Dentistry Uncensored with Howard Farran

Transparency vs Opaque. I was wondering why successful dental leaders are transparent and not opaque until it became clear to me that if your not it’s clearly offensive. Does your dental office team know the daily breakeven point? Do they know the office overhead? Do they get to see the accounting reports for the balance sheet, statement of cashflow, and statement of income? Management transparency is the key to trust and the foundation for strong management-employee relationships to analyze and grasp how the practice is doing and where we’re going. Are collections meeting expectations in the 30/60/90 day periods? How’s are overhead looking and could we lower it? Are costs being managed? What’s helping us achieve our goals? What are our obstacles? Everyone in the entire company has complete visible transparency into the budget, how and what we’re spending, what our results are, and does everyone have a voice on how we can improve our performance. How often have you heard that people leave a job because of the manager not because of the company? It's true whether it’s a small family dental practice or a large dental group practice DSO. One of the common complaints you hear from disgruntled employees is they don’t trust their dentist or office manager who is not very transparent, and have no idea what they're thinking, what is happening, the performance of the office and don’t know what’s coming up in the future. If you can’t trust your opaque non-communicating dentist, office manager or team leader then your life and work become an exhausting challenge day in and day out. The late Herb Kelleher (1931-2019) co-founder & CEO of Southwest Airlines was the only airline CEO who was a member of his own pilots union because he knew how important that relationship was. His book was called Nuts!: Southwest Airlines' Crazy Recipe for Business and Personal Success. Maybe it’s time to go nuts and start trusting your employees to help you become successful.

Dentistry could learn a lot from Sanford I. Weill, the former CEO of Citigroup who tried to join the Air Force until his application was denied by a dentist after examining his teeth. His major break on Wall Street came with a mundane job doing g the paperwork behind the brokers trades. Sandys success with Citigroup came from mastering the back office mundane details of Wall Street trading, banking, insurance, and finance creating value from the knowledge and details of accounting, record keeping, and every other mundane task that was mostly unknown to all the major CEOs. How many dentists could do every task from scheduling an appointment to billing the dental insurer company. Sandy Weill fired Jamie Dimon when he was 66 years old because Jamie wanted to be CEO and then Sandy retired four years later, and in that time, the ship of Citi was wrecked. Young associates share this same issue working for older dentists who swear they are about to retire, it’s never in writing, the older dentists keep delaying their retirement, with nothing in writing, and eventually the relationship breaks down and the younger dentist moves on. Tearing Down the Walls: How Sandy Weill Fought His Way to the Top of the Financial World https://www.amazon.com/Tearing-Down-Walls-Financial-Journal/dp/0743247264/ref=asc_df_0743247264

Let’s get back to the pre-pandemic mindset. If you’re double vaccinated you know this pandemic is over. Let’s get back to fight mode in building a championship dental office. What do champion dentists do more of that their colleagues don’t?

Dentists could hit a Hank Aaron sized grand slam if they could just learn and implement any of the major business lessons that Denny’s have used in over 1,702 locations since Harold Butler and Richard Jezak founded the first Denny’s in 1953 in Lakewood, California. Denny’s are 24/7/365 explaining why in 1988 more than 700 of their 1,221 stores didn’t even have locks. During an economic contraction being poised for growth means you’re conveniently available, with low enough overheard, to perform profitable, high volume quality dental services with low prices. During an economic expansion… this strategy is even better. I’d rather own McDonalds (MCD) any day with a $177 Billion market cap than Ruth Chris (RUTH) with a $700 Million market cap.

Chris Pistorius talks with Dr. Howard Farran, the founder of the incredibly popular online dental community, Dentaltown. Chris & Howard have an open and honest conversation about all things dental.

First you need to stop doing it backwards. If you get the wrong person you spend all your time managing that person, you get poor results, and then you look like a bad manager. Get the right person who is already internally motivated, loves to work, loves their new job, who gets along with people, now you barely have to manage them and they’re making you look like a pro, because that’s how the pro’s do it. Sporting teams couldn’t manage me to be an NFL quarterback or the next ballerina. Your new hire has to already have the natural ability first. As far as turnover, it should mostly be at the new employee beginning as you and/or the new hire find out the new job isn’t a fit and then at the other end have employees that have been with you since the beginning. Whenever the person doing all the hiring is the only person in the company who’s been there for more than five years and no one else has made it five years then the wrong person is doing all the hiring.

What is the best use of my dental office profit dollars?Only 60 of the Fortune 500 companies in 1955 were still listed in 2017. Over 50% of the S&P 500 has disappeared since 2000. Economist Joseph Schumpeter called this creative destruction in 1942. Mufasa called it the circle of life in the 1994 Disney children’s movie Lion King remake of Shakespeare’s Hamlet in 1603. This is why how you allocate your capital is not only the most important business decision you’ll ever make, it’s also the most important financial life decision you’ll ever make. Retained Earnings (RE) are those net income profit dollar earnings that you decide to reinvest into your dental office by adding another operatory, laser, CAD-CAM, CBCT, oral scanner, 3D Printer, continuing education, or marketing campaign, as opposed to taking it out by paying it to yourself in income to reinvest or consume. Would your profit dollar be more likely to turn into two dollars of capital value creation if I deployed it in my dental office, or should I extract it and redeploy it by investing it in another business, real estate, stock or bond? Or, should I just consume the dollar myself with a new house, car, boat, or toy? Obviously the dentist that needs to learn a new technique, and hasn’t taken the time and invested the money to learn it, is already paying for it, but eventually you’ll want an exit strategy from working with your hands all day to having your money work for you. Debt reduction is always a great idea considering it’s guaranteed that the 18% you’re paying on your credit card is a sure bet use of your capital because that is certainty as opposed to the inverse of making 18% in a stock is not. But over the long run, having an investment portfolio which you can retire and live off is very likely given a dentists income given a few decades of time with the miracle of compound interest which Einstein called the most powerful force in the universe because not only can money make money, the money that money makes, makes money, so you can do other things with your time than drilling, filling and billing.

Dentists could learn a lot from Pizza Hut. Founded in 1958 by two brothers Frank and Dan Carney who borrowed $600 from their mom. They named it Pizza Hut because their sign only had room for eight letters, whereas dentistry has nine. I want to personal thank Dan Carney with a shout out for making a religion out of availability to the young entrepreneurs, always making himself available to young dreamers like me and my High School buddies listening to all of our ideas, always adding constructive critiques to our business plans. Dan was a firm believer in investing his returns into the business and not the real estate.

Dentists could learn a lot from Sonic Drive-In delivering service with the speed of sound. Founded in 1959 in Stillwater, Oklahoma by Troy Smith based on a new technology speaker box allowing you to stay in your car to order with your food deleted by a carhop. Today Sonic has over 3,494 locations in 46 U.S. states, and is owned by Inspire Brands which also owns Arby's, Buffalo Wild Wings, Jimmy John's, Rusty Taco, Mister Donut, Dunkin' and Baskin-Robbins. The franchise fee for a single SONIC restaurant is $45,000, with a total investment ranging from $1 to $1.75 million not excluding land. To all the Holier than thou Hypocrites, Gallup surveys show over 80% of Americans eat fast food at least once a month. In 1991 Kentucky Fried Chicken shortened its name to KFC because “fried” was a bad word. Sonic, which is America's fourth-biggest chain.

Does your bookkeeper sit next to you providing statistical analysis like NBA Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban pioneered back in the day with coach Rick Carlisle sitting next to Roland Beech–like I’ve done with Lorie Xelowski since June 28, 1998?