We believe with 100% conviction that to be truly successful, you must monitor your business, connect with like-minded successful dentists, and educate yourself on dentistry, selling, and running your company.
I grew up just south of downtown Birmingham on a dairy farm. I worked on the dairy farm just enough to realize I definitely did not want to be a dairy farmer. No offense to farmers, but those guys work way too hard.
After getting my B.S. in Biology from Harding University, I attended the University of Alabama at Birmingham School of Dentistry. I excelled at both of those schools but knew that general dentistry was the place for me.
In 2008 I bought a practice in Pulaski, TN that was producing about $575,000 per year. I quickly grew that practice to a production level of $1.000.000/year but leveled off for several years. I was doing well, considering our town has about 8.000 residents with about 30.000 people residing in the entire county.
However, I kept having this nagging feeling that I could do better.
In December of 2014, after six and a half years of practice, my mentor was tragically killed in an accident. This, plus some other life events, left me searching for answers and my own path.
I obtained an MBA, which provided some very useful knowledge but did not help my practice to expand. I found a company called MGE Management Experts and began training with them. They taught me how to be my own consultant, manage my team, communicate and sell, interpret metrics and apply formulas, and how to organize a business.
My practice quickly grew! In 2016, we increased our production numbers from $1.1M to $2.1M. However, the growth did not stop there as we continued to grow to $2.3M in 2017, $2.8M in 2018, and exceeded $4.5M in 2021.
We increased our new patient numbers from 35 NPs/mo in 2015 to >150 NPs/mo in 2021. We started with 8 employees in 2016 and now have >45 employees, including 6 additional doctors.
The most significant challenge was in the management of overhead numbers. I was growing, but my net income was not increasing proportionately.
I have learned that the dentist's typical way of managing overhead is simply does not work. Our typical way of managing overhead is to meet with our accountant monthly, quarterly, or even annually. We receive a report outlining how the previous month's overhead looked. This could be a P&L, a cash flow statement, an income statement, or just a management report.
The fact remains that this document represents trailing numbers, which are numbers that have already occurred. They are useful to know, but absolutely nothing can be done to change that they represent the past.
I decided that it would be helpful to know these numbers in real-time. This way, I can truly manage these metrics to see real-time results in my practice. This led to the development of this software.
OverseeDental is a software that will help us manage our dental practices in real-time, an environment where successful and like-minded dentists can share and mastermind together.
You will be able to input 6 key overhead metrics in real-time and then compare them with your production numbers to give you a statistical comparison to national benchmarks and previous months.
The software also includes a social network component that allows dentists that are members to chat, post, mastermind, participate in groups and share tips with other dentists.
It is time that we realize that we are not in competition with one another. There are an abundance of patients available and an abundance of dental work to be done on this planet. It is time to focus on managing our own practices effectively and helping each other succeed.
