#845: How to Vacation Without Your Business Losing Money

Warmer weather means vacations are on our mind. Kiera talks about how to take those two-week vacations (or more!) and not have it affect your practice’s profit and loss. It’s about planning, yes, but Kiera gives you the variables to consider as you calculate how much you can vacation based on your practice’s output.

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Transcript:

Kiera Dent (00:00.91)

Hello, Dental A Team listeners. This is Kiera and I want to talk about how you can take vacations and not have it hit your production. Anybody up for that? Because I am, because I live to take vacations. So today that's what we're going to dive into on the podcast. And just a quick reminder, our goal of the podcast is to get this podcast into the hands of every dental practice that there is. We want to positively impact. We want to tactically inspire you. We want to give you the motivation to keep going and realizing that dentistry is the greatest profession you could ever be a part of. So please today,

 

Leave us that review, give us those five stars, share this podcast with someone. Remember you are getting this for free. And what I ask in return is that you share this with somebody you post about us in a Facebook group. I am so happy you're here and I have chosen to give you all of our content for free. If you ever want to join us, cause you're like, wow, that's a lot of free content. I need to now implement it. Join us.

 

but all this content is given to you for free. And I just ask that you please share it with other people, that you leave those reviews. And that's all I ask because that way we're able to serve as many patients as we possibly can. That's my mission. That's my goal. If you want to work with me, phenomenal. I would prefer you to work with us if that's what you need and share this with people and just change their lives. So with that, let's talk about how you can take a two week vacation without this hitting your PNL.

 

We've read up that a particular doctor said that they went down 20k in monthly collections when they took two weeks off. And I agree, that's freaky scary. So, you know, let's actually dive into that of how can I take vacations and not have it crush my PNL. So the way you do it is you plan. And what I recommend for my office is, and I know that this is not as fun. I've done it myself as well. It doesn't feel as spontaneous as when we're in our youth. Like, I just want to go on a vacation today. I would love that.

 

You now own a business, you have a child. We've got to be a little bit more productive unless you're okay with having that production hit. But I would prefer to set you up on a successful path where you can have the vacations, you can have the production you want, and we're not tanking our production because you go on vacation because then it doesn't feel fun. It's like, oh, I don't want to go on vacation, I just lost 20K. Like that's terrible. That is crummy. So let's make sure that we give you the tips. So what I recommend for my office is, and this also helps your scheduling team,

 

Kiera Dent (02:15.342)

And they're a lot happier because now expectations are just laid out. So my husband and I, usually in like October, whenever you're listening to this podcast, go for it, do it today. Don't wait till October. But typically in October, my husband and I start planning all the vacations that we want for the following year. Sometimes I have to do it a little bit earlier. Dental practices, you do start to book out six months in advance. So just throwing that out there that maybe June, July would be the optimal time for dental practice to start thinking of their vacations that they want to do next year.

 

I understand that's pretty far in advanced, but guess what? The end of the year is going to be here before we know it. So if you can just set that cadence up of like, what vacations do we want? Do we have spring break? Do the kids need to be out? My husband and I, this last year decided that we were going to take two trips just for me and him. So it's no CE, it's no work. It's not tacked onto a work trip. I don't, I love work trips. I don't enjoy having a work trip and then trying to be intentional.

 

with my relationship. It's very, I go from work brain to intent. Like it's, it's hard for me. So we just decided this year we're going to take two trips, just me and him really enhance our relationship. And those are the two. So I put those in, um, and I went a little extra geeky this year and I put in all of my personal trips, all of my CE trips, all of my work trips to see how much time was I actually on the road. I go a lot and I just needed to make sure it was a good balance for me to be able to maintain. And so what my husband and I did, um, and for doctors for you, just figure out.

 

And it doesn't have to be set spaces or places. Like right now, I don't know where my husband and I are going in October. We have the time blocked off. I still don't know where we're going to go, but we did block that time and we're going to go somewhere really fun. We went somewhere in March. I didn't know where we were going to go. I decided we booked like pretty last minute. It was about a month in advance. We booked a trip to Bora Bora and it was so fun, but we had the time blocked off. So you need to go figure out how much time do you want? Do you want a week, a quarter? Do you want like two weeks here? But we even have a spreadsheet that we share with our clients.

 

of where they can actually do a production. So we look at every single month, the days available, we take out all the holidays that they'll be closed because we have those holidays to factor in as well. And then we factor in the doctor's days off that they want to have. All of this is totally doable if we plan and it's not going to tank your production. So then what we do is we actually figure out how many available working days we actually have every single month. And then we figure out what we want to do for their production goals for the year. I usually recommend at least a 10 % increase.

 

Kiera Dent (04:37.006)

If you're not actively growing year over year as a healthy growth rate for a practice, also make sure you're increasing your fees. So on that note, then what we do from there is we figure out, all right, so let's say this practice wants to make 2 .5 million is what their goal is for this next year. That's their healthy growth rate. What we do is we take that 2 .5, let's do 2 .4, that's gonna make my math easier, 2 .4 million. We need to break that down of what they need to be producing every single month.

 

I'm double checking, so 2 .4 million. And we've got 12 months, we need to be producing $200 ,000 a month. From there, we look to see, okay, what does our daily need to be? And we look at those months that maybe have longer months, shorter months, and we figure out, we break it down based on the number of days available to work, cutting out all the holidays, cutting out all the pieces, what each day needs to be. Because now instead of it being, well, we have 12 equal months of 200 ,000, maybe it's that we have, we do the number of days available.

 

divided by the dollar amount that we need each day to be. And then from there, we can actually set our monthly goals. And our monthly goals might not be exactly like the same. It's not 200 ,000 across the board. It might be that January is going to be 150 because we're taking a week off. And then our February, March, April, May are going to be 225 because we're going to make up that additional 50 ,000. Plus we know we're going to be gone again in June. So our goals shift, but it becomes a daily goal, not a monthly goal based on the days that you're gone.

 

Okay, I hope all that math just made sense. And this can get a little tricky, but what's really fun is we look to see time production, daily production, and then we block schedule according to that. And we make it to where it's exactly the dollar amount we need. We track it, we might be down a month, we might be up a month, but we watch it every single month. So for my clients, I'm tracking it based on the projections of where we want to be, based on the vacations they're planning to take, what we need it to be and what we need to produce. Now in some states, if doctors are going to be gone, hygienists can still work.

 

And so that can be a great way to like not have to put as much on the doctors, but really it's just figuring out the math equations is how we do this. You can take all the vacation you want, truly. It does not matter to me. I feel like you will be prepared. You will be so healthy. You'll be so happy. And then we just have to figure out how we actually break it down into your block scheduling, your productive scheduling, figure it out. And then we adjust and maybe those aren't the goals that we want. Maybe we need to change our goals. Maybe we need to increase our goals. Maybe we need to decrease our goals.

 

Kiera Dent (07:01.646)

Maybe we're more intentional with the time off we take. Maybe I'm like, well, I don't actually need two trips this year. I just need one trip. All right. Fantastic. We changed that, but you then play with the math equation. You look at the projection spreadsheet to see what do I really want to do? What time do I want to have off? And for me, I do think having vacations are super important. And I think just being strategic. So I feel like the office that I've got that's doing this really, really well, they're in Washington. And what they do is they said, we want to have one week, a quarter off where we take a vacation.

 

So I check in with them, I hold them accountable, I make sure that they're taking a week off and we just prepared their schedule for them. We figured out what they need to produce with these vacations off to hit the goals they want. And literally they're blowing the goals out of the water because they know what they need to hit. They know what their daily goals needs to be. They've got their treatment coordinator bought in. All the team knows the goals. Everybody's working towards the same pieces. They get the vacations off the team does. The doctors get the team, the time off. Everybody's happy and we're not tanking production. So I feel like you get the tank production.

 

because what happens is you didn't plan for it, you took the time off and then you're trying to scramble and work super hard when you get back. You're going to have some months that will be lower. But you also have to make sure if I take that much time off, I need to be using the money from my higher months to be able to offset the cost if it's gonna be a tight month. Also saving that money, we don't just spend that money. That does take discipline, but this discipline truly equates to freedom. And this is how you can take it.

 

all the vacations, all the fun, all the tips, all the pieces and make it truly beautiful and enjoyable as opposed to feeling stressful. And I think it's one of those pieces of like just making a lot of fun. Now, the other side is you could hire a temp doctor. I think there's pros and cons to that. Some people are like, I am totally fine with that. Other people are like, I'm gonna have to come back and do their work. But I feel like you don't actually have to do it, a temp doctor, if you just plan. So,

 

I think, let me pull up for you guys kind of this projection spreadsheet and if you're not watching it, I understand that. But really, it's not that hard to do if you're willing to just plan a little bit. So I have an office again and they did a conservative one. So like, hey, if we were to not take this many, then we'd be able to take this many vacations.

 

Kiera Dent (09:20.846)

And then I have others that are like, let's do an aggressive one. If we want to take 10 vacations a year, what does that look like? And I sometimes just think there's the fear of we don't actually know, like, what is it going to take for us to do it? And so I think that this just removes the fear. So let me share on the video. Here you guys go. Here is the spreadsheet, like I was mentioning, of the January, February, March, April, the number of potential working days, the number of days the offices close.

 

the number of days the office is open. And then you put in the doctors, what their production is. We put in our hygiene days, how many hygiene columns they have, how many hygiene days are going to be off, the hygiene goal, and then the monthly department. Then we put our office monthly goal, we put our overhead goal in here, and then we do our budget based on our collections and overhead. And then you come all the way over to the end of the spreadsheet, and you can actually total this up to tell us what our production would be. So hopefully just giving you guys a quick visual of what this looks like, of how you can actually build this.

 

to where it's not stressful for you anymore. You don't have to make this stressful. You don't have to make it hard. You literally can take vacations. You just need to know. And like I said, you can build a conservative, you can build an advanced, you can build a crazy one, you can build a non -crazy one. You can figure out how many days you want, but really it's just planning, preparing is going to make it easy. So I would love to help you take more vacations. I would love our team to be able to give you that freedom back in your life.

 

to teach you how to do this. And this is part of what we're doing in our company. So reach out hello at dentalateam.com. Go plan, go take those vacations. We're right about the time, right around summertime where you should be looking for next year anyway. Pre -plan those. You don't have to know exactly where you're going, but live your best life. Plan for it, prepare for it, and enjoy it. And with that, thanks for listening. Thanks for listening to the podcast. Thanks for, wow. Thanks for listening, and I'll catch you next time on the Dental A Team podcast.