So I'll let you tell the part one of the story if you want.

Yeah.

I mean, I think at first it's important to note that we weren't really looking for a Another what they call a strategic partner or another DSO out there that, you know, somebody bigger than us that wanted to bring us in.

We were really focused on, you know, a small to middle market private equity group that wanted to come in and kind of bootstrap it up with us.

And that seemed pretty sexy at the time.

We're all builders and we're all wanting to recreate the wheel and utilize all of the principles that we have.

But to your point, the market kind of kicked us back and they said...

And that was the justification to opening it up to those opportunities as well.

Take care.

So, yeah, so the way that this presentation was created was kind of fun.

I use my fancy little Plod thing that you all have seen, and I record all of our calls.

And then it goes into Claude, and I said, hey, Claude, I have to give a presentation, and I want to see what the common themes are, and this is what we came up with.

And I never could have done that myself.

So let's find out what Claude said.

All right, so...

That's crowncardservices.com.

Take care.

Awesome talk we've got here.

We've got Dr. Tahir Dune.

He earned his BA in Physiology and Neuroscience, can't even say those words, from UC San Diego before heading to the University of Pennsylvania School of Dental Medicine.

Since then, he has traveled the world perfecting the most complex techniques in modern dentistry, from full mouth rehabs to sleep, ortho, and advanced surgical care.

He's the co-founder of Colorado Surgical Institute, co-author of The Practice Launchpad, and serves as a black belt coach for the dental success companies.

His mission is simple, pay it forward and educate.

Whoo!

It looks like you guys aren't at the pool yet.

That's weird.

Usually at these things everybody's left by now, so thanks for staying.

We've spent a lot of time talking about growth and how to make our practices better.

What we haven't talked about is why we're doing that and what we're trying to get to.

So I started not as a dentist.

[laughs]

Take care.

So we are absolutely not going to talk about numbers at all today, which is a first for me, but I think it's going to be kind of fun.

So always appreciate being here.

I think, you know, the greatest part about this group is that we learn from each other.

Whether you're brand new or you've been here a long time, you've got something to add.

So the biggest piece of advice that I can offer before we get started is in the hot seats, regardless of who you are, if you've got something you feel like is beneficial to say, go ahead and say it.

So when we all went to dental school, we were instilled with an operating system.

of them want to stay as associates i mean how do you find those people so

first of all two of them have owned practices before okay and it's really great to have them because they don't want to own practices anymore they don't want the headaches of that um but they also remind those that might be thinking that they're interested in going off on their own all of the things that they have that that they wouldn't have like technology benefits um And I think it just kind of keeps that culture.

But we also, just like the hygienists, we want to reward them.

So I mentioned that several of our partners, we have a doctor equity program where they earn equity in our business as they're performing.

And so we set a base target, which is well below what we think they're going to do.

I think this year it's around $800,000.

And for every dollar they earn over that, they earn 20% of that.

And, and, uh, uh, tell me about what, tell me about your 32nd kind of elevator pitch, just about what dental success partners is not necessarily trying to convince anybody that it's the best or whatever, but what is it?

... as possible to the IRS, as much profit possible when you're evaluating the dental practice.

I also think it's important to make sure that you're realistic here.

Uh, um, I think CE is a really good topic to kind of hammer on for a secondYou don't want to go to your future partner and say, "My CE moving forward is gonna be zero dollars." Um, because that's, A, not realistic.

You have to have some certain amount to, to pass through the state.

And then, two, you, you wanna learn something.

Um, and you need to get, you know, better every year.

So what, what we did is we looked at it and I said, "Okay, what's a realistic CE budget?" And that might be different for every office.

You start, Bill.

How were you making all these bars and then going out and trying to pitch it to co-ops and like w- t- tell me about your day-to-day up there in Sacramento.

Oh, i- it was, we would spend, oh, our mornings prospecting, going door to door, um, and then we would spend our time doing demos if we were lucky enough to get a gym here or there.

We actually had a chain of four different gyms in Sacramento that we were in.

Um, at nighttime after we were done pitching, we would, um, make the product and we did almost every day, and we put a big old goal, I'll never forget, in my office, it was a small office, and then next to it was the warehouse, and it was 10,000 bars a month.

If we can get...

That was our break-even point, and I, the first month it'd be 2,500.

The next month would be 27 h- I mean, it, it was taking too long, and y- you start going three or four months, five months into it not hitting your hurdles, starting to get in bigger and bigger debt.

So you've, you've really gotta do something to generate more sales here, right? And, and I guess one idea, uh, that you had was to start going to like, like, uh, like music festivals, rock festivals in, in Northern California to hand out samples there, right?