Dental Marketing Goat

#249 122 New Patients: A Dental Startup Success Story

• Gary Bird

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How does a brand-new dental startup reach 122 new patients in just three months in a hyper-competitive market? In this episode, Gary Bird talks with Dr. Hussam Asker about startup dental practice marketing, high phone conversion rates, ZocDoc patient acquisition, Google reviews, patient experience strategies, and the systems that drive rapid new patient growth. Learn how smart marketing investment, front desk scripting, patient retention strategies, and transparent pricing can help dentists grow a successful dental practice from day one.

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Dental Marketing Goat, the go-to podcast for dentists who want to grow faster, market smarter and build practices that thrive in today’s competitive landscape. Hosted by Gary Bird, the Dental Marketing Goat himself and founder of SMC National - recently named Best Dental Marketing Agency by over 60,000 dental professionals. Each episode unpacks the real strategies, marketing frameworks and operational shifts that high-performing practices use to attract more patients and increase production. Whether you're a solo practitioner or scaling a DSO, you’ll learn how to align your marketing, team and systems to drive predictable growth.

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SPEAKER_00

You had one of the highest, I would say maybe ever that I've ever worked with, phone conversions right out of the box, like day one. You were converting at almost 90%. And there were some months you were converting at 100%.

SPEAKER_01

During that time, I was just listening to your podcast, reading books, and trying to understand how the best experience can be created. And I learned a little bit about marketing and phone conversion, how to talk to patients, how to convince patients to stay at the office. And I built SOPs and I wrote scripts. Last month I spent around$20,000 on marketing. And I know that's very high. The reason why I'm doing this is because I want to work full-time at the practice. You can spend$50,000 a month on marketing and then get patients and lose them. There's also the team training our team, making sure they're ready to receive these patients. And so also it's very important to know how much this office can take.

SPEAKER_00

Welcome back to another episode of Dental Marketing Go. I'm your host, Gary Bird. Today we're going to dive deep into a practice, a startup, and a very, very competitive market. Dr. Asker is going to dive in and tell us exactly how he got 122 new patients in only his third month of being open, which is insane. At the end of the show, he's actually going to share how much he's spending and his exact strategy. This is a great episode. I learned a ton. There's some hacks in here that I've never seen before, and he's figured that out. Also, he shares the scripting that he's using on the phone to get almost 100% conversion on the phones, which is insane. We don't ever see that. So this is a power-packed episode of one of our clients. You're going to love this one. Stay tuned. All right. We are live. And I'm so thankful that I really love what I do. And I get to come on podcasts and talk to doctors and talk about their success. And you have a very unique story because you, well, first of all, I really appreciate you listening to the podcast. You were just telling me, like, hey, Gary, I listened to all your content, which is like an honor to me. It's always so cool to have people tell me that. But you have done so many things right with your startup. You've been open for three months. And last month you saw 122 new patients. And like there's some practices that have been open for years and not seeing 122 new patients. So you have done so many things right. And I just wanted to talk through those and talk through how how did you get 122 new patients in your third month of being open? So just for the audience, you opened up, you opened up at like the end of November. And then in December, you saw almost 60 new patients. And then January, you saw almost 90. And then February, you saw 122. And it wasn't easy. Like you didn't like I know that you put a lot of work into this beforehand. But I want to talk through, talk through how you did that. So the first thing that I want to talk through, you had one of the highest, I would say maybe ever that I've ever worked with phone conversions right out of the box, like day one. You were converting at almost 90%. And there were some months as you were converting at 100%. So tell me how you did that. Like, how did you get your team to actually convert that well?

SPEAKER_01

So I'll tell you a little bit more about my experience in dentistry. I grew up in it. My my dad is a dentist. And the first time I went to dental practice, maybe I was like two months old. So I kind of lived dentistry from the first day of my life. And then I graduated from the University of Michigan, moved to Massachusetts, and got a job there. So the company I was working for, they put me in three offices. And their model was to buy different offices and just hire associates. So the first one I worked at was a Medicaid office. They had the Mass Health program and they were getting a lot of patients. But most of their patients were coming through insurance because they take MassHealth or Medicaid and they ended up with a lot of patients. The second office was a PPO office or insurance heavy office, but mainly PPO plans. And it was very busy. I enjoyed that model and I was always productive. The third office was near the Cape Cod. It was more like a slow-paced office where they would get patients, but most of their patients were very long-term patients from the previous dentist, and they were very loyal to the previous dentists, and they just kept coming to the practice. And I enjoyed this experience. It allowed me to see how the whole dental model works from Medicaid people to fee for service. And I don't think there is one model that's better than the other one. I just think that delivering the best patient experience is what set the practice apart and what makes us make us successful as dentists. So I started building this one. Yeah. We started the building this practice in Flauberville back in 2023. So it took me two years to finish this practice. Wow. Lots of construction issues.

SPEAKER_00

I remember you had a lot of I actually you just refreshed my memory. You were gonna start like six months before, even though it was a long time before, but then construction issue after construction issue, right?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, and it was all related to getting like an electric meter or getting this permit approved. And so, and then we had like issue like someone broke in that practice and broke the walls and flooded the office. So we had multiple problems happen, and during that time I was working as an associate, then I was working for temping agent agencies and going from one town to another in Texas. So I had a lot of free time on my hand. And during that time, I was just listening to her podcast, reading books and trying to understand how the best experience can be created. And how I learned a little bit about marketing and phone conversion, how to talk to patients, how to convince patients to stay stay at the office. And I built SOPs and I wrote scripts. And of course, I used AI because that's what everybody is doing nowadays. But I I thought, how can we make that more human and more friendly, not look like AI? And I built scripts for my front desk team, but also SOPs for the office, for the back office and the front office. Wow, that's awesome. The day they joined, they were they're they're just like they don't have lots of experience. So I gave them the SOPs and we spent a full week in my like right when we first opened just studying these fans. And we talked about getting a new patient, how to calculate them on the phone, how to seat them, how to create a nice experience. And we also built a nice office, it feels fresh, lots of windows, lots of sunlight. And I really think that has like a big effect on patients too when they come to a place that feels like nice and friendly.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, open, right?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. We started seeing patients, and we're doing our best. Also, doing dentistry in a friendly and kind way, showing compassion to people is very important. I think that's what's getting us the good reviews. I was looking at the reviews I have on Google, and most of them are about like the dentist was nice, was friendly, was kind. And doing dentistry this way is very important. It is it's stressful to go to the dentist. It's not fun to be at a dental office.

SPEAKER_00

That's such a good point. You know, I was just actually talking about this, is that patients actually don't know if you're a good clinician or not until years later. All they know is how you emotionally made them feel. Like, did you make them feel comfortable or did you smile? And if they were in pain. That's it. And if they if you make them feel good and they're not in pain, they think you're the best dentist ever, right? Like they and they don't maybe, maybe someone isn't the best clinician in the world, but if you were nice to them, the patient's like, oh, that's the best dentist ever. Dentists, I know, see it differently, right? You got to be good clinically and you can see things that a regular human like me can't see. The other thing, I've listened to your calls. Your scripting's really, really good. So I'm I put down below in the show notes for everybody because I already know everybody's gonna ask me. I have the scripting down below. If you want to use it, it works really well. You got to hold your team accountable. And you did a really good job of training your team. But if you use it, it really works. The other thing that you mentioned is Google reviews. You've done a good job of getting Google reviews, but I know a lot of people are gonna listen to this and go, oh, 122 new patients. That that must mean he's in a rural market or there's nobody around. You're in a really, really competitive market. I just pulled it up. In your city, the top dentist have two to three thousand Google reviews. That's so competitive. So you're doing this in a hyper competitive market. Why did you pick this market?

SPEAKER_01

So I wanted to live in Austin, Texas. I thought that's a great city, and I think it's a beautiful place to be at. The cost of living is not as high high as Massachusetts. And I was able to build a practice here because there's lots of growth and lots of new construction. If you drive around, you see a lot of new buildings, new apartments. So it's a good place to start the practice. Of course, not as good as a rural area because there's more demand. And one thing we'll get into this, but if you notice in my numbers, when we get new patients, the new patient production is not very high. And this is related to the area we're at. We get a lot of patients because there are a lot of patients moving here, and a lot of them are young. They don't have a lot of dental issues, they don't need film off implants and bridges and crowns. So the benefit of starting in a saturated market that is growing, not only saturated, it's saturated, but there's real estate growth, there's also employers' growth. It works very well, but you the the sacrifice is you don't get very good production per new patient because most of these new patients don't need a lot of work. So I would still favor that rural area. And if I go back, if I go back to 2022 and I'm planning my project, I would consider being somewhere slightly more rural because people would need more work. Working in a saturated market like my area gets you a lot of patients, but you just see lots of people who don't need dental work.

SPEAKER_00

Healthy mouths. Yeah, so this is this is interesting because a lot of dentists don't understand that how demographics impact the type of patients you're gonna see. High income areas where there's a lot of dentists, big cities, typically higher dental IQs. They've been going to the dentist their whole life, so they don't have bread and butter problems, which is the easiest kind of dentistry to do and the easiest to sell. But there's more cosmetic opportunities. So you can do aligners, implants, veneers. There's a lot more opportunities for that, but those that's a different ball game to do clinically and to market for and all those kind of things. Rural areas is different, they won't do any of the cosmetic stuff because they don't have the money for it typically, but they have tons of bread and butter dentistry because they just haven't been to the dentist. So that's a that's an excellent observation.

SPEAKER_01

Absolutely. So going back, I would favor a slightly rural area just because I enjoy doing comprehensive cases and doing like more challenging cases. Most of my cases here in the past three to four months are simple because most of my patients need either like some simple fillings or exams, just regular care. So in this practice, I want to focus on wellness, on bringing people back every six months, building a nice environment.

SPEAKER_00

And they'll refer, they'll refer patients to you. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That over time, that's the winning recipe for dental. Is over time that will start to catch up and start to snowball, and they'll trust you more and send more referrals. So that you've done a really good job of that. The other thing that you've done a really good job of is you've used Zoc Doc. Now, a lot of dentists hate Zoc Doc. And I understand why. There's there's some there's some things that they do that I can understand why some people don't like it, but you have figured out how to get most people have a 50% no show rate for Zoc Doc. Meaning, if you get 20 patients to schedule, you have to pay for all 20 of those. And usually only 10 of them will show up. That's the average that I've seen. You figured that out. How did you how did you get such a high show rate? Almost all of them are showing up. How did you do that with Zoc Doc?

SPEAKER_01

So, first of all, when a patient books on Zoc Doc, they're most likely scrolling on their phone, trying to find a dentist. They Google dentists near me or whatever they Google and they get ZocDoc app because Zoctalk is spending a lot on like Google marketing, and also they have very strong SEO and strong presence. But they've been around for a long time too. And it's an app that does dentistry, medicine, dermatology. So they they have multiple streams of marketing that I think they benefit from. And a patient books an appointment, but they're still scrolling. They don't know if they want to see the dentist or not. They they're not sure if this is real or not. They would think this is this might be a scam too. So the first thing we do is we call blood. When a patient books an appointment, they immediately get a call from us from the office, from the office phone number. So now they have our number and they know that we're real, we exist. And we send them an intake form and multiple digital forms to fill, and they also get reminders for the appointment. So we move them from the ZopToc environment, which we are now we're charged for Zoctalk, is the patient book. The moment the patient books, now we have to pay Zoc Talk for that. And if if we don't do a good job converting this patient from a Zoc Doc patient to a patient in our practice, we end up losing the patient. So calling them early on, right after they book is one of our steps. Second thing is sending them text messages and reminders about the appointment and making sure they fill their forms before the visit. This your copay will be that much. And this is on a separate note. One thing we're doing at the practice is we're very transparent when it comes to like pricing. So before we see any patient for anything, we give them a treatment plan that includes the patient portion, the insurance portion, very well explained. And I'm using lots of technology stuff for that. I recently signed up with a company called AirPay. They they do insurance verification. So I trained my team how to use AirPay, and we use all information we can obtain about the insurance plan to give the patient the right numbers.

SPEAKER_00

Are you in network with a lot of insurances, or how did you structure your office?

SPEAKER_01

So we're we're a network with PPO plans only. I did not sign up with any HMO plans or any Medicaid plans.

SPEAKER_00

Is your plan to stay in network long term or is it to over time start dropping those?

SPEAKER_01

So in my area, we we do have to stay in network for a while. Maybe one day we can go out of network for some plans. But just considering that we're in a very saturated area, and also a lot of people who come to our practice are employees who work for tech companies or biotech companies that exist around us. And they have insurance. And they will always choose to go to a dentist who takes their insurance, especially very busy people who don't have time to like look up this dentist or the other dentist. They just want something quick and they want fast and quick and easy service. So for the coming three, four years, I don't see us going out of network just because there's the area factor. But if I was in a smaller town, I I would definitely consider being out of network.

SPEAKER_00

Got it. Okay. And then what are your are you doing anything with like patient financing or anything like that?

SPEAKER_01

Uh yeah, I'm using Cherry Payment, Cherry Payments. Cherry is good, it's pretty simple. And I I like their digital platform. It gives us all the information we need. And patients, if they ask for financing, they would just scan a QR code and they fill the application by themselves, they're approved. We can use these funds to pay for their treatment. So I'm I'm I'm satisfied with the service.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, Cherry's awesome. I love Cherry as well. A lot of our almost all of our clients use them, and that's a a great one. Is there anything else that you have done? Oh, I know what I want to do. How much are you spending on marketing total? Because that was okay, this was the number one question. So I posted, I said, Hey, I have a doctor, they're brand new startup in a very competitive market, they're seeing 122 new patients a month. What do you want me to ask them? I posted that on Facebook. And the number one question that multiple people were like, How much is he spending to see that much? You know what I mean? Because a lot of people start, they'll start a practice. I've seen this over and over and over again. They'll start a practice, they'll spend a ton of money, and I'm sure you spent more on construction than you thought you were gonna spend because there's just stuff that pops up. And then they get to marketing and it's like, okay, how much you want to spend on marketing? They're like 2,000 bucks, and it's like, oh no, it's not gonna, you're not gonna get much from that. You spent a lot on marketing. So, what what's your monthly marketing spend to get to 122?

SPEAKER_01

So last month I spent around$20,000 on marketing, and I know that's very high. I asked my accountant if they've seen this before, and they said, yes, we've seen it a few times, and but it's not very common to spend that much. The reason why I'm doing this is because I want to work full-time at the practice. I for two years I was just moving from one place to another, and it was just exhausting to go like through the temping agencies or work in different offices. So I just wanted to be here at my own home and be working here full-time and see see patients at my own practice.

SPEAKER_00

Yep. And you wanted to go faster, not slower. So it uh you could spend$5,000 a month on total marketing or$2,000. It might take you two years to get to full time, but now you're spending$20,000 and it's gonna take you, you know, a couple months.

SPEAKER_01

Absolutely. So it's it's it's more like an investment, and you have to invest at expect a return. But also, it's not about how much you're spending. You can spend$50,000 a month on marketing and then get patients and lose them. There's also the team training our team, making sure they're ready to receive these patients. Sometimes we can get patients more than our capacity and create a negative experience. And so also it's very important to know how much this office can take and how, and if this team is ready to see all these patients, and if as a dentist, I'm ready to also serve these patients the best way possible. So it's important to spend on marketing, but also receive these people and take very good care of one of the same people.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. And I know you're doing a good job of that because, and I know you're focusing on it because your reappointment rate is 80% the last two months. So that means 80% of your new patients are before they walk out the door, they're scheduling their next appointment, whether it's for treatment or for their next hygiene appointment, which is huge. That's really good. So you can even get it up higher, right? You can get up to like 90%. But that means almost like out of 100 patients, 80 of them are like, I want to come back here. And that means they're gonna turn into patient referrals in the future.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. And I think this part is on the doctor. No, no one and like no team member can help fix this problem. I think part of what we should be doing is telling people that, hey, the way that dentistry works is you you keep coming back every six months, we clean your teeth, and you I also give them the mirror, I show them the calculus in their mouth in their mouth. I would be like, hey, we have some buildup here. If you see this, I tell them why this calculus forms, it's where does it come from, and how it would affect their dumps if we don't remove it. And then I tell them that you can't remove this at home. If you don't come back to us in six months, this buildup will get worse and worse and we'll end up with gum disease three years, four years, five years from today. But I I noticed that a lot of patients, especially younger patients, don't know what calculus is or what buildup is. They look at it and they're like, and they're surprised when you tell them where this came from and this is the natural mechanism that if we don't remove the buildup, it won't it will just stay there. And your toothbrush cannot remove it, even your electric toothbrush cannot remove calculus. And this motivates them and kind of creates some urgency to come back. It's not seeing the dentist. They they think about the six-monthly calls as a preventative visit that they have to do, but I can do it, it's good if I do it. But creating urgency and telling people that if you don't come back for your next cleaning, you will come back with a problem three or four years from today. They're they're more cautious about it and they will take it seriously.

SPEAKER_00

It's so true. As a patient myself, I didn't realize when I was younger that uh neglecting your regular cleanings leads to what you just described. That leads to having cavities and other problems, which leads to gum recession, there, you know, and all the stuff that you were talking about. And then eventually, if you don't take care of that, you need root canals or you need implants. And what happens is it gets more and more expensive to take care of the problem. It's actually really cheap at the beginning just to come in and get your teeth cleaned regularly. That's not expensive, right? But it gets really expensive, like a filling turning into a root canal that turns into an implant. That's just like you went from 500 bucks to you know 1500 bucks to five thousand bucks. That's a big step up. And And it ri you know it's painful, it takes time, and all those kind of things. So educating patients on that is so important because they don't know. They just don't. If they knew, they would just come in and take care of it, but they don't. How many do you have how many hygienists do you have? Do you have just one hygienist?

SPEAKER_01

So we we tried using like temporary hygienists. We're having a hard time hiring a full-time hygienist. I have an ad, I posted on Facebook, I emailed the community college that has a hygiene program. So it's very hard finding a hygienist nowadays. And I really hope we as nentists.

SPEAKER_00

You did all that with a temp? You did 80% reappointment rate with a temp hygienist?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, and I did a lot of the cleanings too. So on the days where we all have a temp, I sit and do the cleanings because another thing, people expect a cleaning on the first visit when they come in. So they're a profit, and if we don't do the cleaning on the same visit, they they might not be happy with the service too.

SPEAKER_00

You did an awesome job. This is really, really good stuff and a lot of stuff to learn from. Before we part ways, is there any other advice? If there's another dentist out there listening, maybe they're they have a startup and they're off slow or they're in construction problems or whatever it may be. Is there any advice that you would give them just from a mental standpoint of how to deal with all the stress? Because you've kind of you've gone all the things that could go wrong went wrong for you.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, I think building a startup is one of the hardest things you can do in your life. Just think about you're not building a tech startup. You're not coding and then building an app and hoping it sells and people use it. You're building a workplace, you're you're building an actual office, a physical place, but also you're building a small company, a small business that's that is not easy. And dental school does not teach us that. They teach us how to work on Keith, but they never taught us how to build a practice or how to deal with insurance and management. I think education is the key first to have a plan. We're lucky to have a lot of resources online from YouTube to podcasts to books to also the experiences of other people to Facebook groups. Utilize all these options, talk to people and go for it. And things will go wrong. I mean, I I I never expected construction to take uh two years. I resigned from my associate job thinking that I'm gonna be in my practice in 30 days. And then the contractor called me and they said we can't open because you failed your fire inspection, because the ad hoc did this, and this has to be done before this. And so it took us about nine months to just pass the fire inspection and the zoom construction. And then we had another issue with the electric meter, which also took another four to five months. And all of these things are not within your control as a dentist. Even your contractor sometimes cannot figure it out because it's just a very hard system to navigate. You're dealing with the city, you're dealing with a lot of moving parts, sometimes like a landlord. So it's not easy to build a practice, but it's definitely worth it. Every day I come to work. I come to work at 7 a.m. and I leave at 7 at night. So I work for 12 hours every day, and I enjoy every minute of it because I know that I'm building a house. I'm building a practice that's a good thing. And you don't have to do it forever.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, and you don't have to do that forever, right? You're not gonna work 12 hours every single day for the rest of your life. It's just for right now, it's a season. It's like when you have a kid. When you first have a kid, the little baby, it's so cute, it throws up everywhere, it's pooping everywhere, it stays up all night. It's like a lot of work and it really wears you out. But it's not forever. Eventually the baby grows up, and and and kids are awesome, but they're a lot of work up front. Starting a business is very similar where things are gonna go wrong, you're gonna work long hours, you're gonna work hard, but you're you the reason you're doing it with joy is because you're looking forward to the future. You're not looking at your present and going, oh, this is so hard. So I love that mindset and I love the transparency. And you're gonna you're gonna continue to do amazingly. I know your practice is gonna crush your long term, you're gonna just absolutely dominate your market. And that's saying a lot because there's a lot of big time dentists in your area. So great job with that.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. Thank you, Garrett.

SPEAKER_00

Awesome.