Success for Our Youth

Nearly 20 years ago, we launched our first youth seminar at a summer camp in Hunt, Texas with the goal of giving high school and college students a 7-year “leap” ahead in their career and their life. Like most things I have experienced in my life, I have learned more from these programs than I think people have learned from me! As one example, The 13 Biggest Mistakes Parents Make and How to Avoid Them (www.MistakesParentsMake.com) was the book produced after nearly 14 years of working with youth in our seminars. It contains 13 “mistakes” prevalent in the lives of many youth that can easily be avoided or prevented early in life by parents and other positive influences in a young person’s life.

Today, the ideas, techniques, and systems we have taught young people to use to get ahead in life are taught in the LEAP Foundation program (www.LEAPfondation.com)

Dr. Bill Dorfman (www.BillDorfman.com) and I established the LEAP Foundation just a few years ago as a non-profit education foundation to provide a unique, 6-day experience for young people who are eager to get ahead in life.

Part of the mission of the foundation is to provide sponsorships and scholarships to deserving youth around the country who desire to attend the program. Through the generous donations of Crown Council members (www.CrownCouncil.com), donations from James Malinchak (www.Malinchak.com) and his seminar participants and many others, youth can attend the LEAP program on partial or full merit-based or need-based scholarships. Scholarship applications can be found on the LEAP Foundation website.

Whether you have a young person in your life that could benefit, you would like to sponsor a deserving young person, or make a donation to benefit a deserving youth, the LEAP Foundation and its programs are changing lives.

This summer’s LEAP program will be held at the UCLA campus August 9-14, 2010. Hundreds of youth from all over the country will attend for 6 action-packed days of learning from mentors who will show them how to:
• Dramatically increase their study effectiveness, study less and make better grades.
• Set goals that become reality.
• Find successful mentors in any field who will share how they did it.
• The secret of the top 20 percent in any field.
• Become a top communicator to get results.
• How to land the best job in any field without using a resume.
• A secret tool that will get you in any door for a scholarship, job, or any key position.
And much, much more.

My favorite part of the LEAP program is the Mentor Roundtable where we assemble over 50 successful mentors from different professions and disciplines that sit around a large ballroom where the students can go and interview them to learn from their experience. Based on the idea that it is “easier to copy genius than it is to create mediocrity,” students learn how to ask the best questions in order to gain from the experience of others so they don’t have to take as many years learning from their own trials and errors!

So, consider this an invitation to spread the word about LEAP. We are looking forward to a great program this summer with outstanding youth and mentors who will come to share the best of what they have done for the benefit of the next generation.

Just go to www.LEAPfoundation.com for enrollment, sponsor and scholarship applications and we’ll look forward to seeing your youth this summer for a LEAP ahead in life.

3 Secrets of the WOW! Experience

Everybody knows that the most powerful form of marketing in dentistry is word-of-mouth marketing: People telling people about your practice.

I am frequently asked how one can generate more word-of-mouth marketing or how they can get more referrals from their patients.

How?

With a Wow!

Create such an amazing experience that patients will be compelled to tell everyone they know about you.

Consider these three areas where you can make an every day experience in your office into a WOW experience that people will talk about:

1. Services. The dental treatment you provide and how you provide it. Clinical excellence that starts with dental work that looks good, feels good, and lasts a long time. That is the first step in the dental services you provide. Then consider how you deliver it: Painless injections, a gentle touch, sedation, etc. Do you provide the dental treatment people are looking for and do you deliver it in a way that is comfortable and easy?

2. Amenities. What do you provide your patients beyond what they expect? Relaxing chairs, warm towels, neck pillows, videos, or anything that makes the experience more comfortable. The amenities add an extra personal touch that makes the experience special.

3. Personal treatment. Far more powerful than anything you do to create a WOW! experience is the personal service you provide. It is what we call Total Patient Service. Total Patient Service is focused on meeting patients where they are emotionally, exceeding their expectations and then moving them forward toward life-time care. It is how you interact with the PERSON that will ultimately determine the WOW!

Consider this example that happened this week at one of the offices with which we work: I had personally referred a business acquaintance to this practice. It was close to her home and I knew the team would WOW her. And WOW her they did. Within moments of her departure from the office, I received a text message which said:

“They were awesome and definitely made me feel comfortable! I’ll send my husband and everybody else over there.”

That’s the ticket! If a patient walks out your door and immediately starts thinking of everyone they are going to tell about you, you have scored a WOW! And the referrals and word-of-mouth will come.

So how can you increase the WOW factor in your office?
• Services

• Amenities

• Personal Treatment

They all contribute to the WOW! It is the personal treatment is the multiplier.

Sit down with your team this week and review the three areas of the WOW experience. How can you improve in each area? Simple improvements in each department may yield huge returns in case acceptance, patient retention, and word-of-mouth.

WOW!