Surviving “SUCKtember” with Dr. Dwight Peccora and Dr. Trey Tippit

The following transcription was from the Bulletproof Youtube channel. Here is the https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rfmKik92m1E

Craig Spodak
0:00:00
Let's do this.

25
0:00:11
Back again.

Peter Boulden
0:00:12
All four of us back again. Trey abandoned the Luther D'Andros microphone this time.

Trey Tippit
0:00:17
I apologize for that.

Craig Spodak
0:00:18
It was entertaining.

Dwight Peccora
0:00:19
It was awesome.

Peter Boulden
0:00:20
That was the most laughs I've had in a long time.

Trey Tippit
0:00:22
No, I apologize for abandoning it.

23
0:00:23
Oh, yeah.

Dwight Peccora (
0:00:24
Not having it.

Dwight Peccora
0:00:25
And by the way, people who are only audio are like, who's the new guy? Because last time you sounded so much different, that is literally the new person. That's the same guy with his normal octave.

Peter Boulden
0:00:38
So I hide.

Dwight Peccora
0:00:39
There might have been a nitrous leak in your office though. That could have been it.

Dwight Peccora (
0:00:43
You'd be like, oh, thank you guys.

Dwight Peccora (
0:00:44
You guys are cool.

Peter Boulden
0:00:45
So speaking of leaks, this morning I woke up to lots of furious phone calls, text messages, pictures of building burning down. Oh nice. What? Yep and I was like oh my gosh here we go again like a PTSD. Yep. So couldn't tell if it was one of my buildings. Someone was giving me an aerial shot from their high-rise right so it was my new office in Buckhead that we're moving to, we're actually building and I was thinking to myself, oh my God, these contractors lit, like a tool caught fire, and now it's burning this building down again. Great, two fires in less than three years. I'm never going to get insured. You know, literally going through the, I'm a panic animal at this point, just going through all the next five steps of my life being ruined.

Dwight Peccora (
0:01:29
No, you're a panic animal now.

Peter Boulden
0:01:32
So I drove, hey, you can't, the roasting doesn't start until you get insured. So I'm driving down to the street, right, and I still can't tell. I see smoke just billowing all Buckhead. Fire engines everywhere, 50 fire engines. I finally get to the round of the corner and it looks like my building, but it's the one, it's the bar next door called Buckhead Saloon. Literally next door. So you woke up to your buildings on fire? Yeah, pretty much. Yeah, yeah it was. But you know it was a, in my head I was like, alright, there's a 50-50 chance, like what are the chances that building is on fire? And there's a bar next door and they, it's a, they throw napkins in the air on a Sunday night, like it's one of those bars. Oh yeah, yeah. And, but it caught fire. And honestly they've been trying to build a high-rise on that area for so long. So, who knows? Maybe it wasn't a very good bar. Wasn't a very good bar. I mean, so, anyway.

Dwight Peccora (
0:02:37
Good riddance to the bar, apparently.

Peter Boulden
0:02:38
Well, I mean, you hate to, I mean, I've been through that tragedy. You hate to, luckily there's insurances for things like this, right? This is what you have it for. But anyway, so interesting warning.

Dwight Peccora
0:02:50
It's true. You've got to remember, you pay money so you don't have to pay with a motion. So if your building does get lit up, you get the money. But yeah, that sucks. I've woken up to phone calls like that.

Peter Boulden
0:03:01
Yeah, you've had floodings. Lots of floodings.

Dwight Peccora
0:03:03
Yeah, I've had floods.

Dwight Peccora (
0:03:04
At least it wasn't this hurricane for you, though.

Craig Spodak
0:03:07
Yeah.

Peter Boulden
0:03:08
It was on track right to do it. Okay, a resident bestie roaster.

Dwight Peccora (
0:03:15
Let's throw down some bestie action, absolutely.

Peter Boulden
0:03:19
Why don't you intro us into this, it's gonna be a great episode.

Dwight Peccora (
0:03:22
Alright, we're gonna go in a different order this time. Let's roll out. How about he's the CEO who loves hugs, he's the trailblazer and entertainer, his thoughts are so many we decipher, we have to decipher him through a binary decoder, he's a mayor delray and the most likely to overpay his name drop in power is only matched by his self-preservation desire he's a sunny smile of the sunshine state please welcome our very own correct spodek to the parlor

Dwight Peccora
0:03:49
i'm not just a dropping is my network mother

Craig Spodak
0:03:52
uh…

Dwight Peccora (
0:03:54
and

Dwight Peccora
0:03:56
uh… i have a little more

Dwight Peccora (
0:03:58
and of course welcome welcome great and of course we got he's awaiting his third child and we're hoping to make some less wild. The true seeker and promise keeper. His ADHD may be more related to his college drinking, but his competitive edge keeps him practice reaping. The always agreeable Texas ranch hand who eats uppers for supper. He's the rainmaker himself. Trey Tippett!

Dwight Peccora
0:04:21
I love it. I love it.

Dwight Peccora
0:04:23
Dwight, who knew? Who knew?

Dwight Peccora
0:04:25
We're going to roll down.

Trey Tippit
0:04:26
Who's his writer?

Dwight Peccora
0:04:27
He might have a writer. He's had a lot of time this weekend.

Peter Boulden
0:04:32
It doesn't matter how he did it. The fact is he's huge.

Dwight Peccora (
0:04:35
I love going to sleep at night, the night before Sunday night, and just be like, I'm going to come up with crazy trash to talk about you guys.

Dwight Peccora
0:04:42
How many Starbucks do you have, bro? You literally have… What's going on here, guys?

Dwight Peccora (
0:04:49
He's alternating Starbucks and I'm waiting for one day where each of you get to come up with something epic. But what's in both cups though brother? What's going on there? This is just because I need one gas and one spray. He's got a medicine ball he's not feeling well. There's a medicine ball. Oh I missed that part. And a regular coffee. Because I got one more. Okay keep going. The one and only what I need to do is I need to be biohacked by Pete so coming to us from the comforts of his chili pad And his glutathione infused green morning juice this biohacker has no break especially when he sees something he wants to take Atlanta dental spa is his game while the Atlanta social scene is his drain the Enterpriser himself disagree with him and he'll run you over the only way to partner with him is if he's the majority shareholder Let's welcome the dictator itself, Peter Baldwin!

Trey Tippit
0:05:40
Dwight, that was amazing!

Dwight Peccora
0:05:44
The Dental Dictator. I think they call the dictator that Shymeth Palipapatia on… That's awesome. Anyway, that's hilarious. Dwight, who's doing yours?

Peter Boulden
0:05:56
No one ever does Jason's until they switch, and so Jason's always on the thing, he always roasts it. Anyway, I love the dental analog of that intro that's hilarious Dwight good job okay always good always good anyone else have anything pressing and no fires this morning training updates that we need to clear the table with any updates Oh Greg Wow guess what guys Craig got asked to speak at the AACD a main stage in a in in April. Pretty awesome. So he said, I'm not doing it without you. I'm his security blanket on stage. He likes when I just sit there and look at him. You're doing great, buddy. You're doing great.

Dwight Peccora
0:06:40
So he's like, I'm not doing it without you. And I was like, alright. Sorry, April 27th in Grapevine. Dwight, Texas boys, you wanna make the trip? Dwight, you gotta come.

Craig Spodak
0:06:52
We'll do something.

Dwight Peccora
0:06:53
Let's go, Trey, let's track up there together.

Peter Boulden
0:06:55
We're gonna be in our state,

Dwight Peccora (
0:06:56
so you gotta make it happen.

Trey Tippit
0:06:58
Yeah, April 27th, we're there.

Dwight Peccora (
0:07:00
We're doing a big thing on the patient experience,

Peter Boulden
0:07:04
and I told Craig, I was like, we need a new book out by then. I think we're going to make one called the patient experience. I already started last night. We haven't fully agreed to it, but it's going to be written. It's going to be written. Whether or not Craig gets to be put on the cover or not, is up to Craig.

Dwight Peccora
0:07:27
I think I'd really do well with that. I'm obsessed with that patient experience stuff. So anyway, AACD, pretty cool.

Peter Boulden
0:07:34
Yeah, cool stuff.

Dwight Peccora (
0:07:35
That would be epic. We just got to go up there and cause some trouble.

Trey Tippit
0:07:38
Yeah, heck of a lot.

Dwight Peccora
0:07:39
We're only lecturing for an hour, so that means we could surrender a lot of partying before and after.

Dwight Peccora (
0:07:45
Sounds like a plan to me.

Craig Spodak
0:07:47
We can do that.

Dwight Peccora (
0:07:48
So Dwight, what do you have in store for us? Let's throw down some big topics. I swear that it's about that time of year when everybody's either revving down or revving up. They seem to settle into their natural tensions as a business and one of the main topics that keeps going around the dentistry right now is the one and only apparent suck suck timber as where they like to call it in our industry and it's funny if you spend any time on social media it's almost as if I see people practice owners just jumping on there just complaining about their suck timber and the way they do it is they go on there and say anybody else having a suck timber and they want to talk about it and it amazes me because it's the same thing every year right and one of the biggest things I wanted to talk about is kind of like why is it that we naturally get stuck on this mindset that it is business is what it is and it's completely out of your control to be able to make changes. So I'm interested in hearing right off the bat how is everybody feeling about their suck timber and what do you do every year to make sure you don't have a September? What type of strategies do you do right off the bat to make that difference? So how was your September?

Peter Boulden
0:08:56
So ours was, yeah, a little bit down, Dwight, honestly, a little less than impressive. So as you know, you know, everyone thinks that the month is reflective of what you're actually doing in the month. And I am a proponent of there's a lag of two to three months. So the things that you were doing two to three months ago usually predicate the months you're having now. So we used to have slower summers until I said, you know, there's gotta be a way, I can't just sit around and keep complaining about the output of having a shitty summer. I need to change all these inputs in March and May, I'm sorry, March and April, to get us launched into that period. So I don't know, Dwight, if it's at this point, here, let me pause that for a second. There was almost a point in my career where it was August for us, and it was almost a self-fulfilling prophecy for us, is that I kept saying it and saying it and saying it, like, oh shit, here comes August, oh shit, here comes August, right? And like, as a poor leader would do, I was almost proclaiming that we were gonna have a bad month coming up. And sure enough, guess what we have? Shitty month. So I'm not saying that there's not real data and science to it being a sucktober. I think everyone's sucktober is a little bit different. Or sucktember, whatever you call it, right? You know, look, school gets back in session, people are trying to travel, there's fall break, you know, there's a lot of stuff going on. You can make excuses for anything, the economy, whatever. But there's always lulls in business. And your September might be an April. But I'm guessing that you're seeing a predominant amount of people in September. Is that what you're saying, Dwight?

Dwight Peccora (
0:10:39
What I'm saying is that it seems to be, like every year, people freak out over the same thing, but they're not making any changes. Well, how was yours? How was yours, September? We were up 18%.

Trey Tippit
0:10:55
From what?

Peter Boulden
0:10:56
From last year or from last month?

Craig Spodak
0:10:57
From last September.

Peter Boulden
0:10:58
Got it.

Trey Tippit
0:10:59
OK.

Dwight Peccora (
0:10:59
But one of the biggest is that we put a lot of effort into it, right? I mean, we said, yes, there's a normal consumer expectation. Their spending habits might be changing. But if anything, I see it as, like you said, there's a little bit of a lag indication in that process but if you see things coming along you're having these great months and everybody's talking about these great summer months and things are happening and all of a sudden they know that well people are gone well what are you changing we actually started a big Invisalign program that we held off right before and we kicked it in in August to be able to kind of scale it in and scale through. We added new providers right in that time span so it created kind of a practicality of saying hey we're gonna make a bump and we're gonna reshift something. We start some new marketing some different things to kind of make it happen but it's things that we do differently throughout the year that we don't we don't have to turn on in November December but we do have them on starting in the beginning of August and so it turned out to be… 18% so you're

Peter Boulden
0:11:58
not experiencing that Craig what about you? I'm gonna go last if you don't mind.

Craig Spodak
0:12:02
Okay.

Craig Spodak
0:12:03
All right.

Trey Tippit
0:12:04
I'll jump in and tell you.

Dwight Peccora
0:12:05
Those are all good points, but you're talking about a trailing 12 at that point, comparison over that. Everything you just said wasn't necessarily in preparation for September. It was preparation for just growth in general, and that acknowledges what Pete said from the standpoint of there's just a natural lull in business, whether it be in April or September. Misery loves company, so everybody loves to blame September. I actually had a doc tell me, well, it's September. And he had a great month, nailed all the goals. The whole practice nailed all the goals from that standpoint.

Peter Boulden
0:12:37
But it's nothing more than just repeating what you've heard over and over again. And then you get into, and it can be a self-realizing prophecy, but at the same time, I agree. What happens this month was baked two three months ago, and I think it's important You know because you know predominantly this is listened to by doctors right who were leaders in their practice So if the tip of this spear, let's just say is saying like hey September's coming so it almost gives everyone a hall pass right like okay cool you doctor. I'm sorry acknowledge We're gonna have a shitty month. Let's have a you know. We're gonna have a shitty month kind of thing So be careful with the words that you use it's okay to do that amongst colleagues and your family and all that stuff, but be careful of the words that you use in the office because they manifest and become real,

Dwight Peccora (
0:13:21
right? All of us have practices that our team is a lot of their income comes from, you know, incentive points. And for us, the way we really knew was we hit four-tier bonuses in September. I mean, that's how we knew we were having a good month. And so the truth is, is for us to say those things, it's kind of like saying hey by the way you're getting paid less this month so don't work too hard by you saying that out loud it's just like literally hey by the way you're gonna get paid less this month of course you're not gonna put in the added effort as opposed to coming in saying let's make sure you're killing it this month it makes all the difference in the world but I think it does need that that immediate the same way people responding negatively at the start of the month is how you should show up at the beginning of the month and say, let's go, let's make this happen, let's double check it, and maybe put a little bit more emphasis on it to make sure people are winning that month.

Dwight Peccora
0:14:08
Yeah, so I've never heard this word before, suck-temper. I've never even heard it.

Peter Boulden
0:14:15
I hadn't either until Dwight proposed it in our Texas-

Dwight Peccora
0:14:17
So I have a really good process of just ignoring people who have damaged psychology. Psychology and what Peter just said and what y'all alluded to is it's a self-fulfilling prophecy It you know, it's what we it's not what we say aloud But what we whisper to ourselves silently that has the most power over us and I don't have anybody in my world I try to eliminate them quickly if they show up that has that type of psychology Well, you know how it is or you know how it is in in grapevine, Texas Or you know how it is over here, that's just bullshit. So, you know, in my particular situation, the reason why I wanted to go last is because in full disclosure, and you guys are gonna pick on me, I don't know how our September was just yet.

Trey Tippit
0:14:58
Oh my God.

Dwight Peccora
0:14:59
I don't know, because I don't know how it finished because I added two docs on August 1st. I wanted to say something about that. So one doc's been practicing 10 years, friend of Dwight's and mine.

Peter Boulden
0:15:08
You can look in your patient management software, you know it's 20 years.

Dwight Peccora
0:15:11
No, no, I know, I don't know last week because a hurricane rolled through and I've been chainsawing the last five days.

Dwight Peccora
0:15:17
Excuses.

Trey Tippit
0:15:19
Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Peter Boulden
0:15:19
Such excuses, Drew.

Dwight Peccora
0:15:20
A cat four.

Dwight Peccora
0:15:21
I don't even know how I did it.

Dwight Peccora (
0:15:22
It wasn't even a cat five.

Peter Boulden
0:15:23
I don't even know how I did it. It's a cat third.

Dwight Peccora
0:15:25
It's a cat third. A cat third. So there's a lot of people suffering right now. But anyway, I'll let that slide. So we added two doctors August 1st at the same exact time. Both started August 1st. One's been practicing for 10 years, that's our friend Dwight, and the other one's been practicing for 12 years. Within the first 40 days, they both landed, landed or closed and started their largest treatment plans of their entire professional career. So one was a $95,000, one was a 74, and for them, those two, independent of each other, those were the largest treatment plans they've ever presented, closed, and started in their careers. So 22 years of dentistry. So why do I not care how the last week finished up? Because I've added so much wood to this fire. And I think in business, you guys were saying, what have you done three months ago? What have you done four months ago? If your business is all about innovation and growth, you should consistently be adding fuel to the fire or else you're going to be up to the whims of what's happening a local economy and what time you're it is But you can't compare one year to the next if you've added shit tons of infrastructure if you added

Peter Boulden
0:16:33
Equipment or scanners or printers or people how could it not grow? I think so if you wait yeah, I agree Craig I like that I like you're saying and sometimes people get they wait until the symptoms occur right they're experiencing In order in there like wait, and you could have done a preliminary checkup three months, a year prior, and avoided the systemic whatever. It's easy to say, though, right? Because we all get busy. We all get rolling, right? And then you forget that marketing got stale, employees got stale.

Dwight Peccora
0:17:03
But Pete, you're the one who always says you're either growing or dying. You always say there's no such thing in business as coasting.

Trey Tippit
0:17:10
There's no coasting.

Dwight Peccora
0:17:11
There's none. Right. So I would like to actually coast. I'm, you know, knock on wood, doing how well I want to be doing, and I actually would like, if there was the coasting button for me personally, I would actually like to hit that button. I want to repeat the same two years I've had for the rest of my career and 3% for inflation or whatever, you know. I mean, obviously inflation is probably 30%, but something. But I just know I can't do that. It's either too hot or too cold, and you'll never be able to so I have to innovate But I feel compelled to innovate because of what you always say there's no coasting

Peter Boulden
0:17:45
That's true. Yeah. Yeah, I mean the good news is though at this point You can flutter your wings a little less to maintain that kind of equilibrium, right? You don't need to make draconian moves to say Oh, we're in a fire and actually I would recommend not doing things when you get to a place that you like, split and beta test, little things here and there, to just move the lever a little bit. Because you've gotten to there. It's not these big movements that you need to do, because that can mess you up, actually. You want to just keep innovating at a 3% to 5% ratio, not these 20% swings. But I think paranoia… I'm glad you're bringing that up, Greg. The paranoia is good for business owners. We need to be slightly paranoid of, like, who's going to eat our lunch, what's gonna happen, we got oh this is not good enough, the patient experience is not good enough, like there needs to be a certain healthy paranoia for business owners, you know, and you got to keep pushing for the innovation. We actually did, we actually just started interrupt, we actually, I like your paranoid thing because I think that's a healthy thing, we actually just did a, we had a meeting and I'm really instituting doing SWOT stuff a little bit more, just so it, with my leadership team, just so it kind of brings up awareness of things. Like, here's where we're really strong, let's stay there. Here's where we have opportunities, here's where we have threats, here's where we have, you know, weaknesses. And I think that's a good thing to run, even if it's just you, the doc, listening to this, even if it's just you, go through that exercise, because awareness, putting your awareness on where you know you're kind of weak, I think just inherently you start kind of like, like almost like that Pearson's Law, right? What you're looking at, what you're tracking, gets better over time. But just to put your head in the sand and be like, ah, I hope we do the same next month, and I hope we do the same in a year from now. Like, you might not, you might not. And you don't step in front of somebody.

Trey Tippit
0:19:26
And people get really complacent.

Dwight Peccora
0:19:27
I have one of my doctors, awesome guy, he's just been in my ecosystem for so long. He just thinks that the marketing and the machine that we've done is built and it's set and forget it. So like my social media company is having trouble getting before and afters and we have shit tons of before and afters every single day. I mean, 10 dentists every single day we have an amazing before and after. And it's like, you know, I'm like, I had to tell him, I'm like, listen, you are protected in this ecosystem because you just think it's magic that 200 new patients show up. Show up in the door. And it was like, it was hard for him to understand. And finally, you know, he decided to post something. It was a beautiful case because he's super talented. Invariably, he got tons of people connecting on it, which is awesome. But it's wild that success changes you, success forces you or can sometimes manipulate you into thinking you're too good to fail or you're too talented.

Peter Boulden
0:20:23
You don't need to do all this stuff. I want to pause there, Craig, on something you said. I think that's a really good idea, especially when you get to the size in which all four of us are on this, right? You have doctors that say, hey, maybe we can augment the marketing. Maybe we could do some more things here and there. And then you ask, well, have you been asking for referrals? The reviews in that location have been a little lax. Have we been asking for reviews, right? Has there been a lot, you know, where I'm going is that adding more money to marketing doesn't equal more butts in the chair all the time. There has to always be a grassroots thing. And so to your point, Craig, about the associate you're talking about, is saying like, hey, he's very comfortable because you have a machine that's built to get butts in the chair on regular cadence. And that allows some of the internal grassroots operations, things that we all need to be doing as providers, is asking for a referral, asking for a review, asking how was your experience, all these things. That is the most powerful marketing. It's not, hey, I threw in another $1,000 to Google so that it would augment that location. I mean, yes, you can do that but only after you know all the post-op calls have been done in those you know of course

Dwight Peccora
0:21:42
all the things like that right? Yeah, you focus on the patient experience which y'all were talking about earlier right and I do think this comes up like what I'm thinking is like the thermostat the human psychology thermostat we all have a thermostat for how our life is meant to look like how fit we're meant to be how much money we're meant to be and when you make more money than you think I think there's this thing you turn on the AC you cool that shit down and when it gets too low you get panicked You speed it up like that You know Peter and I talk a lot about our own personal finances and like, you know when there's cash We're like, oh man, we got to deploy this. I'm like blah blah blah We're gonna take up the world then like we deploy a lot of cash and a couple months later the conversation like oh shit That's like there's this there's a thermostat You know that we all have and I think that once you're making the right level of success, you get comfortable. But that comfort is going to kick your ass. So comfort in business is very, very dangerous.

Peter Boulden
0:22:35
Toxic, yeah.

Dwight Peccora (
0:22:35
I think this is a huge topic, especially for a lot of the Bulletproof listeners. Like, this is the biggie right here. The concept of segregating, what I like to call natural tension, right, within a business. A lot of people believe that if you are a good leader, there will be no tension in your business. Tensions are things we have to manage. Conflicts are problems we have to solve. There's a big difference between a tension and a conflict. I think one of the big things that you're talking about here, which I think we're trying to just get all in the same vocabulary, and this is how I tend to explain it, and I love it, is a tension can be described as, for example, if I'm always at work, my family and my life may suffer. But if I'm always at home, I might lose my job. That's a natural tension, and it's also healthy. It's almost expected that you should have those levels of tension, because you wanna be at work, you wanna make a lot of effort, because it brings home the bacon all at the same time. You wanna spend some time with your family, because you want to know what you're working so hard for, and there's that balance. But the same thing as what you're talking about there, is that if there is no tension, and you're just on the auto button, first of all, we know that in our industry, it's consolidating, it's changing too fast, so auto button is tremendously dangerous. You're not just gonna stay status quo, you're gonna go down. But the other side of it is the fact that you're not looking into your business enough to recognize that tension and to accept it and to make those pivots and those changes. And it didn't take but a pandemic for everybody to realize they had to wake up and shock themselves and make some pivots.

Peter Boulden
0:24:04
I think if you're listening to this, I always look for the action that you can do instead of just we pontificate about problems and it doesn't solve anything. I think, and I would like to hear y'all's feedback on this. You, as someone listening, print out your trailing 12 months or trailing 36 months and see if you identify a trend in your practice, whether it's September, like Dwight is indicating. And then look for the causative factors that happened prior to that. Is that when everyone goes on vacation? Look for the reasons of what that happens. If you don't see and identify a trend to circumvent for the next year, now you have, let's say you have 10 months to prepare for this, then start changing some things up in preparation. And I think it's a healthy thing so that you don't become victim to the narrative of we're gonna have a shitty September. Like really strive all year long to change that narrative. And I think when you do and you can and you all of a sudden have a shitty September and then the next September you have an awesome September, it changes everything and it becomes a power play versus like there's nothing you can't do. You kind of feel invincible, so to speak, and you need these as a practitioner, as an entrepreneur. You need to be able to say, like, I am in control of this destiny. That's important. And not only that, stabilizing your operations. Stop thinking, oh, the patient's available, let's shove it in there. Stabilizing operations, meaning no more feast and famine work. You're going crazy and you're jumping it up and down. You're not templating out your schedules.

Dwight Peccora (
0:25:37
You don't have set goals for your day.

Dwight Peccora
0:25:40
Well, reactionary versus proactive.

Dwight Peccora (
0:25:43
We have a doctor in the mastermind that was struggling with this. It's like, I can't say no to all my patients. They keep coming in. Well, have you hit your goal? Yeah, I've hit it by midday. Well, you need to let your team breathe. Or you know what's gonna happen to your business naturally? You're gonna have turnover. You're gonna burn out your people. And you're constantly gonna be like saying it's okay and guess what, you're not going to survive that and at the end of the day, you're going to come back and complain, well, these months are high, these months are low. Why don't you just stabilize your business and make sure that the infrastructure is set in place in a way that makes it more stable?

Dwight Peccora
0:26:14
In fairness to that guy though and we've all been here, he's just doing constant clinical dentistry. When you're putting 95% of your output toward patient care, by 5.30, 6 o'clock, you're picking up the pieces. Sandy, the hygienist, wanted to talk to you at 9. She's upset about something. You don't have their systems put in place. And you're just totally spinning your wheels, and you don't have strategic. You're not a good leader because your time is short. You're spent. You just can't do it anymore. So if you really made that decision, you want to run a dental business, not just a dental practice. And there's a distinction there because either one is fine You could actually be a very successful dentist that works four days a week or five days a week makes money It doesn't have to deal with all this bullshit We're talking about right now But if you if you jump over the line and say no I want to be dental business owner Then you're gonna have to put the handpiece down just a little bit every single day so that you can be Strategic and thoughtful because all you're doing is running around fixing clogged toilets all day. This is going on, that's going on. You're so reactive. It's just impossible. And by the way, I just want to tell you, we collected 9%… 10% more. 10% more this September. So, Dwight's 18.

Peter Boulden
0:27:25
Craig grew 10% more. I was probably 10% down. I don't know year over year. I just know that it's trending. And Trey?

Dwight Peccora
0:27:30
But I would never go… I would always compare the same month and the same year. I would never subject myself to like, how is September versus April? Who gives a shit? As long as you're growing every single month. And if you don't grow, if you're not growing, figure out why you can. I'm in a weird space too, Peter. I've talked to Peter a lot about this, where I am comfortable and uncomfortable being comfortable. So I am stressed out, like why are you so comfortable? Someone's gonna eat your lunch. Like I talk to my doctors, there are groups all around here that are doing Instagram and better than we are and before and afters and they do a tenth of the volume. Like what are we doing? Our market machine's frozen, blah, blah, blah. I'm like getting amped up.

Dwight Peccora (
0:28:14
Well, Craig, that's the health of your leadership, right? At the same time, you're getting exposed to a lot of other doctors and their practices through Bulletproof, which inherently helps you realize, wow, there are some things out there that we may not be feeling or sensing, but let's tackle it before it hits the doors of our office and affects my team. And I think that's the beauty of your leadership and the way you're seeing it that way. Trey, where were you at in September? So from a trailing 12, I

Dwight Peccora
0:28:40
have no idea comparison-wise, but like Pete, we're trending upward. So I'll watch the overall trend in which case. You guys don't compare this month, this year, to this month last year?

Dwight Peccora (
0:28:52
I personally do not.

Peter Boulden
0:28:53
I'd say probably 12 is what I'd, the only 12.

Dwight Peccora
0:28:55
Interesting, because if there are seasonal dips, like 40% of our patient base moves out of the state in the summer. Right. And that's why I don't look at month over month, because one, you're cash accounting, and everything's paid on credit card.

Trey Tippit
0:29:09
I mean, we can have financial consequences 90 days later. Yeah.

Dwight Peccora
0:29:15
So I'm not worried month over month.

7
0:29:17
I mean, no problem.

Dwight Peccora
0:29:18
I guess it's a little more important comparison. Let me ask you, Trey, first. What looks different in your ecosystem September of this year? What wood or fuel did you add to the fire this year versus last year? I'd love to know. What are three things that you've done that are adding? Did you add an office? Did you add a patient? I'm gonna go with what you said earlier. I'm embarrassed to say nothing. I don't really pay attention to September. We don't, we actively do. Did you add, have you hired an additional doctor? Have you gone from 12 to 15 total doctors? We have, we've added doctors. We're always in that innovation aspect. So you're adding doctors. But net doctor growth, you've had net doctor growth? Yes. Okay, got it. I think that's important. Net doctor growth, net chair growth. I mean, Peter, are you net chair growth

Peter Boulden
0:30:08
or are you net down because of moving and stuff? Yeah, no. It's gonna become net fire, but luckily. Luckily it's not open yet, so that's not affecting me.

Dwight Peccora
0:30:20
Because I would take that into consideration too.

Dwight Peccora (
0:30:23
Sure.

Dwight Peccora
0:30:24
I don't know if that just makes me feel better.

Dwight Peccora (
0:30:26
I mean, you're talking about increasing the foundation.

Dwight Peccora
0:30:29
That's not what I was saying. You're laying the foundation, you're innovating, and you're in a constant state of innovation to address that paranoia that you don't want to coast and start to slip, not paying attention. Because, Dwight, with 18% growth, didn't you acquire, last September of last year, did you have that standalone Fort Bend Dental and that shopping center that you acquired?

Dwight Peccora (
0:30:47
So this was just individual practices. That hasn't changed since last September, but we've added more providers here, which is good. I mean, they started last month, just like you did. So that's healthy, but for me, utilization is what's increasing, and that's really what I care about the most is per hour per chair, and that makes a tremendous difference for us. It's an interesting place. I think we're all in very interesting places

Dwight Peccora
0:31:19
right now, which makes for a good conversation, but I've never been in a place like this before. It's just a weird space for me right now. I would second that. I'm in that same. Yeah, but you were there last year. I couldn't understand it when you were there. Now I'm there. Tray would say to me, what do I do? I just don't want to mess anything up. I'm just at that point super self-aware of I think possibly had I just pivoted a little sooner, I could have gotten out of the way and my organization would have been further along. I mean, it's all fine. It is the right time. I don't want to look backwards. But I was so, I'd say five years ago, if I stopped, if I put the hand piece down, we would have gone out of business in like, I don't know, a handful of weeks or months. So it's like I was the one that was, maybe not five, I maybe got my days wrong. But there was a certain point in the last decade where if I would have stopped generating my own revenue, the practice would have fallen apart. And it's like a lot of doctors always ask us, say, how do you know when you can step back? It's a very fine line because you've got to keep the thing running and you want to jump off at the same time. So it's like a very

Peter Boulden
0:32:36
timed example. But anyway, I digress. Perfect. Well, I think that's a good place to kind of put a pin in that. I think we covered that. I'd like to close this one down and let's start a new topic here. Let's do it. Let's see if you guys have anything

Dwight Peccora
0:32:53
else in closing. Got anything Greg? No, I really like this one. This is great. So thanks for bringing this up. We'll roll right into another one. So if you're craving more Bulletproof, just hit forward to the next one. And baby I'll be

Craig Spodak
0:33:07
Playing through Playing through This time baby

Transcribed with Cockatoo