To Sell or NOT to Sell PLUS Mastermind Ski Retreat Recap

The following transcription was from the Bulletproof Youtube channel. Here is the https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yhy2paWVSkQ&t=7s

Peter Boulden
0:00:00
If you're a dentist and you're growing you get romantic about one day someone's gonna give me this bananas offer right and that becomes like your drive maybe as Going through this several times and and Trey I think you alluded to kind of feeling the same way when we talked about this is that There's a lot of realizations when someone's willing to give you a check To walk away or to buy your business and you have to you have to pause for a second and think, who's the dummy here? Is it me or is it them? Right, who's getting the better, who's getting the best deal? And even when it's a banana's offer, let's just say, right, something that's, let's call it 250% of your top line revenue or 200% of your top line revenue, and you think like, holy shit, this is a lot of money. When you start to reverse engineer, okay, I'm gonna get this up front because it's not gonna be all the money up front. We've talked about that ad nauseum from this pod, right? The cash at close is this, the stock you're going to get is this, unless you're selling from one person to another at which point multiples and stuff don't go into play. So you have to kind of reverse engineer, okay, this is the cash at close, potentially all I'm left with X in the bank. How does that compare to the cash flow that you get from running a business?

Peter Boulden
0:01:23
Do you have anything? Because if not, I can roll.

Peter Boulden
0:01:26
You roll, man.

Dwight Peccora
0:01:39
Okay.

Dwight Peccora
0:01:40
I thought you were going to do a

Dwight Peccora
0:01:41
neck roll. You got GPT one.

Dwight Peccora
0:01:43
No, no, no, no, no.

Peter Boulden
0:01:44
You know what? Actually, it's funny. I'm glad you brought this up. I tried. I actually tried. I could not convince, it was basically saying, I will not do this because that's mean, essentially, right? I will not roast because that's mean. And I couldn't hack my way through prompts to get it to do it. I was kind of like, and usually you can hack, if GPT gives you some pushback on something, saying, well, I'm not really qualified to do that, you just say, well, act like this person. Act like this person gave me those prompts, right? They will do it via proxy almost. It would not, it wouldn't do it. And then it didn't have enough context on like, who we were, right, as much as I tried to give it. So anyway, it was a fun idea and I was hoping we could do a chat roast. But guess what, Dwight? You are safe from disruption in this department for now.

Trey Tippit
0:02:38
I give myself another year of no disruption, right?

Dwight Peccora
0:02:41
Yeah, by the time GPT-4 comes around,

Peter Boulden
0:02:43
you're probably screwed. I'm right, yeah. The more content we all put here to give it more content. Like maybe I am feeding future roasts. Like maybe that's the way to go. But we're not on this call. We should have all three had an individual roast for him. Yeah. You know, as an as a I don't know, Santee Pants, he might not. He might not. It might not work. That was what I realized that he was getting a little upset because it was after all my roasts started going in he's like Dwight you've changed. Dwight you wish you weren't. Speaking of the chat GPT have you guys seen the did you guys see the reveal from Google's answer of in response to because there was tremendous amount of pressure on Google everyone was saying holy shit this disrupts this changes it from a search engine marketing to a find engine right we've always been searching for the answer and now we're now we're finding now a GPT is allowed to find it so it's changing the whole dynamics of that yeah and so they answered with Bard correct Dwight and y'all know what happened y'all did y'all did y'all see what happened messed it up huh did man so there was a team that was that was responsible for I guess they did this in another country, I want to say it was Spain. And they were announcing some other things like new features on Google Maps and whatnot, but basically they were kind of saying, hey, and now we're announcing BARD in response to Chet GPT. Well, what happened was someone asked, as they tested it, someone asked, hey, BARD, what's the new developments for the James Webb telescope that I can tell my nine-year-old about. And it responded and it said, you know, basically it incorrectly showed a picture of a telescope that took the first pictures of our solar system. And basically there was that, you know, the meteorologist or the astrology world kind of was like, no, it's incorrect. We actually had Wait long story short it essentially their one debut at this smart computer model Yep, incorrect gave an incorrect answer So they lost 7% of their share price which was how much was that a hundred billion dollars? in a day a hooch What is though they are behind they are they are it is apparently code red at, I thought I'd freaking know, but I mean, you know, from what I hear on the Twitter web is that it's code red at, you know, Google. And a lot of people got fired for that, for that presentation because it was just a colossal failure. That's the equivalent of Elon Musk sharing his Tesla truck, the cyber truck, and then showing bulletproof windows. You know what, Dwight? I agree with you on that. Right, there's been some catastrophic reveals, right?

Dwight Peccora
0:05:40
Right, right.

Peter Boulden
0:05:41
But Twitter, but didn't the truck sales go off the charts from that?

Dwight Peccora
0:05:45
I would say, yeah, either way, just even those crazy, funky looking truck, it's still like, what can you have access to? But that's the consumer.

Peter Boulden
0:05:52
Right, but I think the, I mean, I've got a reservation for one, just cause like, yeah, I want one.

Trey Tippit
0:05:57
Me too.

Trey Tippit
0:05:58
I'm doing more sales.

Dwight Peccora
0:05:59
Me too, it feels good.

Peter Boulden
0:06:00
Trey, do you have one?

Trey Tippit
0:06:01
I don't.

Peter Boulden
0:06:02
Oh man.

Peter Boulden
0:06:03
I thought we were going to get you.

Trey Tippit
0:06:03
I'll sell mine to you.

Peter Boulden
0:06:04
Um, anyway, it was just, it was an interesting thing, right, because to me it was a great example of like, of rushing to the consensus of what people wanted you to do, right? And so it was like, hey, do this, and we're waiting for a response, and they rushed to it, and they, and they shift the bet. And to the tune of a hundred million dollar mistake. They will probably recover, but I think that, you know, look, it's like we always talk about even with dentistry, it's first mover advantage you have. And when you have first mover advantage, you get, you get to run, you get to create the rules, so to speak. So playing catch up sucks as we've all done that in either market we've, we've entered or, or a startup we've done or practice we've acquired or, you know, playing catch up sucks. So that was my loop back to the dentistry, especially when you're a distant second Yeah, true story true true story. It's almost yeah

Dwight Peccora
0:06:56
It's you know when someone's clawing into position It never comes out as nice as it needs to be right everybody's got the advantage on that but you've almost got to reinvent yourself with a Totally new perspective on what it is you're doing and I think that's what initially Bardu tried to come out just strong, but then they lofted little balls at it, and I'm like, you gotta control the environment. This is your first jump in. I mean, it was kind of a sad showing to say the least, especially being Google, because that is their biggest fear this year, is that Google search will be disrupted. And this will be that-

Peter Boulden
0:07:33
Look at how they make, I mean, that's the whole business model makes money. And we saw in kind of the all-in podcast how profitable search is. I think they're 93% of the industry right now. 93% and the profit margin is literally like from a compute standpoint is literally they make like 90% of the dollars they make and they just literally I mean I think it was Chamath was saying like they can't they can't find ways to spend all the money they're making and so this disruption could be costly you know and so I'm on Microsoft and Bill Gates. He's a whatever. Did you guys, I don't want to get into a political and a COVID thing. You'd better fail. No, he's still, you know, he's still whatever. That was actually the funniest part of, did you guys watch the Australian Open? I did not. I missed it. I missed the Australian Open. You know who won? Joe Kabeck won. Oh yeah. I'm you know, you know, he won joke a big one. Oh, yeah, he was banned the prior year. So oh, that's right That's right. Yeah, it's is in the audience the finals and like and Was banned for your prior in Australia because of Kovac because not taking that right? Yeah

Peter Boulden
0:08:39
Yeah

Peter Boulden
0:08:40
And and so to come back and win is like you it was like the internet was you know Twitter of course was going funny with it like saying imagine Imagine banning this person them coming back and winning, and the taste of victory, blah, blah, blah.

Dwight Peccora
0:08:54
Well, go to your previous comment. I think that there will be an AI part of every single podcast you do this year because it's rapidly progressing and blowing and going, and now there's talks about whether it can lie, whether it can do this. So I would be surprised if every time we get on,

Peter Boulden
0:09:09
there's a little piece of something that's developed. And I would encourage people to encourage that or mute that on us because we live in this echo chamber. And so comment if you'd like. Like Sharissa actually said, I was talking to her the other day and she's like, I know you've been mentioning AI and stuff a lot on your pod. And I was like, am I? You don't want to become so in your own head. That becomes like you think what's important for everybody else to hear. Well, just because I think it's important. I mean, we had little office hours with the mastermind earlier today. And I mean, there was a little AI talk at the beginning, just one little comment. And then that spiraled into, well, what should we be pre-prepping our practices for? Like, what are the things? And I think that that was a cool, I mean, that- Right, I've worked into a KPI and I get your head out of the sand and what are we looking for? What are we looking for? And I think that's cool. There's nothing wrong with that I mean we're gonna live in this environment and as every industry is so I don't think you can put your head head in the sand on this one there's a lot of stuff you can blow off political you know that especially Dwight part of my interruption I'm just effort to not an interrupt anymore what I'm trying what did you guys see? And I know I sent this on like the Mighty Networks and such and I'm gonna talk about it. Dwight, I know you just printed it out. Trey, if you had a chance to look through it. But there's not many times where I get like a giant PDF where I feel called to print it out, right? But there are several times, meaning like the Naval Master Tweet Storm, I printed that out and bound it in a PDF. So there's not many times, but this was one of those times I got it from ARK. And so ARK is led by a pretty legendary investor named Kathy Wood. Hasn't done so well in the previous two years, let's call it, because it's usually highly tech-based. They come out with a, I mean, Dwight, would you call it like a prognostication guide? But it's actually what they see in the next future. What they're investing in and what they see, how they see our world to look based on X, but based on the technologies that are present. And so this one was the, it's called the big ideas, 2023, and it's looking for, you know, and I kept seeing a 2030 extrapolation of the data. And you can tell by the way they did this, this wasn't someone's opinion, this was highly fact-based. If you look at the citations, Dwight, and you're doing. And so why am I, you know, I say like why is this a big deal? You know, you're a dentist, like why does this matter? And again, Dwight, back to what you're saying about getting your head up out of the sand, because this one, this may be that inflection point in technology that all of a sudden, like I said in the last pod, turns us into this fourth industrial And so the thing that resonated with me on this was, and we actually did speak about this, but I wasn't as eloquent to be able to speak about it last time because I didn't have the data. I didn't have this in front of me, is that the power isn't so much AI, the power isn't so much the blockchains, the power isn't so much energy storage. It's the convergence of all those things that are happening and so it's the rising tide. And basically what they're saying is AI now becomes the accelerant for multi-omic sequencing, robotics, energy storage, public blockchain, and AI in the neural network standpoint. And those are the five things that she says, you know, they're anticipating becoming the large share of this technological economy in the future. I read earlier and I like marked it and it says AI should increase the productivity of knowledge workers

Dwight Peccora
0:12:46
More than fourfold by 2030 and at a hundred percent adoption AI could increase the global labor productivity by 200 trillion Dwarfing the 32 trillion in total knowledge work worker salaries I mean It's just it's it fuel-to-fire isn't even like it isn't like a 1% of what we're talking about. And I'm with you. I think if these are the kinds of things that in life, like there's political issues, there's things out there, there's social issues, I get it, all these things can slightly disrupt different things, but this is a complete disruptor. And like computers were, like internet was, I mean, we've got to be prepared for this.

Peter Boulden
0:13:31
Trey, what do you say?

Trey Tippit
0:13:33
I think that you're- I knew you hadn't read it, so I'm not putting you on the spot. No, no, no, but I mean, I think that touching on what you said earlier about AI and how, you know, or what you mentioned, it's going to be part of every pod we do. It is. It is something that fuels the fire that's going to change everything and bring about that fourth industrial revolution. When you look at ARK, you know, I mean, ARK isn't just tech. ARK is pretty cutting edge tech.

Peter Boulden
0:14:01
ARK either explodes or falls flat on its face.

Trey Tippit
0:14:04
Right. Exactly.

Trey Tippit
0:14:06
But the thought process and the theory of what she's zeroing out there is pretty awesome. And I mean, how many times when you look back, even just through our lifetimes, that you've had any sort of tech jump in and not just dominate, but completely change the paradigm

Peter Boulden
0:14:23
and the landscape of how we live our lives.

Trey Tippit
0:14:26
Yeah.

Peter Boulden
0:14:26
And this is doing exactly that for exactly what you mentioned. It's the substructure underneath all this stuff that we're looking at, excited about ChatGPC, finding answers, that type of thing, but the blockchain and everything underneath is what's gonna bring about an entirely different program driving forward. It's really cool. Whenever my wife makes fun of me about being a nerd, and like, why do you look at this stuff, and why do you watch this YouTube and you know and a I'm got a my kids do you know like what dad when he gives it who cares about that's like watch tick-tock with us like who cares hmm you know I may be wrong on this stuff and I always in my line is like history is gonna prove us one of us correct when Craig and I argue about shit but my my thesis is a it's interesting and be this is probably not gonna make me stupider yeah that's a good point. I mean, so yes, you could be wrong. Yes, Kathy could be wrong. But me digging in and learning is like, okay, it's a heads up play for the next seven years. Yes, I am, you know, JFD, just a dentist. But yes, I'm also, you know, but all of us are just not dentists. We are investors and we are, you know, we are looking for financial futures and we are consumers and we are in groups and we have conversations. So like these kinds of things, it's just nice to keep your head out of the sand, even if it's not just for the business of tennis.

Trey Tippit
0:15:46
Right. Think about it from the standpoint, I was thinking about this the other day. You know, I have little kids, think about what their lives are gonna be like 40 years from now. Think about them in our situation, what they've seen, what they've, what, you know, I didn't have a cell phone in college. Right. That changes the whole game of virtually everything you do once you have that. Facebook, social media pops up. I mean, it's a different way of life. Yep. Yep.

Peter Boulden
0:16:15
It changes. Remember when you did get your first cell phone and you had a bucket of minutes and you would literally speak to people like a telegraph? Yeah. And you're flying through it. What about you? I only have 120 minutes from my Powertel subscription. Can you please speak faster?

Trey Tippit
0:16:34
Just speaking about how productive we are. I miss those days.

Peter Boulden
0:16:38
I want to go back to the beeper. There's some simplicity of joy because today it's like we can't disconnect, we can't this and that, but we are far more productive when we want to be. It's funny, and now it's like you can sign up to go to a resort where you can forcibly disconnect and people are now paying to go back in time, be what that is. You can imagine, this is going to make us so much more productive.

Dwight Peccora
0:16:53
Can I pause you there? Yeah.

Peter Boulden
0:16:57
Because I think this is the argument online where people are like, turn it off, turn it off the AI, it's scaring us. And so there's a group of people and it's probably split down the middle where it's like this is going to disrupt us this is scary this could cause problems and there's another half of the segment that's like this is not going to disrupt anyone it's just gonna make those who want to become more productive seven times more productive right yeah which is so it's a weird uh dichotomy of the populations like that's not really adopters late adopters forcing adopters I mean this is human mindset I'm saying it's human history and it's a drag because people don't they want to accept it Once they've seen other people fall flat on their face and then they're willing to kind of accept the remnants But you know, it's not a matter of doing I think a lot of us even in this, you know Between the three of us we like the idea of being a little bit more on the edge Being that person and kind of enjoying that but in reality some people are are less driven in that sense. They want to do it as a collective. They want to move forward.

Dwight Peccora
0:18:04
They want to do those things. That's fine. But in the grand scheme of it, to me, it's an exciting time to live. It's an exciting time to run a business. Um, and I'm with you, Trey. I think it's interesting. What are our kids going to think is, I mean, they're going to think we weren't very productive at all. I think, well, we don't have a, you know, five AI chatbots trying to run half of

Peter Boulden
0:18:23
what we do or co-pilot a programmer sitting here.

Trey Tippit
0:18:28
And get out.

Peter Boulden
0:18:29
I hate my practice management software in my practice and I have to use a funky cloud and I just want a web-based option. I need to get something to kind of drive this. You know what's beautiful about that, Dwight, what you just said? Is that I always tell people if I knew how to code, I would have been unstoppable, right? Because the ideas and so… Troy's laughing. It's just my arrogance, I know. But like I always say that that was like my Achilles heel

Dwight Peccora
0:18:55
is that I just didn't know how to throw it.

Peter Boulden
0:18:56
I would have these ideas, then I'd be like, and it would be beautiful in my brain, right? But I could see the outcomes and the blah, blah, blahs and this and that. And then I would try and articulate to someone and hire someone to do it and it just was like, wah, wah, rah, rah, rah, rah, rah, rah.

Trey Tippit
0:19:09
And then you would retreat to your basement and you would not eat and you'd never see the light of day and you'd be a skinny pale version of yourself 100 I couldn't understand you to be like hey hey let me I got you're the only one that understands what I'm doing let me Tell you what I'm doing

Dwight Peccora
0:19:27
We being somebody who's run a computer programming company They're two very different people like I couldn't like I couldn't take some of those programmers out to lunch because they just literally wanted to be in a lights-off room with their computers, as many screens as they could get, and they just wanted to hack in and out and go.

Peter Boulden
0:19:48
But think about the advancements. Now, I guess my illustration was like, think about if that disrupts coding, and coding is the big place to disrupt. If you have an idea and now something can code for you to make that idea true, think of that, I guess that goes into the advancements of what they're talking about in this ARC PDF, is that there's no longer bottlenecks and impediments to innovation. So anyway, so we just threw out there,

Trey Tippit
0:20:15
just this was in, I want to say it was a book, I think it was called Things That Matter. It was like Charles Krauthammer, his favorite journal articles he ever wrote in the fire and passing away. And there was a great one in there that was talking about civilization so far advanced beyond us. And this was kind of a small pearl of another one of the articles he wrote, but it's the, are there civilizations that far advanced beyond us? And his comment was probably not because they've long since innovated to destroy themselves. And you sit there for a little bit and think oh shit yeah that makes sense you can innovate yourself into oblivion if you're not careful sure absolutely this is what happens well you know it's coming whether you want it or not so if it's right buckle up if not fantastic I mean we've got to turn ourselves into

Peter Boulden
0:21:11
the Terminator movie at some point, right?

Trey Tippit
0:21:14
Not even not.

Trey Tippit
0:21:14
I mean, we're not going into war with the computers necessarily, but you can very easily destroy things

Peter Boulden
0:21:21
by constantly innovating one thing after another.

Peter Boulden
0:21:25
Right.

Peter Boulden
0:21:26
And then here we are yearning for the early 90s.

Dwight Peccora
0:21:31
Well, it's the solution. To break it down, it's like the solution of the problem. We try and find a solution, but then it has its own side effects. It's like a medication, right? You come and you see a patient comes in, they have like 15 medications and it's like, well, one medication was done to treat like acid reflux, but it also causes this and this and this. Now you're taking two medications to manage that.

Peter Boulden
0:21:50
Yeah, one was meant to treat the side effects of the first one.

Dwight Peccora
0:21:53
Yeah, and then next thing you know, you're like, why am I taking 15 medications when I would have been fine with the heartburn?

Dwight Peccora
0:21:58
It's a start.

Peter Boulden
0:21:59
That's what happens, and that's just-

Peter Boulden
0:22:01
Cascade.

Dwight Peccora
0:22:02
All of every problem. There are some problems we don't need to solve and I think that's a good point right that I think we keep cliffing it so Trey we missed you in a Salt Lake buddy this year how good stuff from that how is next when you you're you can't miss but I'm gonna do it again the same place so it's gonna be so next year you won't come don't have any more kids okay I'm done procreating so you done done cut the blinds have not wait I pushed for number four I was met with violent opposition have I am a lot of curvature Yes, doesn't have enough amnesia yet, right? It's like I haven't even hasn't kicked in enough. Oh, right you already pushed like with the first month or two. It's like Well, I mean like you said we got to get productive. This is go time Hey, look at this two of my kids are 11 months apart. My wife hated me. Oh, yeah, or Like yeah, nine months. She's like don't get freaking near me after this baby, please the love of God Anyway, so anyway from the mastermind what I was gonna say is and Trey I know you weren't there. So I'm gonna just kind of I'm gonna give you the cliff notes So obviously, you know We did it and you were there the Cabo one, right? And as I looked through my notes and the notes from the takeaways from Cabo, which was in October, versus the context of a lot of the same people there, the context of like the biggest issue, right? The key takeaway. So the key takeaway for me in the first mastermind, what I saw in everyone in all the notes was, Dwight, if you remember this term, the nucleus of everything? Yeah. Trey, do you remember everyone talking about that? Like that being kind of the big issue? And I've been there, you've been there, we've all been there in our career. And if I had, I have so many thoughts going in my head right now, but I think that is like the most debilitating feeling that you can have as a dentist because growth means more of that. It's like you're running on the treadmill, like you are the bottleneck of your of your of your growth but you're also like the catalyst of your growth at the same time and so it feels scary and I contend this is where people throw their hands up say F it and and do some kind of draconian move which we're gonna get to an exciting topic today are you some kind of something stupid so it was great to see Trey now you saw that context and you just said, yeah, I heard everyone, you know, that was kind of the thing was like, I feel like I'm in charge of everything. Everything comes through me. All the decisions are made through me. I don't have time to do anything. I have no free time. I have no life. My business is doing mediocre and I'm just kind of leaning in because I want to help extricate someone from that situation of feeling panicked and helpless because I have – God, have I been there?

Trey Tippit
0:25:10
I can't say that about all the answers.

Peter Boulden
0:25:11
The beautiful thing though, Dwight, was that at this second mastermind, didn't you see the evolution in five months? And it was so great. Trey, what we were seeing was it was just, as opposed to like, it went from a feeling of like I have these scarce problems, meaning I'm the impediment, I'm everything. You see, I'm actually shaking because it's such a revelation for me. It's powerful. And then it moved to, Trey, it moved to this better quality problems. How do I grow? It moved to this abundant problem. So they were stuck in this, well, how do I buy a building? How do I grow this? How do I teach this? How do I lead this team member? How do I fire this team member? And it was like an attitude of abundance versus like this scarcity, I can't do it anymore. Did you pick up on that, Dwight? So yeah, so what I noticed that really kind of blew my mind. And I think you saw me kind of pivoting around the table on this was. In five months, people work so hard not to implement marketing strategies, all these other things, but trying to remove themselves from being that nucleus, empowering the team and kind of doing that. And you know, what's funny, we had more personal conversations with people in the mastermind about all of a sudden they had personal clarity about stuff that was going on in their personal life That was totally like getting totally pushed off because their business was consuming a hundred percent of them They could not like much less could they think about their vision and then be like alright Well, here's the next thing and then oh, I want to do this and maybe yeah Maybe I would love to do building and then people like I want a lake house, you know, it's like, but it was all well, well, that became the, what, like you said, you blew over that. And I became like the Y and I know we've made the illustration. I'm like, I want to be, I just want to be a football coach. And then like backfilling your, your life to fill that dream.

Peter Boulden
0:27:02
Right.

Peter Boulden
0:27:02
And so, and so one of them finally says, look, I just, you know, honestly, I just want to be able to buy a lake house so I can have the same memories that I had growing up from my kids. And we were like, boom, that's a Y right. Cause it gives you purpose beyond, I just want to make money. I just want to have three locations, I just want to do this. Because that's not in a storm, that is going to be shaky ground, right? When there's going to be a metaphorical storm coming. So it was, yeah, honestly it was awesome. I don't know if it was. What's cool about that is that everyone focuses, and we all know that, I mean, if you go into any program of some sort, everyone's going to tout vision as the first step. They'd say, let's get a why, let's get a vision, let's move, let's lay out where we're going. But everyone does that and focuses on the core of their business. Everything becomes business related. It becomes what can I do? It becomes more for the sake of more for some, you know, whatever, basically because that's what we are all trained to think in that regard. And you forget that the business is just a piece of the overall pie of your lifestyle. And you have to put that into the compartment, you have to compartmentalize it into the section where it belongs and know that there are other pieces to lifestyle that are just as important and they all complement each other. And it's the concept, that gets into the whole concept of work-life balance or work-life integration, where one necessarily, does one hurt the other does one compliment the other but and what's what's awesome about that what I hate About having to miss something especially the ski trip with with this group is this is a group of people that you watch go through This they're here to learn And so when you put yourself in a group of people that all share that mindset and you watch the growth that happens happens exceptionally quickly, and they walk through these steps, very, you can almost predict the aha moments that start to happen, and they show up and get to the next one, and then start bringing the next level problems, and you watch the scarcity to abundance mindset start to materialize. It is awesome to see.

Dwight Peccora
0:29:06
And this is what happens in our industry right now, is I remember, because Brad Tyner, he wouldn't mind me talking about it. He's in the mastermind and he did this when I talked to him well before the mastermind started, he's a buddy of mine that I'd worked with him or interacted with him in several other CE groups and things like that.

Peter Boulden
0:29:27
Brilliant mind, incredible dentist, and just a drive, an internal drive. Great profile. Yeah, great profile because he's just like Pete's profile. But that's why I said that. But the goal here is, is like he was stuck. So stuck that he verbally talked about it in Salt Lake City with some other people was when Dwight called me and we were having this conversation, I was considering a sale because I was the nucleus of everything and I hated my business. People don't sell businesses they love, they sell businesses they hate, they sell teams they hate. 100 percent Dwight, keep on preaching. That is the piece where we see time and time again if you're stuck in the nucleus of your business, doesn't matter what you do, but in our world of dentistry especially, you're the technician and you are the CEO and you are the office manager, you are all these things and you've given other people titles, but you still are the bottleneck for their approval process or their systemization and their appreciation and their day-to-day and their incentive is whether you like them or you're having a good day or not, guess what? You will sell your practice. Because if not, what's the point? Who wants to live that life or who can keep doing that and how do you solve the personal life? You're saying how sustainable that is, right? Like that's not sustainable. And so it's, I love what you guys both had said. Trey, you're saying about putting people in that environment. And I said that, I actually thought that as we were in this room. Because people are given their specific examples of what's happening in their life. And the problems they have may not apply to you. Therefore, you're thinking, well, how does this apply, this isn't for me. But yet, you put yourself in this pressure pot, meaning you get on a plane, you fly somewhere, you get out of your environment, you put yourself in an environment where you become vulnerable, and then you hear other people's problems and then you hear group solutions. And then you vicariously adopt that to maybe something that you're thinking about or maybe something that you didn't think about. And so that in itself is like the power of a group, the power of the energy, the battery in the room. I gave that analogy once, the battery in the room. So it's really cool. The other thing I want to say is, it's funny how we always think about problems. And you think happiness is probably the only thing that beats happiness is the absence of problems. It's not. Happiness is kind of the evolution of your problems. I mean, just endeavoring to get better quality ones as opposed to on the nucleus of everything to, hey, how do I get more hygienist as a problem or how do I get more locations or how do I invest in real estate by you're finding problems that are better quality problems? And I think that's something to always remember. Dwight, what you said leads me into what I want to get, the fodder for today's podcast. We're finally getting there after 30 minutes. It's okay. This has been awesome. Probably the best one ever. So here we're going to talk about something. And I tried on our text message to get a couple of you to be on one camp and a couple of us to be on the other camp. And I don't think it's doable, as I sat here and thought about it. But the case for selling versus the case for not ever selling your practice. Okay, because that is pervasive in an industry. Do I sell? Do I not sell?

Peter Boulden
0:33:05
Everywhere.

Peter Boulden
0:33:06
And I kind of went through some things and did a little research and wrote down some things just to give us fodder. It's more than likely going to, well, who knows how much it goes into, but it is. As I've gone through this exercise, right, with, let's just call it private equity suitors in the past. I've gone through this exercise many times, just as you guys have, just as anyone has. It's eye-opening. You get, let me pause for a second. Let me collect my thoughts. If you're a dentist and you're growing, you get romantic about one day someone's going to give me this bananas offer. Right. And that becomes like your drive, maybe. As going through this several times, and Trey, I think you alluded to kind of feeling the same way when we talked about this, is that there's a lot of realizations when someone's willing to give you a check to walk away or to buy your business. And you have to pause for a second and think, who's the dummy here? Is it me or is it them? Right, who's getting the better, who's getting the best deal? And even when it's a banana's offer, let's just say, right, something that's, let's call it 250% of your top line revenue or 200% of your top line revenue and you think like, holy shit, this is a lot of money. When you start to reverse engineer, okay, I'm gonna get this upfront because it's not gonna be all the money up front. We've all, we've talked about that ad nauseum from this pod, right? It's the cash that closes this, the stock you're gonna get is this, that this is, unless you're selling from one person to another, at which point, multiples and stuff don't go into play, right? So you have to kind of reverse engineer, okay, this is the cash that closes, potentially all I'm gonna get. Now my tax rate's gonna be this, and now I'm left with X in the bank. How does that compare to the cash flow that you get from running a business? I'm going to loop this back in Dwight to the nucleus of everything. You have to get yield somehow from that money that you make, because if you're going now from being a business owner to a W2 employee for X number of years, let's call it three to five years.

Peter Boulden
0:35:13
Right.

Peter Boulden
0:35:13
You're yes, you're still gonna make money as a dentist because it's the cost of labor, but, but does that yield that you're going to get. From investing in other people's business, whether it's a bond, the government's business, repeat that people pay you for your business, yet you still have the money and you have to still put it in as another people's business and the government, I say is that the bonds are a business, right?

Dwight Peccora
0:35:34
Yeah.

Peter Boulden
0:35:34
Everything's business. Stock market is a business private, you know, alternate investments is a business. Like you still have to, you know, it's like the old expression. You have to have your money working for your money. Working for more money. Right? Little, good little soldiers that go out and do it. And let's just call it, but here's the thing is that you fall into a scarce mode because you're thinking this was my life's work. And now instead of trying to look for yields of 15%, you can't risk that, so you now need to look for yields of, what was Bob doing, 4.5%, 5%. So you better make sure that check someone's willing to give you post-taxes is enough that you're getting safe yield to live the exact same lifestyle that you're living now. That just covers the lifestyle thing. We didn't even talk about purpose and things like that.

Dwight Peccora
0:36:25
So Peter, it is shocking to me how many people, one, have not actually heard about ERC and two, have gotten the wrong information. And you and Trey being two of them, I mean, I consider you to be an epic business person. And when I talked about the employee retention credit to you, you were really dismissed above me like, no, I went through that. I got it. You know, it's great. I got it. It was done. And even Trey just now, we were just talking to them on the last pot, he's like, yeah, I already, you know, my accounting firm, they got it very little. They only got

Trey Tippit
0:36:55
like five or 10 grand. So we know this is totally misunderstood.

Peter Boulden
0:36:59
I was told I didn't qualify until I went to a specialist and they're like, you absolutely qualify and here's the number. And it almost startled me. Like my jaw was off on the ground. Yeah, you don't actually, you don't believe it. You don't believe it. But don't ask your CPA, ask someone who specializes with you, which is why we actually have this awesome arrangement and we created a link and the company, it's Bulletproof ERC to help kind of implement this because from this pot of money that Congress has allocated,

27
0:37:27
we want the people listening from Bulletproof

Peter Boulden
0:37:29
to take advantage of it. So this is why this announcement is going on because it's, like I said, don't ask your CPA, ask the people who this is the only thing they do all day every day.

Dwight Peccora
0:37:38
That's why we had to do this because initially I was telling everybody, telling you, telling everybody, like, oh, I went, we don't qualify. So like, oh, this is not going the way it's supposed to. Like you have to go to the people that do it. So I'm really proud of that. My buddy Norm works at the company. Norm, as you know, is like the nicest guy in the world. He's literally like Ned Flanders. He's like, how do you do what you do? He'll fill out your form. He'll walk you through the process. He'll do the zoom call with you. It's literally white glove services. You don't have to do anything. And this is what they do. And it's an unbelievable program. You have two ways to pay for it. You can either pay up front or they can just take a percentage when they give you the money. And it is awesome. You did one, I did the other. We won't tell which one, who did what, but it's a government program. It's going to run out. Do not delay. It's amazing how many people are like, I'll handle a couple months. I don't have time. You don't need any time. Like, this is like crazy. First come, first serve, right?

Peter Boulden
0:38:29
First come, first serve.

Trey Tippit
0:38:30
And I mean, I know the government's treated you well through the CARES Act, and you're

Dwight Peccora
0:38:34
thinking to yourself, well, maybe I don't need this.

Peter Boulden
0:38:36
It is your money to have.

Dwight Peccora
0:38:37
This is part of the CARES Act.

Peter Boulden
0:38:38
Right.

Dwight Peccora
0:38:39
It is part of the CARES Act. But I mean, even when I thought about it, I'm like, nah, I'm good. I don't want to take, you know, more money.

Trey Tippit
0:38:45
But this is a program that's allocated for people like you who have kept your employees,

Dwight Peccora
0:38:51
kept your businesses open. Do not take it for granted. If your accountant told you, your friend who's a lawyer told you, do not leave that stone unturned. Go to bulletprooferc.com, spend five minutes. It's worth the due diligence. Do not assume anything. And even if you filled it out, you got something, but it wasn't what you think is commensurate for your size business, go ahead and reopen the process. You can amend these things for different years. So do yourself a favor, take the five or 10 minutes, have a Zoom call, you may be leaving hundreds of thousands of dollars on the table, which is not prudent for you, your business, and the families that your business supports.

Trey Tippit
0:39:30
Do it for them.

Dwight Peccora
0:39:31
So I want, you know, to give context,

Peter Boulden
0:39:34
and I'm gonna shut up. Everyone listening, I again tried to form kind of two facets where it would be two people. I think arguments are great in a public forum where one says this and one says this and that. It just works better. It's just fun. But the four of us really couldn't come to a consensus on why we thought selling was ever the best idea. I mean Dwight, so you're kind of shaking your head, maybe, so let's do this. Let's talk about the advantages to selling potentially. Can we just hypothesize about why, let's talk about the pros of selling and the cons of selling. So right off the bat, go ahead. Where are we starting? Which side? Selling advantages. The advantage is to say, I want to sell everything. Screw it. I'm the nucleus of everything. I cannot do this anymore. I hate my practice. I want out. I want to sell. That's number one.

Trey Tippit
0:40:36
Offload responsibility.

Peter Boulden
0:40:37
Okay. Responsibility, offload, and by nature, stabilization of the emotional turmoil of running your business. Okay. All right. Non-clinical, right? But the emotional turmoil of running a business, right? I think the delegation of that is probably the number one reason why people sell. Because it's kind of like, even Bruce Baird talked about the fact that when, you know, it was a political thing, right? Obama came in, I've got to pay for healthcare for everybody and there was all this fear factor and all these things were coming along and he got offered a check and was Like yeah, cuz the world is too or too unsure. Well uncertain right on certain times uncertain times Hey, right. I'll hurt. I think that's the biggie Those to me are the two biggies as to why people say I've had enough and in particular like the craftsman style

Dwight Peccora
0:41:34
Kind of doctors who are just like I just want to do dentistry.

Peter Boulden
0:41:40
So offloading responsibility, you're saying is, would it be a reason?

Dwight Peccora
0:41:43
Okay.

Peter Boulden
0:41:43
Dwight, in this scenario where someone's coming to buy you and you have to stay on, do you think Dwight and Dre, do you think you get to be absolved of those

Peter Boulden
0:41:52
responsibilities?

Peter Boulden
0:41:53
Do you think they're like, okay, we, we got, we got it as a leader. You no longer have to lead the practice or be involved in conversations of solutions. Like you no longer have to be here. Do you think that happens?

Dwight Peccora
0:42:06
I think, I think owners, I think getting the chance to get some money in your pocket and put a stock into something. The idea is, is that the owner gets to be an associate or feel like an associate, like step back and just do clinical. And maybe some of the HR stuff comes off of you, maybe these other issues, but you still have to live and breathe and practice with the team who's now getting managed by another entity. So you're still going to be the go-between person. You're still an interactor, right?

Peter Boulden
0:42:37
That's my point.

Trey Tippit
0:42:38
I agree with you. There is a de facto leader of any team, whether it is your responsibility or not, and being the doctor tends to put you there, whether you want to be or not,

Peter Boulden
0:42:47
if you're not good at delegating. Of your de facto, are you offloading? I'm trying to… What I would get at there is there's a staged answer to that because it's a difference between a guy who's running a million dollar practice with a decent bottom line and someone that's running a $15 million operation that has a very different program that has a management company or anything else. And there is a point at which the leadership of the $15 million so-called leader or the driver of that organization is gonna be what they're after in many cases. And they will leave you in place to keep that going. And then there is a point at which, yes, there is some at that $1 million level or that good practice that's trucking along. You are still there, but your liability is different. Your responsibility is different. But yes, you are still involved. But I think there is a staged part of that and we have to keep that in mind

Trey Tippit
0:43:46
because they're two very different scenarios.

Dwight Peccora
0:43:48
The other thing I think that gets into people's brains is the quo concept of the ROI potential. Meaning if I bind myself with either other guys

Peter Boulden
0:44:02
and the potential of maybe not the first bite at the apple, but the second might.

Trey Tippit
0:44:08
So, dumb that down to the fact that if it all works out, you get what you're promised. And let's assume that they lay it out, this is what's happening, and you actually get to go along for the ride and get what you're promised.

Peter Boulden
0:44:20
So, what Dwight is saying for the audience is basically what they call in the world of private equity is the recap scenarios where you are bought with someone for cash plus stock into this private company in the hopes that they are going to be able to roll up more people like you to get to a critical mass that attract the buyer for a bigger private equity right so it's a recapitalization of your stock at which point then that will trigger event where your stock gets paid out.

Dwight Peccora
0:44:51
Right.

Peter Boulden
0:44:51
Which point you might be able to roll into the next one at the end, take a third bite of the apple. So the first bite of the apple was selling majority share of your practice or pretty much all your practice. Second bite was potentially when there's recap third will be, you know, and this is a five years and then another five years from that would be the third recap. Dwight, sorry, I just, it doesn't want to go. And I'll even give an even easier example within my own ecosystem. I had a doctor that had a small single practice in an outskirt area. He joined our practice. He only had a 5% he inserted his whole practice, the whole value of his practice to us, which was probably worth a two and a half, three multiple. It wasn't a senior practice, but when he merged it with us, he then owned 5% of the holding co. And now the multiple of that same value that practice was now a four or five or six because of the size of our ecosystem So again, there's that was the arbitrage Yeah, I'm sitting for him doing the arbitrage arbitrage unless you sell correct unless you realize the equity I don't think of it for him even immediately when he retires It's more value as a part of our ecosystem than what it ever would have been. And if you never sell those, what are you saying? If you never sell. That would be the piece that I would touch on, though, Dwight, is that guy that sells the million dollar practice typically has an opportunity to maximize the value of his practice in terms of what he brings in as he checks out. That is where I think there is a positive in that regard. You get a little bit more than if you just sold on the open market. In a private equity format, you're saying, Trey? Yeah, and I wouldn't even go into a private equity format. Let's go to a strategic buyer where you're selling a bigger DSO. Where you're just plugging in. Well, I want to put a pin in that because you're saying you're getting more. Your enterprise is valued for more, but whether or not you get those funds, right, so you may in a PE or strategic environment, million dollar practice, potentially, he'd say, look, we'll give you 2 million, right. But we're only going to give you the million up front and then five, you know, the rest of it's going to be in stock and hold back and performance issues.

Dwight Peccora
0:47:07
So.

Peter Boulden
0:47:07
It sounds sweeter because as the person who has the $1 million practice saying, all right, that's two, that's twice as much, right? All you've heard in that conversation is $2 million and you immediately psychologically start spending the money. What am I going to do with this? How am I going to do it? What do I do about beach house? Finally, I'm going to buy this lake house finally, right? Versus the person who's kind of sitting on million dollar practice. Let's say you sell it for 700 after taxes, you probably sitting on four 50. Okay. Getting yield on that four 50, how much is 7% of $450,000 a year, right? It's about $30,000 a year. That's not retirement money for folks. So let me give you a pro on how, if you are early, I'm going to talk about the time value. If you are early and you have created a juggernaut of a practice and you can put along a bunch of money on the sidelines. I actually heard a couple of stories where someone could put a bunch of millions on the sidelines at in their thirties. And I'm like, okay, maybe that makes sense, right? The time value of money for that is that they get to now do nothing on that. And potentially that money, the rule of 72, that money is going to double X number of years.

Peter Boulden
0:48:16
Right.

Peter Boulden
0:48:17
And so maybe that would be a case for, I'm trying to do the pros. And the other pro would be if you're young and it is that thing, if you're non-compete is somewhat limiting and you're feeling like you've got a lot of gas in the tank and let's say you sell and you have either no non-compete or maybe one that's only a couple of years or three, you can go do it again.

Peter Boulden
0:48:38
Right.

Peter Boulden
0:48:38
And so it's step in repeat, but you got to have the chops and feel like you can do this. And it wasn't lightning didn't happen.

Peter Boulden
0:48:44
I'm sorry.

Peter Boulden
0:48:45
Lightning didn't strike just once. It can strike twice. And so many times I've seen so many, how many entrepreneurs have you seen that think they, because they had success in one exit of their business, they're like, I can do anything, I'm bulletproof, I can open it, and then they waste all the legendary money they made on kind of the endeavor too, because it was an ego thing.

Trey Tippit
0:49:06
Absolutely.

Peter Boulden
0:49:07
So the next, so the cons also of selling, let's go over the cons real quick. I know there are many. I think one of the biggest things is like now what? Let's say you're in your 30s and you sell. Let me give that same example. Like now what do you do the rest of your life? Okay, maybe you can do it again. Okay, maybe you don't need to do anything again. If you're older and you sell it, you still need purpose, right? Because it almost insulated so much of who your entire being was. Like you associate, like my dad was a pilot right he associated everything he didn't you know he was I need to work he was a pilot he was a captain at Delta and right and then when you retire you leave that environment it's like wait a second I don't have all these you know flight attendants admiring me and people walking through the airport like being like holy cow look at the pilot coming right you you you're gonna miss that environment it's where I'm going and so we start to lose purpose I'm not trying to ramble guys I always think that I'm talking too long. No, no, no, no you got I mean

Dwight Peccora
0:50:04
This is kind of valid. I think this is the piece that most people forget

Peter Boulden
0:50:09
The head that they will lose and that we all have to have fulfillment requires purpose Mm-hmm and personal individualized day-to-day weekly monthly annual fulfillment requires perfect so the thing Dwight you're saying is that potentially the catalyst of being the nucleus of everything could be the thing that's actually getting a lot of pleasure enjoyment if you were to remove yourself. Meaning, talk to talk about being romantic about having to give the wife enough time to think about the amnesia of it. Once you get out of that, right, and that pregnancy's gone for a night and much, you're like, you see this a lot. You see this a lot is the purpose. And I had this conversation, I went to lunch with Bob and a private banker yesterday, and he was saying how he sees this a lot is, you know, this. It feels good to look at those zeros in your bank account. And then the next week it's like, what do I do? Yeah, that's my life. I had this beautiful place where I led people and I was able to dig in and make experiences and I got great cash flow machine and golden egg and I was writing things for my business. Now I can do none of those, right? Because I don't own it.

Dwight Peccora
0:51:23
How long can you actually be, if you took a month long vacation right now, what point in time would you be itching to get back to your business, right? Or do you prefer to take those in doses and build a business that allows you to take those more frequently or take off when your kids are off or you know, from school or things like that, right? There's this balance piece, right? But I think one of the bigger net cons that we do need to talk about besides even the piece of purposes is these are really smart business people offering you a certain multiple to buy in practice. And if they're offering you that kind of money, these Wharton Business School people showing up, knocking on your door and being like, hey, by the way, 25% of our investors require that our portfolio is in healthcare. Therefore, we need to buy more dental practices or healthcare related, blah, blah, blah. All they really care about is, okay, well, how much is Pete going to earn in the next seven to 10 years? Great, I'll pay you for a seven to 10 year multiple up front so that you have that balance money. But they're just paying you the money. If you've got the runway to stick those seven to 10 years, then sell it after you've got that money.

Peter Boulden
0:52:32
And that'll only happen. The kind of model I gave to her, I love that you bring this up, right? Because there's someone, and this is a very simple way to think about it. If someone's taking your EBITDA, right? So let's take your EBITDA. And someone's like, I'm going to get a 10X, which is astronomical. We don't hear that much in dentistry. All that that means is someone's paying you for 10, if you flatline your practice, someone's paying you for 10 years of earnings so it would be the exact same as if you waited 10 years got that money then you could almost walk away from the practice it would be the exact same outcome almost right exactly and you wouldn't you'd be able to sell it from there it that's why one way is so dependent or like you have to decide to run or keep it and still get ash here's another con that we don't think about the consequences to your team and your patients.

Trey Tippit
0:53:16
Yeah.

Peter Boulden
0:53:17
And we do think about that, right? People get concerned at the signing table about, holy shit, what about my patients? Holy shit, what about my team? You know, but it's something that's nice to think about. Like that is a con and guess what? That is a highly unknown variable. You hear good stories about when that happens. And you also hear the horror stories about what happens to the people and the patients and the care. And so I would think that that is, you know, again, a big con of selling. The other thing would be you become a W-2 employee. And I know that that's not a big deal, but like you went into, you took the risk to be a business owner so that you could afford the benefits of taking risks so that you could be have favorably putting things through, whether it's insurances or the business benefits or things that you got, right? Now you become, now you really don't have the benefit of using the tax law to your advantage because you're deficient in that.

Dwight Peccora
0:54:10
Okay.

Trey Tippit
0:54:10
Any other questions?

Peter Boulden
0:54:12
You're a W-2 employee.

Trey Tippit
0:54:13
But like you said, that's not that big of a deal. That's one of the biggest deals to me. Yeah. If I don't wanna play in the sandbox with someone, you know, in someone else's sandbox basically. Yeah. So that'd be good.

Dwight Peccora
0:54:23
How much are you paying on taxes? How much are you getting paid? Usually about 25% is what the going rate at most DSOs are, what they're going to pay you of what you're collecting. And on top of that, you're going to be paying taxes in a different mindset. I mean, it just is what it is.

Trey Tippit
0:54:40
I think a lot of this is we never say this, or we don't say it enough, and I think this needs to get touched on a lot more because we're in an environment where people are looking to solve their problems and move to the next level which means they're putting out the negatives and now we're solving the problems and trying to move them forward. Everything you talked about with Salt Lake. But I love my business. I love, I wouldn't say everything about it, but I would pretty much tell you that I love what I do more than the vast majority of people love what they do. Why do I want to get rid of that? I mean, and as a dentist, think of as a dentist. I've always said this, you go in and see so many people and you're able to bullshit in the hygiene columns and you get to have a smattering of human life every day. How many people hate their job? It's staggering how many people hate their job. It's unbelievable. So, knowing that, I don't wanna go, what am I gonna do with, and this is obviously first world problems type situations, but if you get a little bit more money, what are you going to do with it? All the things we've talked about, you got to deploy it, first off, but at what level do you jump to your next level of, let's call it lifestyle, from a spending perspective? I mean, if you're happy where you are, war for the sake of more is really dangerous. It's a hedonic treadmill, right? That's right.

Peter Boulden
0:56:05
I also want to introduce another topic if I can.

Dwight Peccora
0:56:08
I think… Another topic? Are we staying on the seller not the seller?

Peter Boulden
0:56:13
Concept affiliated to this topic. Okay. If I was doing this business alone, I may be more likely to sell. Let me define alone. Wait, when you say this business, meaning if you were doing it hypothetically. I was doing dental practice. I was the clinician. I was the business owner. And I was doing this alone. And what I mean by that is not my team, because I got to manage them. They're all employees, right? And you're not, if I wasn't a part, I'm not joking when I say collaborating, even on this podcast, talking about my business, there are bad freaking days. There are amazing days, but I like to say like, when you're an associate, your day can be a plus 10 and a negative 10. Right? It can range in there. Because things happen, bad patient care, some messed up, patients upset, or you know, but as a business owner, it's like a plus 100 and a negative 100 because you don't do that, right? I was wondering where you're going with this. It's a high probability, right? So if I was doing this, just out of vulnerability with all of you, if I was doing this alone, but that I can't mentally and emotionally, uh, constantly feel like we are, I'm the only one dealing with the problem. And because the problems are deep and they're all focused on me being that nucleus and what this practice does and what this business type does is that it throws you at the top through education and through titles and doctor and all this other garbage. And then it forces you to A, be a great business person, which we are not, or normally in the industry. And it keeps going down this road where all the pressure keeps piling. And it feels like you're all alone doing it all by yourself. And I think that that is the main reason why people choose to delegate, people choose to sell, choose to do those things. But I can tell you right now, I've run other businesses in other industries, this is a very lonely business. Very, very lonely. If you're not out there and about and saving yourself, interacting with other dentists or interacting with other business owners

Dwight Peccora
0:58:43
within this industry.

Peter Boulden
0:58:45
I struggle with the conflict.

Peter Boulden
0:58:46
Let me just fill it down. You're saying without collaboration and kind of a brotherhood, sisterhood in this industry, you wouldn't have bailed.

Dwight Peccora
0:58:57
I would have got into another industry.

Trey Tippit
0:59:00
Okay, okay.

Peter Boulden
0:59:01
Because the truth is that the ROI. But that's not like an attraction to our profession. Meaning like, that is not the reason that a lot of people got into, like dentistry is awesome because I have to collaborate with my colleagues. If anything, I think it's the exact opposite. Yeah, isolationism.

Dwight Peccora
0:59:18
Sorry, let me clarify that.

Peter Boulden
0:59:19
I don't want to get roasted. Sorry, the reality becomes the opposite. I'm not saying that is the attractant. I'm not saying the opposite is the attractant. Saying that is actually what happens is a lot of us get in a silo 25 years and it's like you forgot to get in a study club and you forgot to get in a mastermind, and you forgot to get in this group. And all of a sudden, now you're like, dude, this is a lonely place.

Trey Tippit
0:59:45
Yeah, it's an unknown piece. That when you signed up for this gig, you didn't realize that was what was happening, or that was very likely to happen.

Peter Boulden
0:59:53
And in medicine, right, you don't have that, because typically you're in the hospital setting, and you're getting your collaborating point. You're doing case theory with other people, and look at this case with me. So I get it. I get that, Dwight. I get that. So that's something to. Well, you've got to be careful, though, because that could be that could be a legitimization of the cell. Be a part of something bigger. Also could be a legitimization of expansion. Correct. They could. But very true.

Trey Tippit
1:00:19
Which is why I believe I should have got it. And everybody's different. You got to keep in mind that there are going to be people who are a sale.

Peter Boulden
1:00:30
If you're lonely, go buy some friends. Go buy some friends to put in your bigger house. If you're lonely in the yard, go buy some associates. Go buy some. Hire some associates. Buy some. I think all the things. Buy some friends. I was trying to make Genelegy buy some friends,

Peter Boulden
1:00:45
but that came up.

Trey Tippit
1:00:46
There's so many places we can go and buy some friends.

Dwight Peccora
1:00:48
I just, I have, true, true.

Trey Tippit
1:00:51
This could be a great rabbit hole.

Peter Boulden
1:00:53
Five meanings.

Peter Boulden
1:00:55
End on the infrastructure, right, and then encourage people to come.

Peter Boulden
1:00:58
That's what I meant.

Dwight Peccora
1:00:59
I just feel, I feel like dentistry has this natural ability to make you that nucleus of everything, and then you are stuck, and your problems seem too big, and you can't get out of them, do these things. And I think this is the majority, like you said, it was the number one topic that we evaluated over the last five months with Mastermind. It keeps to be the recurring problem. Everybody shows up at the Mastermind wanting all the marketing fixes and then although those are there, it's not what we end up talking about. I think it's just because it's that loneliness factor that, you know, I can walk outside and run into pretty much any doctor out there. I'd be like, hey, do you happen to know my brother Christian Pecora? He's a pain doctor. He's like, oh yeah, I ran into him at this ambulatory center and then this and then he's in the surgeries. You know, and it's just there is this unity concept, right? And and that's just the natural tendency of it. When in dentistry, I can walk in and out of my office and not have to interact with anybody and there's this fake concept like what you're talking about that because you're meeting new patients every day, or all your patients coming in and out, and you've got a team of people, and it's small office, like, is what it is. I'm like you, we had to build a large infrastructure. All three of us have built multi-location, multiple doctors working for us, big entity structures, like we love gathering places, you know, where we can kind of get everybody together. But I think it's some of that, it's also because we love to collaborate. We know that we would have been stuck, and not enjoyed it if we were doing it all by ourselves. That's just how we are. And it's not just our personality. I think it's also a natural trait of the industry. It just is, right?

Dwight Peccora
1:02:35
Okay, so here we are.

Peter Boulden
1:02:37
We're at 58 minutes and we're about to talk about the pros and cons of not selling a business. We've illustrated by the counterpoints of some of the cons of the push for selling, we've illustrated some of the, the, the advantages for not selling. Um, okay. So I think when we touched on this, the biggest advantage for not ever, not ever selling your business or not on, I'm not on the, any horizon for you is that, um, that cashflow that you have inside your business is going to be exceedingly hard to recreate. And that goes back to the illustration of what I said about someone gives you a large check, take out the taxes, and then find that yield. The yield you get inside your business is the cash flow. I know I'm stating the obvious for you guys, but when you know it's due, but it's it's

Trey Tippit
1:03:34
two stocks.

Peter Boulden
1:03:35
Do the math. Yes, it's two stocks. You either take the cash and put it in an alternative investment that yields you a certain amount per month, or you put it in your business stock. I put it back into my Fort Bend dental stock and I never sell it. I keep it there and I see what yield that gives me every month. That's what you're trying to break it down. Two types of stock, investing here, investing out. Well, I think you're making it more complicated than it has that has to be, right? Meaning that like, here's an asset that gives me more dollars, that gives me X amount of dollars. Here's something that I took, I converted that asset into a big check, which I then still need to get converted into more dollars. And you compare the bucket size, right? And I'm just saying, if you do the math, it's scary, right? And so you have this business that, and obviously the reason that, and Dwight, you said this, the reason that people, private equity, everyone is tripping over their genitalia to get to

Peter Boulden
1:04:36
you is because, I'm trying to keep it PG.

Trey Tippit
1:04:39
I'm trying to keep it PG.

Peter Boulden
1:04:42
It sounds as better as a dick, but it's like whatever. Is that, right? That is a rarity in the world, right? A cash producing business, right? That's stable, it's quote unquote recession and pandemic stable. And so that is the biggest pro, it's a safe spot.

Trey Tippit
1:05:02
Let me put that in different words. One of these deals is built for you and one of these deals is built for someone else.

Trey Tippit
1:05:10
Very good.

Trey Tippit
1:05:11
That's pretty much all there is to that. One of them you're at the bottom, one of them you're at the top. Which one do you want to be?

Dwight Peccora
1:05:20
Not to mention, let's add the next layer of it.

Peter Boulden
1:05:23
No one's ever doing it in benefit of you, Trey? No one's ever giving you a check as charity?

Trey Tippit
1:05:29
I'm just rhetorical.

Peter Boulden
1:05:30
I'm kidding.

Trey Tippit
1:05:31
I'm kidding.

Peter Boulden
1:05:32
The point you're saying is you've got two batches of money, right? What's the yield here? What's the yield there? The only problem with that argument is the yield of the sale is coming from the cash flow that your business is going to hold on to. So, the next thing obviously we touched on again is the tax advantage situation of owning a practice. And whether or not that's you know everyone knows what that means but inside that maybe you have some real estate control, some owner occupied real estate, you then can leverage some cost segregation, some bonus depreciation, you start taking advantage of the tax base code, which the biggest expense in all of our lives is taxes. And so finding ways to mitigate that legally through the confines of the document that they provide to us is incumbent upon you to do so. And so owning a business is one of the greatest ways to optimize. So I didn't say like avoid or optimize against the code or for the code, I should say, you know, I don't, I don't want you to jump over what you just said. I'm interrupting you because of this. He said one important thing and everybody, if I asked everybody and Randy did, Randy came to us and asked us in the about Sir My that Salt Lake City and he came and spoke for a little bit and he asked what's your biggest expense and people started saying well you know my mortgage right of this well I was like no it's tax your business biggest expenses tax so start at the top what is the one thing that you want the same way you look at your business and your profit loss statement or your balance sheet in your business, you should look at your personal financial statement in the same way. How do I reduce my largest expense? My largest expense is still tax. And so I thought that was really intriguing. That was a little tidbit that, you know, the luxury of being in the mastermind, you got to hear that.

Dwight Peccora
1:07:29
That is huge. So don't worry.

Peter Boulden
1:07:32
We're wasting time. Coming up here soon. And actually, Dwight, because it was so transformative for a lot of people from a financial acumen standpoint. He's speaking at the summit now, but we'll put him on the pop up. But it's so eye-opening, right? And I said, look, guys, I'm learning, you're learning. No one taught us this shit. No one at dental school taught us this school. Some of our parents didn't teach us this. Some of our parents might have, but no one taught us this shit. So do not be ashamed that you don't know what cost segregation means. Do not be ashamed of anything because we're all here figuring this shit out.

Trey Tippit
1:08:04
Yeah.

Peter Boulden
1:08:05
So let me keep going unless you guys have any other comment on this.

Peter Boulden
1:08:09
Go for it.

Peter Boulden
1:08:10
The biggest pro for not is the freedom of direction. And I thought about this. I literally sat on a table away from electronics today, and I really had like a write this stuff down. What are pros and cons and think about it because I think it's interesting. And for me, I came up with the freedom of direction. And what I mean by it, let me unpack this just real quickly, is that I can either optimize for my profits. Now I have a business, I can optimize for profits. I can hustle, I can go, I can optimize for time. I can optimize for relationships, or I could optimize for growth, meaning going back to the tax advantage situation, buying more assets inside of the vehicle of my business. So I have four freedoms, four freedoms now that I can exercise by having the encumberment quote unquote of owning, right, having this big nucleus of everything. Now I have four freedoms that are afforded to me by this. I, this is so good.

Dwight Peccora
1:09:11
I think more freedoms, right?

Peter Boulden
1:09:13
Maybe maybe mother the correction is a great summary statement. Because what freedom of direction, freedom of direction is a great. Yeah. Because I will tell you when I said, you know, it's a positive 10 and negative 10 to be an associate. It's a positive 100 negative 100 potential as an entrepreneur, as an owner. you're more likely, because of the freedom of direction, to justify the bad days. And you can flip them into good days, because you're like, great, I'm building something. But if you were just an associate, or you sold off to private equity, and you have a bad day, what are you justifying? You're just like, ah, it's a job, I'm doing what I can right doing your time right Dwight and you put in the time because someone gave you a check You're putting in the three years. You're counting the days until you're out of jail, so to speak. Yes. Yes an

Dwight Peccora
1:10:10
Opportunity is what I think is the key to that freedom of direction is just like hey, I'm having a bad day Yeah, it's probably worse like I had an associate asked me yesterday or walked by he was like hey I just heard like what the last three people just walked in and asked you to make like just a random opinion on. One of it was like concealed carry in the office. Are employees allowed to have concealed carry? The kind of topic that we have in Texas, right? Things like that, right? And we're going down these things. And he just gave me knuckles. He's like, so glad I'm not making those decisions right now. Or not so glad that's not like in between my patients, you know, or whatever.

Peter Boulden
1:10:46
And it made me laugh. Seems pretty awesome to me.

Dwight Peccora
1:10:49
Yeah.

Dwight Peccora
1:10:50
But for you and I, it's like a direct conversation

Dwight Peccora
1:10:53
related to that.

Dwight Peccora
1:10:54
I could also not answer any of those, because I have freedom. So you'd be like, not a topic I really want to tackle today.

Peter Boulden
1:11:01
Or just no, right? The freedom to say no.

Peter Boulden
1:11:03
Moving places doesn't really matter.

Dwight Peccora
1:11:05
And so that's the freedom of it, as opposed to being told, hey, by the way, here's the protocol. This is what you have to comply with. This is how it works. And that could turn into a kind of a daily bad day. But I have no opportunity to change it.

Dwight Peccora
1:11:17
I have no control.

Trey Tippit
1:11:18
You're right, dude. I think one of the things, I'm gonna repeat this, you talk about the four freedoms of direction in that regard, that's essentially how you build your lifestyle. You can design your lifestyle based on how you wanna design your business. And those freedoms and those levers you get to pull can directly correlate to how you want to live your life. And that is dramatic in terms of being able to escape the hamster wheel that people feel like they're on, where they're working to live, and now you can flip that on its head and go down that live to work path. But you end up with, when you, well, and I'll close with this on that thought. I have never, I just wrote a letter to a doc that went and bought her own practice. And it was very congratulatory with one big theme in there that I think is very good that I was mentioning from my own experience. And as I've learned more about myself building a business than any other aspect of what I've done. It was the greatest education I've ever had.

Peter Boulden
1:12:26
Very good.

Trey Tippit
1:12:27
Because I am able to pull those levers in whatever order, in whatever direction, and as far as I want. So it allows me to make mistakes, to trip over my dick or genitalia as Pete wants to call it. Genitalia! Tripping over genitalia.

Dwight Peccora
1:12:46
You get to make those mistakes and no one's over your shoulder saying, why did you do this? What happened? Instead you're saying, man, I fucked up. How do I learn from it and how do I take that and be better next time? So, I don't know, I just ended my own ass. I need to figure that out. That's right. I think that is so good. The concept that you are a better person than you've ever been because you had to struggle through some of those things. I mean, there's a lot of things that we're battling in our personal lives that are easier decisions or we're more able to weather those storms because we've weathered some things in our business.

Trey Tippit
1:13:27
I think that's brilliant.

Dwight Peccora
1:13:28
I think that's so true. I like that.

Peter Boulden
1:13:30
Yeah, so I mean, really, I mean, I could go over the cons, but we've kind of illustrated the cons by advantages of being the pros in the first cut so it's like now you're feeling unbalanced the cons may be like just not selling that you're feeling unbalanced from an equity situation meaning the majority of your of your net worth is wrapped up in an asset that you are uncomfortable from quote-unquote back to Dwight's example uncertain times the blues buried example uncertain times you don't know what's coming we never know it's free from coming by the way but you're concerned because 95% of your net worth potentially is wrapped up in this juggernaut practice you built. I get it. So too many eggs in one basket. Your cons of not selling, but you're too stressed and you're overwhelmed because you're the nucleus of everything. And then I have retirement age on here because I think there's pros and cons to both. Like we talked about the early advantage, but in the late scenario, you don't have the time value of money anymore. You don't have, you know, so you better just, it's just the basket of money that someone's giving you. You don't have the power of compounding interest.

Dwight Peccora
1:14:34
That's true.

Dwight Peccora
1:14:35
I'd sked over those.

Trey Tippit
1:14:36
You're using the instant. Right, well, you see, so that's true, but you have a cash producing asset. So when you learn to unlock the asset, even at the retirement age, it can travel on indefinitely. Right.

Peter Boulden
1:14:47
And because of that, why sell the practice, invest it to draw cash coming out? The interesting thing is like selling, we think of selling as being the only liquidity event that's available. And Dwight, you're both smiling and laughing big if you can't see this. It's like, it's not this 100% or 0%, right? I have fractionally allowed investment in my practice eight times with eight different partners and eight different entities. I have lots of partners because I like writing with people. I'd like Dwight to your point. I like collaborating like right like I got this you do that divide and conquer. Let's let's do it, right? Let me be let me let me focus on what I'm good at you focus it Well, you're good at and let's go let's go optimize for each other so to speak right so There are many ways to liquidity events partial liquidity events Just I guess what I'm trying to say is in closing, if you're selling tire, kit and caboodle, be careful because back to Trey's line, it's probably not set up to benefit you.

Dwight Peccora
1:15:47
Absolutely. Without a doubt. If I'm adding one last item to that, you know, in our industry, a lot of ego and a lot of roostering and a lot of banging our chest about what we've done.

Peter Boulden
1:16:05
Mm-hmm.

Peter Boulden
1:16:06
And this is why everybody hears about all the glory stories of selling and taking two bites of the apple and this and that. But I know Pete and I, for example, we've talked about, friends of ours and people we know, that the story was the exact opposite. Right. Others who fully invested said, no, I'll put all the stock in I'll put the majority of what you're buying me out in and ended up collapsing going the other direction and that's not a fear tactic that's me literally saying that like with all business there's a full gambit of potential risk that comes along with that and I think it's really really important the only people who are yelling from the hilltops about selling because they're a really good experience right I know it's some people who are getting back into the business because they lost everything trying to sell. They'll sell them from the- They gave control. They gave the keys to the kingdom to someone else and someone lit that kingdom on fire. Right. And they still had some equity in that castle, so to speak.

Peter Boulden
1:17:05
Right.

Peter Boulden
1:17:06
Right.

Peter Boulden
1:17:06
And you're right.

Peter Boulden
1:17:07
We do have a couple of examples of mutual friends who have like, they're having to get back in. Like Trace said, having to play catch up sucks. Having to play catch up late in your career because you made a potentially catastrophic decision where you gave the control, you have no one to blame because you're not in control. So now you're just hoping and praying things go well. And that, I saw, that personally would be more of a stressful and anxiety-ridden situation than, oh my gosh, I am the nucleus of everything. Meaning my future was predicated on the decisions of someone else. Versus, I need to implement and orchestrate my way out of this temporary problem that I have of being the nucleus of everything. And the answer is not knowing. The answer is optimizing, working every day to get yourself out of the situation of being the nucleus. Not because you don't love dentistry. People hear me loud and clear. It's because it's incumbent upon you to focus on things that you are sustainable doing and it wakes you up and then you make sure keep your you have to keep yourself in bed in the morning you wake up and you're like oh my god stay in bed I know the alarm hasn't gone off yet you're just so excited to start your day. Hit that, that's where the good shit that's what we just do that forever. But keep in mind to put my last little pin in it or my last little spin on it. It is, this is in vogue right now. What's in vogue? Selling. Is it? Yes. I like it's shifting back, Trey. Maybe that's my own confirmation bias. I think that is your confirmation bias. What you're always finding is, you're finding that everybody is discussing it and why is everybody discussing it? Because everyone else is discussing it. It's an option on the table right now because you're in the right industry in the right time where we have consolidation and now you have opportunity, so-called, that is presented to you, but the one thing when you really start to dig deep and sit down with people and start questioning them, none of them understand what's going on. So you have a lot of fear of missing out, more so than you have a legitimate, well-thought-out, due diligence-performed decision saying, this is the best option for me. And that's why, yes, you have people shouting from the hilltops, it worked out for them. But nobody's standing around shouting from the hilltops saying it didn't, and the vast majority of people I've spoken to. Because of shame or something? Yeah, they're not out there going, you know,

Trey Tippit
1:19:31
they're not getting on. I lost a couple of house kids. This is terrible, I lost everything, I wish I'd never done it. By the way, I love you investors.

Trey Tippit
1:19:39
Yeah, I love you too.

Peter Boulden
1:19:41
Don't sue me, don't sue me. But you don't hear the negatives. It's the bad shit that goes, you know, swept under the rug and no one's really out there voicing it. Make sure you do due diligence on it and there are certainly situations where sell is a great option.

Trey Tippit
1:19:55
They might be.

Peter Boulden
1:19:56
And it is perfect, if it makes sense. I would say that's the exception rather than the rule.

Trey Tippit
1:20:01
I agree, I agree. I think that's 100% correct.

Peter Boulden
1:20:04
Do you agree?

Peter Boulden
1:20:05
I agree. For certain situations like we've illustrated, it might make sense. And I'm not saying don't ever do it. I'm just saying like,

Peter Boulden
1:20:13
stop it.

Peter Boulden
1:20:14
Yeah, like honestly, like I used to get forwarded all these solicitation emails from PE and someone like, oh, this is cool. You know, it feels nice to be wanted. You know, one a week, can come in somebody, oh, I'll talk to this person, see what they have to say. I literally instructed Kim. I was like shut that don't ever did not maybe not don't ever don't don't send me Any more emails from those people? I don't want to tell me want to see him because I don't give a shit because it can't be sweet enough It can't be sweet. I mean, I guess realistically could it sure but like within reality It can't be sweet enough based on the sweetness of the situation That we have here going back to the four freedoms that freedom to do whatever we want, me and my partners have the freedom to do whatever we want in the practice. And if it was that sweet of a deal,

Dwight Peccora
1:21:00
do you know what the expectations are?

Dwight Peccora
1:21:03
Yeah, well, no.

Dwight Peccora
1:21:04
Quoting a friend of ours who was like, I thought, oh yeah, we can do that. And then they disrupted my whole team. I lost my whole team. And then there was no way I was hitting those expectations on a year to year basis for me to get my the rest of my buyout and I got 40% of what I was promised.

Dwight Peccora
1:21:20
Yep.

Peter Boulden
1:21:20
That's what happens. So the sweeter the deal, listen, these, these people have gone to business school, they run businesses in every industry enterprise out there. These are consolidators, right? This is, um, Trey, you have anything else before I tip off the announcements and things like that? Anything else in closing? I think that was great. I think all we can do is dilute the points at this point, guys. That was great. Honestly, I got to say this, and I know I make jokes a lot. That was one of my favorite, most favorite pods, and I'm sorry that Craig wasn't here because Craig's getting some vitamin D right now on vacation. I'm sorry he wasn't here for that because I think that was going to be very transformative. And I've gotten lots of cool feedback from a lot of dentists, direct message and stuff like that. Even reps that recommend this to dentists, because it's helping a lot of people. So if you're one of those people, definitely give us feedback, because that's kind of some oxygen for us. Other thing is, and I'm not sure we've been doing a good job promoting, but the summit is open. You know, it's evolving. I mean, maybe it is. Maybe some of the bumpers within the summit's evolving. It's gonna be awesome. It's gonna be in Vegas. The format is different. If you've been to one, it's not gonna be the same. Exciting speakers, exciting curriculum, more team building, more team collaboration, more team accountability, bringing your team. It's in the fabulous wind. We have the entire theater, which is quite the bar.

Peter Boulden
1:22:49
Crazy.

Peter Boulden
1:22:50
It's evolved from a little, first time we did a summit.

Peter Boulden
1:22:53
Big time bro.

Peter Boulden
1:22:54
It was in a little St. Regis room in Atlanta. And now it's evolved into the theater at the Wynn, which is cool because I know we've talked about this, the Wynn is spectacular in Vegas, bring your team. The room rates are 250 bucks, which if you go on Expedia right now, they're like a thousand bucks, or they were. Which is just a no brainer. So the rooms will definitely sell out.

Trey Tippit
1:23:14
Yeah, the rooms will.

Peter Boulden
1:23:16
It might be hard to sell out the theater of the wind, but the room block that we have, I think we have 250 rooms, 300 rooms, room nights. It will go fast. It will go fast, and the supply is already on. So again, check it out, bulletproofsummit.com. Like I said, Randy's going to speak, Dwight, you're speaking. Trey, I'm sure we're gonna have you on stage a tremendous amount. I'm there to look good. That's right.

Trey Tippit
1:23:42
I'm the face of the organization.

Peter Boulden
1:23:44
You're what we call bulletproof eye candy.

Trey Tippit
1:23:46
Yeah, yeah, I know why y'all have me here.

Peter Boulden
1:23:49
There's gonna be a startup, Trey Miller, who's kind of been our unicorn startup in the mastermind, he and Bonner are gonna be having a startup kind of like evolution speech, which I think is just awesome. Sounds good. Dwight, I'm gonna push you in to kind of have a KPI talk because we had a great day in the mastermind office hours, like evolving into making it simple, not more complex. So again, I know it's six months away, but do not hesitate because these early bird things are gonna go away, the rooms are gonna go away, don't delay and think that like, it's gonna be available forever. It's gonna be great, man.

Trey Tippit
1:24:22
And that's it, guys.

Peter Boulden
1:24:23
That was all.

Peter Boulden
1:24:23
I know we're kind of pushing up against 80 minutes now, looking at my counter, and it felt like the time.

Dwight Peccora
1:24:31
Or did my? That's a huge topic. I don't think there are very many topics

Peter Boulden
1:24:35
that need that much oxygen, but that one does. Well, you know, Dwight, I have a little sweaty back, because I was going with the mindset of trying to break things into multiple episodes of pods where they get too long. I was like, oh, let's listen to a long pod, in a long format. And then we started getting crushed on YouTube comments. Like, what are you guys trying to do? Like this guy's method of like, you know, trying to optimize for clicks and shit.

Peter Boulden
1:24:58
Shit.

Peter Boulden
1:24:58
Like, no, I just was trying to optimize for efficiency that it's a lot to take in. So we are no longer. Well, I post in part one and part two, hear me loud and clear.

Dwight Peccora
1:25:07
Thank you.

Peter Boulden
1:25:07
Mr. Who made that recommendation. I appreciate that. Let it hear you loud and clear, loud and clear. I can appreciate that. And we need to do a better job, I also got some feedback, we need to do a better job because there's four of us of not talking over each other, right? Yeah. Because we all have good stuff to say. Trey's like, fuck you.

Peter Boulden
1:25:26
I told y'all a long time ago,

Dwight Peccora
1:25:27
you're like, you should talk more.

Trey Tippit
1:25:28
I was like, if I talk more,

Peter Boulden
1:25:29
I'll fuck your whole podcast. So I got current people talking over each other. So I figure I will be the voice fucking reason here to stay quiet Plus I write and all of y'all are wrong so that is my own issue I gotta be quiet cuz I let I like Craig interrupt you Pete. It's just too much fun to watch. I'll do it. I just You know like animals clasping for oxygen I'm here to watch. That's funny. Content is king. I love this concept though, because these are the types of pods that we need and same thing goes for long form. These are deep. Yeah, this format, I think a lot of what the long form stuff does, it gets you deeper into the topic on that. Yeah, there you go. There you go. Even it takes you a few days to like scroll through it because you're driving to work or whatever, like you're listening to it as you go, but it's a lot of content. It just is and these are the concepts that are being talked about So we need it. We I know I needed this was great for me Cuz we we say ourselves need that reminder of like hey, it's like when we did our predictions podcast It's like let's think about what's coming this year. Yeah. Yeah, stop and think about it. So this is great Hi brothers Silvestris Silvestris is a time.

Transcribed with Cockatoo