📍 Welcome back to No Silver Spoons. I'm your host, Sarah Beth Herman, and this week we have a little bit different of a podcast. We're doing a podcast swap. I was recently on a podcast with Dr.

Howard Farran, and I'd love to welcome you to hear how that went. If you are on YouTube listening to this, you can absolutely see the video of it. If you're tuning in from anywhere else that you get your favorite podcast episodes from, feel free to download, save, comment, or share with your favorite dental bestie.

We're talking all things dental insurance. Lots of great carrots in there. So sit back, relax, and enjoy this awesome podcast co-host with Dr. Howard Farran.

It is just a huge, huge honor for me to be podcast interviewing- Yes ... my buddy and mentor, Sarah Beth Harmon, MBA. She's a nationally recognized leadership educator, entrepreneur, and servant leadership expert with more than two decades of experience helping dental practices grow through people, systems, and accountability.

As the CEO of Dentistry Support and Dentistry Support Academy- and Sarah Beth Harmon LLC, she has built a reputation for transforming practices by strengthening operations, elevating team performance, and creating healthy, sustainable workplace cultures. Her work is rooted in a people-first philosophy, combining high standards with practical systems that drive real results.

Sarah Beth recently earned her MBA from Grace Christian University, graduating summa cum laude. A reflection of her commitment to excellence and lifelong learning. Under her leadership, Dentistry Support was honored with the top, with the 2025 Torch Award for Ethics by the Better Business Bureau, recognizing the organization's integrity, transparency, and commitment to doing business the right way.

She leads a global team spanning nine countries and provides hands-on support to practices across the United States through mentorship, SOP development, and both virtual and on-site training.

Known for her energy, clarity, and direct approach, she helps dental teams build consistency, improve communication, operate at a higher level. Sarah Beth is also the host of the No Silver Spoons podcast, reaching tens of thousands of listeners, where she shares insights on leadership, growth, and real-world business challenges.

With a passion for service and a focus on sustainable success, she continues to empower dental professionals to build stronger businesses and more fulfilling careers. And I just wanna start with my, first question to you, and that is, um, the young dentists aren't happy. Yeah. I know I'm 63. The only thing next on my calendar is, a dirt nap.

And they look at me and they say, "Oh, you graduated in the good old days." And they got $500,000 of student loans. They got DSOs. They're mad at the ADA. They're mad at dental insurance. The insurance companies haven't caught up with our fee schedules. We- they've had a ton of inflation. And it seem, looks like about 20% of the hygienists left during COVID 'cause of all the aerosol.

So do you have any good news for the kids? Anything? I do. I do. Can you make something up? And I don't even have to make it up. It's just that I think over time, I started in dentistry when I was 17 years old, and I was literally filing charts in a back office. And- We have made dentistry so complicated. We have added AI for this, and we've made billing so complicated and eligibility so complicated.

And should I be in-network with all these insurances? And how do I make this one decision? But oh no, my front office just quit for a dollar more an hour to the dental office down the street, right? It's the same thing at every dental office, right? That hurts just to hear this, right? I know, but that's everyone's story.

And it makes me sad to think that dentistry is that complicated. And so if there's anything that you hear from me today, it's that dentistry is not that complicated. It doesn't have to be that hard. And I can give you a couple quick little tips that'll make it as easy as it actually should be, and you can remove the noise.

Because a lot of the reason we think it's so bad, we think we're so angry with it, we're so frustrated, is because there's a lot of noise. And sometimes you just have to get to that 30,000-foot elevation and get out of the weeds to be able to see it, and I think that's what we're missing the most. Let me give you a good example of that, okay?

A lot of dental offices are like, "I'm not collecting what I'm producing," or, "I have really high AR." Or, you know, something around billing is the problem, because money is what we're all thinking, right? It's how can I get the money that I need to make? Insurance isn't paying what they should be paying. If you- A lot of dental students don't know what AR is.

Okay. Dental billing, accounts receivable. That's what I'm talking about today, okay? Well, right now. Let's talk about dental billing.

You'll hear that spoken to as dental billing, AR, accounts receivables. You'll hear those words. What I mean when I say that is just how you're getting your money in. So whether the insurance is paying you, whether the patient's paying you, where are you getting the money, and why isn't it in when it should be?

There's really, really simple rules when it comes to this. So what I'll say is this. When you open your practice, when you start working in your office, I want you to have one expectation and one expectation only, and that's that we work every claim every 10 days, and that we always collect what we produce in the same month we produce it.

And if a dental office team member tells you that's not possible because of insurance, that's not possible because of our patient base, that's not possible because of our demographic, I want you to ignore all of those excuses and I want you to recognize that there is something called an insurance commissioner, which is someone who has regulated how insurance companies have to pay you.

And insurances today, they operate in ways that are unfair to dentistry, and they also operate in ways that protect dentistry. And you may not hear that from anybody else. You might hear them say, "Dental insurance is trash," or, "Dental insurance-" stinks or I hate dental insurance. Well, we're here, so we've gotta play the game.

So if we've gotta play the game, and that's the truth, then we have to understand the things that are on our side with dental insurance, which means how quickly they pay us. For example, you go file a claim with MetLife online, they're gonna adjudicate that claim, which means process it, in 24 hours. So if we know that's true, why are we waiting till a claim gets to 30 days aging, 60 days aging, 90 days aging before we're looking at it?

If we know that they are gonna pay that within 24 hours, why wouldn't we work those things quicker? Why wouldn't we pick our team, design it in a way where this person does this job, or get a third party? I mean, I'm pro third party, but that's because I run a company that does this virtually. But if you've got in-house people, let's utilize them the right way.

What is third party to a dental student? What are you doing for dentists? You're- Yeah ... you're processing their insurance. Yeah. Explain that. So my main brand is Dentistry Support. That's where I started. So not dental support, but dentistry support.

So what we do is we virtually support dental practices all over the United States, and the United States only. I don't work in Canada or anywhere else. What we do is we're your entire front office team. So instead of you paying someone 20, 30, 45, $50 an hour to work your front office, depending on state, 'cause there are some states where you're paying 50 bucks an hour for a front office person- San Francisco

which is crazy, right? But,, you're gonna pay a fraction of that to work with my team, and it's a flat rate, so we don't charge like a percentage of collections or anything like that. It's based on FTE, which means how many full-time employees do we need on your practice. And when we work your office, we essentially do your billing, we do your eligibility, we do your phones, we handle credentialing.

All the things that would make up an administrative team at a dental practice, my company handles. Okay. Even the older dentists don't know what credentialing means. So credentialing means, who are you in-network with and who are you out-of-network with with insurance? And that's really a 30,000-foot vantage point.

You can kind of dumb that down a little bit by saying, , you know, when you're in-network with someone, what are the fees that they pay you upon? You'll have a fee schedule, maybe your top 20 to 30 codes, and you can negotiate the rates with most dental insurance companies on how much they'll reimburse you for services performed in your office.

So credentialing just means how am I in-network with them? How do they pay me when I'm in-network with them? And you'll hear a lot of feedback on being out-of-network, 'cause That's kind of the trend right now is get out of network. Be just fee for service, meaning just take patients but don't be in-network with anybody because insurances rob you on what they pay.

So we can dig into that a little bit deeper, but essentially- We'll have to dig into that real deep. She's trapped in the dog pound. Yeah. She can't get out. So, all right. So let's talk credentialing for a minute. We'll sidebar this, and then I'll kinda go into the billing part that I was gonna talk about.

So when we talk credentialing, you might open a practice tomorrow, or you might be in the middle of building a practice, or you're gonna go work for a DSO, okay? And they're gonna talk to you about who they're in-network with, or you're gonna choose who you're in-network with. If we were to take, for example, Delta Dental, big player, right?

Everybody's heard of Delta Dental. They've heard the horror stories of Delta Dental and how they pay and how they combine services. So you'll say, "Do I wanna be in or out-of-network with Delta?" Now, if you're out-of-network with Delta- Can I, can I just say one thing? Yep. Um, there's, like, a lot of different Deltas.

Yeah. So are you talking about in-network with all Delta or out-network? Yeah. So- Or are you talking about you have this relationship with, you might be in-network with Delta of Arizona but not Delta of California or- Yeah ... an issue? So that's even deeper. So let's say for example, you're looking at Delta Dental.

You can choose to be globally, in-network with them. You can choose to be just a certain tier level in-network with them. You can choose many different things. But at a high level, when you decide to be in-network, well, you'll work with someone, at their credentialing team to decide how you want to be in-network with them.

They'll give you a slew of options. There will be some decisions you'll have to make with that. Oftentimes new practice owners or new dentists are going with, like, a credentialing-type company. There's many of them out there. And they'll teach you things like, how to be in an umbrella, which is like, hey, I can be in-network with this kind of plan that also includes these 60 dental insurances, and it pays this specific way on this specific fee schedule.

So credentialing just means how am I in-network? What are the parameters of my agreement with them? What is the benefit to my practice to be in-network with them? Or on the complete opposite end of that- If I don't wanna be credentialed at all, can you still operate a dental practice without being credentialed?

The answer is yes, absolutely you can. But there are things that you wanna know. You can't just say, "Oh, I don't wanna be in-network," because there are different ways insurance, do and don't pay you. For example, if you're out of network with insurance, you might find that the insurance company will only pay the patient the reimbursement.

They won't actually send it to the office unless you change what's called assignment of benefits. So that's a key thing to write down from this episode. What does assignment of benefits mean? Assignment of benefits means, "Hey, I'm out of network with this insurance company. When I call to verify benefits, I'm gonna find out, hey, I'm out of network.

How does this insurance pay when I file a claim? Oh, this insurance pays the patient. Can I get an assignment of benefits so that you pay the dental office?" Because let's be honest, if the insurance company pays the patient $2,000 for that crown build-up and root canal, which is not enough money as it is, and they get the check, you think they're gonna give it to the dental office or the dentist?

No. No. They're not. Because desperate people do desperate things. That's right. And if they're, if they're poor and they're struggling, they're about to get their car taken- That's right ... and they get this check- $2,000 Yeah, yeah. Oh, I'm going to the store. Do you think the insurance company, they know what they're doing.

Yes. So they're, they're not helping their patient- Right ... because more people would, would do this, you know? It seems like an intentional- something that you need to know as a dentist, as a provider, is that dental insurance companies are not in the business to pay claims.

They're not in the business to benefit their insurers or the people that are getting paid by the insurance plan. They're in the business to make things look really, really, really good for their shareholders. And so if you know that information going into it, you can approach how you are in or out of network and how you file claims and how you research claims from a completely different vantage point.

But Delta, they tell everybody they're a nonprofit. Okay. Can we just clarify nonprofit for a minute? I know we're doing a lot of sidebars. We can organize this later. When people say nonprofit, that does not mean that there is not profit somewhere in here.

Okay, Rolex is a nonprofit organization. Seriously? I'm wearing a Rolex right now. They're a nonprofit organization. Go look it up. Wow. So now that you have that information, I need you to separate a little bit of the church and state in your mind between what you think a nonprofit is. Because if I say I'm a nonprofit, you immediately, your heartstrings are pulled.

Honestly, we think nonprofit and we think, a foster care facility. We think a dog shelter. We think something that serves the less fortunate. Am I right? Right. So nonprofit- Or Sears. Sears is a nonprofit. There you go.

Okay. So nonprofit is just a business structuring. Let's just leave it at what it truly is and understand that Goodwill is a nonprofit. Okay? Goodwill, if you look up, I mean, we're not gonna get into politics today, but if you were to look up Goodwill, you'd never step a foot or donate a thing to Goodwill again.

Just because of how it's set up and the way that their employees are mistreated. There's a lot to go there. So- So someone's making money at pr- at Goodwill? People are making big money at Goodwill. And if you looked at what their year, their reporting shows, millions and millions of dollars their C-suite is making.

So just because someone is a nonprofit doesn't mean they don't have a profit. Okay? We're not gonna get into business structuring today. But regardless of someone being a nonprofit, that doesn't mean that there aren't investors, that doesn't mean there aren't things that exist so that business continues to bring money in.

Let's not misconstrue nonprofit by thinking, "That means this business doesn't have any money, doesn't make any money." Because the truth is, no business can exist on no money. The world works on money moving, right? So let's take that piece out. That's a great marketing tactic. I love that Delta Dental leads with that, but we're not gonna use that as we look at our dental practices.

We're gonna take a step back and think for a minute, how does an insurance company work? If you look at historically how you receive payments, you're gonna notice a couple things. At the end of every quarter, and at the end of every year, payments are gonna slow down. Why do you think? If I were to ask you, why would that ever happen with dental insurance payments, what would you think?

To have the year-end numbers high. Yeah. The year-end profit high. There you go. There you go. So and same with quarters, right? So you get to the end of a quarter and you're like, "Wait, where's all our money? Why am I not getting payments in?" And im immediately you want to choke the throat of whoever is your front office.

"You're not doing your job." Well, they very well might be doing their job. But it's out of their control. So we have to prepare for certain patterns of things. We have to have knowledge of things so that we can actually approach things a whole lot better. We gotta stay on top of it like nobody's business.

Let me give you an example. In billing, I'm kinda going back to that again now that we've kinda touched on credentialing, now I'm going back to billing. If we want to have billing where we collect in the same month what we produced, and we have that 98, 99% collections that we all dream of, that every new dentist gets out of school and attends a business meeting or a conference of some sort that they hear, "98% collections, 99% collections," but then they pull theirs and they're at 87% or 75%.

When we want that, we have to expect very simple things from our team, and we have to not overdo it. We have to not overcomplicate it. And overcomplicate it means listening to the noise. " I can't get ahold of insurance. I'm waiting on hold for too long." That's just the way that insurance works. They take forever.

I was in a dental office in, Maryland three weeks ago doing a week-long mentorship, coaching them on their billing. They had , a third-party person who was working from home. Third-party person meaning they have their own company, they work from home, and they do the billing. They have five offices that they do billing for, but this gal happens to work from home.

she shared with the office that it takes, on average, about three to six months for them to get a reply back from the VA in order for them to be able to get a patient approved. And sometimes she would get them in 30 to 60 days, but the overall tone when I spoke with her personally and what the rumor was in the office was that it took this three to six month timeline to get cases approved.

And to get payment for things could be anywhere from three to six months to get that payment in. I got on the phone with the VA. I spent three, all of three minutes, maybe five. If it was five minutes, I would be shocked. Asking them some very simple questions. "What is your turnaround time on claims being paid?

What is your turnaround time on getting approval for patients to receive services?" By the way, get in network with the VA. The VA is Veterans Affairs, where they, have, benefits for dental for dentists to be able to provide services for those veterans, that need services.

So VA will pay For a veteran to go to a dentist outside of the VA? Yeah, absolutely they will. Okay. Absolutely, yeah. It's wonderful actually. And you just, you can get a network with them, and they pay 100% of whatever is needed to be done. So let's just say for example, someone needs a crown.

Um, you know, maybe they need three crowns, six fillings, they need a deep cleaning, all of that. You would submit their entire treatment plan. The VA will review it, of course. I mean, they're not just approving everything that comes through, but they will have it reviewed by their dentist. You send in intraorals, e- all imaging, everything, perio charting, all the stuff from the exam, everything, right?

They'll approve it and get it back to you, and once they approve it, you can do everything, and there's a fee schedule the VA follows, which is quite generous, comparatively speaking, to,, you know, traditional dental insurance. And once that's approved, you can do all of those services, submit it and be paid, right?

Well, in this particular office, this particular person doing their billing had stated that it was this three to six-month timeline for everything. So on this call with the VA, I asked all these questions. If you want to get a patient approved for services, it's about a three to seven-day turnaround time for approval.

You fax it in here, they review it, they get it back to you. Within a week we could have that patient back. This office was sometimes up to six months before they were getting a patient back. Payment, the exact same. Send your claim in, your payments, and under 10 days we were able to get payments back in.

So sometimes there's a lot of noise. I, I'm mentioning this because there's a lot of noise. This particular office had well over six figures in outstanding AR. I won't disclose the dollar amount, but well over six figures, and the majority of those were VA patients. And the excuse, the noise from who was doing their billing was that it just takes longer because it's this kind of insurance.

That's not always true, so we need to take a step back, have simple expectations of our team, and not make billing so complicated. Here are some key simple expectations you can have of your team when you go start in an office, when you're working for an office, or when you're getting hired on in a practice that takes in dental insurance of any kind.

We work our claims every 10 days, meaning I call every claim that's outstanding every 10 days. So that means in a month you should have three touch points for every claim. Why 10 days, Sarah Beth? What does 10 days mean? Here's what 10 days means. The average dental insurance company has many automations, AIs, technologies that are already part of their system.

And because of that, adjudication or claim processing, when I say adjudication, I just mean claim processing, that happens at a rapid speed. Now, yes, there are some manual approvals that go on. But for the majority of claims, they are adjudicated in twenty-four to forty-eight hours. Because we know that's true, we allow seven to ten days for that claim to be snail mailed through the USPS

for that check to get to you. Your office should be on EFTs. You don't need to go with Zealous or any of those other companies out there to get EFTs. The dental insurance companies will pay you via EFT, and they will literally send that to you. If you are getting visas in the mail, call them, ask them to reissue it as a hard check.

Get on EFTs. You're gonna get your payments so fast. But if our first standard on our SOP, on our standard operating procedure is we work claims every ten days, then that's the first rule. Second, we collect what we produce in the same month we produce it. So, if we're gonna produce $100,000 this month, we're gonna collect $100,000.

Oh, well, Sarah Beth, what about the last week of the month when maybe insurance isn't cutting checks as frequently? Okay. Well, now our third rule of thumb, is our over-the-counter collections. We have an expectation of our team to have over-the-counter collections at a certain dollar amount.

If we know that, in- I'm gonna use the word insurance utilization. That word just means how many of my patients are using insurance? How ma- how many of them? Out of ten patients I see a day, how many of them have insurance, and what percentage of that is covered by insurance? The typical dental office is around 60 to 70% utilization.

So, 60 to 70% of the money you bring in in a month is from insurance. So if we know that information, then the other portion has to be over-the-counter collections, and we've got to measure our team on that. We've got to say, "Sarah Beth, if we're gonna bring in $100,000 over the course of the twenty days that we're open in a month, I need to collect this much over the counter every day because I know I'm gonna get this much from insurance this month."

So I literally map that out, and I set those goals for my team. If my team researches every ten days, I'm getting the money within ten days. I'm getting it in the same month I produce it. And if they collect over the counter this specific dollar amount, then I know that I'm gonna get to my 99%. We don't have to hear all the noise about how long this insurance takes to pay, how they don't process claims as fast, how hard it is to wait on hold from the insurance company to get a claim paid.

Use an online portal. My team works hundreds of thousands of claims every month, and we successfully use portals for the majority of that work. Portals meaning I log in online to MetLife's portal, like their metlife.com login for the user.

My practice is registered. I can see the status of claims right there. So every claim I submit to them, I can see the pending status. And every dental insurance does that for you, Delta, Blue Cross, Blue Shield, all? Yep, they all offer that, absolutely. Okay. But back to your deal, if you collected $100,000 in dental insurance checks- Yeah.

What should the over, what, what should the over-the-counter be? So if we're doing 100,000 a month, the average dental office is open 20 days a week, or 20 days a month, on average. I mean, if they're four days or five days, I don't know, but let's just say 20 days. So let's divide that by 20.

So that means we have a $5,000 a day of, collections. Let's go 60%. Let's times that by 60%. So $3,000 a day is gonna be paid by insurance, so $2,000 of that would need to be collected over the counter from our patients. That's done in multitude of ways. We can collect that from the patient portion from treatment plans that are being done today, or we can collect that by future scheduled appointments, right?

So, "Hey, Sarah-Beth, I know that you have a crown scheduled. Your portion of that appointment is $400. I'll collect that for you today so when you come in for your appointment, you don't have to worry about taking care of any sort of balance with me. It's already taken care of." Confidence right out the gate.

I speak to this on my podcast as well, No Silver Spoons, about having confidence when we're talking about payment. Much of our front office team members, they have and much, much of us, we do, everybody has this issue. It's an issue with money. How do I talk to someone about collecting $500 if I don't have $500?

So back to if it's 5,000 a day, they should be collecting how much over? 2,000 over the counter, 3,000 comes from insurance. So if you collect a dollar from insurance, there should be co-payments of 40 cents? Yeah. Roughly. And that's just giving you an average number.

Yeah. If you collect $100,000 a month- From just insurance checks- Mm-hmm

you should be also collecting how much co-payments? I would say another $40,000 in co-payments a month. If you were doing $100,000 in insurance. Maybe a little bit more than that. But what I would say is that, if your question is how would I ever meet that $2,000 difference or that 40% difference in over-the-counter, a lot of it has to do with the way that we teach our team, the way we coach our team, and the way we understand the disconnect between money that happens.

Because oftentimes it's not that it's impossible to collect money from patients, it's that we put mental barriers between how we communicate confidently to patients about what it is. If you look at medical insurance, no one bats an eye, right? "Oh, I have to, I have chemotherapy. I just have to pay for it. I have, I broke a leg, I have to pay for it.

I had to take my daughter to the emergency room for a bloody nose. It was a $500 copay, I had to pay it." Nobody balks at it. We might not like it, but with dental, there's this overarching black cloud on dentistry that says dentistry is taking advantage of patients. Dentistry is too expensive. Does anyone know how much it costs to become a dentist?

Do you understand that most things are disposable, and so you're literally throwing money away even if you didn't use the cotton rounds? I mean, it's insane how much it costs. So my dream when I got into dentistry and I learned more about how much it actually costs to be a dentist, I learned that my goal needs to be make dentistry better and make people understand, make dentists understand that dentistry doesn't have to be so hard.

It's very easy for you to collect what you produce in the same month, especially if you're in-network with insurances. They have to pay you. I mean, especially if you accept insurance, not even if you're in-network. If you accept insurance in any way, money should be free-flowing. If it's not, it's a billing problem.

That's it. It, that's the answer. There's no other magical thing that someone needs to know about. If you're not collecting what you're producing in the same month, there's a problem in billing. That's it. The problem is, my dental assistant, you know, I hired Jen when I started and she's there when I retire.

You know, no turnover. But she went to school to become a dental assistant. Mm-hmm. My hygienist went to school. I went to school. Yeah. And then you hire the front desk, you know, from Indeed. Yeah. And there's no school. They're not educated. And then you go to small businesses- Like,, go to any machine shop in Kansas.

Yeah. The only two people making the money is the owner- Yeah ... and the salesman taking incoming calls and calling out. Yeah. That guy's in a three-piece suit with a briefcase. Everybody making the metal factory, they have a lunch pail, $25 an hour, whatever. In dentistry, that person taking incoming calls and sending out your number one salesperson, , the first contact when they call or come in, off the street, no training.

Yeah, and that's one of the reasons why dentistry should be ran totally different in the age that we're in right now. And I'm gonna explain to you how I think a front office should be run, and how we should train and coach them, and what their goals should be aligned with. One, I think that the front office is the biggest revolving door because you get a new person in, you offer to pay them what they want, and then six months later they leave for a dollar more an hour down the street, which this happens all the time.

Second to that, when you get the new person in, they believe they are the supreme expert in dentistry and that they know everything because of what their last o- office did. And my argument to that, and this may sound crass, is that if that dental office was so good, why aren't you there? And if that worked so well, why did you leave there?

I don't wanna hear how dentistry was so great at the last dental office. And in fact, I don't hire a single person with dental experience that works for my company. Over 700 people I've hired since 2014, and not one of them I have hired with dental experience, not one. And I will forever stand on that mountaintop preaching to never hire with dental experience because- For the front desk

for the front desk. I believe that, that no matter what anybody says, and this might ruffle some feathers, that is a sales position. Right, right. All day long- Right ... that is a sales position. Right. That is not a dental position. Leave the dental to the dentist and the dental assistant who went to school.

This is totally to prove what you just said. So I believe wholeheartedly that treatment plan presentations happen by the dental assistant. I do not believe your front office should do that. I believe that the dentist should be educating the patient on why they need services and how they will be performed, and that your dental assistant should be confident enough to explain that to the patient, get them to sign their things, and then your money lady can come in right after that.

But your front office person should never be someone who has dental experience. Hire the best person from Starbucks. Hire somebody through the Dunkin' drive-through that wowed you on that speaker. Hire a waitress that is so good at selling cocktails. Hire someone who has been in pharmaceutical sales. I don't care how you wanna do it.

And then put them on a base plus commission. All right, if we hit 98% collections this month, I'm giving you a $500 bonus. If we hit 99% collections, I'm giving you a $550 bonus. If we hit 101% collection, I'm giving you a $2,000 bonus. Sarah Beth, why the jump? Because that's how important it is to me to get 101% collections and teach my salesperson to pre-collect for future appointments.

Because today is the most important day, and then tomorrow. Tomorrow we could have another shutdown, and the office could have to be closed for whatever reason, but I'm still collecting my money today, and that's the most important thing. I remember, have you heard of the Great Wolf Lodge? Yes. Remember going there, and they had- The kid's dream

and they have some, this new timeshare deal where you can actually buy a, a timeshare condo. Yeah. And I was just like, she starts pitching it, and I just kinda giggle and walk and I say something and she just kept coming back, coming back, come back, come back. And, it wasn't even 10 minutes and I flipped the whole timeshare deal to, "I need you to work for me."

I mean, you just won't say no. Every time I say something, you come back. Yeah. She had the energy. She had the confidence. It's like- That's right ... that's who I want answering my phone. Exactly. That's who I want outside. I don't give a crap- Yep ... if she knows anything about dentistry. I don't need her to know all the steps and the levels of s- products that we put on before the crown is cemented.

I don't care if she knows what a scaler is. I don't know if, I don't care if she knows what a Cavitron is. I don't care if she knows what the laser is, what it does, and all the benefits. I just want her to be able to upsell every hygiene appointment so that instead of us having an ei- an $800 hygiene day, we have a $3,200 hygiene day because we added fluoride, laser bacteria reduction, desensitizing medicaments, all the things.

I want them to be able to sell. I want a salesperson at my front desk that can shake hands, kiss babies, and absolutely adore on anybody who walks in that door so that more people come in. Yeah. And have dental assistants that, "Well, you know, if we're gonna do the two fillings over here, just, let's just numb the other side."

I mean, come on, just- Yeah ... you wanna just knock this out? Yeah. So now a $200 appointment just went to 400 or 1000. And every new dentist out there needs to understand that dentistry really is this simple. If you are a dentist that is confident in what you do, and you understand that really the barrier to everyone starting treatment comes down to three basic fundamentals.

It's either time, fear, or money, right? So I'm either, I either don't have enough time, I either am scared of the dentist, or I don't have money. If you understand that the barrier to starting today is one of those three things, and you have a great assistant next to you that backs your play, loves you as a dentist, believes in what you perform, the two of you can get anyone to start treatment today The money person's just collecting.

You've already sold it there y- on h- why it needs to be done. You're doing the part, right? You and your dental assistant are a team. Your front office person does not need to understand what RCT means. They don't need to understand what a 2750 is. They don't need to know any of that. Your dental assistant's putting the treatment in so it's coded right.

You, as the dentist, have diagnosed properly. Your dental assistant believes in you. They're presenting the treatment. Your front office, very simply put, they're collecting the money and they're making sure billing happens.

I think we can separate it out and have different measures of accountability. Let me give you an example of this. So with Dentistry Support, my company, one of the things early on that I used to, like, cringe when I would hear is, "What has your company done for me lately? Like, yeah, you do my billing. Yeah, you handle my phones.

Yeah, you do my eligibility, but, like, what have you done for me lately? What is my $3,000 a month covering?" You know? And then immediately as a small business owner, you know, you go into, like, justifying, "Oh, well, we did this, and we did this, and we did this." And then I thought to myself, "Why am I even having these conversations?

Why not lead with the end in mind?" So that's a Stephen Covey thing, Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, . Begin with the end in mind, right? So if I'm gonna do that, and I know that sometimes I'm gonna talk to a dentist that's gonna get a wild hair and they're gonna wanna know all the things because they're mad about their collections, what can I do to make that better?

Now, there's a lot of salespeople that might be listening to this very episode thinking, "Oh, well, my product is the best. I have CECA. I have Dental Intelligence. I have da, da, da, da, da." That's gonna tell them everything they need to know. All of that's a lot, okay? And it's, they all serve a purpose. Don't get me wrong.

All of those softwares serve a purpose, but it's a lot of information for a dentist that just randomly has a wild hair and wants to know something. They don't actually wanna look at it every day because they're not business people. They work with their hands, and they want to work with their hands, and that's okay.

So what we're gonna do is my company, Dentistry Support, every day we provide a daily recap report, and every month an MSR, which is a monthly success reporting. And what we do every day is we say, "In the last 24 hours, this is how your business performed. This is what we produced, this is what we collected, this is what we billed out to insurance.

These are your anticipated collections coming in." Any time the dentist wants to know, pull those reports. They're there at 7:00 AM every day. Awesome. At the end of the month, "Here's how your business performed. You produced this, you collected this." They don't need to understand how the claim is paid.

They need to know what metrics to look for. The metrics to look for. Am I collecting what I'm producing every month? If my productions says $100,000 and I collected $80,000 and we wrote off 20,000, that is a question you need to ask, why did this happen? That's insane. So what percent of production is collected?

Yes. What, what's the easiest way to say that? So if I produce 100,000, the best dental offices out there are collecting at 99%. The best ones. I wanna collect at 101, so my goal is to incentivize my front office to have 101% and give them a massive bonus at 101% collections, 'cause I know that they're gonna strive for that.

They're gonna want that big money, and what's your bonus with it again? So I, this is just what I think they should be. On a $100,000 a month office, I think that

at 98% collections, we do $500. Okay. At 99%, they get $50 more, just a small little carrot. But at 101% of collections, we give them $2,000. Damn, girl. I want the 101%. That's right, so does your dentist. So does your dentist. Incentives have, have to align. They have to align.

Now, you can break that up however you want. I know a dental practice in Washington, and I know she's gonna listen to this episode, so I'm so sorry to whoever you are. You know who you are. I'm not gonna say her name. She's gonna listen to this, and she's gonna be like, "Sarah Beth, I know you told my office."

What they do, their practice does 900,000 a month. They bonus $250 at 99%. They do 900,000 a month. I'm sorry, 250 at 98, 300 at 99, and at 101, they get $500. So you can spread it however you want. My basic thing I want you to understand, my philosophy, is that you give a good bonus at 98, you give a tiny bit more at 99, and you give a banger at 101.

Like, an absolute banger out of the park at 101. Okay, but she's asking, she's in dental school. She's saying, "How can you collect 101% of your money? I mean, if I go buy a bottle of water for a dollar, how do they collect a dollar one?" Pre-collecting for the next one. "So, this is Sarah Beth. I've got you on the schedule for two weeks from now.

You're getting those two crowns and that filling. Your portion is $800. I'm gonna go ahead and collect that from you now. We'll make sure your appointment is set up. You won't have to worry about paying for anything when you come in that day. We've got you all taken care of." Like, and it's very fluid.

It's very much like that. It's, "Sarah Beth, I'm gonna go ahead and collect now for that appointment in two weeks. Honestly, you don't wanna have to worry about money the day you're coming in. I already know you're anxious about it." Blank. Done. Or, "We have Klarna, Affirm, Cherry, Sunbelt, whatever. We're gonna go ahead and take care of all of that today.

You don't have to worry about it when you come in." You are doing the patient a service by pre-collecting. You are helping them make their appointment in the future better- By collecting now. And that's the mindset we want our salesperson to have. And if you have a salesperson up front, that's how that will work.

We also should change that title. Like, stop calling them your front office. Stop calling them patient coordinator. Stop calling them whatever. Change their name to business assistant. You know, we just had the front office desk employees. Yeah. So we named the hygienists dental chair employees, and the assistants dental stool employees, and, we just started naming everybody off furniture.

Yeah, that's, like, ridiculous. Wanted to be a stool. Honestly, if they're a business assistant, they know that they're thinking about the business. So you call them business associates or- Business assistants. Business assistants. They assist the business.

And what do you call, hygienists and dentists and assistants? Dentist, hygienist, dental assistant, just what they are. And then everybody up front is a business assistant? Business assistant. Okay. Now, do you believe in a head office manager?

There's two ways to run your dental office. One, you have all of these positions fulfilled in person, in office, right? The other is you have a company handle everything virtually for you. The reason Dentistry Support exists is because we wanna consume less of the P&L, less of the profit and loss statement.

So as a new dentist, new grad, you're coming out of dental school. How much of my P&L, my profit and loss statement, that might be the first time you've ever heard of that spoken, or maybe you've heard of a P&L before. When I first heard of a P&L, I thought it was a P, letter P, letter N, letter L, just so everybody can have a little giggle.

I didn't know it was P and L. That's beautiful. So everybody can get a little giggle out of that. I did. But now I know it's a P and L. So for all of you that have never heard of it before, it's a P and L, a profit and loss statement. And there are percentages that your CPA is going to expect that you know and understand, and you keep budgets in those certain percentages.

And I'm sure we could have six more podcast episodes breaking apart this one and kinda going off on tangents. But I'll tell you the most important ones are- No, but we could have a series of six articles in Dental Town Magazine, , that, write the whole thing- and we'll publish the whole thing.

You got it, and I'll totally do that for you. Yeah. So let's talk P&L for a second. As a new grad, you wanna know the biggest numbers, right? You don't care about the 1% for supplies or the 2% for this. You care about the big numbers. And the big numbers in a dental office are payroll. Big, right? So the average dental office, you're gonna see their payroll be anywhere from 28 to 49% of their P&L, of all their money, is payroll.

Their payroll- Staff payroll, all of that payroll  is that also include the dentist's- Yeah ... pay? So I'm say- up to 49% is gonna include dentist pay, right? Okay. , That's even if he's the owner of his own practice? If he's owner of his own practice. , They always peanut butter and jelly their own number.

I used to tell myself, I said, Look, if I sold this dental office for a million dollars- and bought a 30-year tax-free bond from the US government risk-free- Yeah

you know, I'd make a nickel on every dollar of that- Yeah ... without getting out of bed." Yeah. So if I'm gonna get out of bed, and if I put an S&P,, stock market bond, I get 12%. Yeah. So I could be making 12% on this, the asset, without getting out of bed.

Your profit number, you want it to be as big as you can. And the numbers that you can control, we wanna focus on those. So what numbers from your P&L can you control?

Well, in my opinion, I can control the staff dollar amount, the amount of money for the staff. So if my staff, let's say my front office, I mean, some front office staff, it blows my mind when I hear how much they're paying. But let's talk about that number for a minute and how we can shorten it. What's your staff equal minus the dentist, whether it's a owner, pay?

25 to 28% is typically staff. 25 to 28. But after the pandemic, a lot of my friends, for the first time in their life, passed 30, and some of them are some of the biggest names in dentistry. Like, I don't wanna throw my buddy Rick Kurster under the bus. Don't throw him under. He was the king of mean and lean.

Yeah. Yeah. Last time we had dinner, you know, he's got 100 offices, we got a big variance, but he says, "Man, I got..." You know, he's got 100 offices, but he's never seen labor like this in some of his offices. It's so high. He said some of them are near that magical 30. And this is from the guy who held it at 20% for decades and decades and decades.

So how do we lower that? I have the answer for you. Okay. The answer is you start exploring an offsite team. Because my company, we aim to consume less than 3.5% of your entire P&L for a full front office team.

, Are you saying that you take over the front desk and when they walk in, there's no one even sitting there?

That's one option. Are you serious? And I have a second option. And what's the second option? That you have someone there that's your salesperson. So if you were doing 100,000 a month, you could have one salesperson up there and you guys can handle it all? Yeah. 'Cause when I- And we'll charge you 3,500 bucks a month- Okay, now are you- We'll do all your billing, we'll do all your phones

now is that phone internet? Is that internet phone? Because some people in the world- Your phones, it doesn't matter 'cause they don't have internet phone. Your phone lines can be forwarded to my virtual call center, and my phones team has a goal every month to add 10% to your scheduled production every single month.

That's their minimum goal. How many employees do you have now? Over 700. You have 700 employees? In nine different countries. Practice management software, some of them are internet-based and includes a phone, but some people say that once your internet is on 100%, you lose phone calls.

Are you... It's called voice over internet. Voice, voice over IP. Yeah. Yeah. We have, ours is voice over IP ... and is that bleeding edge or leading edge? It there today? Is it good enough? Oh, it's amazing. So even for a consumer calling and the front desk lady, is it Mexico, it's still working?

Absolutely. And our system is so intelligent that if a phone call were to end, we know who it ended by. Oh, it was a disconnect by the caller, or was a disconnect by us, and if it's by us, we can dissect what might have happened. 

Is there a dental practice or any software that you like more than the others or- Oh gosh, everyone asks me this, and I refer to a lot of different ones for different reasons, but my most favorite, oh gosh, I shouldn't say this unless they paid me, but my most favorite dental software is Open Dental.

I love Open Dental, and yes, the interface is archaic. It really, the interface truly is like a DOS machine. it's like Windows 98. . But the comm log is amazing. The way you can put insurance benefits- the comm log, it's literally called C-O-M-M L-O-G.

Comm log is, like, where you can put all your communication log, of like every interaction with a patient in, and then the insurance interface is so great because you can put, all of the breakdown of benefits in really, really well. Whereas, like, Dentrix, even though they've made updates, it still doesn't work the way it should.

So many of them just don't work the way they s- they should and, and Dentrix, they had the wrong business model. They want all this upfront cost, which is- I know ... that common barrier to entry. Yeah. And Open Dental says, "Join us, just start paying a monthly payment." That's right, and we'll just do it and whatever.

And we'll just do it. And it works really well. Like, it's, you know, Dentrix, they want this big up front, and then you pay, and then every little update or every little support you need, or if you wanna send this this way or do it this way, it's all, they nickel and dime, and nickel and dime for a software that isn't fully capable of doing everything.

Like, our treatment coordinators in a dental office are still having to manually fix things in a treatment plan in Dentrix because maybe they didn't have this update, or this update costs too much here, or whatever. Open Dental is just there. Yeah. It's just there, and it's easy, and it's not complicated.

And it reminds these new dental off- these new dentists, stop listening to the noise. Don't go to the CareStack. And I've, work directly with many CareStack clients and many of the owners at CareStack, I love them for different reasons, but they have almost too much.

I would tell you, don't listen to all the noise in how a new cloud-based software is coming out, because a lot of them are over-promising. Called CloudStack? CareStack. CareStack. CareStack. But these cloud-based or virtual-based dental softwares are overcomplicating their systems by trying to add in a verification of benefits, or they're trying to add in automatic billing.

But it's not working right. It's like the adjustments don't come in right. They're writing off something that shouldn't be written off. They're denying something that shouldn't be denied. . Human effort is needed, and in dentistry, because of how complicated insurances are and how they're different- let me stop you just for a second on- Yeah

on, Delta Dental. How many different Delta Dentals are there? Every state, multiple in a state. So there's- 39 ... 39 different- 39 and I gotta tell you, when, when I moved out here, the head of Delta Dental was from Missouri. Yeah. His name was Ed Judd. His board of directors was all the best ortho.

There wasn't one dentist on his board that you wouldn't refer your mom to I'd call him up, I'd have a, question with him. We'd meet for lunch. I'd bring my front office team to his front office. They'd look at the deals. 'Cause I was always complaining to Ed. I said, "You know, you're giving me way too much money for crowns, dentures, partials, this."

When, do you know when I started my dental office, the Dead Sea wasn't even sick. And, back then I was paying my hygienist I think $20 an hour in '87. Yes. And they were paying me, like, $28 for a cleaning. And I said, "You know-" but then if I walked in the room, did four wisdom teeth, that's 1,000.

If I went in there and did a molar root canal, it was 1,000. A crown was a everything was a... I said, "I just need more money to cover the cleanings, exams, and X-rays is where I'm getting my butt kicked. And oh my God, we had all these conversations. So then, over the years they decided that, you know, they don't need any dentists on their board like that.

They need people to represent the patients, the people who don't know a damn thing about dentistry. And then they got dentists that will, agree with what they said for,

I've seen Delta at its best and now I've seen it a long way from its best. And, a lot of dentists are sitting there on Dentaltown, they're always asking, "Well, what's the best AI to automate all my insurance in?" Dude, they don't wanna pay their claims. Yeah. So- Delta Dental's 39 companies.

How long would it take them to get a dozen AI software engineers and completely automate the claims process and - you would send the claim and it's deposited in Chase Bank. . But could they do it? They could, but let me tell you why they're not, and let me tell you why AI in dental billing and AI in eligibility is absolutely a farce.

Right. Anyone that tells you that they've got it and that you should buy their software, you need to slam the door , because it doesn't exist. Because listen to me, dental insurance is not in the business to pay. Right. They're not. No insurance is. They're not. So- Geico doesn't wanna pay

State Farm doesn't wanna pay. Nobody wants to pay. Just think about it for a minute. What you are trying to know is, I'm gonna give some words here, some acronyms that you may not have heard before, but hopefully this helps bring some light to it.

So there's something called an API. An API is like a special key, a special bit of information that Delta Dental, MetLife, all these other insurance companies are gonna give to a software developer. And they're gonna say, software developer's gonna go, "Hey, Delta Dental, I want my software to be able to read your breakdown of benefits so I can create a software that will give a full breakdown, file a claim, pay a claim, all this stuff, and I want to be able to sell this software to dental offices everywhere.

So can I buy your API?" And Delta Dental will say, "Sure, sure, sure. You can buy my API." And what they don't know is Delta Dental is gonna give them a portion of the information, because they're not gonna give them full access to Delta Dental's platform, no matter how much money they wanna spend. I don't care if it's $20 million they offer them, they're never gonna give them all the information.

But now said software company's gonna have to go to every single dental insurance company that exists and ask for the exact same thing and pay for the exact same thing. And do you think every dental insurance company is going to give their full API to Joe Schmoe- AI? , Because they're not in the business to pay.

They're in the business to hold onto their money as long as possible because their shareholders wanna be profitable. And I don't care if you're non-profit, for-profit, LLC, S corp, C corp, whatever you are, I don't care what kind of business structure you have, you're trying to make money, and you've got to be able to meet certain metrics as an organization.

So selling an API to an AI company to create said software, it will never have all the information. Said software? Said software, like for the example- ... software. The problem is that AI has become a buzzword. Right. And it's this word of like, "It makes my life easier. It makes me more money.

It makes me more profitable." But in dentistry, because of the structure of how dental is paid with insurances, there are so many different factors. For example, Delta might pay $700 for a crown, MetLife might pay 800, and Aetna might pay 650. If that's true, and all three of those numbers are different, that AI would have to know exactly how Delta's gonna pay, exactly the type of insurance plan the patient has.

There's so many anomalies. There's no perfect AI-, but the, , I'm all pro. What you're talking about is AI- Yeah ... which is artificial incompetence. When it comes to the business- ... of dentistry. Now let me tell you, I believe AI does belong in dentistry for other reasons.

For example, there are tools and instruments now that you can literally point the instrument at a tooth and it'll tell you if it's, has even a micron of- Okay, I will disagree on this. Yeah. I started, my, I got four sons. One of them's a, got a couple degrees in computer software.

He came to me September 2020, September 2023. Mm-hmm. Which will be three years ago this September. And he came to me and, , he made me, he'd been telling me for three months that I gotta download this ChatGPT, " he came over to my house, said, "Dad, Dad, Dad, , you, you gotta do this."

I mean, he's my son, he's been to my lecture a million times. , I think he went with me to 32 different countries to lecture, and he says, , and he showed me this AI, and he was just so excited, and he finally... I got religion on ChatGPT, and he told me, he said, "Dad, I'm sorry, but, your software is 25 years old.

We, we can't put lipstick on a pig. We have to take it behind the barn and shoot it and rewrite the whole thing-" "and it'll take years." , We're at two and a half years. We're almost done. September will be three years. I feel like, , I'm a junior in, , AI school. Because, you know, 2023- Yeah

2024, 2025. And, , like, when you talk about these, , APIs application programming interface, every day I'm in these artificial intelligence. I mean, and here's what I believe. I believe that when you're talking about math, physics, chemistry, accounting, heavy quantitative data and images, it's here.

But replacing a human conversation, .. people get upset when they get, , push one, you know- like every time you call a doctor. . Every time you call a doctor. It's like you get on an airplane, the flight attendant, her best message is to show you how to put a seatbelt on.

I just wanna stand up. Is there anybody in the plane- that does- doesn't know how to put on a seatbelt? And then you call your doctor's office. They tell you, "If this is an emergency, call 911." So when I walk in there, I always say, "This is not an emergency, but if you're having an emergency while you're treating me," why is this on your answering machine?

It's so redundant. And , they get mad at pushing buttons. And you think you're gonna automate that with AI? . I mean, humans are so complex. And dentistry already has a cloud over us, so when you try to implement something that hasn't been perfected out and that there are too many different anomalies to make that perfect, you're just going to get more angry patients.

Because if you're gonna trust AI to verify your benefits and that AI gets it wrong once, what are you gonna tell your patient that now has a $3,000 bill they weren't expecting? "Oh, sorry, my software screwed it up." They don't care. Why did you choose software? Why didn't you have a person doing it? And l- , look at the AI when you call Walgreens.

They have 8,500 locations. With 8,500 locations with six-year degreed pharmacists each one, you'd think they got the biggest money. And whenever I call my pharmacist and go to the AI, they can't ever get it right. And you'll ask them a question like, you know, "Is my, , pills in?" And, and it'll say, "Our office hours are,"

Or, "Do you need to speak to a pharmacist instead?" When I call Walgreens, I just say, "Pharmacist." Yeah. "Pharmacist." Yeah. "And well, it's faster if you go to our website. Pharmacist." Yeah. "Well, have you tried call-" you know, "Pharmacist."

Yeah. And finally, finally they put you on a human. But I think the last thing that AI will take over is a human-to-human- I think so too ... element. And I don't think that we should be so quick to jump to that. I think that we hear noise from our front office saying things like, "Eligibility takes too long.

Billing takes too long. Phones are ringing off the hook." Okay, if that's the case, let's bring that to a team offsite, lower our expenses in office, and keep the person in office selling and growing the practice. The problem in dentistry- Is that, if you go to a, an assembly plant- it'll make one car per, per hour. Yeah. They decide they wanna make a million cars, they'll divide it to eight, 83,000. They know precisely. Yeah. Yeah. But the problem in, dentistry is the phone might not ring for an hour, and then four people try to call all at the same time.

Or you're two hygienists and everybody's checking everybody out at the end of the hour- and checking. So she was up there doing nothing for 30 minutes, and then the phone... it's just not steady. It's nothing. It doesn't flow. So what, how does your service help if all of a sudden five people, call at the same time?

Well, for one, the, all the tasks that were happening at the front desk are no longer happening at the front desk. So for example, the billing is happening somewhere else, so , the front office person doesn't have to worry about sending a claim when a patient comes to check out, right? , When the patient comes in, they're not worrying about having to prepare an eligibility 'cause that's being done offsite.

, We're not worrying about confirming appointments at the counter because my team's already confirming them. If the phone's ringing in the office and another one comes in simultaneously, it is automatically going to my team who's offsite that's gonna get it right now, okay? Now, if you have someone coming and you have three people at one time, that whole hour while that front office team member was waiting for the patient to be done, this is their time to shine.

We're going to pay attention to what's happening in the back office. Oh, they added a filling. Oh, they added a fluoride treatment. Okay. I already know, I have their ledger done. If I have to collect payment, they should already be doing that in the office, in the operatory with the patient. So if we added the filling, the dental assistant already told the patient they needed it.

The patient accepted it. They're doing it. The money person should have already come in the office at checkout. There should be no money collection. There should be nothing but, "Have a nice day," because we pre-collected for that appointment likely, or we collected in the operatory and they did it same day.

Our dynamic completely changes. It's not the old school dynamic of do it as you check out, take all this time on the phone, yada, yada, yada. We're pre-collecting because we're trying to hit 101% collections, right? How much, do you remember the late Sally McKenzie? Yes. Oh my God, I love her. No one had a giggle like her.

No. It was a scream. It was almost like a screech. Yeah. But she said that, every dental office, these numbers come back from the '80s and '90s, she said that every dental office- They didn't add about 200 to $300 a day of just stuff they did.

Like, "Oh, you took bite wings, but you forgot to add it to the bill." "Oh, that doctor said, oh, this tooth's gonna be numb. Should we just do the filling behind it?" Oh, but it didn't get added. Or, "You took a PA, but just didn't," she said it was 2 to $300 a day per dental office. You know what it is now?

What is it now? And this is just X-rays. Only X-rays. The average dental practice loses $3 million over the lifetime of not adding in X-rays that were done that we forgot to add in. That would pay off your ex-wife. You could get a free divorce just for taking care of all- 3 million just X-rays alone.

And you know another thing Sally would do? She was so funny. She was, God, she was so much piss and vinegar. If they were complaining like, "I can't believe I'm gonna pay you $5,000 to come in for two days," or whatever, so she'd say, so when she got there, she'd tell the doctor, " you just go have your normal day."

And she'd go in there and she'd get on the phone and work the counter and she goes, Sarah, Beth, I see you, , didn't make your payment, and that's okay because right now I could take your MasterCard, Visa, or American Express. How would you like to take care of that right now?" And she would not come out of there until she got her whole fee paid.

She goes, "Oh, you're worried about paying me 5,000? I just collected $8,000 in your bank, so I'm already up three. Can we begin now?" She said there's not a dental office in America where she couldn't make five grand collections right now on your AR just calling.

There's a local dentist here that I worked for several years back, and absolutely genuinely one of the nicest dentists I've ever met in my life. Great clinician, Dr. Eric Kerbs. I hope you know him. Yes. One of the greatest men I've ever worked for, and he always told me, "Sarah Beth, you have the magic."

And, I worked for him a very long time ago, but, I came into one of- I was a regional director of operations for him for several years, and I went into one of his dental practices that he bought, and he just happened to buy... He actually still owns this practice today. He sold off many of the others.

But, this one practice, he had just acquired it, and the old office manager in there, they had a patient in the back, and the patient, came in and it was gonna be a $12,000 treatment, and it, the patient talked to the office manager, the office manager said, "Oh, they wanted to wait till later. They didn't wanna do it right now."

And the patient had their hands on the door leaving, and I was like, "Absolutely not. We don't let a patient with a $12,000 treatment plan leave saying that they're just not ready now or they want it to wait. That doesn't work for me." I didn't say this, but in my mind I'm freaking out because are you kidding me?

That's a $12,000 bill, and I'm gonna collect it. No sooner did 45 seconds happen and I had the patient back in, they were giving me their credit card, pre-paying for the entire treatment. It's how you look at it. It's the way you communicate. It's how your confidence is. Because that person was making 20 bucks an hour, behind on car payments, came to work disheveled, wasn't confident.

I show up in my very best every single day. I believe that, I know every person that walks in has money. I don't believe any other way. I just can't. Everyone has the ability to do it, and if they don't, they're lying to you or you haven't figured out a way to get to them. , , you can make anything happen.

There is no reason your practice shouldn't collect 101% every month. There's no reason you shouldn't make your goals. It's a billing issue if you're not. Have the payment options. Be flexible in things. I don't mean by taking payments from patients on treatment on your ledger. I mean, get Klarna, get Affirm.

These things are buzzwords, and people are using them for instant- get what? , Klarna. Klarna will give you the full dollar amount up front, and then the patient pays every two weeks to Klarna. Or Affirm. These are all- Are what? Affirm. A-F-F-I-R-M. That- A-F-F-I-R-M? Yeah.

They offer 0% interest for 12 months, 18 months, 24 months. These are big players right now in payments, and everyone is making payments on everything. Care credit and the days of using just care credit are over. There are so many other options today that dentists are not taking advantage of that we could get more patients to pay up front treatment that we're just not doing, because we're not doing it.

I mean, it's, that's simply it. It's not that it's hard to get someone approved or hard to get money. We're just not doing it. Challenge. You get something that you feel is a setback. Like maybe you're a new dentist but you have an office and now you're worried about reviews 'cause you got a bad review.

Okay, listen, everybody gets a bad review, and if you don't have any bad reviews- Someone's lying somewhere or you had someone remove them. Do you think that Walmart, Amazon, doesn't have people they make mad? Okay, everyone's going to do that. Who cares? Like, stop letting things give you a setback. Stop letting something else tell you you shouldn't move forward.

Like, just do it. Dude, you're not gonna believe this, sir. The, sir, Beth. Yeah. The pyramids have bad reviews. Oh, God. And I was going to the pyramids- Everybody does. Who cares about reviews? I was going to the pyramids. Get over it. I think they're old. I think they look ugly. I don't even know why it ca- I mean, there's like 21 stars on the pyramids I mean, people need to get a grip.

Yeah. People- It's really not that serious. And yes, you're still gonna have patients. I don't care if you got a bad review on Monday. Tuesday, you're still gonna have new patients. Next Monday, you're still gonna have a crown seat. Like, life goes on, okay? So open the practice, hire the employee, get another location.

Do it. Do it for yourself. Do it for your future generations. Just do it. We gotta wrap this up. Okay. Yeah. Thank you so much  📍 for all you do. Thank you so much. Thank you so, so much. This was great.