Dental Unscripted | Getting into Ownership and Practice Management Insights

Welcome to Dental Unscripted.

Where Mike Dinsio and Paula Quinn break

down the practice ownership journey,

one episode at a time.

Starting up, buying,

and running a successful dental practice.

All right, all right.

Good morning.

Welcome,

welcome to another episode of Dental

Unscripted.

I don't know if you're listening to this

in the morning or maybe at night,

but it's morning for Paula and I.

And we're in the studio today talking

about job descriptions.

It's going to be a fun episode.

And we're happy to be here.

And we appreciate you listening and being

part of our little community.

But yeah, let's get into this.

Paula, good morning.

Welcome to the studio at whatever time

this is.

Yeah, so guys, again, just as a reminder,

please like, subscribe.

share.

It really does help.

We don't do this for profit.

We do it for you guys.

And I think it helps.

We get on a lot of phone calls

every week with folks that are considering

consulting and maybe consulting is not for

you and that's totally fine.

but i think the podcast does give you

a lot of great information when you're

going to buy start or run a practice

and it's just fun sharing ideas and topics

and whatnot um and so liking us

subscribing um even giving us a google

review or whatever it is spotify review uh

it really does help the program so we'll

take a review i mean yeah we'll take

the yeah we'll take a good review

We were thinking about doing this topic of

job descriptions,

and you are the one that really works

in office with doctors,

and as something as simple as job

descriptions

It's kind of mind-blowing from someone

like me sitting on the outside looking in

on how simple but important this is in

every business,

let alone every dental office.

What do you see?

Why is this important in a dental office?

Gosh, so many reasons.

I think the first couple of reasons is

if there's more than one person up front

or more than one person helping up front.

I think that sometimes people can think

somebody did something and it didn't get

done.

You know, if we're all sharing in duties,

it's like we're all verifying insurance

and all of a sudden the next day

someone's not verified.

You know,

there's a couple of things that happen.

Number one, somebody is not verified.

It messes up our day.

Number two, who do we go to?

Whose fault is it?

I'm going to say it's her fault.

She's going to say it's mine.

doctors are going to just scratch their

head and go do what they do.

What are they going to get frustrated?

They're not going to fire us over that.

Um, you know, so I think, you know,

the,

So that kind of is what happens when

you don't have job descriptions.

I also think that I'm going to say

this a couple of times throughout this,

but I think that it mostly less than

what do I do throughout the day?

It does two things.

It manages my time because up front,

it's very reactive.

There's people coming in and out.

you know,

people are bringing patients up to me,

the phone's ringing, I'm scheduling.

It's I'm constantly unlike a dental

assistant and a hygienist,

who sure things can change.

It's very rare, though, where up front,

it's like,

anything can happen at any moment.

You could be bringing your patient up and

the phone rings,

and I have to answer it.

And now I can't even talk to the

patient in front of me.

So

It's very unpredictable.

So in that very unpredictable environment,

in order to get your job done,

you need a lot of predictability that you

can count on.

And when we put these in place,

often many team members will argue, well,

we all do it.

So that's number one.

Number two, it's, well,

we can't plan because everything happened.

those are just kind of some things i

mean i want to dive into everything a

lot deeper but just based on that i

don't know if that sparks anything for you

yeah no that's it i mean i i

think that kind of sets us up for

a really nice um a really nice uh

podcast so so you know for for me

maybe for those that

don't own a business yet,

and they're sitting back wondering,

really?

Nobody really knows who does what.

I think that's the first thing you said.

So when you go into these dental offices,

Paula,

you're obviously seeing that there's some

confusion on who does what or who does

what.

And I've been talking to my seven-year-old

too much this morning.

So, like, as simple as who does what,

like, how, like, is that,

that's a real thing?

That's a real thing?

People don't really know what they're

supposed to do?

Exactly.

Well, I think, yes,

the things that you're forced to do,

answer the phone, schedule a patient,

you know, there's things you're just,

you just have to do,

you're going to do,

but it's the things that,

I think that drive the business that mean

the most that either nobody's doing or

it's getting very little attention.

And that's the big thing.

There are things we do that of course

keep the business afloat,

but it doesn't drive the business.

And in order to drive results,

you need a plan around it.

You need not necessarily a lead person,

but an accountable person

You need a time management plan.

There has to be,

it has to be super intentional or it's

just, it's not going to happen.

You know, I always equate it to like,

let's say that you want to,

workout, grocery shop,

pick up your dry cleaning.

I mean,

name ten things off you wanna do on

a Saturday morning, okay?

Well,

if you don't write it all down or

in your head, you don't say, okay,

cleaners open to eight, I'm gonna do that,

I'm gonna go by the grocery store,

make a grocery list,

or you can even just compare it to

grocery shopping.

Are you going to get it done?

Some of it, right?

Yeah, no, totally.

That happened to me yesterday.

It was grocery shopping and I was on

the phone and I had the list.

I put it into my little Alexa.

I had the list.

I had the job description.

I had the list,

but I was on the phone,

not checking the list.

Yeah.

And guess what?

I got seventy percent of it.

But now this morning I was making some

breakfast and well, shit, I forgot.

I forgot the butter, the eggs.

And that's, you know,

but but it's even worse.

They're missing the eggs.

You know,

it's it's the it's the big thing sometimes

because that phone kidnaps us.

Those patients kidnap us.

The team kidnaps us.

And then those eggs that are probably the

most important ingredient in the entire

breakfast.

never gets done.

I look up.

Oh, go ahead.

No, no.

I was just going to say,

I think that's,

I look guys do not under appreciate this

little segment of who does what,

because

The eggs, the butter,

eggs are very important.

Butter is kind of a minor ingredient.

So, of course,

I used olive oil and Charlotte said this

tastes like crap.

And she didn't say that, but, you know,

she made a comment.

The point here is that the results aren't

as good.

And doctors are constantly complaining to

Paula and I about not hitting goal.

Just yesterday we heard an office not

preparing the team for the day.

The huddle was not effective and therefore

they were not as productive.

Like Paula said,

the phones and everything's kind of

getting done, but the eggs,

the most important things in a dental

office,

the things that we need to be very

intentional about to drive the practices,

actual freaking goals to pay the bills are

not getting done.

The littlest things that are really big

things, the eggs.

So I think that's very good because it's

so simple of having...

specific jobs for people and and it kind

of goes that pivots now to like

responsibility because if you do and maybe

i'm jumping the gun paul and maybe you

wanted to tie that last one up but

like without defining who who does what

you can't hold people responsible so sorry

if i jumped the gun there no not

really i i might have get into it

but i i think it all flows i

i don't think it matters um you know

i think

I'm going to,

I'm kind of got a waterfall of backward.

And I think the biggest results of not

having it is empty schedules,

low production, um, claims, claims,

not getting paid on time, uh, patient, uh,

statements not going out,

patients don't get statements on what they

owe until, this is a whole nother segment,

but until three months after they had

their dentistry.

Here we're waiting on a claim,

then we get it,

nobody sends statements out on a regular

basis.

Here I had my tooth fixed three months

ago,

guess what?

They didn't estimate appropriately.

Now they send me a bill for a

hundred and twenty bucks,

three hundred bucks, fifty bucks.

If it's ten, I might not be mad,

but if three months has gone by and

they send me a three hundred and twenty

five dollar invoice, I'm going to be like,

what?

Number one,

even though we all know in dentistry

world, it's an estimate.

But as a patient,

I'm going to be like,

why is it taking so long to get

this?

How do I even know money?

I'm not paying this.

I've had this

toothpicks for three months now,

like all the weird things that people do

when they owe you money.

So it's just really important that the

impact the domino effect of not having

specific job

descriptions,

not having like you saying somebody

responsible,

and then not having time slots in our

day time management in our day,

it's really detrimental to a practice.

So basically,

we're just waiting for the month to fall

upon us.

And we just cross our fingers that we

have a good month.

And the funny thing is,

is even doctors that have a good month,

Could they could they have a ten times

better month?

They're just used to that.

So they that status quo now it's like,

oh, well, we do X amount.

If you were intentional,

like I use the grocery shop list where

I I mean,

I know this is crazy for a Saturday

morning,

but I put eight o'clock dry cleaner,

eight thirty grocery store.

Here's my grocery list.

know ten o'clock whatever that is eleven

o'clock whatever that is i'm gonna get

every one of those things done i'm not

gonna get seventy percent of my grocery

list i'm gonna get a hundred and i'm

gonna feel so accomplished in a much

shorter amount of time yeah i mean

everyone's left their house before and

they've had six errands to run and they

realized they drove fifteen minutes this

way ten minutes back this way only to

drive eight more minutes back up to where

you were

an hour ago yeah same with the groceries

right you go down that aisle where the

bread is but you don't grab bread and

then you go and you're like oh i

need bread you know and then you're back

yeah so you're inefficient yeah you're

back in the grocery store you're there for

an extra twenty minutes so it's it's just

super important i mean i can't express it

enough

So I think that's great.

I think like we work with a lot

of startups, right?

And those startups typically start out

with impeccable job descriptions, right?

Well,

I'm just saying that like they have them,

they have them.

And my point is,

is they might be more intentional than an

office that's doing a million dollars

because every dollar,

every opportunity matters to a startup.

But if you ran your business like a

startup, it's kind of funny.

We talk to a lot of practices that

buy or have been in business for many

years.

ironically they have things to learn from

the startups because the startups come out

desperate and desperate is an aggressive

word but like just trying to seize every

single opportunity and my point to this is

that as the startup gets busier busier and

busier and busier things start falling

apart they stop putting the descriptions

together they don't redefine often

as the business grows or you hire someone,

you don't redo the job descriptions,

reorganize things.

Like you just kind of grow and that's

another big pitfall is number one,

not having them.

But if you have them,

In a year,

a startup needs to break it down again

because we have two more team members

because they grow.

And so that's what happens is business is

just kind of higher and people quit or

they grow.

And then it's just not very intentional.

So who does what is very important.

But as a leader...

for me it's it's if you don't have

that you can't go up to the employee

and say who's who's responsible for this

mistake it's not that you're going to

berate them or punishing them but when

everybody like you said paul is just kind

of pointing and it's her fault or no

it's her fault there's you can't really

hold anybody accountable it's like okay

that's my fault now that you two don't

know that your job is and your job

is

So for a leader,

do this often so that you can hold

your team responsible and accountable.

And as you grow,

you need to do it often and frequently.

And by the way.

like that's the biggest thing that we see

as consultants is the lack of leadership

in holding people accountable aka

responsible for their job description is

the number one reason why i think

practices don't grow i don't know do you

disagree or agree with with that comment

and also

How do job descriptions really,

how does it help you become easier to

make people responsible for what they're

supposed to be doing?

Yeah,

so I think there's a couple things there.

No,

I think you're a hundred percent right

because as a dentist,

If you're a dental owner, which most are,

as a dentist, you're very busy.

You're back in a chair with your face

in somebody else's face.

And besides doing maybe a hygiene exam or

somebody's waiting to be seated and you're

numbing someone else, whatever,

you hopefully aren't getting a ton of

time.

We'll another segment or we can talk about

it later.

But on top of that,

we definitely recommend docs have admin

time because you don't get time.

But you count on your team a lot.

You can't sit up and make those

reactivation calls,

those unscheduled treatment calls,

make sure statements.

I mean,

you don't have enough time in the day

unless you stop two hours early every day

and you sit down and you

You know,

are a total admin and go through

everything yourself.

And that's not going to happen.

Number one,

most dentists don't have that ability.

They don't have that knowledge that the

front has.

And number two, they don't have the time.

That's lost money.

If they shut their practice down,

you know, they could do anything.

another crown prep,

whatever in that in that time.

So you very much rely on your team

to drive the engine of your business.

It's it's more team than anything.

You're the doer.

Yeah.

But someone's got to bring it's almost

like

they're the doer and the teams,

the salespeople in a way, you know, it's,

it's the, the sales team,

the follow-up team, the, the,

the people who to, you know,

cause I'm the, I'm the front office,

I'm answering the phone.

I drive whether the new patient schedules

or not.

Correct.

Then I drive the cancellation and no show

to make sure my patients show up for

the doctor and the hygienist.

Then if anything's diagnosed,

I'm responsible to call to make sure that

or before they leave,

get them on the schedule, if not call.

So think about all the revenue I am

driving.

Then I've got to submit the insurance,

which is how the doctor and the team

gets paid.

If something's incorrect,

I have to make sure I'm on top

of it to correct it so the insurance

will pay.

I got to collect from the patient.

And if the insurance doesn't pay what's

expected, I'm now a collection agent.

Go get the money.

So I am literally running this doctor's

practice for him or her.

I mean, I can't do it without them.

They're the producers.

But it's a lot of responsibility we put

on these patients.

Sometimes experienced,

sometimes non-experienced.

Sometimes they learn from this rando.

We usually have a name for Mary Beth

up front, Susie Jo, whatever her name is.

I've been in a practice for forty years.

Now I come along.

You know,

it's there is no there are some I

mean, obviously, next level does it.

There is some formal training,

but it's not very common that a front

office like a hygienist or a dental

assistant does.

goes to a school and learns every

intricacy,

but yet they have so much control of

the practice.

It's crazy.

So would you say,

would you say this job description topic

is, is,

is the biggest issue in dental practices

is at the front?

Yeah, but I think there, you know,

I'm talking about that the most,

but I think there's plenty of things that

dental assistants can do to help.

support the front and drive stuff

themselves.

I mean, they can schedule from the back,

but I think,

I think the thing about the front,

because doctors,

it's very foreign to doctors is there has

to be a job description.

There has to be the, the,

the expectations and order of priority as

a dentist.

What's important to me, Paula upfront is,

That you are making sure because

everything else has to happen.

But I'm not OK if these five things

don't happen every week or every day,

depending on what it is.

And I think that if they aren't as

efficient as you want,

there needs to be training around those

things.

key things that you want and then you

have to have a system that you can

check on me so let's just use uh

unscheduled treatment as an example if you

don't have a system you don't know if

i'm doing it i'm going to tell you

i'm doing it yeah i don't know i

called it fifteen people and no one wanted

to schedule so now our schedule's empty

you don't know if i called

I did.

What did I say?

You know,

so I think having this sets both me

as a front office and doctor up for

success because we use these job

descriptions to manage time.

to find out where the gaps are in

knowledge.

And then we recommend at minimum quarterly

check-ins and I'm going to evaluate how I

feel Paula is doing based on what we

decided was important.

So as a, as a, you know,

I was talking to a dentist the other

day who just bought a practice and she

I said, welcome to the world of ownership.

I don't know if you know this,

but you are now a manager, a babysitter,

a salesperson, a business owner,

a dentist, and a marketing person.

The days of...

being on the corner,

being the only dentist in town.

I mean, my dentist,

I think I told you before,

he would have a cigarette.

He'd put it on his desk with cigarettes

in his pocket, you know, a thing.

Go in with no mask, no gloves,

see a patient.

come back, grab a cigarette,

smoked in the practice.

I mean, you can't do that anymore.

And that literally is where we've come

from.

Like you easily could still be in the

chair right now easily.

So like that's where some of your

colleagues of your tenure started.

And this is where we're at today.

And they...

The same person, the same person.

Exactly.

So I always say to,

especially my new buyers,

and this isn't about new buyers,

is they don't have the loan that you

have now.

That business may even be paid off.

And by the way,

if Mary Beth and Josie Ann and whatever

have been there long enough,

those wages are probably not very high

either.

They're going to go up if you have

to hire someone new or you acquire a

practice.

So it is very important to,

that you understand you are you now run

a business it is a business it is

a service industry but it is a business

and so you have to just like starbucks

chick-fil-a whatever you want to i was i

went into mercedes yesterday and it was

impeccable i was so impressed

of everything that happened, it was crazy.

I was sitting there,

my wheels were spinning about dentistry in

the moment that it happened.

So I think that if you do not

have job descriptions,

you do not hold your team accountable,

you do not have blocks of things

for them to do it and they have

to be prioritized in the way that you

feel is important,

the things that drive the needle for the

practice.

That's really important.

It's a mess.

Don't say that fast, too fast.

Okay, we'll go ahead.

There's so many job descriptions.

that that like the tasks themselves um you

know you could spend the time take our

uh this podcast and really implement you

could go you could do all the job

descriptions and okay nancy joe you do

these things and and you

Kimberly, Joe,

you do these things and you both need

to answer phone calls.

But like, you know,

insurance is your responsibility.

Filling the schedule is yours, blah, blah,

blah, blah, all the things.

But then like that part right there where

you said prioritize is oftentimes what I

see these workers, your support team,

they just don't have any grasp on.

of like why filling the schedule is more

important than fighting a thirty dollar

claim for two hours.

They literally don't have that ability to

know that I should probably not be on

the phone for two hours fighting a thirty

dollar claim,

even though I really want to get that

thirty dollars and they should pick up the

phone and fill the two cancellations.

They don't know that.

So prioritizing these tasks because you

said it fast.

I wanted just to say that out loud

that like, God,

like I don't see that happening.

And then when you get new technology,

like you said, I love it,

you said that my brain wasn't there,

is revising it.

I had an office,

I think it was yesterday, Wednesday,

tell me nobody checks the chat.

You know,

they implemented a platform where patients

can now text.

No one's checking it.

No one's checking it.

The chat bot isn't working.

Yeah, you know,

no one's communicating with the patient.

So...

you think i mean we're it sounds silly

but when someone doesn't pay the bills i

you guys i was i was a dental

assistant and a hygienist before i owned

my dental practice i was pro i'm a

gen x i mean

I will probably get a lot of hate

mail,

but I don't know if there's harder workers

than a Gen X. And it's yes, individually,

anyone could be a hard worker.

But I'm just saying as a as a

generation, as a whole,

we came after an era where.

It was just what we did.

No BS.

Just get it done.

No BS.

And I always, I mean, you know, from,

from a little child, you know, like the,

by the time I hit I had side

jobs, side hustles,

maybe it's just me and I'm weird,

but all my friends from the Midwest are

like that too.

The reason I bring this up is because

I really do feel like I had ownership.

When I work for somebody, I,

love what I do.

I reschedule patients.

I try to, you know, discuss the flora.

I do all the things that I hear

people tell me to do,

but there is nothing like being the one

that pays the bills.

your eyes are open in a different way

you're you're and and i'm not talking them

into anything they don't need i'm doing

the same thing i'm just much more creative

i'm much more on top of it i

follow through i follow up because now

when that patient doesn't schedule it

isn't like oh well they said call them

in five months or oh they'll call us

no

I have a plan around that and I

am not waiting on that patient to call

me back.

Yeah.

That page to annual value could be

anywhere between five hundred and twelve

hundred.

If that patient's not coming, you know.

So I guess I wasn't expecting this episode

to go super long,

but it actually is really important.

I know I kind of want to talk

a little bit more about that because.

I mean,

we really haven't even talked about the

job descriptions or what we do.

I mean, we have,

but it's kind of taken a different turn.

And that is that, like, is that, like,

there's also this, like,

responsibility that's not there.

And it shows up in...

lots of different companies.

It could show up in ours.

It could show up in dental offices.

It could show up in Mercedes.

And just because you create a job

description doesn't create a desire to

fulfill...

how do I say this?

If you have the job description and then

you create priorities,

the employee still has to like give a

shit.

about the priorities and the owner,

what you just said as you,

as the owner, you were like,

oh my God, like I'm collecting the money.

I'm filling the schedule because I'm the

owner and I can't pay my bill if

I don't do this.

It's that desire and like drive that an

owner has that a front,

like sometimes workers don't.

And when we walk into offices and there's

a front office gal or guy that does

care,

it's they're like an anomaly it's like

holy crap you care more than the owner

like that's you're like gold you might

have some deficiencies but i will take

that over any deficiency you have where we

have a lot of employees that and and

we've we might have some listeners or some

clients that do have job descriptions do

have the priorities set but the but the

people don't

give a shit.

They don't have this desire to move the

needle.

It's a, it's a J O B.

That's a J O B. Well,

I do think people do innately have a

desire to please though.

And I think, you know,

will they ever be, you know,

but I think that

if you're clear, concise,

set expectations and follow through,

people will tend to do way better.

If they know you're just full of this

and no one's ever gonna check and you

complain and then they do it again and

you complain and they do,

and it just gets,

they kind of get away with it.

I don't know if,

I don't wanna say they're intentionally

getting away with it,

but they're just gonna keep doing it

because there's no repercussion.

There's no...

And it's almost like when people,

you know,

you have a great rah-rah meeting and then

nothing comes of it.

It's like,

why are we having these meetings type

thing?

So I do think that if you can

set the job descriptions

You can set your priorities and

expectations around those.

You set them up for success if there's

any tools they need,

whether it's verbal skills, you know,

a gentrics lesson, you know, whatever.

And then you yourself learn some,

not everything.

But learn your KPIs so that if your

account's receivable,

if your fluoride enrollment is

if your whatever isn't there,

that you at least can say, hey,

this doesn't look right.

What's going on?

Yeah.

They're going to appreciate that a lot

more than just blah, blah, blah, blah,

blah.

You know,

put your money where your mouth is.

Let's, you know, show me you care.

And so I don't know.

I just I don't think there's we start.

We definitely start in offices with front

office because I say it's a domino effect.

If we're not set up up front,

the success of the back is never going

to happen anyway.

Because I, as a hygienist,

I can't even quote a fluoride fee if

we don't have great insurance verification

up front.

So we start there because we want the

front of the house solid.

But it's just as important for dental

assistants and hygienists as well.

I get paid as a hygienist,

depending on the state,

anywhere from probably forty an hour to

seventy two an hour.

And I know it's a big swing.

But you have to think about if my

schedule is empty three times a day,

even if I'm forty dollars an hour,

not only is doctor paying my salary,

but he's losing he or she is losing

that production on top of it.

So I have to at least if I'm

not.

helping keep my schedule full i should

have priorities on what can help move the

needle in the practice as well i can't

i can't sharpen my instruments every day i

can't you know get caught up stocking my

room that doesn't help order order dental

supplies every day yeah that doesn't help

the practice um we we need to do

those things but that should be last on

the priority list compared to

We just lost out on this revenue,

pay these wages.

How do we avoid this?

Or how can I help the rest of

the day not do it?

But anyway, I love that.

Well,

we got a question from a colleague of

mine in the dental space,

and I appreciate the question, Craig.

Good to have you listening, buddy.

So there was a question and it's a

good one.

How to do how to job descriptions and

responsibilities change from a startup

compared to an existing office?

I'm going to I'm going to give that

to Paula.

I have my answer,

but I think you help doctors set up

and hire employees.

teams,

as the startup coach on the back end,

I'm on the front end,

you're on the back end.

So you help these docs hire and set

up these job descriptions.

And then you also coach, you know,

now for million dollar practices.

So what?

How would you answer that?

Well,

I think the biggest difference is the job

descriptions, the protocol,

the accountability,

the time management needs to all be the

same.

The difference is usually an existing

practice has more than one person that can

do it.

So the accountability will go to,

you know,

what I love about practice management with

existing clients is we can kind of have

a scheduling coordinator and a treatment

coordinator and sometimes a financial

coordinator.

Most of the time we have to combine

them into two, but we can separate those.

When you're a startup up front,

you kind of have to do it all

and you have to do it now unless

you're outsourcing some stuff.

Um, you know,

that it takes me into a lot of

other things and I won't go there, but,

but I think that that is the biggest

thing.

And it has to be that way because

financially, when we get clients that say,

I'm going to hire a hygienist or I

need to bring over my scheduling

coordinator, who's amazing,

or I have this dental assistant,

but she's kind of a princess,

but she's amazing at helping me prep my

teeth.

No, like as a startup,

you have a wage budget that Michael will

give you that you have to hit and

you can't hire a bunch of people,

even though you want to.

And your brain is like, oh, my gosh,

we're going to see forty patients today.

No,

we're going to see forty patients in a

month and you're going to be sitting there

twiddling your thumbs.

And so everybody does have to be a

floater, cross trained.

Right.

Is that what you mean?

Right.

That's what I was going to say.

I love when we can get a front

office and then a dental assistant that's

cross-trained that can help when there's

some downtime.

I think the hardest thing today,

totally different subject,

is it's hard to find people with

experience in today's world.

A lot of

people struggle and when those startups

it's imperative it is so imperative

because you don't know what you're doing

everything counts but yeah i think that's

the biggest difference is you get the

luxury of more than one person and like

you said michael um you know it's

You know,

it's good when you do want every I

mean,

I like to even practice management

clients,

existing dental practices that many people

are cross trained.

I love cross trained.

It's it's way to go in today's world.

If somebody calls in sick, guess what?

Yeah.

And that, you know,

what's funny is I know where Craig's

coming from.

He's probably thinking of like that four

million dollar practice and that that is

the black and white difference.

But I will tell you,

and we got to probably shut this episode

down because everybody's made it to work

by now.

But I will tell you right now that

most offices,

when I was at Bank of America,

the average practice collections was

around eight hundred thousand.

It was like seven to eight hundred

thousand was the average practice.

Okay.

And that's just across the board.

At eight hundred or seven hundred

thousand,

you really don't have a lot of employees

or shouldn't have a lot of employees

still.

I mean, Paula,

you managed about that size.

How many employees did you have?

uh one front office one dental assistant

an associate dentist and i did bring on

another you were the floater oh and then

i did bring on i did have a

hygienist eventually i brought on two um

but those are producers um so if you

discount the doctor you had one two three

you had four including yourself as a

floater so five including the dentist four

total so four employees that's it i ran

a i ran a very very long time

on three

Yeah, yeah, that's true.

And you outsourced.

So there's that, that's that.

Not at first.

So like, that's the point is like that.

I mean, even at eight hundred thousand,

which is the national average,

cross training is very important because

you still should only have four employees,

give or take.

So I think that's a great question.

Thank you, Craig, for listening.

um any last comments i know we kind

of run it over but i i like

such an important thing for small

businesses to really dig in on the ta

all the tasks that need to happen

prioritize those tasks and then you can

hold people responsible but if you don't

have those about have those performance

reviews have those check-ins don't you

know even if you don't know what you're

saying to the front office person

You have to have those check-ins.

What's working, what's not,

your expectations for the next quarter.

It's the only way you're going to grow.

Be intentional.

And they're your team.

They're your team.

If you treat them like team,

I think they'll act like team.

Yeah, perfect.

Okay.

Well, guys,

tune into the next episode of Dental

Unscripted.

We always appreciate you listening and

participating like Craig did today.

So if you see a live,

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like Craig did today.

But listen to us on your own time

whenever.

We really appreciate it.

Thanks so much.

Have a good day, Colin.

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