The Role of your Admin Team in a Thriving Practice

Gary Takacs: Welcome to another episode of The Thriving Dentist Show. I’m Gary Takacs, the Thriving Dentist Show podcast founder and co-host. We have a great episode for you today. Today’s episode is "The Role of your Admin Team in a Thriving Practice", something I am absolutely passionate about. And we’re excited to share some information that we think will bring you a lot of value. Hey, before we get into this podcast episode, two quick announcements to make those of you that are regular listeners to the Thriving Dentist Show, that we routinely put on virtual events. They could be webinars, they could be panel discussions. They could be conversations we’re having with people we think will bring you useful information. And we do those on a regular basis. And if you’d like to be informed about what the next Thriving Dentist virtual event is, go to thrivingdentist.com/events, thrivingdentist.com/events.

Gary Takacs: Some of the events have CE. If we’re allowed to provide CE, then you’ll get CE some topics, allow us some topics do not. But if it’s a topic that allows us to provide CE, you’ll receive CE credits for those. However, all of the episodes will bring you information that you can use to strengthen your practice. And here’s the really cool part about it. There’s no tuition for these events. Even on the events that you get CE there’s no tuition. That’s a way for us to say thank you for your listenership, and a way for us to show some appreciation to you. So, if you wanna stay informed, go to thrivingdentist.com/events. And what you’ll see there is the next event on the calendar. So come join us. We’d love to see you at our Thriving Dentist events. The next announcement I have is we have a Thriving Dentist top clinical tip. And this is actually a returning guest, Dr. Jared Williams, and he’s got an awesome tip for you that do third molar extraction or wisdom teeth extraction. And his tip is three ways to protect the nerve on a tough wisdom tooth. I think that’s something you all might appreciate learning about. No further ado, here’s Dr. Jared Williams with three ways to protect the nerve on a tough wisdom tooth.

Dr. Jared Williams: Hey, thriving dentist, have you ever started working on a wisdom tooth and thought it was gonna be easy, but you found yourself stuck? Well, I’m Dr. Jared Williams. I’m a third molar expert, and I just wanted to share with you a couple of tips that have allowed my clinical practice to go smoothly over these last 12 years. All right, let’s jump into it. Number one is this. One thing I find that a lot of GPs or general dentists typically struggle with is finding the IAN, the inferior alveolar nerve. Well, if you don’t have a CT scan, I want to let be at peace. There’s a couple things that you could do in order to find the IAN. You could track it from the mental nerve and go backwards, or you could track it from the entrance into the mandibular foramen. The next thing I want you to do is this.

Dr. Jared Williams: When you find yourself in trouble, just breathe. The reason why I say just breathe is because there’s three things that you could do in order to prevent issue to the IAN. Number one is do nothing. So if your clinical skills aren’t up to practice, always do nothing. That’s always something I always recommend my GPs that are not trained for oral surgery. The second thing is this. When you take out a tooth and you feel as if you have disturbed the IAN, what you simply want to do is just get dexamethasone, the four milligram to one ml vial, and pull out the medication and place it in the socket. You don’t have to do any IM injections. All you have to do is take the tooth out and place it in the socket, have the patient bite down on gauze and let them go. That’s gonna prevent any type of inflammation around that nerve. The last thing that you could do is perform an apicoectomy. Now, I wish I knew that tip when I got started. That would’ve saved me a lot of sleepless nights and thinking that I’m gonna get a call from the dental board. But if you apply these three techniques to your clinical practice, you won’t just be a regular dentist. You’ll be a thriving dentist.

Naren Arulrajah: Hello everyone. This is Naren, your co-host of The Thriving Dentist Show. I’m really excited about our topic today, but before I jump in, I wanna take a minute to thank Jared for being a returning guest. I love your tips, Jared, keep them coming. And of course, if you enjoy this, feel free to reach out to us or Jared if you have any further questions. Gary, the topic today is a very powerful topic. And it’s an important topic because this is something that I have heard a lot of our mutual clients struggle with. That is the whole admin team. What is the role of the admin team member in a thriving practice? How do you get the right people? How do you motivate them? How do you support them? What are the no-nos? So, very interesting topic, Gary, and I’m so glad we are covering it today.

Naren Arulrajah: And I also know you talk about a high performance team that you truly love and enjoy working with as one of the seven goals of a thriving practice. I believe it’s goal number four, a high performance team that you truly love and enjoy working with. At the end of the day, most of us who are professionals spend a lot of time with our team, sometimes even more time with our team than we spend with our own family. So, hey, if it’s not fun, then it’s like going to the salt mine, right? So you’re not gonna enjoy it. You’re gonna wish it’s Friday, as opposed to, you jump out of bed on a Monday. So it’s important to get this right. And many practice owners unfortunately don’t get it right. They struggle with this, and they struggle with this, and they’re in survival mode.

Naren Arulrajah: They just keep putting up with this. And after a while, like first, they lose, think of it like a battle, and then the second one, they kind of get resigned and just keep taking it. And I know you and I have seen situations, Gary, where some doctors know it’s not working, but are afraid to take action. They’re afraid of, what if I lose that really bad employee? And what if that person causes even more trouble? So all these things, and they get stuck in it. And one of the things you do, Gary, is help them get unstuck, right? And I’ve seen you get practices not only set it up properly, but also course correct and change. Now you have commented, Gary, that the high performance team perhaps is the most important of the seven goals.

Naren Arulrajah: Why? Because your argument is, without that, nothing else comes true. I know somebody might be thinking, hey, what about AI and how does that fit in? And I think AI can be a tool kind of like radiologists use AI, but they don’t trust AI to decide whether to treat somebody or not. Still a human is involved. So I think AI can be a useful tool in some parts of it, but you will still be successful in any kind of a group sport. practice is a group sport. You need good team members. So, let’s jump right in. So what are some of the reasons why, in your mind, Gary, this admin team, not just the clinical team, is so important for a practice?

Gary Takacs: Well, Naren, I have a strong belief that every department within a practice is critically important. When we think about the different departments, we think about our admin or our business office team. I’ve never liked the term that is so commonly used in dentistry, my front desk.

Naren Arulrajah: Right?

Gary Takacs: The front desk is a piece of furniture. Your team members are not a piece of furniture, right? They’re business team members, or I like the term admin, administration team members. And every single position is important. The team members we have in the business office are very important. The team members we have as dental assistants are very important. The team members we have as hygienists are absolutely important. And, if you’re a practice owner and you have more than one doctor, your doctor’s department is very important. Naren, they’re all important. But we thought it’d be fun to focus on this episode on admin team, and some things you can do to attract and develop the admin team to support your vision, whatever your vision is, to support that.

Gary Takacs: But some of the reasons, to answer your question specifically, some of the reasons why the admin team is so important, is they are the face of your practice and the voice of your practice. I used to say that the first impression was when someone called your office to make an appointment. I’d say that was the first impression. And we only have one chance to make a great first impression. I no longer believe that’s the first impression. I think today, if you look at the patient, the new patient journey into your practice, likely the first impression is they somehow land on your website. Maybe through, maybe they’re using a great marketing company like Ekwa, and they did a search for a dentist. And because of the work that Ekwa did, you’re not only on page one of your organic search, but you’re at the top of page one.

Gary Takacs: They click, your practice takes ’em to the website. So I think the website today, most of the time, is the first impression. And if that website doesn’t make a first impression, you don’t get a second chance. Okay. So now we have the website. Then I think the second thing, if you look at the consumer, the patient journey, the next thing that most of the public does is look at two or three of your Google reviews. They won’t read dozens of your reviews or hundreds of your reviews, but they’ll look at two or three. Would you agree with that, Naren?

Naren Arulrajah: Agreed, Gary. Yeah. I think the world is always evolving and changing. And, like I remember the days, 10, 20 years ago where, even before 20 years ago, we used to depend on Yellow Pages. I’m sure we all remember those days, right? And a lot of us saw the big ad and called the office with the big ad in the dental section. Then of course, we went into the early days of internet, and we used sites like AltaVista, and you could keyword stuff. And the person who used the word dentist a thousand times shows up. And then these sites got smarter and realized, it’s cheating. So Google came along and it became huge because it really stopped the cheaters and started giving people useful results.

Gary Takacs: You had to earn it. Yeah, exactly.

Naren Arulrajah: And the point that I was trying to make is, now we are almost coexisting with these machines. we all use ChatGPT, on a regular basis or something like it, to edit emails, to summarize documents, to give us, before asking a lawyer about a contract, we ask ChatGPT about a contract. what ? So, and then same thing with search and Google, right? We use it for everything today to get information, learn, make decisions. So, as they coexist, like you correctly pointed out, that first impression is not necessarily happening when they’re on the phone, but it’s happening before they get to that step.

Gary Takacs: But when they finally do get to the call, that’s the first human interaction, yes.

Gary Takacs: That your potential new patient is having. And it’s more important than ever. And you could have a great website, have great Google reviews, and if that phone call is flat, then many patients will think, hmm, that’s not where I wanna go get taken care of. And they’ll go to the next office, it’s so easy for them, they just go to the next office in their search. So it’s the first human interaction. That’s one of the reasons why admin team is so important. Another is, one of the roles upfront is to be the financial coordinator, to sit down and do financial arrangements with patients and scheduling. And that’s very important, because if the team member is helpful in terms of helping patients figure out how to afford the care that they want and how to get it to fit within their budget, then you’re gonna have more scheduled treatment.

Gary Takacs: Another reason is the schedule. Admin team members are your scheduling coordinators. And I’ll share something very bluntly with any of our listeners, that you get scheduling right in your practice, and it’s not easy. There’s nothing easy with it. You get scheduling right, and a whole lot of positive things happen, right? So those are just a few of the reasons why admin team members are so important. And they’ve gotta be a balance between left brain and right brain. Left brain is the analytic side, right brain is the creative side. So they’ve gotta be people persons, and they also have to be skilled at their task. And those are kind of, in the brain, those are competing functions. Usually a person is one side or the other. But if someone’s gonna be a great scheduling coordinator, they’ve gotta be strong left brain, to be able to schedule. But in terms of greeting people and welcoming them and connecting with your patients, that’s right brain. So they have to balance left brain and right brain. And of course, every one of our team members has to do that. Doctors also have to do that. I agree. There’s some of the reasons why.

Naren Arulrajah: Right? And I think the way I think about admin is, identifying the people business. They’re not in the teeth business, right? Admins are the ones who take care of the people, welcome them, get them to feel appreciated, make them feel important. dot the I’s and cross the T’s. ‘Cause you can take care of teeth all day long, but if the person linked to that teeth is not happy, you don’t have a great experience.

Gary Takacs: Wonder if you were to walk into a practice as a patient that you’ve been a patient say for a little while, right? You want the team members sitting at that front desk, your first impression that day, right? Naren, it’s so good to see you. We’ve been expecting you, have a seat. Instead of looking at you with a blank stare and trying to figure out if you’re a patient, are you a patient or are you a salesperson trying to get the doctor? I want that patient to know when you walk through that door. Naren, it’s so good to see you. I saw you on the schedule, we were expecting you, have a seat, welcome. that’s different than just looking with a blank stare, yes, can I help you. Different. Now, if you’re a drill fill and bill practice, you’re a transaction practice, probably perfectly okay to say, who are you and how can I help. Maybe that works just fine in a transaction practice. But our listeners know that we’re not about transaction practices, we’re about relational practices. And if you listen to the Thriving Dentist Show, you drink that Kool-Aid, or would like to. So more important than ever to have those skills at the front desk, and we wanna continually develop those.

Naren Arulrajah: Let me ask you a question that just popped into my head, Gary. You talked about the left brain in the right brain, and you obviously are a huge fan of the people who are good at the relationship piece. Could you make the argument with technology, for example, we will tell you who’s calling, what they need to do with you. AI will help you with a lot of things like that. In other words, keeping tabs on things and reminding you and all that stuff.

Gary Takacs: We’ve added any of the multifunctional software programs that ride alongside your practice management software can really help you with that.

Naren Arulrajah: So I guess my question is people more important in the world of tech and AI more so than those other process and organizational skills, people skills? I’m just asking if you have to choose.

Gary Takacs: I have a bias. So, yeah. I believe that everyone listening to this, if you listen to the podcast, will know my answer to this. Absolutely. People skills are more important than ever, right? And, Dr. Reed taught me that in 1982, Gary, dentistry’s a people game. And it’s more so today than it ever was, right? And especially in a world where we have less and less connection, in healthcare,

Naren Arulrajah: It’s all automated. It’s all like, oh, I get a text message from my office, and it’s a thing that’s sending me the message, not a human being. Right?

Gary Takacs: More important, the more, and I’m a fan, I’m a nerd. I love technology. Love the right application of AI, absolutely love it. But it becomes, the people stuff becomes more important than ever, because the rest of the world, that stuff is evaporating,

Naren Arulrajah: Right?

Gary Takacs: Yeah.

Naren Arulrajah: Thank you. Got it. Now, what are the traits? I know we touched on the people side, but what are the other traits, in addition to that, of an admin team member that actually moves the needle in a practice?

Gary Takacs: Let me give you six traits, okay? And six very specific traits, that I think are very important. Whether we are hiring for those traits, or hiring to see if the candidate has those traits, or whether we’re working to train those traits inside an existing team. So let me rattle those off in no particular order. I want warmth. I want someone that’s warm, that’s genuinely interested in others. And I truly believe Linda Miles taught this many years ago, that when someone’s answering the phone, you wanna smile through the phone. You want the caller to feel like you’re smiling. So I want warmth. Another one is I want curiosity. I want your team member to be curious. Mary Osborne, I had a chance to spend time with Mary Osborne, one of the most incredible people I know in dentistry.

Gary Takacs: I was recently at the Pankey Institute for a faculty enhancement program that Mary led. And Mary teaches a concept called stay in the question. Stay in the question. And what she means by that is, oftentimes a breakthrough can happen if we just ask the patient one more question. One more question. So I think curiosity, I want admin team members to be curious, as opposed to the opposite of curious, which is judgmental. Judgmental is a closed door, it closes doors. When you’re curious, it opens doors. So I want curiosity, and you might ask a question to an interviewing candidate. Tell me in your past jobs, when you’ve been able to use the trait of curiosity in your job. Notice how open-ended that question is. If someone just looks at you and has a blank stare in an interview, they’re probably not curious. But ask that open-ended question.

Gary Takacs: Give an example, in any past job you’ve had, doesn’t have to be in dentistry, when curiosity has served you well. All right, a third trait, confidence. Oh, confidence. Oftentimes the treatment coordinator is going to sit down with the patient and schedule and handle financial work. They’ve gotta be confident. They can’t be fumbling. They’ve gotta be confident they booked the appointment. You gotta have some confidence in that. Next, they have to be organized. They’re gonna be running many different systems, and they have to have a level of organization to be able to keep a lot of different plates spinning in the air. So they have to be organized. Another trait is I want them to be calm, especially when things are a little bit tense. I want them to demonstrate calm and bring order, bring function to situations that can be a little bit tense.

Gary Takacs: I want calm. The last of the six that I’ll mention is they have to be, this is not negotiable, they have to be coachable. They’ve gotta be coachable. If they’re not coachable, it’s a deal breaker for me. So there’s those six traits, warmth, curious, confident, organized, calm, and coachable. Notice what is missing in those. I care a little bit about dental experience, but not so much. And especially if you don’t know what kind of practices they’ve worked in the past. If they’ve worked in a highly transactional practice and yours is relational, it doesn’t matter how much dental experience they’ve had in that type of practice, it’s not gonna cross over to yours. And I do find that today, with a shortage of team members applying for jobs in dentistry, it is useful to look outside of dentistry for our admin team members.

Gary Takacs: School teachers, I’ve hired many school teachers in my client work that have turned out to be absolutely amazing. And all they knew about dentistry was, I’ve been a patient in a dental practice. That’s all they’ve known. And if they’ve been a patient in your practice, that might be a really good connection. Maybe a school teacher, that for whatever reason, wants to change careers, and they’ve been a patient in your practice, they already know your practice from the patient side. So my point there is, be open to hiring admin team members outside of dentistry. Now understand that will be a project, right? It’s not plug and play. Gary, these could be useful.

Naren Arulrajah: Yeah. These traits are really important. So I wanna kind of go through them again and ask you some questions just so that our people really get it. The first two traits, warm and curious. I guess if you find people who care about people and who want to help people, I assume they would want to do this, right? They would be warm and they would be curious, right? In other words, they’re committed to making a difference in the lives of people. What’s your take on that? Like, hiring people.

Gary Takacs: Everyone’s gonna say, are you warm? Yes, I’m warm.

Naren Arulrajah: Yes, exactly.

Gary Takacs: Everyone answers yes to any of those questions. Yes, you have to, and you can read it. Warmth is something you can read in a face-to-face interview. I don’t know that you can read it as well in a Zoom interview, but absolutely in a face-to-face you can. So you’re gonna read that yourself. Curious is, ask that question. Hey, in any of your past jobs, inside or outside dentistry, show me where being curious, open-ended, right, and you’re gonna find out.

Naren Arulrajah: Do you wanna hire people, like for example, if somebody’s looking for a job, and for them this is the same as being an Amazon driver, how do you find those people who love people, who wanna make a difference? Is there a way to, I know it’s not a trait carry, it’s more of like how they see the world.

Gary Takacs: Hey, I worked at Trader Joe’s in the past, and I thought it’d be a great job because I love shopping at Trader Joe’s, but all my job was at Trader Joe’s was stocking boxes. I didn’t have any people connection. I want people, that’s, that’s where a past Trader Joe’s employee might be in dentistry, where they’re seeking out what they didn’t get in another job.

Naren Arulrajah: Right? Yeah. I remember you said sometimes you have hired people at a Starbucks. They’re so warm and friendly and, how even a waiter, at a restaurant,

Gary Takacs: I can actually think of multiple examples in our client base where we’ve hired a barista from Starbucks, right, zero dental experience, right? And it’s like, we can train you on that stuff, right? But this warmth, you remember my name every time I come in, and having my drink on the counter, by the time I get through the line, it’s already there. Yeah, that one’s organized. If they’re a barista, they’re organized, to be a barista, one, making the saucer, the coffee, you can’t be a successful barista without being able to juggle multiple plates in the air. Exactly. So they’d be likely would be very organized. Calmness is also something you experience. If someone,

Gary Takacs: Do they, being in front of them, do they raise your blood pressure or do they lower your blood pressure?

Naren Arulrajah: Great question. Let me ask you this. Calm and coachable to me is tied to ego. What is the people who kind of inject themselves and make themselves part of the drama are definitely not calm. And it’s hard to coach because they always think they’re right, and everybody else is always wrong. So how do you figure that stuff out? Because I know, unfortunately, the world we live in with self-absorbed people who are obsessed with TikTok and Instagram, this human element and being able to control your emotions is not a skill that’s abundant, right? Unlike the prior generations. At least that’s kind of my take or my experience. How do you comment on that, Gary? How do you figure that stuff out? Like someone who has self-mastery, someone who’s self-aware, someone who understands when they’re being part of the problem versus part of the solution.

Gary Takacs: I’d love to tell you can always hire for it and screen for it in the interview, and that is not true, right? Sometimes it reveals itself in the early days of their employment. And if someone is maybe not naturally calm, we can give them some tips to add that to their skillset, to read the situation, to demonstrate calmness. By the way, it also shows up in the DISC personality styles, someone that’s a high S, that’s above 50 in the DISC scores, has calmness, especially calmness in a crisis. So that can be part of it. But some of these things can be learned, right? Sometimes they’re natural traits and then they can be enhanced. But in some cases, we can let them know, one of the things I need you to do, Susan, let’s say Susan’s an admin team member, is to demonstrate calmness, especially when a new patient shows up with some apprehension. Let me show you how to do that. And they can pick that up. So, we talk about traits, but traits aren’t always yes or no. They’re sometimes in the middle, and they can be developed. So it’s something we can work on as part of their career path and their success path in your practice.

Naren Arulrajah: Can you find that out in a working interview? So you ask them to come and work for you for a day, and you pay them, is that like a good technique to kind of discover some of these things? Or not really?

Gary Takacs: Not a fan of working interviews. Never have been. Working interviews bring out the worst in people.

Naren Arulrajah: Right.

Gary Takacs: They’re in an environment they don’t know. They have no idea, they might not even know your practice management software, and now we’re judging them on that. It’s the opposite of being curious about, could this person fit our practice. Now you’re being judgmental based on how they performed in a working interview. I tell you what I would do that would substitute a working interview. Have one of your team members spend some time with your candidate. And one assessment, I want one assessment only, how does your team member think this person will fit with your team?

Naren Arulrajah: Right?

Gary Takacs: And it wouldn’t be a working interview, it might be a lunch. In fact, I might suggest that would be a wonderful format, one of your team members taking a candidate out to lunch, social, and evaluating how your team member thinks that person might fit. When your team thinks you’ve made a good hire, you are miles ahead, as opposed to, oh my God, this isn’t gonna work, why did Dr. hire this person. So involve your team somehow. You bet, right?

Naren Arulrajah: Let me jump to the next question, Gary. But before I do, I’m assuming you would argue that if you do get it wrong, because I think all of us, even though we are so thorough, could get it wrong, I think you would say let go of that person sooner rather than later. But my question is, how do practice owners get hiring a role wrong? And what should they do differently?

Gary Takacs: Well, I think they hire too narrowly. In other words, let’s say you have Open Dental. I only want someone on my admin team that understands Open Dental. And now anybody that has other software experience, Dentrix, Eaglesoft, Curve, is now not a candidate.

Naren Arulrajah: Oh, even that barista that you really liked is what?

Gary Takacs: They’re absolutely out. Yeah. So I think they hire too narrowly on skills like software. But I would say an axiom that I believe even stronger today, and I think most dentists are getting this flat out wrong today, don’t take that personally, doctors, just be open to this. But you hire slowly, hire slowly. And if we do need to make a change, you make that change quickly. So hire slowly, fire quickly. I don’t like the word fire, ’cause it’s so caustic, but, no, hire slowly, take your time. Most dentists today, in the post-COVID era of not even getting very many resumes, I hired her because she showed up for the interview, that was the one redeeming factor, Maria showed up, and that’s why they hired her. I think take your time.

Naren Arulrajah: And another thing I was just thinking about as you were speaking, you said we tend to look for skills and things like that, right? Dentists, I’ve been to dental conferences, like you have, the other detail-oriented people who love to learn, who love to take notes. So they appreciate those, but is it because they themselves are not that people, so they tend to attract people who are kind of like them versus the people who are different from them, who have the things that they’re not good at? I’m just trying to understand.

Gary Takacs: I think what’s happening now is people are hiring just to fill a slot. And I get it, I get it. It’s

Naren Arulrajah: Like a checkbox, like a check.

Gary Takacs: Okay, I need an insurance coordinator, hire someone. Instead of hiring for fit, hiring for values, hiring for alignment with the practice vision. Hey, so doctor, if you don’t have a practice vision, get one, right? Get one, and it needs to be, a short paragraph. So imagine if you’re doing the interview, say, Maria, let me share with you what our practice vision is, and share it, and don’t read it, share it in an impromptu way. Tell me why you think you could support our vision. Tell me how you feel like you’re the right person that can support that vision. Notice the open-endedness of this, right? Do you like that vision? Yeah, that’s a good vision, I’m all about it. I got nothing out of it. Nothing.

Gary Takacs: here’s the vision, here’s what we’re trying to, for example, the vision might be, our goal is to treat patients the way we would like to be treated, clinically and behaviorally. We think about our patients as our patient family. We know that sounds corny, but we think about our patients as our patient family. Part of our goal, part of our vision, is to deliver the highest quality dental care possible and truly make a difference in the lives of our patients and connect with them. And it’s a highly relational practice. And then I’m literally just making this up extemporaneously, and then say to them, tell me about how you feel you could support that vision as one of our team members. And then zip it up and listen. You’re gonna learn an awful lot right there, right?

Gary Takacs: But hire slowly. Even now, don’t fill a position so often. I’ll ask a client, especially if we’re looking at resigning from PPO plans, the first factor I look at is your practice highly relational or is it more transactional? If we look at a spectrum, the more relational the practice is, I’ll say, on a scale of one to 10, with 10, it couldn’t be more relational, it’s relational to the max. On a scale of one to 10, how would you evaluate your practice? Very subjective. And they’ll say, Gary, I’d like to think that we’re a 10, but recently we’ve had some turnover, and with newer team members, I think we’re maybe a seven or an eight on our best day. And they’re commenting on it in regard to the newer team members not being as relational as the longer-term team members are.

Gary Takacs: So don’t hire quickly, you’ll be shooting a hole in the relational aspect of your practice if you make the mistake of hiring quickly. Even when it is hard, to be shorthanded, you can fill some roles. Heck, if you need an insurance coordinator, hire it out. You can hire it out and have that done. You can get all of the insurance verification and all of what we like to call revenue cycle management, what we used to call collections. Well, that can be outsourced, and that can be handled through companies that do that and individuals that do that, while we’re waiting to fill the position.

Naren Arulrajah: So don’t rush, right? What’s the role of references, Gary? How would you do it? Is it important? Is it not in this process?

Gary Takacs: Well, I’m a practical person. If I was interviewing, I would never have references that wouldn’t sing glowing praises about me. So I think that’s a built-in, I’d like to see ’em. I’d like to see references, don’t put a lot of weight in them.

Naren Arulrajah: when I have done references, sometimes I ask open-ended questions, and once they build rapport, they will share examples or lack thereof, and it’ll give you some

Gary Takacs: Disagree, Naren.

Naren Arulrajah: No. Okay.

Gary Takacs: Today, in the legal environment that we’re in, no one’s gonna give you a negative. No manager or dentist is gonna say something negative about a team member from fear of getting sued,

Naren Arulrajah: Right?

Gary Takacs: It’s worthless, right? Absolutely worthless. It used to be more valid when we weren’t so afraid of HR action, right? But, believe it or not, a candidate could go to the labor board in your state and take issue with the labor board about a reference that provided a negative reference for them in a job interview. And that could be many thousands of dollars of judgment, if you’re in a state where the state favors employees over employers, right? Be careful. So most dentists and most office managers know that what I can say about that person is, that person worked for us during this time period. That’s all they’ll say,

Naren Arulrajah: Right?

Gary Takacs: So, I think they’re worthless.

Gary Takacs: Literally the beginning. Yeah. We need to have clear expectations, a timeline, relative to certain tasks, and we need to have regular check-ins. The worst thing you could do is say, we’re gonna do, first of all, there’s a 90-day probation period, and then after that, we’ll meet once a year and do a review. 1950s style, that’s not 2026. We need to have regular check-ins, short check-in meetings, doctor and team member, manager, office manager, if we have a big enough practice to have an actual office manager, and a real two-way check-in. Imagine it’s a doctor, and imagine it’s after the first week, I just wanted to check in with you, how are you feeling? Notice the open-endedness of that question. How are you feeling in your new job?

Gary Takacs: Share with me some successes you’ve had this last week. Share with me some challenges. How can I support you? Think about those questions, right? And you do that regularly, as they’re learning how to schedule in your practice, meet with them. And this is a short, this is not a long meeting, this can be five to seven minutes, and show interest, and come to the meeting and compliment, hey, I overheard you saying this the other day, and I was so proud, you’re new in the practice, but man, that was a perfect response, you supported our vision in the way that just made me feel so proud. So I would say, it is really the answer to that continuous development. one of the qualities we search for is, do they wanna be better tomorrow than they are today? That’s something I’m looking for too. And then how do they show that in their work? I’m gonna switch the roles now. I’m gonna ask you the question, because it relates to marketing,

Naren Arulrajah: Okay?

Gary Takacs: At the admin level, or admin team members, marketing becomes very important. That’s where every marketing dollar is either potentially converted into a new patient or is wasted from a marketing point of view. What should practice owners be paying attention to, for our current admin team and potential new hires?

Naren Arulrajah: Great question, Gary. And I think it’s really important to address this, because garbage in, garbage out, right? So if you don’t attract the right patients in, and you don’t make them feel important, right, from day one, and welcome, everything else is gonna fall apart, right? Like the wrong patients, we talked about the PPO patients who are only interested in things that are covered, versus all the education and all the excitement you have about dentistry, about changing lives. So your marketing team, especially your admin team, or the people specifically answering the phone, are playing a key role in that process, right? They’re the ones who are rolling out the red carpet, making people feel welcome, making them feel they can trust your practice. It’s kind of like the first impression. Like, we decide about anything, a new person, new business, in the first few seconds, that conversation that they’re gonna have on the phone is those first few seconds.

Naren Arulrajah: But like you said, Gary, earlier, a lot of this is also happening ahead of time. They’re reading your reviews, they keep seeing you again and again for everything you do on Google organically without ads, or you’re using ads and they think you’re not good, that’s why you’re using ads. All these impressions are getting formed in our heads, and then that phone experience validates it. The number one issue that I notice with the phone experience is lack of accountability, meaning there’s no tracking, right? Imagine you send kids to school and they never get a report card. They don’t know for that last assignment whether they got seven out of 10 or nine out of 10, and which questions they got wrong and what they need to do to fix it, right? That usually is lacking in 90% of practices.

Naren Arulrajah: So the average dental practice today is only successfully booking one out of three new patients. Lots of studies have been done on this. Why is that? Because they don’t even know that they’re booking one out of three, because none of this is getting recorded. So I think from a basic standpoint, you need, as a business, call tracking, lead tracking. So at least every call, every interaction coming in. And then you also need to figure out what percentage of the new patients who are engaging with your practice are actually booking. And it, they may not be booking because you’re missing calls, they may not be booking because you have a technology issue, like your phone system is not working properly, or they may not be booking because they were not trained properly, or because nobody was watching, so they didn’t, they just did whatever they thought they needed to do without really trying to be really good at what they do, right? So it could

Naren Arulrajah: 100%. And I have even heard stories like they get yelled at by the doctor about this one patient, and now that’s in the back of their mind, and anybody who sounds like them, smells like them, they will reject them. So why, and the doctor is unaware, he’s not tracking it, so he doesn’t know what’s going on. And this issue becomes, all these holes in the bucket means two out of three are not booking. So I do think,

Gary Takacs: If our listeners are not listening to their inbound calls,

Naren Arulrajah: Yes,

Gary Takacs: No idea how they’re being handled, and I don’t mean that judgmentally, right? You start, and it doesn’t matter, I know you do a great job, Naren, with Ekwa providing the analytics, you let ’em know how many calls were missed during, what percentage of the calls that came in during your business hours went to your voicemail, you have that, right? That data is now known. You can give us our conversion percentage of the new patients that called, what conversion, what percent of those, you’re absolutely right, the profession data across the entire profession, dentistry, is less than one third of new patients that call a practice end up making an appointment. But this is where some training can really help. One of our Thriving Dentist coaching clients, when we first started tracking that for them, they were at 25%.

Gary Takacs: Our goal is 70% or higher there, by the way, you can be higher than 70%, but our goal is 70% or higher for conversion percentage when new patients call this office, this was at 25%. We did training with them, and today they’re sitting at 76% each and every month. So they went from failing to absolutely thriving with that. It’s not a hundred. The goal is not a hundred percent, because, for example, if someone calls asking for a service you don’t provide, that’s not gonna convert. If someone calls asking if you would take Medicaid, and if you’re not a Medicaid provider, the answer is no. So we’re not looking for a hundred percent, we’re looking for 70% above. But same team members went from 25, these are great team members that were coachable, remember that, coachability?

Gary Takacs: Yes, coachable, and now they’re at 76% each and every month, they had a month where they went to 81%, and we were putting the holler in on that month, celebrating it because of the great results. So it can absolutely be transformed, but if you don’t know, if you don’t listen to your calls, you don’t know what’s being said, you might be trying to solve the wrong problem. You might say, I don’t need more calls. Did that office that was at 25% need more calls? No, office, solo dentist, right, only the name out, solo, strong solo practice, strong hygiene, 50 calls a month from potential new patients, that was thanks to Ekwa, 50 calls a month when they were at 25%. Naren, do the math, that’s 12 new patients a month, that wasn’t enough. And it wasn’t a marketing problem, it was a conversion problem. The same 50 calls a month from Ekwa, now convert 75%, it’s actually 76, but at 75%, that’s 38 new patients a month. Doctor, what would you rather have, take as long as you like, 12 or 38? Same marketing dollars.

Gary Takacs: That’s the difference. Profound, absolutely profound. Well, Naren, I wanna say that if any of our listeners would like some strength in terms of marketing, set up a marketing strategy meeting with Ekwa, something I did in 2017 and very grateful that I did, and recommend it to our clients. So go to ekwa.com/td , a Thriving Dentist, and you’ll set up a marketing strategy meeting and maybe get that piece, get on the way to getting that piece solved in your practice. And then in terms of bringing it back kind of full circle to this episode, I think this type of episode is one of those that can create lasting results for any of our podcast listeners. And we know that the admin team is critically important.

Gary Takacs: If you’d like help with that, one of our strengths is working with your admin team to fully train them, to get the systems in place in the practice to help them answer the phones effectively, to manage all the different clinic spinning plates. And we’re a strong support system of that, and Thriving Dentist coaching. If you’d like some help with that, you can schedule a coaching strategy meeting with me. We are accepting new clients. We don’t always accept new clients, there are times where we have a wait list. However, we are currently accepting new clients. We’ve had some doctors successfully, by plan, hit the finish line and successfully retire or transition, and we are accepting some new clients. So go to thrivingdentist.com/csm , coaching strategy meeting, that’s a Zoom meeting with me. We’ll talk about your practice, we’ll share a little bit about our coaching, talk about your goals and aspirations, and talk about how we can really get you on track to have a thriving practice. Well, Naren, this has been a lot of fun. We’ll simply close on letting our listeners know that we look forward to, first of all, thank you for the privilege of your time. We look forward to connecting with you on the next Thriving Dentist Show.