Many dentists invest in marketing to attract potential new patients, but what they don't realize is that if their team does not answer incoming phone calls effectively, they're losing out on the results of their marketing efforts. This week, Gary shares his insights on how to effectively respond to patient phone calls while emphasizing the value of phone training in a growing dental practice.

Thriving Dentist Show with Gary Takacs

Is the way your phone answered the Achilles’ heel in your Practice?

As a dentist, one of the most valuable assets you own is your practice, and if you think about it, the value of a practice is highly dependent on the dentist. So what if something happens to you, the dentist? Are you and your practice ready to face that challenge? This week, Gary challenges you to be prepared for the unexpected by sharing everything you need to know about having a mutual aid agreement.

Mutual Aid Agreement - Everything You Need to Know

To be better tomorrow than you are today is a philosophy that Gary firmly believes and follows each day. He and his team at LifeSmiles, have followed this principle by embracing life-long learning & actively attending book club meetings since the year 2007. These book club sessions have been instrumental in Gary's successful development of a thriving dental practice, which is why he encourages you to do the same. Listen to this week's episode to learn how to start a successful book club that your team members would be excited to be a part of!

The Benefits of ‘Book Club’ with your Team Members

In this week’s episode, Gary answers 11 practice management questions shared by dentists and practice owners like you. These series of questions cover a wide range of topics, from tips to reducing insurance dependence, to increasing case acceptance, as well as how to have a high performing team with no drama and if starting up a practice in the COVID-19 era is possible.

The AMA (Ask Me Anything) Episode

In this week’s Thriving Dentist Show, Gary shares actionable tips to help patients accept more of the types of dentistry that the Dentist would like to provide. This episode will prepare you on how to convince your patients to make rational decisions about their oral health while encouraging them to book more appointments willingly.  Every Dentist enjoys providing certain types of clinical services, which Gary would like to call as High-Value Dentistry. These services must be individually defined because every Dentist has a unique range of services that they enjoy.  Even though many dentists would be against this concept as it looks more like ‘’selling dentistry’’, Gary believes this as an opportunity to guide patients.  The two ways that you can create more opportunities to guide patients are:  Patient Education By providing high-value services Tune in to the podcast to learn how to communicate effectively with the patients using the six Digital Photos as part of your exam.

Tips to Help Dentists Do More of the Dentistry They Love!

In this week’s episode, Gary Takacs shares tips on how you can take actionable measures to avoid the coming crisis in your hygiene schedule. Due to the Lockdowns that prevailed in March-April, most of us have not had any patients who came in those two to three months. What happens if they did not show up for their hygiene appointment? You will have a hole in your schedule by no show appointments. Learn how to fill up those holes and what is the best way to get in touch with patients who haven’t turned up for their hygiene appointments in a long time, and how to handle patients who are scared to turn up for their hygiene appointment in this testing time. There is a direct correlation to the number of hygiene appointments you have and the busy productiveness of your doctor's schedule. This episode is all about taking action to solve it ahead of time, so you don't end up dealing with that crisis.

How to Avoid the Coming Crisis in Your Hygiene Schedule

In this week's episode, Gary Takacs shares the importance of leadership in a dental practice and how you can develop it. This is an area where so many dentists feel like they are out of their depth. Generally, when you ask a dentist how much leadership training they have, the answer will either be absolutely none or a little bit. Leadership is about guiding team members to do the things that you need to do within your practice. It is about providing the motivation, inspiration, and direction that they need. Simply, it is when the doctor and the team are all in the same boat rowing in the same direction towards commonly defined goals and objectives. There might be people who are naturally more of a leader than the other, but leadership is mostly a learned skill. Whether you have the characteristics in your personality or whether you have to develop those, you can always learn to be an amazing leader, but if you want to know how, you will need to listen to the podcast. Besides, to the 4-tips, Gary will also be sharing books that you can read to develop and understand the importance of leadership and the impact it has on the culture of your practice.

4 Tips to Become a More Effective Leader

In this week's episode, Gary Takacs will be diving deep into a metric that 9 out of 10 dentists involved in PPO plans are completely unaware of. The title of the episode is - The one metric you must know if you're a PPO practice. PPO’s are thieves that keep robbing you. That is what Gary thinks of the PPO plan. A lot of dentists are involved with insurance companies to get new patients into their practice, but they are unaware of the money they pay insurance companies in adjustments. An average insurance adjustment paid is between 42 - 44% of your income, and in some practice, it might be over 50%. But a general number will be between 40 - 42%. In this week's podcast, Gary will be sharing methods you can use to track the cost of insurance adjustments that you are paying through your practice management system. He will also share examples of how blind dentists have been regarding the amount of money they have paid, as insurance adjustments.

The One Metric You Must Know if You are a PPO Practice!

In this week’s Thriving Dentist Show, Gary Takacs will share all of the details behind the concept of using an in-office membership plan to attract new patients who do not have insurance. Gary shares many insightful tips and guidelines to help our listeners learn how to attract more fee-for-service patients while still retaining existing patients.  He further stresses on:  How important is a Membership Plan to a dental practice? Guidelines and tips for you to create an ideal membership plan for your practice. The types of patient categories you can target for a membership plan and how you can get them to sign up? If you can follow the guidelines and tips shared in this episode, and set up the ideal plan for your dental practice, it will perform like a superhighway to bring more patients to your practice, and you will not have to give away 40% of every dollar you make like you will in a PPO plan.

A Pathway for More Fee-For-Service Patients!

In this week's Thriving Dentist Show podcast, Gary shares about the biggest scheduling mistake that dentists make. Scheduling appointments is one of the most vital parts of growing dental practice, as that's how you can get new patients as well as get your regular patients to turn up for their routine check-ups. The biggest scheduling mistake that dentists make is that they don't have a scheduling template to accommodate new patients within three working days. Gary will provide our listeners with four strategies to avoid making scheduling mistakes. In today's world, no one will be willing to wait weeks to get what they want, and if your office is unable to schedule an appointment for a patient within three working days, you're just burning bills on marketing. So the problem here is that they don't have a proper scheduling practice in place for patients to be able to make an appointment within three working days, but the doctor might wrongly think that his marketing is not working and spend more time and money on marketing.

The Biggest Scheduling Mistake That Dentists Make

In this week's Thriving Dentist Show podcast, Gary shares valuable information on world-class CE resources with many details on courses plus dentists that will help our listeners get accredited and certified to join the elite group of world-class dentists.  Having been in the dental industry for more than 40 years, one of the things Gary has noticed is the importance of CE to dentists. Unfortunately, some dentists barely take the required CE and scramble towards it by the end of the year with CE lapses, trying to keep their license.  But, on the other hand, the world-class dentists will often achieve it in the first two to three months, and they'll take a geometric level of additional CE, which will assist them, to achieve two main benefits.  This episode will help them know more details on the various CE resources that will benefit them immensely and, he further stresses on:  Why is CE so important to dentists? What is the correlation between dentists and the amount of CE they've taken? Why does CE bring happiness and satisfaction to dentists? How does CE improve the number of patients you get and make them fortunate? Does CE cost a lot? Resources

World-Class Dental CE Resources

In this week’s episode, Gary Takacs shares 7 specific tips to improve search engine optimization. Mastering SEO on google is a pathway for attracting more quality new patients in a dental practice.  Google controls more than 90% of the search engine market, and most of us use Google to find the answers for the local services we need. Gary is doing this episode because to create a thriving practice and to become less insurance dependent, you need another source of new patients, and in Gary’s experience, the best source is SEO and google. So he wants to educate our listeners on this topic and the importance of it.  According to Gary, successful dental marketing is two things.  Help people find you  Give a reason for them to choose you. The 7 tips are:  you need original content on your website master google reviews have a consistent nap, Have a high google lighthouse score show compliance with the google eat ‘’e-a-t’’ update have thorough organic search engine optimization via your website content (backlinking, website coding, etc..)  You need to know your data  He further shares How his LifeSmiles practice now ranks on Google search page 1 How Robert Cialdini’s principle fits into this.  ‘’It's about helping people find you and then influencing them, those who found you, so they are choosing you. That's kind of where Chaldini comes in.’’ Why are companies using artificial intelligence? What are backlinks? The realistic marketing budget according to Gary Why should you hire experts to handle digital marketing? How Ekwa helps Gary  Advantages of organic SEO over PPC & many more... Gary mentions about the new challenge for MBA where they have to write us a review on iTunes to get a 50% savings on MBA tickets & encourages his listeners to take part in the challenge & also requests to join the new TD FB Group. 

7 Specific Tips to Improve Your Search Engine Optimization (SEO) on Google

In this week’s episode, Gary Takacs shares 4 tips on how to convert potential new patient calls to appointments. According to him,  it's all about first impressions. Even though a potential customer would first visit your website or social media pages to get to know about the practice, the first time they would come in contact with a person with you would be by a phone call.  That's why it's necessary to make a good impression during that first phone call. He stresses the importance of connecting with the new patients and teaches the audience what they can do to convince them to become clients.  The 4 tips To Convert Potential New Patient Calls To Appointments Know your data Connect with the caller Set up a scheduling template to see a patient in three business days or less At the end of the call encourage them to visit the doctor’s page and also close by letting them know how much you look forward to meeting them face to face. He further discusses:  What's the best method that works as of 2020?  The method you would want your marketing team to focus on and reach the target number of appointments? Why is it not possible to have an open table client system like in restaurants in the dental practice? Why do most of my customers make appointments and not show up? How to determine whether the marketing approach is working/ not?  Gary’s new patient stats  Gary encourages the listeners to learn more about EKWA marketing and get their support. 

Tips To Convert Potential New Patient Calls To Appointments

In this week’s episode, Gary Takacs talks about the benefits of assisted hygiene & provides the listeners with secret tips that will help make it work in their dental practice. Gary is a huge advocate of hygiene driven practices. There are a lot of different hygiene models but in this episode, he talks about the assisted hygiene model. Assisted hygiene practice requires assistance. There are a few conditions that you need to be clear about before you hire an assistant and Gary will explain how he implements these conditions when he hires a hygiene assistant into Life Smiles. Having an assisted hygiene model is a useful practice enhancement, if you have the right circumstances and the right situation. Below are the 4 KPIs that help you make good hygiene models in practice. ⅓ of total office production coming from hygiene. Daily production goal $12000 per day per hygienist 92% or more hygiene appointments should be filled every month 85% or more of your patients should be involved in active re-care. He stresses the fact that having a good assisted hygiene model will motivate the practice to get serious about involving their patients in recare, and it's like a gift that keeps giving.

The Benefits Of Assisted Hygiene

In this week’s Thriving Dentist Show, Gary shares about his most favorite system of achieving consecutive growth in his Life Smiles Practice, which is having a proper Bonus system/compensation system that works.  This episode will help you understand the importance of having a properly functioning Bonus system that will help the entire team work together towards a common goal with much enthusiasm and determination.  These are the guidelines to be in a proper Bonus system.   It has to be a win-win It must be simple to understand It needs to be as immediate as possible  It has to be a measurable goal Gary shares in detail the Fun methods of Bonus systems that he has implemented in his practice with how it has impacted his dental practice growth.  He promotes  MBA, iLD community & coaching in this podcast episode. 

A Bonus System that Works!

Gary Takacs is helping you build a great dental practice that provides personal, professional and financial satisfaction.

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Thriving Dentist Show with Gary Takacs

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