Episode 48 – Annual Planning

Annual Planning is something I’ve done every single year in the last 36 years in my practice. At the end of the year, I look at my numbers for this year versus the previous year and ask myself these questions:  What have I focused on, what have I not focused on? What were my goals? Did I reach my goals? So today I want to walk through each of these topics and why I look at them.

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Dr. Bruce Baird 0:00
Hello everyone, this is Dr. Bruce B. Baird and you’re listening to the productive dentist Podcast, the podcast that focuses on productivity in today’s dental practice and explores my experiences over the last 39 years. Our goal is to give you the choices that productivity allows more time for the things you love doing, increase, take home pay, better team relationships, and lower stress in practice, we will help with not just strategies, but real life examples that have helped 1000s of dentists over the last 30 years.

Hi, this is Dr. Bruce Baird with the Productive Dentist Podcast number 48. And today, you know, we’re going to be talking about year end planning for the new year. It’s something that I’ve done, gosh, for every year for the last 35 years in practice 36 years except for the four years I was in the military. And but as we began our practice, there are certain things that you want to do to compare this year’s data, which would be 2019, against 2018, is that and I want to compare those two to see what things have I focused on this year? What things that I’m not focused on this year, and I want to be able to look at my goals, I want to be able to look at what months did I reach my goals this year? What were my goals. And so I’m going to go through each one of these things and kind of why I look at them. The first thing that I always run is my just standard report of you know, our analysis of the practice total, total productivity total collections for this year, compared to the exact same timeframe last year in 2018. And then I’ll figure out, Okay, I’ll do the multiplication and figure out we have 4.3% growth or 6.8% growth, or we’re behind from last year, which truthfully, if you if you follow the recommendations that I’m that I’m going to be talking to you about, you’re going to find that you you’re not going to be ever going down, you’re constantly going to be watching your business as a business and and you’re going to be growing your business. So I look at just a straight numbers, production collection, new patients, how many new patients do we see last year at this time? And how many new patients that we see this year, you’re either growing or you’re going and so and I like to continually work? Now I don’t mind if I have a healthy new patient flow? I don’t mind if it’s, you know, within one or 2% the next year? You know, I’m not always going to have continual growth in numbers of new patients. But then again, what’s my ROI on my marketing efforts? So I look at what things did we do last year marketing, and what was our ROI? Remember, each year you’re going to do this. So you’re going to be able to look back at the data you had last year. And say we had an ROI of X or Y eight to one. Now you go back for years and why it’s important. Just go back 25 years or 20 years and think about the ROI on Yellow Pages. While I might have had a Yellow Pages ROI of nine to 110, to 112 to 115 to one, the next year hit might have been 15 to one the next year 14 to one the next year 12 to one the next year, you know eight to one until nowadays. I mean, I really don’t think people ever pull out a yellow pages to find the dentist and they may a few and we I think we still have a little simple listing for those folks who still have their have their

Yellow Pages under their house phone with the with the dialing that you do on the old phones. But for the most part, things have changed. So I want to see how did last year’s marketing work compared to this year’s, we did radio with Dave Ramsey. It was a sponsored spot. We spent, you know, a, you know, $80,000 or whatever last year, and our return on investment was 580. So you figure it out. And let’s see how that marketing did this year. And how often did we change that marketing? So I’m looking at it from that perspective, year over year. Now. I’m starting to get the data and the information to plan for next year. So I go also go in and do a production by procedure report. And I literally look at what percentage of the practice was crown and bridge what percentage was implants, what percentage and what percentage was it last year? Are we growing our crown and bridge to department are we growing our implant related? Are we growing our perio related services, I want to see what we’re doing year over year. Knowledge is power when you start planning for the next year. I remember Jeff always, Dr. boskie. My, my partner, he was always amazed that we were always within within three or 4% of our goal planning for the next year. And so we already knew we were going to be up by 4%, or 8%. And I like planning for a six to 8% growth each year. So and that’s what we’ve done probably closer to the 10% growth over the years. So now I’m going to run that predict production procedure for it. And I’m going to look at any individual procedures that stood out to me. For instance, 2018, we did 23 indirect pop caps. But in 2019, we did zero. Why is that? Did did all of a sudden, indirect pop caps not were they not there? We did in 2018, we might have done 73 crown lengthening, we use our Biolase for doing crown lengthening. And this year, we only did 14. What that means is when I’m going through my diagnosis and treatment planning with a patient, more than likely, I am not telling the patient anything about deep restorations, you know, and when I’m trading final say, Bob, you got a really deep cavity here, that’s, that’s, you know, we’re gonna need to put in a certain type of restoration. My team, I’ve instructed them to say, Dr. Baird, will that need an indirect PopCap? And I’ll say it will, it’s very close. And then I’ll say, Bob, what an indirect PopCap? Is we put medicine right over where the nerve is. And that’s all I have to explain. And it helps sue the nerve. Crown Lengthening, why is it fair to charge one patient just issues a turn $1,000 for a crown that is super gingival and have another patient that you’re fighting to get below the the amalgam level, when you’re doing your build up. You take the amalgam out, you do your build up, and you You’re right on the bone. So you have to go in either surgically with burrs or with a laser.

And, and get room and do crown lighting. But it’s not it’s different procedures. And so these are the little things that you do, how many occlusal guards did we do last year? How many perio? appliances do we do last year? How many did we do this year? So I’m comparing all of these different things to find out? You know, first of all, if they’re very consistent, a little bit of growth each year, well, then I feel like I don’t need to remind myself when I’m doing my treatment planning. But the truth is, we’re all human we’re going to go through, we only see what we know. And we see what we’re thinking about. And so this is super, super important for you to to look at last year, and then look at this year. Once you’ve done that, then what I like to do is begin to plan for the new year. So planning for the new year is, you know, how many days? First of all, what was my total production, personally, and what was hygiene each individual hygenist personal production, what was my associates personal production for this past year and are say for 2019? I also look at it what was it for 2018. And I can look at it if I’ve got like a six or 8% growth from one year to the next, I can predict without any doubt that we’re going to have a six to 8% growth the next year. And we start to set goals that way. So if I’ll use an example, let’s say my goal was $600 an hour, and last year was 560. Well, then this year, I’m going to I want to go to 650. In my case, it might be I had a goal to 2300 an hour, and I want it to be 2800. You know, and when you look at percentages that obviously the more you produce them, you’re going to you’re going to grow that at a little higher rate if you just compare dollar to dollar. But I want to do that with every one of my employees. I want to do it with my with my producing employees with hygiene, hygiene. You did this last year you did this year, this year, where should we be this next year, we might have a 3% fee increase. So that’s 3% right there. And then I want to continue to grow my business and grow my practice. I’m going to education and learning new things. And again, you only see what you know, I go to Pat Allen’s course on connective tissue grafting I go to pin hole, I go to this, I go to that I’m always constantly trying to find additional high end procedures that are going to help the patient and so these are the things that’s why I go to education, because I know I can help a patient and usually that equates to higher revenue. So what I’ll do is I’ll play and this was my last 12 months. And this was my goal for me individually as a Doc, what am I doing this next year. And the way I like to do this, I like to come up with a number. For instance, I want to guarantee my team, which is my business, I want to guarantee that I will do whatever, in the past few years, I’m going to guarantee I’m going to do $175,000 per month, I’m going to do 175,000 a month, and I’m going to guarantee that now when I say guarantee it, that doesn’t matter if I work four days in that month, or if I work 18 days, now I’m looking at previous years to know what I’m able to do. And the higher you produce, but it doesn’t matter if you’re working, you know, 128 hours a month, and you’re putting together, you know, 1600 hours a year, which is four days a week, then plan your year, but come up with a number that would put you I’m going to use the example that would put you at if last year you did 1.2 million, and next year, you want to do 1.32 Millions, I’m using easy numbers, then I’m going to divide that out and realize I have to do an additional $10,000 a month for me to reach that goal. Okay. And if that’s what I want to do, I’m then going to break it down into this is how much 12 months divided into that. So each month, I’m going to guarantee X number of dollars. Now, if I’m working eight days, I’m going to divide eight into that if I’m working 16 days, I’m going to divide that into that. And I’m also going to look at what I’ve done in the past. So these are super important things, do that with your hygiene. Do that with your associate, say, Hey, you did great, let’s continue to grow. I’m not we’re not trying to we’re not waving a carrot, it’s our business should be consistently growing year to year. It’s just the way it is, again, you’re either growing or you’re going and so I’m, I’m in a belief that for the last I don’t know, I’ve gone up in production every single year for 3035 years.

You know, some years it was three or 4% when the market was doing certain things. And some years it was eight, eight 10%. And it usually had to do with some new procedures, new techniques, something new that we were doing any office. So what I challenge you to do is look at all the data from 18. Compare it to all of your data for 2019. Find out where those differences are, you’re going to find a little additional things that you have just forgotten. I mean, again, human nature, you just forgot to do it. And so now you’re trying to come up with these are the things I need to look at. So when you then have your team planning, this is what the whole team, I spent a half day. I like doing it before the end of the year. But you can do it in January. And set goals. Every single person that as a producer has goals for the month. And I’m I’m I’m wanting them to say yes, I’m going to reach this goal. And I’m going to do it every single month. What that allows you to do, it allows you to get off the roller coaster of dentistry, you’re not going to have a great month one one month and allows you month the next and a great month and allows you month. If I’m planning on taking three weeks of vacation, I’m going to probably take 10 days in July and 10 days in August. Why? Because I don’t want to take the entire three weeks in one month. Because then I’m going to be committed to a three or a four day workweek. I may only work Mondays and Tuesdays. But that four days I’m going to work Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday because and on those days, I might have to do 25 or 30,000 a day to reach my goal. How do I do that? We’ve talked about that in scheduling before. I’m going to pre booked my schedule. I’ve had some amazing months with very few days. I’ve also had amazing months with full, you know, full number of days. So these are the things I want you to look at. It’s super important. Because without planning, you’re just gonna hopefully get there. And that’s really not the way you want to run your business. You want to know where you’re headed. If you have any questions about this, just send me Bruce at productive dentist stock calm. And I’ll be more than happy to do an entire podcast just on this aspect. So that’s the end of that’s the end of this podcast. I look forward to talking to you guys again soon. And have a happy holidays. Merry Christmas. Happy Hanukkah, happy, happy, just happy holiday season for all of you. So and remember to sign up for productive dentist podcast and talk to you soon.

Remember, this is Dr. Bruce B. Baird, the productive dentist signing off but before I do, make sure you go to our website, productivedentistpodcast.com Give us a like and we look forward to sharing some more information with you on our next podcast.