Your Ultimate Blueprint To Starting An Orthodontic Practice!

[00:00:06] Today we're talking about unlocking the full potential of your orthodontic practice. Now, we like to start a lot of things with a quote. If you've watched any of our material, you've probably seen a lot of quotes. This one sets the frame perfectly for today. It says, growth is never by mere chance. It is the result of forces working together. And this is the founder of JCPenney.

[00:00:36] So jumping in just a little bit about Harrison and myself. My name's Luke, one of the co-founders here at HIP. And we started about 10 years ago. And then five years ago, Harrison joined our team, really kind of ushering in sales. And we've worked together very closely, not on just sales, but on how to be an expert within an orthodontic and dental practice.

[00:01:05] And just how to help orthodontists to grow. So that's anything from, you know, sales. We look at sales as the first touch point. So on the internet, on a phone call, text message, all of that into the treatment coordinator role. And then all the way up into operations and the org chart. So that's just a little bit about us. I'm from Pensacola. I was born and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area.

[00:01:32] And I'm a proud Floridian of the last seven years. And I don't think you could pay me enough to go back to California. Unless it's to watch a 49ers game. Unless it's to watch a 49ers game. All right. So success across the U.S. and even into Canada. We've worked with a lot of practices over the past 10 years, about 280 active partners all across the U.S. We may not have seen it all, but we've seen most of it.

[00:02:00] And we can speak to a lot of different models, a lot of different examples. Success, things not to do, et cetera. This section is going to be most valuable for the residents. Or if anybody's watching this, maybe you've just started your first practice as a de novo. Or maybe you've acquired an old office and looking to grow it. So we've got the building. We've got the chairs.

[00:02:29] We've got the x-ray machines. Now we just need patience in the door. So the question rings, now what? So let's talk about how we're going to get some patience in the door. Well, first and foremost, I think we know, or I'm sure you know, whether you're acquiring an old practice or whether you're doing a de novo, it's not cheap. At the same note, becoming an orthodontist wasn't cheap either.

[00:02:57] You know, I think the average resident or new orthodontist is graduating with like a half a million dollars of debt. And now we buy a practice and now we're going to take on more debt. So how do we actually budget properly to make sure that marketing isn't an afterthought and new patient acquisition isn't an afterthought? And we're really almost pre-framing ourselves to be set up for success.

[00:03:26] And the reason we wanted to deliver this to you guys is, I mean, I know you've been on calls, Luke. I've been on tons of calls. And man, I can't tell you how many first-time practice owners, when I ask them like, you know, how did they budget for marketing or what is your marketing budget? It's one of two things. It's either we don't have one or it's just whatever's left over. We've got 5K left. What can we do? We've got 10 grand left and I'm in downtown New York City.

[00:03:57] And I'm like, hey, man, like whether that's with us or with somebody else, like $10,000 to take a new brand and a new business to the marketplace, this isn't sufficient. And I don't know if this is possibly lack of education in the original education system on training the new providers or it's a mindset thing.

[00:04:23] But we said, hey, maybe we could add some value, share some information to help you all save some time, learn from other people's mistakes and really just collapse time to do this a bit faster. So how do we actually plan for marketing and advertising costs if I'm going to start my own practice or, like I said, take an old practice to marketplace and build it? Well, it's not cookie cutter, obviously, Luke.

[00:04:47] You know, if I want to be a million-dollar practice, I probably need to be thinking a little bit differently if I want to be a $10 million practice. So we really have to start off with the goal. And once we've got a clear goal in mind of where I want to be in 12 months, where I want to be in two years, three years, five years, now we can start to kind of reverse engineer what needs to happen.

[00:05:12] This rule of thumb I really think is most applicable for people that want to go fast. You know, I've talked to some new practice owners and they're like, you know, if I could just do 250K, 300K in my first year, I'd be ecstatic. And if that's your goal, like go get them. I know you can do that. But I know that we both talk to people that are like, I want to do a million in my first year.

[00:05:39] I want to do – we talked to a guy out in the Bay Area who wants to do two million his first year. And so if you want to go fast – Or faster. Or faster. Thank you. Batman and Robin. If you want to go faster, I really think that you need to be budgeting about 10% of your first year production goal towards marketing. We didn't pull these numbers out of the sky. Okay.

[00:06:03] This was a combination of a study that we read from the Small Business Administration, the U.S. SBA, and also from interviewing some of our doctors that have grown very quickly and most importantly, very easily. So I know in middle school and high school, our teachers told us not to just read off the slides, but I'm just going to read this slide so I don't paraphrase anything from the SBA.

[00:06:30] So the SBA says, as a general rule, small businesses with revenues less than 5 million should allocate 7% to 8% of their revenues to marketing. This percentage is based on companies that have margins in the 10% to 12% range.

[00:06:53] Now, any orthodontist or future orthodontist watching this, I'm sure you guys know, I hope you guys know, that even a halfway sort of decently run orthodontic practice should be doing much better than 10% to 12% profit margins. Let's make a statement here. I'll look at both cameras.

[00:07:17] If we have an ortho practice doing 10% to 12% margins, this conversation and marketing, probably the least of our worries. Knowing that a typical practice is doing much better than 10% to 12% margins, that's why we recommend spending a little bit more than that. You know, I think we have very healthy practices that probably do 50%, maybe even a little better. I think a typical practice probably doing 35%, 40%, maybe 45%.

[00:07:46] So that's how we need to be thinking. Now, obviously, we know that it's going to take about one to two years for our collections to catch up to a decent percentage of that production. So we have to have a little bit of a runway and working capital to be able to float that. But I really believe, and I know you feel the same way, that I think it's extremely realistic for a startup practice to do at least 500K production in their first year.

[00:08:10] I would say 95% to 97% of all the de novos that we've worked with have done a million, if not pretty darn close. And we've had a lot of people do over that. So if I want to do a million in my first year, we've got to be thinking at least 100 grand going towards marketing.

[00:08:27] And I want to make a note here, it's kind of off the slide, but something I've really started to think about and ponder about is why do some people grow so fast and make it look so easy and other people are spinning their wheels for a decade? And I know you obsess over this too. But it's like once you've got the license to practice, figuratively speaking, it's like the James Bond license to kill.

[00:08:53] Like you can make yourself as wealthy as you want to being an orthodontist, but why do some people get stuck and why do some people not? What I've been thinking about the last few weeks, Luke, and I actually haven't shared this with you. I really think it comes down to three things that hold orthodontists back from growing as fast as they want to, as easy as they want to, and productive as they want to. It's three things. Number one, how much time are they willing to put inside the walls of the clinic?

[00:09:22] You know, I've got some docs that will work four or five days a week for their first five years, crush it. I have other docs that think it's sacrilegious to work more than two days a week. This is your prerogative as a doctor. But we have to make sure that the time we're willing to work is in alignment with the goals that we want to hit. I talk to people that say they want to double their business in a year, but they won't work more than two days a week. Maybe you can do that. I don't know. But number one is how much time are we willing to put into the clinic and see patients?

[00:09:50] Number two is how much money are we willing to invest into the business before the business is making money? When the business is flowing with cash, it's easy to invest in the marketing. Number three, a little woo-woo here. What do you really believe is possible? Belief is a big part of this. You know, I talked to DeNovo, the guy I'm talking about in the Bay Area, and he's like, I want to do 2 million in my first year, and I think I can do it.

[00:10:21] And I talked to somebody a couple months ago, and they're like, I want to do like 300 my first year, and I think it's going to be really hard to do that. And so I go, well, who's right? I can say they're both right. They're both right. They're both right. So if you're listening to this, if you're stuck or you're doing your first business, these are the three things I might like put on a post-it note and really obsess over. How much time am I willing to work? How much money am I willing to invest? And what do I believe is possible?

[00:10:50] I think we both believe that million dollars in your first year, very possible. Yeah, I was just listening to Brian Tracy. If you don't know him, that's okay. It's irrelevant. But he was saying the same thing. What are you telling yourself? How are you building yourself up? Because you're the person who's most influential on your beliefs. Bingo. And whatever you believe, even if it's a false belief, it determines your reality.

[00:11:18] You'll start to build logic around why you're correct. 100%. Right? I'm like, oh, 300 grand in my first year. That's going to be tough. So I should probably only spend 20 grand on marketing. I probably only need to work one or two days a week. I'll keep my associate job over here. We're building logic and building strategy around what we believe. But that guy that believes that he can do 2 million. He'll probably do it. He'll probably do it. You know?

[00:11:46] So now here's the thing, guys. Do you need to be spending 10% of next year's goal forever? Of course not. Right? We scale down. I think the time that you can scale down is either when you're producing as much as you want to produce and you don't want to grow anymore, or when you've kind of hit that critical mass. Yeah. Right? Where I've got such a big ball of patience that people are coming in. And at that point, maybe we can scale down to 7% to 8%, maybe even less. Could be. Could be.

[00:12:17] Depending on what the goals are. I can't see anybody's faces, but my ears are buzzing right now. I can see people's faces in my dreams right now going, holy crap, $100,000 of marketing in my first year. That's a lot of money. Yep. My thought is, well, it's a lot of money just to become an orthodontist. What's another $100,000 at this point if I'm going to not get the patience in the door, right? Well, this is just some of the practices that we work with. Some of these are startups. Some of these were established.

[00:12:46] But I think if you look at all these practices, they've all grown extremely quick. And they're putting up really, really impressive numbers. So I wanted to just share a couple stories of some of our first-time practice owners. Maybe just to give you guys the belief that, man, this really is possible no matter where I'm located. So this is Dr. Sarah. Her practice is called Smile Orthodontics by Dr. Sarah.

[00:13:13] They are up in the Hamptons, New York. And her and her husband, Paul, who's kind of the COO, director of ops, they saw a real need in the Hamptons where in the Hamptons, most of the practices are really only geared to serve like that top 1% to 2% elite wealthy population, $9,000, $10,000 fees. And Dr. Sarah and Paul see an opportunity here.

[00:13:42] And they really almost wanted to like disrupt the marketplace a little bit, make things affordable, take the insurances. Because there's a lot of people, and I didn't even know this until we saw them, but like the people that actually live in the Hamptons like year-round, it's a very like blue-collar working force. It's not like the, you know, people flying in their private helicopters in their front yard. That's like the summer crew. Yeah. It's the people who maintain it all year right now. Yeah.

[00:14:11] So they were like, hey, we're going to go against the crowd. We're going to disrupt this. They started investing into marketing very, very early into their journey. I remember talking to Paul somewhere in their first six months. They were already doing 25 to 30 starts a month, six months into it. I'm not going to share their numbers, but let's just say in their first 12 months, they did break the higher end of those expectations that we know possible.

[00:14:40] And I could argue that they are producing more than some people that we know that have been doing this for almost a decade. Yeah. And they did this in a year. Yep. But they started spending money very early on to get the word out. They were willing to put the time in. They believed it's possible and they were willing to put the money in before the business was making the money. This is Dr. Wes Gass.

[00:15:06] He also has his wife, Dr. Kelsey Gass, who funny enough is actually the associate of one of our very successful partners. But they did a startup, a DeNovo up by Lake Lanier in a city called Dawsonville. We started working with them almost a full year before they got open. I do remember when we started talking to Dr. Wes and Dr. Kelsey. They were definitely very nervous to invest that kind of money that early on.

[00:15:35] You know, they both have associate gigs. They were buying this building, the debts, et cetera. Very, very nervous to move forward. Well, I talked to Dr. Wes pretty frequently. Knock on wood. They are on pace to hit their goal in their first year. But I remember having a call with them a little while ago and he goes, okay, Harrison, you were right. And I said, Dr. Wes is not what I'm looking for. He just goes, well, after all that kind of hesitancy and nervousness to move forward,

[00:16:05] I can tell you that like 90% of our patients right now are coming straight off the internet. And they are just moving along quickly. I remember August of last year was their fourth month open. They did like 135K in their fourth month open. Wow. Incredible. And the last story I'd share with you is Dr. Kristen Kinnick. She's out in the Houston area. She opened her practice in 2020.

[00:16:30] If you guys remember what happened in 2020, an interesting time to open a new business, to say the least. She had to close her practice six weeks later. Gosh, the contractor actually put another orthodontist like in the same shopping center, four doors away from her. So we look mindset here and belief. The world shuts down. I can't see patients. There's another orthodontist next to me. They charge $2,000 less. What would the average status quo doctor think here? Holy cow.

[00:16:59] I'm going to be out of business. I'm going to be out of business. How the heck am I going to do this? Dr. Kinnick. Willing to put the time in. Willing to put the money in. I'm going to be out of business. Strong belief. Boom. We can share numbers with her because she's pretty open about it. We helped her do $1.4 million in her first 12 months open. She got to $2 million in her second year in practice. I think last year, like over two and a half in her third year in business. In a great area.

[00:17:28] So we interviewed Dr. Kinnick and said, hey, you know, we want to start doing some talks with the residents, kind of giving back to the next generation of orthodontists. You know, if you were giving a talk to the residents or if you were speaking to your younger self, what are some of the things that you might share with your younger self or give back to the next generation? So Dr. Kinnick says that I wish I knew how feasible it is to do a startup with the right team, both in office and marketing.

[00:17:56] There's a lot of negative talk on the forums and amongst colleagues about how challenging it is to open a practice from scratch. Knowing this would have saved me a tremendous amount of stress and lost sleep. Most importantly, I likely would have done it sooner. So she goes on to say that one of the biggest mistakes I see people make opening a startup is bringing on a consultant.

[00:18:23] In parentheses, that should say bring on a consultant too soon. Too soon. Right? In business, everything is timing. So I would advise them to allocate that money to marketing instead and just utilize as many friends and colleagues for practice advice if needed. Also, be very cautious with lab fees in the beginning. Try to keep those low and stretch them out as much as possible so you can allocate that money back into marketing because...

[00:18:53] Kills your margins. Kills your margins. Cash flow. And I was talking to somebody earlier this week, actually, Luke, not a startup, bought a practice from an older doctor. She's owned this practice for three years. Three years. She's barely doing 300K a year. And I asked how the marketing budget looks. There really isn't a marketing budget. And her profit margin... I said, where's all the money going?

[00:19:21] Well, I have to use Lightforce brackets. I can't use regular brackets. I have to use Invisalign. I can't use another aligner system. I had to get a cone beam. Couldn't use two-day imaging. And hey, guys, I'm not a doctor. Luke's not a doctor. We're far from it. All those can be great things, by the way. These are great things. All of them can be great. Right? I'm not going to ever tell a doctor how to practice, how to treat.

[00:19:47] But the reality is those things do not bring patients in the door. They're taking money out of the pocket. If we went to the street right now and asked 10 people on the street that are thinking about bringing their kids into orthodontics... What type of bracket is he going to get? They have no idea. I'm going to say... The metal bracket, silver... What do you mean? What kind of bracket? You mean the things in the teeth with the wire? Things on the teeth. Yep. Yeah. Or they'll say... I'd ask them. I'd say, you know, would you prefer to go to a practice that has CBCT cone beam

[00:20:15] or regular x-ray two-day imaging? They're going to say, what? What is a cone beam? I'd probably say x-ray because that's what they know. Because that's what they know. But I will say to your point, I think the most important part of all of this, it's a little bit different if a billionaire wants to go buy a house for $10 million. Okay? They can do that, right? They got a billion dollars. Well, if I want to go buy a house for $10 million, you're probably going to...

[00:20:45] You have to do a few more of these podcasts. You're probably going to hear about Luke going belly up. And so it's not that extreme. That's a bit of an extreme case. But it can totally tank any business to bite off too much too soon. Like Harrison said, it's timing. And so while all of these things can be great for the practice and for treating patients and getting optimal results, guess what?

[00:21:12] If you can't pay for it, that's how you need to be looking at these different things within the practice. Can I pay for this? Can I afford this? If you can finance it and it makes sense, go do it. The reality is and why Harrison's bringing it up and it's a part of this talk is we see so many people who can't afford it. And then they're saying, now what? And they're saying, I'm out of money. I got no more money for marketing. What do we actually need? Well, I'm going to pass this one to Luke. All right.

[00:21:41] We need a couple of things. And this is really a lot of this is in relation to marketing, branding, positioning. So I'm going to go quick. The way that you need to be looking at marketing and branding and how you position your practice is long game versus short game. And so when somebody says, oh, I got 5k left over, maybe I can run some Facebook ads. Is that short game?

[00:22:11] Am I thinking short term or am I thinking long term versus? Yeah. Versus, you know what? I'm probably going to need a good brand name, colors. I probably need to get colors before I design my building because what if that clashes? Probably need a pretty good website. I'm going to need to invest in SEO because that's long game. You know, there's three other practices who have been here between 5 to 20 years.

[00:22:39] How would I rank before them if they're doing things right? Right? Long game. So there's a lot of long term things and those signage. Do you swap out your sign every six months? It's long game. So there's a lot of one time costs that are significant, but it's one time. It needs to be done right. You don't want to be replacing your sign every year. You don't want to be replacing your website every year. You don't want to have to do a rebrand. You don't want to have to change fonts.

[00:23:08] So we need to be thinking long game. Long game can be a bit of an investment, just like becoming an orthodontist. That's long term. Didn't take you a year. Yeah. I mean, imagine. Long term. Long term. Imagine if we thought like that in dental school and residency, right? Like we talk to these docs all the time, you know, they're 90 days into marketing and their life hasn't changed. I'm not rich yet. And I'm like, what if you thought like that in dental school?

[00:23:36] Like you're spending all this money on tuition with no ROI for what? Seven years? Yeah. Eight years? Is there a chance you apply for your first five jobs and they go, yeah, we don't like you. Is there a risk involved with that? But people don't think like this when they get out of school or when they're in school. And we get into business world to actually take all that time and turn it into a lifestyle and a living. And suddenly the mindset completely changes.

[00:24:04] It's like price versus cost. Yeah. So you're going to need a brand. You're going to need colors like we talked about. You need to be thinking about this. So if you're using a designer, interior decorator, you're just slapping paint on the wall. You have an idea for being cohesive. This is a brand that we recently completed showing you colors, fonts.

[00:24:29] Here's another brand just to show some logos, collateral, how it looks mocked up. Well, that's an important point as you hit these, Luke, is, you know, I talk all the time or people ask me all the time like, oh, well, you know, couldn't I just go to 99designs or fiverr.com? And the answer is 100%. Go ahead. You definitely can. You get what you pay for. Now, could they make you a cool logo? I've seen some cool stuff produced online.

[00:24:58] But now the next step is, okay, I've got my logo. Now I need just to name a few signage, letterhead, business cards, referral pads, scrub design, swag. The list goes on and on. So when you go to 99designs and throw 500 bucks at a logo, what are they going to say? Oh, yeah. No, I don't do that. Here's the logo. Good luck. Yeah. Here's the logo. Good luck. So when we handle the branding, we're not just like making you logo, you know, a watermark and some colors.

[00:25:27] We're going to take you from I don't have a brand to all the way to the end and helping you version out all the collateral, get it over to your printer, etc. Yeah. You're going to need a website. Really? Yeah. It turns out you're going to need a website. I'm a little biased, but I think some of our sites are the best in the space. Well designed, minimal, and you can easily go there and get the information and take action. So you're going to need a brand. You're going to need a website.

[00:25:57] The key things to look for with a website. Yes, you want it to look up to date, pretty, user friendly, but you need to have great SEO. SEO is essentially findability. I could say it's search engine optimization. You may go, what the heck's that? I've heard that term. It's just findability. Can people find you on the internet quickly?

[00:26:25] Are you coming up in the first three rankings? And so you want to look for a company who focuses on helping local businesses. Key point there. And if you can find a company who helps orthodontists, local orthodontists, that's even better. And that's what we do. There's several other people. There's several other companies who do this as well. We are not the only player, but we'll get into this.

[00:26:54] Marketing is just one piece of what we do. So you're going to need name, brand, type, colors, website, SEO, findability. These are just some examples of SEO and ranking. Egan, Minnesota. Our client ranking number one. You're going to need with SEO. Part of that is reviews. Getting reviews. Your Google business profile. Not only getting reviews, responding to reviews.

[00:27:23] There's a specific way you have to respond to reviews for HIPAA compliance. The next thing you're going to need is you will need ads. Now, this is short-term and long-term. Ads, especially on Facebook and Instagram, they should be getting you leads. Hopefully, those leads are being turned into patients. And it should happen relatively quickly. I mean, relatively. We get a couple leads a day for HIPAA. Some of our partners get one lead a day. Some of our partners get 20 leads a day.

[00:27:52] It depends on where you're at in your budget and to go back to your goal. But this can be quick results. And it's a long game thing in terms of strategy, iterating, trying new things. These are just some previews of Facebook ads. You want them to look real, authentic. You want to have an offer. You got to think this is not SEO. People are not going to Facebook to search in the search bar, orthodontist near me.

[00:28:22] What do they do? They're sitting there. They're scrolling. And when they scroll, you have to have an offer. You have to have something that stops them dead in their tracks and makes them interested and click. And so it has to be crafted the right way. This is just showing kind of the sequence of seeing the ad, reading the copy, clicking the call to action, and what that goes to on Facebook. You're going to need Google ads. Okay?

[00:28:52] And this is search-based. So people are going into the search bar. They're searching. But guess what? It's a limited amount of people. Facebook, it's Instagram. Everybody's going there. How many people who could be treated are going, yep, today, go type it in, orthodontist near me, braces near me, braces for little john. It's much fewer. Well, people ask all the time, like, well, what's better, Facebook or Google? And my answer is- Both.

[00:29:22] Yeah, both. How many people that are on Facebook that have never heard of you also go to Google? How many people that search on Google also scroll around on Facebook? Yep. Do I want to just be limited or do I want to saturate my market? Correct. The most important aspect of any business is your team, and with that, are they trained? Okay, we can go to Burger King.

[00:29:51] We can get some type of burger, sandwich, whatever. Is that going to be a great experience? Am I going to walk out going, gosh, I feel better about my life. I'm in a great mood. I love today. I have some questions if you walk out of Burger King feeling that way. If I go to Chick-fil-A, yeah, the food's a little bit better, but let's just pretend maybe some people don't like chicken sandwiches. Are you going to feel better? You can go in there and ask for a cup of water.

[00:30:19] It'll be the best cup of tap water you've ever had. Right. And so we want your practice to be the same way. I've never heard any successful business person ever say, the reason my business didn't work is that marketing company that I hired. No successful business owner has ever said that. They may say, yeah, it didn't work well. I found somebody better, but we were already doing good. It gave us lift.

[00:30:49] It should just throw more gas on the fire. When somebody's hitting doubles or triples and they get a batting coach and like, hey, let's tweak this one thing. Or you need to work out a little bit more. Maybe your legs are a little bit weak and they can strengthen that or perfect your swing. And then you're hitting home runs and grand slams. That's how marketing should be with your business. In order to do that, again, it's long game. You've got to invest in the right people.

[00:31:16] And then when you have the right people, which is attitude, mindset, you've got to teach them the right skills. I always wonder, you know, we talk to – they could be young business owners. They could be older business owners. And, you know, they've worked with us. They've worked with other marketing agencies. And they're still just not growing quickly. And then when I like talk to them, it's like, oh, yeah, I can't grow because this marketing agency failed me. And I'm like, well, you know, I'm sorry to hear that.

[00:31:44] Whether that was us or somebody else, I'm also going like you've worked with two, three, four, five different people. Is this a marketing issue or is there something else wrong in the business? Have we ever like just looked introspectively and gone, hmm, I wonder if it could be me. It starts with you. You've been here a while. You know that me and Justin can spend some money, right? We'll spend some money.

[00:32:13] That's actually how I got my job here at HIPP was collecting money from Luke and Justin. We'll spend some money if we think it could possibly even 1% chance work. How many marketers have we hired, consultants have we hired since you've been here? 20? More than I can count, yeah. Okay. Have we ever said the reason we weren't successful is because that last marketer? No.

[00:32:39] We may say, hey, there's somebody better or we think this could be implemented differently or let's go try this. We've still been successful the entire time. And all those people, even things that didn't work, still added value because maybe they showed us what not to do. Yeah. Okay. So you paid for time. Just think about that.

[00:32:59] Like clockwork in 2017, 2018, a little bit maybe a 2019, as we started to grow, there was a small percentage of our partners, we call our clients' partners, blowing it out of the water. I mean, you guys have all heard of Fishbine, but let's just say Wentz, Dr. Jennifer Farina.

[00:33:27] And as we started to get more and more people coming to us because they were seeing these stories, hearing these stories, we onboarded them, started to work with them. And we didn't know everything we know today and we're still learning. And they would come to us and say, man, this isn't working. And so we wanted to find out why. Why could we apply the same marketing that we take from Fishbine, Farina, plug it into your practice and it didn't work?

[00:33:55] So for all the people that it wasn't working, we said, hey, kind of like how when we've hired people that didn't work out, we almost learned just as good of lessons from what not to do. We wanted to interview the people that were, let's say, on the struggle bus and understand their psychology a bit. Why isn't it working? And these are the things that we would hear all the time. You know, we're getting all these leads, but they're just bad leads.

[00:34:22] Or, you know, everybody that comes from my website or off the internet, none of them show up. All the other patients show up. No shows. No shows. It's all your fault. Yeah. No shows are the killer of my business. Or, you know, we're getting patients in the door, but they're just bad patients and we only want good patients. Yep. And I'm always like, what does that mean? Like, what is that? I think I'm a pretty good patient, but.

[00:34:52] Did they pay? Yeah, they did, but they'll probably stop paying. Yeah. Oh, okay. My favorite one, though, is, you know, Luke Harrison, I, you know, I know this works in Florida and Texas and Louisiana and California and Mississippi and Oregon and Minnesota, but digital marketing just doesn't work at my practice because I have a unique practice that you've probably never seen before. It's different.

[00:35:18] And I'm going, okay, maybe it's a little different, but let me just take a wild guess here. There's some dental chairs, a compressor, some hand pieces, some brackets, some resin, some glue, lights, x-ray machine, scanner. You're an orthodontist, right? White coat. What am I missing? You know? Now, I'm over-exaggerating, but at the end of the day, guys, people are people. Behaviors are behaviors.

[00:35:47] I promise you that the same reason an orthodontist buys or moves forward with us, the issue is going to be for the very similar reasons that a patient or a parent moves forward with the orthodontist. People are people. Behaviors are behaviors. So these, I would say, are just symptoms, though, right? Just like a headache is a symptom of dehydration or not good exercise or poor diet. Those are the root causes.

[00:36:13] We want to figure out what's the root cause of this because the people that we see growing, they still get no-shows. They still get bad patients, but they're still growing, and they don't hem and haw about these things. So what's the root cause? So this was a study that was done by the Harvard Business Review, really looking just at the consumer behavior, the difference in consumer behavior from people that are like a direct referral versus people who find you on the internet.

[00:36:39] And on the first graph there where it says response time, you can see that there were almost 10,000 contacts or 10,000 leads generated in this study off the internet. And after almost 10,000 inquiries, the study found that if you don't follow up with that person within five minutes or less, there was a 400% decrease in ever getting that person in the office. So that would be my first question.

[00:37:07] How fast do you call these people back, and how do you verify that it's being done? Because I have yet to get on with a doctor or an owner that goes, yeah, I just tell my team to get back to new patients whenever they feel like it. They all say new patients are a priority, but what kind of checks and balances are in place that these things are being done? So we call that speed to lead, five minutes or less.

[00:37:34] But persistence, I like to use the word nurture, I could argue is just as important, if not more important, because most people don't answer their phone on the first try. I'm currently in the process of getting my disability insurance handled. We had to do this new thing with the lab, but Seth and Carla have had to follow up with me roughly 497 times. I'm still serious, but things have happened. And so the study says that if we don't make at least six touch points, we lose another 70%.

[00:38:02] So if we have a practice that's spending money on marketing, and I'm taking over five minutes to call my leads back, and I'm giving them less than six follow up touch points, we're almost at a 500% decrease in getting these people in the door. I was just talking to Tim today, and we're hiring for a role in a different company. And I said, have you contacted the applicants? Yeah, I called them. I said, okay.

[00:38:32] What do you do when people call you? Do you know who they are? Do you call them back? No. Did you listen to a voicemail? Did you even leave them a voicemail? No. Oh, you got me there. I said, go call them again and send them a text. How many people did he talk to after that? Four or five people. Oh, wow. Wow. Again, it's connecting the dots. So many owners we work with think, yeah, my team called them.

[00:39:02] My team said they're bad leads. Okay. And I'm not trashing your team. I'm just thinking, and what I'm saying is, is you have to look at how consumers behave. So asking your team, well, put yourself in their shoes. If I call you, Sandy, do you pick up first phone call? No. If you don't, should I maybe call you and leave you a voicemail and send you a text? Maybe send you an email?

[00:39:31] And maybe I should do that for a couple days. Not to annoy you. You clicked on our ad. Yeah. Let's remember who reached out to who here. But I do this all the time. I had an issue at my Airbnb. There was a leak. I called like 10 people, you know, the emergency leak and come do the test. And I didn't care which one called me back. Guess what? It was the one that texted me right away. Said, yeah, we can be there in two hours. Okay.

[00:40:01] And you got the business. You got the business. The no-shows you have, what if they had a better experience on the phone somewhere else, decided to go there and they're not going to call you. They may have wanted to, had good intentions, thought about it, but they didn't. And they no-showed and you are never identifying the problem on the front end,

[00:40:27] which is again, the Chick-fil-A, the Publix, the Starbucks, the Ritz-Carlton experience. You got to put that into your team. And so here's the reality right here of what I was just talking about. First attempt, second attempt, fifth attempt, sixth attempt. When does the opt-in actually happen? How many businesses actually call people back?

[00:40:54] And so if we can just be exceptional and stop focusing on the bad leads, guys, we get bad leads. Okay. We got like a roofer that clicked on our eyes. We get bad leads. Our ads say how to grow an ortho practice. Do we talk about the bad leads in our huddle or do we talk about the opportunities in our huddle? Right? Focus on the, every business is going to, who's advertising. You're going to get some leads who maybe aren't serious. Maybe they didn't have teeth. Maybe they want teeth. Can you do dentures? Whatever.

[00:41:24] Maybe you could refer that to your dentist. But regardless, focus on the possibilities that could happen and focus on getting all the things right on the customer service side. If you do that, if you do this and a lot of other things, you will have success. Thank you so much for watching this episode of the Grow Ortho podcast.

[00:41:48] If you haven't already, hit the like button and the subscribe button and make sure to leave a five-star review on podcast services. It helps us out a ton. And make sure to check out the rest of the content that we have here on the channel. Thanks for watching.