Starting From Scratch with Dr. Mike and Stephanie Walton – Episode #424

Starting a practice from scratch is one of the most challenging decisions a dentist can make. This successful dentist and his wife talk about what held them back and the steps they took to finally make a single-owner practice happen. On a Dentist Money Show™ first, Matt welcomes two current Dentist Advisor’s clients as Dr. Michael and Stephanie Walton share their startup journey.

Show notes:
Walton Family Dentistry

The guest being interviewed on this episode is a client of Dentist Advisors.

No cash or non-cash compensation was provided in connection with our guest’s participation and his/her permission for Dentist Advisors to use, publish, stream, and broadcast all or part of this episode originally recorded on August 3, 2023, including the guest’s favorable testimonial of Dentist Advisors.

Dentist Advisors provides investment advisory services and other, non-advisory services for certain of its clients. The guest who participated in this episode provided the testimonial for Dentist Advisors’ use without any payment or arrangement for compensation, discounts, or other benefits.

 

 

 

 

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Podcast Transcript

Matt Mulcock:
Hello, everybody. Welcome to another episode of The Dentist Money Show brought to you by Dentist Advisors. We are very, very excited about this episode. This is actually the first ever client interview, and so I guess I should get that out of the way first, the legal and compliance stuff. This is an interview with clients of Dentist Advisors. They did not receive any compensation, any discount of services for this interview. So with that said, the interview is with Dr. Mike and Stephanie Walton out of Kentucky. They tell an incredible story of their journey through dentistry, how they are now today running a killer practice after 20 years of experience as an associate, owning three different offices, having bad partnerships. Now they run their office together, and I mean that, they run the office together. Mike as the dentist, Stephanie running the show on the office side and they talk about those dynamics, they talk about their journey towards owning a tiny house on a big lot in retirement. They talk about how they’ve gotten off of insurances at their office and the process there and the journey of having a startup and what it took to get that flywheel going. Just incredible work.

Matt Mulcock:
And now they’re really where they’re at today, their biggest focus is loosening up the purse strings and trying to spend more money. So a lot of different things we talk about. We cover a lot of different money topics. Hopefully a lot of things that you’ll find helpful. Hopefully you enjoy one of the first of many client interviews here with, again, Dr. Mike and Stephanie Walton. Enjoy.

Announcer:
Consult an 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.

Matt Mulcock:
Welcome to The Dentist Money Show where we help dentists make smart financial decisions. I am your host today, Matt Mulcock, and I am so excited about today’s show. This is the first time ever we actually are doing a client discussion, client interview with my clients, Dr. Mike and Stephanie Walton. Guys, how are you?

Dr. Mike Walton:
Doing great. Doing great. Glad to be here. Thanks for having us.

Stephanie Walton:
Great. Thank you.

Matt Mulcock:
Yes, of course. I’m so glad we’re doing this again. Full disclosure. This is the first one ever we’ve ever done. And so this is an experiment for all of us. We’re just going to have some fun with this. I want to start with kind of in the… Through the theme of Stephen Covey, the end in mind. I want to start with this, tell us about your dream of having a tiny home on a big lot.

Dr. Mike Walton:
Well, I guess I’ll go first but I want to put a disclaimer out here, Matt, that since this is the first one with a client interview, if it goes south, it’s not my fault.

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah. [laughter] No, if it goes south, this is all on me. I will take full credit or full blame on that one.

Dr. Mike Walton:
So I think it’s just a matter of what our priorities are. We’ve kind of learned a lot going through my career and even opening up our own office, the things that we really want and the things that we really need. And so, our family’s getting older and I think we like to spend time away from the office and time together and I think that’s kind of what the goal is and insight there is having something that’s not too big, that’s just right, it’s just what we need and not going off the deep end with things that aren’t that important.

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah, I love that. And Stephanie, I want you to be able to answer this too from your perspective, but the one thing I’ll say is just in working with you guys, I don’t know if I have many people I’ve talked to that are so locked in on the things they know they want and doing it specifically for themselves, and just not letting any outside pressures get to you, just saying, “No, this is what we want.” You’ve talked about this a lot in our conversations over the years, of that tiny house and that being a dream and knowing you want a big lot of land, but the house is not… Like the size of the house is not as important, so I love that. Stephanie, what about you? Any thoughts on that? Just the dream of the tiny house on the big lot.

Stephanie Walton:
I think we just kind of floated through after graduation, just without any kind of end in mind, just like everybody else does. We went through school, now where we have jobs and that’s what you’re supposed to do. And then we had some adversity. And then that let us get hyper-focused in what we really wanted to do, and then when he opened his own office, we realized how important that was to begin with the end in mind, and then we realized that that’s what we wanted. We wanted peace, we wanted to be minimalist, kind of and focus on experiences, focus on time with our kids, and just those type of things, going out and doing things versus having things.

Matt Mulcock:
I love that, going out and doing things as opposed to having things, that’s amazing. I’m curious, how much has this changed for you, if at all, this kind of end in mind, this goal of having… I mean, we’re talking about the tiny house and the big lot, but there’s a lot more to this, right? How much, if at all, has this vision for you guys changed over the years? Has it changed?

Dr. Mike Walton:
I think it has. You know, well, it has in that I think we’ve become more focused on what we want, I don’t think we really had a goal in mind until we started getting the right pieces of the puzzle in place, we never had coaches for the office, we never had specific financial guidance.

Stephanie Walton:
Mentors.

Dr. Mike Walton:
Mentors to guide us through and then as we did that it kind of honed the path that we were on to say, well gosh, what is it that we really want or what is it that we really need? And I think it’s… As we go out and do things instead of have things, we’re like, “Oh, this is nice. Let’s… ” You know, I think that’s what really stuck us with the little, and I don’t wanna say tiny home, but it’s smaller than what we have. But it was, we kind of did like a weekend vacation to a place and it was meant to be a work vacation where we were focusing on planning for the next year and we were like, “This place is great, this is what we need.” I think that’s when we really started contemplating having something like that towards… As our kids got older and moved out of our house, we didn’t need that big of a space anymore.

Matt Mulcock:
I love that. So it sounds like it’s been a process. It’s been a journey. And what you’re alluding to, Mike, it sounds like you’ve been testing. You’ve almost been like sort of trying to like test this in increments, experience it almost. And with the mindset of saying, what does this feel like? Like, we like this. Like you start doing more things and you’re like, we like the doing of things as opposed to the having of things. But it sounds like it’s been a process for you guys. Would you say that, Stephanie?

Stephanie Walton:
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, totally agree with that.

Matt Mulcock:
That’s awesome. I want to… So we started kind of with the end, I want to go back now to the beginning if possible. Just tell us about the early stages of your career, as you came out of school, what was that like? What was your path from the beginning?

Dr. Mike Walton:
Well, I always thought I was gonna end up at the dentist’s office that I was a patient at. And so…

Matt Mulcock:
As a kid, right?

Dr. Mike Walton:
As a kid, yeah.

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah.

Dr. Mike Walton:
And so, and that was not in my hometown. And so, my thought of hometown dental… You know, we’re from a pretty small town. And there were what seemed to be a lot of dentists in that pretty small town and I never even contemplated going to that town. I thought I’ll just go to the office that I grew up in and kind of started that process. And I actually had an instructor that was retiring to come to our hometown and said, “Hey, you need to check out this office.” And so he kind of turned me on and that was the first time I thought, oh, I can be a dentist in my hometown. And so started out there right out of school as an associate, and was there for several years as an associate, actually became partner there. Had a falling out several years later and moved to a different practice, it was another office in my hometown that I guess the dentist that had been there, had been there for 20 years and was moving, and so I thought it was a good opportunity to stay in hometown, and I was the hometown face in that office.

Dr. Mike Walton:
The other dentist that was there was not originally from Bardstown and so I kinda stepped in over there and we worked a few years and it was a much bigger practice than what I came from. And I think we kind of learned along the way the things that we didn’t want and the things that we wanted and it kind of made us hyper-focused on doing our own thing. And you know, when you get in a situation like that and you don’t have that happiness and you get up every morning and put your feet on the ground and say, “I just got to get through today.” You know, that’s the red flag. And Stephanie was… Lucky enough, I was able to have somebody pick up on that. And she kind of started the search for how can we get started on our own. And because that’s the big scare for everybody coming out of school is you come out with, you’ve got all this debt and no business know-how. And everybody’s afraid to make that leap. She found a group of Ideal Practices that got us hooked up and made it all happen.

Matt Mulcock:
Shout out to Steve and Jamie of Ideal Practices. They’re fantastic. Stephanie, Mike just said that you picked up on that. What did you pick up on during that process with Mike?

Stephanie Walton:
So the first practice, he has always liked what he does and so I really didn’t have anything to do with what he did at the first practice and I had my own career and we had three kids real quick and so I was pretty busy and he was real involved with the kids too but he was doing his career and I was doing mine and he was always really happy, has a great personality, fun guy and then about 12 years into his career had a real sudden falling out with the first guy and that was a whole lot of adversity real quick and had to make that quick decision and then when he started in with the second practice, he can get along with just about anybody and I can tell he…

Matt Mulcock:
I believe that. I believe that. [laughter]

Stephanie Walton:
I can tell he was trying really hard to make the best at the second place and I could tell it wasn’t where he wanted to be. He wasn’t the guy that I married and he was stressed. You could tell he was really, really, really stressed. And I was over at the second practice. I was getting involved because I think he lost his sense of trust in people after the first practice. And I think a lot of people have mixed feelings about when family, especially wives or significant others are involved in the practice. And I do have a stronger personality. I’m the yin to his yang.

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah, you are the yin to his yang for sure.

Stephanie Walton:
[laughter] And I learned a lot along the way about self-awareness and things like that. And he literally did say at the second practice one day really, “I just have to get through today,” and I was like I’m gonna be a widow. This is not gonna work. He worked too hard. We have worked too hard for him to feel like this is life this way and I just started every day that I would get up, sit at the kitchen table, delve into every podcast I could and I just came across, you know, I think… I can’t remember the name of his book.

Dr. Mike Walton:
Startup Blueprint.

Stephanie Walton:
Yeah, that’s what it was.

Matt Mulcock:
Startup Blueprint. Yeah, yeah.

Stephanie Walton:
And I thought, I’m gonna try this and I read it and did all the research, and I was like, “You’re so good with patients. And you’re so good, so passionate about what you do. I can manage.” I’m the manager personality, and we just… I said, “Let’s do this. What do we got to lose? You are so unhappy here and we’re so established in the town, let’s do it.” So.

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah, that’s amazing. And Stephanie, I’ve always admired that about you, just how you dive in to this kind of stuff. Mike, obviously we’ve talked about this, like Stephanie does the research. She comes… Whenever we talk you’re coming to me with, “Hey, I read this, I read this, I’ve listened to this podcast,” and it’s so amazing. And you are literally the yin to Mike’s yang, like, in the best way.

Dr. Mike Walton:
You can go ahead and say it, I’m the luckiest guy on earth. [laughter]

Matt Mulcock:
I mean, I’m not gonna lie, Mike, I’m not gonna lie. So, I’m curious, like, because a startup is scary, right? A startup is really scary, and it sounds like, would you say, Mike, that it took you going through this journey and getting to this point of being like, “I can’t do this anymore.” Like, do you think that gave you the courage to be like, “It can’t be worse than this.” Like, is that how you would define it, sort of?

Dr. Mike Walton:
Yeah, because between the first office and the second one, we actually… I had about 11 months, I guess, to figure out what I was going to do. And we looked at buildings, we looked at lots and had something drawn up. And it was. It was a big undertaking and of course, it was a much smaller time frame to get it done, but when we finally decided to make that move at the second office, it was… I don’t remember having those same fears, I remember just like what you said, it’s like this is the way it’s gotta go. And having somebody help you through it too, where we didn’t have it, I think with the help of Ideal Practices, ’cause they kinda walked us through every little step of it, it made it a lot less stressful.

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah, that’s amazing. Do you think you would have… This is hard to obviously know for sure, but just knowing your journey looking back, do you think you would have ever done the start-up if it wasn’t… ‘Cause it sounds like you’re saying if you’re getting to a point where you’re saying, “Just one more day, just get through another day,” that’s different than saying like, “Eh, it’s not great, but it’s not horrible.” You’re kind of in that middle ground. Do you think you would have done a startup?

Dr. Mike Walton:
If I wouldn’t have got to kick in the butt to make this move and have somebody kinda support me through it all and recognize it and making it… ‘Cause I’m the type of person that would be like, “Ah, this is the bed I made, I must… ”

Matt Mulcock:
Power through. Yeah.

Dr. Mike Walton:
Yeah. I’ll just stick with it. And why put the stress on… I’ll deal with it and not stress her or stress the rest of the family. But what I didn’t realize was it was stressing her because she could see the stress on me.

Matt Mulcock:
Totally.

Dr. Mike Walton:
So without that gentle nudge, yeah, I don’t think. I probably wouldn’t have moved that way on my own, so.

Matt Mulcock:
So we can give Stephanie all the credit here, basically.

Dr. Mike Walton:
That’s right, that’s right.

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah, yeah. So Stephanie, you were obviously, as we just said there, like you were there pushing and doing the research and figuring out how to make this happen, but you weren’t… Or were you? You weren’t very involved like day to day with Mike at that point at the practice or were you?

Stephanie Walton:
In the first practice, he asked, come in, I want to learn a little bit more about the business part of it. And it was totally not my background at all. I worked over at the hospital. And so I started to learn, like how insurance worked and things like that. Came to work two half days a week before, in the very first practice. And so at the second practice, I think he was at the second practice for 4 years, I was there on a daily basis and I did not understand why… It was a lot of, we’ve always done it this way type stuff.

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah.

Stephanie Walton:
And you know what? Even though it was a really bad experience, we learned so much. Adversity is a gift. I mean, you hate to go through a really bad thing like that and come out with not having bad blood with people, but we came away with a lot of things we knew we weren’t going to do.

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah, I love that. And Mike, you said kind of a similar thing and this is really interesting insight. You said, we learned what we didn’t want, which I think is almost the most critical part of these “bad experiences” of saying I don’t know what I want necessarily, but I know what I don’t want. And it sounds like you guys had some very definitive things and I think that’s what experience comes down to, especially for dentists going through an associateship or what you’re describing as maybe a part owner or whatever. You really learn quickly the things… Like the specific things you don’t want, which puts you on a really solid path moving forward. So that’s good to hear.

Dr. Mike Walton:
Yeah. And I think that was eye opening too once we experienced that and realized because it was hard transition from that first practice to the second one when we had that opportunity, do we start up? We didn’t… That was the other big question and maybe that’s what it made it so easy the second go round is the first time there were so many choices of what do we want? And then by the time we got the second go round we had already marked a lot of those off because we had experienced it and we knew we didn’t want that.

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah, that clarity was probably so helpful even though it’s again still scary. So, and then you did the startup. Stephanie, tell me at that point, you were still… You still had your career at the hospital. Right? If I remember this correctly…

Stephanie Walton:
Actually…

Matt Mulcock:
Oh, go ahead.

Stephanie Walton:
Things happen for a reason. I had gotten laid off at that time, so I…

Matt Mulcock:
Oh, okay.

Stephanie Walton:
Yeah. We lost… My contract therapy company had lost the contract at the hospital and so I was full time able to learn everything that I could learn about insurance and just it became my full time job and the kids were at an age where they needed me full time and so, I just felt like things happen for a reason, so.

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah, absolutely. And then now you guys obviously work very closely together in the practice. Tell me what that experience has been like working closely. Stephanie basically running the show on the office side. Mike, you being the clinician. Very much a partnership. In fact, I’ll just say this, working with you two and seeing how you guys are almost in my opinion the ideal model for how to have defined roles in the practice seriously and define roles, knowing your strengths, knowing your weaknesses for each other. But tell me what that has been like the road of kind of getting to this point of working so closely together.

Dr. Mike Walton:
Well, and I would say closely is a relative term because we’re in the same building, but we really don’t see each other a lot through the day.

Matt Mulcock:
Sure.

Dr. Mike Walton:
And where she is the genius as far as running the business and knowing the background and then I try to do everything clinical. But she’s also the kind of the eyes and ears on the flow. And so we had to… We decided early on that you can’t have two bosses either. Everything kind of gets funneled through… On paper, I’m the one in charge, but in reality, it’s both of us that make it work. We both have our areas of expertise and hers is in management and dealing with insurance and dealing with patients and making that first impression. And then mine is the follow through and the care and I tend to relate a little bit better. I’m a little bit softer as far as dealing with the rest of the team, but sometimes I’ve got a blind eye to what’s going on and she’ll say, “Hey, did you notice this?” And it’s good to have somebody… A different perspective. And then things that kind of slip through my perspective that if we need to address with the team, then we can… It kind of comes through me. And then I address with the team, so.

Stephanie Walton:
But when it comes to policy decision or final say or how do we handle it, if things come to a head, there’s one person that has the final say. And so I’ve learned if there’s something that needs reprimand or something that needs to be… It comes much better from what patients or team members see as the owner, it doesn’t bother me one bit. It’s a means to an end. And so that’s all that matters, so.

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah. And it sounds like… I mean, and I know this just in talking to you, Stephanie, you’re sometimes the one giving Mike the pep talk, right? Like giving him that different perspective and saying, no, we got to… We have to address this. So again, that yin and yang coming back as a theme here. Looking back through this process of everything that you just said, and I know we’re obviously summarizing a long time, but looking back, anything that you would do differently, anything that you can look back and say, man, I wish we would have done this or that, or is it just everything happens for a reason. We got here and everything worked out how it was supposed to, but anything you can point to that you would have done differently?

Dr. Mike Walton:
Well, I think this year from January has been our first full year of being out of contract. That’s always… With the insurances, I think that’s always the huge scare. Every practice that I’ve been in is like, no, you got to sign up for everybody. You got to take everybody and I think that was one of the things that, another shout out to Ideal Practices is one of the first meetings we had with them is they were like, think of your… Who your avatar patient is, and you focus everything on people like that. And it was eye opening that you do not have to be everybody’s dentist. You advertise to the population that you enjoy seeing and that appreciates and values what you’re doing, and it makes your day at work a whole lot easier. And same thing with being out of contract. It allows you that extra time to spend with the patient and establish the relationship and experience that makes it all worthwhile.

Matt Mulcock:
Definitely. And Stephanie, I know this is something you’ve worked a lot on. We’ve talked a lot about this over the last year or so, even longer about this process of going out of contract, dropping the insurances. What has that been like? What was your kind of journey through that?

Stephanie Walton:
Well, I think we’ve probably done it a little bit probably differently than some offices, probably kind of a hybrid way of doing it. But it’s been a whole lot of work, a lot of hard conversations with patients but it’s been… It’s really been worth it. And now that we’re into August of this year, the flywheels turning. We’re getting a lot better types of patients, a lot more of patients with good insurances that pay the full UCR, referring their coworkers with… We’re seeing a lot of better patients with better insurances referring better patients with better insurances or a lot more cash insurances. A lot. We see almost 80 membership patients a month.

Matt Mulcock:
Wow. Yeah.

Stephanie Walton:
And so, yeah, it’s just about the flywheels turning. We’re marketing to the right people, so I think… I wish we had… But we’re only four years old, right? So I don’t think that’s something we could have done right out of the gate, but we set up a membership plan right out of the gate. We did a lot of those. We marketed to people right out of the gate because of their advice. So, and we use the Dental A Team, so yeah, that way…

Matt Mulcock:
Shout out Kiera and her team. Yeah.

Stephanie Walton:
Yeah, yeah. And so having a mentor, I wish that’s something we did do… I wish we’d known that with the other practices that having a mentor was as important as it was. And so, I think we’ve done all those things these past four years. I wish those were things that we knew early in our lives, so.

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah, for sure. Just to summarize that and again, in our conversations I know you just mentioned it a few times, kind of the main points of this, of what has made this successful, because this is a conversation a lot of our clients are… We’re having with a lot of clients, a lot of dentists out there just at events of this whole idea of dropping insurances or going out of network. This is coming up all the time for good reason, right? And depending on the area, it’s just become out of control with what these insurances are doing. So it sounds like you’re… If we had a blueprint and I know it’s again, high level, but it sounds like a blueprint again, in our conversation, separately from this, and then what you’re describing now is marketing is key. I know communication is key. And you guys doing the proper steps to prepare for this and not just pull the plug with no plan, having a membership plan in place and having some language and outlines for your team to start using and how to talk on those phone calls. Is that a fair summary of what you’ve put in place? Anything else you’d add to that? And again, is that a fair description of how you guys have kind of put this in place?

Stephanie Walton:
Yeah, I would say… Go ahead.

Dr. Mike Walton:
Go ahead. I would agree 100% with that. It’s a lot of planning, a lot of communication with the team and making sure everybody’s on board and understands the why. I think having the right guidance, too, kind of helps push you in that direction. But it is, it’s not a… Like you said, it’s not a pull the plug, it’s you got to plan for it, and then you can’t be afraid to execute when it’s time.

Matt Mulcock:
Definitely. Stephanie, what would you add to that if anything?

Stephanie Walton:
As much as the team members hate, it’s role play. They’ve got to role play for those hard conversations, because we even have hard conversations on a daily basis about deposits because of broken appointments. And I’m telling you, the girl that I have, shout out to Jessica at the front desk, she and I have conversations about deposits if we have broken appointments. And I’m telling you, when we would have those conversations in the beginning now… In the beginning, our stomachs would turn over. They were so uncomfortable. And now if we have people that break more than three appointments, she has so much ease, and I do, too, with saying, “Absolutely, we could get you on Dr. Walton’s schedule, how’s Thursday at 08:00 o’clock? To hold that appointment, we’ll just need a $50 deposit,” and it just rolls off our tongue. And it’s the same way with the insurance conversations. We give them the whole spiel. We make the appointment now with our Delta and Anthem patients. Those are the only ones that won’t pay us anymore.

Stephanie Walton:
And now we’ll make their new patient appointment. We’ll give them the whole spiel. We say, “We’re looking forward to seeing you guys. Just to let you know, we don’t want any surprises that day. Delta is going to mail you the check. So when you come in… ” And it would all… And they hardly ever balk at that. So the more you practice it, the more you role play, the easier it is. And if they do balk, we just say, “Hey, if you can’t find a great place, we’d love to see you.” And it’s just no skin off your back. It doesn’t turn your stomach anymore. You don’t get anxious because we know we have the best office in town with the best hygienists and the best doctors and you don’t even get anxious anymore.

Matt Mulcock:
I love that. The role playing, the repetition, it’s awkward at first, but you just keep doing it. We’ve experienced that in our own business with our advisors and having conversations with clients or prospects or whatever it is. So I love that. That’s really, really solid advice right there for people out there that are struggling with this, have a mentor, have a plan, repetition, like go through that language, I think you’re… Shout out to again Kiera and her team. Having someone like that, that’s a huge piece of advice we’re always giving to people is you need people in your corner, whether it be with the financial planning like we’re talking about or on the practice, like having that team around you. You guys are a walking testament of this, of how successful you can be with that. So that’s amazing. I want to shift gears a little bit to more on the personal financial side and something like kind of bringing it to today on the personal side, something we’ve talked a lot about recently and we just emailed about this recently, like last week is in regards to spending and this whole idea of, you guys have been through this journey, very frugal, very much have a lock on, and a real… Like really, really solid control of where your cash is and your spending.

Matt Mulcock:
And Mike, you said it earlier, you know what you want, you don’t need a lot and so… But a conversation we’ve been having a lot lately is around spending and actually loosen up a little bit. It’s like, hey guys, you’ve earned this, let’s spend a little bit. Tell me about that. What has that been like with this recent change of almost like pushing you to be like, hey, let’s enjoy some stuff. What has that been like for you?

Dr. Mike Walton:
It’s a little scary because I’m afraid I’ll get addicted. If I like it too much I might just be going and going.

Matt Mulcock:
Can’t have that first drink. Yeah, yeah.

Dr. Mike Walton:
That’s right. But yeah, it has, it’s just been different because we have been so focused on our finances with everything that we’ve done and starting this practice and you get to that point of now you got a little bit of cushion and it is, it’s hard to change that mindset, but we do, we go out and do some things. I know, like you had told us last year, it was like your goal… My only goal for you all is to do a first class flight and we still didn’t do that.

Matt Mulcock:
I was going to say you didn’t do it, you didn’t do it. [laughter]

Dr. Mike Walton:
But we did rent a… We stayed at a hotel in Clear Water and we got the penthouse suite.

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah, there you go. That’s a substitute. Yeah.

Dr. Mike Walton:
There’s a splurge, so. And that was… It was fun. You check it off and I don’t know if I would feel comfortable doing that again, but we had a good time and we just look for other opportunities like that now.

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah. Stephanie, what about from your end on that? Just like loosening up a little bit and trying to spend more?

Stephanie Walton:
Well, we both grew up in pretty frugal families and fiscally responsible, so it is, you got to make sure you’re enjoying it and I think we’d like to share it and see your kids enjoy it too. But I also feel like I need to make sure that they understand the value of a dollar. So I have this reservation of splurging too much on them because I want them to… Even the one that’s going away to college I’m just, I’m like…

Matt Mulcock:
Shout out to Lily.

Stephanie Walton:
Yep, yep. And I want to make sure she wants to do… I don’t want to hand her everything because I want her to have grit and I want her to want for more, and I don’t want to give her everything, so.

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah. That’s great. I was going to bring this up, too. Again, shout out to Lily, and she is a walking example that you’ve obviously instilled this in her that grit, that hard work. I’m going to brag for you if that’s okay. She got a full ride scholarship to Louisville, right?

Stephanie Walton:
Yeah.

Matt Mulcock:
Starting pretty soon. This is her first year coming up, right?

Stephanie Walton:
Right.

Dr. Mike Walton:
Yes.

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah. So that’s a testament, obviously, to you guys and to her. And I know that’s always a dynamic people are… Parents are trying to grapple with of enjoying your hard work, enjoying your spending, especially with your family. But Stephanie, to your point, saying there’s a balance, I want them to know that we earned this. This isn’t just something that happens. And that’s a really, really tough balance. I am curious, though, for you guys just through this journey and maybe it’s too early, because again, these conversations with us have just kind of started, so it’s been this transition pretty recently about this enjoy your money. Let’s start spending some intentionally, obviously. What have you found, if anything, right now that you really enjoy spending money on and anything that surprises you with, like, “Oh, I didn’t really realize X, Y or Z.” Like you said, the penthouse, Mike and you’re like, “Eh, I wouldn’t do that again, probably.” But has anything surprised you of what you love spending money on?

Dr. Mike Walton:
That’s a good question.

Stephanie Walton:
I think it’s travel. I think we like to go and see places and do stuff, and we took a trip out West a week and a half last year with the kids. I think that’s what we like.

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah. That’s awesome. Mike, anything else you’d add?

Dr. Mike Walton:
No. And I think that she’s kind of hit the nail on the head with that is I think before when we would go, when we were being extra frugal, if we did anything, it was just she and I because it was cheaper.

Matt Mulcock:
Sure.

Dr. Mike Walton:
Kids weren’t involved, and luckily they were old enough that we could get away on a weekend or a long weekend and do stuff. But last year we had that big trip for a week and a half where we did a lot of things out West and we had a nice trip this summer where we got to go to the beach and everybody was there. And I think it’s the memories and the fun that you have with the family as a whole. And it’s nice to get a little weekend away, but the long trips that you can do with them and enjoy, like we went out and while we were at the beach this year, we went shark fishing and I was like that’s something I would have never done on my own. And we had a good time, and so just looking for things like that to do as a group.

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah, that’s amazing. It’s the… Again, Stephanie, you said that perfectly earlier, the doing of things as opposed to having of things. That’s been consistent. And now it’s maybe just maybe doing it more often for you guys. Doing it more often or doing maybe a little bit more extravagant trips or maybe just longer trips, it sounds like, which I think is fantastic. Kind of bringing this full circle, how many years for you guys, would you say, between you and the dream of the smaller house, the big lot, how many years are you hoping for at this point of the distance between now and then?

Dr. Mike Walton:
You’re going to take that one, Stephanie?

0:38:47.6 Stephanie: Our youngest…

Matt Mulcock:
He’s like tomorrow. [laughter]

Stephanie Walton:
Our youngest is in the 8th grade and we’re planning on having his high school graduation there, so.

Matt Mulcock:
Awesome. Mike, you’re up.

Dr. Mike Walton:
And she’s got it planned out. She’s got it planned out month by month…

Matt Mulcock:
Yeah. She’s got everything… I knew she did.

Dr. Mike Walton:
For the next five years.

Matt Mulcock:
I was just waiting. I was just waiting, I was like, I know she’ going to have this answer laid out. So this is amazing guys. I have one final question. Your million dollar advice, what would be your million dollar advice for younger dentists out there that maybe haven’t experienced what you have? They’re maybe just starting out in their career. What comes to mind for you? Again, that one or two things or three things or anything that comes to mind for that million dollar advice?

Dr. Mike Walton:
I think it’s recognize the things that you’re not good at. And this was another thing that Stephanie taught me. Don’t try to do the things that you’re not good at. Let the people that are good at doing those things do them, you do the things that you’re good at. And so with that being said, coming out of school, if I would have… I think would have saw the value and invested… The first practice, I kind of asked them about having coaches and mentors and they were kind of like, oh, consultants, no, that costs too much and you don’t get any return for it. But I think that’s been the most valuable thing for us. It got us started in the practice. It got us moving to where we’re out of contract and even talking about the Dental A Team. And you mentioned Kiera. I’m going to throw Tiffany’s name out there too, because she’s our coach. They hold your feet to the fire. You set goals and we meet with them and we call with them. And if you don’t do what you’re supposed to do, you got to report to them that you didn’t do what you’re supposed to do. And so I think having somebody like that on our side, and even with you, Matt, these are the things that we need to plan on.

Dr. Mike Walton:
You need to put so much into savings. We would have been way behind on what retirement would be. So I think that’s… For me that’s the million dollar advice is get established with the people that know the things that you don’t know and have the faith and have the trust in them to guide you and take care of you and let them do their job while you do yours. And don’t try to do it all yourself.

Matt Mulcock:
Love that. Yeah. You mentioned the accountability piece, the guidance piece. I think that’s huge. Stephanie, anything you’d add to that or different advice you have, maybe?

Stephanie Walton:
Well, I think when we were talking about this the other day, I think Mike, in his best nature, said what he would talk to younger dentists about is how important the relationship is. If you want a longterm practice, it’s the relationship. He has patients coming in, this is his 20th year, that are bringing their kids in already. And what he can tell those people about what he remembers from seeing them 20 years ago has them choosing him over the cheapest dentists in town. And so that relationship, people remember how you make them feel, not what you say and all that stuff. That was one of the things he was answering that question with, was it’s the relationship. It’s the things like that. And so I thought that’s a wonderful answer besides all the other things was, it’s the relationship. It’s what you invest in people. So I thought that was a great answer.

Dr. Mike Walton:
I think…

Matt Mulcock:
Go ahead, Mike.

Dr. Mike Walton:
I think that’s the first time she’s ever quoted me. I kind of like that. [laughter]

Matt Mulcock:
We like this. We like this. We just got to get you on a podcast, and then Stephanie starts quoting you. Yeah, I love that. I think that is so big, and I think that’s big in all of life. That’s big on our side of things as well. It’s all about the relationships with your team, with your clients, with anyone you come across. Yeah, I think that’s fantastic advice. Well, Mike, Stephanie… It didn’t go wrong, Mike, so we can give you all the credit now, both of you, this has been so amazing, so valuable. I cannot thank you both enough being open and sharing your story, I know that it’s going to help a lot of people out there just hearing your journey through this and the advice that you’re giving to all the dentists out there. So thank you so much for doing this. And then, everyone, thank you for listening. Whether you’re a first time listener or you’ve been listening for years, we really, really hope that this is valuable. And if you want more of this stuff or you want… If you have different ideas, we’re always open to it or if you just want more education on all this kind of stuff, just go to dentistadvisors.com.

Matt Mulcock:
If you ever want to talk to us, dentistadvisors.com, you can book a consultation or just, again, use the education library where we have a bunch of stuff like this between podcasts, webinars, articles. We’re always looking to just educate the dental community and help you make good decisions. So, again, Mike and Stephanie, thank you so much. Thanks, everyone, for listening. And we’ll catch you next time on The Dentist Money Show. Bye-bye.

Stephanie Walton:
Thanks, Matt.

Dr. Mike Walton:
Thanks, Matt.

Matt Mulcock:
Awesome, guys. That was so good. Oh, my gosh.

Practice Transitions