Dental Practice Heroes
Where dentists learn how to cut clinical days while increasing profits - without sacrificing patient care, cutting corners, or cranking volume. We teach you how to grow a scalable practice through communication, leadership, and effective management.
Hosted by Dr. Paul Etchison, author of two books on dental practice management, dental coach, and owner of a $6M collections group practice in the south suburbs of Chicago, we provide actionable advice for practice owners who want to intentionally create more time to enjoy their families, wealth, and deep personal fulfillment.
If you want to build a scalable practice framework that no longer stresses, drains, or relies on you for every little thing, we will teach you how and share stories of other dentists who have done it!
Dental Practice Heroes
Financial Freedom in 5 Years with Dr. Henry Ernst
Unlock the secrets to building a flourishing dental practice with insights from Dr. Henry Ernst, a seasoned practitioner who transformed his vision into reality. Ever wondered how to scale operations smoothly? Dr. Ernst takes us through his journey from being an associate to a successful practice owner, emphasizing the critical role of demographic research and strategic planning in his rapid expansion from five to eighteen operatories. Learn how he navigated the challenges of managing growth, assembling a capable team, and overcoming the initial apprehensions of practice ownership while maintaining a steady cash flow.
Dr. Ernst highlights the importance of understanding one's "why" in dentistry, inspired by Simon Sinek's teachings, and how a clear purpose can guide professional growth. Tune in to hear about overcoming office politics, empowering team members through innovative methods, and how thoughtful leadership can transform both personal and professional life. Dr. Ernst's narrative offers a powerful testament to the lasting impact of purpose-driven growth in the dental industry.
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Take Control of Your Practice and Your Life
I help dentists create thriving practices that make more money, require less of their time, and empower their teams to run the office seamlessly—so they can focus on what matters most.
Join the DPH Hero Collective and get the tools, training, and support you need to transform your practice:
- Comprehensive Training: Boost profit, efficiency, and team engagement.
- Live Monthly Webinars: Learn proven strategies for scaling your practice.
- Live Q&A Sessions: Get personalized help when you need it most.
- Supportive Community: Connect with practice owners on the same journey.
- Editable Systems & Protocols: Standardize your operations effortlessly.
Ready to build a practice that works for you? Visit www.DPHPod.com to learn more.
Do you ever get tired of running your practice or maybe ever feel like your practice is running you? Today we have a great interview with DPH coach Dr Henry Ernst, and we're going to start all the way at the beginning, at the startup phase. We're going to talk about growing the new patient numbers, expanding to more and more chairs, cutting back clinical days, getting to a place of burnout and eventually transitioning to creating the leadership structure that saved it all and gave the freedom to find that perfect work-life balance and reach early financial freedom. How do you do it? How do you set up the leadership team? How do you go from being a reactive practice owner to getting in front of the issues and proactively creating the practice? You want so much wisdom and actionable advice from one of the most humble, down-to-earth, authentic people. I know you are not going to want to miss a second of this one. Dph coach Dr Henry Ernst shares his story and the lessons he's learned along the way. Let's do it. You are listening to Dental Practice Heroes, where we teach you how to build a scalable practice, make more money and take more time off.
Speaker 1:I'm Dr Paul Edgison, author of two books on dental practice management, dental coach and owner of a group practice collecting over $6 million in the south suburbs of Chicago. I want to teach you how to grow and systematize your dental practice so you can spend less time practicing and more time doing whatever it is that you love. Let's get started. Hey, what's up everybody? Welcome back to the Dental Practice Heroes podcast. I'm your host, dr Paul Edgerton, and I'm joined by one of my DPH coaches, a very successful dentist out in his practice, huge practice, 18 ops, pleasant Plains Dental. It's outside of Charlotte and just an amazing owner, amazing leader, and that's why he's one of the coaches with us. So welcome to the podcast, dr Henry Ern's why he's one of the coaches with us. So welcome to the podcast, dr Henry Ernst. What's happening? Henry, thanks for having me. This should be fun.
Speaker 2:So I mean, if the listeners they've heard you on the podcast, I would hope, but if they've never really heard your story, talk about your journey into practice ownership and a little bit about your practice, sure, so my wife and I moved to North Carolina in 2011, and I'd already been in practice for about five or six years. We wanted out of Florida where we were. We just wanted the North Carolina lifestyle. When I first moved to North Carolina, it was an interesting market. Either practices were so brand new that there really wasn't an opportunity, or, if you wanted to partner into a practice, the practices were so old you didn't have an opportunity.
Speaker 2:So I was an associate for a couple of years. Then, in 2014, we opened the doors to Pleasant Plains Dental. I went outside the comfort zone and did a startup, found somebody, a mentor that kind of coached me along and I mean, everything just fell into the right place, right center, right group, right situation. We opened the doors and we have five operatories, two employees. I was doing the hygiene. You know how that is. I was doing everything. First month we had 80 new patients. Second month, 84. Ever since then, it was over 100. So opened the doors in November 2014. May of 2015, we expanded to nine shares. Two years later, we expanded to 13 shares and then, a couple years later, in 2020, we went to 18.
Speaker 1:So it wasn't like one expansion. I didn't know that. I didn't realize it was three different ones. So when you mentioned that you were doing hygiene, as a lot of startup owners do, at what point did you hire a hygienist? About two?
Speaker 2:or three weeks in, when you do a startup, I mean you're very nervous. You're signing bank notes, you're borrowing money, you're opening up this space and you're just praying that people are gonna show up the first day. So you're trying to do everything to conserve the cashflow. Our space was 3,000 square feet, but initially we only built out 2,300. So this way we still got the tenant improvement allowance for the whole entire thing. So every step that you're doing in the beginning is to preserve the cash flow. So, to answer your question, a couple of weeks in I was doing the hygiene which actually was kind of cool because my treatment plan acceptance was probably the best it's ever been, because you're spending, it's like a 40-minute exam. So a couple of weeks in, we started looking and saying, man, we're getting booked out, people are booking their families. Two or three weeks in, we're looking for a hygienist and then, maybe two or three months later than that, we were getting the second one on board.
Speaker 1:You mentioned that we go into it with this nervousness because we're doing all these things and it's happening fast. At what point were you looking at it and you're like, hey, I think we're going to be okay.
Speaker 2:I honestly knew that we were going to be okay. After the first month I said, wow, this is proof of concept. Look at all the patients we're getting. Right from the get-go I knew we were going to be good, just fortunate.
Speaker 1:What do you think contributed to the early success of the practice?
Speaker 2:Demographic location making sure that the demographic studies that we did were just off the charts, like, for example, one of the metrics that we were looking at were families that made $70,000 or more to dentists. How many families like that were dentists and popular areas the people that are really trendy and cool areas. If you looked at an area and put a demographic map right there, maybe it was like 200 families for every dentist. Well, in 2014, our location was like 6,400 families to one dentist, which was off the charts, and if you saw my shopping center where our dental practice is, you wouldn't think much of it. I hear this all the time. I mean, we're like a food line which is like a basic, not a fancy grocery store. We have a liquor store. We have a dollar tree right. So I think that was the biggest thing. Just demographic location. We're not in an office building. There's tons of foot traffic all the time. We can put the big signs out there. I think that was the biggest thing is demographics.
Speaker 1:So talk about marketing. In the beginning you mentioned that you didn't have to do too much. I can kind of relate to that because I think we have a similar location. For instance, mine is on a strip mall on a busy street, but it's like the only strip mall on that street, so it's nothing before or after it. So it's like you see the mall and you can see my practice and it's the same thing demographically favorable, not 6,400 or whatever yours was, but it was high. What kind of marketing did you start off with? Bringing in new patients?
Speaker 2:So let's just use the word commitment. I think a lot of practice owners look at marketing and they want it two minutes from now. Right, I want the results two minutes from now. We made a commitment and we did a marketing package, which I think was an 18-month package, and in that package the commitment was every month we're going to send out 10,000, not just little mailers but the ones that fold out and open I think they call them the nine panel mailers or whatever they call them with no stock photos, photos of actually us photos of us in the community. So people will actually open it and they're proud of their community. So I think the word commitment is important because we kept that commitment. We still do have a 30,000 mailing list and every month it's going out to 10,000. So if you're in our mailing list every quarter, you're getting something.
Speaker 2:I think that consistency and commitment and obviously making sure people are getting great care in the office, because that's going to be your internal marketing right. People send you others, but we've never stopped that, and I've even had this conversation with people where others, but we've never stopped that. And I've even had this conversation with people where oh dude, why are you still doing it. We still do it 10 years later. We still do it every single month. Perfect example Recently I had an older woman, maybe like in her late 70s, and she had four of them, four of those mailers.
Speaker 2:So that means, if you do the math, that's like what's that? Like a year and a quarter or whatever. And she came in. I knew this was the place to go to, but I've just been waiting and her and her husband needed implant overdentures and lots and lots of work. So there's a great example. Don't just do the marketing, expect it to come through in another two months and then quit. Keep it going. As your practice grows, you'll see that accounting report that shows you the percentage that you're spending on marketing and you can keep it at a certain percentage and maybe your growth can expand to other things. Or you can just say I'm just going to keep what I have, and that number actually gets smaller.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's funny because I was going to follow up and ask you do you have any evidence that it's still working? Because a lot of people feel like marketing with the mailers isn't as good anymore and it's something that we don't do anymore and I think a lot of it's just because we haven't committed to and it's partially just laziness on my end, but it was always very successful for us and when we did the big mailers, we did really well. And then somebody came in from this little like not Clipper magazine, but someone's came in. They're like hey, we can print you this many. We already got the list. It'll go to this many people. And it was a small one and it was like one third the price for the mailing. So I was like hell yeah, and we tried that and nobody brought it in, nobody. We got nobody off it. So it's just a testament to you got to put something big and obnoxious in there and have real photos, right.
Speaker 1:I mean, how many do you get? I mean, think about how many you get in your mail where it's just like the stock photo. It doesn't even show the actual office. Like what am I even getting into? It seems like a total waste. So you're early on. You did this expansion fairly early on. At what point were you like, okay, we need more space, and what is used to make that decision?
Speaker 2:I think number one. You feel it, you just feel it Like there's too much demand. A couple of things I would just look at is how far we booked out hygiene wise. These were different times in 2014. Back then believe it or not for maybe younger dentists, back then you could snap your fingers and put out an ad for hygienists and I'd get like 10 people. I'd have to turn down interviews, right. So the metrics were how far we booked out with hygiene. Are we just constrained? And we got no more room and every time it just worked. It's the most stressful decision, because now you got to go to the bank, you got to ask for more money, but basically the proof of concept was there and every time we did it it just drove the practice revenues way up again.
Speaker 1:You went from, I believe you said, five to eight, to 13 to 18?.
Speaker 2:Five to nine to 13 to 18.
Speaker 1:So what was the rationale behind that decision for chairs in each of those?
Speaker 2:jumps. We needed the capacity, we were running out of room, we were running out of potential. We couldn't bring in any more new patients. I think that's the biggest thing, right. New patients are the fuel to growth, especially as this process went along. We're getting the first associate. Now we're getting the second associate. You know now we're at three or four. You know you got to keep the fuel going. If you don't have that fuel going, then you're going to choke.
Speaker 1:When you brought on your first associate, did you cut yourself back or did you stay on and just it was all additional to you?
Speaker 2:So I made the mistake of every time we did add associates, I kept my schedule the same. I was getting stressed because now I was dealing with all the admin stuff that you do with a large practice Maybe some people on the podcast have a practice that's five chairs and five employees, right? Imagine you're getting to 30. Imagine you're getting all the headaches that comes with that. So that was one thing, and somebody hit me over the head and said here's what you're going to do and I'm very grateful for this person. This is a person that has a strong will here's what you're going to do.
Speaker 2:You're going to go from your four to five days clinical and you're going to go to two and trust me the practice revenues are going to go up and I thought that was nuts because I was like the big bad wolf that was the highest producer and actually it came to fruition. And there's a few reasons for that. Number one is I am the type of practitioner where I do a lot of specialties type stuff and, as you're growing associates, maybe they don't do certain things. Well, they stay in the practice. They come back to you for implants and sedation. But I think more importantly that people don't realize is I was a better visionary. I had time to breathe and sit back and see the practice in action and make improvements in our EOS type model, make suggestions and be just a better leader.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's so right and it's so hard for all dental practice owners to realize that is just when they have a successful practice, how gifted they are as the leader and how nobody else in the practice can do that. Like now that you had that time back, if you could talk about like how you started using your time instead of doing dentistry to do other stuff and what kind of things you were doing.
Speaker 2:Well, it came around the same time as when we implemented EOS. So before that, yes, from the outside, looking in like everything's organized, we've got systems, we've got this and that, but internally, in your own dentist's mind, it's like man, this is getting out of control, like I'm not being proactive, I'm being reactive, I'm just reacting to things coming to me and I feel like kind of like Superman, with like a big bad guy coming out with a big wave. I and I felt like kind of like Superman, with like a big bad guy coming out with a big wave. I was able to like push it the other way and become proactive. Now I'm envisioning things.
Speaker 2:What can we add, what can we make better? And it's such a good feeling to foresee problems rather than just attack problems all the time, because that was getting stressful. And I think the other big thing and I should have mentioned this too is the mentor that mentioned it to me is we were getting to the point where and this happens in a larger practice you lose an associate, and now, in the model we had before, I had to jump in and go from like the four days to six days. Well, my mentor said here's what you need to do, go to two days, get another doctor and be a little bit overstaffed in the doctor department. This way, if something like that happens, okay, now, maybe temporarily, you step in, but you're stepping into three or four days, kind of what you were before, because that was a stressful thing too.
Speaker 1:One thing I realized in my journey was when my associate now partner, when she had her second maternity leave For some reason the first one, I worked it and it didn't bother me that much, but then the second one that came like three years later, it was like a big wake-up call that, oh my gosh, like my life is so much dependent on her being here, and without her here it's either shut the doors or lose a lot of revenue, or you get your butt in the chair again. Now you're running EOS, which, if the listeners don't know, is Entrepreneurial Operating System, which is a very organized way of setting up an organization with clear roles and, I believe, tiers and people that are responsible to other people. What did your practice look like before you went to that and what did it look like after? I'm just curious to hear how your life changed as an owner by implementing systems of leadership.
Speaker 2:So I believe it was right around the time when we were going from nine to 13 shares, so that was about three to four years into practice. And it just hit me one day I was just like things are getting out of control. I'm just being too reactive here and I think sometimes the dumbest things in the world make it happen. One day one of my hygienists came up to me and told me that those little stupid recall cards that people write like their own address on there, so when it gets mailed to them they recognize it. Hygienists told me that we hadn't been doing that for 10 months. We just forgot it and for some stupid reason it drove me nuts and I was like one of those people on bar rescue, like I need a call for help, and in masterminds and stuff I'd met this guy who's like an implementer of EOS and I just I literally called him that day and I said help me. For some stupid reason that was the thing that made me do it. It took maybe a couple months to get that process going.
Speaker 2:A couple of little things that really hit home with me was right person, right seat. In every dental practice you have to have the right people in the right seats or else you're going to have a choking point, and when we first started doing this, this was something that was mentioned to me that I thought was crazy at the time. Okay, we're going to put this great system in place. It's going to take a lot off your shoulders. The team is going to feel that they can do what they want to do as far as the practice structure, so they can make their own employment place their place, but During this process, you're going to lose some people.
Speaker 2:And that statement right there just what we're going to lose people. Oh my God, looking back on it, it is so true. And the reason why is you put structure in place, you put systems in place, and some people just don't deal with that. They want to be a ragtag practice, and if that's what they want, then for the benefit of them and us, it's not going to be the place for you, and that did happen. There were a couple of people who left, people that maybe originally I thought were really great, but maybe they really weren't and they were gonna be a choking point moving forward.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's interesting. I see this in a lot of my clients' practices and a client that you and I sharing right now there's someone that I worked with and I was working with Henry worked with and I was working with Henry. He was feeling horrible about how many people on his team were leaving and I was like, stick with it, man, you're going to get through it. But that was the thing is that these employees have never had structure and they've never had anyone hold them accountable to it. So then you put it in and you're like, oh, the good employee is no longer a good employee because I'm holding them accountable, but the reason they were good employees is just because they didn't bother you. That was what made them a good employee. It was like they weren't going up to your standard, but they just didn't bother you. Was your experience similar to that?
Speaker 2:No doubt I could give you a great real life example is when the person that came in and did all of our implementation of EOS they were working with my integrator, my office manager and I was totally out of the loop, which felt weird to me but actually felt really good, stuff's happening I'm not doing anything about, right. So when we came to a leadership team like you mentioned before has structure. There's something called an accountability chart. So this way, any person in the office knows where to go to for anything. Right, they shouldn't be coming up to the doctor because the light bulb's out. They shouldn't be. You know what I mean? Oh, my God, the Henry Schein guy's here. No, you're at the top of the list, not saying you're better than anybody, but you're the person with the big, broad ideas and you've put those ideas out.
Speaker 2:So when we came to the accountability chart, we were looking for our dental assistant team lead. Now, naturally, at the time we had a dental assistant who probably had like 20 something years of experience, had been with us for a few years, and the most natural thing people would assume would be oh, that's going to be the person that's the team lead for dental assistants. Well, going through some of these testing personality testing that wasn't the right person for the dental assistant team lead because of their personality traits. We had somebody who was an entry-level dental assistant that fit the personality traits perfectly. So that person was deemed the team lead for dental assistants.
Speaker 2:And it's not about the title, it's about being servant leader kind of a thing. So that was an example of something that happened that really caught my eyes, because normally you would think the older, more experienced person but the younger one was perfect. She was so organized, she was so excited to do this kind of thing. And that person that I'm mentioning is one of the ones that left because she just felt like, oh my God, this is so insulting. I should be the team lead. And I tried to explain to her it's not about a title, it's about the person that's willing to do the work that's necessary for this position for the greater good of the practice.
Speaker 1:How long was this person working, the one that did get the lead? How long was he or she working for you before they became the lead?
Speaker 2:Yeah, like two months.
Speaker 1:Oh okay, so let's go down that rabbit hole, because I'm sure there was some office politics that worked into that. I see this a lot where, when we're doing because that's, I mean, that's primarily what I teach is the leadership stuff and figuring out with doctors who their leads are going to be and sometimes they say I'm not so sure I have the lead for this position right now and I want to hire that person, but it's hard, because how do I bring somebody in this team and then make them in a leadership position? And I agree with that challenge. I think that's very hard to do. But here you are, you've successfully did it. So if you could talk a little bit more about the actionable advice around that and just how you did that, how you had that transition.
Speaker 2:The personality testing is very important and there's lots of different personality tests that are out there. The one that I'm most familiar with is Colby testing. I know a lot of listeners are probably familiar with that. And you want somebody that's got a high follow through, right. Somebody with low follow through is the worst person to be a leader. I don't care how long they've been in dentistry, right. I want somebody that if I give them a task, or our integrator and our group gives that person a task, you're not worried about it. You know it's going to get done. So the personality traits are one thing.
Speaker 2:As this thing has gone on over the years, there have been times where you've kind of had to reset things. Sometimes you will get people who look at it like a position of power, and you have to really make sure that you're not letting that happen, right. You have to make sure it's a very democratic system. Anybody can come up to their leaders any problem. We're going to address it, we're going to tackle it and once the rest of the team sees it in progress, oh man, I had a problem and I gave it to my leader and you know what? A week later there was a new system that we had or something to address this, because you can tell your team hey, you're in control of your own work environment. How many people can say that Most people just go to work, clock in and they have to deal with whatever systems are in place and they have no say? Well, how nice is it to have a say?
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely. I'm reading a book right now on burnout. One of the things it said was lack of autonomy, and I think there's a lot of people when they become the lead or they get the idea of being the lead, some people will jump to it for the power. They're like, oh cool, but some people are like man, I just don't want to take all this on. I'm overbooked already and what I found is that most people, when they do take this on the right way and they're given time to do this job they don't just do it in between patients is that they love this job because they love the autonomy and they love the creativity and it's not a burden, it's a blessing. Like they come to work engaged. Was your experience similar with your leadership?
Speaker 2:No doubt I was so proud when I would walk with the office. Because again, let's go back I'm working two days a week. Sometimes I do it strategically, where I have nice time off in between. So maybe one week I'm working Monday, tuesday. The next week I'm doing Thursday, friday. So there's a lot of time in between.
Speaker 2:And when this all started and we empowered them, I'll give you an example of end of the day tasks things that the back staff, clinical staff hates cleaning the autoclave, taking out the trash, making sure that the restrooms are clean in the back, and gosh, it really stinks when one person has the same task all the time. Right, this is just a really maybe it's a dumb example, but they came up with the idea of they call them popsicle sticks and one day I'm walking down the back here and I see this big chart. It says popsicle sticks and I had to have somebody. I said what is this popsicle stick thing? And somebody explained to me like I'm somebody that didn't even work there. Well, here's all the tasks that we have to do at the end of the day. Here's like six or seven of them Every day. At the beginning of the day, we have six popsicle sticks and just randomly pick it out and if you're number six, okay you know, and I saw them like this is some badass stuff. This is pretty cool. I had nothing to say about this. They're excited about it and it's working.
Speaker 2:That was probably the example that always stuck with me. I'm seeing things happen and I'm having nothing to do with it, not because I'm lazy, because I'm the worst person to come up with ideas. I'm not the boots on the ground person.
Speaker 1:Now, when you expanded to get to where you are now, at what point was it your decision? You said, okay, no more expanding, this is it. And the reason I ask is I know a lot of people. They're at maybe this five, six op and they're like, okay, if I can go to eight ops, I can have two docs at the same time with two or four hygienists. And they're like, well, I'm just going to go big, I'm going 15 ops from the get-go and then I'm always asking people do you really want that type of practice? When did you reach the point? You're like this, is it capacity? We're not going any bigger, we're not extending any hours, we're just going to work with what we have, or how.
Speaker 2:You even hit that point yet Well, I think for me I was very fortunate. We started with 3,000 square feet. Essentially, most of the spaces in this shopping center are 1,500 square feet, so at that nine chair time we needed more space. We're getting out of room. Right next door a consignment shop went out of business, so the owner comes to the big bad dentist first, obviously because we signed the biggest leases and we're the most stable. So they came to me and I said, yes, done.
Speaker 2:A couple of years later a scrub store went out of business and we took that one over too. So for me I think it was really important and I feel like I was really lucky that I was always under one roof and being a coach I mean, how many times do you hear this story, paul, where somebody's really successful in their first practice. Maybe they get a little bit of ego and they're like this was so successful I'm just going to replicate this and you do it somewhere else and now that second practice doesn't have the same vibe, it doesn't have the same culture. It's really hard to translate that culture to somebody else and maybe you're taken away from the first one and now maybe you got two that aren't so successful.
Speaker 1:Totally yeah, all the time, and I think a lot of times is they don't have that first location running so much as without them. It's still very dependent on them.
Speaker 2:So I was really lucky. The whole time I was always under the same roof. So even though we got the 18 chairs, I was always under the same roof. And right now I think we've kind of like I want to say, treaded the waters is that we have picked away some insurances.
Speaker 2:I think the biggest thing that's kept us from not continuing more is just the hygiene situation that's out there. At one point we had almost double the hygienists that we have now. We used to have double and now we're just we don't have as many, and it's just. Like I said back in the day, you could just wave a finger and you'd have hygienists at your door. It does not a thing right now. So I think right now we're still very profitable and I'm content. I've hit a lot of goals in my life. Personally, I think it's probably more important. I mean, I'm a little older than you. I'm going to be the big 5-0 in March, so I think I just wanted like a lot of the personal autonomy there too at this point in my life. And who knows what the future holds.
Speaker 1:Yeah, to expand on that a little bit more that you are content and have what you want. If you could look back five years ago. How realistic is it to look five years ahead and be like, what am I going to want in five years? Or were you more of the person like I don't know what I'm going to want next year? What went into that thought process of just getting to where you're at?
Speaker 2:Sure. So when we implemented EOS, there's a process that you go through and you say where do we want the business to be 10 years from now? Where do we want the business to be five years from now? It's like the big one, where do we want to be five years from now? And, for example, we did active patients. At that time we wanted to have 18,000 active patients by 2021, or something like that five years. And if you're going to do that, then you got to go and break it up. Break it up by year. What do we need to do each year to get to that goal? Are we on track? What do we need to do every quarter? So, first off, business-wise, I just did the EOS model right, like we're on track, we're hitting all of our goals and we're going along. We didn't talk about this yet, but in 2019, at the very beginning of 2019, now we're kind of getting into personal here.
Speaker 2:I was getting burnout at the beginning of 2019. And I was sitting in a dental mastermind group which we all talk about each other's issues and how we can help each other, and at that mastermind meeting I had a presentation which everybody did, my situation and how I felt just overwhelmed and I don't know what to do, because I was at a point where I didn't have you mentioned partner before. I didn't have any partners. I was the only owner, no partners, and the practice is growing so big that there's a lot of risk Something happens. I'm the only one that's responsible for this whole thing so I had to figure out something and at that point I kind of made the decision to go the sale route. When I started to see at that time in 2019, what the sales were like, and when I saw what the practice was worth, it was just amazing to me and we actually partnered up with the DSO in October of 2019.
Speaker 2:My goal was just to kind of have some more time, more freedom, but still doing what I wanted to, and at the time I didn't know what it was going to look like moving forward. And now here we are, five years later from that, and I'm still doing it. You know, I still do two days a week. I'm still the visionary. I still do. But I think the difference is I do it on my terms. I do what I want to do. If there's from a bully pulpit to say this is what you should do, this is what I suggest. I'm talking it from a boots on the ground because I'm still doing it. I'm still out there pounding the pavement, and all these things led my wife and I to kind of reach our personal goals, which one thing that was really we always wanted to do is we always wanted to live by the beach, and last year we accomplished that goal and we have a beach house and we love it.
Speaker 1:So, talking about that overwhelm that led to the practice sale. And I love what you said about having the freedom to do things on your terms, because often people ask me about my practice sale. Do you regret it? Do you wish you hadn't, do you wish you still had your practice? And I go back and forth because there is part of me that I planned on leaving the practice and I'm out of contract.
Speaker 1:I'm still there because I like it, because I like doing it now, but things are much different right now than they were before the sale, and I'm not saying attributing it to, like, the DSOs and they're running everything for me.
Speaker 1:It had more to do with my leadership structure and what I was doing, with getting myself out as the bottleneck and holding my leads back, but it's still something that I will say I'm still glad I did for that exact reason. I've got freedom to go in when I want to go in. I'm barely practicing. I'm not there that often, but when I am there, I'm engaged and I want to be, and if I decide that I don't want to do it anymore, I kind of got the freedom to go do whatever the heck I want. I'm not handcuffed to it anymore. But though, there is still that part that's like well, if you're going to stick around, you should have kept 100% of the profits. So talk about your overwhelm and I'd love to hear why you think in retrospect, did that change? Or if it didn't change and if it had more to do with the practice sale, or if it had more to do in retrospect of something you did internally.
Speaker 2:I think it was a combination of both. Even though I had the systems in place, I don't know. I just felt this feeling every morning when I was taking a shower, going to work. I'm like what are we doing? What's the end game here? Is there an end game? Like I said, I'm a little older than you are, but I mean I felt like there's got to be an end game and I started to look into the maybe bringing on my long-term associates as partners and stuff like that, and I saw what that looked like financially. And then I saw what it looked like to do the DSO route and I saw what that looked financially and I mean the long and short of it. That route was like exponential in net worth and when you saw that and you saw what it would allow me to do, allow me to have the freedom, it was a no-brainer. And I think, the most important thing because, yes, we bring out the bad word DSO it doesn't have to be like people think about and people always talk about.
Speaker 2:The first time you're on one of these Facebook boards and somebody mentions DSO, you get 50 people. Don't do it. Everybody's situation is different. More importantly, every's situation is different. More importantly, every DSO is different. I love the people that I'm grouped with. They let me do what I want to do as far as, like, hey, these are the things I love to do in the practice, I'm going to continue to do it. We're not going to come in and just sweep everything away from you, but they're such a good resource. If there's something I don't want to do or need help with, they're the first ones to employ great resources, and I joined a smaller group when I started. It wasn't one of these big bad ones, so I feel like it was maybe one with more of a heart.
Speaker 2:To answer what you said before, I have zero regret. I would do it every single time again. Granted, I was in a very lucky time October of 2019, there was something coming right after that. I was very happy that I did it. I was not Notre Dame and figured something was coming. I just timing was right. But I think the time in life was right, too, where it allowed me more freedom. And I have four kids and you go through this process sometime in your career as you're educating yourself, and sometimes you miss out on things, and I didn't want to do that anymore. So I think that was an important thing also, but the stress is definitely a lot less. It's almost gone because I show up and I, like you mentioned, I want to be here. When I'm here, I love the people that we've taken care of. Now that we've been here for 10 years, I'm taking care of wisdom teeth on people that were kids and they've grown up through our system and it's really cool thing to see and be a part of.
Speaker 1:It's so true. And I remember when COVID happened, this was like after your sale and we're all because me and Henry are in this group, but it's funny because everybody's in there what do we do? What are you doing? You know, Tenori's in there talking about fogging down the place and Henry's like I'm just chilling, Like we got somebody that's on top of that and just giving us because there was so much a lack of information of what to do, and Henry, through his DSO, he was also helping us out as well.
Speaker 1:It's so true is that DSOs get a bad word and I think I've said this always is that I think a lot of the DSO being a bad word comes from practices joining DSOs that don't really belong in DSOs. And when we say, oh, I still want to maintain my autonomy, I don't want someone telling me what to do. If you've got a practice doing a million dollars or less, that DSO is going to come in there and tell you what to do. But if you get DSOs like yours or mine, or Chris and Eric and all those guys I'm talking about three different DSOs with a very similar model of what kind of practices they are willing to take on, and I think there was a post in Nachos recently that said DSOs are no longer taking practices less than one and a half million.
Speaker 1:What do you think about this? And I was just like. I was thinking of my DSO years and the other guys. It's like they've always been doing that. That's what kind of practices belong in the DSO and it can be very nice Comment on that if you got anything to say about that. I'm just curious.
Speaker 2:I'll give you a good example to that is, the DSO that I chose was not the one that gave me the highest quote. A lot of times people just sort of like thinking, oh, biggest money, let's go right. I did a lot of due diligence. I kind of was trying to figure out, like, how do you treat your doctors, how do you treat the associate doctors? They did not have the highest amount, they had a heart and they just they loved the way that the things were running. And a specific example that I never forgot is, after the sale was over, the CEO of the company. Again, it's cool to be with the smaller one, I'm not just a number, I'm talking with the CEO and we're talking about things back and forth. And he mentioned to me. He said you know what, Near the end they competed a little bit and they went a little higher. And they said the reason why we really fought for your practice was we saw and this was their due diligence we saw that a couple of years ago you backed away and you went to two days a week and the practice grew In our minds. That means you have a true business.
Speaker 2:Most dental practices maybe some of the ones that you're mentioning are so dependent on the doctor that if something happens to that doctor, the place is not going to run, the profits are going to be way off, and this and that we saw that you stepped away. Clinically, the numbers went up, the practice kept growing. It even was better than ever before. That's the definition of a true business. So if DSOs are looking into practices that are already good systems, running really great, and we just want them on board.
Speaker 2:And now we've got all these great leaders, Well gosh, we're going to be on top of things. And now we've got all these great leaders, Well gosh, we're going to be on top of things. And I think what you said is exactly what I see is people just have those. Maybe they're not running so great, they have a good practice and they're good practitioners, but maybe it's not system-wise so great. And then a DSO comes in and they do say, dude, this place isn't really running like it should. We're going to step in. And that's when you hear these stories. They took over everything.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely so. Final question is just you know, if you had to give a dental practice owner we work with dental practice owners and Henry's a coach with us. If you guys are interested in doing a consultation or discovery, call Henry, just reach out to us on the website dentalpracticeheroescom. But if you had to look at a practice owner who's listening to this and saying, man, I kind of want that, that's where I want to go, which I find a lot of my listeners do what kind of advice would you give to them? Just kind of actual advice, that just in the next few years, in the short term, long term, I mean, maybe this is a very simplistic answer, but the why, right?
Speaker 2:People tell me that all the time I want what you did. I want to grow the practice from a startup to a five million dollar grossing practice within five years. Ok, let's slow down. Why? What's that going to do for you? What position are you going to be in life? Are you going to be satisfied? Do you realize everything that comes with it? Why is the most important?
Speaker 2:Because some people and there's nothing wrong with this, some people will say you know what? I'm happy having my one doctor practice. We're not expanding anymore, we're not growing, but we're just taking care of people. And that makes me happy because, ultimately, that why has to lead to your happiness. All of us have that little hyphen, right the day that we're born, the day that we die, and that hyphen is everything in the middle. I don't want my tombstone to say dentist, right, that's what I did, but it doesn't define me right. I want to be a great father, I want to be a leader. Some people say I can help you. So I think the why let's reverse engineer it. Let's talk about the why and then let's see how we're going to get there. And there's lots of different levers we can pull to get you to the Y, but I want everybody to be happy in life.
Speaker 1:And that's where the Y comes in first. Yeah, I love that man. It reminds me of a client that I'm working with right now six operatories busting at the seams and we're talking about expanding into expanded hours, split shifts and she comes on her last coaching call and she says I just decided I really think family is so important I don't want my team to be after 5 pm. I'm so sorry she was like so apologetic. I'm like that's totally cool. So if that's important to you, let's figure out what we can do within that constraints. That narrows it down for us. I mean, there's no right or wrong. You shouldn't have to split shift because everyone else is doing it. It matters what internally. What do you want?
Speaker 1:And for some people and this is something I'm personally realizing is that I have three associates, I don't want four. I don't want more than 11 chairs. I can expand and I'm not. I don't want to. So now we're playing the insurance game. But I would say in my career there was a lot of growth for growth's sake and there wasn't a whole lot of why behind it, of why behind it. As I got to a point similar to yours, super burnt out, I started doing things more for me and how I felt inside, rather than what's the next step, and I think that's great advice, man.
Speaker 2:It's the shower moments. I don't know, for some reason, in the shower in the morning I was like washing my hair, like why are we still growing? What are we doing? Oh my God, Now it's like I know. I know why we did it and I was just lucky I didn't have the why. First I was one of those guys that was just like grow, grow, grow, grow, grow, grow. But eventually it just hit a point where now we have to do the why. So now my best advice to people start with the why, and there's even a book I can't remember who wrote it, but it's Start With why, Simon Sinek. Yes, yes, and that's a great book that I would probably recommend people. Before you get into all this dental stuff, Find out your why and reverse engineer everything else based on that why.
Speaker 1:Awesome, great advice, man. So thanks so much for coming on the podcast. Thanks for always being on the podcast. You're on here all the time. So thanks, man. Your story is always interesting.
Speaker 2:Hey, I do what I want to do and this is what.
