Built to Lead: From $450K to $3.2M and the Power of Intentional Ownership

Welcome back, everybody, to another episode of the Dental Boardroom podcast. Let's jump right into the episode today. I think this is going to be one of our best episodes. That's just my opinion. I think this is going to be one of our best because we are interviewing one of our longtime clients who we. We sort of were with her throughout her. Most of her ownership, I believe, and then through the sale of her dental practice, where she has now transitioned into consulting other practice owners. And it was such a remarkable journey for us to witness and be a part of seeing her grow her practice. I remember always asking my colleague Paul, who's on this podcast, Paul, how does she do it? So that's what we're going to talk about today. How did you do it? Why did you pivot into consulting? Now let me make an introduction. Dr. Megan Shelton, welcome to the Dental Boardroom podcast.

Thank you, Wes and Paul, for having me today. Great to be here.

And I've got my colleague Paul, who's been joining on a recent episode and may become a frequent guest to the show. Paul, welcome back.

Thanks for having me. And yeah, being one of Megan's biggest fans, this is a good one to be a part of.

So I think this one will be actually a really substantive podcast. And the reason why is because, Megan, you're journey was just so remarkable here at Practice cfo, our mission of the company is literally make your journey remarkable. And it's not about the accounting or the tax filing or the tax savings or setting up that 401k. All of that is just a backdrop to ultimately making your journey remarkable in life. And so we're excited to hear about that. And then Paul. Paul was Megan's CFO advisor here at Practice CFO for a few years and was very involved in the strategic thought process of the practice, especially as it, of course, related to the financial side of owning a dental practice. So, Paul, excited to have you here and comment on your experience in working with Megan over the years. Let's kick it off. Question number one. Megan, let's go back. How did you get your start in dentistry and what pulled you in dosh ownership? I want to go back and really talk about your story, so head back to the beginning.

Dentistry for me, I knew I was headed there since I was about age 12. I have no dentists in my family, so no one hung that shingle for me. Unfortunately, I got to hang my own. But my mom's side, everyone in medicine, my dad's side, all in business, and that's a common question. I get is, where did I get my business acumen? And. And I would say it comes from a few lessons I had growing up as a kid, and one that really stuck with me, as I remember. Multiple times I had to learn this multiple times. I would pick up a handful of, you know, the Parmesan cheese packets at Pizza Hut, and I'd be like, what? They're free? And my dad's like, nothing is free. You know, and. And he's like, someone has to pay for that. That costs. I don't remember, like, 7 cents or something, you know, and so that really was my first lesson in margins and overhead. And, yeah, I. I started in dentistry. I love working with my hands. I love talking with people. Artistry, the creativity, it really hits on so many facets, and you get to indulge in all of those, the left and right brain. I. I was an associate for a while, and I loved it. I was really successful as an associate. I. You know, had Paul been my advisor when I purchased a practice, he probably would have told me, no, what I know now about practices, the practice I purchased would not be a practice I would have advised people to buy into, because I was $450,000 in debt. I was making almost 300k as an associate, and I was looking at a practice that only generated around 400,000. And so it just wouldn't have supported the cash flow or my debt. And I took a leap of faith and, you know, knew that I could do it. And so that's. That's my story, how I got started.

And, Paul, where did you come into the mix with Dr. Shelton?

Well, I came in. I think it was about more than 12, less than 18 months after you. You purchased, and you. You had kind of found your stride. And the. The general thought I received from her was, all right, now what? Now what do I reinvest? Do I pay off debt? I think you were very logically driven by paying off debt and having these dialogues and hearing me kind of say, well, now's probably the time to actually reinvest. And that's really where I think we hit it off, is, you know, we're not wasting the money on the Parmesan packets, but we're buying more Parmesan, right? How do we do that effectively? And so, you know, there was definitely an evolution with Megan. No doubt. I think I got lucky because we found her at a time where some of that early success had already shown through. And now it's like, what's the next phase?

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And Megan, I know when you stepped into ownership, one of your philosophies I've you've come in, you've talked to my team a little bit about your approach and one thing you've said in your approach is that it was always both data driven and heart centered. So how did that evolve?

Well, I. I would. I would tie it back to my postdoctorate education at the KOI center. You know, having the data and a confident understanding of the science and the evidence gives me clarity to diagnose, treatment, plan, all of that. The problem is, that's not enough. You know, that you can take all these courses, you can know all the science, but if you can't connect with your patients, you're really not going to have that next level of success in your practice. And so for me, it was really honing in my communication skills and being able to connect with the patients on a level of, like, what's important to them and how do I make health or, you know, complete health or ideal dentistry? How do I relate that to what's important to them so that they have peace of mind in what they're investing in, and I'm not having to use scare tactics or feel like, you know, they're going to run into problems.

So if I'm a patient, I'm in your chair, and I may not be feeling pain yet, but you see it, it's going to be coming at some point. How do you frame. What questions do you ask in order to allow you to frame it in a way that makes it more impactful to me and my life?

Well, it's not always just questions about dentistry, right? It's listening to your patient as you're spending time with them. It starts from the first phone call of them reaching out to your practice. You know, my team taking notes, understanding what this patient values, what do they do in their spare time, you know, do you play tennis? Do you enjoy golf? Do you have children? What are you doing with your time and your money if you don't have health to invest in? Right. But ultimately, our health is going to affect how we show up in our tennis match or, you know, if we're going to have an emergency during a flight, those type of things. So being able to connect it to that and, you know, sure, it's just a tooth at the end of the day, but now the science and the evidence is leading us to see that it can affect our quality of life. And everyone's biggest phrase, I don't have time. Well, you know, if you don't have time to stay healthy, how are we going to make time to repair those things when it does become a painful issue? Wes?

Yeah. I recently had somebody share with me this cartoon image, and it showed these sort of like, like cavemen pulling a cart, and it had square wheels. You know, these two guys are just, like, heaving to pull this forward, and there's someone behind them who says, hey, do you Want to. Can I tell you about this new invention? It was the will, and they're like, I'm too busy. Talk to me later. And it goes back a little bit to Stephen Covey's four quadrants, where you have things that are urgent or non urgent and important and non important. And we tend to be super caught up in the urgent and important, which is valuable. But sometimes we miss the not urgent but important. And those are the ones that really catapult forward aspects to our life. But you have to make space to plant those things that are not urgent, but critically important. All right, let me go on to my next question. So you grew this practice. So. So just sort of summarizing that one. Really building trust, communicating. Well, you have to somehow juggle in there the time that it takes to build some trust, because you can't just jump in and say, here's what you need. Let's set your appointment. You've got to sort of nurture that relationship a little bit. But by nurturing that relationship, you get case acceptance a lot better. And you move up case acceptance 20, 30, 40%, you're going to be in a much better situation in your practice. Okay, let's go on to the next question. You grew your practice from 450,000 to 3.2 million. Now, how long did you own your practice?

I own my practice. I don't know. Around six years.

Six years? Six years. That's essentially a startup at 450,000 to.

It felt like it.

A $3.2 million practice here in San Diego. What were the key habits that made that possible?

Oh, goodness. Well, there's a few. You know, obviously, I think surrounding yourself with the right people is critical. A few of those people, obviously practice CFO played a huge part. And, you know, I w. I could say I was paid to say that, but I'm not. And I'll say it over and over again. I'm. I'm a huge proponent of you guys. You guys have. You not only look at the numbers, but you help us develop as individuals. And, you know, Paul was one of those people who, when I said, okay, I want more, I'm not happy here, he said, well, let's get you investing in a coach. And so that started my journey with coaching, and from there, it continued to grow. But I think, you know, we all think of athletes and they talk about practice, right? And so in my team, we made a lot of time to practice role playing. We weren't afraid to do that. We were uncomfortable while we did it, but we Weren't afraid to dedicate the time to work on the practice, and not just in the practice. And the other thing we did, we really honed in on our verbiage, and we identified that words matter. The way we use words, not minimizing the words we use, not minimizing the situation, but having truthful conversations with ourselves and with our patients.

Well, I think. I mean, at least from my perspective, I think that truthful commentary is, from what I saw was the most important. Because what I know about Megan, this wasn't just something she did. This was some. This was kind of who she was, honestly. And so when you're talking to your staff and this is who you are, that place of authenticity, it's who they become. I think that's probably where you did that at a higher level than maybe a lot of your peers, is that you were talking the talk just as much as you were walking the walk, leading by example, and never afraid to roll your sleeves up and always ask why. So, Megan, with. I mean, there were certain times where I was like, okay, we need to kind of relax on the coaching and CE investment. But every time we did sit down and do the math and say, okay, well, what's the output? Right? So it's not, oh, we're just gonna go to, you know, Arizona on trip or whatever the case may be, it was, all right, let's talk about what's the outcome? What's the outcome we want here? So that. That's roi, and. And I think that was just a really natural dialogue between us, that sort of friction on spending versus roi. So that by the time we were talk. She was talking to the staff, and. And then as an extension of the patients, it just. It was just who it was.

You know, one of the biggest decisions every CEO of every business, big or small, ever has to make is what's called capital allocation, which is how do you take your dollar and how do you allocate it to get the most effective results? Because there's a million things demanding your dollar, asking for your dollar, screaming at you for that dollar, and how you prioritize the allocation of that dollar is a very strategic and critical skill set that you develop. Now, I'll admit, in my journey to learn to be effective at capital allocation here at practice, cfo, I've made a ton of mistakes along the way. Money that I'll never get back. That literally not only didn't go anywhere, it lost me not only the money, but time as well. And I'm still learning lessons on this but thinking carefully about this, and this is why it's so valuable to have an outside mind as a thinking partner in many ways, but especially financially as well.

I actually recruit Paul into my own life and ask Paul to talk to me about sometimes my financial situation and here at the company as well. Because like I always say, you can't read the label of a bottle from the inside. And so you get somebody on the outside and the clarity can really settle in and we just become so much more self aware now. One thing I know from you, Megan, is you're always pushing an owner mindset in the practice and I think about that a lot as well. Because an owner mindset is just more hardworking, more, more positive. They care a lot. If, if somebody literally is an owner most of the time, they're going to exemplify those core values that you have more naturally. So how do you get your team to think like owners, to have an owner mindset and really care?

Well, I think there's a couple things. One, you have to have the right team members. You know, you can't walk all team members to that thought process, but you can get most of them there and you start to get better at identifying who's the right ones for your team. But it starts with you. You know, I have docs that I work with day in and day out and they're like so and so is doing this or they didn't show up on time. I'm like, are you on time every day? You know, like you were late yesterday. So you know, you really have to remember that you as a doctor are the momentum. And if you're not willing to be the one give that mer go around the first push, then your team's not going to take and follow your lead. So, you know, I see the other example I see a lot is I'll hear from docs, I don't have time. And I say, well, when you say that, that gives your team permission to say they don't have time also and they're going to follow suit. So we need to find better ways to say that, you know, your time is best utilized with a handpiece in your hand and you need the support from your team versus saying I don't have time to do that. That's not the message you want to deliver to your team. So, you know, I didn't always have time, but I made time. And sometimes that looked like, you know, missing out on a dinner at home or most nights, honestly, sometimes it looked like less hours of sleep. And you Know, it comes and goes. You hear a lot of talk about balance and, and I don't believe that balance exists. I think you really have to find your, your own rhythm and what works for your life. So, you know, for me, you gotta walk the walk the walk, like, like Paul was saying. And gosh, when I did it, I didn't even have chat GPT. So I had to really use my own time and my own resources to create systems and protocols for my team.

Megan. So with that, Wes mentioned that sort of fourth quadrant of, you know, important but not urgent, and that's where all of this stuff fits in. What sort of cadence did you develop with that? Is that something you were doing daily with your team? Was that an admin day? Was that some combination of the above? I mean, surely you have to block off some time in a consistent way to make this stuff happen. What worked for you?

Yeah, so I found that if we didn't schedule it, it wasn't going to happen. I really had to and even so far as to like schedule it on my practice management software because if I put it in my calendar, then the team didn't know about it or I might forget. But if it was in the practice management software, if our dentist showed it, it was going to happen. You know, like, because now we can't put a patient there and then my admin time. Yeah, you really have to commit to making time to developing this, to making the exercises, to doing the role playing, to reading your P and L. I mean, you guys send them monthly to your clients. You send a really beautiful packet at Practice cfo and I have clients that we all work and they're like, I don't, I don't open that. And I'm like, what? You know, like, you gotta make time for this. How do you know if your money's where it says it is?

So what she's saying, guys, she's saying that four clinical days does not mean it's a four day a week job.

Okay?

Yeah.

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Yeah, I can't emphasize that enough too that a lot of times people view a leader and they think that it's a natural set of traits that they have. They didn't think about it, it wasn't intentional or deliberate. It's just the way that leader is. And the truth is for the vast majority of people that is absolutely not the case. Now they may make it look like it's natural, just like a golfer can make a tennis swing look very natural. And then you go try and mirror that and it looks nothing like it. It takes practice. It takes, it takes repetition and very intentional effort both in learning and implementing. Implementing being the most important part there. And I, I would say maybe one part learning in three part attempting to implement and then you come back and learn and then three part implementing. And that's how you, you learn that and grow. Now one of the things that I've thought about a lot as a business owner, I want to ask you about this as well, is striking the balance between allowing or having a high tolerance for mistakes for both yourself and your team. I want to focus a little bit more on the team here while at the same time not allowing persistent repetitive mistakes, making some of the hard choices with removing a staff member who isn't learning. But how do you, how did you find that balance in tolerating mistakes and recalibrating as you went in an efficient way?

That's a great question and comes up often. You know, when early on obviously it looked different for me I had, you know, like you said, leadership is a learned and practiced skill. So early on you go from the people pleasing and a lot of tolerance and then later in your career you find more clarity in what your expectations are. So these conversations are had ahead of time and, and they become more repetitive and I don't mind repetition to A point, right? When I see there's a difference, like, are you tolerating something? Are you not getting what you're asking? Or were you letting that slide? Right. Or if you are coaching your team members and you are giving them guidance and they're not getting it, are you doing it the same way every time? Because you might need to try a different method? You know, I'm like, what's the definition of insanity? A lot of telling. I see that time and time again. Well, I told them, I wrote this protocol for them, I made this binder for them that, you know, just like a child, like, I tied their shoe. Well, that's not how he's going to learn to tie his shoe. He needs to practice and do it himself, you know, figure out his method. So asking questions of your team, getting them on board so that they're. They're engaged in adopting into developing that system with you, they're more likely to learn it.

You know, on that note, as you communicate with your staff about learning and developing, correcting mistakes, all of that. One of the things you mentioned earlier was avoiding minimizing language. Can we double click on that for a second? I think this is extremely important and often.

Minimized, to use the word minimized again, when you, when you're talking with both patients and your staff, give me a few examples maybe of minimizing words that don't.

That don't drive a desired sort of outcome or thought process.

There's so many. One of the most common ones I hear in dental practice when we're talking with patients would be, oh, you have a small cavity. And I try not to size things up when I'm communicating with patients. They either have a cavity or they don't have a cavity. It needs intervention or it doesn't need intervention. And if it doesn't need intervention, what are we going to change about their home care to improve the likelihood that we won't need intervention? But if I say it's small now, the patient starts thinking, well, maybe it doesn't need addressed, or maybe it's not going to cost me very much, or maybe it won't take very long to treat, and all of those things could be false. It could be a small cavity that has a large, you know, existing restoration that's going to require a crown. Well, now the patient's very confused and they don't have a lot of confidence going into it. So I really try to eliminate those quantifying conversations with a patient. Things that could minimize the value when it comes to.

Leadership. I hear all the time from docs, they'll implement something new or have something that they need and they'll say, okay, moving forward, we're going to do duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, let's try it. And I'm like, what, what are we trying? Like, I thought we just said we're going to make this change. And now you just gave the team permission to, to backpedal if it's hard to make this change. Right. Or let me know if you have questions.

Right. Or sorry. And it's, you know, you really have to be convicted in what you believe in back to the clarity and, and give that to the team. And you know, I've thought long and hard about this. I know this is the right thing for my practice.

It's, it's so true. And it's such human nature for us to not have that confidence and give ourselves or team members or whomever and out. And whether that's with the patient or the team, we're doing it constantly. And it's, it's deep seated, it's deep within us. And we're giving them that same deep seated doubt. Are, did we do the thinking? Did Dr. Shelton do the thinking? Is this going to work? I don't know. And on the other side of it, you know, you talked about the patients, you talked about the staff. What about? And I believe, correct me if I'm wrong, you're the expert here, but I believe a lot of treatment planning and, you know, moving cases forward has a lot to do with the communication that has nothing to do with the doctor. Right. What I say kind of in a joking way, based on my profession, is people listen to people in their own tax bracket and there's this sort of, I don't know, this sort of public perception that dentists are rich and so, but maybe their hygienist isn't or their assistant isn't. And so that dialogue is really important. Are you seeing any common threads in that limiting dialogue between patient and staff that either hurts or helps both you and your clients?

Of course, the idea of minimizing language has to be holistic throughout the whole practice, right? From the person answering the phone to the person that presents the treatment and reserves the commitment and helps the patient out the door? So, you know, you'll hear like, oh, you're maxed out, we'll take care of that next year. Or oh, referring to insurance, what the doctor says, or oh, you don't have insurance coverage for that. Right. And so there's so many different ways. Even the word cost, I don't, I don't love that word because when we, you guys being in investments, you know that cost is usually something that's depreciating asset versus if it's a fee or an investment, it's something good. So changing our language around that helps build the value and make the patients feel comfortable and sure that this is a good decision to take care of their health.

I think that decisiveness of language is extremely important as a business leader and I've been into multiple dental offices obviously in my life and some I can tell the front office and even the doctor is very tentative about telling you what the cost is. It's like in their own head, they almost don't even know if it's worth the cost is. Is what it is almost interpreted it as. And then there's others where the cost is like it's a, it's downstream in terms of importance. The importance is your health. It's your smile, it's the pain, it's your teeth, it's the oral systemic health relationship, all of that. And it almost like minim or makes the cost seem less relevant and almost a given. Well, of course I'm going to pay for that. That level of confidence as a communicator is absolutely critical, especially when it's a PPO issue. When there's. When you're in, in, in contract in network and your staff is. Your staff will. If you are hesitant at all in talking about fees with your clients or talking about.

You know, them accepting a treatment, your staff are probably going to be twice as hesitant as you because they're going to reflect you a lot. And people in dental offices and in businesses, they tend to start to reflect the person who is their leader. It all starts with you. Like if you're. I think one thing I heard you say is that when you're, you have to be the one to spin that merry go round and you gotta be spinning that and people will get on and help it go, but you gotta be the one to make that happen and create that momentum in the practice. Okay, let's talk about some of the influential people in your life as you went through this journey. You, you've talked about coaches, you talked about your dad, you talked about Paul here with us on the team. What I'll just make a preface comment here about coaching. I'm very hungry for coaching. I have somebody who I talk to about my family relationships. I have someone I talk to about my business decisions. And I don't know, if I call him a coach or a therapist or a psychologist, honestly, doesn't really matter to me, the title. I just view them all in the same way, which is they are people that help me think effectively. And so I call them thinking partners. They just sort of think as a. They're a thinking partner in just different areas of my life where I have to put thought into those. And I think of people like Tom Brady. I think I remember watching a documentary with him where he's just as hard on his coaches as they are on him, because if they're not hard enough on him, he gets upset at them because he wants to be pushed. He doesn't want to be accommodated or patronized. He doesn't want to be, you know, told nice things just to try to keep the relationship or the contract. He wants somebody who's gonna compel him to greatness. So talk to me about the people that you've invited in your circle to compel you to greatness.

Yeah, obviously I mentioned my dad. You know, he was a. He's been a huge part, still a huge part of my life. His. His business background really predisposed me to.

A lot of insight in terms of managerial relationships and then work ethic. Beyond that, I would say my coaches, we talked about same. You know, they're asking the hard questions, making you really get.

Introspective with yourself. The uncomfortable questions, you know, what. What compounding decisions are you making today that are going to affect the future? What marginal thinking do we have? What limiting thoughts are we going through so they really help you break through all of that? I aligned with a coach back when I was. When Paul referred me to someone and she left that company. But she's still my coach today. So, you know, I think every coach needs a coach just like you, Wes. You're. You're in such a position to influence people, but you're still seeking advisement and continuing to grow. And then beyond that, I'd say clinically, Dr. Kois, you know, world. World class clinician and educator, but he taught me a lot about systems. And I think so many people go to the Kois center and they take away this. This idea that we're. We're doing clinical dentistry at another level. And I think that's true. But there's two things that people, they go to the Koi center, and one is how he communicates with his patients. He uses Mrs. Jones a lot, and those lines, I think, are gold, and they're worth the tuition alone. But the other thing he talks about is systems. And when you have a system in place in your practice or in your life, it removes having to think something through, right? And so it frees your mind to be able to do so much more like connect with your patient. So if all my gloves are pink in every operatory, I don't have to look for my gloves. It's just so easy. My team doesn't have to wonder what size extra small in my office is pink. That's it. No one else gets pink gloves because it creates confusion. You know, things like that. We have a certain color of paper for a, a new patient intake. No one interrupts if someone has that color of paper in front of them. There's just little things that limit our thinking. And then we try to create as many always and Nevers, which Dr. Kois talks about. Because when you have exceptions is when you have confusion in your practice, and that's when your team doesn't know. And, and I hear it all the time. It starts with the doc. You know, we're, we're in a team meeting developing a system, and they're like, what about for when this happens? And I'm like, no, no, no. We're planning for the 95% of the time. We really need to focus on that. Once we master that, then we can think when that situation arises. So Dr. Koi is huge. And then, you know, you always have the, the doubter in your life that, that told you, you know, don't buy that practice. It doesn't cash flow. It's not going to work. And, you know, usually you're pissed off enough at that point when you take those type of leaps of faith that you bet on yourself. You know, I'm, I'm not a gambling person, as Paul knows. He, he gets frustrated with me for that. Sometimes I' risk adverse. But when it comes to betting on myself, I'm all in.

Let me ask you a question. So you bought this essentially a modified startup. You bought this practice doing 450,000 a year. How many ops did it have when you bought it, by the way?

It had four ops.

Okay, so it had four ops. That's good. But at 450,000 after paying your acquisition loan and your overhead, there's probably not a whole lot left. So how early on in your practice ownership journey did you hire Kois?

Well, I started Kois before I bought my practice.

Wow. Okay, so you did seek out coaching early on. And one of the things I, you know, I talked to doctors about is a lot of times they don't feel that they have the cash flow to afford to pay for coaching. In this case we'll say a practice management sort of operational coach. And I often talk about the need to step back in your personal life and really budget, really live. Live well below your means. Find a way to live well below your means. For younger docs I always say keep living like you're in dental school but that could apply to a 60 year old doctor who just isn't breaking through. And we need to create extra cash that normally would come out of the practice to fund a personal life to try to keep it in the practice to invest in these things that will help catapult you forward like leadership training, operational training or financial management training as well. Did you ever feel like you had to make some of those sacrifices in your personal spending and your life in general in order to create the financial resource to invest in these enhancers known as coaches?

Yes. So. Well, fortunately I had the mindset that CE and coaching was worth the investment. The other thing I.

Like docs will say I don't pay myself enough and you know, if you look though they're spending a lot on CE or coaching and I think you have to see that as part of your, your salary in a way. Thankfully, at least it's mostly, you know, pre tax dollars if you own. So that's a blessing. But yeah, I, I'll give it a funny story, right? So.

I wanted a new car and I see this a lot like docs will say I can't afford coaching and I'm like, well you're driving a new BMW. What do you mean you bought a $90,000 car but you can't afford, afford to pay 70k for coaching this year. What, what are we doing? So I had coaching which was, I think I paid 70 for the year for it. And then I also bought a car that year, cash, which was my biggest check that I wrote, you know, myself in my life at that time. And I bought a Nissan Pathfinder because my lovely advisor Paul was encouraging me to make fiscally responsible decisions.

You know, Paul isn't at the same car you drive.

Paul was the same car I used to drive.

So, so yeah, you know, you got to make choices here and it's like marginal thinking. What's, what are you doing today for the long term? And we talk about this a lot, Paul and I, and it all worked out. I still have the car, I'm not driving it, my husband is. So things are fine.

She's going to make, she's going to Hate me for saying this, but I feel like Megan definitely makes trades with herself to some degree. So, so it's okay. If I'm going to take this, what am I going to give to the equation? Now I, she, she has an affinity for handbags. So I've, I've distilled it down to how many handbags are we giving up for this one?

Right.

It's our little joke. But it, but it's so true and we can make light of it because it is, it just the way it goes. You know, if we're going to make a sacrifice here, what are we given on the other end of the equation? And I just think that's something that, even when it comes to consumer decisions, it's an ROI decision. That's something people can take away. And I think I've actually learned that from her of how do I actually spend my money a little better? Because, because having it sit in a bank account or in the s and P500, that's all well and good, but there's got to be that balance. You got to make deals with yourself and you got to kind of reinvest in your own happiness.

Well, Paul always taught me, you know, when it comes to equipment, even when it comes to like an employee, if you're onboarding someone, like, can we get 3x out of this investment minimum? And so that's how I looked at it. And, and then there's also, you know, and he's even said this as someone who's fiscally very responsible, he said, you know, but also there's the, doesn't make you happy. Which showing up happy to be able to perform in a high stress job is also important. So balancing that, but not, not so much that it takes away from the business because the business ultimately is your cash flow that's going to get you closer to the lifestyle or quality of life that you're, you're striving for.

You know, we often talk about a P and L, a profit and loss statement and a balance sheet in the context of a business. But also we all have a P and L and balance sheet. In our personal life, we have money that comes in and we have money that goes out. And then we have a balance sheet which is everything you own called assets, everything you owe, called liabilities. And your assets minus your liabilities equals your net worth. And in the business sense, they call that your equity. But in a personal balance sheet, or they call it a net worth statement and an investment is when you route money that would have gone Toward a depreciating thing like a car, for example. And you reroute it to your balance sheet, which is an asset that appreciates, that goes up over time. Either dividends, rental income, capital gains, interest, various forms of income. Now, now you're building a way for you to have more time and discretion and freedom later on in your life as you do that. And the earlier you can start, the more that balance sheet grows and the assets go up, the debt goes down and the net worth goes up. And the net worth, it isn't your self worth, as I say, always it's not your self worth, but it is that number one indicator of how financially free you are as a human being. And so pairing up the success in the practice with the success in your personal life is just a really important thought process. And clinically speaking, there's, you know, there's skills, there's strategies and discipline to that whole ecosystem. Megan, we gotta end, but I will probably want to have you back because I only got through about half of the questions. I do want you to give us a little plug really quickly what you're doing now that you've sold. Why did you sell what you're doing now? And are you open for business?

I am. So I sold my practice almost four years ago. Now.

Obviously the big question is always like, why would you do that if you had such a great thing going long term? California wasn't my final home. We're back in Kansas. And since I sold, I've now been coaching dentists and helping them with the same things we just talked about today. Really owning their mindset, owning their systems and helping improve their patient outcomes. You know, huge proponent of all of this without compromising the quality of dentistry. So you can still do high end dentistry. You can still, you know, have that freedom and financial stability that allows us to have the, you know, ability to drop your kid off at school in the morning or to take a trip once a year, six times a year if that suits you. But really just to give you the predictability and the, the, the clarity to do that. Yeah, I work with dentists on a regular basis doing coaching. I go in to their practices and we make huge transformations.

And we've seen that as you've helped some of our clients. We have absolutely seen that. Hey, Paul, give us maybe a final comment. You worked with Megan for years and as just one of your favorite, if not your favorite client, I gotta be careful because maybe your other clients are listening. But I know you just had a really great relationship as her CFO advisor here at practice. Cfo. What were, what was the top one thing you would say that was a distinguishing factor about Dr. Shelton that helped her success that some of our listeners can take away?

Well, selfishly, it was definitely. It's been a relationship. I get out what I put into it. So I feel like we've just, you know, iron sharpens iron. I'm very honest. I'm very abrasive at times. And she can be when she needs to be with me, you know, when you're talking Tom Brady, I was like, yeah, she, she's been that way with me before. When I'm sugarcoating, it's like, don't give me that. And so I think that's unique about her. But, you know, we're talking people, we're talking quote, unquote, fluff to some degree. But she's not afraid to break open the spreadsheet. So as long as the data's there, she's gonna analyze it. She needs guidance at times on what to sift through and what to focus on. And let's distill it to the two or three things for this meeting. But if there's data, there's action. And so that's just something. We didn't talk about it too much today, but hopefully in another one we can kind of dive into some of those key metrics because I know that's been a huge part of kind of the way she drives change.

And I'll just say one thing I've noticed in those people who tend to be successful in whatever their field is, is they were always thirsty for learning and self improvement. It's just built into their nature. When they got a free minute, they're listening to a podcast on some subject that is going to help them improve, or they're reading a book or they're meeting with the coach, or they're looking at their numbers. They're just engaging the world of learning. And I love that about you, Dr. Shelton. This has been great to have you on the podcast and Paul also for joining. Thanks again. We will do it again. Thanks, everyone for listening to another episode of the Dental Boardroom podcast. Until next time.