Latest / My Dental Playbook / 038 170 New Patients… Then Everything Broke

Transcript

038 170 New Patients… Then Everything Broke · My Dental Playbook

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_01: The price that I'm paying right now for not having the SOPs where they should be is I feel like that I'm doing things in my practice that if you showed up today, I'd be embarrassed to tell you that that's what I did.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_01: Right?
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_01: Like truly, and I'm just being like transparency here.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_01: Like there's just simple things that shouldn't be happening, and I'm personally handling it, right?
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_01: And it's sterilizing.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome back to another episode of My Dental Playbook.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_00: I'm your co-host, Gary Bird.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_00: Along with my friend Dr.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_00: Blake Hamblin, we're gonna be diving deep into his office and how he's doubled his collections in just under 12 months.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_00: We're also gonna be talking about his journey to a$10 million practice and what he needs to do to get there.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_00: You're gonna see behind the curtain, and Dr.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_00: Blake is amazing at sharing the hard details that you need to know so you can do the same too.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_00: If you want to grow, this is the show for you.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_00: Stay tuned.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_00: All right, we are live for another episode.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks so much for tuning in.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_00: My name is Gary.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_00: I'm the co-host of Mind Don't Playbook, along with my friend Dr.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_00: Blake Hamblin.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_00: We're diving deep into his office as he takes over the world in Houston.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_00: His practice has absolutely exploded.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_00: And this last month, you had a record month with almost 170 new patients, and you just the office is exploding.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_00: But with new levels, there's new devils.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_00: And today we're going to be talking about training the team, SOP, staying organized, getting the team to do what you want them to do, when you want them to do it.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_00: And I think most dental offices struggle with this.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_00: Now, before we jump into that, I want to uh encourage our listeners, go check out our sponsor, Cherry, something that's helped Dr.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_00: Blake double his collections and something that we talk about in our mastermind all the time is using Cherry as a leader.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_00: And when you do that, it increases your collections and it avoids the insurance conversation.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_00: If you're not using charity, I highly cherry, I highly recommend that you check them out.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_00: And go down below.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_00: There's special pricing.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_00: So you get special pricing on that.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_00: So let's jump into this.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_00: You're having you're growing like crazy, but as you grow, there's problems that come along with growth, right?
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_00: Like, and they're good problems.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_00: Um, growing, we call them growing pains.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_00: And you are dealing with growing the team, seeing more patients.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_00: Um, how what are you doing right now with your SOPs?
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_00: You were kind of explaining it to me, and it was pretty cool.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_01: No.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, so this episode, I'll probably be asking more questions than I will be teaching anything, to be totally frank with you.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and so we I've I've hinted at this uh throughout the uh the life of our podcast, but a while back, right before we started really working with you guys, we were we were really dialed into okay, we're we're at this plateau phase, and so um we were just kind of like anchoring in and we're like, okay, let's focus on SOPs.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_01: And then fortunately but unfortunately.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_00: And how big were you there then?
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_00: What were your collections of patients?
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_01: We were a five-op practice doing let's call it 2.5 to 27.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and we had uh seven to eight team members, right?
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_01: So fairly this is just over a year ago.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_00: This is like a year and a couple months ago, if I yeah, okay.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, probably less than 18 months.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and so we met you guys and instantly started seeing growth, and so we we kind of had to put the SOP thing to the side, and I and I knew that we were gonna run into today, right?
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_01: We I knew we were gonna run into the problem of like one one day we we're gonna need to have more uh formulas to how we run the practice, and and we just frankly, and as a leadership from a leadership position, like I failed at that, right?
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_01: And so right now, what we're trying to do is as we're onboarding new team team members, and as people have left that maybe didn't fit the vision or that they had a different vision for what their uh goal in dentistry might be, we're we have a perfect time to be onboarding people the correct way.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_01: And so we're really honing in now, even though we don't have the time to do it, uh we're really honing in on creating those SOPs so that when we do onboard people, there's really a lot of clarity around what success looks like.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, for example, like our lab, in my opinion, looks really messy and it really bothers me.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_01: And I just told Bailey, one of our one of our leaders, I was like, we need to make sure we have an SOP for that so that when we onboard people, they don't think that that's acceptable.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_01: Because right now, I could see where that would be acceptable.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_01: So what we're doing, and this was a little bit of a conversation I had with you, uh, is we're we're diving in and instead of overwhelming them with too much, we've created a a system with them basically Chat GBT that we can just talk and we can just say, hey, uh, you know, we we want to create a lab system to make sure that labs don't fall through.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_01: And this is these are the steps that we're trying to do, and these are the things we're gonna avoid.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_01: And it puts it in a very succinct format.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_01: And then we're gonna do that, we're just gonna do that.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_01: We're gonna create create them all, and then um we're gonna get have our leaders come in, likely on a Friday that we're we're gonna close the office, but we're gonna go through all those SOPs and we're gonna utilize Loom to be able to link that to kind of the more emotional side of the SOP because we've had a really hard time of people, and this was your recommendation.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, we've had a hard time of people really buying into the SOP.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_01: So it's like we have the plan, but you're not following the plan, so therefore we have no plan.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and so uh that'll be phase two of how we're trying to climb out of this whole lack of SOPs and accountability.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_00: So and what Dr.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_00: Blake's talking about there is we had a long conversation about this.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_00: It's um the letter of the law versus the spirit of the law, right?
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_00: So the letter of the law is like we don't want this room dirty.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and dirty is a a strong word, but we don't want it messy, is probably a better word.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_00: So we we don't want this room messy, but of course we're gonna take care of patients before we go and put away the box, right?
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_00: You don't wanna so what is the letter of the law versus the spirit of the law?
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_00: And what Loom allows you to do is it allows you to explain why we have this SOP and then you can walk through it.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_00: And the beautiful thing about Loom is that I personally hate, I like there's almost I would literally rather have a tooth pulled out of my face than write an SOP.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_01: Like I'm so with you.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, okay, yeah.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_00: Like I hate, but but I don't have any problem talking through a process.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_00: Like, no problem.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_00: Hey, then we go to there and there, and this is why we do it.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_00: So, what's beautiful about Loom is you can take the transcript, throw it into AI, Chat GPT, or anything else, and then you can say, Hey, create a shell or a framework for me in an SOP style.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_00: Boom, it's all done.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_00: And then you just go in there and doctor it up.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_00: And then now you have the letter of the law, you have the spirit of the law.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_00: And again, there's no reason for anybody not to learn it because it's like, hey, you didn't do that.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_00: Did you look at the SOP?
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_00: Did you read it?
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_00: Did you watch the loom?
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_00: And once you have that library, then it's just from there, the kind of the next phase, and this is the next hard part is like, oh, we have 200 SOPs.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_00: How do we organize them?
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_00: How do we find them?
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_00: How do we make sure that everybody can see them?
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_00: So then it goes back to simplifying, right?
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_00: And cleaning up, but that's kind of the next phase.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_00: So now your one of the one of the things that you are um struggling with, and I think every dental office struggles with this, is that you have a team that are doers, but not a lot of people who are working on the business.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_00: That everybody's working in the business, right?
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_00: Which is normal when you're seeing, you know, almost 200 new patients.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_00: It's like you don't have time to sit down and write out an SOP.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_00: So you are making a separate time and saying, guys, we're gonna come in and we're gonna do this.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_00: Is this like on an off day or do you have an administrative day?
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_00: Or how do you think through that?
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_01: So that that's actually what we talked about in our leadership huddle this morning was we we need that.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_01: Like we're gonna need we're gonna need specific time to where we either do give up revenue by shutting down, or we come in on the weekend, or or whatever we decide is appropriate.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_01: But we we have got to be able to for probably eight hours sit there and focus on how our office can run like a well-willed machine.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_01: And the the thing is, is like if you walked in today, you would be like, Man, this is this is humming, right?
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_01: But we know that there's problems looming, and there's and I know that there's even deeper problems looming underneath that.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_01: And so my job as the leader of the organization is to help us avoid those, but then my management, my leadership team, their job is to make sure like the daily things don't hinder us.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_01: And so that's where we're starting.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_01: And my job right now is just to make sure like the big things don't end up bubbling to the surface.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_00: That's so good.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_00: And something I'm gonna leave for the viewers down below, just enter my brain.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_00: One, I have an SOP on how to make SOPs, because I know most of our listeners don't have any SOPs.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm gonna give you an SOP that tells you how to make SLPs and we'll include some prompts in there that will help you create the other SOPs that you're going to need.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_00: So make sure you check that out down below.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_00: It's all free.
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_00: Um, a couple thoughts come to mind.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_00: One, I'll I'll start with this one.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_00: So there's a saying in business slow is smooth and smooth is fast.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_00: And so there's times in the business where you have to stop everything and say, hey, we're actually going to slow down so we can go faster.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_00: So right now you're you're rowing on the boat together, and it's like, guys, we got to pick our R's up, put them in the boat and write these SOPs, and it might cost more money.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_00: It might, it you might lose a little bit of revenue, you might have to pay a little bit of overtime, whatever.
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but it has to happen.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and so that's the first thing.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_00: And then the second thing that ties into that, what you just described there, where you said, hey, it looks like everything's good, but under the surface, I know there's little monsters under the bed.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_00: And under that, there's even bigger things in the closet, and I know it's there.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_00: That in my experience, those are the kinds of things that buzz in the back of your head as an entrepreneur, and they make it impossible to do anything else in your life happily.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_00: Um, is that would you is that a fair assessment?
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_01: Totally.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_01: You're you went exactly where I was gonna go as well.
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_01: Uh my coach talks a lot about you always pay a price for something.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and the price that I'm paying right now for not having the SOPs where they should be is I feel like that I'm doing things in my practice that if if you showed up today, I'd be embarrassed to tell you that that's what I did.
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_01: Like truly, and I'm just being like full transparency here.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_01: Like, there's just simple things that uh shouldn't be happening, and I'm personally handling it, right?
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_01: And it it's it's paralyzing.
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_01: Like it exactly what you said.
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_01: I'll sit down to do some deep work, and my brain just immediately gets pulled to the stuff that doesn't matter, but yet I have to do it because no one else can do it, or I'm trying to teach someone how to do it, or X, Y, and Z.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_01: And so um, yeah, you nailed it, but like I love the idea of understanding that you are always there's a reason they say you pay the price for it.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_01: Like it may not be money, but it might be time, it might be sanity, it might be whatever else that it's costing you to do the X, Y, or Z things.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_00: I've just I I love your transparency.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_00: I don't I've never heard a dentist say that on the podcast, but I know every dentist goes through that.
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_00: I've heard a lot of people tell me privately, like, hey, my life's a dumpster fire right now because of these things, and it's just stressful.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_00: But very rarely do we bring it up on a podcast.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_00: And I, for me, I've been there, and it's it's called it's called being a firefighter in your own business, where you're doing your normal job as a dentist, plus you're like, oh, there's a fire over there.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_00: Fire extinguisher, fire over there.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_01: Well, it's it's the superhero syndrome, right?
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_01: And like what I what I'm learning is like there's phases of that.
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_01: You go from being the superhero to having total freedom.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_01: Like the the most freedom I ever had in in my dental practice was when we were probably doing about two million dollars.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_01: And I I literally didn't come in the office on Wednesday.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_01: I literally didn't do anything, I didn't work on the business, I just hung out with my family at home.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_01: And now we're in like this growth phase where we're trying to expand and we're adding Fridays and we're doing all these things.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_01: And like as a leader, I feel like I do have to leave.
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_01: Like leaders go first, right?
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_01: And so, like, I'm not gonna ask my team to to do Fridays if I don't do it first.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_01: I want to show them that I'm willing to do that.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_01: And then as time goes, I can tailor that back.
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_01: But like, I'm probably working more now than I have ever, right?
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_01: And so I think there's seasons of it's not like you, it's not like you beat the sin, right?
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_01: It's not like, oh my gosh, I'm no longer gonna ever ever have to face that.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_01: It's in this season, I'm less of a firefighter and I'm I'm more of a dreamer, and then in this season I'm more of a firefighter and less of a dreamer, and you go, you ebb and flow through that.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_00: And there's there's um again, there's different stages, right?
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_00: Like a lot of people think that, and this is the lie of entrepreneurship.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_00: If I can just get to this, then my life will be, then I don't have to, and it's like, no, no, no, no, no.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_00: Like the next level is like everybody starts suing you because they're like, oh, you got money and you got big insurance plans.
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_00: Then the next level after that is like you have competitors that start coming and trying to literally destroy your business because they're they want your market and so on and so forth.
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_00: And it's just like there is no in business, there is no just neutral, but there are ways to control these things.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_00: Um, something that I've I'll I'll share this with you.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_00: I I'm proud of it.
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_00: Um so in marketing agencies are notoriously stressful because they're complex issues, and a lot of times the complex issues you're dealing with on the client side, you know what I mean?
• 14:19
  SPEAKER_00: Like trying to solve their complex issues.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_00: And so it's like my stress levels were really high.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_00: I started wearing this whoop band and it measures non-active stress, meaning I'm not working out, I'm not doing anything strenuous, I'm just working, like typing on a keyboard, but my stress levels are super high.
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_00: So when I started doing this, my non-active stress was like four hours a day, which is bad.
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_00: So just to give you an idea, my wife says like 24 minutes a day of non-active stress, you know what I mean?
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_00: And she deals with kids and like all that kind of stuff too, which is stressful, but it she's like way calmer than me.
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_00: And I was like, oh, that's not good.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_00: And I know that that carries over.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_00: And I like you said, you pay a price.
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_00: It's like picking years off the end of your life, basically.
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_00: It's like redlining your car, so to speak.
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_00: And so I was like, oh, I gotta get this down.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_00: And so I started working through how to get this down.
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_00: And this last week, I was able to get it down to 37 minutes on average.
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_00: Still, everything, there's still problems, there's still stuff going on, there's still, but how I'm emotionally dealing with it, I'm doing a better job of that.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_00: And I have data to back that up.
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_00: I don't just uh say that.
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_00: So that that would be my encouragement to people is like you you said something really important, is like you gotta have there's seasons and it's fine, but what's the light at the end of the tunnel for that season?
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_00: I think where dentists get burnt out as they don't see the light at the end of the tunnel.
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_00: So they're like, Yeah, there's no hope.
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_01: There's no hope.
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, no, you gotta have to have hope.
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_00: Like, there's gotta be an I can do any, I can work 12 hours a day, uh, seven days a week if I need to.
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_00: I can't do that forever.
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_00: If you said, hey, do that for the rest of your life.
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_00: I can't.
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_00: But if you said do it for a month or two, totally could do that, right?
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_00: I've done it before.
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_00: So it's like, so there's light at the end of the tunnel, like we can get to that end, and then also managing your stress so that it doesn't bubble up and and you start yelling at everybody and get mad at everybody, you know, because then that what that does is it then it puts everybody as your enemy now.
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_00: Like my team's stupid, my marketing company sucks, my my accountant doesn't know what they're doing, etc.
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_00: etc.
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_00: etc.
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_00: So now the whole world's working against you, plus, you're not getting what you want as a business operator.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's so good.
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and it's um the more we're talking about this, like I I would even argue that this correlates well with like an associate who thinks they want to be an owner, right?
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_01: Like it it's like these things don't change.
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_01: Like you go, you just trade problems, right?
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_01: Like your associate your associate problems are that like you don't have enough control and that you want to do X, Y, and Z thing, but then you get the control and you want it and you get to do X, Y, and Z thing, and then all of a sudden you're like, man, if I could just show up and do dentistry, my life would be so much better.
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_01: It's like, yeah, but you just traded for that, right?
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_01: And it's over there.
• 17:07
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 17:07
  SPEAKER_01: So like my buddy Colin in in Florida, he like he he says something that I love, and it's like, the problems are the problems that I've always wished to have.
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_01: Like, and so me complaining about them is just silly.
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, it's just figuring out how, like you said, how do I get through these problems with the best attitude, the best relationships, all in those things?
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, one thing that's really helped me on that stress level, there's a bunch of different things I started to do, but one thing that really helped me with my non-active stress is uh looking at everything as a journey, not a destination.
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_00: And I know that sounds super mad corny.
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_00: Someone's listening to this and they're like, whatever.
• 17:43
  SPEAKER_00: It actually works.
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_00: Like when I get into these weird spots where I'm like, dude, this is so stupid.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_00: Like, I thought I already solved this, or I thought the team was gonna do this, or I thought, why is the client even thinking like that?
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_00: This is dumb.
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_00: I just go, oh no, no, no.
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_00: This is part of the journey where we all get to learn from this.
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_00: And maybe we don't solve it 100% this time, but maybe we only solved it 75%, and this time we're gonna solve it 80%, next time nine.
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_00: Eventually it's gonna get solved, and we just need more reps working through it.
• 18:11
  SPEAKER_00: And the reason this keeps happening is because I'm not the kind of leader that I need to be yet to get the outcome that I desire.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_00: So I need to keep learning how to do things better, how to communicate better, whatever it may be.
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_00: And it just gives you so much control and it allows you just to keep working through things because again, the one thing, the one lie about entrepreneurship is the destination.
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't change anything.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_00: The destination's arbitrary.
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_00: You made it up in the first place, you know what I mean?
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_00: I gotta get to I gotta get to a million, I gotta get to two million, I gotta get to three million, I gotta get to this many new patients.
• 18:45
  SPEAKER_00: It's all arbitrary, it's just made up numbers.
• 18:47
  SPEAKER_00: And when you get there, you already have five other made-up numbers that you need to get to for the next thing.
• 18:52
  SPEAKER_01: 100%.
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_01: And and like that that uh perspective, I would imagine, because like I I feel like I'm learning that, and I'm I'm on the journey towards learning how to better deal with that.
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_01: But I've you're probably further along than I am with that.
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_01: And I don't believe there's a way you get there's probably a handful of people that are just born with the innate ability to just be like, you know, this sucks, but like that's all right.
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_01: Like this is this is the journey and I love it, right?
• 19:23
  SPEAKER_01: But most people they run into the problem and it's like meltdown, right?
• 19:27
  SPEAKER_01: And I think learning that perspective, you just gotta go through the fire and you've got to be, we talked about it, just be patient with yourself and learn that like this isn't it is a you problem because like you've got to do something about it.
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_01: But this is just this is just life.
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_00: It's the price tag to the next level of the game.
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_00: You can go backwards if you you could always go backwards.
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_00: You could go back to the 200 that you know, 200,000 or you know, two million dollars or wherever you were at every Wednesday off with your family.
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_00: You could a hundred percent, but I guarantee I didn't I didn't know you back then, but I guarantee you you had some things you were like stressed about, worried about how are we gonna do this?
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_00: If I could just figure out this one problem, then it would solve all my other problems.
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_00: And everybody, we all that's how everybody starts, right?
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_00: Every young entrepreneur is like, I'm gonna be a billionaire.
• 20:15
  SPEAKER_00: Well, guess what?
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_00: Most of them don't.
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_00: The vast 99.9% don't.
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_00: And it's like, how do you deal with that?
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_00: Like, how do you work through that?
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_00: So, um, what I would say that you do really well, Dr.
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_00: Blake, is you are cool under pressure.
• 20:31
  SPEAKER_00: Meaning, most dentists, when they're doing dentistry, plus doing all this operation stuff, it bubbles up in a lot of bad ways.
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_00: Like, really, and I understand why.
• 20:42
  SPEAKER_00: Like, I get it, like how stressful and pressure and perfectionism dentistry is, but it that does not match well with um business.
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_00: Business isn't that way, it's not a perfect game, it's an imperfect game, in fact.
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_00: And there's a lot of room on the margins in business, a lot on either side.
• 20:59
  SPEAKER_00: In dentistry, you don't have that.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_00: And so transitioning your brain from perfectionism to wide margins, and hey, we're gonna learn it and come on, guys.
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_00: That's really hard to do.
• 21:09
  SPEAKER_00: And you you do a really good job of keeping your cool through that as you transition back and forth.
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_01: That's really kind for you to give me some encouragement as we haven't cussed me out and like you haven't cussed me out in like three weeks.
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, there you go.
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_00: I'm just playing.
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_01: I'm playing.
• 21:22
  SPEAKER_01: That's so good.
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_00: No, I'm just playing.
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_00: You you're always super kind and gracious.
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_00: And um, so, anyways, that uh hopefully that helps some people out there.
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_00: Um, thank you for being transparent.
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_00: And Dennis, everybody's going through this, like no matter what level you're at.
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_00: Dr.
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_00: Blake has a an amazing office and he's working through stuff.
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_00: And next year you'll have a better office and you'll be working through other stuff.
• 21:43
  SPEAKER_00: So it's fun, fun times.
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks for your time today.
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, thanks for having me.
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_01: I appreciate it.
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_01: Peace.