What Young Entrepreneurs Get Right That Most Business Owners Forget

Got it, and that makes a lot of sense.

You know, um, a lot of practices or a lot of dentists have successful practices, um, and they love being a dentist, okay?

Mm-hmm.

Uh, but they s- they feel trapped by the business, uh-

That's right

... because they work on the business more than they actually work clinically in the practice.

So what do you think there... what are some of the signs, and if someone's listening to this and trying to, you know, understand a little bit more about what makes them a really good candidate for to do something about it, what are some common signs that you see that a practice is, you know, not running efficiently, that the, that you can come in there and, you know, change the mindset and change h- the direction of how the practice is performing?

performing?Well, oftentimes the reason why the business is the challenge is because the investment into operations.

And so this is a place I see people get caught a lot.

There's something in business they call the proverbial valley of death, [chuckles] which is a, which is an omni-ominous term.

But the idea is that most businesses hit a certain growth level, and then they stop.

And when they hit that point, they'll slide backwards.

So let's say that's losing an associate, a hygienist, patients, whatever it is, because the quality of operations and, and ultimately patient either care or experience decreases.

And so then what ends up happening is they increase it, decrease it, increase it, decrease it.

Eventually, you have to get someone in the operational chair who can actually run this practice and doesn't need you.

And that level of investment, I find most doctors struggle to do that.

If they're paying somebody fifty thousand dollars a year and I say, "Now you're gonna pay somebody ninety-five thousand." And mentally that, that jump is one of the biggest jumps that I see that people struggle with as far as "I've had Becky with me for thirty-two years, and even though she doesn't know how to do this, I'm gonna still put her in that position." And, and they weren't, you know, and then they hit-- they, they keep hitting this wall, and they can't get over it, then the business becomes more and more frustrated because a non-operations person is trying to train an operations person on how to become better at their job, which doesn't make any sense.

And I see that, I see that happen all the time.

It's probably one of the biggest, uh, next movements doctors could make, but they're, they're usually do not wanna make that move.

Yeah, it's interesting you said that.

You know, I just gave a, uh, a seminar, um, at the FDC meeting, Florida Dental Conference, and, uh, the seminar was on, uh, increasing case acceptance using software technology.

And, you know, I find a lot of practices underperform with case acceptance.

That's one of the things that they change.

They can really increase the number of dollars they're bringing into the practice, both from a production and a, a collection perspective.

And, um, you know, as I was talking to these dentists, you know, I asked them questions like, "You know, do you know your case acceptance?" A-and literally I had a room of twenty-eight offices, and two people raised their hand.