The Strategic Planning Episode

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. The title of today's episode is The Strategic Planning Episode. I'm really excited to share this information with you. Before we get to that, I have a couple of announcements to make. The first announcement is we have an upcoming webinar, a Thriving Dentist webinar. And the next virtual event is a webinar.

Gary Takacs: It's happening on August 27th. It's a one hour webinar. You'll get one hour of CE. It starts at 6:00 PM Eastern Time. 5:00 PM Midwest time. 4:00 PM Mountain Time and 3:00 PM Pacific Time. The name of this webinar is The $500,000 Question: What Your Dental Practice Is Really Worth in 2026. No tuition. You're there as a guest of ours. You do have to register, and to register for that, go to thrivingdentist.com/events . The next announcement is we have a returning guest, my co-host Naren. His tip is titled How to Turn Every Google Review Into a Marketing Asset. No further ado, here's Naren Arulrajah, How to Turn Every Google Review Into a Marketing Asset.

Naren Arulrajah: How to turn every Google review into a marketing asset. Hey, everyone, this is Naren, the co-host of The Thriving Dentist Show, and the founder and CEO of Ekwa Marketing. I have been CEO of Ekwa for 19 years. Google reviews are a very powerful way for you to grow your business, and it's something I recommend and advocate for from all of our clients. The minimum standard is to get 10 or more Google reviews. Now that you have these wonderful reviews, what do you do with them? One, it's gonna help you with search, whether it's AI search, whether it's ChatGPT, Google Gemini, or if it's regular search, or if it's Google Maps.

Naren Arulrajah: Google still controls 95% of the market. You can also leverage these reviews to convince patients. All of our clients have these Google reviews highlighted on particular pages of their websites, especially those five star paragraph reviews. And you can post it on social media. A recent post that we made for one of our clients had a review that said, a patient wrote on Google, I used to dread the dentist. Now I actually look forward to it. That line sat on Google for a year doing nothing. But by putting that line on a social media ad, we are able to get a lot more mileage from it.

Naren Arulrajah: So when you have these reviews, definitely take advantage of them, highlight them on the website, showcase them on the relevant pages. For example, the sedation dentistry page, where patients talk about how they used to dread going to a dentist, and now you make it seamless and painless. Share it on social media and even boost those posts. You are seen as an expert, and it's not just you saying it, it's a real person. They said it on Google, and you are putting that Google logo next to that review. If you want to learn more, or have us review your entire marketing, book a marketing strategy meeting. The link is ekwa.com/td .

Naren Arulrajah: We spend six hours prior to the meeting researching you, your competitors. We'll tell you where you stand on all the different components of marketing, whether you're getting an A, B, or C, and also compare you to your competition. Finally, we'll give you a plan, a roadmap, on how you can dominate marketing within a 12 month period. Book that meeting. That's our gift to you ekwa.com/td .

Naren Arulrajah: Welcome back to The Thriving Dentist Show. The topic we are covering is the strategic planning episode. Hope you enjoyed my tip on how to turn every Google review into a marketing asset. And if you need more new patients, don't forget to book that marketing strategy meeting. It's no cost. We spend six hours researching how you are doing versus your competition. The link is ekwa.com/td . Gary, I believe this episode is one of the most important episodes we have ever done. Strategic planning is very, very simple. It's kind of like asking our young kids, who do you wanna be when you grow up?

Naren Arulrajah: Kind of the same thing. Yes, you wanted to be a dentist, we get it. But who do you want to be a hero to? What kind of patients do you wanna treat? What kind of team do you want to work with? What will make you want to jump out of bed and go to work? And of course, it also has to be fulfilling to you. It has to be financially rewarding to you. So your hard work for 20, 30 years turns into something meaningful for the rest of your life. Having worked with hundreds and hundreds of practices, at least in my case, and in your case, probably 2000 plus, there's a lot of nuances when you look at the ones who are strategic and who do well and the ones who are not. Gary, in your experience, having done this for 46 plus years, what do you think are the differences between those who get it right versus who are always struggling?

Gary Takacs: Well, if you're strategic, you're proactive. If you're not strategic, you are reactive. If you're not planning for the future, then you're just letting the future happen. You're letting the future unfold. Those that are strategic planners are proactive. They're creating their future, not just waiting to see what happens. When I sit down with a client with strategic planning, I go out three years and I say, doctor, imagine that we are face-to-face three years from now enjoying a really great dinner together. Imagine that your practice at that point feels as good as it could possibly feel. Every aspect of your practice is firing on all cylinders. What does that look like?

Gary Takacs: So, doctor, your homework is to tell me, if your practice was as good as it could be, what would that look like? Now they need to actually unpack it into all different aspects. What kind of dentistry would you be doing? What would your relationship with insurance companies be? What kind of team would you have? What kind of marketing would you have in place? What would your schedule look like? And really go into granular detail. And then when we get together and they tell me what their version of ideal is, in their words, I let them tell me what that is.

Gary Takacs: Because there is no generic version of ideal. I know some dentists that absolutely love everything related to TMD and TMJ. Yet there are many other colleagues that say, when I hear TMD, TMJ, I wanna run the other way. So when they can describe to me in granular detail what they would like their ideal practice to look like in three years, then we just reverse engineer it. We know where the finish line is, they just described it, and I know where they are now. It's just a matter of reverse engineering. What do we have to do to get from where we are now to where they'd like it to be? The biggest mistake most dentists make is they've never given themselves the luxury of even considering, if your practice was as good as it could be, what would that look like?

Gary Takacs: Because they're bogged down in reality. They're stuck in the reality of the day-to-day struggle. And so consequently, when you're stuck in the reality of day-to-day struggle and never break free from that, three years later, you're just in the same version of another everyday struggle. Every one of our listeners can benefit by going to the place in the world you do your best thinking, wherever that is. It might be on the beach. Maybe it's in the mountains. Maybe it's on your back porch. But take the liberty of saying, with no limitations, if your practice was as good as it could be, what would that look like? Most dentists have never given themselves the luxury of asking themselves that question, and as a result, they never get there because it's not even a target on the board.

Naren Arulrajah: I wanna share a story that just happened yesterday. One of our mutual clients. He was a PPO practice, has been for a long time, 85% of his patients were PPO. And today he's a 100% fee for service practice. He and his wife had a chat, and he said, I would rather quit dentistry than every year go to work, work harder, make less, and feel less appreciated.

Gary Takacs: You're a chef working at McDonald's.

Naren Arulrajah: Exactly, Gary. And he's like, I would quit. He has literally told his wife, I'm not a stupid guy. I can create a new career. We have money saved up. Anyway, fast forward, he makes a choice. He went through the transition, he lost patients, but now he's like, I'm working so much less. His revenue didn't go up, but he's working 50% of the time. He loves his job. He even shared a story of one of these patients who quit and came back, and this particular individual had gone to this practice and that practice. And then finally it's like, I am home.

Gary Takacs: Refer him to Thriving Dentist coaching, because we'll correct the part where his revenue didn't go up. We'll correct that part. The reason why I wanted to do this episode right now is, as we're recording this, there's still almost half a year left in 2026. So regardless of where you are at this point, you have enough time between now and the end of the year to finish where you want to finish. And also, I wanted you to finish the year with a lot of momentum. Going into 2027, you can really gear up to make 2027 your best year. You have the ability and the time to mid-course correct, and to change.

Gary Takacs: Hopefully we are igniting a little bit of passion under our listeners about the fact that they can have an ideal practice. But you first have to really be able to define that, because there is no one generic version of what ideal is. Ideal is your own. Give yourself the privilege of asking and answering the question. If your practice was as good as it could be, what would that look like?

Naren Arulrajah: Yeah, I think it's just not taking no for an answer. Sometimes people accept that reality they hit, but they feel like there's no other reality. But that's not true, if you really have a strategic plan. Gary, can you provide a specific example of how strategic planning has resulted in meaningful or significant benefit for one of your clients?

Gary Takacs: Well, I'm gonna do better than that. I'm gonna give you three specific examples. A client of mine really enjoys doing Invisalign. This particular doctor, really excited about Invisalign. And in the first six months of the year, he had started a grand total of three Invisalign cases. Three. And so if he continued at that pace, he was on track to end the year with six.

Gary Takacs: We did a specific meeting around what do we do in the last half of this year? Strategic planning. And in the last half of the year, based on all the different steps we took in strategic planning, he started one start a week. So there was 26 weeks left. He did three starts in the first six months, 26 starts in the last six months, ended up at 29. And that was done through strategic planning. If he was to continue that into the next year and do a start a week, he's gonna have 50 starts for the year. Now that's a difference maker in his practice.

Gary Takacs: Example number two is a client of mine that had been a solo practitioner, but had wanted to get to the point where he could bring an associate doctor on. He had an associate candidate he thought would be ideal. And he said, if I could by the end of the year get to the point where I could add this associate, I think I'd be adding my ideal associate doctor. But I'm afraid that if I'm not ready by the first of the year, I'm gonna lose him. He was contracted through the end of the year. So all of our strategic planning built around, how do we grow the practice enough to support adding a second doctor?

Gary Takacs: It had to do with reactivating people that were past due. It had to do with follow up on unscheduled treatment plans. It had to do with getting the team on board to adding another doctor. Part of the plan was he had room to expand another operatory. We wanted to make sure we added that other operatory before we added the associate. And sure enough, everything came into line so that he was able to hire this associate when his contract expired at the end of the year. It was the beginning of 2026, going into the new year, this doctor was now a two doctor practice.

Gary Takacs: The third one. This is my favorite one. This is an office that was heavily infected with PPO plans. The doctor was extremely frustrated. He said, hygiene is costing me money to do hygiene. And he said, I know better than that, because hygiene is the backbone of a successful practice. So the strategic planning that we did in the last six months of the year was to prepare to successfully resign from PPO plans. So we could start the next year by resigning from plans, to get to by June 30th of the next year, be completely out of network with all plans.

Gary Takacs: So the six months of strategic planning had all to do with preparation. We're not just gonna send a letter and let the chips fall where they will. That's a disaster. The last six months, getting the team on board, getting marketing in place, building the demand in the schedule, strengthening the relationship aspect. The office, by his own admission, I said, how relationship driven do you think you are? He said, Gary, I'd like to say we're an A plus, but that's not true. He said, I think maybe on our best day we're a B, and on most days we're more like a C plus. And I said, when do you wanna start making those changes? He said, I want to start moving in that direction now.

Naren Arulrajah: I'm 50, and life is short. We have a few years left. The question is, what do we do with it? Are we jumping out of bed and doing the things we love? Or are we just going to the salt mine? I really don't think in 2026 anybody has to go to the salt mine. But the prison we live in is not real. It's in our head. And I do think having a conversation with someone like you, Gary, who's taken a lot of people from the salt mine to paradise, is a smart move.

Gary Takacs: It's why I continue to do what I do. Naren, recently there was a post on a very large private Facebook group with over 60,000 dentists. The question was: knowing what you know now, would you advise your son or daughter to become a dentist? 68% of the respondents said no. And in many cases, there was an expletive in front of the no. I was sad when I read that. So more than two thirds are saying they would not advise their son or daughter to become a dentist because they're so miserable.

Gary Takacs: And it's diametrically opposed to how I feel about our profession. And I believe most of our listeners are in my camp on this one, or they wouldn't be listening to a podcast on their own time. And probably most of those 68% are PPO providers. Meaning they're taking care of people that don't value what they do, because they want their free cleaning. And I just believe we have the ability to craft your ideal practice, whatever that is.

Naren Arulrajah: Can you give me two or three other strategic planning examples that you think will apply to most of our listeners?

Gary Takacs: Yeah. Some simple examples. Let's have a strategic planning project to put these 24 systems into your practice. A lot of offices say they have systems, and in fact, there's no evidence of those. When we look at all of our systems, we have 24 systems. If you make me pick one, I'm gonna say the schedule. You get the schedule right, and all kinds of positive things happen. Now, starting with, doctor, does your scheduling coordinator know what your daily production goal is?

Gary Takacs: A lot of times the doctor will say yes. And then I go to the scheduling coordinator. I say, what's doctor's daily production goal? And it turns out the number that they gave was three years ago. It's not current. So how in the world is your scheduling coordinator scheduling to the goal if they don't know what the goal is?

Naren Arulrajah: The thing that you and your team do is you do this on behalf of the doctor. A lot of doctors love dentistry, but they don't like talking to their scheduling coordinator. They don't like looking at call conversion numbers. They don't like paying attention to it two times a month.

Gary Takacs: They don't wanna do review meetings with their team members.

Naren Arulrajah: Yes, exactly. We tend to do the things we love, and we tend to ignore the things we don't love, even though they could be hurting us. That's why I think someone like you is there, with the trained team that can do that.

Gary Takacs: I'll give you another example at the granular level. When I look at our clients' websites, there's no coincidence that websites that have tons of landing pages with lots of before and after photos are gonna do much better with marketing. Is that true, Naren?

Naren Arulrajah: That is true. Especially if you're doing high value cases, landing pages are worth their weight in gold. Let's say you're doing implants. A single landing page with four or five beautifully orchestrated cases can make you a couple of hundred thousand dollars a year.

Gary Takacs: Yeah, absolutely. And yet doctors are usually pretty good at photography with something that falls in their clinical realm. But they don't have the befores and afters. So maybe a strategic planning project would be to get discipline around getting before and after photos of all the different procedures we do in our practice. Maybe it relates to revenue cycle management. Maybe it relates to a project where we once and for all button down everything that has to do with collections in our practice. Maybe we decide to have a buttoned-down system to not only do an annual review for each of our team members, but to have periodic check-ins throughout the year so that we can make mid-course corrections when needed.

Naren Arulrajah: If anyone is interested, I would strongly recommend they have a further conversation with Gary. The link is thrivingdentist.com/csm . I've seen this in action. We have a lot of mutual clients, so I get to see some numbers. I've seen practices that have made an extra $200,000 in profit in a year. I'm not talking revenue, in profit. And the funny thing is, the doctor says I'm working less than I used to.

Gary Takacs: Working less, enjoying it more.

Naren Arulrajah: Enjoying it more. Exactly. A lot of people think nothing will change. Just that they don't know what they don't know. And the other funny thing is getting introduced to bonus plans. People are happier, they love coming to work, they feel like they're part of the success of the practice. So there's a lot of good things that happen, not just to the bottom line, but for the overall makeup of the practice.

Naren Arulrajah: Gary, why is it important to involve the team in strategic planning? And how does one go about doing that in an effective way?

Gary Takacs: Great questions. The reason why it's so important to involve the team is if you do not involve the team, your plans will go nowhere. They'll die. Very quickly. I actually witnessed this as an in-office consultant. We had a really great meeting. Doctor came in on fire to share what he learned at a Spear course. And when the meeting broke up, I was in the lab in a spot where the team couldn't see me.

Gary Takacs: And the office manager called everyone together in the hallway and she said, I've been here for years. I've seen this happen time and time again. Just nod your head and agree. Two weeks later, he's gonna forget about everything that he just talked about in this meeting, and we'll go back to the way it was. And I heard that on the other side of the wall. So if we don't get the team involved in this, everything will go back to the way it was. Most team members are looking for direction from you on your practice. They're looking for direction from you.

Gary Takacs: So the reason why it's so important to involve the team is it doesn't go anywhere unless we do. The best way to do that is consistency. Have regular meetings. I like the format of two hours every two weeks, the same amount of time, but it allows you to go a little bit deeper into the format. And then the way I'd kick it off is I'd have a half day meeting with your team to talk about what this vision is, what the big picture is, and then just keep chiseling away at it with regular meetings.

Gary Takacs: Naren, I'm gonna shift gears. From my experience, marketing is often a very important part of any strategic plan. Please talk about where our listeners should spend their marketing dollars to get the best results. Let's say they want more Invisalign new patients. Where's the best place for them to spend their money?

Naren Arulrajah: Great question, Gary. Everything starts with the question you ask. If you and I are talking in three years, what should happen for you to be ecstatic? That clearly defines the goalpost. All of these come back to execution, and marketing is a huge part of successful execution. You have to help the ideal patients who you want, find you. Then you have to get them to like you, and then you have to get them to trust you. The fundamentals of marketing don't change. People have to know that you can help them. They have to like you. And then they have to trust you enough to give their care to you.

Naren Arulrajah: Today internet marketing is 95% of how patients find a dentist. Within the internet marketing space, you have Google, which dominates. Within the internet space, 90 to 95% of the people go to Google. And today they call it AI search, Google Maps, SEO, and various other names. But fundamentally it's people looking for information about a dentist who can help them. So first, are you showing up organically on those platforms? Especially Google, which controls 95% of the search market.

Naren Arulrajah: You can also use social media. But what I have found in my 19 years is it works for the influencers. The 1% who are like the dancing dentist, they do well. The other 99%, their options are ads or PPO plans. And ads are five to 10 times more expensive versus SEO. PPO plans are 30 times more expensive than SEO, because every time the patient comes in, you are getting a write off, which is the difference between your usual and customary fees versus what you end up collecting.

Gary Takacs: I call it the PPO tax.

Naren Arulrajah: PPO tax. Yes. Which is even worse than the IRS tax. Much, much bigger.

Naren Arulrajah: So if you're not an influencer, then dominating Google makes sense. The minimum is, at least for a hundred different types of popular searches people are doing, you better be at the top of Google search. And of course, don't ignore ChatGPT, don't ignore Perplexity. They're still small, but you wanna make sure you are also dominating those other platforms. I have found if you are ranking for a hundred different searches or more at any given time at the top of Google search, you are in the top 5%. You are gonna have an unfair advantage versus everybody else in the room.

Naren Arulrajah: So that's the basic of marketing. People have to find you. Of course, if you're into Invisalign, some of those keywords have to be related to Invisalign, at least 20 to 30. The second part is, they have to like you. And that's where landing pages become extremely important. Especially for high value services. They are making a life changing decision. So they want proof that you have actually done this and helped a person just like them. So they're like, oh yeah, Jenny was happy, and Jenny looks just like me, at least in the before picture. I want to be the after Jenny. Okay, let me call the office.

Naren Arulrajah: And the last one is reviews, reviews, reviews. The same doctor whose story I shared with you, who I spoke to yesterday, he said he used to run a Google Ads program, and it was not working for him. It was costing him like $300 to $400 a new patient. And he does SEO with us. Instead of spending a thousand bucks on ads, he bonused his team. He said, every month we get more than 10 reviews, you each will get a hundred bucks. He's getting 23, 22 reviews a month, and he's getting like double the number of patients he used to get. Last year he had a lull. And we noticed in those months, he was only getting like four or five reviews. So reviews are also a key part of this, especially in 2026.

Naren Arulrajah: So it's SEO, it's landing pages, and it's reviews. And the last piece is the way the phone is answered. The average dental practice, unfortunately, only books one out of three new patients. If you need help with any of this, Gary first met me almost 10 years ago, by doing a marketing strategy meeting for the practice you owned at the time, LifeSmiles. So we would love to help. Book that marketing strategy meeting. My team and I would tell you how you are doing, how your competition is doing, and see what we can do to help you.

Gary Takacs: As we bring this episode to a close, this has been a fun episode. Hopefully I planted some seeds about incorporating strategic planning into your practice. I wanna reinforce what Naren said. If you'd like to get more of the type of new patient that you'd like to see, and reduce your insurance dependence, then set up a marketing strategy meeting with Ekwa. And if you'd like very granular support in developing your ideal practice, consider scheduling a coaching strategy meeting with me. Go to thrivingdentist.com/csm . You'll have an hour Zoom meeting with me. Come to that meeting prepared to talk about, if your practice was as good as it could be in three years, what would that look like? I want you to know you deserve it. You deserve to have a practice that you truly enjoy coming to work in.

Gary Takacs: There's another part of work-life balance. I will call it work-life integration. Because work-life integration is about the days that you go to work, you truly enjoy what it is that you're doing. And if that's not true for you, and if you're part of that 68% that might not wanna advise your son or daughter to become a dentist, set up a coaching strategy meeting so we can change that. On behalf of Naren and I, thank you for the privilege of your time. Let me encourage you to put this into action. We look forward to connecting with you on the next Thriving Dentist Show.