All things Real Estate – Part 2

The following transcription was from the Bulletproof Youtube channel. Here is the https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HbFgucelDOw&t=257s

Peter Boulden
0:00:00
Hey everybody, welcome back to another episode of the Bulletproof Dental Practice Podcast.

Peter Boulden
0:00:08
I'm Peter Bolden. And I'm Craig Spodek. Dentistry can sometimes feel lonely. Having over 45 years of combined experience and the chops to run eight successful practices, our mission is simple. Pay it forward and share what we've learned.

Peter Boulden
0:00:23
That's why we developed the Bulletproof Pathway, to help you navigate your way to ultimate success in dentistry.

Peter Boulden
0:00:28
And don't forget to join our community's conversation over at Bulletproof.Dental. Now, let's get to it.

Craig Spodak
0:00:34
Welcome back to another episode of the Bulletproof Dental Practice Podcast.

Peter Boulden
0:00:38
Craig and I just left each other. We went, we were in Miami this past weekend with a handful of our masterminders for this year, kind of doing some deep dives on all the things. Man, everybody's awesome. You know what was cool, Craig? We won't harp on this, because I feel like we talk about mastermind and shit a lot, but I think it's applicable, because there's lessons in that, and I think we try to translate those lessons. But you know what I thought was really cool? Is that everyone left with like real good clarity. Like, here's what I'm doing right and they you show up with like I could do this, I could do this, I could do this, but there's consensus among like smart dentists and it's like here's what you should do. Yeah. You know and you kind of um you battle test it right almost. Yeah. And uh I don't know I left with a lot of clarity um clarity that I need to kind of revisit some of my visions and and knowing myself that was my one of my big takeaways is like, man, you know, I accomplished the things that I wanted to do. And my vision hasn't been modified since that.

Craig Spodak
0:01:45
Not all the things, but a lot.

Peter Boulden
0:01:46
Yeah, but I mean, look, Mimi wrote a vision for April of 2023 that we'll use her last name, but Mimi wrote a vision from 2020 for 2023 to take her practice from, you know, 750 to 1.2 to, you know, have a house closer to our practice where a commute is 10 minutes instead of 90. And now it's November of 2021 and all those things are accomplished. So I'm like, hey, Mimi, time now she's actually doing $2 million a year. So from 750 to 2 million, she got a house nine minutes from her office. Like, so all of her stuff on her vision's done. So it's time to go back. And sometimes our three and five year vision winds up being 10 months. That's a good problem.

Peter Boulden
0:02:29
Especially when you execute, right? When you create the accountability and plans and you're meeting, and I think that's another beautiful thing of mastermind, whether it's this one or another group or something, just creating accountability where you have to declare you're gonna do something and you freaking do it. Yup. Uh-oh, my camera's on the fence again. So, buddy, last episode we started with kind of talking about real estate, so bear with me while I get my camera back on. But now, and that was really kind of building from an investment thesis.

Peter Boulden
0:02:59
Yeah, it was an investment side. Now we want to get to those questions that have been shown up on the Mighty Network.

Peter Boulden
0:03:04
Yeah.

Peter Boulden
0:03:05
So we're going to do a little bit more.

Peter Boulden
0:03:06
So we're going to talk about the building aspect of the Bulletproof pathway, which, you know, yes, it can be built from a ground up scenario, but we talked about it from an investment and now we're gonna be talking about it from a dental standpoint. And this is always a popular topic because a lot of people, it's typically, when they go do this, they build,

Craig Spodak
0:03:23
they don't do it a lot, right?

Peter Boulden
0:03:24
So you don't get repetitions in this space and you don't wanna blow it. And a lot of times when it's your first time doing something you blow it, you blow it, to be quite honest. I blow it, I've blown it. I feel like I blow it every time, you know, and I've done 10 construction projects. But, but you learn something at every turn, but it's important. And I think that you building kind of like 10 practices in one and me building 10 distinct practices, we have a lot of good tidbits and advice. So some of the thing that always comes up, Craig, that I hear is like, what architect do you recommend? And I'd like to hear your stance on it because you have obviously a very specialized building meaning elite certified and you want to join that or merge that with dental. So how did you go about? Well you know I think what I did is not as applicable for the average dentist. You know I'm a 13,000 square foot like dental hospital and I had no idea. I don't think anybody that I was aware of had done this before. So it was hard because I was just guessing how the flow and how things would be laid out.

Peter Boulden
0:04:33
And I got a lot of things wrong.

Peter Boulden
0:04:34
Well, also, Craig, to interrupt you, your form wanted to follow function, meaning you wanted to look a certain way first and function a certain way second.

Peter Boulden
0:04:45
Yeah, I wanted it to. Absolutely. It wasn't about – in fact, some of the areas were designed to have to walk further and have to do other things. So, I'm probably not the test case for it, but I did hire a dental-specific consultant. I had an artist, so I went about it the entire leap. This is not going to be applicable to anybody, but since you asked, I'll answer. I hired an artist. His name was Michael Singer. He helped design the U.S. Embassy in Greece. He designed Terminal C at the Denver Airport. He does a lot of infrastructure public works projects. I've been a fan of his work, so I commissioned him to do an artistic sketch. He had a dental consultant and a local architect and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So that was probably, for what I wanted to create, that was the best route. What I've come to do, then I built a house I'm building another and I built some other stuff what I really like I Do believe that there are architect? Specific I'm sorry dental specific architects and dental specific consultants But one thing I really like and I'm kind of combining a couple things at once is I like firms that are design-build design build. Because what I find when you're looking at the construction process, you have an architect who's kind of like the artist, and they make it all pretty. And it's like, oh, this is going to be great. You can see through a CAD and, you know, Revit and all these programs you can actually fly through your building. And then it goes to engineering. And engineering is like, oh, we can't do that. And we can't do this. And it kind of gets changed a little bit. And then it goes to the construction guy. And he's like, oh, this is really expensive. So if there is in your local area, if there is a design build person, there's less finger pointing at the end. It's just because I'm doing a design build for the house now, for my house. And it's like interesting to hear the GC that's designing and knows the structure all together. It's a little more straightforward. So not everyone's gonna have that, but if you have that, I'd rather, if I could do that and have a, you know, that's pretty rare to find, especially, I mean, it'll hardly be a, probably, I mean, you'd be hard pressed to find a dental design build, but you're saying I did not do it that way. I must be a glutton for punishment. No, but it would be nice to have a GC. That's a design build, meaning their GCs and they have in-house architecture and then get a dental consultant to massage the floor plan. But anyway, yeah. What about you? What did you do? Did you have a dental specific architect on your John's Creek?

Peter Boulden
0:07:19
No, no. So I started with just the design. So the most important thing for me, because it's on a highly visible road, was how it looked. And I just had a vision of, you know, I love architecture, I love buildings, and I wanted to create something really cool. So it wasn't like, hey, just design me an office. And quite honestly, Greg, I got a design back from someone traditional. And I was like, this looks like a shopping center for Starbucks. I'm like, I'm not building this. And so I actually had to enlist one of my friends who owns a kind of a design. He actually owns a design build, but not a demo design build. So he did the Revit and design. He has this really talented guy who kind of made me, you know, and once I saw it, Greg, I couldn't unsee it. I was like, that's the building I'm building right. So there's. So let's, let's pause for a second because a lot of people is there saying hey I'm really interested in in building out, meaning not building from ground up ground up is probably maybe 20% of when people say I want to build an office. It's usually 20% they're saying I'm going to build a start from scratch building, which I really enjoy the process so don't be dissuaded from that. Speaking of Mimi, we kind of were talking to Mimi about doing that this weekend at the Mastermind. But that almost seems daunting, but it really shouldn't be, provided you have good cashflow to be able to support something like that. It's a great investment and it really strokes a lot of creative. If you're an artist by trade and as the dentistry you're doing, you might really love the design and process of the architecture of the space that's going to live. I know I did. As a matter of fact, many of my locations has been supported by the fact that I really love the building and real estate aspect of it, quite honestly, Craig. Going back to what I was saying is that 20% are probably doing it build up, build up and 80% are probably doing build out. So that being said, it's a little simpler when you have, here's your box footprint that you're trying to fill. It's a little bit easier in terms of, then it becomes more of a floor plan ergonomic thing versus how big do I build? What's it look like on the outside? A lot of those things are already predetermined for you. So when you're doing that, and I've done several of those, I do actually start, believe it or not, Greg, when I'm doing floor plans, I actually do start with my supply company. And there's only been a couple of times where I've actually really not just scraped them altogether, but it was a good starting point, right? So your design company, if you don't know, Patterson, Shine, whoever you use, they've got in-house design that will help you say, hey, you've got a 2000 foot box, essentially, in a shopping center or something you're retrofitting, they will help you design. And they do that, it's for free. And they do that as a benefit because they know if they can help you with this, that you're gonna be more, it's the law of reciprocity. You're gonna be more inclined to buy all the new equipment from them, right? And so it's a good service and it's a free service. And so I always kind of enlist that just to see what they're going to do. Typically they come back very unlike my designs, meaning shotgun halls, very sharp corners, ergonomically nothing exciting. It's very functional first and design kind of second, meaning how many ops can we fit in. If it's 2,400 square foot space, we're gonna fit in eight operatories because we wanna average 300 square feet per op. Well, yeah, they also have a purpose to jam as much stuff

Peter Boulden
0:10:49
and equipment as possible. That's what I'm saying. Of course, right?

Peter Boulden
0:10:52
And so you have to also be, you know, and sometimes that gets, that's sexy because good, like honestly, everyone knows this. The only thing that makes money in a dental office is operatories, full stop. Waiting rooms, nope. Admin area, nope. Break rooms, nope. So you have to break it down and obviously that builds capacity. But, gosh, so there's so much here. So that is a good starting point. I would recommend that being a start point to decide what you like, and then maybe enlist the help of an architect at that point to say, I like this, I don't like that. Okay, but also going back to what you said earlier, Craig, enlist someone who's got a Revit design, right? It's a form of CAD CAM, it's really easy to do. It's usually the architect does it rather or not. And it will really save you a lot of time and most importantly, anxiety. I get tremendous amounts of anxiety when I'm building because it's like, I know what I want. I can see what I want in my mind, but are we talking the same language here? Me and Mr. Builder, me and Mr. Architect, when things are down on a plan, a piece of paper, sometimes it's wrong. Not to mention, sometimes, for instance, in the John's Creek office, Greg, I had an area where it became, it had two corners that were juxtaposing each other, and it became almost a pinch point from an energy standpoint looking at it. It just, it constricted the hallway, and it was not good. Right? And had I not had Revit or done it on CAD, I wouldn't have be able to see that. Oh, it's so important.

Peter Boulden
0:12:26
I do that with everything.

Peter Boulden
0:12:27
So Revit's really neat in that you can say, hey, look, you do it all before you build, kind of thing. And you say, I want you to see that. You put on some virtual reality glasses.

Peter Boulden
0:12:37
You don't even need that. But perspectival rendering, is what they're called.

Craig Spodak
0:12:40
Yeah.

Peter Boulden
0:12:41
They're different. Yeah, I think 3D glasses.

Peter Boulden
0:12:44
But it's great because it saves change orders, too. So the anxiety, yes. The stress, yes. But also the change orders. And the change orders, when you're building something get really expensive. Your contractor loves change orders. Can we, when you say this to buy your building, hey, you think we can do this?

Peter Boulden
0:12:58
Yeah, of course you can. Yeah, well, yeah, we can do that. No problem. We already framed the drywall, but we'll pull it all down and do it again.

Peter Boulden
0:13:04
No problem, but it'll be easy, right? We'll do it, no problem, doc. We'll do it, no problem.

Peter Boulden
0:13:07
No problem.

Peter Boulden
0:13:08
Because change orders mean cha-ching, cha-ching, cha-ching.

Peter Boulden
0:13:11
Yeah, that's what it's, yeah, exactly.

Craig Spodak
0:13:13
They know.

Peter Boulden
0:13:14
By the way, you'll say, hey, can I build this for 200 bucks a foot? Yeah, no problem.

16
0:13:17
Yeah.

Craig Spodak
0:13:18
No problem.

Peter Boulden
0:13:19
Because they know lots of changeovers are probably coming.

Peter Boulden
0:13:21
And then when you're like, hey, how did it wind up being $350 a square foot or 400? Well, you know, you wanted that glass, didn't you? Yeah, but I asked you.

Peter Boulden
0:13:28
No problem. Yeah, no problem. You wanted to move that wall. You didn't like the way this looked and this looked. Remember that? And so many times, Greg, I did that in my career and I thought they were just being cool with me. Like, dude, yeah, we'll change it, no problem. And like, there's a bill that shows up for that. I was like, wait, I thought you said it was cool. He's like, well, it is cool.

Peter Boulden
0:13:45
Yeah, it's like when we tell patients you have a little cavity. How is it $200 for a little cavity? Now don't minimize your dentistry either. It took me no time at all.

Peter Boulden
0:13:53
But the Revit, Greg, is where you can go. You can, and that's why my last one was so enjoyable.

Peter Boulden
0:13:58
Yeah, there's a lot of them.

Peter Boulden
0:13:59
They're just perspective rendering services. Okay, rendering services, fine.

Peter Boulden
0:14:04
It's very important.

Peter Boulden
0:14:05
And that's worth it to pay for.

Peter Boulden
0:14:05
Convenient to look at something three-dimensional, virtual, and say, hey, move that outlet up a foot and a half because I don't like it there. And you know what? Let's change the surface of the bathroom here. I don't like the way that tile looks and all that. You can get into that level of detail. So it was almost like when I finished that process, Craig, with the ground-up construction, it was almost much, much easier than some of the ones I had not from much easier projects that I had not utilized the service. It was almost enjoyable. I would call my builder and be like, Hey, is everything okay? I haven't heard from you in like two weeks. I'm like, yeah, dude, we're, we're putting up the roof. We're putting up the walls.

Craig Spodak
0:14:40
We're putting up to this.

Peter Boulden
0:14:41
Yup. Like, okay. Cause like all my other projects, I've had to almost be there all day, every day.

Peter Boulden
0:14:45
If you will, did you do a liquidated damages clause in the bill?

Peter Boulden
0:14:48
No, I didn't.

Peter Boulden
0:14:49
You're more sophisticated in that probably. Well, let's just bring that up real quick. I would have a construction attorney look over your contract with your GC, especially for a building, especially because subcontractors are all flaking out. It's hard to get things done right now, maybe for the foreseeable future with supply chain disruption. And I would just have your builder, if they're willing to put in some form of clause in the contract that says if it's not built by the time that they said it would be built, and then a little bit of a grace period, of course, that you could start having some liquidated damages or less payment for them or penalties.

Peter Boulden
0:15:28
Yeah, I remember you had mentioned that, and I looked at the term, and I couldn't find it prior to the bond.

Peter Boulden
0:15:33
Yeah, but you're a little bit more sensitive to getting the average bearer, and I just want to make sure that the dentist who hasn't done this before, it's just a good idea. Have a construction attorney look it over. It's called a liquidated damages clause if you're going to be building something.

Peter Boulden
0:15:46
Are you getting the most out of your practice? Well, find out exactly what type of dentist you are and understand exactly how to get impactful results by zeroing in on your superpowers and mitigating your weakness.

15
0:15:58
Want to find out?

Peter Boulden
0:15:59
Head over to dentistquiz.com now to get your results. The thing that I don't like about having someone who's quote-unquote I am a dental CPA, I am a dental something, I am a dental only. Know what that means when they're dental only? What?

Peter Boulden
0:16:18
That just means that they charge 30 to 50 percent more.

Peter Boulden
0:16:21
Well, but also too, Craig, like you start when you only do one thing all the time, you become holding a screwdriver and everything looks like a screw. And so, the creativity is like, it starts to sometimes be rubber stamped. And I just offended you because you're one of those people, you know, it's not a sweeping generalization, but it's what I've seen. Is that the creativity has gone out the window because you've done so many projects that it's like, oh, this works kind of thing.

Peter Boulden
0:16:47
Yeah, this is a dental office. If you think about the most amazing things you've ever seen, the most amazing restaurant, it's different. It's a different.

Peter Boulden
0:16:55
So that's why I start typically with the design house of someone who's going to make it boring from Patterson or Shine or whoever it is, and then take it to someone else. I was like, what do you think of this? Because functionally, it's the less the function of dental office, plumbing, the cabinets, you know, the ergonomics, all that thing. And then certain times, Craig, I've actually had my first office, I had a feng shui consultant. I know it's, it's woo, woo, and you know I'm not like that. But that got the most, people would walk in just like, this place just feels really good. And that's super important in dentistry, right? Like if you walk into a building and it feels good, you're more apt to say, hmm, I'm really comfortable here, let's do the treatment here kind of thing.

Peter Boulden
0:17:36
Yeah, so that's never talked about by the way, and at least when I built mine, that was not a conversation that was actually happening.

Peter Boulden
0:17:42
Really? Yeah, your building feels good. Like when you go in, it's spacious and it smells good, and people are happy, all that. And so, but I'm sure there's probably some, I'm sure there was some feng shui that you kind of incorporated. I mean, you have tons of natural light and water and all the things.

Peter Boulden
0:17:56
Yeah, natural light is important. You know, and unfortunately, most of us as dentists, when we lease in the strip mall, you have natural light just at the store front, the front where the waiting room is, and the rest is just the bowling alley all the way back.

Peter Boulden
0:18:10
But that's where I copied you on some of this thing, that new build, even in a strip mall, what you can do is utilize those solo tubes. Yeah, solo tubes, exactly. You make a six-inch penetration in the roof, you drop down a solo tube, and it basically uses a like a prism and magnifies light throughout your dark, dark, would have been retail office. And they're not that expensive.

Peter Boulden
0:18:33
I mean, the only problem with those in spaces you don't own is the landlord may have problems with the ceiling. But of course, they're a great solution. And by the way, you know, something interesting about solitudes, you can put them on the outside wall. So basically on a vertical wall, you can put them and they can travel light Horizontally across your crawlspace or above your drop ceiling and then make a right angle turn just about your mirrors, huh?

Peter Boulden
0:18:58
And that wild well, that's light. I guess Reflection or reflection refraction if it works, but yeah, that's pretty neat. Yeah So that's a good little tidbit right because that is that is one of the That is one of the negatives, I think, of building in, like you say, a box structure is that the light just feels very, very constricted. Yeah. So, we talked about the architect. Do I like dental specific? I personally don't, but I utilize them at certain junctions in the design process. The next question we have is, we are going to do a ground up. What are the suggestions for an architect. Again, I think that you should, if you're gonna go ground up, I think the most important thing first is get romantic about how the building looks. Spend time on how it looks and then be passionate about it. Don't just accept like, hey, I wanna build a building and then let them come to you. Create a Pinterest board of buildings that you like. I actually did that. Created buildings of stuff. I was like, here's what I want. And then my guy presented me with what, you know, the amalgamation of what I pretty much wanted and I was like, this is it. So pictures tell a thousand words. You know, sitting there trying to orate kind of what you want and articulate, it's pretty impossible. So Pinterest boards or example boards or something like that, when you're going to build is super important because what you may get back, like I did the first time, was something super traditional. And I didn't want super traditional. I wanted a Greg Spodek building.

Peter Boulden
0:20:31
You know, there's a nice architect I like. I'm gonna give him a little plug. We're not affiliated with him, but I really like Joe Architect, Peter.

Craig Spodak
0:20:38
You do?

Peter Boulden
0:20:39
Yeah, I don't know if you've seen it before, but really cool stuff, just joearchitect.com.

Peter Boulden
0:20:45
Hey Joe, you're welcome. And then the guy who designed mine is RLW Designs. His name is Lee Wagner. He's a good buddy of mine. But he, so if anyone's, I can put that in. Yeah, I like it too. You're right, I mean, you're right. Why not give some, why not give some, at least. But I just wanna give it to these guys.

Peter Boulden
0:21:01
You know, they're doing really cool stuff in the dental world. It's definitely not your normal dental office. Very, very cool.

Craig Spodak
0:21:10
That's cool.

Peter Boulden
0:21:11
Also, did you use a dental specific construction company? Yeah, I wouldn't do that. Yes, I would say so. Wait, did you say yes you would, right?

Peter Boulden
0:21:21
Yes.

Craig Spodak
0:21:22
Oh, that's awesome.

Peter Boulden
0:21:23
I'm like, no, that's great. So I've done both, right? And so when, oh man, this is not even a loaded question. I'm just having like PTSD from having to train. When you use a dental specific contractor, right? And don't utilize them for the design and don't say, hey, design me an office. But someone who comes with the experience of knowing that you can't bend a pipe underground for suction 90 degrees. You can't do that. It's got to be 245 to make a turn. And so many contractors, I had to teach the nuances of dentistry. Hence me saying, Craig, I couldn't, I was always there all day, every day, because I was constantly fixing their mistakes from a dental specific standpoint. No, you can't mount the water here. No, the air can't come out here. No, the med gas, no, no, no. What are y'all doing?

Peter Boulden
0:22:15
Yeah, but your local supply house can coordinate that.

Peter Boulden
0:22:18
They can coordinate it, and they do help, they can help. They cannot be there on site all day, every day. And sometimes when you put pipe underground, and then you pour slab back over it without, and then you recognize, wait, you put a 90 degree bend? And then you wonder for the next 15 years why your suction sucks?

Peter Boulden
0:22:34
Your sucky suction?

Peter Boulden
0:22:35
Your sucky suction?

Peter Boulden
0:22:37
Suction doesn't like to happen at 90 degree bends. What was that, Bernoulli's law?

Craig Spodak
0:22:42
Bernoulli's?

Peter Boulden
0:22:43
Yeah, I think, no, I think that's something about Venturi then Bernoulli's let's find this out This is like just a normal conversation for you and I by the way and then of course then there's usually a wager like that's not That no really I'm right Bernoulli's dynamics. You are right. Oh, but I am air for it is also an airfoil Well, one of Bernoulli's laws were also about air and lift Bernoulli was a badass, by the way. Bernoulli.

Peter Boulden
0:23:15
Yeah, he was a badass. So I do like dental-specific companies when it comes to the hammer and nails because they have a lot more know-how and they just know how to build it versus being like, yeah, we built some medical before. You know, I'll have the, yeah, well, no, we can do it, buddy, don't worry.

Peter Boulden
0:23:31
And I'm like, okay, sure. Yeah, don't worry,

Peter Boulden
0:23:32
we can do it all the time.

Peter Boulden
0:23:33
And I trust them.

Peter Boulden
0:23:34
And then it's a shit show.

Peter Boulden
0:23:35
Yeah. So I do think it's important. It will save you, it may be a little more expensive, but it will save, what it saves you is just stomach lining. Okay, when building a de novo, do you use a dental specific contractor? Again, we just answered that. What was it called in the contract to make sure you do the build that is done? Oh, look at that, foreshadowing. Liquidated damages clause.

Peter Boulden
0:23:56
Liquidated damages clause.

Peter Boulden
0:23:58
At least that's what I call it. And when you present your builder with that, he may be like, eh, I'm good, I don't want to work with you. I'm just kidding. Well, right now, yeah.

Peter Boulden
0:24:07
Yeah, right, because he's like, you know what, I'm good.

Peter Boulden
0:24:09
I'm really busy and I don't need any bullshit.

Peter Boulden
0:24:11
So a liquidated damages clause is a contractual provision requiring a party in breach to pay a predetermined amount back to the other party. So the way it was written in my specific instance was like, okay, you think it can be done in 10 months, great. At 12 months and one day, for every day you're late, it's gonna be the cost of my operation that I'm gonna be putting in there. And guess what, they were not late. Yeah, but to tell. And it's a tell, I mean, so if they say it's gonna take 10 months and you put a liquidated damages clause at 13 months

Peter Boulden
0:24:44
and they're not willing to sign it, that's a tell. That's a tell, that's a good point. But you know what they'll push is, especially in today with the supply chain thing, like I can't control this shit.

Peter Boulden
0:24:54
You could prove that. You could say, hey, this is going to affect

12
0:24:58
our liquidity and debt.

Peter Boulden
0:24:59
You know what, in today's day and age, you might just be lucky to get someone to say yes.

Peter Boulden
0:25:03
Exactly. It's so true, by the way. I want to build something. Yeah, you and everybody else.

Peter Boulden
0:25:09
You and everyone else. So, that being said, this is the last question. What are the pros and cons of owning real estate of where you practice? We touched on this. What's the con?

Peter Boulden
0:25:16
Let's go to the, because I only know the pros.

Peter Boulden
0:25:18
Because we touched on all the benefits last pod, right? This is part two. So the cons of owning your own real estate are… Pay less taxes.

Craig Spodak
0:25:28
That's a con.

Peter Boulden
0:25:29
No, no. No, because you're not supporting the government at the highest level you possibly can. That's stupid.

Peter Boulden
0:25:35
What are you, a socialist now? No, I'm just saying, less taxes for the government. So the con would be that it is risky. It's a large investment on the front end. Yeah, cash flow. Right, cash. Cash. Most people don't go out of business because they have a bad product or service. It's cash flow that gets you in trouble. And it's not as safe as being like, you know what, I'm just gonna pay rent.

Craig Spodak
0:26:02
To someone else.

Peter Boulden
0:26:03
Well, it's also permanent too. So like, if you're not really sure, you kind of tested things out, it's not a good idea to build something. The area you mean?

Craig Spodak
0:26:10
Yeah.

Peter Boulden
0:26:11
Or yeah, the location or maybe, you know, all those things. Liability, you have to make sure that you own your real estate in a separate company that you own your practice.

Peter Boulden
0:26:21
Yep. In the state of Florida, we have a lot of great rules and regulations in the state of Florida. We have one really weird rule, and when you have same owner for LLC of property and different owner for the business renting, you actually have to pay sales tax to yourself or sales

Peter Boulden
0:26:39
tax to the government.

Craig Spodak
0:26:40
Well, guess what?

Peter Boulden
0:26:41
You guys don't have sales tax, so. I know, but that's one little, so many of our Florida tenants may not know that, by the way. So if you own your building in Florida. No one feels bad for Florida residents, Craig. Okay, but I'm just saying, no, I'm not asking for you to feel bad, I just don't want you to get a department tax audit

Peter Boulden
0:26:58
from the state.

Peter Boulden
0:26:59
So one of the, yeah, I think the con is only that it's more expensive in the beginning and it's scary. And it's, and typically the con also is you can't do it as your first build. Meaning if you're a couple of years out of school, you're like, I want to build a building and get a loan for a practice, and I have a bunch of student loan, the bank's going to say, slow down.

Craig Spodak
0:27:22
Slow down.

Peter Boulden
0:27:23
Yeah, they told me that too. I got rejected by five different banks.

Peter Boulden
0:27:26
So, but that being said, like, you know, if you can sign a retail space or something and you say, you know, maybe-

Peter Boulden
0:27:34
Well, I got another con.

Craig Spodak
0:27:36
Okay.

Peter Boulden
0:27:37
The other con is like, okay, so we always say this, know thyself. So if you are wanting to open up 10 practices, maybe the best use of cash is not to actually deploy it in a brick and mortar building. Starbucks does not own their retail centers that they're in. So it's all about opportunity and utilization of your debt and your cash. So stop for a sec. Because someone may say, why? Yeah, well, you answer why to that. This is a balance sheet thing, meaning the bank may say, we gave you this, we built this building for you. You put 15, 10% down and gave you leverage to build this building. Okay, now we look at your balance sheet and your debt to income ratio.

Peter Boulden
0:28:22
Yep.

Peter Boulden
0:28:23
And you, us letting you build another one or doing another office is a little risky right now. So Craig is right, it is a rate limiting step. You can build a new dental office in a retail space with no money down, probably won't pay rent for nine months, for $250,000, $300,000. If that's your goal is to get 10 of them, you can use that $3 million that you would have cost to build a building potentially, and build 10 offices if you've got the chops to do that, if that's what you want to do.

Peter Boulden
0:28:50
But this is what happens to most dentists.

Peter Boulden
0:28:50
So Craig is right, it does chew up a lot of financial bandwidth.

Peter Boulden
0:28:54
But they don't think long about it. They're like, oh, this building came for sale with the practice, I'll buy that too, I'll buy it. And then all of a sudden you're like, oh, I really wanna open up eight locations. And like just not knowing where you wanna go, you'll waste a lot of time.

Craig Spodak
0:29:07
Yeah, you are right.

Peter Boulden
0:29:08
There's a reason, Craig, why DSOs are not some of the aggressive ones.

Craig Spodak
0:29:15
Most.

Peter Boulden
0:29:15
Have nothing to do with the real estate. Most don't. I don't think many people want many DSOs. I'm not aware of many that want real estate.

Peter Boulden
0:29:24
I'll take them. Just kidding.

Craig Spodak
0:29:26
Yeah.

Peter Boulden
0:29:27
I think that was the case for a while, Craig. I'm not sure that's the case anymore, especially with debt being, I mean, I'm sorry, with capital being so easy, especially at that level, and cheap, that I think that they're probably looking at like McDonald's, right? McDonald's was a hamburger, I mean, a real estate company that disguised as selling hamburgers, or is.

Craig Spodak
0:29:47
I can't think of anything else.

Peter Boulden
0:29:47
I think these are the questions we've aggregated from past summits and people chiming in on Mighty Networks. But I can't think of anything else related to it. I think it's one of the joy, it's been one of the joys of my careers, career, building, being able to build out and flex that, that love. Because I would have been, I always tell people, if I hadn't been a dentist, I would have been an architect. Because I think it's neat. Well, you know, a dentist is an architect, they're micro architects. Right, yeah. But I mean, I think it's important. That's what Peter likes. And I actually really like it too.

Peter Boulden
0:30:26
So I'm building something right now.

Peter Boulden
0:30:28
I love doing that stuff. Yeah, so going back to you, you said, know thyself. Yeah.

Craig Spodak
0:30:32
Know thyself.

Peter Boulden
0:30:32
Yeah. We had someone at our mastermind actually said, like, hey, I wanna do what you do.

Craig Spodak
0:30:38
And I said, well, we're just-

Peter Boulden
0:30:39
At our master, oh, this weekend? Yeah, and I said, well, why do you wanna do that? Why do you want one large facility? And the answer was, this guy, who everybody knows, we won't say his name, said that that's the most profitable model. And I know the guy, we all know the guy, and I said to him, like, hey, this doctor that told you that he's a podcaster, he practices like in five operatories. So he told you it's the best way to do it, but he's never done it.

Peter Boulden
0:31:06
Oh, from a partnership? Wait, what was he talking about?

Peter Boulden
0:31:08
Yeah, he asked, he's like, you know, he's saying like, what does he want to do? Does he want to do multiple offices? He's like, no, I kind of like what Craig does. I want to do one larger office.

Peter Boulden
0:31:16
And I went and said, oh, oh, no, the question was, Craig, sorry to cut you off. I know I've done a lot today, today. But it was, you should aim to have a one, four million practice, four million dollar practice versus four, one million dollar practices.

Peter Boulden
0:31:30
Right, and the guy who told him that has, you know, a small single practice. So it's just funny how, you know, he's a professional bias. Yeah, it's confirmation bias. And you always want to whenever someone says so-and-so told me to do it. I'm like, well, who is so-and-so? And it's always interesting that so-and-so doesn't do it. It's like asking your divorce attorney if she should get married. No, marriages, they all suck because he doesn't get to meet the good ones. Or it's asking a police officer if he can trust people. He gets called on the worst people. So I think it's just important. You have to find out what you want to do. And Peter and I love building real estate. It's fun for us. We've been through it. We know how to secure financing. We know how to make it work. We get excited. We like vision. We like creating something new. That may not be you. And if it's not you, don't do it. Because you can take that same money and diversify it elsewhere. You can invest in a REIT or you can have other real estate plays. I would not care if my cash flow is massive if I was renting. I really wouldn't care. If a rentable, if a location that could provide me with greater revenue in my practice was available, and I would probably take that. What I'm trying to say is that if the rented space is going to net you more income on your practice, do that. But if you have the choice between renting or owning then that's a

Peter Boulden
0:32:52
different situation. Well that's not fair to say because like that would have deprived me like someone like me like you know like it's not just about dollars I actually would have said the exact opposite. I would have taken a scenario where I made less money and got to build buildings. Yeah but you had it both you put you put practices in really good areas and built a building there. Okay but that's not site selection. That has nothing to do with the concept of building. Yeah, you're just a little bit more sophisticated too.

Peter Boulden
0:33:23
You do demographic reports.

Peter Boulden
0:33:25
I agree, but I got sophisticated. I wasn't born, I got that just like anyone else can get that, right? I learned and I did demographic reports.

Peter Boulden
0:33:34
I think you're a little bit more special than you think you are.

Peter Boulden
0:33:36
I created that, that aspect of me. It wasn't innate.

Craig Spodak
0:33:40
Okay.

Peter Boulden
0:33:40
So, and also, Greg, a lot of it came from me being scared shitless. If I make a mistake, I could go bankrupt, kind of thing, you know? And so, I think fear is one of the greatest motivators in the planet. True. All right, let's, unless you've got anything else, let's wrap this one. I think that covers real estate. Again, we're gonna be covering more of this at in Nashville in the summer because it's always a popular thing. Tenants love real estate. I just found out that this weekend that there's apparently masterminds that cover this for dentistry, just real estate. And it's just residential ownership in real estate, which is fascinating to me for just dentists.

Peter Boulden
0:34:20
Yeah, and they're $100,000 tuitions.

Peter Boulden
0:34:23
You know, but if it's value there, then okay, cool.

Peter Boulden
0:34:28
I'm not sure about that.

Peter Boulden
0:34:29
You gotta love that.

Peter Boulden
0:34:30
That's for sure. You gotta love that. Peter and I don't really love, we don't love residential for a variety of reasons, but yeah.

Peter Boulden
0:34:36
Well, I've been a landlord, right? I know there's management companies that can act as an intermediary, but I think I have PTSD from being a residential landlord. And I was like, I don't care what you pay me. If you ever call me for a light bulb again, I may just light the building on fire. Well, it's also that the tenant laws that are written for residential real estate are much more pro-tenant than commercial.

Peter Boulden
0:34:58
You can't get them out. You can't, but if a commercial tenant invests in a new pizza oven and they default on their lease, you're locking the door and could potentially seize that equipment to recover your investment. You're not gonna go to court as Mr. or Mrs. Fancy Dentist evicting this poor family out of the house.

Craig Spodak
0:35:17
Good luck with that.

Peter Boulden
0:35:18
And you don't even want to do that. I mean, forget the legality of it. It's pretty hard to deal with that stuff. But I know that a lot of people do make their money in residential real estate, but single door, single house, single condo residential, definitely not my area of expertise.

Craig Spodak
0:35:33
Yeah, and I think in closing,

Peter Boulden
0:35:34
so we've talked about a lot of things. We've talked about architects. We've talked about using the supply house. Using Revit, getting a bunch of opinions, maybe consulting someone from Feng Shui, all these things that I think are important to look at. Don't just take what someone says you should take if you're not excited about it, right? Because it's your build out, even if you're doing a shopping center. I've seen some bad ass build outs for shopping centers.

Craig Spodak
0:36:07
Like bad ass, right?

Peter Boulden
0:36:08
So don't think that you have to just take the cookie cutter approach because Shine said this or Patterson said this. Use their services, get a good idea of the outline that you can do, and then pay someone who's fancy to make it amazing because those things will, that is not just a warm fuzzy, that will translate into dollars and cents later. That's my firm belief. Firm belief that your employees will be happier when it feels good, your patients will enroll more, you'll be happier, you spend more time there than you're gonna spend your house awake pretty much. So like don't cheap out on that. If you can afford it and you want to do it, freaking do it. Do it. Get one ticket. You get one ticket. One. Just one, Greg. Actually, you get one ticket, but the podcast I want to do next time, Greg.

Peter Boulden
0:36:55
That's a little reminiscent of our president when you just did that. You altered your pitch. What did he say recently?

Peter Boulden
0:37:01
He said something where he whispered.

Craig Spodak
0:37:02
It was weird.

Craig Spodak
0:37:03
Something about, I don't know.

Peter Boulden
0:37:05
The interest rates are not going up. Inflation doesn't exist. Let me tell you something, people. Inflation's not happening.

Peter Boulden
0:37:15
The next podcast I wanna do, Craig, I was gonna do, is on peak performance. There's a, because I think there's some cool stuff going on in medicine and that can help us dentists

Craig Spodak
0:37:26
and longevity.

Peter Boulden
0:37:27
Oh, biohacks, you're saying, like biohacking? Well, not just biohacks, but like there's some cool stuff that I think are good. I've read some cool books, I've seen some good data lately. I've had to fix a lot of stuff in my own body. There's some cool things on the horizon. Like for example, let me give a little teaser, Craig. Tell me here, I want a teaser. Do you know what escape velocity is? Yeah, you talked about this years ago. Yeah, so there's this guy named Aubrey DeGray. And he's always done studies. Yeah, you've talked about this. He studied longevity. So the idea of longevity or escape velocity, longevity escape velocity, is that it's the point for where every year you survive, you gain an extra year.

Craig Spodak
0:38:11
Yeah.

Peter Boulden
0:38:12
Okay. So it's almost an infinite life extension. And he thinks, and a lot of people think, that it's going to happen around the year 2036. So it's not just, oh, you know what, I'll be happy to get 75 years in the day we grew up with our parents and such. I'd be lucky to get this, and that's cool. But like, what if, right? The what if scenario. So not only that, I wanna talk about just some cool hacks of sleeping and eating that I've discovered and the aura ring that we've talked about and all the things. We actually talked about some of it this weekend. But I'm really pretty passionate about this right now because…

Peter Boulden
0:38:47
Yeah, I mean, you got me on an Aura ring and an Ullr.

Peter Boulden
0:38:53
Yeah, even like blue blockers at night to make sure you're not looking at your phone or watching TV and all the things and diet.

Craig Spodak
0:38:58
You know what I got, by the way, Peter?

Peter Boulden
0:38:59
I got some cool hacks for diet because I could never fix this.

Peter Boulden
0:39:03
You know what I got? And the jury's still out. I just got it. But I got, you know how I wear a Garmin watch? I got a Garmin Scale. And it's really well rated, but actually, it's the Garmin S2, I think it's called. But check it out, Peter.

Peter Boulden
0:39:16
Like a scale you step on? But it also measures BMI, water, all the stuff.

Peter Boulden
0:39:21
I mean, body fat.

Craig Spodak
0:39:23
Who cares?

Peter Boulden
0:39:24
Oh, it's so cool. If you look good, if you like the way you look, who gives a shit?

Peter Boulden
0:39:29
Right, that's why I bought it.

Craig Spodak
0:39:30
That's why I bought it.

Peter Boulden
0:39:31
Oh, okay. Yeah. All right, buddy. I don't like the way I look.

Peter Boulden
0:39:35
I wanna get better.

Peter Boulden
0:39:36
Okay, well, fair enough. I make you look great, pal. Oh, thank you. I'm happy we're recording this. You're being so nice. Yeah, I'm gonna listen to this one. Soak it in and replay it because it's not happening. I'm gonna replay this whole thing. Yeah. A couple notes that we need to announce today. So we do get a couple. As you all know, we have a summit coming up. We do get hit up by students a lot because I think we resonate with them. Oh, that's right. And so we have decided, because so many times in our career, we got benefit of being a student, getting able to go and audit a summit and learn from the giants in the industry. And there's just some badasses that come to our summit that could be future mentors, possibly to some of these young men and women. So we decided this year, we're gonna do one, if you're a student, we're gonna give you a student code. Do you see that code, Craig? I'll look it up on the email list.

Peter Boulden
0:40:31
Here, I'll find it.

Peter Boulden
0:40:32
Geez. We're making mistakes. I just start talking about it, and I don't even have the code in front of me. But it's true.

Peter Boulden
0:40:39
We've had people one-off text us in the past, like, hey, I'm a student, and nothing better than a person investing in themselves before they hit the ground, because you can prevent so much pain. At our mastermind this weekend, we were just talking about like, it was just so much value to help people before they have to skin their knees, and getting people while they're still in school is awesome.

Peter Boulden
0:41:02
So, yeah, I think it's great. So we're gonna do 10 tickets at basically a very reduced fee, enough where we don't go, you know, for I think 5.95. And if you're in the code is DentalStudents22. DentalStudents. So if you're a practicing dentist and you try and enter that in, we're gonna ask for your student ID.

Peter Boulden
0:41:24
Oh, sweaty butt.

Peter Boulden
0:41:25
Don't do it.

Peter Boulden
0:41:26
Don't do it.

Craig Spodak
0:41:27
Don't do it.

Peter Boulden
0:41:28
Because we may shame you publicly.

Peter Boulden
0:41:29
Oh no, don't do that.

Peter Boulden
0:41:30
Please don't make us,

Peter Boulden
0:41:32
people do that, please don't do it. I might, I might.

Peter Boulden
0:41:34
I know, it'd be terrible. Try and sneak it in. I may say, Golly, you're a rich dentist, what are you doing? Can't, you can't fool us.

Peter Boulden
0:41:44
Yeah, Dwight Bacora, I can't believe you tried to do that.

Craig Spodak
0:41:46
Dwight.

Peter Boulden
0:41:47
I'm kidding, you're never gonna.

Peter Boulden
0:41:49
And then, again, we always touch on the Mighty Networks. We haven't gotten a review in a while, Craig. I don't, I think it's because we haven't asked for it. Just like in our practice. It's because we're not good. You don't ask for shit. It doesn't just magically appear. So today, if we've gotten, if you've got some value from us, please, can you go and bang out some stars for us just so the Google algorithm can say, hey, these guys are awesome.

Peter Boulden
0:42:12
Yeah, it's worth it.

Peter Boulden
0:42:14
Agreed?

Peter Boulden
0:42:15
I agree 100%.

Peter Boulden
0:42:16
And actually, if you want to potentially be on the – we also created a site because we need it for just promotion and marketing, get the word out for the things we do, is a site we created called WeLoveBP. WeLoveBP.com, and you just go to it and you can upload like a, hey guys, love what you did, like what you're doing, the impact you've made in my life, you know, you're amazing, even my kids love you, like I don't know, all the things. That would be cool too. I know that's some ask, but I feel like we've done a lot of give, so that's a big ask. That's not a big ask.

Craig Spodak
0:42:49
No, it's nice.

Craig Spodak
0:42:49
Is it, Craig?

Peter Boulden
0:42:50
No, it's fine.

Peter Boulden
0:42:51
Is it a big ask? No, I mean, listen, the way things work nowadays is like if you're not being mentioned or rated, your content is gonna be downgraded and not exposed. And our mission is to have a positive force in dentistry. It's a lonely place. There's people solving problems that we've had to get our butts kicked on. So if it is helpful for you, it's not for us, it's for others. So by leaving the comments, subscribing, or letting other people know you're helping the profession as well So we're kind of arm-in-arm Helping this profession together all right beautiful people it sounds like Craig Spodek All right, you're around you around me. He was around me for three days

Peter Boulden
0:43:27
Like osmosis he's pushed into me like mold like a girl. I do worse. I grew on you all right buddy. Thanks guys Like osmosis he's pushed into me like mold like a girl. I do worse. I grew on you all right buddy. Thanks guys I don't have a great day, and we'll see you next time see you next time people. Thanks, Pete

Transcribed with Cockatoo