Okay, here we are, Dan Brown, Senior Service Consultant of MGE, and I'm back with another client testimonial, and this one's special. This one's special to me because this is a client who I'm going to let him tell his story where he came from and where he is today. And that's Dr. Ken Sirka. Dr. Ken Sirka, welcome and thank you for taking time, talking to other dentists about your experience with the MGE power program. Well, thanks for having me, Dan. I really appreciate it. Yeah, if I could just encourage some of these dentists to just move a little faster, be a little stronger, and enjoy dentistry a little bit more, I would love to tell them my story and let them know what I've been doing. You know, I joined MGE a long time ago, and when I first started with MGE, I was only seeing about 10 new patients a month, and we were collecting about $17,000 a month, and it was a real struggle. You know, right out of dental school, I worked at a practice that was like a factory. I was seeing, you know, so many patients a day working out of six chairs, and I said, you know, there has to be something a little bit better than this, and I had the fortunate opportunity of having a period on this recommend me to MGE. And when I ended up going to MGE and I took a couple courses, I said, there's something about this that's special and different than other management courses that I've done. I was collecting $17,000 a month, and I went to $53,000 within a two month period of doing some courses, some lectures, and implementing what I was taught at MGE. And I was in a building of about 30 dentists in downtown Philadelphia. So being in a high-rise building with 30 dentists was a challenge in the beginning. You know, getting five to 10 new patients a month was difficult to pay the bills. You know, going to MGE and learning how to deal with patients, how to market properly, how to budget everything from the marketing that you do to how much do you spend on dental supplies and office supplies, and really having a solid plan was what I was taught at MGE and I was able to implement. You know, fast forwarding now, many, many years later, I've been with MGE about 15 years. What's unique about me is I've really stepped away from doing the day-to-day dentistry. I have 20 full-time staff members. I am in Center City, Philadelphia, and I've been awarded the largest dental practice of Philadelphia. And it's because we've been able to grow by implementing the systems that MGE has taught us. With absolute certainty, I know if we do this type of marketing, we're going to get this type of result. And, you know, even from the beginning where I went in and I was spending money on trying every type of marketing and wasting marketing dollars and not knowing where to go next and where to grow the practice. I was taught really how to focus, how to work with my marketing person in the office to find those type of patients that we wanted more patients like that. And we were able to streamline our marketing efforts. We reduced our marketing spend now under 3% in the practice and we're still getting on average 137 new patients a month. We've been able to maintain that 137 new patients a month for the past eight years. So we have grown, we have gone up more than 25 fold from how we started at MGE. So there's just a lot to be said. What you can learn at MGE. Wow, just incredible. And, Dr. Circuit, let's lay the landscape a little bit. Just so people understand how dense downtown Philadelphia is with dentists, other dentists. So not only were you in, you know, 13th floor of a 15 story building with over 30 other dentists, which I understand is there's even more in that scene building now. Isn't that right? It's really about this thing. What's happened though is we're finding since COVID happened, there's about 20% of the offices that have never reopened or have actually sold their practices. Our building, which was at 100% capacity for many, many years, is now 20% vacant. And what's sad is in downtown Philadelphia, about 40% of the businesses have never reopened. So, you know, having that foot traffic, having the patients that were living outside of the city and commuting downtown Philadelphia where our practice is, it's reduced about 70% because people are working from home. So what do we need to do? We needed to reach out to every single patient that was in our marketing list and constantly let them know that the safety protocols that we've implemented are following CDC guidelines. And we have done things that were above and beyond what we had done in the past. So we wanted to create a very safe environment for not only our patients, but our staff members as well. Wow. I had no idea of that impact. So it's devastating, but so well done for being in a position for you to have survived. So, you know, I think maybe we could also tell doctors now, and just to confirm, I'm not compensating you for this. You're not being financially incentivized. This is, you're doing this out of the love of dentistry and out of the true understanding that others like you that were in your same spot could do better. Can you confirm that? Yes, that's correct. I think what happens is, you know, you you look on Facebook, you look on Instagram, you see blogs, you see what people are saying about how difficult things are. Well, yes, you know, you have less income if you've agreed to have less income. If you've decided, you know, my patients are going decreasing. So how do you react to that? And instead of waiting till the income is lower than it was before COVID, what can you actually be doing? So in our office, we've decided every single patient that comes in, we educate them that the healthier their mouth is, the more resistant they are to getting COVID or any other respiratory diseases, flu season is upon us. So, you know, just being as healthy as we can possibly be. And then we ask them, do you have anyone at home that may need to see a dentist? If they do, then we call them when we schedule an appointment right there when their roommate or partner is in the office. Because you have to take care of full households, especially at this time. We have to, you know, protect our staff from making sure that the patients are coming in, we're able to get them as healthy as we possibly can to extend their lives or make them more resistant to whatever is going on. In doing that, we've actually had an increase. You know, our increase is up about 30% from where it was 12 months ago. So what do we attribute that to? You know, we attribute that to spending more on marketing dollars, especially through Facebook ads, believe it or not, and Instagram ads. That's what we've been doing. We've had an increase of 37% in patients accepting cosmetics, which is sort of surprising during this time. But we're doing usually an inviseline start each week if not two starts per week. And we're also doing one or two full veneer cases per week. That wasn't the case a year ago. So I think that patients are willing to spend money on what they care about. During this time, patients are unable to go shopping like we were to high-end stores. They're also not able to take vacations. So if you reach out to them and say, you know, you might be in a situation now where we can do some dentistry for you to make you look better, to make restorations last longer. And that we guarantee that you won't have any chips, cracks, or breaks. That is one thing that we offer in our office that covers every restoration for one year. And we cover veneers for a five-year period. So that might be something that we do a little differently than other practices. And we've had patients that have reached out. They do trust us because we post a lot of before and after photos. And we do a full consultation where we're sitting with the patient to find out what their needs and wants actually are before we take the handpiece to their tooth. So it's very important to have communication with your patients and your staff about where you want to go and about how you want to do it safely. Well, I think that's incredible. I mean, you really touched on some things of like what are you doing right now to make it through it. And it sounds like you're actually expanding through this, whereas so many others are contracting. So hats off again on that. And you know, I want to touch on this. So, you know, when you were just talking there, I'm thinking to myself, yes, he's obviously a skilled practitioner. I know you have awards for your cosmetic dentistry. But up and over that, I guess somebody who understands business. And now, was that always a case? Did you always kind of have a natural knack for business? I always enjoyed financing and investments and things like that. But I'm coming from a family that was blue collar workers, you know, from Pittsburgh originally. And I didn't have a background in anything except, you know, working at a fast food chain for seven years. That's my background. So when I ended up going to dental school right out of the fast food industry, I didn't know anything about business. So when I joined MGE, after spinning my wheels at my own practice for over a year and not being able to make ends meet, there were some simple processes that they've taught me of how to manage the office, how to track what we're increasing and what we're decreasing, what we're spending money on. The number of patients that are showing up in for every six month, re-care visit, those sort of things that I had no knowledge of. So I feel like after going to MGE and doing the year long power program, I feel as though I basically gained an MBA, I understand marketing, I understand looking at budgets, I understand profit and loss statements, all of these things that I had no knowledge of prior to joining MGE. The biggest, I think, problem that we run into in dentistry is the management. It's not the clinical aspects. Dilling with patients is the easy side, you know, running the business, you know, hiring staff, training staff, putting in correction for staff. If a staff member is showing up late for work, how do you handle that? A lot of dentists friends say, well, I don't say anything because if I lose her or him, I don't know what I would do. Well, you know, it's your practice and you're taught some communication skills, how to tweak things in your office to make it fun for everyone, to make it a team effort instead of you as a practitioner working alone. And that's what I've gained from MGE. It's fantastic, really, excuse me, really is truly fantastic. I, you know, and I think I want to round things up with what you just covered there because, you know, you have a great staff, you have a great internal culture, and I've gotten to meet them and work with them. So I know you guys are having fun, and you're working and you're doing amazing numbers, but you're having fun. And on top of that, maybe you could also share not only about the internal office culture and what the program being a power program graduate has done for you and internally in the office, but maybe give people a little glimpse of what it's like now. We have a picture of the before. And what is it like now? How often are you in the office? How much do you work? How have you set things up? And how much is that tied to the MGE power program? Yeah, well, I mentioned that the practice is in Philadelphia. I no longer live in Philadelphia. I've moved to Soho. I live in New York City at this point. What I get from the practice is a report that shows me every Friday, any, any metrics that I'm tracking in the office and I'm able to remotely determine what's going on in the office just by having data. So MGE is taught me how to review this data, how to know exactly what's going on in the office without me having to be there. I still go to Philadelphia four days per month. So the four days per month I'm actually in the office seeing patients running the office, touching base with the executives. That's the office manager and the person that's doing the public relations in the office like marketing. So we get together and we talk about how things have gone for the past month. And I set goals and we set policies. So we don't repeat the same mistakes that we've done the previous month. And we also look at what we've done right for the previous month and we find ways to repeat that. So it's a very simple process, but it's it's something that I can do remotely and we're still again growing the office. I've been able to hire two amazing associate dentists that are in the practice excited about what they're doing because we're all there to get patients healthy. And if everything's aligning to get patients healthy and to, you know, protect them from whatever viruses are going on in the world at this time. And that's our focus. Then we don't get distracted by anything else. It's all working together as a team to protect ourselves and to protect our patients. And as a result of that, by doing the right thing consistently, the practice keeps growing because our intention is to get people healthy. And, you know, there are struggles that we all have. Financial struggles, paying the bill struggles, worrying about the future. But if you spend a little bit more time talking with your staff and finding out what their concerns are, so you're all working on the same page. And then reassuring them that, you know, we are doing something amazing for patients. And their responsibility level, if you can increase it a little bit, to show them that we're not, you know, a nine to five job where we're just coming in and flipping burgers, you know, we're there to get patients healthy and extend their lives. And if everything aligns with that, you can't help but succeed. It's fantastic. Really. It just sounds amazing. You know, in addition, I follow you on Facebook, so I get to see your excursions to, you know, Paris and other countries. And so you're traveling, obviously living in Soho. So you're reaping the benefits of your success and hard work and really truly hard investment. I mean, this didn't come easy. You had to work hard to learn how to be an amazing manager and remotely managed. So I don't think there's any factor of luck involved. But outside of the financial benefits that you've seen from having graduated the power program, can you tell me what learning this has done to your office and life and how has it impacted outside of just, you know, financial improvements? Well, I think taking on the responsibility of making sure that not only is the office doing fine, but I've been more connected with my staff members and their families and making sure that they're more comfortable at home and their kids are taking care of, you know, especially now, during these times when you have a mother, a single mother that's working in the office and her child's at home, have to be sensitive to those concerns that she may have. And what can you do to help her is one thing that I've done is looking at my staff and seeing what are their needs inside and outside of the office and trying to help out. Secondly, is I've been able to go back to the area that I grew up in. It's a depressed area. We've been able to do a lot more volunteer work. We've provided computers to a lot of students that didn't have computers during this time that have to work at home. I've been able to reach out to dental students. I'm up here near NYU and I'm able to work with some dental students because they can't do their clinicals in the dental schools right now. So being a resource for them that I can share my knowledge and just to be a little more helpful is good. When I used to go into the office, I would have a headache every day going into the office, like a physical headache, or I would leave at the end of the day having a headache, not knowing what to do. There were many nights that I left the office at midnight or one in the morning, just trying to keep my head above water. I've learned to work more smartly over the years, and you learn how to focus. I never worked out for many years. I now have time to work out daily. It's those sort of things that MT is freed up. It's some more free time to take care of myself, to take care of others, to take care of my family, and to take care of staff. It's those things that I never even thought of because when you're struggling and you have so many financial concerns right in your face, you're not looking at the big picture. You're not looking at globally. How can I make the world a little bit better? And for me, stepping away from dentistry and having more free time, that's my mission. My mission is to make the world a better place. My mission is to never post anything on social media that's negative. My mission is to reach out to those people, friends and family that are struggling, and to make their lives a little bit easier by letting them know that someone's there listening to them. So that's my mission going forward, and to spreading the knowledge that I've gained from MGE to other MGE clients. Like Dan said, I'm not being compensated for this. I'm not being compensated when I'm lecturing and when I'm sharing things. I'm looking to how can I help another dentist, love dentistry a little bit more, and make their staff enjoy their jobs. Wow, just awesome. Thank you for that. Ken, I'd like to ask you another question. Obviously when you came on board and decided to do the power program, you had concerns prior to that decision. It's a commitment. Tell a little bit about the concerns you had about MGE and doing the power program. Well, the concerns that I had about joining MGE and doing the power program really stemmed from lack of money. So I couldn't even pay my student loans at the time. I was working two jobs. So when I started my practice, I was still working full-time at the other practice, and then I was working in my practice in the evenings. So I said, well, how would I ever make this happen? Because if I'm going to, at that time, it was going to Florida to do training, how could I close my doors? I have no associate dentist to keep the office open, and we'd be losing revenue. So I decided, why don't I jump on the plane with my office manager? Which, again, I would encourage anyone if you're doing any type of training at MGE, I would do it with someone else. When I ended up going to MGE, I was able to learn things, and together with my office manager, go back and implement them. So the concern I had is financial. How am I going to pay bills and how am I going to take away time from the office, fly down to MGE, and actually do learning? So that was my biggest concern. I know a lot of other people have kids and have to leave their families to go down to MGE, but I understand now a lot of the training is now online. If it's online, you can do it during your time that you have available. If you carve it out and do it every day or every week at the same time, I think it's amazing, and I would encourage everyone to do as much as you possibly can remotely and get through the power program quickly, and then finish up in person at MGE. If I had that opportunity back then, I think I would have gotten through the power program much more quickly and been able to implement things better. But the systems that MGE has put together during this time is amazing to have the so much content available online. Awesome. Awesome. And then I just want to touch on one point. You have trained a number of your staff on the power program, and I don't know if I've kept an accurate count, but it'd be somewhere between, if my understanding, about 10 to 14 people that you've put on the power program now, some of these people have lives and they move on and their husbands move away and such. But you know, that was all remote training where they had to come to MGE and participate in Florida and such. Tell me what impact that has had to take advantage of kind of like the all-you-can-eat program of training that MGE has to offer. And having put so many people, not just on the power program, but on extended training lineups. Well, there's a few things that come to mind, one of which is staff members that have done training and have gone through the power program in my office. Some of them are executives. Some of them are my dental assistants and some are my hygienists. So even my dental assistants have done the entire power program. So I know that if there's a disagreement, we handle it before we leave at the end of the day. I know if there's something that doesn't go right during the day and if we need a policy written, the dental assistant will speak up and say, "Hey, we need a policy written, so we're all doing this the same way." It's having the staff on board, so they're taking responsibility for their area, so you as the owner or the dentist, you're not doing everything in the office all day long. So our staff have really learned who does what in the office and how does that interrelate with the other positions in the office. For example, how does the dental assistant running on time help the receptionist or help the scheduler? So it's how we are working together as a team to grow the office. In my practice, I've been with MGE for many years, so over the years, I've trained two office managers, one of which is now in LA and he's working with two large dental practices, and he's utilizing the information that he gained at MGE so many years ago, and both of the practices are full MGE client practices now, and they too have gone up about 40% during this time of COVID. So when you see that and you hear it, again, I'm in Pennsylvania and they're in California, and you see that other practices that are implementing what they've learned at MGE, it's not just one site-specific area that this works in. It can work in the rural towns, it can work in large cities, and when you see successes like that and you tie it back to MGE and the training that we received so many years ago, and I'm talking about it 15 years later, it's because I believe in the system and I know that the system works because it's almost like a cookbook, you know, you do step-by-step and you will get this result, and I've seen it time and time again over the years, and I know that the implementation of what's trained through the power program works consistently and every time. Fantastic, fantastic, and then would you say that your ability to operate remotely from the practice is tied together with the extensive training you've done with your other staff, because you said you've put your assistance through the power program, many other staff through the power program. How relevant and important is that factor of them having also done that training and you being able to leave the practice? It's invaluable to have your staff members do training. I can't stress it enough if you're an island and you're the only person getting the training, implementing it is near impossible, but the more staff members that you focus on, you spend time with, you work with them, you get them through the training at MGE, and you put together an actual implementation plan, and you have staff members working with you, so you're not all doing it by yourself, you will find that things can't help but get grown, because you're in communication. All of a sudden you're working together as a team, whereas previous to MGE, I felt like most of us were working by ourselves, and all of a sudden now you have goals that you're setting, you're working together, you're excited because you're accomplishing things together as a team. That's the biggest thing. For me to know that my staff members love doing what they're doing in the office, because they're all working together, even though I'm not there, and I go back, and I actually see every review that we get posted through Google, those reviews get emailed to me every day, straight through Google, you can set that up. So you see the reviews that are coming in. We do have a quota, which is getting one review per day. So at this point we have about 1,000 Google reviews on our site, and when you see that and you see, yeah, they're not all positive, there are some things that come out negative, but how do you adapt and how do you change your practice so you address those issues? You don't fight with your patients, you don't talk negatively about your patients, and if you establish those type of parameters in practice, then all of a sudden it's a very positive environment. So the staff members work together as a team, and it's all from what they've learned at MGE. It's not what I've taught them, you just don't have enough time in the day to sit and to train them on every piece of communication and how to do their job, but if you're having some sort of training through MGE or another party, that really pairs up with you and works together, your staff members can succeed amazingly. And for me, it was MGE. I had done other consulting firms prior to working with MGE. I had done other organizational firms prior to joining MGE, and yes, I received some results, but the amount that I had to put in to receive those results was excessive. All of a sudden everything is streamlined through MGE, and what my staff was taught has created a very tight group that we worked together great. Fantastic. Well, Dr. I can only tell you that I could listen to you all day, and I kind of told you this would probably be a short 10 or 15 minute interview, but I just couldn't stop asking you questions because it's just fascinating. And it's just your success is really legend. So, well done to you. I'm so happy we have this relationship. I'm so happy for your success, and if we'd wrap it up, it would be the one thing that you would say from your heart to other dentists who are considering this power program and possibly doing this training, just a short summary of how you would address it to them. If you want to have more success, you want to have less stress, you want to have a team that's working together, and you want to go home at night doing what's right, knowing that you've done what's right for your patients, I would join the MGE power program and do it from start to finish with your office manager. It's so surprising to me that I see a lot of dentists that have not done the entire MGE power program, especially dentists that were on the fence years ago, and they might have waited a year or two, and then they've done the program. They always call me or email me and say, "Ken, I should have followed your advice and I should have done it a long time ago." So, you know, if you're waiting a year, you're waiting two years, you're waiting longer than that, I really don't see the point because you're really losing out in the long run of your own stability, your own confidence, your own success. If you can bring that success on earlier and stability and have less headaches in your office, I would encourage everyone to do that. Thank you. Thank you so much, and I think those are words of extreme wisdom. Dr. Circuit, thank you so much for taking the time. My apologies for this going longer, but again, I couldn't stop asking you questions because I have found myself fascinated well down to you and your team, and very much, you don't not like you need it, but good luck with the going future and success. It sounds like you've got a good grip on it. Thank you again. Thanks for having me, Dan. Now, for you watching this, you too could have this same success. The MGE Power Program has helped over 1200 of your dental colleagues make a combined $9.9 billion in additional revenue. And yes, that's billion with a B. And to give you an idea, after the first year of doing the program, the average power client sees an 89% increase in collections. Within five years, it's a sustained 232% increase. What would that mean to you? Well, if you're collecting $50,000 a month on average, that's about $95,000 a month after one year, and $166,000 a month four years later. Even better, these doctors are doing these numbers while focusing on patient care, doing the type of dentistry they love to do, not just what the insurance covers, having a great team and enjoying come into work in the morning, assuming control of their practice and schedule, being able to take time off and not working excessive hours, being able to sleep at night because they feel secure about the future of their practice. And knowing that they always have unlimited access to a top MGE consultant to get help and solve problems together. And what makes this all possible? Revolutionary education and coaching on practice management systems that not only work, but that continue to work again and again as their practices grow. It's truly a case where some extra work now makes your life and the rest of your career far more rewarding. So what's next? Well, you need to find out if the MGE power program would be a good fit for your practice. And listen, don't wait. Enrollment for this year is limited. So go to mgeonline.com, forward slash power program, and fill out the form today to learn more. Or call us now at 1-800-640-1140. We're here, and we're ready to bring these same results to you. We want you to succeed, and we know how to make that happen.