Dental Butterfly Effect – Season 1 Episode 11

The Dr. Chris Griffin Show – Season 1 Episode 11

“You can get totally messed up trying to please everyone with what you do but ultimately, you have to please yourself.” 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 Dr. is in.

Yes of course, everyone knows that quote, right? Well, I don’t expect you guys to get all these quotes and actually this time I pulled it from the world of entertainment; more so than the world of history or business greatness. You know that’s what I usually like to do on these things but however I am a gigantic fan of the person who provided us with this quote. I’m going to give you guys a little hint, okay? Forgive me for being off tune about this. Dum dada damdumdumdum …. Okay, like that was really terrible. But just imagine as the James Bond thing music and the guy that provided that wonderful quote was none other than Pierce Brosnan, the James Bond before Daniel Craig. So and that’s probably not even my second favorite Bond but hey, the guy was still awesome, you got to admit. I am a huge James Bond fan so, hey I think that quote works. And it really works well with what I’m going to talk about today.

And I am going to take you guys back to be a little fly on the wall in Oklahoma City from the lecture I gave a few weeks ago now. Because the stuff that really, I cannot duplicate what happened there. It was just a lot of it was off the cuff. I can’t even remember how I put things if I tried to but the way it came out was wonderful. I’ve gotten, really maybe more good feedback from that lecture than any lecture I’ve done in a while. So let me take you guys back there and we’re going to delve into a lot of stuff. Starting with a little bit of what happened after the fire in my office, if you don’t already know. And working our way to some other big topics like how I try to certify myself to success; my fear of marketing, fear of letting myself try to do more same day dentistry. Big things like that and what was holding me back and you guys are going to get a ton of value added today. So with no further ado, let’s travel back in time and go back to Oklahoma City.

So here’s the next, so I’m like you know, I’m seeing…I know I screwed up at this point and I know that this bonus system is unsustainable. This is pre fire. And so I went to a lecture and I heard a guy from Australia speak, Dr. Paddi Lund, everybody ever heard him talk? I’m just hating myself, these guys are referred to as popular 10 to 15 years ago. But anyway, Paddi’s an Australian dentist and his claim to fame was he was so OCD that he could, he’s just about…you know it was a struggle for him just to get to the office every day. You know, it was a struggle for him to leave everyday because he washed hands until it bled and stuff like that. He actually created a practice in Australia that is pretty much you know, I don’t know that you can do that in the states, I don’t know if you can do it anywhere. But it’s of such a boutique practice there that did not even have a sign on the door. I mean it just wasn’t addressed and you showed up by appointment. I mean everything is 5 star to the hilt and one of his big things was he didn’t want any stress in his life because stress makes his OCD just blow out of proportion.

And he wanted his team to be happy. So he created this scale, so every day, he would have his dental staff write his…their level of happiness on a scale of 0 to 10 every day. And if it wasn’t like a 7 or 8, he would go to him and say “Sarah, what’s wrong? Why did you rate us as a 4 today?” and she would tell him and he would, you know, they would talk about it and they would you now. I mean this…I mean I’m a jerk. I mean I can’t do that, I can’t go to people and just say “Hey tell me why you feel this way?” This is not going to work. But he did it, so I thought, “You know what? This sounds okay. I want my people to be happy. I want to be a nice guy. So let’s try to do it. Let’s figure out how to have a happy-centered practice.”

So I allowed pretty much my staff to dictate policy from that point forward. I tried this for 6 months to a year, something like that; I don’t know how long. But we would do that, we would do it every Thursday. You know we would take a, we would have a meeting…a big long meeting and we talk about our happiness scores for the week. And how, how’s everybody doing this week, you know. How can I make your life better? How can I make you a happier person? What could I do to help you? Anyway, this was a weird period in my practice life where I would just, I would just, for some reason, just scared to death of my staff. At this point, I don’t think I’d ever fired anybody. You know? I think I was so young, I never fired anybody.

That will do wonders for your life when you learn how to fire people right? I mean how many of you guys, how many have you fired somebody in here? The first person you fired, do you remember, like was it real scary? And you hated to do it because you felt bad, you thought you were a failure of probably too because you had to fire them, whatever? I did anyway. But you know what, after 3 or 4, it’s not that big of a deal right? So like, listen, “It’s not you, it’s me.” Right? Here’s the situation. I really think you could be great if you were working in a crystal meth recovery clinic. But right here at Griffin Dental, I think you know, it’s just not a good fit. So I think I’m going to go in and give you the rest of the day’s pay. You just get your stuff and get out. Please. But by the end, this is the mistake that I made. And this, led to this.

Now somewhere along the middle of 2000, I was starting to figure this out; that, yeah it’s interesting. When I have nothing on my schedule, and I diagnosed a coronary root canal, I can usually get the person to stay. But if I reschedule them, oddly enough, they’d tend to not come back. Hmmm, I started to just twirl around in my head. So I thought, “Hey guys, why don’t we start this big promotional program where we like promote that we can do their vice dentistry while they’re here today. Let’s figure out how to do that.” But my staff did not like it at all. So I actually developed this ad, which I think it’s a cool ad, right? You know, you don’t have to put off dental care and get seen today. I mean, I don’t know.

We developed it but we never ran it because my staff’s like, “Listen, you can’t promise people we’re going to do their dentistry today and there’s no way, it’s never going to work. We’re maxed out as is.” I said, “Maxed out? We did $50,000 a month. What are you talking about, maxed out.” Right? But anyway, they said that word to me multiple times. “We’re just maxed out.” What does that mean, maxed out? So if we’re doing 50,000, now we’re doing a 150? You said you were maxed out at 50? What’s that mean, I’ve gone back and asked those who were still there. “You know you never told me you were maxed out for doing like 50,000 a month? What was going on?” And she’s like, “I don’t know. I thought I was maxed out.” So anyway, I don’t know that there’s such a word as “maxed out”. It’s kind of a joke.

You know what, I even went to the trouble of saying if in order to be seen today, you must call the office prior to 10 am local time and be willing to accept available options. I don’t know, that’s some lawyer junk, it’s probably better I never run that ad, it’s a little cheesy looking. But the reason I think that I was noticing that people wouldn’t come back every time when I reschedule them is this. So if you already, I don’t know how it is in Oklahoma City, now you guys are maybe so affluent. The people just have time on their hands and all the money in the world, it don’t matter. But in Ripley, if they got a job, you know they’re pretty proud of their job. They don’t want to lose that job.

The factories in Ripley have all got some kind of point system. I don’t really know how that works but like you get 10 points a year and if you missed part of the day it’s minus a point. You miss a full day it is minus 2 points or something and it’s like a ‘no questions asked, no crap policy.’ If you get 10 points, you’re out! You know, good luck. And so they don’t want to use up those points on teeth, you know. And then there’s not that many teeth on Ripley, not many as there are in Oklahoma City, I’m sure, but a few there are, they just hate to use that up. and so they’ve taken off work to come to your office. They’re there.

Now if you can figure out a way to see them and do at least some of their work today, then there’s a reasonable chance in their mind that’s worth money to them, right? That’s worth even more than a discount. The fact that if they’re here, I’ve already I’ve taken off, I can get it done right now. I don’t have to miss anymore work or get any more points on my record. If I can just get it done today, I’ll think I’ll stay. I think I found that to be true. Now just think of all the stuff that hits this person the second they leave your chair side that you diagnosed. Okay? So the second that they get up on the dental chair. You know, cell phones going off, they’re texting the kids you know, they get a babysitter. Hey if they got kids and they got a babysitter for the day, do you not think that’s not worth something for them not to have to try to get another babysitter? And line all that up again?

They get up front. Maybe they start thinking about how much it cost and they’re like, “Oh man I have to come back you know and pay 10,000 bucks” blah blah blah. They leave your office, you know they get in their car and so they get back to work. Maybe their boss gets on them, you know where I came from, bosses are kind of mean. Maybe they get on them and fuss at them for missing. That’s actually happened, I mean it actually happens. So the boss is probably trying to fuss at you when you miss work. So then they’re thinking “Oh gosh, I probably can’t make it back for that second appointment.” What about when they get home? What about when they have to try to tell their husband that they’re not going to be able to buy their bass boat this year because they need to get their teeth fixed. Or their new hunting rifle or stuff like that. Okay? All kind of stuff.

And so I called that the butterfly effect because you know there’s that theory that circulated years ago that a butterfly flapping its wings over the Galapagos Islands could cause a hurricane that hit the Gulf of Mexico. And so that’s what I say, you know if somebody leaves your dental chair, just the tiniest little thing can push them off course. And they are very likely could end up not coming back to your appointment. And it really, I don’t know how it is here, but in Ripley, a lot of times people will schedule that appointment, something weird happens to them, makes them think they don’t want to come back. They won’t really tell you they’re not coming back. They just won’t show up. Right? That happens all the time.

So, oh this is a good one. Then I think we probably attest on a lot of these. So I thought “Well if I can’t really make it doing all this stuff, let’s just try to do everything and just get certified at it, right?” So actually at cosmetic dentistry I went to all Dr. Gerety’s courses. I did the you know, the fast brace stuff. You know, so I do, I actually do a lot of braces. I tried to become a general dentist/ortho kind of guy. We’d talk about sedation dentistry, the implant dentistry you know, I would tell you, I don’t…the slides never got here, dog gone it! But I have, I would tell you guys I don’t get anything out of it but you guys may have a wonderful implant training course here. But if you guys ever need an amazing hands-on implant training course, there’s a great one at UAB. It is really tremendous, Dr. Michael McCracken.

I tell you hundreds of hours of implants CE and I can tell you, I never ever got trained in like that. It’s at…it’s at a crystal meth recovery clinic, it’s what it is. So I guess UAB has got some sort of grant where they actually employ people that have recovered. They fix their teeth and then they work on the teeth of the people that have come through the crystal meth recovery and like Dr. McCracken says, if you’ve been on crystal meth a few years, you probably need to see your dentist. Right? So there’s plenty of work to go around. And it’s really cool because they have not only a couple of doctors but they…well, they’re all doctors. But they have 12 first year residents running around helping you.

So you know you’re there. Somebody’s got your back 24/7. You can do really complicated cases. First time that I ever reflected you know the flaps enough to expose the whole lower jaw, I was there. And you know, it’s just something that I just would be scared to do in my practice without somebody just right on my shoulder. Actually it’s cool the residents were actually on a hard case, they’ll actually be your assistant. And you know and he’s like, he’s like “I wouldn’t cut right there.” You know. He said, “You might want to get a finger asked if you’re going to reflect right there now.” You know, okay. Alright now hey, that’s the way to learn. Right? You don’t learn by cutting on a pig’s jaw. I mean it’s okay but you just don’t learn as well.

So now it’s cool just right there. I never would have learned about…how many of you guys have ever done any…do you guys do any bone grafting and membrane placements? Anybody? Have you ever used that PRF, platelet rich fibrin? Have you heard of it? It’s amazing! It is so easy to do. You just draw 4 vials of blood. I guess my IVs, that’s the one thing I still use, drawing blood right? IV Training. But you draw 4 vials of blood and you spin it in a centrifuge; a cheap centrifuge, a $500 centrifuge. Spin it for 12 minutes and you basically then you get you know, what looks like red water and then snot at the bottom. So you don’t follow your snot into a compress, and then you compress, you squeeze all the liquid out.

And I’m not kidding you guys, it’s like, it’s like creating skin. It is amazing! You get the most bio compatible membrane that ever existed on the planet. You get this big old sheet of membrane and then you get all the juice you squeezed out. You mix it in with your freeze dried bone and then also you know, it helps the bone stay put better, long enough for your body to create a new bone. So I mean you feel like you’re, you know, a Dental god you know, doing that right there is a really cool technique and this is one place you can go learn and find out about it.

Anyway, as fun as it is to geek out about dentistry, I still don’t believe you can build a proper foundation of your dental practice or make as much money as you’d like to make by just focusing on that kind of stuff. And this is the last big mistake that I’ll talk about this morning. So lunch is at 11:30? Okay? So let me go over this one and then we’ll take a break. If that’s alright with you guys. The last big mistake that I can tell you guys that I made that I see a lot of people making is, I had one employee who I thought was so good. And one of the reasons I thought she was so good is because she consistently told me “I’m so good.” Right? I pretty much let her dictate policy for most of the office. I kind of gave her the keys to the kingdom. Not only did I hire her but I paid her 50% more than I ever paid anyone. Right? To come in and also I brought her in and I just transplanted her to the position of office manager; completely removing a couple of people who have been in the position similar to that and now immediately creating friction there.

But I’m thinking, well if she’s so great, it won’t matter. It will all solve itself. So well first off, let me just tell you, this hardly ever works. It didn’t work for me, it’s not going to work for you probably. As time went on, I started to figure out. A. She’s not nearly as good as I was led to believe and B. You know it’s Ripley, it’s just the way it s down there. And what did I do? Well I still thought, okay so I can’t fire her. What could I do? So maybe there’s some knowledge that I could impart that would save the situation. Who knows who this guy is? Come on, basketball fans, what’s his name? There you go. Yeah do you like him by the way? Okay yeah, that’s good, that’s good. I agree. He probably is.

But I’ll tell you a good story. It’s a good story. Now so I’m a big basketball fan, right? So I thought, okay who would know how to coach because I still thought maybe she’s a superstar and I just don’t know how to coach her. Who would know how to coach a “superstar” person on a team? And I said there’s no way, there’s no way this guy’s going to write back to me. But I busted out 50 handwritten letters right? On a really nice stationery to who I considered 50 top coaches in college basketball at that time, right? So I was writing down the list and I’m a big junky, I wrote them all men. I wrote Krzyzewski, I wrote, you know, I wrote everybody you could think of. So out of 50 letters, I was you know, I thought I was being smart. I waited until the off season, you know after the final four, early summer; they’re just doing camps and stuff. So they’re not really you know, they might potentially could read this, they might reply. How cool would that be if they replied, you know.

So out of 50 letters, how many do you think I got back? How many? Oh man! Okay, so who said 30? Down. No. No. No. No. Keep going down, keep going down. You guys are awful at this. Forget it. I’ll just wait…It’s 3! You guys said every number but that. Man, you guys are very terrible Bingo players. Alright so there were 3 people that wrote me back. Number 1, is anybody in here a Texas Tech fan? Well right now Texas…nobody? Okay. Tubby Smith, alright, at that time he was in University of Minnesota. So I get back this nice card, a nice stationery, you know maroon gold and a golden gopher on the front, opened it up it’s printed off, not handwritten. But it says, “Thank you for your interest in the Minnesota program. We really appreciate it. As you can imagine, coach Smith is a very, very busy recruiting right now. We want you to know, we appreciate your letter and we’ll you know…Go Gophers!” whatever. And actually, I think Tubby signed it. Right? So it’s nice enough, that’s fine. I’m sure he signs a stack of 500 and then his staff…whatever. That’s one.

Number 2, also Texas Tech. I get one back, I get this big letter from Texas Tech. At that time their coach was, Bobby Knight. Right? All time great. Like “Wow! Big Manila folder, this is awesome man. What is in this thing?!” So I tear it open and I pull out that‘s like an eight-page catalog of Bobby Knight signed memorabilia and an order form price list. I bet you could see it, now, you can have a Bobby Knight signed basketball for $200. You can have a Bobby Knight signed golf ball for 50 bucks. Blah blah blah…alright? Nothing personal, that’s what I got.

The third one, however, sends me back this. John Calipari, from the University of Memphis at that time. And he actually writes this, do you believe this junk? “Thanks for your note. I really try to coach each player the same way. But I may be able to get more out of a special player. It’s always a benefit to a coach when his best player is also his hardest worker and can be a team leader. If that can happen, you have a chance to have a special team. Coaches get caught up in coaching great players differently. I can’t do that. Hope this helps, John Calipari.” What do you say, man? Old John! This is why people like him and Bill Clinton are so successful. They’re so nice about it. Right? Who would do this?

I mean sure you can find a way to get a recruit, but he’s going to hug you and tell you how great you are while he’s doing it, right? He’s a good guy! So, I’m like “Well crap! Even John Calipari can’t figure out how to coach this superstar people differently.” So I’m on my way to one of the Institutes. I’m driving. I’ve got this letter from John Calipari and I’m driving to the airport and popped in a couple of cassette tapes because at that time, I’m still driving a 1999 Ford Expedition with a cassette tape in it. And one of the cassette tapes was from a doctor in Houston Texas named Scott Perkins. Anybody remember him? Alright, so Scott. Actually I became friends with Scott after that. Scott’s talking about how that being an efficient dental practice can really change the way you practice, change your life. Okay?

And then I popped in a tape from a guy named Dr. Roy Smith, from Tyler Texas. Anybody know Roy? You and I listen to the same stuff, it appears. I actually became friends with Roy, too. Roy spoke for me at a seminar 2 years ago. I went to play golf with him a couple of times down in Tyler; the greatest guy on the planet. The only person I ever met that had two hole in ones in one round of golf. Right, how about them apples? But anyway, Roy’s telling a story about how he nearly wrecked his practice by trying to do all this fancy stuff, went broke, lost his father-in-law’s retirement money going broke and then decided, wait a minute, if I can do a more high volume model, I could see all these Delta dental patients nobody wants to see and maybe I could do better. Right?

So then Roy builds this huge base of patients, huge practice, then he hires associates to do the general dentistry and now, he pretty much only does sedation dentistry and stuff he wants to do, right? Which is the dream of all dreams. So I figure, okay this is what I’m going to do. I’m going to go back, I’m going to think about how I can build this blue print for this General practice and just start doing things the stuff that folks around here actually want and need. Extractions, fillings and crowns that are not super, super expensive. I read this book called Napoleon Hill’s Law of Success. Who has read “Think and Grow Rich”? Alright? It’s good. That’s great book. The book, The Law of Success is actually like the expanded version. Right?

Let me do this. This is a good stopping point as any, let me give this book away because I actually brought this book. I actually brought this book right here. Now what can I do as a…you guys have already proven to me that number questions are not going to work. So we have about half OU and half OSU fans in the room, right? And you guys know I went to Mississippi State so you already feel sorry for me. But this is for probably, it’s up for grabs, but OSU people have a little advantage. But the last time Oklahoma State played Mississippi State in football, where was the game played? Who said Houston? Look at you, man. You’re so smart. But let me tell you what happened. So you’re an OSU fan? You guys know, you killed this, right? I was there and you know it was alright.

Actually it’s an interesting story, I was in the box. I was in my college roommate’s box in Reliant Stadium, you know. And he, you know he’s so rich he doesn’t even watch the game. He’s got dadgum 20 people walking in and wanting to shake his hands and talk. I wanted to watch the game. So I walked down, it was really crowded, and I walked down and sat down the 45 yard line. About the tenth row, I watched it and walked back up in his box when it was over and he was like, “Where’d you go?” I’m like, “I didn’t come here to talk to rich people. I came here to watch the game.” But yes, anyway. In that game which you don’t know is that you guys injured at that time, our all-time leading quarterback, Tyler Russell, in the first quarter. Guess who came in to replace him, who had been on the bench. I mean I don’t know if you’ve heard that guy. The best quarterback that we ever had and he’s you know, the best player that MSU’s ever had.

So you kind of by defeating us and injuring us so badly, you kind of did us a favor. So anyway, here’s this book. It’s awesome book if you haven’t read it yet. It’s a little bit you know, like he wrote it back inside the 40’s, so it’s a little bit turn of the 20th century cheesy and talks about some woo woo stuff. But there’s some really good business principles in there too. So if you guys want to take a quick break, then we’ll come back and we’ll keep going down this path. And I’ll eventually, I promise to get to this formula that I worked out for you guys.

Okay, so yeah, that’s the end of the first part. The morning lecture I gave in Oklahoma City. And the formula I’m referring to is my practice achievement formula. Really, I think I developed a really neat formula and so I’m sharing with them there. That will be the topic of one of the podcast we’ll do. The next podcast, I’m not sure exactly this is how it’s going to work out and how quickly I can get it edited. But I’ll talk to you about an upcoming interview I’m doing with a very important person right after these words.

This is John Lee Dumas of EOFire. And if you’re ready to ignite your productivity, explode your growth and burn down the barriers to your dream life, the Dr. Chris Griffin Show is where you need to be.

So yeah, that was John Lee Dumas. And he was gracious enough to do that for me for my podcast. Now, I’ve got an interview coming up with him and it is going to be tremendous. Now John is known for so many things. He has had the number 1 podcast in iTunes business for a long time. I cannot tell you how many umpteenth million downloads or whatever he has. He’s just amazingly popular. He’s had a tremendous life from active combat veteran, overseas all the way to he’s a lawyer and well, I don’t know if he completed law school. But anyway, at some point then he just made a decision that that’s what he was going to do in life was becoming an entrepreneur and then help people become entrepreneurs and it’s just an amazing story. He’s going to be gracious enough to share that with us.

So look forward to that podcast coming and I’ll be interviewing John about what it takes to really make a decision, set some goals, go after them full throttle and I think the reason is going to be particularly interesting for our group. Because he’s known for a lot of stuff just general entrepreneurship goal setting on this but what I would like to really dive into is the power it took for him to actually change the path he was on and pursue this new path with such amazing gustos. So look forward to that interview. I’m really looking forward to it. Thanks, John; ahead of time and I will see you guys next time.

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.