Are your to-do lists leading to more stress than productivity? In this episode, I've invited Robert Kim to discuss why it's time to throw out the traditional to-do list and focus on what truly matters. Robert shares his revolutionary approach to managing tasks, emphasizing the importance of aligning daily actions with overarching goals. Dive deep into the intricacies of prioritizing tasks in high-pressure environments like startups, and discover how Robert’s experiences at Zuub, an innovative company in the dental insurance verification space, have shaped his unique perspective.

Robert takes us through the journey of Zuub, explaining how the company addresses inefficiencies in practices to improve case acceptance rates and streamline patient engagement. Along the way, you’ll gain valuable insights into the art of prioritizing tasks based on their impact on clients and the overall mission. This conversation is a must-listen for anyone struggling to manage their workload effectively or those looking to elevate their productivity strategy.

What You'll Learn in This Episode:

• Why traditional to-do lists might be holding you back.
• How to focus on critical tasks that align with your main objectives.
• The challenges of managing priorities in a startup environment.
• Insights into operational inefficiencies in practices.
• How Zuub improves case acceptance rates and patient engagement.
• The importance of prioritizing based on impact rather than volume.

Ready to redefine your approach to productivity? Click play and transform your to-do lists with, Robert Kim!

‍

‍

You can reach out to Robert Kim here:

Website: https://zuub.com/

‍

Mentions and Links:

Businesses/Services:

Amazon

‍

Terms:

PMS - Practice Management Software

‍

If you want your questions answered on Monday Morning Episodes, ask me on these platforms:

My Newsletter: https://thedentalmarketer.lpages.co/newsletter/

The Dental Marketer Society Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/2031814726927041

‍

‍

Michael: Hey, Robert. So talk to us. What's one piece of advice you can give us this Monday morning?

Robert: I'd say throw out your to do list.

Michael: Why is that?

Robert: So I think that too many of us have the best of intentions, and oftentimes we create a lot of these punch lists of things that, we think that we need to get done, we'd like to get done, whether they're aspirational or tactical, or whatever the case might be, and oftentimes we lose sight of what we really need to get done and those to do lists, While they can be great in terms of getting your thoughts down, I think that oftentimes we use them a bit as a crutch of well, these are the only things I need to do, or it can be the flip side to become this overwhelming terror filled list of things that you don't think you can ever get done.

What I mean by getting rid of the to do list is remember what are the things that you really need to get done. Why are you getting those things done? And write those things down and focus on that.

Michael: Now, with the to do list. could this be the way of remembering things though? Like for example, if we were going through so many things throughout the motions, I feel like sometimes I'm like, I got to write this down or else I'm going to forget it.

Robert: you're absolutely right. I would say that. if your mind is as porous as mine, and mine is a complete sieve, if I don't write something down, it doesn't exist.

It's gone. It's in the ether, right? So I'm not saying don't take notes. Don't write things down. because without it, we wouldn't be able to, function on a day to day basis. What I'm advocating though, is all of those to dos they should all bubble up and align to something that.

Is at a higher order of things that need to get done for a particular purpose. So what I like to do for myself and what I recommend to my teams on a daily basis, you know, we're a startup company. There are a million different competing priorities. And if I were to look at my punch list, I'm looking at it right now over here on the side.

It's overwhelming. And to the point of potentially causing paralysis if you were to just try to operate off of that punch list, what I'm recommending is let's remember what's the focus. Why are all of these things on that list? What is it that you're trying to accomplish? And if you look at it from that lens, that helps to prioritize the things that you absolutely need to get done.

Some things are deadline based, and if there is a hard backstop that you can't go beyond, of course, that's going to be prioritized, but all of those other things, the things that you really feel like you need to get done, you just don't know how to get started. Or you find the lack of motivation to get started.

It's because you're losing sight of what that larger vision, that larger goal is.

Michael: Gotcha. Okay. So you mentioned it to, like you're a startup company, right?

What happens when there's stuff that needs to get done deadline based, is there a way to gauge it to where it's like, it's not that important.

It is important. Maybe this could wait another, did I put a deadline when I didn't even need to put a deadline kind of thing? You know what I mean? But that all also takes time to sit down and look through.

Robert: So let me give you a little bit of color and context of what it is that we do here.

I'll make it a little bit more personal, but how I, go about my day. So at Zoob, our number one selling product is automated insurance verification. You know, Offices come to us with the need because they're overwhelmed in their daily task of. verifying insurances withthe various portals or calling these insurance companies, wasting 20 to 40 hours a week just in that activity, right?

It's a never ending list of things that need to get done on a daily basis. So we take that on for them. The way that we prioritize things here and for myself is anything that's client facing, because this is such a mission critical operation within their business. If it's impacting the client, that always goes up to the top.

Now, there are things that we have to do to prioritize that punch list. So the overarching theme is impact a client and how severe it is. If it's severity level one, then that's something we get on right away. If it's something that is impacts the client, but the client can actually get the work done, it might not be optimal.

They might be a little bit slower than they would like. That's something that we're still going to give immediate attention to, but it's not as severe as that level one, right? It all comes down to immediate impact a client, but then there's a secondary overarching goal and that is to improve the life of our client.

they might sound like they're one in the same, but it really isn't. The second one is what can we do? What are things that we haven't done yet that will impact our clients in the way that in the future it will make their lives better. It will give them back more time. It will help them to focus more on patient care things like that.

those are the activities that we would prioritize next. And it's a matter of filling up that queue on a daily basis of which of them fall under the following buckets and then knocking them off one at a time.

Michael: Gotcha, okay. Is that how Zoob kind of came out to be? Where you were like, you're in a practice and you're thinking, Hey, how can we kind of like eliminate some of these high priorities, but like, you know what I mean, checklist items?

Don't take up much time or

Robert: where Zube came in the whole team were all veterans dental space. And what we saw were that a lot of practices were because of the inefficiencies, either whether it's operationally related or PMS related, they were leaving an awful lot of money on the table with their patients.

Yeah. and it wasn't necessarily a fault of their own. It was fault of the available resources and the tools. So we started down the road of increasing case acceptance. And we looked at the way that most practices, your average practice, I'm not talking about 1 percent that has an amazing treatment coordinator.

They have amazing collateral and material and all of those things combined. That process runs effectively and efficiently 100 percent of the time those aren't the practices I'm talking about. I'm talking about your All average practice the practices that are starting out and they don't necessarily have everything figured out.

How can we help them maximize every potential of every patient? We started out with case acceptance and we created this beautiful platform where we make it as easy to understand what a patient's obligation is, what the patients are signing up for, as it would be if they were to go look at product on Amazon or look at their checkout on any other website that they're familiar with the realization from going down that road was the insurance verification process was broken and it was a crucial process for them to be able to deliver these treatment plans.

You can't tell a patient how much their potential out of pocket expense would be if you don't have that. insurance properly verified and you have a limited amount of time. It's from when the case is being displayed and discussed with patient to when they walk out that door, that's your highest conversion of moment, right?

the other side of that coin wasif that's when we need to convert the most, what do we do when they leave? And that's where the other side of Zoob was created. And that's, we would help practices with that cadence, with that reminders, with the ability to reach out to the patients, give them that same patient friendly format that they walk them through in the office.

And give that to them on their phone when they're at home so they can peruse it at their own leisure, they can think about financing options and sign their consent forms, schedule for that appointment for that treatment and move on from there. So that was the Genesis of where we started as a company.

the automated insurance verification portion has been a game changer in the life of most of our practices. Yeah.

Michael: No. Yeah. I see that. It takes up a lot of time. And so it's so interesting that you mentioned throughout your checklist. Cause it's part of the thing that every front office comes in and it's are you doing it?

Are you doing it? You know what I mean? The practice owner asked the front office that. So it's something super important that we should do. Now, when it comes back to the checklist and ZOOP, can both kind of work together in the sense of how do you guys work together with the front office

Robert: Yeah. On the average day a ZOOP, practice would do the following. You would log into your PMS or into the ZOOP portal and you would see your schedule of patients that are scheduled to come in either that day or a number of days in advance. Okay. Every office is a little bit different in their workflow.

If you happen to be a Medicaid, Medicare heavy office, those need to be verified day of typically. And, if you have 30, 40, some of our practices have hundreds of patients that are scheduled to be seen on, that day to go through each and every one of those patients on the same day to verify their, insurance status.

You need an army individuals. So what they do today is they log into zoom and they'll see immediately on the dashboard, the status of all of those different patients that were verified that day. And they only now need to deal with the exceptions. Patients that happen to have their insurance lapsed or the patients that their insurance information was incorrect or their date of birth was incorrect and so they weren't able to be verified.

Those are the 2 percent of the exceptions as opposed to having to deal with the 30, 40, 100 patients on a daily basis. And then they go about the rest of the day. The amount of time and all of those to do's and check boxes that they need to do is now shrunk. That's essentially how they operate with Zoo on a daily basis.

Michael: Nice, man. I appreciate it. Robert, thank you so much for your time. I appreciate it. And if anyone wanted to reach out to you, where can they find you?

Robert: They can find us on www. zoob. com. That's Z U UB as in boy. com. And take a look around. If you have any questions, fill out a request for a demo and we'd be happy to help them.

Michael: Awesome. So that's going to be the show notes below. And at the same time, Rob, thank you so much for being with me on this Monday morning episode.

Robert: My pleasure, Michael.

‍