Brett Allen (00:23)

Hi, Brett Allen here, host of the Marketing32 show where I connect with leading dentists, dental influencers, and experts in our industry to uncover the latest and greatest, share with you guys the innovations and insights you need to grow your practice. This episode is brought to you by always our team here at Marketing32. We are the only dental marketing team that I know of that is fully invested in your growth or we don’t get paid. So that’s our performance guarantee. If you are interested in marketing, need help with growth,

and want a team that is ethical in their approach and truly results driven, reach out to us at Marketing32. We’ll have a quick conversation, set you straight. We don’t work with everybody, but we can have a conversation and see if it’ll be a good fit for both of us. Quick shout out to Dr. John Montoya of Dental Purchasing Partners. Recently had him on the show, talked about his awesome platform and how he connects his club of dentists to get awesome discounts in the industry. Go check that episode out.

to learn more about dental purchasing partners. Excited to have a new friend on the show today, Callie Ward. She is a dental professional with over 30 years of experience dedicated to helping dentists enhance patient care and practice management. As a business development consultant at Dash Dental Consulting, she focuses on strengthening leadership and communication vital for a successful practice. Many dental practitioners struggle to balance excellent patient experiences.

Callie Ward (01:40)

Thank

Brett Allen (01:44)

with effective business operations, often facing issues like low case acceptance and missed appointments. Cali understands these challenges and employs proven strategies to foster relationship-driven results, helping practices achieve greater fulfillment and success. Committed to authenticity and care, Cali empowers dental professionals to thrive with their teams and deliver exceptional patient experiences. I butchered that, I’m sorry.

Callie Ward (02:11)

No worries.

Brett Allen (02:12)

Kelly,

welcome to the show, excited to have you on.

Callie Ward (02:14)

Thank you so much Brett. I’m just thrilled to be here and it’s it’s taken us too long to get to this point. So I’m excited. Let’s dive in

Brett Allen (02:21)

Yes,

I’m glad we got introduced as part of the network of dental professionals here in Denver. Yeah, excited to have you on and talk more with you and what you gained in your experience over 30 years in dentistry. So why don’t we kind of start there, you like your story, like how did you get into dentistry and then walk us through to how you got into consulting?

Callie Ward (02:43)

Okay.

So ⁓ the year was 1992. I was at the time a flight attendant for Alaska Airlines, ⁓ moved from Seattle to Eastern Washington and knew that I wanted to start a family. So I knew that I just was not gonna, I couldn’t leave my kids for four days at a time. So looking for something closer to home and a friend of a friend.

Brett Allen (02:54)

really?

Callie Ward (03:12)

there had a dental practice who was looking for somebody to hire. And I fell into dentistry and what I absolutely loved was the heart. I loved the people. So I was in a very small town in Eastern Washington and the patients became your family and you knew their families, family, like the circle just got bigger of the connections and

I stayed with that doc for about 10 years, decided that I needed to go back to school, went back to school, got my master’s degree in education, taught for about three, four years and then decided dentistry was where it was at. I was going back and I have managed single locations, multi-locations. I’ve worked with teams as small as like four or five team members up to 30 plus team members.

Brett Allen (03:54)

Mm.

Callie Ward (04:08)

⁓ I kind of transferred into the consulting world when my youngest child graduated high school. I had done, I think, every report for that practice and cleaned up everything that I could that I was bored with. I wanted more and I was starting to understand, and I like to gamify things. I was starting to understand the game of dentistry. So it’s not, to me, it’s not just

You know, the day in and the day out, but the business side of it was intriguing to me. kind of fell into consulting, ⁓ had a friend who did it was like, man, what do you do? That looks so fun. And I was with productive dentist Academy for about eight years. ⁓ loved my time with them, but knew that I, I really always feel like we need to walk the talk. And so.

Brett Allen (04:54)

Okay.

Callie Ward (05:05)

If I’m working with entrepreneurial Dennis, I should be more entrepreneurial on my own. And so I had to take a year off. worked with support DDS while I was off for that year with my non-compete. And then I opened my own consulting. Um, think that was like 20, 22, 2023, somewhere in there. And, um, Dash, who my company’s name is, is actually my grandma name.

Brett Allen (05:11)

Mm.

Callie Ward (05:30)

My grandson who turns nine this next week, ⁓ named me Dash. And it, it really fit in to something I’m passionate about. And that is we’re born and we die. And what’s in the middle is our Dash. And what, what do we do with that Dash? And I go back a lot having been in the trenches. And I think of, you know, I, it was a great job to be in Long Island.

Brett Allen (05:36)

⁓ awesome.

Mm-hmm.

Callie Ward (05:57)

It was a great job. was consistent. Like I loved my job, but it wasn’t feeding me. It wasn’t filling my cup. And I was working with providers that weren’t necessarily in that mindset of having their team work on the business. Right. And we were, we were more looked at as clock punchers, which we need, but we weren’t involved in the process of growing the business. so once I kind of got into the management role.

Brett Allen (06:18)

is

Callie Ward (06:26)

and started seeing that side, I became so passionate about helping the people who show up every day. How do we help them fill their cup? Even if their role is one that’s kind of limited, right? Like there’s only so many positions in the dental practice. But what blew me away having worked with so many different dental practices now is we all have the same challenges. We all have essentially the same

Brett Allen (06:42)

Mm-hmm.

Callie Ward (06:53)

business and there’s different models, there’s different sections of it, but how differently we solve those problems. How different the results can be based on the culture of the practice, the engagement of the team, the systems that we have. I mean, there’s so much. When I came into it in 92, it was a book that we were scheduling. was the technology girl taking the paper chart and putting it into the computer.

Brett Allen (07:06)

Yeah.

Yeah?

Callie Ward (07:20)

You do things the way that you were taught, but you don’t necessarily understand why do we do it that way? And in coaching, I started to learn, well, why, why do we do it that way? And what if we tried it a different way? Could we possibly see a different result? And that really became fun to look at the data, get the real numbers, like base, base our decisions on facts, but then go,

Brett Allen (07:26)

Right.

Callie Ward (07:47)

well, what if we tried this and to work with the team that they’re telling me what their solution is, what they could try differently as opposed to me telling them what to do. So it kind of comes, it goes really well with teaching in the sense that I can’t dictate to the students, this is what you do. If I want it to stick, if I want them to think outside the box, I have to ask,

Brett Allen (07:50)

Yeah.

Hmm.

Callie Ward (08:15)

questions that lead them kind of where I’m looking to go. But oftentimes they come up with an answer is that I wouldn’t have. And when they collaborate on that system, when they collaborate on the solution, they’re more likely to do it because I wasn’t just telling them what to do. so I, I, I love helping people feel great at the end of the day. helped the docs, you know,

Brett Allen (08:24)

Mm-hmm.

Callie Ward (08:42)

learn how to communicate. think they’re really, really great at dentistry, but there’s a whole human by a human being behind that mouth. And how do we help them connect to the human being first before we go to dentistry? Because that’s where we see impacts. and, that’s how we see team members continue to be passionate about their practice and not leave. ⁓ you know, COVID was brutal in the industry.

Brett Allen (08:58)

in.

Yeah.

Callie Ward (09:10)

And I think the docs that are successful, are really seeing success are the ones that are able to create a culture that their team is engaged, wants to show up and look at the patients as if they’re their patients.

Brett Allen (09:17)

Hmm.

Yeah, I love that. The game of business, you talk about, well, there’s this problem, how do we solve it? And do we have to keep solving it the same way we’ve always solved it? Yeah.

Callie Ward (09:35)

Which is

the irony, right? Because it takes a special person to be able to hire a coach or a consultant, right? It’s somebody holding you accountable, it’s uncomfortable, change is uncomfortable. But the reality is if you’ve tried all the things that you know how to do, all the tools you have in your toolkit, and you’re still seeing the same result, yeah.

Brett Allen (09:43)

Excuse me.

Mm-hmm.

You’re still stuck or yeah.

What do we need to change? Yeah.

Callie Ward (10:01)

You kind of need somebody else’s

eyes. And, and to me, consulting is kind of like raising teenagers. If I did my job right, they’re going to leave and, and be successful on their own. They can always come home. We can always have a meal. can always really align kind of a thing. But if I did my job well, they don’t need me. And that’s different than I think there’s, there’s a lot of consultants out there who want to be needed, who want to be right. And I just want to.

Brett Allen (10:27)

Mmm, yeah.

Callie Ward (10:30)

get them excited, line them up. Yeah, and get them fired up to be happy.

Brett Allen (10:31)

Empower them. Yeah. Well, that’s a good coach. think.

Yeah, I think that’s the, that’s the, the nature of a good coach, right? You empower people. ⁓ I grew athletics. was, I was athletic growing up. I was a swimmer in college, all American. And, ⁓ I recognize the value of coaches in my life. have a coach in business. ⁓ I’ve had.

coaches in relationships. I think you glean from the experts or somebody who’s been down the road before or studied and it has that experience. You gain insight in a vision that you don’t have intrinsically. It’s so valuable to learn from others’

Callie Ward (11:18)

Yeah. Well, we find that the team already knows what the solution is. They, you go to a dental practice and the years of experience that they have in the room, they have the answer. They just don’t know how to articulate it in order. know how to kind of percolate that to the surface. Or we don’t have a safe culture where they’re willing to be vulnerable, which is another whole piece of it. So.

Brett Allen (11:39)

Hmm

Callie Ward (11:45)

I love the sports analogy because it’s so true. Like I think about when I’m coming in as a coach, we’re spring training and we’re going back to all the basics. We’re going back to the defensive drills. We’re going to the offensive drills. Like we’re starting off repeating what we already know, but then we stack those habits on top of each other and we start to build the culture. And to me, it has to be in positivity.

Brett Allen (12:10)

Yeah.

Callie Ward (12:14)

We tend to work in the practice, not on the practice. There’s oftentimes we don’t dedicate regular consistent team meetings, which how are we going to see something implemented differently if we don’t give ourselves an opportunity to kind of work through it? Like it’s, have to, we have to do that. So kind of helping them just with structure, like what, what, what opportunities do we have for team trainings? Do you cross train? Does everybody.

Brett Allen (12:30)

Sure.

Callie Ward (12:41)

Or do we have the same person leading every meeting and nobody hears them because it’s just ma-ma-ma-ma-ma-ma-ma-ma-ma-ma-ma-ma-ma-ma-ma-ma-ma-ma-ma-ma-ma-ma-ma-ma-ma-ma-ma-ma-ma-ma-ma-ma-ma-ma-ma-ma-ma-ma-ma-ma-ma-ma-ma-ma-ma-ma-ma-ma-ma-ma-ma-ma-ma-ma-ma-ma-ma-ma-ma-ma-ma-ma-ma-ma-ma-ma-ma-ma-ma-ma-ma-ma-ma-ma-ma-ma-ma-ma-ma-ma-ma-ma-ma-ma-ma-ma-ma-ma-ma-ma-ma-ma-ma-ma-ma-ma-ma-ma-ma-ma-ma-ma-ma-

Brett Allen (12:48)

Yeah,

what’s the intention of the meeting? Just having to have a meeting doesn’t do anything either. ⁓ Well, let’s talk about the process and methodology you use with your clients at Dash Consulting. Walk us through what it’s like to work with you, what are some awesome results that you’ve achieved. Tell us more about your process.

Callie Ward (12:55)

Right, right. So it’s just lots of pieces.

I love A, working with people who are willing to do something differently. So that’s like a qualifier to be able to play in the game. Are you willing to be uncomfortable? Because that’s changes uncomfortable. And then looking at what do they know and what do they know about their real data? Like, do they understand and not just the doc, but we need to understand, you know, just because we produce a hundred thousand dollars in a month doesn’t mean

that is what the profit is. So understanding the business side of it, we don’t have to give absolute specifics, but I want to communicate what that vision of success is. Like, why are you bringing me in and what do we hope to accomplish? Like what’s the end all? it a certain production amount, collection amount? Is it that the doc wants to work less time, but be making the same amount of money? Like success can be different for everybody.

Brett Allen (14:11)

Yeah.

Callie Ward (14:11)

And then

for that doc to be able to communicate that with the team. Maybe it’s a new practice. They don’t, they can’t offer vacation or ⁓ medical coverage right now, but that’s something in the future I’d love to be able to offer. Those are the kinds of things that we can communicate with the team so they know what that vision is. And then looking forward to, you know, this is our starting point. These are the KPIs.

So the key performance indicator is that we want to affect. And maybe it’s the collection amount. Like bottom line, we’ve got to get more money in the jar. Well, then we go back and we look at systems. if their systems are already working in a certain area, I’m going to go to a system that isn’t working. We’re not going to fix something if it’s not broken. But we have to analyze. We have to look at all that data to know.

What’s, what is the data telling me? What’s the story that I’m seeing? And then we identify opportunities for different behavior to see a different result. ⁓ I’ve, I worked with, ⁓ huge practices, tiny practices, scratch starts mid career. Gosh, I’m going to retire in five years and I don’t know, do I want to sell to a DSO? Do I want to sell? Do I want to bring an associate in?

Brett Allen (15:08)

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Callie Ward (15:31)

⁓ So a little bit of everything and really the most fun, the most successful are the ones who are just willing to try, to experiment. Yeah.

Brett Allen (15:43)

to really take your

feedback and your insight and try it out. What are some of the most common things that you experienced in your experience? What are the common ceilings that people butt up against? What’s the cause? What are some of the common things that people deal with?

Callie Ward (15:48)

Yeah, or participate. Go ahead.

I think a lot of times we find providers who don’t have strong leadership skills or they don’t have strong business skills. So we don’t have systems in place. That’s an easy fixed. It’s really easy to implement a scheduling to goal. It’s really easy to implement, you know, a clean revenue cycle management system, like where all the problems that can come from that. So it’s kind of that analysis.

Brett Allen (16:13)

Hmm.

Mmm. Right.

Callie Ward (16:35)

But looking at who’s successful are the ones who don’t expect it overnight, who are willing to celebrate what we’re learning as we’re learning it. So huge thing for me is morning huddle. We look at yesterday, what was great about yesterday, who can we shout out? When we start acknowledging our team for doing the job that we hired them for.

and not ignoring the quiet one because they’re always dependable. They’re always there, but we never say anything to them. We only focus on the negative, right? That, that philosophy leaves a lot of people feeling not seen. Whereas if we start to generate that positivity and acknowledging our team and it’s not just the doc who has to say, Hey, Mary, you did a great job yesterday. I want my team catching their team.

doing a job well done. And when we start in positivity, neuroscience supports it, we’re creating a culture that we’re more likely to try and do something differently because it’s a safer environment and we fail. And so we look at yesterday, what was great, who can we celebrate? And then where were our opportunities? If we’re implementing a scheduling to goal and I had inadvertently scheduled a RIC now right next to extraction and the docs double booked, it’s not going to work, right? We’re going to

Brett Allen (17:38)

Hmm.

Callie Ward (17:54)

we’re going to run behind schedule. But if they don’t ever unpack that challenge as a team, it’ll happen again. And that’s where it’s just helping them learn how to communicate in a way that is ⁓ healthy, ⁓ clear expectations. It makes it easier to hold people accountable. I help them create SOPs. I help them create what their system is. It becomes more repeatable.

Brett Allen (18:00)

It’ll happen again. Yeah.

Callie Ward (18:21)

And when we have those opportunities on a regular basis to unpack things, we don’t tend to have the big explosions. So that, that helps them start to feel comfortable. Okay. I know we’ve got a meeting next week. I’m going to put my name on the agenda. It’s going to take me 10 minutes. Maybe I just need to show two of the team members how to break down the room the way that we want them to. Right.

Brett Allen (18:29)

Hmm.

Callie Ward (18:44)

And so you’re just identifying training opportunities and we track those on a list. It’s not rocket science, but it now that we just start to have clear, clear guidelines of when we can talk it through to be able to implement something new.

Brett Allen (18:44)

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, I love that. I think you look at these practices that are just crushing it. You know, the multi seven figure practices that have awesome, like you go into the practice and it’s like an awesome team. The ambiance is amazing. And it’s like, these are the practices that get all the word of mouth referrals because they just got a great patient experience. And it doesn’t just happen by accident. It’s, it’s, it’s a choreographed calculated.

Callie Ward (19:23)

Mm-mm.

Brett Allen (19:26)

It doesn’t happen overnight, but it is a planned business. There are leadership roles and people are assigned roles and everybody understands what the SOPs are. ⁓ It’s a well-run machine and you don’t just get there on accident. And I think a lot of times dentists get into dentistry because they love people, they love the art of dentistry and the financial, you know,

component to it that’s possible. ⁓ But like everything in life, don’t have, like you have to learn, you have to develop the skills and the team, or it’s not gonna happen.

Callie Ward (19:57)

But I think you.

Right. And,

and, and it’s the team, right? When you think of, okay, maybe I’m a provider and I don’t want to lead the team. Maybe I don’t want to be the manager. Delegated. We have to have somebody. Yeah. Hire somebody that that’s their strength. Right? Like you want to pair that, but we have to be really clear with those expectations and set that person up for success.

Brett Allen (20:18)

Hmm. That’s okay. Yeah, that’s okay. Have somebody that compliments you.

Callie Ward (20:31)

⁓ and, and, and look at, there’s no judgment if you’re not a naturally born leader, you, as the owner, you’re going to have some, some expectations of, of showing up in a certain way, but you can hire a team member, an office manager to be that person. And when I think of docs too, that are maybe, ⁓ mid career, maybe they’ve brought on an associate and they want to kind of back off.

Brett Allen (20:38)

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, 100%.

Callie Ward (20:59)

and they want the practice running maybe without them being the forefront. To do that, we just have to know we’ve got that leader in place guiding the team, holding that consistency, holding that accountability ⁓ so that we continue to see that. Like I’ve seen so many docs who have phenomenal practices and then they’re getting close to retirement and they brought in an associate and they’re like,

Brett Allen (21:16)

Yeah.

Callie Ward (21:23)

I’m not showing up for morning huddle anymore. I’m not, I’m just going to come and do this and, and go out. But they didn’t intentionally replace that leadership and they flounder and it’s, nobody knows who to go to for what. And morning huddle is haphazardly happening and they lose that momentum. And it’s frustrating for them. Like what, are you guys doing? It’s the same team, but we have to have the leader. You have to, you have to have that person who’s just.

Brett Allen (21:30)

They didn’t. Right.

New thing.

Yeah.

Callie Ward (21:51)

guiding us. it’s it everything can be done.

Brett Allen (21:52)

Yeah, I can’t

I’ve learned this lesson in business. I’ve heard this saying before, it’s not how, but who. You need to find the right who to figure, to fix the problem that you’re having. But I’ve also learned that you have to have an awareness to some degree of the how so that you hire the right who and you empower them and help them own whatever role they’re filling. Because early days in my business when I started

Callie Ward (22:16)

Mm-hmm.

Brett Allen (22:23)

what is it, 12 years ago now, ⁓ I would, yeah, we would just hire Hoos. And it was like, it was almost a revolving door of like, well, that didn’t get fixed right. Or the result didn’t happen that we wanted because we didn’t really dig into the problem and try to figure out, okay, well, who’s the right person for this thing? Rather than just, I’m going to put a warm body in this and they’ll figure it out. No, you have to have some awareness to what you’re, you’re hiring for.

Callie Ward (22:47)

And that’s…

Brett Allen (22:51)

haha

Callie Ward (22:51)

Exactly, that’s what we do. I traditionally, especially for front office, I wouldn’t say clinical, like there’s a lot more clarity around clinical team. But when we hire front office, we tend to hire really nice people and they’re good with people. That does not mean they’re the great ones to collect money. That does not mean that they are great at training your patients on showing up for their appointments.

Brett Allen (22:56)

Yeah, front office is a big one.

Great.

Callie Ward (23:20)

We have to be skilled.

Brett Allen (23:22)

Or

best practices on like handling questions on the phone the right way so you don’t lose the appointment. Even though there are people person, there’s a way to handle that call. Yeah.

Callie Ward (23:28)

Right?

Yeah, I’ve

heard people in the office go, well, I know that John down the streets doing ⁓ whitening. Why don’t you call them? We don’t do that exact whitening. Like what? Stop. Don’t send them away. But they’re just being helpful. And so we have to set them up with clear expectations on what, how to answer a call. And honestly, the only training I received other than how to do the revenue cycle was really what I was trained on. But I was first on the phones.

Brett Allen (23:42)

No. Right. Right.

Callie Ward (24:00)

Nobody told me that the goal of the phone call of a shopper was to get them on the schedule. Nobody like, okay, that’s basic. We should have told this 25 year old kid, yeah, your main goal is to get them in the schedule and here’s your toolkit. Right. And, and so it’s, it’s, have so many more opportunities now for front office training. We’ve got ADOM, we’ve got all kinds of different groups and availability of speakers.

Brett Allen (24:10)

That’s your main job. Get them in the schedule. Yeah.

Callie Ward (24:27)

to help them, but it is just that simple. Here’s how I want you to answer the phone, and here’s the goal, and if they ask you this, here’s how you should do it. But that comes back to training, that comes back to having time to train. It’s easier if we have SOPs, and people are like, why do I even need to write down how to answer the phone? Well, you just fired a girl because she didn’t answer the phone that you wanted.

hurt you but you never told her how you wanted her to answer the phone. See a problem there? Like it’s just kind of helping them get righted. Get on the train track, they’re all aligned, they’re headed in the same direction and then how they show up, the energy that they have is what pushes them forward.

Brett Allen (24:57)

Right.

Yeah. Yeah.

I love that. Yeah, we have a, ⁓ we have a tool called call cat, which categorizes the calls. That’s why we call it call cat. ⁓ there’s an AI behind it that reads the transcriptions of the calls and it puts it into different buckets whenever a patient doesn’t schedule as to why the patient doesn’t super helpful and gives great clarity to the office manager in the front desk of like here’s okay. If booking rate is 20 % or if we don’t even know what our booking rate is.

Here’s what you need to do to get it to 30, 40, 50%. Yeah, so, oh yeah.

Callie Ward (25:45)

Yeah. AI is phenomenal. mean, when I think

of that change, the amount of time that I took documenting phone calls that I had in patient charts, like astronomical, and if we don’t document it, it didn’t happen, right? Like there’s, if anybody’s ever been involved in a lawsuit, if you don’t have it documented, you’re toast, right? Like you have to show all your due diligence. And so to have AI now that is just,

Brett Allen (25:56)

It’s wild, yeah.

Yeah.

Callie Ward (26:14)

That feedback of that instant feedback, you did this, this, and this great with your call, but here’s where you have an opportunity. That’s huge. The conversation and you and I were talking about this prior to was, you know, if, a doc is going to hire a marketing company, I really hope that they take the time to talk to their team who are answering the calls to know what is it that what’s the message that we’re sending out.

Brett Allen (26:16)

There’s so much. Yeah.

Callie Ward (26:40)

how are we going to accommodate those patients? What’s the goal? Do they have the ability to say, ⁓ I can absolutely give you a free consultation for this. This is a second opinion. Let’s get you in the schedule here. Like if we don’t let our team know what power they have to be able to get that call converted, we’re missing those opportunities. And patients only know one question. Do you take my insurance? That’s a tough one because

Brett Allen (26:56)

Yeah.

Yeah.

Callie Ward (27:08)

My clients, I’d rather them say, ⁓ we are not at, you know, like we’re not in network. I want them skilled to be able to answer that. How do we, my gosh, you’ve come to the right place. Yeah. And that’s intentional training, getting those calls converted despite us not being in network. But that is the only question patients know how to answer. Or we haven’t really scheduled intentionally and doc is booked for three months, which

Brett Allen (27:12)

Yeah, fee for service is the big thing now. Yeah. How do we convert those? Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, what are the columns like? Right.

Callie Ward (27:35)

sounds really good,

but their profitability is non-existent, but he’s booked for three months. We need to have a conversation about your schedule, and we need to craft your schedule to be able to convert those new patients. Because it doesn’t matter how much your marketing generates, if they don’t have somewhere to put that patient in the very near future, they’re gonna lose them. So it…

Brett Allen (27:59)

Yeah

Callie Ward (28:01)

There’s a little bit with every different system that we’re looking at.

Brett Allen (28:03)

⁓ there’s so much

to operating a super successful practice like the one I was just, I was talking about. That’s amazing. ⁓ And we see it all the time, right? ⁓ Marketing can do so much to get the lead to call the practice or even to schedule online. But what happens after that appointment or even getting the appointment? Like what happens with the team and is there a good integration with the marketing team? Is there a good handoff? Is everybody on the same page?

Callie Ward (28:10)

Yeah.

Right.

Brett Allen (28:32)

Is it humming along?

Callie Ward (28:32)

And

even if we get that lined up and that is smooth sailing, like we’re hitting that, that doc may still not fill the ROI of your marketing if they’re not collecting. And that’s that, we have to go back, right? We have to go back and go, yeah, if that’s how I determine my success is are they collecting more over last year at this time? Like that’s that growth.

Brett Allen (28:43)

Mm.

Right? His acceptance is huge and collections is huge.

Yeah.

Callie Ward (28:59)

it’s the profitability. can’t just be a production and a collection number. Like that sounds great, but what’s your overhead and what’s your profitability and what are you paying your team and where are your fixed variables? Like all of these different pieces that come into play. And if we need to really kind of have a conversation with Mary, who’s been doing collections for 30 years, but we’ve got $100,000 in the over 90 days.

Brett Allen (29:09)

Yeah.

Callie Ward (29:27)

And she doesn’t call and work those because she’s friends with everybody. So it’s uncomfortable. We need to have, we need to have a pause and go back to, okay, how can we, how can we solve this problem in a different way? Because they’re not ever going to feel the ROI from marketing if they’re not collecting anymore, even if they’re producing more like, and I’ve had docs say, I can produce 3000 an hour. Well, good for you. How often do you do it? And what are they collecting?

Brett Allen (29:28)

Yeah.

It’s, yeah, yeah.

Yeah. Yeah, let’s…

What’s collections?

Yeah, yeah, for sure. There’s so much that goes into successful practice management. And that’s why I love having consultants on the show like you, Callie, and the expertise you bring. I know we’re out of time. I wish we could go even deeper on the marketing side of things like we talked about, but ⁓ that’s okay. We can, you know, maybe we do another one down the road. But ⁓ if people want to work with you or they want to find out more about your process,

Callie Ward (29:55)

Yeah.

Absolutely.

Brett Allen (30:22)

if they’re a good fit, how can they get a hold of you?

Callie Ward (30:25)

Pretty easy. My company is dashdentalconsulting.com. My email is dashdentalconsulting at Gmail. And I’m on Facebook, I’m on LinkedIn, I’m ⁓ on Instagram. And really reach out. I have a calendar link that I’ll send you, grab some time. I wanna know that we fit well together. I think it’s…

always awesome for my strengths to be maybe what your weaknesses are in the dental practice. So really strong in the front office, case acceptance, communication skills, those kinds of things. And then we just kind of dive in, we can pull your data, take a look at it and see where your opportunities would be and if it would be beneficial.

Brett Allen (31:10)

I love that. We’ll put it in the show notes. So if you’re driving or you’re not able to write down, ⁓ check out marketing32.com for the episode with Cali Ward and you’ll find all of that there. But Cali, this was a great conversation. Thank you for coming on today.

Callie Ward (31:23)

Appreciate

it. So fun. Good to see ya.

Brett Allen (31:25)

Yeah, okay. Well, thank you everybody for tuning in. Hope you had some value from this. I certainly did. I learned some things. ⁓ like we said, check out market32.com if you need help with growth in your practice. ⁓ we do it ethically. We don’t charge people if we’re not generating result and we track all of that results through some integrations we have with the PMS so we can map the whole marketing equation from dollar spent to production generated. So

⁓ Thank you again for tuning in. Cali, thank you for being on the show and everybody have a great rest of your week.

Callie Ward (31:55)

Thanks, Brett.