Create Amazing Team Adventures – Season 1: Episode 2

Transcribed from the actual audio of the Dr. Chris Griffin Show…

The Dr. Chris Griffin Show – Season 1 Episode 2

“Putting on the same jerseys doesn’t make you a team. You’re still a collection of individuals until you have a common goal.” Now who said that?

Welcome to the Dr. Chris Griffin Show. Your resource for leveraging systems and technology to easier workload, increase productivity and provide you with the time off you deserve to live the life of your dreams. It’s time to practice productivity in the passionate pursuit of a better life with your host, Dr. Chris Griffin. The doctor is in.

Yes, yes…Hello everybody! Welcome once again to the Dr. Chris Griffin Show. This is actually Season 1 Episode 2 and I want to thank you for tuning in. Now let me go ahead and reveal who made that amazing quote back there. I think it’s very applicable quote to anyone who are in to dental practice or medical practice or any small business. That person was the one and only Mr. Harry Sinden, GM Coach and president of the Boston Bruins. Now if you are not a hockey fan, let me fill you in. Mr. Sinden actually presided over the longest playoff stretch consecutive seasons in the playoffs with 30 seasons as a GM. Now that’s a pretty big deal. 30 years in a row going to the playoffs and also in his 4th season, 6970 he also coached the Bruins for their first Stanley Cup in 29 years and all I can say is who stays with the team for that long? I mean that’s a pretty big amazing thing anyway. I mean I’ve always heard a coach, most coaches I’ve heard says that as a joke, that every year they make 10% of their fan base angry. So after 10 years, no one’s left to be their friend or be a fan of theirs to try to keep them around. I’m not sure about the advance math on that deal but we’ll, we’ll forgive the people that say that because it is a very simple way of saying that “Yes, staying around for a long time in one place as a head coach is a hard thing to do”. And I think it’s a hard thing to do as a doctor or anything else like that to be the boss man and the person that calls the shots for any extended period of time. I can do the first 10 years, yeah. That’s almost like the honeymoon phase. After that, people that stay with you that long and longer, you know, it’s up to, and there are people that are super loyal, and then there’s also going to be people that kind of get in your nerves and sure you keep them around because you think they’re really good or whatever, but it’s always a challenge staying around for a long period of time.

And so now of course I’m speaking with great wisdom as I’ve had the same dental practice since 1999. I do still have, in fact, an original employee that’s still with me. And yes, you know, it’s a give and take but she’s really, you know, she’s amazing person at what she does and so hopefully I’m not the worst doctor in the world to work for. So we have a good give and take. Anyway, that’s the guy that gave the quote and I think it’s a really good way to start this out.

Now we’re going to talk about something today that a lot of you out there, I’m afraid, have not taken advantage of. You guys are probably leaving so much money and productivity on the table by not taking advantage of this amazingly powerful tool that anyone can do, by the way. This is not something that’s left for the ultra rich or the ultra smart. Anyone who’s thinking can get this done in their practice, small business or whatever. So after today, you are going to be privy to the most powerful team productivity building strategies ever invented. And of course, if you know me, you can tell the hyperbole is flowing off my lips as usual. I really do believe it’s a huge deal. And we are going to walk you through exactly how to create for yourself this powerful strategy. Okay? Anyone wondering what that powerful strategy is? Maybe you didn’t read the show notes yet or the title of the podcast. But what we’re going to be doing is we’re going to be teaching you how to create amazing team experiences. Okay? Amazing team experiences. So a lot of times you think, you know a lot of people have this trouble of, they feel like, yes, work is work and when 5 o’clock hits, you know, it’s always like the old cartoon. I can’t think of the dog’s name right now. But you know you had Wile E. Coyote and the white dog with the red bangs. If I remember that, all day long. It was Wile E. Coyote’s job to try to steal sheep and all day long it was the dog’s job to stop him. Now these guys, they beat each other up, they beat each other to death. You know usually Wile E. is getting the worst end of the stick for sure but when that end of the day whistle goes off just like it would in a factory, you know, they stop what they’re doing; usually Wile E. Coyote’s getting pounded over the head or something. They stop, the dog will put him down, and they walk and get their lunch box and they’ll leave. Okay? So that’s the way that a lot of us view the work day at our practice. You think, okay, I will accept the fact that I’ve got to come in and get this done. I’ve got to bust things down and be a good doctor and I’ve got to, you know, I got to be a good leader, whatever that means to me. And by golly, at 5 o’clock, when that bell rings, I’m out of here. Okay? And I think a lot of your team members would feel the same way too. But what I’m going to tell you. Is with just a small amount of creativity, not even a ton of creativity, right? Just a small amount of creativity you can create this either onsite or offsite adventures for your team. Well you call them adventures, experiences, whatever. And these things are going to give you so much invisible currency. This is going to put it in your bank account. So the next time you’re kind of, you know a tail at your practice and you’re acting bad, it’s going to put things over on your side of the column. So they might overlook a little more and maybe things are a little more pleasant. Sort of gives you a little leeway to not be perfect all the time when the team is really on your side. And they know that you’re looking out for their best interest because you’ve proven it to them by doing amazing things like creating amazing team experiences. Okay?

One thing I’ve got down here on my next course, you guys as usual. You can all get a copy of the mind map that I’m actually using that I built myself. This is the way that I built everything in my life. As I do mind maps to begin with because that’s just how I think. So you can get a copy of this mind map over at the website, drchrisgriffin.com. Also, when you go there, you get these mind maps. Now we’re going to have other stuff there, links to things that I’m talking about. I’m going to go back and put all that in at the end of the day. And we’re going to do that. So there’s always some good ways to get some goodies and stuff like that. But when you get these mind maps, you’re going to see a lot of notes on here. It’s a lot of stuff, I probably just going to gloss over and never even talked about on the actual show. Right? But it’s there and it’s all useful information. A lot of times I put little links and stuff in the mind maps myself, you know, for me. But it’s there for you too. You can absolutely use it for inspiration and your team building, trip building stuff too. So anyway, that’s what you do if you want to copy the mind map for today’s show.

Now let’s go over a few examples of some of the things that I have personally done with my dental practice to create these amazing experiences. Actually I’ve done this with Griffin Dental, my dental practice. I’ve also done this with Capacity Academy or Effective Dentistry, my other company. So let’s think about some of the options that I’ve done over the years and some of the, let’s also create some segments, some differentiation points. So what are some things you can do? What doesn’t have to be the most extravagant thing in the world, right? You can do things that are fun and rewarding for your team and sort of a team building thing. You can do it locally.

For a long time, well, actually many times, we’ll set these goals at the beginning of the year and some of the goals are mundane. In dentistry, some of the bigger goals that everyone keeps are production and collections. Production, of course, means the amount of money you produced in practice. And collections, means the amount of money you actually collected. Now we all wished we collected 100% of what we produced but as anyone who runs a business knows; you’re never going to do that. So whatever is going to happen is going to happen. You know, you’re going to run problems with insurance companies. You’re going to run the, there are various different issues, you know patients not paying all their bills, whatever. But anyway, those are couple of the big things we like to watch. And then also over the years, I’ll probably do a show on this too. But there’s an amazing book called “Mastering the Rockerfeller Habits” by Vern Harnish. Now that book right there allows you to sort of really sit down and think about dividing your year into time modules; like quarters even. And so each quarter, it’s even like a yearly goal, and it’s really hard to keep up with for the whole year. You might have quarterly goals or monthly goals. And each one of those periods of time, of course that has its own reward and things are really cool, you know, you might give it a good name or something. Anyway that’s a whole different episode down the road and we’ll absolutely do that. In fact, one of the goals of this show is I have an amazing, I mean I say it’s amazing, I have a really big library. Okay? So anytime I go somewhere, I’m always looking for business books. Or reading any books but then I personally love business books, right? For whatever reason. And so I’ve got this huge collection. Well right now, I’m just looking at my wall of my bookshelves. I have 2 big bookshelves at my office room recording this. And those bookshelves are just full. It’s bursting to the seams with business books. Right? And so I’m looking here at that book. There’s probably 100 books that anyone who’s serious about running a business should have some exposure to. I’m not saying you have to read every one cover to cover but you kind of need to know the basic concepts behind each one. So it’s one of the goals for me as we go through this show over the years. To periodically pull out examples and sort of have a, almost like a book party day and talk about the book and how it can relate to you as you’re trying to run your private practice.

But anyway, just make it here or there. But you can have the local fun day like if you meet your yearly goal. So this past, I guess this past year, yeah January 2015. We had met our yearly production goal. Okay? We set a goal. It was our first year back in the new building. We are actually on there half a year after a fire destroyed our practice that have been there forever. And we set a yearly goal and we met it. Okay? Now it might just be giving pats on the back or handing out $5 dollar bills. I mean what are you doing? $100 bills, well that’s even better. Well what we decided to do in my practice, if you don’t know the entire story, I only work on patients, Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays. Now Thursdays, I’m there but I’m just sort of there, I’m running my other businesses and there are things that’s going on at the dental office catching up on paperwork, whatever. You know, just simple stuff like that. I’m there if there’s an emergency or whatever but I mean that’s never, that never happens hardly. But I’m there. Anyway, we decided to take one of those Thursdays and didn’t tip them off until it was just about time to go. But so we tell everybody on Wednesday, “Look, tomorrow you need to show up and be ready to go somewhere. We’ll be back normal time. You have to get the kids in school. You have to pick them up, that’s fine, no problem. You know, we’re still going to be on time but we’re going to have a fun day.” So we loaded up at 8 just like normal and we head out to Memphis, the closest big town to me. And unfortunately it’s 66 miles to the mall in Memphis but that’s just the price you pay for living out in the boondocks, that’s fine. That’s what I’ve always done so I’m not too terribly against driving to go places, so we you know get out of town at 8:15 or so. You would drive to the mall, they’re not open yet but there’s like a breakfast place in the mall that’s opened. So we go in there and buy some breakfast and then I tell them the big kickers not just “Hey, we’re having a fun day instead of working. But I’m actually giving everyone of you a…” I think it was 3, thank you for reminding me that. I gave everyone $300 bills. And so we had a little game. Everyone had to go out and spend the $300 on themselves. Okay? And they had to bring me the receipts back to prove they did it but whoever gets to spend closest the $300 without going over, and it was on themselves, they got another $200 as a bonus. See that’s not an inexpensive day. However many employees I have times 300 plus another 200. Then we all met at lunch, at 12 o’clock, at the Firebird Steak House at the mall. I bought everybody a big old lunch. And of course, as you can imagine, I told them to order what they wanted. And they’re all trying to fair how to get steak and lobster with a salad and lobster, whatever, you know stuff like that. But anyway, whatever, it’s okay. We had a good time and a lot of fun and that was a huge plus as we we’re building out this year. It gave everybody a good head start, they had a lot of energy, and have a good attitude and everybody on the same page for this year.

What are some other things that we’ve done? Well we’ve done off site training/planning days. Now these are probably the more underutilized things that I’ve seen in dentistry or private practice anywhere. These off site days, I mean these things are so beneficial because you spend 4 or 5 hours on a day or two days planning out your next year, planning out your CE events, planning out your goals, planning out all kinds of important things for the practice. And we actually went to a little bunkhouse getaway. It was a little dude ranch kind of thing. And we all had a…with cabins and stuff like that. You know, it was really native and we did it on a Friday and Saturday. And you know, it was a driving distance so we drove on Thursday evening and got back Saturday afternoon. And you know when you get back from something like that, you didn’t, you usually do it on December, something like that. And once you got that done in December, so that it’s all mapped out January through December of the next year. All the really fun stuff you’re going to do. We have also done off site fun trips. So the examples are those couple of things we’ve done in the past, if we’ve met our yearly goals or whatever. I’ve sent them on a cruise, I actually didn’t go on the cruise myself. Well I’ve just sent my team on a cruise, one year from meeting one of our goals. Well it has to be a pretty good goal, like I think it was the first time we hit 1.5 million a year or something like that and I was really proud of that number because I know how we’d work to get there. So I sent them on a cruise. The next year, they still met their goal and I sent them to New York to a Broadway play. By the way, I found out that hotel rooms in New York are very expensive. I did not realize that a 100%. I mean I’m from Mississippi now. I know they say that whatever you do in Mississippi, moneywise, you can multiply by 3 up in New York. But I did not know it was that serious and they told me too that not only was the hotel room, it’s right there on Rockefeller Plaza, they say it’s not only 3 times more expensive but it’s probably 3 times smaller than the hotel rooms we have around here, whatever. Anyway, they had a good time. You know, and when you do something like this, it’s also, it’s not just the team building. It’s the stories, you know, the memories that last forever. That’s really is most powerful about it.

What else can you do? You can do, you know, go to the conferences. CME’s, CDE, straight up CE, anything like that. After people have put in a good day of studying, of being good employees, learning for you, you can have little getaways. You can grab a bite, eat together in a nice place, go listen to a band or whatever. After hours of conversations, those are always really popular. Just a good old CE trip with after hours fun. That’s a really good reward for a team. But today, what I really want to talk to you about is what we just recently did. And I think as it turns out, it’s probably one of the most fun things that we’ve ever done. And that’s why I wanted to show you and outline it so that you might want to do something like this for your team if you had the opportunity. Because I’ll tell you what, it’s still fresh on my mind. It hadn’t been that long but I’m telling you, guys, ever since we’ve been back, our productivity has been through the roof. People had a better attitude towards each other, they had better attitude towards me. I think now when I’m kind of a jerk at the office, when I’m deep in thought or thinking about something or not super sticky sweet nice to everybody, like a little more of a pass on it. Hey maybe it’s strands in, it may not last forever, but I’m telling you, it’s really neat, it’s really fun right now. So what did I recently do? If some of you may know, we lost last year, several long time employees for various reasons. And it’s been a challenge, not so much in that the patients aren’t there to work on but the challenge has been in just the management of that practice. And so our software that we used to run everything at the dental practice is, this one is used by a lot of dentists, it’s called Dentrix. And so Dentrix, even though it’s a pretty intuitive software, it’s complicated, you know. There’s a lot of, my wife says, “You got to do a lot of clicks. You got to click a bunch of times.” Like we engage things in clicks at our office and like “Oh, she can enter a new patient in like 7 clicks” or whatever. But Dentrix is a recently complicated software, so we went down for training day for Dentrix. Now they have these all over the country. Okay? We can be going to Memphis Tennessee, or Nashville Tennessee, or Birmingham Alabama. And in the past I have sent employees to those Dentrix training courses in those places. However, I really was looking for a way to make this special. And so, this December, I’m sorry, this November, they had one in Orlando Florida. Alright Orlando right? Yey! You just say the word Orlando. You merely think, you know, Mickey Mouse, you got Universal, you got SeaWorld. All these places are totally awesome. Orlando is just a great place to go. I personally love Orlando, too. Maybe that’s what, you know, was shading my judgment on this but okay so I said, “Great! Orlando. We will definitely look into that”. So I look and see and sure enough, there were enough seats that I can carry 7 of my top employees. And so we head down to Orlando to that. Now I signed everyone up without telling them about the bonus day and I told them right up front. “You know we’re getting ready a team to go, everyone doesn’t have to go. You are welcomed to go. I would like for you to go but you know these are the rules.” I did not mention anything about the fun stuff. So we got the people that really were serious about helping the practice and we loaded up to go down there. And after they signed up, I told them “Oh, by the way, we’re going to be staying an additional day after the seminar and we’re going to do just a full day Universal Studios. In fact we’re even going to stay on site at the Universal Hotel. So we all have the advantages of staying on site. And the bonus stuff you get for doing something like you’ve never been, if you stay on site, you get a lot of perks for just staying at the on site hotel.” So we we’re talking about really a lot of anticipation. So the 2 months leading up to the trip, everyone at the practice were really excited, doing a good job, it’s just really awesome. Right?

So anyway, in just a moment, I’m going to go taking you step by step with exactly what we did and the ways that I feel like we use productivity to make it the most power pact event, fun conference post day type of thing that you could possibly do. But before we get to that, really quickly, let’s sort of define, how that you can build your team experience right? So if I were doing this from scratch, in a way that I always did. The very first thing that I want to do is before I have a day like this is I want to define whatever goal it is that I’m trying to accomplish. And then once I have decided what’s our goal, okay, that could be anything. So just, you know if you’re listening to this, pause or whatever, take a moment, if you’re thinking about doing a day like this, just pause there for a second and come up with, you know “What’s a goal that we really need to hit or work on?” Like for Orlando, for me, our goal was, everyone that’s new needs to learn Dentrix okay? It’s hurting us, it’s hurting our productivity because everyone doesn’t know how to use the stinking software, right? So that was my goal. I want more people to know how to use Dentrix efficiently and effectively. So okay, define your goal. Okay?

Now if you get like a big goal, maybe it’s not like, we need to learn Dentrix software. That’s pretty darn specific. And that’s a best way to set a goal, by the way. We’re going to be talking in the future program about my Time Genius Productivity System and one of those, one of the main things you start that out with is you have a definite ideal goal. Not just a, you know, “Oh I want to do better in my practice.” You know that’s just never going to work. So you have to have that really definite ideal goal but if you’re having trouble with it, sort of, start out with the broad over arching goal and work your way backwards. Okay? Now, you know, and so maybe it’s not only better in my practice, you start working it backwards in your head and you realize, if I had more patience coming in on a regular basis, maybe, if my hygiene department were more full, then we would be better. That would maybe help me meet my goal. So I’m going to define what I need to do to make that happen; to make my Hygiene Department better. And that’s just a way you can work backwards on it. Okay?

Then once you have defined that goal, the next thing to do is sort of survey your team. You know you can do it stealthily or you can do it overly however you want to do it. And sort of see what they’re thinking. You know, what makes them tick or happier or you know, what might be a wonderful thing to do to surprise them. I like to be really stealthy when I do stuff like one of the reasons why we chose Orlando, is because Jackie, my long time clinical assistant had recently been to Universal with her son. But because he is so small, she only saw like, I mean, she only saw like 400 square yards of the park. You know this is a gigantic park and she missed so much and I felt really bad because she didn’t get to do stuff like that. So I was really looking for a way to make this happen for her ever since I heard that story from way back in the spring. And then when she sort of feel what could make some impact. Man, I seized that opportunity. Create a big impact is going to create a lifetime bond between you and your team. Plan this thing out to maximize the benefit the whole way through. You know look, if you’re going to do this, just have a budget but just know spend money with what’s really going to count. I do not mind spending money ever when you’re going to have a big old pay off from it. I mean look if you make a big splash with this, your people are going to like you a lot better and feel closer to you. They’re going to work harder for you, okay? They’re going to work harder with you. Not just for you, with you. They’re on your team, they’re going to have your back.

You know, there’s one of the speakers that said, they’re going to be jumping in front of you to take those bullets instead of shooting you in the back themselves. I always view the price tag as an investment and the outcome, not just, “Oh gosh, it’s such a huge expensive thing.” I look at it as an investment, you know we’d rather buy another stupid laser in the practice or you know, would we rather invest in the team and making people happy. And ultimately, the main goal of all this is to just have fun. Having fun is right probably the most important part, right? So that is the way you build your team experience. Now in just a moment, in our productivity segment of the day, I’m going to take you step by step through exactly how we did the Orlando thing and so that you, yourself can help give you your framework so that you can build your own, okay? We’ll see you in just a minute.

Okay so we talked earlier about the Orlando trip, now I’m going to run you through how this thing came by one more time. So back in the spring, Jackie, my long term employee, love her to death, didn’t get to do much at Universal. I had previously been to Universal last year with my kids and you know, how awesome it was. Several people in my team were big Harry Potter fans, that’s where I called the Harry Potter World but I think it’s the Wizarding World of Harry Potter. That’s where that’s at. And it was going to be an awesome trip. If I can just get everybody down there and get them on the same page. And so we knew we needed that Dentrix training. We searched for conferences, I found one in Orlando and I “Hey look, that’s going to be perfect!” Now when we thought about how to get down there, okay there’s a lot of ways you can get down there. Ripley Mississippi to Orlando is a good 10-hour, yes a 10-hour drive. And then you’ll loose an hour drive in there and gain one coming back. But a 10-hour drive, I’m driving before I drive pretty much. I would have flown them I could have flown them, that answered the cost. I kind of set an arbitrary goal to not spend more than $5000 on this trip. And I was carrying remember 7 people. So $5000 is going to be tricky and you have to be, you know, smart where you spend your money. I’m not being, I wasn’t being real stingy with the money, certainly. But on the other side of the coin, I’m willing to spend more than I had to. So I sort of set an arbitrary limit of $5000. The best option that we came up with was actually to drive. Now I have an expedition before. A Ford Expedition, that’s what I drive. I get a new one, I usually do like a 100,000 miles and I get a new one. A 100,000 miles and get a new one. Now a lot of my friends drive these fancy, you know, super expensive cars; just not my style. You know I’ve been a pick-up/SUV man my whole life. I’m probably never going to change. And so that’s just the way that is. I’ve got this expedition, it’s pretty nice. But still, you know you got to think about all these adults and luggage. Right? So, and we didn’t want to take two cars because that kind of hurt the bonding experience. And there’s the money because you got to pay somebody else to drive and got to pay them to use their vehicle. And I just, I want everyone together. So somehow or another, we were like the airlines, you know. We gave everyone a sample luggage and say “Look you’re not going over this luggage piece because we got to get all these pieces of luggage in this expedition and human bodies. And you know, it’s going to be a long drive.” And of course, we got some girls. Some girls are pretty small so that worked out in our favor. But anyway, we decided to drive down there. Okay? Now like I said earlier, the hotel options. We could have stayed, the seminar actually was at Stetson University in Orlando. In a place called “Celebration Village”. Now I’ve never been to Celebration Village, it’s actually a cool part of town, I mean I really liked it. I even thought “Man this must be a fun place to live.” But anyway, we could have stayed right there and walked to the seminar. It could have been way more convenient for the seminar. It turned out really hard to park in Celebration Florida and they were having some kind of worldwide food festival while we’re there. Anyway, for whatever, we were like 10 minutes late. I hate being late as you can imagine a person who writes a book called “Time Genius” hates to be late. However my wife is over 20 years of being married maybe more used to it so hey, we’re 10 minutes late. I didn’t love it but we were, but I was really trying to do is I was trying to optimize the free day. And so to do that, if we’re going to go to Universal, the best thing to do would be to stay on site and get those extra hotel perks including getting there to park 1 hour before everyone else; which is a big deal if you’re going to the attractions at Harry Potter World because you know those, if you’ve ever been to like Disney or Universal there are things called fast passes or press passes or whatever. And you can buy those but it doesn’t matter how much you spend on one, you can’t get early entrance into the Harry Potter attraction. They’re so popular, the parks have decided to leave those off of the express pass. So you have to wait in line with everyone else. So getting to the park an hour before everyone that does not stay at the onsite hotel has distinct advantages because you can get in line and like we get through the Harry Potter castle like super fast compared to what we would have. And anyway, that’s why I wanted to do that…let me tell you, we closed that place down. We got there at 8 am and we where there until they closed the park at 9 pm. Okay? We blew it out. And I think, you know, we had a great time.

Anyway, that’s where we stayed and on the onsite hotel, it made our conference day a little more inconvenient but the fun day, way better. Okay? We talked about team selection. I did have a few people that I made it mandatory but everyone else was optional. And we didn’t tell them about the free day until after they’d chosen and after we had chosen, and after they knew about the free day, we did not give them the opportunity to say “Oh yeah, I’d like to go!”. Sorry, if you didn’t want to go for the right reasons, you’re not going now that you know about the fun stuff. It’s just the way it works in life, right? So that was the team selection part. I actually sat down and kind of mapped out what I thought would be the most, get the bang for our buck plan since I’ve been to Universal the previous summer. And so we planned it out. And like I said, we went from 8 am to 9 pm. We still didn’t do everything. “Guys, this place is awesome!” There’s so much to do though you just can’t do everything. But if you have a plan, you can get a lot done. I think we rode, the one, I was in the group of the riders that rode the most. So it was myself, one of my hygienist Kierra, one of my assistant CG, and we rode I think 14 or 15 rides. And that’s pretty impressive in a day right? Anywhere, you can’t do that in Disney. Well I don’t think.

So anyway, that’s how that worked. Also after a while I’m there, what else can I do to make this really special. And if you’ve ever been to Universal, you’ll know that at the end of the day, they have this big on water movie show like a cinematic spectacular, they call it. It is really awesome, by the way. Universal throughout the years, and the best…I got to do some research. And the best place to watch this thing is actually on the balcony of a restaurant called “Lombard’s” okay? So I call up Lombard’s and I say you know, “How can we watch that?” “Oh well, Dr. We have a cinematic spectacular package where we serve desserts on the patio while you’re watching in deck chairs; while you’re watching the show instead of having to crowd around the lagoon with all the rest of the patrons that day.” And I’m like, “Whoa, I’m all over that! I’m all about, you know, special access. How much is it?” “Oh, well it’s only your dinner plus…” and I just “…plus a few bucks.” It’s only $50 a person. To have dinner and then go to the balcony, a private balcony, where it’s totally not crowded with all the dessert you can eat and watch this thing. And it was a wonderful way to wind down. Everyone’s hot and tired and they get wet on the rides, you know, some of them. There are water rides. And boy, the Dudley Do-Right’s water ride, always a huge favorite. My family loved it, my wife loved it, my team loved it. So if you go to Universal, I highly recommend Dudley Do-right unless you don’t like getting wet. And in which case, you don’t need to ride that one. Maybe Jurassic Park, stick to that ride for the water rides, and don’t get too wet, well not that wet. Anyway, I digress, We’re sitting there having that wonderful end of the day and then after that, you know, go back to the hotel, you load up. You get ready for the ride home. Now as you can imagine, everyone was pretty exhausted but last productivity tip of the Orlando trip for you. I had very sneakily planned on spending time on the way home, getting organized and getting some things down from our conference day. Because remember the goal is to get people better on Dentrix. So a very productive ride home, I mean after everyone sort of slept off their previous fun day hang over, and started waking up around lunch, we go in and we eat lunch at Atlanta Georgia and after that, we just kind of woke up and we spent the rest of the ride home setting some planning goals. We set goals, we gave people some responsibilities, we delegate it, we set deadlines, which is very important. Now we’ll talk more about that in our, when we talk about the Time Genius System. But then we also had people commit to it. You know say, “Oh yeah, I’ll commit to doing that.”; very important part of the process.

So we had a very productive ride home. You know, we set some great goals and so every Thursday, after we work on patients Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, I go through with my office manager/clinical team leader/do-it-all executive assistant Lovita, and we go through a list of things. We go through it every Thursday and I will tell you, that we have already accomplished in 1 month since the trip. We’ve accomplished all the goals we had for Dentrix. And that never would have happened, that would have been six months from now, still trying to get some of the stuff I wanted to implement had we not done this. Okay? So do not tell me that spending money on your team is wasted money because we just saved ourselves 5 plus months. Actually I don’t know if it would have ever gotten done right. But seeing it done in person and you know, it was really cool, we chat our own computer down there. Everyone doing it with their own hands, and then bonding as a team, get on the same page, planning out goals, setting deadlines, getting commitment from team members on the way home and now, that’s all accomplished in 1 month or less. Right? So now, hey, we can plan our next big goal. Alright? We can, this stuff is, it’s almost like we have a secret formula. Now just like anything else, you overdo something, I suppose it can get old, but if you’re smart about it, just a little bit here and there. Maybe once a year, or every couple of years you’ll do something big like this, the payout is enormous. So there you go, that was the backbone of our Orlando trip. I encourage you to copy it as much as you want to. I don’t think you can go wrong being good to your team, stuff like that. And as usual, if you have any questions for us, you know, just go to the website at drchrisgriffin.com to your dr chris griffin dot com and communicate with us and we would be glad to share as much as you would like for us to share about this or anything else we’ve talked about on the Dr. Chris Griffin Show. And with that, I will leave you to it. This episode hopefully has made you think a lot about what you could do with your practice and your team and I would love, love, love for you to share back things you’ve done or things you’re going to do after you’ve listened to this episode. Okay?

So feel free to shoot us a line. I always love to hear stuff like that and who knows, if you have a great idea, we’re going to share it with everybody else with your permission okay? So anyway, everyone go out there, be productive, be happy, build a better life and we’ll see you on the next Dr. Chris Griffin Show.

We appreciate you joining us for this episode of the Dr. Chris Griffin Show. Be sure to visit drchrisgriffin.com for the latest resources and updates to keep you more productive every single day you’re at the practice. So when you’re not working, you can do the things that matter most in life. We look forward to having you join us in another episode of the Chris Griffin Show; where the doctor is always in.