Do These 3 Things to Reboot Your Team post-COVID – Episode 244

For many practices, coming back from COVID has been hard. Learn how your team can innovate to overcome the new challenges.

On this episode of the Dentist Money™ Show, Ryan does a follow-up interview with Kiera Dent of The Dental A-Team. As a popular dental team coach, Kiera has her finger on the pulse of offices across the country and offers practical tips your team can follow to find success amid COVID uncertainty. 

In an often frank discussion, Ryan and Kiera look at both the good and the bad of coming back from COVID as they examine where you might find unexpected and innovative solutions.

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SHOW NOTES:

www.TheDentalATeam.com
Email: hello@thedentalateam.com
Instagram: TheDentalATeam

 

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Podcast Transcript

Ryan Isaac:
Hey, Dentist Money Show listeners. Thanks for tuning into another episode. Have you ever wondered how you can be more proactive in your business with staff and systems and processes, especially during times of uncertainty? Today on the show, we have Kiera Dent from the Dental A team to help us tackle these questions and more with some great tips that you can implement right now in the practice.

Ryan Isaac:
Thanks for joining us on another episode, enjoy the show.

Announcer:
Consultant an advisor or 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, a registered investment advisor. This is Dentist Money. Now, here’s your host, Ryan Isaac.

Ryan Isaac:
And welcome to the Dentist Money Show, where we help dentists make smart financial decisions. I’m your host today, Ryan Isaac, joined by longtime friend and consultant, smart person extraordinaire, Kiera Dent, of the Dental A team. Kiera, thanks for being here. What’s going on? How are you doing?

Kiera Dent:
Yeah, so fun to be here and Ryan, sometimes you get on podcasts and people say, my friend, and friend is a loose term.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah, everyone is always a friend.

Kiera Dent:
Everyone is a friend-

Ryan Isaac:
A good friend.

Kiera Dent:
But you guys, truly, Ryan and I, I think we were siblings in another life.

Ryan Isaac:
Probably.

Kiera Dent:
You are one of my dearest friends.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah. Both have red hair.

Kiera Dent:
I see you as a brother, we do both have red hair and we literally do chat a lot. And we do have an affinity for Taylor Swift. So I don’t know if you shared that, Ryan, or not, but if not I just shared it.

Ryan Isaac:
People might know that about me, cereal and Taylor Swift is what I’m known for, besides a bad nickname from the Dentist Money Show. But anyway, thanks for being here, you … No, go ahead.

Kiera Dent:
Yeah. I was going to say, and if people don’t know, Ryan and I have toyed with the idea, so I don’t know if anybody out there likes this idea or not, Ryan, I’m putting it out to the world to see they will want us to do this.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah, up vote it.

Kiera Dent:
We were contemplating doing a cereal podcast where we’ll actually try all of our favorite cereals on a podcast, all the bad cereals, all the cereals. We’re actually thinking of having a cereal podcast [crosstalk 00:01:57].

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah. People hear cereal and they’re like, isn’t there already a big podcast called Cereal? And we’re like, no, no, no, no. We’re literally going to eat bowls of cereal and then give financial advice to dentists and their businesses. That’s what we’re going to do.

Kiera Dent:
Correct, yep. It’s going to be great.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah, let us know in the social media comments and let us know. I think it’s a great idea. So we’ll probably do that anyway.

Kiera Dent:
I think it’s a great idea too. You did give me cereal flavored ChapStick one year for my birthday.

Ryan Isaac:
Oh yeah, that’s funny.

Kiera Dent:
And I tried all five flavors on at one time.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah, big mixed cereal bow.

Kiera Dent:
Yeah, I was trying to create a new cereal flavor.

Ryan Isaac:
That probably exists somewhere. That is probably a flavor.

Kiera Dent:
It was actually terrible. I would not recommend anyone ever do it.

Ryan Isaac:
Don’t do it. All right. That’s fair. That’s fair.

Ryan Isaac:
If you’re listening later, this is the year of COVID. It feels like a 10 year period of time. It’s been about four months since it really started in the United States. So if you’re listening later, you have more hindsight than we do right now, but it’s been a weird year for practices. Unprecedented dental shutdown, as everyone knows and remembers, economic impact, stock market impact. A lot of anxieties and worries, it’s an election. There’s just so many like unknowns. So today what I thought we could do to be helpful since Kiera and her team, if you don’t know, it’s Dental A team, and we could put some links and talk about how to contact you later on at the end, but you guys are in offices, now virtually a lot because of COVID, but you guys have been in offices for years, like every day all over the country, training on systems and processes and teams and efficiency.

Ryan Isaac:
So let’s just talk about maybe some of your top things as you’re still consulting with offices, people reopening, coming out of COVID, what should people be thinking about for the next six to 12 months when there’s still uncertainty, but what can we be proactive about? What can we work on? So we’ll just start there as an open question, what you’re seeing and hit some of the things on your list of what people can be working on.

Kiera Dent:
Yeah, for sure. Thank you, Ryan. And you’re exactly right. We used to travel a ton and our dream was how do we still have as great of an impact virtually, and is that even possible? And so I was really grateful for COVID to push us. I feel like every business, including your dental offices right now, I think one of the best gifts we’ve been given through COVID is the ability to innovate if you choose, and how are you innovating and how are you impacting your patients in a way that you never even imagined possible? And that’s what we’ve been able to do in the Dental A Team. Yes, we actually just started traveling, our first coach actually went to our first office this week.

Ryan Isaac:
Wow.

Kiera Dent:
So the traveling is going back. We’re really excited, but through COVID it was really fun to be able to still help offices, still help doctors, and build that throughout COVID virtually, and realizing we can be just as good, if not better, virtually for offices. We’re saving you on travel expenses, things like that. So it’s been really fun, but I would say I actually came with a couple of things through COVID-

Ryan Isaac:
Can I, and sorry, before you get there, I just want to cut you off, I’m sorry. But you’re saying something I think is really interesting, I’d like to hear your take on is, your business has been very highly dependent on being physically present with somebody, and it completely switched for you guys, and dental offices are a little bit different, but can you speak to that a little bit? What have you seen in the A Team in your interaction with dentists learning now virtually, and teams learning virtually, what’s been the pros and cons of that, that you’ve seen? That’s just really fascinating.

Kiera Dent:
Yeah, it was fascinating. And when COVIT hit, I remember I had this, oh, shiz moment. We’re going to get this G rated. Oh shiz.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah. We can bleep it. We can bleep that.

Kiera Dent:
I just don’t think I actually say that word. So shiz feels like a good choice, but I had this moment of, I have a traveling company and now we don’t travel. What are we going to do?

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah, crazy.

Kiera Dent:
And so it was like, hey, there’s got to be a way. And my famous quote that people quote me on is, there’s always a solution, we just have to find it. And so I think for dental offices, what I think is really cool is I feel because of COVID, it forced all of us to learn differently. Kids are learning differently. Teams are learning different, doctors are learning different. And I think it was something that we always have had. We just never had to learn it.

Ryan Isaac:
We didn’t have to.

Kiera Dent:
Exactly.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah.

Kiera Dent:
So I think virtual events are getting better. I think webinars are getting better. I’m getting better at how I present. I’m sure you are, Ryan, because that’s my new mode of transportation to communicate. So I am a huge, huge, huge fan, Ryan, you know this, of traction, the EOS model, the Gino Wickman, I coach those eight hour meetings. Well I used to fly to an office, be there with the team for a day, eight hours, and I had an office call me through COVID and sign up and said, we need leadership help. Can you help us now? And I thought, I don’t know if I could run an eight hour Zoom meeting with a team, Ryan here, I just got [inaudible 00:06:53].

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah, my eyes just got really big, like, that’s a lot of Zoom. That’s a lot of video time.

Kiera Dent:
I felt the same way. And I was like, okay, well, let’s try next Tuesday. I’m going to wake up at 5:00 AM. You guys are East coast. It’ll be 8:00 AM your time. And we’re going to go. I said, everybody bring snacks, I want everybody on Zoom. And it was that moment of, will this work, I don’t know, but let’s try it. And I think a lot of offices who have embraced that, I don’t know if this will work, but let’s try it, because that’s one step closer to either finding the solution or finding what didn’t work, which will still get us closer to the solution. So that team crushed it. Eight hours, it didn’t even feel like eight hours. We had Google Sheets that we were sharing. They were working off it. I had them do exercises and activities. I am like a camel. So I usually don’t have to go to the bathroom. So I purposely drank water to give breaks.

Ryan Isaac:
Like forced breaks, that’s funny.

Kiera Dent:
Yes, just things that you wouldn’t normally think of. So, as far as offices are concerned, that virtual learning, people were realizing they could be just as good. So that office, for example, what they did is, we built out their whole leadership team, and in the next three months that they were implementing this plan, their practice production went up. This is through COVID, so they were training people, and then when they came back, they were hitting higher numbers than a lot of my other offices. A lot of offices came back and hit high number, so high five, that was just due to demand.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah, a lot of backlog.

Kiera Dent:
But the offices that I worked with through COVID that did try to do the distance learning, that did try to do things differently, they hit, we’re talking even higher numbers. So it was, they had a month plus a half a month or they doubled their production. This is a three doctor huge practice. And they’re hitting these massive, huge treatment plans. And it was because their team was ready to go. They had it ready to execute. We had trained their whole back office how to treatment plan. We had softwares in place, they prepped to be ready and they executed hard and they were heavily rewarded with just a better team, a better patient experience and being able to facilitate the demand of all the patients coming in, because they had done the remote learning. And that’s what I’ve seen with, that’s just one example.

Ryan Isaac:
And it works.

Kiera Dent:
But it’s heavily, heavily valuable because there are different ways to do it that actually don’t take as much time as, say, coming into the office.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah. I’m a big efficiency person. I hate wasting time. Although I will gladly watch seven episodes of the office at night and just eat a cookie.

Kiera Dent:
But you’re highly efficient, I love it. You just go.

Ryan Isaac:
I like wasting time-

Kiera Dent:
You’re going to binge, you binge, you binge it all together. So it’s a great time.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah. I just prefer to waste time in the ways that are fun to waste time in, but like meeting … So I love the efficiency of all this stuff and that’s really cool to hear.

Ryan Isaac:
As you’ve listened to our podcast, maybe there’s a question about your finances you’ve wanted to ask. It’s easy to get an answer. All you do is just pick up that phone, give us a call at 833-DDS-PLAN to set up a consultation. Or, if you don’t want to call us, you can just go to the website at DenistAdvisers.com, click the book free consultation button and set it up. It’s free. Do it today.

Ryan Isaac:
Real quick too, just because you guys have so much insight into offices and teams across the country, I’m wondering, what have you seen with as people are reopening, with team members coming back or not coming back, what have you seen with that?

Kiera Dent:
Bad. It’s been rough.

Ryan Isaac:
Oh, it’s been a lot of people not coming back?

Kiera Dent:
Full transparency, I’m usually very positive. People listen to Dental A Team, some people have told me, I listen to you to get my positive fix in the day. I’m like, cool, thank you.

Ryan Isaac:
But it’s about to get negative is what you’re saying.

Kiera Dent:
But I’m not going to sugar coat it, it’s been hard for a lot of offices. What I’ve seen is, some offices just knocked it out of the park. Their whole team came back. They were fantastic. They all worked through COVID and they literally didn’t skip a beat. Other people, they had hygienists that might’ve been on that tipping point of ready to retire, so they’re like, meh, I’m not coming back, out. I would say the hardest department has been hygiene, hands down. The hygiene world, there’s not enough hygienist to go around. A lot of hygienists, if they were having babies, they just didn’t want to come back to work because of risk factors or if they had family that was a risk factor. So I know hygiene has been hit hard, and I’ll have offices say, I put a thousand dollar signing bonus to hire a hygienist and literally no bites on my ads.

Ryan Isaac:
And normally that would be huge incentive.

Kiera Dent:
Who puts a signing bonus for a hygienist? Usually you have so many applying, especially for this office. They are downtown, beautiful office, well known, amazing location.

Ryan Isaac:
Wow, and nobody. Just crickets.

Kiera Dent:
And not a single bite.

Ryan Isaac:
Wow.

Kiera Dent:
So the hiring, the coming back, and then also you have the difference of some people will come back, but then they decide, actually I don’t want to be back. So then they quit. And I’m also seeing a lot of people when they quit, it’s not your traditional, I’m going to quit and give you two weeks. It’s I’m done today. See you later.

Ryan Isaac:
I’m done. I’m not coming back. That’s tough.

Kiera Dent:
It is tough. It’s really hard, and I was telling offices, I had an office call me a couple of days ago, because we also, in the Dental A Team, I had somebody just quit. And I was like, oh shoot. Like, hey, don’t worry, Docs, I’m in your same world, and here I do coach this. I think one of my aha moments that hopefully is beneficial for anyone listening was, I truly did think that I was better than that. I thought I prepared. I’m a good coach. I’m a good leader. I’m a good … This is what I do for a living so I should be exempt. Or I’ve heard doctors say, I’ve treated my team so well, so we almost have this expectation that we should be exempt from people quitting on his haphazardly or is that a reflection of my poor leadership or what I haven’t done?

Kiera Dent:
And I do think ask yourself those questions, but also realize none of us are exempt from anything. And that was a really big humbling moment for me and I know a lot of our offices. But I had an office say, Kiera, I’ve done everything. I was like, okay, well, I’m just going to throw out what we did to hire. I was running three ads simultaneously with different titles. So on Indeed, literally three different ads. So I said, you could have a dental office manager, you could have a dental business implementer, you could have a dental … And just come up with different names and see which ad performs better. But I’m literally running three ads on Indeed, three ads on ZipRecruiter, three ads on Craigslist all simultaneously. So I’ve got different answers so I can see which response actually is the best ad that’s performing, but I’m literally interviewing like a machine.

Kiera Dent:
As soon as those resumes would come in, I had somebody on them that would text them and call them. We sent scenarios, we had certain things in our ad, like put your favorite ice cream flavor in the subject title and answer these three questions. If they didn’t, they were out. So we weren’t wasting our time with just the people applying for jobs.

Ryan Isaac:
Oh really? Yeah, okay.

Kiera Dent:
But I asked an office, I said, are you doing that? Are you running nine ads a day? And you’re literally calling every person that comes through, and she’s like, “No, I’m not.” And I said, okay, cool, let’s go to there. So I really think it’s, I’ve gone through a lot of different podcasts and there’s a lot of hiring, but to your question, it’s been hard. It’s been really hard. A lot of offices have struggled with this. And so I say, okay, let’s see, look at what we are today.

Kiera Dent:
So offices, for example, who can’t find a hygienist. I said, okay, what can we do with the hygienists you have, I have an office I was brainstorming with where we literally are taking the doctor on Fridays because she has availability for six hygienists to work, but doctor is taking up three columns. And I said, what if on Friday, we stopped doctor at, say, 12 o’clock, but we bring in our other hygienist who could be working and we open up six bays from 12 o’clock to four o’clock. Well, if we open that up, we would have, or what if we even ran assisted hygiene, because our assistants could stop. We have our other hygienist working. We could open up six columns of hygiene just with a little bit different schedule on a Friday, where we’re used to working until three o’clock, but we shut doctor off three hours earlier, so we do better treatment planning and we build that schedule a little smarter.

Kiera Dent:
But I’ve been able to open up 50, 60, 70 hygiene spaces without changing people’s hours, just by thinking smarter and more strategically. So you don’t actually have to hire another hygienist. Let’s think outside the box. I tell a lot of offices, when everybody is zigging, you should be zagging. So if they’re all placing tons of ads for hygiene, place a better ad, let’s make a better ad, let’s have a better title, let’s beat our competitors, but also let zag in the fact of how do we work with what we have to fulfill the needs. And let’s just think outside the box.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah, I think that’s the, if there’s a takeaway from how to just keep going during all this stuff this year, that’s probably the takeaway is it is what it is. So how do we keep going and make the most out of what we have, which is why all this Zoom meetings and all these web conferences and webinars are so helpful and so important. We’ve had it, but we’ve used the crutch of driving to someone’s office or flying there and sitting in person. So now we just use what we have. That’s really cool insight. Thanks for sharing that.

Ryan Isaac:
I’ve been wondering about that. I’ve heard from offices all over the country, just mixed stories about that. I’ve wondered how that’s impacted people. I’ll bet it’s a big deal. So, well, let’s jump to some of the tips that you had in mind.

Kiera Dent:
Sure.

Ryan Isaac:
There’s there’s two already.

Kiera Dent:
There you guys go.

Ryan Isaac:
So this is going to be like, yeah, we can stop right now. And that’s really quality.

Kiera Dent:
Ryan, just keep asking me questions. Ask the questions you … Because sometimes I do think you hear from doctors and I think sometimes the best pearls of information, I have a list over here, like what could you guys do? But I think oftentimes, Ryan, I love that you asked those questions because that’s what people really want to know. Those are the crux. I can sit here and think, but if you ask the questions that you’re hearing or things you’re wondering, that really gives an insight that’s more relevant versus just the like, hey, I’ve got a few ideas over here. So if you have other questions, I’m all for you asking.

Ryan Isaac:
I will. I’m unfortunately an interrupter. I’m an equal opportunity interrupter, no offense, but it’s in my brain, just thinks of stuff. And I just want to ask you.

Kiera Dent:
Yeah, ask. Yes.

Ryan Isaac:
All right, well, let’s hit the list of some of the things you wrote down of like, again, I asked you, just for everyone listening, hey, let’s just share a few things as we are opening back up, and there’s still some uncertainty in how the next year is going to play out. What can people be doing to have more efficiency and organization in their teams and processes and systems? So we’ll just start with what you were thinking about.

Kiera Dent:
Totally. Okay. And I love teams. Let’s just get that excitement of teams. You guys, your team is the best investment you can ever make because they’re going to ultimately drive you to success. They’re going to drive you to that VIP patient care. So I think it’s really important to, and gosh, as a leader, sometimes I want to sit in my own world of just like this sucks, embrace that suck of how hard this is, and then move on to see how can I help my team? What can I do? How can I show up the best? So I would suggest my first idea that came to mind was to embrace and instill a culture of pivot and pivot quickly.

Ryan Isaac:
Cool.

Kiera Dent:
Teams get frustrated when expectations aren’t met, we all do. So if you can set an expectation of we’re going to be pivoting, we’re going to be working harder. We’re going to be trying things that might be unconventional, because at the end of the day, we either innovate or we die and we’re an office that’s going to innovate and pivot and pivot quickly. So I think if you can start to create that culture in your practice, well, now we don’t have an office that’s angry because we’re trying things that we’ve never done before. We’re doing things that are unconventional off the map. And the reality is, no, what we’re doing is we’re just pivoting as an office. That’s our culture and the faster we can pivot, the better we’ll be, so great, that didn’t work. Let’s pivot, try something else, pivot, try something else. And if your team can adopt this culture and you as a doctor can adopt this culture, these changes, I mean, thank you 2020 for, like seriously, I have no clue. Every month I’m like, oh shoot. We’re about to flip the calendar again. What’s the Jumanji curse that’s coming out of this month? Seriously, what has happened?

Ryan Isaac:
Which plague is coming? I know. What’s the new shortage that’s on the horizon?

Kiera Dent:
Yes. So I think, but that’s also life. So if you can create a culture of pivoting quickly, your team will have less frustration, less miss expectations because that becomes the culture of your office.

Ryan Isaac:
So I’m curious, you mentioned one earlier and there’s probably dozens and dozens and it probably is really specific to each office. You mentioned the one about pulling the doctor off the calendar certain hours and doubling down on hygiene or assisted hygiene, any more come to mind, like any more unconventional pivots you’ve seen or help people implement? And I know it’s probably very individual, depending on all the specifics of the office, but in any of those come to mind that are unconventional pivots that you’ve seen people try?

Kiera Dent:
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. One of them is traditionally we would walk patients up to the front and they would get a treatment plan in the front. Well, in the Dental A Team ,my dream is for offices not to have treatment planning in the front, but actually to do treatment planning in the back with your assistants and your hygiene team. So while this feels off the chart, don’t worry. This is sneak attack Dental A Team on you. That’s our elite practices. So this is something new. And there are so many cool softwares and platforms, like Madento is our favorite, and they actually have made it so simple for your back office team. If your front office team already has the insurance information in there, where your back office team can actually present treatment plans, can sign, can schedule in the back.

Kiera Dent:
Well, I know a lot of dental assistants and hygienists who have told me, heck no Kiera. I don’t talk money with our patients. That is a totally unconventional topic. And my thoughts are, okay, well, let’s talk about why you don’t talk money. And usually when I get down to the root of it, the reality is fear, they don’t want to misquote or present something and have that patient mad at them later.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah, totally.

Kiera Dent:
So then if we can get a better system up front of really truly getting the insurance dialed in, giving our team verbiage of how to speak about insurance and what insurance is. I didn’t know, as a dental assistant, I remember I became a patient, I had this weird freak accident and I was at the dental office a lot. And somebody, you guys, I had been a dental assistant for probably at this seven, eight years of my life. I’d been in the field for quite a while.

Kiera Dent:
And I remember this other office that I went to for a bunch of cosmetic work, they told me, they said, “Kiera, insurance is like a coupon. So you get about a thousand dollars of a coupon a year and we’re going to use that coupon. And then the rest of it is out of pocket. So it’s very different than medical insurance.” I remembered them just using the word coupon. I felt like my mind was blown, because I actually understood what dental insurance was. It’s not this end all be all, catch all, everything. It’s literally a coupon. I get a discount off of the things, but I still have to pay money for them. So helping your back office team understand what insurance is, how to explain insurance, being able to read a ledger, I’ve literally taught an entire office of 15 people how to read a ledger in your dental software.

Kiera Dent:
So if a patient asks, why is my bill this? They literally can go back up through the ledger. And so empower your team, teaching them, role playing those tools, presenting treatment plans, asking the hard questions that the patients will ask so they actually know the information. It’s not really about talking money. It’s more all the underlying pieces of fear that hold your back office team. So if you can actually treatment plan in the back, schedule in the back, you cut down on the patient to front office connection. We don’t need to have that contact anymore, but we don’t actually drop all the handoffs, the lower treatment plans, not closing big cases and you’re actually able to then instead of having one or two treatment coordinators, you have an army of treatment coordinators.

Ryan Isaac:
A team of them.

Kiera Dent:
It’s incredible.

Ryan Isaac:
That’s really cool. Awesome. Thanks for sharing that. I’m sure there’s tons of these things, but yeah. So you’re saying that the flow of patients to the front office where they normally would do this stuff in a lot of places because of health code and COVID, that it’s not being done. They’re ushering people out of different doors and they’re not letting people be in the front waiting room. Yeah, that’s so cool. That’s awesome.

Ryan Isaac:
All right. Okay. I guess that was number one. This could be number seven for all I know, but that was something, instead of numbers, these are just bullet points.

Kiera Dent:
There we go. I like the bullet points. That feels better.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah. What’s your next bullet point? What’s the next one you had?

Kiera Dent:
So the next one for helping teams be successful coming back from COVID, this is going to sound so basic. And Ryan, remind me of the quote, because I always get it wrong. You told me on the phone, gosh, this is months ago. And I think you said, and I always switch up, so that’s why you correct my quote, but it was-

Ryan Isaac:
Mine is probably wrong too.

Kiera Dent:
Just because it’s simple doesn’t mean it’s easy.

Ryan Isaac:
That’s good enough. Yep.

Kiera Dent:
Is that it? Or is it, just because it’s easy, it’s not simple. Which one is it?

Ryan Isaac:
No, I think it’s just because it’s simple, doesn’t mean it’s easy. Yes.

Kiera Dent:
Okay, fantastic.

Ryan Isaac:
It’s like someone, hey, save 20% of your income. That’s pretty simple. It’s just 20% of income. But that is not an easy job to keep up for 30 years of your life.

Kiera Dent:
Yes.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah. Simple is not easy.

Kiera Dent:
No. And that’s where, because I always thinking like easy, hard. So I know that’s my last word.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah.

Kiera Dent:
So just because it’s simple and a lot of these things are going to seem very simple, but that doesn’t mean it’s easy to implement. So just knowing that there’s compassion and love with these tips, because half the time you’re just dealing with the mayhem of convincing your team members that COVID is not coming into our practice and we’re okay.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah.

Kiera Dent:
Even if it does come. So the next thing I was thinking of to help your practices, again, it seems very simple, maybe not as easy, is to have more communication. In times of fear, the way to alleviate fear is to give facts, not make it worse than it is, but also not sugarcoat the reality of where we are.

Ryan Isaac:
Totally.

Kiera Dent:
So really communicating with your team. I know a lot of offices have implemented, my favorite is WhatsApp. I do a WhatsApp group, and you can have maybe a hygiene group or a dental assistant group or a whole team group, but being able to deliver information quickly and simply to your whole practice, and then having them have an easy way to respond, which is why like WhatsApp, because you could actually respond directly to a message that’s asked. Some offices love Slack, some offices love, I don’t know there’s lots.

Ryan Isaac:
Shout out to Voxer.

Kiera Dent:
Voxer, so many people love Voxer. For me, I’m always on the road. And I’m like, just … That’s why iPhones have a way to transcribe your message so I don’t have to actually listen to it.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah. Siri does such a great job with that too. It’s amazing.

Kiera Dent:
It’s usually pretty terrible. It’s fine. But any of those things that are quick and efficient for your team, because the reality is, more communication is going to alleviate fear. So often we in leadership, I’m guilty of this, I’ll be making new plans or we’ll be changing things because things change so quickly. But then my team members who are maybe one or two people removed from me that aren’t always in my inner circle, they might be missing key factors that could make their life much easier. So really ramping that up, again, this is a very simple thing that’s maybe not as easy to implement. So I would try any of those things. I personally don’t recommend having it in group text messages, because I feel that’s your team members personal space, and pulling it out of there, also text messages, I know we’ve all done it, I’ve done it where you accidentally read it and open it and then there’s no way to unread it.

Ryan Isaac:
Oh yeah. You forget about it.

Kiera Dent:
You’re toast.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah. You don’t go back to it, you’ve got a hundred texts. Yeah.

Kiera Dent:
Yes.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah, I think that’s totally a simple but not easy thing. And just having seen our own company go from two of us to now, I think more than 30, I swear as soon as you’re over five or six people, communication is just, it’s hard and you have to be very deliberate about making sure everyone is in the loop and over-communicate sometimes and you still mess it up. It’s tough.

Ryan Isaac:
One thing I’ve seen you and the A Team about a lot, forgive my ignorance if this isn’t in the category, but it seems like it is, you talk a lot about like team huddles and team meetings, and you’re always so stoked when your offices that you coach are implementing team huddles, does that fall in this category of communication? Does that help? Is that part of that system?

Kiera Dent:
Yes. 100%. Those morning huddles, yes, they look different, but it’s that quick connection. Let’s talk about the highlights. Let’s talk about the wins, all of that, and make it very quick and succinct. And oftentimes this might be an area where you actually clean house and cut all the fluff that wasn’t necessary, because complexity is the enemy of execution. So having a very simple, concise morning huddle that delivers the facts, but keeps everybody on the same page, for offices that are on swing shifts or they’ve got different team members trickling in at different times, literally record your morning huddle, pop it into WhatsApp or wherever it’s HIPAA compliant in your practice, and have your team literally watch that.

Ryan Isaac:
Oh cool.

Kiera Dent:
You can actually see who viewed it so you can make sure they’re all watching it. But that helps to add that communication in there. So many offices just try a little checklist and most of the time those get missed, but the quick video of morning huddle, or they can pop in, you could have it virtual where it’s Zoom so everybody could just pop in, and then also doing, I really am huge on once a week traction meetings with your whole team to make sure we’re, instead of always focusing on the minutia of the morning huddle, which is great for the day to day, but the weekly traction meetings or the weekly WIG meetings, or whatever you want to call them in your practice, that pulls your team out of the minutia. We look at the bigger picture, where are we headed? Where are we going? And that way we can actually refocus of what is our ultimate outcome, why are we even doing this minutia to recenter and refocus your team? So, yes. Ryan. You’re exactly right.

Ryan Isaac:
So cool. Yeah, I got it right. Okay. All right.

Kiera Dent:
Yeah man, I love it.

Ryan Isaac:
Good job. One point. Let’s say one more of your bullet points. I don’t know how many more you have there, but let’s go one more, you pick.

Kiera Dent:
Sure, no, I only had another one. All right, simple, three.

Ryan Isaac:
All right, prefect.

Kiera Dent:
Three.

Ryan Isaac:
All right, perfect. I like that.

Kiera Dent:
So I had the pivot, the more communication, and the last one, again, another simple, but maybe not as easy, back to the basics. I’m hearing so many practices feel that coming off of COVID they’re pretty much just starting a brand new practice again, like we’ve done all this coaching, we’ve done all this training. We had all these systems in place, but I think we have to remember, our team’s plates were kind of full. So we had all these systems on there. Well, now we’re adding COVID. So some of those things are actually falling off the plates that have always been there and it’s not intentional. So going back to those basics. So for example, handoffs, handoffs get dropped left and right, right now through COVID because their system, the way they were doing it has been thrown off with COVID, with the health history forms that we have to check, with the temperatures, with all the things that we now have to do because of COVID we’re forgetting a lot of our basics that made us successful.

Kiera Dent:
So role play your handoffs. How does that look? Get a good system so your team, and then practice it, practice it, practice it, get back into role-playing, get back into practicing scheduling. How do we schedule? What do we do for cancellations? Well, that script changes a little bit. Now they’re not just calling because they can’t get out of work. They’re calling for all these other reasons, so role playing that out and getting your team back to those basics is going to help you guys so much, because the basics are the foundation and the fundamentals that made you great, and good can get in the way of great. So don’t miss that greatness that made you who you were and go back to those basics. As simple and easy as they might seem, and oh, cool, I’m listening to this podcast and she’s literally telling me, go back to the basics. That is what will make you successful again. And then you can build upon it again.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah. I think that’s huge. The basics are what get probably 80% or more of people’s success in a lot of areas of life. That’s a totally made up statistic though, by the way.

Kiera Dent:
I liked the statistic.

Ryan Isaac:
80%, it could be 90%.

Kiera Dent:
I believe any number. I literally believe any number you ever tell me, because you are the-

Ryan Isaac:
Me too, I sound authoritative. Yeah.

Kiera Dent:
You do. 80%. Well, they do say right?

Ryan Isaac:
It’s true.

Kiera Dent:
Yeah.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah.

Kiera Dent:
Yeah.

Ryan Isaac:
I think it’s true. Okay. So as I hear all this stuff, simple, not easy, it is the basics, but it’s not easy to always stick to basics. Human beings are just, we’re not good creatures at consistency, we deviate. We’re easily distracted and we like shiny new stuff. So what I think about when I hear all this, and we can just end with this is where can people find you guys? Because accountability is huge. And just having another human being in your life to help you stick to these simple, but not easy tasks, it ensures your success and that you will actually follow through with these things. So where can they find you? Where can they find Dental A Team and all the awesome content you guys have?

Kiera Dent:
Well, thank you. And I agree, that’s why I have you, Ryan, you keep me accountable for all my finances.

Ryan Isaac:
Exactly.

Kiera Dent:
I have to, because I do get distracted, especially of things I don’t want to do or the things that I’m not necessarily good at, I tend to shy away. So Dental A Team, you guys can see us at our website, TheDentalATeam.com. We have lots of different ways you guys can do coaching or consulting or training with us. It’s either one-on-one or virtual full team immersion, or actually coming back to your practice. So any of those, The DentalATeam.com or email us hello@thedentalateam.com. And obviously if your email is, hello, they’re super friendly people. We actually do have a ton of fun.

Ryan Isaac:
They are friendly.

Kiera Dent:
So any anything we can help you with, even if it’s a simple question, more than happy to help out.

Ryan Isaac:
What’s the Instagram page? Because you guys are putting out great stories and great content every single day. So what’s your Instagram?

Kiera Dent:
Thank you. Yeah. You guys can follow us on Instagram. It’s The Dental A Team, and also same thing on Facebook. We actually have a Facebook group. It’s our leadership group. So if you want some leadership tips, we have a good discussion going on in there. You guys can also join that private group as well.

Ryan Isaac:
All right. Kiera Dent, thanks for spending time. My actual friend, it’s not just the podcast term, my actual friend, Kiera Dent. So smart, thanks for your expertise, as always. And we’ll catch you next time. Thanks everyone for tuning in and we’ll catch you on the next one.

Kiera Dent:
Thank you.

Ryan Isaac:
Okay everyone, thanks for tuning in. I hope you enjoyed that episode, thanks to Kiera Dent for joining us today and spending some time talking about all the things she’s learned with her team, how to improve your practice and be more proactive with your teams and your systems and your processes.

Ryan Isaac:
If you have any questions for us that you’d like to ask an advisor, go to DentistAdvisors.com, click on the book free consultation button, or go post a question in our awesome illustrious mighty Facebook group that’s very nice and civil, it’s DentistAdvisors.com/groups. Thanks again for tuning in. Thanks for joining us. Thanks for the support. We’ll catch you next time.

Practice Management