Eliminate Money with Wings- The 3 Places Money Is Hiding In Plain Sight In Your Dental Practice

Hello, everybody, and welcome to DE Solutions Lab. I'm so excited about this event, and I know we've been doing this monthly, but it just keeps getting better. Tonight's topic is eliminate money with wings. Three places money is hidden in plain sight in your practice. And with us tonight is dental industry expert and advocate Gary Kady. Gary is the CEO and founder of Next Level Practice. Gary, I'm thrilled to have you here today.

Oh, Pam, you know, it's like each month we get to do these and we get better and we learn about each other. I learned that you like Celine. We're talking about residencies in Vegas. I was like, she likes Celine Dion. I love learning more about you. And, you know, it's great, too, the people that I get a chance to speak to from our sessions that register and come on my calendar. You know, it's really cool to see how many people you're inspiring, especially female dentists out there. Like, it's really a joy for me. And I go, you could be like that, too. You could do it. And they get inspired. I don't know. I think you humbly kind of like, you know, hang out there as a practicing dentist and the chief editor for Dental Economics. But it's like, I want you to know the difference you're making. I really do, because, you know, I get to hear about it, and I want to make sure you know the difference and the contribution you're making to the industry.

Thank you so much. You know, it's so funny because I just love what I do, and I'm just like everybody else out there, and I want to practice. I have a staff. I see patients all the time. And so, to be completely honest with you, Gary, you inspire me. And I think about some of the things that we talk about, and all of a sudden, you pop up in my mind multiple times a week. And so the feeling is completely mutual. So thank you for all you do for us practice owners.

Oh, you bet. You bet. Well, this is a big one. You know, I was just also talking, you know, where I think this came from, this topic. When you and I sat down, we said, what is really relevant for Dennis as we work with them? And I just want to share a personal story with everybody about money. You know, I came from very little. I grew up in New Jersey. You know, my dad had two jobs. You know, we, you know, we're making ends meet, just getting through. And, you know, I was the first person to go to school. And then, you know, I became an entrepreneur, and I started. People ask Me, how did you get started in dentistry? And you know, back in the day, I was a marketer and I had a franchise called Moneymailer. You know, ever see like Val Packer, Money Mailer. And like, you know, you would run an ad and it would be a dentist and a chiropractor in a restaurant, a hair salon. Well, I had a franchise and I did very well at it. I had the number one franchise nationally. And then my, I moved out to San Diego and my, my fraternity brother Pam said, you know, let's start our own company. And we started our own. And I had no business being in this business. Like I was, I didn't know what I was doing. I was a printer, a graphic designer. You know, we just, we built this whole organization. Anyway, long story short, we went out of business. $800,000 in debt. I was personally, you know, I, we, I was way above. I was 28 years old. Didn't know what I was doing. Well, I remember sitting on Coronado island and it's right where like the Coronado Hotel, Coronado Hotel del Coronado is, you know, like where Tattoo from Fantasy island, boss. The plane sits up there and, and the only plane I could think about was at 20 years old. I had 880,000 in debt. And I was watching the ocean and I was all alone. It was a hot summer day, Pam, and I said, you know what, I'm going to figure this out. And I thought I would have to go bankrupt. And I didn't. I met this coach, his name was Roger, Roger Lane, still friends with him today. And he taught me about the principles that we have here. By the way, I did pay that 880 back. Took me 10 years, but I did pay it back. But the lessons I learned along the way, I said at that moment, Pam, no doctor on my watch will ever have a financial hardship like I took on, you know, being a stand, like right now, our mission for our company is to get a quarter million dental professionals completely debt free by the year 2030. Like that's our mission. Yeah, that's our mission. And it came from when I was 28 years old and said I learned my lesson and anything I do, no one's going to go through that pain. And that really designed my whole career and that's why I work with Dennis and that's the work we do. And we're going to talk about today.

Well, it's so interesting that you bring this up how all of these things you sort of have to learn on the fly and you really didn't feel prepared for it. Well, that's us as dentists. You know, we all go to dental school and we graduate and we're excited because we're a dentist. But then we don't really realize that many of us are inherently going to become an entrepreneur and a practice owner. And I know I became a dentist because I wanted to treat patients, and I know I wasn't fully prepared for all that involved being a practice owner. And so in becoming a practice owner and a default entrepreneur, you pour all of your time and energy into your practice. But sometimes you aren't just seeing the profits you want or the profits you deserve. Believe me, I've been there, and I know many viewers feel the same way. And so we're talking about hidden revenue that's just there sitting on the table, and we just need to figure out how to find it. If that's the case, I cannot wait to hear what you have to share with us. But before we get into the first point of where is this money hiding? I want to get your take on how does this even happen? Why is there money just hiding? And how do we. How do we not know about it?

Yeah, it's really interesting because there's things called blind spots, right? There's things that, you know, as a practitioner, like, I know if, you know, I present a case and deliver a case, but they don't collect the money, well, that's money in plain sight, right? Or I know if I don't reappoint somebody and they don't show up in hygiene again, if you're a gp, you know, then, okay, I know I'm going to lose my patient base, right? You can kind of get, like, the ones that, like, there's things that you know, things that you don't know, but if you knew them, then you can change them. But there's things that you don't know that you don't know. It's the realm of, like, there's three bubbles. The things that, you know, you know how to do a crown, you know how to, you know, how to, you know, you know, be a mom, you know, there's things you know, then there's things that you don't know. Like, I don't know how far it is from here to, you know, the moon, but I can go on Google and find that out. And I put that. I can put that in the domain of knowing. The things that we're going to talk about today are the things that you don't know, that you don't know. You don't even know to like, look here or think about this most of the time as a dentist, as a business owner. Right. And so that's what we're going to talk about today. We're going to. I came up with three. There's way more. But like, I like these three because it's a quick fix and a quick way to generate, you know, dollars that you've earned. Really pretty much.

Wow. So I'm thinking that there's plenty of us that are kind of watching this and we're thinking, okay, Gary, we're going to need some help. So I encourage everybody to stick around until the end of this because you definitely don't want to miss all of the information that Gary's going to share with us. And also, don't forget, we love to field questions from the audience. So please feel free to ask your questions by entering them in the question box on the right hand side of the screen. So let's get into it. Where are the actual places that money is hiding in our practices? Where is the first place?

Well, I'm going to say where it's not. First, let's talk about where you think it is. You're not going to have to work any harder. Zero more hours with this, right? Because there's this, this. I call it the catch 22. If I want. So many dentists have this belief if I work harder and work more, I will make more. And just got off a call with a guy from Dutchess county in New York. He's like, I don't feel like I could take a vac another vacation day because I don't know if I can afford it. And I don't know what, what my practice is going to look like when I come back. Like, that's insane. And his wife wants to go visit their daughter in, in Europe. And it's like, imagine he's missing out on that. I want to be clear here. It's not about working harder, it's not about working more hours. In fact, you can even reduce your hours. And this is not woo woo. This is like an algorithm of dollars that you can actually be more efficient in less time. And you don't realize how much wasted time happens. Right. If you don't have some of these structures in place, it's not about new patients. Oh. When I ask a room full of dentists, like, if we go, we do this live event together and we do a live event and I say, how do you grow your practice? 99 dentists will raise their hand and Say I need new patients, and it's just not true. There's two other ways to build your practice internally. You know, it's retaining the patients you have. So if they don't come back in hygiene, then you're not gonna. You're not gonna build your practice. Your patient base is gonna shrink. And then the other way is making sure that when you're presenting treatment and we're gonna give this specific tool that you're gonna be able to take away, it's gonna be one of the things we're gonna talk about here today. That tool helps you increase your case acceptance automatically just by using the tool. So that's where you go. And then you drop new patients in to grow from there. But most people drop new patients into a flawed system, Pam. That they come in the front door, they go out the back, and when they're there, they don't invest in any care. Right. And then needing new team members, needing new marketing, that. That's not necessarily case. Maybe on those last two, because some people are. And I want to put a caveat in here, some practices are still not fully staffed up, which is mind blowing to me at this point. Like, if you're not staffed up at this point, you definitely want to make sure you raise your hand and get help from somebody. Do not accept the myth that you can't find people. They just. You just the approach you're taking hasn't attracted them yet. So please note, be a stand to having a full team right now because we're in a different world and it's just the way you're going about attracting them and onboarding them. Okay. So I just want to make sure we're clear there anything you want to add there?

No, other than I think a lot of people can relate with that dentist who says, I can't take another vacation or what's going to happen if I go away. And when I sit back and think about something like that, I think, gosh, this isn't really why we got into this profession. Obviously we all got into it for different reasons. But one of them was we were going to be our own boss and we were hopefully going to have a decent lifestyle. And I don't think we were all prepared for that type of struggle. So I'm pretty excited to hear about where this money is just hiding in my office.

All right, all right, step number one. And I'll tell you, I said, when I ask a doc, when was the last time you read your P. Ls? Most of them go, what's P and L. So a P and L is a profit and loss statement that we look at. And again, this is not diminishing in my communication, but it's true. It's true. Most dentists don't enjoy and relate to numbers as allies and accelerants. They relate to them as avoidance. Like I call it one of the areas of avoidance. It's outside of their comfort zone. And then they almost find themselves reading the PNL but not knowing what to do about it or how to correct it. So what ends up happening is the number one thing of why dentists have money with wings is their, their default mechanism to avoid. Does that make sense, Pam, to you, when you hear avoidance?

Oh yeah, I do it too. I think about, and I'm not going to lie, my bookkeeper doesn't send it even the following month. So I tend to get it a month or so later. And by then I'm not really worried about what's happening the month before. I'm trying to just kind of work in right now and look to what's booked in the following month. So I sort of look at it. I'm like, did I do all right? All right. And then I don't really do much with that information.

Exactly. And that's there's two types of data. Lagging data, which is you're talking about or leading data. Data that gives you leading decision making versus like you said, once it goes past 15 days in the, in the month and you're looking at the month before and it goes, you're supposed to get it the 15 days, the 15th day of the following month to give your CPA some time to reconcile. Once if it goes past that, you're like, oh, we're on to the next month and I'm busy and I can't do that. And it, you end up like leaving it all behind. But if you just, and here's the P and L that everybody did, everybody looks at the first one of the year to know how you ended up last year because now you're accountable to paying the taxes on that. And one of the things that happens when we grow practices, if you don't get with your CPA and start paying more quarterlies, you're going to end up with a big tax burdens because you just made a boatload of money. Taxes are a good thing actually. You have to know how to mitigate them. But taxes tell you that that's your success. Acknowledgment of why you know, you did very well. So you have to know how to have a good CPA that's going to guide you through mitigating your taxes and making sure you're maximizing the advantages that are available. But ultimately fixing this problem and automating it because I ended up enabling. Pam. I was reading thousands of PNLs each year for dentists because they wouldn't read them. So you know, it was like the we got your back syndrome or done for you because they were unwilling to do it. So I built a piece of software that you plug into your QuickBooks, plug into your bank account and it reads it for you in automated fashion. I'm going to share it right now and you'll be able to know exactly where you are in real time and not have to wait for any reporting from your cpa. It's sort of like I was inspired by dental intel because they gave me real time data and I didn't have to pull reports. So I was like, ooh, if we did that for quickbooks in my bank account or bank accounts, I would never have to read a P and L again. So isn't it exciting to have a solution that where you don't even have to like, you know, look at your P Ls you could just walk in and get them done. Right.

That is beyond exciting. Absolutely. Especially if it helps you interpret the data. I just sort of get these numbers and I don't always know what to do with them.

Exactly. So let me just break it out for you. So this is called abundance. So we took the word abundance more than enough for everybody and dental and combined the two and we it's really profit made simple. So the first thing you'll see. Do you see my screen here, Pam?

I do.

So the first thing is just like a FICO score, your abundance score. Dentists want to know how they're relating their finance financially to all the other dentists in the U.S. so this is like a FICO score specific for dentists from so from 0 to 175. This practice growing one set 165. Nice job. That means highly profitable for the type of practice they are. Most people don't know what their practice valuation is until when they want to sell. Imagine having, you know, a pretty good algorithm of what dental, dental practices are selling for. And if you see here we look at it in a two year window two years ago this thing was worth 369 because this doctor worked on her profitability, her now practice went from 369 to 458. So you're not only making money in your P and L here, you're. You're increasing the equity value of your practice. Got it? Now, let's. Now, here's your PNL in real time. Boom. One click plugged in. Here we are. I'll just be using August 2021. This is profit equals income minus expenses. So if I really looked at this in August, this is a real live practice that I'm plugged into right now. She profited 36,000 in the month of August. She took in 72, and her expenses were 36,000. And then you can go into real time and say, my labor was 18%, facilities 13, supplies, 7, marketing, 6, operating expenses. And then no more calling your CPA to get your register. I can go in here and let you know where all the expenses are in real time. So everything is right here. So, you know, I could see, oh, I paid team logic, it 428. Oh, oh, legal and professional fees. My practice management company, oh, they paid 7,700. So, oh, I can know exactly where I am and where my expenses are in real time. Now, how do you fix money in plain sight here? If you see an expense that is exorbitant, you can go, you can question it or adjust it and set. Set a budget. So, like, one of the things we do with our assistance is we set a budget for supplies and we make sure we fit inside of that. Now this I can see here. She didn't have any lab fees, so that there might have been no lab charge in the month of August. So you can go, oh, we didn't charge anything out. So it might have gotten charged out in July or got charged out in September, but you can get a very, very good sense in real time, the game here. So it's pretty cool, right? I mean, to have this kind of control at your fingertips, I think it's great.

And I think it also helps us kind of make sense. I know sometimes, I guess a month or two after my bank, my bookkeeper will be like, hey, what was this charge? And I'm like, I don't know. And now I have to go all the way back. And I'm trying to figure it out, but it's all right here. And I think we're all pretty good at seeing graphs, and I love seeing green versus red. Helpful. So people as dentists.

Yeah. And then, you know, then we have. Then we're plugged into the practice management software. Now, this gives you an unfair advantage as a business owner now, because one of the things that I realized is we have to be plugged into your bank and your QuickBooks and your practice management software. Now we can have embezzlement fraud alerts. So I want to give you an alarming statistic that's really real that we got from our forensic account. And our advisor on this, he said that 80% of dentists over their career will be embezzled upon $109,000. $109,000. He had mentioned this system because of the way it's set up. And we have alerts if, if you. And I'm going to share my screen again. Let's do this here. One second. And I have to go out and I did it on a slide here because you know that practice is not in a position of fraud. But you can see here because we're, we're plugged into QuickBooks and they're open dental. If the collections and what goes in the bank is dramatically off in a percent percentage that we set, then you'll get this alert only to the business owner. It'll go to your email and you'll know that you have a gap between the money that's coming into your business and the money that's going into your bank. So that's how you can. And by the way, no team member has access to this, only the business owner.

Wow. Does this integrate with all dental practice management softwares?

Yeah, right now we have open dental and Eaglesoft and Dentrix is coming next month. So all the primary, the primary three are integratable.

Wow, that's an astounding statistic. I think it's worth kind of reiterating again. 80% of us are going to be struck with embezzlement in our practices.

Yeah. And that's mind blowing. You know, one of the big key things in this forensic accountant. So this is the best forensic accountant in the U.S. what he said is the number one reason, 80% of the reason why dentists get embezzled upon is because when you're interviewing the person and they know that you don't look at your numbers on a monthly basis, they know it's a free for all in that practice. And there's no check and they know that there's no check and balance system. The minute you go, yeah, we have system where we check this and check that and check this and they all look nice. By the way, all embezzlers are always, you know, mouth drops when people find out and they go, I can't believe that this person would do that because they're kind and nice out here, but underneath they have a different level of ethics and integrity. And when you run the numbers, the number of people, you know, and then you look at the, you know, you look at inflation, you look at, you know, expenses, you look at what's going on in the world. Some people have different levels of ethics, Pam, unfortunately. And you know, they prey on dentists because they know they're not looking at their numbers. This system allows you to get control, eliminate money with wings, you know, now you're doing it proactively and you're. And in and you're. And it's easy. You can see it. Oh, I see where it is. Everything is. And then you can look at and diagnose it. And now have a check and balance system so you don't get embezzled upon. Simple, easy system to be able to do that.

Wow. And clearly we need that help. And I think this is a topic we could go on and on and on about because it's so devastating to us as practice owners. But let's move on to number two. Where is the second place money is hiding in plain sight in your practice that you're not even thinking about.

All right, now this is, you know, maybe that last one I showed you. Like, okay, I know I don't read pianos, but like, if I started reading PNLs and I saved a few thousand here and a few thousand there. All right, that makes sense to me. All right, this one is truly a blind spot for most people. And it's the cost of not dealing with an employee who is defiant or non performing. All right, now, employees are an investment. Now there's a scarcity mindset with most practice owners right now. Like, I don't want to confront that person because I feel like I have a pulse. And a person that shows up, they may show up angry, defiant, they might show up late, but they go, she shows up or he shows up. So I'll put up with that. But here's what we know. I call them the Debbie Downers, you know, the old school. Like, or to be fair, Brian bummers. It could be the. And if it's the dentist and it's Brian, you know, we got a big problem. The one guy, Pam. But like, what we're talking about here is, here's what I have. Case study after case study after case study. Do you ever play pickleball? You like this new thing called pickleball? Have you heard about it?

I've heard of it, but I've never played it.

Yeah, it's like this tennis thing for older people, so you don't have to run as much. I guess that's, you know, I guess that's what it is. But I played pickleball. I didn't know how to play. And I played with a poor player called my son, 17, and he didn't care. And we were just kind of batting around the ball was going all over the place. I played with an amazing player and I played up to his ability, you see. So we either play up or we play down to. So let me give you the, this, the. The. The mindset around this cost of keeping that employee. Most dentists, this is a huge blind spot because they're. They're doing the math in their head and they're going. And I can't tell you how many of these stories I've had over and over again. Pam, I can't let her go because she is the best assistant I've ever had. But every time I say we're going this way, she says, no, we're going that way. Every time I say you need to show up on time, she's late every day. Every time, like, so she know he. She knows she has full control over this situation. Here's what I've learned. That the team plays down to what you allow to be put up with in your business. So because the team is playing not to lose their job, and most business owners are playing to win, but they put up with this and they're not going to win because the team is only going to play to the level that that individual is playing at. That is it. The minute you confront this person. We always give people, Pam, the opportunity to step up. Always. But here's what we know. If you leave that person as they are and they don't step up, the rest of the team won't move up with them. You will get complete. You will not get implementation. You will not get consistency. And that is costing you day in and day out. And I have doctors literally, that would rather put up with that than have more free time in vacation and more money like today. The minute that happens, because they're afraid of the reaction of that individual because they got their heels and they're in handcuffs from these people that are dictating how that practice is being run. Do you know what I'm talking about here?

I'm just nodding and nodding and nodding. I absolutely do. And I think that we as dentists, because our teams generally are kind of small, even if you have a large practice and the individual practice, you know, everybody you know, their family, you know everything. And you become connected with them and you become attached to them. But truly, it's a business and it's a business that you have to run. I can tell you a really brief story on my end. I staff after I bought my practice, and I knew they weren't seeing my vision. I knew they weren't excited about the things I was excited about, but I was afraid that patients were there for them because I was the new one. And the doctor that I bought the practice from didn't stay on very long. So it was just the existing staff and me keeping this sinking ship afloat. Finally, it took a pandemic. I know I've told you this before, but it took me that to reflect and realize that I'm not seeing my vision. And I really can't take it anymore. I replaced my entire clinical team. Well, finally, enough time's gone by, so I compared the numbers from my hygienist from all of 2019, which we thought was a pretty decent year for us. And my new hygienist that's been with me for a full calendar year, she by herself increased her production in her room by $87,000.

Absolutely.

That's not even talking about the dentistry that was presented in that room. That is just the bottom line in the hygiene room.

Yeah. You know, I gotta go. I gotta go to the Madden Telestrator here because it's. I wanna show a visual of what this does here. So, you know, when I look at this, so many doctors, Pam, are going, gary, please get me back to pre pandemic levels. I'm like, let's bust that out. So, like, if your pre pandemic level was 1 million over here, right? And just consider, like, what got you to here. This is what I see right now in the industry with people that get on my calendar from our sessions, like, and I think people need to know that I give five hours a month because of my residency. That's ten half hour sessions to your listeners. And they come on and we talk about this right here. And what happens is, Pam, they get to a million. And let's say some of these people were like 2019, like you were saying, to get to the million right here and they're starting to go back down, right? Like, they're starting to really, like, they're going here now, here's what's going on. If they don't make a change, they're definitely going down. And I'm seeing this number be 750 over here now, here's what we're talking about, not dealing with a team member. Now, I'm telling you right now, if you're not fully staffed up, you got to get with somebody who knows what they're doing. I'm happy to talk to you about it, give you a strategy to get your full team on board. So I want to take away that you can hire people. That is no longer an excuse. That is being done everywhere. It's now it's not being done with people that are taking the same approach with the same message. That's that, and I have compassion for that. Now, here's what's going on. I call this the valley of avoidance. Now, I showed this before, but I want to do it again because I think it's really relevant here. The value of avoidance is you're avoiding having a conversation. Let's call it that individual. Let's call it an assistant, Right? And then you're worried about, like, how are the patients going to respond to that? And you don't know what. Like, that's an unknown. And then you're like, well, how is the team going to be now? You just gave them. You were courageous enough and your ethics were screaming at you enough that you were like, I'm not going to avoid this anymore. But not everybody has that same level of courage. And I have a lot of empathy and compassion for that. Right. I really get that. And they're sitting there and they're looking at this and their mind is making up this stuff, and then they go, well, I'm just going to avoid it, hope it goes away. And then what's happening is their practice is going down to 750. That's not acceptable. So what happens here is this. When you work with somebody who knows what the heck they're doing and knows how to deal with this person and the team and the patients, and they've done it thousands of times. And that gives you the confidence to take the actions right and moves you straight across the valley. That's the bridge. You land here, and let's say it's 2 million that you're sitting on. You go right across the valley of avoidance, right up. And then you're on your way to 2 million in 2022 versus 750 over here. That's the game, Pam. That's the game. And look, you're not alone. Almost every dentist I talk to is dealing with this. Almost every single one avoids. That's the game. They avoid their P. Ls or they avoid this person that they don't want to confront. Avoidance is the key here.

Avoidance is the key. And I can tell you that you can get out of it, because I did. And I can tell you when you live in that valley of avoidance, like, I'm looking at your teleprompter, and I'm like, or not teleprompter, your telescreen. And I'm like, it's like you feel like a little troll living in this little valley. And I was there. And dentistry wasn't as fun, and it was just. My day was not. It was not. I didn't love my practice. And I think that's really sad that we invest everything we have into our practice, our heart, soul, money, all the things. And I didn't love it. In fact, satisfaction every once in a while. I mean, I can't believe I'm saying this so publicly, but it's true that, you know, sometimes when I would talk vulnerably with people, I would say, I think this was one of the biggest mistakes I ever made. And after leaving that valley of avoidance, I can tell you that I love my practice so much, I'm jealous of you for living in San Diego. And every winter I tell my husband, why do we live here? And he says, would you leave your practice? And I say, hell, no.

Oh, Pam, you know, thanks for that story. It's like, you know, to think that your practice, because you confronted it, is more important to be in Boston, right? You're in Boston, right? Than San Diego. You know, I'm a Yankee fan, too. So, like, Boston is like, no way, right? So he got. You're hanging in the enemy, and it's cold, and. And. And there's Bostonians there. You know, I'm probably not going to get anybody on my calendar from Boston, which is okay. I'm cool like that. But my friends from Padre land in San Diego, You're. You're. Because you confronted your practice, you're willing to stay in that place, that horrid, terrible. Just the putrid Fenway park in Boston. You'll stay there, Pam.

I am now. I don't mind the green monster anymore just because of my practice.

Oh, my gosh. So here's the deal. It's like, you know, if you continue now and you don't confront this employee, you end up down here defaulting into the 750 land, right? But when you do, and like you so beautifully said, you go up here. I mean, let's say it's 2 million, 3 days a week with 8 weeks vacation, and that's Your game, you're not going to get there if you know, you, you don't deal with this here. You just won't. I, I've never seen a default or avoidance go, hey, man, I, I, I'm gonna just not pay attention to that and not deal with that, and I'm gonna have a $2 million practice. I promise you. I've never seen that occur ever. So this is the cheapest time. It's the, it only gets, the longer you wait, it gets costlier and it gets harder to make the move. So if you're sitting and you're wondering when you should do it, the time is aora, as my Spanish friends say. I think that's the Spanish word for now. I don't, I think it is. I hope it is. So, anyway, we're moving on. I'm, I got a little off. You know, you got me excited about this Boston thing. But Pam, it's like, stop what we're saying here. The message is it takes some courage. If you can't do it alone, find somebody that will help you do it and walk you across the bridge of the avoidance and get you the other side. It is costing you time, money, freedom, peace of mind, your team following through consistently. And if one person gets away with it, they all get away with it. So I'm just letting you know, that's.

The cost of it, and the only one paying is yourself, which is really, really hard. So, Gary, this is awesome so far, and honestly, I cannot wait to hear where the last place money is hidden in plain sight. But what I do see is that we are getting so many questions coming in, and I know we're going to get to them shortly, but there's also questions about you helping them directly. So you alluded to the fact that you give our listeners your time and you hold that time in your schedule. Can you tell us a little bit about that?

Yeah. One of the things that I decided to do was never take a dentist dollar or minute, because the way I see it is you're called forth to be a great clinician and a great entrepreneur. Right. And when I first started working, obviously I needed to build the business and I didn't have the extra time. And I found that I would just take everybody on it. And not everybody's a fit for everybody. It's just not right. And so this is a great way. No cost, no risk, just to get on the phone and give hope. Some, some dentists need hope to get across the valley of avoidance. Like, you can do this and like, sometimes it just takes somebody to say, you know, you're not in as bad as place as you are. You're. You're doing. A lot of docs are like, think they're in the worst place than they actually are. And when they share with me, I'm like, no, you just need to connect these dots and get over here. And they're like, oh, my gosh, I'm so glad I finally got on your calendar. But yeah, there's 10 slots a month. They always fill up. And it's, you know, it's awesome. You know, click on the calendly, they get right on my schedule. And we have this zoom call just like this. And I'm a very safe, compassionate person. Extremely. And doctors go, I'm telling you this, but I haven't even told my wife this. Like, you know, that's what one of the guys said on our last call. He's like, he goes, I'm afraid that I can't provide for the family. And that scares me because I feel like that's my responsibility. Like, stuff like that. Like, people share with me all the time because they know that, you know, like, I. I share myself. Like, I'm a sober man. 14 years. My wife didn't want. She said, you don't have to quit drinking, but you can stay here. She wanted to get rid of me. So, like, I. I mean, now I have. My wife and I have a crush on each other. I take 12 weeks off. I used to be a workaholic. I used to work 24, 7, 365. My brain wouldn't shut down when I was on vacation. I felt like I had to be at the office. When I was at the office, I was angry and I thought I needed to be on vacation. You know, all the things that, you know, all the dentists bring to us. I lived all that stuff and battle it, you know, from time to time. But ultimately, I love giving people three things when they get on the call. How to get out of debt, how to get out of frustration, and how to get more free time. Those are the three things. Time freedom, frustration, freedom, and debt freedom. And we talk about those things. And if I could help, I do. If I can't, I recommend who they should talk to. It's really cool.

That's amazing. Thank you so much for giving that time to our audience because so many of us are feeling the frustrations that you described. So, all right, hit me. What is the third place? Money is hiding in plain sight.

All right, and this goes back to Dental school. And this is a blind spot from dental school. Now, you know, most professors are pretty awesome, but a lot of them don't run. They're not running practices, they're being educators. Right. So they don't, you know, they were given a curriculum and an approach. And, you know, it's not just in dentistry, it's in medicine as well. And it was this, you know, sick care mindset, which is find the symptom, throw. Throw in medicine, throw a prescription at it. In dentistry, find, find the pain point, find the chief complaint and go fix it. Right. That's, that's even at Tufts. You went to Tufts, right? Yeah. Like one of the best dental schools on the planet. Right. There you were, you were by your professors. Hey, find the chief complaint. Right? Yeah. So here's what happens. When you walk into a treat, when you walk into a room and you see a patient there and, or your team, if you're, if you're trained to find the chief complaint, what are typical questions you would ask a patient? If that's your mindset going in.

What'S hurt? What is there something that hurts? What. You know, and that kind of thing. And it's, you're kind of focusing it on that one problem or that one tooth.

Yep, one tooth, one problem, one symptom. Here's the problem with building a practice. 90% of dentistry is asymptomatic.

That's true. Unless it gets really bad and then it's too late.

Right. And so a lot of our dentists say they, they practice conservative dentistry. Conservative in the face of. What they're really saying is, you know, some people use that and they misguided. They say conservative dentistry means that I'm going to do a six surface filling. There's no six services. And they just, they're trying to patch. And what they're saying is conservative dentistry. I don't want my patients to spend money. That's, that's a misnomer about conservative dentistry. The others are. Conservative dentistry means I'm going to be conservative to help you do this. At the least costly, least painful, you know, the least problematic. Because if the minute you know there's pain, you know, that's at the most costly, the worst time to treat. Right. So the blind spot here to build your practice is instead of walking in and saying, what's hurting? What's bothering you. Here's the other thing. For dentists that want to get off of PPOs, the reason why patients say, do whatever my insurance covers is because in their mind, they go you haven't shown me that I have a problem. So. And I don't pay for this thing called insurance. So you can use that however you want, but I'm not going to take money out of my own pocket. That's why dentists can't go to a fee for service practice because they don't have a patient education system that allows them to do that. Does that make sense?

Very much so. And the word value keeps popping up in my mind as you're speaking.

Yeah. And the very. I'm going to give you the first step in a five step system that is called a healthy mouth baseline. So this was invented on Croton on the Hudson in New York. There was four doctors. This is a big practice I was working in four doctors, there was seven hygienists and none of them agreed on what's healthy and what was going to be treatment planned. So you had 28 combinations of people collaborating to educate a patient. And I remember the one hygienist goes, I'm not going to call that doctor in for a check because every time I do, he goes, we're going to watch that. And now I feel invalidated, I feel like an invalidated hygienist because I think a crack needs to be treated. Right. He or she didn't. And there was this like, he's too aggressive. And, and there was no agreement on what is healthy and not healthy. So I invented a tool called the healthy mouth baseline. Everybody is going to get a free one here. And the healthy mouth baseline is this. I am going to show it to you and you can create this for your practice. And by the way, this, this fixes a lot of problems. I'm going to just share the first one, which is it increases case acceptance by 40 to 70%. Now that might seem overwhelming, but here's what happens if you have two hygienists and the two hygienists are looking through two different viewfinders on what they think is healthy, or one hygienist is a gum gardener or a tooth polisher and another one isn't even looking at restorative care and they're going into recare visits, they're not making any recommendations. Coming out of hygiene, that's number one. Number two, let's say you want more free time and you want to be more profitable and you hire an associate, you send an associate into the room. They only diagnose and treat what they treat, not what the practice treats. So the other thing is they don't have the Same confidence with the patient. But when there's a team approach to case acceptance, Pam, all of a sudden your case acceptance rises dramatically. And when you put the other four steps in, your case acceptance goes through the roof. The easiest way to build the practice is give patients the treatment they need. But if you walk in, your here's, here's money with wings, number one, if you walk in and say, is there anything hurting you, anything bothering you, or even like, what brings you in? Today is another version of that. Instead of you being the advisor to letting the patient know what is healthy in your practice, having them agree to what's healthy in your practice and explaining why, if they don't understand, then doing perio charting, intraoral camera tour of the mouth and a walking tour with scalar. Now all of a sudden you're putting all the pictures up. Now the patient sees the gap between what you declare as healthy and what is actually happening in their mouth. So let's stop here and I want you to do your Pam on this. Tell me what you're hearing.

I'm hearing a lot of different things. I'm hearing that we all have to have a practice philosophy that every team member should share, but we also don't have the luxury to not do this. If you didn't watch last month's DE Solutions Lab with Gary. Gary clearly stated that for your practice to continue to thrive or continue to grow, you have to make goals each day for what you're producing, but also the care that you're recommending and care that's being planned, that's the only way that your practice is going to survive in the future. And I think this is a great tool to do. So.

Yeah, it's great. And here's the other thing. It brings a consistency of the philosophy of your practice. Again, I'm not dictating this. This is your license. You get to say, and when you sit down with your team and create all these check marks, here's the other thing that happens, by the way. This is in like, I think six or seven languages because it goes viral. People bring it home and they share it with their family members. You get referrals, they say, because most often if you send. If a wife goes home with her treatment plan for $3,000 and the husband goes, well, you went to the dentist today. And the first thing the husband will say is, how much was it? And she'll say, $3,000. And he goes, for what? Does anything hurt? No, nothing hurts. And now all of a sudden they go, well, cancel that appointment, you're not doing that. Nothing's bothering you. Don't worry about it. Because it's again, it's. Americans are. And Canadians are patterned, unsymptomatic because we trained them that way. Now we're taking that away. And Pam, now the dentist and the hygienist and the assistant are true advisors. They set the benchmark. Now, by the way, there's no diagnostic going on with the hygienist. They're just teeing it up and putting the ball on a tee so that the doctor can come in. Now you can send an associate in because the hygienist has already established a benchmark and they can't minimize the treatment plan. They're going to treatment plan because they're not going to backtrack and go, no, we don't have to do that. So you fix that problem. Here's the other problem we fixed one more, one more joy on this. You get a new patient. The patient goes, I love my old dentist. He was down the road, he retired. I've been going for 20 years. And then one of the person in the practice goes, why'd you like your old dentist? Because we want to be able to give you what he gave you. And he goes, well, he didn't recommend any treatment. I've been going for 20 years and I never had to get. My mouth is completely healthy. Meanwhile, you're looking at a bombed out mouth. And now you're going to be the bad guy. The guy's going to write up a negative review because you just presented $5,000 worth of treatment because the guy was practicing supervised neglect. You should not be the bad guy or gal with a guy coming in, he should go, oh my gosh, my dentist. This is what our practices report when they use this. They said, I never had an education like you just gave me and I'm so appreciative that you told me, like, what the heck's going on in my mouth? And like just to. This is a very rudimentary one. Then there's a way to connect it to the body. You know, there's four, four levels of dentistry that we work with practices emergency maintenance, optimal and complete health. So I work with practices that go all the way to complete health, which is educating on the oral systemic connection and its impact on the whole body. And those are for people that are doing airway work and oral systemic education on the top level. But wherever you are, when you elevate your value proposition, you elevate the value for dentistry and what you do is you increase your retention and hygiene and increase how much treatment you present and accept. You talk about money with wings. This is you look at your P Ls, you get rid of the Debbie Downer or Brian bummer. And then you educate from this place. Oh my gosh, Pam, you're going to blow. That practice is. I know blows up. I mean to grow 25 to 30% this year, if you just did these three things, I promise you a minimum of 25 to 30% growth. I know it, I see it. I see it on the P and LS when this happens.

The best part about it is you're not selling. I find with photos and the perio chart that's out there for the patients to see. I just tell them, I just want you to see what I see so we can have a discussion about it. And most of the time patients are looking for a solution because the problem is clear as day. I love that you are bringing this to light. Not many people know this, but I actually have a parrot that lives in New York. I've had him since I was in middle school. And they live way too long, by the way. And you got to clip the wings. You know, we can't have money with wings just sitting around our practice. And I feel like, just like I don't want my parrot to fly away. We shouldn't have money just leaving our practice as well. And I don't know what happens. Gary, I wish like my workday was like my time with you. It just flies by. And that's really all the time we have today. So I know we didn't get to answer all the questions live but worry everyone. I will make sure they get forwarded to Gary and he will get back to you and he will answer them for you. So I look forward to next month with you. And for de Solutions Lab, I'm Pam Miragliano Muniz.