I hear of so many people out there having “verbal” agreements with one another over matters that should have written documentation.
As dentists, we know how difficult it can be to extract payment from unscrupulous clients who choose not to pay us for the services we provide, because the dental industry is structured for clients to pay for their dental work AFTER they receive it, rather than before.
That’s just how it’s always been done….
But these days, there’s a lot of businesses out there where customers now pay in advance for goods and services.
When you go to a concert….
When you go to a concert, you don’t pay for the performance as you queue to exit the concert hall.
In fact, in most cases with musical and theatrical productions, you pay for your ticket often months in advance.
When you travel…
When you travel, you most often purchase your travel and accommodation well in advance of your actual journey dates, so that you are secure with the thought that your plane seat and your hotel room that have been reserved just for you, will indeed be there for you on the dates requested.
When you buy a book…
When you buy a book, you pay for the book before you read it. You certainly don’t pay for the book AFTER you’ve taken it home and read it, do you?
That’s just how things get done these days…
Most business is now conducted with a payment in advance.
That’s just how things are done.
If there is a failure in this arrangement when some expectations of one or both parties are not met, then there are processes available for the settlement of any disputes.
A friend of mine once said:
A friend of mine once said, that it’s very difficult to start writing the pre-nup [prenuptial] agreement when your marriage is in the divorce court.
This same friend spent more time [and length] explaining what would happen on the dissolution of a business contract than he spent on writing what would actually be involved in the performance of the contractual business engagement.
This is because he wanted it to be crystal clear that when it was time for parties to go their separate ways, that the path of dissolution had already been decided upon.
Because if you don’t…
It doesn’t matter how close your family is, and how good a friend you are, and how “nice” a person appears, people change.
And lie.
And let you down.
It will happen.
It does happen.
So the easiest way to reduce disappointment is to take the time and to get all contingencies listed and handled and signed for ahead of time.
To be sure.
To be certain.
To be sure and certain.
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LIVE Workshop: Dr David Moffet and Jayne Bandy:
“How To Easily Run, Maintain And Grow The Ultimate Dental Practice In 2022 and Beyond”
If you’re sick and tired of drilling all day long, and not having anything close to what you deserve, to show for it… or if you’ve ever wondered, “What can successful dentists POSSIBLY know, that I don’t?”… then register for this LIVE workshop Thursday November 25, 2021 in Sydney, NSW.
The Ultimate Patient Experience is a simple to build complete Customer Service system in itself that I developed that allowed me to create an extraordinary dental office in an ordinary Sydney suburb. If you’d like to know more, ask me about my free special report.
I used to play golf with a lawyer who once said to me:
“The trouble with lawyers is that 99% of them give the rest of them a bad name.”
And we all know the answer to that other question:
What’s the difference between a lawyer and a catfish?”
As many of you know….
As many of you know, I’ve been involved in four or five long years of legal battles against the organisation that purchased my dental practice in 2007 and then employed me to perform dentistry at that practice between 2007 and 2014.
In 2018 the Federal Court of Australia ruled that under the definitions of the relevant Superannuation Acts, the duties I had been performing for my employer were regarded to be labour and therefore I was eligible to receive superannuation that the employer/owner/purchaser had not paid me.
In 2019 my employer appealed to the Full Bench of the Federal Court, and was unsuccessful in having the Federal Court judgement overruled.
Following that, in February 2021, the employer sought Application for Leave To The High Court of Australia, the highest court of the land.
The High Court told them to rack off.
My defence, at the High Court, was not even called to present.
The High Court awarded costs.
In the previous Federal Court actions, costs are incurred by both parties and are not claimable from the other party.
However, in the High Court matter, the High Court directed that my legal costs for the High Court were to be reimbursed to me by my employer.
So my solicitor was in charge of collecting reimbursement for these expenses paid.
As you know, legal fees are expensive:
My legal fees for the High Court were in excess of sixty two thousand dollars. So you can see that I was keen to receive this money that I had outlaid back.
And back quickly.
So I received this email from my solicitors last week:
It arrived at 4:19pm on a Friday afternoon a couple of weeks ago.
It read:
Subject: [Name of Law Firm] Tax Invoice
From: [Name of Personal assistant]
To: David Moffet; [Name of head lawyer]; [Name of lawyer 2]
[The attachment was here]
Sent on behalf of [Name of head lawyer] and [Name of lawyer 2]Our ref: XYZ:KLM:1234567Re: Moffet; [Name of Employer] High Court Application
Dear David,
Please find attached our tax invoice dated 30 June 2021 for professional services and disbursements for work performed to 30 June 2021.
Details of the work undertaken are included in the tax invoice.
In relation to your matter, we have now also received ….. three lines of blah blah blah
Please contact us if you have any queries and we thank you for your instructions in this matter.
Kind Regards
[Name of Personal Assistant]
Personal Assistant, Sydney Workplace Relations and Safety Group
[law firm logo, address and disclaimer]
So what do you think happened?
As you can probably tell, I wasn’t impressed receiving yet another email from my lawyers with yet another bill considering the matter was in its final stages of being tidied up.
I read the email down to the line:
Details of the work undertaken are included in the tax invoice.
And then went back and opened the attachment [the invoice] to see the amount of $2097.00 had been incurred for the month of June.
My thoughts were….
Actually my immediate reaction was quite tame.
I muttered to myself:
“The gift that keeps on giving”
You see, the amount of superannuation owed to me, even including interest, was still significantly lower than the legal expenses I’d incurred in winning in the Federal Court hearings.
[And not putting a financial amount on the stress and emotional trauma of having to revisit the past regarding what was a relationship of “employer bullying”]
And the fact that we were into the fifth month following the High Court hearing and I was still out of pocket for the legal costs incurred there, was seriously sticking in my craw.
I don’t remember when exactly I opened that email and viewed the solicitor’s bill. I don’t usually do much desk work between Friday afternoon and Saturday night, as a rule.
I remember thinking:
“Yeah, I’ll get around to paying your bill…”
And then closing the email and walking away….
So I received this subsequent email from my solicitors yesterday:
It arrived at 5:29pm, again on a Friday afternoon ….
It read:
Subject: Your Claim and Payment of Your High Court Costs [Initials of Law Firm-Matter.FID87654321]
From: [Name of Head Lawyer]
To: David Moffet; [Name of lawyer 2]: [Name of personal assistant]
Hi David,
I hope this email finds you well despite the lockdown.I wanted to check that you received [name of personal assistant]'s email below that asked for your bank account details so that we can arrange for a transfer to your account of the moneys we have received for legal costs in the successful High Court action. I confirm that we now hold the moneys in our trust account.I also had a call from the solicitor from [law firm acting for your employer] and he said that you'd called him in relation to payment of the costs. I've confirmed to him that we have the money and will arrange for the transfer to you.We look forward to hearing from you.Kind regards
[Name of Head Lawyer]
Partner | etc
[law firm logo, address and disclaimer]
And attached below this was the email sent by the Personal Assistant the previous week.
When I read and re-read this second email….
When I read and re-read this second email, my blood boiled.
Really.
I had to go back and re-read the three lines of blah blah blah that I had skipped in the personal assistant’s email.
Those three lines read:
In relation to your matter, we have now also received a payment on account of the costs order to you in the High Court proceedings from [your employer’s solicitor]. Could you please send us your bank account details so we can ask our finance team to arrangement an appropriate EFT to your account?
Imagine that….
What my law firm should have done is this:
Send two emails.
Send the first email with the good news:
Subject: We’ve received your money from [your employer]!!
And then ask where I wanted the money transferred.
Then send the second email with their bill.
But don’t put the good news that your customer has been waiting months for unannounced at the bottom of an email AFTER you’ve led with your invoice.
That just sucks.
Lawyer’s customers are human beings.
Some lawyers are not.
Does this get done in dental?
We hear similar faux pas on regularly on dental phones.
We hear team members answering the phones so intent on getting names into slots in their appointment schedule that they TOTALLY IGNORE the fact that there’s a real live human being with emotions on the other end of the phone having to deal with a whole lot more important stuff.
We heard this call:
Caller:
“I need to make an appointment for my wife. She’s just finished chemo, and she’s now got four loose teeth that need to come out”
Dental team member:
“I don’t have anything available for six weeks.”
What she should have said was this:
What probably would have been a better response is this:
“Oh I’m so sorry to hear that. How’s your wife going? Is she OK?”
Or
“How’s your wife going? Is she going to be OK?”
In this case the dental team member answering the phone was more concerned with what she didn’t have in her appointment schedule than the fact that she had a real life, life and death scenario on the other end of the phone.
The dental team member totally missed the point of truly connecting with the caller and showing compassion and empathy for their situation, and being able to offer that caller a “virtual hug” in a time of need.
I’d never expect a law firm to give me a “virtual hug”.
I’d never expect a law firm to give me a “virtual hug”.
I don’t think anyone would.
Lawyers have a reputation they need to live down to.
But civility?
I’d have thought that putting money back into a client’s pocket before reaching into that same pocket for their pound of flesh would just be common decency.
Or common sense?
The problem with common sense is that it really isn’t all that common….
***************
LIVE Workshop: Dr David Moffet and Jayne Bandy:
“How To Easily Run, Maintain And Grow The Ultimate Dental Practice In 2022 and Beyond”
If you’re sick and tired of drilling all day long, and not having anything close to what you deserve, to show for it… or if you’ve ever wondered, “What can successful dentists POSSIBLY know, that I don’t?”… then register for this LIVE workshop Thursday November 25, 2021 in Sydney, NSW.
The Ultimate Patient Experience is a simple to build complete Customer Service system in itself that I developed that allowed me to create an extraordinary dental office in an ordinary Sydney suburb. If you’d like to know more, ask me about my free special report.
Those people that are full of empty promises, and those people that are not.
You know the type?
People who say they’ll do something, and then when it comes to the actual doing, they’re MIA [Missing In Action].
They are nowhere to be seen and the promise is unfulfilled.
The job is not done.
Incomplete.
When I was at University….
There was a friend of mine who was notorious for making grand promises that were never realised… so much so that his nickname [used behind his back] was FOS.
He was full of it.
Which was disappointing, because empty promises aside, he was a really nice guy.
But, you just couldn’t reliably plan anything with him.
As a boss, as an employee…
As an employee, as an employer, you want to be known for turning up, and showing up, and getting stuff done.
You want to be known for being a person of your word.
You want to be known for being reliable.
You don’t want to be known for being unreliable, or for letting people down.
You don’t want to be known as a person whose word can’t be trusted, because you fail to deliver.
People who fail to deliver are a real pain.
Life is too short to have people like that in your life.
There are too many nice and likeable people out there to socialise with without having to deal with these “Gunnas”.
A “Gunna” is someone who says:
“I’m gunna do this. And I’m gunna do that…”
And in reality they don’t end up doing anything.
All that they can be relied upon is the fact that they’re gunna do nothing.
You don’t want Gunnas as friends, or as associates, or as employees.
Let them go and be friends with each other and go work for each other.
Doers are much better.
It is always nice to be known as a person of your word.
And it is always nice to have trustworthy and reliable friends, and associates, and employees, who not only will say that they will do something, but ACTUALLY DO do what they say they are going to do.
They complete the task at hand.
The difference between a doer and a gunna?
A doer knows their limitations. They know when to accept a task and when to decline a task. A doer never takes on too many tasks at the one time, because the doer knows that the more you have to do often results in you actually completing less.
A doer is practical and reliable.
A gunna on the other hand, cannot decline. A gunna takes on way too many tasks and rarely completes one of them.
A gunna is followed by or surrounded by a long list of incomplete promises or tasks.
And a gunna sees no problem with this behaviour
A gunna sees their role in life as being of some assistance, whether or not they complete their task, when in fact all they are being asked to do is to complete a certain duty.
People who start things but never finish them are painfully annoying at best, and distressingly frustrating at worst.
A gunna will often fail to attend a certain engagement or appointment, or will turn up late, and believe that their behaviour is acceptable, despite the disappointment that they create by their actions.
A gunna amongst your employees…
When you find that a gunna has accidentally been employed in your organisation, you need to extricate this gunna from your business as quickly as possible, and move rapidly into an organised damage control to minimise the long-term harmful effects that the gunna has caused.
Surgical extraction of the gunna is the only remedy. Nothing else will work.
A gunna never changes. They just stay gunnas.
In the words of author Jim Collins:
“Get the right people on the bus and in the right seat, boot the wrong people off immediately.”
When you meet a gunna socially:
When you meet a gunna socially, identify them quickly, and then say this:
“It was nice meeting you.”
And move away.
And don’t look back.
There are plenty of nice people in the world…
There are plenty of nice people in the world. You don’t need any gunnas.
You don’t need to know them socially.
You don’t want them as employees. Why would you pay them?
And you do not want them as clients or customers or patients. They fail to attend appointments. They make the lamest excuses and promises.
They cannot be trusted.
They waste your time.
And you never get that time back.
And by having them around in your life, they eat away at your faith in human nature.
Kick them out of your head, and jack up the rent there.
Life is way too short to tolerate these parasites.
***************
LIVE Workshop: Dr David Moffet and Jayne Bandy:
“How To Easily Run, Maintain And Grow The Ultimate Dental Practice In 2022 and Beyond”
If you’re sick and tired of drilling all day long, and not having anything close to what you deserve, to show for it… or if you’ve ever wondered, “What can successful dentists POSSIBLY know, that I don’t?”… then register for this LIVE workshop Thursday November 25, 2021 in Sydney, NSW.
The Ultimate Patient Experience is a simple to build complete Customer Service system in itself that I developed that allowed me to create an extraordinary dental office in an ordinary Sydney suburb. If you’d like to know more, ask me about my free special report.
What are you doing in your business to create lasting memorable positive impressions for your customers?
Swedish businessman Jan Carlzon said:
“Anytime a customer comes into contact with any aspect of a business, however remote, that customer has the opportunity to form an impression.”
It is therefore paramount that the customer only receives POSITIVE impressions when coming into contact with your business.
This thought initiates the NO BROKEN WINDOWS theory… a “broken window” is a metaphor used to describe the occurrence of something so obviously out of place in a business that has become tolerated and ignored by those working in [and owning] the business, yet is a glaringly obvious defect to someone newly visiting the business.
A “broken window” could be”:
A dirty glass door
Cobwebs in view
Dusty corners
Crookedly hung pictures
Poorly positioned bins and water coolers
Untidy desks
An unprofessional greeting
A poorly answered phone…
The list can go on…. Easy to see that what becomes routine for us as employees and owners of a business, may be seen by someone visiting us to be glaringly obvious DEFECTS that need rectifying.
Broken windows will create long lasting negative impressions for visitors to your business.
And broken windows are not always physical. They can also be can be actions and behaviours.
Your customers and clients want to be shown respect and attention by your employees working in your business, and will form long lasting NEGATIVE IMPRESSIONS when they receive attention that falls short of their perceived expectations.
For instance, callers who phone your business during business hours and who receive a recorded message to leave their details will hardly feel “valued” when they are told during that message:
“Your call is important to us.”
Yes….. but:
“your call is so important we don’t have sufficient staff available to take your call during normal business hours”
is the message being conveyed.
And it’s a lasting impression, that’s for sure…
Most callers to a dental office who have their call go to a message, usually end the call without leaving a message, and then phone another dental office for what they want.
And what they want is someone to solve their dental concern.
What they do not want is an understaffed dental office pretending that it cares, when it obviously does not care.
I was once told:
“In the play of life, there is no backstage.”
Everything is on show.
All aspects of your business must be on parade, and ready and available for inspection at any time.
You cannot have areas of your business that are “off limits” to your visitors and customers.
Your business cannot present weaknesses as being acceptable.
It must always be SHOWTIME at your business all the time.
Putting your “best foot forward” at all times is the easiest way to build likeability and rapport with your customers.
*******************
LIVE Workshop: Dr David Moffet and Jayne Bandy:
“How To Easily Run, Maintain And Grow The Ultimate Dental Practice In 2022 and Beyond”
If you’re sick and tired of drilling all day long, and not having anything close to what you deserve, to show for it… or if you’ve ever wondered, “What can successful dentists POSSIBLY know, that I don’t?”… then register for this LIVE workshop Thursday November 25, 2021 in Sydney, NSW.
The Ultimate Patient Experience is a simple to build complete Customer Service system in itself that I developed that allowed me to create an extraordinary dental office in an ordinary Sydney suburb. If you’d like to know more, ask me about my free special report.
Two and a half years ago Jayne and I relocated …. We sold our Sydney home and moved out of Sydney to live full time in our other home in rural NSW.
With no regrets.
There’s a lot less people in the country. I think our village has about 150-200 weekday residents that swells to about 1000 people on the weekend.
Morning walks in winter are tough.
A lot of you know that I have a personal daily commitment to walk a 10km, ninety minute power walk each and every day. And when it’s been zero degrees Celsius and minus two degrees Celsius the last two mornings, that sort of temperature can test a person’s commitment.
But I’m up for it…
However, there’s another small hurdle…
Depending upon my mornings, there are some days where I have other commitments in the morning that I have to schedule my exercise around.
And that means sometimes having to be setting out for a walk in the dark.
Which can be tough.
Especially because we have no streetlights on our roads.
The local village has streetlights.
But the village is a mile away and only accounts for about eighteen minutes of the morning walk.
So, I have a headlamp.
Which I wear to illuminate the roads, and even my driveway, while walking in the pitch black of country-living darkness.
This morning in the darkness a wombat crossed the road right in front of me… and about a month ago, another wombat walked right across in front of me on my driveway while I was filming a Facebook live video, in the dark, before I set off for my walk.
I kid you not.
The thing with the headlamp…
The headlamp is a combination of LED lights, and I choose to wear it on the brightest setting.
And why not?
After all, if it’s pitch black out there, and I want to make sure that I don’t get attacked by a nocturnal marsupial.
Or a nocturnal mammal, for that matter.
The headlamp is powered by three triple-A size batteries.
The thing about the headlamp is that with time, the batteries start to lose their power.
Slowly at first.
But the light starts to get dimmer.
And it FEELS dimmer.
But like most people, I don’t often change the batteries as quickly as I should, because I feel that the batteries, and the amount of light being emitted, is still OK.
But it never ever is….
But it never is OK.
And we know this, because each and every time that we finally succumb to the realisation that it is TIME TO CHANGE THE OLD BATTERIES, the subsequent improvement in performance of said lighting with new batteries delivering, is several orders of magnitude better.
Without a shadow of a doubt.
This same thing happened to me… yesterday morning I went out with LED light that I thought was OK-ish, but overnight I changed the batteries and the difference this morning was palpably staggering.
It was like DAYLIGHT coming out of my headlamp!!
Do you remember the days of fluorescent tube lighting?
In the “olden days”, everybody had fluorescent tube lighting somewhere in their house or their office…
In our family home we had them in the kitchen and the family room, and behind pelmets in each bedroom.
And I remember my dentist neighbour at work… [yes, the rooms next door to my practice were occupied y a dentist named Dr Ken Osborne].
I remember walking out my front door one evening as Ken was locking up his rooms for the day and he laughed and said this to me:
“You’ve got to come and look at this. We’ve just changed the lights in the waiting room.”
And Ken opened up his front door and the light being emitted from his new fluorescent tubes was staggeringly brilliant.
You know, sometimes life is exactly like that….
Sometimes in life we battle on too long with lights that are failing, with running shoes with worn soles, with knives and scissors [and pencils even!!] that are blunt.
When the action of replacing with “new”, is like a breath of fresh air, or forgive the pun], a LIGHTBULB MOMENT.
Sometimes we simply need to have someone FLICK THE SWITCH for us, or we need to take a couple of steps back, pause, and review.
And notice the AMAZING difference!!
Sometimes we can reassess and gain clarity on our own…
But more often than not, the reason our lights go dim and our knives get blunt and our pencil loses its point, is that we as individuals are JUST TOO BUSY to stop and take a break and survey the landscape.
When I talk to dentists about their businesses…
When I talk to dentists and ask them about their businesses, they often tell me that they’re doing OK, and they are happy, but when I ask a little more deeply, I find out that their version of OK is really not that OK.
In reality, they’ve become so focused in their own business, that they’ve lost the relativity of how their business could be doing better, in relation to other similar businesses, other local businesses, and to the economy in general.
In reality, they’ve been so busy gazing at their own navels that they’ve not realised that the lights all around them have dimmed.
And that they should have paused and replaced their tired battery supply [metaphorically speaking].
The point I’m trying to raise is that some dental practice owners get lulled into a false sense of security that they’re doing OK, when the harsh reality is, as Dr Omer Reed said to me, that 95% of dentists reaching the age of 65 will not be able to afford to retire on an income equivalent to their working income, because they haven’t accumulated enough savings and assets during their working life to fund a satisfying retirement income.
And that, is the tragedy of modern day dentistry.
Who are you using as your point of reference, as to how well YOU are actually doing?
Because a lot of the time, your version of “doing OK” is far from OK.
Because you haven’t compared it to anyone with even a vague idea of what OK is in reality.
Sometimes in life, in reality, you just need someone to come along and change your light tubes, replace your weak batteries with new ones, and point you in a new direction…. And things will be dramatically different.
Don’t be too proud to seek assistance, even if you feel that you are doing OK.
Remember, the best athletes, the best business brains, achieve what they achieve with collaboration with people a lot smarter and wiser and experienced than them.
As my good friend Dr Ron always used to say:
“No one is as smart as all of us.”
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LIVE Workshop: Dr David Moffet and Jayne Bandy:
“How To Easily Run, Maintain And Grow The Ultimate Dental Practice In 2022 and Beyond”
If you’re sick and tired of drilling all day long, and not having anything close to what you deserve, to show for it… or if you’ve ever wondered, “What can successful dentists POSSIBLY know, that I don’t?”… then register for this LIVE workshop Thursday November 25, 2021 in Sydney, NSW.
The Ultimate Patient Experience is a simple to build complete Customer Service system in itself that I developed that allowed me to create an extraordinary dental office in an ordinary Sydney suburb. If you’d like to know more, ask me about my free special report.
You can order your copy here: Click Link To Order
You can order your copy here: 
You can order your copy here: 
