193: Why You Need Financial Clarity To Grow Your Practice & How To Get It

You deserve to have a place in your life that's not stressful and is clear. And financials is the one place that could be. 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 answers 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 great to be with J.W. oliver, owner, president, leader, extraordinaire of support DDS, and Tanner Applegate with Unifi, who's doing consulting with Support DDS and helping them get some amazing new platforms in place. Great to have both of you guys here with me on this Friday.

Happy Friday. Thanks, Emmett.

All right, so we're going to talk about something that plagues not only dentistry, but frankly, every entrepreneur, every industry I've ever been in, and it's called financial clarity. Right? So we start off as entrepreneurs and frankly, we're just excited to make a. We're excited if we can pay our bills. We're excited that the patient, the customer, actually likes our product. We're excited that we can get employees to work for us. Or at least in the past, we used to. And so we grow our business and then one day we wake up and we go, oh, wait, this is like a business and I should know what's going on and my bank account's not enough, Right? And usually that happens, especially when the bank account isn't telling us what's going on or it's got drained for some reason. And in dentistry, I found that we can go pretty far sometimes, especially in the past, with margins being good, without having the financial clarity that, frankly, we really need. But one, at one point we wake up and we're like, oh, my goodness, I've got a million dollar, multimillion dollar business here. I think I should know what's going on. There's this thing called profit and loss, and it should show me in a report whether I'm winning or losing, like it's the scorecard. I've been playing basketball and I just don't even know what the score is on the scoreboard. And so typically I'm going to my accountant or accounting firm and say, hey, listen, you do a really Good job on my taxes. You make sure that, you know, I haven't gone to jail or anything. The IRS hasn't come knocking on my door. You seem to know these number things. Do you have anything around, like, where you could help me with my profit and loss? And they said, of course we can help you with that. And so we run with that for a while and then maybe one day we get a little more educated and we're like, I actually need my profit and loss organized a certain way. And oftentimes those are people who are in DTO who figure that out. Like, I got the profit and loss. It just doesn't tell me anything that gives me help to run the company. And I sure as heck don't want to give it to my office managers with the way it's organized right now. And I'm not getting it timely. So we use two metrics for financials. Are they timely and are they accurate? And they're putting, you know, expenses in the wrong place. And my marketing person's going in supplies or supplies into marketing and all of these things. And I have this gross profit line, but I don't even really know what gross profit is versus net income and no one's explaining it to me. And that would be fine, I guess, if we didn't own a multi million dollar business that we were supposed to run and that we had customers and patients and team members who relied on us to actually understand this stuff, to be sophisticated around this. So with that issue at play, we oftentimes go to our accountant and say, I need more, I need more. And they say, you know what? In fact, right now is a great point. Taxes are coming up. My clients are trying to get taxes. I can't get your financials out. And you're like, well, my business can't wait. Like, I'm really running a business every month. Imagine that. And so we start to go, are there other ways to solve this? And what we realize, if you've gone through some of the DEO coaching is I actually need team members that play at the CFO level. I need someone who plays at maybe a controller level and a bookkeeper level. Now, bookkeeper I kind of understand. They put stuff in the right place. Controller and CFO a little more foggy. But that is your leadership team, if you will, that actually gets things cleaned up. I go out and I go, this is really hard. This really expensive. How do I do it? Who could help me with this? So with that lead in jdove and and Tanner, talk to us a Little bit. And maybe for those who don't know who support DDS is, let's start with that. Jw, tell us a little bit about what you guys have been solving in the dental industry up to this point and then kind of this new initiative around accounting support.

Yeah, you know, we started out with some basic support roles back in 2017 where it was the insurance verification, maybe a little light bookkeeping, doing some recare, some really standard type of back office or even some front office functions. And as that's progressed and matured, especially through Covid, we were needing, people were needing director of first impressions, somebody to actually answer the phone and get them on the schedule, new patient calls, et cetera. And in the past year and a half, probably past two years, there's been really an uptick of a person's needing, hey, we need some accounting help. We've grown to three practices, five, seven, 10. And we're just needing some bandwidth on the accounting. And, and, and then as you and I have had a lot of conversations as well, it's, it's now evolved to the point where they said, you know, I, I'm at that point where I'm, I'm, you know, the, the founder owner.

Right.

He's the cfo, the coo, the CEO and picking up the trash on the weekends. He says I'm really not good at accounting and I need some help out there. And as you know that that gets quite expensive. So we've segued into where we're even able to provide controller level and then all the way down to payroll support, accounts payable reconciliations, and then kind of flowing into the little bit of the rcm. So, and again, for those that don't know, we actually provide full time team members. So if you hire someone with us, they're actually working for you. Dedicated 40 hours a week. And most all of ours now have a university education and if it's an accounting role, they're going to have an accounting background or an accounting degree as well.

It's awesome. And we just did a training on how to outsource, how to think about outsourcing, how to look at the position, make sure it's the right position for outsourcing. And you were on that training with me just a couple of days ago and were nice enough to provide us, you know, some market data and I'll just summarize one of the slides which is, you know, you end up saving over 50% in labor costs in things that you can outsource. And as you mentioned, you're still getting someone with university level education, those kind of things, with real capability, frankly, oftentimes having worked in a more sophisticated environment than your dental office previously. And so you think about the competitive advantage that provides to dental offices, leveraging outsourcing solutions like this. Not only are they working towards getting their financial clarity, getting it timely, not worried about whether it's tax season or not, they're just getting them every month, but they're getting them at a cost that is much more competitive as well. Right. And I think that's what we've been working on between DEO and Support DDS is how can we create will provide that CFO leadership as needed or maybe they have that on their team if they're larger and then that CFO leadership can get a more inexpensive but more sophisticated team in there. And Tanner, you've been helping put this together. What kind of created your passion around wanting to do this with Support dds?

The number one thing really is like you, you did a great job. And as you open this. And I actually was really kind of impressed by it, nailing the pain points that the dental offices are feeling around this. Right. And the pain point really is I'm not getting my financials in a timely manner. If you were to uncover the layers underneath that, which is one of the things that I do as a kind of a passion. Right. I like digging into the details and the process and such. The reason why those aren't coming out for two, three months after that they were due is because the process of organizing those and pulling those together really is not there. Right. There is no organization really. There's a lot of manual things being done, et cetera. And so I think the reason why JW asked and pulled me in was because there's an understanding of how do we take an accounting process, dumb it down into a repeatable, predictable structure and make it so that we can get those financials out within seven days, within 14 days, obviously depending on the complexity of your organization. Right. And so it's how do we make that and then hold them accountable to it on a regular basis. So as we bring in, as we have these clients that are coming in, asking for controller level individuals for the organization, the controllers can go in and take a repeatable structure. But a lot of the times they're new to maybe a multi entity consolidated financial. Right. Or maybe they're new to the, the accounts of a dental office.

Right.

And so really just kind of, I come in, I help them hold their hand a little bit through the Beginning process. But then once they get the hang of it, that controller has way more experience than I do in accounting and they are taking it and they run it to a whole new level. So really it's just kind of making sure that we can set that up in a predictable way. So that way you have that clarity in that timely fashion.

Well, and oftentimes I've used the example of, you know, if I'm a layperson and I come in to a dentist and I say, hey, can you treat my whole family? You know, I've got a three year old with a blown out mouth who needs a lot of help. I've got a parent who's 70 years old who needs all in fours. I've got a root canal that needs to be done. My wife needs, you know, you're a dentist, why can't you solve all these things? Right? And why can't you do that on scale too, for like every patient? And the reality is, because there's skill sets associated with each of those activities that typically one dentist isn't going to do and never necessarily isn't going to do on scale for sure. And it's same for accountants, right? They've got a skill set that's very good on making sure that your taxes are filed. Well, they might even have a team member who can do bookkeeping. But when you get more sophisticated than that, it gets overwhelming for them. Let's kind of break down the different pieces because I think a little bit of jargon would be helpful. When we talk about a bookkeeper, we're talking about someone who is putting the expenses in the right place. Right? And that right place is called the chart of accounts. So oftentimes the accountants will sign up and say, hey, we can do that part. Because, Tanner, what really happens there is. And we'll use QuickBooks as the primary software. I know some are on Sage or Netsuite, but Most are on QuickBooks. What really happens there is you tie it to the bank account, right? And it sucks it in to QuickBooks. And QuickBooks gets smart enough that I say if I pay Tanner Applegate, that goes under xyz, then every time it sees Tanner Applegate, it'll just push it under xyz. Is that right?

Correct. Yeah, that's the ideal setup. And, and honestly, as we talk about the pain points of why you're not getting them timely, that is actually a pain point of not enough people are doing that. Automatic connection to the bank accounts. Right. A lot of these old CPAs are still going in and waiting for the statement at the end of the month and then taking that statement and going in and updating that ledger. But when you have 400, 500 transactions at the end of the month to input, you're not going to get to it for a while, right? And so that delays it. And so, yes, you should have your accounts, your bank accounts automatically connected to your QuickBooks account. So that way you can go in and just kind of every day you, you mark off three to four transactions, and it makes it a lot more manageable for your bookkeeper.

Number two, the bookkeeper is not an expert on how your chart of accounts, you know, let's just call them categories and line items, need to be set up. Right? And frankly, many of the accountants aren't either. And so what I see is some accountants literally use their own chart of accounts instead of seeing production or revenue, you'll have something like CPA fees, you know, for the dental office. And so you clearly want those to represent your business. And we have at DEO a set chart of accounts that then feeds down for you to manage better. And what's happened with support DDS is, we've handed them that, that chart of accounts, and they say, yep, that's how we'll train everyone to do this. So you set up the chart of accounts correctly. Now those bookkeepers are feeding those into, you know, the right, at least the right big areas there. But you can get a little bit tricky. And this is where a controller comes in. I get a Henry Schein bill and the software says Henry Schein, that supplies. Right. Or whoever. Patterson. Bingo. And you go, oh, no, no, I bought three chairs. That's got to be booked differently, right? That's got to go over on the balance sheet. That's got to be depreciated, those kind of things. A bookkeeper doesn't necessarily need to know, you know, debits and credits. When people say, when do I need a controller? It's when I start getting a little more sophisticated, like I'm opening new locations, I've got a management company, we're charging management fees, and then we've got to, you know, merge these different panels together into one for my bank. Anything else you would add that you're seeing that the controller piece helps with?

Well, I think to talk to a little bit on your chart of accounts issue, right? If you. There's a lot of DSOs that I talk to that think, oh, I can just get away with just a bookkeeper, right? You give a bookkeeper free reign on the Charts of accounts. And yes, you might end up with maybe your cpa, your accountant's chart of accounts. But what also happens too is that that the bookkeeper looks at this line item and says, oh, well, this doesn't fit into any other chart accounts on here. So I'm just gonna create a new one. Right. Before you know it, your account, you have like 200, 300 lines on your charts of accounts that you can't make any business sense out of because it just didn't fit perfectly in this other one. Right. And so that's really where a controller comes in and says, hey, no, there's gotta be some reasoning behind when do we open up a new one. Right. From a business logic, how do we think about when to describe whether we do a new line in the chart of accounts or not? And so really kind of making sure that you do have that higher level strategy thinker is something that's required on that as well.

Oh, that's a good example is. Yeah, they start breaking JW out from Tanner pretty soon you have everyone's name on there, whatever it might be. Another, like, if you want to look at your chart of accounts and know that maybe it's not the right one, it's alphabetical in nature, which has no grouping to it. Right. Like marketing's not together, facilities isn't together. I see that all the time. Like, they literally just pulled the template alphabetical and called it good. You're probably not getting sophistication off of that. Another one. Yeah, go ahead.

I also love when you see, like you have salaries and then you also have like office team member pay. And then you also have. You're like, okay, wait, what's going on here? These are all the same thing, which is different names.

Yeah. And depending on the month, they put it in one or the.

Oh, totally.

The other thing might be, hey, this is the payroll I got from adp. So I plug it all into office salaries. It's got the hygienist, it's got the doctors in there. It's just, it's just this big lump labor sum. Right. Or someone who's like, no, I'm going to break out the front from the back office. So they go too far. And then it's like, so do you know if that person got moved to sterilization or not? Now you got to coordinate with HR to make that perfect. Is that really correct? So finding the right way of like detailed, but not too detailed. Right. There is some art to this. And this is where not only having A controller. But having someone like support dds, DEO really helping guide you. Listen, at the end of the day, this isn't about accounting nerdness. This is about you as a leader being able to go to your team and saying this is working and this isn't from a more sophisticated, objective way and not some subjective, I'm feeling anxiety or I'm feeling great. Right, like you're really running a business. Jw, anything you would add? I mean, as a business owner, I know you appreciate this.

Well, you know, actually it was, it was funny. It was bringing back some bad memories of, of, of failed businesses I've had in the past where as a, as a founder, CEO, entrepreneur, whatever you want to call it, you, you kind of think you can do it. All right, you're, you're Superman. And oh yeah, I can handle the accounting. I'll just jump into the QuickBooks and I'll categorize those. And oh yeah, I need to put JW's travel and Tanner's travel and Emmett's Travel all separate. And oh, it's a taxi. This was a Uber. And you, you're right, you end up with this mess. And if, if I could offer anybody some advice, you know, they, they talk about growth and hitting these walls at these certain numbers. You know, we, everybody talks about that, oh, you get the 5 million and there's a wall or 10 million and there's a wall. The walls are things we create because we have failed to hire the right people to take you to the next level. You know, even I know at some point, my business, as it's growing, I need to bring in a more qualified CEO than myself to take it to the next level. We've done that with a CEO and a CFO and everything else. So if I had any advice on the accounting side, it's hire somebody early on that can help you not end up in a mess, as Tanner pointed out. You know what point is, do you need a really good high level accounting manager rather than the bookkeeper just creating new chart of accounts and you got a GL that looks, you know, all out, all out of shape. And then at what level do you need to hire maybe a junior controller who's handling those internal functions, operational issues, SOPs, et cetera, for the accounting to function? And I think, I'm guessing in the DEO you see the same thing. Somebody gets to three, four, five offices and they just can't grow because they're dealing with a mess on all different fronts. And they're probably trying to do everything themselves rather than hiring a qualified person to do the marketing or the accounting function or, you know, whatever that role is.

Yep, yep. Well, let's, let's address the, the last one here and then kind of talk about, you know, cost management because this gets really expensive to get that sophisticated. Right. So the last one would be the cfo. And I think the way I like to just simplify this is really thinking through the controller and the bookkeeper as managerial accounting, not tax accounting, but managerial accounting. And the accounting term means they're looking backwards, they're getting things in the right place, they're giving me that clarity of what happened. CFO can help lead, that some CFOs will even kind of play a controller level and lead the bookkeeping team, etc. But really when I add F to that, the CFO, the finance piece, finance, this is the difference between accounting and finance is more looking forward. So I might bring on a cfo because one, I need some leadership for the controller and bookkeeper. Two, I want to start looking forward. I want to do some budgeting, I want to do forecasting, I want to do a 13 week cash flow. I want things that are like, okay, great, you know, I'm seeing it after it happens. Can you kind of predict if I do this, what will happen? You know, and I often joke with, again, having graduated in accounting, I can say this. But if you go to your tax accountant and say, hey, what's my tax strategy for next year? They say, come in next year and I'll tell you what you should have done. It's just that backwards looking, you know, mindset. And I think the cfo, we're starting to say, hey, if I made these decisions, if I added this associate, if I, you know, if I bought this practice, if I add these scanners in and I assume this revenue increase and I assume these expenses, what really happens, that's that CFO piece. Okay, so now I know what the three layers are. By the way, if you're in deo, we have a full training around this as well as what your chart of accounts needs to look like and how to leverage that. But one of the things I'm going to run into is this is expensive. Okay, so let me give some ranges. Bookkeeper, if it's not your spouse, 30 to $50,000. Controller, 50 to $85,000. CFO, 125 to sky's the limit, you know, depending on how big big you are. But let's say 250. So I stack those up and I'm like, I can't afford that. So how could I strategize around that? Well, one, learn the right way to structure it so you don't waste money going down the wrong path with people. But number two, you can start using outsourcing to bring those costs way down. And you can start using things like fractional CFO services so that because you don't need someone 40 hours a week, you know, running performance for you, probably at your size. So those kind of things. And I think that's why this conversation with support DDS came in is we know we need to move from an accountant who's simply doing the tax stuff, being there. But if I really do this right, can I almost do it for a similar cost or can at least the value be something where I go that really makes sense? And I think that's where this partnership came together. Anything you guys would add to that?

Go ahead, Emmett.

Is that those, those ranges you gave? Those sound like Texas ranges to me. If you were to get a controller at the top scale of 80 grand, if you get the best top quality controller, I think, man, you are, you're getting a steal because controllers will run way, way more than 80 grand.

Those are pre. Those are pre. Covid.

Yeah.

Or maybe when you graduated from college.

Yes, that's right, that's right. Those are. Yeah, those are what I was getting offered when I graduated. Okay. Yeah. Tanner, give us, give us a more fair. I think you're right. Give us a more fair range on some of this.

I mean, I think the. So bookkeepers. Yeah, I'd say you'd be able to do anywhere between 50 to 65k. Right. Controllers starting again. 60k, upwards of 120. 130 is what I'm seeing really in the experience range. And then a true CFO that has like the financial strategy side. You'd be lucky to get a Good CFO at 1:50. And then you're right, the sky's the limit after that because they come with crazy amount of experience. But, but yeah, I mean really, that controller range is the one that I would say you're, you're going to be looking to pay on regular, somebody with experience over six figures.

I remember Alex Hermosi, you know, which many of you know, on Instagram, great coach was asked what was your most expensive employee you ever paid? And it was the cfo a million dollars a year. And it was because he was looking to exit his business. Now he ended up getting 30, 40 million dollars for his business. So it was worth it. But yeah, it can get pretty expensive when we think about doing this. Maybe it would be nice to give some contrast when we think about doing this with a support dds, DEO type structure. You know, you literally can get a lot of it for the cost of almost one of those employees. Right, Depending on how many locations you have. But definitely if you're in the one to five range, absolutely, you can get that for much, much less. You know.

And Emmett, I would also add something. People don't calculate when they're, they're hiring a person. They'll say, oh, I found this person. I'll use an even number. I got a controller for 120,000. That's 10,000amonth. But you start to add in payroll, matching, vacation benefits, healthcare, if they're in your office, you know, they've got office space, et cetera. And there's some studies we pulled out that you can add 38 to 40% just right on top of the salary. So $120,000 ends up looking more like 160 or 170 when you add it all in. And when you look at an outsourcing insourcing like we do, then it's a flat fee. You know that that's an all in 1099 fee that you're, that you're able to pay out. So you can get skewed if you say, well, you know what, I found somebody who can work in my front desk for $15 an hour. And you're like, well, it's not really 15, it's probably 20. And, and, and so I always tell people when you're comparing these pieces, be sure and compare apples to apples dollar wise. But also skill sets. Are you getting the same level of skill set there? And as Tanner pointed out, we, we've seen controllers be that, that 120 pretty consistently. 100, 120 for somebody with some experience, if not more. And I think you're right if, if you've got a CFO who's got some FP and a experience who can really help you with looking one, two years down the road, you know, what's it going to look like if I add two more practices? If you want somebody at that level, you're right, you're, you're at 200, 250 to get somebody who has that skill set to.

Yeah, great, great feedback. Well, and I don't need most of them full time either. So if I can get it on a fractional basis and outsource, I really Start getting some, some nice leverage there. The other thing is, as I grow, I oftentimes outgrow certain people in this position. So it's nice if I have a more outsourced kind of relationship, 1099 relationship. If I do outgrow them, I simply kind of move up or scale up. It's much more difficult to fire someone, you know, in your office and when you're trying to scale and grow.

Emmett, do you, do you have a kind of a, in your training, in the process, is there a, is there a number, dollar value or is there a number of offices where you say, okay, here's where you need a full time cfo? I'm imagining that's at a pretty high level in terms of volume.

Yeah, I think it has a lot to do with how much future growth you're doing and then the complexity of your, you know, current team. If you've got management companies and JV partners, you've handed equity to a bunch of associates. It puts a lot of pressure on the accounting system to provide even more accurate and timely because now you've got basically all these investors. If you've brought in private equity 100%, if you've, if you've done bank lending and they need things on a consistent basis. So I think those things add up. If you're, you know, moving more slowly, I think you can really leverage the fractional piece. You know, it's more project based. I'm looking at this one practice boom, I'm good. You know, those kind of things. Maybe 13 week cash flow, occasionally those kind of supports you, you might add on more from the CFO side. Obviously at certain practice sizes you'll just need that CFO for consistent leadership. You know, you get into 30, 40 locations, you're just going to need a team to, to drive that.

I want to address too. Like I'm trying to put myself back when I was in the DSO world, but I'd hear all these conversations all the time of like, hey, you need to get financial clarity, yada, yada, right? And I think we've done a good job today of discussing like, what is it that you need, like what's the end result? And now we're kind of moving into how we're getting there, right? Oh well, you got to hire this person or you got to hire this person, etc. We're talking about the cost, but I also want to kind of address the elephant in the room, which is like, what is the norm right now amongst those peers? Right. A lot of the Times what you do is you see these groups as they start growing, they think, oh well, this group claims to be the answer for all of these problems. If I just outsource to them. So I'm going to go ahead and just outsource to them, right? And this is not like a support DDS model where you get one individual that's assigned to your locations. This is like a boutique firm that is going to do all of it, right? So if you go in and do hire those, a lot of the problems that I want to make sure people understand and represent is that what you're paying for is per transaction in that relationship, right? So if all of a sudden now you've got, you've got to get your bookkeeping in, you've got to get your controller level advice in, maybe they can offer you some cfo. A lot of these accounting firms don't even have dental experience to be able to do that. But as you start looking at these outsourced firms and how they offer it, because they'd be going in and pricing it per essentially transaction, right? Whether it's hey, each entity I gotta close or whatever it is, now all of a sudden you are stuck to say hey, if I want to add in this additional thing, right, Maybe I just want to go in and get a cash flow statement, right? Where it wasn't part of our pre negotiated rates. Like now that's an additional cost, right? Now that's additional cost. And so as we look at that, we say, okay, outsourcing it, great, you can get to an outcome on that and it'll come at a price and it's usually a pretty hefty markup. But the other piece of it too is that there's no flexibility in what they actually deliver as far as the things you want above and beyond the normal day to day stuff, right? And so that's where I think that as we start talking about whether it's outsourcing or insourcing, having that individual in your practice that has that experience, right? The person that commands $120,000 salary versus like the $60,000 salary, the person with has experience is the one that will be able to add on those additional things at no additional cost to you because they're part of, it's part of their hourly job, right? It's part of what they're already doing. They now once they get that structure set up where the bookkeeping and the month end close is a lot more kind of automated and systematized. Now all of a sudden they have this a little bit more flexible free time where they can do things like, oh, maybe I can go in and create a budget. Right. Maybe I can create a forecast, et cetera. And these are going to be things that you may not get with that outsourced firm. Right. And there's a lot of other kind of pros to having an individual assigned to it versus, like, having a group of people that may or may not have that flexibility and it ends up becoming kind of a costly thing. I don't know. I mean, I know that you kind of played around with that in your group too. I mean, I mean, what are your thoughts on that?

Well, no, I love what you're saying. I think ultimately you're talking about, you know, leverage of the team versus, you know, a strict variable cost or people only able to do one thing and not grow with you as an organization. That's the benefit of, you know, maybe using an outsourced solution instead of strictly a vendor who says, I'm going to charge you per item. But one thing that you, as you were talking, Tanner, it's like, so if I'm listening to this, what would be some key indicators for me that I should think about getting my financials more clear? So, number one, you wake up stressed, not knowing what's going on financially. Ding, ding, ding. Probably want some help there. You're not clear if you're going to make payroll, and you're not even clear how you would know if you were or weren't. You feel like a lot of your business acumen is around your incredible looks, great personality, willingness for grit. You just work hard and that's what's gotten you here. And you actually don't know the science of business. You just know ambition is really important and it's worked for you. You actually don't know how to benchmark things. Do I have too many people in my practice? Do I not? Do I? Should I add more regional help? Should I add. Which position should I add? What should that cost me? Is my margins good enough? Am I paying the dentist too much? Am I paying, like, does this work mathematically? You don't know. And so again, you're relying a lot on your ambition and grit and, and strong personality. You don't know what your break even points are for your practice. So you can't calculate your gross profit margin against your fixed costs to know where break even is. And for those who don't know, break even tells me when my overhead basically goes to zero. It's been covered because rent doesn't have to be paid again and again. So where's my break even point? And I don't know where after my break even point, how much profit's going to drop to the bottom line in clear financials. That's instant. You can know that I can look at someone's financials if they're set up correctly and I can pull out my iPhone calculator and know tons about their business. Break even points, profitability, etc, if you don't have good chart of accounts, you can't do that. You don't know what adding an associate would do to your practice. Again, if you don't know break even point, you don't understand the associate piece and how valuable that could be. You don't know how much you can pay them. You, you don't understand why everyone else can get these associates, but you can't because you don't know the math on some of these things. And the same thing with adding a practice. You don't really know you're adding a practice, maybe you've even been successful at it, but you're really nervous. Like, how did that work? Like, it worked because you were able to get patients in and you felt like you got lucky. But now with the new inflation cost on labor, you're a little concerned that the same formula wouldn't work again. All of this stuff, here's the fun part. I don't know half the stuff, 90% of the stuff with my team members because they're humans and they're emotional and a ton of things could happen in their life that I can't predict. All of this stuff is math. It's predictable. I do not need to have this stress in my life. I can just have it every month, every day. I could have this clarity. So that's one thing that I really push our DEO members to understand is you deserve to have a place in your life that's not stressful and is clear. And financials is the one place that could be other things harder to predict. We can give you some leadership skills, but this is something we should all just get nailed down. So with that, any final thoughts? J.W. tanner. J.W. we'll start with you. Yeah.

And you know, I think it's a, it's kind of like the, the frog in the bowling water. You know, you're in there and it's starting to warm up and you got, you know, you start off with a million dollars in revenue and next thing you know you have three practices and you got four and a half million and you're, you're thinking about doing the fourth one. And now you look up and say, wow, I, you know, I'm showing. I produced four and a half million, but I collected four million. What, what happened here? I'm running out of cash. And, and you're right, it's, it's just this kind of a, A slow evolution to a point where you realize, man, I got a problem. And, and those, I think that can get ahead of it a little bit. I mean, I mean it's going to happen. Right. With any type of business. But if you just don't wait too long. I had so many conversations.

Who or you at least know what lever to pull when you start feeling anxieties? You're like, oh, I know. I heard Emmett, JW and Tanner talk about this. I just need to pull this lever.

Yeah. And sometimes you got to, you got to have a little faith and you know, it may be a little more than you were expecting to pay to, to solve a problem, but when you solve that problem, you can break through to that next level. There's no doubt.

Totally. And the return on investments, very high to have financial. You make so many other better decisions. So.

Yeah.

Tanner, any other thing in closing?

No, I, I love what you guys are doing. Emmett. I love JW the same place. Honestly, I love this synergy even more. Right. The fact that you guys are coming in on the strategic side. Emmett, JW will come in and help you guys more on the transactional side. I think it's, it's the batch made in heaven. Honestly, I wish it existed five, seven years ago when I was looking to build this out from my dso. Because man, it is daunting to come in and say, how do I run a department that I have no expertise in? Right. And I think that's where you guys are coming in and solving a problem that exists inside of a, inside the industry for sure. So. Awesome.

Yeah. I would just piggyback on that. I think with what DEO is beginning to offer. From what I've seen, you know, with the fractional CFO and us partnering a little bit with the back end support with controllers and bookkeeping, it really is a solution. And one thing I would add, I think when, when you look at most people have an accountant, you're right, they started off with their, their friend, brother in law or somebody else they knew was doing taxes and they trust them, but they don't have the dental specific knowledge. And as you have to get these consolidated reports and you've got different entities and you're, you're trying to bring all those into one that gets, that gets overwhelming. And so yeah, I think what do is doing is a great solution. Offering some solutions within the industry as well.

Awesome. Well, thank you all. Now if they want to reach out to Support dds, good way to contact you. Jw.

Yeah, just jw, support dds. That's a, that's a hard one. JW at Support dds or just go to the website, schedule a call and just put a little detail in there and that message about what it is you're looking for and say, hey, I heard it on the DEO and I'm interested in learning more about the accounting process. Then we're glad to help.

Awesome. And if you're looking to join a group of 250 dentist owners as they scale and grow, come over to DEO Dental Group. We have our elite event coming up here in Nashville, which jw, you and your team will be there, which is fabulous. Those are our groups, over 10 million. And then summit out in Orlando here this summer. So you can go to our website and see that that allows everyone to come, get some training and learn. So come to that event, you'll see Support DDS there as well. And if you have any other thoughts or questions, you can always come over to our Facebook page at DEO GrowthSecrets. 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 until next time, keep smiling.