The Night I Slept with a Knight

Posted on by
12

Last week I completed what was definitely the most physically challenging experience of my life.  I signed up for part of the Strive Challenge, a 27-day fund-raising event that is still taking place. It involves a five-day hike, a 1350 mile bike ride, swimming from Italy to Sicily and then a half marathon up Mount Aetna.  I just did the hike segment, which had over 100 participants.

I call it a hike, but it was more like mountaineering, which I did not know ahead of time.  On the longest day we covered 11.4 miles, ascended 5400 feet and descended 5900 feet, and took almost 45,000 steps. Virtually none of it was level and little of it was smooth, and large portions of it were simply climbing over rock slides like the one below.

This is not my idea of a trail!!

This is not my idea of a trail!!

Because I thought it was basically like a normal hike, I foolishly did not train for this.  Oh, and we also were carrying packs weighing 25 pounds.  In other words, this damn near killed me. I was so trashed after the first day I could hardly summon the strength to feed myself!

And we also stayed primarily in “refugios”, which are essentially eating and sleeping lodges for hikers. The first was the most spartan, with no showers, cold water to wash, toilets that were essentially open troughs, meals that were the equivalent of prison food, and rooms with bunk beds.

Though my childhood was fairly simple and spare, I’ve certainly grown accustomed to creature comforts over the years.  But what was perhaps the most striking aspect of this adventure is that Sir Richard Branson was also doing the hike right along with us.  In fact, he’s doing all 27 days.  And did he sneak off to somewhere luxurious, or even comfortable? No. The first night he was in the same room with me in one of the lower bunks, ate the same food, and walked the same routes. (He’s the knight in the blog title, of course). I know few millionaires who would put themselves through all that, never mind billionaires.

I also took two Ambien that night, which makes me snore, and I pretty much kept everyone else awake for the four hours it allowed me to sleep.  (I think Sir Richard has forgiven me by now!)

My admiration for this man grows with every encounter.

My admiration for this man grows with every encounter.

This was called a challenge, and it was meant to be, and for me it really showed me how much difficulty I could endure, how much will I could summon, and how much harder I could push myself than I ever imagined.  Finally, at the end of the fourth day, I crumbled.  My 62-year-old joints and untrained muscles rebelled to a point where I couldn’t be cheerful, and that was a hard lesson.  But I also learned that being comfortable isn’t anywhere near as important as I thought, and that I’ve been way too easy on myself in the past ten or twenty years.

And perhaps most impressive to me was that a billionaire, who could have had a helicopter take him to the nearest Ritz Carlton, not only did every step of the hike, but did it with a sense of humor, an amiable nature and not a hint of entitlement behavior the entire time. (By the way, he wasn’t the only billionaire with us.  Hartley Richardson, who I believe is the second richest man in Canada and recently beat throat cancer, also did the hike.)

I have been both humbled and inspired by this experience, more deeply than I could have imagined.  I can’t count the number of times that I felt like giving up, except that I had no other option but to keep going, and I had my hike mates toughing it out with me, and encouraging me, and cheering me up and cheering me on.  It was grueling, unpleasant, tedious, and painful.  And I already miss it.

I saw beautiful sights that I would never have seen any other way.  And I saw myself laid bare.  And I spent time with a remarkable group of people.  The whole experience was filled with unexpected gifts.  At one point on the fourth day we stopped at a little inn and I had one of the most memorable snacks of my life: an orange popsicle.

fred-popsicle-strive-2016

My lesson from this was simple and powerful, and I give it as advice to you: Do something hard. Harder than you think you can do.  It doesn’t have to be physical. It can be learning a new technique or new technology, instead of coasting along on your current skills.  It can be learning a musical instrument, or a language, or getting a degree. Whatever it is, get way out of your comfort zone, and you will amaze yourself.  And if you can, do it with other people.

The charity that this was for, by the way, is called Big Change.  It leverages the money raised to create programs that encourage young people to learn about the possibilities of business, and how they can make a good living and a better world.The last time they did this, in 2015, they raised $800,000, and leveraged it to get over $40 million in government support around the globe for their programs.  If you would like to donate for my efforts, I welcome that, and you can do so by clicking here.

I’ll end with the motto of the Strive Challenge: “Growth begins when you get out of your comfort zone; magic happens when you do it with others.”

My Siroworld Video

Posted on by
8

This is the video I showed at Siroworld 2016 for the first time.  It’s a comedic take on what it would be like if I became a dentist (and why it would not be a good idea!) The actors in it are my operators from the call center at 1-800-DENTIST, and they did a fantastic job. Hope you enjoy it.  And no, it can’t be downloaded, because I don’t really want it distributed to the non-dental public. You’ll be able to figure out why!

7 Things I Learned from Sir Richard Branson

Posted on by
15

Richard, book and me

If you don’t know who Richard Branson is, I’ll explain that he is the creator of the Virgin brand, which started as a record company, then an airline, and now has over 400 different companies under that banner.  He’s a multi-billionaire who is now also pioneering commercial space travel with Virgin Galactic.  In other words, he’s a wild and fearless pioneer and entrepreneur.  And he’s a knight.

I had the occasion to spend five days on a business retreat at his island in the British Virgin Islands.  It was a spectacular experience, both from a business and a personal perspective.  I admire Sir Richard as much for the way he lives his life as I do for his achievements in business and philanthropy, and here are seven things I’ve learned from him that I think are very relevant to dental practices and to business in general, and I wish I learned them a lot sooner.

1. Offer an exceptional product with exceptional service. This is the only way to defend yourself long term against the competition.  He told us that the times he failed to do this were the times the endeavor failed.  If you can’t do that, in your own way, in your own neighborhood, to some group of patients, then you will be at risk.

2. Sweat the small stuff.  It’s all about the details. This is what people notice, and what people remember, and what makes you distinct as a person, a business and a brand. And in this world where your reputation is being created in the digital world every day, whether you like it or not, your brand is everything.  You will distinguish yourself by the smallest of details, and by not neglecting anything that the patient experiences.

3. Infuse playfulness into your business and your workday.  You may say that you are in health care, and there is no place for that.  I totally disagree. Even at its best, dental care is an anxiety-inducing experience.  Lighten up the atmosphere in your practice, and encourage your team to do the same, and you’ll see patients respond positively.

Why lets kids have all the fun? Play!

Why lets kids have all the fun? Play!

Remember, it’s about the experience of being a patient, not your clinical skills, that make the biggest impression on your patients.  Bring fun into your practice. For me, I realized how much I had let that slip away in my personal life as well.

4. You can’t change the world until you get your own business right.  All of us would like, I think, to have some positive impact on the world around us, and perhaps create a legacy.  But your first legacy is to have a solid, sustainable business, providing good, secure jobs, or as a team member contributing your best so that the business thrives. Then you can go out and change the world.

5. Take care of your body and your health.  You cannot be a good leader or good team member in the long term if you let your health fail.  And it won’t matter what level of success you achieve if you can’t enjoy it because you’ve let your body go.  Dentistry is a very physical profession, but when you maintain yourself you can do it comfortably into your 70’s and even 80’s (if you choose to!)

6. Turn your disadvantages into advantages.  Sir Richard is dyslexic.  Also a high-school dropout. This has allowed him to approach the world differently, to extraordinary success. Your disadvantages, either physical or mental, can serve as a motivator to you and also give you a different perspective on the world.  It’s a choice to let your disadvantages limit you, rather than discover the new pathways they provide.

7. To get great at something, get great coaching. He plays tennis almost every day with a tennis pro.  Whatever he undertakes, he finds the best coaches or advisors to help him.  I was not wise enough in my younger years to do this, but now I have remarkable people as resources, advisors and coaches in every area of my life.  It saves me money and time in reaching my goals.

I’ve learned a whole lot more from Sir Richard, much of it on a personal level.  I highly recommend reading his book, The Virgin Way, if you want more insight into how he has shaped his success.  He is also the keynote speaker at SiroWorld this summer, which is going to be an amazing and unprecedented event in August hosted by DentsplySirona. I wouldn’t miss it if I were you!

IMG_0649

 

Perfecting Your Dental Practice YouTube Channel

Posted on by
6

In my previous post, I explained how to make patient testimonial videos.  One of the most important Internet locations to post those videos is on your own practice’s YouTube channel.  Yep, just like ABC, CBS and Fox, you can have your very own channel for people to watch.

Why do it?  Because YouTube is the second most active site on the Internet, second only to Google itself, (which owns YouTube.)  And people love watching videos.  More than 50% of the time on smartphones is spent watching videos.

It’s so pervasive that there’s a battle going on between YouTube and Facebook for video dominance. The good thing about this competition is you can play on both sides and come out winning either way.  And beyond that, there is the Google Juice (SEO) that videos generate.

So how do you make your own channel, and how do you make it interesting?

First, you must have a Google+ account. I know, I’ve told you not to bother with regular posting on Google+ anymore, but that refers to social media activity. You still need to have a practice profile there, so that when people search for you on Google all your information comes up.  If you haven’t done that yet, go to Google Accounts and do that first, before I get angry.  (You don’t need a Google+/Google Place account to have a YouTube channel; you just need to have one if you’re a dental practice in the 21st century.)

I’m not going to give you a frame-by-frame explanation on how to do create your channel, because you need to learn to do this stuff by reading what’s on the site itself and finding what you need. But I’ll tell you what you should be doing, step by step.

1. Go to YouTube.  Sign in with your Gmail address.  If you haven’t created a YouTube account yet, you can do that as you sign in.  Make sure it is the same Gmail as for your Google+ account. If you have a Google+ page, YouTube is going to drag in the images from that. You’ll notice that it looks a lot like a Facebook page, only with a wider, narrower image.  So don’t be afraid to be consistent in your look and use the same panoramic photo, and put your practice logo in the thumbnail.  You can always adjust or replace them in your Google+ page and it will automatically adapt.

2. Name Your Channel. You can name your channel whatever you want, but generally it’s your practice name.

Add a description of your channel, which is simply a quick description of your practice and it’s location and contact information. Mine looks like this:

Fred YouTube Home Page
3. Upload Videos.  Anything you have already done:
  • Patient testimonials
  • Practice tour
  • Practice parties, holiday events, etc.
  • Dentist’s statement of purpose
  • Treatment explanations

Entitle and describe your videos individually. Your settings should include making the video public and allowing comments.

4. Tag your Videos.  This is perhaps the most important part of the video, maybe even more than the title. Click the on the pencil icon and you will get to “Information and Settings,” and then there is a box to add tags, where the red arrow is pointing.

Fred YouTube Channel tags

Click to enter the “tags” box and then just start typing relevant words. You can add as many tags as you want. You can’t do too many. They should include your practice name, your dentist’s name, and words like: dentistry; teeth; smiles; dental health; and anything that relates to the video, like braces or implants. Two or three words in a single tag is not a problem. These are critical because this is how Google finds your video if someone is searching a specific topic. (You don’t think Google is watching your videos and determining what’s in them, do you?  They won’t be able to do that until next year!)

5. Create a Playlist. On the left side of your Channel Page, click on “Library” and then on the button that says, “New Playlist.” What this allows you to do is suggest what video the viewer should watch next, in what sequence. Otherwise Google will do that for you, and that’s not necessarily what you want to happen, because it won’t be one of your videos.  Click on “Playlist Settings” and make the playlist “public,” and I also suggest in the “Ordering” that you show them by “most popular.”  Then click “add videos” and all the videos will appear.  Highlight them all and then add them into the playlist.  Eventually you will make multiple playlists, like when you have a lot of patient testimonials, but for now let’s just one done.

6.  Add Relevant Outside Videos to Your Playlist.  You can add other videos that you like to your playlist. They don’t have to be all yours.  Essentially, you are creating “programming” because you want them to stay on your channel, even if the video is made by someone else.  This is what the playlist allows you to do.  Make your playlist more interesting by suggesting other videos that relate to dentistry in some way.

7. Shoot more videos.  Add them to your playlist. You should be shooting more testimonials all the time.  But also, do videos explaining your technology and procedures or treatments if you think you might be any good at it.  That way you own them, and don’t have to borrow someone else’s.

Some other notes:

Facebook prefers it if you upload a video directly to them, not embed a YouTube video into your post.  So why make them unhappy?  Just upload it two times: once to Facebook, and once to YouTube.

You can embed your YouTube videos into your website, if you have a dynamic one.  If you don’t. Shame on you. Check out WebDirector.

Still can’t figure it out?  Then search YouTube for a video on “How to Set Up a YouTube Channel.”  There’s a YouTube how-to video for everything!

 

6 Steps to Making Good, HIPAA Compliant Patient Videos

Posted on by
9

I’m continually being asked the best way to do patient testimonial videos, so I’m going to lay it out for you.

People ask in part because I am always saying that patient videos are the most powerful marketing tools available, and perhaps the most versatile.  You can post them on your website, on your YouTube channel, on Facebook, and in your Google and Yelp profiles.  And people love watching videos. Facebook and Snapchat both have over 8 billion video views a day.  Yes, I said billion!

Requesting and making videos should be someone’s specific responsibility in the office, and in some ways everyone’s. Every team member should be willing to request this from a patient they believe will do a good testimonial. But every office should have one point person–the Facebook Geek, I call them–that is in charge of regularly doing these, like one a week, and then posting them in all the appropriate places.

Here are the steps:

STEP ONE: ASK FOR A TESTIMONIAL

Identify a patient who might be a good candidate, either because they just had a great result, or they’ve already praised the practice in some way.  If they just said, “You are all so nice here. I’m so happy I found you.”  That’s your cue to say, “We’d love it if you would do a short video saying that for us to use on social media. You know how important that is nowadays.” Don’t say crazy stuff like, “Please help us promote our practice,” or, “We really need your help getting new patients.”  Don’t sound desperate.

If the person is reluctant, just say, “If you don’t like it we won’t use it. But all you have to do is take 30 seconds and tell us what it’s like to be a patient of ours.”  If they’re still hesitant, then back off.

STEP TWO: RECORD ON A SMARTPHONE

This is what makes the testimonial real and credible: You didn’t make a big production out of it.  You made it like a video that they do themselves all the time.  Using a smartphone camera is also less intimidating to the patient.  One more important thing: shoot it in horizontal mode [I’m amending this from my original post] because in most media it will look much better.  The one challenge is that 70% of Facebook viewers are watching on mobile phones, and people don’t like to turn them.  This is why Facebook’s new Canvas ad format is a good example of the direction this is all going. The solution is to shoot through Instagram in horizontal mode, and then you can modify the shape if you want to.

You’re looking for four things from the patient:

  • sincerity–you want them to be believable;
  • enthusiasm–low energy is not persuasive or watchable;
  • brevity–it should be at the MOST, 60 seconds long.  Closer to 30 is better;
  • the practice/dentist’s name–this “labels” the video internally.

WARNING: Don’t let them talk about their treatment in the video! This qualifies as “patient health information,” and this is where the HIPAA challenge arises.  It would require you to create a release from the patient describing the specific treatment and who the audience would be that would see it.  Too much trouble.  The fact that they agreed to make the video would seem to me to qualify as a release, but the government doesn’t see it that way.

However, the patient can make a video on their own phone and post it to their Facebook wall. Patients can say whatever they want in their own posts on social media, because they can’t violate their own HIPAA.  If they do it that way, then you can share that video on your practice page.

STEP THREE: SHOW THE VIDEO TO THE PATIENT FOR APPROVAL

If you did more than one take, ask them which one they like. But make sure they approve you using it.

STEP FOUR: GET A SIGNED RELEASE

If you don’t already have one with the patient, get one, to use their image and video in all media, including social media, in perpetuity.  If they won’t sign one, then don’t use the video.  If you have an account with HR for Health, they can provide one, otherwise use LegalZoom.

STEP FIVE: ASK THEM TO SHARE IT ON SOCIAL MEDIA

If they did it on their phone, obviously they can share it on Instagram or Facebook.

STEP SIX: POST IT ON ALL YOUR DIGITAL LOCATIONS

  • Website (your website should have a separate page for patient testimonials, with a link from the home page.  If not, read this blog.)
  • YouTube channel
  • Yelp profile
  • Google+ page
  • Facebook (start with Instagram and have it post automatically–the Facebook geek knows what I’m talking about)
  • LinkedIn
  • Twitter

As a huge motivational bonus, show them to your team in morning huddles. Letting everyone know how much they are appreciated by patients is a great way to start the day.

Here are examples of the right and wrong way to do videos:

The above one mentions the treatment, cost, negative aspects of the experience, but is in the right framing–horizontal.

This one doesn’t mention treatment, is positive and energetic, and says the dentist’s name.  But it’s shot vertically, so it’s only good for Facebook mobile.  Almost there.

Make it a habit to do videos. As I said, they are the most credible and versatile marketing tool you have or your practice.  Do one today!