Does your P&L team cost feel high? Tiff and Dana provide insight on how to reduce your overhead besides scaling back team members. There could be easy solutions, from cleaning up definitions and job descriptions in your ops manual, to facing the numbers when it comes to debt, and many more.

Episode resources:

Transcript:

The Dental A Team (00:00)

Hello Dental A Team listeners. I am here with you today ⁓ with Dana. Dana, you know, is one of my favorite humans on earth. We are starting our Monday with you guys. And I know it may not be Monday while you're listening to this, but you know these are pre-recorded, these aren't live. That's not a shock to you. So we record these on Mondays and Fridays. And Dana has been so gracious to share her Monday morning with us. Dana, how are you on this beautiful day?

DAT-Dana (00:27)

I'm doing pretty good. I know I'm loving the weather right now. As you know, I'm like a sunshine lizard, right? So I love the sunshine we're getting right now. And I love some extra tip time on a Monday. It's a great start to the week.

The Dental A Team (00:30)

beautiful.

I agree, I agree. was like, yesterday I was like, oh gosh, what is tomorrow? know, like, because I had prep the week before, I think we all kind of prep, but then Sunday you're like, wait a second though, what was that again? I've had two days to forget what I'm supposed to be doing tomorrow. And I checked, I'm like, oh yeah, podcasting with Dana is gonna be so great. So we're here today with you and Dana, this one's a really fun topic. I know you and I, notoriously, if anyone goes back into the archives and listens to the other 5,000,

It feels as though it's been 5,000 podcasts on operations manuals that we've done. That's just Dana's fun girl for that. But today is team related but less about training and kind of operations manually kind of things. And I think it's just a really fun version of a team aspect. And I say that because this is coming at it from a business standpoint. I think you guys all know that Dental A Team focuses on profit.

and profitability, but we focus first and foremost on happy people and having a fantastic business that can support your personal life, but then also having a fantastic business that supports an awesome team. And so being team focused and being people focused first, we truly believe that that's what creates a business that's sustainable over a lifetime and gets that profit for you. If we went profit first, not the book, we love the book. If we went profit first and never the people,

I think we would just be doing you a disservice. So today is all about how to get profitable, how to be profitable without sacrificing the team. And Dana, I know you and I, I think our whole company is really, really strong in this belief, but you and I specifically very, very strongly believe that treating the team right and not looking at the team for the cuts in the overhead is, that's how we start. So I'm gonna.

Just pick your brain some today, Dana. First of all, what are you seeing today? It's 2026, recording this. It's close to the beginning of the year. We're about almost done with Q1, honestly. So I'm flying by, but we're getting towards the end of Q1. But with that, we've had some financials. I don't know why, but in my world, financials are hard to come by this year. I love you CPAs, and I'm just hoping that we can get a little bit better towards Q2.

But so far in the financials, what are you starting to see and what did you see out of 2025 with your clients? What kind of trends were you noticing?

DAT-Dana (03:14)

Yeah, think ⁓ financials, know expenses going up in different areas, a lot of that expense does come from team members. A lot of my conversations right now are like how do I show my team appreciation? How do I create things for my team when it comes to pay increase raises, things like that. ⁓

and still keep my payroll within where it should be. So a lot of team pieces are part of these financial conversations, I think even pretty heavy in 2026.

The Dental A Team (03:46)

Yeah, totally agree with you. I've seen those same things and towards the end of the year too, was like Christmas bonuses. I know you and I worked, we talked about it. So I know, I know at least you and I did. I'm sure the rest of the team did too, but we talked about it towards the beginning of last year, I think on a podcast of making sure that we were getting our clients prepped to give bonuses. So they're saving some little acorns every month over in a bucket for that. So hopefully it didn't hit them, but it still looks ugly on the PNL no matter what, you pull wherever you're pulling that money from. So.

I totally agree. And then I do think wage increases. I mean, if we compare 2018, 2019 to today, drastic difference. And I know, I think in our brains, it doesn't feel like COVID was that long ago. It feels like it was yesterday, but gosh, like 2017, 2018, 2019, those were the years of like dentistry. Dentistry was really doing well for team's sake at least. It was easy to find people. You could pay people whatever you wanted. Like people really worked for their dollar.

And then you flash forward now it's been, gosh, almost seven, eight years since that time period. when we, in dentistry, when it comes, and this is just my opinion, when it comes to pay and team pay, I think that we are all still very much stuck in seven, eight years, nine years ago, like time period. And we forget because COVID, the emphasis on COVID and the emphasis on the

the world as it is today and all of our, gosh, attention is being so distracted by all of that stuff that it's almost like that time just disappeared. We didn't live that time. so team pay wise, we're still stuck back there, but the inflation and the reality is if you compared 2007 to 2017,

You would never pay someone what we were paying in 2007 in 2017. Those, those pays would be so different. But I think we're trying to like transplant that still today of the gold, the golden years, the good old days of what money was back then, forgetting that that much time has elapsed in the middle. And we're just truly not caught up yet in my opinion. So I don't know, Dana, is that just me? Do you feel that that we just like, we lost years. like just forward jumped.

DAT-Dana (06:07)

Yeah.

Yeah, I feel like it was kind of like a time warp and I feel like especially in dentistry because I don't think dentistry hurt a ton as far as what we were able to produce. But I think that there was a big time warp when it came to salary increases and things like that. And I'm talking about that a lot on my calls because you know, yes, is it astounding that we're paying people in the dentistry where what we are right now. But again, I always say look at your area, what is fair for your area, what is competitive for your area because these team members bring value.

The Dental A Team (06:13)

Yeah.

How to Reduce Overhead Without Cutting Team Members