This Is Guaranteed To Make You Feel Good About Dentistry!

One of the great things about dentistry is being able to enhance patient’s lives so significantly. Allowing people to look better, smile more readily, be free of pain, chew and function normally, live longer and have nice fresh breath for speaking and kissing are just a few of the things we do to improve the lives of everyone we touch. Even the most basic dental procedures are incredibly important – without good dental hygiene and regular cleanings millions more teeth would be lost every year.

Unfortunately even in the United States there are many citizens who have little or no access to oral health care. Many of these people, especially children, will have their futures dampened due to dental disease and lack of care. At The Madow Group, we are huge believers in helping the less fortunate achieve excellent dental health. We urge you to make 2010 the year that you help a few members of your community by providing free or low cost dental treatment. It will make you, the entire team and your patients feel even better about what you do.

Want to get involved on a larger scale? There are ways that you can touch thousands of deserving people from traditionally underserved parts of the country. For over fifty years, Oral Health America has been improving public health by eliminating oral disease through educating and empowering communities to provide access to care, and advocating for policies that create oral health parity.

Here are just a few examples of their great work:

ACCESS: OHA is close to their goal of providing 1,000,000 dental sealants to 225,000 children by 2010.

EDUCATION: Their messages of dental hygiene, proper professional care and healthy food choices have appeared in news sources which have reached over 170 million people.

ADVOCACY: For every American that lacks medical insurance, approximately two lack dental insurance. Only about one third of children covered by Medicaid obtain dental services each year. Oral Health America is advocating for the mouth to be included as one of our nation’s healthcare priorities, and is working in partnership with other oral health leaders to educate policymakers about disparities in access, social and economic equity, workforce, and effective community-based interventions.

We support this fantastic organization and hope that you will too. Please visit their website at www.oralhealthamerica.org to learn about the multitude of things they are doing to educate and improve the oral health care of so many in this country. While you are there learning about the fantastic work of this organization, we urge you to donate whatever you can afford. It’s guaranteed to make you feel even better about the great things we do in dentistry!

Why 2010 Will Be Better Than 2009!

As 2009 comes to a close, many people are saying “Good Riddance!” And why not? It marks the end of a decade that some are actually calling the worst in history. Are they right? Well, here is the evidence.

After the non-event of Y2K, we were witnesses to a horrific terrorist attack on American soil followed by wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Of course we also had anthrax letters and the DC sniper.  Mother Nature was not very kind either as Hurricane Katrina wreaked havoc and is still affecting many Americans. It was the largest and most expensive natural disaster in our country’s history.

Financially things were certainly no better. The Wall Street scandals of Enron and WorldCom made us realize just how vulnerable we all were. Then the housing market, artificially inflated by cheap money and easy credit, came crashing down like the house of cards it was. The major markets experienced their worst decade in the history of organized trading, and the economy pretty much had a total collapse.

Our infamous poster boy, prisoner No. 61727-054, a.k.a. Bernie Madoff, rots away in a Butner, N.C., jail cell, doing 150 years for orchestrating the biggest Ponzi scheme in the history of humanity. Yes – it was quite a decade.

Naysayers are still using every format possible to scream bloody murder and predict the collapse of mankind, as others are positive that the world as we know it will end on December 21, 2012. But believe it or not, there is lots of room for hope, and much of that is even based on fact! Here are a few tidbits to get you in a positive spirit as the next decade begins to emerge.

The economy is improving. That’s right! The unemployment rate dropped last month, the economy grew by 2.2% in the third quarter of 2009 and the Dow Jones Industrial Average is up a full 60% from its bottom in March! Practically every economist is predicting a huge upsurge in job creation next year. The release of a new Taylor Swift CD followed by a tour may also pick things up by a few percentage points. Things are pointing to a decent or possibly even great year ahead.

Banks are actually repaying their bailout money. Many major banks (even those that were predicted to “ghost”) have either paid back or have announced their intentions to pay the government (and taxpayers!) back. The Treasury Department has stated that just about all of the $700 billion will be returned. Who ever saw that coming?

Crime is down. Violent crime rates have not been this low since the early 60s! Criminologists have many theories and can’t seem to agree why this is true – but who cares? This has to be a good sign.

The Swine Flu wasn’t all that bad. With apologies to those who had serious health problems from H1N1, this was not nearly as bad as many health experts predicted. Put the masks away! (Keep using the Purell though.) The world is not coming to an end quite yet.

So there you have it – some positive signs at the end of a bad year and a pretty rough decade. Still, even with much of this bad stuff still lingering, many dental practices continue to grow and thrive; some are closing out the decade with their best year ever. But even if things have not been so stellar for you, we are excited about the year and decade ahead. Signs are pointing to great things for our profession and for the country as a whole. Keep going – don’t lose faith. We will prevail! We have to.

So This is Christmas

We would like to take a few minutes to say to you and to every one of our friends “Have a very Merry Christmas.” This is the time of year to be thankful for the things that we are so fortunate to have. Our health, our family, our friends, a roof over our heads, etc. Let’s please never forget the big picture. We do a lot of talking all year round about success, money and making our practices more profitable, but in the scheme of things, if we are blessed with these two things – (1) people around us that we love and (2) good health – then wouldn’t you agree that we pretty much have it all?

So please make the holiday season a time not only to spend with loved ones, but one to reflect on how fortunate we are to have what we have. There will always be time for us to improve our practices and make more money. For right now, we are going to tell our loved ones just how much they mean to us. Merry Christmas to everyone that we have touched over the years!

PS… Would you like some good karma for the holidays? Would you like to do something really cool? It’s easy! If you are not yet a member of The Madow Group Facebook page, now is the time to join. We have so many things to teach you. We post a dental pearl each and every morning. You get to hang out with a lot of like-minded dentists and team members. And besides, if you click on www.facebook.com/madowgroup and become a fan, we will give you one full karma point. What does that mean? It means you will not get a free DVD, a free book, a free this or a free that. But it does mean that you will somehow get some good things happening to you into 2010 and beyond. It’s called karma. Want a little? Just try it. Go for the Madow karma! Click HERE to join (it’s FREE). There is nothing to lose.

Already a Facebook fan but still want some Madow karma? Simply tell two friends that are in the dental field to go to www.facebook.com/madowgroup and become a fan. You will get Madow karma and so will they. We promise it’s true. Please try it and you’ll see. We want to hear good karma stories once you join and refer your friends. We have a lot coming in 2010 and we want you to be there with us!

Please have safe and happy holidays. If you are traveling, please be careful. Peace.

What’s Your BHAG? You Need To Know!

Yes – it’s that time of year again- the time when you get stuck with a really stupid white elephant gift from the annual gift exchange, drink too much at the office party and reveal a really embarrassing moment  from your past, get all nostalgic for something that wasn’t all that great anyway – and maybe, just maybe, begin thinking about next year.

When things in the office slow down a bit due to the holidays and you have a few more days off than usual, it is a good time to think about the future, namely your BHAG. So just what is a BHAG?

A BHAG is a “Big Hairy Audacious Goal” – a long term picture of where you see things going – not a one year plan, but a futuristic vision of what you would like to accomplish many years from now. When you do your short term planning you need to keep your BHAG in mind.

What are some examples of BHAGs? Here’s one.

“By the end of the decade we will send a man to the moon and have him return safely home again.”

Most people know this was one of the BHAGs of President John F. Kennedy. He didn’t say that first we would develop the Mercury space capsule and have someone orbit the Earth for a few minutes. But that was certainly one step of many that had to be taken.

Or how about this one from the business world?

“A computer on every desk in every home.”

When Bill Gates said that in 1982, most people, including the big shots at IBM, thought it was ridiculous. What use could the everyday consumer possibly have for a computer in their home? They certainly never pictured that right now this blog would be written on a laptop at 30,000 feet. But Bill Gates did. (Of course, he probably did not think it would be a MacBook!)

So while those are great examples of Big Hairy Audacious Goals, how well do they translate to the dental office? Actually, very well.

Bill Gates had so much work in front of him and his colleagues to get a computer in every home. Things like writing code for an operating system that normal people could use, making processor chips small and powerful enough to fit into a compact enclosure, and tons of other things we now take for granted had to be created for that BHAG to be achieved. But without it, they may never have happened.

So let’s take it to the dental office (or chiropractic, podiatric, medical office or any type of business if you happen to be one of our growing numbers of non-dental followers). Pretty soon you will be sitting down to set your goals for 2010 – or you certainly should be anyway. And in it you will have all of the normal stuff, things like:

• Increase production and collections by 22% over last year.
• Obtain 45 new patients each month.
• Begin the interview process and hire a second hygienist by March 2010.
• Complete a course and have a Social Media Marketing program up and running in the first quarter.
• Ask every single patient if they would like whiter teeth.

Okay – you probably get the picture there. And that is all great stuff. But without the BHAG, you really don’t know where you are going with this. So take off your loupes for a second and put on your binoculars. What do you want to be doing ten years from now?

Maybe you want to sell your practice and work for the new owner, netting enough money on the sale that you can comfortably retire. Or perhaps you want to develop your practice from a one-person show into a multi-specialty group practice. Maybe you want to buy your own building and lease out space to other medical professionals.

Or how about this one – maybe you want to grow your practice by converting associates into partners so that you may be involved clinically just one or two days per week, take off the months of April and September to stay at your resort condo in Hawaii, and keep your income high and your retirement plan funded. Sounds pretty good! That goal is really big, kind of audacious, and pretty hairy too. And the only way to make that happen is to start now!

Team members – does this involve you? Absolutely!! Remember, the more the practice changes and grows, the more you will be rewarded (or should be rewarded anyway). So feel free to pitch in with the BHAG. And you can also have a personal BHAG, so please take some time to contemplate that.

Here is the point. Many offices will be doing their 2010 planning around this time of year, and that is fantastic. But to REALLY know how to plan, you need to know where you are going long term, and for that you need a BHAG.

So go ahead and make one! Make it super big, pretty darn audacious, and really hairy. Don’t worry – you can always modify and change it, so dream large! And then, when you begin your 2010 planning, keep the BHAG in mind.

Does Heaven Have a Username and Password for You?

This may be a really strange thought, but when you or a loved one dies, can you keep your usernames and passwords? Do you even think there is Internet access in Heaven? Well, no one really knows for sure. We’re waiting patiently, but we have not yet seen a blog or a Facebook posting from Heaven.

But back on earth web and social media use continues to grow at a staggering and exponential rate! In 2006 there were 2.7 billion Google searches per month. In 2008 there were 31 billion! Use of sites such as Facebook and Twitter are gaining use and popularity at extraordinary rates.

Do you know that it took television thirteen years to achieve an audience of 50 million? It took Facebook only two years! Facebook has 350 million users at this writing and is increasing every day. Two billion pictures are uploaded to Facebook each month.

Over 50% of American adults use the Internet for banking and bill paying. Over 80% of working adults use email. More people have more types of accounts online than ever before. We communicate online; we bank, pay our bills, buy and sell stuff, store photos, videos, etc. The list goes on and on! We have so many different accounts, usernames and passwords that we can barely keep track! And those lists are growing and growing.

Hopefully most of you are pretty good about storing your usernames and passwords in a safe place and making sure that no one has access to your accounts. But here is a question – what happens, and who has access to your accounts when you die?

Many people assume that a family member will be able to get access to this information. Unfortunately we have found that this may not be the case. According to Yahoo’s terms of service agreement, a person’s Yahoo account, including email is not transferrable. Yahoo closes the account and deletes all of the data when you die. Facebook will ‘memorialize’ the account, which will remove certain information, but still allow people to leave posts in remembrance. But they will not allow anyone access to the account. Try to find out what happens to your PayPal account at death (do a search), and there is no answer.

As we perform more and more activities online, it will become increasingly difficult for the executor and trustee of your estate to make sure all of your bills are being paid. And without access to your online accounts, it is very possible some of your assets may go undiscovered. That certainly is not good!

There will be other issues, such as who controls the items you have listed on eBay? How is money retrieved from a PayPal account? Who owns the content of your blog? Who owns your pictures, movies and podcasts? What about personal items such as any secret email, love letters or other correspondence that you do not want discovered by anyone after you are gone? You definitely need to plan for all of these scenarios.

Without an accurate list of all of your online accounts, usernames and passwords, it will be nearly impossible for your family members to locate them at your death. So what do you do?

Perhaps the simplest strategy would be to give a list of accounts, usernames and passwords to a family member or trusted advisor. Of course this violates the advice that every website gives you (to keep your password secret and never share it with anyone). A list of passwords could be kept in a safe deposit box, with access only to be given upon death or disability. Or special instructions concerning online accounts can be incorporated into a power of attorney, will, or trust. There are even some online services that allow for storage of username and password information and will send to the appropriate people upon death.

There is no doubt that the Internet is playing a more important role in our lives than ever before. As more and more information is put online, it becomes increasingly important to plan for how this information should be handled upon your disability or your death. Failure to plan properly could result in loss of valuable information and money, but may also cause unnecessary complications, difficulty and expense for your family.

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Social Media Marketing Summit, Baltimore www.madow.com/dental-social-networks.html

SCARY STUFF GOING ON IN YOUR OFFICE!

There is something very scary going on in most dental offices across the country – probably yours. Learning what it is and taking the proper steps to correct it could be one of the biggest things you ever do to help your practice grow. What is it? Please read on.

But first – want to have some fun? Pull out the Yellow Pages – oh wait a minute – no one uses the Yellow Pages anymore! Go to your computer and Google “Dentist” and the name of any city or town. Find a listing that you like and then go to the telephone and give them a call, asking one of the following questions:

 -         How much do you charge for a cleaning?
 -         Do you take dental insurance?
 -         Where are you located?
 -         Do you do cleanings and crowns?
 -         Are you accepting new patients?
 -         I just moved here from out of town and my previous dentist told me I need some gum treatment, six crowns and a root canal. I would like to pay in cash. Is that alright?

After they answer the question, just say “okay – thanks for the information.” What will happen? Over 90% of the time they will not put you on the schedule! How do we know?

Since 1995 we have been doing “secret shopper” calls at our live events and as a service to offices that we work with. And it is amazing how most team members simply have not been properly trained in converting a caller into an actual patient. The scary part is that your office could be losing nine out of ten potential new patients because of this!

Think about all of the questions on that list. What they are really asking is “May I become a new patient in your practice?” And ninety percent of the time the answer is “NO!”

Think this is happening in your office? Do you want to know? You should. After all, you need to know if you are losing potential new patients! Well, we would love to help you find out with a

FREE SECRET SHOPPER CALL!!

That’s right – our expert team will secret shop your office and record the call. We’ll give you a grade from zero to one hundred with an explanation of what went wrong (or right!) and some fantastic suggestions to help you increase your telephone skills. We will also include a detailed report to let you know exactly what you need to do in order to be scheduling many more new patients in 2010!

Please keep in mind that the purpose of this call is not to poke fun or belittle anyone – it is to help your team and your practice become a new patient scheduling machine!

Just go ahead and submit the following contact information and pretty soon you’ll be “secret shopped” – the first step on the way to significantly increasing your new patient flow! After all, potential new patients are calling offices all across the country and being turned down. Don’t let it happen in your office!

Please note – this request must come from the doctor or practice owner! By filling out and submitting this electronic form, you are giving The Madow Group permission to place a “secret shopper” call to your practice, record the call, and send a detailed report back to your office. Are you ready? Then just click this link:

I Want A Free Secret Shopper Call!

Remember, as a service to you this call is free! By taking this step, you will be on your way to scheduling more new patients than ever before! There is nothing to lose – and hundreds of new patients to gain!

I Want A Free Secret Shopper Call!

Is it Too Late To Catch Up?

What if your dental office has done nothing?

What if you’ve just watched the last fourteen years go by? No real website, no social media, no email marketing. What if you’re now ready to do something?

Author and expert marketer Seth Godin has made a list of his top things you should consider doing right now in your dental practice, especially if money is tight:

• Use gmail to give every doctor and team member in your dental office an email address.
• Use a free website creating tool or even Squidoo to build a page about your office. Nothing fancy, but list your location, your team (with descriptions) and make it clear you want to hear from people.
• Start an email newsletter using Mad Mimi or Mail Chimp. Give the responsibility for the newsletter’s creation and performance to one person and offer them a bonus if signups outweigh dropouts.
• Start a book group for every person who answers the phone, or interacts with patients and prospective patients. Read a great online media book every week and discuss it. It will take you about a year to catch up, but you will catch up.
• Offer a small bonus to any team member who starts and runs a blog on any topic. It does not have to be exclusively about dentistry. All health topics are great. Have them link it to your office site.
• Have the doctor post his or her (real) email address on every invoice and other piece of communication the practice sends out asking people to write to him or her with comments or questions.
• Start a newsletter for your vendors (labs, printers, reps, etc). Email them regular updates about what you’re doing, what’s selling and what problems are going on internally that they might be able to help you with.
• Look into using Basecamp to help with project communication among your team.
• Get a white board and put it in the break room. On it, have someone update the following: how many people subscribe to the newsletter, how many people visit the website, how many requests and questions come in by phone, how long it takes a team member to answer an email and how many Facebook fans your practice has.
• Don’t micromanage your new web strategy. Just do stuff. First you have to fail, then you can improve.

The problem is no longer budget. The problem is no longer access to tools.

The problem is the will to get good at this.

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Just announced – Madow Social Media Marketing Summit in Baltimore, MD on Feb 5-6, 2010. Are you finally ready to do it? Click HERE if you want more info!

FIVE CRUCIAL STEPS TO A SUCCESSFUL PRACTICE IN 2010!

There are FIVE CRUCIAL STEPS that every single practice must understand and master in order to cross the line from a “normal” practice into an incredibly successful one. Do these five things, and you can transform your office from a “practice” to a…

DENTAL POWERHOUSE!

It has nothing to do with your location, practice size or age, or even the type of procedures that you are performing. Whether your typical case is an implant supported full mouth reconstruction, an extraction with a “flipper” or anything in between, you MUST have these FIVE STEPS up and running all day, every day in order to succeed.

Here they are. Even if you think you have heard some or all of them before, please pay close attention if you want to truly succeed in the coming year.

1)   KEEP THE FRONT DOOR OPEN AND THE BACK DOOR CLOSED!

Every dental patient has a natural “cycle” which occurs during their time in your practice. Typically it happens close to the time when they first become a patient, although that is not always the case. During this cycle, which lasts approximately six months, most patients have the large majority of their high profit procedures performed. Some patients have a second wave, typically involving elective procedures, but for most patients, once the cycle is complete, you only see them for hygiene and emergency visits. Their true monetary value then shifts to referrals that they generate.

That is why it is crucial to have a constant source of new patients. Internal marketing, external marketing, referral programs, signage, location, word of mouth and many other factors all contribute to this source of new patients. Also, we are very excited about the use of Social Media for new patient generation and believe it is the wave of the future.

The point is, no matter what your current situation, your practice simply cannot survive let alone thrive without a constant and sufficient quantity of new patients.

The second part of this equation is to “Keep The Back Door Closed” – and this means retaining the patients you already have. Even patients who have completed their major production cycle are extremely valuable to the health of the practice, especially if they can be cultivated as good referral sources. It is essential to stay in touch with your existing patient base. Studies have shown that people need more “touches” than ever before to feel like they are cared about. While a quarterly newsletter may have done the job in the past, it now takes more to stay on your patient’s minds. Fortunately, electronic media such as email have made this easier and more cost effective than ever!

2)   UNDERSTAND THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN “MARKETING” AND “ADVERTISING” – AND STOP ADVERTISING!

According to dental practice growth expert and CEO of 1-800-DENTIST Fred Joyal,

“Advertising is using a specific medium – the newspaper, radio, TV or internet – to communicate who you are and what you do. Marketing is everything you do to communicate who you are and what you do. This includes obvious things like on-hold messages and much less obvious things like the color of your reception area. It’s an important distinction.”

Attempting to do any advertising without understanding your total marketing strategy is a complete waste of time. Sure, it may bring you a few good patients now and then, but making the transition to “marketing” is where the true Dental Powerhouse takes off.

Some may call this “branding” as well, but the fact remains – advertising doesn’t work over the long haul – marketing does. As a matter of fact, you can be successful in marketing without doing any advertising at all! Some extremely successful dentists who claim they are “against” advertising or marketing have actually been doing it all along without even knowing it! Make no mistake – even if you don’t “advertise” you need to understand marketing.

3)   HAVE 100% TREATMENT PLAN ACCEPTANCE

The truly successful practices, to put it simply, have patients who actually have their recommended treatment needs taken care of – practically every single time. How do they do it?

Here is a secret that these practices know. Treatment plan acceptance does not start after the examination when the doctor or team member sits down with a patient to do a review of findings or a “treatment plan presentation.” Offices that do it that way will never cross the road from moderately successful to a powerhouse practice.

The truly successful practices know that treatment plan acceptance begins before the patient is ever seen in the office! It starts with the proper marketing and referrals, continues with the initial telephone call, and every step that follows is carefully executed so that when the time comes for the patient to commit to having their dental needs taken care of, they are excited to get started and able to pay!

It DOES NOT by any means mean a high pressure treatment plan presentation or some slick sales job consisting of a series of scripted questions. This is why most “treatment plan presentation” or “case acceptance” seminars or retreats simply do not work. There is no way in the world that any kind of presentation will get most every patient to have their treatment completed. It simply works against human nature to do it that way.

It may seem difficult, yet we have seen office after office increase their treatment plan acceptance like never before by adhering to a few very simple principles.

4)   LOVE WHAT YOU DO!

It may seem over-simplified, yet it is absolutely true. In the real “Dental Powerhouses” every single team member, including the doctor, really loves what they do! It has been seen time and time again, so it just can’t be wrong!

Some offices can have exceptional production by taking workshops, hiring “coaches” or following particular strategies, but if these strategies divide the office or serve to have team members competing with one another, they usually backfire as the office goes into a quick tailspin.  A truly motivated hard working team simply has to enjoy going to work every day. There is just no way around this. The good news is  – any office can do it!

5)   SURROUND YOURSELF WITH WINNERS AND NEVER STOP LEARNING!

While all five factors are extremely important, if there is one dominating trait that separates the hugely successful practices – the kind where everyone loves going to work every day and that are making more money than anyone ever dreamed possible – it is that the doctors and team are on a continual search for improvement and realize that they can’t do it on their own.

Anyone who has an attitude of “I already know all of that stuff” or “Why should I listen to them?” will always be in a practice plateau situation that will eventually drift downward. The winners are always learning – reading, going to seminars, consulting with experts, reviewing video and audio programs, and doing everything else it takes to absorb as much information as possible.

But they do something else too – and this is where the truly humongous success stories emerge.

The real “dental powerhouses” share information with everyone they know!

They brainstorm, they mastermind, they join study clubs – the most successful dentists share their stories, both their successes and failures, with anyone who is willing to listen!

Yes – there are still some dentists who cower in a corner and won’t talk about what is going on in their office for fear that “someone down the street” will find out about it. But in the top one percent of practices, this just does not happen. The practices that are doing the huge numbers, making the most money, and enjoying dentistry more than anyone else always love sharing their tips and techniques with others.

Why? Well first of all, when you are doing that well you simply do not worry about competition – you actually enjoy seeing your colleagues succeed. But the other big reason is this – when you give, you get!!

When you share your successes and failures with like-minded colleagues, they will do the same! And then everybody grows together! Makes sense, doesn’t it?

So how about you? Are you ready to grow your practice like you never thought possible? Maybe not. Some people are actually afraid of success and are more comfortable staying where they are. If you fall into that category, you may want to think about why. Hopefully you will be able to summon up the courage to take your practice to greater heights and enjoy the success you deserve.

And for those of you who are ready to make 2010 the best year in the history of your practice BY FAR – please read on!

We want to help you have a true DENTAL POWERHOUSE!

The Madow Brothers have been helping dental offices achieve success for over twenty years – but we are just getting warmed up! Recently we have been on a huge roll of studying the most successful offices, learning the inside scoop on patient acquisition and behavior, and brainstorming with the top dentists from all across the world. We have gathered together a group of like-minded offices – those who crave success and are ready for tremendous office growth – to teach all of these things to. Not only that, we encourage everyone to share secrets with each other in order to create the most successful group of dental practices on the face of the Earth – the true DENTAL POWERHOUSES! And we want you to join!

What will happen should you decide to become a Powerhouse Office?

First we will send you two hot off the presses audio programs –

“100% Treatment Plan Acceptance Starting Tomorrow!” ($149 Value)

It simply is not acceptable to have new patients walk in your door and eventually leave the practice without having all of their treatment needs taken care of. On this brand new program, Dr. Richard Madow explains why the old methods simply do not work and how you can put human nature on your side to finally get 100% treatment plan acceptance! No scripts or sales jobs – just easy, friendly things that make sense!

“Social Media – Jump In or Get Left Behind!” ($149 Value)

On this amazing new program, Dr. David Madow teaches why Social Media is crucial to the success of your practice and what you need to know in order to confidently jump in! Like it or not, Social Media is here to stay, and in this informative program you can immediately learn what steps to take to put your office on the forefront of dentistry.

Each of these has a $149 value but they are yours for free!!

And then, every month you will receive the following:

• A video training program by The Madow Brothers teaching you the latest techniques to turn your office into a true Dental Powerhouse. These are made with the entire team in mind (great for team meetings!) and are fun and easy to implement. Any topic that contributes to your success is fair game! Everything from scheduling more new patients to the latest in marketing techniques to clinical tidbits will be covered and much more. There may even be some hidden camera video in actual dental offices!

• A live teleseminar with The Madow Brothers! If you have seen Rich and Dave in action you know that with them anything goes! Well, the same is true of their teleseminars. They tell it like it is! No topic is taboo as each month they reveal more steps to take your practice to the top. There will even be time for question and answer!

• A professionally written article or blog that you can use and adapt for your own practice! If you want to write blogs for your website or articles for your newsletters or emails to get your patients excited about dentistry but don’t really know where to start, don’t worry! We will do it for you! Finally your patients will be asking YOU about whitening, veneers, perio therapy, and many other types of treatment! The Madows and their team are the best writers in dentistry and are ready to work for you! This one thing is worth the entire monthly cost!

If that’s not enough to get you going, how about this?

Twice each year there will be a live brainstorming, idea sharing, anything goes meeting with The Madow Brothers and Dental Powerhouse members! So much knowledge and inside information will come out at this face to face session it will be practically illegal! As a member, your cost will be….ZERO! That’s right – you can attend this event, which is guaranteed to build your practice like never before, at no cost! Imagine sharing time with the most successful dentists across North America and The Madow Brothers as the ideas and the fun flow like crazy!

So how about you? Are you ready to join an elite group of the most successful or soon-to-be-successful practices in the country? It can start for you in January 2010, and if you join now you can have your first month for free! That’s right – sign up now and…

JANUARY 2010 IS ABSOLUTELY FREE!!

In just a few short weeks, you will be on your first teleseminar with the most successful dental practices in the country sharing secrets and learning! You’ll receive a training video from The Madow Brothers and get your first article or blog that you can use any way you like! And then you can start putting these ideas in place as you get ready for the next month of non-stop information!

Plus, when you sign up now you will get two fantastic brand new audio programs (worth $298.00) absolutely FREE!

Then – get ready for the amazing face to face live brainstorming sessions where the top offices from across the country share idea after idea. It’s hosted by The Madow Brothers, so you know it will be good!

After January, it is just $149.00 each month to be a member of this amazing group! It would be worth it at triple the price! Once you sign up – put the ideas into action and then just sit back and watch your office become a true Dental Powerhouse!!

Ready to sign up? Have a question or two? Then please give us a call at 1-888-88-MADOW. We would love to see you succeed! Don’t wait – call now and get your first month for free!

Ever make a New Year’s resolution to have a better practice and a better life and nothing gets done? Well, now is the time! Call 1-888-88-MADOW now! For less than the cost of one simple restoration you can be on your way to the practice of your dreams. The amount of free materials offered are limited, so please call right away!

There is NO WAY a stupid song can help your practice in December!!

Here it is – the middle of December and you may already be sick of hearing holiday songs blaring from every corner of the Earth – from Sirius XM all the way to Quizno’s. Well here is a holiday song that can mean lots of income added to your bottom line before the end of the year!

Let’s face it – even the most highly productive offices can be a little bit slow this time of year. But instead of just shrugging your shoulders and saying “That’s the way it is” – here are five sure fire ways to either save lots of money or earn more before the end of 2009! Just to make you pay attention, we’ll gear the list to the first line of a popular holiday song – “Chestnuts Roasting On An Open Fire.”

1)     Chestnuts:  Okay – the first one may be an old “chestnut,” but as you know many of your patients have dental insurance dollars just waiting for them, and it is “use it or lose it” before the end of the year. Some of them are not even aware of this situation. These days it’s easier than ever to get the word out. Simply compose an email to let them know that if they don’t take advantage of this benefit in 2009, they will lose hundreds of dollars that belong to them! In just a few minutes you can tell your entire patient base.

Also, go through the files starting with patients who were seen the most recently (they most likely have this treatment on their minds) and let them know that in order to maximize their benefits they need to start treatment before the end of the year. People who need multiple restorations can do some now and some at the beginning of 2010. You can easily schedule ten units of crowns or other high-end restorations this way!

2)     Roasting:  It seems like we are always “roasting” the government because all they want to do is tax us to death. So when the government wants to give us some money, we should go for it!! If you check with your accountant, they most likely will confirm that you can take advantage of IRS code section # 179, which allows dentists to take a deduction of up to $250,000 on equipment either purchased or leased before the end of 2009. This is free money from Uncle Sam – grab it!!! Not sure what to get? According to dental technology expert Dr. Larry Emmott, here are the top two choices:

My #1 tech investment recommendation is to make sure you have a good complete office network. No other tech investment will give you as fast a retun on investment or allow you to do so many more things with technology. So this is the year to add computers to all the treatment rooms, put a workstation in the lab, upgrade the server, improve your security, and anything else you may have been putting off. This will cost a typical dental office between $20 to $25,000. A big multidoctor office will of couse spend more.

#2 is digital radiography. If you have #1, that is a complete up to date safe and speedy network, then you need to have digital radiography. Adding a sensor system to an exisitng network will cost less than $15,000. Adding a digital panoramic will cost around $30,000.

Speaking of digital x-ray, we absolutely love the new Dexis Platinum Sensor. Check it out at www.dexray.com.

Just think about it – if you were planning on purchasing new computer equipment or a digital x-ray system (or even a few new sensors for your existing system) you can get a HUGE check from the government for doing it now!

3)     Open:  As the year comes to a close, more and more offices are taking vacation time, longer lunches, closures for holiday parties, and anything else to celebrate the end of the year. And we are all for that! But just make sure when your office is not technically open that it is “virtually” open by forwarding your office phone line to the cell phone of a team member or using a virtual scheduling service. The holiday season is actually a great time to pick up new patients and emergencies – unless they call your office and get an answering machine. Then they are lost and gone forever.

4)     Fire:  Okay – this may not be the nicest topic in the world, but the new year is approaching, and it is a great time to make a fresh start. Is there a team member who just is not “on the bus?” I know we all love them or feel sorry for them or for some mushy reason can’t face up to the fact that they don’t belong in our office. But someone who is not 100% on your team for all the right reasons and bringing their “A Game” into the office every single day is costing you tens of thousands of dollars and really ticking off the rest of your staff (and probably patients as well). This is a toxic situation and it needs to be remedied. Go ahead and do it – you will feel better when 2010 comes around.

5)     White Christmas:  Who doesn’t want whiter teeth for the holidays? Everyone does! But it is also a tough time when shopping for everyone else is on the minds of most patients. So take a tip from the marketing geniuses who invented Black Friday – have a sale! Give your whitening fee a significant discount and tell all of your patients that you are having a holiday sale. You will be amazed how many patients will just say “yes” at the end of their hygiene appointment when offered a great deal on whitening. Then just move ‘em on over to the next treatment room and get started! It’s December – you weren’t doing anything anyway!!

So please – don’t just write December off as a month where nothing gets done! All five of these things can add up to huge earnings and savings as the year comes to a close!

If You Show Me Yours, I’ll Show You Mine!

Thanks for joining us today! You’re going to get a really great lesson, so get ready. We’re going to take you on a quick little tour and show you what a website of 2010 will look like. As you know, everything changes so quickly online and you need to keep up – it’s not good enough to simply keep your three year old website up without changing certain key elements. Remember, as our very good friend Dr. Michael Barr says, it’s not about how good your site looks. It’s about how much money it’s actually making you!

So as you are reading this article, you may want to have another window opened at the same time with our new website, www.madow.com.  Although it is not 100% complete on some of the interior pages, you should be able to get a good idea of where we are heading with this.

First of all, you can see that it is definitely optimized for Social Media. Very important for 2010. At the very top of our page, you can click buttons to join us on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. Please click and try these out. Imagine how powerful these would be on your site!

You can also read our blog (lower left box) directly. We would seriously recommend that you get your web designer to add this functionality to your site. A tremendous advantage of having your blog feed on your home page is that Google sees it as “fresh” content and Google REALLY likes fresh! What that means is that (assuming you are using good keywords) your site will be indexed higher up when someone in your area is searching for a dentist!

Take a look at the “Upcoming Events” box on the upper left. Again, since this changes, it keeps the website fresh and people want to come back to it often!

Notice the large box in the middle that is featuring “Profitable Dental Scheduling,” This can easily be changed at any time to feature any product that we would want to promote. It’s simple to change. We just replace the box with another one of the exact size and WHAM, new content again! By the way, if you have not tried our “Profitable Dental Scheduling,” what in the heck are you waiting for? We are having a special price until the end of the year. It is a great way to get your team trained on getting practically every single caller into your appointment book. Unfortunately almost every single office needs help with this. With “Profitable Dental Scheduling,” your entire team can be trained to be experts in two hours total. We have already trained hundreds of offices. Check it out! Click on the big box!

Another very important feature of the site that we wanted to point out is the “Get Your Free Report” box at the upper right. When someone requests the report, we are able to capture their email address. This is crucial for you to have on your dental website. Wouldn’t you want to have a list of people that visit your site so that you may correspond with them? We certainly think so. Go ahead and click on the Special Report and see what happens! Just another marketing idea for you!

The central part of our site “What Would You Like to Do?” simplifies what we do and what we can do for you. As simple as this appears, it actually took a lot of planning. We wanted all of these things to be visible from the front page. You should be doing the same with your dental office site. Don’t make people hunt for stuff. Put it right out there in the open!

Next, at the very bottom left you can see our blog feed that we referred to earlier. And on the lower right, you will see our partners. These are some great companies that we believe can really help your practice in a big way. Check them all out!

By checking out our site, you should be able to get some good ideas of some of the things that you should be doing on your own website. If you are not optimized for Social Media, now may be a good time to think about doing this. As you know, we are seeing tremendous changes in our business simply by applying some of the principles of Social Media Marketing. We hope you are doing the same! Make 2010 the year that you really start to understand Social Media, or you may be left behind by the many offices that are starting to seriously embrace it.

A big, big thanks goes out to the good people at DDS.com for all of their help with the website design. Dr. Rich Hirschinger and his team of experts are the best we have seen at designing a dental website to today’s standards. They understand search engine optimization and exactly what needs to go into the site to make you come up near or at the top of Google! We could not have done all of this without them!

If you want to see a BIG difference in your website or are interested in learning more, be sure to click the DDS.com button at the bottom of our site. They have set up a special page for Madow Group friends and members and the only way to get there is via the button on our website. Please check it out. Or just click HERE.

Don’t fall behind the times. Now is the time to get your site optimized for the new decade!