Dental Practice Heroes

Two Day Clinical Weeks with Dr. David Maconi

• Dr. Paul Etchison, Dr. David Maconi • Season 3 • Episode 67

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What if working less could actually make your practice more profitable? Dr. David Maconi proves it's not just possible—it's achievable for committed practice owners willing to challenge conventional wisdom.

Whether you're burning out from too many clinical days or simply curious about creating more flexibility in your practice, this conversation provides actionable strategies for working smarter, not harder. Join us to discover how strategic staffing, targeted marketing, and a willingness to challenge dental practice norms can transform both your business and your life.

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Paul Etchison:

What if you could reduce your clinical days in half and still grow your practice? Well, today's guest has proved that it is possible. Dph coaching client, dr David McHoney, has been able to increase his profitability, increase his efficiency, all the while cutting back to just two days a week. We are talking today about how he made it happen, what worked, what didn't, and how you can start making similar changes in your own practice and start living the life that you've always dreamed of. You are listening to Dental Practice Heroes, where we help you create and scale your dental practice so that you are no longer tied to the chair.

Paul Etchison:

I'm Dr Paul Etcheson, author of two books on dental practice management, dental coach and owner of a $6 million group practice in the 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 enjoying a life that you love. Let's get started. Hello and welcome back to Dental Practice Heroes. I'm your host, dr Paul Edgison, and joined by somebody very special that I'm really excited to interview here today. It is a previous Dental Practice Heroes coaching client, he's a 2017 graduate of University of Maryland and he's the owner of Havertown Dental Arts in Pennsylvania. Welcome to the podcast, dr David McHoney. What's happening, dave, thanks for having me on man.

Paul Etchison:

Yeah, dude, I'm so pumped to talk to you, and we've talked about doing this for a while. Dave is actually a podcaster too. He has a fitness podcast, and so we share some podcasting stories over the time that we work together. But what I really excited to get Dave on is that he has cut his days from four days to three days to two days, which is a really sexy thing. But before we get into it, tell the listeners a little bit about your practice and when you took it over, and just how many apps, what kind of things are you guys into, so that they know a little bit more about what you're running.

David Maconi:

So I took over the practice at the end of 2021. I was originally close to the area as far as where I grew up, maybe an hour away, but I moved to that area to become an owner of a practice. Kind of like the classic story here. I was going to take over for an older dentist who was going to retire. He was 68 and was going to retire at 69 and then 70 and then 71, and it just kept not happening. So that ended after about two years there and at first it was kind of this big hit.

David Maconi:

We had moved to the area for that, but I really just didn't know what else was out there. So I started looking for another associateship just while I could try to find a place to buy. So after about a year at the next associateship I had found a good practice, a place that I thought there was a lot of room for improvement as far as bringing different procedures to the mix and all of that, and they weren't really doing any marketing any of that stuff. So I bought that practice, got a pretty good deal on it and they were only practicing three days a week. At that time they were kind of like really slowing down and I knew like that was a good opportunity I could add there, I could add hours. And so for the first year to two years I first year to two years I had basically gone to like a full well, what we call full in dental like four days a week. I never worked any Fridays, just on Monday through Thursday. And it was kind of funny like people outside of dental be like I don't know why you're not working Fridays, and I was like well, I need time to actually work on some of these other things. And I was working all the time. Like people are like what are you doing at the office? I was there until like 9pm. I mean it was a lot, definitely a lot early on. And then eventually I heard different coaching people talking about cutting to three days and it was just nice to see it could be done and I just figured, if they're doing it, why wouldn't I be able to do that? So after about a year and a half to two years I cut back and this was actually when you and I kind of first started talking. It was like in the plan and I remember you saying like okay, is this actually happening? Because I know a lot of people just talk about it and I'm talking to some other dentists about it as well. So we cut back and it was great, it was really nice just cutting back to three days. That was basically all 2024.

David Maconi:

And I basically just had hygiene going on Thursdays and I was very strict to my team. I said I'm not seeing patients Unless this is an emergency that I would go in for a weekend call. I'm not going to see them on a Thursday and of course initially they're like, well, can't you just do this, can't you just do that? And from day one, because I just had a lot of people warn me like, don't let that happen. So I and it was great, our production and collections went up from initially the owner they were doing about $700,000 when I bought the practice.

David Maconi:

So the first year we did 1.1 and then we did 1.5. And my goal was just to match that 1.5. When I cut to three days a week, I just thought that would be great because you're getting more efficient. But we ended up doing about $2 million the year, going to three days a week and I was very happy On three days. On three days a week, yep, amazing. So I was very happy with that.

David Maconi:

And then the next step was all right, do I want to add an associate? We talked about some of the associate horror stories, but talking with you and some other people, it just seemed like what I was kind of meant to do for my career. If I look at a day and there's all this production and I'm not necessarily breaking my body to do that, it's nice to see. And now you're down to two days, yeah. So basically I said, okay, in the new year I'm going to cut to two days. And again there was the concerns with it, but we actually opened a fifth day for the office. So it's not like things were going to be overall dropping. It was just me and there was the concerns and it's not like there's been no issues with it. But so far I've really been enjoying it.

Paul Etchison:

What do you think the biggest challenge was, or what were you going up against when you had to, like mentally plan this out? What was the hardest part about doing it and not losing production or collections?

David Maconi:

So I think the answer is different for going from four to three and three to two. So do you want me to address one? Yeah, let's do four to three first. Yeah, so four to three. I was pretty confident that I'd be able to match the production because there were still a lot of inefficiencies and we still were going to do some negotiations with insurances. I figured I could make that up. So I really wasn't too concerned about dropping production or even income. I just kind of wanted to match it.

David Maconi:

The big thing was going to be with the team and then patients. But I had enough dentists telling me like look, it's not the end of the world. You know, we're not cardiologists where there's some emergency constantly, where you have to go in. Most things can wait. And you did have some people who would maybe be upset that if there was an emergency on Thursday they would be seen until Monday. But to be honest, I was even surprised at how rare that was. It really did not come up as much as one might think. So that was not as hard.

David Maconi:

I think mentally it was a lot harder to drop from three to two because in that case I very much expect and I mean still expect an income drop. Now how much that will be, I don't know. But I mean, at that point you're cutting a third of the days that you can see patients, a third of the days that you can treatment plan. The difference here is we are also more or less concurrently adding an associate, so maybe it won't drop that much, but just mentally and then just the hang up of like, is it being lazy? You know, should you be?

Paul Etchison:

I mean you shame, the shame that comes with it, the shame with choosing your life instead of what everybody expects, exactly exactly.

David Maconi:

But ultimately I just I kind of had to realize like, look, it's not this permanent decision. If you don't want it to be, If you do it for three months and it sucks or your income drops to half, like you, you can undo this change and it's a very simple thing. I mean, I can just add back a Wednesday. It's not actually this permanent thing. But, as I mentioned earlier, I kind of tend to think in these categories and like when this is done, like if I have a goal, I'm going to hit that goal. And so I kind of had to realize like, no, you can change things if it's not going according to plan.

Paul Etchison:

What motivated this change from going like to four to three? I mean, you mentioned that you had heard it. Can you think?

David Maconi:

Yeah. So it's something I think about all the time in terms of what I want out of life. It has nothing to do with laziness I mean, almost nobody who knows me in real life would say I'm lazy it's just a calculated decision on the work involved. And so if somebody says they want something and they're just not going to do the hard work, I think that's maybe a problem. I think, on the other hand, if you're looking at it and you're saying, hey, just objectively speaking, the work involved to get to XYZ place is not worth it and it's a net negative, if you weigh it all out and it's a net negative, then just decide rationally and objectively not to do it.

David Maconi:

And so when I looked at the income that I wanted years ago, I said, okay, this is the income I want, and once I hit that I'm going to cut back. And as long as I can continue to make that income, I have so many other things in my life that I want to do. Now, fortunately, that has been far exceeded. And I you know we talked before about you know I just didn't realize what was possible in dentistry. So that's been great. But I still follow that same ethos and I enjoy dentistry, but I just I wouldn't be that person who's just practicing 40, 50 hours a week and running multiple practices. It's just. There's other things in life for me.

Paul Etchison:

Let's talk about the jump from four to three. You mentioned there were so many inefficiencies that you were easily able to keep your production the same. By completely, I mean taking out 25% of your producing time. What kind of inefficiencies are you talking about that you were able to improve on, so to make this possible?

David Maconi:

so part of it was growing the team. You know, initially when I took over there was one person at the front desk and she's amazing, but it was just one person one and a half pygenus kind of and one assistant, and so just getting the right team members was very helpful, like, and there was a clear jump. Like there was one particular assistant who's now my lead assistant and when we added her there was just a clear difference there. So having the right team again, the insurance negotiations were pretty big. Everything's going up significantly and just learning how to pack in more without the quality going down at all. So at the time, I think most days we were doing maybe 7,000 to 8,000. And I said, okay, so if I want to hit $1.5 million on the three days, then I've got to do like XYZ per day. And then I figured maybe a little bit more on the hygiene only day and I just calculated out of what I need to do and most days were over that. Most days the office was doing over $10,000.

David Maconi:

We started doing marketing and the returns on that were pretty immediate. I think you or somebody else was saying how they didn't find mailers to be effective. We had great results with mailers. We had great results with doing Google Ads, so the marketing has been very effective and it's just kind of taken off. And obviously there's all the underlying stuff about patient communication and building rapport and all that stuff as well. That really goes into it, because that first year they don't know you and after a while you start, the patients who are going to leave have probably left and the patients who, like you, have stayed, and then they refer more people. So it just kind of snowballs from there.

Paul Etchison:

Talk about this lead assistant. I'd love to hear about how you found this person and how did that role evolve, because I think this is one of the biggest things for all practice owners is is smaller practice. You got to have at least one or two. You know, like I've got four leads right now, my practice is almost 40 people, but like it's it's so useful to have, just like you know, that key person.

David Maconi:

Well, I knew she was a very quality assistant. We didn't really get into the leads too much until working with you. I hadn't really thought about having leads until that point, and I remember when you and I started working together, there was a little bit of uncertainty of if we could have leads because a lot of the departments had two people and so you just had two assistants or two hygienists. To me it felt and I don't know, maybe you disagree with me here, but it felt like by having a lead with only two people, one was just kind of the boss of the other and it just, I don't know, it's like not discriminatory. The other one becomes like the not lead. Yeah, yeah, exactly. So it was more in these last few months, I would say, where we've now got 10 team members, that there is a lead in each department. So this individual I mean she was great the whole time, but she wasn't an official lead until about a few months ago.

Paul Etchison:

And what are her responsibilities now that have changed from previously?

David Maconi:

Yes. So now it's basically and it's been nice a lot of checklists. I know you just had a podcast out on checklists recently and just kind of having somebody else where if there's something that's not done, I can go to her first and say you know, I mean again not like blame her, but just say like this is kind of your responsibility at this point and I can't oversee every little thing. So like if notes, for example, are not completed, or you know, a lab slip was not sent, why wasn't that done? And again, I mean, she's been great, that hasn't happened much. But it's nice to kind of have a person to turn to to say like hey, this is the system and like why wasn't it done, versus just kind of talking to a whole team and everybody's pointing fingers at each other and nobody knows who was supposed to do it.

Paul Etchison:

Do you feel like, looking at her from an employer standpoint, that you see traits in her that you don't always and I'm not saying we're going to throw your team under the bus but are there traits in her that are unique, that make good for that position?

David Maconi:

Yeah, for sure. And, like you said, we're not throwing anybody under the bus. All of my team members I talk about having an A-plus team and all of my team members have different qualities that really help out. She's actually very studious. She may eventually go to dental school, which will break my heart from an employer standpoint.

Paul Etchison:

I'm so happy for you. Deep down, you're like am I? Yeah, I think I am.

David Maconi:

She's very intelligent. But the biggest thing is I think she's dedicated to the practice. She's on my team. You know what I mean In the sense that it's not like and obviously there's always going to be some clashing between employer and employee. But I feel like she's on team Habertown Dental Arts and team Dr McHoney and I can talk to her about struggles of the office and just kind of be open with her about it and she's just very reliable too.

David Maconi:

She had a baby and she was back at the office in six weeks. She wanted to come back. She liked the culture of our office. You and I talked about it. We were like, is she really going to come back? You never really know. She was back in six weeks and she just doesn't really take much time off. She's just dedicated. It's honestly she is an A-plus player but I'd rather have a B-plus player who is really dedicated to the cause than somebody who was maybe a little bit better. But then you know they're looking to get $1 per hour more elsewhere and you know you just never really feel like they're on your team.

Paul Etchison:

Yeah, it's so true, and if you think about it like, hearing you say that just made me think that the people that are super loyal tend to be like the best employees, and it's almost like, even if the skills aren't there, that dedication seems to matter so much more than the actual execution, the ability of them for just to deep down, do it for reasons that are internal that motivate them rather than just do it maybe the best way. It just more matters that it's getting done. I mean, would you agree?

David Maconi:

For sure. Yeah, the loyalty there is a big thing. I mean, obviously, at some point the person has to be competent, right of course, and still be able to talk to people and whatnot. But I think that's one of the most difficult things with newer employees.

David Maconi:

I know everybody always talks about the new generation, but I will say it is harder when whether it's hygiene or anything else if you're hiring somebody and you just kind of feel like it's of course we all work to make a living and to better our families and all that stuff. But it's tough when you go to work and you feel like this is completely transactional. It just makes it less enjoyable versus like, okay, we're all kind of pulling together and just feeling like the office as a whole is growing. And I had somebody recently tell me they felt like dentistry was really lonely and this person was an owner of two practices. I ended up selling them due to the stress and whatnot. I feel like she wasn't collaborating with the team. It was just kind of her and I think that collaboration can be very helpful.

Paul Etchison:

So, looking back at when you took this practice over to what you know now, having a few years under your belt and you know massive success, is there something you think about like a mistake that you used to make or something that changed in your, the way you thought about the practice that you look back at now and you kind of laugh about?

David Maconi:

I'm kind of fortunate A lot of us are fortunate now that we are coming up in this time where podcasts and coaching is so common. You know, because you see people who are in their 50s or 60s and you think, what did you do for 30 years? You've been practicing this long and the practice is still only doing X, y, z and so fortunately, I don't look back and think, oh, my God, I should have done this so differently. I do think maybe coaching earlier could have been helpful. I think certain things like marketing earlier and coaching earlier could have been helpful. I think certain things like marketing earlier and hiring earlier could have been helpful.

David Maconi:

I was very hesitant to. I didn't want to be overstaffed. So we had the first year where we did the 1.1 million. That was with one assistant that was only there three days a week, and then the fourth day I didn't have an assistant. I just, like you know, the front desk would come back and help sometimes, so I would have hired more people earlier. I come back in health sometimes, so I would have hired more people earlier.

David Maconi:

I just didn't know the level of growth that we would have. So same thing with like hygiene, like I was at one like one and a half hygienists. And then we were at eight hygiene days and I remember thinking, well, I mean, this was only like six months ago. I was like, well, we can kind of support nine hygiene days, you know, maybe nine and a half. And then now we have 13 hygiene days and they're all full. And I'm not saying that's always the case, I'm not saying everybody's just over hire, but in my case I probably should have had a little bit more confidence in the ability to fill the schedule.

Paul Etchison:

Yeah, and I went through the same thing in my career. The expansion of my practice early on was very slow and then at a certain point it was just like let's go, let's just find people, let's grow to it. But I think that's such a common fear for dental practice owners is that we always look at man. Do I have too many people at the front desk? Do I really need another assistant? Can I really fill another hygienist? What type of advice would you have for someone? Because I see this so much that we're so slow to hire because we think for some reason one additional employee is going to bankrupt us and we don't see how we can get a return on that investment in human capital.

David Maconi:

So I think this is where the flexibility that production provides is very helpful. So it's kind of like in life, right, if you have a lot of money it's not that money is everything but you just don't have to care as much about things right? Let's say, you got pulled over and you got a ticket and it's like $200. It's like, oh, that sucks. But if you're doing really well, it's kind of like okay, I'm just going to brush this off, whatever it is. And same thing with other little things in life that are expenses. It's just nice to have that comfort.

David Maconi:

And similarly with a practice, if you are doing $700,000 and you've only been doing 700,000 for a long time and you look at your percentage for staff and it's 32%, it could make sense that somebody is worried about adding somebody else.

David Maconi:

But I think when you get to the point where you're like okay, we're going to improve our efficiency, we're going to learn more procedures, whatever it is that allows you to produce more, you can think, okay, well, maybe now we're at 24% staff, we're going to add somebody that might temporarily bump us up to 27%, let's say, but that's going to allow us to do X amount more in production and you now have that confidence from past years to see that adding a team member allows that.

David Maconi:

And again, nowadays we have so many ways that we can run these reports to see the actual numbers that we kind of don't have to guess. Hey, I added an assistant. We did this much in production before and now we're doing this much in production. And if you think about an office your size where you're doing like six million, paying an assistant $50,000, you can probably do another $50,000 at least in production with that extra assistant Again, assuming you have the capacity and the room for it. And in many cases I think with the type of people that you'd be dealing with with coaching, they're going to be able to get that improvement. Now I'm not just saying everybody should just hire, you know, and just anybody that comes their way, but I think in most cases if you're kind of like type A, you're going to be able to make that up and more with a new team member.

Paul Etchison:

I think it always comes down to new patients too is these are offices, and these are the offices that I work with typically, are people are seeing a decent new patient flow and if they're not, we figure out a way for them to get more new patients. What has your new patient flow been like? What is your office seeing about a month, would you say?

David Maconi:

So when I took over they were seeing about eight to 10 new patients a month. You know, no market or anything like that. And the first year I didn't really market at all because I was seeing all these new mouths and there was a lot of underdiagnosis and whatnot. So I didn't do any marketing. I started with mailers and we bumped up to about 15 to 20 new patients a month for a while there. And I find that the mailers, while the number of new patients you get, isn't as good as maybe some other methods. It seems like there are bigger cases at least in my area I've found that. And then since then we've been seeing closer to 40 to 50 pretty routinely and that's been a great jump. And I don't know what's going on this month, but we're at about 90 for January. So we had some crazy spike in January. I don't know how next month will be, but I would say closer to 50 most months now. Yeah Well, you just set the bar really high.

Paul Etchison:

Now you've got a taste of it and now you're going to be like every month needs to be 90. That's what most of us would do with that. Talk about adding the associate. You mentioned that. You know you were three days by yourself, but then two days, you know, bringing on an associate. And when you said that, I thought about do I know any two-day solo dentists? And I can't think of any. I think it would be very hard to have any level of profitability two days a week. But what has that been like having another provider in your office servicing your patients and with the team?

David Maconi:

I'm glad you made that. One point, though, about you know there's no solo dentist doing two days a week, because that was kind of the thing. It was like, all right, you can cut from five to four, for sure, and you can cut from four to three. Even though some people may go against that and say you shouldn't, we've seen it work. But, as you mentioned, you really can't have a functioning business that's only open two days a week. It just doesn't really work. I mean, maybe there's somebody out there who's doing it or they're really slowing down, but for the most part it doesn't. So that's kind of in part why I decided to add the associates. I have to still have a functioning business, and the cool thing is it's more of a functioning business.

David Maconi:

So when we opened up the ad, I'm in an area that's I'm like 30 minutes outside of a pretty city. So, unlike hygiene, we had 20 applicants in the first week and that was just from Indeed. I mean, that wasn't like using any sort of like you know the crazy stuff like on Facebook or anything. And ironically, this associate was the first person I spoke to and she just had a great demeanor. She could hold a conversation, to be honest, like it's not that the clinical doesn't matter, but I wasn't that interested in their clinical other than that they could do the basics because that's more trainable. It's very hard to change personality and I've found that patients have really liked her. The team-like search is very sweet and at this point now now there's just a stress of if this person leaves, then what do you do with that and all the potential there, whole new set of worries, right, whole new set of things to worry about.

Paul Etchison:

So now you've got this freedom, you work in two days a week. You can work more days if you like. You can take more time off, because your practice is still open. When you're not there, what do you see yourself doing, and I mean, what is the near future and what's your longer term goals for your professional life?

David Maconi:

Yeah. So as far as for professional life, I'm kind of just trying to enjoy this time. I know it's like cliche on every podcast on. You know you got to enjoy the time and you know be in this moment and all of that. But I mean that's something I thought about for even since my early 20s.

David Maconi:

I feel like I'm fortunate that I've kind of again had those early influences, that I've kind of again had those early influences that I was not somebody who said I just want more, more, more. I'm very happy with what I've been able to accomplish both inside of dental and out of dental. And I do feel like I'm somebody who, again, not that there's like enough as far as like a defined time point, but I am somebody who, you know, there's been a lot of for anybody any dentist. There's a lot of for anybody any dentist there's a lot of delayed gratification. You're studying hard throughout high school and college and dental school and I'm very at peace with the idea that you know what. We're going to still grow and it's going to go up.

David Maconi:

But I want to enjoy family time, time with friends, just kind of exploring things. And again, I say that as somebody who is still working a lot in and out of the office, but I'm very at peace with the idea of scheduling more vacations and things like that. And I want to grow, and whether or not we will ever expand or move the office is still kind of up in the air right now. Going back to the new patient flow, much sooner than I realized we're going to be at capacity and then I have to decide do we keep growing and expanding or do we cut insurances? That'll probably be a conversation in the next year or two, but for now I'm kind of just enjoying it.

Paul Etchison:

Yeah, Cross that bridge when it comes right. Yeah, that's awesome, man. You know one thing I want to ask you is there any chance that you would go back and work more clinical days, now that you've gotten yourself down to just two clinical days a week?

David Maconi:

Yeah. So I think different scenarios kind of pop up there. So one is with a different procedure mix. So I've really grown to enjoy ortho getting more into like TMD and then sleep work and all of that. And so again, part of the reason that I cut back was physically demanding work on those other days and ortho and night guards and things like that. It's just not physically demanding and it's obviously a lot of assistant-driven work. So I've talked to my team about how on Wednesdays I may just open it up to a half day of just ortho where I'm not doing hygiene checks, I'm just kind of there consult, seeing ortho patients, things like that and some big cases. I've told the team we've got a couple of cases coming up where it's like eight to 10 crowns or veneers and I'll do that on Wednesday and it's pretty enjoyable to just go in and I'm just with that one patient and obviously it's very productive. So in that sense adding back a little bit. But then longer term, I said if I have an associate and she's out for maternity leave or if she were to leave, then temporarily I would add back those days.

David Maconi:

It's hard to imagine at this point going back to just being solo. I mean I joked before about, like you know, the stress of like is that person going to leave? But honestly it's actually not that stressful in the sense that being at just one office you can cover for that person. I think it's different when you have multi-practice and obviously you can't be two places at once or you have many associates. Then it becomes a little bit more problematic. But it honestly is a nice balance right now where it's like again, I really enjoy my associate, we get along and she's great.

David Maconi:

But if she were to give notice and leave, it's really not that difficult for me to just jump back in to happy Wednesdays again and taking my time to find another associate. You know what I mean. Like, even compared to hygiene, you have a hygienist quit and it's like who's going to fill that whole slot? Like you're not going to do the hygiene, whereas with an associate you can pretty easily do that work. So again, obviously I wouldn't want them to leave, but it's an easy transition and so that's the time where I would say adding back. But other than that, I don't really see adding back just because I, similar to like when I went from four to three, I saw it was a better life and it worked. Like I had clear demonstration that it worked, so I don't see why I would ever go back.

Paul Etchison:

Yeah, I love that man. All right, final question what is the best piece of advice you've ever gotten when it comes to dental practice ownership?

David Maconi:

So, while it's somewhat cliche, I really believe that the mentorship and coaching aspect is huge.

David Maconi:

Ever since I was pretty young, I was reading books from like Dale Carnegie and like just these various self-help books, to try to have, in a sense, like those people become mentors for you. Right, there's somebody that you can kind of look back. Somebody had told me about your book and I had read the book and that's how we eventually got connected. But even before I had an official coach, I have a friend who's very dedicated to his practices and we would just talk about it all the time. And then I was put in contact with it was kind of a family friend actually who had basically done the finances for many, many offices, and while there were things I disagreed with him on, as I learned more myself, it was instrumental to kind of get in the door with certain opportunities. And then you know we talk about our mutual friend Talon. He helped me out a lot. And then, of course, you and just having a soundboard that you can balance these ideas off of, because the reality is like, if you listen, even like for your coaches, you guys don't agree on everything, but sometimes it's not about having like the perfect protocol. It's somebody who can give you the confidence to try a protocol and then you can adjust along the way.

David Maconi:

I mean, again, I make the analogy to fitness things all the time and it's like with my clients. It's not like I'm going to give you the perfect program and then you're going to see these amazing results. I'm going to give you a good program for you and then, week to week, we're going to adjust it and that's the big thing. And so, whether you're using like PBN or dental intel or whatever, it's having something to go off of and then having somebody who's a few steps ahead of you who can then guide you through it. You know, sometimes if they're like too too far ahead, it can almost seem like it's something that can't be reached. But if you have somebody who's, like you know five to 10 years ahead of you and has done what you want to do, that mentorship is huge. And it's motivating too to feel like I can. That's why I said about going to three days a week. It's like, hey, these people have done it, I know it can be done.

Paul Etchison:

You know what I mean, yeah, that's a, a client man. You have been one of my favorites to work with. You've always been. I don't think you've ever said I don't think that's going to work, not once. You're like let's try it, let's see. And I think that it's just like piggybacking off what you said. The people that move forward in life are the people that implement and try things out and don't get stuck in that analysis, paralysis, thinking they don't have the right information. You just got to get moving and you'll figure it out when you get there and I think that's a testament to that. And, man, what a success you've had at your practice in such a short time and I hope you've inspired some people listening to maybe think there might be working too much or maybe working a little inefficient to possibly do a little bit what you did. So thanks so much for coming on. Dave, appreciate it. Thanks, man.

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Dr. Paul Etchison

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