#930: Getting To That 10% More

Dental A Team Podcast

Tiff and Dana are here to gameplan your goals for 2025 by starting big and breaking it into smaller and more attainable pieces. They discuss aspects to consider, such as profitability, time management, tracking systems, and more.

Episode resources:

Subscribe to The Dental A-Team podcast

Join Dental A-Team Consulting

Leave us a review

Transcript:

The Dental A Team (00:01.106)

Hello, Dental A Team team listeners. We are back here today. I've got Ms. Dana with me and we are here to talk to you about numbers today. I'm excited for this one. Practice owners, doctors, dentists, all of you guys out there, this is a really important one and Dana and I have some awesome information to really hand out to you. But before we dive in, Dana, how are you doing over there? How are you?

We're wrapping up the end of the year. I know I've seen a ton of successes in so many of our clients. How are your clients doing? What are you working on right now with your clients?

Dana (00:34.404)

Yeah, it's great. 2024, I think was an interesting year for a lot of practices. I think different than some of the more recent years. But I think in all of that, practices are still coming out with huge wins, lots of growth, and getting patients to accept treatments. So I call that a win for 2024 for sure.

The Dental A Team (00:52.836)

Yeah, I agree. think there was a lot of... gosh.

unknown uncertainties in 2024. I think 2020 we had some uncertainties too, right? We walked into the year with uncertainties, but then it kind of grew from there. And we've had just this massive growth in dentistry, I think since 2020 and COVID shutdowns. And this year, was kind of like, wait, hang on dentistry still doing fine. we're in a, we're in a recession proof industry, but what the heck is going on? And so there were just so many questions I think in outside of

of dentistry and financially that it did lead to some oddities that we haven't seen in recent years, like you said, within the dental world. know a lot of my practices have been, I think they're coming out of it now, but we had some issues with confirmations or patients coming to appointments or pre-collecting, kind of making sure that those pieces were really dialed in and locked in, because I did feel as though here in the recent months, kind of September, October.

some August really was tough for some practices in case acceptance, but then November hit got a couple weeks into November, how we'll say it and things just started to really turn around again. And I think again, there's so many uncertainties of the world translated into uncertainties within the dental industry and and Dana, I think you saw that too. Yeah.

Dana (01:55.438)

Thank

Dana (02:15.363)

Yeah.

The Dental A Team (02:16.56)

Yeah, well guys, we're on the other side of that. So this is the exciting part and this is one of my favorite times of year. I'm really looking forward to what's to come and we have to look at what was right to know what can be in many cases, but this is the time of year where we really get to dream up what next year will look like and what it can look like and it's just so much fun for me.

I love building out goals with practices. I love seeing what it's going to take to get you to that goal and really working backwards. So dream big and then work backwards and make it smaller and smaller and smaller. So today, I wanted to chat about that and Dana pulled in to help me just really discuss how we go about increasing goals every year. And we do this with all of our clients. We look at what does an increase look like for next year? What is it going to create for you? So a lot of our clients will say, you know,

I want to have more time at home with my family. We're having a baby this year. We want to take a maternity leave. I want to take a vacation to Europe for two weeks. I had a doctor that took her family to Paris this year. Like, how are we building that into the goals? And realistically, how are we making your business work for you so that you can have the personal life that you want? And so your team members can as well.

But really what does the business have to do to afford you those pieces of life that are really, really valuable and important to you? One of those things that we look at is your profitability. And your profitability is key, you guys. That is the extra money on top, that's the kush, that's the, this is really what my business is able to create for me within that. So we do look at that when we build out your goals, but just on average, we wanted you to know what an increase, an annual increase looks like.

her practice majority of the time a practice that's already been working off of their BAM. So their bare ACE minimum, right? Your, this is what it takes to pay my bills. This is what it takes to survive plus a percentage to get that profitability. So we typically look at, I Dana and I talked about this this morning, we're usually looking at what's your BAM. So what's your baseline? This is my baseline, just like at home, like this is what it takes to

The Dental A Team (04:35.57)

feed my family and to pay my bills. This is the baseline money that's going out and then 20 % on top of that. So baseline plus 20 % creates a profitable business. If we're only looking at baseline, you guys, I don't know, I felt Dana like in that conversation this morning that it was a confusing space maybe for people that...

That's one of those spots I think where we talk dental. People are like, what are you talking about? All right. Our marketer this morning was like, what's a bloody profie? And I was like, that's funny. So it's one of those spaces that's like, what are you talking about? But Dana, I you do this with your clients to have really that baseline plus that 20%. So Dana, how do you go through that with your clients and really helping them to figure out one what their baseline is, and then what that 20 % is on top?

Dana (05:00.716)

No.

Dana (05:25.09)

Yeah. So really it is, it starts with their overhead. So what is their overall practice expenses? Okay. So that's going to be part of their bare ACE minimum. And then what are they taking home? Right. Also to any debt services, because we've got a pair of debt services to be to utilize them, whether it's a practice loan or equipment loan or whatever it is, as far as debt services, we've got to put that in your BAM. Cause at the end of the day, those things have to be paid or business will be shut down.

The Dental A Team (05:34.546)

Yeah.

Dana (05:53.052)

Failure to pay those things too So just making sure that you know all of those pieces that go into it and all of that is accounted for because oftentimes actors like well No, I don't put my pay in there. Well, right? You're not being able to live your life and you're not being able to afford like you have to be paid too That's why you are a practice owner. That's why you chose ownership, right? So we want to make sure that is included in there. So Let's just say we know you know, they're they're

The Dental A Team (06:05.446)

Yeah, yeah.

The Dental A Team (06:15.538)

Yeah.

Dana (06:22.148)

BAM is 100,000, because I like round numbers. So 100,000, we would obviously say then, okay, for that 20 % profitability, we need an extra 20,000 each month. So your goal then for that month becomes 120,000. And as long as we hit 120,000 each and every month, that will give you your BAM every month, plus your 20%.

The Dental A Team (06:25.735)

Yeah, same.

The Dental A Team (06:37.339)

Mm-hmm.

The Dental A Team (06:43.302)

Yep, I love that. I think the confusion or to separate statements is we've talked about when we talk about all the time your overhead and Dana, you just mentioned your overhead, right? So we do say your your true overhead.

is if someone if someone were to purchase your practice from you today, what would they respond be responsible for taking on your pay your loans and come with you right you they they're not going to continue paying you. So what would a practice owner take from you if they were to purchase your practice is your true overhead. So in order to find your band, you find your true overhead, this is your outgoing money. And then you add in your loans, your debts and your pay.

And if your associate pay or whatever else is not included in your true overhead for you, you add that in underneath. This is what you have to make in order to maintain your business as it is. So if you were looking at your personal finances, you would say, great, what are my credit card payments? What's my mortgage payment? What's my car payment? Those go into your baseline for what you need to make as an individual within your home. So you're to think the same thing. What does my practice need to make to baseline to say,

We are at a zero zero, right? We are zero zero. We are not negative, but we are not positive. This is what my business has to make. And then we add, like Dana said, that 20 % on top of it. So that's the difference, you guys, when we talk overhead versus bam, is overhead is different. Your bam is going to be everything included. So I think that's where some of that confusion may come in.

Now that 20 % can be bucketed out however you want it to be. So that 20 % could be bonuses. I do have a practice that's like, Tip, want, this is our BAM, but I want my practice to bonus every month. I'm like, great, then let's add a percentage after your BAM.

The Dental A Team (08:34.276)

a certain percentage of that will be their bonus. So they know if they get to this tier, this tier, this tier, but for that practice specifically, you guys and for most of my practices that talk about this, I want you to know I don't go bam plus 10 % and then they get you know, they get that bonus at that 10%. No, I still want bam plus some now it's above above and beyond that. So it has to be above and beyond your profit. Otherwise, now you're bonusing and taking out of your profit for the practice and the

for the practice should be going towards renovations, should be going towards new equipment, it should be going towards whatever you want it to be, an emergency fund, like all these things to be reinvested back into the practice, not taking, we're not taking money out to pay people. That's an above and beyond situation. So just clarifying that a little bit for you guys, going into a new year, once you have that settled, you're like this year Tiff, I went off my ban plus my profit, that was my goal.

Fantastic. So then next year, going into 2025 goals, we really want those goals to be, I like 10%. I usually say seven to 10 % on top of what you did last year. Super easy math, number one. Number two, inflation has to be accounted for. Inflation on average in America right now is near 7%, right, at least. So

If we go above and beyond that 7 % and hit that 10%, again, we're looking for that profit margin. Because if we're only accounting for 7 % inflation, again, we're just status quo. We're not growing. In order to see that growth, we've got to go above and beyond. So that 10 % creates that above and beyond. And again, that's if you've been operating off of BAM Plus profitability. If you haven't, then let's work the numbers and figure out where you should be and what you're able to do next year.

but that 10 % should be able to be finagled within that. And creating that space is really fun. Figuring out how am going to get 10 %? A lot of doctors' teams usually will be like, that sounds awesome, but like, my schedule is full. Where in the heck do you want me to get? So we're adding 10 % every day. So we're adding 10 % of time every day to have like, how are you doing this? I'm like, no, it doesn't have to be that

The Dental A Team (10:57.736)

hard. This is where we make sure you're pulling your financial analytics. Like where are you at for your fees, your fee analysis? Have you had a rep pull your fee analysis? Have you requested fee increases from all the insurances? Have you looked at insurances that you could drop? How do we squeeze more out of the time that you have? Dana, I know a lot of clients come in and they're like, I want to reduce stays, but I want to be more profitable.

Fine, absolutely, you guys, can create the magic for whatever you want. If it's unrealistic and we're like, that's a little crazy, we will tell you that too. But oftentimes coming in from, you're working five days or four days and you're like, I really want a half day admin day.

Great, we're going to squeeze more dollars out of the time that you have. So Dana, I know you've been working on this a lot with a lot of your clients this year specifically and block scheduling, things like that definitely contribute. But what are some pieces that you've got a lot of clients currently working on for next year to squeeze more out of that time that they have?

Dana (12:03.5)

Yeah, so one, is taking a look at just each provider in the practice, their production per hour. Because if we're looking to cut hours, then we know exactly how much production we need to make up in different hours of the day. Also, two, helps us see just is there any provider that like, okay, they've got a little bit more opportunity. So we can kind of let's say we look at hygiene, right? And they're not hygiene across the board isn't hitting their daily goal or their hourly goal. Then what can we do there? Can we talk about a

The Dental A Team (12:08.765)

Yeah.

Dana (12:32.452)

upgrading our perio protocol, can we talk about adding adjunct services? What can we talk about on that end? On the other side, when it comes to providers, can we look at just efficiency? Are we maximizing and utilizing our assistance so that there is more actual doctor time to do additional dentistry? Another thing that I'm working on as far as building that in and helping to see goals is just cost of procedure versus

The Dental A Team (12:58.408)

Mm.

Dana (12:59.576)

time it takes to do the procedure. So a cost per procedure is I'm doing that with a couple of offices just because it does help us see. Okay, if

this doctor does this procedure in 70 minutes and this doctor's doing it in 90, like what does that look like as far as then their production per hour and where can we squeeze and those things. So I think it starts by knowing really what you're producing each hour, especially if you want to cut back hours. And then as we're looking at that, who has potential for growth or where do we have potential for growth? And then how do we get there? What does that look like?

The Dental A Team (13:30.632)

Yeah, I like the breaking it down by cost per procedure and hourly. That's something I think that we forget we can do and that really makes such a drastic difference. The perio space, the hygiene space is huge. You guys, I have a client this year that we were just looking at their KPIs this morning, Dana and I, and they had a goal of increasing one to 2 % on their perio.

program, right? So hygiene was going to go from 18 to 19 percent and on average is where they were in 2023. This year they needed to hit at least 20 percent overall production, which means the hygiene department as a whole contributes 20 percent of the monthly and yearly production.

So we looked at it this morning and luckily the office manager had filled out November and so for November they're actually tracking at 25 % for their hygiene department which is great. I usually push for goal wise so you guys know for goal sake 25 to 30 percent.

Dana (14:23.844)

Thank

The Dental A Team (14:36.38)

for hygiene to be making up of that goal. So when you're going into next year's goal, and you're like, gosh, 10 % means I'm going to be at $2.1 million next year. Freaking fantastic, do it. So look at, okay, well, what did my hygiene team do? On average, what was their percentage now with us not looking at it? And think, okay, what would one to 2 %? What would a 2 % increase from last year look like financially? It's over a year, it's usually pretty significant what a 2 % increase can do.

And then how can we get a 2 % increase? Normally when practices are not tracking their hygiene department, they're typically sitting anywhere from like 14, 15 to maybe 20 % on average. I would say probably like that 17 % range is pretty common.

for practices that haven't been really looking at it and caring. So then you have a space of like fantastic, what's a 1 % increase in everything that we do? It could be making sure we're always charging out for the PAs. That's a 1 % increase. Like really looking at all of the coding and making sure we're getting every single code in there every single time, because those things add up over time. But when you're parsing it out, sometimes I think doctors feel like, gosh, $2.1 million. That's a lot of

implants, that's a lot of crowns, like, you are not the only one that's providing that. And so really looking at what are the other contributing factors? How can we add more value? How can we add more whitening this year? So in-office whitening that our assistants are doing, what would it look like if we did three more Invisalign cases this year in comparison to last year? What would it look like? How many, you know, how many of each thing do I want to do?

Oftentimes I'll take a practice and say, do you want to do more of next year that you love doing this year? And I know I had a doctor that was like, gosh, Tiff, I love placing implants. just, I want to do more implants. Great.

The Dental A Team (16:31.144)

So we went into 2023 with a goal of X amount of implants this year. And so then the goal from there, we backtracked and we're like, okay, great, every month you have to do this amount of implants every month to get to this yearly goal, which would allot for X amount of dollars towards your yearly goal. So then we translated that into well, how many opportunities do I need based on my case acceptance? So then we said, well, you've got to talk to X amount of people about missing teeth

and the implant option to get your 65 % case acceptance on it to get to that. And within the first quarter of the year, he had surpassed his quarterly goal and was well into his six month goal for the year. But it was because we had worked backwards and made it so simple, it was really easy for everyone to track. From there,

the team was like, well, how do we keep track of all these? Like we're talking, they're like, I have ideas. And now the team is creating tracking systems and using the whiteboard and they're following up with the patients because they can see it. And it's so easy. So that 10 % increase from last year can feel a little daunting sometimes. And I've had practices, Dana, that I'm like, to get you on track to where you actually want to be. And because we weren't working off of a BAM plus 20 %

previously, you actually need a 15 % increase this year to get you to where you should be. And still though, as long as you can increase it by how much ever you want to, and as long as there's a plan in place and we can work backwards to see how we can actually accomplish it, I think that's where the success really lies. And I've watched it time and time again of how easy it can be to just say,

How many implants do we have to do? How many Invisalign cases do we have to start? How many, you know, all-on-fours do I need to do? And you guys, holy Hannah, if you don't like surgery, you don't want to do all-on-fours, don't do it. It is not a space where it's easy money. It is not lucrative if you do not like doing it, so don't do it.

The Dental A Team (18:43.334)

Pick the things that you enjoy doing. Is Botox something you want to do next year? Fillers, like what does this look like? Cosmetic cases, like what do you love doing? And how do we translate that into part of that percentage goal for next year? Dana, what other thoughts do you have on that goal and just really making sure that it's set in stone?

Dana (19:05.349)

I love that you do that and I think too if you're like, well, I don't really know even okay I know 2.1 right but what does that look like every day or what does that look like every month? Map out your projections put in your number of working days put in

your number of hygiene days for each month, your number of doctor days each month, and then play around with your numbers. Say, okay, well, I did, let's say $3,000 a day this year, and I'm trying to grow 10%. Okay, well, that looks like 3,300. So put in 3,300 and see, does that get me to my 2.1 million? If it doesn't, okay, let's increase that. Let's say 3,500, put that in and see, okay, does that get me there? Okay, that gets me partway. Now, what can I do with hygiene? Right? If hygiene hit, let's say 960 this year, if I get them to a thousand, if I can just get $40 additional every hygiene day, what does that look like?

So take your working days take where you were for the last year look and say okay average This is what we produce each day. What does it take each day? Because once you know what it takes each day Each week each month then you can do exactly what you did tip and say, okay How do we do that? Because oftentimes if we don't know what that looks like if we don't know that that's the difference in a crown every other day

The Dental A Team (20:03.058)

Yeah.

Dana (20:11.0)

Right? Once you have it broken down into daily and weekly and monthly numbers, then it's very easy to say, okay, look, these simple things, if done consistently, or this addition of 10 crowns each month, that's what's gonna get us there. But you have to know kind of what those smaller numbers look like. It's real easy to say 2.1, but when you break it down into daily and monthly, it's super simple then to see where opportunity lies.

The Dental A Team (20:36.968)

Totally agree. And I love that you said like going from 3000 to 3300 or 3500 because even if it 3500 and I've got an eight hour day, it's like that's less than $100 an hour. In addition to what I was already doing. That's a couple PA's. That's a couple x-rays like it's, it's charging out for the things that you're doing. So I love that. Thank you, Dana. Right now you guys know it's the time of the year to see where are you going to end you should be able to project at this point in the game like what what it's going to look like at the end of the year.

Dana (20:51.556)

Thanks

The Dental A Team (21:06.918)

Start mapping out what next year can look like. Don't wait till January, because in January, you should be boots on the ground, freaking running for those goals. So start building that out now. Reach out to us, you guys. [e-mail] If you have any questions on this, there was a lot of numbers involved. There's a lot of trajectory, a lot of projections. Reach out to us. We have all of this information. We love giving it out, and we love nothing more than to answer your questions. So [e-mail] You can find us on all the socials as well, Dental A Team.

We want to hear from you. Drop us a five star review. Let us know that you loved this content and we cannot wait to support you and your biggest 2025 dreams. Let's make them all a reality. Thanks guys. Thank you, Dana, and we'll catch you guys next time.