January 1, 2025 • 50 mins
Click here to learn more and join our Clinical, Business and Life MasterMind
Group. Work closely with the most forward thinking doctors in healthcare and our Founder & CEO, Brian Wright.
Click here to choose your day and time to meet with us online to help you create a plan of success.
Book Suggestion: Tim Ferris - The Four Hour Work Week
Welcome to 2025! Watch our Founder & CEO get the year kicked off with long time New Patient Group and WrightChat customer, Dr. Bob Skopek. This episode encourages listeners to redefine their understanding of growth, focusing on efficiency and quality rather than volume. Key topics include tracking important metrics, identifying personal financial goals, seeking mentorship, and pursuing continuous education to enhance business practices for a healthier work-life balance.
• Reimagining growth as working smarter, not harder
• Understanding your personal magic number for financial freedom
• Importance of tracking earnings per hour rather than just volume
• Differences between being a business owner and an entrepreneur
• Benefits of outsourcing non-essential tasks for increased efficiency
• Importance of mentorship in developing professional skills
• Role of ongoing education in staying effective and current in the field
What if you could redefine success by working smarter, not harder? Our latest episode promises to transform your approach to business as we explore the flourishing possibilities of 2025, a year brimming with innovation and resilience. Discover how the entrepreneurial mindset and strategic efficiency can outshine traditional growth metrics and help you thrive even when the economy takes a downturn. We unpack the pitfalls of conventional advertising and shine a light on internal business inefficiencies, as we embark on a journey of continuous evolution, buoyed by the new season's transformative spirit.
Join us as we venture beyond mere numbers to redefine entrepreneurial success. The conversation pivots to exploring how fewer working days and heightened hourly productivity can lead to unprecedented growth, both personally and professionally. We unravel the intricate tapestry of key performance indicators, the nuances between being a business owner and an entrepreneur, and the critical concept of your "magic number"—all essential components in maximizing earnings while living your ideal life. This isn't just about financial success; it's about reclaiming time for what truly matters.
Our exploration doesn't stop there. We cast the spotlight on the orthodontic industry, underlining the pivotal role of mentorship and continuous education in shaping the future of young orthodontists. With insights from industry experts like Jeremy Emanuele, we delve into the creation of a legacy Dental Service Organization focused on clear aligner orthodontists. Through this narrative, we underscore the importance of long-term vision, strategic decision-making, and embracing a collaborative mindset to navigate the complexities of modern orthodontic practice. Prepare to be inspired as we reveal how diverse mentorship and strategic innovation can redefine success in any field.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, new patient group and Right Chat Nation.
Welcome inside the broadcastbooth, brian Wright here, and
welcome in to the very firstepisode of season eight as we
get 2025 rolling.
Happy New Year to everybody.
As this is coming out onJanuary 1st, 2025 is here.
Crazy.
It sounds so futuristic to me.
I don't know what it is about2025 that is so different than
(00:20):
2024, but for some reason Idon't know what it is.
It just sounds very futuristic.
Next thing, you know we'regoing to be remember Back to the
Future, part Two, flying carsand everything.
It just feels like we'regetting day by day closer to all
of the flying taxis and carsand just seems futuristic.
But I hope everybody had agreat Christmas.
I know our kids are still inSanta mode, so it was amazing
(00:42):
here that our household here inColorado Springs and boy oh boy,
am I ready to get season eightkicked off with a bang.
Today we're going to be talkingabout reimagining growth.
Now, there's several thingsthat go into reimagining growth
and several things and I'll bebringing in the great Dr Bob
Skopak here shortly there areseveral things that we talk
about today, so it's not just aone simple thing or one thing we
(01:04):
want you to do, but this issomething you know if you're a
rep out there.
You run a corporation out there, so you work for one and or run
one.
This is not messaging thatyou're going to get excited
about, but it is important.
Reps out there because we havea huge rep following Listen to
this podcast.
You will become a better repthe more you understand and get
into the brain of what it's liketo be an entrepreneur.
(01:24):
But what I'm going to talk abouttoday is not something a
corporation is ever going tolook at it and go, wow, our
numbers on paper are down, butwe made more per hour, we worked
less and we hit our magictake-home number to where we
could live our dream life.
Right, that's going to be ahuge messaging today and so many
of you out there, you're nevergoing to go to an event and have
(01:46):
people talk about.
What you're going to learn onthis podcast today New ways to
track stats stats that you'reprobably not tracking, but you
should be All right.
We're going to dive into thatand much, much more on the very
first episode.
So let's kick off season eightwith the brand new intro music
and we'll see everybody on theother side with the brand new
intro music and we'll seeeverybody on the other side.
Speaker 2 (02:06):
The time for real change is now, when tough times
test us, we overcome.
When hardship hits us, wepersevere, we innovate, we
transform, we transform.
If you're ready to achievesomething special, buckle up and
(02:30):
get ready for the ride of yourlife.
Welcome to Season 8 of the NewPatient Group Audio Experience,
a podcast dedicated torevolutionizing lives, careers
and business.
So you, your team and yourpractice forever flourish in the
(02:51):
new economy.
And now your host.
He's a husband, father of two,a founder and CEO of New Patient
Group and RightChat faculty forAlign Technology, and a trusted
speaker for Invisalign andOrthoFi, brian Wright.
Speaker 1 (03:09):
Hey everybody, welcome in.
I get asked a lot how do youcome up with the intros and
things like that?
And hey look, I designed, Iwrote that one.
And the guy this is actuallypretty cool the guy that does
the podcast for me I've used foryears and when I went to hire
him on Fiverr is where I hirehim every single year when I
went in there I always listenedto a couple intros.
(03:31):
You know some of the new oneshe's had since I've, since I've
last used them and the veryfirst one he had on there was
the Ben Shapiro show.
So the guy you know he's reallymoving up.
The guy that does the podcastintro that you just heard,
that's who Ben Shapiro uses onhis show.
So he's really moved up in theworld.
He's becoming more and moresuccessful.
So props to him.
But I designed this podcastintro for season eight and I'm
(03:55):
thinking about it.
It may change throughout thisparticular season, but I like it
because so many of you outthere are hurting so many of you
out there and you're hurting.
A lot of it's self-induced, buta lot of it also is just look,
the economy sucked.
It's going to affect peoplemore in certain areas of the
country than it has others.
You can't force people to have.
(04:16):
This is why the dumbest thingyou can do when the economy's
down is advertise.
It's ridiculous, and a lot ofyou out there you know you.
Unfortunately you do it.
You spend money onpay-per-click when you can't
force people to have money tospend on orthodontics.
So what you have to dodentistry beyond.
So what you have to do isdouble down with all of the
holes that exist inside yourbusiness and man.
(04:38):
That is so hard to get peopleto do.
But I designed it because Iknow the people that listen to
this podcast New Patient GroupRight Chat family members out
there.
I'm so proud of you because youpersevered during this time.
You know, great leaders are notcreated when times are great.
Great leaders are born whentimes are difficult.
(04:59):
Right, they innovate, theypersevere, they transform, just
like the podcast intro does.
And I'm so proud of all of youout there because you keep
reinventing yourself.
You keep understanding is thatthe way you're going to grow
this year is not the same asnext year.
Right, the, the team that getsyou to your initial goal this
year may not be the team thatyou, that you have the two years
(05:19):
from now, because you're tryingto reach new heights.
You're always evolving and thatis what a great leader does,
make no mistake about it.
That is what a greatentrepreneur does, make no
mistake about it, and so many ofyou out there you have to
understand the days of going todental school, ortho school,
coming out making a ton of money.
They're over.
Some of you are still gettinglucky out there, but the
majority of you understand youhave to know different than a
(05:42):
chef.
That's commoditized.
It goes way beyond your food.
So that's how I came up withthat intro for season eight and
hopefully everybody likes it outthere because the messaging
it's true.
I want all of you, when timesare tough, to just love the
journey, that all of you fallinto right.
(06:04):
The journey needs to fuel yourfire.
It is going to be differentthat journey every single year.
The journey is going to bedifferent for all of you and you
have to love the entrepreneurside of it All.
Right now let's bring in thegreat Dr Bob Skopak.
How'd you like that?
The great?
Speaker 3 (06:22):
Wow, I didn't know if you were talking about me or
somebody else.
That's, that's, that's awesome.
Speaker 1 (06:27):
Did that make you feel good?
That made me feel good.
Yeah, we got our matching blackshirts on today.
Speaker 3 (06:32):
Yeah, I know, I know.
Yeah, you don't want me to gochange, I could go change.
Speaker 1 (06:37):
It's too late now.
We already started.
Speaker 3 (06:39):
Yeah, we're here.
We're here, Ready to go Matchand everything Should take a
survey and see who they thinklooks better in the black shirt.
Speaker 1 (06:46):
All right.
So in the YouTube descriptionbelow, after you all thumb this
baby up, you can make somecomments on whose black shirt
looks better.
Should have made you wear a hattoo.
We could have put that out,yeah, but hey, man, how was
Christmas?
Speaker 3 (07:04):
It was good.
Kids were home.
Kids were home for about a weekUm, and uh yeah, it was just
relaxing, just hanging out Um.
The only family now really wehave is my mom, who's local now
at this point.
Um so, yeah, it was.
It was good Just four or fiveof us hanging out, relaxing, and
now we're getting ready for newyear's.
Speaker 1 (07:25):
Nice, so the girls are gone yeah girls are gone.
Okay, so back to Chicago.
Chicago, where'd you sayChicago?
Speaker 3 (07:35):
and Memphis, Memphis, that's right.
How'd she end up in Memphis?
She worked for Smith Nephew,which is a they do like
orthopedics a lot of healthcare,wound healing orthopedics.
She's a biomechanical engineer,Okay, so she's worked with knee
replacements for them.
Now she's more of a productengineer.
So, she sells or not sells, butshe educates the docs on how to
(07:58):
use Smith and Nephew's products.
And they're big corporateheadquarters in the States.
One of them in the States is inMemphis.
Speaker 1 (08:08):
Okay, all right, does she like it?
She loves it, like Memphis,yeah, yeah, cool.
Well, I got a question and fora lot of you out there I mean
you know we teach a lot ofdifferent things on here and I
thought this would be a good oneto kick off season eight,
because a lot of you I said thisat the top a lot of you are
hurting out there.
I've got all kinds of datasaying the industry's down 15
(08:29):
plus percent conversions, dippedinto the high forties, blah,
blah, blah.
So the messaging today is youknow, we understand some of you
may look at this and go, no, Ineed to go beyond this because
I'm not even close to hitting mymagic number.
So we're going to dive intomore of that and I'm empathetic
(08:50):
to it.
But the main point today is isredefining growth and and this
will this would be a great wayto kick it off, because I'm
going to ask I'm going to askBob here in just a second did he
grow?
And when you hear the response,you're going to what most of
you are going to think is is theanswer's no, and he's going to,
he's going to re change yourmind, to redefine your mind
around this.
So let's kick it off.
Did you grow last year?
Speaker 3 (09:08):
Um, I feel, I feel that I, yes, I grew tremendously
.
However, now my production, myproduction, is going to be down
about one and a half percent.
Starts are going to be downmaybe 6%, um, but I feel.
But I did grow tremendouslybecause I work 19 fewer days.
We've cut some hours, so we'renot working, we're not starting
(09:31):
as early, we're not starting aslate.
So, from that perspective, I'mmaking a lot more money per hour
, per day than I was in 2023.
So, yes, I feel like I grewtremendously.
I got a lot more efficient, butI'm not doing more cases.
(09:52):
I'm not spending more moneywith my labs.
I'm not spending more moneywith my monitoring companies.
I'm not spending more money onemployees because I'm adding
days and I'm adding patients perday.
So I'm working a lot moreefficiently.
But if you wanted to look at mynumbers the way most people
(10:14):
look at numbers now, I'm downabout a percent or so.
Speaker 1 (10:17):
Well, this is what I want to talk about for a minute,
and I also mentioned this moretowards on the on the intro,
mentioned this more towards onthe on the intro.
So this is not an episode thatyou know.
We we have a huge rep followingon this podcast, from from
Invisalign to OrthoPhi to DentalMonitoring to tons of others,
and this is an example repslistening on.
The more you learn about whatit's like to be an entrepreneur,
(10:40):
the better, because acorporation whether you work as
a rep for a corporation or yourun in Invisalign, align
Technology, whatever it may beyou are never going to look at
numbers this way, because you'renever going to look at a data
sheet and say we were down apercent or six percent, like Bob
is describing, yet you grew.
You're never going to look atit that way.
But the idea for all of you outthere business owners, that is
(11:04):
is how you can set things up ina way that every year, you make
your magic number.
So let's say, your magic numberis 500 grand.
Just throwing that number outthere for now is how do you hit
that take home number everysingle year while working less?
And the data he just gave you?
A lot of you out there andyou're never going to hear this
stuff in an event.
They all teach you how to domore new patients, more, more,
(11:25):
more, more, more, more, more,but they don't teach you how to
do more with less.
And a stat all of you need tobe very into is a stat he just
gave.
He knows it is how many workingdays did you have this year
versus how many working days didyou have last year?
If he doesn't know that number,correct me if I'm wrong.
If he doesn't know that number,there's no way he could sit
(11:47):
here and tell you he grew, eventhough the numbers on paper are
down.
Make sense.
Speaker 3 (11:52):
And that's.
You're exactly right and that'sa very easy, simple thing to
track, simple KPI to track.
The next level of that, whichhas taken me time to really get
there is how much you make perhour.
Tim Ferriss's four-hourworkweek book was very impactful
(12:13):
on me and he talks about howbusiness owners and
entrepreneurs should look at howmuch money they make per hour.
Now I'm not punching a clock,I'm never going to punch a clock
, I'll never know exactly.
But yes, it's about the day'swork.
But you know, if I'm working afour-hour day and I'm starting
(12:34):
five people and doing four exams, you know that's a lot of
production and that's a lot ofefficiency per hour and that's a
lot of efficiency per hour.
Now, if I'm working a 10-hourday and I'm doing three starts
and three exams, that's not asefficient of a day.
So you're right, the number ofdays you work per year is a very
(12:54):
simple, easy KPI to start with.
But the next level is how muchyou make per hour, how much you
produce per hour.
Speaker 1 (13:03):
I'm going to ask you a follow-up question to that in
just a second.
But this is, you know, for somany of you out there, you chose
to own your own business, soyou're an entrepreneur.
Now, there's two differentthings.
I'm going to be doing anepisode, probably this season,
about the difference between abusiness owner and an
entrepreneur.
Those are two very, verydifferent things and,
unfortunately, many of you outthere run your business as a
business owner, not anentrepreneur.
(13:24):
Now, one of the examples ofthat is what we're talking about
.
As a true entrepreneur, you donot open up your own business
and risk everything your houseand have student loans and
millions in debt to make alittle money and have no time to
enjoy it.
The goal for all of you outthere is to be make as much
money as you can in the fewestpossible days, every single,
(13:47):
every single year, and a lot ofyou do not set that up and, like
we said, the number changes.
If you're opening up a practicenext week and you're a single
dude, as an example, your magictake home number that you need
to hit is going to be far lessthan when you have three kids
and a wife, et cetera.
So this number is an ever going, ever evolving number that all
of you should know.
You should know to live mydream life and do whatever I
(14:09):
want in life, this is the amountof money I have to take home
this year to do it, and this ishow much time I've got to have
to be able to do it, becausenothing worse than making a ton
of money and not being able toenjoy any of it because the
business is sucking you dry.
So how do you the KPI, like wesaid, like the number of days
(14:29):
work?
That's an easy thing to track.
But when you take it to whichall of you out there need to be
tracking that when you take itto the next level and how much
money you're making per hour,how are you tracking that?
Speaker 3 (14:41):
I, it, it.
It's always going to be anapproximation because I don't
punch a clock and I don't thinkany of us, as business owners,
are going to punch a clock.
But what I will literally do isI go through every month and I
look at how many days for thatmonth that I worked and I
approximate the hours that Ispent doing that.
Now there's also hours likethis.
(15:05):
I mean, now I technically Icould count this as a working
hour.
I generally don't, because I dothis because I choose to and I
enjoy it and I'm having fundoing this and I'm not making
money doing this.
So I track more the hours perthose days that I spent making
(15:28):
money in quotes, and that's howI do it, and I just approximate
it and I write it down.
And I write it down every month.
Speaker 1 (15:36):
You know, one of the things that you said and this is
something everybody I trackmyself and it's a little bit
hard.
You know, new patient group isnot a company that can really
grow without putting more hoursin, at least for me RightChat,
another company, is right.
That company can grow and itcan grow without me having to do
all the work.
So I look at data differentlyfor both of those companies.
(15:57):
Now, for most of you listeningout there, you don't have
multiple companies.
You have one.
You have your practice, eventhough it may be multiple
locations or a single.
So you've got to look at thingsdifferently.
But the one thing all of youneed to do and this is not
really what today is about, butat the same time it is in this
reimagining growth is you haveto design the business in a way
to do things that you love.
(16:19):
I have talked to so many chefsthroughout the years that hate
what they do because thebusiness completely sucked all
the fun out of being a greatchef, dealing with the people
and the HR and all this crapthat all of you have to deal
with as well, and I view you allas the chef right and a lot of
(16:40):
you have the fun sucked out ofthe practice because you don't
get to do what you love to do.
So the point is, what I want totalk about here for a minute is
how you design things in a waythat allows you to do what you
love and outsource the otherthings and make them do the
things that you don't love right, and take a lot of that
pressure off and I want you totalk about that for a minute and
(17:03):
you have two different businessmodels with your practices as
well.
Speaker 3 (17:07):
Well, and here's the first thing I think that we all
have to realize and we just hadthis conversation a while ago
it's like if you look at, say,engineers, for example, or chefs
, let's put engineers and chefsin the same category.
They're very good technicians.
They know how to do their taskvery well.
Most of them don't know how torun a business.
(17:29):
Very few engineers and chefswill run a successful business.
Most of them work for somebodyelse, doing their task and doing
their craft.
That's the same thing withorthodontics and dentistry.
We are trained as technicians,we are trained to do our craft.
We're not trained to own abusiness, but yet most of us do
(17:52):
own a business.
That's the difference.
Most dentists come out theydon't know anything about it,
but they do go run a business.
So the first thing is to justreally educate yourself and read
on the minds of some of thesegreat business people the Steve
Jobs, the Jeff Bezos, all theseguys that have been
(18:15):
entrepreneurs and run thebusiness, because you have to
think differently.
None of these business modelshave come about really, because
I'm an orthodontist Now, thefirst step to each one of them
(18:39):
is clinical excellence andknowing my clinical craft with
whatever tool or technique Iwant to use to the highest level
.
But then the whole businessmodel has nothing to do with
what we learned as a dentist oran orthodontist or as an
engineer or as a chef.
I mean, it's a completelydifferent skill set.
So to do that, I think youfirst have to do a lot of
reading, you have to educateyourself and you have to think
(19:00):
very differently, becausethere's different steps for each
of us.
I mean, and the steps that Iwent through to kind of develop
this model is, first andforemost, I became an expert at
the technique I do, and I'm aclear aligner orthodontist.
I'm 97% clear aligners.
I'm 97% Invisalign.
(19:21):
I consider myself a clear lineorthodontist.
Now I was Invisalign certified24 years ago and I sucked at it
for a good 10, 12 years.
At least you can admit it.
Well, I can, and quite honestly, I think the product sucked,
and I sucked initially.
Now I don't believe that.
(19:43):
But so, first and foremost, Igot myself, I got myself
educated on that clinical skillset.
Then you have to learn how towork a P&L and run a P&L.
And if nobody knows what I meanby P&L, just go out there and
learn about a P&L and a profitand loss statement.
(20:03):
I think it's one of thesimplest yet most impactful
financial statements you canhave.
You look at the P&L what am Imaking money on?
What am I losing money on?
What do I need to change inthere?
From there, I worked on myworkflows and my operations and
my systems and what I needed tobuy or what I needed to get rid
(20:26):
of, what I could outsource, whatI couldn't outsource, and I
think a lot of people make themistake of starting with that,
when you should really startwith.
Here's how I want my practiceto go.
Here's the technique I want touse.
I'm going to get great at it.
Okay, now I'm going to figureout am I making money, am I
losing money and why?
What do I change so I can makemoney or lose money?
(20:50):
And then what are the importantKPIs that I need to track after
that?
And those are things.
I think that's a littledifferent order than most people
will go through.
For sure it is Because mostpeople will go listen to that
KOL get up on stage and say, gotry Brand X because it's a game
changer.
Well, it's not a game changerunless it fits my P&L and unless
(21:14):
I can use it to the highestlevel.
So that's what I've figured out.
With what I've done and the wayI've looked at it, you got to
get your clinical craft to thehighest level with whatever you
want to use.
You have to look at your P&Land work the P&L and run the P&L
to create profit in there.
Then you modify your systems,your workflows, your operations,
(21:36):
your outsourcing, your products, wherever you're going to buy,
to make that P&L profitable andthen you determine the KPIs
you're going to track.
Speaker 1 (21:45):
Well, a couple of things that you the reason I
said, at least you can admit itis, you know, after being
obviously I'm not a clinician,but I've had the fortunate being
of being around really the bestof the best in this industry.
I mean, they're all ourcustomers I don't know how we
did it, but they are.
And looking at Jeff Paschal,you, rob Schaefer, boyd Whitlock
(22:09):
, I could go on and on.
I'm going to leave out a ton ofMarco.
I'm going to leave out a ton ofnames, can't name them all and
the cases they're knocking outwith clear aligners are just
insane.
But then you look at so much ofthe industry still and this
isn't what today is about, butit is about those four steps
that Bob just mentioned areabsolutely critical, because
(22:29):
there's so many of you out therestill that are convinced you
can't do some of these caseswith aligners.
And I think and I'm just goingto say it, you can tell me if
I'm wrong, but I think that's anongoing CE problem.
If you know, you've got 10orthos knocking out an
Invisalign case that another 10say you can't do it with, and
you're knocking it out like andit's just insane, in five visits
(22:52):
or something, what else couldit be other than a CE problem?
Speaker 3 (22:56):
Well, and you're right and see, that's where I
think number one with everythingwe talk about or we preach
about is a CE problem.
It's like and I'm going to usethe MARPI, Sarpy, SFOT, surgical
expansion stuff as anotherexample I don't do that, I'm not
good at that, I haven't takenCE on it.
(23:19):
But I'm going to give a shoutout to Jeremy Emanuele, who's in
Vegas, who I've met, who'sphenomenal.
He's a brilliant dude.
I love that guy.
That's his thing and he doesthat to a very high level and in
his practice that's a big partof his business and his practice
.
That's great.
(23:39):
He knows how to do that.
I don't I have a CE problem withMARPIs, SARPs and SFOTs and I
choose not to do it, and you'reright.
Other people will have that CEproblem with clear aligners and
that's where, again, it getsback to number one, where you
have to choose what do you wantto do and what's your modality
(24:00):
of choice and then learn it andbe great at it.
But, yes, 100%, it all comesback to fundamentally that CE
and learning how to do that at ahigh level.
Speaker 1 (24:13):
Jeremy, if you're listening, I want you to know
that he's never called mebrilliant and never said he
loves me, so I just wanted tomake that clear for the record.
You're a special guy, clearly.
The other piece to that is andI see this all the time and it
drives me nuts and I think thatjust people don't.
They don't know what they don'tknow, but they will go to an
(24:34):
event, they will see a KOL andit could be from a remote
monitoring company, it could bewhatever the hell it is, and
therefore they go and they buyit, instead of realizing that
the modality, the remotemonitoring, right, chat,
whatever it is, invisalignClearLight, whatever it is has
to fit the model that you'retrying to run and what you're
(24:57):
trying to get out of your life,your career and your business.
That has to come first, andthen you go and you pick the
companies that fit into thatmodel and then that absolutely
goes into reimagining.
That's why so many of you areall over the place, like you'll
try this remote monitoringcompany for two weeks and then
say, ah, it doesn't work andyou'll throw it in the trash
(25:20):
when, when it works, great, it'syou.
And and I mean what are your?
What?
Speaker 3 (25:22):
are your thoughts?
What are your thoughts on that?
Well, a hundred percent and andthat I discovered a lot of that
in my step number two, whereyou work the P&L and you run the
P&L Because I can't afford topay my dental monitoring bill, I
can't afford to pay my ortho-fibill, I can't afford to pay my
(25:44):
right chat bill and I certainlycan't afford to pay my
Invisalign bill if I have myoffice staffed with those 16
people that I did in atraditional braces and wires
practice.
So by running the P&L andanalyzing your P&L, you figure
out what do you want in there?
What do you want to do Now?
(26:06):
For me it's like I don't needthis many people.
Other people will look at itand say, well, I don't need the
remote monitoring, I don't needthe Invisalign.
But for what I wanted out ofthe practice and the efficiency
that I thought I could gain, Ikept the technology and I got
rid of other things that wedidn't need with the technology
(26:28):
and the outsourcing we didn'tneed with the technology and the
outsourcing.
But it doesn't start withbuying the outsourcing or buying
the technology and trying tofit it in to whatever model that
you have.
Speaker 1 (26:39):
Yeah, that's a great point.
Earlier, you had brought up TimFerriss's book and I think
we're getting through to peoplemore than ever before and it's
becoming more of a norm.
But as we do this podcast today, new Patient Year has been
around 12 years.
So we're in our we're about toenter our 13th year.
So next November will be our13th year, which is crazy, and
(27:00):
one of the things I havepreached forever is, whether
you're a chef, whether you're anorthodontist, whether you're a
dentist, whether you're me orwhatever is, go outside your
freaking industry and learn fromjust people that are badass at
what they do, whatever.
It is right.
They've had seven companies andthey could all be plumbing
companies, whatever it is, andit is so hard to convince people
(27:24):
and no one's telling you don'tlisten to another doctor, don't
go to some of these events.
You should.
But where most of you cut thatoff is exactly what Bob was
describing is those famousentrepreneurs that can teach you
so much, which is exactly whatreally our purpose is inside
this industry.
(27:45):
They aren't doing dentistry,they aren't doing orthodontics,
et cetera like they are, butit's just like the chef To make
the restaurant extremelysuccessful.
It goes way beyond the food Tomake your life extremely
successful.
It goes way beyond theorthodontics.
It's all of this stuff thatwe're talking about, your
(28:06):
thoughts.
Speaker 3 (28:09):
Yeah, a hundred percent.
I mean it's, it's, it's, it'sinteresting.
You know it's alwaysinteresting.
As you've been in your careerfor 25 years plus, you know, you
, you, you start to see a lot ofthings.
A lot of people talk to you andand and what we're finding now,
because we're, we're now as agroup, scaling um, what, what,
(28:31):
what I'm doing with ClearCut,with the Invisalign only,
clearaligner only boutiquesatellite model, and these young
orthodontists coming out ofschool, they realize what you
just said that we don't know howto run a business, we don't
know what's going on and we needhelp and we want mentorship.
(28:53):
The younger orthodontists thathave been out say, less than 10
years, that we talk to say, well, what would you want to come
into our system, into ournetwork?
You know, do this.
And the overriding answer ismentorship.
We want mentorship.
We don't know how to do.
This answer is mentorship.
(29:16):
We want mentorship.
We don't know how to do this.
And, yes, you have to listen topeople and learn from people
that know things different thanyou do.
And that's a different mindsetthan like when I came out, you
know, 25 years ago.
It's like all right, I got myorthodontic degree, I know it
(29:38):
all.
I'm just going to go conquerthe world.
Now they say I want mentorship,I want training.
I don't know how to get out thereal world will do this but I
do want to own a business and Ido want control over my life.
Back to your point of what isgrowth and what is your number
and what do you need?
Most of these youngorthodontists like no, I want
control.
I don't want to work forsomebody, I want to own it, but
I don't know what the hell I'mdoing.
I need mentorship.
Speaker 1 (29:59):
Yeah, I see a lot.
I mean we have and this was notthe case five plus years ago,
but it is now so we have a tonof residents that listen to this
podcast.
We have tons of doctors thatare going to become and open up
their first practice ascustomers in the mastermind
group, and we see it exactlywhat you just said and a lot of
(30:19):
them.
What they've told me is that,yeah, I kind of want two
different types of mentors right, the orthodontist that's great
clinically, you know that's one.
But then also find a reallysuccessful entrepreneur and it
may happen to be anotherorthodontist that's great
clinically, you know that's one.
But then also find a reallysuccessful entrepreneur, and it
may happen to be anotherorthodontist, or it may be a
person like myself.
Whatever it may be is they wanta business mentor and a
(30:42):
clinical one, and sometimesthat's the same person, but
oftentimes that's two totallydifferent ones and it's just
becoming a niche that I havefound that they truly enjoy from
this podcast and you know,listening to people like you're,
like yourself.
Hey everybody.
Brian, right here, I hopeyou're enjoying the first
episode of season eight,certainly when Bob and I get
together.
You know he's a longtimecustomer, longtime friend of
(31:05):
mine we get together.
We can go on and on and onabout some awesome things, so
hopefully you're getting a lotout of it.
I want 2025 to be the year thatyou took action.
Become a part of my mastermindgroup.
I'm going to put a link in thedescription below that you can
click on that'll take anddiscuss what you get as being a
mastermind member of New PatientGroup.
There are so manyforward-thinking doctors and
(31:26):
it's a really cool mix ofdoctors that are just opening up
their business to ones thatmight be opening up in a year to
the biggest names in theindustry and people in between
Unbelievable forward thinkingclinicians.
In the group you know we meettogether every single month on
Zoom.
We have our spouse doctorin-person event.
You also get a trip to my houseto stay with me for some
(31:47):
business and life stuff.
And look, you is difficult whenyou decide to own a company.
It is a really hard thing andwe are here to guide you through
that ever-evolving process.
Click on that link.
Learn more about it.
There's gonna be a Calendlylink as well.
It'll be to Stephanie Solomon'sCalendly link.
Click that.
Schedule a 10, 15-minuteconsultation with her to learn
(32:09):
more.
Become a part of my mastermindgroup and look forward to seeing
you as a part of the MPGmastermind family.
Now let's get back to today'sepisode.
Speaker 3 (32:17):
And I would say, oftentimes it's several people.
It's really never just onepeople, right, it's several
people.
It's people that you'llactually maybe meet and see, and
it's people that you may justread their book, it's people
that you may just watch aYouTube video on.
But I think it's a multitude ofpeople that you need to listen
(32:39):
to and need to evolve yourmindset and evolve your skill
set.
Speaker 1 (32:45):
Yeah, no, I think that's a good point and it's
like I said, the masses.
It's hard to convince, but Ithink it's becoming more and
more the norm.
So I want to recap a little bithere.
One, like I said earlier, thisis not going to be.
Obviously, bob's very involvedwith Align technology, so am I.
This is not a message that isgoing to excite the corporations
(33:08):
out there, but it is importantfor all of you as the
corporations understand how ourminds think, because and just
like what you said earlier thedown 1% and the down 6% a
corporation views that and theboard is not going to be happy.
Those are not numbers and acorporation's never going to
look at it.
How can we set things up so ourreps work less?
(33:28):
Right?
That's not the way your worldworks.
It is the way our world works,right.
That's the point of owning yourown company is eventually make
your magic number and work lessand less and less every year.
Easier said than done.
A lot of people never achieve it.
A lot of people never evenachieve their magic number.
They don't have the time toactually enjoy it.
And, like I said, I dounderstand a lot of you out
(33:49):
there.
Your magic number may be X and,because the industry got their
butt hammered last year, a lotof you may not even be close to
it, but I still think a lot ofthis applies to everybody out
there, because even if you'renot close to it one, you have to
identify it, and I don't thinka lot of people even have their
number identified.
I mean, you could probably goand ask an audience of a
(34:10):
thousand and the majority ofthem are not going to know what
that magic number is.
And you got to know it, agreed.
Speaker 3 (34:19):
Yeah, approximately, approximately.
I mean see, I yeah, I mean I'veI've never stressed myself out
with stuff like that.
But but part of part of thereason I don't is and you know
me well enough I mean I have themindset that you know I don't
know if I'm the richest guy orthe poorest guy in any of these
(34:39):
rooms, but I feel like I havemore money than I could ever
spend in one lifetime, and youknow a lot of that maybe is you
know, I'm the first one in myfamily to go to college.
I grew up in a house that'sliterally the size of my kitchen
right now, so I have more thanI could ever use.
So it's somewhat that with themindset too.
(35:04):
And my car is now 10 years old,but it's a Porsche, so I mean
I'm not going to complain aboutthat.
Speaker 1 (35:12):
No, you can't complain about it, but also
you'll get a new one if youwanted to.
Speaker 3 (35:16):
Yeah, so some of it with the numbers.
I've never freaked myself outwith the numbers and I'm a
little different that way,because every financial guy
we've ever had is like what'syour number, what's this?
Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah,and I guess we know
approximately.
But you get to a point whereit's like you just you have
enough.
Speaker 1 (35:36):
That's all you need and I don't worry about it.
Well, and that when I talkabout, I mean you know me well
enough to where I'm very weirdwhen it comes to looking at
numbers.
But all of you, you don't needto stress, but you do need to
know the digits.
You know, if you're a personthat and Bob's a relatively
simple guy when it comes to this, right If you are somebody that
wants eight cars, a boat, youknow, three homes, a plane,
(35:59):
things like that, your number'sgoing to be different and I
think it's important for all ofyou to still know it.
But really, the point of knowingit and this is just what Bob
has done is there's no point ifyour magic take home numbers
around 500.
Like I said, it changes right,next year it may change to 550
or 450.
(36:19):
The number is always evolving,because you should be always
evolving.
But there is little to no pointin working harder and longer
hours, et cetera, et cetera, totry to bring home 600 grand when
500 grand gets you everythingyou would ever dream of getting.
There is no point.
The point of that is everythingabove the 500 number you should
outsource, you should makethings easier on yourself and
(36:41):
work less Makes sense, right.
Speaker 3 (36:44):
Yeah, well, and that's and the biggest
commonality I see, and thebiggest problem I see is people
will want it.
It will go from 500 to 600, butthey'll work three times as
much.
Speaker 2 (36:55):
Exactly.
Speaker 3 (36:56):
And it's not worth it .
It's not like it's not likethey work an extra hour a week
to go to that.
They work an extra two days aweek and it doesn't make sense
at all.
Um, but it's interesting.
If any reps are listening orcompanies are listening, can we
go back to that for a second?
Sure, because here's where it'scoming, because they are Okay,
(37:17):
because here's where it's comingwith that, because we've.
We now there's a group oforthodontists we're organizing
into.
It's technically a DSO.
It's a legacy DSO.
It's not a private a DSO.
It's a legacy DSO.
It's not a private equity DSO.
But we consider ourselves clearaligner orthodontists.
We consider that now asubspecialty and we're creating
(37:42):
a network of aligner-only,invisalign-only practices as
orthodontic specialists.
Now we're having conversationswith people that you know and
I've spoken for these people,like Dental Monitoring, orthophi
, invisalign, because I don'twant to do more cases and I'm
not going to be a biggercustomer for them.
(38:03):
But we are creating a veryscalable, very efficient model.
By doing that we're able totrain, mentor, young docs that
can own their own practice, havea very efficient, high
profitability practice and thenthey use those products because
(38:23):
they need to use those productsto make this efficient.
So I'm not and the other youknow the Regina Blevins and John
White and the other people inthis group they're not looking
to spend a whole lot more moneywith these companies.
But as we train and mentorthese young people coming in,
these companies will thrivebecause there's more people
(38:47):
using their product in a moreefficient way and we're really
trying to create this nextgeneration of orthodontists that
do it efficiently and are doingit in this modality where they
don't have to work their ass offall week.
So that's where it's comingwith the companies and we're
(39:07):
getting pretty good feedbackwith a lot of these companies
because, again, I've beenfortunate I've got to meet a lot
of the CEOs and a lot of thehigher ups in these things just
from doing some talks for them.
But you're right To your point.
It flies in the face of whatthey do and especially with
their reps, it's like sell, sell, sell.
Get them to do more next year.
(39:27):
Well, maybe not, maybe.
Just let them scale this, letthese senior docs train these
junior docs.
The senior docs will get agreat exit strategy without
selling their life away and thiscreates a whole generation of
(39:47):
younger docs that will use thatcompany's product, whatever that
company may be.
And that's where I think thebig companies need to get to to
see the future.
Now the challenge with that andevery CEO, every executive,
every major company will admitthis.
They're worried about nextquarter, absolutely, you know.
(40:10):
I mean, we're worried about thenext three years, five years,
10 years.
They're worried about the nextquarter and I'm not going to
help them in the next quarter,but three years from now, when
we have a network of theseoffices, that's when we help
them For sure.
So some of it's that long-termversus short-term vision too,
and a lot of what we're doingand a lot of Brian, what you and
(40:39):
I have done is a long-termvision.
We don't necessarily sit downand say we're going to do this,
this, this and next quarter it'sgoing to go up 20%.
This is more of a long-termvision.
We're playing the long gamewith this.
Speaker 1 (40:49):
Which is hard because of so much instant
gratification.
Now I mean, I see this withwith customers that may.
Usually what happens with uswhen people come aboard is year
one, um, and this varies, butthe majority of the time year
one, they grow, whether theywant to or not they grow.
Year two, it happens again, andthen sometimes year three for
(41:09):
all kinds of different reasons.
It kind of stalls out for awhile and that could go year
three for all kinds of differentreasons.
It kind of stalls out for awhile and that could go year
three and four.
And if they get through it andmake the right changes in year
three and four, they skyrocketin five, six, seven, etc.
Six, seven years down the roadnot tomorrow.
(41:35):
And that is so hard especiallythe younger doctors listening.
You grew up in an instantgratification world.
The reality is to get it onautopilot is hard and it takes
time.
It absolutely takes time.
And if you can be looking fiveplus years down the road and
make the right moves to getthere, you're going to enjoy it.
But it's hard for some people.
The moment they stall out yearthree and four, they freak out
(41:55):
Even though things are stillgoing great.
They just can't see it becausethe paper a lot of times doesn't
show it to you, right?
It's even like what youdescribed.
You know, down 1%.
Speaker 3 (42:04):
You said you were down 1% on what and then 6% on
the other what was that Downlike 1% on production and like
6% on starts, which means thatwe raised our fees.
Okay, and we did.
We did some very strategic umfee changes this year.
Um.
The other book I always talkabout is blue ocean strategy.
We, we had a we talked aboutthat on something Um, and we we
(42:29):
raised some of our fees um, um,and we, we raised some of our
fees um pretty nicely, and Ilowered some other fees Um, so I
strategically changed the wholefee structure in there.
Um, but um, that keeps theproduction up, um, even though
the starts are down.
Speaker 1 (42:45):
Right, yep, I love the idea, and I mean also, for
all of this is, again, not whattoday's about, but I I think it
all goes into this.
Reimagining growth is.
Bob fully understands that.
You don't just wake up one dayand say we want to jack up our
fees because it's going to allowme to work less, like, if
you're going to raise the feesand for some of you you know
you're in higher income areasthan others, blah, blah, blah.
But if you're going to raiseyour fees, there has to be at
(43:08):
least what I teach.
There has to be at least what Iteach.
There has to be an enhancedexperience along the way to do
it.
And this is the other thing thatdrives me nuts about this
industry is you'll get people upthere on stage saying raise
your fees to an audience of athousand.
They go back and raise theirfees and everything goes to hell
because there's nothing from apeople business first standpoint
.
That improves with it.
(43:29):
And it drives me nuts.
And he gets me what are yourthoughts?
Because this does I mean.
That improves with it.
And, and it drives me nuts.
And he gets me what are your?
What are your thoughts?
Cause this does I mean.
That's why it could go into amillion things in this
re-imagining growth.
Speaker 3 (43:37):
That's.
That's an extremely importantpoint that you just made about
raising fees, um and and, andI'm seeing that in the last year
, year and a half or so, thecorporate cause I've I've always
been within a few miles, fivemiles of corporate offices and
I've seen now people coming in,you know, second, third opinions
and all of a sudden nowcorporate's charging more than
(44:02):
me and they'll look at it andthey'll start making comments
like, well, but you're evencheaper, why wouldn't we come
here?
And it's like, it's like fromthe numbers they're showing me
and the quotes that they bringin from some of these other
offices, you know they're theyraise, they must have raised
their fees a couple thousanddollars in the last couple of
(44:24):
years and they still have thedifferent orthodontist every
year, different staff every sixmonths.
So to your point.
That's a very important pointbecause you can't just sit down
and say, look at my P&L, I'mgoing to raise my fees.
You have to go and you have tochange that whole workflow
experience.
You know the techniques you use, the technologies you use.
(44:47):
You have to have that wholestructure in place, otherwise
they're going to look at thatand say why would I pay that
there?
Because?
So that's an extremelyimportant point, because people
will tell you to raise your feesand if you have a half-assed
practice that can't support it,it's not going to work.
Speaker 1 (45:06):
Well, and this is if I wrap it up on this, but you
get this.
I mean, you've heard me preachthis a thousand times, but it
just goes back to you.
All are people first businesses.
And people do not understandwhy you're 2,000 more than their
other opinions If your peopleare not trained on sales and
hospitality, communication andverbiage and presentation and
(45:29):
psychology all these things thatwe go around all over the place
teaching every business, and wejust found a niche in the
orthodental world.
That's how you raise your fees.
Now, obviously you got to be agreat clinician, just like a
great chef.
That's part of it, part of thebundle, but it can't be the only
bundle.
Your team has to be trained onthis stuff from experts and how
to happen to apply it in theortho, dental et cetera world.
(45:51):
So I see it drives me and Ifeel bad for a lot of the
doctors.
They go back and sabotage theirbusiness just because they hear
things from some guy or girl onstage.
They go back, do it and it'syou know.
The one on stage runs a totallydifferent business model, wants
something totally different outof their life.
Their magic take home number isdifferent and yet they're
telling you to run your businessthe same way.
Speaker 3 (46:12):
It drives me crazy, it doesn't work and you're 100%
right and also, to that point,what we're attempting to do with
this, with our Vanguard groupand our Vanguard DSO, is we
provide the mentoring for whatyou exactly said.
It's training with people likeyou, but it's also mentoring
(46:35):
from a senior doc thatunderstands that.
It takes all of that, becausethere's, you know, people will
go to meetings all day long andprobably 3% of the people in
that crowd will actually everimplement anything.
Maybe, maybe, maybe, exactly.
So the future is, yes, trainingon that so you can actually
(46:56):
raise the fees, but also thementoring on that.
I mean, as orthodontists, wedon't get that, we don't know
that, and there's a relativelysmall group of us that
understands it and does it, andthat's what we want to scale at
this point and that's what Ithink the future of orthodontics
is.
I mean, if we're going toremain a specialty and if we're
(47:19):
going to remain one of the bestspecialties out there, we're
going to have to do stuff likethat.
Yeah, no.
Speaker 1 (47:26):
I love it.
Good stuff, man.
Yeah, yeah, I mean I just thewhole.
We knew this.
We talked before we, before werecorded the podcast on how this
topic, while mainly abouttracking how much you're working
, finding out how much you'remaking an hour, you know,
finding your take-home number itwas really the the the main
message, and re-imagining growth, but it's everything that we're
(47:47):
talking about today.
Every single thing goes intoall of you re-imagining growth.
And so many say the new patientgroup customers.
I think 80% of them were uplast year, which is something
we're really proud of.
I think 30% had their best yearever.
I think that's the data, butthere are still some that we're
hurting.
But if you just do, the pointis is, if you just do these
(48:09):
things, you will be fine.
You will have more fun, maybenot every year, but you're going
to be fine.
You don't have to fall intothis trap that a lot of you fall
into, that if the industry'sdown, you're down, the
industry's up, you may be up.
It doesn't have to be that way,but you do have to reimagine
(48:32):
how you're doing.
Things.
Period, things, period, agreed,yeah, agreed.
He agrees with everything I say.
Speaker 3 (48:35):
Well, yeah, and can I wrap it up something really
quick?
A quick point we talked about.
I just wrote a book.
I can't remember what the bookwas, but it talked about like
the internet and um, and it saidthat way too many people think
of the internet as a noun.
It's not.
It's a verb, it's not a thing,it's a process.
It's an ever-evolving thing.
(48:57):
And when we talk about growthin an orthodontic practice,
that's not a noun, that's not atwo or three tangible line thing
, that's a verb.
That's something that changesall the time and evolves all the
time, and I think that's animportant way to look at it.
Speaker 1 (49:17):
Well, it's a brilliant point and it's see, I
called you brilliant, yeah,thanks.
But this is among many otherreasons.
One of the reasons I startedthis company 12 plus years ago
was every year it evolves.
And if you're just hiringcompany A and this is how,
unfortunately, I think, a lot ofyou do it If you're just hiring
company A for this year andcompany B and C and D, and
(49:40):
you're just all over thefreaking place, you don't have a
consistent messaging withinyour office that's going to help
you evolve as the times changeand et cetera.
So that's why I like being apart of the practice, because
next year is different than thisyear and et cetera, et cetera.
So, thanks for coming on, man,thanks for having me.
(50:00):
This should have been a goodway to kick off season eight.
So we're doing some differentthings this year.
I'm going to bring in some moreguests than we normally do and
things like that.
So good stuff.
All of you re-imagine growth.
Is there anything else you wantto talk to him about?
Speaker 3 (50:16):
No, not that I can do in under three hours.
So no, I'm good, we'll have youback on.
We'll do it, okay, cool.
Speaker 1 (50:22):
Because I think about 10 things we talked about today
is a podcast in itself for sure, so we can spin this off in a
lot of different directions, butappreciate it everybody.
Until next time.
Appreciate you all.
Following the podcast, pleasethumb this up on YouTube, make
some comments, give us afive-star review on whatever
outlet you're listening to thepodcast on, and we'll talk to
(50:43):
everybody soon.
Bye-bye.
Hey, new patient group and Right Chat Nation.
Welcome inside the broadcastbooth, brian Wright here, and
welcome in to the very firstepisode of season eight as we
get 2025 rolling.
Happy New Year to everybody.
As this is coming out onJanuary 1st, 2025 is here.
Crazy.
It sounds so futuristic to me.
I don't know what it is about2025 that is so different than
(00:20):
2024, but for some reason Idon't know what it is.
It just sounds very futuristic.
Next thing, you know we'regoing to be remember Back to the
Future, part Two, flying carsand everything.
It just feels like we'regetting day by day closer to all
of the flying taxis and carsand just seems futuristic.
But I hope everybody had agreat Christmas.
I know our kids are still inSanta mode, so it was amazing
(00:42):
here that our household here inColorado Springs and boy oh boy,
am I ready to get season eightkicked off with a bang.
Today we're going to be talkingabout reimagining growth.
Now, there's several thingsthat go into reimagining growth
and several things and I'll bebringing in the great Dr Bob
Skopak here shortly there areseveral things that we talk
about today, so it's not just aone simple thing or one thing we
(01:04):
want you to do, but this issomething you know if you're a
rep out there.
You run a corporation out there, so you work for one and or run
one.
This is not messaging thatyou're going to get excited
about, but it is important.
Reps out there because we havea huge rep following Listen to
this podcast.
You will become a better repthe more you understand and get
into the brain of what it's liketo be an entrepreneur.
(01:24):
But what I'm going to talk abouttoday is not something a
corporation is ever going tolook at it and go, wow, our
numbers on paper are down, butwe made more per hour, we worked
less and we hit our magictake-home number to where we
could live our dream life.
Right, that's going to be ahuge messaging today and so many
of you out there, you're nevergoing to go to an event and have
(01:46):
people talk about.
What you're going to learn onthis podcast today New ways to
track stats stats that you'reprobably not tracking, but you
should be All right.
We're going to dive into thatand much, much more on the very
first episode.
So let's kick off season eightwith the brand new intro music
and we'll see everybody on theother side with the brand new
intro music and we'll seeeverybody on the other side.
Speaker 2 (02:06):
The time for real change is now, when tough times
test us, we overcome.
When hardship hits us, wepersevere, we innovate, we
transform, we transform.
If you're ready to achievesomething special, buckle up and
(02:30):
get ready for the ride of yourlife.
Welcome to Season 8 of the NewPatient Group Audio Experience,
a podcast dedicated torevolutionizing lives, careers
and business.
So you, your team and yourpractice forever flourish in the
(02:51):
new economy.
And now your host.
He's a husband, father of two,a founder and CEO of New Patient
Group and RightChat faculty forAlign Technology, and a trusted
speaker for Invisalign andOrthoFi, brian Wright.
Speaker 1 (03:09):
Hey everybody, welcome in.
I get asked a lot how do youcome up with the intros and
things like that?
And hey look, I designed, Iwrote that one.
And the guy this is actuallypretty cool the guy that does
the podcast for me I've used foryears and when I went to hire
him on Fiverr is where I hirehim every single year when I
went in there I always listenedto a couple intros.
(03:31):
You know some of the new oneshe's had since I've, since I've
last used them and the veryfirst one he had on there was
the Ben Shapiro show.
So the guy you know he's reallymoving up.
The guy that does the podcastintro that you just heard,
that's who Ben Shapiro uses onhis show.
So he's really moved up in theworld.
He's becoming more and moresuccessful.
So props to him.
But I designed this podcastintro for season eight and I'm
(03:55):
thinking about it.
It may change throughout thisparticular season, but I like it
because so many of you outthere are hurting so many of you
out there and you're hurting.
A lot of it's self-induced, buta lot of it also is just look,
the economy sucked.
It's going to affect peoplemore in certain areas of the
country than it has others.
You can't force people to have.
(04:16):
This is why the dumbest thingyou can do when the economy's
down is advertise.
It's ridiculous, and a lot ofyou out there you know you.
Unfortunately you do it.
You spend money onpay-per-click when you can't
force people to have money tospend on orthodontics.
So what you have to dodentistry beyond.
So what you have to do isdouble down with all of the
holes that exist inside yourbusiness and man.
(04:38):
That is so hard to get peopleto do.
But I designed it because Iknow the people that listen to
this podcast New Patient GroupRight Chat family members out
there.
I'm so proud of you because youpersevered during this time.
You know, great leaders are notcreated when times are great.
Great leaders are born whentimes are difficult.
(04:59):
Right, they innovate, theypersevere, they transform, just
like the podcast intro does.
And I'm so proud of all of youout there because you keep
reinventing yourself.
You keep understanding is thatthe way you're going to grow
this year is not the same asnext year.
Right, the, the team that getsyou to your initial goal this
year may not be the team thatyou, that you have the two years
(05:19):
from now, because you're tryingto reach new heights.
You're always evolving and thatis what a great leader does,
make no mistake about it.
That is what a greatentrepreneur does, make no
mistake about it, and so many ofyou out there you have to
understand the days of going todental school, ortho school,
coming out making a ton of money.
They're over.
Some of you are still gettinglucky out there, but the
majority of you understand youhave to know different than a
(05:42):
chef.
That's commoditized.
It goes way beyond your food.
So that's how I came up withthat intro for season eight and
hopefully everybody likes it outthere because the messaging
it's true.
I want all of you, when timesare tough, to just love the
journey, that all of you fallinto right.
(06:04):
The journey needs to fuel yourfire.
It is going to be differentthat journey every single year.
The journey is going to bedifferent for all of you and you
have to love the entrepreneurside of it All.
Right now let's bring in thegreat Dr Bob Skopak.
How'd you like that?
The great?
Speaker 3 (06:22):
Wow, I didn't know if you were talking about me or
somebody else.
That's, that's, that's awesome.
Speaker 1 (06:27):
Did that make you feel good?
That made me feel good.
Yeah, we got our matching blackshirts on today.
Speaker 3 (06:32):
Yeah, I know, I know.
Yeah, you don't want me to gochange, I could go change.
Speaker 1 (06:37):
It's too late now.
We already started.
Speaker 3 (06:39):
Yeah, we're here.
We're here, Ready to go Matchand everything Should take a
survey and see who they thinklooks better in the black shirt.
Speaker 1 (06:46):
All right.
So in the YouTube descriptionbelow, after you all thumb this
baby up, you can make somecomments on whose black shirt
looks better.
Should have made you wear a hattoo.
We could have put that out,yeah, but hey, man, how was
Christmas?
Speaker 3 (07:04):
It was good.
Kids were home.
Kids were home for about a weekUm, and uh yeah, it was just
relaxing, just hanging out Um.
The only family now really wehave is my mom, who's local now
at this point.
Um so, yeah, it was.
It was good Just four or fiveof us hanging out, relaxing, and
now we're getting ready for newyear's.
Speaker 1 (07:25):
Nice, so the girls are gone yeah girls are gone.
Okay, so back to Chicago.
Chicago, where'd you sayChicago?
Speaker 3 (07:35):
and Memphis, Memphis, that's right.
How'd she end up in Memphis?
She worked for Smith Nephew,which is a they do like
orthopedics a lot of healthcare,wound healing orthopedics.
She's a biomechanical engineer,Okay, so she's worked with knee
replacements for them.
Now she's more of a productengineer.
So, she sells or not sells, butshe educates the docs on how to
(07:58):
use Smith and Nephew's products.
And they're big corporateheadquarters in the States.
One of them in the States is inMemphis.
Speaker 1 (08:08):
Okay, all right, does she like it?
She loves it, like Memphis,yeah, yeah, cool.
Well, I got a question and fora lot of you out there I mean
you know we teach a lot ofdifferent things on here and I
thought this would be a good oneto kick off season eight,
because a lot of you I said thisat the top a lot of you are
hurting out there.
I've got all kinds of datasaying the industry's down 15
(08:29):
plus percent conversions, dippedinto the high forties, blah,
blah, blah.
So the messaging today is youknow, we understand some of you
may look at this and go, no, Ineed to go beyond this because
I'm not even close to hitting mymagic number.
So we're going to dive intomore of that and I'm empathetic
(08:50):
to it.
But the main point today is isredefining growth and and this
will this would be a great wayto kick it off, because I'm
going to ask I'm going to askBob here in just a second did he
grow?
And when you hear the response,you're going to what most of
you are going to think is is theanswer's no, and he's going to,
he's going to re change yourmind, to redefine your mind
around this.
So let's kick it off.
Did you grow last year?
Speaker 3 (09:08):
Um, I feel, I feel that I, yes, I grew tremendously
.
However, now my production, myproduction, is going to be down
about one and a half percent.
Starts are going to be downmaybe 6%, um, but I feel.
But I did grow tremendouslybecause I work 19 fewer days.
We've cut some hours, so we'renot working, we're not starting
(09:31):
as early, we're not starting aslate.
So, from that perspective, I'mmaking a lot more money per hour
, per day than I was in 2023.
So, yes, I feel like I grewtremendously.
I got a lot more efficient, butI'm not doing more cases.
(09:52):
I'm not spending more moneywith my labs.
I'm not spending more moneywith my monitoring companies.
I'm not spending more money onemployees because I'm adding
days and I'm adding patients perday.
So I'm working a lot moreefficiently.
But if you wanted to look at mynumbers the way most people
(10:14):
look at numbers now, I'm downabout a percent or so.
Speaker 1 (10:17):
Well, this is what I want to talk about for a minute,
and I also mentioned this moretowards on the on the intro,
mentioned this more towards onthe on the intro.
So this is not an episode thatyou know.
We we have a huge rep followingon this podcast, from from
Invisalign to OrthoPhi to DentalMonitoring to tons of others,
and this is an example repslistening on.
The more you learn about whatit's like to be an entrepreneur,
(10:40):
the better, because acorporation whether you work as
a rep for a corporation or yourun in Invisalign, align
Technology, whatever it may beyou are never going to look at
numbers this way, because you'renever going to look at a data
sheet and say we were down apercent or six percent, like Bob
is describing, yet you grew.
You're never going to look atit that way.
But the idea for all of you outthere business owners, that is
(11:04):
is how you can set things up ina way that every year, you make
your magic number.
So let's say, your magic numberis 500 grand.
Just throwing that number outthere for now is how do you hit
that take home number everysingle year while working less?
And the data he just gave you?
A lot of you out there andyou're never going to hear this
stuff in an event.
They all teach you how to domore new patients, more, more,
(11:25):
more, more, more, more, more,but they don't teach you how to
do more with less.
And a stat all of you need tobe very into is a stat he just
gave.
He knows it is how many workingdays did you have this year
versus how many working days didyou have last year?
If he doesn't know that number,correct me if I'm wrong.
If he doesn't know that number,there's no way he could sit
(11:47):
here and tell you he grew, eventhough the numbers on paper are
down.
Make sense.
Speaker 3 (11:52):
And that's.
You're exactly right and that'sa very easy, simple thing to
track, simple KPI to track.
The next level of that, whichhas taken me time to really get
there is how much you make perhour.
Tim Ferriss's four-hourworkweek book was very impactful
(12:13):
on me and he talks about howbusiness owners and
entrepreneurs should look at howmuch money they make per hour.
Now I'm not punching a clock,I'm never going to punch a clock
, I'll never know exactly.
But yes, it's about the day'swork.
But you know, if I'm working afour-hour day and I'm starting
(12:34):
five people and doing four exams, you know that's a lot of
production and that's a lot ofefficiency per hour and that's a
lot of efficiency per hour.
Now, if I'm working a 10-hourday and I'm doing three starts
and three exams, that's not asefficient of a day.
So you're right, the number ofdays you work per year is a very
(12:54):
simple, easy KPI to start with.
But the next level is how muchyou make per hour, how much you
produce per hour.
Speaker 1 (13:03):
I'm going to ask you a follow-up question to that in
just a second.
But this is, you know, for somany of you out there, you chose
to own your own business, soyou're an entrepreneur.
Now, there's two differentthings.
I'm going to be doing anepisode, probably this season,
about the difference between abusiness owner and an
entrepreneur.
Those are two very, verydifferent things and,
unfortunately, many of you outthere run your business as a
business owner, not anentrepreneur.
(13:24):
Now, one of the examples ofthat is what we're talking about
.
As a true entrepreneur, you donot open up your own business
and risk everything your houseand have student loans and
millions in debt to make alittle money and have no time to
enjoy it.
The goal for all of you outthere is to be make as much
money as you can in the fewestpossible days, every single,
(13:47):
every single year, and a lot ofyou do not set that up and, like
we said, the number changes.
If you're opening up a practicenext week and you're a single
dude, as an example, your magictake home number that you need
to hit is going to be far lessthan when you have three kids
and a wife, et cetera.
So this number is an ever going, ever evolving number that all
of you should know.
You should know to live mydream life and do whatever I
(14:09):
want in life, this is the amountof money I have to take home
this year to do it, and this ishow much time I've got to have
to be able to do it, becausenothing worse than making a ton
of money and not being able toenjoy any of it because the
business is sucking you dry.
So how do you the KPI, like wesaid, like the number of days
(14:29):
work?
That's an easy thing to track.
But when you take it to whichall of you out there need to be
tracking that when you take itto the next level and how much
money you're making per hour,how are you tracking that?
Speaker 3 (14:41):
I, it, it.
It's always going to be anapproximation because I don't
punch a clock and I don't thinkany of us, as business owners,
are going to punch a clock.
But what I will literally do isI go through every month and I
look at how many days for thatmonth that I worked and I
approximate the hours that Ispent doing that.
Now there's also hours likethis.
(15:05):
I mean, now I technically Icould count this as a working
hour.
I generally don't, because I dothis because I choose to and I
enjoy it and I'm having fundoing this and I'm not making
money doing this.
So I track more the hours perthose days that I spent making
(15:28):
money in quotes, and that's howI do it, and I just approximate
it and I write it down.
And I write it down every month.
Speaker 1 (15:36):
You know, one of the things that you said and this is
something everybody I trackmyself and it's a little bit
hard.
You know, new patient group isnot a company that can really
grow without putting more hoursin, at least for me RightChat,
another company, is right.
That company can grow and itcan grow without me having to do
all the work.
So I look at data differentlyfor both of those companies.
(15:57):
Now, for most of you listeningout there, you don't have
multiple companies.
You have one.
You have your practice, eventhough it may be multiple
locations or a single.
So you've got to look at thingsdifferently.
But the one thing all of youneed to do and this is not
really what today is about, butat the same time it is in this
reimagining growth is you haveto design the business in a way
to do things that you love.
(16:19):
I have talked to so many chefsthroughout the years that hate
what they do because thebusiness completely sucked all
the fun out of being a greatchef, dealing with the people
and the HR and all this crapthat all of you have to deal
with as well, and I view you allas the chef right and a lot of
(16:40):
you have the fun sucked out ofthe practice because you don't
get to do what you love to do.
So the point is, what I want totalk about here for a minute is
how you design things in a waythat allows you to do what you
love and outsource the otherthings and make them do the
things that you don't love right, and take a lot of that
pressure off and I want you totalk about that for a minute and
(17:03):
you have two different businessmodels with your practices as
well.
Speaker 3 (17:07):
Well, and here's the first thing I think that we all
have to realize and we just hadthis conversation a while ago
it's like if you look at, say,engineers, for example, or chefs
, let's put engineers and chefsin the same category.
They're very good technicians.
They know how to do their taskvery well.
Most of them don't know how torun a business.
(17:29):
Very few engineers and chefswill run a successful business.
Most of them work for somebodyelse, doing their task and doing
their craft.
That's the same thing withorthodontics and dentistry.
We are trained as technicians,we are trained to do our craft.
We're not trained to own abusiness, but yet most of us do
(17:52):
own a business.
That's the difference.
Most dentists come out theydon't know anything about it,
but they do go run a business.
So the first thing is to justreally educate yourself and read
on the minds of some of thesegreat business people the Steve
Jobs, the Jeff Bezos, all theseguys that have been
(18:15):
entrepreneurs and run thebusiness, because you have to
think differently.
None of these business modelshave come about really, because
I'm an orthodontist Now, thefirst step to each one of them
(18:39):
is clinical excellence andknowing my clinical craft with
whatever tool or technique Iwant to use to the highest level
.
But then the whole businessmodel has nothing to do with
what we learned as a dentist oran orthodontist or as an
engineer or as a chef.
I mean, it's a completelydifferent skill set.
So to do that, I think youfirst have to do a lot of
reading, you have to educateyourself and you have to think
(19:00):
very differently, becausethere's different steps for each
of us.
I mean, and the steps that Iwent through to kind of develop
this model is, first andforemost, I became an expert at
the technique I do, and I'm aclear aligner orthodontist.
I'm 97% clear aligners.
I'm 97% Invisalign.
(19:21):
I consider myself a clear lineorthodontist.
Now I was Invisalign certified24 years ago and I sucked at it
for a good 10, 12 years.
At least you can admit it.
Well, I can, and quite honestly, I think the product sucked,
and I sucked initially.
Now I don't believe that.
(19:43):
But so, first and foremost, Igot myself, I got myself
educated on that clinical skillset.
Then you have to learn how towork a P&L and run a P&L.
And if nobody knows what I meanby P&L, just go out there and
learn about a P&L and a profitand loss statement.
(20:03):
I think it's one of thesimplest yet most impactful
financial statements you canhave.
You look at the P&L what am Imaking money on?
What am I losing money on?
What do I need to change inthere?
From there, I worked on myworkflows and my operations and
my systems and what I needed tobuy or what I needed to get rid
(20:26):
of, what I could outsource, whatI couldn't outsource, and I
think a lot of people make themistake of starting with that,
when you should really startwith.
Here's how I want my practiceto go.
Here's the technique I want touse.
I'm going to get great at it.
Okay, now I'm going to figureout am I making money, am I
losing money and why?
What do I change so I can makemoney or lose money?
(20:50):
And then what are the importantKPIs that I need to track after
that?
And those are things.
I think that's a littledifferent order than most people
will go through.
For sure it is Because mostpeople will go listen to that
KOL get up on stage and say, gotry Brand X because it's a game
changer.
Well, it's not a game changerunless it fits my P&L and unless
(21:14):
I can use it to the highestlevel.
So that's what I've figured out.
With what I've done and the wayI've looked at it, you got to
get your clinical craft to thehighest level with whatever you
want to use.
You have to look at your P&Land work the P&L and run the P&L
to create profit in there.
Then you modify your systems,your workflows, your operations,
(21:36):
your outsourcing, your products, wherever you're going to buy,
to make that P&L profitable andthen you determine the KPIs
you're going to track.
Speaker 1 (21:45):
Well, a couple of things that you the reason I
said, at least you can admit itis, you know, after being
obviously I'm not a clinician,but I've had the fortunate being
of being around really the bestof the best in this industry.
I mean, they're all ourcustomers I don't know how we
did it, but they are.
And looking at Jeff Paschal,you, rob Schaefer, boyd Whitlock
(22:09):
, I could go on and on.
I'm going to leave out a ton ofMarco.
I'm going to leave out a ton ofnames, can't name them all and
the cases they're knocking outwith clear aligners are just
insane.
But then you look at so much ofthe industry still and this
isn't what today is about, butit is about those four steps
that Bob just mentioned areabsolutely critical, because
(22:29):
there's so many of you out therestill that are convinced you
can't do some of these caseswith aligners.
And I think and I'm just goingto say it, you can tell me if
I'm wrong, but I think that's anongoing CE problem.
If you know, you've got 10orthos knocking out an
Invisalign case that another 10say you can't do it with, and
you're knocking it out like andit's just insane, in five visits
(22:52):
or something, what else couldit be other than a CE problem?
Speaker 3 (22:56):
Well, and you're right and see, that's where I
think number one with everythingwe talk about or we preach
about is a CE problem.
It's like and I'm going to usethe MARPI, Sarpy, SFOT, surgical
expansion stuff as anotherexample I don't do that, I'm not
good at that, I haven't takenCE on it.
(23:19):
But I'm going to give a shoutout to Jeremy Emanuele, who's in
Vegas, who I've met, who'sphenomenal.
He's a brilliant dude.
I love that guy.
That's his thing and he doesthat to a very high level and in
his practice that's a big partof his business and his practice
.
That's great.
(23:39):
He knows how to do that.
I don't I have a CE problem withMARPIs, SARPs and SFOTs and I
choose not to do it, and you'reright.
Other people will have that CEproblem with clear aligners and
that's where, again, it getsback to number one, where you
have to choose what do you wantto do and what's your modality
(24:00):
of choice and then learn it andbe great at it.
But, yes, 100%, it all comesback to fundamentally that CE
and learning how to do that at ahigh level.
Speaker 1 (24:13):
Jeremy, if you're listening, I want you to know
that he's never called mebrilliant and never said he
loves me, so I just wanted tomake that clear for the record.
You're a special guy, clearly.
The other piece to that is andI see this all the time and it
drives me nuts and I think thatjust people don't.
They don't know what they don'tknow, but they will go to an
(24:34):
event, they will see a KOL andit could be from a remote
monitoring company, it could bewhatever the hell it is, and
therefore they go and they buyit, instead of realizing that
the modality, the remotemonitoring, right, chat,
whatever it is, invisalignClearLight, whatever it is has
to fit the model that you'retrying to run and what you're
(24:57):
trying to get out of your life,your career and your business.
That has to come first, andthen you go and you pick the
companies that fit into thatmodel and then that absolutely
goes into reimagining.
That's why so many of you areall over the place, like you'll
try this remote monitoringcompany for two weeks and then
say, ah, it doesn't work andyou'll throw it in the trash
(25:20):
when, when it works, great, it'syou.
And and I mean what are your?
What?
Speaker 3 (25:22):
are your thoughts?
What are your thoughts on that?
Well, a hundred percent and andthat I discovered a lot of that
in my step number two, whereyou work the P&L and you run the
P&L Because I can't afford topay my dental monitoring bill, I
can't afford to pay my ortho-fibill, I can't afford to pay my
(25:44):
right chat bill and I certainlycan't afford to pay my
Invisalign bill if I have myoffice staffed with those 16
people that I did in atraditional braces and wires
practice.
So by running the P&L andanalyzing your P&L, you figure
out what do you want in there?
What do you want to do Now?
(26:06):
For me it's like I don't needthis many people.
Other people will look at itand say, well, I don't need the
remote monitoring, I don't needthe Invisalign.
But for what I wanted out ofthe practice and the efficiency
that I thought I could gain, Ikept the technology and I got
rid of other things that wedidn't need with the technology
(26:28):
and the outsourcing we didn'tneed with the technology and the
outsourcing.
But it doesn't start withbuying the outsourcing or buying
the technology and trying tofit it in to whatever model that
you have.
Speaker 1 (26:39):
Yeah, that's a great point.
Earlier, you had brought up TimFerriss's book and I think
we're getting through to peoplemore than ever before and it's
becoming more of a norm.
But as we do this podcast today, new Patient Year has been
around 12 years.
So we're in our we're about toenter our 13th year.
So next November will be our13th year, which is crazy, and
(27:00):
one of the things I havepreached forever is, whether
you're a chef, whether you're anorthodontist, whether you're a
dentist, whether you're me orwhatever is, go outside your
freaking industry and learn fromjust people that are badass at
what they do, whatever.
It is right.
They've had seven companies andthey could all be plumbing
companies, whatever it is, andit is so hard to convince people
(27:24):
and no one's telling you don'tlisten to another doctor, don't
go to some of these events.
You should.
But where most of you cut thatoff is exactly what Bob was
describing is those famousentrepreneurs that can teach you
so much, which is exactly whatreally our purpose is inside
this industry.
(27:45):
They aren't doing dentistry,they aren't doing orthodontics,
et cetera like they are, butit's just like the chef To make
the restaurant extremelysuccessful.
It goes way beyond the food Tomake your life extremely
successful.
It goes way beyond theorthodontics.
It's all of this stuff thatwe're talking about, your
(28:06):
thoughts.
Speaker 3 (28:09):
Yeah, a hundred percent.
I mean it's, it's, it's, it'sinteresting.
You know it's alwaysinteresting.
As you've been in your careerfor 25 years plus, you know, you
, you, you start to see a lot ofthings.
A lot of people talk to you andand and what we're finding now,
because we're, we're now as agroup, scaling um, what, what,
(28:31):
what I'm doing with ClearCut,with the Invisalign only,
clearaligner only boutiquesatellite model, and these young
orthodontists coming out ofschool, they realize what you
just said that we don't know howto run a business, we don't
know what's going on and we needhelp and we want mentorship.
(28:53):
The younger orthodontists thathave been out say, less than 10
years, that we talk to say, well, what would you want to come
into our system, into ournetwork?
You know, do this.
And the overriding answer ismentorship.
We want mentorship.
We don't know how to do.
This answer is mentorship.
(29:16):
We want mentorship.
We don't know how to do this.
And, yes, you have to listen topeople and learn from people
that know things different thanyou do.
And that's a different mindsetthan like when I came out, you
know, 25 years ago.
It's like all right, I got myorthodontic degree, I know it
(29:38):
all.
I'm just going to go conquerthe world.
Now they say I want mentorship,I want training.
I don't know how to get out thereal world will do this but I
do want to own a business and Ido want control over my life.
Back to your point of what isgrowth and what is your number
and what do you need?
Most of these youngorthodontists like no, I want
control.
I don't want to work forsomebody, I want to own it, but
I don't know what the hell I'mdoing.
I need mentorship.
Speaker 1 (29:59):
Yeah, I see a lot.
I mean we have and this was notthe case five plus years ago,
but it is now so we have a tonof residents that listen to this
podcast.
We have tons of doctors thatare going to become and open up
their first practice ascustomers in the mastermind
group, and we see it exactlywhat you just said and a lot of
(30:19):
them.
What they've told me is that,yeah, I kind of want two
different types of mentors right, the orthodontist that's great
clinically, you know that's one.
But then also find a reallysuccessful entrepreneur and it
may happen to be anotherorthodontist that's great
clinically, you know that's one.
But then also find a reallysuccessful entrepreneur, and it
may happen to be anotherorthodontist, or it may be a
person like myself.
Whatever it may be is they wanta business mentor and a
(30:42):
clinical one, and sometimesthat's the same person, but
oftentimes that's two totallydifferent ones and it's just
becoming a niche that I havefound that they truly enjoy from
this podcast and you know,listening to people like you're,
like yourself.
Hey everybody.
Brian, right here, I hopeyou're enjoying the first
episode of season eight,certainly when Bob and I get
together.
You know he's a longtimecustomer, longtime friend of
(31:05):
mine we get together.
We can go on and on and onabout some awesome things, so
hopefully you're getting a lotout of it.
I want 2025 to be the year thatyou took action.
Become a part of my mastermindgroup.
I'm going to put a link in thedescription below that you can
click on that'll take anddiscuss what you get as being a
mastermind member of New PatientGroup.
There are so manyforward-thinking doctors and
(31:26):
it's a really cool mix ofdoctors that are just opening up
their business to ones thatmight be opening up in a year to
the biggest names in theindustry and people in between
Unbelievable forward thinkingclinicians.
In the group you know we meettogether every single month on
Zoom.
We have our spouse doctorin-person event.
You also get a trip to my houseto stay with me for some
(31:47):
business and life stuff.
And look, you is difficult whenyou decide to own a company.
It is a really hard thing andwe are here to guide you through
that ever-evolving process.
Click on that link.
Learn more about it.
There's gonna be a Calendlylink as well.
It'll be to Stephanie Solomon'sCalendly link.
Click that.
Schedule a 10, 15-minuteconsultation with her to learn
(32:09):
more.
Become a part of my mastermindgroup and look forward to seeing
you as a part of the MPGmastermind family.
Now let's get back to today'sepisode.
Speaker 3 (32:17):
And I would say, oftentimes it's several people.
It's really never just onepeople, right, it's several
people.
It's people that you'llactually maybe meet and see, and
it's people that you may justread their book, it's people
that you may just watch aYouTube video on.
But I think it's a multitude ofpeople that you need to listen
(32:39):
to and need to evolve yourmindset and evolve your skill
set.
Speaker 1 (32:45):
Yeah, no, I think that's a good point and it's
like I said, the masses.
It's hard to convince, but Ithink it's becoming more and
more the norm.
So I want to recap a little bithere.
One, like I said earlier, thisis not going to be.
Obviously, bob's very involvedwith Align technology, so am I.
This is not a message that isgoing to excite the corporations
(33:08):
out there, but it is importantfor all of you as the
corporations understand how ourminds think, because and just
like what you said earlier thedown 1% and the down 6% a
corporation views that and theboard is not going to be happy.
Those are not numbers and acorporation's never going to
look at it.
How can we set things up so ourreps work less?
(33:28):
Right?
That's not the way your worldworks.
It is the way our world works,right.
That's the point of owning yourown company is eventually make
your magic number and work lessand less and less every year.
Easier said than done.
A lot of people never achieve it.
A lot of people never evenachieve their magic number.
They don't have the time toactually enjoy it.
And, like I said, I dounderstand a lot of you out
(33:49):
there.
Your magic number may be X and,because the industry got their
butt hammered last year, a lotof you may not even be close to
it, but I still think a lot ofthis applies to everybody out
there, because even if you'renot close to it one, you have to
identify it, and I don't thinka lot of people even have their
number identified.
I mean, you could probably goand ask an audience of a
(34:10):
thousand and the majority ofthem are not going to know what
that magic number is.
And you got to know it, agreed.
Speaker 3 (34:19):
Yeah, approximately, approximately.
I mean see, I yeah, I mean I'veI've never stressed myself out
with stuff like that.
But but part of part of thereason I don't is and you know
me well enough I mean I have themindset that you know I don't
know if I'm the richest guy orthe poorest guy in any of these
(34:39):
rooms, but I feel like I havemore money than I could ever
spend in one lifetime, and youknow a lot of that maybe is you
know, I'm the first one in myfamily to go to college.
I grew up in a house that'sliterally the size of my kitchen
right now, so I have more thanI could ever use.
So it's somewhat that with themindset too.
(35:04):
And my car is now 10 years old,but it's a Porsche, so I mean
I'm not going to complain aboutthat.
Speaker 1 (35:12):
No, you can't complain about it, but also
you'll get a new one if youwanted to.
Speaker 3 (35:16):
Yeah, so some of it with the numbers.
I've never freaked myself outwith the numbers and I'm a
little different that way,because every financial guy
we've ever had is like what'syour number, what's this?
Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah,and I guess we know
approximately.
But you get to a point whereit's like you just you have
enough.
Speaker 1 (35:36):
That's all you need and I don't worry about it.
Well, and that when I talkabout, I mean you know me well
enough to where I'm very weirdwhen it comes to looking at
numbers.
But all of you, you don't needto stress, but you do need to
know the digits.
You know, if you're a personthat and Bob's a relatively
simple guy when it comes to this, right If you are somebody that
wants eight cars, a boat, youknow, three homes, a plane,
(35:59):
things like that, your number'sgoing to be different and I
think it's important for all ofyou to still know it.
But really, the point of knowingit and this is just what Bob
has done is there's no point ifyour magic take home numbers
around 500.
Like I said, it changes right,next year it may change to 550
or 450.
(36:19):
The number is always evolving,because you should be always
evolving.
But there is little to no pointin working harder and longer
hours, et cetera, et cetera, totry to bring home 600 grand when
500 grand gets you everythingyou would ever dream of getting.
There is no point.
The point of that is everythingabove the 500 number you should
outsource, you should makethings easier on yourself and
(36:41):
work less Makes sense, right.
Speaker 3 (36:44):
Yeah, well, and that's and the biggest
commonality I see, and thebiggest problem I see is people
will want it.
It will go from 500 to 600, butthey'll work three times as
much.
Speaker 2 (36:55):
Exactly.
Speaker 3 (36:56):
And it's not worth it .
It's not like it's not likethey work an extra hour a week
to go to that.
They work an extra two days aweek and it doesn't make sense
at all.
Um, but it's interesting.
If any reps are listening orcompanies are listening, can we
go back to that for a second?
Sure, because here's where it'scoming, because they are Okay,
(37:17):
because here's where it's comingwith that, because we've.
We now there's a group oforthodontists we're organizing
into.
It's technically a DSO.
It's a legacy DSO.
It's not a private a DSO.
It's a legacy DSO.
It's not a private equity DSO.
But we consider ourselves clearaligner orthodontists.
We consider that now asubspecialty and we're creating
(37:42):
a network of aligner-only,invisalign-only practices as
orthodontic specialists.
Now we're having conversationswith people that you know and
I've spoken for these people,like Dental Monitoring, orthophi
, invisalign, because I don'twant to do more cases and I'm
not going to be a biggercustomer for them.
(38:03):
But we are creating a veryscalable, very efficient model.
By doing that we're able totrain, mentor, young docs that
can own their own practice, havea very efficient, high
profitability practice and thenthey use those products because
(38:23):
they need to use those productsto make this efficient.
So I'm not and the other youknow the Regina Blevins and John
White and the other people inthis group they're not looking
to spend a whole lot more moneywith these companies.
But as we train and mentorthese young people coming in,
these companies will thrivebecause there's more people
(38:47):
using their product in a moreefficient way and we're really
trying to create this nextgeneration of orthodontists that
do it efficiently and are doingit in this modality where they
don't have to work their ass offall week.
So that's where it's comingwith the companies and we're
(39:07):
getting pretty good feedbackwith a lot of these companies
because, again, I've beenfortunate I've got to meet a lot
of the CEOs and a lot of thehigher ups in these things just
from doing some talks for them.
But you're right To your point.
It flies in the face of whatthey do and especially with
their reps, it's like sell, sell, sell.
Get them to do more next year.
(39:27):
Well, maybe not, maybe.
Just let them scale this, letthese senior docs train these
junior docs.
The senior docs will get agreat exit strategy without
selling their life away and thiscreates a whole generation of
(39:47):
younger docs that will use thatcompany's product, whatever that
company may be.
And that's where I think thebig companies need to get to to
see the future.
Now the challenge with that andevery CEO, every executive,
every major company will admitthis.
They're worried about nextquarter, absolutely, you know.
(40:10):
I mean, we're worried about thenext three years, five years,
10 years.
They're worried about the nextquarter and I'm not going to
help them in the next quarter,but three years from now, when
we have a network of theseoffices, that's when we help
them For sure.
So some of it's that long-termversus short-term vision too,
and a lot of what we're doingand a lot of Brian, what you and
(40:39):
I have done is a long-termvision.
We don't necessarily sit downand say we're going to do this,
this, this and next quarter it'sgoing to go up 20%.
This is more of a long-termvision.
We're playing the long gamewith this.
Speaker 1 (40:49):
Which is hard because of so much instant
gratification.
Now I mean, I see this withwith customers that may.
Usually what happens with uswhen people come aboard is year
one, um, and this varies, butthe majority of the time year
one, they grow, whether theywant to or not they grow.
Year two, it happens again, andthen sometimes year three for
(41:09):
all kinds of different reasons.
It kind of stalls out for awhile and that could go year
three for all kinds of differentreasons.
It kind of stalls out for awhile and that could go year
three and four.
And if they get through it andmake the right changes in year
three and four, they skyrocketin five, six, seven, etc.
Six, seven years down the roadnot tomorrow.
(41:35):
And that is so hard especiallythe younger doctors listening.
You grew up in an instantgratification world.
The reality is to get it onautopilot is hard and it takes
time.
It absolutely takes time.
And if you can be looking fiveplus years down the road and
make the right moves to getthere, you're going to enjoy it.
But it's hard for some people.
The moment they stall out yearthree and four, they freak out
(41:55):
Even though things are stillgoing great.
They just can't see it becausethe paper a lot of times doesn't
show it to you, right?
It's even like what youdescribed.
You know, down 1%.
Speaker 3 (42:04):
You said you were down 1% on what and then 6% on
the other what was that Downlike 1% on production and like
6% on starts, which means thatwe raised our fees.
Okay, and we did.
We did some very strategic umfee changes this year.
Um.
The other book I always talkabout is blue ocean strategy.
We, we had a we talked aboutthat on something Um, and we we
(42:29):
raised some of our fees um, um,and we, we raised some of our
fees um pretty nicely, and Ilowered some other fees Um, so I
strategically changed the wholefee structure in there.
Um, but um, that keeps theproduction up, um, even though
the starts are down.
Speaker 1 (42:45):
Right, yep, I love the idea, and I mean also, for
all of this is, again, not whattoday's about, but I I think it
all goes into this.
Reimagining growth is.
Bob fully understands that.
You don't just wake up one dayand say we want to jack up our
fees because it's going to allowme to work less, like, if
you're going to raise the feesand for some of you you know
you're in higher income areasthan others, blah, blah, blah.
But if you're going to raiseyour fees, there has to be at
(43:08):
least what I teach.
There has to be at least what Iteach.
There has to be an enhancedexperience along the way to do
it.
And this is the other thing thatdrives me nuts about this
industry is you'll get people upthere on stage saying raise
your fees to an audience of athousand.
They go back and raise theirfees and everything goes to hell
because there's nothing from apeople business first standpoint
.
That improves with it.
(43:29):
And it drives me nuts.
And he gets me what are yourthoughts?
Because this does I mean.
That improves with it.
And, and it drives me nuts.
And he gets me what are your?
What are your thoughts?
Cause this does I mean.
That's why it could go into amillion things in this
re-imagining growth.
Speaker 3 (43:37):
That's.
That's an extremely importantpoint that you just made about
raising fees, um and and, andI'm seeing that in the last year
, year and a half or so, thecorporate cause I've I've always
been within a few miles, fivemiles of corporate offices and
I've seen now people coming in,you know, second, third opinions
and all of a sudden nowcorporate's charging more than
(44:02):
me and they'll look at it andthey'll start making comments
like, well, but you're evencheaper, why wouldn't we come
here?
And it's like, it's like fromthe numbers they're showing me
and the quotes that they bringin from some of these other
offices, you know they're theyraise, they must have raised
their fees a couple thousanddollars in the last couple of
(44:24):
years and they still have thedifferent orthodontist every
year, different staff every sixmonths.
So to your point.
That's a very important pointbecause you can't just sit down
and say, look at my P&L, I'mgoing to raise my fees.
You have to go and you have tochange that whole workflow
experience.
You know the techniques you use, the technologies you use.
(44:47):
You have to have that wholestructure in place, otherwise
they're going to look at thatand say why would I pay that
there?
Because?
So that's an extremelyimportant point, because people
will tell you to raise your feesand if you have a half-assed
practice that can't support it,it's not going to work.
Speaker 1 (45:06):
Well, and this is if I wrap it up on this, but you
get this.
I mean, you've heard me preachthis a thousand times, but it
just goes back to you.
All are people first businesses.
And people do not understandwhy you're 2,000 more than their
other opinions If your peopleare not trained on sales and
hospitality, communication andverbiage and presentation and
(45:29):
psychology all these things thatwe go around all over the place
teaching every business, and wejust found a niche in the
orthodental world.
That's how you raise your fees.
Now, obviously you got to be agreat clinician, just like a
great chef.
That's part of it, part of thebundle, but it can't be the only
bundle.
Your team has to be trained onthis stuff from experts and how
to happen to apply it in theortho, dental et cetera world.
(45:51):
So I see it drives me and Ifeel bad for a lot of the
doctors.
They go back and sabotage theirbusiness just because they hear
things from some guy or girl onstage.
They go back, do it and it'syou know.
The one on stage runs a totallydifferent business model, wants
something totally different outof their life.
Their magic take home number isdifferent and yet they're
telling you to run your businessthe same way.
Speaker 3 (46:12):
It drives me crazy, it doesn't work and you're 100%
right and also, to that point,what we're attempting to do with
this, with our Vanguard groupand our Vanguard DSO, is we
provide the mentoring for whatyou exactly said.
It's training with people likeyou, but it's also mentoring
(46:35):
from a senior doc thatunderstands that.
It takes all of that, becausethere's, you know, people will
go to meetings all day long andprobably 3% of the people in
that crowd will actually everimplement anything.
Maybe, maybe, maybe, exactly.
So the future is, yes, trainingon that so you can actually
(46:56):
raise the fees, but also thementoring on that.
I mean, as orthodontists, wedon't get that, we don't know
that, and there's a relativelysmall group of us that
understands it and does it, andthat's what we want to scale at
this point and that's what Ithink the future of orthodontics
is.
I mean, if we're going toremain a specialty and if we're
(47:19):
going to remain one of the bestspecialties out there, we're
going to have to do stuff likethat.
Yeah, no.
Speaker 1 (47:26):
I love it.
Good stuff, man.
Yeah, yeah, I mean I just thewhole.
We knew this.
We talked before we, before werecorded the podcast on how this
topic, while mainly abouttracking how much you're working
, finding out how much you'remaking an hour, you know,
finding your take-home number itwas really the the the main
message, and re-imagining growth, but it's everything that we're
(47:47):
talking about today.
Every single thing goes intoall of you re-imagining growth.
And so many say the new patientgroup customers.
I think 80% of them were uplast year, which is something
we're really proud of.
I think 30% had their best yearever.
I think that's the data, butthere are still some that we're
hurting.
But if you just do, the pointis is, if you just do these
(48:09):
things, you will be fine.
You will have more fun, maybenot every year, but you're going
to be fine.
You don't have to fall intothis trap that a lot of you fall
into, that if the industry'sdown, you're down, the
industry's up, you may be up.
It doesn't have to be that way,but you do have to reimagine
(48:32):
how you're doing.
Things.
Period, things, period, agreed,yeah, agreed.
He agrees with everything I say.
Speaker 3 (48:35):
Well, yeah, and can I wrap it up something really
quick?
A quick point we talked about.
I just wrote a book.
I can't remember what the bookwas, but it talked about like
the internet and um, and it saidthat way too many people think
of the internet as a noun.
It's not.
It's a verb, it's not a thing,it's a process.
It's an ever-evolving thing.
(48:57):
And when we talk about growthin an orthodontic practice,
that's not a noun, that's not atwo or three tangible line thing
, that's a verb.
That's something that changesall the time and evolves all the
time, and I think that's animportant way to look at it.
Speaker 1 (49:17):
Well, it's a brilliant point and it's see, I
called you brilliant, yeah,thanks.
But this is among many otherreasons.
One of the reasons I startedthis company 12 plus years ago
was every year it evolves.
And if you're just hiringcompany A and this is how,
unfortunately, I think, a lot ofyou do it If you're just hiring
company A for this year andcompany B and C and D, and
(49:40):
you're just all over thefreaking place, you don't have a
consistent messaging withinyour office that's going to help
you evolve as the times changeand et cetera.
So that's why I like being apart of the practice, because
next year is different than thisyear and et cetera, et cetera.
So, thanks for coming on, man,thanks for having me.
(50:00):
This should have been a goodway to kick off season eight.
So we're doing some differentthings this year.
I'm going to bring in some moreguests than we normally do and
things like that.
So good stuff.
All of you re-imagine growth.
Is there anything else you wantto talk to him about?
Speaker 3 (50:16):
No, not that I can do in under three hours.
So no, I'm good, we'll have youback on.
We'll do it, okay, cool.
Speaker 1 (50:22):
Because I think about 10 things we talked about today
is a podcast in itself for sure, so we can spin this off in a
lot of different directions, butappreciate it everybody.
Until next time.
Appreciate you all.
Following the podcast, pleasethumb this up on YouTube, make
some comments, give us afive-star review on whatever
outlet you're listening to thepodcast on, and we'll talk to
(50:43):
everybody soon.
Bye-bye.
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