Creating Success as a Healthcare Entrepreneur with Dentist Mark Costes | CashPT Lunch Hour #64

Foreign. Welcome back to the podcast. This is Dr. Aaron LeBauer with Dr. Mark Costas, my special guest. Today, I'm bringing you someone from the dental profession who is killing it. He's doing a great job, amazing job with multiple businesses, coaching, etc. And I know Mark through my coach, Bedros. So shout out to Bedros. Bedros can't stop talking about you, Mark. So thank you for spending the time to come with us and drop some knowledge today on the show.

Oh, thank you so much. I mean, yeah, Bedros is one of my favorite people and he's mentioned you several times. So it is my absolute honor to be on your podcast today.

So, Mark, I not only want to have you on the show for the reasons of, you know, like Bedros saying, hey, you need to get this guy on, but, you know, as physical therapists, there's a lot of things that I think we could do better that I see people in the dental profession doing. So I want to spend some time talking about that aspect of the business because we're missing something. Just like I feel like we missed something that chiropractors get that dentists have because of how you're. You're kind of. You guys have like these. You're almost like your own island as a profession versus where we came as PTs, as physician extenders, you know, and 50 years ago, we got out of that. But it's still the way the practice model works. So to give everyone a little background about who you are and what you're doing, can you just, you know, kind of briefly cover, you know, like, how did you get into dentistry? How'd you get. And how'd you get into private practice? You know, what was the steps that led or the pivotal moments that led you down that path?

Yeah, yeah. Thank you for, thank you for the question. I never had dentistry on my radar. In fact, I was considering physical therapy. I was considering being a physician. And I moved from Tucson, Arizona to Southern California when I was 15 and a half years old. My very first varsity baseball game. Big kid gets up to the plate. I was the starting left fielder at the time. Jacks went in my direction. My previous field had a warning track and a padded fence. This particular new field that I wasn't used to playing on had neither of those two things. So I had a full speed collision with my face into the left field fence. I broke my jaw, lost most of my upper front teeth, and that kind of led to 16 months of rehab in every different dental specialty and plastic surgeon and, and, you know, physician that you could think of. And that kind of got my interest piqued into dentistry because I was amazed at what they were able to do with my face. You know, between plastic surgeons and all of the dental specialties, they put my face back together. Now I have a nicer smile that I did prior to the accident. So that kind of sent me on this journey, this path that I walked. After that, it was no longer whether it was going to be physical therapy or medical school or dental school. It was definitely going to be dental school. So I went down that path. Unfortunately, I had some learning disabilities add, so I had a really difficult time comprehending the written word. So in fact, my teachers in grade school and all the way up through high school had to read my exams to me because I didn't comprehend the written word very well. But once we figured out that once they read it, read those exams to me, then that I did quite well. I was, it wasn't that I wasn't smart, I just had difficulty processing those words on a page. Long story short, I ended up being a collegiate athlete. I played football for a couple years and then decided to hang up the cleats and really focused on trying to get into dental school. But my learning disabilities and my attention problems persisted. And my transcripts after I graduated from undergrad were average at best. So it took me three years and 21 attempts to finally get into dental school. I got a single acceptance after three years and 21 tries. So 20 rejections. But finally got in, had some grit and persistence. In the meantime, I decided in that three years after undergrad I decided that I was going to start my own business. And I did get accepted to the executive MBA program, the University of San Diego. So started my MBA and I drove a catering truck. That was the business that I purchased. So with my catering truck experience, I learned how to read a P and L and a balance sheet, how to recruit good employees, how to manage them, how to market my business. Most of all, I learned that the owner of the business is the last person to get paid. So those were the valuable lessons that I learned and the different journey that I took from most of my classmates that got me interested in entrepreneurship and business. And since then I've owned 15 dental practices. I started my own performance coaching group for dentists. I started the biggest dental assisting school licensing program in the world. And I'm still very occasional wet finger dentist, but mostly an entrepreneur.

Wow, that's a lot in like three minutes. That's insane. I didn't realize like you Know, a lot of people were like, yeah, I got a little, you know, I tweaked my knee and worked with a physical therapist or, you know, this. So, holy cow. So, all right, let's go back when. So you, you, you had an accident. And that, that's the thing. That's the thing that got the dentist dentistry on the radar. And that's not an easy thing. That didn't sound very easy to get through.

No, it wasn't easy to get through that. The funny thing is I have the privilege of being able to speak on lots of stages now, mostly to dental audiences, but I've spoken at Bedros events several times to large crowds. But I. That sequence of pictures of me actually hitting the fence showed up on the front page of the LA Times the next day. So I have these pictures that on PowerPoint that I could click through and say, this is me right before I hit the fence. This is me hitting the fence. This is. This is my shortstop and the other coach looking for my teeth in the grass. This is them taking me to the ambulance right off the field. So it's lots to. It's lots to. A lot of visual kind of aids in telling my story. But, yeah, it was traumatic, but it was one of those things I truly believe, you know, the Obstacles Away by Ryan Holiday. I'm sure you've read it. I truly believe that our struggles and our challenges and our failures actually define who we are as a person. So if I never experienced that difficult time, I never would be where I am today.

Right, Right. I can't imagine. That's. That's an. That's an amazing story.

Thanks.

It's pretty amazing, but it does. It takes some deter. It takes determination. Like, what kept you from quitting? You know what, Like, I mean, you didn't quit when you were trying to get into dental school, but that's not the first time that, that you encountered that kind of struggle. I mean, that seems easy compared to 18 months of rehab and stuff. So, like, what kept you from just giving up and saying, like, I can't do this anymore?

Yeah, you know, I have a very similar story to Bedros in that I am the son of immigrants. I'm a first generation American, and I got to watch these remarkable people. I mean, I won the lottery when it comes to family that I was born into, and I got to watch them start in the United States with a hundred bucks in a suitcase. The typical American dream story. And my dad was an electrical and mechanical engineer and had his master's in Business. And he was just a gritty dude. A gritty dude that taught me that, you know, effort is more important than talent and that if you set your mind to anything, then you can, you can get to as far as people or even further than people with God given talent. So he ingrained that work ethic and that example in my upbringing and that was it. When I decided I wanted to do something, I dug my heels in and there was, there was going to be no. I wasn't going to take no for an answer.

Yeah. Are you one of those kinds of people that like, you either do something all the way or you don't do it at all?

Yeah. I mean, the majority of the people that I coach want to be multiple practice owners. Some get to two or three, but you know, we, we got to 15. It wasn't pretty and they weren't all smashing successes. But I am that person where I am a starter and I am not awesome at maintaining anything. So I'm good at starting things. I'm good at a focused amount of energy in the beginning. And then I now am lucky enough to be surrounded by a great executive team. So once I start something, pour some energy into it, I have a team that can take over and maintain the thing.

Wow, that's awesome. Yeah, because like, I struggle with some of the same stuff in school too. I was just like, how am I gonna like sit here? Like, well, I had a conversation with my brother one time and he was just like, I gotta go, Aaron, I gotta go read for a couple hours. I was like, we need to read for a couple hours. It doesn't happen. Yeah. If I do something with my hands once, then it's, it's all in there. But like reading no

wasn't my strong point, that's for sure.

So what, what are the things that you have come to realize now or learn about yourself over the years that like where, where do your big strengths. You start, you get things started. But like, what are the other strengths that you have that, that you feel like are the cornerstone to being successful?

Yeah, I mean, I just have staying power. I have stamina and tenacity that most, most people don't have. It's because my number one strength is that I recognize what my shortcomings are, what my weaknesses are. When I was in business and I finally had two practices and then three, then four, then five, then six, six practices in the first seven years, I didn't have the wisdom to understand that I had to surround myself with people that filled the gaps for My weaknesses. So I was trying to be everything in the practices. I was the manager, I was the marketer. I was the actual clinic in a lot of the practices. I didn't delegate well. I didn't automate well. I didn't understand the power of systemization. And now after, you know, after that difficult start, I ended up having to sell four of those practices because I had nearly a nervous breakdown and a physical breakdown and an emotional breakdown because my relationship. My relationships were falling apart. And so it was a very difficult time. In that period of time, I learned that I needed to structure things much, much differently. And it was in that period of time that I recognized you got to surround yourself with people that are better at the things that you're not good at. And you need to take some of this off your plate. You need to remove yourself as the bottleneck in your business. That's what I think are my strengths now is my ability to surround myself with people that are smarter than me in areas that I'm not great at.

Were you afraid at that time, before you were able to hire the right people, that if you hired someone, they weren't going to do it good enough or as well as you could do?

Absolutely. I think that's that perfectionist mindset. Right. And perfectionism often disguises itself. It is. It is a what's. It is an excuse. Perfectionism often is an excuse or a mask for procrastination. So if I don't want to finish the task or I don't have the attention span to finish the task, I often would say, hey, you know, I can't get to this, and nobody else can do it as well as me. So I'm just going to leave it as an open loop. We call those open loops in my business now. We try to close every loop as quickly as possible. And, you know, that is. I think the secret to closing loops is to be able to realize that 80% of how you could do it is better than you trying to do it at 100% and not getting to everything.

Right, right. No, I totally, totally get that. And I talk to you all about that. All the time is done isn't finished or done isn't perfect. You know, it's like, it didn't have to be perfect to be done. It just needs to be viable because otherwise you hold yourself back.

Sure.

What's a time when you, like, procrastinated into, you know, perfection? Or you're like, okay, I'm never getting this done. Like, what? And then it actually, like, Hurt your bottom line or. Or it impacted you in a way that, you know, you realized, all right, I shouldn't do that anymore. What was. Was there a story with that?

Yeah. I mean, back to. Back to my six practices in seven years and my breakdown story, that was a. That was a level of procrastination. I didn't want to take the time to procrastinate. I mean, I was procrastinating putting the systems together that I knew needed to be put put together. I was procrastinating, you know, recruiting that executive team that I knew that I needed. I was procrastinating doing the hard stuff. The hard stuff is the actual foundational work, the systemization work, the. The CEO work. That's the hard stuff. The easy stuff, actually, and it is a level of procrastination, is the busyness stuff. I was. I was trained as a clinician, and for me, if I had a problem with one of the practices, the easier thing to do was for me to go do 12 hours a day in that practice and produce my way or attempt to produce my way out of a problem. That's procrastination. And that is what led me to my first really, really huge challenge in business.

What was that?

That was that breakdown where I had to sell those four practices. The story goes, I had this arbitrary goal that I set when I was 16 years old. I wanted to have a million dollars in the bank. I wanted to make a million dollars net per year. Seven years into my practice journey, at six practices, they're spinning off a lot of cash. My CPA said, hey, open up your email. Your tax return is in there. I need you to look it over before we e file it. So I opened up my laptop and I did it. I had accomplished my goal. I already had a million bucks in the bank. And I realized for the very first time that I had generated a million dollars. That that year, I closed my laptop. I still remember exactly how that felt. It was the most empty feeling of my life. Even though I had accomplished my financial. My arbitrary financial goal, I realized that I had never been more unhappy my life. And it was because my relationships were suffering. I wasn't spending time with my family, with my three young boys. I wasn't spending time with my wife. I was a terrible boss. I was grumpy all the time. And when I came to that realization that I had my ladder leaning up against the wrong wall, I decided right then and there that I was going to sell the four practices. I sold four of the six practices and Then I went on a journey to figure out how to do it the right way. That's when I. That's when I really took time to put the systems into the remaining two practices and I built them up the right way.

So you weren't leveraging your time the way you should be, right? Something like that?

No, no, it was, it was dollars for hours straight. A straight trade. Wow.

So what, when you saw you sold four practices, brought it back down to two. What are like the top, you know, one or two things that you changed or did differently now that you were starting to rebuild?

Yeah. So if you have a multiple practice model, if you have a multiple practice business, it's really important to try to calibrate and get as consistent amongst the practices as possible. So, you know, one of my favorite books is the E Myth by Michael Gerber. And he talks about creating this franchise prototype, this franchise prototype being your first business, get it as nearly possible, nearly perfect as possible. You know, having this operations manual, what we call it, this is how we do it here. It is consistent amongst all of your locations. So you're systemized. You have systems that good people could run. Not necessarily outstanding people, but systems that good people can run. And you are the person that isn't necessarily the primary doer of the thing. You are the manager and supervisor of the thing. So, you know, that, that's the thing that I realized that was lacking. So now we created this franchise prototype, what we call our flagship practice, which is our primary practice. And we went about systemizing everything about it. The way we handled incoming phone calls, the way we handed billing, handled billing, the way we handled marketing, the way we handled the patient experience and the treatment planning, all of that stuff was calibrated and systemized. And we took that and we replicated to that to the second practice. And once we had both of those that were calibrated and totally consistent, then we started building again. And from that, from those seven practices, we built seven more up to all the way up to 15. And now I sit on about seven practices right now.

Is seven kind of the nice number for you? Is it? You know, is it. Was there a reason that you've kind of come back, gone up and then come back down?

Yeah, I mean, there, there were opportunities to liquidate some of the underperforming practices, to merge some of the practices together. There was a point in my career when I was very, very attached to a number. There was a certain number of practices that I wanted to get to. And then I started second guessing the Wisdom of that. Almost as if it was a very just arbitrary choice. Just like the million dollars in the bank and the million dollar kind of yearly income. Super arbitrary. I wanted to have 30 dental practices and, you know, got up to 15 and I was like, is this really what I want or do I want to have a very lean and successful business? Someday I might get to 30, but it's not necessary because the practices are spinning off enough cash flow for them and they basically run themselves. Now I have a great executive team in place, so I don't think that I need more than seven. But there also is. This is getting a little deep. But I do believe that we are on the precipice of a financial correction right now. I got caught holding a lot of real estate and businesses just prior to the previous global financial crisis. And I'm not going to make that mistake again. So I've liquidated some of my ass, my underperforming assets, and I'm sitting on cash. And if we go into a tailspin as far as the economy for a couple of years, things are going to be on sale and I'll be able to snatch them up, right?

No, that's a great, that's a great point. Is the only time I. What's the. One of the quotes is the only time people freak out when something goes on sales, when the market, crack market goes down, but it's like stuff's on sale. Well, I guess that and Black Friday.

Yeah. So if you're sitting on cash and you have the ability to snatch up those assets, it could be a great period of growth for you. While the rest of the economy and the general public is scared and reeling from a market correction, if you take time to plan correctly and you're liquid enough, you can take advantage of a

lot of opportunity, right? Absolutely. So what? Well, where'd you learn, like, where'd you learn all this stuff? Like, you didn't learn this as an MBA student, obviously. And did you guys learn this stuff in dental school?

No. Dental school, you get one semester on the tail end of your senior year in practice management, which, depending on the school, and I speak at dental schools a lot, depending on the school can be very, very inadequate as far as preparing you for the business world and ours. My school was inadequate in preparing us students for the business world. And you can't fault them for that. I mean, there's enough clinical stuff that you have to get through in a very short period of time that you barely have enough time to learn how to not be Dangerous when you hit the streets. But. But no, I mean, I learned this stuff in the trenches. I learned this through the school of hard knocks and by making more mistakes than anybody else. And like, like you alluded to before, my greatest gift is my gift of grit and tenacity and persistence and stick to it. Iveness. And even though, you know, the dental profession has kicked my ass and. And I've had plenty of opportunity to retract and say, you know what, I'll just be happy in one practice for 40 years. I got back up, dusted myself off, and learned from my mistakes. That is the true gift of an entrepreneur and somebody that is, I think, success beyond successful, beyond average, is their ability to learn from their mistakes and get up and try it again.

Wow.

Wow.

Definitely. So I want to ask you a couple questions so I can get familiar with the dental profession a little bit.

Sure.

What percentage of people get out of school and go into practice for themselves versus, you know, work for someone else or hospital? Do you have an idea about what that is?

Yeah, I mean, luckily, dentistry is a cottage profession that still has the majority of us when we graduate at some point, actually do own least one dental practice. I don't have the exact percentage, but it's greater than 50% of dentists that graduate from dental school will own their own dental practice. That is changing a little bit with consolidation. A lot of big corporate groups, what we call DSOs, are sweeping across the country and snatching up smaller practices, snatching up groups, small groups of practices, and consolidating them within their larger groups. Private equity right now happens to be very, very interested in throwing money at dentistry because they recognize that it is a profession that has retained its autonomy and it still spins off very good cash flow in comparison to other businesses. So the vast majority of dentists that graduate will end up owning a practice. But the tide is turning a bit with the consolidation.

And do you feel like people go into dental school knowing, like, yeah, one day I'm going to be. I'm going to own my own practice, or, you know, I'm the way to, you know, pay off my school debt and not have a debt ceiling is dopamine. Is this what people are going into the profession thinking, like, this is going to be my thing, like, I'm going to be a dentist and I'm going to own my own business at some point or my own practice?

Yeah, I mean, I think that it's very, very dependent on the individual. But, you know, people do not get into dentistry and say, yes. To 350 to $500,000 worth of student loans because they think that they're not going to be able to pay it back. Right. And I think most people recognize that the fastest way to pay that back is to own your own business and to own your own destiny and not work as an employee for $125,000 a year. Because $125,000 a year is 4 salary or the average income for an American. But it's not enough to offset a hundred, you know, four times the. The average income of an American isn't enough to offset a $500,000 student loan payment.

Right.

So people recognize that there is the ability to earn a good wage in dentistry. But I think that people that are business minded understand that you probably have a higher ceiling and a greater chance to pay back those loans faster if you own your own successful dental practice.

When you guys are. And I'm kind of. There's another like, setup question to the next question I got to ask, because a lot of people who listen to me are physical therapists. And so it's. When you guys are seeing patients, what percentage of maybe is it your practices or practices in general are, you know, fee for service versus insurance actually covers it. Because I know, like, I would have to pay extra for dental insurance and it still wouldn't cover, you know, as much. And because I know in my experience, when I go to the dentist, it generally costs me a couple hundred bucks to get something or, you know, five or, you know, there's $500,000, you know, get a couple of cavities filled in their crown and it's a lot of money. Like, I want to, like how common is that in the dental industry? And what I want to get to is you guys are like, just comfortable charging a lot. When most medical professionals don't know what. They don't know what they charge. And as physical therapists, it's like we're very disconnected from what the fees are. So can you. That's the road I want to take you down.

Yeah, yeah. Great question. So the closest estimate that I have is about 85% of dentists are accepting some level of dental insurance. And that could be 60 to 80% of their patient base is dental insurance. Or it could be, you know, 10 to 20% of their patient base are dental insurance patients. 15% about probably less now, are strictly fee for service dentists. And those are, most of those are holdovers from generations of a fee for service office that they either inherited or started many, many years ago. It's getting tougher and tougher to get patients to come through the doors if you're not a preferred provider on their insurance. Every single one of my practices that I've ever owned has been an acceptor of dental insurance. And that's just. That's just my model. The, the second part of your question. I do believe that dentistry as profession, as a medical profession has separated itself from other medical professions in that we did not get in bed with. With these huge buyouts and hospitalization, and we are not as entrenched with insurance companies as you guys are. The way that it works for dental insurance is that somebody will have, say, a $2,000 or $2,500 max for dental insurance. The dental insurance will typically require that the subscriber to the insurance pay a certain percentage of. Of that service. For instance, a crown. 50% of that would come from the patient, and 50% of that would come from the dental insurance, and they would very, very quickly cap out with the dental insurance. So we as a profession have to be very familiar with how much things cost because we're charging a percentage of the actual procedure. And once they run out of their dental insurance benefit beyond, say, $2,000, we have to charge them a certain amount of money. So we have to be very, very acquainted with how much our services cost. And for that reason, you know, it makes us slightly different than medicine. And we've been able to stay away from, you know, getting devoured by. By dental insurance just because of the way that it's set up.

Right. So when someone so and so here's the thing that I want to get to is like, so when you're a dentist, when you're a provider and you know that my patient needs this crown or this procedure, their cost is going. And you guys are seem much more aware of, like, in the offices I've been to, the actual cost to me or to one of your patients versus, you know, like, you go to the hospital, like, no one knows, like, six months. It might be 20,000 or it could be nothing. The insurance might owe you. It's just like a lottery. So you know that, like, the office knows that this procedure is going to cost the patient a thousand bucks. It's not. Or even 500. It's not just a copay. This is like real tangible money. How are you setting this up so that everyone feels good about the whole whole thing? Like, no one feels like they're selling someone a patient something they don't need. Patients are okay with. Okay, you know, what the money comes out of my pocket. It's 500 bucks. It's 1800 bucks. You know, like, what is the. Like where you guys. Like, like, where does the value come from? Like, where. I know where the value comes from. But where. Where's the education in this value of what you're providing? Where does that come from? Is that inherent? Is it something that people are having to learn or. And people are struggling with, or is there something that people are learning? As you run a dental practice, this is how you sell dentistry?

Yeah. I mean, it's one of the biggest challenges in our profession. One of the biggest challenges in our profession comes back to your question in the first place. The fact that you. In the medical model, physicians. Sorry about that. Physicians have a totally different model. So we have to be very, very aware of our costs, how much it costs to provide a certain service, and then also how much it's going to cost our patients. So it is an uphill battle because patients, when they go through the medical model, when they go to a hospital, when they go to their physician, a lot of times they're not even asked to pay any money up front. So we have to retrain them within the four walls of our practices that we are not, you know, we do not subscribe to the same rules that medical insurance does, and your insurance is not 100% coverage. And we're having these discussions every single day. Education is a big part of what we have to do every single day. We not only have to justify our service and educate the patients as far as the necessity for that insurance, for them to be healthy and for them to keep their teeth, but also we've got to convince them that it is worth parting with their money for.

So maybe in your practice or how would you do this if someone said, you know what, Dr. Mark? Like, you know, that's too expensive for me. Like, I can't do that. I need to find somewhere cheaper. Or, you know, how do you guys, like, how do you build that relationship? And how do you. How do you answer the objections that people get? And is that even the most common objection that you're getting in your practices?

It's probably the most common objection that we get is price. You know, it's price, it's fear, and it's time. Those are the three main objections that we get. So, you know, it all starts. Case acceptance starts before you even meet the patient. Case acceptance starts with your reputation in the community. Case acceptance starts with the very first phone call and how we handle that. And our Receptionist's ability to build rapport immediately, and then when they walk through the doors of the office for the very first time, that rapport needs to continue. You need to continue building that trust. And then when you transfer that trust from the front desk person to the back office person and you transfer that trust from the back office assistant to the doctor to the, to the hygienist, to all the providers in your practice, you have to be able to build rapport and build trust in a very short period of time. You're talking about a 45 minute initial consultation, slash first exam, and then you're asking them to part with $5,000 because you know this is what's needed in your mouth. It is, it is a slippery and steep slope to climb. But if you handle it correctly, the most successful dental offices do it every single day very, very well. It's about rapport, it's about building trust, it's about education without alienating the patient, not talking over their head. There's so many different levels to how we are able to do this as a profession to the very best people in the profession are able to pull it off.

Right. Is there like one single question that you ask or you train your staff to ask that's like you would think is the most important question or a pivotal question and getting patients buy in?

Yeah, I wouldn't break it down to one single question. You know, I think, I think there is such a large amount of emotional intelligence and ability to communicate that is reliant on whether or not your practice is going to be successful. It's a matter, like I said, of being able to build that trust very, very quickly, answer their questions, allay their fears and, and give financial options. We have at least four different financial options at all of my practices. You know, you have a cash discount. You know, you have CareCredit, which I'm sure you guys use. There's another financing company that takes a little bit more high risk patients with lower credit scores, charges them a little bit more interest. We have in house financing. You know, there's lots of different opportunities for us to make it a little bit less painful to the pocketbook and to be able to talk them in and out, lower those barriers than those obstacles to closing that treatment.

Right. Well, all I want to know is that you're going to numb me up so I don't feel anything. Mark, I wanted to pivot just a minute before we run out of time, so I want to respect your time. So you've, you started in baseball, you had an accident. You, Dentistry is the way to go. You have this grit and determination that's not going to stop you when you decide you got to do something. You've built up to 17 practices. You've got like a nice six. You're, you're doing other things as well. You're, you're coaching and teaching other dentists with the Dental Success Institute. Can you talk about how did you pivot into coaching? How did you, how did that become a transition for you? And what are you doing in that arena?

Yeah, great question. So this comes back to our mutual friend, Bedros Coolian. So I was 38 years old, feeling like very, very burnt out in dentistry. I was a personal trainer for 16 years prior to becoming a dentist. After I transitioned out of collegiate athletics. So I created a fitness product. And when I was looking for somebody to help me market my fitness product, I came across Bedros. And he was my number. He was my first business mentor. I showed him my fitness product and he was underwhelmed. And he said, hey, look, you're a very, very highly skilled, educated person. Why do you want to swim in the red ocean of fitness? It's very, very competitive. There's a lot of people that are doing the exact same thing that you're trying to sell here, so why don't we do something in dentistry for you? And he said, what else you got going on? I said, well, I have this dental assisting school product. And what we would do is we created these schools that after the office was closed after 5 o', clock, when everybody went home, and on the weekends we had a facility that was sitting idle. So I created this program where we could teach. We could turn the dental offices into schools at nights and on the weekends. And our assistants would stay after if they wanted to, and they would teach people that wanted to become dental assistants how to be dental assistants at our facility. That turned out to be quite successful. And when people heard about that, they started asking me if they could buy that curriculum from me. And I was selling that curriculum with a little bit of success. I think I had 16 locations at the time. When I bumped into Bedros, he said, let's focus on these things first. And then, you know, after we build up your dental assisting schools, then we can, we can revisit fitness if you want to. He was basically, he was patronizing me, right? He's saying, okay, let's see how we can do this. So with Bedros help, in an eight month period of time, we went from 16 locations to over 100 locations of my dental assisting school. And now we have over 200 locations of my dental assisting school. But what happened was when we were selling these schools, people started asking me to speak at conferences about this business opportunity. So I get up and say, hey, dental assisting schools are a great thing for you. Dental, dental offices that have downtime after five o' clock and on the weekends. But here's my story. You know, I built six practices in the first seven years. I had a near breakdown. I was getting super burnt out, decided that I wanted to have some, some more, I guess passive income that wasn't related just to my two hands. So I created these dental assisting schools. But when people were hearing my story about my six practices, how I was able to build six practices and then get, get up to even more practices, they started asking me to speak at other conferences just on that topic of multiple practice ownership, decreasing overhead, increasing case acceptance, and increasing revenue and profitability. So I kind of made a shift over to coaching dentists on how to be high performance in their dental practices, how to get more profitable and how to spend less time in the dental office. And when that happened, people just started asking me if I would be their coach. And you know, fast forward seven and a half years later. We have over, let's see, 160 clients in Australia, New Zealand, United States, Canada and Europe that are all private clients of mine. And we meet four times a year and we have a really, really nice coaching group now.

Wow. Wow, that's awesome. That's amazing. What, what was it? I got so many questions I want to ask as you built up this coaching group. Let me just ask, like, what was the one thing that you did that helped it succeed? Like, what was the thing that you did that like, you know, as you pivoted into like coaching, you know, hey, speaking. What was the thing that you did that like, really like, you know, helped it take off? What was the pivotal piece?

Well, I'll be honest, we had our very first summit and there was 82 people there, which I thought was great. But my, I had friends that weren't in the dental industry that were there for seat stuffers. And my hairdresser was there, my friends that owned gyms down in the valley were there and we stuffed this thing full of some dentists and a lot of seat stuffers. So it started very, very modestly. My very first year, I had nine private clients. I thought, I think I lost, I don't know, a good amount of money that year with all the marketing to get to people for the live events so that we could sell our coaching program. But every single year it got bigger and bigger. And the biggest turning point definitely was the podcast and having a daily podcast. I have a 20, 20 day a week, 20 day a month podcast, where 130,000 downloads a month now. 150 countries. So that really accelerated the growth of the company. Just talking about common sense business topics, how to decrease overhead, how to create a marketing plan so that you could, so that you could increase the patient flow through your practice, all this stuff, we give all of it away for free and then encourage people to come to our live events. Once they're at our live events, they can see our culture and they can see our. The success of our other clients. And the company has just grown exponentially ever since then.

That's amazing. So in your podcast format, is it interviews and you're doing, you know, shorter teaching pieces yourself or is it, you know, kind of? Because I've listened to a handful of them, but I haven't looked. I know you got like 300 or 500 of them.

You know, 483, I think.

I haven't listened to nearly all of them.

Yeah, I don't think anybody has. That's a lot of hours, right?

So is it, I mean, what's the, what's this, what's the formula on that that you found most successful?

Yeah, we do a mixture. We do a mixture. We do live in person interviews when I'm at, when I'm on the road speaking at conferences or people actually travel to me and we'll, we'll speak in my studio. I do solo episodes where I'm just riffing on a particular topic. Those will usually be between 15 and 30 minutes. And then I do long form interviews while I, where I will interview an expert.

If someone wants to get in touch with you, learn a little bit more about you, where can they go to find you? Online? Website, Instagram, social media. What's the best place?

Yeah, and it's actually interesting because we do have a fair number of physicians, dermatologists, physical therapists, chiropractors that follow the podcast just for general business knowledge. So go to the dentalpreneur podcast on itunes. On itunes. Like I said, 20 times per month you can catch an episode there. We have a Facebook group called the Dental Success Institute. Facebook group. And we have Instagram. Dental Success Institute on Instagram. So any of those would be a great way for you to reach out to me and PM me anytime.

Awesome. Well, Mark, we're gonna put the links on our show notes, and I've got a couple other links from you for that. So we'll put links to all your places on the show notes. Is there any one last thing that you have to add that maybe I didn't ask about that you want to impart our guests with?

Yeah. I mean, I think that a really important thing to recognize is that all the best highest performers in the world have coaches. Right? I mean, Bedros is one of my closest confidants and most special people in my life because he helped push me to the next level. I still have relationship coaches. I have business coaches. No matter what level in my life I get to, I will always lean on a coach. LeBron James has a coach. Tiger woods has a coach. All of the highest performers in the world have coaches. And the reason that they are able to continually progress and evolve is because they have somebody that is watching their every move and helping them progress and seeing things from an outside perspective. So I recommend anybody out there, whether it's Aaron or somebody else, to always have some sort of a performance coach, help them along the way and so that you can learn from their mistakes and you don't have to relive the mistakes of others for sure.

Right. Well, thank you. Thanks, Mark. I appreciate that, and I appreciate your time and you being here, and I'm looking forward to meeting you in person one day.

Yeah, I can't wait. Aaron, thank you so much for having me on your show.

All right. Thank you guys so much. And we're going to see you next time.