What Is Dental Guiding Point? The Podcast Built for Dentists Who Want More

Dr. Mark Dill started with zero patients and two employees in 2008. Today he runs four locations doing up to $80,000 per operatory per month. In this intro episode, he and COO Toria Plank share why they started Dental Guiding Point, who it's for, and what they're going to teach — for free — because nobody taught them.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

When it comes to the overall success of your business, and by success, I don't mean your collections or revenue. By success, I don't mean just your profit. By success, it's everything. It's your happiness, it's your work-life balance, it's your lifestyle. All of these things are dependent on one thing. And with me today is Miss Toria Plank. Hey guys. We decided that instead of having every video to have to try to like, you know, reiterate some stuff, it would maybe be easier if we just did a video where we actually talk about our humble beginnings and where we came from. We are in the trenches just like you guys. We didn't weren't handed anything. We don't come from neither one of us come from a background of entrepreneurs, business people, or dentist. I started my practice in 2008, zero patients, two employees, have over a hundred employees now. And uh we're gonna kind of tell you guys how we do it and why we do it, because we never sought out to say that we know better than anybody. We just do our thing. What happens with that is though, is as you're more successful, people that you work with in business, they take notice of that. You know, your supply bill is higher than most. So your reps have questions. How are you doing it? Your lab cases are strong even when other offices are retracting, and the owner of your lab is like, I don't get it. You guys are growing and expanding and sending me more cases, and other doctors are retracting. And, you know, the point about this is not so much uh that that's what's occurred over the last year or two or three. I started my business during a recession. You know, we've been through COVID. So we've been tested for sure as a business. We grew by over a million dollars uh the year of COVID. And that was with no acquisitions. We didn't purchase anything that year. We we were purchasing equipment maybe to to expand, but all of these things that people are taking notice of are things that have occurred over the last, you know, 15, 18 years. Why are people interested in us and asking us all these questions? Well, I guess the technical side from a business standpoint, as of end of last year, we owned three practices. We have 29 ops between the three. So we have our primary practice at 13 ops, our second practice at uh 10 ops, and our third practice at six ops. If you wanted to, you know, know the details so that you can kind of judge us. So she took a practice where maybe we were collecting, you know, um, I don't know, twenty or twenty-five thousand dollars per op per month. No, not even that. We were probably collecting far less than that before you became office manager. We might have been more like $12,000 to $13,000 per op per month.

SPEAKER_00 3:28

I think we did the math one time and it was around $13.

SPEAKER_01 3:31

Yeah. No implants really, but um, but about $13,000 per op per month, all the way up to $80,000 per op per month, maybe more some months. Took that, that was our primary practice. Well, then most of the time people go out and get them a second practice when they've had some success, but then the second practice turns into a job. We go out and we buy us a second job, basically, and it's a struggle. And in my second practice, I've never met a patient there. Uh, the doctors that work there, they're all associates currently. Um, and they're pushing $80,000 an op or more in their office. So a primary practice, you know, $70,000 and $80,000 per op, a second practice, $70 and $80,000 an op, and a third practice, $50,000 per op that doesn't do implants or anything like that. If I could build a parking garage, we probably we would be pushing probably $60,000 per op.

SPEAKER_00 4:28

I would I would actually we probably would get it more than that.

SPEAKER_01 4:32

Well, more than that then. Uh but we we actually have space inside the building for a couple more ops. We just don't have place for the patients to park. So we're working on that. Anywho, if you take your operatories and um you can do $50,000 per operatory, but you are not very heavy on $3 or implants, $50,000 an op is pretty good. Meat and potato dentistry, that's pretty good. Most of you guys, when you do your calculations, you're not going to be there. You're going to be a good bit lower. But we have systems in place so that you can get there in an easy kind of way. Now, if you are doing implants or ortho, it may change a little bit. We don't do a tremendous amount of ortho. It's some invisalign, but we're still not heavy there. But if you've got an office that does do some implant stuff, you can get your office up to over $80,000 per operatory per month. So $50,000 per op per month, $80,000 per op per month. Now, here's the important thing. It doesn't matter how many of those operatories are hygiene or production restorative. Doesn't matter. So if you have 10 ops and you say, well, I've got five and five, or six and four, or seven and three, uh, that part doesn't matter to us. We're just taking your revenue and dividing it by however many ops you have. So you do, you know, $300,000 per month uh in 10 operatories, that's 10 into 300, that's $30,000 per operatory. You can get to $50,000 if you're not doing implants. But if you can place implants, we can get you up to $80,000 per op consistently. So how do we do that? Well, you have to have an amazing team. Because I have a successful team, I can take time out of my day to sit here and share with you guys the things that I find have made me the most successful. And the team is working. Our office is open right now, and me and Tori are sitting here talking to you guys. So that's because we've developed a really good team. And I didn't just develop a good office manager or a COO and an office manager. I've developed many office managers, I've developed a COO, and we continue to develop office managers. I don't have any doctors that have, you know, any ownership in my practice currently. My goal is not necessarily to teach you guys how to be like me. It's we're going to give you tools so that you can be whatever you want to be. If you want to own multiple practices, have one big practice, you're just trying to grow it or beyond. But the first person that I should talk about right now is Toriya. Who is she? Why is she sitting here? And why does she get to talk and tell you guys what to do? As you guys listen to her talk, you'll start to think, because I hear it all the time, I need to go find me a Toria. I need to find me a Toria. I can't say it enough. Torias are not born, they are created, they're developed. Tori came to us doing her clinicals. She went to a crappy high school. She went to a crappy dental assisting school. And they don't teach much of anything. But she was doing her clinicals with us about 17 years ago. And then I hired her on temporarily, then I hired her on permanently. And from there, she was a chair side assistant. And then in 2019, she became the office manager. I could not do what I do without her.

SPEAKER_00 8:18

For years, I have wanted him to be able to talk to a large crowd because if people would get to hear the information that he has stored in that brain of his, is it's insane. Uh, it surprises me all the time. He doesn't just copy people, he comes up with original and his skills on management and leadership is like no other. And I know because I've seen so many offices like throughout and watching him develop other offices, not just ours, but helping other offices, there's just nothing like it. Um, but when I started with him back in 2009, we was a smaller practice. But the thing about him that always set apart that from other practices and I interviewed with other practices was he was always interested in his employees. Um he always wanted to know like what like what was their goals and stuff. And he would explain the whys, which you will hear us talk about this in different videos. And he would sit and take time and he would develop. But when we would run into things, because you do run into things like COVID or finance companies, he was always out there looking for more answers and he's always hungry for knowledge. Uh, he taught me a long time ago nobody can take your knowledge away from you. And so always keep feeding it. And he literally does that all the time. He is studying from the best of the best, but he doesn't just copy what they do. He learns from it and he develops what he wants for his practice. And it's like magic almost, but it's duplicable, duplicatable, right?

SPEAKER_01 10:03

Yeah, there you go.

SPEAKER_00 10:04

Duplicate. It's a hard word.

SPEAKER_01 10:06

You can duplicate it.

SPEAKER_00 10:07

Yeah, there you go. Um, he's able to have other doctors and staff members be able to like learn his magic and do it in their own practice. Um, and he's able to scale things very quickly. Um, and I have seen where he's taken practices that is non-profitable at all, almost to bankruptcy, and get those doctors like producing and profit and organization and a staff that loves being there and the staff taking ownership. Because there's nothing like your staff taking ownership of your practice when they they don't have any ownership to it. But Dr. Dill is able to take that and teach you to be able to have that within your practice. Um, so getting his knowledge out there, it's like uh taking your brain and like opening it up to everybody. I am super stoked for everybody to see the genius stuff that you're able to share with them. So it's really cool.

SPEAKER_01 11:06

Now, if you think about it, we're elbow deep in patients' mouths, right? You can't really be organizing things on the back end, you can't really be typing up, you know, stat sheets and organizing your playbook. You can't be developing other staff members um while you're busy working in someone's mouth. And for most of us, it's like, well, we're busy, you know, that stuff can wait, whatever. But if you have an office manager and you're pouring into them, then they're working on the back end. So that workflow is a little more like I tell her, hey, look, I think overall strategy, we need to be able to implement these things. So during the day, maybe she's working on something. Um, maybe it's a training pack for a new for a for a particular position. And at the end of the day, she can show it to me and she say, Hey, this is what I got. I'll look at it and I say, Okay, well, let's make these changes, or I approve it. And then that becomes the training pack for a new hire, and we're able to start getting people trained a lot quicker, a lot more effectively. But you have to have a partner in that. You have to have an office manager in this, you know, somebody that is uh smart, somebody that's innovative. We have videos where we talk about the characteristics that you want to look for in an office manager. We talk about the office manager and owner doctor dynamic between the two because that's really important. It's not like a personality thing, it's like what are the rules between an office manager and an owner doctor, uh, the do's and the don'ts to be able to make things work and to excel at it. When it comes to like coordinating and organizing and developing staff, you're not going to come across somebody that can do it better than Torrier can. She's been there, she's done that. As an office manager, you're busy doing your stuff and you have to be like putting systems in place. Well, that stresses a lot of people out. So, like, how do you actually do that? How do you, you know, walk and chew bubblegum at the exact same time? When do you have these meetings? If you're the owner doctor, when would you have these meetings with an office manager? Because you're, you know, busy, busy, busy with patients. So, how do you make it work to where y'all have time to be able to communicate and communicate efficiently? What does that actually look like? So, we're gonna talk about um developing your Toria on this podcast. We're going to be able to talk to younger doctors because we know what you guys go through. If you're less than 10 years in practice, our stuff is gonna benefit you for the life of your career. We're not talking clinical stuff, we're talking business and management stuff. You don't realize how much money you lose when all of that stuff is not in order. I kind of like to compare it to riding a bicycle. You're pedaling really fast and you're barely moving forward. You are moving forward, but you could be moving forward way better if you just shift gears and get going. We're gonna teach you guys how to shift those gears. So, a younger doctor, that is, you know, perfect for you guys. If you're somewhere between, you know, 10 years into your practice and you know, maybe five years before retirement, two years before retirement. You got to make hey while the sun is shining. This is where you're starting to get some traction. And with just a little bit of intention, you can really slingshot your practice. That's really what I discovered because I wish I would have known some of this stuff or figured it out even sooner. And honestly, I just thought that I was a little late to the show. And it turns out, no, all along the way, I was trial and error and learning. And because I didn't have anybody to teach me, I think that developed curiosity in me that caused me to always seek, is there a better way? And I didn't have anybody kind of imparting their way of doing things on me to where it caused me to be closed-minded and just think that I knew the best way to do everything. I didn't. And so I kept seeking and kept searching and reading and learning. Uh, and before I know it, I start to see the difference in our practices. If you're a doctor that is a few years away from retiring, you guys really need to reach out to us because we the things that we're going to talk about, they will make an impact in your practice immediately. So many people out there are teaching stuff, and it just takes years of effort and buildup and all this other stuff. And it's like, no. So when you're that close to retirement, you need to reach out to us because we can help you, which by the way, we're not consultants and we don't want to be consultants. We have our own practices, we're doing our own thing. We have nothing to sell you. We're just here to talk about the things that we found that work for us, that solved problems that we were having, and we know for a fact you guys are having those same problems because we've been put on a platform where nationally we interact with dentists and dental staff all over the place. So a retiring doctor really needs to be able to implement some of these things because you're going to need a buyer and you want your practice to be as marketable as possible. And yeah, you can go out there and you can talk to all the other professionals, um, but they have an angle because they want something from you, and that's called money. And then you have, you know, staff that should be watching this.

SPEAKER_00 17:10

Yeah, we would want them to watch, especially like any if you want to have leaders in the practice, office managers, a trained office manager, and actually what an office manager duties should be. Um, and again, we had to learn the hard way, hard way of like what they needed to learn. But there's so much good stuff that we can teach where um they can have a functional and profitable hygiene department and a functional with systems and uh the systems with the assistant department. So these doctors are not sitting here feeling like they're on that bicycle. I always use the treadmill, but you feel like you're running, you can't get off. Um, but these all help everyone in your practice to develop their skills and make things organized.

SPEAKER_01 18:02

Here's the deal. Doctors, you can't do it alone. You can't do it alone, you can't do it alone, and I can't say it enough. You can't do it alone. You can get in there and you can you can practice your clinical skills all you want, and you can go to continuing education, that sort of thing. But let me tell you something. When it comes to the overall success of your business, and by success, I don't mean your collections or revenue. By success, I don't mean just your profit. By success, it's everything. It's those things, but but it's your happiness, it's your work-life balance, it's your lifestyle. All of these things are dependent on one thing, and that's your ability to develop your team. That's it. Simple as that. Your ability to develop your team. You can't do it alone. You have to have a team. Training isn't enough. Training's just giving people knowledge and skills. Um, you have to be able to develop them, and you will be judged on how well you can develop your team in your office. That will then provide you the level of success that you want. You guys are struggling in your offices uh with some aspect. And it's like, we're gonna create videos on all these aspects, we're gonna get them polished up, and we're gonna give them to you in a way that you'll be able to understand how to make it work. A lot of times, uh, so many of the people out there that are trying to give dentist advice, one, they're just stringing you along because they want you to sign up for something, but two, they uh they tell you like the end result, oh, well, you need to get your staff to get patients to leave reviews or something. And it's like, okay, but like how? They tell me that patients don't want to, or patients don't have a Gmail, or like they don't have time because they're trying to do a really good job with their patient notes. I mean, all of these things are barriers. We know these things because we're not consultants, we are in the trenches. We've had to find ways to overcome these challenges, and uh that's what we're gonna share with you guys. So like, subscribe, connect with us. Uh, these are all really important things. We want to build a community where we have a bunch of positive dental professionals. If you're an assistant or an office manager or a hygienist or a treatment coordinator, any of these things, like reach out. You don't have to be a doctor to reach out. If you're close to retirement, whatever stage you are in your career, we've kind of been through it all, and uh we've been really successful. And we just want to share with you guys and help you guys out uh so that you guys have better practices uh that fulfill you in ways that you really never even thought was possible. You're successful from a financial standpoint, which leads to less stress, you have better lifestyle, work life balance, and you're honing your leadership skills, you're honing your entrepreneurial skills, your business management skills. We're gonna teach it all. We're gonna talk about all of it right here. It's the only podcast that you need in dentistry. All right, see you in all the videos.