Are you tired of your dental practice experiencing a slump during certain months every year? Discover expert tips from Casey and Jarrod on how to overcome this challenge and find relief. They will share tried and tested methods that will alleviate the pain and help your practice thrive.
Announcer:
Hello everyone. Welcome to the Millionaire Dentist Podcast, brought to you by Four Quadrants Advisory. On this podcast, we break down the world of dentistry finances, and business practices to help you become the millionaire dentist you deserve to be. Please be advised, we do speak with an honest tongue and may not be safe for work.
Casey Hiers:
Hello and welcome. This is Casey Hires back at the Millionaire Dentist Podcast in studio with co-host Jarrod Bridgeman.
Jarrod Bridgeman:
Casey, how you doing?
Casey Hiers:
Thriving. Thank you for asking.
Jarrod Bridgeman:
It's a lovely, lovely day today. Woo,
Casey Hiers:
Woo-hoo. Let's give our listeners some juice, man. Let's give them something day.
Jarrod Bridgeman:
Give them that juice? Juice them up? I'm into it. Casey, listen, every business has a, what do we call it, a slow period.
Casey Hiers:
Hold on. You just said every. I tell my wife, there's no absolutes.
Jarrod Bridgeman:
Okay.
Casey Hiers:
Most.
Jarrod Bridgeman:
I've had Absolute before, first of all.
Casey Hiers:
That's delicious.
Jarrod Bridgeman:
Okay, many.
Casey Hiers:
You probably make it mixed with a peach Absolute.
Jarrod Bridgeman:
Mountain Dew, just dump it right in there, back to college years. So many businesses, a lot of business owners would recognize patterns within their business, and some of them would say "Yes, there's certain times of the year that things may be a little slower than normal," be it back to school time, vacation times, more than likely the holidays. And yes and there's other months that can potentially make up for that, your really busy times. But sometimes those slow months or those slow weeks can potentially hurt your business quite a bit for let's say, payroll or anything like that. Casey, are there things that we can instill and tell our listeners here that may be good ways to help with that?
Casey Hiers:
How your practice can survive or thrive during a few slow months? I wrote that down.
Jarrod Bridgeman:
Nice. I love it.
Casey Hiers:
Is that what you're trying to say?
Jarrod Bridgeman:
Yeah, sure.
Casey Hiers:
Yeah. No. Well, this is an interesting topic because there's ebb and flow to everything. There's trends, there's patterns, and we have a lot of practice owners in a lot of different areas and states. And for example, the ones in Florida, well, there's snowbirds and there's some seasonal things there. We have folks, a lot of practice owners in Michigan, if you take into account all the lake homes and people there in the summer, but maybe not in the winter. So there's a lot of geographies where there are slow times and heavier times, some are built in, like you said, for all those reasons.
Jarrod Bridgeman:
Right and they're opposite of other areas.
Casey Hiers:
Right.
Jarrod Bridgeman:
Here in Indiana, people go on vacation and leave the state.
Casey Hiers:
Well, right. And when I talk to these practice owners, even though they've lived in these areas and practiced in these areas for a while, they're always like, "Well, it's just always slow here, or it's super busy here," but it sounds like their frustration is annual. They're annually frustrated typically.
Jarrod Bridgeman:
And if you've only owned possibly for just a few short years, you may not have a system in place to alleviate those downtimes.
Casey Hiers:
Well, yeah, what we want to talk about today is if you're a practice owner and you experience some mountains and peaks with busyness.
Jarrod Bridgeman:
Right.
Casey Hiers:
Whatever you attribute it to, the areas we just mentioned. But how can you prepare? So prior planning prevents problems. Those are four Ps.
Jarrod Bridgeman:
Okay. The four Ps.
Casey Hiers:
I've been saying for years-
Jarrod Bridgeman:
Prior planning.
Casey Hiers:
Prevents problems.
Jarrod Bridgeman:
Prevents problems.
Casey Hiers:
The four Ps to life.
Jarrod Bridgeman:
Prior planning prevents problems. That's the first time I've heard of this.
Casey Hiers:
That's big time stuff.
Jarrod Bridgeman:
I love it.
Casey Hiers:
I don't give that out all the time.
Jarrod Bridgeman:
No.
Casey Hiers:
I got to keep some stuff for the personal life.
Jarrod Bridgeman:
That's what the four Ps in your back is for?
Casey Hiers:
Well, in my shirt, right? Yeah.
Jarrod Bridgeman:
That's right. Yeah. So I would say one of the big ones could be is if you and your family to take vacations, it may not be a bad idea to plan a vacation during a time it's going to be slower.
Casey Hiers:
Well, you just said it, planning. The best way for this not to bother you every year is to plan appropriately, right? And you're exactly right. Everybody wants to, not everyone, I caught myself. Most people would like to go on a vacation, go to see some friends or family, and so schedule those things. Again, some of this sounds like a Mr. Or Mrs. Obvious statement.
Jarrod Bridgeman:
Right.
Casey Hiers:
But align your schedule with the ebbs and flows of your practice schedule.
Jarrod Bridgeman:
Right. Take a look at usually 4th of July week is a big week for that I think, people like to leave town.
Casey Hiers:
Yeah. And for certain industries, and again, this is a dental podcast, but the...
Jarrod Bridgeman:
It is? What?
Casey Hiers:
But yeah. No. Yeah. Schedule vacations, schedule things when you can. Look, but the key is know your data. We talk about that all the time financially, but from a scheduling perspective, know your ebbs and flows of your schedule, draw some correlations.
Jarrod Bridgeman:
You can't just go off one year, for example.
Casey Hiers:
No, you need three or four, right?
Jarrod Bridgeman:
Yep. Yep.
Casey Hiers:
And so look at three or four years of data and find those areas, and then boom. Now you have a time where you could potentially schedule vacations. Woo-hoo.
Jarrod Bridgeman:
Well, and the nice thing about that too is once you have that data in place, and it almost becomes expected for both your family and your staff to be like, "Hey, we're going to be closing the office during this week during this time."
Casey Hiers:
Mm-hmm.
Jarrod Bridgeman:
Which is good because most people like to have consistency of, "Hey, I could even start planning now for next year's vacation because I know roughly when it's going to be," so that's always a bonus. Casey, what's another way that you think that we can help alleviate downtime like this?
Casey Hiers:
We have three more, right?
Jarrod Bridgeman:
Right.
Casey Hiers:
You probably want me to go in order. I'm going to throw you a curveball. How about reactivation campaigns?
Jarrod Bridgeman:
That sounds great, Casey. What the hell is that?
Casey Hiers:
Well, so let's say there's three times a year or four, I guess in this example, where there is some downtime where you can have opportunities for other things. Reactivation campaigns, you have patients who they haven't been in for a while, maybe they've fallen through the cracks. That's a nice time for your staff or team to get in touch with them, maybe for a cleaning or a checkup or just touch base with them. And so...
Jarrod Bridgeman:
Hey, it's been a year. Where are you at?
Casey Hiers:
Most offices have that data where they can pull, here are people who have not been in for X amount of period of time. Let's reach out to them. Obviously, have strategy and verbiage and all of those things mastered, but that can be a nice time for a reactivation campaign. You mentioned-
Jarrod Bridgeman:
Even if it's as simple as cleaning and stuff like that, or even more of an operation. You can schedule that in knowing like, "Hey, this is, we have time available on June 5th through the 12th."
Casey Hiers:
Yeah. Well, and that kind of runs into run promotion. So if you think about it, let's say you do a reactivation campaign.
Jarrod Bridgeman:
Yep.
Casey Hiers:
And you have 7% hit success, right?
Jarrod Bridgeman:
Sure.
Casey Hiers:
So let's say you've got 60 new people that go, "Yeah, actually I would like to come in."
Jarrod Bridgeman:
Yep.
Casey Hiers:
Maybe part of your reactivation campaign is that you're running a promotion during this period of time that is typically slower. So maybe you're giving them 20% off of a cleaning. Now there's always fine print where maybe if they're certain insurances that you're already getting scalped with, they might not qualify. But if they're maybe a fee-for-service paying person, then you're not only doing a reactivation campaign, but you're also running a promotion to entice them back in. But there's a lot that you can do with reactivation campaigns, running promotions, scheduling your vacation. You mentioned cutting hours, right?
Jarrod Bridgeman:
Yes.
Casey Hiers:
So it's a double-edged sword. If you know different periods of time, maybe. You're going to condense some hours during two weeks or four weeks over the year, condensing hours can help with overhead because you're paying your hourly employees less. That being said, some of the employees might not like that. So that's one you have to look at strategically and really balance for yourself. But also-
Jarrod Bridgeman:
And that one could work to your favor sometimes if one of your hygienists or somebody is looking to take some days off during that time period anyways.
Casey Hiers:
Potentially. But the biggest one with all this planning, and you mentioned it off mic, was when you plan for something, you can build in that safety net, you can build in the cushioning with your cashflow in the practice and at home and all of those things so that you're in better position.
Jarrod Bridgeman:
And with that, just again, being proactive and as you said, planning, so proactive, planning betters-
Casey Hiers:
Prior planning, prevents problems. See.
Jarrod Bridgeman:
Proactively, oh, my gosh.
Casey Hiers:
There's five Ps. You're butchering it.
Jarrod Bridgeman:
But having a strong cashflow, having your safety net built-in money-wise could also help alleviate that. Casey, with all these things that we've been talking about, if someone needed more information, wanted to talk about this stuff, they could always come and see you when you're speaking or talk to you via phone, via email.
Casey Hiers:
Always really.
Jarrod Bridgeman:
Always. He's available 24 7, but you're going to be somewhere soon. You're going to be at the Georgia Dental Convention.
Casey Hiers:
Yeah. Yeah.
Jarrod Bridgeman:
That's in Georgia, right?
Casey Hiers:
We're presenting at the Georgia, their state meeting.
Jarrod Bridgeman:
Yes.
Casey Hiers:
It's in the state south of theirs.
Jarrod Bridgeman:
Texas. Florida obviously.
Casey Hiers:
Cuba.
Jarrod Bridgeman:
But you're going to be on stage, right? Talking it up?
Casey Hiers:
Yeah. There's a podium, there's an elevated surface.
Jarrod Bridgeman:
Yeah.
Casey Hiers:
And it's good stuff. We just came back from another state meeting, but that subject matter is really important to the business side of dentistry, and so we'll be presenting it there. We're also presenting at an implant course out west.
Jarrod Bridgeman:
Oh, nice.
Casey Hiers:
So yeah, a lot of people.
Jarrod Bridgeman:
We got a lot of things coming up. I know we're going to be doing a tasting or Top Golf events in St. Louis in August as well as Minneapolis.
Casey Hiers:
Well, and you're going to laugh, but it's interesting how many people, again, we joke, they come to these events, because they're CE Junkies or plate liquors.
Jarrod Bridgeman:
Yeah.
Casey Hiers:
And then it's the specialist that comes up and is already making half a million bucks and they go, "Casey, how do you know?"
Jarrod Bridgeman:
Yeah.
Casey Hiers:
"Yes. I struggle with this. I want to get better. Let's go."
Jarrod Bridgeman:
What if people are already crushing it just like last episode.
Casey Hiers:
Yeah. They're already doing pretty good, but they also know that they're not mastering all these areas and they would like, "Hey, if I can, I want to," but I love that person versus the loudest cries crumb from the cheap seats. I'll have to coin a phrase from our founder and I had another point. We already kind wrapped up. I'm sorry. [inaudible 00:10:16].
Jarrod Bridgeman:
That's fine, dude. Listen, it's fine that you can't think for yourself, neither can I at the moment. But Casey, I want to thank you for your time, and good luck with your presentation. I know you're going to kill it and crush it. Casey, your presentation has been great so far. Thanks.
Announcer:
That's all the time we have today. Thank you to our guests for their insight and for sharing some really great information. And thank you to you, the listener for tuning in. The Millionaire Dentist Podcast is brought to you by Four Quadrants Advisory to see if they might be a good fit for you and your practice. Go on over to fourquadrants advisory.com and see why year after year they retain over 95% of their clients. Thank you again for joining us, and we'll see you next time.
