Common Denominators of Thriving Practices

Intro: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. The title of today’s episode is Common Denominators of Thriving Practices. Uh, I’m really excited about this episode, and I think we’ll be sharing lots of useful information that you can use immediately, uh, to strengthen and improve your practice.

Hey, before we, uh, get to that episode, two quick announcements to make. Coming up shortly, uh, after we publish this episode is our 2025 Reducing Insurance Dependence Annual Virtual Summit. Uh, it’s coming up on October 24th. Uh, that’s, uh, about nine days from now. Uh, from the time we published this, if you’re listening to it the day we published it, uh, it’s happening October 24th on a Friday. Uh, it’s, uh, from noon to 5:30, uh, Eastern Time. Uh, it’s actually five hours of CE. We have to take a couple different breaks during that.

The, uh, CE requirements require us to take a couple of short breaks. So it’s five and a half hours from noon to 5:30, um, but you’ll get five hours of CE, and it’s a variety of different formats. We have some keynote, uh, presentations, some short, um, keynote presentations, and then we have different panels throughout the day. And absolutely everybody that will be participating with that as a presenter will be an expert in their field and have some expertise that you need to know to successfully resign from PPO plans.

This is our fifth, uh, annual summit. We did the first one in, in, uh, 2021. Every year, we’ve doubled in size. It’s done virtually, so you can attend from the comfort and convenience of your home or office. Uh, you’ll get five hours of CE credits. If you stay through the end, you’ll get five hours of CE credits.

And here’s the great news: there is no tuition. We’re gifting your tuition in appreciation for you being a listener of the Thriving Dentist Show. You do have to register, so please register. You can register at rid.academy. Uh, when that website opens, you’ll see a popup that gives you an opportunity to register for the 2025, um, Reducing Insurance Dependence Annual Summit.

If you are, if you’re serious about resigning from, from, uh, PPO plans, if you’re thinking about it, if you’re not sure—for all of you—this would be an awesome, uh, meeting to attend because you’ll, you’ll be able to answer all of those questions, uh, after listening to the panel of experts that we have.

Um, come join us. Uh, go to, uh, rid.academy and grab a seat.

The second announcement I have is we have our resident marketing, uh, expert, uh, Naren Arulrajah. And, uh, Naren is going to answer the question, should I track the source of new patients? And how is the best way to do so?

With no further ado, uh, here’s Naren on tracking the source of your new patients.

Naren Arulrajah: The marketing tip I’ll be talking about today is: Should I track the source of my new patients? And if so, how? This is Naren, the founder of Ekwa Marketing and the co-host of the Thriving Dentist Podcast. It’s a great question that I keep getting asked a lot, and my answer is: absolutely, you must track the source of your new patients.

There’s two ways you can track it. The easiest and the most powerful way is using what we call a call tracking number. So, for example, if you’re running Google Ads, have a number, a tracking number, to track Google Ads. If you’re doing social media ads, same thing, a separate number. If you’re doing an event, you know, have a different number. If you’re running an ad in a magazine, have a different number. Today, you can get these numbers, and your marketing company should be able to provide these numbers for you.

And of course, you also need to have a tracking number for your SEO—search engine optimization—marketing. The beauty of this is, you know how much you’re spending with each type of marketing activity and how much each one of those activities is producing. So, for example, you spend a thousand dollars on SEO and you got 20 new patient calls, and you know these patient calls came because they came in through the tracking number. Same way with Google Ads: you spent $5,000 and you got 20 new calls. So you know that you spent $5,000 and you got 20 new calls. So now you can figure out the cost of a new patient from each marketing method.

This allows you to really fine-tune your marketing and spend more money on the things that are costing you the least. If you don’t have this, then you could be spending, you know, $10,000 in four different techniques, and one technique might be five times better than the others. Like, typically SEO done right should be the best technique in terms of cost per new patient acquisition. But regardless of which one is the number one, which is number two—you don’t know. And sometimes the difference in cost of acquiring a new patient could be four, five, ten times differential. So you get ten times the results for the same amount of money with one technique than the other.

So I strongly recommend using a tracking number. Today, 95% of new patients call your office first, so the tracking number is the best way to go. But some do come through chatbots, some do come through, uh, you know, filling out a form. So definitely, you can also have different landing pages. So, for example, you could, you know, set up separate landing pages for all your Google Ads, so all the leads coming through that would only come through that page.

So they would fill out a form on that page, or they would call a separate number on that page. So you can really get nuanced in understanding what’s working and what’s not. Without knowing this, it’s kind of like spending a lot of money on marketing and wasting, you know, a lot of it, and only some of that marketing dollar is working for you.

So I strongly recommend: start here if you don’t have it. The other advantage of tracking numbers is you can now record the calls and even listen to the calls to see how you are doing. You know, converting a patient who’s calling because they were referred by another doctor might be a lot easier than converting a patient who’s coming through ads. Or coming through SEO—ads are the hardest because people don’t trust you. But even SEO—they don’t know you, right? They’re not your friends. They were not referred by somebody, so you still have to earn their trust.

So now that you’re tracking that phone call, you can analyze how your team is equipped to handle those types of calls. So hopefully this tip is really useful to you. If you like what I had to say and you have more questions on marketing, book a marketing strategy meeting. Go to ekwa.com/td. 

In this marketing strategy meeting, we study your marketing, your competition, and give you both a report card and a plan. So it’s gonna be a really good use of your time where you can get your questions answered as you fine-tune and take your marketing to the next level.

Naren Arulrajah: Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Thriving Dentist Coaching and Action Segment. This is Naren, your co-host. Um, if you enjoyed that tip, um, and you want to know how to properly track your new patient source, book a marketing strategy meeting—ekwa.com/msm. 

Gary, today’s topic, Common Denominators of a Thriving Practice, is very intriguing to me. And, uh, thank you for giving me a sneak peek. Um, and I’m not going to take the thunder away from Gary, but I’m just gonna give you a bit of a hint. Um, both Gary and I are huge fans of, uh, Stephen Covey, and, uh, Stephen Covey—um, habit number two is: Start with the end in mind. So, uh, some of what Gary’s gonna say today has a link to that habit: start with the end in mind. Gary, take it away.

Gary Takacs: You know, I’ve made it my life’s work to study world-class practices. Um, it’s been, uh, a passion of mine for, uh, almost 45 years now. Uh, and truly had a really, uh, interesting opportunity to, uh, look, uh, uh, behind the scenes, uh, at, uh, some really world-class practices. Uh, we thought maybe it’s time to, uh, share that with our listeners. So that’s why we, we titled this one Common Denominators of Thriving Practices.

Uh, so I’m gonna share with you some of the things I’ve learned by observing. Uh, I’ve had the privilege of coaching practices in all 50 states—kind of crazy, isn’t it, Naren? Uh, but I’ve had the opportunity to coach practices in all 50 states. Um, and I’ve really had a, a, a wonderful—it’s been a wonderful ride—um, working with some really great, uh, great practices. Um, and I’ve noticed there are some common denominators.

Um, and, uh, I thought we’d, uh, maybe unpack that and share with you, because you, you could maybe think about—if I, if I list a denominator—and you might think, do I have that or not? And if you don’t have that, maybe you can strive to put that in place in your practice because it might be allowing you to take a step, uh, closer, uh, to a thriving practice.

Now, what’s interesting about my observations is that, um, there’s a lot of, um, variance in, in, in terms of, you know, the details of a thriving practice. Uh, in some cases, it was a solo dentist practice. In other cases, it was a two-doctor practice. In other cases, it was a small group of dentists that, that partnered together, uh, to create a practice. There’s all kinds of different models of, of thrive.

It’s not a one universal answer. Um, but there’s a lot of different ways, uh—and really, to some degree, that needs to be answered personally. What is your vision for your practice? You know, what is your vision? Um, and really, a thriving practice is one that meets your vision.

Um, and there’s a lot of different flavors of dentistry, a lot of different clinical aspects of dentistry. What one dentist loves to do, another dentist maybe doesn’t enjoy doing. So, it really is a more complex analysis that we’re gonna go through today. But I’m gonna start with, um, some things that I would consider the common denominators, uh, of thriving practices.

And they have to do with our seven goals. We have—we have seven goals of a thriving practice. This is something that we do in our coaching with each one of, of our coaching clients. Um, we help them achieve, uh, these seven goals. Let me march you through those seven goals. I’ll number ’em one through seven—

Naren Arulrajah: This is the tie-in to Stephen Covey’s habit, right? Start with the end in mind.

Gary Takacs: This is. This is starting with the end in mind, yeah. Um, so I’ll number ’em one through seven. They’re not numbered in importance—they’re numbered so I can remember to cover ’em all.

Number one: A thriving practice, if it’s a solo dentist practice, has overhead no higher than 60%, ideally 50%. If you have two or more doctors, we have EBITDA—earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, amortization—of at least 20%.

Goal number two of a thriving practice: We have the ability to achieve financial independence through the practice. Financial independence is the day you can go to work because you want to, not because you have to.

Goal number three: A thriving practice has a state-of-the-art practice with all the technology that makes dentistry fun for you and more effective for your patients.

Wow, Naren, it just got a little bit harder right there, didn’t it?

Naren Arulrajah: Yes. Yep.

Gary Takacs: Goal number four: We have a high-performance team that we truly love and enjoy working with. I crafted that statement. I put the word love in there.

Number five: We have patients we enjoy taking care of. You don’t have to love your patients, but I hope none of them cause you to lose heart muscle and stomach lining.

Goal number six: A thriving practice has a treatment mix that you enjoy. It provides a treatment mix that you enjoy. You’re doing more of the things that you love.

And finally, goal number seven of a thriving practice is: The practice provides an effective work-life balance. Effective work-life balance.

Those are the seven goals of a thriving practice.

Naren, I’m often asked in live presentations, “Which of those seven goals is most important?” And here’s how I respond to that. I think they’re each important. But if you press me on it, and—and press me to pick one, I’m gonna pick goal number four: high-performance team that you love and enjoy working with.

And the reason why I’m gonna pick that one, Naren, is because I don’t believe you get the other six without that one. And if you did, it’d be a hollow victory, because you wouldn’t be working with people you love.

So, uh, I think—I think it’s goal number four, followed very closely—right on the heel of that—is goal number seven: effective work-life balance. If you have a financially successful practice, but it comes at the expense of your relationships—relationships with your loved ones, your family, your kids—comes at the expense of your health and your fitness, comes at the expense of other aspects of your life that you enjoy, like your hobbies and your interests.

Gary Takacs: That, I’m gonna say, it’s not success at all. I want you to have an effective work-life balance. I’m rather passionate about that, Naren, because it’s my observation that there is an extreme crisis in our profession—a shortage of dentists that feel like they have an effective work-life balance. And so I’m on a mission to change that.

Now, those are the goals, but let’s talk about, you know, how are they achieved? How do we achieve those? So I’ve got five observations that will lead to achieving those goals and putting you in the definition of a thriving practice.

One would be to work on having a reduced insurance footprint. A reduced insurance footprint. Now, we call it reducing insurance dependence, right? Do you notice I’m not calling it going fee-for-service, Naren?

Naren Arulrajah: Correct.

Gary Takacs: Why do I define it a little bit more broadly as a reduced insurance footprint?

Naren Arulrajah: I mean, as a business owner, you don’t want to handcuff yourself, right? You don’t want to put yourself in any kind of a box. Reducing insurance dependence means you are choosing which insurance companies you want to have in your corner and which you don’t. Some treat you better than others. You know, in some markets, there might be certain employers, and you want to take care of them. Perhaps a lot of schoolteachers, and maybe they’re all with a certain plan, and you’re like, "Okay, I want to be nice to these people." Or firefighters—you pick. So there could be lots of reasons you might make exceptions to the rule of, you know, not dropping every PPO plan.

Gary Takacs: I answer a little bit more narrowly. I say that you don’t have to go all the way to fee-for-service.

Naren Arulrajah: Right. You don’t have to.

Gary Takacs: You know, every time you successfully resign from a plan, you’ve improved the strength of your practice. Every time you successfully resign. But you don’t have to go all the way. In fact, you know, I can recount many what I would call world-class, thriving practices that have some insurance participation. So you don’t have to be fee-for-service.

Yet, I can also recount many of them that are fee-for-service. But I would say one of the things you do to achieve those seven goals is: you have a reduced insurance footprint. It’s reduced, right? And if there are plans that—many plans today, it’s not just a small minority—there are many plans that don’t pay you enough to pay your team members’ hourly wages, let alone the other expenses that go along with delivering dental care. And I would simply say no to those plans.

You know, we talk about the insurance companies as being the bad guys—and they absolutely are—but there’s another bad guy in this equation. The bad guy is the employer. The employer. Employers can buy better insurance plans, but guess what? They have to—what is the consequence of buying a better dental insurance plan, Naren? What’s the consequence for the employer?

Naren Arulrajah: I mean, the patients are taken care of better, right?

Gary Takacs: What’s the consequence to the employer? The employer that bought the plan?

Naren Arulrajah: Meaning with the better insurance plan?

Gary Takacs: To the employer that bought it.

Naren Arulrajah: Yeah. I mean, I assume it’s gonna cost—

Gary Takacs: Google, Facebook, the local ball bearing factory. What’s the impact to them?

Naren Arulrajah: I mean—

Gary Takacs: It costs them more.

Naren Arulrajah: Costs them—yeah, it costs them more. Exactly. It costs them more.

Gary Takacs: It costs them a lot more. Yeah. And so, you know, they’re going to the insurance company saying, "I want the cheapest plan I could possibly provide."

Naren Arulrajah: Yes.

Gary Takacs: Yes. Well, stay away from those, right? Stay away. Stay away from those. So one of the things you can do to achieve those seven goals is reduce your insurance footprint.

Another thing you can do—I’m gonna go through five of them—another thing is, and this is non-negotiable in my opinion, you have to have proven marketing in place in your practice to consistently attract quality new patients.

Naren Arulrajah: Right.

Gary Takacs: Every practice needs new patients. Every practice does, because you’ll reach a point where your patients are restored, and there’s no more dentistry to do. Now granted, if things break, you’ll have more things to do. But some practices have an appetite for more new patients. We’ve gotta have a consistent, proven source of new patients in your practice.

Another thing that we need, if you’re gonna achieve those common denominators—those seven goals—number three is a little bit more tactical: thriving practices are really good at tracking and monitoring practice performance. Tracking and monitoring. It’s not just left to chance. They track and monitor.

It’s Peter Drucker—who many of you will recognize. If you don’t know who Peter Drucker is, let me challenge you to Google him. Peter Drucker is considered by many to be the father of modern-day business management. And he says, "You can’t manage what you don’t monitor." You can’t manage what you don’t monitor. Think about that for a minute, right?

And as a practice owner, you’ve got to put your practice management cap on. And you can’t manage it if you’re not monitoring—if you don’t know what’s going on.

So thriving practices, world-class thriving practices, have a great way of monitoring and tracking key performance areas in the practice. And that can vary by practice because of the nature of the office. They’re not generic KPIs—key performance indicators—but they’re tailored to the practice.

And the dentist can—the owner-dentist can—look at those KPIs, and they can instantly—it’s like taking the pulse of the practice.

Naren, if you go to a physician for a visit, maybe your first visit to a new primary care provider, they’re going to take some vital signs. They’re going to take your pulse. They’re going to measure your blood pressure. They’re going to get out the stethoscope and measure your heart rate.

And that’s what this stuff does in your practice. Tracking and monitoring key areas of practice. You always know what’s going on.

A fourth area is—

Naren Arulrajah: That’s—

Gary Takacs: Go ahead, Naren.

Naren Arulrajah: No, yeah. I think tracking key areas of your practice—I know one of the things you focus on, Gary, with your coaching work is, uh, you have a dedicated team that logs into the practice management systems and figures out those key metrics—how is every practice doing? And it’s happening constantly, because it’s so easy to kind of fall off the wagon, so to speak. And then once you fall off, it’s so hard to get back on the back end.

Gary Takacs: Well, you don’t know what to do to correct it, you know?

Naren Arulrajah: Yeah.

Gary Takacs: And we go way deep. We’re not talking about the obvious things like production and collection and new patient numbers. We go way deep. Like, for example, right? This month, what percent of calls that came in from new patients during your business hours were unanswered? Were unanswered. Those calls were not answered. So now marketing has done its part. The patient is calling—they’re interested in your office—and we’re not answering the phone during business hours.

And if you think off the top of your head, "Oh no, no, we do that. We have multiple phone lines. I’ve got multiple people on the phones." That doesn’t happen in your practice—you don’t know if you don’t have the hard data that shows that. You don’t know.

And I’ll also say that if you’re not listening to the phone calls of new patients in your practice, you have no idea how those calls are being handled.

Naren Arulrajah: Correct.

Gary Takacs: Which goes way beyond the obvious, you know—way, way, way beyond. So the things that we’re tracking and monitoring go way beyond that.

You know, we’ve had a success in our coaching—I love using this example—where a new client that had never done any phone training with their team members—not any at all—and they were converting 25% of their new patient calls. 25%.

By the way, the nationwide average is 33%, right? It’s a third. So yeah, I think that’s great. The 25% isn’t as bad as it seems, because nationwide it’s 33, which is horrible, right? But 25% is even worse.

And through our coaching—through myself listening to calls, working with the team, you know, in a Zoom call to provide a foundation where they’re going to improve—this office, over a fairly short period of time, went from 25% to 75% conversion rate.

Gary Takacs: And conversion means a new patient that called, that made an appointment. So, getting 50 new patient calls a month—at 25%—they were seeing 12 new patients a month. At 75%, they’re seeing 38 new patients a month and didn’t have to spend another nickel on marketing. It was all spent on conversion.

Does that make sense, Naren?

Naren Arulrajah: Yes.

Gary Takacs: Yeah. Uh, what a, what a powerful difference.

And the fifth thing I would ask you to focus on when it comes to achieving those common denominators is: a world-class practice has strong leadership. Strong leadership. And oftentimes, that can be the missing link.

Do you have a vision? Does your team know what the vision is? Is it evolving? Because what started as, at one time, being your vision may evolve over time as you work on your clinical skills, you work on your mindset, you work on what kind of practice you want to have.

But it has very, very strong, ethical leadership—the kind of leadership where team members want to join your practice because they want to be part of something that’s bigger than them. They want to make a difference, you know, in the world. And it’s your leadership that’s going to guide that.

Really, a cool way to get exceptional performance is by self-improvement of your own leadership.

Well, there are the seven goals of a thriving practice. There are the things I’ve observed. Quick review on the things I’ve observed:

These practices have a reduced insurance footprint.

They have proven marketing to consistently attract quality new patients.

They track and monitor key performance areas of the practice—very deep, not just the obvious.

They’re always working—now, the fourth point—and I skipped this when I was covering it, so I’m glad I’m doing the review:

World-class practices are always working to improve the connection they have with their patients. I call that being relationship-driven. But world-class practices are always working to improve the connection they have with their patients.

And that’s done one-on-one. One-on-one—it’s a unique connection. And I would say, the more our world turns to technology and the more it turns to a more impersonal experience, the more valuable this is: that your practice becomes a way that the patient feels connection and feels connected to you and your team.

And then number five: they have very strong leadership.

Naren, we’re at a good point to take a pause. Let’s pause here, and we’ve got some great questions in our Q&A segment.

No further ado—we’ll hit pause here and we’ll go to the Thriving Dentist Q&A.

Naren Arulrajah: Welcome back to the Thriving Dentist Q&A segment. Hope you enjoyed the Coaching in Action segment. The topic today is Common Denominators of a Thriving Practice, and this is Naren, your co-host.

Gary, I have four questions for you. Let me start with question number one. If there is a dominant practice model among the thriving practices, based on your experience over the last 45 years, what is it? Uh, have you seen one particular model that is hands down better than everybody else?

Gary Takacs: What a great question. And I have to tell you, when I started studying, you know, thriving practices—world-class thriving practices—I thought I would find a dominant model. I thought it might be something related—oh, they’re doing a bunch of dental implants, they’re doing a bunch of this. Uh, and maybe it involves having more than one doctor, because then, you know, your fixed expenses can go down as a percentage because you’re providing more production in your practice.

And ironically, the answer is no. There is not a dominant practice model. Not at all. In fact, it spans the entire gamut.

It could be a solo dentist—an owner-dentist practice, solo dentist.

It could be a doctor and associate—a two-doctor practice.

It could be two doctors who partnered together.

It could be a small group in one location.

For example, in our client base today, we have a terrific practice in the Midwest—five doctors. They’re all partners in this practice. It’s five doctors.

As far as the way the format is clinically, it can completely vary. It could be a practice that focuses on cosmetic dentistry. And conversely, it could be a practice that focuses on everyday general dentistry.

It could be a practice that focuses on biomimetic dentistry, which is a subset today—some people are interested in. But it could literally be any format at all.

There isn’t a clear—through my observation—there isn’t a clear answer to that in terms of format.

Now, I do have a favored format, but it’s not meant to be one-size-fits-all. I do like the idea of a two-doctor practice, and I’ll take a minute and explain this.

It could be an owner-doctor and an associate doctor. It could be an owner-doctor and a partner, where maybe an associate becomes your partner. But the reason I like the two-doctor model is that it’s an easier model to achieve goal number seven: an effective work-life balance.

Think about that for a minute—because you could choose to work a three-day clinical week. Each doctor is a model that we followed where, you know, one doctor works Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday; the other doctor works Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. And there’s a lot of benefits to that, Naren.

Naren Arulrajah: Yes.

Gary Takacs: Now, it’s a three-day work week. By the way, as the owner of your practice, you’re not done working if you work Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. You’re not done working, right? You still have to do some admin. You still have to do the business, HR stuff you need to do in your practice.

But having a three-day clinical week is a much more likely pathway to achieve an effective work-life balance.

Also, when you have a second doctor in the practice, you can take more time off, and the practice can be covered by the other doctor. So now you’re not worried about leaving your practice uncovered by not having one of your doctors available for care.

We can also be open over five days. You know, there are a lot of businesses today, Naren, that do the four-day work week. Typically, the four-day work week could be any four days, but it tends to be Monday through Thursday, and there’s a lot of people that have Fridays off. And it’s easier to schedule dental appointments during Friday.

That can also be a model that works well for your team members. Because now, if any team members need or want 40 hours a week, they can get those 40 hours across the five-day schedule. If they want to work four days a week, they can certainly work—get those four days across the five-day schedule. If they want to work three days a week, they can get that three-day schedule across the five-day schedule.

So I like that model. But in our coaching client base, Naren, we have a number of solo dentist practices that work the three-day week—and it still works.

So there really isn’t a common denominator there. It can be done in so many different ways, and I never cease to be amazed at how this can be adapted to what your vision and your model is.

Naren Arulrajah: Thank you, Gary. That’s an excellent question. Um, going back to the theme today, which is Common Denominators of Thriving Practices, I think that theme makes a lot of sense because we are living in a time of unprecedented change. And the next question is related to this. I know in 2025, AI is essential. How does AI relate to successful dental practice marketing?

Gary Takacs: Ah, Naren, I’m going to comment on that quickly and then flip it over to you because you’re our resident marketing expert. So, AI is, um, rapidly becoming much more commonplace in the world today, right? Would you agree?

Naren Arulrajah: Agreed.

Gary Takacs: And whether you know it or not, there’s a lot of the public that doesn’t realize they’re actually using AI, or AI is influencing them—they don’t know it. But let me flip that question to you and ask: how does AI relate to successful practice marketing today?

Naren Arulrajah: Great question, Gary. So let me give you my two cents on AI first. AI is affecting every part of our lives, right? And just for those who are not computer science graduates—by the way, I have a degree in computer science—AI is the idea that, unlike typical software programs where you tell it “if this, do that,” AI can figure out what to do. And depending on the situation, how it does that—it’s kind of like a black box or black magic. Nobody understands it; it just does it.

And there are certain chips—and I’m sure those who are watching the stock market know—pretty much anybody who has anything to do with AI is worth trillions of dollars today: Google, Nvidia, Tesla, Facebook, and so forth. So AI is here to stay, and it’s going to change our lives. Already we have self-driving cars, and in a few years, we’ll probably have robots in our homes doing half our work.

Gary Takacs: Robots are placing implants, Naren.

Naren Arulrajah: Exactly! And I know even surgeons nowadays use more and more of this technology to do things. So AI is here to stay.

Now, what’s the impact on marketing? Which is the question from this particular listener who sent this in. AI has become commonplace. Many of us heard of ChatGPT—that kind of brought the idea of AI to the common man. They built a chat engine, just like you could chat with a human being, and it’ll answer any and all questions. Now it has become popular, and now there are so many other companies chasing the same thing—Gemini, Grok from Elon Musk’s X.AI, and so forth. So there are a lot of these solutions out there, and everyone sees it as a gold rush, trying to capitalize on it.

When you start understanding how people are discovering dentists and the impact of AI on that, I’ll tell you what I found. Just recently, ChatGPT published a report on what kind of things people are using it for. One-third of users want ChatGPT to edit their emails or documents. They just copy and paste whatever they’re going to say, and it makes it nicer. Another third wants ChatGPT to summarize documents—like, you upload a 100-page document and say, “Hey, answer these three questions for me,” and it gives you the answers.

Gary Takacs: I’d call that shortcuts—they’re looking for shortcuts.

Naren Arulrajah: Exactly—shortcuts. It’s like using ChatGPT to write a resume.

Gary Takacs: Right.

Naren Arulrajah: You give it your information and it makes it better, organizes it.

Now, when it comes to discovering information—if I type in “dentist near me,” I’m looking for a dentist. Or “implants near me,” I want someone qualified, someone with good Google reviews, and so on. Google might show you a map, or local businesses. But if I type in something like “cost of dental implants in Chicago,” then Google knows I don’t want to do the research—I want AI to do the research and give me a short paragraph summary.

Gary Takacs: So that’s a little more sophisticated?

Naren Arulrajah: Yes, that’s a bit more sophisticated. People want AI to do the work for them. Instead of me going to four websites, I want AI to go to four websites and give me one paragraph: “In Chicago, the typical cost of implants is $2,300 to $4,500. Here are three examples of doctors who provide implants at these price points.” Boom. Now I don’t need to visit 17 websites and figure that out.

That’s called AI Overview. AI Overview has been used 2 billion times a month, and it’s now three times more popular than ChatGPT when it comes to search. Why? Because Google already has 3 billion users on products like Search, Gmail, Chrome, YouTube—so it’s easy for them to integrate AI into those. Google has also been working on AI for 10+ years, while others have only been at it for 3 years. So Google has deep knowledge, deep tech, and deep teams.

If you’re sitting here in 2025, you want to make sure you’re showing up on AI Overview. It is the standard.

At Ekwa, for example, we’ve spent the last four months revamping everything we’re doing. We’ve already communicated with our clients about how we’re making sure they show up on AI Overview. We also want to make sure they show up on ChatGPT and Gemini.

Even though only 2–3% of people currently use these other AI platforms for search, we don’t want to take chances. What if 3–4 years from now, ChatGPT has 10% of the search market? We make sure our clients are ranking on every platform. It’s not easy—these platforms don’t make it easy—so we do a lot of manual and technical work to figure out where and how you’re ranking.

SEO has always been difficult. I’ve said this before: only 5% of dental practices get 95% of the free traffic. The rest have to pay 5–10x more in ads. If you want to be in that top 5%, like every one of our clients is within a year—ranking for 100 or more keywords—you must lean into AI and realize the stakes are higher than ever.

One of my strong recommendations is: book a Marketing Strategy Meeting. It’s at no cost. We’ll analyze your current marketing. Are you doing what it takes to rank on Google and other AI-driven search platforms? If not, we’ll tell you exactly what to do to fix it.

We have a team of 300 people. It’s getting more complex and harder—but you just need to make sure your marketing keeps up with the speed of change when it comes to AI.

Gary Takacs: So a listener could schedule a Marketing Strategy Meeting with you to determine if their current marketing is AI-inclusive?

Naren Arulrajah: Exactly. A hundred percent, Gary. The link again is ekwa.com/msm. We spend six hours researching you and your competition and tell you how you’re doing. If you’re doing better than the competition, keep doing it. If you’re not, we’ll tell you what to change.

Typically, within 12 months, we help any one of our clients go from the bottom of Google search or AI search to the top—meaning they show up for 100+ keywords in any given month.

Gary Takacs: Naren, it kind of reminds me—if we flash back, what is now quite a few years ago—in the early 1990s, websites were starting to become very common. And early on—think 1991, 1992, 1993—only the really progressive practices had websites. Others were kind of sitting back, waiting.

And it’s kind of the same thing happening now. Are you using AI in your marketing? Is your marketing agency using AI? It kind of relates to, “Did I have a website in 1991?” You’re going to want to be on the leading edge of this—not on the trailing edge. Great answer.

Naren Arulrajah: Absolutely, Gary. And I do think—you know, this entire episode is about how you continue to change. And I do think this is one area you need to continue to change. It’s not going away. It’s not a fad. So you need to just stick with it and continue to improve how you rank on Google and all the other search engines.

Gary Takacs: Get on the bus. Yep.

** AI is already shaping how patients find your practice online. If you’re unsure whether your marketing is keeping up, don’t miss your chance to book a FREE Marketing Strategy Meeting.

We’ll analyze your website, SEO, and competition – and show you how to stay visible in the AI era.

👉 ekwa.com/msm

Naren Arulrajah: Let me go to the third question, Gary. Gary, I heard you do a fee analysis every single year for your clients. What have you learned by providing this analysis?

Gary Takacs: Yeah, we subscribe to a service that provides fees in all the CDT dental codes by ZIP code—by ZIP code. Very, very important, because fees can range all over the map depending on where you’re located.

For example, I think we’d all agree that if you were in Manhattan, New York, it’s likely your fees would be higher than, say, a small town in the Midwest. The cost of doing business in Manhattan is a lot higher. So we actually are able to source that by ZIP code.

And what we do is we look at the most frequently used fees in your practice, and then we compare that to this third-party objective analysis of fees by ZIP code. And they’re provided in different percentiles: 40th percentile, 50th, 60th, 70th, 80th, 90th, and 95th. And we’re able to evaluate that.

Only you can determine your fees, but this information can help you set your fees at the level that you feel is appropriate.

When we did this recently across our client base, I actually thought—because it’s a pretty cool client base, all over the country, all kinds of different practices, all striving to be better—I thought that their fees would be pretty closely indexed to where they should be, according to the third-party analysis.

And what we found is that many of our clients had fees that were significantly lower than where they should be. And we’re able to share the information, with which they could then make decisions about what to do with their fees.

It doesn’t make sense to have your fees low, because you could be leaving money on the table—even if you’re in-network.

For example, if an insurance plan pays at the 50th percentile, but your fee is set at the 30th, the insurance company can’t raise your fee to the 50th. Only you can raise your fees. So they’ll gladly pay you at the 30th percentile—and pocket the difference.

Now, that applies whether you’re in-network or out-of-network. Of course, if a patient doesn’t have insurance, you want to have your fees set appropriately for your area.

And it turned out, we got a lot of praise from our clients saying, “Oh my gosh, I never knew this type of resource was available.” So it’s something we do as part of our coaching, and we do it every year because fees change. And it allows us to kind of keep these calibrated.

We provide you with the information to determine what you want to do with your fee—based on science, not based on some random guesswork.

Naren Arulrajah: Absolutely, Gary. I do think many people are benefiting from this. I’ve seen practices literally make 30% more in their fees—literally—as soon as you do this. So it’s like a game-changer.

Gary, so thank you for doing this. And I think if anyone is interested in learning either about fee analysis or other ways to improve your practice in 2025, I would recommend talking to Gary. Gary, can they do that? Would you be happy to?

Gary Takacs: Yeah, happy to do that. We have what’s called a Coaching Strategy Meeting. We’ll put a link—it’s thrivingdentist.com/csm —stands for Coaching Strategy Meeting.

What happens is, it opens up my calendar and you’ll see available appointments. You schedule a Zoom call with me—it’ll actually be a Zoom call with me. We’ll talk about you and your practice, and I’ll share some suggestions on what you can do to enhance your practice and get on that track to become one of those thriving practices.

I would love the opportunity to do that. I’d love to talk to any of our listeners. And we do that as a courtesy—at no cost.

** Many practices discover hidden profit opportunities through this simple review.

If you’d like personalized guidance on fee structure, profitability, or reducing insurance dependence, schedule a Coaching Strategy Meeting with Gary today.

👉 thrivingdentist.com/csm

Naren Arulrajah: Thank you, Gary. Let me go to the last question. I have heard you talk about the importance of team building. I also believe that it is important. What are some specific actions I can take to build a great team?

Gary Takacs: Naren, that is a great question because, uh, you know, I mentioned one of the points that’ll help you achieve those goals is strong leadership. But, you know, a world-class team is one where everyone’s on the same bus—you know, on the same boat, rowing in the same direction. Everyone’s on the same boat, rowing in the same direction.

And that’s not going to happen just randomly. There are some things that you can do:

Regular team meetings are important.

One-on-one check-ins with your team members are important.

Having a regular cadence of doing things together outside of the workplace—where we have a chance to connect with each other—is another one of those things.

But maybe the most important thing you can do when it comes to team building, doctor—and you can start this tomorrow at no cost—look for opportunities to compliment your team members.

Catch them doing good things and compliment them. The more specific you can be about that, the better.

It’s one thing for you to say, “Maria, you did a great job today.” And hopefully Maria is going to have a good feeling—a good, warm feeling—about that. But if you can say:

“You know, Maria, I happened to be in the hallway today, and you were talking to our patient—it was mid-afternoon, I think it was about 2:30—and that patient had so many questions for you. You answered those questions so patiently. You represented our practice so well. I just want to take a minute and say thank you. I’m sure that patient was appreciative of the time and effort you put in to answer her questions, and you made her feel like her questions were important. Thank you.”

Do that. Do that individually with each one of your team members. And that’s something you can do starting tomorrow.

Catch them doing good things. Before you leave, pull them aside one-on-one and compliment them—and compliment them as specifically as you can.

That’s just one thing, Naren, and it’s kind of triggered my thinking that maybe we should do an entire Thriving Dentist Show episode on team building.

Naren Arulrajah: Yeah, let’s do that.

Gary Takacs: Yeah, let’s do that.

Well, this has been a fun episode—Common Denominators of Thriving Practices. I hope you’ve learned some things you can apply tomorrow.

Quick reminders:

If you want to schedule a Marketing Strategy Meeting, go to ekwa.com/msm.

If you want to schedule a Coaching Strategy Meeting, go to thrivingdentist.com/csm.

On that note, thank you all for the privilege of your time—and here’s to your success in developing a thriving practice.