How to Offer Amazon Prime-like Services to Your Patients – Episode 248

Half of the general public doesn’t have dental insurance. It’s time you did something to reach them.

On this episode of the Dentist Money™ Show, Ryan interviews Jordon Comstock of BoomCloud, a software company that helps practices create in-house dental membership programs. During the show, Ryan and Jordan discuss the numerous advantages in-office subscription programs offer. 

For patients, membership services can be easy to understand—they’re already paying fees for different types of insurance or subscriptions for things like Amazon Prime. But many dentists remain hesitant. If you’re one, this might be the education you need to finally get on board.

 

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Podcast Transcript

Ryan Isaac:
Hey, Dentist Money Show listeners. Thanks for tuning into another episode. Today on the show, we have Jordan Comstock from BoomCloud apps. If you’ve been wondering how you can find different ways to increase your practices profitability, income, revenue, and overall value, this episode’s for you. Thanks for tuning in. If you have any questions for us, you can go to our website and schedule a chat with one of our advisors at dentistadvisors.com and click the book free consultation button.

Ryan Isaac:
Or if you have any questions, go to our Facebook group. Post a question in there. We’ll get in there and answer quickly. Dentistadvisors.com/group. Thanks for tuning in. Thanks for joining us on today’s episode, please enjoy the show.

Announcer:
Consultant advisor conduct your own due diligence when making financial decisions. General principles discussed during this program do not constitute personal advice. This program is furnished by dentist advisors or registered investment advisor. This is Dentist Money now, here’s your host, Ryan Isaac.

Ryan Isaac:
Welcome to the Dentist Money Show where we help dentists make smart financial decisions. I’m your host, Ryan Isaac joined today by good friend with good hair, Jordan Comstock from BoomCloud.

Jordon Comstock:
What’s up, man?

Ryan Isaac:
How’re you doing, man?

Jordon Comstock:
I’m good.

Ryan Isaac:
I spent many years of my life with no hair, so I just got to recognize.

Jordon Comstock:
Got to recognize the hair.

Ryan Isaac:
I got to call it out. Yeah.

Jordon Comstock:
Well you got a nice beard, man. I can’t-

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah. Had to compensate. Yeah. I had to compensate for the face hair. So anyway, man, thanks for joining us. How’ve you been lately, man? Let’s start with this. I think this is an interesting question for all businesses. It’s middle of 2020. Well, I guess we’re past the middle. It’s August, 2020. And what changed for BoomCloud over the last six months when office has shut down? How’d it go for you guys?

Jordon Comstock:
It went really well for us, we stayed extremely busy. In fact, we signed up the most users during that time than I’ve ever seen in the history of BoomCloud in that amount of timeframe. So we were worn out actually towards the middle of July, we were pretty worn out with how busy we got. So we had to bring on new team members, which is always exciting, but also a lot of work.

Jordon Comstock:
So for us, it was a great opportunity to help our practices and friends in dentistry. And then we’re just maturing as a company as well, which is obviously a fun and challenging time as well. So during COVID-19, that was great. I was scared at first, because I didn’t know what to expect. I’ve been in the dental industry for a long time.

Jordon Comstock:
And prior to BoomCloud, I managed my dad’s dental lab and we went through the recession at that time, and that was hard. That was hard for a dental lab. My mindset was like, is this going to be like the dental lab days of going through a recession? But it was the opposite for us, which was great. And it was great to see at least our product helping practices that were shut down in regards to revenue, which we’ll talk about today.

Ryan Isaac:
Thanks for everyone for tuning in today. Let’s kind of get to the meat of it. What we’re going to be talking about today is membership programs, office membership programs, and to a layman like myself and layman, I like to think of like a lame man.

Jordon Comstock:
Well, that’s basically what it says.

Ryan Isaac:
What it’s saying to a lay man like myself, it seems like in office membership programs are becoming a lot more popular and people are kind of starting to realize the potential that they have and why they’re so important and how they help. So before we jump in any details, how about give us an overview on what is in office membership program for anyone who might be wondering this, why do they exist and how do they grow? Is it true that it’s growing in popularity?

Jordon Comstock:
Yeah. So perfect. Yeah. So my definition of a membership program, it’s an alternative to dental insurance that allows your patients to pay you a subscription fee, whether it’s yearly or monthly to get access to certain benefits and savings that you design as an office, no third party designs it. It’s very similar to Amazon Prime. I’m sure you’ve got Amazon Prime, Ryan.

Ryan Isaac:
That I do. Yep.

Jordon Comstock:
I do too.

Ryan Isaac:
I bought a cot for my upcoming beach camping trip last night on it.

Jordon Comstock:
So I bought my paddleboard a few days before I went to … I just got back from Yellowstone in Island Park, and I bought my paddle board on there because I’m like, I don’t want to haul a kayak up. So yeah, I’m the type of guy that gets a package on the porch every day from Amazon.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah. We’re getting there.

Jordon Comstock:
It’s pretty pathetic.

Ryan Isaac:
It usually don’t show up for me though, it’s usually someone else in my house.

Jordon Comstock:
I guess I should reword. Yeah. It’s typically there’s a package on the porch, but it’s not.

Ryan Isaac:
Not always for me.

Jordon Comstock:
Yeah. So only the big ones are, like the paddleboard. I don’t waste time on the little stuff.

Ryan Isaac:
That’s fair.

Jordon Comstock:
But yeah, think of Amazon Prime, but built for your dental practice, built for your the patient’s oral health care. That’s typically how I designed it. And some of the reasons why you would want to create a membership program is number one, the opportunity with the amount of patients that don’t have dental insurance is growing right now. It’s been a little over half the United States that doesn’t have dental insurance.

Jordon Comstock:
But with COVID-19, that’s actually started to increase, which is pretty crazy. So there’s that opportunity there for your practice to be a solution for these patients. And then obviously you build patient loyalty and you build a case acceptance strategy. And then my favorite thing is you build a recurring revenue or a cash flow strategy for your practice, which is extremely important in a good economy, but even more important in a down economy.

Jordon Comstock:
Cash is king, and managing your cashflow becomes one of the most important things in a down economy. And that’s what a membership program helps with. So that’s kind of my thoughts are what it is and why you should. What’s your third question there?

Ryan Isaac:
Well, actually let’s stop right there because … Can you throw out some statistics then on maybe what you’re seeing in average practices that are implementing needs? How are case acceptance changing? What’s production changing?

Jordon Comstock:
Yeah, so we’re seeing within the first month, the practices if they’re starting from scratch. Maybe they didn’t have a membership program prior and they just launched one, we’re seeing the good practices get to about 100 patients in a month and a half to two months signed up to the program. And then obviously the longer you’re on it, this is a longterm strategy. You’re not going to launch a membership program and all of a sudden get 1000 patients signed up.

Jordon Comstock:
That’s just [crosstalk 00:07:25]. Unless you’ve got the volume. But most solo practitioners don’t have that type of volume. So we typically see within about eight months to a year, a practice is generating roughly around 15 to $20,000 in monthly recurring revenue, which that can vary with patient size, but it can be anywhere from 400 on a patient’s active membership.

Ryan Isaac:
And you’re saying this revenue comes from the new recurring monthly revenue.

Jordon Comstock:
Yeah, exactly. So any revenue I talk about is going to be a real niche.

Ryan Isaac:
This is the Amazon Prime revenue.

Jordon Comstock:
Yup. Yeah. And if you think about Amazon, it’s like a multi billion dollar membership plan for Amazon. Like they’re not selling products on that. Obviously when you’re a member, you’re buying products. But just from their members alone, they generate billions of dollars each year in just membership. And that’s how a practice is you develop these membership programs.

Jordon Comstock:
That’s how you should think as well, the longer and the bigger you generate or you sign up patients to your membership program, that recurring revenue is going to build and compound over time, which is a very powerful tool if you will, in the business. But the trends are within eight months to 12 months, you can get a good amount of patients signed up on a membership plan, paying monthly or yearly subscription fees.

Jordon Comstock:
I guess that’s the key word is subscription fees. I think that’s the most powerful form of revenue that a business can generate. In fact, we often call it the Holy Grail of business revenue. There’s a book that I wish I had it in front of me. But there’s a book that I typically recommend for everyone listening. It’s called the Automatic Customer by John Warlow.

Jordon Comstock:
It talks about the power of subscription revenue and what that does also in terms of the valuation of a practice, which is also fascinating. When you generate a recurring revenue stream for any type of business, it increases the value of that business because you’re reducing risk in cashflow and you’re increasing stability of cashflow. So any business owner is more attracted to that than a traditional business model, in my opinion.

Jordon Comstock:
So I recommend getting that book, the Automatic Customer, talks about the power of subscription revenue and what it does to valuations, which your business is one of your greatest assets, in my opinion. And as an operator or a practice owner, you should be focusing on optimizing that asset to give you the best types of returns and the best stability.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah. Is this something you have to like convince people of maybe like it was five years ago or something, like starting a program in house?

Jordon Comstock:
So convinced practices do this or patients?

Ryan Isaac:
Let’s do both. Let’s talk about both. Yeah. I wonder if this concept clicks with people pretty intuitively or if it’s something that has to be educated on a little bit more until they grasp it, let’s start with the practice level. And then patients.

Jordon Comstock:
On the practice level, there definitely is some education involved. But obviously when it clicks, they get it. The downside is most practice owners, they didn’t study business. And we at least view ourselves as helping them on the business side of the practice in this specialty. So it does require some education to the practice. Recurring revenue is not a natural concept in dentistry. Outside of dentistry, yes, there’s lots of industries that-

Ryan Isaac:
Sort of like ortho or something.

Jordon Comstock:
Yeah. Yeah. And I think outside of dentistry, recurring revenue and memberships makes complete sense, but it’s still somewhat a new business model. Since I started, when I started building BoomCloud back in 2014 on the side when I was at the dental lab and it was rarely talked about back then.

Ryan Isaac:
2014. It’s like not that long ago, but it is. Yeah. In terms of like technology.

Jordon Comstock:
In terms of technology, it’s-

Ryan Isaac:
Might as well be decades.

Jordon Comstock:
But back in, I should say 2013, 2014, because it was the end of ’13, it wasn’t talked about much and it’s still a new business concept. So yeah, they requires some education there. On the patient standpoint, it’s a no brainer for the patients. Because they’re already used to paying a subscription for dental insurance and things like that. So on the patient level, it’s pretty-

Ryan Isaac:
I’m a non-dental insurance patient and it seems like really intuitive to me. Like I’m paying out of pocket anyway. And I have paid my monthly insurance fees for a long time. So yeah. It’s kind of a no brainer.

Jordon Comstock:
Yeah. So for the patient side, it’s pretty simple, especially with like the traditional plans that are out there that most practices do, which involve some cleanings and exams and an X-rays and some discounts off of like crowns and stuff. So it makes sense to the patient. And most of the time, it’s pretty easy when the patient needs treatment and they don’t have dental insurance.

Jordon Comstock:
You say, “Hey, you can join your plan and you can save 10, 20% off the crown today and also all your cleanings and things like that are included.” So, on the patient standpoint, it’s really easy for these practices to talk about and share and get signed up. On the business standpoint, that requires lots of teaching. Because when you implement a new business model like this, Ryan, with recurring revenue, there’s a whole set of metrics that you have to measure that the software community is really … we know these metrics like the back of the hand.

Jordon Comstock:
Monthly recurring revenue, annual recurring revenue, churn or attrition, customer acquisition costs. All these metrics you need to know now when you implement a membership program, you just have to install those types of metrics in your practice so you understand the health and the growth of that type of thing.

Ryan Isaac:
What about I imagine and I’m pretty sure I’ve heard statistics on treatment acceptance from patients. Like a patient who has no insurance at all, no membership plan versus a membership plan, heard it’s pretty astounding.

Jordon Comstock:
Yeah. From our data with our customer and the patient base that we serve, we’ve seen and it goes up and down depending on the practice because selling in case presentation is a soft skill.

Ryan Isaac:
That’s true. That’s a part of it. Yeah.

Jordon Comstock:
Which is huge. I think if you’re going to improve your practice, I think helping your team improve the soft skills of selling is really important. But we’ve seen when a patient becomes a member of that practice, they end up spending two to three and a half times more than a nonmember, which is pretty cool. And the same thing outside of dentistry with membership plans, that’s Amazon site two time. When we became Prime members, we started spending two times more than normal.

Ryan Isaac:
Double. I believe that. [crosstalk 00:15:05] the buy with one click, man. I’m like …

Jordon Comstock:
They definitely have some pretty more advanced processes than in dentistry. But it’s a good thing for practices. Especially if you have a patient base that is uninsured, they’re probably not showing up on a regular basis. And they’re probably not saying yes to treatment as much.

Ryan Isaac:
That’s in their best in their best interest too, because now they’re getting a dental care and the health care that they need.

Jordon Comstock:
Yeah. Which is important. Because dental care is related to the whole body really.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah. For sure.

Jordon Comstock:
That’s just as important. So, that’s one of the greatest benefits I think of having a case acceptance tool.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah. That’s awesome, man. Okay. I have a few more questions. Let’s take a quick break. And then when we come back, we’ll jump into a few of these questions to identify what a good practice looks like to implement these plans. Right when it come back. Hey, Matt, what do you like to drink or snack on when we do our webinars every month?

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah. That’s a good question. I’m usually hitting a Red Bull, but it’s hard because there’s an evening webinar.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah. These evening webinars is taking place 6:30 PM, mountain standard time.

Matt Mulcock:
Mountain time.

Ryan Isaac:
Once a month.

Matt Mulcock:
Where do you find it?

Ryan Isaac:
Well, if you’d like to find the webinar or you’d like to register for it, you go to dentistadvisors.com/webinar, or just go to the website and click on webinars under the education tab.

Matt Mulcock:
It’s a good time.

Ryan Isaac:
It’s a great time. What kind of things do we cover in our webinar, Matt?

Matt Mulcock:
So each month we’re going to hit an element. So it’s going to be some component of your financial life. We’re going to dive a little bit deeper than we would like on the Dentist Money Show. We get to draw pictures. There’s live polls. You can ask questions.

Ryan Isaac:
It’s a great time.

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah. It’s a good time.

Ryan Isaac:
Well, we’d love to see you in attendance at one of our fantastic webinars. Just go to dentistsadvisers.com. Sign up today for the next one. Thank you very much. Okay. So one of my first questions is, if I’m an office listening right now, I think going through my head is maybe you’ve heard about this before. I’m probably pretty aware of the amount of [inaudible 00:17:06] patients in my office. Who are the best candidates or the ideal office is to implement a plan like this?

Jordon Comstock:
So yeah, the types of offices are general practitioners. You want to be able to create lifetime maintenance, I guess, you can call it maintenance. Lifetime service to your patients. So orthodontists, it’s a little bit harder for them to do membership like programs or an oral surgeon. So we typically say general practitioners, pediatric dentists because they don’t have lifetime, but they have a good amount of patients.

Ryan Isaac:
Returning. Yeah.

Jordon Comstock:
Returning. And then I’d say periodontists as well because those types of patients need even more maintenance than a regular patient. So we see a lot of perio plans in perio maintenance plans. And that’s been on the rise as well over the past few years. Really anything with longterm maintenance.

Ryan Isaac:
Okay. So just right there, those specialties are typical candidates. What about are there any other like data or metrics that would tell an office like, “Hey, you might be a good candidate for this. You should really look into it.”

Jordon Comstock:
Yeah. I think the main thing is I think the lifetime or longterm service or recurring type service. Because hygiene, for example, if you’ve got a hygiene department, it’s the core of what membership programs offer. And if you think about it, hygiene is recurring, but not every patient that’s uninsured comes every two times a year. They come once a year or once every couple of years.

Ryan Isaac:
Guilty.

Jordon Comstock:
Me too. They do. The key is to really look at those uninsured patients that aren’t coming in or haven’t come in, aren’t coming in on a regular basis and getting them on a better program. Because I think insurance is great on the patient perspective, because it does encourage patients to go into the office and get work done, but it’s just a bad deal for both the practice and patient.

Jordon Comstock:
And if you think about it, Ryan, I think insurance attacks some of the two most important elements of business. They attack the profit margins of the practice which is sacred to me, profit margins are sacred. And it also attacks the cashflow of a practice, which is also equally sacred to me in regards to managing business. And I think that does nobody a service.

Jordon Comstock:
It just complicates the practice owner’s life and the office manager’s life and you get distracted. And also insurance doesn’t give a good customer experience to the patients. Because if something goes wrong with insurance, the patient’s going to think it’s the practices fault. They get ticked off the practice.

Ryan Isaac:
For sure.

Jordon Comstock:
It’s out of the control of the practice, which is kind of ridiculous. So in my mind, I think insurance companies are just bad partners. If they’re a partner in my business, I would probably try to buy them out or fire them.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah. Yeah. If they behave that way.

Jordon Comstock:
If they behave that way.

Ryan Isaac:
It took a long time to pay. They didn’t pay you what you’re worth and [inaudible 00:20:31].

Jordon Comstock:
They’re killing your profit margins. I’m like, man, that’s a really bad partner.

Ryan Isaac:
Every time you talk to, you hate getting on the phone with them. [crosstalk 00:20:39].

Jordon Comstock:
Yeah, exactly. It’s not a good sign for partnership. And I think the industry definitely is waking up to that. More and more practices are reducing dependence on PPOs, which brings a smile to my face because I grew up in dentistry and my mom is an office manager. And growing up when I was a kid, her office was next door to my bedroom, which is dumb. I heard every conversation with insurance companies she had.

Ryan Isaac:
They’re like childhood nightmares. It’s like the theme song for mash bedtime or something. You hear like an ELB or stave. And you’re like, oh.

Jordon Comstock:
I’m like, “This again.”

Ryan Isaac:
That’s funny. So what about logistically? Like someone’s listening to like, “Okay, I think this could benefit me.” What are the steps to kind of like get this thing started and how does it work for someone? Like what are the mechanics of like how this actually works once it’s started and everything?

Jordon Comstock:
Yeah. So I think the first step that someone would do if they’re wanting to launch a membership program is just really look at the, go into your practice management software and see how many uninsured patients you have. Some startups may have low amounts of uninsured patients because they’re more reliant on PPOs from what I’ve heard. So they may struggle, but still it’s still good to look at how many uninsured patients do you have and how can you attract more uninsured patients?

Jordon Comstock:
Because eventually, you’re going to want to just cut out PPOs eventually or reduce it to a certain amount of volume. So I would look at that first, look at how many uninsured patients you have in your database. Because most practices are so surprised at how many uninsured patients they have that aren’t really … I remember talking to a practice that had over 1000 uninsured patients that weren’t coming in on a regular basis. And I’m like, “Man, that’s a goldmine with recurring revenue.”

Ryan Isaac:
Wait. So you find that people are actually surprised. They underestimate the amount of uninsured patients they have?

Jordon Comstock:
A lot of the time they did. Yeah.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah. Because they don’t see them. So they’re like, they probably think it’s a lower number.

Jordon Comstock:
Yeah. They’re not being proactive looking at those types of … they’re just being reactive on the patients coming in, which is fine. But I think there’s some power in being proactive. So I think that’s the first step. And then after that, you want to develop a plan, an offer that you’re going to share with those types of patients. So, the benefits that you’re going to offer and the pricing.

Jordon Comstock:
And obviously with my company, we help our customers with that. And we’ve got some templates that are proven successful. There’s nothing wrong with using a template. You can always tweak it and adjust it to your practice. But I think that the next step is getting an offer put together a plan. And then from there, it’s just about outreach and it’s simple. There’s nothing complicated to it.

Jordon Comstock:
The only thing that’s complicated is learning how to scale it and systematizing everything for scale. Because if you’re running a membership program manually with your team, the office manager can’t sit down and manually run 1000 cards a month [crosstalk 00:24:03], or keep track of benefits received or not received on that type of volume. So you typically want to plan to scale because it’s not fun just creating a membership program and just getting 20, 30, 50 people signed up.

Jordon Comstock:
You want hundreds to a thousand plus, that’s when it gets really beneficial for the practice. But I’d say after you create that offer, you start promoting it in house with your existing uninsured. And some people are afraid to do that. Because they’re like, “Well I’m already collecting 100% from those patients that are paying out of pocket.” It’s like, “Well-”

Ryan Isaac:
They’re not accepting enough and they’re not coming back.

Jordon Comstock:
Yeah. You’re only collecting 100% of a segment of those people, not 100% of 100% of those, if that makes any sense. So you want to be able to … plus having a recurring revenue stream, we have a practice that throughout COVID-19, they’re generating close to $50,000 a month in just membership fees. They didn’t have to do dentistry. They shut down and we’re collecting close to $50,000 in monthly recurring revenue.

Jordon Comstock:
So when they shut down, they weren’t as worried. So that’s one of the core, I think, benefits of creating a membership program because I want to help practices understand the foundation of business, the foundation of really any business. Well, let’s talk first because I do talk a lot about revenue and money. I don’t want people thinking that that’s the only thing I focus.

Jordon Comstock:
Revenue and money in general is a byproduct. So you still have to offer a great patient experience to your patients. And even my company, we’re still learning on how to offer a better customer experience. I think it’s a lifetime of learning, I think. I think that’s critical. You can’t be a crappy office that offers a horrible service and you’re rude to patients and say, “Well, we’ve got a membership program, we’re going to grow it and it is going to grow.” This is not the truth.

Jordon Comstock:
Money is a byproduct. So make sure that your customer experience is spot on and if it’s not, fix it, just be conscious of it. So I think though during the pandemic, the shutdown, practices that had healthy membership programs, they weren’t thriving and exploded with growth, but they were able to maintain and have a solid foundation. And that foundation is having a strong cashflow foundation where the traditional office is cash flow.

Jordon Comstock:
How do you say cashflow? There’s a lot of issues with the cashflow because maybe patients aren’t paying on time. I’m sure some practices have this figured out. A lot don’t. Their accounts receivables, there’s issues with insurance companies paying on time and things like that. So by creating a cash flow system with a membership plan, I think that’s the strategy that most practices are going to.

Jordon Comstock:
It’s obviously becoming even more popular throughout COVID-19 and seeing that most patients are open to this idea and insurance just is a horrible experience for both sides. So I think it’s definitely the future. But that’s in regards to growing it and in doing the logistical stuff, it’s just starting out with your existing customer base. And then from there, you want to use this as a marketing tool, external market.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah. Not just your current uninsured patients, but there’s a bigger group of people who don’t have insurance in your marketing. They’re not going to a dentist because they don’t have insurance. They’re looking for solutions.

Jordon Comstock:
Yeah. It’s the patient benefit mindset where patients think I can’t go to the dentist because I don’t have a benefit program. I don’t have insurance or the insurance mindset. Where do whatever the insurance will cover, which is ridiculous. Because the insurance doesn’t cover what you need as a patient, but we all know that in the dental industry. So, the opportunity there is not just with the existing patients, that’s a great opportunity.

Jordon Comstock:
And most practices find early success. It’s the low hanging fruit from that segment of patients. But the practices that have really achieved success have made it into their marketing program and attracted new patients this way. And I think that’s key. The practice I mentioned that was generating about $50,000 a month in recurring revenue, they not only focused on their existing patients, but they use direct mail marketing, which I know in some areas it work, some areas, it doesn’t.

Jordon Comstock:
So you just got to know the channels of marketing that work for your practice, but they use direct mail marketing to get the word out and to educate their local neighborhoods about their membership program. They said, “Don’t have dental insurance, we can help,” or something to that degree.

Ryan Isaac:
Man. Sorry to cut you off there, but I get those packets of the money mailers and everything. Every week there’s always 30 cards and 12 are dentists. And I always see whitening, cheap cleanings-

Jordon Comstock:
Or free cleaning.

Ryan Isaac:
… maybe a free brush or something, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen, “If you don’t have dental insurance or if your dental insurance just really sucks and you’re tired of paying for it-

Jordon Comstock:
Give us a call and we can help you out.

Ryan Isaac:
… call us because we have a plan in house it’s better than dental insurance, and we’re the best dentists around anyway.” So I think probably exists. People are obviously doing that, but I just don’t-

Jordon Comstock:
I’ve got one at my house and I smiled.

Ryan Isaac:
Cool. Yeah. I think that’s really effective.

Jordon Comstock:
Yeah. Obviously direct mail marketing is one channel, there’s social media marketing. There’s so many depending on your area. And I know practice that used direct mail marketing solely on like 55 and up communities. Because that demographic of people lose their dental benefits because they’re either retired or retiring. And they’re the demographic that needs dental care the most.

Jordon Comstock:
Because I saw this at the dental lab, their teeth are wearing out. So, I’ve seen practice really hone in their marketing, which I think is key. But whether it’s on social media or direct mail or whatever, all channels work, just finding the right channel for your-

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah. That’s a whole other thing. Yeah.

Jordon Comstock:
Yeah. That’s a whole other episode.

Ryan Isaac:
How to market your practice. Okay. So let’s take another quick break. I’ve got one question about common mistakes that you’re seeing when people are trying to implement this stuff. And we’ll hit that when we come back. Like what you hear on the Dentist Money Show?

Matt Mulcock:
I do.

Ryan Isaac:
Then set up a free consultation. There’s no obligation and let’s chat about how we can help you make a better plan for your future. All you do is go to the website at dentistsadvisers.com, click the big green button, book free consultation, or call us at 833-DDS plan. I’m sure you’ve seen a lot of people try to implement their own plans on their own. Maybe like hodgepodge, I don’t know, a Google spreadsheet or something.

Ryan Isaac:
And you mentioned earlier, you’re talking about someone at the front desk trying to bill hundreds of credit cards and stay on top of updating that kind of stuff. So what are some common mistakes you see people make when they’re trying to start this for the first time or getting into it? And how could they avoid those mistakes?

Jordon Comstock:
Yeah. I think some of the common mistakes are just that. When they manage it manually or they do it themselves, a lot of the times, they’re lacking in systems to help automate a lot of the tasks, like payments is the first thing that comes to mind, but there’s so many other tasks besides payments. Benefit tracking, and then even when card is declined, what do you do?

Jordon Comstock:
So I think that’s the biggest mistake where people are like, “Well, we can just do this on our own,” which is great. You can, you can do anything on your own. Really. If you think about it, I can finish my basement my own, but I suck at drywall. So I don’t. And you want to create a scalable system, but a lot of the times, they’ll manage it manually and they don’t automate the subscription. So it’s more like a cash program, which is great. It’s better than nothing.

Jordon Comstock:
But the whole concept is to create recurring revenue for the business in a loyalty system, not just a cash paying system, which is cool. Again, that’s better than nothing, but I’d say that’s a big problem. Not auto renewing your patients. Just bottom line, just think like Amazon Prime. Amazon, doesn’t call you up, Ryan say, “Hey, did you run your car today? Oh, by the way, what is it again?”

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah. Did it change?

Jordon Comstock:
It changed. That’s a bad experience for both the customers of Amazon and the employees of Amazon to do that all the time. So think like Amazon is my tip there. But then a lot of people don’t use agreements with their patients, which I think no, no. If you’re not using it like a retainer agreement is what I typically call them. Some states call them different, like a medical or a health retainer agreement or a direct primary care agreement.

Jordon Comstock:
Some states call them that, Utah calls it medical retainer agreement. But there’s other states that just say retainer agreement, it’s a retainer agreement. So you want to make sure you’ve got the right agreement in place that states what the patient gets, what they don’t get, if there’s anything. How much it’s going to cost the terms of the agreement and things like that.

Jordon Comstock:
I think that’s just good business practice, but some people don’t do that. And then they end up shooting their stuff on the foot. The other thing that people do is sometimes they’ll put a payment information on sticky notes or a binder in the office, which is super risky.

Ryan Isaac:
I don’t think you can do that. Yeah. Right.

Jordon Comstock:
No. You can’t do that. I’m sure that was okay in the early days. And maybe not, I don’t think it is. But there’s definitely some PCI issues with that, which is basically like HIPAA regulations about credit cards. So that’s a big mistake. Or sometimes people even use Google docs, which is not cool because Google can get hacked pretty easy. I know my Gmail account has been hacked a few times and I’ve had to reset passwords and you just don’t want to do it in Google docs. It’s just not very secure.

Ryan Isaac:
Okay. So it’s just systems automation. It’s like all the recurring tasks and processes that have to happen. And that’s what BoomCloud will … That’s why you [crosstalk 00:34:59]-

Jordon Comstock:
That’s why we exist.

Ryan Isaac:
… here on this earth.

Jordon Comstock:
Why we’re put on this earth.

Ryan Isaac:
Purpose.

Jordon Comstock:
Absolutely. So there’s a lot of tasks and the thing is, you don’t want to get into the routine where you think of your membership program as an admin sock, just like insurance. Insurance is an admin sock. And you don’t want to structure your membership program in the same way from what I’ve seen out there. But we’ve had practices come to us after they get hundreds of patients signed up manually to a membership program, because it just turns out to be a nightmare for them as they scale it.

Jordon Comstock:
And I know even for us, let’s talk about declined cards because that’s something to consider. If you don’t have the right systems in place and processes to follow up with those types of issues for like a $30 monthly payment and then you get an office manager who gets paid 15, 20, $25 an hour, whatever, you can easily go in the hole with that specific revenue stream if you’re spending too much time on it, which I know is a huge hassle.

Jordon Comstock:
So even in our platform, we’ve got credit card declined minimizer where we sync up to like Visa and MasterCard and talk to those guys on a daily basis and make sure the cards expiration date is gone, it auto updates, there’s no human element involved. Or, if there’s fraud on the card, we’re talking to Visa and MasterCard each day and then it auto updates. Because they’re a fraud charge.

Jordon Comstock:
Things like that make it super easy. But I would even say one of the biggest mistakes out there is just simply not getting your team involved in the right way and train up the right way which is fascinating to me.

Ryan Isaac:
Because they’re the ones that really need to educate and informed patients.

Jordon Comstock:
They’re driving it. You can buy a tool, a software tool for it and everything, but it’s still requires people to drive. People are still necessary in this day and age, so far.

Ryan Isaac:
So far the robots are not taking over yet.

Jordon Comstock:
So, what I would encourage people to, practice owners, if you’re interested in this topic, make sure you educate your team on whatever you’re listening to, whether it’s this podcast or, we’ve got tons of resources on our website, free resources or a webinar, make sure you’re sharing with your team.

Ryan Isaac:
They need to know.

Jordon Comstock:
And then getting them on board and explaining the why. Why is this important for the practice? Why is it important for the office? Why is it important for the patient? And I think if you can do that, all the practices that have done that have achieved predictable success with the membership program. So, that’s probably the biggest mistake I see.

Ryan Isaac:
Awesome man. Where can people find BoomCloud and Jordan’s great hair? Maybe those are two different offerings. We start with BoomCloud.

Jordon Comstock:
Yeah. We start with BoomCloud. So BoomCloud, if you’re interested, just go to boomcloudapps.com or just boomcloud.com. It’s all connected. Just Google BoomCloud, and you should be able to find us. And from there, we’ve got a free eBook. It’s called How to Create and Grow a Dental Membership Program. Completely free. It’s about 50 or 60 pages long that talks about everything in detail that we talked about today and then some.

Jordon Comstock:
And then we’ve got a whole bunch of free resources, other case study eBooks for the practices to read and practice owners to read and webinars that we’ve done with other influencers. So just go to boomcloudapps.com. You can also schedule a demo online-

Ryan Isaac:
I was going to ask. Yeah. Okay.

Jordon Comstock:
… to see how our platform works and what we’re up to here at BoomCloud. And then, that’s pretty much the easiest way to get in touch. But the hair is just genetics.

Ryan Isaac:
Finally it is. Just find Jordan on social and slide into those DMs. Give him a hair shout out.

Jordon Comstock:
The hair’s a whole different story. You just have to message me and I’ll tell you the tips.

Ryan Isaac:
All right. I like that, man. Man, thanks for taking time today. I think that’s really helpful, especially what we saw this year and shut downs and people, some having liquidity and cash and others not, and quite the difference that made. So thanks again, man. Really appreciate it. Thanks for tuning in and joining us. Hopefully this was helpful and we’ll catch you next time. Carry on.

Jordon Comstock:
Rock on.

Ryan Isaac:
All right. Thanks to Jordan Comstock at BoomCloud apps for taking some time. This is a pretty big trend all over the country, among many, many practices trying to get away from PPOs and just generally trying to find different ways to involve their patients a little bit more in the practice, higher case acceptance, increased revenue, increase awareness in health among the patients. So a lot of great content in today’s episode.

Ryan Isaac:
Thanks for tuning in and thanks for joining us. We appreciate the love and the support as always. If you have any questions for us, you can go to dentistsadvisors.com, click on the book free consultation button. Book a chat with one of our friendly dental specific advisors today. Go to dentistsadvisers.com/group. Post your question. We’ll get in there and answer quickly. Again, thanks for tuning in and thanks for joining us. Thanks for all the support as always. We’ll catch you next time.

Practice Management