Navigating Dental Economics, Strategies for Thriving in a Recession, Cyberhacks and Unpaid Associates

The following transcription was from the Bulletproof Youtube channel. Here is the https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n5vJpBghAaM&t=9s

Dwight Peccora
0:00:00
I like being special, I like being the one they call to solve the problem. I know that I'm the only one in this state who can do the work that I do, or in this city.

Peter Boulden
0:00:08
I wanna be the hero.

Dwight Peccora
0:00:09
I wanna be the hero, I wanna be the one that I'm available, oh, somebody wrecked their face, and I have to be the one to put it back together, because nobody else knows how. I got the phone call from the ER. All that drama, with all due respect, first of all, we're not saving, we're not reconstructing, we're not cardiothoracic surgeons, this is not complex work, okay? I come from a long line of physicians who do much more scary stuff every day, and I kind of want everybody to realize, like, get your life back, and this is so common thread in the beginning of every single mastermind, where it's like, well, they need to see me, but I wanna scale, I wanna grow my business, I wanna be able to take a vacation, I wanna be at my kid's soccer game, but I have to be the one that's there. I have to be the one that takes care of it. And I think the truth is that is a big problem in our profession.

Peter Boulden
0:00:57
Because we have the ground game, we've actually built the practices that people aspire to

Peter Boulden
0:01:02
create.

Peter Boulden
0:01:03
History will prove one of us correct.

Craig Spodak
0:01:04
Wait, wait, wait, wait, you're not letting me finish, bro.

Peter Boulden
0:01:05
This is how you become bulletproof.

Peter Boulden
0:01:06
Bulletproof.

Peter Boulden
0:01:07
Bulletproof.

Peter Boulden
0:01:08
Bulletproof.

Craig Spodak
0:01:09
Bulletproof.

Peter Boulden
0:01:10
Bulletproof.

Peter Boulden
0:01:11
Bulletproof.

Peter Boulden
0:01:12
Bulletproof. Bulletproof.

Peter Boulden
0:01:14
Bulletproof.

Craig Spodak
0:01:15
Bulletproof.

Peter Boulden
0:01:16
Bulletproof. Well, you are now in your cold open, Craig. Now I know what you said, but, but wait, I mean, Trey, your microphone sounds normal.

Craig Spodak
0:01:27
You actually sound like, uh, I pulled a few levers.

Peter Boulden
0:01:30
I feel like everyone's going to miss that, Trey.

Peter Boulden
0:01:32
Yeah, they are.

Dwight Peccora
0:01:33
They are.

Peter Boulden
0:01:34
The deep, deep love.

Dwight Peccora
0:01:35
And I used to play that for you.

Craig Spodak
0:01:36
We're going to have to watch the comments to see who's angry. No, but bring him back.

Peter Boulden
0:01:39
Please comment if you would like him to reduce his mic back to bare metal. I think it would look good.

Peter Boulden
0:01:41
It would. I agree. See, I'll get your ERC money, by the way. I did. I got some checks today. It was like- Oh, today. I did literally, I'm today, trying to post today. So, it is crazy.

Craig Spodak
0:01:53
I thought you had them in a long back. I don't know why I thought that. I thought you got them

Dwight Peccora
0:01:56
in when I got them in. No.

Peter Boulden
0:01:57
So, by the way, I got an email today from my bank. My bank is like, you could be eligible for up to $26,000 per employee. So it's still going on. So if you haven't done anything, go check out, we got that website still up, BPERC, Bulletproof ERC, which is awesome.

Craig Spodak
0:02:17
BPERC, right?

Peter Boulden
0:02:18
No, Bulletproof ERC.

Peter Boulden
0:02:20
Isn't that Bulletproof ERC?

Peter Boulden
0:02:21
How do we not even know our own landing pages?

Craig Spodak
0:02:23
No, because we got a gazillion of them to help people out.

Peter Boulden
0:02:25
I know, but it's like, that's embarrassing. Bulletproof ERC, it's still, do it, do it, do it.

7
0:02:31
Holy shit. Yeah, literally.

Peter Boulden
0:02:33
I saw these checks, holy shit.

Craig Spodak
0:02:35
Yeah, it's paying, I've actually, so I got my check today and they're hammering concrete, you know, sawing concrete. So I'm like, that just paid for this entire new location.

Trey Tippit
0:02:45
Sweet.

Craig Spodak
0:02:46
So good. You know, and that's, I mean, you know, better use of funds like that. Right.

Peter Boulden
0:02:51
Yeah. The investment. Just how many people, everybody's just leaving them on the table, but why is it that people don't want to look through this process?

Craig Spodak
0:02:59
I'll tell you, Craig, what happened. So I actually had this conversation with my banker and he said, he's like, Hey, can you give me that contact? He's like, you got money. He's like, cause all of my clients are being told they don't qualify.

Peter Boulden
0:03:09
Or well, look at what you happen with you. You said no to one of the masterminders and Dwight and I, Dwight had this company that he was

Craig Spodak
0:03:15
working with and I was working with these guys. Well, the amounts they get, Craig, what I was going to say was like they were getting like $30,000 approvals on big practices and they were like, well, it's probably not worth it by the time you fund this and do that. And so they weren't doing it. And then I kind of explained in the amounts that were possible when you, when you go to a specialist and he was like, what?

Peter Boulden
0:03:35
So, right.

Peter Boulden
0:03:36
Of course I did.

Trey Tippit
0:03:37
Yeah.

Peter Boulden
0:03:38
Good.

Trey Tippit
0:03:39
Good.

Craig Spodak
0:03:40
All right.

Craig Spodak
0:03:41
Well, just check it out. If you haven't done it, please don't. It's not just for you. It's for your team. And it's a government program that exists to help people like you who kept your employees and paid payroll taxes prior. Enough of my beating on the drum. That was not what I wanted to say, but I was excited.

Peter Boulden
0:03:56
What other news other than a helicopter land in your front yard today, Craig? What other news do you have? You had your front, your practice, you had a patient come in in a helicopter, landed in your practice and…

Peter Boulden
0:04:06
Yeah, not on my practice, so.

Craig Spodak
0:04:08
What? No, in your practice, you had a patient.

Peter Boulden
0:04:12
Patient, I guess the full story since the recording is it just so happened he had engine trouble while flying over my practice and had to make an emergency landing on the neighbor's property. And then while he was here,

Craig Spodak
0:04:25
he got his implant crown and took off.

Craig Spodak
0:04:27
And they, and the mechanic.

37
0:04:29
He just happened to be a conventist.

Peter Boulden
0:04:30
It's just amazing. I mean the coincidences can happen, but I mean.

Dwight Peccora
0:04:33
I'm disappointed in you that you do not have a landing pad at your practice.

Trey Tippit
0:04:38
Yeah. I mean. Yeah, that's nuts.

Dwight Peccora
0:04:40
You're not inventive enough to think through.

Peter Boulden
0:04:42
That's what a ZRC is for.

Craig Spodak
0:04:43
Well, helipad.

Peter Boulden
0:04:44
It's for the helipad.

Peter Boulden
0:04:45
It's an E, it's an employee helipad, an EHC.

Trey Tippit
0:04:51
That's right.

Trey Tippit
0:04:51
Like you said, it's for the team. It's for the team.

Trey Tippit
0:04:54
It's for the team.

Peter Boulden
0:04:55
For the team.

Peter Boulden
0:04:56
All right, looks like we have an agenda, folks. There's an agenda going.

Craig Spodak
0:04:59
Well, unless we've got an issue, like I know I crushed, shut it down, unless you want, I don't even know if you're-

Peter Boulden
0:05:04
If you could do a little roasty, that's kind of fun.

Dwight Peccora
0:05:07
I don't know, I'm a little worried that sometimes the roasties are too hard for, I mean, I'll keep making them,

Dwight Peccora
0:05:12
but it seems like it's a little hard for some of y'all.

Dwight Peccora
0:05:15
I'm not gonna lie.

Craig Spodak
0:05:16
You mean for sensitive pants over there?

Peter Boulden
0:05:18
No, don't talk to Trey that way.

Craig Spodak
0:05:20
Yeah.

Peter Boulden
0:05:21
You know, you gotta-

Trey Tippit
0:05:22
It was only a single tear. Only a single tear….friendships.

Peter Boulden
0:05:26
Like, most of y'all know it's the Rose, but I don't know. Hey, Dwight, when you come out of Florida, weren't you threatening to come to Florida and hang out with me and do some stuff here? Weren't we doing this?

Peter Boulden
0:05:35
Is this still happening?

Craig Spodak
0:05:36
We can hang out?

Dwight Peccora
0:05:37
Yeah, yeah.

Dwight Peccora
0:05:38
When you want to go.

Peter Boulden
0:05:39
I was thinking about my house and all that.

Dwight Peccora
0:05:40
I'm in, I'm in. Bart and I were talking about it, he wanted to do it this summer.

Peter Boulden
0:05:45
Okay, good. I just want to make sure that that happens because I don't know if you noticed, but I took Pete out to ERC Ranch, Bitcoin Ranch.

Dwight Peccora
0:05:52
Bitcoin.

Peter Boulden
0:05:53
Bitcoin Farms. Pete was burning around on the dirt bikes and made me ride my bike.

Dwight Peccora
0:05:58
Yeah, I got a good video from y'all, Total Makers. No, I'm totally down, man. We're going to have a blast. And I figured I should put a buffer of no roasting for like a month before I come over that way.

Trey Tippit
0:06:11
Oh, yeah.

Trey Tippit
0:06:12
Just in case.

Peter Boulden
0:06:13
I'll be hurt. It's self-preservation.

Dwight Peccora
0:06:15
RIP. Let's roll this thing.

Dwight Peccora
0:06:16
Scorpions in your bed.

Trey Tippit
0:06:17
Yes. Scorpions in your bed.

Peter Boulden
0:06:18
All right. So we've got an agenda. I want to talk about this article I found. And it was ironic. I don't really read dental magazines that come to my mailbox, like, for they all come to y'alls. Once in a while I'll look at them, be like, anything interesting, stupid, stupid, stupid. There was an article that came out, I thought it was applicable to the stuff we talk about sometimes. So I've got a dental economics mag article I wanna talk about. I wanna talk about, you know, kind of the macroeconomic climate that we always talk about, and then the recessionary strategy that you guys are deploying. So last episode we did some marketing stuff, right? We were talking about kind of the best marketing strategy that that was good.

Peter Boulden
0:06:54
I actually re listened to that myself as a listener.

Peter Boulden
0:06:57
I thought I was really good.

Peter Boulden
0:06:57
He likes to smell his own.

Craig Spodak
0:06:59
I'm sorry. I'm on far as He loves saying that. I don't even know where that came from.

Peter Boulden
0:07:03
Everyone loves their own breath. Again, what do you mean? I think it's like Napoleon dynamite or something.

Craig Spodak
0:07:07
But I want to talk about this cyber hack and the stuff that was posted by Dr. Paul Goodman and he posted something that like associates were not being paid at Aspen and it was quote unquote for I guess for the cyber hack, but it's conflicting evidence on that. ERC updates we already talked about. And then Craig, I want us to recap at the end to kind of talk about AACD and what we kind of learned and discovered. Oh, that's smart. And also some Summit stuff. So big, big agenda and then anything that will come in from there. So I'll jump into it with you guys can see on your screen essentially what what this is done by the Levin Group. Right. And I guess they take bigger swath of of data from all practices across the nation rather than just like, you know, we we tend to look at entrepreneurial practices and hear from entrepreneurial practices. I think it's a different data set. But it's interesting to hear that, so basically I'll summarize this article. So it's profit down, overhead up, and overhead up by a lot. And so 65 dentists reported that the rising overhead was the biggest challenge they see right now. And I wanna hear if you guys think that that's,

Peter Boulden
0:08:23
yeah, that's legit or no. Define legit.

Trey Tippit
0:08:27
You want to know if we agree with it?

Peter Boulden
0:08:28
I think you highlighted or you underlined or underneath that little tag on the bottom. You highlighted some errors.

Trey Tippit
0:08:36
Can I read that too?

Dwight Peccora
0:08:37
Coming from the guy whose face is covered by the same tag.

Trey Tippit
0:08:40
Oh, I don't care.

Peter Boulden
0:08:41
This article looks good. My face does not, so that's a difference.

Dwight Peccora
0:08:45
Yeah, it says, only 4.6% of dentists reported that their production increase in 2022 was greater than 25%.

Peter Boulden
0:08:59
Is it significantly declining?

Craig Spodak
0:09:02
So yeah, it's basically saying there was a 2021 was a banner year for most practices and 2022, there's only been a small amount of people who've actually gotten better in 2022 than 21. I think that's a hard comparison, first of all, only because of the fact that 2021 was

Dwight Peccora
0:09:17
a pent-up post-pandemic demand.

Peter Boulden
0:09:19
Correct.

Peter Boulden
0:09:20
100%.

Dwight Peccora
0:09:21
I agree. That's my first thought. But generally speaking, I feel that the natural tendency of everybody feeling inflationary spending or inflationary goods in their personal lives and in their business, they push that on to their customers and dental offices and owners of dental offices started to feel that. But I think if you're not proactively watching what your supplier is charging you or you're not evaluating this every year, I think this is where it gets caught. And I think it's just like Pete's rule. I have the same kind of rule. Like you're always asking for a 20% off every, like I asked for it every year. If I work with one supply group and I've worked with them and I require the beginning of every year, like I compare them with two other potential suppliers and we go through it and you ask for a discount, you compete it out. If you're not doing that, they're taking advantage of you right now because they've had to do that.

Craig Spodak
0:10:15
I got to tell you, I got to put a pause on that because I actually have been teaching that to some of my key people that are, you know, they're now in kind of some deals and I'm like, look, get someone's quote, go back and say, hey, will you do X and let it always be 20 percent, which they might then be taken aback. But then they will usually split the difference and give you 10. Absolutely. So whether that's the roofer that comes to your house or the supplier or plumber or whoever it is, ask for 20. And then if they split the difference and they feel good because they won and you're really aiming for 10 to split the mean. So anyway, that not to interrupt, but that's a good little life hack that always work versus most people just get the price like, okay.

Dwight Peccora
0:10:55
Yeah. No, no, no. And I think your default should be to always ask for that and to build your infrastructure, your team to always be asking for that because I think that's the natural tendency. And I struggle if people are not evaluating this every year. If you're, if your supplier, whether it's Burkhardt Patterson, Shine, name your supplier, I don't really care. Feels like they have an unlimited contract with you, you're not doing business properly. Like my supplier knows you get 12 months, like great, and then we'll evaluate it 12 months from now. You've gotta earn, this is the percentage you need to fall into if you're not following this on the profit and loss statement, then you're doing that. So they don't feel like, they can probably feel that they can go to most practices and inch that 3% inflation on their goods, on all their costs, but you can't, they know they're not going to be able to do it at our practice, or they know that 12 years, 12 months from now, they're going to lose that contract or six months from now, they're going to lose that contract. I think that's an aggressive tendency, but that's what you need to do to maintain and protect your business or else you will lose your profit over time.

Craig Spodak
0:11:56
And almost inform them like the business is yours, but it's yours to lose, right? Meaning like this unimperpetuate, I think that's smart Dwight, like keep everybody on alert.

Dwight Peccora
0:12:05
It's smart work.

Peter Boulden
0:12:06
Along those lines too, from the standpoint of contracts, and I say contracts not just in who you're contracted with to use whatever insular service, be it supplies or equipment, anything like that. I actually avoid any contract that locks you in. I want the freedom of a 30 day window, and if I really like you, I'll give you a 60 day window. But the aspect is if your product speaks for itself, then it's never an issue.

Dwight Peccora
0:12:29
Agreed, yeah.

Peter Boulden
0:12:30
Then you sharpen the pencils like Dwight said every year. And I think that's, I agree, most people don't, but it's because it's set it and forget it. And then you are victim to them doing the same thing.

Dwight Peccora
0:12:40
I'm telling you, if you're not getting multiple quotes, if you have stayed with the same supply company, just to make it real simple, same supply company for, I don't know, because that's your supply company. This is what you do. You're getting hosed, period. I'm telling you right now. If you don't have a comparison bid every year, you are getting hosed in our industry, hands down. So my favorite is I go back and I say, by the way, this is what I can get if I go somewhere else. The last time I did this, aka this year, I've reduced my cost by $150,000 across our note. In consumables and supplies? In consumables and supplies. Just because I did a cross comparison with two other suppliers, they came to market and said, well if you want to keep your business, you're gonna have to make some adjustments and you're gonna standardize some of our supplies throughout. Meaning we had to put the onus on them to standardize us to

Craig Spodak
0:13:29
maintain our supply. Dwight, I'm gonna pause you here because I want to hear your steps for going into this. Walk me through how and why you started auditing and if someone's listening to this saying, I don't have the bandwidth Dwight has nor the acumen to do this, can you walk through some quick hacks of look at these three things, or you know what I mean?

Dwight Peccora
0:13:47
Yeah, well we do this in our personal lives. We just for some reason don't wanna do them in our business, right? If you go and compare, like I wanna buy this car, right? You're gonna go and get quotes, multiple quotes. If you wanna go travel somewhere, you're going on to some sites, a lot of people go on a site, and it's like TripAdvisor, you're going here, you're going to a site that's going to give you three different options for travel. It's all about price in a lot of ways. And if what I do is I take all our supply costs from that previous year and Q1, my team knows we spend most of Q1 analyzing everything we spent our money on the last year and where we can save. So you're going through and you're cutting and you're cutting and you're cutting. And all you're really doing is getting three bids on everything that we spent our money on last time. And you're an IT company, if you wanna keep your business with us, you're going up against this other guy. Why are you better than them? Am I willing to pay a premium to stay with you, or am I not? You gotta prove it to me. So for supplies, for example, I went in and you get everything we spent and every bit of supplies and volume amounts. The same way we run it for insurances or patient care and things like that. You run all your total amounts and you break it down for the whole year. You send that out to two other suppliers you're not working with who want your business and bring them to the table and say, hey, by the way, I do 12 month contracts. I allow you to come in, meaning I can kick you out at any point in time. There's no contract per se, but I'll allow you. I won't be reevaluating this until Q1 of 2024, kind of like what Trey is saying, right? But I'm gonna go through that. And I can tell you every single time they're like whoa that's they're cheaper because they're offering this quality or that and they'll tell the dentist all these typical things guess what it used to be that composite was vastly different this one versus another in the past now there's 15 different types of high quality composite that are all within the same micro filled micro macro all that garbage, it's all there. This is all, this is, everything is equal these days. You can go to all these others and say, I want cotton rolls, cotton rolls are cotton rolls. If it's going to be, you should probably get it from me.

Craig Spodak
0:15:51
Well, let me pause you for a second. Let me pause you. Because, like you said, it's all the same. There are gray market materials, right?

Dwight Peccora
0:15:57
So- We're talking not gray market. I'm talking actual quality- Above the bar. Above the bar. Clearly you can go to China and order all your coffee.

Peter Boulden
0:16:07
You guys can drive like 20 minutes across the border.

Dwight Peccora
0:16:09
Yeah, you can do all kinds of things. But I'm saying any of the suppliers I've talked about, if you put the top five to eight that you know that are in your area and service your area and you put them up against each other, you will notch that down two to 3%.

Craig Spodak
0:16:24
How do you export that? So that sounds like a lot of work, right? When I hear you talk, it sounds like a lot of work. So, is there a way to quickly say, I'm going to export my inventory document and then reshop it? Uh-huh.

Dwight Peccora
0:16:38
Well, first and foremost, if your supply company you're working with should do the majority of this work for you. Okay. I need to know all the stuff I bought from you and every single invoice can fall into an annual report.

Peter Boulden
0:16:52
The big boys will be left.

Dwight Peccora
0:16:52
And you're not doing any of this, right? So you're gonna give me that data. And they're gonna tell you, the first thing they're gonna tell you is, well, yes, but we don't want you sharing what fee structure. I'm like, take the fee structure that you give me off of there. I wanna know how much I spent and how many of each thing I ordered annually. They do all the work for you, they give it to you. You take that and you hand it to two others. And you say, if you wanna keep my business, we're about to go through this little gameplay where y'all each show up and present what you think you're going to present. And we as partners or as an owner can go in and decide whether I want to pay the premium for that or not. If I want to stick with 3M products, because the way they get reduced fees for you is they bulk everything under 3M. All right, we're going to use all these 3M products or three and a half here. Or if you're multi-location, they'll help you balance your structure where it's like, we use 3M across all offices and therefore your inventory isn't free goods.

Craig Spodak
0:17:43
Let me, uh, let me get back to, Dwight, I love that. And I think that's an audit that should be happening and you're right. I think we said it, forget it because it's like so boring. So like if you're out there and you want to look at operational efficiencies, that's something we're to look at. I'm gonna go back to this.

Peter Boulden
0:17:56
One thing to Pete is that there's creep. So you successfully negotiate your supplies and they give you amazing pricing, they save you tons of money, and then over the next year or two or three, it creates, it's a lot like the credit card thing, Dwight, you're in the air. Because Dwight, you are the only person that I know that when we looked at your credit card fees, you had negotiated them, you're a very special person that you can look at these things that drive me batshit crazy, this minutia. So I'm the type of person that needs to have a company. So like with that MCC thing that we do, that's the one thing that saves me consistent money. On my credit card fees, they save me thousands of dollars. But if you don't, when I used to do it, I was negotiate, feel great about myself. And then two years later, like, I wonder how it's going again. And it was all super screwed up again. So constant looking at these numbers and you gotta make sure, like what we do in my office is we have a no-go. Our clinical supplies do not exceed 4% ever. We can't. And when they're sub-5, there's bonus categories for that. So we're just very careful of that. So there's an internal control on that. Because if you're looking at an absolute numbers, it's hard because you're growing. So just pay attention to your P&L and the percentages.

Dwight Peccora
0:19:10
But even that, like when you were at 8 million as opposed to 12 million, now it shouldn't be 4%, it should be 3.5, it should be 3. At some point in time, those are the, every little bit of it. I guess just to bring it back to the article, like what you're saying, Pete, my thought is, I think every dentist thinks that the way you grow a dental business is to increase production. And the way you actually run your business properly is you reduce your overhead as you grow your production.

Craig Spodak
0:19:38
Right, yeah, well on the first bottom line,

Dwight Peccora
0:19:40
unless you wait for an article like this to tell you, oh by the way, everybody's overhead has gone up, oh I must be everybody.

Craig Spodak
0:19:46
Right, but

Dwight Peccora
0:19:48
speaking to a very

Peter Boulden
0:19:50
few percentage of people out there, by the way, the only reason why I even know about this stuff is because I almost lost it all. I almost went out of business growing my top line and not paying attention to my bottom line. It was existential, like I almost ran out of money. If that same thing would have happened early in my career, I wouldn't have been able to weather that.

Peter Boulden
0:20:08
Right.

Peter Boulden
0:20:08
Using this-

Peter Boulden
0:20:09
I'll probably stop listening to this podcast by now because we're like, I'm not a business person.

Craig Spodak
0:20:13
No, no one stops. Correct. The reason that I'm bringing this up is mainly for fodder because our viewpoint would probably differ from, you know, a little bit. So I'm bringing this up as just what do you think so that there's either consensus or something can learn from the difference of opinion. So the next thing is, and we actually just talked about this on our office hours for our mastermind, is that more than 90% of respondents believe that there is a shortage of dental staff available for hire. I get cringed when I see dental staff, by the way. But anyway, 90% of dentists believe there is a shortage of people for dentistry.

Peter Boulden
0:20:52
For sure.

Peter Boulden
0:20:53
So we're talking not dental, I mean not dentists, I mean. It says staff here.

Craig Spodak
0:20:58
Okay. That's right. So it's gonna be hygiene.

Peter Boulden
0:21:00
So.

Craig Spodak
0:21:01
Yeah, everything non-dental, non-dentist, let's call it. I think there, you know, you write an article

Peter Boulden
0:21:07
for the same reason a news channel runs a story. Right, if it bleeds and reads.

Craig Spodak
0:21:13
That's right.

Peter Boulden
0:21:17
So, I mean, looking at, even looking at something like this, that one graphic sitting there in the bottom left, Dennis reporting production increased greater than 25%. And they're like, oh, look at this huge bar next to it. And then this tiny little deal here. 25% is a massive amount of growth, except for a startup type practice. If you're a capacity practice growing 25%, that's doubling every three years. That is dramatic growth. And it is unsustainable in a single location because you'll hit capacity very quickly. So that's not appropriate to throw that out there and act like it is, hey, this is a huge problem. That's a very normal statistic. This is baseball talking about in this situation with these runners on base and this inning, given this pitch count, this is what normally happens. We can make up whatever statistic we know with that. I think the team aspect of things, if there is a shortage of team, people that you can hire for your team, then you go to every other industry and you hire from there, in which there are no shortages. One of the things we looked at, we've talked about this actually, but I just had Chad GPT write my hygienist ad. And we went through a whole deal of looking at it, and what you realize is that in the prompt, one of the biggest things was I'm not looking for people that are unemployed, I'm looking for people that work for other practices. I want people that have a job. So that's one of the big issues is you run ads, you're targeting or you're looking at, hey, there's a shortage of people. Well, there might be a shortage of good people that don't have jobs. Unemployed don't apply. Correct. Wow. There you go. I love it. Okay. Trey, the butcher. I like the butcher. I like the fact that you admitted the article was written for eyeballs and let's be frank, the person who's writing it is a consultant trying to drum up business for his consulting practice. He does not get paid or make a majority of his money from writing articles for Dental Economics or whatever magazine that was. It's like, hey, the future is really looking bleak. Trust us, we take practices and make them successful. And I agree with you, practices reporting 25%. That's a great graphic, but it's like you're coming out of a pandemic, everybody's booming, there's pent up demand. I think I agree with you. But moreover, there's a lot of private chat that we all have, and I'm still of the persuasion that there's pain coming. And I know we had a group chat just a couple of days ago, and you guys are on a counter point to what I think, but it's just the voices I'm tuned into and the people I'm listening to think there's like a big slowdown coming. There's a slowdown in the logistics. My buddy's a truck dealer and he's always the canary in the coal mine because logistics slows prior to the consumer feeling it. And they had a record Q1 and April just ground to a stop, like massive stop. And then my friend who's owned a Ford dealership here who I've been trying to get a new F-150 from for a while called me and was like, I have 40 platinum F-150s and I'm selling them below invoice. I'm like, wow, that's interesting. And then something else happened too. And I'm like, is this, could we make meaning out of these tea leaves or is this just a coincidence or, you know, as you guys have said in the past, it's all baked in already?

Craig Spodak
0:24:33
Well, let's move to that.

Craig Spodak
0:24:34
This will lead us into what I think is important. Like, Craig, if you are saying that there is going to be a little bit more gloom coming, a little harder times, a little stagnation in the economy, we already kind of talked about Dwight's little strategy about like use this time to audit your supplies, lower that to 4%. I think you were saying, you know, Craig, you said 4% and Dwight is continually auditing it. I think 4% is tough. But anyway, so let's keep talking about…

Peter Boulden
0:25:04
Making sure what you're categorizing that 4%. This is not implants or your lab costs.

Peter Boulden
0:25:08
It's not the lab costs.

Craig Spodak
0:25:10
Yep. Let's keep talking about recessionary strategy. And what I have here written down is a couple of things that I'd like to maybe hear you guys, your takes. But my keys for a recessionary strategy would be to increase and focus on attracting hygiene patients. Because as we've always said, those become fertile ground for treatment that people may not know they want or need. And usually those are the lowest hanging fruit in terms of new patients versus an all-on-X patient, so to speak, right? Which takes a continuum of leads and curation of that touch points. That make sense from a marketing perspective? So that would be one. So mine would be increase in focus on hygiene patients. Have your team review benefits prior to the patient's appointment. So many times we look at what is available after we've had the conversations and see if they're interested. And I think that's a really important thing to remember. And I think that's a really important thing to remember. And I think that's a really important thing to remember. And I think that's a really important thing to remember. And I think that's a really important thing to remember. And I think that's a really important thing to remember. And I think that's a really important thing to remember. And I think that's a really important thing to remember. And I think that's a really important thing to remember. And I think that's a really important thing to remember. And I think that's a really important thing to remember. And I think that's a really important thing to remember.

Dwight Peccora
0:26:33
when you're talking about treatment.

Peter Boulden
0:26:34
It's like, hey, I actually saw it.

Craig Spodak
0:26:36
Before I came in here, I actually saw that you had a thousand dollars remaining on blah, blah, blah. Right, that's a very, oh, okay. And you're like, like clear aligners, stuff like that. Yeah, or whatever it is, right? Remaining benefits or benefits that may exist. And sometimes, I guess we just check after the fact is where I'm going, but being armed with that. And air pay, you know, I know we've got a great thing. Craig, are you liking air pay? Yeah, it's awesome. We use that as an insurance verification done automatically, so it populates. And we have a, I think it's BP AirPay, but it gives people, if you sign up, it gives you months off or a percentage off. But my team loves it because it really reduces the amount of work and phone calls. The level of insurance verification data that is given automatically is much, much more developed than some of the other ones.

Peter Boulden
0:27:14
Yeah, I'm working with them to create those customized reports so that they can send you an email or a CSV file that you can actually say, Mrs. Jones is coming in in three weeks and she has that coverage or liner coverage, which is huge because if your insurance company is subsidizing your clear liners, that's awesome because most of those don't happen.

Craig Spodak
0:27:36
Let me get through this. The third thing, we'll come back. I mean, that's cool, but like, let's get through the three strategies. My third one is look at negotiation strategies for supplies and labs. And we already talked about this, the 20%, Dwight. So those would be my three things, is renegotiate the labs and supplies, look at benefits prior to the appointment, and increase and focus on attracting and creating that hygiene experience for new patients and hygiene, for hygiene patients. Okay, anyone else want to jump in? Craig, since I cut you off, do you want to kind of jump in on that or?

Peter Boulden
0:28:09
Let me just say one thing, you know, whatever, you know, I guess it's the way my brain works. I got something wrong with my brain, but listening to the ways to trim and weather yourself for the storm is never like really powerful for me. And I know we need to talk about it. So we're doing the audience an injustice if we don't speak of the battening down the hatches and preparing for the storm. I think that this next economic cycle, like all economic cycles, are where people can go and make their killings. This is the time when people who are aggressive and have cash will be able to turn their 10 millions into 100 millions, 100 millions into billions. This is the time to do something. So I think you have to look at two distinct areas. You have to have a good sword and a good shield. The shield is to protect your house, watch your 3.4% to 3.5%, blah, blah, blah. That stuff drives me crazy. Although I know we need to do it. We're doing an injustice to the listener. If we don't say, look at your supplies, look at your credit card fees, et cetera. But I also do believe, like do you believe like I've been waiting and having cash for a while. Like I sold that land and I had the cash because I thought the recession is going to come sooner. And I don't know if there's a massive dip like you always say or Peter Dwight, I don't remember, but people drop things when they tend to be when they're running. And I don't think that there's going to be when they're scared. I say people drop things when they get scared. So there's going to be dental practices that people are just like they got their ass kicked during COVID. It was emotionally scarring. They have PTSD of that. It's not that long ago. And then with the news and the sensational articles, I think there's going to be some really great practices and opportunities around. I think some DSOs will go out of business. You know, I actually think that capital markets may dry up. And I actually, that's what excites me as much,

Peter Boulden
0:30:01
if not more.

Craig Spodak
0:30:02
So, I mean, so this is to the audience that has a tremendous amount of dry powder like you do, so we want to gear the podcast at that as opposed to talking about.

Peter Boulden
0:30:09
No, not a tremendous amount of dry powder. You don't need a lot. You just need, just know that I don't think it's here yet. I'm a big believer that the pain at our cash registers of our practices has not begun. It might be beginning. And I think there's going to be a lot of great opportunities to be aggressive. That might just be merging an existing practice into yours.

Peter Boulden
0:30:32
You don't need cash for that, you can pay them.

Craig Spodak
0:30:34
You're basing this, I think, Craig, based on 2008 and 2009 kind of scenarios where there was blood in the streets and if you had bought, even if the blood was yours, you'd have been a rich guy right now. Right. Entirely different, it's an entirely different paradigm right now, in my opinion.

Peter Boulden
0:30:47
That's kind of right, but none of us will know. We'll know in two years from now.

Craig Spodak
0:30:50
Okay, well then I know we're just-

Peter Boulden
0:30:53
You're presuming that, I mean, let's just get on the same page. I think that would be good because we talk about this all the time. We're all very different, and that's why I brought this up. That text thread that we had in our private chat was, I think, Dwight was, let's find out what the position of each one of us is. Are you guys thinking that this is a flattening, it's like kind of a flat spot and then a rebound, or do you think there will be blood in the streets, the proverbial blood in the streets, things falling apart?

Craig Spodak
0:31:19
We've already had this conversation.

Peter Boulden
0:31:21
Right, but it was months ago.

Craig Spodak
0:31:22
Yeah.

Peter Boulden
0:31:23
Okay, nothing's changed.

Craig Spodak
0:31:24
Interest rates went up a little bit. I think they will start trending down, I think, because in stagflation, which is the worst, which is an inflationary environment

Dwight Peccora
0:31:32
where people aren't spending money, like the worst scenario. Stagflation, we as business owners and a lot of the big wigs that like to have an opinion or talking heads like to have opinions, they like it when it's going up or when it's going down. When it's stagflation, they're confused and they're scared and they don't want to say

Peter Boulden
0:31:50
it. What do you mean by stagflation? Just so you can explain that. What does that mean? A rising interest rates and no economic growth?

Dwight Peccora
0:31:56
Correct. Exactly. And so when they don't know how to define it, it's going up or it's going down.

Peter Boulden
0:32:01
And they're in-

Craig Spodak
0:32:02
Inflationary. Inflation and then no economic impact.

Peter Boulden
0:32:05
Inflationary.

Dwight Peccora
0:32:06
Correct.

Dwight Peccora
0:32:07
Correct. And so on that impact, what I'm struggling with is hearing these doomsday talking heads, all this. Why? Because it's the same thing like that article. It's trying to get people to listen to you. They're not actually out there, actually working on their business, realizing and paying attention to their consumer, paying attention to their numbers. It's like the docs who responded to this survey and said that 90% of them think that there's a shortage of dental staff, right? You know what that means really to me? Is this is a bunch of individuals who are not actually, they haven't built an environment where they can take anybody in and make them better people. They're waiting for good and established dental staff to come in who already know how to work. Like, oh, you have to have Eagle soft knowledge. You have to know how to, how to take it. Like, that is garbage. That's just poor business. And so these are the individuals who are creating a scarcity environment, making people think that when in reality, if you run a good business, you have a good onboarding system, training protocols that allow people to be successful. But they're not saying 90% of them aren't available. They just think they've made this funnel so little, it makes it hard for them to recruit anybody for any one position.

Craig Spodak
0:33:14
Craig, I believe in real estate, you are right. You will probably be able to get some deals in real estate. I'm not sure about that in dental practices and here's why. It's because they have yield and you can already acquire them for two and three times, four times earnings. I had a conversation, so I went to F1 this weekend, Craig, you knew that, I told the guys and it was through YPO. Half the reason I go to a lot of these YPO things is because it's a great incubator for talking. You know, half of it is fun and half of it is get a pulse. Get a pulse, right. Different industries, different people, non-dentists, right? And so I was talking to a guy who had a building supply company, massive building supply company in Texas, actually. And I said, so here's the deal. I'm wanting to build a couple of buildings right now. And really, I was like, should I, you know, I don't wanna do it though in this inflationary environment, right? Our building supplies are so much. He said, yeah, you know what? Like he basically his conclusion to me was things are never going back to the way they were and it's not even because lumber is going to go down or whatever. He's like, it's all the other cost. It's the cost of labor associated with actually producing it. So he's like, don't wait. Go ahead. Right. Interest rates may be high and building supplies may be high, but it's not going to get better. It's not going to dip down to 2008 is what I was trying to get to.

Peter Boulden
0:34:28
Starbucks coffee will never be $1.50.

Craig Spodak
0:34:30
Never. It doesn't go backwards, right? It doesn't readjust. Yes. Very, very good point, Greg. And so that to me was like, oh yeah. And so I think sometimes when you say like, hey, sit on the sidelines and dry powder, you may get some deals. Sometimes, you know, the person who's sitting on the sidelines, it grows old and gray.

Peter Boulden
0:34:49
Of course, it's timing the market, same thing. The analogy I've always used with that, even paying at premiums and things like that, if when I jump in the river and the current is flowing, and you're waiting for the deal, you'll never catch me.

Craig Spodak
0:35:02
Yeah, that's a good one. That's very good.

Dwight Peccora
0:35:05
My biggest, my struggle with exactly that is just sitting here and listening to people kind of just sit on the wayside waiting for the right time. There's no, the best ROI is opening up your operatories and seeing patients as soon as possible. I don't care how much you pay for it, you can make incredible profit. We're talking about 10, 20, 30, 40, 50% profitability in dental practices. It's far more profitable than any of these costs we're talking about building anything. But some people are so scared because they're like, I wanna get the best deal to build the practice or expand or add two operatories. I'm like, the best deal is getting them open as soon as possible. And that's where this concept of getting stuck on the economy or what, honestly, it's too many people leaving the TV on and paying too much attention and not listening to all that, which is made to be for TV. Right.

Trey Tippit
0:35:52
Leaves it reads.

Craig Spodak
0:35:52
Leaves it reads. Okay. So, so we kind of hit some strategies there. I mean, I wasn't expecting you guys to be like, all right, my one, two and three would be this, but like, Greg, I do think it is important to get in the dirt and then get in the clouds, get in the dirt. You got to have both. And so what you're saying is like, Hey, I've got a bunch of dry powder. I want to get some stuff. Let's talk about that. And that's a cloud movement to me. Dirt movement is let's look at supplies and, and we're at 4%. I want to be at 3.99, right? Like that's a dirt move and you've got to have an equal balance. In my opinion, as an operator,

Peter Boulden
0:36:24
I, I will, it's sword and shield. You have to play the game from an increase your revenue. You got to block and tackle. Or you know, that's not…

Craig Spodak
0:36:32
Shake it back.

Trey Tippit
0:36:33
I'm making it.

Peter Boulden
0:36:34
Yes, shake it back.

Dwight Peccora
0:36:35
I'm making it.

Peter Boulden
0:36:36
With all due respect, but you have to play the game from both sides. It's developing strategy in mobile.

Peter Boulden
0:36:43
So everyone's a plan ball team.

Trey Tippit
0:36:44
Yeah.

Peter Boulden
0:36:45
I'm digging deeper.

Peter Boulden
0:36:46
I just, I just, you can't step over dollars to save the dimes and you can't save your way to prosperity. You have to focus on driving forward and you have to do the best strategy from the standpoint of, of saving money and appropriate business tactics. And really it's your model. It's always readjusting your model to fit whatever your, whatever the season of the economy is. But you gotta drive forward. You gotta keep moving forward. But it is a good point, and I'm happy that you guys pushed back on it. I am thinking about this, and it's very difficult. It's true, I would tell someone saying what I just said to me, I would actually tell them, like, Ty, get in, get in right now. If we look at things, it's frustrating because when you buy that house, you buy it for 500, the guy before you 10 years ago paid 100, you're so fricking pissed off. Like, you just paid 100, and I'm paying 400, but you don't realize that in three years, you're that guy that paid 400, now it's 800. Asset prices are not going anywhere over time, and waiting on the sidelines is a silly move. I am, in my own neurotic brain, trying to find the bottom as like a fun thing, but it's not good advice.

Craig Spodak
0:38:04
I agree with you guys.

Dwight Peccora
0:38:05
I just had a learning moment. I don't agree with you, but getting better. As far as tactical things with recessionary strategy, one thing I would add to your list, because I love the focus of the avatar of the hygiene patient. One thing I would tell doctors and people with associates to help them re-energize themselves on the understanding of the re-care appointment, not just the new patient hygiene appointment. Everybody thinks the new patient hygiene appointment is sexy, the truth is, is the recall is the highest case acceptance. Like you said, we know what's coming in, we know what their benefits are, you know, like all this to me, one of the big key cogs is morning huddle, right? It is, there are days when a provider, you may come in and they've got a light schedule because they had two, three cancellations. I had two big cancellations on Monday actually and I was gonna see patients that day and I come in, I'm like, whoa, all of them sitting on my tail here and I'm like, what am I gonna do? The money is in the chairs, the production is in the chair. So if you have a good morning huddle and a strategic time to slow down and look at everything, not only look at your benefits, but know what's already coming in that is already treatment plan and get them in other chairs and do your same day dentistry. I ended up producing over 10,000 like it was 50 grand at the end of it.

Craig Spodak
0:39:19
Well Dwight, if you from the summit, like we actually in the summit manuals, so we have kind of how to run a successful morning meeting and that is actually there's kind of five key components of that we talk about and one of them is what you're talking about, looking, identifying in the meeting same day opportunities. Doesn't mean you're going to have the time to do it. It does know that there's pending treatment and conversations that you could do if there is cancellation. So, going back to that strategy, you know, same day would be a massive recessionary strategy, but you've got to be on it. You don't have time to walk to the chart when the patient's in the chair, is what I'm saying. So, you've got to have that.

Peter Boulden
0:39:57
Hygiene.

Dwight Peccora
0:39:58
Hygiene, you're right. People think that same day is like, oh, people walking in. No, no, no, it's the patient's already in the office.

Trey Tippit
0:40:04
Really?

Dwight Peccora
0:40:05
Well, I think there's this natural gut that people are like, well, same day means somebody

Dwight Peccora
0:40:09
walked in and they're in pain.

Peter Boulden
0:40:10
Walking?

Dwight Peccora
0:40:11
That's good to clarify that. Same day is actually what's in your office that very day that you're converting over, either diagnosing because they came in for an exam, you're converting over it, or you're in hygiene, you're diagnosing and you're converting over and you're getting it done the same day and I think the other piece that a lot of people miss is they feel like this is business talk for their team and it's not what it is is it's comprehensive great customer service and patient care patients don't want to come back none of us want to go back to the doctor multiple times you

Peter Boulden
0:40:44
know patients don't that patients don't tell you they have a crown out they make a cleaning appointment and they bring the crown in a Ziploc. So how many times have we gone in like, oh, you know, I'm coming in today. Oh, great, getting cleaning? Yeah, and plus that these two crowns fell out two weeks ago. Oh, well, you didn't book time with me. You know, like we think that they understand. They think they have an out hygiene appointment. Let me just bring everything in at that point. And by the way, guys, if my mic goes out, tell me.

Craig Spodak
0:41:10
I just did via text.

Peter Boulden
0:41:11
Yeah, but you texted me and I'm not like, I can't multitask.

Dwight Peccora
0:41:14
We just thought you weren't talking

Peter Boulden
0:41:15
so

Craig Spodak
0:41:17
Right. That is a good Mediation that's a good different to clarify. We do say same-day dentistry. We do not mean walk-in dentistry We mean we mean the people who have been on the schedule for a while, which means that you have ample time to review For same-day opportunities. Yeah, right typically that happens in hygiene It's and my our hygienist go ahead and look look at that and that's something that's talked about and it's not hey, we're doing number 14 today. Everyone can read the damn schedule. Do not waste your time doing that with a morning meeting. No number 14 is going on Mrs. Jones. You know that's a seat. But what you don't is does there's an outstanding balance? Is there other treatment that could be done? That's a good use of the 15 minutes for your morning meeting, not today we're doing scaling and replanting on Ms. Jones. And that's when everyone dreads the morning meeting because they serve no value.

Dwight Peccora
0:42:07
And I don't think that assigning morning huddle to a person, an office manager, it should be a team effort approach. Our hygienists present their same day opportunities. Our doctors present opportunities for open spaces where they could take on same day, but it's usually their assistant speaking for them as a team conglomerate, kind of speaking it out. That is the goal, is that morning huddle is a team approach and it is comprehensively done by everybody so that everybody's bringing something to the table and say, oh, actually you've got an extra hour and a half, I think we can move this Sarek over from this person to this person, it shouldn't be a problem, it might be a different doctor, well, go ahead

Peter Boulden
0:42:46
and do an intro, grab me before I go in for this for the intro all that is the key to Dwight can I piggyback on what you're saying is that there's keys to this in my opinion is that you put it in how in patient-benefited verbiage how lucky are you that I just had a cancellation not a cancellation enough enough you must live in life the right way because wow right yeah we just had a last minute you can see you today whether that be us or not but like it's it's all about the verbiage that someone's presented, in my opinion. All right, so moving along. I think that's good. Trey, you got anything to add to kind of a recessionary strategy that we didn't cover? No, I think the sustainability of a dental practice it lives in the hygiene program. Okay. Statistically, too. So you put that together, you weather any storm because you can pull the same day treatment out of all those of that program. We're very fortunate in medicine that we have a recurring preventive strategy of seeing patients. And if you really think about it, how many industries in medicine, how many fields of medicine have that? You have colonoscopies, you have us, you have mammograms. I mean, they're doing part between. Yeah, DERM. Well, DERM is adapted. DERM is putting a whole bunch of elective stuff, Botox and fillers to get that frequency up. So we're not dependent on waiting for the phone to ring. But Ray, there are practices out there that are dependent on that. They run business models, they're just all on X mechas or whatever, Visalign specific or Clear Align specific practices. Those have holes in those business models.

Peter Boulden
0:44:24
For sure.

Peter Boulden
0:44:25
They were so blessed.

Trey Tippit
0:44:26
As well, you're right.

Peter Boulden
0:44:27
And by the way, my friend is a plastic surgeon He's like one of the largest Consumers of Botox and for those Dennis out there that I'm sorry. Yeah. Yeah, he's like 74. He looks like he's 28 Except for down here. Yeah, exactly

Peter Boulden
0:44:41
But he's like you guys are so lucky

Peter Boulden
0:44:43
the reason why we have to do Botox is because People don't come in frequently and we don't get a chance to touch on them like, hey, you think about the facelift or the blepharoplasty or the whatever, but the Botox allows them that frequency. So we are so blessed. And if you think about it, statistically speaking, the most important statistic, I know we've all heard it a million times, but it bears mentioned one more time, it's the pre-appointment rate, not the reappointment rate. Pre-appointment rate means what percentage of your patients have a next appointment booked. And that's the single metric that over points to overall practice, health and success. Let me say this about that too. Pre-appointment is a lagging indicator of reappointment. Right. So, but the reappointment rate is a hygiene specific thing. Hygienists do a great job of reappointing their patients, but you can have a reappointment rate that's 98%, like ridiculously high, but only 20% of your patients are actively in the hygiene system. Cause let's face it, when we finish a case, or when I see a lot of my doctors finish a case and they drop in that FMR, see you later.

Craig Spodak
0:45:49
Not like the next visit, right?

Peter Boulden
0:45:50
So it's visit, they walk in the other door. That takes into account that none of these metrics work in a vacuum. All of them work together. You can't do focus on one and ignore all the others. But if you have that, if you can focus on that pre-appointment rate though, it's the largest net to catch it all because it divides the active patients with the next appointment. Pre-appointment.

Dwight Peccora
0:46:11
Because out of sight, out of mind. Pre-appointment rate is your recessionary indicator. If you have a bad pre-appointment rate, you can expect local recession. I love people who think, oh, well, nothing's happened. No. It happens locally in a lot of businesses. They have a quote recession within their own business. That's because they haven't done their pre-appointment rate. Their patients aren't coming in. If you want to figure out your own business, there might be a recession going on out there, but there's nothing going on in here. It's because you're locking in this one. And if nobody does anything else, the pre-appointment rate is the one to focus on.

Dwight Peccora
0:46:42
There's no doubt about it.

Peter Boulden
0:46:42
And by the way, just assign somebody in the practice that responsibility and have them just gently beat that drum every Monday morning. Like, hey guys, great job last week. It went up 1%. Just 1%, we're getting there. And that like Pearson's law, that which gets measured and reported back tends to improve just one person every single Monday. Pre-appointment rate, pre-appointment rate. So I actually never look at the pre-appointment rate. I only look at the hygiene pre-appointment rate. But I look at it in conjunction with, I monitor how much, what are my active hygiene patients versus my active patients, so I have to see that that benchmark is hit. Then I monitor the reappointment rate, knowing that that's feeding the pre-appointment rate. And then the pre-appointment rate, the hygiene pre-appointment rate, tells me that I will always have a sustainable program, and then I can pull those people out. When you only focus on pre-appointment, which includes the restorative side of it, you can have that one practice that focuses on all on force. It's a restorative heavy practice can be, have a very good looking pre-appointment rate and then get, just get trounced in a, in a.

Craig Spodak
0:47:46
It's a lead indicator. That's what you were saying, Trey. That was what you were saying earlier, right? There's a lead and lag and that's a great lead or prognosticating indicator of how you're going to do.

Peter Boulden
0:47:54
But with this, yes, I was saying the reappointment is a lead indicator to the pre-appointment, which is the lag indicator. So reappointment, a good reappointment feeds the pre-appointment. But in this case, if you're focusing on just pre-appointment as opposed to hygiene pre-appointment, it leaves a big gaping hole for that practice that can have those numbers look good, but if it's a restorative heavy practice, you look good all the way up until you crash because there's no hygiene program to keep feeding that restorative, it's the engine. It's the engine that feeds it. So you can keep going if you have a good hygiene pre-appointment.

Peter Boulden
0:48:28
Oh man.

Peter Boulden
0:48:29
There's so much to look at. And by the way, you get something good in your practice, you get a metric that you're really working towards and have it optimal levels and you kind of lose attention on it and you focus on the next thing. And then you go back and you have to pick that part up as well. It's a never-ending saga of this. Even when you build good systems, you know, after a while things tend to fall apart. There's disorganization that happens.

Craig Spodak
0:48:54
Unless, unless, Greg, unless you focus on, in my opinion, a sustainable amount. And this is just what works for me. You know, I think if you gamify the five or whatever, and I think there's really five that move in, and we've talked about that in our AACD lecture, right? Like no one has got the damn time to look at 100, right? And if you do, it's probably a point of diminishing returns. So yes, you're spinning plates, Greg, and I agree. When you're spinning one, you're like, this is awesome. And you kind of take your eyes off it. You look back in a couple of months, like what the hell happened? But I think, as I kind of said at AACD, it is incumbent upon us CEOs or the people leading practices, you just have to have some level of acumen on your numbers. Otherwise, you're A, going to get taken advantage of, or B, you're going to wake up and be like, what the hell happened? Right. And you're the one with those. What do you mean? You know, we've all been there. Yeah. I mean, this is going on. What do you mean? Weren't you guys, what do you want you guys looking at this? Like it's your business, doc.

Peter Boulden
0:49:50
What are you talking about? Yeah. No one can care more than you. I don't care. It's hard to set this example. I've been there, done that. Okay. Let's talk about some, some gossip. Let's get some dental gossip.

Craig Spodak
0:50:02
Woo, aspirin.

Craig Spodak
0:50:03
Yes.

Craig Spodak
0:50:04
So, I was looking at the Dental Nachos feed of Paul Goodman's and I saw this like post. So, he sometimes will take, repurpose some of the stuff that's on Facebook, that I don't get on Facebook, because it looks like a whole conversations. It just looks like a terrible cesspool of conversations. I don't even go there. So, but he repurposed a conversation that I guess an associate was asking, he put it on Instagram, which I saw. And it was basically someone saying like, hey, I work for Aspen and they're not paying their doctors right now. And so it was like, whoa, that's pretty crazy. What's going on? Where Craig, and then I posted that to our group thread, where Craig Quigley was like, hey, look, they got a cyber hack on their data. So I'd kind of dug in a little bit. Maybe I'd love to hear y'all found out, but there is a little bit over there Okay, looks like there was a vulnerability and there was data was being held hostage or a ransom Now that maybe you know, I don't have any don't take that for fact That's all just this is just the rumor but like but so it was interesting which prompted Dwight Dwight, I believe you brought this up today in our office hours was has everyone have what's the name of the insurance, Dwight?

Peter Boulden
0:51:15
Cyber security insurance.

Craig Spodak
0:51:17
Cyber security insurance, right. And looking at your IT. Did y'all hear anything else on that Aspen deal?

Dwight Peccora
0:51:24
Just the fact that, I mean, clearly they've been having some

Craig Spodak
0:51:28
public share value issues and- What did the stock do that day, by the way? Does anyone know?

Craig Spodak
0:51:33
Tanked.

Peter Boulden
0:51:34
Did it really?

Dwight Peccora
0:51:34
It got so cheap that everybody, that's why everybody was yelling consolidation, consolidation is about to happen because someone

Craig Spodak
0:51:40
was going to make an offer that they couldn't.

Peter Boulden
0:51:42
Really?

Peter Boulden
0:51:43
Well, what happened?

Craig Spodak
0:51:44
How long did it go on for, Dwight? Do you know?

Dwight Peccora
0:51:46
I don't. All I know is that they had just had an uptick in their stock value and then they had some executive drama going on. It was like one thing after another and then they had the payout issue and that started dropping and then they had to hack and it went like below appropriate share value where it was a negative Spend and so it was already being considered for a sell sell sell get out of this before it tanks any further

Craig Spodak
0:52:10
So, let me see where we're at on the stock tray. You didn't hear anything. Did you not to that level? No, I Mean I was I was just thinking okay I kind of blew my mind right when I saw all post and I was like, holy shit, like, you said there was more to it. What's going down? What happened? Well, there was more to it, meaning that there was a lockup on the data. Therefore, if you can't access your systems and you can't access the pay and how are you going to look at what doctors produce what and all that stuff. So I guess that was the reason for non-payment. What is the stock symbol, Aspen? I don't know. ASPU. ASPU. So, that was just, you know, it's just kind of a thing that, you know, as we have all been talking and beating the drum and like, don't sell your assets and like, you know, and people saying like, what's it like to work for a DSO? Like sometimes this can happen. Not that this couldn't happen to a private. You can't exempt all of us. Sure.

Peter Boulden
0:53:04
But guess what?

Peter Boulden
0:53:05
Is that, is that really it? ASPU, Aspen Group Incorporated?

Peter Boulden
0:53:08
Yeah.

Peter Boulden
0:53:09
They traded seven cents down.

Craig Spodak
0:53:11
Yeah, that's what I was saying. Their price target is $1.83 and they're at seven cents right now

Peter Boulden
0:53:16
Now if they lose money now we have to have ASP has to be the wrong this is not the right symbol Where's our Jamie? It's not I'm right here Craig Dude ASPU what Dwight is telling me that as Aspen dental revenues are 17.07 million?

Peter Boulden
0:53:39
No, no, no, no, no.

Dwight Peccora
0:53:42
What are you looking?

Peter Boulden
0:53:43
I'm looking at ASP, what you just told me. That's not what it is. You're giving me the wrong symbol. I'm calling bullshit on DeWizzle here.

Craig Spodak
0:53:51
Please comment below at-

Dwight Peccora
0:53:56
Is that really?

Dwight Peccora
0:53:57
Have some fun with this. Yeah, I mean, I don't know how else to explain it, but I'll leave it. Well, just keep talking me through it. Well. I don't know pick any Aspen group incorporated. Let's see ASPU is that seven cents share right now?

Craig Spodak
0:54:11
Let's see I can give you more information on charts like we shouldn't be doing this live, but I don't care

Peter Boulden
0:54:16
Put my neck out. I'm gonna get a I'm gonna get torched Aspen Group, it's 17. What am I seeing here? Am I really seeing that their sales are that, I mean, their revenues are that low?

Dwight Peccora
0:54:34
Revenue is 77 million.

Peter Boulden
0:54:37
Okay.

Dwight Peccora
0:54:38
A net income of, net income right now is negative 10 million.

Peter Boulden
0:54:42
That's what I saw. So their net income, they're losing 10 million a year?

Peter Boulden
0:54:47
Correct.

Peter Boulden
0:54:48
Geez, I just don't understand.

Dwight Peccora
0:54:50
Operating margin is negative 11%.

Craig Spodak
0:54:52
Oh my God.

Peter Boulden
0:54:53
Is that a healthy profit margin?

Craig Spodak
0:54:56
Well, it's like a software thing in that it's basically operating on growth and scale. Like I was talking to some other buddies.

Peter Boulden
0:55:02
But by debt back though, guys.

Craig Spodak
0:55:04
Debt back, it's the growth, not the profit. Enterprise value to EBITDA is negative 4.1%. Negative 4.1%, sorry. So return on total capital, negative 12. I mean, obviously at this point in time, these are automated formulas, so they tell you to buy because it's a buy ratio because the expected target is 1.83 cents. That's crazy.

Peter Boulden
0:55:28
But, you know, it all depends. At some point, you'll have to figure it out. I mean, what a robust company though, guys. I had no idea about the financials, but as an outsider, as a dentist looking in on Aspen, being that they own Clear Choice and their facilities and the quality, what appears to be the quality of the work life for the dentists at Aspen. I know people that work at Aspen and they don't, I mean, I think from what I've seen, it seems like one of the better ones.

Craig Spodak
0:55:55
You still want to buy that Aspen property, Craig? You and I were looking at in Florida. We were looking to buy an Aspen practice, but just the real estate holding.

Peter Boulden
0:56:06
Yeah, Peter and I have this idea about trying to create a portfolio of dental real estate, which I love. I just love a lot of real estate, but actually I'm not loving my shopping center lately.

Peter Boulden
0:56:17
I gotta tell you what happened.

Dwight Peccora
0:56:19
I was about to say, I was like, what's up?

Peter Boulden
0:56:21
I'm getting my ass thoroughly kicked right now.

Craig Spodak
0:56:23
So like,

Peter Boulden
0:56:24
We all, I think it's being landlord until you realize all you want to do is a single tenant space.

Craig Spodak
0:56:28
Maybe it's a single tenant space.

Peter Boulden
0:56:29
No, it's not a single tenant space, but you know like when we have a masterminder come in and we just like really unlock all these opportunities because we can help people see around all the corners. So I am like two year dental dentist in real estate. Like I have two years of experience. I know enough to be dangerous. And I just really screw things up at my own shopping center. But I'm gonna fix it. I got it, I'm gonna fix it.

Craig Spodak
0:56:51
But, yeah.

Peter Boulden
0:56:52
The unicorn is the single tenant space. It is not a multi-tenant space. Yeah. It is just hard to find, it's massively profitable, it's fantastic, and we ignore it, and then try to go multi-tenant and play landlord instead of. Yeah, well I think the biggest takeaway is when you write a lease to a tenant, you should at least read it.

Trey Tippit
0:57:11
These are just basic studies.

Craig Spodak
0:57:15
I heard Greg and his lawyer arguing with each other and he was like, can you read this? And like, isn't that what I thought, you can read this? He's like, Craig's like, I'm not the attorney. I'm like, you're the attorney.

Peter Boulden
0:57:26
He's like, we should sue them. I'm like, I read the use clause that you wrote. It says that you allow people under the jurisdiction of the state. To me as a dentist, that means we're catering to prisoners.

Dwight Peccora
0:57:40
Anyway, it's fine.

Craig Spodak
0:57:41
I'll deal with it.

Peter Boulden
0:57:42
But it's, it's, it's, it's, I've had a lot of accelerated learning. Learning is costly guys. Hey, that's actually a really good point. It accelerates your learning. It accelerates your learning and you kill it next time. I'm not upset. That into the contract. Yeah, it's a long story. It's a, it's a long story, but you can't like the same way we're preaching to Dennis, like know your numbers, know your pre-appointment percentage. My buddy who's a real estate like mogul, my buddy Michael is just like, so wait, didn't read any of that. I'm like now. And then yesterday I signed a quote because I have a property manager. My, my thought was the property manager is going to do that, but like you need, you need, it's incumbent upon you. If you run a business, you own a piece of real estate, you got to do so. This is all me, guys. It's all me. I'd love to point the finger, but I was just a knucklehead.

Dwight Peccora
0:58:30
But I'm still gonna do okay.

Peter Boulden
0:58:31
I'm gonna go ahead.

Craig Spodak
0:58:31
Your velocity sometimes, you miss things, right? But like, just like always say, be the advocate of your healthcare. Be the advocate of your legal. Be the advocate of your practice. Like, you unfortunately have to be the advocate of a lot of things in your life,

Peter Boulden
0:58:43
which is be the advocate of your supplies, right, Dwayne? Well, all we really do as business owners is constantly checking and making sure, like everything we've talked about thus far is like this keep your eye on it delegate make sure it gets done recheck in check it with your supplier it's like really all we're doing is just checking to make sure things are getting done because you said it you set it up and you have to go fix it again and fix it I don't believe that's all we I don't believe that's well I mean that's essentially what we're talking about today in standpoint yes yeah okay yeah all right you're probably not the one doing the maintenance, though. Well, I was yesterday.

Craig Spodak
0:59:18
I'll send you pictures.

Peter Boulden
0:59:19
In some cases, yeah.

Craig Spodak
0:59:20
Yeah.

Peter Boulden
0:59:21
I walked up. I'm like, there's like broken asphalt everywhere. But any dentists in city worth Florida, let me know. I've got an amazing shopping center that's about to be really amazing after I clean up the tenants. Or you want to open up a foot massage place?

Trey Tippit
0:59:36
That sounds good.

Peter Boulden
0:59:37
I learned about those, too. I learned about those as well.

Dwight Peccora
0:59:41
I'll put in some checks on Aspen here in a second, see what's going on.

Craig Spodak
0:59:45
Yeah, Dwight, you got this stuff.

Peter Boulden
0:59:47
All right, well, let's wrap.

Craig Spodak
0:59:49
Craig, do you want to talk about AACD region?

Peter Boulden
0:59:52
Yeah, I want to talk about AACD. I'm so happy about that.

Craig Spodak
0:59:55
Have you guys ever been?

Craig Spodak
0:59:56
Wait, hold on. Dwight's got something.

Dwight Peccora
0:59:58
Have we ever been to the conference? Well, my thought was this. I want to ask you all more like question and answer. I'm terribly interested in A, how well attended the event was? What type of individual did you interact with compared to the people that would show up to a summit? One at a time Dwight. One at a time. One question at a time.

Peter Boulden
1:00:19
How well attended was it? So like I am know Peter has a really good good understanding of the ACD and in fact when when 2000 I went there since 2000 on Dwight that's the contest so he actually went to the actual gay Lord Hotel and the DFW area like 15 years ago like as a new dentist and like looked up at all these You know the heroes of dentistry and so he has a lot of perspective on him I in full disclosure when I was we were asked to Fragment say what I was asked to come on stage, I said, Peter, I don't know if we should do this. And he's like, dude, this is great. And I didn't know anything. And I walked away thinking like having a really profound appreciation for AACD. And from what I understand, they went through a little bit of a rough patch where they kind of got in their own, they just believed their own height for a while. And under, you know, not the greatest leadership, it declined, the membership declined over time and the summit attendance declined. But there's new leadership coming in. I don't think it's public knowledge yet, but there's a new appointed president,

Peter Boulden
1:01:24
which we can't talk about.

Peter Boulden
1:01:25
But he's a rock star. And I'm really excited about the AACD, man. I thought the people were there, were cool, right? I thought the event was cool. I thought it was congenial. I thought, it was probably like what, how many thousands? Three thousand?

Peter Boulden
1:01:39
No, not about that.

Craig Spodak
1:01:40
It was probably a thousand. Okay, yeah.

Peter Boulden
1:01:42
You know my motto, never look the kid in the way of a good story. Thousands. Well, there were thousands of people at the Gaylord. They just weren't there for the AACD.

Craig Spodak
1:01:50
Yeah, it's hard. It's hard to get a head count on that because there's such a, the rooms, right? There's so many forces going on at the same time, so it's hard to, and we didn't go to

Peter Boulden
1:01:58
the General Assembly, so. We were lecturing, I think, right after the General Assembly, but I want to give a shout out to Brian Bolliwaz, who we spoke, we spoke at this little breakout session, Peter and I, it was Brian Bolliwaz and a guy by the name of Phil Shaheen.

Dwight Peccora
1:02:11
That was a huge room.

Craig Spodak
1:02:12
What are you talking about a little breakout room?

Peter Boulden
1:02:13
It was a big room. Yeah, it was actually, yeah, that was 300, by the way, wasn't that?

Craig Spodak
1:02:18
200? Proceed with the Brian.

Craig Spodak
1:02:20
Okay.

Peter Boulden
1:02:21
Yeah, I have no idea about the numbers. Where'd Trey go? Just Trey just bolted?

Peter Boulden
1:02:24
Isn't that boring?

Peter Boulden
1:02:25
I'm out of here.

Dwight Peccora
1:02:28
He didn't say you, your microphone.

Peter Boulden
1:02:30
What is that? But Trey is actually going to be going to the Quadrant Dentistry and Blood Processing. No, that's too big. That's way too big. I'm sorry. I corrected you on that one. I actually had two mouths go to the AECD. I didn't know they were going. It packed up, hit the road. Trey's at the form of crease all in the stomach.

Dwight Peccora
1:02:51
What's the difference between the type of attendee?

Peter Boulden
1:02:55
So let me just kind of, let me just finish with this. So we had a, we had a breakout. It was awesome. What I was most impressed about is that started at nine and the doors open and it flooded in. We had actually people coming in saying they actually attended the AACD just for us, which I'm happy they told me after. So I wouldn't have any pressure on. Brian Baliwas, SF Dental Nerd, he's a badass. He did a great presentation on marketing and there was a bunch, I mean, the future looks really bright for dentistry. You know, met a guy named Joey Arte, rock star, brand new minted dentist, doing, you know, a lot of super GPs in this room. So AACD is not, to me, it's not just the guys that are just doing the cosmetics, but they're deep diving, they're doing COIS and SPEAR and all sorts of surgical training. Another one, Jessica Wyatt.

Craig Spodak
1:03:42
What a badass. Was that not normal before, D?

Peter Boulden
1:03:48
He knows the perspective.

Dwight Peccora
1:03:49
Like super GPs versus just like aesthetics guys?

Craig Spodak
1:03:52
No, it wasn't super GPs. It was really just generalists saying, you know, being cosmetic only, right? Right. I think that I think that new phenomenon of the super GP has come on more recently. Not phenomenon, but people have identified like if you've been in dentistry long enough, I get that story. Like, look, I was all I did in 2008, seven, eight, nine kind of thing was cosmetic. And then you learn you learn hard and fast in a recession. That's a very good model of only being a quote unquote cosmetic dentist. So, Dwight, I think there's been to your question. What was the room filled with? I think it was filled with a still predominant amount of craftsmen kind of people, right? Like people that are very serious about like they just want to do more and more and more and more clinical and more and more like, you know, look at this case and all that stuff, which is contendous. Right.

Peter Boulden
1:04:44
And just to expand.

Dwight Peccora
1:04:45
Awesome.

Peter Boulden
1:04:46
Awesome. It's beautiful to see. Expand on what you said, Peter, just so the audience knows what you're talking about with that craftsman comment. People who are doing the craft and not necessarily dental business people. They're not multi-location, multi-doctor. They're all, you know, our age or, no matter where they are in their life cycle, they're actually into their craft.

Peter Boulden
1:05:04
They're not hiring multiple doctors.

Peter Boulden
1:05:05
They're clinicians that have dove in, dove into that at a high level, which is exactly who you want your clinicians to be.

Craig Spodak
1:05:12
Well, and they become the LeBron James of their own little ecosystem and that and unfortunately that is not scalable right the car accident The skiing accident, you know like David, you know I remember when David Hornbrook lost his thumb in a skiing accident, right? And he was like at the time like almost lost half of it, but you know the world's kind of cosmetic dentist

Trey Tippit
1:05:25
You know

Craig Spodak
1:05:25
He was lecturers and all the stuff's and like just losing the tip of your thumb on your right hand your dominant prepping hand Can can change the trajectory of your career and so that's not a very when there's vulnerability in that model right when you're LeBron James you're winning championships in your in your in your five operatory office and something happens to you get sick or whatever you know that's dangerous the model predicated on you and so I think there's a lot of that I think they're amazing dentists I was looking at some of the dentistry on some of those accreditation boards Craig it's it's it's lovely to see. It really is.

Craig Spodak
1:06:02
It's really cool.

Dwight Peccora
1:06:03
It's very inspiring for the craft of dentistry. And what do you think that they took so much from your presentation?

Craig Spodak
1:06:09
Yeah, so can I answer this, Craig?

Peter Boulden
1:06:11
Yeah, please.

Craig Spodak
1:06:11
So I think Craig, I think was really asked, right? Because I think there's some optics opening up around that, right? Because just what I was saying is that you can't just be kind of like, can't be very myopic and just say, well, I'm gonna do this and nothing. I don't need to worry about anything else. They are getting wiser and wanting to bring in people who can help teach business because I always say it's not that you're not the best at your job, but just no one knows who the hell you are or no one knows what the heck you do in your community. So there's marketing, there's scale, there's more locations potentially. Like you have to get your job if you're that great to create awareness and scale to your community, in my opinion. And so I think they're getting wise and they're bringing on people like Craig and I who are just as passionate in their direction as they are in cosmetics and bonding and stuff, just as passionate about growing practices. Like we kind of said, we grow practices, right? We grow our own practices and we help other people grow their practices, full stop. And I think it's getting that exposure in a quote unquote niche academy like AACD is, they're wise, they're very wise to do that.

Peter Boulden
1:07:12
Yeah, I agree with that. I do think, to comment on one thing you said earlier, that world, it is predicated on them, which can be, which creates a vulnerability. But that's the vast majority of people because the hill is not on most people's mind. But there should be exposure to scale because it opens the door to teach you, if you did lose the tip of your thumb, you can pivot. There are adaptations that you can do in your vision, in your model. And frankly, you could change careers, but the ability to do so is predicated on that fact that you know, you are aware of, hey, it's gonna be okay. You're gonna-

Craig Spodak
1:07:48
It's interesting, Trace, I heard a conversation and the woman we were talking to at the time was basically saying like, look, I can't do that. I can't scale and increase the size of my practice because everyone comes to see me. Me, they want me. And I have associates, but no one wants to see them. And quite frankly, they're not as good as me. So, like, isn't, won't the people deserve the best treatment? Right? And so that is a business psychology that you all of a sudden are going to put yourself on that. And meanwhile, my back hurts, my hands hurt, my this hurts, I don't have time for anything. And so this becomes a narrative in your head. I'm the best. I should be working. No one can help me But woe is me look at all the things surrounding my life I made a great income, but I'm on this treadmill and I can't get off

Peter Boulden
1:08:34
Right and by the way, it doesn't have to be such a by it doesn't have to be so binary It's not be full you can you can hybridize your practice. It's not a lot of scale that there's a way to hybridize it But you know Peter and I were talking about at the AACD, there's a very, it's like they, I think I want to give them kudos because they recognize that we have to offer a full nutritional diet of CE. You can't just learn all clinical. Clinical is wonderful and it's great, and hats off to those amazing clinicians. It's like the first step, but it's almost like we need a CE timeline. The first CE is master your craft and do these things. But then ultimately you have to have another stream of CE that teaches you how to be a business person. Because you have a hole in your knowledge base. So by and large, the people we were talking to were really good at what they did, but completely clueless how to take the next level, how to run a business.

Peter Boulden
1:09:33
Yeah, no operations.

Craig Spodak
1:09:34
No operations.

Dwight Peccora
1:09:35
No operations.

Craig Spodak
1:09:36
No procedural protocols, things like this, right? It was just, you were good because you were good. Like the practice was good because you were good.

Peter Boulden
1:09:44
That's it. So our lecture was like, it's not about you. It's like the dentistry and then not the dentistry and not the dentistry is much, much more. And I think it's, I'm really excited for the AACD because I think- The new leadership's gonna be good. New leadership, but I also like what we were doing and we were invited back to come back and I'm just a huge fan. I mean, my flight got canceled. Peter and I were flying out and I came back because my flight was canceled. I had the best time ever. And I told Peter next year, for sure, we want to spend the entire time because they're just cool dentists. Usually we fly in and out of places like, you know, because it's like, all right. But these are the cool dentists. Like I, Peter and I are actually going to join the ACD. We're going to do it just for the, you know, I mean, that's, that's what was talked about. It's like, what is it,

Dwight Peccora
1:10:27
600 bucks? I love about it is, is, you know, I think we've gotten the luxury for several years to get to work in and around with so many doctors and masterminds. And I just want to point something out because I can speak personally from this situation, from being a super GP, like that was and the true cash profitability of my practice was based on my shoulders. Right. Right, and the reason I can, you know, it's listening to you talk about those in the ACD. Right, I've been to those, enjoyed it, like I get it too, but you look back and you realize those are individuals who, and I can say this because I've been there, where they almost prefer to be special than to be happy. And it's a hard thing.

Craig Spodak
1:11:19
I can say that.

Peter Boulden
1:11:20
Status.

Dwight Peccora
1:11:21
You're talking about status. I like being special. I like being the one they call to solve the problem. I know that I'm the only one in this state who can do the work that I do. Or in this state. I want to be the hero. I want to be the hero. I want to be the one that I'm available. Oh, somebody wrecked their face and I have to be the one to put it back together because nobody else knows how. I got the phone call from the ER. All that drama. With all due respect, first of all, we're not saving, we're not reconstructing, we're not cardiothoracic surgeons. This is not complex work, okay? I come from a long line of physicians who do much more scary stuff every day. And I kind of want everybody to realize, get your life back. And this is so common thread in the beginning of every single mastermind where it's like, well, they need to see me, but I want to scale. I want to grow my business. I want to be able to take a vacation. I want to be at my kid's soccer game, but I have to be the one that's there. I have to be the one that takes care. And I think the truth is, is that is a big problem in our profession. And it doesn't mean you can't grow and you can't scale, but you've got to accept the fact that happiness does not come from being the special one. Happiness comes from being the fulfilling one who scales your business and teaches others your craft and gives you the ability to be in a fulfilling life with your family too. So I love that you're doing that.

Peter Boulden
1:12:38
Your happiness, though. It brings into question the whole lifestyle comment of you build what you want. Right. The freedom of direction you got it right right and those that are into the status like Peter said that's your freedom of like he likes the light that's legacy and there's nothing wrong with that you know there's there's plenty of dentists out there that are doing phenomenally well as solo solo practitioners they're making great money they consolidate the schedule from five to four to three days I mean that's an amazing life too and they love it yes

Craig Spodak
1:13:11
so I think you should be reading Arthur Brooks' Strength to Strength and realizing that that's the first half of life, but the majority of life that comes after from fulfillment is

Dwight Peccora
1:13:19
not that.

Dwight Peccora
1:13:20
It's not a happy scale.

Peter Boulden
1:13:22
Right, but the ACD provides something like that too because you can be an artist in your craft and then wind up getting accredited and then you're on stage teaching other people. It's just a different column of the Strength to Strength. Right. Well, and they brought you all on stage to talk about it. So yeah, they're seeing that as they jump the curve to the next, that second half of life. So kudos to them. Yeah, no, super cool guys. Holy shit, loved it.

Craig Spodak
1:13:50
Guys, we are pushing about 100, 100, pushing it now, pushing 115, see, I came back from F1.

Craig Spodak
1:13:58
Pete can't save numbers.

Craig Spodak
1:14:00
I saw our buddy Randy at F1. He got a quick hug and he told me that he's got to go catch his helicopter. Oh shit, true story. And I was like, dude, you took a helicopter at F1? He's like, yeah. Like, oh, that's a next level move. Anyway, watching F1 is crazy because it goes by so fast and you almost have to watch it on TV because your vantage point is only turn one. And there's quirky…

Craig Spodak
1:14:26
Anyway, guys… Did you see how he looked?

Peter Boulden
1:14:30
He looked great. No, I didn't mean Randy, I'm like saying as they drive by,

Dwight Peccora
1:14:34
like you can't see anything, but it's an amazing party.

Peter Boulden
1:14:36
I want to go next year.

Craig Spodak
1:14:38
If you've never been, it is a cool… I'm going to Vegas, I think, the Vegas F1 in October, I think. Just because it was very addicting. It was cool, like I got my Red Bull hat on, and like, you know, I got…

Peter Boulden
1:14:48
And the series on… And Chris, by the way, right?

Craig Spodak
1:14:50
What did I come?

Peter Boulden
1:14:52
Yeah.

Craig Spodak
1:14:52
Yeah.

Peter Boulden
1:14:52
So Netflix has got that cool that cool special. It's really brought as listening to guys that Brown has the head of, you know, we think YPO brought in speakers and such and Zach Brown was saying how he's the head of McLaren's team and I was saying how 75% of new attention has to F1 and it's just new to America. It's like soccer. Yeah, exactly. I want to tell you guys, it's been pretty cool. So sometimes I see some of the ticket matriculation on the summit stuff because it's operational and I'm close to Lacey, and so I see some things. And it's really neat to see some doctors. We're seeing like 19 tickets at a time, and people just really leaning into their office. And it's like, I wanna reach out and hug them and be like, you just made the best investment. So I think it's really cool to see that. So this summit, speaking of Vegas and F1, this summit's gonna be special because A, we've got massive size. Everything in Vegas is special. But it's gonna be just a lot of great energy there. And kind of how I mentioned you know one of the half reasons I go to YPO events is because of the energy of people, the things that you learn that you didn't think that you were going to come to learn. I went to an F1 event but guess what I learned about construction and I learned about this business roll up and I learned about all these different things and I think that's the beauty of like going to an event like Bulletproof is that you come for well I want to see the manual, I want to hear Craig and Pete talk about this or I want to hear Dwight talk about, you know, whatever it may be. But the halo effect, benefit comes from like you meeting someone that may be in that same struggle as you and you having that conversation or your team having that conversation. So right, what you think you're going for is not the intended effect of what happens. And I'm just, I got to tell you, I'm really excited about it because feedback, we're getting ticket, the amount of tickets that are being sold is crazy. So, and we're still shit. I mean, how many months away are we what are we in May? We have four months right scream three and a half months and so this shit's gonna sell out so so don't do they don't Yeah, how many are you having a baby in hotels Babies yeah, it's 93 days 13

Peter Boulden
1:17:04
27 minutes away days away. Good. Just so you know, too, that I just want to make sure everybody knows that there's discounts for groups. So you bring 10, you get 10, you bring 20, you get 20, bring 30, you get 30. What an amazing investment. You don't just have to take your team, but it boosts through. Say that again, Kermit. I don't know. Slow down. So 90, you bring 90 people, we'll pay the 60% so that you can get 90%.

Craig Spodak
1:17:40
We will pay you.

Peter Boulden
1:17:42
Yeah, exactly. I honestly did tell somebody last year, there was a guy, I tell them, it's worth 100 grand. I said, if it's not, you come find me. And he actually came up to me at the end, he's like, listen, it was awesome. Shout out to that guy that was sent through.

Dwight Peccora
1:17:55
Like, not quite 100 grand, though.

Craig Spodak
1:17:57
Well, no, it's not, it was not,

Peter Boulden
1:17:58
it was like 20 grand for the entire team.

Craig Spodak
1:18:00
Go back and clarify what you were saying about the 10. Go back and clarify.

Peter Boulden
1:18:05
Why, did I mess that up?

Craig Spodak
1:18:06
Yes, you just said if you buy 10, you get 10.

Peter Boulden
1:18:09
It's percent.

Peter Boulden
1:18:10
Oh yes, yes. Buy 10 tickets, get 10% off. Off your aggregate. Get 20% off. Buy 30, get 30% off.

Craig Spodak
1:18:19
Big difference.

Peter Boulden
1:18:21
I will say it again. I heard 50%.

Craig Spodak
1:18:23
You got it.

Peter Boulden
1:18:24
So it's involved, that generosity.

Craig Spodak
1:18:27
Oh, what, buy 10, 10?

Craig Spodak
1:18:28
That's 50.

Peter Boulden
1:18:29
Yeah, but listen, we should do a 50-50.

Craig Spodak
1:18:32
So, if someone does bring 90, they get 90% off?

Peter Boulden
1:18:34
Let's just email us or drop a comment. We'll figure something out. I would love there to be, yes.

Peter Boulden
1:18:40
Oh, Jesus.

Craig Spodak
1:18:41
It's a larger discount.

Dwight Peccora
1:18:43
I totally doubt.

Peter Boulden
1:18:43
Hey, let's hit up Aspen.

Dwight Peccora
1:18:45
Who came up with this math?

Peter Boulden
1:18:46
Oh, boy.

Craig Spodak
1:18:48
Came up with this math. All right, guys, anything in closing? We're gonna wrap, if not.

Trey Tippit
1:18:54
Good stuff. Good stuff, gentlemen.

Dwight Peccora
1:18:56
Good to see y'all, fellas.

Peter Boulden
1:18:56
Okay. Okay.

Craig Spodak
1:18:57
Thanks, guys.

Transcribed with Cockatoo