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How can you strategically grow your practice without the risk of losing everything? In this soul-stirring episode, our guest, Luke Infinger, provides the tools you need to stand tall in your field. He dives deep into the importance of mastering your existing practices, before even considering expansion, underlining the necessity of building a robust foundation and optimizing your operations for overall success. Luke's guidance will help you identify the right time to scale, steering you on a path of continuous and sustainable growth.
In the second leg of the journey, Luke uncovers the crucial role of profitability and planning in expanding your practice. His words serve as a wakeup call, reminding dentists and practice owners alike that profit isn't all about numbers - it's the lifeline of your growing business. His riveting advice and personal experiences will guide you into understanding the intricate relationship between strategic growth, profitability, and optimal planning.
What You'll Learn in This Episode:
Ready to skyrocket your dental practice to a whole new level of success? Tune in to this episode with Luke Infinger!
Website: https://thedentalmarketer.lpages.co/the-ground-marketing-course-open-enrollment/
You can reach out to Luke Infinger here:
Website: https://hip.agency/
HIP Resources: https://hip.agency/resources/
Mentions and Links:
Software/Tools:
Personality Tests:
Books/Publications:
The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don't Work and What to Do About It
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Michael: Hey Luke. So talk to us. What's one piece of advice you can give us this Monday morning?
Luke: So one piece of advice for dentists, orthodontists, or really a lot of business owners. Uh, I've had the pleasure of working with probably about a thousand dentists or orthodontists, uh, within the past 10 years.And I think a false belief and, it's probably taught or, you know, talked to, uh, amongst peers is you need to be able to scale your practice through acquiring locations and adding more doctors. And while that could be the case, I see people do this way too quickly. Absolutely. they'll have a low production practice.They'll also be carrying a lot of debt. and think I need more cash flow. I need to look for my second location. I need to look for another associate doctor. And I've actually seen a lot of practices go under this way because they become over leveraged. So I always tell people, focus on what you have.Grass is not always greener, build what you have, prove the concept, get your business to an A player, and then duplicate that. Nobody wants to duplicate a D player. You know what I mean? So if I have a business, it's not performing super well, it's probably not time to duplicate the model.
Michael: Interesting. Okay.So then what's too quickly in your experience? If we're specifically talking about, let's go with like a general practice. Sure. And they're busy, too busy, right? So they're assuming, Oh my gosh, I need a doctor. I need an associate. I need a more hygienist. Right. Would that be too quickly?
Luke: Well, it really depends on the specific situation.It could be time. But. Most of the time I've never met a dentist or orthodontist that's actually too busy. It's very rare and I'll explain why. The reason why we become too busy when running a business is we're doing the wrong things. Thanks. Very rarely do you talk to a dentist or orthodontist running the practice.I mean, again, this could be any other specialty within dentistry or maybe even any small business. And I've done this myself as a business owner. Well, who is, uh, looking at payroll? Who's looking at our credit card statements? maybe a security camera goes out. We need that. I mean, you get the idea.We carry all this stuff and there's a lot of things we don't delegate. So if you look at an org chart within a dental practice, typically it's the doctor, Maybe an office manager and everybody else. And the office manager probably also does other things. Maybe she has to be an assistant some days, or maybe she has to pick up the phone or things like that.And so I think if the doctor sets up an org chart to just be a doctor, which is going to produce the most amount for the practice. That's why they went to forever, you know, because they're, they are the only ones who can do what they do. So on your genius and delegate everything else. The doctor within a practice.In the day to day should be the technician. And I don't mean like a dental tech. I mean, if you read the book, the E myth, which is one of the most popular books in the world for small business, there's technician, the manager, and the visionary. A dentist can be the technician and the visionary. They never want to be the manager.everything else has to be delegated. They have to be the dentist and outside of 8 to 5 or maybe on breaks or specific planned meetings. They can float into the visionarybecause they're the owner. So their vision, their mission is going to set the practice apart and have a unique identity, but they should not be managing.And this is where most dentists, I would say 98 percent get stuck on the hamster wheel and they can't grow. The number one thing we hear, I don't know if you hear this, is we just need more new patients. Makes sense. But I asked them, well, how many people filled out a form on your website last year?Well, I don't know. Well, where do those people go? Well, I think they go to Cindy. Well, does Cindy have a list? Um, no, I think she just like calls them then and sees if they pick up. Okay, well, how do we track that? How many times did we call them? What did we say? So you don't necessarily need more patients.You need better systems, right? Because if I scale marketing and just bring you more of those types of leads and they're falling by the wayside, do you need more patients or should we first fix system and then you may already have. The leads that you need to scale to your goal.
Michael: And I guess that's where that, it of comes in where the front office sometimes, do you get this sometimes Luke where like they tell you, patients you're sending me, the quality is not good.I need better quality patients. And you're like, the only job is to be getting you leads, right? It's up to you to, you're not converting it kind of
Luke: And And this is any sales process. Yeah. I don't care what business you're in. Uh, people are guarded. I don't know about you, but I've opted in to a lot of things.I missed an appointment with my chiropractor. I've been for like three years. Totally forgot. Am I a bad patient? Well, probably not. but we have access to anything we want right here. We have a supercomputer in our pocket at all times. And so, you know, dentists and orthodontists, and I can appreciate this.Typically, there's a little bit of an ego there. Hey, I'm a very specialized person. I'm a smart person. I'm skilled. I can help you. Um, you should come to me, but we don't know that as the consumer, we look at dentistry now, largely as, a commodity. And so you have to put yourself in the shoes of the patient, the consumer, the client, If they don't know, if they opt into a lot of things and click on a lot of things and forget.Or it's not at the top of the priority list. If my tooth's not in pain, how do we nurture them and establish a relationship and bring their guard down and let them know that we are the practice of choice? that is a real holistic sales process that we've forgotten because we think people should just click on our stuff and then show up in our practice.Doesn't really work that way. would challenge a lot of people listening to look at how they behave. When's the last time you checked your voicemails? Do you respond to all text messages? Do you call every number back that's red on your phone? Because red is like, on my phone, that's the missed calls. I never check my voicemails.only when it says 95 percent full. And I never call the numbers back that are red. And my phone, I haven't looked into changing the settings. Thanks. But if I don't have your number saved in my phone, it won't even ring. it takes you straight to voicemail. So if a practice is calling me and I opted in, do I save their phone number?When I opt into the ad. No, of course not. That would be ridiculous. So don't have your number saved. You go straight to voicemail. I don't check my voicemail. Did you send me a text? What did the tech say? You know, was it personable? Did it sound like a robot? Cause that's another thing is like people are getting spam texts all the time.I probably get five, maybe 10 a day. So we have to look at ourselves, uh, and this is why the rest of the team in the practice is so important as people who genuinely want to help people and know that people probably most people, especially when it comes into digital opt ins, they're on step one. If step 10 is getting them in the practice, what do we have to do to bond with that person, get that person's trust.Make them realize they do want to come in to see us when it's time to fix X, Y, and Z. And the people doing that should love doing that. They should not be complaining about doing it. If they're complaining about doing it, they're not in the right role.
Michael: Interesting. If they're not in the right role, what do we do then?
Luke: We have to either move them to another seat, Or move them off the bus. This is why planning is so important. If you don't build an org chart, if you don't look at the different roles, if you don't plan, if youdon't, give uh, tests to your team, like, predictive index is a test that we use. There's others, maybe, uh, strength finders, Enneagram, maybe all of them see what their strengths are, see what what they like to do.Even if someone's not highly trained, you're going to know if they have a passion for something. Based on their giftings and what they're genuinely, uh, succeeding at, right. They may need a lot of help, but they have a natural inclination to do this thing. Um, Uh, and that was me on the phones. Like I, I sold, uh, New York times in a call center.So I was like cold calling people and have to turn it into a game. and you have to have fun with it. And if you can't have fun in whatever role you're in, even as a dentist, if you can't have fun doing it, maybe you shouldn't be doing it.
Michael: Interesting. Okay. So then if we scale back a little bit or rewind back a little bit, you mentioned when you have an A practice, like an A practice, that's when it's okay, let's start scaling.So then how can we tell, all right, this is an A player practice
Luke: profitability. So it's not about how much money you make. It's about what you keep. ThereThere is a an average, healthy business when you look at profitability and you know, within based, it's probably about 30 percent is the benchmark.Now dentistry and then specialties within dentistry like orthodontics could even be higher. You know, your average orthodontic practice on the low end is going to be 30 percent net. I know some people who are 60 percent net, which is kind of unheard of. But we should be shooting for somewhere in there.Now, certainly if there's lab fees and you're doing, um, more indirect bonding or things like that, profitability may be a little bit lower. but that's the benchmark you should look at. You should be working with a CFO, like fractional CFO, accounting firm, whatever, to define that. and I would also look at.total revenue profitability and your time, you know, if my time and I'm 30 percent net and you know, at a, at a good run rate. If I still could add a day in, well, would I go start another location? Because I can still maximize where I'm at. So, you know, maybe I open Fridays, maybe I open up a half day Saturday.Now, if I don't want to all the time, then I would bring in that associate to cover the Friday and half day Saturday. While I went out and spent that time looking for that satellite location. Then when I create the satellite location, they're already trained. They've been working with you in the main location.Now you can place them into the satellite. Once you ramp that up.
Michael: Gotcha. Okay. So that's when the associate kind of comes right? That that's when you're like, okay, It's a super need Now bring them in while looking. Interesting. Okay. Interesting. Okay. Awesome. of advice for this? this?
Luke: Not I think you have to look at the flip side.And, and what I mentioned early on was people do it way too fast. what are you taking home? Uh, how are you having to pay these other doctors? What loans do you already have? How much are you going to have to pay for that new location? And if all those things are going to put you in a bad financial place, don't do it.you can focus on what you have and grow what you have. And so, like I said, I mean, I've seen people go under, people are producing very little, maybe even half a million a year. And they're like, I got to bring in a doctor. I got to get another location. It's like, with what? Like, you don't have the resources to do it.This doesn't make any sense. So slow down, pump the brakes, take a deep breath, get strategic, grow the practice that you have. Get it to a good place, then look at scaling and you may not want to scale. That's the thing. Like you don't have to do this. You could create a lifestyle practice three days a week, and it could be what you want.And then you only have one practice in one building and one note to worry about instead of two or three or four.
Michael: Yeah, you're right, man. Bigger isn't always better. Yeah. Awesome. Awesome. Luke, thank you so much for being with us. I appreciate your time. And if anyone has further questions, where can they find you?Luke: Uh, can find me at hip dot agency. You could also reach out to us on the contact form And we have all this stuff in books. So we have several books, that are applicable for any specialty within dentistry that go through all this stuff. This one really talks about the org chart scaling and how to grow the right way.Um, and then I even created one for the doctor's mindset, which I think is very key, but yeah, you could, you know, Hit us up there. Uh, we'll actually ship all these to you for free. If you don't want to wait for hard copies though, you could just go pick your copy up on audible iBooks. They're on e readers and, and all audio platforms as well for purchase.
Michael: Nice. Awesome. that's going to be in the show notes below for you to check out. Awesome, man. And Luke, thank you so much for being with me on this Monday morning episode.
Luke: Absolutely. Thanks for having me.