Fire Up Your Dental Practice and Increase Profitability

Kiera Dent The Dental A Team www.thedentalateam.com kiera@thedentalateam.com 801.885.5351

 

The Transcript

Art Wiederman, CPA And hello, everyone, and welcome to another edition of the Art of Dental Finance and Management with Art Wiederman, CPA. Welcome to my podcast. I'm Art Wiederman. I'm a director in the dental division of Eide Bailly CPAs. And I'm very excited to have you with me today. And we're recording right around Labor Day. And believe it or not, folks we're two thirds of the way through this year. And I'm sure many of us would like to see this year come to an end. But I will tell you that we've got a lot of great things that you can do in your dental office to get to the end of this year and to go to 2021. And what I've been doing during the COVID-19 pandemic is a couple things we've been talking about, you know, the PPP and EIDL programs and everything that the government has put out there. And as soon as we have an update as to what the government's going to do, which we're hoping is going to be sometime right after Labor Day, we'll do a show on that and bring you up to date on that.

But what I really want to do is I want to provide you resources of the best people in dentistry, the best coaches, the best advisors in dentistry to give you great information. And we have one of the best in the country today. We have Miss Kiera Dent, who has a company called The Dental A Team. And we're going to talk about lots of tips for you to make your dental practice better. How do we get rid of cancellations, verbal skills, all kinds of things.

And when you listen to podcasts, you know, you don't get 60 minutes of things that you can use in your office. I mean, ten minutes on my podcast are my dumb jokes. So you don't get any of that. But what I'm hoping is that you're going to be able to take maybe two or three or four things from this podcast and some of the other ones that we're going to be doing and use it in your dental office.

So I want to give you a little bit of information before we get started with Kiera. So what I want to tell you is that our wonderful, wonderful sponsor, Decisions in Dentistry, go on to their website. You can get copies of all of our podcasts, www.DecisionsinDentistry.com. They have a program where you can get access to their over one hundred and forty continuing education courses that they do. For example, Dental Handpiece Care and Processing, treatment of Perimplant Disease, Diagnosing Pre Malignant and Malignant White Lesions. Those are the types of courses that you will get on their website. And if you are looking for a complimentary consultation with me or a member of our Academy of Dental CPAs go on to their website, click on the link and we'll get you hooked up.

If you're looking for a dental CPA anywhere in the United States, Eide Bailly, we're in Southern California and across the nation. Give us a call. Again, my phone number 657.279.3243. Email is awiederman@eidebailly.com and go on to the website of the ADCPA, which is www.ADCPA.org. Twenty four of the best CPA firms in the country representing close to 10,000 dentists.

One other thing I want to share with you. On September 12th, my good friend Mark Rosen from Rosen and Associates in Boston is going to be sponsoring, is a sponsor of a virtual Parkinson's walk. And what I'd like to do is tell you about that. And have you go ahead and give him. Send him an email if you want more information at mrosen@rosencpagroup.com . That's September the 12th. If you want to go ahead and do that.

Alright, let's get to my guest because we have lots of really great information. Kiera Dent is the president and CEO of The Dental A Team, which is a national dental consulting group. Kiera is actually out of Reno, Nevada. One of the things I liked when I looked at the information that she sent me is the core values of her company. She uses the anagram FIRE, which is: Fun. Integrity. Results. And all done with Ease. Kiera is actually a fellow podcaster and she has a podcast called The Dental A Team podcast. So Kiera Dent, welcome to the Art of Dental Finance and Management.

Kiera Dent Art, thank you so much, and thanks for that glowing introduction. And gosh, it sounds like so many fun things you're offering. You guys get on over those CE courses that you're listing off, Art, sound incredible, especially right now. We're in September, historically known as 'Suck-tember' across the nation. So it tends to be a slower month for dental offices across the nation. So I think this is definitely the time to maximize that downtime. And Art, it is an honor to be here, a privilege to be here. So thank you. Thank you for having me on the show. I appreciate it.

Art Wiederman, CPA Well, you're very, very kind and this is all about helping our dentists out there. I mean, you know, they're out there, many of them in a vacuum. And they've been listening to I mean, many of them are podcast and webcasted out and everything is virtual. And there's no dental meetings and there's no this and there is no that. There is golf, which is good. And there golf. The saving grace of life is there's golf.

Kiera Dent There is golf, the saving grace of all things golf.

Art Wiederman, CPA So, Kiera, I also noticed on some of the information I looked on your website that you sent me, is that, you're obsessed with cotton candy and traveling. How does that work?

Kiera Dent I'm such a five-year-old over here. I love cotton candy. I'm thirty-four years old and I'm obsessed. So if I go to an ice cream store or Rita’s is one of my favorites, if it's got cotton candy on the menu, you can guarantee I will always order cotton candy. So I've even had some clients and friends ship me different types of cotton candy from their areas of the United States. And I will tell you, cotton candy is just a fun thing to be, to have. I mean, it's great. Even Dairy Queen right now has a cotton candy dipped cone. If everybody out there wants to know, I'll give it a fair rating. It's not a great rating, so.

Art Wiederman, CPA So are you depressed because the fact that there's no state fairs, because that's where you get your cotton candy right now? Now, actually, South Dakota is doing their state fair, but they're kind of on their own. They're kind of in their own world. But anyway, no offense to anybody in South Dakota.

Kiera Dent I heard that Utah was doing. I know Utah was doing rodeos and state fairs as well. And I was so jealous because I also love rodeos. But, yes, I just I do appreciate cotton candy and traveling. It's funny because I made a vision board about five years ago and on there, I had a type it on because I loved dentistry. And right next to it was travel the world. And it's ironic that now with the consulting business, I literally get to travel the world and helping offices. So it really blends my two favorite passions together, but absolutely traveling, I think seeing people in their, in different areas of the world. Just expands me as a person. I love seeing different cultures, different communities, different people. It's a huge, huge passion of mine. We actually went to Antarctica right before the pandemic. I was I.

Art Wiederman, CPA Did you really? What was that like? We have an hour just to keep that in mind.

Kiera Dent I thought, like many other people, that coronavirus really wasn't anything crazy. I mean, this is in February. So I had a goal to hit all seven continents and I only have one continent left. So we are going to Antarctica. People were wearing masks, but it wasn't crazy. And then we went to Antarctica. And when we were on the ship, they had asked us, do you think they were giving away a three-week cruise afterward to go even further down into Antarctica. I looked at my husband. It was so cheap compared to what we'd already paid. Like, come on, let's do it. Like, we'd get to go see the emperor penguins. I loved it. And my husband's like, no way, get me home. The Drake Passage, which if nobody's gone through it, it's either the Drake Shake or the Drake Lake. And we were fortunate enough to get the Drake Shake. And he was so seasick. And so we decided not to go. But the people that went on our exact same ship after I said they dropped us off in Argentina picked up another crew. A lot of our friends that we had met stayed to go further down. That boat actually got stuck in the ocean for about three to four weeks and they weren't allowed to come back on land because of the pandemic. So I feel I just skirted right back into the United States. Just in time. So.

Art Wiederman, CPA You did. I love that. Well. I unfortunately had to. You said you're 34. I had to cancel my thirty fifth wedding anniversary trip to Spain and Portugal. But we're planning that for next year. But, you know, again, this too shall pass. And I have a saying on my podcast. I say every week here, which is failure is not an option and it's not. So let's give our listeners some really good tips. Let's start off with how do we hire an A Team member? I know that, you know, hiring is one of them. I mean, I ran my own CPA firm before I merged with HMWC and now Eide Bailly for 33 years. And hiring was not one of my favorite things. In fact, I had some people that interviewed really well. And then when they started working, I said, did you, like, have an out of body experience when you came to interview with me? Because you're not the same person. So how do we hire an A Team person? Because right now we've got lots of dentists. You know in this pandemic who team members are leaving. They don't want to be in dentistry. You're seeing that, right?

Kiera Dent Absolutely. And, Art, when you had asked me if I wanted to be on your podcast, I was trying to think. In the Dental A-Team, my goal is to always have tangible items that can help your practice today that are easy, that you can just implement. And so some of the best tips for hiring, it is. It's tricky, I've heard, we’ve coached over 165 offices where we physically have gone to their practice. I used to be an office manager and treatment coordinator, scheduler, biller, taught at a dental college.

So we own dental practices. We just I try really hard to be on both sides of the coin of the owner and the team member. And I'm seeing just the hardship right now of hiring. So that's why I really wanted to give some tips on hiring. You know, when I first started a business, like many entrepreneurs out there, I decided to make multiple businesses right away out of the get go. It fed my ego. And I realized how crazy it is to run many businesses very well. And we used to have a company called Dental Placement Pros. And I felt like a little matchmaker. Because I worked at Midwestern Universities dental college in Glendale. And so I had all these dentists that needed jobs and I knew all these doctors who needed associates. So I thought, fantastic. We're going to start this cool company called Dental Placement Pros and we're going to match them together. Well, what I will say is that the company was not a good company to do, but it taught us a lot about how to hire and hire really, really well. So I've hired hundreds of people, all different positions. And what I would say the best tip that I can give you right now. Well, there's a couple. But the first one is write a really, really, really good ad. I think often we forget that writing a good ad is the first impression of your practice. And also, it's what's going to get you results. So, Art, I can do a podcast analogy since you’re a podcaster as well. But I've noticed and I'm sure you have too it does not matter how good my content is on the podcast. What matters is what my title is. So if I have a really good title, people will click it and download it. It does not matter. I can have the best material. But if my title is crummy, nobody clicks on it or it has less downloads than the really good ones. Right?

Art Wiederman, CPA That's right. So I think I'm going to start every podcast with how you can get more money with Kiera. I mean, that would get their attention, right?

Kiera Dent It would. You're exactly right. So when I'm like I have a girl who actually has a master’s in writing. And the reason I chose her to write my podcast is because she writes really good titles for me. And so it's the same thing with your resumes and or people looking for it. They're going to click on ads that are eye-catching.

So I write really, really, really unique titles for ads. And also, I write really unique ads. So, for example, the title could be a rock star dental hygienist needed, or superstar office manager needed for a growing practice. And I capitalize a superstar because if you go look on Indeed or Craigslist or Zip Recruiter, most of the ads for dental hygienists say dental hygienist, dental hygienist. So how on earth are you supposed to stand out among hundreds of offices wanting the same thing? So I would, I think of hiring right now - everyone is zigging. How can you zag? So make a fun title. Get. I call my creative, super sexy title a super fun title that someone's going to click on and then write a really good ad to back it up.

Art Wiederman, CPA Because in my mind, it like, what you just said. Looking for a rock star hygienist in my mind when I read that, I say, wow, this sounds like they're fun. It sounds like they've got a killer office and they're looking to add another really great team number that's what, when you said that to me, that's what I first envisioned. So that makes a lot of sense.

Kiera Dent Fantastic. I'm glad, thank you for that confirmation on that, because I found that you have to get people that click your ad. That's the first thing. So you've got to post ads. And I will tell you, I don't know what it is. But Monday nights or Tuesday morning, I don't know. I think people get ticked off on Monday and decide they're going to go look for jobs. So whatever it is, Tuesday ads tend to perform better. And then also Thursday afternoon, like evening or Friday morning, those are my two favorite times to post ads. And a quick little information on how it works. Craigslist. Believe it or not, people still come off of Craigslist. But that's a timestamped post. So pay attention. Most people post in the middle of the day when they're thinking about it. So they're going to post at, say, 12:00. Well, that gets lost in all the ads. So be strategic when you're going to post. So I like 6 a.m., 5 a.m., 5, 6, 7 p.m. That's when people are going to actually be scrolling, looking for ads. So you're actually going to be at the top of the list. So that's a one way on Craigslist and on. Indeed. Indeed is probably my favorite place to hire. But Indeed is SEO based. So if you want a dental hygienist, make sure your ad and your title use the word, dental hygiene, hygienist, all those words, a ridiculous amount of times. Your ad is going to feel kind of funny to you, but it's going to show up higher in the search because Indeed runs off of SEO. So that's a huge tip. Also with Indeed, I personally am, I actually will typically run one, two or three ads simultaneously for the same position just with different titles. And that way I can watch to see which ad which title performs better.

Art Wiederman, CPA Which one does better. Yeah.

Kiera Dent Exactly. So a lot of people just post one ad, but my thoughts are guys, you can post as many as you want and how bad do you want to hire? So I like to run three ads simultaneously with different titles. And you don't have to put your practice name in there. You can actually write confidential dental practice. So they're not seeing that it's the same ad. But then you can see which ones actually performing. And also a tip for Indeed, sponsor it. And then a lot of people will just they'll change their ad, but they never repost the ad. And what happens is the date. So let's say it's today. It's right before Labor Day. I post an ad and I don't get anybody. And now it's September 14th and then September 21st. But I'm changing my ad title. What happens is people won't click on your ad because your original postdate was 9/7, not 9/14 or 9/21. So they don't think it's as relevant. So you have to post more regularly. So I typically will post one, two, or three ads simultaneously and then I also will make new ones two or three times a week. So when I go to hire, I'm aggressive and I'm consistent to make sure that we're actually getting people to come in. And then I'm watching to see which ad performs or doesn't and shut it down. And also on Indeed, I do sponsor all of my ads because the sponsor ads will show up higher. And my thoughts are if I'm going to hire. Let's get it done. Let's not have this take a long time.

Art Wiederman, CPA OK. So let's... That's fantastic information, but I want to take this to the next step. Now we get the candidates. They come in the office. OK. I have a saying in my life that 75 percent of any major decision you make in your life - buy a house, buy a business, get married. All this kind of stuff is in your gut. So I think it's the same thing with interviewing. So how about some tips? Because I've got so much more I want to talk to you about. How about some tips on when we get that candidate into the office, what are some good questions? What are you looking for? You're looking for body language or what are you looking for?

Kiera Dent Super good question. Art. And I will tell you guys, I've had a lot of people reach out to us to hire. And what I actually did is I made “How to Hire Your Unicorn.” So if you guys pop on to thedentalateam.com/hiring, we have a whole hiring course where I have all the forms, all the questions, everything we use. And if you use the coupon code HIRE7, because I think seven's a lucky number, so why not give you some good luck? All of this information, I even have sample ads, sample interview questions and I go through.

So, Art, to your question, I go through a phone interview question and I do the exact same questions for every person I interview. That way it's apples to apples, not apples to pears, apples to bananas. And I can't remember the questions I asked Art versus the questions I asked Sara. It really helps streamline your process. And then you can follow your gut. But you also have facts to back it up. So some of my favorite questions when I'm doing a phone interview, I don't like to waste time, so I get right to the chase. My top three questions are, does the pay work for them? Because if not, I don't want to waste time. And I literally say, all right, guys, I'm going to drop my dirty laundry. And if it works, high five, we’ll continue on. And if not high five, I don't want to waste either of our time. So I ask about hours, pay and then location because oftentimes people think a 30 - 45-minute commute will work for them. But if they're too far away, I know they're not going to last. They're just desperate right now. So those are my top three questions I ask right out the get-go. My shortest interview I've ever had, I think was fifty-five seconds. I just, there's no reason to talk longer if they're not going to fit. And also, when I was an office manager, I used to try to make the position fit the person vs. making the position and then finding the person who fits it. So I needed evening hours, but people would tell me they didn't want evenings. I'd be like, well, we could probably make this work. And my thoughts are, no, you know what you need. Find the person that fits. Don't try to adjust it, especially at the beginning. So those are my three favorite questions to ask right away. And then after that, some other questions I love to ask and I'm happy to share any of this Art. No problem at all.

And I like to ask maybe what was the last book they read. I want to see if they're active learners. Another question is if we were celebrating one year from now, what would we be celebrating? And I ask that question because I'm looking to see if the person is going to answer with I comments or if they're going to answer with we comments. If they say I, I know there may be a harder team member to work with, they're probably a little more conceited and they might think their way’s the right way. And versus a we they're a team player and their focused on the team result. So you can get a lot just by small cues when they're answering those questions.

Art Wiederman, CPA Right. I've always said, when it comes to hiring people, whether it's in a dental office, an accounting office, a manufacturing business, you know, I can teach skills. I can't teach attitude. How do you feel about that?

Kiera Dent I completely agree. The only area I will say doctors struggle to teach skills are the front office. So I say often hire The Dental A Team if you need help with the front office or honestly, if you’re new practice. I strongly and I'm happy to help you guys, like if you even send over resumes and say Kiera, what do you think of this person? More than happy to do that for anybody out there listening if you don't know the front office, because hiring, if you’re a brand-new practice, hiring a really strong office manager or biller or outsourcing those tips, or those projects, I guess, that's going to help you because that is a harder skill to teach. But absolutely personality, their attitude. All of that. Hire for culture. Don't hire just based on their skillset either.

Art Wiederman, CPA That's great. I want to jump to some other topics. I know that one of the biggest frustrations my doctors have are cancellations. You know, you should have less than, you have cancellations and you have no shows, which are two different definitions. But how do we minimize. You're never going to eliminate cancellations. You and I both know that. That's just not going to happen. How can we minimize cancellations in a dental office?

Kiera Dent So something that I think is a really fun with cancellations is I love to look for patterns and I think it's important to look to see what type of patients are canceling, because if you can figure it out. Often people come to me and say, hey, I have all these cancellations, but if we do a just a smidge of digging, there's not a lot. And then I'll also give you guys some verbiage. But a smidge of digging will tell me, is it our new patients? And if it's our new patients, I've got a solution for that. Is it your hygiene patients? If so, I've got a solution for that. Or is it our doctor patients? I have a solution for that. So depending upon which one is cancelling, there's different solutions. Yes, there's an overarching one, but there's specifics for those three different types of patients that you can actually start to eliminate.

Art Wiederman, CPA OK. I'm sure you have some of that on your website, which I want you to... A couple of things before, because I've got, again, some other things. Number one, I want to share that Kiera is going to be participating in, and I think she's one of the featured speakers, in a women's dental summit. I think it's in November, if I remember correctly? Talk about that.

Kiera Dent Yeah. That's our sister company. So, yeah, you got it. So I am a partner in Women Dentist Connect. Dr. Summer Kassmel and myself, we created the company Women Dentist Connect. And it is a company towards women professionals in the dental field. So it doesn't just have to be dentists. It can be treatment coordinators, office managers. It can be spouses. Anyone who's a female in the dental industry, we want to connect with you. And so November 13th and 14th because, hey, it's 2020 Art. Why don't we throw an event on Friday the 13th? Like that's what we're doing this year.

Art Wiederman, CPA Why not?

Kiera Dent Why not?

Art Wiederman, CPA How much worse can it get? Right?

Kiera Dent Exactly. So I'm on November 13th and 14th Summer and I will be putting on an event where we're going to talk about mom guilt. We're going to talk about systems and structure, accountable teams. And we're going to also have a really cool speaker line up with Dr. Desiree Yazdan, who will be teaching how to grow your practice through social media. She has one hundred and sixty-five thousand followers on social, and she's grown her cosmetic practice from that.

Art Wiederman, CPA Wow.

Kiera Dent And we have Dr. Mark Costes are one male speaker at the event, and he's the DFI owner and one of my partners. We also have Erin Elliott for sleep apnea. And we have Dr. Amanda Wilson. And she's going to talk about how to incorporate ortho into your practice. And then Summer and I, we'll be talking about how to do time management and work-life integration together using personal assistants and executive assistants. So it's going to be a ton of fun. Tickets are on sale right now.

Art Wiederman, CPA There's nothing going on at this summit, right? It sounds like it's pretty. Geez Louise. What's this lasting, like three months or something? No, it sounds wonderful. The sleep apnea is near and dear to me because my dentist diagnosed mine and I've been sleeping with a C Pap, my audience knows, this for 15 years, and he probably saved my life, quite frankly. And, you know, there's 40 million people in America who have this affliction. And, you know, again, what we teach our doctors is, you know, they don't fix teeth. They are you know, it's about a better relationship, a better self-esteem, a better quality of life. And if you can do that. My God, that's your legacy. So it's great.

Kiera Dent No. I know. So. Yeah. So absolutely. So for any male doctors or team members listening, send your teams to it. We're going to do it virtual so your whole team can participate. It’s great. They'll get CE through it and everything. And we have a whole team bundle for it. So that's WomenDentistConnect.com and Art, to your point, I am so excited to be adding in things like sleep and ortho that I think a lot of doctors can use right now. And plus, Eide Bailly is one of our sponsors. So thank you to Eide Bailly for representing and supporting us as well.

Art Wiederman, CPA I've heard of Eide Bailly. Oh, I work for them.

Kiera Dent I've heard of that great company.

Art Wiederman, CPA OK. So just give out your website and your contact information. And then we'll do it once at the end. And then we'll move on to some other things I want to talk to you about.

Kiera Dent Yeah, of course. So if you guys want to come to the Women Dentist Connect to our summit, it's on November 13th and 14th. The website is WomenDentistsConnect.com. And right now it is Early Bird special pricing through the end of September.

Art Wiederman, CPA Nice. OK. All right. Let's talk about, I mean, one of my big hot buttons with dentists, Kiera, is recare unscheduled treatment plans. I get doctors all the time, Art, you gotta refer me to a marketing company. I need new patients. I need new patients. I'm not getting new patients. I go, have you looked at your uncompleted treatment plan report lately? And I even get a couple of say, where do I find that? In your dental software. So, you know, so you have magic phrases, I hear. Tell me about your. So how do we pull production? Because right now, you know, we know that 15 to 20 percent of the people in America are still afraid to go to the dentist. That’s a fact. And that's what I've seen. I'm sure you've seen that, too. So we've got to ramp up our production and complex care and all this stuff. So I want to hear your magic phrases. Do they have anything to do with cotton candy that is what I want to know?

Kiera Dent I wish! That would be so much better, no, they don't.

Art Wiederman, CPA It would be wouldn't it?

Kiera Dent But yes, so a magic phrase with recare and unscheduled treatment. So there's two quick things on that. Working in the dental office, I didn't enjoy making phone calls for return unscheduled treatment. If you want to torture me, make me have, make those calls. I did not like doing them. So I got really good, back to the cancellations, I call it not letting patients break up with me first and foremost. So I got really good at that first and foremost. And there’s just ways to, you know, if somebody’s calling to cancel, to say sure, let me let you cancel. I would say, oh, my gosh, I'm so sorry to hear that. What's going on? Make them tell me why they're trying to cancel with me. And that's a magic phrase, that little, ‘oh, my gosh. I'm so sorry to hear that. What's going on?’ is a great way to prevent your cancellations. But for recare and unscheduled treatment, something that I did calling patients was. Yes, you're right, Art, pull those reports and divide it amongst your team and have a set expectation that by the end of the month, all these patients have been contacted at least once and have a report back so you can see that they've all been contacted. And I actually like to create codes that go in my software so I can see that they were called once or twice, or three times and I can run a report through my software at the end of the month to show how many calls were actually placed. But the phrase that I love to say is, ‘Hi, Art, this is Kiera calling from All Smiles Dental. I was calling regarding your account. Give me a quick callback. And the reason I say account is because one that's HIPAA compliant, two. I am I do want them to think they owe money even though they don't. And three, that it's all like their entire thing. ReCare unscheduled treatment that is truly all part of their account. So what happens I usually will make that phone call. And then I send a text message to the patient right away as well, because most patients look at text messages more than they look at voicemails. So you really can ramp that up. And I will promise you, if your team will say that, hey, this is Kiera calling regarding your account. Give me a quick call back. I promise you, your patients will call you. I promise they will call. But also make sure you're placing those calls during what I love to call the sizzle time, meaning like before they go to work at lunch or at the end of the day, those are your sizzle times in the day. So make sure your calls, when you're making them, actually are counting.

Art Wiederman, CPA Kiera, I want to ask you a question, because I run into this a lot. Again, I'm a quasi-management consultant. I know enough to be dangerous. And I get people asking me all kinds of stuff and legal questions and H.R. requests. But so I get the comment. When we talk about uncompleted treatment plan reports, they go, you know, Art, here's my problem. My front office person is constantly complaining they don't have enough time to check in and check out the patients and bill insurance and all this stuff. So how do we get the time in the dental office to get someone to go into a quiet room, because it's not just one phone call. There's lots of people that have uncompleted treatment. How do we do that?

Kiera Dent OK. Really good question. So I am a…I love efficiency. And so similar to you Art, I have been working in the industry for several years and I purposely built a consulting company to help the dental students know the best of the best people out there. So one quick tip is Madento is one of the companies I love and actually have a ringless voicemail. So you can actually, like, call all these patients with a click of a button and the doctor can actually pre-record voicemail to the patient.

Art Wiederman, CPA Kiera, say the name of the company again.

Kiera Dent Sure, it's Modento.io. And that company, they do a ton of other things, but to your point, if your team’s saying they don't have time. Well, there is a company out there that has a solution and it's not very expensive. And they also will allow you to just do their ringless voicemail option on your own. So it would be for, you could do that for welcoming new patients in. It can be for your post op calls. It can be for your unscheduled treatment calls, your recare calls, every one of those, you could create a voicemail and then all your front office team has to do is just identify those patients and send these voicemails out. And it's really cool. It doesn't actually ring on the phone. It delivers a voicemail to the patient. I mean, you can use a similar thing to text them as well. So if they don't have time, that's one option. But I'm also going to caveat from that and say one of my favorite things to do is to help offices see how to block schedule their front office's time. Because if we just allow our days to happen, that's a very reactive process versus a proactive process. So my standard and my practices that I own or the practice I work in, our team knew that they had to do the entire list. And they I mean, one of our consultants required 100 calls a day with her team. I, I didn't care. I just expected them to get through the entire list by the end of the month. And that was there. That was just the expectation we had. And so what I found is people don't have time if it's not a priority to the doctor if it's just a passive thing. If you have the standard and say, hey, this is what needs to be done, your team will find time. There's lots of little snippets of time. I also am a real big believer of admin time for all for an office or at least one hour of quote unquote, uninterrupted, quiet time per team member every single week for the front office especially can really help bring that air down, get those on schedule treatment calls like actual calls to them, get those recare calls made. But again, if your team really, truly is struggling, maybe you've lost team members. Modento is a phenomenal efficiency way that will free up more time for other things.

Art Wiederman, CPA How do you spell that?

Kiera Dent That's m o d e n t o.io. So Modento.io. It's a huge efficiency saver for you guys. And they're one of my favorite companies out there. I'm really picky on companies.

Art Wiederman, CPA And does it sound like they're calling from your dental office?

Kiera Dent Yes. So, Art, if you were the dentist, you would actually record a voicemail, so you would say, hi, this is Dr. Art. I was calling I noticed you weren't scheduled for your treatment. I'm concerned about getting that taken care of. I'd love to see you next week. Give us a call back. So literally, you create the voicemail as the doctor or the hygienist and it will automatically go to their phones.

Art Wiederman, CPA So it's a computer system that takes your voicemail and calls all these people. I see. Interesting.

Kiera Dent And it doesn't actually ring like I said, so you know how sometimes you travel? Why do I have a voicemail like it didn't even ring? That's exactly what the software does.

Art Wiederman, CPA There you go. Now, I know that you have a. We were talking about you have a trick that will allow dentists to increase case acceptance from 50 to 90 percent, because I will tell you, I used, you know, some of the dental metrics programs like you do, like you and I were talking about. And it tells you what the case acceptance is. And, you know, most doctor's case acceptance, I think, is, well, probably not your clients, but most of the doctors out there are probably in the 30 to 50 percent range, if that. I don't know if that's what you've seen. So you have a trick that will allow them to go from 50 to 90 percent. All right. So how does. That's what, I'm all ears.

Kiera Dent It does. Well Art, for today's podcast, I really wanted to just give you guys, like, five things you can do today to change your practice. So, like, I don't care if you take one or five or, but just do something. So this one I actually tested it in quite a few offices, and I was gracious. I actually took that practice from 50 percent to 100 percent in one day implementing this. And so it shows consistency and we call it. I need to come with a better acronym, but it's N D T R. So one office has called it ‘the neuter’. And that just sounds so ridiculous. But hey, you won't forget it. You can remember it by a new dentist's tough road. North Dakota totally rocks. Never date the rookie. I don't care what you choose to remember it by, that came from a Chicago office. So I've heard all the ways to remember this little acronym, but if you will.

So doctors, I’m going to teach you just a quick way to help your patients say yes. And then it becomes the perfect handoff for your back office to your front office, and it will literally increase your case acceptance because the patient actually knows what they need to come back for. So N actually stands for the next visit. D stands for the date range to return. T stands for time needed. An R stands for recare scheduled. K. So I've even had offices buy stamps and get them on Vistaprint and stamp them on their route slips. If you have Open Dental, you can just pre-print this on there and highlight it. It's a really, really, really convenient way. So doctors in your exam. If so, let's say Art, I am your doctor. K, and you're my patient. I would say to you, OK, Art. So I've already done your comprehensive exam. I've told you need to get a crown done, you need some fillings done and you need your SRP. Well, doctors, you've got to prioritize which ones first. Art needs to know with complete clarity what he's coming back for. Because one of the number one reasons I found as a treatment coordinator, my treatment plans I used to do I started out doing, you know, like one thousand five-thousand-dollar treatment plans. And when I ended in a practice, I was doing 50 to 80-thousand-hour treatment plans. I was doing implant cases. And I had about an I had an 85 percent success close rate on those big treatment plans, same day. And what I found is when people would come in. The reason that they would get confused is because the doctor wasn't clear of what they needed to come back for. Or the doctor made it very wishy washy of like, well, if you can get it done, great. Or like, let's get this done as soon as possible. Or, you know, I'd really like to see you soon. And what I started figuring out is soon is very different and relative for each person. Soon for Art might be tomorrow. Soon for my mom because she hates the dentist is never so Exactly. And so what we found is if you do this next visit date time on all of your exams, your patients have clarity and your case acceptance will increase. So for the example are you've got the crown, the fillings, the SRP. So if I was your doctor, I would say, all right, Art. So we're gonna get you started. I want to start in the upper right with that crown. That's where we're going to start. And I'd like to see you back. And within the next two weeks and I'll need about an hour and a half for that appointment. I can't wait to see you. What questions do you have for me? But right now, are, you know. Exactly crown. Two weeks. An hour and a half. Because oftentimes patients don't know how long a crown takes. So they think, oh, gosh, I've got to take the whole day off of work or they don't know. They're like, I heard crown, I heard fillings, I heard SRP. I don't know any of those words mean. So there's confusion. And when we have confusion, we don't close because we can't execute. They say complexity is the enemy of execution. So if we make it too complex, our patients won't say yes. The goal is with these exams. This is what I tell all the doctors we work with. I say, your goal is docs, the you say, an exam. And then by the time the patient walks up to the front desk, they should be able to tell the front desk what they need to come back for when they need to come back for and how much time. And so this office that I was using, the example of the 50 percent to 100 percent, the patients literally would walk up front and they'd say, oh, Dr. So-and-so said, I need to come back in two weeks for the crowd and I need about an hour and a half. The patient was saying that not the team members. The patient knew that. And this is just in one day they had it. I mean, it was the first time we've done it, but it was so clear the patient had already connected in without us doing it. So then what you do is you have your back office schedule. I always like the assistants or whoever is back there to say, okay, cool. So our doctor needs to see you back in two weeks. It looks like they're available on Wednesday at three p.m. Let's reserve that time. If we can schedule the back office, there's an emphasis on treatment, not an emphasis on money. And if your team is leery about that, that's totally fine. They don't have to schedule. That's just my preference. Then when we got front, the office team says exactly what the doctor said. Hey, Kiera, here's Art. Dr. So-and-so wants to see you back for that crown on the top right. Or once is he back for treatment on the upper right. If you've got patients, you can keep it HIPAA compliant. Once you see him back in two weeks for about an hour and a half, his cleaning is scheduled. His recare is scheduled. This is Sarah. She'll take great care of you. So you complete these perfect handoffs and the verbiage is there.

Art Wiederman, CPA Handoffs - that's the word I was just going to say.

Kiera Dent That's the handoff. Yes. And then your front office says the exact same thing. So I say, oh, my gosh, Art, so great to see you. How is your visit?

You tell me it's great. Beautiful. Well, let's get you scheduled. Two weeks. It looks like I've got something Wednesday at three o'clock. Let's reserve that for you. So even your front office puts the emphasis on the treatment before they put the emphasis on the money. And there's lots of ways to work around that. But I found this will really help. It's not to not share of money. I love to talk about money. Money is just a way to pay for services. But I found that if I'm creating objections right from the get-go versus focusing on I whenever doctor says treatment, my job, my assumption, is we're getting the treatment done. I assume Art wants to do it. So that's how I'm going to act. And if Art's doing it, I want to find the best time. I want to reserve it. And then we're going to discuss details of finances and just make it work for him.

Art Wiederman, CPA Because I've gotten. I was just going to ask you about that. I was going to actually role-play say, but Dr. Kiera, how much is this going to cost? I'm really worried about that. And then, you know, I've gotten some people who say the doctor should never talk about money. And I've got other people say the doctor needs to know what he or she charges. So where are you on all this? And how do we who has the money conversation and when does it happen?

Kiera Dent Really good question. I am… I don't have a hard and fast. I think it depends on the doctor. So if doctors are going to always give discounts on their treatment, they should not be the one to talk money. Sometimes it gets uncomfortable for doctors. And so that's often why they say doctor shouldn't talk money. Myself included. When I talk consulting, package prices out, whatever, somebody else talk about it, because I feel people are assuming that I'm paying for my boat, which I don't even have a boat, but I assume that. And so I feel funny about it. And so if doctors feel that way at all, I recommend they don't talk about money because they're going to discount their services when that's not necessary. And that's not needed. Often, we misinterpret the silence as rejection versus them just processing. And so if a doctor is super confident and they're not going to discount, by all means, they are more than welcome to close treatment plans, by all means. If not, I recommend either actually train back offices to talk money. I also train the front office to talk money. So if you have the availability to have your back-office team present treatment plans beautiful, I think you'll get better close rates chair side than you do in the front office. However, if not, some offices love consult rooms, other offices love just at the front desk. I have seen it work everywhere.

I think the biggest piece is every person on the team needs to assume the yes. Meaning we assume every patient wants to do the treatment. If we trust our doctors, if we believe in our doctors diagnosing that, I assume that every person is going to do the treatment. My job is just to find the solution of how they're going to pay for it. And I always assume that they can pay for it. And if not, then I find solutions. I don't create problems before the patient even tells me they have a problem.

Art Wiederman, CPA Yeah, we don't want to diagnose the patient's pocketbook. That's what we don't want to do. Right? Yeah. So let's talk about... You and I had also talked about assisted hygiene. I don't see that a lot. But that's a way that a hygienist can see more than eight patients a day, I guess. And so how do you use that in your practices?

Kiera Dent So I put on here assisted hygiene because right now I know and the only reason I'm advocating or promoting it right now is because I think so many offices are struggling to hire hygienists. And so because of that, I think this is a creative way to maximize your practice while you're in the pinch for finding a hygienist. My preferred is not assisted hygiene. My preference is actually just one patient per hour for your hygienist, or however, you choose to set it up. However, this is getting creative with your schedule. So that way you can see the new patients. You can see that backlog of patients from COVID. I know we're rolling into the months where we're probably going to see a downside from this, but you might be the practice that's still jammin and having so many patients without having a hygienist. So what I found is assisted hygiene. A lot of offices right now that can't hire a hygienist. What we're doing is we're getting really creative. So what that what you have done with some of them is, let's say on Friday, the office usually works from 9:00 to 4:00. And we see patients and we have three hygienists or two hygienists that are working that day and we have two assistants. Well, what I've done is I've closed off doctor production, which sounds scary at first. So hear me out. If I close doctor's production at, say, 12 o'clock. That opens up four more hours because we're going from 12:00 to 4:00, four more hours where my two or three hygienists, let's say we have two. Two hygienists we could actually open up four columns of hygiene by using our two assistants because our assistants can help take the X-rays. We can have our doctor just doing exams, but we could actually open up about if we had two more columns and we had four days, or four hours, that's eight more appointment spots just in one day. Well, some doctors get really nervous to close off. That's four hours of doctor production, being a treatment coordinator, being a scheduler, being an office manager. I will promise you, I can still if I maneuver my schedule correctly and I know I only have my doctor hour until twelve o'clock that day and then opens to hygiene. I know I can I'm not going to block my doctor with silly little items on that Friday. That Friday is going to be high, high, heavy production because I only have my doctor working three hours that day and I'm gonna have all assistants on deck and then they're going to turn to assisted hygiene. So that is where I love to bring in assisted hygiene. It doesn't have to be for a full day. It doesn't have to be all the time and it doesn’t have to get crazy. But it is a great way right now to be able to open up more hygiene spots even without extending your hours, even without bringing on new team members. It's just utilizing what you already have in your practice, just in a different way.

Art Wiederman, CPA So what you're doing, you're giving up maybe three or four hours of doctor production time, but aren't we gaining from that? The doctor's got more time to spend with the patient and can maybe diagnose more and maybe we get more production down the road that makes up for those lost hours?

Kiera Dent For sure. I think a lot of doctors might say with assisted hygiene that they won't have as much time because they're seeing four exams per hour versus seeing the two exams per hour. However, you're not seeing any patients. But what I will say is hygiene feeds the doctor's schedule. So what we're doing is we're opening up more hygiene patients to feed that production schedule later on. And yes, I promise you, I promise, promise, promise. Being a treatment coordinator for years. I can make your schedule just as productive on less hours if I know those are my parameters and I know the expectation. You don't lower your production goal. None of those things. I used to book doctors really strategically on those days when I knew I was cutting doctor production for that hygiene to be able to see more hygiene patients. It really, you're exactly right. It just it allows for more production later on because we're seeing more hygiene patients and docs, you're not doing any production, so you really are just doing four exams in one hour. You do have more thorough exams.

Art Wiederman, CPA So do you have like an extra brain sitting next to you, like in a hard drive or something?

Kiera Dent Thank you.

Art Wiederman, CPA Because. I mean, the amount of information you've disseminated in the last 45 minutes or so is remarkable. I think it's great.

Kiera Dent It shows that I just love it. I love it. My last name's Dent, Art. How can I not enjoy dentistry with the last name of Dent? I can just sit here and love it.

Art Wiederman, CPA That is correct. And that is a requirement to be on this show. No, actually. So I know that doctors talk to me a lot about meetings and team meetings, and they complain about that the team meeting ends up to be a bitch session. The team meeting ends up being a social hour and we don't ever get anything done. So how about give us some tips, Kiera, about how do we run a really good, efficient and worthwhile meeting with our team? How often do you like to do that too?

Kiera Dent Yeah, well, Art, massive love to all those offices dealing with really crummy meetings. That was me. I think my worst meeting ever was when I. My hygienists and my assistants weren't getting along. So being a naive business owner, being a naive office manager, I was like, I’ve got the best idea. Let's bring them together, have them air it all out, and we're just gonna clear the air. We'll come up with solutions. Oh, that was the worst thing I ever could have done. I had. I feel like I put to beta fish in a tank and just watched them fight for the entire meeting and I didn't know how to stop it. So I will say through coaching several offices, I've been lucky to find one of my favorite resources and it's a free resource is the traction book. It's by Gina Wickman and it's called Get a Grip on Your Business. And so what I found with that book is it literally walks you step by step through how to run a Level 10 meeting.

And this has changed my business. This has changed my meetings with teams. And the way you run a Level 10 meeting is it has a little segway at the beginning. So everybody comes and they talk about something great in their personal life and their professional life. It's really quick. And you guys, you can just pop on. You can even Google EOS. The entrepreneurial operating system. And you can look for their level 10 meetings. So I like to run these to answer question Art it depends on the practice. If you're just starting out, run them at least once a month. If you've been doing meetings for a while and they're used to it. I like to run these every week in my own company. I personally run a Level 10 meeting every single week for at least one hour. And then I also run a quarterly meeting every 90 days. That's an eight-hour meeting. So that does sound a little crazy. When I first heard it, I was like, no way. So I started with just once a month with these high-level meetings, and then I was able to gradually work into it. And the way you do it is like I said, there's the segway of the personal professional. And the reason you do that is to get everybody into this really, really high, high energy positivity mode. So that way they go into meeting mode. It also clicks in the brain that we're switching to meeting mode.

And then after that, we review our rocks or the goals that we're working on for the quarter and we find out are those on track or off track. I found so often that companies lose sight of what they're really focused on. Why are we even having these meetings? So if you want to do your monthly goals, if you want to do your quarterly goals or your yearly goals, I don't really care. Just make sure you refocus back on the goals that you're setting for your team. And often doctors are super scared to set goals for teams. Being a team member myself, I will tell you, I loved having goals because I actually knew what my doctor wanted. I knew and there was clear expectations of what I was aiming for. What I was working towards. And no, that doesn't mean I had to have a bonus. It just not I had clarity and that's what I like. Most teams get frustrated because expectations aren't met. And it's because the expectations aren't clear. So that's why I love to have these quarterly goals that your whole team's focused on. And every single week or every month, whenever you're doing these meetings, you focus on that. Then after that, what I like to do is it's called the Issues List Building. And it's five minutes where you just list off the issues that are in the company and it doesn't matter what they are, it could be from this person's balance to we don't have a good system for taking time off to we don't know how to get our AR down. Our AR is out of control to our overhead’s too high. But what we do is it's five minutes and I literally set a timer and the team just lists things. We’re not solving them we’re just listing them. And what I found this is the most important exercise of an effective meeting is when you list these ideas out, you could actually see patterns. So, so often we just try to go down the line of, oh, well, let's fix this, let's fix this, let's fix this. But if you look at all those issues together as one whole, you'll notice several those issues actually are the same topic or one of them will solve the other issue if we solved it. So you combine them together.

So let's say I've got a list of 20 items I try to combine them down to usually it typically ends up being three to four true actual issues with subcategories underneath them. Then once you figure out those subcategories, you choose the top one issue to solve. That's going to move your company forward the most. Yes, there's 20 items on that list. You've consolidated it down to four, but you just choose one item to focus on for that meeting that's going to move the company forward.

Art Wiederman, CPA That's the problem, is the doctors, they go, OK, so we're going to handle these 20 things in this meeting and we'll get them all done by Monday and they never happen. The other thing about running good meetings is that you find out about your team. You have the person who sits there with their arms folded and doesn't ever say a word or is, you know, negative. And you really find out what your team is made of because, you know, you as the leader, and I want your thoughts on this. And then we're going to have to wrap this thing up. But as the leader, you set the vision, but you need the team's help. Now you're going to ask for their advice and going to ask for their input. But you are, you as the doctor, are gonna make the final decision. Like you say, if you make it a priority that we're going to really push sleep apnea in this practice, or if you make it a priority, like you were saying earlier, about uncompleted treatment plans, that we have to get these out. There's hundreds of thousands of dollars in every single dentist's Dentrix. Eagle Soft. Open Dental. It's all there. They just have to get it. But, that, I mean, talk a little bit about leadership in these meetings and in a practice.

Kiera Dent Absolutely. I think we want everything solved today, and so by doing so, that means nothing really gets solved. There's one of my favorite books called Essentialism. It's by Greg McCowan. But in that book, I remember reading it as I just started out business. And one of my favorite images was he had these two circles and one had all these tiny little arrows like really, really close to the circle. But there was so many circles. There were so many arrows around it. And then the other circle just had one straight-arrow going really far outside of it. And that was the idea of when you have too many things that you're focused on, you make very small progress in all these areas and nothing really moves forward versus when you have one clear focus, your team can actually resonate. We all work on that and you can have massive movement forward. And so as a leader, it's hard. I'm a leader. I own a couple of different businesses and I. I run different practices. And what I found is if I'm not clear as a leader, how do I expect my team to be clear?

So if you can get clarity and guess what, you might not be able to figure it out. So that's why I use the power of the team. Ask them if we can only saw one of these issues today. What's going to move our company and our practice forward and have a VIP experience for our patients, but also a VIP experience for our team that really will help. And then call out those people that aren't participating. Ask them by name. Ask them to come up with a solution. And the goal is in these meetings, and this is one of my favorite phrases. And as leaders, if you can, like, bring this in and remind your team over and over and over again. The reason we list these issues is to solve it forever. So we don't want this to come back up in two months. We don't want to come back up in a year. How do we truly solve this issue forever? And when I start implementing that in practices it, my own company and we start looking to solve problems forever. We start creating bigger and better solutions that were more simple. Most of the time and we've seen massive traction and forward in our companies and our practices. So that's one of my favorite things for teams. It just changes their mindset.

Art Wiederman, CPA So the... and I would just like to sit here for hours and talk to you about dentistry because you have such incredible wealth of knowledge and I learn every single time, even after 36 years in this profession. But the last thing I want to touch on is obviously we're five months, five and a half months into COVID, into the COVID pandemic. And we know that the pent up demand after doctors have been closed for eight to 12 weeks and doctors had a lot of really strong June, July and maybe even August. But now we're coming into September. Now we got the unemployment's running out. There's all kinds of things going on. We got an election coming up. So what can we do? Last, maybe one or two gems to try and keep that book filled both in hygiene and the doctor production. So when we get into, what did you call it, Suck-tember. As we get to the Suck-tember, Suck-tober, I don't know. You know, all these different months. What can we do to keep the momentum going? And then we'll call it a podcast.

Kiera Dent Yes. I am really big on whatever you believe is what you're going to create.
So if you think it's going to be a Suck-tember, it's going to become a Suck-tember. So and making sure as leaders that you are crystal clear and optimistic for the future. So your team will follow you. Extreme Ownership's another one of my favorite books. And they say the leader at the helm is like your team's a direct reflection of that leader. So helping your team really see that we can do it. And then having them create and collaborate with you is going to help a lot. So ask them. Guys, our problem is that we are hygiene schedule is not full. What can we do right now? In my coaching calls, I just talked to an office manager last week. And so we are creating lots of different ideas through social media strategy, through marketing strategy, because her recare list, she's a rockstar office and they have like, I think 50 total people on her entire unscheduled list because we've been working for two years to get that list down. So she doesn't have a lot. So that's where we went to external marketing. But use your team. So I would say right now to help build that up. Number one, you don't have to go for out external patients, look inside, get the referral process going with your with all the people that are your raving fans, and maybe do giveaways during September and October. Also, look to see I can't tell you how many family members are not scheduled in your practice. That is a huge wealth. And you can ask them, hey, what other family members can we schedule for you? Notice, I'm not asking, do you have other family members? I'm saying what other family members can we schedule for you? That's going to help build that up and then really making sure it's crazy because when your patients come in, make sure you're giving them VIP and looking for ways to do same-day treatment. My first practice that I owned, we took from five hundred thousand to two point four million in nine months and everybody asked me how we did it. And there's a lot of factors. But one of the biggest factors was we were incredible on same-day treatment. We were quick on being able to turn around. And so if you have hygiene patients do same day. If your schedule's open, look for the recare opportunities for the patients that are already there. People always think they have to get on their call list as soon as somebody cancels. And what I've told them is so often, if you just look at your schedule that day, there's so much dentistry that can be done. There's patients that don't have their cleaning scheduled. And it's crazy because you think you've got tight systems, but all of us have holes in our systems. And so looking even on your same day for opportunities, there are so many opportunities every single day. They say the most productive chair is an empty chair. If you're willing to turn it into two productions. So look for those same-day opportunities. Make sure your team is calling and have them report to you. Don't just assume it's being done.

Art Wiederman, CPA Wow. I'm. My head is about ready to blow up. I'm telling you. This is just ... We're approaching one hundred podcasts and this is one of the most informative ones that I've ever had. So thank you so much for all that you gave our listeners today. So, first of all, tell us, how do we listen to your podcast, Kiera?

Kiera Dent Thank you, Art. Yeah.

Come on over. I tried to. What we just did today is usually like five or six podcasts on The Dental A Team because I try to keep them short. And so that way you get the topic of treatment planning or the topic of cancellation. So, yes, I agree. As I was as you're asking me questions. Oh, my gosh, guys, I hope your heads are not spinning too much, but take action even if it is one thing. So pop on over to the Dental A Team podcast and we do it purposely to help your teams grow as well. So it's geared for teams and doctors to help you all reach higher levels.

Art Wiederman, CPA How often do you publish?

Kiera Dent We do three podcasts a week, so Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. Art, I just got huge. We have so many team members that listen on their way to work, I have offices that will do raffles. So they'll say, hey, for these two weeks, we're going to ask three questions and whoever gets the most right wins the prize. It's really fun.

Art Wiederman, CPA So. Do you ever sleep? I have a question. Do you ever sleep? Probably not.

Kiera Dent I just learned to talk really fast. People say, how did you close out your treatment plans? I said, I just talk so fast that they didn't even know what they're signing and just signed because they felt great. So, yes.

Art Wiederman, CPA I love it. I love it. Well, last time. Give out your contact information, Kiera, and then hang on, I'll give my exit and then we'll call it a day.

Kiera Dent Yes, absolutely, and thank you again, Art. So if you guys want more help or free resources, anything we talked about, pop on over to thedentalateam.com. And that hiring course was thedentalateam.com/hiring. Use coupon code HIRE7 or you can always email us Hello@thedentalateam.com.

Art Wiederman, CPA I love it. Kiera Dent, you are a gift to the dental profession and you have young energy. I'm so glad to have gotten to know you a little bit today. And I hope doctors, that you take this podcast, maybe you give it, you give it to some of your team members to listen to as a driving to and from work, because it's got a lot of really great information. And thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much. I really, really appreciate it. Appreciate your time. So again, folks, if you want to get a hold of me in my office in Tustin. That's 657.279.3243. In addition to that, email me at awiederman@eidebailly.com. That's e i d e b a i l l y.com. One thing I didn't point out the beginning I want to point out here, our next podcast is going to be up on the seventh, the 16th. This one will be up on September 9th. On the 16th, we're going to have a special podcast on the research and development tax credit, which is a big, big deal. We can get a lot of you tens of thousands of dollars in federal and state tax credits if you're doing new procedures and everything, new procedures, new materials. So I had a doctor, one of my long term clients who said I'm going to go ahead and send in the information because we're using lasers for a bunch of new things. So what you want to do, doctors, is go on to our website, which is www.EideBailly.com/dentalRD. That's forward slash Dental RD. And you will be able to click on and fill out a questionnaire that will allow us to take a look and see. Now this credit is not for everybody. Probably not pediatric dentists, probably not a practice that is doing two or three or four hundred thousand a year because you're going to have salaries and people doing this stuff.

But it is a humungous deal. And we have a whole group at Eide Bailly that does that. And we got one of our clients, a big prosthodontist group, over four years, almost four hundred thousand dollars in tax credits. It's really fun when you're doing these amended tax returns.

Go to DecisionsinDentistry.com, our partner. Click on if you want a complimentary 30-minute consultation with a dental CPA, either myself or one from the Academy, or one from Eide Bailly. We're all here to help you. And go to our website for the Academy of Dental CPAs www.ADCPA.org. Make sure you go to mrosen@rosenCPAgroup.com if you'd like to register for the Parkinson's virtual run that Mark is sponsoring. And it's so wonderful that he's doing that. Kiera, thank you so much. Thank you so, so much.

And that is it for this episode of the Art of Dental Finance and Management with Art Wiederman, CPA. Remember my saying, folks - failure is not an option. Keep working hard on your practice. Dentistry is going to come out of this stronger than ever. I think Kiera and I both believe that. And we'll see you next time. Bye bye.