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The Hidden Cost of Perfectionism: How to Reclaim Joy in Dentistry

Podcast Cover Photo with Dr. Noel Liu, DDS titled "Reclaim Your Joy"

Summary:

Burnout can manifest as both physical symptoms and emotional exhaustion, making it crucial to recognize and address it early on.

In this episode, Dr. Eric Recker, Owner and CEO of Win The Now,  shares his personal journey through burnout and how he overcame it. Dr. Recker recounts his early experiences of feeling inadequate, which fueled a relentless drive for perfection in his career and personal life. This drive eventually led to severe burnout, characterized by physical symptoms and emotional exhaustion. After nearly selling his dental practice to escape the stress, Dr. Recker realized that running away wouldn’t solve the problem. Instead, he made significant changes, including selling half of his practice, reducing his workdays, and focusing on coaching and speaking about burnout and mindset. Throughout the interview, Eric emphasizes the importance of recognizing the signs of burnout, such as a lack of joy in daily activities and a sense of life becoming monotonous. He discusses how mindset and small, significant changes in daily routines can help combat burnout. Finally, Eric explains why he now dedicates part of his time to coaching other dentists, helping them identify the root causes of their burnout and develop strategies to regain control and find fulfillment in their lives.

Tune in and learn why seeking help from a coach or mentor can provide the guidance and support needed to navigate through burnout!

Secure Dental-Eric Recker.mp3: Audio automatically transcribed by Sonix

Secure Dental-Eric Recker.mp3: this mp3 audio file was automatically transcribed by Sonix with the best speech-to-text algorithms. This transcript may contain errors.

Dr. Noel Liu:
Welcome to the Secure Dental Podcast. Through conversations with the brightest minds in the dental and business communities, we'll share practical tips you can use to scale your practice and create financial freedom for yourself and your family. My name is Dr. Noel Liu, CEO and Dentist at Secure Dental, and also co-founder of DentVia. I'm your host for the Secure Dental podcast, and I'm so glad you're joining in.

Dr. Noel Liu:
Hello. Hey, welcome everyone back to our Secure Dental podcast, where we bring in many different talents from both inside and outside our dental industry. Today we have a very, very special guest, Dr. Eric Recker. And Dr. Recker is practicing Dentist in Iowa. So before we dive into his details and his great story, I would just like to give a shout-out to my sponsor, which is DentVia. DentVia is a virtual dental assisting company that, you know, does all the back-end stuff, and they basically help the front desk office manager to take care of calls, scheduling, you know, like marketing leads and all that good stuff, all the front desk people they hate to do. So they do all the back end stuff and they help with our front staff. So definitely visit them at www.DentVia..com. That's DentVia.com. Now, let's get to the show. So I got Dr. Recker here. He is a motivational speaker, a dentist that practices in Iowa, and he has a great, great story to share with us. I'm not even going to try the intro. I will just let Dr. Recker go ahead and introduce himself, and just tell us a little bit about his history and how he got started. So, Dr. Recker, the floor is all yours.

Eric Recker:
Thank you so much for having me, Dr. Liu. I'm really excited to be here today. I can tell you the short version of my story. It'll only take about four hours. And so we'll just do that, and by then everybody will be well asleep and we'll have four episodes recorded, so we'll be all set. Right? I've been a practicing dentist for 22 years. So I graduated in 2002 from University of Iowa. But I have to go back way farther than that. So when I was in second and third grade, I was a little rough around the edges. I was a little husky, you could say. I was one of the youngest people in my class and where I grew up in central Iowa, recess kickball was life in the early 80s. And so at recess, we would go out and we'd form teams and we'd play kickball. Well, I was told that I wasn't good enough to play. It would have been one thing if I was picked last. But the problem was, I was told that I wasn't even good enough. So I would have to sit there and watch the people in my class play kickball while I stood on the sidelines. Well, after this happened enough, I remember steaming on the sidelines saying, I am going to be so good at everything I ever do in my life that no one's ever not going to pick me. Well, guess what that led to? It led to burnout, and it led to burnout in a huge, huge way. So what happened is everything in my life was not good enough. It wasn't good enough that I was in the top 15 in my dental class. I had to be in the top ten. It wasn't good enough that my practice was cranking. It had to crank more. It wasn't good enough that I was starting to run. I had to do more than that. So I went all the way through Ironman triathlon, mountain climbing; all this kind of stuff. And what it really led to was burnout. So pretty serious burnout. I had three what I would consider big seasons of burnout, where I had chest pain, heart palpitations, panic attacks, all that stuff, which ultimately led me to nearly selling my dental practice and walking away. The problem with that is that I would have just been running away from the burnout. And so when that fell through, I had to figure out what I really wanted to do with life. That was in 2021. And now at this point, I now have a partner in my dental practice. I've sold half of my practice, so are 50 over 50 partners. I see patients three days a week, and on the other days I coach and speak to people and groups about mindset, burnout, self-care, self-awareness, all of those kinds of things. So I'm in a great space right now, but it's been quite a road to get here.

Dr. Noel Liu:
That's such an amazing story. So how old were you when you first realize that okay, they keep saying, I'm not good enough; what I got to do, I got to be the best? Like, what was the age frame?

Eric Recker:
So the first time that I said that out loud and it's something that was, I guess, hidden in my subconscious somewhere, because I only remembered it a couple of years ago. But it started in elementary school when I was standing there saying on the recess playground, believing that I wasn't good enough. And I just, I heard those words all the time. Anytime I would get a grade back that wasn't as good as I had hoped it would be: You are not good enough. Anytime I wouldn't be able, anytime I wasn't as good athletically as I wanted to be: You are not good enough. And I just heard it, and I heard it, and I heard it. And I think so many of us have those things that were said over us when we were younger that impact the way we live our lives and the way we do our daily living. And those things need to be identified, and they need to be retired and they need to be replaced with something that's much more productive.

Dr. Noel Liu:
So would you say that was an emotion that actually got you fired up? And if that was the emotion that got you fired up, I mean, how did you figure out that was defined as a burnout?

Eric Recker:
Yeah. So it took a long time. I had to go through the burnout. And what would happen is every time I would get burned out, I felt like something was missing. So I'm obviously, doing something wrong. Something's missing in my life, so I have to add something. Well, that was part of the problem. I kept adding more and more things. So my first real season of burnout, the one that I really, now, in retrospect, I know that's what it was, I was buying my dental practice from my father. I was building a new clinic. I was coaching both of my kids in soccer. I was on five different boards. And I was training for two Ironman triathlons. I mean, that's crazy, right? Who does that? That is way, way, way too much. But like the frog that gets put in the water and then the heat is turned up, I didn't realize until it was too much. So what I've realized is when we really get to that burnout space, oftentimes we have to look at everything that we have going on in our lives, and instead of adding something else, something needs to go. So what are all the things that are going on in our lives, and how can we look at all of those objectively and say, Okay, might feel like something's missing, but really something probably needs to go. And that's kind of where I got to.

Dr. Noel Liu:
So when you speak to people and when you identify their issue, or they ask you to help them identify, what are some of the traits or some of those things or patterns that I would say that you look out for, like if somebody is about to enter like, you know, burn out phase?

Eric Recker:
Yeah. One of the things that I've definitely noticed, and it was very true in my life as well, now that I look back on it, is life just kind of seemed gray. It didn't seem like there was a lot of color in life. A lot of the things that gave me a lot of joy weren't giving me joy during that season. I was kind of pulling back from things. I was feeling very introspective with my thoughts. I wasn't doing a great job communicating with my wife. I was holding it, trying to hold it all together and holding it all in. So if the things that used to excite you aren't exciting you anymore, what's going on with that? We probably need to pull the thread on that. One of the examples that I like to use for this is the movie: The Secret Life of Walter Mitty. We're big movie fans at our house, and what happens in this movie is the main character, Walter, lives a very grey existence, and the cinematography in the movie is masterful. And it just shows everything's grey, it's dull, it's monotone. He's not living a very exciting life, but as the movie goes on, the colors start to appear, adventure starts to appear, he starts stepping into exciting things and his life goes from grey to extremely vibrant. So noticing the grayness, like you wake up every day and it just feels the same. You go to work with kind of a low level or a high level angst towards your job. You can't get excited about things. You also maybe don't get as bummed about things. You're just kind of hanging out in that middle space, and that's a good reason to start sounding an alarm.

Dr. Noel Liu:
How much of it do you feel, its internal mindset, and how much do you feel like it's external?

Eric Recker:
Yeah, so I think a lot of it, a lot of it is internal. It really is. We get into these patterns, and Einstein defined insanity as doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Whether that quote is actually his or not, doesn't really matter. But we keep doing the same thing over and over again and expect things to change. So if something's not working, how can we switch that up? What can we add? What's a little thing that we can add to kind of disrupt the routine? Sometimes it's as much as changing our drive home from work. Maybe it only takes us five minutes to get home. What if we, and that's my situation. If I drive to work, it's only about five minutes to get home. Sometimes that's not enough. I have another route to get home that takes me more like 20 minutes. And sometimes once in a while we just need to do that and roll the windows down and let the breeze blow through and just be quiet and experience the moment. So what are some things if we're feeling life is grey, how can we add some colour to our lives? Can we add an ice cream date with our family at the end of our work week to celebrate that we made it through another week? Can we have a phone call with a good friend? Can we reward ourselves with a little bit of time to just listen to music, or just hang out for a little while without anything to do? What are some of those things we can do to add a little color in our life? There's always going to be external pressures; we're not always going to be able to control those. But if we work on the things that we can control and influence things like our mindset, our habits, our routines, then we're much more likely for the rest of it to work well.

Dr. Noel Liu:
That's amazing what you just said, because I believe strongly that that pattern that we have daily in our lives, it's got to be switched up. It's like working out at the gym, right? It's like you always have to have different routines. And what you just said, it just kind of resonated a little bit. So tell me something here. When you found out that you were burnt out and you kind of switched your mindset and now you started seeing things differently, was it one event or was it like a series of events that kind of got you to where you are today?

Eric Recker:
Yeah. So one of the reasons I am so passionate about helping other people is I went really far down that burnout journey, really far down it. And I believe if I hadn't done something about it, that there is a chance I might not be alive today, or there's a chance that at some point my life would be cut short because of the amount of stress that I had. So that's why it's something needed to happen. I mean, burnout almost made me sell my dental practice because I couldn't figure out any other way around it. I just figured that I had to leave it, and that's a pretty scary thought. And from talking to other dentists, I know that I am not the only one that is thinking right now. Man, this mountain of getting to a point where I actually enjoy my practice; that mountain's just too high. I never going to get to the top of that. I'm never going to get to the point where I enjoy what I'm doing. Well, yeah, you're never going to get there if you don't take the first step. So I went so far down that that it almost took me out. And boy, if I would have sold my dental practice and walked away, I don't know what the heck I was going to do. What was I going to do with myself? The burnout was going to follow me; that's the really tricky part. The burnout was going to follow me. It was going to be there wherever I was, and it was going to show up in different ways. So because I went through all of that, I thought, okay, I'm not alone here. I need to go to work figuring out what are the steps. How can we stop this along the way? How can we help other people move forward? And how can I really make a big impact? Because that's what I want to do. I love my practice. I love my patients. I love the relationships I've built with people over 20-plus years. That's amazing. But I believe that because of my burnout journey, I was made to leave a bigger impact, maybe on the dental community as a whole, or maybe just on different practices where people are going through those same issues. So I'm in that space where I'm fortunate to get to do both of those, but it's because I've done a lot of work trying to figure out, okay, what are other dentists struggling with? Wow, they're struggling with a lot of the same things that I was struggling with. Okay, how can we help people create a life that they don't want to get away from? That's really what motivates me.

Dr. Noel Liu:
Love it. Love it. You know, there's a subsequent questions that I would like to ask you. It's a two-part question. Number one is: What are you doing now to help dentists get out of burnout? And number two is: Once they identified some of the actionable items by hearing this podcast, what can they do like right away?

Eric Recker:
Yeah. So one of the things that I'm doing for dentists is one-on-one coaching. The thing about being a dentist is it can be very lonely, especially if you are a solo practice. If you own a practice by yourself, you have teammates, but there's a hierarchy there, and you can't share everything with your hygienist, or you can't share everything with your assistant. It's just, we don't feel comfortable doing that nor is that their burden to bear. Or even where I was, I had two dentists that worked for me, but I was the owner and it was, it felt very isolated at the top. So what I like to do is come alongside people as an ally, kind of a, Hey, you are not alone. Here's somebody else who's walked this journey. Let's see if we can walk it together and help you be able to come up with some better systems and habits and routines so that you can feel better so that you can feel like you're not alone, so that you can feel like you have a plan going forward. And yeah. And so people who are listening to this and hearing some of the actionable steps, I love the phrase small but significant. It's one of my favorite phrases. So oftentimes we can go to a dental CE class and okay, what are we going to implement? Oh man. We learned all this stuff. We got to implement it all Monday morning and our, we come back and our team's teams like, Oh my gosh, he's going to bring all these new ideas. And, you know, just leave him alone for a little while. He'll, it'll pass, and we'll get to move forward. Yeah. Right? Because I know you've been to a class before and you're like, I'm going to implement all this stuff and I'm going to do all these things. And then Monday morning hits and we're like, right back to the grind and oh, great idea, but that's not going to work for me. So when I say small but significant, what I mean by that is you can't cure burnout by snapping your fingers. You just can't. It's a process. It's a journey. And we also want to create things and add things into our lives that help it to not come back. So what is one small but significant thing you can do today to push back the hold of burnout in your life? What is one small but significant thing you can do in your routine to switch things up to maybe make a change a little bit? I always come to work at ten till eight. I always feel fried when I come in there and then I'm ready to go I feel like I'm, but I'm behind the eight ball every time. Okay. Would it be better if you came in at 20 till eight and you had a chance to maybe review and do a couple things before you started your day? Man, I always worked through lunch and I'm always shot at the end of the day. Okay, what if you took 15 minutes of that lunch period, that lunchtime that you have, and you just sat at your desk and you closed your eyes? What if you tried that? So that's what I'm getting at. I'm always trying to help people do that. And some people think, well, I don't have a clue. What are the small but significant things I can do? Well, one thing that I have on my website is a five-day knock-back burnout challenge because I know so many people are facing this, and it's basically five steps that you can take towards easing the hold of burnout in your life. And then at the end of that, I talk about some options of coaching. If you want to work, see if we can have a call and see if I might be a good fit to help walk alongside you. But I'm somebody who believes in giving out a lot of resources. So there's several things available on my website, ways to help take care of yourself. I have a newsletter that I put out: Three Ways to Win. Just lots of great resources because I want to help. I want to be a part of the solution for sure.

Dr. Noel Liu:
Oh, that's great. We'll definitely share the link to your website as well as all your resources. That'd be awesome. How long does a journey take, like for someone in your, you know, experience that who you've helped like in the past? Like let's say you got started with them on a coaching program. Does it vary by individual or is there like a specific time goal that you give your clients?

Eric Recker:
Yeah, that's a great question. There's a couple different paths that we can take. There is a three-month version coaching package that we use sometimes, and basically in that we meet ten times. And what we do is we get clear on what you want, and then we work on some systems and habits to get you moving forward. Typically what happens is people want a little more than that. They want to go a little bit deeper and not only have that initial coaching relationship, but kind of an ongoing mentorship slash coaching. And then after that, oftentimes we'll just meet once a month going forward. So that would be more like a year package. So we'd meet fairly intensely for those first three months, once every week or every other week, and then the rest of the time it would just kind of be monthly check-ins, seeing how everything's going, and then adding in some new strategies as we go along. And I have one person that I've been working with for about two and a half years right now, and she just needs that ongoing check-in, and I'm happy to provide that. So it's different for everybody. It really depends what you want to get out of the relationship.

Dr. Noel Liu:
It's such a great service you're providing, doc. I mean, honestly, before you know, you and I, we met I used to hear about burnouts, but, you know, it was always like something in the back of my mind. I never thought it was like a real, real physical thing. And I always thought it was more like psychological in nature; and which is psychological in nature but I always felt like, you know, it would be like sheer willpower for somebody to just come over it themselves. But hearing from you, it seems like, you know, there's a huge population that needs help and what you're providing, I think it's amazing because once when you're stuck in that rat hole, that's the world you're living in, and it's really, really hard to even identify with you in that hole before somebody, you know, can, you can actually reach out for help. So love what you're doing. How would somebody reach you at, do you have a link?

Eric Recker:
Yeah, absolutely. So home base for me is just my website EricRecker.com and there are links to the hiring me as a coach or to in really the thing I like to make it a really easy onboarding process. First, we do a no-obligation call. We just talk. I hear about your story a little bit, see if what I do might be a good fit for you. And we have a conversation about that. And then I will send you some options for packages and we can talk through that. So I really like it to be a very low-pressure thing. If we're not a good fit, then I'm happy to help you find somebody that is a good fit for you. But I always want to be part of the good part of someone's story. I'm super passionate about that. That's what I want to do. And so if we can work together to help you get to a point where you I mean, we're not always going to look forward to going to work every single day. Some people say that they do that. It's rare. But I want to get to people who are dreading going to work every day and help them discover hope and belief that good days are ahead because they can be if we work on it.

Dr. Noel Liu:
I really love the fact that you said, like, the first time you meet somebody, you ask them that what is it that they want? Because so much times we are like always, always get caught in the daily trivia of life that we really forget our goals, our passion, and we really kind of get sidetracked. And I think, you know, that is one of those things, I think, you're the expert. Once you get that online, I think everything starts falling into places. It's just the noise in this social media world of ours that we live in now.

Eric Recker:
Yeah. You know, as dentists, we're high achievers, right? A lot of times own our own businesses. We manage teams, we do all these kind of things. So when it comes to goal setting, we do that in the high achiever way too. We set 50 goals and there's no way we can pay enough attention to all of those goals. So a big part of what I do is helping people, walking alongside people and helping them get clear on what they really want, because when they get clear on what they really want, it all starts to make a whole lot more sense.

Dr. Noel Liu:
Love it, love it. Last question for you, doc. What does success mean to you?

Eric Recker:
Oh, man. Success means to me. So when I talk about success, I talk about my why or my purpose. So my why is to make a difference in this world that's utterly disproportionate to who I am. And for me, that is walking alongside individuals and helping them find a life that they love because we're meant to enjoy the lives that we have here. We're meant to find happiness. We're meant to have hope. Sometimes we just need some help along the journey. And that's what I want to do.

Dr. Noel Liu:
Great, I love it. Well, Dr. Eric Recker, thank you so much for coming along. I mean, this was a huge, huge help to many listeners who are actually burnt out. So if you are one of them that's burnt out, definitely, look this man up. EricRecker.com. I mean you cannot go wrong. Like he said, just a simple phone call to see if you're a good fit. And I think that will definitely pay off for itself. So with that being said, any last-minute comments, Dr. Recker?

Eric Recker:
Yeah. You know, burnout is a, it's a tough word and a lot of people don't want to raise their hand because burnout is like, Oh, there's no way I could have let myself get burned out. You don't even have to use that term. If your life just feels a little gray, if you're not excited about life, if there aren't things in your life that, if you're just feeling like it's become dull, that's similar to burnout. It's a stage on the journey. So I don't only work with people who say they are full-on burned out. So if you just aren't living the life that you want to live, if you feel stuck, if you just need some hope, let's have a conversation. Because that's what I love to help people do. It is my goal after I work with someone that they will leave with faith, hope, and belief that good days are ahead and we all need some of that, right?

Dr. Noel Liu:
Every single day. Hey, Dr. Recker was such an honor to have you with such good information. Thank you so much once again for coming on board and sharing your wisdom. So with that being said, we are going to land the plane and make sure you guys like and subscribe. Definitely look him up. EricRecker.com. EricRecker.com. And if there's any questions, DM me. In the meanwhile, look out for our next episode. Be great and God bless!

Dr. Noel Liu:
Thanks for tuning in to the Secure Dental Podcast. We hope you found today's podcast inspiring and useful to your practice and financial growth. For show notes, resources, and ways to stay engaged with us, visit us at NoelLiuDDS.com. That's N O E L L I U D D S.com.

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About Dr. Eric Recker:

Eric Recker is dedicated to helping others learn how to #WINtheNOW. Eric has taken on many roles throughout his life, including husband, father, dentist, elite success coach, pilot, speaker, author, mountain climber, and former triathlete. He has pushed himself to the edge, only to realize that what he truly sought wasn’t at the summit. Today, while managing a thriving dental practice he loves, Eric focuses on helping others learn to #WINtheNOW and uncover the life they are meant to live through his coaching and speaking engagements, through his coaching business. As a speaker and consultant, Eric shares stories and strategies that inspire audiences to live with hope, create a plan, and believe that brighter days are on the horizon. Eric and his wife, the amazing Amy, are now empty nesters. They, along with their two grown children, are proud residents of a small town in Iowa.

Things You’ll Learn:

  • Burnout can manifest as both physical symptoms and emotional exhaustion, making it crucial to recognize and address it early on. Ignoring the signs can lead to more severe consequences, including the urge to abandon one’s career.
  • Perfectionism often drives professionals to push themselves to the brink, but this mindset can be damaging in the long run. Shifting focus from perfection to progress can help prevent burnout.
  • Small, intentional changes in daily routines can have a significant impact on reducing stress and improving overall well-being. These changes can include adjusting work hours, delegating tasks, and prioritizing self-care.
  • The first step in overcoming burnout is recognizing the warning signs, such as a lack of joy in daily activities or feeling trapped by routines. Self-awareness is key to identifying when it’s time to make a change.
  • Seeking help from a coach or mentor can provide the guidance and support needed to navigate through burnout. Having someone to offer perspective can be a crucial factor in making lasting changes.

Resources:

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Podcast

From Paper Forms to Digital Success

Secure Dental Podcast with Guest Samad Syed titled From Paper Forms to Digital Success.

Summary:

Consistent, personalized communication is crucial for maintaining patient connections and reinforcing the importance of regular dental visits and pending treatments.
In this episode, Samad Syed, the CEO and Founder of SRS Web Solutions, brings a wealth of knowledge to optimizing dental practice efficiencies through his innovative platform, mConsent. He explores how mConsent transforms patient intake, enhances communication, and propels practice growth using deep integrations and targeted engagement strategies. From his engineering background and corporate expertise in productivity, Samad shares practical tips on reactivating patient databases and maximizing your practice’s potential.

Stay tuned for a fascinating conversation that could revolutionize how you manage your practice.

Secure Dental_Samad Syed: Audio automatically transcribed by Sonix

Secure Dental_Samad Syed: this mp3 audio file was automatically transcribed by Sonix with the best speech-to-text algorithms. This transcript may contain errors.

Dr. Noel Liu:
Welcome to the Secure Dental Podcast. Through conversations with the brightest minds in the dental and business communities, we'll share practical tips you can use to scale your practice and create financial freedom for yourself and your family. My name is Dr. Noel Liu, CEO and Dentist at Secure Dental, and also co-founder of DentVia. I'm your host for the Secure Dental podcast, and I'm so glad you're joining in.

Dr. Noel Liu:
All right. Welcome to another episode of our Secure Dental podcast, where we bring in many different leaders from our industry, both inside and outside. And today, we have a very special guest, Mr. Samad Syed. And this guy is really great at what he does with his M consent. So we're going to dive a little bit more into it. But before we get started, this pod is sponsored by DentVia Dental Administration Virtual Company that actually takes care of all the back-end tasks for your front desk as well as your manager. So, definitely look them up. They do anything from call verification, lead generation calls, and all that good stuff, which our front desk hates to do. It's www.DentVia.com. Again, it's. w w w .d e n t v i a .com. Now, without further ado, I'm going to get started with Mr. Samad Syed, he is the actual CEO and founder of SRS Web Solutions. Mr. Syed, welcome to the show and let's pass the mic off to you.

Samad Syed:
Thank you, Doctor Liu. And interestingly, I just found out you're in Illinois, so I have some good memories of living in Chicago - the cold weather and all that stuff. Since I moved to Dallas, I missed the summers of Illinois. It's pretty nice to be around the lakes and the greenery, and it's beautiful out there.

Dr. Noel Liu:
It's all relative, right? Because it gets so cold and everybody enjoys the summer.

Samad Syed:
And you get away to that.

Dr. Noel Liu:
What better way to enjoy the city than in the summertime?

Samad Syed:
Absolutely, absolutely. So, a little bit about myself. I have a background in engineering. I did my MBA from Indiana University and got into dental well a few years ago, about eight years ago, when one of my friends, interestingly, in the Chicago area, invited me to his practice. My background in the corporate world has been in productivity and efficiency - Six Sigma master black belt. I care about where the money is wasted. So I looked at I used to look at different processes and I say that how can we improve this so we can improve the bottom line of our practices of, of our businesses. And he knew what I used to do. And he called me to his practice, and he said, tomorrow, I want you to come in and see what's happening here and see how can you help me. Long story short, I went into his office, and he took. He showed me a wall. And the wall has all the forms, about 30, 35 forms, where he said that I can't get the patient in without having them sign these forms. And it's a lot. Can you do something about this? This was back in those days where iPad was new and the technology was booming, said that why can't did you try this? And he said I'm giving this as a challenge if you can help me out.

Samad Syed:
And that is one. And I'm proud to say that it took us about a year and a half, and then we were able to transform his office, where we were able to completely change the experience of how patient intake works. We designed an iPad app where basically helps him to collect all his consent forms, medical histories, and all that are digitally and also designed an online intake form where the patients, before they come into the practice, is able to fill out the forms. So that's how it started, and it's all history. Today, we have about 2500 practices where we transform their patient, not only just patient intake. Now, we help them with three different areas in their practice. The number one is the patient intake part, which I just talked about. Number two is the patient communication part where, you know, the practices can text the patients, ask for the images, ask for the forms, ask for reviews, whatever. You have two-way text messaging with the patients' HIPAA-compliant text messaging. Also, we have a partnership with the phone company. Then, the number three is the practice growth. I was looking at a survey that they did last year.

Samad Syed:
And they said that only 77% of practices are able to fully utilize their capacity. Actually, the practices are only able to utilize up to 77% of their capacity in general. So, if you can see 100 patients, the practices are not able to see more than 77 on across across the board. Okay. So that's where we don't help with the digital marketing and all that. But what we help with is that we look at unscheduled treatment plans and say that how can we bring back patients into the practice who have not completed, who have treatment plans that are due? We also help with collecting payments, whether it's sending an online invoice, collecting text to pay, or we help with payment terminals in the office. On-site payment terminals and also the number one thing that we help them with patient reactivation. There are so many patients sitting in the database and people are and the practices ignored, this number one asset that they have, which is their patient database and people are not able to practice is not able to fully utilize what they have that close to them and bring back patients into their practice. I haven't showed up for a long time.

Dr. Noel Liu:
So tell me a little bit.

Samad Syed:
So this is the short of how we help.

Dr. Noel Liu:
So, you started off with your buddy's practice. This was when again? 2004?

Samad Syed:
2014 or 2015.

Dr. Noel Liu:
14 and 15. Sorry. So 14 and 15. And now you've grown it to like a 2500 doctor base, right? Practices?

Samad Syed:
Practices. Yeah.

Dr. Noel Liu:
That's awesome. So, how do you guys differ from some of the practice management software out there? It's like most of them are doing that, right?

Samad Syed:
Yeah, of course, of course. One thing that we take very seriously is our customer support. That's what we take seriously. The onboarding experience, the customer support part. But what we look at is that nitty gritty of things where, for example, if you get if you go into forums, everybody says that, oh, we just digitize forms. But there are so many levels of the digitization of forms. It's not just collecting on-of-the-line forms, but making sure that the medical history integration is there. So, we have deep integrations. We have a partnership with Henry Schein. We are connected partners with Henry Schein. We are a technology partner with Patterson Eaglesoft. We integrate to a point where I see a lot of lacking in other systems where our integrations go deep and we also help with open dental. So our integrations are deep and we help practices at a higher level when it comes to patient intake forms, but also on insurance verifications. We help with the collecting. We have a tool that helps them verify insurance verification When the form comes in, we verify the insurance verification with the form because we all have all the information already. And we show them whether this person is active and active and then give them all the information that they need.

Dr. Noel Liu:
So, for some of the listeners out there, right? They are looking at their software like us, we use Dentrix ascend. So we have a cloud-based. How difficult is it for you guys to tap into their API, or is it something which you've already worked it out?

Samad Syed:
We have a partnership with Dentrix and On Demand. We can build the integration with the APIs whatever Henry Schein can support us with. So there's there are limitations to what they allow you to integrate. And whatever they allow, you'll be able to integrate with.

Dr. Noel Liu:
Okay, okay. And as far as practice management software. So this is not practice management software.

Samad Syed:
It's a no we call it a patient engagement system. That's what it is.

Dr. Noel Liu:
Okay okay. Got it. So what about what is this M consent? Is that the consent forms, too?

Samad Syed:
Yes. So, it does have online forms. M consent is a total patient engagement platform okay? And it has patient intake forms. It has online scheduling. It has an appointment reminder system, a text messaging system, insurance verification, treatment plan reminders, and a complete suite of what the practice might need when it comes to intake, communication, or practice growth.

Dr. Noel Liu:
So let me take my example. I'm gonna ask you a tough question. My example is with Dentrix Ascend. These guys have decks built in. They have patient communications built in. They have all these reminders, all this stuff built in. Dentrix Ascend, some of them are like ala carte, and some of them are extra services. So for someone to say, okay, I want to get onboarded with you, what would be some of the benefits to skip those guys and then jump over with you?

Samad Syed:
So the number one thing I see is our interface with the patients is super easy. The patients love to work with something super easy. We have forms that are easily built for the patients to fill out, sign, and send it over to you. So that's the number one thing. Our Appointment Reminders system is customizable where you can have messages in Spanish. You can have messages built out. We have worked on a plan of appointment reminders, looking at different surveys on how many times the patient should be reminded for them to make sure that they don't forget coming to your practice. So there's a little more data and analysis that goes back into our system when it comes to how different we are with some practice management systems like Dentrix Ascend, which have all the built-in vessels into it. But know that we have spent a lot of time into developing these features. Compared to this, we don't focus on building practice management. We focus on building patient engagement. So that's how it can be different.

Dr. Noel Liu:
And for some other concerned listeners out there, I'm assuming that it's completely HIPAA compliant. Oh.

Samad Syed:
You can't be in the industry.

Dr. Noel Liu:
I just had to like throw it out because some are going to be people that are not HIPAA.

Samad Syed:
100%, 100%. One thing that I did a survey, not I did, but our company did a survey with 250 offices, and we asked them two questions. The number one question that we asked is what are the top three challenges that are faced by your practice? The number one challenge that we saw was that the practices said the amount of administrative time that we spent; the dentist basically said that we want to spend less time on administration time and more time on the chair, helping the patients, taking care of the patients, and about 25 to 30% of the time still the dentist spend on administrative time. And the number two answer was the practice growth. As I said, they all want to fill out fill their chairs, and they're still not able to book the appointments at a level that they want to. So they feel like the practice growth is important. We want to grow our practice. There are some offices that said that we want to grow from one location to a second location and a third location, and then the last one, they said that the third choice was financial management, meaning that financial management is where you have the practices, who are struggling with the insurance reimbursements and are not the way it used to be.

Samad Syed:
So, the cost of running the practices keeps going up, and the insurance reimbursements keep going down. Of course, the gap that's creating, that's where the struggle is that we're seeing. So these are the top three challenges that we see. And based on that, we ask questions like how can we help practices with their administrative time. And that's where M consent comes in. And for the practice growth, one thing that I have been telling practices is that the number one asset that you have in your practice is not your location, it's not your equipment. It's nothing else but your patient database because your patient database is the number one asset. So take care of the patient database. And how do you take care of the patient database? Let me give you an example. Crescent Family Dental in Illinois. We're not very far from you. And they were struggling to the doctor calls me and he asked me, hey, Samantha, I need your help. Give me some advice on how to fill my chairs. I need to fill my chairs. How do I do that? And he was asking like, should I spend $5,000? What's the marketing budget that I should consider? And what I ask him is that how many patients you have in your database and how many patients that you have in your database that hasn't come back for past 18 months.

Samad Syed:
We pulled in the database and we saw there were 2500 patients. That hasn't been back to his practice. We worked with them. I helped him out as a friend. We designed a strategy for email, text messaging, and social media. Everything included direct mailing. And we ran this campaign for six months and the results were amazing. He started to see 40 to 60 patients coming in every month back into his practice just by reactivating his database. And the messages were simple as, hey, Doctor Hahn, want to see you in your practice. I haven't seen you for a long time. Would you like to schedule a cleanup? There you go. You have people responding. Hey, the doctor is asking about me. Okay? Yeah, I've been missing this for a long time, so let me see when can we schedule? So it's a super important thing that if through this podcast, if I can let your listeners know one thing, which is to don't ignore your patient database. And I wrote a book on this, and I'm going to shamelessly advertise this. This book is called The Art of Patient Re-engagement. And the book has strategies on how you can build this patient re-engagement within your practice.

Dr. Noel Liu:
It's called The Art of Patient Re-engagement.

Samad Syed:
The Art of Patient Re-engagement. So now there'll be people who tell you that I already do recalls, though. What does that now? How is that different? So, the recalls, let me tell you that the recalls are the email open rates have gone down, and it keeps continuing to go down. So just the recalls are not enough anymore. What you have to look at is that you have to have a strategy in place because there's a cost of patient acquisition, people have to spend 200 to $600 to bring in patients into your practice. Now that patient is sitting in your practice, and you're not doing anything with that, that's a sin. You have to communicate with them. You have to have a strategy of continuously having a communication in whatever most natural possible way. For example, I tell people, what you need to do is have your patients join your social media, and when you have a baby shower in your practice, or you have a birthday in your practice, or the doctor is celebrating something, put that on social media so they can see the human part of your dentist. They don't have to see the coupons all the time. Just something very simple as this is what's happening in the practice.

Samad Syed:
We are giving away Colgate toothpaste and stop by to pick it up if you're available.

Dr. Noel Liu:
That's a great idea.

Samad Syed:
Building that natural connection is the thing that you have to start looking into. How can I? The patients that I've engaged with and the patients who know me are the ones I need to keep working with. To make sure. Then the cost of your patient acquisition is lower year over year because people look to spend five, ten, 15, $20,000 always looking for new patients. Of course, you got to look for new patients, but know that what you have already in your database is a treasure, and you can't afford to just ignore that treasure. And that's what I would say. And then also one more thing. This is a technical thing, but for your front office, you have to make sure that they're properly collecting the email addresses and phone numbers. If you're not doing that digitally yet, you're probably collecting that and keeping your database intact, making sure that whenever you want to use it and whenever you want to start those campaigns, you have the right data in place.

Dr. Noel Liu:
100%. You just nailed something right there in the head. A lot of times when we are actually just searching for the new patients there. We are just going outside of what we don't have. We're always focusing on what we don't have. And you should be focusing on what you do have. And that is exactly what you just said. That's great. That's great.

Samad Syed:
And one more thing I would say is that I want you to think about this. There are probably like, every practice, have six, or seven competitors around them, and they are willing to put 4 to 400, 300, $400 per patient that is sitting in your database to bring in their database.

Dr. Noel Liu:
Good way to look at it.

Samad Syed:
But don't ignore that. You have to have a strategy in place. Whatever you do, email, you do phone you make phone calls. You send text messaging, you have direct mail. You're trying to spend a lot of money on the patients that you don't have in your database, but you're not doing anything with the patients you already have in the database. So that is something that's needed. And we do help practices if somebody says that, hey, I need help with that. And they raised their hand and we said that, okay, we'll help you with we have an account manager who can help you build the strategy and put things in place for you. So people usually get confused with like, oh, well, how do I put these Excel sheets together? How do I send emails? And we got people in place who can help.

Dr. Noel Liu:
Sure, sure. So how does it work with you? So let's say is it like an ala carte service that you provide like different services? Okay.

Samad Syed:
Yeah, yeah. So if you come to our practice and come to M consent and say, hey, I'm using your forms and I want to see if I can, you know, reactivate my database. Sure. What does it take? Our account manager will sit down with you and help you put a strategy in place. And because every practice is different. Some people have 1500 patients that haven't come back in the past 12 or 18 months. Some people have like 5000 patients. I have a practice that has 10,000 patients who are working right now to reactivate their practice. He didn't realize that. When I asked him, hey, doctor Q, I asked him, how many patients do you have in your database, like, what do you mean by that? Okay, let's go look at your open dental, pull that up, and see how many actual patients that you have seen in the past few years. And his practice has been in a long time. So he had about 10,000 plus patients that, on command he can bring back into his practice. And he doesn't have to look for any new patients. If you have 10,000, if you can get like 5% back, that's 500 patients in a month if you have the capacity to take care of them.

Dr. Noel Liu:
Absolutely. No, I love it briefly. This one thing is how do you guys onboard? What is the onboarding process look like?

Samad Syed:
Oh, for the patient reactivation?

Dr. Noel Liu:
Correct reactivation, or if there's any other services that you provide?

Samad Syed:
So the onboarding process is pretty simple. Our sales team will walk you through whatever service you are looking for. And then we have an account manager that we assign to everyone who wants to be part of the M consent. That account manager is responsible for making sure that we're taking care of your practice. Whether you need forms, whether you need appointment reminders. It's a la carte service, basically. And we do have a great savings plan, or we are very cost-competitive. We don't charge, like $2,000 and we don't charge $1,500 just to get the practice onboard. So usually our onboarding cost is very low to nothing.

Dr. Noel Liu:
Okay. Do you guys like do the reactivation for general population across the board on the database, or is it like specific target patients that we can also like play with?

Samad Syed:
Yeah. We actually look at your database. Whoever you have in your database, we reactivate those patients so that they come back to your practice.

Dr. Noel Liu:
So I'll give you a good example for myself, like me and a bunch of my other associate doctors, we do a lot of implant surgery, right? And we have many consoles that come through the door on a daily basis. And some of these guys, it's been over six months, over 12 months, 18 months, or two years, you name it. Do you guys have something service like that where you can just say, hey, I just want to target Invisalign or maybe just implants?

Samad Syed:
Yeah. Absolutely. So we have something called an unscheduled treatment plan. So what we do is that we educate them or we don't go and tell them, hey, come back for our coupon. We tell them, listen, you are looking to make your smile better. What's a better way than getting it done? During the summertime, we actually have a program for people who get a treatment plan for cavities. They don't come back. We basically educate them. Telling them about procrastinating a cavity doesn't help. It doesn't cure itself. You need to make sure that it doesn't go to a root canal so that now you have bad teeth and you have to remove your teeth itself or get a new implant, which may cost you 15 to $20,000. Procrastination is expensive, so get it done early. So this kind of education messages that we automatically send out. So what we do is that we connect with your system and we read the codes that your procedure asks you. Yeah, yeah. And based on those procedure codes we designed messages that go out to the patients based on those codes.

Dr. Noel Liu:
Got it. Got it okay. No, that's great. That's great. Yeah. Anything else you want to add to how people reach you?

Samad Syed:
Yeah. So the best way for people to reach us as a M content is www.mconsent.net. And if the people who want to reach me for questions. I'm very good at responding on LinkedIn usually. I'll send you my LinkedIn if you want to add.

Dr. Noel Liu:
Yes, we'll have the LinkedIn profile.

Samad Syed:
The profile video submitted is my LinkedIn profile. So people who want to get in touch with me. Yeah. I'm so glad that we connected with Doctor Liu. And it was wonderful talking to you. Thoroughly enjoyed the discussion.

Dr. Noel Liu:
Oh, great. Great. It was such an awesome experience to learn about what you do. And there is another niche that fulfills this market, so I'm very glad that we connected as well. Awesome. Thank you very much for joining us. And ladies and gentlemen, make sure to like and subscribe. And this is going to be the end of our show today. Definitely go out there, crush it all my dark colleagues, and be great and have a great day.

Dr. Noel Liu:
Thanks for tuning in to the Secure Dental Podcast. We hope you found today's podcast inspiring and useful to your practice and financial growth. For show notes, resources, and ways to stay engaged with us, visit us at NoelLuidds.com. That's n o e l l i u d d s.com.

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About Samad Syed:

Samad Syed is the CEO and Founder of SRS Web Solutions, a Minneapolis, MN-based company that developed the leading dental patient engagement software platform, mConsent. mConsent is All-in-One Digital Transformation Solution for Dental Offices which helps the front office go paperless thereby improving Dental office productivity and improving Patient experience. Over 10 million patients across the USA have utilized mConsent software to go paperless, leading to improved patient experience and increased office productivity. 

In addition to his work in the dental industry, Samad is also a Visionary when it comes to healthcare technology, he has used his 6 Sigma Master Black Belt skills and has trained over 400 business leaders on bringing productivity and profitability to their businesses. Samad completed his Master’s in Engineering from Wayne State University in Michigan and holds an MBA from Indiana University. 

Samad lives in Dallas, TX with his wife and son. His educational background and extensive experience in the dental industry have made him a respected and sought-after expert in the field. Samad’s passion for improving patient experience and helping dental practices grow has led him to write “The Art of Patient Re-engagement: How to Win Back Your Inactive Patients”. His hope is that the book will help dental practices achieve higher patient retention rates, increase revenue, and provide better patient care.

Things You’ll Learn:

  • Your existing patient database is the number one asset for your practice. 
  • Avoid focusing solely on acquiring new patients; reengage your current patients to maximize growth and retention.
  • From digital patient intake forms to HIPAA-compliant text messaging systems and patient reactivation campaigns, leveraging a comprehensive patient engagement platform like mConsent can streamline administrative tasks and improve patient satisfaction.
  • Consistent, personalized communication is crucial. Email, social media, direct mail, and text messages should be strategically used to maintain a connection with your patient base and remind them of their pending treatments and the value of regular dental visits.
  • Effective reactivation tactics can bring back former patients, filling your chairs without the high cost of acquiring new patients.

Resources: