What To Do When Times Are Slow

Good morning and welcome to this Monday morning minute. I’m Dr. Todd Shatkin, and I want to talk to you today about a question that comes up quite often. What do we do when times are slow? And there are certain times of the year that I find that things slow down a little bit.

It’s usually around holiday time, for example, of course, Christmas time, New Year years, pretty much the whole month of December. Slows down a little bit and then it also slows down when our kids are off of school, on break, spring break, and then in the middle of the summer, there are certain slow periods because families get together, they go on vacation like 4 July weekend and things like that. So things slow down at those times. So what do we do when those are the slow times? Well, one of the things I do is I take my vacations at those times.

So if I want to go away with a family or whatever, we do that during the Christmas vacation because I know that we’re not going to be that busy in the office. Spring break, same thing, and sometimes over the summer. But if you don’t want to take a family vacation and you want to keep working, what can you do to help grow the practice? Instead of getting discouraged and complaining and calling me, which a lot of people do, think about what you can do to build your practice up so that you can get through those slow times with no problem. In other words, we need to produce more money before and after the slow period to COVID the slow period.

Right. So what needs to be done is something my grandfather always taught me, and he was the owner of Ellis Advertising for a long, long time. It was the largest advertising agency in western New York. You have to advertise more during the slow times. I know that the money is a little tight and you’re worried about it, but most of the radio stations, TV stations, they give you at least 60 days to pay your bill.

So you don’t have to pay it when it’s slow. But you can take out the ads and put them on the air. Advertise On TV, advertise On Radio, do some print work and what will happen is you’ll get the benefit of it a few weeks later when you get back to work or when things start picking up. You’ll get busier than normal and you’ll be able to COVID the period of time when things were slow. The other thing I like to do when I have a slow time is I like to plan for the future.

What can I bring into my office that might give me a jolt for the next year? For example, over the Christmas vacation, think about what you can do in the coming year that might spruce up your practice and make it more successful. It might be buying a piece of equipment that you don’t have a laser or getting more involved with mini dental implants. Doing more teeth whitening like our eye Smile whitening system. Launching more of an aligner campaign to do.

Krystal Klear aligners or something that you’re not offering in your practice right now that might bring in an increase of even 10% revenue to your practice over the next year. Which one great procedure can do that? Now, of course, I’m speaking to all of you who are already doing mini dental implants, and if you’re not doing enough of them, you got to promote it. Come to Buffalo. Do an infomercial with Mark Aarons, get some online marketing done with our Maxilla marketing team, do some radio ads, whatever you need to do, and we’ll help you put that whole package together.

But think about what you want to do in 2020 to bring in 10% to 15% more revenue to your practice on top of what you’re already achieving with the mini implants. It may be doing more mini implants. It may be adding another service or procedure to your practice. You might even want to bring in an associate to bring in more revenue to your practice if you have room and chairs in your office to do so. So contemplate this. Think about it. If you have any questions and want advice, give me a call. I’m here. I’m happy to help you. And that’s my morning tip for this Monday Morning minute, and I’ll see you next week.