New Patient Group Podcast

Welcome to 2024 - The Year you Fired Yourself

• Brian Wright • Season 7 • Episode 94

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Today's Podcast:

Have you ever considered the radical act of 'firing yourself' to jump start a transformation? That's exactly where we begin this season, exploring not just career revitalization but diving into the nitty-gritty of orthodontics, healthcare, and the pursuit of freedom. In an unexpected twist, a chance meeting with my old flight instructor, Preston, serves as a springboard for discussing life's unexpected stalls and how to handle them with finesse. This episode isn't just about looking back but catapulting forward into a future where challenges are not just met but conquered with grace.

Leadership isn't just a buzzword; it's the cornerstone of thriving in tough times, as our patient group practices have shown by prioritizing fan creation over advertising. I'm also spilling the beans on our upcoming MPG iconic event in Colorado Springs, where transformation isn't just promised—it's inevitable. Plus, get ready for some high-impact collaborations, including my new role with the Invisalign faculty and a host of workshops set to infuse your practice with fresh innovation.

To wrap things up, we'll chat about the importance of ditching the blame game in favor of accountability and continuous self-improvement. I'll share stories that reinforce the value of patience, adaptability, and the rewards they bring. And as we sign off, know that your support fuels this journey we're on together. So, go ahead and engage with us, leave those reviews, and let's make 2024 a year of extraordinary growth and success.

Speaker 1:

Hey, new patient group in RightChat Nation, welcome inside the broadcast booth, brian Wright here, and welcome into the very first episode of season seven. So excited to get season seven kicked off. Episode 94 overall, the new patient group podcast, keep rolling along. Happy New Year to everybody out there. Merry Christmas. Hope you had a wonderful time in December with family, a safe Christmas.

Speaker 1:

If you traveled, hopefully the travels were great, and let's get it started. Let's get 2024 rolling. Got a great one for you today and it's going to be called the year you fired yourself. This is something that I almost did last year and the year before and I didn't want to put it off for another year. I think it's very fitting to what's going on right now in orthodontics and other healthcare spaces as well, and a couple of good examples that I'm going to be talking about today. And we'll bring it back home and do what we do on here and move your needle forward, take you outside the comfort zone and get you ready for a great 2024. Got some great updates for you on the other side, but before we get started, let's fire up the music.

Speaker 2:

Welcome aboard the new patient group flight deck. Less chaos Check. Less stress. Check Less advertising costs Check More personal and financial freedom. Ah, check All right. Business checklist completed, let the take off roll begin. Welcome to season seven of the new patient group audio experience, a podcast dedicated to forward thinking doctors wanting to learn innovative ways to run their business today so your practice can achieve new heights tomorrow. And now your host. He's the founder and CEO of new patient group, managing partner of right chat and a trusted motivational speaker for Invisalign, ortho-fi and others, brian Wright.

Speaker 1:

Hey everybody, welcome in. If you're watching over on the YouTube station, hey there, our YouTube following has really grown. We're starting to get more and more views of the podcast in addition to the lessons that we get on a lot of the major stations, and I really, I really appreciate it. I love to see the numbers growing. I said this in January January's podcast last year about the previous December, and I'm going to say it again this year is this past December of 2023. It was our largest listening month ever. So again, while you should be with family and Santa, instead you are with me. I appreciate it so much. You know, when I started this podcast, I had no idea that people would listen, no idea what to expect, and over the course now of entering our seven season, we have really grown that underground cult following that people that know us for and we got a thousand more downloads than we did the previous year. And just so excited as we keep growing and we have residents coming out of school that have been listening to us and we teach the future on here and how you make the future happen today and the forward thinkers are really attracted to it and I really, really appreciate it. Like I said in the intro, hope everybody had a merry Christmas and hope your year's off to a great start. Hopefully you liked that new podcast intro. So the guy I hired knocked that out in the very first take and I wanted to combine something that a lot of you know I'm very passionate about around flying planes and combine it into a business theme and I love it and I hope all of you loved it too. The guy I hired really deserves a lot of credit because I had put the vision down on paper and he grabbed that vision and made it reality and on the very first take I think he really nailed it. So love the new podcast intro. Hope all of you did as well Last night.

Speaker 1:

So I go to dinner. So Preston a lot of you have heard me mention him before. Preston is my flight instructor and or used to be my flight instructor on my journey to get the pilot's license and he was based out of Houston and he got hired. He's running right chair, first officer chair with Concords and LearJets, with a private jet company and flying families around and things like that. Anyway, a couple days ago I get a text from him and he landed in Colorado Springs and he goes, didn't you move there? And and I responded back I said, yeah, hey, buddy, and he's like, yeah, let's go, let's go grab a bite to eat.

Speaker 1:

So last night we go out and we eat together at the steakhouse here in Colorado Springs and and just sat at the bar, had a great time and we got into this conversation around just you know some chaotic things that can happen in the air and he starts telling me, starts telling me about this person years ago that you know as a country boy, you know and and from a small town, and he's sitting up in the air and they're doing stalls and and you go when you're doing training you go up and you're at about three, four, five thousand feet, depending on where you're doing, on the type airplane you're flying and usually in those schools you're flying Piper's with, you know Archer aircraft or Cessna 172s, because you can beat those planes to hell, you can land them hard, you can hit them hard, you can do kind of stupid things in the cockpit and the planes they withstand it. So a lot of the schools use those planes and great planes, very reliable planes, and you can run them into the ground. So he's telling me takes us, he takes this, this student pilot, up and they're working on stalls. And the reason you work on stalls is the obvious In case that happens to you, whenever you're you're piloting the plane, you have to know the steps to get out of the stall and the controls. So if you stall the plane, the controls feel very mushy, it's like you, it's just it's hard to describe them. They almost become like a wet, soaked, wet soap sponge and it's a very weird feeling.

Speaker 1:

And so what you do when, whenever you do those stalls, is you get up to three, four, five thousand feet and then you intentionally pull back the power and and stall the plane. You get it to where it's below the speed that it that it can stay in the air, and then you take the the steps to get out of the stall as you start to drop out of the sky and and it's it's really simple procedure, but it's one of those things that that you know. When it happens to you, even though the procedure is somewhat simple or simple to get out of, when it happens to you unexpectedly, how are you going to react? Well, preston tells this guy, they're in what's called a practice zone. So there are, there are areas in the sky from airports where you can take the plane and you can practice things like this and you're out of the way of, of inbound, outbound traffic and things like that.

Speaker 1:

And Preston tells this guy, okay, go ahead and and pull back the power and install the plane. And and this guy, instead of just pulling it back which you pull it back gently this guy yanks it back and he yanks it so hard, he yanks, he yanks, he yanks the lever out of the plane. So he's got, he's got it held in his hand and Preston's looking at it going, you know, holy, holy shit, what do I? What do I do now? And and it's it's past red line is where the power, where he yanked it out of. So thankfully he did not stall the plane at too slow or he didn't pull it out at a place where the plane was was too slow to stay in the sky, because that would have been a big, big, big problem. They would have just dropped out of the sky and I never would have seen Preston again.

Speaker 1:

But Preston's thinking to himself okay, I've got to, I've got to think this through, I've got to look at the instruments, I've got to go through these procedures because they cannot control the speed of the plane. They're in the practice zone. They've got to fly back to Paraland Airport. And Paraland Airport is the airport that I learned the majority of my flights the landing taken off, maneuvers, things like that speaking on the radios. And and Paraland Airport is not an easy airport. It's one runway, the runway isn't that long, it's high traffic, non towered, and it's somewhat somewhat a very complicated airspace. So he's got to fly the plane all the way back to Paraland Airport and get it safely on the ground without being able to control the power. And you know he safely, you know he calmly, goes through all the procedures and the instruments and locates where he is and makes a plan and makes a plan.

Speaker 1:

And and he had the student. You know Preston was telling me on the inside he's freaking out, but you know on the outside he's very calm in the radios he's very calm to the students sitting next to him and and remember, you know the students riding captain chair, that the, the instructors, in the first officer chair right seat, so they get back and he instructs the, the student, to to pull the power and basically what you do is you pull the primer all the way down. Basically you're turning off the engine of your car and that was the only way they could slow down to get to a speed where they could land. So you know, they went into the runway, they found the right path to get in there, they pulled the power, shut off the engine and and got in the ground safely. And and he's telling me this story and I get into the conversation because he listens to the podcast, and you know we got into this, the conversation, just around the podcast I did last year around.

Speaker 1:

You know, adopting the best trait of professional baseball umpires and great pilots is is leading and handling very chaotic situations calmly, even if on the inside you're you're freaking out. And and if you haven't listened to that podcast, I want you to go back and listen. But the reason I open up with the story is I want to tell you and this is mainly to to the new patient group family members and the new patient group family members that also use right chat and just quite a few of the podcast listeners that I have met, you know, through last year, throughout the years just of events I want to tell you how proud I am of you for leading your organizations during chaotic times in a very calm manner, even when you're possibly freaking out on the inside. Look, we've been together. I mean, think about the last. You know, we've gone through COVID and then we went through a couple really good economic years and then now we're coming off back to back really crappy economic years and who knows what's going to look like in 2024. But when people do not have money and you can't force them to go search for you, the worst thing you can do is advertise.

Speaker 1:

Right, the best thing you can do is become better and better and better at what you can control, and so many of you of the new patient group, family members and the podcast listeners in general, you are so good and so much better than other people at just focusing on being great at what you can control and leading your organizations with during chaotic times with, with calmness and an even humor. Preston was telling me on the radio he was actually, you know, kind of making jokes and and trying to get you know the guy next to him, the student pilot, to to laugh and and for all of you out there, you know it is so easy to lead when things are going well. It's so. It's so easy to live your best life and be happy when things are going well. But when things are not going well, that really really places you in a position of of showcasing how good of a leader you are. Are you making the right decisions? And it's obviously it's much easier to make good decisions as things are going good.

Speaker 1:

When things are not going the way we want in our personal life and our career, our businesses, it gets harder and harder to make good decisions. A lot of times we start making irrational decisions. Quick decisions and sometimes quick decisions and I teach this is good, other times it's not. It just depends on where your mindset is. A lot of times so very, very proud of so many of you out there who are really kicking butt during these economic times and when I say kicking butt, some of you.

Speaker 1:

Many of the new patient group practices were up this year. Many of you actually had your best year ever, and I remind the listeners out there that our new patient group practices are not doing pay-per-click, they're not doing advertising, they're not wasting their money on this stuff. They're spending their money and investing their time on creating fans of their practice, creating a better employee experience, and they're again, they're dominating inside their doors. And that is always the recipe for any business in any industry that is commoditized to win. And it's even better because there's not that many people you can convince to do it. It's always the one, two percenters that are focusing on always getting better, always growing themselves, et cetera, and those are the people that are constantly winning.

Speaker 1:

Now, if your numbers weren't down, whether you're a new patient group practice or not, there are still ways to dominate. There are still ways to look at your business the previous year and go look, we got better at the things we can control. So, whenever the economy does turn around, instead of us being up five or 10 or 15%, we're setting ourselves up to be up 20, 30 plus percent, while not spending advertising. Look, the orthodontic industry got obliterated in 2023. The official numbers are not out, but I have heard some really dismal numbers 15% down, more than that. Some say less, but the industry just got their butt hammered and the majority of the industry is also dumping tons of money into advertising. So they are advertising and getting hammered at the same time. All of you out there with the customers, you're not advertising and most of you are up. So I'm so proud of all of you, because the last couple of years have not been easy.

Speaker 1:

Some updates for you. I cannot wait. So Preston got to see it yesterday. The lodge, because the steakhouse I was talking about we're sitting at the bar. It oversees the mountains. It literally is a one minute drive down the street from our house that we bought in Colorado Springs. It has a lodge, a private gym, a day spa. This lodge is gorgeous, with hotel rooms. This steakhouse, it is just an absolutely gorgeous setup that just oversees the mountains and we are gonna have our first MPG iconic event ever here in a couple of weeks. I believe the 11th is a Thursday. I believe that's when it starts Wednesday. A lot of the team, members of new patient group are flying in, some are staying at the lodge, some staying at the house, and to all the people coming to this doctor and team event, boy oh boy, are you gonna have an amazing time. This is something that we're actually gonna launch, this as a standalone service. So a lot of you out there, you're gonna be able to fly you and your team in for a two day workshop in Colorado Springs, and I would tell you, customers that are flying in, just be prepared. This is gonna be unlike anything else that has ever existed in this industry. It's something that I've wanted to do now for quite a few years and shout out to the new patient group team members that have helped create this or carry out this vision that I have for this, and it's gonna be absolutely fantastic.

Speaker 1:

So many of you out there know you go to events and there's a lot of big events out there. They make a lot of money and they've got wonderful bells and whistles and I don't know, maybe they have good speakers, maybe they don't, I don't know, that's up for debate. But you know, when you guys go to these events, it's a fun time, like the bells and whistles. It's a good time, it's memorable, but it doesn't move your needle. You go back to your practice and you end up doing the same old stuff and in five minutes or five days or five weeks, it all falls flat.

Speaker 1:

This is something that is gonna be completely different. That is gonna impact your organization from a business and life coach standpoint, from how your team is trained to your digital marketing everything new patient group does under one roof. This is gonna move your needle forever, and I mean there is gonna be role play scenarios that take you outside of your comfort zone. There's gonna be motivational speeches when I kick it off Thursday. I hope all of you get a ton out of Thursday because that's gonna be my goal. Thursday is just life, life, career, business, just motivating you to get into the right mindset for the event, and it's gonna be really awesome. Many of you know so. Last year this could have been about four or five months ago and it's something I'm very proud of is Invisalign. Invisalign technology made me faculty and there's not a lot of non-clinicians that get to say that and I'm very thankful for it, and we're gonna have a ton of events together this year. Matter of fact, so I think it's the weekend after everybody's in for Iconic.

Speaker 1:

We are I'm flying to Miami to do a all day workshop for Invisalign in Miami. We did one in Tampa last year. The feedback was great. Word spread, so now the Miami team is putting together one. So shout out to the Miami team. It's gonna be fantastic. And those audience members, regina Blevins and I so Dr Blevins andI have been wanting to do and speak together for a long time and we finally got to do it at Orthopaneur's last year together and the feedback was really great.

Speaker 1:

And what Aline is working on with Regina and I is a two day workshop and it's gonna be amazing. That two day workshop, I think, is gonna be kind of spread out around the country. I don't think it's gonna be one where people fly in to Raleigh or the details aren't finalized yet, but we're working hard on that. That's gonna be again. That's gonna be a dream, she and I. She's a longtime new patient group in RightChat, family member and one of my good friends and that is gonna be a very impactful two day workshop as well. That is not what I'm talking about with Iconic. Iconic is delivered and put on by us, so this is gonna be something separate. I'll be at Invisalign Summit this year speaking a couple Invisalign symposiums I'm sure there's gonna be multiple other study clubs that come up and looking forward to the future. We have had a off paper partnership from literally our very first customer, robert Stewart in Pasadena, texas, many years ago, and the partnership has grown and grown and grown and now we're in a place where I'm very excited about it and looking forward to a great 2024.

Speaker 1:

Orthofi's national event is coming up the first weekend in February and I'll be on main stage delivering, unlocking your inner badass, becoming a better version of you to thrive with a practice for tomorrow. Really looking, that's gonna be brand new content that I haven't done before, so looking forward to that. That's a good spot, I think we go on. Second to last, I think Dr Jamie Reynolds he comes up to finish the event. Founder of OrthoFi and I go on right before that and really looking forward to it, since I was their keynote the year that COVID hit. So right before COVID hit I was their keynote for about three hours to kick off their national event. And since then we've always spoken at the event but it's been more kind of side stage, doing a workshop with Oliver and Jamie Reynolds and his TC more to non OrthoFi customers. So glad to be back in front of the main audience. We have a wonderful message and it'll be great for the audience to hear. And then at AEO we're gonna be doing probably about a four to six hour workshop the day before the AEO starts Oliver from OrthoFi and myself and, needless to say, a ton of stuff.

Speaker 1:

December you've heard me say this many times December is a I hate to call it a hibernation month because it's not like I'm just taking a break and laying down on the couch. It's actually December is for me actually the busiest time of the year and it's all preparing content for the following year and running the companies and helping the customers. And while it could not be overwhelming it's not the right word because I love it it's very much on my mind that you're somewhat only as good as the last piece of content people hear. And there's a lot of pressure there. It's a good pressure, but nevertheless it's a pressure. And then you have Christmas and everything. We still have young kids. It's a very magical time.

Speaker 1:

Matter of fact, kristen is walking our dog, winston, in the park. It's about a five minute walk from our house, just a big park. It's just gorgeous and we go there a lot. And there's this other guy walking his dog next to her and all of a sudden and this is a true story nine deer come flying by, both of them right through the street, out of the middle of nowhere. You know there's no real woods around us. There's a ton of woods, but it's a very great distance away. You're kind of thinking where the hell do these deer come from? And Kristen turns to this guy. She's like have you lived here a while? Is this normal Guys? I've lived here for years. I've never seen anything like that before in my entire life living here, and this was three days before Christmas, and I said nine deer. Well, guess what? There are nine reindeer on Santa's sleigh. So how magical is that? Kristen told the kids, braden and Madeline, and they were just so giddy and so was I. I heard that and I'm like, okay, maybe Santa really is coming to Colorado Springs this year. So just an awesome time. December is great and now 2024 is here and let's get rocking. The year you fired yourself.

Speaker 1:

You know this is an industry very much that you all, the ones who grasp what's happening, are the ones that are forever going to stay ahead and remain ahead. I believe of the ones that aren't, you know there's a lot of negativity that surrounds this industry price shoppers, competition. You know Smile Direct Club, which is no longer right, bankrupt, and I'm sure many people are happy to hear that. It's just an industry where there's a lot of blame and we live in a very blame other people's society, right? You know I didn't get a chance to go to college. That person did so. They owe me something and I blame you for my failures and I blame you because I'm not successful in my mind or I blame you because I'm not making more money. And we had an instance a while back with somebody from RightChat, you know, as an example. It was a perfect example. You know she did not get a promotion. Someone else got it instead.

Speaker 1:

And instead of having the mindset of coming to the leadership team and saying, look, you know, what can I do to get better, to make sure the next promotion I'm the one right, I want this. I believe I can do this. Tell me what I can get better at so I can focus on those things and show you my commitment to self-improvement and helping the organization. And blah, blah, blah. Right, people, it's very hard to get people that is the vast minority of people that still have that mindset, and that's why those people kick everyone else's butt. And no matter how many times, often that you try to bring this up to people, for every one that you can change their mindset the majority you just can't. And so what does she do? She quits when she doesn't get the promotion, you know, and then files unemployment and it's hard for her to realize that that's where she is in life. That's why. That's why she's not in a higher position. That's why she's not making more money, that's why she's not advancing her career forward. That's why.

Speaker 1:

But it is a blame society. You know we lost the game because of the umpire. We lost the game because of the referee. Right Meanwhile, you know you shot 25% from the floor, didn't make any threes, played bad defense and you wanna turn around and you wanna blame the umpire or the referee or whatever it may be at the end of the game. This is our society. And I say to all of you out there blame is not a strategy for greatness, it is not a strategy for freedom, it is not a strategy for joy, it is not a strategy for success, it is not a strategy to achieve your goals, it is not a strategy to advance your career, it is not a strategy to make more money while working less. It is not a strategy that will ever advance you forward.

Speaker 1:

And many of you sit around. I have a podcast at some point point and I thought about doing it this year. But, like I said, this, this topic I've wanted to do now for a while and and I thought it was very relevant to the times to just go ahead and do it now. But the podcast is basically around stop letting the enemy sit at your table. A lot of you You're in these big orthodontic chat forums and when I look at these it's so different than the MPG, the new patient group, mastermind, where these forums are negative.

Speaker 1:

They talk bad about clear liners. They talk bad about patients that aren't compliant. They talk bad about competition. They talk bad about the corporations. They talk bad about price shoppers. They talk bad about millennials and Gen Z, the employees. There's just this constant chatter inside these threads. That is basically kind of the premise of the enemy sitting at the table is. It's kind of like in school, right, you're going to become who you surround yourself with, or not even just school, just life You're going to surround yourself with. And this negativity and this blame that goes on in this industry is unbelievable to me. And the harder it becomes to grow, the more commoditized you all become, the more negativity comes from that. And you look at the new patient group Mastermind thread and that stuff rarely is talked about, right Rarely, because none of it's the case.

Speaker 1:

If you are not achieving your goals, if you did not have a good 2024, if you have a new patient, no show problem if you have a conversion problem. If you have a, we can't get people to call us problem. If you have a digital marketing problem, I could keep going on. If you have an employee problem, you're the reason and one of the things that I am so happy about doing this job and being in this industry. Now for gosh, I mean new patient group we just celebrate. So November was our. This past November was our 11th year, and I can tell you that if I sat around and blamed other things whenever we weren't achieving what I wanted to achieve or exceeding those things, we'd have been out of business a long time ago.

Speaker 1:

The beauty of what a lot of you have is that you're in a business where your mindset can be off. You can run the business not very well or, in some cases, like complete crap, and still make millions and convince yourself that you're a genius. You just happen to be in that industry. Now, that industry, though, that's going away. You know, there's orthodontic practices that open up and go out of business. There's ones that have been around for years that struggle and go out of business. There's ones that can't make money because you are being welcomed in to what every entrepreneur, every business owner, especially ones that are in a commodity, deal with Right. Everybody deals with price shoppers. Everybody deals with competition. Everybody deals with employee issues. Everybody deals with et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And while it may be a little bit different from industry to industry, these are things I mean what the restaurant industry and hotels, if people, have dealt with forever. What a lot of you now deal with. Residents listening.

Speaker 1:

When you get out of school, you are not being taught by the professors in school the things you need to know, period. And it's no different than, like when I went to business school at University of Maryland. It was a joke. I used to argue with the professors all the time because they were full of crap. Most of them have never owned a business in their entire life. Most of the professors that teach you out there have never owned their own practice, their own business, and you are not being prepared for what you are now thrown into. And you are now thrown into hospitality, customer service, sales, consumer psychology, verbiage, presentation, being a great leader, being a great entrepreneur, et cetera.

Speaker 1:

I could go on and on. A great motivator, how to hold people accountable, how to have difficult conversations, how to hold people accountable that aren't compliant in your office and turn them into a compliant patient. You know how to overcome objections, handle complaints. I could list out another hundred off the top of my head that all of you now have to be experts in and most of you aren't, and that the iconic event that's what it is. It is a non-clinical, non-clinical event that makes you become an expert at all of the things that I just mentioned, and the new patient group family members already know this stuff. Their mindset is already there.

Speaker 1:

But I look at this industry and whatever issue that you have, you have to change what you're doing in order to achieve a different result, and so many of you don't. So many of the problems that exist in your practice turnover, low conversion, new patient issues, lack of digital marketing presence it's because of you and that is so hard to hear employees watching If you aren't making the money that you want to make today, if you missed out on the promotion that you thought you should get, it's because of you. You're the problem, and it doesn't mean that you're bad. That's not what I'm saying. But the biggest thing I want to get across to you is blame is not a strategy for success. Don't lie to yourself that the reason you had a bad year in 2024 was a down economy. The reason you had a bad year in 2024 was Dr Joe opened up another practice down the street. The reason you had a bad year in 2024 is the GPs started doing Invisalign, right? The reason I'm not making more money is because I didn't get to go to college and somebody else did.

Speaker 1:

These are not strategies for joy, happiness, success, advancement of your business, your career, of your mindset. These are strategies that make you miserable. They don't solve anything and I suggest for all of you out there that are involved in chat forums and chat groups and you've got two orthodontists or whatever type of doctor you are friends of yours that you hang out with, if they talk this way, you've got to end the relationship. You've got to surround yourself with better people, right, and it's not that they're bad people. They may be great having a beer with. That's not my point. My point is is a better mindset, because they will bring you down.

Speaker 1:

Whatever challenge you have in your practice, you have to change you. You've got to fire yourself. You've got to stop lying to yourself, saying the reason why we have five new patient no-shows a month is they're just shoppers. We don't want them anyway. This mentality is unbelievable. The reason you have five no-shows is because your receptionist isn't good and you have analog paperwork and you do confirmation calls and automated text messages, the same thing as the other three practices they scheduled. That's why they no-show your inability to understand how to place more value on you than the other five places. They're calling the other three or four places they're scheduling. It's just that simple. All of you and again this could be employees. This could be you as doctors out there, reps listening executives that I know we have so many aligned and orthophy executives and dental monitoring executives listening to this podcast and more.

Speaker 1:

This me, me, me, me, me, me thing has to stop. Poor me, the competition I just can't get anybody through the door. Poor me, our conversion's down. Poor me. Wow, wow, wow. You got to stop it. It starts this year. Becoming a better version of you and realizing the future is now. The reality is is your personal growth is the only limit to your happiness? I'm going to say that again your personal growth is the only limit to your happiness. It's the only limit to growing 5, 10, 15% every year for the rest of your life. Or if you are down, you're down a little when the rest of the industry is down a lot, getting uncomfortable which, by the way, if you feel uncomfortable listening to me or watching me on stage, or you know part of our program out there, or if you have nothing to do with us whatsoever, when you get uncomfortable, all that means is you're about to learn something new. That's it, and that's how you should view it, because you should always want to learn something new. That's a good thing. That's a good thing. Your personal growth and this is why all of you have to create a culture of constant personal growth it's infinite.

Speaker 1:

I love these people and we hear this a lot on the right chat side. You know they say, oh gosh, we just trained on hospitality just a few months ago, and when I listen to the calls now, they're just the same as they were before. And my response always when I hear things like that is is what do you mean? You trained on hospitality a few months ago? Like hospitality and customer service, two very different things sales, verbiage, presentation, etc. Etc. Etc is infinite. You don't stop. There's always a deeper layer New patient group, customers this is good for you to know, ones that have been with us five, six, seven, eight, nine plus years.

Speaker 1:

You're just getting started, and that's a culture you need to create is yeah, is there a lot of repetition? Yeah, that's the point. That's the point. Is there also new things? Yes, that's the point too. It's consistent personal growth, it's accountability, it's repetition. It's doing what average people do occasionally. It's doing what great people do and very big successes do consistently. I'm going to say that again Great success comes from consistency. Successful people do consistently what average people do occasionally. You should embed that into all of your cultures out there, because it's so, so true. It's personal growth Going into 2024,.

Speaker 1:

You have to fire yourself and you have to rethink and reimagine on the fly everything that's going on inside your practice, without making the excuses. You know well we can't, and this one is one of my favorites. It will be a podcast when I get into digital workflow, probably this season, but we'll see. All of you know I can hear some of you laughing out there that I know you make fun of me for this. As I say, there's an idea for another podcast. This is one I have written down around the digital workflow, but all of you out there's a perfect example of.

Speaker 1:

We don't have time to scan with the ITERO machine or whatever scanner you use out there. We don't have time Yet. What you do have time for is the 30 minute records appointment that you forced them to come back to later down the road. So you don't have five minutes now, but you have 30 to 45 minutes on your schedule somewhere else. Do you know how crazy that is? That makes less than no sense whatsoever, but this is what a lot of you do. This is why you have to fire yourself If you don't have time and you have a chaotic schedule. Are you wondering why Joe isn't coming back to buy when he leaves? It's because of all the barriers you create, from the money presentation, your financial options that you even have at the practice, to when they leave, they've got to come back to sign a contract, or when they leave, they got to come back for records. Meanwhile the other practice they don't like. These are all things and decisions that you all are making, whether it be intentional or not, that create the problems. It creates the conditions that you all live in.

Speaker 1:

Right, if you're frustrated with price shoppers, you better damn well learn how to sell better. I used to hide behind that terminology, but I don't anymore. You all are in sales. You can hate that word, and the reason you hate it is because you think of a car salesman. You don't think of education, and that's what sales is. That's what we teach. It's how to educate in a way that places more value on you than other options. That's it. There's zero reason to be upset or scared, or I'm better than sales, or whatever it is. And if you have that mentality, you might as well turn the show off right now, because the reality of the situation is is that's what we teach, inevitably is sales through experience, experience through sales, whoever you want to say it. But whatever issues you face, employee, if you have employee issues, I love this.

Speaker 1:

Well, gen Z and millennials, you can't find anybody that wants to work. It's all bull. It's a bull, for one is because every industry deals with that, not just you. So again, wow, wow, wow, me, me, me. Create a blame strategy. And if you want that to stop in your practice and you want Gen Z and millennials to go the extra mile for you and you want to create a great team, guess what you have to do? You have to become a better leader. You have to learn how to create a different type of culture. You have to learn how to communicate better. You've got to learn better hiring strategies. You've got to learn better bonusing strategies. You've got to set up the job descriptions differently Just an example of how you will end up with wonderful, wonderful employees. Employee experience is the new customer experience.

Speaker 1:

You've heard me say many times on here one of the greatest things, one of the biggest things I am proud of in my career is that the great people stay in my organizations. Right, chat, new patient group. We have turnover on the admin side and things like that About the leadership team, the rock stars they stay, and there's reasons for that. Right, there's all kinds of reasons for that. Today's not the idea, but if you're having turnover issues with good people, right, there's a difference between bad and good turnover. Good turnover is when the crap organically leaves because you set the culture up in a way that pulls the greatness out of people.

Speaker 1:

And the people that have no interest in self-improvement and those exist, right? Unfortunately, again blame society. That's the majority of humans. It's also the majority of a lot of you that own your businesses out there, right? And this is when I watch cooking shows and these shows where people go in to help failing restaurants. It's always the same story from these restaurants, right? Rarely, rarely Do you go in and hear the business owner go.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, you know our food. Just, I need to look in the mirror. The food's got to get better, got to be a better chef. Maybe we need to invest in some better tools back in the kitchen. I've got to train our waiters how to sell better. We've got to have a better ambiance. We've got to revamp the whole thing.

Speaker 1:

No, what do they say? Yeah, it's really. Just, you know, we got a tight advertising budget. People just don't know about us. And this is the mindset that so many of you have out there in the orthodontic industry. Well, if we just had more new patients calling, we would be fine. Meanwhile, your phase one to phase two conversion stinks, your OBs conversion stinks, your pending treatment conversion stinks, your same day starts stink. The list goes on and on and on and on. Yet you've convinced yourself all of that's fine, you just need more advertising. And this is the biggest issue in every business is realizing that the more you look in the mirror and the more you realize that whatever problem you have, it's because of the decisions you have made to get you there or if that problem has happened, not because of that, it's the decisions that you're making to try to get out of it, and a lot of you make very, very, very irrational decisions, very irrational decisions, and I'm going to give you so and unfortunately these were a couple of podcast listeners too.

Speaker 1:

Normally, you know, when you do content like we do, it attracts other people that believe what you believe right and it turns off. That. This is one of many reasons that we have a very high retention rate across all my companies, which I am very proud of, because all of you, as an industry, you're very much a okay, I'm going to use this person for a little while. And then you go to an event. You hear three speakers. The next thing you know, you're at some booth buying something that totally changes your vision, totally changes everything that you've worked on, and it's like you're getting bed with these different people all over the place. You're all over the place, decisions are all over the place and you're using all these companies. And then you wonder why it doesn't work. And I am very proud of the retention we have, because people don't leave unless it's for irrational things.

Speaker 1:

And I give you an example. It's, like I said, normally the podcast listeners this does not happen with and these are only two people we've lost with right chat what I'm about to describe. But this is the kind of thing that motivates me to do podcasts like this and say you have got to fire yourself, you have got to stop lying to yourself, you have got to make different decisions in order to achieve different outcomes. We bring a board. I met them at Ortho Panours and we did Instagram photos and you know blah, blah, blah. And then you know the first doctor on boards with right chat and during the onboarding phase look for people who have been with right chat a long time there is going to be onboarding issues. So those of you out there that are coming aboard in 2024 understand like we're dealing with IT and we have a great. That's like. Steve Miranda is a genius, great with with the customers, is willing to work his butt off, and I will give you an example of what I mean by that here in just a second with his story and and. But there's going to be IT hookups.

Speaker 1:

It's inevitable, or just like when you hire an employee, they're going to make some scheduling errors. It happens. None of those are red light emergencies. Those are things that come up. You calmly sit down as a leader, you communicate to somebody else in a calm manner because they are not your inferior. They are not your inferior, right. You communicate that to them and then you see if they go and fix it and assign.

Speaker 1:

A true greatness as a company is not one that doesn't make mistakes. As a matter of fact, if you're implementing things the way I teach, you're going to make mistakes, and I'm going to explain what I mean by that here with this story here, just a second as well. So the true test for all of you is as companies make mistakes, how do they react to it, how do they fix it, how do they stay on top of it, how do they communicate with you? Right, but it all has to be calm. So this doctor is not calm, right, he's talking down and I can't. This type of stuff drives me nuts when and I have family members that are lawyers that tend to do this sometimes to people it's like I know the law. So I'm smarter than you and I'm going to talk down to you and some of you out there are, like that right Now.

Speaker 1:

Our loyal following is absolutely not like that. They are the opposite of what I call white coat syndrome. They are experts at the clinical and they know that and they want to constantly get better at that, but they are extremely coachable around all the rest of the things. So this lady is rude to the team and rude to Brenna, and I mean how you could be rude to somebody is incredible as Brenna or as incredible as Steve, I have no idea. So during the onboarding we promote, this girl and good employee wants to do really well and the leadership team with RightChat thought she was ready to go and handle the onboarding.

Speaker 1:

Well, it turns out she didn't handle the onboarding with this doctor very well. I believe she didn't make a meeting, she just didn't just all the things that I teach, the unexpected hospitality just wasn't there. So what do we do as a team is we get feedback from the customer. We go to the employee. We say, okay, look, maybe you're not ready or maybe you are and you just didn't handle it. Let's go through this, let's practice it, let's role play it, let's get you more prepared, and that, everybody, is how you run an awesome company. One of the ways you run an awesome company is. You receive the feedback and you go and improve yourself internally as an organization in order to come back stronger and kick everybody's butt.

Speaker 1:

Well, this doctor and Steve was on with this doctor until, I think, like 930 on a Friday night. And I say what company out there with the employees willingly beyond at 930 at night on a Friday with a customer, when it's not even an emergency right Now it's an emergency to this customer, but it's not an emergency at all. None of these things are a big deal right. We're in month one, I think we're rolling into month two and by the end of month two everything works itself out Schedulings nailed, the agents are unbelievable on the phones, better than anybody you're ever going to hire and get trained. Everything works so beautifully.

Speaker 1:

Now it doesn't mean there's not more hiccups along the way. Of course they happen, right, but this is the beauty of outsourcing we have to deal with it. So this lady just flips out over the whole thing and cancels without even giving it six months, without even giving it eight months. And this is what so many of you do out there is you make such irrational decisions and you trip over, just you trip over yourself with these decisions and you lose so much money, so much chaos is created from it and you don't even realize it. Because so much of this, like with this doctor, she is not going to know how much money she's going to lose for the rest of her life with people that called and her practice didn't answer, or, when her practice does answer, have them not psychologically prepared to buy when they know, show right, it's going to cost her millions throughout the rest of the course of her career. And those are decisions that she has to live with. And that is another example of firing yourself. You can't handle situations like that.

Speaker 1:

Whenever a hiccup happens, you have to communicate calmly. You've got to give it time. You've got to hire companies that match your vision to where your vision is carried out by the people you are surrounding yourself with, rather than your vision going in the toilet because of the people you surround yourself with. And, sure enough, what happens with her friend and I knew this is just basically a month later, a friend quits because her friend, who was rude as could be to the team as well. It's the same thing. It's like I don't understand. Why do you treat people that way, especially people that are very intelligent, very good at what they do and have helped tons upon tons of people.

Speaker 1:

Now my team right chat team was on with this lady on a Saturday. Again, nothing was an emergency, nothing was like oh my God, that practice is going to blow up. None of it was a big deal. It was hiccups that happen over the course of onboarding and then they get worked out, they get smoothed out, just like when you hire your own employee. There's mistakes that are made, there's a learning curve, and then you move on and you get better and better and better and better. Well, this lady made, again, irrational decision, very short term thinking, was unable to see the future, was unable to be infinite minded, and she's going to suffer the consequences without even knowing that they're happening.

Speaker 1:

And this is happening to so many of you out there. There are so many leaky holes that you have, from a business mindset to the culture you create, to how you talk to people, to the leadership, to your receptionist, to how people are greeted when they walk through your door, to the ambiance, to how your front desk looks and feels, to not scanning with your ITERO machine, to not understanding sales fundamentals critical sales fundamentals in your doctor exam and your TC exam, how you present money in the critical sales fundamentals there, pending treatment OBs, phase one to two conversion after they sign, your existing patient experience and how they're greeted and trust transfers throughout your office. And handling objections and complaints. And having conversations of noncompliance with mom and the kid to get them compliant. And that's only about 10% of everything I could sit here and rattle off.

Speaker 1:

If you want different outcomes, you have to make different decisions. You can't lie to yourself and play the blame game at all whatsoever. Ah, that patient didn't buy because they were a price shopper. Guess what? Welcome to 2024. People should price shop until they realize why your $2,000 more expensive. Oh, I see this from how I was treated non-clinically in those experiences, to the uniqueness of the technology, to all of these things, to how excellent the doctor is, to all of these things. And how do you accomplish that? You train your team and you on the non-clinical world you all live in and function every single day.

Speaker 1:

You know you wonder why there's chaos in your practice. Right, there's chaos because of you. You're making the decision to be high share, to share with braces. You're making the decision to not take all the records at the very first appointment so people don't have to come back. You're making that decision, so now they have to come back, right, because you're not taking all the records up front. You know your analog with your paperwork you either send out the paperwork they have to print out or your contracts they've got to come back and sign. You know the new patient. I could go on and on and on and on. These are decisions that you're making that you have to stop. You have to fire yourself. Stop lying to yourself and playing the blame game in 2024 and saying somebody else is the reason for why you are not successful or why you are not achieving goals or why you're not, and, more importantly, surpassing your goals on a consistent basis. So many of you need to stop and slow down and ask yourselves what are the fruits of your labor, what is your legacy? What do you want to be remembered for in your life, in your career, in your business? What do you want to be remembered for? What is your plan of attack of accomplishing that? I have a.

Speaker 1:

One of my all time favorite movies is Spaceballs. I'm a big Star Wars guy and Spaceballs is just to me. It's hilarious and I like playing movie clips from that movie when I speak, because there's a lot of business lessons that come from it. And one of the movies, one of the movie clips that I play, is when Lord Helmet, when they fall behind and they need to go into light speed to catch up, and he says light speed is too slow, we've got to go right to ludicrous speed. And it goes. It has these lights that go. Okay, they've achieved light speed, and then it goes to ridiculous speed and then it goes to ludicrous speed and they end up passing, you know, by thousands of light years, miles, whatever you want to call it, the target they're going after.

Speaker 1:

And so many of you do this where you fall behind and your practice is down or you're not achieving the goals, or you're not getting the phone calls you want or your conversion or whatever it is, and you make these irrational decisions and you try to go so fast and you try to speed up so much that you end up getting nowhere. And then you compound those with ridiculous decisions on top of it, like the two doctors I was just describing about with RightChat. Those are irrational decisions made on non-facts, not being calm, being a chaotic leader and not understanding the full picture of what it is that you want and sticking with it during the hardest of times. You can't be the person that is trying to go a thousand miles per hour and then wondering why you're never able to check things off of your list.

Speaker 1:

I would tell you all that if you hired me as your CEO, I would walk into your organization and I would say here's what we're going to do. Year one we're going to reduce the no shows and we're going to focus all of our attention there. Right, not all of it, but for the three things I'm talking about. That's one of the three. We are going to train our receptionists how to convert people into same day starts Okay. Two, three we are going to train the assistants how to coach their patients chair side and how to coach the parents, how to make people compliant, and we're going to reduce our non-compliance by 30%. See, all of your chaos I was talking earlier. It's created because of the decisions you're making.

Speaker 1:

If you want to know why patients aren't compliant, it's because your assistants don't know how to sell. They don't know how to have tough conversations, they don't know how to motivate, they don't know how to coach. They don't know how to hold people accountable. That's a learned skill set through training, role plays and accountability period, and if you do that, your compliance will get better. Your non-compliant people that you're in your chat forums complaining about I don't do clear liners or patients aren't compliant with it. They're not compliant because of you. Humans are humans. So if you know that, you've got to learn how to get them to follow your rules and you do that through sales, hospitality experience, verbiage, presentation all the things that assistants are never going to learn from people inside your industry they're never going to learn at assisting school, just like your receptionists don't, your TC's don't. You don't learn in the schools you go to. You have to fire yourself and make different decisions if you want to achieve different outcomes.

Speaker 1:

And once again, blaming your patient, blaming the industry, blame, blame, blame, blame, blame is never a recipe that's going to achieve joy, happiness, success, you achieving your goals and now the beauty of your legacy and what all of you are wanting out there is. The beauty is is none of nobody gets to define that except for you. And then it's your job to bring in the right companies to help you achieve it. But nobody gets to define that except for you. You know, inevitably, I'm a big believer in this because I study people and I've been studying people forever. And the question you got to ask yourself is is the people that achieve success, surpass success, they achieve their goals consistently, they surpass their goals consistently, they they're happy, they're moving the needle forward consistently, versus the people that don't? Why? Why is that? Is it is it skill? Is it education, et cetera? And the answer is a resounding none of the above 75% of billionaires didn't go to college. They dropped out. That is nothing to do with it.

Speaker 1:

Obviously, it's the decisions that all of you are making. That's, that's the reason. Why does somebody lose weight when they have a slow metabolism and another person with a slow metabolism doesn't? Same condition of the slow metabolism what's the difference? It's the decisions one makes compared to the other. It's that simple.

Speaker 1:

You have to fire yourself and reimagine your practice in 2024. And there's a roadmap. You got to know what you want. You've got to have the vision to get there. You've got to articulate what you want and that vision to your team. And today's not a what's the roadmap, that's a podcast for another time. That's also a big reason why we're hired and brought in. Some people know exactly what they want. Other people need help finding it.

Speaker 1:

The premise of today everybody is 2024 can be your best year ever, 2025 can be even better, 2026 can be even better than that. You've got to be patient. You have to know what you want, and whatever is not working today, you have to change it. And if that doesn't work, when you change it, you change it again. And if that doesn't work, you change it again and again and again and until it works. But you cannot keep doing the same exact thing over and over and over, while not getting better at it and expect different results. It's not going to happen. You've got to be great at what you can control. You've got to say at the end of this year you've got to say we got better at all the things we can control than we were at the end of the previous year. You've got to be infinite-minded, which we have lots of podcasts coming up about. The infinite-minded CEO versus the finite-minded CEO Big topic, very important.

Speaker 1:

You can't use blame as a strategy. Everybody. It's going to keep you down. You can't surround yourself with people that blame others for their situation, their condition. It is going to bring you down. You can involve yourself in chat forums, in groups, in orthodontics etc. Other industries, with people that are blaming conditions on why they aren't happy, they aren't succeeding, they aren't thriving, they aren't making more money, they aren't less chaotic, they aren't more efficient. That is on you. That's called being an entrepreneur. It all falls on your shoulders. It's called being a leader. You get none of the credit when things are great. You get all the blame when things aren't. If you don't like that, then you better turn in the leadership little flag, because that's part of being the leader, part of being the leader. It comes with it In 2024, you can change for the better if you don't blame others and you're willing to fire the way you've done things.

Speaker 1:

Stop lying to yourself about the reasons you aren't succeeding, because the reason is you. If you're not making more money, the reason is you. If you can get past that mindset, become great at what you can control. You're never going to be able to control the numbers If you play the game of being great at what you can control when things aren't right, looking in the mirror and saying how can I get better to change this If an unfortunate scenario happens to you that's totally out of your control? Guess what those things have happened to other people too. The decisions you make to get out of that situation will determine what happens in your future.

Speaker 1:

Be the person that if someone says here's the time machine, what are you going to do with it? So many people will go back into the past and say I wish I could change this, this, this and that. But the true innovators, the true forward thinkers and the true greatness out of people, the ones who realize that greatness is not achieved from your past. The greatness is achieved from the comeback that you have and what you're going to do to make your future different People that are great. Use a time machine to look into the future and say how can we get better? And the future starts today. Run your practice differently. Fire yourself. Stop using excuses. Make different decisions. Commit to being unbelievable inside your doors. Create and commit to being business and life coached. Have your team training. Stop using crappy digital marketing companies and use real ones that move the needle forward. Change your decisions. You will change your outcome. You will change the conditions and you will overcome poor conditions like a down economy. You all can do it. Welcome to 2024.

Speaker 1:

I hope everybody enjoyed this podcast. Best of luck to you this year. We're going to be back in February with another great episode, episode number two of season seven. See all the customers here for MPG Iconic coming up here in a couple of weeks. I cannot wait to kick that off and we'll have a ton of video footage online for everybody to see how it went, because we're going to be shooting tons of YouTube and social media content with the team there and look forward to it.

Speaker 1:

All right, love all the followers out there. Thanks for your loyal partnership. Thanks have a great 2024. See everybody soon. Bye-bye, hey everybody. This is Brian Wright. Thanks so much for listening. If you would do me a favor and make sure to write us a five star review on whatever podcast outlet you are listening to the podcast. If you are watching it online, make sure to make some comments and get some chatter going around the podcast on YouTube. If you would be so kind, also write us a five star review on Google, that would really help us out and look forward to working with you in 2024 and have a great year. Thanks for listening today and we'll talk to you soon.

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