Episode 88 – Why Do I Need a Coach?

I realized there were people out there who knew more about business and leadership, how to deal with my team, and get rid of stress than I did. That’s why in my career I’ve brought 9 different coaches in to help me achieve specific goals I had for my practice. But a lot of dentists dig in their heels when coaching is brought up in conversation. So today I’m going to talk to you about:

• The pain points that made me seek out coaching
• Why I brought in people who knew more than me
• The results I saw when I applied expert strategies

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Productive dentists that consistently produce 3-4x the national average (even during a pandemic) have three things in common when it comes to generating year over year growth in the practice:

1. A well-defined philosophy of care
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3. An easy way to get team buy-in

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EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

I realized that from my perspective, I realized there are not only people out there that know a lot more in dentistry than I do. But I bet there’s some people who know a hell of a lot more about business, and about leadership and about how to deal with my team and how to get rid of stress in my business. And so that’s where. For me, being able to have a coach helped my team and hold my team accountable.

We’re going to talk about consulting, or coaching. And interestingly enough, But some people go through their career, and they never, you know, they never hire a coach, they never hire anything. And that’s fine. And they become very, very successful. I can only speak for myself. When I when I talk about coaching, and when I talk about consulting, or talk about advisors, or talk about life coaches, you know, all of this stuff. And, and, and I can only speak from personal experience.

But one thing I think that helped me early on in my career is that I realized, and when I was in dental school, I, you know, I felt extremely comfortable talking to patients and working on patients. I feel like I was, you know, God blessed me with good hands and the ability to be able to see the results before before, before I actually started doing it.

Matter of fact, one of my team members, I asked that question I said, you know, what is it? What’s the difference between me and maybe one of our associates? And they just said, Well, it seems like you know where you’re going or know where you’re going to end up? And I said, That’s interesting, you know, and I think it’s important for us to evaluate ourselves and look internal.

And one of the things in dental school that I realized was, every time I would go up to the senior floor when I was a junior or I would go to a course I would go Wow, that is so cool. And what it allowed me to do, I think, is to realize that I didn’t know everything. Duh. You know, but, but there are a lot of dentists that come out of dental school that have so much ego, that Oh, yeah, I’m a dentist. I know what I know what I’m doing. I mean, I have cut five crowns now. And I feel pretty confident. But even some of the best hands in my dental school class. Never they got out of school and never really saw much again, not not on continuing ed courses, not anything they just went said, I’m going to do dentistry.

And that’s it. Well, I mean, and that’s everybody’s prerogative to do whatever it is that you decide you want to do. If you want to get out of dental school and just go sit and see patients and in your, in your town or your community and, and that has been your goal and your dream. Awesome. Just do that be happy. You know, that’s that’s the deal.

My goal in starting a dental practice, and I’ve said this on previous podcast is that I want to have a model practice. Now what is that? I had no idea what it was. But I just knew there were other people out there, Rick Kushner, up in Colorado back in golly, this has been 33 years ago. I call him up out of the clear blue. And he was lean and mean guy still up there. I called him out of the clear blue said, Rick, can I come up? And I just want to see what you’re doing. And such a nice guy. And he said, Sure. Come on up. And so I went up there and I was just amazed at the I never did multiple practices like he did. But I was amazed by all the things that he was doing and setting up these partnerships and in his practices, and I called up.

I’ve called up a lot of people. One person I called back, this is not many years ago. But I found out who was the best guy in the world in sleep apnea. And it was Dr. John Remmers. And so I called john out of the clear blue and said, john, I want to come I want to meet you, I want to come see you. And so I got a chance to go see John Remmers. And John came and did a course for all of our Productive Dentist Academy Docs.

I have called, I don’t know, probably 10 different dentists. Because I realized that they were at the top of their field, I went through all of Pete Dawson stuff I went, you know, anybody who I felt like this is different. This is education. And we’re talking about consulting.

But I guess why I’m saying this is, I want you to understand that, from my perspective, I realized there are not only in people out there that know a lot more in dentistry than I do. But I bet there’s some people who know a hell of a lot more about business, and about leadership and about how to deal with my team and how to get rid of stress in my business.

And I told you, you know, about predictive analytics, and I became a much better version of myself when I realized the business part of my business. So once you do that, I mean, you know, I would say you hire productive dentist Academy to come in and get your business running tip top. And at that point, you can pretty much from that point on, you’re not going to have to focus on a lot of those things, you’re still going to have your goal setting, you’re still going to have your bonuses, you’re still going to have your profitability incentive points.

But at that point, what you need more help on is no longer the business, but you need more help on learning about leadership, learning about when I say consulting, and coaching, I love and I’ve had nine different coaches and consultants in our practice. And that is, that’s minimal compared to what what we’ve had individuals come in and just talk to our but I’ve had so many different people and and why did I do that? And I’ve spent an enormous amount of money. But why did I do that?

Because every time I go to work course and education course, I learned something that increases either my communication skills, my ability to be able to produce dentistry, at a higher level, the same with consulting and coaching. I love it. When I have somebody who’s been one of our coaches, and actually, Victoria, my partner with PDA, I first met her she was she came into our business, from doing hygiene consulting, and I’m not even counting the hygiene consultants we’ve had. And so I don’t mind spending money because we’re proactive when things happen in our business, we take that information, and we turn it into better results.

And what I think a more ideal practice, a more I that, you know, that model practice that I was telling you about earlier in the podcast. That’s really what I’m thinking about. I want that model practice. And we were so far from being a model practice, and we probably still are, and that’s fine, because continual improvement, personally, continual improvement, practice wise, continual improvement in your marriage, continual improvement in your relationships with your kids, continual improvement is something that that is you’re not going to be perfect in anything, there’s only one person was ever perfect, and but you can be excellent, you can be excellent at a lot of things as long as you’re committed to excellence. And so that’s where for me, being able to have a coach helped my team and hold my team accountable.

You know, I personally as a leader, hold my team accountable, but I don’t have to do and I’ve trained my team on whatever aspect. If it’s making a temporary I train the people who work with me, I didn’t care if they came from Walmart or had 10 years experience made no difference to me, I’m going to train you the way I want them to be made. And I’m going to hold you accountable to make them that way every time. And if I see that it’s not I’m not going to go ballistic like I would have 30 years ago. I’m just going to say hey, you notice this little rough edge here? That’s really tough on the tongue. Believe me, I’ve had a lot of dental work done. And they’d say, Oh, yeah, didn’t even see that. Okay, or I go back here and I’m checking something look at this hunk of cement that was left gotta be really careful with this cement. I don’t say that with a patient sitting there but I’ll say hey, that you see a big white hunk of cement. You know, we don’t want to leave that that’s not good for the tissue.

All these little things I train people. However, it’s lovely to have somebody come in and help and that’s what Productive Dentist Coaching does. I believe that coaching should be much more about built much more like a football team. We have coaches for different areas. We have front office coaches, that are people who used to work the front office, we have office manager coaches who were office managers, we have chairside coaches who are chairside we have marketing coaches who do marketing.

So it’s like we have defensive back coaches, offensive line coaches quarterback coach. And overall, we have a head coach that works with you. So these are all things that, you know, coaching, in my opinion to get to the highest level possible unless you’re just one of those, just I mean, and there are people out there, there are some out there that have built amazing businesses, and have just done amazing things and probably never had a coach. I’m just not one of those guys.

So I just want you to be, I just want you to understand, and I’ve spent the last 25 years 30 years trying to help dentists through through coaching through consulting through lecturing through, you know, through all the things that we do through financing through, you know, all those things. So, hopefully this podcast has been interesting. You can always go to productivedentist.com and get more information. You can have a look at your practice, give you some ideas. It’s not a hard sell. Yeah, but we’re there if you were there. If and when you need us.

So anyway, share this with your friends. Hope you enjoy the productive dentists, podcasts and stay safe. And we’ll see you soon.