Episode 41 – My Dental Practice Was Never the Same After I Wrote Myself a Check for $10,000,000 with Maggie Augustyn

“I was thinking of my 24-month forecast and I wrote myself a check for $10,000,000.”
– Dr. Maggie Augustyn

It started by writing herself a check for $10,000,000. She didn’t have the money, but that didn’t matter. 

That $10,000,000 meant freedom. It meant security and safety. It meant the ability to work because she wanted to, not because she had to pay her bills. It meant she had the freedom of choice. 

The sad reality is 9 out of 10 doctors can’t retire and maintain their lifestyle. I believe this is unacceptable. You deserve a life you love, fair compensation, and the freedom to retire knowing your future is secure. 

So today I invited Dr. Maggie Augustyn to share her story about how she took a seemingly unrealistic financial goal, and with planning, execution, and guidance turned it into a reality by:

• Forecasting with dreams: not just financial planning for dentists
• Crafting the processes that execute the plan: retirement for dentists
• Leveraging dental consulting services: How systems can make you go from $250 to $1000 per hour

Want to know if you have an Investment Grade Practice? Click here to use the completely free Investment Grade Practice calculator: What’s my IgP Freedom Number?

Want to have a conversation about your Investment Grade PracticeTM? Contact Brent at brent@productivedentist.com.
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EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Regan
Dr. Are you finding it hard to get your entire team aligned into a productivity workshop, but you know, you deserve growth just like everyone else? Hi, I’m Regan Robertson CCO with Productive Dentist Academy and with over 30 team members myself, believe me, I get it. That’s why our co-founders Dr. Bruce B. Baird and Victoria Peterson have put together a productivity bundle designed to guarantee your growth in 2023. All you have to do is register to attend a 2023 productivity workshop and if you do so, before December 31st, you will receive 12 months of PTA on demand. That is our entire productivity workshop including breakouts recorded at your fingertips for a full 12 months after you attend. This is ideal when you bring on new team members. If you add an associate and make sure that you have mined every nugget of gold from our award-winning curriculum, you will also receive a 90-minute one-on-one session prior to attending the workshop with a PDA business advisor. This is to help you get the most out of your time before, during, and after your experience. So you can customize it and hit your specific goals. We offer this only once a year and due to capacity, especially with the hands-on attention we provide each attendee we only have 50 available, it sells out every single year. You can grab yours right now go to www.productivedentist.com you can click on the Cyber Monday link or go to www.productivedentist.com/workshop If you feel you need it right now, email Brent brent@productivedentist.com. We probably don’t even have 50 left at this moment. So I hope to see you we can’t wait and have a wonderful new year.

Victoria Peterson
I am back again with the amazing Dr. Maggie Augustine. In our previous podcast, you talked about the paradigm shift in being a great employer being that sought-after employer right that doesn’t have to worry about team turnover. Today we’re going to talk about vision casting. So one of the tools we have in helping our doctors build an investment-grade practice. You know Stephen Covey always says to Begin with the end in mind and Maggie, you do that time and time again. We used to think about the end What’s my goal for next year? Now we’re thinking about what is my goal in five years. And what is my endgame goal where I’m at financial choice? So Maggie, thank you for being here once again today and we have got to share this wickedly cool story of you and your coach Christine Nuun. So take us into your you’re doing your 24 months planning what happened.

Dr. Maggie Augustyn
So it was shortly after the productive dentist Academy conference and I sat down and I was thinking of my 24-month forecast which started when I first met you guys in the foundation’s course where you just sit down and you think and you figure out where you want to be and as I was doing and I thought you know, you always talk about manifestation.

So I took out my checkbook, and I wrote myself a check for $10 million. Right? Because why not? And so, you know, I just actually hold it behind me I have a screen over my computer. On the outside of it to prevent it from breakage. I just put it in so you could see the $10 million and I didn’t want my husband to find it because I thought he would keep it good.

You know, he’d be like, what, what is his? When are we getting it right? So, um, and then, you know, I was talking to Christine and we were Speaking about the 2024 month proposal and how we were going to get there, and she was showing me a timeline of what will happen in our investment grade practice if we make these changes, and in five years, the number that she had my practice worth, and subsequent, subsequently, all the revenue from it was at $10 million and what she didn’t know is that I wrote that check to be cashed in 2027 and the forecast that she created for $10 million was ending in 2027. It just like, it was, it was the kind of moment that is just so surreal. In our lives.

Yeah, I think both of us just was speechless at that moment. Yeah. Which is $10 million represent for you. It’s a number that I can’t quite comprehend and I wanted it to be a number that I couldn’t comprehend. I don’t know, I don’t lead a life where I would know what that would mean and so I was shooting for the stars, and I made that number but you know, it would mean that I wouldn’t have to worry if I became ill. late in life, I might, I would be able to pay for my daughter’s college. Maybe my grandkids, my grandkids’ college, means freedom but most importantly, but most importantly, it means that I would be working because I would be choosing to work, I would no longer work for money and the freedom of healing people. Because you want to be doing it and not because you have bills to pay. It changes everything.

Victoria Peterson
Mic drop, it’s good to end it right there. So, Maggie, you have so encapsulated the journey of the clinician to the practitioner, to the business owner, to entrepreneur to an investor, what would it be like to think about my practice as an investment? And what and when I pour myself into it, and when I plan it, and when I build systems, and when I invest in marketing, and when I invest in my teens? What is that ROI as an investor? And what does it mean to my life that that is the quintessential definition of what an IGP practice is, it’s not money for money’s sake, it’s understanding the process of building your joy, and building the systems naturally gets you to where you would need to be financially.

Dr. Maggie Augustyn
100%. And once you get to a point where you understand that, once you understand, once you understand that, not to mention the fact that when you find yourself in a place and somebody is telling you that what you have built is worth or maybe worth $10 million. It gives you such a tremendous well ROI on your own hard work, it just lifts you, you

Victoria Peterson
know, even if it’s 2 million or whatever that is,

Dr. Maggie Augustyn
even if it’s $500,000 it’s, you know, there’s a sense of pride that needs to be taken and assigned in it and seeing for me seeing that growth or seeing the potential in the growth or making the goals and hitting them and seeing the change not just myself and my team and not just my team but in our patients. It’s very addicting and not to grow money but just to keep making it better and so I think I think I told you last weekend or this weekend that working on my business and making these 24-month goals and creating these systems and polishing them is like building Legos for me I get so much joy and I get so excited to do this because it comes to fruition right whatever you count whatever you pay attention to it’s gonna get better if that’s what you want. Yeah,

Victoria Peterson
energy flows in the direction of your dreams, that’s for sure. That’s for sure. Maggie, you’re an inspiration because you walk the talk. When we met has your service mix changed or your patient the texture of the patient base shifted over time?

Dr. Maggie Augustyn
Yes, there’s, there’s, there are so many changes that have happened since the first time you and I met, we were predominantly an HMO and, and public aid office where our write-offs were probably 90%. You know, we were taking home about $100,000 a year, maybe not right when you met, but so for most of my career, and I did it because I, somewhere along the line, I thought I was taught that it was wrong to charge money for healthcare, right. So I’m like, I will just try and help as many people as I can but it led to burnout, we were seeing, you know, I’d have in one chair, I’d be doing a bridge, and another chair, I’d be doing extraction and another one, I’d be doing Endo and then there were hygiene chairs and so there’s only so much someone can carry. So yes, we did change the cervix mix. AND and OR NOT the service mix, but you know, patient, mix and patient population, we negotiated our fees and networks and that’s allowed us to have the revenue, at least initially, to start speaking with someone who can give us advice on how to get better not just for our sake, but for the sake of our patients and when that happened, we were able to be better and more generous with our team members.

Victoria Peterson 11:47
And your fee schedule is not

Dr. Maggie Augustyn
extraordinary. Well, no, no, we are all network. We probably have only 15% that are fees for service patients. We are predominantly in network, PPO, practice insurance driven practice.

Victoria Peterson
That’s the part I wanted people to hear. It’s not like Well, good for you. You’re a boutique II full mouth rehab, Hollywood celebrity $10 million.

Dr. Maggie Augustyn
Yeah, no, not at all. I mean, I do not do any smile makeovers, and I do not do any all on floors. I don’t do full-mouth rehabs. This is bread and butter dentistry but you have to know how to get started, you have to know how to get it going, and had I done it myself without the help of coaching with PDA it probably would have taken me to be retired by the time I would have figured it out. Mm-hmm. Which is,

Victoria Peterson
which is why nine out of 10 Doctors can’t retire and maintain their lifestyle because you’re working really, really hard and there’s this framework of schedule that balances out great patient care and productivity. Yes. Did your productivity per hour even though your fees? I mean, of course, you went from HMO or PPO, you’re in network, still not on the top tier fee schedule, but did your productivity per hour

Dr. Maggie Augustyn
shift. So I think when we started and I’d have to look at the number again, but I think I was at maybe $250 an hour from my productivity, and

Victoria Peterson
was rich and extraction and

Dr. Maggie Augustyn
all at the same time and I think for this year, I met 1000 grant slimmer grant slammer and I would like to but you know, and it’s just the system’s and, and the in the hard work, I hope to be at 1300 by the end of next year and, you know, reduce my hours or be more generous with my teams or do more pro bono work.

Victoria Peterson
I don’t know. That’s the crazy thing about productivity. It’s not about being busier. When you get on the wheel of it, it starts perpetuating this ties in so much with the previous podcast of how this perpetual belief and trust in your team and it’s reciprocated and now you’re delegating at a higher level and you’re trusting at a higher level and that comes through to your patients. They know when a doctor and a team really have love and trust for one another and it halos into what they say yes to I think

Dr. Maggie Augustyn
and I wonder how many of us can raise our hands for being micromanagers right? I mean, for me, learning to delegate has probably been the greatest challenge of being a practice owner and an entrepreneur not necessarily a dentist because I can’t necessarily you know, source that out but it’s really hard and now you know my office manager has had she has meetings that don’t include Dude, me and there is such tremendous freedom. That I feel. Because, yes, I mean, you can only carry so much but you also have to allow other people the opportunity to grow and that’ll come with challenges and hiccups and things but man, I mean, she’s incredible. She has grown leaps and bounds because she’s been afforded the trust, right, because I stepped back and we’re all better for it. I love it.

Victoria Peterson
Maggie, as always, you are a wealth of knowledge. What I love the most is that you walk the talk, and you come from this place of experience. It’s not Oh, I read a book and I’m gonna try it out. Do read a ton of books but thank you for being a role model for doing the work and having it pay off. Do you attend that you get 10 million reasons to smile, woman?

Dr. Maggie Augustyn
I sure do and you know, I just sincerely, don’t have a doubt that that’ll come to fruition. Yeah, I’ve just seen it. Come through, and I would encourage all of you to create these audacious goals for yourselves to it, as long as that’s front and center, and it’s not about the money. You’d be hard-pressed not to make that happen, though. Life is funny, right? Different things can happen but you’ll get there. I have no doubt. Oh, Maggie,

Victoria Peterson
I can’t wait to see the impact you have on the world. You’re having such a tremendous impact and, quote, having to work. Like the freedom not to be unhooked from the financial connection to work, and then see your passion out into the world. Oh, my goodness. That life-changing.

Dr. Maggie Augustyn
Oh, yeah. I’m looking forward to that. All right.

Victoria Peterson
No doubt we will have you back again, Maggie. You’re just one of my favorite people on the planet. Thank you so much for who you are and all that you bring to dentistry.

Dr. Maggie Augustyn
Thank you, Victoria. That’s very humbling. Thank you.

Narrator
Thank you for tuning in to this episode of Investment Grade Practices. If you find value in this episode, help us spread the word by passing it along to a dental friend, subscribe, and give us a Like on iTunes or Spotify. Learn more about building your Investment Grade Practice at productivedentist.com Today