During this episode of Hey Docs! Jill Allen and Mari Sawtelle the owner of Mari's list will focus on buyers groups vs. big business sales and the details that every young doctor needs to know about ordering from small to large orthodontic practices.
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[Music]
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hello everybody jill allen here from jill allen and associates and i am so
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excited to have mary sotel the founder and president of mary's list here on my
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third episode of hey docs today we are going to be talking about how you
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do not need to be the laughing stock of inventory management and i just want you to know it is definitely easier than you
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think i am so excited to introduce to you my good friend mary satell the owner
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of mary's list over mary's 30-year career as an award-winning sales rep and trainer for
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four of the largest orthodontic companies mary became a master of organization and inventory systems and
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learned the ins and outs of manufacturers and distributors she was
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recruited by a 12 doctor multi-practice group to serve as director of business
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development and purchasing where she saved the company over one million dollars in their first year mary
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wanted every orthodontist to be able to benefit in the same way so she took her
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orthodontic experience and ordering experience and founded mary's list
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mary's list is now the largest orthodontic buying group in the country focused on helping doctors save both
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money and time through effective inventory management welcome mary
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hi jill thank you for having me you are welcome i am so excited that we
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are getting to do this and we're gonna you know we're just gonna have a little chit chat here um one of the things that
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i really want to dive into it's great to kind of hear um you know the intro component but i really want you to tell
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me a little bit more in your own words like how did you get to where we're at today and how did you know that our
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industry needed something like this um i think
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the offices that i walked into i saw that there was a need and when i
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got recruited to actually be in an office and i was opening offices and i saw how many hats the doctors wore
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and the systems that you know we had yeah i realized that
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orthodontists tend to focus on the big items and try to save on those and
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delegate the rest and because orthodontists see patients for a year and a half to two years it's
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a lot of visits with a lot of staff and so the multi-uh practice especially
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is going to go through a lot of consumables right and if you're overpaying it it really really adds up
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we ran quickbooks on everything yeah and i very quickly saw you know just shaving a dollar off of
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something you use a lot or five dollars the magnitude of how big it was
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um so from there we we started the consulting company in 2012 and we spent two and a half years we
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analyzed 45 practices wow learned a lot and i believe helped them a lot and from
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there i felt you know we could take it a step further and so we launched the study club and buying group at the ao in
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may of 2015. wow how exciting and this is you know this is what and why i
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wanted to start hay docs because i feel like there's so many people in our industry that really do have this why
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like how you know how did you get here and what did you see that our industry needed um you know in and and i think
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that this is this you know mary's uh list is you know something that i work with all the time with my
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clients and i you know i just feel like it's such a such a a huge asset and you know it's
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hard to believe that we didn't have we didn't have a mary's list you know you know 20 years ago um you know in our
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industry or even 15 years ago so that's that's that's super exciting so i'm gonna today we're going to kind of
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break this down because a lot of my audience is you know younger doctors doctors that have done acquisitions
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doctors that are thinking of doing startups and i really want to just kind of talk about two groups today
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acquisitions um doctors that have you know went in and you know done done an acquisition and then doctors who are
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doing startups and if you don't mind i want to start with acquisitions i know that some of the things you're going to
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talk about will a hundred percent apply to existing practices as well um
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but i know that oftentimes practices can really get wrapped up in the ordering right um and as as you were saying you
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know a lot of times our doctor doctors focus on the big things um and they're like oh you can handle these little
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things but we know that you know they they all come together and a lot of times it's kind of that last can that
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gets kicked down the road because really nobody's got time um you know to be doing ordering but everybody's really
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concerned about it when we've run out of the things that we need so um when you think and when you were kind of
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going through this and if you were to have some really good advice and again we're going to start with acquisitions
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here um can you tell me a little bit about um
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do you think that you know if somebody's really thinking about ordering you know what what i tend to think is a lot of
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times it has to do with they probably don't have systems in place and so can
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you kind of tell me a little bit about what does that mean and you know how do you get a system in place before you
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just go in and grab all the books and start ordering or you know start start surfing through
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everything like like what do you need to do to set yourself up for success and i
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think especially i'm going to pull this back to you know an acquisition let's just say you're a new doc that's maybe
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purchased to practice um you know come in and you have in your mind what you think you want you're
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trying to evaluate what they have maybe you've got a team member that can help you maybe you don't so i'm gonna i'm
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gonna let you uh get give me some good good little pearls here for for everyone listening okay
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um i and we do have a lot of members that have just recently bought a practice and a lot of
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startups um and and what i think the doctors need to to realize and do
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from the very beginning is pick a person in the office
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give them enough time and you want to find the right person somebody that's highly organized has
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good computer skills wants to do the job is interested in saving the practice money and creating
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good systems what we did when we first walked into the practices the first thing we looked
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at was storage and most of the offices that we walked into that were acquisitions
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had things stuck away in drawers and cabinets and lab and
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whatever you know grandma's attic right exactly or orthodontic hallway door number one
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you gotta make room and so i i mean one of the practices that i was in it was a big three doctor practice
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and the person doing the ordering she was great she was a wonderful assistant
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she just didn't have time to do the job literally and they had a lot of satellites
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so when i went in there and i had my team with me and we looked at their storage one entire wall they had a big
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storeroom but one entire wall was completely filled up with files
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and i knew the practice was paperless and so i went to the office manager and i said
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you know how often do you go to these files and she said never and i was like okay i said do you have
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storage units and she kind of laughed and she said yeah we have three so i said okay i said we're gonna make
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some room because you know they would get things in and they'd still be in the boxes and they didn't realize they needed
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something or if they were out of something because they hadn't even taken out of the boxes so we spent literally a
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day taking the files to the storage and then we also got on the floor and in the
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storage and we looked at everything that they had and anything that was expired we had the
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toss because they weren't rotating the inventory unfortunately so that's why it's really important and
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we also you know looked at the the areas around the chairs we call
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that on deck as far as what we could store in those areas and there was stuff in there we threw
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away i mean we had a big garbage can that we actually threw away and this one practice because their system was not
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what it needed to be they were uh in a program where they bought brackets and they got free
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product and we actually audited all the invoices because what they were doing is they
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would put in an order for one or two items just you know one spool of chain or two
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boxes of elastics and sometimes the shipping was more than the product oh gosh
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we actually added it up and in one year at this one company the shipping was over four thousand dollars oh my
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goodness and when you're looking for those pennies on that p l statement and where you can save i mean that's easy
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that's low hanging fruit right there exactly and so you know i think that if you start there
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as far as clearing out making room you know getting a good ordering person
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you know from there you want to create a good list um you need to have if it's an
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acquisition somebody that's interested in taking the reins and opened a change so that they're not just
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going to go down the same path that they've been going down um you know and then start
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utilizing the reps of the companies that will help you cross-reference things and so you can find opportunities to save
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that way um but that's kind of a starting point is you know to getting organized
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most offices that i was in actually had a good amount of storage um some of them just weren't using it
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well they just didn't they just didn't recognize it because they were using it for other things so
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if i kind of hear what you're saying first you know take inventory of everything so if you're a new dock
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you've done an acquisition come in there maybe dedicated data just going through
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everything that you can find so from the back storage area to the drawers to
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what's up on the top shelf in the lab like go through it all you know kind of get an
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understanding of all of the product get rid of anything that's old because you just can't use it get get rid of it and
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then make sure that you've got room and i would assume like what you're talking about is like something where you can
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visually as a team see when you're going to need product is that is that kind of what what the
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reasoning is behind what you know why we need to make make room for storage and we don't just have things you know
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tucked away in the back closet and then under the chair number one and you know in the bottom drawer at the front desk
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you know i've seen it all i'm sure you have too oh yeah well you know if you have a good system
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then and if you're changing things over once you do then it's just reordering and it's really not hard at all
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it's a little work in the beginning but once you get it dialed in then it's it's really simple yeah
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so i know i get asked this a lot but you know a lot of times my docs are like hey
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jill you know like how much should i order how much should i have on hand and i you know i know i
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kind of have an answer but you're our expert here so what do you advise what do you what do you advise you know our
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our docs you know what's what's too much what's too little well too much is
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having more product that you would use before it expires obviously
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you know when you think about retail stores people that have retail stores go to
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market twice a year that's it they order everything and then it's shipped to them you know
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they say how they want it delivered and i'm sure sometimes they have to adjust it but they don't order constantly
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and if a practice is doesn't have a good system in place and it's not just
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putting the orders in or having ordering software or templates or what have you it's actually having yours your floor
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organized and you're on deck and your storage um if if you don't have that organized
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that's where it's going to throw you off and you'll run out of things and so the
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practice where i was we had eight offices and we had a great system that we
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established and what we did is on friday afternoon we didn't see
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patients every uh chair patient chair in the office had a dedicated team member so before they
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left for the lunch hour and headed out on friday everybody was required to stock their chairs i love this this is
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such a great pearl i stock it from the on deck yes and then from the on deck
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you stock storage to on deck and you take it from the front of your storage and then move it forward so when new
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product comes in you put it in the back of storage that way when i was talking about rotating you never run out yes we
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try to educate the doctors and the team members to not order more than once a month you know fill in orders you know
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we have quite a few companies where the shipping is free but if it's not you know when you're ordering too often
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it can really cost you practice so if you can get it once a month it's great if the doctor is open to it you have
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enough storage you get it to once a quarter if you had been doing it once a month you just cut off eight ordering cycles
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of labor time and shipping cost yeah so quarterly is so simple um
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another pearl that we share is if you don't have a ton of uh storage
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space you don't have to really stock up on all the big items like gloves and wipes for
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three months you can set those up on auto ship and you can set them so they just come
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as you need them you can adjust it if you need to and so we did that with our gloves at one of the practices it was 23
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chairs and three doctors and we that's what we did is we staged when the big stuff would come in so we've
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never run out but it didn't take up all our storage and if you do set up futures
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we have companies on the list that give you an extra five percent discount when you set it up that way i love that i
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love that i've i've got a dog food company i've got two very very large dogs and there's nothing better than
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knowing that i don't have to remember and i don't have to store all of those big bags of food either and i think it's
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the same thing it's such a great idea and you know because i do a lot of startups and we'll talk about this a
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little bit more in startups but you know we're trying to utilize our office you
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know to the best of our ability and we just don't build tons and tons of room for storage anymore so i think that this
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is fantastic that companies are willing to do that if you can just manage that a little bit i love that
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yeah and i especially love the idea of getting to quarterly orderings i mean that's usually what i tell my docs is
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don't have more than three months of inventory on hand and you know i i a
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hundred percent agree with you enough we can use our non-doctor days and have a team member that's really got
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this organized where they can sit down and spend an hour or two at most probably getting getting these orders in
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place and ready to go and they don't have to really think about it again you know for the next quarter and just
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imagine what that frees that team member up for the other things in the office you know maybe that allows them to be a
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digital coordinator or some other things that we could be utilizing them for so i love that stocking the chairs you know
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when each team member does it with their chair it doesn't take but a couple of minutes i mean literally they were done
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in 10. and if all the chairs are stocked every week if you're on deck is stocked every
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week if your storage doesn't go past the halfway point before it's time to reorder you're never
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going to run out yeah and so you know by doing it that way and
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you know constantly managing it that way that you know your system won't be
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broken basically yeah i love it i love it it's such a good idea now and now i have had um i will tell you i've had a
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an office where we had the um the hoarder assistant um
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that loved to stock their drawer but um love to overstock their drawer um so you know
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we do have to pay attention to that too in our offices and you know maybe every once in a while just kind of um you know
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whoever is managing that clinic take a walk through and make sure that we don't have you know for the in case i run out of
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five tubes of glue um incident but i i think i think that
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that's just a really really great uh tip um that that people can really take away from that so so when we're looking at
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this and we're saying okay you know we could order once a month maximum once a quarter
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what does overhead look like like what you know as as a new newer doctor like you know what what does that look like
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and and i'm gonna tell you docs out there your overhead may look different than the previous docs
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overhead depending upon what you're doing and if you have you know really working to get a handle on your um your
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ordering so what so what does that kind of look like to you mary you know how how would you talk to docs about that
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well that the average orthodontist supply overhead and this is according to the research we did as well as chris
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benson they run about a 10.9 percent supply cost
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um and so what that means is if your production is a million dollars you're spending 100 000
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on uh supplies if you for an example if you're running a 10
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supply cost and you just cut it in half that's 50 000
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and so it's not pocket change i tell the doctors this really adds up yes and a
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lot of my members know that because we have a lot of members that run a three to four percent supply cost yeah after
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they you know join us and so it is important you know i have one doctor in particular that he
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actually orders one time a year and his supply cost is about three percent wow and you know he he has
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saved so much money that he says basically the savings is going to put his kids through college
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and i tell doctors you know if you save 20 or 30 or 50 000 a year on things that
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are going to end up in the garbage can and put that in a 401k
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and give it 30 years to cook you're going to have a nice retirement yeah and so
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you know it isn't just top line it's bottom line too yeah exactly and i do want to you know just just make sure my
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docs understand too that you know when we're looking at our profit and loss statements and we're looking at overhead
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for lab we're not talking about your digital lab so we're not talking about if you're
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doing um you know custom brackets or custom aligners you know not those lab
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costs we're talking about your fixed costs that are coming in in your disposables and you know all of those
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different things correct so i i love that i think that that's such a good number to be shooting for um but also to
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understand that you know this is this is again i i like to call
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it low-hanging fruit if we can get a team member that understands this if we can get a team that understands how
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you know maybe paying attention to you know how many things we drop on the ground and how much you know we don't
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rotate and you know or do rotate you know how often we order are we paying shipping are we not can really really um
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make a difference to your your bottom line so now let's talk just a little bit about
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so how do you manage how do you build an accurate ordering list um and you know
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how do you do that with future growth in mind you know how how do docs kind of get a handle on this or
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their ordering team members get a get a handle on this well i mean if your practice grows 10
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percent you just raise the stock that you're ordering 10 to cover it
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um i think as far as a list and putting it together if you're starting from scratch
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what we did at the practice where i was is we got all the products you know so we were aware of everything
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we have and then we just did it in google docs and we had a tab for each company that
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goes a to z and then on the first tab for example if you were
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going to buy from say amtouch because it's an a yeah then we would list the products alphabetically a to z with the
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description that's that's easiest to find them that way and then put part number and then the
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current price and then you just do that by company and so you have it all you
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know in a nice place that anybody could go to because google as you know google docs anybody
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could log in in the office and see somebody's out sick um we always had a backup person do the
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you know ordering that knew how to jump in just in case the main person had a good idea if they were a good idea car
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accident or got coveted or yeah having a baby you know that was my fear is some
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of those people not being there and so we always cross trained and had a backup person yeah but i think if you do that
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do it that way if you have it in google docs if you do decide that you know you want to or use ordering software some
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offices want want to do it some don't but if you if you have it in google docs a lot of the companies can just upload
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that data oh great well that's wonderful that's that's really really good to know
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and i 100 agree with you um if you can have it digital i think that's great i mean i've been in this industry for over
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30 years now i remember the spiral notebook and you know and or the recipe
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card you know um you know you you'd alphabetize it you know a b c d pull out
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your recipe card fill in you know when did you order when did you last order how much was the price you know so we've
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really evolved a lot and and i think that as much as we can do digitally just
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helps us and you know how wonderful is that if you do decide to move to some type of a platform where you can just
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upload it versus having to have somebody manually put in all that information so
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i love that so tell me a little bit about because i get this is probably one of the number one
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questions i get asked is well hey jill what's the benefit of me joining a buyer's group versus just
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buying directly from you know um this the sales guy that keeps um wanting to take me to lunch um he seems like a
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really nice guy don't you think because he's nice i'm going to get a better um deal than than being in a a sales group
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so um a buyer's group so tell me a little bit about that um you know what what do you think docs need to know
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about that well um i know that there's a lot of good ordering people out there and they do
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try to negotiate on their own and some of them are great shoppers but they just don't have the buying power to
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get the deepest discounts um some of our members that have small practices have said it's actually
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more important for them to be in a group like this because they don't get the bigger discounts that bigger practices
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get yeah and so you know that's one of the things i think sometimes people will ask me is am i going to save enough
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and when we go back and look after a year if you use the companies in our group
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you're going to save there's just no way i mean i tell doctors it's almost like you have to play dodgeball now because
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we have so many wonderful companies we vet the companies carefully we don't allow gray market on the list we
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expect excellent service exclusive discounts and a lot of our discounts are exclusive to our group because i started
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the company 10 years ago and we have those agreements in place so yeah that's great i think i think that's
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that's wonderful and and i don't get asked this a lot but i but i do get asked it
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what's the difference in an ortho exclusive group versus you know one of the um
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gp groups out there um are are aren't docs going to get the same discounts
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well the gp groups for one thing are going to have different products in different companies you know there's a lot of companies that
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general dentists use that orthodontists don't use right and then there's a lot of companies that orthodontists use that
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a general dentist wouldn't use and so since we focus on ortho and that's what we are as an ortho exclusive
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group you know we try to think outside the box and look at everything an orthodontist
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would need to run their practice you know to help it be more efficient
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to you know be able to save and get quality products and so as we're looking at
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adding companies as you know we have discounts with consultants like you yeah um you know smile suite we just recently
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added them and you know we listen to the members as far as what companies they want at it and so you know we have
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discounts on things like that most ordering platforms don't have those kinds of discounts on things like that
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they just have product um and we you know we try to think of everything an orthodontist could
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possibly need so for example a startup you know they have a break room they
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need a refrigerator or a microwave or a dishwasher if they want a dishwasher and televisions we have discounts on all of
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those things yeah and remember members that have actually built homes have said our prices and our
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discounts on all those things actually be with their builders are able to that's that's that's wonderful and i
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think you know this is a really good segue in into startups because i you
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know knowing that you know i primarily focus on startups you know in the acquisitions but
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you know this is you know your group is you know something that i talk about every single time with my startups
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because i feel like there are such deep discounts that can be um
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you know attained especially in our big ticket you know items and when we've got such tight budgets if we know that we
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can go to one place and you know get these really deep discounts really what that does for us is that helps us have
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more money for marketing which which is what we need to get those practices off the ground so let's let's
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talk a little bit about startups because it is a totally different ballgame when
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we think about you know that one doc coming in maybe with one employee maybe um and you know they're
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saying hey i i need to get started with my ordering i need to know what to order i need to
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kind of know how how to set this up um and then you know kind of from a cash flow standpoint you know how do how do i
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protect my cash flow because that's you know anybody who's worked with me knows
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you know it's all about the budget [Laughter] and you know we are we are just working
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so hard just to stay within that budget and keep them safe so that they've got their working capital to only use in an
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emergency as we're as we're moving through that year so let's let's let's kind of switch gears and talk about
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startups um a little bit do you have any good pro tips for for any of my startup
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docs out there or you know best best practices that green
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newbie team members should put in place to assist with their ordering okay well
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when a doctor calls us and they're a startup i generally ask them when they plan to open
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and if they've signed their lease because leases do fall through and so once the lease is signed there's
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a lot of planning and even if they're not ordering for two or three or four months
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if something is back ordered you know they may need to get the order in sooner if they're trying to decide on x-ray
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they have time to do their homework before they actually order it but then they also need you know to have the
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walls up before it can be installed so it all plays in as far as timing but i
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think that with startups you know if doctors don't overstock in the beginning
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you know order what you need as far as instruments and you know pliers and
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cassettes and things for sterilization you know all the things in the clinic you know but you don't need to order a
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year's worth yeah out of the gate right right and you know and sometimes doctors
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just don't know yet which bracket company they want to use so they may want to try a few before they place a big ground order yeah a lot of companies
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you know will let them place the smaller like mini grad before they place their big one
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um i do tell doctors that if they're gonna do a liners of course
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they'll need a scanner if it's invisalign it has to be the eye tarot if it's another modality any
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scanner they can order a lot of our doctors have ordered the medic because it can be used on anybody
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and it doesn't have the monthly recurring and the tips can be uh sterilized up to 100 times per tip and
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so plus it's less expensive and so a lot of doctors have looked at that and have ordered that in the beginning
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we we try to guide them and do a coaching call because and then turn them over to you a lot of times if
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they don't come from you but it's interesting because startups you know
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it is more work you know for us to help with startup but we love doing it because if you
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if you are with the practice in the beginning and you help them develop and then you grow
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together you know they become a wonderful client that wonderful referral source and it's interesting because when code
30:29
happened i kind of panicked and i thought oh what's going to happen to my company you know when the offices were shut down
30:36
and what actually turned out to our benefit i think is doctors for the first time were glued to patients so they were
30:43
actually in our portal and seeing more of what we do yes and when coveted
30:48
happened i can't tell you how many of our members said you guys are awesome we haven't run out of anything you know we
30:55
never had to worry about getting you know level three masks or n95s or gloves you know we always were
31:02
able to keep them supplied and the other thing that i saw when coveted happened is the startups and i don't know if you
31:08
saw this or not jill they kind of went flat and now we're just so busy i think we're
31:16
waiting to open offices when the whole heyday of covet was going on well that and our banks stopped lending so you
31:23
know we uh we were doing the money dance around which bank which bank is handing
31:28
out money and you know running from one to the other um so i can tell you that's what happened is um you know everything
31:35
went um it got a little difficult um i i could i you know i was definitely
31:41
working hard to make sure that we we got we got funding for those startups but you're right everything is really uh
31:48
broken loose you know for sure and you know i i do want to just kind of circle back around to something you said you
31:54
know working with startups you know one of the things is it's so important that we do understand especially when we're
32:02
looking at design of an office and you know when we're signing that lease we're usually fairly far into
32:09
the design of the office and we're getting into mechanical engineered plans
32:14
and one of the big things that we need for our mechanical engineered plans is a lot of times the spec sheets for some of
32:21
the equipment that we're going to be ordering and i think that has been such a benefit um you know with a lot of the
32:27
companies on your list having again you know kind of one place that we can go to um because if i need to know all right
32:34
we're going to use you know the vatek machine from voxel and we're going to order our chairs from ross orthodontics
32:40
or we're going to do this or we're going to do that you know the companies are great to be able to give us our spec sheets even if
32:46
we aren't ready to place the order yet just to help facilitate that we keep moving forward with what we're doing and
32:54
what we need to do so that we don't miss our timelines to make sure that we can have that that practice um open on time
33:02
so i think i think that's just another benefit to having kind of this one area with a lot of options but also i think
33:10
you know speaking to the companies that are on the group just super helpful people that really do want to help
33:15
companies that are really out there to to help young doctors and existing doctors as
33:21
well so i think i think that that's um wonderful so again
33:26
kind of the same thing with acquisitions anything different we have to think about um when we think about
33:34
quantity and not overspending i know
33:39
like i have provided in the portal like for startups i actually have kind of an
33:44
overview of an ordering list of um you know items how many pliers should you be
33:50
ordering how many sets of different things you know i kind of have an overview of that but
33:55
do you have any any additional suggestions maybe on appropriate quantities and how how we don't
34:01
overspend you know even though we're excited to be opening up our practice um again that
34:08
money only goes so far right right well i mean you certainly want to have enough for your patient
34:14
flow and so as far as you know giving a number of how much to buy you can't really cookbook that
34:20
unless you know how many active patients the doctor has so you have to kind of gauge it off of
34:26
that and have a good enough amount so that as long as it takes for to go back into sterilization you have enough
34:32
coming back out and so you know the the levels are going to vary depending on
34:38
you know how many how many active patients you're seeing yeah and i tell me if you think this is a good
34:44
gauge i usually tell my startups you know again when we're first starting out order
34:50
enough to get your price break you know if you're looking at certain items but
34:55
you know if we think about it we're starting with one or two or three starts a month as we're getting going and you
35:01
know we're just not going to have a lot so don't don't overstock your shelves
35:06
you know you you've got plenty of time to do the ordering um you know so so do what you need to to get maybe the the
35:13
basic discounts that you need but um you know don't get caught up in oh my gosh
35:18
if i just order 10 you know cases of gloves i'm going to save fifteen hundred dollars well you
35:24
know you're gonna have those ten cases of gloves maybe for the next three i would put them on auto ship and get the
35:29
extra five percent discount yeah and then you pay as you go the thing about when you do it in auto ship
35:35
is you know you you get the price that day if it goes up or down the price may go
35:40
up or down but you'll still still get the extra discount and so you know like what you just said depending on the
35:47
quantity to get the discount an example is like eufridi they're you know
35:52
very often have a buy get free and so if you know if it's buy six pliers get two
35:58
free you wanna for sure do that you know to take advantage of that yeah yeah that's great and that gets us to what i
36:04
consider to be our minimum order that we want anyways for a startup so that's you know that's that that's beautiful
36:10
so um i know i'm going to circle back around a minute you said something about gray market um but i don't think i've
36:18
heard that before um yeah i know right you know it's amazing is that possible
36:24
tell me tell me what that means i i do hear daily people that have never heard of it
36:30
don't really know what it is and it really is in the last i'd say five years last just
36:36
couple years i'm seeing more and more of it and what it basically means is
36:41
it might be like an ordering platform where you go and you shop and you buy from a whole bunch of different companies
36:47
and as an example is say they sell cava wipes and i'm looking and i go to look at the
36:54
name of the company that they're coming from if they're not an authorized dealer of ker that means it's gray market
37:01
and so what that can mean and i've seen this several times is
37:06
if it's ordered off a platform and it's a gray market product and we had recently something we
37:13
investigated and we could tell by the lot number when we went back to the the dealers on
37:19
our list they had gone to the manufacturer the lot number was from 2009
37:26
expiration said 2022. interesting so i knew that couldn't have
37:32
come from a company on my list because that's basically what gray market is it could be counterfeit it could be expired
37:38
they change the date um and so that's why you want to be sure you're buying from authorized dealers
37:43
authorized distributors because you're you're putting your practice at risk right
37:49
and you know you may save a couple of pennies but it's not worth it and so we vet the companies very carefully
37:55
uh the three dealers for consumables on our list are amtouch pure life and darby and they're all authorized dealers
38:02
so our members know everything's been vetted for quality and safety right yeah that's great that's well
38:09
again i i didn't i didn't know what that meant so that's that's really some good information and and i'm sure it's kind
38:15
of the same thing as like oh i'm sure i can you know just go out on you know where wherever you know i i you
38:22
know this random site to to buy stuff and you know like anything maybe you're
38:29
getting the prada purse maybe you're not well and i think jill you know if it's
38:34
something like paper towels and uh tray covers and things like that you know you can save but if it's
38:41
something critical something you're using on the patients you know there was a a couple of years ago
38:47
a patient that actually had an adverse reaction from septicaine and
38:52
one of the companies on my list got a call from attorneys wow attorneys and they wanted to know if
38:58
the product had come from them we could tell because of the lot numbers that had not and it was a gray market company and
39:04
so yeah it's it's really important you know that you buy products that are quality and
39:09
that they're safe for your patients so yeah such such good good information
39:15
all right mary well we are going to wrap it up here this has just been
39:20
so wonderful i mean i've i just love working with you you're a great great friend of mine but also i just think
39:26
what you are bringing to our industry for our doctors especially for you know the group that i focus a lot on those
39:33
acquisitions those younger doctors those new team members um thank you thank you for just providing a really a really
39:39
great um platform for docs to go in and if they work it they're gonna save and i
39:46
think you know i think you've already shown us that you know it's low hanging fruit if we just pay attention to
39:52
how often we order you know i think our takeaways are make a list how often are you ordering and you know really where
39:59
where we need to be keeping our overhead at and and it is attainable to shoot for that three to five percent so i think i
40:06
think that that's wonderful i think one more thing jill i'm just gonna throw this in real quick um because this was
40:12
this is a big one and it's not really ordering but it's a company that saves our members this
40:18
this past week we just hit the two million mark in savings and what they do is they um
40:25
go in and they look at your credit card charges and then they negotiate to bring them down and somebody had posted about it in the
40:32
group this past week and somebody had said it's the easiest money i ever made and so there there's a lot of savings
40:39
there and so we you know we try to look at not just things you buy for your practice but things to help you promote
40:44
your practice you know consultants like you uh ordering systems
40:50
software office furniture things to help you get organized you know we really try to
40:56
encompass just about everything that everyone else is going to need so yeah i love that and and you are right that is
41:02
a huge pearl um you know i usually tell my docs they need to be re and especially once they get going they need
41:08
to be looking at their you know credit card charges you know at least every couple years because those companies
41:14
what they start you at i absolutely guarantee you you will not be at that and you if you're if you're really
41:20
scrutinizing it you're going to look back and go huh what's that charge didn't see that charge before you start
41:27
and they hide them i mean merchant cost consulting once once they did ours and we got it down to a reasonable rate
41:32
literally the next month they hit us with the ten dollar per swipe charge currently
41:39
i mean it's just it's it's amazing though you know what goes on behind the scenes and you know
41:45
we're not a typical group purchasing organization we don't take any part of the sale you know we don't take two
41:52
percent on up to 20 we don't take anything we don't charge companies to be on the list to advertise in our newsletter um
41:59
our philosophy is we're gonna tell you who we think is the best the best product best price save you
42:06
money but my trainers and all you know my whole team none of us are on commission
42:12
and the reason we don't do it that way is not only because the credibility but if we did it means the end price to the
42:19
doctor is going to be more because the companies still have to you know business make money and if there's a
42:25
middle person taking two to five or ten percent they can't discount as much yeah yeah that's great that's great and i
42:32
think i think that's that's great too to just you know totally uh put that out there too because i'm sure there are
42:37
people that ask that or have have wondered about that as well so i think i think that that's wonderful and i do
42:44
want to say one more thing too i think that's a real asset too is is the um the facebook group that you have you know
42:50
that's that's something that you know i can see is such a an asset too you know
42:55
people can get on there and ask questions and i know you and your team are great about answering things you
43:01
know right away or being like hey we're gonna have a deal coming up or um you know this that or the other and i think
43:08
sometimes it's nice to just know there's somebody out there that you can ask a question to
43:14
especially in this realm and you know get an answer that's an unbiased answer
43:20
which i think is also you know super helpful as as well because again like i said there's no kickback there's no you
43:26
know nothing that we're worrying about there also so thank you well we're going to finish
43:32
this up here we're going to spin this around a little bit and do something a little fun we're going to do
43:38
it the my heydoc speed round um so are you
43:43
ready to accept the challenge of the speed round
43:50
all right here we go favorite ice cream haagen-dazs coffee
43:56
oh me too girlfriend me too have you ever worn socks with sandals
44:03
oh no i'd be thrown out of texas if i did that
44:09
star wars or star trek star wars ah okay
44:15
is double dipping ever acceptable uh probably with my husband
44:22
[Laughter] you know texas was the first place i ever went to where they actually sat
44:28
down two separate um salsa bowls and i was like huh that's interesting so anyways um all
44:35
right do you wear a retainer every night uh no when my contacts start to open i'll put
44:42
it on i have a little bolt in discrepancy and so behind my cuspids
44:47
food starts getting stuck the retainer goes in how would you rate your karaoke skills
44:53
on a scale of one two beyonce ooh uh
44:58
six maybe hey tomatoes are they a fruit or a vegetable oh that's easy i'm a gardener it's a
45:05
fruit [Laughter] what show have you been watching lately
45:11
um i'm a big wheel of fortune fan i don't watch a lot of television though
45:16
i'll do that after the the day is over just that's the brain drain right yeah yeah and i'm a yellowstone fan i can't wait
45:22
for it to be back oh it's coming all right um what podcast or audio book
45:28
or music have you been listening to lately um oh wow i listen to a lot of music bruno
45:35
mars love him um yeah willie of course hi of course of course that's great and
45:42
then last one if you were to name one big hairy audacious goal you have for yourself for
45:48
your business in 2022 what's that um a big one for us is we're moving to a
45:54
new crm oh that is a big one yeah yeah andy helping us and emily are both
46:00
working on that right now and i have actually more than one we're going to gorp this year for the first time oh
46:06
that's wonderful that's wonderful well well congratulations on that that's great well again mary i just want to say
46:13
thank you so much for being a part of this hate docs episode i think you've given us just some great information i i
46:20
know um the doctors that are listening are really going to eat this up and have some pearls to take away so until next
46:27
time thank you very much thanks jill appreciate you
46:32
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