Welcome to the Madow Brothers audio series with Rich and Dave Madow
Madow:Hello, this is David Madow and I want to welcome every single one of you to another edition of the Madow Brothers audio series.Great to have everybody with us today.We have a very special guest with us today.Her name is Dr. JoanneRief.Some of you may know about Dr. JoanneRief maybe if you’re in our Powerhouse, new patient Powerhouse, or on any of our calls; she’s a pretty well-known name in the Madow household.That’s really not the right word but kind of amongst our Madow friends and Madow followers.So let’s give Joanne a really warm, big round of applause.How are you doing today, Dr. JoanneRief?Listen to that…
Rief:Everything’s great.
Madow:…incredible round of applause you’re getting today.It’s great to have you here today.It’s great to have you actually live in the studio.You know, a lot of times we do these interviews on the phone and it’s so much better to actually be able to look at my guest and have eye contact, and I think it’s gonna be a great, it’s, we’re gonna have a great time today; there’s no question about it, so good to have you here, Dr. Rief.Now, I want to tell our audience, our listeners, something very interesting.I’ll tell them a little bit about the inner workings of how these interviews work.Oftentimes, if I have a local guest, we’ll meet up at a little restaurant around the corner, we’ll have lunch together, we’ll chitchat about the interview and talk about how the interview’s gonna go, maybe rehearse a little bit, and then come over to the studio.Well, it happened to be a Chinese restaurant today, and at the end of the meal, by the way, I hope you liked your meal.Was it good?
Rief:It was wonderful.
Madow:Good, good.
Rief:Thank you.
Madow:You’re very welcome. You’ll get a bill. No, I’m kidding.At the end of the meal you get a fortune cookie.You say, should I open up my fortune cookie? I said, sure, open it up and let’s see what it says, and I think it’s, the fortune you got is hopefully going to kind of foreshadow how this interview’s gonna go.Do you want to share your fortune you got today?
Rief:Sure, it says, “Many people will be drawn to you for your wisdom and insights.”
Madow:And I actually think it’s an understatement because, I gotta tell ya, you, you’re a local dentist; you’ve got a dental practice called Crossroads Dental Arts in the Owings Mills area, which is a suburb of the Baltimore area.How long have you been practicing dentistry?
Rief:Dentistry?Twenty-six and a half years.
Madow:So you’re pretty well-versed, well-seasoned at this, and you were a hygienist before…
Rief:Yes.
Madow:…a dentist.You’ve got some incredible tips.I’m looking here at the list; I’ll tell ya, I don’t even know how we’re gonna get through them all.I’m gonna have you go kind of fast because you’ve got some incredible practice-building tips.I mean, you’re a, not only a great clinician, a great marketer, a great communicator, but just a great businessperson.You totally, totally get it, and I think that’s one reason why you’re really so successful and just loving every single thing you do.But I’d like you to share a little bit with our audience how you got to what you’re doing today.How’d you get interested in dentistry?Tell us a little bit of the story there.
Rief:Sure, well, first of all I’m a third generation dentist.There aren’t too many of us out there.Maybe soon there will be four generations, but my great uncle who has since passed away was a dentist.He inspired my father who is a retired dentist and I’m the third generation dentist.But the story really goes that when I was thirteen years old, just a few years ago, my mother would pick me up from school once or twice a week; I was in junior high at the time, and she would take me to my father’s office and I was the gofer.So besides stocking the rooms, maybe calling some overdue recall patients, my job was to take the little drinking cups that the patients, you know, rinse out with, they would be filled with periapical X-rays and bitewing X-rays because at that time there were not automatic processors.We had to hand dip.So you put them in the developer, the water, the fixer.So they would have these cups from the whole week lined up.There weren’t panorexes; we didn’t have a panorex then, and I would hand dip all these full series and then, after they dried, I was to mount them.I mounted X-rays when I was thirteen years old.I have to tell ya, I have staff in my office that have been in the dental field for a while that I know, if they had to, they could not mount X-rays, and I just feel like that was something I really learned a long time ago.And you know, so then, I went to college and my father says, you know, we’ll pay for you to go to college.You can major in whatever you want but you’ve gotta come out with a job, a career, so he said the only thing I don’t want you to do is be a schoolteacher because they were a dime a dozen back then.So I said, oh,well, I worked in the office; I’ll be a hygienist.Really never really knowing what the hygienists really did, so I said, oh, I’ll go to hygiene school, and while I was in hygiene school, I worked one summer at College Park University of Maryland.Well, I was living there, but I worked for Dental Power.That’s still in business today, and I temped all over the Northern Virginia, DC area in dental offices doing dental assisting, front desk, and even worked for Dental Power in their office placing women who would call up, you know, needing positions.So I did that one summer, went through hygiene school,and while I was at hygiene school, between my two clinical years, I said, you know what, I think I’m going to dental school, and my father said, I told you years ago to go.You can do it.So I had to go to summer school for two summers and take one evening course. I think they frown on that now; I don’t think they want you doing those summer school things, but I did it and, you know, got into University of Maryland and been a dentist ever since.
Madow:And the rest is history.
Rief:Right.
Madow:And you’re, it seems to me, although I’ve been in your practice, I’ve come into your office many times, it seems to me that you’re just loving what you do.Is that true?
Rief:It’s hard work, but yes, we work as a team, and yes, we do love what we do, but I tell everyone that it’s hard work, and what their answer to me is nothing that makes you successful isn’t hard work. That’s what I always hear from people, that everything’s hard work, so…
Madow:And if you think, it’s probably true, but if you love your work, then maybe it’s not as hard as it could be as if you hated it every day…
Rief:Exactly.
Madow:…so I can tell by the look on your face, even now, you just, you love what you do, you’re passionate, and not only that, if I may say so, you’re extremely successful.So I just want to make sure that our listeners understand this is not just some run-of-the-mill dentist we brought in here to do an interview to fill time; Dr. Riefis a really, really successful practice who runs a large practice, a great practice, and she’s here today to give, she’s got so many tips, she’s always thinking about how to make the practice better, how she can serve her patients better, and she’s come up with a list.Joanne, I hope we can even get through every single one of them today, so let’s get started.We’re gonna kind of go fast, but there’s no need to really rush, rush, you know. I won’t make a whole lot of comments. I just want you to start with number one, and I want to make sure our listeners have a notepad, a couple of sharp pencils in front of you, because I don’t want you to miss even one of these things.These are tested personally by Dr. Rief.They’re, most of them were invented by her, although if not, she’ll tell you probably, but she uses every single one of these all the time.So, without further ado, I guess let’s go ahead and get started.
Rief:One thing though, I think we talked about, if anyone does want me to elaborate or give you phone numbers or names, my email is .
Madow:Easy enough, that’s ’re gonna be mentioning a lot of things, we’re gonna be, you know, you’ll be moving at a pretty fast pace, so yeah, listeners, if there’s anything at all you want to know more about, I’m telling you something, Dr. Rief is friendly, she’s helpful, she’d love to speak to any one of you.So the best way to reach her would be to just drop her an email and take it from there.So let’s, let’s go ahead and get started with number one.
Rief:Ok, the first thing I actually introduced Dave and Rich Madow to this, maybe a year or so ago, it’s calledSNAP Dental Imaging and it’s really, they call it SNAP because you can kind of do it in a snap.Basically, we take a full face view of our patients, photo, you know, with a good digital camera, and then we, in one of our computers we have the SNAP program.And let’s say the patient has dark teeth and they want whitening.So we can whiten the teeth on the SNAPand we can print out the before-and-after picture and either hand it to the patient, we can email it to them, we can fax it to them, whatever they prefer, but more importantly, it’s for things like patients who are interested in Invisalign, they have some crooked teeth.We can them fit into the mouth and then, you know, they can see how they’re gonna look with straight teeth. But even more importantly, we do people, show people who have missing teeth or discolored teeth or spaces or whatever, and we’re gonna do some cosmetic, maybe a combination case of crowns, veneers, and a bridge or whatever, and we had this one woman – Dave, have you ever seen the show, “Say Yes to the Dress”?
Madow:You know, it’s funny, I don’t watch a lot of TV. I’ve heard of it but I don’t know if I’ve actually seen the show.
Rief:Yeah, well, of course I know about it from my daughter…
Madow:Right.
Rief:…but basically, in the show, the bride has to decide which dress she’s gonna buy, and eventually she says yes to the dress.So this woman comes in with her husband and he had some of the gold shell crowns in the front, had to lose a tooth or two, so basically we wanted to show him how he’s gonna look with a six-unit bridge.And we did the SNAP image and we took a picture with the gold teeth, and we put a beautiful bridge in there and the wife was with him, and she pointed her finger at the screen and said, yes.Like, instead of say yes to the dress, she said yes to the bridge. So we sold that case immediately and it’s a really cool thing.It doesn’t, it’s not expensive, by the way, most of these I’m gonna talk about are not necessarily expensive.You know, of course you need a marketing budget for some of these things, and I would highly recommend someone to help you with a marketing budget.But SNAP is great, and I think they were at TBSE last year, and I know they got a lot of feedback, and I think the woman’s name is Joanne, same as mine.But anyway, give them a call and/or you can email me.Second thing is we have been doing commercials for several years on TV.One of my friends got me involved with this because she works at a station; she sells advertising.I would’ve never thought about TV.I always thought you needed this humongous budget and you have to constantly have it on the air and all that stuff, but really you don’t.These stations, especially in this economy, will work with small businesses.They bring in people, they had brought in someone from Atlanta for me and other people and presented, you know, how they could market using TV to small businesses.They weren’t necessarily looking at Coca Cola; they were looking at small, like a dental office, like a chiropractor, things like that, and they put together a plan for me that fit into my budget.They know what days you should be on the air, what times you should be on the air.They know I’m a female trying to attract other female patients who will then send in their spouses or their kids, so we want to be on during The View; we want to be on during Katie.And there’s so many perks; they even invited me to so many networking parties where I’ve given out my business cards.I got to meet Katie Couric; she was in town before her show.It was great.In fact, I got her talking about her teeth, her veneers or whatever, crowns or veneers.She pointed to her teeth, we got a picture, we posted it on Facebook, it, you know, it was really special.I have a really great commercial that I came up with the idea, I have to say, but they helped me execute the idea.They do all the filming in your office with your staff, you know; you can retake and all that kind of stuff.But if you look at my commercial on my website, it’s on the front page, the first page, and then some of the older commercials are within the website also.We had a patient who we did a full mouth reconstruction on, actually when I was at LVI, and the woman was very overweight, and after we did the full mouth reconstruction, she decided it was time to lose seventy pounds.This woman is so thin now; she looks fabulous.She had these fabulous teeth and the rest of her wasn’t so fabulous.So we got on that on a commercial, which is such a different take on dentistry to bring in the health, diet, exercise kind of thing.So it was a really cool idea and that commercial has done very well for us.Instead of bringing in the shoppers, it has actually brought in people who are interested in cosmetic work.So I would look into it. I would, you know, it may not be in everybody’s budget, but certainly it’s something to think about.And I’m gonna go to number three if it’s ok with you.
Madow:I think you’re doing great. I just want to bring up the fact that you’re, I didn’t realize, your office, not only are you doing TV commercials but you’re doing a lot of filming and video because we, your office was the site of the now famous video that Rich and I did, “I Got a Filling,” which is really getting a lot of views on YouTube by the way.So your office is becoming kind of famous in the area.
Rief:Well, I think you and Rich were famous. I don’t think I was so famous in that.I don’t know, I don’t know how I was doing dancing in that waiting room.
Madow:I’ll tell you something, you’re being seen by dental offices in every city that we go to all over North America, so I think you are becoming very famous.
Rief:Ok, all right, the third thing is this is something I came up with a couple years ago.I knew during the holiday season everybody’s going to these Midnight Madness, whether it be at a mall or a street, a lot of different neighbors had Midnight Madness where they’re open till midnight, they’re serving wine or cheese or whatever, and the stores are open late.Well, our patients are always asking why we aren’t open later and then I explain to them we all have families and whatever.So we started this Dental Madness.We’re not gonna be open till midnight but, like, we’re thinking, like, the next time we do this we’re gonna be open eleven to eight, where we’ll take lupper or whatever you want to call it, linner, like, from three to four, you know, for the team.We expected, this is, we’ve done it three years now, we expected that we’d be putting this on Facebook to advertise it on Demand Force, but actually the appointments get taken so quickly we bring in a third hygienist, so we have three hygienists working at least in the evening hours from four to eight, we serve wine and cheese and dips and chips and all that kind of stuff.We have Hanukkah decorations, we have Christmas decorations, one year we had little dollar gifts wrapped under the tree, every patient got to take a gift.Another year we had a drawing, guess how many jelly beans for Christmas, or whatever we had in the jar, and someone won a prize.And basically it’s just our regular dentistry we’re doing that night but everybody’s happy and in a good mood and drinking and socializing, and people are meeting other people in the waiting room cause there’s more people than usual in the waiting room with three hygienists and myself, and it’s just a fun night.Everybody looks forward to it, and like I said, it really gets filled up quickly; we have a waiting list.So that’s just a really fun thing to do and you can do whatever, you can just take that to so many different levels.You can do it several nights, you know, in a practice; we just chose to do it one.The one, the one year Rich Madow gave me the idea for March Madness.We did it during the basketball season for March Madness and we served, like, peanuts and popcorn, and we had the game on the TV in the waiting room.Maybe we’ll do it this year.