The Dr FriesWithThat Show: Recent Episodes
Josh Renken DDS
Dental care has become confused as an impersonal short term transaction. Consultants push on persuasion and case acceptance while dissatisfied patients bounce from office to office or avoid care altogether. Growing a profitable dental practice doesn't have to feel so greasy! Dr. Josh Renken, dentist and founder of practicewater, has found a unique way to approach dental care and wants to to share it with others who might be frustrated with the status quo. The Dr. FriesWithThat Show offers fresh strategies to help dentists and their teams grow health and profit in their practices.
On today’s episode, I discuss reasons some patients may be wary of pursuing further treatment or seeing their treatment plan through. I also outline ways to ensure that they feel comfortable, understand the importance of dental health, and return to the practice regularly.
The goal of ensuring return visits is not only to fully serve the patient, but to also ensure the health of your practice. You don’t have to stress about adding new patients to the roster if you ensure existing patients feel compelled to follow through with care.
Today’s Topics:
- Identifying and refining patient goals
- Keeping plans of care simple
- Providing solutions to reticent patients
- Ensuring comfortable procedures and recovery
- Method for cementing a crown
Links and Resources:
Dr. Frieswiththat Podcast Homepage
I would love to hear your feedback on today’s episode. Send me a message at practicewater.com.
If you enjoy listening to this show, please leave a review in iTunes. This really helps us spread the word to other dentists and helps make everyone’s practice a success.
This podcast is sponsored by PracticeWater, providing online training and other products to implement health and profit strategies in your dental practice. Visit PracticeWater to learn more!
Today I discuss why it is so vital to make learning a core value of your practice. In a time when demand for dental services and profits are flat, frustrations run high. As such, it is important to manage personal and team stress. The way to do this is to advance your practice through learning.
A practice that is not evolving is one that may ultimately deal with not only a frustrated team, but frustrated patients. Listen in as I talk about how learning and (in due course) change improves the culture of a practice.
Today’s Topics:
- Dealing with change
- Managing your team’s stress
- Micro-change
- The importance of discussing a problem
- How learning improves practice culture
I would love to hear your feedback on today’s episode. Send me a message at practicewater.com.
If you enjoy listening to this show, please leave a review in iTunes. This really helps us spread the word to other dentists and helps make everyone’s practice a success.
This podcast is sponsored by PracticeWater, providing online training and other products to implement health and profit strategies in your dental practice. Visit PracticeWater to learn more!
On this brief episode, we delve into which part of the elephant to eat first. Namely, I break down how to tackle the many issues that arise at a practice. When you have a team, patients, and finances to deal with, it’s hard to know where to put your focus. Today, I help you determine which problems to deal with first and how.
Today’s Topics:
- Team issues/drama and how to resolve it
- Improving patient care
- Making key management decisions
Links and Resources:
Waterfall Profit Calculator
I would love to hear your feedback on today’s episode. Send me a message at practicewater.com.
If you enjoy listening to this show, please leave a review in iTunes. This really helps us spread the word to other dentists and helps make everyone’s practice a success.
This podcast is sponsored by PracticeWater, providing online training and other products to implement health and profit strategies in your dental practice. Visit PracticeWater to learn more!
On today’s episode, I talk about an important aspect of every dental or medical practice: I discuss anchoring. Namely, framing patients’ expectations and understanding various procedures and the costs they may incur.
It’s extremely important to communicate clearly with patients and to make sure they understand why they need a certain procedure. If you don’t frame the problem in an effective manner, the patient may only consider the monetary costs and not the cost to their health. Listen in as I explain ways to engage your patients and anchor problems effectively.
Today’s Topics:
- Couching bad information/Explaining procedures
- Managing patients’ goals and giving them perspective
- Framing problems for patients
- Thoughtful communication
I would love to hear your feedback on today’s episode. Send me a message via practicewater.com.
If you enjoy listening to this show, please leave a review in iTunes. This really helps us spread the word to other dentists and helps make everyone’s practice a success.
This podcast is sponsored by PracticeWater, providing online training and other products to implement health and profit strategies in your dental practice. Visit PracticeWater to learn more!
On today’s episode I cover a topic that comes up so frequently in the life of a dentist. Namely, I discuss the issue of how to change the perception that dentistry is expensive.
Dentistry is commonly perceived as an expensive or unaffordable health care cost (even with the help of insurance). In actuality, it is not preventative dental care that costs the most. Listen as I discuss emergency dental care, tending to your patients’ financial needs, and shattering perceptions.
Today’s Topics:
- The initial sticker shock felt by emergency patients
- How to manage sticker shock and reassure your patient
- Planning for the costs of long-term dental issues
- Using my new tool to track percentage of revenue you should be investing and discover ways to grow your practice financially
Links and Resources:
Waterfall Profit Calculator
I would love to hear your feedback on today’s episode. Send me a message practicewater.com.
If you enjoy listening to this show, please leave a review in iTunes. This really helps us spread the word to other dentists and helps make everyone’s practice a success.
This podcast is sponsored by PracticeWater, providing online training and other products to implement health and profit strategies in your dental practice. Visit PracticeWater to learn more!
On today’s episode, I discuss the often uncomfortable topic of collections. Specifically, I underline ways to stress the importance of your relationship with your patient, while successfully collecting on most, if not all, of your overdue accounts.
Creating a successful practice comes with many pitfalls and the last thing you want to do is create a strain on your relationship with patients. Listen in as I emphasize the importance of working with patients to pay off debts and not alienate them in the process.
Today’s Topics:
- Steps for dealing with past due accounts
- Writing effective 90-day letters to patients whose bills are past due
- How to determine which bills to send to collections and which to write off
I would love to hear your feedback on today’s episode. Send me a message at practicewater.com.
If you enjoy listening to this show, please leave a review in iTunes. This really helps us spread the word to other dentists and helps make everyone’s practice a success.
This podcast is sponsored by PracticeWater, providing online training and other products to implement health and profit strategies in your dental practice. Visit PracticeWater to learn more!
On today’s episode, I discuss simple ways to build your business through relationships within your community.
More often than not, tips about building your practice involve gimmicky, short-term ideas that ultimately do not bring in the type of business for which one would hope. The best advice I can offer, while simple, is not always obvious.
Today’s Topics:
- How to gauge the perception of your practice
- Using the delivery person as a resource
- How to go about building relationships within your community
Remember: your goal is to get your patients to health and keep them there. It becomes less about convincing, and more about offering care that’s consistent with that long term plan you want to have.
If you really want to get out of the short-term transactions and follow the Dr. Fries With That model, you’ve got to follow today’s tips and communication techniques.
When you start getting interested in other ways to increase the lifetime value of your patient relationships, head on over to PracticeWater. We’ve got great articles, funny cartoons, and other resources at your disposal. Have a good time!
I’d love to hear your feedback on today’s episode. Send me a message over atpracticewater.com.
If you enjoyed the show today please leave a review in iTunes. This really helps us spread the word to other dentists and helps make everyone’s practice a success.
Most of what you’ll hear nowadays encourages you to pursue a short-term, pushy and gimmicky path when approaching new patients. (You’ve probably heard all about “The Art of Persuasion”, right?)
Well, if you’re having case acceptance issues, that may work for you. I, however, have never felt like it was the right thing to do in terms of presenting treatment to people.
If you’re having trouble with your patients accepting the care your recommending, today I’m sharing one of the best things you can reference during every treatment plan presentation to help improve your profitability, and move your patients to health without being greasy or sleazy in the process. And after all, that’s what this show is all about.
It’s nice when you know that your care provider isn’t just trying to sell you something, but instead trying to get you through life in a way that’s going to help you meet your goals.
This is a huge profitability tip, because when you start to have relationships with patients that aren’t just one-off, short transactions, the chances of your hygiene schedule becoming an ongoing source of value go up drastically.
I also tell the tale of how I met my wife, and how I used today’s tip to secure her as a patient, and apparently, a life partner!
Remember: your goal is to get your patients to health and keep them there. It becomes less about convincing, and more about offering care that’s consistent with that long term plan you want to have.
If you really want to get out of the short-term transactions and follow the Dr. Fries With That model, you’ve got to follow today’s tips and communication techniques.
When you start getting interested in other ways to increase the lifetime value of your patient relationships, head on over to PracticeWater. We’ve got great articles, funny cartoons, and other resources at your disposal. Have a good time!
I’d love to hear your feedback on today’s episode. Send me a message over atpracticewater.com.
If you enjoyed the show today please leave a review in iTunes. This really helps us spread the word to other dentists and helps make everyone’s practice a success.
Welcome to episode three of the Dr. Fries With That show! Today’s edition is about what an amazing Hibachi chef knows about customer service that could totally change your dental practice numbers.
As dentists, we desperately want our patients to understand how incredibly and deeply dedicated we are to the quality of what we do.
However, there are people that have found better ways to connect with their customers and portray this, and I met one on my most recent visit to a Hibachi restaurant with my family.
We chose Hibachi so that our kids could be entertained while we got a chance to get out of the house for a bit. Even if the food wasn’t fantastic, every little part of the experience was amazing to them because they had never seen it before
The chef knows that the people he serves are primarily there for the experience; the food is more of an afterthought or an added bonus.
The reason he was able to deliver so much entertainment while delivering a decent meal, in my mind, is because he’s gotten his routine to be so second nature, that he’s truly doing it naturally and authentically. He doesn’t even have to think about it because he has a well scripted routine of how he’s going to perform.
I feel like this is incredibly similar to the new patient experience in your practice, and today I tell you why. By the end of this episode, you’ll know how to help your patients by not only improving their oral health, but also leading them to be self aware of things that they wouldn’t have thought of before, in turn making them want to be even healthier.
Inconsistency is the last thing you want in your practice. If you lack a streamlined process, you’ll never get to the point where you patients are fully engaging in the experience you're providing. Today I tell you the secret to giving them an experience they’ll be talking about for years
So if you take lessons from a Hibachi chef, you’re going to move more patients to a great initial experience and first impression.
If that new patient experience is well-scripted and consistent, patients will have a great time and tell their friends about it, too. The next patient should have just as good an experience as the last, from the moment they walk in, until the correspondence after the appointment.
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is what leads to long term growth in your dental practice.
Did you enjoy today’s episode? Make sure to subscribe at Dr. Fries With That and we’ll notify you every time we publish a new episode. Also if you could, please take a moment to rate and review the podcast on iTunes; I’d be so grateful. That way, other great people like you can find out about the show, too. Thanks for your support!
This podcast is sponsored by PracticeWater, providing online training and other products to implement health and profit strategies in your dental practice. Visit PracticeWater to learn more!
The usual advice about growing your dental practice isn’t about people; it’s about short term, impersonal, gimmicky transactions.
“Dr. Fries With That” is a show about strategies to increase both health and profit at your practice, without feeling so greasy.
This is episode two, and this edition is about how spending too much money at TJ MAXX as a new dentist nearly ruined my practice startup.
When you’re a young dentist getting started, one of the most challenging things to your success is your own self-consciousness about how you’re perceived by patients.
The funny thing is that at least in my case, I wanted to change my patients’ perception of me. That led me to spending a bunch of money, time after time, and I was so focused on how I would be perceived that I was kind of missing the boat.
I kept thinking that if I could adjust the way I looked and acted, that it would have some huge impact on the patient’s experience.
Nowadays what motivates me to get into the office is something totally different, and I’ve actually done myself and my practice a big service using the method I explain today.
“I feel that patients trust us most when we deeply get invested in understanding who they are and where they’re coming from, and it’s even more convincing when the rest of your team is the same way.”
The difference hasn’t been in maintaining some sort of professional appearance; the difference has been in learning to get involved with the patient and understand them, and it’s also been just as much about helping our team do the same for our patients.
That's my tip for today: lots of young dentists feel offended when people don't’ believe them or take them seriously, and it’s not to be taken personally.
I feel like this is an important note, and in this edition, I explain how it made a distinct difference between the beginning and later phases of my professional career.
“When I’ve seen profound growth, it’s because I’ve grown my interest in my patients.”
That might seem like a bland recommendation, but there are some very specific things you can learn about the patient that will absolutely help you while partnering over time.
You want to know what’s important to them; for some people appearance is everything, and for others it's not.
“What I really care about is doing a good job and helping our patients achieve their goals.”
All I can say is the easy way to do it is included in today’s episode, and once you start applying it, I can almost guarantee your success will never be higher.
Did you enjoy today’s episode? Make sure to subscribe at Dr. Fries With That and we’ll notify you every time we publish a new episode. Also if you could, please take a moment to rate and review (insert link) the podcast on iTunes; I’d be so grateful. That way, other great people like you can find out about the show, too. Thanks for your support!
This podcast is sponsored by PracticeWater, providing online training and other products to implement health and profit strategies in your dental practice. Visit PracticeWater to learn more!
Welcome to the Dr. Fries with That Show. My name is Dr. Josh Renken, and I’m very glad you’re here.
In this inaugural episode I’m going to talk a bit about myself and the journey I’ve taken in developing my dental practice. As I’ve built my business, and learned some hard lessons along the way, there are a handful of key themes that I’ve found to be the guiding principles that I think make a dental practice a success.
So let’s dig in. Here are the themes that I think will set you and your practice up for financial success in the long run:
- Location, location, location: If there’s a dentist on every corner competition will be tough and standing out will be much more difficult. If you find a gem where there is low cost of living, fewer competitors, and high quality of life it makes everything else easier.
- Build a Team: Good suppliers, accountants, lawyers, and advisors will be key in setting your practice up for success. Adding these players to as if they are partners on your team will pay off big time in the long run.
- Spend the Money in the Right Places: Be frugal in certain places while spending good money on outcomes and profit for your practice. Increasing net profit by focusing on just the things that matter is a great metric when making purchasing decisions.
- Know Your Financing Options: Small banks want to lend on assets in place while large banks work off of well established algorithms of your practices expected success. Both have their merits, but when making these financial decisions keep your big picture in mind.
- Keep Personal Expenses Low, Low, Low: Maximizing your personal cash flow will allow you to minimize your business liabilities. Even then the financing you do have to extend for your practice will go directly towards building your practice the right way.
I’d love to hear your feedback on today’s episode. Send me a message over at practicewater.com.
If you enjoyed the show today please leave a review in iTunes. This really helps us spread the word to other dentists and helps make everyone’s practice a success.