Dr. Paul Homoly, CSP, is president of Homoly Communications. Paul’s focus is to help dentists do the dentistry they love and be abundantly compensated. His belief is when dentists thrive, patients are best served, team members engage with their work, and the profession of dentistry is protected and advanced.
Dr. Paul Homoly is a leading voice on the topics of case acceptance for complete dentistry, practice development, and influential communications. For over three decades his work has enabled all members of the dental profession to experience the rewards they’ve earned and deserve.
Name: Paul Homoly
Company: Homoly Communications Institute
URL: http://www.paulhomoly.com/
Title: president of Homoly Communications
Transcript of the Conversation
R.J. Martino:
Welcome to the iProv Made Podcast where we help you build a better more profitable healthcare practice. I’m sitting here with my co-host, Jordan Smith.
Jordan Smith:
Hey, R.J. How are you?
R.J. Martino:
I’m good. I got to tell you, I’m excited because I’m going to be talking, and you’re going to be talking, to a man who wants to tell us a, not a KPI, which we talk a lot about, but a PPI, a prime performance indicator, the one number you should look at.
Jordan Smith:
I love that. That was a key revelation. I like that phrase a lot. For all the listeners out there, Dr. Paul Homoly is our guest today, with Homoly Communications. He specializes in dentist, veterinary, but the things that he’s going to talk about, I think, apply to all facets of healthcare. If you saw the name on here and you Googled him, chances are, if you’re a dentist, you already know who he is. You can’t hardly go to any type of speaking engagement or big conference without either seeing his name on the list or some of his practices on the list of things to talk about. I’m excited to bring you all, not only his story, but how he helps turn around and build practices.
R.J. Martino:
Let’s get started.
Jordan Smith:
All right. Dr. Homoly.
R.J. Martino:
I’m super excited because we get to talk to a subset of people about building their practice. We have Dr. Paul Homoly, who is doing this every day, and came to us with high praise. I hate to tell you, Doc, but we’ve got high expectations for you helping our audience build a profitable healthcare practice.
Dr. Paul Homoly:
All right. Well, I’ll do my best. I’ll do my best. I’ve listened to some of your other podcasts and there’s some really knowledgeable people, I picked up a few tips myself from your podcast. Go ahead, fire away. I’m ready for you, guys.
R.J. Martino:
Well, we always like to kind of start and just tell you our framework and kind of how we think about it. Then, we move over and talk about you. We talk about very simple baby steps. The first one is we like to ask questions to our physician who own practices, and we are trying to dig into what the real problem is. Usually, they tell you some symptom. The symptom is, I really want to culture shift, I want to be the Chick-fil-A of the dentist industry. If you ask more questions, you get to dig a little deeper. As you dig a little deeper, you figure out what the real problem is.
Step two is making sure that the physician or the dentist is someone who wants to take complete accountability for the problem, because we can’t get something for nothing. We’ve got to really say, “We’re going to fix it. We got to get personally invested, and we want the dentist or the doctor to do the same thing.” Three, we look at a triage process where we look to make sure they’ve got a long-term vision. That is a 10-year plan on where they want to be.
After the vision, we make sure we build a strong strategy. Then, we build tactics around meeting that strategy and that long-term vision. Then, we engage the team. We align them and we show kind of a cadence, “Hey, you got to meet weekly or monthly or quarterly.” We have alignment practices that we say, “That’s how we like to talk about building the operation.” That being said, I love having guys like you in, because I know you might have a different philosophy or might align. Why don’t you give a little elevator pitch about yourself and your thoughts behind how to build a practice?
Dr. Paul Homoly:
Wow. Well, I’m a 1975 graduate of University of Illinois College of Dentistry. I went right into the United States Navy at Cherry Point North Carolina, worked with the Marine Corps Air Station.
R.J. Martino:
Thank you for your service.
Dr. Paul Homoly:
One of the best experiences I had is serving with the Navy. They’ve stationed me in the Department of Oral Surgery. I’m a general dentist, but when you’re in the military, you got to go where they point you. I spent two years working with our bass oral surgeon, Dr. Mel Davis. Oh, boy. That was a terrific experience. Unlike most young general dentists, I learned very quickly the operative procedures to dentoalveolar surgery, removal of wisdom teeth, setting fractures, working in the operating room. It was terrific.
After two years in the Navy, I got out and went and practiced in a small Southern community in western North Carolina called Hildebran, North Carolina. This is 1978 now. Back then, a new and brand new emerging technology in dentistry, called dental implants, just came on the scene. I placed my first dental implant in 1978. In 1979, a very interesting event happened in healthcare, all of healthcare. It became legal and ethical for medical practitioners, dentists, physicians, attorneys, architects, engineers, anyone with a state license to market directly to the public. Prior to 1979, that was illegal or ethical.
I marked it in my practice by 1983. Again, I’m a general dentist, but because I had that significant surgical and restorative background from the Navy, my practice was really exclusive to implant and reconstructive dentistry. I focused on what we call dental cripples, those patients with significant dental disease. I did that for 20 years. In 1995, 20 years into practice, I suffered on eye disability to my right eye. Although I could practice dentistry, I could not practice it at the level that I was. I really lost the acute sense of depth perception. I’m not walking into telephone poles or anything like that, but as far as the visual acuity necessary for practicing dentistry, I really lost that ability. I had 20 great years in practice, sold my practice, sold the equipment, sold the building, really got out.
R.J. Martino:
Congratulations.
Dr. Paul Homoly:
I started a business, teaching dentists how to build practices, how to build sophisticated high-end restorative practices. I called my company Homoly Marketing Group. Since then, I changed the name to Homoly Communications, because I brought in different service line extensions. Since 1995, I’ve worked with, literally, thousands of dentists, dental societies, dental associations, dental manufacturers, on the concepts of how dentists can provide complete care to patients, how to make it easy for patients to see us, how to be profitable doing sophisticated dentistry.
That’s not a simple thing. I would say to those listeners who are not in the dental practice, I would boast to say that the practice management challenges of reconstructive dentistry would really rival any practice management challenge in healthcare. The dental environment is highly emotional and highly fearful for patients. Number one, the fees are incredibly high. Patients can spend 30, 40, 50, $60,000. Dental insurance takes care of little or none of it.
There’s no guarantee of outcome, so it’s more retail than it is healthcare. Because we don’t really rely on third-party payers, it’s more of a business of establishing a culture of relationship among the patients to team and the providers. I’ve written five books on the topic, and created a consulting group online program, and all the bells and whistles you’d expect for people like me to do. That’s it, in a nutshell.
R.J. Martino:
Well, I want to hear about all the other bells and whistles, too. Before we get into that, I like to talk about the before and after with working with someone. If someone’s trying to relate to someone that you’ve worked with in the past, what did it look like before you started the implementing procedures? What did their life look like? Personally, professionally, what do the practice look like? Then, what does it look like after sell the vision of what they’re life could be like?
Dr. Paul Homoly:
Well, the practice of medicine and dentistry, basically, is piecework. We really don’t have an economy of scale. It isn’t like you treat one patient, and then, you can scale it up to 10,000. You can’t. It’s one person at a time. Consequently, the practice of healthcare is piecework. It’s piecework. It’s very task-centered, very task-centered.
Consequently, it’s easy for providers to get sucked into efficiency models of running from chair to chair, operatory to operatory, go, go, go, go, go. Doctors, dentists, we’re not being compensated for our wisdom. Insurance codes don’t include wisdom. They just include procedures. Consequently, there’s strong financial incentives for providers to see as many patients as possible in the shortest period of time.
R.J. Martino:
Yeah, just go fast.
Dr. Paul Homoly:
Consequently, that task-centeredness is, how practices look when I first see them? That was your question. What do they look like when I start? Then, the task, then, becomes, “What do we really want to do here?” Then, it gets to be a question of vision. What’s important? To tell you the truth, to some healthcare providers, healthcare is a hobby. It’s a lucrative hobby. They’ll spend six to seven to eight hours a day doing their hobby, whether it’s dentistry, audiology, veterinary, medicine, ophthalmology, whatever it is, and they make a good buck doing it. When they’re done, they go coach Little League, or they read books, or they build model airplanes. They have a life outside their practice.
What they’d like to do is really keep up with your continuing education as the state regulators require them to do. They want to be able to hold their practice together for as long as possible. They would like to be able to have a lifestyle that, when you have “Dr.” in front of your name, there’s a certain amount of entitlement they feel they deserve. They kind of go along with that. I call that the hobbyist. That’s not wrong. That’s not wrong at all. To tell you the truth, some of the happiest dentist I know are hobbyists. They don’t bust their hump trying to be the biggest or the best. They just want to take care of their patients and go home.
Now, there’s another type that is really looking to build legacy. They’re looking to build an enterprise. Yes, they love healthcare, but what they love more is the idea of growing to the point where they have greater significance in their career. They want to be able to impact more people. What’s important to them, income is important to them, but after a certain level, the consumption aspect of their life, really, is replaced with the contribution aspect of their life. They get to the point where they’ve got multiple practices. They’re making plenty go. They’ve got good leadership systems in place. Now, they’re looking to pay back. Those are the legacy seekers, that.
What I do is I work with both groups. I work with both groups. I don’t really have a strong preference, to tell you the truth. The hobbyists are easy and fun to work with, because you give them ideas about how to build relationships with patients, how to perform more procedures per visit to cut down on the task nature of things. The legacy builders, oftentimes, are looking for, how do they scale their wisdom? With them, I work with them on how to build intellectual property, that is writing books and white papers and online programs. How do they lead? How do they become key opinion leaders within their domains? That, to me, is very satisfying work.
In my own career, I have been a legacy builder. That’s been me. I’ve been served on boards and I’ve been a key opinion leader, and have created multiple companies, and on and on and on. That’s kind of it. That’s kind of the two groups that I see. Both are good to work with. Both have different energy. You can’t take a hobbyist and make them into a legacy builder, unless they want it. I don’t determine what they want. I just listen to what they want.
At some point, the hobbyist gets burned down into tasks, to tell you the truth. It typically occurs about year eight or 10 in people’s careers, when they realize, “This is old.” The thrill of fixing a tooth begins to go away. They’ve done it a million times. Or fitting a pair of eyeglasses or fitting a pair of hearing aids, it gets old. After a while, they’re saying, “Well, what’s it all about?” kind of thing. Then, contribution. Now, they begin to hire associates. They bring younger people in. Now, they’re interested how to access their wisdom, how to package their wisdom so they can help other people. That’s exciting work right there. That’s kind of outside of healthcare. That’s in the leadership and entrepreneurism. That’s why you guys invited me on this show.
R.J. Martino:
That’s right.
Jordan Smith:
I love that. It goes along to kind of the process that we talked about, too. What are the symptoms of whatever problem that you have, then, you’re doing this, too, digging into what their vision is. They want a multi-provider practice, where they’re kind of playing the CEO role, instead of being the dentist all day long.
Dr. Paul Homoly:
That’s right.
Jordan Smith:
Are they doing enough where they can make a nice living, pay off their debt, stay up on top of everything?
Dr. Paul Homoly:
And go fishing. Go fishing when they’re done? Yeah, absolutely.
Jordan Smith:
[crosstalk] a couple of weeks every year to go do what they love to do and do something nice for their family.
Dr. Paul Homoly:
Sure.
Jordan Smith:
I like that. That makes a lot of sense. Talk a little bit about, and I know you’ve got these two different segments, and I love the way you describe them, kind of, in both instances, how involved are the most successful? You already mentioned success looks a couple of different ways. How involved are the actual doctors whenever they come to you with an issue? Are you kind of talking them first, and then, you’re mainly spending time on their staff? Are they involved with every step of your process?
Dr. Paul Homoly:
I principally deal only with the main provider, the big cheese, the head of it. Here’s why. If the leader doesn’t embrace the concept, there’s no way the staff is going to be able to sustain the commitment to make it happen. It has to come from the top. My work is about how to bring the best out in people.
A way of doing that is to create work environments where it’s easy for them to manifest the best versions of themselves. Put the right people doing the jobs they’re best suited for. If the big cheese, if the boss doesn’t buy into it, then, I don’t accept the work. This has happened to me. I’ve lost major business opportunities. When I say major, I’m talking about a dental entrepreneur that may own 2 or 300 dental practices.
R.J. Martino:
Wow.
Jordan Smith:
It’s hard to turn down.
Dr. Paul Homoly:
They want me to install my treatment acceptance process as a whole. I have online programs that they can subscribe to, all of that. It’s scalable. It’s exactly what the big legacy builders need. When the CEO or the Chief of Operations or the VP or the President, or somebody in that C-suite, starts getting me, “Well, so and so who’s further down on the food chain is going to handle all this.” That’s a process that’s destined to fail. Their check paid cash, okay, but I’m not going to have a long-term relationship with those people.
I am to the point now where I won’t take the business. Even if they’re putting the check in front of me, I’ll say, “Listen, if you don’t buy into this, then, it’s going to go away. I don’t want people asking you two years from now, ‘When you worked with Homoly?’ ‘Yeah, I worked for Homoly, but it didn’t work out.'” Well, my stuff works, but people make the business work. The number one person that’s got to make it work is the leader. If the leader is not into it, 100%, all the time, full in, then, I’m not in it at all.
R.J. Martino:
I love that. I just can’t commend you enough for taking that stance on it, because that is both experience talking. It’s just so wise and so counter to what we see often in the dental industry, or physicians. We want to throw money at problems and just make them go away. It’s not until we get personally involved. I just said this to Jordan. It’s like we almost got to file bankruptcy before we start saving money. We got to almost let the doors closed before we change stuff in the business. It’s not fun dealing with problems, but it’s not until you just say, “You know what? I’m sick and tired of being sick and tired. I know what it takes. I got to get in there and do it.” You have to get to that point to really see change in your practice.
Dr. Paul Homoly:
You see, that’s the big benefit of the coronavirus. I hate to say it. I was just reading some newsletters before we did this webinar that dental expenditures are supposed to go down 66% this year and 30% next year. That’s billions and billions of dollars. There are going to be dentists that are be going on to business. Dentists who have marginal leadership skills. They may think they’re leaders because people do what they say to do. That’s not leadership.
The coronavirus crisis is going to bring a lot of people to their knees and say, “I need to hit on all cylinders all the time.” Patient’s budgets are going to be tighter. This applies to every professional that’s listening to this right now. Patient’s budgets are going to be tighter. Their aversion to risk is going to be off the charts. They’re going to have all sorts of life circumstances that we’re going to need to deal with. Plus, you add into that how the whole definition of standard of care needs to change.
Let me back into this topic. Let me talk about the clinic. We’ve been talking about the business nature of things. Let me talk about the clinical nature of things here. I’m going to relate this to dental. I’ll let non-dental people who are listening to this kind of figure it out and apply it to where it makes sense for you. In dental, there are dental conditions that will exacerbate systemic conditions. Oral inflammation, periodontal disease can create issues within the immune system that make people more susceptible to infection, including COVID-19.
The whole concept of standard of care for dentistry, the definition is more or less along the lines of restoring patients with the minimal amount of dentistry required to restore them to optimal function, comfort, phonetics, aesthetics, and airway. That’s what dentists deal with.
I’m suggesting. I’m more than suggesting. I’m saying here that that definition is no longer adequate, that the standard of care must include patient safety. If we were to read the fine standard of care, it would be restoring patients to optimal function, comfort, aesthetics, phonetics, airway, and systemic safety. What does that mean for the typical dentists? What it means is that they no longer have the excuse for not presenting complete care to patients. You see, over 70% of dentists don’t present complete care to patients.
How do I know that? Because I’ve done assessments with thousands of patients, with thousands of dentists for over a decade. In so, 70% of the dentists, let’s just say it’s 70% of the dentists, aren’t presenting complete care. Why is that? Well, I’ll tell you why. It’s because they’re afraid. It’s fear that patients will be overwhelmed by the complexity of what they’re recommending and they’ll lose the patient from sticker shock, so they play it safe.
Jordan, let’s just say that you’ve got missing teeth, you got some aesthetic problems in front, you’ve got some orthodontic issues, in order to fix a mouth like that, it might be 15 to $20,000. Now, the dentist looking in your mouth was thinking, “Oh, man. I don’t know. It’s a lot of money. Maybe, I shouldn’t recommend complete care. Maybe, I’ll just recommend for the front teeth and kick the can down the road a little bit.”
Then, the treatment plan, instead of a $25,000 treatment plan is a 70 to $100 treatment plant, but complete care has not been offered. What if one of the conditions I didn’t offer you, Jordan, contributed to a systemic condition that made you more susceptible to COVID-19? You see what I’m getting at right here?
Jordan Smith:
Yeah.
Dr. Paul Homoly:
What I’m saying to every provider that’s listening now, dental or not, that offering complete care is the new standard of care. Now, that will drive more procedures per visit, because what we want to do is do more procedures per visit, limit the number. The fewer visits the patient makes, the safer they are.
R.J. Martino:
Sure. Yeah, I agree.
Dr. Paul Homoly:
You see what I’m saying?
R.J. Martino:
Yeah.
Dr. Paul Homoly:
Now, it’s not only an economic crisis, but it’s going to be a clinical renewal that, maybe, COVID-19 is going to give practitioners the nudge they needed to give them the courage to offer complete care. Remember, 70% of them don’t do it. What my work is about, remember I was talking about legacy?
R.J. Martino:
Yeah.
Jordan Smith:
Yeah.
Dr. Paul Homoly:
If I was to be able to wave a magic wand and say what’s going to be my legacy when I’m done with all this and I’m off fishing somewhere, I want my legacy to be that I’ve reminded the profession that complete care is the new standard of care. That’s what I want to be known for in this coronavirus. You see, it’s interesting when I look at the body of work that I have around the patient experience, the new patient experience and treatment acceptance. I’ve developed that 25 years ago.
Over the years, I’ve refined it. I’ve taken things out. I’ve added things in based on changes in technology and culture. I didn’t design any of it with a worldwide pandemic in mind. None of that. I wasn’t thinking about that. Well, maybe, you did. The serendipity of it is that the way things are shaping up, it’s really the resource that dentists need. It’s totally accidental is what happened.
R.J. Martino:
That’s incredible.
Dr. Paul Homoly:
Well, I’m getting a little philosophical with you.
R.J. Martino:
No, this is great. This is what audience likes to hear, is really getting into kind of the core and the philosophy and the framework for making decisions. I talked about it a lot, but our belief system drives our actions.
Dr. Paul Homoly:
Sure.
R.J. Martino:
Our actions are what really changes a practice. All of it’s driven by this belief system. It’s philosophical, and it drives beliefs, and beliefs drive action. It is important that we impart your beliefs into them. I love the thought process. The other thing that lots of our audience always talks about is, they think, “Man, I’ve got so many problems, that what you guys are talking about is definitely one of them. But I’m afraid I won’t be successful even if I brought them in, because I got these other problems to deal with.” Are there key features that allow you to say, “Hey, this guy is going to be successful,” or, on the alternative, are there key things where you look and you say, “This guy, I’m going to teach him the right stuff, but he’s not going to be successful?”
Dr. Paul Homoly:
Well, I don’t judge it going in like that. The only judgment that I have is what I’ve already talked about. If the leader is an asshole, I don’t work with them. I know that’s kind of raw, but that’s what it boils down to. You can sniff that out real quick, real quick. For the garden variety practitioner, I go in with the attitude of positivity and optimism.
I think a mistake that a lot of trainers, a lot of consultants, make is they tolerate errors, that they tolerate errors on the part of who they’re trying to coach. When you tolerate an error without immediately correcting it, then, so much time has to go back to repeat the process to fix the error. Do either one of you, guys, golf? Are you, guys, golfers at all?
R.J. Martino:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Jordan Smith:
Yeah.
Dr. Paul Homoly:
I see you shaking your head.
R.J. Martino:
Poorly.
Jordan Smith:
I feel like it’s a negative if I say, “yes,” and people see my golf skills.
R.J. Martino:
We enjoy being out there swinging clubs.
Dr. Paul Homoly:
Sure. Now, I’m going golfing right after this interview. As a matter of fact, I got a tee time that’s set up in about two hours. Here’s the deal. Imagine that you were five years old and your mom and dad were golfers, and they got you to the best golf coach and you learn the right way to swing the golf club, instead of the way you, guys, are swing it now or the way I swing it now. You didn’t have to unlearn anything. The first time you learned it, you learned it the right way.
Well, it’s the same with this stuff. So much of the energy that goes into consulting and coaching is fixing previous screw ups or false beliefs that people learn. The easiest people for me to train, I tell you this right now, are the new providers. Providers right out of a specialty programs, or right out of school.
I have tremendous success with new dentists, young dentists that are run out of their general practice residency programs or, maybe, coming out of the military or coming out of dental school. They don’t know what to do. I walk. Here’s a Yoda, Dr. Homoly Yoda. I’m like Daddy. I say, “Here’s how you do it,” they go, “Okay.” They don’t argue with me. They just know they don’t know. They think I do because I drive a nice car, and they figured they want a nice car, too. It’s just-
Jordan Smith:
They have to unlearn those bad practices that they’ve already learned throughout the years, right?
Dr. Paul Homoly:
That’s right. I don’t have to argue. When you have it, what about this? I don’t get any of that. They just say, “Yes.” [crosstalk].
Jordan Smith:
I’m going to try that, Doc. Try it my way.
Dr. Paul Homoly:
I’ve worked with this young dentist right now. He belongs to a group in Carolina’s dentists. They’re a great group. They’re about 20, 25 practices, or so, in North Carolina. The dentist’s name is Dr. Nolan Bodah. This guy’s been in practice a year and a half. This guy is making a ton of money. He’s loving dentistry. All he knows is what I’ve taught him about how to talk to patients. He’s a good dentist. I don’t take credit for any of his technical skills.
R.J. Martino:
Are you sure?
Dr. Paul Homoly:
Nothing, but I take a lot of credit for giving him permission to make it easy for patients to say “yes.” It’s a young practitioner that they just soak it up.
Another person that’s very difficult to work with is the semi-successful practitioner. They got just enough successful, they got some dollars in their pocket. They’ve kind of bought into a philosophy about something, and it’s hard to get them to change.
The person that’s impossible to work with is the person who, probably, should not have chosen healthcare, to begin with. They made an error in judgment, or they had parents who pushed them into a profession that they simply don’t have the unique ability to be able. To be a healthcare provider, you have to have a lot of moving pieces. If you don’t have the ability, if you don’t have hand-eye coordination, if you don’t have high cognitive ability, if you don’t have the ability to follow processes, if you have a minimal expressive range, if you don’t like people, if you don’t give a shit.
Those are all the big criteria. If you don’t have those, then, you don’t belong there. If they are there because of some reason, then, you’re wasting your time. It’s like the old saying, never try to teach a pig to sing. You’ll waste the time and you’ll irritate the pig.
R.J. Martino:
Well, I love that. If we’re talking about this, I agree with everything you’re saying. Again, that belief system, the five-year-old doesn’t have any bad habit yet. I’ve been swinging the golf club wrong for 20 years, and good luck trying to fix my swing.
Dr. Paul Homoly:
Me, too.
R.J. Martino:
It is ingrained in my head. I get it. The belief systems that lots of experienced entrepreneurs, business owners, dentists have, those are ingrained deep into the crevices of our brain. That is hard to change. Let’s talk, procedurally, kind of how do you integrate into their practice. Maybe, talk a little bit about the bells and whistles. Is it in person? You talked about an online. You talked about some books.
Dr. Paul Homoly:
Prior to COVID-19, I did most of it via Zoom, like we’re doing now. I would do an on-site visit. I would do an assessment. I’d start with an assessment. We would do some Zoom calls, and I would get to know the principles involved. We would do an assessment. What do you want, where are you going, where you’ve been, that kind of thing.
Then, I’d show up and it would assemble the entire team, all the providers, all the team members. I’d spend a half day or full day giving everybody the kind of the lay of the land and give them a sense of who I am. They need to know that I’m on not up to make anybody wrong. I have a sense of humor. I can speak to them. I’ve been where they want to be. That way, they can smell me and touch me and get the sense of that.
Then, from there, it’s mostly online. I’m very proud of the intellectual property that I’ve been able to package and distribute online. There are recording sessions and there’s multiple programs based on provider experience and career stage. During those online sessions, typically, it takes anywhere from four to six months to get through the entire online program. What I do is I have monthly Zoom calls with the entire team, all the providers, to kind of check in with them. We have private Facebook groups that they can collaborate with.
My big challenge there is engagement, how do you get people to stay with the program? That’s why that leadership thing is so important. I’m not looking over their shoulder. The leader of the team or the operations team, depending on how big the organization is. If you got a large organization, you need operations people who are absolutely drinking the Kool-Aid on this stuff, because behavioral changes are hard. It’s developing good habits. We’re back to the golf swing again.
Jordan Smith:
Well, that’s a great point to make. I love that. It sounds like you really come in and plug in to every aspect of their practice, and review it.
Dr. Paul Homoly:
No, I really don’t. No, I don’t plug into every aspect. I don’t have anything to do with hiring and firing, or overhead control. My specialty, I’m very deep and very neural. I specialize in the treatment acceptance process, the new patient in the treatment acceptance process. That’s the first domino that’s going to fall.
If patients aren’t saying “yes” to care, I don’t care what field you’re in. If patients aren’t saying “yes” to your hearing aid or your eyeglasses, or your breast augmentation, whatever it is that you’re selling, if they’re not saying “yes” to that, there’s nothing you can do to make that problem go away.
I’ve been very specific in really assembling the most complete body of work on the new patient experience and treatment acceptance. It turns out what works in dental works in audiology. It works in veterinary care. It works in multiple domains of healthcare. I really stick to healthcare.
Jordan Smith:
Very cool.
R.J. Martino:
Dr. Paul Homoly presents so well, has obviously had success in the past, is a dentist, is a premier speaker on any. If you go into any dentistry event, you’re going to hear him touted as a great speaker. The first thing a lot of our audience thinks is, “I can’t afford him.” It’s going to be a fortune. I just can’t do it. You don’t have to, but can you share typical pricing models? I know everybody hates that question, because it’s hard to say, but how does pricing work on something like this?
Dr. Paul Homoly:
Dental offices spend more on Q-tips than they do in me. I’ll tell you that right now. Here’s my pricing model. My pricing model is based on me having tens of thousands of practices online. For the first 20 years in my career, after I retired, I’ve been out now, I have not practiced dentistry in over 25 years. Over the last 25 years, I’ve been doing this stuff. For the first 15 or 20 of those years, my fees were very high. Very high. 10,000, $15,000 a day. That would include all expenses, all the bells and whistles. That’s on a per day basis. If you do multiple days, I don’t really reduce my multiple day fee, because once I get on an airplane, you know how it is.
R.J. Martino:
[crosstalk].
Dr. Paul Homoly:
It isn’t the time you spend in the facilities. It’s the time you take to get to the facility. I’m in Scottsdale, Arizona right now. If I have to fly to New York, it’s an hour for me to get to the airport, another hour and a half at the airport, another four hours in the airplane, another hour to get to the home. I will spend three times the amount of time traveling as I will actually consulting. For me, to go on site and spend a couple of days, it’s going to be $40,000.
Now, would people write the check? Sure, they would. In the salad days of dentistry, the last couple years, this year was forecasted to be the best year in dentistry in terms of overall revenues. Historically, the best ever. Well, the coronavirus has changed all that. However, about two years ago, I get real tired of getting on airplanes. It’s just, “I’m done with this.” Don’t get me wrong. I love it. I love it when I get to where I’m going. I don’t know. It’s just I reached a point.
I remember I was in a limo driving home and I was just tired. It was after midnight. I’ve been in that car. I actually forgot where am I coming from? What were you coming from? I don’t know. I have to look at the departure gates. Where am I coming from? That’s right. I’m coming from Indianapolis. I thought, “This has gone too far.” About two years ago, I said, “You know what? I’m going to reinvent myself.”
I changed my vision. I changed my vision from being the on-site guru, hide by the side guru. I did well at that. Now, I said, “You know what? I’m going to be every man’s consultant. What I’m going to do is I’m going to do stuff like this, and I’m going to create online program so I can scale this stuff.” My stuff, it’s under $1,000 a year for a dental team to access my online material. It’s under $1,000 a year. People say, “It’s worth much more than that.” Well, sure. I would rather have 10 people at $1,000 a year than no people at 10,000 a year.
R.J. Martino:
Well, that is phenomenal. I think you have piqued a lot of our audience already, and those who don’t know you, the more they’ll find out, the more they’ll realize that it is well worth that annually, to get any access to it.
Dr. Paul Homoly:
If somebody loses their mind and say, “No, no, no. We want you personally. Get on the airplane,” well, then, get off your wallet because here I come.
R.J. Martino:
You can justify those costs. You put math to someone that has multiple facilities.
Dr. Paul Homoly:
Sure, absolutely.
R.J. Martino:
You write those checks and it’s well worth it.
Dr. Paul Homoly:
It’s well worth it.
R.J. Martino:
I love that you’re going to get to spread your legacy out, your knowledge. You’re sharing the stuff that is in your head that is taken decades. You can’t explain to entrepreneurs until they do it how much time they save by bringing an expert in, who has lived and breathed it for 20 years.
Dr. Paul Homoly:
Absolutely. Look at what we’re doing right now. Is this so different? Jordan, I can always reach out and touch you. You guys are right here. You know what? I got a cup of coffee sitting over here and I smell lunch in the next room. Sweet Lisa, my wife, she’s a nutritionist and a chef. She’s making seafood paella. I can hardly wait. I’m not anywhere near an airport.
Yet, I think I’m doing a pretty good job of giving you guys kind of a sense of what’s in my head. All I would have to do is pick up my mouse and click on a few things and go to share screen, and I can show you everything I would show you if I was on site, everything.
R.J. Martino:
It didn’t happen in 1979 when you [crosstalk].
Dr. Paul Homoly:
No. I tried doing it. I tried to do it in the mid-80s.
R.J. Martino:
Really?
Dr. Paul Homoly:
I built a recording studio, three cameras, green screen, lights.
R.J. Martino:
Oh, gosh. That would have been a fortune back then.
Dr. Paul Homoly:
It was $90,000. Plus, that did not include the operators. I add the camera operators and the editors, and all that stuff, I lost my ass on that deal. Here’s why. Because I invested in the infrastructure so I could send this stuff out. Too many dental offices had dial up connections and they would buy our online program. Then, they’d scream at me because the streaming would be interrupted.
I said, “Well, what do you have, a diesel computer? What’s going on?” I ended up feeling so frustrated, I sold everything. I said, “You know what? Forget it.” It wasn’t until two or three years ago that everything that we’re doing now is really happened. This is crazy good. Zoom is cheap and it’s easy to use. Look at us.
R.J. Martino:
It does feel like we’re right here and you can get all the information you need, transact quicker. I think we’re excited to know that you’re out there, to tell our audience about you. One of our kind of key things is kind of tracking progress or hitting the goal along the way. Do you have anything in your practice or in your framework that you kind of look at as far as tracking progress and outcomes?
Dr. Paul Homoly:
Sure. Healthcare providers deal in what’s called KPIs, key performance indicators. When I look at the different data sets that different analytic companies offer healthcare providers, I see reams of papers of KPIs, all this detail. It just makes my head hurt. I came to the conclusion, this is 10 years ago or more, that we don’t need as nearly as many KPIs as we have.
What I did is I created what I call a PPI, a prime performance indicator. What is the one number, if there was one thing to talk about? I’m talking about dental now, I don’t know about this other domains, but I would imagine it is true, too. I’ll just cover my bases and say this is absolutely true in dental. The prime performance indicator in dental, in every dental office under every situation, is what is the total monthly amount of total care offered? Not care accepted, not collections, none of that. The prime performance indicator is how much dentistry has been offered.
Here’s why. We’re going to call that complete care needs. Complete care needs is the total monthly treatment presented. Complete care needs are the prime indicator. Collections are a lagging indicator to complete care needs. For example, let’s say, in the month of January, you present $200,000 worth of dentistry. Well, you present it.
Now, when did those collections occur? I’ll tell you when they occur. In the January, February, March, and April. Collections are a lagging indicator of the previous month’s complete care needs. Now, patients who accept care, somebody says, you present them $10,000 with treatment. They go, “Yes, Doc. Let’s do it.” Then, the practice management person enters into the practice management software, right?
R.J. Martino:
Yup.
Dr. Paul Homoly:
$10,000 presented, $10,000 accepted. The next day the patient calls and cancels the appointment. Here’s the question. Does the practice manager go back into the software and change the numbers? No, she doesn’t, because she’s too busy with all these tasks. Collections or treatment acceptance percentage, percentage of treatment acceptance is a ghost number. It’s not the number to watch. Now, so many leaders look at that number. They ask me, “Well, if we hire you, will you increase our case acceptance?” I go, “That’s not the number we’re going to track.” “Why not?” Then, I give them the speech I just gave you.
R.J. Martino:
I love it. Jordan and I, we always talk about whatever measures moves. If you start measuring a number, that number starts moving in the direction that you’re. The more numbers you put out there, the less your people are able to focus on anything.
Dr. Paul Homoly:
Exactly. Focus on the big number.
R.J. Martino:
We all want one number, but it’s always so hard. I’ve never heard someone talk about a PPI.
Dr. Paul Homoly:
PPI.
R.J. Martino:
A prime performance indicator.
Dr. Paul Homoly:
Prime performance indicator. Every practice has one. I would say dental. I don’t care what kind of practice you are, where you are, where you are in the world, there’s only one number. The number you should be really working toward is complete are needs. Now, that’s not to say that you shouldn’t track collections and all the other stuff.
R.J. Martino:
Sure, yeah.
Dr. Paul Homoly:
But don’t bust your hump on that and don’t reward on collections because, then, what happens is that team members get all bound up in driving treatment, which oftentimes can come across a sales pressure to patients. Get team members to get behind, how do you muster the courage and the personality and the initiative to offer patients complete care, offer them complete care in a way that doesn’t overwhelm them, or blow them out of the water, the sticker shock.
Let me say something right now. We’re creating lots of loose ends here as we speak, because there’s practitioners that are going, “Well, what about this? What about that?”
R.J. Martino:
Sure.
Dr. Paul Homoly:
Well, everybody that’s listening to this podcast, here’s what you should do. I put together a sample lesson. Remember my online program? Remember I talked about the online? I’ve put together a sample lesson. Here’s what you do. You pick up your smartphone and text the word, “leadership,” to the address, 55444. Leadership 55444.
What you’re going to get on your phone, it’s going to say, “Hey, is it okay that Homoly send you some stuff?” You say okay to that. You put your email in there. Then, poof, you’re going to get a landing page that’s going to take you to a sample lesson. Just check it out. It gives you a sense of the instructional design. It’s a free lesson.
With this COVID-19, I decided to do the unthinkable. I hate discounts. I see, “Hey, two for one.” I would go, “Oh, man. This is going to suck.” I did something interesting. About two weeks ago, I signed up for an online program called masterclass. Write that one down, masterclass. It’s phenomenal. I’m taking a writing course right now from Malcolm Gladwell.
Jordan Smith:
I love those.
Dr. Paul Homoly:
I’m taking a writing course from this guy. Now, it’s recorded online, but it’s righteous. I’m telling you, it’s really good. What they do, it’s 180 bucks a year, and I can learn the guitar from, what’s his name, Santana. I could learn basketball handling from who’s this guy that plays for the Lakers? I forget his name.
Jordan Smith:
Kobe? Not Kobe. LeBron?
Dr. Paul Homoly:
No, not LeBron. It’s the other guy. He’s short. He’s the small guy that runs around the court. Anyway. The world’s best at what they do. Masterclass offers two for one. They say, “You sign up and we’ll allow you to gift an annual subscription to a colleague.” I thought, “Wow.” The first thing I thought was, “Well, that’s a good idea. Whom am I going to give it to?” I gave it to my wife because they have culinary. They got all these famous chefs who’s worldwide chefs and my wife’s a chef. She’ll love it.
Then, I started thinking, “Why are they doing that?” Here’s what I realized, is that, every time they get a guy like me, that’s willing to write a check, and I find someone that can go in on it, now, what they’ve got, they’ve doubled their potential for word-of-mouth, haven’t they? They’ve doubled it.
What I’ve done with my online pro is exactly what I did. I did it last week. I just pulled the trigger on it. I told my team, “Here’s what we’re going to do.” They said, “Are you out of your mind.” I said, “Yes, I am. This is what we’re going to do.” Now, people that sign up for my online program, you sign up and you can gift it to a friend for a year. Bingo. If you want to, you can share the cost, but that’s not the reason to do it. The reason to do it is that if you sign up a buddy, let’s say, Jordan, you and I, let’s say you buy it, and then, you enroll me. Now, you and I become accountability partners.
R.J. Martino:
I love that.
Dr. Paul Homoly:
We start talking to each other about it. Boy, once you get an accountability partner or once you get teams working together, that’s really the magic right there. Anyway, Leadership 55444.
Jordan Smith:
I love that. That’s great. There’s no reason not to.
Dr. Paul Homoly:
None.
Jordan Smith:
You said, we’ve got a lot of loose ends, and there are. We could do a whole series with Paul. Just trying to give out just an introduction to him and his processes and his organization-
Dr. Paul Homoly:
That’s right.
Jordan Smith:
And what he does. Before we wrap up, I want to ask a couple of more questions that we kind of call our final round.
Dr. Paul Homoly:
I’m very excited.
Jordan Smith:
I love it. These are easy, though. You’ve been talking about a lot of stuff. I know the listeners out there, they’ve got a ton of value, but maybe, there’s a couple out there that say, “Well, this stuff is great. I’m definitely going to text that number. I’m going to get that free.” What are some real life actionable tactical things that some of them can start doing today, that will move the needle in the right direction?
Dr. Paul Homoly:
Number one rule, offer complete care. Do a complete exam, look at all conditions, then, recommend treatment for all conditions. That applies to everybody that’s on the line right now. I don’t care what your profession is. Look at all conditions. Especially, now in light of COVID-19, for those conditions that could contribute to establish pre-existing condition, then, it becomes, like I said before, complete care is the new standard of care. Number one, start offering complete care.
Number two, do it in such a way that you accommodate the new circumstances of people’s lives. Talk to them about what’s going on in their life. Then, acknowledge those life events. For example, Jordan, you come into my practice and I do an interview with you before we do any exam, and I find out that you’re still employed. Let’s say, you’re an electrician, but your wife has been laid off because she’s a teacher. You get kids at home.
Now, I do my exam and I present treatment to you. Let’s say you need $6,000 worth of dentistry. That’s not a lot of dentistry, by the way. Dentistry is a very expensive stuff. When I present care to you, Jordan, I would present it with the acknowledgement of your life circumstance. It sounds like, “Jordan, now that I’ve looked at your teeth, I know that we can get you comfortable chewing on that website. I know that’s been a problem for you. I also know that things are tough right now. You mentioned to me that your wife’s been laid off, you’re homeschooling at work. You still have your job. With this virus thing, it’s tough. I want you to know that we’ll do everything we can to help you fit this within your life and within your budget.” At that point, I’d introduce you to our patient advocate and she would help you with financial interest.
See, what I’m doing is I’m empathetic. I’m just not, “You got this problem, I’ll sell you the solution.” That’s the old style of stuff. That’s the old style stuff. Now, we don’t have a choice but to empathize or acknowledge. Empathy is almost the wrong word because a lot of male provider, a lot of healthcare male providers, they don’t understand that word. They think empathy, that’s being soft or something. Empathy is just another form of intelligence. It’s what it is.
Jordan Smith:
It is. It’s a different language. We talk about it. It’s one of our core values with iProv, the marketing agency that R.J. and I run.
Dr. Paul Homoly:
That’s right. That’s right.
Jordan Smith:
One of our core values is empathetic guidance, is you got to guide somebody.
Dr. Paul Homoly:
There you go.
Jordan Smith:
You have to do it empathetically.
Dr. Paul Homoly:
There you go. You, guys, are in the marketing business. I’m telling you that the weak link in your business is not the marketing. The weak link is after the phone rings and they get on the phone and they start talking to the patients. That’s the weak point.
Jordan Smith:
Very cool. All right.
R.J. Martino:
This has been amazing. We love it. I want to repeat. Everybody should, right now, pick up your cell phone, text message Leadership to 55444.
Dr. Paul Homoly:
That’s it.
R.J. Martino:
Dr. Homoly has the biggest and loudest cheerleaders at every conference you can think of. You know his stuff is good. Let’s take advantage of this guy and get all this free content. If anyone else is interested in getting in touch with you, what’s your recommend way for them to contact you and get in touch with you?
Dr. Paul Homoly:
Just go to my website. It’s my name, paulhomoly.com, P-A-U-L-H-O-M-O-L-Y.com. You can see all the stuff that we got on there. There’s contact information and you want to make phone appointments through this information on that, too. You just dig through the website. You can see all you want. The place to start is Leadership 55444. Start there. If you like what you see, well, then, it will work for you.
Jordan Smith:
Very cool. Dr. Hamlin, we appreciate it so much. Thank you.
Dr. Paul Homoly:
Okay guys. See you.
R.J. Martino:
Thank you.
Dr. Paul Homoly:
Bye-bye.
Jordan Smith:
Well, everybody, I hope that that was as fun and as valuable as it was for all of you guys as it was for R.J. and I. It was a great combo, R.J.
R.J. Martino:
He really got into some philosophy, got into giving practical advice. It could be applicable right now in kind of the whole scale. I can’t tell you how much I said it during the podcast but texting Leadership to 55444. We’ve already done it. It’s going to be worth it, just being able to see and understand kind of if it’ll apply in your practice.
Jordan Smith:
If you have any questions, we’ll also include all of his contact information in the show notes. Go follow him. He’s putting out good information all the time as well. Like, follow, comment, share.
R.J. Martino:
Forward this to somebody. Email someone a link to this that needs to hear. It can be almost, I’d tell you, any dentist you know would appreciate that you thought about them enough to just forward them the audio.
Jordan Smith:
Absolutely. If you have any questions, reach out. Dr. Homoly is a wealth of information and good stories, too. All right. R.J., until next time. Thanks for listening to iProv Made Podcast.
R.J. Martino:
Thanks, guys.
