Latest / Dental Mentors / The 27x Return: How One Major DSO Uses AI to Scale (feat. Amol Nirgudkar)

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The 27x Return: How One Major DSO Uses AI to Scale (feat. Amol Nirgudkar) · Dental Mentors

• Dental Mentors: AI is here and either we are an AI company or we're dead in the next two years. There's no choice left anymore on whether we should adopt AI in our businesses, in our lives, only to upgrade us to doing better things. If AI doesn't change our behavior, then it's all just jargony, jargon, saying, ⁓ I got AI, I got AI, I got AI. It's got to change behavior. AI will enable humans to have more time with other humans, which means that our job in healthcare is to make sure that we actually cure a patient's disease. Dentistry, it's the gateway to your overall health, right? Going to a dentist is more important than going to any other specialist because everything starts in the mouth as we know, right? So what I think AI will do is it'll abstract away the mundane tasks that have no value to the patient. It'll allow people to spend more time with the patients, earn their trust, get them to treatment, get them to say yes to treatment that they deserve to change their life. It's going to allow us to detect more disease, diagnose better. get more case acceptance better, we're going to get paid better from RCM standpoint. From a marketing standpoint, AI's will allow us to do better bidding on keywords, on Google, on Meadow, on Instagram. All of it, it's going to actually create an abundance. The challenge is, are we ready for it? Are we ready for this abundance going forward? Are we ready to take these patients on? Are we ready to make the changes in our practices to drink all the champagne that the AI is going to create? Or is it just going to flow into the gutter? And that's the key. you Welcome to another amazing, awesome episode of Dental Mentors. I'm Matt Ornstein, one of your co-hosts. here with Neil Zemba of Rise DDS and Eric Morin of Tower Leadership. We have a very special guest on today who also happens to be one of my best friends. name is Amal Nirgidkar. He's very, very well known in the dental industry. So if you don't know him, I'll introduce him real quick. He's the founder. and CEO of an amazing company called Patient Prism and his services and technologies have really, really done wonders for dental practices and DSOs in relation to new patient acquisition, scheduling, and really driving profitability in EBITDA. And so it's a pleasure to have you here Amal. Thank you very, very much for coming on. Thank you for having me. This is fantastic. Yeah. Well, we're super excited to see you. So Amal's area of expertise is artificial intelligence and hyper-focused in the dental industry and the dental space. So Amal, if it's okay with you, I'd love to just open up the mic to you and have you share with our listeners and viewers your take on artificial intelligence, what's going on currently as it relates to the dental space and dental industry, and where you see artificial intelligence going. for the benefit of the dental industry. Your presentation at the DICOM event in Dallas a couple of weeks ago was absolutely outstanding. So it's a pleasure to have you on. So I'll let you go. No, I appreciate it, Matt. And I appreciate your years of friendship and counsel, whether we like it or not, AI is here and either we are an AI company or we're dead in the next two years. Right? So there's no choice left anymore on whether we should adopt AI. in our businesses, in our lives, only to upgrade us to doing better things. I started my journey 11 years ago in dentistry and AI to understand why patients don't book appointments. And we figured instead of humans having to listen to phone calls, which was impossible to do, what if we could train AI to listen to phone calls? That's how we started in 2015. Alexa and Siri were just launched. And what we realized is it's dentistry and broader healthcare is that no matter how many patients are trying to get our appointments at our clinics, if the appointment doesn't consummate, it's all a waste, right? We do well, we take care of patients, we drive revenue. When we see the patients, they come in, they accept the treatment and then we get paid. But if the patient is not even able to come in, then obviously everything else after that. is pointless. So we built the first machine learning models to understand human conversations between patients and receptionist and call centers and notify ⁓ within a short period of time on here's a conversation patient wanted an appointment wanted an invisible line they couldn't book because they couldn't afford the treatment we didn't offer them any financing and all that packaging all that information that we dropped the ball on we missed the we missed telling the patient how they could make it how would be easier for them to get this appointment and affordable, we just let them go. So that's what we decided to solve 10, 11 years ago. Today, we solve a little more than that. We look at the entire patient acquisition journey. We look at marketing and whether marketing is driving the right leads at the right cost, which is important. You guys do that, DDS. Patient acquisition cost is super important. No matter where you are today in all of healthcare, including dentistry, all roads lead through marketing, which means you have no choice. but to market. 20 years ago, 10 years ago, there was a choice. You had referrals and everything else. Today, there is no choice. Even if it's a referral, every patient goes online, searches for you online, and you better show up. Either organic listings, through your ads, social media, everything else. So we at Patient Prism look at whether marketing is driving the right leads, the right patients are calling you at the right cost. Then we make sure the patients are making appointments and by analyzing a conversation and immediately within 20 seconds, letting the people know that, Austin opportunity, let's reconvert it back. And that's important. Heartland Dental last year, using this system, brought back 60,000 patients on that second attempt. 60,000 patients worth at least $72 million of revenue. And these are their numbers, not mine. Based on the idea that we missed an opportunity, Asian Prism sent an alert out, we were able to reconnect with the patient, and we recovered revenue. And that's a big deal, right? Because we've already spent money in marketing to drive that lead to call us. Pointless leaving them on that too much money on the table. The third thing we do, and I apologize, I won't have these long-winded answers after this one. The third thing we do is understanding deep needle in the haystack insights around operations. Okay, Neil's firm, Rise DDS, drove the perfect lead, perfect lead, perfect patient into the call center. Now the person who answered the phone, did the perfect job to provide the patient all the information, they were empathetic, they built trust, all that stuff. And what if we don't have any room on the schedule to offer the patient a slot when they want it? What if we don't take their insurance? So, Patient Prism built this contextual AI to understand those operational needle in the haystack insights that say marketing did a job, sales, which is the call center or the receptionist did their job, but operationally, we didn't have any slots for the patient. Operationally, we couldn't tackle their insurance obstacles. Operationally, we couldn't offer them any financing or any of these things. Operationally, couldn't take the service was not available. So when you take marketing, sales and operations, overlay AI on top of it and let whether a single practice or DSOs know exactly why they're not growing, it's a more holistic approach than saying, I need to spend more money in marketing. or I need to train my receptionist. The answer is usually in between the lines because if people think it's just one thing that's going to drive revenue or EBITDA growth, that's not true. Then patient prism today, we're very fortunate over 10,000 offices in dentistry across US, Canada, seven Europe are on the platform and they use us to really understand and get smart about why are we not growing the business. Sorry. Long. That was great. So I remember I was just having a private breakfast with Pat Bauer at some DSO event. And I asked Pat, I was sitting right next to him and Pat Bauer, CEO of Harlan, just nicest guy I've ever met, period. And certainly one of the absolute smartest. But I was chatting with Pat and I said, you know, how are things going with Patient Prism? And Pat said, oh, they're going great. And I said, well, what does great mean? And Pat said, every dollar we're spending on Patient Prism, we're getting back $27 in revenue. At first I thought he said like 2.7 and I said 27. He's like every dollar we're spending on patient prism software each month, we're generating an additional $27 of revenue. And I was like, holy mackerel. mean, it's a game, absolute game changer. Just give me a moment here because I've had this discussion with them all. Amal told me one specific example one time where patient Prism AI was listening in and some guy called me, he needed an implant. He was in a lot of pain and the receptionist said, yeah, know, it's around 5,000 bucks. And the guy said, fine. And he said, well, when can I come in? He was in a lot of discomfort and whoever was doing it looked at the schedule and said, our next opening is six weeks. And he was like, okay, bye. And then patient Prism alerted. you know, the correct person at the office, you know, called the guy back right away and was like, when do you want to come in? And he's like, as soon as possible. So they, you know, maybe they bumped a cleaning, a hygiene patient and, you know, brought this guy in and for a $5,000 treatment overriding $125 hygiene cleaning. I mean, these things move the needle in a huge way. Real quick, Amal, like you have really good knowledge on it, so do I, but I was just curious, what is the lifetime value of a patient at a dental office? I think there is lots of ways maybe Eric can comment on this too. It's anywhere between 15 and $30,000 a lifetime. Right. That's really the LT. Right. And so the profit coming out that is, you know, $3,000 to like $5,000 of profit over the lifetime of the patient after all operating costs. So I go back to this, like if someone calls in and it's a new patient, If you don't get them scheduled to come in in the next seven days, there's a 95 % chance or higher they're never, they're not going to book at your dental office. They'll keep calling till they can come and find someone that we can see in the next week. And my philosophy on this as a DSO owner is if you get a new patient, you need to know, you need to get them scheduled within the next seven days. Or if they say, I'd like to come in in three days, you have to do whatever you can to get them on the schedule. Even if that means bumping an existing patient for a cleaning. where you have to call that existing patient and say, hey, we got overbooked today. Can we reschedule like as soon as possible? And even if you say, whatever your copay is, we're covering it. So there's no cost for that cleaning. So maybe you give up 50 bucks to bring in a new patient that's now worth three to $5,000 to you. And you cannot miss these opportunities. Do you have some thoughts on that? Yeah, a hundred percent. We measure that at patient prison. We measure how long it takes for a new patient to come in. We call it median lead time in patient prism. And we know there's a direct correlation between how long you make them wait to how likely are they going to show up. And obviously we've spent money on an Invisalign patient costs a couple hundred dollars to acquire. And that money is going to waste if you're not going to bring them in. So we have lost the money on the marketing and then we have lost the revenue. And what it's more important, I it's not about deprioritizing hygiene patients at all. And there is, what happens is when you understand how the patients are flowing, it may allow you to say, maybe I need to add a hygiene assistant. Maybe I need to do assisted hygiene. Maybe I need to add a hygienist to the mix so that we are able to see both, right? A lot of times, generally speaking, because we're not measuring the loss happening, every day from these lost opportunities, we are not making good human resources decisions about are we staffed enough to be able to handle the demand that people like Neil are creating for our practices. And that's also important because a lot of the work comes from hygiene, restorative work comes from hygiene. So we want to bring those hygiene patients in, but maybe we need to readjust the schedules. And that's some of the work we do now with DSOs. It's not just about answering the phone, is that Now if we can, if patient prism can tell you that there were these 10 high value patients last month who would have spent any between three to six thousand dollars with you, right? Now your fixed costs were met. So your contribution margin is super high. Your contribution to EBITDA is super high because your fixed cost already met, right? So you potentially could have 50, 60, 70 % profit margins, EBITDA margins because now your fixed costs are met, right? Now you turn them away, right? Because you don't have room on the schedule. Now what that does is, again, what I say about AI today is if AI doesn't change our behavior, then it's all just jargony, jargon, and always saying, ⁓ I got AI, I got AI, I got AI. It's got to change behavior, which means we have to figure out a way to give patients an appointment when they need it, and preferably within the seven-day period. Obviously, if they're an emergency appointment, need to come in. If they need a root canal, they're not going to wait seven days, right? They got to come in today or tomorrow. Nobody's going to wait that long. And so that's also important. We also measure at patient prism, Matt. We have a thing called appointment priority and we understand in real time how emergent that appointment was. Did they want to come in right away or they could wait a little bit. And we report that in real time to say, these are the people who want an emergent appointment. They wanted to come right away. And we said no to 50 % of them. And knowing that Emergency patients on an average spend 50 % more than routine patients. We have to take that data back to the doctors like, doctors, what would you like guys to do? Should we deprioritize emergencies or should we have dedicated slots on our templates to see emergency patients so that we are doing that? Sometimes we just have to do it, right? We can't drive patients away to our competitors because that prevents us from growing our business on a same store basis. Yeah, I'll tell you. I was at, and then I'll let Neil and Eric hop in with some questions. I was at a Tony Robbins event many years ago and it was a seven day event. And on like day two, I got an abscess on my tooth and it was all swollen. I was in excruciating pain. It was on a Saturday or a Sunday and I called like 20 or 30 dental offices. you know, even like I got through to like a couple of them. like, well, we're closed this weekend. I literally would have paid two or $3,000 to have that thing fixed. I finally found somebody, somebody at the Tony Robbins, their cousin was a dentist and I went in to see him, but I would have easily paid, I was in so much pain. I would have paid $2,000, $3,000 to alleviate that. was probably the worst pain I'd ever felt. So I hear you on what you were saying and I'll open it up to Neil and Eric for some questions. Well, I'll just say one, Amal, I completely agree with your premise that every Every company needs to wholly embrace AI. I don't think we have a choice. I completely agree with you. I'll also preface by saying I think on this show we've learned there's no such thing as too long of an answer. So I think, I think, I think our community loves diving deep. We love it. I'm going tell you right now, like we love it. ⁓ I love it. You know, I would say like I'm like a pit bull and I'll just latch onto a question and just go, go deeper. I really appreciate your insights there. You know, one thing I'd love your view on and I don't want to, I want to try hard not to lead this question. because I want to get your raw opinion about this. But as AI comes in and really transforms, you know, specifically really everything, I think going on in dental practice over the next one to five plus years and then beyond that, can you kind of break down your view on how do you think that what roles in the office do you think will change? How do you think that they'll change? Just so everybody knows my bias, I mean, my opinion is such that I think that lower level administrative jobs either will be eliminated or people will have to upscale, people will have to become more senior and become sort of managers of AI. Do you agree with that, disagree with that? And what specifically do you think is sort of the ideal staffing configuration inside of practice? And what do you think that they're going to be doing? It's a great question. I think our society needs to answer that in terms of what happens in the next five years as we see job displacement happen as a result of AI. In my view, in healthcare, including dentistry, I think abstracting away the mundane tasks like calling an insurance company and being on the phone with them for three hours or answering phone calls, right? Those don't add to the patient experience. They don't add any value to the patient. If you're just calling an insurance company, you're calling some people and all that stuff. And I think what it will do is AI will enable humans to have more time with other humans, which means that our job in healthcare is to is to make sure that we actually cure a patient's disease. Dentistry is the most important, it's the gateway to your overall health, right? Going to a dentist is more important than going to any other specialist in my view, because everything starts in the mouth, as we know, right? So what I think AI will do is it'll abstract away the mundane tasks that have no value to the patient, right? And it'll allow, maybe at one point AI receptionists will become the norm. They're not there yet. including our own, it's not great, but it'll get there one day. It'll get there one day, it'll abstract away, and it'll elevate the people who need more acuity, more higher end services to the human. But if now humans have, I think staffing will kind of stay the same. Maybe call centers will not need as many call center folks. Receptionists will be still needed for checkout and everything else. But I think, I'm very optimistic about AI. I think it'll allow people to spend more time with the patients, earn their trust, get them to treatment, get them to say yes to treatment that they deserve to change their life. Computer vision AI, like people like Pearl, it's going to allow us to detect more disease, diagnose better, get more case acceptance better. The people like Zentist and Zoom and all these other guys, from an RCM standpoint, we're going to get paid better from RCM standpoint using AI. I think through our... From a marketing standpoint, AI is going allow us to do better bidding on keywords, on Google, on Meadow, on Instagram. All of it. It's going to actually create an abundance. The challenge is, are we ready for it? Are we ready for this abundance going forward? Are we ready to take these patients on? Are we ready to make the changes in our practices to drink all the champagne that the AI is going to create? Or is it just going to flow into the gutter? And that's the key. The key is, again, if we can make humans into superhumans. That's the point. I think I agree with what Elon and Peter Diamandis and all these guys are saying is it's the most massive upgrade to humanity. It depends how we use it. Do we use it to create better relationships with humans? Do we use it to abstract away the mundane tasks that don't add any value to anybody so that we have more time to spend with other humans? I am very optimistic. I love that. I love that take. love the optimism. I mean, you know, what would you say to owners, Dennis in particular, who are afraid of AI? What would you say? And to that point, you know, sort of 80-20 rule, and you kind of answered it, but, you know, where do think that they should start implementing AI? mean, obviously, patient prison would be an amazing place to start for somebody listening to this or watching this. If you want to get a taste of That upside that you're talking about, know, patient prism obviously would be an amazing place to start. You mentioned the clinical AIs. Do you think that people should be looking to just get a first flavor of what it can do for them? I think try it all. The cost is so little. The cost of trying AI is so little. You're not set back in years of contracts. We don't do that. Just try. And maybe it won't work in the first time around. Maybe your workflows are brittle and that's why it doesn't work. You can't blame AI. AI didn't work. You didn't work because you didn't know how to figure it out. Right? So you have to figure it Just try. My thing is I don't mind trying things and failing at them and then retrying them and failing at them again and then eventually figure it out. Right? A lot of folks, especially in the clinical side, say, oh my God, they didn't work. Oh, it had a mistake. Okay. Well, guess what? It's okay. All of us make mistakes. Humans make mistakes. My goal is definitely try computer vision. Right? Even before you try patient prism, you try computer vision, right? Because we have a diagnosis crisis in America. We've got to figure out how to standardize diagnosis across all doctors, right? Detecting disease is important. If you don't even detect disease, how the hell are you going to do that? Right? Use that. Use RCM, revenue cycle management, AI, to sense, submit better claims and do claims validation, insurance verification. Those are problems you currently have. And to solve. Now, if you need to grow on top of that, patient prism is great. It's going to tell you that maybe we need to have better quality patients. Maybe we need more patients. Maybe we need to add more capacity. I think what AI does, which is the most interesting thing, it finds the signal from all the noise. For AI, we had no ability to measure these conversations, to look at bone depth inside X-rays, to look at these insurance verification things. Now all of a sudden, AI has unlimited potential to analyze data at scale. And now we're able to find these needle in the haystack insights. We're measuring things now. Now all we have to do is start measuring and then take one vertical slide at a time. You don't have to take, buy all AI companies. Take one thing, implement it well, get buy-in from your people saying that, hey, this is going to actually make your life better, not harder. And then, and then then keep adding more features. think. I think it's going to be, and people who are naysayers today, ⁓ mean, well, guess what? Kodak developed the first technology and the board at Kodak said at the time, who is going to ever watch pictures of other people on their mobile devices? Who is going to do that ever? That's what they said, right? They developed the technology to actually take pictures on a mobile device. The board said they were top fortune five company and they said, Who's going to do that? Who's going to take pictures on the phone? They're no longer in existence today. So we have a choice, right? We have a choice. It's the most transformational technology in the history of mankind. It's going to upgrade all of us. And the cost of deploying it is very little. So go do it. Well, want to jump in. I appreciate you, first of all, you being here. got to... to see also your presentation at Dicama. And I loved all the data points because I geek out over the data. I love Patient Prison. By the way, I've referred about 500, 600 people, I think, over the years to Patient Prison. Thank you such a fan of the platform. It's just so much. One of the things that you were talking about was that Heartland got, for every dollar they put in, $27 back. And by the way, this Are We Ready for the Abundance? I wrote this down. If you ever hear me say that, I'm all somewhere. Say that. I know it's yours, but I'm going to take it some time because I think it's so good. But are we ready for the abundance? So the question is around sophistication because someone listening to this might say to themselves, well, that's great for Heartland. Heartland has the ability to implement at that type of scale and enroll something like this out. If someone's an emerging group that doesn't have the operational capabilities, where does their sophistication need to be to be able to extract maybe AI and patient prism specifically to grab some of these data points that you're talking about? It's a great question. struggle with it quite a bit, actually. I think first and foremost, we have to understand that in order for dental practices to succeed, it's a team sport. Everybody's got to work together. We have to have clinicians calibrate with operations, with marketing. And I think a lot of the emerging groups that are coming about, a lot of these functions are not well defined yet or they're siloed. and nobody's sharing data between that, right? The operation says, man, marketing sucks, I need more patients. Doctors say, I need more patients, I need more marketing. Marketing is like, ⁓ I'm driving all these leads, you guys are the ones screwing it up. I think the first is realization that growth is not that difficult if we measure the right things. And I think what I tell emerging groups is that I start, let's start measuring. What does it matter? We have to get smart about having the finance function understand the impact. of what a difference between an expense and investment is in its accounting concept. Just because it's an outflow of cash doesn't mean it's an expense. It looks the same. When you buy a building, it's an outflow of cash. And when you spend money on repairs, it's an outflow of cash. Two different categories. One goes in the balance sheet. One goes in the profit and loss statement. The key, the understanding is CFOs have to understand that not all all outflows of cash are expenses. Now the accounting rules prevent us from capitalizing them on the balance sheet. But what we have to understand is that if I spend a dollar here, the definition of an asset according to accounting is that it gives you future cash flows. It's the present value of future cash flows determines the value of an asset. Now, if I'm spending a dollar, I'm getting $30, $27 from it, although I put it on the P &L, it's still an asset. in my mind because accounting rules are archaic. They're like way behind everybody else, right? That's how accountants are. I'm one too. I'm a CPA. And so what we have to determine is the mindset is we've got to figure out how to distinguish between an investment and an expense. That's one. Number two, we have to figure out how do we measure the leaks in the patient funnel, the patient journey. Because at the end of the day, if you want to grow our business, We want to grow it based on facts. And facts are marketing is working, operations is screwing up. Marketing is working, but our call center or receptionist need more training. We need to measure the right thing so that we have the right diagnosis of why we're not growing. Doctors are producing $400 an hour today as GP level on an average in America, know, Bruce Baird, God bless his heart, just recently died from productive dentist academy. He got people to produce $1,000 a month. How do we do that? Well, we do that when we have the right butts in the right seats at the right time producing the right amount of revenue. And AI is going to allow them to do that without spending more money on anything. So my advice to these emerging groups is you don't have to spend more money. You just have to measure the right things. AI allows you to measure that cheaply and make the necessary adjustments to grow your business and keep everybody happy. Sorry, long winded answer again. No, that's great. Would you frankly say on the side of that, if we were having a conversation, make sure you're also investing in the people who can take this data and do something with? Because I see that as we're seeing more more technology and Neil, you were saying we're going to see some of these lower level administrative positions maybe disappear. We'll find these efficiencies as these are merged in groups. Sometimes we don't look at the people as an investment to extract the data and then do things with it. I would just love your comment or thoughts on that. Yeah. One of my good friends personally, as well as Pat Bauer at Heartland. And one of the things he says is that if we want to grow our businesses, we have to invest in ourselves as leaders. Right. And part of leadership is building the right team. Right. And it is a team sport. Not, you can have LeBron James, he's still not winning championships over the last years because there's no team. Right. There's always everybody else. And so we've got to figure out is, do we have the right team members? And we have to sometimes in a higher head of growth. It may not make sense to hire somebody, but it does make sense because we need the who's to do the how's. It's classic Dan Sullivan. It's who, not how. It's who is going to help us take us to the next level. And sometimes we have to have the, we must take some risks in order to, and risks in terms of the people that we bring on in the equation. If we don't do that, If we don't build our people, it's very difficult to grow the business. Part of why Heartland has succeeded in the world is that they have an intense focus on leadership. It's intense focus. They want everybody to be a better leader. Everybody is going to these leadership courses with Dr. Bell in North Carolina. Even I went there. Because unless we build ourselves and we say that's the core of growth, it's really hard. And I think a clinician struggles with that. especially when you're a smaller group, I'm like, am I going to invest in myself and my people and my leadership so that I can scale this to the next level? And all of us struggle that. mean, it's not easy building a small business over the years. Leadership is hard and something that we have to invest ourselves in. that. All right. I'll jump in again. ⁓ you ⁓ could look forward, let's just say five years in dentistry, what are some of the most like wildest outcomes that you see as more probable than not. And one of things I might just be talking about is like, you know, using robotic arms, robotic arms to do cavities or extractions or root canals. I'd love to hear your opinion. if, cause I think we're just now stepping into like the hockey stick exponential growth phase of of AI and technology and the human mind has a hard time grasping exponentiality, right? It's like, you know, there's that example of, hey, would you, what would you rather have? I'll pay you one penny. You work for me for 30 days. I'll pay you one penny on day one, then two pennies on day four, then four pennies on day three, or I'll give you a half, I'll give you, you know, a thousand, excuse me, $3,000 a day. And at the end of it, you'll have a hundred grand. Most people go, oh man, I'll take 3000 a day, not realizing the power of exponentiality. by the end of 30 days at a penny a day doubling every day, I think it's like over $10 million. It's crazy. I do think we're just now hitting that exponential vertical hockey stick phase of AI and technology. And I don't think most humans, probably including myself, can really grasp what the potential outcome of this is. And let's keep it on a positive note. you know, if you're thinking of great outcomes, I don't think we can, humans can even comprehend what's about to unfold, but let's say things do unfold in a really great manner and exponential growth is kicking in. What are some futuristic things that you think are more probable than not to show up in dental offices and dental practices and DSOs? ⁓ think, in five years is going to be transformative for the world. And I think. If we think that something is not going to happen, it most likely will happen. All of a we're going to have next year, we're to have Teslas going and making money for us on their own, right? With unsupervised driving. I genuinely think the customer experience, especially on the phone and intake, that will kind of eventually be AI driven for the most part. It'll abstract away 70, 80 % of... of conversations that are happening. AI will handle that. That'll happen. We will see, in my view, much better diagnosis with computer vision and getting people will almost see 100 % diagnosed and it'll be it'll be table stakes to have AI to diagnose disease. think robots at some point in five years probably will do some basic work like like fillings. We don't know what the regulatory climate will allow that or not. We'll see how that goes, but cleanings could potentially be done by robots. We could see basic work like fillings could be done by robots. And I think, I wonder if the receptionists, we could have robot receptionists. There is a possibility. think once, when I hear everybody talk about Dario Amadoui, who started Anthropic, was at the Davos conference a couple of months ago when he said that When we eventually get to a point where AI builds better AI and humans are not even there, where the pace is exponential. And he said we're about two to three years away from that. So humans don't have to worry about it. Then it's multiplicative. So AI makes AI better and there's no humans involved and it makes it better and it keeps working at it at nonstop rate. The progress could be, obviously we could have Elon's optimist or figure of robots doing our laundry and washing our cars and doing our dishes and all that stuff. But at the same time in dentistry, I think ⁓ we'll see everything from receptionists to answering phones, intake, the communication process could be all done by robots. And I think depending on the regulatory frameworks, either we'll allow robots to do basic surgery or not. Elon says by 2030, robots will have better surgery skills than humans. Elon's been a little wrong about certain things from a timing perspective, but he's never been wrong in terms of what will end up happening. Timing? Yeah, of course he has to shoot for the stars, but he's never been wrong. Everything he has said 20 years ago has come true today. So he says robots will do surgery better than doctors. I don't know if it's 2030, but I don't see them not do that unless the government stops, which again... I think things are going to unfold a lot faster than humans can possibly imagine at this point. So Amal, dental mentors is, we started dental mentors because we want, our focus is building wealth in dentistry. And, you know, I bring this up a lot, like I always talk about etymology, but you know, when someone's really successful, you typically hear someone say like, ⁓ he's filthy rich. And there's that negative connotation and you know, All three of us are of the same mindset. Like you can't give what you don't have. And I don't want to get into any details here, but Amal's known me long enough. Like I love helping other people. I mean, in a huge way. Can you verify that as a true statement? From day one? I mean, you helped me when you didn't know me. You sent me the Tony Robbins event like five years before you knew me. Yeah. So I love to help people. I love to help people succeed in whatever area. Dental mentors is focused on financial success primarily, right? And like, let's not put a negative connotation about being wealthy and being successful financially because you can do so much good. You know, I always say this, like the top 1 % of the net worth, people with the highest 1 % of net worth give over 99 % of all the charitable giving and grants and gifts, et cetera. So it's a good thing. And, you know, we're here to promote that, but One of the things that I think a lot of people watching or listening would love to hear, even though you don't own dental offices or dental practice groups, but I think it's a similar thread here. Can you just take some time and go over your journey with Patient Prism and what that's been like as an entrepreneur? Because it's never a straight line. It's up and it's down. It's sometimes it's, sometimes it's one step forward, two, sorry, one step back, two forward. I've been in situations where it's five steps forward and then maybe Sorry, five steps backwards being knocked on my butt and then all of a sudden, bam, you're slingshot forward ten steps. So I'd love you to just, if you're willing to do it, just kind of share what that journey's been like and how important it is to set your goal, be hyper-focused on it and no matter what happens, never give up. Never give up on yourself. Can you get into that for a little bit? I mean, absolutely. I'll keep it brief. mean, we started the journey 2015. We built the first product called Version 1. It was okay. We didn't know what we were doing. Then we rebuilt the product again called Version 2. We were not really innovative with the names. We it Version 2. And that also was not scalable. Eventually we realized that, thankfully we had great partners. We finally realized that we have to rebuild again. Pandemic was very difficult, almost ran out of business. But we knew we could make impact on the business. And we were okay to look back at ourselves and call ourselves like, man, we were wrong. And we were wrong. And we need to redo this again. We need to go back to the drawing board and rebuild the product again. And without having, it's very hard. to criticize your own decisions as a human. Look back at your own self in the mirror and say, man, I sucked at this. I didn't do a good job. I didn't realize what this magnitude of this product should have been. And eventually, we stumbled, we worked hard, we had several missteps. the one thing we did is, number one, we didn't give up hope. The second thing we did is we listened to our customers and we listened to what was important and we listened to... the most important customers we had and said, what would you like us to build? Instead of us figuring out, ⁓ here, I'm going to build this fantastic AI and it's going to be wonderful. Instead, we decided to pivot and saying, I'm not going to focus on that. I'm going to focus on asking my customers what are their problems and I'm going to build everything based on their problems instead of me thinking about that. And that there's a psychological element there, right? Because you have to almost not allow yourself to feel bad about yourself, right? For making mistakes. And then learn from them and saying, all right, well, I don't know anything. My customers know everything and I'm going to be humble. I'm going to ask questions. I'm going to keep my ego out the door and be humble about all of this stuff and focus on impact. At many times, the journey has been very tough. As a founder, I'll share this openly with people, still, as a founder, 11 years, I haven't paid myself a salary yet because I believe in what I'm doing. I know we're going to build incredible wealth for everybody and postpone gratification for the longest period of time because I genuinely believe in what I'm doing. And I'm very fortunate to have people in my life that have helped me, including Mr. Matt Ornstein over here, that have really helped me through my journey. Whether he came in with full disclosure, he is an investor in patient prison, came in at the right time actually, came in at the right time when we needed the most amount of help to drive the the next level, right? And you need those people in your life too that come in as angels that actually give you the mentorship, not just the money, but the mentorship to think about the right things. And so I'm very grateful. Every success that we have had over the last, especially last two years is built on the shoulders of people like Matt who have stood on top of and gotten the company there. It's not mine. I'm just one of them. Everybody has helped me and I stand very proudly on everybody's shoulder and saying that, ⁓ my God, look at me and all this. It's not, I literally am standing on everybody's shoulder. we talked to lot of dentists that might have one practice or whatever, two or three, and they're like, you know what? I really would like to grow this so I can have a very meaningful financial exit, right? So they grow their practice group where they can exit it. 10, 20, 30, 40 plus million dollars. One thing that I've noticed when I've interacted with these ⁓ doctors who are amazing people is they're scared. Like, you know, I'm scared to take the next step or I might have to bring in an equity partner or borrow some money from the bank or I might be biting off more than I can chew. I don't know if I can handle this operationally. And I know everybody that's on this podcast right now. has dealt with that stuff and the same doubts, the same insecurities, the same anxieties. Have you felt that way on your journey and how did you push through when you were dealing with like being nervous or not having enough confidence and like doubting yourself, doubting your self confidence or your abilities? What did you do to push through that when those moments arrived? I mean, I read a lot of the history of business folks and entrepreneurship and how the fundamental, I mean, if you As an entrepreneur, the number one quality you should have is the ability to take risks. Without that, there's no entrepreneurship. You just basically have a job. And if you don't want to put it all on the line, then it's okay. Just work for somebody and it's completely okay. You'll be a good, successful professional. But if you want to build wealth, the only way you can build wealth is through entrepreneurship. And the only way to do entrepreneurship is to take risks. Now, it doesn't mean you go gamble over there in Vegas. But you've got to take risks and be okay. I think one of the things our society does not teach kids growing up is accepting failure as an okay outcome. Accepting failure. Okay, I failed and I'm going to redo it again and rebuild it again. And I think part of what I had to do and thankfully my dad was a great mentor in this journey was that no matter what happened, he used to always tell me, Amol, it's just a failure. Just learn from it. Don't do it again. Keep pushing hard. Because as almost everybody said, Jim Collins said like it's not entrepreneurship is not a race where the fastest person wins. It's the person who perseveres and persists and keeps running the race is the guy who wins or the girl who wins. And that's what my dad taught me. That's what people like you, Matt and everybody else, my mentors taught me is that keep running. Because most people give up. Like most people give up. It's a marathon, right? Jim Collins said success is a 20 mile march. It's not a 100 meter spring. So don't have to be Usain Bolt and do it in 9.7 seconds. You just have to keep running and running and running. And then everybody else stops running because they just give up. They don't have the grit and the persistence and the perseverance to do that. And so I am just lucky that I didn't run out of money. I'm lucky I could run and I kept running and running and running. I could have ran out of money so many times, but I didn't. And so I think I was okay making mistakes. Thankfully, I didn't make humongous ones, but Sometimes circumstances beat you down anyway, right? Doesn't matter. It's not your fault. The government comes down on you and they could completely take your business away. So there could be all kinds of things that could happen. I think is what I've learned even from you and your journey is that no matter how hard things get, you keep going. You just keep going. You just don't stop. And that itself is going to put you ahead of everybody else. And then it's be okay. I made a mistake. I'm sorry. I made a mistake. And I speak about a lot of my failures very vocally now. because it allows me then like it's okay to fail. It's okay to make mistakes. And a lot of the times when you're in single practice, when you're a founder dentist, right? One of the things that happens is you're very smart. You've gotten good grades. You've always succeeded. You've gotten all A's, some B's. You've gotten really high into these. And so you're not used to failures, right? And that's the mindset shift, right? And because you always succeeded, you're a good dentist, you know how to do the teeth properly, you've always got good grades, and you make good money. And so that sometimes gives you the feeling that, my God, I don't want to fail. And I think if, especially on the smaller side, if you give yourself the permission to fail in control experiments, you look at the, just look at the last thing I'll say, it took NASA, like how many years to freaking send stuff to the moon, right? because they were not willing to blow up rockets. Now, Elon blows up rockets like it's nobody's business. Every month, the rocket's blowing up. It's okay because he's learning from every rocket failure, right? The government was never willing to do that. So, all of a sudden, Sakes became the most important player in space because they were willing to blow up the rockets and they were okay with it. They blowing up rockets, blowing up the rockets, blowing up the rockets. Eventually, we're to have a colony on the moon in five years. That's the way, right? mean, read Elon's biography. I if that doesn't inspire you, Walter Isaacson's Elon, if it doesn't inspire you to just figure out how to take risks, that's probably a book I would recommend reading is Isaacson, Elon Musk's biography. It's a little dated now because Elon's done more things in the last three years, but it's still good to know that how do you, how do you like figure out how to build a rocket company when you've never built a rocket? How do you start, figure out how to, how to do self-driving cars when nobody's ever figured that out yet? You just take risks. a moment we talk about the idea of, because we're at an inflection point and now somebody hears everything's changing in the next 24 months on this podcast alone. We've said robots are going to possibly do hygiene and possibly clinical surgery. Eventually we talk about everything moving in the next five years. It's going to be faster than we could even imagine. And then we also say on this podcast, hey, stay the course, put your head down, right? And, just be patient. we're saying kind of be patient, but don't be patient. at the same time. So somebody listening might say, well, hell, I don't know what to do now. So what is somebody who's listening that says that technology is changing dramatically. I know I have to stay the course, but I don't want to be complacent either or get caught. What's the best advice for somebody who's building a dental group or somebody who's maybe even got a DSO who's listening to this and say, what should I do right now if I'm moving forward in this industry at this inflection point in the next five years? What's the best advice for someone like that? The first thing you should do is map the patient journey. Map. How does the patient move through your process? Right? Where do they find you and all the entire journey. Then figure out what part of the journey is the patient dropping off. Right? Is it marketing? Is it in showing up? All that stuff. Right? Figure out. And then say, okay, well, this is my biggest problem right now. My biggest problem is I'm not diagnosing enough. My biggest problem is that I'm not getting paid enough. And then figure out, okay, well, if I'm not getting paid properly, And my insurance is denying 30 % of my claims. and that's the biggest fire that's burning, then pick a technology vendor that can solve that problem. My advice is don't pick technology first and then try to fit that to your problem. Figure out what problem you have first and then say, my biggest fire right now is new patients. Okay, great. Well, hire somebody like Neil, hire patient prism to make sure you get smart about patient acquisition. My biggest problem is patients are not showing up. Well, figure out how to invest. and technology that sends appointment reminders and text reminders and everything else that gets them there. I think what I have learned is that instead of getting bombarded with all these technology vendors, including us, right? Oh my God, I got to buy this. I got to buy that. got to buy that. No, don't worry about that. Don't buy everything. Just figure out where the biggest fires are. Map the journey. How does the patient come in and how did they come back? Right? In that whole journey, figure out which is your biggest, which is the biggest leak where patients are dropping off the most. And if patients are dropping off the most because you don't have any appointments available, then figure out how to do assisted hygiene, hire more doctors, do template schedules, work on Fridays. Work on Fridays. Yeah, I want to work on Fridays. See, it's the biggest unlock, the way. Working on Fridays for dentists, biggest unlock, right? You don't have to do anything. Just work on Fridays and you're going to make 30 % more money. just by working on Fridays because there's enough demand coming on Fridays. But again, I'm not telling you to do anything, right guys? You have to figure that out. What our job is to tell you, this is the money you're losing on Fridays but not having appointments. So that's it. And then don't be afraid, right? Don't be afraid of picking something and making a mistake. You pick a vendor, doesn't work. But the key in all of it is AI is not going to deliver you money from the sky. Patient prism or Pearl or any of these guys. That's not going to deliver you money. You have to have somebody who owns that technology within your organization that's going to operationalize it. And if you don't have it, then don't buy it. If you don't have it and just don't buy AI and expect, oh, I got patient prism. I got the look at $27 they made, Heartland made. I'm going to make $30 now and it's automatically going to happen. I'm never going to log on. I'm never going to train anybody. It's not going to happen. That's one thing. The other thing is, ⁓ as you get people in your organization, make sure you're paying them enough, make sure you're treating them well, invest in your culture and leadership and get them there. It's a lot for the dental office team members right now to take on all these challenges. It's very stressful to learn everything and put the tech stack that's, I use this one, use that one, use this one. Pick something small, pick the biggest fire, pick a technology vendor. implement it correctly, operationalize it, have somebody who owns it so that you can say, are in charge. And as long as you have a plan and you can execute it, then go to the next solution saying, all right, what's the problem? I'm going to solve it. And then have a way to measure success. And if you see success, then you can go back to your CFO or your board or whoever is over that and saying, guys, here's a clear cut ROI. We need to invest more in this thing. I have something to add to that. That was great. And again, you know, I own, think it's we're at 85 dental practices right now. I'm not a dentist, but this is some advice that I would proffered it to any dentist, whether it's single or multi-practice group. You don't know what you don't know. Right? So if, if at this point in time, you have problems in your practices or practice, clearly you're not really aware of them. Cause if, or you're ignoring them, right? If you still have problems, you either don't know about them. or you know about them and you're just not doing anything. I still give this advice to anybody. I don't care what business they're in. If you think that you can do better financially or you want to do better financially, the best investment you can make to start off is hiring a world-class consultant that knows your business and industry. And I'm going to go into step two. Why do you do that? Because you need a third party to come in. and look through exactly what your company is doing operationally and tell you these are areas of opportunity for you. And you may have been aware of them or you may not have, but as far as solutions goes, and I'm to come back to dentistry, especially with tech and AI, every vendor out there, right? I get calls, I'm bombarded constantly by vendors like, we have the best this, we're the best at this, we're the best at this. And I'm like, how the heck could I know? And I'm not willing to try like, 20 different vendors to see which one, you know, cause by the time I get to the third or fourth one and they've, they've flamed out. like, I'm, give up. So I highly recommend that talk about dentistry, hire a great consultant. Like a really great consultant, let them go through your operational stuff, let them see what's going on in your practices. That, that consultant will tell you here, here are two or three or five opportunities that could really exponentially impact your profitability. and your growth and they, great consultant will know which vendors do great jobs and which vendors are best in class and which vendors are going to deliver the solutions to whatever issues you're having. So you don't have to guess. So it's going to save you a lot of money, a lot of time, and really eliminate trial and error. Now it does go back to what Amal says. If you're going to, you're going to start using a technology or AI or some sort of platform. You have to have somebody in your dental office or organization that's going to take ownership of that and be accountable for making sure that the tech or the AI is implemented and used. Right. It's like buying a lawnmower, right? I could buy a lawnmower, but if nobody in my household knows how to start it or use it, my grass is never getting cut. Right. So yeah, I have a lawnmower, but why is my grass two feet high? Well, because nobody's using it. It doesn't mean there's something wrong with the lawnmower. So I concur with what you said Amal. Yeah. And I concur with what you're saying as well is that a lot of times, if you look at the history of all the greatest CEOs in the history of the world, every single one of them had a coach. Bill Campbell was the greatest coach that lived ever. Read that book, Trillion Dollar Coach. He was coach to all the big guys, right? It's called The Trillion Dollar Coach. And it's really important to have that consultant coach that can actually see your business. from the outside. Because you're spending all your time working in the business. You don't have time to work on the business. And you need some coach consultant to look at your decisions objectively, to be the mirror and to tell you things because all of us develop blind spots as we're going through it. And we believe what we're doing is the right thing because why are we going to criticize us? And somebody needs to come in and say, guys, ⁓ well, this is it. And so there's nobody in the history of business has succeeded widely. without having a coach, a consultant. Guys, what you guys have done at Tower is really being the coach. You can't do, again, LeBron James is not going to win championships. Michael Jordan didn't win championships without Phil Jackson. And you can ask Michael Jordan and he'll say that. We wouldn't have won it without Phil. And so Matt's not telling you something that's like revolutionary. It is what great performers do. They hire the right people to give them the right coaching and the guidance and the consulting. to get them to the next level. They're just not doable. Not doable. All of us need them. No matter how successful you are, Amy Diamond has a coach. does Sundar Pichai has a coach. Every CEO of every big company has somebody that they can rely on to bring them, set them straight. No matter how successful you are. So I think it's a great point to bring on and I wish I had known that a long time ago. to have a mentor early on, I would have succeeded like best. Absolutely. Yeah. I'm going to read that book Amal. Thank you. love, I'm a book where most of, know, I would say, geez, almost all of my mentors, you know, certainly in my early days were books. You know, I'm 57, so didn't grow up with the internet and podcasts and even didn't even know how to find a mentor, you know, back in the day. Yeah. I'm going to order that and read it. Trillion dollar coach Bill Campbell, he was the coach to all the big shots. And he died a few years ago and it starts with his funeral. Eric Schmidt kind of wrote it. Who is one of the CEOs of Google. And it's amazing to realize one of the things he talks about is how do you determine how you hire somebody? And the most important skill set is are you coachable? If you're not coachable, you can't work for us. It's fantastic book. ⁓ Highly recommend it. for everybody. But Good to Great is fantastic. Jim Collins has done a great job in that process. Think Again by Adam Grant is fantastic because it allows you to kind of understand, rewire your mind and rewire your brain. There's lots of amazing books out there and now you have podcasts, right? Diary of a CEO is great. just, you know, it's fantastic. Stephen Bartlett is fantastic. Some podcasts, I think one of the things that I listen to a lot is Diary of a CEO. listen to All In. Those guys are great as well. Peter Diamandis has a podcast called Moonshots, which talks about the future. They are very optimistic about the future. They talk about every, robots running around and everything else. If you want to really understand the future and know that where the future is going to be, listen to Moonshots. Peter Diamandis and Salim Ismail and all those guys, absolutely fantastic. Well, have some more, I have some more stuff I'd love to just kind ⁓ yeah. Yeah, go ahead. I think you, I'm here. You guys can cut it however you want to, but I'm having a great time talking to you guys. Thank you. Yeah. Awesome. One of the things I always like to ask people is Amal, are there any great quotes that you, that you can think of that have had a meaningful impact on your career? Great quotes. There's a great poem by Robert Frost called The Road Not Taken. I read it lot because it's, it's been... It's been made all the difference, right? Two roads diverged in a yellow wood. It's one of the best poems ever written for people who want to take the road not taken. So that's a poem from by Robert Frost. I've always enjoyed. I think the ability to answer questions that you've never seen before is the highest form of intelligence. And I genuinely believe that. And the ability to observe without judging is also intelligence. It's really hard for us to And I've looked at that quote there from an Indian philosopher named Krishnamurti. talks about how do you observe without judging? And it's something that you have to keep learning and being able to absorb things. Be the last to speak by Simon Sinek. That's a hard one for me because I love to talk a lot. Be the last to speak is a great quote. I think there is, I can't think of anything else other than those. But yeah, Robert Frost, Krishnamurti's intelligence without judgment. Walt Whitman, which was again, ⁓ who said Ted Lasso called him out in that darts episode where he says, be curious, not judgmental. That's a great quote by Walt Whitman that the darts episode, you have not watched that, Google the darts episode, Ted Lasso episode on how we should not judge book by its cover and be curious. One of the things I learned from you, sitting in board meetings with you sometimes, you ask some of the most basic questions without even fear of like, ⁓ is this a stupid question or not? And you just ask them. Like, well, I don't understand what this means. Well, I don't understand what you said. Well, I don't understand the meaning of this word. And be okay. Be okay to sound stupid because the only person who's not stupid is the person who thinks he's not stupid. It's really crazy. I think Be Curious, Not Judgmental is a fantastic Walt Whitman thing that Ted Lasso, that Dart's episode is iconic. Iconic TV. I don't watch much TV, but that was... Yeah. Ted Lasso is a great series. Amal, I know you're a CPA and you do other work in the financial industry. Yes. So you're also truly one of the smartest people I've met and I love chatting with you. Amal and I talk a lot socially and I just love the conversations. ⁓ And by the way, today is Sunday, so we're doing this on a Sunday. Like I literally work seven days a week, not all day, seven days a week, but I love work. I love what I do. you know, to me, it's a lot of fun. Amal. for the dentists that are listening to this that really want to build wealth, right? They really want to build wealth, you know, and in my opinion, generational wealth starts once you've got to have a net worth of $10 million. That's my opinion, right? And that's where generational wealth building really starts to snowball. What kind of advice would you give dentists that are on the road to really building wealth for themselves and for their family? And I'll leave that as an open-ended question. Just a few of thoughts on that. I remember a Chris Rock special on Netflix a few years ago where Chris Rock was saying, what's the difference between being rich and being wealthy? And what Chris Rock said is that at the time Shaq was playing, he's like, Shaq's rich, but the person who writes Shaq's salary is wealthy. ⁓ What that means really is that building wealth is different than making money. And that requires a different mindset. That requires leadership, that requires taking risks, that requires building a team, that requires going outside of the box and being humble and being coachable. That's what it requires. And so if you want to be wealthy, you can always be, you're always going to be rich as a dentist. You're to make enough money. You're going to be in the highest echelons of income that you're making. But if you want to be wealthy, the good news is Dentistry, over the next 10, 20 years, for sure, until God knows what happens after that, we don't Robots take over everything. But at least for the next 10 years, 20, you have a unique opportunity to, because we're not yet consolidated as much, right? The consolidation and being able to piece together, you have the unique opportunity, if you have the leadership, to build business that can create wealth that's generational. And so I would recommend you guys to get out of your way, seek help. Find the right mentors and the coaches and the consultants ⁓ and be curious about how we can do it. It's the greatest opportunity. Not every profession is that in this business. Dentistry is in it. If you're a physical therapist, it's hard. If you're some other business, it might be hard, but dentistry has a unique opportunity over the next five, 10 years to genuinely build generational wealth. And that is a different skill set than being rich. Follow Chris Rock's advice. He's always... ⁓ I want to cover another topic and that's like investing in yourself and in your business. I do hear this a lot of times. Let's just say, I'm just making a number up here, like someone might say like, well, why don't you hire a consultant? Well, how much is that? I'm going to make a number up here. Okay. Well, it might be a hundred thousand dollars over a year, year and a half, something like that. And I'll hear people say, oh my gosh, I would never spend that much money. And I go, well, how much do you put in your 401k every year? Well, I put 300,000 into my portfolio. I'll put $300,000 into my retirement fund or my portfolio. And I'm like, okay, well, how much do you average per year on growth? I'm like, well, 7 % a year. All so you're taking 300 grand and making an extra $21,000 a year. but you won't invest a hundred thousand to increase your annual income by half a million dollars a year or a million dollars a year. And, know, or like, you know, oh my gosh, that technology is, you know, 500 bucks a month. $6,000 a year. That's too expensive. I'm not, I'm not spending $500 a month, but you'll go ahead and put, you know, 30,000, 25,000 a month into your retirement account. making 7 % where if you could spend $500 a month, $6,000 a year and watch your net income go up by a hundred or $200,000 a year. And I find the psychological barrier popping up all over the place. It's very interesting to me. But in my opinion, if you own an operating business, which dentistry is, the best investment you can possibly make as a dentist owner operator is to take whatever excess capital you have beyond your lifestyle needs and wants and reinvest it back into yourself and back into your business. What's your opinion or thought on that? Yeah, mean, yes, of course. mean, tomorrow I could go buy Nvidia stock, right? And hope it goes up. What control do I have over Nvidia? How much do I understand? Yeah, I mean, you can get lucky and make a lot of money. That's great. But the most control you have, right? You could go to Vegas and gamble, what control do I have? The house always wins over me making money. The most amount of control I have in terms of determining my own destiny is when I put money in myself because I have control over it. And so I would rather invest in myself, in my own business. And that also means investing in myself. And when I don't see a clear cut ROI right away, because leadership, what was the ROI on that one? It takes a minute, but there has to be some leap of faith. that when you trust yourself and invest in a coach or a consultant, you have to have a leap of faith that investing in this, listening to a podcast is investing. Investing in myself, investing in this is going to yield me ⁓ great returns because that's the best place to invest because I have control over it. I have no control if I buy Apple stock tomorrow. Tim Cook has it or some of these people do. I don't have any control. over what Apple does. I definitely have control over my dental practice, who I hire, who I fire, what technology vendors I get, who I affiliate with, who I sell to. I have control over all of that. And why wouldn't you want not want that? So I don't disagree with you. Invest in yourself. you know, hire the best people money can buy. You one of the things I did with both of my children is I said I was deficient as a parent in giving them all the tools that they need to succeed. Right? Both of my kids are musicians and both of them were, my daughter was trained by a Juilliard, somebody who got a PhD from Juilliard, from Juilliard School of Music. And then my son is also learning cello from a Juilliard trained musician. Is because I want to give them the best opportunity to learn from the best. Right? And we don't know the best. As a parent, I don't know how to train my son in all the things. I just only know what I know. I only know what I know. And like you said, we don't know what we don't know. So hire the best. It's the best investment I've ever made is hiring the best coaches and consultants from my own children so that they can get stuff that I cannot give them at all. ⁓ They cannot. They're learning. ⁓ One of my son's instructors has a PhD in mathematics from Georgia Tech. ⁓ I cannot compete with that. And they're expensive. But that's an investment in his education, right? Because that is investment that's going to yield next returns in the future. So believing in that, I genuinely believe Matt, is that the more money you put in yourself and your children, obviously it's the same thing, it's going to return back exponentially. And don't be afraid because what's the worst that can happen? You lose it, but you keep doing it again. I don't remember who brought this example up to me, but it's like someone who has one chicken and one rooster and that chicken makes one egg a day. So you get to eat one egg a day and all right, let's just say that's enough to eat each day, one egg and you're good. You can survive on that. Well, instead of eating an egg every day, one day a week, you don't eat one of the eggs and you let that egg hatch into another chicken. Right. And then next thing you know, instead of one egg a day, now you have two. And maybe you went a little hungry on Sunday for a period of time, but before you know it, now you have two eggs a day. Instead of eating two eggs every day. Let another one or two of them hatch. Yeah, maybe you're a little bit hungry for short term, but before you know it, you got 10 chickens making 10 eggs a day. Like you have to reinvest. You have to, if you really want to build wealth, you've got to reinvest. And the best investment is in yourself, in technology, in products, things that'll help your business and invest in your business to let it grow. Even if it's a linear growth, right? Going from, you know, $300,000 a year of net income to 400, then 500, then 600. That's still great growth, but you've got to invest in growth. 100%. I think Charlie Munger said this, right? I think was, I forget the quote and it was very interesting. I think he said something like, you know, how do you build wealth? And Charlie Munger just died two years ago. Warren Buffett's partner at Berkshire Hathaway died with like, God knows, 60, $70 billion. And he says, and I paraphrased this quote from him. It's like postponing gratification is the surest way of building wealth. And that's the egg store. That's the egg analogy right there, right? Postponing gratification, which means I'm not going to buy the biggest house. I'm not going to buy the biggest car. I'm not going to buy the biggest watch. I'm not going to do, I'm going to post, because I don't need it, right? What I need is to invest in myself and my business. And if you postpone that just a little bit, and the pain of that is probably, and I think Charlie Munger, the Almanac, Charlie Munger's Salmonac is a fantastic book as well. But no, I agree 100%. There's a lot of lessons to be learned. And again, I haven't mastered any of these. I'm a work in progress, but there's a lot of good wisdom out there. Would you say that you have to have short-term memory? The reason I ask this is because I find that oftentimes they'll have someone will try one marketing company, one technology, one consultant, and... They have a bad experience for whatever that investment they made, the return wasn't there. then forever there's like a trauma that's built in. As an entrepreneur, would you say you have to have a short-term memory to some degree around some of those things or move past them or be able to take that risk? What does a great entrepreneur have to deal with or think through those types of challenges? I think it's really strange. how humans are, right? I think we are very strange because we call ourselves scientists, especially in the sciences, right? We call ourselves scientists, but we don't give enough credence to an adequate sample size, right? You hired the last person, didn't work out. Hired the next person, didn't work out. You have a sample size of two. And that's statistically significant for you to figure out whether it's a good decision or not. And so if you call yourself a scientist, an educated person, and you make decisions based on the last thing that happened to you, That's just not enough. I we are clouding ourselves by the experience we had the last time. So yeah, I we made a mistake. Okay, good riddance. I'm never going to hire a consultant again. It was terrible. Well, you just hired one. Or you just hired two. And that sample size by any stretch of imagination in any statistician in the world will tell you it's not adequate. And so that's it. The human psychology is funky because we are so afraid of failing and we are so averse to losses. that we are just not willing to take another loss because it makes us feel bad about ourselves. And we have to overcome that. And okay, it's okay, man, try it out of myself. Okay, I suck. Okay, great. Let me try it again. Yeah. Pat Bauer, and you know this, but Pat Bauer says data fixes everything. And that's what the beauty of AI and technology is. It gives you many, many more data points to be able to find solutions. 100%. Yeah. think, I think AI is unprecedented ability to look at that signal within the noise. And there's a lot of noise out there and, and deploying AI allows you to really see things. We call ourselves prism because prism allows you to see things you don't see with a naked eye. That's why it's patient prism. It allows you to see things that you don't see. And most of our life is figuring that out, right? It's figuring out our blind spots, looking at, at, Tony Robbins says, self-limiting beliefs. What are those? And they're all coming from our blind spots. No, that's great. This is a great conversation. Yeah. Tony Robbins, who I'm a big fan of, bring them up almost every podcast, but Tony says, you can have anything you want, but not everything you want. And I'm going to put a part two on that is if someone else has done it and is doing it, you can do it too. I'm a firm believer in that. There's some exceptions, right? Like I couldn't at 57 go. Well, I've never been an ice skater, but I'm going to win the Olympics at figure skating. Now that's, that's unrealistic. I would say generally speaking in business, if someone else has done it successfully, you can do it as well. But again, you can have anything you want, but not everything. And I'll give an example. I do know a few ⁓ dentists that own ⁓ multiple practices and these practices are netting, net income, a million and a half dollars a year per practice. And I've asked them, well, how you do this? And they said, well, they all have the same answer. They all have the same answer. ⁓ They're open six days a week from 7 a.m. till 7 p.m. And they have, you know, one doctor working three days a week and the other working three days a week. Right? Almost all of my dental practices, I can't get the doctors to work more than four days a week. So they're sitting there empty, you know, Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Well, let me tell you, if you're able to hire the right company to pack your schedule and also fill it with the right type of patients, not just hygiene, you need high dollar treatment cases and you're leaving slots open for them. maybe Friday only it's just high dollar treatment cases. But if you're willing, to keep your dental practice open seven days a week and you're working with the right firms to get the right type of patients in there and you're open 12 hours a day, you can make a million and a half dollars per year per practice because others are doing it. Then I get the same thing. Well, I'd like to, but I don't want to work more than four days a week. Okay. Or I don't want my practice open more than four days a week. Well, what do you want? Do you want to make high income or do you want to be open four days a week and work 35 hours a week. There's another solution that is hire some associate doctors and open the busiest days. Any practices that are, I was talking to a doctor, he's closed Tuesday and Wednesday. He's open every weekend. His busiest days are Saturday and Sunday, slam packed, overbooked because no one else is open. But again, like If you, there are solutions, you can do it. If others are doing it, you can do it too. The question is, are you willing to do it? And that's up to you to decide because there's no right answer, right? But certainly if others are doing it, you can do it too. If you can do it successfully at one dental practice, you can scale it. If you have a dental practice that's making a half a million dollars a year of net income, I promise you, you can open a second one and build that to half a million a year. And if your goal is to make $5 million of net income as a dentist and You have a practice making a half a million a year. I just reverse engineer that and say, five million divided by 500,000. need 10 practices. I have one now. So to get to that number, I either need to increase the profitability at my original practice, but you also need to open additional practices and grow. But if you can do it once, you can do it again. If you can build one house and make a hundred thousand dollars of profit on a house and you want to make a half a million a year, easy. Just build five houses a year. It's just mathematics to me. But a lot of times you just need some help, some guidance, some mentoring, but it's achievable. If someone else has done it in dentistry, you can do it too. I firmly believe that. What are your thoughts? I agree with that, right? I think it's just a matter of keeping an open mind about this. There are mentors. You need mentors in life. You don't have to figure this out yourself. There are people that can help you. Dan Sullivan again talks about the strategic coach. It's who, how. You don't have to figure out how to do anything. You just have to figure out your who's in the business. Who is going help you get there? What team members can get us to the next level? What coaches and consultants can get us to the next level? Partners, interpartners can get us to the next level. And that's all we have to figure out. And then eventually you build a machine that makes money. You do it in one practice, then you do it in another practice. You do it in another practice. You figure out your associate hiring strategy, assisted hygiene strategy. And all of a sudden, you don't have to work in the business constantly to make money. You can work on the business and figure out how to get the right people on the bus and have it make money even when you're not working. And that's true definition of business, It makes money for you when you're sleeping. That's what real estate does. But you can possibly work in five dental offices at one time. people and associates. So I don't disagree with you at all. The opportunity is there and in dentistry there is the most opportunity because of the way the economics are currently in the state of the consolidation. The next five to 10 years are the most opportunity for dentists to really build wealth, not only for themselves, but for the generations to come. All right. I'm going to close out with my final question and then if Neil and Eric have anything, what was the biggest mistake you ever made as the founder and owner of Patient Prism business-wise? And what was the best decision you ever made as founder and owner for for Patient Prism? I think my biggest mistake was I didn't really seek help early on from people. I should have actually sought help because I had never built a technology company before. I had no idea what to do. And I should have engaged somebody who had been through that process before and hired a mentor and a coach early on to give me So I would have made less mistakes and I would have not as that's the biggest mistake. It's really is not having help early on and believing that I can just build it myself and having that, that ego about like, I'm a smart guy. can figure it out. And that was the biggest mistake I think. And not building, not building, to this extent, I still have not succeeded in building a great team ⁓ that can really take the business. And so I, know, we have a great team now. I'm just saying, I wish I could have done it sooner. I would have succeeded more. The other thing that I could have done at Patient Prism is focus more on engineering versus sales. Focus more on product. And I learned that after I read Elon. He's like, it doesn't matter. Your sales doesn't matter. You have to have the best product. Sales takes care of itself when engineering is good. And as a technology company, I think the most important thing you can do is build the best damn product. And the best damn product comes from the best damn engineers. And I should have invested more into engineering versus sales because all the salespeople sucked. ⁓ And then the best decision I made is to rebuild the patient prism from scratch. And knowing that the version we had two and a half years ago was not scalable outside of dentistry, as it was not even scalable to large DSOs. It was not scalable. So was the most counterintuitive decision to scrap everything you've done for seven years, gut it. Throw it in the garbage can, rebuild the entire platforms from scratch. Knowing all that we have learned has made all the difference. It's like completely saying, you're an idiot, you're stupid, you had no idea what you're doing, go rebuild it again and people will buy it. And that was the most gut-wrenching decision. I had lots of support, including from you, to do that. So that's it. Those are the two decisions. Thank you. Yeah, I always tell people, sorry, this will be my last one, but... And I know I've said this to a mall and I tell a lot of people that's like, give yourself some grace. Don't beat yourself up so bad. As long as you don't quit, you're doing great. Like, you know, it's not a failure. It's a learning experience. And I know that's totally cliche, but it's true. You know, so if you make some mistakes, don't beat yourself up about it. Just learn from it and then be, you know, have gratitude. Like, okay, this is great. Now I know that does not work. So that's one thing I will not be trying again. Right? So it's okay. think Thomas Edison like tried 10,000 times before he got the light bulb to work. Right. So give yourself some grace. Don't beat yourself up. It's okay to make mistakes. Everybody makes mistakes. And I say this like the, the, the highest paid and best baseball players in the world that make it to the hall of fame. They only get on first base one out of three times they get to bat, which means that they strike out two out of every three times they just get to bat. And those are the best of the best hall of fame players. They don't even get around the home base. They just get on first base one out of three times, which means, you know, we're using some semantics here, but they, the best baseball players in the world fail 67 % of the time. And they're still the best of the best of the best. So you can't, you can't dwell on, ⁓ man, shoot. didn't, struck out the last two times. You got to focus on, all right, man, I'm on first base now. Great. ⁓ Let's move forward. I'll turn it over to Neil and Eric, then we can wrap it up because Amal has been real generous with his time. No, man, we so appreciate it. And I love what you said about product too. Like one my favorite quotes, I'm a big Naval Robin Con fan and he says the same thing. Like if you're doing too much sales, it's because your marketing sucks. And if you're doing too much marketing, it's because your product sucks. Like those of us on the tech side, yeah, there you go. I had that as a recommendation. I was just going to think of, I was just thinking about that. That's one of the best books I've read in the last almanac of novel. I'll send this to you, Matt. Thank you. It's absolutely stellar. Yeah, go ahead. Sorry. Now, you just made me think of that too, because those of us on the products, I think one of the biggest mistakes that we've made over the years with Rise, ironically, being a marketing company, least a big part of what we do is we weren't marketing ourselves enough because I was focusing too much on products because I'm a tech geek, right? that's my background. ⁓ We had no sales team for the longest time, which I think was really stupid. So really appreciate your transparency there. I fully agree with your and Matt's point about investing in yourself. And one of the big taglines for dental mentors is building wealth in dentistry. I am curious about, you have a take on, aside from investing, like you said, I completely agree with you as well. These AI tools are not that expensive. to test out, to try it in your practices. I totally agree. You know, I see this every day as well. A lot of these tools are a mirror to reflect back to practice owners what is not going well in their practices as well. Totally love that point. If folks out there do want to invest in AI, ⁓ if you had to pick some kind of AI investment that people might invest in to take advantage of that. I don't know. I mean, the world is moving so fast. One thought I have about, not about investments, because I could be completely wrong, is that it is really important to know, to be able to separate the hype from the reality. There's a lot of hype about AI everywhere. Everybody is, know, because it's easy to build a company that looks like a company, but it's just a feature, right? That connects itself to a chat GPT or open AI anthropic platforms. And it looks like an AI company, it's not. Just because it walks like a duck in AI world, it's not a duck. Right? ⁓ It's really important to go. And so my advice to people as they think about AI investments, AI vendors is go a little deeper, ask some questions, see what problems are you trying to solve. Don't go by the hype and how everything looks good on demos. Because everything can look good on demos. And all your industries, I just had a post on LinkedIn yesterday about the entire cybersecurity industry is under assault because Codex security and Anthropic security launched something for free that people are charging a lot of money for. So you could get wiped away tomorrow. And so what is your moat? What are you believing in? so it's really important to separate the hype from reality and do just a little more questions about what is it doing? Because everything looks amazing. Everything looks amazing on the, the, the, on on the, on the, the, the, the, the Here's what I want to say, Amal, I appreciate what you've done for this industry. You know, it's, I've just recently met you in person, but the truth is that I've watched the work you've done for years and not just with Patient Prism, but as someone who lends to the entire industry, your communication, the knowledge, all the things that you bring, you're constantly sharing with this industry, you're constantly communicating, you're constantly mentoring. I think there are, are some people who are really impacting the future of dentistry. I think you're one of them. I have tremendous respect for you and I really appreciate this time today because I think you're doing great things and so thank you. Yeah, thank you very much. I'm all in closing and then we'll wrap it up. If someone wants to contact Patient Prism to hear about your software, what's the best way for a dentist to contact you? My recommendation is go to our website, www.patientprism.com and schedule a demo. There is a button there. Actually, we're launching a new website coming up in the next few weeks. It's going to be awesome. It's the first big update to our web presence. But patientprism.com, schedule a demo. Somebody will contact you, get a conversation going. The other thing I recommend you guys is look me up. I have a long Indian name, so these guys will have it somewhere. Look me up ⁓ on LinkedIn and follow me because I do a lot of stuff. I'm not promoting Patient Prism nonstop on LinkedIn. What I'm promoting is good information, good content, and we produce a lot of good content to just help the industry help think through what's going on with AI and trends. So follow me on LinkedIn and reach out if something excites you, if you want to figure out if you're stuck somewhere. I'll give you my two cents without any kind of conflicts of interest about anything. And that's it. Follow me on LinkedIn, go to paishitprisim.com and connect. if there is a right thing, if we can help you. We'll certainly would love to work with you guys. We've done this long enough in almost every AI company out there. And we've finally figured out from our own clients on how to help you guys navigate 2026 and beyond in terms of growing your business. We know it. We will tell you upfront whether we can help you or not. And we are very confident in our abilities to give you and give you steer in the right direction so that you can build the wealth. which is the purpose of the show, is to build wealth in dentistry. And we certainly would love to partner with you in that journey. Well, thank you very, very much. Amal will also be at our live event in Atlanta, August 1st, 2026. He's one of the keynote speakers. So if you come to that, you'll get a chance to meet Amal in person. He'll be on stage and it'll be a phenomenal time. But anyway, thank you so much for being on Dental Mentors. We really appreciate your time. Amal Nirgidkar, founder and CEO of Patient Prism. Thank you so much. Thank you, sir. Thank you, Amal. If you enjoyed today's video, we'd love to invite you to join the Dental Mentors Facebook group. The group is completely free, but it is private and invite only. The group is for practice owners, dentists, specialists, and dental CEOs. If that's you, we'd love to see you inside. As part of Dental Mentors, you're going to have direct access to the brightest minds in dentistry and the brightest mentors. and some of the greatest CEOs that have ever worked in the dental space. 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