Latest / Scrappy but Successful [Consultant's Personalities When No One's Watching] / 68. Unclogging Dental Cash Flow: The CFO Who Hates Algebra with Melissa Leavitt

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68. Unclogging Dental Cash Flow: The CFO Who Hates Algebra with Melissa Leavitt · Scrappy but Successful [Consultant's Personalities When No One's Watching]

• 0:03
  What's happening, everybody? Welcome to Scrappy But Successful. It's a show where I sit down
• 0:07
  with your favorite consultants and we find out if they're successful today because they're sophisticated
• 0:12
  or because they're a little bit scrappy. I'm your host, Jack Tompkins, CEO of Pineapple
• 0:16
  Consulting Firm and Pineapple Analyst AI, always helping small businesses become more data-driven. Fun fact
• 0:21
  of the day for our guest out in Salem, Oregon, Kettle Chips, the well-known brand
• 0:26
  Kettle Chips, got its start in Salem, Oregon in the 1980s, running their operations out
• 0:30
  of a van. Talk about rags to riches and scrappy to sophisticated. But that's neither
• 0:35
  here nor there. Today I'm joined by my friend Melissa Leavitt. She's the founder of
• 0:40
  Keystone Advisors. She started out as a dental assistant, then 15 years in corporate finance,
• 0:44
  and all of this combined into now what is Keystone Advisors. They're a fractional CFO
• 0:49
  advisory firm for independent dental practice owners. And she's the financial GPS. Her clients are
• 0:54
  staying in the driver's seat. She just makes sure that they know where they're going.
• 0:58
  So Melissa. Thank you so much for joining. We know that you are successful today.
• 1:03
  The question we have for you do you think you fall more on the sophisticated
• 1:08
  side, more on the scrappy side?
• 1:10
  I'm I'm definitely in the middle, so I I'm excited to see where you think
• 1:16
  I land.
• 1:17
  Okay, perfect. Yeah, we uh we get a lot of people that start off in
• 1:20
  the middle and then we will see if the data agrees with you though.
• 1:24
  Yes. Though I did not know about the kettle chip fact, so I didn't, so
• 1:27
  You didn't. Okay. All right. Well, at the very least you've learned something. Um,
• 1:31
  I have learned something.
• 1:34
  take us back to the very beginning. Where did you grow up? Did you have
• 1:37
  any entrepreneurs in the family?
• 1:39
  That is one of my favorite questions where I grew up. Um, so what I
• 1:41
  tell people is I was
• 1:42
  Okay.
• 1:44
  born in Guam and I grew up around the world. So
• 1:47
  Okay.
• 1:48
  my dad was in the Air Force. So it nobody in the Air Force or
• 1:53
  military knows how to answer the where did you grow up question. Um,
• 1:58
  Right.
• 1:59
  it's it's all over. Um as far as entrepreneurs, we we had a couple more
• 2:03
  on my mom's side, more in the restaurant. side of things. They started their own,
• 2:08
  I think they had a couple of restaurants that they had started. uh But yeah,
• 2:13
  mostly right there we had a couple electricians that started their own business. ah I
• 2:18
  am the first in my generation to start my own business. So we'll see. We
• 2:23
  had a lot of restaurant and a
• 2:26
  Okay. Very.
• 2:28
  lot of Mary Kay. Mary Kay was popular.
• 2:31
  Sure, of course. Okay. Did you ever get roped into working for either the restaurants
• 2:34
  or the Mary Kay?
• 2:36
  No, but I did start off in restaurants and I wanted to be different, so
• 2:40
  I did.
• 2:41
  Okay. What was the first job? Was it in a restaurant?
• 2:47
  No, it was actually mowing lawn. Um so yeah,
• 2:50
  Okay. Very nice.
• 2:51
  I was 11, 12 years old and the neighbor next door didn't want to mow
• 2:55
  the lawn and asked if I wanted to mow it. I'm like, sure, why not?
• 2:59
  So he's like, I'll give you 10 bucks to mow the lawn. And so I
• 3:03
  I did and I had a lot of fun doing it. I'd mow it every
• 3:07
  different direction because they didn't care.
• 3:09
  Yeah.
• 3:10
  And I liked making patterns in the lawn. So yeah, appropriate patterns, not like you
• 3:14
  know, alien patterns.
• 3:15
  Sure.
• 3:17
  but then word got across the street that I would mow the lawns for ten
• 3:20
  bucks an hour. And so by the end of summer I was going down the
• 3:23
  street and I had probably five or six people that I was mowing lawns for.
• 3:27
  And so that was my very first job.
• 3:29
  That's awesome. That's awesome. And at eleven twelve, getting a crisp ten dollar bill or
• 3:33
  twenty dollar bill or something. Woof. That was awesome. Yeah.
• 3:36
  Right. Back in the day that was a lot of money.
• 3:40
  Now were you a saver, would you would you store that ten bucks? Would you
• 3:43
  store the twenty bucks? Would you immediately go spend it?
• 3:46
  no, I I saved it. Um I knew that I wanted a car one day
• 3:50
  and my parents told me I had to pay for everything involved in said car.
• 3:55
  So between mowing lawns and babysitting took me three years, but I got my first
• 4:00
  car, thousand bucks.
• 4:01
  Nice.
• 4:03
  And when I signed the paper to take it over to me, I did think
• 4:05
  for a moment, was this worth paying a thousand dollars to get a car?
• 4:08
  Ha How long did the c what was the car and how long did it
• 4:14
  last?
• 4:15
  Oh, it was a light blue Ford Taurus. Um, what
• 4:18
  Sure.
• 4:19
  is it like a ninety four or something? Um, and it it lasted through the
• 4:24
  end of high school before it before it died. So
• 4:28
  Well worth a thousand bucks then. That's pretty good.
• 4:30
  Yes. So
• 4:32
  Okay, this is awesome. So mentioning high school, how are the grades in high school?
• 4:37
  Oh, grades were good. but I was also a class of one. I was homeschooled.
• 4:43
  So I
• 4:44
  okay.
• 4:45
  was top of my class, highest grade earner in everything.
• 4:47
  Yeah.
• 4:48
  It was it was great. But yeah,
• 4:50
  A real rock star.
• 4:51
  no, really, I I did pretty well in school. Some people find it interesting to
• 4:56
  know that math was actually my nemesis. I
• 5:00
  Really?
• 5:01
  I loved arithmetic. I hated algebra. Um It was my thorn in the side. I
• 5:07
  just never understood it. Fun fact, my now mother-in-law was my algebra teacher senior year
• 5:13
  of college, spring semester. And if she did not pass me in math, I would
• 5:20
  not have graduated. Yep.
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  No way.
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  So she I got the pity card. Thankfully my husband and I were not dating
• 5:27
  at the time, but
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  Yeah.
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  But I
• 5:34
  Yeah.
• 5:34
  I can do accounting. I am great with numbers and accounting, but please don't make
• 5:37
  me go find X.
• 5:39
  Interesting. Okay. Yeah. I uh I remember in high school like there were some kids
• 5:42
  that were really good and then the second letters entered a math equation, they're like,
• 5:46
  I don't know. I this isn't English. What are we doing here?
• 5:50
  Right? Letters do not belong in math, but
• 5:54
  Oh, I love it. Okay. Give me give me thirty seconds, sixty seconds on today,
• 5:59
  what you do today, and then we'll build a bridge from the lawn mowing babysitting
• 6:04
  eleven-year-old to today.
• 6:05
  Yes. So today um it is my passion to help dental practices um be able
• 6:10
  to connect the financial and operational dots of their business so that they can be
• 6:15
  more confident in the decisions that they're making. It's something they're not taught in school.
• 6:21
  Everybody doesn't feel comfortable with finances unless you're in that realm. And so I want
• 6:26
  to bring that to them because It is complicated and it is complex. And again,
• 6:31
  knowing that I don't like math, I like things to be easy and understandable for
• 6:37
  other people. So helping them from cash flow to figuring out productions and collections, which
• 6:42
  we can chat about more later, and even getting strategy plans in so that they
• 6:47
  can take the business and finance side off their plate and focus on their standard
• 6:53
  of care for their patients.
• 6:55
  Nice. Okay, very cool. I mean, the CFO that doesn't like math that much is
• 6:59
  the most relatable thing out there, especially to a dentist who's goes like, I like
• 7:03
  teeth, not running a business. Like that's a very easy conversation, I imagine, right? Okay.
• 7:07
  Right.
• 7:08
  Yes. uh Not so for me. Still send my sixth grader to my husband to
• 7:13
  go help with her math homework.
• 7:15
  Nice. Okay, and speaking of the infamous husband that's already come up twice now, he's
• 7:19
  a CPA. However, you are
• 7:21
  Mm-hmm. Yes.
• 7:24
  a CMA. We're gonna get into this, but tell us why that is so much
• 7:28
  cooler.
• 7:29
  Um, it is more cooler um because the M stands for more awesome. Um so
• 7:33
  There you go.
• 7:36
  uh a CMA is a certified management accountant. They've been around for about 80 years.
• 7:42
  They're not as um recognizable, unfortunately, as a CPA, but CPAs focus primarily on tax
• 7:48
  and audit, whereas CMAs are really working inside the company. So think of the controller
• 7:54
  CFO type work, their risk management. um doing SWOT analysis, looking at the operational sides,
• 8:00
  investments, like any and everything you need to make the cut the company successful from
• 8:06
  within. And then you send all that information to your CPA who is kind enough
• 8:13
  to put together your tax return. So
• 8:16
  I so if I boil it down, it's the fun stuff that keeps the company
• 8:19
  going versus the boring stuff.
• 8:21
  Exactly. So
• 8:24
  I love it. I uh you and I were just chatting. I I love math.
• 8:27
  That's where that's where you and I differ. I absolutely love math. I'm a data-driven
• 8:31
  person, all this good stuff. Taxes just do not make sense to me and I
• 8:34
  cannot wrap my head around it. And it just it is a I have no
• 8:38
  problem paying. Just tell me what to pay. I don't understand it. And I don't
• 8:41
  ever want to be a part of it. Just I just want the final bill.
• 8:45
  Just give me that. So the the CPAs out there, shout out to them for
• 8:48
  doing that really boring work.
• 8:50
  Yes. They they do a good job, but I I pay my husband in cookies.
• 8:53
  That's what he gets to do my tax return. So yeah, I think it's a
• 8:57
  good deal.
• 8:58
  That's not bad. That's not bad. Okay. Yeah. All right, very cool. So you go
• 9:04
  from homeschooling to college. what's the major in college?
• 9:08
  Um, so the major in college was um business management.
• 9:14
  Okay.
• 9:15
  Um, again, not liking numbers. Um, you had a choice of accounting or business management.
• 9:19
  So I'm like, I could do that. And my, I don't know, first night with
• 9:24
  my advisor, they were doing a get together with everybody in the program. He just
• 9:28
  came up and started asking me questions. He's like, What do you like? What do
• 9:33
  you enjoy? We got on Excel. I'm an Excel nerd. I love Excel. Um, and
• 9:37
  we just I don't remember the conversations he was having with me, but I remember
• 9:42
  at the end of it, he's like, You should be an accountant. And I'm like,
• 9:46
  you're funny. I can't
• 9:48
  Yeah.
• 9:49
  even put a cake recipe together without screwing it up, much less go be an
• 9:53
  accountant. And he's like, no, just just go with it. Take take the first class
• 9:57
  because that's prereq. So I did, and I loved it. I don't know if it's
• 10:01
  You know, I s I did a little bit in banking. I was three years
• 10:06
  a bank teller. So we did the debit credit stuff. Um, if it just made
• 10:10
  more sense in my brain. But the more I got into accounting, I'm like, I
• 10:14
  like this. This is fun and this is where I I wanna go. So that's
• 10:19
  how it started.
• 10:20
  Okay. And was there a detour to do I think it was dental hygienist work,
• 10:23
  or was that like during college? Where did that come into play?
• 10:27
  Yeah, so the dental assisting side. So I actually wanted to be an OB when
• 10:32
  I was 13. And that's what I planned on until I was 18. And then
• 10:37
  I realized babies don't come between eight and five. And my
• 10:42
  Ha ha ha.
• 10:43
  desires changed as far as what I wanted to do. But you know, every kid
• 10:46
  wants to be a doctor, right? So my sister told me she was going to
• 10:50
  dental assisting school. Um Somebody had told me to try dental assisting to see if
• 10:54
  I even want to be a dentist. And that honestly was the greatest advice because
• 10:58
  when I got in there, I was watching and learning from the perspective of the
• 11:02
  dentist. Like I was learning what I needed to do, but I wanted to see,
• 11:06
  do I want to be a dentist? And the
• 11:09
  Yeah.
• 11:10
  answer at the end of the program was no. It was stressful.
• 11:13
  Yeah.
• 11:14
  They a lot of them, you know, they looked happy. They loved what they were
• 11:17
  doing. You can see the interaction with the staff and the patients. And then a
• 11:21
  lot of them, they were just, they were burned out. And I'm like, I don't
• 11:25
  want to be in a job where honestly people don't like me. That was the
• 11:29
  big thing. I mean, think about it. How many people say I can't wait to
• 11:33
  go to the dentist to get my teeth cleaned?
• 11:36
  I have actually met one person and literally only one.
• 11:38
  good. I'm glad you said that. Cause whenever I say that to people, I get
• 11:41
  the ones who's like, I love my teeth getting cleaned. It's so relaxing.
• 11:45
  Yeah.
• 11:46
  And I'm like, okay, you're weird. Um, but why would you
• 11:48
  Total work. Yeah.
• 11:50
  want to be in a job that people don't like you? And that's that was
• 11:54
  really the trigger point for me. So um needless to say, I I I finished
• 11:59
  school, I tried to find a job, did it for a little bit, and then
• 12:04
  I'm just like, I want to do something, something different. So That's where I started
• 12:08
  working at a bank and got into accounting afterwards. So
• 12:12
  Okay. This is it's a long way from the restaurant work of the family and
• 12:16
  the Mary
• 12:17
  Yeah.
• 12:18
  Kay stuff. Um one of my questions I'd like to ask on here is do
• 12:23
  you have to unlearn anything from your parents or anything from the entrepreneurs in your
• 12:30
  family?
• 12:31
  To not be so frugal. Um, and
• 12:33
  Okay. Nice.
• 12:34
  it wasn't something per se that they taught me. It's something I just I learned
• 12:40
  on my own because my family was the can we pay my MasterCard with my
• 12:46
  Visa type family? No savings, no financial concept, whatever. I have no idea where the
• 12:52
  finance brain in me came from. Like
• 12:55
  Yeah.
• 12:57
  literally no idea. So I just became very frugal because I'm like, I'm not gonna
• 13:02
  be the person that needs to rely on the government or my family to take
• 13:07
  care of me. I'm gonna take care of myself and I somehow became a penny
• 13:12
  pincher. It's really bad. Like I get mad when I have to throw away a
• 13:17
  box of mac and cheese that was 99 cents.
• 13:20
  I feel you though it's it's less about the dollar amount, more of uh Are
• 13:32
  we back? Okay. Alright, cool.
• 13:36
  Yeah.
• 13:37
  I'm going to mark this. We'll obviously edit that out. Let me do this.
• 13:42
  That's fine.
• 13:43
  Is your Wi-Fi good or was it did it just mess up?
• 13:45
  It is. I think the computer just went to sleep, which is weird. It doesn't
• 13:48
  do that on videos. So
• 13:50
  Oh, so strange. Okay, cool. Um,
• 13:53
  We're
• 13:54
  all right, but easy enough. So okay, all right, we were before I get back
• 14:00
  into the second mark here to record, um penny pinching or unpenny pinching. Okay.
• 14:07
  Yes, I'm trying to learn to not be a penny pincher. It's probably one of
• 14:12
  my worst traits. I literally get upset if I have to throw away a box
• 14:17
  of macaroni and cheese. That costs like ninety-nine cents penny pincher.
• 14:21
  Right. And it's I feel you there too because it's it's less about the dollar
• 14:25
  amount that it costs. It's more just I bought a thing and now I'm not
• 14:29
  going to use the thing and that feels very wasteful. Yeah.
• 14:32
  Yes, exactly.
• 14:34
  Yeah. Okay. Um early days of call it penny pinching or you know, in the
• 14:39
  recent days of starting your business, when it's a little bit more scrappy inherently. Any
• 14:45
  sort of mac and cheese or ramen noodle dinners that you were really uh leaning
• 14:50
  into to save a couple bucks?
• 14:53
  Yes, um, it was literally the mac and the mac and cheese. especially like in
• 14:59
  college, I could not stomach paying fourteen dollars to go eat pizza and cereal. Like
• 15:06
  Yeah.
• 15:08
  so I did. I lived on popcorn and the instant or the microwaveable mac and
• 15:14
  cheese um through most of my my college college time
• 15:18
  Nice.
• 15:19
  because it was cheap. So not rice and beans, so I got that going for
• 15:21
  me.
• 15:22
  Sure, exactly. Yep. Not not a hobo with a stick either. You got it. You're
• 15:25
  you're doing great. Okay.
• 15:26
  Nope. Great.
• 15:29
  Okay, so then you get into corporate finance. Um you work your way up in
• 15:35
  the bank, you get into this corporate finance type role. It sounds mathy, but you're
• 15:41
  saying that did you like that stuff?
• 15:44
  Did um when I was at the the bank, I think that's where my love
• 15:48
  for what I now know as data analytics um came in from. Um started as
• 15:53
  a bank teller. Uh surprise, I could not balance my till if my life depended
• 15:58
  on it. It was always like a penny or five cents off. It was nothing
• 16:03
  major, it was just something small, some small piddly amount. But um, I think a
• 16:08
  lot of it came down to I was just nervous and I had to get
• 16:12
  it over. the need to be perfect because I think as accountants, we feel like
• 16:17
  we have to be perfect because we're the accountants. And at the end of the
• 16:22
  day, we're human. And so we're not perfect. And I that's something I really learned
• 16:27
  through my career is just not worrying about making a mistake. Cause I am going
• 16:32
  to make a mistake. So side note on that. But um started off in operations
• 16:36
  with um working on on credit card fraud. It was actually quite Quite interesting. So
• 16:41
  um
• 16:42
  Yeah.
• 16:43
  back in the day when we had fax machines, I'd hear the fax machine go
• 16:45
  off and I knew a big fraud case had come through. Um, and so we
• 16:48
  actually
• 16:49
  Okay.
• 16:52
  had to um cancel everybody's cards at the bank and reissue them. But it also
• 16:56
  had me going into people's bank statements. You can learn so much about someone's bank
• 17:01
  statement and who they are, what they like, what they don't like, what they probably
• 17:06
  shouldn't like. Um But just asking those questions of what's what's going on? I'm looking
• 17:10
  at a hundred transactions. What are these transactions telling me? And then you would see
• 17:15
  something weird. And for example, I actually saw one for $10,000 to a funeral home.
• 17:20
  And it was, it was a young person. And so I had to call him
• 17:25
  up. I'm like, hey, I see you spent 10 grand at this local funeral home.
• 17:29
  Um, can you just help me understand it? And he's like, yeah, I thought I'd
• 17:34
  just buy my casket. Like he's in his 20s and decided
• 17:38
  Ha ha ha.
• 17:39
  to buy his his casket. It was, it was weird. And then you saw the
• 17:42
  people that spent a ton of money and you're just mad at them because you're
• 17:45
  like, I want that kind of money. So
• 17:47
  Right.
• 17:49
  um, but that's where analyzing data really piqued my interest. So um flash forward. Um,
• 17:54
  yeah, I did a lot of insurance company. My last company I was at was
• 18:00
  a large workers' comp insurance company. So if you're from Oregon, that would be SAIF
• 18:06
  Corporation. Um, or quasi-government and they really push storytelling with data, and I love that
• 18:12
  telling what's going on with all the claims, why are some types of claims higher
• 18:18
  than others, or why are some businesses buying more insurance than than others? And so
• 18:24
  it just it really fostered that love for numbers. So even though I don't like
• 18:29
  doing the big complex stuff, I like analyzing data. and the numbers and telling the
• 18:35
  story. And I do like reconciling things. There is a there is a high when
• 18:41
  you reconcile the zero. So that's still there. but
• 18:45
  Okay.
• 18:46
  I think it's really it's the data analytics. I like telling the story and that's
• 18:50
  I think that's what I enjoy about accounting the most is not just doing your
• 18:55
  debits and credits and doing journal entries, but it's it's telling what happened and what
• 19:00
  you can do with that information.
• 19:02
  100% agree. I mean I I've I've made a business based off of that single
• 19:06
  belief. So I'm I'm very much in the same boat there. And I I like
• 19:10
  to say that if you're presenting a dashboard that is the summary of data analysis,
• 19:15
  you should be able to get the story within 15 seconds. That's how we build
• 19:19
  all of our dashboards. Um take that to today. What are the stories that you're
• 19:23
  telling dentists? Like what what actually matters to a dentist from a financial perspective today?
• 19:28
  Yeah, I I feel like sometimes it can be hitting a dead horse, but their
• 19:33
  their biggest pain point still is cash flow. And the reason
• 19:37
  Okay, makes sense.
• 19:38
  why it's their their main pain point is they don't have full control over their
• 19:43
  cash flow. And that's because of insurance. So a dentist will measure things by production,
• 19:48
  what they're actually doing in the chair day to day. So they're producing their hygiene
• 19:53
  appointments or their crowns. And then their collections obviously is what's actually coming in. And
• 19:58
  that collection gets clogged up like crazy with insurance. And it's simple things like the
• 20:04
  claim was denied because they use the wrong code. If you don't update your CDT
• 20:09
  code, which is the code that dentists use and you submit it, the insurance isn't
• 20:14
  gonna pay for it. So let's go back and let's go back and fix that.
• 20:19
  So you know, a lot of that's training. procedures. Like how do we figure that
• 20:24
  out? Sometimes it's just they didn't put the treatment plan in correctly to the insurance
• 20:30
  expectation. Maybe they left off the x-rays. Um maybe they didn't document that one detail
• 20:35
  about health history. And so the insurance denies it. So a lot of their collection
• 20:40
  is hung up by denied claims. And that's such an easy way to unclog it.
• 20:45
  And once we get that unclogged our cash flows are better. But at the end
• 20:50
  of the day you're still waiting. For somebody else to pay you, it's not the
• 20:56
  patient. And so that's their that's their biggest pain point. So helping them understand that
• 21:01
  story, which I think they do, but more importantly, how easy it is to fix
• 21:06
  it and how just ignoring it is not the right.
• 21:10
  Yeah. I mean immediate proof positive of the storytellers because like what you just described
• 21:14
  is almost more operational of hey, like we found the issue, we found the clog,
• 21:18
  we understood the story from the numbers, and now we're gonna go fix it with
• 21:22
  actual human people and because we put in the wrong code. Like that is the
• 21:26
  that is the most tangible explanation of what a CFO does I think I've ever
• 21:30
  heard, and I've talked to hundreds. Very well done.
• 21:33
  good. Yeah. No, it it is. I mean, other companies they have legitimate cash flow
• 21:40
  problems and trying to figure out things. You have seasonalities and you know whatnot. But
• 21:47
  in dentistry, really it is the insurance. That is your cash flow clog. And so
• 21:55
  Yeah.
• 21:56
  if you can't count on insurance paying you in the next ten to thirty days,
• 22:00
  well, no wonder you're freaked out at the end of the month when you can't
• 22:05
  make payroll.
• 22:06
  Yeah. Yeah. Okay. All right. It started off pretty scrappy. We're getting more sophisticated though.
• 22:10
  Um tell
• 22:11
  Okay.
• 22:12
  me about tell me about starting the business. What was the actual story of launching
• 22:15
  the new business, deciding to go off on your own? Be the first entrepreneur in
• 22:20
  your generational family.
• 22:21
  Yes. Um it's actually something I've I've kind of thought about doing my own thing
• 22:26
  um for a couple of years. Um and it really started with my husband obviously
• 22:31
  being a CPA and me working in a large corporate company. Our busy seasons collided
• 22:37
  all the time. We also have four girls. Yes, four girls. Um so work-life balance
• 22:42
  isn't isn't great. So he went out on his own, bought his clients from his
• 22:47
  firm. And kind of in the back of my mind, I'm like, maybe I can
• 22:53
  move over and do some accounting work for him and I can run my own
• 22:58
  thing. Um, so that was the premise of it. So I started off um quitting
• 23:03
  my job and I'm like, I'm gonna do all the year-end accounting for my husband,
• 23:09
  and that will be great. I hate bookkeeping. I started doing
• 23:13
  Ha ha ha.
• 23:14
  it and the conversations we had. No standard chart of accounts. I was complaining about
• 23:18
  that. Somebody capitalized candy and trash bags. That was like a whole day rant for
• 23:23
  me. I'm like, who does that? Um, so
• 23:26
  Sure.
• 23:31
  we we started thinking maybe this isn't the right thing for me. And as I
• 23:36
  was kind of thinking about what do I enjoy most, what brings me the most
• 23:41
  fulfillment and joy in helping people, and that came back to storytelling. Um, I like
• 23:46
  to tell the story and make the connection and I like advising, even though like
• 23:51
  in corporate accounting, I wasn't like an advisor, I was still bringing recommendations to leadership,
• 23:56
  to the board and different things, and I really enjoyed that aspect of it. So
• 24:01
  that's what kind of led into the fractional CFO work. And then of course everybody
• 24:06
  says you need to niche down. I don't like I don't know where to niche.
• 24:11
  And in the back
• 24:13
  Ha ha.
• 24:14
  of my brain, dental kept coming. back up. And it's funny, I just wrote a
• 24:18
  post about this recently, how my dental days for the longest time felt like a
• 24:23
  waste of time. Like it was just that spot in my life. Like why did
• 24:28
  this happen? It was useless. But today when I decided to go dental, I'm like,
• 24:33
  it all clicked. Because no, I didn't know the finance side when I was sitting
• 24:38
  in the chair, but I was sitting in the chair. I understand the pain points
• 24:43
  that the doctors go through. I understand when a patient cancels and how that disrupts
• 24:48
  the entire day. and now be able to connect those dots in a way that
• 24:53
  other people don't necessarily have in finance. And then you pull in that insurance background
• 24:58
  of understanding how the claims work, you know, coding, you know, all the the loops
• 25:03
  you have or hoops you have to jump through for that. It just started making
• 25:08
  more sense like this is where I want to go because I can pull all
• 25:13
  these things together and I can bring a more holistic approach to a dental practices
• 25:18
  office. So that's where I'm at now.
• 25:21
  That's incredible. Most people are like, yeah, you know, I I got my first client
• 25:25
  and it turned out to be a construction company. So now my my niche is
• 25:29
  construction companies. But you're you actually have a very sophisticated, dare I say, com compilation,
• 25:34
  I guess, is what the word I'm gonna go with of combining all the different
• 25:38
  stuff that you've done in your life into an incredibly well rounded approach to the
• 25:43
  thing that you enjoy doing. That's the beauty of entrepreneurship. I mean, that's that's amazing.
• 25:47
  Yeah.
• 25:48
  Right. And it's just getting to that point of, I mean, I rebranded my services,
• 25:52
  if you will, three or four times until I got to know this is exactly
• 25:57
  what I want to do. I don't want to do bookkeeping. I don't want to
• 26:02
  pay the bills. I want to help people unclog their cash flows. I want them
• 26:07
  to have a strategy plan for their practice. And those are my two main focuses.
• 26:12
  Everything else kind of weaves in there, but we unclog cash. We get a strategy
• 26:16
  plan because a lot of them decide, like, hey, I want to retire. They use
• 26:21
  the term exit, so don't say retirement to a dentist. What's your exit strategy? And
• 26:26
  they're like, well, I think I'm gonna leave in six months. And then they see
• 26:31
  the valuator and they're Hey, your business isn't worth much. And they're Well, what do
• 26:36
  you mean? I've put 25 years into it. Well, first off, if your collections are
• 26:41
  clogged and your AR past 90, Is three quarters of your business, no one's gonna
• 26:45
  pay for that, right? You still have your shaggy rug from the 70s, maybe we
• 26:50
  should update your office. So there's so many different things that we can do ahead
• 26:55
  of time to get their business at a better spot. And that's where the strategy
• 27:00
  comes in. Or if they want to bring on an associate or, you know, sell
• 27:05
  to their kids. Like there's so many different things that we need to think about
• 27:10
  three, five, ten years before it actually happens. And that's the power of bringing. someone
• 27:14
  like me in because we can start planning for that. So that when you are
• 27:19
  ready to go, or God forbid, you have an unexpected tragedy on the dentist's side,
• 27:24
  your practice can keep on moving. And so that's that's what I want to help
• 27:29
  them with.
• 27:30
  Yeah, I I I talk with folks that what is it like build with the
• 27:32
  end in mind kind of thing or build with the exit in mind if we
• 27:35
  keep that terminology
• 27:36
  Yeah. Mm-hmm.
• 27:37
  right? And it's not to say that something bad is going to happen. It's just
• 27:40
  like you can't plan to leave six months from now and assume that the value's
• 27:44
  gonna be what you want. You kinda have to build it up, get the systems
• 27:48
  in place, get the process, like all that stuff. Do you go into the actual
• 27:52
  it seem it sounds like yes, this could be a software question, but do you
• 27:56
  go into like the operations and the processes? Of you do that as well. Okay.
• 28:00
  So the numbers tell the story, then you say, here's the problem. Let's go build
• 28:04
  the process. Okay. Okay.
• 28:06
  Yes, I am an SOP nerd. Everybody should have their policies and procedures written down.
• 28:11
  There's too much institutional knowledge out there in any business that you're in. But in
• 28:16
  dentistry, there's so much high turnover between the office manager, if they have a billing
• 28:21
  person, dental assistants, and things aren't captured. Simple things such as what what does a
• 28:26
  hygiene tray look like? What does a general exam tray look like? And let's make
• 28:31
  sure it's all there. So you're not in the middle of the procedure and the
• 28:36
  doctor's like, yeah, I need some more cotton swabs, or you know, I need another
• 28:41
  explorer, you know, or you're in the middle of a crown prep and you don't
• 28:46
  have what you need. So that takes time away. Time is money. If the people
• 28:51
  knew how to set the tray up correctly, you don't run into that problem. So
• 28:57
  that's like a really small thing, right down to big things, like how do we
• 29:02
  Enter in all the journal entries from Dentrix into QuickBooks and make sure that integrated
• 29:07
  correctly. How do we bill for our claims and make sure that we're using the
• 29:12
  right codes? So things like that, having those policies and procedures. Although people don't like
• 29:17
  putting them together, save a ton of time and money. And I love putting those
• 29:22
  things together. So that's like my first stuff is get it written down.
• 29:27
  Love putting them together, love saving time and money. I mean, you found your sweet
• 29:28
  spot. Um,
• 29:29
  Yep. Right?
• 29:32
  you hinted at something that is a that is a theme for the show, definitely
• 29:35
  a theme for my conversations even outside the show. Changing your ICP. So it sounds
• 29:39
  like you had to rebrand your services a few times, or decided to rebrand your
• 29:43
  services a few times.
• 29:44
  Mm-hmm.
• 29:45
  Um, what was the original ICP and how did you begin that niching down process
• 29:50
  to what you finally landed on?
• 29:53
  It it was dental.
• 29:57
  So you left and came back?
• 29:59
  I left and came back. I started off with dental and then you know you
• 30:04
  just get scared because everybody's like you got an inch down. That's where people are
• 30:09
  gonna see your value. But it didn't happen fast enough. And I wasn't feeling like
• 30:14
  I was making traction. And I'm like, okay, well, let's go to healthcare because at
• 30:20
  the end of the day, the accounting principles and the strategies that I use are
• 30:25
  the same across any healthcare platform. They all deal with insurance. They all deal with
• 30:30
  cancellations. And then I came back in because I'm like, no, I want to be
• 30:36
  your dental CFO. Like, so that you know that I really do know the ins
• 30:41
  and outs of your office. And I feel comfortable there because I do have that
• 30:46
  chair side experience. I can guess with optometry. I can guess with PT, you know,
• 30:52
  but I don't have that real life experience. So yes, started, left, came back.
• 30:57
  Oh, it's fantastic. Okay. Um and
• 30:59
  I don't know if I recommend that approach, but
• 31:02
  I you know, there's something to be said about the gut instinct of the first
• 31:07
  decision's the best decision, you know, pick your favorite cliche there. anything that you wildly
• 31:13
  overthought uh other than the ICP maybe, then when you started your business.
• 31:18
  Yes, my my branding, like my colors, my tone, my approach, because you go look
• 31:24
  at an accounting website and it's your grandpa's website. It's beige, it's blue, navy specifically,
• 31:30
  it's gold, it's boring. But I'm like, I gotta be like everybody else, because that's
• 31:37
  how you're gonna get clients, right? They trust, you know, you put in AI, it's
• 31:43
  like what colors are trustworthy colors? Bayesian blue. And I'm like, really? Like, not that
• 31:50
  Yeah. uh
• 31:51
  I want to go neon pink, but I want something with personality. But I felt
• 31:56
  like I couldn't have that personality and still be credible. Um, I know I'm younger
• 32:01
  looking, and so how do I still look credible, but act older, look older, portray
• 32:07
  myself as knowledgeable? And I just kept redoing things over and over. And finally, um,
• 32:12
  I have a speaking coach, and she's like, Just embrace your snarkiness. And I'm like,
• 32:18
  Yeah.
• 32:19
  I like that. And I honestly, like when we first met and I saw Pineapple
• 32:23
  Consulting, I'm like, I don't know about this, but it sounds fun
• 32:27
  Ha ha ha.
• 32:28
  and he looks cool. Let's give it a try. And you know, I I love
• 32:33
  that because you get to use your personality. So that's what I'm doing. So I
• 32:38
  am putting my snarkiness in a professional way into what I do because I think
• 32:43
  people relate to that. They don't want your grandpa's accountant. I want to not necessarily
• 32:48
  be the accountant of the future, but I w I want to be with where
• 32:53
  we are today. And I want people to connect with me at a real human
• 32:58
  level.
• 32:59
  It's I completely agree. Branding I think is a l largely about personality, especially in
• 33:06
  our small small business world. Um
• 33:09
  Mm-hmm.
• 33:10
  it goes a long way to not be like everybody else, 'cause
• 33:13
  Mm-hmm.
• 33:14
  I know I I'm just saying I've talked with hundreds of CFOs. I know and
• 33:18
  talk with probably still hundreds on somewhat of a regular basis. You are the dental
• 33:22
  CEO or c CFO though. Like that sticks out. Now we've got, you know, obviously
• 33:26
  a couple conversations at this point too. Like it sticks out. And especially in an
• 33:31
  area where there's a bunch of fractional CFOs, let's say there's a bunch of dental
• 33:35
  CFOs as well. Obviously less of them, but now we have the snarky
• 33:39
  Mm-hmm. Yeah.
• 33:42
  dental CFO, and that is so memorable and so likable. So I'm a fan.
• 33:48
  That's great. It just it makes me more comfortable around people. I don't sit here
• 33:51
  and be like, are they gonna worry about what I say? If they already know
• 33:55
  that I like to make jokes and have fun, then that just integrates in with
• 33:59
  the client. And they relax
• 34:01
  Exactly. Yep.
• 34:02
  too. I relax. It's great. So
• 34:04
  Exactly. Yep. It sets expectations and then meets expectations, which there's nothing better in business
• 34:09
  than that. Um
• 34:11
  Exactly.
• 34:12
  You mentioned uh having the human relationships being not necessarily being the accountant of the
• 34:17
  future, but meeting them where where they're at today. The AI question. Do you get
• 34:22
  into AI a whole lot? Do you use it for efficiencies? How are you using
• 34:27
  it today?
• 34:28
  I like they say, um, work smarter, not harder. That is my my mantra. So
• 34:33
  I love AI. I use it for everything. Um, and what I actually I know
• 34:38
  they say AI makes you dumber. Um, and maybe for people that is true. I
• 34:44
  think for me, it opens up that creative side um
• 34:48
  Yes.
• 34:49
  a little bit more because I can see things a little differently, and then I
• 34:53
  basically rewrite whatever it says, but it gets that. that juice flowing, if you will.
• 34:58
  Um I'm not really good on the, you know, making things pretty side. I'm not
• 35:02
  a marketer. So I can put stuff in there and be like, hey, make a
• 35:07
  pretty slideshow for me. And um so I I use it for a lot of
• 35:12
  that, but also just for analyzing things. um I think today people are nervous about
• 35:16
  putting information into AI. Obviously you got to be responsible with it, right? And you
• 35:21
  have to be aware of, you know, the hallucinations. But it helps so much for
• 35:25
  research. I love its capability. And again, as accountants, as we know what things should
• 35:30
  be, it's really quick to find those hallucinations because we we know what to look
• 35:35
  for, right? And I'm like, no, I don't want the IRS code from 20 years
• 35:39
  ago. I want the one from this year. Why are you giving me that? You
• 35:44
  know? Um,
• 35:45
  Yeah.
• 35:46
  so it just helps drill down and it gets you thinking about things you wouldn't
• 35:51
  normally think about or other areas to go explore. And so I think it just
• 35:56
  makes it more powerful. Not worried AI is gonna replace my job. but I I
• 36:01
  think people need to lean into it a lot.
• 36:04
  Yeah, I I as somebody who also is in AI all the time and does
• 36:07
  AI stuff for a bunch of different businesses, I'm in the same boat. Um,
• 36:11
  Mm-hmm.
• 36:13
  what data points do you care about most as an advisor for these dental firms?
• 36:19
  So um, like we talked about earlier, their production collection ratio is probably the largest
• 36:24
  data point that I look at because that's a huge part of their business. And
• 36:30
  if we don't have the right proportion of what they're producing and what they're collecting,
• 36:36
  they can't sustain the business. So we got to get that cleaned up first. Um
• 36:42
  and then just making sure that everything else primarily on the expense side is in
• 36:47
  line with their practice, their specific practice. I don't like it when people say, hey,
• 36:53
  your, you know, your benchmarks are out of line with the average practice. Well, define
• 36:59
  average. Are we talking about a general practitioner that's with a DSO group, or are
• 37:05
  we talking about an independent oral surgery? You know, so don't get caught up in
• 37:11
  The average practice. What is your practice look like to other practices like you? And
• 37:16
  those are the data points that we need to look at because it's different for
• 37:22
  everybody.
• 37:23
  Okay, well said. Well said. Um,
• 37:25
  Mm-hmm.
• 37:26
  all right, let's jump into the Scrappy vs. sophisticated lightning round. Um
• 37:30
  Okay.
• 37:31
  Have you ever had to play the credit card timing game? We wait till tomorrow
• 37:34
  to charge something, because that's next month's statement. Okay.
• 37:37
  No. I pay my credit card off every month.
• 37:42
  Okay. Okay. Pretty good. Pretty good. Um any fake it till you make it once
• 37:47
  you started your own business.
• 37:49
  Yes, and I hate that phrase, but you have to do it.
• 37:53
  You do. I know. It's it's it's a painful one, but it has to be
• 37:59
  done. Um ever gotten a review from a family member?
• 38:03
  Does my husband count?
• 38:05
  I I would say yes.
• 38:07
  Yes, he not like an official review, but he'll look at my stuff and say
• 38:10
  that I'm too corporate. So I'm working on that.
• 38:12
  Okay. Okay. Would he ever have you ever gotten any like five star reviews or
• 38:18
  anything like that from a family member?
• 38:22
  No.
• 38:23
  Okay. Okay. take me inside the inbox. How many emails unread is too many? One.
• 38:29
  Okay. All right. Pretty good.
• 38:31
  One, I like a clean inbox. I have an old boss who he'd have like
• 38:36
  a thousand unread emails. I'm like, that's crazy and not cool.
• 38:40
  Um, ever send an email that is just in the subject line, nothing in the
• 38:46
  body.
• 38:47
  All the time.
• 38:48
  Okay, to yourself, to clients?
• 38:52
  Um more internal, I probably wouldn't send it to a client, but um yeah sometimes
• 38:58
  you can just I need this report end of day and I do EOD so
• 39:05
  please send cash flow EOD and because it's efficient but
• 39:10
  Okay.
• 39:11
  probably not to a client no
• 39:12
  Okay, fair, fair. Do you have a team that sounds you have a team that
• 39:16
  works with you?
• 39:17
  Uh me. I I do have my my kids that will sometimes come and help
• 39:20
  all of them type up things
• 39:22
  Okay.
• 39:23
  or design things and then they feel like they're
• 39:26
  Nice.
• 39:27
  part of it.
• 39:27
  Okay. when emailing a client, will you ever say, We'll get right on that when
• 39:31
  you know it's just you that's gonna do the work?
• 39:35
  No, I am very particular about setting boundaries with clients or internal people, but I
• 39:41
  will get to this and I'll put in a time.
• 39:45
  Okay. All right. That's a lot of honesty. take me inside the office. how many
• 39:51
  monitors do you use at the desk?
• 39:55
  I have two monitors plus my laptop.
• 39:58
  Okay. All right. Very, very accountant of you. Are they the same make and model
• 40:05
  monitors?
• 40:06
  Yes. Had to look. I'm at my husband's desk. He has bigger monitors than I
• 40:06
  do.
• 40:07
  Okay, all right. This is this is again Is your desk also a standing desk?
• 40:13
  Okay, all right.
• 40:15
  It is a standing desk. The difference between my desk is I don't have the
• 40:20
  lovely whiskey bourbon supply in the back. That's my husband's. I get the bookshelf.
• 40:25
  Gotcha. Okay. Okay. Um leads perfectly to the next okay. Leads perfectly to the next
• 40:32
  question. Uh what is the most unique thing in your office? Any trinkets, any awards?
• 40:40
  My money tree.
• 40:41
  Money ch Okay, tell us about the money tree.
• 40:43
  It's a it's a money tree. Um I wanted to get into bonsai and like
• 40:47
  doing math, I do not have a green thumb. And so someone say get a
• 40:52
  money tree, um, and that's the easiest plant to keep and you can't kill it,
• 40:57
  and it is true. It's not making me as much money as I'd like, but
• 41:02
  it is alive and it's still green.
• 41:05
  Is it making you any money?
• 41:07
  Probably not.
• 41:09
  Okay. Okay, I love it. Um, last one, this one uh gets back to the
• 41:13
  the overarching theme of the episode. You have this it seems like a very like
• 41:18
  uh impressive ability to identify happiness throughout your whole life. You're like, hey, I like
• 41:23
  this and I don't like this. I think that's so cool because I think that's
• 41:28
  actually way harder than people think. What is something today that you're over the moon
• 41:32
  about? Can be the stories that you tell via the numbers. Can we just the
• 41:37
  work life balance like, give me what is the happy moment for today? I know,
• 41:42
  I'm getting existential on you as we close.
• 41:45
  I right. You know, honestly, it's it's the fact that I am able to do
• 41:50
  what I can do right now, in the sense that when I quit my job,
• 41:56
  um I also lost all our our benefits, right? I was the carrier of benefits.
• 42:02
  Again, the company I worked for was quasi government, so I had the really nice
• 42:08
  government benefits. I I joked we we had the government benefits without the red tape.
• 42:14
  Okay.
• 42:15
  And that was a huge, that was a huge financial hit. And a lot of
• 42:18
  people can't just up and quit like that. Um, and so I'm very happy and
• 42:23
  grateful that my husband has been able to basically absorb that with his clients. The
• 42:28
  joke is just get another client for him because everybody wants tax person. Everybody needs
• 42:33
  tax. He's he's cooler on that side, they like him more than me. But
• 42:38
  Okay.
• 42:39
  um a lot, you know, I can still send my kids to the private school
• 42:43
  that we want. And we can still, for the most part, keep our standard of
• 42:48
  living. And that's something that I'm very, very grateful for. It takes a lot of
• 42:52
  pressure off as you're trying to get your business going and find clients. Um, and
• 42:57
  so I'm just I'm really happy that we're able to do that. So
• 43:01
  That's awesome. That's awesome. Congrats. It's not easy to do. So definitely congrats. I am
• 43:06
  a huge fan. This has been awesome. Um, straight down the middle. I think I
• 43:11
  have to agree with you. Scrappy upbringings, scrappy beginnings. But you've got a lot of
• 43:16
  sophistication today. I gotta rule 50-50 split. I love it.
• 43:20
  Okay, I like it.
• 43:23
  Awesome. Well listen, thank you so much for coming on. Um, what do you want
• 43:26
  the folks out there to know? Anything you want to promote, any websites, anything like
• 43:29
  that?
• 43:30
  Um yeah, if you want to learn more, you can always follow me on um
• 43:34
  LinkedIn, Melissa Leavitt, and my um website will be in the show notes. But um
• 43:38
  my goal is to be the right CFO advisor for you. I don't want to
• 43:42
  talk people into taking my services. I really just want to help. If I could
• 43:47
  do it for free, I would. But I have four girls and four weddings I'm
• 43:51
  gonna have to pay for, so help me out.
• 43:54
  Yeah.
• 43:57
  But yeah, no, my my thing is um education first. I I want you to
• 44:00
  be educated, I want you to make the right decisions and I wanna be a
• 44:04
  part of your journey as you get there.
• 44:07
  And she'll have a snarky smile on her face while she's doing it, everybody.
• 44:11
  I will. And usually a cup of coffee. I don't have my coffee yet.
• 44:14
  There you go. Okay. Okay. Awesome. Melissa Leavitt, everybody. Scrappy and sophisticated in equal split.
• 44:19
  Thank you so much for coming on, Melissa.
• 44:23
  You're welcome. Thanks.
• 44:24
  Thanks. Stay data driven, everybody.