Success in Dentistry is a Team Effort

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Intro: You are now listening to another episode of the Insurance Untangled podcast, where we explore the various challenges faced by dental practices due to their reliance on insurance. Join us in this podcast as we dive deep into the issues surrounding dental insurance dependence and offer practical solutions and strategies to help you take control of your practice’s financial future.

Ben Tuinei: Welcome to another exciting episode of the Insurance Untangled podcast. My name is Ben Tuinei, and I’m one of the co-hosts on this podcast that’s dedicated towards helping practices that are tangled up with insurance. We talk about all topics in dentistry, all topics that we know of very well—insurance, marketing, and business—and help you take more control, create a bigger, better, brighter future for you, your patients, and of course, your team members. Today I have my good friend and co-host with me, Naren, and I’m gonna be interviewing him about a really amazing marketing concept. Naren, how are you?

Naren Arulrajah: I’m doing great, Ben, and yourself?

Ben Tuinei: Doing wonderful, thank you. Yeah, I think, um, I think this is more than just general marketing, right? When you talk about—well, let me outline and, um, introduce the topic. So we wanna talk about the concept that success in dentistry is a team effort. You know, too often, um, business owners tend to bottleneck their own opportunities. They cannibalize on their own opportunities by doing everything themselves, right? Or trying to do everything in-house, right? Which can often lead to mistakes. And, uh, so we’re gonna pick Naren’s brain about this whole concept of sort of networking and outsourcing and delegating, right? To allow you to be as successful as you can be.

So, first question I have for you, Naren—why is collaboration so important when it comes to dental practice growth? And I’m thinking of a lot of the doctors that I talk to that want to keep things in-house. A lot of doctors that are not necessarily adept to socializing, right? And not going out there or not interviewing vendors and trying to find help in those areas. They just kind of wanna do it all themselves. But why do you think collaboration is so important in growing a dental practice?

Naren Arulrajah: Absolutely. I think it’s the nature of life itself. And I’ll just, um, start by talking about, you know, you as a human being, right? First, you are dependent, right? You’re dependent on your mom even to just keep you alive, right? Just give you food and stuff.

Then, little by little, you become a 5-year-old, or maybe you can, you know, when you feel hungry, you know how to open the fridge and eat something, right? So you become a little independent. And then, um, but even up until you finish high school, the teacher tells you what exam to study for, what subjects to take, and what assignments to do. So you’re still very dependent. So our world trains us to become very dependent. And then you go to university—kind of continues—where, yeah, you may have to read your own books and figure out your own answers, but still they’re dictating, you know, what you should do.

Naren Arulrajah: Um, then of course, you get a job, you become kind of independent even more. You have a job, you are making money, you’re paying rent, you’re living by yourself, taking care of your clothes, figuring out your food. You become kind of independent. So you go from dependent to independent. Then you get married. Now, all of a sudden, it’s no longer one person calling the shots—two people. Or even you live together with someone, right? You know, "Hey, I don’t like it this way, I like it that way." You start dividing and conquering. You’re like, "Okay, I’ll take care of this, you take care of that." Um, so you start really practicing interdependence, right? Where you are two people coexisting.

Of course, you see great marriages and crappy marriages, and usually great marriages are very interdependent, right? They’re very good at understanding each other, understanding their tendencies, understanding their strengths.

Naren Arulrajah: It’s no different from your academic career, right? I mean, in dental school, you’re made very, uh, dependent in the way the teachers think. You don’t do what they say, you get a low mark. You don’t please them, you get a low mark. So you really start optimizing for dependence. And then all of a sudden you’re pushed into this real world and you’re working for somebody else. Again, it’s a little bit independent. You make 30%, and, you know, as long as you do a decent enough job, you’ll make that money. That’s you as an associate.

Then you become, um, interdependent. Remember, when you own a practice, you’re no longer just one person. You have six employees, three employees, and they have to contribute, and they have to be rewarded—just like, you know, you are getting rewarded. So how do you create this interdependent culture?

Naren Arulrajah: So anyone who kind of succeeds in life realizes this transition from dependency to independence to interdependence. But some people, I guess, don’t get the memo about how important interdependence is. Therefore, they struggle. Like, you know, they try to do it all themselves. They don’t develop other people. They don’t reward other people well. They don’t find the right people to be on that team.

Imagine, you know, even with marriage, right? If you don’t find the right person who’s compatible, it’s gonna be challenging, right? Same thing with, you know, your team. Um, so I do think this idea of collaboration or being interdependent—I like the word interdependent—which is something that I learned from Stephen Covey, by the way. His book changed my life, Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. And one of the things he talks about is this idea of, you know, maturing from dependent to independent to interdependent.

Naren Arulrajah: And he says you can’t skip a line. You have to first become independent before you can be interdependent. So, of course, mm-hmm. So everything you have—your independence—is a good thing because you know how to be self-sufficient. But when you’re running a business, you can’t be self-sufficient. It just doesn’t work, because you need to do six people’s work. So how does one person do six people’s work and think for six people, right? You can’t. You need everyone thinking, everyone doing their best, everyone pulling in the right direction so, you know, you get the outcomes you want.

Ben Tuinei: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And I love Stephen Covey’s book. He had a huge facility there in Utah, um, bookstore and all that, and his seminars that I didn’t get to attend—but my parents have. Um, great insight on this concept and a lot more, you know?

So, you know, as I’m thinking about this, Naren, in terms of this whole concept of being, um, independent, interdependent—you know, just collaboration with professionals, right? Not being stuck and being your own bottleneck in your own practice because you’re doing everything. You’re too busy to get all things done effectively, right? How does this whole concept of interdependence or collaboration—how does this apply to marketing?

Naren Arulrajah: That’s a great question. So I think we talked about interdependence—you and your team. Same way, there’s interdependence between you and your vendors, right? You know, to be really good at, you know, creating wonderful, you know, lab work, you need to specialize in being a lab technician. You need to run a lab. Like, you know, dentists can’t do a side hustle and be a, you know, lab tech, right? You just can’t do it. Or, um, you know, you have software companies—that’s all they specialize in. You use software like Dental Intel, for example, you know, where they’re good at their piece. And then you have suppliers, and that’s all they do. They buy supplies and make sure you get the right quality supplies. Same thing with marketing.

So I think anytime you have an interdependent relationship, there are a few things you need to pay attention to.

Naren Arulrajah: You need to make sure you’re picking the right partner who knows what they’re doing. In other words, they need to be the expert in that domain. They need to be the best in that domain, right? Like, you don’t need to go to accounting school and become a CPA or a, you know, certified accountant for you to run a business. You’re gonna hire somebody, right? But if you don’t get the right person who knows what they’re doing, you might be paying more taxes than you need to. You might not be doing planning you could have done that would have saved you a lot of money. You might not know how well your business is doing because you don’t have the right person giving you the right advice. So there is a lot of price to pay for not picking your right partners—right vendors.

Naren Arulrajah: But if you are to pick, you know, the right partner, I think, um, you know, you succeed. So what is marketing? Marketing is helping people find you, helping people choose you, and then helping people trust you. That’s what marketing is—and doing it at scale. In other words, instead of you, you know, I’m sure we all remember walking by a food court and there’s this lady giving you samples, right? Do I see you as the dentist giving samples outside the door? I don’t think so, right? How do you give somebody samples? You’re a dentist, right? You can’t.

So how do you still influence people without giving them samples like a food court employee would do to get them to try your office? And that’s what marketing is—helping them like you, trust you. And so, helping them find you, like you, and trust you.

Naren Arulrajah: And then how do you know if each piece is working? Anyways, we can get more into this, but in interdependence, you have to understand the game. You don’t have to know the game. You don’t have to play the game. But you have to understand the keys to success. And then you have to hold your partner accountable for those key things.

With a lab, if quality is your thing, then hold them accountable. If how quickly they can turn around is your thing, then hold them accountable for how quickly they can turn around. Because then it becomes a very productive relationship. You don’t micromanage them on what to do or how to do it. They don’t micromanage you. But you guys have this relationship where they know what you want, and they deliver it consistently.

Ben Tuinei: Right? Right. No, I like that—having good partners. I mean, what I’m thinking of is, um, with regards to what you just said—years ago, um, well, some background: I’m of the mindset that you can fix just about everything with good instruction, right? You could YouTube something and find instructions, like how to change an air filter on your vehicle. You know what I mean?

And years ago, I had this one-terabyte memory card that I traveled with everywhere, you know, ’cause it had a lot of things. It was my whole computer on wheels, basically. And one day, for some reason, it wouldn’t open, it wouldn’t work. And so I Googled how to fix it, how to inspect it and fix it. And because this is not my space, I ended up ruining the whole drive—because you’re not supposed to open it.

Ben Tuinei: Because the speck of—I learned about this later—a speck of dust that lands on the internal actual data thing, the disc… yeah, one speck of dust is like dropping a 10-ton boulder on your house. It destroys everything. And you know what? It destroyed everything on that file. And I learned the lesson the hard way: that there are certain things that you could DIY—do it yourself—but there are other things that you just have to leave to the professionals, you know?

And marketing is one of them, in my opinion, you know? ‘Cause we could spin our wheels and spend more time—not necessarily more money—but more time trying to do a marketing concept. But that time is lost opportunity for most business owners, you know what I mean? It could have been cheaper just to have a partner resolve those things, because that’s what they do on a daily basis.

So I like to look at things from that perspective: when we network, leave certain things to professionals. Because the cost to repair something that I failed on is significantly more than just hiring somebody to do it. You know?

So that kinda leads me to the next question: what happens when you try to do it all yourself?

Naren Arulrajah: Yeah. I mean, you brought up a good question, right? I mean, technically, I could take a bottle of alcohol, drink it, and take a plier and pull out that—

Ben Tuinei: Tooth. That dirty—

Naren Arulrajah: I could do it. I mean, technically, I could do it, right? Like, I have a hand, I can get alcohol, I have a plier in my house. I could do it. But—

Ben Tuinei: Right.

Naren Arulrajah: Would I do it? I don’t know. Maybe not.

Ben Tuinei: Maybe not. Yeah, I agree.

Naren Arulrajah: There’s an easier way to do that. Maybe there’s a safer way to do that. Maybe there’s a less painful way to do that. So somebody goes to dental school, spends, you know, 10 years becoming a doctor and getting experience—and I go to that person. Because why? Well, like you said, we all need professionals.

In the same way, I think—find professionals. But you wanna make sure they know what they’re doing. And you wanna make sure you are clear on the outcome. So, for example, if I’m going to that dentist to get me out of pain, my number one thing is: how fast can you get me in? Right? If you’re telling me, "Oh, wait three weeks," I’m not gonna wait, because it’s hurting me every minute.

Second is, when I go there: how quickly do you get me out of pain?

Naren Arulrajah: And does it last, right? If you get me out of pain and then three minutes later or three hours later it comes back, I’m like, oh, I’m not too happy. I’m writing that nasty review. "Don’t go to this guy. He’s just the worst." Right? Right, right. So—but I’m very clear on what I want. And I think, as business owners, you have to be very clear on what each piece of the puzzle is and what you want from each partner in that piece.

Now, marketing is—I wish it were simple. It’s probably one of the hardest things for any successful business owner. And if you look at the most successful ones, they kind of lean a little bit into it. Because—you know why marketing is so hard? You can’t force a customer to become a customer. Like, you know, I can’t—I mean, unless you live in, you know, I don’t know, a Soviet-style place where people vanish and, you know, magically things happen to you if you don’t listen to, you know, the powers that be.

Naren Arulrajah: But if you live in a free country, you can’t force anybody to do anything, right? You just can’t. You can’t even force your kid to do anything—forget about strangers. Just like—so how do you get them to want to do it, right? That’s what marketing is.

First, they have to know that you can help them, right? They have to find you. Again, there’s a whole science around it and, you know, magic around it. Then they have to like you. Just because they found you doesn’t mean they’re going to do business with you. Dale Carnegie said, right, "We do business with those we like." So how do we get them to like us? And how do we do it at scale? Because remember, I’m not standing outside the door and giving them free samples as a dentist, right? So how do I get people to like me at scale?

Naren Arulrajah: And then finally, how do I get them to trust me—again, at scale—so the phone keeps ringing with new clients? And then even then, it’s not done. Now marketing is done, but you’re not done. You have to now convince them to come see you. That’s where your phone training and, you know, conversion rate and all those things come in.

So once you understand this game, don’t expect magic. I know some doctors are frustrated: "I wanted 17 patients or 39 patients, and I’m not getting them." Even when SEO is working, doesn’t mean it’s done. You still have to get them to like you. They have to trust you.

Are you getting Google reviews? Are you getting proof to show them that, hey, you are good at what you do? If you are not, and I can choose between somebody who has, you know, 10 reviews in the last 30 days and you who have two, who am I going to go with? You know what I mean? Like, put yourself in the customer’s shoes.

So marketing is one of the hardest and the most important things for success. I can put everyone who’s in the top 1% of dental practices on one side, and everybody else who’s in the bottom 80% on the other side. I can guarantee you: everyone on the 1% side would know what marketing is and would have good partners—and they know how to manage these partners.

In other words, "Okay, if your job is to help people find me, how many keywords am I ranking for?" You know? And the minimum number I would recommend is a hundred or more keywords on page one. If you’re in charge of my phone team, "What’s our conversion rate?" Right? You know? I would recommend 70% or higher. You need to even know your conversion rate.

Naren Arulrajah: Like most doctors—90% of practices don’t even know what their conversion rate is. So once you figure out what are the key parts of the puzzle, think of business like a puzzle. You just need to figure out: what do I need to do right in each part of that puzzle—and just do it. That’s it. And then, many of these things can be delegated to somebody else. But you need to be the driver who knows, “Okay,”—just like that patient—“Can I see you quickly? Can you get me out of pain? And can you keep me out of pain?” Right? Those are the three things. It’s an easy example.

So we don’t—this is not a complicated thing. But in business, you have to think a little bit. Understand what marketing is. Understand what the keys to success are. And then, once you understand it, hold people accountable.

So, um, and that’s kind of what I focus on—like, you know, educating our clients on what is marketing, and then even teaching them on how to hold us—or anybody else—accountable on those key pieces.

Ben Tuinei: Mm-hmm. No, I love—I absolutely love that. You know, I think that kind of brought to mind the whole concept between marketing and branding—you know, name recognition, you know—where marketing sort of helps tee you up for people to kind of understand and know what your reputation, what you’re all about. You know?

So maybe we can do an episode on that. Maybe, you know, I’d love to pick your brain on those things. Yeah. But that kind of leads me to the next question here as I’m thinking, uh, Naren, is that, you know, when it comes to results, um, I’m fairly certain that results are different depending on who you choose to go with—especially when you’re looking at marketing concepts, right?

Do you sort of see that in terms of small, big—small or even big differences—in terms of results when a doctor’s making a selection on the right marketing partner, per se?

Naren Arulrajah: Absolutely. And I’ll use an example we all can understand—Apple iPhones, right? Anybody who studies the whole, you know, phone business knows Apple takes most of the profit out of the whole market. In other words, they can sell the same phone, pretty much made by the same people in China or India or wherever, and charge twice as much. And people would, you know, take away two months’ salary in certain countries—because the iPhone is that expensive for them—and pay for it.

I mean, like, literally, they would forgo all the other things they could do with that two months’ salary because they want this thing, which is twice as expensive as something similar with a different logo on it. Right? Why? Why is that?

I think because people will pay for what they want, and not—more than what they need. Like, they want an iPhone. Like, yeah, it’s double everything else, but they want it. You know, it makes them feel good. It does things for them that perhaps the other products don’t do. And, um, just by carrying around a phone, now you elevate your social status—at least subconsciously, right?

Naren Arulrajah: So, same thing in dental, right? I’ve worked with practice owners for 18 years, and I know the ones who work, you know, 20 hours a week and make two and a half million dollars. And I know the ones who run $7 million practices with a lot of associates. So the way I think about it is—one could be a Ritz, one could be a Best Western. Doesn’t matter what your game is. You need to understand your game, and you need to play that game.

So, in the context of marketing—remember, marketing is about helping people find you, like you, and choose you. But one thing I missed out, which is ideal patient—what is your ideal patient?

Like, we call it ICP: Ideal Customer Profile, right? It’s a buzzword in, you know, large businesses, because they want to make sure everything they do is targeting the ICP—the ideal customer profile.

So what is your ICP? If you are somebody who loves to create beautiful smiles, your ICP is people who value those beautiful smiles, right? So, how do I get them to find me? How do I get them to choose me?

Now, if you’re on a PPO plan, for example, you are going to get nine out of ten people who are not your ICPs. Why? Their first question is, “Is it covered by insurance?” They don’t care about that beautiful smile that’s going to cost them the price of a car they could otherwise buy, right?

Naren Arulrajah: ’Cause that’s not what they’re looking for. They’re just looking for what’s covered by insurance. “I’ll do it if it’s free. Anything else is too much.” So there’s a disconnect between you getting all this education and all these qualifications versus the clients you’re getting through your PPO plan—who are not your ICPs.

So focus on the ICPs. Now, imagine if you can identify and find the right ideal clients. I mean, imagine you are doing these $30,000 cases. You love what you do. You get even more continuing education. The amount of money you make per hour—five times, ten times more than the amount of money you have to make doing, you know, fix-it dentistry or, you know, um, you know, just get-it-done dentistry versus, you know, this minimally invasive dentistry around health and how they look.

So you will enjoy your life.

Naren Arulrajah: Your team will be less stressed, right? When you’re taking care of these ideal patients who want what you’re giving them—who appreciate what you’re giving them—they’re thanking you all day long. They’re thanking your team all day long.

Versus everything is, “Is it covered by insurance? Is it covered by insurance? Is it covered by insurance?” And you are like, “Why did I waste my time?” You know? “Why did I go to school? Why did I get this continuing education? Why am I hiring good employees who love what they do and who want to make a difference?” Like, the whole thing breaks apart.

So the rewards for you for getting your marketing right—which can attract the right patients, which can get them to come in—is massive. The root of all—if you don’t—you end up being like the 90% who are stuck with PPO plans and just doing whatever the heck the PPO plans want them to do.

Naren Arulrajah: You know, every year they pay you less. Every year they make it harder. And they put all these hoops—and half your employees are fighting those hoops. You know, that has nothing to do with healthcare. That has nothing to do with beautiful smiles.

So I think the benefit of getting marketing right—if you can be in that 10% who figured it out—one, you’ll quickly climb up to that top 1% of dentists in your country, and two, you would love your life. Your team would love their life. They’d jump out of bed to come to work because they take care of the people they want, the way they want to do it.

And those people are willing to pay for it—and willing to appreciate you for it—versus the misfit, right? “I want to create beautiful smiles,” and you want what’s free, which is “covered by insurance.”

Ben Tuinei: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, you know, what you’re describing is—if you do marketing the right way, holy smokes—you’re in a position where you can scrutinize the kind of clientele or kind of patient base you want, right?

Because you don’t need everybody. You just need the ones that fit your model of dentistry—that come in not because you take their insurance plan, but they come in because they have that trust factor, you know?

And to me, that is the ideal place to be as any kind of business—where you can have that ability to pick and choose who you want in your practice setting and have full control over that, you know? So if I’m a listener—

Naren Arulrajah: I wanna make a comment on what you said.

Ben Tuinei: Oh, yeah, yeah—

Naren Arulrajah: For sure. You know, in life, we all have choices, right? So one of the questions I would challenge you to ask yourself is, Who do you want to be a hero to? Don’t try to be a hero to everyone. Who do you want to be a hero to?

If you want to be a hero to those who want beautiful smiles, just focus on that. I mean, we talk about the 80/20 rule as if it’s this magical thing. It’s not. The people who are successful first decide who they want to be a hero to, and then put all their time and attention into attracting those people, serving those people, building a team to serve those people—and they get rid of all the other distractions. They say no to everything else.

I mean, when Steve Jobs came back to Apple, they had 400 products. He killed 396 of them without even looking at them.

Naren Arulrajah: He’s like, “We want to be a hero in these four places. That’s it.” You know—consumer, professional, desktop, laptop. That’s it. Four lines, each box. And we want to have one product that is the world’s best in each one. That’s it. Nothing more, nothing less.

And before him, they had 400 products and were three months away from going bankrupt, right? So we think working more is better. No, no, no, no, no. Working less, saying no to things, focusing only on the things you need to focus on, and having the guts to say no to everything else—that is the difference between those who continue to climb and continue to succeed, and the ones who are going in circles month after month after month after month. And you talk to them four years later, they’re in the same rut they were in four years ago.

Ben Tuinei: Yeah. You just dropped a bomb of wisdom on the episode today with that latest comment. I—you know, I agree wholeheartedly with what you said there. It’s just like raising kids. At some point, you have to help them hone in on their focus for their life, right?

Yeah, look at what their skill set is and encourage them and steer them in that right direction. Because you’re right—when we’re split-focused, we could be somewhat okay at all the 400 different things, right? But not an expert and not great at any of them.

Naren Arulrajah: And the difference between being great and being average is 10x. You’re not talking 10% better. When you look at rewards, you know—the top one player in golf or the top ten players in golf make a hundred times more than the bottom thousand. You know what I mean? Or the next thousand.

Because the difference is literally 10x, 20x, 30x.

So—you have the same number of hours, same number of brain cells as everybody else. One path gives you 10x in terms of self-satisfaction, results, etc. The other one—same old, same old. You know, going to the salt mine every day.

I would choose 10x all day long.

I know it’s a different path. It’s a different way of thinking. But once you get on it, you will see massive improvements—not just in terms of money and revenue and profits. Even you—you’ll jump out of bed. Like, I mean, you’re like, “Oh man, Sunday’s not ending soon enough because I’m so excited about what I’m about to do,” right?

And your team feels that way too. It’s not just you. So everyone has joy. I mean, you’re making them happy not just with your paycheck, but with what they get to do with you.

Ben Tuinei: Yeah. Yeah. That’s the key. That’s—I mean, that is the ultimate pinnacle place to be as a practice owner: to think, I can’t wait for Sunday to be over. I can’t wait to get into the office so we can have fun. You know?

Exactly.

So—and I think marketing is so key to allow you to do that as a business owner. So last question I have for you, Naren, is, you know, as listeners are hearing this, some of them might be thinking, “Well, what’s next?” You know? How can I get this kind of support? Or what should I consider?

What would be some of your recommendations in terms of next steps for doctors that are really ready to take action on these things?

Naren Arulrajah: There are things that don’t change, and there are things that change. And you want to build a business around what doesn’t change.

Marketing, a thousand years ago, was the same as it is right now—helping people find you, like you, and choose you. That’s all marketing is. It’s not going to change. Why? Because the person writing a check happens to be a human being.

First, they have to know that you exist. Then they have to like you. If they don’t like you, they don’t want to work with you. And finally, they have to trust you. If they don’t trust you, why would they give their hard-earned money—and especially, as a doctor, let you cut and chop and do things to them—if they don’t trust you, right? Like, they won’t. I mean, I won’t. You won’t, right?

I mean, imagine you go to a surgeon who you think is the worst one—and he’s a butcher and he kills people or does crazy things—you won’t go, right?

Naren Arulrajah: Why would you, right? Same thing with you guys, right? I mean, you’re doing invasive things. And so they have to trust you.

So there are things that don’t change. And there’s no point arguing or trying to ignore it. Those things that don’t change—you just have to lean in.

So step one: find out—are people finding you?

Right? So book a marketing strategy meeting. One of the things we look at is: are you ranking for a hundred or more keywords on the top 10 results? How is your competition doing? Because you want to know who you are up against, and how well they’re doing versus you.

Because the one who’s ranking for a hundred or more keywords on Google has an unfair advantage. Why? The cost of them acquiring a new patient is one-sixth of the cost of somebody who has to depend on ads.

Naren Arulrajah: Why? We don’t trust ads, right? Again, human nature—we don’t trust ads. It is what it is. From the time we are four years old, we are told, “If there’s an ad, there must be a catch.” That’s why they are spending money on ads. Otherwise, if they were so good, they wouldn’t need to advertise, right? That’s what we believe.

So that’s step one: book a marketing strategy meeting to find out if you’re ranking for 100 keywords. Now, if you’re ranking for 100 keywords, it’s because you’re doing well in the six things Google cares about. And if you’re not, you’re getting a B or a C on those six things. Figure out how you’re doing on those six things.

So we give you a report card—not only on how you’re doing with rankings—but also on those six things that lead to ranking.

Naren Arulrajah: And then second: how are you doing on liking? How are your landing pages? In the marketing strategy meeting, we review that and we’ll tell you: are you an A, are you a B, or a C?

And then finally—trust, right? How are you doing on Google reviews? You know, other things to help people trust you—your cases on your landing pages.

So get this full audit. And we also give you a plan. So it’s a 12-month plan for anyone—because we’ve done this for 18 years. So we can say with confidence: any dental practice who wants to get into the A category in finding, liking, and trusting—we’ll give you a report card and a plan.

Of course, we’ll tell you how well your competition is doing. Now that you know where you stand on the things that will never change, go to work on it.

Naren Arulrajah: Like, okay—I’m ranking for 20 keywords. Can I rank for 40?

Our promise to clients is: within 12 months, and once we put in 600 hours’ worth of marketing—which is how much we put in the first year—you absolutely will rank for 100 or more keywords for free on Google, in the top 10 results.

So just figure out what doesn’t change in life—based on first principles—and figure out how you stack up on those things. And then go to work on improving yourself.

I mean, that’s what you did to become a dentist in the first place. You were not in the bottom of your class. You figured out how to get into the top 5% of your class. You figured out how to do well in your entrance exam. You figured out how to do well in your interview.

Naren Arulrajah: You figured out how to finish dental school. You figured out how to get board certified. You know what I mean? You figured these things out, and then you have some advantages the average person doesn’t. I mean, you are in the top 5% of the population for a reason—because you are good at knowing what’s important, and then focusing and making it happen.

Now bring that to your business life. You know, when it comes to interdependent relationships—I talked about marketing and how marketing works. Once you know it, work with a partner who can deliver those things, who can improve those things with you, side by side. So you guys become friends.

I have clients I’ve known for 18 years. And my kids grew up, their kids grew up—we talk about our kids and our, you know, challenges as parents of 20-somethings or late teens, right?

Naren Arulrajah: So you become friends. I mean, at the end of the day, we’re all going to die. We’re all going to retire one day. So it’s good to enjoy life too. It’s good to learn, good to grow—spend time with other people who are also learning and growing.

And that’s one of the things I get from working with the 1% or the top 10%—they’re always growing. They don’t waste their time going in circles. Yeah, they’ll go in circles once or twice, but they’re not going to go in circles a third time, a fourth time. They just learn from it. They’re like, "Okay, this is what I’m doing wrong. I’m going to correct it." And they get on the right path.

And our best clients are the ones who have used marketing companies—because, you know, they’ll sell you whatever you want to hear, and then they don’t deliver. Or they don’t tell you the hard truth, right? They don’t tell you that marketing is hard. Helping people know you, like you, trust you—is hard. And then they don’t work on it.

So, I mean—and a lot of doctors think there’s a magic pill. Trust me, it doesn’t exist. There’s no magic pill.

Everyone who’s going in circles—they’re searching for the magic pill day after day, month after month, year after year.

So don’t be one of those people. Do what you need to do to create a better future for yourself, your family, your team, your patients.

Ben Tuinei: I love it. I love it.

Naren Arulrajah: And the link is, insuranceuntangled.com/msm 

Ben Tuinei: That’s right, I highly recommend it. Click on that. It’s complimentary, and you get so much value out of that. You’ll have at least a good roadmap on exactly what the opportunities are in terms of marketing.

But, you know, today’s episode is so important with that in mind. We have to find good partners and find good people. You know, the thought that came to mind is that I could fail at something and not know it very well as a business owner—but I can outsource or delegate to an expert that knows it well.

So we all have access to those experts for things that we’re not good at, that we don’t want to focus on. And this is definitely one of those things. If you want to be a successful practice owner with continuous growth, visit insuranceuntangled.com/msm  to obtain that marketing strategy meeting.

Ben Tuinei: Naren, what an amazing episode. Lots of wisdom bombs that you dropped here today—so thank you for that. And just want to take a moment to send some love your way for the amazing stuff that you do on this podcast and for the community.

And I want to close this episode by thanking our listeners for joining us today on another amazing episode of the Insurance Untangled podcast. As always, if you enjoyed this, don’t forget to share this with your friends and family, social media, or other avenues—whatever it may be. That’ll help other doctors find our content.

And don’t forget to give us some love with some five-star reviews. But don’t forget to check out insuranceuntangled.com  for all perks and programs, including webinars and episodes that we do publish weekly.

Folks, until we meet next time, we wish all of you the best of success.

Take care now.