Latest / Founder Talk with Alex Sheridan / The Moment This Dentist Stopped Drilling and Started Building an Empire | Dr. Abhishek Nagaraj

Transcript

The Moment This Dentist Stopped Drilling and Started Building an Empire | Dr. Abhishek Nagaraj · Founder Talk with Alex Sheridan

• 0:00
  So Doctor Raj, you walked into a business that was about 40 years
• 0:04
  old, broken and going nowhere, and within 12 months you guys
• 0:07
  quadrupled the revenue and then you did it again and then you
• 0:12
  did it again. And today you run a multi
• 0:14
  location operation, Multi location operation in the
• 0:17
  station and the patients in a dental management firm built on
• 0:22
  one idea that most business owners are world class at their
• 0:25
  craft, but they're often times terrible at running the actual
• 0:27
  business. And that gap is what's costing
• 0:30
  them everything that they want. So Doctor Rush, welcome to the
• 0:33
  Founder Talk podcast, man, how you feeling?
• 0:35
  It's a it's a pleasure to be here.
• 0:36
  It's an honor. Thank you for having me on.
• 0:38
  This, Yeah, I'm excited. Move this over a little bit
• 0:39
  here. There we go.
• 0:43
  Perfect. So let's talk about that turn
• 0:45
  around story. So you quadrupled your the
• 0:47
  business's revenue in 12 months. Sounds like there's a story
• 0:51
  there. There's definitely a story
• 0:53
  there. You know what, I wish I could
• 0:55
  take all the credit, but this is me and my wife, Anushka.
• 0:58
  You know, we, we, we were dentists, right?
• 1:00
  We'd worked with other dentists for a while and for about a year
• 1:05
  or two and we realized the vision was different, right?
• 1:09
  We wanted to do a more same day dentistry vision where people
• 1:13
  could come in and get dentistry done the same day and walk out
• 1:16
  because let's, let's face it, nobody really wants to be at the
• 1:19
  dentist, right? I think we're one of the
• 1:21
  probably the, one of the most hated professions out there.
• 1:24
  And yeah, and we, we basically built our business that way
• 1:30
  knowing fully well that people want to come in, spend as little
• 1:33
  time as they can, get all the dentistry that that they can get
• 1:36
  done in one visit and get out of there as quickly as we can.
• 1:39
  And that I think was the foundation of how we grew our
• 1:42
  first business. So what were they doing?
• 1:44
  Were they very slow? It was scheduling.
• 1:46
  It was like long process, like what was the before?
• 1:48
  And then what'd you guys do to change it?
• 1:50
  Yeah, that's a really good question.
• 1:51
  I think most of dentistry's always been, hey, I'm going to
• 1:54
  go come in scene today and the dentist would then set up
• 1:57
  multiple visits or appointments to see patients.
• 2:01
  That means we're just delaying the torture of these patients,
• 2:05
  right? Why did they do that?
• 2:06
  Though I think part of it was that's just how dentistry was
• 2:09
  practiced for a really long time.
• 2:11
  It was more along the lines of the dentist didn't want to do a
• 2:14
  whole lot of comprehensive care in one visit because the dentist
• 2:19
  always thought, oh, this is a lot for patients, but the
• 2:22
  patients are asking for it. The dentists were like, no,
• 2:24
  we're going to just do like one tooth or two teeth at a time and
• 2:27
  then we're going to bring them back four or five times to
• 2:29
  finish a root canal. Let me tell you, I haven't had a
• 2:32
  root canal, but I've had some friends who've been in pain.
• 2:36
  And when you extend out that process over a four or five
• 2:39
  visit appointment, that's real torture.
• 2:42
  So that became the foundation of how we look at people.
• 2:46
  It's about giving, saving their time, but also making dentists a
• 2:51
  lot more comprehensive. And that's what we kind of
• 2:53
  really coach our dentists up to do is make them comprehensive.
• 2:57
  Don't waste people's time. Let's get done.
• 2:59
  Let's do as much dentistry as the patients can actually
• 3:02
  handle. Let's make dentistry affordable.
• 3:05
  Let's let's give them easy financing that way and let's
• 3:08
  give them a great experience along the way so that they can
• 3:11
  keep coming back because now they relate the dentist to not a
• 3:14
  lot of pain. And I think that's the insight
• 3:17
  for founders listening regardless of the business too,
• 3:19
  is get feedback from your customers, listen to your
• 3:22
  clients and then create a great experience for them.
• 3:24
  How did you guys know that this was the right way?
• 3:26
  Were you just asking patients and things or what?
• 3:28
  Yeah. You know, I have to give credit
• 3:30
  to my previous job where I started out, I worked at for
• 3:33
  about a year and three months. And I saw that as a dentist, as
• 3:36
  a dentist, as an associate dentist.
• 3:38
  And I saw we were 4 dentists in the practice and one or two
• 3:42
  dentists were, were getting a lot of stuff done there right in
• 3:45
  1/1 visit. And I'd look at them and say the
• 3:48
  patients weren't complaining. In fact, the patients were like,
• 3:51
  thank you so much. They paid them a lot of money,
• 3:53
  but they were like, thank you, You got everything done.
• 3:56
  And one of the big bottlenecks in dentistry is as Dennis,
• 4:00
  sometimes we're the bottleneck, right?
• 4:02
  We think patients don't want to sit in the chair for three
• 4:05
  hours. That's not true.
• 4:06
  If we, if I tell you, if you had a mouthful of dentistry in
• 4:08
  cavities and if I told you, Hey Alex, I can get all of this
• 4:12
  done, but it'll take about 3 hours, it'd be like sign me up.
• 4:15
  For it do it. Do it get?
• 4:16
  It done because I don't want to come back six times.
• 4:18
  Exactly, that just makes that makes more shots more.
• 4:21
  Pain, right? Let's reduce.
• 4:22
  That OK. And so making those changes did
• 4:24
  what for the business and there had to been other things you
• 4:26
  guys did because that's a drastic swing.
• 4:28
  You come in, you know, to a company that's like broken and,
• 4:30
  and not doing much and then just boom, 12 months later, it's
• 4:33
  quadrupled. Right on right.
• 4:35
  I think that's the basis of how we treated patients.
• 4:37
  We said, hey, you have problems Here's let's be real, right.
• 4:40
  I think one of the Dennis we have as Dennis, we also have
• 4:43
  this thing called approval rejection.
• 4:45
  We're afraid of being rejected by patients because they they
• 4:48
  say, no, no, rejection is just part of the game, right?
• 4:51
  Sometimes people aren't going to fully reconcile the fact that
• 4:55
  they have problems in their mouth.
• 4:56
  That's OK. We didn't put it there right.
• 4:58
  And I think as long as we can have those real conversations
• 5:02
  with patients and say, hey, these are problems, I see.
• 5:04
  And I what we found also was that they people needed to see
• 5:08
  it, to believe it. Just having these cameras,
• 5:11
  interval cameras in their mouth, just showing them really quickly
• 5:14
  what they are like. You can talk about X-rays.
• 5:16
  X-rays can get a little too technical.
• 5:18
  You can talk about that all day long, or you can actually show
• 5:21
  them what the problem is. We want to have a shared
• 5:23
  experience with the patient where they are part of the
• 5:25
  treatment plan. The best treatment plants that
• 5:28
  my wife and I came up with are the ones that the patients came
• 5:32
  up with because they were asking us what is this that I see on
• 5:35
  this photo? What is that black dot?
• 5:37
  Is that a cavity? Now you know that you won half
• 5:40
  the battle and now you can actually educate them.
• 5:43
  And once you've done that, the perceived value is really high.
• 5:46
  Once the perceived value on any procedure is high, people are
• 5:49
  more motivated. They have a propelling force to
• 5:51
  go get that done the same visit. So I think that became the
• 5:55
  foundation. So we were able to do five times
• 5:58
  more dentistry just in the first month.
• 6:00
  In fact, we had some team members who pushed back on that
• 6:04
  said, oh, patients in this area can't afford this stuff.
• 6:07
  Nobody here likes financing. Nobody here likes evening
• 6:10
  appointments. We broke all those myths in a
• 6:13
  span of 30 days. Of course, we probably turned
• 6:16
  some team members over who'd who weren't, you know, behind the
• 6:18
  vision, but really got other team members excited because
• 6:23
  they were here to serve. Ultimately, I think as Dennis,
• 6:26
  we have to be there to serve anybody.
• 6:27
  Dennis, any business owner, I think we're here to serve our
• 6:30
  clients. And if he can't do that, then
• 6:32
  why are we in business? Do you find that some people,
• 6:35
  especially in your industry, feel like if you're all about
• 6:38
  making more sales or growing that for some reason you're not
• 6:40
  patient focused? Because I feel like what you
• 6:42
  guys just did was very patient focused, but also increased
• 6:45
  revenue. So it's like, don't they sort of
• 6:47
  go hand in hand? They absolutely go hand in hand
• 6:50
  and you know, sales, you know that, you know, the definition
• 6:53
  of sales is about helping people.
• 6:54
  I think Mark Cuban summarized it the best.
• 6:56
  You have to be able to help people as long as you're not
• 6:59
  being pushy or salesy about about and saying things like,
• 7:03
  what do I need to get this done right?
• 7:05
  We don't want to do that. We want to educate people.
• 7:08
  We want to give them the power to make their decisions.
• 7:11
  We want to give them maybe one or two options and say this is
• 7:15
  what happens and talk about consequences.
• 7:17
  I, I think a lot of times as owners, we talk about why people
• 7:21
  should do something, but we never tell them what the
• 7:23
  consequence of not doing it would be, right And moving, you
• 7:28
  know, that that moves the needle a lot.
• 7:30
  And dentistry never gets cheaper, right?
• 7:33
  More, you know, you if you waited just always more money,
• 7:36
  more time, more pain. So I think that's enough of a
• 7:40
  motivation for people to take action.
• 7:43
  Yeah, one of the things I've learned in sales conversations
• 7:45
  is, yeah, asking the question, why, Why do this in the 1st
• 7:48
  place or what happens if you don't do it?
• 7:49
  You know, why not just in marketing?
• 7:51
  I'm kind of like, why not just do nothing right now?
• 7:53
  Like, well, can't do that because I, I wouldn't, you know,
• 7:56
  have a brand that people, my clients wouldn't come to me.
• 7:58
  I wouldn't be able to get invited on stages or podcasts.
• 8:00
  And you're like, oh, OK, well, tell me more.
• 8:01
  You know, and it's just like you, they kind of work up this
• 8:03
  whole story. That is the reality, but it also
• 8:06
  kind of builds the case to where you say, well, we can take care
• 8:09
  of this for you if you want. Absolutely.
• 8:10
  And to your point, Alex, I think as people, we have a more loss
• 8:14
  aversion than seeking pleasure, right?
• 8:16
  We want to avoid pain than seek pleasure.
• 8:18
  So I think it's important not not not to say that we should
• 8:22
  scare people into doing anything.
• 8:23
  I think that's that. I would never propose that,
• 8:26
  right, or be a proponent of that.
• 8:27
  But just being real, I think people want to know both sides.
• 8:31
  As much as people want to know how much good is happening in
• 8:34
  their mouth or their body, people also want to know that.
• 8:39
  They want to know what what their issues are.
• 8:41
  And when you hold that back, we're doing them a disservice.
• 8:43
  It's truly how we think. So what else, what else took the
• 8:47
  business to the next level? Give me give me another good one
• 8:49
  that maybe founders can apply. What are some things sounds like
• 8:51
  you, you obviously packed more services in in a condensed
• 8:55
  period of time. Good for the patient, good for
• 8:56
  the business. You had a different kind of
• 8:58
  vision and mindset around the business and the team had to
• 9:01
  come with it. Or are they, you know, somewhere
• 9:02
  in a fit naturally? What else?
• 9:04
  Because it still just seems like it's such a drastic.
• 9:06
  You. Need to get more patients in.
• 9:09
  Absolutely. You need volume, right.
• 9:11
  Let's let's be real, you need volume to be able to do those
• 9:13
  procedures on. I think though, sometimes when
• 9:16
  you buy a, an, a dated practice that hasn't invested in their
• 9:20
  business, I think doing Google ad, you know, paper clicks or
• 9:25
  Facebook, just getting ourselves out there, getting the brand out
• 9:28
  there in itself will drive some organic flow.
• 9:31
  So really great SEO. Some, you know, ad campaigns can
• 9:36
  drive some inorganic traffic. I think that's, that's the
• 9:38
  patient lever volume, right? And just being available, I
• 9:42
  think that's, that's another thing, right?
• 9:44
  I will tell you it's really hard in today's world.
• 9:47
  And I know a lot of the owners that are probably watching this
• 9:50
  will agree, especially doctors Dennis that it's really hard to
• 9:53
  get Dennis to work on weekends and evenings, right?
• 9:56
  They want to work 9 to 4 hours. I always find that really
• 9:59
  challenging because that's when our patients are working too,
• 10:02
  right? Our patients want to come in.
• 10:04
  So just being available, my wife and I always took the approach
• 10:07
  of we need to be available when patients are available.
• 10:10
  So we would be in the practices till 8:00 or 9:00 PM and be
• 10:13
  there every Saturday for the first six years.
• 10:16
  I think that in itself, that was a huge unlock for us.
• 10:19
  The other thing I would add though, is just training up the
• 10:21
  team, right? Just really role-playing with
• 10:24
  the team because we want to be consistent in our messaging.
• 10:27
  You don't want your front desk to say one thing and then they
• 10:30
  come see the doctor and the doctors relaying a different
• 10:32
  message. So we would at at the minimum
• 10:35
  once a month get all our team members together in one of the
• 10:37
  practices, actually close the day even though that's loss of
• 10:40
  revenue technically we would, we would invest in them, train
• 10:45
  about half day, do role-playing to say let's keep it consistent.
• 10:48
  I think those two were like huge on locks in addition to the
• 10:51
  other things that I that I talked to you about.
• 10:53
  That's a big one too. So you would actually role play
• 10:55
  with your team? Yes.
• 10:56
  And how would how would that go? You know, Hey, I have a patient
• 10:58
  walking in the front desk, you know, hey, how's it going?
• 11:01
  And then you just kind of role play the whole situation.
• 11:03
  Yeah, and it was tricky because we aren't used to doing that in
• 11:07
  dentistry or healthcare. Right in any.
• 11:09
  Profession because we expect it's like putting an amateur on
• 11:13
  a, you know, on a basketball court and have them play against
• 11:16
  LeBron James and Michael Jordan. How how would that go right?
• 11:19
  But that's what we've been doing in dentistry and healthcare for
• 11:22
  the longest time. So people would all often push
• 11:25
  back on that, but we would just ease them into it.
• 11:28
  I would walk in as the patient and say, hey, just just tell me
• 11:30
  what's going on in my mouth or just tell me walk me through the
• 11:34
  steps that the doctor is going to do right?
• 11:36
  And then as long as you use their expertise to explain,
• 11:40
  right, if it's a dental assistant, you want them to
• 11:42
  explain all the things they're going to do, not what the doctor
• 11:45
  was going to do, right, but at least what they were going to
• 11:47
  do, how they were going to transition to the doctor.
• 11:50
  And then people started getting more and more comfortable.
• 11:52
  And then they were enjoying it. And then they saw the fruit of
• 11:55
  that when they did it with patients.
• 11:57
  Suddenly patients were like, Oh my God, this is like the most
• 12:00
  seamless experience I've ever had.
• 12:02
  So it was really cool to watch that, but it did.
• 12:05
  It was that was a bottleneck, right?
• 12:07
  Because people don't want to role play.
• 12:08
  Everybody just wants to get in the arena and just wing it.
• 12:12
  It never. Works.
• 12:13
  Why do you think they don't want to role play?
• 12:15
  I think it's a fear of it's probably fear that they don't
• 12:21
  know what they're talking about. Look stupid in front of other
• 12:25
  people. But I can promise you, you look
• 12:27
  way more stupider when you don't do it.
• 12:29
  The thing is when they're actually you're, if you're
• 12:30
  role-playing or if you're actually in a client
• 12:32
  conversation or paint patient conversation, there's no one
• 12:35
  there to say, hey, why'd you say that?
• 12:37
  Or you said that little off, or this wasn't, you know, how we
• 12:39
  typically do things where if you're role-playing in front of
• 12:41
  your team, a boss, you know? You get to call them out and say
• 12:44
  let's not do that in front of the patient because I can't tell
• 12:46
  you how many clients we lose, patients we lose when we don't
• 12:51
  role play and go wing it because that's that's the difference
• 12:54
  between an amateur and a pro. So what do you guys do at
• 12:57
  special that wows the clients or patients when they come in the
• 13:00
  door? Because I, I saw I was talking
• 13:01
  back and forth with a friend on LinkedIn about that.
• 13:03
  I said you got to wow your patience, your clients, you
• 13:06
  know, give them an incredible experience when they come in
• 13:09
  your office or they hop in the virtual car or they on board
• 13:12
  with you, regardless of what you do, what's what's some of the
• 13:14
  things that you guys do from that standpoint?
• 13:16
  That's a really good question. You know, surprisingly, the bar
• 13:18
  is pretty low, especially in today's world, right?
• 13:22
  I think if you can run on time and answer the damn phones, I,
• 13:26
  I'm sure your other guests have talked about, you know, the bar
• 13:28
  is so low, if you can just answer the phones and have just
• 13:31
  be really polite. I think people appreciate that,
• 13:34
  right? Because that's missing in
• 13:35
  today's world, a lot of that. So I think that just sets the
• 13:38
  right tone. And then when the patients come
• 13:40
  in, just having them seated and actually walking them through.
• 13:44
  A lot of times I've seen, I went to the physician like a few
• 13:47
  weeks ago and I was sitting in the lobby for a good 30 minutes.
• 13:50
  Nobody said hi, nobody checked me in.
• 13:53
  And then they said, they waved towards me.
• 13:55
  They said, come here, right? I, if I see this in, in one of
• 13:59
  our practices, that will never fly, right?
• 14:01
  I would literally write that person up or probably let them
• 14:04
  go. I, the expectation is exactly
• 14:06
  right. The expectation is they walk to
• 14:09
  the patient in front. Tell them what exactly?
• 14:12
  If we're running late, tell them that, right?
• 14:14
  Tell them, hey, we're running about 10 minutes behind, but
• 14:17
  here's the next steps. Here's what we're going to do.
• 14:20
  That just sets such a great tone.
• 14:21
  I think transfer of power is another thing that we do really
• 14:24
  well in our practices. Once, once the patient care
• 14:29
  ambassador goes up to the patient and tells them, hey,
• 14:32
  you're checked in, the dental assistant will come come get you
• 14:36
  and actually make that introduction to the dental
• 14:38
  assistant saying Sandra is here as the dental assistant.
• 14:42
  She's great and she's going to take care of you and I've filled
• 14:45
  her in on all the things. There's nothing for you to do at
• 14:48
  this point. I think that really puts people
• 14:50
  at ease. Let's be real, Anytime you go to
• 14:51
  the doctor, physician, dentist, people are anxious.
• 14:55
  They want to, they want to know everything is OK, and the least
• 14:58
  we could do is not screw that up by waving at them to come to the
• 15:02
  off front office like there's something wrong or discuss their
• 15:06
  treatment plan in front of all these other people.
• 15:08
  I see this so often that people are loudly discussing finances
• 15:13
  in front of other people. It's embarrassing for people,
• 15:15
  right? So we've got to just pay
• 15:17
  attention to the small things. The devil's in the details.
• 15:20
  I like that, yeah. Yeah.
• 15:21
  I think it's one of the things where I think about my business,
• 15:23
  it's like we work so hard to get a client or get a patient and
• 15:28
  then it's like sometimes then when they actually become that,
• 15:31
  then we just kind of like lose the wow factor.
• 15:33
  Like we stop trying to impress them or like take it to the next
• 15:36
  level. And I have to think about this
• 15:37
  and like, you know, I try to create a good experience for my
• 15:39
  guest. I try to have their favorite
• 15:40
  drink or like, you know, we send them videos beforehand, we give
• 15:43
  them all the content. I create this, you know, good
• 15:45
  environment for them, make them feel comfortable.
• 15:47
  And then it's like, am I doing the same thing for my clients,
• 15:51
  you know, the paying clients who actually keep this whole thing
• 15:53
  going? And I think, you know, what are
• 15:54
  you doing when someone becomes a client?
• 15:56
  Do you send them a gift box or something cool?
• 15:58
  Or do you have a certain onboarding process so that where
• 16:01
  they're like, whoa, this is I've never experienced this before,
• 16:04
  you know you. Hit the nail on the head, Alex.
• 16:06
  I think by the way, you do a really great job of just
• 16:09
  generally, you know, really interacting with people really
• 16:13
  well, right? You do such a great job of that.
• 16:15
  I see you. I see you on LinkedIn.
• 16:16
  I follow you on LinkedIn. I think you do a great job of
• 16:19
  that. I think that's half the battle,
• 16:21
  but you're right, the other half is actually how do you retain
• 16:24
  and keep your people who are paying you a lot of money happy?
• 16:27
  And this is something that both Anushka and I spend a lot of
• 16:30
  time thinking, right? One of the things that we've
• 16:33
  been just able to do is just put a small note right?
• 16:37
  Like I tell her, hygienic. We look at our hygienists as
• 16:39
  very important to the business because they are the retention
• 16:42
  tool in in a company, right? So when any patient comes in, we
• 16:47
  need to understand what they're propelling forces are.
• 16:49
  When I say propelling forces, what I mean is what do they?
• 16:52
  Why are they actually here? You write that down and you
• 16:55
  repeat them back that back to them at every appointment of
• 16:59
  theirs. The patients will never forget
• 17:01
  you. They feel heard, they feel seen,
• 17:04
  they feel valued, right? And also a little thing about
• 17:07
  their kids or something that actually matters to them.
• 17:10
  Like some, some of my patients are into cars.
• 17:13
  Like every time I had a patient come in, I'd say like, how's
• 17:15
  that Mercedes? He's like, oh doc, you still
• 17:17
  remember I had a Mercedes, huh? By the way, I changed to BMW.
• 17:20
  I'm quickly going and making a note of that 'cause next time I
• 17:23
  don't want to talk about the Mercedes, I want to talk about
• 17:25
  the BMW. Just little things that really
• 17:28
  makes people valued. I don't think it's like anything
• 17:31
  crazy that we need to do because they already are bought in.
• 17:34
  It is so much easier to have an existing patient refer another
• 17:38
  client to you 'cause the trust is already there, but it is so
• 17:41
  much harder with the new client because they don't trust you
• 17:44
  yet. That is such a great point too.
• 17:46
  And I have tried to do that on my meeting notes, you know,
• 17:48
  after I have conversations with clients too, if they mention
• 17:50
  something where they're going or their kids or this or that or
• 17:52
  what they're into, you try to make a note of that because it
• 17:55
  is refreshing when people actually remember and they say,
• 17:57
  hey, how was that trip to XY and Z or hey, I remember your kids
• 18:00
  are into this, this and this. What do you guys got coming up
• 18:02
  for that? You know, and it's just like,
• 18:04
  it's a good experience and when you don't do it and you miss it
• 18:07
  and they feel like I've already told this guy or gal like 3
• 18:09
  times that I have kids or this or that.
• 18:12
  And you kind of just are not remembering that.
• 18:14
  It's not like it could, I mean, sometimes it could kill the
• 18:16
  relationship, but it's just one of those things that doesn't
• 18:18
  feel good. You know, it's like they're not,
• 18:20
  they're just like I'm a number. I'm a.
• 18:22
  Transaction, yes, and they've forgotten about me.
• 18:24
  They were so great when I started out.
• 18:26
  One other thing too that I I consciously try to remember in
• 18:30
  the business is especially when they're cash paying.
• 18:33
  We can't discount insurance patients because of all these
• 18:35
  rules and regulations. But when they're paying you a
• 18:37
  lot of cash and I've had patients see me for 10 years
• 18:40
  that have followed me from different offices to the one
• 18:43
  that, you know, we we practice out of is being conscientious of
• 18:48
  giving your existing patient base this like cash discount
• 18:53
  that you would easily dole out to a new client just to get
• 18:56
  their business. But sometimes we lock in
• 18:59
  business and then we forget to do that with that existing
• 19:01
  client. They that goes a really long
• 19:04
  way. I I've seen that time and time
• 19:06
  again. They really appreciate that even
• 19:08
  if they never ask me for discounts my existing patients,
• 19:12
  but just to say I really appreciate you.
• 19:14
  I'm going to write you a 10% discount on this just because I
• 19:17
  appreciate you walk them through out to the door when they're
• 19:19
  done with treatment. Those things go such a long way.
• 19:22
  I love that you're asking about this.
• 19:24
  This is great it. Really matters, man.
• 19:26
  Running a good business. I think in general, especially a
• 19:28
  practice, we have patients coming in the physically all the
• 19:30
  time too. But I think there's so many
• 19:31
  parallels regardless of what business you run.
• 19:33
  I think what you said earlier too, is being transparent about
• 19:36
  what you're doing with your clients is so freaking
• 19:38
  important. Like, I had an awesome dental
• 19:40
  hygienist for, gosh, probably 10 years.
• 19:43
  And then she retired and me and her were like friends.
• 19:45
  I mean, she knew everything about me.
• 19:46
  I knew about her. We'd have a great time when she
• 19:48
  came in a little chatty, but she was awesome, you know?
• 19:51
  And then a new person came in and like what?
• 19:54
  What my old dental hygienist would do, Flora is her name.
• 19:57
  She would explain everything that she does.
• 19:59
  So you go, hey, Alex, I'm going to come in your mouth right now
• 20:01
  with this, this and this. And what I'm doing is I'm
• 20:03
  looking for this, this and this. You know, I'm scrubbing for
• 20:06
  this. If you hear this noise, that's
• 20:07
  what that means, right? And then the new lady came in
• 20:10
  and she just like has some new machine thing, which is probably
• 20:12
  not like new in dentistry, but I just never had used it before to
• 20:14
  you new to me, right? And she starts using this thing
• 20:17
  and I had to ask her midwife. There I go, what is this thing?
• 20:19
  And she's like, oh, this is what we do for this, this and this.
• 20:21
  And I was kind of like, man, if you were to, you know, explain
• 20:24
  that and just say, Hey, I don't have you used this before?
• 20:26
  Have you seen this before? So what I'm going to do now is
• 20:28
  I'm going to do this and this. And I try to do that in my
• 20:30
  business too, where it's like, hey, next step of the process,
• 20:33
  I'm going to go behind the scenes and start doing this,
• 20:35
  this and this. And what I need from you is to
• 20:37
  do this, this and this. And then what's going to happen
• 20:38
  is we're going to bring it all together.
• 20:40
  And this is what it's going to look like for the next few
• 20:42
  weeks, you know, And I think that is if you can just, again,
• 20:44
  it seems like very small stuff, but it all adds up to the
• 20:47
  experience that you give your clients or your patients.
• 20:50
  And as I'm sitting here, I'm observing that I took a look at
• 20:53
  that as feedback right in, you know, in pediatric kids
• 20:57
  dentistry, there's a concept called telshow do, right?
• 21:00
  So you never want to just introduce a sharp instrument
• 21:03
  into a kids mouth because then they're never going to trust
• 21:06
  you, right? And they're never going to and
• 21:08
  you're going to damage them, mentally traumatize them.
• 21:11
  So they're never going to see the dentist.
• 21:12
  But I find a lot of adults that come in are traumatized, were
• 21:15
  traumatized as kids. So I think Telstra do should
• 21:19
  apply to adults too, right? You tell them what you're going
• 21:21
  to do, you show them a model or hey, this is what we're going to
• 21:25
  do. And then you do it.
• 21:26
  So they're not surprised when you introduce a sharp instrument
• 21:30
  in in in their mouth. So I love that.
• 21:32
  No, I think no one's gonna be mad at you for explaining what
• 21:35
  you're about to do to them exactly.
• 21:37
  Yeah. As long as we don't, you know,
• 21:39
  derail or waste time like like you said, because people have
• 21:44
  things to shit to do, you know, it's like. 10 minutes later.
• 21:46
  And like so. Anyways, this was invented in
• 21:47
  1920. Five.
• 21:48
  I was like, let's make it quick. Let's keep it moving.
• 21:50
  Right, that's right. Every be respectful at the time.
• 21:53
  So when you started moving to so this practice went well, you
• 21:55
  came in and you're like, you know, you're probably like, all
• 21:56
  right, let's see if we can do this.
• 21:57
  I think we can. I think we, you know, we got the
• 21:59
  skills to be able to do this. You start doing it, then you
• 22:02
  take it to other practices. Was it easier the next time that
• 22:05
  you try to? Because I think about a business
• 22:06
  owner, I think, you know, I'm six years in, it's like you
• 22:09
  start a new company now it's a lot easier.
• 22:11
  You know, it's just like, not that it's easier, but maybe you
• 22:13
  just got a lot better. You know, it's like you just
• 22:15
  kind of know, yeah, definitely don't do that.
• 22:17
  That's a waste of time. And hey, when we start, let's
• 22:18
  remember we have this in place first.
• 22:20
  And did you experience that too? We did, I think we, our
• 22:24
  leadership was in a better spot, right?
• 22:26
  Just expectations wise with team members, what we expect, what do
• 22:29
  we need them to do? What, what does a practice have
• 22:31
  to do day one day? I think that stuff we got
• 22:33
  better. But what we didn't realize the
• 22:36
  reason we opened a second practice was because there was
• 22:39
  two of us, right? But it was my wife and I were
• 22:41
  both dentists. We were probably tired of seeing
• 22:43
  each other every single day. And we were like, we can go do
• 22:46
  this separately and then, you know, come together and talk
• 22:49
  about all the issues. So that part was easy for us,
• 22:54
  right? The hard part is you don't
• 22:56
  realize when you have one physical location and you scale
• 22:59
  that to a second. If you don't have the unit level
• 23:02
  economics down in one location. And then you're taking the same
• 23:05
  mistakes you did in the first because you don't have a full
• 23:08
  understanding of what you did wrong and then you're doing the
• 23:11
  same mistakes in the second. So as much as you can scale your
• 23:14
  success, you can scale your mistakes and chaos too.
• 23:17
  I found that to be very true. That's a really good point.
• 23:20
  What what was some of the biggest mistakes that you guys
• 23:22
  made in the business taking it from the first operation to the
• 23:25
  second? I think probably in hindsight
• 23:29
  hiring too quickly, I think was was a mistake.
• 23:32
  I think we should have really taken time hiring our first few
• 23:34
  team members, right. We were just so gung ho about
• 23:38
  scaling the business that we hired the wrong people.
• 23:41
  We also hired some good people along the way.
• 23:43
  But I think when you make 5050 hires where I think that's too
• 23:48
  much of a mistake, right? When you have 50% good, 50% bad,
• 23:52
  that's not good enough. You got to get 8085% of your
• 23:54
  hires right in order to scale the business to 4X or five.
• 23:58
  XI think there's always people that are going to slip through
• 24:00
  the cracks, I think and not letting go people quickly enough
• 24:04
  to that's another one when we thought you make excuses for
• 24:07
  them. I think that's a lot of
• 24:09
  healthcare because we need bodies, you know, people need
• 24:12
  bodies. So they're like, I'm just going
• 24:14
  to hold on to Susie. See here, who is crappy?
• 24:17
  Everybody. She makes everybody miserable in
• 24:18
  the practice, but I'm just going to hold on to her because if I
• 24:21
  lose Susie, then I'm not going to be able to fill that seat.
• 24:24
  So I think a lot of that too initially, but I'm way better
• 24:27
  about that today. Let's.
• 24:29
  Let's stay on that because I think it's an interesting one
• 24:31
  for for other founders and business owners listening.
• 24:33
  I'm hiring right now. I think a lot of us are hiring.
• 24:37
  How do you hire great people? What is the What is the secret
• 24:40
  there that you've learned? The secret is great interviews,
• 24:43
  right? But also I think just interviews
• 24:45
  aren't enough. I think now today my wife and I
• 24:48
  do a personality testing on people, right?
• 24:51
  We do a yeah, I think we do a Colby at the minimum, right?
• 24:54
  Because you want your people to be high follow throughs and
• 24:58
  decent fact finders. And if it's a front office
• 25:02
  position or if it's a operations person, you want them to have a
• 25:06
  high follow through or not a very high quick start.
• 25:09
  Don't you think those personality tests though, people
• 25:11
  can just like, put in the answers they think you want to
• 25:12
  hear or no? No, not with Colby.
• 25:14
  I find that to be like one of the most accurate because Colby
• 25:18
  tests people, they're cognitive side of the brain.
• 25:21
  So Colby is about testing them on how they would react under
• 25:24
  pressure. So it's instinctively are they
• 25:27
  high follow through, are they high?
• 25:28
  But. They're not under pressure when
• 25:29
  they take it though, right? They're not under pressure, but
• 25:32
  that's but the questions test them on whether how they would
• 25:35
  react on under pressure. They without without them
• 25:38
  knowing that, and that's the beauty of that.
• 25:40
  What do you mean by that? You don't really know that some
• 25:44
  of the questions that that have been designed in a Colby are
• 25:47
  based on how bad situations could go or how pressure
• 25:52
  situations. Those are the questions they're
• 25:53
  asking and these are multiple choice often.
• 25:55
  So you can pick anything you. Want You're almost all right
• 25:58
  answers to some degree. You're just testing.
• 25:59
  There's no right or wrong, right?
• 26:01
  It's just tricky. How do you how do you build a
• 26:03
  complementary team? That's one of the mistakes we
• 26:05
  did was we usually hire people we like and I think that's the
• 26:08
  mistake that we do. We've got to hire people that
• 26:11
  have complementary skills. But how do you know that if you
• 26:13
  don't know yourself? I know I'm a high quick start.
• 26:16
  My wife has a high follow through and that's complementary
• 26:18
  to us. We need all our operations team
• 26:21
  to be high follow throughs. I don't need any more quick
• 26:23
  starts in the business. Defined what those differences
• 26:25
  are. The difference would be when
• 26:27
  somebody has a high follow through, they're getting their
• 26:29
  projects completed. Whereas quick start means you
• 26:32
  have a bias for action. You can start stuff quickly, but
• 26:35
  not having a high follow through, that's me.
• 26:38
  But having a medium follow through means I need somebody
• 26:40
  with a very high follow through to finish the thing that I
• 26:43
  started. That would be our operations
• 26:45
  team in our in our case, right. I don't need our operations team
• 26:48
  to have a very high. I need them to act.
• 26:51
  I need them to have a low to medium, a quick start.
• 26:53
  That means if they're too low on a quick start, then they're
• 26:56
  never getting started, right? It's, you know, analysis by
• 26:59
  paralysis thing. But once they start, they are
• 27:02
  going to complete that stuff, right?
• 27:04
  So that's for operations. But if if it's somebody on the
• 27:07
  growth side, they need to have a high, high quick start, that
• 27:10
  means they need to go, you know, do business development.
• 27:14
  That's a higher quick start personality.
• 27:16
  So my wife and I have different roles because of that, right?
• 27:19
  I operate more on the growth side and she operates more on
• 27:22
  the system side. And but this is not something we
• 27:24
  knew until we took the Colby and now we hire based on that.
• 27:28
  And then you do a disk on top of that, right, just to understand
• 27:31
  how people react, right? Disk is you, you put you haven't
• 27:35
  taken the disk. Got it.
• 27:36
  It's D is the person. The way I look put it is the
• 27:39
  person driving the car AD and an eye eyes person sitting next
• 27:43
  who's guiding the the driver. The S is somebody who is, you
• 27:47
  know, looking at making sure everybody's OK.
• 27:50
  And the C is the cautious one looking at the map, making sure
• 27:53
  that we're going the right spot. So if it's an insurance person
• 27:56
  you, you want to hire in your business, you want to make sure
• 27:58
  they're they're ADNSC. If you hire a DNI, good luck to
• 28:03
  you. Your bills are never getting
• 28:04
  collected, right? Because you want a patient care
• 28:07
  ambassador or fund office to be influential with people.
• 28:10
  So those two things are a must, I think.
• 28:14
  Founders, do you see how well he understands his team and how
• 28:17
  he's putting these together? I mean, this to me is like the,
• 28:20
  and I know you're always learning and growing and that
• 28:22
  kind of stuff, right? No one has it all figured out.
• 28:23
  But I think the level of detail that you're talking about, how
• 28:26
  you screen people, what you're looking for in your team, who
• 28:28
  compliments who and what does that look like?
• 28:31
  That speaks to someone who knows how to put together A-Team and
• 28:34
  run businesses and things like that.
• 28:35
  So I appreciate you sharing that, of course.
• 28:36
  So that's the hiring side. Do you also, there are certain
• 28:39
  good questions that you ask to try to, you know, aside from the
• 28:42
  test and things like that, which I think that does sound like a
• 28:44
  good idea. Maybe we'll start doing that.
• 28:45
  Are there certain questions that you found?
• 28:47
  They're like this one really pulls the realness out.
• 28:50
  You know, I try to follow the Elon Musk rule.
• 28:52
  Just tell ask people an open-ended question.
• 28:55
  Tell me about your story and tell me about the things that
• 28:59
  you did rather you want to find out if they're technical, if
• 29:01
  they're BS ING you right. I really like that question,
• 29:05
  especially on the leadership hires that we've made.
• 29:07
  We ask very open-ended questions.
• 29:09
  Tell us about a time where things went wrong.
• 29:13
  What did you do? You'll really quickly know
• 29:15
  whether someone is technical or not by the end of that answer,
• 29:18
  right? You want technical people in
• 29:20
  your business, right? That's kind of the conclusion
• 29:22
  I've come to because you don't need like Fluffy, Oh, I want to
• 29:25
  be in strategy type answers because there's, as founders,
• 29:28
  we're good at strategy. We know we can see 10 things I
• 29:31
  had we can already do that need people to come and execute in
• 29:34
  the business. So I asked very technical
• 29:37
  questions, but very open-ended questions.
• 29:40
  I want them to just talk and just get really comfortable that
• 29:43
  we're good listeners and I just shut up.
• 29:46
  Really. My wife and I've learned to shut
• 29:47
  up. Just ask 20% of the questions,
• 29:50
  80% shut up and people will show you who they are if you just let
• 29:53
  them talk. That's so true, man.
• 29:55
  Yeah. And sometimes you just need to
• 29:56
  say, like, little follow up phrases, like.
• 29:58
  Tell me more about that. Exactly.
• 30:00
  There's a story there. Why'd you do that and then just
• 30:03
  sit back? Just sit back.
• 30:04
  Yeah, just sit back. It's, it's amazing, isn't it,
• 30:07
  how much people will volunteer? Yeah.
• 30:10
  And I was like to ask like how do you measure success, you
• 30:12
  know, in your role, Like what was success to you and how often
• 30:14
  did you hit that? And because that that tells me
• 30:17
  from a content marketing standpoint, you know, if it's
• 30:19
  success is like, well, we posted this amount of times and we got
• 30:22
  this many impressions. It's like, OK, but was there a
• 30:24
  lead generation opportunity? Was there revenue that got
• 30:27
  impacted by the marketing? Like I want to know how do they
• 30:29
  measure their role and and then the next question is how did you
• 30:34
  do and what happens when you missed it?
• 30:36
  I love that and those type of questions.
• 30:38
  Yeah. Oh, I love that.
• 30:39
  And you know, that's a great way to weed out the snakes in the
• 30:41
  grass too, because if somebody really owned their metric, they
• 30:46
  will be able to tell you exactly how they did it.
• 30:48
  And that's the key difference, right?
• 30:50
  And I've seen this with some of our leadership team too, when we
• 30:54
  asked them, tell me what part of the business you impacted,
• 30:57
  because this is especially true for operations folks, right?
• 31:01
  Where they can tend to take credit for a lot of the things
• 31:03
  that happened, but they were because they were generally
• 31:06
  touching things, they tend to take credit for a lot of the
• 31:09
  stuff. So if you want to pinpoint, ask
• 31:11
  them pointedly. Tell me which part of this,
• 31:14
  right? I'll tell you.
• 31:15
  I'll give you an example. Why I bring this up is we've
• 31:17
  hired, made some poor leadership decisions, hires in the past.
• 31:21
  And I didn't know that any better back in the day.
• 31:24
  I thought, oh, this person scaled this group from like 30
• 31:27
  locations to 100 locations, but I forgot to ask them, was it
• 31:32
  private equity backed? Were they buy and build?
• 31:35
  Who was buying 'cause they had a whole other team that was buying
• 31:38
  revenue and EBITDA behind the scenes.
• 31:40
  Of course it would make you look really good as an operator.
• 31:43
  Of course it would make you, what did you impact in that,
• 31:46
  right? Those are the nitty gritty
• 31:48
  details that sometimes as founders, we're afraid to ask
• 31:50
  these questions, 'cause you don't want to lose that
• 31:52
  candidate, but if it's the right candidate, they'll be really
• 31:55
  excited. If you ask the detailed
• 31:56
  questions, for sure they will. Yeah, I see that in social media
• 31:59
  marketing where it's like you talk to a social media marketer
• 32:01
  and they're like, you know, hey, I grew the company page to
• 32:04
  50,000 followers and it's like, OK, how'd you do it though?
• 32:07
  Well, it's a billion dollar company and they give us
• 32:08
  unlimited ad spend and so we just ran ads until we hit
• 32:11
  50,000. It's like, all right.
• 32:12
  So like organically though, how do you, how did you grow?
• 32:14
  What revenue did it produce? Did it actually build a brand?
• 32:17
  Did you generate leads? And, you know, to your point,
• 32:19
  it's like you can have a result on your resume, but that doesn't
• 32:23
  mean that you actually did the thing to get there.
• 32:26
  It could have been an overarching, you know, other
• 32:27
  people involved or, you know, private equity money, unlimited
• 32:31
  money coming in that maybe you won't have in this next
• 32:33
  opportunity. And so, yeah, those types of
• 32:35
  things definitely play a role. So what about we talked about
• 32:37
  hiring? What about firing?
• 32:39
  You said you need to fire as quickly as you can.
• 32:43
  I think any red flags, right, based on your core values,
• 32:45
  right? We have 5 core values in the
• 32:47
  business, one of them being on your stuff.
• 32:49
  So for example, if somebody deflected and blamed, I think
• 32:52
  that would be a red flag. We, we people analyze our, our
• 32:56
  people on, on the OS, we people analyze once 1/4 And if it's
• 33:00
  more than two negatives on any of our 5 core values, I think
• 33:06
  the decision is let's let's kind of face this person out and help
• 33:10
  them succeed somewhere else. How do you phase them out?
• 33:12
  What's that like? Do you have a real conversation
• 33:14
  with them and say, hey, you're falling short on this system,
• 33:16
  this? It's always a very core values
• 33:18
  driven conversation. We can't make it emotional,
• 33:20
  right? That's one of my learns as a
• 33:22
  business owner. And when I started out, probably
• 33:24
  it was more reactive, more emotional, like you said this
• 33:27
  and you did this. No, it doesn't have to be that
• 33:29
  way. And I think people appreciate
• 33:31
  that as well. Just making it very core values
• 33:33
  driven, right? You have to find the the right
• 33:35
  person means core values. The right seed is do they get
• 33:38
  it? Do they want it to have the
• 33:39
  capacity for it? I think that becomes pretty
• 33:42
  apparent. I think as founders, we know a
• 33:44
  lot of times this person, we have this instinct just leaning
• 33:48
  into that instinct more. I think that's what my wife and
• 33:50
  I do better now than we used to back in the day do.
• 33:53
  You find there's a balance of being being careful, of not
• 33:56
  being too hard on people versus, you know, expecting too much
• 34:00
  versus like, you know, hey, this is what you need to do.
• 34:03
  Like this is your job. These are our core values.
• 34:05
  What's the balance there? Sometimes that can be a little
• 34:07
  tricky. It's like I want to, I feel like
• 34:09
  I'm over demanding because I'm a crazy founder, you know?
• 34:12
  So I never expect someone to work like me obviously, of
• 34:14
  course, but it's also like I do want to demand excellence from
• 34:17
  myself and others. You're right about that.
• 34:19
  I think that's hard, right and for any leader.
• 34:22
  But just, I think as long as we've done the right onboarding
• 34:26
  for them and laid out our expectations, it doesn't have to
• 34:29
  be like you need to do this for me or it's just I ask you to do
• 34:32
  these things and we're going to check in once a week and we need
• 34:36
  to get all our todos done for the week and we need to get our
• 34:39
  90 day goals done. And and then you see a pattern
• 34:43
  of those, do those todos actually get done?
• 34:45
  And if it's like once or twice you have a conversation and say,
• 34:49
  we need to pivot. I think we need to be very clear
• 34:51
  about that. That's one of my learns is when
• 34:53
  people don't get done, you tolerate it.
• 34:55
  That means you've allowed it the second time.
• 34:57
  Then it's a habit. Then they think it's OK for me
• 35:00
  to not do it the second time. I'm never give people a chance,
• 35:03
  but never a second. This is something I learned,
• 35:05
  right? And I think I kind of stand by
• 35:07
  that because the second chance is like, I need you to really
• 35:09
  pivot. And this is where we need to go.
• 35:12
  And after that, it's more along the lines of, hey, we need to
• 35:15
  probably talk about performance improvement here.
• 35:17
  Yeah. It's kind of like you give them
• 35:20
  the freedom, but if they're going to take advantage of the
• 35:22
  freedom, you know, then then you, well, now we got to get
• 35:25
  clear. Now we got to get the, the, the,
• 35:28
  the leash gets a little bit tighter.
• 35:30
  It just has to because it's like, hey, I'd love to give you
• 35:32
  the freedom, but if you're not going to take it and run with it
• 35:34
  and do it, then you don't have the freedom.
• 35:36
  It's just how it works. You're right, because it's also
• 35:38
  not fair to the other A players in your business, right?
• 35:40
  They're watching too, and they're thinking, oh, this
• 35:43
  person just got away with that, so maybe let me push the limits
• 35:47
  on this too. And then now suddenly the
• 35:50
  culture is like, we underperform and it's OK in this company,
• 35:54
  right? I, and that's something we
• 35:55
  struggled with too, right? Because of necessity needing
• 35:59
  people. And you know, as you know, in
• 36:01
  healthcare, sometimes it's hard to get people to get them
• 36:04
  motivated in dentistry to come and do an insurance job 'cause
• 36:08
  they can make $20.00 an hour just flipping a burger versus
• 36:12
  dealing with a tough insurance agent in the Philippines.
• 36:14
  Then people would rather do the other thing.
• 36:17
  So then getting them motivated is hard.
• 36:19
  This is especially true in healthcare.
• 36:21
  I find that. You know, a lot of people say
• 36:23
  core values are overrated or emissions overrated.
• 36:27
  I don't think it is. I think it is when you don't
• 36:29
  when you establish it on a a piece of paper on a wall or a
• 36:32
  poster on a wall, but it doesn't really mean anything to the
• 36:34
  company of the people. I think it's everything.
• 36:37
  And I look at some of the biggest mistakes I've made in
• 36:38
  hiring is exactly what you just said earlier.
• 36:40
  I wasn't clear from the beginning.
• 36:42
  I wasn't like, and then I look back and I'm like, oh, they're
• 36:44
  not doing this as this. I'm like, well, Alex, that was
• 36:46
  never instilled in them as core values make it go.
• 36:48
  You never talked about it every single meeting and every day and
• 36:51
  every interaction that you had. You never gave people shout outs
• 36:54
  and said, wow, do you? This person was really
• 36:56
  demonstrating our core values. Like let's give a round of
• 36:58
  applause, maybe a bonus or something, you know?
• 37:00
  And on the flip side, it's, you know, making sure you have
• 37:02
  conversations around, hey, you know, you drop the ball on this
• 37:05
  and you know, I want to try to coach you up and get you to
• 37:07
  where you need to be. But when things keep happening
• 37:09
  and it's a violation of the core values, then that's a
• 37:12
  conversation. And other people need to know
• 37:13
  like, hey, this is the standard we have.
• 37:15
  It's almost like your standards. Right.
• 37:16
  Yeah, I think you, you make such a good point, Alex, because
• 37:20
  that's you owning your stuff, right?
• 37:21
  I think core values aren't just meant for your team members.
• 37:24
  It starts with us, right? And I think just, you know,
• 37:27
  maybe giving your team members the, the safe space to call you
• 37:31
  out on your crap, to own your stuff, like I said, is one of
• 37:34
  her core values. That means I've got to own my
• 37:36
  stuff. Anoushka's got to own her stuff.
• 37:38
  When we, if we aren't owning our stuff, it becomes tricky to ask
• 37:41
  people to abide by these core values 'cause then they can
• 37:45
  inherit. They'll, they're saying yes.
• 37:48
  But you can always look at people's how they nod, they say
• 37:53
  yes like this, right? But do you actually pay
• 37:55
  attention to what they're doing in body language?
• 37:57
  But that's what they're truly doing, right?
• 37:59
  They're saying yes, but they're doing this.
• 38:01
  That means they don't actually buy in to you.
• 38:03
  And sometimes people are saying no, but they're saying doing
• 38:06
  this right. It's the opposite is true.
• 38:08
  Also. Wow.
• 38:09
  That's interesting. Yeah.
• 38:11
  So I want to ask you about the MBA.
• 38:12
  Yeah. Is it worth it to get your MBA?
• 38:14
  Because I look at Someone Like You and I'm like, you are a
• 38:16
  thoroughbred entrepreneur. You've got businesses like I'm
• 38:19
  like, what the hell can an MBA teach a guy like you?
• 38:22
  No, I think there's all there's so much more to learn and I
• 38:24
  think so I'll, I'll tell you this right in in healthcare, we
• 38:28
  don't get any business training, right.
• 38:30
  A lot of like as as Dennis, we just have to kind of lie, learn
• 38:33
  on the fly, make a lot of mistakes.
• 38:36
  And I think business cool is less about giving you tools for
• 38:40
  like how to run your business. It's more about frameworks.
• 38:43
  How do you think about stuff more rigorously?
• 38:46
  Like MBA kind of hammers that into, especially at Booth,
• 38:49
  They're quant focus. They're extremely like, you need
• 38:53
  to think through this decision before you make it, especially
• 38:56
  if it's like $100,000 check that you're about to invest in
• 38:59
  something, right? And I think those are things
• 39:02
  that when you learn on the fly, when you're experimental, you
• 39:05
  just go invest and then find out it was the wrong decision.
• 39:08
  But are these people that the people teaching you, are they,
• 39:10
  are they people that have built businesses?
• 39:12
  Some some are, and some are Nobel laureates who have written
• 39:16
  books and papers on how this stuff needs to be done right.
• 39:21
  Because I would look at them with a little bit of like maybe.
• 39:23
  I agree. A not a taint, but just like I'd
• 39:28
  look at them like you've never actually built a business
• 39:31
  before. So not that you're not credible,
• 39:32
  not that you don't know anything because there's plenty of smart
• 39:34
  executives that have done incredible stuff.
• 39:36
  But you know, as a founder, it's kind of like, all right, you can
• 39:38
  tell me this shit, man, but you've been five years into a
• 39:41
  business and had, you know, challenges and had a fire and
• 39:43
  this and that. And it's different when you're
• 39:45
  in the in the arena, the man in the arena.
• 39:47
  You're right, and I agree with you.
• 39:48
  I think that was our thought process to going in there,
• 39:51
  right? It's just Founder Energy's
• 39:52
  different, only about 1, maybe 115th of our classes, founders,
• 40:00
  The rest are all corporate, you know, execs or VPS, consultants,
• 40:05
  VPS, you know, making their ascendant to AC suite.
• 40:08
  Those are the guys and we're often in Business School.
• 40:11
  You're talking about billion dollar companies that may not
• 40:13
  feel as applicable, right? We're talking about analyzing
• 40:16
  Apples, Apple and Tesla and NVIDIA balance sheets.
• 40:21
  But I think it just gives you a sense of.
• 40:24
  OK, if Apple can do this at a very high level, you can
• 40:27
  certainly take some of those things and do this 'cause you
• 40:29
  have a much smaller scale. How do you move faster?
• 40:32
  How do you think about stuff more rigorously?
• 40:34
  I think that's the stuff that MBA is teaching us.
• 40:37
  I'm not, we're not done with our program.
• 40:38
  We're only about a year in. We have another year to go.
• 40:40
  And I'll, I'll update you next year.
• 40:42
  Maybe I'll come back on this next year and I'll update you on
• 40:46
  like what I truly think about getting an MBA.
• 40:48
  But so far you also make great friendships though, and that's
• 40:52
  another one. The cohorts are everybody's
• 40:54
  there to learn. People are super humble.
• 40:56
  They want to they want to help you and you connect with people
• 40:59
  from all over the world. I don't think you could do that.
• 41:02
  You could go become members of EO and YPO and all that stuff.
• 41:05
  We're members, but you still don't have the variety of people
• 41:08
  that you meet. You meet some wickedly smart
• 41:11
  math majors, hedge fund type people in Business School that I
• 41:15
  thought I was good at math. Wait till you hang out with
• 41:17
  them. You'll have a freaking
• 41:18
  inferiority complex when you hang out with some of these
• 41:20
  people. They're like 10 times fast.
• 41:23
  They do some complex math, like, like that, right?
• 41:26
  That's cool to be around. Yeah, I can do that.
• 41:29
  Right? But there's something about
• 41:30
  brain power that you know, when you surround yourself with
• 41:32
  people like that, it levels you up to your.
• 41:35
  Extent No, I agree. And I think there's things you
• 41:37
  know, I came from before I started this business, I came
• 41:38
  from a multi billion dollar staffing and recruiting firm.
• 41:41
  And so you know, coming from that business, I was around a
• 41:43
  lot of very smart people. They didn't have their own
• 41:46
  businesses, but they operated in a business that was very well,
• 41:49
  it was a well oiled the machine. I mean, the sales training,
• 41:51
  leadership training, the structure, the accountability,
• 41:54
  the IT was impressive, man. And I learned a lot from there.
• 41:56
  And I think actually the reason I found success early as an
• 41:58
  entrepreneur is because I had that background, to be honest.
• 42:01
  But but there was a ton of things that I took there and
• 42:03
  then used in my business. And there's people that now have
• 42:06
  a lot of people have left there to start their own businesses
• 42:08
  now since 2020, it's just become a whole thing.
• 42:10
  But I think there's always things you can learn from the
• 42:12
  big company going to a smaller company.
• 42:14
  And then there's stuff you can learn from the smaller company
• 42:16
  going to the bigger company because they both have strengths
• 42:18
  and weaknesses. All the more reason for Someone
• 42:21
  Like You to do an MBA, Alex, because as much as as much as
• 42:26
  it's about, you know, getting from others and professors, you
• 42:30
  have a lot to offer too. And that's something I've been
• 42:32
  thinking too, Like people really appreciate that too.
• 42:35
  It's a way to give back. Yes, it's a, it's an expensive
• 42:38
  check you're writing the return on investment is there.
• 42:40
  It causes a one to two degree separation over like maybe 10
• 42:44
  years, I think. And as you know, the other
• 42:47
  point, the one last point I'll make about this is in
• 42:49
  healthcare, you know, when you deal with finance and private
• 42:53
  equity, we've always they've all dentists and doctors have always
• 42:56
  been told you're the doctor, you're the technician.
• 42:59
  Go do your craft while we manage the spreadsheets the.
• 43:01
  Finances. I think it's good to have an MBA
• 43:04
  to just be able to speak the same language.
• 43:06
  At least from my perspective. I it is super intense.
• 43:10
  It takes you away like many days.
• 43:12
  So if you don't have a well oiled machine, the team, it's
• 43:15
  gonna, it's really hard and it's super rigorous too.
• 43:18
  So I got some questions. What's it like?
• 43:20
  Like working with your wife by the way, before I get to these.
• 43:23
  It's amazing. Yeah, you guys seem like you
• 43:25
  have a good relationship. We, we have a really good
• 43:27
  relationship. We're best friends and we, not
• 43:30
  that we didn't butt heads when we started our business because
• 43:32
  we hadn't done that together either.
• 43:34
  But I see a lot of people, I have friends who say things like
• 43:38
  my wife and I could never do business together, right?
• 43:41
  And I feel bad about that, right?
• 43:42
  Because. To me, there was a disconnect.
• 43:44
  There it is a disconnect there because you're sharing.
• 43:47
  If you have the same goals, you should chase after the same
• 43:49
  goals, as long as you understand what roles and responsibilities.
• 43:52
  That's where we used to probably butt heads 'cause we were
• 43:55
  overlapping into each other's skill sets because we did not
• 43:58
  clearly understand what our skill sets were, what our unique
• 44:02
  abilities exactly. OK, cool.
• 44:04
  Cool. Yeah, I think it'd be kind of
• 44:05
  fun. I don't know, you probably talk
• 44:07
  about business during dinner and stuff sometimes.
• 44:08
  We do, we have a hard cut off now for 8:00 PM, right?
• 44:12
  Because we used to talk into the night and then, you know, it
• 44:15
  spikes cortisol, you sleep somewhere.
• 44:17
  We did that for so long. Now we have an 8:00 PM cut off.
• 44:20
  We don't talk business after that.
• 44:22
  So it protects our marriage a little bit.
• 44:24
  And also on the weekends, I think Sundays, we really take to
• 44:28
  reset with us and our dogs. We we, we do talk business shop
• 44:32
  on Saturday though. I bet it's hard.
• 44:34
  It's hard not to talk about it when you love what you do and
• 44:36
  you're like, you're building shit and it's like, I just love
• 44:38
  it. It doesn't feel like work.
• 44:39
  No, it's like, yeah, I used to work out in my porch and stuff
• 44:42
  in the old place we had, and I'd have this lady walking her dog
• 44:44
  that would always go by and go, oh, you're still working.
• 44:46
  It'd be like 6:00 PM or like in the morning.
• 44:48
  And I'd beg, yeah, but to me, it's not working.
• 44:52
  Like, it's not like I have some job I hate.
• 44:53
  And I'm like, oh, I can't wait to clock out and do something
• 44:55
  else and go watch Netflix. The ironic thing is if I was up
• 44:59
  there like watching Netflix and like just throwing a ball
• 45:01
  around, she would have been like, hey, enjoy.
• 45:02
  Your day but. Because I was like building
• 45:04
  something. And to me, I think it's a lot of
• 45:06
  other people's insecurities bouncing off me and back to them
• 45:10
  because maybe they didn't have something that they felt that
• 45:11
  passionate about, that they wanted to build, that they were
• 45:13
  excited about. And so they see you doing it and
• 45:15
  it's like, why are you working so much?
• 45:16
  Why are you gonna lose this net? It's like, 'cause I love it,
• 45:19
  man. It's none of your business.
• 45:20
  We're the what's that saying? We're the only people that would
• 45:24
  not get paid something along the lines of not get paid to be
• 45:27
  unemployable and still work seven days a week or something
• 45:30
  like that, not get paid for it. Yeah, that's so true, man.
• 45:34
  So I'm curious what the day in the life looks like for you as
• 45:36
  someone. And we got some founder talk
• 45:38
  community questions. So we have a community of
• 45:40
  founders in the area, all Chicago land founders.
• 45:42
  And I I given them an opportunity to ask questions
• 45:44
  before a guest comes on. Hey, I got this guest coming on.
• 45:47
  Here's what they've done. Here's a background and say, oh,
• 45:48
  I got a few questions. But before I get into these and
• 45:51
  these kind of have to do with where I'm going next, I'm
• 45:53
  curious like, where is your day spent?
• 45:55
  Like if I looked at your schedule because obviously
• 45:56
  you're not a practicing dentist anymore, right?
• 45:59
  Where is your time? Is it like man back-to-back?
• 46:02
  Is it in meetings? Is it like?
• 46:04
  Certainly not back-to-back. And I think when when I feel
• 46:07
  bad, when founders have their calendars stacked every minute
• 46:09
  of every day, it just tells me that they don't have their time
• 46:12
  control or calendar control. But what about the Gary Vees?
• 46:16
  Because he always, you know, Gary Vaynerchuk.
• 46:17
  You know what that is, right? Like guys like that, like I
• 46:20
  think they almost brag about like 15 minutes meeting because
• 46:23
  then I gotta get to the next one, next one, next one.
• 46:24
  And I don't know what makes them feel like they're so busy.
• 46:26
  They're so and not a knock on Gary's done amazing things.
• 46:29
  But of course, I'm just curious your perspective.
• 46:30
  You know, sometimes you take things with a grain of salt,
• 46:33
  right? Because Gary V is not telling us
• 46:34
  about the time that he just spends away from the business,
• 46:37
  right? His team is operating in full
• 46:39
  flow, right? He's talking about the times
• 46:40
  maybe. Is that a day, a week where he
• 46:42
  has that stacked? Like I'd I'd like more context
• 46:45
  on stuff like that. Right, that's.
• 46:46
  So good for me. I think because I work on the
• 46:49
  growth side, I'm not in the nitty gritty day-to-day of the
• 46:53
  operations as much because we have a really good operations
• 46:56
  team at this point, very talented.
• 46:59
  And my wife Anushka is actually OP strategy.
• 47:03
  So she deals with the operations team unless there's like
• 47:06
  something we both need to talk about.
• 47:08
  I'm looking, I spend most of my day looking at analyzing deals,
• 47:13
  looking at PNLS, looking at like maybe 8 to 6 to 8 PNLS a day
• 47:19
  because you. Want to require other dental
• 47:21
  practices? Acquire, yeah, exactly partner
• 47:24
  require the right fit and doing a lot of that and then when
• 47:29
  something piques my interest going and visiting that site.
• 47:33
  So I'm doing a lot of that. And also I also I'm in charge of
• 47:36
  pipeline creation in, in the business like in terms of
• 47:39
  scouting talent for the leadership team.
• 47:41
  So I'm looking at resumes. I'm also looking at dentist
• 47:45
  resumes too. My OPS team, although does a lot
• 47:48
  of this screening. I'm like, I look at that to make
• 47:51
  sure they're the right fit for us and then maybe get on final
• 47:55
  screenings with Dennis. So I do a lot of that.
• 47:58
  So I think that fills fills up, you know, the the three days of
• 48:02
  my time, the other three days, obviously I'm in the NBA right
• 48:05
  now. And so that takes up lots of
• 48:07
  still assignments and stuff like.
• 48:08
  That yeah, yeah, you'd have to have a business where it can run
• 48:11
  without you to do that stuff, because otherwise it'd be
• 48:13
  impossible to step away. So a few questions from the
• 48:15
  founder Talk community. One, how did you capture your
• 48:17
  expertise for the rest of the team to operate from it?
• 48:20
  Meaning, how did you kind of pass down your knowledge and
• 48:23
  skill sets so that other people can do the job?
• 48:25
  Lots of, lots of SO PS standard operating protocols.
• 48:29
  My wife is great at that. I, I, again, I recognize my
• 48:33
  strengths and it's not like I not building systems, so to
• 48:37
  speak, although I'm, I'm pretty decent at it.
• 48:39
  She's actually great at it. So I, I leverage her or you
• 48:43
  could leverage another person in your business who's actually
• 48:45
  great at SO PS or if you don't have that person, I think highly
• 48:48
  recommend hiring somebody with a high follow through and who can
• 48:52
  build systems and OPS did that. And then once we captured a lot
• 48:56
  of the SO PS, it was really easy to tell people not to come to us
• 49:00
  directly and to go look at the SOP.
• 49:02
  We have a central place with all the SO PS If they don't go there
• 49:05
  and they come to us directly, we asked did you go there and then
• 49:10
  we send them back. There, that's good.
• 49:11
  How did you get past? The other question here is how
• 49:13
  did you get past clients or patients wanting to work with
• 49:15
  you as the expert or the dentist in this case versus you're going
• 49:19
  to be working with somebody else or someone else is going to be
• 49:20
  your dentist or was that a hard shift to make?
• 49:23
  In my case, I had actually transitioned to about a day or
• 49:27
  just two days a week in in the chair from about four to five
• 49:31
  days one year or two I went down.
• 49:33
  So when I went down from that five to two days a week, being
• 49:36
  the technical technician myself, patients were like, oh, you're
• 49:40
  not available as much, but I, but I was continued to tell them
• 49:43
  that I'm here for you on the two days.
• 49:46
  Just my calendar shrinks a little bit, but I will still see
• 49:49
  you in those two days. So patients already understood
• 49:52
  that, my teams understood that. But when I fully transitioned
• 49:55
  out of the chair for both Anishka and myself, our goal was
• 49:58
  to find somebody as good, if not better.
• 50:02
  And that was a long process for us, right?
• 50:04
  Because obviously as founders, you do whatever you need to, to
• 50:08
  like keep it going. You're you're going to be
• 50:10
  scrappy. But sometimes the other dentists
• 50:12
  don't want to be that they want what they want.
• 50:13
  They want like all these, you know, equipment devices.
• 50:17
  So it's just finding the right fit.
• 50:18
  It took some time. It took took us about a year to
• 50:20
  find the right dentist. I actually replaced myself with
• 50:24
  a specialist who is, I would say in a lot of ways is better in
• 50:28
  the clinical aspect of things. And she's great.
• 50:31
  She's a great core values fit and my patients, I felt like I
• 50:34
  really left them with an amazing clinician.
• 50:38
  And so they never felt like, oh, you just just left me out to
• 50:41
  dry. I never got that.
• 50:43
  Same with Anishka too. We were able to replace her with
• 50:46
  a pretty seasoned dentist. I think that's key.
• 50:47
  If you're going to replace yourself, do it with somebody
• 50:50
  great, if not better than you. That's a great point, as you do
• 50:54
  miss practicing at all. Occasionally, yes.
• 50:57
  I placed a lot of implants. I did a lot of implant
• 50:59
  surgeries, so I do miss the the feeling of implant going through
• 51:03
  somebody's bone, right. I know it sounds morbid.
• 51:07
  I know it sounds morbid, but that's the stuff I miss.
• 51:09
  Thank God there's people that do that though, But I know there's
• 51:12
  Dennis in my group that are doing a great job of that.
• 51:15
  But I I have enough in my plate now that probably don't miss it
• 51:18
  as much as I was probably a six months ago.
• 51:20
  OK. Yeah.
• 51:21
  When you look at the timeline of your entrepreneurial career,
• 51:24
  when were you the most happiest and most fulfilled?
• 51:28
  I. Think the probably in the last
• 51:31
  one to two years as I've been able to step away from doing it
• 51:34
  because you have to think about your impact, right?
• 51:37
  I deeply care about impact and 'cause if you're doing it just
• 51:41
  for the money, then what's the point, right?
• 51:43
  Money just becomes a number at the end of the day, then it.
• 51:45
  Does you have so much is like all right, what more would an
• 51:47
  extra of $500? Like it doesn't do anything to
• 51:50
  your life, right? It's but impact does.
• 51:52
  So I think probably in the last two years as I stepped back, as
• 51:57
  I was able to recruit more Dennis and empower them to do
• 52:00
  this stuff, I was only able to service 10 patients a day or 15
• 52:04
  a day. Now my impact is because I've
• 52:06
  hired 15 dentists, they can go service 10 each.
• 52:09
  That's 150 people that I'm able to impact indirectly, right?
• 52:14
  I, I look at it that way and I would rather spend a lot of time
• 52:17
  zoning, honing in on our dentist to make sure that they're living
• 52:21
  up to our standards at this point.
• 52:23
  Love that man. Gives a lot of hope for people
• 52:24
  that are trying to accomplish that.
• 52:25
  Listening to that. Some people have that are
• 52:27
  listening, but a lot of people are striving towards that, of
• 52:29
  course. So you can kind of stay in your
• 52:30
  zone a genius now and do the thing that you really want to do
• 52:32
  that makes you happy, but it absolutely, you know, creates
• 52:35
  the most impact. Yeah, you have to, you have to
• 52:37
  realize you I I think you have to reconcile with the fact that
• 52:40
  do you want to let go of the craft?
• 52:43
  Do you want to be the engineer yourself or do you want to be
• 52:45
  the orchestrator of the engineers?
• 52:47
  I think that's a decision one has to make until you make that
• 52:50
  and really reconcile with that. Because I know Dennis that do
• 52:54
  half this and half business and half dentistry and they're
• 52:57
  always frustrated. They're always pissed off at
• 52:59
  their teams. They're always pissed off that
• 53:01
  things aren't moving, you know, the way they want it to.
• 53:04
  I wonder why, right, Because they haven't made that decision
• 53:07
  yet. We both know Brad Hughes.
• 53:09
  He's very active online. Of course, shout out to Brad if
• 53:12
  you're watching this. But I feel like he's he's in his
• 53:14
  own, a genius. You can just tell he's having
• 53:16
  the time of his life. And making an impact.
• 53:18
  He's a great guy. And you know, he, he likes what
• 53:20
  he does. He's great at what he does, too.
• 53:22
  Yeah, Yeah, he is. I agree.
• 53:23
  So actually a quick question for you from your business
• 53:26
  standpoint, I'm going to play a clip from you actually, what's
• 53:30
  next for you guys? Like what is the bigger picture?
• 53:32
  What are you really trying to accomplish?
• 53:33
  Because you know, arguably you could just kind of coast here.
• 53:35
  So what do you what's what's keeping you going?
• 53:37
  And what is that next? Thing, you know, and, and
• 53:38
  that's, that's a really, I think about a year ago we had to
• 53:41
  reconcile with that, right? Do we coast?
• 53:43
  Do we good because we're in a good spot, right?
• 53:45
  Do we coast? But but that also breeds some
• 53:48
  complacency. And I probably would say, you
• 53:50
  know, I probably got a little bit complacent maybe for about
• 53:53
  two to three months. But we've also Anushka and I
• 53:57
  have enough awareness that complacency doesn't let you move
• 54:00
  forward, it actually keeps you there.
• 54:02
  So we have great leadership coaches that are challenging us
• 54:05
  at this point to push higher impact more people.
• 54:09
  For us, it's like how, who can we serve at this point?
• 54:12
  Our, our clients are the, our leadership team at this point.
• 54:15
  That's our client and doctors are our clients, right?
• 54:18
  We need to find a way to really support our dentists at a very
• 54:21
  high level. If you aren't doing that, then
• 54:23
  I'm like I would not be in business.
• 54:25
  So for us it's about bringing on more dentist and really helping
• 54:29
  them accomplish their goals. We call them the $1,000,000
• 54:32
  dentist helping dentist achieve $1,000,000 of production per
• 54:36
  year or revenue per year. And a lot of dentist want that,
• 54:39
  but they have no clue, no idea how to do that.
• 54:42
  So we have a pathway for that so that we're really zoned in on
• 54:44
  that, zoned in on, you know, bringing in more practices.
• 54:49
  Again, for the same reason, if you aren't serving the dentist,
• 54:52
  I would not go buy more practices at this stage.
• 54:54
  But I feel like we have the bandwidth to be able to do that.
• 54:57
  Very cool, man. And if you stepped away from the
• 54:59
  business for six months, what would happen?
• 55:02
  That's a really good question. I think the business would be OK
• 55:12
  with where it is. I think we would continue to
• 55:14
  grow, probably not at such a fast clip, but not not double
• 55:18
  digit growth, right, because you need to.
• 55:21
  The the truth is, I think most founders want to be passive.
• 55:24
  I don't I don't at least believe that that's a thing, right?
• 55:27
  You have to be active until you can get it to enough scale where
• 55:30
  you're ready to actually walk away from it.
• 55:32
  That's truly one passive. You know, passivity comes in
• 55:36
  will. You do that eventually, will you
• 55:37
  guys walk away? I don't.
• 55:39
  I don't think so. I think we really like what we
• 55:41
  do until I'm enjoying it. I feel like we're serving our
• 55:43
  dentist and they feel well supported.
• 55:45
  There's no reason for us to do that.
• 55:47
  What if someone came by right now?
• 55:48
  It's like we'll buy everything for 100 million and you can go
• 55:51
  do whatever you wanna do. Now that you say 100 million?
• 55:54
  You can do your life work. You're gonna make impact,
• 55:56
  obviously, because knowing you and founders like us, we're not
• 55:58
  just gonna sit on a beach and drink margaritas all day.
• 56:00
  Sure. Boring 100 million would
• 56:02
  probably be hard to say no to, I'll be honest.
• 56:05
  But you know what? We're in a really good spot.
• 56:08
  I think again, it's like, I wish like, yeah, money plays a
• 56:12
  factor, money plays a role, but we're in a good spot where I, I
• 56:16
  don't think our work is complete.
• 56:17
  I think there's a lot of things we still need to accomplish.
• 56:20
  Just getting yourself out of the chair is just one aspect of it.
• 56:23
  We need to do this. We need to repeat this more and
• 56:25
  more like 50 more times before before I can feel like, OK,
• 56:30
  we've served a lot of people. We've served a lot of patients
• 56:32
  and a lot of doctors. So there's a lot lot left.
• 56:35
  Very cool, man, I love that. And I think that is the key is
• 56:37
  that when you stop growing and learning and stop trying to make
• 56:40
  the impact, I just think that just doesn't sound like an
• 56:43
  appealing life to me personally. You know, even if you do have
• 56:46
  the money or this or that or success, it's like, I always
• 56:48
  want to be kind of like feeling like I'm building something or
• 56:50
  making a difference or doing something that I enjoy.
• 56:53
  I just couldn't imagine, like, what are you going to watch TV,
• 56:56
  take a couple trips on the beach?
• 56:57
  Just doesn't sound that fun, you know?
• 57:01
  But I think having freedom is, is cool, you know, having the
• 57:03
  freedom to say I'm going to do what I want to do now and not
• 57:06
  these things that I, I wish I could get off.
• 57:09
  I I couldn't agree more. Dan Sullivan says says it best,
• 57:12
  right? You need freedom from freedom of
• 57:15
  relationships, freedom of purpose, freedom of money and
• 57:17
  freedom of time. If you can check out those boxes
• 57:20
  every day a little bit, you know, and then ultimately, not
• 57:24
  freedom to just sit around to your point, but freedom to
• 57:27
  actually move things ahead, make more impact, serve more people.
• 57:30
  That's really what it's about. If you aren't doing that, then
• 57:32
  what's the point? That's it.
• 57:34
  Yeah. I'm going to play this clip from
• 57:35
  you speaking on stage. I think you guys weren't
• 57:37
  accepting at a. War, yeah, and.
• 57:39
  Then I'm going to get your thoughts on this.
• 57:40
  I think what you said is really cool.
• 57:45
  Hold on, I got the volume to low here.
• 57:47
  There we go. It's hard not going.
• 57:54
  Three things that I want to say while we're on this stage.
• 57:57
  Growing is hard. Not going is hard.
• 58:01
  Deciding who gets promoted in your business is hard.
• 58:04
  Strategy is hard. Having no strategy is hard.
• 58:08
  Pursuit of excellence is hard. Showing up every day to do the
• 58:11
  work is hard. Being a dentist is hard.
• 58:14
  Being CE OS is hard. Running a multi site practice
• 58:18
  operations is hard. It's all hard.
• 58:20
  You have to pick your heart. It's all hard.
• 58:23
  You have to pick your heart. It's.
• 58:24
  It really is. Everyday is hard, right?
• 58:27
  Like as much as feel like we can coast, it is hard every day.
• 58:32
  You have to show up for your teams.
• 58:33
  There's stuff that happens in your especially in a multi side
• 58:37
  location. There's fires every day in some
• 58:39
  location, right? As much as you have great
• 58:42
  people, there's somebody there that's you know that did
• 58:45
  something, didn't lock the door. As owners, you, you're
• 58:47
  responsible for all of it. You have to, you know, make sure
• 58:50
  payroll is good. You have to make sure your bank
• 58:52
  balances are good to pay people. You have to make sure you're,
• 58:55
  you're investing in the right things in the business.
• 58:57
  You have to make sure you're, you're growing, your people are
• 59:01
  growing and they're happy and otherwise the culture gets
• 59:04
  blamed. I, I find it extremely hard, but
• 59:08
  the hard, I think that's where the, you know, Tony Robbins said
• 59:11
  something really great, right? Leadership is pain.
• 59:14
  I used to think leadership is suffering, but after how he
• 59:17
  coached Alex Hormozi when he said I leadership is a lot of
• 59:21
  suffering, Tony Robbins said I think suffering is a choice.
• 59:27
  It was amazing. I think suffering is a choice.
• 59:29
  So I've changed my mindset on that.
• 59:31
  It should not be suffering 'cause if you're suffering every
• 59:33
  day, then what's the point? It is painful though it is
• 59:36
  painful, but I like pain. My both my wife and I, like we
• 59:39
  know you, we embrace that pain because on the other side of
• 59:42
  pain is growth. So that's, yeah.
• 59:45
  Wow, this has been an incredible conversation.
• 59:47
  Raj I. You at the knack for great
• 59:49
  questions by the way. You made it really easy for me.
• 59:52
  Thank you. Well, it's also easy.
• 59:53
  We have a great guest. Where can people find you,
• 59:55
  connect with you, learn more about what you guys are doing,
• 59:57
  and if you want to say a little bit more about what you're
• 59:58
  doing, totally fine. Yeah, our company's called Aereo
• 1:00:01
  Dental, aereodental.com. We I'm also on LinkedIn, pretty
• 1:00:06
  active. Doctor Abhishek Nagaraj.
• 1:00:08
  My wife is Doctor Anushka Gagani.
• 1:00:10
  On Instagram I am Doctor Dentagram.
• 1:00:13
  That's Dr. Dentagram. My wife is doctor entrepreneur.
• 1:00:18
  So yeah, you know, find us, hit us up.
• 1:00:20
  Happy to chat, happy to talk to anybody.
• 1:00:23
  I, I do spend a lot of time mentoring some of my folks that,
• 1:00:28
  that run a business, but maybe slightly smaller scale that want
• 1:00:31
  to get to the next step. Happy to share anything that I
• 1:00:34
  can, but also happy to learn from other people too.
• 1:00:37
  Wow, Yeah. Thank you so much for being
• 1:00:38
  here. Appreciate you.
• 1:00:39
  Appreciate you guys for watching and we'll see you on the next
• 1:00:42
  one. Thank you so much.