​​​Dr. Jeff Grove is a practicing dentist with over 20 years of experience who has built and led multiple successful dental practices, including founding Grove Dental Group and co-founding a 10-location dental support organization. As a faculty clinical instructor at the University of Colorado School of Dental Medicine and a frequent guest lecturer at Harvard, UPenn and Temple Dental Schools, he brings both clinical expertise and academic credibility to his work. Dr. Grove now coaches dentists on achieving work-life freedom while maintaining practice independence through Ascension Dental Coach, specializing in helping dental professionals combat burnout and build sustainable, fulfilling careers while leveraging their unique strengths and surrounding themselves with talented teams.

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

• [02:43] Dr. Grove’s journey from single practice owner to co-founding a 10-location DSO
• [04:23] His experience working with private equity and building from scratch with patient-focused values
• [06:29] Why “when you’ve seen one DSO, you’ve seen one” and the importance of maintaining choice in dentistry
• [08:51] Moving to Colorado and transitioning into coaching after selling his group practice
• [10:52] The three biggest challenges dentists face: burnout, feeling undercompensated, and staff turnover
• [12:49] How to recast your vision when reality doesn’t match expectations from dental school
• [16:22] Working with practice teams and the importance of intentional leadership modeling
• [18:45] Using self-awareness to leverage strengths rather than focusing on weaknesses
• [20:32] Helping entrepreneurial dentists transition from clinical work to business leadership
• [22:04] Building hiring and onboarding processes to avoid panic-mode recruiting
• [24:24] Aligning practice vision with marketing strategy for ideal patient attraction
• [28:22] The breakthrough moment: investing in yourself as a leader just like you invested in becoming a dentist

In this episode…

Feeling burned out from the daily grind of dentistry while struggling with staff turnover and financial pressure? Many dentists find themselves seven to ten years into their careers wondering if this is really what they signed up for when they entered dental school. The reality of practice ownership often looks very different from the vision they had as students, leaving them questioning whether they should sell to a DSO or find another way forward.

According to Dr. Jeff Grove, veteran practice owner and founder of Ascension Dental Coach, the answer isn’t necessarily selling your independence but rather becoming the leader your practice needs you to be. Through his experience building everything from single-doctor practices to a 10-location group backed by private equity, Dr. Grove has learned that sustainable success comes from leveraging your unique strengths while building systems and teams that fill in your gaps. Rather than trying to do everything yourself—which leads to burnout—successful practice owners focus on the five to ten things they do exceptionally well and surround themselves with talented people who excel in the areas where they don’t.

In this episode of The Marketing32 Show, host Brett Allen interviews Dr. Jeff Grove about building sustainable dental practices that don’t drain your energy but instead fuel your passion for dentistry. They explore the common pitfalls that lead to burnout, why panic-mode hiring creates revolving door staff problems, and how to align your practice vision with your marketing strategy to attract ideal patients. Dr. Grove shares insights from his diverse experience, including his time with private equity, and explains why the key breakthrough moment for any practice owner is making the same level of investment in developing leadership skills that they once made in becoming a dentist.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

• Brett Allen on LinkedIn
• Marketing32 – Performance-based dental marketing with growth guarantee
• Dr. Jeff Grove on LinkedIn
• Ascension Dental Coach – Coaching for sustainable dental practice growth
• Alliance of Independent Dentists (AID) – Supporting independent dentistry
• Bob Spiel episode – Previous episode about DSO challenges mentioned
• University of Colorado School of Dental Medicine – Where Dr. Grove serves as faculty clinical instructor
• Good to Great by Jim Collins – Leadership concepts referenced in the discussion

Quotable Moments

• “When you’ve seen one DSO, you’ve seen one. The ones that you hear about are the ones that are having challenges, maybe not doing it well. But the ones you don’t hear about that are doing it well are still taking great care of patients, increasing access and quality of care.”
• “A dental practice is like a tire with a slow leak. It’s constantly losing energy, and if the dentist doesn’t have enough energy and drive and focus for the future to keep the system inflated, the whole thing is just going to continue to get flat.”
• “When you’re hiring or trying to fill a spot in panic mode, the result is never good. You’re literally looking at the first person that applies and you want to like them and they want to like you, but you don’t ask the best questions.”
• “The breakthrough moment is when I looked in the mirror and realized that the success of this dental practice is going to rely on my ability to grow, change, learn, and surround myself with people that are smarter than me.”
• “You need to do the same work on the personal side and on the business side and on the leadership side that you did to become a dentist if you really want to experience breakthrough.”

Action Steps

1. Assess your current state: Honestly evaluate whether you’re experiencing burnout, feeling undercompensated, or dealing with constant staff turnover, and identify which area needs immediate attention
2. Recast your vision: Take time to define what you want your practice to be in the next 10-15 years and who your ideal patients are, then align all decisions with that vision
3. Develop self-awareness: Identify your unique strengths and the 5-10 things you do exceptionally well, then build systems and hire people to fill in the gaps rather than trying to do everything yourself
4. Create hiring processes: Establish systematic hiring and onboarding procedures before you need them to avoid panic-mode recruiting that leads to poor fits and team turnover
5. Invest in leadership development: Commit to the same level of personal and professional development in business and leadership skills that you once invested in becoming a dentist

Sponsor for this episode…

This episode is brought to you by Marketing 32, the only dental marketing agency with the Practice Impact Formula™ for predictable growth without financial risk.

With a focus on new patient generation, addressing missed opportunities, and expert scheduling, Marketing 32 has helped over 170 practices in the US, Canada, and Australia. Grow in 30 days, or you don’t pay — it’s that simple.

To learn more, visit marketing32.com and schedule a 15-minute discovery call. If you’re a visionary practice ready for impact, Marketing 32 is ready to help you grow!

Episode Transcript:

Brett Allen (00:19) Hi, Brett Allen here, host of the Marketing 32 show where I connect with leading dentists, dental influencers and industry experts to uncover the latest and greatest that’s happening in dentistry to help you guys grow and thrive. This episode as always is brought to you by our team here at Marketing 32. We’re the only dental marketing agency that I know of that is truly invested in your growth. And if you’re not growing, you don’t pay us. We really try to find practices we know we can help and deliver that value. So if you need help growing.

Check us out at marketing32.com and we’ll have a quick conversation, see if it’s a great fit. Quick shout out to Bob Spiel. Just had him on the show. We talked all about dentist partner pros and how they find associates for practices and their success rate. And we also got into his podcast, Just Say No to the DSO. Talked all about the challenges with DSO and dentistry. But today I’m excited to have Dr. Jeff Grove on the show. We’ll talk a little bit about

group practices in DSO, but he is a practicing practicing dentist with over 20 years of experience who has built and led multiple successful dental practices, including founding Grove Dental Group and co-founding a 10 location dental support organization. As a faculty clinical instructor at the University of Colorado School of Dental Medicine and a frequent guest lecturer at Harvard, UPenn and Temple Dental Schools, he brings both clinical

expertise and academic credibility to his work. Dr. Grove now coaches dentists on achieving work life freedom while maintaining practice independence, specializing in helping dental professionals combat burnout and build sustainable fulfilling careers. That’s quite quite the intro there, Dr. Grove. Excited to have you on.

Dr. Jeff Grove (02:08) Thanks for having me, Brett.

Brett Allen (02:09) Yeah, this is this will be a fun conversation. So you’ve got quite the background and experience. I want to go if we can go first into co-founding a 10 location practice. We’ve got several clients of ours that are multi-location, and that’s certainly a direction a lot of entrepreneurial dentists go is building up multiple locations and group practice. Tell us more about your experience in that realm and how.

how that led you to where you’re at today now with Ascension Dental Coach.

Dr. Jeff Grove (02:43) Yeah, great experience really overall. I mean, I think you can look back in your history and I can look back at my history and certainly look at ups and downs and low points and high points just as everyone can. What I like about

the experience that I’ve had in dental is it’s been very diverse, vast, lots of different applications. I’ve worked in everything from a small practice with just myself to having one associate to having 20 associates in 10 locations. Through that experience, you get a lot of perspective, you learn a lot, you learn a lot about yourself, you learn a lot about the industry and people. I was probably eight or nine.

years into my career and I had gotten to the point where I felt clinically my aptitude was pretty good, but I realized that I had a lot of work to do on myself as a leader and learning about business and how to grow. And I was ambitious. You know, I, at that point, you know, you have this drive and this ambition thinking bigger is better and more. And so I built one really big group location, one really big office. And when I did that, that office was very successful. We had four doctors in it.

we brought specialty in. It was a state of the art facility. It was just sort of like at that point, the culmination of everything that I had worked for, you know, in terms of becoming strong clinically and becoming a leader and really surrounding myself with super talented people. I had some amazing team members and doctors that helped me get to that point, help us get to that point. And whenever you have something real successful like that, especially in, you know, when the consolidation market, you’re going to attract the attention of private equity and,

Brett Allen (04:22) Yeah.

Dr. Jeff Grove (04:23) which I did and ended up attracting and bringing in some outside investors and some outside leadership and a board of directors. And all of sudden, we were off to the races and building what ended up being 10 locations. Again, some ups and downs in that process. Overall, I learned a ton.

we, when we came out of COVID things, you know, the practices weren’t, didn’t, didn’t recover real well. We, we suffered just like a lot of practices did from the, you know, the great resignation and a lot of team members leaving dentistry. And, you know, we, we, you get to a point where when you have private investors looking at a business, really they’re, they’re looking at that return and they, they, you know,

decide that it’s time to move on. So, you know, our board of directors, I was only one member of that. We decided to move on and, sell the practice, which we did do a larger group. So I, you know, I, I lost my owner. I sold out and lost my ownership in that. And, you know, gave up my board seat and my working position in that company and moved on, moved out to Colorado and kind of rebooted and started and got back into some practicing out here. And I kind of feel like I’m in the second half of my career, but I don’t know how to summarize it other than like ups and downs and

just wouldn’t trade it for the world. Good experience overall. Yeah, yeah. And learned a lot, you know, when you start to get that scale, you learn a lot about what you can scale and grow and do well with, you know, what’s the challenge.

Brett Allen (05:40) That was a good experience.

Yeah.

If we can, if we can take a moment to dig into that a little bit more, when we talk about private equity, I know on the episode with Bob Spiel, there’s a lot that is at play with DSOs and there’s a lot, I know that there’s, there’s stigmas out there towards DSOs. There’s stigmas out there towards, private equity, getting involved in dentistry and it’s all about profit and they don’t look out for, you know, all the, all these rumors about,

bad things with DSOs, but what was your experience working with private equity and what was it like?

Dr. Jeff Grove (06:29) Well, I had heard all of those, you know, all those stories and all those bad things. So my, and maybe this was a bit naive. My thought was if I can be part of building one from scratch myself, we will do it differently and we’ll, we’ll remain people and patient focused. And I think we really did a good job with that. We had some fundamental things that we didn’t do that well with that, that hurt us along the line. Some really, some application of business type stuff, but

Brett Allen (06:40) Hmm.

Dr. Jeff Grove (06:54) in our 10 practices and our locations, we always had a focus on team and patient care and quality. And so my comment is, you know, it’s not so much like the model of private equity and DSOs that’s bad. It’s some of the motives that get kind of woven into some of those groups. So I heard this once and I’ve always said it, you know, in terms of DSOs and groups and group practices, when you’ve seen one, you’ve seen one.

Brett Allen (07:14) Yeah.

Dr. Jeff Grove (07:21) Right? You know, so you, a lot of times you hear a story or two and you’re kind of like, it must be bad. I’ve found in my experience, the ones that you hear about are the ones that are having challenges, maybe not doing it well. They start to put profits over, over patients and it’s happening for sure. And there’s some really bad players out there and some people that just aren’t caring about anything but the money. But the ones you don’t hear about that are doing it well are still taking great care of patients, you know, increasing the access and quality of care, employing great.

Brett Allen (07:38) Hmm.

Dr. Jeff Grove (07:50) great doctors and teams and they’re flying under the radar and doing fine. You know, so I think there’s a mix of good and bad happening in that. I, I want dentistry to, to, want my ultimate goal for dentists and with all my experience, Brett is I want dentists to remain, able to have the choice. And I agree with what Bob and like, you know, we, I love the AID, the member of the Alliance of Independent Dentists where we met, you know, I want, I want to push back.

Brett Allen (07:52) Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

You

Right.

Dr. Jeff Grove (08:19) and represent and fight for independent dentistry so that we don’t go the way of medicine, right? Physicians don’t have a choice anymore. They’re gonna work in one model and that’s pretty much it. I believe dentistry still has an opportunity, dentists coming out of school and dentists that are practicing still have the opportunity to remain independent or to work for a big group in a private equity.

Brett Allen (08:39) Right.

Dr. Jeff Grove (08:40) location. I don’t judge either one. I think we need to have choices and to do that we’re going to have to continue to make the independent dentist viable and effective.

Brett Allen (08:51) Yeah, shout out to AID, Alliance of Independent Dentists. That’s how we met, like you said, Dennis and people that are really impacting the industry for good. Check them out. Great group. So, OK, so you sold and you’re out. You moved to Steamboat. Talk to us about, you know, starting that practice and now doing coaching, right? Because that’s a big part of it.

Dr. Jeff Grove (08:55) Yeah, great group.

Mm-hmm. Yep.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I came out here and took some time off. And honestly, those, those couple of months that I took off for some of the loneliest, least purposeful, miserable months of my life, because I need to be busy. I love dentists. I love leadership. I love the concepts that, that make.

dentists that dentists need to understand to be to become great. I love talking about it. I love teaching people about it. So I went back in and started helping out in a in a public health clinic to kind of get my fingers back into it again, start meeting and kind of re re re let’s just say recharging my engine for dentistry. And then I started teaching students, fourth year students at CU through that agency, which is a great agency up here in Northwest Colorado. And then, you know, I had just been coaching and consulting with dentists all along and had

great network and I thought, I’ll start, you know, I had a friend up here who’s a coach and he said, you should, you should really like open up a coaching business and coach Dennis because Dennis need help, especially the ones that want to remain independent. They need resources and they need, they need your knowledge. You need to pass that onto them. And so I’m just having a ton of fun with that and working with some great people.

Brett Allen (10:22) That’s awesome. So you so you have a practice and you’re practicing. You’re also coaching. Talk to us about and I know this is I like to ask consultants and coaches. This question is like in your experience when you’re working with Dennis and you’re working with your clients, what are some of the big pitfalls or mistakes or challenges that they’re up against and how do you tackle those? What’s what’s been eye opening and helpful for your clients?

in those areas.

Dr. Jeff Grove (10:52) Great question. I think the biggest, I connect with a doctor on an intro call where we’re getting to know each other, I think the three biggest things I’m hearing is they’re burned out, they’re just out of energy, losing some of their passion for the profession. They feel undercompensated, they’re, with costs going up and reimbursements going down from insurance companies, they’re feeling like they’re working really hard and bearing all of the stress of their practices, but they’re not getting compensated.

Brett Allen (11:02) Listen.

Dr. Jeff Grove (11:19) the way they envisioned being compensated. So they’re having their challenge and feeling off track financially. And then the other one, the big one that tends to emerge as we talk more is challenges with staff and team and culture and just.

the worry that you’re, you know, this revolving door of team members. A lot of times it comes back to that. The dentist or doctor has just been so busy in the grind of running the practice, coming in, fixing teeth, going home, trying to maintain their work-life balance that they’ve sort of forgotten and let their culture and their team and their communication and some of those foundational leadership principles kind of slide and slip a little bit. So we’ll revamp that with a revamp of, you know, what’s the core focus of the practice? Where do we want the practice?

to go, how do we create the practice of your dreams or what you want? And to get there, a lot of times it starts with some leadership and some culture and communication training with the doctor. So we start there and that becomes foundational and kind of a breakthrough time and get into then others.

Brett Allen (12:24) Yeah.

So is that, is that helpful to kind of, recalibrate and focus in on, okay, what, am I doing what I’m doing? What are my values in this practice? Does that help with burnout? Do you think that that’s a good.

Dr. Jeff Grove (12:37) Yeah, yeah, it really, it really does help to recast because a lot of, you know, let’s say the average dentist I’m working with is seven to 10 years out of practice, out of dental school and practicing.

Brett Allen (12:48) Mm-hmm.

Dr. Jeff Grove (12:49) What they expected coming out of dental school and going into the first five years, the reality wasn’t what they expected. So they had a vision for something. It’s very different. Now they’re hitting kind of that seven, eight, nine year mark where they’ve become very competent clinically. They’re going in and kind of, and the years just passed by and they’re just fixing teeth. And they sort of look around and say like, where am I? And what does my practice look like? And is this what I not only maybe envisioned when I first thought about becoming a dentist, but is this what I

want for my next 10, 15, 20 years. So it can be really fun to talk to them about

Again, one of the special things about our industry still is that like the possibilities are endless. You know, if you focus and make the right moves and do the right things, you can have the type of practice you want. It can be a fee for service, boutiquey practice where you do more cosmetic work. It can be a participate in every PPO practice where you’re, you know, seeing high volumes of patients and you have a really big practice with associates. It really is, it needs though to come from the doctor. They have to cast that vision and then create that focus, that intentional focus around

that vision to get and achieve what they want.

Brett Allen (13:59) Yeah, I think that’s big. I think a lot of dentists are in that spot. And one thing that we were talking about before the show, the impact that that has on your team and the culture, like when you’re not in the right mindset and you’re feeling the stress and you’re feeling overwhelmed and you’re feeling the burnout and you don’t have that vision anymore for your practice that. I think oftentimes, yes, we focus on the health of the dentist.

And we want to get that dialed in and help where we can. But we forget about, well, there’s this whole team that’s also experiencing some kind of energy and some kind of conflict from this. Can you speak on that a little bit and how you reach that?

Dr. Jeff Grove (14:44) Right. Yeah, 100 % I get what you’re saying. Like if the dentist hasn’t figured out ways to push back against the burnout and the drain of energy maybe that they’re feeling and they don’t continue to work to…

build communication, lines of communication between their team and be the clear leader, be the clear decision maker, be the clear person who’s setting the pace and the energy for the practice. If they lose their ability to do that because they’re so drained themselves, the whole practice suffers. When we as dentists put that white, that proverbial white coat on,

We are the leader and our team recognizes us as that and we are modeling and leading them in some way. The question is, are we intentional about how we’re modeling and leading what we want from the practice?

And I just see that that’s sort of the, my big analogy, I’ve used this in a lot of my writing is it’s like a, it’s like a leak, a business, a dental practices, like a tire with a slow leak. It’s got this little hole in it and it’s constantly losing energy and air, you know, in the form of air. And if the dentist doesn’t have enough energy, and, and let’s just say, drive and focus for the future to keep the system.

inflated, the whole thing is just going to continue to get flat because I don’t care how good of a practice or a business you have in general, it’s always losing energy in some way over time. That’s just the natural law of entropy of systems.

Brett Allen (16:01) Either.

Yeah, yeah. When you work one-on-one with your clients, do you get involved with the team or are you just working mainly with the doc one-on-one?

Dr. Jeff Grove (16:22) I haven’t gone into any of my relationships with the doctors intending to get involved with the team because I really feel like I have to work with the doctor and get that foundation right. But I do have some clients now that are saying like, I’d really love for you to, you know, come in and work with and talk to my team. So next week I’m starting it’s, it can be, I like to be able to show up in person if I can. There is a practice here in my hometown that did.

Brett Allen (16:40) Mm-mm.

Dr. Jeff Grove (16:48) did bring me on to do just that, to work with the team. I also still work with some great leaders and.

team members from my past. Remember I said like, you know, when you build a group like the group we built, like you that that was by no means just me. And we had incredible marketing people, human resources, regional managers, office managers, doctors. I mean, it was a huge team effort, just worked with some amazing people in my career. So I’m still in touch with some of them. And so sometimes I’ll kind of like have them jump in, especially if it’s a, if it’s an area that the practice is really struggling, it’s very specific, like human resources or

Brett Allen (17:03) Yeah.

Hmm.

Dr. Jeff Grove (17:24) you know, the front desk team needs to be trained on new processes and systems, or there’s a great front desk team member who really should be an office manager and that training needs to happen. I have some people that I’ll bring in. But the answer is I try to accommodate whatever my clients need. And I do that a lot of the ways I do that is just by referring them or bringing someone in that’s that’s a lot smarter than me at what they need.

Brett Allen (17:28) Mm-hmm.

Yeah, I think that’s why is that philosophy of finding people smarter than you and letting them work in their zone of genius, right? So is that kind of help us better understand your methodology when you are coaching? I know you help with burnout and find values and vision. But what other components to your coaching do you bring to the table and how does that work? What do you think is different about your approach than a lot of what’s out there already?

Dr. Jeff Grove (17:58) Right.

Kind of just mentioned it like I’m a big believer in

teaching early on, working with the dentist and helping them with their own self-awareness. So a lot of times a coach will dive in and it’s all about self-improvement. Like what are we going to do? What’s wrong? What’s broken with you that we’re going to fix? That where are all your gaps that need, you know, your weaknesses that need to become strengths. I lean a little bit more on the side or I’d say a lot more on the side of teaching the dentist to be self-aware. What are your strengths and how can we leverage those strengths? Just like you said, Brett, like what

What’s your unique genius? What are your unique skills as a dentist in terms of your hands, working with patients, communicating with patients, and where are your gaps rather than weaknesses? And then when we identify those gaps, what are we going to do to backfill those? And maybe it’s training an amazing office manager to sort of backfill some of that stuff. There’s no escaping the fact that they have to be the leader, but there is a way to leverage someone’s strengths through self-awareness and filling in then gaps.

that they naturally have that if they try to go and do everything themselves, that is where I’m seeing a lot of the burnout. So I’m trying to kind of coach dentists away from like being the one person that does everything in their practice. No, you do the 10 things that you do really well or the five things you do really well. And then these 10 or 15 other, you know, capacities and things that need to get done. Let’s get a marketing team to do that or an outside marketing company like yours.

or an outside HR person to take care of this, or let’s get your front desk person trained. You’re not qualified to do that. You don’t know processes and systems for front desk. But you are amazing clinically. You’re great at communicating with patients. You’re really good with the hiring and onboarding process. Again, I’m making this up, but you do more of that and then let’s build the capacities around you to fill in some gaps.

Brett Allen (20:05) Yeah.

Yeah.

How often do you find you’re working with a client and they’re like, they’re super business minded administrative focus. It’s like, Hey, I want to transition more into practice owner. I don’t want to be on clinic clinical, you know, I got, I want to hire a team of associates. I want to do the, you know, the multi-location thing and just be on the board. Right. That happened.

Dr. Jeff Grove (20:32) Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, there’s, yeah, there’s, there are lots of people that are hitting that point. They’re, clinically burned out. They’re just the going in and the seeing patients day in and day out. And that, that is, that tends to be a group of dentists that sort of have a little bit of more of that entrepreneurial.

DNA. And they’ve reached a point in their in their dental career, where I think just going in and giving injections and fixing teeth has gotten a little bit monotonous. And that’s where the burnout is coming from. So yeah, then we start to craft like, okay, what’s a vision for the future that’s going to create some challenge and some scalability and some stimulation for you, again, to kind of get you out of that, that burnout boredom, boredom cycle. That’s not your I think the answer you said, like how many it’s not a lot. There’s a few

Brett Allen (20:48) Mm-hmm.

It’s not, yeah.

Dr. Jeff Grove (21:14) Um, a lot of them just want to take the practice that they have and kind of transform it into something that’s going to be, um, I don’t know, for lack of a better term, so a little less draining or a lot less draining like all the energy that they’re putting in. It’s sometimes this is a reorganization of systems processes. Who’s doing what, what are you good at? Let’s focus on that and, and build the team around you to kind of take some of this off of your plate.

Brett Allen (21:25) Okay.

Yeah. Do you, yeah. How much of it is coaching them on hiring the right people and finding the right people and putting key people in place? Like we talked about earlier, that seems to be like it, cause if you’re wanting to get to be where your, your business is more of an asset and it’s not controlling you and you work three days a week and like you’re going to need a team. You’re going to need things dialed in so that it is kind of running and you, yeah.

Dr. Jeff Grove (22:04) 100%. It’s huge, it’s everything. Like the dentist’s ability to, you know, in the book, Good to Great, Jim Collins talks about, and I go into practice, like, hey, you guys have a good practice, but that’s the enemy of being great. I mean, you could have a great practice, there’s things that we need to tweak. And a lot of times it is getting the right people in the right seats. And again, that’s a Jim Collins, good to great concept. And it’s also one of the very first things we often have to do is we need to take a close look at.

What is your hiring and onboarding process or do you have one at all? I just see too many dentists that, you know, a great hygienist leaves because her husband gets a job in a different state or someone goes on maternity leave or someone just, you know, unexpectedly quits and they’re in panic mode. And when you’re hiring or trying to fill a spot in panic mode, the result is never good.

So they’re, literally looking at the first person that applies and that you sit down with them. They like, and Brett, you’re just such a nice guy. Yep. We’d love to have you. You know, when you sit down with somebody in that situation, they want to like you and you want to like them. Like you want to like them and that, and you don’t, you don’t ask the best questions. You don’t really have a process for kind of vetting out someone who’s going to fit into your specific culture, get along really well with your team. And you just plug somebody in there and four to six weeks later, after everybody’s kind of poured time into the new person.

they’re gone and you’re kind of right back at it. And that’s really frustrating for practices and really frustrating for dental team members, especially the A players. And if they see that over and over and over, it’s very draining for them. So a lot times we just have to go in and kind of rebuild that right away so that we, cause you know, it’s inevitable. People are going to come and go, let’s alleviate some of that stress by having a process in place that’s going to help us get somebody who’s high quality.

Brett Allen (23:47) Yeah, yeah, I love that. Yeah, if you don’t have a process around it or you’re not tracking certain metrics, then it’s like you don’t. That’s that’s an exposed area of your business that can until you learn that lesson, you’re just going to keep going through it over and over and over. Right. So let’s talk a little bit about, you know, this practice that you’ve got now digging into the weeds a little bit more of like growing a practice, marketing a practice. What?

What are some things that have worked well for you to get a practice filled and schedule filled and attract patients?

Dr. Jeff Grove (24:24) My right now, the only practice that I own is my coaching practice. I’m working a couple days a month in public health and I don’t have to handle any of the marketing for that. We have just an enormous flood of patients because we’re the only organization that takes medicated in all of Northwest Colorado. So we are booked for months. No marketing needed there, but reflecting back on my days of growing and helping my clients grow, Brett.

It really starts with a focus and a vision of like, what do you want your practice to be? Who do you, who is the ideal patient that you want to walk through your door? I did a podcast a couple of weeks ago and we talked about this quite a bit, with Ben, another guy from the, from, insurance untangled and Ben.

You know, Ben was asking a lot of the same thing, like a PPO driven practice looks very different than a fee for service practice, right? A highly cosmetic, lots of bells and whistles.

you know, Invisalign, veneers, sort of bread and butter, that type of like that type of practice versus the bread and butter dentistry type of practice, they look very different. So the marketing and what you need to kind of put out there to the world, the way your waiting room looks, the way you present yourself, which is what marketing is, it can be, needs to be very intentional and focused based on.

Brett Allen (25:40) Yeah.

Dr. Jeff Grove (25:46) your vision for the practice. So for me, the biggest thing working with doctors in terms of like, okay, you know, Hey, well let’s do some marketing. Yes. Marketing is extremely important, but who are we marketing to? Who do you want to walk through your door? Who are the ideal people and what do we need to do to do to your practice to make your, to have your marketing and the way your practice really is and your vision talk to each other.

Right? Cause sometimes the marketing’s out there we’re trying to get this group of patients, but the practice itself, when they walk in is, is sort of geared toward a different look, you know, or a different type of a model. So to me, it’s like, okay, what, what we have to figure this out first so that when we contact a great marketing team and bring in, and I love using people who are talented in marketing, cause why would we try to step out of our lane and do that? But we need, we, it’s our responsibility to tell them what we want coming in. You know what I mean?

Brett Allen (26:39) Yeah, a hundred percent. And that’s a big part of what we focus on at Marketing32 is making sure we’re attracting that ideal patient. Is the messaging in our ads and on our website and does the video and photography tie in this brand experience that’s going to attract that patient? And can we then prove that our marketing generated that patient? I think that’s where a lot of marketers and practice owners have a disconnect is they don’t

track marketing dollars spent to ROI production generated in the practice. They may know, okay, we got this many leads, we got this many calls, but are we really seeing, are these patients showing up? Are they the ideal patient that’s moving forward with treatment? That’s the other piece. Yeah, there’s.

Dr. Jeff Grove (27:23) Right. Yep.

That’s how you’re how marketing 32 does that bread. I mean, it’s just so important. And, you know, when my patient, when my my patient, clients asked me about marketing, you know, like, one of the things you really have to be aware of is like, what is the ROI and understanding like, how long it takes to see that ROI and then really how you drill that down to like, what is a new patient worth to you, especially a certain type of new patient, and breaking down the metrics and the dollars of all that is super important. You guys do a great job with that.

Brett Allen (27:54) Thanks, yeah. Well, I mean, we’ve talked about quite a bit in just a half hour here. We’re about out of time, but I always like to close with one question that I ask everybody, and that is, you know, if there’s one thing that you’ve seen really make an impact in either for your clients or for you, Jeff, that’s really unlocked things for you. It’s like this one concept really made a huge difference for me. And what’s that epiphany that we can help our listeners have?

Dr. Jeff Grove (28:22) Yeah, great question.

it, but I come back to this answer every single time when I was growing and kind of got into this mode where I finally stepped up to the plate and became a great leader and worked on it and studied and learned from other great leaders on how to be a great leader. Cause it is teachable. It really was the moment where I looked in the mirror and realized that the success of this dental practice is going to rely on my ability to grow, change, learn, surround myself with people that are smarter than me, not only on my team, as consultants,

coaches. I spent hundreds of thousands of dollars and countless plane trips and flying all over the country, working on me, learning from people that were a lot smarter, better leaders, better business people. So I think the breakthrough moment and what I have with my clients is, is I get to know them, it’s talking and it’s convincing them and making sure they understand that they’re going to have to do some real work on themselves.

just as much if not more than the work they put in to become a dentist, right? Four years they had to excel in their undergrad institution. Four years of dental school, hard work, lots of money, lots of studying, lots of frustration. You need to do the same on the personal side and on the business side and on the leadership side if you really, really want to experience breakthrough.

Brett Allen (29:21) Yeah.

Yeah, I love that. I forget who I heard it from first because I’ve heard it a number of times, but this concept of be do have right. A lot of times we focus on I want this. I want to have this outcome. And so what do I need to do to have that outcome? And that’s where we get lost. It’s like, OK, I did this. I did this marketing. I did this thing. I hired this coach. I did whatever it is. You’re doing an action. But are you getting to the core of like, who are you fundamentally?

And are you becoming that person who then does the things that gets the outcome?

Dr. Jeff Grove (30:16) Right. I perfectly said I love that. I’m going to steal that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Brett Allen (30:21) Yeah, be do have that. I forget where I first heard that become become what you want. You’re like, yeah, do and then and then you’ll do the things that yeah. Yeah.

Dr. Jeff Grove (30:29) Yeah. And then you’ll get what you want, but be clear on it and be that person that is sort of like, I don’t know, worthy of that, right? Like that’s the groundwork for that person who’s going to get what they want. It doesn’t, right. It’s not easy. It takes time and effort. All good things do.

Brett Allen (30:38) Yeah.

Yeah, 100%. Well, this has been a fun half hour. Thank you, Dr. Jeff Grove for coming on. Where can we send people if they want to connect with you? I know we’ve got your website, ascensiondentalcoach.com. Is there any other resource or place you want to send them to to connect with you?

Dr. Jeff Grove (31:03) No, that’s great. I try to stay active on LinkedIn and put a lot of content out there. And so every once in a while I get a message saying somebody read something there and it really helped them out. So, you know, check me out, find me on LinkedIn, connect with me there. That’s where I’m consistently posting content. But my website is a place where you can go and set up a 30 minute call and we can meet my coaching.

company is very, it’s just me, it’s very boutiquey, it’s very small. So we’re gonna meet, we’ll talk, and we’ll see if it’s a good fit and if I can, if I’m the right person to help you with the challenges that you’re having. So you can set that call up via my website. So thanks for asking, Brett, and thanks for having me. Really appreciate it.

Brett Allen (31:37) Yeah, this has been awesome. Ascensiondentalcoach.com you guys. Jeff is one of those guys that has been in the weeds and it’s been where you want to go with your practice. If you’re wanting to grow, if you’re wanting to do the group practice thing, he’s got that experience. He’s not just a coach out there, you know, with their own system. He’s really been in the trenches. So reach out to Dr. Jeff Grove, ascensiondentalcoach.com and yeah, Dr. Jeff Grove, thank you for coming on again.

Dr. Jeff Grove (32:07) Brett, my pleasure. Thanks again. Thanks for having me. Look forward to seeing you soon.

Brett Allen (32:11) All right, everybody, until the next time on the Marking32 show, have a great rest of your day. Take care.