The Bulletproof Panel – Hating Work, Marketing, Body Aches, Team Drama

The following transcription was from the Bulletproof Youtube channel. Here is the https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kdygi_adEtM&t=3s

Craig Spodak
0:00:00
Because we have the ground game, we've actually built the practices that people aspire to create.

Craig Spodak
0:00:04
History will prove one of us correct. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. You're not letting me finish, bro.

Craig Spodak
0:00:08
And this is how you become bulletproof.

Craig Spodak
0:00:11
Bulletproof.

Craig Spodak
0:00:11
How you doing, buddy?

Craig Spodak
0:00:12
Everything's good.

Peter Boulden
0:00:13
Everything's good. It's a rough day, a little bit. Oh, I'm sorry to hear that. Well, rough in this capacity. So I can say this since my wife never listens to the podcast. Well, at least your wife knows you have a podcast. Mine doesn't even know that. She's been dropping hints about a fourth kid.

Craig Spodak
0:00:32
No way.

Peter Boulden
0:00:33
And I said, I just text her back, less than 0% chance, less than zero. Wow. She wants a fourth child. How old is Emily? Is she childbearing age still? She's childbearing. She's 42, but she was like, I don't want to carry it.

Peter Boulden
0:00:49
I was like, God, well, okay.

Craig Spodak
0:00:50
Is this a pitch to people that are listening? Yeah, right. Have you always thought you wanted to be a surrogate? Didn't know. Yeah. We've got a deal for you. Dude, I literally thought, and I don't think I thought about it. And I was like, man, I just feel, I don't have that, that enthusiasm. Meaning I just feel like, oh my God, I don't have the, I don't have the diapers, bro. I don't even want a puppy. Nevermind a child. I mean, look, Trey, Trey, who hasn't joined us yet, I mean, just had a child, but I just don't have that, I don't have that in me anymore.

Peter Boulden
0:01:21
Anyway, so.

Craig Spodak
0:01:22
Wow, when did she drop that on you? When was that? Like literally like 45 minutes ago, so. No way.

Craig Spodak
0:01:28
Oh wow.

Craig Spodak
0:01:28
She needs a part-time job, buddy. Well, you know. So, waiting on, is the other guys coming to join us, I don't know. I don't care, let's just roll. I have a whole day of videography going on here today. You do? Yeah. We did some of that yesterday as well. That's cool. Oh, Nate's in town. Nate's here, yeah, Nate's with me. He wants to go out on the beach later today and ask people random dental questions. I'm like, okay, I'll do it. Yeah, that would be, for instance, give me an example of that. Like, so like he has on his phone, like a bunch of smiles of celebrities and he's going to go around like kind of Gonzo style, like going up to people like, Hey, do you know who this is? Or who's, you know, 50 cent and, and Lizzo and fricking Sarah Jessica Parker, like all these Clint Eastwood, everybody in this head, you know, the smile is how reckon are for smiles. Yeah. So like, look, that's gimmicky, but it's content that gathers people's attention. So Craig's like, I know, I want to be like the four steps when choosing a cosmetic dental provider. He's like, listen, let's just do this. So like, that was kind of part of my presentation at Summit. You know, when I did my little breakout on marketing was like literally attention is the currency. And when you figure that out, right, don't get so focused on a sales perspective. I know the problem is videography so expensive, Peter, and you want like you have this 90 second thing and you want to be like, and why were the best and we do it this way and we do it that way. So it's and you want to feel counted, right and polished the way you envision it. And the irony is that a lot of the stuff that performs best meaning best, meaning it gets the most eyeballs, this stuff that's raw, right?

Peter Boulden
0:03:14
It's stuff that's entertaining.

Craig Spodak
0:03:16
I mean, look at like, look at Constantino or Constantine, the guy who was dancing.

Peter Boulden
0:03:20
Richard, Richard Constantine.

Craig Spodak
0:03:22
Yeah, he had nothing about dentistry except he looks good and he was like doing a dance and he wound up on Ellen. Right. I mean, talk, you know, his business boomed from that, had nothing to do with that. So you're right, if attention is the market, who can get the attention? But it does feel counterintuitive to me, having these videographers. I really want to highlight the benefits of the practice and why we're different. And part of me, and see if you felt this way, Craig, kind of felt like that stuff was beneath me. Oh yeah. Okay. Well, it feels trickery. You know, I'm not going to do this, this TikTok dancing and all this. I have a doctorate. It's serious business and dentistry is a serious business, right? So like it's that catch-22.

Peter Boulden
0:04:05
It's like, do you want attention or do you want to be serious and not busy?

Craig Spodak
0:04:09
Well, it's also just being you and every dentist that I'm thinking about in my head right now has a very different feeling and vibe. And, you know, there's really heavy hitter cosmetic dentists in big cities and they're not doing TikTok. So it's like it depends. There's a flavor for everyone, but I agree with you. Well-crafted message is not as important as something that people want to see. So the most important thing is do people want to see it? And I mean, one thing that we've all learned from social media is that a well-done cat like swiping at his owner or her owner is more, can spread faster than a perfect message of sales pitch, it's for sure. I think we're sold to so much to Peter. We're sold to more than ever before. So we just tune that crap out. The other thing is I'm going to add train. The other thing is, how nice of you to join us. Hey, we're rolling live.

Peter Boulden
0:05:02
So don't, don't say anything crass.

Craig Spodak
0:05:04
Yeah.

Peter Boulden
0:05:04
Well, just don't, don't be you, Trey, by the way.

Craig Spodak
0:05:06
That's what he said.

Peter Boulden
0:05:07
So the other thing I was going to say, Craig, on this is that, you know, I have hired videographers in the past when I was trying to kind of do things and it was really, I thought really I could just check the box by like, I hired a professional film crew and they're just going to get it done. What I didn't learn is that the secret sauce isn't so much in who can push the record button and who has good equipment and who has good lighting, it's the choreography of that. Meaning, are they good at extracting information are they making someone feel good do they have ideas like they just gave us That's what you're paying for that's what you're paying for but I used to I used to just literally hire

Peter Boulden
0:05:47
Film crews in my town. I was like god. This is such a dude

Craig Spodak
0:05:51
You should have you seen my old my videos I used to run on TV They had like scripting everything down like a fucking motion picture and everybody said the same thing and they were real patients by the way they said holy smokes you got the best actors it pissed me off that was gonna spend $35,000 a month that's an average crushing you make home in the mirror and say yeah hey Craig I want you to go home and say you know I like yourself in the mirror and just Craig Spodek and paying $35,000 a month on but that was that was a table local restaurant is fine if you're listening to this and you want to dip your toes into the video either you need to be involved and The iPhone is a perfect way to do it and we teach you kind of have it You know we have we talk about this at summit a lot or if you do choose someone choose someone that's got some dental Experience doing it because because you will you will leave Frustrated if you just hire a random film crew in my opinion because dentistry is a more professional and more frustrated I think she'll probably be whoever have you have you get your toes into video. Yeah. Yeah. He has a great You have a great video your typical story where you're all at the ranch all wearing like a cowboy plaid or whatever That was cool. Oh boy. Glad cowboy denim for sweet. Yeah. Yeah, we've done a lot of video

Trey Tippit
0:07:04
There's a great thing to do good

Craig Spodak
0:07:06
well today today I have some you know as the as Moderator a de facto. I have some content. Are you the world's greatest moderator, Peter? I am not. That is Jason Calacanis. Can you be the world's greatest dental moderator? Would you throw yourself at number two? I would not. Who is a better dental moderator than you, bud? Well, I don't know of any other pods that actually have moderation. Okay, so then you're the number one. You're the best ever. Okay. Right? I mean, I'm liking what you're trying. Yeah, so look. Keep laying down, buddy. Keep going. Yeah, so the fact that there's no other dental moderator has nothing to do with you being the world's greatest dental moderator. So I win by default, essentially. Can you just try that out? Just try it out.

Trey Tippit
0:07:45
It's still a W. It's still a W.

Craig Spodak
0:07:47
It's still a W.

Peter Boulden
0:07:48
Hey, Trace says take the win and move on to another one.

Craig Spodak
0:07:51
Take the win.

Peter Boulden
0:07:52
All right, well.

Craig Spodak
0:07:53
As the world's greatest dental moderator.

Craig Spodak
0:07:54
Go ahead.

Craig Spodak
0:07:55
All right. Let's see if you got swagger. Say it. As the world's greatest. Go for it. We'll edit all this out and make it sound perfect. No, no, no. I don't care. You know we don't do that, Craig.

Peter Boulden
0:08:05
I'm fucking with you, man.

Peter Boulden
0:08:06
We do not do editing.

Craig Spodak
0:08:07
Don't do editing, don't take advertisement. We should take some advertisement. That win was expensive, buddy. How crazy was the win?

Peter Boulden
0:08:14
Yeah, but it doesn't matter. You gave amazing, life-changing experience to everybody.

Craig Spodak
0:08:20
So therefore, don't expect a profit or anything. Yeah, we elevated the brand. There's not too many dental summits that go down at the Wynn. Well, there's not too many that have Cello, the famous DJ mixer. I know, it's amazing. So if attention is the currency in marketing, then energy is the currency of conferences. And that was something we were missing, I think, on previous conferences. And music and the right cadence. You don't know until you do it.

Peter Boulden
0:08:47
So it's like.

Craig Spodak
0:08:48
But it was, I'm gonna throw Peter under the bus a little, both of us under the bus. So we're, we're here at the wind, 500 attendees, and we have very professional.

Craig Spodak
0:08:57
Summit crew.

Craig Spodak
0:08:58
That's was borrowed from a very well-known motivational speaker for the weekend. And we're backstage. But now, yeah, we're backstage and it's a whole different level. It's like, okay, Peter and Craig, 20 seconds and 10 seconds and four, three. Peter, like we have two, three minutes before we go on stage, and Peter's like, I gotta go to the bathroom. So, I was like, either he puked, or he had a gastric thing going on, but it was like dumb and dumber, like, are you scared? No, I'm not scared, are you scared? Can you show me someone on a stage with a headset, with a microphone, boom, microphone coming off,

Peter Boulden
0:09:33
tell me how long it is.

Craig Spodak
0:09:34
We have a syntax now, what is a syntax? Is that from like Dr. Seuss?

Peter Boulden
0:09:38
Oh my gosh.

Craig Spodak
0:09:39
It's scary, but it was fun.

Peter Boulden
0:09:41
It was fun. That was pretty, pretty funny. Uh, all right. So here's where I'm going today. That's the world's greatest dental model. We're not going to talk about something like Craig, you and I did a recap with

Craig Spodak
0:09:50
Randy, uh, Trey, I didn't feel like I saw you, but yeah, no, you weren't.

Craig Spodak
0:09:55
You attended.

Craig Spodak
0:09:56
I did give you a shout out live on stage. I'm sure you heard this from multiple. Oh, I got texted left and right.

Peter Boulden
0:10:04
I'm sure.

Craig Spodak
0:10:05
I'm like, where is Trey Miller?

Peter Boulden
0:10:07
I mean, Trey Tippett.

Trey Tippit
0:10:08
Hey, we're eating breakfast. We got a cabana.

Craig Spodak
0:10:10
We're headed to the pool today.

Trey Tippit
0:10:11
That was day two.

Craig Spodak
0:10:12
Only give me shout outs on day one.

Trey Tippit
0:10:14
I will show up day two.

Craig Spodak
0:10:15
Dude, it was so funny. So I'm going to give you the shout out again because I think it's worthy of being a shout out. I think it's worthy of another shout out. It's shout outable. So as you know, you know, we talk about paraprotect or at least our hygiene stock talks about paraprotect. And so Trey, so so Tanya, who kind of runs area protect, I don't know her exact position, but she's always involved in paraprotect. And maybe she's the director. And so that is taught through our kind of bulletproof mastermind and bulletproof hygiene and all the things. So the leading part, she got in touch with me. She said, hey, do you know the number one office in the entire nation for payriproduct? I was like, no idea. Thinking like, hopefully she tells me it's us.

Craig Spodak
0:10:55
Yeah.

Craig Spodak
0:10:55
I was hoping, not even in the top 10.

Peter Boulden
0:10:57
I was like, and she's like, it was Trey Tippett's office.

Craig Spodak
0:11:00
I was like, Oh my God, how did this happen? How did that happen?

Trey Tippit
0:11:04
Oh, we cranked that out.

Craig Spodak
0:11:05
We do well with it.

Trey Tippit
0:11:06
That's good.

Craig Spodak
0:11:06
What's your fee for it?

Trey Tippit
0:11:08
I don't know.

Craig Spodak
0:11:08
I knew you were going to say that. Something like that. Can you text Morgan? Can I text Morgan? Yeah, go for it. Trey, you're going to have to say- Mariah, the one that we put in the mastermind, she's basically becoming the director of hygiene and she's now training other offices to do the same. So that's kind of the goal of our mastermind. To duplicate that type of situation. The question is, do you have them, Trey?

Trey Tippit
0:11:38
Do I have them?

Peter Boulden
0:11:39
Yes.

Craig Spodak
0:11:40
Everyone should have them.

Trey Tippit
0:11:41
I have them. Yeah, everyone, I will say this. Everyone has them, but for the same reason I don't show up at day two, I don't show up for my dental appointment to get that.

Craig Spodak
0:11:49
Right. So you're going right for all on four, Trey, right? I'm going for all on four. No.

Trey Tippit
0:11:53
I mean, I do with that.

Craig Spodak
0:11:54
So I have that going for me.

Trey Tippit
0:11:55
Hey, they look good from here.

Craig Spodak
0:11:56
Let's not, let's not.

Trey Tippit
0:11:57
Come close to the guy.

Trey Tippit
0:11:58
I want to see how you look. I do have great personal hygiene. That's debatable. So, Peter, when Peter and I started the Mastermind, I don't think the goal was to have people that attend do better than us. So, this is not cool. This is not cool. It's embarrassing.

Trey Tippit
0:12:14
It's embarrassing. Yeah, I know.

Peter Boulden
0:12:16
It's embarrassing.

Trey Tippit
0:12:17
It's embarrassing. You have to get up again. You have to get up again.

Craig Spodak
0:12:20
Yeah, let's…

Craig Spodak
0:12:21
That's why I didn't attend the…

Peter Boulden
0:12:22
That's why I didn't attend the…

Trey Tippit
0:12:23
Yeah, you didn't need to see that part, right?

Craig Spodak
0:12:24
You're already number one.

Craig Spodak
0:12:25
Yeah.

Craig Spodak
0:12:26
What are you going to learn? What are you going to learn? You think $2,000? I don't think it's that much. It's $900,000 somewhere.

Trey Tippit
0:12:31
Okay, got it.

Craig Spodak
0:12:32
I misunderstood you. Got it.

Craig Spodak
0:12:34
Good for you.

Peter Boulden
0:12:35
And BP, I think there's some – we should probably know this stuff, but I think there's some – it makes it cheaper when you're BP bulletproof practice, and I don't know. We've got to get Lacey to put that link in the bottom. We are so bad with this stuff. Anyway. You want to know the funny thing, you know how I had to wait for the love of God. Just one last story. You know how I have para protect because of Randy. So Randy says to me, you know how like when you put the gel on your para protect and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Like I don't have it. He's like, what? You don't, you don't have that. And he got like mad at me and I wound up, you know, using it as well. So that's funny. And we are not sponsored by para protect. I know they sponsored the summit, but we're not sponsored by them. So I know this sounds like an infomercial, like other pods about Parioprotect, but no, it's not. But good for you, Trey.

Craig Spodak
0:13:18
Yeah, number one.

Trey Tippit
0:13:19
I can't take any credit for that.

Peter Boulden
0:13:21
Some people push some, I've had a lot of dentists push back on that and be like, dude, it's hocus pocus. I'm like, I don't know what to tell you, but it's not. It is freaking not. Hocus pocus. Well, I mean, listen, hydrogen peroxide, carbon monoxide works great. I mean, there's a study from opalescence, I remember back in the day, opalescence with PF, with potassium fluoride, it lowered bacterial counts in the sulcus and it prevented cavities. So I mean, if you could just think of a way to push the peroxide down subgingively because of the design of the tray, duh, it's not rocket science. It's just that it's not that it's a novel medicament. It's a novel way to push it down. Yeah, it's the mechanism that's the way it works, not just by, yes, I hear you. But it's also, Craig, you wouldn't want to push 20% hydrogen peroxide down into your, into your

Peter Boulden
0:14:09
crevicular area, you know?

Craig Spodak
0:14:10
I don't know where my crevicular area is. Is this an offer, or what are we talking here? Maybe it's crevices, you don't want to push. I don't know, I have crevicular areas. That's a 1.3%. Let's not talk, let's not talk. Yeah, this is nonsense. All right, so I was listening to something the other day. I don't know where I'm gonna get this from, but this is gonna be a good question. I am actually gonna moderate on this, meaning I'm gonna ask you guys questions, okay? From guys who have had their ass kicked, have a lot of experience. Some of the panel is the number one area of protect provider, some are not. So in the beginning, okay, in the beginning when you're just out of school, let's just say, you're expected to make mistakes.

Peter Boulden
0:14:53
Would you agree?

Trey Tippit
0:14:54
Agree.

Peter Boulden
0:14:54
Agreed. Craig?

Craig Spodak
0:14:55
Yes, of course.

Craig Spodak
0:14:56
Agree.

Trey Tippit
0:14:56
Agree.

Craig Spodak
0:14:57
Okay.

Peter Boulden
0:14:57
So, so to that, are you expected to, quite frankly, suck, potentially, and it's okay? In a generality, I would agree with that.

Craig Spodak
0:15:06
Okay.

Peter Boulden
0:15:06
So would you also agree that if you're five years into your career and you still stuck or suck, meaning you're still kind of stagnant. You're not, you haven't really advanced past your basic skillset. Would you agree that that's probably on you? Could you be more specific? Like, no, no, because I don't want to talk. I'm not talking clinically, clinically, but I'm not, not talking clinically. I'm also not talking leadership. So it's all the things, right? Because there's growth in a hundred different ways. But what you see is, is a lot of people becoming stagnant, right? Like they're almost exhausted from the journey. And then there's stagnation that happens of like, Oh, if I finally got my doctorate, right, I only got my dental degree. And then they kind of roll into maybe someone they get plugged into, whether it's a DSO or someone else's office. And they kind of just do that for a while without expanding things that they could expand, whether it's leadership, whether it's learning marketing, whether it's learning more clinical skills, whether it's, you know, fill in the blank. I agree with that 100 percent. OK, OK, so I'm going to ask you guys questions as someone who feels stuck. I'm going to be the person who feels stuck with a couple of questions. And I've got five questions here that I am, well, it doesn't have to be a young, young general student. Let's just assume it's anybody. So Trey, I'm having a confidential conversation with you.

Peter Boulden
0:16:37
What do I do?

Craig Spodak
0:16:39
I'm a dentist now. What do I do if I hate coming to work? So I know you need some more context probably with like, well, the office. I've had that exact conversation. Okay. That's not abnormal, very common. And coming from a position of mine, more than just really just experience, more so in time than anything else. Yeah. The first thing I do is talk about burnout. So it's identifying the fact that you're burned out. Now let's identify why we're burned out. Let's talk about what got you here, what's gonna get you out and-

Peter Boulden
0:17:12
Can I stop you there for just one second? I'm sorry.

Trey Tippit
0:17:14
Yes.

Craig Spodak
0:17:15
Moderators should not do that, but like, how soon do you think someone could experience burnout quickly?

Trey Tippit
0:17:21
You do.

Trey Tippit
0:17:21
I do.

Trey Tippit
0:17:22
And the reason is, is I think some people are not chasing or not aware. As they should be. And they don't necessarily, they're not chasing a challenge. They don't feel challenged or think of how many new docs get out of school and take a job that don't have a mentorship. So they don't know, you don't know what you don't know. So they're trucking along, doing all the things, going off of whatever they were taught from either a textbook or a professor in school, or they're just, they're winging it. They're winging it and going down that path. And then all of a sudden you're two, three years down the road doing the exact same thing, feeling you've made no progress. You watch colleagues maybe excel beyond that, or at least you think they are. And then you're not sure where to turn to for questions or answers. So I think there's a lot of things that play into that that can happen quickly if you don't have the right setup. And really it's mentorship. And it doesn't have to be over the shoulder, I'm in the office, mentorship there, something like Bulletproof counts. It's you can seek knowledge, but some people don't know to do so, especially at the beginning of their career.

Peter Boulden
0:18:24
Very good of that answer.

Craig Spodak
0:18:26
Do you think that people, how many people do you think show up, don't like coming to work or not happy because they don't like the choices of dentistry that they made, meaning dentistry as being the profession?

Craig Spodak
0:18:39
I think…

Craig Spodak
0:18:40
I thought I would like it. I'm really into it now. I went through school and I'm just going to do it. Or do you think it's more of what you said, right? Lack of fulfillment, lack of challenge, lack of mentorship, lack of a good goal, lack of, you know, all the things. I think obviously lack of those things, I think is probably the predominant of that. This is me just footballing here, but of course I think there are definitely people, some of which I know that just got out and thought, I thought it was going to be this and it's not. And at that point you pivot or you don't.

Peter Boulden
0:19:11
Love that, Trey.

Craig Spodak
0:19:12
That's very good. I'm going to keep it somewhat pithy.

Peter Boulden
0:19:15
Yeah.

Peter Boulden
0:19:16
Love that.

Craig Spodak
0:19:17
Craig, what do I do if I hate coming to work? So I was just listening to what you guys were doing and since you're now the world's greatest dental moderator, I was actually quiet, which is very rare for me. And I think that there's something else at play. I think that human beings are just wired to be moderately unhappy. You know, it's what has us invent and become the most inventive, restless species. We do amazing things because I think there's a wiring in us that's always just not incredibly happy but not sad, just moderately unhappy. It makes us change our environment. What I've learned through Bulletproof and helping people and the career that I've chosen, this thing that we do, is that people sometimes just need a reminder of the progress they have made. So the one thing that makes people most happy in life is progress, just being a little better than you were before. But most of us don't have a reality around the progress we've made. We don't see the tree that we planted growing. We need snapshots of it. So it's like you see your kids from five years ago and see how small they were and you can appreciate their growth. So I think the burnout thing, and at least in my experience, when I start winding it down and boiling it down, rather reducing it is like, don't look at what you've done, you know, like, like Randy would say to me when I, or us, if we were thinking about selling our businesses, like that value was always there, you just didn't know it. So I have had people that were saying I'm burnt out. I opened up my own practice. I was making more as an associate. Okay. Well, did you pay down your principal? Yeah, I paid down 100 grand on principal. Okay, good. So is your practice worth more? Yeah, it's worth more. Okay, what about this? What about that? And they realize it's almost like an aha moment, like I'm further ahead than I think. And I think we as human beings have a tendency to just mislabel our surroundings, not saying that the feeling isn't real. I know how people feel, but it's somehow a little bit of a stretch of the truth to really, you have to point, you have to paint your situation in a less favorable and less realistic light in order to truly be burnt out. So I think progress in a nutshell is not oftentimes as readily measured, but it's there and that progress will keep you happier. So people feel like they're working and they're not moving. The rock is not being pushed up the hill, but if they had someone else to help them point it out, remember how you started out, remember this, remember the challenges. So how do you recommend quantification of that? Right. Well, for those of us who aren't good at taking inventory of the progress, how, how do you, how do you recommend like that being the antidote to, you know, if you're saying this is kind of the antidote for not liking where you are, right, well, like you're showing up for work, how do you recommend this? Well, thing that I think is once you're in the moment, it's kind of hard because you can't see it. You don't have any waypoints for your own personal growth. But a goal, a written goal like I would love to make $250,000 a year and work three days a week as a clinical dentist or four days a week as a clinical dentist, and you write that down as part of like a plan, a game plan, and then you get there and you see it and then you're like, oh shit, I'm actually working two and a half days a week and I'm making 255. And then you realize, okay, well I really want to make 350 and work two. And then, so if you write these things down, you have waypoints because personal development and progress, there's no waypoint. You don't know where you've come from. It's funny you mentioned this. I love this, Greg. You guys are both kind of converging on kind of the same thing. And I think it's, so I've got a story with one of my good buddies who runs the 29 to 29 event. What's that, sorry? 29 to 29 is with Jesse, Itzler, and Mark, my buddy, who, yes, they essentially have, it's not a race actually, Craig, they give you 36 hours, they rent out a ski mountain, and then you climb up and ride the gondola down. Did they just do this like last week? Well, yeah, it's been, there's been 20 of them, let's just call it. But yes, there are various ski slopes in the summer. And so anyway, very hard event. You know, it was probably a 60%, 70% finish rate, right? It's just, it's difficult. So where I'm going with this is Mark is built for, he is an extreme athlete. Meaning you look at him and he's just built for that. He's actually done 100 milers, you know, so it's those people who are built different. And he came like recently, he's also in my YPO form. And I'm not sharing anything that wouldn't be said he wouldn't share but I'm just he came he said hey I really am just feeling now granted he's like this ultra athlete like perfect fit body and he's like I'm feeling very unfulfilled I don't have something that I'm training for right there was no purpose there was no there was no goal and so he actually was like usually I'm used to setting up races or I'm used to setting up events to do and granted he does this for that's his work, 29 to 29, but he didn't have something that he was, he was quantifying an event to say, Hey, I'm making progress towards X goal. So Craig, just like you're saying, right, write down what you want to do, reverse engineer it, and then take inventory as you're, as you're getting closer to that

Peter Boulden
0:24:19
metaphorical mountain.

Peter Boulden
0:24:20
Um, would you agree with that?

Peter Boulden
0:24:21
Craig?

Peter Boulden
0:24:21
A hundred percent.

Craig Spodak
0:24:22
Yeah. Okay.

Craig Spodak
0:24:22
I mean, all of this takes self-awareness, though. And I think that's the big key piece to recognize, Craig, what you said of, yeah, you might be geared to not see those waypoints and you need to push to the next one and push to the next one, but you also got to figure out where the way, which waypoints are you headed. You know what sucks is you don't develop self-awareness, though, at least I didn't.

Trey Tippit
0:24:46
No.

Craig Spodak
0:24:46
Until I was in my 40s.

Trey Tippit
0:24:47
No, I agree.

Craig Spodak
0:24:49
It's a long curve journey. I actually feel counter to what you're saying. I think we could have had we been a part of, this sounds so egoic, I hate saying it, but like had we been a part of our mastermind, like ours, and had the hard questions asked of us, like Peter, like if you would have been this 28 year old, you know, Peter Bolden, and you would have been in the mastermind, like, what do you really want to create? Well, I'm going to be the best cosmetic dentist ever. I'm going to get FAGD, whatever, all these certifications. I'm going to get ACD and be like their head honcho there. And then it would have whittled down to like, hey, if I could tell you that you'd open more practices and not be able to practice, would you be okay with that? And you would have said, well, could I like make more money?

Peter Boulden
0:25:30
It's a very good point.

Craig Spodak
0:25:32
And this goes to your office. And you know what you would have said, by the way. You would have said, wait, wait, no, no, I don't really love doing the dentistry. I would like to build a hundred offices. I'm like, okay, let's do it. No, I know. But like you, you would be ready to exchange it. Totally. I know you would have a 20. So here's where, here's where I love what you're just saying is that in your office and you guys correct me if I'm wrong on the come up, especially when you're growing, you like you need to be looked at is the person who has it all figured out, right? You know, you have the answers, Greg, don't jump in and say, well, like, yeah, but that's, you shouldn't have to do that. I'm just saying in our faults, we kind of like, okay, I need to look perfect. I need to look like I'm a good leader. I need to look like I'm a bad-ass clinician. I need, you have it all figured out because I am the captain of this ship leading all these people, you know, leading my team essentially. And then you go home and you pretty much have to do the exact same thing, right? Be the strong man or woman in the household. Have it look like you had it all figured out. You are buttoned up. And so guess where do you ever get to share your vulnerability? And so Craig, like you're saying, finding a group where people are rooting for you with authentic, just, you know, authentically rooting for you, I should say, is good. Where you can be vulnerable, whether you're not sure, you know, an EO forum or a Bulletproof forum or a study club where you actually can't, well, study clubs are tough because you can't really share your vulnerabilities with dentists who live in your town, right? Heaven forbid, you know, they might use that against you. Too close. But- Oh, you have the FMR done by Dr. Tippett.

Peter Boulden
0:27:01
Oh, he's moving on.

Craig Spodak
0:27:03
He's going through a rough time right now. You know that, right? You know he's going through a rough time. The old dental firing squad being the circle, right? They always trash each other. All right, so moving on, moving on. Second question. My team has so much drama and it's making me miserable.

Craig Spodak
0:27:21
Trey.

Craig Spodak
0:27:22
All right, so that is what everyone says of, and I'll just rephrase that. I just can't stand the staff. The staff are all my problems. They're all my problems, people problems. And my answer to this is not as kind or as forgiving. It's, we are in a people business and you don't get to avoid it. You don't get to run from it. You can't hide from it. You're in the middle of it. You have to dive in and you have to address those issues and, you know, and building a team, being part of a team, the inspiration of you as an individual. Those are things that you, you're, that's how you build your practice. And we talk a lot about culture index on this, but culture index is one of many psychometrics you can talk about too. You can use DISC or what's the other one, preferred index or some other index too. But a lot of ways you can try to quantify it and put data towards it, but you gotta go in and especially in a single practice, you are the leader, de facto. If you shouldn't be or you can't be, there might be someone else that takes that spot. But if there's nobody that stands up and leads, they look to you as a de facto leader. So for the associate, I'm not sure how you do. That's fine.

Peter Boulden
0:28:38
The doctor. But like, how does that, how do you, I understand that you're the de facto, that didn't help, like, I came to you as my battle cry, is, hey, Trey, my team has drama, it's making me miserable. How do I stop this? And you're just saying, suck it up, right?

Craig Spodak
0:28:51
Lean it. I mean, yeah, I mean, unless unless I'm going to like Craig's answer better, cause I kind of heard it when you were on your pool day, by the way, because someone kind of asked this in the audience and Craig gave the, Hey, grab this.

Peter Boulden
0:29:03
Craig, go ahead.

Craig Spodak
0:29:04
So, so, so what happens is human beings are messy and you put enough of them together and they do really bad things to each other and there's no difference in your dental office and human beings also have a need to, we're kind of like, we're like violent apes. We want to war with each other. And when someone is upset, the easy thing to do is to get people to support their conflict. So hey, Dr. Tippett, you know what Stephanie did, Stephanie blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, you go talk to Stephanie and Stephanie's like, well, it's actually Becky because Becky did blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And now you are the conduit for this office drama you have just by listening to it. So it's gossip, really, when someone doesn't want to go to directly to the person that's involved in a constructive manner. It's gossip. The only reason is they want to make themselves feel better by telling you, just like the way your daughter and your son slap each other and then both run to you like he hit me first. No, she hit me first. So we have to recognize that by listening by just lending an ear, you're not being supportive. You're actually being destructive because if you went to Peter right now, Trey and said, you know, Craig's being a total blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then you both come to me. I feel super ganged up on and attacked. So the first step in limiting the drama is to set some ground rules. And like in our office, one of our core values is open, honest, and constructive criticism, you know, or dialogue open, no, not criticism. I'm sorry. Open, honest, and supportive communication. So as part of that, we always take our upsets to the party that's directly involved. And I think just in any relationship, all three of us are married. A lot of our listeners are married or in long-term committed relationships. The most difficult thing in our relationships is communication. And those types of things need constant practice. So what we do in our organization is when Stephanie complains to Becky, if you're listening to that, you're gonna take Stephanie directly to Becky and say, hey, let's work this out. And it's typically not that big of a deal to work it out. The problem is that Stephanie went to Dr. Tippett and ratted me out. And now you're trying to sway Dr. Tippett and the whole office against me that elicits this primal war thing that we love to do. We're doing it all over the world right now. I mean, if there's wars all over the world, there'll be wars in your dental office. It's just part of the thing that human beings are messy creatures. I've seen people on ski slopes. So stop being the conduit information between two that are conflicting. That is extremely destructive. I know you're not a gossiper doctor that's listening to this. I know you don't gossip. But when you listen to gossip, gossip means you're talking about another person while they are not there. You are giving oxygen and creating more of a problem. So you have to stop. I know you want to be supportive, but when Stephanie comes to you this afternoon and says, you know, hey, let's go talk to her right now. Let's settle this. Let's figure this out. I know you both care about this practice and you care about the patient. What can we do to make this better? So instead of being the conduit, you actually kind of serve as almost the mediation person, like, hey, let's go talk to her. You stop it, though, Pete, because they didn't want to go to each other. They wanted to triangulate you. Right. And the people, Craig, I'm guessing, the people who hate, who are in this position of being the conduit, and they know it, I'm talking to them, they don't like being there. And this is a way to not only, A, stop the trauma, but A, stop putting them in the situation. Because guess what? Sally and Karen, who have issue with each other, they both know that if they gripe to you, the conduit, all you're gonna do is grab them and take them to the other person. So potentially, potentially this starts solving or training the culture in your office to be autonomously solving problems, right? Open and honest communication. Yeah, it's all in the way we respond to our teams, we're training them. Do you hear this a lot, guys, with practices about drama? Trey, you do, a lot? I hear it a lot. Yeah, it's constant. And by the way, this doesn't remedy it in and of itself. You still have to actively work on it. I don't think this is unique to dentistry either, by the way. No, of course not. No, it's unique to human beings. Human beings, we like to fight for fun. And that's just, you know, this is what happens. But we're always training our teams in the way we respond. If someone comes to you and you're the nucleus of everything that happens in your office, and you're constantly giving them the solution to every problem, you are going to get yourself a job that you don't want. You are going to be the center fulcrum point of everything, from the broken copier to the angry patient. You have to start, I know it sounds gimmicky, but when Stephanie comes to you and says, hey doc, such and such is not working. Well, instead of saying, well, this is what you should do. Hey Stephanie, what do you think you should do? Well, I don't know, that's why I'm asking you. Okay, well, what do you think I would do? I know exactly what you do. Okay. Well, why don't you try that? And you're not being tongue in cheek. It's not being disrespectful and making a very short example of a longer dialogue, but we can either, and I listen to friends that are on the phone all the time with their, you know, I have a friend of mine that's a GC and I'm listening to the conversations he has with his subcontractors and how he's playing this game of operator of like angry plumber. They call us the angry electrician. I'm like, why are you in the middle? Why don't you get them to talk together? So I think by virtue of the way we start a business, that we are the nucleus of everything, and we are the person that gets everything done as a business matures. The ultimate goal of a business is to be autonomous and self-sufficient. A business when it grows up should run by itself. So it's your duty as the leader, owner of the business, to think of a way to replace yourself in every possible way. And the fulcrum of the dialogue of gossip is one of the major destructive forces that you're a part of. Yeah, I would say it's probably one of the big contributing factors to doctors eventually selling their practices, right? Just getting to a place where you're just fed up with that. I mean, I'm not saying it's, I'm not gonna put huge preference on that, but it's definitely a contributing factor to be like, I can't deal with this drama anymore. I just want to do the dentistry. I just want to do the dentistry. That's magnified. I agree with that a hundred percent. And the reason is, is because that never stops. That's not a destination. You never arrive at the point where everyone's perfect and everyone's gotten there because then you have a change in team or- A flood. Everybody's working towards the perfection, but no one ever reaches it. So you're right. And that goes back to lean in. You got to lean into this. You got to, you got to learn this stuff. Right. Like I was talking to my kids, they take my kids to school in the morning and, and my time with them to talk. And so I was having this conversation and we were just playing around and I said, and last night my son and I, we changed a tire and it's like a little electric bike. And it took me a lot longer than I expected it would take because it has an engine, a motor back there and all this stuff. Right. And so I was like, I'm going to do this, but you have to watch me. I'm not going to do it for you while you go play. You have to watch me and do some of it. And he's like, okay. And so we were talking about that on the way to school this morning. And, and I was saying, you know, it's talking to my oldest daughter. And I was like, you know, the stuff you're learning at school is great. And we were saying how like math and science are probably the things that are really important to learn because like reading is good, but like, it just helps you comprehend stuff. So I was like, I want you guys to really be good at math and science. I'm getting to my point, bear with me. So I said, you know what would be really cool is if there was like a camp or a secondary school where you guys learned how to have conflict resolution or read a P&L or balance a checkbook or do your taxes or learn body language or learn how to change a tire or learn how to change your oil or learn how to start a fire. All these life skills that like, they're just not getting in their education and drawing it back to dentistry, right? No one gave us this, I never had conflict resolution class in dental school, right? No, they don't teach it. Never had body language class.

Peter Boulden
0:37:00
I never had human psychology.

Craig Spodak
0:37:01
And it was just-

Peter Boulden
0:37:02
You never had a fulfillment course.

Craig Spodak
0:37:04
You never had a course on how to be fulfilled. And I've told you this at Summit, but like I'm interviewing these really fancy private schools in the area. And I asked the same thing, like, what do you do for mental wellness? To which the answer has been twice now, two different schools. We have a psychiatrist on staff. So I'm like, oh, I'm not talking about like breakdown and crisis management. I'm talking, are you teaching the students about fulfillment and contribution and mental wellness, things that make you happy as a human being? So the only thing they have is the pathology of it. So if you're having a crisis, yes, we have something to support you, but we're not preventatively teaching this, just like there's no preventative health. You know, we're still if any, if any philanthropist listening, I know there's a place in Florida that's got about 100 acres. I can set up a life camp. This is place. Yeah, 100. Yeah.

Peter Boulden
0:37:57
Hundred acres. Yeah. It's free, right?

Craig Spodak
0:38:00
It's free.

Trey Tippit
0:38:01
It'll be free because of all the things.

Peter Boulden
0:38:02
Yeah, definitely free.

Craig Spodak
0:38:03
And yeah, the land is free. All right, moving on to the third. That was great. Third question. And this is gonna be a little bit of a tangent, but I've been hearing this a lot from dental counterparts. My body hurts and I am just tired of doing dentistry. Oh yeah. This is part two of the same thing. Your first question, although more specific, but Craig's answer is basically you got to take care of your mind. This part is you got to take care of your body. They work in tandem. Have you guys ever been through points where your body ached doing dentistry?

Peter Boulden
0:38:41
Sure.

Craig Spodak
0:38:42
Yeah. You both have. Once in my career.

Peter Boulden
0:38:44
Once.

Peter Boulden
0:38:45
That rough IPR?

Craig Spodak
0:38:46
No, I had a lot of pain. I had a neck injury. It was terrible. I needed a neck injury. So it was interesting, Craig, that I think this draw, who was Uche's, he brought his grace, right? And she was there at Summit, we were kind of like after hours, and she was like, she's a massage therapist, but she's very specialized in her therapy. And she was showing like how dentists have these pronation of the hips and these psoas and all these things because we're in these repetitive positions, right? And you just think, look, when you're 26 and you get out of dental school, like, I just felt very bulletproof already from a body perspective, right? I could go out, I could ride a bike a hundred miles or whatever, and I could go do a full day at work. I was never sore, you know, but eventually that repetition, inflammation of aging catches up with you and you forget that needs to be augmented into your curriculum. Like you're, you're actually, it needs to be time dedicated to that, whether it's flexibility or chiropractor or doing sit-ups because we all know like the ab thing right it from from a dentistry perspective is so big. So I'm gonna ask a question again I want you guys to say like here's the things that I would do if your body was hurting I guess depends on where your body is hurting but hey guys my body hurts doing dentistry what do you recommend? I think the two things which I think is a recommendation across just not just this but the two things I would move directly to is mobility and strength.

Peter Boulden
0:40:09
Okay.

Craig Spodak
0:40:10
Good. And if you don't know where to start with it, go get a trainer. Okay. Yeah. So I think the, you know, like, obviously, to fix a problem, you have to have leverage over the problem. You know, you have to the effect of not fixing it has to be greater pain than fixing it. And we all know physical fitness and health are things that are very difficult for most people. Some people say, Craig, sorry to interrupt you, but some people say like at a certain point like, oh it's just it's just the way it is, right? And at what point is that the way it is? Meaning is it your 50s? Is it your 60s? Is it your 70s? Well I have people that say, you know, I'm 35 now and it's just really hard to keep the weight off and I'm like looking I'm like 52 like so yes it is it is the dialogue at your circle if you are the most fit person in your circle you're probably gonna get less fit over time if you're the least fit in your circle then you're gonna get more fit over time I mean I was I was in Spain when I you know for a week on the boat you know a week boat trip and my best friend's wife my best friend Michael has his wife Eliana like literally laid into me. I tell you this. Yeah, you did. Yeah, she's like she's like Craig You are like you like look at you She like started zooming in on pictures because it was in a bow and I was shirtless and she's like look at how you look Five years ago, and I mean it was loving but it was very harsh and I was 207 when I got back from Spain I'm 193 now. I've never in my life lost 14 pounds Trey. You just lost a shit ton of weight, right? So it's like the dialogue of like, oh, well, you're 40, oh, you're 50, you're 60, you should be like this. It's a fixed mindset and you have to be able to identify with pain points that are gonna be enough leverage to make you change it. For me, it's my children, I wanna stay active. I also care about the way I feel and look and I wore a continuous glucose monitor and got some scary stuff at the Cleveland Clinic when I went and it's a wake-up call. But you know health is very easy to take for granted and we're stuck on you know trading you know money for health and trading time for health and then when you lose your health you're like shit like what is it to be a bulletproof dentist and to make money and do everything if you don't have your health it's nothing it's a fool's errand. Yeah we were kind of talking Trey because this is this I think this hit home for both Craig and I we were talking to Uche after we actually went dinner with him and Grace after just spontaneously they were sitting near us and just invited him over. So we're talking about how it's the one thing that really should be added into the Bulletproof pathway. And almost like you know how fulfillment, Trey, when you get all the way down, it's like do all this stuff, all marketing, culture, all, you know, recapture. And then KPIs and then assess where you are in a fulfillment as a human. Wellness, yeah. Yeah. And then we thought that it should be one tangent. Tangent near that is like, how are you doing with wellness? Right. And that includes physical, that includes mental. And so it was like, are you being intentional as that, as you are doing intentional as your marketing as intentional as your CE?

Peter Boulden
0:43:03
I would agree.

Craig Spodak
0:43:04
You know what's my trap? I think that's a phenomenal idea. You know what's my trap by the way?

Peter Boulden
0:43:07
Be Peabody.

Peter Boulden
0:43:08
Peabody.

Craig Spodak
0:43:09
So, launching wellness. So, you know, you know, got to be honest with you guys. The reason why I let my physical fitness or my wellness kind of slip is because in my office I'm with 50 people and they're average and, you know, I mean, I love my team, but you know, when you go to get a good sampling of what the average American is, we're not doing well holistically. We're extremely overweight. We're extremely unhealthy. We're eating shit foods. So I'd go in my office and I'd see, you know, half the people eating Chick-fil-A on a daily drinking sodas and possibly, you know, not able to run a half mile and they're young. They're like, you know, 28 to 35 and 40 and I'm like, shit, I'll do, I'm doing great. So my, my, I was slowly accommodating to this feeling that I'm fitter than those people

Trey Tippit
0:44:04
Yes

Craig Spodak
0:44:05
That got me where I was and I really let myself go and thank God my friends are fit and healthy and they care About what they're doing and that was my saving grace But I was just like better than that if you go to Disney World right now if you can walk here even in Vegas, there's so many people walking with canes because they're so Morbidly over overweight morbidly obese. Yeah, the cool thing is none of us have it all figured out. None of us are sitting there going, we're not saying we're the epitome of wellness or anything in this aspect, physically, mentally, all these things. But I think our stage in life, we're very conscientious about it. And I think you can't start that too early, as I guess my sense. Yeah, like investing as well. It's like the earlier you can invest in your health and your finances the better. It pays a compound interest. Well yeah, I was about to say, it's compound interest that does not just apply to finance. It applies to every other aspect of your life. I think honestly, like and even like going back to Uchi, we were talking about like a wellness retreat because we were like, oh maybe we should bolt it on and do something, you know, on the first day of summit or something. You know, that just seems like a bolt-on. Maybe there should be some kind of like event where people go and get educated, they get well, they have discussions about it, right? And maybe it's just like-minded dentists and so we thought that'd be pretty cool. A thing I was gonna, there was one more thing I was gonna say, oh, Trey, you said something about flexibility and I think that is the number one thing, right? I would probably those dentists who, I would love if there's a dentist out there who does yoga, I would want to know if you practice pretty much pain-free um you know and yoga just a way to kind of get lots of flexibility I don't love going to it I don't like sitting there in hot rooms and all that stuff so what I what I do typically is go to so you know like those stretch labs and stuff like that have you all ever done those those yeah it's like lazy man's yoga you get stretched for you yeah I love it but it's right but it's it's a great at least it gets makes Craig where I'm going is it makes my calendar and it makes me do it versus, hey, I should go do this, put it on my calendar, I make the appointment, I go to it, and I feel a lot better. So anyway, advice is phenomenal. And especially now, I think that's the thing I wake up. You wake up and you're like, wait, I didn't go to bed with this ache. How's my ache? Yeah, my dad always says that. You know you're old when you wake up, you go to bed, finally wake up injured.

Craig Spodak
0:46:26
Yeah.

Craig Spodak
0:46:27
But I think, I think flexibility is the answer to that. And you know, you look at guys like Ucci, I ask, Ucci, how old are you? And he's like, I'm not telling you. I was like, yeah, he won't tell us. Yeah. He's like, I know like 30 years ago he was 60. So shut up. I'm kidding with you. Man, he looks phenomenal.

Craig Spodak
0:46:43
All right.

Craig Spodak
0:46:44
But he's also been a competitive bodybuilder his whole life. I think pay attention to your friends, I think is one of the things that I'd like to, you know, if you just make sure that your friends are fit to get into circles where people are fit.

Craig Spodak
0:46:57
So drop your fat friends.

Craig Spodak
0:46:58
Yeah, just tell them to drop their fat friends. And challenge them in a way, like kind of Trey, how you and I taunt each other with our ruck packs, right? Our 50 pound ruck packs, you know, like maybe make a challenge where it's not dropping them,

Peter Boulden
0:47:11
but it's like, hey, I need to do this, you need to do this.

Craig Spodak
0:47:14
Yeah, so on our group chat guys, on our fearsome foursome, post every day a picture of your physical activity. It'll just by virtue of doing that, it'll- Pearson's wall. Yeah.

Trey Tippit
0:47:26
Yeah, that's exactly right.

Craig Spodak
0:47:27
But there's many days where I didn't want to go put on that 50 pound cement bag on my back and go walk, but I was like, oh, Trey's gonna do it.

Peter Boulden
0:47:34
I love it.

Craig Spodak
0:47:35
He's waiting in the wings.

Craig Spodak
0:47:36
Trey's gonna do it today, he's gonna taunt me. To say some really bad shit to you.

Dwight Pecorra
0:47:40
Yeah.

Peter Boulden
0:47:40
I would.

Craig Spodak
0:47:41
And then I had to, I stopped Trey just so we, I got COVID again. This is my third time now.

Trey Tippit
0:47:46
Dude, I got it.

Peter Boulden
0:47:46
I got wiped out again. Really?

Peter Boulden
0:47:48
Was it bad?

Trey Tippit
0:47:49
It wasn't bad.

Craig Spodak
0:47:50
You know, it's never been bad.

Craig Spodak
0:47:51
Uh, but you know, was that COVID at the lake house? Want to talk to you a little bit? Yes, that was, yes. I was getting back into it. Can you, can you, well, it was actually right before Summit. I went and had an IV and I just felt like, you know, it is brain, brain. Only bad thing about COVID for me, all three times that I've had it, it's been brain fog. But we can't talk about this. Let me tell you why. Yeah, you're going to get flagged. We got crushed on. Oh yeah, my God. Oh, I want to read that review. Thank you for bringing that up. I love it. So, so I, I am fully vaccinated against COVID, or at least I got two doses of the vaccine. And I was just talking to a bunch of friends. I'm like, you know, knowing what I know now, I would not have chosen to get the vaccine because I was told that I get the vaccine, I don't get COVID. And now I've had COVID two or three times. I got the vaccine. And I'm just, if I could do it all over again, knowing what I know now, I would not do it. I would not do that, get the vaccine. So we got this review by the way, and do you have it up, Peter, can you read it? Oh my God, it's so damn good. It's not a review, it's actually- Yes, it's a review.

Craig Spodak
0:48:59
Yeah.

Craig Spodak
0:48:59
So check this out, I don't know if you know this, but we are now anti-vaxxers. I didn't realize that, but I'm an anti-vaxxer. So I'm a fully vaccinated anti-vaxxer. So I'm just like a self-loathing person is what I am. Yeah, every day is fine. It's like I'm a tall, hateful person of tall people. Yeah, let me see if I can find it. Yeah, so yeah, it's wonderful. I'll read it to you here. Okay, I got it here. Okay, exactly. Bulletproof Podcast and Anti-Vax Nonsense. If you want anti-vax, pro-RFK nonsense, this is the podcast for you. I can't imagine how these guys could be taken seriously when they question vaccines causing autism. So now, since we've somehow talked about vaccines, everything we've ever done for dentistry is null and void. Everything. So Justin or Justine0980898, sounds like a keyboard warrior because I'd like to know your first and last name. Let's get Justin, Justine, I don't know who you are.

Trey Tippit
0:50:04
Come on.

Craig Spodak
0:50:05
Come just come out because if you can't even have dialogue without label without being labeled that is a major problem. I think it's a pervasive problem in our society too. I know but I would like to lean into this one. So just a lot of directions to got your political. Oh, well, you did talk member when we were talking about our name, you know, and we were just talking about his standpoint.

Peter Boulden
0:50:28
And so for whatever reason-

Craig Spodak
0:50:29
He wants vaccines according to what he says. He wants them tested. He wants peer reviewed long term data on it. But listen, I just think it was really cool. So I would really welcome, I'm not kidding, Justin, I guess it's Justin, please reach out.

Trey Tippit
0:50:45
We'll get you on.

Craig Spodak
0:50:46
I want you guys to guess, right? We're gonna, this is related to this, and this is gonna be my battle cry for Bulletproof listeners to help. When you get a bad review in your practice, what is the ratio? Let's say you get a one-star review. Like we just got, what do you think the ratio is that you have to squash it? How many positive, how many positives do you think is the studies say? I think a lot.

Peter Boulden
0:51:07
How many can I guess first?

Craig Spodak
0:51:08
Please 20.

Trey Tippit
0:51:09
Okay.

Craig Spodak
0:51:09
Trey 20.

Peter Boulden
0:51:10
That's high. I don't know.

Craig Spodak
0:51:11
No, I would go higher.

Trey Tippit
0:51:15
If I'm, if I'm thinking research.

Craig Spodak
0:51:17
Yeah. Research. I'm going to, I'm going to throw out 50 and let's see what.

Peter Boulden
0:51:21
Okay. One of you is too low and one of you is too high. The answer is 40.

Craig Spodak
0:51:24
Geez. All right.

Peter Boulden
0:51:26
So maybe Justin.

Craig Spodak
0:51:27
Perfect together. So yeah, you, well the Goldilocks, one of your poured was too hot and cool. The Goldilocks answer is 40. So, so we need 40 reviews. 40 pauses review. So if we've ever done a frickin thing for you, like if you got one little pearl for us once upon a time leave a review it's so hard to find where to leave a review by the way for a damn podcast i don't i still have not figured this out anyway we're getting on this one came through apple podcasts yeah so can you help us squash this one oh my god the one star anti-fax Please. So, we need 40 people. Can we actually get 40 people? I don't know if we have 40 listeners. Yeah, I think we have 35. But if you're listening right now, go on Apple Podcasts and help us out. We are not anti-vaxxers. And no, I'm not a hateful person or a conspiracy theorist. I think you're the one who pulls, you know, you guys always talk about me in the tin hats. Maybe he was addressed, maybe I was the one who was. Yeah. Then write Peter a personal review at Peter. You suck. Anti-vaxxer. Direct this where it belongs. Yeah, direct. Exactly. Exactly. All right. Next question for my panel here. My. By the way, Trey, were you vaccinated for Covid? I was. You fricking anti-vaxxer. And I know Dwight. Oh, so that is you, by the way, Peter. You're the one who chose not to get vaccinated for COVID. I've never publicly declared that, but thank you. Thank you. So now we really, you've come to hate me. Look at Dwight showing up at the last minute.

Peter Boulden
0:52:59
Dwight, Dwight.

Craig Spodak
0:53:00
Dwight, you walked into a shit storm.

Craig Spodak
0:53:03
You did.

Trey Tippit
0:53:04
Is that not normal?

Peter Boulden
0:53:05
Hey, do you guys, you guys just casually show up to this, show up to my podcast whenever you feel like it.

Craig Spodak
0:53:10
Just come on in. Dwight, we got this bad review and I don't want to dwell on it, but that were anti-vax nonsense.

Peter Boulden
0:53:15
How are you, how are you 57 minutes in?

Peter Boulden
0:53:18
Well, I don't know, bud.

Trey Tippit
0:53:19
Oh, you know what it is?

Craig Spodak
0:53:20
It's called you live in Texas and you're sleep full time.

Peter Boulden
0:53:23
Is it an hour early?

Trey Tippit
0:53:24
They didn't tell you? They didn't tell you?

Peter Boulden
0:53:26
I'm going off of the Google calendar, which is exactly what it says.

Craig Spodak
0:53:31
We all did that too, bud, but it looks like you got Texas time and stuck with the Eastern

Peter Boulden
0:53:35
Coast time.

Peter Boulden
0:53:36
All right.

Trey Tippit
0:53:37
I'll see you all later.

Peter Boulden
0:53:38
Don't leave now.

Peter Boulden
0:53:39
Dwight, I need you. I need you. I need you actually. So you're just going to have to quickly come up to speed. All right, let's go.

Peter Boulden
0:53:47
Let's keep my pan.

Craig Spodak
0:53:48
We are we talking vaccination? No, we're not.

Peter Boulden
0:53:51
Oh, we're not.

Craig Spodak
0:53:51
I want to know we're talking hatred of Chris. I want to talk that shit. I think it was hatred of people. Yeah, that's right. I'm sorry.

Trey Tippit
0:53:56
I get confused.

Craig Spodak
0:53:57
We're losing viewership right now.

Peter Boulden
0:54:02
Oh my God. We're losing viewership and being labeled. I just don't want to talk about it.

Craig Spodak
0:54:07
I didn't want Craig to bring it up. I loved it. I think it's great.

Peter Boulden
0:54:11
I want to stay away from it.

Craig Spodak
0:54:14
I like chaos. Next question. Back to my questions panel. Dwight, I am acting as the person who is in need of y'all's help. He's role playing.

Peter Boulden
0:54:25
I'm the dentist who is needed.

Craig Spodak
0:54:25
Okay.

Craig Spodak
0:54:25
I feel like my cashflow is always so tight month to month and I just can't get ahead.

Peter Boulden
0:54:31
What am I doing this wrong? What am I, what should I be doing? Oh, that's not loaded.

Trey Tippit
0:54:36
Okay.

Craig Spodak
0:54:36
Dwight, I'm going to let someone else go so you can see how they, they, they do. Craig, I feel like my cashflow sucks. Actually some months it's good. Some months it's bad, but I don't have a real handle on it. I feel like I'm not making any progress with business, but I don't really know. I don't know their numbers. Yes, so how you feel is irrelevant because I felt like I was doing very poorly and to discover that I'm doing well. I felt really good about myself to discover I'm doing very poorly, so it works in both ways. I've, you know, taken my eyes off the business for a while and just a bank account and, you know, that's like the curse of being successful. You know, you, you just take your eyes off of it. So I don't think you should ever feel about numbers. You should look at your numbers. And I think having a goal for profitability and a goal for cash, bare bare minimums of cash flow, I think is a better way to navigate than see how it lands at the end of the day. And unfortunately, as dentists, we're not trained for this. We just look at how we feel if we feel like we're busy. And I have a lot of doctors in my world that have been making a lot of money, but they are not busy. So meaning they have hour and two-hour openings in their schedule, but they're very, very productive. They're making exactly what they want to make, and they leave or go on another insurance network and make less money but are now busy. So they feel great. So I think doctors have a need to be, A, productive and also busy. And I don't have a need to be busy. As long as I'm productive, I don't care if I'm busy or not. Actually, I'd rather be productive and less busy if I had my choice. But how does that help me who needs to know? Well, go know and tell me what you used to make a year ago and what you're making now and how much principal reduction you've put down and what other things that are non-cash that have happened for you because you have to. I would like to answer this,

Peter Boulden
0:56:37
even though I'm like, what are your numbers?

Craig Spodak
0:56:39
I mean, I would like to. I would like to.

Craig Spodak
0:56:42
You missed that, Dwight.

Craig Spodak
0:56:43
Veeders Now is the world's greatest dental moderator.

Peter Boulden
0:56:45
Well, they crowned me that, Dwight, in your essay.

Craig Spodak
0:56:48
I did, I did.

Peter Boulden
0:56:49
All right, Trey, it's your fault.

Craig Spodak
0:56:51
I'll expand on that from the standpoint of the first question that I would ask if you come to me and say that is, do you know your numbers? So let's talk financials, the P&L, namely, specifically. Then once we get that, it leads to- Well, Trey, let me push back a little bit. I get it probably like a month after that last month closes and I don't really know what I'm looking, what should I be looking at? So we're going to work on timeliness and we're going to work on knowledge of the numbers. So we learn about a P&L, we learn to get timely numbers. Then we learn about systems. Then we proactively put ourselves in groups like this. We seek others to discuss this and move forward.

Peter Boulden
0:57:33
I'm overwhelmed, I'm overwhelmed.

Peter Boulden
0:57:34
Great, great, great answer without having to like unpack it all.

Craig Spodak
0:57:38
Great answer. I love that actually, because guess what? Like a lot of that, what you just said, you can YouTube things and Hey, how do I read a P&L?

Craig Spodak
0:57:45
How do I do this?

Peter Boulden
0:57:46
What should I be? I mean, there's lots of education is out there. Dwight, same question to you. The question is, I feel cashflow is so tight month to month up and down. I can't get ahead. I don't feel like I'm getting ahead. What would you recommend? Would it be Trey's answer kind of thing?

Craig Spodak
0:57:59
Or do you have something that is maybe eye-opening for us?

Peter Boulden
0:58:04
Often I think, it's funny you say this because we're all working from experience, we hear this all the time. And it's where the business is them and it's not a business on its own. So they're still treating it as how much is in my bank account and how much am I spending versus not. And that's how they're relating to their dental world. And I think that the greatest thing is to then say, well, can we separate you from the business and figure out that whole process and then lead into what Trey is talking about? Because yes, they need to know their numbers, but they also need to understand that the business is not them. And once they start creating that separation, which we see early on in masterminds, we see early on when people start talking to us about it, they start to realize that it has to live apart from them. And I think that's the, that's where I would start and start going towards making sure that they get educated on the why.

Peter Boulden
0:58:55
Does that help?

Craig Spodak
0:58:55
I love that.

Craig Spodak
0:58:56
I love that.

Craig Spodak
0:58:56
And you know, some of us have a weird relationship with money and cashflow and things like this, right? Greg, and I think it dictates how you move. I think it dictates your month. I think it can dictate, you know, you know, look at the people who are highly invested in the stock market, right? Like their day is, is, is it good day?

Peter Boulden
0:59:15
Well, yeah, the S and P's up.

Craig Spodak
0:59:16
I hear that.

Craig Spodak
0:59:16
So one thing I would recommend that I, that I did implement, and I'm not saying I have the answers at anything of value that more than you guys have already said, I would do think that when you have fluctuations like that, right. You feel rich, you feel poor, you feel, I don't know. I can't get ahold of things, but regardless, make it a system to put some, some at some type down into a different bucket, meaning do not leave it in your operating account. Takes take, you know, it's that book, that's a book called profit first. Profit first. Yeah. And so pay yourself first. Well, it's not even maybe, okay. Maybe it is pay yourself first, but, but, but dislocate it from the operating account because otherwise it's, it just stays and gets spent and things happen is what I've noticed. So as someone who's done this for now, 10 plus years, it doesn't have to be 20%. It doesn't have to be anything that's going to cause undue harm, but make it intentional the first of the month that that X amount of percent of revenue goes into a certain bucket and now it's gone. And when you don't see it, somehow you function a little bit differently, right? You figure out, you problem solve different, get more proactive with your supply. It just helps you. And then before you know it, you look back at the year and you're like, wow, I've got a large chunk of money sitting in this other account, which then insulates you from the days of highs and lows and highs and lows because you have this protection built in, this little security blanket, if you will, right? This bucket to weather the storm or the bucket to keep adding to. And then maybe when you get to a healthy point, you're like, hey, I really don't feel like I'm getting ahead. And maybe you're not getting ahead because you're not making alternate investments, right? Now you have a bucket of funds that you aggregated over the years

Peter Boulden
1:00:52
through your discipline.

Peter Boulden
1:00:53
I love where you're going. Maybe you're going to school estate, maybe you can deploy it toward, maybe you can get some leverage, some safe leverage on that and really start making plateaued strides in your career as opposed to just like, well, this is what I'm making, this is what I'm making. Make leverage strides. But it's never going to happen by peaks and valley months. Like, oh, I had a great month, I'm going to deploy and buy a building, right? I had a bad month.

Peter Boulden
1:01:17
Oh shit.

Craig Spodak
1:01:18
It's never going to happen that way.

Peter Boulden
1:01:20
And this is just my experience.

Craig Spodak
1:01:23
Love that, Pete. I want to just add on, I think like the function of your, you know, cause what we all have is a SMB, a small, medium sized business. The function of a small business, like a dental practice, is to put out predictable cashflow. And then from that cashflow, you want to diversify it. You want to invest it so that you're not forced with this dilemma of taking this business and having to sell it. The two then, a lot of people are just in constant growth mode and they don't live good lives because they're always strapped, they're always leveraged, they're always redeploying. And then they get to a certain point where they're maybe our age, in their late 40s, early 50s, and like, shit, I have to live my life. I must sell this thing now to get the cash out of it so that it can live my life. So optimize it safely so that it produces predictable cashflow and then invest that. Cause I think what winds up happening for most of us, most of us dentists own our own practices because someone told us that was a good idea to do. And now we own businesses that are not really businesses at all. They're just jobs that we get to control the color of the walls and who gets fired and hired, but they're not really businesses. Cause God forbid you break your wrist. Your business goes out pretty fricking quick. If you're the sole operator in your business and you're out for 10 weeks, five months, six months, can, can your business survive? You have to let people go. So I think it's like, if you've decided to open your own practice and you have a business, but you're the sole producer, I think you have an obligation to at least backfill in another set of providers so that it can be subsistent on its own. And I want to add to some of that, at least if I can.

Peter Boulden
1:03:03
One of the biggest things that I would say on top of all this, and the reason that I think, and y'all will all resonate with this because we hear it so often during the first two months and especially the first getaway for mastermind. There, there are, sometimes you'll ask somebody and they'll say, I'm down on myself because what my business is doing, and these are new practices or a few years in, or they've been practicing for a long time, but they're down on themselves and you start looking at their numbers and it's purely a comparison culture that they're stuck in. And we're looking at them like, you're making what? And they're like, well, I don't have a nine location, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, or a 13,000 square foot. And they go down that road. And I think sometimes when they're down on themselves, it's only at a comparison. But if you actually pay attention to these practices, these people are killing it and enjoying the fruits of this industry and not realizing it, but they're seeing someone's Facebook page and they're not realizing the amount of debt they're in. They're like, but I'm not driving a Lambo. And I'm like, you don't need to drive a Lambo. That's so this is why we start with the me start the, you know, who we are at the beginning of the mastermind. And then we get in there. And how many times have you heard, well, I need to open a second practice. And we're like, why and why and why? Well, I need to get all this. And then to the point where like, I don't know. And then we hear about how much they're making now. And I'm like, trust me, if you add a second practice, your total income

Craig Spodak
1:04:28
will likely go down for the next three years.

Trey Tippit
1:04:30
Or you're rid of them.

Peter Boulden
1:04:31
And so it's like this whole mindset, and then we can get into the basics. But by that time, they're so overwhelmed. You know how much content we drive in the mastermind, and by month four, they're still stuck on the very beginning, scaring themselves.

Craig Spodak
1:04:43
Amen, Dwight. Hey, so we talked about, you guys all mentioned investment and your self-worth and stuff. There's four little principles I think that people should do. Maybe this is a pod on itself. Maybe I'll drop a teaser. But I listened to this guy named Alex Hormozy. Do any of you guys see him? I just heard his name. Yeah, he's awesome. Yeah, he's awesome. So he said those. There's four things to look at when you're looking at any investment. Really? These are the only four things you should look at the yield you're given in the investment, the appreciation, the downside protection and then tax efficiencies. And right. So we look at, look at your investments when you, when you put the pay yourself first, the profit for us into a bucket and you're looking at an investment, you look at those four things as a, okay, how, how is this going to perform? And so, you know, just giving frameworks for people, I think it's just so damn helpful, right? Cause like someone had told me that when I was 25, like, hey, look at, look at your investments that you're going to do in terms of these four things. Right. And, and I'd say let's, let's do a pod on that specifically because I think that's such a key piece of things we, you and all four of us share when we're not recording. I know we're talking about all this and all that and these investments and this real estate and this whatever. Right. So I won't go there, but I think it's a big one. I think one last thing to say to this money conversation is that when we all started, we had many days, weeks, months, years of the existential threat of going out of business and defaulting and feeling that we're going to fail. And I think there's a lot of keyboard warriors and podcasters out there that talk to you about their successful practices. And we know because they've told us that they're not successful. They've admitted that they're not successful. So there's pressure from our industry saying like, this is how it's done. And these are the five easy steps and it's not easy. And when you get those bad reviews, I'm speaking to the people that haven't been in business very long. You think that your business, like, like I've said, with Randy or your business, I'm sorry, or your podcast, you think that your business or your podcast is going to fail. Yeah, that's gonna fail completely. And you realize is that we underestimate what the good can do and we overestimate what the bad will do. Right. And you just, and I think that the one thing as you get through it, I'm hoping that we can cut the time ass kicking curve down for the listener. But I don't know if that's just, is not able to be done because it's the suffering that makes you happy going through it going through the Unfulfillment having the rainy day to know the good day and sunny day. I wonder if human beings must suffer and that are hope to cut the cut the suffering down to the time down is really as As beneficial as I would have wanted to be because it's like you have to go through that I mean, how many how many distinct episodes in your life did you think, oh shit, this is going to bury me? Who here on this podcast has had at least three of those?

Peter Boulden
1:07:45
At least three?

Craig Spodak
1:07:46
Like episodes where like, this is going to tank me. That's it.

Peter Boulden
1:07:49
The fear factor.

Craig Spodak
1:07:50
Yeah, just the fear, whether it was real or not.

26
1:07:52
Yeah, yeah.

Craig Spodak
1:07:53
Yeah. Well, I- Okay, how many people have had five? I probably have had five.

Trey Tippit
1:07:57
I don't know if that's five.

Craig Spodak
1:07:58
I don't know.

Trey Tippit
1:07:59
I can think of three.

Peter Boulden
1:08:00
I want to add to that though, because I had the absolute luxury, I think it was for two, maybe three years, I was in a mastermind, a business mastermind with Alex and Layla Hormozy, he and his wife. And I love- Oh, really? Yeah, yeah. Alex Charfman's mastermind for, I think it was two years, maybe three. That was when he was really championed Jim Lords and taking off and doing all that. It was so cool.

Trey Tippit
1:08:23
It was here in Austin.

Peter Boulden
1:08:24
What's so cool with working with him is you're in this room with all these types of business and it's all over the industry. And I remember sitting in a room, myself included, having a very emotional direction to my business. My business was very emotional, very visceral, which is what Craig is talking about. And it's like, okay, I'm being led there. And it would go around and Alex and Layla would pop up and be like, well, no. And they would go back to those same mindsets. What kind of yield is it gonna give me? What type of, they were very clear from the start, which is why he's relentlessly growing, right? And this was way back. I mean, I was what, shoot, 20, I was early 30s or late 20s. And I was sitting there and I was watching him and it was this relentless pursuit for the ROI, for understanding the tax benefits, making it happen. And that's why he outspent a lot of us in that mindset because he and his wife, Layla, were just so focused on that. There was no other way around it.

Peter Boulden
1:09:20
And so.

Peter Boulden
1:09:21
That's cool. That's cool, Dwight. I didn't know that about, I didn't know that you were in early education with him. That's cool. All right, the last thing, guys, we're on, we're about an hour 14. I know Dwight's on 14.

Trey Tippit
1:09:31
I'm not.

Craig Spodak
1:09:32
Dwight's on 14.

Peter Boulden
1:09:33
Dried fresh.

Peter Boulden
1:09:34
I'm just starting.

Craig Spodak
1:09:35
He's giving up after two hours,

Peter Boulden
1:09:37
so I'm collecting my coins right now, I'm feeling good.

Craig Spodak
1:09:40
The last one is going to be, I'm not even sure, I might just cap it and say, all right, that was good for him. But we'll see what happens. Okay, guys or guy, marketing is just so daunting. I don't even know where to start. I just, it just seems like way too much. You know, I have a practice, I've never really done much, but I don't have time, I don't really know what to do.

Craig Spodak
1:10:02
Trey.

Craig Spodak
1:10:03
So most people are gonna go to external marketing of which I do not do very well. So I focus on the branding and the patient experience. That's where I would say what y'all have talked about many times, which I agree with 100%, call your patients, say hello. The cheapest marketing. Increase the touch points. That's beautiful. Build your, build your, build your, yeah, the three Rs, the return, review, refer. You want people that are gonna do those three things, so ask for them. And once you have a patient experience that's legitimate and improved, no matter, I mean, 500 dentists in a room, how many have a shitty one, no one raises their hand, but you know a lot of them have terrible patient experiences. So everything can be improved, so come from that vulnerability, go make it better. Love that, processing it all, because I'm actually just thinking in my head, like, what if, like, what if you only focus, what if you, what if you said I am prohibited doing any ad spend in the rest of my practice? And I'm just, this is a hypothetical, but you want it to grow. Like do you guys think that you could do it if you were 100% of your marketing efforts were just what Trey said?

Peter Boulden
1:11:12
Would it be slower or the same?

Craig Spodak
1:11:14
I am that person.

Trey Tippit
1:11:16
Okay.

Craig Spodak
1:11:17
I don't have ads. I played with, got with Trey Miller and we have played around in one practice on Google ads and then I kind of set it and forgot it, didn't worry about it. That's really the only ad spend I've ever done. Everything else is patient experience in that. And the answer is yes, it's slower. From a startup, I have a startup going right now, three months in, it is a slower process, but it works and it works fine. You just, if you're in a hurry, you got to change it. You know, that was a big focal piece, the summit and really what we were basically can, you know, saying that like everything is kind of the patient experience. It's not this one bucket or silo of things that like, Oh, make some cookies and put a cookie make couldn't Otis Spunkmeyer cookie machine in your office. And now you have great office experience. It was the whole way from your awareness online to your book of patience and are they greeted by name. There's a couple hundred little things that you can do that add up to it. I'm not saying we wrote the book on it, but it's ideas of how to be intentional with that experience. I say that's the arbitrage of competition, meaning that the Aspen's opening up in the world.

Peter Boulden
1:12:22
You're scared of the DSO opening up next to you, then like double your ground game because they ain't going to do that. They ain't going to do that like you.

Craig Spodak
1:12:30
The ROI I did, we did a recent calculation on ROI of spend on different advertising modalities and return on the investment. And the ROI of our internal marketing is freaking crazy. Like thousands of percent ROI. Right. It is crazy. Yeah, so crazy. I feel like when we talk marketing. Well, it's hard. It's hard. It requires work. Yeah. External marketing, I can hire somebody, I can give them $5,000, they can do it all. Making an amazing patient experience is not, I can't hire someone to do that. I can't. It's so hard. It's like Ozembek is easy to lose weight. Going to the gym is hard. Give me the fricking shot, right? I mean, isn't that what, isn't that human nature?

Peter Boulden
1:13:20
Yeah, it is human nature. I will say the only add to that is it gotta be able to find you. And so I do always say, hey, get a website up and then do some internal marketing, all the things you just said. Like, just get, that's bare base minimum. Like, you've gotta get going on that. And at least make sure that people can find you and you're on some Google something or other because that is a generational gap that you're going to miss out on a certain avatar that's going to affect you. And beyond that, then you'll tip your toe in the water. Beyond that, I don't think you need to do much more until you really start saying, I want to compete in this market, I want to consume this market, I want to overbrand this market. That's a different story. I want to start releasing things that have to do with my insurances. If I want to release insurances, well then, yeah, then you got to put your money elsewhere, right? There's other components to that, but still you can maintain and live out a whole practice on how good that internal experience is for your patients.

Craig Spodak
1:14:16
100%. You know how many restaurants I've gone to and different things that are the biggest secrets that actually make it difficult to find them. I've gone to restaurants that are just doors where there's no address. There's some spots that I know of like this. It's just like you deliver massive value to your consumer. You will be a raving success.

Peter Boulden
1:14:36
Yeah.

Craig Spodak
1:14:37
Okay, I love that feedback that you all gave. I'm pulling this up, this is actually in my little breakout. And it's not exactly saying what we're saying right here, but there is a pyramid to what people should do, right? They should, and Trey, like you're saying, it should be the, or Craig, the post-op call, the ground, you know, all the little, the things, asking for referrals. And so this is a pyramid, if you're not, if you're listening to this on, on audio, on just Apple Pod, won't be able to see this. But essentially what I'm, where I'm going with this is so many people, Trey, like you're saying, go right to, I need to market, and they jump right to the apex, which is the last step in what you should do in a marketing strategy is the paid ads. Well, think about this though, Peter. Did you just get mad that I interrupted you?

Peter Boulden
1:15:20
Not at all.

Craig Spodak
1:15:21
Because you made a face. I got very insecure. It's my L of one. Anyway, think about this though, Peter. Who is selling? What is being sold to us? No one is selling us like… So paid ads are the thing that dentists are getting sold. Hire Acme SEO and give us $5,000 a month and we will create the ads for you. Hire my social media company, Acme Social Media, and we'll post Garfield for you on Monday morning. Hire Acme SEO and we'll do this shit. Where is the help us care about our patients and deliver more care service? Who does that? I know we do that at Bulletproof, but who does that? So it's show me the money and I'll show you the result. Compensation drives the outcome. So there's a lot of marketing dollars of SEO and what that are able to be harvested. I know dental advertising companies that are generating implant leads for doctors. And it's a thousand dollars per lead, you know, holy shit. They are acting as the liaison between and then being like, Hey, we've got a good referral, like, right. But it is crazy that that's, that is the, that everyone goes to the apex as a marketing, I'm going back to the question, right? Like marketing is so daunting. Where do I start? Like you said, Trey, you started this whole thing off with, they go right to the apex of that diagram, which is the easy button of, I guess I'll spend a couple thousand dollars a month on paid ads, right? And really have no strategy around that. Meaning, oh, I'll just do Google ads, which is like ultra expensive. You talk about $50, six and such, right? Like that's going to wear you out very quickly. You know, if you, especially if you don't have strategy

Peter Boulden
1:17:07
around it.

Craig Spodak
1:17:08
Or even worse, like some of our friends in mastermind where it's like, we need, I need more advertising. Okay. If I call your office to get a new patient exam, when can you see me? Not for six months. So now you're paying to get your phone to ring only to piss those people off. Yeah. Like accepting new patients, you call, hello, when can I see you? Arch of 2024. Yeah.

Peter Boulden
1:17:31
But I most often hear some, in particular, new young doctors that are opening their practice, and they hear the one off of, this guy danced on a video camera, posted to social media and they're kind of off, right? Which is great and wonderful, but that's outlier. Let's build a foundation. If you're going to invest in yourself, invest in your business, invest in

Craig Spodak
1:17:50
anything, have a foundation. What is the irony that that came up twice without Dwight? And he sold, by the way. We all talked about that example, actually. You're right. The Constantine example, and you weren't even here, and then you brought it up a second a second time. Oh, we're all in a connected We have a connect yet we were women we all be menstruating Negative review coming in Here comes on here. It comesogenous. How about the ads old you begin TV maximus? Ogenous, that's Peter at Peter Bolden Misogynist like I don't know I just live if that if it's anti-vaxxer saying that we talked about something, then that's definitely.

Craig Spodak
1:18:28
Hey, let me tell you something.

Trey Tippit
1:18:29
I love it.

Peter Boulden
1:18:30
Oh God, here we go.

Craig Spodak
1:18:31
We need to edit that out.

Peter Boulden
1:18:37
But that's the point is they will. They'll jump and they'll jump over the whole, the landing page, the website, all the front desk stuff. And then they're just upset. They're like, well, I haven't become an influencer on social media yet, which is why my dental practice isn't successful. And I'm like, okay, let's just take a moment. And that's just how, you know, it's slow down, build a foundation. I love that, that, uh, that slide you had.

Craig Spodak
1:18:57
Yeah.

Craig Spodak
1:18:57
I think I need to, I mean, I was actually given that from actually Nathan gave me, gave me that as kind of some fodder to come talk and I was like, yeah, I like it. But like, as I'm talking to you guys, I really want to like erase a couple of those things and just make them more distinct for the things that we talk about, because I didn't create that diagram, but like, yeah, like based on all the things we'd said and we concur with it's we skip, we skip steps one through three or four and be like, wait, it's not working for sure. Cause you're driving $50 leads to a shitty website that has not even a picture on you or, you know, it's a, it's a terrible experience on your website is how do you

Peter Boulden
1:19:29
think the experience is going to be in your office?

Craig Spodak
1:19:31
Like, or they focus on the recent fad, right? Definitely doing my Google local services ads.

Peter Boulden
1:19:39
I'm like, okay, all right, hold on. You went from level zero to three, right? Like you-

Dwight Pecorra
1:19:46
Yeah, but they went to some CE and they told them this is what I need to do. I need my verification green check. I might've been the one who said that in CE you're talking to, but whatever, I'll take full. But there's a foundation to it all. All right, so we are now at 86 minutes and Dwight's just getting ramped up. I'm getting exhausted so Love you guys, but we're gonna wrap I understood well next time. I'll be on the distant Yeah, sure, maybe I'll just be there. Yeah, that's right. Just your whole operation. I'll buy your machine wait How is it I do I was waiting for a tray. I got you. I got you You don't even have to shop it around.

Trey Tippit
1:20:25
I'll take it.

Trey Tippit
1:20:26
Sounds good.

Craig Spodak
1:20:26
Wait, you're-

Peter Boulden
1:20:27
Peter and Craig will decide the multiple. I feel like I'm in good hands.

Craig Spodak
1:20:31
Yeah, I feel like so was. A long time ago, you said 5X, so. Yeah, you did, Dwight.

Trey Tippit
1:20:38
I'm in.

Trey Tippit
1:20:38
Dwight's a five.

Craig Spodak
1:20:39
I'm in for a five. I'll even leave you some so we can be partners.

Peter Boulden
1:20:43
Yeah, that's for minority shareholdership, absolutely.

Craig Spodak
1:20:46
You and I lose Dwight from 16% down to 2%.

Peter Boulden
1:20:50
But I'll have some agreements in there like Pete does.

Peter Boulden
1:20:53
It'll be a giant.

Trey Tippit
1:20:54
You're lucky to be here.

Dwight Pecorra
1:20:55
I have two percent and all the control. And they have exploits behind me.

Craig Spodak
1:20:59
All right.

Craig Spodak
1:20:59
All right.

Craig Spodak
1:20:59
Let's leave them alone.

Craig Spodak
1:21:00
We have to leave them alone.

Dwight Pecorra
1:21:02
We're spiraling.

Craig Spodak
1:21:03
We're getting the punching bag.

Craig Spodak
1:21:04
Yeah.

Craig Spodak
1:21:04
Hey guys, well, I appreciate you being here.

Peter Boulden
1:21:06
And that was fun, Pete.

Craig Spodak
1:21:07
I love you as the world's greatest dental moderator. Oh, fantastic job.

Craig Spodak
1:21:18
Thank you. Thank you.

Peter Boulden
1:21:19
Thank you guys.

Craig Spodak
1:21:19
You have my quiet, right?

Peter Boulden
1:21:20
Do I, I didn't, I didn't see enough.

Dwight Pecorra
1:21:22
I didn't see enough to know.

Craig Spodak
1:21:23
You didn't know.

Peter Boulden
1:21:23
No, no, no.

Trey Tippit
1:21:24
He's the world's greatest.

Craig Spodak
1:21:25
Hands down. That'll, that'll all right guys.

Craig Spodak
1:21:27
We'll see you. We'll see everyone next time.

Peter Boulden
1:21:29
Hey, drop, drop us a review.

Craig Spodak
1:21:31
We need 40 to get rid of that one. Bad one.

Dwight Pecorra
1:21:33
Dwight.

Craig Spodak
1:21:33
I'll text you the bad one. Yeah. I want to hear a bad one. All right, guys. All right, guys. We'll see you guys.

Transcribed with Cockatoo