Here is the full transcript of the video

Scott Leune (00:00):

There are three very clear ways to take home a million dollars a year as a dentist. One involves working full-time, one involves working part-time, and one involves not picking up a handpiece.

George Hariri (00:12):

There's two things I want to say.

Richard Low (00:13):

This is amazing.

Richard Low (00:23):

Welcome to the Shared Practices Podcast 2.0. We are rebooting this podcast from scratch, new hosts, new topics, everything relevant to 2024 and moving forward, not 8-year-old content, not content that's diluted by pre owner content getting really mixed into the owner content. This podcast moving forward is the place where if you want to grow a dental business, you should be here. We are going to have a separate feed for pre owners, so we might touch on some of that over these next few episodes. But if you want to listen to, Hey, how do I get into practice ownership? The pursuit of ownership is where you're going to hear those episodes. So there'll be a link in the show notes as well. If you're wondering what the heck happened to all of the old shared practices content, we've moved that to a separate feed, the Archives of Shared Practices and the links for that will be in the notes. But before we get too much further, I have some amazing co-hosts to introduce. There's that is it the David Letterman show that my next guest needs no introduction, but I want to welcome to the show my cohost Dr. Scott Leune. Scott, how are you?

Scott Leune (01:39):

Yeah, I'm doing great. I'm so excited for this kind of new chapter in the podcast and I just can't wait to dive in and I'm just bursting to talk and to interview other people and to just allow all of our experiences to come in raw and applicable. And hopefully that makes this a very fresh experience for people listening in that are looking for just the real stuff right now.

Richard Low (02:05):

I love it. This is years in the making of we have been super fans of you for a long time and that people come up to us and tell us like, oh my goodness, I've been listening to your podcast for eight years and I've listened to every episode. And we get to do that for you of like, okay, we were reading breakaway stuff or your content back on Dentaltown before any of it got crystallized into the content that it became. And then your events have transformed our journeys and given us a foundation of entrepreneurship to really build upon. So it is a delight and a lot of fun for us to be in this position where we can create content together and help Dennis out to be better business owners and better entrepreneurs. So Scott, I'm stoked.

Scott Leune (02:52):

Yeah, likewise. Thank you so much.

Richard Low (02:54):

Well, I would be remiss if I didn't introduce my other co-host, our other primary guest he wants to be referred to, which is a way of delegating. George is like, you guys got this, our co-host, Dr. George Hariri. George, how's it going?

George Hariri (03:11):

Yeah, I've been excited to get going on Shared Practices 2.0. I feel like we've been doing this for eight years and lot's changed in eight years, both with us, our thoughts and the industry as a whole, and we'd be remiss to not take shared practices back to its best days again. And I'm really excited for the combination that we're going to have with you and Scott carrying the podcast forward on a regular basis. And I'm going to be here as well. And so I'm excited to dive into today's topic and today's really fun for me because it's the IP blend, right? Scott and us, we have our own language on how we refer to things, and I'm excited to kind of ask him some questions about the Million Dollar Dentist and see where our different philosophies kind of blend and where we might have some differences. And so I think shared practices has always been unique in that we share the best practices and there's not always one size fits all. And bringing Scott on the show, we get his best perspectives in our shared practices and then together with those, hopefully we have even better content than we've ever had. And so I'm really excited for this next chapter of the show. And yeah, I can't wait to jive in.

Richard Low (04:23):

Well, and our listeners, if our listeners have no clue who any of us are, we will do more of a backstory episode in the future, but we don't want to really waste a lot of time on that now. But we'll tell our full story in future episodes for people who are new to shared practices who are new to Scott Leune, we'll do that. But in traditional shared practices form, we want to get straight into the good stuff right up front. Let's really actually talk about stuff that is fun for us to talk about and we want to explore. So you mentioned it, George, this idea of the million dollar dentist, and we haven't talked about this as much in shared practices. We kind of talk about here's all these different ways to get there, but I love the concreteness, the concrete, like this provides focus. This is my goal. How can I get there? So Scott, I want to hear where did this come from for you and how did you decide, okay, I want to tell the story of how dentists can get to being a million dollar dentist?

The Million Dollar Dentist

Scott Leune (05:34):

Well, it came in part due to the fact that everyone in our profession that I seem to bump into and talk to about profitability was actually describing a scenario that I would think would never get to this point. They think profit comes from things that I was not doing and I was not seeing. They think profit comes from growing bigger, building bigger, having more, and unfortunately more production, more collections, more patience, doesn't always equal more profit and definitely doesn't always equal more happiness. And so as I started helping build all these startup practices, which it's been hundreds now, hundreds of startup practices, I saw that our startup practices were getting to a million dollars take home pay by year three to four typically. And of course that was in the time where $350,000 take home pay was viewed as really good and we're at a million.

And it wasn't from following the bigger is better model. And I took that experience combined with the fact that my own experience as a dentist working one day a week, my second year out of school in a wheelchair, I took home more than $1.1 million that year in a different way. And as I started seeing these stories and these paths and measuring and looking at profit loss statements and doing what I do for my career, I've made it my career's work, studying the science of dental business, I recognized there are three very clear ways to take home a million dollars a year as a dentist. One involves working full-time, one involves working and one involves not picking up a handpiece. And once I saw the clarity on how to get there, we just started having all kinds of people get there very soon. And that became an exciting thing for me to share because it was so different than what we in dentistry expected to be possible.

Richard Low (07:41):

I love the fact that when you talk about a million dollar dentist, you are not talking about what was coined 15, 20 years ago of the million dollar practice of a million dollars in collections. We're talking about a million dollars of profit take home as the owner operator and including whatever degree of clinical involvement that you want that fits you and you've seen it, you've done it, and you've helped people do it over and over and over season one of shared practices addressed this issue of like, should I own, should I be an owner? So we're in episode one of Shared Practices 2.0. I think that question is a moot point at this point. We'll maybe touch on that in the pre owner podcast, but for here it's like, okay, we're committed to ownership, but I want to know the same version of this, but for these types of practices or these types of ways of getting to a million dollar practice take home.

So should I go down one of these three routes and which one suits me and what are the opportunities? And then in future episodes, we're going to dedicate a whole episode to each one of these journeys and really get into this. And probably whole future seasons and topics in the show will revolve around various aspects of this. But George, I want to hear your take on this million dollar take home dentist and the emotions that creates for you and the story that we tell to our audience in person at our courses and our podcast. How does that fit in with what the language that we use in describing what's possible for a dental practice?

The Smart Solo Dentist

George Hariri (09:35):

So I think the first thing that comes to mind is one of our avatars that we call super solo, which is the first iteration of Scott's frameworks for the Million Dollar Dentist, which is that single producer who's able to produce their way to a seven figure income. And I think that my first, if I were to, I think always your personality sometimes can influence the way that you lecture and teach. And for me, I'm the no time no handpiece type of dentist. And so for me, I think I look at this and I say, well, I want to hear Scott's thoughts on the sustainability of the seven figure income for the heavy producer or the sustainability of someone's ability to work as hard as it required on a regular basis to take home that type of income, at least as the first one as a full-time owner.

So I think that's where maybe Scott's personality and my personalities are very different, where I think Scott's personality might be more in line with that type of individual than mine. And so that's the first one. When I saw kind of the outline for the Million Dollar Dentist, my first question was, I really excited to ask Scott about the super solo because at our seminars we sometimes call it the stressful solo. And I am really interested to see what is Scott seeing on his side that makes this sustainable that we haven't necessarily seen on our side.

Scott Leune (11:05):

So it's so funny because right when you were describing super solo, you were describing a different dentist than what I'm describing in my mind. And I was saying to myself, we should probably rename that the smart solo not the super solo. And then you named it the stress solo. And I'm like, yeah, we're definitely describing two different people. So yes, we could get to high production numbers being super, doing super dentistry, having super speed, managing a super kind of volume of people and patients and employees, and that is a hard way to do it. I would prefer that we don't use the super path as the model, but we have a smart path that's almost like a light way of doing it, A path that only has four, five ops, a path that only has a handful of employees, a path where the dentist has openings every day and they're not having to cover an army of hygienists and they don't have to do super dentistry.

You see, an interesting thing about math when it comes to dentistry is the bigger our expenses, the more super we have to be to pay for them. And if we can take this kind of two-pronged approach that says we are going to have a beautiful practice that has smaller expense base, then we have to be less super on the clinical side to get into profitable territory. And how we get to the profitable territory on the clinical side could be with heavier lifting or it could be with lightly lifting expensive things. We can get to the same number multiple different ways. So maybe right off the bat, I want to clarify when I think of the full-time owner operator dentist taking home a million take home pay, I think of someone that is a little bit bored every day with a small team, with a very manageable patient base in a beautiful office that has lower expenses. And that is what I envision. I do not envision being super, I do not envision being tired. I do not envision big anything except profit. Does that make sense?

Richard Low (13:24):

Yeah. And this is productive solo is really what this sounds like to me, is an extremely well executed, productive solo. No. No. Okay.

George Hariri (13:37):

No. Okay, so imagine, so help us out here. We're not understanding this.

Scott Leune (13:42):

So if we just do a bunch of math and we will get to the details in the next episode, I think we need at least an hour to teach A to Z how to do this solo version, but just from a high level to make sure we're not getting too confused already to get to a million take home pay in a low overhead model, we're collecting about 2 million. And if we're going to work full time, we're in an earlier part of our career, we're like, we don't mind working, we don't mind working full time as long as it doesn't burn us out, we're good. Showing up to work to collect 2 million per year. We're doing about 5,500 a day on the doctor's schedule that assumes hygienists are mediocre producers at best, the doctor's going to be at 5,500 a day. Now what's the really light way to do 5,500 a day?

The really light way is if we know one or two or three larger type procedures and we drip one in a day, we got an Invisalign case once or twice a week that we start, maybe we place an implant once a week. And very quickly, one Invisalign case got us to 5,500 a day without the dentistry. And so you could see if we know how to do those types of procedures, we dramatically lighten the load of our schedule to achieve the 5,500 a day kind of goal. And if we don't know how to do any of that stuff, that's okay. How do we get there the old fashioned way with bread and butter dentistry? Now are we on low fee or high fee bread and butter dentistry? So there's that lever too. So in the beginning, maybe if we're doing a startup, we've got openings everywhere, we're in network with plans, we're at lower fee bread and butter dentistry.

But if we can operate the practice well so that our excess new patient leads come in and we actually answer those calls and we actually schedule 'em and we actually retain those patients and we diagnose plenty and people say yes to plenty, our schedule and our small little practice is going to be full in no time and we are going to have the power to drop out of those ridiculous plans we might've been in. So to get to that $5,500 a day number, the bread and butter way, hopefully we are growing in our fees and we can get there with less and less patience as well. But I bet any owner listening to this, even many associates have looked at their career and said, I've done 5,500 a day plenty of times, and those aren't necessarily the stressful days. The stressful days seem to be when I didn't do that much, but I saw a whole lot of people and I had to cover a lot of hygienists. You see? So 5,500 a day, not a stressful number to hit if we are thoughtful and deliberate about how we get there.

George Hariri (16:38):

So Scott, I want to ask you some questions. I wrote down 5,500 a day and I assumed four days a week. Is that your assumption as well, or are you assuming five?

Scott Leune (16:47):

Well, let's just do the math. Let's say we've got a dentist in the first 10 years of their career and they're like, I don't mind working five days a week. Maybe they're going to be six hour days.

What else am I going to do on a Friday? I'm here to pay off debt. I'm here to build wealth for my family. I'm ready to work. I just want to work in a healthy environment. So let's just do the math. If we've got 2 million in collections we need divided by 12 months, now we're at 167,000 per month, we're going to have equate if we divide that by the 21 days or so in a month we might work, that's 8,000 a day, right? 8,000 a day that is hygiene and the doctor side hygiene's going to account for approximately two thirds to maybe 70% or so, or excuse me, hygiene's going to count for one third. The doctor's side's going to count for two thirds to maybe 70% in a practice that doesn't do huge cases. And so that brings us to that $5,500 a day mark five days a week.

George Hariri (17:58):

Yeah, I see that now if you're

Scott Leune (17:58):

Wanting to work four days a week, it's going to be a little more than 5,500 a day.

George Hariri (18:03):

And my numbers now show that, yeah, if we're working five days a week at 5,500 a day, that's 110,000 on the doctor side each month. And then that extra 55,000 on hygiene gets us to our $2 million per year run rate. So that's a third hygiene two thirds doctor at 5,500 a day for five days a week. That adds up. Yeah, that's

Scott Leune (18:25):

Pretty cool. And people might be listening to this and like, okay, well how do we get to 110,000 a month? I mean, I don't know if I've ever had a month that big. Well, you haven't had a month that big as an associate maybe because you are not controlling your destiny. You are not the one making the decisions around marketing, branding your employees. You're not the one making decisions about how you're scheduled. You also maybe haven't learned how to grab high case acceptance numbers out of your career. And it doesn't take a lot of small changes of all those things I just listed for you to have an exponentially different result, the dentist that commonly do more than a hundred thousand dollars a month, some of those dentists do it because they know all on x, I'm not talking about them. Some of those dentists do it because they are freaking hyperspeed dentists, and I'm not talking about them either. I'm talking about the 80% in the middle that hit that number, they hit it because they've got healthy patient flow, healthy case acceptance, healthy retention, and they just do regular dentistry. And that is an easy way to get to this number when you understand patient flow diagnosis, case acceptance, when you understand how to control those factors as an owner.

Sustainability and Growth in Dentistry

Richard Low (19:41):

Here's George where my thoughts go with this. We have tended to grow practices, and so there's not been a big emphasis in our framework of let's find this smart optimized solo that is turning excess demand into reduced insurance participation and increased fee schedules. And I think that's where this is kind of this little third avatar of we're doing more by dropping insurance participation, being a little bit more in control of our fee schedule and optimizing for this ideal flow and including that fifth day, we've kind of always assumed a little bit lazier of a dentist and who wants to work a little bit less s, but I absolutely can see this as a, you know what, Hey, let's work. I have no problem with five days of work maybe compared to any other career where I could be working five days a week, the take home is better. And that fifth day, the amount of margin that fifth day adds and the ability to kind of top out a little further is I also think maybe something that we've underestimated and underemphasized in our framework,

Scott Leune (21:05):

But I know we're saying four or five days. I'm describing 30 hours, so that could be three days, so 30 hours. But if it's like a six hour a day, you're doing five days a week, you start seeing patients at eight and you're done at two and you don't eat lunch or whatever, that's $5,500 for a six hour kind of day. Okay,

George Hariri (21:30):

This is about $915 an hour.

Scott Leune (21:33):

So using an analogy, cars, I love my, I don't collect cars or anything like that, but I love gorgeous cars. I love cars that can perform and I've got a couple of 'em. If you drive too slow in a car, you just don't get where you want to go. It's very frustrating. It's not definitely a great way and an efficient way to drive, but if you drive too fast, you are burning more fuel than you had to. You're putting more strain on the car. There's this kind of magical 55 mile an hour way that puts the least amount of strain on the car and gives you the most gas mileage. And if we can run our career at that beautiful 55 mile an hour pace, we can drive like that for a really long time, especially we're taking home a million dollars. So another kind of reason why I think you and I and others have initially assumed, ah, let's make this a four day a week model, is because the days themselves burn us out too much. But if we make the days short and enjoyable and we're in an earlier part of our career, then it might be very easy. It tastes great to go ahead and just work five partial days a week at 55 miles an hour.

Richard Low (22:52):

I love this. And this is why we wanted to have these conversations because you can only see what you've seen. And this is stretching our framework. It's stretching what we've seen and what we've preached and what we've taught. And we've always had a humility to what we do at shared practices of like we have the data, we've got the results, we've got the growth, but there's a lot of different ways to do dentistry. We streamlined to our profitable, simple, sustainable avatars, and there are other avatars, there are other things that are out there and we want the best. We want to include all the different ways. And this is highlighting a way that it's like we have not emphasized or we have not driven towards as much. George, what are you thinking about with all this?

George Hariri (23:42):

Yeah, I couldn't echo what you're saying more. One of the things that I've said publicly and privately is that when we add Scott Leune to shared practices and we get our IP together, there's an iteration that's going to happen on our philosophy that's natural. We need to take what he brings to the table and add it to what we have. And that transition from super solo to smart solo is a fantastic example of how we had one belief and we come in with that. And then with new information, your mind changes. And so from my perspective, I think that on our first episode, we just saw right there, super solo can be done differently to make it from stressful to smart and sustainable. And I guess my question for you, Scott, is every time I've lectured or taught super solo, I've always questioned the sustainability of it.

And my example is I've never met anybody in our ecosystem in the shared practices world that has chosen to stay there. So they might do it for a period and then after that period they're like, okay, I want to get the associate, I want to go more entrepreneurial in my practice. I want to go have a group practice. There's some type of transition point for them. And maybe you're with more experience having interacted with more dentists, you may have an avatar of person that stays here long-term for their whole career. And so if you could help us, that's I think the piece that maybe for me is a little bit unclear is do you know of many people that have stayed in that million dollar per year, 2 million per year practice as a solo and maybe help us understand their personalities and just what that person is like?

Scott Leune (25:25):

Yeah, I think the vast majority of dentists that do this should stay in that phase long-term because when you start reducing your time and you start expanding your facility, you are permanently increasing your cost base and you are also giving up some of the control over the productivity and the quality of dentistry that's being done. And so you're kind of trading money and clinical time now for potentially losses risk and administrative time. And so I don't believe most people should leave that 55 mile an hour incredibly lucrative setup. But if you do, there's very thoughtful ways to do it. So I think that a lot of people, once they achieve success in dentistry, they get a little bit high on the success and almost like a little bit of subconscious greed and ego and wanting kind of to be the next bigger thing. And because there's always a bigger thing that's a loop, there's no finish line to that race.

You continuously add more and more costs, risk, more debt more time, and that can spin out of control. So I think when we talk about the three kind of categories we've described on taking home a million where we are going to be the solo operator full-time, then we're going to go to a part-time setup and then a no clinical time setup. I don't view them as three choices, although they could be, but I view them as a linear path. So I would love to take home a million dollars first with the least amount of risk being the only dentist with a small manageable enterprise and then cut my time down to part-time in a very specific way, never losing a million dollars, take home pay so that I'm always stable in life. Then after that down the line, not pick up the handpiece again, never losing that million dollar take home pay minimum.

And to me, when it's linear, it builds boundaries to make really smart decisions in we don't make decisions that could risk our take home pay and therefore risk our lifestyle. We don't make decisions that could break the good we have. So because that creates compromise in our life, in our health, in our time, in our mental stability. And when you hear the stories of people burning out, some of those stories are because they grew quickly, they added a bunch of locations, a bunch of associates, and they added them on a lower fee model, which is even riskier. They could have gotten on a higher fee, higher margin model first and cashed in those chips and controlled their destiny a little more before then expanding that. So what's the avatar? I think that the avatar, as a dentist that understands what I'm just saying, it's not a certain age, a certain gender, a certain race, a certain mindset. It's all about understanding how to do things in different ways. When you fully understand what you can, it's easier to make a decision on what makes sense for you. Now, that's the other thing. None of these decisions are permanent. They're all super changeable.

Sustainability and Long-Term Growth

We can't get lost in the analysis. We can't get lost in the what if someday I might want this or that. Don't get lost in the future. The future doesn't even exist then the past doesn't even exist. The only thing that exists is right now, and what's the best thing we can do right now to get us the money we need in a practice? We're proud of delivering great care to patients and just having the time and the mental strength to dedicate to the rest of our life. I think most people should stick to the 55 mile an hour solo model when they achieve a million dollar take home pay for those reasons.

George Hariri (29:38):

And Richard, this is something you've been saying for quite a long time.

Richard Low (29:40):

This is still validating for me because one of the things I'm conscious of in our podcast is that there is a degree of entrepreneurialism, a degree of willingness to take on risk, a degree of willingness to step back, become more admin that a lot of dentists just don't. They don't have that drive to go more bigger, bigger, bigger or they don't want to step back. They actually taking care of patients, they like doing clinical care, and I've always wanted to talk to that dentist. I skew a little bit more that way. And one of the absolute things that led to my recent mental health burnout and crash in this year was the growth of SPG, which was astronomical and very intense. And so I've lived the downsides of scale, and there's definitely a part of me that when Scott outlines this like, okay, a million dollars of profitability here, maintaining that growing next phase, maintaining that growing following phase, there's a part of me that wants to say as they say these days, bet like, okay, let's do this or hold my beer.

Like, okay, we might have to be more patient. I think we've lacked patience in our desire to grow practices, and I think there's a slower more deliberate, it's like we're used to this in one two year phases versus maybe this is a two year phase or a three year phase of really tweaking and optimizing and getting to this million dollar take home, and then it's a little bit slower of a transition. I might be wrong in that. The other thing that comes to mind is you're talking about a $2 million practice, a million dollar take home, which assumes a 50% overhead, which fits maybe a variety of markets. There's also a part of me that's like, how can I make this lazier? If you have a lower overhead, then you really don't even have to do 2 million. If you're able to keep that overhead, 600 K, 700 k, then you're doing 1.6, 1.7, and we're even more sustainable in this. So I want to hear your response to those things, Scott, or unless George, you have something else to comment on what Scott had just said?

George Hariri (32:11):

I do, but I think I'd like to hear Scott's answer.

Scott Leune (32:14):

Okay. Okay. So yeah, of course. When you look at a model and the model says 2 million collections, the model says 50% overhead. It's all about understanding that that is highly achievable in nearly all market conditions. But if you've got strength to keep your overhead even lower or you've got strength to do more than 5,500 a day, of course it could be even lazier or it could be even better of course, and we definitely strive for that. But what I've noticed is that once you take home a million dollars, take home pay as a dentist, you start deciding to make different or you start making different decisions in your life and in your career, assuming you don't get an unhealthy amount of high from the success and you go all in again and you keep double or nothing double or nothing because you think this is some game about being big, right?

Let's put that aside. That is very unhealthy. If we look at just the health of taking home a million dollars a year, however you got there, once you're there in a sustainable way, a lot of people choose to not focus so much on dentistry. Let's just maintain that easy million dollar paying job that you have full control over and go build a life. So that's what I see a lot of people go to. Now, I don't want to underscore the fact that the second phase of taking home a million when you're working part-time is even lazier. It's even easier. But a healthy way to get there is to do the first phase first. And now some dentists are going to have a hard time getting to the first phase because they bought a nine knot practice that has high rent and they can't control their supply expenses and we're all suffering from high staff costs, but they have a model right off the bat that is a higher cost model and it's emotionally difficult for them sometimes to peel that away, to cut away those costs.

One quick story, I've got a client of mine that just hired me as their personal coach, and they're almost done expanding their practice from five ops to eight or nine ops. And one of the first things we decided when we started coaching together is to not hire associates and to not even use the ops. They're almost done building, not even use 'em. And I told 'em, look, if I were to buy your practice today, I'd use the five ops, I'd make a million dollars. And I'd be like, yeah, it's kind of nice. I got eight or nine someday, maybe I will use them, but I'm not going to go use 'em now because I thought I expected I should because they exist. I'm going to get on a model first that brings me success immediately. I'm getting a trophy every year. I'm winning, I'm winning. I'm not hoping for the future, hoping for something that doesn't exist. I'm winning someday. Maybe someday I will use those other ops or maybe I'll never use 'em, and that was just a mistake I made in my career. But what's worse, a worse mistake than adding ops when we don't need to is using them when we shouldn't use them. That's a worst mistake. That is an ongoing every month, every year costly mistake. Does that make sense?

George Hariri (35:35):

Yes. Yeah. And it's so interesting because I have a very different take on a lot of your perspective, and I think it goes down to a fundamental where I think Scott, you operate on the idea of get the consistent income for the stable lifestyle and then progress slowly through entrepreneurship without risking that income going down. And for me, I'll tell my story, I was the dentist and I just went straight to no time. And I did that with the idea in mind that I knew my income would drop and I didn't care because for me, the lifestyle freedom was more important than the income. And I think that we've always catered more to that dentist who has the entrepreneurial passion and is more patient through the unstable income period or not maintaining their high income the whole time. And so I think that when you look at different dentists with different levels of entrepreneurship, there's going to be some that are going to, for me, I couldn't make enough money to go into the office five days a week and do dentistry.

That isn't something I could ever really get myself to do. And then there's someone else who's like, are you kidding me? I would do that for whatever. And I think that different types of dentists have different experiences and relationships with entrepreneurship. For me, it's always been like I like to keep my personal expenses so that I can take risk On the professional side, I think then there's the alternative mindset where it's like I want my income to be high so that I can enjoy my personal life and have a comfortable lifestyle the whole time. And I'm okay taking multiple years between phases. And I think that we've always said, how can we get there fast? And just like we call it the ugly duckling in the middle. And so I think that it's very interesting how we've taken the same problem, which is helping dentists own operate. And we've definitely taken the slant more towards the entrepreneurial side, and I think that you've taken the slant more towards maintaining the income. And I think that that's a very interesting difference

Scott Leune (37:49):

In this part of the discussion. We're talking about maintaining that income. Yeah, don't get me wrong. I mean I've gone the opposite route and helped so many people do it, but if we look back to what was the problem we were actually trying to solve, I think a lot of people are trying to solve the problem that they would like to have more money than they need and they would like to spend their time earning that money in a way that is enjoyable and sustainable.

If we just define that as success, then how can we get there? Well, we could just quit picking up the handpiece because we think that is going to be enjoyable and sustainable. Or we could also solve the problems of having the handpiece in our hand that make it unenjoyable and now make that an enjoyable environment. And I'm so thankful that I get to sit from the position of watching and talking to and coaching thousands of dentists over my careers, so over my career. So I get to see how they all do it and where their pain points are. And unfortunately, when you're not in a position like mine or ours, you only see what you've done and the people you've spoken to directly, you may not see that it's possible to do dentistry and to not be burnout, for example.

So if we can do dentistry and not be burnout and have more money than we ever need, that might be the win. Or some people will be like, well, I still don't want to do much dentistry. I still only want to do dentistry part-time. Great. There's a way to do that thoughtfully. Well, or some were like, I really don't want to pick up the hampe. The minute I got to dental school I realized I hate teeth or whatever it is. And there's a great model for that too, but don't justify becoming an entrepreneur because of other pain points that could be solvable in a much smarter way. I'm saying that's what happened with you guys, but you know what I mean? Yeah. A lot of dentists say, I just want to focus on the business side. They know nothing about business. They've never done it before. What they're really saying is the clinical side's burning me out.

Burnout, Pressure, and Mindset Shifts

George Hariri (39:58):

And I guess my question for you is what are the common pain points that the heavy clinician experiences and what are some of the remedies that can really transform that experience for them?

Scott Leune (40:13):

One pain point is a more macro pain point. It says, I don't feel like I could ever take off time. I don't feel like I could ever be sick. I can't go on vacation. I just have to show up to work. That is a problem in their thinking because it's not actually true in a real kind of, I mean, I could talk about that for several episodes by the way, just just what I just said. But if we kind of think on a macro level here, what if I want to take two weeks off for vacation? I'll just take two weeks off for vacation as a dentist. Well, what about my employees? I'll keep paying them to work full time. Well, what are they going to do? Whatever I say they need to do while I'm gone and I'm not going to produce nearly as much when I'm gone, but that's okay.

My bills stay the same every month and my collections will be a little bit diluted for the next two months because I took two weeks off. And that's okay, especially if I'm making a million dollars, take home, pay a year, even if I'm making 500,000, take home pay a year. That's okay. Here's the other beautiful thing. If I have holes in my schedule, commonly not crazy, but just I have a few every day and I take two weeks off, those holes get filled before and after my vacation and I might produce the exact same amount taking two weeks off, which therefore I have the same collections and I have the same expenses. I'm in the same place, but I didn't work. Two, it's a mindset thing, take a month off. So what? Who's going to see the patients? Not you. No one, it's fine. So that's one issue.

This kind of feeling like you are a slave to the schedule of the practice. Those chains are easy to break. Then you've got kind of the micro issue, the day-to-day stresses of how do I cover hygiene and stay on time in my schedule and deal with staff problems and all the things in the fears in the back of my head about embezzlement and collections and maybe patients going to write a bad review. That kind of pressure inside of the everyday operations could also cause someone to say, I don't like the pressure I need to change. And instead of actually solving those pressure points like putting a little WD 40 there and kind of turning this knob down here and turning that knob up here, they just went out. They just went out of the situation, which is another way to do it. But I think that when you realize you're trading a one pressure cooker for another one, maybe you'd be more open to understanding how to fix the first one instead of trading it for a more risky, bigger one. What happens when you add more dentists to more locations? You could have a situation say, I had a life implosion this year because we grew too fast. I don't think you'll hear anyone say, I had a life implosion because we fixed my practice too well.

So which path are you going to go down to get rid of your pressure? I think it's not actually about one being better than the other. It's about being educated on all of this so that in your life today you see which one is going to give you the best predictable outcome, whether that's not picking up a handpiece or being part-time or being full-time, one's not better than the other. There are different styles of a movie to watch. Do you want a thriller? Do you want a romantic comedy? Right? So it's about learning that. And then what am I in the mood for in my life today? Which one fits the best,

George Hariri (43:43):

Richard, I'm sorry. I think there's two things I want to say. My first thing is that Scott and us at the shared practices team, we're going to work together and we're going to take his thoughts and philosophies, our thoughts and philosophies and get aligned on what is the mutual agreeable understanding. I think he's going to bring so much to our solo avatars because I can already see this mindset shift could help a lot of people and potentially keep them in that avatar, which is something Richard, you've been saying for a long time. And so I'm just really excited to get to the meat and potatoes of that and building courses and doing that type of thing. And I think the second thing that I have is around what just said about making things sustainable. And I guess my question is one thing that we get commonly is the entrepreneur once they feel like their practice is done needing them so much, they have that push and energy and drive to build and create, but their office doesn't need that anymore.

And I think that that's something that our answer to that has always been more. And so I think there's another answer which is somewhere else, and I think that's something that I want to ask Scott. When you get to that, when you've fixed your practice and it's humming along 55 miles an hour, kicking off the income you want, that entrepreneurial person still wants to express themselves and have active pursuit, but their practice doesn't need that anymore. And so where they, is that where you're advising people to put that in a hobby or get some interest outside of the office? That's the active pursuit, but I think that's something that the entrepreneur always needs. And I'm curious, how do you help people navigate that My practice doesn't need me anymore. What do I do with all this energy that I have?

Wealth Protection and Future Planning

Scott Leune (45:45):

It starts with how mature are you going to actually be in your life as an entrepreneur? So the immature thing would be to say, we got the success. Let's just keep rolling the die. Let's just keep playing. Or let's go back to the table. I hit 21 4 times in a row. Let's keep on going. Let's just increase our bets. It's a very mature way of doing it because that means the only game you're playing is a short-term success. When you play long-term success, you'll recognize that that takes different chapters. So the first chapter is building an income stream that is more than you need and incredibly stable. So that's chapter one. And then what do you do with that excess income and the freed up time you've created? You take that income and now you go into chapter two. Chapter two says, I'm going to take my set for life money and I'm going to entrepreneurially protect it and grow it, protect it, being now an important component of what you're doing and the next entrepreneurial venture is not going to take or add risk to that money.

So I'm still not at a point in life where I can use my money to build the next thing that would be very immature. So we're going to take the money we've made and we are going to protect it and have it grow in an entrepreneurial way that doesn't add risk to it. And the next venture where we want to get our next high, our next build something new is going to still be with other people's money. It is not going to ever risk what we built. Once our pot of money that's protected is big enough to always give us excess money, then we can go to the next chapter that says, I'm going to leverage my own excess money maybe with other people's money to build something even bigger. You see, we keep going. We keep notching down the entrepreneurial path, solidifying our position to never go backwards.

And it's rare. I see people do that. They'll build a cash cow and then the first thing they do is starve the cow. They starve it because they take away their time from it, they take away the money from it and they go try to buy another cow, but they didn't increase how much grass they have to feed the first one. So it's like they add more and more risk to their cash cow. What I'd rather see is protect your cash cow and protect all the milk you get from it until you got more milk than you know what to deal with. And that's finally the point where you get to build something even bigger with your own money. I don't know if I'm making sense with my crazy analogies, but I think in analogies all the time. But what I'm trying to say is what's a win? A win first is having more money and income that I'll ever need. Then the win is having more money stored that I'll ever need. Then the win is having that stored money make me more money than I'll ever need. And only at that point should I risk pieces of my stored money. Does that make sense?

Richard Low (48:52):

Absolutely. And the pitfalls here I really see are number one, a lack of patience in this process us because this requires that emotional maturity of this is a good thing. I can screw this up by driving in lots of different directions. And part of this is this sense of fulfillment from solving this problem. There is an early career energy and drive to solve the problem of wealth and success. And for me, part of my multi-year midlife crisis that I've talked about on air has been that I can see the solution to that problem and that problem provide, we're not there yet, but figuring out that problem created incredible momentum, energy, drive fulfillment, and there was a void created when that problem got solved. But there's a future timestamp to it of like it's solved, but I just have to be patient. This created problems for me and my health and stress in a weird way. It's like, okay, what do I do now? This was my all consuming focus for a number of years. Now I have to enjoy life. It's stupid how that problem can be difficult for the entrepreneur of someone who is very driven. Does that make sense at all?

Scott Leune (50:38):

And that would've been the perfect time for you to have had a coach because I think a mature coach would've told you, let's get on the new fun game. But the rules of this new game are we're not going to add health time and money risk to the accomplishments you've had up to this point, but it's going to be fun, it's going to be new. It's going to be new problems that you're going to love solving. It's going to be a new passion. But instead, you may have chosen to double up on the game you were in. And look, I'm not saying necessarily that's bad, we just have to understand what it all means. It's great to go build 40 offices in four or five years, and I have a huge valuation and all that. But that path, nine times out of 10 doesn't end up at that point where you look back and say, that was what I expected and it was worth it.

So often that path we think we want to go down so excited and high from the thought of this massive success has all kinds of dangerous moments that will hurt people, they will hurt. That success will crush people because of what's behind the door of success is all the continuous chaos and crises and just breaking of your expectations and stretching of your physical and mental abilities. And what makes that easier is when you have people alongside of you to share. And when you have experts guiding you, that makes that all easier. But I am worried that on this episode I'm sounding like there's only one smart way, and that's to be small and to do it yourself. I not meaning that at all. I just want everyone to understand that as we go over these next few episodes, we can point out and describe today's way of being solo and smart, today's way of having associates and being smart.

Today's way of having lots of locations and being smart and don't assume one's better than the other. But I see what most dentists want, and most dentists would be incredibly happy with that million dollar take home pay, solo dentists, small operation, and lots of extra time. However, this podcast may be speaking a lot to the entrepreneurial crazy people like me. And you don't want just that. That's like good. That's a good appetizer. Maybe so I get something started, but you want more. Got it. That's going to be fun. It's going to be great. You have to understand the price of that and the smart way of doing it today. This is George.

Richard Low (53:17):

Go for it.

George Hariri (53:18):

I really love the patience and the chapters approach that Scott talked about because I think that our avatars are linear progression, and I think that that's what Scott's talking about too, right? His avatars a full-time, part-time. No time is a linear progression, but I think maybe a difference is Scott advocates for a progression, a pause, a chapter by chapter approach that the chapters build on each other. And I think that's going to be something really good for us to implement and integrate into our philosophy because there's something, I think patience is something that we haven't catered to and we really haven't had ourselves. And I think that it's going to be interesting to kind of bring that into the fold because with profitable, simple sustainable, like sustainable patience and sustainability kind of go hand in hand with one another where it takes patience and content with where you are right now to truly have a sustainable setup. So I think on my side, if this is the first episode, it's fantastic. I think shared practices has always been a place where we want conflicting ideas to come on air and discuss with each other, and I'm just really excited to keep going and keep learning about the different frameworks and all that Scott has to bring to the podcast. So I think those are kind of my remarks. Richard, what does this leave for you?

Richard Low (54:53):

For me in particular, I think we have not created the solution for what's next after creating success. And this is what's really exciting for me is that piece that Scott just talked about of this next phase of your life and protecting wealth and not shifting into other areas. The other thing to do is, oh, okay, I've been a successful entrepreneur in dentistry. Now I'm going to go be an entrepreneur somewhere else, or now I'm going to grow that money aggressively. Now I'm going to all these other things. And this systematic way of this is a new chapter and include it in this chapter, is protecting this kind of sacred cow and this ability to protect that wealth you've built before you go risking that wealth you've built in the next thing. So there's so much to talk about, so much to go into. I'm incredibly excited.

And it's funny because we've always on this podcast, been talking to people who are one or two or three steps into this process. And with Scott having lived this practice, stepping back, building multi-practice, building something else, you're just further down the road than those of us at Shared practices. And there are so few people that have done all of these things and seen all the different ways you can do it and seen the pitfalls along the way that we're just grateful to have you here having gone a few steps down and now able to help George and I and the partners at Shared Practices, but more importantly, our audience and helping people understand the pros and cons of all these approaches. And so we're going to get into these different aspects, but Scott, anything else to wrap us up before we close out this episode?

Next Steps

Scott Leune (56:56):

Yeah, I think, well, first of all, because this is episode one, so I need to comment on this whole idea of us being on a podcast together is awesome because we all represent a different component of the entrepreneurial side of dentistry, and we've all had pretty remarkable experiences and remarkable pains and scars. And maybe more important than that, we've all got this willingness to share and help that comes from truth within, as opposed to some podcasts that are just selling a bunch of stuff. You know what I mean? Trying to act like they're someone that they're not because they've got other intentions. So when you bring really nice people that want to do good and they've had plenty of pains that they can speak honestly about things and not be scared, maybe disagreeing, it creates this wonderful environment where everyone listening and the three of us get to learn all kinds of new things that make us see our own lives just a bit differently. And the moments in life that allow us to see things just a bit differently are really cool, valuable moments. So I'm very thankful that we all had kind of the leap of faith to do this together and see what comes of it.

Richard Low (58:18):

This is amazing. George, anything else to wrap us up?

George Hariri (58:23):

No, I just really, I'll echo everything that Scott said. I am really thankful for the opportunity to bring him on to reboot the podcast and have a 2.0 version where we recreate again and go back to the drawing board and build new ideas with new people, with new perspectives. And that's always what made shared practices great, is that we're not one person's ideas. We're all of our ideas. And I think that that's continue, that's going to something we continue moving forward. So I'm super excited and I'll let you two kind of finish out the next two episodes for the week. And I'm going to be tuning in like everyone else on the Shared Practices Podcast.