In this episode, we talk with Gary Kadi, best-selling author and CEO of Next Level Practice, about the 5 steps of his marketing framework and his unique patient care system.
Gary has helped to generate more than $1Billion of increased sales for his clients and in today’s episode he shares some of his best methods for increasing revenue (some of which don’t cost you anything extra!).
Gary also shares how he recently helped his client add an extra $1.2M in revenue in just 12 months, as well as his secret to how he is able to multiply himself and get so many things done.
Join us!
To receive a copy of Gary’s book, Million Dollar Dentistry, simply text MDD3 to 678-506-7543.
Full Transcript
Intro: 00:00 What do you get when you combine simplified practice marketing, proven ROI strategy, and Vans skate shoes? You get Mark Thackeray, of course, so lace up. Grab your green smoothie and get ready because this is Dental Marketing Secrets and this is Mark.
Mark Thackeray: 00:22 All right, welcome back my friends to another episode of the Dental Marketing Secrets Podcast where we provide actionable tips and tricks that you can take and apply immediately to grow your practice so that you can serve more patients and leave a greater impact both in the life of your family, the life of your team members and the community at large because that’s what it’s all about. My friends, that is the name of the game. My name is Mark Thackeray and as always I am honored to be here with you in this moment. Thank you for taking the time to hop on Dental Marketing Secrets. It will be well worth your while. You can trust me on that.
Mark Thackeray: 00:57 We have a very special guest and his name is Gary Kadi and he is a man of many talents. We had a phenomenal discussion that we’re going to have to do a second part, maybe a third part to down the road because there’s just so much information packed into this interview.
Mark Thackeray: 01:14 And so for those of you who don’t know who Gary is, let me read a little bit about him. In addition to being CEO of next level practice, Gary is a bestselling author, a dental industry advocate, and a personal advisor to many of the top dentists in the country. His firm next level practice has been on the forefront of dental practice management for over 20 years now and with more than $1 billion of increased sales, a mission of 30 million people healthier by 2020 and a 9.8 out of 10 speaker rating, Gary Kadi is in the business of improving lives. Gary’s goal is to provide financial security, professional respect and create a deep sense of satisfaction within their practice and personal lives.
Mark Thackeray: 01:54 And Gary is phenomenal. We had a, like I mentioned before, a tremendous discussion where we got into Gary’s five steps of marketing this framework that he’s created so that you can understand, okay what you need to be doing marketing wise to grow your practice, to help patients connect with you and to come in and to trust you more. There’s five steps involved in this and we dive into each one of those and then he goes into his patient care system which is – You’ve got to listen to this because it’s he, she shared some some case studies at the end where some of his clients have have have generated an extra an extra you guys $1.2 Million in one calendar year through this system, an extra 1.2 million which is phenomenal. Doesn’t involve any additional spend in terms of marketing to acquire new patients at all. You guys, you have to listen to this.
Mark Thackeray: 02:51 Just a great, a tremendous a conversation there and then he also, he ends the conversation with how he is able to get so many things done. How able to multiply himself. As I mentioned before, Gary is all over the place. He’s, he’s writing books, he’s creating documentaries. He just spoken Budapest. He’s, he literally is all over the country all the time. Um, and the, he shares his secret on how he’s able to get things done. So please tune in. You’re going to want to listen to this. You’re gonna want to download this. You’re gonna want to listen to it again, it’s that powerful. Take notes and I hope you enjoy it. So with that introduction, we’re just going to jump right into the interview where Gary’s talking about the five steps, his marketing framework.
Gary Kadi: 03:34 So I want to give you the five steps that we believe marketing every marketing campaign, every marketing strategy, every piece of marketing and marketing means just to start defining it, generating interest. Marketing generates interest. That’s how we define it. So how do we do that? First is you go from no awareness to awareness because if people aren’t aware – awareness is the key to all of it. It’s like how do you get in front of people to make them aware that you’re there? And that’s external marketing. Which is aware that you’re there to bring in new patients in. Internal marketing is what you do to create interest internally, to have patients come back to the practice and re care to have them accept treatment. So creating interest is the definition of marketing. External is outside of the four walls, bringing new patients in internally for your retention and case acceptance.Okay. So that’s awareness. Got it.
Mark Thackeray: 04:35 Awesome. Let me just jump in here too, Gary. That is a, I love the way you put that because a lot of people don’t know that they need help with this. You know what I mean? There’s a lot of patients out there that you also have to, it’s part of it is creating that understanding that there’s a need there on their part as well. You know, I mean that not only that you’re there as a provider, but it could even be even before then where they’re understanding, Hey, I might need to look into this for myself.
Gary Kadi: 05:03 Exactly. Absolutely. And the distinction inside and out to is really important. We’re going to do any equation. So get ready. Um, at the end I’m going to walk you through any equation cause so often people as you know this Mark, they don’t know how much marketing, what kind of marketing, you know, I’d like to see a raise of hands out there if you became a dentist because you wanted to create monthly newsletters, daily social media posts, marketing appreciation experiences, develop an annual marketing plan.
Gary Kadi: 05:29 Raise your hand. Let’s see, I don’t see any ads know. So we really want to look at this and I want to just, I want to take this complex and often over like just so expensive waste of time and just get you right to the heart of the matter. So like what we just gave you an internal and external and then at the end we’re going to run a lost revenue locator and that’s going to tell you what kind of marketing and how much marketing you’re going to need. So that’s big. That’s awareness. That’s number one. Okay. Now the way we’ve developed these is we, I really spend a lot of time on the psychology of the mind. I study how the mind processes once they become aware, what do you think the first question people have? They go, Oh, when you see something and you don’t even realize that you’re doing this, but there’s this one question that everybody asks and it’s either understood or not understood.
Gary Kadi: 06:25 What do you, what do you think? Can you take a poke at it? Mark, what’s the next question? I’m aware of something. Now what are they? What’s the next question? Immediately after that?
Mark Thackeray: 06:32 I would probably say, do I? Yeah, do I need that or where do I go? Yeah, good, good.
Gary Kadi: 06:40 Do I need that as in there? Here’s the real fast one. What differentiates this from everything else that I’m doing with that thing? What is my, what is the differentiator? What makes, all right, so they see dental practice. What makes that dental practice different? What’s the differentiator? What’s the position of that dental practice? And what they’re asking is do I align with that differentiation? And so this is where marketing, if you put something external, your internal needs to match, right? But you’re saying, well, world class service for saying this, so often marketing doesn’t have an alignment all the way through the experience internally and externally.
Speaker 3: 07:28 It’s differentiation and you’re going to hear this word now that I’ve saying it, we believe so we believe is the differentiator because you’re going to listen to every ad from now on and I want you to listen for every ad on TV, every ad on radio, the we believe concept and this is the game changer in in marketing that works in marketing that doesn’t old school marketing is where the best. Here we are. You should buy from us. That’s old school, masculine push marketing, attraction based female marketing as we believe in this. Oh, I believe in that and then you’re attracted to it because consumers of today, Mark, do not trust businesses in their marketing messages. Therefore, if it’s passive and you’re not aggressively in my face, people look at it and they go, Ooh, that feels right to me. So female based differentiation and finishing the statement we believe blank, blank, blank, blank, whatever that is for you. Differentiation is too.
Mark Thackeray: 08:30 That’s huge. Yeah, that is huge. And I love what you said there too, because it really needs to have that consistency. You know, from the messaging on the outside. Your outside perception needs to match your inside reality so that when people, maybe they hear that message could be a, it could be a Facebook ad, it could be a mailer, it could be a billboard, whatever the case may be. And then they step into your office. That experience needs to match message that they heard on the, in that initial, uh, that initial point of contact, right? I mean, otherwise then you’re starting to lose, there’s, there’s an incongruency there and there’s a lack of trust that starts to sprout up if they, if you fail to be consistent with that,
Gary Kadi: 09:10 And you just nailed step three, which is trust. And that’s exactly it. If you don’t have alignment, if they don’t experience what you’re espousing, then they see it as a veneer will, you will use a dental term. It’s just one big, you know, smoke and mirrors. And so just want to go back to differentiation. A great little exercise for you and your team. Say, have them write out as many we believes as they can on a piece of paper and an exercise at a team meeting. Write out all the we believes and then see what the common ones are and then have people do selfie videos that we believe actually doing it. We believe in having fun and that they’re running a bike or we believe in family, we believe in. And it’s not about dentistry, it’s about what they believe in because people do business with people that they believe in the same thing. And when you can make dentistry fun and engaging, we believe in whole body health and you see somebody at you and they’re there, they’re any yoga studio and you take this video and you compile it and you put it on your, your home or your home page on your site.
Gary Kadi: 10:12 Now you just have a position that’s immediately differentiating from the guy who’s looking off camera saying we’re the best and this and this. And we have CE and we have the best technology and a comfortable setting .
Mark Thackeray: 10:26 And that’s such a different approach, right, because so many, so many doctors, so many providers out there, they want to talk about their clinical skills, you know, I mean that’s what they feel like sets them apart. So how do you, yeah, how, how do you get someone to understand the why behind doing these e believe videos?
Gary Kadi: 10:44 Exactly. And you get them in a space. And here’s what’s great about it and this is where you get step number three is trust. How do you build trust? A few ways. One is congruency all the way through in the experience. See in 2017 it was more retail closures than there was in 2008 and the reason why most people say it’s Amazon, it’s not. It’s because people don’t buy things anymore. They buy experiences, right? And so if you turned your dental practice into a congruent experience from what you’re espousing externally, how the phones answered and then have that team operates internally and the experience that they have, you’ll never lose that patient. And we get crazy Google reviews that we had 75 and two months unsolicited Google reviews. Just lining up congruency and having that experience be alive. And so trust gets when you make a promise you deliver on. So that’s where trust is. And if I can give you a simple one, trust is built by making promises in agreement with people. So what that sounds like is who we have we a culture of agreements. Who’s going to do it? What are you going to do? And by when do you get it done? Who, what and by when and when your culture internally actually operates from that type of an agreement, like seeing people on time.
Gary Kadi: 12:06 And if you don’t see somebody on time, they came in and they weren’t seeing that time, you just honor your word. You say, look, we want to acknowledge that we’re five minutes late seeing you. We want to take responsibility for that. And when you restore your word with that patient who’s meeting you for the first time, all of a sudden there’s an opportunity to say they really cared and honored my time. You just own the trust of that person. So when they go back and you internally market them with your case presentation, they go, wow, he, I can trust this guy or gal.
Mark Thackeray: 12:35 Right. So that’s, that’s an excellent example you just gave Gary. What, what other examples could a, you know, an office manager or a doctor start to implement in their system to build that type of trust? I mean, you’re talking about setting up the expectations, making promises with the agreement of your patient. What other things could, could they look to do to implement that type of culture, to build that type of culture of trust as a, as a team and with their patients?
Gary Kadi: 13:05 Yeah, there’s really, I mean, Mark, I hope you have like I can do six days on this, but I’ll keep it simple, you talked about two things, creating a culture and creating a system. So culture is very simple, really establishing yourself as a culture of agreements. So you just have a team meeting and say, look, what we want to do is bring facts to how we operate here. And we want to focus in on how we’re going to go about interacting. And we’re going to create a culture of agreements. Agreements are, who’s going to do it? What are you going to do? And by when will you get it done? Who, what and by when.
Gary Kadi: 13:37 And so, and we’re not going to tell you what to do anymore. We’re going to just ask you if you’re willing to do something. And if you agree, our team leader is then going to hold you accountable to the agreement that you made. We’re not going to be forcing you to do anything anymore. So that’s the culture of agreements. Now I’m going to put them in. You put it out and you’re gonna have a dialogue about it. And then the next question most people have is, well, what happens when people don’t follow their agreements? Then we have what we call the AIDS system aid stand for you. Go back to the person and you don’t make them wrong. You just say, Hey, do you remember we had an agreement about taking four and draw pictures or answering the phone using this VIP phone intake script.
Gary Kadi: 14:14 Um, and you’re not using it. Can I just ask why? And so ask as the first step and then you escalate up, then you insist, cause now you’re coming back for the second time. Then D is demand. He is forced S a suspend. And once you start handling some urgency and certain consequences associated to the gradient, uh, confront of those agreements, it has the rest of the team start winding up. When you say something, you mean it and they start following through on all their, their aspects as well. And then if they don’t, they just honor their word and say, I promise this and this didn’t happen. So when you’re working from a culture of promises either happening or not and managed by the team leader, it changes everything. And this is our secret about how this is our Coca Cola KFC on how we focused on creating happy teams that implement sustainable results. That’s our asset. Yeah. So that’s how we do it. In 30 seconds or less.
Mark Thackeray: 15:10 Well, that’s, yeah, and it’s like a higher level, right? I mean, you know, appropriately next level really. I mean, because now you’re, you’re, you’re not telling, you’re not demanding. I mean, you’re just, you’re asking and inviting and you’ve built that, that culture where people want to thrive, they want to succeed, and they’re going to actually take up that, pick up that Baton and run with it.
Gary Kadi: 15:31 Exactly. And then if they don’t, you know, they’re really not committed and then they’re going to either de-select themselves because they don’t want to operate inside of the integrity, or they’re going to get better and get willing and, and show progress. So that’s the culture side. The other side, the answer to this question, Mark, is the systems. So we have, we have a new patient experience, and you want to start by having a new patient, VIP intake form. And it goes through a series of questions that engages the patient. It doesn’t talk about insurances. If they ask about it, we teach you how to, you want to teach them how to deal with insurance. But first you want to get related to the patient you want to get in their world. And then you talk about insurance. We did a study of a hundred practices. We call them 92 within the first few questions asked, what insurance do you have? And yeah, there was no relatedness. They didn’t even ask their name. So, you know, these are simple things that you can change pretty quickly here.
Mark Thackeray: 16:28 Yeah, yeah. That’s an easy one. That’s an easy one. And that’s, yeah man, there’s so many ways we could go with this cause there’s just so much, so much content and what you just said, dealing with the experience, really customizing and tailoring that experience to the patient. And it starts with understanding who your patients are, who your patients are, you know, and really taking the time to get to know them. You know, I mean that’s, you know, a lot of, a lot of practices really miss out on huge opportunities and as a result they see patients running to the next office down the street because they haven’t built that relationship.
Gary Kadi: 17:02 You bet. You bet. Yeah. There’s no doubt about it. And then you know the other thing, the last piece of the system is new patient VIP intake form. You alert the team in the morning huddle, give them the highlights and the why they’re there cause people buy on why and we teach. You had mentioned the why. We teach teams to get in there and find out why they’re coming in. And often they’ll say like I have the broken tooth that something hurts but a lot of times they’re not going to ask. And really getting in there and understanding the why behind it and also just down and dirty for personas. Are they competitive? Are they methodical, are they humanistic, are they spontaneous? When you can identify the personality type, you can change your language to address the way the person listens. So it’s sort of like if I speak English and they speak Italian, I speak Italian to my listener not English if they don’t understand it.
Gary Kadi: 17:51 And so this is, these are two key elements. And then the third step is a new patient interview, knee to knee, toe to toe relatedness from the treatment coordinator. Who is going to eventually be presenting the case now doesn’t become the money gal. They become the financial freedom fighter we call them, who actually helps the patient get the care they need and finds a way to fit it inside their lifestyle.
Mark Thackeray: 18:14 No, it’s so powerful. It’s so awesome. So awesome. Yeah, I love and I like, you know, taking a step back, I love what you just said about even taking notes on how, what type of person they are. I mean you’re truly trying to differentiate yourself and provide this custom experience so that they have a great time, but then also it’s going to lead to, you know, case acceptance. It’s going to lead to referrals down the road, but just taking the time to identify, okay, this person likes to be spoken to this way, and then changing your approach to suit them instead of trying to force them to suit your preferred style.
Gary Kadi: 18:49 That’s exactly in 75% of dentists are humanist methodicals. So if you’re a humanist methodically, you’re given way too much detail to a competitive or a spontaneous, they’re not paying attention and then you actually lose the patient, right?
Mark Thackeray: 19:02 Oh yeah. See that all the time. All the time.
Gary Kadi: 19:06 You bet. You bet. And then that brings us the next step. Step four is registration and marketing. This is, this is, we include this in marketing because most people say, well, these people are interested. I have a lot of people who saying yes, but they got wait on that treatment. Or they’re saying, yes, they want to come in, but they didn’t really register. Registration has four elements to it. Registration is a commitment to time, energy, information, and money. So when there’s an exchange of one of those four things, you have registration. So if somebody goes to your website, they’re giving you time.
Gary Kadi: 19:47 And then if you opt in to something, they’re giving you information, right? If somebody’s giving you like their energy and their space and like you know, you, you’re getting a connection or if they exchange money, those are all registration proofs of registration. That means that they were, you created the interests with the marketing, but if you don’t gain commitment, the marketing was not successful. Right. It was just nice. A nice piece, a nice billboard, a nice email, a nice website. But if it doesn’t convert into a registration of some commitment from the other side, it’s not a successful marketing piece.
Mark Thackeray: 20:29 Yeah, and that’s a key distinction right there is that you’re always looking for what’s motivating or what’s driving them to take the next step. You know, and this is a, I think that’s, I love how you articulated that, where it’s a commitment and time and energy and information or money, those are all indicators that they are in essence raising their hand saying, yes, I’m interested. I’m willing to put forth my time or I’m willing to take out my credit card and learn and pay more so I can better understand what you’re offering.
Gary Kadi: 20:57 You bet. So that’s, that’s registration. And then the last one is ambassadors. And an ambassador is the, in my opinion, the most important. That’s the person that is served beyond expectation. And they go out and tell other people about you even unsolicitedly so they like, they become your, your, your tribe, your community that really are advocates for who you are, what you do. And they want to tell everybody around them to become a part of the community or part of your tribe, your patient base, your, your group, if you will. And it’s a game changer when you have those ambassadors out there because they’re telling other people about you and it’s not you talking about you and that’s the game changer.
Mark Thackeray: 21:46 Oh yeah, absolutely. People’s ears perk up when it’s someone else talking about you as opposed to when you stand on the soapbox and proclaim how awesome you are. It’s a total different story.
Gary Kadi: 21:56 And in today’s world it’s crazy because get this. I never thought that I would rely on a stranger to tell me what restaurant I should go to. That sets a good example. That’s insane. You know, a place to stay. Then I’m going to travel around the world and I’m going to rely on a guy who I don’t know and I do all the time, all the time.
Mark Thackeray: 22:21 So we’ll talk to me more about this ambassador. Okay. Is this, so this is a byproduct of everything you’re doing beforehand, but are you also, is there, is there an element of, Hey, we’re, we’re at, I mean, you said unsolicited. So is there, is there any element where you’re encouraging them to do this or you’re trying to think of, you know, from an actionable standpoint? Or is this just the byproduct of doing everything properly?
Gary Kadi: 22:45 Well, no, it doing everything properly, it gives you the permission to have an ambassador. Okay. I believe that there’s only two types of marketing that works in today’s world. Relationship-based marketing and educational marketing. You know, even on your site, and when I saw your podcast and we talk about these expensive marketing programs that, that are just expensive, time consuming and they just don’t work. It’s because you know today that the trust level for human beings with a message is like zero when they read it. So if you can facilitate ambassadors, that’s one thing that we believe that is most important. So it’s really about creating environments that, that have other people learn about your business. And we invented a platform. I found a guy who was doing this in chiropractic because chiropractic is 10 times harder to market than dentistry.
Mark Thackeray: 23:41 Did you know that? No, no I did not.
Gary Kadi: 23:44 Yes, because it’s intangible and there’s no like belief that you should go to your hygienist twice a year. So it’s so much harder because you have to sell people on the concept, right? And then have them come and it’s like if they get in an accident and whiplash, like that’s different. But 99% of chiropractic is intangible. So I have a friend who’s been marketing chiropractic and I know you’re crazy. It’s so hard. You should just be in dentistry. So he built this whole platform. We spent millions on this platform and he’s like, I said, you ready? Cause it was about four years later after we, the concept and I go, you ready? You ready to bring it to dentistry? And he goes, yep. So for the last two years we’ve been building, I took his chassis of this delivery system to build ambassadors.
Gary Kadi: 24:30 And imagine having a delivery system that plugs into your social media channels that plugs into your database that it’s 16 minutes Mark. You can plug and play campaigns that are built and customized for you and click them in and set and forget your marketing for the year. Social media newsletters. Watch this webinars to your patients. Wow, insane patient, patient experience. Imagine once a month that you have you invite guests to your, to your, uh, office. We have posters and, and digital, digital property and principal property. So you’re marketing in other people’s businesses, your business, your practice and online. And in social media. If you’re going to have an event on whitening or Invisalign or whatever it is, and we have the campaign already built, you don’t have to build it. You just upload your logo, upload your photo, pick the date you want to do it, fill those fields in and it’s deployed, done.
Gary Kadi: 25:34 And if you have printable materials, you press a button, send it to FedEx office and they deliver those, those posters and tent cards and you know, registration cards, everything done for you, done for you.
Mark Thackeray: 25:46 That is a dream is a dream. I’m salivating as you’re talking about this right now.
Gary Kadi: 25:50 This is thousands of hours. Like you, you couldn’t even spend the hours, you couldn’t hire the copywriters, you it would take you forever to do it. We have over 250 campaigns built already that like you know, if you want to market Perrier protect you just pick the one of the seven campaigns prepared, protect whether it’s an email drip campaign, whether it’s a webinar that you want to deliver to your patients. It has landing pages, it has drift campaigns, opt in, landing pages. It is like autoresponders, like it’s insanity. It’s built and done for you. So that’s why I believe marketing has these five steps, but it needs a platform to deliver it and we had this thing built that has those five elements sitting right inside of it is phenomenal.
Mark Thackeray: 26:35 That is truly phenomenal. And like you said, I mean the, the, the amount of hours it would require to do this on their own. I mean they probably couldn’t do it in this lifetime and there’s just, there’s just so much involved in just a single campaign, let alone hundreds of campaigns and to be that robust where it is, it’s the messaging on, you know, a social post. It, it’s, but then it’s also a webinar and that type of experience. It’s also in office experiences. All of those combined. That is a force to be reckoned with right there.
Gary Kadi: 27:09 Ambassadors watch this twice a year you have patient appreciation days. The guy, the one guy who does, he goes to the Padres, he takes two buses of his patients and that patient appreciation, that relatedness to the practice, they get connected to it. They bring family members, they become patients. They get up on the board at the Padre game and see, see, that has done a lot. Chiropractic webinars are not done in dentistry. These patient appreciation days are not done in dentistry a little bit, but not. But it’s like it takes so much energy and effort to put the marketing together and package it all and, and to deploy it. And that’s why this system works beautifully.
Mark Thackeray: 27:50 No, and like you said, it really provides, I love those patient experiences, those patient appreciation days because you’re getting outside of the office, going back to what you mentioned before on some of the, we believe statements, it’s, and the differentiation, it’s, it’s giving you an opportunity to show that you’re a normal human. You know, I mean, you’re not just a sterile doctor, you’re not, but you’re just like them and you have those type of shared experiences that really bond them to you and to your office.
Gary Kadi: 28:17 You bet. Imagine twice a year. So once a quarter you do to a patient appreciation and nice weather and then you do, are you close? You close your practice down to, you know, whether it’s battered women, underprivileged kids, and you’re doing charity work, you know, twice a year and now all of a sudden you have relationship-based marketing because just setting those things up and letting people know that you’re doing those things and, and your, your karmic connection to the community changes. You know, because people, people see you as a giver, not a taker. Because most people Mark think of dentists as takers like, Hey, you’re trying to get your, your next portion of my mouth because there’s no symptoms. And so they think you’re trying to sell something they don’t need and this changes all of that. It changes all of that and you show up as a giver and people trust you on a whole nother level.
Mark Thackeray: 29:08 Right? Oh, total. Yeah, that’s totally a next level move right there. And that’s so exciting. That’s so powerful. So powerful. Okay, so just for everyone listening do a quick recap. So we’ve got, um, first is awareness and then you have differentiation and then comes trust and then registration. And finally, ambassadors.
Gary Kadi: 29:31 You bet. Right? You bet. You bet those five, that’s the wheel. And then it starts all over. You know, you get your ambassadors, what do you want them to be aware of? Maybe you have another, um, at different, you know, service now you’re going to be doing, um, you know, sleep and now we’re going all the way down the rabbit hole again and you’re going down with different campaigns and different, different messaging and this is all planned out a year in advance and all set up. And then you, you know, this is the biggest problem I see in dentistry. You know, it’s like, let’s say it’s, it’s May and people go, you know, we should do a mother’s day thing and you’re in may, you know, imagine sitting down in December, this is what I love. Like you sit down in December or wherever you are listening to this and then you’re just map out your 12 months ahead and you’re done because it just automates everything. It’s just amazing to be able to set it, forget it, and then have the machine run.
Speaker 3: 30:27 And here’s the other thing about this more. When you go to existing patients and you bring digital messaging to them, sharing it. Virtual sharing virtually is another way to create ambassadors easily. So let’s say, let’s say you do a campaign on bad breath and you know somebody’s on your, and your family’s been fighting bad breath, that campaign get sent to them easily. You click and share and that’s how you go viral and that the relationship came from a person you know about bad breath and now they’re validating you. You see, so this is the way, you know, marketing really works well and in 2020 and beyond.
Mark Thackeray: 31:05 Yeah, that is exactly right. And that’s, I just can’t get over how exciting that is just to be able to use this as a lever to accelerate your practice. You know, I’m putting all these things into place where you know, I mean for a lot of the, and I’m sure you’re like this to Gary when you meet with a practice for the first time, and if they haven’t really dived into marketing or thought about it much, then this, this is overwhelming. I mean, right? I mean, you’re starting to outline all these things that they really ought to be doing to really position themselves properly in the marketplace. And they just look like a deer in the headlights and they have no, no idea where to start. And so having this pre-packaged, all created, ready to go, ready to deploy that is huge and is just a game changer really is.
Gary Kadi: 31:56 And specialists use this too. They give the play by the platform for their referring doctors. Now a specialist can go direct to GP patients and generate interest for ortho and implants and things like that. So it’s really like the smart people know how to, how to utilize and really go direct to patients. It’s insane. You know, I think, I think it’s really important to, to recognize here, and this is our philosophy, is to take dentists, we’re not trained to be marketers and they shouldn’t need to master it. So there’s platforms that can do this and there’s people that can do it and you should outsource it. And that’s why our way we look at our work is we’re fractional marketers. Like you know, the fractional ownership of a jet and fractional ownership of a house. Imagine having somebody who has all the expertise but you don’t have to pay full price for it.
Gary Kadi: 32:48 And that’s really what we see that people love about our approach because you know the first thing we do is like how much marketing do you need and what kind of marketing and that’s what I think we should talk about next because that really is going to help the listener really, really get like, Hey, Oh, I never thought about that. Like what do you mean they just think I need to market and they don’t. They don’t know what kind and rare, yeah.
Mark Thackeray: 33:10 Well let’s, yeah, let’s get into that. Let’s, yeah, let’s say someone’s just getting into this, they recognize that there is a need that there maybe patient flow isn’t going as well or they have a whole host of existing patients that just aren’t accepting treatment. What, how do they find out what they need and then what to do about it?
Gary Kadi: 33:26 Yeah, that’s a great question, Mark. And I think it’s really this, you know, people go, I’m not making the money I want to make and they immediately go, I need marketing for what? [inaudible] new patients. So that is, that is myth number one in marketing, it’s not always new patients you need. And here we have, you’re like you’re a baby boomer and you’re spending like your nights sleepless trying to social media market and you’re going and meanwhile you’ve got 2000 patients and you’re going, I need to be out there social media marketing. I’m like, no you don’t, but I got an easier way for you if you want one. So most doctors are blown away when I share with them this next distinction, so it’s what we call the lost revenue locator. So what we do is we look at, see most doctors look at their practice that there’s only one way to make, make a practice grow more patients, right?
Gary Kadi: 34:22 That’s, I mean that’s how they think and that’s cause that’s what everybody else is thinking. But I’m going to give you three ways to build the practice. It’s called our care system. C A. R. E so you can remember it. C a stands for case acceptance. R stands for retention of patients. E stands for the experience and acquisition of new patients. So in essence case acceptance, retention, and new patients. Three systems, three times growth. When you look at this, and when I got into this business, here’s what I’ve learned. The average case acceptance is 15% of the total total case presented to a new patient and 30 for existing patients. Total case presented 15 to 30 the machine’s broken right there, right, right. We want to get that to 67 the next one is retention. The patients that come back twice in a practice, 20% on average, we want to get that to 80% now you’ve got a machine.
Gary Kadi: 35:20 When you drop new patients in, which costs anywhere from maybe a hundred dollars to $500 depending on the marketing you use right now, when you drop that expense of patient and the top of the funnel, they’re retained more often than not. And when they’re there, they invest in treatment. So the real way to understand your marketing is understand the annual average value of an adult patient. So I’m going to walk you through that revenue right now. You’re ready?
Mark Thackeray: 35:45 Yes, let’s do it.
Gary Kadi: 35:47 So case acceptance and let’s use PPO fees and let’s use Utah cause it’s, you know, lower dollar amounts. Let’s just say it’s 800 for a crown and 200 for a buildup. So we’re not saying we’re going to sell crowns and buildups. I don’t even care if you charge. The only reason why I’m saying crown of buildup, because when you have a good case acceptance system, a good internal marketing system that brings awareness, brings differentiation, brings trust, gets them to commit that.
Gary Kadi: 36:15 When you can do that internally, Mark, the average adult will invest in the value of a crown in a buildup annually. We’re going to call that $1,000. Fair enough. That sounds good. Yeah. Two prophys, two exams, set of bite wings. That’s two hygiene visits a year. We need to get that retention to two hygiene visits a year. You do that? Well, let’s just call it $300 PTO fees. All right, just to round it off, 1300 bucks is the average annual value of an adult coming back twice through hygiene, investing in a crown of build up when they go into hygiene and we have good education in there, good trust transfers. Good people you know who know how to remove money and insurance as a barrier. $1,300. If we take this practice, let’s say they have a thousand patients for ease of math, that’s one point $3 million, 1.3 million.
Gary Kadi: 37:11 And Mark, when I first get this practice, it’s doing five, six or if they’re lucky, 700,000.
Mark Thackeray: 37:18 Yeah, I see that all the time.
Gary Kadi: 37:20 Oh my gosh. Right? So guess what? Here’s the good news. There’s no new patients in this equation. Such a good point. So say, so say I’m smoking medical marijuana right now, right? And I’m crazy bad at what I’m doing here. I know I can get this practice to 1 million bucks. If you’re adding 20 patients a month or 10 patients a month, it’s a no brainer to get this practice to that, you know, 30 40, 50% growth. Because you’re doing it from something you can control, which is internal marketing, getting your team on board and training them how to educate patients and get them retained in hygiene and get them to accept treatment and when they’re in the hygiene visit.
Mark Thackeray: 38:04 Right. Well, and you haven’t even touched on the referrals that will likely come as you’re treating them better as you put in, implement that type of system.
Gary Kadi: 38:12 Exactly. You got it. So this lost revenue locator has people respond in a few ways? They go, I don’t believe that nobody’s ever going to buy a full crown. Like, here’s what you want to know. Confucius said, at best, I have a, I have a little, a little sign on my, in front of my computer. It says whether you think you can or you think you can’t, either way, you’re right. Yes. I love that. And we believe that there’s, is that we believe, we believe that you if you’re open and willing and you’re willing to take a new path, then those are the only people we work with. See we make sure we’re not for everybody because we’re only for serious people that want to have this turnout. If people are like skeptical and they’re like going to be resistant we have a system where people meet with me for a month and if by the end of that that they pass, then they go and then we can help them.
Gary Kadi: 39:08 Because I used to take everybody when I first started. Right. It just doesn’t work because not everybody’s willing. Some people want to just, you know, confront me and tell me why it’s not going to work and it’s okay. I’m okay if you don’t believe it. You know, limiting beliefs really stop all progress. And if you’re not ready you, maybe you’ll be ready in a year from now or a month from now or never. And it’s okay because there’s more than enough for everybody, right?
Mark Thackeray: 39:30 Oh absolutely. And that’s a tough pill to swallow for some people because they feel like, Hey, my door’s open. Anyone who walks in here, I should be okay. You know, treating them. But the reality is that we can, can, we can really determine who those patients are that we treat and attract those types of patients.
Gary Kadi: 39:48 Yup. The minute you’ve moved from scarcity and poverty thinking to abundance and prosperity thinking and you understand that the world is abundant, and I know it’s not some Google, you know, theory smoke your Sage, you know, this is real deal.
Gary Kadi: 40:02 This is like if you see pennies and you’re going to miss dollars, if you’re looking for dollars, you’re going to find whatever you’re looking for is going to find you. And you know, and look, it took me awhile to really learn this and believe that, but I know that that’s true. And you know, because I see it every day in practices that we work with. We’ve only worked with 6,000 over my career. So we’re, we’re getting there. We’re starting to really see some trends that are patterns.
Mark Thackeray: 40:30 Oh man. When I look back personally and see the times where I’ve really wrestled with that idea, this and, and held onto that scarcity mindset and how much it costs me. You know, I started a photography business when I was in, in college, just finishing up college and how difficult it was for me to raise prices or to charge more. And it took, it was an evolution to get to that point where, you know, charging $1,000, charging $5,000, you know, I mean that, it took a long time for me to get to that level. Um, but it’s real. Like I totally agree with you. It’s, it’s, it’s something that will change your reality as soon as you’re willing to let go of that as quickly as you can.
Gary Kadi: 41:13 Well, I’m a street kid from New Jersey right and I, I was unworthy and undeserving and deserving. I’m an alcoholic. I live in shame and guilt. Um, you know, I went through a long laundry list. I’m 12 years sober now and, um, shame and guilt are big drivers of deserve level. And I a book after I was three years sober because I wasn’t getting mentally healthy and I wasn’t changing my behaviors about scarcity and fear.
Gary Kadi: 41:39 And if anybody’s out there grappling with that, you can send the, this MDD3 to the number (687) 506-7543 MDD3 to that number, (687) 506-7543. That’s one of my books. And then my second book, um, came from, I dunno Mark if you’ve experienced this, but when you’re installing something and then people start dismantling it and they, they take it all apart, like you build this business model and then they just stopped doing it. You know, we all had that experience, right?
Mark Thackeray: 42:13 Oh way too many times.
Gary Kadi: 42:15 Yeah. It’s called self sabotage. And where that is originates from is what I call an unhealthy deserve level. Like meaning that in life and in practice, you don’t get what you deserve. You get what you think you deserve. And if you live in shame and guilt that when you’re chair side, that comes out sideways, things like, let’s watch that too.
Gary Kadi: 42:36 Oh, I’m going to give that to you for free. Um, and there’s this guilt and shame that’s driving the practice. And I want to tell a quick story about my friend Jim. You know, all my doctors become friends I guess. I don’t know, but he was, he had $450,000 in an accounts receivable and he was, you know, came to me for marketing on the front end, but he really didn’t. He had over $4 million in under his roof and he was doing a million and he had 450 of it out and accounts receivable. And once I said, Jim, the source of your problem is that you don’t think you deserve to receive the money that you’ve worked so hard for. And he’s like, you’re 100% right. He flipped a switch. I gave him the system on how to collect the money, collected that 450 in a, in a matter of months, any increases business $1 million in a 12 month period is still just, we just had the record in a 12 month period.
Gary Kadi: 43:28 Mark, Jim, Jim’s record was broken. We just had another doctor down in, uh, down in D C she just went crazy and she was up 1.2 and another gentleman in grand Rapids, Michigan, 1.2 million more just in the past year, over a 12 month period of $100,000 more a month and not working in more hours, just working smarter, having all the systems in and producing that kind of results. Some people might think I’m insane, but I’m telling you, this is what’s going on in dentistry. If you know the right process.
Mark Thackeray: 44:00 Well, and that’s what’s so exciting too, is because you’re not advocating that you need to be going out and getting all these new patients because usually what that equates to is twice the amount of work to double your revenue, right? But now you’re, you’re taking advantage of those patients that you’ve already acquired, you’ve already invested to acquire, and you’re really maximizing return on those patients, which is up, you know, is, is, is bringing in more net profit in the end, but it’s also delivering so much more value to them and it’s delivering you more referrals. I mean, it’s just this exponential growth curve, right? I mean it’s a hockey stick that just shoots right up and that’s, and and most importantly, it’s not taking away from your time, you know? I mean, you’re really kind of doing things pretty much the same. You’re just improving it and really optimizing it.
Gary Kadi: 44:47 And here’s the, here’s the even better news. It’s ethically done, aligned with your values as a human being. What we’re doing is removing the barriers and getting you out of the way of you so you can go do the natural thing that you were gifted to do, which has come from your heart, not your head. We get people to move 18 inches Mark from their head to their heart when it comes from your heart people, it’s truth. It’s, this is all truth. There’s no smoke and mirrors here. This is all like factual evidence based, science based education, relationship building, exchange of information and people make their own choices.
Gary Kadi: 45:24 We like to say this, we share intelligent information with intelligent people so that they can make intelligent decisions. And when you do that really well and consistently everything goes, it’s just everything moves right. It’s just that, you know, teams aren’t usually aligned, they’re not trained internally, they don’t know what to do. And when you put these simple, you know, three systems in the care system and use the a platform like, um, like the new patient engine, which I explained the new patient engine.com just go there and there’s videos and everything that shows you how it works and it’s just simple. And it’s low cost too. It’s like it’s only couple hundred bucks a month. It’s insane.
Mark Thackeray: 46:04 Yeah. Such a nominal cost for what you get. It’s so nominal. That’s, that is awesome. That is man, just so exciting that this is even a possibility. And that’s what I hope listeners will, will really grasp onto is that Hey, this is, this is where you could be, you know, I mean, this is a reality. It’s not, you don’t have to be a slave to your business this way. You don’t have to, in order to double your revenue, you don’t have to double your workload. You don’t have to, you can just work smarter. And I love what you said to Gary is really, it’s aligning yourself more with your values leading with your heart and it’s really becoming more of a true self, so to speak, in your practice as well. So that, that is, that was phenomenal. That was phenomenal.
Gary Kadi: 46:48 You bet. Like when your business becomes a self expression of who you are in your heart, you’re not working anymore. You’re just going through your day and you don’t know if you’re playing or you’re working. Right. And that’s what possible. Listen, I was depressed. I went through a three years of like panic attacks and depression and, and it was really a journey to get to my core of who I am as a person.
Gary Kadi: 47:12 And I don’t have to sell anything. I don’t have to go to work anymore. I choose to based upon what I love to do. And that’s bring hope, possibility, health, wellness and freedom to dental teams around the world. And um, when you just lead with that, I mean, I a privilege to be on your podcast. I mean to be invited on your podcast Mark is incredible. And you know, I was invited to Budapest to speak it, you know, these European union of, of whole body health practitioners, like this is like beyond my wildest dreams. But it was because I got added my ego out of the way. I got humbled, I got sober, I stopped numbing myself out with workaholism and alcoholism and my son had autism and now he’s like, he’s healthy, I’m healthy. And I believe that I believe in God and God gifted me these pain points so that I can transform them and give hope to other people so that they can go out and do the same thing and then just give them a method to get it there so they don’t have to be like bogged down and take the complex and be simple and then all of a sudden it’s like, Hey, you know, it’s worth going to work for every day and worth waking up for every day, you know?
Mark Thackeray: 48:26 Oh, so rewarding. You know, it’s, it really is. And just the trickle down effect that that has on like you mentioned your, your, your life as a provider, uh, but your team’s lives and then the community, your patients, all their families as well. I mean it has, has such far reaching effects that that is how, what better work would you be doing? You know, I mean you can have that type of influence in your community. It’s so, so exciting to me.
Gary Kadi: 48:53 Yeah, but you just have to remove like the best analogy I can give you is Michelangelo didn’t carve the David, he just took away the pieces of marble that weren’t the David. And what I find is in the work that we do is like people have these belief systems that get in the way of like, you know, marketing is hard or marketing is difficult.
Gary Kadi: 49:14 Yes. From the perspective of you’re trained as a clinician and now you’re thrown into this game. But if you trust somebody to automated for you and simplify it for you and then you, and then you follow the process. That’s how I got sober. I couldn’t have gotten sober on my own. I found a guy with 36 years of sobriety and I said, what did you do? And he goes, just follow me. And I did it and I just keep doing what he’s been showing me. So you don’t have to reinvent things. It’s already done for you. And just trust the process. Yeah, you’re going to fail again. There’s going to be, sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t. Don’t expect. You know, and so often I hear, Oh my spouse doesn’t want me to do anything cause I failed so many times. Well guess what? You stood up again and you started walking and you’re going to have some breakdowns. Things don’t work. But the one thing I do know is everything that we’ve done, we’ve talked about today, it works 100% of the time. The only time it doesn’t work, Mark, is when you don’t do it.
Gary Kadi: 50:08 Cause these are basic, these are, these are thousands of years. Human principles and business principles. Thousands of years given in a timely manner in 2019 to 2020 in a way that’s easily, you know, digest it and deliver it. I mean, that’s it. I mean, there’s no magic behind that. It’s just simple. It is simple, isn’t always easy, right? Simple.
Mark Thackeray: 50:32 Yes. That’s a great distinction. And by the way, it is not always easy, but at least the path is paved. You don’t have to, like you mentioned before, you don’t have to reinvent the wheel. And that, that part is so, so exciting to me. Okay. So before we finish up, I’ve got two questions to ask you. So yeah, as, as I think about, um, the things that we’ve discussed in today’s podcast, and I consider all of the other things that you, well, and I’m thinking too, from the point of view, from a doctor or an office manager, all the things that they have on their plate, their day to day responsibilities, what’s going on at home, what, you know, other interests they might have, how do they, how do you get things done?
Mark Thackeray: 51:15 So I look and then I look at someone like you, Gary, and you have, you know, I’ve written books multiple, not just one book, but several books, documentaries. You’re, you, you know, leading this tremendous company with so many different service offerings. How are you able to do all that? How do you get so many things done?
Gary Kadi: 51:32 No one wins alone. No one wins alone. If I didn’t have an infrastructure of 25 and I work with all ladies and one of the gentlemen, um, I, I believe having good, good people around you, um, smarter than me. It wasn’t until I surrendered that having people around me that were smarter than me, once I popped that ego, um, everything took off. And I just, I give them space and I give them accountability and I give them return on investment and they just go and they know what the game is and they play inside of the values and vision of the company.
Gary Kadi: 52:08 And that’s how I can duplicate myself 20 times over. And so, you know, just really building a team of trusted people around you. And, um, if you have one person that’s counter intentional to who you are, it kills off the whole team. So I don’t allow, it’s no nonsense. November Mark and I don’t allow any nonsense in my space. If you’re not aligned, it’s OK. we’ll help you find, be successful somewhere else. And that’s just how I am. I’m really straight. People know I’m straight. I don’t pull any punches, right? I’m a, I’m a humanist. I used to acquiesce and say yes to everything. Now, you know, I got a little older and it’s like, this is how it goes. If you want to play cool. If not love you, we’ll help you be successful, you know, where do you want to go?
Mark Thackeray: 52:49 Oh, I love that. I love that. And I also have, you’ve, you’ve, you’ve provoked another question. So, so with that though, I mean, for someone who’s looking to, you know, say, add to their team or grow that team. Um, and I’m asking personally too, because this is something that I would love to continue to do as I move forward. When do you know, when does that time, right? Uh, when do you know it is the right time to do that? Or is it something you have to feel out or do you just try and do it as early as possible?
Gary Kadi: 53:16 You’re talking about another team member if they’re, if they’re aligned on, on your vision or not.
Mark Thackeray: 53:20 Yes, yes. Another team member.
New Speaker: 53:22 Oh, it’s really, really simple. Everybody has, we have a vision, purpose and values, and they either fit inside those vision, purpose and values are, they don’t, they have measures and metrics so that they know what it takes to be successful and to give the company return on investment for what the company’s investing in them.
Gary Kadi: 53:38 And then we ask them and we give them a chance. Just like I said earlier on, they have the AIDS system, so, right. You know, we ask, we insist, we demand, we enforce, we suspend. They have five strikes. And when you shorten this and you, you just keep that, that ball going. And then here’s how the Ritz Carlton gets people to fall through. They have redundancy, so they know that the next person is going to take their job and they have, they, you’ve packaged your business. So it’s the best place to work on a planet and they don’t want to lose that job because they get paid well. They get acknowledged and get appreciated. When you create that kind of environment, people don’t want to leave. And so therefore they line up with what you need them to do. As long as you’re clear about it.
Gary Kadi: 54:15 And then you’re loving and supportive and then you give them course correction along the way. So it’s, you know, I can speak for three days on this.
Mark Thackeray: 54:23 Well, yeah, that’s such a great approach. Um, and that helps me a lot. So, and then the other, sorry, I keep asking this question because it’s such a man, this is such a hot, there’s so much here and so much that can allow you to grow. And like you said, multiply yourself. So on the other side of that, when you’re, let’s say you’re, you want to add or grow your team, when do you feel like that that is a good time to do that? Is that you’ve reached a certain point or is it just, Hey, I, I know I can’t be doing these many things, or how do you determine it’s time to add another team member?
Gary Kadi: 54:55 Oh, it’s all, it’s all relative to what we do is we do the top three things that a doctor wants to achieve. So we don’t just add 10% in the next year. We say, okay, what do you want to achieve? And we reverse engineer on how much you need to do by position by day. And that simply gives us the mechanics of and the math on how much revenue we need, how much salary you’re going to spend, what the return on investment proposition is. It just gives us an equation that’s fits all that out. So it’s really based upon the goals of where you are and where you want to go. So it’s pretty simple like that.
Mark Thackeray: 55:30 Okay. So you’re just doing your due diligence, your homework to see, Hey, does this make sense? If we were to add another person to, will it help us achieve this goal?
Gary Kadi: 55:38 Exactly. Well, everything has to have. If your money ain’t right, you can’t join the fight. You can’t make a difference if you’re thinking about and worried about money. So what we do is we make sure the money is always right and make sure that everybody has the return on investment benchmarks by position, accountable by position. And when you do that, it’s in my book and I’ll give you the book. Um, and I’ll have to sign off here cause I have my next call coming. I’m going to give you the, just pick up my book and it outlines it all this inside of there it’s million dollar dentistry. And if you just text MDD3 just those four characters to this phone number is six eight seven (506) 754-3687 five six seven five or three. And you’ll get a copy of my book and that’ll be the best way just to get that information quick. But Mark, I’ll tell you, you’re an incredible interviewer and I would be honored to be back because I think we can, we can pack another at least another hour or 500.
Mark Thackeray: 56:40 I was thinking the same thing. I’ve been taking notes. You probably heard me try chipping away at my computer as I’ve typed in these notes, but I would love to have you back again. There’s honestly, we’re just scratching the surface with where we could go with this. Um, and all your experience, your wealth of experience. So again, thank you so much Gary, for coming on today, sharing what you did and, and with the book and everything like that. Uh, we’ll make sure to link that up in the show notes. Make sure people can, can find you to find out more and to get the book and see what else is going on in your world. Cause you’re always doing something.
Gary Kadi: 57:11 You bet, man. Well, lots of love to you, Mark, and all the listeners out there. I hope you have a great, great day and evening and drive safe. Take care.
Mark Thackeray: 57:23 Wow, that is it, my friends. Thank you for joining us today on Dental Marketing Secrets. If you have any comments, questions, or feedback, I’d love to hear from you, simply email me at markthack@gmail.com and if you’ve enjoyed this episode, please leave a review for this podcast. That would be a tremendous help to me and it would mean a lot to me.
Mark Thackeray: 57:48 And please share this with your friends, your team, your peers, whomever that would find value in this. And until next time, my friends make it a great week. We’ll talk to you soon.
Outro: 57:58 Did you enjoy this episode of the Dental Marketing Secrets Podcast? Head on over to iTunes to subscribe, rate, and leave a review. And for more proven marketing strategies to grow your practice, visit practicerocket.net.
