"The Seven Figure Dentist" - Making More & Working Less (feat. Kirk Teachout)

How does doing seven figures this year sound? Not bad, right? Now, how about doing it by working less? Now we’re talking. In Episode 13 of “The Dental Domination Podcast,” Kirk Teachout of VI Quarter Coaching shares how he and his wife transformed her dental practice into a revenue-driving, profit-boosting machine — even while reducing the clinical schedule to 3 days per week. In this in-depth conversation, Kirk shares three things dentists can put into action right now to start making it happen. If making more and working less sounds appealing to you, don’t miss this one!

Transcript

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All right, folks, welcome back to the Dental Domination podcast. This is episode 13. My name is Dan Bryan. I am the co-founder of Dentalscapes. We're an online marketing company specifically for dental practices. We work with general dentists, pediatric dentists, orthodontists, you name it. All of the specialists in between. And I'm really excited to be here today, not to talk about our company, but to turn it over to a real expert within the dental consulting world. And I'm really excited today to welcome Kirk Teachout. Kirk is a business strategy consultant. He owns and operates a company, Fourth Quarter Coaching. He's been working on a real cool program lately for dentists that are interested in improving workplace culture, improving profitability, and runs a program called the Seven Figure Dentist. And, you know, he, after my own heart, is a serial entrepreneur. He's an author. And this guy knows what he's talking about. His wife is a private practice dentist in Covington. Tennessee and Kirk has actually managed the office since I think 2019. He's also got a background in marketing, so watch out. But Kirk, I want to turn it over to you really quick. Thank you so much for joining the show today and what can you tell folks just sort of about your background and brief and how you got into dental consulting and that sort of thing. Yeah, sure. Thanks for having me on. This is great. I love talking about this kind of stuff. I'm super passionate about it. But like you're saying, yeah, I do kind of have a background in marketing a little bit, mainly because I came from the music industry, which was completely random from the dental industry. Right, right. So I come from the music industry tons of years in the music industry. And you have to learn so many different things as an artist. where you have to learn how to build your own website, you have to learn how to run your socials and do all sorts of things. And so I came from that industry and when my wife four years ago was like, hey, I really wanna buy a practice, she was an associate at the time, she was like, will you help me? I was like, sure, I'll help you. She had never run a business before. So I was like, okay, let's go in husband and wife team. So we did and... We obviously learned a ton. I'd never been in the dental field beforehand, except for when she was in dental school, just hearing all the things she was learning about. So it was kind of like watching House. I felt like a doctor after all the seasons, right? But. isn't it true that you opened the practice something like just a couple months before COVID hit? Oh, yeah. Nice. Oh. Oh man, but to be honest, and I know, you know, we've talked about this too, is like, that was honestly the best thing for us. Because during those two months, yeah, I mean, during those two months that we had to be shut down by the government, it was the time that we really developed what we're doing now. Because we had the time. to actually focus on the things internally that we just couldn't. So we were coming home exhausted just mentally and physically and emotionally and relationally, all sorts of things, just exhausted. And my wife probably wouldn't want me to tell you this, but she was crying coming home every day. I totally understand. And I'd be, I'd quite honestly, with everything you had going on, I would wonder what was up if she wasn't. Yeah, it was hard. It was hard, especially as a female doctor coming home to very young kids. We had two at the time. So she wanted to be home. And so we focused on, okay, well, what's the lifestyle that we truly want? Not just, you know, kind of molding ourselves to the societal constructs that dentists have. Like, yeah, they work four days a week. Some work five, some work six with corporate pushing the bar there. But... like, what do we actually want? And how can we actually do that? So that's kind of really what set up the, the bar really for us to launch what we're doing now. Cool. So you were, you know, you were obviously looking at a whole lot of factors, uh, going in and starting the practice. And I know, you know, we've talked offline and you and your wife were, I don't know how you had all this time with, with the kids, but you know, you were sitting down each night and it sounds like going through processes and workflows and really trying to, you know, narrow down what your processes were going to be to make the practice, you know, as efficient as possible. And To that point, I wanted to ask you, I follow your content online. Love it, by the way. I encourage everyone listening to check you out on LinkedIn and Instagram, and you're all over the place, and I love it. But there are two things you talk a lot about, about looking at in every practice. And so I wanna kinda open the floor here. What are those two things, and what should dentists focus on improving profitability, improving workplace culture? Like what... What are those two metrics that you're looking at and wanting to make sure that they tap? Sure, and that's something that I do get a lot. I'm more on Instagram than anything else, so if you do need to find me, that's where you wanna ask me. But those two things that you're talking about are definitely something that, those are the first two things I look for, KPI-wise, and really kinda steer doctors towards, which is scheduling efficiency. Because most people are not as busy as they really think. Yeah. Yeah. but then also treatment acceptance percentage. So a lot of people are like, wait, what? That's what you look for? Like, yes, that is. So that's really the first thing I look at is treatment acceptance percentage. And really what that boils, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, there's a lot of questions surrounding that. What does it mean to you and how do you go about improving that number? Sure, so it's different from case acceptance percentage because case acceptance percentage is just, okay, you see the patient, you give them 20 things, and if they accept one thing, that's 100% acceptance. But treatment acceptance percentage is if they have those 10 fillings, they actually go forward with all 10 of those fillings and schedule it and actually follow through with that treatment. So our office has an 86% treatment acceptance percentage. Damn. Yeah. that out of almost nine out of those 10 fillings, they're doing every single one of them. And it's not because we're pushing them, it's because we give them the options and we build the frameworks. I was going to say, so what sort of your approach there, there's a real move in dentistry towards shared decision making. And so making the clinician and the patient partners in their treatment planning and that kind of thing. Is that something that you guys are implementing? And does that explain some of the really impressive treatment acceptance percentage that you guys have at your practice? How are you doing it on the ground? Yeah, and like you were saying, like it's a partnership, right? So we can only do so much. Obviously building rapport is important and trust, but at the end of the day, you have to educate the patient on their responsibility. You know, you can only lead a horse to water. That is true, yeah. So you have to frame questions and you have to frame the treatment in a way that they take responsibility and full responsibility for their health. 100%, that's like, you know, we actually had Dr. Matt Allen on the show, you know, way back in the beginning, and he talked a lot about motivational interviewing. And that's really that entire philosophy there, is sort of eliciting their hopes for their oral health and getting them to buy in first and foremost. I love that approach. Right, right. And like Alex Hermosy says, it's selling the vacation, not the plane flight. So you gotta, yeah, you have to tell them what their life's gonna be like and kind of frame it to where like, look, this is what it's gonna be like when you don't have 10 cavities in your mouth. This is what it's gonna be like when you don't have two bombed out teeth in the back. This is what it's gonna be like when you have a confident smile because you just did ortho or you just did a full mouth veneer case. Yep. Yeah. look, and this is something that a lot of doctors do, and I get it, because you just came out of school, your just dental jargon is in your mind. You have to get rid of it. You have to simplify it and just tell the patient how it is and what it's gonna be like when their confidence is boosted and when all this treatment's done, what it's gonna be like for their life. That vacation, that selling the vacation, not the dental treatment itself. Yeah, I have a fraught relationship with turbulence. So I really like the idea of selling the vacation and not the plane flight. I like that. It's getting worse by the way. I read an article just a couple of days ago about how global warming or, you know, it's contributing to increased turbulence and actually airborne injuries. So there's that for you. Ha ha ha. Yeah, well, and then you have the 737 Max's, you know, just falling apart in midair. Ha ha ha. to pay extra. I used to pay extra to sit in the exit row. Don't think I'm going to do that anymore. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, they should give those seats away at this point. Okay. So that's really good. So let's pivot here. Scheduling efficiency, though. Big part of this, big part of this equation in terms of increasing profitability and ultimately, you know, the way that you've structured it, I know from hearing some of your content online. really eliminating some of the burnout also associated with practicing full time. So what do you look at when you assess a practice in terms of scheduling efficiency and what are some of the things that you've put in place that you and your wife's practice to improve that? Sure. So really, it comes down to, like, everybody's like, oh, you block schedule. Yes, we do block scheduling. But it's more of a hybrid block scheduling. So we sat down. And every doctor is different. So this is not really a cookie cutter approach. But this is the basics of how we kind of frame this. But we sat down on an empty schedule. And we had a goal. We had a daily goal. based off of our yearly goals. And we're like, okay, how can we hit that daily goal? Based off of the numbers, so we look at ROCs is what a lot of people call them. We look at big procedures, the most profitable procedures. entrepreneurial operating system in the US? You mentioned, you mentioned rocks. Okay. I was just curious. We run on that. And so, yeah, it sounds like you have a similar philosophy though. Yeah. right. So you look at the most profitable procedures that don't take as much time. And so we look at crowns, obviously, bridges, partials, all these things. And that's our left hand column. And we're like, okay, how can we fit so many of these during the day? At the end of the day, not everybody is going to need a crown. That's fine. So we have a restorative column where we have fillings and extractions, which is not restorative, but still, like you have extractions on that too. So we have a column for that. And then we have a column for emergencies and non-productive things that are assistant driven. So as we're flowing through this schedule, I asked my wife, I was like, okay, what do you not want in the morning? She was like, I don't want super difficult fillings. So we put those in the afternoon. She was like, I was like, okay, so what do you want in the morning? She was like, I want root canals in the morning, not as soon as I start, but at 10 o'clock. I'm like, okay, cool. So I asked these questions of like, what do you want? What do you not want? What are you good at? What do you feel like takes a long period of time? And we run through the schedule as if like, okay, this is my ideal day. And then we look up at the schedule goal. I'm like, okay, does that actually hit the goal? Like, no. Okay, so how are we gonna actually hit that goal? So we start at 8.30 with a crown. And then we have a 9.30 slot or a nine o'clock slot that's restorative. That's like a one or two surface filling, just one. And then we have an emergency patient at 8.32. So if you're looking at this schedule, it's kind of this block-ish schedule, but that emergency patient's assistant driven. So my wife is numbing the patient in op one, the crown, to get ready for the crown prep. The assistant's already taken a PA and kind of telling the patient kind of what they're finding. And then she's coming in as soon as she numbs and confirming what's been found or saying, no, this is what's going on. This is what we need to do. Go ahead and schedule it. Great. And then they move to hygiene checks. If they have time, if not, she goes back, preps the crown for 20 minutes and then numbs the restorative, that filling, and then goes and does hygiene while that restorative is getting ready. So it's kind of a dance. Yeah, I love that concept. And you've talked previously about, um, you know, if it doesn't require a dental license, do something else. Um, and, you know, delegate that task. And so, you know, we talked, uh, offline Tennessee is one of those great states, my opinion, that allows hygienist administered local anesthesia. And so you have, you know, those team members participating in that taking time off of your wife's schedule. so that she can attend to other things that actually do require her dental license and a dentist's hand. So really love that. Obviously, the whole point of this is to minimize stress, minimize burnout, but more importantly or not more importantly, I take that back, but also improve practice profitability. And so, you know, one of the things that you talk a lot about in your work is... this simple change or this simple mindset shift that you can use to add 20K to your monthly production. So I wanna talk about that. What is that all about and how can everyone do that? Cause that sounds good. Yeah, right. Yeah, if I can add an extra 20K to my month, I'm always happy. So really it comes down to meeting cadence. And I forget where I found it, but somebody was talking about basically, it's like if you come in 15 minutes early every morning, you're gonna add an extra 100K to your year. And so I was like, okay, so how can I implement that? And my wife was like, okay. man. Ha ha ha. Yeah, yeah. so, and I'm not a morning person. I'm a night owl. So it's kind of hard for me. Yeah. So, right, right. Yeah. I was like, Hey, let's do this early in the morning. Yeah. But still, right. But still, it's about the morning meeting. So we have two meetings in the morning before we even start. So my wife gets there, we started at 8.30 seeing patients, but we get there at 7.45 and my wife has a meeting with the assistants for 15 minutes to go over the doctor's side. And there's two things they look for. They look for what they're doing that day, how can they improve that appointment if they have pending treatment that's maybe not on the schedule that we can add, if they're okay with it. And then what's the next step? So we look at every single patient on that. And then we move to a morning huddle with the whole team. And with that morning huddle, we go over everything in hygiene from all the hygienists. We have two, but we go through each of their schedules, what we're watching, what's on the treatment plan that we haven't done. And if there's any holes in the schedule, how can we move them over? And if it's as simple as a scan with our Sarac, our prime scan, then we can go in and scan it like a partial. That's an extra $1,300. So we look for things every single day. And if you do that, if you have those two meetings, you'll easily, easily add$20,000 and more. I mean, I had somebody that they're adding$40,000 a month. Just by adding that little 15 minute meeting, yeah, that 15 minute meeting makes a massive difference. Yeah, yeah, I love it. Well, I mean, like you said, who wouldn't want that? You know, one thing that comes to mind here is I think as you pitch this to other dentists and you have a consulting business and work with dentists on implementing these strategies, which is awesome, and I'm gonna throw in the show notes how folks can get in contact with you if they're interested in partnering with you. But you know, it's work. At the end of the day, you gotta put in the work to... improve your profitability to, you know, improve outcomes for your patients, you've got to put in the work. And some dentists, you know, are pretty, you know, I'm not disparaging anyone, I think it's pretty obvious that a lot of dentists are sort of stuck in a rut in terms of being a little bit hesitant to adopt changes that ultimately will benefit. Um, but it is, it's, it's more work at the outset to change your workflows and that sort of thing. Ultimately, however, what you're proposing here is, is stuff that will make their lives easier and in fact, require them to work less. And so to that point, you have talked a lot about how you increased your monthly collections and in fact, I think the most recent number you cited was something like 37 K every month. by working less and working three days a week. That sounds good. So how are you actually making that happen? And what does that shift look like in practice? Sure. So yeah, we did talk about this a little bit and I talk about this a lot. And it's kind of my ethos because we have four kids. Like we want to spend time with our family and I know that resonates with a lot of people, especially as more female dentists are getting into the industry and there's more female dentists now graduating than male dentists. And what they want is that life balance with the practice that they want. and to be able to be the boss, but also to be able to be at home with their kids. And I mean, I have a couple clients right now that's the same thing. And they're male doctors too. You know, they want to spend more time and travel more with their family but have the means to be able to afford that travel. So I subscribe to working less. Right? Right, right. And so and I mean, we take even though we work three days a week, yeah, we take little weekend trips. we also take whole weeks off. I mean, that it's, and it's fine because we have a team that works even while we're not there legally. But how we do that is kind of counterintuitive. The industry typically, even when we got into it was like, okay, yeah, you're gonna work four days a week minimum. And then the DSOs are really pushing five days, six days, seven days, sometimes 12 hour days. Dear God. man, that's just a lot. Like why? And so then in order to do that and prevent burnout, you have to hire more people, which creates complexity. And then you also have to hire more doctors, which creates even more complexity. And it really affects your culture. So I think there's a way to do it. And obviously people do it, but I didn't want to have a high churn rate in the team. So when COVID hit, we came back at three and a half days a week. We asked the team, we're like, look, if we did three and a half days, we're not increasing pay, but if we did three and a half days a week and we had a great bonus system, how can, like, would you guys do it? And they were like, yeah, yeah. So we can do that. Okay, great. We did it. And as soon as we shifted that, it changed our lives. Yeah. Even with that half day, cutting out like three or four hours in the afternoon was a massive change in the energy of the office, in the culture of the office, and also in what we could do. So I mean, yeah, I mean, we increased 56% that first month, just from going four to three and a half days. So we went from an average of I think it was like 65,000 to over 103,000 in production. or no, sorry, in collections, not even production, collections that next month. And then when my wife had a baby not too long later, we decided that she's gonna come back only at three days a week, not three and a half. So we still have the team there on that half day on Thursday because they can do checks, they can do different things. But we came back at three days a week and we increased again. Yeah. because now we're forced to have just those three days a week and find the time to fit all the patients in that we can and be super efficient with scheduling efficiency, like I said, and treatment acceptance percentage. And it's made a massive change in our life, but it is hard as far as your mindset goes because everybody's scared. Yeah, I mean, it's a limiting belief that you can't do it. But when you do, you'd be surprised at how much your team loves it more. And like I was talking to the doctor, we hired our first associate this last year. And I was like, you know, when you move, you know, she's from Nashville. I was like, when you move to Nashville, it's gonna be hard, you know, to try to find a job. She was like, I'm not finding a job that I'm working more than three and a half days a week. What are you talking about? It was like, once you're in it, it's like, whoa, like I'm not going back to a different style. This is awesome. yeah, exactly. Well, you know, it reminds me, it's like when I shift to working remotely full time, and I was working remotely before it was cool, way before COVID, I think I've been doing it about 10 years now. Yeah, I won't go back. And the thing about it is, it doesn't just have to do with the fact that I have more flexibility and I can work in my pajamas if I want to. I don't, by the way, everyone says that, but most of the time that's bullshit. But you know, what it means for me is I am more productive. I get more done because I don't have the distractions. I don't have folks busting in my office every 20 minutes and starting a new conversation, which then requires another 20 minutes for me to get reset into my next task. And it's sort of the same idea, I feel like with dentistry, you not only are better focused, you are more productive, but there are tangential benefits as well. I mean, let's not kid ourselves the quality of your work when you're super focused and feeling energized. is going to be better than at two or three o'clock in the afternoon when you're burned out you're tired, you're ready for your post lunch nap like I am, you know you're just going to do better work in general and you know to your point you're going to make more money while you're doing it. Who's not going to be for that? But it is a mindset shift, totally understand it seems counterintuitive but I love what you're preaching I think it makes a whole lot of sense. It is, and I want to leave you with this too, is I've been reading Atomic Habits again, and James Clear talks about this, and it's so true. And that's what we're going over on our monthly meeting today actually, is that you don't rise to your goals, but you fall to your systems. Yeah. and you're only as good as what your systems are. And so focusing on your systems and focusing on what we talk about with scheduling efficiency and treatment acceptance percentage, if you can fill the schedule efficiently and have the production to do it, but then training your team with the systems to be able to run it in the back, because it doesn't matter if you have a full schedule, if your team feels like they're running around with their heads cut off, it doesn't matter. So we've created a way and systems to where we can run a $16,000 schedule with one doctor and it not feel like chaos. Yeah. Amazing. You know, it really all boils down to, I think, two things that you've already touched on, which is systems, of course. You know, DentalScapes, we're all about the SOPs and making sure that everything is well documented and that we're sticking on the path. But it's also people. And I know, you know, we've talked a lot offline outside of this podcast about how do you find the right team members? How do you interview effectively? How do you sort of gauge intuitively? how they're going to embrace the vision, the overall vision of the practice and buy into that. So I would love if you were up for it to come back on the podcast here in the future and talk a little bit more about your philosophy there because I think you're doing, from what I can tell, I think you're doing hiring the right way and really building a team that is, you know, better equipped from the outset to follow those processes that you put in line and really buy into the vision. And I think that's so important and resonates with a lot of. of dentists out there who maybe don't have that quite as dialed in. But anyway, Kirk, I can't thank you enough for dropping by today. I think this has been an awesome conversation and I always pick up great tips from you when you share your content. So to that end, if folks want to connect with you, if folks want to explore a consulting relationship with you, where can they find you? What's the best way to get in touch with you? And where can people find your content online as well? Sure, yeah. So like I said, I'm on Instagram way more than anything else, but I do post it everywhere else, but Kirk Teachout, at Kirk Teachout, I'm on Instagram, message me, whatever. I'm easy, super easy to get to. And I manually message everybody. I don't have a bot on there, I promise. But I do manually message everybody. And then also LinkedIn, TikTok, Facebook, the YouTubes, everything. But then you could also email me at kirk at four And, you know, I'll respond. And that's fourth, I think, with an IV, like the Roman numeral, right? Okay, awesome, awesome. Awesome, well good deal. I will throw all this information in the show notes and folks can connect with you if they like. And to that end, folks listening out there, if you enjoyed what you heard today, if you enjoyed the conversation, and I personally don't know how you couldn't, but that's just me, I'm biased anyway. If you enjoyed it, I could not thank you enough if you would take just two minutes and leave us a rating. And if possible, a review on Apple podcasts or Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts from really helps us reach more dentists, more practice administrators out there. And I can assure you the algorithm is brutal in terms of getting your podcast more visibility and I can use all the help that I can get. So thank you all so much. Thank you for joining. This has been episode 13, Onward and Upward. And if I have my way about it, Kirk, I will gently drag you back on the show if I can make it happen. Sounds great. Alright, sounds good. Thanks, Kirk. Take care and everyone out there. Thanks so much for listening. We'll see you later. See ya.