Million Dollar Dentistry Masterclass May 2021- "Why Your Team Hates You"

Hey, practice owners want to welcome you back to another edition of the Million Dollar Dentistry. Gary, Katie, our master class. Gary, how you doing, Gary?

Steve. Doing good, man. I'm so grateful to be back with you this month, man. Last month was incredible. What you really should be doing with your dental hygienist. I got some good mail from that. I don't know about you, but I got pictures.

I don't know what you got, but it was stuff I, I didn't want to take home. No, it's a, it's good stuff, a good topic. And, you know, this, this month, I think, is even more on target. Why your team hates you. And by the way, I have the. I had to go all the way back to 2006 to find this book, this version, the first edition. I'm never letting this go. And this has been reprinted like a jillion times and, you know, for, since 2006. And I really am glad that we chose this as a foundation. You know, we, you and I have a lot of docs who ask us what can they do? And they're struggling. And, you know, I thought it was interesting, you know, how things just come to life. You can do exactly what this book says. Even after Covid, there's, you know, the fundamentals of your business, your practice haven't changed. It's still doing the exact same things.

Yep. Well, the only difference, Steve, in all the docs that, that I get the privilege of talking to after our, you know, after our sessions, you know, we, we open it up to 10 people and I've had so many amazing conversations, Steve, in this particular area of team, not just existing team members, but also how to attract team members. So it's really relevant in that site as well. It's like, you know, why your team hates you are, you know, translates also how to attract good team members from the outside in if you need new team members. So it's relevant there too.

Well, and as you know, I'm a big. I like to read ahead and I highlight and I tag and I, you know, dog ear and I really do. This is a book that I turn to over and over and over and over, which is so, you know, that's why we're talking about it. I noticed some questions down here at the bottom, and I do want to encourage anybody who's watching or even if you're listening, ask those questions if we're going to try to get to every one of them. If we don't, Gary's agreed he will. It'll save the questions he'll at least get back to you in some form or fashion either tonight or tomorrow. You know, as we, as we sort of wrap up, all the questions that you ask will be saved. So go ahead and ask them. Even if we can't get to them tonight, we're. We'll make sure that we get your questions answered, no matter how big or small or, you know, you can ask some teeny tiny question or something big about your practice. One of the things that I appreciate about you, Gary, is you are very generous with your time and just, you know, just answering whatever question it might be. And a lot of them seem silly, but they're not. They're very fundamental. And that's what we're going to talk about tonight. So we, we went through, just kind of kick us off here. We went through the first four chapters. Number one, a day in the life of Larry dds and which is really a common story. That's the cool thing to me is this is, you know, for a lot of the people. I see a lot of people coming in here, it's a very common story and they think it's unique and they're struggling and nobody else is and there's something wrong with them and it's not. It happens every, every day. So chapter one, it was sort of a model of a typical dentist in the career that brought them to being a practice owner. Two is the life you're entitled to lead, which is an awesome chapter about your healthy deserve level and getting right in your head about you're the owner and you know, you deserve not feeling guilty about being profitable. Three is CPR cash in your pocket now, which is one of my personal favorites, getting comfortable with your relationship with money. And for anybody who hasn't read this, read the book. We're going to have a link at the end where you can click and get your copy and go back through these last episodes, these last chapters. Chapter four, one of my personal favorites, what you should really be doing with your hygienist. It's not what you think. Not for our purposes, it's not what you think. And then today or tonight is why your team hates you. And what I like, especially Gary, about what you've done is you frame these in the mind of the practice owner. And you know, a lot of practice owners think they're almost adversarial with their team and they wonder why they can't make money, they can't pay the bills, their practice isn't growing. And you do a really good job in this chapter of laying that out, and we're going to cover that today. There are nine things we're going to cover that you're probably doing wrong. And when you read these, what's amazing is you and I probably have a thousand stories about docs we know who have done every one of these wrong and can't figure out why their practice is struggling. So I wanted to start off, you have a really good story to kick this chapter off about Snoopy. So I was going to ask you to start off with your Snoopy story, which I think is poignant to remember through this whole episode.

Oh, yeah, yeah. I grew up with Peanuts, and I love, you know, Charlie Brown and Linus. And they're talking, and they're sitting there chatting, and. And Linus goes, hey, Charlie Brown, like, who. Who loves you? And he's like, well, you know, I don't know of anybody who loves me. And then all of a sudden, he says, you know, Snoopy loves me. And he goes, well, Snoopy doesn't count. You feed him.

Yes. Yeah. Snoopy doesn't have a choice. And. And that really, fundamentally is a good way to kick this off. And a lot of docs, in their mind, they can't grasp that, you know, their team gives them attention and affection. They love them, and they come in, they're happy every day. But what I always say is try to miss a payroll, because there are times as a doc when you're, you know, starting your practice early on. No, you miss a payroll. Well, try that with your team. And it's not that they don't care, but it's a relationship where you're feeding them, and as long as that happens, you know, they'll stick around. But what you do so eloquently here in these nine steps is you don't want them just sticking around. You want them contributing to the practice. So. So if you're ready, we've got nine things to cover. You want to dive right in?

Heck, yeah. Let's do it, Steve.

All right, so here's. Here are nine things you are probably doing wrong in your practice, which is why your team hates you. Number one is broken agreements and promises. So what do you mean by broken agreements and promises?

Yeah, so what I mean by that is if you're having a challenge for implementation, for people to be consistent, for people to follow through, for people to be accountable, for people to show up on time and leave on time for them to produce results, every upset or inefficiency that happens. Steve, in a dental practice, our first diagnostic Is we, where's the missing agreement and where's the broken agreement? Missing agreement is like I like, you know, I expect, I like there's a morning huddle and the morning huddle is at 8am Well I think it's at 8am the team thinks it's at 8:15 and nobody really has agreed. There's three components of an agreement. Who's going to do it, what are they going to do and by when will they get it done. So and then you get agreement around that. So you say, look team, we're going to have a morning huddle and you need to be here on time. It starts at 8. Are you guys committed to being here at 8? They say yes. Now you have a verbal contract and the more you can do that, the better your business is going to run and the better implementation you have and the better ownership and accountability. All the things that you grapple with. See the difference between before pandemic and after pandemic. The only difference is it was done for you and it unveiled the areas that were weak pre pandemic. And now you just have to be more efficient and better. You have to run a better business. So that's why these things are fundamental and they work. They just need to be put in now. And that's the difference right now, Steve. And the thing about it is once you have an agreement like hey, we need to be at the huddle on time, then if somebody misses that agreement, now you deal with a broken agreement. So first there's a missing agreement. You put in all the key agreements that need to be in with the team. Then there is if somebody misses an agreement, the key person to manage that is the team leader, not the doctor. Doctor should not be managing agreements. And the other piece about this, Steve, is it's what we'll get to it a little later. We'll leave, we'll leave that for a little later. But I want to get missing and broken agreements are key. And if you make a promise and you don't deliver, what happens to the team member is they go, well he didn't do this or she didn't do that. So I'm going to pull back and I'm not going to do this. And then you get this conspiracy of broken agreements and no progress. That's where businesses get stuck.

Also you do a really good job here of explaining maybe from the team members perspective is you interview somebody and you say, oh, we're glad to have you, you know, can't wait till you start. We're going to pay you this. And we'll have a review in 90 days, and we'll talk about how you're doing. And to you, that's just, you know, words to get somebody on board. But to that team member, they know when the 90th day is, they're looking forward to it, and they have to ask you if they have to remind you this is their 90th day and you're really busy, that's a broken agreement. That's something they've looked forward to. And, you know, you. You basically. And you're right, we've got several to cover here later that fall in the same category. But fundamentally, they feel that's a broken agreement. You promised them a review in 90 days, you think they're doing awesome, and it's not worth the conversation. And you say, yeah, you're doing great. And they kind of want to have a lengthy conversation. They might even have something they want to say or some ideas. But when you blow through it, it's a broken agreement, right?

Yep. Oh, yeah. And then when you ask them, like, if you didn't do what you say you're going to do, subconsciously, they're going, well, he didn't do what he said he was going to do, so I'm not going to do what I'm going to do. And then you have this downward spiral. And the other piece about it is, I do these culture surveys with our clients at first and get feedback. Nine times out of 10, people will say, I was promised a review. I never got one. And I use that as a great example. And here's the thing, Steve. It's not usually the doctor's fault. They just don't have a structure for the fulfillment of things. So if they're just making promises and there's no structure to hold it in, like a calendar reminder, another person accountable for that, not the doctor. Like, when you make all those promises, you need a place to hold all those promises in place. And we actually put structures into the practice so that you. When that comes up, there's actually an appointment somewhere that when something comes out of your mouth. My grandfather said this, Steve, when the tongue in your shoe matches the tongue in your mouth, Gary, you will be a trusted leader. Right? Meaning when I say something, the. The actions that my feet take are in correlate with what my promise was. And so I learned this the hard way. I can tell you a story here, man, that'll really blow this thing up. It's really awesome. You want to hear it?

Yes.

So I learned this the hard way. So I never used to keep my word about anything. And I didn't realize that that was the root cause of trust. Meaning, like I would tell my family I'd be home at 1 o' clock and I would show up at 4 and they'd be mad. I'm like, why are you mad? And I had the world revolving around me and the world didn't start until I showed up. So it was like my way of controlling things. It was really interesting. I had no idea this. The other thing was I was making promises because I'm a people pleaser and I have a lot of docs that I work with that are people pleasers. They're also non confrontational, so they hate confrontation. So all these elements at play create this thing. So I had a coach and I was failing and this was when I was 24 years old and, and I said, can you teach me how to run a business? He said, sure. And he's been teaching me, you know, executive administrative, sales, marketing, finance, quality assurance, you know, really the infrastructure of how every entrepreneurial business needs to run. It was amazing. He goes, you got all the knowledge you need. He goes, but you have one thing that's going to hold you back with everything in your business. And I said, what's that? He goes, you're not a man of your word. And I got angry. I was like, man, I had a lot of pride, a lot of ego. I was like, dude, all right, yeah, I, yes, I am. He goes, well, let's see. He goes, $100aminute for every minute that you're late for our meetings. This, this month. I go, sure. You know, and that was the other thing. My wife says, I fit a 54 inch refrigerator into a 40 inch, 48 inch space. Like, she says, like, I'm not a size 2 anymore, I'm a size 8. So I don't buy size 2 jeans. You try to pack too much stuff into too small of a space, you know what I'm saying? Steve, does Paul have that with you?

Yeah, absolutely, yes. But I'm not going to talk about her jean size here because absolutely she would be. That would be the end of it.

All right, good, good. We'll leave that out. So anyway, so what happened was, he goes, gary, you did great this month. He goes, but we need to reconcile. Oh, by the way, we shook hands. He looked at me, looked me in the eye and he goes, we agree, thanks. So he made that a point. Anyway. He goes, we got to reconcile. You did great. But you were 36 minutes late this month. I go, yeah, so what? 36 minutes. Yeah, sorry about that. You know, people pleasing, try to dance over it. He goes, remember we had an agreement, a hundred dollars a minute. He goes, you owe me 3,600 bucks. I go, no, I don't. See ya. And I walked out on the guy. Three months later, my integrity. I couldn't sleep. I called him up, I said, roger, come over. I'm going to pay you 3,600. Back in the day when we used to write checks, this was a long time ago. And he goes, young man, that was the best 3600 bucks you ever spent. You're going to make millions from that. He walked out the door, went down to, to the elevator. I thought he was going to rip it up, Steve. He said, see ya. Bye. The guy left. He lives in Hawaii. I sent him a Christmas card every year thanking him for bringing tangibility to the cost of not keeping my word. And it changed my whole life. And we teach docs this, and you think it's harder to do this. It actually makes your life so much simpler, so much easier. And everybody around you mobilizes and does what you want them to do when you want them to do it. More often than not. It's amazing. It works well.

You, you become reliable and dependable. You have integrity, which is what we're, you know, we'll get to here in a little bit, what we're really talking about. And when you minimize those little things, I think your team, you know, in their mind, it also can minimize the big things.

Oh, yeah.

So if you promised them a review and you just blew past it and said, oh, you're doing fine. Yeah, they're wondering what else there is that you're blowing through. And so, yeah, I, I, and that story has always resonated. There are things that happen to you in your life that you will never do again. And I think that's one of them. And it really does every time you tell somebody. So I had that same problem. And I've gotten to the point where I know if I'm going to be here at this time. Paula has taught me this. You know, if, if we need to be there at one, either I need to leave way earlier or I need to set the time back. If I'm going to be rushing, I try to set the time back. And it just, it really is something that your team, in the pressure and the bullets flying every day in the practice, they need you on what you say you're going to do well.

Time is the most tangible one, not only with your internal customer, your team. We're talking about building your relationship with your internal customer, your team. This also works with patients, too. See, when you remove time, money, and pain as barriers, and they can count on when you're going to be seen and when you're going to be released, all of a sudden, the trust level of going and you're broken and canceled appointments go way down. There's so many layers to this distinction, Steve. We could just spend the whole time and the next 12 months on this. That's how powerful it is. That's why it's the first one. Because if you don't have this in, you don't have workability and empowerment on your team. You just don't. And if I can give you, like, how powerful this tool is, think about as a dentist, you can't work without a handpiece, or. Or as a hygienist, a scaler, as a leader and a manager, you can't work with anything without your word and the promises. So, like, when I tell my team we're going to do this, they get scared because they know it's not going to be the flavor of the month. They start mobilizing and going, hey, I need more bandwidth. Can we get another person? Can we outsource this? Here's how I can do it. Because they know when I say we're doing this, we're doing it. It's not like, let's say yes and mean no, and then it's the flavor of the month. Because Gary just said we're going to do this. No, we get stuff done here, and this is the way we get it done. And this is the way we earn the trust of our word with people and they start mobilizing into action. And this is the biggest blind spot I would say, that Dennis had, because they didn't train them on this distinction, Steve. And in dental school, you're just not trained in this stuff. So we just made, you know, practice management made simple. If you just get this one distinction, you're halfway home.

So, number two, one of my favorites, and this comes out of the book, and basically in the book, you basically say you go back to chapter one, and Larry. Larry manages by emotion rather than results. And I think that is. That is spot on. Where a lot of docs don't realize, you know, they're mad, they're frustrated, and that's how they're managing.

Yeah.

As opposed to. Let me step back and look at the numbers. What's really happening. And you do that. You cover that really well in the book.

Yeah. And, you know, Steve, here's the thing. I mean, I get it. Like, you're dealing with, like, your lawyer, your banker, your cpa. You're looking at your bank account and you're. You're like, you have, you know, fear and scarcity present because you're a business owner. And then your team's showing up and they're like, doing 14 cents. And they go, man, we had a good day today. We did great in hygiene. We had a great hygiene day. And there was like 14 cents in that day. And you're like, what are you talking about? Like, and here's the problem. It's not because Dennis are bad leaders. They're just not set up to win their game. And when you have a business model and when you reverse engineer how much time and money you want to make and you divide that by month, by person, and they know what their measure is now, all of a sudden, they can be responsible as an individual on the team, correlate with what you need to produce as a group each month. And when you start putting that business model in, you're going to be less apt to be reacting, and you'll be responding because, you know, you'll have peace of mind. A lot of dentists don't have peace of mind because they don't know what's going to happen tomorrow or they don't know what's going to happen when they come back from vacation. And I just had two guys that came from last month when they responded to, you know what you really should be doing with your dental hygienist. They. They've been working for 20 years, and they take three weeks off, and they could be taking 12 weeks off, but they think they have to stay there being control freaks on top of it. And it's. And they're. They're in this treadmill of no off switch, just reacting to things. But if they get their arms around it and they see that they have control points in now, they have peace of mind. Now if something goes wrong or sideways, they don't react. They can go, oh, that's just a blip on the screen. I can now respond because I know I have things handled. It's when you don't have the landscape. And you're also looking at your bank account, by the way. Your bank account is the worst measure that you can be looking at, you know, Steve, I mean, because that is a lagging indicator. You want leading indicators. You also don't want to look at production and collection lagging indicator. Leading indicators are seven months upstream. You talk about not having to react anymore because I know and you'll be able to know how your practice is going to do from six months from now. You could take all time off and know how when you do these things upstream, this is how your, your production and collections are going to look seven months downstream. And then you get it into your bank account. So it's flipping the script. It's, it's new solutions to old problems. Steve, instead of trying to chase this, we don't want to chase this. We want to get ahead of it. You don't want to have firemen and women on your team. You want to have creators and architects for designing your lifestyle versus being reactive. And then you can be responsive.

I'm always intrigued by, as a practice owner, in the old days, I would do what I call the call around, say how we do today. And, you know, the first answer would always be, we did great today. We were busy. We were covered up.

Busy.

Well, okay, we're busy, but, you know, we need $8,500 a day to break even on this practice and 10, you know, to be ahead of the game. How'd we do? Well, I don't know that yet. I haven't checked. Well, busy is not a result. Busy is not a measure. Busy is that emotion.

Exactly.

I feel good and what I see. And you tell me if you see the same thing. I see dentists. What's interesting is they're trained in such specific protocol. They're going to prep a crown down to, I don't know, a kajalometer or whatever it is. You know, I'm going to show my ignorance here. On the clinical side of it, I mean, everything is so precise. But when it comes to the business, you know, busy was good. We're really busy today. Are we losing money today? Are we going to struggle next week or next month? They have the ability to do that, but they managed by that emotion of we were really busy, so we must have done good and they're okay going home like that.

Yep.

And that's that. I think that's kind of what you're saying, right? Don't, don't worry about if we're losing money. It doesn't matter how we feel. We're not going to be doing this much longer.

Well, there's, there's four different types of currency. There's competitive people that want to know what, how to, how they win the game. There's the Humanist person that their currency is how many validations they got from patients that the methodicals currency, the step by step person that wants to know the steps is if they didn't make any mistakes today, they had a good day. And the spontaneous their currency is if they had fun. So only 10% of people are looking at measures. That's the competitive side. And when, you know, we don't want to force people that are naturally non defaulting into, you know, looking at numbers and stuff. We have a systematic process that we put a person in place and then report up to the dentist. The senior most person in a practice is the team leader and the dentist who is doing dentistry reports up to that person until they get out of that and then they become a CEO and then the team leader reports into those metrics. So there's a lot of layers to this Steve. But once you get the business model in, it really takes care of itself. It's really interesting. You know, the business model that we're unfolding here in Million Dollar Dentistry. And the other piece I want to just say is, is managing by facts rather than emotions. Keep it simple, you know, what are the facts about today? But if you don't have it reverse engineered from what you want to do annually in revenue and how much time you want to spend and figure out how much you need to do per day per individual, if you don't have that measure set, you're not dealing in facts by position, by day and you need to break it down to that detail and then reward that person for each day and only pay it if you collect enough money to do that. That is a system that works flawlessly. It works every time.

Yeah, and I'm watching some of these questions come in and we sort of have this theme that has run through each episode that is about money. And it's, you know, there's this fear or distaste or uncomfortableness with the money part of it. And I think it's back to our chapter three is getting comfortable with the money. Piece of it is understanding that's just a measure of how well you did. And while you may, while your measure may be you took care of your patients, you know, your landlord's measure is an exact number every month. Your utility bill is exact number. Your supplier, you know, your supply bill, your payroll is an exact number every month, you know, try to, if you want to keep your business, you know, going and take care of patients, you know, try, you know, putting a smiley face in a pay envelope. And you know, that's an old time thing. Now it's direct deposit, but that we took care of a lot of patients this week and you know, I can only pay you this much and end result is you just don't get to be a practice owner very long. You can be a great dentist and if that's what you're there to do, you should probably be an employee somewhere. But if you're the practice owner at some point, the results are we did provided a great service, took care of our patients and we got paid for it on time and we got paid more than it cost us and we get to do this for an entire career. And so I think that's where, you know, the results are difficult. Here's one of my favorites here. Number three. One of the things you are probably doing wrong, the way you've got it in the book here is a new long term plan every two weeks. What I hear is, you know, when Doc says, hey, I'm going to a seminar this weekend and the practice manager says, oh my gosh, here comes a binder. That's going to be a whole bunch of stuff that they learned and spent a few thousand dollars on. They're going to drop it on my desk and say, Mary Jane, I went to the greatest seminar ever. We're going to double our production. Here's this binder. Let's just do this and double our production right now. And then two weeks later they go to another seminar. And so that's kind of what you cover. Number three is the, like you just said, maybe the flavor of the month in management theory.

Yep. Yeah. And it's Steve, I call it, you know, you know, team members used to say like, yeah, my doctor is going to go smoke the medical marijuana cell. They're going to get high as a kite and they're going to get giddy and listen to this guy with all these possibilities and he can do it and you know you're going to do it and you should go do it. And then what the problem is about that is, is that they didn't consider where they were starting from. So there's many people who espouse great things on how to build the business, but if you don't back up your Ford F150 or your Ford Raptor now to your, to your trailer and then pull it forward. If your team hates you and you bring more stuff to them, they're going to hate you even more. You have to have a foundation of what I call fertilized soil. That's where they're Ready, willing and embracing. They can't wait to take what you got. Whatever you're putting down, they're picking up. But you've got to set the team up to be in that position. And that's what's missing is that you need a fertile ground for implementation. And, you know, and I really feel for docs, I have a lot of compassion. You know, you're reading all the magazines, you're listening to podcasts, you're listening to this, and you're going, well, that makes sense to me. And then I'm going to try that and I'm going to go over here and then I'm going to go over there and it's like one strategy, Steve, trumps a thousand tactics. Let me say that again. One strategy trumps a thousand tactics. What I mean by that is a lot of people are throwing nuggets, pearls, gems, little tips and tidbits to things, but they don't have a core business model that allows for the business to have a machine. Like we have one that's called our care system, that there's three ways to build the business. Case acceptance, retention, and new patient acquisition and experience. That is one strategy. And then there's tips on how to implement that. But one strategy trumps a thousand tactics and own that thing. Because here's the other thing. In implementation, there's four stages of implementation. The first thing is when you implement, you forget that you're implementing it, so it goes out of existence. Forget is the first stage to get through. The second stage is fail. You fail at it. Fail tells you what you're missing. So when you course correct it and put that in, it's going to work. And then the third is mastery. So you get to, I mean, a third is success. So you succeed at it. And that's level three. And then level four is really mastery. Mastery of it. So you can teach other people to do it. And so that's the four step process for implementation. But people never get past the first one. They forget what the heck they told them to implement at the last agenda at the team meeting.

And your team knows you're going to, you know, your team knows that you just went to another, what did you call it? Medical marijuana CD commercial.

No, they're going to go smoke the good ce. And now I added to it. Well, of course it's the medical marijuana with the prescription that is allowed that you can smoke and get giddy and high.

Well, they know when you come back and hand that binder and say, all right, we're doing. I went to an implant course, so we're doing implants. They know that you're going to forget about it. And I can't tell you how many times I hear. I've. I've been to 11 implant courses and still not doing any implants. What's wrong?

Sleep. Sleep the same way Steve. Sleep. Everybody has sleep as a hobby today. We don't. We don't play that reindeer game. It's like, no, we're going to get sleep implemented. Like, you know, our buddy Nick And Kristen hit 20 cases last month. 20 sleep cases.

Right.

I mean, it goes back to. Because they have fertile ground for implementation to occur. That's why they don't.

Well, they don't put it in front of their team unless they have a plan. It's organized, it's thought through, and when they pull the trigger, they're going to execute on it. And they're not going to change plans in a week or two. They're not going to drop that and start doing something else six weeks from now when they go to a different course. And. And that makes a lot. I hear that a lot. I also have a. Here's an interesting question. I was looking down here, and I'm going to. So I try to pull them together and paraphrase, but. And keep the questions coming. We're going to get to them. We've got a lot to cover, but I want to make sure we get this one. It says, I fired my whole team a few years ago because they didn't respect me and do what I said. The new team is no better. And it's more of a statement than a question. How many times have you heard docs that just say, here's the solution, Fire everybody and start over?

Well, it happened after Covid. You know, that question is like, I know a lot of docs, but, like, after Covid, a lot of people started over. And it's a gift. But here's what you got to remember. Wherever you go, Steve, there you are. Wherever you go, you're in your underwear. It's you and your underwear. And, you know, a lot of times people are blaming Covid or they're blaming their team. And what there is to do here, docs, is this. Take responsibility that your business model doesn't allow and the infrastructure that you have set up in your practice and doesn't allow you to be in the right places. I have this course that I lead, it's called rewirement, because I believe that nobody's going to retire. We're going to rewire, meaning we're going to rewire how we work. Three tenants of that program, stop doing things you're not good at, stop doing things you don't like doing, and remove toxic people from your environment. Right. Those three things are key to this process. So if you're trying to get better by firing people, not necessarily the right answer. Because your thinking and your leadership are the same thinking and leadership that got you into the problem in the first place. Let me give you a personal example of this. As you know, I just celebrated 13 years of sobriety, which I'm so happy and proud of. And what I learned.

Congratulations.

Well, thank you, Steve. What I learned was the problem doesn't go away until I get the lesson. And there was some lessons I needed to get and I needed to take responsibility because before I got sober, I was blaming other people for my circumstances. I was blaming my situation for my circumstances. And the minute you take 100% responsibility, it doesn't mean you need to know how to do it. You're just going to own and figure it out and find the people that actually can get this done for you so you don't have to be on the treadmill with no off switch and keep these reoccurring problems going. You know, and here's the thing. When you shift from a people personality centered business to a business model and process structured business, you can then plug and play. And if you get A players in there, it really takes off. If you have B players, the machine still works and you can develop willing B players into A players. It's the only way to do it in today's world because our, our supply of dental team members have shrunk. So you have to take a different approach. And if you don't do that, you're going to be spinning wheels or have open spaces on your floor in the practice.

Yeah, that's. So I'll just throw this out before we move on. And you made me think of this when you were, you were talking a second ago. There was a comedian many years ago, he's passed away, Tim Wilson, who I remember going to a show and he said, he stood up there and he had this southern drawl and he said, yeah, I got to tell you, I'm getting divorced again. Fourth time. I'm beginning to think maybe it's me. And I think a lot of docs do that. You do this thing if it keeps happening to you over and over. I always say there's a common denominator and it's not Everybody else. So you're right. If you're getting these results, it's because you say it much more eloquently. It's because you've created the environment for it to exist.

Well, and you're not a bad person and it's not your fault. You're a dentist and that's what you're good at. Stay in that lane. Get your business set up so it can run that you don't have to do the things you don't like or you're not good at.

So number four, Larry is either too controlling or too lax.

Oh, yeah, it's the pendulum. It's like there's no middle ground. I was a control freak forever and I'm like, I gotta learn how to do this better, right? And when your business model runs the business, not people, and you have agreements in place and you don't delegate tasks, but you delegate responsibilities and outcomes. Now it's just a fact game. Now you're dealing in facts, and then you can deal in real life data. Facts versus, like, I feel like it's good or I feel like it's bad. And then you're, you know, like a lot of guys and gals are either people pleasers or control freaks or both. And you're trying to maneuver around this world of leadership and it just, it just doesn't work. So again, root cause is business model. Then this is the other thing, Steve. Leaders inspire and influence. So as a doctor, your job is to inspire and influence as a leader. And your team leader is the manager. If you're the team leader and you're also the doctor, you need to put that piece in. And when I work with people, Steve, they're either say they don't have the right one or they've been burned before or they do have the right one, but they need to be elevated and educated in a new way. So it's wherever you're starting from, but it's leadership and management, business model. And then you just deal in facts, not emotional, you know, force and pushing and persuading and manipulating. It just is. And they own the outcome versus you having to push them to do it.

Yeah. And not to jump ahead here, but number nine, this really says that is, you know, it goes to predictability. And when your team comes in and they don't know if you're fired up today or you're, you know, passive today, that's a hard thing for the hard environment for them to work in. And yes, they, they learn to hate you. They learn to hate the days. And they learn to start to hate the start of the day. And they learn to come in and figure out whether it's going to be a crappy day or a great day based on your attitude today and emotion. And that is the beginning of failure. That's the beginning of the whole team hating you. Number five, why does your team hate you? You are more focused. You're better. You think it's better to look good than to be real, to put on that appearance.

Yeah. In today's world, the best leaders are transparent. They're vulnerable. Right. They have this, I don't know. They can say, I don't know. It is so okay to raise your hand and say, I don't know. The other thing is, you don't have to respond immediately when somebody asks you a question. So let me think about that. And then also, like, you know, responding to say, like, you know, you have to look good. You know, it's okay not to look good in the eyes of people. Right. I know. We defend that. I've been there. I wore a mask for many years. My insides did not match my outsides. And when you get transparent and congruent and clear and vulnerable, there'll be a place in time that you won't have to be vulnerable anymore because you're going to be okay inside your skin. You'll reach a point, if you do this work, you'll reach a point where you could be okay with who you are and know what you're good at and know what you're not and be completely, fully transparent and congruent with what's inside chronically and what comes outside socially. And when you live that life of truth, you're set free. And that's what's available to leaders. You just. You got to take the leap. I used to, Steve. I'm going to be fully transparent. My first days, I didn't know what the hell I was doing, and I was faking it till I was making it on stage because I wanted to do this, because I was inspired and I was committed, but I was faking it. I mean, I didn't have the full transparency. And people looked at me and go like, that guy's not real. People want real people. And I just share about my sobriety. I share about my flaws. You know, all superheroes have flaws, and they want to see that flaw. And that's what makes you trustworthy, because you're sharing who you are with people, and it makes it safe for you and your team to be, you know, communicative. About what's real.

Well, at the end of the day, here's the, here's the secret your team already knows. If you're scared to death to show up every day, you're scared to open the mail, you're, you're beaten down because you know you lost a team member. If any of those things happen, they already know. So you can deny it, pretend it's not happening and expect extraordinary results out of them, which you're not going to get. And I agree with you wholeheartedly. Just be honest with it. We got, we had a crappy day, we had a crappy month. We're struggling, we'll be fine. But you know, we took a hit and instead of laying down, we're bouncing back and here's what we're going to do instead of letting it happen, they know.

Exactly. And Steve, it's great point, I love the way you said that. And here's the great point about this guys, is that they will feel a compassion towards you that if you're trying to hold a strong front up, they can't have that emotion of compassion and partnership with, with you to help you get the job done. And people want to help. So it was a blind spot for me. I thought I had to hold it all together. And now this is very different than venting to be rescued. Very different. That's victimhood. You don't, you want to, it's front of the hand, back of the hand on this. You don't want to be doing that. But if you're real and say what the facts are and people will rally around you, it's really an interesting phenomenon.

Number six. You always have to be right. That's why your team hates you. You always have to be right.

Yeah, this, this one, you know, I want to, I want to really highlight this. This works in everywhere. We'd rather be right than happy. We'd rather be right than wealthy. We'd rather be right than healthy. Self righteousness kills all possibility. The minute you don't know and the minute you're okay with being curious and in wonderment and the minute you give up the right to be right, you're actually set free. I was one of them. I was like, I have to know things. People are paying me to know things. I have to be right about it. And then I spent my energy and time asserting my righteousness. And man, when you surrender to what's so and then where you want to go and then you get straight about it and you don't have to assert Yourself, righteousness. You can actually have new conversations that forward the action, build relationships, and you'll have a freedom and people who trust you around you in a way that will blow your mind. Because here's the deal, you have such a big force of your team, and I didn't know this, like especially men, big men. Like, I know guys that like have a big presence and in smaller people they get dominated by that. So whether it's being right or some form of domination and control over people, that's when they go sideways and they leave. I have a lot of guys saying, well, this person left and that person left. Well, it was because they were being dominated by some self righteousness. And you know, it's better off to allow two people to have. I always like to say, Steve, like, you know, in this can, like describe it to me. Well, you would say, well, there's a circle on it. And I would say there's a lot of writing on it. And you would say, well, this is hairspray. And I would say this is how I clean my glasses. So from your perspective, you know, you're right about your perspective and I'm right about my perspective. We're both right from our perspective. But everybody wants to assert their righteousness from their viewpoint only and not consider the other person's. And that kills connection, relatedness. And I can't tell you how many divorces, this one distinction saved people's marriages. Like, no kidding. Because there was two people just hanging out, being right. And once one person surrenders, there's a vulnerability there. Yes. But there's an opportunity to come together and look at, look at the viewpoints that they're looking at.

I have, in fact, I had this conversation, you know, we were talking beforehand. I've owned several businesses and I've had some turnover. And in part of the, in part of that is you've got to get comfortable with letting the person you put in charge do it 70% as good as you do. Now, I know if I jumped in, interjected myself and did what I know, it would be 100%, but at what cost? So there are two costs. Number one is my time. And number two is I'm teaching this person to come to me for the answers, to be a hundred percent right.

No. Great.

I'm just comfortable being 70% right. I won't even, I'm not even going to bring it up. What good does bringing it up do? And that's a question that always goes through my mind. What positive outcome would come from me proving this person's wrong about something this big. Now, if it's this big, you know, that's a different story. But if, if they would have, if we. They bought something for the practice that was $100 when they could have gotten it for 75 on eBay.

Yep.

What did being right about that cost me? And you're right, there are personalities that just need to inject themselves and say, hey, you wouldn't get that for 75 on eBay. But the cost of that is way more than 25 bucks.

There's no doubt about it. And I've got caught in it. It's like you get in, like the, you know, dentists are, Their attention is in microns, tiny little spaces, and they get caught up in the detail. So you have to wear a different hat when you're managing and leading people. And you got to look at the big picture landscape. And 75% is like getting 100% right, you know, but if you're, if most dentists are perfectionists, they're looking for that. They find the 30% and harp on it. And that kills off everything. Now, we can ramp up that 70 with a good business model and a good manager and get that to 80 to 85%. That's your 100% right. And that's the game.

Well, and you're freed up to do other things than own that, because again, I always say once you take it over, you own it. And they'll be glad to let you. As long as they get a paycheck every two weeks, they'll be glad to let you. And back to why your team hates you. You always need to be right. So, number seven, why your team hates you. You treat patients with respect and treat them like garbage. Yeah, a lot, A lot. Way more than is comfortable.

Yeah. And it's a blind spot for a lot of people. Like, they, they, they, they go, well, the patients feeding me my money, so I got to really put on, like, the nice, nice for them and, you know, not be so reactive and, like, listen to them and like, they observe you how you interact with patients, and then they observe you how you interact with team. Now, yes, it is. My wife and I have arguments. It's because we're intimately connected and we get, we get tussle. Yes. The closer the intimacy, the more you're going to have those types of things. But, you know, if there's no acknowledgement, no appreciation, no safety, no security, no respect, those things, then people go to money. And that's what we're going to talk about in number nine. But it's like they want to be validated. People want to find you can actually correct people by giving them what's working about them and show them areas of development. If you ask them permission, may I have permission to give you areas that I'd like you to develop? And it goes back to like your reviews. If you don't have sit downs with them, you can't get major things shifted. If you're trying to shift them in the hallway in between patients, you know, excuse me, the game's over before you start. You can't, you're not going to have a course correction. Pardon me. So, yeah, it's like, you know, people are observing how you treat other people, especially patients and team looking at that. So just be mindful of that and raise your awareness around it and have some balance between the two.

I've seen docs and I don't know, I'm assuming you've seen this or I've seen them in the operatory at times feel like if they snap at or correct or address a situation with an assistant or a hygienist or whoever in front of a patient, oh, it's over. They're being, it's, they're, they're showing that they know what's going. They're the smartest person in the room. They're dominating and they're not going to let Mary Jane do that again. You know, Mary Jane, I don't want to see this. And again, you want your team to hate you really quick. Here's what I always say. If they knew it was wrong, I don't think they would do it.

Yep.

So number one is there's an unawareness about what they're doing and the last place to call it out is in front of a patient or another team member or I think once you do that, you establish that you're capable of that. Every team member just wonders, okay, when's my turn?

Well, well, Steve, that's a great point. We have this saying that says people are doing the best they can with what they can know. So in other words, if you're driving down the freeway and you have a blind spot and you see the car and like, I didn't know you were there, so I wouldn't have driven into you. So I hold my hand up and say, I apologize. Use that as the example with your team. And yes, you might think like, I mean, I said this a thousand times. Yes, it's also because you don't have an infrastructure. You don't have your manager set up.

Right.

You don't have a system set up a. There's a lot of layers to that, especially if you're being the octopus dentist, where you're trying to hold it all together with all eight arms trying to pull it all together. You're never going to get ahead of that thing. So just know that you're in a place where you're in no win place and know that people. There's only two types of team members. There's willing team members and unwilling team members. If you have a willing team member that's willing to go to bat for you and have your front back and sides, but they just had a lapse and you invalidate them in front of a patient and they go home and they're beat up, and they're beat up for weeks. So like, you know, and your expectation is coming back because you had no pain in that, but they're still living in pain. And then you're wondering why they're not performing or they're leaving because their husband's moving down the street to another job, stuff like that. And they give you reasons, by the way, you know, a lot of times, you know, they're not telling you the truth as to why they're leaving. I see that happen a lot too because you're not safe to actually communicate with. So if you have attrition and there's an all of a sudden attrition, sometimes there's reasons for good attrition. It's like the lobster story. In order to grow, sometimes you have to release the shell, go into a vulnerable spot, reload and then go again. Because you needed a new mindset shift in your culture. But if you have people dropping like flies, there's, you know, something to take a look in the mirror at, not point out the window that there's a problem with them.

Yeah, and you're right, they're not telling you. So I've got somebody, Dr. Ryan here, Queens, New York. Why is everybody on my team always asking for a raise but never giving me any better results? Well, there's a lot in that question.

Oh man, big time. Well, the first thing is want more money.

But they want it for this doing the same thing.

Well, you know, Steve, it goes back to money is a short term motivator. You know, people want to get paid and they deserve to get paid for value that they create. And you know, with the business model that allows you to do that, paying on performance, you know, salary plus performance. And that individualize is great for if you want to just handle the money thing. But what the blind spot is is that if people don't get a purpose like that, they're a part of something greater than themselves. And they don't get appreciated and, and they don't get publicly acknowledged, or even worse, they get invalidated in front of another patient. You know, they're invalidated or they don't have a safety or security to be who they are. These are all very deep rooted emotional priorities for most people prior to asking for more money if they don't get those first four things. Steve. Like I'll tell you, like, when I go into a practice and I see like a driving dentist and the salaries are out of whack, the reason why they stay is because they're getting paid big money. And there's some groups that have that. And I can see that happening. I'm like, how, you know, how are you staying here? Well, you know, there's a hygienist who's making, you know, six figures. Six figures, you know, and they put up with a guy who doesn't keep his word, dominates them, tells them what to do, invalidates them, and they overlook it because they want to be there for the money. Some people are only there for the money, and that's okay. But when you have a team that's there because they appreciate being there, they have a purpose, they feel safe, they feel acknowledged, they feel respected, then as long as you have fair exchange, you're good. And, you know, I like the salary plus individual team performance to handle the money thing, because then you're sharing in the revenue and they're causing the revenue to go up for you in the practice. So it's, it's the chicken and the egg, it's working together.

Yeah. And you know, when they're there for the money, that's awesome. As long as you have the money.

Yeah.

But in my experience, there's an arc to that. And when you don't have the money, you have to have those eight players who are there for the money. But one day when you don't have the money, you know they're going somewhere else, they're following the money, and you know they don't love you. So that is a hard, hard game to keep playing. You bet number eight, why your team hates you is you use names for jobs that demean the team.

What do you mean by that? Well, you know, I have fun. Like when I first got into this business, they were like, you know, the front desk people, you know, those pieces of furniture Right. Like, if you call them a front desk person, they're like, you know, you know, there they are.

There are dots that don't even say person. They just say, you know, my front desk.

Yeah, my front desk.

Front desk is a piece of furniture or my. And yeah, I mean, they have. They're a person. And if you want them to contribute and not hate you, I think you're spot on. You know, you got to respect them and dignify them.

Yeah. And like, you know, when you call them like my, you know, my assistant and stuff like that. So, like, when you speak to people as they are or if you demean them, saying, calling them like my front desk, what happens is, is that they become. That they become a piece of furniture. But when you. When you up level them and you speak with how they can be, they become it. So I'll give you some examples. Like, at the front desk, we have director of first impressions. So now that person sits in that ownership of, like, you know, now they're not filing their nails and reading magazines.

They.

They step into, oh, my job is to direct how people experience us. How I answer the phone, how I greet people, putting my attention on people. I become who I declare them to be. Another one is, you know, we have assistants who just go, no, I'm just a little woman on the totem pole. And I'm just an assistant. So we made up a name. We call them ninjas, and they love it. And you know what? Ninjas dance for Steve is so much fun. No, I'm not just an assistant. They walk around. They are a ninja nation. They feel good about themselves, and we have fun with it. Right. And you know what happens is they go, yeah, they call themselves ninjas, and they have fun with it. They don't even use the regular terms anymore of assistance. Like, she's a ninja and the patient is what's a ninja? She goes, no, she's not just assistant. Guess what happens. She uses the intraoral camera. She. She makes sure that the production gets done the way it's supposed to get done. She makes sure, or he makes sure that the rooms are impeccable and that people are taken care of. And they become elevated. When you speak to how they can be. They become that. Not this thing. Piece of furniture over here.

Just. Just an assistant. Exactly. That's awesome. Ninja. Not just. No, I'm not just another assistant. That's genius.

Yep.

Well, and I think you're right on. If you don't want them to hate you, treat them in a respectful way. And that's, that's really awesome. Versus. Or what you're going to get is turning the ops and getting a paycheck.

Well, and we see it in hygiene, too. It's like, I can't tell you how many hygienists are thrown under the bus and invalidated by the doctor. And they don't even know they're doing it. Like, saying, oh, we'll just watch that. You know, we'll, we'll, you know, we don't need that. Like, there needs to be an agreement on what's healthy and what's not. That's what a healthy mouth baseline does. And when you have what's healthy and what's not, you're not invalidating your hygienist because if she is trusted or he's trusted by the patient and you go, no, we're just going to watch that they feel invalidated and they go in their, their hygiene cave. And that's why we call them hygieniuses, Steve. Hygieniuses hygiene cave.

I'm going to start. So before we go to number nine, we're going to, you and I are going to make an agreement. We're going to put together a Gary dictionary, put all the acronyms and all the phrases. My notes at the end. So I keep lots of notes. Last item. And I think all of these, really, what we're going to talk about is integrity. But last item, number nine, the big one is that you, the reason they hate you is you fail to provide appreciation and acknowledgement, safety and security and respect. The three things that they're really there for or they're there for. A paycheck. Yep, one of the two. You get to pick it.

Yeah. And I'd rather it cost me a lot less. When I'm acknowledging and appreciating and, you know, respecting and creating safety, it costs me a lot less to have that than, you know, having money, you know, be the only motivator because that just. The clock keeps ticking and it keeps rising up. And one of the things about this, Steve, is that's so profound is that, you know, a lot of doctors want to do this and that's who they are, but they just are just not set up to win their game. And once you get this thing structured in a way, you could actually become that. And it feels so much better to go in to find what people are doing well and right and acknowledging them for it and respecting them for it and removing the things that create fear and reactions, all the things that we spoke in the last eight steps that give you this like experience of not going to work in dread. I call it the Sunday sillies, where like, you know, Sunday you're just dreading to go to work on Mondays just because of the energy that sucks out of you because of the environment that you walk in. I used to walk into dread in my own business and it's no fun. And you can flip the switch. You don't have to continue to suffer like this. But just knowing these things is one thing. And then it's one thing to get on the court and like start making changes so that you don't have to live in this way. And the number one challenge in dentistry right now, Steve, as you know, is really attracting good team members. And so if you have this underneath it all, you're not going to be able to attract good people because the existing people, when they come in, they're going to sniff out an environment that doesn't work and then they're going to go, man, I'm going to go find a place. Because here's the thing, the, you know, it's always sellers or buyers. The buyers who are the employees. They're looking for top notch places. And most doctors don't look to this area to clean up in order to fix like the big game which is attracting good talent as well on top of this. So yeah, it's an exciting time for doctors. If you get some of these things fixed up, man, you can really soar and you'll have a grape, I call it a grapevine, a lineup of people waiting to work for you or versus you and scarcity, trying to search for people and not having enough people under your roof.

Well, and they're also coming to work for you. You know, I know, I know a lot of your people, your, your clients and they will tell you that one of the things, in fact I talked to one, one of the things is I don't pay the highest in my area on purpose. I don't want them coming to me. And they're the place to work. They're the practice everybody wants to work at. And you know, there are those practices in town that every assistant, every hygienist, that's where they want to work. And it's not because they pay the most. It's because it's the best place to work. It's where you're, you feel good about what you do every day. The doc doesn't do any of these nine things. They feel valued and you can't dynamite them out of that job, even though somebody down the street will offer them a buck or two or whatever, an hour more, they. It's. It's too much to give up versus what they're going to gain in money. And they, they, you know, you and I have both been in business long enough. Your employees make that. They make that calculation in their head. They know what they're giving up. And if it's more to give up than they're going to get, they just stay. Even though they can make more money. So it becomes less about the money. I want to be conscious of time here. We went over. That's okay. You are chock full of Gary isms. I do want to. I've got a lot of questions here. Keep asking your questions. Gary will answer them all. And you know, an email or call. And I did want to say before we started here, you. I know you do consultations.

Right.

Just. And I, I forget what you call them, but I know it's. It's 30 minutes. It just picked Gary's brain. And you've done. What are you up to now? You're over 6,000 practices and your people through the pandemic. I think if it's not everybody, it's pretty darn close to everybody. Everybody was up. Everybody was up and more profitable. And you were very good at saying, this is a unique opportunity. Let's just don't sit back and wait for it to get over. Let's engage in our practice, clean things up. Let's make good use of our time. And every one of them come through it really, really, really well. So, you know, that sounds a lot. And it's only 6,000 practices, so, you know, maybe you're doing something right. But you offered the first 10. We're going to pop up a little over here on the side. We're going to pop up a little link you can click through. And the first 10 people get a half hour actually with you. Not one of your practice. Practice advisors, that.

Would you call it? Practice advisors? Yeah, they're going to. You're going to get with me.

It's actually gk it's actually Gary.

And you know, it's been so fun because they go, I feel like I'm being with a celebrity because, Steve, you celebrity eyes me for some reason. And it's so cool to meet people that watched our sessions. And I love. I do it because I dedicate five hours a month. And what it does for me is it gets me in the richness of, like, what's happening day in and day out. And I love staying connected to that. It's really a joy. And doctors leave like, oh, wow, okay. They feel like they were heard and understood, Steve, in a way that. That maybe somebody. They had. They just needed to get some stuff off their chest. And then, you know, a lot of docs are coming in very clear, though. Like, man, when you said this, I thought that. When you said this, I thought that, and it was just great. Steve, they're quoting you. I love when they quote you. That's always a joy for me. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And. And what's really cool is you have such a diverse group of practitioners. You know, I speak to people from Little Rock, Arkansas, big practice, rural to, you know, city practices. You know, New York City and all the cities. You know, everybody has a little different situation going on. New York City and the big cities have lost patience because they've gone out to the suburbs. Suburbs are going. I can't find team members. So there's, like, there's stuff going on, you know, around regionally and city to rural, and we get to the. We get to the nuts and bolts of that. And. And, you know, my dedication to this is because I'm a. I'm an advocate for Dennis, because I believe you weren't set up to win your game. And you don't deserve to have suffering go on. You know, you can get stuff, get all this fixed, and you don't have to. You don't have to suffer. You just don't. Unless you want to. You know, it's a choice. I really believe that it is.

And. And I, like I said, for our readers and our listeners and our viewers, I really appreciate. Appreciate us doing this. And I think you and I both get a lot out of it when the calls. I mean it. You know, we can guess what people think, and we run it through our own filter. You know, you're in Manhattan and I'm in, you know, Indiana. And I see it one way, you see it another. When they call and talk to you, you are. This is literally what they're living. So I appreciate you doing that. Click the link. The practice owners, the first 10 to sign up, get some time with Gary, and I've got a ton of questions. He promised to answer all of those. Well, then, Gary again, another episode. I didn't even know my team hated me. Why does my team hate me? You answered them all. You knocked it out of the park. And everybody who clicks through can still get a copy of this book, right?

Oh, yeah. This is what it Looks like this is what you'll get.

You can't get this one. This is like a collector's item now.

That things like 400 bucks on eBay, Steve, easily.

That's just because I'm bidding it up.

And you know what's really cool about it is you can get it in digital or audio too, which is really cool too. So a lot of people go on their walks and listen to it. And then what I really love is before they get on the calls with me, they listen to it and they're like, hey, I'm like Larry Laser guy, man. I'm like the chapter number one. And then, you know, I heard you with Steve on chapter number four, which is, you know, what you really should be doing with their hygienists. And I need to know more about my hygiene department because I think it's a mess, you know, So I had a lot of those conversations last month. I'm sure I'm going to have a lot of team stuff this month with this episode.

Hope so. So looking forward to that chapter six next month. There's a fortune in your supply closet. I'm very much looking forward to that. I haven't read ahead there, you can tell because there aren't any orange marks and.

All right, notes.

But Gary, as always, I appreciate you coming on. I appreciate your time, I appreciate your contributions. And practice owners, click the link, get some time with Gary, get a copy of the book Million Dollar Dentistry. I do have the new one, but I like using the old one better and otherwise reach out. GaryXTlevelpractice.com right?

Yeah, you bet. And you know I usually leave with a quote, right, Steve? So I got one for you. You ready?

All right, your parting thought, whether you.

Think you can or you think you can't, either way, you're right.

One of my all time favorites, Henry Ford. So practice owners, thanks for tuning in. I know we went a little over, but totally worth it. Every bit of every second is valuable here. Gary thanks you. Thank you for doing this. And until next time, profitable dentist Steve Parker. Gary, Katie, next level practice. See you next time.