137: 5 Main Mindsets to Help Associates Transition to Ownership

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 right 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, and so grateful to have our guest, JD Stacey, Chief Growth Officer at Community Dental Partners, back with us today. JD, welcome.

Hey, Ken. Great to be back.

Well, I'm excited, jd, because our last episode that we did together, we unpacked some concepts that are sometimes drastically overlooked. And you brought up some painful moments in the history of our organization where we had overlooked those things. And we've tried to take those lessons and learn from them and implement some strategies. And so maybe if you take a second and just reset some of those key things that were learned early on from some partnerships and some associate to owner transitions, that didn't go so well. And then we'll set the table for what we're going to hit today, which are really just the five primary mindsets of how to successfully transition from an associate mindset to an ownership mindset.

Yeah. Yeah. And for those of you that did listen to the last episode, we talked about some great lessons learned both positively and painfully. And as a result of some of those painful lessons learned, we knew we needed to develop some kind of a training program platform. It has evolved into what we call our MBA program. So you think of business, because I know a lot of dentists don't get a lot of training in dental school around business. We recognize that. And yeah, life experience is great, too. But there are some very tactical, specific things you have to understand to be successful in your dental practice. So we built out this program that outlines, hey, here's the keys to success, and more importantly, here's the keys to be able to ride the roller coaster that is business ownership.

Yeah, that's a great summary. So do you want to set the table for. As you've gone through the years and had kind of rolled this, sorry, the MBA program out and done training and a lot of different coaching. You want to talk us through these? These Five. Just give us an overview of these five mindsets that we're addressing.

Yeah, so five main mindsets. Like Ken said, mindset number one is the basics of investing. And I don't want the word basic to throw you off because we'll get into that. This is the overview is it's not just understanding what to invest in, but how to manage the emotions of the investment. Number two is understanding financials. It's this. Yes, this is about profit and loss statements and balance sheets, but this is clearly understanding pro formas. You need to be able to look backwards, but you also need to be able to look forwards and understand the ramp up is where we lose a lot of people to emotions. Not we as cdp, just we as in a lot of business owners really struggle in the first couple years of their business. And then we talk about the entity structure, the legal setup. You got to make sure, especially in the dental space and Ken knows a lot about this one, you've got to make sure that your entity setup and your legal structure is, is conducive for a business to operate. You've got, you've got governing bodies, the irs, you've got people looking at you and you've got to make sure you're protected. We then go through the platform and by platform we mean we want to understand what every department does, how they help support doctors, how they bring value, and at the end of the day why our practices are so successful. And finally, what I call the psychology of ownership, this is some of the fun stuff. This is the personal growth. Because to be honest with you, if you're going to get into ownership and if you're just going in it for the money, it's going to be a painful journey. But if you're going in it knowing that I'm going to learn and develop as a person, it's one of the best, it's one of the best educations I have ever received, is going through this ownership piece.

So, and jd, you mentioned as part of the five was understanding the platform of support as well. Right. So we've got all five lined out. I think I had mine in slightly different order than yours. So we want to start with basics of investing. This is really critical and primarily around the emotional management part of investing. I'm reading news articles and hearing that the market's going to go down. So should I be selling and I'm hearing things and should I? There's this whole emotional roller coaster that we go on and generally speaking, those who contain their emotions, because in fact Research shows that we generally give into the emotions to sell at the absolute worst time and the emotions to buy at the absolute worst. At the absolute worst time. We just, if we go by emotions as opposed to overcoming those and using rational thought and other elements. So what walk us through this and where is it that you see the hang up with associates? Why are they not coming built with this skill already established?

Yeah. So awesome questions. And Ken, as you know, cause I know you've been in the stock market, you've said it. It's tempting to bail at the wrong times. It's attempting to buy at the wrong times. And honestly, when you think about it, think about a business as when I studied psychology. There's a life cycle, right. To human beings. Businesses are no different. There's a life cycle to businesses. There's going to be up and there's going to be downs. And so understand this first piece that we take doctors through, just helping them know how to ride out this roller coaster. To be honest with you, Ken, we probably spend the majority of this first session when we're talking about the basics of investing. Yeah, we, we talk about what a good investment dental can be. And yet, you bet we talk about other options out there, but we spend the majority of our time talking about emotionally navigating. Right. How do I handle when my practice is struggling? What happens when Covid happens? Like you said, what happens when President Biden said, hey, we're going to double the capital gains taxes? And we saw the frenzy around that. So there's always going to be external factors and to be quite honest with you, things out of your control that are going to cause. It's going to. Even the best of us, even the toughest of. It's going to cause us to buckle a little bit. So we spend the majority of the time managing that. One of your questions, Ken, which I think is potent, was how do you help? I think this is how I understood it. But how do you help the associates so that they know how to stay in the game here? And honestly, that's why we spend. It's. It's so interesting. Even when I teach parenting, when I used to teach parenting classes, I used to teach the parents, hey, before we even get to your kids, I'm going to teach you how to, how to manage your own self, how to become better, how to do things better. It's the same principle with business ownership. I'm going to teach you how to, how to manage your emotions and how to keep, you know, increase your self awareness and to Work with the people around you. That's what's going to make you a good business owner. That's the area where they first and foremost struggle.

And do you find then or walk us through the experience of this emotional journey that an associate goes through when they either move to going out and buying their own practice or they decide to partner with a dso or what is this emotional journey and what are the key touch points that we should all know about both as an associate? Hey, I'm feeling these emotions. Oh, yeah, that's right. J.D. said I would be feeling these emotions at this point. And then as DSO leaders, how are we helping support through that to try to drive the best outcomes for everybody?

Yeah, great. Yeah. There's always excitement right up front. Right. This has been my dream, and as it should be. It's exciting. And as you start to get into the actual, okay, now I'm going to build the practice. Now I got to get funding. Now I got to go locate a practice. So there's always this soberness that kicks in and some fears that kick in. It's interesting. The main reason why doctors have come to us. In fact, this is very common for our associates. They've. Most of them, and I encourage this, by the way, most have gone out and looked into it on their own and saw what they had to do and what was, you know, what. What the commitment to them was in those first couple years, like, okay, I'm not going to see my family. I actually am going to work. And the average salary for a doctor opening their practice is around 50 to 70,000 a year, just meaning to pay the bills. So the reality set in. So they come back to us saying, I would rather skip a couple of those steps. So it's a normal feeling to just be so excited and then to feel the. Almost like the big tidal wave of responsibility that comes with it. So you'll go through that. And then as you build out the practice, this is the day you've been waiting for. And it takes time to ramp up. Yes, some ramp up slower than others, but there's this whole, you want it to hurry up and happen. It's almost like I've heard of farmers saying, don't pull up the crops to check on the roots. There's just a lot of emotion around. You've got to know how to get these next two to three years. That's our doctors. I tell them, just plan on two to three years. Just know this is your education journey. So it's your bouncing back between excitement and frustration. From fear to. Okay, I get this, it's starting to

turn fear to anxiety and every potential motion there and in between. Yeah. And it is fascinating that really if you think about even business education where you are trying to help fill some of these gaps and the emotional management piece still isn't really present there. And this is about real life. The phrase that I always use, and I think it particularly works within dentistry, just because we all think about teeth a lot, is we found that associates that have been kicked in the teeth a time or two, meaning they've tried some things and they haven't worked out, they've made some bad decisions because of emotionally reacting maybe a little bit early in a process that tends to build up some resilience. So that when you're starting a practice and all of a sudden you sign for that $500,000 loan, for example, that you might get to build a practice or to buy a practice or you are going through all these steps or like you said, you start up and you're so excited and you open up first day and two patients walk in the door and you're sitting around just stressing out like crazy about what did I do? And all of this is going to fall apart and I barred against my house to do this or whatever it is. There's all those emotions that come with. So. Yeah. Is there any other takeaways that our listeners can grab?

I would just reiterate what you just said, that patience is the key. We've had doctors, including in the last two years who've come to work for us after they had to sell off their practices and they've all said it's way harder than they ever imagined to run those. And he said the part that, that brought him to us is he said you just feel like you're alone, like you're on these islands and sometimes you partnered with someone, sometimes those partnerships go sideways. But. But really? Yeah, I would say, I mean, doing it alone is tough. Find. Find people you love to work with and don't be afraid to bring support in. It's. That's the bottom line. Make sure you can do that.

Yeah. And when you feel those emotions spiking up, be. There's an element of being self aware to manage through that and to drive for resilience. Okay, let's jump to number two. The second one we wanted to hit was the proforma and doctors giving that associate an opportunity to understand what is the proforma? Why is it important and why should I care so much about it? Yeah.

And this is right up Ken's alley, as a matter of fact. Pro formas are needed for so many different reasons, but two main reasons. Number one is you're going to need. If you're going to go get bank funding, you have to have, you have to be able to forecast what your practice is going to do. And it's not enough for you to say, look, I'm a dentist, I just, we're going to make, we're going to make a kajillion dollars. They actually want to see it broken down month by month for the next 36 months. They want to see. And what's what I found what they're actually testing for. Because remember, banks are important. The banks out, they're great at checking boxes on spreadsheets. They want to make sure that you as a provider or you as an owner understand exactly what your practice is going to do in the pro forma is going to. They want to see that you understand how many staff you're supposed to hire and what cadence you're going to bring them on. They want to make sure you understand reimbursements. They want to make sure it's just a pro forma is the way that they see that you know what you're doing. And I'll tell you, it's a great exercise. I spend probably a month, at least a month on the pro forma with our associates because it's the spreadsheet that shows you exactly where all the cash is going and exactly how it's going to play out. When I say exact, meaning it's going to show you how we expect it to play out over the next 24 to 48 months. So that being able to look forward and be really upfront and be realistic about how your practice is going to scale and to grow, that's critical. I mean, so it's. The exercise is critical for you. You can go hire people to do performance. They're super expensive. We have an amazing FP and a team internally that we talk them through, get them all the information they need and they build them out for us. But pro formas are critical. That's how you understand what's going to happen in your business. And you got to know when you're doing, when you're winning and when you're struggling.

Yeah, that's right. So many high value points that you brought up there. One of the things that we've gotten the most confidence on when we're going to partner with a doctor, the pro forma really calls out like you said J.D. the cash flow. And we set the pro forma up and what's called a three statement modeling format that actually shows us based on all the assumptions, all the equipment that's coming in, any loans that are received, and the hiring up and ramping up of staff and all of, all of those things get all layered in. And it ultimately it's this little graph that goes like this for those listening. It's just, it's like a little valley and it literally shows. Here's the cash you're going to start with and then it's going to go down like this for a little while. And then once you turn cash flow positive, then it turns up and we're looking for the lowest point in that valley of cash flow and saying, is that, is it going negative or is there a surplus? So we've got a little bit of cushion if maybe things don't go quite as well as we hoped for, quite as quite as well as we had planned. And it's a very, very powerful tool. And then I'm, I know that you go back and forth sometimes with associates that are becoming owners of. If a practice is doing a little bit worse than what the pro forma called for, we still go in and make adjustments to that and say, oh look, but cash flow is still, we're still on the right trend and all of this is going to end up working out. We don't need to somehow manufacture additional cash to get the business to the right level.

Yeah, Ken, you brought up a point I didn't even mention. Because banks are very reluctant to underwrite working capital. They're actually, they short circuit it all the time. Our pro forma is what allows me to have the conversation with the bank and say, listen, I'm showing you dollar for dollar what we need. Because remember, working capital is what allows you to stay alive. As Ken said, as you go through that down curve, through the J curve, right when you. Because there's going to be a point where it's your cash flow, meaning the amount your practice is bringing in versus the amount minus all your expenses and overhead, you're going to be under for a little while. And that cat, that working capital is what bridges that gap. And so a pro forma, without a pro forma, it's hard to get any working capital from them at all. And so that's why, so I'm glad you brought that up, Ken. That's actually a super important piece.

Awesome. Okay, so we hit the basics of investing, especially around managing our emotions. Then the importance of having a pro forma, not just to show to a bank, but also to probably help manage emotions a little bit. Meaning I can go back and look and say, oh, okay, everything's on track. We're still.

Okay.

It's going slower than I really hoped, but. But we're still. We're still forging ahead productively. The next one I had written down, jd, was the platform. I think it's a little out of order of. But if you don't mind, walk us through this discussion about the platform and why it's so critical for an associate to gain an appreciation for what's happening there.

Yeah, this is. Ken, this is where we lost. You know, I, as you heard from our last session, this is where we actually lost in that partnership went south, in my opinion, is. Is it's easy to look at the, you know, what the business is doing. And then when you look at it and you're saying, well, why do we need that? And why do we need that? You just start asking these questions, which are great questions to ask yourself. Why do we need marketing? Why do we need. Why is it so expensive? So really, what we were doing a terrible job at, me specifically, was we weren't doing a good job showing why these departments are needed. And not only that, how they bring exponential value. And what was interesting is that practice that I told you that went sideways, that we ended up parting ways with them. We actually had an opportunity to buy back into that practice years later. And it was interesting getting those financials again and just seeing what happens when you just start cutting costs, what happens to the overall revenue. And so the platform, yes, it's looked at as an expense until you start appreciating how it helps drive more patient flow, how it starts driving just your overall culture and productivity of a practice. So we walk our associates through each and every department and we show them what each department is doing to support. And we go beyond that, actually, we. I actually show them a comparable to the market. We've gone out to the market and we've shown them if you go to the market and try and duplicate this, here's what it's going to cost you versus and here's what you're going to get in the market. Because remember, those are mostly consultants.

Yeah. And if I can answer, you kind of have this where you're going to have to hire an accountant or a bookkeeper and somebody do your taxes, you're going to have to hire somebody. Or, I mean, you could do all this yourself, too. You're going to need support around credentialing, you're going to need support around scheduling, and you're going to need to hire team members to take these different functions on. And so it sounds like what you're saying is you walk them through the platform that CDP has built or, you know, another dso, you could just, you know, layer in what services you're providing and how you do that, but you walk them through it so they gain an appreciation for what it does. And the shortfall here is that if I am an associate and my experience in life has been going to school, because you have to go through a lot of school in order to get to where you can be an associate or own a dental practice. And during that process, if I don't have a lot of experience with how hard some of these things are and how difficult they are to get right, what you're doing is you're trying to accelerate their learning to say, look, okay, sure, you could go hire a bookkeeper, but remember, 50% of every bookkeeper out there is below average, and you're going to struggle. And 50% of every, you know, fill in the blank, credentialing expert or compliance expert is below average. And you're going to wrestle and fight through actually getting what you need and, you know, relative to what you pay for. So what you're doing is you're trying to give them an accelerated learning so they don't have to go out and make all those wrong hires, burn through all that money, and ultimately have to figure out how to lead an accountant or a credentialing expert or somebody who's doing scheduling. So walk us through. Like, what does that trigger for you? Because I know there are pressure points here where associates say, whoa, how come your platform does this? Or how come it does that?

Yeah. And honestly, it does what exactly you said can. It drives gratitude and appreciation for the process. Right. Because at the end of the day, what, you know, what we found was anywhere we lacked in communication, they. It was. What people normally fill that gap with is mistrust. Right. Well, you must be. Must be doing something. But you're right, there's a point where, like, a call center is just one of the. That's a fun one to talk about because it's one of those hot topic, you know, do I do a call center? Do I not do a call center? And to be honest with you, yeah, there are times when it's going to be more cost effective to do an internal call center. And I love that you brought up accounting because yes, you're going to go pay an accountant and to be honest with you, they're probably what they're going to give you and Ken knows this. They're going to do your taxes and they may get you some financials quarterly, but they're going to be cash based. Right. Versus I go to Ken Ken monthly. Sitting in my inbox are some accrual, some accrual financials, which is awesome. Now I get to look at my practice and make some real life decisions. So yeah, there is a point when you are starting to experience pain and challenge like in any of these areas. That is when we start looking at. And here we are back to the pro forma and we start to pro forma out, hey, we would love to bring on this resource in house and this is what it's going to cost us but this is what it's going to do to drive this forward. So yeah, honestly, making smart decisions. Go ahead. You're going to say.

I was going to say a little bit of energy and intensity for me around this because I get asked at least twice a week, Ken, what should my DSO or what should my parent company be charging as the fee for the platform services and how do you come up with that and cause you have these partners, associates that are becoming owners and partners. What, how do you come up with that fee? And they go back and forth and back and forth on this and struggle with it. And I just keep coming back to, well, it needs to be whatever services you're providing and you need to provide them at a fair market rate and you have to be able to show them why. Just use our accounting platform, don't go hire somebody, just you know, come, come over to our doctor recruiting platform and there is a cost for it, but here's the value and the benefit of it. Like instead of try to shroud the fee or you know, come up with some magical piece, just own it and go to your partners. And like you said, JD training. Because ultimately what happens is down the road if you don't do that, the partners end up not understanding why you're charging a fee for services being provided. They don't understand the value of it. They get frustrated and as you know, or as we've had some bad experiences, then we part ways. And so it's really this, it's an amazing concept that you've built here which is get all the way out ahead of this.

Right.

And it filters through the organization. So for those who are struggling with this and how do you know what management fee to charge for services or administrative support fees. This is the key, this is critical. Just actually know what it is you're offering and be able to offer it at a reasonable price.

You're right, Ken. You have to know what value you're bringing to the table. Honestly, we actually, it's very easy for us to do because I just list out what we're doing and I'll show them what Ken and our accounting team brings to the table. And it's a no brainer. It's an absolute no brainer. And as we've done that and just showed them, here's what this department brings. Do you want it? Do you not? It's usually a no brainer. Almost always.

That's right. And especially the one other thing is because dentistry is a very unique niched business and anyone that you go and hire to do specific functions, they generally, they may know some things about dentistry, but they usually have their foot in other industries and they don't really know deeply. And so at least my experience has been the reason why platform is so effective and can be run so cost effective relative to the market is because we're just so niched down. And as a dso, if you're a DSO owner or leading a DSO or an organization like a group organization, just take credit for the fact you have to own the fact that we do this better than the market does. Because this is all we do and this is all we know.

It's hiring an operator versus a consultant. Right. And nothing against consultants, but they, they don't own the process like an operator does. And so that's what we're, that's what I'm putting in front of our doctors. These are operators. They're going to own the process.

Okay, cool. So I think we've platform, I think we're good there. Let's, let's jump to this entity structure. It seems like in dentistry we end up creating lots of entities. We have lots of legal documents, we have lots of things in order to properly set up our dental practice. So how do you help walk them through? And they get their own counsel, obviously to represent them. Use a dso. You can't have your legal represent them. They need to have an attorney and people who are helping and giving them good advice. How do you help them understand the need for some of this complexity that exists in our industry?

Yeah, always encourage your associates to go get their own legal advice. Always. And here's one thing you will find as a side note. Just plan on with how, how different dentistry is and we we take it for granted. It's easy for us. We know we have to have a PLLC and if you want to have any kind of support organization, it needed have an llc. And to us that makes sense. Just plan on having to explain that to almost anybody that they go get to do their, their legal counsel. So just know that. So we actually have a presentation with, with an org chart with a flowchart how, how funds flow. And then we actually have it broken down into. Here's the documents you need to. So that there's a full suite of documents for bank funding, there's a full suite of documents for when it's time to open your practice. And then if you're going to refinance or you're going to consolidate it, there's a whole nother suite of documents. So we have that all laid out nice and easy to help with the associate as much as their counsel because a lot of times we have to coach on both. This piece is critical. So. And as Ken knows, Ken's been in this world so long not getting set up the right way that actually puts your, exposes you as an owner and it exposes your enterprise to risk and to, to, you know, to the governing bodies.

Yeah. So there's this risk element function which we always in dentistry have to be thinking about compliance and risk mitigation. And some of it's on how to, how am I treating patients and things that are on a clinical level that you and I know nothing about. J.D. right. All of the doctors and they all think about that on a day to day basis. But this legal and tax and entity structure and the relationship of the documents and things between these different entities, there's definitely a right way to do it and there's a lot of wrong ways to do it. And there's some effort and some, some deep understanding that's got to happen. Anything else?

One last thing I'd add to that Ken is. And there's good companies out there, we all know who they are, that have these suite of documents. But we have found that those companies that they're legal teams and they don't do an amazing job at educating your associates. We've had to fill that gap to help teach them and help them understand what, what it is they're even signing, looking at and, and why this helps them.

That's right. And again, for an associate who has followed the path of I'm going to become a dentist and become an associate, these legal documents are long, they're laborious, there's lots of legal jargon that can feel overwhelming and intimidating and it can feel scary. So again, get counsel, but you're helping fill the gap to educate them on what some of these documents are, what they're meant to accomplish, and then they get, they can get their, ultimately get their legal counsel to review them and just make sure that everything's represented properly. Okay, the last one is what you've referred to as the psychology of ownership. Again, these are the five mindsets. This is mindset number five that we're covering today. Walk us through the psychology of ownership.

JD so this is my favorite one. You know, with my psychology background, this is one where we start to just take this on as this is my. This is a vehicle for me to learn and grow as a person. We use all kinds of different tools in here. Just so you all know, as an organization, we use the Colby test in all of our management and above and doctors, our executives. Everyone takes the Colby. What I love about Colby is it gives us a wonderful framework in which to communicate with each other and appreciate each other's skill sets, their striving instincts and so forth. We also use the Enneagram for those of you that are familiar with that. That's become one of my favorites. It dives much deeper into how you like to interact with people, how you process information. It talks about when you are healthy, how you act, when you are unhealthy, how you act, love, love these types of tools because you are going to, I promise when you open a business the way you think today is not going to cut it a year from now, two years from now. So the psychology of dentistry is how do I increase my self awareness? How do I become a better leader? How do I. So that's the essence of this one, is knowing how I'm going to push myself.

Yeah. So what's interesting here is if I, I'm trying to put myself in the associate shoes right now and think to myself, why am I taking personality profiling tests or other, other assessments that, that measure things? I'm showing up with money. I want to buy a practice or I want to build a practice. What does all of this have to do with it? And I think what I heard you say, and I'd love to have you expand on this for a minute, is the more we understand ourselves, the more capable we are to get up to that next level, to grow to that next level, which is if I'm used to being an associate and this is the world I live in, and now I'm going to Be a business owner, we need help understanding why we're feeling certain emotions, why we're going through certain things, why we react to certain situations in certain ways, why certain people are frustrating to us versus other people aren't, and why certain employees. There's so much human interaction that's occurring in the world of dentistry. It's what makes it so awesome, but sometimes so wildly frustrating. Walk us through why, as an associate, I should be engaged in if I'm going to become an owner. Why self assessment? Why understanding me and who I am is going to help me actually be successful?

Awesome question. And I'll start by saying this. The same skills that make you successful as a clinician, those are important, but there are different skills required to be successful as an owner. And I look no farther than our original owner partner, Dr. Evans, can. And looking at his path in life, and he'll be the first to tell you that his first go at dentistry, he struggled. He'd be the first to admit it. You probably had him on your podcast. The one thing he said I underestimated was there's going to be things I love doing and I'm just going to naturally do those. And then there are things where they are not my passion and some might not even be in my core strengths. And he said, honestly, one of the best decisions I have ever made is start to bring people in around me to help build out those parts of me. So he would never have got to that. We would never be where we are at today had he just stayed stuck in that same mindset from that initial practice. The reason we've able to expand and grow the way we have and be as successful as we have is because of his humility. So what self awareness does is it opens that humility door for you. Humility means, yes, you are all smart people and you are amazing people and you are successful in your own rights, but depending on what you want to accomplish, humility is what allows you to bring other experts and subject matter experts and people in around you. They're going to help you grow and expand. And what is fascinating is I've watched Chad over the years. He's become more specialized in what he does, but he's doing more of what he loves than ever before. I've never seen him happier. And he never could have got to that had he not started that track of personal development. Never would have happened.

That's a great. That's a great point. I think it's a great example and it's so critical. So if I Put a DSO hat on or a group practice leader hat on. Understand that you can't just assume that somebody's ready to be an owner and ready to take all of that on and understand that the more support that you can give them to kind of build and grow into that is going to be critical. And the self awareness element is a big, big piece that we've invested in over the years and I think it's paid back handsomely. And then the other part to think about is now if I'm an associate, you need to start being open. If you want to be an owner, you need to start being open to these things and opening these doors and being really critical of yourself in the terms of where are places where I need to improve and where I need to grow to be a better leader. Because like you said, to lead a patient to treatment and, and then to deliver that treatment is a, an amazing skill set to have. But to lead an employee to understand the value of why they need to use an autoclave to sterilize your equipment, it's a different type of leadership that has to come in on so many different levels. And so I really just appreciate this one. And as leaders, we just constantly have to be working on ourselves because the asset is us as an owner. The asset is me as an owner. And how am I going to choose to lead? How am I going to choose to show up? So, yeah. Any reactions to that?

Perfectly said. I mean, back to what you and I talked about last time is this is a process and this can be one of the best experiences of your life. And I'll promise you this, because I get asked this question all the time. I get asked by people coming right out of dental school or even doctors who are struggling. I talk to them a lot because they asked me, well, how did you guys do it? How did you get to where you are at? I do tell them this. I said, just know this. It is going to be way harder than you think and it is going to be way better than you think. The key to all of it is just learning to embrace growth and development. Just learning it is okay. You are going to win sometimes and you are going to learn sometimes. Those are the two areas you are going to bounce back and forth between. It is an amazing, amazing journey. So worth it. But you are going to have to grow. Who you are today has to evolve. So.

Well said, jd. You can tell you have been doing this for a while, a little more than a decade at this point. So if you don't mind, we're going to wrap up here. You've shared your contact information and things before, but if you want to share that and then any final thoughts or takeaways as you're thinking about associates out there, listening, thinking about group practice leaders or DSO leaders, Any final thoughts and then we'll wrap it up.

I just, I love this and I appreciate, Ken, that you're even providing this to doctors because I can't fathom what it would be like to try and go about this alone. So thank you, number one, for providing all the resources that you provide. Yet number two, don't hesitate to reach out. I said this so many times. If we could have found someone like CDP 12 years ago, we would have jumped on board in a heartbeat. More because some people want to recreate. But for us, we just want to grow, learn and be successful. So by all means you can contact me. My email is jstacydp.dedental that's JSTACY Stacy spelled S T A C E Y at CDP Dental. I'm happy to take any questions, any calls, any emails. We love to share what we've learned and more importantly, where we've where we've messed up. We love to share our experience.

Outstanding. Well, jd, it's been an absolute pleasure to have you on the soul on the show. Sorry about that, and I hope our listeners are gaining some insight into some of the challenges of transitioning from associate to owner partner for both parties, both for the associate as well as for the partnering group or DSO or set of group practices. Many, many thanks to you for joining today. This is a wrap on the five mindsets that are needed to switch or to grow from being an associate to an equity owner. Happy day.

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