119: Garrett Beedle Interviews Emmet Scott on Entrepreneurship

Welcome to DSO Secrets. I know what it's like to be an entrepreneur in the dental industry. I've had my ups and downs, just like you. There's so much opportunity to be excited about, but so few resources to get answers. From here on DSO Secrets, we get you those answers so you can change the lives you're meant to bless and achieve your personal success.

When I was working as an associate rat at a school, I never imagined I could own these many practices with

this amount of support.

So thank you.

You have helped build my marketing mind

to a whole new level. You have this natural talent, this unique ability. Hello, everyone, and welcome to another episode of DSO Secrets. I'm your fearless host, Emmett Scott. And today I've got kind of a special treat. I think I had a college student. Good friend of mine, Garrett Beadle, came over and interviewed me about the entrepreneur journey and just my thoughts around entrepreneurship. Love to share it with you all and would love your feedback on how you think about entrepreneurship and just how cool it truly is and the impact that it has on the world, especially when it comes to healthcare. So enjoy.

Okay, well, I'm here with Emmett Scott. He's the co founder and CEO of Community Dental Partners. There's actually a long list here. He is the host of the DSO Secrets podcast, president of the association of Dental Support, and the CEO of the National Dental Partners. Graduated with a degree with a Bachelor of Science in Accounting from byu. Am I missing anything?

No, it's all good stuff. Oh. I'm also partners in Dentist Entrepreneur Organization.

Yeah, deo. Yeah, that was one of the best things.

Yeah.

Okay.

Got it. Yeah.

So perfect. Well, I appreciate you sitting down with me and taking the time to go over some questions that I had for you. I really just wanted to start kind of with your upbringing, with your backstory, how that shaped your entrepreneurial career and the role that your parents played in that, or anything that you'd like to include.

Yeah. So first thing, my parents were actually very much, get a job and work hard. And my dad was actually like a big union guy, worked construction. My mom was an employee, worked hard. So there wasn't a lot of entrepreneurship from that perspective. They were always trying new things, just generally. But I'll tell you what really sparked it, Garrett, was when I was 14 years old, I went to go get a job, and they said they couldn't hire me because I was 14 years old.

Okay.

It was illegal, you know, and it really ticked me off. I don't know why, but, like, why can't I contribute to the world, why can't I work? And probably I just wanted some money too. So I got with my best friend at the time was Brian Fielding. And we started E and B Lawn Care. I know, yeah, Emmett and Brian. And we didn't really have any money. He could drive. He was a little older than me. He was 16. And so we made some flyers. My marketing team would not think that they were anything amazing. And we took them down to a printing place. And I remember we had a pizza that we had bought real cheap pizza. And when we took it to the printing place, we didn't realize how expensive it was going to be to print this flyer. Especially because we wanted different colors because it's pretty boring flyer. And when the lady told us, I think she could tell on our face that like, and she was young, that we couldn't actually afford that. And so she said, hey, if you give me two pieces of pizza, I'll print you, you know, a thousand. So we handed her the pizza box and that got us the. The printing we needed. And we. We didn't have like a truck or anything, so we'd like stuff all of the lawnmower stuff in like this really small trunk. It was all hanging out the back.

Yeah.

But you know, we had like nine lawns within a couple months. And man, I felt like I was in high cotton. But the big thing I thought was, holy smokes, I don't need anyone to create value. Right. Like I could come up with and just go solve a problem. So that. That started now. I had no clue that I was as entrepreneur as I'd later kind of figure out.

So.

So when I got into. After church, mission and stuff, got up to byu, I could not figure out what degree to do. You know, I was. I had gotten a small scholarship in electrical engineering. After looking at transition transistors and resistors and all these things, I was like, I can't do this. I know I'm not that detailed. So BYU Provo had top accounting, you know, so I'm like, okay, well I'll just go do. Try to get into the top thing. I ended up getting in. I don't know that I loved it, but it set a good foundation. I did one tax season and after that I was like, yeah, I can't do this anymore.

Yeah, completely. I think that's something that's pretty common with all entrepreneurs, is that they have a moment of realization where they don't need. I guess you say they don't need anybody else to go and do their own Thing, right?

Yeah.

And not that, you know, obviously later on you can't do everything by yourself and you have to. You have to delegate. But I think everyone has had a moment like that where they see the success that they can create on their own and they realize that they might not need other people to do that for them, basically.

Well, I remember I was in this BYU study group and, you know, back from my mission, I'm 21 or so, and there's a guy in our class, I don't know if he was doing an MBA or if he was in the accounting program, but he was probably 40 something, you know, probably around my age now. And I thought he was way old and had tons of life experience, but he said to me, he's like. He's like a rancher guy. And I was having a lot of anxiety and I was kind of sharing it with him about graduating and. And he said to me, emmett, one of the things you're going to realize when you get out there is the world is super incompetent. And I thought, that's an interesting thing to say. Now, it actually gave me some level of confidence for some reason. But I found those words, I mean, I still remember, 25 years later, I found those words to be so prophetic.

Sure.

The majority of the world is incompetent and there's just so many problems to solve that no one's solved yet, you know, And I think. I think entrepreneurs have this gut feeling, like they probably don't, you know, see themselves going to Mars, like day one or something like that. Elon Muskus, you know, but they do feel like the Stephen Covey's, like, center of influence, that there's this influence circle that they could have some level of impact on. And then they just start kind of picking at that and it gets bigger and bigger and bigger.

Absolutely. I think that one of the things that a lot of entrepreneurs that might be starting out that they struggle with is they see, they identify a problem and they see that to a degree that it's already been solved. And so they get kind of discouraged and they think that there really isn't a whole lot else for them to do. But I think that's what separates maybe the good ones from the great ones is that they just add on to that solution. Right. Like it's never fully solved and they're always able to bring value to maybe to a solution that has already been created.

But don't you think that's kind of funny that there's almost this disappointment when things are solved, right, like, we have, like, this thing, like, oh, somebody's already figured it out. They can have that. And I want something big and hairy and complex that no one's done before.

Yeah, for sure.

We're always, like, looking for, like, some Greenfield problem.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I wanted to ask you real quick about your college experience and how you felt. I know you mentioned that. That that was when you kind of started to realize just how entrepreneurial you were and how.

It wasn't even then.

It wasn't?

No, no. I mean, I don't think today there's a bigger conversation happening around entrepreneurship. Maybe I just wasn't in those circles. Maybe it was my upbringing of being with a very traditional family, but I just didn't even really have the language I have now to talk about that. Mostly I just felt lost.

Yeah, okay.

Yeah. Mostly I was just like, well, if I get the best degree BYU has to offer, that should put me somewhere, right? But then I was like, I mean, I remember that fourth year finishing, and I'm sure this is still true. You could do one more year and have a master's in accounting. And I could not, like, emotionally and almost physically. I'm like, I. I can't be here anymore. Not because I didn't like byu. I couldn't do classroom study, theoretical talking anymore.

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So when did you. So I guess it was at that point maybe that you started to realize that, you know, you weren't going to get your master's anymore.

And I just thought, I'm just going to go get. I'm just going to go work again. I didn't have, like, the entrepreneur language yet. I had gotten interviewed by PricewaterhouseCooper, by Arthur Andersen at the time, before they went under with Enron and stuff. And, man, just talking to them. And again, nothing against them, but I was like, I cannot be in that environment. I don't know. It felt bureaucratic. Just in the interview.

Sure. Yeah.

So I went over to this small, like, it was called the Money Group, and it was like financial planning. And I thought I would be, like, doing sophisticated financial planning. I think I didn't understand that. I thought I was, like, investment banking, but really it was selling mutual funds and insurance products. And so I took this degree, and then I just went over into a complete commission job, and I ended up doing really well there. Still didn't know I was an entrepreneur, but I really enjoyed, like, meeting people, solving their problems. I didn't use any of the sales techniques they would teach me. I would just be like, hey, buddy, do you. Problem solved? If not, then I didn't, you know, but, yeah, so I think.

I think that's one of the things that a lot of college students, I think myself included, run into, is that I haven't graduated yet. But the ones that have graduated, you know, they put all this time and effort and study into getting a degree to be able to get a job at a company that they want to work for. And then when they get there, I feel like the majority of the time they're still doing. It's almost like, yeah, like manual labor, but intellectually, if that makes sense, they're not doing anything of real meaning to them, and they're not getting a whole lot of satisfaction out of their jobs. So I guess that kind of brings me to my next question is what are your thoughts on, you know, that kind of formal education and the role that it plays in starting your own business or things like that? Because there are a lot of entrepreneurs and a lot of really successful ones that have never been to college, that might not have even graduated high school. And I know that's definitely a narrative and a question that's out there is how much value does cause really bring if you're just going to start your own business?

Well, I think in fairness, like, entrepreneurs are a unique set of individuals, so we can't extrapolate all the learning systems for just entrepreneurs. Right. Like, a friend of mine had a bookkeeper that would come in and do his books, his, like, personal books, for 20 years doing this. And he once asked her, like, hey, Susie, like, how do you. I mean, I think in his heart of hearts, he's like, how in the world do you wake up every morning and, like, do this? You know? And she said to him, she's like, oh, Dan, when I come in, I just never know what I'm going to see. I mean, your electricity bill could be higher. This could happen. Right? So I think how people perceive change, what they think of as challenging and dynamic, is definitely different. Entrepreneurs are on the extreme end of the spectrum. We want to solve, like, world problems. We want to solve something that people stand up and say, thank you so much. Most people don't have that hunger or need. So I think for education, I do think that in the past, universities, formal education really held the library of knowledge. Yeah, the Internet has really disrupted that, you know, I mean, before this interview, you saw how much we did on Google and YouTube. So I could get everything set up and ready to go. I didn't need A four year degree to start starting a podcast and you know, or to do most of everything I do, I just need access to Google and I can start learning a spreadsheet really quick. Right. So I do think that learning is becoming more real time and dynamic. I think education, like frankly a lot of businesses are trying to figure out where can they bring the most value and also who's their customer avatar. Maybe entrepreneurs aren't their customer avatar, but there's other places where there is a customer avatar. I will tell you I have an opinion on formal education. I have a really hard time with the general education concept that you're paying for two years of repeating high school.

Okay.

I think that that's. But when you look at like BYUI and some of what they're doing with pathways and trying to make things more practical and more universal, I think it's really interesting. I think they're going to continue to experiment on ways to make education like what it's done with these certifications that are very honed in on. Here's what you need. Certified. Certified. Certified. I think you're going to see more education move that way.

Yeah, I think that Covid has definitely played a role in that as well. That universities have had to adapt to like the Pathway program that was already kind of doing that, you know, for people worldwide that wanted to study in the, in the church, educational systems.

I mean, isn't it cool that they were like, they're ahead on that thing?

I think that was super interesting looking back. But I think, yeah, now a lot of universities, I'd say all of them really have had to adapt and start making plans for things like that because students, they didn't have students on campus. If they did, it was a significant amount less than they usually would have had. And now they're having to adapt. And I think that's just kind of, that's what breeds innovation, is those kinds of situations.

Education is a platform, it's a tool. And so I think when you start looking at it that way, then it kind of finds its right place, I think anytime. And when I say education, I mean formal university education. I think when you look at it as like an end all be all, you can really get into actually a bad problem for society. I see this with a lot in the dental industry right now, but dentists will put half a million dollars of student loans into this certificate and get told, hey, once you have this, your life is made. Your life isn't made. Having a degree, especially in today's world, your life is made based on, from a business perspective, based on your ability to bring value to a customer. So that's great. You got a dental degree. Now can you convince customers that they should come and do dentistry instead of watch Netflix?

Yeah.

Right. Can you convince them that they should go do oral health instead of go down to the local water parks? Right. Like, we're all competing for the time, heart, and financial resources of people. And that's not talked about enough, I think, in a university platform for some of these degrees. And then they're sent off and they're like, I've got my dental license. Why am I feeling like I'm going to go bankrupt?

I think that's something that you and Chad Evans obviously do really well, is that Chad was the one to get the dental degree, and then he was able to find a way with you to put that to use and to bring value to people's lives and to make a profit off of it. And I think that just like you were talking about that, that's what a lot of students have an issue with, have a difficulty with, is just being able to take what they've learned and, and being able to use it to make a profit off of. Which there's a lot of people that have their opinions about that. But at the end of the day, you have to make money. You have to live. Right.

Well, it really comes down to value creation. So if I. I'll take this book right here. If I've created this book and it's of value to you more than it costs me, that's where profit gets created. Right. To the extent it's not valuable to you more than what it costs me, then I'm not creating something better. I mean, entrepreneurs really just take resources at one level and they turn them into value at another level. Okay, so if I'm. If I'm a farmer, I can make a birthday cake by grinding weed, etc. But there's some value in being able to buy a box that already has it all ground out. And I'll pay a little bit of a premium for that. Right?

Okay.

I'll pay even more of a premium if you've already baked the cake and I can just buy it at Costco. Right. But I mean, if you look at it, it's the same set of wheat. It's just that you've already done a set of labor for it. If you take that same wheat and cake and so forth, and then you put a bounce house around it, I'll pay even like a thousand times More for that experience. So entrepreneurs are constantly taking resources at one level, and they're moving them up to the next and to the next. One thing that I think as an entrepreneur I've learned is you don't have to do something dramatic. You just have to do something meaningful. I think we look at the Elon Musk, the Steve Jobs, the Jeff Bezos, and we look at the technology and say, what could we do there? I think you can look at something like dentistry and say, what's the problems they're running into that you could solve?

Okay.

And so that's kind of where I found my place with entrepreneurship is like helping other. I like partnering. I like, you know, helping and partnering with other people.

Okay, absolutely. Well, that kind of brings me to my next point, is how the Smile Magic Dentistry I started and community dental partners, and correct me if I'm wrong, that came a little bit later. The cdp. Is that correct?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So it was originally Small Magic Dentistry, which, you know, brought a level of. A level of enjoyment to getting your teeth cleaned, which was something that I had never seen done before and something that y'. All. Y' all brought to that industry.

Yeah. So when I first looked at dentistry, I'm like, this is a product that, like, just sucks. Yeah. This is not like iPhones and stuff. Right. Like, when you look at the general public, we actually have idioms that we use for life from dentistry to say something sucks. Right. Like, it's like pulling teeth. It's like getting a root canal.

Right.

Like, that's our jargon. And. And so I thought to myself, as Chad said, hey, I want to start a dental practice, and I want to really service kids. I'm like, yeah, but they hate you. They hate your product and everything. So I thought we really have to create a parallel experience, because oral health is the largest childhood. Oral disease is the largest childhood disease in America, which is fascinating. Right. And as we increase our intake of carbohydrates and processed foods, that doesn't get better, that gets worse. Right. Obviously. So how do you create something where you can really impact the world? Make a child smile better, make them more confident, make them where their teeth don't hurt so they'll eat hard foods like vegetables. Make it so their breath is better. Make it so that when they smile in class, the teacher perceives them differently than if they're not smiling, the kids perceive them differently. Like, there's so much of this impact. And what we stood back and said is, well, what does the customer really want? What they really want to do is go to Chuck E. Cheese, not the dentist. Well, what if we made Chuck E. Cheese part of the dentistry? So we put a movie theater, a play jam. We called them back as Prince or princess. Designed the whole thing like a storybook. Give them gold coins along the way. At the end of their journey, we crown them for their bravery in dentistry. They get a balloon, they get a sticker. Mom gets a sticker because she's usually freaking out. They get to spend their money and. And a lot of it is distract, distract, distract. Create a parallel experience where it's like oral healthcare. Fun. Right. And, you know, good dental practice will have a hundred new patients come in a month. In the first three weeks, we had a thousand patients come through. And so we're like, okay, we figured something out here.

Yeah, we're on.

At the time, I didn't have the vision of we're going to start a DSO and we're going to support. We now support over 70 locations. That wasn't vision. The vision at the time was, I'm going to help my buddy out to create a really good dental practice. And then pretty soon we were building more of those locations.

I remember as a kid going into your practices, I remember the first time going into one and he had a huge pirate ship in there with a movie theater in it.

Yeah, yeah.

And I was just blown away. It was so cool. You had the cookies and the pizza you were giving to the kids, and I just thought that was so crazy. And really just. I mean, I don't know anybody else that does that.

Yeah. Just. That's the other thing is I think you got to do something to disrupt. I mean, there's just so much awesomeness happening in the world that if you're going to kind of make your mark and you really believe in your product, like, you kind of got to go all out.

Yeah.

You know, okay, Safe. Like to do cookies inside of a dental practice. To do pizza. Right. That you mentioned, by the way, do you know how we started, why we started doing pizza? Because my office manager, the second weekend, his sister committed suicide and he had to leave. Right. And so he was taking. So that's the other thing. Like, a thousand things happen when you start a business that were nowhere in the business plan. Like, life happens. And so I became the office manager, and I had no clue what I was doing. And we had all these patients coming in, and I had no clue how to manage what to do with all these people coming in. It was a great problem, but it was still A problem. And they would just stare at me. And I was just terrible manager. I didn't know what I was doing. So I relied on my good LDS culture, and I thought food solves all problems. And I literally left the practice with all these patients in there, and. And I went over and bought a bunch of tacos. And everybody was so happy. Cause they had been waiting a long time and all this stuff. And then I would just, like, leave and just buy food. And then I'm like, why am I leaving and buying food? I don't think I even came up. I think someone else said, emmett, why are you leaving? Let's just order pizza. And then it just became a staple of what we did is every time there was lunch or dinner time, we just ordered food and brought it into all the patients.

That's unbelievable. Wow. So another thing I remember, my dad worked for y' all for a while, and I remember him coming home with the very first iPhone and then later on with the very first iPad that the company bought. And I was just. The first time I'd ever seen it was right when they came out. And I remember him mentioning that something that y' all placed a lot of emphasis on was technology. And I was rereading the Good to Great by Jim Collins, and he talks about using technology as an accelerator as opposed to. I forgot what the exact quote was, but as opposed to the basis of your business. I wanted to know how you had used and implemented technology as an accelerator for business and how you think that you'll continue to do so in the future.

Well, I like what you said, that technology is an accelerator. I think sometimes people put technology in as kind of a wow or they think it's going to solve a problem. It doesn't solve the problem. It just accelerates or simplifies what the vision already is. And so we have a great cto, Michael Irving, who's been leading us for a while, and he's excellent at this. But you work to develop out your systems and then you can just. Technology, the microchip has just done so much. And we have now a problem for all entrepreneurs, which is a small business called Amazon that has made everything so freaking convenient. And then it's gotten followed up with your Netflix and YouTube and Facebook and just everything's so instant and connected. And, you know, Instagram, I think I buy more. I'm buying more and more off of Instagram than I am even off of, like, Amazon. Right. Like, I've just. There's is such, well, targeted marketing.

Sure.

How does dentistry compete with the capability and convenience of Amazon? How does Walmart? How does your local restaurant? And I think Covid accelerated.

Yeah, absolutely.

Everyone having to figure that out because it was like, I'm just going to sit at my house and you all have to come to me. So I think it's awesome. I think it's challenging. The consumer ultimately wins in all of this. But I don't know, I think it's fun. It's fun to be disrupted. It's fun to be disruptor.

Yeah, absolutely.

And one of the things you can do, I think this is a little bit of a cheat for entrepreneurs, is you can go into an industry and usually that industry is only good at certain things and they are terrible at others. You can go over to another industry and they're really good at something and terrible at others. If you go steal what they do, like, maybe they're really good at texting and chatting with their customers. And you bring that over to something like dental.

Sure.

Then you can beat out everybody else.

Sure, yeah. I think for a long time, dentistry especially was a lot of older men who had been dentists for 50 years and were still doing things the same way that they were when they first started. And I think y' all really, really took advantage of that, and it obviously played quite to your benefit.

Well, it's fascinating. In the last 10 years, the graduation rate of women in dentistry has accelerated. In fact, this last year, 51% of graduates in dentistry were women.

Oh, wow.

So talk about, like, this change, which is awesome, and it creates all these new opportunities and challenges. But you're right, previously you had a lot of men. Money was easier to make before the Internet because needs and wants were very clearly defined. What the Internet and social media has done is it's weaponized our wants, so Netflix can target us in such a way that we're like, I really need to finish this series. I don't need to go to the dentist. I don't need to go get my health care done. I need to finish this series. Right. 1980s, there wasn't anything like that.

You just.

You just went to the dentist. Right. I mean, it was either that or the bank or something else.

Boring. Right.

So now there's much more of a crowding effect of this. And. And I think that also. And there was a lot of margin. There was a lot of money in dentistry. And when there's a lot of money going on, people don't change.

Okay.

There's not the need to change.

Why fix what's not yeah.

There's a reason retail, like something like Amazon is pushing innovation is because the margins are really tight. Right. Like, they're not making a ton of money off of one book. So they need everything to be as systemized as possible. I think if you can find an industry that has good margins in it and then bring some of these disruptive things, it's awesome.

Yeah. Okay, so I wanted to ask you a little more technical question about there at the beginning with Small magic, how you went about funding some issues that you ran into and how you solve those. Because I think with entrepreneurs, it's a lot of just that they have a really great idea and they do really well for a while, and then they start scaling and they don't have the means to fund it. So just want to see how you did that and some. Some tips for success.

A lot of begging. Yeah. It was so painful, you know, swallowing

your pride a little bit.

Yeah. Oh, man. You're just so. When you want to do something different, all the. It's not that the universe hates you, but all the systems in the universe don't work for you. Right. They're not built to do something different. They're built to do something the same. So a dental practice, bank of America, Wells Fargo, other large banks were set to hand dentists money. In fact, dentists right out of school, despite all their student loan debt, could easily get 400,000 from a bank to start a dental practice. Okay, but if you wanted to do something totally different, if you wanted to have instead of 80 patients come in, you wanted 1,000 patients come in, then you needed a loan for 800,000, not 400,000, but you were also doing 10 times. It was a better loan to give. Right. Like, you're more successful. The banks didn't get that. We were outside of their box. I finally found a regional bank to help us do the first location. When the first location took off, I thought, my wife's mate. Yeah, right. Because I just proved that I was right.

Yeah.

And so no more begging. I was completely wrong. The banks were like, well, yeah, you did this one. But we only loaned to dentists for one location. They don't do more than one location. I mean, they might, but they do them like 10 years apart. I was trying to do one 90 days later. Oh, wow. And so it was actually, your dad introduced us to a family, and they said, well, we'll invest in this. Well, now I'm becoming an investor manager, not bank. So I'm trying to understand and explain to them what the Investment is I'm making assumptions and performance which they're interpreting as complete promises.

Right.

And. And so they ended up investing. We did the second location, and obviously some of my assumptions were completely wrong. And so this required more money. This didn't scale as fast. And at times they got really upset and I think probably scared, too, which is rightfully so. And we grew so fast. Those two locations grew so fast. My accounting team couldn't keep up. And the technology was breaking down. To run an accounting report in dental software, the actual, like you click to run the report, it would take 12 hours.

Oh, wow.

Before it would print. And it would only print one way in a PDF, and you couldn't manipulate, change it or anything like that. I didn't know that the software was not going to scale with us. I didn't know I was going to have to hire a group of programmers so that I could do accounting right. So all these things started hitting me and I, we were being successful, we were doing something right. But when you're disrupting that much, then you're outside the norm. To do our third location, which we did just six months after that, Chad's dad put his cabin up.

Yeah, I remember reading that.

Oh, my gosh. And that. And then we opened that location. And this was. This is 11 years back, but Dallas was hosting the super bowl and they had like the biggest freeze ever and all the roads were frozen and stuff. And we had just opened this practice. I didn't care about the Super Bowl. It lost millions of dollars because no one could travel and buy stuff. I was worried about this dental practice that had this family cabin and it took longer for it to scale up. It ended up being amazing, but I'm like, this is so stressful. And then we ended up bringing in a private equity firm and kind of just bought everybody out. And they did really well. Like 50 to 75% returns within 18 months.

Within 18 months, yeah. Okay. What was the original, I guess, promise that you had made to them?

Well, about that, I had said, hey, I think this will kick off. Based on your return, I think this will kick off 50%. Early on when it first started, it was going to probably kick off more like 25, 30% return. And I learned a really important lesson because, I mean, the rest of the marketplace might kick off like, I mean, a Bank might kick 2%, sure, yeah, Marketplace might do 8 to 12. But when you tell someone this and then it does this, they're really upset. They don't say to themselves, well, this is still better. Than anything else I could get in life. They just say, but this is what you said. So that under promise, over deliver really got reinforced for me. You just want to make sure that you get things buttoned up.

Sure. Yeah, absolutely.

Anyway, yeah, it was stressful and it just continued to be stressful.

Yeah, I can only imagine. I feel like.

And yet in an awesome way.

Yeah, I was going to say I feel like it's a little bit of, A little bit better stress than making sure that a family doesn't lose a cabin. Things like that.

But here's the thing. I've realized as an entrepreneur and as I've met now thousands of entrepreneurs and worked with them, we're not in it for the money. We're not even totally in it for the problem solving though. These are all things, you know, that we might be passionate about. We're really in it for the personal development.

Your own personal development.

Yeah.

Okay.

When you really dig into like, why are you trying to do this? There's something inside of us that's like, it's like CrossFit.

Okay.

You know, it's like, I want to be able to do the pull ups, I want to be able to do the squats, I want to be able to do the cleans. I. I like the fact that I'm never perfect at something and I could push myself to another level. Another level. And there's nothing like starting a business to push you emotionally and physically. I mean, just in every aspect.

I can only imagine. That was another thing that I wanted to ask you about is you emphasize a lot your customer satisfaction and just how important that is to creating a sustainable business, sustainable product and delivering. I just want to get your thoughts on that.

There's only one reason a business goes out of business, and that is they stop taking care of the customer.

Okay.

Like if I came to you and said, hey, I've got some financial issues, I need some help, I've got a million people a day wanting to buy my stuff. Can you help me?

Yeah.

That's a problem you can figure out and solve, Right. If you're like, hey, I got a problem, no one likes my product and it's not solving a problem they care about.

Right.

That's really hard to like. Well, then you just need to scrap it and go find something else. So to me, the ultimate boss isn't the CEO. It's not a board, it's the customer. And the best businesses are constantly thinking about that, worried about that. They know at the end of the day, their business lives and dies on how well they can take care of someone else. And that's what I think makes capitalism much more altruistic than people realize. It's not all about profits, because the profits, let's say it is all about the profits. Okay. What does it take to make a profit?

Money over expenses.

Yeah. And how. So the first thing is you've got to have revenue. You've got to have money. Right. Because I don't need accounting or operations if I don't have any revenue coming in. Right. How do I get revenue?

You have to sell something.

I have to sell something on a sustainable. Like I could do one transaction and trick you.

Yeah.

And then you're on Facebook and it's over.

Okay.

You're like Emmett says, a lying cheat. Don't buy a stupid product. Right. So especially with social media and stuff like I have to sell something that solves a problem for you or gives you pleasure, gives you opportunity, excitement, something, and I have to do it on a consistent basis to have consistent, predictable revenue. So at the end of the day, entrepreneurs are out there combing the earth looking for problems to solve for people. Right. That I think is pretty amazing. Right. That's the only way they ever get to profit. When they stop solving a problem for someone, when they really stop bringing value. The whole thing. Like, you don't have to have the government come in and shut it down. People just walk away and it's over. You know, I look at like, yeah, it's, it's so cool because you look at something like Uber and it just destroyed regulation from the government like that because the customers are like, oh, yeah, no, I want that. I want to be able to click on my phone and have a car come and I don't want to have to work with that lousy taxi service. Did you know to be a taxi driver in New York City, you had to have a token. There was a limited amount created and you could buy it from another taxi driver for about $250,000 because they were such a limited resource. The problem with that is the taxi drivers didn't have to provide great service because regulation had created a non capitalistic market.

Sure. They just hold on to their coin and they're good.

Yeah. And as long as they lobbied for the government not to allow any more taxi drivers, then they made a ton of money. That's what created the value of that coin.

Right.

Is to have it. Uber destroyed all of that and made something better for the consumer. Didn't require any lobbying. Well, I mean, it ultimately Required a lot of lobbying, but the first start was just a bunch of customers saying, thank you for making my life better.

Yeah, absolutely. So I was going to ask you, I guess, kind of like Uber and how they evolved from. From an issue like that. What industries do you see here in the future emerging or being revolutionized? And I guess if you have plans to kind of take part in that.

So the place that I'm deepest in, there's so many different opportunities. The place I'm deepest in is healthcare. And here's the reason, like, as an entrepreneur, because we like challenges, right? The reason I like health care is because the businesses with the biggest challenges have the most humans in them. Because humans are crazy.

Okay.

And so when you have to have a lot of humans, you know, if you think about factories, you can get rid of a lot of the humans through robots and automation. If you even think about business services, you know, tax returns, stuff like that, they're giving you a product, right? Healthcare, everything is humans, even the product you're working on as a human. That's a lot of crazy to try to figure out. It's an industry that people say it's sick care, it's this, it's that. It's got issues. I totally agree. I think there's a lot of opportunity to rethink how we do healthcare and to make it more convenient. You know, we're getting there with things like telemedicine and, and stuff like that. But online scheduling for appointments, I mean, what other industry could get away with? Hey, Garrett, thanks for coming in. If you'd fill out this forms of paper. Right. I mean, definitely a restaurant. Nobody else could get away with that, right? So there's just so much there to disrupt and make more convenient for people.

Sure.

I'm just fascinated. I feel like I'm like in the 1970s when I'm in health care. And yet I came from like 2020 and I'm like, what could we do here now? It's not something where you build a software, snap your fingers and it's done. Because there's all this regulatory and of course you don't want to kill people and, you know, all this stuff. But, you know, I mean, Covid just also is like, okay, what could we have done to make that so much more convenient? There's so much regulation. That's weird.

Yeah.

Like your pharmacist can give you a shot for a vaccine, but a dentist who does shots all day long can't give shots for vaccines because there's just this weird Regulation around it, and it's more like people just haven't thought it through, or different groups have tried to protect through legal regulation their hold on the marketplace, and that's not good for the consumer. So.

Yeah, absolutely.

So, yeah, I think healthcare is a fascinating one because it's so complex.

I think even just to myself now that I'm kind of starting to get out on my own and things like that. The healthcare world, to me is just a mystery.

Yeah.

I think with the insurance and things like that, it's just. It is a complex industry. And I think if someone was like yourself, was able to get in there and just simplify it, make it, you know, as easy as, like, the telemedicine and things like that, I think that is a super interesting.

Yeah, the customer service is terrible in healthcare. And that's another place for entrepreneurs to kind of find opportunity is like, where do you think this is terrible? You know, where do you go into a restaurant or go into, you know, business? And you just think, and the hospital system and quick cares and all of those things. We all go in and go, this is terrible.

Yeah, yeah. Just trying to get out of there as fast as possible.

So lots of opportunity there, I think is fun. And when was the last time your doctor called you and said, hey, want to take your blood work? Kind of track where you're at, you know, help you in your health goals, etc. Like, there's none of that. Right. And how cool would that be?

Yeah, that would be. That would be super interesting. I feel like healthcare is. It's all about health, but at the same time, it isn't. It's just about health when you're there. Yeah, yeah. Or sickness. Yeah, I guess would be a better way to better.

It's all about sickness, not about the health piece. And so what could we do to make it more about the health piece?

Sure. That's super interesting. Yeah, that I. My next question. Just some. Some business role models and heroes in your life and kind of people that have inspired you when you were starting. And if that's changed at all over the years.

Yeah, there's some staples out there. Dan Sullivan has a group called Strategic Coach, works with thousands of entrepreneurs. He's got great books. There's, you know, to be completely frank, entrepreneurs are partly created out of the trauma of their childhood. And as you get kind of deeper into entrepreneurship, you realize that part of what's driving us is we're trying to prove something that ties to something in our childhood.

Right.

And that's okay. I think that that motivation's fine, but there are some dysfunctional components to it that you want to work through to have a more mature and healthy relationship with entrepreneurship. Dan Sullivan has some great books around how to do that, and then just different tools and mindsets that I. I love. And I will say therapy in general with counselors has been a huge help for me because if you look at our founding fathers, I love biographies. So that would be another mentor is people read a lot of business books. I think that's fine. There's some problems with them. They're too alpha male oriented. Like, create your vision and then drive your team. And it's much more collaborative and you're much more uncertain than the way it sounds like. It's more like, try this, and if it fails, try this. It's much more experimental than they put out there and you're much more reliant on your team. Biographies help. You see all that. Biographies help. I mean, like, I love the play Hamilton because it kind of introduced people to biographies again, you know, through rap music. But you see the ups and downs of this guy, like what he created for the nation, what his ambition did for him, where it hurt him as well. And our founding fathers really looked at ambition and said, how do I use it as a strength, but not as a destruction? So, anyway, I love that. I love Alex Charfen. He's got a podcast, Momentum podcast. Really good. I love how I built this. Yeah, yeah, that's so good. Because it's more honest kind of biography. Right. Of like. And then I almost went bankrupt. Yeah. So I. Yeah, I don't know. You got some of those that you like.

Yeah, no, actually, I think I listen to Tim Ferriss a lot.

Oh, yeah?

Yeah. I listen to a lot of military podcasts and I think one of the things.

Jocko.

Jocko Willink. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I. I think one of the things that podcasting does very well is, like you said, it's a lot more. It's just honest.

Yeah, authentic.

Yeah, authentic. Right. People are telling their story and not so much just a five minute clip of the results. Right.

Yeah.

And I think that that's something that has been super valuable to me, you know, when I'm not able. Because I love biographies as well, but when I'm not able to sit down and read a book about it, I can listen to it basically, maybe in a more real sense in the car on my way to work. Right. Things like that. So I think that that's another industry that's going to continue to grow is the podcasting media type.

And how do you think that'll disrupt education?

Well, I think it's a much less formal way to be educated, and I think it provides a lot more realistic education. I think that, you know, as opposed to. Because a lot of the things that I've learned since graduating high school or even in high school have been from podcasts and things that have made a lasting impact on me that I remember to this day, that I remember very little about high school. So I think that's an interesting point that I haven't even really thought about.

Yeah. Because I've often wondered if we had YouTube and podcasting when Einstein was around and we were able to capture kind of his thinking along the way. What's going to happen as we capture some of these best thinkers and we get to build on their platform? Like, as a physicist, what's the value of that? Like, why go to school when I can just learn from the best of history? Right. Is that the new school system? Is that. And you see this with, like, Masterclass and some of these other platforms that are coming out is. It's almost new educational delivery systems that I think will be interesting.

Yeah, I hadn't even thought about that. That is a really, really interesting, interesting.

And they're much more surgical. And they're also. You're able to be like, I really want to learn this history thing right now. Grab it. Right. So it's like. It's like the pupil and the teacher are just ready for each other instantly.

Yeah. I never thought about that. I was going to ask you. In your business career, I'm sure you've had several ups and downs. I really wanted to talk about the downs and how, you know, what those were and how. How you overcome. Overcame that. You talked a little bit about it, about funding and things like that, but just wanted to get you input there.

So when you're really down, you know, I mean, I've had the fetal position, not want to get out of bed, crying, what am I doing with my life? What's the purpose of life? You know, nobody loves me. I mean, no one appreciates it. I've had those moments, and I've had instances where the government was coming after our business. And that's very intimidating because they have unlimited resources and they have the ability to push PR out there. And, you know, it's. It's hard to overcome. So how do you. How do you build into that? And where do you. Where do you go? So for me, the spiritual components have been. I Mean, I don't know how I would have navigated it without it. You know, our church doctrine that earth life is a time to prepare for our future, for our future to become like God makes this whole thing its own education system, right? And so as soon as you're able to step back and say, well, if I'm just here to learn, maybe the stakes aren't as high as I'm making them, right? So that's been super helpful.

This isn't the end all, be all.

This isn't end all be all. If this business fails, if this, you know, I'd rather not go to prison or jail, but if this falls apart, heart, what did I learn from it? Nobody could take that away from me. I will leave this earth with. With new experiences that others were too scared to try and take on. So I'm like, okay, that. That's helpful for me, knowing that I'm sealed to my wife, that my family is eternal. That doctrine has. Has been a huge foundation for me because I'm like, if you can take everything else away from me, but not my family, those really low moments, I'm like, well, then what's most important to me, I've got, I can go live in an apartment or with friends and take all my kids with me, and I can rebuild with my knowledge, knowing that my family's with me forever. So those become, you know, gospel doctrine type things become real foundation stones as an entrepreneur because you're taking risks that, you know, others would never do. And so you, with those highs also becomes these very big lows. Now you've got kind of the middle lows, too, that are still painful, like, feeling like, am I just doing things wrong? Am I leading everyone in the wrong direction? Did I make a fatal mistake in designing the business? You've got the times where, you know, right now we're doing a merger and you're just ground down by all the legal stuff. And you're like, this isn't what I signed up for. I want to go change the world, not change paragraph two, verse three, you know, of this sentence for the 400th time. But I think in all of that, it comes back to Garrett. Like, but if none of that was happening, wouldn't you be a little bit bored and then go sign up to do something bigger?

So, yeah, it takes. It takes both. It takes the highs and the lows. Yeah, and that was. I'm glad that you mentioned the spiritual aspect of it, because I haven't heard a lot of entrepreneurs, but also just successful people who maybe weren't entrepreneurs that might not even be religious, but they still mention that spiritual aspect of just that balance and how necessary it is. So I wanted to ask. I watched your interview on Newsmax and just want to ask you to elaborate a little bit more about your relationship with religion and business and just kind of how you balance that.

So.

And how important it is.

Yeah, it's an interesting time because as the world gets more socially progressive, which I think super positive, religion sometime is looked at as something that's traditional and not as progressive. And so there can be some discrimination of, hey, you can talk about your gender preferences, but you can't talk about your religious preferences. Right. And I think we need freedom in all aspects of this area. The religious component, that spiritual component. Yeah. It's interesting that every entrepreneur kind of goes there because, like, this hits at a deep, a deep place of, like, meaning. Like, what am I trying to. What's my mission here on this earth? And you're trying to juggle everything you're doing in your business with what you're doing with your four year olds, you know, with what you're building a relationship with your spouse. Like, some of the biggest entrepreneurship I've done is, is get married.

Okay.

I'd never been married before, you know, so I'm just making it up as I go. And intimate relationships are by far the most complex. They hit on things and triggers and traumas and different points that you didn't even know you had. And so, I mean, all of that requires some kind of like, spiritual foundation around life purpose. And of course, you know, our doctrine is, hey, we were, we were spirits before we came here to this earth. We've come here to this earth to gain a body, to gain experience and to progress and to become like God. That doctrine is like the ultimate entrepreneurial journey.

Wow.

Yeah, right? Like, like we signed up for something like, heck, yeah, I want to try that. I want to take that on. And then we're reliant upon a being, Jesus Christ, who was perfect in his virtue and his kindness and his desire to bring the ultimate value to the human race.

Right.

He said, listen, one of the things you're going to deal with is shame, guilt and unworthiness. And I'm going to take all of that on, which gives this freedom for us to go make mistakes. Right. It gives us freedom for us to not have to blame anybody else. Like, we can completely own it, but not own it in a way that it's going to crush us.

Sure, yeah.

And so takes a Little bit of that burden. Yeah. He takes all that burden. Yeah. So what does it require of me? It requires an element of faith, repentance, which really. Repentance. I like Neely Maxwell's definition, which is to change your mind. Well, that's ultimate entrepreneurship, which is to have paradigm shifts to continue to progress and learn and go, oh, I did that wrong. I'm going to try this way. Fail faster. Right. Those kinds of things. So repentance really lines up. It requires that and then some level of ordinance. Take action and show that you're committed. But those are all such minimal for the return of. All right, let's play the game.

Yeah. Yeah, I remember actually, I was probably 15 or 16 maybe, and I remember you came and spoke to us at a. As a youth night that we did. And you mentioned that God the Father and Jesus Christ were like the ultimate entrepreneurs, the ultimate creators. And just how us as, you know, God the Father's children are, you know, we're trying to become like him and we're trying to. To create and. Yeah, to be perfect. And I just thought that that was such an interesting. I had never thought about it like that before, that they were the ultimate creators, the ultimate entrepreneurs. They created the earth, they designed and created our bodies and are overseeing their 7 billion employees that are on the earth right now.

Children in the ultimate development process.

Yeah, exactly. Their pre existence, their existence here and then their success, you know, after we die. And I just. That was just such an interesting perspective that I never thought about before.

You'll also, as you mature as an entrepreneur, you realize that things become less and less about you, and you do naturally become more and more passionate about the success of your team. In parenthood, you feel this immediately. You actually want your children to achieve. Not the same as you. You actually want them to achieve better than you.

Yeah.

Like, it's interesting because with children, if. If my kid said, hey, dad, I built a better, bigger business than you. Not that that's a requirement, or I care if they do, but if they did, I wouldn't think to myself, what, well, I got to do better than you.

I raised them.

Yeah, exactly. I don't feel any competitive. I would actually feel like, holy smokes, how could I help? Right? And you start to feel that with your own team initially, you kind of see your team as like the workers to help you achieve your dreams. If that changes where you're actually like, how do I help them achieve their development and their dreams? And I think that that is a godlike progression because I Think God's intent, as the scriptures say, is to. For us to receive everything he has. I think he doesn't have an intimidation factor of like, well, I hope they don't get to the same level I'm at.

Right.

I think it's like, how cool would that be? Right. How cool would that be to continue to progress and to learn to that level? So I don't know. When you start looking at an eternal perspective, this is a pretty fun, amazing, and blessed place to be.

Yeah, absolutely. I totally agree.

Lots of service to do.

Absolutely. Yeah.

Either through capitalism or some other means. It's the same principles.

Okay, yeah, that was another thing is, I just. I think that a lot of successful entrepreneurs always have that element of giving and service that really distinguishes, I guess, truly successful people is that they don't feel attached to that so much so that they can't use it to benefit others. And that's something that I've, obviously, I've seen from. From you and community dental partners and I mean, a lot of other guys that I associate with, that they're able to put others first, primarily their family, but then help others succeed as well. And that's something that, yeah, when you

meet entrepreneurs, you do see their generosity. And I think it comes from the foundation of they had to create a product that benefited others. And then that just continues to evolve of like, okay, what can I do to benefit others? The compensation for that changes. Seeing the smile on someone's face, knowing that somebody has something that they couldn't have achieved on their own becomes its own compensation. I mean, frankly, there's only so many dollars. I think that they figured out that after 50 or 60,000, whatever the dollar amount is, that the happiness ratio of the human, once you've got shelter and your basic needs, it's pretty incremental, and it probably deteriorates at some point at too many funds and not enough purpose. So I think the type of compensation you want, changes you want, you want the success of seeing somebody else succeed. You know, those kind of things. You hear entrepreneurs all the time talking about how mentoring is becoming, like, very invigorating for them. You know that seeing other entrepreneurs like yourself becomes much more interesting than. Can I make another dollar?

Sure.

It's like, I've been there, done that.

Yeah, absolutely. Which I think everybody is trying to. To get to that point.

Yeah, yeah.

Wrapping it up. I just wanted to ask you about any books or podcasts or any. Any sort of media like that that have made an impact on you, that you're working on now and anything that you've learned from that?

Well, I think early stage Rich Dad, Poor dad is very inspiring for a lot of people. So I kind of always put that one out there. Though most entrepreneurs have have read that. I like crucial conversations because again, the human component becomes the most complex, the skill set. I read over a hundred books on financial investing when I was a financial planner and they say if you read 12 books on a subject, then you're in the top 5% expert knowledge. So I try to read as much as I can, but I found that human interaction is by far the most common, complex. So crucial conversations. I really like Radical Candor. It's a new one by Kim Scott. I say new last few years. She used to work at Google and Apple and everywhere else and she's amazing and I love her framework for how to lead. In fact, I'm doing a presentation for a church youth group and I'm going to use some of her principles. I like Jocko Willink. He's Extreme ownership and the Dichotomy of Leadership. A lot of people haven't read that one is really good on. Like, it's not humility or confidence. You've got to figure out the dichotomy between the two. I always say the straight, narrow path isn't on one stream or the other. It's right down the middle. So I really like that book. E. Myth was a great foundation for like, hey, you got to systemize things. Tim Ferriss four Hour Work Week was more like really thinking about what's important and what's not, as far as action and taking activity. Like, how can you systemize your life more?

Yeah.

You know, I love all his stuff anyway. Alex Charfen podcast. Love him for just what he's done as far as breaking down the mindsets of entrepreneurs and the tools they need and really simplify them. So anyway, that'd be a few.

Yeah. Well, that's a great list. And again, I, I really appreciate your time and sitting down with me and hopefully this will be of some benefit to some people and. Yeah, anyways, just, just wanted to congratulate you on, on all that you achieved so far and, and how you've helped others achieve that same success.

Yeah. Well, thanks, brother. Thanks for calling me and setting up this interview and good luck, BYU, Idaho.

Yeah. Good luck on your CrossFit championships.

Yeah, thanks. It's been awesome.

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