Howard: It is just a huge honour for me to be podcast interviewing Scott Westermeier, who’s been a friend of mine forever, and Maria Miecyjak. Scott Westermeier is the third generation Dentist practising in his home town community of East Ore New York for over 30 years, what’s that, outside Buffalo?
Scott: Yes, sir.
Howard: A passionate student of all things marketing, Scott is a great believer of the powers of positive thinking, focusing on the goal and then just doing it. He applies these concepts to all areas of his life attributing much of the success to growing from one location to three, all free for service. In 2016, Scott co-founded and served as CEO of One Buffalo Dental, a completely Dentists own DSO to service seven locations representing two brands. Scott and his college sweetheart Donna were blessed with three children, Scott is building his own legacy model, the oldest starts Dental school this fall, that is amazing. Then your sidekick there, Maria Miecyjak has been serving as the COO, Chief Operating Officer of One Buffalo Dental since 2016 and is responsible for DSO services including practice growth, marketing, and overall operations for seven offices. Prior to her in this post, Maria was the practice administrator at Westermeier Martin Dental since 1995 and grew and guided this free for service practice in one location for seven ops to three locations with thirty three ops. Recently she was recognised for her efforts by being named Woman of Influence in the area by a leading business journal. Maria and her husband Richard have two children, the younger will be joining their practice as a Dentist next month, he just finished his residency, he graduated from Temple Dental School, congratulations to both of you. So Scott and Maria, you both made a Dentist?
Maria: Yes, we did.
Scott: Yeah.
Howard: So he will be a fourth generation?
Scott: Yeah, exactly.
Howard: You’ve got to have your DNA analysed and find this gene and then donate all your money to how it can be corrected with medication. So what, so Scott, we’ve been talking about what you’ve been doing, when did you present, when did you tell me about what you were doing for the first time, it had to be?
Scott: I don’t know.
Maria: I think we met in Dustin at one of those shows.
Scott: Woody Okes show.
Howard: Was it Woody Okes?
Maria: Yeah, I think it was the Woody Okes show.
Howard: How is Woody doing, have you talked to him lately?
Scott: I’ve seen him a little bit, he’s still kicking around online though, I see him liking something on Facebook occasionally so he’s okay.
Howard: His editor of the Profile Dental Magazine is going to come on and do a Podcast.
Scott: Oh, great.
Howard: Yeah, Floyd Nobbs Indiana but I really like what you did, what do you want to talk about first? Do you want to talk about your marketing, your genius marketing idea?
Maria: You start.
Scott: We do something kind of unique and kind of cool that really saved our practice, that’s become a foundation of the successful story we have today. We built a fairly unique, I’ll just say it, we’ve just built a $10 million free for service practice on the back of implant centres that we give to the public and we do it every single month and it just works incredibly. And we like to share the work because we show other Dentists how to do the exact same thing.
Maria: And I want to add to that, Scott, that we are in Buffalo New York, this is not California, this is not a high nett worth area, it is in Buffalo New York, happens to be third poorest city in the entire country.
Howard: Happens to be the what in the entire country?
Maria: Third poorest city in the entire country.
Howard: If it gets any poorer I think the Buffalo Bills are going to Canada.
Scott: We’re lucky to be here still, yeah.
Howard: Haven’t they been threatening that like for 10 years?
Scott: No, a guy with a lot of money came by and grabbed them, he doesn’t care anymore.
Howard: Oh, was it, the guy who was going to take them to Canada is gone and there is a new guy?
Scott: Yeah.
Howard: Oh, I didn’t know that.
Scott: Yeah, [unclear 03:59]
Howard: But you’ve got an Ida Claire up the street, a suburb of Buffalo is AMER’s and Ida Claire could’ve gone anywhere in America and they chose a suburb of Buffalo New York, why do you think that was?
Scott: I have no idea.
Maria: Closer to the border.
Howard: Is that the coldest thing they could find to mimic where they from?
Maria: Liechtenstein.
Howard: Liechtenstein, they had to find something as frozen tundra as Liechtenstein so they went to Buffalo?
Scott: Because they bought a company called Williams Gold in Buffalo one time, I think that is how the story goes.
Howard: Oh, that’s right, you are correct, you just rejogged my memory. So tell my homies what you do.
Scott: So back in the recession time, what time was that, ‘09?
Maria: 2008.
Scott: ‘09, ‘08 somewhere there, I took my eye off the ball in the practice and I thought I was going to go out and be a real estate rock star and got myself right to my eyes in a deal that almost took me down. And I lost a bunch of money and I came back to the practice and said, holy cow, Maria?
Maria: Something like that.
Scott: We got to get this practice popping again because I know we can make it work, but I just was doing something else for a while. So she had an idea and I didn’t think it would work and she prevailed, and she came out of the, well, I tell you, you tell them.
Maria: So I used to work in Ophthalmology and one of the things that we did was we understood that people really didn’t buy what they didn’t understand and so seminars, public education, seminars by the Ophthalmologists brought in people who were interested, and they recruited them. I just, I didn’t see how that couldn’t work in Dentistry and I talked to Scott about this for a long time but it seems timing is everything and when he got his rear end kicked, as he says. I think it was time to, we had to do something, we knew there were times in the day and times in the schedule where everything went smoothly and we were able to produce at high value fees and we thought, well, what can we do also to create more of that to attract more of that to the practice. And we thought, well, the timing was right, let’s put together a patient seminar for implants, at that time there were a lot of ads, a lot of confusion in the market place, there were a lot of messages out there and people would be constantly calling the front desk asking, well, what are these implants and what is a partial and what is a denture and what is a mini implant? And how do I know what’s right for me, and instead of putting people into the book, our front desk ladies were asking a lot of questions and so we thought, well, let’s change the furniture in our reception a little bit. Put together a little presentation and let it be known to the public that we’re doing a public education seminar and invite the public. So we did and we really didn’t know who was going to come, Scott, say why do you think people are going to come, I mean, they don’t even want to come to their Dental appointment. Why would they leave the comfort of their homes to come and listen to bad teeth, but that first night we had 35 people show up. We were so new to this we didn’t even know to ask them to make an appointment but all of a sudden people started to raise their hand and say, well, can I schedule a consult and we’re like, well, okay, sure. So we decided to do it again the next month and we thought maybe it was just beginners luck but we did the next one and just as many people showed up and, but this time we were smart enough to ask them to schedule a consult and at some point we thought we would run out of people. But I mean, it’s 9 years later, and we’re now doing three a month and it’s stronger than ever.
Scott: I’m so chicken.
Howard: So you, for 9 years you been doing this once a month on average?
Scott: Yeah.
Howard: Once a month, is it mostly in Dentistry, is it mostly Dental implants?
Scott: That’s the hook, well, yeah, we do talk mostly about Dental implants but what happens is people come in with all Dental needs naturally. We call it just kind of collateral Dentistry but we’ve watched the metrics now and studied it, it takes a few months to figure it out per each seminar but here’s the wild claim that we make when we show people how to do this is, we do $50 to $100 000 worth of Dentistry that comes out of every single seminar that we do. So we take an hour and a half in the evening once a month, do a little dog and pony show and we book a barrel of Dentistry.
Howard: So when you were in Ophthalmology, what were you edumacating them on, was it cataracts or?
Maria: It was mostly the Lasik surgery at that point.
Howard: Oh, yeah, Lasik surgery, right. That was, I still say that was the greatest gift I gave to myself, I don’t know whether it Lasik, I don’t know the name of it but I had glasses forever and I had 20/20 vision, and I finally went down there and I wouldn’t do it because the Ophthalmologist said they wouldn’t do it on their own eye because first it was like a 4 millimetre cut, then the laser got bigger to 6 millimetres, they said sometimes you dilate to 8. But finally my own Ophthalmologist were coming in and when my first Ophthalmologist patient had it done, he says, well, they got an 8 millimetre, there’s no hallow, it’s computer done, blah, blah. I went and had it done and I couldn’t believe it, I mean, I saw twice as good without my glasses and with my glasses they told me I had 20/20 vision. But I mean, I’ll never forget the first night we were sitting in the backyard and I was looking at this mountain and I told the boys, I said, “look up there, it looks like a road or a ledge up there,” my boys looked at me like, and what do you mean, I had never even seen it with my glasses on. But yeah, you know what the oldest DSO is in America?
Scott: Harland, I don’t know.
Howard: Oh, no, man, there’s 100 year old affordable dentures.
Scott: Oh, yeah.
Howard: You know what their hook is, just like you said when they come in to talk about implants, but if you need an implant you might probably need cavities, root canals, I mean, all the things you want, their biggest deal is they have a low-price extraction. Like the lowest price in the area because anybody who comes in who needs a tooth extracted for the lowest, so the lowest price because for all the price shoppers, so they would go into an area and say, everybody is charging $100, $150 for a single tooth extract, they will say, okay, $99. What else does that $99 guy need if he needs an extraction, he probably needs anything from a partial denture, root canal, crowns, bridges, so I can see how you can have a seminar on implants and it can lead to root canals, crown, bridge, cleaning and root planting and everything under the sun.
Scott: The thing that made sense about implants is that everybody hears about it but if you stopped anybody in the street and you asked them what is it, how much does it cost, does it hurt? They don’t know any of the answers to that stuff so there was this fuzziness to that and they want to know, I hear they’re good, I hear they’re terrible, I hear they hurt. So they want to get cleared up on that and this is a free no strings attached type of deal for them to do that, so they come in, get some free groceries, bunch of smiling people, a tour of a nice Dental office. We make it so friendly they fall in love with us and all we’re pitching is a free consult at the end of the night, and they already know what it is that is going on, how much things cost. We just did twenty two consults at one time so we leveraged time in a big way, so the consults are great, they come in and I kind of show them the menu, show them their x-ray and say, well, you are here and you can have one, two, three, or four, what do you think? They say, oh, I like number three, great, sign right here, it’s great.
Howard: So on the consult is that a CBCT and exam?
Scott: Yeah, exactly.
Howard: Yeah, and are you target marking, I mean, are you mostly going after the silent generation, the one before the baby boomers, the elderly or is it, how do you market, do you target it and how do you market it, is it direct mail, flyers?
Scott: Every week we practice, market it, but we specifically market it as a freestanding thing as opposed to our practice, we market this as an event, an educational event and it is important, we made that distinction some time ago, Dan Kennedy taught us to do that, actually he said separate it from your practice, he goes, make it an adult education type event and make it clear that they can just sit there without having to sign anything, or get involved with anything. Sure enough that phycology seemed to play off, some free food, friendly people, 5th Grade presentation and before they know it they’re feeling smarter, they like the end environment and they say, hey, I want to play with you guys, that’s how it works.
Maria: Yeah, and you know what’s always interesting is there will always be people in the audience have an appointment with their own Dentist on Monday morning, let’s say, and they come in to listen all about their options at our seminar, because obviously they never got the information that they needed, or they want a second opinion and it’s just a great way for them to do that, and I can’t tell you how many times those people will turn around and make an appointment.
Howard: It’s amazing, what percent of Dentists would say in the last 10 years has not done one single $20 000 treatment plan?
Scott: Oh, God, they can’t even say that word usually.
Howard: Okay, think about it, what percentage of the American Dentists have not done a $10 000 treatment plan in the last decade?
Scott: Have not done?
Howard: Have not done one $10 000 treatment plan, a full mouth rehab?
Scott: Yeah, at least half I would say.
Howard: Oh, you say half, I’d say eighty percent.
Scott: Really?
Maria: Yeah.
Howard: I ask that question in my seminars all the time, I mean, it’s got to be eighty percent.
Scott: We are very blessed, we travel the country, I can’t even believe how hard it is to find a free for service practice, I mean, I was with some guys in Louisville a couple of weeks ago and they said, oh, you couldn’t have one of those in Louisville, they don’t exist. I said what are you talking about, of course they have, they sell Lexus’s down the street, people will pay for teeth and they said, oh, we don’t think so. Okay, that’s your problem, they are there.
Howard: The medium average price of a new car in America is $33 000.
Scott: I know.
Howard: What percent of those practises in Louisville in the last ten years have bought a $33 000 car, what percent, a third? And then one percent of those, one third did about, I don’t know, I mean, an easy third and then what percent of those bought a $33 000 dollar, whether it’s an F150 pickup truck or whatever has, walking around with their mouth in disarray?
Scott: The last time I heard, experience doesn’t buy you a pickup truck.
Howard: Yeah, exactly. So now are you placing implants or who’s doing all your implant placement, if you sell all these cases who’s placing them?
Scott: My partner puts the screws in and I put the tops on, whatever that is, whether it’s a full arch or a single crown but he does about one thousand a year, Doctor Jeff Martin is awesome. He is a general Dentist, we’ve been partners, we graduated together and he has …
Howard: From where?
Scott: He is an incredible surgeon.
Howard: Where did you guys go?
Scott: Buffalo.
Howard: Buffalo, did Buffalo ever get accredited?
Scott: I hope so, I’m sending my kid there.
Howard: What implants system did he go with?
Scott: We go with Buy Horizon, they’ve been taking good great care of us and we only have one system in the office and everybody knows what every little screw and part looks like, so there’s no confusion. A great system.
Howard: Didn’t Carl Misch start, that’s in Alabama, didn’t Carl, he was involved with that in the beginning, wasn’t he?
Scott: Yeah, he was involved in the original designs I believe. Maestro of Maestro, something like that.
Howard: Yeah, that was an amazing man, an amazing company, but yeah, Buy Horizon is crushing it. So this seminar, so what percent of those one thousand implants, those one thousand Buy Horizon you place in the air, do you think came from your seminar, your monthly seminar presentation?
Maria: Oh, a vast majority.
Scott: Vast majority.
Scott: If not directly, indirectly via referrals from people that came in via the seminar. But that’s a foundation oral practice now, we’re the guys that give those seminars. Whether people come or not, they know that we do this every month, so we’re kind of established a certain notoriety for just that, if for nothing else.
Howard: Now what is your website, is that empoweredpractice.com?
Scott: So that’s an operation we put together that involves a few things. That is exactly it, empoweredpractice.com.
Howard: So to learn more about this, my homies should go to just www.theempoweredpractice.com, what are they going to find if they go there?
Scott: So what we did is we figured, people kept asking us how we do this and after a while I got a little, it took a little bit of time explaining what we did so we put it all together, we put it in a box, every detail of how we assemble the seminar, the presentation, a little coaching how to do the presentation. Some videos on when we do the presentation, all the build-up, the ads, the ad copy, the follow up stuff, we put all this stuff in a box so that a guy could get this kit, hand it to his office manager and say we’re doing this next month. It is step by step, baby simple and boom, they can have a successful seminar right out of the shoot because it took us a while, trial and error to get this thing down and now you can get it right first time. Just kind of getting a recipe to a cake, you can throw the stuff together but unless you do it right, you don’t get a cake.
Howard: But now you, you also give this lecture to study clubs and to Dental study clubs, teaching Dentists how to do that, right?
Scott: We’ve had not so much study clubs, we’ve had it on Podcasts, Tom Warren, Woody Okes.
Howard: Tom Warren, the one thousand gem seminar down town, don’t tell me, Boston, right?
Scott: Yeah.
Maria: Jerry Jones.
Scott: Jerry Jones, he said just to put us on his Podcast, we kind of did the how to, like exactly the kind of ten step, the do it yourself is out there, I didn’t want to buy the kit, they just come and listen to us, kind of take notes and put the whole thing together themselves and do it next month. It works out great, it makes too much money, it is just stupid not to do it, some people say, oh, that’s a pain in the neck, I used to say that until I realised that was the most profitable hour I had in the entire month. An hour gets to be fun, at the end of the day I walk up from the chairs at the back, the waiting room is set up like a theatre, I walk into a bunch of people, it’s practically applause, it’s kind of cool and tell a little story. Answer some questions at the end and it’s amazing.
Howard: Now you’ve been selling your program to Dentists for nine years, right?
Scott: No, we only put it together, what?
Maria: Maybe four years ago, five years ago.
Howard: Oh, you guys have been giving the seminar for nine years?
Maria: Yes.
Howard: How long have you been selling your program?
Maria: About five years, four years.
Howard: Five years, and what’s the percent that love it, what’s the pushback, who’s it the perfect fit for? I mean, they say one of greatest fears is speaking but I’ve never been in a funeral where anybody said, well, at least he’s not giving a speech. So my homies listening to you, what’s the perfect fit in the five years doing this, do they need to be a little kind of Broadway, someone who like Toast Masters and?
Maria: No.
Scott: Let me tell you …
Howard: What if someone working to drive work and says I’m an introvert geek, I’m afraid of my own shadow? I don’t even like to talk to a mirror?
Maria: I’d like to answer that, so we actually, we found that the Dentists who maybe are not so showy actually do better because people do not expect their Dentists to be Broadway stars. I mean, they expect them to be Dentists and we, part of our presentation or part of our kit includes a presentation, so all they really need to do is show up and talk about the Dentistry, and in the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king. I mean, the Dentists know more about any of the things in this presentation than anyone in the audience.
Howard: I have never heard of that, in the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.
Maria: Yeah, I mean, we the eyed people, we the eyed Dentists who have had those same concerns and they do great because all they do is they just follow the presentation.
Scott: Howard, I was so chicken, I mean, I’m not particularly shy but when we made up our mind to do this I kind of chickened out and I made my implant rep give the presentation. I was like, well, you sell this stuff all day long, why don’t you give this talk and so she did, and she did well but as I’m watching her from the back of the room, I’m like, I can do it better than that. So the next one we did and Maria and I would share the stage, Steve Jobs taught us a few tricks, keep it simple and share the stage and we employed a lot of that stuff. Now we just have a ball doing it, she introduces.
Howard: Well, the key to public speaking is being authentic, so if you’re not in public speaking you’re afraid, you just go up and tell your audience, look, I’m not a public speaker so bear with me, whatever, and then they start having empathy towards you and they’re on your team. They’re trying to cheer you on to get through the presentation as long as you’re authentic and truthful and you’re talking about something you’re passionate about, it always works.
Scott: We’ve found that absolutely true, we screw up, we laugh, we giggle, we trip, there’s nothing slick about it at all, it’s very home spun and I think that’s why people respond so well to it.
Maria: That’s right, and we learned that doctor actually means teacher.
Scott: Somebody said that.
Maria: Yeah, so we’re kind of like, we tell the doctors you’re coming back full circle.
Scott: I’ll quote you on that.
Howard: Well, doctor is a Latin word from Dosier meaning doctor, just like Bible is a Latin word meaning book, just like Dentist is a Latin word meaning God.
Maria: Oh, okay.
Howard: I’m not sure on that last one, I just assume that is what is it. So yeah, when people say Ola just means God, Bible just means book but anyway, so you do have a powerpoint presentation, right?
Scott: Absolutely.
Howard: I think the best thing to do is just put up your presentation and give it.
Maria: Yeah.
Howard: And if you listen to us on iTunes, it’s audio, I mean, I’m sure you’re going to get it without a presentation if you really want to see the slides on, you can subscribe to us and follow us on YouTube and then on Dentaltown on the Dentaltown app, on every one of these podcasts you can either hit video and watch it live. Most people put listen to it on audio because they say I have a face for radio and they say I should never have been on video. So I would just put up your powerpoint presentation, I’m going to stay completely out of it, give your entire presentation, don’t worry about the link, the time, and then just have in mind that most people probably eighty five percent are listening to this audio on the way to work.
Scott: So they already know who we are, there it is. So a lot of people will find themselves kind of stuck, we find that a lot of practices right now whether because of the economy or the changes in the insurance or any number of reasons, they just flatten out and get stuck, how do I get to the next level, what can I do and it sucks to be stuck, no question. I like to warn people, I think it’s really important when you get this point and a lot of people do in Dentistry, it’s a little bit of a dangerous time, it’s when Dentists make mistakes. They take their eye off the ball, they go out and do something outside of Dentistry like I did, I thought I was going to be a real estate hero and I got my butt handed to me, big deal, lost almost $1 million. That hurt bad, that put me in a spiral that I had never been in before, I never understood people that couldn’t sleep at night until then. Then that became me, that is when people have affairs, this is when people do stupid things or start toying with drugs or get suicidal and it’s a dangerous time in your career. So I say we have an option for you to get unstuck and don’t get caught into that thing, let’s just say you’re over trained and underutilised. We know how to do tons of stuff, there’s just not enough people walking into the practice asking for the stuff that you know how to do. Very often Dentists think they just go out and do another course, learn how to do a Root Canal faster, or do a Perio, do a little new bonding, new this or that, that’s going to save them, and it doesn’t. It doesn’t make more people knock at your door and come in, so the answer we think is a steady stream of qualified patients that seek our high value services, whether that be crowned bridge implant services or any of the other things or the things that you like to do, that you get paid well to do.
Maria: So right now we’re going to share with you how we got unstuck, how we stand out from the competition, how we were able to create our own economy, how we became insurance independent, and we now own three free for service practices and how to unlock the value for patients so that they can stop the online shopping.
Scott: So I kind of alluded to my story already, the only interesting part of this story I, that we had a pretty good suburban practice outside of Buffalo, we were doing okay, we had spikes of good performance and otherwise just level with free for service and we were pretty solid, but I went a little bit sideways, I thought I was going to do something else because my buddies, my buddies on the golf course they were retiring or selling their companies or hitting home runs and playing more golf and working less. I was like, damn, that sounds pretty good because all my income has to go through my hands as a Dentist, and as blessed as we are in this profession, we are cursed by that chain to the chair if you choose that model and at that point that’s all I had done. So I was interested in any stuff, so anyway, here’s that shot of our suburban practice, we’re 25 miles outside of Buffalo, it’s a nice little community but it’s not rich or poor, we have everybody from the farmers to a couple of wealthy folks but it’s like any other USA practice.
Maria: My job as practice manager at Westermeier Martin was to meet practice goals set by the owners and doctors and at that point Scott decided that he needed to make the practice sing anymore, so we were looking to create a stream of high value cases to the practice. So how do we do that, well, we knew how to market and we marketed quite a bit but so did other Dentists in the area, and by doing, though inadvertently, we created a lot of confusion in the market place, because people were getting a lot of messages and they, if you asked anybody walking down the street what a Dental implant was they probably couldn’t tell you or maybe they’d heard something about a regular or a mini. We knew also that people really didn’t buy what they didn’t understand.
Scott: We recognised this as an opportunity because that confusion, and we love this statement done by a big clothier around us, he said, and it was a famous commercial, people identify with it around here, “An educated consumer is our best customer”. Well, we kind of ran with that idea thinking, wow, people are confused and we’re able to deliver the education, maybe we could make some hay with that. So that in conjunction with the fact that we were wasting time explaining over and over what an implant is, how it works. All kinds of Dental treatment, we spent too much time doing and we got those television shows and those computer programs, and they were all fine and they helped but, there’s nothing like a real life thing. So Maria came up with this idea.
Maria: We decided to do patient education seminars for the community, free, no obligation, no commitments, we thought that we would advertise it, we thought we would put out some chairs, some food and we’d educate the people about Dental implants and when we first started doing this we had lots of questions. We didn’t really know how to do, we didn’t really know what to do, but we kept doing it and at first it was hit or miss until we hit the right formula of message and putting it in the media. Now we’re happy to say that our patient education seminars are honestly single handedly the most important thing we do in marketing, in our practice.
Scott: So from being stuck and losing my butt in the real estate game, only a couple of years later here’s what we found we built as a result, oh, we put a shot in, this is what a typical seminar in our office looks like, there’s only about, not even fifteen people at this one. This is a light one.
Maria: Of course, it’s June and they’re all wearing coats, right.
Scott: The beautiful Buffalo weather, right. So there is Selena up front with the little laptop, you can’t see the projection screen but we drop it down there and we give a little talk, so here’s what we produced as a result. This year we’ll do over $11 million in this practice, in this one building, we’ll do just shy of one thousand implants, in the past twelve months a whole lot of other collateral Dentistry. The schedule is jammed, we’ve had to hire associates, we do $50 to $100 000 every month, we do this, there’s a new production directly contributable to the seminars. So if you think you have a way out you can add this right on top of an existing schedule and try to create a mess in your office, let me tell you what, it’s alright. We are not Periodontists or Oral Surgeons or Implantologists or anything, we’re two general Dentists, but we have probably created a go to implant practice based on the fact that we wave this flag every single month and we put this on routinely as a patient education thing. It doesn’t suck anymore.
Maria: So we’ve had to add two associates, we’ve had to add a Specialist, we added a bunch more Ops, our hourly production went up, Scott, now you went from four days a week to what, three days a week?
Scott: Can’t wait till it’s two.
Maria: Now we have money for new equipment, for training, for bonuses, for CE, so it doesn’t suck anymore.
Scott: I’ll tell you what, by redefining your schedule and your practice and granted I’m a little over fifty seven years old, and we’ve been around a little bit so it helps, but last month, the month of May I set a new personal record that the highest production I’ve ever had in my whole life, I’m three days a week and I don’t know it’s north of $300 000, and for me that’s good, I know there’s superstars out there that do more than that but for me that’s pretty darn good. I’d fairly say most people would say that would be good for them, too, so if we can do it, you can certainly do this.
Maria: This is how you do it.
Scott: So listen, Howard asked us to just walk through the steps for the do it yourselfers out there because I’ll tell you, at the end we have a kit or a box, we call it a blue print. You can copy exactly what we do every single month, we’ve made a way for you to do that but whether you take advantage of that or not is totally up to you, but if you’re a do it yourselfers man, take a few notes, we’re going to tell you right now the ten steps exactly how we do this every month. So get your phones out and record this because here we go, so we’ll literally break this down into steps, here’s step one.
Maria: So you commit to a date, you commit to a time and location, usually six weeks out for your first one is good to get all your media in place, and get all your things together. Your office is preferable, if you have an area like reception room where you can put out some chairs, we find middle of the week works better Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, but it can be at a hotel, it can be at a restaurant, we’ve done that as well and it’s worked quite well.
Scott: Sounds stupid commit to a date but I want to tell you, I’ll never forget this, I did this for a long time before we ever did it and we said, okay, let’s commit and we put it on the calendar and we said, we’re going to get everything done before this date and it’s going to happen. It was that empowering move that actually forced ourselves to do it, right?
Maria: Daily was not an option at that point.
Scott: Exactly. So step two is commit to an advertising budget, and I will tell you that you’ll have to spend a few dollars to put some pockets and some seeds, whether it’s in a hotel or in your waiting room. But you’re going to have to advertise this event in some fashion or form, it’s probably the same media you use to market your own practice preferably. It could be print, it could be direct mail, it could radio, TV or all of the above and God knows the internet is obviously good, too. But when you’re marketing an event, we find that some of the other media works a little more appropriately.
Maria: But don’t forget, Scott, to, I mean, there’s a whole slew of patients sitting within your own software program, your own practice that are missing teeth, maybe that are wearing partials, maybe wearing dentures that you can send invitations, too, and have them come on in and see you in a different way.
Scott: Absolutely, not too many people are totally in love with their dentures, right.
Maria: Yeah.
Scott: So here’s a little blub;
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Susan: I’m here with Doctor Scott Westermeier from Westermeier Martin Dental Care, we know that they’ve been offering these monthly seminars for a long time now. Doctor Westermeier, someone who has missing teeth or failing dentures and they know they need a lot of work, what really goes on at these seminars?
Scott: We found this seminar environment to be very comfortable for people because they don’t have to do that awkward thing where they make an appointment for an exam and they’re not even sure they’re going to like the Dentist or they’re afraid they’re going to be sold a bill of goods or something. It’s an environment where they can sit and learn about all the different things that we do with dentures and Dental implants. We go through a whole list of options and alternatives and what they can do is basically figure out if this is something for them, or something attractive for them, they get to check out the office, our staff, the doctors. If it feels good, we make appointments available and if it doesn’t, that’s okay, too, just last night’s seminar at the Marriot, I make it a point to ask everybody that attended was this helpful. To a person they always appreciate all the information and the comfort they get out of understanding what it is that we do.
Susan: What is the most impact thing at these seminars?
Scott: People tell me they like to hear most from the patient, we invite to speak and describe one of the procedures they’ve had and gone through so they’re available for questions and answers, and getting a different perspective from the patient seems to be very helpful.
Susan: How can people learn more?
Scott: Well, tonight 18:30 we’re having a seminar right in the Eastor Office, you can call at 608:3741 and reserve a seat or visit our website at wmsmile.com.
Susan: Are walk ins welcome?
Scott: We always save a few extra chairs for people that walk in at the last minute.
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Scott: Every now and then we sponsor a news cast and I’ll just do a quick two minute interview with the radio host and explain what a patient education seminar is, and I just make it clear that it is absolutely no strings attached, no sales pitch, no nothing, no pressure, just come in and learn and leave. Get a second opinion, use it any way you want, and we find that those people are often more hesitant and once they come in, we always, always survey the crowd at the end of the night and I say, was this helpful, and they say, my God, this was wonderful, how come I didn’t know about this before, you guys were great, blah, blah, blah. They feel so much more empowered because they understand more and they trust us now, it’s awesome. So here’s a tip, get a sponsor, there’s some expenses involved, well, guess what, you’re selling somebody’s implants and there is no reason why they can’t help you in some form of fashion, whether they buy the food, the hotel space, whatever it takes but ask for some help. My God, at the end of the day we are the salespeople for all kinds of Dental products and there’s no reason why they can’t help you accomplish that. So step three, take it away.
Maria: So you want to, once you have your media in place and your invitations out, you want to be able to register your guests but, and you want to send them a welcome package. This point, it’s really important that your team involved and make sure that they know about the seminar, make sure they know what will be covered, and have them talk it up on the phone. When people call to register and call you, they should say, oh, gosh, you’re so smart to do this, it’s going to give you so much info that you need to make the right decision for yourself. The welcome packet can be sent out and that usually includes a letter welcoming them to a seminar, directions, we found that buy including a ticket for entrance, that actually works quite nicely. Don’t give away too much information on the seminar, maybe a little bio on the docs who’ll be presenting it, yeah, that takes us to?
Scott: So we make it sound like seats are little bit scarce, with limited seating only but there’s always room for walk ins.
Maria: Right.
Scott: I guess now’s an appropriate time to say if you have twenty people call and say they’re coming, set the room up for fifteen chairs, that’s how many, actually you should set it for a little less, its always cool to pull out the extra chairs for the extra unexpected people walking in. It creates a little energy, a little buzz in the room, like, oh, my God, there’s more people here than they intended, it, there’s a lot of psychology going on in this room and that helps. So Jobs told us to share the stage and keep it simple, so Maria usually starts off, introduces us.
Maria: I come out like a mom, I bring out my docs, I tell them just a little about the practice and who we are so they know who’s talking to them. Introduce the doctors, and then the doctors come in and do all the Dental, the scientific Dental stuff and then the team ends the presentation, so the doctors aren’t talking about making appointments or making money or anything like that.
Scott: You know what Jobs does when he introduces the iPhone or the iPad and all that stuff, we paid really close attention to how they do that, we’re naturally not as high tech as that but if you’ve ever noticed, there’s never more than one or two, maybe three at the max, bullet points on the screen, it is super simple. And this goes to the next step, this is not the time to be super smart Dentist, Doctor, Professor of Implants, that’s not the deal here at all. What’s going is people are there asking themselves a question, can I trust you, not how smart are you and if they feel good about you, at the end of the night they’re going to say to you, I’d like to stick around and find out more about my mouth with you guys. Too many Doctors, Dentists, being the nerds that we are, want to start talking about the science and technical details of the threat inclination on their implants and it’s just such the wrong approach. This is absolutely a fifth grade presentation with easy to follow cartoons, no big, I mean, use one big word ICO integration and, I mean, we make fun of it, like that’s the biggest word we use all night long. But we put a PowerPoint together and you should, too, you can make it as long as you want, ours is actually probably too long, it’s almost eighty slides but we whip through it in an hour and a half and people are as happy as a clam.
Maria: No gross pictures, lots of before and afters, put pictures of your team, a video walk through of your office if you’re doing the seminar outside in a restaurant, just missing teeth, a lot of the options if a person has one missing tooth or several or all of them, what are the different options.
Maria: And don’t be scared to show your Cadillac stuff, in other words onesie, twosie implants is wonderful but show full arch, all on four type restorations and tell them how much it costs because there’s always somebody in the audience that says, I hate this stinking denture, I want something that screws in and stays there. They’ve got $30 000 in their pocket, I’m not kidding, there’s always one in the room that says they want to do that and we’re happy to oblige them.
Maria: Don’t be afraid to talk fee ranges, you don’t necessarily have to quote exact fees but fee ranges, like we say, you’ll probably find yourself somewhere in between $15 000 and $50 000 somewhere in between.
Scott: It’s quite a range?
Scott: Yeah, well, people want to know, so anybody who thought the implant was $100, they filter themselves out.
Scott: After doing this for a bunch of years, we found out that one of the most motivating things we say, and we didn’t realise it at first, was when we explained that when you take teeth out that the bone loss that happens to your jaw bone and we show a little video of how that happens. That freaks people right out and they said, I’m here because I don’t want to lose any more bone in my jaw, I want one of those implants to save the bone. We’re like, okay, so being students of surveys we mention this point several times in the presentation now and drive it home because it turns out such a motivating factor. So step five? This is you.
Maria: Yeah. Organise your team, you’re going to need a pre-game team, they’re the ones who are going to take the registration calls, they’re going to send out the welcome packets, they’re going to confirm the registrants. Then you need a game time, those are the people who are your meet and greet people, they are the ones that take the patients through the tour of the office, explain to them how you’re different and how wonderful all the creature comforts are in your office. Then post-game because once the seminar is up, it ain’t over, there’s follow ups to be done, there’s appointments to be made, so there’s, and everybody should be put on the right seat of the bus for this one.
Scott: This is, you paid some money, you put some energy into this, it’s worth paying attention to choreograph this event to the end degree. It really pays, you want to create a wonderful experience for these folks, there it is, it’s not just a seminar, it’s an experience, that means the tone of your voice, the way you communicate to each other, the giggles, the laughter, just the hominess. The hospitality that you show, all that stuff is being felt and is creating an experience, people come in kind of thinking they’re going to get a lecture of some kind, like a little college lecture, they come in with their note books sometimes ready to take notes. I’m like, chill out, relax, have a piece of bacon or whatever we’re serving that night and just listen and we have all kinds of fun with it.
Okay, I came here this evening because I received a postcard in the mail and I really was interested in the implants, and unfortunately, I didn’t know anything about them. So I thought it would be well worth my time just to come and listen, I knew there were no strings attached. What I learned tonight was extremely educational, Doctor Martin is extremely good in making people understand exactly where he’s coming from, all about the implants. All about the bone which I didn’t know anything about receiving bone, all about how here it’s so modern, up to date, the staff is extremely, the minute you walk in the door they are extremely friendly. There’s certainly no fear at all coming in here and having anything done, I was very impressed, my husband was here as well and he was very impressed, and we did make an appointment and we came out. I am positive that I will change from my Dentist that I’ve been going to and now I will come here, there’s no question.
Scott: Typical lady right after the seminar, so step six, AV equipment, I’ll just say that bigger is better, you cannot do this on little television or laptop screen. Blow this up on a projector screen or one of those big screen TV’s, my God, you can buy seventy inches for under $1000 today, put one on your wall, run your PowerPoint through it and make it big because your target audience is just a little older. Just a little harder at hearing, doesn’t see as well, isn’t as quick on their, they’re just a little bit towards the seniors, they are the ones that have the money, put aside to do this as a general rule. Not everybody falls into that demographic, however they’re going to be in your audience so you might as well take good care of them, right. Seven.
Maria: So one of the most important parts of the whole seminar, patients tell us all the time it’s their favourite part is the testimonials, so find a raving fan, somebody from your practice that absolutely loves what you’ve done to them, loves your practice, loves you and coach them a little bit. Most audiences just really want to know what life was like before the patient had treatment, did it hurt, how long did it take, was it worth it, did it hurt, have them speak five minutes max, a lot of people will come on a little nervous and then they kind of like being on stage, so you almost have to pull them off. But stay up there with them and ask them questions to sometimes lead them along and say, video tape a testimonial just in case for whatever reason your live one doesn’t show up, you can always have that in your back pocket.
Scott: This is not to be missed, this is an important thing, it’s somebody else bragging about you besides yourself. The most important thing of the night and we’ve already said it is important to prep the people, so they understand what their role is. Have these three main points, just take five minutes be done now, if they’re really effective you can let them roll, if the audience is connecting with them and they want to stay up there a little bit, it normally works to your advantage. But you know who’s who, we have one engineer get up there, pull a thing out of his pocket protector and read the schedule of his appoints and we’re like, oh, no, that’s not what we’re looking for. But we have other people go up and share a story about their grandchildren pointing to their teeth and embarrassing them, and going to tears the old lady is starting to sniffle and then at the end she’s biting into an apple saying these things are awesome, they changed my life and people just flip out over this stuff. So they start selling for you, it’s great, here’s why these seminars work so well, we didn’t know this for a couple of years until I read this book. We had already been doing these things for a while and this guy, he’s from Howards home state, University of Arizona, I believe Robert Cialdini wrote this book and inside the book he talks about several principles of persuasion and one of the reasons these seminars work so well is because they employ or deploy so many of the principles. One of which is being the principle of authority, by virtue of our title as doctor we have authority and when we convey information, we’re using that principle right to our advantage. We use the principle of reciprocation, we always give a gift, there’s some kind of little as they walk in the door, boom, we put something in their hands, when they sit down in their chair, there’s another something on the chair. Then we offer them a gift certificate at the end for free, so we’re just loading them up with gifts and they kind of feel a tiny bit indebted to us psychologically and the repayment is literally just making an appointment because that’s the only ask that we make, is why don’t you come in and find out about it for yourself, it’s a free consult, it’s just an easy sell. But the most important one I’d say is the thing called social proof and basically that’s like if everybody else is doing it, it’s good enough for me, and at the end of the seminar when we say you can stand up and make an appointment to see us next week and find out about your situation, the first person that stands up and walks over to the desk creates the, opens the flood gates. It’s okay for everybody else right after that first person does and we used to think we’d have to plant somebody to do that. It’s never necessary, there’s always some hyper person in the audience that wants to jump up and be the first one in the book, but once that happens the whole room signs up, which, by the way, now is a good time to say we usually convert the entire room, the only people that don’t sign up are the people that drove the other people to come there and sometimes they do, too.
Maria: Yeah.
Scott: We often convert one hundred percent of the room, now we measure conversion as a person making an appointment for a consult, so that’s an easy conversion. Then the people are all preheated, they understand everything when it comes to that consult, they’re buying something, I don’t care if it’s a few fillings or a couple of arches of implants. It could be up to $55, $60 000 but it happens so routinely that we don’t even get excited about it anymore, it’s just what happens when we do seminars now. But this guy’s got a nail and so many of his principles that we see working in these seminars. Step eight.
Maria: So your call to action, so if you have an impactful presentation, it actually eliminates the selling because it brings the people to that point where they want to know what their own options are. They want implants because they can get them, so make them an offer that they can’t refuse to take the next step, so we offer them a free consultation with x-rays and we tell them there’s no obligation, there is absolutely no commitment but they owe themselves at least that knowledge of what their own options are so that they can make the right decision for themselves. We also then give them, like Scott mentioned before, a gift certificate to help them jump start any treatment and I’ll tell you, people love those gift certificates, and that’s where we get a lot of the drivers that come with the attendant because they’ll use them for a cleaning or a filling or whatever. So we actually get a lot of people who did not attend to come in actually convert.
Scott: So be smart, if there’s a bunch of people, don’t make them all wait in line to make an appointment, have a few people taking schedule or making appointments, make it easy. Drop all the barriers to be able to engage and do business with you, it’s just fundamental, make it easy to buy from you, okay. Step nine, when you think some people walk out of the room they don’t appoint if that were to happen. You tend to think they weren’t interested, well, maybe not, maybe they just had to go and get a babysitter or whatever, people sometimes had to duck out, you’d be a fool not to have their name and number so that you could follow up and say, hey, was that helpful, can we help you out with anything. Those people say, yeah, I mean to, and can I still get the deal, can I still get the free whatever. Yeah, absolutely, of course, this kind of follow up turns into thousands and thousands of dollars, you’d be foolish to let them go.
Maria: You want to track your results and you want to look at how many registered, how many appeared versus how many appointed and then you tweak your results, you keep tweaking, tweaking, tweaking, making little adjustments so that you’re always on the pattern of success.
Scott: Yeah. So this seems like a no brainer, step ten is, when Maria and I did this the first time and looked at each other and said, well, that’s pretty good, I wonder if we’ll ever do that again, like wait a minute, that’s stupid, why don’t we do it next month. In fact, every now and then I ask myself, why don’t we do this every week, but it makes perfect sense to do this on a regular basis, you will reap the rewards months and months from now, people that cut the ad out, put it on the refrigerator, not knowing really that it was going to come again but it’s clear we always call our seminars, the monthly seminar, so if they can’t make it this month, they’ll hit the next month or maybe the month after or maybe six months later. But it is such a regular thing in our community now and that’s what’s allowed us to position ourselves as implant experts in our community, and it’s fascinating how people just associate implants with our practice. Oh, and it doesn’t hurt at all if you get a little celebrity or someone that helps you with your ads, we were able to invite Jim Kelly of football quarter back Hall of Fame to do a few of our ads and he mentions the seminar, in fact, he does a little video at the beginning of our seminar that says this was a smart decision to come here, I trust these guys, I love these guys, give a good listen and boom, boom, it’s what, like fifteen seconds long or something like that.
Maria: Yeah, and Scott, just like with all marketing, I mean, frequency and consistency of your message, that’s the most important part. It’s important to be one of the first in your community to do this, that way you establish your authority and at first you’re going to get a lot of the early adoptors and then everybody else, I mean, crowds just keep on coming. So some of you are probably out there thinking, okay, so I do all this and what happens if nobody comes.
Scott: I remember one night four people showed up and I was pissed, I was like, damn, I spent 7000 bucks on ads and stuff and I’ve got four people in the room, and Maria had to remind me of something we used to talk about, she goes, the only people that know there’s only four people here are these four people. The rest of the five hundred thousand people in the community think you’re having a seminar tonight and some wish they could be there and some, ooh, they missed it again or whatever but nobody knows that. You have done the community and yourself a service by announcing a fact that you’re giving seminars on a topic that may or may not be of interest to them this month. But I want to tell you, don’t lose heart if you get a few people show up, oh, and by the way, the third person that made an appointment that night scheduled an $11 000 case, I, for some reason, remember that number, so paid for it all right there, boom. So Maria, am I right?
Maria: Yeah.
Scott: So I used to whine a little bit when I’d say, oh, I have to give a seminar tonight and then I would kind of remember, oh, yeah, all I do is go up and run my mouth a little bit in front of a slide show, answer a few questions and book $50 to $100 000 worth of Dentistry, that’s the best hour in my entire month every month for eight years, that has always been the best hour every time. So I have to occasionally remind myself of that, but it’s true.
Maria: It’s not only just about the money, Scott, it’s a business, but it’s also the, how many times do patients come up to you with tears in their eyes and so grateful for the fact that we put this information out.
Scott: We’re very blessed, we take it for granted when you start doing full arch restorations with implants, we talk about changing lives, we do sometimes take for granted how blown away people are by the stuff we do. We do this thing called Teeth Express with Buy Horizons and they take a nap with a bunch of nasty teeth and wake up with a whole new set of teeth set in, ready to go. I want to say that’s not unbelievable, you guys have seen the clear choice commercials, they do a great job marketing their stuff. We do the exact same thing, and whether, for a few million dollars less budgeting or less of a marketing budget, I should say. But this is your way to do it, a home spun fifth grade seminar on a regular basis will get you the people who come in and say, hey, can I have that kind of Dentistry? Yes. So listen, what we’ve done, I have alluded to it before, this may sound simple but there’s a lot that goes into making this go off well and if you’re the type of person that says, okay, I get it, instead of reinventing the wheel, I’ll just copy this thing we did, we put it all together and put it in a box, actually Maria did.
Maria: Well, I put it together in a way that the doctor doesn’t really have to get so involved with it because doctors have so many things to do, you could actually just hand this right over to your team and like, in our practice our doctors show up right on time right, on cue for their presentation. Everything else is done for them, it’s an entire checklist of what to do six weeks before, four weeks before, three weeks before and, yeah, I have to say we’ve gotten a lot of actually nice feedback about how easy it is to actually implement.
Scott: We call it the ultimate seminar blueprint and that’s exactly what it is, it’s just a blueprint for how to do these seminars and make them effective. Step by step, super simple paint by numbers, it works every single time, it’s just dead stupid easy. It’s really, I told you this already, we routinely get around $15 to $100 000 every time we do it. Bruce Fine says, wow, this is the perfect tool, I’ve always wanted to promote implants in my practice but other than the ads, I was at a loss. I thought about doing a seminar but didn’t know where to start, that’s typical. This seminar in a box made it easy to do a seminar and the outcome is incredibly huge, I’m almost embarrassed to say. As a buddy, Bruce, and he’s one of the early doctors of buying the blueprint and it took off for him, it’s totally digital now, it’s downloadable and it includes time sensitive activity checklist, PowerPoint presentation, print ads, radio copy resources and suggested presentation equipment. What would it be worth to you to routinely ad $50 to 100 grand to your schedule every single month. I mean, it’s silly, it’s a very incredible package, I would say, if I don’t say so myself. Listen, inside the package we did a video, it’s like a coaching video, here’s how to put on a seminar that’s successful, step by step we go through the slides and say, here’s when we explain bone loss, here’s why we explain bone loss. We tell it this way, we use this language, so that’s very effective in helping somebody out, that’s just a little quirkier and a little uneasy about giving the presentation like I was initially. But over time we find out what works, so we put it in a video and poach it through, we also made a video of us doing it. Because if you have that little voyeuristic nature in you and you just want to see what it looks like when they do it, we made a fly on the wall video so you can see what it looks like as we put it on.
Maria: We include a seven fatal mistakes report because you will make these mistakes and we know it because we’ve made them, so we want you to avoid them, so that’s included. Also a customisation guide for your presentation, how to make your presentation actually reflect and represent you, your team, your logos. All sorts of letters, forms and tons of updates to best performing ads presentations, so we’re constantly updating this as we’re doing it and finding things that work better, we’re updating things.
Scott: So we put this blue print together, we have a website, it’s called theempoweredpractice.com and we routinely put this blueprint together for $59.97 with all the bonuses, it has a value of over $12 000 with a total value of over $18 000, we’re very proud of this because it works so well for us. It’s just blown our practice out of the water, what we did was for Howard’s audience we normally sell this thing for $59.95 and if anybody that’s listening to the Podcast wants to take advantage of it, go to theempoweredpractice.com and there’s a little coupon, what’s it called, just a little code you have to put in. If you write Farran there, it’ll take $1000 dollars off of it, so it’s only $49.97. So not to be confused with 49.97, it is $4995. But I’m going to tell you what some people say, well, 5000 bucks I’ll do it myself, go ahead, do it yourself, that’s why we’re doing the Podcast, we want you to be able to do it yourself but if you have any appreciation for the time value of money and your time and the value of your time, and you understand how much money is at stake by doing it right the first time, I’m not kidding about the $50 to $100 000. If you do a successful seminar the first time and generate that kind of RLI, then this price becomes absolutely negligible.
Maria: Don’t forgot, Scott, too, we’ve added something that’s very valuable that we don’t have in our bullet points and that is that first twenty seven people to get this, get an actual quick start on boarding by our team. So somebody from our team will call you, answer your questions and help you get started, so this actually gets done.
Scott: Here’s another guy, Doctor Matt Hookem, he says, I started doing implant seminars over two years ago, they’ve had a huge impact on my practice and my community. My patients are better informed and I definitely do more implants because of the seminars, thanks for the help. Typical comments, I love this guy Shaun Tarpeding, we just did our first seminar, we had close to thirty attendants, sixteen appointed that night, the next day the third person that came in for their one on one consultation was a $50 000 double hybrid case, are you kidding me, couldn’t wait to call Scott Westermeier and tell him incredible, he’s so funny. That guy is such an implementer, he hears a good idea and the next day it’s done, man, he reaps the rewards, too.
Maria: Doctor Glenn Schmidt from New Orleans, he purchased the ultimate seminar blueprint last May, Miami started doing the seminars in June, another implementer in seven months, they did over $300 000 in new implant cases and now they’re doing them twice a month, need I say anything more?
Scott: It’s so fun hearing from the people that grab the kit and run with it, I’m sure some people get it and stuff it under their bed and say, I’ll do it someday, that’s just silly but the implementers, if you’re one of those can do people or you’re one of those people that are stuck, and you just want to figure out a way, what’s a way you can distinguish yourself and be different. Then there’s no more guessing, there’s no struggle, no creating nothing, you don’t have to test anything, you won’t make a mistake because you’ve figured it out already. Don’t waste your valuable time, there’s no kidding, this is the way to do it, we’ll give a sixty day money back guarantee that anybody wants to do this, if you want to grab it, if it doesn’t float your boat, you think you can’t do it, there is something about it that you don’t understand or believe in, we’ll give you your money back, we don’t care. We know this thing works and we’re very confident about it, so we’ll stand behind it.
Maria: Oh, there you go.
Scott: There’s another.
Maria: That quick start team twenty seven orders.
Scott: A little added thing here but we have a quick start team that will hold people’s hand right through their first seminar. So at the Empowered Practice there’s both an email and a phone number that will give them a direct line into our guy that will ensure that their first seminar goes off well, and that we call the quick start team. Okay, there it is, we want you to go to theempoweredpractice.com, click down the purchase button and the promo code Farran, choose a single or a three payment option, enter email and enjoy immediate access to this stuff, you get the material right away, that’s great, you don’t have to wait three weeks for it to show up in a box or something like that.
Maria: So some of the people that have implemented this, Scott, have called us after doing the seminars for a while and asked us, now we’re so busy we have all these patients and we need help now because we have this chaos in our office because we’ve grown so fast, we’ve had this explosive growth that we don’t really know how to handle it.
Scott: I’ll tell you I met at a meeting once, I met a guy who called himself a coach and I really didn’t understand a coach, a business coach and because he was not a Dental business coach, I thought he had no application to me, I had lunch with this guy, we were in a master mind together. And he really impressed me, he goes, I can really help you and I said, yeah, but you don’t know anything about Dentistry. He goes, it doesn’t matter, I say, yes, it does, we did the yes, no, yes, no, long story short we got together, his name is Earl Camper and we call him big Earl, he is a great big mountain of a guy, and he’s a mountain of a guy who has been to us for the last what, last five, six years?
Maria: Yeah.
Scott: He’s made an incredible difference in helping us organise the chaos that we created because we actually created a mess with these seminars, there were so many people coming in demanding so much service, we had a problem, we had to expand the office, we had to hire associates, we had to re-establish our systems and how we delivered care and with success comes issues, and we needed a little help doing that and Earl was instrumental in doing that, and to this day we talk to Earl every single week on a regular basis. We’ve partnered up with him, in fact, not only is he our coach but we joined forces to build this thing called The Empowered Practice, because the blueprint just happens to be the start of it all to generate inflow new patients into your practice, but then we’ve gotten together and built a mastermind and a coaching program for Dentists that find themselves in that same situation. Like holy cow, I’ve got a lot of business, I’ve got a whole new set of problems, who’s going to help me with this. Well, we’ve done just that, in fact, we’ve even put a cool thing together, Howard, we’re almost done here but if people want to do this, we have put together a little program, we’re going to do it in September where you can actually fly into Buffalo, I know that sounds scary.
Maria: It’s September though, it’s nice.
Scott: You can actually sit in one of the live seminars that we do with the public and just kind of blend in as a patient, witness exactly how we do what we do and when the people stand up appoint and go home, we open the bar and deconstruct the seminar for the Dentists that come in to see it. Then the next day we do a deep dive on the practice and how we built, and what, this year will be over an $11 000 000 practice in one building free for service outside of Buffalo New York. And people find it very, how do you say, eye opening?
Maria: Yes.
Scott: We’re not magicians, we’re just normal people but we’ve put a pretty good thing together and people find that they can learn a whole bunch, so we’re going to put this little thing together, I guess we call these things boot camps. If anybody is interested go to The Empowered Practice, give us a call and we’ll tell you more about it. We’re very proud of it, we’ve done it a couple of times in the past and it’s been real successful, so we’re going to do it again this Fall. Howard, that’s all we got, man, we could go all night.
Howard: Well, I tell you what, going to Buffalo sounds good because right now it is one hundred and eight degrees in Phoenix and it’s seventy three degrees in Portland.
Scott: Oh, my God.
Howard: For anybody going to Portland, how far, it’s not that far to Niagara Falls?
Scott: A little over half an hour from Niagara Falls, beautiful.
Howard: Yeah, I’ll never forget, I stayed there one time and the bed was the shape of a heart.
Maria: Yeah, it’s the honeymoon capital, right.
Howard: Yeah, I did not know that or I’d have bought my cat. So I had to sleep alone in a heart shaped bed, man, that’s just, that was a new rock bottom for me. I think you guys are amazing, I think it’s great, and I know Dentists just want to, when they heard you talk, all they wanted to know about was why you chose Buy Horizons, they just want to learn all the to do. They don’t, they’re not interested in the business and my job is to try and focus these millennials that, dude, you’ve got $350 000 in debt, you can’t call them patients or customers, they can’t wait in the waiting room, let’s say your receptionist, I mean, they name their receptionist after a piece of furniture, the front desk lady, I mean, how low is that. They don’t look at that lady answering the phone as an incoming sale and they don’t track how many hits on their website convert to how many call, and how many have to call to convert to how many come in as the patient and how many convert to get actual treatment, and they don’t want to think about any of that, they just want to know, well, why did you pick Buy Horizon, why didn’t you pick Nova Buy O Care, and I think what you guys are doing is amazing it’s also amazing that you can get people to part with their money and upgrade their dentures to implants and all that stuff, instead of thinking that they should just put a jacuzzi on their deck or go to Europe or buy a new car. So I think what you’re doing is very great for the profession.
Maria: Thank you. People have money for what they want, our job is to show them what they can have and how it can affect their quality of life, and then they want it.
Scott: Some would call it some but I love how Maria says that we just show them what they can have, they point to the menu and say, I like that, and we say to them, well, can we help you get that, we’ll show you how you can finance that, and they’re like, great, done, let’s go. It’s that simple, my consults are a joke, I walk in, point at a forty two inch screen of their pan and I say, hey, those teeth got to go, two or three implants there or whatever and we can give you a whole new set of teeth and you can look like this picture tomorrow, and they’re like what.
Howard: ARN or CBCT?
Scott: Well, I’m usually showing them a pan in the consult room but the CBCT is how we pan it out, yeah.
Howard: Yeah, I think that two-dimensional pan is the best teaching method, the BFAMAX, there’s no way their money can put eighteen films back together and the CBCT is way too complicated, and I still think the greatest invention of all time, in all of Dentistry since Pierre Farshad, was whoever figured out how to put a R on one side and an L on the other on that panel, that was just the single greatest invention in all of Dentistry. On that note, thank you for all that you guys do for Dentistry, thank you for all that you do for the people of Buffalo, and I hope a lot of my homies go to Buffalo and get out of this heat.
Scott: Thanks for having us, Howard, excellent show.
Maria: Thank you, Howard.