Dr. James:
Yeah, baby, what’s up? I think that I think me saying, yeah, yeah, baby might have just crept on to the podcast just then when I hit record, but it’s all good, let’s keep it in. That does embody my personality to a certain degree. That is something that I would say, so that’s fine.
Dr. Barry:
Anyway, how are?
Dr. James:
you? How are you doing, my friend? So anyway, guys, thank you for joining us today. We’ve got returning face on the podcast, Dr Barry Alton, and we’re here today to talk about selling without selling. What does that mean? We’re going to cover that in just a second, but before we do, barry, how are you? How have you been since we last spoke?
Dr. Barry:
I’ve been really well, really really well, mate. I’m very little clinical at the moment maybe three hours every couple of weeks just finishing off big cases and so I’m 100% into coaching, which is great because I’m coming up with new stuff and new trainings, looking after my existing clients and really enjoying it, actually helping people achieve more out of what they’ve got.
Dr. James:
Yeah, man, so you’re all in, and you know that is the part of the power of going all in. You actually things move faster and you actually see opportunities that you wouldn’t have seen otherwise. And sometimes, if you don’t take that leap, I feel, I feel that you impede your progress quite significantly, purely because your bandwidth is split on many different things significantly, purely because your bandwidth is split on many different things.
Dr. Barry:
Yeah, I agree with that.
Dr. Barry:
I think not only are you spinning you know multiple plates, but actually I think, uh, the clinical dentistry I was doing, so very well at it it maybe was um prevented me from taking the leap because it was a security blanket in many respects, and so that you’s SH1T or bust, isn’t it? I mean doing this 100% of the time, god damn it. I’ve got to make it work and actually I keep saying my success is based on my client’s success. I have to deliver. I have to deliver, otherwise that’s the end of the whole business model and I’m very proud of saying that I am delivering. I do a hundred percent money back guarantee on our entry-level program for principals and basically it’s they will double their investment in me within the 12 weeks, or I give them their money back, and nobody not nobody has needed their money back. So it’s going to happen, right, someone’s going to come along and we they just you know we don’t gel or something, that’s okay, but to date I’ve managed to help everybody double their investment in me within the 12 week program.
Dr. James:
So it’s good and you know what Can. I just add one thing to that. That is possible with the stuff that you teach, which is boosting cash flow, and this is a big limiting belief that a lot of people have. Like once upon a time, a version of james when he was like 25 would have heard something like that and being like, yeah, whatever, pull the other one. That’s just how can anybody ever do that? Because it was so outside my realm of understanding and I love the investing side of things, as in finance and what have you.
Dr. James:
But finance will never let you double your income in a few months, but understanding how to articulate value correctly and then being able to deliver on that value as a dentist will 1000%, and I feel like if people could understand, comprehend that and embrace it, oh my God, there’s so much good stuff on the other side, but what we’re talking about is, of course, being able to articulate the value that you already give and just to add to that, there’s two components to it. You’ve got your skill as a dentist and then you’ve got your beliefs right as in how much you believe in your own value. And actually what I find is people have skill and competency as a dentist, but they just don’t understand how much that’s worth. And they also could improve, certainly, at how well that they articulate that to people so that the patient intuitively gets that and is willing to invest to the standard they deserve.
Dr. Barry:
I am completely aligned with that. I think you know, even yesterday having conversations on my opening cohort. So this 12 week program that we call more because dentists want multiples, or one of one thing that they want more of. They either want more income, more money, they want more time out of the clinic because they’re working their backsides off, or they want more enjoyment, more fun dentistry, more wants-based dentistry, the stuff that they get juiced up about and get excited about. Not everybody gets excited about dentistry, but I do. I love doing dentistry and there’s certain things that I love the most, that I love doing in dentistry. Usually they’re the higher ticket value stuff, right, so that you want one of those three things or a multiple of those three things. So I have a 12 week program where I help them with certain systems, certain things to implement, but also certain language skills and communication. That leverages what they’re doing and they get more from what they’re doing, and so I thoroughly enjoy doing that because it works for everybody, no matter where you are and a lot of the people that I come across.
Dr. Barry:
The old way of making any more money in dentistry is typically dentists work on hourly rates. They price the hygienists at hourly rates and they price themselves at hourly rates. And the only way to make more money on an hourly rate is to either charge more for your hourly rate or to do more. Hours is no different from many other jobs. We pay our cleaners by an hourly rate, we pay our hygienists by an hourly rate, and so if you have that mentality of you’re trading time for money, it’s hard to comprehend how somebody like me can generate 5,000 pounds doing routine dentistry in a day when actually the majority of that is generated in about a three-hour period, because then the other five hours doesn’t matter what I generate. So I work on a daily production rate, not an hourly rate. And so when you start to talk about that, people attach their worth very often to the value of the hours that they’re working and therefore charging, and that mindset sometimes is quite difficult to shift. So when we kind of open up this box of possibility and start to help people realize that it’s your value, not your time, and the value of your time that is where your true long-term income will come from. And so yesterday this guy was saying like you know, my hourly rate is 300 pounds an hour and you know, I really don’t know how I can earn any more than that and I went that’s perfect. You know, let me, over the next 12 weeks I’ll show you. But I gave him um an, and that is that the company.
Dr. Barry:
Do you remember the company FedEx, huge American kind of postal and packaging courier, and they have their own airports. They’re that big in America. They have their own airport where all these packages come into and they fly around the hanger on conveyor belts so that people in the old, back in the days, they were sorted by hand. So you’d have a look at, this is going to philadelphia. You’d throw it on conveyor belt two and it would take it, you know, 300 feet down to a different part of the hanger to be put onto the plane. And what happened is the conveyor belt stopped working. All hell broke loose because without that conveyor belt there’s 12 flights getting delayed because nothing’s getting loaded and it fundamentally makes a massive difference to the profit and the functionality of the business. So they called this bloke in and they called him in and said oh, my God, you’ve got to help us fix this because we can’t work without this conveyor belt working.
Dr. Barry:
The bloke has a look around. He goes over to this stainless steel pylon which has got a box on it. He opens the box, takes out a screwdriver, puts his screwdriver in and turns a screw. Everything comes back to life and the conveyor belt starts working and they’re like yes, we’re back in business.
Dr. Barry:
The foreman says give me your invoice. And so the guy writes his invoice down and the bloke picks his invoice up and he goes what a thousand dollars, dude, you’re only here for two minutes. A thousand dollars for two minutes. And the bloke goes oh yeah, you’re right, rips the invoice off, tears it away, throws it in the bin and writes another invoice, writes it out, gives it to the foreman. Foreman takes a look and says can you give him a check for a thousand dollars? And somebody goes hang on a minute, what? Two seconds ago you’re like thousand dollars, thousand dollars. And now you’re right, give him a check. Foreman gave him the invoice and he looked at the invoice and he said time taken to turn the screw $1.00. Knowing which screw to turn 999.
Dr. Barry:
And so the value isn’t necessarily in the time that we spend. The value is in the service that we’re giving. Is the value that we’re giving that one turn of the screw gave so much value? It was probably worth millions if they hadn’t fixed it and it had gone on a day or two or three and they were waiting for somebody that kind of would try and find out what it was, what sort of value to give.
Dr. Barry:
And so I have this when I’m using. So I’m a key opinion leader for S4S and splint therapy, I lecture on parafunction right, and I provide SCIs and an SCI is probably no bigger than this right that little bit, 585 pounds, right. And you know some patients go 585 pounds for that piece of tiny piece of plastic. Now, it’s not the piece of plastic that they’re really paying for and I don’t want to get into an argument with a patient. I’ll give you, I’ll tell you what my answer is in a minute.
Dr. Barry:
But ultimately, what they’re paying for is the years that I’ve spent learning. They’re paying for the hours and hours that I’ve spent training other people and passing on that knowledge and developing and growing my continued knowledge, the knowledge from me that I know exactly how to produce this, how to shape it, the angle I need to use it so that it works exactly as it’s supposed to immediately. That’s what they’re paying for. The value is that it’s going to protect their teeth. They’re not going to break them. It’s going to get rid or reduce their headaches. It’s going to all of this extra value, right? And so I have no qualms in charging £585 for a piece of plastic, because I’m not charging that. It’s the value of what that’s giving, if that makes sense. But do you want to know how I handle that, by the way, when a patient says £585 for that?
Dr. James:
My response is yes. I’d love to know, in that particular situation, my response is do you know what?
Dr. Barry:
I had the exact same response when my wife showed me her new diamond ring. I was like 5,000 pounds for that tiny little thing. What I realized is it’s not the size of the product, it’s the quality that goes into it, it’s the craftsmanship and it’s the legacy and everything that comes before the manufacturing of that link, that ring. It’s very similar to how we price our splints. You know, we’re very proud of the manufacturing of the products and actually of what it’s going to do for you.
Dr. James:
So yeah, it’s 585 pounds two things, two things that I’m just going to interject with. First of all, if you don’t break that mindset, you’re always exchanging time for money. Absolutely, you’re always doing it. Yeah, and most people want to work less, right? But that belief is a direct paradox to that dream. So you have to confront it, you have to go there, and people think finance is a quick fix. Finance is more what you do with the money. Yeah, you have to actually accumulate it in the first place, and part of that that’s cash flow, and a big part of that is our dentistry, which in turn, is related to this exact thing that we’re talking about. That’s the first thing.
Dr. James:
Second thing really beautiful, concise analogy If I give you a ford mondale or I give you a lamborghini, takes me just as much time to hand, to sign the papers and hand it over to you. Right? But could anybody reasonably expect to pay the same for a lamborghini versus ford mondale? But it took just as much time for me to hand it over, right? So we know that, right, and we, we, we agree, because who would ever argue against that? We agree, it applies in certain situations. So if our dentistry is a Lamborghini, or maybe if your dentistry isn’t even quite to that level, even if it’s like a BMW or of a reasonable standard, then if we have the whole well, I can’t charge on value mindset. It’ll only ever be Ford Mondeo prices for BMW dentistry and the sad part is we’re spending a lot of time getting our dentistry to that standard.
Dr. Barry:
Yeah, I agree with both of those points. Just to add into that one is that the majority of the time we’re focusing on the dentistry and actually nobody really cares about the dentistry. So long as it’s good enough, we care that it’s cares about the dentistry. So long as it’s good enough, we care that it’s 10 out of 10, but the patients, if good enough, is 7 99 of the patients happy with 7 out of 10. What they judge us on is how the dentistry is delivered. So it’s the experience, right, because you can go and buy a BMW from two different garages and it’s the exact same car, the exact same spec, but the experience of the purchase will determine whether you go back or not, not the quality of the car. And that’s the same in dentistry.
Dr. Barry:
And yet most of us in dentistry spend time, effort and money on developing our skills in delivering the dentistry, not in the experience of how that dentistry is delivered. And so there’s one thing to become aware of this mindset of being fixed within a trading time for money. As soon as you become aware of that, the next question is well, how do I break out from that? And really I think that’s where what I teach and I train that’s where it comes in is being able to help people become more productive, having conversations with patients. That isn’t selling, but is helping their patients to identify what’s important to them and what they want, and it’s kind of developing this conversational style where it just is involving yourself in ensuring that the patients get the opportunity to make their best choice.
Dr. Barry:
And, funnily enough, when you help somebody to be in an environment where they can make their best choice, typically they choose the best, and typically in dentistry, choosing the best means it’s the indirect restoration over the direct restoration, which generally means we make more money. They get something that is better quality and longer lasting, but also so do we, and so for me, the beauty of all of this is it’s a win-win-win it’s good for the, it’s great for the patient, it’s good for us and it’s good for the business, and it’s good all the way around. Everybody wins, and so I. I love the fact that what we’re doing is helping people to develop their way of communicating with patients to ensure that they’re making the best choices, and that’s why it’s to sell without selling right.
Dr. James:
Love it. So we’ve definitely dealt with the mindset side of things, and these are the big hurdles that people need to overcome, and you’ve given us a lovely, tangible example there of how it can be used in practice. Is there any other biggies that you observe whenever it comes to dentists, as in opportunities for them to be able to articulate the value better and hence increase their cash flow and, as a well, purely as a by-product of them, offering a higher standard of care? What other common situations do you observe this in?
Dr. Barry:
So I think the opportunities are massive, right, if we’re talking about the importance in being the experience of the dentistry, there are so many different ways that we could add value to that, and let me I’ll, just off the top of my head, run through a few. Number one is giving an injection that nobody knows that they’ve had. Right, most people have two fears of dentistry it’s the fear of the needle and it’s the fear of pain. Now, interestingly, the fear of the needle, it’s the needle that, when administered the local anesthetic correctly, it’s that which prevents the pain, and so the two are intrinsically linked. So they fear having pain, but they fear the needle in the first place. So my patients have an injection and they don’t even know they’ve had an injection.
Dr. Barry:
And that is all about smoke and mirrors, communication, distraction, a little bit of hypnotic language and suggestion, and it’s really simple. It’s a simple process. It’s called the CDIT comfortable dental injection technique and it’s basically knocking their socks off. And I have an upfront contract with my patients, as the aim for me is that I want to knock your socks off. My aim is to knock your socks off, and when I do so, I use the word when. So it’s not if, because if we use the word if, that puts doubt into their mind and our own about whether we’re going to be successful or not. So it’s a presupposition, we’re presupposing that I’m going to knock your socks off. It’s not in question, it’s not if it’s when.
Dr. Barry:
So when I knock your socks off, I’m going to ask you to do two things. Would that be okay? And the patient goes yeah, because they’re a little bit sus right, because no one’s ever said my job here is to knock your socks off. Most people go hey, how are your teeth, any problems? And so my job knock your socks off. And when I do, I’m going to ask you to do two things. One is to go out and tell everybody it was the best experience you’ve ever had. Would you do that? And they’re like, yeah, a little bit of doubt I said. The second thing is that I want you to recommend and refer your family and your friends and I want you to give me a five-star Google review. So when I knock your socks off, will you do that for me? And they’re like, yes. So then we have this contract. We’ve created a contract right at the beginning of the relationship.
Dr. Barry:
The expectation of me myself and them of me is that I’m going to perform in a way that knocks their socks off. That’s the experience, as well as the dentistry. It’s not just the dentistry, it can’t just be the dentistry, it has to be the experience, and that’s a team event. Right, it’s how they’re handled on reception, how they’re handled on the phone, it’s whether we give a tlc follow-up call the following day, it’s how they’re looked after along the whole of the journey, all of the touch points. And so, firstly, it’s identifying the touch points and looking at where you can leverage and improve the patient journey at each and every one of those spots. It’s making sure that you are communicating to the best of your ability, and most of us are communicating the way that we’ve always done it, not realizing that people prefer to be communicated in different ways, subconsciously.
Dr. Barry:
And so learn some communication skills, learn that there are four main areas that people absorb information. It’s either kinesthetic, because they’re touchy, feely, they like to hold things and touch things. It’s visual, and they need to visualize things and they think very quickly. It’s auditory, where they like to listen to stuff and they’ll tilt their head when they’re talking to you and they’ll, you know, speak in these kind of almost lullabies, and then it’s AD, auditory, digital. These people are system orientated. They love bullet points, they love to follow a process, and when you understand how each person that you’re dealing with you can identify easily how they process information, and then you deliver the information in the way that they like it, boom, you’ve got them eating out the palm of your hands because you decrease the miscommunication and you iron out any problems and you’re able to help them therefore make their best decisions, because they’re getting the information the way that they need it and want it. So learn how to communicate, learn how to give an injection that they don’t know they’ve had.
Dr. Barry:
Develop your patient journey each step. Make it as good as you can, go out of your way to increase and leverage the experience they have. And it doesn’t mean you’re giving gifts. You know it could just be as simple as giving a compliment. We all love a compliment, and so at the end I’ll say to my patient I really enjoy treating you. You know, it’s been absolute pleasure.
Dr. Barry:
When you come to the practice, people are like, oh, that immediately taps into reciprocity. The practice people are like, oh, that immediately taps into reciprocity. Having trained with Cialdini in America, he’s got six elements that we all have within us that make us influenced, and one of them is reciprocity. And so that’s the point at which I said I’ve really enjoyed looking after you and I go. Do you remember when we first met and I said I was going to knock your socks off? Have I done that? And they’re like, yeah, you absolutely have Excellent. Do you also remember I said that when I do, I was going to ask you two things.
Dr. Barry:
One was to go and tell everybody recommend your family, your friends, not grumpy Uncle Bob, I just want nice people like you. That’s another compliment. And the other thing I asked for was a five-star Google review. Do you review? Do you think you’d be able to do that for me? Boom, that’s how I developed my business without any marketing, for 18 years. It was the upfront contract and it was the reciprocity and the follow-up at the end of it, and then in between those two points is making sure that we leveraged every touch point as as we possibly could, and we took you know we took five years to do. It doesn’t happen overnight, but it’s this constant, never-ending improvement.
Dr. James:
So, yeah, loads of things we can do you know what, on the communication side of things, again, a younger version of james once upon a time did not go on communication courses because I just thought to myself but I’m good, everything’s fine, I get a lot well with my patients, yeah, and I’m doing loads of. You know, the books are not empty. This is great, right, and that’s what I thought. I always thought I can’t, because it’s a little bit of a blow to your ego, to acknowledge the fact that you could be better at communication, right, yeah, not saying that’s correct, but at least that’s how I felt back in the day. But here’s the thing. Let’s remember this. Let me tell one story right, when I had that epiphany that actually it’s not just a binary thing Am I good or am I not good? It’s more of a continuum and we can all improve the sooner I acknowledge that. Right, there was so much good stuff that came into my life big time, right, and I want everybody to realize that and be inspired to actually improve this aspect of their dentistry, because it’s massive and I was just going to tell a quick story on that.
Dr. James:
I went to one uh in london, um, pip asif syed, right, yeah, I went to his. This was a few years ago, and what he did at the start was he said uh, okay, guys, I want everybody to write down on a piece of paper how good you think you are to communicate at communication out of 10, 10 being supreme, one being terrible, yeah. So everybody wrote it down and he’s like okay, what I’m going to do is I’m going to take them all, I’m going to add them all up, I’m going to find the average right. The average was 8.2 out of 10. Yeah, right Now, just like with any skill, there’s going to be a bell curve in that room. You might say okay, they’re dentists. Maybe they’re slightly better than the average barric communication because they do it day in, day out.
Dr. James:
However, having said that, 8.2 is pretty high. So everybody considered themselves to be 8.2, right, but a bell curve must have applied in that room. There must have been five. There must have been people who were five, people who were one. The average should have been five. What I’m saying is that our perception of our own communication is actually slightly distorted and we generally tend to think that we’re better than we are and the sooner we embrace that we can improve on that front. Well, we’re able to have better conversations with their patients allow them to see the value in what we do and, because they now understand that value, their scope to be remunerated much more fairly and to the standard that we deserve, given our investment in our skills 100, 100, a younger barry was very similar to you.
Dr. Barry:
I thought that I was great at communicating, right. The problem is you don’t know what you don’t know and I didn’t know that we process information differently. I didn’t realize that, you know, I know about personality I’ve done DISC right and that was personality and preferences but I didn’t realize that we all process things slightly differently in terms of the sensory information that we get and that there’s four main categories. And so, having thought that I was great at communicating those that I found I didn’t communicate with very well, I blamed them. I was like I’ve told them three times and they don’t get it. They’re obviously stupid. You know, I’ve told him, I’ve told him the same thing three times. He’s just a dickhead and I’m almost embarrassed to say that. You know, in hindsight, there was a very innocent arrogance there. Yeah, in the assumption that I also, this is really bad.
Dr. Barry:
I genuinely thought that everybody was touchy, feely. I genuinely thought, cause I give and receive love by by touch, I like to hug, I like to be touched and I like to touch, and I thought that was normal, right, cause that’s normal to me. So you know, for example, this is maybe where it slightly went wrong with the ex-wife. So the ex-wife had a two-year affair and I didn’t learn all of this until after that, because of the shit that went down and I needed to go and rebuild myself in some respects and so I’d get home from work and I’d want to give her a hug and show her that I missed her and she’s like get off. And I thought, oh, she’s, you know, over time I was like she’s, she’s damaged, there’s, there’s clearly stuff that went on because she doesn’t like to be touched. And I wonder if there’s something in her childhood. And this is where my head was at, because I thought giving and receiving affection and love physically was completely normal. It’s not it’s completely normal for people like me. It’s not completely normal for somebody who’s highly visual. They still have feelings, right, they still might like physical touch, usually only when it’s invited by them or from somebody that they want to be physically touched by. And what I realized is she wasn’t broken, damaged, wrong, it’s just different.
Dr. Barry:
And the realization came with my eldest daughter, who processed information very similarly, and so she’d be shrugging me off, get off. Daughter, who processed information very similarly, and so she’d be shrugging me off, get off. And I thought whoa, she’s got some problems, man, she didn’t. So when I learned this, what I realized is she has a different language. She has a visual language and I have a kinesthetic language. So you don’t know what you don’t know, and when you start to find it out, you realize that actually there’s so much opportunity out there to expand what you’re doing and to adapt how I deliver information to people based on I can figure out how they’d like to have it delivered to them.
Dr. Barry:
And I found that my acceptance for dentistry went through the roof. I found that income went through the roof. I found that patient satisfaction went through the roof. We’re not talking about making money at the cost of somebody else. What we’re talking about is making money at the benefit of somebody else, and I can’t think of a better symbiotic way of living your life and making money by adding value. And, to be honest, that’s why I like coaching as well, because I make money out of adding value to other people, which ultimately, they’re adding value to patients. To win, win, win. So, yeah, I learned some tough lessons and realized that, without meaning to be, there was a level of arrogance in them because I didn’t know what I didn’t know.
Dr. James:
Well, you know what this sort of stuff in these lessons. They’re ultimately, lessons that we only learn through experience. So the point is, you went through that and you actually adjusted and amended your behavior. You learned the lesson that was on offer there, and I feel like lots of times people will ignore that and think it’s everybody else. Well, we have to just take part accountability in that and think to ourselves actually, how could we have got better? How could we have to just take part accountability in that and think to ourselves actually, how could we have got better? How could we have allowed that patient to understand to a higher degree what we were talking about, which effectively reflects on our ability to communicate, and you really only see life through your own lens, and one of the skills of life is self-awareness to be able to understand how you’re perceived and how you come across to other people see life through their lens. That’s basically what selling is in a nutshell, selling without selling, which is exactly what we call this podcast absolutely.
Dr. Barry:
I think you know, when I was a younger dentist, we didn’t even the internet when I first qualified, did we have the internet? Well, if we did, we didn’t have much of it. I can’t remember, but we didn’t have the opportunity that you’ve provided with this kind of platform. Right Dentists to Invest. What an opportunity for people to watch stuff, because I only became aware of things when you’re exposed to it, and back in the day when I had my first business coach, everything came through as a fax. Do you remember faxes?
Dr. James:
I’ve never actually as a fax. Do you remember faxes? Uh, I’ve never actually seen the facts, but I I know of them. I’ve seen them in movies, I think oh, you’d hear.
Dr. Barry:
And then this piece of paper like a photocopy, but it would come through and it was from a phone call and you get a fax machine. We were. It was facts and books, and and if you didn’t read books and I’m not an avid reader then you’d have to read a bloody fax. We didn’t have access to this right. So the ability to learn these things now is so much better and it’s so much easier to expose yourself to information, to be able to challenge yourself, and the fact that anybody watching this right now. I applaud you because you are the sort of person that wants to grow Right. You’re not like I was, where you just kind of happily burrowing away doing your own thing, thinking that I’m normal and people that aren’t like me are a bit weird and not normal like I did. You know the information is out there now and so if you are exposed to it and you recognize you oh, you hear this. Look, there’s four different ways you process information and you don’t know what they are. Flip and learn it, because it’s fantastic and it’s not.
Dr. Barry:
I would say you need to see it as such a wonderful growth opportunity, not a bang to the ego, because if we have a growth mindset. If we have a mindset of I am a learner and we believe that you know I am a learner, it means that I can’t beat myself up for anything I don’t know. What I can do is, once I’ve been exposed to the possibility of learning something, if I choose not to, then it’s through choice, not through ignorance and not knowing what I don’t know. But I think you know what you’ve created in dentistry invest, and the number of different guests from all walks of life and different kind of um professions and advice is a wonderful opportunity for people to kind of cherry pick and go oh, I want to know more about that and so. So, yeah, I think there is such an opportunity to improve the experience for patients that will ultimately improve the results for yourself, so long as we are having the right mindset, which is having a patient centric practice that is really delivering the highest quality journey, as well as dentistry.
Dr. James:
Love. Thanks so much, and thank you for your kind words on dennis, who invests, and I certainly didn’t expect all of this to happen, but I am immensely grateful and a lot of the stuff that you’re talking about. Those were actually the epiphanies that led me to think to myself okay, actually, there needs to be some sort of platform here where we share this information, because there’s massive, massive, massive scope to help people. And, on that note, yeah, dude, huge, right, like you can listen to a podcast and it can literally change your life. You’re always one podcast away from a podcast that might change your life. That’s my mindset. That’s what keeps me hungry, man, and I’m like, yeah, just one more, just one more. And then, and then you do find that stuff every so often, every once in a while. Hopefully, this has been one of those podcasts for people today. In fact, I really fully believe that if you embrace this stuff, it will be. Barry, you’ve got an event coming up in july time.
Dr. Barry:
I have, I have, I have. I have my event, which is how to sell without selling. So we’re running. I have um part of my mastermind group. We’ve run six live events each year, right. So we have three two-day events in london where I get all my mastermind together. It’s a it’s a fantastic community. They are beautiful people supporting one another, sharing and helping and everybody in developing and getting to whatever their next level is, and so part of that is we train their team. So we have three single day team events throughout the year. We run those in Birmingham, and so we’re running that on the Friday.
Dr. Barry:
And then we’ve opened up to general dental public a full day’s training on the Saturday, the 13th of July, and the title is how to Sell Without Selling. So it’s teaching people some of these nuggets and the essence of communication that will help them unlock certain things to their patients that we ultimately have our patients writing their own treatment plans. Now, don’t take that literally. They’re not sitting down going, so I’m going to have an MOD in the lower left five, but what they are doing is I ask them certain questions and ultimately, future pace them. So what I want them to do is identify how they want things to be further down the line, let’s say in 20 years time, because that will influence what I recommend today, and actually it starts to open up conversations about what they want, and typically, patients start writing themselves treatment plans that include wants-based dentistry as well as needs-based, because, think about it, when you were trained which is a few years after me we were basically trained to be dental firefighters. We looked for a fire and we put it out. We’d ask questions like and I mentioned it earlier hi James, how are you, how are your teeth Any problems? And that was our kind of opening gambit, and the patient would go no, no problems. So we kind of go, oh, okay, no problems. What we’re then looking for is can we spot any problem? Oh, I found decay. And then we would sell, have a conversation about you need a filling or you need a crown, and it’s in the one tooth that we found decay.
Dr. Barry:
The way that we present dentistry is comprehensively every single tooth, three different treatment plans red, amber, green. Red is disease got to be done in order to be fit and healthy. Amber is stuff that hey look, it doesn’t have to be done right now. It’s worth considering, though, because if you’re doing the five. Think about the four and the six at the same time because of the contact points, whatever else Green is then elective whitening, straightening facial cosmetics, implants, filling spaces, stuff like that.
Dr. Barry:
We find that typically we are more than doubling the treatment value that a patient is accepting because of the way that we present stuff, and most of that is driven by the questions that we’re asking and finding out. Why is that important to the patient? Because nobody wants straight teeth, nobody wants white teeth. What they want is either what they think it will bring them confidence, connection, love, feeling good about themselves, looking good or what it will avoid them rejection, criticism, not feeling part, stuff like that and so when you find that out rejection, criticism, not feeling part you know stuff like that.
Dr. Barry:
And so when you find that out, firstly, I’m hugely motivated to serve and, secondly, you’ve tapped into what really matters to them and they end up going yeah, I really want to do this. So they end up doing more dentistry and then being very happy at the end of it. So, yeah, that’s what we’re doing on the day in Birmingham, includes lunch, and yeah, what I said to you right at the beginning is, if we were to mention this to your community is that we had for my community, my existing clients we had a very special discounted offer that I would be happy to roll out to anybody in DWD.
Dr. James:
DWI Dennis University there we go.
Dr. Barry:
Yeah, yeah, my dyslexia coming out. So, yeah, we’ll stick a code in and over the next couple of weeks that is the absolute give you the absolute best investment to come and join us for a day 395 for the day. It’s actually 695 if you go through the normal website. So don’t go through the normal website, come through dwi there you go.
Dr. James:
Exclusive offer for the audience. And how are people best off availing of that barry? Reaching out to yourself?
Dr. Barry:
uh, so they can either reach out directly to me, in which case Tom will respond to them. Uh, they can go to my website, um, barry Eltoncom, and it’s going to be forward slash, sell without selling. But, um, what we will do, mate, is I’ll give you a QR code that we can put into this, and then they can scan that and go straight in if they want.
Dr. James:
Yeah, or, or how about? Or how about forward slash DWI? That would be good, because I’m not sure about QR codes, but we could definitely hook the link up. Okay, we’ll sort that out. That would be fun. Nice one, all right. Well, listen, barry. Thank you so much for your time.
Dr. Barry:
It’s so good to see you again, mate. I really appreciate this and I appreciate you allowing me to share some of this stuff with the community because it bloody well works. It’s really good and I can’t claim it Right. I didn’t design NLP, I didn’t design psychology, but what I have done is played with it and got the results that now I know I can pay forward, and that’s what happens with the clients, so thanks man, I appreciate it.
Dr. James:
Hey, dude, you’re welcome anytime. And you know what? What reminds me of a quote, what you just said, isaac newton. If I have seen further, it’s because I’ve stood on the shoulders of giants, which I really love. I really really like that. And just to really break that down, the reason why he’s so perceptive and has so much knowledge is because he’s building on the knowledge of his forefathers and people that he learned from in books and from word of mouth. And that’s exactly what we’re here to do today, because you can figure out stuff on your own. It just takes decades. So why not just, why not just expedite that journey and benefit from it immediately? And that is literally the mission of dennis, who invest right there. Anyway, barry, let’s go ahead and wrap up right now, looking forward to have you back very soon, anytime, my friend, much love, appreciate it, take care. Bye.
Dr. James:
Yeah, baby, what’s up? I think that I think me saying, yeah, yeah, baby might have just crept on to the podcast just then when I hit record, but it’s all good, let’s keep it in. That does embody my personality to a certain degree. That is something that I would say, so that’s fine.
Dr. Barry:
Anyway, how are?
Dr. James:
you? How are you doing, my friend? So anyway, guys, thank you for joining us today. We’ve got returning face on the podcast, Dr Barry Alton, and we’re here today to talk about selling without selling. What does that mean? We’re going to cover that in just a second, but before we do, barry, how are you? How have you been since we last spoke?
Dr. Barry:
I’ve been really well, really really well, mate. I’m very little clinical at the moment maybe three hours every couple of weeks just finishing off big cases and so I’m 100% into coaching, which is great because I’m coming up with new stuff and new trainings, looking after my existing clients and really enjoying it, actually helping people achieve more out of what they’ve got.
Dr. James:
Yeah, man, so you’re all in, and you know that is the part of the power of going all in. You actually things move faster and you actually see opportunities that you wouldn’t have seen otherwise. And sometimes, if you don’t take that leap, I feel, I feel that you impede your progress quite significantly, purely because your bandwidth is split on many different things significantly, purely because your bandwidth is split on many different things.
Dr. Barry:
Yeah, I agree with that.
Dr. Barry:
I think not only are you spinning you know multiple plates, but actually I think, uh, the clinical dentistry I was doing, so very well at it it maybe was um prevented me from taking the leap because it was a security blanket in many respects, and so that you’s SH1T or bust, isn’t it? I mean doing this 100% of the time, god damn it. I’ve got to make it work and actually I keep saying my success is based on my client’s success. I have to deliver. I have to deliver, otherwise that’s the end of the whole business model and I’m very proud of saying that I am delivering. I do a hundred percent money back guarantee on our entry-level program for principals and basically it’s they will double their investment in me within the 12 weeks, or I give them their money back, and nobody not nobody has needed their money back. So it’s going to happen, right, someone’s going to come along and we they just you know we don’t gel or something, that’s okay, but to date I’ve managed to help everybody double their investment in me within the 12 week program.
Dr. James:
So it’s good and you know what Can. I just add one thing to that. That is possible with the stuff that you teach, which is boosting cash flow, and this is a big limiting belief that a lot of people have. Like once upon a time, a version of james when he was like 25 would have heard something like that and being like, yeah, whatever, pull the other one. That’s just how can anybody ever do that? Because it was so outside my realm of understanding and I love the investing side of things, as in finance and what have you.
Dr. James:
But finance will never let you double your income in a few months, but understanding how to articulate value correctly and then being able to deliver on that value as a dentist will 1000%, and I feel like if people could understand, comprehend that and embrace it, oh my God, there’s so much good stuff on the other side, but what we’re talking about is, of course, being able to articulate the value that you already give and just to add to that, there’s two components to it. You’ve got your skill as a dentist and then you’ve got your beliefs right as in how much you believe in your own value. And actually what I find is people have skill and competency as a dentist, but they just don’t understand how much that’s worth. And they also could improve, certainly, at how well that they articulate that to people so that the patient intuitively gets that and is willing to invest to the standard they deserve.
Dr. Barry:
I am completely aligned with that. I think you know, even yesterday having conversations on my opening cohort. So this 12 week program that we call more because dentists want multiples, or one of one thing that they want more of. They either want more income, more money, they want more time out of the clinic because they’re working their backsides off, or they want more enjoyment, more fun dentistry, more wants-based dentistry, the stuff that they get juiced up about and get excited about. Not everybody gets excited about dentistry, but I do. I love doing dentistry and there’s certain things that I love the most, that I love doing in dentistry. Usually they’re the higher ticket value stuff, right, so that you want one of those three things or a multiple of those three things. So I have a 12 week program where I help them with certain systems, certain things to implement, but also certain language skills and communication. That leverages what they’re doing and they get more from what they’re doing, and so I thoroughly enjoy doing that because it works for everybody, no matter where you are and a lot of the people that I come across.
Dr. Barry:
The old way of making any more money in dentistry is typically dentists work on hourly rates. They price the hygienists at hourly rates and they price themselves at hourly rates. And the only way to make more money on an hourly rate is to either charge more for your hourly rate or to do more. Hours is no different from many other jobs. We pay our cleaners by an hourly rate, we pay our hygienists by an hourly rate, and so if you have that mentality of you’re trading time for money, it’s hard to comprehend how somebody like me can generate 5,000 pounds doing routine dentistry in a day when actually the majority of that is generated in about a three-hour period, because then the other five hours doesn’t matter what I generate. So I work on a daily production rate, not an hourly rate. And so when you start to talk about that, people attach their worth very often to the value of the hours that they’re working and therefore charging, and that mindset sometimes is quite difficult to shift. So when we kind of open up this box of possibility and start to help people realize that it’s your value, not your time, and the value of your time that is where your true long-term income will come from. And so yesterday this guy was saying like you know, my hourly rate is 300 pounds an hour and you know, I really don’t know how I can earn any more than that and I went that’s perfect. You know, let me, over the next 12 weeks I’ll show you. But I gave him um an, and that is that the company.
Dr. Barry:
Do you remember the company FedEx, huge American kind of postal and packaging courier, and they have their own airports. They’re that big in America. They have their own airport where all these packages come into and they fly around the hanger on conveyor belts so that people in the old, back in the days, they were sorted by hand. So you’d have a look at, this is going to philadelphia. You’d throw it on conveyor belt two and it would take it, you know, 300 feet down to a different part of the hanger to be put onto the plane. And what happened is the conveyor belt stopped working. All hell broke loose because without that conveyor belt there’s 12 flights getting delayed because nothing’s getting loaded and it fundamentally makes a massive difference to the profit and the functionality of the business. So they called this bloke in and they called him in and said oh, my God, you’ve got to help us fix this because we can’t work without this conveyor belt working.
Dr. Barry:
The bloke has a look around. He goes over to this stainless steel pylon which has got a box on it. He opens the box, takes out a screwdriver, puts his screwdriver in and turns a screw. Everything comes back to life and the conveyor belt starts working and they’re like yes, we’re back in business.
Dr. Barry:
The foreman says give me your invoice. And so the guy writes his invoice down and the bloke picks his invoice up and he goes what a thousand dollars, dude, you’re only here for two minutes. A thousand dollars for two minutes. And the bloke goes oh yeah, you’re right, rips the invoice off, tears it away, throws it in the bin and writes another invoice, writes it out, gives it to the foreman. Foreman takes a look and says can you give him a check for a thousand dollars? And somebody goes hang on a minute, what? Two seconds ago you’re like thousand dollars, thousand dollars. And now you’re right, give him a check. Foreman gave him the invoice and he looked at the invoice and he said time taken to turn the screw $1.00. Knowing which screw to turn 999.
Dr. Barry:
And so the value isn’t necessarily in the time that we spend. The value is in the service that we’re giving. Is the value that we’re giving that one turn of the screw gave so much value? It was probably worth millions if they hadn’t fixed it and it had gone on a day or two or three and they were waiting for somebody that kind of would try and find out what it was, what sort of value to give.
Dr. Barry:
And so I have this when I’m using. So I’m a key opinion leader for S4S and splint therapy, I lecture on parafunction right, and I provide SCIs and an SCI is probably no bigger than this right that little bit, 585 pounds, right. And you know some patients go 585 pounds for that piece of tiny piece of plastic. Now, it’s not the piece of plastic that they’re really paying for and I don’t want to get into an argument with a patient. I’ll give you, I’ll tell you what my answer is in a minute.
Dr. Barry:
But ultimately, what they’re paying for is the years that I’ve spent learning. They’re paying for the hours and hours that I’ve spent training other people and passing on that knowledge and developing and growing my continued knowledge, the knowledge from me that I know exactly how to produce this, how to shape it, the angle I need to use it so that it works exactly as it’s supposed to immediately. That’s what they’re paying for. The value is that it’s going to protect their teeth. They’re not going to break them. It’s going to get rid or reduce their headaches. It’s going to all of this extra value, right? And so I have no qualms in charging £585 for a piece of plastic, because I’m not charging that. It’s the value of what that’s giving, if that makes sense. But do you want to know how I handle that, by the way, when a patient says £585 for that?
Dr. James:
My response is yes. I’d love to know, in that particular situation, my response is do you know what?
Dr. Barry:
I had the exact same response when my wife showed me her new diamond ring. I was like 5,000 pounds for that tiny little thing. What I realized is it’s not the size of the product, it’s the quality that goes into it, it’s the craftsmanship and it’s the legacy and everything that comes before the manufacturing of that link, that ring. It’s very similar to how we price our splints. You know, we’re very proud of the manufacturing of the products and actually of what it’s going to do for you.
Dr. James:
So yeah, it’s 585 pounds two things, two things that I’m just going to interject with. First of all, if you don’t break that mindset, you’re always exchanging time for money. Absolutely, you’re always doing it. Yeah, and most people want to work less, right? But that belief is a direct paradox to that dream. So you have to confront it, you have to go there, and people think finance is a quick fix. Finance is more what you do with the money. Yeah, you have to actually accumulate it in the first place, and part of that that’s cash flow, and a big part of that is our dentistry, which in turn, is related to this exact thing that we’re talking about. That’s the first thing.
Dr. James:
Second thing really beautiful, concise analogy If I give you a ford mondale or I give you a lamborghini, takes me just as much time to hand, to sign the papers and hand it over to you. Right? But could anybody reasonably expect to pay the same for a lamborghini versus ford mondale? But it took just as much time for me to hand it over, right? So we know that, right, and we, we, we agree, because who would ever argue against that? We agree, it applies in certain situations. So if our dentistry is a Lamborghini, or maybe if your dentistry isn’t even quite to that level, even if it’s like a BMW or of a reasonable standard, then if we have the whole well, I can’t charge on value mindset. It’ll only ever be Ford Mondeo prices for BMW dentistry and the sad part is we’re spending a lot of time getting our dentistry to that standard.
Dr. Barry:
Yeah, I agree with both of those points. Just to add into that one is that the majority of the time we’re focusing on the dentistry and actually nobody really cares about the dentistry. So long as it’s good enough, we care that it’s cares about the dentistry. So long as it’s good enough, we care that it’s 10 out of 10, but the patients, if good enough, is 7 99 of the patients happy with 7 out of 10. What they judge us on is how the dentistry is delivered. So it’s the experience, right, because you can go and buy a BMW from two different garages and it’s the exact same car, the exact same spec, but the experience of the purchase will determine whether you go back or not, not the quality of the car. And that’s the same in dentistry.
Dr. Barry:
And yet most of us in dentistry spend time, effort and money on developing our skills in delivering the dentistry, not in the experience of how that dentistry is delivered. And so there’s one thing to become aware of this mindset of being fixed within a trading time for money. As soon as you become aware of that, the next question is well, how do I break out from that? And really I think that’s where what I teach and I train that’s where it comes in is being able to help people become more productive, having conversations with patients. That isn’t selling, but is helping their patients to identify what’s important to them and what they want, and it’s kind of developing this conversational style where it just is involving yourself in ensuring that the patients get the opportunity to make their best choice.
Dr. Barry:
And, funnily enough, when you help somebody to be in an environment where they can make their best choice, typically they choose the best, and typically in dentistry, choosing the best means it’s the indirect restoration over the direct restoration, which generally means we make more money. They get something that is better quality and longer lasting, but also so do we, and so for me, the beauty of all of this is it’s a win-win-win it’s good for the, it’s great for the patient, it’s good for us and it’s good for the business, and it’s good all the way around. Everybody wins, and so I. I love the fact that what we’re doing is helping people to develop their way of communicating with patients to ensure that they’re making the best choices, and that’s why it’s to sell without selling right.
Dr. James:
Love it. So we’ve definitely dealt with the mindset side of things, and these are the big hurdles that people need to overcome, and you’ve given us a lovely, tangible example there of how it can be used in practice. Is there any other biggies that you observe whenever it comes to dentists, as in opportunities for them to be able to articulate the value better and hence increase their cash flow and, as a well, purely as a by-product of them, offering a higher standard of care? What other common situations do you observe this in?
Dr. Barry:
So I think the opportunities are massive, right, if we’re talking about the importance in being the experience of the dentistry, there are so many different ways that we could add value to that, and let me I’ll, just off the top of my head, run through a few. Number one is giving an injection that nobody knows that they’ve had. Right, most people have two fears of dentistry it’s the fear of the needle and it’s the fear of pain. Now, interestingly, the fear of the needle, it’s the needle that, when administered the local anesthetic correctly, it’s that which prevents the pain, and so the two are intrinsically linked. So they fear having pain, but they fear the needle in the first place. So my patients have an injection and they don’t even know they’ve had an injection.
Dr. Barry:
And that is all about smoke and mirrors, communication, distraction, a little bit of hypnotic language and suggestion, and it’s really simple. It’s a simple process. It’s called the CDIT comfortable dental injection technique and it’s basically knocking their socks off. And I have an upfront contract with my patients, as the aim for me is that I want to knock your socks off. My aim is to knock your socks off, and when I do so, I use the word when. So it’s not if, because if we use the word if, that puts doubt into their mind and our own about whether we’re going to be successful or not. So it’s a presupposition, we’re presupposing that I’m going to knock your socks off. It’s not in question, it’s not if it’s when.
Dr. Barry:
So when I knock your socks off, I’m going to ask you to do two things. Would that be okay? And the patient goes yeah, because they’re a little bit sus right, because no one’s ever said my job here is to knock your socks off. Most people go hey, how are your teeth, any problems? And so my job knock your socks off. And when I do, I’m going to ask you to do two things. One is to go out and tell everybody it was the best experience you’ve ever had. Would you do that? And they’re like, yeah, a little bit of doubt I said. The second thing is that I want you to recommend and refer your family and your friends and I want you to give me a five-star Google review. So when I knock your socks off, will you do that for me? And they’re like, yes. So then we have this contract. We’ve created a contract right at the beginning of the relationship.
Dr. Barry:
The expectation of me myself and them of me is that I’m going to perform in a way that knocks their socks off. That’s the experience, as well as the dentistry. It’s not just the dentistry, it can’t just be the dentistry, it has to be the experience, and that’s a team event. Right, it’s how they’re handled on reception, how they’re handled on the phone, it’s whether we give a tlc follow-up call the following day, it’s how they’re looked after along the whole of the journey, all of the touch points. And so, firstly, it’s identifying the touch points and looking at where you can leverage and improve the patient journey at each and every one of those spots. It’s making sure that you are communicating to the best of your ability, and most of us are communicating the way that we’ve always done it, not realizing that people prefer to be communicated in different ways, subconsciously.
Dr. Barry:
And so learn some communication skills, learn that there are four main areas that people absorb information. It’s either kinesthetic, because they’re touchy, feely, they like to hold things and touch things. It’s visual, and they need to visualize things and they think very quickly. It’s auditory, where they like to listen to stuff and they’ll tilt their head when they’re talking to you and they’ll, you know, speak in these kind of almost lullabies, and then it’s AD, auditory, digital. These people are system orientated. They love bullet points, they love to follow a process, and when you understand how each person that you’re dealing with you can identify easily how they process information, and then you deliver the information in the way that they like it, boom, you’ve got them eating out the palm of your hands because you decrease the miscommunication and you iron out any problems and you’re able to help them therefore make their best decisions, because they’re getting the information the way that they need it and want it. So learn how to communicate, learn how to give an injection that they don’t know they’ve had.
Dr. Barry:
Develop your patient journey each step. Make it as good as you can, go out of your way to increase and leverage the experience they have. And it doesn’t mean you’re giving gifts. You know it could just be as simple as giving a compliment. We all love a compliment, and so at the end I’ll say to my patient I really enjoy treating you. You know, it’s been absolute pleasure.
Dr. Barry:
When you come to the practice, people are like, oh, that immediately taps into reciprocity. The practice people are like, oh, that immediately taps into reciprocity. Having trained with Cialdini in America, he’s got six elements that we all have within us that make us influenced, and one of them is reciprocity. And so that’s the point at which I said I’ve really enjoyed looking after you and I go. Do you remember when we first met and I said I was going to knock your socks off? Have I done that? And they’re like, yeah, you absolutely have Excellent. Do you also remember I said that when I do, I was going to ask you two things.
Dr. Barry:
One was to go and tell everybody recommend your family, your friends, not grumpy Uncle Bob, I just want nice people like you. That’s another compliment. And the other thing I asked for was a five-star Google review. Do you review? Do you think you’d be able to do that for me? Boom, that’s how I developed my business without any marketing, for 18 years. It was the upfront contract and it was the reciprocity and the follow-up at the end of it, and then in between those two points is making sure that we leveraged every touch point as as we possibly could, and we took you know we took five years to do. It doesn’t happen overnight, but it’s this constant, never-ending improvement.
Dr. James:
So, yeah, loads of things we can do you know what, on the communication side of things, again, a younger version of james once upon a time did not go on communication courses because I just thought to myself but I’m good, everything’s fine, I get a lot well with my patients, yeah, and I’m doing loads of. You know, the books are not empty. This is great, right, and that’s what I thought. I always thought I can’t, because it’s a little bit of a blow to your ego, to acknowledge the fact that you could be better at communication, right, yeah, not saying that’s correct, but at least that’s how I felt back in the day. But here’s the thing. Let’s remember this. Let me tell one story right, when I had that epiphany that actually it’s not just a binary thing Am I good or am I not good? It’s more of a continuum and we can all improve the sooner I acknowledge that. Right, there was so much good stuff that came into my life big time, right, and I want everybody to realize that and be inspired to actually improve this aspect of their dentistry, because it’s massive and I was just going to tell a quick story on that.
Dr. James:
I went to one uh in london, um, pip asif syed, right, yeah, I went to his. This was a few years ago, and what he did at the start was he said uh, okay, guys, I want everybody to write down on a piece of paper how good you think you are to communicate at communication out of 10, 10 being supreme, one being terrible, yeah. So everybody wrote it down and he’s like okay, what I’m going to do is I’m going to take them all, I’m going to add them all up, I’m going to find the average right. The average was 8.2 out of 10. Yeah, right Now, just like with any skill, there’s going to be a bell curve in that room. You might say okay, they’re dentists. Maybe they’re slightly better than the average barric communication because they do it day in, day out.
Dr. James:
However, having said that, 8.2 is pretty high. So everybody considered themselves to be 8.2, right, but a bell curve must have applied in that room. There must have been five. There must have been people who were five, people who were one. The average should have been five. What I’m saying is that our perception of our own communication is actually slightly distorted and we generally tend to think that we’re better than we are and the sooner we embrace that we can improve on that front. Well, we’re able to have better conversations with their patients allow them to see the value in what we do and, because they now understand that value, their scope to be remunerated much more fairly and to the standard that we deserve, given our investment in our skills 100, 100, a younger barry was very similar to you.
Dr. Barry:
I thought that I was great at communicating, right. The problem is you don’t know what you don’t know and I didn’t know that we process information differently. I didn’t realize that, you know, I know about personality I’ve done DISC right and that was personality and preferences but I didn’t realize that we all process things slightly differently in terms of the sensory information that we get and that there’s four main categories. And so, having thought that I was great at communicating those that I found I didn’t communicate with very well, I blamed them. I was like I’ve told them three times and they don’t get it. They’re obviously stupid. You know, I’ve told him, I’ve told him the same thing three times. He’s just a dickhead and I’m almost embarrassed to say that. You know, in hindsight, there was a very innocent arrogance there. Yeah, in the assumption that I also, this is really bad.
Dr. Barry:
I genuinely thought that everybody was touchy, feely. I genuinely thought, cause I give and receive love by by touch, I like to hug, I like to be touched and I like to touch, and I thought that was normal, right, cause that’s normal to me. So you know, for example, this is maybe where it slightly went wrong with the ex-wife. So the ex-wife had a two-year affair and I didn’t learn all of this until after that, because of the shit that went down and I needed to go and rebuild myself in some respects and so I’d get home from work and I’d want to give her a hug and show her that I missed her and she’s like get off. And I thought, oh, she’s, you know, over time I was like she’s, she’s damaged, there’s, there’s clearly stuff that went on because she doesn’t like to be touched. And I wonder if there’s something in her childhood. And this is where my head was at, because I thought giving and receiving affection and love physically was completely normal. It’s not it’s completely normal for people like me. It’s not completely normal for somebody who’s highly visual. They still have feelings, right, they still might like physical touch, usually only when it’s invited by them or from somebody that they want to be physically touched by. And what I realized is she wasn’t broken, damaged, wrong, it’s just different.
Dr. Barry:
And the realization came with my eldest daughter, who processed information very similarly, and so she’d be shrugging me off, get off. Daughter, who processed information very similarly, and so she’d be shrugging me off, get off. And I thought whoa, she’s got some problems, man, she didn’t. So when I learned this, what I realized is she has a different language. She has a visual language and I have a kinesthetic language. So you don’t know what you don’t know, and when you start to find it out, you realize that actually there’s so much opportunity out there to expand what you’re doing and to adapt how I deliver information to people based on I can figure out how they’d like to have it delivered to them.
Dr. Barry:
And I found that my acceptance for dentistry went through the roof. I found that income went through the roof. I found that patient satisfaction went through the roof. We’re not talking about making money at the cost of somebody else. What we’re talking about is making money at the benefit of somebody else, and I can’t think of a better symbiotic way of living your life and making money by adding value. And, to be honest, that’s why I like coaching as well, because I make money out of adding value to other people, which ultimately, they’re adding value to patients. To win, win, win. So, yeah, I learned some tough lessons and realized that, without meaning to be, there was a level of arrogance in them because I didn’t know what I didn’t know.
Dr. James:
Well, you know what this sort of stuff in these lessons. They’re ultimately, lessons that we only learn through experience. So the point is, you went through that and you actually adjusted and amended your behavior. You learned the lesson that was on offer there, and I feel like lots of times people will ignore that and think it’s everybody else. Well, we have to just take part accountability in that and think to ourselves actually, how could we have got better? How could we have to just take part accountability in that and think to ourselves actually, how could we have got better? How could we have allowed that patient to understand to a higher degree what we were talking about, which effectively reflects on our ability to communicate, and you really only see life through your own lens, and one of the skills of life is self-awareness to be able to understand how you’re perceived and how you come across to other people see life through their lens. That’s basically what selling is in a nutshell, selling without selling, which is exactly what we call this podcast absolutely.
Dr. Barry:
I think you know, when I was a younger dentist, we didn’t even the internet when I first qualified, did we have the internet? Well, if we did, we didn’t have much of it. I can’t remember, but we didn’t have the opportunity that you’ve provided with this kind of platform. Right Dentists to Invest. What an opportunity for people to watch stuff, because I only became aware of things when you’re exposed to it, and back in the day when I had my first business coach, everything came through as a fax. Do you remember faxes?
Dr. James:
I’ve never actually as a fax. Do you remember faxes? Uh, I’ve never actually seen the facts, but I I know of them. I’ve seen them in movies, I think oh, you’d hear.
Dr. Barry:
And then this piece of paper like a photocopy, but it would come through and it was from a phone call and you get a fax machine. We were. It was facts and books, and and if you didn’t read books and I’m not an avid reader then you’d have to read a bloody fax. We didn’t have access to this right. So the ability to learn these things now is so much better and it’s so much easier to expose yourself to information, to be able to challenge yourself, and the fact that anybody watching this right now. I applaud you because you are the sort of person that wants to grow Right. You’re not like I was, where you just kind of happily burrowing away doing your own thing, thinking that I’m normal and people that aren’t like me are a bit weird and not normal like I did. You know the information is out there now and so if you are exposed to it and you recognize you oh, you hear this. Look, there’s four different ways you process information and you don’t know what they are. Flip and learn it, because it’s fantastic and it’s not.
Dr. Barry:
I would say you need to see it as such a wonderful growth opportunity, not a bang to the ego, because if we have a growth mindset. If we have a mindset of I am a learner and we believe that you know I am a learner, it means that I can’t beat myself up for anything I don’t know. What I can do is, once I’ve been exposed to the possibility of learning something, if I choose not to, then it’s through choice, not through ignorance and not knowing what I don’t know. But I think you know what you’ve created in dentistry invest, and the number of different guests from all walks of life and different kind of um professions and advice is a wonderful opportunity for people to kind of cherry pick and go oh, I want to know more about that and so. So, yeah, I think there is such an opportunity to improve the experience for patients that will ultimately improve the results for yourself, so long as we are having the right mindset, which is having a patient centric practice that is really delivering the highest quality journey, as well as dentistry.
Dr. James:
Love. Thanks so much, and thank you for your kind words on dennis, who invests, and I certainly didn’t expect all of this to happen, but I am immensely grateful and a lot of the stuff that you’re talking about. Those were actually the epiphanies that led me to think to myself okay, actually, there needs to be some sort of platform here where we share this information, because there’s massive, massive, massive scope to help people. And, on that note, yeah, dude, huge, right, like you can listen to a podcast and it can literally change your life. You’re always one podcast away from a podcast that might change your life. That’s my mindset. That’s what keeps me hungry, man, and I’m like, yeah, just one more, just one more. And then, and then you do find that stuff every so often, every once in a while. Hopefully, this has been one of those podcasts for people today. In fact, I really fully believe that if you embrace this stuff, it will be. Barry, you’ve got an event coming up in july time.
Dr. Barry:
I have, I have, I have. I have my event, which is how to sell without selling. So we’re running. I have um part of my mastermind group. We’ve run six live events each year, right. So we have three two-day events in london where I get all my mastermind together. It’s a it’s a fantastic community. They are beautiful people supporting one another, sharing and helping and everybody in developing and getting to whatever their next level is, and so part of that is we train their team. So we have three single day team events throughout the year. We run those in Birmingham, and so we’re running that on the Friday.
Dr. Barry:
And then we’ve opened up to general dental public a full day’s training on the Saturday, the 13th of July, and the title is how to Sell Without Selling. So it’s teaching people some of these nuggets and the essence of communication that will help them unlock certain things to their patients that we ultimately have our patients writing their own treatment plans. Now, don’t take that literally. They’re not sitting down going, so I’m going to have an MOD in the lower left five, but what they are doing is I ask them certain questions and ultimately, future pace them. So what I want them to do is identify how they want things to be further down the line, let’s say in 20 years time, because that will influence what I recommend today, and actually it starts to open up conversations about what they want, and typically, patients start writing themselves treatment plans that include wants-based dentistry as well as needs-based, because, think about it, when you were trained which is a few years after me we were basically trained to be dental firefighters. We looked for a fire and we put it out. We’d ask questions like and I mentioned it earlier hi James, how are you, how are your teeth Any problems? And that was our kind of opening gambit, and the patient would go no, no problems. So we kind of go, oh, okay, no problems. What we’re then looking for is can we spot any problem? Oh, I found decay. And then we would sell, have a conversation about you need a filling or you need a crown, and it’s in the one tooth that we found decay.
Dr. Barry:
The way that we present dentistry is comprehensively every single tooth, three different treatment plans red, amber, green. Red is disease got to be done in order to be fit and healthy. Amber is stuff that hey look, it doesn’t have to be done right now. It’s worth considering, though, because if you’re doing the five. Think about the four and the six at the same time because of the contact points, whatever else Green is then elective whitening, straightening facial cosmetics, implants, filling spaces, stuff like that.
Dr. Barry:
We find that typically we are more than doubling the treatment value that a patient is accepting because of the way that we present stuff, and most of that is driven by the questions that we’re asking and finding out. Why is that important to the patient? Because nobody wants straight teeth, nobody wants white teeth. What they want is either what they think it will bring them confidence, connection, love, feeling good about themselves, looking good or what it will avoid them rejection, criticism, not feeling part, stuff like that and so when you find that out rejection, criticism, not feeling part you know stuff like that.
Dr. Barry:
And so when you find that out, firstly, I’m hugely motivated to serve and, secondly, you’ve tapped into what really matters to them and they end up going yeah, I really want to do this. So they end up doing more dentistry and then being very happy at the end of it. So, yeah, that’s what we’re doing on the day in Birmingham, includes lunch, and yeah, what I said to you right at the beginning is, if we were to mention this to your community is that we had for my community, my existing clients we had a very special discounted offer that I would be happy to roll out to anybody in DWD.
Dr. James:
DWI Dennis University there we go.
Dr. Barry:
Yeah, yeah, my dyslexia coming out. So, yeah, we’ll stick a code in and over the next couple of weeks that is the absolute give you the absolute best investment to come and join us for a day 395 for the day. It’s actually 695 if you go through the normal website. So don’t go through the normal website, come through dwi there you go.
Dr. James:
Exclusive offer for the audience. And how are people best off availing of that barry? Reaching out to yourself?
Dr. Barry:
uh, so they can either reach out directly to me, in which case Tom will respond to them. Uh, they can go to my website, um, barry Eltoncom, and it’s going to be forward slash, sell without selling. But, um, what we will do, mate, is I’ll give you a QR code that we can put into this, and then they can scan that and go straight in if they want.
Dr. James:
Yeah, or, or how about? Or how about forward slash DWI? That would be good, because I’m not sure about QR codes, but we could definitely hook the link up. Okay, we’ll sort that out. That would be fun. Nice one, all right. Well, listen, barry. Thank you so much for your time.
Dr. Barry:
It’s so good to see you again, mate. I really appreciate this and I appreciate you allowing me to share some of this stuff with the community because it bloody well works. It’s really good and I can’t claim it Right. I didn’t design NLP, I didn’t design psychology, but what I have done is played with it and got the results that now I know I can pay forward, and that’s what happens with the clients, so thanks man, I appreciate it.
Dr. James:
Hey, dude, you’re welcome anytime. And you know what? What reminds me of a quote, what you just said, isaac newton. If I have seen further, it’s because I’ve stood on the shoulders of giants, which I really love. I really really like that. And just to really break that down, the reason why he’s so perceptive and has so much knowledge is because he’s building on the knowledge of his forefathers and people that he learned from in books and from word of mouth. And that’s exactly what we’re here to do today, because you can figure out stuff on your own. It just takes decades. So why not just, why not just expedite that journey and benefit from it immediately? And that is literally the mission of dennis, who invest right there. Anyway, barry, let’s go ahead and wrap up right now, looking forward to have you back very soon, anytime, my friend, much love, appreciate it, take care. Bye.
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