New Metrics and New Benchmarks to Thrive in 2025 and Beyond

Gary Takacs: Welcome to another episode of The Thriving Dentist Show. I’m Gary Takacs, your podcast co-host. We have an amazing episode for you today. Today’s episode is titled, New Metrics and Benchmarks to Thrive in 2025 and Beyond. Lots of new information we’re gonna percolate with you today. Thanks for joining us for this podcast episode. Hey, before I get to that episode, two announcements to make. Coming up, about three weeks after this episode is published, is our 2025 Reducing Insurance Dependence Academy Annual Virtual Summit. It’s happening on Friday, October 24th. We do this every year right around the same time. This is our fifth annual, and the entire summit—it’s five hours. It’s actually five and a half hours. It starts at noon Eastern Time and goes to 5:30 Eastern Time. You get five hours of CE credit, and everything about this summit is about experts that can help you in some way or another successfully resign from PPO plans.

Gary Takacs: There’ll be some keynote presentations. There’ll be many panels. Everybody on the panels—there’ll be more focused panels—and everyone on the panels will have something to do with helping you successfully resign from PPO plans. You get five hours of CE. We’ll take a couple breaks in there, that’s why it’s five and a half hours. But you’ll get five hours of CE. And here’s the, maybe, maybe the greatest news—how it’s gonna help you reduce insurance. But the next greatest news, there’s no tuition. You’re there as a guest of ours. We’re going to cover your tuition in appreciation for your listenership. You do have to register. Go to RID—that stands for Reducing Insurance Dependence—RID Academy. You’ll notice as soon as you land on that homepage, a popup box will happen, and it’ll be your opportunity to register for the 2025 Reducing Insurance Dependence Annual Summit. Again, October 24th, noon to 5:30.

Gary Takacs: That’s Eastern Time. So go ahead and do the time zone translation. Come join us. Love to see you there. All right. The second announcement I have is we have a Thriving Dentist Clinical Tip today. We have a wonderful guest, Dr. Gary Glassman. And Dr. Glassman is going to share some information about how to easily locate hidden canals with confidence. So when doing a root canal therapy, how to easily locate hidden canals with confidence. Man, if you’re doing any root canal therapy, you’re gonna love this tip. No further ado, here’s Dr. Gary Glassman.

Dr. Gary Glassman: My name is Dr. Gary Glassman. I’m a full-time practicing endodontist and endodontic educator. My objective as an educator is to help you practice endodontics predictably, painlessly, and profitably. Finding the root canal orifices, like the MB2 canal in maxillary molars or the mid-mesial canal in mandibular molars, is not an easy task. Let me make it simple and easy for you by using the following technique. Once access is made through the pulp chamber, a sharp DG16 endodontic explorer is used to identify the orifices of the root canals. It’s always best to completely shape the canals. One can immediately find and leave the more obscure canals until the end for two reasons.

Number one, when one shapes the canals that can be immediately found, the canal orifices will be displaced to the original spatial position that they were in when the tooth first formed. This redefines the anatomy of the pulp chamber floor, facilitating the location of the more obscure canals.

Dr. Gary Glassman: Number two, when one shapes the canals that can be immediately found, the clinician gets some work done. For example, if the clinician spends the entire appointment trying to find the MB2 canal without first treating the canals that can be found, then when the patient is rescheduled for a subsequent appointment, the clinician is back to square one. Now, if the clinician shapes the canals that can be immediately found, they get some work done. Then, during the subsequent visit, focus can be made on just finding the more obscure canals, like the MB2 canal in the maxillary molar. Since all the other canals have been treated accordingly, the clinician focusing on the task at hand will often find the obscure canals more readily when undistracted from treating the rest of the anatomy. This allows the clinician to exercise best practices and be excellent in the moment. Treat first what you can find. Thank you.

Naren Arulrajah: Welcome back to the Thriving Dentist Coaching in Action Segment. This is Naren, your co-host. Hope you enjoyed that clinical tip from Dr. Gary Glassman. If you like it or have any questions, feel free to write to us. Go to thrivingdentist.com, and we would love to get back to you and connect you with Dr. Glassman.

In the meantime, we have an amazing topic for you today: new metrics and new benchmarks to thrive in 2025 and beyond. I think this is a timely topic. I do think we all realize we are in a time where the rate of change is only speeding up—AI, technology, changes in how the world works with each other, and so the countries—lots of things are happening. So in this time of change, what are some of the new metrics and benchmarks you need to consider or master to thrive, right?

So that’s the topic of our conversation today. And Gary and I have been thinking about this a lot. And Gary, of course, many of the ideas he’s gonna share with you today are ideas that he has tested with his coaching clients. Like many of you know, we work together—Gary and I. I run a marketing company, Gary runs a coaching company, and we help our clients together. So Gary, I’m really looking forward to this conversation. Take it away.

Gary Takacs: And for our listeners’ benefit, we’re gonna go beyond the obvious. I think the term KPI—Key Performance Indicator—a few years ago, if you brought up that acronym, many dentists wouldn’t recognize what a KPI is, right? Right. It was kind of a mumbo jumbo, like a shorthand.

Naren Arulrajah: Yes, yes, yes.

Gary Takacs: But now most dentists have some kind of a metric software. It could be Dental Intelligence, it could be Practice by Numbers. Even the software—Dentrix, Eaglesoft, Open Dental—have developed their own metrics within their software, and they talk about it as KPIs. And so we’re gonna go beyond the obvious ones like production and collection. We’re going beyond that. And we’re gonna talk about new metrics and benchmarks that really, in my perspective, will help you create a thriving practice.

If you’re a regular listener to the Thriving Dentist Show, you know that a couple months ago we did an episode that went viral, and it was The 7 Goals of a Thriving Practice in 2025 and Beyond. Those seven goals, right? Let’s start by talking about those seven goals, and then we’ll get into the metrics that help achieve those seven goals.

Gary Takacs: But if you didn’t listen to that episode, go back—wherever your podcast directory is—go back and find the episode that is Seven Goals of a Thriving Practice in 2025 and Beyond.

Goal number one is, if you’re a solo dentist by yourself, have overhead no higher than 60%. Overhead is all your expenses, with the exception of your compensation. If you have two or more dentists in your practice, the way we’re gonna measure that is by measuring your EBITDA—E-B-I-T-D-A. If you’re two or more doctors in your practice, we want to have an EBITDA—earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization—of at least 20%. And that’s after paying you as a dentist. After paying you. So, goal number one has to do with your profitability and overhead.

Goal number two is, we want you to achieve financial independence from your practice. Not from the lottery, not from inheritance, not from gambling—but from your practice. And what’s the definition of financial independence? When you can go to work because you want to, not because you have to. And technically, that happens when you have enough income coming from something else that replaces your income. So if your income’s $400,000 a year—I’m just making up a round number; yours could be more or less—but if it’s around there, when you have assets that produce $400,000 or more a year without having to liquidate those assets, then you have financial independence.

Gary Takacs: Naren, what happens if we have to liquidate the assets to get there?

Naren Arulrajah: You know, if you have to liquidate, it’s kind of like killing the golden goose, Gary.

Gary Takacs: Yeah. Strangle the goose that lays the golden egg.

Naren Arulrajah: Exactly. So that, to me, is not the preferred method. I still want the golden goose as long as I can.

Gary Takacs: Wanna keep the goose.

Naren Arulrajah: Yeah.

Gary Takacs: Goal number three: we want you to have a state-of-the-art office and all the technology that makes dentistry fun for you, right? And more effective for your patients—and still control your overhead to 60% or less. That’s goal number three.

Goal number four is a high-performance team you truly love and enjoy working with. I crafted that statement. I said "love." I want you to love your team members. You’re gonna spend more time with them than your biological family. So let’s make sure we have a team we love and enjoy working with.

Goal number five: patients you enjoy taking care of. You don’t have to love ’em, but I hope you enjoy taking care of ’em.

Goal number six: a treatment mix that gives you satisfaction. So whatever that is—dentistry comes in a lot of different flavors—whatever you love doing, I want you doing more of it, because it’ll make your practice and your work life more enjoyable.

Gary Takacs: Which leads me to goal number seven: I want all of the above goals—and number seven—an effective work-life balance. If you achieve the other six, but don’t have a good work-life balance, I’m gonna say it’s not success. Right? If you achieve financial success in your practice, but at the expense of your family, your relationships, your hobbies, your interests, your health—then it’s not success. So I want all seven.

So those are the seven goals of Thrive. We work on those—those are front and center in all the work we do with our clients. In our coaching work, we focus on those and we’re constantly trying to achieve those and check each one of them off the list.

Now, let’s get to the new metrics and benchmarks. I’m gonna go through one, two, three, four, five of those.

Gary Takacs: So, number one, I’m gonna challenge you guys a little bit. I’m gonna call number one: I want you to look more at profitability over production. Profitability over production. Naren, from pretty much as long as I’ve been in dentistry—which is now 45 years—if two dentists get together and they talk about their practices, you know what number they talk about?

Naren Arulrajah: Production.

Gary Takacs: Production, yes. Every time, right? And we somehow measure, or compare with our peers, through production. Well, production’s not a bad thing to measure, but I’m more interested in profitability. Yeah, profitability.

Naren Arulrajah: A classic example is the airline business, right? They sell billions of dollars of tickets—they don’t make a lot of profit.

Gary Takacs: Profitability, yeah. Start paying attention to profitability over production, right? Yeah, production’s important, and we measure it, we look at it. But I’m more interested in your profit—your profitability.

Naren Arulrajah: Profit is a pure representation of the value you create. If you create a lot of value, you make a lot of profit. In the customer’s eyes, you’re not creating a lot of value—you are not making a lot of profit.

Gary Takacs: It also gives you clarity on where you need to fine-tune things, right? Profitability. So if you’re a solo dentist, I want you to have overhead no higher than 60%, right? Which—profitability isn’t technically that other 40%, because you still should be paying yourself as a dentist, right? Most dentists pay themselves whatever’s left over, right?

Naren Arulrajah: Like, so there’s no goal, there’s no targets, like you said. It’s just—instead of proactively working on it, you just end up with whatever’s left over.

Gary Takacs: One of the ways you could start to think about this: if you’re a solo dentist, pay yourself what you would pay an associate to do your job. Right? Pay yourself 30% of the collections on your production. Right? Make that your pay.

Naren Arulrajah: That’s your salary. Every month, you get that.

Gary Takacs: Yeah, that’s your salary. 30% of the collections on your production, right? And then have another category—that’s profitability—that you might distribute to yourself. You distribute whenever you want.

Naren Arulrajah: Monthly.

Gary Takacs: Yeah, once a month, once a quarter…

Naren Arulrajah: Once a year…

Gary Takacs: No, I like quarterly. Quarterly, yeah. And then you could see if you’ve got profitability. That’d be a good way for any listener to sort of pivot how they’re doing their finances. And then you can start thinking about, “Well, what is it that eats away at my profitability?”

And now this leads me to the second one. Maybe you discover that—you know, you have 50% of your patients that are Delta patients, right? And you’ve got a 45% discount on those Delta patients. Maybe that’s the thing that really eats into your profitability. It’s not saving a dollar on a box of gloves.

Naren Arulrajah: And now you’ll start making decisions. Let me drop that PPO plan that’s eating so much of my profits.

Gary Takacs: Which leads me to metrics and benchmarks—new metrics and benchmarks. Number two is PPO reduction. That’s awesome. We call it less insurance dependence, right? We don’t call it going fee-for-service—intentionally. Right? Because you don’t have to go all the way to fee-for-service to improve your practice. Every time you successfully resign from a PPO plan—and by success, I mean retain an acceptable amount of existing patients that stay with you—every time we successfully resign, we’ve improved your practice.

So how are we doing on reducing your PPO participation? PPO reduction. Maybe in 2026, you start with 15 plans—I’m just making up a random example—and your goal is to get that down to X number by the end of the year. PPO reduction—that’s a great metric and benchmark to measure success. Would you agree?

Naren Arulrajah: Agree, agree. I think that’s a—I think change the way you look at things or change the way you measure things, and your business changes just by shifting to profitability. And like, I love the fact that—get paid 30% on your production and then distribute profits every month. So you know, are you making any profit and how much it is, right?

Gary Takacs: And remember—it’s 30% of the collections.

Naren Arulrajah: Collections of your production, exactly. Yeah. And then the second one—start measuring how much PPO are you reducing. So hey, we reduced $100,000. Now that means that 45% write-off is no longer a write-off—that’s going into your profits.

Gary Takacs: At least. So let me give you an example. This is how it can affect your thinking. Let’s say your UCR crown fee—I’m gonna make up an example here, right? And if you’re listening to this in future time, you’re gonna have to adjust this for inflation. But today, let’s say your crown fee is $1,600. Your UCR crown fee. But your contracted fee with—let’s call it MetLife, okay?—is $700. Alright? Your crown fee is $700—not $1,600. And if you get paid on the collection—if you get paid 30% on the collections of your production—Doctor, what did you get paid to do that crown?

Naren Arulrajah: You got paid… you said 30% is the… is the write-off or 30% is…

Gary Takacs: No, your UCR fee is $1,600. Right? Your contracted fee is $700.

Naren Arulrajah: Oh, right. So you’re getting paid $700, but you’re doing $1,600 worth of work.

Gary Takacs: What do you get paid—paying yourself?

Naren Arulrajah: So, so you’re getting paid $700…

Gary Takacs: Oh, so there’s no overhead associated with that crown? We don’t have to pay a lab bill? We don’t have to pay—

Naren Arulrajah: Oh, I see what you mean.

Gary Takacs: You get paid 30% of the collections.

Naren Arulrajah: Collections. Right, right, right. So you get—so you’re getting paid $210, even though you did $1,600 worth of work?

Gary Takacs: Why did I go through this? I went through this—yeah, first of all, it tripped you up, Naren. It tripped you up. So how many dentists are gonna get this right?

Naren Arulrajah: Yeah.

Gary Takacs: It tripped you up. And I didn’t mean to trip you up, but it tripped you up.

Naren Arulrajah: Absolutely.

Gary Takacs: Dentists might think, “I got $700.” Right? No. You got $210. How angry are you—might you be more motivated to kick Delta? Or—I think MetLife was the example I used. Right? Would you be more motivated to say goodbye to MetLife?

Naren Arulrajah: A hundred percent. Yeah. Why would I spend so much time to make $210—and probably I can’t use the labs I want, because nobody’s gonna do the kind of quality work I want. So I had to go to the cheapest lab on planet Earth, and—do I want to look at myself in the mirror and say I’m proud of the person I am? Not really. And I get paid peanuts for it. It doesn’t make any sense.

Gary Takacs: And what if it’s two visits? If you’re using an outside lab, what if it’s two visits? So now we had the time it took to prep and temporize it, and now we had the time it took to seat that crown. Might do the hourly rate and discover you’d be better off working at TGI Fridays.

Naren Arulrajah: I know you’re joking, but I think there’s some truth to it, Gary.

Gary Takacs: Yeah.

Gary Takacs: I’m doing this on purpose because I think these new metrics and benchmarks give you a different way of looking at things.

Naren Arulrajah: At things, right?

Gary Takacs: If you’re looking at getting paid $210—by the way, those fees I quoted are not out of line. Right? $1,600 usual fee, getting paid $700. That’s not out of line with low-paying PPO plans. Might give you a different way of thinking. So, second one would be PPO reduction.

Third one, I’m gonna—I’m coloring outside the lines here. Maybe something we really focus on with metrics is team member retention.

Naren Arulrajah: Great point, Gary. Man…

Gary Takacs: Nothing can stall a practice out quicker than constant turnover. Nothing will stall your practice and cause more frustration, more aggravation, more stress, more anxiety than constant turnover. And if we’re not doing something to work on team retention, man, what’s happening?

Naren Arulrajah: You’re going backwards. I mean, it’s really…

Gary Takacs: Let’s be clear—there’s a certain amount of turnover that is outside of your control.

Naren Arulrajah: Yeah. Like, I think 20% maximum is reasonable.

Gary Takacs: It’s a moving target. We have people moving around more than they ever have. Right? One of the reasons you might lose a team member is—your hygienist decides to relocate out of state. Well, you can’t do a lot about that.

Another one we can’t do a lot about—let’s say one of your team members, by design, is pregnant with their first child. She’s planning on coming back—until she holds that bundle of joy. And then she says, "No, I’m gonna be a stay-at-home mom." And, you know, we celebrate that because of the wonderful opportunity for the family to be able to do that, if that’s possible. But, you know, that’s outside of your control.

But what I want to absolutely stop is someone leaving to go work in another practice down the street.

Naren Arulrajah: Especially if they’re somebody you would value, and they’re leaving to go work somewhere else—something is wrong.

Gary Takacs: And so if we’re not doing something for team retention, then we’re subject to that possibility being more likely to happen.

Naren Arulrajah: Exactly. So work on—make it a goal—to work on team retention.

Gary Takacs: Right.

Naren Arulrajah: And measure it. Like Gary said, if you measure it, you know where you stand. It’s not hypothetical, it’s not whatever—it’s real numbers, real data.

Gary Takacs: Ask your team. Do one-on-one check-in meetings with your team members. Not a review—but a check-in meeting. And maybe in that meeting, you sit down with a team member and say: “First of all, I want you to know how much I value you. But I’d like to hear from you—what can I do to better support you in your job? What can I do?”

And maybe we talk about it now, and then you come back to me with some ideas. I don’t mean to put you on the spot. But—what can I do to help you be happier at work?

Naren Arulrajah: Right.

Gary Takacs: And I can’t control everyone’s happiness, but I can contribute to it.

Naren Arulrajah: A hundred percent. And one of the books you read in your book club, Gary, a long time ago, was a book called Drive. And I remember he talks about purpose, mastery, and autonomy, right?

Are you giving these three things to your team members?

Do they have a purpose they all buy into?

Are you giving them a little bit of freedom so they can bring their own ideas and try them—and feel like they have some autonomy? We all like autonomy.

And finally, mastery—are you helping them grow? Are you setting milestones for them?

Like, I know you talk about giving people goals. Like someone who’s responsible for doctor production daily—now that’s a goal. And you give them some guidelines, and they work on it, they get better at it. Maybe in month one, they struggle—their call conversion rate is only 40%. And now they’re crushing it, they’re doing it at 80%.

We all love to grow, right? It’s just in us.

Gary Takacs: I’ve seen team members leave practices because they feel like there’s no opportunity for personal growth.

Naren Arulrajah: Yeah.

Gary Takacs: Now, sometimes that’s the team member’s perspective, but are you providing clear, understandable pathways for growth?

So number three: team retention.

Number four: I’m gonna go—same kind of topic, retention, but this time—patient loyalty. Patient loyalty.

Now, can we measure that? I’m gonna argue—partially. We can’t fully measure it. Well, sometimes we can measure it by, you know, patients leaving the office. That’s a clear indicator—if patients have asked to have records transferred. Right? We can measure that.

Naren Arulrajah: Uh, patients who go quiet, right? Who haven’t shown up in 15 months or more, right?

Gary Takacs: They’re MIA—they’re missing in action. MIA.

Naren Arulrajah: Missing in action, yeah.

Gary Takacs: But maybe we can also measure it in a positive way—through Google reviews that talk about how much they love the office and how they’d never go anywhere else for their care.

Naren Arulrajah: Exactly. Are we cultivating those kinds of relationships that lead to those reviews and even ongoing care?

Gary Takacs: Right. What percentage of your patients are coming in at least, you know, twice a year? Once a year on a regular basis?

Naren Arulrajah: Yeah. And if it’s 80% or 90% coming in at least once a year, you’re doing pretty well. But if only like 70%, you have a huge—

Gary Takacs: Cohort. 90% is the thriving benchmark for active recare. 90%—you’re not gonna get 100%.

Naren Arulrajah: 100%—

Gary Takacs: And that’s for twice a year recare. Or whatever the frequency is.

Naren Arulrajah: Got it, got it.

Gary Takacs: So, patient loyalty—how do we measure that? How do we work on it? How do we let our patients know that we love them and we hope they feel that in return?

And finally, the last one—it parallels my goal number seven: what progress are you making on work-life balance?

Don’t do what I did. And I’m very transparent about it. What I did throughout most of my career is say, “Someday I’m gonna get there. Someday I’m gonna do it.” It took a wake-up call—a personal wake-up call—for me to say, “Okay, I’m not going to keep putting this off to someday. I’m gonna start working on it now.”

But what baby steps are you taking? It’s not just a matter of getting there in one fell swoop, but what steps do you need to take so you can honestly say you have a better work-life balance? What is that?

So right there—there are five different benchmarks that we can look at that are outside of the normal KPIs we see everywhere:

1. Profitability over production
2. PPO reduction

Naren Arulrajah: I love that.

Gary Takacs: That might be big—big time.

3. Team retention, which we all know is very important today 4. Patient loyalty 5. Work-life balance

Well, let’s hit pause here and we’ll explore these in further depth in our Thriving Dentist Q&A Segment.

Naren Arulrajah: Welcome back to the Thriving Dentist Q&A Segment. This is Naren. Today we talked about new metrics and new benchmarks to thrive in 2025 and beyond. A wonderful topic. And Gary, we had fun and I learned a ton—so thank you for that. Let me go to—

Gary Takacs: Yeah, there’s some discussion there because a lot of times, there’s details behind the metrics. Not the obvious ones like production and collection—there’s stuff behind them that leads to those metrics being where they need to be. So I think we had some fun with that.

Naren Arulrajah: Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. And there are some follow-up questions. Let me just go through them. First question, Gary, is:

From your perspective, what is the one key metric to increase practice profitability?

Gary Takacs: What a great question. And I can answer that very, very quickly. So Naren, the data nationwide on what percentage of practices are participating with PPO plans is a bit elusive. But the data is that something like 92% of all practices in the country are accepting at least some PPO plans—one or more.

So, if you’re part of that 92%, then the single thing you can do to increase your practice profitability is: quit giving the fat cats at the insurance company 45 to 50% of your fee. Right? And so—what do I mean by that? What am I saying?

Naren Arulrajah: Yeah, I mean, because the problem with PPO plans is you are doing the full dentistry, but they’re only giving you part of the payment, right? So, let’s say—I’m just using a simple example with a single patient—you do $1,000 worth of dentistry, but you only get $600. Right? Which means it’s $400…

Gary Takacs: You’re underreporting it.

Naren Arulrajah: Yes. $550?

Gary Takacs: You’re getting $500 to $550.

Naren Arulrajah: $500 to $550, right. So your expenses are benchmarked on the fact that you’re doing $1,000 worth of dentistry, not $550 worth of dentistry. But when you collect only $500 or $550, you are almost losing money in many cases. In other words, after you pay your electricity, your team, all your other expenses…

Gary Takacs: When we go to the obvious things that doctors think about, like—“Okay, maybe I need to tighten up my supply budget.”

Naren Arulrajah: Yes.

Gary Takacs: Is that gonna solve it?

Naren Arulrajah: No, it’s not. Right? Because you can’t save 50% of your total revenue in your supply budget—because you don’t spend 50% of your total revenue on supplies.

Gary Takacs: Wait, wait. I was on that, uh, cheap dentist group—what’s it called?

Naren Arulrajah: Nifty Thrifty.

Gary Takacs: Nifty Thrifty! I was on Nifty Thrifty and they can save me a dollar on a box of gloves. That’s gonna do it, right?

Gary Takacs: No, no, no. How about we quit handing Delta, MetLife, Blue Cross 45 to 50% of your fee?

Naren Arulrajah: Exactly.

Gary Takacs: Now, here’s why a lot of doctors don’t think of it: they don’t know what they’re writing off.

Because there are two ways to enter your fees and fee schedule. One way is to enter your UCR fees, and then when you get an EOB from the insurance company, that’s loaded into your software program and it calculates the adjustment. Only 10% of dentists in the country enter their UCR fee schedule.

The advantage of doing it that way is—you can now run a report and see what you’re writing off.

90% of dentists enter their contracted fees. And all three major practice management software—Dentrix, Eaglesoft, Open Dental—encourage you to enter your contracted fees.

Why do they do that? Because it’s easier to figure out what you’re collecting—because your production and collection should match.

Gary Takacs: That’s why they encourage that. But when you do it that way, you never know what you’re writing off. And that’s why doctors spend so much time trying to save a dollar on a box of gloves—because they don’t realize they’re writing off 45–50% of their fee.

So, the one thing that 92% of dentists—the ones who are in-network—could do, is look at reducing your insurance dependence. That’s the solution.

And notice I did not say “be completely fee-for-service.” I said: reduce your insurance dependence.

Every time you successfully resign from a PPO plan, you’ve improved your practice.

But if your goal is to be fee-for-service, then I’ll be your biggest cheerleader—because that’s the way to get the most out of it.

But what a great question. For 92% of dentists, the answer is: develop a strategy to start resigning from some PPO plans—so that more of that money goes into your account, instead of going to the fat cats at the insurance company.

Naren Arulrajah: Absolutely. Gary, let’s jump into the next question I have for you—and this is really, really an important question, right? Reduce the amount of money you’re giving to PPO plans. So even if you reduce it by $100,000, that means $80,000 is pure profit, because you’re not losing all that money.

Anyway, let me go to question number two: “I feel like I have a good handle on practice metrics. However, after listening to this amazing episode, I’m worried if I may be missing some. Your thoughts?”

Gary Takacs: Oh yeah. You know, if all we do is follow the metrics that are in Dentrix, Eaglesoft, and Open Dental, you’re only getting a really big-picture view of things. And I think sometimes it’s useful to zoom in. Right?

So let’s use that. We’re all used to zooming in now, right? With our devices. So maybe we need to zoom in. Let me rattle off some that you may not be tracking:

1. How many new Google reviews are you getting per month?

Naren Arulrajah: Great question, Gary.

Gary Takacs: That’s an easy one to track. On the first day of the month, look at your total Google reviews. At the end of the month, check again. Let’s say on the first day, you’re at 400. By the end of the month, you’re at 412. That means you added 12 new reviews that month. Start tracking that every month.

Naren Arulrajah: Absolutely. We’ve been doing this for 18 years, and we know practices that are getting 10 or more Google reviews per month consistently will get a lot more new patients than those who don’t.

2. What percentage of calls during business hours are going to voicemail?

Gary Takacs: There used to be a time when people would leave a voicemail and wait for a callback. That’s not happening in 2025. What do they do now?

Naren Arulrajah: They go to the next dentist on the Google list.

Gary Takacs: Exactly. So what percentage of your calls during business hours are going to voicemail? And by the way, if your marketing company can’t provide that to you—get a different marketing company.

3. What is your call conversion rate?

Gary Takacs: That means: of all new patient calls, what percentage of those callers schedule a new patient appointment?

Let’s benchmark some things. So far we’ve got:

• New Google reviews
• % of missed calls during business hours
• Call conversion rate*

For Google reviews, aim for 10 new reviews per month.

For missed calls, I’d like to see that at 5% or less.

Naren Arulrajah: Yes, I would. Even 10% would be a huge improvement, especially if this is an area where you’re struggling.

Gary Takacs: We have data across a large client base, and over 40% of calls go to voicemail in some offices. So 5–10% would be a massive improvement. And I’m gonna stick with 5% because I think our Thriving Dentist Show listeners are exceptional.

Now let’s go to the third metric—call conversion rate. We’re not aiming for 100%. That’s not realistic.

Here’s the grading scale:

• 70% or more – A
• 60–70% – B
• 50–60% – C
• Less than 50% – Failing

4. Bonus metric: Net new patient flow

Gary Takacs: What is your net new patient flow every month?

That’s the number of new patients that come in, minus those who have left the practice.

Let’s say you’re in a transitory area—like parts of Florida, Texas, or Arizona—and you get 30 new patients a month. But 15 patients move, leave, or pass away.

Naren Arulrajah: That gives you a net new patient flow of 15.

Gary Takacs: Exactly. You may need to bring in more new patients just to maintain or grow your active patient count. And that’s a number that a lot of offices don’t really think about.

Naren Arulrajah: It’s a wonderful question, Gary. And I do think all the new metrics you shared—and the new benchmarks you shared in the podcast—were so right on the money. Nobody’s talking about this stuff. And I think it’s about time we adjust our thinking to 2025, instead of living in the good old days.

Gary Takacs: Yeah, we can look at some other things just for fun. We can look at your case acceptance percentage, right? That’s another good one.

And another one—just throwing things out there, see what sticks on the wall here—how many workdays did we have this month, and how many of those days did we hit our daily practice goal? That’s a great one.

Another metric that I love looking at, Naren—and this is really getting forward-thinking—it’s forecasting.

Look at the first day of the month, and ask: What do we have scheduled in the books for the month?

And keep doing that over time. Because at first, it won’t mean much—it’s just another piece of data. But over time, you’re going to develop a cadence and an awareness around it.

For example, one of our clients discovered that if he was at 75% of his monthly goal on the first day of the month, he knew the likelihood of hitting the goal was very, very high. Very.

Now, by the way, your number might be different than 75%. It depends on a lot of variables. But here’s the thing—if he was under 75%, he knew he needed to push. He needed to do some things to make it happen.

And if he was close—like 73% or 74%—he didn’t have to do a lot, but he had to do something.

But if it was at 50%, then he really had to do three things:

1. Reactivate patients who are past due in hygiene
2. Follow up on unscheduled treatment plans
3. Look for opportunities to add in same-day dentistry

And he reported back—he said, “Gary, you know what’s really cool? I used to panic if I was only at 50% of my goal for the month. Now I don’t panic anymore. I know what to do.”

He said, “We’ve been at 50% and finished at 105% of goal just by doing those three things.”

That’s real-time thinking, not just looking at history.

Too often, metrics tell you the history of what happened. And I like history—my undergraduate degree is in history, by the way. I don’t know if you knew that, Naren.

Naren Arulrajah: No, I didn’t!

Gary Takacs: Yeah, my undergrad is in history. So I like it. But the problem is—history tells you what happened.

Some of the best metrics tell us what’s happening now.

For example, if the goal is 10 new Google reviews a month, and it’s the 15th of the month, where do I want to be?

Naren Arulrajah: Around five?

Gary Takacs: Right. If I’m at five or six—great, keep going.

But if I’m at two… do we give up and say, “Oh well, it’s not gonna be a good review month”?

Naren Arulrajah:  No. You double down.

Gary Takacs: Exactly. You’ve gotta get eight in the next two weeks. That’s four a week. So I like goals that are forecasting-focused because they help us adjust while we still can.

And if you don’t like what’s happening—this is something we master with our clients—if you don’t like what’s happening, what do you do? Just throw your hands up?

No—you do something about it. Make adjustments.

I do this in my running. Most of you know I’m a distance runner. If I’m doing a half marathon—13.1 miles—I have a very specific goal for the halfway point. And if I’m not at that halfway goal, I’ve gotta pick it up, right?

Same thing applies here in your practice.

So anyway—that was fun, Naren. Great question.

Naren Arulrajah: Thank you, Gary. Appreciate it. Let me go to question number three:

“I enjoy caring for patients who value their health. How do I find them?”

Gary Takacs: Alright, Naren, I’m gonna flip that to you. You’re our resident marketing expert. How do you find them?

Naren Arulrajah: This is a great question, Gary. So let’s look at people who value their health—what are they typically looking for?

As we all know, there are communities within the general population. For example, some people care deeply about the materials used in dental care—they’re searching for things like:

• Holistic
• Biological
• Mercury-free dentistry

That’s one large community with lots of sub-communities.

Then there are people who understand the connection between gum disease and overall health—conditions like:

• Dementia
• Heart attack
• Stroke

There’s a great book by one of our mutual friends, called Beat the Heart Attack Gene.

Gary Takacs: Beat the Heart Attack Gene.

Naren Arulrajah: A good friend of mine—he’s in incredible shape—had a heart attack and was three minutes away from dying. It was because of a genetic marker he didn’t even know about.

And now, many dentists are talking about this—especially those who are tuned into the oral-systemic connection.

Gary Takacs: By the way, that book—Beat the Heart Attack Gene—was written by Dr. Bradley Bale. It’s a lay book, not a scientific text. It was a New York Times bestseller.

And he gives one of the best quotes I’ve ever heard from a physician about dentistry:

“All good health begins with the mouth.” — Bradley Bale, MD

How’s that for a cool quote?

Naren Arulrajah: That should be on your homepage!

So coming back to the question—how do you find these patients?

Start by researching what keywords these people are typing into Google. If I’m concerned about gum disease and heart disease, I might search:

• “Connection between gum disease and heart attacks”
• “Mercury-free dentist near me”
• “Biological dentist holistic care”

There are hundreds of these keywords. If you’re showing up when they’re searching, you’re attracting people already on the same wavelength.

Gary Takacs: And Google will tell us, right?

Naren Arulrajah: Yes, Google Analytics can tell us. And tools like Google Ads Keyword Planner can show search volumes. For our clients, we generate detailed keyword reports every month. Our goal is to help them rank in the top 10 Google results for at least 100 keywords and phrases.

Many of them rank for 200+ keywords. And even if they’re not ranking yet, we give them full transparency on which keywords are moving up and which aren’t—based on Google’s data.

Here’s the catch: There are “haves” and “have-nots” in SEO. Just like only 1–2% get into Ivy League schools, only about 5% of dental websites rank consistently for hundreds of keywords.

That’s by design—Google makes its money from paid ads. So if you’re ranking organically for hundreds of keywords, you have a real advantage.

If not—you’ll struggle to get traction with these high-value niches through SEO.

So, the first thing to do is check:

Are you ranking for hundreds of keywords?

If you’re not sure, book a Marketing Strategy Meeting—it’s our gift to you.

Go to www.ekwa.com/msm. That’s the company I founded, and Gary’s practice LifeSmiles has been our client for over 7 years.

We’ll do three things in that meeting:

1. Analyze your market and competition
2. Tell you exactly how many keywords you’re ranking for today
3. Give you a 12-month roadmap to get into the top 5%

Gary Takacs: You’ll walk away armed with information and a clear plan. I highly recommend setting up that Marketing Strategy Meeting. 

Naren Arulrajah: Absolutely—ekwa.com/msm. We’ll put a link in the show notes, so please take advantage of that.

Naren Arulrajah: Gary, let me go to the last and final question: “I know there are many different practice models. What is your preferred practice model?”

Gary Takacs: What a great question. And yes, there are indeed many good practice models. It depends—it depends on your goals and your vision.

But I like the idea of having a two-doctor practice. That could be:

• An owner dentist and an associate doctor, or
• Two doctors who are partners in the practice.

The two-doctor practice model can benefit you in a number of ways. One of the biggest benefits? It can be a fast track to achieving work-life balance.

For example, many solo dentists are working four clinical days a week—typically Monday through Thursday. But are they done at 5 PM on Thursday? No.

They still have to:

• Pay bills
• Handle HR tasks
• Catch up on chart notes
• Manage the practice

So even if they’re chairside four days, they’re really working 4.5 to 5 days once you add everything else.

Now, when you go to a two-doctor model, whether it’s by adding an associate or a partner, each doctor could work three days a week:

• One doctor could work Monday–Wednesday
• The other doctor could work Wednesday–Friday

You both get a four-day weekend, depending on how you configure it. And now you’re working just three days a week, yet you can still be just as productive as when you were working four.

If you’re wondering how in the world that’s possible—schedule a Coaching Strategy Meeting with me. I’ll walk you through exactly how we do it. We’ve done this many, many times with our clients.

Another benefit of the two-doctor practice: You and your co-doctor can divide and conquer based on clinical preferences.

Maybe your associate loves doing procedures you don’t enjoy—like surgery or endo. That complements your skillset and allows your practice to offer a broader range of services.

Plus, as your practice grows, your economics improve:

• Your rent or mortgage stays fixed
• But your collections grow
• So your overhead as a percentage drops

There are a whole lot of advantages to having at least a two-doctor practice. That’s my preferred model.

If you want to explore this further, schedule a Coaching Strategy Meeting with me at: thrivingdentist.com/csm

We can talk about your current model and explore how to design a better one that meets your goals. That would be a fun and productive call.

Naren Arulrajah: Absolutely, Gary.

Gary Takacs: Well, Naren, as we come to the finish line, this has been a really fun episode. Hope you all enjoyed it. I think there are a lot of takeaways here.

But most importantly—we want to encourage you to apply what you’ve learned.

As we wrap up today, I want to express my sincere thanks to each and every one of you. Thank you so much for listening to the Thriving Dentist Show.

Naren and I truly appreciate the privilege of your time, and we look forward to connecting with you on the next episode of the Thriving Dentist Show.