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VIDEO - DUwHF #788 - Cheryl Janis
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AUDIO - DUwHF #788 - Cheryl Janis
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Cheryl Janis designs healing environments for purpose-driven physicians and healthcare solopreneurs who desire a highly-profitable, patient-attracting, and referral-generating busi- ness. She is also the author two books:
1) The Color Cure: How to transform your healthcare office, clinic or treatment room into an oasis by choosing the perfect paint and
2) The Waiting Room Cure: The healthcare practitioner’s guide to turning waiting rooms into highly-profitable, patient-attracting, referral-generating dynamos
Cheryl is the principal of Cheryl Janis Designs–a wellness design studio in the San Francisco Bay Area dedicated to helping doctors and healthcare professionals achieve the very best healing environments possible. Unlike conventional interior designers, Cheryl uses an inte- grated holistic and evidence-based approach to design—evaluating the patient experience from the moment they walk through the door, until the time they leave, and every step in be- tween.
www.cheryljanisdesigns.com
Howard Farran: It is just a huge honor for me today to be podcast interviewing Cheryl Janis. Where are you at in California? Are you in San Fran?
Cheryl Janis: Yeah, I'm one hour north of San Francisco, in a little town called Sebastipol. It's beautiful here.
Howard Farran: Thanks for coming on my show. Your brother Richard is a dentist, and a townie.
Cheryl Janis: Yes.
Howard Farran: And you've been in the dental space with Cheryl Janis Designs for almost 15 years designing healing environments for purpose-driven dentist and health care solo entrepreneurs who desire a highly profitable, patient-attracting, and referral-generating business. She's also the author of two books, The Color Cure: How to Transform your Health Care Office or Treatment Room into an Oasis by Choosing the Perfect Paint, and The Waiting Room Cure: The Health Care Practitioner's Guide to Turning Waiting Rooms into Highly Profitable, Patient-Attracting, Referral-Generating Dynamos. Let's push those out on our social media right now. We'll sell her some books right now.
Cheryl is the principal of Cheryl Janis Designs, a wellness design studio in the San Francisco Bay area, dedicated to helping doctors and health care professionals achieve the very best healing environments possible. Unlike conventional interior designers, Cheryl uses an integrated, holistic, and evidence-based approach to design, evaluating the patient experience from the moment they walk in the door until the time they leave, and every step in between. We're always talking in dentistry about the new patient experience, about how important it is that that first impression is ... You never get a second chance to make a first impression.
Cheryl Janis: Exactly.
Howard Farran: First impressions are set in lead. What do you think goes into the environment to make people feel that they can trust the doctor, he's not going to hurt them, she's nice, she's going to listen? How does this all work?
Cheryl Janis: Well, first I just want to say, I am thrilled to be here. I am just so excited to be on your show Howard. Thank you for that, and thank you for that great question. There's a lot that goes into it. When you design with the patient in mind, meaning you appeal to their senses, you help them feel calmer, more relaxed, you appeal to their biology and their psychology, you start to build a business that's super profitable. I just want to kind of back up for a minute, and just kind of share how I got into this work, and what I started to see in dentist offices and also medical offices, in these spaces that I was designing. I want to share what I started to see after I designed these spaces.
When I was a kid, I got into every accident imaginable. It's interesting story. I was at a pinata party, and I was behind the bat. I got landed in the ER. When I was eight years old, I fell down the stairs and broke my two front teeth, and I landed in an emergency dentist's office, and I was totally scared of the dentist who was mean at that time. I was in Mexico, and I got bit by a dog, and I didn't get rabies miraculously. I had these several car accidents, and several experiences when I was young, even car accidents. Then when I was 17, I had the motherlode of car accidents, and I was driving home from a birthday party with my boyfriend at the time, who became a dentist funny enough, and I leaned over to kiss him, and he crashed us into a row of parked cars. I went through the front windshield, and my front tooth fell out. It was funny because I became unconscious, but the policewoman picked up my front tooth and gave it to the ER ambulance driver, and so on and so forth. I have a lot of experiences being a patient, that's my point.
Howard Farran: Oh, you've got to say his name. This is Dentistry Uncensored. He still might be practicing.
Cheryl Janis: He is.
Howard Farran: He might be watching the show. Are you going to out him?
Cheryl Janis: Who? My ex-boyfriend? Yeah.
Howard Farran: Your ex-boyfriend who was the dentist.
Cheryl Janis: Should I?
Howard Farran: Absolutely, he'll love it.
Cheryl Janis: Okay. He will. I don't know about that.
Howard Farran: Oh, yes.
Cheryl Janis: Alright. I think his name is Doctor Randall Leoni.
Howard Farran: Randall Leoni.
Cheryl Janis: I think he practices in California somewhere, but I'm not sure.
Howard Farran: How do you spell Leoni?
Cheryl Janis: L-E-O-N-I maybe?
Howard Farran: L-E-O-N-I?
Cheryl Janis: Yes.
Howard Farran: So did you get to kiss him before the crash, or was it-
Cheryl Janis: I did. I did kiss him, yeah.
Howard Farran: Was the kiss so good it was worth going through the windshield?
Cheryl Janis: I can't remember, but it might have been. I think so, quite a kiss, and it was my birthday so it was my birthday kiss. So it was-
Howard Farran: The first girl I ever kissed in my life is now a nun. The joke is that-
Cheryl Janis: No.
Howard Farran: Yeah, she's a Catholic nun. Oh my gosh. She was in the convent with my sister Jean Marie. She's an Immaculate Heart of Mary nun in Wichita, Kansas. Marilyn ... O'Halloran was the last name. Jordan O'Halloran. Jordan O'Halloran.
Cheryl Janis: Alright.
Howard Farran: So the joke is always in our family that my kiss was so bad, it was so horrible, that after she kissed me she said, "Never again. I'm going to join the nunnery." She's been an amazing teacher and nun for 40 years, but anyway continue.
Cheryl Janis: There were lots of many accidents, just a plethora, a rich history of accidents, car accidents and such. What happened about eight years ago, coincidentally, I was in another car accident. It was on my way back from helping a dental office re-design their space. I got in another car accident, and this time my whole back was out, and I had to take off about six to eight months of work. But I was in and out of this natural medicine clinic, and so of course they hired me to re-design their entire facility and I happened to be right there following every ... Because I was in twice a week, so I'd constantly be asking them and it turned out to be a very wonderful case study.
What I saw happening was that as I re-designed each space, so each treatment room within the facility, the waiting room, the bathroom, the staff room, that the business started to triple in both income and in onboarding new patients, and there was about a 75% increase in referral business. So I started to see that from then on, moving forward, I started to see that regardless of if I designed a dental office, if I designed a health care facility, a mental health facility, a psychiatric office, private practice, acupuncturists, chiropractors and so on and so forth, I started to see that when I implemented this certain kind of design, which is through design psychology and some feng shui and evidence-based design.
I'm really so excited to be here to share what I've learned over the past 14, almost 15 years of designing health care spaces and dental offices included. I wanted to just jump right in and talk about what, especially new dentists, because I know that you care a lot about the new dentists right? And young dentists, is that right?
Howard Farran: Yeah, yeah.
Cheryl Janis: Okay, okay.
Howard Farran: With the quarter million dentists on Dental Town we got the dental students, the young, the middle, the old.
Cheryl Janis: Okay, okay. First I just want to say that give a quick factoid, which is that 35% of the United States consumers here, of the population, spend their money on wellness services outside of the traditional health care insurance. That number is growing, and as baby boomers move into retirement, and even millennials are influencing this greatly, they are becoming more pickier about the experience when they're in the dentist's office or any medical space for that matter, or any wellness space for that matter.
Here are some tips. I put together some tips today that can help the new dentists or even the old dentists. Maybe you're taking over a practice that the design is from 1970s, and it has wallpaper on it, and it's just kind of tired and sad. And you're having problems onboarding new patients and you're just not feeling it in the space. That's the purpose of sharing these tips with you today. So I'll just jump right in. Just stop me Howard if you have any questions of course.
Howard Farran: No, this is amazing.
Cheryl Janis: So the first thing I want you to think about, is how to humanize your waiting room. I think that there's this sort of idea among dentists that you have to have a waiting room that's spa-like and it's going to cost you 30 to 50,000 dollars in new furniture and in professional design fees, and it has to look magazine-worthy. This is an absolute myth. This is wrong. What you need to do instead, is simply to create a space that feels nurturing and safe to your patients who come in, so that at every step while they're moving through your practice, and while they're moving through the experience from the waiting room, to the operatory, to the check-out, and out, that everything that they see is positive and uplifting. The first really important thing to do is to humanize the waiting room with your hobbies.
Now it's really important that you stand out from the crowd. With dental offices on every corner in a lot of cities in the United States, you really need to set yourself apart. Not be like the crowd, but actually stand out from the crowd. Be a lighthouse. For example, this is a wonderful example. One of my young dentist clients, Doctor Adam Diesburg in McMinnville, shared his love of the Japanese art of bonsai trees. He had this hobby at home, and he loves the bonsai tree, so he started placing them in his waiting room, in his dental office. That created questions among patients, who started asking, "What's this? Oh my God, I love this." Besides the therapeutic quality that we'll get into later of plants, this created curiosity. Plain and simple, super easy.
When patient then went into the chair, Doctor Diesburg then started talking about, or answering questions about this hobby that he had in his waiting room, and then he took it further, and he started rotating his bonsai plants out so that patients would look forward to coming in to see what new plants he had on display. He took that even further in social media, by talking about it in social media, and even further by talking about this in his newsletter. So he's gone from generic dentist, to "Oh, he's the dentist who has these bonsai trees in his waiting room. Oh!" He becomes known in the community. He re-emphasizes that by bringing in his community, bringing in his patients to the story, and that is the first way I want to say, regardless of if you have a dollar or $100,000 to re-decorate your space. Humanize your waiting room with your hobbies.
One of the easiest ways to do this, is to just think about what your hobbies are. Maybe it's nature photography, maybe it's bird watching. Maybe it's going on safaris in Africa, maybe you have a love of history. Maybe you're a science fiction fan. Whatever it is, bring it into the waiting room of your practice. That's my first tip. I just love this.
When I was on Dentalpreneur with Mark Costes, he told me that he and his team do is, once a month they walk through the waiting room and they pretend like they're the patients. They go through the actual process and they look at what can be improved. This is one thing you can do. Once you bring in your hobbies, you can go through the process and see how it feels. Get your staff on board, because staff loves this, so get your team involved and become a work family. This is how you build your reputation in the community and this is how you stand out.
The second tip I want to give you is freaking paint your walls and ceiling a soothing color. Howard, I like to talk about the example of McDonald's versus Starbucks. We all know that McDonald's uses reds and yellows, and there's no coincidence there. The retailers or the researchers behind that chose those colors for a specific reason. They make you hungry, and they make you want to move fast.
Howard Farran: Red and yellow makes you hungry and want to move fast?
Cheryl Janis: Want to move fast. So they stimulate your nervous system, they stimulate hunger. You want to avoid red and yellows in your dental practice. Really, really avoid those, even the burgundies. Because they're just stimulating. One thing I so love about dentists is that they have this unique opportunity to create such a contrast between ... There's so much fear around going to the dentist, that they have this opportunity to create this totally opposite experience, and so the results I've found are much bigger. They're much more dramatic than, let's say, an acupuncturist clinic or a massage therapy practice for example.
On the other hand, when you go into a place like Starbucks or Pete's Coffee, they've chosen greens and browns, and earth tones. They may have some yellows, but they're more like they've got those undertones like a good wine flavor does, of like very earthy. Why? So that you can sit and drink coffee and tea, and chat or be on your computer and drink more coffee, and buy more of their product. It's very strategic, so my point is choose colors that are soothing. There are different colors you can choose, and I talk about this in one of my books, The Color Cure, where I give about 23 of my top favorite colors. For your waiting room, thing in the blues and the greens. Blue is a really calming color, it's the color that reflect trust just like your shirt Howard, is a blue, so that if you were to give a speech or a talk, blue is a color of trust. You want to strategically paint your walls so that ...
You mentioned first impressions and how important they are. There's never a second chance to make a first impression, so when your patient walks into the clinic, especially a new patient, you want them to see a soothing color on the wall opposite of the door. Greens and blues are really beautiful, I often recommend grays. I talk about grays also in the book. I include it in one of my tier packages. I have my favorite dozen grays. Grays are really nice in the operatory, especially if you're a cosmetic dentist, because they don't get in the way of seeing, if you're matching shades, if you're not sending something out to a lab. But here's the caveat with gray. You can't just leave gray on the walls by itself, because it will feel very dull, and tired, and sad. You absolutely have to put colorful artwork on top of it. I have free resources on my website, so if you go there you can sign up for an email course on color that talks and gets into more of this, because I want to move on with my next tip.
My next tip has to do with lighting. Please for the love of God, please remove those cool white fluorescent tube lights. Another little factoid I found out some years ago, is that the entire country of Germany has banned cool fluorescent lights in hospitals across the country, because of its harmful effects on the human body and brain. Germany, they're heading this. We all know it's a problem. We all know it glares, it's unattractive. Some research has shown that it contributes to melanoma and other skin diseases. Either turn it off if you absolutely can't replace it, and use your task lighting, use all of your equipment. I'm not saying to not use all that, but instead, layer your lighting in the same way you would layer clothing.
In your waiting room, instead of having just a bright overhead light, which by the way, research shows that if you have just a single overhead light and it lights up the room entirely and there's no shade or anything, it contributes to depression and it resembles a cloudy day. Let me repeat that. Somebody walks into your waiting room, and you have one overhead light that lights up the room evenly, and it feels like a cloudy day, and it's sad. So such an easy fix, all you do is replace the light with a beautiful fixture, or if you can't do that because the landlord won't let you, you keep that light off and you bring in a table lamp for your side table in your waiting room. You bring in a floor lamp. You light up the corners and create that coziness.
I'm going to talk about how to talk about how to design your waiting room in a minute. But for now, I just want you to know that if you create shadows and coziness in your waiting room, you appeal to the circadian rhythms, healthy circadian rhythms in the body. What you're doing is you're mimicking the daylight throughout the day. Layer your lighting. This can be wall sconces. This can be spotlights. You can light up plants in there. You can go get a ten dollar spotlight from Home Depot and create a totally different vibe in your waiting room. Again, you are trying to create an experience that is so positive and so uplifting that appeals to the body and the brain, relaxes people, calms them down, and makes them feel good. Again, layer your lighting and get rid of those cool white fluorescent tube lighting please.
So moving on, this is also really, super powerful. Make your waiting room feel like a living room at home. That doesn't mean being unprofessional. That doesn't mean going out to Ikea and making it look like dorm room. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about not lining up your chairs like army cadets in front of their drill sergeant. I'm talking about bringing in furniture that's comfortable and creating the same kind of environment that you would create in a very professional living room. There are many furniture companies out there. The great news is that we're not 20 years ago when there weren't that many options. Now there are just tons of commercial furniture options that are beautiful and soft materials, and can be sterilized every day in medical environments that need to be, and that feel like home.
There's this thing in the brain that, when we walk into an environment that feels familiar, the stress response is reduced. It's an automatic thing that happens in your brain. So do that. Do create a space that feels homey. Here's another wild secret. Balance your squares and your circles, shapes. In other words, balance the rectilinear shapes that are in your waiting room with curved shapes in your waiting room. How to do this? And why? Do this by introducing round tables, okay? You have some square chairs, bring in some round side tables, boom. Super easy. There's been so much research that's been done that shows that people feel more comfortable when there's a balance. If you know about any eastern philosophy, you'll know about about the concept of yin and yang, the balance of masculine feminine. Circles and round shapes are more feminine, and square ones are more masculine.
I've tested this over the years. This totally works. Clients come back to me and they say, "Oh my God, I replaced the square or rectilinear table in the waiting room with a circular one, and suddenly my patients are noticing it, and they're noticing the wall art, and they're noticing other things." Again, balance your squares. Balance your rectilinear shapes with your curved ones.
This is also a super awesome, super awesome new technique that is being used. Design element, moving on to the next tip, is how to scent your dental practice with essential oil blends. This something that's been used in dental practices before. It's a field called environmental aromatherapy, and hotels use it. You sign up with a company like Air Aroma and you get a system that's attached to your HVAC system, and every month ... It's subscription-based. You pay like an initial cost to get it installed, and then it's a pretty low subscription. They come in every month, or they send you in the mail something that you replace that hooks up to your HVAC system, which has these very, very calming essential oils.
They don't stink. It's very, very subtle, with essential oil blends like lavender that reduces anxiety. It just takes down that fear-based notch that people are going, "Oh my God. I have this anticipatory anxiety. I'm in the waiting room." They've been anticipating going to the dentist for a week or longer. They walk in, and it just is another piece of this puzzle that creates such an incredible experience that your patients will then start to remember you. Again, you are starting to revolutionize this experience and patients will go out and say, "I don't know why it felt so good in there, but it just did." This is the kind of feedback I get from my clients.
Howard Farran: By the way, I want to just tell my homies that almost everyone's commuting to work for an hour. That's why we do this show for an hour. Her Twitter, I just retweet my guest last week. She's @Sheryl_Janis, spelled the same way as Janis Joplin, who was from the area you were in. I guess she was from Texas. But my favorite quote of Janis Joplin was freedom is when you have nothing left to lose. You kind of have a Janis Joplin flavor to you. You're in San Francisco, you're Cheryl, you're @Cheryl_Janis, and I retweeted a couple tweets. One is I also tweeted you were on another podcast, Dentist Metrics.
Cheryl Janis: Yeah.
Howard Farran: Episode 83, how to transform your dental practice through office design with Cheryl Janis. I also retweeted your podcast. How many shows have you done?
Cheryl Janis: 64.
Howard Farran: Have you uploaded them on Dental Town?
Cheryl Janis: No, I haven't. I didn't know that-
Howard Farran: Oh my gosh.
Cheryl Janis: I'm not familiar. I will. I promise I will.
Howard Farran: So your brother's a dentist and he didn't tell you how to do that?
Cheryl Janis: I think I need a little tour. Yes. No.
Howard Farran: And your first kiss was a dentist, Doctor Randall Leoni, and he didn't ... So on Dental Town, we got a quarter million dentists, and 50,000 have downloaded the app. You can upload your own podcast.
Cheryl Janis: Through the app.
Howard Farran: Anybody who puts it on itunes should put it on here, because a lot of times-
Cheryl Janis: Okay.
Howard Farran: They get in the car. Maybe they're tired of listening to whatever show they're listening to, and now we have 39 people in the dental space posting podcasts. Everyone who's uploaded their podcast onto Dental Town said that their show exploded on itunes.
Cheryl Janis: Oh.
Howard Farran: But look at some of these.
Cheryl Janis: Fantastic.
Howard Farran: Look at this one. This guy has a podcast, how to open a dental office. He has 670,799 views.
Cheryl Janis: Woah. Okay I promise I'll do it after this interview.
Howard Farran: Yeah, yeah. Upload them all there, and then-
Cheryl Janis: Okay. You've got me.
Howard Farran: Then tell your amazing brother Richard that he's going to get a spanking for not telling you.
Cheryl Janis: I will.
Howard Farran: This is amazing. Keep going. Sorry I interrupted.
Cheryl Janis: No, not a problem. Do you have any questions, Howard? Are you feeling any questions? Or do you just want me to continue on?
Howard Farran: Yeah, one of my questions is I'm wondering what percent of the time is the patient upright sitting in a waiting room, versus what percent of the time is that patient laying on his back staring up at the ceiling for an hour and a half? One of the biggest jokes among dentists is, it's kind of creepy. Are they looking up your nose? Are they looking at your eyes? Are they looking at [inaudible 00:26:06]. Maybe it's because I'm a dentist, but to me it seems like most of the time they're laying on their back.
Cheryl Janis: Right.
Howard Farran: What should the ceiling be like?
Cheryl Janis: So let's talk-
Howard Farran: And I want-
Cheryl Janis: Sure.
Howard Farran: To make one other comment.
Cheryl Janis: Sure.
Howard Farran: That as hard as I am on my homies, I think dentists, and vets, and chiropractors, all do ten times better than physicians. I mean, physicians take you to some sterile room-
Cheryl Janis: Right.
Howard Farran: Tell you to take off all your clothes and sit there, and then you literally sit there till you freeze to death. You may be sitting there 30 minutes. Every physician I go to still has the old window at the front-
Cheryl Janis: Right
Howard Farran: Where you knock on the glass, or ring ... They hand you a chart without making eye contact. I mean, my God, if you think dentists could improve, I think physicians have barely even started.
Cheryl Janis: Amen to that.
Howard Farran: Yes.
Cheryl Janis: It's really, really, so important. It's so critical. It's interesting because you have this patient experience, and I have ... So the patient is already super anxious. Many of them are when they go to the dentist. They're at least uncomfortable, it's not like their favorite thing to do. Even if they'd spend a couple minutes in the waiting room, it's still an important couple of minutes.
Howard Farran: Oh, yeah.
Cheryl Janis: It's enough time for them to freak out in their mind, catastrophize about what it's going to be like in the chair, get in such a state of frenzy. It's really important that you do take care of the waiting room, because it really sets the tone. Of course, I want to revolutionize the operatory.
Howard Farran: And in a hospital waiting rooms, you almost think you're in an insane asylum.
Cheryl Janis: You do, and it's really freaking scary.
Howard Farran: Yeah.
Cheryl Janis: I think anxiety is just under alcoholism in terms of how many people in this country experience anxiety on some level-
Howard Farran: I'll drink to that.
Cheryl Janis: Yeah. Ha, ha.
Howard Farran: I'll drink to anxiety, why not?
Cheryl Janis: Most men do. Most men who have anxiety do, before they get on an airplane. You can find them in the bars.
Howard Farran: Yeah, that was one of my earliest misdiagnoses for the first year. I was so young, and dumb, and naïve about every tenth patient, I'd be sitting there thinking, "You know, I smell ketones on your breath. Have you had a physical? You might be having some health problems. When's the last time you had a physical? I can smell ketones on your breath." And then finally, at a study [inaudible 00:28:24], I was telling this dentist that, this older dentist said, "Dude, you're not smelling ketones. They drink before they come because they're scared." So I'm-
Cheryl Janis: They're scared, yeah.
Howard Farran: Freaking out every person who's had a couple belts, but yeah. There was a dentist, you can't make this up. There was a dentist right out of school, that had a complete wet bar in his waiting room.
Cheryl Janis: No.
Howard Farran: And he had a very successful practice.
Cheryl Janis: Talk about memorable.
Howard Farran: Yeah, and you know-
Cheryl Janis: Is that legal?
Howard Farran: Well, back in the day, who cared?
Cheryl Janis: Right.
Howard Farran: I mean, it was 1987 and man he had so many patients that come. He had every single thing in this bar. You could make any drink you want. I mean, there's like 50 bottles of stuff, wines, beers, everything.
Cheryl Janis: Now that's a memorable dentist, right?
Howard Farran: Yeah, yeah.
Cheryl Janis: I'm not advocating that, just want to say.
Howard Farran: And he had another name. He had a name, but he only would go by Doctor Ace. He just thought that was so cool. Kind of like Batman, he was just Doctor Ace, but that wasn't his name, and it wasn't on his card or building or anything, but everyone called him Doctor Ace.
Cheryl Janis: Okay, Doctor Ace. Shout-out to Doctor Ace.
Howard Farran: Yeah. I wonder if he's even alive [crosstalk 00:29:32], but he was a character, a funny character.
Cheryl Janis: That's awesome.
Howard Farran: But yeah, I think this stuff is massively important.
Cheryl Janis: It's massively important. What I want to do is, I want to know-
Howard Farran: And one last thing.
Cheryl Janis: Yeah.
Howard Farran: Your website is cheryljanisdesigns.com
Cheryl Janis: Cheryljanisdesigns.com
Howard Farran: Couple things, what do my homies find at cheryljanisdesigns.com? And how much does it cost if they're thinking about re-decorating their office, re-doing their new patient experience? Do you just do website, and books, and that? Or do you fly to location and help pick colors? Tell us what they'd find on cheryljanisdesigns.com.
Cheryl Janis: Sure.
Howard Farran: And what service you provide for dentists.
Cheryl Janis: Thanks for asking Howard. The first thing I want to tell you is that, Howard, I created something special for your listeners today, and that is I created a DDS Design Kit. So it's very, very cool. I created it just ... I'm introducing it here for the first time, and you just go to DDSdesignkit.com and you can put in your email and your name, and you can get it instantly. What that has, it has really cool stuff in there. One of the things it has, this is all free. I put together what I call a dental office design inspiration tour where I walk you through some of the designs I've done, and why I've chosen what I've done, and I show you different scenarios so that you can apply those to your own practice. That's the first thing I have to offer. That's totally free-
Howard Farran: Okay.
Cheryl Janis: And that's brand new.
Howard Farran: Okay, what I want you to also do. Dental Town has 50 categories, and one of them is office design and location, so dental office design, design flaws, ergonomics-
Cheryl Janis: Okay.
Howard Farran: Office decorating, dental ... But pick one of those, so it doesn't look like spam, just say I just did a podcast with Howard today and he wanted me to leave these for the notes for the people listening to the podcast, so they can get to work. So they can either go to @howardfarran on Twitter, finding your last tweet, finding your website, or they can just go pull up their Dental Town app and go to office design and location, and post that there so it's easier to find. Then upload all of your podcasts, and this is going to be the start of something really fun.
Cheryl Janis: I will, I will. So the second thing you can do, is I just really want everybody to do that today, because I made that especially for dentists. You can also go to my website and find just a shit ton of free stuff for you. You can find for example, my podcasts are on there, the wellness design podcast, you can sign up to The Color Cure email course. I don't want to overwhelm you, I also write daily emails with design tips, you can sign up there. But today, I want to just direct you to DDSDesignkit.com because I really want you to take action on the tips that I give in that, and I have a lot of them in there. So I know sometimes-
Howard Farran: So www.DDS ...
Cheryl Janis: Design kit.
Howard Farran: Design kit.
Cheryl Janis: Dot com.
Howard Farran: Turn your dental office into a nurturing, highly-profitable, patient-attracting, referral-generating dynamo now. Grab this free DIY, do-it-yourself DDS design kit and get started today. Nice.
Cheryl Janis: Thank you.
Howard Farran: Thanks for making that for my homies, Cheryl.
Cheryl Janis: I'm happy to do it. I'm really happy to do it. I want your homies to-
Howard Farran: Was that Richard's idea or was that your idea?
Cheryl Janis: No, that was my idea. He approved of it.
Howard Farran: He approved it?
Cheryl Janis: That was my idea, yes.
Howard Farran: Did you run it by him?
Cheryl Janis: I used his waiting room as an example, because I re-designed his waiting room. I asked if I could use his as an example, because I talk about artwork in that. We haven't even talked about artwork, and so in that I talk about what artwork to use for your dental waiting room, and what not to use and why, and all that, and why it's important et cetera, et cetera. But what I want to talk to you about, I don't want to skip this important ... I want to revolutionize the operatory. I'm really passionate about this, and if anyone can help me do it, you can. You can convince your homies that it's super important to do this.
I'm going back to a question you had just a few minutes ago about patients spend an hour, an hour and a half in the dental chair. What can be done to improve that experience, and not make them freak out and want to run for the hills? Like they're panicked and totally afraid. One of the most important things you can do is to not, if you can, and I know this is not possible because the operatories are sometimes often small, is to not have the back of the chair facing the opening to the room, so that when the person is escorted in, they sit in the chair and they have their back ... Suddenly they can't use their sight, so suddenly everything is behind them. All the activity is behind them, they're no longer engaged, they're no longer part of the process, and they're having to rely on their hearing and their smells. They're hearing the drill, they're hearing people talking, and they're hearing people coming and going.
There are studies on this that have been done that this type of position in offices or in operatories, or anywhere releases and increases the stress hormone cortisol, so it's such a cool and easy fix, if you can do it. I really, really, highly, highly encourage you to, which is to just move the operatory chair. Again, I know if it's already there and you have all your cabinets and stuff, you can't always do it. But for new dentists, or for dentists that are doing a remodel, you might be able to do it. So you turn the chair, you push it into the room more. Some dentists that I've worked with, do already have this position so that it's kind of tucked into the room. They have a view of, especially when they first get in the chair, they can see the dentist comes in, the hygienist and all the assistants have to kind of go by the chair, and so the person feels like they're more a part of what's going on and they're not just this object with a mouth and teeth and everything in it.
On top of that, I would love, love for dentists to bring in a chair, right when you walk in, just a really comfortable chair. I show this in the operatory in my DDS design kit. I show an image of this so you can get a visual there of an area for a family member.
Howard Farran: You know-
Cheryl Janis: An area-
Howard Farran: You know the smartest person in the world on dental operatory design? Is the youngest guy in my class was Brian Newworth.
Cheryl Janis: Brian-
Howard Farran: He graduated in 1987 and became an oral surgeon. I think he's out in South Carolina. When I went out there, he had me lecture to a study club. When he showed me his office, his operatories were like three times bigger, four times bigger. He said to me, "You know what I never understand Howard?" He goes, "A dentist will spend eight hours in bed a day, eight hours in the operatory a day, and his best idea is to make this thing 10 foot by 11 foot. He's going to spend half his waking life in this room, so he decides to make it 10 foot by 11 foot. I thought, shit if I'm going to live Monday through Friday eight to five in this room ..." And it was like four ... He had a couch on one side, he had windows-
Cheryl Janis: Right.
Howard Farran: He lives in there. He said, "If I'm going to live in here, the hell do I want to live in a shoe box for?"
Cheryl Janis: Why not? Right, right.
Howard Farran: And I've never seen anybody who ever did that since Brian Newworth, so I think he's got to be the smartest person.
Cheryl Janis: So tell your homies Howard. Please tell your homies to do this, because it will not only reduce the patient anxiety, it will badass their business. It will take their business into the next generation, which is people are spending more money on a better experience period. It's being talked about. It's trending. It's not made up. This is happening.
Howard Farran: I agree. I agree.
Cheryl Janis: That's exciting for me, and I'm really excited to share that with you. What else can I share? What else do you want to know about?
Howard Farran: Well some things I'm just not smart enough to ask the questions on, but when I'm on your website, let me go down and show you some of the things I was ...
Cheryl Janis: Oh, you talked about how I work with my clients?
Howard Farran: Yeah, yeah. What services do you provide? If they went to-
Cheryl Janis: Sure.
Howard Farran: Cheryljanisdesigns.com, do you do this all long-distance, do you go to site, do you help them pick out colors?
Cheryl Janis: Sure. I do, I do all of the above. I have a process. I have one interior design service, and I specialize in only health care practitioners helping doctors and physicians with their spaces and health care practitioners. I have a process. You can just go to my website and click on the design process, and I have a two-step process. The first process is called design therapy, where we meet either virtually or in-person. There's a 90 minute to two hour interview, and I basically elicit the genius out of you. I figure out what makes you tick, what makes you rock and roll. I use that information for the next step, which is called a design space-lift.
Howard Farran: Now that's a nice play on face-lift. You went with space-lift.
Cheryl Janis: Right.
Howard Farran: I love it.
Cheryl Janis: Space-lift. Thank you. It's an intensive process. What I've found over the years is that doctors and health care practitioners and owners of these types of health care businesses want it now. They want it yesterday, and typical interior design processes can take up to a year or longer. I offer everything in a day. After we go through the interview, I do all my work beforehand. I put together virtual rooms for you to look at. I put together a couple of choices for you. We get together for a whole day, sometimes it can be two days depending on how large the facility is. I have also a service that's kind of like the home run, the glam service, which is you get professional photography, you get everything you need and that's about a four-day process.
During that time together, during that intensive, we place all orders for everything. I show you colors, I show you rooms, I show you how it looks because I have a certain type of CAD program that's from Germany called [Polecticad 00:40:25] that is total badassery. It's just an immersive experience. I love it. I paid a lot of money for it, and it's worth every penny because it sets me apart from my other interior designers. It sets me apart because I have a way to show you what it's going to look like, to immerse you into the feeling.
We get everything ordered that day, and boom. That's it. It arrives, you put it in place, you hang the artwork where it's supposed to be, you put the light fixtures where they are. You put it all together, and boom. You have your beautiful patient-centered office design. So again, that's design therapy, which is just this. You can get that alone, if you're just like, "Well, I just want to do the design therapy." You can buy that alone, and then that i will give you an outline, a brief, at the end of that, that can show you how to move forward and what areas that you need to focus on. You might just need to focus on your waiting room. Maybe your operatories are fine. Maybe you just need color, and we can repurpose some of your existing furniture. Maybe you need to take off the wallpaper, maybe you need to get a new reception desk. Maybe we need to talk about your office, or maybe your bathroom, which is an extension of the patient experience.
Howard Farran: I think the most important piece of furniture is the front desk. They named that lady's career after a piece of furniture. I'm a dentist, others are hygienists, but she's a front desk. When you're named after a desk, that should be one bitching hot desk.
Cheryl Janis: That's right. I agree.
Howard Farran: I don't understand some of your terminology. You say on your website, why painting with no and low VOCs is the only choice. What is a VOC?
Cheryl Janis: Volatile Organic Chemicals or Compounds. In the olden days, that's not really an issue anymore, because the standards have become such that you could only really buy eco-friendly paint. In other words, you buy paint that is not off-gassing, doesn't have a lot of those toxic smells, so that you could do over it a weekend or hire somebody to do it over a weekend, and then on Monday you could open up and it wouldn't have any of those fumes. That's what low and no VOCs are.
Howard Farran: I remember when I was little, I was born in Kansas. My parents were hardcore Catholics, went to mass every day, they were Republican. They only voted in the election on one issue. I remember when they were talking about taking the lead out of the gas and coming out with this unleaded stuff, and the lead out of paint that everybody was painting their cribs with.
Cheryl Janis: Right.
Howard Farran: It was the same argument saying, "Big government, get out of my face. You guys don't know anything you're talking about." Today's the same argument with global warming. It's a mind-set. It's a mindset that everything the government says is evil.
Cheryl Janis: Right.
Howard Farran: They don't like any change, and taking the lead out of gas and the lead out of paint, I don't think anything pissed my father off more than big government. Changing the gasoline that goes in the car. Then they took lead out of the 12-gauge shotgun shells, because for no reason. Everybody out there is shooting these 12-gauges just polluting everything with lead. Now it looks like it's getting to do the same thing to dentistry with the mercury in fillings, it's kind of that ship is going down, isn't it?
Cheryl Janis: Yeah. What do you think about that? Do you have a minute to comment on that?
Howard Farran: Yeah, I do. I've lectured in 50 countries, and you can't do a composite unless you have a lot of equipment in that surgery to keep it dry, keep it clean, and when you see them do direct composites in Africa and Asia where the person's rinsing in a pickle bucket and spitting in a chair. When the conditions are not perfect, like a missionary dental trip. You can't go out into the jungle in Mexico and be a bonded dentist unless you got a high speed suction and an assistant and a rubber dam and all that. So I always get worried when people don't realize and think about that there's seven and a half billion earthlings and three and a half billion of them live off three dollars a day.
Cheryl Janis: Wow.
Howard Farran: I mean, I've been to South Africa where 25% of the population is HIV positive and unemployed. That's very, very different-
Cheryl Janis: Right.
Howard Farran: Than Phoenix, Arizona. I mean, it's just hugely different.
Cheryl Janis: Yeah.
Howard Farran: It's a big world. I do think there's some simple things they could do, like really the biggest problem with silver fillings is burning coal contributes to 50% of the atmospheric mercury. Burning coal is what took the ocean from one part per million mercury to four part per million mercury from 1950 to 19 today. But what 6% of the atmospheric mercury isn't the mercury that we're placing or removing in a dental office, it's when they're cremating humans. They put a human in the cremator and they cremate him to ashes, and those people that work in crematories-
Cheryl Janis: Yeah.
Howard Farran: So it'd be a very simple thing to do, have a dentist have to go extract the amalgams out of a corpse before they cremate them. I mean, that's a simple thing that even California doesn't even do that today. So California-
Cheryl Janis: Oh, wow. Interesting.
Howard Farran: With all their environmental passion, they're still cremating probably 1,000 bodies as we do this podcast that have mercury fillings in there, because the mercury in a filling is bonded to silvers and copper in ten, and it's an insoluble salt. If you swallow that filling, tomorrow morning it's going to come out the other end.
Cheryl Janis: Right.
Howard Farran: And you can weigh it, rinse it off, swallow it again. You can do that every day the rest of your life, just keep passing the same old filling, and it ain't going nowhere. But the mercury in the ocean is heavy. If you throw a fork out into your swimming pool, it don't float on the top it goes to the bottom. The mercury goes to the bottom, and then the shellfish, the shrimp, the lobster, they eat all that, and then these people who are all anti-mercury fillings are sitting there eating yogurt and shrimp cocktail, and that shrimp has absorbable methylmercury that you eat popcorn, you eat shrimp, that mercury will go in your bloodstream and end up in your brain.
Cheryl Janis: Right.
Howard Farran: But when I put a silver filling in your mouth, that doesn't happen. I can't tell you how many thousand times, and I mean a thousand times, no a hundred, not a lot, I mean a thousand times, I've been at breakfast, lunch, or dinner, out there at lectures or around the world, and some hippie environmentalist dentist is telling me how evil amalgam is while they're eating shrimp and salmon, and tuna. I had a dentist at the Centers for Disease Control tell me that they are this close to putting warning labels on all canned tuna that you cannot eat this if you're pregnant, because there's so much mercury in tuna-
Cheryl Janis: Wow.
Howard Farran: So you can't be a dentist saying mercury amalgam is bad while you're eating a tuna fish sandwich-
Cheryl Janis: I hear you.
Howard Farran: At some point, you just got to call bullshit.
Cheryl Janis: Yeah, yeah.
Howard Farran: But anyway, they last 38 years. The white ones last six and a half years, but at my age ... You know when I was 20 I was filled with piss and vinegar, I was going to change the world. At 54 you just kind of throw your hat in, just give up on your talking monkeys, and just try to make the best decision you can in light of all your crazy monkey friends.
Cheryl Janis: Right.
Howard Farran: Yeah.
Cheryl Janis: Thanks for that. That was cool.
Howard Farran: And it's a tough life for me. I mean, imagine being born the only normal person on Earth.
Cheryl Janis: Wow.
Howard Farran: It's really a curse. It's really a curse to be that guy ...
Cheryl Janis: Yeah.
Howard Farran: Ryan's laughing. I don't know why he's laughing. But anyway, so I think this is amazing, but if I asked 100 dentists, I got to spin this all around on you.
Cheryl Janis: Yeah, please do.
Howard Farran: If I asked 100 dentists what keeps you up at night, it's not silver fillings, it's not bonding agents. You know what it is? It's their staff. Their staff drives them crazy.
Cheryl Janis: Yeah.
Howard Farran: I'm sitting there listening to all of this wondering, what would an environment do-
Cheryl Janis: Good question.
Howard Farran: To make your staff more ... What would make them more act like Buddha-
Cheryl Janis: Yeah.
Howard Farran: Than act like they're all jacked up. In fact that's another reason ... This is something I don't even think I've ever even mention on podcasts. For years, and years, and years, and years, and years, I had the office manager stop by the grocery store on the way to work, and get a platter, a vegetable platter tray, some sandwiches or whatever, because I specifically had three girls that I knew for a fact skipped breakfast, grabbed coffee, and by 9:00 they were so amped up on caffeine on an empty stomach that they started to get agitated, irritable, whatever. I just looked at them, I said, "you know, it's like when you see a one-year-old baby crying. I mean, it's not many problems, it's hungry, crapped it's pants-
Cheryl Janis: Right, right.
Howard Farran: It's sleepy. There's not a rocket science," so I'm sitting here thinking, they don't eat breakfast. I'm going to make sure there's food there, and when I put it there, I'd see them take off their coat and put on whatever, and they would be grabbing, they'd be munching it. Most of the time, it was all gone by nine or ten o'clock at night. So I bought breakfast for three exact girls because they were happier when they weren't hungry and amped up on caffeine. I'm wondering about all of this-
Cheryl Janis: Sure.
Howard Farran: I'm sure all of this would apply, maybe. Would it be measurable on making HR an easier job if everybody was in a different environment?
Cheryl Janis: It is measurable. There's another solution, it's one word, plants. They've done all these studies and research that show that people who work in office settings perceive their environment and their job as more satisfactory, like way more luxurious when they're around indoor plants. They've done studies that show that people get along better, so staff get along better. There's less fighting, there's less griping, there's less irritability. There's such a therapeutic quality with indoor plants and it's under-utilized. Indoor plants are under-utilized. There's a lot of push-back. I hear, "Oh, I don't have a green thumb. Oh, I can't really hire somebody to take care of that. Oh, I don't really want to put a staff person to be responsible for that." Well, hogwash. Use plants, bring them in. They will help like nobody's business.
There's science out there that proves it, and so what I recommend when it comes to plants, is that you don't bring in anything spiky. No cactuses, no spiky thorns, no aloe vera plants, because people are automatically afraid of spiky things, right? They tend to avoid them. That would make somebody feel more on edge, not calmer. You want to bring in ... First assess the lighting in your office. Even if you don't have windows, there still are very low-light plans like the peace lily that can thrive in those places. I lived in Portland, Oregon for a long time. I know what it's like to have low light inside spaces, and I worked with a lot of health care facilities that did have low lighting or no windows. You have your choices. Simply go to your local indoor plant store. Not your home depot, because they generally don't have the type of specialty or the information you need. Or you can hire somebody, or you can ask your cleaning people to take care of your plants. Or if your partner or beloved, or husband or wife, or BFF or cousin knows about plants, ask them for their help.
There's no reason to not do this, and it saves you a heck of a lot of money in the future by having to replace staff, and having people get along better. It creates less drama. What happens is, when you start to apply some of these things, including evidence-based art, which is a whole other subject. Evidence-based art has been shown to not just reduce anxiety, but reduce reliance on pain medication. People get out of the hospital earlier when they're exposed to either a window with a view of a tree versus a window with a brick wall, or even nature artwork that has specific light coming through the trees, for example, that shines onto a bench, or a lake. Immersive, just think immersive nature photography that makes you really feel like you're there. Not the crappy kind that you buy at Ikea or on Amazon, and larger. Anyway I talk about this more in the DDS design kit, so I'll take you through the process. Don't worry if you're feeling overwhelmed with a lot of information I'm throwing at you today.
Howard Farran: Well you know what? Just like the lady that works up front is named after a piece of furniture, the front desk lady. Staff are named after a staph infection, caused by staphylococcus bacteria.
Cheryl Janis: Oh, wow.
Howard Farran: Germs. I'm thinking with my staff, I'm going to start growing plants, maybe I should just grow weed-
Cheryl Janis: There you go.
Howard Farran: We could sell the medical marijuana, and at the end of the year I use the money for a Christmas trip. Maybe just growing the weed in the office and make them all more pleasant.
Cheryl Janis: Yeah. [crosstalk 00:54:01] You could offer them joints. You could roll them up, and then put them in a bowl, if it becomes legal in your state.
Howard Farran: In all seriousness, I cannot believe I haven't heard yet of where it's legal in Colorado, that some dentist isn't offering coming in and eating an edible.
Cheryl Janis: Yeah.
Howard Farran: Obviously no ones going to be smoking at a dental office.
Cheryl Janis: Yeah.
Howard Farran: But I'm surprised someone's not offering come in 30 minutes ... Just someone who doesn't use marijuana recreational-
Cheryl Janis: Yeah.
Howard Farran: Like I don't use marijuana, but if I had-
Cheryl Janis: Yeah I don't either.
Howard Farran: Really high anxiety, and someone will come in and eat a brownie 30 minutes before your root canal or your colonoscopy, it'll take the edge off.
Cheryl Janis: Yeah.
Howard Farran: Maybe it's not as ... I'm assuming it doesn't work that well for that.
Cheryl Janis: Well, I think not everybody reacts the same way. I think some people can get more paranoid when they smoke, or eat a brownie or whatever. I think that if you just use evidence-based art, you're going to trigger those opiate-rich pathways of the brain in the same way, so that when somebody comes in they're just biologically inclined to feel high. It's a natural high they feel.
Howard Farran: But you're right in that everybody doesn't feel the same way. The most common prescribed drug in America for two decades, every single year number one, is Vicodin or hydrocodone. That is a bizarre drug, because a quarter of your patients say-
Cheryl Janis: Wow.
Howard Farran: "I slept for four days and couldn't get off the couch." Then the next quarter says, "Oh my God, I was wired. I was bouncing off the walls. I couldn't even sleep." And some people-
Cheryl Janis: I get constipated when I take it.
Howard Farran: Yeah. Some people say, this is a little too much information-
Cheryl Janis: TMI.
Howard Farran: But some people say for men, they'll say, "Oh my God. It didn't work for a week. I was almost worried that it killed it." The next guy will say, "Oh my God, I had the greatest sex of my life."
Cheryl Janis: Yeah.
Howard Farran: The most common drug prescribed ... Some people say there's nauseous.
Cheryl Janis: Right.
Howard Farran: So one person's throwing up in the toilet, and then on the other end, they want to start eating it for breakfast.
Cheryl Janis: Right, right.
Howard Farran: Then when you tell some ... How many times I had to comment off is people saying, "I can't believe people get addicted to this. I was itching and scratching, and it was the worst feeling in the world. I couldn't sleep. I couldn't imagine being addicted to a more horrible thing in the world."
Cheryl Janis: Yeah, absolutely.
Howard Farran: And then the next person ... So yeah, everybody is different. Everybody is unique. In fact, the name unique in California is registered as a name 276 different ways according to the book Freakonomics.
Cheryl Janis: Wow. You're like a walking encyclopedia. You're amazing.
Howard Farran: I don't believe that. I believe people will say they have a bad memory, and then they remember baseball statistic known to man. People say they have a bad memory if it's not something they're supposed to memorize in school. But they always remember what they're interested in. You could be the 80 year old lady who says she has dementia and then she can rattle off her 12 great-grandchildren, every one of their birthdays, you know what I mean?
Cheryl Janis: Right.
Howard Farran: So people, I believe that if you dissected 100 dolphins, 100 ants, and 100 humans, we all have the exact same brain. I think the reason that this person plays violin awesome is because she was interested in it and played it four hours a day for 20 years. Then you've never played the violin one time, and then you say you don't have any musical talents.
Cheryl Janis: Right.
Howard Farran: I saw the same thing in math. People would say, "Oh, I suck in math." It's like, "Dude, you watch eight hours of college football on Saturday, eight hours of NFL. You've never done your math homework once. You skip half the classes, and then you tell me you're bad in math." Then there's other people who ... My best friend Dennis [Tommattern 00:57:52] all the way back from Creighton was a math major. If they told you to do questions one, three, five, and eight, he did every one of them.
Cheryl Janis: Right.
Howard Farran: For him, it was like a crossword puzzle. It was just a game. It was a trivia game. He couldn't do enough math. People will always excel what they're interested in, which is tough for me, because dentists aren't humble people. Dentists, physicians, and lawyers are arrogant. Ask anybody in a airplane you sit by.
Cheryl Janis: Really?
Howard Farran: Yeah, well sit by anybody on a airplane. Just say, "If you had to describe a physician, or a lawyer, or a dentist, what would be the first word that comes to your mind? Arrogant, conceited, thinks he's all that and a bag of chips. They never say, "You know what? Humble."
Cheryl Janis: They will. They will after you design your space this way, because it will be giving back to the community in this way.
Howard Farran: But the point I'm making is that the dentists are always the best at everything they're interested in. So if they're interested in business, they crush it.
Cheryl Janis: Nice.
Howard Farran: But 80% of them are interested in doing their hands-on surgery craft, and they're not interested ... So I'm always trying to do podcasts knowing my homies for 30 years, is saying, "Okay, I know this is fun and exciting and you get to make a new type of dental procedure. I know bone grafting, you dream about it. I know that, but come back over here." Then I stick their nose in accounting or SEO, or HR. When their assistant gives notice because she's quitting because her husband is moving, they don't even get around to putting an ad in until like the last day, and then they put it on Craiglist, two people show up, and they hire of them.
Cheryl Janis: Oh.
Howard Farran: Imagine if the local sports team did that. Trying to get a dentist interested that HR is more important than root canals, is tough. That's what I'm trying to get at. What I think leadership is, is trying to lead these homies where they need to be, not where they want to be.
Cheryl Janis: Well this is dollar and cents smart.
Howard Farran: Yeah, yeah.
Cheryl Janis: I mean, this stuff, I've seen it. Over the past few years of doing this work. Regardless of if you ... Whatever office you have, this works-
Howard Farran: We're doing a podcast, so it will be listened to audio on itunes, video on Facebook and YouTube, but this might be something that I'm Howard in downtown, there's another Howard there, Howard Goldstein, so he's Hogo Downtown. But this looks like this would be better, a very visual communication. You might make an online CE course with Hogo one day.
Cheryl Janis: Okay.
Howard Farran: We've put up 417 online CE courses. They've been viewed almost a million times, and Richard should have told you that by now.
Cheryl Janis: Okay, I'll let him know.
Howard Farran: But it's such a visual, just like we did a podcast. Some podcasts are just not made for sound.
Cheryl Janis: Right.
Howard Farran: And this, I was thinking if there ever was to be a visual presentation-
Cheryl Janis: This is important. Yeah
Howard Farran: And one last thing, I can't believe we went over an hour. I'm not really an artsy fartsy type guy. I live in a bachelor pad with three of my four sons, the oldest one is married and leaves. So we're not very artsy or any of that stuff. But when I lectured in Paris last year, I took three of my boys, and we went to where, what was it? The big art museum there. The Louvre?
Cheryl Janis: The Louvre.
Howard Farran: The Louvre where the Mona Lisa is.
Cheryl Janis: Yeah.
Howard Farran: It's a tourist trap. We thought we'd do that. We were speechless, for two days. I mean, these paintings were like ten meters by ten meters, a walkthrough history, the detail.
Cheryl Janis: Yeah.
Howard Farran: I mean we'd stand there and look at some of these paintings for five, ten minutes and just little weird stuff like this big painting here of a scene, but there's a little elf monster thing hiding behind a tree. There might be three birds, but one of them had a human face. I think it was the single best art collection I've ever seen anywhere in the world. It was just, literally, mind-blowing. It was so mind-blowing, it's worth a trip to France. If you're a dentist, you've got to go see the Pierre Fauchard museum. He was the first dentist in the world, 1800s. That's amazing. But if you're a dentist, you should go to Paris and see the Pierre Fauchard museum and then go see the Mona Lisa. The Mona Lisa is actually the most boring part of the whole museum. Just a little two foot by two foot picture-
Cheryl Janis: It is. It is fascinating.
Howard Farran: Most of those pictures are ten meters by ten meters, I mean it's amazing.
Cheryl Janis: Amazing.
Howard Farran: I had so much fun.
Cheryl Janis: So did I. Thank you.
Howard Farran: Email me, and CC Richard Janis, and if you can dig up your first kiss, that would be hilarious. I bet he would laugh for a month if that was on there. That has got to be hilarious.
Cheryl Janis: It is.
Howard Farran: But hey, thanks for all you do, for dentistry, Dental Town.
Cheryl Janis: Thanks Howard. It's a pleasure.
Howard Farran: I think the patient experience ... Well, this is my final thought on it. The dentist is addicted to a drug called new patients.
Cheryl Janis: Okay.
Howard Farran: All he wants is new patients, and by the time the average dentist gets to 5,000 new patients, 4,000 of them never came back. He never wants to figure out why they didn't come back, because of his hours or he didn't have nitrous, or wasn't pleasant, or had toxic staff, or the new patient experience, color, smells, everything.
Cheryl Janis: Right, right.
Howard Farran: He never wants to fix why 80% of his patients never came back. He just wants more new patients.
Cheryl Janis: Right.
Howard Farran: If you had a drug addict, the first thing you do is you take their drug away. I almost wish ... I think the best thing that could happen to a dentist is you took away their advertising and marketing and said, "Okay, we're not giving you any new ones. Now go in there and make Grandma Mary want to come back." [crosstalk 01:03:58]
Cheryl Janis: Yeah, it's true. Yeah.
Howard Farran: Working on three chairs at once, leaving her alone in a room for 30 minutes. The number one skill they could have is the new patient experience and the chairside, bedside manner. If you could crush-
Cheryl Janis: Right.
Howard Farran: That new patient experience, and she walked in and felt like she was at home meeting your receptionist-
Cheryl Janis: Yes.
Howard Farran: And then when the doctor walked into the room he has two ears and one mouth, and he listened twice as much as he spoke, and really made her feel at home, she'd stay there. [crosstalk 01:04:33]
Cheryl Janis: And it makes your work easier, right? Because your environment is making your life easier, so you don't have to work so hard because your environment is like your ally. It's like your assistant. It's creating an experience that they're already doing the work before you even see the patient.
Howard Farran: Back to visual, it'd be a great article in Dental Town if it had a lot of pictures in it, visually. Visual displaying-
Cheryl Janis: I'd love to write an article for Dental Town. My brother did tell me about that.
Howard Farran: We would cross out your name and put Richard, just-
Cheryl Janis: Right.
Howard Farran: Because he's a dentist and all. No, I'm just kidding. But anyway, tell Richard I said hello.
Cheryl Janis: He'd love that. I will.
Howard Farran: Okay.
Cheryl Janis: Thanks Howard! Have a great day.
Howard Farran: Have a rocking hot day.