Why Your Schedule Controls You and How to Change That

Narrator: Are you looking to grow your dental practice and attract top-tier new patients? Discover the potential of digital marketing with a personalized strategy session. Join Lila Stone, the marketing director at Ekwa, for an exclusive 90-minute consultation. Lila and her team will dedicate six hours before your meeting to create a customized marketing plan specifically for your practice. This valuable opportunity is free of charge and comes with no commitments. Visit www.insuranceuntangled.org/msm to schedule your meeting with Lila today. You’ll also receive a free analysis report so you can start transforming your practice through the power of digital marketing.

Narrator: 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. And y’all know we’ve developed this for you, mainly to help you untangle yourselves from the mess of insurance that we all have to deal with on a day-to-day basis. And today I have my good friend and my co-host, Naren Arulrajah, with me, and we’re gonna be talking about why your schedule controls you and how to change that. Naren, how are you, my friend?

Naren Arulrajah: I’m doing great, Ben. I’m really doing great. Thank you for asking. How are you doing?

Ben Tuinei: Doing wonderful. Thank you. It’s great to have you again. Great to chat with you again today, I should say.

Naren Arulrajah: Absolutely. And the topic, "Why Your Schedule Controls You and How to Change That"—I think a very important topic. I mean, I’m sure if I were to do a survey today of, you know, a hundred practice owners, most of them have this feast and famine problem. They’re busy, they’re not busy, they’re busy, they’re not busy, and most of the time they’re not busy. Their schedule is like Swiss cheese. And now they’re panicking and they’re stressed out, and they do even more things that kind of make things worse—like sign up for PPO plans, even the ones that are, you know, paying them peanuts or not even paying them enough to cover their expenses. Or they waste money on ads. They’re just going around in circles, digging a bigger and bigger grave when their schedule is not in control. So I’m really interested—looking forward to this chat, Ben.

Ben Tuinei: No, I love it there. And I think this is one of those things—when you talk to doctors these days, there’s definitely a misunderstanding that hurts a lot of these doctors in terms of the concepts of marketing. And it’s this idea that marketing has very little to do with a busy and productive schedule, which is kind of ironic. When you look at any business, it’s the opposite. You know, in my mind, I think most dentists feel that their schedules are controlled by insurance. And that’s where things kind of break down, right? It’s that this is the insurance’s fault, not necessarily our own actions. But Naren, you’ve helped so many dentists over 18 years. You say that this mindset is one of the biggest things that hold doctors back. So I think for me, this is a perfect place to start.

So, question for you: why do so many dentists feel or think that marketing doesn’t affect their schedule? Like, why is this such a big blind spot for dentists?

Naren Arulrajah: So, most dentists only think about marketing when they feel slow. They act only when they need patients right now. Because of that, marketing is not the best. And I think part of the reason goes back to the root cause. Most dentist practice owners are accidental business owners and accidental entrepreneurs. So the same forethought and planning they had in becoming a dentist—the same forethought and planning they provide in getting better at clinical dentistry—they don’t provide to marketing. It’s almost like, you know, when something goes wrong, they jump in, look at it, then they forget about it.

So it’s almost like this—instead of leaning in. Like, for example, I’m 50 now. I know I have to lean into mobility. I have to lean into strength training. I can’t just do it one day and not do it the next and expect to be mobile and healthy 10 years from now.

Naren Arulrajah: Right? I just have to lean in. So, the quote goes, "The best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago, and the second-best time is now." So it doesn’t matter how you looked at marketing—meaning how you focused or didn’t focus—starting now, take it seriously. Take understanding marketing seriously, and take mastering marketing seriously. You don’t have to do the work. You just need to understand it, and you need to manage a set of people or partners you work with in achieving what you want to achieve.

So your schedule depends on new patient flow, and new patient flow depends on exceptional marketing. If you want to control your schedule—what I mean is attracting the right patients. So it’s not just about the number of patients—the right patients, right? If somebody’s doing a big case that’s worth $10,000, that’s very different from somebody who’s doing just basic cleaning that’s only a few hundred dollars.

Naren Arulrajah: So, are you attracting the right kind of patient based on your goals and based on your objectives? Is your marketing supporting that? Do you have a well-thought-out, strategy-based marketing plan? When marketing is weak or ignored, you end up depending on insurance lists to send people to you. That is when you lose control. Now, the only reason they’re coming to you is because you are "free"—you know, it’s covered by insurance.

So they will never do high-value services. They will never really focus on overall health, because their first question is, if it’s not covered by insurance, their mind is telling them, "Oh, maybe the dentist is trying to make me spend money I don’t need to spend." So why not stop depending on PPO plans and start attracting patients—those high-value patients, those patients who value you for your qualifications, your technology, your attention to detail? Why not attract those patients? And why not build a practice on your own terms?

So take marketing seriously. That’s my first message, Ben.

Ben Tuinei: No, I love it. I love it, Naren. And it reminds me of the last episode—the do-it-yourself kind of approach, right? It tends to cause a lot of pain points for doctors in the sense of building habits on the marketing front that end up hurting them. But there’s another component to this, Naren. You know, I talk to doctors all the time, and a lot of them feel like they’re sort of stuck. They kind of feel like their schedule is packed with small cases or just hygiene cases, and that the day is rushed and there’s no room to breathe.

How does something like that tie to marketing—or improper marketing—and how do you do a little bit better to reverse a situation where a doctor feels stuck like that?

Naren Arulrajah: Yeah, that’s a great question, Ben. You know, when you do not control your new patient flow—especially, are you getting the right patients and the right number of them—you cannot shape your schedule. You end up filling your days with anything you can get. That often means short visits, low-value cases. But when you have a steady flow of the right kind of new patients, you can plan your days around better cases. You can set real goals.

Like, for example, if you want to do X dollars in production—and a lot of it will come from your existing patients—but some will come from new patients. So, on one hand, you will attract, let’s say, general dental patients—maybe 20 a month. And maybe you also want to attract five big cases or one big case a month.

Naren Arulrajah: Because that big case alone might be $20,000, right? So now, do you have a marketing plan that helps you achieve those goals? And a lot of times when you don’t have that marketing plan, and it hasn’t been built up and nurtured over time, you end up doing the wrong kind of dentistry—literally feeling like you’re working so hard for so little money—because you don’t have the right kind of patients and the right number of them.

When you have the steady flow of the right patients, you can plan for that, right? Like, you know, you can say, "I’m gonna do two big cases today," or two—what Gary likes to call "rocks," right? Where it’s meaningful production in that 60 minutes or 90 minutes. You don’t need like six rocks—you just need one or two.

Naren Arulrajah: And then of course you can slow down, because you know at the end of the day you’re gonna be very productive. Because those rocks are where you make—you know—the production dollar amount is pretty high. Now it allows you to spend time with patients. It allows you to build relationships. You don’t have to do three times the dentistry to make the same amount of revenue.

And also, you become less reactive. The more you are in control, the more confident you become. The better you get at being confident in presenting cases—ideal dentistry—versus getting desperate. It’s almost like desperation creates more desperation, just like success creates more success. It’s almost like a self-fulfilling prophecy—kind of like a snowball coming down from the top of the mountain, and it just gets bigger and bigger.

On one hand, it’s either getting worse and worse, or on the other hand, it’s getting better and better. So which way is it—better and better, or worse and worse? You have to choose. And if you want it to get better and better, you have to get ahead of it. You have to get ahead of marketing. You have to take control. You have to figure out how do you make something happen—of course, with the right partners and by focusing on the right things. But if you do that, you’re gonna do really well.

Ben Tuinei: Yeah, absolutely. You mentioned one thing there, Naren, about marketing concepts. And these days, I see a lot of knee-jerk reaction—a lot of business owners in general seeing their practices get slower, and then naturally there’s quick decisions that don’t necessarily help the practice, right? But it’s this whole idea of, "We want to at least do something rather than doing nothing."

And right now, I’m fielding way more calls from fee-for-service practices that are slow. And in my mind, I’m thinking—and this is not an insult to any of them that might be listening to what I’m about to say next—it’s not an insult to you, it’s just business. We learn from situations—hard times especially. And fee-for-service practices that are in decline, you tend to be complacent with the comfort of profitability, right? To where it’s hard to detect when the first signs of a decline are starting, or a recession that’s impacting your practice.

So I always believe that those things have to be monitored regularly. You often talk about planning ahead, Naren. Why do dentists need to think about marketing long before they feel slow or overwhelmed with a lack of profitability or productivity?

Naren Arulrajah: You know, you bring up a good point, and I remember this quote—the famous quote from the Serenity Prayer, right? There are things you can control, and then there are things you can’t. Focus on the things you can control.

You can’t control government policy. Like, for example, there’s a lot of uncertainty around Obamacare, right? Tens of millions of people might lose their health insurance. Now, if I’m one of those tens of millions of people, I might push dentistry down my list, because my being alive is more important than, you know, my teeth—at least that’s what a lot of people might go to.

Now, that is something you don’t control, right? Whatever’s gonna happen is gonna happen. Which direction things are gonna go—you don’t know. I mean, you’re not in Congress, you’re not the president. What’s gonna happen is gonna happen.

Naren Arulrajah: There’s a lot of negotiation, all kinds of stuff, right? Now, it does impact you, right? Yes. It might impact how people feel. Like you talked about the word "recession." I know a lot of people are saying that’s what it feels like—even though the numbers are saying it’s not. But a lot of the growth is not coming from day-to-day businesses and day-to-day people. It’s coming from AI investments. These companies are pumping trillions of dollars into buying AI servers. And all that money goes to like 10 companies, right? Like Nvidia and some of the chip companies are making most of those gains.

So the rest of the economy is weakening, even though 1% of the companies are doing extremely well. So now these are all real. These are things you don’t control.

Naren Arulrajah: But on the other hand, human nature is the same. Marketing and how people buy hasn’t changed. I mean, yes, the mechanics have changed—in other words, they’re using Google now; back then, they used Yellow Pages and things like that—but fundamentally, they go through a process. They first start researching what they need, and then they start liking or trusting the provider. Then they engage that provider, usually with a phone call. And then, if they like that, they come in and they become a great patient—and they send their friends and family, and they stay loyal for even multiple generations.

So that playbook, even though the mechanics may have changed, is fundamentally the same. So look at it as a core activity, a core function, that you get really good at. Don’t look at it as, "I can just flip a switch and run an ad and all my problems are solved."

Naren Arulrajah: That quick fix doesn’t work with marketing. I think it doesn’t work with anything. I mean, how many people who wanted a quick fix ended up becoming a dentist, right? Zero. Like, there’s no quick fix to doing anything hard. You know, anything hard—there’s no quick fix. It doesn’t work.

So, for example, building trust takes time, right? You can’t put a gun to somebody’s head and say, "Thou shall go to this particular dentist." How do you build trust? Get those reviews—10 a month, 10 a month—especially those paragraph reviews. Ranking on Google takes time. If you’re not showing up when I’m looking for something, and you’re not showing up organically, now you know I’m gonna lose. I won’t even be in the running when that patient is looking to find someone like me.

Naren Arulrajah: So when dentists wait until the schedule crashes, they’re already behind. And when they’re behind, they get trapped and they’re desperate, and they do even more dumb and stupid things that make things worse. They’re running promo ads or signing up for more PPO plans that pay almost nothing. So in other words, they’re working for free or they’re losing money.

So, if you want to avoid all that, you need to start looking at marketing as a long game. Doesn’t matter what’s happening with the economy, doesn’t matter what’s happening in your town or your state—you should look at it as a long game and really do the right thing to attract the right people and then focus on growth, right?

Naren Arulrajah: So I know one of the mistakes people make is—they’re getting 10 patients and they set a goal of, "I want to get 100." How can somebody who’s getting 10 go to 100 and do it overnight? It just doesn’t happen. It’s like going from grade one to grade 12 in one year—it doesn’t happen.

So set realistic goals based on where you are. Get there, and then get to the next step. Then set the next goal once you’re there. And again, we do so much to take a gun and shoot ourselves in the foot, and then we wonder, "How come things continue to suck right now?" These are things you can control. Are you taking marketing seriously? Are you planning ahead? Are you setting realistic goals? These are all things you can control.

Ben Tuinei: Love it, Naren, love it. You know, I think control and freedom are big themes these days, in terms of successful practice owners and what they’re looking for. So, if a dentist is looking to get exactly that—more control and more freedom—where should they start? And what part of marketing makes a big difference for them in terms of getting there? Like, what’s your advice there on how to influence doctors to implement the right marketing where the end result is more control and freedom?

Naren Arulrajah: Yeah. Three things I’m gonna leave you with, right? If you do these three things, and you make sure you’re getting better at these three things every quarter, you are going to be set. You are going to be in that 5% that’s gonna have an unfair advantage by doing marketing properly.

First is: people have to find you. So that’s SEO. Are you ranking for 100 or more keywords? Are people finding you a lot more consistently than your competition? Good news is, 5% of you will get 95% of the free traffic. Why? Google makes so much money from everybody else who are not in that 5%, through ads. They keep that number small so they can make money. So you can get into that 5%. That’s what we help our clients do. So get into that 5%—get the most amount of people to see you for free on Google.

Naren Arulrajah: That’s number one. And it takes time, it takes effort, it takes a long-term perspective. It takes long-term focus. Compare your SEO keywords—number of keywords ranking. Compare the number of people who see you on Google organically. Make sure those numbers are growing quarter over quarter.

Second is the website. A website that helps people book. It’s fast to load, it’s easy to find the information I need, and more importantly, it makes me want to book that appointment.

And last but not least: trust is important. Are you getting 10 or more Google reviews a month?

So do these three fundamental things. Once they’re going well—especially when you have good landing pages and good reviews—and you want to grow a certain part of your business, use Google Ads. Yes, it’s five to ten times more expensive, but as long as your landing pages are great and your reviews are awesome, it still is not a waste of money, even though it’s a lot more expensive.

Naren Arulrajah: Now, take it off when you don’t need it, because why spend five to ten times as much money when you don’t need to, right?

So when these three things—reputation (Google reviews), a website that helps people book, and SEO that helps you rank for 100 or more keywords—are working well, you can now start controlling your schedule. You’ll be attracting the kind of new patients you want. But don’t get annoyed that you didn’t go from zero to 100 in two minutes, right?

Set realistic goals. I have to emphasize this. A lot of times people set goals that are not realistic. Imagine if, when you were trying to become a dentist, you said, "I’m gonna finish dental school in one year." It’s just not gonna happen, right? It just won’t happen. So why are you setting a goal that has no basis?

Naren Arulrajah: So if you’re only getting 10 patients, set a goal to get 15. Once you get there, set a goal to get 20. Set realistic goals. Things usually are a lot harder than you think—a lot tougher than you think. And turning around a ship that has been fumbling around is so much harder.

In the early days, you may not even notice it. It might be so minor. But you have to do the heavy lifting to turn around the ship when it comes to SEO, Google reviews, and of course, a website that helps people book.

Ben Tuinei: Wonderful, Naren. Love all this that you’re sharing. And I think what you’re sharing is super important to help doctors gain that control and independence and freedom—you know, less stress and all that.

So, for a listener that wants to kind of take those next steps—get more of that, get more of that freedom, get more of that control, reduce that stress—what do you recommend in terms of the next smart step to take?

Naren Arulrajah: Yeah. The next step is to get clear on your numbers and see what are your blockers—right? What are the root causes why you are not doing well?

I recommend a marketing strategy meeting. It’s a no-cost review where we spend six hours. It’s a $900 gift from us to you. The link is insuranceuntangled.com/msm. We look at your website, we look at your SEO, we look at your Google reviews—we look at all the key pieces of the marketing puzzle and tell you which ones you’re doing well, which ones you’re not doing well. And if you’re not doing well, we’ll give you a plan that allows you to get to the top 5% within a 12-month period.

So take that plan. Because once you have that plan, then now you can execute on it. When you have control over the new patient flow, you can shape your schedule. You can slow down. You can spend time with your patients. You can drop the PPO plans that are literally losing you money and that aren’t making any sense anymore. You can now work on case acceptance because you can slow down. You can work with these patients who are not asking the question, "Is it covered by insurance?"

Once again, the link is insuranceuntangled.com/msm.

Ben Tuinei: Wonderful. Highly recommend that. I’ve had nothing but positive experiences and positive feedback from listeners, as well as my own clients that have taken advantage of Naren’s invitation for that marketing strategy meeting.

So thank you, Naren. This has been an amazing episode, and I want to take a minute to thank you and thank our listeners for joining us today on another amazing episode of the Insurance Untangled podcast.

If you enjoyed today’s episode, don’t forget to share this with your friends on social media. We also appreciate those amazing reviews—that helps other doctors find our content. And don’t forget to check out insuranceuntangled.com for future webinars as well as all episodes that might be of interest to you.

And then, if you’re on YouTube, subscribe to our YouTube channel at Insurance Untangled and hit the notification bell to stay updated on all the latest episodes and anything we push out there.

But until we meet again, folks, we wish all of you the best of success. Take care now.