157: Gaining an "IT Mindset": See Tech's Value Add, Not the Cost

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. Hello everyone, and welcome to another episode of DSO Secrets. I am Ken Kaufman, your host today, and I am thrilled to introduce our guest on today's show, Jacob Irving. Jacob, do you want to take a second, introduce yourself and, and then we'll jump into the topic and where we're going to take this.

Sure. My name is Jake Irving. I own my own IT company called Intech. Together we've been running for six and a half years almost now. Loved every minute of it. Been in Dental for 12, 13 years now and just I'm focused on helping people find how they can fix the bottlenecks and their processes. And if technology is the right fit, we use it. If not, then we make sure that we get the bottleneck fixed either way.

So outstanding. Thank you, Jacob. Now, you and I have had a chance to work together in the past, and then we've recently been reconnected and it's been, it's been a lot of fun to reconnect. And then we realized there's a lot of stuff here that These smaller emerging DSOs maybe aren't thinking about or maybe are missing in terms of things from an IT perspective. So we're attacking this episode to help DSO leaders take on that IT mindset and think about how it can be not a cost, but a value add to the organization. So why don't you start, Jacob, by just sharing with us how you think about or.

Sorry.

First of all, I forgot my most important question. Most important question is what led you into the DSO industry? And what in the world are you still doing here?

Why am I still here? So first I was in a small family business doing tax and financial planning. And I just needed a change. Needed to, to kind of take on some more control in my life. And so I, I. Many of you know I'm at Scott, right, part of this. And so he and my wife are related, but he and his wife and my wife were talking and My wife said, my husband's looking. And she said, is he? And so from there I joined CDP when it was one office and I was their first regional manager. Don't know why I need regional manager for one office, but we did and it was because we had two other offices coming on fast. And so I was with them from 2010 to 2016 and grew it from that one office that we had to 20 when I left. And so I've loved that. And Emmett and I, we parted ways with my intent of wanting to start this company because we wanted to bring the IT tools we had found that worked well there. We wanted to bring to other people. And so with everything he was doing to grow cdp, I decided this was the time to step out and do that myself. So we started. I didn't have a single customer. I called up a friend, said, hey, do you need some help? He said yes. And from there I had my first customer in the first hour. And so since then we've, we're now supporting over 200 customers, multiple DSOs. DSOs are who we focus on. If you three or more offices is what we consider DSO. And the bigger one mid size are probably 10. And I'm still here because I just, I love finding the problems and finding ways to help fix it and I love helping others fast track by helping them avoid the brick walls that I've hit myself. So that's why I'm here is to save a bunch of broken noses.

Awesome. Great, great story there gl and glad you're still here by the way. You too.

Thanks.

So as let's jump into this from kind of the IT vision for somebody who's maybe novice in this area, maybe they've done a little bit, maybe they just haven't really put any type of IT infrastructure into their organization. Walk me through, like where should they start? How should, how should they be thinking about engaging? What, what should be the vision? How do they engage and how, how do they ultimately make it, you know, this, this value add to what they're trying to build.

Yeah, value add versus a cost. Right. Just something they have to pay. So I think a lot of that comes from I always think of crawl, walk, run because I'd rather crawl, walk and run than get up, sprint, trip and be in the er. So there's an order to stuff, right. So the first thing you have to do is you have to make sure that that one office works and that your systems are right. Like if it doesn't work on paper, it's not going to Work in it. It will not solve your lack of focus and effort in putting the right system in place. And so a lot of people think it is just I have a router that I got from Best Buy, I have a computer I got from Best Buy or sometimes I see them from Walmart and they think that's good and sufficient. And then they leave it to the assistants and the office manager to figure out. So first get a stable system. Make sure you have the right equipment in there. Realize that even though you might be one or three offices, you still have data that other people want to get. That's why HIPAA exists. And so you need to make sure you have the safeguards in place for that. So make sure you're self contained, you're protected, don't just buy everything that anyone tells you need to get. But also don't skimp and think, oh, I'm not big enough, no one cares. So we don't need to Change passwords every 90 days or anything like that. There is real risk to that. So come up with those things because you are going to make a decision, do I need this now or later? And it's your call and I'll tell customers like, hey, you need to get encrypted email, but they're making the decision, hey, we're not doing that that much and we have this policy place. Great. Just always keep it in the mindset, right? So after you crawl and you got it stable, then the next part is walking. I we normally see this if you have three to five offices, you can have each office operate independently and probably pretty successful with it. There's not a ton of complexity as far as, because probably your offices are close enough that you can travel between them as soon as you start getting these remote ones. Now you guys are figuring out, okay, how do I track them when I'm not there and when I'm gone for a while. So this is where you really have to start looking at how can I start scaling my systems? And I usually see offices, once they hit the 10 office mark, really start to need this. That's kind of where it all breaks down, right? And so you need to start figuring out, okay, am I going to have a phone system? Like what happens when this office front office staff is busy taking patients, they miss phone calls, I'm missing possible sets, right? So now you start saying, okay, I'm not going to have them take care of that, I'm going to take that off them. I'm going to have one consent form so that you don't have every office make their own consent forms. I. I remember the first task I had at CDP was I sat in a closed windowless room for six weeks standardizing all of the consent forms that had been created by. While we only had one office, everyone had brought all their consent forms and just throw them all together. So I was there going, nope, we're going to combine this and this. So now we went from like eight consent forms down to three.

So, so where you're going here is, is right.

It's.

You start to want to standardize. And as you start to standardize, then all of a sudden things start to centralize. Is that a fair way to describe that?

Yeah. And then you have one person in charge that makes. And then it's quality control. Right?

Yeah.

So now you, now you got to start figuring out how am I going to take all my payments so that I don't have cash issues in the office. Do I need to put cameras in there? Do I need remote billers? Because sometimes there's some billers who can. Can get in there and do the claim a lot faster than someone in another office. So find those efficiencies of scale. Right. By one. And again, once you get to that about that 10, I see people starting to go, I'm not getting bigger. I don't know how to do that. I don't want to do that. And I even see before 10, they start, most of them will start going, I'm going to start putting all my calls together. Right. Like that's usually the first thing people go, my calls aren't working. I'm missing production. Okay, let's work on that. So, and then what they normally do though, is the tool that they use to track it all is our favorite Google Sheets. Right. Everyone uses Google Sheets to grab things, forms at the end of the day. And, and that's. That's great. It gets you there.

I've Not a bad way if you're just getting started.

Right.

You might. You got to start with something and learn.

Yep. And again, it goes back to that part of the crawl. Make sure it works on paper before it works in a big system. So make sure it works on Google Sheets before you make a database and all these rules and stuff around it. Right. You got to prove the concept. Yeah. It is a tool that just will scale your system no matter how it is, whether it's good or bad. So if you have a bad system, it's going to scale the bat.

I always say this, Jacob. I'm interested in if you think this is accurate, if you want to poke holes in it, we can chat it through. But technology itself doesn't solve problems. Smart people solve problems. And then what you do is you buy or leverage technology to automate the solution so the smart people can go on and start solving the next problems and figuring out how to do that. And you can leave behind the solutions they've and automate them so that they stay solved, so to speak.

Would you agree with that? Yeah, staying solved is a great way. I totally 100% agree with that. And just one, one piece that validates that is a great book by David Jennings. I believe his name is called Systemology. And it talks about the most beneficial part of your company are your systems. Because people leave, they come and go, your systems remain. A system you put in place right now can last for decades. Right. And it'll help not only those employees who are here now, but those who will be coming and can be used for the. Not these synopsis but the next 20 and 40 and 100. Right. Good systems. You're exactly right. Awesome. So I think the after you have. So this is. Almost leads to right where that bridge is. Once you've got this centralizing now you gotta, you gotta automate and customize. Like you almost have to customize this. There's not a. I wish there was. There's not a software out there out of the box, a dsokit and go. This will run everything for me. Emmett and I talked about this a lot. That, that that's the competitive advantage is building your own stuff, knowing how you run it and so that you can beat everyone else. And DSOs still aren't sharing that. I think by the fact that I'm part of over 10 different DSOs, I'm hearing different stuff. And we don't say hey, this DSO said this and this DSL said that. But we're hearing the same things that they're actually starting to collaborate more. And what a lot of people are doing is finding ways to customize maybe not their pms because they're choosing cloud or local and even some are all in on one. And others say we'll use a bunch of different ones. But they're starting to centralize and standardize their central services by putting in help desks not only for it, which is your normal, but for hr, for compliance, for, for like facilities requirements and stuff like that so that they can see what's going on. Because the next part and the where you can run with it is once you know your process are Running in the system, in the practices. The next thing everyone wants is BI now give me dashboards that I can pull up and it tells me that I'm doing right or tells me where I'm missing it. Right. So that last part, this is where you start running and you have to, before you can have a BI solution, you have to have what's called a master data strategy. You got to know, how do I define a client, how do I define what are my different types of appointments? So if you figure that out, then now you can bring a team on that says, all right, now we're going to give you all the data you need and you have to figure out can I look at this stuff once a day and I'm okay, or do I need to see it every hour? Right, that's, that's a call for you to make for whatever will help you sleep at night. Right. But a lot of people, especially Central, once a day is fine for them. And so then you start building everything you need to, to help them. I kind of break it into three different things. You have HUDs that like a heads up display that tells me here's how my office is doing, here's how full my books, my appointments are for the next seven days so they can work on, on what do I need to fix. And so daily huddles really use these to go, all right, we got to get these confirmed, we got to fill this spot, right? But then you have Geigo boards. This is a data term called garbage in, garbage out. If you put, if you put in the wrong data, a computer is like, is like I said, it's only going to scale the bad, it's going to kick out the bad stuff. So you have to know, hey, here's an appointment that's marked as no show, but has completed procedures attached to it that can't be. So we got to fix this. And that's really a big problem. Depending on what software you have, if you can't put validation rules in that says you can't do this, this doesn't match. So then you have to have some reports that say this so you can fix it so you can trust the data. Otherwise you can build dashboards so you're blue in the face and you won't trust them. And then the last one, you have daily huddles that say, here's what we're doing today. You have end of day reports that say, here's how we did. But a RICO board is one that says, good, I'm glad you got Those. But here's the three appointments that were scheduled for today that you didn't tell us if they showed or didn't show. So it's a reconciliation of okay, what's missing? And again, it's so that the system can support the people who are working it. Right. Smart people create the systems and use technology to solve it. And what you don't want is your regionals having to call every day. Because I was at regional, who before we had it, had to call every day. Okay, how'd the day go? What was going on? How'd tomorrow look? Right. And that's not scalable. Yeah.

All right, so while we're here in this going through this IT mindset discussion, I've just got to launch this at you about practice management software. I have ranted on it. I think everybody has ranted on it. We're in this really interesting space right now within just the DSO industry itself where cloud is starting to come on and looks like maybe it could be a contender. And there are a few that seem like they're doing a good job. I've heard of some that are on some of these most recent cloud based solutions and they're working. But the on prem server based installation of practice management software still is by far the most common deployment that we see in dentistry. And some of the big guys are going to shine one and figuring out some things that way. And it's a really interesting time thinking about these emerging groups, maybe, you know, three, five, 10, maybe even 20 practices. What are you seeing right now? What advice would you have as people are thinking about practice management software?

What am I seeing? I'm seeing just like you're saying a lot of local, local installs, basically they get with their shine or passion rep and say I need software, get it for me. Right. So a lot of times we see Eaglesoft and Dentrix in there. Me personally and for a lot of others, I think open dental, if you're local, is one of the best. Because it's open, it's open source, I can do anything I need to inside of open dental. Whereas if I want to do something in Patterson or Dentrix, I'm paying a lot of money for access to it and I got to have a someone else to really dive into that data. So we have to be fair, you're

paying a lot of money for somebody to figure out how to get in and tweak and mess with open dental too. It's just, it's a little easier to access. Yeah.

Because you don't have that hurdle of acts. Yeah, exactly. You don't have API blocks or databases that are locked open and you can see everything. I mean, I've gotten to the point where Spike at open dental, I've broken the databases and he just gets on like, jacob, we've told you not to do. It's like, yeah, but it's easier here. I don't want to use your tool. And so he fixed it for me. He's a good guy. But yeah, there's. But we're starting to. And we see a lot of, like, I don't know that I can. I don't know what my. How far I can go with this, but Dentrix Ascend, I've done nothing but convert people from there. People get on it and they get off it because of the limitations. And so we've done a lot of that recently to the point where if you call Dentrix Ascend, they're usually like, all right, how can I help you export your data? Like, they don't say, how can I help you solve your problem? They just know that you're exporting data. But I think the cloud is getting there. We've got customers who are on there, who. Some who have four or five offices and it's working fine, and others with 10 or so. But here, here's the problem that I'm finding. People talk about the server, right? If I go cloud, I don't need a server. Okay, so a server's three grand, right? Maybe four or five fully installed, depending on what X ray software you're getting. Guess what? You might need a server anyways. Yeah. So you're not saving that cost, right?

Well, because image size is one of the biggest issues you have when it comes to cloud.

Yes. And I have not found. I've been on many calls with different TSOs and their X ray company, and the extra company says, we can get you 3D, we can get you 3D in the cloud. I'm telling you, for five years no one's been able to do it and no one's close to it. From what I've seen. If there's some other. Other X ray companies out there, I'd love to talk to you. We've got a lab, we got all these different softwares. Let's go figure it out. But I haven't seen anyone figure it out. So if you're a 3D as well, heavily folks in that. And it's interesting, I found that 3D is more used in the west, like Colorado, Utah, Oregon, California, like that west, more In Texas, we got, we got, we're in 13 different states, but we don't have as many people using 3D in, in the Southwest and, or I guess central right there on Mississippi and all that. So I don't know if that's a, I don't know why. That's just what we're seeing. So I can't give you a reason behind it. And so there. Cloud works well if you're not touching 3D. Right? But you, but now what you got to do is you may not have a server unless your X ray requires it. And here's the problem. Sometimes the X ray won't require a server, but now your workstations have to be a little beefier because they're actually storing the image there and then they have an uploader. And so now instead of managing one server that with the uploader, you're managing it on five different machines, right? So, and now you got to have Internet backup. What's your plan for that? Do I bring in from Verizon and att? Well, what if my circuit goes down? Most of these are using the same circuit, so having two carriers doesn't even solve you for that. So now you got to look at lte. Okay, well, we, we support a lot of rural offices. They don't have strong lte, so that, that's the part. So I would say if people, you're, you're going to go cloud or print on prem, whichever is your preference, right? You just need to know that when you pick up one end stick, there is another end that you have to address and figure it out. And I have just found that the whole key, and this is the IT mindset, is don't go for the latest and greatest. Why do you have it? Why do you have a dental office? It's because you're trying to make production that you're serving patients. And production is your way to know that. So if I lose Internet with an on prem, I'm still working, I'm still seeing patients, right? If it takes a day for my central services to jump in and do the billing, fine. At least I still had a $10,000 a day instead of losing that. So that's just what you need to look at. And I just, I feel the, the last part about that is even though they're cloud, we always have to address compliance here. HIPAA high tech says you're in charge of the data, right? So just because the, your data's in the cloud doesn't mean you're not responsible for pulling down backups of that on a consistent basis and having that somewhere, because what if your cloud software goes away, your patients are coming to you and they want all those things. So now guess what, you might need a server to store all those images. So that's just the stuff to think about. So I, 90% of the time I will recommend on prem because it's about production. You have good connection and interconnectivity with X ray software so that you don't have to be limited in what you can do. I don't want the doctors looking at this and going, oh, I wish I could do that, but my software doesn't support it. So. All right, so talk to me, my thoughts.

Yeah, talk to me about the data backups. You know, why should I be doing this? What value is there? And you need to know I'm following this one up with cybersecurity and some of the, some of the stuff we're hearing about in the industry right now.

So I'll try and just talk about data and then we'll tie in some more on the cyber part. Like I said, hip high tech requires you to have it, what, six, seven years and be able to get back to it any moment. Here's what I, I've. We do practice profiles. So if you, if you want to work with InTech, we'll actually do a practice profile. We'll ask you everything that's going on. We'll come on site, we'll look at your computers and a lot of doctors say, yeah, we just got them. And we'll get in and we'll look at like, this is a 7 year old computer still running Windows XP. Like you did not just get this. And so part of that is we look at backups. And I have seen in the last two years about three different tape backup systems still in play. And I just invite anyone with a tape backup system to come to the 21st century. The doctors are not. And you look at it and you look like, I go in on a Thursday, the tape in there says Monday. Like, okay, so who's really doing this? No one is. The next part we see is that people have a USB plugged in, right? They have a little program that's kicking data off to it. More times than not, we'll jump on that, that hard drive and it's completely full and they miss the checkbox of rewrite, like get rid of the old stuff, put the new stuff in. So that's not backing you up. And I mean one from the, from the Compliance standpoint. But two, if you had a catastrophic failure, you. You need that data, right? So the other part is, if there's a fire, who's running in for that hard drive? I'm not. Right. So then you have your I.O. safes. The. And so hopefully after the fire or the flood, we can go and retrieve it. And we've seen that. But even there, I see people, they think it's running, but they never check it. And so the. What we recommend is you got to get your backup in the cloud. It needs to run every night. Or we have some that we. That even do incrementally. Like every time you change the file, it's uploading it. That depends on your bandwidth and everything. But nightly backups is, to me, the minimum. You've got to do that. But more than that, you got to check it. You got to make sure it's going to be there for you. Because the worst case is, hey, yeah, we lost everything. And now we got this new server we knew back up the data, and it's not there. So we check data backups at least twice a week. We have alerts if something's missed it two nights in a row. So it's faster than that. But then the last part of it is we also test our backups once a month to make sure that, hey, in three weeks, if we need this, I actually have data I can get. Because a green checkbox saying, yeah, the backup ran doesn't mean the data is fully available. Right? Yeah. Interesting.

Those are all great points. Very important things to consider. And as a dentist or as somebody that's trying to build a dso, you either need to know your way around this or you're going to have to get somebody who knows their way around this and to navigate all of this DSO IT mindset. So, Jacob, let's transition. I want to. We're hearing more and more about ransomware, especially in dentistry, especially because dentistry seems to be vulnerable for some reason.

What.

What's going on and what, what do we need to be doing as DSO leaders to protect our organ from all the bad people out there that the dark web, so to speak, that are trying to, you know, drop ransomware and, and do all of these sorts of things.

Yeah, good question. Cyber security is evolving, right? It used to be just go buy Norton Antivirus from the store and put on your computer and you're good and make sure your definitions are updated. Right. Viruses are. They're not gone, but they're not the threat that they were before. So I would recommend the one piece I would say is you got to put antivirus in but make sure that it's a cloud based definition antivirus, which means the definitions are stored in the cloud and pushed to the client. They don't have to be downloads client because then the clients are always going and looking. So you have real time protection. Big, big companies out there are keeping those databases accurate. But the real risk of anything with cyber security, and we love them, but they are our users, they are the ones who are clicking on that clickbait. Clickbait isn't made for like scripts and other software. It's made for people who are scrolling the Internet, clicking on something and then going, oh I trust it, let me download that and run it. Right. So the, what we need to do is we need to train them, train them, train them. But we have to trust them and verify that they're actually doing what we say. So we, we look at cyber security. There's three different ways. There's your data, there's your email and there's your network. So the data I've talked about, make sure you have good backups running on a nightly basis. Email, Email is becoming a huge thing. How many times have you heard and, and I know you're in like in the accounting side of it, Ken and, but most of the problems come from the accounting department, right? Hey, send me the, send this check to this person. We're all good, right? Someone gets hacked, they, the hacker in inners puts themselves in between and then next thing you know, an accounting controller got an email from Ken and says, all right, I'm sending $80,000 to the vendor because it, when you're at a DSO, those numbers aren't, aren't outside of your normal day to day. Right? Right. So we've had many customers, not, not many, but many potentials that come to us. Go, I'm talking to you because I don't want this to happen again. So you've got to elevate your email. Whether you're on Google or Microsoft or using someone else, they all have tools that you can use. There's other third party tools out there. When we do, when we, when you get cyber security email protection through us, we actually have about four tools that we use just for email to make sure that you're super protected. But the most important, probably my favorite tool that we use is we will fish your people. Right. So we'll do the training and go. Don't click on stuff that looks like this. If they're asking like this, don't don't do it. Right. All this great stuff and then we will go send an attack to them and try to get information from them all safe because it's us. But then we can come and go, hey Ken, so and so responded to these emails and actually download the file and did this. So now maybe you need to go have a more specific training with them. It's not to say go fire them, it's go talk to them because they are your biggest, biggest hole of your security right now. Right.

So interesting. So you actually get into the environment and test it out and see where some vulnerabilities are. That's really interesting. Yep.

You got to make, just because you put it there, you have trust and verify yourself. Right. Just because we put a firewall in there. I'm running penetration testing to make sure things aren't getting in so that when and my team can see it and know what's going on and we'll know how to remediate in the future. So one, one more thing about how people are expanding in ransomware, especially ransomware. We're not immune to it. Right. I've, we've been doing this for six years and we've dealt with three ransomware attacks with different customers. Every time it has come from a source that all falls under this umbrella. A user who's a corporate user using their personal laptop that they thought they didn't need to have any security on because it was their personal one. But they're bringing their personal device into the company network and using it for work. That is my biggest fear of any dsl. They'll go buy this laptop from Costco Best Buy, give it to their people, say get going. And then they're taking it home and bringing it in. And these, these ransomwares, they get downloaded, downloaded Apple music, something someone thinks is totally fine. Right. But they'll sit there and they'll wait. They'll wait three, six months before they execute. And then what happens if your backups are only not far back enough like you can't go back and get it? And in those three months it can start to encrypt, infect other stuff. So it's about training your users and then you've got to make sure that you've got good solid backups. Every time we've been hit, we've been able to restore the customer. The longest, I think took 18 hours, so or not 18 hours, 36. It was a day and a half. But all the others were same day like we knew about in the morning. We had them back up the next morning because we were recovering that night. So we, we do stuff we need to, to have servers on hand, people ready to drive out. The one was eight hours away. We're on site at 4 o' clock with the backup going, so. But the last part about how they're getting even sneakier. And this has been coming out, some conferences I've just recently been in, they know that you're backing your data up. Ransomware is all about, let me lock you out, make you pay me money. Right, Right. We just say, forget you, we got a backup, we're fine, we're going to clean it up. And here's the data. Right. So now they're trying to work on getting into your backups. That is why you need to make sure backups are running nightly but are tested at least monthly, in my opinion, if, if not more frequently. Because that's where they're going. That's the new pot of gold for the hackers, because if they can block your backup, then you have to pay the ransomware.

Yeah, that's right. Fascinating. Any other little tips and tricks to protect ourselves against these types of things at which again, I'm hearing about it more and more in dentistry, unfortunately.

Yeah. I don't know where that. I'm hearing a phone call. I'm not sure where it's coming from. So the only other tip would be don't think that. Don't think that your users understand everything you say. People don't understand until they've heard it seven times. And so make sure that you're saying it until you're blue in the face. But don't say it the same way over and over. I've been in compliance meetings where they just say the same thing and people still don't get it right. Say it in a different way and help them see it and help them see that you're a part of it to help them and to help make their life easier. So I think that's the real trick. So that you're not coming from a compliance, I'm going to beat you with a stick. But you're coming as a manager, leader, friend with a carrot going, we're going to help make your life easier. And maybe some of these habits we're teaching can help you at home too. Because what we're finding, you've even seen people with texts, right? Where a text comes from them. So people are finding they're seeing you guys on, on LinkedIn and Facebook, they know that you're an executive at a dso. So they're going to start hitting you personally too. So some of the things that you're doing at work are good practices at home as well. Change your passwords using encryption. Two factor authentication. As much as I hate two factor authentication, having like stick my finger and pull up a code and punch it in, there are systems that do need that, especially for your executives who have basically the keys to the kingdom. You need to protect them even personally.

Great points. All right, Jacob, we're to the exciting lightning round part the interview. These are seven questions. We hit these pretty quick and so we'll just go through these kind of rapid fire. Although I might have a follow up question on one or two of these. What are you currently working on?

Currently working on with my family we're trying to become urban farmers. So we're raising rabbits, chickens and quails. And then we had some, some dogs that we were going to breed later but ended up they bred themselves. And so I now have nine puppies that are ready and available. I got nine golden doodles if anyone wants one on Christmas Eve, that's when they'll be ready.

Just keep. Yeah, that's the gift that keeps on giving right there.

Yep. All right.

What are you the most proud of?

I mean everyone goes here, but I'm most proud of my wife of 20 years. We just saw yesterday was our 20th anniversary.

Oh, congratulations. That's huge. Great accomplishment.

So 20 years and eight kids and they still love me and want to hang out with me. That's. That's my biggest accomplishment.

Good for you. We have the eight kids in common.

We do.

That's awesome. Favorite sports team?

Gotta be. BYU football. Go Cougs. All right.

Favorite hobby?

I love playing the piano. Been playing it since I was 7. So I love just sitting there and just putting some music in front of me. Just having fun.

Good for you. Favorite app on your phone?

My favorite app. I'm got 185 day streak with Duolingo so I am learning Spanish and Hebrew.

Really?

Yep.

You feeling after 180. 85 days you said?

Yep.

Feeling like you, you're slightly conversant. Where would you sit? You're at.

No, I might game the system a little bit. They have leaderboards so sometimes I just do the practices to keep my points high. So 185 days. Probably not of, of the right type of studying but it's, it's a great system to help you see where you're at and how to go. So that's awesome.

Great.

All right.

Your Favorite spreadsheet function.

I'd say all the lookup functions, the Vlookup, hlookup and xlookup. Those, Those are probably my favorite, so. Well, actually. Well, they're not my favorite. Sorry. They're the most used. My favorite is if error because I get so many spreadsheets sent me from people that just have all of this data there. But at the end you have div0na. I'm like, don't give me these like error codes. Just put if error, then put your stuff in and call it good. So that's my favorite because it cleans stuff up and people think you're a genius because you're using one function.

Oh, Microsoft Excel has made all of us look like geniuses on many occasions, right?

Yes, it has.

It's a, it's one of those tools that smart people use to solve problems and then hand it off to Automate. For sure. It's one of the great tools. Awesome. All right, well, as we're kind of starting to wrap up the episode here, Jacob, what would be some parting advice that you give to emerging DSOs out there as they're trying to navigate this whole landscape of building and growing a group of dental practices, becoming a dso, what's some advice you'd pass their way as they're trying to grow, scale and live the dream.

Live the dream. The first, what I would say is don't think your IT in your dental office, and especially in a DSO where you have 2, 3, 400 plus people is as easy as your smartphone. There's not an app for that right now. There's a lot of things you bring together, but give it the, the credibility it's due. It's a big beast, and that's why it's not. There is no out of the box solution. So you need to be thinking about your IT infrastructure early and figuring out how you're going to monitor it and, and how you're going to develop your process around it. And so just remember, a quick consult with someone who does this day in, day out can save you thousands of dollars. Ask the question. There's no dumb question except the one that's unasked, Right? So if you, if you, unless you feel you've got the time to be the expert, which I don't think you do think that because you're trying to build a dso, right? You realize you have to bring experts. You have to have your experts in finance and clinical and operations and marketing. Right? Then I think it, especially with the security standpoints, Today you need someone who's talking to you about that and, and finding ways to use technology to fast track stuff. So if you don't have that person inside, then find someone externally. I'm living proof that there are some of those on the outside who can still act completely on the inside with you. Because we believe in full transparency, one of our benefits is we've been in your shoes so we know the pain points. You don't have to explain dental procedures and priorities to us. We know it, we get it, and we're here to help you grow. And we'll take you as you are and grow with you. So find someone who you trust, who communicates well and that you can move forward with. So our hope is that we could be that for more people. And if we're not the fit for you, great. But I will be remiss if I don't say this as part of this, we would like to offer for any of those who have question about backups. If you want to talk with us, you want to get your backup solution in the right way, then we're actually offering half off backups for the year and probably more. I'm sure Brian will, Brian will work all the details. He's our guy there. But if you talk to us and mention that you're part of DSO Secrets, then you get half off of backups. We just wanted you to be protected and make sure that your data is your data and not anyone else's so you can keep producing outstanding.

There's the value. That's one of the many values that you get or valuable things you get from being part of the DSS Secrets group. Of course. Jacob, we appreciate you being on the show. This has been, I think, very insightful and hopefully very helpful for those who are trying to navigate this IT component of building, building out a practice. Why don't you share with everybody what your the best way is to contact you if they want to reach out and connect.

So the best way is SalesTechTogether.com if you want to get me directly. I will, I will say this, I'm an IT guy, but I'm not big on social media. But I do watch my LinkedIn so you can find me at Jacob daughter dash Irving. They're on LinkedIn and we'll, I'm sure we'll post that down in the notes down below Facebook. Don't try me there, try me on LinkedIn because I have more people helping me track that.

So very nice. Well, Jacob, thank you again. It's been an absolute pleasure to have you on the show.

I appreciate you having me here and looking forward to all the other exciting work we get to do together and hopefully we can help others as well.

Yeah, it's going to be great. All right, so we've heard from Jacob Irving, been in and around the DSO space for a long time, been in it and solving all of those problems for a very long time. All about and ultimately this episode is just all about trying to get that and understand the IT mindset that we need to have as DSO leaders. Many, many thanks to all of you for joining today. And this is a wrap on DSO IT Mindset.

Thank you for listening to DSO Secrets. Join our community on Facebook at 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 dsosecrets.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.