Feb 13 2025 13 mins 1
It’s not difficult to enter a practice and feel whether a team is synergistic and they love each other versus if they have animosity and do not get along. Kiera gives advice for spreading love to team members and patients, and establishing a culture of appreciation beyond Valentine’s Day.
Episode resources:
Subscribe to The Dental A-Team podcast
Schedule a Practice Assessment
Transcript:
Kiera Dent (00:01.23)
Hello, Dental A Team listeners. This is Kiera and it is the season and the month of love. And honestly, Valentine's Day and February isn't just about hearts and chocolates. It's truly the perfect time to show appreciation to your team and patients if you desire. So today we're going to teach you some simple, impactful ways to spread love in your dental practice, because why not? One of my favorite quotes is to spread love like confetti. And I think in today's world and in Dental A Team's mission to positively impact the world of dentistry in the greatest way possible,
Why not spread love, spread kindness, spread joy to our team and our patients. So just wanted to give you guys a couple quick tips on how you're able to do that. You guys know that this is something that I'm really passionate. I'm really passionate about you loving your job, you loving your life, loving your patients, impacting your community and your team to ultimately live the most fulfilled and impactful life. Showing love and appreciation increases our morale in our practices. It increases retention and the overall practice culture where patients feel that love.
crazy because when I walk into an office when consulting, you can feel if a team is synergistic and they love each other versus if they're animosity and they do not get along with one another. And so really just something for you to highlight that people can feel the energy. And so let's spread that love in a quick action packed episode for you today on the season of love. So number one, step one is show love to your team. I do believe that it comes from when we
recognize and appreciate our team's hard work when we show that love to one another. That's really how we're able to highlight and enhance in some quick easy ways that I think are love appropriate within the workforce, our right personal thank you notes to each team member, maybe once a quarter, we we bust out the thank you cards and we write them. It's crazy how a little pen and paper can really make a big impact for people. You guys could also have like around Valentine's Day, maybe have a Valentine's Day themed lunch or treat where
We really do maybe exchange Valentine's Day gifts with one another, like go back to the time where we wrote Valentine's for one another. And also like we've talked about in other times of creating a shout out board where you can write kind notes to each other. I've seen offices where they just have a whiteboard there where people just write a quick note of like, here you crushed it today or Sarah, you crushed it today and we just leave it. And it's almost like our wall of love. And you can even create a wall of love where we just like stamp them up there or on shout out jars. We post those up there because again, showing love to one another.
Kiera Dent (02:25.7)
It creates a habit, creates a pattern. creates a way for us too of how we operate. And so just again, thinking of that. And so my suggestion for you is pick one of those ideas. Are we going to do thank you notes to one another? Are we going to have a lunch of a Valentine's themed? Are we going to get those little Valentine's boxes back out? Are we going to have a shout out board for one another? What are we going to do to implement kindness and love within our practice? And then step two is now we've done it to our teams. We've taken care of ourselves.
Now we're going to spread this to our patients. And so what can we do to show love to our patients? And what's crazy is when people feel loved, they're actually very bound. There's a retention piece. There's a loyalty piece because people feel that love and that genuine appreciation. And so little things for them that we can do of you can send heartfelt emails or text messages to patients. We could even have little hearts this month and write little love notes to our patients of how much we appreciate them. You could highlight one patient.
that you just every day to have them be the patient of the day. We could actually create a social media post highlight, make sure it's a HIPAA and you've got consents for it. A patient appreciation and highlight the patients to like why we really love them and why they love their smile. So lots of different ways where we can show them. But I think that intentionality, there's a book called Unreasonable Hospitality. And I loved in there where they had like this whole little like craft kit is how I imagine it. I've never been there.
But where they were allowed to, they really encouraged their team to create magic moments for their guests, for these people who would attend the restaurant. so having a way for your team to produce this unreasonable hospitality, if we know someone's having a baby or we know someone's getting married or we know someone's it's their birthday or like just having a little, like I said, a little craft station where we can do these things on an intentional basis every single day to really create magic and to spread love to our patients. It's crazy how just a small little intentional thing
I mean, I can't imagine it's never happened to me, but could you just imagine if your hygienist in your little goodie bag wrote you a handwritten note, like again, like a little heart or a little card, like, Kiera, I just really always look forward to when you come. You're one of my favorite patients. And I just want you to know how much I really appreciate you and do it without any expectation other than just giving the gift of love to this person. I think that this would actually really truly grow your practice, grow your,
Kiera Dent (04:47.136)
retention, grow your patient base. And then another idea is think about our online reviews. Yes, we respond to those reviews for Google Analytics and for different pieces. But what would it be like if you actually wrote a personalized letter to each person who left your view, thanking them for that review, or a personalized letter to each person who referred someone to your practice? It just seems crazy how this intentionality of personalization and creating magic for our patients and spreading the love.
really would be able to be something. I think in the month of February, it's a fun time for us to pick one patient focused, like idea where we can show them the love and implement it, whether before Valentine's day or after Valentine's day you choose, but really like how can we create this magic for our patients? And then step three is foster the culture beyond Valentine's day. Like how do we foster this culture of appreciation and love beyond? And I think a lot of the pieces for this were,
talking about things of creating the magic moments, creating the shout out boards, but maybe for this ideas are we start a monthly recognition program for team and patients. How can we recognize somebody every single month that really we just love and we want to like shower them with love, sprinkle them with the confetti of love. Maybe we also do positive feedback, like the shout out jars, the kudos jars, keep the board going of how much we love each other. Maybe these things like that. And what you can do is even like rotate. I like to have systems and cadences. So maybe it's.
Kiera's day is on Monday and Kiera goes and writes love notes to each team member every single Monday. Every Tuesday it's Britt's turn to do it. Every Wednesday is Tiff's turn to do it. But really like finding a way to have this where it becomes, yes it will be quote unquote forced at the beginning, but then becomes automatic in the longterm. We could also do quarterly patient appreciation events. So I've seen offices, one of my favorite offices that I've seen is they had donuts on the corner. offices like patients would be driving all the time for high school.
and they had donuts and they just like gave a little like, love our patients and they would do it. And people in the community knew about this all the time. I have an office where they're gonna start running promos of if your name is blank, come in and get free whitening. We love our patients. We love to have them smile bright and something like that where it's just fun things where we're showing appreciation, we're showing love, we're able to give back. These are ways that we're able to make this not just be about Valentine's Day and the month of love.
Kiera Dent (07:00.9)
But like I said, spreading love like confetti all year long. And so I would plan one appreciation initiative. So what we're gonna do this year of are we doing recognition for patients and team? Are we going to have a quarterly event? Are we gonna do donuts? But the goal is not to cost a lot of money, not to create more busy work for you, but to really be in the habit of adding love for our team and our patients. I feel like our world has become such a world.
where we've forgotten to be humans. We've forgotten to be, we've forgotten to love. We're so automated, we're so into AI and automations and doing and maximizing and optimizing that we've forgotten to just love. We've forgotten what our center is, what our core is, what it means to be a human being, not a human doing, but a human being, being intentional, being in that spirit to really create magic. So I think a good book is Unreasonable Hospitality.
to just think of how can we create magic and love moments more often, to have that be the culture and the feel. And I know families who have love, you can feel it when you walk into a home, relationships that are very centered on love. You can feel that when you're around them, why not make your practice a space where people feel loved, they feel accepted, they don't feel judged. They feel like they're special, but they're important. Everyone in this world is looking for that, whether big or small, they're looking for that. So like I said, we've got the three steps of number one, show love to our team.
Number two, spread love to our patients. And number three, have that culture of appreciation beyond just Valentine's Day in the month of February. This is how we're able to change the world. This is how we're able to create magic. This is how we're able to change people's lives just by coming to the dentist. And if we see that by, we're not just changing their smiles, we're changing them as a human. It's what we do in consulting. Yes, I'm here to talk to you about profitability and systems and consulting, but I believe in changing the human. I believe in impacting the soul.
I believe in having you have your dream life as team members and as owners to really give you the best life you can possibly have. And we do that through love. Love is the connector. Love is the bridge. Love is what makes us so happy. So I encourage you to truly like, if you're ready to spread love in the practices, like share, tag us. Like that would be my, my action for you is go spread love and tag the Dental A Team. Um, on Instagram, I would love to just have like it flooding of
Kiera Dent (09:22.358)
an initiative of all the podcast listeners. Let's just make it this month of love where we're tagging, we're spreading, we're saying hello. Can we add love into Facebook groups? Can we share this podcast with someone that we love? Where can we do that? And truly, this is a way that we're able to give back. if this is what you want and you want a team that's not just about systems, you want consulting that's not just about the dentistry. Yes, that's what we do, but it's more about being, it's more about intentionality, it's more about love.
reach out. This is what we do. when we are ready, we're ready for you. And so reach out [email protected] or just go click and book a call for a complimentary practice assessment for you and your team to just show you value and insights and help you. Because at the end of the day, the mission of Dental A Team's podcast and Dental A Team is from love. Loving my Midwestern students when I worked with them to give them resources to then loving our dental offices and loving them as people to give them the resources.
to change their lives, to change their communities and have this impact that goes far beyond our dental practice and our space. It blesses our families, it blesses our teams, it blesses our patients. And so really, that's what we're about. I'm so happy you're here. So go spread love like confetti. Know that I love you, that you're doing better than you think you are. Give yourself the grace, the kudos, make magic moments for those patients and let me know. And I cannot wait to see you guys. Tag me, DM me. This is where we're at. I would love to get Valentine's from you.
I love Valentine's, so send them out, spread them out, give those love bombs to people around you, inside and out, and so truly, this is the time. It's your time to spread love like confetti to change the world. And as always, thanks for listening, and I'll catch you next time on the Dental A Team podcast.
