Latest / Dental Mentors / The Business of Dentistry: M&A, AI, and Valuation Traps ft. Brian Colao

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The Business of Dentistry: M&A, AI, and Valuation Traps ft. Brian Colao · Dental Mentors

• Dental Mentors: You've got to make sure you hire competent counsel that understands the dental space. Diligence goes two ways. Everybody always thinks diligence just comes from the buyer, but the seller is allowed to really diligence the buyer, ask questions, ask to talk to other people that have contractually affiliated with that buyer, understand what life is going to look like. Eight out of 10 times the highest price is not going to be the best overall value. A lot of things that go into picking the right partner, you know, the buyer's track record in dentistry, the buyer's track record in general, what the time horizon is for another equity event, what the management style is. It always bothers me if the LOI talks price and some very high level issues, but doesn't really talk about the terms of your employment agreement. And then you see it at the end, like right on the finish line of closing. And you're like, look, I can't live with that. It really causes problems. and sometimes even prevents the transaction from going through or delays it. I'll tell you something that really bothers me because there's kind of two tiers of counsel out there that are sort of playing in the dental space that are traps for the unwary. One is people that just don't do it. If you don't understand the dental space, that's reckless and irresponsible and that's going to be a big, big problem. But two, there's lawyers out there that I call discount lawyers. They do dozens of dental deals, but they're on sale. You know, they'll say, ⁓ we'll do that for 5,000. We'll do that for 10,000. Usually this is a solo practitioner. They don't have any overhead, so they're just making up these numbers. But here's the thing, they're not really representing your interest. All they're really doing is just spot checking your document, making sure the right parties are in there, making sure the amounts are correct, making sure it roughly follows the LOI, but they're not protecting your interest. So when somebody comes up to you as a seller and says, you know, I'll do this for 5,000, I'll do this for 10,000. If it sounds too good to be true, it most always is because they're not representing you. Welcome to another episode of Dental Mentors. I'm one of the hosts, Matt Ornstein. We're here with also Neil Zemba and Eric Morin. And we have a very, very special guest today. ⁓ I'd be shocked if anyone listening or watching does not know him. Today we have Brian Coleo, the director of Dicama's DSO Industry Group. Probably, I wouldn't say probably, definitely the most knowledgeable person regarding the overall state of dentistry. the DSO space and the king of legal representation. And we're very, very pleased to have you here, Brian. It's an honor. Thank you so much for coming. Well, thanks, Matt. Really my honor to join here and be here with really talented folks, Eric and Neil. So looking forward to chatting with you guys this morning. All right, wonderful. So we're going to dive right in. We've got a bunch of questions and we value your time a lot. So I'll start off. And the first question is, as a leading expert in the dental service organizations or DSOs, what are the most significant trends that you're seeing in the DSO industry right now and how might they impact independent dental practices? I mean, the biggest trend right now because the markets have been very, very tough is integration of technology, how you do that. I think the interest rates are very, very high. The climate has not been terribly favorable for a lot of ⁓ &A. There still are some deals going on, but it's not... as explosive as it was in 2019, the end of 2021 or even part of 22. So I think the key is same store growth. And the key is how you update your organization by integrating all the technology that's out there. And some organizations are doing a better job than others. And I think that's the biggest trend analyzing the technology solutions that are out there and figuring out which ones work best for a particular organization and then integrating them. All right. That makes a lot of sense. mean, that's a big thing that we talk about in dental mentors a lot as well as technology and what technologies, you know, make sense and how to integrate them. Brian, my question is what key considerations should dentists keep in mind when evaluating the sale of their practice to a DSO or private equity group, especially from a legal standpoint? Well, I mean, there's two parts of this and one's a lot more important than the other. Okay. You know, the most important part is picking the right partner and seeking out the best overall value. And by the way, I would say in just in my personal experience, I'm in my 38 out of 10 times, the highest price is not going to be the best overall value. Sometimes it is. mean, sometimes, but eight out of 10 times, it's not going to be. And there's a lot of things that go into picking the right partner. You know, the buyer's track record in dentistry, the buyer's track record in general, what the time horizon is for another equity event, what the management style is. Does the buyer integrate with your software and your solutions and how heavy a lift is it going to be to integrate with the buyer systems? mean, there's a lot of different things that go into it, but you got to spend the time. You got to pick the right partner before. you know, going ahead and signing an LOI and doing a deal. So that's on the business side. On the legal side, you know, you've got to make sure you hire competent counsel that understands the dental space. This is a very specialized type of transaction. This is a very specialized field. You know, if you're a buyer or I'm sorry, seller, is what we're talking about. And let's say a seller, you know, you've used your country club lawyer for years or a family friend or somebody, more often than not, they're not going to be up to this task unless they also happen to be a specialist in dental, which almost never happens. So the lawyer that set up your organization that helped you do your lease with your landlord, that helped you do some general corporate stuff, they're not going to be a good fit for this like nine out of 10 times and you can get into a lot of trouble. if you don't pick counsel that's highly experienced in dental. Brian, I appreciate that. In your experience with over 700 dental clients, what are the most common pitfalls dentists encounter during mergers and acquisitions and how can they be avoided? Well, mean, one pitfall we've just talked about, obviously not getting competent and qualified counsel. That can completely ruin things. Something else that is another ... pitfall that they run into very often is not being aligned with the buyer. I mean, this goes to what I said about, you you got to pick the right partner, not really taking the time to do their homework. This should be very, very difficult. You know, diligence goes two ways. Everybody always thinks diligence just comes from the buyer, but the seller is allowed to really diligence the buyer, ask questions, ask to talk to other people that have contractually affiliated with that buyer. understand what life is going to look like. you know, to answer the biggest pitfall is not doing enough diligence on the buyer and just jumping in and then finding out much, much later that, you know, things are not what they thought they were going to be. And it always breaks my heart. If I'd say 1 % of the time, you just got surprised and you couldn't avoid it. 99 % of the time, if you did diligence and you did proper diligence and asked the right questions, you could have figured it out. So it always breaks my heart when somebody, you know, post-closing is like, oh my God, I'm miserable. I can't believe this happened. And I'm like, well, we could have found this out. This would have been really something easily that we could have figured out, you know, pre-closing and might have changed your trajectory. You might've decided to do a deal with somebody else at that point and could have avoided all of this. So I hate it when that happened. So not doing enough diligence to me. would be the number one biggest pitfall. Number two would be aligning with people that are not competent or qualified on the legal side to do dental transactions. Yeah, absolutely. Been there, done that for sure. All right, next question, Brian. How have recent regulatory changes such as those related to healthcare compliance or anti-kickback laws affected dental practices and what steps should dentists take to stay compliant? Well, I the environment under this new administration, they've made health care fraud a big priority. So we're seeing more, a lot more enforcement than I've seen in a very long time. And I was a little bit surprised because usually the Democrat administrations, you know, do more fraud enforcement than the Republicans, but this one's kind of broke the trend. I've seen a lot more enforcement. under this new administration than I saw under the last one. So how this leads is the buyer's diligence, Matt. I mean, they're being much more aggressive on the diligence and they're much less likely or much less forgiving to look past things. It used to be during the market peak of 2019, 20 and 21. You know, if there was an investigation or an inquiry, even if I was positive, this is a benign sort of thing that wasn't going to be. you know, a big deal, they would, you know, back in those days, they would look past it, they would, you know, maybe you'd have to, you know, hold back a little money or something, but mostly, they would be willing to go forward with the deal, close over it, if you will. Today, they don't close over hardly anything on the regulatory side until they have absolute, I mean, when I say absolute comfort around it, that, you know, they know exactly what the worst case scenario might be and they're prepared for that. If there is even any uncertainty going on, we're having a lot of trouble getting things across the finish line right now. So for that reason, you really need to make sure your regulatory house is in order. And this would be the time pre-closing to have somebody take a real hard look at the organization and button up anything that needs to be buttoned up. Because the last thing you want to do, and I've seen this quite a bit recently, not when the market was at its heyday, but the last year or two, I've seen this a lot. Somebody gets an offer that's really attractive. They're really excited about it. They want to do it and we start doing it and then we get a couple of months down the road and this regulatory issue comes up. And sometimes it's not even, I mean, I don't believe 31 years in it's that big a deal, but the buyer is panicked about it and we just can't get them comfortable. And that really concerns me. And I always hate to see that. And the way you avoid it, is you got to have a checkup beforehand and you've got to make sure your regulatory and legal house is in order so that these things don't just pop up at the last minute and potentially sabotage what otherwise might be a great transaction. Absolutely. Ryan, what advice would you give to dentists negotiating employment contracts or partnership agreements within a DSO environment? Yeah, that's a great question, Neil. You've got to be reasonable. And what I mean by that is It is subject to negotiation. would like to have those terms, I mean, one, procedurally, I'd like to have them ironed out in the LOI because it always bothers me again if the LOI is silent on that, if the LOI talks price and some very high level issues, but doesn't really talk about the terms of your employment agreement. And then you see it at the end, like right on the finish line of closing. And you're like, look, I can't live with that. It really causes problems. and sometimes even prevents the transaction from going through or delays it. So one, you know, I think you want to have that ironed out at the LOI stage so there's no misunderstanding later. To the specific terms, you got to be reasonable, right? Nobody's going to give you millions of dollars without a non-compete. So I sometimes have sellers, I'm not doing a non-compete. I don't want to do a non-compete. Okay, that's nice. but nobody's gonna pay you millions of dollars and then say, ⁓ you could go across the street and take all the patients. mean, we gotta be reasonable about that sort of thing. You're gonna have a non-compete. The next one I hear is, well, non-competes are unenforceable in my state. No, no, no, not in the sale of a business. Even those states that say non-competes are not enforceable generally, they're always enforceable on the sale of a business. Even California. says if somebody pays you millions of dollars for your business, you're allowed to have a non-compete under those situations. The rest of it, I'd say, you you have a right to ask for things that are very similar to how it's always been. What I mean is, if you you decide, like, I don't know, I'm making this up, but these are real life examples. You've always had three weeks vacation. All right, put that in there. You always had your CE paid for, you know, up to $10,000. All right. Because you know why? Your EBITDA is where it is having paid those things. So that's really, really reasonable. But if you suddenly decide at the time of a transaction that we're going to take a private jet once a month to Vegas and have a big office party once a month, brand new development, yeah, they're not going to put that in there. But as long as it's consistent with historical practices of what you've always done, meaning I was able to get my EBITDA to this point, having done all of these things historically, I think it's up for negotiation and you'll be able to get that. it. Brian, with the rise of new technology, AI, teledentistry, all the things that are happening right now in this space, what legal challenges do you foresee for the industry and the practices as they try to prepare with this change of technology? Yeah. mean, look, we got to figure out best practices for AI. There's no uniform things. The dental boards are very, very slow. Like, you know, when a new thing comes out, It might be three, four, five years before a dental board adopts some guidelines or regulations around it. But in the meantime, we're practicing dentistry. We're operating here without guidance. So when it comes to AI, we got to figure out what the best clinical practices are. I have been asked to write articles on some. Everybody on this show knows I'm not a dentist, but I've been in the legal space for 31 years. So I've been asked to kind of put some guardrails in place. And what I always tell everybody is you got to remember that it's not a substitute for the independent professional judgment of the licensed dentist. These things are terrific. They can really, really help you. But two things, it's not a substitute. And number two, you're gonna be 100 % if you're the dentist, 100 % responsible for the outcome, meaning that will never be acceptable to say we did the wrong thing, but we were relying on the AI that will never work. They will say, you with the dental boards and the courts and the regulators will say, you know, you have a right to use AI, just like you have a right to use binoculars and other things you want to use to kind of help you a little bit. But in the end of the day, you are 100 % responsible for the clinical decisions that are made. if you know, if AI somehow made a mistake, hardly ever happens. But if AI made a mistake, or you misread the AI, you are not entitled to blame it. We got to figure that out, know, those types of standard of care issues. We also have to figure out privacy issues. I mean, there's been some lawsuits recently where some DSOs got sued for having AI review, you know, allegedly review phone calls, allegedly look at records, and we've got to get all that stuff sorted out. But I think it all can be. I think AI is the single biggest advancement in the history of dentistry. It's here to stay. None of these things are going to prevent it from being implemented. And it's a very, very powerful and a very, very valuable tool. Yeah. That was a great, great feedback. Thank you. So this one's close to home for me because I have this discussion with a ⁓ lot of dentists. And ⁓ I think it's really important. So my question is, I'd love you to explain to everyone why is specialized legal counsel important for DSOs and emerging dental groups compared to just hiring a general healthcare attorney or just a regular general attorney and what unique aspects of dental regulations really make this necessary. Yeah, no, I mean, I appreciate the opportunity, Matt, to sort of clarify that a little bit. I mean, I made clear a few minutes ago that you got to get specialized counsel. But I'm sure somebody watching this might be like, Okay, that's nice. But why? So the why is, ⁓ there are things, first of all, specialized counsel knows what the market is. Okay, I'll tell you what you know, when I look at the multiple of EBITDA that's being paid one, I'll tell you whether it's you know, in line with market or not. You know, somebody that doesn't, you know, that doesn't operate in the dental space day in and day out, they have no clue, you know, whether it is. Two, you know, if you want feedback on specific buyers and specific... you know, what has happened on other deals and what you know, is customary in a deal like this, you're only going to get that from specialized counsel, you're not going to get that from somebody that this is their first dental deal, by definition, they don't know what's customary and what's not you asked me a question or, or I think Eric did a few minutes ago about, you know, how you negotiate your employment agreement, for example, if you haven't done that 100 times, you're not going to have a clue as to how to negotiate, you know, your employment agreement. The other thing I'll tell you something that really bothers me because there's kind of two tiers of counsel out there that are sort of playing in the dental space that are traps for the unwary. One is people that just don't do it. Like this is what I'm saying, if you don't understand the dental space, that's reckless and irresponsible and that's gonna be a big, big problem. But two, there's lawyers out there that I call discount lawyers. They do dozens of dental deals, but they're on sale. They'll say, ⁓ we'll do that. For 5,000, we'll do that for 10,000. Usually this is a solo practitioner, probably his office is out of their house. There's nothing wrong with officeing out of your house, but I'm trying to explain it to you. They don't have any overhead, so they're just making up these numbers. But here's the thing, they're not really representing your interest, meaning. When I represent and I do a lot of buy side work, I'll be opposite. And that's part of, know, why I think personally, I have a lot of perspective on this because I do a ton of buy side work, and then we'll do some sell side work. So I understand both sides of the coin. But sometimes you'll have people that they do lots of dental deals. So superficially, it looks like, ⁓ this person might be good. But all they're really doing is just spot checking your document, making sure the right parties are in there, making sure the amounts are correct. making sure it roughly follows the LOI, but they're not protecting your interest. So when somebody comes up to you as a seller and says, you know, I'll do this for 5,000, I'll do this for 10,000. If it sounds too good to be true, it most always is because they're not representing you. They're just looking at the documents. You know, there's schedules, for example, you have to fill out. And these schedules say, you know, various things. You're making what's called representations and warranties that I am in compliance with the law here. and there is no legal actions or no one has violated this rule or no one has violated that regulation. And often those lawyers will ask the buyer to fill those forms out for them. The reason when we do and it's a little more expensive than everybody else is we will fill out every single schedule. We will sit down with you, understand your business. And if there's, if something... possibly might be inaccurate in a schedule, we will disclose it in advance. So if you put it on the schedule and you disclose it, they can't come back after you later. But if you just sign a blanket schedule that says, I'm in compliance with all laws, all my contracts are compliant, there are no legal actions after us, and you just sign that, and then something comes up, they can come after you later. And there's probably a couple dozen of those things, you have to represent warrant. And the real discount lawyers, although they do a high volume of dental deals, they don't fill those out. Could you imagine doing a deal where you let the other party do your document for you? When the time comes to do your schedule, you say that they asked me to do it. And I'm saying when I'm on the buy side and I start laughing, I'm like, I'm delighted to do it. What do you think I put down? You you're in compliance with everything so that if there's a problem, my client, the buyer is going to be able to go after them. And I can't believe how many attorneys out there will do this for a super, super low price and they don't really represent you. Maybe they act like a glorified, I don't know, paper pushing service where they just check the parties, they make sure. the right parties are filled in the right names are spelled correctly. They make sure the dollar amounts are right. Maybe they make sure you know your bank account gets over there so you can get wired the money, but they don't actually represent you and go through the tedious schedules and make sure you're and that's even more dangerous because I think everybody understands if you pick a lawyer that has zero experience in dentistry. Yeah, you understand that. But sometimes people don't understand the nuance of somebody that says, I've done a dozen, several dozen deals. Yeah, they may have. but if they're charging you such an outrageously low price, they're not going to get in there into the weeds and actually make sure you're protected. And I've seen tax issues come up too, because they're not going to provide tax advice. Again, they're going to go through the document, they're going to make sure everything's, you the names are spelled right and filled out, but they're not going to like look at your what entity you're a part of, what entity is buying you, what the implications are going to be and do a tax analysis. And sometimes I've seen people after the fact, get hit with unexpected tax bills or get a much higher tax rate than they could have if somebody took the time to represent them. So that's very long-winded answer, Matt, but it's something that I feel very strongly about. Yeah. Before we go on, I just want to jump in really quickly. ⁓ From the dentist that I work with through dental pitch brokerage, ⁓ we get pushback on like, why as a seller, why should we pay for a quality of earnings to determine what our real EBITDA is? And I hear this all the time, the dentists say, I don't want to pay, you know, 10 grand or $20,000 for quality of earnings. They've got EBITDA in the millions and they say to me, well, let's just use the buyers. Let the buyer pay for quality of earnings and we'll use that. I mean, it goes back to like the legal issue. You know, you can be penny wise and pound foolish. on the legal side and yeah maybe I'm making this number up but you might save 50, $75,000 on legal fees using an improper attorney but what can happen later on is you could get hit with you know lawsuits from the buyer that amount to you know half a million a million dollars in clawbacks and additional legal expenses. Am I on point with that? Well, in both in both examples, certainly in the legal example, you can absolutely if you fail to disclose something, you know, you fail to use the most tax advantageous structure, you could get hit with hundreds of thousands of dollars of tax bills, hundreds of thousands of dollars of clawbacks, you could forfeit some of your rollover shares. And that makes like, you know, it's always like the discount lawyers are like 10 grand. And when I have it, we might be 35 or 40. I mean, it depends on the you know, I don't want to quote. necessary prices depends on the deal, but it always ends up being the difference of 25 or 30. It's not huge amount of money. And it shocks me sometimes when they'll save 30,000, but they'll lose hundreds of thousands of dollars later in a tax bill or, or in a clawback. And it's the same thing with the Q of A. The way the Q of E works is You might spend 10 or 15 grand to do a Q of E, but if they can boost your EBITDA by even a hundred thousand, you know, out of five, even a conservative five multiple, that's a, that's an extra $500,000 or even a four multiple four. So why wouldn't you spend $15,000 to gain 500,000 of value on the transaction? I mean, it's just sometimes, I mean, I make a joke, you know, lot of people say Dennis math and God bless Dennis. represent a hundreds of them or thousands. over the years, but they didn't go to school to be MBAs and they didn't go to school, you know, to run math calculations. They went to school to be world class clinicians. And sometimes this is a math that just, you know, it they just miss it. And it really breaks my heart when I see that happen. Somebody won't spend 15,000 to gain 500,000 or they won't spend an extra 30,000 in legal fees to prevent them from losing 500,000 later. It's just it's a problem. I agree. I appreciate you discussing that. Thank you. The next question is, how should dental practice owners approach economic challenges such as recessions or inflation from a legal and business perspective? Yeah. mean, look, from a business perspective, dentistry is still one of the strongest segments of the economy, always has been. People always go to the dentist. It is true, ⁓ everything's up a little bit. Dentistry lives right now, Neil, in an unnatural state. What I mean by that is cost of money's up. due to inflation, cost of supplies and goods is up, you know, due to inflation and due to some of these tariffs, you know, so already high costs have gone up higher. There's a cost of labor has gone up, there's labor shortages right now, you know, so there's cost of utilities, cost of virtually everything has gone up, but reimbursement rates remain flat or only slightly elevated. That's an unnatural state. And almost any other business, if all the costs go up, the price goes up to kind of equalize it. industry has been constrained in their ability sorted to do that. And that's created really once in a generation type challenges here that we're experiencing. The answer to a lot of this is integrating technology and solutions and focusing on same store growth. And that's what you got to do right now. If you think you're going to sell here in the near future or something, you've got to, you know, button up your organization and you've got to focus and maximize same store growth. And when we say same store growth. because that's like one of those terms like AI, everybody's talking about it, but what we look at, what the hell does it mean? Right? Same store growth means you want to gain new patients, you want to get more from existing patients, and you want to do a top bottom analysis of the organization to cut unnecessary expenses and lower overhead. That's how you achieve same store growth. And there's tons and tons of technological solutions out there and innovations and new lines of business that will enable you to do that. But you got to focus on them. Not everyone is going to work for every organization. We could spend and I did last week spend an hour just talking about that topic on a web, you know, on a webinar or podcast, out of kind of focus on that, so that you can maximize the value of your organization, you know, leading up to the time when it's right, sort of to do a sale. so many changes. So looking ahead, what do you predict will be the biggest legal disruptions or opportunities in dentistry over the next five to 10 years? Yeah, mean, think technology. I mean, I just keep coming back to this. mean, I love AI. I think You know, AI is going to take over just about every aspect of the practice in the next five years. It's going to schedule your appointment. You know, even if that's in the middle of the night, it's going to be smart scheduling. It's going to schedule the more lucrative procedures first and the other ones, you know, second. When you come, it's going to handle all the billing. It's going to handle the collections. It's going to handle the insurance verification, some aspects of AI. people say, well, it can't treat patients. Well, yours always going to be a dentist in the room. That's true. But some of these robots are incredible. You know, they've got them out there that are going to do cleanings. They're certainly doing like, you know, implant surgeries and other surgical procedures. So I think, you know, dentists may, you know, be supervising the robots, they're going to be there. But a lot of that stuff is going to be robotically done. And like they say, dentistry is about 10 years. behind medicine, there's lots of robots that do heart procedures and all sorts of surgeries and stuff. And I think you're going to start to see a lot more of that become mainstream in dentistry. And then it just becomes a legal challenge. You know, I had a really cool conversation. not so long ago with one of the drivers that drives me around when I'm in. think on that occasion, I happened to be in Chicago and this driver is really, really smart. And he studies advancement in the transportation business. And he said to me, one of the reasons those self-driving cars, those automated like Uber type cars haven't come to Chicago yet, is he said, human beings aren't, and this is philosophical, we're not comfortable We're comfortable with human beings accidentally killing us. I'm not saying it's good, nobody likes it, but we've had human beings make mistakes on other human beings for hundreds of years and that's why we have lawsuits and criminal laws and other things. And you know, if it turns out that, you know, a doctor or a dentist did the best they could, but you know, somebody had a complication or a problem, we're used to that in society. same thing and he was talking about transportation. He said, we're used to people killing each other in cars. It's not good. But if somebody makes a mistake and they crash into somebody and they die, you know, we're used to that. We're not used to AI killing people. And that's the thing, and we're not comfortable with that. So he was telling me in the context of driving cars, we're just not okay with self-driving cars running people over. We would be okay with a human being running a human being over, meaning it's a tragedy, but there's lawsuits, know, there's things we can do. We've had that for a long time. You know, the whole city's not gonna riot if a human being accidentally runs over another human being. But if an AI vehicle accidentally kills somebody, it's everybody's up in arms. So I'm interested to seeing how that's gonna translate to dentistry. know, we're comfortable with human beings occasionally making mistakes on diagnosis and treatment, but I wonder, are we gonna be comfortable with AI or robots making those type of mistakes? And you know, a robot injured a patient, a patient died because a robot did this. I don't know. You know, I don't know if we're going to end up like transportation where, you know, they've proven over and over again that those self-driving cars cause a lot less accidents than human beings. They're not accident-free. There will be every now and then some, but it's a lot less than human beings. But on the principle of the whole thing, we're simply not comfortable with AI, you know, running people over and crashing into stuff. I wonder what we're going to do in dentistry. Are we going to be comfortable with robots where we say robots are a lot more accurate than human beings and they're going to get it right almost all the time, but occasionally they might make a mistake. How are we going to react to that? So that's the biggest sort of legal liability sort of development as this technology gets so strong and just continues to be able to be capable of doing more and more things. Are we going to be comfortable with it or not? Yeah. That's a very interesting concept. It's going to be fascinating to watch all that unfold. All right. Well, I got the next question for you. I think most of people know that are watching this. They probably know that I own a DSO and purchased it about five years ago. I went and had 20 practices and Brian and his team handled all the transactional work for that and did an amazing job. And then we've used Dicama Law Firm for all of our legal work and transactional work over the last five years. we've added about another 65 practices through acquisition during that time. I mean, I know why I love Dicama. I would never use anybody else. I always recommend Dicama to everybody. You already talked about, you know, why should you work with an attorney that specializes in dentistry versus an attorney that doesn't? I have a more specific question. I'd love you to just take some time and tell everybody listening why they should work with Dykma versus another law firm. I know the breadth of your team, but I'd like you to expand on that a little bit more because I've never come across a team of people that are so knowledgeable, professional, and articulate as the group that- Yeah, I mean, I could go on for a while, but the simple answer is we've been in the business, the dental space. you know, longer than just than anybody else that I'm aware of that any firm I'm aware of, we've done more transactions and deals than any than any firm that I'm aware of. We do the buy side, we do the sell side and everything in between. And we're not just an ⁓ &A shop, you know, we're a full stop a one stop shop for anything dental, you know, whether it's leases and real estate, whether it's tax issues, whether it's dental board complaints. whether it's regulatory or corporate or setting up a DSO or some other dental organization from scratch, whether it's employment agreements, labor and employment issues, non-compete issues, any possible issue that can occur. in the context of a group practice DSO, even a solo office, you we've handled, I've done it for about 31 years, and we've just done more, we've seen it all, you know, any possible calamity that could occur and the new calamities that are on the horizon, we're on the forefront of we've been talking about AI. And you know, I work very closely with tons and tons of dental technology companies. So even the new issues that we haven't completely seen yet, I feel like, you know, we're going to be in the best position to address because we're there. You know, we're advising those companies right from the very beginning. So if somebody does raise a legal challenge or a question, we set it all up and we understand it better than everybody else. So that's, know, that's my short answer to this, Matt. Okay. Thank you. I'm going to, there's a part two to this. So if somebody that's watching this or listening wants to get in touch with you to discuss legal representation, what's the best way for them to reach you? Would it be email? And if so, you how do want them to contact you? Yeah, you know, there's there's two things. I mean, if you can remember this, it's bcleo at Dykema.com b c o l a o at Dykema.com. But even if you can't, you can go to Dykema dso.com. And that's got all the contact information of all my team members, you can email me from that site and look at it or honestly at this point in time after 31 years you can Google Brian Kaleo and it comes up Brian Kaleo, Dykema and all that stuff comes up probably a lot of videos. You might be there for a while. If you Google me, you might get caught up watching some of my videos or something, but you know, it really, really easy to find. All right. Thank you. So those are the main questions that we have, but we've got six more what we call magic moment questions. you know, short and fun and you have no idea what they are. So I'll start, we'll go in the same order. nobody shared it with me. This is that new trend of these things. I want to drop these things on everybody. So whatever guys, I'm ready. Go ahead. They're all good. They're all professional. Nothing crazy, but- the wings on one of these a couple of weeks ago, hot wings and stuff. You never know what's going to come, but go ahead. All right. We kept these informational. If you could change one thing about dentistry tomorrow or the dental industry, what would it be and why? If you had total control of that, you could change one thing. Yeah, it would be that the people that a requirement for operating in the dental industry is you have to have a fundamental understanding of the business of dentistry. think we've gotten into trouble with right across the board with people operating in the dental industry that don't have a full and complete understanding of the business of dentistry. And I'd like to require, I wish, I mean, we can't take bar exams or something, but I'd love to hand out some type of like dental competency exam that look, if you want to operate in this space, you got to pass this exam. And if you can't pass this exam, you know, you're not allowed it. I'm not just talking about people being dentists. I'm talking about consultants. I'm talking about anybody that's going to provide any type of service legal accounting, consulting, you know, got to have this proficiency of understanding the business of dentistry. Cause I think we've gotten into a lot of trouble with people that don't. Agreed. Ryan, what's one decision that's had an exponential impact on your career? Yeah, you know, that's the easiest question of all. I mean, it's it's a big important question, but for me, I don't got to think about that at all. You know, it was me, you know, it was basically when I was in the ocean, I think it was 2011. And I was a little disappointed that I wanted to be on stage at some of these events. And people were not letting me get on their stage, even though I thought I had a nice message. You I didn't have a lot of sponsor dollars. There were a lot of reasons they, you know, they weren't letting me get on their stage and in the ocean at the Ritz Carlton in Cancun, I was at a DSO conference. I decided to start the Dykama Conference. said, you know what, if they won't let me on stage, I'm going to put my own stage and put my own conference. And I made that literally, I was up to sort of chest deep water at the Ritz Carlton in Cancun. And when I got out of the water, I started putting the steps in motion to put the Dykama, the very first Dykama Conference. I would have guessed that would have been your answer. I didn't know you were in the ocean, but I absolutely would have guessed that your best, most exponential decision was deciding to do your own conference. I was kind of just thinking like, you know, it was sort of like I was maybe having those moments we all do feeling a little sorry for myself and it's calm, you know, thank God Cancun doesn't have like big waves because I was deep in thought they would have knocked me out or something but just a little wave, you know, I was just waiting like a little bit of waves are coming in and maybe it was getting my brain waves in sync but I was just kind of like, what am I going to do? You know, how am I going to get the message out? What am I? And it just came to me. I mean, it just, I was in the ocean, probably very mild. The water was warm. I probably was in there like two hours and in that two hour period, it just kind of came to me. And that was obviously an incredibly smart decision. No doubt. That's all. I love it. I know that one. So in 2026, if someone's going to build a successful DSO group practice, what advice would you give them today? They're starting off. Well, you know what, ⁓ see question number one, you need to ask yourself, do I fundamentally understand the business of dentistry before I undertake this project? Because the days of aggregating EBITDA and just making money on the arbitrage without fundamentally understanding the business of dentistry are over with. first question, do I fundamentally understand the business of dentistry? And by the way, by the way, being a dentist, does not automatically mean that answer is yes. In fact, it might possibly be no. Being a dentist means I understand how to be a good clinician and you know how to treat patients, but that doesn't mean you understand the business of dentistry. So if you're trying to create or be a founder of your organization in 2026, You got to have a fundamental understanding of the business of dentistry. If you don't, you're really going to have an uphill battle. And then second, you're going to need to right from the get go, implement technology, going to need to, you know, specialty, you're going to need to integrate new lines of business. All of that is going to have to be part of the 2026. you know, dental organization, you know, in a lot of ways, Rick, it's not helpful to say, let me go back over the last 10, you know, 10, 20 years and see how they did it. Those rules are rapidly, you know, falling by the wayside. So, know, the way you asked your question, if you're forming a 2026 dental organization, the new rules apply and you really got to understand business and you got to understand technology and you got to understand innovation and culture and you got to have, you know, new lines of business and you got to integrate specialty and you got to do a whole bunch of other things, but that's just it for starters. Yeah, I agree completely. All right. This one's a little bit interesting, but ⁓ you've been in the dental industry for 31 years. So my question is, what's one of the most important lessons that you've learned personally by being in this industry for so long? Yeah. Relationships matter. Relationships matter. know, the thing that I like about dentistry and why I've been here 31 years and not left and not done something else. And when people say, Hey, you've had even to this point, a great career, you know, are you going to like, you know, when are you going to retire or something? I'm like, I'm not like I'm having fun. The reason is because of the relationships, you know, one, it taught me the power and the value of relationships was one thing, you know, probably a very important one. And the other thing that I think I found in dentistry and I have not yet found that in other verticals. I don't want to make fun of other verticals because I do do some work in medicine and other things, but in dentistry, people help people. They really do, you know, without expectation of anything in return. And I try my best. to that. I get dozens of phone calls a month and maybe can't do them all, but I try to do as many as I can when it's somebody that, I'm just entering the more, and I know Matt, do this. I know Matt, Eric and Neil do this too, because I've talked to you about it. Somebody calls up and they're like, hey, I'm thinking of. you know, joining a DSO, you know, I'm a brand new dentist, I think I've got this new idea, I have this concept, I may have a I may want to start a, you know, a dentistry consulting business, I may want to do I get all these phone calls. And I always try to take you know, at least you know, 1520 minutes, a half hour, you know, probably can't spend hours and point them in the right direction. Because people did that for me, when I was just a really good lawyer, but maybe didn't have a clue about how all the relationships worked. people were like, you got to meet this person, you got to go to this event. In fact, I'll introduce you not only do you have to go to this event, when you go to this event, I'll introduce you to these people. And they didn't have to, they didn't have to they didn't you know, I have tried my best now, as successful as we've gotten to pay back favors and help people. But at the time, these people did this to me, they they got nothing out of it. They didn't have to. They did it because that's the culture of the dental industry. So to me, I've learned two things here that have been critical. Relationships really matter and I've learned the power and value of relationships. And two, I've learned if you help people without expectation of anything in return, it will come back to you in ways you could never imagine in your life. I agree completely. What's been your greatest win within dentistry and why? Wow, I'll tell you what I'll give you that what the answer is. And it has nothing to do with my act. Actually, it's the more I think about it. It's a really simple answer the way you worded that question being granted, you know, you know, by God or the higher power or whatever being granted the gift to inspire people. That's what it is. I could give you a bunch of stories of money and successful transactions and wins I've gotten but they don't compare. to the power to inspire people. And when I, you know, you guys have been to .uc, we go on stage, we got 2,700 people, got pyrotechnics behind me, but it's beyond the superficial like explosions and pyro and smoke. People often reach out to me many times a month and it never gets old saying I was inspired by your presentation. know, somebody told me they named a DSO after me, right? I gave a presentation one time of DSO 1.0, 2.0, 3.0, and then they named an organization Gen 4 after like my presentation. I had somebody tell me recently that a presentation I did about, you know, associates and the pillars of the organization inspired them to create a DSO that That was, you know, a see it friendly was good culture for associates. And, know, there's a million, you know, examples I could give of people saying they were either inspired or motivated, you know, by something I did. And some people will work their whole career 30, 40 years and they'll do a good job. You know, they'll make money, but nobody was inspired by what they did. And the gift to be able to inspire people has been the greatest gift. I, know, I didn't get like a pain. That's not a monetary thing, but it's just hands down the biggest gift that I've been granted through dentistry. We love it. So I gotta, I gotta reach out to them about that. They never told me that. Brian, I get I get the last question, the most fun question, but the most difficult. Make it count. It's the most difficult one, okay? If dentistry had a theme song, what would it be? It's a long way to the top if you want to rock and roll. Okay. Because a lot of people have tried to take shortcuts and a few folks even got away with it. during the heyday of the market, the reality is, and by the way, that is my walkout song for events that aren't my event. change it around, we change it up. But when people often ask me when it's not my event, hey, Brian, you're going to do the keynote or you're going to speak on stage. What's your song? I always tell them consistently. It's a long way to top if you want to rock and roll by ACDC because it really speaks to me and I think it speaks to the dental end. in general, if you really want to be on top and you really want to build a powerhouse organization, it's a long way. You got to put in a lot of work and a lot of effort. You don't just get to the top there. No one just helicopters you there. You got to climb your way to the top. And that's how I'd like anybody watching this to approach it. You know, this is the greatest I think, you know, the greatest industry that I've ever seen. I just love it. I never would have thought, you know, when I was in high school and college and law school, I was going to be like the king of, you know, DSOs and was going to go to like, you know, be in the dental industry for 31 years and counting. it's to me, it's like the greatest industry that there is, but you got to treat it with the respect that it deserves. There's not a free lunch. You don't just show up on day one and all of a sudden you're on the top of it. And everybody here, I mean, Matt's tons and tons about DSOs and Matt's gotten some real challenges out of his DSO and he's used that to make a better, more successful organization and also go into other aspects of the dental industry. And I know Neil, when you formed your marketing company, wasn't like people just printed money for you on day one, you had to work hard and Eric, know, the first time you started consulting with people, weren't like the Oracle of Delphi. They weren't bowing down to you. You know, the first year you started telling people, they were like, who is this guy? And does he really know what he's talking about? Should we go there? Everybody. And I told you about my story. I'm up to my chest in water and nobody will put me on stage and nobody wants to listen to me. And I had to, you know, create this event and I got 41 people. I had to beg to come the first year. You know, it does not come easy. And it's a long way to the top if you want to rock and roll. Yeah, no doubt. want to, so this, this, this group and show is called dental mentors. I just want to say that, you know, Brian, you've been an incredible mentor for me. came into this industry knowing nothing about the dental business and Brian, one thing about Brian, he's very blunt and we share that, that personality trait, but Brian's very blunt. He tells it like it is. He always does it in a nice way, but you know, he does not sugarcoat anything. Brian's been an incredible mentor for me and Brian has saved me and the Oak Dental Partners a lot of heartache and a lot of mistakes that we were able to avoid. And Brian's given me incredible advice. I just want to thank you for being my mentor, one of my mentors, know, Pat Bauer has been an incredible mentor to me too. And I'm very, very grateful. So we're just going to kind of finish up here. I guess it's the final question, but do you have any closing comments or any additional advice for our audience that you would like to share? Yeah. mean, you know, take the time to understand the business of dentistry and understand what you're doing. I know some people here, you know, may, ⁓ maybe you want to sell your organization, pick the right partner, take the time. It should be the most difficult decision of your life because you built this organization from the ground up. It shouldn't be like, They just sent me this offer. We're all done here. It should be very, very difficult. Take the time. You know, if you're working with some people here like Neil, you know, on a marketing plan, take the time. Neil has a ton of metrics and really sophisticated things, you know, he's doing from a technology standpoint, take the time to be analytical and learn how marketing works, because that's how you put patients in the seats if you're working with Eric. over there on consulting and you know, you if you're 1 million in EBITDA, Eric can get you to 2 million in EBITDA, but you're not going to get it from sitting on a beach hanging out. You got to pay attention and take the time and understand what you're being told. And you know, some of the things Eric might tell you might not be super simple, like they're going to get you there, but you're going to have to spend time work and maybe change things change, you know, it's easy to keep doing the same thing. But the definition of insanity is doing the same thing and expecting a different result. You So, you know, everything that all the success you can have in dentistry, you know, it's like, Look, only 50 % of the people go to the dentist right now. There's more runway here of opportunity than anything I've ever seen in my life, but you got to take the time to do it. There's too many people I see come in, they're looking for a quick hit or a drive by or a quick money grab or something. And like we've been saying in Alaska, it's a long way to the top if you want to rock and roll, but there are amazing opportunities here. I absolutely love the dental profession. Awesome. Well, we're to keep this rolling, Brian, but I want to say to our audience, thank you very much, Brian. We really, really appreciate you being on Dental Mentors. We're grateful. I'm grateful to know you. And to everyone listening, thank you very much for being part of Dental Mentors. So we're just going to keep rolling, just maybe get a couple of good clips here. But that was awesome, Brian. I really, really appreciate that. Thank you so much. Yeah, sorry about coughing. That's just where I'm getting over this little head cold. Yeah, it was great. I just had a question. I don't know if we'll put this in there, but you know, a lot of people don't know this, but Brian started wrestling when he was four years old. He was a two-time state champion. And then he's a two-time, was a two or three-time All-American. Two-time All-American, NCAA Division I took third in Division I championships his senior year and also qualified for the Olympic trials. So he was an amazing athlete. Wrestling's a really tough sport. did it myself, but Brian was, you know, a super elite champion. Did wrestling, I'm just curious, do you feel like wrestling helped you out in your professional career? It's everything. Okay. I wouldn't be anything without it. It taught me the value of discipline, dedication, hard work, overcoming adversity. I mean, to me, I don't think any of the success I experienced I would have achieved if not for the trials and tribulations of wrestling. Yeah. So here's another, another. fun when I'm just curious, because I don't know. ⁓ know, Brian, I both wrestled again. Brian was much more accomplished than I was, but, you know, he's an amazing athlete. So when you're out there, you know, wrestling in division one in front of a full pack stadium and you win a match and you got all these people cheering for you, it's a huge adrenaline rush. Huge. Do you get anything similar to that? Like when you come out at Dicama, because your opening segment at Dicama is just mind blowing. It's like the greatest thing I see all year. How does that compare in terms of like the feeling, the, you know, adrenaline rush, euphoria. Does it even compare to your wrestling or are they not in the same ballpark? Yeah, I wish you didn't ask that because I love Dykemon. I love walking out on stage and I love everything that I do. But the reason I wish you didn't ask that is because nothing, absolutely nothing on earth has ever come close to the feeling of winning a wrestling match in a packed arena. just has and it's like the difference between, you know, I'm making a joke. Nobody should take drugs, but the difference between like aspirin and one of those crazy drugs that you know, it's not it's not it's just it's not I mean, I don't ever want to put down Dykem or put down any of the speaking I love doing it, but no it doesn't come close. Yeah, we're not gonna put that on the on the video. We'll edit that out. I mean just don't cuz it's just I don't want to put it down but If we're just having a little meeting here, no, and if you're not going to put it there, it's like fentanyl versus aspirin. It's like, it's just not, it's not gonna. Yeah. Yeah. I still get goosebumps when we walk into the, we're going to, Matt's going to go with me guys to the NCAA wrestling tournament in a couple of weeks. And when I smell the mat, it's like one of those trained reactions. Like you're just, you know, to my. deathbed when I smell the mats, I get like, and then I'm like, no, no, no, you're not competing today. You actually can sit in this thing. And then like my blood pressure starts to go down. the first reaction literally is like a fight or flight. Like, Hey, we're mixing it up today. We're going to go. I literally, when I smell it, my body starts getting in and I just have to say, no, no, no, no, no, we're, watching. We're not going to be called upon to go out there today. And it takes five, 10 minutes and everything just calmed down and I can kind of sit there. Yeah. The smell of the mats, you know, It is. Like, you know, I was a state champ and, know, Clay was at a whole different level. But when I go to the NCAAs and smell that particular smell of the mats. Resolite. Man, just like goosebumps. It's really incredible. Brian, this, I'm going to ask you another question that might, that might be with an indented mentors clips, but you wrestled for a very long time, incredible champion. What, what was the biggest lesson you learned from wrestling that's helped you in your professional career? You got to get up. Nobody cares. You got to get up. Now your knee hurts. You got to get up. You feel sick and you threw up. You got to get up. You know, you got to go. You have to perform. When the lights are on, you have to perform. And that's what it kind of taught me because anybody that wrestled at a high level, okay, you are going to be 100 % for about You know, I used to wrestle about 40 matches a year during the season. You're probably 100 % for between two to five matches of the year. The first two to five matches after that, you're banged up. mean, sometimes it happens on the first match of the year, but usually you can get a couple under your belt before you get banged up. somewhere between match two and five, you're going to be banged up. There's going to be some issue and you're to have to deal with it for the rest of the year. Everybody. mean, nobody that competes is without issues and you just have to compensate, you if your right leg is bothering you a little bit, you go to the left side, you know, if something hurts, you know, you learn that that's what I mean, that was the lesson in wrestling, you had to be proficient attacking from both sides. And it wasn't just to put your opponent, you know, off guard or whatever it was, because it's much harder to defend against both sides and one. But it was also if like I'm hurt, and I can't attack from the right side, I better need to be attacked from the left side. I mean, there's a lot of practical reasons why you got to be able to attack from all sides. And you know the other skill that I really think sometime is overlooked when people think of wrestling They think it's a bunch of brutes out there kicking each other's butt and it is to an extent But it's very cerebral in that there's no timeout There is you know your coach can yell at you But they can't really meaningful give coaching the way they do like in other sports where there's a timeout and they talk to you and you're looking at like a screen and they're drawing X's and those once that match starts It's like, you know, it's chaos and what you have to do in high school with six minutes. seven minutes, I'm in college, six minutes international, you have to diagnose something really quickly. You have to do two things. You have to say simultaneously, how do I stop this guy from kicking my butt? And how do I get my offense working? Because if I just stop him, fine, but I don't score any points. I have to figure out one, how to counter what he's doing while simultaneously figure out how I'm going to score on him. And it's trial and error and cat and mouse. And you have to diagnose situations very quickly out there. I went to the left three times and he's leaning this way. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to fake left and I'm going to go right on the fourth try. And you have to, your brain starts calculating these things. I mean, obviously you can watch a high school match and somebody may go out and just pin the kid in 20 seconds. That kid should be watching cartoons. It's not worthwhile, but at the highest, most elite level, it's like, I'm going to fake left three times. And on the fourth time I'm going to go right. Or, you you start building up a database. And by the way, You only have seven minutes to do this or six minutes to do this. So it's not like you got hours to do this. You got to build up a database very, very quickly on cause and effect and reaction and when you do stuff and you have to say, went this way and this happened, I went this way and this happened. When this happens, that opens up this. So on the next one, I'm going to go this way, but really going to go that way because it opens that up. And you have to think seven, eight, nine, 10, 11 moves in advance to get anywhere. And if you have those skills, For example, I find it super easy in court when the judge starts hassling me to think of alternative arguments and be able to think of things. I think when I'm put on the spot on stage or I'm put on the spot in a client meeting, I find it very easily comfortable making spot battlefield decisions because of everything I went through in wrestling. What do you think? Do you think really separates successful dental practice group owners or DSO owners from the ones that are not ultimately successful financially? know, we talked a lot about this on the show, understanding the business of dentistry. Really, period, end of sentence. You know, there's a lot of dentists that are really successful despite themselves, meaning they could be so much more successful if they understood the business of dentistry, but they don't. but they're fortunate that they have lots and lots of patients that come and they have lots and lots of business so they can waste a little money and still turn a nice, handsome profit. But if they stopped wasting money and started focusing on refining the business of dentistry, that's where you start going from 1 million in EBITDA to 2 million or 3 million in EBITDA. Yeah, I agree. I hosted an event for dental pitch brokers. We had 20 dentists in this room with me. And I just was curious and I said, Who here has heard the term Ibadah? And like maybe three or four people raised their hand. These are all dentists that own multiple practices or one practice. And then I said, who out of the five that raised your hand, how many of you really know what it means? None of all of them put their hands down. You know, it kind of goes back to it. know, all the people there ran, they had successful practices and they were making good money. But it goes back to what you said, you know, they didn't, they don't have any, it's not necessarily, I guess it is, it is, they need to take responsibility at some point in their career, but like, they don't teach you this stuff business-wise that you need to know in dental school to run your dental practices as a business. And so once you get out of dental school, it's incumbent upon dentists to, you know, go seek out the education and knowledge that they need. Because if you don't understand the business of dentistry, and the financials behind it and all the levers, you know, what EBIT is. It's an even bigger uphill battle to create a really profitable dental practice group. Yeah, mean, this is what I'll say. I absolutely have nothing but respect and there's no shame whatsoever in the first couple years out of dental school not knowing anything at all. Of course not. You didn't go to school for that. I absolutely don't hold you responsible for that. What I will over time, and maybe for a couple years you got to figure out how to be a dentist and you don't have time, but after a couple years you know, two to three years or something, I do hold the dentist, you know, accountable and say now is the time that you really got to learn the business of dentistry. You know, it's certainly you have no blame or responsibility the day you graduated dental school, because they didn't teach you now, you know, they're asking me to help out with a couple dental schools, and I think I will. But for now, there's not really any business of dentistry courses in dental school. So when you get out of school, absolutely understandable, you don't know anything totally forgivable, no problem. But after a couple years, it's incumbent on you to really understand the business of dentistry. And if you don't do that, it's going to hold you back and it's going to cause problems. Yeah. I have another question then I don't know if Neil and Eric do, but if you were a fairly young dentist, let's say you were 35 and you've had your practice already for five years, you've owned it. Maybe you've got like half a million of EBITDA or maybe a little more than that. If you were that dentist, would you keep that one practice for your entire career and then sell it when you're ready to retire? Or would you, you personally say, I'm going to build a practice, get it to a certain level of EBITDA, sell it, start another practice or group, sell it. Would you, would you do it multiple times or would you just build one and keep it till the end of your career? I'm just asking you, you you personally, what path would you take? It depends. on what I thought of the business, right? If the business was sustainable, you know, and could keep operating, I would probably look for the right partner to take some money off the table and then build it and do a second equity event and perpetually stay with that organization. If I did a good enough job and it was built to last and I was having fun. If I wasn't having fun, you know, but it was successful, and a lot of people are like that, they're very successful, but they're not having fun, I would sell the thing. I would sell the thing and then... try to ask myself, you know, why did I not have fun? What would, I need to do here to have fun? And I'd try to build the next organization, you know, the way that I wanted to do it. So it really just depends on, the situation. Both could work. I know some people that are perpetually, even in this age of DSOs, perpetually with the same organization. They built it up, they sold to that DSO, got 60 % cash at closing, got 40%, maybe cashed out the 40 % at a second equity event, but rolled some for the next one and are on roll number three or four and staying with the same organization. And they love it. I also know people. that sold their first organization and they're on organization two or three, maybe did another one. They started with one office, maybe every time they build it to five or six offices or something like that, then they turn around and sell it and they keep doing it and they love building things like that. I think both can work. Yeah. Sorry, Neil and Eric, I want to ask one more question then I'll abdicate. And I don't know if we'll use this in the dental mentors or not, Brian, but I still want to ask you, the dental industry has... From what I've read, the highest rate of like alcoholism, drug abuse, depression, and suicide. Why do you think that is? Well, I don't, know, the ADA has really good statistics on this. And I attended a presentation by the ADA at the Women in DSL Wellness event that talked about some of this stuff. And I just think people get caught in traps and maybe, I mean, I don't know this for sure. Maybe if they understood the business of dentistry better, this wouldn't be the case, but they put themselves on like this, like, you know, how the gerbils or hamsters would just run on that treadmill and they could never get off. never stops. You know, they're successful in as much as patients are coming to the office, but they don't understand how to delegate. There's no backup plan. The only plan is them treating patients, you know, 10, 12 hours a day, five days a week. There's no escape. can hardly take, maybe they'll take one vacation a year for a week or something, but there's no way really off. you know, whenever you're in a situation where there's no end in sight, where you're in a miserable thing and you just don't see any exit ramp for decades, you know, that leads to substance abuse that can in some cases lead to suicide. and things like that. So to me, I think the more people understand the business of dentistry, the more people understand how to make this work, what their options are, the more they start not necessarily working in the business, but working on the business. That quotes from my good friend, Dr. Salman Ahmed from Deca Dental. He said, if you want to build it, you've got to stop working in the business and work on the business. And if we can get people to do more of that stuff, I think we have a decent chance of lowering the unhappiness that leads to some of these things. Yeah. Very wise answer. Neil, Eric, you have any, anything else? You know, I want to ask a question about the business of dentistry and you're speaking about that. It's just a topic that I'm kind of fascinated with because, you know, one of the things that we're working on right now, we're building out this, we're calling it the dental mentors mastery series, and we're effectively trying to make a dental MBA of sorts as Matt put it. And I've... When I was getting into dentistry, when I was first getting into it, I mean, I was shocked and I'm still shocked to this day. My alma mater is U of M. U of M, think to this, like right now, I think they have either the number one ranked or top ranked school in the country. used to be a guest lecturer there. why don't, you know, I always think about dentistry, even, you know, as an outsider, I'm like dentistry to me is the one. arena and healthcare where it's the expectation like the top of the mountain is owning a practice. It's not like you're going to go off work for some big hospital system or something like that. Even if you work at a DSO, you're still sort of, you you're still manning the ship ⁓ of a single practice, so to speak. Why do you think that there's such a lack of business training to this day in dentistry? Well, I think you can blame the dental schools. A lot of people have for not updating their curriculum. I mean, a lot of people have. They've said the dental schools have taught the same thing for a hundred years and some of the instructors have taught there for almost a hundred years. And it's just, they're unwilling to really adopt some of the newer things in the marketplace. The dental boards have been very slow to adopt, you know, sort of new things in their standard of care and everything. And I think honestly, the best thing that happened for dentistry, I think it was terrible. you know, I go back and forth because I probably just wish it didn't happen, but it was the best thing for dentistry was COVID. When they shut the practices down, it was a wake up call. mean, nobody wanted to see those practices shut down. It was the only time in history that the government said you can't go to the dentist, but it was a wake up call that we all need to. innovate. We need to think about doing things differently because black swan events can occur in our lifetime. And I think it ushered the age of innovation in dentistry. There's been more advancements in the last five years than the previous hundred years. in the last, know, what do they say, Neil, necessity is the mother of invention. You know, people only start like, I invented the greatest water pump. When the city's flooded, when everybody's about to drown and the waters come in, they're like, Ooh, we better get this water pump working. But if the city is kind of dry and occasionally there's a little water here and there, nobody needs to invent the greatest water pump ever. It's like vaccines can take three or four years to develop. Nobody needs a vaccine in three months, except when everybody's dying all over the world. And they're like, ⁓ well, now we better really figure this out quickly. So necessity is the mother of invention and when they shut the practices down and all of those challenges happen, think dental innovation hit next level. Here's my question. Because I think in 2019, everyone who was in this industry was killing it. So everyone who had to run a business really well, everyone felt proud. And then 2023, 2024, it's gotten tough. And I think In this difficult environment, people need to associate and spend time with people who are doing it well and learning about technology and resources. speaking of the Dicama conference, because going there, meet groups sometimes that are smaller, that are aspirational and they want to get bigger, but there's some of the best conversations happening at your conference. Why should somebody come to the Dicama conference and who's the ideal audience? Well, you know, the ideal attendee is pretty much at this point in 2026, anybody. Okay, if we go I mean, and everybody should come and I'll tell you why if we went back to like, you know, 13, this is our 13th year, if we went back to 13 years ago, I would tell you look, you know, if you work for some of the big DSOs, you should come here and that's kind of it now in two 2026 and really the last deal three, four or five years, it's a business conference. If you're a solo practitioner, okay, you someday you're going to sell to a DSO period, maybe not for a while, maybe you won't, but but someday, you're going to sell to a DSO or somebody and you need to understand the market around you. Even if if your day to day doesn't apply, you need to understand what's outside of your little orbit. Okay. Obviously, if you're a group practice, you need to go there because you need to understand the latest structures, business practices for how to scale up. If you're a DSO of any size, you 20 offices, 50, 100, 500, 1000, you need to go for a million different reasons to exchange ideas with everybody else in the industry. And there's something for everybody there. There's almost no events because I hear this all the time where you might have 20 offices and you go to event you're like, ⁓ this is all solo practitioners or your 20 offices and you go to event. ⁓ these are just you know, 500 offices and 1000 office DSOs, you know, I can't talk to them. If you've got one practice, there will be hundreds of people at Dycomite. If you've got 20 practices, there will be maybe not hundreds, but a couple dozen you can talk to. If you've got 50 offices, there'll be somebody right at your level, few people to talk to. If you've got a couple hundred practices, there'll be a dozen or more people you can compare notes with. You got 1000 offices, there'll be, you know, everybody that's got 1000 offices in the marketplace is there. And sometimes I see a table and there's five organizations and they're all sitting there and it's all the 1000 club and they're talking to each other. You know, so there's something for everybody. at Dicama and you're never going to get better if you don't understand everything that's in the marketplace and you don't compare notes, you know, with your peer group, with people that are your size or roughly your size and see what they're doing. And of course you can also learn from people that are bigger and smaller than you too. And it's all there under one roof. You know, we can make more introductions in a half hour at Dicama than it would take a whole year to do it otherwise, because everybody's there and everybody's in the same room. So it's what I say is best content, best networking, most fun. And that's what the conference is. Completely agree. All right, man. Well, I appreciate your generous time, Brian. That was totally awesome. Yeah, thanks, guys. I mean, really, this looks like this is going to be a pretty cool thing. This denture, dental mentor thing. Yeah, it's gonna be awesome. 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. You're going to learn all the best practices that you're going to need to optimize the profitability of your practices, to properly scale your practices, and to achieve a high value exit. You're also going to learn the closely guarded secrets that the rich and wealthy use for asset protection and the access to private investments and investment strategies that will allow you and your family to create generational wealth. Inside the group, you'll also be able to speak directly with today's guest and all of the guests on the Dental Mentors podcast. You'll be able to ask them questions specific to your practice or group and get the specific answers that you need for that next big breakthrough. Speaking of exclusive. One of the great things we're going to do at Dental Mentors is our events. In these events, what we've done is bring together the industry's top experts, people that you want to be in a room with. These are very curated, exclusive rooms just for the best of the best and the people inside of the Dental Mentors community. And I promise you, you're not going to want to miss these events. If you'd like to apply to the group, click the link below and we'll see you inside. And remember, it's completely free to join.