Building a Dental Team That Can Thrive Through Change

Narrator: This is The Thriving Dentist Show with Gary Takacs, where we help you develop your ideal dental practice, one that provides personal, professional, and financial satisfaction.

Gary Takacs: Welcome to another episode of The Thriving Dentist Show. I’m Gary Takacs, your podcast co-host. We have a fun episode for you today. Title of this episode is Building a Dental Team that Can Thrive through Change. Wow. What timing we have for that. Given all the change that’s happening these days, I think you’re gonna enjoy this episode.

Before we get to that episode, though, a couple of announcements to make. You may know that here at Thriving Dentist, we regularly do virtual events. These are webinars or panel discussions that we do, and we’d like to invite you to come join us. If you wanna see what our latest event is, it will always be at this address that I’m gonna give you: thrivingdentist.com/events. When you click on thrivingdentist.com/events, it will take you to what the next event that we have planned.

We offer those at no cost to our attendees. We do it as a courtesy for your listenership, and they always have great experts, always useful information, and I wanna encourage you to come join us. So go to thrivingdentist.com/events to find some great information that can enhance what we’re providing here on the podcast. Come join us.

The next announcement is I have our resident marketing expert, Naren Arulrajah, to share a Thriving Dentist marketing tip. This tip is titled Three Biggest SEO Mistakes Every Practice Makes. Naren’s gonna unpack this for you and hopefully help you avoid these three mistakes to improve your marketing results.

No further ado. Here’s Naren.

Naren Arulrajah: Welcome to the Thriving Dentist Marketing Tip. This is Naren, your co-host of the Thriving Dentist Podcast and founder, CEO of Ekwa Marketing. The question I get a lot is, what are the three biggest or four biggest mistakes every practice makes? And I’m just gonna pick three because these three are probably the most important. And the reason for that is, you know, if you don’t fix these mistakes, you are never going to do well in SEO. SEO is one of those places where 5% of you will get 95% of the benefit, and 95% of you will get very little benefit or no benefit. They are your only choices: either sign up for PPO plans or get patients with ads, which are six times to ten times more expensive. So, if you want to dominate SEO, you have to do more things — but at least make sure you also do these three things.

Naren Arulrajah: So the way Google works is, they show free results on Google for day-to-day searches, and billions and billions of people use Google to find answers for all kinds of things. And next to those free results, they show ads. Ads make them money; free results don’t make them money. So it’s in Google’s interest to make sure only a very few of you get shown on those free results.

Think of it like getting into a top university like Stanford or, you know, University of Pennsylvania or any one of those top universities in the country, right? It’s not easy. Only like 5% of you will get in. And to get in, you have to do well in many, many areas — great GPA, great references, great extracurricular activities. Same way, there are six types of things Google cares about, and in all of those things, you have to get an A. I’ll just rattle them off, and I’ll focus on three.

Naren Arulrajah: NAP is one of them — Name, Address, Phone number consistency. Original content, 400 words plus — you can’t copy information, you can’t use AI to write content. Google Lighthouse score. And now something new called Chrome UX — CRUX. Quality backlinks. Google reviews. So these are some of the things that Google cares about.

So let me focus on the top three.

NAP. What is NAP? Name, address, phone number. Your business name, business address, and phone number is listed in literally hundreds of directories. Some are more important than others. Now, if those directories — think of a directory like Yelp, Post, Citysearch, or even Google My Business itself — if those directories don’t have the same name, address, and phone number, literally even to the way you write Avenue or Boulevard, even the business name — if Thriving Dentist is two words, then you need to write it as two words. If it’s one word, you need to write it as one word.

So even to those details, you need to make sure your name, address, and phone number is consistent. When we typically take on a client, 95% of them don’t have this sorted. Why? Nobody is paying attention to it. Nobody’s monitoring it. Nobody’s finding out where the problems are and then contacting those companies and fixing these issues. So we do it actively every single month for the life of our relationship. We continue to clean up this NAP issue and make it better.

Now, even after we clean something up, one of the NAP profiles we cleaned up might become a problem again. Why? They might do an auto-update. And then auto-update wipes out the correct information, and now we have to go back and clean it up. So this is an ongoing task.

Naren Arulrajah: Original content. Google loves original content and human content. Lots of rules. Use a tool called Copyscape to see if Google will see any problems, and we do that. We have writers. They write articles. Never use AI and make sure this is original content.

And then finally, Lighthouse score and Chrome UX — these are now linked together. So Google looks at your website and tells you all the things you’re doing wrong and all the things you need to fix if you want to be in that top 5%. Again, just fixing Lighthouse/CRUX is not enough. But if you do that and the other six things, and you stay on top — meaning you are at the A level in all six — you’re going to rank well. You’re gonna rank for a hundred keywords.

Now, it’s really, really hard. That’s why many people don’t do it. That’s why many people spend six times as much money on Google Ads.

Naren Arulrajah: So, I’m not a fan of Google Ads because I don’t like to spend six times as much or ten times as much when I can get it for less. Now, the challenge with SEO is it’ll take time. I would recommend: book a marketing strategy meeting. If you suspect you are not ranking for 400 or more keywords, you wanna find out how many keywords you’re ranking for, and you wanna find out in these six areas how well you are doing.

In the marketing strategy meeting, our team will spend six hours prior to the meeting studying you, your competition. They’ll give you a report card. They’ll give you a plan. Now you have information. Now, with that information, you can make some decisions. Take that information, make some decisions — whether you work with us or not — this is our gift to you.

The link to book a marketing strategy meeting is ekwa.com/msm — ekwa.com/msm.

Naren Arulrajah: Welcome back to The Thriving Dentist Podcast. I’m really excited about our topic today, Building a Dental Team that Can Thrive Through Change. I’m Naren, your co-host. Hope you enjoyed that marketing tip — Three Biggest SEO Mistakes Every Practice Makes. If we can be of any service, if you are not doing really well with SEO, we would love to take a look at what’s going on and give you some insights on what you could do differently — ekwa.com/msm.

The reason I’m really excited about today’s topic is we are perhaps living in a time with the most unprecedented change, right? And that hasn’t just affected industries like artificial intelligence, but it’s affecting everyone, including dentistry. And if you and I would think back even pre-COVID — five years ago versus the way things are today — a lot has changed. Technology has changed. People’s expectations have changed.

Naren Arulrajah: I know there used to be a time where we would get voicemails. Right now, nobody leaves a voicemail. In terms of technology, in terms of diagnosing — right now, insurance companies are using AI to reject claims submitted by dental practice owners, right? So a lot is going on. So how do you kind of keep up? How do you not only gear yourself up as the owner, but how do you gear your team up to embrace change, lean into change, have a growth mindset? So those are the things I want to talk about today.

So let’s start by talking about the ones who are the most resistant to change. What are your thoughts, Gary?

Gary Takacs: Well, Naren, this is a very important question, for sure. You may know, but I don’t know that our listeners know, that my undergraduate degree is in history.

Naren Arulrajah: Did you know that?

Gary Takacs: Yes. Yeah, I did know that.

Gary Takacs: Well, what’s interesting — you talk about now being just the most rapid pace of change that we’ve ever experienced. I believe that to be true, by the way. However, if we look back in history, if we go back 150 years, it was a very agrarian economy. People lived on farms, they grew their own food, and then it changed from agrarian to the industrial age, when now people had jobs, they lived in cities, they went to work. And those people at that time would’ve said, “Oh my God, the pace of change is absolutely amazing.” And now when we look at what we’re doing now, we look back and then say, oh, that was—

Naren Arulrajah: People had pension plans. Right? Remember those days?

Gary Takacs: Yeah.

Naren Arulrajah: People worked for one company for their entire life.

Gary Takacs: Yeah. So really, the reality is that change has always been a constant, right? You know, isn’t that interesting? Those two words are opposites, but change has always been a constant. But I would kind of agree that the pace of change in our— and let’s narrow it to our world — in dentistry, you know, if you’re above a certain age, there will be people that are in dentistry today that remember when dentistry used to be done without gloves, without masks, without infection control.

Naren Arulrajah: Yes.

Gary Takacs: You know, it wasn’t that long ago when we look at that. And certainly, lots of improvements. There are still some offices that have paper charts, paper records. Can you imagine that, Naren?

Naren Arulrajah: Yeah. I cannot fathom it, but I’m sure there are offices that I haven’t been to that I chart.

Gary Takacs: And no judgment. Yeah, no judgment here. I mean, that’s reality for some. But I think the way to overcome the rapid pace of change is to normalize learning. Normalize learning. I would suggest that part of your practice culture, doctors, would be to ask your team members to embrace the concept of continuous improvement — where we all individually strive to be better tomorrow than we are today. That’s what I mean by normalize learning.

And you can model that. The best way to do anything in your practice is to model it. So you model that by taking a lot of CE, and that becomes the model for your team members to follow.

Connect learning to purpose. If it’s just learning something… you know, it was interesting…

Gary Takacs: Our son — you know, we have four adult kids, three daughters and a son — our son happens to be very good with languages. He’s fluent in Spanish, French, Italian, and Portuguese, as well as English. But one of the things that motivated him to learn Portuguese was when he was traveling to Brazil. So, you know, he had a reason. There was a reason. So tie learning to a purpose.

Gary Takacs: What’s the purpose? You’re asking a team member to do something — what’s the purpose of that? What’s the broader purpose? Help them understand what—

Naren Arulrajah: So for example, I know one of the things you teach your clients is they should do one-third of their production by treating gum disease, including advanced periodontal disease. So you want to improve the oral health of your patients because of the connection between that and diseases like diabetes and heart disease and so forth, right? So you create—link it to purpose.

Gary Takacs: We added, in our practice culture — and I’ve been introducing this to our clients — I think every practice should have a one-page list of what we strive to be in our practice culture. And the phrase that I’m introducing, and I would encourage all of our listeners to introduce, is to create an appetite of curiosity. Of curiosity.

Curiosity is so important, Naren. Oftentimes, without curiosity, we can accidentally slip into judgment. But instead, be curious. Don’t be critical — be curious. And learn how to ask questions.

You may have a patient that comes in that has very, very, very poor oral health — and we see it, right? And you can look at that and, you know, in the place that we are — in a dental office — it could be easy to be judgmental around that.

Gary Takacs: But you may not realize that the reason why the patient has very poor oral health is they have dexterity problems, and as a result, can’t effectively do home care. So approach everything with an interest in curiosity. I want to be curious about this.

Let’s say we’re — one thing I think a lot of our listeners are doing right now is applying 3D printing. 3D printing is a technology that I think has a lot of promise in dentistry. And you could use it for some limited range stuff now — like print surgical guides if placing implants. You could be printing appliances — certain appliances — hard appliances like NTI appliances, night guards, those kinds of things.

But there will be a time — and I’m told by the experts that it’s not so distant in the future — where we’re going to be able to print, print — not mill — but print amazing final restorations. Today, we can print temporary restorations, even long-term provisional restorations. The material is such that we can print that. But they’re long-term provisional — they’re not meant to be permanent restorations.

But there will be a time where we could do that. So create an appetite of curiosity around that, because there’ll be a time in the future where we’ll look back, and there’ll be offices trying to catch up with that technology instead of being on the leading edge of it.

Naren Arulrajah: Thank you, Gary. I’m gonna throw a curveball, Gary. And I know you talked about learning being a key ingredient that brings change. Like, there’s this one client I’m thinking of — it’s a mutual client, you know, a lady perhaps in her late sixties. And we — you and I — looked at the conversion rate, the percentage of new patients who ended up booking an appointment, and it was 35%. And many of the patients who didn’t book an appointment — not all, but a large number of them — were on some kind of an insurance plan, and this office was out of network. So you have to kind of convince the patient to still come and see them.

And at least I had a hard time trying to convince her to take that leap, take that first step. Like, how would you think about people who are like, "No, I don’t want to change?" Or is it like you tiptoe into it, and then the more they get into it… I’m just trying to understand — how do I do this, Gary?

Gary Takacs: You raise a really good point. That point is — the particular example you’re using is very near and dear to me. This is a wonderful team member. Committed. She’s been there over 35 years. Committed to the practice — absolutely committed to the practice — but has a mindset that if the office isn’t accepting their insurance, the new patient probably won’t come here. That’s her perspective.

And, you know, the reality is — so again, I’m gonna remember what I said earlier about curiosity, right?

Gary Takacs: So let me be curious. Instead of being judgmental — I’m quick to think, well, she just needs to jump on board, she needs to understand that we can see anybody, right? But what if I approach it from a position of curiosity? And curiosity is: well, I wonder why. I’m curious what your thinking is. Why wouldn’t someone…

And so I turned it around and I said — I won’t use her name, of course, for confidentiality — but I said, “Can you give me 10 reasons why a patient should come here?” And she said, “Only 10?” She said, “Gary, I could give you 50.” I said, “Okay, give me 12 then. Give me 12.” And she rattled 12 reasons off like this — boom, boom, boom — one of them was better than the next.

And I turned to her and I said, “Wow. Everyone should want to be a patient.” She said, “Yeah, everybody should want to be a patient in our practice.” And all of a sudden she stopped and she said, “Wait a minute. I see what you’re doing here.”

Naren Arulrajah: She caught on to what she did.

Gary Takacs: She caught on.

Naren Arulrajah: So you’re saying—

Gary Takacs: What I did — and this is someone that believes with every ounce of her DNA that her doctors — there are multiple doctors in her practice — her doctors deliver amazing care, right?

And I asked her the next question. I said, “Have you ever heard the saying that people will pay for what they want before they’ll pay for what they need?” And she said, “Yes.” I said, “You know, some of those patients that seem to be very insurance-dependent maybe made other choices in their life where they chose to spend their money on things they valued.”

Naren Arulrajah: Absolutely. And those things are expensive. They don’t cost a few thousand dollars.

Gary Takacs: You spend over a hundred grand.

Naren Arulrajah: Yeah, exactly.

Gary Takacs: Ford F-150 pickup, yes. So — and she started to look at things differently. And I said, “May I speak directly? May I share?” She said, “Yes. Gary, you can talk to me like you’re talking to your sister.” And I said, “Well, I don’t have a sister.”

Gary Takacs: But we laughed. And she said, “Yeah, you can speak to me — just share your thoughts.” I said, “Let the patient decide. Roll the welcome mat out. And let them decide that maybe they want to pay for dentistry instead of something else that might be desirous for them. Let them decide.”

And it’s early, but we’re seeing results. We’re seeing results.

But back to this idea of how do we get all the team rowing in the same direction? How do we create a practice that thrives in change?

One of the things I would encourage you to do — and this is maybe going a different direction than some of you thought — but start with cross-training. Cross-train as many of your team members as possible. Cross-train one another.

Gary Takacs: I think that’s a good survival strategy. You know, if you’re shorthanded one day, people can jump in and fill in. For example, one of the things — there’s a large office in our client base, and they have a four-person admin team. But there are times where those four people can’t answer the phones. You know this, Naren, because you track it for your clients. They were missing one-third of their phone calls from patients during business hours. They were going to voicemail — one-third.

Now, talk about change. We remember a time not so long ago when if someone got your voicemail in the office, they’d leave a message and you could call them back. What happens today?

Naren Arulrajah: They don’t. They have the phone go to the next person on the Google list.

Gary Takacs: They don’t leave a voice message. Yeah, they just go to the next office. So what we did is we cross-trained. This office always has an extra assistant — extra assistant, right? So we trained all of these — because any of the assistants could be the extra assistant depending on the day, right? So we cross-trained all of the assistants to be able to answer the phone.

They have a phone in the lab — that’s another place where the phone could be answered. And now, just that one change got them down to single-digit missed calls. They were at 33% missed calls during business days. And now it’s like nine. We still want to get it below five, but that sure is a move in the right direction, right?

Naren Arulrajah: A hundred percent, Gary. So what I got out of this is — you’re saying the reason some people struggle with change is they have a viewpoint. In this case, the viewpoint you shared with this particular individual, who’s an amazing team member. So before they’re willing to change, you have to change that viewpoint. And the way to do that is to become curious — go to the source, help them see things differently. Correct?

And you kind of demonstrated it in real life — how you did that in that one example. And that’s brilliant, Gary. And you’re right. It’s just like, you know, one stone — then it grows. Or one small piece of snow — and then it becomes bigger and bigger and becomes, you know, this avalanche. A hill becomes this avalanche. So you just have to start there and go to the root, get them to see things differently. So this is awesome, Gary. And this is why I think—

Gary Takacs: You know, back to this cross-training thing, Naren, I think if anything happens in your practice that only one person can do, you’re vulnerable.

Naren Arulrajah: Good point.

Gary Takacs: Because — I mean — someone could be out on illness, could be away on a—

Naren Arulrajah: And also, when two people can do it, they might find better ways. In other words, one person might say, “Hey, have you tried this?” You know, if it’s only one person, there’s nobody to talk to. There’s nobody you can bounce off of, right?

Gary Takacs: Our listeners have heard me talk about the value of digital photos for patient education. I believe in every office, every single team member should be able to take those photos. Every single one. Because then you never have an excuse of not getting the photos.

Naren Arulrajah: Yes. Everybody knows how to do it. Anybody—

Gary Takacs: —can do it. Yeah. Yeah. So that’s more of a granular detail here, but we can talk about CE too, related to this scenario. I would say behavioral CE — we’re talking about the people side, right? Interaction, communication, emotional intelligence — that kind of CE can be every bit as important as clinical CE. And so make sure we pepper some of our CE, with all of your team members, on the behavioral side. How do we establish deeper connection with our patients? And that’ll enhance everything you’re doing clinically as well.

Naren Arulrajah: Thank you, Gary. Something that many of our listeners have written us about is — there are so many things going on simultaneously. New technologies, new trends. How does a practice owner — i.e. dentist — prioritize in terms of what skills or capabilities they want their team members to master?

Gary Takacs: Well, I think that has to be individually defined by practice, because there isn’t a generic recipe. It really depends on where you are — where you are with your KPIs, your goals, the things you’re working on in your practice. So everything has to be customized, for sure.

And it has to — you know, we talked about in a previous episode — we talked about the idea of the benefit of a 90-day plan. Continuous 90-day plans when we’re working on things. Instead of trying to accomplish everything in big, bold, ambitious year-long plans, break it down into bite-sized pieces.

I mean, think about — reflect back, doctor — remember how you learned to do a crown back in dental school? And remember the first time you tried to do a crown? You know, in D3, in clinic. And here’s a patient — and it’s not Dexter, the dummy — it’s not our mannequin. And remember that process? And some of you are probably just breaking out into a cold sweat remembering that.

Gary Takacs: But I’m asking you to do that on purpose, because that’s how it can feel for your team members when they’re trying to learn something new. It can feel like you felt many years ago trying to do your first crown.

Naren Arulrajah: We all know CE is important. But in most practices, they’re like just keeping their head above water, right? I know your clients — over time, they’re not just keeping their head above water, they get control of things. But imagine you are like many of the practices who are just surviving and taking it one day at a time — patient schedules, production goals, somebody calls in sick — all these day-to-day demands.

How does a practice, at least in your experience, put CE first? In other words, not let CE go because of whatever the crisis of the day or month is?

Gary Takacs: Yeah. Well, you’ve gotta make CE part of your culture. Put it in your cultural values of your practice — where you embrace the concept of continuous learning, where everyone is better tomorrow than they are today.

And you do that to keep things interesting, to keep it exciting, to better serve our patients. Always bring it back to a patient benefit. How does this better serve our patients?

But we’re also in a very cool time here, Naren, in our evolution, in our history, because there was a time not so long ago, the only way to really get CE was to shut down the office and go down and take CE courses.

Naren Arulrajah: Good point.

Gary Takacs: And that was just how it was done. And I was often on the podium delivering that CE for many years, right? Naren, you might find this hard to believe — our listeners might find it hard to believe — but one particular year, I lectured 117 times.

Naren Arulrajah: At the conferences?

Gary Takacs: Wow — 117 times. And it was literally, at the end of the year, stick a fork in me — I’m done.

But you know, today, someone I absolutely adore in dentistry — and I think most of our listeners will as well — Dr. Gordon Christensen. Gordon and Rella have been friends of mine, oh my goodness, 43 years. And there was a time where the only way you could take Gordon’s courses was to go out and shut down the office and take a course.

Well now, all of his CE — he has a division of his company where all that CE is available digitally. And you can now get all that CE in the convenience of your home and office. You can buy it in digital format and play it in short segments as part of your team meetings.

Gary Takacs: Maybe something you could do is develop a whole year cycle of your team meetings, where a segment of it might be Dr. Christensen for 10 minutes in your team meeting.

And that brings me back to the importance of meetings, Naren. One of the reasons why practices stagnate — they stall — is they stop doing team meetings. And I’ve been guilty of that myself. “We don’t have time to do this meeting. We’ve got so many patients.” It’s almost like that faulty thinking — it’s habit number seven in Stephen Covey’s book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.

Habit number seven is: you have to take time to sharpen the saw. People that are effective take time to sharpen the saw.

Gary Takacs: And the analogy, if you’re not familiar with it, goes back to over a hundred years ago, where lumberjacks — people that cut down trees for a living — had a two-man buck saw. Do you know what that is, Naren? Can you picture what a two-man buck saw is? One person’s on one side, one person’s on the other.

Naren Arulrajah: Yes.

Gary Takacs: By the way, this was happening a lot in your country, in Canada — out in the lumber areas.

Naren Arulrajah: Yeah — lumber, yeah.

Gary Takacs: But the thing is, they got paid per piece — they got paid by how many trees they downed in a day. But imagine you’re a lumberjack and you’re trying to get one more tree, because that’ll make a difference in your paycheck. But your saw is dull.

And you’re thinking, “I can’t take time to sharpen the teeth on my saw — I’ve just gotta keep gnawing away at it.” Right?

Versus imagine taking the time to sharpen the saw — you might be able to cut four or five more trees down because you took the time to sharpen the teeth.

Well, that’s the exact same thing with our meetings. And as long as they’re structured, they have purpose, they have direction, they have accountability — it’s not just a chat session.

We have a really great SOP — standard operating procedure — for our regular team meetings. And we make them very, very productive.

Gary Takacs: But I think that’s how we embrace change. Because you’re now modeling it. You’re bringing the resources to your team. You are making that part of the job. They’re paid while they’re in those meetings, right? And it’s sharpening the saw, for sure.

We have material that’s available in our coaching. All of our systems are available in videos, and oftentimes that becomes the content of their team meetings.

And I’m producing more and more resources on a regular basis that we make available to our clients at their convenience — 24/7, 365. They can have access to all of that. And it, frankly, makes learning fun, makes it more convenient, and makes it more practical — because we don’t have to shut down to do it.

Naren Arulrajah: Thank you, Gary. You have always been an advocate for strong leadership. I assume you would advocate even this mindset of looking forward to change — embracing change — has to come from the top, right?

Gary Takacs: I mean, it absolutely has to come from the top. If you’re the one with your speed flaps down — you know, you’re the one that’s slamming the brakes — then that’s exactly what’s gonna be emulated by the team.

Naren Arulrajah: Can you share that story, Gary? The same-day dentistry "can-do" story? I remember you telling me that story a long time ago.

Gary Takacs: Yeah, this is a fun story from my past history. I love sharing it because it really goes to the practical sense of how hard change can be in an office.

This was an office that was struggling. It was at a time when the economy was very soft — upside down — and they were not achieving their goal. Because we track everything, right? This was an office that, that year, was only scheduled to goal 20% of the time. So throughout the year, one out of five days, they would’ve hit their goal.

And we decided — I was their coach — we decided that one of the things they needed to do to break this dry spell was to embrace same-day dentistry.

Gary Takacs: By same-day dentistry, I mean: patients in your schedule today that we could add some treatment in for — get some things that were needed taken care of and save them a trip. So that was the context.

They were using same-day dentistry, and this particular office assigned the lead assistant to be the one that team members would go to if they had an opportunity to add same-day dentistry. The lead assistant knew the flow in the back, knew the patients, knew the way things were working, and so she was the point person.

I happened to be in that office. We spent the entire morning talking about the whole initiative to add same-day dentistry. We talked about what each team member’s role in that is — not just one person, but everyone’s role.

Like for example, the assistant in charge of sterilization could always make sure we are on top of having sterile instruments, so if we had an opportunity to add treatment, we could do it. We weren’t going to get held up because the “dishes were in the dishwasher,” right?

Gary Takacs: So then I decided to hang out in the afternoon and watch and see how this office embraced everything we talked about in the morning. And they went right back to work — didn’t add a single procedure all afternoon. Not a thing. And there were multiple opportunities — four opportunities.

What I noticed was, when a team member would come to our lead assistant, she would say, “Oh no, we can’t do that now. That wouldn’t work.” She said that four times.

So at the end of the day, doctor and I went out to dinner, and I asked him, “Hey, how’d you do on adding treatment in today?” He thought about it and goes, “I don’t think I added anything in.” I said, “No, you didn’t. Can I tell you what happened?”

Gary Takacs: And I told him. He said, “Hey, you’re going to be here tomorrow for the morning huddle?” I said yes. He said, “I’ll solve this tomorrow morning.” I said, “Wanna give me a tip on what you’re going to do?” He said, “No, I got it.”

So I show up the next day for the morning huddle, and he starts by saying, “Hey guys, yesterday we talked about same-day dentistry. And we assigned—” (and I won’t use her name out of confidentiality) “—we assigned the lead assistant.”

He said, “I’ve been thinking about it. It’s not fair to her. She has many responsibilities — implant coordinator, supply coordinator — lots of things on her plate. I hadn’t thought it all the way through yesterday. So here’s what we’re gonna do from now on. I’m gonna be the person you come to. I’m the one. If you have an opportunity…”

Gary Takacs: He said, “We’ve gotta figure out a code to do this, because I’m gonna have my head down in the patient’s mouth. But here’s what we’re gonna do…”

In this office, they had these aqua blue sticky notes — you know how sticky notes usually come in yellow or orange? These were aqua blue.

He said, “If you have an opportunity to add something, come to the threshold of the operatory. I’ll see you. I’ll look up. I won’t be able to talk or read anything, but just hold the sticky note. That’s a signal to me that we have an opportunity to add something in. I’ll either nod yes or no. Does that make sense?”

Naren Arulrajah: Pretty simple system, right?

Gary Takacs: Yeah, simple system. So, next day, my role in the huddle — he said, “Gary, how’s that sound to you?” I said, “That sounds fantastic. Let’s do that.”

That day, three times team members came to him with the blue sticky note — and guess what his answer was all three times?

Naren Arulrajah: Not “yes”?

Gary Takacs: Every time — yes. Now, a month later I was visiting this office, and by then a month had passed. One of the assistants — who I had become very friendly with — came up to me and said, “Gary, I have a question for you. You know that blue sticky note thing we’re doing?”

She said, “Is doctor ever gonna say no?” 

Gary Takacs: I said, “I don’t think so. Maybe there’ll be a day, but don’t count on it. Still follow the system — but get that next room ready.”

And what happened in this practice? They were at 20% of days scheduled to goal. By the end of the year? They made it 80% of the time — by mastering the whole art and science of adding in same-day dentistry.

Naren Arulrajah: Thank you, Gary. How cool is that?

Gary Takacs: So the question was — what are the lessons? What are the micro-lessons in there?

Naren Arulrajah: Model it.

Gary Takacs: Model it.

Naren Arulrajah: Exactly. I mean, it starts at the top. So if you want change, you model change. This was a perfect example of how the doctor modeled that change.

Gary Takacs: You know what’s interesting? Somewhere in that year, a doctor called me — we had this really wonderful conversation. (This was back when we used to do things by phone.)

And he said, “Gary, I think you’ll enjoy this story. An assistant came to the room, I just nodded my head — because that’s what I do — and honest to God, I’m thinking: I don’t know where we’re gonna put that patient. I think the only available room is the bathroom.”

But you know what he said? “I trusted my team members to figure it out.” And they did.

Naren Arulrajah: They just needed the permission. They just needed to hear, “It’s okay to do this.”

Gary Takacs: They figured it out.

Naren Arulrajah: They figured it out.

Gary Takacs: And he was the lead, though. He set the tone. And I told him, “I don’t want you practicing for 30 years like this, but you know what — that’s a really cool skillset to have. And over the years, you may have to brush that off now and again and dust it off.” And sure enough, that’s been the case.

But they now have, as a skillset, the ability to add same-day dentistry — and that’s very cool.

Naren Arulrajah: Gary, I know you are also a huge fan of incentives. In other words, not only what’s in it for the patient, but what’s in it for the team member. Can you use, you know, what’s in it for the team member to kind of create a culture of change — where people lean in versus dread it? Right? We’ve talked about this before…

Gary Takacs: So, you know, I’m a huge—anyone who’s a listener of the podcast will know this—I’m a huge fan of incentives. Bonus systems, incentive systems, reward compensations — big fan. Used it in my own practice for many years. We use it in our client work.

We don’t have a generic plan — it’s always customized to the practice. But I will state that I don’t believe everything needs to be financially incentivized, right? Sometimes it just needs to be part of the job. Would you agree with me on that?

Naren Arulrajah: I agree, Gary. Yeah. I mean, like for example, everybody has one primary goal, and that’s their most important thing to do — as long as they’re working for you.

Gary Takacs: You’ve found this carrot thing works? This carrot thing absolutely works. So I was looking at — with one of our clients, we have these KPI dashboards. And one of the things we track is the number of new Google reviews. This is recent. We were looking at year-to-date, January through September. The goal in this office is 10 new Google reviews a month — new ones each month.

Naren Arulrajah: You had me at hello. I love that goal — 10.

Gary Takacs: Okay, so let me share with you what it looked like. January, February, March — it was 1, 2, 1, 0. April — 2. Then May? 12. June — 14. July — 10. August — 16. And September was the new record: 18.

I said to the doctor, “What happened starting in May?”

He goes, “That bonus system you suggested for reviews.”

Gary Takacs: He goes, “Gary, I gotta stop here and say — you were right. I was wrong.” Because he said to me, “Shouldn’t asking for reviews be part of their job?”

I said, “Yes. And how’s that working for you?”

He said, “It’s not.” I said, “Why don’t you try mine?” Why don’t you try putting in a simple bonus?

And it wasn’t — I won’t share the number, the number doesn’t matter — the dollar amount doesn’t matter. But it was extra. It was extra.

We were cracking up because he goes, “I said, ‘What’s different starting in May?’” And he said, “That bonus system — now she’s going after it.”

So there’s an example of it. Any bonus, any incentive we do has to be designed to be win-win. If the office wins but the team member feels like they have to work their tail off — that’s not fair. If the team member wins but the doctor can’t afford it — that’s not fair.

Gary Takacs: So we have to design it in a way that’s win-win.

But something we can always do as a reward, Naren, is recognition.

Naren Arulrajah: Recognition. Yes. Praise. Appreciation. Catch them doing good, right? Appreciate them for doing something that you want them to do.

Gary Takacs: Your job, doctor, should be to walk around and catch people doing good stuff. I have a client that, sometimes by his own admission, he can be a little sour.

Naren Arulrajah: Right?

Gary Takacs: Know anybody like that?

Naren Arulrajah: Yes.

Gary Takacs: One time he said to me, “Well, if my team members ever would do anything good, I’d recognize them.” And I barked right back — I said, “You’re not looking close enough.”

He said, “Fair enough.” And sure enough, he started seeing it through a different light. And it changes the whole culture of the practice.

Whenever you can be specific — it’s one thing to say, “Naren, you did a good job.” That helps — people feel warm and fuzzy — but it’s not specific. If you can be specific with a team member — a hygienist, for example — maybe you’re in the hallway waiting to come in to do your exam, and the hygienist is talking to the patient about the need to do some conservative periodontal therapy, and her passion for it…

Gary Takacs: You can say, “You know, Kelly, I was in the hallway when you were talking to the patient about the condition of their gums. And I want to thank you. You were communicating so eloquently. Whether the patient understood anything you said or not doesn’t matter — they knew you cared about them. They knew that. And you represented our practice so well. Thank you.”

How does that feel to Kelly?

Naren Arulrajah: Oh, she feels like a million bucks.

Gary Takacs: She feels recognized. So sometimes, incentive can be recognition and praise — not necessarily financial.

Naren Arulrajah: Thank you, Gary. Let me go to this as we bring it to a close. I do have a question that seems to be on many people’s minds.

How do you make this sustainable?

So one is a tactical question: how long does it take for a practice to embrace change — or for the team to start embracing change and get used to it?

And then how do you do this where it’s in the DNA — i.e., the culture — of the practice? Any comments?

Gary Takacs: Yeah. Keep your time periods in shorter cycles. We suggested the 90-day jumpstart — just have continuous 90-day jumpstarts. We’re always working on new things, right? We’re continually advancing other things.

So instead of starting out on your first run and running a marathon — you know how long a marathon is, right, Naren?

Naren Arulrajah: Yes — 26 miles.

Gary Takacs: 26.2 miles, right? That’s daunting, isn’t it?

Naren Arulrajah: If someone’s never done it — that’s like, no way. I won’t even try it.

Gary Takacs: Yeah. But what if your first goal is to run…

Naren Arulrajah: …Five miles or for 30 minutes?

Gary Takacs: Yeah. However long that is — run for 30 minutes. And maybe when you start to become more accomplished in it, we set a goal of running a 5K.

Naren Arulrajah: Right.

Gary Takacs: A 5K — 3.1 miles. So, break it down. Break it down and celebrate successes along the way. Make it a mutual admiration society.

Make your practice a mutual admiration society, where you and your team members are honoring and recognizing each other — and celebrating your successes with patients.

A simple thing you could do — back to reviews — if a patient writes a review and calls out a team member, you, doctor, read that in the morning huddle.

Naren Arulrajah: I love that. Read that.

Gary Takacs: How is the team member going to feel if they get called out?

Let’s say the assistant’s name is Maria, and the patient says, “Maria was fabulous in my appointment. She was so comforting. She was so gentle. She was just amazing — I felt in such great hands.”

How does Maria feel when you read that?

Naren Arulrajah: Yeah.

Gary Takacs: And what are the other team members thinking?

Naren Arulrajah: That they want to be like Maria — for sure.

Gary Takacs: You want to get called out? Then do something that will get you called out.

Naren Arulrajah: Exactly. Exactly.

Gary Takacs: Yeah. So I think those are some things — celebrate small wins. Just like that running example — small wins, small steps.

Naren Arulrajah: Gary, I learned a ton today. This is a great reminder that change is possible, and there is a method to that madness. Thank you for unpacking it. I know you do this with your clients very, very, you know, one-on-one. You help them think this through, start that first fire — and then of course help that one tiny light grow and grow and grow — and then it becomes part of the DNA.

I know you’re a huge fan of—

Gary Takacs: With clients — and some of my clients have gotten used to me saying this and actually love it — I always tell them: I want this next season in your practice to be your best season yet.

Naren Arulrajah: Yes.

Gary Takacs: And what does that say? Then the next season has to be—

Naren Arulrajah: Better.

Gary Takacs: Just be better.

Naren Arulrajah: Yeah. Just continue to grow. Continue to learn. Continue to get better. Like — something to look forward to every day, every week, every month.

Gary Takacs: Well, if any listeners want some help with this, we are accepting new clients in Thriving Dentist — in our coaching program. We don’t always accept new clients — there are times where we have a waitlist.

However, we had a fun, fun season this year, Naren. We’ve had a number of our clients hit the finish line with a practice transition — where they’ve, by plan, successfully sold the practice and now they’re enjoying their retirement years.

And as a result of that, we do have some openings for new clients.

If you have any interest, go to thrivingdentist.com/csm — CSM stands for Coaching Strategy Meeting. That would be a one-on-one meeting with me on Zoom. We’ll talk about your practice, where you are, what your goals and interests are.

Gary Takacs: I’ll share a little bit about our coaching, and we’ll determine together if this might be a good fit. Please know — I’d welcome the opportunity to meet you on Zoom: thrivingdentist.com/csm.

And Naren, if they haven’t already scheduled a Marketing Strategy Meeting with you — if they want more new patients, better quality new patients — they’d be wise to set up a Marketing Strategy Meeting with Ekwa at ekwa.com/msm — Marketing Strategy Meeting.

On that note, thank you all for the privilege of your time. Naren and I look forward to connecting with you on the next Thriving Dentist Show.