Episode 225 – Unreasonable Hospitality

“Have you ever read a book that is so chock full of tips that by the time you’re done reading it, your hand is sore from writing down notes?” ~Regan Robertson

We all have the same 24 hours in a day, and productive dentists use their time differently than other practice owners. But, you don’t have to go back and get your MBA to find out how to run your practice better. You only need to listen to this ongoing asynchronous subseries of Everyday Practices Dental Podcast, in which co-hosts Dr. Chad Johnson and Regan Robertson discuss lessons they’ve learned from some of the world’s leading business books, and how you can apply them to your practice.

Everyday Practices Dental Podcast co-hosts Regan Robertson and Dr. Chad Johnson continue their book review series as they discuss Will Guidara’s book Unreasonable Hospitality: The Remarkable Power of Giving People More Than They Expect. In this episode, Regan and Dr. Chad discuss Guidara’s 95/5 rule which states, “Manage 95 percent of your business down to the penny; spend the last five percent foolishly.” Discover how hospitality can transform ordinary encounters into extraordinary memories. For those interested in reading the book before jumping into this episode, you can find it here: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=unreasonable+hospitality&crid=2TC7Y1E8OWNIE&sprefix=unreasonable+hospitality%2Caps%2C193&ref=nb_sb_noss_1

Listeners are going to enjoy learning about the important takeaways Regan and Dr. Chad gleaned from Guidara’s book in this episode. Explore the lessons of Unreasonable Hospitality with Regan and Dr. Chad and learn how they can apply to your dental practice. 

As you listen to this episode, we invite you to think about the following:

• What can you do to apply the 95/5 rule in your practice?
• What unique offerings or experiences can you introduce to set your practice apart from others?
• What do you do to remain authentic and stay true to your practice’s mission (even if it means going against conventional norms or expectations)?

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Regan 0:01
Hi, Doctor, Regan Robertson, CCO of Productive Dentist Academy here and I have a question for you. Are you finding it hard to get your team aligned to your vision, but you know, you deserve growth just like everybody else? That’s why we’ve created the PDA productivity workshop. For nearly 20 years, PDA workshops have helped dentists just like you align their teams, get control of scheduling, and create productive practices that they love walking into every day. Just imagine how you will feel when you know your schedule is productive, your systems are humming, and your team is aligned to your vision. It’s simple, but it’s not necessarily easy. We can help, visit productivedentist.com/workshop that’s productivedentist.com/workshop to secure your seats now.

Regan 0:48
The story chronicles his journey of trying to go from the bottom up to the top and it starts at his early days and all of the struggles along the way and the way he’s managed to systematize and put frameworks around the lessons that he’s learned. That is kind of the premise of this book. Welcome to the Everyday Practices Podcast. I’m Regan Robertson, and my co-host, Dr. Chad Johnson, and I are on a mission to share the stories of everyday dentists who generate extraordinary results using practical proven methods you can take right into your own dental practice. If you’re ready to elevate patient care and produce results that are anything but ordinary, buckle up and listen in.

Regan 1:44
Have you ever read a book that is so chock full of tip after tip after tip that by the time you’re done reading it, your hand is sore from writing down notes, you cannot wait to implement what you have just read and share it with others?

Dr. Chad Johnson 2:00
Yes

Regan 2:01
I have. Oh, thanks, Chad.

Dr. Chad Johnson 2:04
Sorry, I just ruined your perfect intro. Keep going.

Regan 2:07
Welcome to the Everyday Practices dental podcast. I’m your host Regan Robertson here with my faithful co-host, Dr. Chad Johnson, and we are discussing the book, “The Myth, The Legend, The Man, Unreasonable Hospitality The Remarkable Power of Giving People More Than They Expect”,  by Will Guidara. Chad, welcome to our show today.

Dr. Chad Johnson 2:28
What a fun book. It was your suggestion here we read it and it sounds like you loved it as much as I did.

Regan 2:35
This suggestion was a share on top of a share on top of a share. So if you know in your own little circle and groups if you’re in a Facebook group or message form or text thread, you know, I think excellent surrounds excellence. So you’re always sharing things and this book came from Dr. Adrienne Reynolds, who is our Chief HR officer. Yeah, she is excited about it and then so she got me to download it. I started listening to it and then you know, I am a Business Made Simple certified coach and a certified story brand guide through Donald Miller. Donald Miller is buddies with Will Guidara and he know at the coaching summit so there was a double whammy there that got me excited about reading this book. So I shared it with you because you have shared with me so many of your great books and this episode one is going to be top notes because there was too many things to go over we’re gonna have a multi, multi-pronged episode

Dr. Chad Johnson 3:28
We will go as deep as we need to or want to

Regan 3:30
Yes, so listeners grab the book we get, we get, we get no compensation for that but grab the book, download it and follow us over the next couple of weeks here. So let’s paint the picture of what unreasonable hospitality the book is the premise of it. So I’ve read lots of business books, and most of them are to be quite frank kind of boring. Like I have to slog through them. They’ve been great on walks with my dog butt I’m I’m not compelled. This starts off almost like a hero’s journey. So the book opens up and it talks about how this gentleman, Will Guidara is, he ran the number one restaurant in the world. I’ll just SPOILER ALERT it right there in the world and it starts out from him coming in 50th best restaurant in the world and how much it hurt that he was last place at this very prestigious awards ceremony. So the story chronicles his journey of trying to go from the bottom up to the top and it starts at his early days and all of the struggles along the way and the way he’s managed to systematize and put frameworks around the lessons that he’s learned. That is kind of the premise of this book, and, and Chad, tell us what some of your top notes are.

Dr. Chad Johnson 4:44
So he made one of them was he talked about win win win, and that was a TV show reference from office. So it’s funny he talked about the win, win, win.

Regan 4:58
What is the win win win?

Dr. Chad Johnson 5:01
I don’t remember.

Regan 5:02
I just remember, this is starting off. Great.

Dr. Chad Johnson 5:05
I know, I’m sorry, I’d have to dig into that but it’s funny, you’re like, what is that? I don’t know, I just remember writing down that when, when, when I was like, That’s a funny line right there. So he was talking about, like welcoming and receiving your guests. This was basically service to the top level and then once you’ve got to that top level, scrapping it all and starting over again, and reinventing yourself, he, he was talking to a lot, you know, even about it, and I know, this is probably one of your notes, then 95, the 95 five rule, managing, you know, 95% shrewdly and wisely and then the last four or 5% just splurging, and, and, you know, we could take note of that, you know, he was even talking about when you receive guests, you know, like being welcoming and, you know, so finding little things to do to, to make a big difference. He was talking, for example, about putting quarters in the meter, you know, out on the street for a guest if they said, you know, like, “What kind of car did you drive?” and he would have them, you know, like, pay the, the meter so that way they the, I was gonna say, the patient, the customer, the restaurant customer wouldn’t have to go out and do that and stuff like that is just like little things like that. So I don’t know, just like a lot of stuff. Oh, you know what else too? At the end in chapter 20, he had a long mission statement and I thought it was funny because I have a long mission statement and he was like, and guess what, we’re not going to change it. I don’t care, you know, basically, and I was like, “This guy gets me, I don’t care about if my mission statements are too long. We like the way that it is. It’s us and it explains us and it doesn’t fit the mold of anyone else,” but you know what? Kiss off, that’s just how you know who we are. So I don’t know, those were some of my, you know, high-level slash low-level takeaways. The low level being when when when I was like, “Oh, that’s an office reference,” but this guy was a good writer, he’s easy to follow and listen to on Audible how I did the book and stuff like that. So your thoughts

Regan 7:25
95 Five rule. i As soon as I caught on to 95 Five rule, I started really paying attention to everything we do at PDA, I love this rule and I think I have informally done this rule several times over the years, probably many times over the years but it deserves to slow down and take a look at it every single thing that you spend, it’s basically running a super tight ship. It coincides with a chapter called “Raindrops Create Oceans”, which was another favorite chapter of mine, that’s towards the back of the book but both of these talk about how to create that hospitality experience without completely busting your budget. So one example that I thought of right away Chad was at our workshops. In the past, we used to provide kind of thin blankets because if you’ve ever been to a productivity workshop, you know when Dr. Bruce speaks the room is cold. It is physically cold, because he emits a lot of heat himself and energy. So we keep it cool. Ask people to bring jackets and before COVID We would just you know recycle the blankets. we’d collect them, have them dry cleaned, and then they’d be out for the next crew. After COVID. You know, that’s not that wasn’t that’s not okay, so we ended up upgrading at the last workshop, I think it was we upgraded and got really big, fluffy, yellow, nice blankets that people could really cozy up to and then it was their gift at the end. So we gifted it to them and it was a surprise, a lot of people were really surprised by that. We met a need and I felt like that hit that 95 Five rule because those blankets are not inexpensive. They’re they’re an investment to make when you have over 200 attendees, but very, very well worth it. So that to me was an example of the 95 five rule. How did you translate the 95 five rule?

Dr. Chad Johnson 9:14
First off when he was talking about the blue spoon that was you know, for the ice cream? Like I, I was, yeah, I was curious to find out what this spoon looks like because he was saying that, “Just trust me this spoon is the best spoon you know, and I was afraid to tell the boss how much the spoon was going to cost but it was going to be the seller,” and I just thought I mean the spoon serious. You know? So like as the business owner side I’m going really like this one, but it was his splurge and the market differentiation along the lines.

Regan 9:50
Wait, did you Google the spoon?

Dr. Chad Johnson 9:53
No, but I know, but I’ve been curious to um, but not curious enough to finish it out on Google yet

Regan 10:00
So this was, he had was it an espresso stand? I think it was an espresso stand that he and he ended up. So how do you differentiate yourself and his 95 Five rule was this special little spoon that people got?

Dr. Chad Johnson 10:10
Yeah, and yeah, so I was like, I’ve got a, you know, I was kind of curious about this spoon. Along those lines in our office, we started having blankets, like you mentioned, but we got them off Amazon. So they actually weren’t at like, ridiculous budget, because we do wash them again but we got plush, Queen-size blankets off of Amazon and I want to say maybe they were in the $30 range or something like that and we have a few of them and they’re, they’re really thick and then by the time you double, and then quadruple fold them over, you know, for the patient sitting in the chair, they’re so like, they’re almost hot and so when a patient’s like, “I’m, I’m cold,” we can either drop those in the dryer real quick, or just bring them out and, and that’s a cool splurge, you know, to give the patient not like this, you know, not like this thin little sheet kind of thing or something and go hope you get warm, like you would on an airplane, you know, they give you those the little thing and,

Regan 11:17
I was thinking of, I was thinking of when you go in for your annual exam, and they give women I don’t know what they do for men, but they give women like a, it’s almost like a paper dress and it’s thin and it’s cold in the room and you have to just sit and wait and you’re dressed in this tiny little thin paper. It’s like it’s not enjoyable.

Dr. Chad Johnson 11:36
Do you know what they give guys?

Regan 11:37
No,

Dr. Chad Johnson 11:37
Guys don’t either, because they don’t go to annuals. You like that one?

Regan 11:45
Yeah, that’s great.

Dr. Chad Johnson 11:47
But so the,

Regan 11:50
but I guess you don’t need a little outfit for it.

Dr. Chad Johnson 11:53
Right? I suppose. So, blankets and then the other thing that I was going to mention, when I first opened my 5% Splurge was we bought little bags for if people bought, you know a Sonicare or, or if we had product to put in, and we had our business name put on the plastic bag and it was a nice plastic bag, kind of like one that would hold books well, you know, it wasn’t just like a, like a grocery plastic bag that’s thin.  It has you know, like it would it look like something you’d get maybe at a store or something like that or if a bookstore and,

Regan 12:28
A better quality.

Dr. Chad Johnson 12:29
Yes, and it was and we do that even now we upgraded to the, the reusable grocery bags, and we have our name on it and we have those to our colors as well and those are super nice because people are going to reuse them, or I hope they do and it’s a splurge because we could get cheaper bags. I mean, grocery stores know how to get cheap bags, Walmart knows how to get cheap bags but you know, like when you get a target bag, it’s actually a smidge thicker, which is you know, just a great up. It’s not it’s not a great bag, but you know it at Target, it’s going to actually be a smidge nicer of a bag and this might date us because at some point, they’re probably going to do away with these plastic bags and in places like Hawaii and even along the coast like in South Carolina and stuff like that, they’ve taken those away and I understand you know, the, the ecology of that. That’s cool and all but most people are going to understand what I’m talking about with the plastic bags. So those when I first started that was a very much a splurge that, you know, I was almost excited about to give people these bags because it to me it actually was costly and being PPO starter practice, you know, and not exactly having the money for it but at the time, I think I spent 2000 bucks on a gajillion of them but I mean, it was $2,000 I kind of didn’t have you know, I was right out of dental school, but I was like, “No, we’re gonna get these bags,” and it was along those lines of that principle.

Regan 14:07
Absolutely is and it’s and it’s a risk, it’s a risk you take. So I think you know, the book, I noticed amps up in its level of the 95 five rule. So you see that 95 Five Rule show up in his journey, it just gets more and more personalized as it goes. Like a level two for me when I hear you say that which we’ve talked about in previous ones zonna toothbrushes because they are personalized, they’re obviously significantly more than a bag you’re not going to give them to every single patient but that to me is a wow factor. If you’re giving someone a personalized electric toothbrush, you know for whatever their treatment plan is that I thought, that’s a great example of the 95 five rule right there.

Dr. Chad Johnson 14:47
We do that for all of our perio patients. It’s just it’s given to them just as you know, like we just gift it to them. I think I told you this last, last podcast I believe it was recorded but maybe not further. Listen say, I was like, “You know, we had a patient complain. He was like, “How much am I paying for this?” You know, he wanted to return it and we’re like, “No, it’s part of its, you know, It’s our gift to you,” and he’s like, “Well, I don’t want the rents either,” and we’re like, “No, that’s also complimentary. Okay, you know, like it diffused, take it. Yeah. You’re welcome. Please use it.”

Regan 15:23
So I noticed that will, so, so he, he ends up running the number-one restaurant in the world. So you can imagine how far he takes the 95-five rule, I do have a little bit of a criticism I’m going to insert here. So part of that personalization in the hospitality element of it felt amazing and mildly creepy at the same time. So part of the book talks about how they wanted to just make sure that that experience was so relevant to the person coming in and they would Google like this, they would, they would end up Googling and seeing if they could recognize the person who called in, like, find a picture of the person. Yeah, so that they could greet them at the door, and say, “Hello, Chad,” before they even knew and, and, and we’re going to talk about this more in part two, how they broke down and making an absolutely seamless experience but I thought that

Dr. Chad Johnson 16:16
It was worth it. It’s borderline creepy, like you said, but at the same time, like we can do that in our office, when you take a picture of a patient, then the person, you know, greeting people, when they are receiving that person to be able to say, “Hey, Jim, glad to have you back.” It’s going to be a bigger sell than just, “Name please,” you know,

Regan 16:36
that’s a lot. That’s yeah, that’s a much more to me appropriate way of doing it but he did what he had he had Google, it’s a little bit different in a restaurant environment than it would be in a dental practice. So that that I thought was interesting and then they ended up making a crew called the “Dream Weaver Crew” that helped continue to personalize so this will be covered in episodes two, possibly three. This is a light smattering of unreasonable hospitality, by Will Guidera and I hope you guys have already got your ears perked and are interested to hear more.

Dr. Chad Johnson 17:10
You know, it took me a minute or two to figure out what he was talking about. EMP. You know, in the book, yes,

Regan 17:17
Yes, I have such a dislike for acronyms. Even though Productive Dentist Academy is called PDA, I think we’ve been called TDA. So many times that now it’s finally taken over but I’m happy that you said that because I listened to books on audio and I kept rewinding and I was like, What is EMP? What is EMP? Listeners it’s Eleven, Eleven Madison Park, which is his restaurant, and then halfway through or three-quarters through he switches and just starts to call it EMP and I think that was you know, he’s not a writer, he did have a penguin supported him but sure, that would have been a critique. Yeah, I’m not, I’m not a fan of acronyms.

Dr. Chad Johnson 17:55
Yeah. But I don’t I wonder at what point I caught on. I was like, oh, yeah, I’m cool. I know what he’s talking about.

Regan 18:00
I’m glad you did that because my brain did the same thing. Yeah, I thought maybe it was an entirely different restaurant for a bit.

Dr. Chad Johnson 18:05
But the, you had brought this up earlier, the dissatisfaction with being 50th and he talks about, you know, his journey of, you know, something along the lines of, you know, when they finally achieved 10th place or a third place and stuff like that, that he was, you know,  you know, you you celebrate, but then he’s dissatisfied too and like, “No, I want first place, what does it take, you know, to get that guy back in here and review us again. So that way we can get the, the level that we want?” And I don’t know, it was it was out of my wheelhouse of my business. So it was cool to see how someone else would do that and then to then correlate that into, “Okay, how would he, if he was a competitor, Dentist up the road, how would he knock someone socks off to where they aren’t going to leave versus what we do? Is it good enough what we do? Possibly. Is it, is it stupendous that, you know, we have no room for improvement? No, like, you know, so how do we keep pushing it to the next level where we have the blanket heated and ready? You know, because we wrote down the patient loves this blanket. In fact, oh, along those lines, it, I’m trying to think if I was actually reading this book, I had a patient at my West Side office that she went on and on about how, how much she loved the, that blanket and so because we have the patient’s address, I just Amazon it and had sent her one.

Regan 19:47
Oh, that’s so sweet. That’s personal. That’s hospitality.

Dr. Chad Johnson 19:53
And she and it shipped the next day so she got it the next day and and she sent me a message Um, and said, you know, like, “That was awfully sweet liquid came to my door,” and I mean, she knew where it came from, you know, we didn’t make a big stink like guests who got you those, you know, but it would be hard to pretend like it just randomly showed up from you know, Santa right? I mean, you know, she, she put it together she’s like, Oh, because, you know, on the way out the door, she was just like, I know, she just went on and on to the front desk people and and I said, I’ll tell you what I think I said something like, you know, like, “Do you did you like do you like the warmth of it? Of course. But like, is that dark blue? Like, is that a color that you really liked? Or whatever? And she’s like, “Oh, yeah, it’s just so pretty,” and so I was like, Yep, we’re getting the blue one, you know, I got the exact same one and shipped it right to her. And again, this isn’t $500 You know, this isn’t something to make someone blush at being ridiculous. But it was just another level of letting the patient know, you know, like, we actually do care, you know, like, more than more than just your teeth.

Regan 21:03
There’s a chapter called, well, I don’t know if it’s a chapter head, but it’s a methodology and they’re talking about slowing down to speed up and what you just demonstrated to me is, you know, to be intentional, and to be personal, it takes time you have to you have to pay attention you have to understand and listen to what your patients want and then providing these little touches that really do help differentiate you in the long run and I wrote down hospitality economy. So that is going to be for the next quarter probably my focus creating, a hospitality economy. I, I look forward to continuing to dissect this with you Chad, and and telling all of you what we’ve learned and what we’ve taken away, and how we applied it to each of our business respectively.

Dr. Chad Johnson 21:44
So read on or audible on end, and then catch us on part two. Sounds

Regam 21:51
Sounds great. See you then.

Dr. Chad Johnson 21:53
Thanks, everybody.

Regan 22:00
Thank you for listening to another episode of Everyday Practices Podcast. Chad and I are here every week. Thanks to our community of listeners just like you and we’d love your help. It would mean the world if you can help spread the word by sharing this episode with a fellow dentist and leave us a review on iTunes or Spotify. Do you have an extraordinary story you’d like to share or feedback on how we can make this podcast even more awesome? Drop us an email at podcast@productivedentist.com and don’t forget to check out our other podcasts from Productive Dentist Academy at productivedentist.com/podcasts See you next week.