188: Decoding Accounting & Financials for Scaling Success

I think where dentists might be having trouble is they're saying, man, my accountant's not getting me X, Y and Z. And it's kind of like my orthodontist isn't doing my implants well. Right. Like they're both dentists, so to speak. But it is a different capability. Hi, I'm Emmett Scott and just like you, I've had my ups and downs in the dental industry, but times are changing. The DEO has built a map of how to succeed in one of the most challenging industries to navigate. On this show, we talk to dental industry leaders, solve problems, and get you the answ you need to face these challenging times and thrive. Welcome to DEO's Growth Secrets podcast for dental organizations. Now let's get started. Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of DEO Grow Secrets. I'm your fearless host, Emmett Scott, and I'm excited today to be here with Patrick Arnold and Mr. Rudolph as we jump into the wild world of accounting and finance. And thank you both for being on. Let's start off, Patrick, do you want to give us a little bit of your background and then, and then we'll go to you.

Yeah, no thanks, Emmett. No, we're really excited to be here today. My background, I've been with Elliot Davis for almost four years now, specifically working with market as we expand our dental group practice, really working on forward looking thinking, accounting, building out strategic models and so forth. Before that I played some minor league baseball for the Washington Nationals. So came from a full analytical, competitive, dashboard style, you know, atmosphere. And so we've kind of really evolved that here at Elliott Davis, you know, and thankfully with the guidance of Mark and the rest of the team, you know, we're having a lot of fun doing it.

Mark, when you and I first started talking, you know, I remember we said there's definitely a hole in the marketplace here because we've got a bunch of accountants who are kind of doing the financials on the side, but they're not really providing managerial accounting. Right. They're just doing enough to do the taxes. But these guys are running multimillion dollar businesses with poor chart of accounts, poor PNLs. So what kind of inspired you to start taking this on?

Certainly appreciate that, Emmett, and great to be reconnected with you. We, you know, Patrick has a baseball background. Mine was basketball. I'm a basketball nut. Still like to try and play, but always fascinated with strategy and sports, team sports, and really preferred to think of scoreboards and dashboards as forward looking strategic instruments as opposed to Reporting history. And so when I was trying to decide in college what I was going to do, my basketball coach introduced me to a cpa. But. But the accounting professor at. At the same university was real, came from an SEC background. And he talked to me about, you know, how the SEC was always about reporting toward the future. You had to let the investors know what to expect, not just what had happened. And it really left an impression upon me. So I started my career working with SEC registering companies and got to appreciate that, worked my way into an opportunity to become a leader and a managing partner in an accounting firm while accounting was going through consolidation. And so I got to appreciate working with our current stakeholders, current partners, and in any new ones that we were bringing on, and the importance of relevant, understandable, transparent information that can help people understand where we're headed as opposed to where we've been. Accountants love to live in a world of regret and tell you what you should have done. And that's Patrick and myself included. We fight that. But our mantra every day with our team is, what can we do to help people make better decisions? And one of the real, the big things in dental, one of the things I love about our team and what we've done is we really have a passion for the docs. We want the doctors to think of themselves as clinicians first, as business people, but more importantly, as investors. We want them to enjoy the same opportunity, the same investment returns, the same valuations that all the private equity groups enjoy who are so hungry to make investments in this industry. So rather than functioning as a private practice and getting the multiples that a local bank would give you, we want to help them to build a structure and a strategy with the right kind of information that can allow them to see themselves and view themselves as investors moving forward.

Well, I do know one thing about this group. The favorite movie has to be Moneyball at this point, right?

Absolutely.

Where the sports and the analytics came together and really got revealed. So that's awesome. You know, a couple things here, one I want to start with is I think as customers, we often make mistakes when we go into other industries that we paint with a broad brush. And as dentists, they know this all the time because someone comes in and says, hey, can you straighten my teeth? Hey, can you do that implant? Hey, can you also do the crown? Can you also take care of my kids? You know, and we all know that there's this division of labor and capability. And yeah, there's some super GPs out there who might be doing at all, but for the most part, efficient practices are kind of picking a niche and they're doing that really well. And so you'd never have a schedule that says, okay, you're seeing a pediatric patient in the morning, then you're doing an ortho case, then you're doing an implant case, you know, and then you're doing a geriatric case later on or something like that. But when we go over to accountants, we often treat them that way and we don't. We're not sophisticated enough to ask what is your real specialty? And so one of the things we try to teach our members is there is tax accounting, specifically for looking backwards, making sure you're doing those filings because they expire every year and you go to jail if you don't do them. You know, they're kind of important. But then there's that forward looking tax strategy, which oftentimes the accountants who are looking back, you know, my joke is if you want tax strategy for your accountant and you ask them for it, they'll say, come in next year and I'll tell you what you should have done. Right. So they're really a backwards looking capability which is important for the regulatory. But there's this third category, which is managerial accounting, which comes down to your profit loss statement, your balance sheet, even going as far as maybe the finance side of a cash flow statement for the future. And so I want to kind of focus on that third area because I think where dentists might be having trouble is they're saying, man, my accountant's not getting me X, Y and Z. And it's kind of like my orthodontist isn't doing my implants well. Right. Like they're both dentists, so to speak. But it is a different capability. So how do you all kind of frame that those different services? You know, I have my metaphors in ways, but how do you all think about the different capabilities that dentists need as business owners from their accounting and finance team?

Yeah, I'm going to let Patrick talk a little bit about our approach to the relationships once it's established. But I do want to emphasize something to your point, Emmett, that we have a tremendous respect for relationships and we've got respect for the relationships that business owners have with their tax accountants. And so Patrick and I lead a team that is primarily focused on accounting and finance and reporting, whether it's management reporting, investment reporting, operational reporting, segment reporting for the stakeholders, et cetera. And we've got our tax group that we're pleased to introduce to Anyone who's looking for that. But we do not have to replace the tax relationship that's involved. And I'm not saying that as a selling pitch, I'm just saying it's something that, to your point, should be asked for, should be requested. You shouldn't miss out on an opportunity to get advice and structure in your management reporting specific to your needs to be able to make forward looking decision just because you have a great relationship on the tax side. There's a tax shortage around the country for professionals, so we respect those relationships.

One of the, like, quick, I guess, litmus tests I have a dentist do to say do I have the right relationship is if they're getting things like, sorry, I didn't get your financials done, it's a busy tax season.

Yes. Then you know you're in the wrong mix. Right? That's right.

So if you're not getting your financials timely because of tax stuff, then you need to go ahead and split that off.

Right.

To another group.

Yeah, exactly right.

And to expand on that too. Right. You know, from your managerial accounting, Emmett, they should be hearing those trigger words on when to pull in that tax specialist.

Right.

When they're going through the diagnosis like, oh, this might be a tax situation, that's when we need to bring them in, let them do what they're great at.

Right.

And then we support them as they worry about the future tax projections. And that's the other type of managerial accounting is how can we help tax for the regulatory, but how can we help them plan for the future as well as different events happen through an emerging group?

Patrick, maybe you can mention how we use sort of our modeling as the core of all of our relationships. Whether we have the tax relationship or we're working with another tax group, how we use our model is the core to the relationship. Yes.

Yes. Thanks, Mark.

Yeah.

And so as we talk about, it's a collaborative process not only with, you know, the clients that we work with, but also their advisors that they also have at the table. And we really start off with getting them in a room and working through their strategic vision through an assessment. You know, what's their market dynamics, what's their customer avatar, what's the industry trends that are currently going on and what's their competitive landscape. Right. To try to find those strategic opportunities. Once we go through that as first assessment, we start building out the financial model and start building out, you know, what's going to happen in Q1, Q2, Q3, how are we going to get to these Places, what's the financing involved? And within that model we build it out to also help the tax side of things. Right. Because we may be on accrual basis accounting, but the tax returns on cash basis.

Right.

And that's a whole nother conversation in itself.

Right, right. You know, you guys are, you guys are helping do forward looking budgeting and forecasting as well. So way beyond just getting their PNLs right, you're starting to look forward for them. Would you even if somebody said hey, I want a 13 week cash flow and kind of know, because I think more and more dentists are starting to realize with labor inflation that hey, the profit margin isn't just automatically there. Right. Like I'm really going to have to know can I afford these, this equipment? Whereas before it'd be like as long as I finance it, it all works out. Now it's like okay, yeah, I kind of need to know am I going to be able to make payroll in two months?

Right.

Or especially if you have a new location coming online. Right. And you have an extra three months of training with new team members, that's a different field of what you've historically done. So to your point, yes, we work through not only the big strategic financial model but, but then take that down to even weekly cash flow models if needed to make sure we make those cash requirements in addition to the management and segmented reporting to empower employees throughout the whole organization.

I just wanted to emphasize, I think you make a great point there that regardless of the size, whether it's a startup practice that's just purchased or you're just expanding hours, adding an op, expanding, you have a new doc coming on, whatever it is right there. We, we really like to begin with a long term in mind. So our model starts and looks out as far forward as comfortable. So that vision is usually 10 years out from a, from a modeling perspective it's usually like five and we'll back it up to three to be reasonable. But we're going to fill all in, fill those blanks and starting with the revenue build and what they're, what their capacity is, what are they capable of doing with their existing facilities or their intended expansion. And so cash 13 week cash flows are very effective and we're getting more and more requests for that projects around, understanding their projections and we do all of that. But the really important work is beyond that. It's like where do you want to be one, three and five years from now? And we work backwards into the timing of those expansion decisions. So and distribution Policies, et cetera, so that you don't get yourself into trouble within the next 13 weeks. And that's really. So yes, we have a 13 week pro forma that we continue to roll forward and help them with to use as a tool. But the strategy, the longer term modeling is the more important first step. Now we usually have to start with 13 weeks because there's some significant pain, but then we quickly get them to thinking longer term so that those that exercise becomes easier and easier and it's just a matter of being more strategic about it rather than putting out fires.

You know, I use a model that says that all of us kind of move from technician or we'll say in this industry, clinician to entrepreneur and then up to executive. The challenge I've always seen is there is a lot of content, whether it's social media and Instagram and so forth, books around moving from the clinician to the entrepreneur. A lot of that language is around grit and hard work and putting in long hours and being innovative, which I think are all great principles. But as you scale as many of our members have multimillion dollar businesses, which I think they forget, like, oh yeah, I'm running a multi million dollar business. You have to start learning the tools between entrepreneur and executive. And I think a lot of what you're talking about here is you're not going to grit your way through cash flow like it either exists or it doesn't. And you need to understand that there's actually very helpful tools here.

Yes.

That that allows you to not just lay up at night going, I wonder if I'm going to make it. I wonder if this is going to work. You know, things that will clean the windshield as you're driving the Ferrari there and allow you to start seeing forward. And it's typically again not going to come from your tax accountant who is there to help you meet your regulatory guidelines. Looking backwards, it's from a finance partner that's going to help you start looking forward. I'm interested too. And you know, as people start to learn this jargon, they can do forecasting, they can do cash flow statements or 13 week cash flows, they can do performance. Right. So they can actually build a spreadsheet with you all and start to go, okay, we're going to buy this practice. How do we think it's going to ramp up? Right. We'll, we'll start educating them on assumptions that they hadn't thought. Yeah, how many patients will come in, what will be our care per visit? Those type of things. I'M assuming you all help kind of start getting into those conversations so they start getting more sophisticated executive level sophistication.

Right.

How to think about this? Yeah.

So I mean, you're spot on. And I think the one thing we, we really focus on is the mindset, especially with an emerging group, because that founder doc is wearing multiple hats in the beginning. Right. And they're in a reaction state of mind. I'm reacting to everything. And we try to really use that model as that decision tree to where we can start being more responsive to everything. You know, especially as you continue to grow, problems are going to get a little bit bigger.

Right?

There's more, more people in the pot

or zeros on the end of this.

Yeah, yes. And on both ends of the direction.

Right, exactly.

And then even the complexity of having a different provider mix, you have seasoned providers at certain younger providers, so as that new location comes on, it may not grow as fast. Right. All that, we wrap that back into that model and you know, you're going to hear us always repeat that because that's our decision tree and that's the purpose of it, you know, is like, okay, let's get from reaction to responsive and then let's work our way up the ladder to that executive role.

Right.

And then let's start really building out that functional team underneath them so that founder doc or whoever the leadership team is is really be able to plan this out and have a really positive story where they can align the organization in itself.

Emmett, part of us being sort of from a fractional perspective, what Patrick does extraordinarily well and our whole team, but Patrick's been a leader in establishing a methodology that enables the founder investor docs to sort of allow us to meet them where they need us to. And so Patrick and his team can build the basic model, ask the right, very specific questions to have the appropriate usable key performance indicators built into the model so that we can have that revenue build and that trajectory of growth that's more appropriate rather than just what we want it to be. And then that leads through all of the variable expenses and controlling the incentive, how we're going to pay docs and clinicians and, and whether we're, whether we're efficiently ordering supplies and using lab and tying all that together and really sharing information with the stakeholders that will influence their behavior in a strategic way as opposed to giving them something that's meaningless. But Patrick and the team can do to whatever extent necessary the work in the modeling and then use cloud based products and even whether It's QBO or Fathom or whatever to bring it back to a user friendly tool to make proactive, forward looking decisions. So it's not about teaching them how to model, it's about asking the right questions, developing the model for them, then putting it in a format that they can use and visualize and understand and manipulate any way that they want.

Well, I'll pull on something you all said when you start combining these principles together. I'm building out a Performa and I have to determine, you know, what my patient flow is, which makes me think through what is my marketing strategy.

Yes.

To think through what is going to be my care per visit and I have to think through which doctor am I putting in there and where is their clinical capability and standard of care. All of this is just making me a more conscious business owner. Right. And start to think through these moving pieces which I think is extremely helpful to mature us up.

Right.

You know, this isn't just magically happening. This capability is driving this result and it actually does flow through in a way that you can see it on a spreadsheet. And you know, I think sometimes we get paralyzed on like, yeah, I don't, I don't know if they're going to do 300 or 321 or whatever it might be, you know, or I don't know if it's going to be exactly this cost. One of the things I've always thought in my own mind and shared with others is the one thing I know is whatever I put down for the future will be wrong.

Right.

I'm just not that good. But what it does is it memorializes what I thought was going to happen. And that variance of reality, better or worse, teaches me as a business owner where I need to focus. Maybe I was right on, on patient flow, but I was right off on, you know, care per visit or how many dental assistance I would really need or what the cost was going to be. And so any of those variances, I think it's less about getting it perfect and more about the learning process. Is that what you all see?

Absolutely. And I think one thing that I do, Patrick, I'll let you go here, but just the, the for me thing that I feel Patrick does really well is empowering the doc who's trying to be the clinician, the administrator, executive, and wants to understand as an investor where we're headed and what that looks like. It allows him to. The tools allow him to empower others so he doesn't have to be doing everything. He doesn't have to wear every hat. You can establish those goals and objectives that we want to have at each level in the sphere of influence that each of those stakeholders in the organization have.

No, Mark. Yeah, you're spot on. And those are tough conversations.

Right.

You know, because it's easy, as you said, for them to go, yeah, they'll do, you know, three, five hundred bucks a day. Right.

And.

And sometimes it takes a little bit more. Right, from that strategic vision perspective, you know, because as you said, you. We want to have that roadmap. Right.

What.

What is our future aspirations going to be and what resources do we need to get there? Right. And is it additional, you know, training for our younger providers and our clinical staff? Do we, you know, do we need to bring RCM in house just because, you know, we really want to make sure that's tightened up due to different market trends and vendors and. But then the other aspects of the resources, which. It makes it even more complex. What's the CapEx needs? As you know, these organizations continue to grow, and that's not just for new acquisitions and denovas, but it's also for current locations. Right. We want to stay. Yeah, we want to stay on par with the brand, and everything else that happens, happens, and then it moves into financing and equity activity, which is a whole nother bigger conversation that plays into this. And, you know, it's the question that, you know, I think Mark's kind of alluding to that. I ask our providers all the time, how much do you want to be in the chair? You know, how much do you want to be in the chair compared to how much you really want to be that executive? And if not, what are the resources? We can find a great executive or a great COO to come in here and really help you do this, because there's only so much, you know, day. Only so much day. You know, minutes in the day. Right.

You know, there's two areas that I find. Dentist owners have friction points, and they don't realize it's actually their lack of financial foundation that's causing it. One I call KPI Delusion. All right, and what KPI Delusion is, is, you know, I've gotten this great software. We'll name a couple. Dental Intel, Jarvis, et cetera. I've overlaid it. I've come up with some KPIs that I think everyone should hit, and maybe they do, maybe they don't. But let's say they do. And I'm paying out bonuses and I'm losing money, and the Reason I call it KPI delusion is because the KPIs are out there floating without actually being tied in to the statement. And I think you said this early on, Mark, but just to kind of call it out is the KPIs need to be a simplified version of what you've already discovered within your P and L. Hey, when we hit these revenue numbers, when we have this patient flow, when these things happen, I have a profit of X amount. If I get a profit above that, I should be able to share it. So once I have established that profit margin clarity, then I can use a KPI type number to say I know enough about how my business works that if these are true, then it should roll down into excess profit. So KPIs are a nice way instead of saying, hey guys, here's my profit and loss statement. Let's go through every line and you got to understand it. And if profits above 15%, you know, then I'll share some with you, etc. You're able to just kind of simplify. But if you just jump to KPIs and you go, so what's the benchmarks for the industry? You might be losing a lot of money. You know, am I your industry, your region, your area? You know, the way that you've structured may not fit well with the benchmarks.

Well, we believe very strongly that what gets measured gets done. And so you really have to be careful what you wish for. So if you establish the wrong KPIs, and even more importantly the wrong incentives around the KPIs, you can drive a lot of behavior, which on the surface looks like exactly what you want. But if you haven't considered the pace of growth, that that can create the expansion costs, that that can create the excess capacity or excess utilization in certain ways, whatever that would be. You haven't decided exactly how you want to finance that and what internal equity program or external equity program or your profit reinvestment distribution strategy that you want to have. All that needs to be tied together in your, your pro forma and your modeling to make sure it's going to work out. So it's one thing to have a stakeholder comp and equity and incentive program that you've thoughtfully considered and tied it to measurable events. That's great. But if you haven't modeled that to see what those likely outcomes are going to be, you could be very disappointed and have a very difficult time unwinding something because it's hard to take something away that you've already offered Right, Exactly.

That's not a fun conversation. Congratulations, you guys are hitting it. So we got to get rid of it, right?

That's right.

And I want to add something there too, is around KPIs, because as you said, there's a lot of stuff I've seen on social media, just in the forums himself, about what's the best ones.

Right.

And I really want to make sure that our listeners are hearing us from our perspective is that it's what's most impactful to you and what's going to help you really influence it in the right direction. Because if you ask an analyst what KPI he wants to, he's going to give you the whole, he's gonna give you a hundred.

Right.

Because it's an analyst. That's what we want to do. We want to analyze, we want to know every little nook and cranny. But it's, it's really just as you said, you know, you don't want to have paralysis due to having too many KPIs that are not impacting you all

in the right direction.

Yeah. Great. So I think this comes back to the foundation of any kind of bonus program and I'll, I'll dovetail this into the next conversation is do you understand what your profit margin is? Right. And that's really, and it's amazing how many of us just don't. We, we don't have an understanding of our profit margin. We know there's money in the bank or it's not, it's going down. But we really don't understand from a month to month perspective what that looks like. And maybe even the seasonalities that might exist that we need to be conscious of.

We use the profit. So our modeling starts with a profitability analysis and projections. And so the revenue build is the most important piece of that. Right. But the other major components are gross margin, which is after the variable expenses, your clinical expenses of clinical compensation, docs and assistants and hygienists, but also the labs and supplies. And we've got targets for each of those that we've discussed with the stakeholders to make sure are reasonable and are going to encourage the outcomes that we want. And then so that margin oftentimes is a better indicator for determining the appropriate level of incentive to provide people that because it's within their sphere of influence, those are the things they can control. They can't control rent and marketing and investment for future growth and all of that stuff, the occupancy costs. But what they can influence is the clinical Behavior and ordering and so forth. And so Patrick builds the model with those certain key indicators that we've discovered through strategic discussions with the customer that are going to drive that revenue they want to achieve and that profitability that they want to achieve. Then it's easy for him to take it back into the management reporting system so they can see how they're doing toward that. And so people only need to look at what it is they're being asked to influence instead of understanding every piece of it.

And that's why we really emphasize doing a strategic business session. Do the assessment, understand where, you know, the owners really want this to go, to be able to map out what those incentive plans are. Because if we don't have that vision and strategic vision, we're just kind of creating something to. Because someone says, hey, I want a bigger bonus because I'm doing X, Y, Z within the practice. Right? It's, let's create something that's going to do that influence that we want to get us to that long term goal that we're looking for.

I'll give you another one that I see as a huge friction point. I just did a training on this here in January, which is I want to give partners some equity or I want them to buy in. And so it's like, what's the right amount, how should that work, etc. A lack of foundational financials is going to cause a lot of problems. And I, I've seen that in a couple areas. One is you've got to know what profit you're sh. You're selling. Right. So you say 10%, 20%, 30%, but what is that translating down to? Because that associate who's buying in is really most interested in what the distribution path is. And that usually leads to problem number two, which is when distributions aren't happening for good business reasons or whatnot, we kind of expect them to just understand as a fellow entrepreneur and you know, they're our partner now and yeah, we got to solve these problems together, but they don't understand. And if you can't provide them timely financials with clarity and be able to walk them through what's really going on, they're going to assume one thing. You're stealing money from them.

Yeah.

You're taking advantage of that dirty dso. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Yeah. I'm one associate and I'm a dirty dso. That's exactly right. And so, you know, and you go to them and say, sorry, the accountant, it's tax season. So they haven't gotten me financial What? Who cares? I need to know why I'm not getting so again, these, this financial clarity drives so many other pieces of the conversation and of the clarity and oftentimes it's the first place on the associate equity side that I want to start is like, you want to be my partner? You need to learn this PNL for the office first and start getting educated because all the conversations are going to be around that. How many dental assistants do we really need? And should we be buying this and should we be buying that and, and those kind of things. If I don't have a partner who's educated on the P and L, I have a very frustrating relationship typically is what I.

And again, Emmett, that's where we, we have two things that we like to emphasize as we're, as we're considering associate equity. And one is that if they understand gross margin, if they just understand clinical pay supplies and lab and nothing else, they're going to, they're, they're going to be right where they need to be. We're going to meet them where they are and we're going to help them to understand that and they can drive and influence that and that'll work. The other thing is we don't talk about associate equity programs. We call about stake, we call them stakeholder comp, incentive and equity programs because we believe there's sort of an evolution that should occur. We all think if you just go to the end and we're going to either let you earn or buy equity, you should be thrilled. And it's so far outside the realm of perception for most of them at that point that it does nothing to recruit my recruitment, but it doesn't retain and keep the stakeholder happy. And so we want to have parallel paths that are tied to performance, compensation for performance and meeting incentives that leads to opportunities, whether it's through deferred comp or earned equity or to purchase equity as they better understand and appreciate the value in that. And it could happen very quickly or it could happen over a period of time. And all of Patrick's modeling brings all that together for them, helps them to see at points in a row and it takes it out far enough that they can see why that equity is valuable, but also how their behavior can influence their current year comp and incentives and so forth.

Especially when you have those younger groups, right, where the original practice is funding a bunch of the shared costs for all these two other practices and associates not going to have the original, any kind of ownership, the original, they're going to be at this practice, right? That has really an inflated profit margin. That's not really, you know, materially accurate. The other aspect too, about modeling it earlier is we give a lot of conversations about, okay, this is what I think our operating agreement says, this is what I think our policies are. But then all of a sudden you start modeling it out and it's completely different. It's like, well, wait a minute, like we're, we're, you know, either giving up the farm or we're not given enough. Like, it's just not exactly how we want our culture to be within the organization.

Right. Well, this is a different conversation, but I love what it ends up fleshing out too, is if I bring on a partner in that practice that is doing very well and that practice is helping fund other practice growth. Now all of a sudden, I have kind of restricted cash with that partner. I can't just be grabbing the money out and putting it. He's like, wait, no, that's my money too, right? And so am I going to have equity in this stuff? So all of those considerations. Again, the purpose of this discussion and podcast is to start to understand why financial acumen as financial support team is so critical. Whether you're a single practice and you're just like, I just need to understand what's happening with inflation costs and what I need to be doing with labor and so forth. Whether you're bringing on that first associate, whether you're at 10 locations and you're like, okay, it's fine, it's finally, I need to get this figured out because this is getting a lot more complicated. Financial clarity will not hurt you, right? It's worth every dollar. Do not go cheap on this thing. Like, you will get your money back. Don't worry. Some of it might be in finding out someone stealing from you when you're like, hey, why are these write offs so much bigger over at this practice? You know, so one way or the other, you're going to get your money back on this investment. Well, this has been awesome. Is there anything we haven't touched on that maybe we should before we go?

From my perspective, just to summarize, it doesn't matter whether it's a single doc, single location, or a single location with multiple docks or multiple locations, or a multi layered structured entity. The modeling is critical and it can be as simple as you need it to be, but it's critical for making good long term decisions. It's also critical to look at the stakeholder transparency, the stakeholder goals and objectives, the stakeholder comp and incentives for anyone that you want to empower. Even a single doc, single location or two docs, you could have various roles for people. A doc can be a clinician and get paid appropriately for that. You can be an administrator executive and be paid appropriately for that and hopefully ultimately have something that looks or feels or actually is equity and you're an investor and you get compensated for that. But they're very distinct roles that we can empower people with and help them to understand.

Yeah, love it.

Yeah. And you know, there's a lot of tools out there, especially for the emerging groups. You know, there's a lot of cloud based software Mark was referring to, you know, because if you look at some of these bigger ones, they're probably in a power BI system that's pulling in all the data from everywhere and those are great and they're really needed. But again, the 23 location practices, you can use a Fathom Reach or something else like that to bridge into an ERP system. Even that has an integrated dashboard. So there's an evolution to that. So I don't want those younger groups to feel, oh, well, I got to wait until I'm at 7, 10 locations and the cash flow is positive enough to make this big critical investment. We can start there early.

Right.

And then my other, my other thing here is think about your strategic vision. Even if it's driving home after work, you just picked up the kids, you've been in the chair for eight hours. Start focusing on that, start thinking about that. Because if you really want to move away from a reactionary position to more of a responsive position, and I think everyone will be way happier with that.

Awesome. I love that. Moving from reactive to proactive piece here. Well, thank you both very much. Now if someone wants to reach out to you, says, okay, you're right, I do need help here. What would be the best path for them to reach out to you?

Well, they can email us both, you know, you know, Elliot Davis are, you know, my, My email is patrick.arnoldiotdavis.com and that's Elliot with two L's and two T's. My personal cell is 863-660-3202. And I think, Mark, probably the same for you, right?

Yeah, Mark, it's, it's Mark Rudolph at Elliot Davis. But I actually prefer a text or a call. I love talking to people if you don't mind. But send me an email if you want to or a text. It's 0535-6436. Anytime awesome.

This has been huge help as we continue to really upgrade the industry and move from that clinician to entrepreneur to executive. So thank you both for being on Check out Elliot Davis. Reach out to them. Text them. Man, you guys are making life easy. For those who are DEO members, immersion members, just as a reminder, we have an event coming up February 22nd through the 24th in Phoenix, Arizona. We're going to be talking a lot about these things as well as other operational strategies. And for those who want to, just check out DEO and what's going on with deo in June June 13th through the 15th in Orlando, Florida, multiply your dental Practice Margin Event Summit. So look forward to seeing you all at some of these events, so it'll be awesome. And until next time, keep smiling. Thank you for listening to deo's Growth Secrets podcast for dental organizations. Continue the conversation on our Facebook group and meet other dental leaders. Get questions answered and the strategies you need to succeed. Plus, we have some free resources for you right there on the Facebook page. Remember, you're not alone. Let's do this together. Join DEO's Growth Secrets Group on Facebook and in the until next time, keep smiling.