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This Dental Specific Podcast is dedicated to the Dental "Entrepreneur" Michael Dinsio, Founder of Next Level Consultants, delivers #TRUTH when starting up a dental practice. From the very first step to getting the keys of a dental practice, Michael shares his raw & unscripted playbook with you. Not only does this podcast provide you with "What To Do" but more importantly "What Not To Do". With over over 15 years of experience & over 150 past clients, Michael delivers an educational and informative program in a real and genuine way. Start w/ Episode 01 - as we go through a STEP by STEP process.
00:02
That question is so low to John, I don't even know where to start with that. Well, guess the problem is, and by the way, I love that question. Interesting, interesting. This is an interesting topic. What's the solution here? Show up, understand your part, and just crush it. Paper, click, social media, we can talk about all this stuff. But what really matters is patient experience, that wow factor.
00:33
Please are you listening to yourself? Come on! What are you talking about? Yeah exactly, so sit back, take notes and listen. Oh, oh, I love this. This is gonna be fun...
00:48
Startup Unscripted. The questions you have with the truths you need to hear. And now your hosts, Michael Dinsio and John Bertagni.
01:04
All right, everybody. Thanks so much for being on today. I am super jacked. This basically starts the entire program. The entire program. You know, we had a vision for this entire program, and ironically, this is the vision episode. And I'm pretty jacked. I'm your host, Mike Dinsio. John, my co-host, John Bertagni. Thanks for being here today, buddy. Good day to everyone.
01:30
We're excited about this. We've got Mladen Kralj, Dr. Mladen Kralj, a good friend, but also in my mind, a visionary of dentistry, but also that piece that we just talked about, patient experience. And Melladen, good morning to you. Good morning. Good morning. Thanks for being on today, man. We really appreciate it. John keeps talking about this guy who's legendary in the...
01:57
Chicago market. I've been looking, I've been looking forward to this interview for a while. Well, is he talking about dentistry? I'm going to clear things up. Yeah. Yeah, no, appreciate that. John and I go way back, um, known each other from pretty much the start of my career. Um, he's helped out a lot. And so he brought a lot of insights to what I needed to do as a dentist. You know, I always pulled some of the greatest information from
02:26
guys like John. So it's a pleasure to be on the show and kind of recap where we started and, uh, uh, you know, where we're going. And I think that's what it's about Mulan. Like, you know, it's, it's about friendship, but you know, you're going to see, and our listeners and viewers are going to see that this is, you know, you can find allies and alignment partners, if you will, that, that are trusted throughout the process. And, know, and we talk about this throughout.
02:56
There are people that you shouldn't trust and you and I both have been in situations like that with business partners, et cetera. Um, but we've also, you know, we've made some great choices along the way too, because I think you're going to be relatable to a lot of people. Um, because of your background. And I would love for you to just kind of jump in because you were in big DSO. You actually paid deference to big DSO, but it also helped shape what you wanted to do. So.
03:26
you know, can you can you spend a little bit of time about how that background built you out? Because there's a lot of people that did the same damn thing or they're they feel they're stuck where they are right now. Yeah. So, you know, my career, I was a little bit envious of a lot of people I to dental school with because a lot of them actually had like family or friends that were already into their careers. They had somewhere to drop into as soon as they graduated dental school. For me, it was much more
03:55
fortress route because you know, and I'm in downtown Chicago, lot of dentists out there. But when I graduated back in 91, there really wasn't the opportunity that I thought was out there, or there wasn't the right fit for me. So I probably spent my first, I'd say eight years of just kind of bouncing from one practice to another as an independent contractor, until I did find, you know, the DSO and I was back in like 99, I ended up spending about five years with them.
04:25
And, um, it was both a great experience. learned a lot. learned what they did at that level, but I also saw then the pitfalls as I grew into, was with them for five years until 2004. I also saw the pitfalls of what rapid growth can mean and how it could affect, uh, you know, somebody like myself who was both, um, very clinically driven. Um, but I couldn't get the tools that I needed or the resources that I needed to.
04:53
grow myself professionally on the level that I wanted to, but my ambitions outgrew what they were able to provide me. And was pretty much why I ended up like leaving after about five years. Yeah. And then, mean, throughout that process, what was it? You were thinking about avoiding the, the check Chicago market or, know, cause you weren't thinking multiple groups or multiple locations right out of the gate. You were thinking for yourself, correct?
05:19
Yeah. Initially, was thinking for myself, but at the same time, thought if Dr. Rick Workman, who is quite the visionary himself coming out of a small town in central Illinois could build such a great organization, I could do this in Chicago where there's just significantly more patient base there, more density. And I thought more opportunity, but my passion started in really the cosmetic world. As soon as I got a taste of and training of doing porcelain veneers and Invisalign,
05:48
That's, started a boutique practice. was three chairs. That's all I did was large cases, Invisalign and whitening. And that's all I wanted to do. The, and to be honest to this day, I wish I would have stayed on that path, but, and I'm actually circling back around to that path. Um, now that we've grown, have to, I want to challenge myself again. But at that time I had a lot of patients who were demanding also, well, okay, yeah, you fixed my veneers. Can you take care of this root canal? That you can take care of this.
06:15
You can't turn down financial opportunities. So I started building my practice off of that as well. We started growing. And then I was fortunate enough, you know, both my brother and Dr. Reggie Thurston, who's our other partner, were both practicing also with Heartland at that time. And everybody lived in downtown Chicago, though we're traveling on the suburbs. And then, you know, I shared my vision for a group practice, which became Aura.
06:41
And my brother came on board, you know, pretty much right away. And that's when we opened up our second location and rebranded to Ora back in 2008 in the middle of a great, great recession. I was going to say, like, if you really think about where we are in, you know, timestamp this, you know, we're in a pandemic, right. And people are nervous about doing dental practices. You guys opened up essentially the flagship right on South Michigan Avenue.
07:11
of Oro Dental Studios in one of the worst economic times. know, Mike being a banker, you could probably relate to this from a B of A standpoint, but it was insane because I happened to be a part of that project. I mean, finding money, figuring out should I do this, should I not do this? Landlords up in arms, not knowing what's happening. I mean, it's very parallel times. You know, if we look at this 12 years in reverse.
07:40
Yeah, contractors stopping jobs because the funding wasn't paid out, you know. So there was delays left and right. was literally in the middle of the week. I think that my brother Ron started the projects in, yeah, I think it was April of that year. And I think we opened up, actually, it might have been even earlier, but we opened up by November of that year, right in the middle of a pandemic. let me touch on that because, you know,
08:07
It's interesting because there's two things going on here. You weren't super happy at a corporate, right? And you had a vision for your or what you wanted to do with your practice, cosmetically, probably some insurance stuff, maybe demographic wise. I I'd like to get into that more, but so many startups start with what I learned I didn't want to do at the DSO. And this is the way I want to do it. Or they were like,
08:37
all that worked and I want to replicate that. So that's number one. I'm sure you picked up some tidbits there, but time stamping this with COVID, there's a lot of associates getting beat up right now because of COVID. Like the hours are weird, the dentists are having to do hygiene. There's a lot of upset associates that this is kind of forcing them to potentially want to do a startup.
09:06
And so it's kind of like, I'm getting mistreated at my associate position. So maybe now's the time to do it. So big picture, like what were some of those things that you were like, oh, I don't want to do this. I want to do that. Or, oh, I can see how this works. I'm going to replicate that. Do you remember that? It was also location driven, correct? Melodin, like you wanted to do a downtown practice, right? That was another big piece.
09:32
Well, yeah, it was for me, it was I had the vision in mind. I knew what I wanted to do. And I always believe that when you so different and I'm always reference, you know, Apple and Steve Jobs is there's a video of Steve Jobs, you know, from 20 years ago or 25 years ago, holding this kind of like notebook and said one day your computer is going to sit in your hands. And that was the precursor to the iPad. So he knew it was going to go that way. You know, so he starts with the end in mind of
10:02
where then he figures out how to get there. So I had kind of the same route in which I knew that I wanted to do, like for example, Heartland's strategy, many DSO strategies are doing acquisitions. I don't want to inherit somebody else's problems. I want to create my own. So, you know, so I started with, I said, we're going to do a brand. We're going to do a de novo. We're going to, we're going to do things from the top back. We're going to figure that out. And that started with a name. It also started with what type of practice I personally wanted to have.
10:32
So when, going back to what you're asking, John, it's like, I didn't plan out where I was going to practice. I just happened to live in the West loop and, I got there, you know, back when there was only two restaurants and nothing going. And now it's one of the hottest neighborhoods in the country. There was a dentist there, you know, before me. And so I was renting space from him, just doing my cosmetics two days a week while I was still working at Heartland four days a week. So I knew I was going to make that transition. like, you know,
10:59
this is the way that I want to practice. want to do cosmetic dentistry and I want to have a patient experience. don't, I don't have to be the dentist to everybody. I just need to have, you know, I'll be a dentist to the select few, um, and change their lives. So with that in mind, I saw, you know, came up with the concept of aura to bring my brother on. And so again, you're starting with really what type of practice environment do you want to have? And we knew that we were going to have beautiful environments.
11:26
that were atypical dental offices. They're not cookie cutters like they all were in the 80s and 90s. And we're going to be very tech forward. So with that in mind, I knew that those two elements right there are going to contribute greatly to a really enhanced patient experience. And as you know, John, I was always an early adopter of some of the technology and always was then and even now. So that's really what helped kind of spread the word like, Oh my God, what
11:55
great experience. got a private treatment suite when everything else was open bay concepts. You know, there's not 20 people in the. You had music that was focused on that particular patient. Like that's that's the patient experience way before you had individual iPod docking stations where people would, you know, come in and suddenly their music would be on like that's and soft materials and you know, quite frankly, I think you were one of the first lead certified dental practice.
12:24
Am I correct with that? you got, it was for me who I built a lot of dental practices in my life, I had never experienced something like this. And I knew I just wanted to be a part of something like that. Cause it was crazy. mindset. That's where I credit my partners and the people that I surrounded myself with. So in a South Loop practice, had a oral surgeon, Dr. Kuss, who also shared the kind of the same vision. So Dr. Kuss, my brother, Ron and Bridget Thurston all went to school together. I'm a few years older than them.
12:53
but we had that familiarity and trust that this is the direction we want to go in. So, you know, the South Loop practice, it didn't get LEED certified, but it followed all LEED protocols. And it was Dr. Thurston's practice in Wicker Park that actually became Chicago's first LEED certified dental practice. And then the other practice is then Dr. Kuhs built another oral surgery practice that became like the first LEED certified oral surgery practice.
13:19
So we didn't necessarily need lead certification in lot of these places, but just to kind of follow some of the protocols and kind of differentiate our brand in a way that very few people were thinking about. Right. The moralizer. Yes. So what I'm hearing is that you, like, that's pretty impressive that not only did you have this
13:46
vision for exactly what you what you want to dock. But then then you got a bunch of partners that also saw the vision and had a like mindedness. It's hard to have partners in general. Everybody knows that. So for you all to number one, work well together. Super impressive. But number two, to have all the exact same vision and be able to replicate what you've done five times, six times. How many practice do you have?
14:15
there's five general practices and well, six general five general practices with one oral surgery in it. And then there's one standalone oral surgery practice as well. So I mean, how did you all did you guys all get in a room and or go to Cabo and just talk about what you guys all wanted to do? Because I mean, I mean,
14:40
John, you had you had five, six, seven, eight practices that were they as unified as what you're making or care. No, no, no, no, no. Like Mellon's actually had a united front and a united vision. Ours were very bifurcated. So, um, yeah, no, that's I would think that everyone aspires to and I think it's from the background of that, you know, you know, from a lot of standpoint of seeing what it's like to be a part of a
15:11
a very structured, very systematic group that actually has KPIs. KPIs, key performance indicators, I mean, it's something that any business needs to live by. I mean, there some truth to that, Melladen, about that you do look at KPIs, how many patients come through the door, things of that nature?
15:34
Yeah, I just look at, you I don't get too crazy about them. look at some, you know, just general numbers. You could, you could get lost, you know, as dentists, we could be overly analytical, but there's just some key ones that are gonna be, as you say, you know, top 10 that you could look at on a consistent basis that will tell you, you know, how the practice is doing. But it does come down to the KPIs are irrelevant unless you've got, you know, again, a bigger system in place. and, you know, dentistry, dentistry for the longest time was
16:04
You come to the city of Chicago, for example, you know, had literally, John, know, better than I do, but you know, hundreds of dentists in the downtown Chicago loop, and they're all in these tall office buildings and stuff. Dentistry ended up following medicine. When all of a sudden medicine became a retail type experience, then dentistry followed suit a few years later. We always contrailed medicine, what they're doing by a few years. And as soon as, as soon as dentistry became a retail type experience,
16:31
and a consumer type experience for people. That's when it didn't matter what services you offered, rather how you offer those services. So in other words, I could have a competitor down the streets who is doing the exact same procedures that I am and has, you know, the same type of patient demographics as I do. So we're competing for the same people, but who's that patient gonna gravitate to? They're gonna gravitate to the person they trust.
17:01
So if I have a eco-friendly high tech practice that is using, let's say lasers to take out fillings with no, or to do fillings with no anesthetic or drills versus the guy down the street who has a really nice practice, but he's practicing traditionally, they're going to tend, you know, gravitate towards us or, you know, high tech practices. Cause that's what people are looking at nowadays. We didn't have that necessarily back when we first started, but we were trying to do, uh, you know, basically the
17:27
term brand differentiation, we were trying to do it from a first of all, an environmental standpoint, meaning in the inside the practice, how do we differentiate ourselves? We're like, all right, private treatment suites, you the music like you're pointing out, you know, little, little other touches around there, where it's a quieter environment doesn't feel like a clinic, it feels like you just, you know, went to a spa, even though we never follow the spa dental spot trends, lot of people commented on it. so yeah.
17:54
Based off of that, we did a lot of marketing back in the day, then we didn't have to because we got a lot of word of mouth referrals. And if a patient is in big of a city of Chicago, used to be in the South Loop, but they transferred or moved to another part of the city, guess what? They came to one of our other offices because they knew they were going to get the same experience and same trusting dentist as well. yeah, that's well. I think one thing you did really well.
18:22
And this is what Mike and I talk about a lot with, with dentists when they're thinking about opening a dental practice, it's about becoming a part of the community, you know, and becoming a part of that neighborhood. And Chicago has that ability, but honestly, anywhere has that ability. And I think that's one thing that you did. You know, I lived in the West Loop. I knew I wanted to open up a practice in the West Loop. That allowed you to become that staple and you know,
18:51
You know, the hairstylist, the, you know, the butcher, whoever it was, of course, you know, I'm going to talk about dried meats at some point in time in this interview, but you know, the butcher, whatever it is, they're going to come and they're going to say, I want to go see you. And that's how you build a practice by being a part of that community as opposed to, Hey, I just put a business in. People are going to come and see me. It doesn't work that way anymore. Am I right with that? Absolutely that correct? Oh, absolutely. I mean, we look,
19:20
for not only the doctors, they all live in the city or close to the practice. mean, I used to walk to work, you know, it like three blocks away. Dr. Thurston walks to work in the Wicker Park location. All of our locations are easily accessible by the doctors. And we try to look for, it's not always possible. We always try to look for team members that live in the city or close by. And we do get a lot of people, some people don't, but that's fine. Branding, you know, I want to talk about branding and staying true to branding. Sorry, Michael, did you want to talk?
19:50
at all? I don't know if you wanted to talk. No, it's your interview. It's your interview. But but that I mean, that that that branding piece and really SEO like you early, like you said it early on, it was important. And then it just kind of morphed and became something. But I mean, the patient flow just kept on coming through due to the early stages and really that location.
20:20
Right? So it was your, your brand marketing to that brand, and then really picking a great location and, and, and you did that on your own behalf, but you also worked with, you know, some trusted real estate people that you're still aligned with. Am I correct? Yeah. mean, real estate people come and go, but they always circle back around as far as what they know that we're always looking to expand. mean, right now we're just kind of waiting things out. We're looking to expand the South Loop location. Um, but.
20:51
For us, the most important thing was like, all right, you might pay a little bit more in rents, but visibility of a location in a city like ours is of the utmost importance because most people are either walking or taking public transportation to one of our locations. So you have to have that visibility. for the most part, except for the exception of my practice where I'm at, on the fourth floor of a building, but I'm in middle of the magnificent mile. people, and I'm surrounded by density of tall buildings.
21:19
All the other locations are highly visible. And when people pass by them, they're like, oh, is that a lounge? is that place? They don't know dental office right away. People thought it was like a restaurant or a music lounge or just kind of something like a spa or something different. Well, and that's a cool that's great realization early on because you talk about that rent, right? That that load of rent and obviously that's a big, you know,
21:48
big number on your monthly nut, but you can actually relate that to marketing dollars. Like you said, because if you are visible, if you're on an inline store of a Walmart, whatever it might be, obviously that's great. You're going to get people that see you, you know, same thing on a, on a busy street. You have to think of some of that rent as marketing dollars. It's not only just rent. So, um, well, I,
22:18
I let's talk about the greatest marketing scheme of all time. You talked about branding like this is something that you've cultivated and created over all of this time. But who helps you create that? It's also your team. Obviously, your team's probably 98 % of that you you walk in with your white jacket if you even wear white jackets and you diagnose and you you get you get out your your entire team.
22:46
is really creating that brand that people say, oh, I go to Aura, right? And so, if you've had this vision, you had the name, you had these locations in your mind, how did you get the team to walk and talk in the exact same direction, right out of the gate though? I'm interested in right out of the gate because I know it takes time. As a consultant, I don't just go into offices and
23:16
and change that overnight. It takes time. However, with a startup, like it's probably the hiring process. It's probably the expectations right out of the gate. Talk a little bit about how you created this brand with your team, because you got how many team members now in all these practices? mean, there's an average. mean, we got between the six locations, probably around maybe 60 team members. Yeah.
23:43
So you got 60 people walking and talking down the same direction talking about aura. Right. How did you do that? We actually have a little bit more independence at the practice level. We let the doctors kind of dictate it. So it's not necessarily a rigid type of a brand. It's going to fit the location and the doctor's personality. I found before when I was trying to make it a very rigid brand, even though we were all on the same page.
24:12
It was hard for us at this level because we were still all wet finger dentists to be able to maintain that brand as perfectly as I personally wanted to. So even though I wanted everything a certain way, I realized that I can't be that stringent on it. As long as the patient is stringent, as long as we all share the same clinical philosophy, as long as we're using all the same tech, all that stuff will fall in place. To answer your question, Michael, I think that as soon as
24:40
you know, and John was there for, you know, really the flagship with the South Loop location. As soon as people saw what that office was designed like, you're going to get employees, know, staff members, team, team members, you're going to get them excited about wanting to practice in place like, wow, these guys really do have a vision. And then you share that vision. Right. Actually, you had people wanting to work for Aura, right. And because it, it became something, right.
25:07
Yeah, well, we do now also as well. It's interesting to see that we got a little flack from a few dentists around town because they thought we were stealing their employees. And we've never not even once ever tried to pillage employee from somebody else. But what they've done is they've gone to other situations in which either the dentist was difficult to work with or the practice over-promised and under-delivered as far as work environments and ability to.
25:36
kind of move up that ladder within the practice. So, you we get a lot of people that would work at one group practice and all of sudden we've got five of their employees spread out through our organization because the vision wasn't there similar to what we had. So, we're constantly kind of reinventing what we need to be. I think that we had a lot of things that were mimicked as far as like office design and
26:04
some of the things that we did. you always have to kind of stay ahead of the competition with a brand differentiation, because we're all competing for the same patients. There's a lot in Chicago. There's more than enough patients go around for everybody. But you still want to be the preeminent brand in your market. there's a couple of groups that come to mind in Chicago that are doing a pretty good job of that. So it keeps us on our toes as what we need to do next. But the technology fact, I don't think anybody could compete with that.
26:31
Technology wise, we're actually in the process of starting our own in-house lab as well within the next month or so. So we already got the equipment and everything. So we're to take that experience and really kind of funnel it through our organization. So that's kind of the next step. You make it you make it you make a great point. Like when the leaders are super clear about what they want, the rest will follow. And if they don't, it's pretty clear. Right. And I think I think that's probably
27:01
one of the biggest tips that I could ever give any startup is if you're not super clear about what you're trying to accomplish, your team isn't going to be right. And so being super clear on that front end really will naturally figure out what if the team's a good fit, a good fit or not, right? And the other thing I think, unfortunately, some dentists, you know, they hire an office manager or, you know, a trusted front desk.
27:29
person and suddenly they're just doing the hiring process where you're relying on someone that is not even paying the bills or, they might be signing the name on the bottom of the check, but it's, it's not their money, but they're in the hiring process. mean, in my mind, the dentist or the visionary has to be involved in that team building process. And what I mean by team building, it's not only team building once you have them on staff, but building the team.
27:58
You know, because you're going to see if they follow the mantra of what you want and keywords are going to come out and, you know, Melanin will be like, no way. This is, this person's horrible. Um, where the front desk gal or the office manager is not thinking that way. Am I, am I onto something there from both of your perspectives? Yeah. Well, we've always, you know, made.
28:22
The mistakes that we made in the hiring process is a lot of times we hired people who were like stop gaps and they weren't necessarily a cultural fit for us, meaning that, you know, they just, uh, they're rocking the boat, you know, in one way or another. What didn't happen immediately. Uh, for the most part, nine out of 10 people are going to, interview greats. Um, if they show up in the interview nowadays, so we can, don't know if you'll don't even show up for interviews, which kind of in this pandemic kind of, you know, kills me. You know, don't, I don't get it.
28:50
So, um, but when you do get them in the front door, then it's up to me to, you know, explain what the vision is, you know, we're doing with the practice, show them the technology that I use, why it's much more exciting place to work at than, you know, somebody down the street that doesn't have the tech that we do or beautiful offices that we do. So, um, um, yeah, it's, my job. You know, I have, people that will, uh, like my youngest brother, he's our business manager and he's the one that actually does all the hiring, does all the HR. then I.
29:17
interview them afterwards, after the fact, but he gives me his recommendations. And most of time we're on the same page because he knows what I'm looking for. He knows what type of personality that I need, but at the same time, it's not like you might have 20 people coming through the door for one position. If you get three, you're very lucky nowadays. So, and then out of those three, you're hoping somebody is looking for a long term. Yeah. Somebody's looking for a long-term place to stay. And for the most part, you know, I, know, we've had a lot of great people come through, our
29:43
Last startup, you we had somebody else who was hiring that I wasn't part of the process or the other doctors weren't part of the process. And for lack of a better term, it turned out to a shit show for a year. It really was. then. But listen, that's OK. Like that's, know, yeah, that's a mistake. And here it was. I was actually giving you all the credence for, hey, you were always a part of the hiring process. And there it was.
30:14
Yeah, that part I wasn't. And then that was our last location that we started a couple of years ago. Then we finally found a team, or my brother, I found the doctor, but then the doctor actually with our brother, Dan, helped build the team. We had to get rid of a lot of bad apples. They were good clinically, but we identified who the people were that were causing the problems and not allowing the practice to reach its potential. It started off...
30:42
great. We lost a doctor after three years because she wanted to do her own place. then we just, the hires that we made after that were more stop gaps and they weren't necessarily people that we thought were, you know, good team members, you know, after we evaluated everybody. So yeah, you learn, you learn and you kind of.
31:06
And you're going to do that. You're going to find that out. Unfortunately, you don't find it out. Sometimes you find out right away because they might not show up on the third day. Right. And sometimes, you know, you just, the culture just changes, even with a defined culture, like aura or defined culture, like who's, know, one of our, our listeners culture that they want to build that it, it can infiltrate the staff and you just have to be in tune with the staff.
31:36
You can't be separate from the staff. And that's, that's one thing that I think, you know, all of you guys over at, or have done, you guys have brought the team together a lot of times and you are approachable. Um, and, and that allows you to hopefully, you know, find some of the bad apples along the way. So it doesn't, you know, uh, you know, ruin the entire cart of Apple. Well, yeah, I'm always looking for great employees. You know what mean? You'd never know when they're going to show up.
32:04
It's no different than, know, John, I'm a big soccer guy, so I follow the Premier League. played soccer all my life. And, you know, you watch some of these top teams and what are they doing? know, the team that came in second is looking how to bolster their team. Second's a great accomplishment, but what they're doing is to try to fill in where their weaknesses are, you know, and that's no different with the dental offices. We got to fill in who do we have a weak spot? And if we do, luckily, if you don't, then great. Keep that team there for the next 20 years.
32:31
If you do have a weak spot, you got to evaluate it. If you can't train them to be better or motivate them to be better, then you have no other option but to look for somebody who's a better fit. Go on, go on, Mike. I'm going to relate to you, please. love it. It's like all day doc. It's like every day. It reminds me of one of my other interviews earlier this week.
33:00
Doesn't that usually show up, doctor and patient experience? I've found that you can train the tactical things. You could train how to call the insurance company and verify. But if you aren't smiling when that patient walks in the door, if you're not hand holding them through the entire office, that shows up really, really quickly, doesn't it? And the one thing I wanted to mention, and I don't want to forget this, is
33:30
You went after this, you didn't want to call it today, the spa, but you kind of are doing the spa. I do a lot of startups for folks that do HMOs and in really, really blue collar areas. That's okay. They can have that vision and it'll probably be really, really successful. But the one thing that they all need to have is impeccable customer service. And isn't that it?
34:00
That's what shows really quickly is that customer service where it's not a good fit and you got to cut it. Well, that's where it comes with, you know, again, that relates to the vision at the top, what you want out of this practice and you fit the people around that to fulfill that vision. And part of that vision is customer service. You know, I think, uh, uh, years ago when I was first starting, you know, we didn't have all this great, uh, uh, CRM software out there that would be able to get feedback from patients in literally, you know, 24 hours. Now I get on my lap.
34:28
on a daily basis, get our ratings. So if there is a three, you know, anything that's three or two or one stars, which is luckily for my practice, very few, you know, in our, in our office, you know, I address those and like, why did that patient have a bad experience? And then sometimes it is just up to the patients having a bad day. But a lot of times it's got nothing to with us, what we're doing clinically. It really had to do something with either their insurance. We sat them down late.
34:56
something wasn't explained. There was a procedure they didn't expect or to pay for or whatever it might have been. So it's just communication. And sometimes it really comes down to one of my team members had a bad day and their tone came across the wrong way. So those are all correctable because now they're all very visible. So we see those. Yeah, but you're using that as a learning experience.
35:24
Right? You're taking that insane. the other piece is what great leaders do is they obviously teach to mistakes, but they also teach to triumphs. Right? So triumph in when staff members have done something right, project that amongst others. So that propagates more triumphs. So let me ask you this question. Have you ever hired someone
35:52
outside of the dental industry. Because sometimes you're taking that, you you were talking about acquisitions, hey, I don't want other people's problems. Sometimes you're actually hiring from outside, you might actually be able to build them up to who you want them to be. Have you ever done that? And what does that look like to you? Well, my very first practice, did that. So my first office manager was actually a manager of a prominent hair salon.
36:19
in Chicago on Oak Street, is kind of like the Foo Foo Shishi, Foo Shii, shopping street of Chicago. And I actually knew her personally through my sister-in-law. And I just thought she was kind of tired of where she was at. She was there for like 13 years and she was looking for a new challenge and I actually brought her on board. luckily, basically she had no skills as far as dental go. She had to learn all that.
36:44
But what she was really good with was she was with patients and presenting treatment plans. And she just had a great rapport and a really good disposition about her. So I hired, that goes to the kind of the strategy of sometimes you hire for personality, not necessarily for experience. Because you could always teach clinical or business stuff or administrative stuff, but you can't teach personality. So, and she was with me for a good, I'd say five years until she decided to move on.
37:11
But I had literally, this is why I started my practice. I was primarily cosmetic. So was easy that way. literally had her and I had one dental assistant and that was it. And I was just doing cosmetic. So our in office flow wasn't like your typical dental practice. We didn't have an abundance of patients walking through the door every 20 minutes, you know? So was literally one patient here, one patient there, you know? So it was, was easier to manage, but that worked out for me. Yeah.
37:38
Yeah, because I think that there's something to that, especially front of the house. I mean, that's a, that's a real spot where, you know, you do want to relate to the patient. You want to be able to give them that experience as opposed to something that is so, you know, strategic and check the box. Like, uh, you need that free flow of conversation. You need that free flow of, you know, uh, gratitude that these people are in the room. And, and that instance probably worked, you know, someone from a
38:07
you know, a beauty salon, if you will. So it's been a while since I've been to one for obviously, but it's right ahead of I don't even know what these things are like anymore. Last last question. And then closing remarks, guys. Doc, you've done all of these projects. They're all beautiful, impeccable, just kind of like wow type practices.
38:36
As we head into the rest of the series, right, with contractors, architects, real estate people, you name it, we're interviewing the gamut on best practices along the way. You've done a few yourself. so give me like two, three things that you could say, you know, made a mistake here, would never do that again, or did this and I'm so glad I did.
39:05
just off the top of your head.
39:09
Um, I say mistake number one is not keeping a consistent contractor. So if you're going to build an office, if you have, um, plans to do more than one, then I think you need to forge a relationship with a, uh, a contractor. Um, yeah, because they're going to share the vision. We've used basically different contractors for each project. Cause we were always searching for the right one.
39:36
So only later did you know, another contractor come up that we were kind of talking to, our, you know, was working on our last project that we thought would be the right fit. But that probably come, that'd probably be the very first thing. And then.
39:53
Second thing would be invest in technology right away. took me even though I'm an early adopter, if you want to be successful, you need to be able to justify a higher cost, a better looking office, a better environment, and some tech that will actually drive patients towards you. If you're going to open up an office in a strip mall next to a money lender and a nail salon,
40:22
You're not going to have the same ambiance as you will somebody who is any you're just doing a bare bones type of practice. You know, you're not going to do as well as somebody who actually invested a little bit more money in the proper technology. So and the ambiance of the place now, that doesn't mean you have to go crazy on costs and, you know, use all Well, that's I was going to say. Like as things went on, you still kept that vision and you spent money on these things, but you were smart and prudent with the money.
40:52
as the projects went on. So, and I realized that for myself, and Mike made reference to this also that, you you don't have to spend money for clean environments, for environments that suit the type of dentistry that you're serving. You just have to be smart and working with that contractor, they could help you understand instead of spending, overspending on this, do this. And I think that
41:21
You know, that ties together that contractor and that partnership for that shared vision. They're not against you. They're actually partners so they can help you build that the right way with the right cost in mind. Yeah. So now you're to have to, especially with the pandemic. mean, we were fortunate because we created all of our offices were closed private treatment suites. We never had an open bay concept in any of our practices.
41:50
Because that was our initial differentiation and we used, you know, the type of hardware and we had sliding barn doors with really cool finishes on them. And, you know, basically the rest of Chicago started copying a lot of our finishes, which is great. I think they probably understood. So if somebody is going into saving costs, well, I could understand if you're going to save costs upfront, you're going to be behind the eight ball. If you don't do something a little bit different from a design standpoint, especially now with this pandemic going on.
42:20
We're looking to retrofit at least my locations with these air vents that are going to circulate the air. They also have a light in them. It's a bunch of projects that are out there. It's a different world right now. You have to have private treatment suites to make the patients feel a lot more comfortable right now. And I think that that's what people would prefer. know, again, going back to all things being equal, they'll take an office with a private treatment suite rather than one with an open bay concept where you can hear what the person next door did last weekend. know, so yeah, it kind of goes all the way.
42:50
It's kind of having a private room in a hospital. Like, why wouldn't you want a, you know, a private room as opposed to a roommate? You don't want an emergency room where, you know, the guy's bleeding over next to you, next to us all next to you. So, yeah, that's the two things come off the top of my head. And then I just think that the third thing, I think we should have placed even higher emphasis on customer service.
43:18
Uh, the majority of our, we ever got, and I would even go as far as say, uh, send your team to basically like hospitality training. Uh, there's something that I've kind of looked into to see what programs are out there. Um, give them the, uh, what is it? The, uh, I forgot what store brand it is. Uh, Neiman, Neiman Marcus hospitality, I think is one of the highest rated ones and they have like a booklet out. I think we should have established that a lot earlier because the majority of our complaints.
43:47
don't come from a clinical standpoint. In fact, very few. So, I mean, I might've had a complaint because the tooth remained sensitive for six months. Patient was unhappy for that. But the majority of them are how somebody answered the phone, how their insurance was handled, how somebody might've talked while they were at the office, know, appropriate remarks, being professional at all times, or how somebody would look like they rolled out of bed. So majority of our complaints come from people at the front desk. And I hate to say that, but...
44:17
Uh, they've got, they're the fruit, they're the face of the practice. So the first person that they hear and, uh, first person that they see when they walk into practice. So they got to be on point. I see those. actually have more, they have more contact time than you do with the patient. That's the crazy thing. And people don't spend the time for proper training. And I don't know if it's Nieman. could be Nordstrom way there. You I've read that. That's a great book that talks about customer service. Yeah. I mean, the Nordstrom way is an amazing book.
44:46
that I've seen people pass out to staff members or businesses pass out to their employees so they can understand how to, that experience of how to treat people the right way when they walk in the door. so, I wanna thank you personally, from a friendship standpoint for spending time with Mike and I.
45:12
because I think your vision and you know, if people want to go and look at your website or a dental studio, see what you guys are doing in the Chicagoland area. See some of the the build outs and really some of your how you are projecting your vision early on. Right. I mean, that's that that website is from, you know, the past, even though it's transcended into the future. You've stuck to your vision.
45:42
through highs and lows, mistakes and triumphs. And that's what we want to convey to people that you can do it. Find the right people, trust in them, trust in yourself and trust in the teammates and spend time on them. Great job on this interview today, Maladon. And yeah, any closing remarks, Mike or?
46:07
No, I just wanted to say thanks. Your success speaks for itself. Anybody that's following along on YouTube or any of our podcast channels, make sure you get over to Facebook and follow because you'll have access to Dr. here. If you have a question, I'm sure Dr. would be happy to help someone just get in there, start. You have access to all of our interviewees.
46:36
Thank you for being a resource for our listeners. And just on a final note, just came to me right now is if you want to see a powerful video that goes to what you just said, John, Simon Sinek, the the golden circle, always start with the go on YouTube, watch that, start with why and work backwards. That's pretty much talks about, you know, what I've been saying here. Start with the end in mind, start with the vision, work your way backwards from that. That's a great drop.
47:05
Dropping golden nuggets right to the end. mean, it's. What is it? Yeah, I think thank you. Thanks so much for being a part of it. All right. Thanks guys.
47:28
Thanks for listening. Tune in next week for another truth-filled episode of Startup Unscripted. Check out Startup Unscripted on Facebook and YouTube. Click like, subscribe, and interact with Michael and John.