Transcript:

Quote of the Week : “A bad system beats a good person anytime.”

Who said that?

Welcome to the Dr. Chris Griffin Show. Your resource for leveraging systems and technology to easier workload, increase productivity and provide you with the time off you deserve to live the life of your dreams. It’s time to practice productivity in the passionate pursuit of a better life with your host, Dr. Chris Griffin. The doctor is in.

You have found your way to the Dr. Chris Griffin Show. Now let’s take a few moments to open up this first episode. Let’s just talk about what it means to be here at the Dr. Chris Griffin Show anyway. Now if you don’t already know me, I can’t imagine how that’s possible, but let’s just assume for a moment that you do not yet know me. Well you’re about to learn more about me than you probably ever even wanted to or imagined you would want to. But since 2005 and throughout the course of this show, you will hear press made plenty about my story. But since 2005, my life as a practitioner, as a general dentist, has been all about building a practice productivity powerhouse in my own practice, in Ripley, Mississippi. And also teaching other dentists from all around North America how to do the same thing and through that, we’ve also made it our mission in life to passionately pursue a better way for everyone. A better life, a better lifestyle, a better practice life, a better everything. We want to use productivity and the time game from the use of that productivity and the money game from the use of that productivity to buy the things that make us really happy. And one of the main things that makes me really happy is more time off. And that’s why I’ve committed in my practice since 2008. I have been a 3-day a week practitioner, that’s all the time I’m willing to devote to my practice and I feel very strongly that if I work more than 3 days that I would not be able to give 100 percent of myself each and every day to my patients. I think it’s a win-win for everyone. And I want to teach you guys the power in how to do the same things that I’ve done. If you pay attention to the Dr. Chris Griffin show, you will, very soon in short order, be able to identify the areas that can really boost your productivity at your practice and in turn make your life better. Okay? That’s a promise. If you can figure this out, this solves the problem of practitioners everywhere feeling helpless. Okay?

Listen like I said, I’ve been teaching dentist since 2008, okay? I’ve lectured all around the country. I’ve had a newsletter that’s coming on out to hundreds of dentists all around the country. I have talked, sat and talked, to so many dentists that I cannot even tell you how many dentists out there are hurting. That’s not just dentists, there’s medical doctors, there’s chiropractors, there’s optometrists, there’s all kind of practitioners. They’re all hurting right now. And there are a lot of reasons why they are hurting. But most of our tribe, if you will, if you want to call us a tribe, we’re feeling helpless because there’s just a daily avalanche of problems that just seems to get worst and worst and worst. And it’s my belief guys that curing the productivity issue in your practice can solve a multitude of problems. Until you’ve seen it with your own two eyes, it’s hard to really come to grips with the fact that things will get this much better. But let me tell you, no one out there has studied productivity like me and our team in Capacity Academy since, let’s say 2005, like us.

And why is that? Let me just, a little bit, a little piece of my story. But in 2000, up until 2005, I had tried to have the kind of practice that I thought that you should try to have. If you remember back, remember back to the early part of the Millennium. Okay? Extreme Makeover is one of the most popular shows on TV. Dr. Bill Dorfman, great guy by the way, but Dr. Bill Dorfman had made cosmetic dentistry into such a big thing that that’s just the direction everyone wanted to go in. It wasn’t just him, it was cosmetic surgery. Cosmetic this, cosmetic that. And it seem to me also that a dentist practicing in Ripley, Mississippi, I know it sounds funny now, but it seemed to me that I wanted to be the best cosmetic dentist in America someday. And that was my goal and I set out in pursuit of that goal and like a lot of my goals in life, I doggedly pursued it. I went all over the country, going to Institutes and everything else trying to become that amazing cosmetic dentist. I even had this little glimpse of my life, right. I even put a list. I found the list of all of the AACD Accredited Dentists in America, okay? And I put them on the back of the door of my small little office in my practice and every time I would meet one of those guys in person, I would check them off my list, make a little note about what kind of conversation we had or how the meeting was. And so I was going down that list. I was in hot pursuit of trying to become my best in what the perfect dentist was in my mind, a perfect cosmetic dentist.

And then somewhere along the way, it occurred to me. This is all well and good that you’re pursuing this vision but is it really making you happy? Is it giving you more time off? Is it allowing you to make more money? Is it giving you more freedom, more autonomy? When you look deep down inside it really wasn’t.  The truth is, everyone has to look at their own situation. In my area, very blue collar area, a cosmetic dentist was not what was needed. The kind of dentist that was needed there was a dentist that could do just a good Yeoman’s job and produce good quality dentistry at an affordable price. But when you look at the kind of process that you can charge for just a regular, I’m using air quotes here, “regular dentistry”, is not quite as much as you could charge for cosmetic dentistry. How could I reconcile these things? Well, A, let’s cut out all the waste, all the inefficiencies in our practice that are keeping us from being able to do a quality job or more patients, right? And so that really skyrocketed productivity but then, I mean, who wants to be the guy that’s just wailing away just doing tons of work every single day and wearing down at an early age, right? That’s not what we’re looking for.

So after we studied that a while, the next thing we did in 2008, that’s when I committed and said “You know what? If I’m going to start this company, and I’m going to preach to people that this is the way that you need to go because improving your productivity in the office can make your life bigger and all these ways. I need to put my money where my mouth is.” And that’s the day I’ll never forget, I was out of my farm in Tippah County, Mississippi. I was actually, I actually had a hoe. You know what that is, in my hands and I was chopping weeds out of my watermelon patch. The particular weed that we have here, called the devil’s tomato was particularly bad that year in that particular patch of watermelons. And I was getting thorns in me and I was hot, I was wet and covered in dirt but I said, “You know what? I know it’s crazy but I love doing stuff like this. I would love to do stuff like this more often. I would like to have more days off. If I want to tell everyone that productivity is the way to go, let’s show them what it can really do for your practice and so that’s the day I decided to go to 3 days a week. We haven’t looked back yet that’s probably the best thing that we ever did for our practice. So when I tell you that I know how that we can help you improve your life by doing more at the time you’re at the office but making sure you have plenty of extra time off. Trust me when I tell you exactly what I’m talking about because I had done it myself. Okay? I‘ve walked the walk since 2008 every single day. Even to the point and here’s something cool that happened, that sort of leaves me into my next point. Sometime between 2008, and a couple of years ago, I actually wrote a book about some of my thoughts and ideas on productivity called “Time Genius”. Well one day I was working away at the office and one of my assistants came and they said, “The MSU president’s here.” Now around where I live, there are 2 colleges of really significance. There is Ole Miss, University of Mississippi, and then there’s my alma mater, Mississippi State University. And so around from we’re from, people call it Ole Miss and MSU. Okay? Or just State sometimes. But she said “The MSU president’s here.” Now I thought she meant a good friend of mine who’s at that time the MSU Alumni Association president for Tippah County. I said, “Well just tell him to, you know, I’ll call him later. It’s, you know, I’m in a middle of something. She said, “No, Mississippi State President’s here.” I’m like, “What are you talking about?” She said, “Just come back here at the break room and let me show you.” So I, you know, finished up what I was doing, take my gloves off, I’m taking my loops off of my head, I’m walking to the back to the conference room. And when I walked through the doors of the conference room, strangely enough, there is the actual current sitting president of Mississippi State University. He’s got a copy of my book in his hand, and he says, “Chris, you know, I read your book. I think it’s amazing! I just wanted to congratulate you and come by personally. I was in the area but I’m just going by and just tell you we appreciate you, we appreciate you’ve been an alumnus at Mississippi State. Ask if it’s okay with your permission, we would like to publish an article about your book in our upcoming Alumnus magazine.” And suddenly my jaw’s on the floor, it’s crazy! I got a picture with him but it was one of those things where it was such a, he had to go, it’s such a fast thing, you know. It was just a quick picture, it’s kind of blurry. It’s an awkward, it’s crazy! It was a crazy thing but from that, after my article was published in the Alumnus magazine, it didn’t stop there.

When I was early on in my career at Mississippi State, before I got an exception at the dental, I was Engineering student. And the college of Engineering actually has a program for post graduate students of the Entrepreneurship program, right. And they, it’s a Master’s level course. There’s a couple of hundred kids, I call them kids, they’re graduate level students. But a couple of hundred of them under each semester, and they bring in guests lecturers from around the country to talk about Entrepreneurship. Well imagine my surprise when I was invited to speak to that group. How cool is that, right?! I actually got to speak to a group of students from my Alma Mater on the stage where I took classes like Psychology101, Western Civ 1, I think I had at least 2, maybe a third class in that room. It’s so surreal to be up on that stage and it’s a cool room, too. It’s in a building called Simrall on the Engineering Row at Mississippi State and it’s a lot of wood everywhere, it’s one of the older auditoriums, it’s sort of a curved seating arrangement and it’s just right out there with the crowd. It’s a wonderful thing. It’s an amazing experience, I highly recommend it. If you ever have the authority to speak to your own mind, I cannot say enough good things about that. But I get the chance to speak to those guys and as we’re leaving the dean who had been the one who actually invited me personally, he’s walking me out to my car. And so we’re in this chitchat, you know. And as we get closer, he says, “So Chris, exactly how long have you been studying Lean Manufacturing and Lean Management Systems?” and I said, “Dean, I have never studied those systems because I know zero about it, right? I know nothing about it.” And he kind of chuckled and said, “Well It makes sense because the terminology you were using out there is absolutely nonsensical. It’s not the terminology that’s used in Lean Management. However, all the things you described on how that you’ve set a dental office up, that’s exactly how someone would set up a dental practice if they were using Lean Management Systems.” And I said, “Really?” He said, “Yeah, you really, you’ve already done all these stuff, you really need to study Lean Management.” And so he recommended some books, of course I as a good student, went to Amazon and purchase 5 books. Got them in and read them. And so I feel like, “Yeah, I’m probably as up on Lean Management Systems as any dentist in America, for sure.” And you know, probably a lot of healthcare people also, I do know there are a lot of some of the books that I’ve purchased were on Lean Management for healthcare and stuff like that. It’s been around for a while, I just didn’t know about it. And I’m pretty sure hardly any dentists know about it because every time I lecture about it, whenever I lecture, you know, no one has heard the terminology and sort of people are like “Wow, I’ve never thought of it that way.” So this is one of those cool things.

As we go through this show, it’s my hope that at least if not once a show, once every few shows we have an entire segment on Lean Management, Lean Manufacturing. Okay? So that’s my, that’s my…by the end of the, after you have listened to this show for a while, you should be pretty well versed in Lean Management and how that it can really help improve your practice, improve its productivity. So that’s...in going back to the quote at the beginning of the show, right? Who said that? “A bad system will beat a good person every time.” That is the father of Lean Management, W. Edwards Deming. Now he is an amazing guy. Okay? If you have not studied his work, he’s an amazing guy. He is the guy that General Douglas McArthur brought in to Japan to help him with the reconstruction of Japan’s economy after World War II. And his influence can be traced to so many amazing things that happen to the Japanese economy after World War II. I mean it’s just, it’s just unreal if you go back you can read what all that he did. But he was an amazing man, had an amazing intellect. And W. Edwards Deming, worth looking him up on Wikipedia, if nothing else, right? But he is the one that said that quote that I said at the beginning of the show. And expect a good quote every show. I mean I try to come up with a very poignant quote every single show. A very inspiring quote every single show.

So let’s just talk a little bit more about if that I am qualified to talk to you about this and to help you with the situations that maybe unfold in before us right now in America, okay? Let’s talk about 2005. Alright that’s the year that I decided to switch from cosmetic dentistry to a more productivity based dental practice approach. And that turned out to pay me in space. Our practice took off like gangbusters; we haven’t looked back, okay? There’s no one around back then to really say, “Oh yeah Chris, you got that one right.” And so between 2005 and 2012, I don’t know that I made that many predictions. But there was, I mean 2005, obviously I bet on myself and I predicted that the course needed to change because not only was cosmetic dentistry already hard to sell in Ripley, Mississippi. I predicted that it would get hard to sell anywhere in America. And that has certainly come true. To this day, everyone knows that that’s a fact. So 2012 comes along, I saw a few more things, the handwriting on the wall. So I had the chance to speak in 2012 in Dallas, Texas. And I did an entire lecture on the coming storm in Dentistry. That was the name of the lecture. Now in that lecture, I outlined in detail with my research why I felt like even though corporations were a big deal in 2012 that they would come to be the huge juggernaut that they currently are in 2015. And just, they’re eating up market share left and right. I’ve called that one. I don’t know that anyone called that to the degree that I did. I obviously, like I said, corporations have been around a long time. Everybody knew they were a big deal. But I made it clear in that lecture that they were getting ready to take over large chunks of segments of dentistry and that’s really was come pass. And there are a lot of reasons for that. You can check me on it, you can go back. And I’m sure you can get your hands on that lecture. It’s out there, you know, student debt, big money coming in from outside dentistry; just a big confluence of forces. Those forces coming together, that’s why I felt like the time for corporations was about to happen and it happened in a big way.

One thing I talked about that lecture that no one really thought about much was that Walmart, and places like Walmart, were getting ready to get into the dental game. Kind of like they did with optometry, kind of like they did with banking; the same type concept. Dentistry has become commoditized right now more than ever in my career. And certainly probably most of you trying to listening out there. Of course if you’re a new graduate, you might think that he hasn’t changed much at all. But, you know, years ago, in the golden ages, sort to say, it was scuff that to think that somewhere like Walmart could ever compete in the dental industry. Well they had 3 offices when I gave that lecture in 2012. That’s 3 offices, right? That’s all they had. Now in 2014, there was an articles released where there was another 25. I don’t know exactly how many they have now in 2015 but I’m sure it’s more than 28. And I’m sure the trend is telling you, it’s going to get more and more and more. I mean, look at how many Walmarts there are. And they’re going to be able to find dentists who will work at a Walmart, especially right now, they’re going to give you really good incentives to swap over. Just like a lot of the corporate entities do. Right now, you get really good deals but over time, you’re going to get squeezed if you take them up on it. And it’s just going to commoditized us more and more. But that’s just one of the big predictions that I had in 2012 that has come true.

Another thing, maybe this is not one of those things that was that big of a deal to predict but the Affordable Cure Act