The Super Associate Blueprint with Dr. Amit Jilka and Dr. Kalpesh Prajapat

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If you’re ready to take your dental career to the next level, this one’s for you! In this episode, we’re joined by Kalpesh Prajapat, or Kal, a dentist who made the leap from hospital-based dentistry to smashing it in private practice. He’s here to share the insider tips and tricks to becoming a Super Associate in dentistry. It’s all about combining top-notch clinical skills with savvy financial know-how to really step up your game.

Kal talks us through how embracing a growth mindset, constant learning, and having the right mentorship can set you on the path to success. He shares personal stories of how building trust with patients and fostering a positive team environment can make all the difference. We also dive into practical tips for making your practice run like clockwork—think digital tools like Asana and Loom to streamline your day-to-day, and how focusing on the high-value stuff (you know, the 80-20 rule) can seriously boost your productivity.

And don’t forget about social media! Kal reveals how a solid online presence can bring in high-quality patients, making your dental practice shine in today’s digital world. Whether you’re a seasoned pro or just starting out as an associate, this episode will give you all the insights you need to thrive in the competitive dental industry. So, grab a cuppa and tune in—this is one you won’t want to miss!

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Disclaimer: All content on this channel is for education purposes only and does not constitute an investment recommendation or individual financial advice. For that, you should speak to a regulated, independent professional. The value of investments and the income from them can go down as well as up, so you may get back less than you invest. The views expressed on this channel may no longer be current. The information provided is not a personal recommendation for any particular investment. Tax treatment depends on individual circumstances and all tax rules may change in the future. If you are unsure about the suitability of an investment, you should speak to a regulated, independent professional.

Chapters

• 0:00 Understanding the Super Associate Journey
• 7:15 Mastering Communication for Dental Success
• 12:44 Enhancing Communication Skills for Dental Success
• 24:42 Optimizing Dental Practice Efficiency
• 35:57 Social Media Strategies for Dental Associates
• 40:12 Effective Patient Consultation Techniques
• 52:43 Career Progression in Dentistry
• 1:03:30 Effective Time Management in Dental Practice
• 1:13:31 Accelerating the Super Associate Journey

Transcript

Dr James: 0:00

Kal and Amit, do you think it's a good place to start by defining what a super associate is, just so we can pull that out of the ethereal? Is that a good place to begin? Yeah, I think so.

Dr Amit: 0:11

I think a lot of people give a super associate kind of different terminology. But in our eyes, in our practice, a super associate is someone who is grossing high but also has a very big mix of clinical skill. So they're not just doing small makeovers and composite bonding, they're trained in sedation, they're trained in potentially implants, or at least restoring them, and surgical. So a super associate is from a clinical aspect and from a monetary aspect. That's the way we look at it and that's what um we effectively try and train our dentists to become is to be the master of lots of different trades. Why would you say Kal?

Dr Kalpesh: 0:54

yeah, definitely so. It's someone who embodies ability to communicate really well with someone as in the patient and the team someone who can deliver really high quality dentistry and an experiential service. So it's basically taking into account all those things to provide great service and great quality of dentistry to the patient and, as a byproduct of that, you're going to achieve success in terms of monetary benefit from, obviously, the treatments that you're doing, but also in terms of your actual satisfaction with your clinical work as well.

Dr James: 1:27

It's all about the value you give. Right, if you make your focus on just giving an absolute ton of value, I swear that makes it way back to you by way of job satisfaction and by way of status and by way of remuneration as well. So that is absolutely the correct ethos, in my opinion. Kal, I know that whilst we're not we're not saying how can I say this, we're not putting anybody in a pedestal tonight and saying, hey, look at me, I'm the super associate. Everybody should aspire to be me, or anything along those lines.

Dr James: 1:54

We're all on the journey, so to speak, of progressing ourselves in our career. For some people, what they aspire towards is being that archetype of the super associate we were talking about a second ago. Some people just want to get better in dentistry. Right, that's fine as well. We're all on that journey, Kal, and as someone, Kal and Amit, of course, but I know, Kal, you are the associate, so to speak. So, Kal, I know that you're someone who's progressed yourself a little further along that journey than most people, and that's something that you're striving towards every single day. Can we start from the start, at the start of your dental career, and if you can just paint a little bit of a picture as to where you were and then, before you started having an epiphany or thinking to yourself right, how can I do better? I want more. Let's hit that next level. What's that? What was the thing that motivated you? What was the thing that pushed you? Maybe the best place to start is how that looked in the first instance yes.

Dr Kalpesh: 2:41

So basically I started out in hospital. So obviously I did hospital training and then, alongside hospital training ie DCT I worked in private practice on the side. So that was completely two different roles I had. So one was in a hospital, salaried, working with mainly oral surgery and restorative cases that were being referred in by GDP mainly oral surgery and restorative cases that have been referred in by GDP. Then obviously on the weekend I'd be working in private practice. So it was great to see both sides of the coin, and so I did a bit of NHS dentistry as well, but majority of it was private on the Saturdays. Then obviously, as you go on more courses, you learn more CBD, you start networking.

Dr Kalpesh: 3:24

The patient list was growing, um, my days were getting busier and then I had to make a decision as to whether I wanted to go down the hospital road as a consultant um or go down um and work in practice. So obviously I made a decision to continue with uh primary care in practice, simply because it was personal choice. I wanted to deliver a variety of treatments, I think within the hospital. I was slightly limited to one discipline as to what I could kind of go down and I didn't want to do that. I didn't want to restrict myself and I think in turn that has helped me grow as an associate in a more rounded way. So I've been able to not only provide patients with the oral surgery that they require, but also the restorative treatments and now obviously going down the more cosmetic route as well.

Dr Kalpesh: 4:10

So I think for myself, that background has really helped to springboard me to where I am, especially with the sedation background and things like that. So the main thing really is having that growth mindset and I think I've always been a lifelong learner, so that I've taken out of the training that I got and then obviously adapted it into practice. And when you're working in private practice, you you want to be in an environment whereby you do have a support structure and a nurturing environment whereby you've got a mentor, you've got someone who has skills and training in the disciplines that you want to maybe go further in. That's a very, very useful setup to have. But if you don't, then it's about finding those individuals who can also support you in that growth.

Dr James: 5:00

You know, I think you hit upon something there that I'm a huge proponent of and I definitely believe in as well. And I'm a huge proponent of, and I definitely believe in as well, and I've heard a lot of people who are very successful S-Bice. They talk about the mindset side of things, and I used to be mega cynical about that stuff. I used to think it was a little bit woo-woo, and now I'm quite the opposite. I preach it and I think it's incredibly valuable because it all starts with that. It's like what motivates us and what drives us, what gives us our why? That's all mindset, that's what's gonna keep you going.

Dr James: 5:31

And you know, I think that we as human beings were hardwired to just keep doing the same stuff. Right, like we like certainty. But that's not where the fun stuff is and they're really aspirational stuff is, unless we've already hit there. But because most of us are still on that journey, we know that we have to grow. Therefore, we can't keep doing the same stuff, and I know that that sounds really obvious, but it's just worth pointing out, isn't it? So it's like it's about flipping that and it's by saying, actually, not only I'm not avoiding growth, I'm actually seeking this growth. I'm seeking the discomfort that comes along with growth, because I know that means that I'm growing, so to to speak.

Dr Amit: 6:03

Yeah, and that's a critical decision when we're recruiting associates is we're not generally looking at your clinical skill set at that point in time, because we know that we can train you in anything. It's the mindset. If you've got the growth mindset, that weighs up for us to whether we're going to recruit you or not. And so the majority of the associates all the associates at Abbey House have all got the growth mindset. So they're all in a different journey as to where they want to be and where they're going. And if someone hasn't got that growth mindset, they generally don't last at our practice because we're all the same here.

Dr James: 6:37

Well, listen, it's interesting to hear that from the principal's perspective as well. Kal, I understand you've prepared a presentation this evening, so maybe now is a good point to segue into that, because I know that that goes into your journey in a little bit more detail. And, of course, we're just being ultra conscious that this webinar is also going to be released as a podcast. We're going to do our very best to describe everything that we see in front of us so that the people who are enjoying this content on the podcast and the audio side of things will be able to understand what's going on as well, which will be great.

Dr Kalpesh: 7:10

Yeah, definitely Definitely. Let's just get set up.

Dr James: 7:13

Let's do that and also everybody's on this webinar. Tonight we are going to have the opportunity for a Q&A at around about the 30, 40 minute mark. So on that Q&A we can answer any questions that you might have with for Kal and Amit with specificity. So it's definitely a good idea to hang around for that.

Dr Kalpesh: 7:30

That'll be fun can you see that?

Dr Kalpesh: 7:31

James, yeah, we got super associate blueprint on the screen yeah, so it was basically talking about the key points that I just mentioned there. So you mentioned what you know really encompasses this kind of super associate. So obviously it's just a term that we would kind of deem for an individual who works as an associate, who has, um, these key traits and is able to, you know, perform dentistry to a high level. Um, so we're thinking someone who has a great communication. So this is really important when, obviously, speaking to patients, you can be a really, really amazing dentist. But unfortunately, if you don't have that those essential communication skills then when it comes to presenting those options to the patient, getting consent from the patient, exploring their patient's concern, it's really hard to be able to actually be able to do that type of treatment without being able to convey that. So it's really important to have those, uh, amazing communication skills.

Dr Kalpesh: 8:28

Um, also, we are talking about delivering a really exceptional service, so an experiential service, so that's one which is not just simply transactional, not just you come in and you're going, it's. It's you're building relationships with the patient, you are treating them in a way that is different to any experience that they've had, and that means treating them in a non-threatening way, giving them a really fun, memorable experience and one which they will remember, tell their friends in terms of their family, because we know that word of mouth, referrals are one of the most valuable kind of marketing sources. So, and the last, most important point, I suppose, really is coming down to the dentistry that you're delivering to the patient and that's being able to deliver very high quality dentistry. And that comes from, obviously, training, comes from having great mentorship and, obviously, building knowledge in that particular discipline, whatever it may one of you may be doing in your day-to-day practice do you mind if I just ask?

Dr James: 9:29

oh sorry, Amit sorry.

Dr Amit: 9:30

What makes it really powerful for us is that we got clinicians that can treatment plan everything and delivering that service to a patient, that they come in for their first examination and you have the knowledge of how to plan an implant, how to plan Invisalign, how to plan the smile aesthetics, means that it's super efficient for the patient to say yes, and so when we're talking about communication, you can go on lots of communication courses, but the clinical communication also has to be very clear to the patient and if you're not trained in all of these things, or at least know how to treatment plan all these things, it comes across to the patient that you don't know what you're talking about and so you'll lose the patient or you'll lose a big chunk of that treatment value because you don't know how to treatment plan that part.

Dr Amit: 10:16

So we don't focus our patients just seeing specialists. We train our dentists to be able to treatment plan the full works and it may be that they're not delivering that treatment fully, but they are in charge and in that one examination that everything's been treatment planned and I think that's critical to increasing your conversion rates I think what it is is when, once you once, once you do these additional um courses and and you train in different disciplines, you start to be more aware of how these types of options can help patients.

Dr Kalpesh: 10:49

So, um, early on in in my career anyway, I was definitely the first to put my hands up and saying that you are less likely to present different treatment options because you aren't that confident in those options and you're not fully aware of them. But as soon as you are aware and you may be able to be trained in those and actually perform those clinical procedures, you start to notice that actually your treatment plans become a little bit more complex. You start to offer the services that you can be trained to do and that way you're treating the patient more holistically do you know?

Dr James: 11:21

I just wanted to share something interesting on the communication side of things. I was on a communication course once way back in the day and the person who ran the course one of the things that he got all the delegates to do he was like right, what I want everybody to do is I want everybody to score themselves out of 10, how good they are in terms of communication, not just, you know, not just relative to the world, I mean relative to this room, so relative to your peers and everybody that you see around you. So naturally, we'd expect it to be a bell curve, of course. So the five out of 10 would be the average, some people would be one, some people would be 10, whatever, right? So at the end he pulled all this. He got everybody to put these pieces of paper in this bag, he pulled them all out and the average was 8.6.

Dr James: 11:58

Yeah, so we all think we're really good at communication and it's it's kind of something that we all perceive ourselves to be. And that was a big mindset shift for me back in the day where I was like, right, actually this is one of the most important skills that a dentist can have and it can make such a huge difference whenever it comes to your treatment, planning, your satisfaction from the job, your levels of patience and good engagement and also, as well as that, your remuneration as well. It's actually huge, and I never realized that, so I'm pleased to see that you guys have that up on the screen there. How can one improve at that? Specifically, kyle, I know you mentioned expanding your skill set. Anything else?

Dr James: 12:34

in terms of delivering dentistry or the communication I think, I think the communication side of things, that's the, that's the best place to begin. How can someone improve their communication levels so?

Dr Kalpesh: 12:44

let me just talk about myself for in this instant, because what I've done personally is I've been on many courses, um, so I've been on year-long courses with communications experts. I've been on on courses whereby I've I've learned about different personality traits. Um, I've been on courses where there's actors and they've literally, you know kind of told us how to respond in certain situations and gone into different kind of behaviour and non-verbal and verbal communication techniques. I've read books on the subject. So there's loads of things you can do.

Dr Kalpesh: 13:25

Personally, I think that you learn things from different individuals. I think going to one particular course or going to one particular speaker, you're going to pick up something, but, just like most courses, you'll you'll gain little golden nuggets from each one, and it's about piecing them all together and then creating your own natural flow, because sometimes the way it works for one person may not always work for another. So therefore, um, by taking different points from different people, reading books and taking different points not only from the dentistry industry but also from other industries as well, is also beneficial, um, so that's my personal recommendation. Um, in terms of, uh, if I've heard to name courses, obviously Ashley Latt has done a course. That's one I've been on. It's like a year-long course. That was very good early on in my training and then since then reading other books and services, and also lots of podcasts on communication, youtube videos, etc. These are. These are things.

Dr Amit: 14:23

And also having the mentor and just sitting in a consultation with a mentor or someone as well who's more senior than you and seeing how they almost talk to the patient, the language they use, the way in which they conduct themselves is also really, really valuable, I think I think one thing that I've noticed about Kal in his communication whenever because, like you know, I go into everyone's surgery as a practice and see how they do consultations and what defines what Kal does that's different to the others is that there's a very fun atmosphere within his surgery and it's not clinical based. He's always having fun with the patient. He's always building rapport with the patient. He's always having fun with the patient. He's always building rapport with the patient. He spends so much time just chatting and getting to know the patient that the clinical side almost becomes a second aspect to it. So the patient he builds up the trust so well that his patients will always usually go ahead with treatments.

Dr Amit: 15:18

But not just that. When treatments say don't go according to plan because he's consented to them and got the trust with the patient, then things can be rectified because they just know that Kal going to sort me out and that's all you want. You want your patients to believe in you, to say that if something does go wrong will he sort me out. Yes, he will, and I think that's what defines how Kal has really accelerated within his career.

Dr James: 15:40

Amazing. Well, anyway, sorry, I didn't mean to pull you guys away from the flow of this conversation, of the of the presentation in front of us, but yeah, I did just want to highlight that because it's extremely important and I really think it's worth just mentioning it time and time again to dentists because I really feel it can help them and make a big difference and we don't always realize it. Case in point, that little experiment, wherever that I was talking about a second ago, where everybody rated their own communication. We all think we're better than we are and actually there's a lot of scope that we can improve and it makes a big difference anyway, onwards. I think there was a few more slides there was there yeah, we've got a few more slides um.

Dr Kalpesh: 16:17

So I think I mentioned this before about kind of how to scale up and how to sort of um.

Dr Kalpesh: 16:23

Once you have these um, once you've had these traits, and once you are aware of the traits that you need, you need then it's how do you actually put that into practice and how do you start to grow and how do you start to kind of excel in your career.

Dr Kalpesh: 16:40

And I think the first thing is really having that mindset and having the skills and the training and the knowledge to be able to provide that treatment um. But secondly, and very importantly, is also having that nurturing supportive environment where you have your team who are fully behind you. You have supportive managers and staff and also a mentor. So seeking a mentor, I think is really important, whether that be someone in your practice or someone who you can trust and speak to outside your practice um who can provide you with guidance, um, because in order to grow, you have to push your comfort, comfort zone, but we have to do it in a safe way and and therefore having that mentor is really important with having check-ins with them and also staying in touch with them so that you are basically guided to um, to the next step in your, in your pathway.

Dr James: 17:35

Amazing, and any more to add on that from your side, Amit.

Dr Amit: 17:41

I think it's the mentorship is critical in how we've kind of pushed associates to do better and better and do more and more. But you can't do any of that unless the cases are coming through the door. So you need to be, you have to have set up a practice that can deliver these complex treatments as well. It's on the associate to obviously discuss these complex treatments and the bigger treatment plans, but you have to get those type of patients through the door. So choosing a practice if you're an associate that has marketing budgets behind it, that has treatment coordinators, that has new patient coordinators, is only going to make the associate succeed.

Dr Amit: 18:19

Now, if you're in a practice that doesn't have those things, you can only deliver treatments to what patients you are given. So if you don't have a scanner there, you don't have a CT scanner, you don't have all of these equipment, you're limited by what you can do. So choosing the environment is critical. So, as an associate, if you're in a practice, it may be that you have to do some of these things yourself, and I know quite a few associates that are within practices that do not do any of these things, and I think James knows as well who I'm talking about. There's quite a few people that will just do their own marketing, hire their own tco and take it upon themselves to have a business within a business here at our practice. I mean, you know, Kal got all of that behind him so that all he has to do at that point is to just deliver a good service.

Dr James: 19:09

Yeah big time. And you know what the mentorship side of things I really feel is a hack as well. You can speed your own journey up so much if you're willing to embrace mentorship, if you're willing to go into someone else's surgery and learn from them or potentially pay them as well. That is the sort of thing that can make you hit really huge heights and accelerate your career massively, especially from the get-go, especially if somebody's taken like 15, 20 years to learn certain lessons and they can give them to you over the course of six months or something along those lines. You can literally get to where they are in six months, and then what that means is your own progress becomes exponential instead of linear. So I really feel like that's a life hack as well, and a clinical dentistry hack too.

Dr Kalpesh: 19:54

Yeah definitely yeah, and um, going on from that point obviously is yeah, you know, all these things are great, but you need the patients. You need the patients to treat and you need the right type of patients as well. So often I get messages from associates who may be not in a in such a practice maybe in the NHS, and it's it is definitely more difficult for those clinicians to be able to do this as easily. It's much, much harder. So these are types of things that you can do as a individual to almost grow your own profile and to almost generate those types of patients who can come and see you. So it's almost scaling up your own profile because ultimately, you are a self-employed clinician. You have got your own skill sets, you have got your own patient base, but you can expand that and you have the ability to do that. And although you work in a practice as an associate, you know you still have the ability to use your own patients to get word of mouth referrals. You can set up a free instagram page which, um, you can showcase your cases. You can have a very basic website, for instance, to have a bio or just at least a contact form with the phone number of the practice or a mobile phone that you know your, your, uh, you have a mobile phone number where patients can contact you. So there's different ways that you can kind of add a little bit more leverage to your situation. Um. So, obviously, within, within the clinic, you're, you're obviously a business within your own surgery. That's the way I like to see it. So it's really important to respect and um appreciate that that the time that you have in that, in that surgery, is your protected time. You are self employed and therefore maximising that chair side efficiency is really important and that means when you are seeing the patient, you've got to make sure that you're doing everything as efficient as possible, adding value to the patient but also delegating any tasks that you are basically less you know you're doing the high value skills basically.

Dr Kalpesh: 22:02

So if you are in a position where you're fortunate enough to have a, let's say, a TCO or a nurse that's spare in another surgery or a small room, you can delegate tasks to them. For instance, it could be even simple as post-op instructions when I didn't have a TCO, I I would this is a very straightforward example but, um, let's say we're doing an extraction, um, you could get your nurse to go through the post-op instructions, go through um all the information on the leaflet. What's your type of notes, for instance? This is just an example of like a very basic example of delegating things within your surgery, but it's a one way of doing that. Nurses can be trained up to provide topical anaesthetic so when you're bringing a patient in, for instance, you know you can be setting up the notes or the scanner or reviewing x-ray while they're putting topical on, for instance. It's doing these little tasks which help to scale you and become, make you more efficient.

Dr Kalpesh: 22:59

And it's just small, small things which, over over the day, can really help to maximize your efficiency. And obviously you can then take it to the other end, which is where the, for instance, the nurse or the treatment coordinator sees the patient initially for photos. They can scan their mouth, they can discuss various treatments with them, they can talk about different finance options, for instance. So this is taking a lot of time out of your clinical hours and delegating it to someone else who can, who can, who is trained to do so. You know the nurses with you all the time. They are fully aware of the sort of the options of treatments and also things like taking photos. That's something that you can train them up to do, even if it's initially just with an iphone. It's literally just with iphone and retractors. That can be done in a simple lunchtime training them up. So that's one thing. It's the business in a business concept. Did you want to answer me?

Dr Amit: 23:58

I think, uh, the the idea of a super associate I think Kal alluding to the super nurse and the nurses are should be treated just the same as associates in terms of scaling their skill set up. So our nurses are trained to scan on the eye terrors are trained to take the ct scans. They're trained to take opgs. It means that the dentist and the associate can just focus on delivering that service to the patient. The tcos are trained to take OPGs. It means that the dentist and the associate can just focus on delivering that service to the patient. The TCOs are trained to do the same. So our TCOs can do the scans, they can do the photos, they can upload everything onto Invisalign portals and we use something called Smart Cloud for implants.

Dr Amit: 24:37

The whole team has been set up to make the associate successful. But if you just let your nurses just hold the aspirator all day long, you're not going to progress. You've got it. You've got to get these nurses doing more and more and they love it and they thrive on it. Um, when you train them up in sedation and implants and all the the dental part of it, it means that then they're motivated to talk to patients about these treatments as well, so you're just setting yourself up to win.

Dr James: 25:03

Yeah, I mean, it's almost like applying a business mindset to your dentistry and just taking that to even more of an extreme. Because what is part of business is scaling up is reserving your time for the high value tasks where you can bring the most value to the table or most suited to your particular skill set, that only you can do, and then delegating the tasks that somebody else is better at to them and just making sure you've got really strict how can I say really strict and defined roles surrounding that stuff and the second that you tighten up on that sort of stuff. It sounds so small, but actually it makes a big difference. And you know, when you guys were talking just then, you kind of reminded me of this book that I read once upon a time, called 80-20, sales and Marketing. Have you read that book, Amit? I see you nodding your head.

Dr Amit: 25:48

The 80-20 rule. I think everyone knows.

Dr James: 25:50

This is it. It's literally all about Pareto's law, the 80-20 rule 20% of your actions give you 80% of your results, and if you can just focus on those 20% of things that are bringing the most value to the table and also the most productive in terms of your time throughout the course of today, of the day, well, what it means is you can, in theory, do 20,. You can, in theory, much reduce your effort and still be just as productive, or even more productive, just because you've become more efficient. And, as I say, none of these things, these things that we're sharing here today, there's very rarely a big.

Dr James: 26:23

How can we say one thing that we just give somebody and it's like whoa, this is game changing for us. It's more than likely 100 little things that we change and they all add up and you know what brings in my experience from webinars and podcasts and things along these lines. What brings great value into my life is writing down all the little ideas that come to me and even if I can't apply all of them, if I even apply like half of them, that's still a win for me, and I guess that that's what we're aiming for this evening by way of inspiration yeah, so, um, another thing as well is um kind of understanding how you can systemize things within the surgery.

Dr Kalpesh: 27:00

So, at the moment, if you're an associate working in um a practice whereby you're doing general dentistry, um, but you're also starting to do more invisalign um, maybe implants, things like that, um, there's systems and processes you can do to help really make this process a lot more efficient. When I started doing basic lab work so like crowns, bridges, et cetera and sending it to the dental lab, we started to communicate with the lab using a digital software called Asana. So I was basically instructed by the lab that we wanted to change everything into a digital format. So the processor will be more slick, the images and the prescriptions can be modified at any time, we can comment on the images and any questions can be directed to me rather than phoning the practicer. For instance, if there's any issues with lab work, I get contacted via the Asana app. So so Asana is basically almost like a project management software. We can have different categories and different timelines in terms of when the lab work is being processed, when it's being received at the lab, so I can see the full workflow. Also, I can add in images. Really straightforward and also it's almost really streamlined the process of lab communication because I'm in direct contact with the technician who's working on the case. So that's one example.

Dr Kalpesh: 28:27

Another example as well is like loom. Loom is a video recording software. So when I'm doing clinchecks now, rather than actually sitting down with the patient like, for instance, bringing them back in surgery and spending that time 15, 20 minutes of your chair side time what I will do is I'll block off, let's say, 20 minutes in my lunch and I'll be able to do a five minute recording or 10 minute recording of a patient's clinch. I can do two of them within um within, you know, 20 minutes, for instance and then I'll just send that out to the patient um. So it's far more efficient way of delivering information and um delivering in a way which is also very informative. It's basically a screen recording tool which you can um. You can then send to the patient and attach with that treatment letter as well, and that can be done for various treatments, including dental implant treatments, any big cosmetic cases as well. You can also attach photos and you can go through your photos and talk on the screen and they can be annotated.

Dr Amit: 29:28

So it's very informative and it also helps with the consent process as well and it saves so much clinical time so you could be doing another console, you know, and you could, you could. You can record your loom videos in the evening, in the mornings, just outside of clinical hours, and patients receive the treatment there, and then you're not waiting for the next appointment for the ClinCheck and then you're ordering the aligners that the ClinCheck's done. The treatment letter for implants is done through a loom video or an automated treatment letter. All of these things means that you can go from doing, for example, 15 Visalign cases to 200. But you can't do 200, 300 cases if your systems aren't there.

Dr James: 30:08

That's huge right there and that knowledge is so niche it's really hard to find little useful golden nuggets like that. So I want to thank you guys for sharing that. It's all about scaling up and leveraging and I'm going to imagine you know patients well. They're more likely to sit down and watch a video versus read a treatment plan letter, so it's going to be more effective and engaging as well definitely it is.

Dr Kalpesh: 30:29

It's, uh, you know it's, it's something that most practices are probably not doing, so it's something different. Again, it's going to tie into that experiential dentistry. It's like, wow, my dentist sent me a video of of my teeth and he's, you know he or she's talking about them, etc. Etc. You know they're going to talk about that, um, when they're at the pub or whatever. And, uh, it's just another thing to basically, you know, give them an amazing experience, but also you're actually doing something amazing for them because you're going through the process really effectively, but also you're saving yourself. It's a, it's a double, double win for everyone, really love that.

Dr Kalpesh: 31:05

What a tip so then, obviously, um, when, when, talking about um, revenue generation, because obviously that's that's really important as well, because we are ultimately here to, to, to work and to earn, but obviously everything that we have to do is ethical, and so understanding revenue generating treatments and understanding how to improve your clinical efficiency, like what we touched upon, is really important. So that's where you need to sit down and you need to understand okay, if I'm spending half an hour doing this amalgam filling or half an hour doing this composite filling, what is the hourly rate that I'm attaining from this versus if I'm doing more? Uh, other treatments, such as I don't know crayons, bridges, invisalign what is the difference between each one and where is my time being spent? Um, because you know, invisalign itself can also sometimes not be that profitable if done incorrectly. And that's where I've sometimes found out the hard way. When you're doing treatments and you're doing more and more refinements, for instance, you're actually just completely diluting your chairside hourly rate because of the fact that you're expending more time on a treatment which is not generating more revenue at the same time, which is not generating more revenue at the same time. So you have to be very careful about what you want to choose and also understanding how to perform that treatment in the best possible way. And then, of course, it's about delegation, as we mentioned, delegating tasks, for instance the scanning the photos, post-operative instructions, or whether it be finance chats. You, as a dentist, should not be spending time um putting a finance application in on the computer. It should be delegated to front of house or someone in the in the back office or someone um dedicated for that role. Um, if not maybe training someone up to do that?

Dr Kalpesh: 32:54

Writing letters. You ideally, you know, dictating letters is better. What I do is um I've got the on my iphone voice recorder app, literally in front of the, in front of the, the notes I'm I'm dictating a letter as opposed to writing it out or then send that out. I will outsource that to someone who can, who can then type that up. They don't even need to have access to the, the dental management software, they can just type that up. I can send them a template as to how we like to structure the letter um and anything else they need to add in um and then, obviously, you know that's all emailed to the patient for an e-signature. We've, you know, gone with the days where we're printing that out and sending it to the patient. It's all e-sign now. So we're getting the patient to read it, confirm it, e-sign it and that goes back into the patient's notes. So everything is is, um, you know, watertight nice.

Dr Amit: 33:42

And going on to the revenue generating treatment, um, what we monitor as kind of principle level and what the associates receive on their pay statement is, uh, every single month, what their average daily rate was. And it's something that um chris barrow taught me a long, long time ago that knowing the average daily rate for your associates's something that um chris barrow taught me a long, long time ago, that knowing the average daily rate for your associates is critical to see. One, are they profitable for you? But two, are they growing?

Dr Amit: 34:07

Um, and having that average daily rate means that I can say to an associate if you train in sedation, your income will increase by x. If you train in invisalign, your income is going to increase by this much. And then that gets them thinking to say, actually, should I even be doing certain treatments if I can get enough cases to do that treatment? And so the mindset changes. So I think it's important to know that what you do in your day to day dentistry and I think most of us just do anything and everything but actually filtering certain treatments out, using the therapy team to take out some restorative treatments, means that you can just scale up without actually having to work more and longer well, it's the 80 20 rule in action again, isn't it?

Dr Kalpesh: 34:52

exactly, yeah, so you know, um, I think the function that we have is we, we have that team here, but, but, um, in a practice where you don't have that it's, it is about trying to outsource what you can, um, and try to use the team that you have got in place and try to make your, your life a bit more easier by delegating those roles out and improving your your chair side efficiency and, now that, the deal of strength that is obviously bringing more patients in that you can treat. And, of course, that comes through marketing, and marketing through different, different means, depending on the type of demographic that you're treating and depending on the area that you're in, that will have an influence. And, obviously, we've touched upon a little bit about social media in a previous uh um podcast, but with marketing, it's really about brand awareness and and putting yourself out there. Um, it's about speaking about what you do and, um, telling your potential audience uh, what you have to offer. Really, one of the things that some of the associates do in our practice is they have the TV on the screen and they literally have a picture of themselves and the list of treatments that they offer. One of the associates was saying to me that one of his patients went to another practice to have Invisalign and obviously that's something that he provides here, so he felt a bit hard done by. So, by putting all the treatments that he offered on the screen the patients literally facing that screen as soon as they sit down, they're seeing those treatments or having your website or Instagram or something up there which highlights the treatments that you're doing is almost like a subliminal message to the patient saying look, we do offer this cosmetic treatment, we do offer these types of treatments, whether it be emergency treatments, whether it be implants, whatever it is that you do.

Dr Kalpesh: 36:46

Having that there and visible is really important because patients need to be aware of what you're doing. You need to inform them, and the more that we talk about the skills and services that we offer, the more likelihood it is that we'll receive that back. And that ties in nicely to the word of mouth referrals. So word of mouth referrals are really the strongest lead source. So after every single patient that you've seen that is obviously happy with your treatment, you can then be giving them a referral card with your treatment. You can then be giving them a referral card which gives them maybe some discount, free hygiene, some whitening something, some form of value that you're providing to them and, as a result, they can provide that to a friend or family.

Dr Kalpesh: 37:31

If you want to take it a step further, then if they have social media Facebook, instagram, something along those lines whether they work in a business, they own a business you can advise them to share that with their audience. And tagging your practice and yourself, if you do use Instagram or Facebook, etc. And what that's going to do is going to help to one, give third party validation that they've trusted your service and the practice, but also it's going to allow them to see um direct link to your profile and therefore, hopefully, um plant a seed in their mind when they would like that treatment. Then they can come to you because they've they've had a great service with their friends. So it's going to give them that reassurance, um.

Dr Kalpesh: 38:13

And then, of course, talking about websites and social media. So if you are associate um wanting to really kind of gauge, gain more traction, then having a website is really fundamental. Website's going to allow you to have a portfolio. It's going to allow you to display your cases. It's going to encourage you to take more photos of your cases so that you've got a portfolio if you don't have one already.

Dr Kalpesh: 38:36

So I definitely would say to those younger associates that having a camera setup, having before and after images which are identical in terms of their positioning and layout so I definitely would say to those younger associates that having a camera set up, having before and after images which are identical in terms of their positioning and layout, and having testimonials from patients is really important. It gives you a lot of credibility when you're talking about certain treatments to a patient. You can bring up a patient's images on your website, for instance, or a testimonial, and you can literally talk through um a new patient to a new patient with that uh image in front of you. It just it just allows you to um have a really strong communication uh with that patient um and also setting up an instagram page uh facebook page is is free, it's easy to do and it allows you to also display those cases, the testimonials etc. On that um.

Dr James: 39:25

Sorry, James, you want to say something well, no, well, I mean, uh, just I thought you were finished, there was all, but uh, all I was going to ask it what, at some stage, was two things really. First of all is how essential do you think, do you feel it is for a dentist in 2024 to have Instagram to get good lead flow, to get the sort of patients that they'd like to come through to perform high value treatment? How essential do you feel that is, 100% essential, or is there a little bit of give there? And then the second thing I was going to ask is more along the content side of things, but we'll come to that in a second Maybe. If you just focus on the first question for the moment, your opinion on that?

Dr Kalpesh: 40:01

if I'm very, very truthful, it's not essential. It's not essential at all because, look, high value treatment could be anything. It could be quadrant dentistry, it could be um, it could be root canal treatment, etc. It the the point I'm touching upon is if you're in a, if you're in an area where you're trying to reach a specific demographic. So, for instance, the demographic which tends to use Instagram typically is between the age of, let's say, 19 to maybe early 60s. That's the kind of range, general range, obviously but those types of demographics are probably having a slightly different treatment to to those who may need quadrant dentistry, for instance. So, to be a super associate, I think you don't necessarily need an Instagram Absolutely not.

Dr Kalpesh: 40:53

However, I think a website is a very, very good thing to start with, as opposed to Instagram. If you're, if you're a general dentist that does great, high quality general dentistry, then having a website is a great. That's how I started. Actually, I started with the website first, um, I think that was the um. It's a great place to start because you can put your before and afters of all types of treatments on there. You don't have to um focus it on a particular discipline that you do, and also you've got your biography there. You've got your contact location and your details, so it gives you some somewhere to go and for patients who are searching on google and they they come across your, your website. It's valid credibility for you.

Dr Amit: 41:36

I think the key thing there to me is okay, instagram's important, but the focus on Instagram at the moment in the dental crowd is to try and get as many followers and patients seeing your profile.

Dr Amit: 41:49

But if you look at it, what Kalpesh said right at the start was that in the consultation, letting your patients know what you do is critical. And if they don't know what you do, then how are you going to upsell treatments to them? So, having that tv screen with what you did, what you do before and afters on there, if you have an instagram page and you just have it on an ipad and show you before and afters to the patient in the consultation, that patient who goes away say they haven't said yes to going for that treatment, can quickly google calpesh and suddenly calpesh has got his own website. So suddenly there's that validation to go that calpesh is actually a well-trained person to have this expensive treatment with and that's what it is it's all about. How is that instagram, the website, tv screen all going to add to your consultation, which will then uptake treatment?

Dr James: 42:44

You know what that's so valuable to know, to know the hierarchy in terms of importance that actually that takes president above everything else, and I think what it comes back to is just really nailing your patient avatar, like what sort of patients you want to serve, what sort of dentistry do you want to do? Because if they're not as you say, as you quite rightly say, if they're not as you say, as you quite rightly say, if they're not on instagram, well that's not going to do you a lot of good. If they're, if they're somewhere else or they're not really on social media, well then you want to focus on other marketing efforts. I did have a question on the content side of things, but you know what? I'm just semi-conscious of time this evening and I don't want to derail things too much, so maybe we can circle back to that, if there's time, at the end yeah, definitely, that's definitely we can.

Dr Kalpesh: 43:20

We can talk about that. Um, I just wanted to talk about our consultation and how we do consultations differently, um, so, in terms of the way in which we like to see our patients, this we feel is quite beneficial towards helping um with adding value to the patient's experience, but also helps with conversion and also gives the patient a great experience. So we do something called this. Well, we termed it sandwich technique, um, I don't think it's an official term, but we just like to call it that because the dentist in the middle it's a. It's a three-part consultation um, which doesn't actually for the dent, for the dentist or the clinician, doesn't take more than half an hour, but you've got half an hour with the T-shirt as well. So in total, the patient is spending about an hour at the practice for that first appointment. So the way this would work is, let's say, a patient sees your website, sees your Instagram, or gets a word-of-mouth referral business card from a patient that your website sees your Instagram, or gets a word of mouth referral business card from a patient that you treated with your number on. They've seen your number, you've written your name on it. They're going to call the practice and say oh, I want to be booked in with Jack, for instance. So they'll be booked in and in an ideal situation you'll have a treatment coordinator or a nurse who would see the patient first. So they'll be greeted by the TCO or the nurse and then, effectively, the images will be taken. There'll be an eye tarot scan taken they're the eye-tray scan will be displayed to the patient and any complaints the patient will then be addressed by using that scan as a almost like a visual aid to show to the patient. The nurse can also then talk about different services, for instance hygiene services and any other things that the patient may be interested in. For instance, they're interested in teeth whitening, or they're interested in getting their silver filling replaced to white fillings, etc. Etc. Now, once that's done that takes about 15 to 20 minutes. Once that's done, the treatment coordinator or the nurse will then introduce the dentist to that patient. So it will be almost like an introduction to the dentist in their surgery. So they'll be brought in and they'll be presented to the dentist. For instance, this is Mrs Smith. She's just come in as a new patient. We've done a scan and photo. She's not happy with x or she has been to another dentist and has had a crown she doesn't like the metal crown, for instance or she's not been for a while because she's nervous.

Dr Kalpesh: 45:59

You'll get a bit of a background. Following that, you do your normal patient assessment, you know your normal examination, etc. And you come up with your treatment plan. And this is where the TV, the x-rays on the TV, help, if you have that. If you don't, that's fine.

Dr Kalpesh: 46:15

But being in good communication with the patient and explaining everything that you're doing is really important. So when you're doing, for instance, as simple as a BPE, I'm always explaining that this is now a gum health check. We're going to be using this ruler along your gum line and as I'm just doing a BPE, I'm just explaining that. I'm just constantly talk to the patient to reassure them about what I'm doing and explaining it. I'm not doing anything different to anyone else listening on this webinar would do. I'm just explaining it and I'm explaining in a way that they understand fully. And then at the end of that appointment, the treatment coordinator will then come back into the room and I'll then relay what I found to the treatment coordinator with the patient. So then everyone in the room is fully aware of what has happened and what the treatments are, and then the patient will be taken into the treatment coordinator room or with the nurse to then discuss the treatments, treatment options that are presented, the cost of treatment, and then you know follow-up questions and finance.

Dr Kalpesh: 47:16

Sometimes you'll find that patient has told you that something, um, uh, that they want to go ahead, for instance, and then they'll tell the treatment coordinator something completely different because they're too scared to to inform you because, um, you know, everyone hates dentists. So that's that's, that's something that can happen. And then you leave, leave it up to the patient to discuss with the treatment coordinator the next steps, but you inform the nurse or the receptionist what the next appointment should be and on that day you want to ideally take a deposit 50% of the next appointment minimum. Never let the patient go without taking a deposit because they've got no financial incentive to come back. If they're not interested in any treatment, that's fine. I would book them in a week's time for a follow-up phone call with the treatment coordinator or yourself to discuss the options that you've gone through.

Dr Kalpesh: 48:08

Never sort of just let that patient go after spending that time with them. There's always a reason as to why. So you need to understand why that is and the follow-up is very good in in around about 50 to 60 percent of cases of following the patient up, they'll go ahead, in my experience. So sometimes they need to speak to a partner. They need to speak to um their other half. They need to understand their finances. They need to have a bit of bit of time to think over those. Some people decide straight away and they're ready to buy them. Some people aren't and some people even after that follow-up phone call won't be ready. But because you've had that great conversation with them the treatment consultants had the conversation with them um, they've it's in their mind so that that next exam or the next review, it's something that you can discuss um as well I love the level of choreography.

Dr James: 48:59

You guys have obviously thought about this too, and it's important. It's super important, Amit. Anything to add?

Dr Amit: 49:07

Just like you said, I think the having it organized in a fashion just sets you up to win and ensuring that patients that have come in a new patient that's come in and there is a follow-up process. So many practices don't have any form of follow-up and associates themselves at our practice are accountable for it. So we do monitor their conversion rates how many new patients have you seen and how many patients booked for treatment? If you're an outlier and not doing well, then there is a discussion to be had and we do discuss with associates what's going on. If the others are doing it, why can't you do it? And it's usually down to the fact that they forgot to take a deposit, they forgot to ask the patient to book the appointment, they forgot to tell the TCO to call the patient a week later. So having some accountability for the associates is important because ultimately, if the associates aren't accountable for doing well, then their income is not going to reflect that.

Dr Kalpesh: 50:06

You know, a lot of people on this call may not be fortunate enough to have a treatment coordinator there. So in this situation what I would do is I would book the patient back in my surgery. Is I would book the patient back in my surgery so I'd ensure that the patient doesn't leave the practice without having some form of follow-up, whether that be phone call or treatment appointment. Many times in the past I've said everything to the patient, given them all the treatments, but then I've just let them go to the reception and they've just told the reception oh no, I'll phone back, and then you just lost that patient. The chances of contacting them again is very low.

Dr Kalpesh: 50:43

So in the surgery, whilst you're there, um, it will actually take two minutes to go through the diary, see when the next available slot is and just book them in provisionally. Book them in and say what I like to say is okay. So we've got the 20th of November free and we can provisionally book that in right now for half an hour for your filling. The nurse will now take you to the desk to take their deposit, which is usually 50% of the next appointment. I look forward to seeing you at the next appointment, for instance, I just leave it like that, and then you've done everything you can to convey to the patient the next steps. You've been clear. You've booked them in provisionally.

Dr Kalpesh: 51:17

It's a provisional booking, subject to them paying a deposit. Okay, they then go to the desk to confirm that um, if they don't want to um pay, then you know clearly that they're not ready to transact at that moment. So then the receptionist should be aware uh, at that point, if they don't want to pay, then let's get them in for a follow-up phone call. They might even say that in the surgery they might even say look, I'm not, I don't know, I need to have a think about things. That's okay, let's book you in for a phone call in a week's time, what time works for you, and that's how I tend to do it and and you know from um the induction part of an associates starting with us.

Dr Amit: 51:53

They are told all of this, so we have presentations for them, we go through this workflow with them so that on day one they know exactly what we expect of them in terms of when you've done a new consultation, what is your duty as an associate to do and what is that follow-up. We just don't let it be open-ended the other thing is sorry.

Dr James: 52:12

Sorry, James all I was going to say just just quickly. What I used to do and this was completely the wrong way to do it was write them a huge treatment plan and send it to them, because not only do you probably lose them, but you actually spend loads of time making the treatment plan as well. So it's like if it was possible to have a double no-no, I think that's what it would look like. So, yeah, hopefully, if anybody in the audience is like me, they've now seen the light a little bit and realized that it's better to probably just get them back for some form of review, either on the phone or maybe a little bit of time it's really about keeping things simple.

Dr Kalpesh: 52:43

People hate the dentist. They're anxious, they don't want to be there for too long. If they need treatment, if they need something doing, um, regardless of what it is, you need to keep things simple. You need to keep things uh clear and you need to make the process friction free. And that means be clear with them about the options. Give your professional opinion on the option that you know. If they want, if they, if they are leaning towards something that is better for them, then you need to explain it to them.

Dr Kalpesh: 53:09

You're the professional and also you need to be clear about the next appointment. You need to be clear about the next step, because people are coming to you and they want a solution and ultimately, you need to be in a position to provide it to them. But you giving them a treatment letter, that's great, but what is the next step? And you need to make that next step happen in the surgery. So the next step is booking for appointment. There's a deposit and that's that. That is done and dusted and then, as as as they have paid and confirmed that appointment, then you can commit yourself to the treatment letter and etc.

Dr James: 53:42

Etc 100 agree. Yeah, excellent branding and marketing.

Dr Kalpesh: 53:49

I see on the screen now this is just a quick wrap-up, just to say, um, obviously, anyone that's on this webinar is is a clinician, so, um, they, you will all have access to patients and an iPhone or an Android phone so you can start making organic content by taking pictures of your work. Hopefully, you can invest in the camera setup. You can get a secondhand camera setup as well for a relatively cost-effective price where you can start taking images of your cases so you have some portfolio work to display to patients when talking about these, these treatments, because what you'll find is there is a bit of a snowball effect. You'll start to take more photos. You'll start to critique your cases, you'll start to become more diligent about the work that you're doing, because you don't want to photograph poor work, so your clinical dentistry will improve. Not only that, but you'll have a uh, you know a sample of cases that you can present to patients. Those patients will then go ahead and then it just snowballs. It really does, and, um, it has taken me about five to six years to get to that point.

Dr Kalpesh: 54:52

Um, but ultimately, starting, starting. You need to start now. Basically, there's no better time to start and, even if it is just with your iphone, just to um capture that, because once you drill into that tooth or once you uh scale the plaque off the patient, you know you can't take that photo, so take it before any treatment is started, in the worst possible state, and then take it at the end. You know you've got a great before and after. For instance, um it's just having, um it's just being in a position where you are getting in a good habit to do that, and um having the camera set up at your side, having um your retract, getting the nurse to get the retractors or the mirror out, just as part of the routine, um, as part of your, you know, routine treatments. Um, it's going to allow you to have that system in place more readily amazing.

Dr James: 55:46

Thank you for your wisdom just there, Kal, because this is a big black hole in our knowledge as dentists. We just don't get taught this stuff. You just figure it out in the school of life, right? Or the school of post uhistry, so to speak. Amit, anything you want to chuck in on top what Kal said?

Dr Amit: 56:03

I mean, yes, but from our practice perspective, we're doing a lot of branding for the practice, but we all know that when you brand an individual, that gets you the most leads and that's what gets you the most traction. So when associates are having their own websites and instagram, we we are not against it, we encourage it because it only adds to the, the practice, reputation and and, in terms of getting more patients and leads, it builds up those cases amazing.

Dr James: 56:30

Well, guys, listen, I've got bags of questions. I am, as I was saying earlier, I'm semi conscious of the time because you like to keep this around the hour mark and we're coming up to that just now. But it's okay, we can have some extra time this evening. To use the football terminology, we can have an extra 15 minutes, because we did say there's going to be questions at the start and we want to come through on our promises.

Dr James: 56:51

So let's chuck that 15 minutes in if you guys are happy as well yeah just to give a little bit more value to everybody who stayed with us right to the end. Wow, we got a full house right to the end as well, which is pretty cool. So we'll come on to that. In two seconds was there more to the presentation?

Dr Kalpesh: 57:06

a few more slides he was just talking about. Obviously, depending on where people are at um, you can then scale it up. So, once you've got your photos and you're happy with those photos, um, everyone's very conscious of publishing their work, uh, online because of um other clinicians critiquing their work, and I think that is something that every person who's ever started on online posting their images has felt. I think I'm first to admit that. So don't be scared, because ultimately, um, it is the patient who you are presenting it towards. It is for the patient's benefit and ultimately, you will get better as more and more cases you do, the more that you critique your work, the more that you will get better.

Dr Kalpesh: 57:51

Once you've been able to deliver more content, you can then go and grow that content organically by tagging your patients and, you know, getting people to share it that you, that you treated.

Dr Kalpesh: 58:04

And then you can go down the route of doing paid campaigns, so that means paying for your post to reach a further audience. You can specify that audience within meta to the demographic, to the location, to the age groups, etc. And then, if you want to take it to the next level which I'm sure that everyone will at one point is, then you can then even get a marketing team to then work with you to then create these things called lead funnels, where your content is being pushed on google etc. Or a landing page whereby people can then see your, your advertorial online when they search for dental implants in wherever it may be. You then come up and then, following that, you can then generate new leads or new patients which, um, your team can call or contact. So that that's so. That's a bit further down the line, but it all starts with generating content and you, as a clinician, are responsible for that.

Dr Amit: 59:09

Yeah, and I kind of wanted to just end on what is the blueprint for an associate? What does that journey look like? That journey starts generally in most practices as an NHS dentist working five days a week. The next step, if you're at that stage, is to have a blocked off diary, one day a week of private dentistry, and those are patients that your NHS patients, that you are having private treatments. You're filling up yourself. You start off with that. That's your next journey and your revenue will go up up. The next phase to that then is to go fully private and only see private patients, and that's doing general private dentistry.

Dr Amit: 59:48

Then where you go from just if you're a general private dentist, just doing general work, where do you go next? You go to consult only. What does consult only mean? Consult only means that you're only now doing. You're not doing general checkups, you're not doing general examinations. You're seeing patients that have already had an interest in a certain treatment, like composite bonding, implants, invisalign. So you're doing consult only. When you get to consult only, income comes up. You do more complex treatments and then, from consult only, then you do specialist work, which is then you go implant only. Or in our practice we've got implant only dentists. We've got Invisalign only dentists, who are then scaling up that way. And as you go up that chain, that's where your revenue will increase and usually the type of dentistry you enjoy becomes better and better, because you're choosing what you want to do.

Dr James: 1:00:40

And can I just point out one thing about what you said, Amit? Those are really words of wisdom right there, because you've seen so many people go on that journey Exactly. You've literally seen that transformation happen countless times. So you describing that and how that looks, that will have come from a place of experience, in a place of yeah, you've directly witnessed that, so it's worth worth mentioning that, worth highlighting that about what Amit just said.

Dr Amit: 1:01:05

there'll be some wisdom in that statement yeah, yeah, exactly, and we think we do see it, and people at our practice are on different parts of that journey and they know where they go next because I've literally got a presentation showing them where they go next.

Dr James: 1:01:18

So yeah, okay, you really. Yeah, I love you've made this into a science. I'm like fair play. Anyway, okay, good stuff. Good stuff is that the was there.

Dr Kalpesh: 1:01:27

More to the presentation no, the last thing was, obviously, if you, if anyone, wants to speak to us um about anything, please feel free to reach out to us. We're more than happy to help um and there are social media and bios um. We've also got, obviously, a um super associate workshop coming up um and people who may be interested in that can obviously scan the qr code to learn a little bit more about the workshop. Um, we're offering um like a consultation, free, sort of effectively a consultancy for anyone who kind of is interested in that as well. So if they wanted to speak to us, we're happy to speak to them about any of their concerns and share the knowledge that we've gained so far to help them yeah, and that's principles as well one for principles as well, and it was that yeah, exactly, I mean principles who are trying to grow their associates, then you know, and I'm more than happy to advise as well brilliant.

Dr James: 1:02:32

Well, listen guys. Thank you so much for giving up some time this evening. I think we owe um and Kal a huge clap, and also clap up to everybody for staying right to the end. Full house guys, thank you so much. Thank you for coming along this wednesday evening. We did say there's going to be some q and a's at the start and we do like to come through on our promises, so I think we can probably squeeze one, maybe two, in if Amit and Kal are happy with that. I'm sure you guys are. You got a little bit of time, yeah yeah, yeah, we're good under bar.

Dr James: 1:03:02

Let's do that, all right, cool. Well, let's just have a little look in the chat here, because I did notice that somebody posted something earlier. Milan has said whoa, what a lineup, uh, right at the very beginning, so Kal and Amit you got a fan in the audience.

Dr James: 1:03:16

That's awesome, bro. Your reputation precedes you. Amazing Guys. If anybody's got any questions, feel free to pop them in the chat just now. We'll make some time for a few questions this evening, whilst everybody is thinking of any potential questions. I was just going to circle back to something I was going to ask earlier, but then we delayed it in the interest of time. It was regards to the content, with regards to the content side of things. So here's the thing. Here was a big roadblock for me creating my own content back in the day. I just surely didn't realize where I was going to get the hours out of the day to do it. So I'm wondering how do you guys leverage that? How do you delegate that? Or do you just make time for it and everything else fits in around that because it's so important? How does that look for you guys?

Dr Kalpesh: 1:04:02

um in terms of um, in terms of the time management things. Um, it is tricky, because obviously there's. So, especially when you're doing more and more complicated cases, your time feels like it's it's just sucked up with treatment letters and you know, reviewing things, et cetera. Delegation delegating things, having staff members in place to be able to conduct, for instance, taking CT scans or OPGs. We are fortunate enough to have different softwares available as well to us, so we use Dentate. Dentate, we find, is really good, for instance, if we've not had enough time, for instance, to do notes, because it's cloud based, we can access it later on to review those. Using things such as SmartCloud it allows everything to be automated in one place. We have complete transparency with communication with our lab. The records and CT scans are uploaded there, so that is a great tool. So it's really having systems in place and utilizing software nowadays, which is only going to help with improving your efficiency. It's really difficult to be able to uh, do you overthink?

Dr Amit: 1:05:24

you're on your own yeah, it's leveraging off the software that we've got the team. You know we have someone dedicated at home who only works from home as an administrator and associates can message her, call her, can you do this? Can you do that? That just means that you're just sending a team's message or an email when things get done. And we've got some exceptional practice managers here as well that support the whole team to make sure that they're all motivated, because it's not just about motivating your associates, it's about motivating the whole team, so it's the team ethos awesome.

Dr James: 1:05:58

Yeah, I love the delegation mindset. Uh and kind of uh highlighting that because for me, how I navigated that back in the day was at a big old one drive. I just threw all my content in there and then I basically said to this person who helped me make my content I was like go in there freestyle, come to me at the end of the week and we'll approve everything together. That saved so much time and it was way and here's the thing it was way better than the content I could have made as well. So, yeah, just throwing that out there. Fiverr is really great for that stuff. Guys, we've had an absolute deluge of questions pouring in here in the chat. Don't know if we're gonna be able to get through all of these, but you know what we'll do. We'll operate on a first come, first serve basis. So the first question we have had come through is from sarah smith. Shout out sarah smith. This evening. Sarah smith says just transitioned from nhs private practice. I'm in my first week. Any tips on patient management, workflow or anything else?

Dr Amit: 1:06:59

I think being in control of your consultations is so critical as an associate. So if you've just moved to go private, only you're now dictated by how good your consultation was as an NHS associate and NHS patients tend to come back because they're getting a bargain for what they're coming in for. But as a new private practitioner, your patients are judging you. How good were you in that consultation? So controlling what happens to them that Carol was saying earlier in terms of booking the appointment straight after getting the team to follow it up If they're not booking an appointment, booking a review in a week's time, especially for these patients that you've treatment planned, complex treatments, um, and then you know, leveraging your consultations with the loom videos, with treatment letters, all of these things that will only add to that conversion.

Dr Kalpesh: 1:07:55

So taking some responsibility for what you're doing um, yeah, so if you transition from nhs to private and you're in a private practice um, fully private practice then I would definitely say that having a portfolio of cases that you can um refer to when speaking to patients, it's adding value to the patient during their consultation. So, providing an exceptional consultation like exceptional exam, it could just be an exam where you're spending more time talking to the patient or doing more thorough bp or just explaining their x-rays to them in a lot of detail. That alone it may not be that on that first appointment it's going to um allow you to um how can I say, just allow them to have any treatment. But it's going to give them a lot of reassurance and confidence in you as a clinician, especially if you're a new clinician to that practice. I think the first few weeks, months, you're building your credibility. You're building your trust with the team. You're building your trust with the patients.

Dr Kalpesh: 1:08:55

Nurses are going to be um working with you that are new, so you know your reputation is really important during that stage and so, um, during the first few weeks and months, it's really important to just focus on delivering the best quality dentistry you can, adding as much value to the practice that you can and, of course, you can do those little things, such as, in terms of workflow, trying your best to have cases that you can show.

Dr Kalpesh: 1:09:21

If you're ever describing a patient's treatment and wanting them to have a specific treatment, having photos of that case is useful. If the practice that you are has got treatment coordinators, et cetera, it's about using them, speaking to them, seeing how they work, maybe observing other clinicians at the practice as well, seeing how they work and the workflows that they're using, and getting tips from them, because every practice is different in the way in which it works. I would also say that in terms of your setup as well, if you, if you've got a tv in the in the surgery, or if you've got an ipad or a laptop and you have that there um out, and you can uh, easily reference to that with the treatments that you offer, um or have your instagram up or just tell the patients what your instagram is, it's about just kind of slowly, um and gently, giving the patient the confidence and reassurance that you are able to do these types of things, and they will soon be able to see that confidence in you.

Dr James: 1:10:29

Building rapport and warming them up a little bit as well, right.

Dr Amit: 1:10:33

Yeah, yeah, looking at Amit Patel's question, how do you break up big treatments? Yeah, we do have a presentation on that as well. But, um, I mean, I think one of the key things to the bigger treatment plans is if you go all in and your patient needs a 10 grand worth of treatment and you present it in a way that's just 10 grand, it is quite scary. So, breaking it up into, rather than quadrants, but into what is priority, what did the patient come in with If their main complaint was that they're missing a tooth present the cost of that treatment first and say the cost of the treatment that you came in for and what you wanted is X, but the other treatment that is required to get you healthy and to improve your cosmetics is y. So we tend to break it up in two.

Dr Amit: 1:11:26

Some people, some of our clinicians, break it up into three and the three would be is what is critical to getting the patient healthy, what is um, an advisable, almost like an mot, and what is nice to have. And then they break it up into three. But it is judging the patient, because if you've done any patient profiling and if you've done any courses on that, the kind of red patient wants to know the price, the full price, there and then and they're going to go ahead with it. So you do need to do some patient profiling training just to figure out what the patient type is and then presenting your treatment plan based on the patient.

Dr James: 1:12:05

And that's the thing about all communication it comes from here, your head, but it also comes from here, your heart. You have to use your intuition a lot as well, which comes with experience. Guys, I just want to thank you both for giving up so much of your time this evening. I think we owe both Kyle and Amit another clap up on behalf of myself, on behalf of Denison and Jess, but also on behalf of the audience on this webinar this evening. We are coming up to the half yeah, we're coming up to an hour and a quarter mark, so I'd love to go on, and you know what? Here's my invitation to you guys let's do another one of these sometime soon where we can give even more value, perhaps explore different topics above and beyond the ones that we got to cover this evening, because I sense my intuition tells me, my spidey sense tells me, that there's a lot more where that stuff came from this evening, and I'm sure we could easily make an absolute ton of content. Guys, shout out to Amit and Kal one more time, because they mentioned there the QR code that we were talking about before. If anybody does want to reach out to Kal and Amit, they are on the Dentists Who Invest Facebook group. Also worth mentioning as well that, if you like this sort of stuff, you're interested in boosting your income as a dentist.

Dr James: 1:13:10

Episode 300 of the Dentists Who Invest podcast is 100% for you. It's all about getting really granular how we can boost your income through our dentistry, but also our asset portfolio as well. Worth knowing both those things. That QR code is on the screen once more now, guys. If anybody wishes to avail of it, go ahead and take two seconds and do that. And in the meantime, Amit and Kal, any final parting words of wisdom for the Dentists Who Investor audience tonight, final parting words of wisdom for the dentistry invest audience tonight, any inspo or anything that you can say to anybody who you feel will benefit in terms of how can I say accelerating their own uh, a super associate journey. What would they, what would have? What would five year olds, what would Kal or Amit from five years ago want to hear? What would you want to tell them if you could go back and talk to them in terms of inspiring them, in terms of speeding up their own journey towards being a super associate, towards hitting the next level of their career?

Dr Amit: 1:14:06

be humble and be willing to learn doesn't matter how good you are clinically and how confident you are and being having the mindset of wanting to grow and wanting to learn is critical. If you're, if you've got attitude and you think you're the best, then generally you're not going to grow. So I think that's the mindset needs to be there love that yeah, be a lifelong learner.

Dr Kalpesh: 1:14:29

Find a great mentor and find something that you really enjoy so that you can be passionate about it. And you know, then your work becomes your hobby.