speaker-0: Alright, five four three two one. Say that again. I miss you, ⁓ bro. No, it's been too long. For real, it has been too long. I know. I don't think I've actually seen it in like a year in person. Shit, has it been that long? Yeah. Damn. We gotta do some shit. Yeah, one more. Yeah. We knew. Dude, the aloha your email is the aloha Dennis. Look at your Aloha shirt. That's how we do. Yeah. I'm either wearing Aloha shirt or scrubs, unfortunately. I would do dentistry and aloha shirt too, but that's frowned upon. Makes it very simple. Could be from Utah, yeah. I gotta s I gotta be, you know, set apart somehow. I gotta be I gotta be special. That's awesome. Man, Jonathan A. Montoya, what's the A stand for? A alona. Alona. I would have been wrong on that. Nope. Family family name. Dude, freaking resume, man. Yeah, it's just ⁓ just some paperwork, bro. Four pages. I mean you were a commercial fisherman in two thousand seven. I have to leave that on there, dude. That was my dream job. That's and you worked at a place called Santan and I thought I thought it was gonna say something about like ⁓ fake sub Medspa. Met spot, but it's pediatric pedestry. Dude, you got an impressive resume though. Let's be serious. Let's freaking be serious. Full art specialist, all these dental offices, all this outreach. I mean everything from Meriden Clinics, Operation Smile. I mean everything right down to Asda. Wait, Baptists on a mission? Yeah, bro. Yeah. Baptist bus. Yeah, that was ⁓ that was some good times. That's awesome. I'm gonna introduce you, John. Cool. Is that cool? That if you want, yeah, let's go. Welcome back to the All-In, All On X podcast, where we take you behind the scenes full arch dentistry, innovation, and people who are redefining what's possible. Here we go beyond the procedures and into the lives of people shaping full arch dentistry. isn't just about implants or workflows. It's the lives we build, the decisions we make under pressure, and the who push this profession forward ⁓ when no watching. Get your head straight, because we're about to go all in. The all in in X pod is brought to you by JB Dental Labs, the elite lab, trusted by full arch surgeons, ⁓ prosodontists, and digital practices ⁓ internationally. JB specializes in precision full arch restorations, zirconia, PMMA, photogrammetry workflows, and fast turnaround times that don't sacrifice quality. JB delivers a truly digital workflow powered by their proprietary online portal for easy case uploads, real time tracking, and fast streamlined communication. If you're looking for a lab that understands immediate load, passive fit, and the demands of modern All on X Dentistry. Learn more at JBdentalab.com. Tell them that the all in, all on X pod sent you. All right, you can probably find this four page resume, very impressive resume on here. But I mean one thing that caught my eye is your business. look, we are joined today with Jonathan Montoya, my good friend. And ⁓ we're gonna have a chance to catch up personally after the show. But kick this off. ⁓ Yeah, dude, so much success and you wouldn't even know it. You know, most dentists spend like twenty years to become a success. ⁓ you graduated dental school twenty twenty, you're producing over seven million dollars a year, advanced implant dentistry, full arch. ⁓ you own multiple practices, you teach internationally, you still find time to give back, you survived cancer and ⁓ Somehow you still found time to bring two associates to my hall on four fours continuum. ⁓ I know how you do it all, bro. Which was the best, which is the best investment I could have made. That was awesome. ⁓ dude. We're gonna save that. I don't wanna kick the show off that I definitely wanna cover that. But we have what it was the best investment. What what best investment ever made? Yeah, great. I love it, man. ⁓ dude, Jonathan Mantoy, man. Welcome welcome to the show. Thanks, Sam. It's great to have be on here. I mean, your reputation precedes you. I've always looked up to you, man. So just to be ⁓ talking with a great is ⁓ is an honor. ⁓ thank you, man. I'm humble. I put on my pants one at a time. I have made more probably more mistakes in my life than successes. ⁓ but I'm I'm happy to share that with you. But you know. What is the correlation there? Yeah. More more failure probably means ⁓ as long as you pick yourself back up. As long as you pick yourself back up. That's what it is, right? Yeah, man. I wanna get into that. I think what I want to talk about first is business, man, because you are a D D S MBA, right? Got a little bit of MBA, yep. We ⁓ University of Florida. Tell me about that. Tell me about that. Tell me about your MBA. Tell me about your what's going on. So I you know, I I will be straight up my uncle was a pediatric dentist, that's where I worked, first job in Arizona. And I was like, yeah, this I was working front desk and verifying insurance. I was a 17 year old kid. And ⁓ I was like, yeah, dentistry's cool, but ⁓ but what he's making is great. So I wanna I wanna make some money. so eventually, you know, I my undergrad I chose to do ⁓ business administration and I was like teach me about business. And we had this ⁓ we had this really young kid who was buying up DSOs and this was, you know, early two thousand or mid two thousands. And he was like talking about EVADA and multiples. And I was just like, I don't know what that means, but he's putting a big number on that whiteboard and that's that that looks good. ⁓ and so a as as honest as I can be, I mean, a lot of a lot of my vision and view of dentistry was how can I have a family work life balance, but how can I make a ton of money? And ⁓ and I'll I I want to talk about like dental school completely changed that for me. I I realize that I will that that's not what we're about. We're about patient care, but I but I kind of realize that there's a mismatch. Some people are like it has to be one or the other. ⁓ no, great companies serving great patients are run by clinically focused people. And ⁓ and then yeah, you you know about that. So yeah. But yeah, so I I bought my first practice ⁓ in twenty twenty two. And I was like, okay, I think I could do this. And ⁓ there was a lot of things I didn't know how to do. So I was like, why don't I just get an MBA at the same time? And so part of my philosophy about learning is if you can learn didactic and do hands-on at the same time, that's the way to to do it because you're learning and applying, learning and applying, not learning for a while and then finally applying after you've already learned the skills, but it's a different one you're actually learning and applying. So ⁓ You know, I was taking creative entrepreneur class while I was trying to figure out a marketing strategy for my first practice. And then yeah, I w I did capital budgeting and ⁓ and capital finance when I was working on acquiring my third office. And so like a lot of these principles were were there to teach me as I was doing. And I had that I had the resources and now I have a lot more resources. And honestly, that was the main reason I did an MBA. I've asked a lot of people, like, well, should I take an MBA? Should I do it? You know, I did business undergrad. And the truth of the matter is the knowledge is there. Like you can YouTube everything I learned in in in my MBA. And you can have greater sources to learn that. Like there, there's other places to learn. I mean, your your business course probably teaches people more about business of full arch than anyone will ever teach in any MBA. You know, and so I went because I wanted connections. I wanted to get with. in the room with people who I knew had potential and then also who taught how to do the right things. So if I have a question about MA mergers and acquisitions, I can call up my friend ⁓ or professor or whoever and be like, Hey, I have a question about this business principle or whatever I'm doing. Help me walk how walk me through it or connect me with the banker or connect me with private equity or whatever it is. So yeah. That was my that was my That personal MBA journey. Like I I just chose to do it 'cause it was something I could do and I wanted the connections. So you've yeah, that's great. Man, isn't business really about connections? Isn't it about people and knowing and helping to get things done, right? So so true. Yep. Yeah. Sounds like you were pay it sounds like you were very you were very purposeful. I mean, you were very specific in your journey. I mean you you you you took the time to do the steps, right? And you're obviously very successful. I'd love to talk about your empire. You got a little empire going on down there. I think also Florida. Yeah. A little empire. A little mini empire is your empire. How is it something that every dentist has to do? Understand MBA sense? Under go to MBA school or research and become a become a YouTube certified MBA? Is it something everybody has to do or I actually think yeah, I actually might think that it's the opposite effect. The people who are like, I have to learn all the nitty gritty details, or like I have to get an MBA and then masters in marketing. And then like maybe I can go do it. I actually think it's a little bit of a detriment. And we have this joke we have this joke in the MBA program itself where it like, we're actually not the MBA is not necessarily for business owners. Like I had one class on entrepreneurship, which is what a business owner is. And then the rest of them were like managerial. It was like how to analyze a PNL. how to understand marketing. Like it it it it was just like a general overview of all the managerial stuff that really is not necessarily applicable for business owners. So there are there are great sources out there. And there are times I was sitting in class I was like this is not applicable for anything I will ever do. Like I I don't wanna I don't want to managerial like I don't want to I don't wanna do that manager stuff. Like I'm here to make money and make a better business and Be successful. I'm laughing because I thought I thought you were describing dental school for a second. Yeah. ⁓ that is like dental school really didn't teach me anything I needed to know, right? I mean I mean really, what would you say is the percentage of stuff that you apply on your day to day that you learned in dental school? I mean I joke about this. Like like is it fifty percent? Five percent? No. I and I I've I've tell I've told like I I say ten to twenty percent of what you learn in school is probably applicable. The rest of it I'm and and that's if you nerd out. Like if you wanna like we t we had an occlusion in class and like I you know, I memorized a little bit of occlusion and like yeah, do how much do I do of that now? I mean not a lot, but I at least conceptually know it, you know. So it's a foundation. Yeah. It's a basic. Yeah. And I would say MBA is maybe even less. Depending on where your focus goes. Yeah. Because if you want to be an excellent clinician, that's hard work. You have to do the reps, you have to learn it. And if you want to do that and do a bunch of business, that that's almost impossible. And I and like we can talk about why, but that's that's it's hard. It's hard. You have no time for anything else. Right. ⁓ dude, I'm totally like living it. I know you know. I live in it, you know. Like you when you're trying to be a clinical operator and a business owner at the same time, you're really working two full time jobs at the same time. So tell me how you do it with your empire. I mean, I kinda I I I might know where you're going with this, but for the listeners, you know, how are you doing it? You got is it how many offices do you have now? ⁓ it's four. I scaled back from six. Yep. Okay. So that's cool. 'Cause I wanna talk about that. You started this empire, you go up to six. Recently I know you went back to four. You know, what caused that sh what got you to six? What what were you thinking? How did that work out for you? And why the swing back to four? ⁓ yeah. Well, I think ⁓ it it maybe it's common knowledge, I'm not sure, but there are there are essentially increments that become more and more difficult. Like I don't know if you've heard like the the one million to three million is like a a la landmark, whatever. From three to five, that's different. From five to ten, that's from ten to fifty. There are these, I I don't even know, like like moments, plateaus that from one step to the next actually increases in difficulty. And I mean, as as you know, like when when you're doing your own practice and it's just you or you have one associate, like there is so much control you have. As soon as you jump outside of that, as soon as you have another practice. as soon as you have more people, as soon as you have more associates, your control goes down. So if your business is based on your success and on you, and it's not based on predictable systems and reliable culture and all the things, then you start seeing those inefficiencies right away. Like as soon as you increase. Right. And and that's and that and that's the difficulty. It's like, so so then yeah. So then part of my journey, you know, I I had two practices, I was in my MBA. I was finishing up and I we went on a fishing trip with a bunch of buddies as our like final we went down cunoeing a river for two three days ⁓ in the middle of Florida summer, which was an awful idea. But ⁓ we were drunk, so it's fine. but I was like I I even with two, I was like, I don't I can't do this. There's no there is no way that I can do and and the business the first one that I bought was was one point two. We jumped to three point five and like It was a year. And then that was when I bought the second one. And that one I bought the real estate, which is a whole nother thing, ⁓ for two and a half. And we jumped that to like three. And both of those, splitting the time, trying to do clinical dentistry, trying to have like some say, was really diff I mean, it's really difficult is not even it's not it doesn't capture the the the sleepless nights, though. the a and they were far apart unfortunately too then some of that was ⁓ was a bad decision on my end where I was two hours away. I was going one practice and then the other practice two hours away. And it was be where I had practiced before so I had like a patient base and ⁓ and then but that's the same manager that started in you know embezzling. And then I I wouldn't I didn't know I didn't have enough systems to double check that the systems were in place, the the credit cards were going through the right way to reconcile to whatever all these small details. So ⁓ so that's part of that decision. It's like as we tackle on more, because we think we can do it, and guess what? The bank the banks were okay. Like, I was able to borrow a bunch of money. I I don't know. They trust us a lot, they trust us dentists. They're like, wow, you're able to produce. Like, we're gonna give you as much money as you want. Like that, that that's not great. But we'll take it. I mean, whatever. As long as we can make money out of it, cool. But yeah, ⁓ yeah, that's that was part of my journey. So, so Yeah, to be more specific, I I just learned a lot of lessons on how not to do things. Right. ⁓ the the risks that you take by taking on more. ⁓ 'cause once you're a business owner, it's not just like, did I do s a bad feeling? Or did I an implant fail and am I gonna get sued or malpractice? Or now it's like, did somebody slip and fall? Did somebody break their leg at work? Did somebody did all these people sue for malpractice or for discrimination or and like I've had most of these hap things happen to me. Right. Yeah. You can see a mounting. People almost target the people with success, you know? I mean if they're not gunning for you, you probably haven't gotten high enough yet. So, you know, it's kind of a a compliment to you that they've come after you in some way. 'Cause I think they they do to all Yay. Let me tell you, I'm involved in Bring me more hatred. I love it. I've got one right now that's absolute BS and we're gonna win, but Jesus, it's just not a thing. so you drop back to four. So is it was it okay, so I was, you know, kind of of the mindset and of the belief that if you're gonna jump to two, you might as well jump to six to ten. Because, you know, it's like you're gonna do a satellite office and one is too much work, ⁓ it's too much of a time suck, and two or three doesn't really bring in the profit, and then you got you gotta hire somebody to manage it all, so you might as well have five more, right? Is that I mean, am I right? Correct. No, you are. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So so I think ⁓ I can't remember who it is. It's either ⁓ another podcast was talking about how the transition from two to three practices is where it gets really difficult. Like the first one, fine. The second one, you're usually able to split your time enough where they're both successful. The third one is where you see where you lose profitability, where you start seeing all of your inefficiencies. That's where like you too spread. And if everything's relying on you. Which you're successful. You're good. That's that's where it goes to shit. So But that's when it's on you, right? That's when it's on you. If it was just you owning, managing, and clinically practiced yeah, I think three would be impossible. Right. But if you were to hire, you know, a manager, a CEO, C a chief operating officer, right? So what would be the minimum number of frax is I guess you have four. So I guess the minimum fract number of fraxes is four to have a COO. I assume you have a chief operating officer. ⁓ no, yeah. So so yeah, I mean we can go into that detail. So ⁓ so in the MBA, these guys that I went down the river with, one of them was like, you know, I'm looking for a career change. I was like, listen, man, you know, I can't do two. ⁓ come and be a COO, like chief operating. And he was like, Yeah, like I'm interested in that. And I, you know, did some numbers and gave him I asked him what he was making and was like, Yeah, I can match that and we'll do ten percent ⁓ sign on bonus and then we'll see how it goes in two years. And he was like, No problem. So he jumped on, super great guy. Like and and as you know, choosing the right people, choosing the right partners, like this is where this gets really important. But he was the right fit because we communicated well. ⁓ he had some skill sets that I didn't have. ⁓ I tend to be a little bit more like, I wanna be nice and he's just like, Nope, this is what gotta happen. ⁓ And then, you know, all of that does eventually catch up to you. And that's where I had to make a decision last year of like, where am I going to go with my life? And that's where I said, hey man, do you want to be a CEO? And do you want to take this to the next level? And he gladly took a pay raise. And here he is, you know, outperforming even what I could do. So ⁓ one one of the books that I loved is ⁓ the e myth, the entrepreneurial myth, where it basically breaks down why businesses fail in America. And it essentially comes from every the journey is the same. We we start as like I'm a great technician, whatever I'm doing, I'm really good at. I wanna be an owner. So I can do it better than these guys who I'm working for. So then you jump on that and all of a sudden you're not just an o you're a technician, you're a technician, you're a manager slash enforcer, and you're an entrepreneur and supposed to be like creative with growth. And so that plus three of those plus whatever else, no man, that's where it gets crazy. You have to decide where you're gonna go. So your scale back basically came from a happiness, I wanna the work life balance type thing? No, no. Okay. No, no, I wish. no, mine was from a a broken family and ⁓ and a and a and a situation with family that just like broke my heart. And so I I mean and and we've could talk about that too, you know. What what are the what do we give up? In order to grind like we do. If we're gonna work in forty hours a day or whatever it is, we're working crazy hours, you n you better believe other parts of our life are gonna take the hit. And it's either health, it's our family, it's our friends. Yeah. 'Cause your ex was grinding pretty hard too. I mean she's a dentist, right? I mean at that point. We're always grinding pretty hard. I don't need I don't wanna get into it but you know, I know you're kinda going through the thick of it. So ⁓ only what you're c comfortable sharing. you know, but life gets in the way. Hey, look, my God, I'm fifty one years old and ⁓ I feel like I'm just getting started on my life the last two or three years because I went through that divorce. Right. And it I mean, you have to like you're just getting punched and beaten from all sides and then you've got your kids suffering and you gotta spend time with them. So I mean I actually went through where I sold my satellite off. I was planning to grow to ten offices then I had a plan. And I started my first office just then. And then I sold I couldn't get rid of it fast enough because I needed to spend time with my kids, focus on me. Might have focused a little too much on me. But you know. Hey, but you you got guns to show it, you know? Like I wasn't in the weight room. I wasn't saying you were lifting weights either, bro. So hold on a second. Hold on a second. Bibles, lifting Bibles. ⁓ that came that came more recently. Hey, look we all go through our we all go through our periods in lives. I think there's a lot of dentists out there. I mean, there's value in that. A lot of dentists out there ⁓ I mean there's a lot of Americans out there, a lot of entrepreneurs out there who are ending up ⁓ you know, divorced. Just to say it. You know? Absolutely. Kids. And ⁓ you know, divorce probably comes out of necessity, but it's difficult and it's hard. And I I don't think it has to be that hard as hard as it was for me, but you know, what I put through, but ⁓ You're in a situation you had to split assets probably. I mean, everyone does, right? Yep. Yeah. Well, and and that that was a that was a huge hit because, you know, I had signed a prenup. I was like, I'm good. Well, the prenup was protecting from alimony, which is paying them out, but it did not protect from business assets. And that was my f my foresight. ⁓ like I didn't know what I didn't know. And, you know, there's plenty of examples in business where we do this, but like I didn't know. I didn't know mer like all of the All of the Empire, many as it might be, was is a marital asset in Florida at least. And that evaluation process, that that's I mean, that's heartbreaking. It's like Yeah. I yeah, you know. So You know, I ⁓ yeah, I get it. And I mean, for better or worse, I mean, for whatever side of the aisle or the side you wanna look at it from, it's gonna be difficult, right? ⁓ I mean, I know a dentist ⁓ who's going through a divorce and you know the He has ⁓ a partner and they're looking at is his ex wife now gonna become a partner and she knows nothing about dentistry, she's never really worked the last ten or twelve years. And is she gonna be a partner in this business? Yeah. Or they or you pay it out. Or they're gonna pay it out. Or there's a huge payout. Yeah. Well, so it affects the partner, it affects the other side too, 'cause he's looking at it. That's right. Is she gonna be in business with me? Or what do you know? What are you gonna do about it? Like so it becomes a big issue, right? Huge. Yeah huge. I we gotta be really so like I when you're looking out there at people to bring in for partnership, you should be looking at their spouse too and go, ⁓ yeah. You know, I'm definitely marrying that person as well in business. Yeah. I it ⁓ contractually it's very similar. ⁓ I think nonchalantly in America, we're just like, ⁓ marriage is like such a special thing. And ⁓ don't get me wrong, it's not it's it can be. But I also think that there's not like when you sign a lease, like there's some there's some serious like okay if you don't pay the lease you go to jail kind of thing. You know it's not like hey if you know if you build a 20 million dollar empire in the next 10 years and you get divorced you gotta have sell half of it or your all your partners have to sell their port like no there's no training. There's no there's no what this is what happens. It's just like yay let's go sign a big contract and that big contract is signing half of that away if again if you don't know enough about protecting your personal assets and what you build and whatnot. And it affects more than just the two people in the marriage is kinda one of the points too. A lot of stress. you know, I think it's really all about the one of the reasons that my life kinda also slowed down a lot with career wise is I mean I had to focus on being there for my kids when I could. Right. 'Cause it's a tough time for them. I know you're I know what you're going going through on that that edge, right? Yeah. Yeah. yeah, I think yeah. ⁓ so The intentional time. And my grew up my my dad was pretty present. So like I can say like he was a good example. When I say really present, now that I know, like he was there like maybe ten hours a week. And ten hours a week may not sound like a lot to a lot of people, but like it was ten hours of quality time. And so and and everybody's might have a different philosophy of like what's the right amount. But more than the philosophy is all about what's qu the quality is what matters. If that's five hours, if that's three hours and like I I I think coming going through this has really made me step up everything I do is intentional. And I was already pretty intentional. But now it's like, no. Like I want my kids to learn 3D printing this summer, last summer. And then this summer they're working on like whatever. We're spending time outside. We're building fires. I'm like showing them whatever. Like my my oldest, I'm showing how to shoot, you know, stuff like that. Where it's like, no, I'm gonna be intentional. Even if it's not a lot of time, I'm gonna be intentional about it. And That's made a huge difference. Absolutely intentional time. I mean, I I you know, out at the ⁓ restaurant the other day for brunch and I mean looking at parents and kids and they're all on their cell phones at brunch. The parents too. ⁓ yeah. Right? Yeah. No, absolutely. It's like not time spent together at all, you know, and it's it's tough. Or the kids are upstairs just 'cause they're at your house, just 'cause you have custody doesn't mean or you know, y whatever it's that time with the kids it doesn't mean that it it's intentional. Quality. Yep. Yeah. And how does a business owner do that? I mean, you got you gotta have an army of help. You got a nanny, I guess. I don't know, you gotta have people helping. Yeah. Yeah, I did have a nanny for a while. got great great daycare systems. I and like part part of part of these china changes, fam familial like family changes is like, well, how are we gonna work through this logistically? You know, and and everybody has a different experience with that. Like ⁓ you did not have a fun time being like, Okay. Can we talk through this? This is the logistics, you know. And I I have been at least able to like say, okay, like we're gonna do this. And like that's it. And and we've been following that. So like I take the kids to school, but like I I had to tell everybody I am not available before the hours of nine o'clock ever. I take my kids to school every day and that's like my thing. Now evenings, my work late, whatever. But ⁓ that's like, you know, working through that is not the same experience for everybody. That's huge, man. I commend you 'cause dropping the kids off at school. I mean, knowing like being able to know their teachers and be able to connect with their teachers every day. That's that's a huge thing. It's way different than like, you know, the every other weekend dad. You know, I mean you know, you've actually actually kind of got it pretty good. I mean, better than most, right? 'Cause you're actually getting physical Face time with the school, right? And ⁓ you know, probably homework and all that stuff goes along with that. You know, that's a big part of parenting. Yeah. I know you're getting it done, man. I for those of you guys out there that don't know Jonathan like I know him, I his heart's in the right place. I know. I know he's getting it done. You're awesome. Just trying to be like you, bro. But be just be like certain portions of my life, please. Not not all of it. I I I will I'll be honest, I don't want to have a k another kid. ⁓ so like be being a father at fifty, ⁓ to me is like that would be hell. But I mean, I'll be a father, but like a new like I mean like One to two year old, ⁓ man, you must be like you're gonna live till you're a hundred and fifty, bro. Like you you're probably gonna be healthier than anyone I know 'cause of that. And that that's a that is a reason to do it. But I mean I had a kid my first kid I had twenty five, so I'm like yeah Yeah. Well, let me let me talk on that because no, this I'll be like square up honest with you. Like I always am with everybody. Everybody knows what you see, that's what you get. And ⁓ this is nothing new from my wife Allie. I mean she knows what the hard times we've been through. ⁓ but you know, originally got married with we're not gonna have kids and then a few years later, you know, she started thinking about it, blah, blah, blah. And that we went through a couple of years where I was like, I don't know if this second marriage is gonna work, right? I mean, 'cause I don't know if I can go through all this again. Because I had just been through a bad marriage and a bad divorce and I mean saw what those kids went through, but then I don't know. I realized that I love this woman and I wanna see her happy. I also realized I had to come to terms with it's not gonna be the same as my ex because this is a completely different person, like personality wise, right? Which is so hard to do, I'm sure. Yeah, so I had to come to terms with that. Yeah. ⁓ but right now I'll tell you that yeah, when I almost walked away a few years ago, man, I I this is such a blessing because I was sitting here, my my other kids were grown. They're grown, you know, eight sixteen, eighteen, twenty, they're getting old. Now they're twenty and twenty four. And I was just cranking out business and going home and exhausted and just doing it again the next day. Right? And I mean, my wife and I, we traveled all over the world and we party like you know. And I'm like, man, like that started to get a little old. Like, right? Just like wake up, make a lot of money, get drunk, wake up, make a lot of money, get drunk. Like, what are we doing this for? So the new the new kid, my baby boy Brecken, it's ⁓ it's reinvigorating. And I have started working out harder again, so and eating healthier and ⁓ super excited to get home at night and so it's been fun. Yeah. Tal talk about motivation and and I I I do believe that they were some of the primary reason I got through the hard days. You know, getting getting that lawyer the the the letter of whatever it was from the lawyer about discrimination or getting that phone call from the police officer being like your employee ⁓ is a felon and it's like the like all the shit that you just get as a business owner. Yeah. Like those are the days where it's like, you know what? I you know, you see their faces, you're like, this is why I'm doing that. And that's not everybody. Not everybody's doing it for their kids or whatever, but talk about motivation for for for a lot of people. So Yeah, I mean, ten years ago I used to think the happiness after a hard day was like I moved down to the beach and I was like happiness that on a hard day is going down and put my feet in the sand. No matter what happens on this day, if I put my feet in the sand on the other day, I'll be happy, right? I don't know, that that did it for a while. But right now, like playing golf with my nineteen year old, you know, or just my my fourteen month old, he's learned how to he plays catch. We roll the ball and he's he actually can kind of throw it in my direction. Nice play catch from like five feet away. And we'll just do that for a half an hour. And that's just you know. I still play I still play catch with my nineteen and twenty-four year old. Like we go out they he comes back from college, he grabs the gloves, we go out and play catch. You know, that stuff is really cool. You know, that's that's it right there. That's quality. Yep. That's quality. And that I mean, at the end of the day, as long as we feel like we're doing a good job with the quality time, I think that that's enough. Yeah. So as long as I don't have too many Slip and falls in ⁓ embezzled. Please don't. Please don't. I think we can get through it with a little game of catch. let's get back to the the ⁓ man, that's good stuff. That's good stuff. Miss my kids right now, but what ⁓ why let's to go back to business, okay? You've got you've grown, you've done it, right? Why do some doctors never really grow? Why do they never get their practice on track? Why do they never get their all on four practice going? Why do they never get multiple locations but they dream about it? What's holding them back? Yeah. if I had to narrow it down. I think some of it has to do with grit. Like when times get tough, we're not talking about like, man, I had a bad day or I did a bad feeling or the patient's all the patients yelled at me today. Like those things now just like roll off my back. Like that's it is what it is. Right. It it's it's can you take the next level of difficulty? Can you take that next really bad letter or phone call? And just say, you know what, I'm gonna figure this out no matter what it takes. Right. And I I think that that's one part that just it's not for everyone. I'll be honest, it's not for everyone. And if you're not used to taking punches over and over and over, you're not gonna like that scaling. You're not gonna like multi practice. You're not gonna like, you know, trying to do full arch when you're only halfway trained or even when you're fully trained. But don't have a good strategy or it hasn't gone and got the right training, which is the second part to me. You know, first part's just like raw grit. And the second is just really that that network, that community, like getting the help wherever you need and not being afraid to say, I don't know what I'm doing. Somebody tell me. Somebody help me. And that's why like I don't I don't think there's anyone else in the industry who teaches it like you do. And I I mean Yeah, like I c I could tell I and I'm not ⁓ I I I'm I don't think there's anybody that does. And ⁓ I what I I I was really impressed. I think I I was just recently graduated from MBA when you spoke at the first symposi ⁓ Orca symposium and I was like it was on ⁓ it was like the seven fundamentals or habits or something. It was pretty good. Yeah, sorry, forgive me. But I was like this this is this is what this is what people need, but the rest of the conference was about like okay like here's an intra osseo you know suture and here's a here's this really cool picture of this osteotomy it's like and and again that's great and I and people who want to be great clinicians eat that up right a business is a whole nother specialty that's a whole nother thing yeah and it's really hard to do both and all of it Hey, if today's conversation is pushing you to think differently about full arch dentistry, that's exactly why we built the Atlantic Implant Institute. This isn't just a weekend course or a set of disconnected modules. The Core Continuum is a purpose-built curriculum. It's designed to develop full arch surgeons and prostodontists, not just expose you to a little content. From boot camp fundamentals to advanced prosthetics and digital workflow to remote anchorage and FP1. philosophy as well. We teach you structure, judgment, predictability, didactic, hands on, type it on, live patient cadavers. Plus, we teach business thinking required to make it all work in real practice. There's nothing like it anywhere in the country because this was not built to be common. Learn more at the Atlantic Implane Institute dot com. Well I didn't expect to segue into me or this but so you've been to my business class, I think you came to did you come ⁓ two years ago. Yeah, yeah. And it's I've it's actually changed ⁓ quite a bit. More than fifty percent of it's brand new. ⁓ because I think that might have been my first class. But ⁓ I mean how did that was that a good MBA for Dennis? I mean what yeah, what does that need? What do I need to have in there? Maybe I already put it in, but what is that? You probably no, listen, you probably put it in I had sh I need to come again and just ⁓ I'll I'll I'll give you some feedback from educated MBA. But no, I mean I'll love it if you're from the next one. You can just come. You've already been to one, just come to the next. Yep. I'm happy to. no, and and I think I think the fundamentals are are just getting people to start thinking differently than they already do. I mean ⁓ as much as ⁓ as much as I say this over and over, it's like you cl us clinicians, we think differently than a business owner does. And you kind of have to know how to flip flop between the two and to understand where that mindset needs to be. And that's what I see you do in your course. It's it's about okay. Okay, take this hat off. Like you gotta take the clinician hat off for a second and let's start talking about how to do this from a business perspective, you know. And yes, they tie together. You can't have a good business if you don't have a good clinician, you know, and vice versa. But you yeah, you got you gotta know how to oscillate between the two of ⁓ appropriately. Yeah, I think you gotta be able to make the hard decisions. I mean, in in my mind, one reason I I don't know if it's a personality thing with Dennis. I think they sit and idle and and wait to make decisions too long. And I think they wait for the perfect opportunity and they or they want to gain more information ⁓ before they make a final decision. So they never make the decision. And what's your anal what's your take on that? You agree? Yeah, no, we actually talked about that directly in the MBA about the worst decision you can make is one that you can't make, the one that you refuse to make. Like any decision is better than not making a decision. Even if it's a bad decision, you'll learn from it. And I I I would I would I would totally agree with you. I see ⁓ especially again, us clinicians were like, but like why in the science do I in this thing? And like you gotta do that to be a good clinician. But that is what stunts you as a business owner. You're like, I just ⁓ like I need to know more. Like what other marketing companies are there? Like what other what other ⁓ and all of a sudden you have like 18 different consoles with 20 different marketing companies and you haven't made a decision. And rude reality, like one's gonna be okay for the first two months and then it's gonna suck. So then you move to the next one, you know? Marketing is a joke. But it works. Yeah. Again, d go to hit go to Adam's class. You'll learn what you need to learn. And I'm I'm just talking about outsourcing marketing, of course, ⁓ because that's where it's very hit or miss. ⁓ that page. You told me ever favors, man. Come on. Just kidding. It was a bud light. Wasn't yeah, I was gonna say, wasn't that the beer? That's not what I it was the bud light. Then you were gonna help me move couch. Not not sure on that one. Marketing ⁓ I mean Jesus, you know, marketing. Let's just take marketing for example. It's like it should be like dating in college. You know, you're gonna try it if it doesn't work out, you got somebody else next month. Right? Be very, you know, but seriously, be very careful of the marketing company that says sign this one year, two year contract, right? Yep. With no way to get out of it. Would you meet the girl in a bar in college or if you're a lady, would you meet a dude on the street and just sign a two year contract to date? No. Yeah. Exclusivity for two years. What? I don't even know you. Or it's a one year contract, but to get out of it, between you know, the three hundred and fortieth day and the three hundred and sixty fifth day, you have to provide notice in writing. Right? No. Like or it goes And so and and cut off your left nut because really that's what it's gonna take. Yeah. We're an equal opportunity podcast, so it could be an ovary as well. Sorry, sorry. ⁓ not ovary, whatever it is, but you have to do that to get out of the contract. ⁓ look, ⁓ I'm not saying that all marketing companies are bad, don't get me wrong. I mean, there's marketing we're gonna have marketing people on here, ⁓ and a lot of them are very valuable, right? But I think that just like in a relationship, people should be held accountable on a daily basis, right? Like at least a weekly, monthly, like like me and my wife, we check in with each other every day, like hey. How am I, you know, how are you? What's going on? How am I doing? How are we? And I think your marketing company should be the same way, right? Man, I I would say like from your bigger question about like why why scaling is so hard, why growing that? And it does it pretty much comes down to accountability. You know, it's like I can no longer hold everyone accountable because I can't see what everyone's doing all the time. And that's where that gets really tough. And so same with a marketing company. If it's a company, you know, they they have five clients. You better believe they better be focusing and they better than other numbers and they better be telling you exactly what they're providing you. What's your customer acquisition cost? What's your what's your lifetime value? What's your CAC? Yeah, whatever it is, ⁓ L T V CAC value, you know, ratio, all the things that you should know. But then they start growing and they have five hundred people and then five hundred people and all of a sudden you're not gonna be special. You're not gonna be getting all the leads. And and that's just that's the nature of the business. And that's why I'm not saying marketing's not useful because it is, absolutely. Right. But it it it there's challenges to it, just like any other business. So Yeah, I think you just have to have your your finger on the pulse constantly. And if you if not you, if not you, it's gotta be your chief operators, your somebody. You have to have a manager tied to it where they're they've they're looking at that every day. If you're gonna be clinical. Yeah. Right. If you're gonna be clinical. Somebody has to be watching that, you know, at all times. ⁓ one of the most valuable things we I built as part of this like mini the mini empire had to do with an accountability chart. And ⁓ you know, people call it an organizational chart, whatever they want to call it. But just developing whatever what what the business needs. And then developing roles based on that, and then developing key performance indicators for each of them. Everything flows to the right person. And everybody has a a finger on the pulse because you have it all organized. Yeah. Explain the I love the KPIs. We talked about we brought KPI into the business course and ⁓ other metrics as well. So wait, are you watching metrics yourself or is someone else in the one of the con one of the contingencies that I told the CEO when I told him takeover, I said, I don't want to get any more phone calls. Yeah. I want I want this I want this passive. And he and and and again, it was double the salary. There was some profit sharing. Like this was a good deal for him, I believe. And it was a great deal for me because it literally gave me back a hundred percent of my time other than one day a week. The all in, all in X pod is brought to you by JB Dental Labs, the elite lab, trusted by full art surgeons Prostodonis and digital forward practices internationally. JB specializes in precision full arch restorations, zirconia, PMMA, photogrammetry workflows, and fast turnaround times that don't sacrifice quality. JB delivers a truly digital workflow powered by their proprietary online portal for easy case uploads, real-time tracking, and fast streamlined communication. If you're looking for a lab that understands immediate load, Passive fit and the demands of modern all on X dentistry. Learn more at jbdentalab.com. Tell them that the all in, all on X pod sent you. I still am a clinician one day a week at my practices. But other than that, I don't get phone calls. I don't get questions. I don't get inquiries. I don't get I don't get anything. So you're only practicing dentistry one day a week? ⁓ I was. So I could ⁓ regulate. And then ⁓ I decided to go do some more contract work. I've been doing contract work for affordable and for ⁓ several several different companies. ⁓ I've probably been to like, I don't know, thirty offices at this point in Florida. And you know, there's somebody will hear about me or call me and be like, Hey, I have a psycho case or have a difficult case and I'll go down there or go wherever. ⁓ and now I was like, if I'm gonna do contract work, I'm gonna do it local. So I've I basically asked all the offices in the area, like, hey, I do full arch, I can do everything in house, I can preprint chair side, I can pick it up chair side, I can do surgery, whatever you need. And ⁓ I've there's been a lot of ⁓ want for that in my area. And so pretty much I do that three days a week. Yeah. ⁓ That's gonna that's gotta be difficult. I mean, not to get into the nitty gritty, but maybe get maybe we will get in the nitty gritty just little bit, but you know, bring in, you know, handling Instrumentation, the chair, the faculty, you bring your own staff. I mean, there's a lot that goes into that, whether you do bring your own staff or not. So are you are you bringing traveling with your own staff and instruments? Yep. So I yeah. So I have ⁓ two assistants and ⁓ and a manager ⁓ who kind of ⁓ helps with all the offices. and then I I travel with all of my everything, everything I you know again, I I have a full digital. protocols in my bag and I have a full analog. So like whatever I stumble into. the anesthesia part is probably the hardest part 'cause basically it's like until I've worked in your office a few times, we're doing oral sedation. If that's what's something you want to offer your patients, that's fine. I'm okay with it 'cause I that's how I s learned and started. So I feel like I can manage patients okay with oral sedation, but man, that's tough. So as you know. So that's that's the hardest part. Yeah. That's probably the hardest thing I teach to people 'cause they come in and they see that I do deep general sedation and I they hear me say I would not go back. And I won't. I'm not going back. I'm just you wanna you want it done by me and it's gotta be in my office and it's gotta be ⁓ deep. I just I love that margin of safety ⁓ for so many reasons. But then they're like but they're getting started out and I'm like, But look, you can't afford this. I get it. Like we all went through the oral sedation. We all went through that and the difficulties of it. And then we went through the IV sedation. Then I got you know Ivy certified and my facility was certified and this and that and then that I was like, I just I'm just gonna bring someone in. Well, 'cause then there's the there's the probably like what, once a quarter that's like some some really difficult sedation patient comes in and it's like managing all of that, plus if their surgery is difficult, man. That's hard. So I just I'm just enjoying I'm just trying to make it more simple for myself these days. Yeah. Well, and I I'll just commend you on that because what what I see, like how I looked up look up to you ⁓ specifically is how you've developed your own like facility culture teaching like your like what you have there is is so special. And in addition, you live like two minutes away. Like you're you were like, Hey, let's go to my house. I was like, ⁓ man, okay, I'll buckle up. He's like, Don't get buckled up. I was like, What? He's just like right across the street. Turn the left and we're already at the fr you know, at his house. And that's see, that's you developing your lifestyle, what you want. And I I mean that's amazing. Like I I I r look up to that. That someday that might be my I don't know. I'm still kind of in a weird place. ⁓ Yeah, you know, my with my ex my ex life, I won't say my ex wife, my ex life, ⁓ she didn't want to move to the closer to the practice and I was tired of being in the car two hours a day. You know and I mean that wasn't reason number one for the split, but it was definitely a reason number eight or nine. Like, come move to the pra like I can't see you and the kids in my car two and a half hours a day. So it was like when I when I had a chance to rewrite a new chapter in my own book, I decided I don't need, you know, a mansion and I don't need five acres. Because where my practice is that makes a you know good, decent living, and it would be impossible to replicate it overnight. Like I couldn't build this back in ten years. ⁓ I'm I'm not gonna drive across town to have a horse farm and I'm not gonna drive to the big areas where you have the big houses. I'm not even gonna drive the ocean front, I'm gonna live right there. Right? Yep. Yeah. Yep. I have a golf cart, I can drive a golf cart. And you do. I do. I do. Although I get I get a lot of I got a lot of birdie waves fr when I'm on the forty mile an hour road. You're in the middle of the road, like I don't care. This is my practice. That was my thing. Like I have a seatbelt and a turn signal. I can be here. I'm legal. I am legal here, okay I am legal. Speed limit's 35. It's not my fault you want to do 55. Exactly. You're going you're going to speed limit. Hold on, say it goes to 30. my gosh. If you've ever taken thirty ⁓ golf cart around a sh a turn at 30 miles an hour, you know why it doesn't go over 30. Because it'll it'll roll. You'll fall. It'll flip over. It will definitely roll. ⁓ Well, man, I look up to you too. I I love, you know, I love that you say that about. Thanks, man. Yeah, man. I for the one thing I've learned keeping my life simple. You know, there's something to be said for that. ⁓ just having less. I talked about this with Lane a little bit a couple weeks ago. Lane Harris, you know, our good buddy. ⁓ yeah. ⁓ yeah, if you don't know Lane, you should know Lane. ⁓ We have a similar background, actually. Yeah. Similar upbringing. Yeah. Yeah. Did you know that? No, you didn't know that. Well, I mean, I know both knew you're both from ⁓ Utah. And so Mormonism. Yeah. Right. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I wait, do you have the same parent father or No the our parents are brother sister, so no. Well aren't they all in Utah? No, I'm kidding. Yeah, yeah, they're all related. They're people in Utah do not send letters. We love our community. We're just yeah, we share we share very similar life experience, so I'll just say that. No. Ex you want to explain for the listeners what a Mormon lifestyle is as a child? Yeah. ⁓ imagine having like twenty moms. No, I'm just kidding. Not that either. ⁓ you know, we Mormons are like the very extreme Christians. ⁓ and there's some controversy in that, but basically they're very, very religious. ⁓ and there's pros and cons of that, right? So growing up in a in a community like that, there are certain expectations that people have on you and that you have on yourself. There's a certain amount of guilt ⁓ and or suppression my possibly of your own feelings that happen because of that. ⁓ and this is not just Mormon exclusive, this is a lot of a lot of different things in our life. So you know, there's a lot of great pros and cons of to a lot of different religions and there is something to be said about ⁓ you know, the what what the LDS community has and they they certainly have some great things going on. So but ⁓ doesn't it doesn't fit for everyone. So Sure. I mean you know, religious ⁓ extremism can be very similar to you know, regardless of the title, no? Yep. Yeah. Regardless of what religion it is. You can come from a bunch of different things. And ⁓ shoot. I never really knew until I was like twelve that everyone thought I was Jewish because my name was Adam. But it was ⁓ it was ⁓ wow which is a whole nother story. But it was a very Catholic community. I mean ⁓ there was some Presbyterian so Catholic lights in there somewhere. But I went to Catholic school and there was a ton of guilt. Just a ton of like you if you're happy and it didn't have to do with God, you know, it's a sin. You shouldn't be happy about anything, right? Like why are you taking joy in something when other people are suffering? Like it w it was that bad. Yeah. So, you know, we were always being checked. We we yeah. We know a little bit about that. So and and you'll you'll get that from any religion who focuses on on like what you should and shouldn't do as a form of of self worth. And and so exploring like what does self worth mean to you. And sometimes that works for people to be like, Yeah, I I believe my self worth is based on what a religion tells me that I need to be doing and that's okay. So some of them it's like You should decide what you is self worth for you inside your own heart. Yeah. And spirit. I'm I'm for whatever religion and God l gets us all to get along. Let's just say, you know. I'm just for whatever that is. That sounds nice. You know, the us versus them, the old Pink Floyd song, Us and Them, right? You know you know the song? Thank you for Remember, I'm I'm twenty five, so there's no way I know that. I'm twenty one. You know ⁓ yeah. You know Pink Floyd, right? Yes. We didn't have if we just have labels. If we didn't have labels, I'm a Catholic, you're a Mormon, that guy's a Jew, you know, whatever. You're a oral surgeon, a periodonist, a general dentist, all the connotations that come with that. Absolutely. If we didn't all just kinda like band together behind a name just because it was a name, I think we'd all be a lot more. What what do you think ⁓ what do you think the automatic connotation is when somebody hears a dental business owner, a dental practice owner? Just a could be anybody or also layman. Layman. Yeah. So you know it's like, ⁓ yeah, if you're out and about and you're like, Yeah, you know, I own dental practice. I think they think that we're we're all rich and it's easy. I think that they think it's easy for us, right? I think you're right. Yeah, or or associates, you know, who are like, Man, whatever it's easy. You what you're doing. I can I can do that. Right. people are, you know, surprised when I say, and you know, it's a blue collar job. They're like, This is a wor this is work. Like, first of all, just owning a business is work. I don't if you have one employee, God forbid five, ten, twenty or forty employees, that's work. And then to have to do dentistry to produce to make money, it's like it's I'm doing exactly what my forefathers did on the assembly line at Ford Motor Plant in Detroit. Maybe worse. I don't like they they I think they had time limitations. I think they still you know like they worked overtime but that was eighteen hours is overtime. Like that these days we work twenty two hours, you know? Yeah. Actually God, now that I think about it, so not too many people in my immediate family went to college until me and my all my brothers went to college. Everyone everyone at college educated but My extended family in Detroit, everybody thought we were all pretty silly, if not stupid, ⁓ to go to college because you could just go work for a motor company and make a hundred dollars an hour pulling the lever on the line from nine to five. And you know, I said that's dumb because it's not gonna be here forever. Well, you know, just a few years later, you know, the nineties they started moving all the factories to Mexico. And ⁓ then they were all out of work. But here I am just ⁓ pulling the lever on the line It's still a lever. Well and I I and I I I would say even more like the misconception that people have about that, like ⁓ you know, and again, I'll give some general numbers, but like, you know, people are out there being like, Well, my dental practice is, you know, fifty percent overhead and like, okay, okay, we can talk about that. What does that actually mean? Maybe different. Right. I mean Statistically, the best run companies. I mean, twenty so what does that actually mean? That means you're paying yourself like you're an associate. So you take away 30% of that. And then of that, then then you're like, what, 10 to 20% more? But you've got 700% more stress? Like that's where that's where it gets like you realize you just bought yourself another job with more jobs on top of it. Right. Unless you figure out a way. to get yourself a little out of it or to delegate appropriately or have accountability or whatever it is. But that's what that's to me that. Yeah. That was how you did it. ⁓ man. Well, I think there is there is a misconception about passive. ⁓ even even like, you know, if you want to do short-term rentals, you know, and you're like, ⁓ it was all passive. Well, if you're a short term rental owner and you're doing Airbnb, I don't care if you hire a management company, there's still shit that comes up. There's still thing. There's still, you're still gonna get letters from lawyers. You're still gonna get, you're still gonna get, you know, complaints or embezzlement. Like there's there's it's not totally passive, right? And so I think I think for me, measuring, you know, one was the strategy of like, listen, I built trust in somebody, I trust this person to delegate, to take over operations. That was a that was a very risky, ⁓ but also very freeing moment for me, you know, and so. I think there is a part of a I I know for Dennis, we don't like giving up control, man. That is the hardest thing. ⁓ because because there's so much risk involved with that, right? It's like, I don't know, this person's gonna just drive everything I've created into the ground, you know, or or the first sign of the of a cracking. It's like, okay, you don't know how to do it. I'm taking that away from you. And so so one was making the decision to give up some of that. Two was to say, okay, when I see cracks, when I get phone calls from manager, from other doctor, from whatever being like, they're doing a bad job, they don't know what they're doing. Do I have the forte to say I trust them? Yeah. You should too. And then say, okay, I'm gonna go to them and be like, what's going on? Do you need help? And sometimes they do and sometimes they don't. But it's it is some of that trust factor of like truly. saying, do I can I give up the control? And then can I trust the process that I created that I'm helping to create? And that's where I'm still involved. I still do a lot all of the leadership stuff. We do quarterly meetings, we do yearly meetings, we have culture visits, like I still do sometimes do practice visits. So I'm still involved from like a just kind of to show face, but also to really just show them that like what what the what the what their leadership is doing is what I'm agreeing with. And that that's enough for the people to be like, okay, like I trust that guy and that guy trusts these guys, so I'm gonna trust these guys too. Sure. Right. So that's a part of it. Yeah. Do you ever get the employees, especially the older employees that you had before that just kind of try to sidestep this the chief operating officer and go, Hey Straight to me. Yeah. Can I talk to you? You mean every time I have an office visit? Yeah, absolutely. But you know what I follow up with? I say, why didn't you bring this up to them? Yeah. And they'll be like, well, I just feel and I say, I trust them. You should too. Bring it up to them. Right. And and that's hard for them, but they're getting it now. They're like, Yeah, we don't need Dr. ⁓ to tell us anything. We're good. We'll ask Brandon or whoever. It's hard to do. It's ⁓ you just had a culture meeting today. You said like forty you forty, fifty employees at that time. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I have forty five employees. ⁓ so I don't know if you've heard of ⁓ culture by design. A little little synopsis. This is this is really cool. So Fortune 500 companies realized that like, what's the most important part of your business? And like everybody's like, well, marketing, whatever, but like the most important usually came down to culture. And then it was like, hey, how do you make culture just as intentional as your PL or your marketing strategy or whatever? There's all these strategies for everything tangible. But the intangible of culture was like there was a there was a miss. So ⁓ I Mr. Friedman, I can't remember his first name, but he wrote this book called ⁓ Culture by Design. And basically it's saying this is how you take culture and actually make it intentional. You design your culture and then you follow up with it. And like huge shout out to them because they they're they real helped. But like ⁓ so I'm I don't just show you. This is our like our little pamphlet, ⁓ smile so big is the company. ⁓ but There are thirty behaviors on here. We like made a little card. Everything is on there. And essentially it's like a little mini ⁓ like ruling of like we just go over it once, once a week. ⁓ we go we we just say, this is something that we expect out of everyone. This is the culture that we have. Yeah. Who's that Allie? No, no, no, no. I was looking to go go ahead. I was looking to see if I had ours close by, but we have yeah. Yeah. And and like these these are like they're not Breaking they're not like groundbreaking, but like speak directly, address issues honestly, professionally, and directly to people involved. Never gossip or talk about anyway. So it's just like, guys, this is our culture. If you do something wrong, like if you do something that doesn't meet these standards, that's what we're measuring you on. You know? And and and that's okay. If you don't if you don't want to live up to that, that's okay. You're not a good fit here. And so it's really about being intentional and building that culture, not just because I like And and this is how it was. There was my the company took a hit culturally when I is stepped away. Because it was like, ⁓ this guy, like he comes in with a good attitude, like he, you know, he's eager to learn, he's there for patience, he listens to everyone. And and then I was like, Map, I'm out. And then it was like, ⁓ the whole culture was based on me. And that's where I was like, No, no, no, no. Okay. We gotta change that because no business should be reliant on a person for culture. Because how can you have a successful business if it's on one person? They're gonna have bad days, they're gonna leave, they're gonna get disabled, whatever. Yeah. And so that that's what really turned that around to be like, no, we're not gonna base it off of anyone. We're gonna come together with the behaviors and say, These are the behaviors we expect of everyone. Yeah. Absolutely. So I hear accountability is what I hear. ⁓ culture of accountability. ⁓ and I'm going through a parallel thing because You know, I have all I'm kinda going through this right now because I've spent twenty some years practicing by myself and then I decided, you know what? And why? Because I intentionally left it that way because I was happy that way. Like, you know. There is some night some happiness with control, man. There is some less anxiety for sure. And, you know, less risk and it's all on me and I can you know, but ⁓ you know, this last year I'm looking to open things up. I opened ⁓ hired an associate, I'm hiring a periodontist soon. probably looking to hire another surgically minded person so I can do what you're doing. ⁓ and step away and do some more business stuff because I just love the creativity of business stuff. So I'm looking at I'm looking at my own DSO ⁓ coming up soon. in a s slightly different structural model. Okay. But ⁓ you know, I don't want to get into get into the weeds here on that. But yeah, I had to I started stepping away. And I started noticing like every day I was gone, things just fell to shit. Like they just bottomed out, right? Like bad days all around. And I'm like, look, this, you know, I told them in a meeting like six months ago, I'm like, ⁓ I want to be able to walk away and just have you guys just do what you're supposed to do with me not being here, right? It's like having a bunch of kids. That's that's the real litmus test. Yeah, like everybody wants to think that their business is great. The real litmus test, leave your business for three months and see how it does. And that's ⁓ Three leave for three days three hours. I mean, we can get down to that, but like but there there was somebody I was listening to. I think it was Alex Rosey, but whoever was like, That's a litmus test. Like leave for three to six months and then then you'll know what you what's your business how your business is doing. Because it should be relied on you. And that and business. What's that? ⁓ that's a that's the business, not necessarily like we are that we're we're in this weird position where we're the clinicians and the and the business owners. So if you're If you're just focusing on successful business, like that's a big part of it. Taking yourself out of the equation in some way. Yeah, and a big part of it's having your name. When you have your name on the ⁓ on the practice, you know, you have a it's not a business, it's a prison. I mean, I think that's a saying or something like that, you know? Yeah. Because it's all you, right? So in twenty seventeen I rebranded to full implant choice, knowing that one day I'm gonna grow and probably walk away. It's hard to sell my name when I take my name with me, right? You know, so that that's the hard part. It's like Your your your branding, your goodwill is like your name. So it's like it's like how do I how do I just walk away from that? No. Yeah. So I mean I had somebody contact me to buy their buy their teaching institute and it had their name on it. And I'm like, so what happens when you leave? Like, you know, do I still like I'm like, no, I'm not interested. It's there's no goodwill here. Like it's just it's all you. Right. Yeah. ⁓ that's why the Atlantic Planet Institute is what it is, 'cause you need to be a partner in there. You need to be a partner in my business class. I think we need to talk more about that. Right? Yeah, we should. You're super, super smart. ⁓ I'm looking at growing that. And I mean that. I really do. Multiple failures creates lasting ⁓ lasting advice for people who haven't experienced those failures before. You know, which I think is one of the both biggest benefits of coming to the class is you know, it took me twenty four years to get where I am now and ⁓ I probably could have done it in four years if I just listened to if I was exposed to somebody like myself, right? Or you to go be your taking the courage. Take yeah. To go if they would learn from you for a year, be your associate for a year, they've learned so much. Right? I'd hope so. It would. Culture of accountability. I kinda wanna jump back into that. because I'm not sure if I heard this somewhere or if it just came to me, but it I I'm I'm convinced that there is No novel idea, it all just floats around out there and gets regurgitated and recycled over time. But for the most part. So I'm not gonna take credit for it. But the culture of accountability, I know I had a talk with my people and a ca a culture is accountability. Culture isn't like ⁓ we all just love each other there. Everyone's just really cool. Yeah, everyone's just really happy around here. Or family. Yeah. And I'm like, you know what makes people really families hate each other is when you do your j job. That's what makes people like each other. Like when they're not having to do your job for you. Right? That's culture people are like, accountability is culture. Yes. Because when they when they like you, it means they're not having to cover for you f five times a day. Exactly. Proud of your work as one of us. Take pride in your work as one of our What do you think of this? I our last meeting, I got in a ⁓ not our last meeting it was a while back, but I gotten a text. ⁓ sorry I'm gonna be a little late. Sorry, I'm gonna you get these all the time, right? At work? ⁓ yeah. ⁓ anymore. Now it's your COO. Hey, sorry I'm gonna be a little late. Traffic was bad. Like it was a surprise. It's like this is the eighth time this month. Yeah, we get it. I so I made a new standard operating procedure. I said, next time you wanna say sorry I'm late, you have to send two texts. One you have to send to your boss, which isn't me anymore, it's somebody else. And it says, I understand that I'm late. I was wrong. I am documenting this for myself. You know, I'm physically documenting this that you can count me late today because I failed to show up to work on time. That's one. Two is you're going to send that text, a text to your immediate coworkers saying, I'm sorry I'm not there on time and I let you down and you have to do all my work for me until I get there. ⁓ I love it. Well, and they're not and you're not wrong. Like anybody who's worked with a person who's constantly late who has to pick up their slack, that sucks. Right. You know, and I I mean I I was an assistant once and like that was the worst. It's like these people aren't here. I gotta set up other ops. I gotta I gotta make phone call what no. Like that's not a team. And the reason why it's respon accountability is culture because you know, something that kills culture so fast is when one person's slacking or skating And other people are getting mad and that's when nobody likes each other. Right? It's not the company picnic and the night at Top Golf. It's not the, you know, it's not the it's not even the birthday cakes you give out. You know, it's it's we all support each other and we do our job. Yep. Yeah, I ⁓ I mean and ⁓ one of my one of my lessons, ⁓ I hired one of my first assistants I ever had. She's super talented, had no accountability. So I put her in a management position in one of my practices. ⁓ you know, and within probably a year, I was like, this is probably not the best fit, but like I don't know if I can let her go. And little did I know, she was she was the one like her lack of accountability was what led to everyone else's. But this was the friend, you know. And so eventually, you know, when I passed on the company, like these things were coming to me. It's like, Hey, I don't think, you know, I know you like this lady. ⁓ and I was like, Listen, you guys make decisions. I'm still gonna be sad, but I think that's the right decision. And because she didn't have accountability, nobody else did. Right. And it trickled down. And it's like, yeah. So and the staff the staff part, man, you know. Like even at at any scale, I feel like the staff is like that's the hardest part. It's the freaking HR. Well, the mistakes of of our leaders only get magnified by the sport. It's I mean, just like your children. I mean, you know, your children are gonna magnify your mistakes. That's why the little tiny mistakes you make are so incredibly important not to make them return. I often refer to my employees as my children. They kind of the same relationship. Jeez. It's kind of the same relationship. I mean, they're a reflection of you, no? Yeah. You're not around. Dude, ⁓ we gotta get you in the business course and we gotta figure out a way to cultivate this business. I think we need to cultivate this business course into more even more modules of business. I mean, we could have culture weekends, we could have just straight up finance weekends we could have advertising sales weekends I think that would be you don't you don't need an MBA but you need some direction and I think just like you're talking about segmentation of like let's just talk about what marketing is and does let's just talk about what culture is and does and how to develop it. Let's go over your PL and like like we can go with look at what's what sucks as an industry standard. Like if you're if your supplies are at 15% you suck. I don't I'm sorry to tell you like the standard's five percent If you're if your lease is fourteen percent, like you are double the price of anybody else. Like you're this is wrong. This is not good. Right. Whatever. Just just walk away. Just walk away. Close guitar. ⁓ that's fine. I'll take the tax. I'll see you. ⁓ Expenses, you know, there was ⁓ the risk of droning on about business and we're gonna wrap this up probably soon, but there were I was listening to a CEO talk on a podcast somewhere a few years back, I can't r remember who it was, but he w they were talking about how every time he went to a company, he could raise profit like in the first quarter, just like thirty percent every time, right? No matter where he went. And it was always the answer was always in the expenses. It's like whatever the expenses are, it's easy to cut them in half or you know, at least twenty five percent. It's easy. The second twenty five percent might take a little work, right? But in three months you can knock out half your expenses, right? Absolutely. Would you be willing to show doctors how to do that? Absolutely. How so so if I had to if I had to put a number on it, I think the average general dentist could save ⁓ where we're talking bottom line or Yeah. It depends on what number we're talking about, but like almost guaranteed twenty percent savings from your expenses. Like most people don't know. They don't know their options. They don't know what how they can save. They don't know where to go. They don't even know that's not even organized well enough to be like, Is this expense even matter? Or it does. Or you know. So ⁓ or what is an expense, right? Yeah. Yeah. I mean my first business class, honestly, like I had to my second business class I had to throw in an hour about you w financial numbers, like what a balance sheet is and what a PL is. I didn't realize that people didn't know that stuff. ⁓ And they're like, profit and loss. I'm like ⁓ That's not a financial document. Like statement of cash flows, balance statement, and income statement, you know, or balance whatever, balance sheet income statement. And I was like, I've never heard of a P and L. Anyway, income statement. So Yeah. All right. Thanks. You got company there. Yeah, yeah. The Dr. Barker. He's still working. Good. That's how you afford stuff. That's kind of that's how you can afford to do stuff. I wanna leave ⁓ I I wanna I don't wanna leave this podcast without talking about this, 'cause you put it on your C V, my friend. And I knew this, but it was important enough that you put it on your C E Cancer Survivor. ⁓ yeah. What does that mean to you and yeah that tell me about your journey. Tell me about how that how that means your life. ⁓ you know, so I think there's a I was just talking about this to somebody today. Well and and I'll tell you, what did I tell you like why it's not for everyone? Why in business, scaling, growth, it's multiple practices. And it has to do with grit. And like at the end of the day, what where do we come up with this grit? And so you know, and I I would say like wrestlers or fighters are probably pretty good at grit because hit after hit, takedown after takedown, you're you're getting back up. You're getting back up, right? And I f foundationally. I mean, ⁓ you know, and I was young. I'm I was two to three year old. So like whatever conscious level probably wasn't there, but from a subconscious level. Like some of the earliest words I remember was my grandmother saying, fight through this. You got this, like fight through this. And I think that at the end of the day, we all are gonna have challenges. We're all gonna have something. And that could be something, you know, totally without outside of our control, like cancer survivor, but it could also just be, you know. a hard relationship. It could be our house burned down. It could be our parents abandoned us, whatever. And how we deal with that, the grit that comes from that is what can then lead us to the next level of success. And so that I mean, yeah, I I think that's what what cancer did for me. And I just inherently instilled this like, I'm gonna fight through whatever comes my way. And yeah, at some point I'm like, I hope the punches stop coming. Like but they don't probably so ⁓ you know, you just keep rolling it and ⁓ you learn through it. But fighting yeah, I gotta love it, man. Fighting through cancer like you fight through your everyday life. You know, just get up and go the next day, just get up and keep on going. That's right. Yep. And and then again from the from the mindset. Like it's it's a mindset of like, I can do this, I'm gonna work through this, I'm gonna I'm gonna beat this, I'm gonna I'm gonna do it. And you that's the choice we make. We can make every day. Like today's gonna be better than yesterday and I'm gonna make that happen, you know. Right. Yeah. I love it, man. You can lay down in the hole and just let ⁓ shell you and take rounds or you can get up and move. Right? That's right. That's right. Exactly right. Sit in one spot, you're a dead duck, right? Same goes for life. That's right. So, ⁓ I wanna ask you this, ⁓ kind of Kind of a last question here. ⁓ what's the best podcast we've ever been on? No. ⁓ my gosh. Well, that's a tough one. ⁓ out of all 8,000 podcasts I've been on. No, dude. I'm so honored to have been on here today. Thank you for ⁓ calling me up. I know even when this was a con an idea, a conception of an idea that you were already thinking of me and like that meant a lot to me. So thank you. I'm I'm honored to be on here and keep it up. I mean I watch these ⁓ whatever other w every other week. I gotta cat catch up sometimes, but it's awesome. You're spreading good news. I love talking to a guy like you because I you know, I know you to be a good a good man, a good good person. I know you to be a good father, and I know you to be a successful business owner. And a lot of people they they would look they would love to be in your shoes. Right, they would love to be there in three years, right? Like look up like this guy, he's he's doing it, right? I mean he's got it, he's doing full arch, he's getting contracted to do full arch, he owns practices, you know, he's got it all figured. He also has a aura of peace, a little happiness, right? That's the Hawaiian shirt. Don't be deceived. I was gonna say that when I show you. And ⁓ And though you you almost look I it might be the Hawaiian in you, but you look like a wise sage already. You're not even a grandpa. Thank you. Thank you. I I g I think I got one gray hair somewhere. Yeah, there it is somewhere. So that I mean I do have a I do have a last question. Okay, so wise Hawaiian sage. I can only imagine you in thirty years, you just look that much wiser, right? You're like More wrinkled. And your grandchildren, right? Imagine your grandchildren huh? I'm catching flies with el with elevators. Like that's that's the level we're at, okay. Or or I think how that's going. So you're thirty years from now, your grandchildren are watching this show. What are what are they taking away from this? From grandpa. ⁓ I think that they'll take away what I'd want them to take away. They might take away like that guy was that guy was going through some stuff and he made it through. But I think what I'd want them to take is we are we are in control of our own destiny and through through our hard work and through the networks and through the people, we can we can do almost anything we put our mind to. Yeah. So that's that's perfect, man. Love it. You got any ⁓ anything we didn't cover? Any f any ⁓ 'cause that's a great, great ⁓ finish on but anything that we have to talk about that's near and dear to your heart. What's up coming? Where can people catch you? Where can people find you? ⁓ yeah. well, ⁓ that's a great question. I am I'm pretty heavily involved with Orca level one, ⁓ which is if you don't know, it's a beginner implant course ⁓ that we do in Guatemala, it's pretty great. ⁓ And I think that's a great place to get started. I I probably referred maybe twenty people to Adam. Like people are always like, Where should I go for Didactic? And again, I'm not this is not paid. Okay. This is just me having gone myself, having taken the courses, having taken my associates. Like it's a pr it it's it's where you want to go for didactic for sure. So anyway, there's that. so I'll be the business course. I'm just gonna put it out there in the ethos. and yeah, Orca and Probably just roaming around the the beach in Jacksonville, Florida. So I love it. Love it. He's g yeah and he you gotta be a you gotta be able to walk up to a stranger at a bum because I'll tell you firsthand he does look look a little bit like a bum when he's off work. So look for that Hawaiian. If you see a Hawaiian beach bone that looks unemployed, he might own four dental practices. That's legit. That's that's pretty accurate. Jonathan A. Montoya. ⁓ I really enjoyed this talk, buddy. We're gonna continue to offline, but thanks for being on the show. ⁓ Thank you, man. You guys ⁓ out there listening, I hope you really enjoyed this. There's a ton of tremendous value with Jonathan in this podcast. And I know Jonathan, you'd probably be amenable to people contacting you with questions. ⁓ so how can they contact you? Yeah, ⁓ you can text me. Do you give numbers out on here or no? People do. DM me on whatever Instagram page. No, don't DM me. ⁓ I don't even know what that means. ⁓ just kidding. ⁓ you can email me. That's the easiest way. ⁓ JM at DDSaloha.com. DDS Aloha. Sounds very sexy. Surprise, surprise. If you enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe. ⁓ on ⁓ you know, the podcast. Apple, Spotify, on the pod app, on ⁓ YouTube, please subscribe on all three. Keep us rolling, and I look forward to seeing you guys next week. Jonathan, let's continue the conversation, but everyone else, peace out. We'll see you next week. Aloha. Thanks. Hey, if today's conversation resonated with you and you're looking to sharpen not just your technique, but your judgment, your discipline, and your long-term vision, then this is exactly why we built the Atlantic Implant Institute. This is not just some collection of disconnected modules. This is the core continuum for education and full arch workflow. It begins with module one, core bootcamp fundamentals, where we establish surgical foundations, diagnostic discipline, and repeatable decision making under real-world pressure. And then it continues with module two, advanced prosthetics and full digital workflow, where occlusion, vertical dimension, aesthetics, condyles, and execution all converge. And then we have module three, which tackles remote anchorage, pterygoids, zygomatics, complex anatomy, taught through biomechanics planning for predictable outcomes. And after the continuum, we have modules in FP1 fixed media load and also business, how to five, 10-20. This is business leadership and operational strategy so that you can build surgically what actually works in practical business. If you're ready to go into full art, Dentistry with intention, structure, accountability, and purpose. You can learn more at the Atlantic Implant Institute dot com.