In this placating episode, Kirk Teachout, Owner of IV Quarter Coaching, shares how he has built up tactics throughout his career to help him get the most out of his professional and personal life.
You will discover:
– The fundamental problem with the formula more work = more revenue
– The for pillars for scalable success in medical practices
– The difference between team culture and client(patient) culture and how you need to align both
Episode Transcript
Scott Ritzheimer
Hello, hello and welcome. Welcome once again to the secrets of the high demand coach podcast. And I am here with yet another high demand coach. It is the one, the only Kirk Teachout, who is a business coach, a serial entrepreneur and a best selling author with the launch of his latest venture, the seven figure dentist program through four quarter coaching, he now unlocks secrets of dental practice management. His diverse experience across multiple industries has armed him with invaluable insights and tactics that ensure personal and professional growth. Teachout aims to empower other dental practice owners to realize similar successes. Is for pillars, culture, team, systems and schedule are the secrets to successfully scaling dental practices without burning out. He’s here with us today. Kirk, I want to start right out of the gate here. We’ve all heard this saying those who can’t do teach, right? And there’s a lot of coaches out there who’ve never really taken their own medicine, yeah, but with what I know about you from the research, that’s not you. And so I’m wondering if we could just kind of open up the show today with the story of how you and your wife Lauren scaled her dental practice, because such a powerful story, and I think it’s going to set us up for a great conversation.
Kirk Teachout
Yeah, of course. Yeah, thanks for having me, Scott. So our story is kind of non traditional. So my background is music. So I’m from the music industry. I came from touring. I came from creating music and something that only I loved and had to create raving fans through an experience, right through the shows, through the live things, through the marketing, the branding and all these things. And I’ve built businesses in that music industry. But then when my wife got out of dental school about 18 months, two years afterward, she was like, okay, the only way I can pay off this half a million dollars in student loan debt is through ownership, or at least faster anyway, and I can have autonomy at that point. So she was like, will you help me? I was like, okay, cool. You know, we have two young kids at the time, and you know, we’ll start looking, let’s see what we can do. So we found a great practice. It was in a rural area for a great price, and we started, well, that was in September of 2019, and if you do the math, that’s six months prior to covid. So when covid happened for two months. We were lumped in with barbershops and nail salons and dental practices, so we weren’t essential. So we were at home wondering when unemployment was going to kick in, wondering when all sorts of things for our team was going to kick in. And couldn’t figure out. So we were like, Okay, well, let’s at least spend time doing something productive in time that we have now, which is what most of the time business owners tend to not do. They don’t make the time, even though they know pretty much what to do. So now we had time, and my wife was spending a ton of time with our kids, and she was like, Man, I really wish I could be home as a female doctor. She wanted to be home with the kids, right? So I was like, okay, so we asked ourselves two questions, what do we want and how do we want to do it? Those two questions really set the trajectory of how we were going to do things for the last five years. And so when we came back, we came back back at three and a half days a week, asked the team, like, Hey, we’re not going to increase pay, but we’re going to take out the afternoon on a Thursday. Will you guys be okay with that? And they’re like, Sure, let’s try it, because at that point, nobody had been for at work for two months, so didn’t really matter at that point. So we implemented a bonus system. We made up the difference, but we were only there for three and a half days now. And the crazy thing is that the culture shifted night and day, different from the time when we came from before covid to now after covid, just in having an extra few hours to do your grocery shopping, to pick up your kids on a Thursday afternoon, to do different things. So the team loved it. We loved it, and we saw a 40% increase in our collections that month. We’re like, Okay, well, this is cool. What are we going to do? So we refined our systems, we continually built over the next year, and the next thing that happened in 2021 was my wife went on maternity leave for the first time since we owned the practice with our third child. We’re like, Oh no, we’re in a rural area. We got to find somebody. We couldn’t find anybody. So we found a doctor who was a friend who just happened to be renovating her office, but she’d never done more than $6,000 a day in her practice as a whole. Well in our practice, my wife was producing $10,000 a day. And so we were like, Oh man, like this is going to be tough for her to jump that big. But long story short, for those three weeks with our system, she was doing $15,000 days every single day that that doctor was in our office. Wow. So we were like, okay, something’s here. We’ve got something that’s duplicatable, that’s impactful, that can really create something that’s sustainable as well. Like, okay, so how can we now transition to help others do the exact same thing? So if. The next few years, we kept refining. We kept refining, kept building these systems, and now I’m just helping doctors trying to separate myself from the practice, because I do do the operations side, so that way I can help others do what we’ve been able to do in creating a seven figure practice, only working three, three and a half days a week.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah, that’s fantastic. What a story. So let’s dive into a little bit of what you’ve learned and some of what you’ve put together. From a model standpoint, you’ve got four kind of core pillars for dentists, and none of them are dentistry. So, yeah, why? Why are these four pillars so important for dentists and for someone who’s listening, who’s saying, Hey, I’m not a dentist. How do you How have you seen, or how do you see these four pillars translating into other industries or professions?
Kirk Teachout
Sure. So I mean, for the most part, it falls back into what James Clear talks about in atomic habits, right? He talks about, we don’t rise to our goals, yet we fall to our systems. And so even in all these four pillars, really, it’s all about systems. So like, even today, I’m going on our mastermind. I have a monthly mastermind that we do, and we’re going over KPIs. And all those KPIs really revolve around systems. And those numbers show you where to look in your systems, to beef up your systems in that if you have one, if not, then you need to create something in order to get your KPIs in check. So really, it just comes down to systems, whether it be your marketing, whether it be your patient experience or your customer experience, right? Whether it be your communication skills and your leadership skills with your team. Do you have a system in place to really focus something that you can leverage, which are numbers, because if we can measure it, then we can adjust and we can do something with it.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah, the systems are so powerful. Another one of the pillars, though, was culture. And you described kind of the cultural shift inside of your organization, and a lot of folks have heard or even experienced cultures that were kind of good or bad. Have you found that there’s such a thing as a right culture or a wrong culture? Are there values that all success successful dentists share? How do we go about fine building the right culture, and is it the right culture for us?
Kirk Teachout
Sure, I think there’s different cultures based off the leadership style that you have. Personally, we like having a servant leadership style where we’re going to be in the trenches with you, and we’re not going to ask you something that we’re not going to do ourselves, which has worked for us, and we’re not perfect at it, by any means, but we have been able to get people around us that have really responded to it, and I think that’s really what it boils down to. You are going to naturally attract the people that are like you or that want to follow you, right? And as you grow as a leader, you really get better at being effective, and with your leadership style, it actually comes into play with those people who are following you is like, okay, yes, this works for them because they’re the either the antitype of your personality, so that way you can be effective with them, or they’re just like You, and so they can relate, and you can show more empathy and sympathy with them during those times. But at the end of the day, like my main core values are with three different books. So the first thing is the Go Giver, which is about servant leadership. It’s in parable form. It’s really great. The second being Extreme Ownership, with Jocko Willick and lave Babin. I love that book, taking Extreme Ownership. Look, I could have done better in this situation, not just placing blame on somebody. And then finally, the compound effect, so being consistent with those things, to try to make sure that you are an effective leader, not just dictating and telling people what to do, but really allowing people to grow and mold in their strengths, and you giving them the resources to create the environment that they need to grow.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah, so practically speaking, what does culture look like when it’s YOU the dentist, maybe a front desk assistant and a hygienist. What does culture look like in an environment like that?
Kirk Teachout
Sure, I think it just, it really boils down to treating patients, right? And, you know, treating them like they’re humans. I know a lot of medical facilities, I feel like, get this wrong, like we have four kids now, and we’re in the doctor’s office all the time, so anytime we go in, it’s very impersonable and not really warm and family felt. And so we try to flip that script on. Okay, how can we create. An experience that feels like, okay, you know, with dentistry, especially, nobody wants to be there, right? So you’re either there with pain or you’re there and you get told bad news, which is tough on both ends. It’s not just hard for the patient to hear. So now what we try to do is we try to create the best possible experience like at all, and get them in and in general. The team culture comes from leadership, but the patient culture, or the customer culture, is something we’ve heavily focused on last year. So in figuring out our ideal avatar, our ideal patient, we wanted to know, okay, who do we want to see in the chair? Because at the end of the day, we don’t have to see everybody. And so when you have both of those locked in those team culture, and then also your patient or customer culture, yeah, that’s when things overall get better. So when people walk through the door, there’s a feeling of the atmosphere. It’s not animosity, it’s not medical typical death, anything like that, which, if you feel death in a dental practice, there’s something wrong, but, but still, when you walk in, it’s an inviting environment. From the time that somebody opens the door, we always say, Hey, John, whatever your name is, we call you by name because little trick, all you have to do is look at the schedule. I don’t know half the people who come in, but I can look at the schedule and guess their name based off the time slot that they’re coming in. So now they’re feeling great because they feel like I know them, and a lot of times I do, but still, they come in, I say their name, automatic, great, positive experience. I use certain verbiage that sets up the proper expectation. So I say there will be a wait if they’re coming in for an emergency visit. So that way, when they come in and there isn’t a wait. Great customer experience. Number two, that increases trust. And then I’m going to tell them they’re not going to get work done today, but when we can do the work, great. Three, something else that increases that trust factor, because now we’re taking great care of them. But at the end of the day, if we don’t do those things, and those bad things do happen, I set the expectation up properly. So in setting up the perspective when somebody walks in, creates that culture, yeah? So that way people aren’t disappointed. Because if you have a lot of losses throughout that experience, then it creates a negative culture, because people aren’t feeling like they’re being taken care of.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah, there’s such an intentionality to that. I absolutely love it, and it for so many people, it’s just as simple as that, right? It’s just as simple as that. But one of the things that struck me for you was scheduling, right? Lots of people talk about culture, lots of people talk about profitability. Lots of people talk about systems, but scheduling right as a core pillar was, was really interesting, because for a lot of professional service providers, right? Dentists, yes. But you know, doctors, accountants, coaches, the formula seems pretty simple, more time, more revenue, right? What’s wrong with that formula?
Kirk Teachout
Well, you can only max it out so far. I mean, really, it comes down to efficiency. And what I like to call or use is Parkinson’s Law is that you allot the time, but the task, right? So the best analogy there is like you had a term paper at the beginning of your college semester, and they gave you the whole semester to do it. But when did you wait to do it the week before or the night before? In my case, so And yet you still got it done, and you still got a good grade, or at least a passing grade. So we use that to our advantage. So we time our procedures specifically, and we dictate our schedule. We don’t allow our patients to dictate our schedule. Sure, there’s a little wiggle room, but really it comes down to getting Ultra efficient and figuring out how long procedures take, how long typical curveballs may take and then puzzle piecing together and understanding how to flow through it like a dance. So having your clinical team super on board and trained on how to take things off of the doctor’s plate that only they can do with their license and delegate. So now, if everybody’s optimizing their role, then your schedule is scheduled properly now, so the front desk is the one running that schedule, and they understand the parameters of it. Then now it’s just drag and drop. So I’ve created a template that literally somebody could come in and just look at it and be like, okay, somebody needs a crown. Great. I have 8:30,10 o’clock, 1:30 and 3, somebody comes in for a filling. It’s at 930, 10 o’clock, and I have built in redundancies. And I do this for all of my clients where you also have your schedule, but you have these built in redundancies. So if a patient doesn’t show up, that’s fine, because once again, I told an emergency that they’re not getting work done, and there’s going to be a wait, but now, when that patient fell off, I’m getting the work done, and there’s no wait.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah.
Kirk Teachout
So it’s all in, like, how you schedule it, and how you’re efficient with your time.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah, and it’s so it’s so smart, because what I’ve found in this space is, you know, out of the gate, you’re just trying to get revenue, right. And so it’s just just get revenue. And to a certain extent, if you don’t work, you don’t get paid. But when you have any degree of success, really, you max that out that pretty quickly, like you just can’t expand it. And so it’s not about how much revenue you make anymore. It’s about how much revenue you make per hour, right? And that’s where that efficiency plays such a big role. And then from there, it’s just, it’s a lifestyle choice as to how many hours you want to work, not a desperation survival choice. It’s so, so important. So there’s a question I like to ask all my guests. I want to I want to send a year away. So what you have to say? What would you say is the biggest secret that you wish wasn’t a secret at all. What’s that one thing you wish everybody watching or listening today knew?
Kirk Teachout
Oh, man. See, I, I love these kinds of questions, because it really makes me think. But, and I could say the cliche, like, get a coach, like, right? That’s what everybody thinks, and it is very true, right? You don’t know what you don’t know, and that’s that’s where we were early on. We got a coach, and it unlocked so much for us to get to that next level where we are now. But to me, I don’t want to be cliche. I want to talk about something that my first mentor told me, I had never met him before in my life, and in the introduction, he said, Kirk, you’re gonna fail. I was like, Hi, I’m Kirk. How are you? But he said, Kirk, you’re gonna fail. Fail Faster. He said, the ones that get to success the fastest are the ones that fail the quickest, and they’re not afraid of failure. They get in there. They don’t sure, like you can mitigate risk all you want, but at the end of the day, they just jump in both feet and their body at the same time, and they go through life failing forward and learning through it and creating a massive amount of success through it. So to me, it’s just about failure getting comfortable with being uncomfortable. Because if you can get comfortable with being uncomfortable, the failure is not that big of a deal, because you’re okay with it, and even with your family, you know looking to you for guidance, and you know taking care of them, you can still do it in a way that that makes sense.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah, yeah. That’s so powerful. It’s, it’s, it’s one of those things you find yourself kind of at the edge of the cliff, as I don’t, I don’t know, I don’t know, but you’re right. So one of the misperceptions that we have on the other side of failure is death, right? Like, that’s just how our brains are wired. And one of the places that this hit me was, I forget who it was, an Olympic sprinter’s coach, and he said, the first thing I have to teach my athletes is to not fear death. The number one limiting factor for his athletes coming in was they didn’t want to run faster because they thought they would die. Right? And it’s just, it’s fascinating how pervasive that thought is now for sprinters, there’s maybe a higher likelihood of that than for us, no business road, but all the more reason why fail quickly and learn from it. I absolutely love this brilliant advice. Thank you so much, Kirk. Thank you for being on the show. Just a privilege having you here before I let you go. Though there’s folks listening to this, particularly dental practices folks that you know that they’re tired of all the hustle and stress they they know that there’s got to be a better way. How can they find out more about you and the work that you do?
Kirk Teachout
Yeah, I mean, they can go to the sevenfiguredentist.com Spell out seven, or they can just hit me on Instagram, on the I’m on there all the time. So @KirkTeachout is the easiest way to get a hold of me. So that would be great.
Scott Ritzheimer
Fantastic. Check it out. I had a chance to check out the website, some brilliant resources on there, particularly for those of you in the dental industry, and I know there’s a bunch of you listening, because I’ve heard from you before. So check it out. Kirk, thanks so much for being on the show. Just a privilege having you here. For those of you watching and listening, you know that your time and attention mean the world to us. I hope you got as much out of this conversation as I know I did, and I cannot wait to see you next time. Take care.
Contact Kirk Teachout
Kirk Teachout is a business coach, serial entrepreneur, and bestselling author. With the launch of his latest venture, “The Seven Figure Dentist” program through IV Quarter Coaching, he now unlocks secrets of dental practice management. His diverse experience across multiple industries has armed him with invaluable insights and tactics that ensure personal and professional growth. Teachout aims to empower other dental practice owners to realize similar successes. His four pillars—culture, team, systems, and schedule—are the secrets to successfully scaling dental practices without burning out.
Want to learn more about Kirk Teachout’s work at The Seven-Figure Dentist? Check out his website at https://www.thesevenfiguredentist.com/ or follow him at https://instagram.com/kirkteachout
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