What Is the Future for DPOs? – Episode #344

You like being your own boss, but is there a way to still feel independent and leverage the economies of scale available through large dental groups? On this Dentist Money™ Show, Ryan interviews Dr. V—Chris Villanueva—founder of MB2 Dental. Chris explains how to get operations help when needed, compete with the big boys on pricing, and still maintain control of your practice.

 

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Podcast Transcript

[music]

Ryan Isaac:
Hey everybody, welcome back to another episode of the Dentist Money Show, brought to you by dentist advisors. We are a no-commission fiduciary, comprehensive financial advisor just for dentists all over the country. Check us out at dentistadvisors.com. Today on the show, my guest is Dr. V from MB2, kind of the founder of MB2 Dental. And we’re talking about everything in the dental industry of large organizations and group dental and the future career of dentistry, really cool, insightful conversation with Dr. V. Many thanks to him for spending some time and sharing some wisdom with us. If you have any questions for us directly, you can always go to dentistadvisors.com, click the book free consultation button. We’d love to have a chat with you any time. Thanks for being here. Enjoy the show.

Announcer:
Consultant your 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.

[music]

Ryan Isaac:
Welcome to the dentist money show, where we help dentists make smart financial decisions. I’m your host, Ryan Isaac, and I’m here today with Dr. Chris or Dr. V, your real name is Chris Villanova, known as Dr. V from MB2. Thanks for being here, man, I appreciate it. How are you doing today?

Dr. Chris Villanueva:
Great, great, thanks for having me.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah, we’re excited. Many people probably know about MB2. You guys are… I think this is correct to say that you’re kind of pioneers in the industry of growth in the dental space and have been for quite some time, and big things have happened and big things still to come, so that’s what we’re here to talk about today. And really kinda just get some of your experience and insight of what it’s like to be a dentist and grow practices and also become part of this bigger movement, but how about… Let’s just start for a second and tell us who and what is MB2. And I’m sure we’ll get into much more detail, but a quick overview. Who and what is MB2?

Dr. Chris Villanueva:
Yeah. MB2 is a platform that me and my colleagues had created 15 years ago, really as a response to corporate dentistry. We wanted to be able to compete with the larger groups, whether that’s buying cotton rolls in healthcare for 30% less or getting reimbursed 10% more by insurance companies, and we basically created a co-op that allowed us to have those economies of scale, but yet preserve the identity and integrity of our private practice. And so it was a simple concept, we just didn’t wanna sell out to the large corporate groups. We created a platform that allowed it to compete and it’s kind of spiraled into something completely different and larger than we had ever anticipated. And obviously, MB2 is just a funny name, we came up with at Pappasito’s, at a restaurant here in Texas. It was never patient-facing, it was never business-facing. It was kind of an inside joke amongst dentists. And so it is the mesiobuccal canal that we referenced and we just thought it’s be a funny inside joke amongst dentists. So nothing… We weren’t that mature then, we’re still not mature now.

Ryan Isaac:
Still not. That’s alright, man. That reminds me when I was a teenager, in my young 20s where I was in a punk band, and our name was an acronym, three letters that didn’t actually mean anything, but we thought it was funny that people would try to guess what it meant, so I kinda of relate to that.

Dr. Chris Villanueva:
There you go.

Ryan Isaac:
[chuckle] Yeah. So 15 years ago, I didn’t realize it was actually that long ago when things started I’ve met some of your initial founding members and have worked with them in introducing clients for years now, and… Yeah, I can say I’m very impressed. And love what you guys are doing. Take us back though. I love these stories. Where were you at the time, what was your life like? What were you up to when all this started?

Dr. Chris Villanueva:
Well, yeah, I graduated from Nova Southeastern of Florida in 2004, and I came out to Dallas for the only good reason, which is chasing a woman who is now gladly happily my wife.

Ryan Isaac:
It worked? Okay, all right.

Dr. Chris Villanueva:
Mother of four children, and so she had a residency out here in Dallas, New Methodist, and so a lot of it stemmed from what I watched in the primary care space, ’cause she’s an internal medicine physician, and I kinda watch it happen, where they were independent sole proprietors like dentists and then they started becoming employees to hospital systems, and I just didn’t want that to happen to us. I like the individuality and the autonomy that private practice allowed us, and I really wanna do
everything I can to maintain that independence. And so like I said, we effectively create a co-op where we are all fiercely independent at the office level, but we negotiate collectively, when it benefits us. And so we act as a union when it benefits us. And so really that’s in the most simplest terms, what MB2 started as and what it continues to be today. It’s gone through a couple of iterations, but the principles are the same, that we as a doctors continue to maintain our independence clinically and non-clinically, which is important, but we leverage the platform to get better pricing and obviously command a higher value for our practices when we see it fit to monetize any equity.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah, for sure. And I’d love to get into that a little bit about where you guys have been and still where it’s headed. And also what that says about the industry as a whole. Where is a… Well, actually, let me back up and ask this question for people listening who might not understand some of the lingo or some of the differences, I guess, between when you say corporate dentistry, becoming an employee versus what you describe as a co-op, which I think is a great way to describe that. What are some of the… It might sound really basic, but what are some of those differences between the business models?

Dr. Chris Villanueva:
Yeah, when you think of corporate dentistry or large hospital systems, for that matter, they try to systematize everything. That’s their model, whether it’s procedures, work hours, names, that’s just… They create a unified business, which is not right or wrong, it’s just the way they…

Ryan Isaac:
It’s just different.

Dr. Chris Villanueva:
It’s different, yeah. I personally don’t believe that’s right for dentistry and healthcare in general, because I think it’s a very personalized approach. We embrace differences amongst the practices. We have specialty practices, we have general practices, we have rural practices, in Soldotna, Alaska down to the most metropolitan areas where in network, out of network, all fee-for-service practice, we embrace all practice types, which then gives us a better platform and a great way for current doctors to continue to invest in our profession, but also outside investors to invest in a more stable platform as opposed to myopically focused on a specialty or a region or a payer type, it creates a lot more stability. And so I think that’s the beauty of our model is that, like I said, we’ve been doing it for 15 years, a lot of the groups today that are looking to copy our model, which I find very flattering.

Dr. Chris Villanueva:
But if they’re copying it, they’re relatively new, and they’re really starting at a point of creating sheer profit, which is different than us. I created this model 15 years ago to survive. It was an uneven playing field with large corporate groups, and we really had no interest at the time to monetize our equity, we really just wanted to compete, and that’s in stark reference to groups today, who are basically more aggregators. They wanna buy practice A, practice B, practice C, bundle them together, change their supply ordering and their procedure of mix and sell them as a bundle to the next investor. That was never our model, it’s never what drives us. I’m really focused on creating a company that stands the test of time, and so you’ll be hard-pressed to find another platform that’s been around for 15 years that really focuses on acquiring practices as partners and that’s why we coined the term Dental Partnership Organization in 2017, because I don’t think… We didn’t feel like DSO really reflected our values. So we thought just like our namesake MB2, and we thought it was funny that we just create a new acronym for the space.

[laughter]

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah. Why not?

Dr. Chris Villanueva:
And we were sitting here with [0:08:41.7] ____ Harold like I bet you, people will start copying it, then we’ll know exactly who’s copying us, and here we are today and people are throwing around the term DPO all the time. It’s pretty funny.

Ryan Isaac:
You’re like “Guys we made this up. That wasn’t a real thing.”

Dr. Chris Villanueva:
It’s not a real thing, we just made it up. I actually… One of my partners gave me, I think it was a cigarette lighter or a cigar lighter with the acronym on it, and was like the first time DPO is actually presented, and we look back and we chuckle at it every time we see another competitor copy and paste it.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah, it’s a different mentality. I’ll think back to people I’ve introduced to your team and it’s a different, I guess, end game and a different personality for the person looking for that to join an aggregator, like you said, sell out, be an employee for a shortest possible time, get your money go, not really care where… Not that they don’t care, but it’s in the hands of someone else versus I wanna still be heavily involved, I want this to be mine, individual, but I want a partner to help me do things that maybe I don’t like doing or I don’t do well, or I just don’t know much about. And it’s a different doctor, it’s a different personality. And I still think… I get this question a lot, I’d love to hear what you think, are DSOs taking over the industry? Are they gonna ruin dentistry? Will it ruin private practice? What do you… I’m sure you get that question all the time. What do you think about just that whole question for the industry?

Dr. Chris Villanueva:
I think thinking about dentists, you have to accept that there are all types of dentists. There’s dentists that love the independence, there’s dentists that love clocking in and…

Ryan Isaac:
Totally.

Dr. Chris Villanueva:
Performing their art and clocking out, and there’s nothing wrong with it. I think DSOs provide that platform for those individuals who don’t want to do… Have anything to do with things outside of the actual dentistry. And so unlike most dentists that think DSOs or speak about DSOs just majoritively, I do believe that there’s a place for them. I don’t think they’re gonna take over dentistry just because there’s such a huge diversity in provider base. I think they’ll provide efficiencies in some areas, but they’re also gonna have some challenges in other areas. I think there’s a lot of DSOs that have already failed because they could not provide a better platform for dentists. And so I think there’s a lot of cautionary tales out there that dentists should know about, especially if they’re thinking about partnering or selling to a platform.

Ryan Isaac:
While we’re on the subject, do you wanna talk about any of those? You’ve probably seen this about as much as anyone could possibly see, what are some conflicts there? It’s really good.

Dr. Chris Villanueva:
Yeah, no, so it’s funny. There’s a lot of, like I said, cautionary tales in the space and no one wants to talk about them. The guys who invested in it are embarrassed, the doctors that fell for it are embarrassed, and the lenders don’t wanna talk about their failures. And so unfortunately, people really don’t reference them a lot, but at the end of the day, I think they all have the same core issue, is over time doctors find that they’re better off working for themselves and working within that platform because they don’t provide enough autonomy, enough equity, enough professional growth, whatever it may be. A lot of them have simply failed because of doctor, they can retain their doctors. The doctors leave and they open their practice or they can’t place…

Dr. Chris Villanueva:
: There is… I won’t name names but there are platforms out there, DSOs out there that may have hundreds of locations, but a third of them are dark, they don’t have providers to even work in them. And so I think that’s really a shallow, hollow victory when you’re just building locations but then you can’t keep providers, whereas MB2, our main goal is to create a platform, an ecosystem where it’s better for providers in all scenarios. It’s less risk, there’s more profitability, there’s more sustainability and predictability. You have more optionality. If you can solve for all the challenges in private practice, then there’s no reason for people to leave, there’s no compromises. If you’re making more than you were in private practice with less risk, I think that is really the end goal. And so we’ve… We have created that. And it’s more than just a structure. It’s truly an operation. I’m sitting here in Dallas and we have 300 support staff for the 400-plus locations. We really are adding value to our joint partnerships, whereas other aggregators are simply bundling practices together and not really creating much value. They’re just taking advantage of the arbitrage in value once they bundle something. So it’s a different strategy.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah, totally.

Dr. Chris Villanueva:
0:13:34.4 CV: I believe what we’re doing is right for the profession and I believe we’re leaving it in a better place than we found it.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah, there’s a quote I like, changing subjects here, that says, I only have an opinion on this because you asked me to have one, which I always laugh about when people ask us to predict what’s gonna happen in the market and things like that. But if I’m asking you to predict where is this all headed with… Right now the valuations are high, money is easy, private equity is pouring into this space. Where is this headed and any kind of time frame that you feel like you have on it?

Dr. Chris Villanueva:
Yeah. Now, I feel like there’s gonna be winners and losers and there’s gonna be a lot of losers. Right now, there’s not… There hasn’t been too many public failures of groups. There’s a handful if you dig hard enough and you ask enough people that they can reference. But I think it’s gonna come to a head. I think there’s a big challenge with these specialty-only platforms. They’re touting high multiples for transactions that are pretty recent. But if you dig a little deeper, those transactions are not nearly as successful and didn’t go as planned. And so I think over time when they’re pressed to perform, it’s gonna be very challenging, especially only practice where you don’t necessarily control all the referral patterns.

Dr. Chris Villanueva:
Those doctors… Doctors are smart. They’re gonna realize maybe after the first liquidity event that they’re better off going 10 miles down the street and opening up a practice again. And then they’re gonna have a hard time backfilling those practices that they just spent all that money on, and then the whole thing gets handed over to the bank. And so there’s some… I’d encourage your listeners to look up a couple of those that are already owned by the bank and they’re trying to dig themselves out of a hole today, because that’s very telling when they can’t even at their smaller size, they can’t even sustain their growth or their performance.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah, man, that’s such a good point. I’ve wondered about where this ends up in the future once a lot of these aggregators have bundled and resold and bundled and resold, at some point there’s gonna be hundreds, if not thousands of once privately owned practices that are now in the hands of [0:15:49.2] ____ third removed private equity firms and banks. And then how do they get redistributed back to the market? Is this what will happen to a lot of them?

Dr. Chris Villanueva:
Yeah. Well, yeah, they get redistributed, they close down, they sell for pennies on the dollar to recoup. It’s no different than a bad piece of real estate. Once your down payment is goose egg, they’re just trying to get whatever they can for their basis. And I think… And once again, this is not something I’m predicting five years, it’s happening now, right now. As we speak, there are lenders who own these large platforms, 100, 200 locations that there’s… It’s not very public because it’s embarrassing to them. But the writing is on the wall and private equity is no different than the dental practice. Everyone knows what’s going on. And so when you go to market with an asset that really is not different than any other asset that’s failed, it’s just gonna be very difficult.

Dr. Chris Villanueva:
And so I think… One thing I can tell you for certain is that because of our tenure and our track record, we’ve broken that mold. We’re on our second institutional investor. We recapitalized during COVID because of our strong performance. We’re looking at another event in the not-too-distant future because of our astronomical growth. From a partnership standpoint, we are head and neck above everyone else, the ones that partner with more single offices than anyone else. Any group larger than ours are either de novo strategy or they purchase platforms. We don’t purchase platforms. We strictly look at individual practices ’cause I believe that’s the right approach.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah, that’s really cool. And I mean, to be clear, you’re not disparaging anything. I’m not disparaging anything. Like you said earlier, choosing to go that route as a practice owner is just a different type of choice, and these are the realities that some of these owners who are selling are facing. You’ve been talking about some of… Like where you guys are at right now, and it is pretty amazing. So let’s go back to something you said, 400 practices, I think it’s a little bit more than that for MB2. Do you have an exact number? Or since we started the conversation, there’s been like three more added or something.

Dr. Chris Villanueva:
Yeah. No. And today I think we’re like 423, but we add between 2-10 a week. And so if you think… It just depends on the period, but yeah, we look at… We did the math and we look at about 2000-3000 private practices a year. We partner with about 100. We don’t need to partner with every single practice we look at. It’s really… Has to make sense for the doctor, it has to make sense for us. And we spend a lot of time just talking about the culture and what we’re looking for, just because we’re extremely different. These other groups that if a doctor is looking to retire and just become an employee, I think that’s an easier conversation. But our average doctor age is mid-40s.

Ryan Isaac:
Okay.

Dr. Chris Villanueva:
And so we’re in our stride right now and we don’t plan to have any corporately owned stores. None of our locations are corporately owned. They all have JV partnerships with local doctors that are out there who care, whose name are on the door, and who are the heart and soul of the practice.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah. They’re the people that draw the people from their areas, and it’s gonna stay that way. You are… Okay, so 423 did you say, how many doctors is that nationally?

Dr. Chris Villanueva:
It’s over 800, 800 providers.

Ryan Isaac:
Wow.

Dr. Chris Villanueva:
We have 300 and change of actual doctor owners, and then they obviously have associates so we have more [0:19:42.1] ____ I’m trying not to think about it too much, it’s a little daunting, but I think we’re on our own race, man, that’s always been my guidance to my team is like, we’re not on a race with anybody, we are looking at every practice as a potential true partnership, we spend the time to get to know the doctors and impress upon them who we are, we’re not consultants, we don’t have all the answers, but we make really good partners because I now have 400 plus partners, I’ve never once had to hire a lawyer to talk to any of them. They’re truly my buddies, Mauricio is one of my first associates, he’s still here with me. We don’t… I tell my private equity guys all the time, I’d rather lose money than lose friendships, and so I don’t know. That’s just kinda how I look at the space.

Dr. Chris Villanueva:
Maybe because I’m the founder and CEO, I’m not qualified to do anything else, I’m gonna be here until I’m hopefully 80 God willing. And so I’m really looking at creating once again a platform that’s stable and that really preserves integrity of private practice.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah, that’s awesome, man. So you’re talking about probably maybe the biggest thing about running a business of any size, which is team and its culture. I wanna talk about that for a minute. I see all the time on social media, it seems like you guys are constantly doing things as a team in your regions, which I’m sure you have to break it down smaller and smaller chunks as you guys keep getting bigger, but walk us through some of the history of what you do and how you do it with culture and team, how do you stay close to that many people, how do you make that many partners still feel connected and important and not a number, but still a person? What are some things you guys do?

Dr. Chris Villanueva:
Yeah, that’s probably what I spend most of my time thinking about.

Ryan Isaac:
Okay. Yeah.

Dr. Chris Villanueva:
It’s just so important that everyone be aligned, not only financially, but professionally, and so we spend a lot of time on company sponsored events, we get sponsored events to go on vacation now from a lot of the vendors, so you probably see that in our social media…

Ryan Isaac:
Oh yeah.

Dr. Chris Villanueva:
We take a handful of those a year. We don’t work on them, we’re literally, one of the biggest ones we all went to Hawaii and we all celebrated and we all just sit around the pool and then have fun. It’s kind of like dental school all over again, but people are giving us money. It’s been really fun to build a company from the ground up without preconceived notions. Everything I learned about running this company, which has over 5000 employees, I learned from private practice. I treat this like my private practice, my executive team has been with me for a very long time. None of them have been placed by private equity, I hand picked all of them, none of them leave me, because we know what our mission, our vision, our values are, I personally make sure that we have a very flat organization, everything, as small as… I personally don’t have an Executive Assistant, my partners text me, call me, DM me, whatever it is, I’m always available to them.

Dr. Chris Villanueva:
It truly is a very flat organization, and that’s important to me not to have a hierarchy in the organization. I tell people all the time, they don’t work for me, I don’t work for them. We truly are partners. And when decisions need to be made at the office level, I trust them to make the right decision, and when decisions that need to be made at the group level are made, I hope they trust me to make the decision, and so that division of labor has worked really well for us all these years.

Ryan Isaac:
Do you have any advice for people doing that same thing, but just on a much smaller scale in their own practices with the culture, team, organizational structure, communication, anything you’d like to add for someone who’s trying to achieve the same thing, but obviously in a much smaller scale?

Dr. Chris Villanueva:
Yeah, I think the same principles apply man, I think people get removed too quickly from their operations or the people that got them there, and so they feel some success, they feel separation from their team. And it doesn’t matter if you have an office of five people. I’ve seen it, I’ve seen people just being a little too distant… I always want to exemplify my expectations, my leadership, I ask… Well, more like make my executives go on mission trips with me.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah.

Dr. Chris Villanueva:
They suction for my surgeons, I asked the private equity guys to go to my last mission trip in Jamaica, and… I’ll give you a little story. I was in Jamaica and the head of the private equity firm, a multi-billion dollar private equity firm, took me on my offer. He’s in the middle of Jamaica suctioning my surgery, he’s sweating, his gloves are two sizes too big. He was like, profusely sweating, I leaned over to him and go, “Hey Paul, 50% of this population has HIV.” He ripped off his gloves and he ran out of the church. And he’s like, “I’m done, I’m never… I’m never doing that again.” I go, “Paul. That’s exactly why you would never tell us to do more dentistry, if you wanna do more dentistry, you do more dentistry, but you can’t tell us.”

Dr. Chris Villanueva:
: He said, “I got you Dr. V, I’ll never tell you guys.” And so I think just leading by example, man, getting your hands dirty, making sure that you’re relatable and you’re accessible is so important as your scale of business.

Matt Mulcock:
Hey Ryan, tell me what happens during a consultation?

Ryan Isaac:
It’s a great question, Matt. The first thing we like to do is just get to know more about you and your practice. What are your career goals, what are you doing in your practice, in your business, what kind of big decisions are you making in your personal financial life? Then we talk about how hiring a comprehensive fiduciary dental-specific financial advisor can help you make better financial decisions in your future, help you grow your net worth, get more organized and get more peace of mind around your financial situation.

Matt Mulcock:
So you’re telling me it’s that easy and painless?

Ryan Isaac:
I am telling you it is that easy and totally painless. Exactly, Matt, just go to dentistadvisors.com click the book free consultation button, do it right now and talk to a friendly advisor today. There’s probably some really excellent clinicians in your group, really, really top-notch clinicians who maybe just by personality or whatever, by nature, they don’t love the business side of things. They don’t like delegating, they don’t like having to be in charge of a team, they don’t like having to correct people or have tough conversations, they just wanna do their dental work and how does a partnership with MB2… I don’t know, remove some of that pressure or stress on doctors who… That’s just kind of their personality and… Yeah, how do they fit in with an organization like that?

Dr. Chris Villanueva:
Yeah, so that’s well said, everyone has their thing. Some guys don’t wanna have to do with anything with HR or operations or marketing. And like I said, we have hundreds of people that that’s what they do, and it was an eye-opening experience for me realizing that there’s actually people that went to school to do marketing and they will do a better job than you at Marketing and HR, and operations and finance and legal. And so I think it’s really kind of a country club concept where people can task any of the 300 employees to help them in any department that they’d like help with, and I think that’s what’s unique about us. If someone loves marketing, they continue to do their own marketing. We can leverage pricing. But they’re still making those decisions. If they don’t like it, and they say, “I just need someone to help me.” We have those people as well. And MB2 proper, the platform that supports them here in Dallas, it’s a zero-profit platform, meaning that’s not where we make our money, the profit stay at the office level, so my goal is to keep this as lean as possible, so a data point for you.

Dr. Chris Villanueva:
A lot of large groups of our size and even larger… They float around 7-8% of revenue in centralized services, we’re about 3.5%, we’re less than half of that because we’re not making any profit here, we’re just trying to improve the efficiencies of the offices where we jointly make more money.

Ryan Isaac:
At the practice level, spread across hundreds and hundreds of people. This may or may not be maybe your area of expertise or a favorite thing, I have no idea, but I wanna ask, because you get to see so many doctors in real life. Dentist advisor’s, Dentist money show, we’re trying to help Dentist make smart financial decisions in their planning and their investing. Do you have any common mistakes or tips that you see doctors make throughout their career that impact our financial lives, maybe the way that they handle money or spend it or deal with certain investments or risk or anything like that. Anything you’ve seen that you think might be helpful on the financial side of just the doctor’s daily financial lives.

Dr. Chris Villanueva:
Yeah, I think dentists. I can always say, ’cause I’m also a dentist so don’t take this…

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah, you’re including yourself…

Dr. Chris Villanueva:
We’re a very excitable bunch, whether it’s like you show us a new widget or you tell us about an investment in a storage facility, we’ll all get very excited ’cause it’s outside the teeth, and we think that we stumbled upon the next cryptocurrency, and I’ve seen a lot of us to make mistakes, thankfully, the profitability of our practices afford us the opportunity to make some mistakes and not be completely terrible, but I feel like we get very excitable and sometimes you have to really rely on professionals like yourself to guide us through the differences, and so that’s why I was excited to get on here to talk about this space in general, because at first blog she may not understand the difference between… An organization like MB2 has been around for 15 years, we’ve had two private equity transactions who’ve had virtually zero turnover in the owner or circle versus a start-up during COVID that has 20 locations, but that promises you a higher valuation in your practice and sometimes if you’re not living it, you don’t know the distinction and you’re really handicapped in making the decision, so…

Dr. Chris Villanueva:
I tell my team all the time. My business guys, I’m like, if I showed you guys an X-ray, you wouldn’t know where to start, what’s up or what’s down, what’s left or right, that’s how dentists feel about spreadsheets. We look at them like, How does this number [0:30:13.2] ____ vomit? And sometimes we just need guidance very similar to what you guys need when you’re at a dental office, and I think that’s probably the best advise I can give people, especially when you’re, I don’t wanna say gambling, but especially when you’re considering doing something with your life’s work, it’s one thing throwing money into an investment like a real estate or Crypto, it’s separate when you’re talking about your livelihood, your blood sweat and tears something you and your family have labored towards, and then now you’re gonna consider selling some of that equity, you better be dang sure you know what you’re getting into because there’s a lot of, once again, very unfortunate outcomes, if you don’t do your diligence.

Ryan Isaac:
I love that. Thanks for using that term ‘Very excitable’. I think that’s a really great way. It’s a very human, normal human condition to get used to our surroundings and then think that things are really easy. I see this all the time, and you do too, where I’ll have a dentist mid-career who’s just absolutely crushing it, they’re just doing everything right, they’re crushing it, and they’ll say things about being… Things are too easy. This is getting easy. This is getting boring, and I think, well, nothing you do is actually easy, it was 10 years of your life, you’re a million bucks in debt, and it was 15 years to get to the point where you’re at right now, and you manage a big team and you manage this business, you’re an entrepreneur and a clinician, none of that’s easy, but you’re just used to it, it’s like a marathon runner that they don’t think running a marathon is hard anymore, you’re like, No, it’s hard, you’re just used to it, and then it’s easy to get bored when we’re used to our surroundings, and I think that’s a really great way to put it, and it’s probably just really smart to be self-aware and have people in your life that can offer some different perspectives or maybe some push back every once in a while, to go “Hey here is maybe something you might not be seeing or something to consider,” so I appreciate you bringing that up.

Ryan Isaac:
I feel like I could do this forever, and we’ll just have to do this another time. We’ll have to just keep doing this another time, but how about let’s just end with a little bit of how do people get in touch and ask questions? I’m sure there’s a preliminary process and a million questions people wanna ask before they do something so big like partner. How do people get in touch? What is that initial process like? Who do they meet with? How does it go? And what’s that like?

Dr. Chris Villanueva:
Yeah, so I like to put myself in the position of a potential new partner and think about how I would like to be approached. Our job is simply to provide as much data as we can so that people can make good decisions for their staff, their patients, their families. And so it’s really an opportunity for them to call us and have a conversation with another fellow dentist that is normally the most normal route. You probably know somebody who’s part of MB2 and you just don’t know it because they’re still independent, and they still have their own practices. And so I would encourage you guys, to go to our website, mb2dental.com, and there’s links there on how to value your practice, a phone…

Dr. Chris Villanueva:
I think there’s a phone number on there that you can call and it goes directly to another dentist, so it’s like being on call. Maurice is one of those guys and you can be on call and talk to another fellow dentist, and really, I think there’s a fraternity amongst us where we just tell the truth and so call them, ask them how their experience has been. None of my doctors are contractually obligated to be here, so if they’re unhappy, they would have gone, so I feel confident that you can have a conversation that will be that positive on their experience, but really, it’s really an informal process where you get to know them, get to know us through them, you can answer your difficult questions and then if it makes sense, and we have some questions for partners where they are in their career and what they’re trying to look for, and if we both like each other, we can take the next step of sharing financials and going into evaluation and hopefully becoming partners, if it makes sense for all parties involved.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah, I just went there, mb2dental.com, and there’s a big red button in the top right corner, it says start the conversation, so it’s pretty self-explanatory right there, just go, mb2dental.com, start the conversation. Dr. V, thanks for spending some time here, it was great to chat with you a little bit. I feel like there’s more on the tank, so we’ll do this again another time, but I really appreciate it, and to all of you tuning in and listening as always, thank you for doing that. If you have any questions for the MB2 team, mb2dental.com, and if you have any questions for us, dentistadvisors.com, happy to chat with you any time, Dr. V, thank you. Have a great week.

Dr. Chris Villanueva:
I appreciate it.

Ryan Isaac:
Good summer. And all of you listening, we’ll catch you next time on another episode of The Dentist Money Show, take care now, bye bye.

Dr. Chris Villanueva:
Thank you.

Practice Transitions