In the Smile Business Diaries podcast, DSD Clinic owners from around the world chat with DSD Senior Executive Manager of Clinic Development, Maria Cabanellas, about their career trajectories and the general ins and outs of clinic life as well their learnings and top tips.
In the latest episode, Maria chatted to Dr Reynolds Lawnin, a dentist and dental surgeon from Houston, Texas with a background in biomedical engineering. Their conversation covered topics such as:
Moving away from engineering and finding a career path that suited him in dentistry
Building strong patient relationships – and making it easier to be a patient
Focusing the clinic's efforts on ‘4 to 12’ in the marketing clock
Keep reading for some of the highlights from their conversation or listen to the whole episode now on Spotify, Apple Podcasts or YouTube.
Being a friendly neighborhood dentist
After several years of working as an associate in a successful practice in the Woodlands Texas, Dr. Lawnin joined Tanglewood Dental Associates where he continues the tradition of excellence that the practice has maintained for over 65 years while transforming it into a state-of-the-art digital dental office. But what brought him to the decision to rehab an older practice rather than build new?
“I was an associate for a very successful practice up in a suburb north of the woodlands for about four years, and one of the things that I kind of realized is I wanted to practice in town or kind of near town.
I'm probably five miles from downtown, but we're right next to the Galleria. It's a central business area. There's three or four central business areas in Houston. So I knew I kind of wanted to be in this space.
I wanted quality of life stuff - there's a kids’ baseball field right there. I wanted something that I could, like, say, cool, I get to be your neighborhood friendly dentist. I get to be the guy that hangs out and goes and does T-ball with his kids – and I just wanted to be the guy in an area.”
Clinic success without a website
In the crowded online space today it can be hard to make your website stand out - but is the solution to delete it all together? Dr Lawnin explained what led him to that decision and how the practice is thriving without a website or social media.
“My ‘why’ has always been developing relationships with people and the ability to get to know the people that I'm treating. The motto for our office is “remarkable dentistry through sincere relationships.”
You can provide remarkable dentistry, you can have sincere relationships, but to be able to do it together, I think to me, is kind of the secret sauce - and that's how we've been able to do it without a website.
We focus so much on spending time with our patients, getting to know them, making them feel comfortable with what we're doing, who we are, what we think, how we see things, how we treatment plan."
On learning how to connect with patients
When dental school doesn’t necessarily teach us how to connect with our patients, was this a natural skill or something he developed over the years? Dr Lawnin mentioned the book ‘How to win friends and influence people’ as part of his journey in building relationships and understanding people.
“He talks a lot about - and I think this is an incredible philosophy - putting yourself in your consumer shoes and then looking at it from their perspective.
My whole philosophy came from the idea of when a person comes into the office, why do they hate us? Why do they dislike dentistry?
And sometimes it's past trauma. There's nothing I can do about that. But sometimes it is this idea in this notion that we're a giant black hole: people come in and they're praying to God that we don't find $6,000 worth of dental work that needs to be done and then put a hard sales pitch on them and they go, man, I don't know what to do.
That for me is why I've kind of crafted the business model the way I have. If I can remove that in some regards, then I make it easier to want to be a patient.”
What drives patient purchase decisions?
“I think we have a tendency to look at marketing and the business aspects of dentistry and say the website and social media are what drives my marketing performance, and I would tell anybody listening, you're wrong. What drives your marketing performance is your relationships with people,” explains Dr Lawnin about the reasons he believes patients decide whether or not to choose you.
“They go and they talk to their friends and they talk to their family and they say: ‘Hey, I have a great person.’ The website and the social media validate what they've heard from other people. In reviews, all of that stuff, that's just extra validation.”
Catch up on the full conversation
Hear more from Maria Cabanellas and Dr Reynolds Lawnin in this episode and stay up to date with all upcoming episodes by subscribing now on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.
About the episode guest
