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Endo Mastery

Tag: Business Growth

NEW YEAR MESSAGE- TIME TO RAISE YOUR FEES

DR. ACE GOERIG

OWNER & CO-FOUNDER

Dear Colleague,


New Year’s Day is one of my favorite days of the year for two reasons that I’m going to share with you in this message.

Resolutions and Renewal

First, there is something about the new year that wipes the slate clean of last year’s troubles or limitations. We become inspired to set resolutions for the coming year. That alone is exciting because it means thinking about what creates progress and forward momentum to better our lives.


We all know that resolutions can be notoriously temporary. If you search the internet, you will find various statistics such as 80% of resolutions fail by the beginning of February. But the flip side of that statistic is that 20% of resolutions do not quickly fail. Even just by the law of averages, at least once every 5 years you will keep at it and potentially make a significant beneficial change in your life.


Personally, I think the turning of the new year is a great time to think about your practice vision. What inspires and excites you in the profession of endodontics? What would you like to accomplish this year? Where would you like to be in 5 years? It’s a process of renewal and rejuvenation of your own energy for the kind of success you want to achieve.


If you research further about why some people succeed with resolutions, the driving factor is usually that they implement a system or structure to reinforce the right choices. For example, the person who schedules time in their calendar to work out usually is more successful than the person who relies on ad hoc daily motivation.


Similarly, when you involve others to keep you in alignment, commitment grows. Involve your spouse or whole family in healthier choices and it becomes a group effort with higher energy. Or, even better, you could work with a professional fitness trainer to map out a program for you, coach you through each activity, measure your results and keep you focused.


Endo Mastery is like a personal trainer for your practice and team. If you have practice goals that need commitment, focus and coaching then we are an incredible ally in that pursuit.

Time to Raise Your Fees

The second reason that I love January 1st is because it is time to raise endodontic fees. Some doctors prefer to adjust fees twice annually in January and July since the cost of living and business expenses are always increasing. You need to keep your fees calibrated to current financial realities.

 

This year it is more important than ever! The McGill dental financial newsletter states that raising fees is the most urgent thing you need to do in 2022. In the 12 months ending October 31st, 2021, we experienced the highest inflation in 30 years. At 6.2%, we have dramatically increased staff, supplies and other overhead costs. Plus, we’ve incurred new expenses to adapt to the pandemic in our practices.

 

Higher inflation is likely to continue into the foreseeable future, so an immediate fee increase is absolutely necessary. Many doctors have delayed or omitted fee increases during the pandemic, but that is not an option now. The McGill newsletter recommends a 5% across-the-board fee increase over your rates from a year ago.

 

I wrote an article about raising your fees which explores these considerations in more detail. You can download it here:

DOWNLOAD ARTICLE

Act Now to Register for Next Week’s Seminar

A final note is that next week on Friday, January 14th and Saturday, January 15th, I’m presenting a livestream seminar called Mastering the Effortless Endodontic Practice. This is a great program for you and your team, and we have a super affordable “all-in” tuition rate of $995 that includes you and everyone in your practice.

It’s almost your last chance to register, so I would urge you to do it today … especially if you have any New Year’s resolutions for your practice. Give yourself the best chance of success and transform your practice and life!

MORE INFO & REGISTRATION
Ace Signaturex300

Dr. Ace Goerig
DDS, MS, ABE Diplomate
Owner, Endo Mastery

P.S. It is my sincere hope that 2022 is your best year ever in endodontics and for your family. That’s our total focus at Endo Mastery. Find out how your practice and economics can grow, and you can live the most amazing life, by registering for the seminar today.

THREE BARRIERS TO ENDODONTIC GROWTH

Almost every endodontic practice experiences times when growth slows or stops. It can be frustrating for the doctor when this happens because growth is essential to practice success. If you are not growing, you are effectively declining as increasing expenses and inflation eat away at your profit margin.

Of course, you can increase fees to counteract rising costs (which is something every practice should evaluate at least annually). However, fee increases are not growth. It’s just the illusion of growth due to increased revenues. In terms of completed cases, nothing has changed and productivity is stagnating.

After a few years without meaningful growth, it’s pretty clear the practice has plateaued. That means the practice has reached it’s natural upper limit based on its current systems and strategies. Efforts to grow are being resisted internally and something has to change before growth will resume. Here are the three primary barriers to growth that practices have:

Limited Marketing

Most endodontists learn marketing by trial and error when they first start to practice and have lots of time. After a few years of “hustling” to establish key referral relationships, they settle into the patterns of those relationships, occasionally adding a new referrer to the mix. Marketing often takes a backseat at this point.

At a certain point (and almost certainly when growth plateaus), you need a more disciplined and systematic marketing strategy. That includes a half-time marketing coordinator who prioritizes and nurtures referral relationships with regular meaningful contact.

Inefficient Scheduling

In many practices that have plateaued on growth, the doctor believes they are fairly busy and efficient already if they are completing around 4 cases per day. Given that most endodontic cases, from bur-to-tooth to fill, can be completed in a single visit in less than an hour, a doctor working a 9-hour day is only efficiently using half of their time.

Most often, the doctor is doing tasks during and between patient appointments that could be done by a well-trained team. Aside from a few personal preferences, doctors should only be doing what is legally required for a doctor to do. Once you commit to this and start scheduling doctor time based on what is actually needed, then the schedule opens up for growth.

Ineffective Systems

Even when the doctor is prepared to schedule efficiently, growth can be impeded by what happens before and after patient appointments. For example, patients who arrive late or no-show. Or, a patient who does not agree to treatment immediately after being diagnosed—resulting in idle time for the doctor.

Effective practice systems ensure that patients are appointed efficiently in the doctor’s schedule, that they will show up on time, that they are prepared to accept treatment immediately when diagnosed, and that they are prepared for their co-pay. It also ensures there is efficient communication between the practice and the referring office to support and build the referral relationship.

Getting Back On Track

If growth has been eluding you for a while, it’s likely that you need to “renovate” your dated and aging marketing, scheduling and practice systems. You’ve outgrown the way you’ve been doing things until now. It’s time to take that foundation and optimize it for future growth.

It does require a commitment to restart growth, and expertise to make the right changes that result in growth. You can do this on your own through continuing education and leadership for your team. Another way is through coaching, such as with Endo Mastery, where you benefit from very focused implementation with proven strategies.

Either way, you can’t afford to not grow, because practices that plateau will usually coast into decline over time, and suffer in the long-term.

CHOOSING YOUR BUSINESS FAMILY

CYNTHIA GOERIG | CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER

Family is the ultimate inner circle of our lives. Family gives us identity, purpose, and home. It is the foundation of where we receive and give love in the world. Family is where we turn for help or advice when we need it, and in turn we give help and advice when we can. Especially when it comes to children, we protect and nurture them to the best of our ability and help them evolve and grow their lives with possibilities, fulfillment, and success.

 

Businesses need an inner circle of family too. In endodontics, doctors often practice in isolation of their peers and colleagues. While the team is part of the doctor’s business family, they are also not on the same level of the doctor, both in terms of understanding the business of the practice, and (since they are employees and not business owners) being able to benefit to the same degree as the business grows.

 

Doctors need to surround themselves with trusted advisors who understand business and can be depended upon to support the doctor’s and practice’s growth and success. At Endo Mastery, this is the heart of what we do. In fact, “heart” is a big part of what we do.

 

The culture and mission of Endo Mastery is to help doctors achieve the best life possible, with an endodontic practice at the center of that life, but not taking over life. Our philosophy and approach come directly from Dr. Ace Goerig, who has achieved such profound abundance and freedom in his life that his personal mission is to help other doctors achieve the same level of success. It’s something we believe in so strongly and at every level of our business. Our goal is to help you define and achieve an incredible vision for your life and practice. In fact, Dr. Goerig often describes Endo Mastery as the 3rd year of endodontics residency that no one gets … the business year.

 

Clients of Endo Mastery count on us to provide coaching to their practices that is both practical and with the highest integrity. We strive to do that without fail, acting in our clients’ best interests, and working with teams with warmth, humor and compassionate focused leadership. We also have our Mastery Circle community of doctors where knowledge and ideas are shared openly between members under the leadership of Dr. Goerig.

 

As CEO of Endo Mastery, I truly believe our mindset of service, value and personalized attention sets us apart. If you’ve dabbled with other coaching providers in the market, you will find us to be much more low-pressure than those companies, with a higher focus on quality content, strategies, tools, and (most importantly) financial and non-financial results that matter to you.

 

We walk the walk, and that’s why we confidently offer a full financial guarantee that no other coaching firm does: you will earn back every penny of your coaching fees and more within one year. We do this to earn your trust and give you a risk-free path to a better life in endodontics. That’s how much we believe in your possibilities, and we invest in nurturing your success. And that’s what family should be.

THE CONSEQUENCES OF BUSINESS GROWTH

DEBRA MILLER | DIRECTOR OF COACHING

One thing that doctors have in common with every business owner is the desire for predictability. Clinically, you want predictable outcomes. Similarly in our businesses, we want predictable and reliable operations that consistently result in business success.

Whenever you contemplate making changes in your business, it’s natural to consider the risks. As the Ethiopian wisdom suggests, it’s prudent to consider how changes might have a ripple effect. What interconnections in systems and procedures will also be affected? Are there hidden traps or surprises that might occur? How will team members react and respond?

Prior to making even the best-intended changes, it’s impossible to know every side effect and consequence. And that means it’s very easy to get caught up in imagining the worst what-if scenarios and getting stuck in analysis paralysis trying to predict and plan for every contingency.

The vital point to remember is there is an important difference between knowing the consequences in advance (which are unknowable) versus being prepared to deal with the consequences. Being prepared means that you expect some bumps in the road will occur. You expect some disturbances in the daily flow that will need to be ironed out. You expect that some team members may need extra training or leadership attention to make them comfortable or to see the positives.

I still believe that looking ahead reasonably and thoughtfully is something every business leader should do. But how much weight you put on the “unknown consequences” should be tempered by how necessary or beneficial the objective of any change will be.

The one area where, as a business owner, you should always be ready to embrace inevitable disturbances is change motivated to grow the business. Growth year-over-year is a necessity for a healthy business, and a sign of effective leadership. If you aren’t on track for successive growth, then you are on track to declining value, which will eventually result in reduced profitability.

We see this pattern all the time in practices. Doctors invest in growth and embrace change in the first third of their career. Then they start to taper off, then level out into an extended comfort zone that fluctuates up and down. And then, after a while, they either recommit and re-energize around new growth or they begin to decline slowly.

Every doctor is different. They are going to rise to their comfort zone based on what they can self-implement. Then, they’ll either stay there until they start declining, or they commit to bring in better expertise, support and resources to “level up”. It is truly a moment of deciding to be prepared for the consequences of business growth, but it is made easier when guided by experienced mentors and coaches.

THE SAME DAY MINDSET FOR GROWTH

DEBRA MILLER | DIRECTOR OF COACHING

Given the chance, I think most doctors would enjoy being able to work less and earn more. Not only would work/life balance improve but rising income would add to your lifestyle spending power and overall net worth.


At the same time, a lot of doctors don’t believe it is possible for them to work less and earn more. In their minds, they have an equation that links how much work is required to earn a certain level of income. That equation tells them that to earn more, they need to work more. On the flipside, it also tells them that if they work less, they will earn less.


They also point out factors in the practice that seem to preclude the possibility of working less and earning more. Often, they believe their team as not ready or capable of rising to the challenge. Or they express doubts that their referral base could refer more cases.
More referred cases are the primary driver of higher income for endodontists. (A secondary driver is which insurance plans you participate in, which affects the reimbursement rate per procedure completed.)


So, for your income to rise, you need to complete more cases and there is no denying that sounds a lot like working more, not working less. In fact, completing more cases in the context of your current team structure, practice systems, and clinical workflow is probably more work. But it doesn’t have to be!

How More Cases Equals Less Work

In my mind, “work” has two meanings. The first is the “I’m going to work today” meaning, which is the time we spend away from our family to earn an income. The second meaning is “labor” … something that draws our physical and/or mental energy to accomplish tasks. Before I address the first one, let’s talk about the second one.


How much you feel the labor of anything depends on how much you love doing that task, and how much resistance you feel while doing it. Even when you love something, if you experience a great deal of resistance to achieving your goals, it can diminish the love significantly. Likewise, even an easy task that you hate to do feels like a huge burden.


Most endodontists have settled around a middle ground between what they love (delivering endodontic care to patients), the “labor” it takes on a daily basis, and the income it generates. But when you try to change the parameters, such as completing more cases to earn more income, the resistance scales up dramatically.


There are doctors who complete 4 cases a day and they feel stressed and labored. Other doctors complete 8 or 10 cases a day and feel effortless ease all day. The difference between the two is how you have optimized your team, systems, marketing and workflow. It’s no different than if you were a baker. The systems to bake and sell 100 loaves a day aren’t going to work for baking and selling 1000 loaves a day.


When doctors refine and improve their systems so that 8 cases per day are just as easy as 4 cases per day, what happens is that 8 cases actually become easier than 4 cases. It’s literally less work and more income on a per day basis! Professionalizing your practice to that level means purging out so much inefficiency, repeated effort and timewasters that were rampant at 4 cases per day (but allowed to persist). Suddenly, everything is in place for you to effortlessly complete more cases than you ever thought possible.

How Efficiency Drives Growth

What is common is that inefficient doctors and teams have difficulty believing they could complete twice as many cases during the same time. Their inefficiency is literally obscuring their opportunities for growth. Getting past the disbelief mindset is often the biggest challenge at the beginning.

 

The truth is that 90% of growth in an endodontic practice is driven by the team. When the team becomes focused on optimizing the doctor’s time, improving daily flow, and scheduling patients smartly so the doctor is never rushed nor ever idle, the value of the doctor’s time inside the practice can soar.

 

Value outside the practice soars too. If you have 50% overhead expenses to begin with, and you increase the number of cases you complete by 50%, then profits almost doubles! Wow!

Cases, Income and Work/Life Balance

It might be hard to visualize from where you are now, but this transformation of “work” is experienced by our clients over and over again as they grow. And it’s matched by a tremendous increase in income. For most doctors, going from 4 cases per day to 6 cases is enough to double their take-home. 8 cases per day can triple income!

 

Once you are successful at that income level, then you really have choices about how many days you are going to “go to work” … the first definition of work that I mentioned. For example, rather than 3 times the income, maybe choose 2 to 2.5 times the income while working one day less per week. Or, you can also keep your practice and income growing by integrating an associate, which opens up many short- and long-term options for amazing work/life balance.

 

There are so many possibilities and I always love to talk to doctors about their vision and how it can be achieved. I invite you to contact me anytime for a complimentary practice analysis and transformation conversation using the button below.

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