Unleashing the Superpowers of Your Hygiene Department

welcome to the automatic patient podcast where we help your dental practice create a kickass recurring Revenue model here are your hosts Mr Jordan and Justin comto this podcast is powered by boomcloud create manage and grow your dental membership program schedule a demo on Boom cloud.com [Music] what's up everybody and welcome to another exciting episode of the automatic patient podcast I am your host today Jordan commock with me as usual Mr Bentley folkman Bentley what is up man how are you doing I'm doing great as always

I'm great when I have a day when I can do a podcast recording get to meet new guests get to have some fun conversations yeah absolutely man we have a fun guest uh here today on the show her name is Tiffany wibben from the hygiene preneur Tiffany welcome to the show how are you oh my gosh thank you so much I'm so Star Struck right now it's like I listened to your show and your voices are absolutely amazing so great for recording and now I'm seeing

your faces and I'm like H this is so great have a face when you have a face for radio you better have a voice for one that's fun I love it I love it we're gonna have some fun so Tiffany for our audience listening tell tell them who you are and how you got started in the the dental space absolutely well my again my name is Tiffany webbon and I am a licensed hygienist for gosh since 2005 and I've been in dentistry for 30 years I

started in practice management started as a file girl actually and then moved my way up to practice management and regional manager of six practices and nice really yeah really had fun building practices that were growing and thriving and and doing well and supporting team members and I was a nerd I would write systems and operations and just thought it was the best time ever you know any any problem that I can solve I was like oh I could solve that I'll just write a system yeah

and run with it and you watch everybody's going to be less stressed highly productive happier with patience and but yes so it started in the front it started in in management yeah that's really cool and you're obsession with systems brought you to what you're currently doing today absolutely which is helping helping the hygiene departments yes yes so I I trans I went into hygiene because I went through a life change I went through a divorce and said okay I love Dentistry but I've got to do

something more I've got to be there for my children and so what do I do do I go to dental school do I go to hygiene school or do I leave the whole dental industry Al together and go back to to maybe Hospitality which I was in the hotel industry and I absolutely love taking care of guests and and so I decided to go to hygiene school and it was the hardest thing I had ever gone through I mean I'm I feel like I'm a pretty

tough person and I would cry at times and but made it through just like all my hygiene you know people out there we all made it through and and so I really do protect and value the Hy license completely and and I just love the field of Dentistry I love what it's done for me and my family and and so you know I gravitated towards making sure that we are operating well and that our systems are in place and so I just naturally put that hat

on as a hygienist and started writing systems and operations for my practice that I worked in and my doctor allowed me to do that he loved it he and were yes and you know he he's such a great supporter to this day and I think I had mentioned to the both of you that you know he was an original Mastermind uh with d with DSI oh cool yes um you might have met him Dr K period Pat Brown uh just amazing guy yes and so he

would always embrace me being a little different and you know me saying gosh you know I see this issue can can we solve it with this or this or this and he'd say go for it this is go this is great yeah and it's awesome so we grew that practice from two hygienists to now it has nine wow and it is completely hygiene driven and it's amazing that you know to sit back and see where we started and and then from there his friend started asking

for my help and it's how it starts I know and it was crazy because I didn't have a business but he and my new boyfriend who's now my husband said you should write a book you've been writing these operations write a manual that's for Hygiene to build a thriving hygiene department and the howto and the tricks and the strategies and and so I did it and it took me two and a half years to write the book I temped in over a hundred practices and and

it's been really well received in the dental industry and I'm I'm just so thankful I'm so thankful that people like it yeah that's awesome I think and we'll make sure we share this book to our listeners in our show notes we'll talk more about it here at the end I have a thought a lot of practice owners look at their hygiene Department as a loss leader uh type Department which is silly to me um how number one why do they think that way because it seems

a little weird that they would be thinking that uh as part of the function of a business and how do you help make that department profitable for a practice so it's so true Jordan our wonderful doctors they say it's okay we're getting diagnosis out of there we're getting 75% of all of the treatment that we're doing is coming out of hygiene so it's okay and then they put it on their backs to do more and be more yeah and they just do that because these doctors

are such they feel like their their their whole responsibility is on them to produce and that they have to do of course all on x's and crowns and and Oro and which we have to do all those things I mean that's that's the essentials right but but when you can have a thriving hygiene Department a hygiene Department that has all of your hygienist just working towards the same goal everybody's calibrated everybody is on the same path with the same voice driving the pra practice to success

gaining the lifetime patient and doing all of the hygiene service mixes right all of the different procedures that we hygienists can do and doing those make sure we're accelerating care and treating perio I mean when we focus on all of that the practice is going to be profitable and the hygiene department is going to be finally really profitable sure what makes a like a hygiene Department not profitable so when we don't serve our patients right or you know we're doing proy propes on patients that have

gum disease sure or we're not taking necessary x-rays when we're supposed to or maybe we haven't adopted the skills of of delivering adjunct therapy to our patients to enhance their care if we're not practicing good time management if we're not all calibrated on the pero protocol and the assessment process all of this goes against us so what my company does is we go in and we look at everything we look at all the wonderful things that the department is doing and we enhance that we want

to elevate that sure and then things that we're kind of missing our mark on we'll say hey we've got a strategy let's go through some training and and I want to support you and we want support you and share this information and and we go in and we do that and we watch the change we watch the progression we're there for support I mean hygienists are calling me all the time and they're like Tiffany what's the code for this Tiffany what's the verbage I need the

laser verbage I mean and I get I get back to them right away and it's it's all about nurturing and being there for for the hygiene team and making sure that somebody's watching that somebody's watching everything that's going on yeah and notating little things as an outsider looking in right and then we do our trainings and and it's just hygienists just really appreciate it yeah yeah that's do you do you see I I've heard that like perodontal disease um doesn't get diagnosed quite a bit in

the United States is that what you see when you're working with a lot of practices yes yes is that part of the problem too in regards to profitability is is just they're not taking care of what the patient needs or maybe insurance is influencing them to not take care of periel it's so hard it's so hard as a practicing hygienist to have a new patient come into your practice and they've been seeing the same Doctor Who they love who retired maybe 20 years and they've been

getting bloody proes they've been getting the procedure that they shouldn't have and then they come in to our hygiene chair and we sit back and go oh my gosh I've got to have this conversation again yeah I've got how much time to do it I've got how many patients in my schedule today and is the message going to be received because you know what as a hygienist I'm not trained to sell Dentistry sure I just I just care about my patients but I don't have time

to go through all of it and so we help guide hygienists on that process on how to deliver that message effectively with good timing and how to do it with hospitality based care back to my background of hotel and yeah at the Ritz Carlton yes and so when you when you bring all of that into your communication what happens is the patients go gosh they're an advocate for me the they're Patient Advocates they're listening to me and the process is that much easier but we guide

we guide the team on that and we help our doctors so that way everybody is on the same page they all know based upon what they see the path of care what's the path of care and so even when they present it everybody already knows like that hygienist is going to do a handoff to the doctor based upon you know what she's suggesting or he's suggesting and the doctor already knows because they already decided it in advance sure during their calibration meeting so that's just one

way that we can convert that number from 18% of the practice you know it's it's like 75% of all adult patients over the age of 65 have gum disease and over the age of 30 it's 50% so why are our numbers so low so that's where the training comes involved and and we get and we track those numbers to let the team know how well they're doing sure would you say would you say that's the biggest problem in the hygiene department is is pero with those

stats one of the biggest I do think it's one of the biggest and and we do know that periodontal is six to nine times more profitable than treating everybody like a healthy patient it's just you know so if we just do the right thing but have those tools to be able to deliver that message effectively with less stress you know we're we're also trying to prevent provider burnout sure yeah know lived it I've lived it for a very long time I've seen my colleagues go through

it I've walked into offices and seen my doctors in the past with their heads down on the desk like super stressed out and so I always said not on my watch I I care too much about the industry I care too much about the doctors that I work with to ever have them feel like that or feel alone or or that they just don't have any answers so yeah that's my so so Tiffany on that on that front because I've I've done Consulting in medical practices

in the past and one of the things that I ran into was you go in and you and you've talked a lot about building good processes and I think on the surface level we all look at that and go oh yeah that would be great but when the rubber hits the road getting people to actually change habits change behaviors and adopt something that is better for them better for their sanity better for their practice and obviously more profitable what roadblocks do you see come up again

and again or what what what tips can you give to a practice that's trying to make changes in a positive way that because you're a very process-driven person um how do you get people to actually adopt processes because writing them down on a on a piece of paper or building a plan is one thing but actually getting it implemented for some of these practice owners and hygienists might seem kind of daunting absolutely 100 perc I I agree with you and the way we get started is

by mindset we don't even start with the whole operation let's fix it until we get into a growth mindset and culture and work on our soft skills which hygienists have an amazing gift of having these soft skills but it's about that social intelligence it's about growth mindset it's about team culture and what is your why why did you become a hygienist why did you become a dentist and so we start with you know what is your why let's remember when and we we start with that

Foundation first and then we build with that and it's been pretty nice because I I think it's because I've been in the trenches for a really long time and I understand the doctor's point of view being a practice Builder from practice management but I also understand the hygiene the hygienist point of view that we just get a lot of positive vibes that they're bought in but we start first with the mindset and just turning it up a little bit maybe just changing it just a little

bit the point of view and a lot of it's fear sure and so when we address the fear then what happens is they become more self confident and we want to give the hygienist the Keys of the Kingdom really really surround them with that leadership and empowerment and it feels really good when you when you have ownership of your operatory your schedule your department and so that's what we project and when they see how different it feels they're super bought in I mean it's just and

then we just keep touching so you know we go two steps forward and then we go back a half a step and go remember a b and c and then we go again just like all of us as children right I mean yeah we don't we don't go real fast you still have to go back and address the lessons and then continue forward and then address again we're always doing our touchbacks always doing that yeah I love that so let's let's shift gears a little I

want talk about your book you said you wrote your book before you started your company which is really cool um what's inside of it what what uh what are the chapters you focus on let's let's let's get into it so it's crazy because I couldn't stop writing it I don't know if you felt like this Jordan when you wrote your book but yeah I had to give it up because my husband he was like you're done you're done and he's a word nerd and so he's

like you got to be done it's taking you two and a half years finished it during covid and you know I got all the content temping at different practices is I was working for my doctor full-time but I really wanted to bring in different demographics diversities all of that different types of practices male female um older demographic patients younger and have those experiences to put in the book and so it was really cool when I tempt because I would bring back pearls that were wonderful from

other practices and go gosh our industry is crushing it here and then I would see other areas where I'm just like H okay I got to write about that sure you know like doctor steamrolling me while I was trying to do a handoff and you know I'm like I'm trying to give you the story to get you in and out very quickly I know you have three more hygiene checks let the hygienist Elevate you and so when the end of the day would happen that doctor

would say all right who are you what are you doing here because they knew I had a full-time doctor I was working 31s and and I said I'm writing this book and you know I want to get out and meet meet different people and and see how we're doing and so the book is full of the teachings communication handoffs calibration uh perodontal assessment calibration with your doctor hygiene mission statement I mean writing a hygiene mission statement before you even start everything you know that's your purpose

in your vision and the whole team the whole the hygiene team and the doctor writes it so it's like they're bought in they've got ownership of that right and we post it and asking for patient reviews a lot of us it feels so awkward well I go through a whole thing on that like how to do that and the best ones to do it are the hygienists because they're the ones seeing the patients most and they get these compliments and the best way to ask for

a review is when a patient gives you a compliment yeah the that's a tip the door is open then all you have to do is say you know what thank you so much that is so nice of you would you mind writing us a Google review we have so many people in the community that you know we're we would love for them to be our patient and coming from an authentic voice like yours you're an existing patient that would speak volumes and oh do you have

a time to have a picture with my doctor you know and you get your little releases yeah you Tee It Up again right and so it's kind of interesting because when you hit about a hundred reviews it starts to snowball all on its own yeah it starts to grow all on its own and and so you know even the practices that are really busy I always say please get reviews because it's not just for gaining a patient a valuable patient it's also for attracting and retaining

team members y we've got we've got shortages everywhere well guess what if there's a a team member that's looking at your practice to come and work where do you think they're going to look the best reviews the practice of the best reviews right yeah right the culture oh my gosh how did they make me feel the doctor's so nice oh my gosh I love my hygienist I love the team you know they got the billing right I things like that right yeah yeah so you know

that's that's there's a lot more in the book I mean it's like almost 270 Pages cool yeah I was gonna ask yeah so oh and I included an index because I'm a science nerd so that way nice they can go through and go Oh I wanna I want to talk I want to learn about communication I gotta get the script on you know how to how to make sure when a patient tries to call and cancel how to how to talk them out of it in

a way sure you know so there's all of that in there for sure yeah so Tiffany how do how does one get your book do they purchase it is it free what what's the what's the uh the pathway to get the book so the physical book is on Amazon and um but at in the show notes afterwards I'm giving all of your listeners a pdf version so they can click on the link on the show notes that would be great awesome thank you for doing that

yeah it's my pleasure absolutely yeah so we'll put that in the show notes be sure to get that especially if you're struggling with your hygiene department or want to make it more profitable what any case studies of of practices you've helped that maybe their their hygiene Department was just a wreck and and how did you help not make it amazing you know what's crazy is that um we we have practices they all grow all of them I've never had one that doesn't grow um I had

I have one that grew 56% in six months with less providers uh that's yes I mean just crushing it because we got the Paro numbers going up and so that that yes you said pero is what six to nine times more profitable profitable yes yeah that makes sense yes and then I have a few practices in Georgia that raised one of them 26% in 4 months and the other one 37% in four months wow wow so when you're when you're talking about a lot of hygienists

I mean that's a big number we're not talking one hygienist we're you know the one practice had four and the other one has three to four in their practices so those numbers are great but besides that our pero acceptance number went up because we we learned how to effectively communicate with our patients so our our pero acceptance number went up tremendously and our average is about 30% growth on pero acceptance numbers our floride percentage numbers go up also and the coolest thing is with adjunct therapy

for the states that can do laser therapy sure so if the doctor doesn't have a laser and he and they purchase one right I'll say they always say okay I'm gonna purchase one but they better use it and I go I know I know I get it I get it and so we'll we'll get the laser we're so thankful that doctor invest in one but then what we'll do is we'll do all of the training on the verbiage behind the laser will integrate the laser completely

into the periodontal protocol and I touch upon that with the hygiene team on multiple sessions and then we track the laser production all on its own so that way when the doctor the doctor sits back and goes oh my gosh they're using it and then they go go oh my gosh the Laser's paid off that's yeah that's a good feeling right there and then I say can we have another one because I want one in every hygiene department so that way that hygienist has it read

yep time management they'll use it and and then of course we're tracking those numbers and we're sharing with the hygiene team hey guys this is where we're at this is how we could do better we got to we're going to work on some language what barriers are you facing when you're presenting adjunct therapy and they'll tell me and I'll say okay let's go through it let's let's get the verbiage going and then you're gonna get the yeses and it's GNA be fun yeah I love it

awesome Tiffany Let's uh let's share your you have you have a website that our listeners can go to yes it's the hygien preneur decom okay go to hygien preneur decom we'll put the book in the show notes as well so you guys can get access to her book I think uh Tiffany do you have a a way for people to reach out to you or would you rather have them go to the website you have an email or phone number I'm on all socials I'm so

social oh my God like everybody you know my husband always says that you've never met a stranger and that's me like friends for life and I love the hygiene community so much and so yes social media is is fun and I love it when people reach out and send me messages and it's so great social then absolutely yes yes faceb page yeah so before we before we cut you loose Tiffany I you and I were talking a little while ago and you have a really cool

project in the works I would I would love for you to just take a moment and talk about what's next for the hygien preneur and what you what you have in in the pipeline because it sounds really fun yes it's going to be so fun so thank goodness my husband is so supportive I mean we've only been married years oh my gosh he's a rockar he's a rockar and and and he's in the marketing industry and amazing and produces books and and just a a superstar

but so I wanted I'm I go out and I speak and I educate and it's my it's my love I just I love having you know those little tidbits and Pearls to help people thrive in the in their operatories and and do great hygiene and do great in their businesses and I found that I was like gosh I'm having this calling I want to have my own events I want to have hygiene ho downs and dental Dude Ranch Retreats yes and so I had been traveling

my husband and I had been traveling back and forth to Nashville every two to three months to visit my family who had moved out here yes Nash Vegas so fun yes yes and the music and so my husband has written you know tons of songs yes we're KNE deep music around here and you know we kept seeing these really cool Barns and so we were thinking we would do it in California where we lived but it was so much money the permitting would be crazy um

you know just crazy crazy money and so we came out here and started looking for property and we purchased 16.2 Acres last July yes that's awesome the barn is built it's big it's a huge monitor Barn it's 4,000 square ft and you know all we have to do is get the inside done and we're going to have we'll have weddings out there we'll have riters Summits out there yes we have art festivals and of course hygiene ho downs and dental Dude Ranch Retreats and yes we've

had different people in the industry call me and say when can I host my retreat there so because we'll have barbecue and music and and little Highland cows I'm getting two little mini Highland cows like so cute right so just living our best life you know I love it embracing everything that comes at us and say and I just say yes I just keep saying yes and it's all working out well yeah for the for the dental one it' be fun to go pay you a

visit uh I too love writing songs so I would love to come out and hang out just for a songwriting event too yes yes absolutely oh my gosh you and my husband would just have so much fun and I like marketing you said he's marketing yeah we're gonna get along real well yeah he produces books and he's written over songs and and yeah so it's just it's it's all fun it's just funny how things just come together isn't it yeah it's wild it's wild how life

can be and you wait for it you work so hard like single mom for 20 years all I did was just work hard for my practices then I loved it and I never knew what was down the road I never knew and but it was my doctor who was like kept pushing me and and and saying you know you're getting bored you need to do this here here's a project and I'm like I'm not bored I'm not bored he goes yeah you are you need more

so love it but you know what thank goodness for that thank goodness for his encouragement and and for my husband's encouragement or I I wouldn't be here today you know talking to you that's awesome yeah okay so everyone go to the hygiene the the hygien preneur tocom is there sweet the one and only the hyene preneur go visit Tiffany's website go get her book uh Tiffany we we appreciate you coming on and hanging out with us on the show today um Bentley any last thoughts for

you dude I just want to say thanks Tiffany thanks for uh our listeners getting access to your book we'll have that in the show notes um and thanks for taking the time the last few times we've chatted I've just enjoyed your energy and wish you all the luck oh my gosh thank you so much guys it was like a natural thing with you too I'm like I'm gonna have a good time with them yeah wonderful I really appreciate your support and your community thank you so

much everybody for you know just Lifting me up and and saying yeah you keep doing you and and you know what we're crushing it our practices are just doing well and I'm just so excited so proud yes thank you guys okay thank you with that said we hope all of you guys have a rocking day [Applause] [Music]