New Patient Group Podcast

Three Essentials to Revolutionize your Practice in 2025 and Beyond - The Final Episode of Season 7!

• Brian Wright • Season 7 • Episode 116

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What if transforming your healthcare practice into a hospitality-driven business could set you apart from your competitors? This episode of the New Patient Group Podcast delves into the heart of this question, sharing insights from a serendipitous conversation with a former Invisalign patient. Discover the power of hospitality, convenience, and affordability in revolutionizing your practice. By drawing parallels with industries renowned for exceptional customer experience, such as airlines and Amazon, we explore how practices can prioritize these factors to create an outstanding customer journey.

The art of hospitality goes beyond being nice—it's about mastering advanced skills in communication, leadership, and culture to elevate the overall experience of your patients. We discuss how embracing convenience through innovations like virtual consultations can meet modern consumer expectations, while also emphasizing the importance of creating a welcoming ambiance to enhance perceived value. Shifting your focus from traditional healthcare practices to a more hospitality-centric approach could lead to increased patient satisfaction, referrals, and business growth.

Financial flexibility can be a game-changer for both your practice and your patients. Explore strategies that make luxury services more accessible, such as offering extended payment plans to attract a broader customer base. Understand the balance of risk and reward in these decisions, as well as the impact an inviting environment can have on justifying premium pricing. As we conclude Season 7, we encourage self-reflection on your practice's strengths and areas for improvement. With gratitude for your support, we look forward to returning stronger in Season 8, ready to tackle the holiday season and beyond with renewed vigor and insights.

New Patient Group - The Employee & Patient Experience Co.

A company designed to help orthodontists, dentists and other types of Doctors create a practice that dominates the new economy. Learn Advanced and Cutting Edge Skill Sets Used by the Finest People Businesses in the World, such as the Ritz Carlton and other famous Companies:  

- Leadership
- Sales Fundamentals
- Hospitality
- Consumer Psychology
- Verbiage
- Presentation
- Many More 

Learn How to Apply the Skill Sets Above to each of the following:

- Existing Patient Experience
- New Patient Experience
- New Patient Phone Call
- Existing Patient Phone Call
- Digital Workflow
- Treatment Coordinator Exam
- Doctor Exam
- Financial Presentation
- Pending Treatment FollowUp
- Handling and Overcoming Objections 
- Trust & Communication Transfers 
- Digital Marketing
- Patient Compliance
- Clinical Assistant Chair Side Conversations
- Clinical Assistant Conversation with Parents 
- Remote Monitoring (If, applicable) 
- Clear Aligner Starts and Profitability (If, applicable)

What to Expect from Implementing the Above Skill Sets:

- Improve Leadership and Culture
- Improve Mindset and Motivation
- Improve Employee Experience
- Improve Patient Experience
- Improve Patient Compliance
- Increase Treatment Conversion
- Increase Production 
- Increase Cash Flow
- Increase Patient Referrals
- Increase New Patients
- Improve Efficiency
- Improve Time Management 
- Improved Digital Marketing Presence
- Improved Brand Awareness 

- Reduce New Patient No Shows
- Reduce Existing

Speaker 1:

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 takeoff roll begin.

Speaker 2:

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 RightChat and a trusted motivational speaker for Invisalign OrthoPhi and others, brian Wright.

Speaker 3:

Hey, new Patient Group and RightChat Nation. Welcome inside the broadcast booth, brian Wright here, and welcome in to another edition and the final edition of Season 7 to the New Patient Group Podcast. This will be the last one of Season 7. We're going to wrap it up. If you'd listened to the previous episode, I was thinking about making that the last one, but I listened to it and a lot of times people are like hey, man, how do you keep coming up with ideas for the podcast? I'm like look, all of you have to do is keep your eyes and ears open. In any company interaction that you have, regardless of industry, just conversations that you have with people on an airplane or your friends or whatever. Run businesses, poor hospitality, leaky holes in many different areas around an organization. That all apply, whether it's orthodontics, dentistry, healthcare, non-healthcare restaurant, whatever all the things you hear us talk about. They all apply to all of you out there. And that's why the ideas are endless and the more I read and the more I study and the more I want to improve, the more ideas just keep coming to mind. And, matter of fact, as I do this podcast today, I was in the process of trading in my car and looking for the right deal and things like that. And next it'll probably be next season, season eight. I'm going to actually go and shoot this and the difference between a finite minded salesperson versus an infinite minded salesperson and how that applies to you as a CEO and entrepreneur would be a really good one. But it's an example of just me going to trade in a car I literally got. That was one example. I got five or six different episodes for future seasons to be able to talk about. So you just have to have your eyes and ears open a lot of the time and just like today.

Speaker 3:

What I'm going to be talking about today happened about 35,000 feet in the air. I was sitting next to this gentleman and his wife. We got into a conversation because he saw me. I was doing some content, I had my laptop open and I had left it on my title screen, which is where people introduce me, and he saw that I was a speaker for Invisalign and he kind of he calls me. He's like hey, man, see you speak for Invisalign. I did Invisalign. And he kind of he calls me. He's like hey, man, ceo, speak for Invisalign.

Speaker 3:

I did Invisalign before. Yeah, I really liked it, you know, blah, blah, blah. So what do you do, man? Like I see you're building out your content and stuff, and whenever somebody asks me, hey, what do you do? I never know exactly how to even answer that question.

Speaker 3:

And we started talking. And and whenever I get into conversations like that, you know there are times on airplanes I don't want to talk to anybody, I guess not even just airplanes. There are times in life where I just don't want to talk to anybody. And then there's other times where, hey, you know I love to have conversations with people and I want to be surrounded by people and, you know, have fun and be with people. And and I was in a mood that day to chat, so I asked him.

Speaker 3:

So you know, the doctor that you bought the Invisalign from, you know what were you? What were you looking for from that doctor, how did you make a decision? Because he had mentioned that. You know he was looking around and he brought that up because I told him what we do. You know, one of the things we specialize in is helping businesses that are in a commodity restaurant, orthodontist, dentist, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. When you type in something that you sell, are there going to be a million options within a pretty short drive from my house or my place of business or my kid's school, things like that. And if there are, you're a commodity. Whether you like to hear that or not, that is the reality. So that's where I told him he's like well, man, that makes sense.

Speaker 3:

You know, I remember when I did my Invisalign, when I Googled it, there were all kinds of different options. So I said, yeah, so what made you decide to go with the practice that you went with? You know, when there's six different choices, what's going to differentiate one practice from another? And he gave me three things that were, I mean, right away, he didn't even have to think about it. He said hospitality, one, two, convenience, that's two, and three, affordability. And I told him you know it's so interesting you said that because these are the things that we teach and I said now, affordability.

Speaker 3:

A lot of times people don't know this, they don't know definitions, things like that, but convenience and affordability go into the hospitality umbrella. You know, a lot of times people think hospitality and customer service are the same thing and they're not right. Hospitality fits into the recipe of customer service, but customer service does not fit in the recipe of hospitality. Same way with this, like affordability and flexibility One. It does not mean I'm going to dive into a little bit of each one, but these are things. This is why I wanted to do this as the final episode of season seven, because these are things that I want you to be thinking about as we head into season eight of the new patient group podcast. Many of you know we don't do episodes, and I talked more about this in the previous episode. We don't do episodes in December. A lot of reasons for it. So this this is going to wrap up season seven, like I said, but these are all things that I want you to think about.

Speaker 3:

As people enter in Invisalign, they enter in braces, they enter in whatever they enter. Are you convenient? Do you showcase that you're affordable? Do you showcase that you're hospitable? When they call your office, do the receptionist presume those things? Do they know how to edify the certain things when they come into your office for an opinion? Like these are things that you've got to be thinking about, because these are also the things that allow you to charge a higher price.

Speaker 3:

It's so incredible to me in 2024, as I shoot this podcast today and as we're heading into 2025, how difficult it still is to get people to think like this. Not only is this the now and it helps you get through tough economic times like we've been in now for a while. Not only do these things help minimize the pain that you feel in those situations or even help you grow, these are also the things that, whenever the economy is good, make you skyrocket, allow you to charge more things like that. But it's so hard, even today, to get people to think in terms of hospitality, convenience, affordability, and obviously there's a lot more pieces to the puzzle. Convenience, affordability, and obviously there's a lot more pieces to the puzzle, a lot more slices to the pizza, whatever you want to call it. But let's start on the hospitality side.

Speaker 3:

When he talked because we got into this conversation and I said what does that mean to you? And he goes well, I want to be treated nice, I want to be noticed, and there's several of you, and this is unbelievable. You know I want to be treated nice. You know I want to be noticed, and there's several of you, and this is unbelievable to me. I just had and this is one of another pod I just got my haircut as I do this podcast today. I got my haircut yesterday and got into this conversation with Sarah was her name and how she described going into an orthodontist one time and sitting down for an hour and just completely being ignored.

Speaker 3:

See, these are things that it's hard for you as doctors out there to understand. Why you need to fix them, why you always need to be improving them, because a lot of these things are happening and you don't even know about it. Right? You're in the back during the haircut is like the doctor wasn't even out there, like I just sat there I was rotting away. Finally, I went up and said something and the girl up front was like oh, we marked you as a no-show. We didn't even know you were here. Right, it's that stuff, guys, it happens to all of you.

Speaker 3:

It may not be the Sarah that's waiting in your waiting room for an hour, but these things there's holes everywhere on the hospitality side of your business for the simple reason, if nothing else, is that your employees as I say a thousand times on here over and over again if your employees went and gave your assistants, your receptionists, your TCs, your hygienists, your whatever, whatever, whatever. If they went and gave their resume to any company that specialized in hospitality, they would not be hired. And if that doesn't freak all of you out in a people first business that you are right In the hospitality industry, that all of you exist in right, if that doesn't freak you out, I don't know what the hell would like. That shows you that you have unqualified people working for you, no matter how good their clinical hand skills are, no matter how good they are chair side, no matter how much you love Betty, your receptionist, no matter how much you love Timmy, your treatment coordinator, susie and Betty, your hygienist, whatever it may be, it may be they still couldn't get a job in hospitality, most likely, right? So your goal as a business owner should be like hey, what kind of training could we give our people to give them the skill sets that can go on their resume to where, if they walked into a Ritz-Carlton, the Ritz-Carlton would go okay, I'm going to consider you for this job, right? That's what we do, among many other things.

Speaker 3:

All of you should see value in that, because if you don't every single interaction your employees have with a customer, a patient or ones that you want to become a customer or patient, there are leaky holes in there because there are literally you know, when I was talking to this guy about hospitality, people tend to say the same things. Right, they talk about I want to be noticed. I want people that smile, I want them to be kind when I call the office, I want them to actually answer the phone. I don't want an AI robot, which is a conversation maybe for season eight. This is a surprising stat around AI and chatbots and things like that. That may surprise some of you, but they say things like that. I don't want to wait for my appointment. When I come in the door, I want people to know that I'm there, I want to be greeted and I want the appointment to start right away. I want them to respect my time.

Speaker 3:

I'm the customer and they go into all of these things that are pretty standard, right, like none of those are rocket science, even though the majority of those still don't exist inside the practice. Like, what's going through my mind with hospitality are things that you could listen to over the course of now. We're wrapping up seven seasons of this, which is just crazy. Like there are so many hundreds of things that we teach that would fall into that hospitality bucket, and it's all with the intent of getting what you want right, of getting people to start today, getting people to put down more, not because you require it, and I'm going to talk about that here in a minute.

Speaker 3:

With affordability right, a lot of people mistaken affordability and flexibility for for cheapness, and it's the opposite. I'm going to give a reference here here in just a minute when we talk about the third thing he brought up. So I started diving into him. I'm like look, man, like let's take hospitality, take a hotel, and I went into all the things that we did and he's like wow, that's amazing, because all of those things like would get me to most likely buy from this practice, right, and a lot of the things that we're talking about are things that the customer or perspective wouldn't necessarily even know. Like he's, they're going to know if you greet him and pay all the things he said they're going to see that. Know, if you greet him and pay all the things he said they're going to see that. But there's countless of other things people aren't thinking about. That would still go into hospitality. That would then, if you deliver it, get them to go wow. But these are the things.

Speaker 3:

If you all just ask people on an airplane, you're standing in a line at a restaurant or whatever it is and you get into conversations and you just ask people. And this is funny. It's just like your five-star reviews. Your five-star reviews prove all of this. Right? The five-star reviews you guys have heard me say this a million times the five-star reviews talk about your business. They don't talk about your practice. Right? It proves why what we do is needed by literally every single practice in the world 100% of them. Right, this hospitality experience, training, the psychology methods and training, the verbiage, presentation, communication skills, sales fundamentals all the stuff leadership, culture, all the stuff you've heard me talk about a million times.

Speaker 3:

So he says hospitality, the mindset for a lot of you and why it gives you such a unique opportunity, is when you think about growth or if you're not growing or if you've got issues. Very few of you think hospitality is the reason, and I am here to tell you that it is For all the reasons I just said. Like you have employees that if they gave their resume to a hospitality company that views themselves that way, they would not be hired, and that proves that you have problems in the hospitality department. It does not mean that you're mean. It does not mean anything like that. A lot of times people think, oh, we're nice, people like us, therefore we're hospitable, and that is not the case. Were hospitable, and that is not the case, right? Hospitality is advanced, advanced, advanced training that comes with hundreds of subcategories and, when executed, people will buy from you, they will refer to you, et cetera, et cetera.

Speaker 3:

So hospitality was the first thing he brought up. And I mean, he spit these things, guys. I'm telling you, he spit these things out of his mouth. It wasn't like, hey, why did you buy from this practice? And if you typed in Invisalign into Google and six or 10 practices come up, how would you determine which one to buy from? It wasn't like he went huh, that's a good question. Let me think about this for a minute. It wasn't like that. It was literally three things spit out his mouth in record time. It was like boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. It was like Sonic. I have little kids, so we watch cartoons. These are the things.

Speaker 3:

Now, the second thing convenience. You all have to remember and and this is true for, for and this is why your mind always has to be outside the healthcare space is convenience, is? It means so many different things, so many different things. And it's amazing still in this industry, when you talk about virtual consults, how people will be like, ah, those are bad patients, right, and it's because, like you've, you've tried a widget on your website and and you haven't had good success with it. Maybe your no-shows are high, your conversions low, blah, blah, blah.

Speaker 3:

So you draw the conclusion that the virtual appointments don't work, when I want your mindset in a place of going look, we have not had luck with the virtual consults. What are we doing wrong? If that's where the mind is, then that's why you can seek help and you can fix the leaky holes that exist. Even people who've got the virtual consult down really well, there's still holes. There's always holes that can get better down really well, there's still holes. There's always holes that can get better. But because a lot of you look at the virtual consult and you may not have had success with it or you don't know how to do it, instead of getting help with these things, you place a label on it it doesn't work. Bad patients, price shoppers, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Meanwhile, the reason why that's happening to you is that your processes are screwed up. They don't work, like you're trying to run it as if it was the person coming into your office and that doesn't work.

Speaker 3:

And I bring up the virtual consults as one thing with convenience and that's something that you should be advertising all over your digital marketing experience as well. But it's also other things, right. It's like if my retainers come into the office, are you going to make me come and get those, or can you mail those directly to my house, right? And then that's another thing. It's like mail them, like and then meet on Zoom with them for 10 minutes. Like that's convenience. And those are a couple examples of so, so, so, so much more that I could sit here and talk about.

Speaker 3:

But a lot of you don't view your practices that way, in the same way that you would view an Amazon Like why do we buy from Amazon? And usually at a higher price? Convenience, that's the word. So why would you not want to offer those same type conveniences? That's how, among many other reasons, that's how you become unique, and a lot of you are, flat out, not convenient, whether it be the appointment times you offer, whether it be you don't offer remote monitoring, which, in 2024, is just beyond crazy to me Like I can't wrap my head around. I can wrap my head around it but it just blows me away. You know, it continuously blows me away that the innovation in industries.

Speaker 3:

You take the airline industry and Richard Branson. You know when he started. You take the airline industry and Richard Branson. When he started there industry experts that have been around the airline industry forever. Here comes an entrepreneur with no previous experience, looking at all these people going you're a bunch of clowns. Like again, you're nickel and diming. You're nickel and diming the profit sheet to screw the and screw in the customer in the process. Uh, you can't look beyond paper. Your customer experience sucks. You don't know people Like you analyze the numbers instead of being great with people. You don't train your people on how to interact with your customers well, you're so inundated with the numbers. This happens to corporations all the time and Richard Branson went into the airline industry and kicked their ass.

Speaker 3:

And this is kind of the same thing that all of you have to remember is that a lot of times they say like the innovation in industries is brought from an outsider, because the people in the industry get stale. And then, as things change taxi cab industry exactly, you know Uber came in, changed it all. Like the mentality is so stale inside industries. This is why, when, like with us, we come from outside your bubble, we look at all the problems you think you have and we look at them at all as opportunities period, because there are solutions to all of them. But you actually have to get off your butt. You have to invest in the people that can help you fix the problems that you're complaining about.

Speaker 3:

Next season, I've got I think it's going to be next season and it's one that I've I have not shot yet. Um, I've wanted to for a long time but, but it's going to talk about the, really the only time that you're not allowed to complain about your problems. And this is kind of the essence. Like, if you're complaining about problems you have but you're not investing to fix them, you have no right to complain about the problems. You have Period Period and a lot of the problems a lot of you have out there can be solved with convenience. And again, convenience means that all kinds of different things and that's why convenience fits under hospitality. If you are not convenient, you are not hospitable. Convenience is a subcategory of hospitality and this is something I was teaching him on the plane.

Speaker 3:

I said look like and this is where I never like jump into these conversations because it's like one of the things you all have to be worried about is that you're obsessed clinically Like that's your passion, so you can very easily get into the exam room and turn people off if you Like that's your passion, so you can very easily get into the exam room and turn people off. If you talk too much about your passion, like if you get into the clinical weeds, right, and that happens to all of us. Like you know, I fly planes so I can easily pilot, nerd you to death and you don't care. But I'm talking about my passion or talking about the rules in baseball. I haven't been an umpire in professional baseball. Like I can bore you to death about those things. I'm passionate about it, and what I'm talking about here today with that guy I'm very passionate about obviously. So I got to really be careful.

Speaker 3:

I don't want to dive too much, but the guy kept asking questions, like he was. He was thoroughly intrigued with the whole concept of what really gets like he didn't really even know why he would buy from a practice, right, like he knew it. But until he said it out loud and we got into this conversation. He was like, damn, I didn't really realize that they. They are a business, right, and I've got 20 options to pick Invisalign for and this isn't about Invisalign, but Invisalign is a highly entered search term and people are shopping for it and and that's all fine and great. If you're the one that's got the better culture, the better, the better digital marketing experience and the better trained team from A to Z, you will win that battle, and at a higher price. And these are the things I'm talking about. But I also talked to him about what true customer service is Like. If you look at the break rooms at the Rich Carlton the montage, you know their mantra is we get what we want from our customers. That's what we're doing Like. Everything we work for is to get what we want, but we're going to get there by delivering more than that customer would have expected at every given moment in time. That's customer service, right? So all the things you know.

Speaker 3:

Hospitality is an ingredient that goes in that recipe. Convenience happens to be a subcategory under hospitality. So does affordability, right? So you have hospitality that goes into that definition. And I'm teaching him all this stuff and he's just amazed like, wow, this is so cool and he actually started. He starts listening, I have his number and he's texting me. It's like listening to the new patient group podcast now going damn like this has already helped me in the job he happens to do, which has nothing to do with healthcare, which is the whole point of of why I have this podcast, why we have this company.

Speaker 3:

The whole point of why I try to talk to all of you is that you're not an orthodontic practice. You are a hospitality people first business that is selling orthodontics instead of food, instead of a hotel room, et cetera, et cetera. And when you're in this mindset, you will constantly get great ideas come to your mind that other people just will not think about when they're stuck inside the healthcare bubble. But I think I got on all of this because a lot of this innovation going back to remote monitoring, when I was like I can't believe it, like I can believe it being in this industry, but it still blows me away that anybody, any practice, would not be using remote monitoring, whatever form Invisaligns. Dms grins like they all have advantages, they all have disadvantages, like that there's one that there's some that are that are better. There's some that aren't, but it doesn't matter.

Speaker 3:

Like the concept of remote monitoring, the only people that would ever view it as a bad thing, and all the bias that comes up about it, which none of it's true and season eight. So next season I'm going to be doing a lot more about the bias against remote monitoring, debunking those bias biases, because we haven't, I don't think and I don't know why. It certainly hasn't been intentional, but I have not done a lot, if any, topics on this podcast specifically about remote monitoring, and I want to because we are huge believers in it. Like I said, the only people that would ever view it as a bad thing are people in the industry, like your prospective customer patient, your existing patient, like nobody's going to view it as a bad thing, especially if you know how to articulate and sell the value of it.

Speaker 3:

All the things that people claim are not good about remote monitoring are all solvable problems, usually created by the practice itself. It's just crazy to me that you wouldn't have all your patients on remote monitoring, clear aligners and braces by the practice itself. It's just crazy to me that you wouldn't have all your patients on remote monitoring, clear aligners and braces, by the way. It's just. It's crazy to me, but the point is is this is why it's such an opportunity for those who are because you are more convenient, period. It's not that people and this is not a remote monitoring topic, so I don't want to get in the weeds on this but it's not that people don't want to see you. It's that they don't want to see you. If they don't have to see you, it just goes back to simple is that every day, companies win that are more convenient Ones. You can click a button and order online, don't have to go into the store, et cetera, et cetera.

Speaker 3:

But, for whatever reason, there's this barrier when you're running your practice. You can't think this way, but you should, because again, you have a consumer sitting in an airplane saying specifically I want the practice that's hospitable, I'm looking for hospitality, I'm looking for convenience and, like I said, convenience comes in many different factors. Convenience is also when I walk through your door, do I have to sit for 10 minutes or do you run on time? Right, that fits into the convenience bucket. Like, there's so many things. Like, are you making me come in for, you know, appointments that easily could be done in a five or 10 minute zoom or didn't have to be done at all, like there's so many things.

Speaker 3:

If I have a potential, you know, emergency, can I take a scan with my remote monitoring box and you can analyze that and go. You know, mr Wright, this isn't actually emergency. This is very common. You're going to be good Switch to the next aligner when it tells you or I tell you what, just come in, come in in a week or two. This is not something you need to get in right away Like blah, blah, blah. Or do I have to come in only to find that out? Like there are so many different things that practices do, usually unintentionally, without even thinking about it, that aren't convenient for the customer, for the patient.

Speaker 3:

And again, if you think about yourself as a people first business that sells orthodontics, dentistry, plastic surgery, whatever it is and this is exactly what I used to talk to my employees in plastic surgery when I my own practices is, we do not sell plastic surgery. We are in the people business first and all the things that people recognize the most. We are going to be the finest organization they've ever walked into in any industry in the world, health care or not. Right and through that. Our sales are going to go up, our referrals are going to go up, our referrals are going to go up, we're going to create fans. We don't need to advertise, et cetera, et cetera. We'll always be innovating, we'll always be coming up with a new idea and we're going to sell great clinical work at the same time. But it's not the other way around.

Speaker 3:

And for all of you listening to this and this is why I wanted to end this on today's message is I want you to truly understand are you a high-level hospitality business? Right? Are your phones up front? If they are, you're probably not a high-level hospitality business. Why? Well, because when I walk through your door with my kid, janice is on the phone and now I have to wait.

Speaker 3:

There are so many hundreds of things that go on every single time, like I show up for my delivery appointment for aligners and the front desk person says sign in and sit down, someone will be with you. Like what the hell is that? Everybody, and that's how it works in all of your practices. By the way, right, there's no communication about the personal side of the notes. From the TC to the front concierge, you know, greets the patient in a wow way. Trust transfers it to the front concierge, you know, greets the patient in a wow way. Trust transfers it to the assistant that's going to be running today. The assistant picks up on hey, you know all the personal notes, like there's so many advanced things that you all are missing out on because you don't know what you don't know.

Speaker 3:

And these are things you've got to then ask are you convenient, like if if I broke your practice down versus Amazon, versus another people-first business, do you offer that type of convenience? You've got to be truthful with yourself. The answer for the majority of you out there is flat out no, and it's not. You can't take it as like a criticism or an insult. You can take it as running a business is freaking hard and being great at the things I'm talking about is fricking hard and constantly evolving and innovating is fricking hard, and that's where I can go on back to is most of the innovation comes from people with outside of your industry. Because you get into this nine to five rut, you only hang out with people from your industry. You end up hanging out with people that are negative Nancy's and talking bad about price shoppers. And when? When reality is, is that price shoppers are smart because they don't understand the value of why you're seven and the other two are five, like that.

Speaker 3:

That's what all this goes into. You've got to be honest with yourself and going into next year and beyond, this is the now and the future. Everybody like. What we're talking about here only becomes more important with every single year that passes period and there's never a finish line that this is another tough part like that. The three things that we're talking about you know for the most part, especially with hospitality and convenience, there's never this line you cross. You're like, okay, we're there, we got it. You can't let that culture ever creep in either of that mindset because you never got it. That's the beauty of ongoing. That's why I did the previous podcast around neutrality and the cognitive training is that your key is repetition, repetitive thought, repetitive role plays, et cetera, et cetera, around like-minded people trying to accomplish the same vision as you. That was a really good episode, great feedback by everybody. Make sure to check out the previous episode.

Speaker 3:

So then we get into affordability, and I have not done this is kind of like the remote monitoring. It's not intentional, but I have not really done a lot of discussion, topics and podcasts specifically about affordability. And the three things this guy told me on the airplane are easily easily 30, 50, 100 podcasts that I could make just from the conversation I had with this guy in the plane, and I intend to. I don't want to go into depth of even if any given one, because it's really not about it. It's just about getting all of your minds. This is just another podcast of getting your mind in a place that your orthodontic sale Invisalign braces, whatever else. That is not what you're selling everybody. You are selling all of the experiences and I cannot articulate this enough, and there's an art to doing that. There's an art to doing that affordability.

Speaker 3:

So there's a lot of bias, you know, I, I think, I think and I usually say this when I speak on stage, and I have a story that I talk about with pilots, and one of the things that gets private pilots killed is is bias where, if you're in IFR conditions, which simply means conditions where you can't see anything you're in the clouds, as an example, or at night even, even usually on clear days, at night, you can't see a lot of stuff. So you're flying the plane on instruments and this happens especially when you take off you can have and this even is the case whenever you can see is you get these sensations of you know you're climbing too fast, right, your plane's too upright, you're not climbing enough, the plane's tipping to the right, like. You get these sensations, but the dials, the instruments, are telling you something else. And what happens and it is easier said than done, just like removing personal bias and how you feel about things in your business is easier said than done, but you have to do it. To be a great CEO, a great entrepreneur, you cannot do things based on how you feel. Fortunately for many of you out there, especially if you're new to this podcast, that's how you do it. I feel it should be this way. Or I feel a patient's going to not pay, or we've had one not pay us if we extend our monthly payments, which I'm going to get to in a minute.

Speaker 3:

So what happens in these IFR conditions as a pilot is that you're in the clouds and you have these feelings of, hey, I'm tipping to the right and your bias wants to say, okay, yank the steering wheel air quotes obviously not a steering wheel on a plane but yank it back to the left and correct it. Well, if you do that, you're dead because the plane's not tipping to the right. The instrument says you're perfectly fine. Or the instrument may actually say you're going to the left and that happens. It's there's sensations, there's medical terms for it that you have to get right and understand them on your test to be able to pass it. And if you're going to the left like you feel you're going to the right, but the instrument's saying you're going to the left and you trust your gut and you yank it to the left, you flip the plane upside down in your history. So, no matter how you feel, if the instrument is saying you're going to the left, you've got to turn it back to the right and compensate properly. And that's easier said than done because as you turn to the right, your body already feels like you're going to the right and you feel like you're going to flip it. And you're not as long as you pay attention to the instruments.

Speaker 3:

A lot of you out there you don't pay attention to the instruments and the financial presentation and money options and things like that are proof. And everybody has the you know patient that screwed them one time and therefore you've made all of your financial options around the one instead of the 99 that paid you fine, or you know you're a paid in full buyer in your personal life, so that's how you think everybody should pay. The TC is this type of buyer, so she presents it with a bias, like there's so many things around the financial presentation that we really have not touched on a lot on this podcast. That's why you know I've got at least 300 more episodes that I've, that I've mapped out and and it's always just like okay, what, which one's next, and how do we take each season and things like that. And and that's part of the role that I have as host here that I love, I love mapping them out.

Speaker 3:

So you talk about affordability and and this is this is kind of the thing, right, Is affordability means so many different things. It's also under the hospitality umbrella. This is what I was teaching him and I asked him what does affordability mean to you? And he said well, to us as a family, it's a matter of getting the monthly payment where we need it, right? So you as a practice, it's a matter of getting the monthly payment where we need it. So you as a practice, and you really got to be thinking about this and, like ortho phyo, I speak for. You know they've got data around this, we've been tracking it, I pay attention to it as well Is that you know if you're a here's what, what? Let me just sum it up this way If you're a practice that charges seven grand, this way, if you're a practice that charges seven grand, right. And this is how one of the ways that a practice that's more expensive can also be more affordable and this is what this guy meant, because I gave him examples. Matter of fact, in the slide deck that I was working on, I compared this as a car Like I had a Hyundai, whatever versus a Mercedes S-Class, and I showed, via flexibility and affordability, how the Mercedes S-Class could be a lower price every month, right.

Speaker 3:

If the Mercedes S-Class said put down whatever you want, you know, let's say, it's a $200 minimum down payment requirement. They allowed you to extend out. You know for many, many years beyond, what the Hyundai is. The next thing, you know, you're more affordable monthly. If you look at the Hyundai and it's like look, we require $3,000 down, right, you can only extend out for this long. The monthly came out at higher than the Mercedes S-Class. People don't really care about the total price. In this country there's exceptions to that, but what they care about is the down payment to get into something in the monthly. So that's why there'd be a lot of Mercedes S-classes driving around if the down payment was really low and you could extend out monthlies as long as you wanted. And I'm not sitting back here saying, hey, you should extend out monthly payment plans for 10 years. But what I am telling you is you are absolutely killing yourself if you don't extend out past. Whatever their treatment length is right let's say it's 18 months there is no reason you shouldn't go to 32, 36 months on that period. What if they default? There's no data in the industry that says they will. The data in OrthoPhi has this is it happens four to six months into treatment after they've paid about a total of $2,400. So, based on the data, what do you care?

Speaker 3:

And the other piece and I've already actually shot this podcast. I don't know when I'm gonna launch it, but it talks about and this is something all of you this needs to ring home. This needs to ring home and ring true with a lot of you out there, because your high collection rate if you're 98%, 99%, 100%, whatever that you and your team like to brag about. That's not a good thing. This industry and the messaging from within the industry by so many people is like yeah, you should be 98% above. That shows that you're collecting properly. That's bull. Any bank that collects at that rate means one thing You're not taking on enough risk period and you're letting customers walk and all of you out there and all of you out there because some of you, especially the MPG customers you are affordable and flexible. You understand that you can charge a high price if you do all the things we talk about and you're affordable and flexible. You can be more expensive than the other five opinions and you are most likely to win because of what we're talking about right now.

Speaker 3:

If you collect in the low 90s, even the high 80s, what's going to happen is is that you are going to get an enormous amount of more starts because of it. So, yeah, are you going to have some defaults? Absolutely you're going to have some defaults, but who gives a damn if five people default but you get 100 more starts because of it? Or if five people default but you get 30 or 40 more starts because of it, who cares if five people do it If you get 25 or 30 more starts because of it, but you can't make your financial mind around the ones that screw you. Every business deals with defaults, not just you. Every business deals with defaults. So what you always have to be doing in this podcast is not about this today, but what you always have to be doing is playing this game right Is, how much risk can I take? And if I take it, do I grow and get a lot more starts because of it? And if you do, the risk is absolutely worth it. Now, if five people default and you got seven more starts because of it, obviously not worth it. Right, and you can and only you can make that math and do that data.

Speaker 3:

But the reality and this guy told me he's like look for us, it was all about the monthly right. So the practice that we ended up buying from, uh, they were really kind to us. Uh, they really respected our time. Uh, you know, they paid attention to us. They did some things that you know other practices weren't doing. Right, and? And ambiance, he didn't mention this, but ambiance is another one because I, I he didn't mention this, but ambiance is another one because he didn't mention this. But I asked him like did that practice look updated? Like, did that? And he's like, yeah, like wood floors, like it just looked apart, right.

Speaker 3:

And a lot of you have to understand too, like ambiance goes into hospitality. That's another thing. It's very difficult for you to be the highest price of five opinions. Try to come across as this advanced, all digital practice and then have carpet from the 80s, cabinets in your TC room from the 80s, etc. You get the point. So this practice looked the part. They were hospitable, they were convenient, and then they were able to reach the monthly payment that he wanted because they extended out the monthly terms, like he was, I think he told me like a an 18 month, 17 month case right in there and they extended out to 35 months. Um, bingo, there you go. It's like that's how you can be more expensive than the other opinions and still win, right.

Speaker 3:

And this is the same thing with the down payment. You know a lot of you have to understand is that you are asking for a down payment that is higher than what the majority of people in America have in their savings account and you have to say to yourself, well, that's asinine, that makes no sense. Like, how can we get away with that? Too many of you don't. But this goes back to the affordability and flexibility you can't require now with the TC skill sets and presentation skill sets. You can get it, but you should not require a high down payment. It's part of open choice.

Speaker 3:

This is not the topic for today, but this absolutely goes into why your practice will lose. Let's say you're 5,000. My practice is 7,000. My practice implements the things that I talk about in this podcast and that we implement into our customers' practices. And then, on top of that, my $7,000 total fee. I'm actually more affordable monthly than your $5,000 total price because I have open choice in my down payment and I allow flexibility to extend out monthly payments to a certain extent beyond treatment.

Speaker 3:

I will beat you. I will beat you, period. And this is how all of you have to think, because here's a perfect example of a guy, 35,000 feet up in the air having a conversation with me that instantly spit out these three things and then wanted to pick my brain because a lot of the things he did for a living, what I taught him on the airplane, now helps him. Like we text. He listens to the podcast, like I said, like these people that you're dealing with. They notice these things, they pay attention to these things as they shop around.

Speaker 3:

And I want you to finish off, you know, as we finish off season seven, I want you to really take a deep dive into your hospitality, into the convenience that you are offering, or lack thereof, right. And then the affordability, the flexibility that you have from a payment plan option to get your monthlies lower than other people that I'm shopping for, and all of this is the art of being the most expensive, right, as well as hundreds of other things, right. But I wanted to finish this off. This will be a good, you know, the rest of November, december take a hardcore dive into it and look, we're here to help and this is something that we want to work with your practice and making sure that leadership, culture, digital marketing, right, sales fundamentals, psychology, verbiage, presentation, communication all these skillsets that fall into the hospitality bucket we want to make sure that you are showcasing those front and center always, and when you do, your problems are they going to go away? No problems ever go away as a business owner, right, but your problems shift from I'm not happy with A, b and C, conversion revenue, et cetera. They shift into other areas that we then can help with as well, and we look forward to working with your practice in 2025 and beyond. And I'm excited.

Speaker 3:

Hey, we finished up a wrapping up season seven. I think this was a good one to wrap up with. We got lots of stuff going on in December. Looking forward to seeing it. Hey, and I saw great people at Invisalign Summit. Summit was amazing. Just love seeing everybody there and love seeing everybody look same way with this right. I love seeing everybody throughout all the events every single year, and the podcast is growing. Dr Hakeem, I'm gonna give a special shout out to you, man coming in from Dubai and at Summit and wanting to see me, and that was really cool for me. It was great getting to know you, um, and you came aboard as a customer too, but just seeing the podcast you know people from all over the world is just really cool. It means a lot and I think we had a great season. The feedback has been wonderful.

Speaker 3:

Uh, looking forward to another great season in season eight, cause the way I look at is we're just getting started, baby. We got all kinds of stuff to go, all kinds of new things to talk about and we're going to. Season eight is going to be great. We'll see everybody back. We're going to be launching the very first business day of January with season eight, so look forward to a brand new episode.

Speaker 3:

Think about these three things and really analyze yourself, really critique yourself and ask where you can get better in all three of them, because all of you can, and there's some areas that you do know, and then there's some leaky holes that happen to you all every single day that you don't know of, and I want you to be aware of both of those. Okay, aware and acknowledge that you may not know the leaky holes, and that's also why you need help in these areas right, hospitality, convenience, affordability. We're gonna end now. Appreciate everyone's support, thumb this up, share it with your friends and colleagues. We keep growing like crazy and I want season eight to be the best one of all time. Until then, everybody have a great Christmas, great upcoming Thanksgiving as well. Happy New Year to everybody. We'll see you back with episode one of season eight in the near future. Bye-bye.

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