The type of practice I am about to describe certainly doesn’t fit in with everyone’s idea of how they want to run their practice. I say, a dentist is the king of his castle, so, by all means, go ahead and build the practice of your dreams. No one stands in your way of happiness besides yourself. However, I have run across a style of practice that can double as extremely secure, profitable, and rewarding. I first witnessed this style of practice in Palm Harbor, Florida, at the office of Dr. Vince Monticciolo. While there I witnessed this style for the first time with my own two eyes. Here’s what I saw. I saw a completely full parking lot. I saw a completely full waiting room. There were employees buzzing around like crazy. There were interlocking mazes of operatories and hallways. Hygienists were quickly and efficiently scaling away in several rooms. It was an amazing display of busyness and efficiency coexisting in the same place. What was driving all those patients there in the first place? Well, it became obvious that Vince had decided to build a practice that accepted many of the PPOs in the area. Most of the patients I saw certainly were insurance patients. Many of them were accepting treatment, but they were only accepting small portions of it at one time. The practice was using small appointments as its fuel. Vince, himself, was fast as lightning. I will never forget seeing him wiggle out two impacted lower molars in about 2 minutes each. I had heard that his practice was busy, but I never expected the level of production I saw with my own two eyes. I closely watched as he went from operatory to operatory in a very smooth manner without any apparent sense of urgency or hastiness. He was focused for sure, but never rushed. I also noticed something else as the day wore on. He was doing tons of procedures, but I saw that he didn’t do any molar root canals as far as I could tell. There were new patients who needed them and he diagnosed the root canals, but he seemed to be sending them out of his office to a specialist down the street. I wondered if Vince just hadn’t taken the time to learn the intricacies of molars, of which there are many, but he just seemed like

too good an operator to be turning these away. At some point I wandered into Vince’s office and saw that he had several dental school awards hanging on his wall as well as several advanced institute plaques. It became obvious that Vince had the talent to do molar root canals if he desired. I watched carefully the rest of the day. I wanted to ask him all day why he didn’t seem to be doing the molar endos. Of course he was so busy that he didn’t even stop for lunch, so it was at supper time that I finally got to pick his brain. I asked him why he had sent out 8, by my count, molar root canals to the specialist down the street in the course of the day. Sure, he had produced tremendous numbers, but he could have done much more if he had done the root canals. I also pointed out that I had seen his awards and suspected that he was very proficient in the procedure that he was turning away. His answer was surprising to me at that time. He asked if I had seen any wasted time in his schedule. I told him that I surely hadn’t seen any. He asked me if there were any procedures that I, myself, didn’t like to do. I replied that, of course, there were several things I hated, but did anyway; full dentures being one of the worst culprits. He then said that he had once practiced in Michigan. He said that the demographics of Michigan had lent themselves to people needing implants and other big procedures. Therefore, when he practiced there he did molar root canals, implants, and other big things that he just didn’t do in Florida. The simple reason was that there was a huge demographic in Florida of older retirees who needed bread and butter dentistry like fillings, crowns, simple extractions, and dentures. So, when in Rome I suppose, Vince had provided a practice model continued on page 2

In this issue:

I’d rather be the Cherry Picker than the guy holding the ladder Pg. 1

Painful but Necessary – SOPs Pg. 4

Template Help to the Rescue Pg. 8

Wisdom for the Ages from the Late, Great Jim Rohn Pg. 9

An Exercise to Truly Change You Forever Pg. 11

Question of the Month BACK COVER

The Cherry PickerThe Cherry PickerThe Cherry PickerThe Cherry Picker By Chris GriffinBy Chris GriffinBy Chris GriffinBy Chris Griffin

Est. 2008

Vol. 3, Issue 2, February 2010

Capacity Review Production and Efficiency for Dentists

continued from front page there where tons of insurance type patients were funneled into the practice every day. Most didn’t need or want big dental procedures. They had found a way to make that profitable in and of itself. The practice would have been a huge success even if there was no “Cherry Picking” going on. However, this is how I formed the idea of Cherry Picking in my own little head while I watched all of this. There was one thing that Vince did that was very specialized. He was IV certified and did this procedure in his office on very fearful patients who usually needed lots and lots of dentistry. So throughout the day with a huge volume of new patients flooding in to the practice, Vince would go along, diagnosing lots of dentistry. There was so much to diagnose that it would have been hard for him to have had a case acceptance low enough to really matter. He could “Cherry Pick” the procedures he wanted to do and still remain as busy as he wanted to be. This also allowed him to pick the procedures not only that he liked, but the ones that he knew he could do fast and well. He was probably very proficient at treating molars with root canals, but he knew that he could refer them to a specialist who would treat them perfectly. All the while he could move on to the next chair with a couple of crowns and maybe a premolar root canal. And every now and then, he would come upon a big sedation case. In fact, that’s exactly what happened the day I visited there. We had scheduled to have lunch with his wife at her medical office next door to the dental office. My buddies who were visiting with me and I were congregating together waiting on Vince to walk over with us when he popped his head in and said he was going to do a quick 6 unit IV sedation case during his lunch hour. He said he would make it up to us at supper. We totally understood and had PLENTY to talk about over lunch after watching this maestro of the handpiece at work during the morning anyway. That night Vince invited us over to his home and then dinner at the country club. He even picked up the tab over our protests. He said he always learned so much from every dentist he ate with that it would more than make up for the cost of our food. Another lesson there. Even the very best at their craft always invest in education, even if it’s just shooting the bull with a few greenhorn redneck dentists from the middle of nowhere. I think that visit to Florida set the stage for me believing that a PPO volume style practice would actually work with a little tweaking, like the “Cherry Picking” method. Here’s exactly how I applied that philosophy to my own practice. I came home from Florida and faced the reality that no amount of positive thinking or training was going to make me a successful cosmetic dentist in Ripley, Mississippi. Next, I researched all the big companies and groups in the area to try to figure out which PPOs were most common and had the most subscribers. You see, I certainly didn’t want to sign up with every PPO in the book, but I wanted to start the sign up process. I knew that just signing up with the PPO wouldn’t get a flood of patients immediately. During my research I discovered that, unbelievably, there was almost no representation for the “bad” Delta in North Mississippi. A lot of dentists were on the Premiere plan, but the PPO only had 2 dentists at that time in the entire north half of the state. I signed up with them. Then, I found out that all the school teachers and city workers had a different plan. I signed up with them. I went down the list until I had signed up with 5 plans. I figured 5 was enough. I decided that I was going to mix my specialty of efficiency with the new influx so that I would have no empty chair time. However, I didn’t want to totally discard my FFS segment of patients. I hoped that I could impress the PPO patients to the point that they would refer their family and friends. I figured that most of the referrals wouldn’t have PPOs. I was right on that point. Then, I realized that it would be months before the word got out that I was a provider, so I took matters into my own hands. I had my employees take baskets of Otis Spunkmeyer cookies to the Human Resource administrators at the big companies that had the PPOs. We just wanted to make sure that they knew that we were now providers and give them a little reason to think highly of us when an employee asked them who they should go to. Then we placed a little line at the bottom of our Yellow Pages ad that said, “Provider for Delta Dental and others.” It took a couple of months, but the patients started rolling in from the big companies. Guess what? I was right about the referrals. Of course, some of the people were referring their PPO friends, but it was way below half. Most of the referred people either had indemnity insurance or no insurance at all. That made the lifetime case value of the PPO patient much higher than it would have been. So, over time the PPO discount for the initial visit became less and less. I started to look at the PPO discount for what it actually was, a marketing expense. The only difference was that it was much better than most marketing expenses. Would you like to know why? The reason the PPO discount is a superior expense is that you give up that percentage; you already have gotten the patient in the chair, produced dentistry, and gotten the revenue. Most marketing expenses are the other way around. You pay for advertising, hope to get some people in the door, hope to get them to accept treatment, and then hope they pay you for it. The PPO discount totally cuts out those unknown factors. I know it sticks in the craw of dentists who think the discount is really discounting their worth or the worth of their services, but I think as business people we need to find a way to separate ourselves from ego centric ways of thinking. I am not saying to go out and take PPOs. I am saying that it is certainly a viable marketing option. continued on page 3

Capacity Review

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Capacity Review

continued from page 2 Too many superstars of dentistry have proven that the model can work and work well for it to be dismissed. If you don’t want to get involved, that’s totally fine, too. You can certainly succeed with that model. Everyone has different outcomes in life that they want to achieve. The completely FFS model is workable, too. You just have to become more of a master of marketing and niche building in my opinion. At the time in my life when I went to Vince’s office, I just wanted a way that I knew would work for me. I was tired of being all dressed up with no place to go. I had all these skills and efficiency systems, but no patients to work on. Luckily, I bet right and the practice took off. Later, I took Vince’s other advice and got a skill I could use to cherry pick very profitable procedures out of the huge volume of patients I was getting. I went to Birmingham, Alabama, and got IV certified. That is also an advanced part of the Cherry Picker strategy, finding profitable niches you can market within bread and butter practice. Now, I have added sedation, Invisalign, and wire braces. I hope to take the time to learn implant placement in the near future. I just haven’t been motivated to do so because everything else has gone so well. If you are struggling to put “butts in the seats,” I think you could certainly use the principles outlined in this article to try a Cherry Picker strategy in your own practice. Just don’t start tomorrow. Sit down and form your strategy today. Implement it tomorrow. It will take time for the applications to get approved. It will take time to form relationships with the Human Resource people at the companies. It will take time for your name to get in the little PPO booklets and on the websites. It will take time to train your staff in the higher volume strategies. It will take time for the Yellow Pages to cycle back around. You get the idea, it will take time. So, don’t delay. Some say the recession is over. Others say it is just beginning. Whatever is true, I would certainly rather try to find a way to have lots of “Butts in the Seats” and deal with PPO discounts than try to throw advertising bait out to those elusive FFS patients who are probably watching too much news and sitting on their wallets right now. As you see your numbers growing and you get a little money cushion in the old bank account, then you can gradually start learning cool techniques that will add profitable “cherries” to your production days. These will fill in the cracks of the schedule and make everything else more profitable. What are you waiting for?

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continued from back page dental supplies, you can store them in clear storage tubs below your new basket shelf. I would then place my colored bins on the southern wall with a shelf below it for the basket. Below the shelf you should have room for either supply tubs or rapid deployable carts (endo and O.S.) Then, I would place templates in each operatory (doctor's). Your sterilization room is too small for the rapid room setup system, but I'll bet you could fit your Route Board and camera in there. Voila. If you need some storage, you could have some under the stairs with a small door just to the right of the new setup area if you were facing it. Let me know what you think and if you need further clarification. BTW, can I use this as a case study for my newsletter? It is a prime example of how to make this work in a tight space. -Chris P.S. Kudos on not wanting to overspend just for the sake of overspending. Just don't step over too many dollars to pick up pennies. I would tear down the northern wall of that closet.

Hi Chris, I'm pretty sure the 17 sq.ft space you are talking about is a closet (under the stairs) we are using as what we call the DA room. It has the DA's open supplies as they arrive, pack cases to go out to labs, place impressions as a holding place before they get to go to the basement to pour, they have lab rx's, lab cases for insert or try in, shipping supplies to send cases to labs. Their counter space is only 12 inches deep. continued on page 7

Capacity Review

Standard Operating Procedures in the Dental Office: Preview to a Policy

Not that everything we’ve taught up until now has been fun stuff, but it is time to hit you with some heavy lifting. No, this part will not be fun, but it must be done to solidify the work you have done up until now. You must set the stan-dards you have created for your dental office and place them into permanent residence in your life or business. The best way to do this is with a Standard Operating Procedure, or SOP for short. Why has the human race, with all its intellect and ingenuity, failed to accomplish more in its time on Earth? We can all look inward and see how much we have personally accomplished in our time on this planet. If you consider all the thousands and millions of great minds that preceded us, one would think great and glorious wonders would exist all around. Perpetual problems and strife should have been long gone. Disease and war should be a distant memory, right? Why has this progress been so exceedingly slow? There have been great thinkers and leaders from way back to ancient Greece up until modern day. There have been plans, schedules, logistics and operations for ages. So little in-novation has endured to be built upon. Ingenuity has ebbed and flowed. Children have continued to make the mis-takes of their fathers. Those great thinkers came and went and took their great ideas with them. Sure, we have made progress, but not as much as we should have made. We know that Archimedes invented amazing war machines for the defense of Syracuse against the Romans, but we don’t have the plans. We know that the coliseum in Rome is still standing. Does anyone think we could build a concrete structure of that size today that would be standing several thousand years later? Doubtful. Where is the recipe for their stone mixture they used? Each one of the preceding Laws of Time up to this point can and should be tested and reduced to written, permanent standard operating instructions so you and those around you may understand the entire goal and the reasons behind it. Who else to write this new standard? The time and research required to bring in an outsider to do it for you would take considerable effort and funds. Outside people will have their own ideas and take on things. You certainly don’t want to derail the train of thought that has survived the tests in your pursuit of the perfect practice. You are the president, CEO, and Chairman of the Board of this particular goal. Take hold of the reins and grab your rightful responsibility. Write your own standard and be glad. You are almost there. Your goal is within sight. What are SOPs? Any official written document that sets forth an operational guideline is defined as a Standard Operating Procedure. SOPs are not training materials; they build on training, providing an organizational blueprint for operational safety and efficiency. Too much or too little detail in SOPs limits their usefulness and effectiveness on the incident scene. You know all the problems that companies, small businesses, Mom and Pops, and regular people face with keeping their systems rolling along intact, right? Well, these problems may have been avoided if the new organization had imple-mented written guidelines that defined precisely how operations were to be conducted. These guidelines, called Stan-dard Operating Procedures, clearly spell out what is expected and required of personnel during any and every business related procedure. They provide a mechanism to communicate requirements, organizational policies, and strategic plans to all the employees of a company or group. A common definition of a Standard Operating Procedure is “an or-ganizational directive that establishes a standard course of action.” In other words, SOPs are written guidelines that explain what is expected and required of anyone performing their jobs. A comprehensive set of SOPs defines in sig-nificant detail how the organization plans to operate. In short, they get everybody on the same page. SOPs are not in-tended to duplicate technical information or provide step-by-step instructions for doing the job; these are policies. SOPs provide the framework within which these more detailed policies exist. The knowledge and skills that individu-als need to perform specific job tasks are addressed in more detailed descriptions. Standard Operating Procedures, in-stead, describe related information like the use of supplies, equipment maintenance, duties of personnel, command structures, coordination with other organizations, reporting requirements, and so forth.

Stated differently, SOPs don’t describe how to do the job in a precise technical fashion, they describe the department’s rules for doing the job and give procedural guidance. An example might help to clarify this point. Operating a piece of equipment requires both technical skills and procedural guidance. Well-designed Standard Operating Procedures help fill both needs. For individual workers, SOPs clarify job requirements and expectations in a format that can be readily applied on the job. They explain in detail what the department wants them to do in the situations they are most likely to encounter. The result is improved safety, performance, and morale. For department managers, the advantages are equally great. SOPs provide a mechanism to identify needed changes, articulate strategies, document intentions, imple-ment regulatory requirements, enhance training, and evaluate operational performance. The result is improved opera-tional efficiency, greater accountability, and reduced liability. Once they are created, the entire continued on page 5

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Capacity Review

continued from page 4 operation benefits. How do we make our SOP? At the beginning of the process, members must clearly define the team’s mission, goals, and objectives, including a projected timeframe for completing the study. Guidance from management should address such factors as the authority of the group, budget and available resources, and the desired end product. The team leader should then clarify expecta-tions of individual members, including work assignments and standards of conduct in the development process. Meet-ing minutes and agendas should be prepared and distributed to members on a regular basis. Members should also docu-ment the work of the team to ensure accountability and to provide a written record of group proceedings for future ref-erence. Write the SOP! Just like everything else we’ve talked about, you’ve got to get up and actually do this. After an alternative procedure has been selected, the next task faced is the actual creation of a written document. To be effective and usable by our personnel, SOPs must be written clearly and concisely, using a logical and consistent format. The following sugges-tions for writing SOPs will enhance the “user-friendliness” of the final product, a key variable in determining success or failure during implementation. What level of detail should the SOP have? Generally speaking, SOPs should provide only broad procedural guidelines, not specific details of task performance. For example, a new SOP may include guidance to “Make our customers feel comfortable using good phone etiquette.” However, too much detail is provided if the SOP describes related job tasks, such as, “(1) Always answer the phone using your name and thanking them for calling; (2) Have your book of common objections open and waiting when the

customer calls; (3) Never ask them yes or no questions.; and (4) Always ask for their name during the beginning of the

phone call.” Remember: SOPs are not training manuals; they are broad organizational guidelines for performing tasks that members have already been trained to accomplish safely and effectively. Policies can and should be written after the Standard Operating Procedures have been established. SOP Topic Areas The most common areas and the ones I use are:

Purpose: This is why you are doing this in the first place. Scope: This should make clear which areas are affected by this SOP and which are not. Definitions: Clearly defines the terms that will be used to describe the SOP Description: This should describe all the factors involved in this project. This will be one of the bulkier areas of

the SOP. Training: This tells everyone what training is required to master the new goal. Personnel Involved: This is just the people who will be part of this SOP Procedure: A step-by-step walk through the expected standard Equipment: Any outside equipment that might be needed. Precautions: A list of potential pitfalls associated with this new standard. Reference: This is a list of references that one might need for clarification about this SOP.

SOPs are statements that summarize behavioral requirements and expectations in a certain functional area, i.e., ex-pected behavior in worker areas, training and education, adherence to policies and protocols among many others. Typi-cally, SOPs also contain some narrative material that explains, for example, the purpose and intent of the guidelines and possible exceptions. The subjects addressed and level of detail in SOPs may vary from department to department. In general, however, SOP writers should try to provide enough guidance to control operations without overwhelming personnel or unnecessarily limiting flexibility in special situations. Writing Standard Operating Procedures continued on page 6

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Capacity Review

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continued from page 5

SOPs should be organized into a logical framework, using headings and sub-headings that help clarify functional rela-tionships and the roles played by different groups. Most experts recommend that departments divide the SOP manual into separate sections for administration and operations. In our dental office that would be clinical and clerical. A mail order business might be operations and fulfillment. If desired, operational SOPs can be further subdivided into units that separately address each major component of the organization’s mission. Personnel policies may be covered in a separate document or set of documents. Always use clarity and conciseness. SOPs should be clear, concise, and written in plain English. While simply regurgi-tating proprietary language is easy for the owner of the business or the developer of the SOP, such language is often difficult to understand and apply to operational situations. Clear and simple statements are the best way to describe ac-tions in SOPs. Using an “outline” or “bulleted” style instead of a continuous narrative simplifies the presentation of in-formation and helps clarify relationships among different components of the SOP. What target audience should you shoot for? Write for the majority of the group or company. Some members may re-quire more help understanding the SOP than others. Others might already be highly experienced in the subject area. Generally, SOPs should be written to address the needs and educational level of the majority of department members, using language they can easily understand. Of course also write these so that you can go back and recommit yourself if you let them slip. We will discuss that more in an upcoming chapter. What about flexibility and ambiguity? To be effective, organizational guidelines must be unambiguous. At the same time, SOPs should provide enough flexibility for the on-scene leader to make decisions based on the situation at hand. Balancing the need to reduce ambiguity while maintaining flexibility can be difficult. Department SOPs should be pre-cise but inherently flexible, permitting an acceptable level of discretion that reflects the nature of the situation and the judgment of the team leader. (This concept should be explicitly stated at the beginning of the office SOP manual if this is an SOP for a business.) A related issue involves use of the terms “shall” and “may” when writing SOPs. An action preceded by the word “shall” is generally considered to be an inviolate rule, while using the term “may” implies greater flexibility and discretion by personnel. However, simply using “may” as an antecedent for every action can reduce the effectiveness of SOPs and lead to unnecessary ambiguity. By the same token, certain actions are so critical to health and safety that the term “shall” is obligatory, e.g., “companies shall not take the elevator directly to the fire floor if the building is on fire.” SOPs must be written clearly, concisely, and unambiguously. They should be organized and pre-sented in a manner that is “user-friendly” and readily accessible during operations. All department personnel should understand that, with the exception of critical health and safety issues (identified by the term “shall”), SOPs can be modified to suit the rarities of a particular situation, based on the judgment of the team member or team leader. A clear understanding by all department personnel of the purpose and function of SOPs will help eliminate confusion and mis-understanding. A standardized format or “layout” for SOPs helps streamline the writing process. Additional benefits include improved integration of new SOPs into the department’s larger SOP manual, ease of revision or updating, and enhanced usability. Different formats may be used for SOPs depending on the intended audience and purpose. For ex-ample, SOPs intended for clinical operations may be formatted differently than operational protocols used by office per-sonnel. Regardless of their intended use, however, several items that are usually included in any SOP other than the ones we discussed above are: • Numbering system—Important for reference, usability, and integrating individual SOPs into the overall manual. • Effective date—Date the SOP is officially adopted for use in the field. (This may be different from the date of issue. The effective date may be purposefully later than the date of issue to allow for all department members to be informed and/or educated on the new SOP.) • Expiration/review date—Important for ensuring the currency of SOPs by establishing a date for periodic review and revision, if needed. • Title—for ease of reference and usability. • Authority signature(s)—indicates that the SOP was properly created, reviewed, and approved by the leader, boss, or head authority. An organized, methodical development process is the best approach for preparing effective and valid SOPs. The process should be conceived as an integrated whole, and as such, its success is determined by the sum of its parts. The quality of SOPs will largely reflect the composition and leadership of the company or group itself, continued on page 7

Capacity Review

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continued from page 6 the level of support provided by the team, the team’s ability to establish realistic goals and accept-able procedures, the nature of research and analysis performed by the team, and the team’s ability to select appropriate alternatives and justify the results.

While certain elements are usually incorporated in all SOPs, a variety of different formats is possible, depending on the purpose and intended audience. Review and testing are vitally important for ensuring that potential problems or conflicts are identified prior to finalizing SOPs. The boss, leader, CEO, or head jerk in charge is ultimately responsible. SOPs have many other applications and benefits for any organization, including: • Explanation of performance expectations—SOPs describe and document what is expected of personnel in the perform-ance of their official duties. As such, they provide a benchmark for personnel, an objective mechanism for evaluating op-erational performance, and a tool for promoting a positive organizational culture. • Standardization of activities—SOPs identify planned and agreed-upon roles and actions. This information helps stan-dardize activities and promote coordination and communications among personnel. SOPs also simplify decision-making requirements under potentially stressful conditions. • Training and reference document—Written SOPs can provide the framework for training programs, member briefings, drills, and exercises. These activities, in turn, improve the understanding of work requirements and help identify potential problems. A comprehensive SOP manual also serves as a self study and reference document for personnel. • Systems analysis and feedback—the process of researching and developing SOPs provides opportunities for managers or leaders to compare current work practices with the state-of-the art in their field. Feedback from outside groups, techni-cal experts, and staff can help to identify potential problems and innovative solutions. • External communications—SOPs clarify the department’s operational philosophy and recommended practices. As such, they may prove useful in communicating organizational intentions and requirements to outside groups, or enhancing the public’s understanding of the business or activity. Now that I have bored you to death, let me try to break down why you should care about these things. First off, if you are reading this Newsletter, I know that you are an achiever. Achievers generally cannot achieve one thing and be done with it forever. They have to continually take the next hill. The Standard Operating Procedure lets you spend a lot of time getting one single aspect of something perfect. Then, once you have mustered the courage to fight off procrastination and actually set this thing down in writing, you can set it aside, delegate it to someone else, and move on to the next big thing in your life or business. This will allow you to have creative freedom and pick your next battle, and, yet you know that things are taken care on the home front. This SOP and the ensuing SOP manual that will inevitably exist after a few of these things get written, will give your business the systematization you need. If you want to step away from things for a week, month, or year, you will know if your SOPs are being followed, your business will still be in tip top shape when you get back. Also, some entrepreneurs I know are bad about getting to the top then getting lazy. They will slide back down to pre-SOP levels after a while and may not even remember the steps that got them to the top. All they have to do is dust off the old SOP manual, open it up, and voila, instant success back at their fingertips. Now that you’re convinced these things are essential, let’s get down and dirty and write up one for a goal your are cur-rently working on. Remember, this is the first step in writing a good office policy manual. The policies can’t be written before the SOP is in place. It could veer into way too many directions. But with the SOP here, the policies will be congruent and make sense. It’ll take you a while to get several of these down, and then we’ll discuss policies in a future issue. 3

continued from page 3 (It used to be our dark room until we went digital). If I take this away from them, then I need to create this space someplace else. I'd like to walk around w/ my FLIP camera and video the rooms over the next couple days, then email you that and we can compare w/ the dimensions. I was wondering if I could do something w/ the large op, it's about 12 x 11. If I partition the room, I wonder if I could fit a chair at least to do emergencies, consults, xrays, deliveries, exts,...things we do mainly standing and don't need a DA chair. I'm going to assisted hygiene now and will give up my 3rd room. As to centralizing the storage, I have the small area that used to be a closet, opened up a wall for a PAN machine, I no longer lease. It's a closet, no door, open to hallway b/w the 2 main ops and the bathroom. It looks tight , but it is centralized. Don't know that I have enough wall length there for all the bins necessary. At this point, my two main concerns is losing the use of my 3rd op, and the need to decrease the turnaround time for the set ups. Once I take the tubs out, what will I do w/ the space where the cabinetry now is? I keep wishing I could do something w/ the large op, once I remove the cabinetry. Let me video and then we can touch base again. P.S. I don't understand " BTW", and what you mean by "Just don't step over too many dollars to pick up pennies." Are you saying that I should not spend too much to make just a small difference? Thanks again for staying in touch w/ me. I'll email you video probably Tuesday. Maria continued on page 8

Capacity Review

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Publisher's Notices

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information should be address to Efficient Dentistry, LLC.

Template Help Finally!

One of the most challenging things for us has been to explain our amazing concept of the templates to others to the point they can implement them in their own offices. I have had great success stories from a handful of offices. They are the exception. I take full responsibility for the fact that I haven’t made it easy enough to get these things into your offices. That’s about to change. For the time being, I’m going to help my members only get these things implemented so they can take advantage of same day dentistry the same way I have. Of course, if you have countertops in the 12 o’clock position that are the same size as most, you can just order some exactly like mine and be done with it. However, there is a great deal of variation out there. So, here’s what I want you to do. Call Lupita (you’ll have to leave a message on Monday through Wednesday) at 662-837-8143. She’ll tell you what we need from you to get the process started. Once we have your measurements, we will figure out if you practice with enough standardization to warrant the tem-plate and we’ll get a proof. After we make sure the proof works, we’ll order your new laminated templates and you’re off, seeing work-ins at blazing speed. You will have to know enough carpentry to screw a couple of screws into sheet-rock, but that’s about it. If you want to refresh your memory about why all the hoopla over the templates anyway, use your new member password at the new website and reference the article, “Room Setups So Easy a Doctor Can Do Them” in the February 2009 issue.

continued from page 7 Hey, Maria, I'll bet you can get creative on where to locate the area that's under the stairs for your DAs. It will be much easier to find somewhere else for them to store those things than to find enough wall space somewhere else for the bins and the shelf that goes under it.

As for the below:

"Just don't step over too many dollars to pick up pennies." Are you saying that I should not spend too much to make just a small difference?

I was saying that it is great to be frugal, just be sure you don't miss out on a big income increase by delaying an expansion, even if it is a small, measured one. -Chris

At some point in everyone’s career, they “get” it. I think Maria finally has seen the light and figured out how she can go after greatly increased production and revenue. The problem we all have is that we will at some point run out of space. Maybe a big expansion is in order. Maybe a smaller sequential expansion. That’s what I did myself and paid each time in cash. Maybe just a simple remodel. Just don’t fall in love with sheetrock and shelves. Always be looking at your current situation as through the eyes of an outsider. If a system is right for you to see more people in a given day, a minor remodel can be paid off in as little as a week. I don’t ever recommend going head over heels in debt, but sometimes debt makes sense. Put a pencil to it and do some critical thinking.

I’ve got a killer case study coming up for all of you from someone who definitely took the bull by the horns, thought outside the operatory, and revolutionized his practice using the same techniques I have been teaching you. You can decide if a little trouble is worth his remarkable results and if the juice is truly worth the squeeze. 3

Capacity Review

Four Steps to Success!

by Jim Rohn

Let me pass on to you these four simple steps to success: Number one is good ideas. Be a collector of good ideas. My mentor taught me to keep a journal when I was twenty five years old. I've been doing it now all these years. They will be passed on to my children and my grandchildren. If you hear a good health idea, capture it, write it down. Don't trust your memory. Then on a cold wintry evening, go back through your journal, the ideas that changed your life, the ideas that saved your marriage, the ideas that bailed you out of bankruptcy, the ideas that helped you become successful, the ideas that made you millions. What a good review. Going back over the col-lection of ideas that you gathered over the years. So be a collector of good ideas for your business, for your relationships, for your future. The next step to success is to have good plans. A good plan for the day, a good plan for the future, a good health plan, a good plan for your marriage. Building anything is like building a house, you need to have a plan. Now here is a good time management question: When should you start the day? Answer: As soon as you have it finished. It is like building a house, building a life. What if you just started laying bricks and somebody asks, "What are you building?" And you say, "I have no idea." See they would come and take you away to a safe place. So, don't start the house until you finish it. Now, is it possible to finish the house before you start it? Yes, but it would be foolish to start before you had it finished. Not a bad time management idea. Don't start the day until it is pretty well finished -- at least the outline of the day. Leave some room to improvise. Leave some room for extra strategies, but finish it before you start it. And here is the next piece that is a little more challenging: Do not start the week until you have it finished. Lay it out, structure it, then put it to work. Then the next one is a little tougher yet; do not start the month until you have it finished. And finally the big one, don't start the year until it is finished on paper. It's not a bad idea, toward the end of the year, to sit down with your family for the family structure plans, sit down in your business for the business plans, sit down with your financial advisor for your investments and map out the year... properties to buy, properties to sell, places to go with your family, lay out the year. I finally learned to do that. It was also helpful for my family to show them where they appeared on my calendar. You know I used to have my business things on there and I used to have my lectures and my seminars all laid out on my calendar, and guess what the children said, "Where are we on the game plan, please show us our names on the game plan." So you need to do it for your children, for your spouse, for your friends. Now, here is the third step to success, and it can be really challenging. Learning to handle the passing of time. It takes time to build a career, it takes time to make changes, so give your project time, give your people time. If you're working with people, give them time to learn, grow, change, develop, produce. And here is the big one, give yourself time. It takes time to master something new. It takes time to make altered changes and refinement in philosophy as well as activity. Give yourself time to learn, time to get it, time to start some momentum, time to finally achieve. It is easy to be impatient with yourself. I remember when I first tried to learn to tie my shoes. The shoe strings, it seemed like it would take me forever. Finally I got it and it didn't take forever, but it seemed like for a while I'd never learn, I'd get it backwards; the bow goes up and down instead of across. How do I straighten that out? Finally I got it, it just took time. Mama taught me a little bit about playing the piano. "Here is the left hand scale", she'd say. I got that, it was easy. Then she said, "Here is the right hand scale." I got that, that was easy. Now she said, "We are going to play both hands at the same time." I said, "Well, how can you do that?" Now one at a time was easy... but at the same time? Looking at this hand and looking at that hand, finally I got it. Finally I got where I could play the scales with both hands. Then I remember the day she said, "Now we are going to read the music and play with both hands." I thought, "You can't do all that." But you know, sure enough I'm looking at the music, looking at each hand, a little confused at first, but finally I mastered it. It took a little time to read the music and play with both hands. Then I remember the day she said, "Now we are going to watch the audience, read the music and play with both hands. I thought, "Now that is going too far!" How could you possibly do that? But see adding them one at a time and giving myself time to master one before we went to the next one; sure enough I got to where I could watch the audience, read the music and play with both hands. So the lesson continued on page 10

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continued from page 15 in a little more detail, and tell you the things that I used when I did the exercise. For me, the questions are this. Where would you live? What would your house look like? What time would you get up every morning? What would you do every morning? Name something for every one of the senses; sight, sound, smell, all of the senses. You need to name what you’re seeing, hearing, smelling, feeling, but every sense needs to be covered. What are you having for breakfast? Think about what it looks like and smells like. You want to think about, for example, I used the example of dropping the kids off at school. Whatever you pick for the first thing you do after breakfast, you want to go as deeply as what you are thinking about. I said what are you thinking about when you drop the kids off at school? What are you thinking about on your way home after dropping the kids off at school? Where are you going for lunch? What are you going to eat for lunch? Who are you going to eat with for lunch? How many friends are you going to have with you if you choose to have friends? What are you going to choose for your personal fulfillment? Like I said, nobody is going to be happy just sitting around, not ever working. I think it is going to have to be work or something work; either work or charity work or something. You’re going to have to have something to pass the time every single day. It’s something for your own personal fulfillment. What purpose do you want in life? Where would you start with that? If you have chosen business for your own person fulfillment, what kind of business? What would you do in that business? Who would you be working with as partners, employees, or whoever? What is your relationship like with them? After your personal fulfillment time, business or whatever, what would you do for family time? In my case, after the kids get home from school. What would you do for dinner? Would you have family dinners? If you did, what would you talk about during dinner? What would you have for dinner? After dinner, what would you do each night if you had to do the same thing each night? Who would you do that with? Where would you go? Then even get it down to the point of what are your thoughts as you are falling asleep each night? In my case, I would probably want to say a good prayer every single night. We covered all the bases and tried to encourage and help myself and look out for other people. You can think up the questions. You may end up with a hundred questions, and that is fine. But that should get you off to a good start. I gave you a good outline. If you think of more questions that help really answer your true identity, fill in the blanks. I would suggest as you are building Curtis or Paul or Bob or whatever you decide your average patient, just use the exact same questions for them. Then the real secret is to allow yourself to step into that person’s shoes, the person you create, you know who you are then. Step into their shoes as you are doing the exercise and feel all those feelings and things that are going through their mind. Anyway, this is a little bit out there this month. But I promise you that this is an exercise that you will get so much out of personally. Also, it will allow you to communicate with your patients so much more easily. You will get so much more positive reinforcement if you use these techniques. We’re going to get that practice full, guys. Just bear with me and come along for the ride and 2010 is going to be a great year! We’ll see you guys next month!

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continued from page 9 here is: Give yourself time, you can become a better pro, you can better master the art of parent-ing, you can better master the art of managing time, conserving resources, working together as a partner. Give yourself time.

And here's the last one; learning to solve problems. Business problems, family problems, financial problems, emotional problems, etc. -- challenges for us all. Here's the best way to treat a problem: As an opportunity to grow. Change if you have to, modify if you must, discard an old philosophy that wasn't working well for a new one. The best phrase my men-tor ever gave me was when he said, "Mr. Rohn if you will change, everything will change for you." Wow, I took that to heart, and sure enough the more I changed the more everything changed for me.

So learn to master good ideas, have good plans, handle the passing of time and solve problems, and you will be on your way to more success than you could ever imagine! To Your Success, Jim Rohn Note: Jim Rohn passed away this past month. He was a great man and a great motivator. He influenced countless oth-

ers for good in this world. Mr. Rohn will be greatly missed. I feel that this particular offering fits in very well with this

issue.

February CD Transcript

Hey everybody, Chris Griffin here. It is time for February’s coaching CD. In keeping with my New Year’s resolutions for Capacity College, this month’s CD is going to talk about something that is not about little nuts-and-bolts type stuff that you can use in your practice. One of the things that I think I’m noticing from all of my clients and customers and people who come to live events here in Ripley; the struggle is, some people have mastered all of the stuff to get patients in the door and they need my system so they can get people in and out much faster and be able to offer same-day dentistry. There are a lot of people out there, who even buy my stuff, and are still struggling to get patients in the door. Once they get patients in the door, they are struggling to get patients to say yes to the things they are recommending. This month, one thing that I would like to share with you guys is an exercise I did myself once, long ago. When I did this, it sounded like something you would do maybe in a psychology workshop or something, maybe in college. Maybe some people do this. When you do this, when I did this, I discovered what I was really looking for. Once I discovered what I was really looking for, the next thing I was able to do was relate what I had learned about myself to my patients. I sort of figured out what my patients were looking for. Once you know what you and your patients are looking for, case presentations become much easier. Now, you can communicate to the person sitting in your dental chair from a really good place within yourself. You’re not going to be trying to sell something to the patient they don’t really need, that you don’t really like giving them. Maybe somebody just told you that you should present this kind of treatment. Maybe somebody has told you that you should offer everybody thirty-two units or something ridiculous like that; I mean, that’s just made up. I am just trying to make a point that if you’re not comfortable presenting what you’re presenting, the patient is going to pick that up right away. For you to be really successful, you need to understand where your patients are coming from. Once you understand that, case presentation is really not a problem. There may be problems, but case presentation will not be one of them. It may not be that you get one hundred percent case acceptance, because that is a ridiculous number. At some point, a person needs something, they might understand they need it, and they honestly, truly may not be able to come up with the money. I’m not saying that’s the majority of cases, because I don’t believe that it is. Every now and then, you’re going to run into a problem where money is an issue. Other than money, once you learn the principles I’m going to go through in this exercise, it should really not be a problem for you to present treatment that you are comfortable doing and that the patient is receptive to. You’ll understand where they’re coming from also. What we’ve got is a core belief, a core identity exercise. The first thing we’re going to talk about is your own self. Then we’re going to talk about developing the same exercise for your patients. What I’m going to get you to do toward the end of this is… people have been coming up with this in marketing for years, but what you do is sort of develop a character of your average patient. You know who your average patient is, and you really want to get inside their head. You will think about past influences, present influences, present concerns, future concerns, and combine all of this into an actual living, breathing, walking, talking person that you can imagine every time you sit down to do a case presentation, right? In your area, you have a certain market, a certain group of patients who are going to share a lot of the same concerns, hopes, fears, dreams, and all that kind of stuff. That’s what today’s exercise is all going to be about. I’m actually going to give you homework for once. After you listen to this, you really need to go ahead and do it for yourself, and then do it for your patient. I know you don’t have a lot of time. No one has a lot of time, right? You could spend two to four hours on this whole deal; maybe two hours on yourself and two hours on your patient, something like that. If you spend those four hours now, I promise you it will pay huge dividends on down the road. Some of the things we will cover on this discussion; I’m all about setting goals. I hope you’ve set goals for 2010. We’re going to try to dive under that and see that goals are really good, but they are just on the surface. We are really going to try to find out what is underneath all those goals. Nobody really wants a Ferrari, unless you’re just an automobile junky and you understand all that stuff, nobody wants a Ferrari. Maybe what you want is you want the feeling you have when you’re driving a really fast car like that. Maybe you want the feeling you have when you drive down the street and everyone looks at you and thinks you’re so cool, like maybe you’re James Bond or something. Maybe you’re even the kind of person who wants your old high school people who told you that you would never amount to anything to see you in a Ferrari and think, “Wow, I guess I was wrong about that guy.” Whatever it is, you don’t really want the Ferrari, but you want the feelings continued on page 12

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continued from page 11 that come with that. I’m going to try to explain that and get it to where you can figure out what you really truly, down-deep want out of everything. Maybe you love the feeling patients give you when you do a good job and they really appreciate it. That’s a rare bird in dentistry, but maybe that is what you are really after. You have to figure out, only you can figure out, what it is for you that is really important. The worst thing you could ever do is strive forever to reach some goal that you set for yourself in dentistry or in life or anything else, and get there and find out that it really wasn’t all it was cut out to be. You then don’t understand why you were going for that goal in the first place. After the day that you do this exercise, you should understand what you’re after out of each goal you set. That should theoretically help you as you set goals in the future. Now you’ll understand why you’re after them. Maybe that’s all your subconscious needed to kick you in high gear, get you motivated, and get those goals achieved, right? So, that’s just another side benefit that you will get out of this exercise. You will have to suspend belief a little bit, because part of this exercise is throwing away all that heavy bag of bricks and baggage that you have thrown over your shoulder every single day. Everybody knows that dentists shoulder a tremendous load every day. You’re seeing patients every day. You have to try to make them happy and help them and do the right thing. You have to keep your business going. You have to help your employees pay the bills. You have to pay your own bills. You have responsibilities to your own family; your wife, your kids. There are a huge bag of bricks every dentist throws over their shoulder every day they lace them up and go to the dental office. For this exercise, you’re going to have to turn loose of that bag and let it drop to the ground. You’re going to have a deep, hard honest look deep inside yourself to complete this exercise. I fully understand after this exercise is over, you’re probably going to have to pick that bag of bricks up and carry it on some more. It would be my hope that after this exercise, after you move on down the road of life and goals that you’re going after and trying to achieve, it would be my hope that along the way, you get to pitch a brick out every now and then and that bag will get lighter and lighter. In three or four years, maybe you will look back and even get to pitch the whole bag down, because there might not be any bricks left. It is amazing that once you really know why you’re after something, you’re going to get there a lot faster. I know I’m sounding a little bit touchy feely here, but I really am trying to solve the problem of people not having enough patients and not having enough case acceptance that their schedule is busy. That’s my deal. Once I can get you super busy, then getting people in and out of your business is certainly not a problem what-so-ever. Anyway, that is the deal. Go through the exercise, listen to everything very carefully. Find a dark, quiet place. Think about it. Spend some time. Write out several sheets of people worth of the answers from the questions we are going to go through. In the end, you’ll know who you are. You’ll know who your patients are. Hopefully, you’ll know how to talk to them. We’re going to get that clinic full, guys. Anyway, here we go. What I would like for you to do in this part of the call is build your true identity. We want to formulate and figure out what your core belief is. Until I did this exercise, I would go to courses and I would always see these guys up on stage that were doing this huge production and I liked the idea. I wanted to be a super-producer. I wanted to be that guy. The truth was, I didn’t honestly know why I wanted to be that guy. I didn’t have a clue. You can say you want to do all this stuff, but until you are wanting to do it, it is not going to help you as well as it could if you understood your true self. Let me take a minute to explain what I am talking about and then we will go down this list of questions and you can take these questions yourself, and formulate an idea of what your true core belief system is. Then I’ll show you how to adapt that into working with your patient’s core belief system. This is just like throwing gasoline on a fire when you can match up your core belief system with your patient’s core belief system. Now you can really get in there and touch them and understand where they’re coming from. It makes case presentations so easy. I don’t even try anymore when I am doing case presentations. It is unbelievable how easy case presentations will become when you understand this really powerful thing. Let me take a minute or two to get into it and explain it. Yes, I will get this up on the website too, so you don’t have to take feverish notes if you don’t want to. The thing you have to understand is goals are wonderful, right? Everybody needs to set goals. I set goals every year. I take a week off at Christmas. I always set my goals for the next year during Christmas. I review the goals I had the previous year. I do that. Having said that, I almost want to say here that goals are almost worthless, because if you don’t understand why you have a goal, they are worthless. Goals are great, but they’re just on the surface. You have to figure out what lies underneath everything, right? continued on page 13

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continued from page 12 Let’s say that you see this guy on stage and he is doing this amazing production or maybe he is doing all of these beautiful cosmetic cases, and why is it that you really want to do like that guy? Maybe you see a guy who is making a lot of money, and you want to be like him. Maybe your goal is making a lot of money. Is it really the money that you want? Everybody knows that money is just ink on paper. It is not really anything.

What you want to do is, you really don’t want the money or you don’t want to be the mega-producer, or you don’t want to be the guy with the perfect margins on the cosmetic case; you want that experience. You want to feel like a rock star or a superstar ball player, or whatever it is. You want to feel like them. It is not the things you really want, it is the experience. It is the feeling; it is the emotion that comes with it that you really want. What I want you guys to take from this is I want you to develop your core belief system and know why you want what you want. I want you to understand the emotions and understand the experience that you want. Then, when you communicate to your patients, I want you to communicate with this understand of yourself. When you communicate from this place, you’re going to be very stable and you’re going to be cool, calm, and collected. Like I said, your case presentations are just going to be too easy. It has been my experience, anyway. Let me tell you, when you understand what you really want in life, people are going to be drawn to you. It is almost like magnetism. It is just the truth. When you understand what you want, people are going to come to you. You’re going to be able to help them better, because you know what you want out of the thing. Until I did this exercise, though, I never could grasp it. I never could, one hundred percent, get it right. The worst thing you could ever do is try forever and ever to reach a goal and once you reach it, be miserable, right? That happens to everybody. It happens all the time. Look at all the rich people on TV and famous people who sell $100 million copies of a song and the next thing you see on TV is that they’re strung out on drugs and they’re messing around on their wife or something. You see it every day; somebody strives forever, they reach their goal, and then they’re miserable. So, you want to answer every question that I’m going to throw out at you. Here is your sentence that you should just put at the top of your page. You should put, ‘If there were no limitations or consequences, what would your average day look like?’ Alright, I’m going to explain that to you. Here it is one more time. ‘If there were no limitations or consequences, what would your average day look like?’ Let me give you a list of limitations. This is the kind of stuff that you’re throwing out the window. Once you start on this exercise, this list doesn’t exist anymore. The limitations are financial limitations, so that limitation might be, “Well, gosh, I don’t have enough money to do that.” That’s gone. That’s out the window. Geographic location limitations; hey man, if your perfect day is watching the sunrise in Bangladesh and you live in Alabama, that is a geographic limitation. But in this exercise, that doesn’t exist. It is like a magic transporter device. You can just go wherever you want to, right? Ok. Health limitations; they are out the window. Maybe you’re a hundred pounds overweight right now, and you can’t have your perfect day, because you are a hundred pounds overweight and you would have a heart attack if Mount Everest climbing was your favorite day. You would not be able to do that, but in this exercise, that does not exist. This is a tough one; limiting people. I like to call it ‘rate limiting people.’ All of us took a lot of chemistry, right? You always had that rate limiting step in chemistry that just wore you out. Limiting people; those are the people, maybe it is somebody in your family who you love to death, but they just drag you down every time you are around them. You don’t have the guts to get away from them right now. But when you do this exercise, that is out the window. It is like magic, that relative that you can’t stand, disappeared. Here are the consequences; stuff that could get you into trouble. Maybe it is stuff that could get you in trouble, but in this exercise, you could do whatever you wanted to. I’m not suggesting you want to do something illegal, I’m just saying that in this exercise, there are no consequences. If you wanted to eat ten cases of Twinkies, for this exercise, that is ok. There are no consequences. It doesn’t matter if you want to smoke ten packs of cigarettes, which I don’t advocate. I never smoked a cigarette. I’m just saying that there are no consequences for this exercise. By the way, I have an assistant that makes an amazing Twinkie cake. She serves this thing for my in-office training days. She makes a Twinkie cake for lunch every time. Then we get all these people so full and on a sugar high, that they give me great testimonials. continued on page 14

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continued from page 13 The sugar keeps them going for at least a couple hours, and then they crash, right? Anyway, there are no consequences. Eat all the Twinkie cake that you want. Here’s what average means for this sentence up there, ‘what would your average day look like?’ You could do this day every single day of your life and actually, you could do this every single day for eternity, because there is no life span in this exercise, and you would not get tired of it. That is what average means. Let me read the sentence one more time, and this goes in the back of your mind while you are doing this. It is ‘If there were no limitations or consequences, what would your average day look like?’ This is not an all-inclusive list, because you are going to think of stuff I haven’t thought of to put on this list. Everyone is different. Let me get you started. Where would you live? Remember, there are no geographical limitations. There are no consequences.

I will give you an example in my life. I live in Ripley, Mississippi. The population is five thousand, or whatever. Nobody is here. There are more cows than cars. If I wanted to make a lot of money, I would go to a big city somewhere. I have had opportunities to go to big cities. I did not go to big cities, because my family is here, I love my family, and the consequences were too great for me to go anywhere else. But for this exercise, where would you live? I want you guys to think about your perfect, unbelievable place if you wanted to watch the sunrise from Hawaii every morning, that’s where you would put down here. Where would you live?

Ok, here is the next question. What would your house look like? What would your perfect house look like? Would you have a stately Anti-bellum mansion like we have in the Southern United States? Would you have a Mexican villa-style house? Would you have a house that had a beautiful back porch that overlooked the Pacific Ocean? What would your perfect house look like? You have to get real detailed with this. Take a few minutes here and get real specific. If you want to go to the point of, “I want four brick columns on my back porch that are two feet by two feet,” you can’t go into too much detail for this exercise. This exercise should realistically take you about four hours. I know it is hard to find four hours in your life, but if you do it right, it could take four hours. Here is the next question; what time would you get up in the morning? Maybe your perfect day is getting up at five a.m. and watching the sunrise. Maybe your perfect day is getting up at ten thirty in the morning and watching the late Sports Center on ESPN. I don’t know. What time would you get up? Next question; what would you do in the morning? What exactly would you do every single morning every day forever? It’s got to be the same. Maybe you would get up and do two hours of yoga and then hang out with your husband or wife. Whatever it is, what would you do every day? This is very detailed. Next question; what are the senses around me? What you want to do is think of all the senses. Think about what things smell like. Think about what things sound like and look like. Go through all your senses and ask yourself what this perfect day does for all those senses, every sense that the human has. We want to get really specific. What would you have for breakfast every day? What would that look like? For me, a perfect day would be, I know it is crazy, but I would love to take the kids to school every day. I really enjoy that. I don’t get to on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Wednesdays, but I try to on Thursdays and Fridays. If that’s your perfect day, you want to think about these senses the whole time. Think about how you’re pulling out of the driveway, as you’re going to school, what are you hearing from your kids? What questions are they asking you? What are you saying back to them? What song is on the radio? Everything you can think of is important. Some of this, you’re maybe already doing. But this is for your perfect day. You have to write this down for every single day. Your day progresses. Here’s the thing. You have to get a time line going. You just think this through in your mind as you go through the day. You maybe took your kids to school, so what is the next thing you do? At some point, maybe you have to think of what you will have for lunch that day. You have to think about whether or not you will get with some of your friends. Of course you don’t want to do without friends forever, so on this perfect day, you have to imagine what friends you would meet up with, what you would eat, what would you talk about, what would you celebrate every day? Then you have your perfect day going, and this is the same every day, right?

Let me tell you, there is no way that you are going to want to do personal stuff one hundred percent of the time, right? At some point, you also have to include what is your personal fulfillment? Part of continued on page 15

Editor: Chris Griffin, DDS

Publisher: Chris Griffin, DDS

Effective Dentistry, LLC

P.O. Box 125

Ripley, MS 38663

FAX (662) 837-8199

Email: Chris@3daydentist.com

Copyright 2010, Effective Dentistry, LLC

All Rights Reserved.

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continued from page 14 my personal fulfillment would always be being in business, because I like to help people. Even if I had all the money in the world, it would be fun to lay off work for two or three weeks, I’m sure. Maybe some of you could go a few weeks more than that. But there is no way, if you had enough energy and drive to get through dental school, there is no way that you would be happy just sitting there and not ever doing anything for anybody else. You have to figure out what your business looks like. What does your perfect business day look like? My perfect business day, honestly, would be after lunch. After I goofed off with my buddies for about an hour or two at lunch, then I would go into the office and work for about three hours.

You have to figure out how you would start your business day. Think about what kind of relationship’s you’re going to have in your business. Certainly think about every single employee relationship you have. Think about if that person makes you happy or not on your perfect day. Let me tell you, remember there are no consequences right? In the blink of an eye, you can get rid of that staff member that you don’t like, right? But only for this exercise. Yeah. You’re building this perfect day. You have all your work relationships. Think about a patient and when they come in. What kind of patient would you like to see? What kind of patient would come in your doors? Maybe it is a little old lady that does not have a denture that brings you a cake every time she comes in and all she needs is she just wants you to take a look and make sure that one of her back teeth is maybe chipped too badly. Maybe you would like to do a crown on it. I would like to do a crown every day forever. That’s fine. I love crowns. You have to think of your perfect patients.

Then, you have to think about going home. Think about the drive home. What is your perfect way to chill out driving from the office home? What are you listening to on the radio? When you get home, what is for dinner? What is that smell like? What does that look like? What is your spouse saying to you? In your perfect world, they are probably not bombarding you with every question in the world. They are probably just being real supportive and happy and stuff like, “Glad to see you.” What do you do at night? This is important. I’ll put this on the website, but the last question for the exercise that I would like you to ask yourself is ‘what are your thoughts as you go to sleep every single day?’ Hopefully somewhere in there your thoughts are how thankful you are for how great your life is. This is your perfect day, right?

That is kind of my exercise on your core belief system. You have to be honest with yourself now. Get past all the bull that you have been telling yourself forever and figure out exactly what you really want. Then, once you know that, I promise you that the stuff you really want is going to be attracted to you like a magnet. Now, this is where you tie this all into dentistry. Now, we’re going to take what you know about yourself and then I want you to do the exact same exercise for your average patient. What you’re going to do is you’re going to create an average patient for your practice using basically the same exercise. What we’re going to try to do is manifest not a real person, but just a classic patient; what they would look like, what they would act like. Are they married? Do they have kids? Do they have a spouse? Do the exercise as much as you possibly can, developing this classic patient for your practice, and that is going to teach you what your true market is.

Be honest with yourself, and you are going to realize your average patient is not going to be coming in and wanting fourteen lumineers. I can give you an example, when I ran through this, here are some more questions you can do when you’re building your classic patient; if you run through the exercise for yourself, you kind of know what their day looks like. Also, what is their biggest desire on the surface? What is their desire? In my area, we have twenty percent unemployment right now. In my area right now, their biggest surface desire is to have security for their family. What is their biggest frustration? A lot of their biggest frustration is that they would like to have a job and they just can’t get one. I know four out of five are still getting a job, but it is a lot. You build out this classic patient, and if you even want to make it more real, give them a name; like Greg or Phil or something. Give that classic patient name. From now on, every time you talk to a patient, sort of have that classic patient in mind. What’s going to happen is you are going to start communicating from your core, because you know who you are now. You’re going to communicate to your patient’s core, because you have empathy. You kind of understand where they’re all coming from. Then, you can work together and you can come up with solutions that work for the patient and they work out for you also. Like I said, I don’t know how it is possible, but when I learned this about myself and I did the exercise for my patients, case presentations got so easy. At this point, I am just so swamped that I guess probably even subconsciously, I am kind of trying to get people to do less than they want to, because I can’t handle it all. I’m scared to handle an associate. That’s the truth! As you do your homework about this exercise, I’m going to give you just another little helping hand here. You should be able to think up all the questions you need to ask yourself and your potential patient, whatever you decided to name them. You should be able to come up with this yourself. Let me go through the list one more time continued on page 10

Question of the Month

How do I fit your template/sterilization concepts into my already crowded office?

Hi Chris, this is a long shot, but I'm not embarrassed to ask. I am still making my way through CDs, yours and Jay Geier's. I really love the sterilization and supply room idea. I would love to be able to copy that system immediately in my office. The catch is I don't have the room as I see it. I've already moved walls to have what I have now. I bought the practice along w/ the building, (a bungalow, arts/crafts style), it's about 1700 sq ft. But I use about 2500. No I did not make a mistake, you see, it's a three story house that was converted to a dental office. It only had 2 ops when I bought it in 2001, Since then, I've added 2 more and we utilize the basement for lab, bulk supply, laundry, and storage. I use the 2 bedrooms upstairs as a staff lounge and my and my office manager's office. I've moved closets and walls to maximize in the past. But I'm stuck now. I have all the issues you listed, ie: slower room turnover, and incomplete set ups. I just hired 2 new DA's and neither has had experience.

So one would say it's time to move to a bigger facility. I'd love to, but I've got to learn to not buy until I have a plan for how I 'n going to pay. HELP?! MARIA in New York

Maria, It sounds like you've done a great job trying to expand what you have. I love the way that you consolidated only the necessary components into the main floor and moved all secondary operations to the up and downstairs. Where do you currently store supplies? I'm assuming that you unbox them and store them somewhere. Where do you get the supplies each time a room is setup? There's almost always a way to fit in the 3 or 4 rows of bins into the office on a wall. It may be that your current stocking area could be converted. Give me more details. -Chris

Thank you for responding so quick. I store bulk supplies in the basement. But supplies for procedures are mainly kept in tubs, (Zirc, color coded). I have one for filling and one for crowns in each room. I have 2 for rct's, but the two combined have all the rct supplies. These rct tubs and in a separate, cheap mobile cart ( Walmart cart). So, I can easily move rct from one room to another. Now simplifying rct set ups and doing rct's faster is a whole topic I could use advice on. It takes me too long to do rct's. But let's get back to the space issue. I work mainly out of two rooms. Each one has one filling and one crown tub. Then, in the drawers are the guns/cartridges, tips, trays, etc...for the impression and bite. Then, in a craft/ tool basket we have the materials for making a temporary. This is in a drawer too. One of the ops I have was there when I bought the office. It has formica from the 7o's, but since the unit and chair are fairly new, it doesn't look as old as it is. In the other op, (about 12 x 11 ft) I bought kitchen cabinets (white). They are very deep, and I have lots of drawer space. So to answer your question, my supplies are in the tubs, which are stored in a drawer of a mobile cart, one in each op. There is a 3rd op I share w/ a hygienist. Then there is a 4th op for hyg only. Each room has cabinets and wall cupboards. My sterilization room is small, no room to expand it anymore. The bathroom has a bathtub in it. I've considered moving the sterilization room to the bathroom, but, I would not gain much more space.

I just had the office measured last weekend. I will get the measurements and maybe even send you a few pictures to help you visualize my space. I'll get this to you on an email by the end of the weekend. In the meantime, what you said about a wall, gets me thinking. Will be in touch , Maria

Maria, I have studied your plan some today. Here's what I would probably do if I were in your shoes and couldn't go with a bigger space right now. I still believe with all my heart that you've got to get the supplies out of the operatories to systematize so that any assistant can be trained to set up perfectly. I don't know exactly what you are storing in the 17 sq.ft. closet, but here's what I propose (unless you have plumbed nitrous tanks in there). I would relocate the stuff there either in the small storage by the reception area or upstairs. If it is continued on page 3

Questions? Email your questions to Chris@3daydentist.com or FAX them to (662) 837-8199

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Next Issue: We’re getting ready for the big Dentalology Boot Camp in Orlando in April. I’ll let you guys in on the juiciest secrets first. Hopefully everyone of you has read my Ultimate Success Ebook by now. If not, go to www.dentistsuccessbook.com or email or call Mendy at mendy@capacitycollege.com or (662) 837-8143. By then, we should have some hard copies for those book lovers out there, too. Maybe I can scare up an interview with one of the other two guest authors who haven’t been on the tape series yet. I’ll also try to keep posting on the Blog of the new website. Be sure to go there and use your new password. I’ve got more material than I can cover in two lifetimes from the questions from the Dentalology class, but I’m going to try to answer them all, starting here. Send in your questions. If you have a question, twenty more are thinking the same thing. I can’t wait to start writing for next month. See you then!