130: Using Finance as Your Strategic Lens

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 rad out of 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. Happy day to you and welcome to another episode of DSO Secrets. I am Ken Kaufman, your host today. I'm very excited about today's episode titled using finance as your strategic lens and super thrilled to have our two amazing guests with us today, Austin Moffatt and T. Hughes. So I'll give a quick bio on each of them. First of all, T. Hughes is the CEO of DSO cfo. He focuses on the financial strategies for their clients. He received from Brigham Young University in strategy and entrepreneurship. He had a period of time where he was a strategy consultant in Hong Kong, China, Taiwan, France for multinational corporations. And he's now owned several DSOs. And in creating this CFO DSO organization, he has a lot of energy to try to help growing groups figure out the right and the best way to do things. He currently lives in Maui with his wife and three kids. T. So thrilled to have you on the show.

Yeah, super excited to be here. Thanks, Ken.

Awesome. And then Austin, he's over business development at DSO cfo. He loves interacting with doctors, learning about their businesses, learning how they're trying to grow. And prior to this, he worked directly with several dental practices around the country, overseeing finance and accounting functions. And let's see, prior to working in the dental industry, he was the director of finance in the marketing industry for over five years. He lives in North San Diego county with his two kids and two.

Two dogs.

Austin, welcome to the show.

Thanks, Ken. Yeah, excited. This is great.

I. Like I said, I'm excited for this. So first of all, I want to ask each of you this question. You can each answer separately and I think we got a little bit into it in the bios. T. What is it that's brought you into this DSO industry and what in the world are you still doing here?

Well, I think for. For me, what brought me to the DSO industry was the opportunity to take. Take a business to the next level. And the opportunity that I had with my first partner when we started our DSO was that we were in an interesting space in dentistry. It wasn't an industry that I was particularly familiar with, but I was always fascinated with. And so getting into it and structuring our DSO and learning everything and kind of figuring everything out was pretty exciting and not having a lot of signposts along the way. And so we were going to these conferences and trying to figure out whatever we could figure out. And to me, that was really interesting. It's like chasing after that and figuring out how we could do something that didn't seem to have been done before. And I think the reason why we stay in it is because I still am passionate about growing DSOs and helping other people to have those signposts and see here things that I can be doing to move my business along and not have to make the same mistakes that we did.

Awesome. Appreciate that. Austin, how about you?

You know, I've been in a small business since day one, really. My brother's been quite heavily involved in dental for the last 20 years, and he knew that I was in accounting and finance background. He had a couple clients that needed some help. I took over their books, and I acted as a fractional CFO or controller in some of those instances. And I learned that dental practices, it's just another form of small business. It's just in a completely different industry. It's the same thing, same type of revenue, same type of functions, if you will, just different in a different industry, different niches, different everything. It's really kept me. It's really clinged me on to the industry. And I love small business. I feel like every single employee, every single decision can make such a large impact on such a business. And so for me, I'm still in here because I feel like I provide value every single day that I give value with the knowledge that I have with both accounting and finance. And it's really fun to see businesses take shape. You know, some of your. Some of your suggestions, some of the things that you're seeing. So it's been a massive value add to me personally.

Awesome. So today we're talking about how to make finance your strategic lens into the business to help you figure out how to obviously improve and grow and overcome whatever challenges are there. So maybe we kick it off with this question. What are some of the barriers that you guys see right now in small groups and folks as well as groups that have become DSOs? What are the primary barriers between them using their financials as a finance or as that lens that strategic lens versus those who aren't. How'd you frame that?

Yeah, I really like that question, actually, because I feel like what we're seeing a lot of times is people that are these burgeoning DSOs. Oftentimes what happens is the thing that's keeping them from taking advantage of that is that the idea that they have to just get acquisition as quickly as possible. And so as opportunities present themselves, the idea is we have to get this no matter what, because we have to make sure that we have enough to do this, enough practices to do this, or enough practices to have financing that we want or whatever it might be. And so it's chasing that growth. And I think that oftentimes prevents them from really utilizing efficiencies in their financials that could be had if they were. They were at a pace that. Or a growth pace that made sense. And so I think. So the converse to that would be that you see these groups that do really well are the ones that have a clear strategy of this is what we want to accomplish and this is financially how we're going to get there. And there's that incongruity that makes it difficult for some of these groups to figure out like, oh, we've got to finance these and then we've got to find a solution instead of, okay, this is what we're dealing with. And realistically this is what's happening at the practices. So this is what we have to do from a finance level.

So what I'm hearing you say is a lot of reactionary growth initiatives as opposed to well thought out plan to growth initiatives that fit into kind of that long term vision and plan. Is that, is that a fair way to.

Absolutely, yeah. Yeah, well said. And I would say that the groups that we've seen that go off track, right. And don't pay attention to financials, those are the ones that end up having. Not that it's impossible, but it creates more difficulties because when you start going off track of what your strategy is, and I think that sometimes it's figuring out what that strategy is. But you know, if you're a, if you're a pedo group and you start chasing down opportunities that aren't fitting within that, that pedo model, then that can cause like pretty significant difficulties. So it's having that like clear strategy of where are we trying to go and what are we trying to accomplish.

Outstanding. Austin, what would you add to that? Again, barriers to groups actually using their financials as the strategic lens?

I mean, yeah, I mean, I Mean, piggybacking off of T, really, it's, it's simply put, I think it's just making decisions based on not having facts. Right. It's again, almost, almost echoing T. It's these groups that just want to grow, grow, grow, grow, grow. They're finding any way possible to get funding to be able to grow. And you know, it might be a huge goal that they're chasing, might be maybe a little bit of a pride factor. Right. That's involved there. But it's making these decisions regardless of whether or not their financials are a even complete, that they're even reviewing. Maybe they are complete and they're just not reviewing. Or maybe they are. Maybe they don't have trust. Right. In what they're seeing in their financials and they're making these decisions anyways. Or maybe it's, you know, they just want to go forward. Right. And so I think, I think that's what it is. It's simply making business decisions based off of actual accurate financial data.

Yeah. And it seems like to some degree, financial performance becomes an afterthought as opposed to the thought. Because ultimately, if we're going to go do a whole bunch of activity but move backward from a profitability perspective or from a growth perspective and put ourselves in harm's way as a result, we've completely undermined everything we're trying to do and accomplish. So it seems like financials become an afterthought and they don't. And we're just not strategically looking at them and using them in the proper way. Is that a fair way to frame that?

Yeah, totally. No, I agree with that. Great.

Any other barriers you can think of that are keeping people from using, which. And I liked Austin, you said a couple of things there that were interesting, which is when you have inaccurate financial statements, no wonder they become an afterthought because you look at them, they don't make sense. It doesn't.

Or maybe it's too slow, right? Maybe. Maybe. And that's the other thing. Maybe you're growing so rapidly that you might not have the back office team to give you data in a timely manner that you need to make decisions by. Right. I mean, we know that when you operate and start working with banks or other lenders. Right. Other financing firms, that there are deadlines, there are timelines for things, and if you're not able to meet their deadlines based on not having a strong support team, then that again, I think accounting, like you said, it becomes an afterthought because it's always funny. As I mentioned in my bio, working in small businesses, oftentimes they are CEOs or people that don't necessarily understand accounting. In fact, I'm quoting a former employer who said that they thought all you had to do was push a button to generate financials. That's not the case, and there's a lot that goes into it. I think there's perhaps that lack of understanding of generating that data to be able to make decisions. So I think. I think. Yeah, I think that that's a factor as well.

Well, and t. Then, too, you also have the situation where. When they're not accurate or when they're more of an afterthought and not being thought about, you know, correctly, it almost seems like the biggest challenge is, is that these groups can get out ahead of their skis. Totally. Yeah. Walk me through that concept. Like, how. How does that work? What does that look like? How would I diagnose myself if I'm a. If I'm a dentist and building a group? How would I diagnose if I'm out ahead of my skis if I'm not using my financials correctly? Help me with that.

Go ahead, T. So going back to your question about the barriers, though, something that kind of straddles both of these questions is paying attention to the right things or ignoring the wrong things. And I think what happens is we go to these conferences, and I'm not, like, pointing the finger at anyone. I did these, you know, when I went to the Mastery Connect conferences out in Scottsdale, I was sitting there going like, okay, cool. Yeah, my supplies check. Yeah. And so then I was like, okay, my financials are fine. I'm within the realm. And the problem is the story. A financial statement tells a different story, and you have to pay attention to that story. So it might be. Yeah. That your dental supplies are totally in line with 4 to 6%. And so you're, like, feeling like, okay, good, I'm good to go. My relationship with my supplier is fine. But ultimately, if.

What's.

If the type of dentistry that you're doing doesn't make sense for that, or there's something on your financial sheet that's telling you that's way out of whack, then the fact that your supplies are okay negates the fact that something is way out of whack. And so I think a lot of times people just think like, oh, well, I've got this. And so they check off the box instead of looking at the whole story. And I think that's critical for figuring out, you know, overcoming that one barrier of like, oh, I've got my financials figured out. I think it's more than just I've got my financials figured out and they're getting sent to me and I'm looking at them and it's like, okay, I've got money at the end. And I think that when you start paying attention to the things that are outside of, like, what you would normally think of. And I think so that's what I think. I think a lot of people are paying attention to the wrong things on their financial statements just because they're thinking, okay, well, that's a cost center, and this is a cost center. I've got to pay attention to those. And there are areas that might be less efficient, like doctor compensation. When you're looking at doctor compensation and you're an owner and you're also in the chair, which we're finding a lot, and your doctor comp, you're looking at it and you're like, well, this is competitive in the industry. But then you're spending less time in the chair because you're managing the dso, and then you're offsetting by putting more onto the, onto the associates. But that's not translating into what you want for the business. Right. Because you're handing back a lot of that potential ebitda. You're giving that out instead of having that hyper focus on what you should be doing as a doctor.

Awesome. Okay, so there's a lot of latent opportunity that's sitting inside these financial statements. We've established that. And the barriers are there's multiple reasons why they're there. So walk our listeners through. So what are the steps I take? How fast should I be getting my financials? How do I determine if they're accurate? And then who's going to help me understand what I should care about and what I shouldn't care about on those statements? And maybe let me just preface this. I believe our listeners, which are they're mostly dentist entrepreneurs, they're extremely smart. They just chose to focus their smarts on becoming amazing dentists, whereas you two chose to focus your smarts on really learning and understanding finance and accounting. And so it's not that they're not smart, it's just that they don't have the experience and the depth of, you know, what's really going on. So help us understand, like walk, walk us through what are the steps they should be thinking about in order to get to the right place when it comes to Using these financials as your strategic lens. Too big of a question. Should we buy?

No, I'm waiting to see who wants to take that one.

Go ahead, T. No, I was just writing some notes. I think the steps. Well, it's hard to check the accuracy of your financial statements unless you're really in the financial statements. And I think there's litmus tests that you can do by throwing your financials out to different groups that can check it for you. Right. Like, if you feel comfortable with your accountant, there's nothing wrong with going to a secondary group and saying, hey, I just want to make sure the reconciliations are happening. We have a client right now that they've been doing their financials for, I don't know, five, six years, and they've been doing the financials themselves. And in that time period, they've never done a reconciliation.

And so I'll throw this in T. Apologize for the interruption. But for our listeners, here's a secret. The accuracy of your financial statements has nothing to do with your P and L. It has to do with every account on your balance sheet being reconciled. And that's generally something that our listeners aren't looking at. And not that they need to be experts in it, but to the degree that's reconciled, that means what you're looking at on your profit and loss statement is accurate.

Well,

the balance sheet is boring, right, Ken? The balance sheet's boring. It's the P and L where I think your pride hangs. But no, I mean, you're right. It is the balance sheet. It's. Hey, is my bank. My bank account usually floats around 50 to $70,000 roughly at the end of each month. In terms of how much cash flow is it really showing? 130. Wow. Right? I mean. I mean, that's. That's it. And it's. Anyways, just to echo you completely that day and kind of going off of what T was saying in terms of checking. Yeah. You've got your third parties. That's always good. Having what we call just like a shadow. Right. Or an oversight, like a monthly oversight. Make sure things are good. But what will always. What will always be the best and the most comfortable from a doctor or practice owner is having that review, that monthly review of your financials, drilling into certain accounts. Wow. Are my dental supplies really this high? Can we go take a look at those? Oh, looks like there's a couple of lab fees that slipped into these dental supplies. Okay. Wow. Let's take a look at some of these office expenses, our computer expenses. Hey, we bought three computers for a couple of new employees. Those are large expenses. You know what, those could really be capitalized and shaded over time. Sorry.

Yes, it's Austin. So walk me through this, this review process. So every month you get this set of information. Do you recommend that our listeners are like, lock themselves in a room and review it independently or should they have their advisor there with them or their accountant walking them through and helping them see and understand?

It depends on that. Yeah, it depends on their level. And I think you asked earlier, one of the components of this question is when do you, when should you expect financials? By the following month, there should be a predetermined date after the month is closed. And so by the 15th or the 20th or some date that you've determined with your accounting group, that's when you should be getting the financials. Because it needs to be enough time for them to make sure the financials are correct. But it also needs to be not so far away that you're removed from actual relevant data. And so I think that's an important part is making sure that you're getting them in a timely way. And as far as like whether you should have your advisor in, obviously it would make sense to have your advisor. And unless you are someone that can do it yourself. I mean, if you've, we, we've had, we've had people that have come to us and said, hey, I, I decided I wanted to go get my MBA at this major university as I was doing dentistry, and it just felt like the right thing and then we were fine. Then you probably are at a point where you could analyze those financial statements and get through. But I think if you're, here's a good way. If you're getting through your financial statements and you're reviewing them for the month and you're looking at those financial statements and you're saying, okay, looks good to go. If that's happening every time, then you probably need an advisor. If you're feeling like these financial statements are good every time and you're just like checking that off the box that you, quote, unquote, reviewed the financials, you probably need an advisor.

Yeah, yeah. I'll just append one thing to that. If you're saying it's all good and you're not walking away with some ideas of things where you could dig in, learn some more about the business, maybe change some of your assumptions on certain things or challenge your assumptions based on numbers. So maybe if I could append, that would be the wicked combination the duo of. If you say they're all good and you're not getting any insights as to how you might be able to improve things, that's a sign. An advisor could probably dig in and help you with that.

Totally agree. Go ahead, Austin.

Listen, I think, and it's not rocket science by any means, but you should be looking at these financials. As a business owner with the expense management cap on, what can I look to cut? What is really necessary? Did we really need to spend this massive lunch for our whole team? Yeah, maybe we did. You know what I mean? So you always have to come in with that expense management cap on, looking to see where can you cut costs, where can you cut expenses? Because, I mean, here's the thing, and to be honest with you, you know, as, as we, as we take on clients as fractional CFOs, you know, we come in with that expense management hat all the time. I mean, listen, there's, there's 1 to 6 to 10 revenue line items at the top, there's 50 plus expense line items at the bottom that you should be looking at every single month. Where can you cut? You know, where can you lessen? Are these things really necessary? Right. And so that's, that's, you know, I think that that's the approach that you take.

I love it. And here, here's one of, one of the reasons why I love that the most. There's two reasons, Austin. The first one is dental continues to be a very high margin business. And because it's high margin, you know, we're not a grocery store where 3% margin is, is ideal. Like if you could have a 3% profit and every, every percent counts in terms of trying to make that store profitable. In dentistry, where we have stores that are hitting 15, 20, 25% margins, those big margins sometimes make us feel like we're really smart and amazing and our costs are just fine. The second one is revenue has a tendency to cover a multitude of cents for a while.

Right.

Eventually catches up to you. And so having that expense hat on and realizing there's, there's a big truck with bags of money on it, and there are bags dropping off the back end as you're driving toward that next acquisition or that next growth initiative and realizing, hey, if we slow down, we can possibly keep more of this money on, which means we have more money to invest for growth. Again, just some thoughts.

My favorite example is when I sat down with a group and was working with them on their financial statements. They had, and they were definitely within that threshold of 4 to 6% on dental supplies. And the CEO was thinking, there might be something different that we can do here, we might be able to save in here. And he went back and he negotiated a deal with his supplier to get down to. I think it was like something never over 2.8%. And on a group that's doing $28 million, 2.8% is substantial. That delta between him being, I think it was like 4.25% down to 2.8%. That's significant. And when you look at stuff like that, you think, oh, well, that's good enough or that's fine. And that is fine. And you can focus on the growth. But in our onboarding process, we sit down every time in our onboarding process and we talk about the difference between your EBITDA and thinking about taking a dollar in and 20 cents going into your pocket versus every time that you cut something on the expense category, that's an entire dollar back into your pocket. And I think that mentality of, like, if I want to grow my business, I have to bring in more new patients. That is the panacea that everyone thinks, like, oh, I can just put more into my marketing expenses or I can do this or whatever, and that'll bring more. That is, I is accurate in its own light, but it's tragic when it's so heavily focused on and not focused on the things that they can change that are probably a lot easier.

Cool.

All right, so I want to take this now. We could probably jam on this for another couple hours in reality, but I think the listeners have got a good kind of overview and some thoughts about lock down a date when you should be getting those financials during the following month, when that month is over, and then start thinking about what insights you're gaining out of the financial statements so they can help form strategy, the next one. Because we started to touch on this, and I want to go a little deeper on this is when should you have an advisor or not? And sometimes These are called CFOs, fractional CFOs. Sometimes it's, you know, an outsourced CPA and those sorts of things. And I know you guys do these types of things for your clients. And so it might be really helpful for the listeners to hear what are the signs that are telling them they need an outside advisor to help and what should they expect from that? What would be the outcomes that would help them be running the business better.

Right? Yeah. So I think, you know, my, my answer's funny and Simple. If you're looking to grow, if you have a practice. Right. And if, well, there's a couple, couple of directions. Right. If you have a practice, you're fine with, with, with your one practice, Right. But you're looking to improve some things and need some guidance. Yeah. Then you probably want someone every now and again taking a look over your shoulder, looking at your, your financials, pointing some things out, creating some goals and action plans. Right. More realistically, though, if you're looking to grow from 1 to 2, 1 to whatever, 2 to 5, it doesn't really matter. If you're looking to grow, regardless, now is the time. Now is the time to have like a fractional CFO come on your side or an advisor, like you mentioned, because you want to make sure that you're doing things right from the very beginning. You want to make sure a. And this kind of goes back to, goes back to the first question and the first conversation is you don't want to grow too quickly. You want to make sure that you have your foundations dialed in. Because that's what you're going to look. Excuse me, that's what you're going to look for as you grow. If you have your supplies at 4 to 6%, like T said, maybe you have lab fees around 4 to 5% as well. Right. You're going to use your, your initial practice as your reference as you grow and grow, grow and grow. And so it's now, I mean, I mean, it's never a bad idea to make sure that you are dialed in and that you have financial data supporting your decisions. I mean, and that's the beauty is we've been talking about accounting, and then you have finance. Those are two separate things, which is sometimes hard to believe, but it is, it's true. Accounting is looking backwards, looking at actual historical data. Finance, which is where the CFO role kind of comes in, is looking forward. You're looking at projections. You're using that historical data to look forward. And so as you do that and as you build out and you make decisions and you create scenario plans based off of data, right. It's what does that look like? And are my decisions sound and what does that look like potentially moving forward on a future P and L, Right.

Yeah. I would say that a lot of people actually have approached us with this, with this topic because they're interested in some sort of like, final tick that will be like, okay, now I know I gotta get like a outside group or I've got to get an accountant. That's more Involved than just sending me financial statements in an email, in a PDF. And I think for me a major indicator of where you are as far as whether you need a fractional CFO or you need an advisor or something like that, is how are you feeling

about

the growth of your business? When you're making an acquisition or you're thinking about an acquisition, are you feeling like you have a clear understanding of how this is going to fit with your strategy? Are you looking through this acquisition as, and I throw this out as a joke, but like, you know, do they have the right type of fish tank in the, in the entryway? Right. And I think sometimes we throw these trivial things because it's got like, it's the perfect practice, but it's got these things that maybe need to be worked on, but like it's what we want. Right. And I think when you're feeling like, are you getting through that acquisition, are you looking at that acquisition or are you looking at that new operatory? Are you doing it and thinking, well, we've got enough money, or are you doing it because you're like, this is going to be a sound business decision? And I think when you're, when you're debating with yourself on whether that decision, if you're being honest with yourself, if you're debating that decision and you're thinking, I don't know if I've really looked at this as closely as I, as maybe I could be if I were paying attention to the whole picture with all the data involved. And that to me, I mean, that's kind of, hopefully that doesn't sound as convoluted as it sounds as it, I'm hearing it. But the point being, like, if you're, if you're making decisions and you're not feeling like I feel fully supported in this decision because I've connected all the dots and taken all the data points, then that to me is like a great indication of maybe I don't need a full blown financial silo in my company, but maybe I need someone that's going to help me out there.

Yeah. And maybe I could layer something onto that. I think in dentistry especially, I think the equipment vendors are really good at showing up and saying, here, you need to buy this scanner, you need to do this and you need to do CBCT in your practice and all these different things. And to the degree, because what I hear you saying is it's thinking about what's the real roi, besides, hey, this seems like a good idea, like actually investigating and coming up with Assumptions. But the piece I wanted to add to the end of years T is not just somebody who helps you evaluate if it's a good idea, but then somebody who holds the organization accountable afterwards to say, yeah, we actually did get the return or no, that was not a smart use of money and we need to learn from that moving forward. And all that ROI or return on investment that that equipment vendor was promising us, it just didn't work in our business and it didn't make sense in our business. So there's some, there's a little bit of accountability too because sometimes we like to buy things or invest in things and then just hope they're working out rather than really deep diving and evaluating. So maybe that's a little, a little bit of an add or a twist to what you said just to get our listeners minds thinking about when could they use that advisor that's in there looking around, poking around and trying to make the business efficient. Any.

Well, that's the, yeah, that's the definition. That's the definition of a good advisor. If they're telling you no on things, then that's a good advisor. They're saying don't buy that scanner because yeah, that ROI sheet that they've created for you does make sense in isolation, but it doesn't make sense from the bigger picture of what you're trying to accomplish. So if you have advisors that are only telling you yes, or you're calling up your accountant and saying what do you think about this? And they're just giving you like you know, yes, speak, or they're just, or

they're telling you go ahead because of the Section 179 depreciation, you should go

ahead and buy it.

Right?

Yeah, right.

Well, because they're looking at it as a transaction and they're looking at it in isolation. And that's not what that, that's my, this is very subjective, but that in my opinion is the last thing that DSOs need. What these DSOs need is they need a trajectory, someone that's going to push them in the trajectory and tell them the opportunity cost is real. That opportunity cost is a real thing. You have to pay attention to it. If you don't, you get distracted and it screws up your target and you end up missing it. We see it. I'm. You asked, you were asking us or asked earlier about what we're passionate about. I'm passionate about that. Seeing these things, these mistakes that are happening where I'm saying, no, it doesn't need to happen. We don't need to be doing that stuff as an industry. We don't have to be going down that. We don't have to be keeping, you know, marching the same way. We can go in and say, no, I. This, this is a better way. We can go after, pay attention to the things that are really going to grow our business and make really sound businesses. Instead of, like, the trajectory of, like, I'm just going to sell off or I'm just going to do that, like, make a strong business and then decide what to do with the business. I think that is. There's huge opportunity in doing that.

That's amazing. Great, great feedback. I think, you know, maybe some other time we could get together and do a deeper jam session on when. When do you need that fractional CFO and those sorts of things. But I think our listeners have gotten a really great overview from the two of you. Some great things to be thinking about and measuring. Where am I at and how am I making decisions and how clearly am I following my plan that I'm setting for myself versus being a little bit of the squirrel? I like when that next exciting thing comes along. All of those are things that using your financials as that strategic lens can help guide us through. So we are going to jump to our lightning round. Our listeners really love this.

So.

And we've got two of you. So we've got to go extra fast here because it's a lightning round, but we need quick answers. Get seven questions. Every guest on the show has to answer these seven questions. Why don't we go in order of. We'll go Austin and T on each of them. So Austin, you go first and then T. First of all, what are you currently working on?

Oh, man. Personally, anything. Getting in shape.

Very nice. Along with all the rest of us, except for T. He's pretty built. All right, T, how about you? What are you currently working on?

We're trying to bring technology into the whole process. So as far as doing valuations is concerned, we're really, like, heavily focused on how we incorporate technology to be more efficient. So I think that actually lends to us being a better service and providing better service.

Fantastic. All right, Austin, what are you the most proud of?

You know, I think it's. It's providing understanding to our doctors who, like you mentioned, aren't, you know, they're very smart, but they didn't necessarily go to accounting school. Right. And so making things simple for. So that they can understand it better.

Awesome.

T. I'm going to have to go on the Personal side of this. I. I'm super proud of my kids. They're. They're awesome, and they keep putting themselves out there, and they do some amazing stuff. It's hard not getting into the specifics of it, but that's what I'm feeling today.

That's awesome.

Great. Love it.

Favorite sports team, Austin.

I'm a big soccer fan. Barcelona and Spain. Been following them for about 20 years. Yeah, been fun. All right.

I did not see that coming. That's pretty cool.

I was actually in Barcelona three years ago to a big soccer game there. Yeah, it was amazing. Hope to be back.

All right, T. Yeah.

Austin's going to be mad at me for this one, but I'm a Manchester United fan.

All right. I love the rivalry and coworkers all at the same time. Austin, favorite hobby?

You know, CrossFit. Actually, I've been in CrossFit the past 12 months, kicking my butt every day, but it's been great.

Good for you, T.

Surfing.

I thought it was going to be surfing. You can't live in Maui and surfing not be your number one hobby.

I think for anyone that knows me, that's kind of a funny thing to say, but I love doing it. It's so much fun. I just got a new board. I've been so busy, I haven't been able to take it out, which is very sad. But this weekend, hopefully.

There you go. That's a good goal. All right, Austin, favorite app on your phone.

Oh, man.

I guess there's a difference between favorite app and most mostly used. Man, I enjoyed the ESPN app. I guess it's fun. I have several brothers, and so we've got a couple rivalries going that we like to harp on each other on about.

Very nice.

Good, T. I have an app called Libby. It's basically how you can get access to all of the public libraries. And I read. I listen to books. Listen and read books on it.

Outstanding.

Nerd.

We'll have to check that one out. All right. Favorite spreadsheet function, Austin.

Oh, man. You know, I love the sumifs. Countifs averages. You know, who doesn't. Who doesn't need a sum counter average based on conditions?

Well, that.

Great, T. Vlookup. I feel like. I feel like it's like we landed on the moon. You know, you take Vlookup and it's like thousands of hours you can take out of a project.

That's exactly right.

Love it.

Okay, now this is your chance to give some parting advice. Think about these emerging groups, right, that are Struggling and trying to figure out how to grow and set their goals and those sorts of things. What parting advice would each of you have? T will start with you.

I would say learn those financial statements. If you don't know what you're looking at, then don't be afraid to ask if you've been spitting out ebitda because everyone's saying EBITDA and you're not really sure exactly what is in that. What are the components of ebitda and why is that a really great indicator of what's going on with your business? The reason why I say learn those things is because if you start digging in deeper, you can pay attention to KPIs that are really important to your business. How much money are you making per doctor, per hour? Those kind of things where you can really start paying attention from a financial lens that I think are a lot of times straddling both things of operational and finance, where you can really start paying attention to your business and see anomalies that are probably a lot easier to fix than you thought.

Nice.

Great.

Austin.

Yeah, I think, I think simply just slow down. I think especially this time of the year, everyone is. Their heads are spinning. It's end of the year trying to hit goals, also simultaneously planning family events. Right. I think it's the craziest time and I think it's just slowing down. Slow, slow down and try to think why you're doing what you're doing, what's important, and where are some areas that you realistically think that you can adjust and change. I think it's an easy answer, but it's also, I think it's hard to implement. So I think just slow down what's important.

Awesome. Great advice. All right, so we've known each other for a while. Really appreciate that both of you are invested with your careers and in other ways in this crazy industry, the DSO industry as we know it. And both of you are extremely generous in terms of sharing and trying to be a part of the overall ecosystem. And so what would be if our listeners wanted to reach out, connect with you, they had some questions or wanted some follow ups? What would be the best way to do that?

Yeah, I mean, our website is really easy. On the first page, you know, there's a little box you can enter in questions, contact info. We also have a contact page, but.

And your web URL, it's dsocfo.com is that correct?

Yeah. Dsocfo.com or our emails is amoffittsocfo.com or T is T Hughes T, the letter T. Hughes cfo.com really easy. And we're both on LinkedIn. I'm on LinkedIn quite actively. So we're a big, big, big proponent of asking questions. Every quarter we do a QA Q and a session where we answer questions that that are thrown our way. So yeah.

And both of you are in the DSO Secrets community, is that correct?

Yep.

Great.

So that is another place listeners, you can come over, we can get a chat started up, throw some questions in there. These guys are generous and willing to try to share and help. So again, this has been a great episode today. I think we have started to unpack some things. We could certainly go deeper in some areas, but really appreciate you guys spending the time today. And again, can't thank you enough for the amazing insights you shared.

Yeah, thanks again.

That was fun.

Yeah. Been awesome to have you. And again, some great key takeaways today about having an advisor and how to measure if you're getting what you need from your financial statements and what role that advisor can play and many, many other amazing things shared today. And many, many thanks to each of you for joining today. This is a wrap on using finance as your strategic lens into your business.

Happy

thank you for listening to DSO Secrets. Join our community on Facebook @DSO Secrets and get answers and resources to some of your most challenging questions. If you want to get a copy of the seven secrets of any DSO, go to our website at DSO secrets.com and we will get that emailed to you. Remember, don't go at this alone. Let us be your team while you build your team.