March 27, 2024 • 22 mins
Les Jones, Creative Director at Practice Plan is joined by Kevin Rose, Dental business coach at Rose & Co. Kevin shares his philosophy of developing dental practices by emphasising both human touch and digital results.
What you'll hear:
- How Rose & Co was established
- Building trust with patients, encouraging self-thinking teams, and prioritising patient care over purely clinical outcomes.
- The difference their approach has made to the practices they've worked with.
To learn more about Kevin and his work at Rose & Co., visit www.roseand.co/
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Welcome to BODCAST, the Business of Dentistry podcast, brought to you by Practice Plan.
BODCAST delivers the best business advice, real-life stories,
and practical hints and tips to make your practice a more profitable and sustainable business.
And now, here's your host. Hello and welcome to our latest BODCAST. My name is Les Jones.
(00:22):
I'm the Creative Director at Practice Plan and I'm very pleased to say that
joining me on today's BODCAST is Kevin Rose from Rose & Co. Hi, Kevin.
Hi, Les. How are you? I am very well, thank you. Very well. Good to see you.
And we're here today. We're going to kind of delve into your world a little
(00:43):
bit, find out what Rose & Co.
Does, how you help dentists to succeed.
Now, I was kind of thinking back, Kevin, and I kind of think you must have been
in dentistry at least 10 years because you Yeah, yeah.
You were in our very famous Peter Kay Amarillo video that we did at the dentistry
(01:04):
show 10 years ago. Can you believe it?
Yeah, I was scratching my head as well. You're right. It was 2014.
Really? Yeah. We were just stepping up from being really myself to being the
and co, if you like, and we were rebranding.
And you're right. It is 15 years as we speak, Cyndi.
(01:25):
Wow. i i suppose did
what a lot of people do that aren't dentists in dentistry you
kind of stumble into it which is what happens to
me so yeah the background to that was
very very very good friend of mine simon thackeray who's one of your clients
yeah simon he's a pain but he's also he's also great at the same time in equal
(01:48):
amounts as you probably know he invited me to look at his dental practice when
I left my previous profession in finance and banking,
and I was at a sort of director level doing that.
And he invited me to look at his practice, and I wasn't really sure why.
But I was curious and a bit bored. And that was 15 years ago.
(02:12):
Some things have moved on since then. But what I noticed was fundamentally.
And Simon won't mind me saying, he's always looking back.
He was always going to be a good example of all the kind of,
a cauldron, if you like, of all the stuff that can happen in a dental practice.
There it was in one very condensed version. version and i
suppose what i did was was look from the outside in dentistry
(02:35):
at this dental practice and apply things
that i've seen work outside of dentistry as
well as things that remove things that we know
don't don't work fundamentally in terms of leadership
structure planning the operation of a
business and that was kind of it that was the brief
and i sort of tinkered with that for about six nine
(02:57):
months and then out of the blue unbeknown to
me simon's management team had put
the practice forward for investors in people
which didn't even touch the sides it
got rubber stamped straight away and then they got investors
in people gold and in case
anyone listening is not that familiar with with investors in
(03:18):
people it's as good as a as good a
external journal accreditation that you are doing the right things with the
people that you pay to come and work for you so excuse me I just thought when
we're on to something here and I was also motivated at the same time by the
fact that I was a bit discouraged generally with dentistry in that.
(03:40):
And the situation hasn't changed that dramatically over
the last 15 years there seemed to me to be a a big disconnect
between the profession and the
public and what i mean by that is the growth
of the the amount of the percentage of the population that
go to the dentist hasn't really gone up it's it's not gone up in the way that
(04:03):
you would kind of hope it to given the what that how much dentistry has moved
on it's i would look at the figures from the british dental house foundation
and that they're reasonably up-to-date,
and it's kind of like growth of less than half a percent per year.
Well, that's a bit disappointing, isn't it, right, given all the work you're
(04:24):
doing and people are doing down the street and digital this and internet and all the rest of it.
Excuse me. So it just struck me there's this disconnect of trust between the
public and the people who are here to serve those members of the public.
And I've really made that my focus is to how we can encourage more people to
(04:49):
regularly attend the dentist.
That's it. That's my, my motivation for the, for the business.
And I don't think, I don't think,
I don't think it's that complicated if we look at things in the right order.
And I think historically what we've got better at as a profession is communicating
(05:09):
what we can do for people.
Online gives us a better tool for that. What we're less good at is communicating
the stuff that people need to process first to get through the door,
to build that relationship, to build that trust.
And I think what we finish up doing, if we're not careful, is focusing on what's
(05:33):
in it for us, as opposed to what's in it for the patient. And you need both.
But I think we need to start with the human side of dentistry,
patients and team members, because they produce the results.
They produce the money, ultimately, the digital results.
And I really think what outside of dentistry have learned.
(05:56):
And it's something I've established having left the financial profession,
largely because I felt disconnected with my values and what the profession had become about.
Out to say profession probably unprofessional in many ways
was that focusing purely on
if you like the digital results produces certain
(06:18):
behaviors it's whether
those behaviors are then healthy for health
care so instead what we
should be doing is rather than saying at any
cost we will achieve our numbers it
should be the other way around we will achieve our numbers because of
how we deliver our service look after
(06:40):
our people care for our patients so it's a
excuse me it's it's a very in-depth way
of basically saying do the right thing and the results follow we all get that
it's what the regulator requires in in health care but what does it mean in
practice and how do you measure it how do you how do you apply that in practice and that That is a very,
(07:04):
very long, windy answer to how this business came about and what we do.
And a very thorough one. Thank you. And so obviously when you first kind of
came into the dental space via Simon, it was kind of just you working on your own.
But now you've kind of you've grown the business.
(07:26):
You now have a team of people, don't you, within Rosencobb? Yeah,
so for historical reasons, one of my early client projects, very successful,
she went on to sell the practice and all the rest of it, was up in Scotland.
In turn, the owner of that practice, Jan, is married to Andy, who is...
I will openly say, because he will admit it, he's a nerd, but he's also very creative.
(07:51):
And there it was right under my nose all along.
What I was looking for was someone to partner with who is a nerd and creative.
And I was struggling to get both.
You either got a nerd who created websites that worked, but no one wanted to go on them.
Or you got a pretty website or a pretty brand that was clunky when you tried to interact with it.
(08:14):
But so with Andy, we got both. So 10 years ago, we set up on this journey to
provide the digital services. And that's the co, if you like.
So that's now grown into this five of them up in Dundee.
Deliberately Dundee, as opposed to not just anywhere in Scotland,
because there's a lot of creative people in that area.
(08:35):
It's quite a creative hub. And I think I've taken a leaf out my own book in
there in which is that, yes, we produce a quantity of stuff for our clients.
But my focus is on actually developing people. Yeah.
So we focus on developing careers in digital marketing as opposed to,
(08:59):
let's say, how many websites we can make this year.
Right. So, again, it's the same principle. If you focus on developing people, and guess what?
Ever since we started doing that, we've attracted more talent.
We've attracted even better people.
Some of those have moved on. And, yeah, we've produced some great stuff as well.
And I think it's better to be a launch pad than a nursing home, right?
(09:24):
That's a very interesting analogy. And,
of course, what you've been doing within the business then is
over time you've kind of developed and
honed either what might be
called a system or a methodology yeah yeah helping
i would say i would say a philosophy and right and it's the problem is philosophy
(09:45):
the problem with having a philosophy is that my audience are very academic they're
dentists okay so the thing i learned first of all is you can't just market yourself
in this profession profession just on the ideas.
You have to make it real.
So the philosophy I have is quite straightforward, which is that,
(10:06):
well, we were touching on it for all of this call so far, but really in summary,
it's create teams that think for themselves.
Which reduces the knock on the door if you got a minute.
Nobody wants that, including the people doing the knocking on the door. So how do we get that?
But also remember we're in healthcare, we're not in health cell.
(10:29):
So the conversation with patients should always be, not just because your regulator
says so, but because it comes from here, from within, that it's about putting
your patients first. So how do we do that consistently?
How do we do that even when we're under pressure, when interest rates are going
up, when we're in a recession, when we're starting out, when there's white space, when there's gaps.
(10:52):
So a simple philosophy, engage teams, think for themselves, and we don't need
to sell stuff to patients.
We have to get better at communicating how we can help people.
And if I'm representing the patient in this conversation a second,
I would say it's quite simple.
(11:13):
The conversation that we're having when we recommend our friends to come and
see you, okay, the dentist, it's not about more.
It's not about your quantity of dentistry. It's not about how many versions
of branded clear aligners you placed in someone's mouth.
It's a human story it's about trust i
(11:37):
choose my dentist because because my
dentist stands for something represents something and is able to communicate
that yeah now you could argue well hang on a minute kevin you know we've got
a declining nhs we've got expanding private market and dentistry do you really
need to do all that it's it's a seller's market if you like.
(12:00):
Well, no, you don't need to. You don't need to. People I work with want to,
and that's a difference, I suppose.
And that's about values and purpose and why people want to be in dentistry.
Yeah. So if I was to put myself in a position of being a principal dentist owner
of a practice and I was working with Rosencoe, what would be the kind of things,
(12:26):
the kind of things that would that would kind of manifest if you like what what
what would what would i see as a result of the relationship with you in terms
of the components if you like that you would kind of bring into the practice
well the the first thing is you you get a perspective.
That you don't get on your own okay that whole
point about an external person however that
(12:49):
person is is labeled my style of
delivering that is not to tell you what to do it's to get
you thinking differently because that's because I encourage
that in your teams as well that's how you get change to to last
so practically what you
get are proven and they
are proven I hope now after 15 years proven structures
(13:10):
in terms of managing and leading and
marketing a dental practice and proven ways of measuring those outcomes including
the the financial outcomes so what What you get is a width of perspective and
a depth of experience through me and through the other members we have in our
coaching group that you don't get on your own.
(13:34):
You get fresh perspectives and you get results.
But you're getting those results, those financial, all-important ones that we
have a vested interest in as business owners,
you're getting them because of the way we are managing, leading,
leading, communicating, and not at the expense of the people in the practice.
(13:54):
And having come from a corporate world where I've seen people destroyed emotionally,
and I was a victim of that myself for a long time, it's not a nice place to
work. Certainly my experience.
Let's get it the right way around. We have too many people disengaged from work,
(14:16):
so many people not enjoying coming to work.
We can do better as leaders and we
owe that to the people and the next generation the
wave of people coming in the children of people of my
children's generation in their 20s now they want
options they want that place to work
you know and i was talking to practice plan before
(14:39):
we came on the call flexibility well it's hard to get people working from home
options when you're in dentistry industry okay so what else can we do yeah how
can we do things better so yes we need to achieve more because it pays for the
fuel that goes in the tank that drives the engine takes us where we're going i get that.
(14:59):
But that should not be at the expense of everybody, everyone, everything else.
It should not be at the expense of the people who come to see us,
the people we pay to see the people that come to see us, the community or the environment.
Focus on those things and the results follow.
So that's what you get. That's what you get with me. And we then have established
(15:22):
proven ways of measuring those results.
So it's not just about financial results, profits, less white space,
more occupancy, and the rest of it.
It's actually balancing that with patient feedback, staff feedback.
Opinions that matter, that ultimately create the EBITDA that you want to get
(15:42):
to eventually, presumably, do something with your business.
Yeah i i think you you kind
of you've touched upon there kind of my my last question
really because the philosophy that you you kind
of bring into practices i you know totally
buy into all that and i was going to kind of take my
dentist hat off and put my devil's advocate hat
(16:03):
on and kind of say you know great philosophy what
are those bottom line results what difference does make
so you know typically you know from from that
practice's perspective what are the benefits that they they they
see kind of driven into the practice well you
are going to have measurable outcomes so you know
i i've i've been involved now in practices that have gone from a squat to a
(16:28):
sale and the most recent one i can think of was from zero to a million pound
sale in in just under four years wow you know that that's a nice measurable
one involved in seeing in practices,
practice owners sell, move on, retire.
We've seen new start practices come along. We've seen people take over practices.
So don't get me wrong. My background is in banking and finance.
(16:53):
I do appreciate that philosophies don't pay the bills.
You've got to have both. But look outside of dentistry. Look where it's gone wrong.
It's when there's been that disconnect disconnect of values and purpose,
if you like, and that creates the wrong behaviors.
And I'll give you an example, you know,
(17:15):
we we we think of let's say reception we
think of reception and objectives for a good reception team
will typically be about call conversion
and i get that i get that
but what's actually of
interest to the patient possibly how many
rings before you answer it yeah okay i get
(17:38):
that but what i really want
to understand as a patient when i pick up the phone is
do you understand me yeah and
what are you going to do with that understanding then i
meet the dentist do you understand me did you
actually fuck was it worth me tell talking to
the receptionist to share all of this oh look it was
(17:58):
right now how can you help
me i need to understand how you can help
me i don't want to feel feel pressurized by that so and again all those things
you can measure but it would be like there's i don't know you're picking a restaurant
you go pick a restaurant to go for a meal out one evening you're not picking
(18:20):
that restaurant because of the company's share price.
Right or how many covers they've got that evening yeah or even or even their
ability to pair the wine with the food you're not you're buying it emotionally
that's what you're buying into.
And yet so we mustn't forget we're
(18:41):
in health care and if you want to care for people think what matters to your
patients and i've got a very simple way of of communicating that is is is to
be kind it's very easy to say it okay but you can't have an sop on kindness,
You can't have an SOP on thinking.
(19:02):
However, you can create an environment which you get to lead when you're running a business.
You can create an environment where people understand that if it's something
you're doing and you have done and you will be doing many, many times,
like talking to a patient, picking up the phone,
(19:23):
explaining things, whatever.
However, if it feels routine for you, it will feel routine for your patient.
Now, you can have identical operating systems on the same pay,
the same hourly rate, the same scrubs, and yet one team can deliver kindness
(19:43):
and another team doesn't.
And not only that, it's been proven in the NHS through two comparable A&E wards.
They actually did an experiment where one A&E ward, they went out of their way
to deliver compassionate kindness.
What is it? Is there a manual on it? Of course there's not. This is not McDonald's.
(20:07):
What they did was go, right, if it feels routine for you, it will feel routine
for your patient. If it feels unique and special for your patient,
they will respond better, and they've proven that.
So the efficacy of treatment, the return rate, the healing rate,
all the measurables from those two comparable A&E departments pointed towards,
(20:29):
you're not doing more, we're not seeing them get any faster,
we're not sycophantic, we're not, you know, it's not about following a process,
it's about kindness and patients responding better to it.
So it's good for the health yes and it feels good
to you delivering it and i
can't remember your question now but i well you
(20:51):
answered it anyway you answered it i was talking about the
you know the the benefits and i think you covered all of that kevin i mean it's
been fantastic hearing about your approach which clearly makes a huge difference
to the dental practices that you're you're working with if someone as a result
of listening to you in this podcast wants to get get in touch. How do they do that?
(21:14):
Go to the website. It's roseand, R-O-S-E-A-N-D dot co.
Don't stick a mm or a UK on the end of it. It won't work. So roseand.co.
From there, you can see what we do. You can see examples of how we've done it. You can see who we are.
And if you want to, you can click a button. You can pick a time that's in my
(21:38):
diary that's It's convenient for yours, and we can have a conversation.
And I don't charge for that because why should I?
It's a gift to me to be able to speak to other dentists and help them.
If that results in something, some business, great.
If it doesn't, it doesn't. And I think that's how we need to approach business,
not to be attached to an outcome, to be detached from it.
(22:02):
That's not just a philosophy. That's what people want. Yeah.
Fantastic. Thanks ever so much, Kevin. Kevin, it's been great talking to you today.
Hopefully we'll get a chance to meet in person in the spring at one of the dental shows.
We all do those, Les, and maybe one day we'll recreate that famous.
Famous video, yeah, yeah, yeah.
(22:23):
Until then, Kevin, thanks ever so much, and we'll catch you next time.
Many thanks indeed, too. Thank you, Les. Cheers.
Music.
Welcome to BODCAST, the Business of Dentistry podcast, brought to you by Practice Plan.
BODCAST delivers the best business advice, real-life stories,
and practical hints and tips to make your practice a more profitable and sustainable business.
And now, here's your host. Hello and welcome to our latest BODCAST. My name is Les Jones.
(00:22):
I'm the Creative Director at Practice Plan and I'm very pleased to say that
joining me on today's BODCAST is Kevin Rose from Rose & Co. Hi, Kevin.
Hi, Les. How are you? I am very well, thank you. Very well. Good to see you.
And we're here today. We're going to kind of delve into your world a little
(00:43):
bit, find out what Rose & Co.
Does, how you help dentists to succeed.
Now, I was kind of thinking back, Kevin, and I kind of think you must have been
in dentistry at least 10 years because you Yeah, yeah.
You were in our very famous Peter Kay Amarillo video that we did at the dentistry
(01:04):
show 10 years ago. Can you believe it?
Yeah, I was scratching my head as well. You're right. It was 2014.
Really? Yeah. We were just stepping up from being really myself to being the
and co, if you like, and we were rebranding.
And you're right. It is 15 years as we speak, Cyndi.
(01:25):
Wow. i i suppose did
what a lot of people do that aren't dentists in dentistry you
kind of stumble into it which is what happens to
me so yeah the background to that was
very very very good friend of mine simon thackeray who's one of your clients
yeah simon he's a pain but he's also he's also great at the same time in equal
(01:48):
amounts as you probably know he invited me to look at his dental practice when
I left my previous profession in finance and banking,
and I was at a sort of director level doing that.
And he invited me to look at his practice, and I wasn't really sure why.
But I was curious and a bit bored. And that was 15 years ago.
(02:12):
Some things have moved on since then. But what I noticed was fundamentally.
And Simon won't mind me saying, he's always looking back.
He was always going to be a good example of all the kind of,
a cauldron, if you like, of all the stuff that can happen in a dental practice.
There it was in one very condensed version. version and i
suppose what i did was was look from the outside in dentistry
(02:35):
at this dental practice and apply things
that i've seen work outside of dentistry as
well as things that remove things that we know
don't don't work fundamentally in terms of leadership
structure planning the operation of a
business and that was kind of it that was the brief
and i sort of tinkered with that for about six nine
(02:57):
months and then out of the blue unbeknown to
me simon's management team had put
the practice forward for investors in people
which didn't even touch the sides it
got rubber stamped straight away and then they got investors
in people gold and in case
anyone listening is not that familiar with with investors in
(03:18):
people it's as good as a as good a
external journal accreditation that you are doing the right things with the
people that you pay to come and work for you so excuse me I just thought when
we're on to something here and I was also motivated at the same time by the
fact that I was a bit discouraged generally with dentistry in that.
(03:40):
And the situation hasn't changed that dramatically over
the last 15 years there seemed to me to be a a big disconnect
between the profession and the
public and what i mean by that is the growth
of the the amount of the percentage of the population that
go to the dentist hasn't really gone up it's it's not gone up in the way that
(04:03):
you would kind of hope it to given the what that how much dentistry has moved
on it's i would look at the figures from the british dental house foundation
and that they're reasonably up-to-date,
and it's kind of like growth of less than half a percent per year.
Well, that's a bit disappointing, isn't it, right, given all the work you're
(04:24):
doing and people are doing down the street and digital this and internet and all the rest of it.
Excuse me. So it just struck me there's this disconnect of trust between the
public and the people who are here to serve those members of the public.
And I've really made that my focus is to how we can encourage more people to
(04:49):
regularly attend the dentist.
That's it. That's my, my motivation for the, for the business.
And I don't think, I don't think,
I don't think it's that complicated if we look at things in the right order.
And I think historically what we've got better at as a profession is communicating
(05:09):
what we can do for people.
Online gives us a better tool for that. What we're less good at is communicating
the stuff that people need to process first to get through the door,
to build that relationship, to build that trust.
And I think what we finish up doing, if we're not careful, is focusing on what's
(05:33):
in it for us, as opposed to what's in it for the patient. And you need both.
But I think we need to start with the human side of dentistry,
patients and team members, because they produce the results.
They produce the money, ultimately, the digital results.
And I really think what outside of dentistry have learned.
(05:56):
And it's something I've established having left the financial profession,
largely because I felt disconnected with my values and what the profession had become about.
Out to say profession probably unprofessional in many ways
was that focusing purely on
if you like the digital results produces certain
(06:18):
behaviors it's whether
those behaviors are then healthy for health
care so instead what we
should be doing is rather than saying at any
cost we will achieve our numbers it
should be the other way around we will achieve our numbers because of
how we deliver our service look after
(06:40):
our people care for our patients so it's a
excuse me it's it's a very in-depth way
of basically saying do the right thing and the results follow we all get that
it's what the regulator requires in in health care but what does it mean in
practice and how do you measure it how do you how do you apply that in practice and that That is a very,
(07:04):
very long, windy answer to how this business came about and what we do.
And a very thorough one. Thank you. And so obviously when you first kind of
came into the dental space via Simon, it was kind of just you working on your own.
But now you've kind of you've grown the business.
(07:26):
You now have a team of people, don't you, within Rosencobb? Yeah,
so for historical reasons, one of my early client projects, very successful,
she went on to sell the practice and all the rest of it, was up in Scotland.
In turn, the owner of that practice, Jan, is married to Andy, who is...
I will openly say, because he will admit it, he's a nerd, but he's also very creative.
(07:51):
And there it was right under my nose all along.
What I was looking for was someone to partner with who is a nerd and creative.
And I was struggling to get both.
You either got a nerd who created websites that worked, but no one wanted to go on them.
Or you got a pretty website or a pretty brand that was clunky when you tried to interact with it.
(08:14):
But so with Andy, we got both. So 10 years ago, we set up on this journey to
provide the digital services. And that's the co, if you like.
So that's now grown into this five of them up in Dundee.
Deliberately Dundee, as opposed to not just anywhere in Scotland,
because there's a lot of creative people in that area.
(08:35):
It's quite a creative hub. And I think I've taken a leaf out my own book in
there in which is that, yes, we produce a quantity of stuff for our clients.
But my focus is on actually developing people. Yeah.
So we focus on developing careers in digital marketing as opposed to,
(08:59):
let's say, how many websites we can make this year.
Right. So, again, it's the same principle. If you focus on developing people, and guess what?
Ever since we started doing that, we've attracted more talent.
We've attracted even better people.
Some of those have moved on. And, yeah, we've produced some great stuff as well.
And I think it's better to be a launch pad than a nursing home, right?
(09:24):
That's a very interesting analogy. And,
of course, what you've been doing within the business then is
over time you've kind of developed and
honed either what might be
called a system or a methodology yeah yeah helping
i would say i would say a philosophy and right and it's the problem is philosophy
(09:45):
the problem with having a philosophy is that my audience are very academic they're
dentists okay so the thing i learned first of all is you can't just market yourself
in this profession profession just on the ideas.
You have to make it real.
So the philosophy I have is quite straightforward, which is that,
(10:06):
well, we were touching on it for all of this call so far, but really in summary,
it's create teams that think for themselves.
Which reduces the knock on the door if you got a minute.
Nobody wants that, including the people doing the knocking on the door. So how do we get that?
But also remember we're in healthcare, we're not in health cell.
(10:29):
So the conversation with patients should always be, not just because your regulator
says so, but because it comes from here, from within, that it's about putting
your patients first. So how do we do that consistently?
How do we do that even when we're under pressure, when interest rates are going
up, when we're in a recession, when we're starting out, when there's white space, when there's gaps.
(10:52):
So a simple philosophy, engage teams, think for themselves, and we don't need
to sell stuff to patients.
We have to get better at communicating how we can help people.
And if I'm representing the patient in this conversation a second,
I would say it's quite simple.
(11:13):
The conversation that we're having when we recommend our friends to come and
see you, okay, the dentist, it's not about more.
It's not about your quantity of dentistry. It's not about how many versions
of branded clear aligners you placed in someone's mouth.
It's a human story it's about trust i
(11:37):
choose my dentist because because my
dentist stands for something represents something and is able to communicate
that yeah now you could argue well hang on a minute kevin you know we've got
a declining nhs we've got expanding private market and dentistry do you really
need to do all that it's it's a seller's market if you like.
(12:00):
Well, no, you don't need to. You don't need to. People I work with want to,
and that's a difference, I suppose.
And that's about values and purpose and why people want to be in dentistry.
Yeah. So if I was to put myself in a position of being a principal dentist owner
of a practice and I was working with Rosencoe, what would be the kind of things,
(12:26):
the kind of things that would that would kind of manifest if you like what what
what would what would i see as a result of the relationship with you in terms
of the components if you like that you would kind of bring into the practice
well the the first thing is you you get a perspective.
That you don't get on your own okay that whole
point about an external person however that
(12:49):
person is is labeled my style of
delivering that is not to tell you what to do it's to get
you thinking differently because that's because I encourage
that in your teams as well that's how you get change to to last
so practically what you
get are proven and they
are proven I hope now after 15 years proven structures
(13:10):
in terms of managing and leading and
marketing a dental practice and proven ways of measuring those outcomes including
the the financial outcomes so what What you get is a width of perspective and
a depth of experience through me and through the other members we have in our
coaching group that you don't get on your own.
(13:34):
You get fresh perspectives and you get results.
But you're getting those results, those financial, all-important ones that we
have a vested interest in as business owners,
you're getting them because of the way we are managing, leading,
leading, communicating, and not at the expense of the people in the practice.
(13:54):
And having come from a corporate world where I've seen people destroyed emotionally,
and I was a victim of that myself for a long time, it's not a nice place to
work. Certainly my experience.
Let's get it the right way around. We have too many people disengaged from work,
(14:16):
so many people not enjoying coming to work.
We can do better as leaders and we
owe that to the people and the next generation the
wave of people coming in the children of people of my
children's generation in their 20s now they want
options they want that place to work
you know and i was talking to practice plan before
(14:39):
we came on the call flexibility well it's hard to get people working from home
options when you're in dentistry industry okay so what else can we do yeah how
can we do things better so yes we need to achieve more because it pays for the
fuel that goes in the tank that drives the engine takes us where we're going i get that.
(14:59):
But that should not be at the expense of everybody, everyone, everything else.
It should not be at the expense of the people who come to see us,
the people we pay to see the people that come to see us, the community or the environment.
Focus on those things and the results follow.
So that's what you get. That's what you get with me. And we then have established
(15:22):
proven ways of measuring those results.
So it's not just about financial results, profits, less white space,
more occupancy, and the rest of it.
It's actually balancing that with patient feedback, staff feedback.
Opinions that matter, that ultimately create the EBITDA that you want to get
(15:42):
to eventually, presumably, do something with your business.
Yeah i i think you you kind
of you've touched upon there kind of my my last question
really because the philosophy that you you kind
of bring into practices i you know totally
buy into all that and i was going to kind of take my
dentist hat off and put my devil's advocate hat
(16:03):
on and kind of say you know great philosophy what
are those bottom line results what difference does make
so you know typically you know from from that
practice's perspective what are the benefits that they they they
see kind of driven into the practice well you
are going to have measurable outcomes so you know
i i've i've been involved now in practices that have gone from a squat to a
(16:28):
sale and the most recent one i can think of was from zero to a million pound
sale in in just under four years wow you know that that's a nice measurable
one involved in seeing in practices,
practice owners sell, move on, retire.
We've seen new start practices come along. We've seen people take over practices.
So don't get me wrong. My background is in banking and finance.
(16:53):
I do appreciate that philosophies don't pay the bills.
You've got to have both. But look outside of dentistry. Look where it's gone wrong.
It's when there's been that disconnect disconnect of values and purpose,
if you like, and that creates the wrong behaviors.
And I'll give you an example, you know,
(17:15):
we we we think of let's say reception we
think of reception and objectives for a good reception team
will typically be about call conversion
and i get that i get that
but what's actually of
interest to the patient possibly how many
rings before you answer it yeah okay i get
(17:38):
that but what i really want
to understand as a patient when i pick up the phone is
do you understand me yeah and
what are you going to do with that understanding then i
meet the dentist do you understand me did you
actually fuck was it worth me tell talking to
the receptionist to share all of this oh look it was
(17:58):
right now how can you help
me i need to understand how you can help
me i don't want to feel feel pressurized by that so and again all those things
you can measure but it would be like there's i don't know you're picking a restaurant
you go pick a restaurant to go for a meal out one evening you're not picking
(18:20):
that restaurant because of the company's share price.
Right or how many covers they've got that evening yeah or even or even their
ability to pair the wine with the food you're not you're buying it emotionally
that's what you're buying into.
And yet so we mustn't forget we're
(18:41):
in health care and if you want to care for people think what matters to your
patients and i've got a very simple way of of communicating that is is is to
be kind it's very easy to say it okay but you can't have an sop on kindness,
You can't have an SOP on thinking.
(19:02):
However, you can create an environment which you get to lead when you're running a business.
You can create an environment where people understand that if it's something
you're doing and you have done and you will be doing many, many times,
like talking to a patient, picking up the phone,
(19:23):
explaining things, whatever.
However, if it feels routine for you, it will feel routine for your patient.
Now, you can have identical operating systems on the same pay,
the same hourly rate, the same scrubs, and yet one team can deliver kindness
(19:43):
and another team doesn't.
And not only that, it's been proven in the NHS through two comparable A&E wards.
They actually did an experiment where one A&E ward, they went out of their way
to deliver compassionate kindness.
What is it? Is there a manual on it? Of course there's not. This is not McDonald's.
(20:07):
What they did was go, right, if it feels routine for you, it will feel routine
for your patient. If it feels unique and special for your patient,
they will respond better, and they've proven that.
So the efficacy of treatment, the return rate, the healing rate,
all the measurables from those two comparable A&E departments pointed towards,
(20:29):
you're not doing more, we're not seeing them get any faster,
we're not sycophantic, we're not, you know, it's not about following a process,
it's about kindness and patients responding better to it.
So it's good for the health yes and it feels good
to you delivering it and i
can't remember your question now but i well you
(20:51):
answered it anyway you answered it i was talking about the
you know the the benefits and i think you covered all of that kevin i mean it's
been fantastic hearing about your approach which clearly makes a huge difference
to the dental practices that you're you're working with if someone as a result
of listening to you in this podcast wants to get get in touch. How do they do that?
(21:14):
Go to the website. It's roseand, R-O-S-E-A-N-D dot co.
Don't stick a mm or a UK on the end of it. It won't work. So roseand.co.
From there, you can see what we do. You can see examples of how we've done it. You can see who we are.
And if you want to, you can click a button. You can pick a time that's in my
(21:38):
diary that's It's convenient for yours, and we can have a conversation.
And I don't charge for that because why should I?
It's a gift to me to be able to speak to other dentists and help them.
If that results in something, some business, great.
If it doesn't, it doesn't. And I think that's how we need to approach business,
not to be attached to an outcome, to be detached from it.
(22:02):
That's not just a philosophy. That's what people want. Yeah.
Fantastic. Thanks ever so much, Kevin. Kevin, it's been great talking to you today.
Hopefully we'll get a chance to meet in person in the spring at one of the dental shows.
We all do those, Les, and maybe one day we'll recreate that famous.
Famous video, yeah, yeah, yeah.
(22:23):
Until then, Kevin, thanks ever so much, and we'll catch you next time.
Many thanks indeed, too. Thank you, Les. Cheers.
Music.
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