John Meis (00:01.496)
Hey everybody, welcome to this episode of The Double Your Production Podcast. I'm Dr. John Meis here with my partner Wendy Briggs. Hey Wendy, how you doing?
Wendy Briggs (00:10.6)
I'm great, Dr. John. How are you?
John Meis (00:12.694)
I am doing good. So we've got a great topic today, and it's really a timely one because of some of the experiences of some of our clients are having right now. But the topic is really stress in dentistry. And what are the mechanisms we have for dealing with stress in a healthy way? So, Wendy, you're such a great researcher. You have some stats here to talk about. So let's is it let's see how big of a problem it is.
Wendy Briggs (00:41.612)
Yeah, you know, it's interesting because these are things that we hear about all the time. We hear about this from clients. Certainly, we have a lot of doctors reach out that say, "I've just something's got to give. You know, I'm having all of these stressors with my practice." And they might be, you know, searching out help and support for that. So we get a lot of those conversations, but then we also hear a lot on social media comments or posts from from doctors who are just in the thick of it with the struggle. that it always seems to strike me in a sad way because it doesn't have to be that way, right? But the statistics that you're referencing, I came across an ADA survey, and this was a survey that the ADA did specifically to determine how all of the details that they could know about dentists and their well being. So, you know, on average, how is your life, right? And on average they found that dentists report five to seven stress triggers every single day while they're dentisting. And that's a lot.
John Meis (01:46.453)
It is a lot, you know. And if you if you figure having a stressor event, it's not just a thing, you know, your body's your body's hormonal system reacts to it and then that has to settle out and it takes time. And so if you have five to seven a day, you're probably feeling in stress, you know, almost the entire day.
Wendy Briggs (02:11.052)
Right. And so it's kind of a obviously something we need to talk about. And in some circles in dentistry, it becomes like the elephant in the room. Everybody, you know, so and sometimes that's the comments that are on those posts. Like everybody is stressed. Like that's just what we do. It's a stressful profession. Well, I don't think that's a a very good answer, you know. I think identifying what the causes of the stress are and figuring out how we can minimize those stress triggers, what can we do to to avoid them or what can we do to make things better so that we don't have to exist in that constant state of stress?
I think that would be my preference. And maybe I'm a little bit looking through the world through rose-colored glasses. But what we see and what we hear from clients is after they get some of these issues confronted and dealt with, they report being much happier, right? At work and things are going much better now than they ever have been. I've I'm having the best time I've ever had, you know, so that tells me that there are some solutions.
John Meis (02:43.832)
Right. Absolutely. And you know, our highest performing doctors on on the clinical side and our highest performing doctors on the business side, you know, they all have a a somewhat of a back and forth between that they have moments of of no stress and then they have moments of stress. So there's stress and strain, and then there's times where everything goes really, really easy. And you know, to some degree the high performers will push themselves to the point where they have a little bit of stress. But this everyday stress all day long? Very, very destructive. Very, very hard on your body, Very, very hard on your brain. So it's something that really there are solutions for. And we wanted to walk through what we see as some of the unhealthy things that people do to adjust to it and some of the healthy things.
Wendy Briggs (03:59.873)
Yeah. So let's take a minute and the top stressors from that ADA wellbeing survey. I'd love to share with our listeners because maybe you can decide, you know, if you are experiencing some of these stressors yourselves, right? So the number one stress trigger was financial stressors.
John Meis (04:20.586)
Of course. So we've got rising costs, we've got lowering reimbursement, we've got poor consumer confidence right now. There's a lot of financial stress in practices.
Wendy Briggs (04:32.788)
Right. And it seems just over the last few weeks, we've also spoken with doctors who all of a sudden had a major stress trigger, a major event that was not expected. So one of them they had an active lease in place, but the landlord sold their building and they had 90 days to vacate. That is a massive stress trigger, right? And a financial stressor that you really can't do much about, you know, in in those moments. So there I think the financial stressors day to day are something to to be mindful about. But then you can have these major events. And if you're not dealing well with your stress, you're not going to handle the major events well if you're not able to handling, you know, the day-to-day.
John Meis (05:09.666)
That's right, body and brain can only handle, take on so much. And the more stress you have, the lower your performance and the less resilient you are for these kinds of ups and downs.
Wendy Briggs (05:24.5)
Yeah. So the second stress trigger, team issues. Then comes time management, confrontation, which one could argue is directly tied to team issues. Right. the stress of perfection, and then isolation. So all of those were the top stress triggers that doctors shared with the ADA.
John Meis (05:28.578)
Yeah. Yeah. And boy, I totally buy every one of those and and have had every one of those as well. And you know, the time management.. We'll often hear doctors say, I don't have time to do any better. You know, and that that's a sign of a time management problem because we see practices that where doctors are producing $50,000 a month and they say they don't have any time to do better. And we have doctors that are doing $350,000 a month saying the same thing. So that that that's certainly an interesting one. And so the the team I think what.. that's such a common one that doctors get exhausted by team issues and find it very, very stressful, hard to concentrate on the dentistry that they're performing when they have this all this stuff rolling around in the back of their head.
Wendy Briggs (06:42.592)
Yeah, very, very difficult. So then I thought this was an interesting thing too, Dr. John. Then it was like, okay, how are we coping with it? This is also part of that survey. And the top four things that were shared, how we cope with this stress, the number one thing was physical exercise. And fifty-seven percent of dentists said they get some form of exercise or physical activity. 49% of those dentists believe that their level of physical activity is very likely to cause health problems in the future. So we're dealing with our stress triggers with exercise, but for some that aren't getting proper exercise, it's yet another stress trigger. So, you know.
John Meis (07:21.494)
Yeah, right. Yeah, yeah. They know they should be and they're not. So I've been studying the neurochemistry of flow, and it's absolutely fascinating that there are things that you can do to shut down this stressed state. But what we want to talk about on this that that's another that's a podcast for a future date. This one we're gonna talk about. How do we deal with it so that we don't have it in the first place?
Wendy Briggs (07:53.931)
Right, a hundred percent. other things that doctors are doing to deal with it alcohol, drugs, or medication. And another fascinating thing that I want to talk about real quick, one study found as many as 59% of dentists avoid the problems. They just leave the office, forget about the day, and they take a a passive approach. And what I wanna kind of visit with our listeners about that is, you know, that's not solving anything, right? just learning to deal with it or just leaving all the problems at the office, when you show up the next morning, there's still problems at the office. And this also leads to a very high level of stress and anxiety of people hating Mondays and hating work in general, right? That's not a healthy way to deal with it either.
John Meis (08:34.67)
Yeah, right. Yep. And how many times do we hear, I'm just gonna sell my practice to a DSO and then I won't have to have any of this stuff to deal with? And of course, that's a complete fantasy, right? They're still gonna be going to the office, they're still gonna be working, the stressors are still gonna be there. that doesn't DSO doesn't solve it. So this is, you know, they might provide some support, but they also might make decisions that create more stress. So, that's I can tell you that is not the answer. So, the answer is dealing with it.
Wendy Briggs (09:14.518)
Yeah, few years back, I this reminds me, Dr. John, a few years back, at one of our member retreats, we had an entire segment on crucial conversations. And we talked a lot about avoiding problems, team issues, lack of confrontation. Like this is just you know, something that's very, very common and we we hear about it from time to time. And I remember researching a little bit at that time and finding a story that highlighted the difference between cows and bison.
John Meis (09:25.763)
Yeah.
Wendy Briggs (09:42.903)
So hang with me for a second because you might be thinking, what in the world does this have to do with anything that we're talking about? But cows can sense an approaching storm. And cows, in their nature, try to outrun the storm. So they can sense the storm's coming, they try to avoid the storm. They try to outrun the storm. Well, they never are able to outrun the storm. The storm always catches up to them. And by the time they're hit in the storm, they're exhausted. They don't have any resources to help them cope with the storm.
John Meis (09:44.129)
Okay.
Wendy Briggs (10:12.912)
And so it just struck me at that time and still today that avoiding the problems often put us into a worse situation when the storm hits and we actually have to deal with it, right? And this article contrasted bison and, you know, they handle storms differently than cows. They actually instinctively turn to the storm and walk towards it. They face the storm head on.
John Meis (10:21.467)
Absolutely. Yeah.
Wendy Briggs (10:41.814)
Because they know that if they do it that way, they're in the storm for less time. Okay, so back then we talked a lot about how your stress is going to be much more if you avoid the storm, avoid facing the problems head on. So we want to channel the bison, right? And in reality, in our conversations then, and certainly the ones that we have now, we know that every single one of these financial stressors can be fixed.
John Meis (10:46.381)
Yeah.
Wendy Briggs (11:11.294)
Or improved with better systems.
John Meis (11:14.51)
Absolutely. Yep. And the avoidance and you use the crucial conversations. You know, the crucial conversations segment that we teach is simply a system. And the system is how do I know when I need to have a conversation? How do I feel about it? How do I how do I logically get my head around it? How do I prepare for the conversation? How do I have the conversation? And how do I follow up after the conversation? It's simply a system.
And when people understand the system, and the first few times they use it, it's a little uncomfortable because dentists are and dental people are kind, caring people. They don't really like conflict very well. But the but not having conflict only creates greater conflict in the future. You can't get away from it. And so the sooner you do it, and that's part of the system, here's how you know you need to have the conversation.
John Meis (12:13.366)
Simply a system.
Wendy Briggs (12:15.7)
It is, you know, I thought it might be kind of interesting real quick. Let's hit each one of those seven stress triggers and talk through systems that we know can have an impact. So the financial stressors. The financial stressors, stressors, a few systems that we teach could have tremendous impact there. Same day dentistry. That's a system. And we know that that every procedure we add to the day that wasn't on the schedule at the beginning of the day is wildly more profitable.
John Meis (12:22.754)
Yeah. Yeah.
Wendy Briggs (12:41.386)
Then, you know, everything that we'd already planned to do. So that's an example of a financial stressor system. I'm sure we can think of more.
John Meis (12:46.414)
Yeah, just just understanding the profitability of your practice. You know, using our profitability quick calc sheet, if you use that sheet, you can actually calculate what the profitability of your business is. You know, your tax return tells you what your take home pay is, but but that's not exactly the same as profitability.
And so most dentists you know, we hear how often do we hear this, Wendy? I'm not making any money. And then you know, we do the calculation and no, they're making plenty of money. They just got some expenses that that that stacked up a little bit, and so their bank accounts a little bit lower, and now they think they're not making any money. They don't know how much money they're making. So just having that knowledge, just that simple system and tracking it and see how you're doing every month, every quarter, every year.
Just a very simple system that provides a lot of clarity, and with clarity comes confidence.
Wendy Briggs (13:43.083)
Right. I think too, you know, we're looking at our.. We've been talking a lot now about our upcoming retreat schedule. And in January, we're gonna be going over cash flow levers and the keys to really drive cash flow. That is a system that can really alleviate financial stress. So, you know, there's so many more we could talk about. We could talk about our emotionally connected exam system, we could talk about our easy financials, you know, all of these are systems that can really help immediately alleviate those financial stressors.
John Meis (14:09.462)
All the Hygiene Explosion, I mean that's a that's a collection of systems, but all of those things can drive productivity and profitability up literally overnight when they're put in place.
Wendy Briggs (14:21.952)
Yeah. Yeah, let's move on to team issues because I'm so glad you mentioned Hygiene Explosion. Team issues, I would say that what we've heard lately, and maybe throughout all time, the biggest team stressors for a lot of dentists right now are coming from the hygiene department. And I would say from the hygiene department, the biggest stressors are coming from the dentists, right? So there's this little disconnect, head butting, if you will. I get tired of the online arguments that don't make any, you know, we don't ever seem to make progress there.
John Meis (14:39.468)
Yeah.
Wendy Briggs (14:50.76)
It's just the same old arguments repeated day in and day out. But I would say when it comes to team issues, one of the biggest things we can do is restructure the hygiene compensation to a production based compensation system. And then when you add all the other hygiene explosion systems in there, it helps alleviate a lot of that those team issues that can come about, the conflict between doctor and hygiene, because everybody understands what their roles are. Everybody feels empowered to take care of patients at the highest possible level.
John Meis (14:51.596)
Yeah.
Wendy Briggs (15:18.644)
And it does help alleviate some of those team issues. Now, other team members, you know, we have a lot of ways, activity bonuses and other things that we can help sort that out. I would say another system for team issues, Dr. John, is just the simple fact of having core values clarified and understanding how to lead with those values. That's a system, just like anything else.
John Meis (15:38.051)
Yep. Yep. So when we see behaviors that aren't match or don't aren't aligned with the values of the practice, that's a trigger for a crucial conversation. And we can use those values in those conversations saying this isn't in alignment with what we're all about here. And here's what I need to see more of from you. So using those as kind of the foundation, the bedrock of how we're gonna behave, how we're gonna treat each other and the attitude that we're gonna bring to our patients and our teammates every day, that's the foundation, a system.
Wendy Briggs (16:13.814)
That is. Yeah, I love that. There's so many right there. And there's so much more we could talk about, but let's move on to time management. Again, I think we've mentioned a few here that would really be impactful for time management. Same day dentistry is one of those. But I think time management for me, what I see as the effective delegator, that's a great system that we have that we help practices identify how well are we delegating, how well are we leveraging the talents around us and helping empower the team and inspire the team to achieve more. That has a huge impact on time management.
John Meis (16:30.518)
Absolutely. It certainly does. And one of the exercises in our CEO group is the question, "Whose job is that?" And so many dentists are are trying to do the dentist job and they're trying to do the practice manager job and they're trying to do the practice owner job and they're trying to be the settler of all disputes job. And they're just trying to do too many jobs. And so, teasing it out. This is your job. This is somebody else's job. So just that alone creates so much time, reduces so much stress when people understand this is my role and the the these other things are other team members' role, and then the system of how those other team members do those roles.
Wendy Briggs (17:34.912)
Yeah. Yeah, I could not agree more. Another big thing that we teach with time management that is a system is the anatomy of an appointment. You know, if we have a forty-five minute or a fifty minute or a sixty-minute hygiene appointment, how do we actually utilize every minute of that time to provide that world class hygiene experience? You know, those are other examples of systems that can really help alleviate the stress triggers from time management.
John Meis (17:56.941)
Yeah, and a another it maybe doesn't neatly fit into time management, but your system of meetings and the cadence of meetings that you have. Because so frequently, so much most dental practices do not have enough meeting. They don't they don't they don't they think the time away from production isn't worth it, but it's sharpening the saw, makes everything run more smoothly when we have well done meetings, well organized. Well taken off. It's really it's sharpening this off.
Wendy Briggs (18:31.786)
Yeah, I couldn't agree more. And honestly, that leads us to our next stress trigger that we've talked about a lot, but I would say the more effective we are in the meetings that we have, the less confrontation there will the need that we we all have to handle that, right? Because we can handle a lot of these challenges before they become a spark of chaos in our practice. So confrontation, we've talked about a lot. We could probably move beyond that one. The next stress trigger is the stress of perfection.
John Meis (18:42.039)
Yes. Yeah.
Wendy Briggs (18:59.1)
And when I think of the systems we have in place for that, there's a lot. You know, even the daily huddle, the morning huddle exercises that we help practices embrace. For example, we usually encourage practices once a week to grab a case or a radiograph or an x-ray of a procedure or a patient situation and talk through that. I think the more confident we are, the more competent we become. And so that can take away some of that stress of perfection. I think as well, doctors and hygienists both need to give themselves a little grace and recognize that there's very few procedures we do that are gonna be successful one hundred percent of the time.
John Meis (19:38.147)
Yeah. One of our members, Dr. Dan West, who's a a wonderful guy and an amazing teacher, he uses the expression, "Crown preps are never done, they're only abandoned." And you know the point of that is.. you can do a really good one really fast, and you can spend a lot of time and it's still a really good one. And that's all it's gonna be. So just a that's a great mindset thing. And so many of us in our schooling were taught perfection and and you know we obviously have an obligation to do a good job and we wanna do a good job, and we get a lot of professional fulfillment from doing a good job. But perfection is impossible, right? It's elusive. It's like going to the horizon. The closer you get to it, it just still is out there.
Wendy Briggs (20:32.502)
And we have to recognize that many of you are artists with an imperfect canvas. You know, home care or the lack of it, is gonna really influence how long your work lasts. Patients need to take more ownership on for their disease and their home care, their habits, their risk factors, you know, all of these things can influence how long the work holds up and and how well it performs. A lot of those variables are outside of our control, which I think again, maybe triggers more stress. But the reality is no one's expecting you to be perfect, maybe except yourself. So we need to relax that level of perfection, or that feeling that we have to get it perfect every single time, because it's just not possible to do.
John Meis (21:18.338)
Yep, that's for sure.
Wendy Briggs (21:21.162)
And then the last one, Dr. John, when we think about systems that we have in place that can help prevent that stress trigger of isolation. This one's my favorite, right? Because dentistry can be a very isolating profession. But this is one of the reasons why we founded The Team Training Institute, because we wanted to have a place where dentists who felt isolated, who wanted some support, who wanted some instruction on how to maybe make things better, could go and have the confidence of knowing that the resources that we put in front of you, at least, are, you know, real world systems that are proven, they're tested, they work incredibly well.
And the membership that we've built is one of my favorite things because that the isolation goes out the window. All of a sudden, you have a tribe of people who are all trying to build something very similar to what you're trying to build that are here to support you and answer your questions and and help minimize your mistakes and all of those things are what are the benefits of the community of The Team Training Institute.
John Meis (22:19.82)
And when you get in this network of people and they're all doing great things too, but they're all struggling on one thing or another, right? And so you all of a sudden you don't feel alone. Cause I remember one time I thought the problems I was having in my practice, I thought I was the only one. And I frankly kind of beat myself up about some of it, was that I should be able to figure this out. It shouldn't be a problem. and then when I got into a network of people and realized, this is a struggle for everybody. I just didn't feel so alone anymore. Yeah.
Wendy Briggs (22:56.308)
Right. And it's so important for us to realize, you know, if we're going to be like the bison and face the storm, we have to be committed to resolving the stressors that we can control. There are certain things that we can do to make things better. Right. And so that's why, you know, we love focusing on systems within TTI, because that is one way that we can see practices make really good progress really, really quickly, is by focusing instead of blaming all the people, instead of saying, okay, I'm not perfect, I'm a failure, my team's a failure. My team sucks. I can't find any rock stars to hire. We have to recognize that often it's not the fault of any one person. It's usually because the system itself needs improvement. Maybe we don't have systems in place. You know, almost always the failure is because of the system or the lack of a system. And when we focus on that, we can turn things around very quickly.
John Meis (23:47.789)
Yep. So if you're feeling any of these stressors, right? It doesn't do any good to avoid it. It needs to be dealt with head on. Having a system for communicating about issues is really important. But really everything that's not working, it's not working because there's not a clear system and not and an accountability for people to those systems.
So that is the secret to all of this. And nobody's practice is going to be stress-free. That's fantasy land, you know. However, we can bring the stress down to a very manageable level. And really the way to do that is to just steadily systematize things and it gets better and better and better.
Wendy Briggs (24:33.452)
Better, better, better. One last little note I want to leave with our listeners. If this resonated with you and you feel like, "Hey, you know what? I really could do a systems checkup on my practice." We always open up a few guest passes for our quarterly practice growth retreats. Our next two retreats really would help tremendously in this category with the topics that we've talked about. So our retreat in Dallas in October, the entire topic of that retreat is Smooth Operations, better systems. We're gonna be doing systems checkups on a lot of vital systems in your practice. So that would be a big one in that regard.
And then in January, we have a doctor's only retreat where we typically do a focus on the financial side of things, cash flow. We're gonna be talking about the keys to really drive cash flow quickly, given all the profitability struggles we're hearing about. So if you've ever thought, hey, I should really go to a retreat and check it out, be sure to go to our podcast homepage and we'll have a QR code there, a link for you to check out if you are interested in being one of our guests.
Again, we have limited seats available, so you'll want to check on that sooner rather than later. But we'd love to welcome you to give you a peek behind the curtain to see what the best and brightest in dentistry are doing. And that happens at our retreats.
John Meis (25:48.823)
Yep, can't wait to see some of you there. We only have a few seats, but that'd be fantastic to see some of you. So, Wendy, great job. This is a great topic, and I know it's on a lot of dentists' mind. And thanks everybody. that's it for this episode of The Double Your Production Podcast. We'll see you next time. Bye-bye.
Wendy Briggs (26:07.488)
Thanks for joining us, everyone.
