Skip to content
Back to Blog

979 (880 Replay): Metric Mondays: “I Feel Like We Should Produce More!” – Dr. Barrett Straub

For the month of December, we look back at some favorite episodes of 2025. In this episode, Kirk Behrendt brings back Dr. Barrett Straub, ACT’s CEO, to break down the one basic equation you need to know to produce more while working less. Stop spending 220 days at the office! To learn how to produce more the right way, listen to Episode 979 of The Best Practices Show!

Learn More About Dr. Straub:

Learn More About ACT Dental:

More Helpful Links for a Better Practice & a Better Life:

Main Takeaways:

  • There are two ways to produce more: work more days or produce more per day.
  • Figure out production per day and your gross production target for the year.
  • Set your goals and make decisions based on data, not with emotions.
  • Just working more days is not the answer. You need a plan.

Quotes:

“As a private practice dentist myself for nearly 20 years, I can say that a lot of my goal setting revolved around not data but this emotion of, ‘I feel like we should produce more.’ It comes from deep within. It's not backed by data, and it's this, ‘Let's do more next year, team.’ That usually is a valid feeling, and it probably is a good goal. But without this next level of data and how you're going to do it, it's not proven with data and it's not a data decision.” (3:13—3:49) -Dr. Straub

“‘I feel like we should produce more.’ Okay. Let's recognize that emotion and let's go pull some data. I'm going to present some really simple data, an equation that a kindergartner could do. It's going to be days worked multiplied by production per day equals gross production. It is the easiest equation and the one that almost no dentists track. How many days did I work last month? I'm going to multiply that by my average production, gross production per day. That's my gross production. So, let's say we have this burning desire of, ‘I want to do more.’ We can only do more one of two ways. One, we can work more days. So, if that variable in that equation goes up, your gross production goes up. Work more days. We don't love that. We actually want to try to find a way to work less. The second way to increase your gross production is produce more per day — work the same days but produce more per day. Now, it’s easier said than done. There are lots of strategies to do that. But any time you're like, ‘I need to produce more’ — I did this all the time. ‘Hey, team. We're going to do 10% more next year. Let's go. Let's rally. Let's do this. Let's collect,’ but nothing about like, ‘Well, Doctor, how many days are you going to work?’ ‘I don't know.’ ‘What's our average production per day? How do we increase it?’ ‘I don't know. But let's just do more.’ So, again, I want to do more. I can either work more days or produce more per day.” (3:50—5:30) -Dr. Straub

“The average dentist, according to the ADA, works 220 days a year. That's insane. Prior to the pandemic, we used to think anyone north of 200 was a lot. That was too much. So, figure that out. More days is not the answer.” (7:47—8:06) -Kirk

“Here's what I want you to do. ‘Okay, Barrett. How do I pull this together?’ Number one, go into your practice today and you're going to pull one number: production per day for the first quarter or year-to-date for the first quarter of this year in 2025. You've had X amount of days. You have gross production. What have you produced per day? Number two, I want you to say, what is my gross production target this year? So, we'll do some math. If you said, ‘Well, I want to do $1.5 million. That's our target. That's our goal. Currently, up until April 22nd, we've done $6,300 per day in production,’ you divide that, and you're going to see how many days you need to work this year in order to hit that target, because your production per day potential is basically what you're doing right now. You can't magically make that increase without a plan.” (8:12—9:24) -Dr. Straub

“Time is the new rich. This is important. It's so important to understand how your time affects your business. You can't keep adding more time to the business because the business is like a monster. It'll keep eating more of your time, and that's when you get angry.” (12:40—12:59) -Kirk

“There are going to be things you didn't plan on. You're going to get sick a few days. This is why you have to do this math, so that you can tell yourself a good story around your production and, ‘Do I really need to produce more?’ You can say, ‘No, I've got my arms around my business.’ When you do this, I promise you, you feel confident being a business owner and you can say, ‘No, I'm going to be good,’ and you can give your attention to the things that matter.” (13:57—14:21) -Kirk

“If you're like me, my whole career, I'd get to the end of the year, I would look back at the data, and say, ‘Huh, that's what we produced.’ It either fell short or it exceeded, but it was a realization after the fact. What we're saying is today, in your office, you can pretty much predict almost to the dollar what your gross production in the year 2025 is on December 31st literally by saying, ‘I'm going to work this many days, and I know we produce this per day.’” (14:25—14:56) -Dr. Straub

“If you're like me and you're like most dental teams, we always say, ‘Let's do more. Let's do more.’ No one quite knows how. But imagine if it's like, ‘We've just got to hit this one number each day.’ When we hit that one number, the rest of this works. Then, we can take those days off, and we're going to hit that gross production target, which then allows us to invest in this, and do this, and invest back into the company. And it dials back to one number per day. Now, those of you that are overachievers, you're going to dig into like, ‘Okay, production per day, Monday is different than Tuesday and Wednesday.’ Great. Awesome. Set that. You can go into production per hour, production per visit, all based on production per day. You can even get more granular to say each hygienist needs to do this per hour, and each doctor needs to do this per hour to hit that PPD. But it starts with this one basic equation: how many days am I going to work? What do I produce each day? That's my gross production. That's what I'm going to do this year unless I make a decision to change it.” (15:14—16:15) -Dr. Straub

“Back in the day, 31 years ago, we would say, ‘Just produce 20% more and add that to the formula. Make it up.’ Then, people would go, ‘Where'd you get that from?’ ‘I don't know. I went to a seminar, and they said to add 20%. Figure it out.’ Not a good way to do it nowadays. So, when you're feeling that emotion, like, ‘I feel like we should produce more,’ take a breath and use this formula. I promise you it works. And if you're stuck, as always, don't stay there.” (16:20—16:50) -Kirk

Snippets:

0:00 Introduction.

1:37 Why this is an important topic.

2:48 Why emotion comes into this equation.

3:49 The equation for gross production.

7:06 Two key numbers to pull.

12:35 Time is the new rich.

14:21 Final thoughts.

16:47 ACT’s BPA.

Dr. Barrett Straub Bio:

Dr. Barrett Straub practices general and sedation dentistry in Port Washington, Wisconsin. He has worked hard to develop his practice into a top-performing, fee-for-service practice that focuses on improving the lives of patients through dentistry.

A graduate of Marquette Dental School, Dr. Straub’s advanced training and CE includes work at the Spear Institute, LVI, DOCS, and as a member of the Milwaukee Study Club. He is a past member of the Wisconsin Dental Association Board of Trustees and was awarded the Marquette Dental School 2017 Young Alumnus of the Year. As a former ACT coaching client that experienced first-hand the transformation that coaching can provide, he is passionate about helping other dentists create the practice they’ve always wanted.

Dr. Straub loves to hunt, golf, and spend winter on the ice, curling. He is married to Katie, with two daughters, Abby and Elizabeth.
ACT Dental Team

ACT Dental Team

    Subscribe to our newsletter