How To Create A Successful Dental Practice

This episode of beyond you'd why Podcast is brought to you by Dentistry Roadmap. After working for the past 30 years developing and growing my practice, I've learned that a great practice starts with a great message. I've narrowed down the essentials to developing your practice message into a six part online study club where I show you how to do this for your practice. So make sure to head over to dentistryroadmap.com to learn how you can take your dental practice to the next level.

So today we're going to be talking about the why Simplify. Now if you remember people whose why is to simplify, they're really good at taking complex, challenging things and breaking them down to the essence of what they are so that other people can use them. They take complex and make it simple. And then other people are able to use that information to build their practice, build their business because they're able to uncomplicate things. So today I've got a great guest for you. His name is Dr. Howard Ferrand and he is somebody that I've known of for many years. We've never met, so this is going to be a great interview for me. He is a noted international lecturer on faster, easier, more efficient dentistry. He's captivated audiences around the world with his innovative informational and entertaining style. In his seminar entitled the Virtues of Profitable Dentistry, he gets down to the nitty gritty details of running a thriving family practice. He can show any dental team how how they too can achieve their dreams and goals. Dr. Feran graduated from UMKC Dental School in 1987, one year before I graduated. He earned his MBA from the Arizona State University in 1999. He received his MAGD in 1998. He received his Diplomat in the International College of oral Implantology in 1998. So Dr. Forana has received wide recognition, such as being named Alumni of the Year for UMKC in 1997, Arizona Public Health Dentist of the Year in 1995 by the Arizona Office of Dental Health, and the Arizona Award in 1989 from the Arizona State Dental association for outstanding contributions made to the profession of dentistry in the efforts of Fluoridated water for Phoenix.

So.

Dr. Feran is the founder and publisher of Dental Town Magazine, which most of you know about, which is mailed to more than 120,000 dentists in 43 countries each month. Dr. Feran is also founder of hygienetown.com, orthotown.com and the flagship site dentaltown.com where more than 140,000 registered dental professionals share information with each other on a daily basis. Dr. Feran is the author of several dental practice management articles and multiple video series. His experience ranges from all aspects of practice management, including business planning, operations and finance, to E commerce, business, and Internet marketing. Dr. Feran, welcome to Beyond. You'd why Podcast.

Oh, it's an honor to have me on the show. Thank you so much for having me. And a big shout out, you said. I graduated UMKC class of 1987. I got two of my best dental school buddies out there. Craig Steichens in Albuquerque, Chris Spears in. What's the city? North Santa Fe. Santa Fe. My God, I love going out there, visiting those guys. The Mexican food in New Mexico is far better. In Texas, they call it Tex Mex. That's kind of like an American version. Arizona is, like halfway between Tex Mex and Santa Fe. But, my God, Albuquerque has the best Mexican food in all of America.

I'm 100% with you. I am addicted to it. So, Howard, I have Mexican food. I would bet 85% of the time just. It's an addiction.

Yeah. And when you go to.

Gosh, one of those big places. What's the big place?

El Pinto. El Pinto.

No, down in Mexico. Puerto Lavarta. What's the one starts with a.

The reason I say it's the best Mexican food is in Alcrea. By the time you get all the way to Puerto Lavarta, everything you eat at Mexican restaurant, they don't even know what you're talking about. And then I'll never forget the first time I went there. I ordered. I named everything they said that I'm addicted to, and they didn't even know what I was talking about. So I said, well, bring me what most people eat here. And they brought me this place up, and it's like, okay, this is.

Not what I thought people in Mexico ate. But anyway, love your state. Thank you very much.

Well, listen, Howard, can.

Let's. Let's.

A lot of people know you. A lot of people know of you. But I'd love for you to tell everybody a little bit about your story and how you went from graduating from dental school to where you are now. I mean, it's. It's significantly different the path that you took than what most people take.

You know, it's a. You're right. Your journey ends up. You know, where did you start? All these things happen for reasons. So I grew up. I was born in 1962, Wichita, Kansas. I had five sisters, a brother, my mom and dad Were Catholic. They had seven kids in three days. My dad was so poor, mom stayed home, dad delivered rainbow bread. I think he made like $11,000 a year. And after World War II, they started building all these interstates. So before World War II, most Americans were born, raised, reared and died and never went 100 miles away from home. So the interstate infrastructure from the government opened up this new thing called franchises. Because for the first time ever, people would leave their city, get on an interstate and drive all the way to Disneyland in California. Well, when they got to the next town and they pulled off, they wanted to see something familiar. So there went all the big chains, all the McDonald's, the seven elevens, the Circle K's, the Dairy Queens. And my dad saved up his money for 10 years and he bought into a Sonic Drive in franchise. And the first year he opened that, when I was 10, he went from making $11,000 a year to $60,000 a year. And we moved out of the inner city of Wichita, which is very poor, to a suburb. And it just blew, blew my mind. And after he got about four or five Sonics, then he moved to the richest area of town, Hidden Lakes Estates. And my next door neighbor was Kenny Anderson, the dentist. And so I would go to work with my dad, who was my idol. And I loved my dad, but he made cheeseburgers and french fries and onion rings. Then I go to work with Kenny and he'd take X rays that look through teeth and did root canals and crowns. And I told my dad in the seventh grade, I'm going to go to dental school. And he thought it was crazy. He was begging me to drop out of high school because his other franchisees friends, their sons were dropping out of high school. And he said, Howard, eight years of college, in eight years you could have five, six Sonic drive ins and be a millionaire. And I'd say, I know, but I don't want to spend my life making cheeseburgers. I mean, fixing teeth. This is really cool. And so I did that. What I didn't know is when you buy a franchise like Sonic, you have a parent organization, the franchise headquarters, and they taught you demographics, picking, location marketing. My dad's cash register was from, remember NCR National Cash Register?

Yeah.

That cash register when I was 10, had more business data than anybody today using Dentrix or Eaglesoft or, you know, their practice management system has all their patient information, billing and address. And then they have all their accounting payables, receivables in Quicken and they don't even talk to each other. So they don't know any of their overhead. So when I got out of dental school, I was really opening up my dad's 10th Sonic drive in. I got demographics, I got location, I had marketing. So I opened up my practice and had a million dollar practice straight out of the gate when I barely knew how to do dentistry. And it only took me about two years to realize that. It was two years after I graduated, I went back to umkc, the alumni meeting to hook up with Craig Steichen and Chris Spear and all my buddies from dental school. And I was realizing their journey was so different. I realized, oh my God. Well if your dad worked on an assembly line and your mom stayed homemade cookies, where did you learn free enterprise? They sure as hell didn't teach you anything. And dental school, medical school, law school. And so finally I realized in 1990 I was going to write a book, the business of dentistry. And I did. And it was a huge success because back in 1990 it was actually taboo. You don't talk about a doctor and money. No one wants to be sold chemotherapy or root canal. I mean it was like. It's like people don't ever report on the news that the third largest killer in America, number one is heart disease. Number two is cancer. Number three is the health care system.

Of going in there and dying from nothing to do with your disease. And people don't want to talk about that because hospitals are named after saints and you know, St. Francis and St. Mary's and I was born in St. Francis Catholic Church. I mean, who wants to talk about that? All these holy Catholic hospitals are completely incompetent and is the third largest killer in America is going to the damn hospital. I mean, I mean look at examples. I see like I have a patient whose mom got a hip trans hip implants. So she went to visit her with her two year old daughter. Well, she put her two year old daughter down, her daughter got crawled around on the floor, now has MRSA all over her body. I mean why would you take. Why would someone healthy? I mean Albuquerque is a million people. The sickest of the sickest of the dying are put in this box and they let anybody go in there and visit and bring flowers and pat them on the head. Why all these microorganisms and viruses and it's just crazy, insane. So what I wanted to do is I was trying to get my dental office to be as sophisticated as my dad sonic drive in franchisee. And my God, it was almost impossible to do it. I mean Here I've been out. My dental office just celebrated its 30 year anniversary last September, 9-21-19 or 2017. 30 years and I still, I just switched from. I've been on Softnet for 30 years. I switched to open dental even though it's not attached to an accounting. I can't even get anyone from Dentrix or Eaglesoft even come on the show or talk about the necessity. I mean, you know, you go up to the Dentrix user convention and they're sitting there talking about, well, first of all, he opens up a seminar. Well, first of all, when he invited me, I realized instantly he must not even know who I am because I can't think of a more. I think the two worst things that ever happened to dentistry were Dentrix and Eaglesoft. And you know, this guy advised and he starts out his frustration well, you know, 85% of all the software is never even used. And it's like, okay. And then he starts talking about all these features that are crazy. I said, well, first of all, the 85% of the features you don't use. When you check into the Marriott, they only ask you nine things. The only nine things they need. And you, and you have to ask question one before you can go to two to three. It's all processes. And when I check out, it's all process when you have 85% of the software that's never even used. It's so confusing. The girl or the person at your receptionist is overwhelmed. And I said, you know, first of all, you should be able to X all this shit out so you can clean it up and make a process. This is what we do when someone calls the office on schedule appointment. This is what we do when we check them out. And it's not that open dental does any of those things. It's just that the CEO started by a company, Jordan Sparks and his son Nathan runs the company Nathan Sparks. Nathan's at least, he's like, okay, I hear your pain, I'll come on your show, we'll establish relationship. We will try to over the next several years work on your to do list. And so these dentists, they just don't know what they're doing. So then I started lecturing about it in 94, 8-11-94 shared a Manhattan first lecture. I started lecturing about it, but then I realized I'm not going to see these dentists for a year or two or three or four. So then by 94 I said, you know what? I'm going to have monthly newsletter called the Fran Report. Because when I'm out there lecturing and I'm meeting movers and shakers like you, they're telling these ideas, and I start saying, write it down. Because I have a newsletter. The dentists all told me they hated advertising, so it was $10 an issue, $120 a year. I built that up to like 4,000 subscribers. And then one day in 98, I was on ESPN website and I saw these message boards where people were talking about football and soccer and basketball. I thought, oh, my God, it's no longer the Fran Report. Me sending you tips. So I changed the name from the Fran Report to Dental Town, Flatten the org chart to an interactive media deal and started Dental Town. And a thousand dentists joined the first month. And it's been a thousand every month since then. We started six years before Facebook. And when Facebook came out, they said, oh, well, that'll be the end of Dental Town. I said, no, you don't even get it. And social media started as an endless news feed. It was dentists at CompuServe, dentists at Yahoo. And you'd open up your email and there'd be a million emails, all unorganized. Crazy chaos. And the early social media people, all they did was took it out of your email and put it into MySpace and Friendsters, then Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn. You still open up Twitter and LinkedIn and Facebook, and it's this endless barrage of unorganized crap. And what a message board does is separates it from. From root canals, fillings, crowns, practice management, marketing. It's an organized fashion that still continues to grow. 1000 new dentists every month. We pat your resume, your bio on me. I need to update that. Ryan said 150,000 members. We now have 275,000 members in all 220 countries. So my contribution to dentistry was writing this new social media thing called Internet. And when the Internet came out, it's amazing. It was five Cs. It was commerce, like Amazon.com I didn't want to sell dental supplies. It was content like blogs and stuff. It was connectivity so you could connect it to your computers and smartphones and all that stuff. What else was there? There was.

What was the other C? It was commerce content, connectivity, community. But what was the FSC commerce content? Oh, commercials, banner ads, all that kind of stuff, which are less and less effective every day. And the reason I didn't do commerce is the same reason dentists aren't buying their supplies. They on Amazon.com they said, well, are you gonna sell Commerce that will monetize the site. And I said, well, first of all, that little sales rep that comes in once a month, that's a dentist only link to the outside world. I know that rep reps 60,000 SKUs and has never done a root canal, but I can ask her, hey, on the endo file, what is the best endodontist? Jason Hales, what does he use? And they say, oh well, he uses the protaper. And I'll say, well, that cosmetic dentist down the street who's got his fellowship and acd, what impression material does he use? And it was the connectivity to the community which they didn't want to get rid of. And I saw that on social media that these dentists practice all by themselves. And sometimes when you take a PA and a bitewing or your hygienist asks you for a raise when you can't pay your bills and all these things, they wanted a place. So I started with dentaltown.com no dentist will ever have to practice solo again. And then we use those hottest threads, we measure it. So many dental magazines, they just print stuff because the editor has a gut feeling that it's good. Well, gut feelings, guts are filled with fecal matter. You have a shitty opinion. What we do on all of our threads, we measure and how many comments, views, replies are on this deal. So then we have a computer that says, well, last month 25,000 unique dentists entered the site and here's the three most common things they spent the most time on that is repackaged into the magazine. So when I'm sending out a magazine, I have measured content. I'm like, I might not think this interesting, Gary might not think it's interesting, but trust me, 25,000 dentists last month, here's the top four things they found the most interesting. So that's why I was in a media company, but I still own a dental office, still love pulling wisdom teeth more than golf. And I just like to help share information. Like you doing this podcast is amazing because when we were little, the only people that created content was abc, CBS and NBC. And when the Internet came out, a few futuristic geniuses said by, you know, by 2030, 90% of everything they'll be watching will be user generated content. And this is gonna be the death of all the big movie shows and all that kind of stuff. And you're already seeing that. You're already seeing that. The only people left on cable television are over 50. You already see that for every hour they spend on TV or Netflix, they're spending an hour on uploaded stuff from YouTube and Face, you know, self, self user generated content. And it's because I want to listen to user generated content for my tribe. I don't want to listen to Hollyweird. Anytime Dennis shows up in a movie in Hollywood, is it good news and flattering or is it Jennifer Aniston in the Bad Boss and she's, you know, it's always bad. So what's replacing radio stations is they got an hour commute to work and they would rather listen to your podcast on the Y Institute talking to them than some brand blah stuff that kind of. Everybody in Albuquerque finds us a little bit mildly interesting, like maybe weather or maybe Trump or maybe sports. But what they really want to do is dig deep because they're on their way to a dental office where they spend half their waking hours in this place and they want to focus in. So user generated content is where it's at. And I applaud you for your podcast. I think it's amazing and awesome.

And I hope you upload it into Dental Town because Dental Town.

Has a quarter million member dentists. 60,000 downloaded the app. They're more likely to be millennials. And the podcasters, what they say is they put their show on YouTube or iTunes, it was okay, but then they uploaded onto Dental Town and then their itunes and YouTube and Dental Town view skyrocket. This is marketing, and it's free marketing. So you put it up on iTunes or YouTube for free. Put up on Dental Town for free. And I also applaud you for doing video because most all dental podcasts, most all podcasts are sound only, which is itunes, which you want sound because you're driving. But the two largest search engines are, are Google and YouTube. And our YouTube channel is up to 6,500 subscribers. And these millennials tell me that they go home on their iPhone, they have Apple tv, they pull up the podcast, they throw it up on their big screen, they can go on, put it on pause if a phone rings or go to the bathroom or whatever. So I can't believe only 5% of the dental podcasts do video. And I can't believe they put on itunes where no one might never find it. There's 5 million podcasts on that thing.

So that's my rant.

Yeah, that's a great rant. That's a great story. What I'm hearing, Howard, is that you've taken so many complex and challenging subjects. Dentistry, marketing, building your business, having a podcast, having social media, and you have simplified Them down to just a couple of things. You narrow it all down to, okay, these are the five things. These are the three things. These are the couple things you need to know. And to me, that's the power of being able to simplify things for the rest of us, because for most of us, it's just way too complex. The thought of doing what you've been able to do overwhelms pretty much anybody. But you jump in there and you simplify it down to just those couple of things that we need to know about, and then you tell us about it. And that's an amazing talent that I've seen you use over and over.

Well, you know, it's very normal for an animal. A mammal, Homo sapiens, lions, tigers, they're controlling because the only way you're going to survive is to control your environment. So since humans are hardwired to control, they don't want to delegate. So I always tell Dennis, do you think you'll live forever, or do you think eventually you'll die? So they all know they're going to die, and no one gets off the third rock from the sun alive. Everybody born on this rock is going to die. And eventually the rock will spin into the sun and it's over. So if you know you're going to die, well, do you want to just do everything yourself till you die, or do you want to start delegating now to see how it works? Like, the only way I've been able to do all I can is like my. I got a president of my company, Lori. Well, she's been there 20 years. When I started Dental Town, I hired a programmer, Ken Scott. He's still there 20 years later. My office manager, Dawn Borneo, she's been there 20 years. The lady doing my finance, been there 20 years. So if you attract and retain the best people get out of their way, then Howard. One doesn't do much, but one plus one equals three with my Lori. And three plus three equals nine with my 10, and nine plus nine equals 18 with my Don. And now I've got these people where, you know, I always tell my staff, I told them since day one, you know, you probably don't think I'm a die of a heart attack today because I'm 25, but I could walk across the street to 711 to buy some gum and be ran over by Mack trucks. So we call it the Mack Truck syndrome. So I tell everybody on my team, our customers are our top priority. What happens to my patients when I'm ran over? By a Mack truck. So we immediately got associates. I got an associate within four months when we opened. So I'd survived the Mack truck. I showed him my programmer. Ken. Well, what happens at dental town if you ran over by Mack truck? Well, I need a backup. So now we have five programmers. When we started a magazine, we monetized it by selling ads. Well, what happens if Mary Lou gets run over by Mack trucks? So we have. So what I've done is I you business. Might my book uncomplicate business, which has 57, five star reviews on Amazon. Dennis Lovett is you only manage three things, people, time and money. And everybody gets it with, with sports. They say, well, look at the Cleveland Browns versus the New England Patriots. Did the Cleveland Browns not win a game because they didn't have the right stadium? They have the best looking uniforms. They had social media, Facebook, Twitter. They did everything right. In every other category of the only category that matters is people. They didn't attract and retain the best players and coaches. So if you attract the best people, you can get an F on your uniforms and your stadiums and no one cares if you're playing on real grass or artificial grass or what your Facebook, Twitter LinkedIn page looks like. What matters is you're winning the games. And what I'm most proud of, of what I've done in my 30 years, I've attracted Lori Szalowski, Ken Scott, Nick Avanas just celebrated I think his 15th anniversary. You know, I mean, for my team to be there five years is nothing and to be there 10 years is a start and to be there 20 years and I can truly, I feel like I could have always been ran over by a Mack truck and my employees and my customers would have been bothered. And if you have that mindset which is thinking in abundancy instead of fear and scarcity, and they say, well, the only way you could ever do it right is if I do it well. What do you think is going to happen when you die, when Gary Sanchez, when Craig Steichen dies? Do you think Channel 10 and Albuquerque is going to say dentistry died today? Craig Steichen was ran over by a Mack truck. Nobody will ever be able to fix their teeth again. I mean, we're all indispensable. This civilization doesn't stop. It didn't stop when, when Abraham Lincoln got assassinated. It didn't stop when JFK got assassinated. And it sure as hell is it even going to blink when any dentist dies. So the bottom line is you got to think in hope, growth and abundance, not Fear and scarcity. So if you focus on the people, attract the best people on your team and figure out how you retain them. If you can't keep your staff, you're not going to keep your customers. Patience, you're not going to keep them. And then time. Dentists don't manage your time well because they don't delegate. They save money on a bonding agent. They don't realize that this bonding agent takes two minutes to set up. And the bonding agent, that costs 10 seconds, 10% more set up in one minute. They don't, they don't value their time. You see it all the time in an operatory. You know, you go watch any dentist do a filling five times during the procedure. This is has to take off her gloves or mask and go into central sterilization. And I'm like, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Your number one cost in dentistry is a 42% adjustment off the price from. You charge $1,000 for a crown, but you sign up for a PPO and you're doing it for 600. So your number one cost is adjusted production from your stated price to your PPO accepted price. Number two is labor, 25%. Number three is lab, 10%. Number four, supply 6%. And you had your labor get up and walk out of the moon.

And why?

Well, we only have two slow speeds, and it was in well by nine. I mean, look at Southwest Airlines. Every damn plane is the same because you go to US Air and they got 727, 737, 747, 757s, Airbuses, L1000, 11s. The maintenance people has to have parts for 10 different planes. 10 times more training. And US Air had a plane fall out of the sky every year for six years in a row. And no one's ever died on Southwest Airlines, which flies from Phoenix to your town, Albuquerque in an hour. Why? Because they only have one plane. And so they only have one part. They only have one training. Look, in an operatory. Is every operatory a727? Hell no. I'm in the hygiene room. You're a doctor, you're busy. I find a cavity. I say, hey, Gary, save you a trip. You want me to do it right now? Let's do it right now. What does I just say? Well, you can't do it in my room because we don't have a trick waiter. And we, we don't have, we don't have like three little trinkets. So we gotta get you up, set up another room. Move your ass all this crap. Because you can't have every room be a 7:27. You know what I did? This used to just. Oh, my God. This used to piss off my staff. I used to have an air horn that you have at sporting events. Whenever the assistant left the room, I tell the patient, cover your ears. And I'd lean my chair out in the hallway and go.

Until that office manager is in my office, I say, why did my assistant have to leave the room? Why, when you're getting a bypass, do you want the cardiovascular surgeon, surgical nurse, have to leave the room three times? So when you get everything faster, easier, it becomes higher quality for a lower cost. Why does it take you an hour and a half to do a single unit crown? Why? Regina Herzlinger, the world's greatest medical economist, the first woman tenured faculty at Harvard University. First woman economist at Harvard University. And she has a doctorate in business management. She did a study, a landmark study that shows that during a surgery, whoever does it the fastest has the highest quality as measured by the surgery. Didn't fail at one week, one year, five years. So you know that in dentistry, an oral surgeon pull all four wisdom teeth in 30 minutes. Then you have some dentist taking an hour to pull out one tooth. Who do you think did a better job? An endodontist does all his molars in an hour. You're doing an hour and a half. Who do you think did it better? She started off with. With. What was it? Not a. Is an appendectomy or what's. What's a abdominal surgery?

Appendectomy.

It was appendix, I think. I think it was an app. It was an appendectomy. No, no, no, no, no. It was a hernia. The doctors who did the surgery in four minutes did not have a failure at five minutes. It was like a 1%, one year failure rate. By the time you were at 15 minutes, you had a 10% failure rate. Because if you have everything in the room and your staff is trained and everybody knows what they're doing, they just do it. And when you sit there and ask for something and they got to get up and leave the room, nobody knows what they're doing. So faster, she said, is really a higher quality. Well, here's what they'll say. Oh, well, no, you know, he's cutting corners. You know, the reason Wendy's has square patties is because they don't cut any corners. And that's why I spend 40 days and 40 nights to do a filling. Look at. Here's two doctors doing a crown One goes in there and numbs receptacle and sets a timer. And in that four minutes, takes the shade, fills out the slab cap, timer goes ding. Immediately starts to pack the zero chord and the one chord. Because you push the gums down and out, you're not going to nick them, you're not going to have to deal with bleeding. And then you sit there and have a burdeel, a bur block. I mean, if you need more than five burs for a crown prep, you need a psychiatrist and you need to be on medication. And the only five burs I would need would be on that little round circle. And you take a 57 carbide and take out the interproximals, you cut your deal. And then when you're done, then me and the assistant make it temporary. We'll take the pre impression, we'll fill it up with acrylic, we'll make it temporary. So I'm sitting here with my loops on, I'm adjusting back to the margin. I can't find my margin. I. I work out my problems in the temporary. I say, okay, I didn't do the margin right. So I go back there, redo the margin, start temporary number two. I'm doing the temporary number two. Margins look great. I'm adjusting the occlusion, I go through. I don't have enough depth reduction. When you get a reduction coping from the lab, it only means one thing. You took the final impression before you made the temporary. You reverse those two things, you'll never have a reduction coping the rest of your life. So now I got the margin. If you can pick it up in the acrylic, you'll pick it up in the 3M effort. And if you got the occlusion and it's all good. So Now I take the 3msv impregnable impression, go to a hygiene check, come back, put on gloves again, look at it under 3.8 loops. Then I hand it to my assistant. My assistant has total independence. If she looks at it and doesn't make it good, she's not going to talk to me and point out it. Bullshit. If she doesn't like it, she tosses it in the trash can and I say nothing. And we take it again. And then I'll go do another hygiene check or something, come back in there, I think it's good. Assistant says it's good. Glue on the temporary. 30 minutes. Now what is the guy doing for an hour and a half? He goes in, numbs with lidocaine, and then he leaves Takes off his glove, his supply costs 6%, and goes back to his office and calls his stay at home. Wife comes back 10 minutes later, preps the tooth, nicks the gums, there's bleeding, then leaves and tells the assistant to pack the cord because he's delegating. Then he comes back 20 minutes later, takes a final impression, and then they come show it to him in his private office. He says it's good. The temporary hasn't even been made and this process is an hour and a half. And then when he gets the crown back, there was a reduction coping. So he's taken 90 minutes to do a shitty crown, that comes back with a reduction coping. So look at when I got out of school in 1987, I set my fees to delta and they paid a percent. They paid 100% of clean sound x rays, 80% of fillings and root canals, food center, crown bridge. I sent them a fee for a thousand dollars, they pay half. Well, they change that around. They send me the fees, they pay me about 700 for a crown, so I have a 30% reduction in price. Well, if I do that crown from 90 minutes, what is 70%? Here, I'll do it. What is 90 times 0.7? That means now I have to go at 60 minutes. So when they went from 1,000 to 700, I had to go from 90 minutes to 63 minutes. Well, you know, after you've done a thousand crowns, why can't you go 30% faster? Because you're not thinking about a business and you tell yourself lies like, yeah, well, Gary across the street, he does it twice as fast because he's cutting corners and not quality. Quality is good. Well, you can't find any PhD medical economist named Regina Hirschfeld to agree with you. They know. And you know, in dentistry, the specialists who only do one thing, do it faster, easier, higher quality, they just charge more. So they're doing that wrong. At this point, I don't even know what question I'm answering. So I should turn it back over to you.

That's classic. So you took it again, you simplified a process that dentists do every day, and you broke it down to just a couple of steps and made it more useful so that people can actually do something with it. Instead of just talking about how complicated everything is, you just took it and simplified it down to, here's the couple things you need to do to make it quicker, faster, better, and get on with it. Right, let's go. We don't need to talk about this anymore. Let's Just go do it. I have another question for you, Howard. You have always, when you came onto the scene, you beat to your own drum, right? You do things the way you do it. You don't. I guess my question for you is going to be how important is it for a dentist to know who they are, to build the practice around who they are, versus just try to model everybody else?

Well, I say business in three words is supply and demand. And the one thing that I disagree with the millennials, they're always trying to have the perfect job. Well, you know, humans are 2 billion years old and they say 100 billion humans have come and died, and there's only 7 and a half billion humans alive today. So basically 96.5% of all the humans already dead and you're living, I mean, 100 billion already dead. And the ones alive today is only six and a half percent of the herd. Well, the last 2 million years, how many of those humans had a great life? How many of them spent the whole winter in a cave, frozen, eating mastodon shit, trying to wait till spring came? And so if you go to Key Biscayne, Florida, you can have a Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous practice in Beverly Hills and Keymiscane or in downtown Manhattan. But you know, when you go back to Parsons, Kansas, if no one drives a Mercedes Benz, then why are you listening to people who treat movie stars in Hollywood? And if everybody in Parsons, Kansas drives a Chevy or Ford, why did you open up a Mercedes Benz dealership? So I would say if you want to make Mercedes Benz, go to where people buy Mercedes Benz. But you know what? Everybody needs a doctor. I am completely non judgmental. I don't care if you smoke a pack a day, you're an alcoholic and you don't brush or floss your teeth. You don't need condescending, you need a dentist. Everybody needs a doctor of dentistry, of dermatology, whatever it is. And like when people come in and they say, I don't want to take any X rays, well, I could be some weird freak and say, get out of my office, you're an asshole. People are complicated. I want to have a relationship. You know, why numb up the patient and don't leave. Not just for faster, easier, higher quality. That's my time to chair side, to bond. So, Gary, were you born in Albuquerque? Are you married? You have a dog, kid, cat, car? I want a relationship because every time I see you and every year that you keep with me, you're going to, we're going to build a trust relationship. And I'm going to be able to try to impart some of my oral health values. Like Gary, you know, your relations. You tobacco. You know, you really should. I mean, right now, the big hall of famer, quarterback Jim Kelly, is dying of oral cancer. You know, let's get your kids an HPV vaccine. He didn't smoke. He didn't chew tobacco when we were little. When I was got out of dental kindergarten in 1987, they said you had to drink and smoke, which I assume only Russians and Irish people got oral cancer. And now we find out that there's viruses associated with this stuff, and we have a vaccine. And now we have people that are losing trust in their institutions, are losing trust in their politicians and the FBI and all these institutions are all jaded. I saw that with water fluoridation, I would show people studies for the Centers for Disease Control, and they would take them out of my hand, throw them on the floor and say, those are all paid for by the pharmaceutical industry. And I didn't argue. They'd say, no, you're an idiot. They're not. I actually know that guy. I know that Dennis I had dinner with that I didn't want. I would want to observe what they were saying and what a quarter of the people were saying on the water fluoridation campaign I worked on in 89 and a couple years ago. They don't believe the CDC. They don't believe their dentists. They look at me and say, you know why you want fluoride in the water? Because it makes the teeth weaker, and then they'll need crowns and root canals. Wow. You just called me a liar. You don't trust me, so you want to build trust. How do you build trust in a dental office? When you sell the invisible, when you have staff turnover. I know when I buy a bottled water what I'm buying. I know when I bought an iPhone what the hell it is. But when you tell me when my engine light comes on and you tell me I need a whole new transmission, it's like, dude, every time I come in here, there's a different mechanic. Every time I call, every time I come into your dental office, it's a different hygienist. You can't sell the invisible and have staff turnover. You need to build a relationship. You need to be trust. And back to that Cleveland Browns. These dentists try to fix all their problems with everything. The Cleveland Browns outright. They got a great location. Cleveland, the only one in town. A monopoly. They got the great Stadium. Their uniforms. I think Cleveland Brown uniforms are the coolest looking uniforms in the whole league. They did everything right. They lost every single game. And you'll see the Fortune 500, they're not advertising on Southwest Airlines. They're moving to the user experience there. And what did the dentists say? Well, the new. The new customer experience. The new customer experience. Dude, look, you went to Parsons, Kansas 40 years ago. You were 25. You went to a town of 5,000, you got 25 new patients a month, every month, and now you're 65. If a hygienist worked 40 hours a week, 50 weeks a year, that's only. She only works 2,000 hours a year. She can only see a thousand people twice. At 25 new patients, you would have added another hygienist every three years. And 40 years later, you still have one hygienist, which means you have a cup of coffee and you've been pouring coffee into it for 40 years. Well, have you ever looked down on the floor? You're standing in coffee up to your ankles and then you talk about the new patient experience. Why don't you do all patient experience? Why don't we get long term staff that greet them when they come in and make them feel special and not talk down to them and not be condescending. Build a relationship. If you can't keep your staff, you can't keep your patients. And I don't. And you're not going to build your practice by putting out a Facebook post every 15 minutes. You're not going to build your practice until you can attract and retain the best employees and the longer you keep them. In fact, if I died tomorrow they'd call up. They've been seeing my hygienist for 10 years. You think they're gonna say, well, Howard and I'm out of here? No. Who do they see? They're hygienists. They have relationship. It's a relay. Humans are. Humans are. Humans are extremely complicated. I'm convinced at 55 years of age that I'm probably the only normal human on the entire planet. Everyone else is, Abby. Normal. And when you look at morality, isn't it funny how morality changes through the years, changes through times? I saw a picture today of this lady being arrested in Los Angeles on the beach for wearing her bathing suit. It was a one piece. And she was arrested and taken to jail. I went to the Human Rights Museum. And where was it? Edmonton. Winnipeg. Winnipeg, Manitoba. And you knew that the big ones, you knew the human rights atrocities of The American Indian, the Holocaust, slavery, the Civil War, you knew all those. But there were so many little ones. Like, are you kidding me? There was this one girl who every year would run the Boston Marathon and these six big old fat Irish cops chasing her down, body tackling her and arresting her because it was men only. And she said, my God, I'll see you next year, you fat Irish cops. And she'd do it again. And finally the town got tired of seeing this woman chased down and body slammed. And the judge got tired of her. Finally people started thinking, why do you need a wiener to run in the Boston Marathon? I mean, they don't put a tennis shoe on the end of it, they don't use it as a cane. Why do you need. And so morality is a moving target. You know, it really does change throughout the years. But these humans are complex and they want to be listened to and they want to be understood. And a lot of it's mechanics, like when someone tells you something, if you don't repeat it, they don't think you listen to it. So if someone says to a doctor, well, this tooth, it says it hot and cold. And then he goes, did it wake you up at night? She thinks, well, you didn't hear what I just said. I just says, he said, so it's sensitive, hot and cold. And you say something like, what do you drink that's. What do you put in your mouth that's hot or cold to make it hurt? Well, when I drink coffee or whatever, if they're Irish to say, when I put gin in my coffee or, you know, or whatever, I mean, just little bitty things. But it all comes down to you're selling the invisible. If they don't think you're in, if they don't trust you, they're gone. And here's some dirty little things that no one will talk about in America. Look at women. If a hundred women engine light comes on and goes to the auto dealership and they tell her they need some. What percent of women wonder, do I really need that or is he trying to sell me something? When women go see on the sign, $20 oil change. So she pulls in, she's got 20 bucks, she wants oil change. And a man walks out and says, well, you know, we just looked at your air filter and we think we should flush your transmission lines. When, when she, when her air conditioner goes out and she calls the biggest air conditioner that advertise on tv and they come out and say, well, you know what? We really can't Fix your air conditioner. You need a brand new air conditioner. 5,000. What percent of them women are saying, I bet my uncle Harry fixed air conditioners. He'd probably fix it with duct tape and a shot of Freon. I don't trust you. And then these dentists are mostly males from my generation. Now, the dental school classes are half female, but that's not going to make half the dentist females for another 25, 30, 40, 50 years because the pipe has already been out. People don't trust their dentist. They don't trust their auto mechanic. When a woman goes to a dealership, there's even proof for economists that they sell the cars to for a higher price to women than men. Because the men probably thinks that you looked it up and you know, you went to cars.com. they know. They know not to trust, in fact, in women. What percent have we just looked at? What percent of women are actually killed by their lover? If a woman is murdered, 95% of the time, it's her lover. I mean, it wasn't someone just drove by and shot her or shot her and stole her purse. It was her own lover. So there's no trust from women to men, period. That's why you saw gynecology turn all into male, from men to all women. There's not three women in Albuquerque want a man for a gynecologist because what did they used to tell women in the 50s and 60s? Oh, you're being hysterical. Well, what is hysterical? That's the Greek word for hysterus. Uterus. They're just saying you got a uterus. You're crazy. You're being hysterical. That's why you need a hysterectomy. And so now they all go to women. I'm seeing it before my eyes in pediatric dentists. Who makes 95% of all the pediatric dental appointments? Mom, not dad. And she doesn't trust dad, so what does she do? You go in these pediatric dental residencies, they're all girls. And then I've seen it in so many towns where the man's been there for 30 years and thinks he's all that in a bag of chip. And a little girl walks straight, straight out of pediatric dentistry, asks for a job there. He says no, sets up across the street and steals 80% of his practice over the next year or two. Why? Because you're not addressing the trust. So what do male dentists do? They tell the hygienist, well, you're not allowed to diagnose and read X rays, so you don't say nothing until I get there. Oh, well, they trust the hygienist. They don't trust you. And the doctor says, well, it's illegal and against law. I say, well, how many hygienists are serving in prison today reading a damn X ray? When my dental assistant takes an emergency, patient walks in, I don't want to pee in a bitewing. I want to die. I don't want to diagnose a tree. I want to diagnose forest. We take an fmx and she takes every picture. Oh, see that? That's the cavity. And see that little white filling there? See, when the X ray goes all the way through, it's black. See, that's hollow. That's black cavity. But see this metal? It absorbed the X ray, so it's white. And look at that. Look at that cavity. It's like this close to your nerve right now. It's a $250 filling. But if you let that go into your nerve, it's a $2,000 root canal. They do that the whole way through. That patient will ask and feel safe to the assistant, well, what about blah, blah, blah, blah, the hygienist in there for an hour. But the control freak male dentist won't let the hygiene diagnose and treatment plan. You will let your hygienist diagnose and treatment plan. When? Right now. A car just drove by your dental office with three pounds of cocaine in his trunk, and you're afraid to let a hygienist diagnose an X ray. I mean, it's a control freak. Because I'm not going to go. If the hygienist said it need a root canal and I look at it and they need extract, I'm not going to go in there and do a root canal on a tooth that needs extracted. But the bottom line is, do you think after that hygienist been there 10 years that we disagree ever? And if you can't convince your dental assistant after a year or two, you're diagnosing a treatment plan, how are you going to convince the patient? And I still go to dental office where the hygienist will say, and how many hygienists tell me this on Hygienetown? Well, the doctor would recommend you to redo this crown because that open margin. But the next patient I have, I'm doing a cleaning on his crown and it has a bigger open margin. So I go back there and say, well, Dr. Gary Sanchez, the first patient, you said to redo the crown because I don't margin. And this patient, you did the crown of 19 and it's more open. Oh, it's fine. We'll just watch it. So now she has no trust in you. Another red flag is that your team doesn't let you fix their teeth. They don't trust you and they're selling invisible. And while you're talking to the patient, you don't even see that the patient seen your assistant behind you rolling your eyes or when they leave the room that they say to the highest, really, do I need 10 cavities? And she says like whatever.

You know, So I mean it's all you know. I say if you get an A on attracting the best players and the coaches, which is the New England Patriots, you're going to win the super bowl five times. And if you get an A on all your location and advertising and supplies and all everything else, but you get a C in people, you're going to have an average practice. You would have above average practice. It only correlates to above average people. Above average people. And you want to get a measurement on that. It's employee turnover. The greatest companies in their segment, like you go in the airline industries. Who has the most sales, the most revenue? They have the longest lasting employees measured by month. We measure all of our employees. We know our average monthly employee. We measure that stuff. You can't sell the invisible. Now I could sell, I could sell bottled water with a different person every day. I get hired the guy holding the street sign because I know what bottled water is, but I don't know what my engine light is. I don't know that I have four cavities. The number one reason people come in your office, the left dentist, is they just wanted cleaning and he said they needed a deep cleaning. Well, they didn't believe you. Why did they not believe you? Was it your presentation? Did you not have X rays, internal cameras, digital X rays printed out? Were you the only one that said it? And you're the one who pulled up at a Mercedes and live in the big house on the hill, as opposed to your dental assistant only makes 20 bucks an hour and drove a Ford Pinto to work. They trust your assistant. Your assistant receptionist is one of them. The doctor who's in the country club who drove a Beamer is selling you something. So you know, I have learned more insights to life studying people. Anthropology, sociology, psychology and the history of people. And I haven't learned shit from all the hours I spent studying algebra, calculus, trig, physics. I mean the fact that every Dentist in Albuquerque knows the difference between geometry and trig and spent a thousand hours memorizing this stuff has helped me nothing but every hour I spent learning psychology. In fact, a lot of dentists that are men, they hate chick flicks. And when you go after watching chicks flicks because you got a date, you got to take your lover and she wants to see the stupid chickflick, that's a bad attitude because that's the part you're missing. Why? What's going on? Why is her feelings hurt? What did he say? You know, you could probably build your practice a hundred times more watching chick flicks than you ever would going back and brushing up on geometry, calculus and figures, trig. And I still don't care. That 23 ATP come out of a glucose molecule on the Krebs cycle. Almost everything I learned in dental school, I'd say 80% of it, I have not needed to be a dentist.

So back to my question, which was.

How important is it for a dentist to know themselves, to build and market and create their practice? Or what do you think about that? Is it important for them to know who they are?

Absolutely. I tell people, I don't care if you lie to me. I tell my boys, I don't care if you lie to me. I just don't ever want you to lie to yourself if you are trying to be something you're not, if you're doing something. I mean, some dentists tell me, they've told me so many times, you know, I went to a Medicare practice because those are my homies. I grew up with a single mother in a trailer. I don't want to be a cosmetic dentist in Scottsdale. I mean, it's not my deal. When I came out here, I found two perfect locations. One was in North Scottsdale and one was in Phoenix. I'm from Kansas. I was born in a barn. I'm a hillbilly. I'm not going to go. I'll never forget, I was at Scottsdale Sunday Cloud. I was talking to a dentist and I said, well, which one's Dr. So? And so he goes, the guy in the suddenly something shoes. I'm like, dude, you know the brand of the shoes he's wearing in Kansas? You get your ass kicked for that. I mean. I mean. I mean, I have more money than any dentist I know. And my Lexus is 2004 with 150,000 miles. I don't have a Rolex watch. I'm not wearing a gold chain. In fact, I'm at home. I don't even have socks or underwear on. I mean, you know, be true to yourself. If you feel best. If you're a Navajo Indian and you want to go to Tuba City and work on the reservation, that's your tribe, that's your people. Don't go to Scottsdale and try to be a cosmetic dentist because you're competing with the Pink Institute and the Spear Institute and Quais and Ross Nash, and that's not you. Be true to yourself.

Yeah, that's what I've noticed about you from day one. You came onto the scene and you were just you and take me or leave me. This is what I'm going to tell you, and this is what I'm going to say. And if you don't like it, too bad.

You know what I'm most proud of? Of all my accomplishments professionally, 50% of every place I've ever lectured said, we will never have you back. And I'll say, really? What happened? Well, Mrs. Cranston said that you said shit 14 times. And it's like, well, you know, go R rated movie. There's nudity, the F word. Did I get naked? Did I say that? What? I said fart at a dental convention. You know, I mean. I mean, I. Be true to yourself. You know, And a good movie that was one of my inspirations was. Remember the Howard Stern movie? What was his. The movie Howard Stern Private Parts. Have you ever watched that movie?

I haven't. I have to see it.

He knew his audience who listens to the radio all day long. Everyone working outside, construction, plumbing, electricians. He knew they like jokes, they like dirty jokes. They liked all that stuff. Every station he went to, he got fired. And he tells wife, no, we're staying true to ourselves. I know they love it. When I walk around town, they say, you have the funniest show on earth. The only people fired me are the people wearing ties that own the radio stations. Finally, after you get fired 10 times for 10 years and no one would hire him, he got a gig in New York. And these. And the two owners, they didn't like him at all. They didn't like him personally. They didn't like anything he said. But they kept looking at the numbers. He said, my God, we have the biggest radio station in Manhattan and this guy's only been here two weeks. Don't like him. Don't like his hair, don't like his foul mouth. Don't like it. But Howard Stern is Howard Stern. Another one is Rush Limbaugh. Rush Limbaugh's a freak. A conspiracy theorist. He's nuts. I mean. I mean, and. But what does he do? He believes that shit, and he sits on there and rants all day long. And Howard Stern and Rush Limbaugh are the two biggest radio personalities. And then here's what I noticed about Dennis lecturing. When I was getting my fagd, my magd, my diplomat in, I go to their lecture, and I was like, I love dentistry as much as anybody. And I'm falling asleep. I'm bored. I don't even want to come back after lunch. And then afterwards, that night, we all go out to dinner and the wine bottles start popping. They start drinking. Or it was like we go fishing and we're sitting in a bath. And then that speaker, when his suit and ties off and he has six beers down. Funniest guy. Teaching me everything I know, putting it in simple terms. And I'd always say, why didn't you talk like that at the dental meeting? Oh, my God. I would have offended half the room. Half. You know, blah, blah. I tell people when they go out there, they lecture. They should lecture. They should think that I am sitting in a bar, I've had three shots of Fireball, and I'm out in a bass boat and I'm fishing with six drunk dentists in a boat. Talk to them like you would if you were at a poker game in your garage. Don't talk. They always lecture like they're in church. You know, my mom and dad made us go to mass every single day from birth until I left home at 17. So 17 days times 365 thing. I went to church like 6,000 times. So I never went to church again because I figured you only had to go to church once a week. So if you took 6,000 times 7, I'd have to live to be like 125. Until I had to go back to my once a week again. And the bottom line is, no one ever said church was fun. Now, 50 years later, what's the only church that I have fun enjoying? Turn on Joel Osteen. Yeah, that's fun. That applies to my life. I've never watched him for 30 minutes and didn't think of something I could apply to my relationship with my boys, my staff, my patients, my neighbor. But that. But the Catholic church, the first 10 years is all in Latin. I didn't know what the hell they were saying. And then when they switched from Latin to English, my mom thought the whole church was gonna go to hell. And then it was just the same prayers oh, it was like just ritual. And then the sermon, that was the part they always cut out. And now where has church gone to? They got rid of all the rituals, they got rid of all the Latin. They got. I mean, look at a rosary. You say a prayer and then you repeat it 50 times. How meaningful is that to a 10 year old kid? But Joel Osteen, I don't care who's in the room. Everybody learns something. I don't even care if you're atheist, agnostic, Jewish, Hindu, Buddhist. He just told you something that applied. That's how you should lecture be. So what I'm trying to say is just be true to yourself. You only get to live once you were born to be what your mother wanted you to be, or what the president, the ADA wanted you to be, or what Delta dental wanted you to be. I mean, you're, you're born you and you're always trying to be someone else. I mean, just be you. Don't be unique. Be you.

Yeah, that's, that's exactly what I talk to people about as well. When we talk about discovering your why, that's the first step in figuring out how to be you. Like you were saying be you. But for a lot of people, they're like, well, what does that mean? How do I be me? What am I? Who am I? How do I come up with that? And when I help people discover their why, that's what helps them to move in the direction of okay, who am I? Now? I know now I just got to be the person that I've always been. You know, transformation is not about you trying to be somebody else. Transformation is you discovering you and then just being you. That's when you find success. How much of your success do you feel is related to you just being you?

Me just being me. I was born in a most conservative Catholic family, walked away from all that. I was born in a die hard Republican family, walked away from that. Born in Wichita, Kansas, walked away from the whole state. I mean, I have virtually walked away from, you know, most people. If you, if I talk to you five minutes, I already know where you're born. If you say you're a Hindu and like Curry, well, that wasn't a free choice. Like my oldest is. That's a nun. I say, well, if you'd been born in Saudi Arabia, you'd be Muslim. And then she's like, no, I wouldn't. I said, well, you're born India, you'd be Hindu. No, I wouldn't. I mean, most people are born into their language, their religion, their thoughts, their culture, and they just drink all this purple Kool Aid, and then they're trapped the rest of life. And I say, I don't care where I'm born. I mean, I was born in Kansas, but I like Italian food. I like Greek food. Food.

I was. You know, I mean, I've just always been true to myself. And I think that the sign of intelligence is to entertain a thought and reject it. And most people are fed their wisdom, swallowed a hook, line and singer, and won't even question it. I mean, you know, I've seen this with.

All kinds of people and issues. So just be true to yourself. If it's not good for you, but it's good for everybody around you, well, then it's still not good for you. Don't ever be anything you're not. Don't ever. Don't ever do something for money. You know, look at prostitutes. 99% of them are drug addicts. You know why? They do things they don't want to do for money all day long. I'm not going to build a successful cosmetic practice for money when that's not what I want to do. You start doing things for money that you don't want to do, it'll lead to disease, depression, alcoholism, drug addiction, suicide. You know, I mean, I would rather work at the IHOP and be totally happy than have a job on Wall street being totally miserable. Wow.

You know, I remember when I first got into practice. You know, I look so young, and I was in with my dad, who was in his 60s, and here I am in my mid-20s, and I looked like I was 15 years old. And I really felt like I had to be in this box of being a dentist. I had to look a certain way, I had to talk a certain way. I had to. Couldn't say I don't know to anything. I had to know the answer to every question. And I remember how stifling that was in trying to just be myself, because I had to try to fit into what I thought a dentist was supposed to be. And I don't think you have probably ever felt that, but maybe you could relate to how that might hold people back from being who they were really meant to be.

Hey. My dad was so upset that I wouldn't drop out of Bishop Carroll High School and go to. I think he wanted me to go, it was Abilene, Kansas, and start my first one and told me that this dental plan was so stupid because by the time I got dental school, I'd already be a millionaire and some of the most miserable dentists I've ever met in my life. One of the things many of them have in common is her dad was a dentist, and they felt like they had to be a dentist. And his dad always say, well, you know, you'll take over the practice. And. And they went down their father's route. I saw it in Kansas, becoming wheat farmers, you know. Well, why are you a weed farmer? Well, you know, it's fourth generation. They wanted to keep the farm in the family. And I was the only one with the wiener. My three sisters were all set free, but since I was born with the wiener, I had to be a wheat farmer. But I bet if I, you know. But if I'd have been an orphan and grew up in an orphanage, I would have done this or that or 19 other things. Don't live your life for someone else. And a lot of people think, oh, Howard must have thick skin. It's not that I have thick skin and don't have feelings or anything. I just don't value other people's thoughts enough for me to think on it. Because you don't know me. You don't know my journey. This is what I do. I'm happy. My kids are happy. I mean, I'm doing great. So if you're offended at your dental society because I said fart and shit and a dirty joke, well, then cancel Netflix. Cancel hbo. Live in a bubble. Just go live in a bubble and don't come out. I mean, I'm happy. I'm having fun. And probably the most proudest thing I am at 55 is I've never done anything I didn't want to do. I've never done something for money. I've had fun. I wake up every day, I want to play. I love what I do. And when I quit loving it, I stopped doing it. Wow.

Well, Howard, we could go on and on and on. I know we've already gone over an hour, and I.

Have we. Yeah.

And I could just keep asking you questions because I love. I got three pages of notes here just from what you've talked to me about, and it's been fascinating. I love it.

Well, next time I'm in Albuquerque, Craig Steigen always picks me up the airport. Why don't you and Craig, and we'll all go. What's that? What's that? Mexican restaurant. Craig always. Thanks. Do they have the sopa pias?

El Pinto? Is it El Pinto Pinto or Sadie's? Sadie's, yes.

He always takes me to say next time in Albuquerque. Can't wait to go to Sadie's with you. And if you're ever coming to Phoenix, I'll take you to Makayo's.

I'm going to be there next week, by the way.

All right, well, let's hook up. Let's hook up.

And here's kind of what I learned from you. Here's my summary of what I heard from you today. A couple things were the first thing was you got to attract the best people. Doesn't matter if you have the best office and the best everything else. You got to have the best people around you. Number one, you got to start going to chick flicks with your wife, because that's the missing part, especially if you're a male. Number three, faster is usually better.

Number four, you love that 50% don't want you back because that means you offended the right people. And the last and biggest thing is be true to yourself.

Absolutely.

How's that sound?

It sounds awesome. And again, Gary, it was an honor to be a guest on your show.

Thanks, Howard. I appreciate you being here. And we're gonna post this on Dental Town as well as itunes. So thanks for allowing me to do that.

Thank you for all that you do for dentistry.

Sa.