Grow Your Dental Practice? (E.219)

“I can take somebody who is right out of school and I can get them clinically proficient to do almost any kind of dentistry in two to three years.” ~Dr. Bruce B. Baird

In this important and enlightening episode of the Productive Dentist Podcast, host Dr. Bruce B. Baird welcomes PDA VP of Client Services Brent Hogan, as they discuss what it takes to grow dental practices the right way. Dr. Baird and Brent share invaluable insights on practice growth, mentorship, and achieving work-life balance in dentistry. 

As you listen to this episode, you are going to gain perspective on:

• The importance of early business education and communication skills for dentists
• Strategies for comprehensive patient care and treatment planning
• Tips for mentoring associates and building a strong dental team
• Overcoming fear and building confidence in clinical skills
• The benefits of continuing education and clinical calibration
• Balancing profitability with personal fulfillment in dentistry

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Dr. Bruce Baird: Hi, this is Dr. Bruce Baird with the Productive Dentist Podcast and I’ve actually got, uh, one of the top guys in the country as far as working with doctors to get them up and going, uh, in their businesses and getting them, uh, enrolled in the Productive Dentist Academy. Brent Hogan’s with us today. Brent, welcome to the show.

Brent Hogan: Thanks, Bruce. It’s a pleasure to be with you today

Dr. Bruce Baird: Yeah, we’re, you know, what we were wanting to talk about is, is kind of where do we start, you know, where do you start to build a successful practice and, you know, one of the things I’ve always shared with people is, is, you know, I first looked at it as I wanted to be successful. I wanted to have a model practice, but, but how was I going to have a model practice if I didn’t know what a model practice was, you know, I don’t know if that makes sense, but it’s like. Yeah. You know, and, and so I began looking at other dentists that were my friends that had been out. I, I went in the military for four years, so they had a four year head start on me in private practice and so I had a great time, uh, going to their offices and learning about their business and, and I actually took a yellow notepad with me, uh, which I’m big on yellow notepads, but, uh. I took that with me and I began to look at everything in their office, how their waiting room was set up, how everything was done in their business and then, uh, I asked him if you could do it over again, what would you do different? And I went into seven of my buddy’s offices just to try to circumvent, you know, some of the issues that they had had that didn’t mean I didn’t have issues, trust me, but it just allowed me to, um, to do the things, uh, with a little bit of guidance from other friends and people and, and I would, I would call them mentors because they were four years ahead of me. I think the word mentor, you know, in many cases, you would think that has to be somebody 30 years older than you do that’s, that’s where you want to be but, but don’t discount the fact that you have friends that are very successful and Why reinvent the wheel? You know, it’s just makes no sense to me to reinvent the wheel. So, uh, not that the wheel can’t be better, uh, but you just, you won’t be able to get to that point until you’ve gotten to a place of, uh, confidence and success and, and that’s the things that I looked at.

Brent Hogan: Oh, Bruce, you are always a great reflector in, in your career. You always looked at, took time, um, I know at the end of the year, every year you took time and reflected. You talked about this in the conference where you shed, you shredded friends in your, in your life that, um, or individuals that didn’t bring gain to your life or positivity to you. What can you bring into that in the business side of things, what would you done differently, where would, if you looked at the time and the support that you said, “Hey, I wish I would have done this. In this phase of your career from the beginning, middle towards the end,” because like that’s in the process of really discovering who you are to shed some time off of, for people’s careers, because a lot of times they beat their heads for many years coming out, they get out of dental school. They do go a DSO route. They go, uh, associate, or they come purchase, but they’re sitting there on a hamster wheel almost seems. When did you wish that you would have said, “I wish I would ask more questions?”

Dr. Bruce Baird: That’s a great question right there. Um, I wish I would ask that question really early on in my career. I, I felt like In order for me to be successful, I had to be the best clinical dentist I could, I could possibly be and I went to all the courses, Pete Dawson, you know, I’ve told people Carl Misch, uh, I, I’ve trained with the best people and, I spent a lot of time doing that an enormous amount of money doing that early in my career in my first four years in private practice, I probably spent 200, 000 and this is in 1984. So that’s a significant investment in my education. I wish I would have spent some of that time, uh, on the business aspects of dentistry on the, you know, clinical is fantastic and I’ve got lots of friends that, uh, have gone through the clinical continuums just like I did and never really did anything with it. You know, they went to the courses and they went into ended up doing just bread and butter dentistry and that’s okay. You do what you like to do but from my perspective, I really wish I would have spent a little more time. Now that’s not to say I wasn’t throwing in courses, uh, along the way. I went, you know, listen to Paul Homley talking about communication skills and, and, um, profitability. Um, I kind of go down, down the list. Whitehall management, uh, and there were just a lot of those courses. I also did, but I think I waited too long to take them. It would have been nice. Uh, Michael Schuster went through his courses and I think all of those things helped me. Uh, as I went along in practice helped me to formulate what my game was, what I like to do, what I enjoyed in dentistry and I never wanted to be just an implant guy. I never wanted to be just a veneer dentist. I didn’t want to do, I never wanted to do fillings all day.

Dr. Bruce Baird: I like, uh, and we’ve built this philosophy of Productive Dentist Academy, I like a comprehensive approach. In other words, if a dentist comes to see me, I want to have the skills and the knowledge to be able to tell them, uh, their best path forward. What, what is your best path? And I’ve said this a lot, I believe that, uh, you know, our dentistry should have a chance of lasting the rest of your life. Whereas I don’t think I would guess that 80 to 90 percent of the dentists out there don’t believe that and, and that’s really where risk factors come into play and how we, you know, John Kois and teaching me risk factors and how does that fit into this into this world of dentistry and me becoming a consultant or an advocate for my patients. I love being more of an advocate instead of telling, telling you, Brant, you know, you’ve got a broke tooth here. Would you do a crown on it? You know, not even considering why did it break? Not even considering, “Hey, you’ve got some gum problems. Why do you have gum problems?” Uh, not even considering, you know, erosion, not even considering those things, whereas now I can’t even move forward without considering those things first, because I’m not going to tell you how to fix something until you understand why it happened and once you understand why it happened, game, set, match. Now, patients say yes to treatment. They say yes to coming to courses. They say yes to pretty much all of this and I’ve said this before, you know, money has never really played a role in my treating of patients. I always wanted to be treated, anywhere I go, I want to be treated at the highest level and I will spend money that, you know, when I go to a great restaurant, they remember my name, they know me, I’m going to have the best bottle of wine and we’re going to have the best steaks and we’re going to have a great time. So I wanted to have that kind of a business. I wanted to have a place where people love coming and I never worried about the finances.

Dr. Bruce Baird: Money always took care of itself when we took great care of the patients and, and, to me, that’s the, that’s the wave of the future and we see more and more people out there doing lots of different things. Um, almost, well, I, I’m doing aligners now, and I, and I’m doing this, and I’m doing that, but never with a, I think a, not never, but without a philosophy of care and my philosophy of care is comprehensive, comprehensive evaluation. Now, if a patient says, “Hey, Bruce, right now, I don’t want to talk about anything else right now. I just want to talk about this front tooth.” “Okay, let’s, let’s talk about your front tooth.” I may then at certain point in the conversation go, “Well, I understand that. Let me, you, you got some wear on here. Let’s take a, do you mind if I take a look at the rest just so that I can kind of get an idea why this happened?” They go, “Oh, no, I don’t mind that,” and so, uh, that, that helped me, uh, to get the verbal skills to be able to. to ask patients permission to look at their entire mouth and so the one thing you ask the question, what would I have maybe done different, or I would have probably taken some business and communication courses earlier in my career.Um, it was seven years into private practice, eight years into private practice when I was actually burned out and I was seeing way too many people and I was doing not piecemeal. Yeah, probably some, but I mean, I saw so many new patients because we had a great reputation, but. I could not satisfy myself that we were doing a great job and not until and so. I heard a great statement at Dykema this past week from, uh, from a dentist from Australia, Lincoln Harris, who has got some great things going on but he said, “You know, most dentists, uh, never get to where they want to be because they’re afraid they’re fearful,” and fear is a huge thing that people don’t take the step forward but my job is to convince dentists to take that step forward, to take that, uh, to, to learn about implants, to learn about cosmetics, to learn about the things that they really think that they would enjoy. You may find out you don’t enjoy it after you take it and you go, “Hey, connective tissue grafting, Pat Allen in Dallas, the best in the business.” I took his course. Uh, I never look at recession the same way again now, but I don’t like doing the procedures. I know Jeff Booski, my partner, he loves it and so now I see it and I can refer it properly to someone who loves it. Uh, endo, not a big endo guy, although I’ll do interiors or single canals, but I had a guy John Bond Specialist who I loved and every time I sent a patient to him, they came back, not only did the patient love John, but his, his root canals looked like state board cases. So I need to know what I don’t know and what I don’t want to do so that I can refer it to the best people and that puts me at a level, um, I think, I think that’s, that’s hard to match, honestly.

Brent Hogan: Well, and that’s the same thing that we do in the business side of things, like with PDA, with looking at the scheduling for productivity, looking at the business models, what they’re doing. Are they growing in practice to an Investment Grade Practice? Where are their goals in putting in that in alignment for that? And that’s where in discovery sessions that we do and through coaching, we really execute on those systems and the processes, the verbiage through a discovery call that we start with and then build it into if it is a positive relationship because you talk about relationships a lot in your, throughout your whole entire career is Yeah. It has to be a partnership between two people going in the same direction. Otherwise, what are we doing and that comes with your team as well but that journey through career, if you had more coaches in your career, business coaches, how would that affect your career path? And it’s been a fabulous one over the course of decades that you’ve been doing this. Well, what would have it changed in how in the trajectory or how fast would have it sped up to where you would have wanted on being?

Dr. Bruce Baird: That’s a, that’s another good question. You know, I probably had seven different coaching organizations come into my office. I waited, though, until I was in that 7th, 8th, 9th year where I was really kind of, I felt like I had to do something. I had to find a better way of doing it because I was unhappy and I think a lot of dentists are in that boat and so I say, the sooner you can start doing that, the better. And then space clinical in with that. But the business, the business aspect of it is, is critical for and, and again, communication skills are critical and what we do at PDA, which you have taken to a whole new level, is evaluate where the doc is. You know, that’s what we do. You know, where are you? Are you happy? Are you, you know, what kind of dentistry do you love to do? Um, do you look at dentistry? You know, what are you, what are your needs? What are your, you know, what are your holding up points? What are the things that are causing you stress? What are the things that are causing you fear? because on the other side of fear is confidence and when you have confidence, you can knock it out of the park. You know, I was at the all star game last night and watching the guys come to the plate. These are the best baseball players in baseball and just watching them come to the plate and their confidence and their ability to be able to execute at such a high level. I feel like I’m a I feel like I’m a well oiled athlete, you know, now obviously I don’t look like a well oiled athlete, but when you’re in dentistry and you have the confidence that you need to be able to tell a patient anything that they need to have done, then I don’t know, I think there’s something about that, you know, dentists, you know, we think, um, we think that all of our patients want to know the procedure and how it’s done and everything else and the truth is they don’t give a crap about that unless they’re an engineer, then they want to hear about it. They have to hear about it before they make a decision but the truth is 80 percent of your patients. If they like you, you know, if you’re confident, like when I tell a patient, I’d say, “Brent, you’re the perfect patient for this procedure. I mean, you really are. We’ve done hundreds or thousands of these, but you’re the perfect case because of X, Y, Z. You know, when you smile, you show a big smile and boy, if we did X, Y, E, it’s going to be perfect.” In other words, that’s a, that’s a voice of confidence. When you have that, the patients go, Oh, okay, well, I’m the perfect case for this. Okay, well, um, how much is it? And I tell them, “You know, 100, 000.” It’s not 100, 000, but they go, “Oh, my gosh. Okay, well, I want to do it. So let me figure out a way to do it,” you know, and they want to do it.

Dr. Bruce Baird: People who want to do something usually will find a way to do it and we will help them with some creative financing, all those things. And we’ll do the same thing at PDA. We’ll find ways for you to do what you want to do and, uh, and I honestly believe after 20 years of doing Productive Dentist Academy and watching dentists grow their businesses from, you know, 800, 000 and when we start with them to some of them, 5 million, 7 million practices, uh, with EBITDAs or profits of, you know, 10 percent to all of a sudden growing their profits to 25 and 30 percent EBITDA margins. These are, these are successful practices that have kind of, oh, some people say drank the Kool-Aid. I, yeah, you kind of drank the Kool-Aid because hopefully it made sense. And you know, we’re not guiding anybody down a path. of unhappiness because for me, we’re only on the planet for a short time and by golly, I want to be happy. I want to have fun. My last 14 years in practice, I worked two days a week, you know, for 14 years, you know, so people say good grief. Well, you know, you probably didn’t do much dentistry while I was doing a couple million dollars a year on two days a week. Why? Because I could and I had learned and one of the other things that’s another big thing that I haven’t mentioned is delegation and state of Texas. There’s not a lot you can delegate, but you can delegate a lot more than you think that your team training. your team, taking care of them, making sure they know exactly what to do. Um, you know, when you have a procedure that you’re doing, I trained my team. This is the way I want it done. Whereas early in my career, I would go, I hired you as an assistant. “Why in the heck, don’t you know how to do this?” And nobody on the planet knows how I like to do it, except me and if I don’t train somebody how to do it, well, then we’re just causing a lot of stress and a lot of problems that we don’t need. And so those are the things that gosh, like I said, I had tons of consultants come in. I learned something from each one of them. Uh, and, and the things that we bring to, to our docs at PDA, you can choose, you can choose how you want to go forward and, and I think that that’s, I think that’s a big deal. Yeah. I don’t want you to be producing 5 million a year and be unhappy. I don’t want you to produce 1 million a year and be unhappy. What I want you to do is produce whatever amount of dentistry, take care of as many people as you love taking care of and enjoying it, enjoying our time doing it and you know, I didn’t enjoy it the first 10 years, you know, but boy, my last, my last 15 to 20 years. I couldn’t wait to go into the office. That’s really weird. Most dentists get tired and don’t want to go to the office as they get older. I had more energy because I had more time to spend with my family. I had more time. I actually had more time to spend with my patients because I came up, came upon this comprehensive diagnosis and treatment planning, which changed everything in the cycle of dentistry for me, so,

Brent Hogan: Well, it brings up, I think there’s some great case studies. One is Megan Gustin, um, her, so, um, she, and she tells the story very well, um, for those people that haven’t read her case study or heard her testimonial of what she’s done, and she presents on this in numerous different facets of, she was basically broke, um, and now it’s grown through her practice to generational wealth, and her, hearing that from Kyle Francis brought her to tears, um, and now, she’s even, she’s gotten the practice where she wants and she’s taking the time off to do the things that she wants to do and loves it. I can think of Ben and Kelly Euse same thing that they, they didn’t want to hire a nanny. They didn’t want to do so. They wanted to be with their children as they grew up. So they worked two days a week and they built their practice to what it is today. There’s many different things. It’s what you boys talked about. This is profitability is great, but you can’t give, you can’t put a price on time. So raising kids and raising things, it’s not, yes, you need money. You need to have to have assets to live off of, but then at a certain point, we can start solving for the equation of time. Can we take a half day off? You challenge yourself doing that and if I increase my profitability, could I do take it half day off? Could I take a half day off? In the end, you, you got down to two days, a week, a week, um, you could probably took more off, but I, I know. Yeah. Your family would’ve kicked you outta the house and you could only That’s right. Get so much golf a week as going there. But you also hit a great point in delegation in the conversations that you’re looking at, how you’ve had some great associates over the over your time.

Dr. Bruce Baird: Fantastic.

Brent Hogan: Um, Jeff Buske, who you mentioned is who is your partner? Jackson Bean. Um, and there’s many, there’s a couple others in, in that, in that sphere. Can you talk about the growth of clinical calibrating with them and the growth of an association and mentorship of those individuals of what it meant to them and getting them from a starting point to almost over a million dollar associate in things that you would have, one, wish you had done better, and two, what is out there now to facilitate that?

Dr. Bruce Baird: Well, I’ll tell you, you know, my first probably six associates, I, I was not a good mentor. I wasn’t a good, I wasn’t a good manager. I wasn’t a good boss and I wasn’t a good mentor for them for the most part. Um, not until I, I found out what I wanted to do and how I wanted to practice. You know, a lot of dentists bring associates in just they don’t even know why they’re bringing them in, you know, they get upset with them. They’re not at saturation, meaning saturation. They’re not as efficient as they could be. They’re not doing, they’re not seeing the patients in, in, in the manner that they should be seeing them. And so they think, “Well, I’m just so busy and I’m, I’m, I’m getting burned out because I’m having to do so much stuff. And they hire an associate. Well, now the associates start seeing some of their patients, their salary goes down. And all of a sudden they’re going like, “Oh my gosh. I don’t like the associate, you know,” or I’m going to, you know, it’s, it’s a vicious cycle that happens. What I will tell you is if you’re an associate dentist, I just talked to one this last week, uh, in Dykeman and hopefully we’re going to get him to come speak, uh, for us at some point. Young kid, one year out of school, just like Brayden, uh, Baird, my nephew, who is just killing it, one year out of school and he just said, “I was in a situation for six months as an associate and I just want to quit dentistry after six months. I just, you know, I wasn’t getting any help from anybody. The doctor, you know, I thought, They would want to help me,” and he says now I’m three months into a new associateship position and I love dentistry again. So how do we, how do we do that? Well, first of all, let’s talk about being a mentor. Being a mentor is being a teacher and you can’t teach somebody who’s not willing to learn. Uh, if you have an associate who has an attitude, has a chip on their shoulder, I’m a doctor, you’re not, I mean, talking to the team, you know, that kind of stuff. You know, I, I, they self-eliminate themselves in my world. What I want is. people who can smile, people who can talk to their patients, people who care about other people and when you find them, you know, you know, when you find those folks, you, you just, I always joke at PDA, give me a hundred docs. I will go through and interview each one of you for two minutes And I’ll figure out the top 20 producers, the top 20 percent of you.

Dr. Bruce Baird: Why? Because you look at people in the eye, you smile, you’re, you’re friendly. Um, and, and we’ve taught, Thousands of engineers who usually have this borrowed brow and want to talk about the molecular structure of titanium and they finally get it and they realize, “Oh my gosh, I need to be, I need, they don’t really care about all that. They really need to like me,” and, and, and for, for most people, once they learn to do that, cause I had to learn to be an engineer, you know, cause I, I just wasn’t my deal. But what I will say is being a teacher or being a mentor. and having someone that’s a willing learner, you can take them because I can take somebody who is right out of school and I can get them clinically proficient to do almost any kind of dentistry in two to three years, two to three years. Now, I may also be recommending I want you to go see Carl Mish. You know Carl has passed now, but that’s where I sent, uh, I, I’ve sent so many friends through there. Um, and I want you to go, I want you to go out to, uh, to, uh, to see Pete Dawson. I want you to go see John Kois. Hard to get in to see him, but at some point I’m going, I’ve taught you, you’ve watched me communicate how to do these things. I’ll help you, but I want you to get the basis behind it all, and that’s really with, you know, with our clinical calibration course that we’re doing. This is our first time to do it this fall in September. We’ve been working on it for five years. We’re going to have some of the best teachers in the country that’ll be there, you know, whether it be, you know, clear aligners to implants to robotics to AI to aesthetics, you know, we’re going to have people that are going to be sharing with you as a young doc or as an older doc doesn’t make any difference but once you calibrate yourself clinically, meaning, “Hey, I’ve got all these tools in the toolbox now. Now, you know what? I don’t like these guys over here. I don’t like doing it.” Fine. At least you know now. At least you know now. Now you can focus on the things that you do like to do and that’s also where our marketing company comes in. Uh, you know, Phoenix Marketing. You know, why market to get new patients when you don’t even know what they need? It makes no sense and what I want to do is market to people who need what I love to do. That’s called authentic marketing and I want to market to those folks. Guess what? They come in now. I’m doing things that. I’m not fearful of. I have a lot of confidence in, and guess what happens? We get to do it now. I’m doing a comprehensive exam. I may find that they need connective tissue grafting. I might find they need X, Y, Z. I don’t care. Well, I refer ’em absolutely. I may find you’re not a good K case for a sleep apnea device because if you’ve had TMJ issues and everything else, that’s not gonna stop me from sending them to a sleep center or to someone who can get them on a C-PAP. It, it, it doesn’t matter.

Dr. Bruce Baird: Whatever it is, I’m going to have the best professionals available around me, but developing associates is critical and taking the time to do it, getting an associate when you are saturated, meaning you really do. You’re, you’re having overflow of patients. That’s the time you need when you think, “Oh, I want to work less.” Oh, no. Now you might want to work less than five years, but don’t work less. Help train that doc, help them become, become the dentist that, that they, they want to be because there’s always such positive things and given back. I remember Jackson and standing over his shoulder when he was doing his first full arch. Great. You know, I had so much fun. Jeff, you know, Jeff was the most highly trained dentist I’d ever seen. Seven years out of school, he probably had spent a half a million dollars just going to courses but he was fearful. He was fearful. He still was afraid to take the step to actually put the implant in or to prep the bridge or to do the TMJ evaluation and I told him, “Dude, you’re one of the smartest dentists I know. Let’s just do it. Do it,” and so I would support him. I’d stand behind him. I said, “I’m right here, man. Just do it,” and those are the things that that’s what clinical calibration is about to bring your associates to a program like this, to where they go from. You know, I would say the average associate in the country is probably producing 350 an hour, you know, uh, 350 an hour. That’s not bad, uh, but you give them, uh, clinical calibration as a gift, they’re going to be doing probably 650 to 700 an hour, which doesn’t sound like a big difference except for the fact that it’s doubled, you know, 300 an hour on an average 128-hour work month, uh, 1600 hours a year. That comes out to about 480, 000 a year. Now, would that help your practice? Would that help your business? Would that make your associate one of the top-paid associates in the country? Absolutely. Will they run off and go down the street? Some of them you want to go down the street. You know, you find that out early on, but the ones that you want to stay because of the fact that you’ve helped because of the fact you’ve been a friend and a mentor. Um, and if they came to you and said, “Man, I really have an interest in buying into the practice. I have an interest in, you know, Bruce, I really have an interest in opening up my own place.” I go, “I had that same interest about 25 years ago.” I say, “How can I help you? Let’s talk about it. Let’s find a way,” you know, life’s too short, man. Just try to help people get what they want, and you’re going to end up getting what you want to and, and, uh, our clinical calibration course is the best course I’ve ever seen. Uh, and we’ve been working on it and busting our butts. We’re going to have some of the best speakers. Lincoln Harris from Australia is going to come. Thank you We’re going to have Jackson Bean speaking. We’re going to have Jeff Bowsky speaking. We’re going to have associates that were in my practice. Um, um, and it’s, it’s going to be, it’s going to be quite a, quite a September this year. So, uh, yeah, I’m looking forward to that.

Brent Hogan: Well, it’s going to be a great 20th anniversary celebration. It’s crazy that you started this over 20 years ago and, uh, in going and it’s grown to what it is today. Um, want to wrap up on a couple of different points that you said. Uh, one, you said benefits of seeking support and having people around you and is was very important also overcoming fear because in a lot of discovery sessions I do is I come and I facilitate where do they want to go? What do they want to do? Here all these things they’re doing marketing that should draw in whoever not hitting this patient But they get to a point of I’m fearful. I it’s a step to it’s in the, going into the uncomfortable zone. You talked about Jeff taking that first step. It’s like that baby step. Uh, when you have a young child of, okay, are they going to take it and they sit there, take it up and they sit up and, and how, or what would you say to those individuals that are one fearful to look at their practice in a business lens and two, fearful of taking a step forward in, in moving their business forward in the, in a direction that.?

Dr. Bruce Baird: Right. Yeah. You know, to me it is, you know, it’s fear of failure. It’s fear, fear of rejection. You know, you tell a patient they need this and they say, “Aow I don’t really want to do that,” you know, or whatever and, and those are all, you know, things that, how does it affect you? Well, you know, if a patient says no to me now, I go, “Well, no problem. I certainly understand.” You know why? Because I have 10 more patients coming in that need the same thing that you do. And I’m just going to be honest with you. I’m just going to share with you what I would do if it was me,” and that is my entire case presentation. You know, Brent, You know, I’ve looked at your situation, we’ve talked about your risk factors and everything else. Gosh, we could go 10 different ways. If you could go to 10 dentists, you’d get 10 different treatment plans. You know that? And I said, you know, “What’s important is, let’s just, let me just share with you what I would do if it was me.” You know, and, and then I share that with them. When you see an associate that’s afraid to move forward, be their mentor by saying, “Wou know what? I felt the same way. All of us felt the same way. You know, the first time you ever hit a golf ball, you feel like, oh my gosh, this is horrible. I feel like that’s sometimes when I hit it today, but, you know, every day is not gonna be, you know, you know, the, the, the, the music’s not gonna be playing and, you know, it’s, it’s, the truth is, dentistry’s difficult. Dealing with people on a day-to-day basis is difficult but if you know where you want to go, take that step.” You know, uh, Babe Bruce struck out more times than anybody in history, but he also hit more home runs than anybody else in history. Um, Michael Jordan, they talk about Jordan, you know, you go through all this. These are people who have an unrelenting desire to be the best they can be and you know, Jeff Bowsky is going to be speaking at the meeting about a lot of things that are along those lines.

Dr. Bruce Baird:  You’ve got to make the move. You’ve got to take that step and I can promise you, um, if you’re there as the senior doc or mentor, and you are a friend to that young doc, and you are understanding that where they are and how, let me help you, they will become the best associate doc you can imagine and eventually a partner doc. Just, just like the other dentists that worked with me, they’ll become a partner in what we do. Why? Because I enjoy working with them and I’m only working two days a week. So I need somebody else there to take care of other patients. So I’m telling you, not only can we get you to where you’re working two or three days a week, if that’s what you choose, but we can also help train your associates so they’re producing 800 to 1000 an hour. My nephew right now, Braden, 13 months out of dental school, he’s producing 1200 an hour right now. That’s four times the national or three times the national average. He’s killing it. Is he just cutting teeth everywhere? No. He’s learned to communicate. He started coming to PDA when, uh, he was in dental school. Same thing, you know, Eric Roman, who’s built enormous businesses and everything else. He first came to PDA when he was a senior in dental school and he is just, you know, now he’ll be speaking at our meeting in September. Uh, these are people who have done it and have been there and so I think support, um, you know, people sometimes need that little baby that’s taking that step. You know they’re going to screw up. That’s okay. You know, you know, they’re going to fall down. That’s okay. You just don’t, you don’t give up on people and, and now I give up on people if they, if they believe that it’s all about them. You know, if it’s all about them, I just don’t like being around people like that and sometimes you’ll bring an associate in there there for a month or two and you go, “Man, this just doesn’t fit.” I want somebody who loves other people, wants to take care of him, wants to be the best dentist they could be and and wants to enjoy dentistry, enjoy life, have fun. leave a legacy, you know, all of those things. And, you know, you’ll know it when you find them, you know, you know it. But then what ends up happening is I think we get afraid to, to help them and get them along because they’re going to leave. They’re going to go somewhere else someday. Well, you know what? If that’s what you’re worried about, then that’s probably what’s going to happen. You know, if you’re just worried about helping somebody, guess what? They end up staying around. Uh, or you end up helping them find a, um, find a location for their own practice, but it is what it is, you know, and I, I enjoy, I enjoy helping other people get what they want and I think it’s allowed and helped us to be where we want to be, um, with leaving a legacy, uh, you know, legacy of love and we’ve got some great, great videos and, and great stuff that we kind of laid the basis for that years ago. So, uh, yeah, that’s it.

Brent Hogan: Well, and I think you hit a couple points and you worked with is in dentistry, you’ve made a lot of dreams come realities for a lot of patients in your career. Um, same thing on the coaching side. We’ve made a lot of dreams come realities for, for a lot of our clients that we’ve worked with over the years and it’s because we believe every dentist deserves an Investment Grade Practice to live the lifestyle that they want to live on their terms. Yeah. And I know that’s one of your, your parts in your, you want to change the industry in many different factors in that realm and I know as we look at it, it pains both you and Victoria that say the stat in front of the stage is 95 percent of dentists cannot retire and live the lives that they are currently living and live the lifestyle. To me, to us, that’s a travesty and we want to make sure. Through a discovery, getting you on the path of your journey and your roadmap to where you want to go, because it’s your destination, much like your patients, like you talked about, you can help them. You’re you’re a guide to this. They’re their own hero. They can, same thing with what we do. We can help guide practices and you’ve done it for 20 years now and it’s something to celebrate is where can, where do they want to go and once you see them cross that finish line and get that, this you’ve seen many of them cross that finish line. You’ve helped many of them.

Dr. Bruce Baird: Sure.

Brent Hogan: Do transactions, some of them happier than others, some of them ready to retire. You’ve done, you’ve crossed that line. Yep. What does that look like for you and, um, and those that have done it?

Dr. Bruce Baird: You, you know what’s funny is, you know, we’re talking about, I don’t know what we charge for 1495 bucks or something. There’s 2100, but we’ll get you a scholarship, whatever, down to 1495. I mean, people go to tell Frisco’s and buy a really nice bottle of wine and spend that in a, in a single evening, you know? Yeah. Um. It’s good evening. You know, it is with no expectation of getting paid back except for the experience. You know, coming to this, we have Emmett Smith is going to be a keynote speaker for us at the meeting, uh, spending 1500 bucks for your associate to come to a program like this to give them an opportunity to be something special in your business. I mean, I don’t know. That’s a no brainer. Um, if you, if you ever wonder about that, all you have to do is reach out to Productive Dentist Academy, talk to Brent, he’ll send you five case studies, www.productivedentist.com. Five case studies of docs who’ve done it. Now we could do 500 case studies. We’ve done five. Okay and all different avenues, but you don’t read those cases you’re going to go, “I want to do that. I want to do that. I want to be like that,” and or you’re going to look at it and say, I want my associate to be that, you know, I, I want, I want that to happen for you. And so you’ll get repaid that 1500 bucks back in the first month. Guaranteed not even close. Uh, if your production goes up 50 bucks an hour, you five times paid for it. If 50 bucks an hour is like. I don’t know. You gotta be brain dead not to go up, you know, you know, it’s, it’s, you know, 50 bucks an hour is what another, whatever it is,

Brent Hogan: about 200 a week, uh, or yeah, no, $50, uh, yeah. Over, um, yeah, 6,000 bucks, you know, $6,000. Yeah.

Dr. Bruce Baird: Yeah and so it’s just. You know, it’s just what it is. And, uh, so I challenge everybody to listen. Um, come to the September program. Uh, we have another one in March. We have a lot of new things that are going to be happening. We’re going to have some exciting announcements. Um, it’s going to be fun and you’ll get to meet some people who are in the exact same boat you are and build relationships and build friendships that you’ll have for the next 30 years. Now, I may not be around in 30, I’m hopeful, but, uh, I probably won’t be jumping around like I am today. So, uh, but I look forward to seeing you guys at the program.

Dr. Bruce Baird: Awesome. Thanks, Bruce

Dr. Bruce Baird: Thanks, Brent for being on the show and asking the tough questions that I always have to try to ask myself and it sure makes it a lot easier with you on with me. So, uh, thanks and hey, thank you guys for voting, uh, Productive Dentist Podcast as number one podcast in dentistry. Uh, look us up on all the channels and, uh, and do me a favor If you would, you do me a favor, um, send us some friends, send us some friends to come to the course too. Thank you Because, hey, you’re just getting started. I’ve sent, I can’t tell you how many people I’ve sent through. Man, you know all the all the programs why because I experienced something that was great and I want to share that. So anyway, thanks again