Brett Allen (00:22)

Hi, Brett Allen here, host of the Marketing 32 show where I connect with leading dentists, dental influencers, and industry experts to bring you guys the latest and greatest to help your dental practice grow and thrive. This episode is brought to you as always by our team here at Marketing 32. We are the only dental marketing team that I know of with a performance guarantee that if you’re not growing, you don’t pay us. We truly are invested in your growth and adding value to your practice or you don’t pay. So that’s that simple.

But we don’t work with everybody. We like to find those practices that we can really make an impact for. So if you need help, head over to marking32.com, schedule a quick discovery call, and we’ll have a great conversation, see if it’s a good fit. Quick shout out to Dr. Rehan Shahid. Recently had him on the show. ⁓ Fresh out of dentistry, dental school, he built a thriving group practice that’s now doing $8 million across his different offices.

Fascinating interview about how he did that in such a short period of time and the strategies with his marketing and leadership, all of that. It’s really, really great interview. Check out that episode. Excited to have a new friend of mine on the show today. Kara Kelly is the CEO of Clinical HR. She’s a keynote speaker and a nationally recognized HR strategist who helps dental practices get their people, policies, and leadership aligned.

so they can actually enjoy the businesses they’ve built. With senior level credentials, including SHRM, SCP and SPHR, she translates complex employment compliance and workplace challenges into practical solutions that work in real operatories, not just in theory. She partners with dentists and practice leaders to reduce risk, strengthen teams and build a practice worth working for. Kara, excited to dig deep with you and learn all about your expertise and your story.

Thanks for coming on the show.

Kara Kelley (02:10)

thanks for having me Brett, I’m excited and congratulat- absolutely said it perfectly. Sherma’s CV and that’s what I’m now it’s a mouthful.

Brett Allen (02:15)

good, yeah I know.

Those acronyms, I’m like, what is that? What does that even mean? You should tell us that first. What is SHRM, SCP?

Kara Kelley (02:23)

Society

for Human Resource Management, Senior Certified Professional, and then HR Certification Institute is the other certifying body in the country, and I have my Senior Professional Human Resources Certification from them.

Brett Allen (02:34)

Awesome, awesome. So when you’re watching The Office, you can see all of the failed compliance. I love that show, so great. Well, tell us your story. Like, how did you get into dentistry? And then how does that story translate into what you’re doing today? Walk us through that.

Kara Kelley (02:40)

Yeah. ⁓ yeah.

Serendipity and adaptability. I was actually finishing my bachelor’s ⁓ after moving out of self-employment from a completely different field back in 2012. And because this was 2012 and we didn’t just hire the first person who showed up on time and sober, like we sometimes do now, I decided that I needed something on my resume other than self-employment. And so I said, okay, let me go work for some company somewhere doing something.

while I finish my degree and then whenever I finish and have my bachelor’s in business with my HR concentration, I can go work in a Fortune 500 HR department and start as a coordinator and have some kind of career trajectory up the ladder in corporate. And yeah, that didn’t happen. ⁓ I ended up landing at a dental CPA firm doing marketing of all things. And so I’m sure we have lots to talk about there. I actually stayed there.

Brett Allen (03:39)

Yeah.

Kara Kelley (03:39)

seven and a half years continuing to do marketing while also kind of building myself into a role as a business development and HR advisor, as well as doing internal HR for the firms. So as you know, most dental practices who are small businesses and understand the wear a lot of hats mentality, I’m right there with you, been there since the beginning.

Brett Allen (04:00)

Awesome, awesome.

So now you work with practices hands-on to help leadership, help teams, hiring. Let’s focus on your process. How do you work with teams? What’s that like? What are some big wins that you can share and brag about and tell us that.

Kara Kelley (04:18)

Yeah, absolutely. Well, after seven and half years there, I got tired of being mistaken for an accountant and so wanted to kind of step out and really lean into the HR side of things. And so that’s what I do now ⁓ because I decided to step out and really get my firm, HR, started in February of 2020, right before we had a pandemic. Start with a little non-traditional.

Brett Allen (04:38)

Right, yes.

Kara Kelley (04:42)

⁓ I ended up helping a lot of practices lay off teams and then bring them back and then navigate all of the alphabet soup of compliance that was coming out around that period of time. And since we’ve moved on from there, what I typically am doing are things like making sure that we have compliant practices, that we have a culture focused on treating our team well so that they treat our patients well so that we can continue to do the dentistry that we enjoy doing.

while making sure that the compliance side of things is smooth and ready to go and not going to come back and bite us at some point. And so a lot of what I do with practices are going to be things like internal HR assessments, building out things like employee handbooks, helping them strategize on finding and retaining top talent. Because right now, think that’s still, I don’t know that that hasn’t been the issue of the day for the last decade. It certainly is, yet again in 2026. Here we are.

Brett Allen (05:26)

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, and there’s a lot of talent. There’s a lot of really great people out there. Some are great cultural fit, some are not. Some are not good players to hire, right? And so how do you, yeah, and making that investment, you invest time, money into training somebody up. And if it’s not a great fit after that, now you’ve wasted all of that, right? So yeah, what are some specific tools or tips of advice that you could share to help?

help our listeners with that.

Kara Kelley (06:02)

Well, and dentists are amazing practitioners. They’re amazing humans and they have all of this compassion in the world when it comes to their patients and all of this way that they can manage their patient conversations and deescalate problems with patients. then somehow when it comes to the team, it isn’t always a ready set, let’s go. We’re not always the best at identifying who’s going to be a great fit for the team.

Brett Allen (06:11)

Right.

Kara Kelley (06:27)

Like I’ve been, I was talking to the practice recently that brought somebody on who had worked in a fee for service practice. And this was a completely different model. This was more of a community type practice, more of a heavy Medicaid practice. And the employee that we were talking to, it just, wasn’t a good culture fit. Like they were used to having, you know, big bonuses and things that they could achieve and big dollars in paychecks they could take home. And this was very much a mission driven passion project type of practice.

Brett Allen (06:54)

⁓

Kara Kelley (06:55)

here to really serve these patients and we don’t always have the ability to do that. Yeah. so it just, it’s a conversation in the very beginning would have maybe considered this might not have been the best fit, you know, and that’s, that’s obviously one example of probably thousands I have at this point, but I think there’s a lot of things that we do in dentistry that we hire out of desperation because we need somebody there. We need to be able to maintain the patient schedule and continue to serve patients and make sure that everybody isn’t

Brett Allen (06:59)

The economics, yeah.

Kara Kelley (07:24)

burning out because we’re understaffed. And so we just hire the first person who’s got the availability who will take the hourly wage. And we don’t really deep dive on whether or not this is a fit. And then sometimes we find the person who is a fit and we’re not ready to really train them. We’re not really ready to bring them on and give them the mentorship that they need. We’re not on to assimilate to our culture. We are just like, here is a 400 page binder of all of the SOPs go read this and you should be good by the end of the week.

Brett Allen (07:32)

Hmm.

Yeah.

Go.

Yeah.

Kara Kelley (07:53)

And I’m sure you have a similar, similar process for when you bring people into your team, that that’s probably not the best way to do it.

Brett Allen (07:59)

Yeah,

I’ve learned that lesson the hard way. We hired somebody and ⁓ still on our team. Awesome. Such an awesome person. Had all of the character traits, culture fit, hard worker, like awesome. Awesome employee. But I just realized that after hiring them, we weren’t giving them the proper tools to help them on board and get up to speed running. And here we are, know, five.

five months into working with them and you’re like, what? You still aren’t doing this piece of the job? and that’s total, you know, extreme ownership, that’s on us as leaders for not ensuring that parts of the onboarding were followed. But yeah, and love that team member and would hate to lose them, but yeah, it’s on us sometimes.

Kara Kelley (08:44)

And you’re saying that I’ve

had calls from doctors where they’ve been here for 30 days. Shouldn’t they know how to do this by now? I’m like, it’s been 30 days. Yeah.

Brett Allen (08:52)

30 days, 30 days

is so short when you’re, yeah.

Kara Kelley (08:56)

It really is. There’s a reason why we have a 90 day introductory period. I don’t love to have a 90 period, but there’s a reason why we give them 90 days to get to full, know, steam ahead. It’s because after 30, no, they probably don’t know all of the things just yet.

Brett Allen (09:00)

That’s what we got, yeah.

Yeah, and there’s probably stuff ongoing, even somebody who’s been with the team six years in. It’s like, ⁓ there’s more, there’s constant improvement, right?

Kara Kelley (09:15)

absolutely.

Well,

and with the exponential rate of change that we have regarding technology right now, there’s a lot that is changing very, very rapidly and we’re not really prepared to train our team to use it or even what do we do whenever this technology can come in and help our workflow. If we’ve got somebody that’s something or a program or software that’s alleviating some of the issues that we’ve had in the past, okay, great. Now what do we do?

Brett Allen (09:22)

Yeah, yeah.

Kara Kelley (09:42)

We’re not used to investing a lot of time training our team and thinking outside of the dental box of what is it that they can do now.

Brett Allen (09:51)

Yeah.

When you work with practices hands-on, you get into the weeds of how their team is set up and how they’re hiring. Walk us through some of the things like common challenges that practices face. What are some things that people are overlooking? ⁓ Things they can do better.

Kara Kelley (10:08)

Having a comprehensive job description, if you’re talking about hiring and getting somebody who is the right fit and setting the expectations upfront, having a truly customized job description, something you pulled off a Facebook group or a Google search or told Chat GBT to generate for you. I mean, those are tools that can be helpful. And I certainly have templates that I would tell clients, yeah, like I’ll give clients some of my job description templates and say, go put it in a Chat GBT, tell it about your practice and say, use this format and come up with something that fits our practice, but then also make sure we’ve got our human eyes on it.

Brett Allen (10:24)

Creative, yeah.

Kara Kelley (10:37)

I think a lot of what we do with job descriptions is just a list of duties and responsibilities. And we’re not really doing a KPI focused or results focused job description, which is what whenever I’m working with practice, we’re going to design.

Brett Allen (10:37)

Yeah.

Cool, yeah that’s good. We talk about how hard it is to hire hygienist today and there’s potentially a shortage. ⁓ What do you do in these tricky markets where it is super competitive and ⁓ team members are asking for more pay and it’s hard to find quality people that will stay and not just jump to the next highest bidder.

Kara Kelley (11:19)

It is, and it’s not even really the next highest bidder nowadays. A lot of times they’re looking for a temp opportunity. I think that has been something that is getting even more compounded at this point. That temping has been around. It’s been an option. ⁓ I feel like what we’ve done in dentistry the past couple of decades has kind of led to this. a lot of people want to say, it was the pandemic. The pandemic created this problem. No, the pandemic compounded this problem. But we had this problem before the pandemic. had

Brett Allen (11:24)

Hmm.

Kara Kelley (11:45)

members who were who were burnt out who were seen as kind of the the second class citizen of the practice because they were the producer and they were the most expensive and so well let’s 1099 them so that we don’t have to the benefits or let’s let’s make them part we have to w2 them okay fine we’ll make them part-time so we don’t have to give them benefits and so they never really got it and they don’t care they don’t they don’t they’re not attracted to a practice that has a home base with a great culture and a lot of benefits because that’s not something that they have felt like they’ve ever gotten and they they’ve needed and this is not every

Brett Allen (12:00)

Yeah.

Mmm.

Kara Kelley (12:14)

And assistants could even, I suppose you could say the same thing because there are some assistants who do temp in this manner as well. But I feel like that for them was a natural reaction of like, well, if I don’t have a practice that is going to be low drama and treat me the way that I feel like I should be treated as part of the team and give me the same benefits or that’s going to try to like cut my pay when I have to do training, but they’re not cutting anybody else’s just because I’m getting paid more.

I’m just going to go temp and then I can, I don’t have to do those other things. I don’t have to deal with the drama. I can just show up. And if I don’t like the office, I don’t have to temp for them again. And I make a higher hourly rate. I wasn’t getting any benefits anyway. So I may as well take the higher hourly rate. Right, wrong or indifferent. I’m not saying that’s a good mentality, but that is where we’re at. And that’s the problem that we’ve created. And in order to pull back from that, we have to look at what are we really offering as, as being a dental home, a home base for somebody to come in and want to work.

Brett Allen (12:55)

Mm.

Kara Kelley (13:07)

full time and really invest that time. have to really strongly create those cultures, build those practices that are worth working for so that they say, look, it’s not about the money. It’s about having that consistency. It’s about having the people that are there to support me. It’s about feeling like I’m treated well and I can have the work-life balance that I would have otherwise, but that I’m able to get that from a team.

Brett Allen (13:29)

Are there some

good interview questions or things you look for in an applicant to help a practice? No, hey, watch out, these are red flags or this is an A player, right?

Kara Kelley (13:42)

when we’re talking about hygienists or just in general.

Brett Allen (13:43)

Well, yeah, hygienists in general. Yeah, do both.

Kara Kelley (13:47)

I’m a fan of situational judgment questions overall. I’m a fan of skills assessments of our working interviews. If anybody’s ever followed me on social or ever heard me talk on podcasts about this, I am not a fan of a working interview because of many reasons, but the number one being that I feel like it doesn’t really work. You’re not assessing the skills that you’re aiming for. ⁓ You’re basically just throwing them into the workflow and hoping everything works out for the day. We end up hiring assistants who don’t know how to take impressions or hiring somebody who, well, they seemed like they were nice, but

Brett Allen (14:09)

Hmm.

Kara Kelley (14:16)

Nobody was really actually watching what they did. so why they don’t know how to do X, Y, Z. Yeah. Yeah. So having an actual skills assessment is key. But when it comes to like questions about weeding out culture fit and things of that nature, situational judgment questions are ones that, that I strongly rely on having the conversation of what would you do in this circumstance or what would you do if, you know, we had a team member call out and we needed to move people to your column. How do you handle that?

Brett Allen (14:19)

⁓ yeah. They interview well, but in practice, they’re not. Yeah.

Kara Kelley (14:44)

Right? know, whenever you’re, what are your thoughts on taking time off, off work? You know, we absolutely want to support work life harmony and we want to make sure that you have some balance there and that everybody can take time off. But what are your thoughts around that? You know, how do you feel like you need to give a practice before taking some time off? Or if you felt like you need a mental health day, would you reach out and say, Hey, I need to take a day off in advance? Or is this something that you feel like, you know, would be an immediate, like we need to have some of these conversations.

Brett Allen (14:56)

Hmm.

Kara Kelley (15:11)

while maintaining your HR compliance of not asking about medical situations and all of those other things, I’m still going to say stay out of the red areas there. ⁓ Stay away from the red flags in the interview process. But we can have some conversations about how do you handle these things in the past.

Brett Allen (15:17)

Right.

Yeah,

it’s interesting what you, know, HR compliance, like what you can and can’t ask. It feels like you should be able to ask some of these questions. Like these are just common, like I just want to get to know this person, but you can’t, you can’t, you can’t.

Kara Kelley (15:40)

It does. I

just had this conversation yesterday with a doctor who wanted to ask a team member about mental health. Had it on an actual review sheet. And I said, like, look, I know that you’re a doctor, but you are not their doctor and you do teeth, not brain. So we can’t specifically ask about mental health on a document like that. can ask, there additional support that you need? You can have the conversation. And I understand where they’re coming from, where they want their team members to feel like they have good mental health, that they’re not hitting burnout.

Brett Allen (15:48)

Hmm

Kara Kelley (16:10)

that they are able to talk about things openly and say, I need a break or this is what I need to do to be able to perform at my highest and best. However, there’s those little lines we don’t need to cross, at least certainly not in documentation. ⁓

Brett Allen (16:23)

Yeah. And it seems like

when you’re calling to find out past history from previous employers, you should be able to ask certain questions too, but you totally cannot.

Kara Kelley (16:32)

Well, that’s a whole other situation. I always advise my clients to, especially if they’ve got somebody who has not been the highest performer or who has been an active detriment to the practice in some way, to say it is our practice policy to only confirm less held title, dates of employment, and eligibility for rehire. And does it. And if they ask, do you repeat that? Flat monotone.

Brett Allen (16:49)

Right, that’s it. And that’s it. But like everything else

you wanna ask, it’s like, were they a good team member? Did they actually do a good job? How much were you paying them? Like you can’t ask.

Kara Kelley (17:01)

Salary,

in a lot of states you can’t, now there’s some salary transparency laws and some salary history laws in some states, yes, that you aren’t supposed to inquire about a last held salary. And quite frankly, I’m on board with some of those and here’s why. What somebody else paid a team member shouldn’t impact what you’re paying a team member. You know what your budget is, you know what the position adds value to the practice, what does it matter? They may have been overpaid, why would you care? Like they may have been underpaid. ⁓

Brett Allen (17:11)

Right.

Or… Yeah, yeah, go ahead.

sure.

Right, that’s a good point, that’s a good point.

But would you hire this person again? Did you like this person? Were they a good team player? Did they work hard? Like all this. What’s that?

Kara Kelley (17:37)

Well, that’s for rehire.

That’s the eligibility for rehire question though. And you can say last year, old dates of employment and eligibility for rehire because if they’re in. Yep. Yep. Now, here’s the other thing. If somebody was an amazing team member, nobody’s going to stop them from saying that. If they worked at a previous like government job, there may be some like barriers. They won’t say it. But if it’s another dental practice, I am usually able to get them to talk about the people who

Brett Allen (17:44)

okay.

eligibility for rehire. Okay. Yeah.

The vibe.

Kara Kelley (18:05)

really well. Yeah, nobody’s gonna get in trouble for giving a glowing review about somebody that was just amazing, right?

Brett Allen (18:12)

But if they say

no, stay away. Do not hire.

Kara Kelley (18:15)

I would be careful if I were them personally because you never know if it’s really a reference check or if it’s somebody’s attorney on the phone or if there’s there’s there’s reasons why my recommendation to my clients is that it is our practice policy to confirm last held title dates of employment eligibility rehire.

Brett Allen (18:21)

⁓ yeah. that’s a point. That is a good point.

Yeah, I wish

we could have asked deeper. We had a team member, this was like three years ago. I think it was three years ago. I hired this person from another dental marketing team. On paper, looked great, interviewed great, and then we hired them. And then like the first few weeks, they didn’t show up to like the morning, the team huddle. And they would like miss meetings. And it was just like, who, what?

come to find out they’re out all night partying and drinking and that’s why they miss the huddle. And you’re like, what, like, this does not, like, how do you find some of that stuff that’s like a little bit more gray area and like, ⁓ yeah, do you have any recommendations like that that are like great tips on like, this is how you can weed out some red flags and uncover red flags.

Kara Kelley (19:19)

And some of it’s a conversation with them of just like, what are some things you like to do in life? Like what are some of your hobbies? Right? If somebody is a… I don’t know that anybody would say that. And there’s the thing, there is no 100 % foolproof hiring plan or question that’s going to get you every single thing about every single person. Right? There is going to be some level though of this is the expectation that we have at this practice. Morning huddle is at 8.45. Our first patients are here at nine.

Brett Allen (19:26)

I drink every night till 2 a.m.

Ha ha ha.

Kara Kelley (19:45)

We do expect you to be able to be here for that time. We ask that you be here for the entire year. Is that something that you can adhere to? This is the schedule. Will you have a problem with that? You don’t have to ask about, you have kids? Do you have party life? Do you drink all night? That’s not the question. It’s can you show up for work and be ready to work at 8.30 or whatever your timeframe is. And if you’re going to dig deeper on some of those, I’d highly recommend first of all talking to your attorney, which I am not. I am not an attorney. I don’t give legal advice. Nothing here is considered legal advice. This is all for legal purposes.

Brett Allen (19:49)

you have a problem with that.

Yeah.

Disclaimer, disclaimer.

Kara Kelley (20:14)

Yes, all the things. If you’re going dig past that, yes, I would certainly talk to an advisor first and clarify those questions with them. But when you’re setting expectations, regardless of what they do in their personal life, you can certainly say, this is the time that we start. Are you able to make this work?

Brett Allen (20:29)

Yeah, yeah, that’s a good point. Well, you are a speaker. That’s how we met through SCN, Speakers Consulting Network. Tell us more about when you’re on stage, when you speak at dental events, like what are you passionate about? What do you share? Like what’s your message?

Kara Kelley (20:44)

A lot of it is exactly what we’re talking about here, about how do we build these cultures that people actually actively want to work for. My primary keynote is called Compete with Culture. It’s a keynote slash full day workshop, depending on who I’m talking to. And that is really what it’s about, about what is the psychology behind motivation? Why do people want to come to work? How do you make this a practice that people want to work for? What are some things that are out of the dental box when it comes to benefits and flexibility and the way that we work with our team?

Brett Allen (20:46)

Okay.

Kara Kelley (21:11)

that we might be able to set ourselves apart from the thousands of competitors that we have out there. Because nowadays our competitor isn’t just when it comes to competing for talent, isn’t just the dental practice down the street, it’s every work from home opportunity that they possibly have. It’s some of these positions, like look at what assistants are getting paid right now compared to ⁓ retail and grocery stores and some of these other jobs that are lower level.

Brett Allen (21:24)

Hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Kara Kelley (21:34)

where in dentistry we used to say, but we’re consistent, we’re four days a week, they’re nine to five, they don’t have to work overtime or late hours, and that’s why they should come work for us. Okay, well that might have made sense in a certain period of time, but now we’re kind of in a gig economy and there are some times people need that flexibility and they need that over time and they need to be able to do other things with their job. And so why would I study to go be a dental assistant when I could do grocery bagging and clerking without a degree or without a certificate?

Brett Allen (22:02)

Same pay,

yeah. Yeah, some of these grocery stores have great benefits. Yeah.

Kara Kelley (22:03)

for this pay and for more benefits in some cases. That’s the current.

Honestly, I talked to you as a veterinary practice a couple of years ago, I want to say a couple of years, my goodness, it’s probably eight or nine years ago at this point. And I was interviewing their team members doing something what I call a workforce 360, where I go and I talk to the team because sometimes the team will tell me things that they’ll never tell the person signing their paycheck. And one of the things they told me is that they have a friend who was working at Papa John’s Pizza.

Brett Allen (22:25)

Yeah.

Kara Kelley (22:29)

who was out on vacation that week because that person who worked for a pizza company got more PTO than they did as a vet tech with the certification. Yeah.

Brett Allen (22:37)

wow.

that’s so fascinating. ⁓ I know the unlimited vacation policy is becoming more and more of a thing. ⁓ Is that happening in dentistry? Are people offering that? What’s kind of your typical PTO policy?

Kara Kelley (22:45)

you

So here’s

the thing with unlimited PTO. It is primarily for truly exempt employees. So it’s primarily for executive level. I am seeing some of it in like maybe the emerging groups or some of the larger group spaces where maybe their corporate team members have it. Sometimes I’m with a practice administrator or her regional. Unlimited PTO does not mean they get to take off as much time as they want forever and ever. You’re just paying them to be on for months at a time. There’s like, I say those words to dentists and they’re like,

Brett Allen (23:09)

Okay.

Right. Right. Right. Right.

Kara Kelley (23:22)

my God, unlimited PTO is insane. No, it’s not. First of all, it’s, yeah, it’s if somebody who’s on a salary where you’re not tracking time rather than nickel and diming a PTO bank because they need to go to a doctor’s appointment that afternoon or take their dog to the vet or get their oil changed or whatever. We just say, look, we’re paying you on the results of your work. As long as the work is being done, we’re okay if you take time off here and there. Statistically speaking, the companies that have implemented unlimited PTO are actually seeing a decrease in the amount of time that people take off because

Brett Allen (23:25)

It’s not that.

Kara Kelley (23:51)

when they have a set amount, they’re more inclined to want to feel like it’s a benefit that they’ve earned and they have to use versus an unlimited, can I take that week or maybe I shouldn’t just, and they actually take less time. So I don’t know that it will seem mainstream in dentistry in every practice, but I’ve seen it occasionally at the executive level for truly exempt employees, which is really what it was designed for from my knowledge.

Brett Allen (23:57)

⁓ yeah.

that’s interesting.

Well, I know there’s, I mean, look at this conversation. We’ve been having a blast. Time is flying. There’s a lot I’m sure that you help practices with. There’s a wealth of knowledge that you have and expertise and case studies and all of that. If people want to work with you, how can they find out more about what it’s like and what you can do for them?

Kara Kelley (24:35)

Yeah, they’re always welcome to reach out. Email, Kara, K-A-R-A at clinicalhr.com. I also always share myself by 1-2-8-7-6-4-8-6-6. And so if there’s ever an HR issue that they would like to address or if they’re already, because they’re either buying a practice or starting a practice or just, you know, been in practice for a couple of years and are like, hey, we need a fresh start on some of these things. Let’s get a new employee handbook in place. Let’s get job descriptions in place. Let’s get some structure to the HR side of our practice.

⁓ that is exactly what I’m here for. So I would love to have that conversation that they’re struggling to find or retain team members. And I’m happy to talk with them about that as well. those are, those are just some of the top level things that I work with. ⁓ I think some of the other things that the practices will reach out to me for are some of like the team building type retreats. I am I’m disc certified. I’m five behaviors of a cohesive team certified. And so if you’re doing like an offsite, ⁓ all hands on team retreat, we’re doing the strategy session.

Brett Allen (25:18)

Mm-hmm.

team building.

Kara Kelley (25:27)

We want to learn more about how to better communicate with each other, better communicate with patients, how to work together as a team, how to be results focused and build trust and have productive conflict conversations. Those are some of the things that I do for associations and group meetings as well as for individual intact teams. And so I’d love to talk with you about that as well.

Brett Allen (25:46)

That’s so cool. Yeah, team building. So our team gets together twice a year in person ⁓ since we all work remote. all over the country. a lot of people are in Austin. Shout out to the 512 area code on your cell phone there. ⁓ Used to be in Austin. Missed that place. A lot of friends there. yeah, team building in person, having actual time that you dedicate to just being a team and being together is so good. Yeah.

love that part of art.

Kara Kelley (26:16)

Well, I would

love to come and facilitate something for your team as well. Y’all ever do our hands on that?

Brett Allen (26:20)

I was thinking of it. I was thinking

of it. Next time, I’ll keep you in mind as we’re budgeting for it and what we’re doing and planning for it. ⁓ Well, awesome. This has been so fun. I always ask and close with, what’s with that one golden nugget? What’s that one epiphany we can help our listeners have that would have a big impact for their life, their practice? What is that?

Kara Kelley (26:40)

You know, up until this year, I would say it would have been something like making sure that you’ve got the communication in place, making sure you have systems in place like your employee handbooks. ⁓ This year, I think I’m really shifting more of thinking outside of that dental box. You know, I know we’ve talked about this offline about like having partnerships with your marketing company to help you whenever you’re building a recruiting strategy, for example. What are some things that other practices are not thinking of? What are some things that we don’t think of in dentistry that we can really help

with the right out the shift that we’re experiencing right now, whether it’s a technology shift, whether it’s an economical shift, just the way that the market is going in general across the board, the way dentistry is going across the board. What are some things that we can do to stay ahead and broaden the narrow way that we have done things in the past, whether that is changing the way that we flex our schedules for our team members to be a little bit more flexible, to accommodate the ones who are struggling with the, I tempt versus do I work for a team?

whether it’s like I said, partnering with like your marketing company to help you do the, you have your five videos that every practice needs to attract patients. Well, what are the videos that you need to attract team members? What is your social media because we’ve got a new generation in the workforce in the next couple of years, y’all like Gen Z, the oldest Gen Z’s are 28 this year. We’ve got Gen Alpha that’s going to be coming in. Yeah, we’ve got Gen Alpha coming into the workforce in about

Brett Allen (27:49)

Mmm. ⁓

Snapchatters. Yeah.

Kara Kelley (28:02)

three years and so like what are the ways that we’re going to need to communicate to those individuals who are our future team members and how can we how can we have these partnerships that wouldn’t be something you would typically think of like you wouldn’t typically think of partnering with your marketing company with your for your recruiting strategy but why not why why wouldn’t you know that’s something that y’all work with where you help them build out their social media you help them create content and come up with a strategy for that y’all are well positioned to do that and so

Brett Allen (28:14)

Mm-hmm.

Mmm, yeah.

Kara Kelley (28:29)

I think that yeah, that thinking outside of the dental box is going to be the way that we survive the next couple of years.

Brett Allen (28:36)

Yeah,

that’s so great. remember we had a business coach we worked with a few years back that helped me realize you have a marketing channel that brings customers in the door. You should have a marketing channel that brings your team members in as well.

Kara Kelley (28:47)

Yeah,

because it is it’s marketing and we’re well past the let’s put out a 16 paragraph job post and expect people to read it and right the one that looks just like everybody else’s and have them send this cover letter. Yeah, it’s not going to look that way going forward.

Brett Allen (28:49)

Yeah.

Posted up on Indeed or whatever.

Yeah.

Well, this has been so great, Kara. Thank you for coming on the show and sharing your expertise. And we’ll put it all in the show notes. If you need her cell or her email, it’ll be on our website and whatever platform you’re listening on or engaging with. Thank you again, Kara. This has been fun.

Kara Kelley (29:18)

Thank you.

Brett Allen (29:19)

Alright everybody, until next time on the Marketing32 show, have a great rest of your day, great rest of your week, and take care.