#19: The Build-Up Weekly

*Welcome to the 19th edition of The Build-Up, where we deliver weekly insights and inspiration for dentists on every stage of the private practice journey. If this email was forwarded to you, you can click here to subscribe.

Dear friends and colleagues,

It’s Friday, it’s summertime, and the sun is shining. I hope you all had a great week!

Here’s what I have lined up for this week’s newsletter:

• 📈 Good Economic News?

• 📔 The EASY Way to Build a Custom Operations Manual

• 🛸 Summer Music for (Extra) Terrestrials

Let’s get started!

📈 No recession?

It was a big news week (more on that below), and I thought it was worth highlighting some of the positive economic news from this week.

First, after another small interest rate increase, the Fed reversed course on their earlier prediction of a recession and updated the outlook to no recession. Here’s a summary from Reuters:

And the Bureau of Economic Analysis released some advanced forecasts that showed GDP growth at 2.4% for Q2 of 2023, outpacing economists' expectations.

Do with this info what you will - but it seems like good news to me.

In the meantime, we want to hear from you.

I’m conducting a survey as a part of a market report I’m assembling, and I’d love to hear from dentists.

It doesn’t matter whether you’re looking to buy or sell or neither.

It just takes 2 - 3 minutes, and I’d greatly appreciate it.

Here’s the link to the survey.

Plus, if you take the survey, you’ll be entered into a drawing to win a $350 Southwest Airlines gift card. The survey will be live for two more weeks, and then we’ll announce the winner.

Click here to take the short survey.

I appreciate it!

📔 The EASY Way to Build a Custom Operations Manual

If you haven’t noticed, extra-terrestrials have been in the news.

It got me thinking about what we like to call the ‘Alien Abduction Manual’. The idea is simple: if your front office manager is abducted by aliens, will you be scrambling to figure out how to submit insurance claims? Or how to take a payment? Or how to reactivate overdue patients?

(We have used ‘Alien Abduction Manual’ because it’s more lighthearted than the ‘What if you get hit by a bus?’ manual – but with recent news, maybe the ‘Win the Lottery’ manual is better…I’ll leave it up to you.)

I think we can all agree that it would be great to have every system in your practice clearly documented. It helps to train new employees and cross-train current employees. It sets a standard for employees to work up to and allows you to hold them responsible for maintaining that standard.

So it’s a good idea…but it’s hard to accomplish.

Perhaps one ambitious Saturday you showed up at the office and tried to document every procedure, only to realize that you have no idea how to check in a new patient.

Or perhaps you tasked your front office manager to create a manual, but – after documenting a few procedures – they get distracted (the office is busy, after all!), the project went into a drawer, and it will sit there until you find it three years from now.

The problem is obvious. Creating an operations manual is hard…or is it??

Two Tools that Make it SO MUCH EASIER

There are two tools that can turn this into an incredibly quick process.

One of those tools is the camera. The camera is especially good for the back office.

What should every drawer look like? snap

What should every instrument pack look like? snap

What do you need for a problem-focused exam? snap

What do you need for a crown prep? snap

You get the idea.

Taking a photo along with creating a list is a great way to set standards and help employees get up to speed quickly.

Make a binder and keep it in the back office. Keep the photos and lists together in a Word document so that you can make easy changes (adding new pictures as necessary) and update the binder.

This can also be a great opportunity to do some additional training. Schedule a meeting with your team to create these lists and photograph the set-ups. By involving the team, you’re more likely to make the manual something that actually gets used.

The second incredible tool is Tango.

What’s Tango, you ask? Great question. Tango is a web app that turns anything you do on the computer into amazing, well-documented processes.

You can pay for one month of Tango ($16 I think) and have your front office person show you exactly how to properly submit an insurance claim, for example.

Check it out here:

This works especially well if you have a great front office person who excels at their job. If your front office needs some additional training, consider hiring a consultant and using Tango to document the procedures.

I hope this was helpful.

It’s not as hard as you think to create a custom office manual - let me know how it goes!

🛸 Summer Music for (Extra) Terrestrials

Are they here? Who knows. Maybe they need dental work.

In the meantime, I recommend a cold drink and sitting by the pool or heading to the beach.

And while you’re there, you may as well turn up the music. Here’s Creedence Clearwater Revivals, “It Came Out of the Sky”.

And with that, I hope you enjoyed the 19th edition of The Build-Up Weekly.

Please consider using the link below to share our newsletter. 🙂 

With best wishes to you and your families,

Trevor Kimball, PhD

These Six Mistakes Can Cost You Six Figures

You can download it for free here. It’s material that I’ve covered in this newsletter before, but - if you’re contemplating a practice sale - the advice in this guide is crucial.

And if you’re ready to have a conversation with a practice sales professional, get connected with your local Integrity Practice Sales broker here.

It’s worth having a conversation no matter your current transition plans. You never know what you’ll discover together.