Golden Nacho Advice from Dr. Paul Goodman – Episode 281

On this episode of the Dentist Money™ Show, Ryan welcomes the legendary Dr. Nacho, Paul Goodman, for a wide-ranging discussion on how to keep all of your practice ownership pieces lined up. From preparing for unforeseen physical emergencies to making sure your staff knows how money flows through your practice to why you need mentors who are within 10 years of your age, Dr. Goodman is at his Dental Nachos best.

Show Notes:
www.dentalnachos.com

 

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Podcast Transcript

Ryan Isaac:
Hey, everybody. Welcome back to another episode of The Dentist Money Show, sponsored by Dentist Advisors, a no commission fiduciary, fully comprehensive dental only financial planner. Check us out, dentistadvisors.com. Today on the show, long-time friend, total guru, nacho guy, Dr. Paul Goodman. Today Paul and I talk about the future of the business of dentistry, how to prepare for unforeseen emergencies, and how to improve the quality of your work and lifestyle on the way. Thanks for joining us. If you have any questions for us, go to dentistadvisors.com. Click on the Book Free Consultation link, schedule a chat with one of our very friendly and comprehensive dental-specific advisors. And as always, thanks for being with us. Enjoy the show.

Announcer:
Consultant advisor, or conduct your own due diligence when making financial decisions. General principles discussed during this program do not constitute personal advice. This program is furnished by Dentist Advisors, a registered investment advisor. This is Dentist Money. Now, here’s your host, Ryan Isaac.

Ryan Isaac:
Welcome to The Dentist Money Show, where we help dentists make smart financial decisions and avoid the bad ones along the way. I’m your host, Ryan Isaac. And I’m here with a legend, a lege as they say in the business, Dr. Paul Goodman, The Nacho himself. What’s up, Paul? Thanks for joining me. How you doing, man?

Dr. Paul Goodman:
Thanks for having me, Ryan. I always enjoy talking to you. Love what you guys are doing here. Sharing great responsible information for dentists to be successful in all areas of their life.

Ryan Isaac:
I like the word responsible. That’s how I like to, I don’t know if that’s true or not, but I’d like to envision that we are giving responsible advice to the masses to just have a boring, slow, steady, financially growing career. Like it’s going to be fine at the end, not too exciting in the between. That’s what I’m hoping for people. Responsible, I like that, man. For anyone who, I don’t know who this would be, but for anyone who might not know who is The Nacho, what are the Nachos? Who is Paul Goodman? Give us a little background.

Dr. Paul Goodman:
I love that. I mean, I’m a huge fan of Gary Vaynerchuk, Gary V. And when I walk around, I think everyone knows him, but most people do not. So I think it’s a cool opportunity. One quick story about this that kind of maybe showcases the fun part of being The Nacho guy. But there’s also some challenges that prior to the pandemic we went to an ASDA event in Chicago, and I’m 43. So back in dental school everybody knew where the one party was. Everybody knew where the one bar people are going to was. Because we didn’t have, text message took you four minutes to type out. It was like a letter in a bottle. So what was funny was, people were walking up to our nacho booth and my wife, awesome wife and daughters were there, and they were saying, “Where’s The Nacho guy? I got to meet him.” Which was very flattering.

Dr. Paul Goodman:
But then just as many people were walking by saying, “Who are you? What is Dental Nachos?” And to me that was interesting, but tells a story, because when I was in dental school, everybody knew about the same thing, because we didn’t really have all these other channels. What was kind of cool, but also unique is that students could sit next to each other in the same class. Half of them could be part of Dental Nachos, half of them have never heard of it. So Dental Nachos is like a Mr. Rogers neighborhood for dentistry. I felt we always needed that. I’ve been doing this since 2005.

Dr. Paul Goodman:
After I left my residency program, I wanted to create a study club for dentists just to be nice to each other so that they wouldn’t hate each other later. And that really bothered me. Everybody likes the dentist. Why don’t we like each … I mean, nobody likes the dentist, why don’t we like each other? So it bothered me, all the competition, the dental student hunger games. So I thought I’d make a Facebook group that had a few hundred people to talk about practice management and implants. I named it Dental Nachos. My wife helped me come up with that, because I’m a speaker, I’m a broker, I’m a dentist. Had a lot of different toppings. I also do have a passion. What’s the difference between passionate and obsession? I don’t know, but I have a passion from Mexican food. I’ve worked at a Mexican restaurant for years.

Dr. Paul Goodman:
So like most, the people have called me Bob Ross a lot with drawing on boards like, “Happy accident, Bob Ross.” It took off into this a great thing. The reason why I think, Ryan is, I named it after the Golden Retriever puppy of appetizers, because everyone does love nachos. So initially people were just posting pictures of their nachos on the group, because I don’t think [crosstalk 00:04:06] explaining.

Ryan Isaac:
Over achiever for appetizers. I would have said those are mozzarella sticks.

Dr. Paul Goodman:
I don’t know, the mozzarella stick. It’s like-

Ryan Isaac:
Is there like a love, hate?

Dr. Paul Goodman:
It’s too one note. And also you can’t share them. Nachos, I mean the whole concept-

Ryan Isaac:
It’s true, nachos is shareable.

Dr. Paul Goodman:
It can be shared, but also has-

Ryan Isaac:
Community.

Dr. Paul Goodman:
Community, and also gets messy sharing. There’s a great community that has a joke of, “Who goes for the last chip on the plate? You’re friends until it happens.” But it’s also to have uncomfortable conversations with a foundation of respect. I think we are moving through a time on earth, but also, especially in dentistry where we can communicate with the push of a button, which comes with a lot of good, but also a lot of challenges. And just, I mean, how many times have you texted somebody who’s older than you, texted all this stuff and they write back, “K.” Not exactly matching the tone. “Hey, you want to go out and get drinks tonight?” “K.” So-

Ryan Isaac:
Thanks.

Dr. Paul Goodman:
I’m sure it’s going to happen to us when we’re old and they have hologram texting and we’re going to want to just smartphone text. But to me, it’s an opportunity for dentists to collaborate, share, talk, support each other. And then also we have great sponsors like you guys, and we have great opportunities for dentists to purchase things, to learn about things. This is such a great start to your show. You talk about money with people, right? And dental school makes money very weird. I mean, they charge hundreds of thousands of dollars to go there and they literally don’t bring up money the entire time. So for four years they say, “Oh, just treat people right and you’ll be fine.” But that’s not how to succeed in the real world. So I really called them out for not infusing the discussion of money for patients, for your team, for yourself. So that’s why I think what you guys are doing is awesome.

Ryan Isaac:
Let’s talk about, I don’t, it’s a subject that has been talked about a lot, but I think it bears repeating because history will repeat itself in one way or another. And that’s being prepared for some kind of unforeseen emergency as a dentist, as a practice owner. It might not be a health pandemic in the future, and it might not be on a global scale. It probably won’t. I mean, but little things can happen that are unforeseen, that are emergencies in a dentist’s life that require preparedness. And it requires being ready to some degree for stuff we can’t predict, but we know is going to happen. So first, let’s just get your maybe overall thoughts on that. And we had a few good points to kind of run through on how a dentist can prepare their practice for something like that in the future.

Dr. Paul Goodman:
Very common. Some of the things that I get to do as a practice broker, coach, consultant, is see things that I never would have seen as just a dental speaker. So I get a chance to help dentists with big life decisions. I talk about the four major life decisions, finding a job, buying a practice, hiring an associate, and selling your practice. So let’s talk about some unforeseen nachos, dropped nachos, broken nachos. So I think the most important thing if we’re being responsible, and I have this little picture of your dental core, which I think is your mind, words, and hands. You have to protect your physical self. So as maybe fundamental as it is, getting disability insurance early and keeping up with it, anyone could have an injury doing anything. And some of these are things like shoulder injuries. They could be leg injuries where you’re out of your office in an unforeseen way.

Dr. Paul Goodman:
So what are two things you need to do? Or three things. One, have disability insurance for yourself. Two, have overhead insurance for your office. And three, know who you can call to take over for you in these emergencies to keep your practice running. I don’t know if you played fantasy football. I played it for a while, but I became too obsessed with it, I had to stop. But I was just saying this yesterday, we have no bench in dentistry. Yesterday two team members called out and I was like, “Okay, let me go to my bench and get the other front desk person.” Nope, there’s nobody on our bench. And if the dentist is the quarterback, you have to bring in a licensed quarterback.

Dr. Paul Goodman:
So disability insurance, business insurance, and also, who can you call and connect with to get a replacement dentist if a unforeseen event happens where you’re injured? So one of those unforeseen events would be injury, unexpected injury to the dentist. And let’s just call it six months or less, right? Let’s not call it, and we can talk about more substantial things-

Ryan Isaac:
Long term.

Dr. Paul Goodman:
But let’s talk about sick, being out of your office for six months in an unpredictable way. Also, Ryan, one of the happiest things is one of these things in life, but it does just affect females due to biology, is that’s giving birth to a child. So as we have 50/50 male versus female, maybe even more females, I believe this is going to be, I believe, Ryan, this is going to be a crisis level for dentistry. We’re going to have these amazing female dentists, awesome practice owners. People like you’re going to help them live their best dental life, buy practices. And then there’s going to be this time period. I think it’s going to start in about five years. It’s going to go indefinitely, where covering maternity leave in solo GP offices is going to be a crisis in the industry.

Ryan Isaac:
Really glad you bring that up. That’s actually a perspective I’ve never thought about. But let’s rewind a little bit to, I hear people talk about this all the time in kind of their disability plan. If something happens, I’ve got a friend, I’m in a study club,. But it always seems very, very loose. And I always wonder like, “Will that actually transpire?” How have you seen it work? How do you get a bench, or how do you propose?

Dr. Paul Goodman:
Great point. There’s two brothers, the Brenners, just connect with them. They were sponsors of one of our things where they have like, I don’t know the exact name of their company, but Brian Brenner and his brother, where they’re trying to put this together, which is a great idea, where you can get coverage. But one of the things that happens, because we work in the most annoying industry ever, this is why. I’m a dentist in New Jersey, okay? I have to be out for six months. I need a licensed dentist, not easy to find. A new licensed dentist in New Jersey, also not easy to find. I need a licensed dentist in New Jersey with an NPI number who can be in the same insurances. So it’s great to have that friend in your study club, but it’s not practical. Why? Because they’re seeing their own patients.

Dr. Paul Goodman:
So the bench in dentistry is a challenge. If someone can create, the Brenners are doing this, some way create a bench, somebody who could come in and just check hygiene and see emergencies, because you guys are in the financial planning world. The dental office team is awesome, but we come from all different life situations. And I want to say upfront, one of my favorite things is the Peloton. The Peloton founder was on how I built this. I really resonate with his story. Founded his company, was in his early 40s like me. He wanted to thank his parents at the end, which sounds cliche. But he basically said, “I was very lucky to be born into these parents.” And I feel the same way. A lot of my success in life was the luck of being born to awesome people.

Dr. Paul Goodman:
So in a dental office team, not everybody has that same luck, but they’re my teammates. So not every team member can go one week, two weeks, three weeks, four weeks, three months without being paid. But the office doesn’t run without a licensed dentists, which is that’s why I work in a group model, which at least insulates us a little bit from this. But the solo GP, there’s some benefits to it, but this is one of the risks. Where do you find that bench? And we don’t have a good answer right now.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah. And then you bring up, statistically there are more women in dental school right now, dental students, then there are men. So the future of dentistry will just change just in the dynamics and the logistics of it and business models will change. Opportunities will change. And I think in really great, excellent ways too, but there’ll be new challenges to have to figure out kind of like you were mentioning before. I’m curious now, with all the dentists that you network with and talk with, how often do you see, I mean like your disability or a pretty bad injury or something that takes you out of the game for a while, it always feels like the thing that’ll happen to someone else and not you. I mean, that’s just human nature, right? We’re always the exception. We’re never the rule. So how often do you see this, and is there a pattern of why or how, or how long [crosstalk 00:11:57]-

Dr. Paul Goodman:
I’ll use it this way. We grew up in New Jersey and our basement would flood frequently, drove my parents nuts. It didn’t flood every day, but it flooded with enough frequency in my life for it to be a thing where we had to think about a generator, do this, run this stuff. It was very, very frustrating. So I see it with enough frequency for dentists to be prepared for a disaster, unanticipated disaster. And here’s my goal in life. My goal in life is not to annoy others, Ryan, including the people [inaudible 00:12:24].

Ryan Isaac:
Okay.

Dr. Paul Goodman:
I don’t want to annoy my family. So as a dental, and I see this as a broker all the time, these can be things as drastic as death by suicide. They can be things as a emotional breakdown where you can’t work, they can be injuries. But if you are a practice owner, owning a dental practice is very complicated, you should be ready to sell that at any time. What does that mean? I’ve wanted to do some real good content on this, this year. What do you need in order to be able to sell your practice? More than just the tax returns, tax returns and P&L. So, my office right now, I would need to fix some things up to get it be sellable, get all of our numbers in order. It doesn’t mean they’re out of order, but can they be given to someone else to buy?

Dr. Paul Goodman:
No brokers and connectors. No someone who contemporary take over the practice. Here’s one that no one really thinks about. Let’s use the example, because my dad actually did die suddenly, which was devastating. But my brother and I were dentists, let’s say he was a solo practitioner, 40 years in the same office with a great team. Who’s going to emotionally support that team? The family should have a consultant who comes in, like we have just a consultant that comes in and talks to the team and say, “I know everybody’s going to be crying, but you’re still going to have to fix their teeth. Here’s how you manage it.”

Dr. Paul Goodman:
Because there was just some on one of the message boards, dental Facebook groups. A dental practice loses value quickly when the dentist is no longer there. You also just can’t close the door. So the family is going to have to deal with this practice, whether it’s selling the charts, selling the equipment. So I remember this as kids and we had fire drills, role modeling, rehearsals, dentist should yearly rehearse. If someone’s listening and they hear this, this is the golden nacho advice. If you’re a practice owner, you rehearse yearly with your advisors and your family what it would be like to sell your practice if you weren’t there. Just rehearse yearly for that. That would be my best piece of advice.

Ryan Isaac:
That’s huge. I mean, I think about even just on the stuff we deal with, like our job as financial planners is just to keep someone’s financial life organized, but I’m constantly amazed at how many moving pieces that is for somebody. And that’s not even all of the business. It’s not, I mean, we’re not accountants, we’re not attorneys. So then there’s legal, there’s tax. We’re not practice consultants. So then there’s a whole side of the business that you’re talking about. I mean, it’s, for a practice owner, it’s a giant, it can be a giant mess to just hand over to someone. Especially if you have a partner, or spouse, business partners who aren’t super involved with a lot of the details. If you just disappear one day, not in the picture for them to step in and be like, “Where do we begin with this stuff? Where is everything? What does it all mean? What do I do with it?” What about, yeah, yeah.

Dr. Paul Goodman:
I will just say, practice for that event, hoping it never happens. But also practicing for that event. That’s where I’ll say the positive part is, you’re going to learn stuff about your business like, “Oh geez. I didn’t know my profit was so great. I didn’t know,” so what I just want to add in, the exercise of practicing for this event that you hope never happens will also teach you things about your business that will come out of there. So there’s a no lose situation in doing that, that’s[inaudible 00:15:25] added.

Ryan Isaac:
What about systems and tech in the practice as part of this preparation?Whether we’re talking about a big, horrible event like this, or some temporary setback, or maternity leave, or what are some of your favorites right now that you’ve seen?

Dr. Paul Goodman:
I think just keeping a digital story with important documents is important. It could be as simple as a Google Drive that you give someone access to. Because I went through this with my dad handling the estate. Basically everyone treats you like you’re lying at all times. So it’s very, very emotionally texting.

Ryan Isaac:
How do you mean that? How do you mean that?

Dr. Paul Goodman:
Because when I would go to the bank and be like, “I’m the son and I want to do this.” “Where’s your paperwork? Where’s this?” Because I’m assuming this is a good thing, I’m not saying. But they’re just guarding against fraud, that you know you can’t get back in your own bank account sometimes. Like what was my pet from the third grade? I don’t know. So one of the things that’s important with technology is, whether it’s through a Google Drive, whether it’s through scanned things, to keep a digital story that I also would keep on actually a real type of USB drive that you keep somewhere. And then, so that’s one piece of it.

Dr. Paul Goodman:
Second piece is in there to have people who you can call in each arena. So let’s just say a house was blown away. Now you have to build a foundation, you have to build the structure, you have to do landscaping. So you’re going to need accountant, attorney, financial consultant, the people who know your story. I also think, just as we’re getting super fundamental, make sure you have a will in place of some sort so people know who to go to. We’ve seen, I’ve seen just messes with this as a practice broker in the worst way. And I think using technology to say, “Hey, here’s an email that I want you to keep in a folder that just says, ‘In case of a problem, look into this.'” And people, they’ll find it. I mean, I have this book on me all the time that I love, The Checklist Manifesto. So it’s the ultimate version.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah, you just pull that out of your pocket [crosstalk 00:17:19].

Dr. Paul Goodman:
Yeah, yeah. I got a bunch of props on here. I’ve got a basketball. Got this guy who sort of feels like to be a dentist inside. So I think that you can really do a solid for the people who were in your life by giving them the tools easily accessible. If you have some paper folder that’s in some file cabinet, people have to … It’s like, “In case of emergency, break this digital piece of glass.” And it could be Google Drive. It could be Slack type of thing. I mean, there’s just different ways, but you should have a discussion with the important people in your life for this. Also, a password, so important. Like you got to give people your passwords to stop. Because there’s stuff coming into your email accounts and other accounts that you won’t be able to access. And I mean, I don’t know who to call, Mr. Google and be like, “Hey, Mr. Google, can I get into here?” So that would be my tip there.

Ryan Isaac:
Okay. So kind of along the same lines, something that I think about all the time, especially as I talk to you, doctors that start getting into their 50s and 60s, sometimes in their 40s though, is maybe not the situation of emergency where you’re disabled or something happens, you’re totally done in career. But let’s talk about like, how do you protect and prepare for the longevity of dentistry? I mean, the statistics are that dentist retire, right now it’s the average of age 69. Some of that is due to because people choose to. A lot of it’s because they can’t stop working earlier than that. But there’s a lot of longevity and there’s almost no career like it to work so few hours and still make a lot of money late in life. How do you, you held up, what was that little chart you held up? It was like a little stick for [crosstalk 00:18:53].

Dr. Paul Goodman:
But this is a normal guy, you don’t want to cry on the inside or the outside, so you got to protect your dental core here. I know, I would say a third is, find your words, your hands and your hearts, so business leadership, communication. Awesome question. A couple of things I see as a medium age, Dennis, 43.

Ryan Isaac:
Medium, okay, medium, all right.

Dr. Paul Goodman:
Medium, which stands for MAD, medium aged dentist man. Seasoned age dentist, that’s SAD. So, there’s only one good quality. You were like, “One good category, retired age dentist, RAD, you’re RAD then.

Ryan Isaac:
I like that.

Dr. Paul Goodman:
But I think it’s dentists caring more about money than morale. What I mean here is, I know you work out, right? So bench press is kind of still a common thing people think. So what if someone said, “You can be in great shape and bench press 270 pounds,” but you’re a dentist, say, “I want to bench press 350.” What have getting to bench press 350, man, you didn’t spend more time with your kids. You were annoyed all the time. You got up at 4:00 AM too often. So what I’m saying is, dentists don’t really know how to track its success indicators, which are different for everybody. I mean, I’m going to rely on Gary V here, which is because I listen to him. So he said, “I have friends that make $60,000 a year that are happier than my friends that make $6 million a year.”

Dr. Paul Goodman:
Because they coach their kids’ sports teams. So dentists just need to pull back and say, “What’s important to me?” No one really cares about what you, no one really even asked each other what they earned, but dentists constantly go capture more new patients, more money, and they don’t really stop and think and say, “Is this hurting my morale?”

Dr. Paul Goodman:
So to insulate yourself from burnout, I think, one of the things, some things I’m doing in my practice currently, and I’ve been in the same problem, growth, add, do, more new patients. How many new patients? Do you have a new patient sit on the new patient’s lap while you have a new patient? One of the things I would say is, I’m grandma finding our practice. We’ve changed our hours. We are now basically operating from nine to 4:00 PM. We are a daylight hour practice, no more one night work till six. It’s just, I think I’ve tried to, I think this is a perfect time to recenter patient expectations during this pandemic and create a dental life where you can still have time for your family, not be starting a new procedure, full contact arts and crafts at 6:00 PM. So that’s just protecting your morale for longevity. I mean, are you, I don’t know, are you a big basketball fan by chance, Ryan or not?

Ryan Isaac:
I enjoy it. You couldn’t say, like I don’t know statistics of it. So I like [crosstalk 00:21:14].

Dr. Paul Goodman:
So someone’s got this and this here though? So my dream was to be a basketball player-

Ryan Isaac:
Really? Okay.

Dr. Paul Goodman:
But basically how would they say, you have to get-

Ryan Isaac:
Hold on, hold on. What was your dream team, actually, when I was a kid I wanted to play for the Detroit Pistons so bad and my friends, I don’t know where we got this, would chuck the ball at me as hard as they could. And they said, “The Pistons throw the ball harder at each other than any other team in the league.” So we would practice catching the ball really hard. I don’t know where we got that. [crosstalk 00:21:37].

Dr. Paul Goodman:
I have the bad boys back then. So I want to be [inaudible 00:21:40] in ’76, there’s bark and all those guys. So someone’s going to hear your podcast and know exactly what I’m saying, but I’ll explain it. So you should Gregg Popovich your career. What does that mean? Gregg Popovich is one of the most successful coaches for the San Antonio Spurs. He had one of the best players in the NBA, Tim Duncan. He had Kawhi Leonard. Gregg Popovich doesn’t care what people think of him, he cares about success. So what Gregg Popovich would do, would he would rest his star players during the season to get ready for the playoffs. So instead of playing them in every single NBA regular season game, he preserved their energy. And dentists have to do that if they want to make it through this career.

Dr. Paul Goodman:
And some of it’s your mental energy, Ryan. The crown prep part of holding the burr. I’m just saying, I don’t want to brag, but holding the burr, not that tiring. Doing full contact arts and crafts and the people that you’re holding the burr to, that’s the tiring part. So I think I was talking with my friend yesterday in the office. The micro stresses dentists are under, you have to minimize those. Just like, I mean, I was just talking to one of my trainer friends today. When people get on an exercise routine, they want to exercise eight out of seven days a week, and then they hurt themselves and they think they’re going for results. So sometimes mental health things, emotional health, taking time to yourself. But it’s very hard to do in a field where you’ve always just been told to do more and more and more.

Ryan Isaac:
Well. And the hard part is, sometimes it’s hard to, I mean, as humans, we just, we struggle seeing the bigger picture with things. So even though financially speaking for your net worth and your financial longevity, it might be better for you to make little less money now, but do it for longer periods of time, then more money and shorter periods because you burn out or you get just physically, you just can’t do anymore. Matt, it’s time.

Matt Mulcock:
Time for what, Ryan?

Ryan Isaac:
It’s time to book a free consultation at dentistadvisors.com. Just click on the big book free consultation button on the homepage and talk to one of our friendly advisors today.

Ryan Isaac:
Do you have any other ideas on how to Popovich your life? That’s great. He’s like, he’s just like such a boring winning person. But there’s sustainability in being boring. There really-

Dr. Paul Goodman:
Just simple strategies for success. So my thing is, look to people within 10 years of your age at all times and ask them really good questions. So what happens, one of the biggest problems, I know it’s very cliche to say gaslighting, is that a 27-year-old fourth year dental student says, “My dentist mentor told me you don’t need to do a GPR.” I’m like, “Okay, tell me more about this,” because I’m a big fan of doing a GPR. Practicing. He was saying. I go, “Okay.” “My dentist mentor told me that you don’t need to do a GPR. My dentist mentor told me that he didn’t do a GPR and he was fine.” I say, “Okay, how old is your dentist mentor?” “70, he’s 70.” “Okay.” I go, “Well, he’s in a different generation, so he can not.” So I don’t talk about my Nokia cell phone and Snake being a cool game to play now.

Ryan Isaac:
Which it was.

Dr. Paul Goodman:
Yeah. So what I say is, “Ask people in 10 year age range back and forth good questions about their career.” Mark Costas, awesome friend of mine. You guys, “Hey, Mark. What is it like to own nine practices?” And he might say, “You know what, if I could do it again, I only would have bought five.” That’s great advice. “Hey, periodontist, what is it like to be a periodontist? Would you do it again?” “Yes, I’m glad I didn’t be a GP.” Ask people good questions without judgment and just hear their stories. One of the things, the biggest problems, if you have people listening to this, say, “Okay, I want to listen to this.” The biggest problem in dental education, in dental school is this. I have a six and a two-year-old. So if you want to ask me how to manage a two-year-old, I’m very good at it right now. It doesn’t mean I’m perfect.

Dr. Paul Goodman:
If you ask me in 10 years, I don’t know about two-year-olds as much. So what happens is, dental school instructors could be amazingly meaningful. They mean to help well, but they either never owned a practice, or they owned it 30 years ago, or they started 20 years ago. And they’re just not in the relevant private practice world to be delivering the realistic training to succeed in that world. So it doesn’t mean that they’re irrelevant. It doesn’t mean that they’re terrible. It doesn’t mean that they aren’t good. It just means that the most important people coming into our industry are not getting advice from the right people at the right time. So I think asking people within 10 years of your age range really good questions is my best advice there.

Ryan Isaac:
I really like that. Maybe the last thing we could touch on is, if we rewound the tapes and went back 12 to 14 months, the shutdown wouldn’t have been on the radar of anyone, could this happen? That wouldn’t have been something we would have thought much about. are there any weaknesses or areas that could be improved in dentistry that could be future problems? Like system-wide problems, things that we can try to look forward in the future and maybe start fixing today?

Dr. Paul Goodman:
100%. There are some things I’ll say, and I’ll share this authentically from my own practice life with multiple practices. One, I would try to develop my own line of credit. That would just be six of one, half a dozen of another. So one weakness would be, dentists tend to make money, pay payroll, pay themselves and move on. Make money, pay payroll, pay themselves. Now, I am a very, I’m a rationalist, Ryan. So if I have saved, just use an example. If I took money from my practice, I’ve saved a $100,000 in a bank account. It’s my money that I could use back towards the practice if I needed, but it feels different once you remove it from the practice, it just feels different.

Dr. Paul Goodman:
So one of the things I would encourage dentists to do, even though I had access to lines of credit, to create your own line of credit, your own cushion inside of your practice for unforeseen expenses in a month. Just like the personal emergency fund, because there was times in the beginning of the pandemic where I was most concerned for my team. Because I, once again, going back to the beginning, I was lucky to have parents that taught me well, and I had enough savings to live my life for a year, right? Just a year plus. If I didn’t make $1, I would not be on the proverbial streets for a year, and it would be … But I know my team.

Dr. Paul Goodman:
It’s also the timing. What if you’re 26-years-old, you just graduated from college and you work at a dental front desk while you’re going to study for your physical therapy degree? That’s difficult. I wouldn’t have had this money when I was 27 years old. So also, people always say, “Practice owners should have planned.” What if you just bought your practice a year ago?

Ryan Isaac:
You didn’t have any money.

Dr. Paul Goodman:
Just timing, right? This is why I want to have Dental Nachos to have authentic conversations. So the weaknesses are, not talking about money enough, not planning for, not treating your practice like a person, and planning for an emergency safety net there. And then also the third thing I want to say, the last thing is, having really authentic conversations with your team about how money works in the office. And I think just explaining to them, because I think there’s a disconnect.

Dr. Paul Goodman:
So if you said to my six-year-old, “Could dad buy this plane?” She would say, “Yes.” I just want to share with you. I don’t have plane money. So she’s under a misconception, because she’s never been in a situation where she’s seen me not be able to pay for something. We’ve never been asked to buy a plane, she would see that, right? But my point is, the team is a lot of times under a misconception about how money works in a practice. I think-

Ryan Isaac:
What are some examples? I think that’s fascinating. I never thought about that before. Like that money communication between a dentist and team, what are something that come to mind when you say that?

Dr. Paul Goodman:
Some of it is I don’t, the most fundamental one will be how overhead works. So I think a lot of times they see patients paying 1,300 for a crown, they see deposits of $15,000 and they only kind of see these daily things, they don’t always see how they add up. And they don’t realize that 60 to 70% of what is taken in could be overhead. Okay, so that’s one thing. Two, I think they don’t totally get the payroll costs of things like vacation, holidays, 401(k)s, health insurance. So I mean those restaurants, Ryan, it really ruins the fun. You know, when they put the calories on the menu. You’re like, “Well, now I don’t want to eat the stuff.”

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah, I hate that. I kind of hate that.

Dr. Paul Goodman:
I think we need to put the calories on the menu for our team and say, “Hey,” and I’ve actually read this from Dentaltown and other people. So this isn’t my original thing, like come up with a sheet. Ryan, you work at Pennington Dental and you make $50,000 a year, but your cost of this office is $68,000 a year because you have health insurance and this. And it should be something you’re proud of. I mean, when I say this to you, I say, “Be proud of where you’ve come in life.” But I just think, would you be, you’re using fitness. People say, “I don’t know how I gained 20 pounds?” But they go back they’re going to say, “Yes, I ate too much ice cream during the pandemic.” So kind of explaining the extra calories to teams. So that would be really my things for the office.

Ryan Isaac:
Have you seen someone do that well? I mean, is it as simple as opening up the P&L and saying-

Dr. Paul Goodman:
I think it’s more about like a one, I’m a big one sheet fan, the one sheets. It’s just kind of creating a one sheet and saying, “Hey, our practice brought in a million dollars. I just want to share with you the expenses to run this practice.” I mean, I think genuinely you could share with your team. Dentists salary is different then practice profit. I know EBIDTA is like, everyone loves EBITDA. They’re going to get a tattoo of EBITDA on their arm. EBITDA for a single practice is not exactly the same as like for a group practice. But I’m just saying like, they don’t understand there’s not a lot of profit built into dental practices outside the dentist salary. And I think, it’s not about sob stories. “Oh, I didn’t pay myself as an owner this one time.” But it’s more about they’re part of your team. And I think yeah, just making a one sheet, like a flow chart how dollars work in an office.

Dr. Paul Goodman:
And I think they would just … Before we go, I had a friend, he was going to do, this is brilliant. So his wife would overspend some, okay? He’s very wealthy, very successful, but she could spend almost all the money. And he said when we were younger, like this is when we were in our 30s. He goes, “One month I’m just going to have my wife pay every bill, just so she sees what goes out of our bank account. Just as an exercise, not because we don’t have enough.” And I think that would be a good experience for a dental practice team to just see, you pay supplies, you pay liabilities, you pay insurances, just so they’d understand that. So I think that would just help bond the team together.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah, I love the conversation about responsible, open dialogue about money. It’s not talked about anywhere and certainly not enough. We could go on forever. This is awesome. Thanks for spending the time with us here. What do you guys have coming up this year? Any cool events or things you want to give a shout out to you and where can people find you guys?

Dr. Paul Goodman:
dentalnachos.com. I’ve tried to build it like ESPN website as all of our stuff. But we are returning some in-person events locally here in Philadelphia, which I’m really excited about. You guys have come in and done some awesome events. Your team came in right before the pandemic. So we have some upcoming events on dentalnachos.com. I really am trying to continue, and I was doing this before the pandemic with fun CE on TV, creating like, continue education on TV in a fun way with exciting speakers. We have one coming up with our Dental Nachos Supreme on digital photography and veneers. So they can check that out at dentalnachos.com too. Anyone can reach out to me at salsa@dentalnachos.com. I love people just emailing me random stuff, questions. It’s my favorite thing to do. My team helps me with these emails. So please feel free to reach out to me.

Ryan Isaac:
Okay, last one. Your favorite, first thing comes to mind, favorite Mexican restaurant you’ve been to around the country as you’ve traveled?

Dr. Paul Goodman:
Oh, it’s easy for me. Well, El Vez, I’m going to say El Vez, but that’s a homegrown one. So El Vez in New York. That’s actually, so now let me try and think of outside I’ve traveled to that’s really good. I mean, I don’t want to go as easy as Dos Caminos in New York City. Coming out to Arizona in May, for a more [inaudible 00:33:18] event. And there’s a great one there, but I can’t, it just escape me. So I’ll have to report back. But El Vez in Philadelphia is my favorite.

Ryan Isaac:
Hit me up. I got a favorite breakfast burrito spot out here in Arizona. I’ll let you know.

Dr. Paul Goodman:
Oh nice.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah, let me know.

Dr. Paul Goodman:
I’ll shoot you a message.

Ryan Isaac:
Okay. Well, thanks for all you do, man. And for educating the masses and taking time with us here today. And you have a great week, man. We’ll catch you around. We’ll see you later, soon.

Dr. Paul Goodman:
You too, Ryan, you’re doing awesome stuff.

Ryan Isaac:
Thanks, Paul. Take care, everybody. Bye-bye.

 

 

Practice Management