​​​​JJ Littrell is the COO and Co-founder of Tuatara, a strategic finance agency dedicated to serving single-location dental practices. With a diverse background spanning Fortune 500 companies, top 50 accounting firms, and international startups, she has led teams of varying sizes, showcasing her versatility in the financial sector. JJ is passionate about connecting with practice owners, aiming to amplify their impact through ownership and purpose-driven partnerships. Beyond her professional endeavors, she serves on the Board of Directors for the Hospitality House of Charlotte, reflecting her commitment to community service. ​

 

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

• [02:40] JJ Littrell discusses how she transitioned from hospitality to dental consulting
• [04:32] The founding story and growth philosophy behind Tuatara
• [08:35] Importance of aligning practice goals with personal and team development
• [12:24] Why dental marketing spend is misunderstood and underutilized
• [18:00] Key demographics to define and attract your ideal dental patient
• [24:36] JJ shares the right time and method to bring in an associate dentist
• [31:50] Why embrace Who Not How for practice success

In this episode…

Hiring the right associate, creating a brand that attracts ideal patients, and avoiding marketing mistakes that burn your budget are just a few of the challenges facing private dental practices today. So, how do you position your practice for long-term growth and freedom without sacrificing quality of life or profitability?

JJ Littrell, a dental growth strategist, shares how practice owners can regain control by shifting their focus from cost-cutting to people-powered growth. She outlines ways to define your ideal patient using creative frameworks, set realistic marketing budgets, and evaluate readiness for bringing on an associate dentist. JJ explains how aligning your brand, space, and operations to match your desired patient experience can create more effective marketing and lead to sustainable growth.

In this episode of The Marketing 32 Show, Brett Allen interviews JJ Littrell, COO and Co-founder at Tuatara, about building a thriving dental practice through smart strategy and team development. JJ discusses ways to attract ideal patients, develop future partners instead of employees, and prepare your practice financially and operationally for growth. She also touches on pricing alignment, marketing benchmarks, and how to create a compelling associate opportunity.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

• Brett Allen on LinkedIn
• Marketing 32
• JJ Littrell on LinkedIn
• Tuatara
• Who Not How: The Formula to Achieve Bigger Goals Through Accelerating Teamwork by Dan Sullivan and Benjamin Hardy
• Alliance of Independent Dentists

Quotable Moments

• “You can only cut costs to zero, and cutting costs is not fun.”
• “Unless you are in a super, super rural location, you are going to have some pressure around DSOs.”
• “You can’t turn off marketing and wait until that suite is built out.”
• “We actually give our doctors metrics to give to the marketing company to say, ‘here’s how’.”
• “Dentists spend less in marketing than every other industry except for utilities.”

Action Steps

1. Define your ideal patient using brand analogies: Clarifying whether your practice is a JW Marriott or a Hampton Inn ensures your branding, location, and marketing resonate with the type of patient you want to attract.
2. Create a compelling associate opportunity before recruiting: Building a well-thought-out role — including marketing strategy, patient flow, and partnership potential — attracts better candidates and improves long-term fit and retention.
3. Benchmark marketing spend against realistic revenue, not just industry standards: Practices in-network with insurers may show skewed percentages, so adjusting for this ensures your marketing efforts are truly aligned with your goals.
4. Develop a financial model before expanding your team: Projecting production, cash flow, and operator availability helps you grow at a sustainable pace while maintaining profitability and team morale.
5. Support office managers with leadership development: Empowering your office manager allows you to step back while still driving growth, team alignment, and practice stability.

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:

Intro: 00:13

You are listening to The Marketing 32 Show with your host, Brett Allen.

Brett Allen: 00:18

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 on how to help your practice grow and thrive. This episode is, of course, brought to you by our team here at marketing 32. I think we’re the only dental marketing team that is fully backed by a performance guarantee that if you’re not growing, you don’t pay us. So we truly try to find those docs that we know we can help deliver a ton of value and help you grow and get to that next level. If you’re interested in that and want to learn more, reach out to us at marketing32.com.

We can set up a quick discovery call and see if we’d be a great fit to help you grow. Quick shout out to Laura Brenner from lullabies. Career coaching. We did an episode together recently. You guys got to go check that out.

We talked all about burnout and alignment with who you are at your core in dentistry. And maybe dentistry is not the right fit for you. And if you’re looking to make a change, Laura can definitely help you with that. Today I’m super excited to have a new friend. JJ Littrell with Tuatara is — she’s a CPA by trade turned strategic dental growth consultant.

She loves talking all things related to growing your practice, whether that’s through marketing to new ideal patients or going out of network to take back control of your pricing and or adding an associate or partner to serve more ideal patients. She’s the lady to go to. Her love language is travel. She talks.

She takes at least one trip a month, preferably someplace with water. Me too. I would love to go to one place new every month with water. But when she’s home in Charlotte, North Carolina, she loves cheering on her elementary aged kiddos in youth sports. JJ, welcome to the show.

JJ Littrell: 02:08

Thanks, Brad. I’m excited to be here. I appreciate you having me.

Brett Allen: 02:11

Thanks for coming on. I’m excited to talk more about what it is that you guys do at Tuatara and how you help practices, I guess, to kind of set some background here. We met online through Dental Nachos Group. If you guys aren’t familiar with that community, go check them out on Facebook. Dental nachos with Paul Goodman.

But let’s talk about how you got into dental. What was kind of the interest in dentistry and why dentistry. How did you get started in dental?

JJ Littrell: 02:40

Yeah, like many consultants. It was kind of on accident or I guess you could say, you know, fate played its cards. So I originally was in the hospitality industry. So I worked with Marriott, Starwood Hotels. In, in hospitality and then started working in healthcare consulting from a finance and accounting perspective.

And came to realize, and it may not surprise you. Hospitality and healthcare are actually quite similar in a lot of ways. So not just if you think about healthcare and if you think about dentistry. If you have a hole in your schedule, you can’t refill that hole tomorrow. If 9 a.m. today and column two goes empty, you can’t refill that tomorrow.

And same thing with a hotel room. If room 102 goes empty tonight, you can’t refill that space from today. Tomorrow. So interesting from a capacity perspective, and also just the type of people that are drawn to careers in hospitality and healthcare are typically really fun people to be around. I don’t think you can find a better group of folks than what we have been so lucky to have here in the dental industry, so loved the people.

And had an opportunity to leave the hospitality space and come over into the healthcare consulting. Found a group of consultants that were working with dentists that needed some support and I was able to jump right in and fell in love immediately. Just again, the people. The accounting isn’t again too dissimilar from the hospitality industry, but the people are really second to none. So that’s what’s hooked me and kept me here for quite a few years now.

2017 is when I got into consulting in the dental space.

Brett Allen: 04:18

Cool, cool. So you got you started helping, so you started helping out this group practice, it sounds like. And then how Tuatara what’s the impetus there. What was the start?

JJ Littrell: 04:29

Yeah.

Brett Allen: 04:29

So tell us more about what you do there.

JJ Littrell: 04:32

Sure. So that’s kind of a fun story. But some folks that I worked with in the original, in my original dentistry consulting space, went over and started a company where they were supporting dental practices from like an outsourced CFO kind of perspective. And I went on and did some other things in the CFO world. I was with an international company as a CFO for a few years.

And when I was looking to kind of come into to? How could I really reconnect in the dentistry space? Those folks were looking to do something different and really use the background of finance, and kind of use that as a foundation to help practices grow. So you can only look at your numbers so many times and look at your supply cost and go, okay, it’s out of benchmark, let’s push it down. But you can only cut costs to zero, and cutting costs is not fun.

So what’s more fun is serving more ideal patients and helping your practice grow. Growth means you can serve your team better. It means that you can serve your interests and your family better with being able to maybe donate to causes that are important to you or create experiences in your life that you want. And so the growth part became more fun and more interesting. And so we really came together with Tuatara and launched that in a focus for supporting the growth of single location, 1 to 2 location, private practice and really giving kind of bringing some of that, that energy in that Strategic firepower that maybe some of the larger group practices or the emerging DSOs have, and really focusing that on how can private practices continue to compete in a space that has really different competition now than it did maybe ten, 15 years ago?

So bringing different resources, you know, you’ve got to you’ve got to bring different resources when, when the environment changes. And Tuatara, our name actually is inspired by evolution and how the dental industry is changing. And how you need to bring, again, different resources, different strategies as things change in the marketplace. And so that’s what we did with Tuatara is bring kind of a different, different feel, a different space to still using finance as a foundation but focusing on growth as opposed to benchmarks, cutting those sorts of things. We really focus on growing.

Brett Allen: 06:44

Awesome, I love that that’s your focus. I just got back from a an event called with the Alliance of Independent Dentists in D.C., a group of about 100 docs that met together and talking about the change in landscape in the industry and how dsos are coming in, and how private practice needs to reclaim its stronghold in the industry, really, and all the different things. So that movement, you guys can go check it out. Alliance of Independent Dentists. Go check them out.

They’re doing some cool things and also integrated with the ADA and different things in Washington that, you know, policies and things like that.

JJ Littrell: 07:23

So yeah.

Brett Allen: 07:24

Go check them out. But I love that your focus as a CPA and at your firm is not just, okay, what’s the bookkeeping strategy and the and the end of the year tax strategy to save money. It’s also let’s look at some models. I remember when we first met, you showed me a bunch of different spreadsheets and different models that you guys use to work with clients to look at the metrics of the practice and look at the books and cash flow and how that’s related to team and growth. I think it’s really cool.

Also, like you mentioned going out of network. We’ll go more into that, but let’s talk more about Tuatara. Thank you for correcting me on the name. I was saying.

JJ Littrell: 08:07

Oh no you’re.

Brett Allen: 08:07

Good. Let’s talk more about what you guys are like really core with when you work with a practice. I think what you’re what you focus on is, is team and leveraging that team. And, you know, hiring the right associate. Let’s talk about that.

How do you guys work with practices on a more intimate level? Processes things that you do when you implement all the things you can do with them?

JJ Littrell: 08:35

Yeah, absolutely. So for us, it’s really about what are the goals of the practice owner, what are they trying to accomplish that’s not typically related to things that you’ll find on the PNL. So you will sometimes hear, I want, you know, 15% EBITDA. Or you may hear, I want to grow my revenue by X dollars. But what we really focus on is what do you want to accomplish with your team, with your practice?

You know things that we love to support. I want to help my office manager grow. I know I need I can’t be everywhere. I can’t be everything in my practice. I need more time.

How can my office manager grow? How do I support them in that? How do I get my team aligned with what we’re trying to do and how we’re trying to accomplish that? How do I bring in another doctor? So again, we talked briefly about the change in dentistry.

Dsos are in the market. Unless you are a, you know, super, super or excuse me, rural location, you are going to have some pressure around Dsos. They’re bringing massive strategic support into their organization. So how can you kind of leverage the types of things that they’re doing in your practice so that you can still compete, but also have the quality of life that you want? We don’t, you know, we can’t have I mean, this job of dentistry is so physical.

You can’t work seven days a week, and if you do, it’s not going to be for very long. So how do we give you all the things that you need inside your practice to support the doctors that work there, to support the operations team, to support the office manager? So all those things come together and have a healthy business that can go on into perpetuity. That’s something that’s really cool. We often, I think dentistry for so long has thought about these kind of chunks of time where I’m the dentist and then you buy my practice and then you’re the dentist.

Versus how do we have Smile Dentistry, for example, a made up name that just continues on and that can go JJ and Brett can work together, and then we can transition to Maggie and Mark. And those that relationship with those patients can continue. And you can have this multigenerational practice without having to have your kids go to dental school without having to worry about your timeline, things like that. So it’s really kind of a unique way that we talk to doctors about what they want for their family, for their legacy, for their patients, for their team. And then we help them build a plan to support that.

And often we find that that is through people, whether that’s office managers bringing in another doctor, etc. So that’s kind of the focus that we, we start with, with practices, which I think is a little different than or perhaps very different, I hope very different than what you experience with most other CPAs or accountants.

Brett Allen: 11:15

Finance.

JJ Littrell: 11:15

People.

Brett Allen: 11:16

Right? Yeah. I don’t think they get too much into the weeds of that, and they certainly don’t get too much into the weeds of marketing. Yeah, I’ve, I’ve talked with a number of docs who are interested in working with our team, and then they go to their CPA to talk about expenses. And they’re like, why would you spend that much on marketing?

It’s like, well, when you look at cost per patient and revenue per patient and lifetime value of patient, and especially when you get into higher end cases and the ROI that comes from those there, it certainly makes a lot of sense to do marketing. I mean, you should constantly be focusing on marketing. It’s not just a one-time thing or just hoping and praying that your patients will refer other patients. I mean, yes, we want to get to that type of growth where it’s all through word of mouth, and you should be focusing on patient experience to do that and relationship with that. But marketing is a big part of it, and I’m glad that you guys have an awareness to that and that you get you get more involved than just the PNL and the balance sheet.

JJ Littrell: 12:24

We do. That’s right. So I think we chatted about this earlier. You know, dentists spend less in marketing than every other industry except for utilities. So the only folks that are advertising less than dentists are people who provide public utilities.

So if you think about that mindset, right, it’s a lot to overcome. Yeah, it’s a lot to overcome. And so when you sit down with a dentist, and especially from an accounting perspective, dentists love benchmarks and they want to know is this can I afford this? Which is appropriate? They don’t spend a ton of time.

I went to a number of years of business school. They probably got a few courses alongside the dentistry that they were learning, which I’m very glad that they got to focus on dentistry because they do a great job when they work in our mouth, but they don’t have as much experience. So when you don’t know something, you want to get information around whether or not it’s okay to do this thing. And so we like to work with dentists and talk through one. If you’re worried about a benchmark when it comes to marketing, let’s make sure that our numerator is correct.

Or excuse me, our denominator is correct. So if you think about marketing as a percentage of revenue, but you’re in network with every insurance company, your pricing is really, really, really low. Your expense may not be high. Your benchmark is blown because your revenue is too low. So it’s not that this is a big number, it’s that it’s you’re looking at it from kind of the wrong lens.

So normalizing for things like being in-network can be important. Also for us, it’s not a light switch that you can turn on and off, so you can ramp up and down marketing based on what you need in your practice at that time. So we have plenty of practices that they really can’t have a lot of additional new patients. They may be maxed out at like 20 new patients a month. They’re at capacity in their current space.

Maybe they’re getting ready to expand and build. We work with a lot of practices who are maybe buying the suite next door, or expanding the building, or converting the office to an operatory. That’s a famous one. So if you’re in that space, you really can’t take on hundreds of new patients a month. That’s not the goal.

Your team would be fried and your patient experience would actually be damaged. Yeah, but you can’t turn off marketing and wait until that suite is built out, or that operatory is equipped to then turn marketing back on and expect the patients to flood in. There has to be kind of this baseline branding experience and just awareness that you have in the market all the time, so you can ramp up your ad spend. You can ramp up things at times when you’re trying to bring in, let’s say, new Invisalign starts and you go through a marketing campaign to do that. Sure, you’ll do that campaign, and then maybe your spend will go down a little bit, but you can’t turn it off because again, like a light switch, you flip that light back on and it’s not going to happen like that.

It’s going to take time. So really helping doctors understand how their spend is correlating to what their patients are experiencing, and that it can’t just be the thing that goes on and off. And oftentimes we found there’s just not enough information that the practice can give to the marketing company to identify that ideal patient, what that looks like. So we actually give our doctors metrics to give to the marketing company to say, here’s how we’re going to measure the ideal of a patient. And then the marketing company now knows who that they can market to.

And I think there’s a unique thing. We don’t sell marketing services. And so I think there’s a unique relationship that we can have where we’re supposed to be the purse strings people. We’re supposed to be the ones that slap your hand and until you know when you hear us saying you actually need to invest in marketing. I think it gives a little bit more comfort for the doctors, and I think they’re a little bit more, a little less hesitant, I should say, to stop the marketing, turn it off.

I think they’re really a lot more open to okay, well, if the finance people are telling me that I can spend this, maybe there’s something here and kind of bringing it back to what, what’s it going to actually do for the practice? So we look at it a different way. But we are huge fans of dental marketing and it’s a different experience, dental marketing and marketing to patients who have this insurance mechanism that’s different than it’s different than marketing. The new cookie company on the corner, you know, your new coffee shop can use different tactics and techniques and needs different things than a dentist does. So it’s a really unique dentistry, such an interesting space where it’s not hospital healthcare where you’re associated with this massive system.

It’s also not retail. It’s this kind of really interesting blend, super relationship focused. So it requires a really special marketing angle. And that’s why we are so passionate about marketing being dental specific. So that you can really get what you’re looking for from a patient perspective.

Brett Allen: 17:07

I’m glad you mentioned that. Dental specific. You should definitely work with a dental marketing team versus a generic marketing team just because of what you just said. They understand the patient journey a lot better, and they understand what tactics work to attract that patient. And to get the right quality patient in the door versus somebody who’s just shopping prices or.

Yeah. So let’s talk a little bit more. I know we want to talk about associates and building the team, but let’s go a little bit deeper into this marketing. You talk about the ideal patient and how you help the practice discover. What are some things that a doc listening can do to really start to nail in?

Okay, who is my ideal patient and what are ways that I can ensure my team and my and my marketing company I’m working with are attracting that patient.

JJ Littrell: 18:00

So I will use a really simple tool that we typically start most of our conversations with our doctors on when they’re just trying to discover what this is. And I mentioned before I started in hotels. So we use hotel example and we will ask the doctor, okay, if you were a patient walking into this practice, what kind of hotel would you want them to associate this practice with? So we can — some folks will use car brands. We’ll go with hotel because that’s my background.

So I do also love cars. But so we’ll say okay what kind of experience do you want them to have. Oh well I want them to have a J.W. Marriott experience and go, okay, what does that mean to you when you think about walking into a J.W. Marriott? What do you expect from a lighting perspective, from a staff perspective, from a uniform perspective, from a price perspective. So they start to talk through this and they go, okay, so and this is a real example, I had a doctor who wanted a J.W. Marriott experience.

They were considering buying a practice that was in a shopping center with a discount grocery store. And so I said, okay, can you envision J.W. Marriott going into this shopping center? Can you imagine paying J.W. Marriott prices? J.W. Marriott staff and having them be in the space? And it was kind of a good connection point of like, okay, if that’s the experience you want, then this isn’t the location for you.

If this is the location for you, then we need to talk about what kind of experience is appropriate for this location.

Brett Allen: 19:31

Right.

JJ Littrell: 19:31

And using that kind of hotel analogy, it makes everything kind of easier. And then it’s also — we had a doctor who is building a scratch space, and she was able to go to her architect and say, I want this to be a Hilton brand. So it made everything easier selecting light fixtures and flooring and they’re like, yeah, so make it look like a Hilton. So sometimes. So using that kind of analogy I think would be the place I would start.

And understand is your ideal different than your current state. And that’s not bad. But identify that. So if you want this J.W. Marriott experience and you currently are. Maybe a Hampton Inn experience.

I stay at Hampton Inns all the time.

Brett Allen: 20:10

I love Hampton Inns Hilton.

JJ Littrell: 20:11

I’m a Hampton girl. Yeah. So since I worked for Marriott I wasn’t allowed to get Marriott points. So I’m a Hilton Point girl so I stay at Hampton Inns all the time. Love Hampton Inns, but it’s a different experience than what I would expect when I go to the Waldorf Astoria, for example.

So thinking through that, I think is a really nice place to start and say, okay, if I’m going to create this experience, what kind of patient does that lend itself to? And is that who I’m currently serving, or do I need to make some changes there? So that’s how we start the conversation. And then to get really nitty gritty, the two pieces of demographic information we like to have practices give to their marketing company. What is your ideal age range and what is your ideal household income for that hotel brand or that car brand, or what have you?

So thinking about your ideal brand position, where you are now and then you can give that information to marketing and then we can track it. If you’re trying to bring in young families and, and all the marketing is bringing in somebody that’s retired. Okay. Is your practice built really well for someone who’s retired, or is that retired person going to come in your practice, experience the family atmosphere and go, this isn’t for me, and they don’t come back. So we tie that back to your operational experience and we look and say, okay, which one of these things is mismatched?

Let’s change those levers. If, however, we want that to work, if we’re really attractive to a different demographic, maybe we need to change our operational experience. Or maybe we need to change our ideal patient. Being able to kind of move each of those levers together. So I love to start with the hotel brand idea to just kind of get you thinking, yeah.

Brett Allen: 21:47

Yeah, yeah, I think that’s a great analogy. And it does help set the frame in your mind of okay, this is how to approach it. I love also that you bring in market demographics of like where is this located? Are we next to a discount grocery store. Are we in a really nice high end neighbourhood area where you’ve got million dollar homes, right?

Like there’s different things. A patient who’s in that million dollar home neighbourhood is not going to go all the way into town. Pass ten other dentists that are nice high end dental practices to visit your discount grocery store type chain. Not to say that that’s a bad type thing. It’s just like you said, a different market, a different patient, and probably more of a volume based practice than a boutique.

What’s the patient experience like? Anyway? Patient experience should always be first and foremost. We should definitely be wowing our patients because that’s how you get the word of mouth when they feel connected to you and your team and your practice. The ambiance feels nice, right?

All of that. But we start working with practices and.

JJ Littrell: 22:58

Yeah, it feels aligned.

Brett Allen: 23:00

Yeah. Right. Absolutely. When we start working with practices, like I said in the beginning, we don’t work with every practice, particularly startups. We don’t typically work with them.

We are more with the established practice. That’s kind of in momentum and wanting to add more fuel to the fire. That’s definitely the route that we go in. Our discovery process is let’s talk about your team. Let’s talk about your numbers and what your goals are, who the ideal patient is.

And then we can kind of come up with a strategy looking at patient to doctor ratio in the market and finding those pockets where there’s zip codes and income demographics that make sense to attract that patient, that a lot goes into this and we could certainly go into the weeds of that. But let’s kind of segue a little bit more into how you work with teams on the associate side. We talked beforehand about, you know, helping a doc with their future plans and looking forward and like, do I want to be in clinical dentistry for my career until I retire, or do I want to have more freedom in my life and maybe set up my practice more as an asset that’s income producing, doesn’t involve a ton of my time, and is a better asset when I go to sell. Those are two different types of docs that we’re speaking to there. How do you come in and bring the Tuatara approach to find the ideal associate that’s going to fit well with the doc and the team and the market, all of that?

Yeah. Yeah.

JJ Littrell: 24:36

So obviously, starting with the ideal patient and looking at the demographics and what can the what, what can the community that this dentist is serving, what are they looking for? What do they need? We’re very careful to not bring additional supply into a market that is already oversaturated. And what I mean by that is oftentimes you’ll see dentists. Oh, I need more patients.

So let’s get in-network with another. Let’s go get a network with another insurance company or let’s go. Let’s open on Fridays and Saturdays etc. And they just continue to bring supply into this market that is maybe saturated, super-low price point, especially a lot of the practices we both work with have a higher end experience, right? So if you bring a really excellent experience at a really low price point into the market and you flood the market with that supply, then yes, you’re going to be very busy.

You’re just not going to be very profitable. And it’s not all about profit. But if we are not profitable, we can’t pay our teams. We can’t do pro bono days, we can’t hire people. So that’s a really challenging place to be.

So that’s something we have to kind of get comfortable with. First is are we in a space where our pricing is aligned appropriately with our brand position and what we’re offering? Because if a Ritz-Carlton starts offering Best Western prices, it will sell out every day. No problem. But it’s not a great business model.

There’s a reason why that is not seen anywhere, right? So aligning that first and then really understanding what do you want your practice to look like from a life perspective. And what we have found is that often dentists working by themselves have a much higher stress level. They have it’s a lot harder for them to invest in some of these growth things like technology, marketing, etc. But you bring another doctor in, you’re able to produce more in that space. Your team can have more hours.

We hear a lot from doctors. I only want to work three days a week. My team wants four. So what do they do? They work for so that their team can get four days because it’s hard to hire people.

So now if we’re not offering as many hours as the team down the street. So what if we were able to bring in another doctor that can support what your team is looking for, what your patients are asking for, but also gives you the quality of life? So that’s where we start that conversation. And really starting that before, I think a lot of folks think I need to recruit an associate, get them in house, and then I’ll figure out the rest. We actually flip that equation and we say, let’s figure it out.

First, let’s talk about what your marketing plan is going to look like. Let’s talk about if an associate was here, what kind of procedures would they be doing. What would you want them working on? Where would they work? If you’ve got four operatories, you’re not going to be there at the same time as this associate.

So what does that look like? So thinking through your space, your team, etc. once we go through that process, then we help you create what we call a compelling associate opportunity. So what is unique about your practice? What can you offer to an associate. And oftentimes that includes a clear pathway to partnership.

Some doctors are not interested in that but a lot are and they’re interested in. They don’t want to go out on their own and start a practice. They don’t want to go out and have to go through the process of buying a practice and converting it into what they want, turning over the team, changing technology. But it’d be real nice to find someone who has a few steps ahead of them. Maybe, you know, ten or so years of experience that has a practice and then coming in and becoming a partner in that practice.

So it’s a way different opportunity if you’re able to start the process by saying, hey, associate here. We’ve thought about these things. Look at here’s our marketing plan. Can you imagine how good you would feel as an associate if you sat down and said, hey, this opportunity sounds interesting. And they said, yep, here’s how we’re going to fill your schedule.

And they had an actual plan. Instead of saying, we’ll fill you up, pinky promise. But you sit down and they say, here’s our marketing plan. We’re working, you know, with this dental marketing company, they’ve walked us through, this is what we can do in the market. Here’s what our brand strategy looks like.

We have all that stuff set up. It’s going to be a really compelling opportunity for an associate. And then if you’re able to say, and by the way, for the right person and we always hear this, the right person, for the right person, there’s partnership opportunity. Well then the associate goes, well who’s the right person and what’s the opportunity. And the doc goes, we’ll figure that out.

If it — we’ll figure it out because who knows what that looks like. Instead of saying, well, here’s what it means to be the right associate for a partnership opportunity, and here’s what the opportunity is. That’s something, you know, you see Dsos doing these things. They have full HR departments that, you know, single doc, single location practices don’t have. And so we are able to bring that level of sophistication to the process so that you can compete very clearly against some of those other opportunities and find the right associate for what you’re trying to do.

So that’s been a really fun, a really fun thing that we’ve enjoyed doing with practices. And that’s what we’re really focused on this year. We see just the impact that having another doctor in your practice can make, and having that doctor be a partner versus an associate is really like a cheat code for. If you talked earlier about a thriving practice, that really is how you’re able to thrive and have the quality of life you want, and also be able to have the practice that you want. So that’s been really fun.

Brett Allen: 29:59

I’m glad you talked about that. You certainly need help. Your team is paramount. It’s how you get freedom. It’s the how.

And oftentimes we don’t think of people as the how we think of what do I need to do? What are the processes I need to implement. When you equip the team with the right resources and you have the right who on board, you get the who takes you to the next level and you have a lot more freedom. Yeah, it’s that entrepreneurial journey that you start to learn that and recognize that. And I know dentists are definitely familiar with that.

We have great teams. But there are a lot of practices that are wondering, how do I, with the cash flow that I have, bring in another doc, or how do I hire that next hygienist or how to? And that all comes back to marketing. And so getting the right flow and increasing the flow to handle the team. And doing that in the right order.

We don’t hire the team before we have the flow. That’s when you really start to get into tricky cash flow and high stress. Right. Yes. And I know your firm has a great way to model that and look at key benchmarks like you were talking about.

Yeah. For hiring. Well this has been an awesome conversation. I know we’re about up for time. I always close with the question like, what’s that one big thing?

Given your experience, JJ and the clients you’ve worked with, the numbers you’ve seen, the all of that goes into finances and hiring and In growth. What’s that one thing that if the if the doc could just have this epiphany today would really make a big impact for them in their practice.

JJ Littrell: 31:50

So you just touched on it, Brad. And it really is there’s a book by this name now. It’s who not how. Yeah. It’s the people we talked Tuatara about people-powered growth.

It’s the people in your team. It’s the doctors that you associate with. It’s the team that you have around you. You can only implement so many strategies. You can only read so many books.

You can only have so many ideas. When it comes down to it, it’s about the people. It’s getting the ideal patient in the door. It’s getting them the right marketing message so that they know you’re for them. It’s then delivering on that operational experience, which is your team.

All of those things come together is what creates that thriving practice. So I would say it’s who, not how. It’s the people, not necessarily the processes. Not saying you shouldn’t have those, those are important. But if you find yourself going back again and again to redo scripts and redo processes and all of those things go back to the.

Who do you have? The right people in the right seats? Do you have the right support and who will take you a lot further than how?

Brett Allen: 32:52

Yeah, I love that. That’s awesome. So I know you have a whole method around how you do that and how you hire and help people ask the right questions. And, and then that next step after they’re hired. Right.

Like working with them to jointly create processes that they own, all of that kind of stuff that goes into management. But yeah, so if they need help with that, if you guys who are listening are looking at retiring, retiring in the next 5 to 10 years, or you’re looking at forward planning and you’re looking at how do I get more freedom in my practice or tax strategies and looking at what key benchmarks and metrics where should I be at for my size practice? For my size revenue? JJ’s got all of that. They can.

They can certainly help you with models and next steps for growth and doing that in a predictable way. That’s not going to be high risk for your practice. So that’s right. Yeah. So where can they get.

Where can they reach out and get in touch with you? Should they go to your website? Do you want to share your email? What do you want?

JJ Littrell: 34:04

Happy to. I’d be happy to. So as you just mentioned, we actually do have a ton of free resources. So we have resources on if you’re wondering, you’re like, JJ, you make marketing sounds so great, but how much money should I be spending on this? Like, what are we talking about here?

We’ve got a really quick four minute video you can watch to see how much your practice should be spending on marketing. We have resources on whether or not bringing in another doctor will actually make you any additional profit in your practice, and what you should consider there. Free resources with videos and worksheets that show you how to fill that out so that you can see what the numbers are for your practice. And then also, if you’re hiring an associate, we’ve got a whole program that’s free that you can go through and see how you can create an opportunity that’s compelling for your ideal associate, for your actual opportunity. So all of that is on our website and the resources page.

Brett Allen: 34:54

I just pulled it up. This is a great page. You guys should go check it out. growwithtuatara.com.

We’ll put that in the show notes. So you guys can go click on it and go there. But yeah JJ thank you for your time today. I think we’ve provided a lot of value and covered a lot of different things that are going to help our listeners. So thank you for coming on.

JJ Littrell: 35:19

Yeah. Thanks for having me Brad. It was a great conversation.

Outro: 35:21

Yeah. And again that’s growwithtuatara.com and until the next time on The Marketing 32 Show. Have a great day.