Post-Pandemic Marketing Strategies – Episode #324

Most people search for answers to three simple questions when looking for a dentist. To successfully market your practice, you better know what they are! On this episode of the Dentist Money™ Show, Ryan greets Michael Anderson and Laura Maly of the Wonderist Agency. The pandemic pause provided time to rethink practice growth. Hear why getting back to marketing basics can pay off.

 

 

Show Notes:
www.wonderistagency.com
Instagram: wonderistagency

 

 

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Podcast Transcript

Ryan Isaac:
Hello, everybody. Welcome back to another episode of Dentist Money Show. Thanks for tuning in today. We are bringing you an episode today that we recorded live from the 2022 voices of dentistry conference. Basically all the cool people in podcasting and the dental world, and then us too. And we we had the chance to sit down with a lot of cool friends and a lot of cool companies and just have some good conversations today on the show we interview Michael and Laura from the Wonderist Agency who has like the coolest office in the world in San Diego, which I love a little partial to it, but they talk to us about, the state of marketing in a practice, right now, 2022, the things that have changed. Where dentists are looking for the future to make changes, to keep growing their businesses.

Ryan Isaac:
Some of the cool things they’re working on. And we started talking about what it’s like to just run a business like all of our dentists and listeners are. What it’s like to be a busy parent have a big team and a lot of things to manage in your life and how to balance it all and so it was a super cool conversation with long term friends of ours. We love these guys. So thanks for being with us, Mike and Laura, and for all of you listening and tuning in we appreciate that. And it was cool to see some of you at the Voice of Dentistry show. If you have any questions for us, go to Dentistadvisors.com, click the book free consultation link. Let’s have a chat. We’d love to talk to you. Thanks for being here everybody, enjoy the show.

Announcer:
Consulting advisor 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. I’m your host, Ryan Isaac coming to you live from voices of dentistry, day two, groggy, tired, full, people are hungover. I don’t know what this situation is at this table, but it’s been a good couple days. I’m here with Michael and Laura Mally, the Wonderist Agency, favorite town, San Diego. What’s up guys?

Michael Anderson:
I think my voice is two octaves lower…

Ryan Isaac:
That’s what I’m saying.

Michael Anderson:
Today than…

Ryan Isaac:
I feel like it’s a weird… Usually when we record, it’s like middle of the week, you’ve had like a normal day, a night of sleep. You guys have a baby. So I don’t know if you have normal days and nights of sleep anymore these days.

0:02:19.1 Laura Maly: No it’s constant sleep deprivation, but I need to note one thing the way you, introduced us makes it sound like Michael’s last name is Mally, which is one of my most favorite things.

Ryan Isaac:
Oh yes, no, that’s not true. Let’s Correct this.

Michael Anderson:
I did not take her name when we got married. Just to Clarify.

Ryan Isaac:
Yes no yeah…

Michael Anderson:
I boldly kept my own.

0:02:34.1 LM: And then…

Ryan Isaac:
I kind of like that we did that though. You know what? Let’s do this.

Michael Anderson:
So.

Ryan Isaac:
It’s Laura Maly.

Michael Anderson:
Right after we got married, you go on the honeymoon. We want a little mini moon beforehand. And my first moment of married life was getting to the hotel and she books all of our reservations. So they said, “Oh, Mr. And Mrs. Mally welcome.” [chuckle] And I was like, I’m just settling in for the next…

Ryan Isaac:
Dude, just roll with it.

Michael Anderson:
Yeah.

Ryan Isaac:
My daughters, I have four girls and they are really bothered by that. They’re like, “I don’t want someone’s last name.” I’m like, “Don’t take it.”

Laura Maly:
Well, I don’t want…

Ryan Isaac:
Keep your own…

Laura Maly:
No offense, Michael.

Ryan Isaac:
Keep your own dude.

Laura Maly:
Michael, you’re the equivalent of being John Doe, Michael Anderson. So like, I would love to take your last name, but it’s…

Ryan Isaac:
That is Laura’s last name.

Laura Maly:
Just a little vanilla.

Ryan Isaac:
And Michael Anderson’s last name is his own. So we have Michael Anderson, Laura Mally it’s day two Voices of Dentistry and yeah, it’s been good. Okay. So here’s what I want to chat about a couple things today, I think would be really interesting. I want to talk about first, what you guys are up to, it’s been a wild couple years. For everybody there’s like so many, like dynamic changes going on practices in the industry and just a lot of things changing in the way probably people are implementing… Man, their teams and their systems and their processes, their hiring, their marketing. You guys are like right in the middle of all that stuff. So I want to hear what you guys are up to. So maybe just start there, like what’s 2022 starting out for you guys. What are you working on? What’s new. Like what changed in the landscape of dentistry and marketing and growth in the last couple of years?

Laura Maly:
Well, we… I had high aspirations ’cause I was coming off maternity leave Jan one.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah.

Laura Maly:
Which really doesn’t exist when you own a business.

Ryan Isaac:
No.

Laura Maly:
Because. I just…

Ryan Isaac:
And which I want to talk about this whole thing. Yeah.

Laura Maly:
And I, I had… I spent the week between Christmas and new year’s our nanny had COVID so we thought we were gonna have this like nice week to get caught up and get our everything. And then we promptly got COVID. And so really Jan one was like last week for us. [chuckle] And it all went to hell. In a hand basket.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah. Fast.

Michael Anderson:
Yeah.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah. Just it’s crazy busy. Okay. It’s pretty normal for everybody.

Laura Maly:
On a work note. Why don’t you take that one?

Michael Anderson:
Yeah. You know what, it’s…

Ryan Isaac:
What’s been going on.

Michael Anderson:
It’s I think the thing that I appreciated the most about this sort of crazy ride we’ve been on for the last gosh two years now, is that everybody had this shared experience about having to really look back at their businesses reflect And kind of get, it was just a big kick in the butt for everybody. It was a kick in the butt for us. There were, there were things that we knew we were gonna do. It was the next step for the agency. And then all of a sudden, When everyone collectively looks at their businesses, it might not be here tomorrow. You get off your butt and you go. And I think that it was great to see so many of our dentists have that same experience and, and that same approach. And so what we’ve found is I think a lot of our dentists have really crystallized on what it is they want in their practice.

Michael Anderson:
It could be the type of cases as they’re doing. It could be the type of growth they expect. Do I want to bring an associate in, is an associate not working for me and I need to do it differently. So we’ve had a lot of great conversations with dentists that I think have a lot more clarity in what they wanna do. And so I think that has been kind of the prevailing theme that I’ve seen emerge over the last year for us. And what we’ve really continued to lean into is just going back to our fundamental belief that I know we talk about every time with you, which is that if we cannot help you be different in your market, if all you have to say is I’m a dentist and that’s, that’s the flag that you put up. You’re not going to meet the goals that you have.

Michael Anderson:
So I think that, we’ve just continued to lean into how do we develop strategies to support our clients in really standing out and being different in the market. So, that’s kind of the backbone. The other thing that we’ve really seen emerge as an opportunity and it’s a big shift for us. It’s something we spent the last year working on is adding a third piece of really the marketing strategy that, that we roll out for clients. So that first piece is, how do you differentiate? What is the… What is the story that you have to tell? The second piece is now that you have something to say, step up on a soapbox and talk to and audience.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah. How you are gonna say it. Yeah.

Michael Anderson:
And that’s what we think about as marketing. Is it Google ads? Is it SEO?

Ryan Isaac:
The how.

Michael Anderson:
Is it Facebook? What are the channels? Where do we tell the story? And then the third piece is, once you get someone interested, once they say, “You know what, I might want to learn more about veneers.” or “I might want to come in and learn about implants.” How do you follow up with them and nurture them? And I think that’s been a missing piece for so many practices because right now, how it works, is the patient will call and then will say something, let me talk to my partner, and then crickets go. And if you don’t have a system to follow up…

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah, life gets busy. Especially… Things are going on. So I’m curious, had any of those steps changed? Like, the story… “The what”… What’s the story we’re gonna tell? And then “the how”, have those changed over the last two years with, like you said, plans change, the kind of the rug got pulled out from under a lot of businesses. Everyone got scrappy, a lot of companies are running on fewer resources, like people resources now, has that changed at all? The “What”, the story dentists are telling to their patient base, their neighborhoods, the cities they’re in? Or how they’re telling it? Or has it been a pretty steady… Is it always… What used to work is still working.

Michael Anderson:
The thing I love about sort of the approach that we’re taking is, it’s not revolutionary and it’s not new, it’s what it is, it’s foundational. And so for me, what I’ve seen shift is people are taking it a lot more seriously because they feel the need to connect, in a different way, they feel the need to actually say, “You know what? I don’t wanna just blend in with all the other dentists, I see that the way I’m gonna succeed is to stand out.” And that could be ditching stock images and taking photos, it could be saying, “I’m going to do that.

Ryan Isaac:
It should be.

Michael Anderson:
Always.

Ryan Isaac:
Please. Yah.

Michael Anderson:
But ultimately, I think that, that is a strategy that worked in the 60s and worked in the 90s, it works today and so for me, keeping that consistent is key, the new thing we’re adding, though, and this is the question I would put out there to any dentist is, Do you have a lead list? And if all of a sudden your brain is scrambling, “Wait a second, I’ve got my patient list I’ve got my…

Ryan Isaac:
My active and inactive.

Michael Anderson:
Patient management tool, what about my lead list? What about people that are flirting with the practice, they’ve maybe called, they filled out a form online, they chatted with us somewhere. Where is the list of those people?” And that’s really the next step that we see marketing taking, is making sure that all the different places you talk to people, whether it’s your website, a form, Instagram, Facebook, now Google messaging, all these things that are coming up, they all ladder back into one list where you can easily send a text message, easily send an email, or create an automated drip sequence that squeeze people down. And that, for me, has been a missing piece for a lot of people’s marketing.

Ryan Isaac:
Well, so like in dentistry, that seems like a concept… That’s a concept that’s been in so many other industries, like a lead list, a marketing funnel system, and that’s a long concept that’s been around for a long time, but in Medical Services, dentistry, that’s probably really new, probably, like really foreign to be like… Like you said, leads… Who’s a lead?

Michael Anderson:
It’s almost a dirty word, right?

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah. It feels dirty but it’s all…

Michael Anderson:
Perspective patient is more palatable. But the reality is it’s a business and it’s a lead, and most front desk do not have the training or the time to follow up for weeks, for months and continue to nudge someone, and it’s a lot to… Okay… What’s the cadence? What do I say? How do I remember? And really, all that stuff is automated.

Ryan Isaac:
Well it’s kind of like, it’s the whole… Dentistry already constantly is trying to get better and better at just recare. Getting people who are already active patients.

Michael Anderson:
Same concept.

Ryan Isaac:
Let alone a prospective patient who hasn’t even engaged yet. Yeah, it’s a whole new concept. So like, how does a dentist begin to… Because it feels like a big… Maybe, paradigm shift, or just the way to think about your business without a feeling, like, dirty, like, leads… I’m in the medical industry, these aren’t leads, I’m not selling widgets. How do you train people to start thinking about that way or do tools… I mean, I imagine maybe tools or software systems kind of help shape how that happens, and so it’s not as, like, weird or foreign or hard to manage?

Michael Anderson:
I think if we just take a big step back and we look at what is the trend in our society right now, convenience is the word that comes bubbling up for me, it’s like whether it’s Uber, whether it’s Uber Eats, whether it’s Netflix…

Ryan Isaac:
Totally. That’s like, it drives my whole life, it’s like, what’s convenient… And fun… That’s it. Yeah.

Michael Anderson:
What’s convenient. And so, if you’re not building your business for convenience, then you’re going to lose to people that are. And I think understanding that we’re seeing a shift right now in dentistry from the clinical dentist to the entrepreneurial dentist. People that are approaching their dental office from an entrepreneurial mindset, understand that it’s okay to say the word “lead”, to say, “I need to get more leads in the door.”, “How do I have more of those conversations?” And that means that every single place that your business can show up, you wanna have a gateway, your website, live chat, social media, be active, make sure people message you there, use call tracking and make sure that you start to see who is calling you and what’s the action they take. So ultimately, for us, the answer has been to build on top of a software that is entirely focused on doing this lead management, and so for us, we get to come in and we get to build a system totally geared for a dentist that has all of these really intricate follow-ups for people, if they’re reaching out about implants, reaching about All on Four, and it just does the work for the dentist.

Ryan Isaac:
And the convenience, I imagine a lot of people view marketing as a one-time spend, they’ll think about a marketing agency and be like, “Oh, you spend whatever you spend that year and you get a website set up and you get some stuff and… And that’s over, right?” But that’s not really how it works long-term, so I guess I’m asking current marketing agency services, things you guys are doing. It’s not just a one-time experience, you guys are with people for a long period of time, hopefully, the accountability process and just keeping it all like you’re saying, how do you keep it going for years and years? It’s not just a one-time event.

Laura Maly:
No, we obviously do the stuff that would be more one time, that’s a logo, that’s a website, and obviously there’s changes and updates, continuously adding to the site.

Michael Anderson:
Yeah. Those have to be changed… But internally in their office, they have to maintain that…

Laura Maly:
Yeah. And we help them do that, obviously…

Ryan Isaac:
Exactly…

Laura Maly:
But… Yeah. If you wanna keep the new patient flow going and that’s an interest to you in growing your practice then, yeah, we do soup to nuts, everything, PPC, social, SEO.

Michael Anderson:
The hardest conversations we have are with dentists that… Their practice peaked 10 years ago, and it was a million dollar practice, and that’s kind of frozen in the mind. It should be a million dollar practice, but it’s declined. Now it’s maybe at 750,000, and they’re ready to sell. And it’s like, “Hey, can we just pump this up for the next six months?” And I think for me, where conversations always start with marketing, is what is your goal? And there’s some practices that just maintain on referral and if that’s the case, good for you. But you’re still, in a way, continuing to support that system by providing good service, right? By continuing to take care of your…

Ryan Isaac:
It’s still process. It’s still team…

Michael Anderson:
Exactly.

Ryan Isaac:
The team internally is what… You guys could come in and make it all begin. I mean, it’s like building a good investment account. You can build a good investment account, but if there’s not long-term behavior, a healthy savings rate, doesn’t really matter what investments you put in an account, if it’s not, like, you gonna stick to it or save money into it long term. Yeah. That’s kind of an interesting thing. So anything new for you guys that you’re working on right now? Any new things that are growing a lot? That you’re excited about? What’s coming up this year?

Laura Maly:
Always. We’re, probably to… [chuckle] To our own detriment, we’re constantly…

Ryan Isaac:
Constantly.

Laura Maly:
Picking apart, redoing, editing, finishing something and then making it better. Iterate, iterate, iterate.

Ryan Isaac:
Every entrepreneur can relate to that, yeah. It’s like a disease, almost.

Laura Maly:
Yeah, we have a bunch of new stuff coming out this year. We have a new onboarding process for our clients coming in. That’s exciting. It’s gonna create a lot of infrastructure and automations and resources for our clients so that they can be better faster, stronger, quickly and more easily.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah.

Laura Maly:
We have a lot of our lead flow stuff coming down the pipe, which Michael was just talking about. I’m trying to think what else we have.

Michael Anderson:
So there’s a couple of initiatives. The first one that Laura talked about, clients that are coming in in 2022, we’re starting out with this comprehensive marketing strategy deck that we present to them right off the bat, so we’re all on the same page. And that might sound kind of like a no-brainer, but the way that we’re doing it is making sure that we do work through our system both with our team and with the client so that we’re lock step. We’re speaking the same language. So we’ve spent a lot of time crafting that system.

Ryan Isaac:
That’s kind of the onboarding process that you were talking about.

Michael Anderson:
Yep. And then the next thing that we’ve been working really hard on is just improving our own products. So we build websites, and a lot of times, I think, from a dentist perspective, it’s like a website’s a website. That’s a lot like me saying, “A crown’s a crown.” It’s like, “Wait a second, we do Starrett crowns versus we’ve got a great lab.” You could talk about that for hours, and websites are the same. And so we’ve spent a lot of time overhauling the way that we build websites. And I think one of the things that we’ve shifted is five years ago, seven years ago, when we set the tone for the websites that we build today, we were thinking about designing things differently. Different looks and feels. And now what we’re doing is we’re really building websites to serve specific types of dentists. You’re a dentist that’s really focused on implants? This website is built for that. You’re a scratch practice that has very specific needs? This website is built for that.

Michael Anderson:
And so that has been a real mindset shift for us, and we’re just launching those new sites in 2022, and we’re very, very excited about that. And the last thing we’re rolling out something called the Wonderful CRM, and like we were talking about, if anyone’s listening, like, “Oh man, this idea of automating follow-up to people that are interested in me sounds good,” this comes with online scheduling. It comes with live chat baked in, call tracking, you can do SMS, texting, you can do email out to leads, and it’s all in one platform. The best part is the way we build it, you can go in and actively use it, or you can just let it work on its own and people are gonna come and build that list, and it just continues to squeeze them until they come into practice. So that’s a huge thing.

Ryan Isaac:
That’s cool.

Michael Anderson:
We’ve worked on it for a whole year, and we’re really excited to roll that out.

Ryan Isaac:
In our industry, there’s a lot of misconceptions. There’s a lot of old ideas, old attitudes about all kinds of things and money and finance and investments, and that onboarding process is just… It’s so important to not only do stuff and strategy, but educate and teaching. You have to reshape people’s mindsets around things. I’m just curious what it’s like for you guys in teaching dentists about new mindsets around marketing.

Laura Maly:
Oh man.

Ryan Isaac:
Do you not have a couple of hours?

Laura Maly:
Yeah. Go ahead.

Michael Anderson:
I think that at the end of the day, if I’m going to the dentist, and the dentist is placing an implant, I don’t really want the dentist to explain every part of the process to me.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah, true.

Michael Anderson:
I don’t want to get down to the…

Ryan Isaac:
Which isn’t that hard, though, when you’re like… The dentist struggles to not explain that. I struggle to not talk for hours about nerdy investment stuff. And you guys are probably holding back explaining marketing strategy and philosophy. You don’t wanna overwhelm people.

Michael Anderson:
And that’s it. At the end of the day, we all have this deep need to be understood, and I would love to take the next hour and go into the… Let’s go through each step of the website process. Let’s talk about…

Ryan Isaac:
Because it matters. There’s well-thought out process and philosophy behind the way you’re doing things. It’s not like, “That picture looks pretty, and that’s a good color scheme.” It’s, like, there’s studies behind this. There’s research. This matters…

Michael Anderson:
Here’s a great example. Websites… Ultimately, Google is still a content machine, and it’s gonna look at your website and see what keywords are actually on it. But I think a lot of people preference more of a streamlined, simple design. You don’t wanna have a wall of text on your own page. So you can have elements that you bring in that they can take text, and it’s almost like a slider. So you see testimonials. We’ve all seen this. There’s one testimonial, and then you click the arrow, and there’s another, and there’s another. What’s great about that, we just took a long wall of text, and we hid it in a really delicate, nice, pleasing way. So there’s all these psychological things that go into both aesthetic design and design that’s also built for a search engine, and we could talk about that for hours.

Michael Anderson:
But here’s the fact of the matter, and this is, I think, is increasing what we’ve learned: Five years ago when someone would ask, “What do you do? Tell me about marketing,” I would start to hear myself go down this rabbit hole of, “And we optimize our websites, and meta titles and tags, and image compression,” and I could just see their mind is wandering. Not that they didn’t agree with what I was saying, but, “Here’s what we do. We sit down with people… ” let’s go back to dentist. At the end of the day, the way people make decisions is they’re going to look at a dentist. They’re gonna first say, “Do they look like a nice person I can trust?” Then they’re gonna look in the background and say, “Does this office look like it’s comfortable?” And then they’re gonna say, “Does anyone else think… ”

Ryan Isaac:
Agree with that, yeah.

Michael Anderson:
“… This dentist is a good dentist?” And that’s it. So the reality is, we’re all walking through the world wildly unqualified to make the decisions that we make, and anyone that’s kind of, like, “Michael and Laura, they have Wonderist Agency, they do marketing.” Do I think that they could help me? All that’s gonna really happen at the end of the day is we’re gonna have a conversation and you’re gonna either say, “I think I trust you guys, and I want you to be the professionals to get it done,” and I think we’ve actually moved away from this idea of let’s go into the nitty-gritty of helping you understand each part of the website. What we need to do is talk about the fundamental thing that’s gonna change it, which is you better not have stock images and what makes you different. And I hate to keep coming back to that, but that is the hardest part. And if you can do that well, everything else works.

Laura Maly:
Yep.

Ryan Isaac:
Laura, you were telling me something yesterday about… Maybe you wanna talk about your virtual consult, right?

Laura Maly:
Yep.

Ryan Isaac:
Is that the official name?

Laura Maly:
That is the official name.

Ryan Isaac:
You have some cool sweaters on there.

Laura Maly:
I try.

Ryan Isaac:
You were talking about part of the… And this is maybe a cultural thing, it’s a generational thing, you’re talking about part of the struggle with that, and you’ll probably have to explain a little bit of the process, was getting people comfortable and just sharing themselves over content. Whether it’s video or audio, you guys probably remember the first days you record a thing. ’cause I remember our first podcast, and it’s horrifying to go back and even listen to them. I can’t even do it. Do you wanna talk? I just thought it was a really fascinating thing, because I think about my kids and their friends, and there’s a zero shame now that you can be in a public square full of thousands of people and doing a dance on an app. No one cares. Younger people don’t care about that. After a certain age, we have this built-in self-consciousness about putting ourselves out into content. Maybe explain a little bit about what the service is, and then what that struggle is like and how people can… Why it matters to get over that and learn an authentic way to do it.

Laura Maly:
Yeah. Wonderist agency has a sister company called Your Virtual Consult, and that is something that was Mike’s idea a couple of years ago. And really what it does is it lowers the barrier to entry to get prospective patients to engage with a doctor, Dentist via their website or via inquiry through uploading some photos telling their story and telling their story.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah, telling your story.

Laura Maly:
Like the Medicare, right? And submitting it to the doctor and the doctor will get back to you with a customized video and say, “Hey, we do cases like this all the time.” And the context of which you and I were talking about it was… It’s been an interesting proposition because we’re doing podcasts all the time, and Mike and I are on stage and we’re here at these events talking all the time…

Ryan Isaac:
But after a while you don’t even care, right? You’re just like, “I’ll get it later.

Laura Maly:
And you just get used to it, right?

Ryan Isaac:
Yes, yes.

Laura Maly:
It’s been interesting for me watching some of our doctors sit down to record their custom videos, which we ask them to do, because I can sense that there’s a lot of anxiety for them doing that, and so what I’m trying to figure out in my head and turn over is how do we create resources to lower the barrier to entry for…

Ryan Isaac:
Totally…

Laura Maly:
For our docs to get in front of a video camera and feel really comfortable, and it’s been an interesting paradox and me having to revisit where I was, and I still… I mean, I was on stage yesterday…

Ryan Isaac:
Well, you used to sing and dance. [chuckle]

Laura Maly:
Doing a silly song and dance, and I had terrible anxiety about it, and I forget… I forget what that’s like sometimes. And so how do we do that for a doctor in a way that makes them feel comfortable and happy and confident, and feel like when they do sit down and they do start recording something that they’re being wholly themselves.

Ryan Isaac:
Themselves. Yes.

Michael Anderson:
And authentic, and organic, and aligned with what they want to convey in the practice. That was an interesting conversation that I’ve been having in the last couple of weeks. We hopefully, this will be helpful. Yesterday, we launched a teleprompter as part of the platform.

Ryan Isaac:
Oh, cool.

Laura Maly:
The doc can literally have their script scrolling and be looking…

Ryan Isaac:
And not get frozen. Yeah.

Laura Maly:
Right. And even I was recording a video… I was recording an Instagram story the other day, and I put it in the group text to Tom, and Michael, and Joe, and I was just like, “I am having a hell of a time doing this video.” And I [laughter] screenshotted all my photo… I took like 30 takes of this dumb 10-second video.

Ryan Isaac:
I know, I know. So dumb, yeah.

Laura Maly:
What’s wrong with me today? I’s just an interesting thing to think about, ’cause you’re right, you were talking about it with your girls. They’ll open up the camera, they’ll put the most boring thing in the world on. Brian Mills is showing us a video of his kids yesterday, and it was just… It’s like nothing.

Ryan Isaac:
They don’t care.

Laura Maly:
It’s like water off a duck’s back.

Ryan Isaac:
It’s just… Maybe… I don’t know, it’s just… It’s normal, it’s a normal thing now.

Laura Maly:
And yet, it’s such a learned behavior for us 30-something, I guess.

Ryan Isaac:
Well, it’s tough, when you’re gonna speak, or do content, or video, or podcast, or something you have in your, we all have in our heads the ideal of what is a good speaker, what’s a good podcaster. And we maybe subconsciously try to mimic it and then it comes across not authentic, and we get weird and we clam up and it’s just nerve-racking. It’s really scary. What I’ve learned about content is just, it matters that you… Anything else that you just keep doing it. It’s consistent. If a doctor is like, “Okay, I need to post a video of myself, I need to make an intro to my practice and what this thing is,” it matters that you probably do that a lot, and not that you do one perfect one.

Laura Maly:
Right.

Ryan Isaac:
Which is hard to get over.

Laura Maly:
We talk about that a lot with our docs too. When, especially with the Scratch-starts, who are just kind of getting their sea legs under them and they’re opening the lid on what’s gonna be an entirely new life change for them. And we have a bunch of resources about teaching them how to give their sales pitch essentially. And we say, practice on everybody, and it just becomes a part of who you are, and it doesn’t matter if it’s the cashier at the grocery store, the lady behind you is just keep doing it.

Matt Mulcock:
On the Dentist money show, we teach Dentist how to make smart financial decisions.

Ryan Isaac:
You’re correct.

Matt Mulcock:
It’s that all it takes Ryan to make smart financial decisions, listening to our show?

Ryan Isaac:
Matt, it’s a good first step. But to put your financial future on the fast track, the next smart decision is to go to Dentist advisors.com. What you do there is you click on the book free consultation button right in the middle of the home screen, and then you schedule a time to talk with one of our very friendly dental-specific financial advisors today.

Ryan Isaac:
One last thing I wanted to talk about a little bit, this is more like lifestyle and everything. New baby, a couple of kids, life, business doesn’t slow down for you guys, just ’cause the kid comes along. You’re like… Everyone is just jumping right back into it. You guys live right by your office. It’s like work and life is probably just fluid, probably just mixes into everything.

Laura Maly:
Yeah.

Ryan Isaac:
There’s not a cut-off or where like, This is work time, this is lifetime, you got dogs and kids at the office, probably work at home. Have anything to share about that, what it’s like to, you guys have a big business, you have a lot of team, you have a big office, you have tons of clients everywhere, and you’re busier than ever. And, anything to share about parenting and business ownership?

Laura Maly:
I could go on and on, but I think the biggest insight from Michael and I as we were scaling is, and maybe it was less of an insight for Michael, but it was kind of a mind blow for me is, we would go out at night and we’ll be like, “Can’t talk about work tonight.”

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah, yeah.

Laura Maly:
And then, we were like, “Well why, we really like work.”

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah, it’s life, work is life.

Laura Maly:
And so, when I realized that the balance doesn’t exist for me, there’s no work life and then after work life, for me, it’s one big messy pile.

Ryan Isaac:
Yes, denigration, yes.

Laura Maly:
It’s like the most freeing thought in the world, and that really changed the way that I digested life, and it alleviated a lot of stress for me, ’cause I was like, “I’m just gonna allow myself to let this be one big messy pile, and that’s totally cool.” And, we’re so lucky, we are so lucky that we live by our office, we’re so lucky that we have the team that we have, and who are… Roll through our house or we go to their weddings, and we just…

Ryan Isaac:
You guys are really close too, yeah, yeah.

Laura Maly:
We’re super close, and one of the… I was telling Michael this and I popped it in the making of group, the other day, we hired an employee right out of college, and she’s from Wisconsin, we have a weird amount of Wisconsinites, and that’s our home state, they work for us in San Diego.

Ryan Isaac:
Little bias, a little Wisconsin bias.

Laura Maly:
And, it’s the most unintended positive part of owning a business is, and I’m stealing Michael’s line here, but you get to bear witness to people’s lives, you get to watch them grow up, you get to watch them hit milestones, whether it’s work or whether it’s their personal professional life, and you just get to be a part of the journey. And that has been such an exciting thing, we had somebody who’s been a long time employee get engaged last week, and I get chocked, I’m gonna get chocked up thinking about it, but that’s also been one of the greatest blessings. We having family too, is like, we just get to bear witness to all the tiny moments that add up to a lifetime.

Ryan Isaac:
You have these human stories.

Laura Maly:
And so, that’s been really fun, but parenting has been a pleasure, parenting as a business owner has been a pleasure.

Ryan Isaac:
I mean, just for context, we’re at this thing, Wilder. I haven’t seen Wilder unless he’s running in front of somebody, like with the parent or grandparent walking by.

Michael Anderson:
He keeps running over, the dentist implants and worms crew over there has this big fire ball dragon, and he keeps running up to it and saying, “Dinosaur, scary, ra-www.”

Ryan Isaac:
Does he have the of energy?

Michael Anderson:
No, no.

Ryan Isaac:
He’s been running since like 8 AM until 5 PM since I’ve seen him here.

Laura Maly:
He loves Gina’s yappy puppies.

Ryan Isaac:
Oh yeah, the puppies, that’s so awesome.

Laura Maly:
Yeah, they’re fun. It’s been one of the, it’s also been a great and exciting thing for us to be able to bring our kids along on these things and have them be accepted and have it be acceptable.

Ryan Isaac:
Do you feel it’s becoming more normal? I feel like the pandemic, since they shut everything down and we had zoom call in our bedrooms with the kids and the dogs and not dressed professionally really, I feel like it chilled things out a little bit, it’s like a little bit more relaxed, life now does bleed into work, and it kind of should. I don’t… I like what you said about there is no, it’s not work-life balance, work shuts off, life starts, it’s like some days you have free time in the middle of a work day, but then you take calls and emails at night, and then some days it’s more traditional, and I kind of like that flow, I really, I think that’s a testament to somebody who’s found… They do something they love, they truly… Work isn’t just a means to an end, one day, it’s like it’s a part of your life that you’re glad to have a part of your life.

Laura Maly:
Yeah, 100%.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah, I think that’s cool.

Michael Anderson:
I think the thing I’ve connected the most to as we become parents, as our business has grown is, in our relationship is the idea of grace, and it’s something that we talk about a lot, I’m not saying we’re great at it, but I think that being a parent forces you to have more grace in your life, whether or not it comes naturally to you.

Ryan Isaac:
It’s forced on you.

Michael Anderson:
And, I think business ownership does the same thing, and that the reality is, there’s a lot of failure in business, and I think we’re increasingly more comfortable talking about that, I think society kind of has this narrative of like, “You have to fail to succeed,” but the reality of living in that is not easy, and I think that to have daily grace when you don’t get through all your emails, you forget to respond to that person that’s been sitting in your inbox for two days, you don’t handle a conversation at work the way that you want, there’s that little T again, you think about how you said something, grace is such an important part of sort of moving forward, and I think that’s been a real lesson for us in the last two years with the pandemic, with kids, with the business, it’s been.

Ryan Isaac:
It kinda forces you to acknowledge those things and acknowledge into other people, acknowledge your shortcomings, like you know, “I sat on your text for two days, and I’m sorry, I just did, and I’m sorry. So, what can I do, let’s work on it.”

Michael Anderson:
Right, right.

Ryan Isaac:
That’s really cool. Anything else you just wanna share? Thanks for doing this, this is really super cool. It’s been a really good time.

Laura Maly:
We just can’t wait to have you down to San Diego, so you can podcast for us.

Ryan Isaac:
Just for everybody, I love your office, and I haven’t even seen it since the most recent remodel. I see you guys do dinners and yoga, and it looks like the coolest tech start-up in the world, and it’s like this just rad marketing agency in San Diego.

Laura Maly:
We’ve got a good team.

Laura Maly:
We’ve got a good team and Sarah, who manages, her job is to manage the office and the culture, and she is…

Ryan Isaac:
You guys are killing it.

Laura Maly:
She is the…

Michael Anderson:
She manages it.

Laura Maly:
Yeah, she does. She does a damn good job.

Ryan Isaac:
We should talk to Sarah sometime about team culture, or should you guys do.

Michael Anderson:
She could write a book.

Ryan Isaac:
Not really, and it shows, it’s not like just Instagram pictures, it really shows what you guys do with team, and it’s ’cause you love it though, again, it’s that thing you’re talking about, Laura it’s, your work is your life, it is part of your love and your frustrations, I’m sure. [chuckle]

Laura Maly:
Yeah. We’ve got a very soulful team, a very fun team, and the people who wanna contribute and lead exciting lives.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah, that’s so awesome. Where is a good place to find you guys? Reach out, ask questions, contact you guys?

Laura Maly:
Yeah, you can find us at wonderistagency.com, and if you’re interested in the buzzed up meeting, there’s a button where you can click to meet with Forest or Garrett who are our buzzed up team, and they’re hilarious and they’re so fun, so funny, you’ll get a kick out of both of them or you can find us on Instagram, Wonderist Agency, or if you want Michael and I, I’m Laura A. Mally, no E in Mally, Michaels, I don’t know what yours is.

Michael Anderson:
It’s Michael James And.

Ryan Isaac:
Well, yeah, but it’s Anderson, just for the record, to close this thing up, it’s Michael Anderson.

Michael Anderson:
If we’ve learned anything today.

Ryan Isaac:
Michael A. Mally sounds pretty cool, if we have learned anything today, Michael Anderson is laughing, thanks everyone for listening. If you have any questions, hit our website, dentistadvisor.com. Thanks to Wonderist Agency, I love you guys, you guys are awesome. We’ll see you soon, we’ll eat tacos on the boat again.

Michael Anderson:
Let’s do it.

Ryan Isaac:
Thanks everybody, take care, catch you next time. Bye-bye.

Practice Management