Below is the complete transcript of this episode of the Bulletproof Dental Practice podcast. Prefer to listen? Find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube.
The following transcription was from the Bulletproof Youtube channel. Here is the https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZZIsTg023mA&t=5s
Peter Boulden
0:00:00
Hey everybody, welcome back to another episode of the Bulletproof Dental Practice Podcast.
Craig Spodak
0:00:08
I'm Peter Bolden. And I'm Craig Spodak. Dentistry can sometimes feel lonely. Having over 45 years of combined experience and the chops to run eight successful practices, our mission is simple. Pay it forward and share what we've learned. That's why we developed the Bulletproof Pathway, to help you navigate your way to ultimate success in dentistry. And don't forget to join our community's conversation over at
Craig Spodak
0:00:38
Bulletproof.Dental. Now let's get
Craig Spodak
0:00:43
to it. Hey everybody and welcome back to another episode of the Bulletproof Dental Practice Podcast. It And we're actually doing something cool. We're fielding questions from our audience. Nothing better. So if you have a topic you want us to cover, or if you have some sort of pressing issue in your practice, don't hesitate. We're here. If it's compelling and we think other people are suffering from the same ailment, we'll be on it and answer it. So this is gonna be anonymous, but I'm gonna go ahead and read it. Hey Peter, you there?
Peter Boulden
0:01:17
I just wanna make sure I got it. I'm here, buddy. I'm sitting here waiting in the wings.
Craig Spodak
0:01:22
Okay, cool. So, hey Docs, I've been listening to your guys' podcast since I was a third year dental school student. Thanks for that. I just recently graduated last year and recently franchised a small practice with a DSO. I'm constantly running into communicating with employee situations. I love that. I'm constantly running into this whole, I have to talk to people stuff. Anyway, my experienced dental assistant often tells me, quote, the other doctor doesn't use this or the other doctor only does this. Since I'm a new doctor, they often don't do notes for me and do not mark the completed treatment before they take the patient to the front desk. I have to constantly tell them to make sure you do this and that before communicating with my employee situations. My experienced clinical assistant, oh I'm sorry this is a JPEG, blah, blah, blah. I have to constantly tell them to make sure you do this and that before you take the patient up front. Do you have some suggestions on how you communicate with your assistant slash staff? Any suggestions on classes I should take to make my approach to them a bit easier. I love doing dentistry, but dealing with assistants is just not my strong suit. Thank you. Good for you, thanks for writing us. Yeah, that is awesome.
Peter Boulden
0:02:36
Thanks for that. That is awesome, taking the time. You probably didn't think that it would make the big time being published in the airwaves, but here we go. But you left it anonymous, so I dig it.
Craig Spodak
0:02:47
No, he didn't leave it anonymous. I just did.
Craig Spodak
0:02:51
No, I know you did though.
Craig Spodak
0:02:52
No, because you know what? I want to talk about how to remedy it and I don't want anybody getting feeling hurt. But it is, I think one thing about communication and I'm just gonna jump in on a 30,000 foot view is why is it that people, why is it so hard for me and so easy for others? I think the first thing in problems is we suffer because we feel like, why am I having to deal with this? You know, I look at Dr. So-and-so and their Instagram and everything just runs like seamlessly over there. It's just perfect. And I think the first thing to realize is the only difference between amazing results and mediocre results is the quality of their communication. So kudos to you for asking the question saying, is there a book I could learn? Cause you're starting to say, instead of the finger pointing outward, you're saying the three finger pointing back at me. I need to learn something. So kudos to you.
Peter Boulden
0:03:43
I would agree with that. There's some accountability and it's not like, oh, these shitty assistants and all these shitty people. There's like, hey, maybe I'm doing something wrong. I agree. I think that's…
Craig Spodak
0:03:55
And by the way, that's the primary knee jerk reaction is screw these assistants, screw these hygienists, they don't appreciate anything. And kudos to you for saying, what can I do to learn?
Peter Boulden
0:04:07
So what's the advice, Craig?
Craig Spodak
0:04:09
Well, I'm going to go off of the first thing. The quality of your life is directly related to the quality of your communication. We don't go through communication school. We learn math. We learn social studies. We don't learn how to communicate. And human beings are tricky animals. Peter and I were having a conversation earlier today, and we were talking about the fact that we're basically a civilized ape. We can have a rational conversation because everything is going okay, but if the shit goes down and you feel threatened either physically or emotionally, you're going to react, your limbic system is going to kick in, you're going to produce enough neurochemicals to make you act temporarily insane. So we have this condition of being human where at certain points we're run by our better judgment, and other points were run by the chemicals that flow through our body. So, but if you notice, the best people, the people living the most epic life, typically, are the best communicators. They are wonderful at communication, and they had to learn it on their own. They had to be students of it, and they had to decide how to make other people, give other people feedback by still empowering them and building them up. But I don't know about you, Pete, but in my life, I see these amazing people that have great existences and there's a consistency throughout them. They are wonderful communicators and they are builders. They build people up, they're multipliers, they make everybody better around them. And I see that. and general success with higher quality communicators? Yeah, so I would say, Greg, that this is easy for you. So he may be more in my camp, right? You are a good communicator.
Peter Boulden
0:05:42
You are not afraid of hard conversations.
Peter Boulden
0:05:44
You are not afraid to say things to people that you're intuitive, right? Your EQ is off the charts. You're very good. You're very good. And we've had this conversation, even on the podcast before. It's harder for some. And we've had this conversation even on the podcast before. It's harder for some, communication's harder for some. That way, I think I've struggled with it to the same degree that this person is. So where you can get the outcome you're wanting by leading with it, being an empath and trying to understand where they come from, like I probably didn't do that a lot of, I don't do that in a lot of my communication.
Craig Spodak
0:06:22
Which is I would think that you're superior superior in your communication. Well, I appreciate that Pete But I just want to like pull pull back the the the go bullshit Yeah, the bull I'm gonna call bullshit on that a little bit or a lot actually so I was good talk No, I was and you know, maybe you don't know this or maybe forgot but there were many nights where I'd go home Like really uncomfortable in my own skin because I made two or three people in my office cry. So, you know, it might be that I'm an empath and that's what led me out of it, but my go-to communication style before I refined it was to blow people up. My assistant, Michelle, who you know, a good friend of mine as well, she's not only my right-hand assistant, but, you know, just a good person in my life. She, I remember her going into the room at a certain point. When she was first with me, I used to, I would get, she'd be so upset and nervous around me that she'd run out crying oftentimes. And I had to realize, oh shit, here's this, I'm a father now and she's a young girl and I imagine my own daughter dealing with somebody who is being a little bit of a dictator like me. And she had to get up in my face and finally say, listen, this is, we have to have a better way of communicating. And me adjusting to that, and also then me having a conversation with her saying, okay, well, do you know when this happened? She's like, yeah, it's when you get in a bad mood. I'm like, well, do you know when I get in a bad mood? She's like, yeah, everybody does. You walk differently in the office. We can feel when you're in a bad mood. So I was like, can you do me a favor? If you ever see that I'm in a bad mood, will you let me know? She's like, I mean, can I? I'm like, yeah, I could. I'm like, just do it. So then what would happen from that is JoJo, our latest assistant that came to our team, I had another similar conversation with her where I was like really getting, she was getting upset. I was like, how can you do this? You gotta get this on, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and all that stuff. And what we wound up doing, what wound up happening there is Michelle like got up in my face and she said like, you better not, you know, F this up with Jojo. She's awesome She's smart and don't do what you did to me to her You know that type of like come to like really harsh conversation And I I wasn't a great communicator with my team, and I was you know knocking them down I'm you know you can feel when I'm upset with you, and I think I was not doing a good job of disguising My my feelings and people could feel I didn't wasn't feeling Try to land me here Peter, you know I had to come to the realization after hurting enough people that this is not the type of leader
Peter Boulden
0:08:57
I want to be and I made a hard hard turn. Well look, but and I appreciate that I think this question though that he's posing it does relate to that right at all There's nothing that lives in a silo by itself But I think the question he's saying is like hey How do I get the output? That I'm wanting without having to be yell and be a dictator and all these things because it doesn't it sounds to me like to he's saying like, hey, the assistants don't respect me, but they do this stuff for other doctors, but not me.
Craig Spodak
0:09:24
So it's almost like, how do I gain the respect of the team? Well, that's his belief. He said, since I am a new doctor, they often don't do notes for me.
Craig Spodak
0:09:31
Right.
Craig Spodak
0:09:32
That's his opinion.
Peter Boulden
0:09:33
Well, it's probably factual, but like, look, I agree with you.
Craig Spodak
0:09:36
I think everything is them. You know, I don't know. We don't have the intel. We don't know, but that's typically what happens. Like, since I'm new, they won't do it. Well, did you ask them? Well, no, but they do it for the other doctor. Well, maybe the doctor sat down. I'm saying inputs equal outputs. And really good communicators, like you have a style with your team. They know how to win.
Craig Spodak
0:09:57
Hey, everyone, newsflash.
Craig Spodak
0:09:58
Save this date. Our 2022 summit will be taking place on June 2nd through 5th in Nash, Vegas, Tennessee. Sign up to receive Summit updates at BulletproofSummit.com or stay connected with all things Bulletproof by joining our network at Bulletproof.Dental. Peter was just showing me before I jumped on the call this really cool metric he's building and it's really just every dashboard, every bit of the data is there. So everybody knows how to win. So part of communication is setting expectations. It's not making people feel good. I appreciate your comments that you're giving me compliments that I'm an empath and I have a way of making people feel good. That's fine, but when you're conducting business, there's a list of tasks that need to be completed. And if they don't get done, it doesn't matter how good your feel good is.
Peter Boulden
0:10:52
That's what have been my advice as you were kind of, you know, wrapping and saying like you've gotten good because you've gotten a lot of reps, you've gotten your ass kicked at doing some of this. And mine, it would be if I was in this gentleman's situation, I would start with sitting down, right, and doing the best communication I can say, hey, I really need this done. excellent these three things done it can you do that for me and there's something I can help with you know like making making it a collaborative thing versus I am the boss do what I say or I am your boss do what I say making it being like this hey we need to get these three things done at end of day I need notes done I need my post-operative calls done or whatever like let I need this from you this is a non-negotiable and like let me know how I can help.
Craig Spodak
0:11:38
And then like, stop right there.
Peter Boulden
0:11:40
And if they say, well, you know, there's nothing I can do. I'll say, so, okay, we just need to find the solution. Like these are non-negotiables. We have to find the solution. I'm willing to help, but like we need a system between the two of us, full stop. Because without a system between the two of us or out accountability between us, shit's going to fall through the cracks. I'm going to get, you know, we're going to get bad reviews as a doctor assistant team. We're not going to be operating, we're not going to be thriving correctly. Patients, you know, things are going to fall through the cracks.
Craig Spodak
0:12:09
Before that happens though, Pete, without an accountable system, you build a sloppy system, you get sloppy results, the doctor and or assistant stop communicating properly, rapport breaks down, no one, no, everybody resents each other. It's like a bad relationship. I mean, it's the same thing, like your assistant and you or your team and you, it's the same as your friends and your family. You'll get old enough and you'll start to see recurring themes.
Peter Boulden
0:12:33
What I have found though, Craig, and pardon, I know you weren't probably done, but is that a lot of times people want to do the right thing meaning, right, they want to score the goal. It's just we as doctors or owners or haven't set the, where's the gold line? Like what's a win and what's a loss, right? And so I think sometimes it's just like, hey, if we can do these things and stay on time, like you and I are gonna be good. Like let's just do that, right? We'll be good, you know, we'll talk. So I think there's probably been a lack of delineation
Craig Spodak
0:13:07
about a win versus a loss in this scenario probably. 100%, and to compound it, the doctor is feeling, well, she does it for the other doctor.
Peter Boulden
0:13:16
It's alignment.
Craig Spodak
0:13:17
It must be because… It just always goes back to alignment, man. But if you ask, if someone just takes the time to ask, like, hey, assistant, you do these three things for the doctor, why? Well, two of them he told me to do, and one I started doing two years into working with them, and they said it was a really good idea. Or, I just learned over time that's what it is. But if this doctor, people can feel what you believe. So if this doctor is like, these people don't respect me, he is walking around his nonverbal communication or his or her nonverbal communication showing them like F you energy and they're going to get worse around it. You have to resolve before you communicate. These people are trying to do their best. I've got to be crystal clear and even just going to them like, Hey, you're clear about what I want. Is it crystal clear what I want? Just I want to make sure I, you know, maybe I'm not the greatest communicator, I just want to make sure it's crystal clear that I want you to write the notes before I read. No, I had no idea.
Peter Boulden
0:14:10
Because the one time I did that, you looked at me weird. Or you've been doing it, so I thought like, you wanted to do it, right? And there it is right there, right? Well, you were doing it, and I was only doing it to fill in the gap because you weren't doing it. And it's like, well.
Craig Spodak
0:14:23
Or the one time I did do it, you asked for a correction. The one time I did do it.
Peter Boulden
0:14:28
All right, let's jump off. I feel like we've beaten this horse. It's just, you know, I think this happens a lot, especially, and this gentleman's coming from a DSO scenario, so I think this happens a lot more in corporate offices, I believe it or not. I hear it more, maybe that's anecdotal, but I hear this more, is that there's a system, but a system does not trump you having to communicate
Craig Spodak
0:14:53
with what your expectations are from provider level are. And by the way, even if you're an associate or you work in a practice, you still need to be excellent and crystal clear with your communication. And also just when you say, is there any class I should go to? Just tell your assistants, tell your people that you work with, hey, they spent four years of dental school teaching me how to do composites and fillings and crowns and vertical dimension and medical history. They spent zero minutes on me about how do I run an office, how do I become a business leader, how do I communicate with people, how to talk to people. So what I need is I need your help, guys and gals. I need your help to help me lead this practice. So anytime there's no stupid questions, anytime you don't understand what I really want, please ask me.
Peter Boulden
0:15:40
And that creates a microalignment, Craig, you are so right, a microalignment with you and you're not only, you know, we talk about alignment from a 30,000 foot down in your office, having your office aligned, but there's also little microalignments that need to occur, and that right there is like giving people permission to say, hey, yeah, we're on your team.
Craig Spodak
0:15:57
It's vulnerability too. Vulnerability. It's vulnerability of the doctor saying, hey, I need help with this, and then your team will be like, oh, they loved it. They wanna help. No one is a dental assistant for the money, especially now when you can walk by like a barbecue place and they're starting salaries are $26. I mean, I was in Austin, you know, for our summit, Pete. And there were signs at like Terry Black's Barbecue at the front of the barbecue, line cooks $30 an hour. So what I'm trying to say is these assistants are doing it because they want to be a part of a healthcare profession. They want to help the doctor. They want to deliver care. They want to be an adjunct to your hands. So asking them for help is going to be right up their alley, their caregiver, their empath. So I think it's really important. So hopefully we helped that question. Keep the questions coming. You can do them here or you can actually go to the Mighty Network, which is kind of an interesting place to exist too. Peter, do you want to kind of jump off into that? Boy, that was a great, compelling thing.
Peter Boulden
0:16:55
It's kind of an interesting place over there.
Craig Spodak
0:16:58
Yeah, very interesting.
Peter Boulden
0:16:59
It's very interesting.
Craig Spodak
0:17:00
No, it's just awesome.
Peter Boulden
0:17:01
I think it's like the line I use from about Twitter is like, I can't believe this is free because I think you just get so much information from Twitter. I think Bulletproof Network is the same thing in that it's like, you can just have a conversation and great entrepreneurial dental minds will give you feedback.
Craig Spodak
0:17:18
What?
Peter Boulden
0:17:19
I think there are some forums online that we all know I'm talking about for dentists. And there's a lot of crab potting, I call it. Oh my God, yeah. Tell them what crab pot is. So crab pot is, I mean, I'm sure everyone's heard this. No, but I love it.
Craig Spodak
0:17:40
I wanna hear it. I love hearing this. So look, you catch crabs.
Peter Boulden
0:17:42
You catch crabs, right? Have you ever thrown crabs in a pot? As soon as one starts getting too high, another one will look up and say, hmm, that looks awesome. I may be able to climb out from him and he'll pinch him, pull him down. And so the analogy is, is like no one likes, it's like getting everyone back down to the base level. So some of these forums do not like it when you you become better than because it exposes their mediocrity, right? And so it's like wait a second. How are you doing? So well as a dentist when I am not right So let me throw some jabs because your clinical care must suck your office Mike suck You may not you may be doing so my point is God I can go on this diatribe for a while I want to I think it's really important, but it is important But we I think we've hit that Craig point is is that I've never seen a better forum for collaborative rooting for you, let me share with you because this worked for me, versus like there's no infighting is what I'm trying to say. So anyway, the forum is really cool. If you haven't joined, then I don't know what to tell you.
Craig Spodak
0:18:41
You can't drink, you can't make. Here's my thought on that too. So we've always said, Peter and I say that we've borrowed it from the greats, like show me your five closest friends, I'll show you your future. So you're a product of the circles you put yourself in. I was on a business Facebook page, I can't help myself. If you could just see how many times I've written a response and then completely deleted it before I could post it, a well thought out response where I'm like, okay, this is really gonna help people. It's usually about hygiene or assistance, it's venting about your people.
Craig Spodak
0:19:13
I know where you're going with this.
Craig Spodak
0:19:14
And so what I did yesterday is I just kind of- Your delete. I know where your delete is going. I know where it's going with that, because you're like, oh my God, I don't have the time to fight. Well, not only that, but I can't influence this crab pot. They're going to grab me and throw me down. So I can't, I'm just like, hey guys, there's a way out. Come follow me. There's a hole in the crab pot. Let's all, we don't need to be crab soup. Let's go. And I'm like, oh shit, these people are going to drag me down and tear me apart. And it was it was all about a question about hygienists. And everybody was saying, like, you know, this is ridiculous. And I can't believe you're still hiring hygienists. You know, haven't you learned about my five steps to the hygiene free model? Hygiene free model. What cleaning? So a doctor is going to clean teeth for eighty five. I mean, listen, in the beginning, we all did it. I mean, Peter and I in the beginning, we cleaned teeth.
Peter Boulden
0:20:03
I was horrible at it, too.
Craig Spodak
0:20:05
Well, I mean, you had to do it. But actually consciously firing a hygienist because they want X dollars per hour. You know, we've gone through this already. We have two hygienists. I have multiple. We have multiple hygienists that are doing north of $400,000 of collections per year. In fact, two that are doing $500,000 in collected dollars per year. And there's a systematic way to do it. And there's, I've made a lot of mistakes. I did the wrong bonus structure, the wrong hygiene compensation. We've done the wrong things. I had to honor it, because you can't change that compensation, or at least I couldn't. But we figured it out, we refined the system. There's a system to do it. And this is not theory. This is not those dental consultants that are drinking Red Bull, jumping around on stage. This is actually you and me that are actually doing it. I think between us, we have 10 hygienists on compensation plans and no one is doing less than 350 a year. So if those hygienists look at their hourly wage, yeah, they're 45, 55, 65, but who cares? Who cares? I don't care if I bought Amazon stock and it went from 1,000 to 3,000. I am not angry at Jeff Bezos because he made billions. I tripled my money. It's business. What bothers you more? Does your high GNS salary bother you more or does the amount of money your business is making because you have an awesome person on your team bother you more? Like it's just math. Don't get offended over math. Math is just numbers. And going on these Facebook pages, I'm so proud of the bulletproof.dental because this is a scenario where we can actually control the dialogue.
Peter Boulden
0:21:39
It's a closed ecosystem.
Craig Spodak
0:21:40
If someone comes on and be like, oh, screw the hygienist, screw the assistants, it's a reach to the bottom having assistants, you should do it all yourself. I'm gonna push you to delete that chatter. We gotta cancel that person.
Peter Boulden
0:21:52
Yeah, or someone who's not abundant thinking and not sharing and only taking. Like, yes, I agree with you. Point is, it's a great community, it's growing. You know, I mean, I think there's, you know, five, 600 active members now in the community. Craig, I think we're, I didn't tell you this, but I think we're actually getting our own branded app in the iOS store that's going to the pro level of it because it's just so fun to get in there and collaborate and share that I think it's a good altruism to our colleagues, I really do. So enough on that. I do want to talk about something though that is a little bit pressing and hopefully by the time this podcast comes out, it's not moot. And it might be in that the summit, as everyone knows, the summit is coming on and I'm gonna talk about this for a second, not as a shameless plug, Craig, but as an education because it's a completely different structure
Craig Spodak
0:22:43
this year pretty much.
Peter Boulden
0:22:44
I mean, not completely, but it's expanded and gotten more complex.
Craig Spodak
0:22:51
Well, I mean, we could have made the summit seven days, but no, I want to do seven days of learning. So the same two days.
Peter Boulden
0:22:57
But everyone knows it launched the other day, last Friday, today's Monday the 25th, it launched, the registration Lacey put out was, I guess, three days ago, and we're allowing for early birds, which are almost gone now, which is great, which is great. There's 50 early bird tickets, which is great. That's what we want. But this summit is eight months away. So this one will sell out. It's in Nashville. It's a confined space. It's gonna be awesome. We're gonna have a great time. But the most important and the most exciting thing about this is that we are actually running different tracks this time, right? So it's not all people in one room we were running. We have so much content to deploy and we're going at a little bit of a different strategy, that we're gonna have to have tracks now. Like some of the bigger, you know, like for instance, when I used to go to AACD back in the day, it was like, oh, you choose your own adventure kind of thing. And it won't be that complex, because like the last thing we want is thousands of people at a conference, but it is gonna be bring your team, and then you're gonna have to divide and conquer. I mean, you're gonna go to this one, and then you're gonna send them to the teams aspect, or you're gonna send them to the hygiene thing, or maybe some doctors wanna go into the hygiene tracks or whatever it may be. I'm gonna let you expand on it. You did a great explanation of it, so I'm gonna let you dig in.
Craig Spodak
0:24:15
No, you said everything that we talked about. It's just, look, I wanna go to marketing, but I want like, it's hard to figure out if you need basic marketing or marketing mastery, or maybe you just want social media or maybe your office manager wants to learn about the hygiene compensation that our Bulletproof hygiene talks about because maybe your office or maybe your office manager is doing the marketing and you actually want to learn about clear aligners as a doctor. So if there was no way you know we started looking at this like how do we fit all this stuff in like you know literally we went from almost triple the amount of hours of content and we're trying to add more now, you know, between now and the time the summit will release, we'll probably have an additional 10 or 15 hours of content. So I don't want to go to a four-day summit and you look at like what like all the other summits do and you know, the Invisalign summit and places like that, you can micro curate your content. So I think it's just important and I think people were always nervous about like walking out of a room or missing something. So divide and conquer, send your hygienist to certain things, send your office manager to certain things, and then come back and just execute those three or four things. Because listen, knowledge is not power, execution is power. And we said it to her, we're blue in the face, but how many times have you gone to a summit, learned a whole bunch of crap, and then you come back on Monday, your assistant doesn't understand it, your hygienist doesn't understand it, there's no alignment. So that's what I'm super proud about, that we have something that will actually create traction.
Peter Boulden
0:25:39
Because people- The thing that's gonna be weird this time, Craig, is that you and I are not gonna, it used to be, go back to like Summit One, you and I were like on the stage all day long, just doing things together, right? And so this one, because of that, we're gonna have less Pete and Craig show, so to speak. We have some fun, exciting stuff, but like-
Craig Spodak
0:25:55
It was funny because, Pete, you remember you said, like, I don't wanna be standing, like you do your part, I'm just like standing up there. Yeah. Well, I feel the same way. Peter's going into marketing, doing deep dives on heavy D marketing stuff, and I'm just like his guest listener up there. So it was awkward for both of us. We just didn't want to admit it. We had one day that was really me and one day it was all him. And it just felt weird. But you know, like, listen, that's the point. In business and everything you're doing, you have to evolve. You always have to be doing, you know, always evolving and innovating in some fashion. And I think it's an important thing. Like there's the business you're in and the business you'll be becoming. And clearly, you know, having me up on stage, not talking or Peter up on stage, not talking at all, that wasn't a good fit.
Peter Boulden
0:26:35
I think the reason too, I think one of the impetus for doing this or leaning in so much more Craig, is like you always say, success leaves clues. And we're seeing so much awesome results from this mastermind because we actually are running three masterminds. Yes, it was, those of you who went to the last summit, we announced a mastermind you could join, but really it was a trifecta in that it's a, it's a independent autonomous hygiene mastermind you get, a independent autonomous doctor mastermind, an independent team mastermind. That's all going on conjunctively towards the same outcome. So we're seeing this synergy effect that's going on in the practices that we, that have joined with us. And so we're like, man, we need to bring this same kind of concept to summit even more so, right? And so that's the really, to me, that's exciting because that's, like you said, the evolution, the innovation that's happened is like, hmm, let's modify this and not be too proud about like staying up on stage and me and you just having the Pete and Craig show. Like that's valuable to some people, but like, guess what? It's a lot more valuable and it moves the lever a lot more for people's practices and income and freedom and time and currency and all the things if we do it this way. So that's why we're pivoting, honestly.
Craig Spodak
0:27:47
No, a hundred percent.
Craig Spodak
0:27:48
I did that all in one breath, Craig.
Peter Boulden
0:27:50
I know, you gotta breathe a little bit.
Craig Spodak
0:27:52
You know, by the way, I can't help myself. When I was talking about the Facebook thing, I was reading this post, I have an excellent hygienist who wants to be paid in commission as recognition of personal production blah blah blah blah blah I pay her $60 an hour But you know I want to devise a system and then you have this litany of people like I stopped reading at $60 per hour I can't believe you still hire hygienists and these are all different comments. I'm sure I'm so thankful I don't have to deal with hygienists. It's amazing online online. It's just incredible I'm so on a Facebook group? I don't have to deal with them.
Craig Spodak
0:28:25
Yeah.
Craig Spodak
0:28:26
I'm so glad I don't have to deal with them. I'm so glad I don't have to deal with them. I guess my only drawback is that it's me who's universally loved by my own patients. And then it's, one dentist is actually really funny because he says she's universally loved by patients. So this dentist says, if she's universally loved by patients, why don't you have her put a tip jar in the hygiene room? It's terrible.
Craig Spodak
0:28:45
Here's what's funny about this.
Peter Boulden
0:28:47
If we could take a snapshot of everyone who said that in those comments and look at the way they are five years from now, for shit sure, they're in the exact same place.
Craig Spodak
0:28:58
Yes, 100%.
Peter Boulden
0:28:59
Right? Their practice is the exact same place it was today.
Craig Spodak
0:29:03
Because it's the belief systems. If you look at a business, it's 90% psychology and skillset of the owner. And if you really boil it down to psychology, and if you believe you're hygienist, you should actually have a practice that does not employ hygienist how much can you actually grow? That means you have to do every single cleaning how much time would you have to be able to do your own? Rate limiting step yeah, I got it. Yeah, so $60 an hour 2,000 hours a year $396,000 per year is what that hygienist needs to be producing collecting to earn $60 an hour, so if she did $500,000 of production, she could actually be afford to be paid divided by 0.3.
Craig Spodak
0:29:45
Why am I doing that wrong?
Craig Spodak
0:29:47
Divided by a third, so $500,000 divided in three equals 166 divided by 2,000 hours. Yeah, so if she was doing $500,000 in production and you paid her 33%, she could actually be making $83 an hour. Not to say that that's a good idea, but it would be better off having a hygienist working for $70 an hour that produces $500,000 a year versus having a hygienist that's being paid $22 an hour producing 50,000 a year. So your $22 per hour hygienist could wind up being, you know, a better deal for you than your 83.
Peter Boulden
0:30:31
100%. Look, it's just math. It's not emotion. It shouldn't be, it shouldn't be, oh, I stopped reading at $60. Like I always say, lead with math instead of emotion. Like, okay, well, if you want a million dollars an hour, let's just reverse engineer what that looks like, right? I don't really care what it is. I'm literally, I'm agnostic to what I pay you. It just, it has to work out well. It has to be a triple win. Things, this is a business at the end of the day. So, anyway, yeah.
Craig Spodak
0:31:02
But isn't that funny though, how people-
Peter Boulden
0:31:03
People get so emotional, like, oh my God, you can't pay him that, why?
Craig Spodak
0:31:07
Or you can't do that, why? I don't understand why people don't look at it what it is for you. Like, if I invested with you, Peter, and you got me three times my money, but you made 5% commission off of me, like this really blows people away, by the way. Like writing you a check for like 100 grand would bother people. I wouldn't look at it that way. I'm like, you made me, you know, if you're-
Peter Boulden
0:31:33
You're an abundant thinker. I mean, look, it's psychology.
Craig Spodak
0:31:35
But I mean, tell me how you're different. Are you, like if I tripled your money, if you gave me X dollars, or look at MCC for example, Peter. Do you give a shit, this is for those that don't know, Peter and I have engaged a company that gives us a percentage of what we save in credit cards. So meaning, they They negotiate our credit card fees for us. Peter and I are saving thousands of dollars, right? And I believe, of course I don't know how it all, they give us a percentage of what they save us. So they're making money, we're making money. I do not care if they're making money. Split the delta is essentially what it is. Right, but I'm just saying, my accountant started saying to me, like, you're not obviously taking much credit cards now in 2022 or 2021. I'm like, well, why do you say that? Is it because your credit card fees have gone down? I had to remember, remember I told you this? I forgot that. Yeah. I'm like, oh, that's interesting. I guess because of COVID people, you know, and I actually went down a rabbit hole. I'm like, oh shit, no, no, no. I hired a company that gives me my money, gives me my savings. But like, would it ever bother you that our credit card fees got so high that they were making $20,000 a year? Who cares? I see $20,000 of them saving or $25,000 of them saving. It just gets crazy that people have that psychology. Not to harp on that, but it's so funny how a lot of the people talk about like, I need to trim my P&L. The first thing they'll look at is dental supplies.
Peter Boulden
0:33:11
Like why is it always dental supplies?
Craig Spodak
0:33:13
Let's not use Lux Attempt. Let's use some shitty, some shitty like temporary-
Peter Boulden
0:33:17
But the credit card fees are staring you like right in the face.
Craig Spodak
0:33:20
Right in the face, right in the face, yeah.
Peter Boulden
0:33:22
No, no, no, let's use off-labeled dental products.
Craig Spodak
0:33:25
Well, Peter, full disclosure.
Peter Boulden
0:33:27
I'm kidding, I'm kidding.
Craig Spodak
0:33:28
Peter was pretty confident that he's not gonna save any money, and you wound up saving a lot of money. So Peter had done a really good job negotiating his credit card fees. And like we talked about before, it goes back up. So you negotiate, you feel like a rock star. Eight months later, they rise back up and it's all bad again, so.
Peter Boulden
0:33:45
Okay, anything else, Bob?
Craig Spodak
0:33:48
And that's dentalmerchant.com, right?
Peter Boulden
0:33:50
Yeah, yeah, dentalmerchant.com. Is anything else pressing today on Monday the 25th that you wanna get out to the-
Craig Spodak
0:33:59
Congratulations on Bitcoin, Peter.
Craig Spodak
0:34:02
Oh, Craig.
Craig Spodak
0:34:03
I won't go there, but yeah.
Peter Boulden
0:34:05
Really, because I did something for it?
Craig Spodak
0:34:08
Well, I don't know.
Peter Boulden
0:34:09
You congratulated me.
Craig Spodak
0:34:10
Well, congratulations. Thank you for getting me into this project. All I did was hodl. Well, congrats. Thank you for pushing me when it was three and 5,000 all those times and 9,000. Peter would actually send me texts of confirmations of buying it at 7,000. Be like, your turn. I'm like, oh shit, really?
Peter Boulden
0:34:28
7,000? I think our egos made us, I think the taunting did well for us.
Peter Boulden
0:34:35
Like, I can do it.
Peter Boulden
0:34:36
You're not gonna beat me.
Craig Spodak
0:34:37
I'll do this.
Craig Spodak
0:34:38
I'll sell him.
Craig Spodak
0:34:38
I'll buy one at 5,000.
Peter Boulden
0:34:40
I'm actually thinking about doing, ironically, Craig, I haven't told you this, looking at the schedule, a crypto financial track at Summit. Just because we have so many people
Craig Spodak
0:34:50
who are interested in it. Yeah, you should absolutely do that. And that way, that's the primary motive for the tracks, because some people, you know, Bitcoin's like religion to some people.
Peter Boulden
0:35:00
It's not just Bitcoin, but meaning the process of how to do like, you know, I'm talking about security and protocol and why to do it all and do it this way. Yeah, so like, because I get questions all the time. So I'm like, yeah, maybe I should just make a track at the Summit for this. That'd be cool. I'm doing as well as partnership and as well as real estate. I'm gonna do those three. And marketing, of course. I'm gonna do level one and level two marketing.
Craig Spodak
0:35:20
I might wanna do the real estate one with you. I feel so proud.
Peter Boulden
0:35:23
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Craig Spodak
0:35:24
You definitely should do that.
Peter Boulden
0:35:26
See, we're doing it together there, pal.
Craig Spodak
0:35:27
Yeah, we'll have a couple.
Peter Boulden
0:35:28
Back together.
Craig Spodak
0:35:30
Yeah, there's a better song than that one.
Peter Boulden
0:35:33
That was the one I made up just now.
Craig Spodak
0:35:34
Oh, okay, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But yeah, I'm gonna do a clear aligner one, which is cool. I'm excited about that one. I have assistants that wanna do like how to like do like scanning, like, you know, be a badass in scanning, do three minute scans and how to upload to all the different clear aligner companies. Anyway, lots of content. Happy it's not gonna be seven days and just two days. So if you've ever been to a summit before, come back to this one because this one's gonna be completely new
Craig Spodak
0:35:59
and you're gonna change your own agenda.
Peter Boulden
0:35:59
And just a bad-ass city. Like there's a reason Nashville is literally the number, the hottest city right now in real estate because it's awesome.
Craig Spodak
0:36:07
Yeah, I'd say my buddy Josh may wanna move there.
Peter Boulden
0:36:09
Dude, everyone wants to move to Nashville. It's like, Nashville is awesome.
Craig Spodak
0:36:15
Yeah, I'm excited about it. One of my best friends.
Craig Spodak
0:36:17
Where's the hotel? It's in the Gulch, right? Like that nice area?
Peter Boulden
0:36:19
Yeah, it's in the Gulch. It's in the Gulch part. It's like the Grand Hyatt or Park Hyatt. It's badass. You go to the website and look, it's like rooftop pool, or have patio, like bad-ass stuff, bad-ass. So I know when we first started this, Craig, you and I were like, let's only have it at St. Regis's.
Craig Spodak
0:36:33
And then like.
Craig Spodak
0:36:34
Yeah. So you're like exclusive partner of, I mean, it depends on the city. I mean, the Houston St. Regis was great.
Peter Boulden
0:36:42
Yeah, no, they're great. I'm just saying it's like, we've even gotten out of our own way, like, hey, let's just go where it's like, is the best.
Craig Spodak
0:36:49
Like, let's not be like so dogmatic with the hotel. Yeah, that's just my personality though. I get so stuck in things and don't ever lift my head up.
Peter Boulden
0:36:56
But this one's awesome. This one's gonna be fun. And yeah, too bad it's so far away, eight months away, because I really want to do it now. But anyway.
Craig Spodak
0:37:04
Oh, also the VIP tickets, I'm excited about that. So now we have a VIP lounge, Peter, you know that? Did you know about that? Lisa and I put together the VIP lounge. So it's not only, you know, better meals, breakfast and lunch. They get to hang out with the entire Bulletproof team. So buy a VIP ticket for your hygienist if they're going to Bulletproof Hygiene. That'd be great. Oh, everybody's going to be in the- Everybody can go into the VIP lounge and buy the VIP ticket. So there's 40 VIP tickets because last year they sold out really quickly. But I'm saying like Sharisa and Brittany are going to be there.
Peter Boulden
0:37:30
Sharisa is going to be there, Brittany, Erica. Erica.
Craig Spodak
0:37:32
So it's a way because, you know, Erica and the girls got pretty overwhelmed during breaks, everybody trying to pick their brain. So now it's a curated content, curated room, and it's a place that we can just go to chill out. So upgraded meals and all that stuff. And then also upgraded seating, so special seats are reserved. Oh, like the Tony Robbins up in the, with lions. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Peter Boulden
0:37:57
Shocker, shocker that you've extracted some Tony Robbins shit into our summits, correct?
Craig Spodak
0:38:01
Yeah, I did.
Craig Spodak
0:38:02
That's a fair point.
Craig Spodak
0:38:03
Are they lions, Peter?
Craig Spodak
0:38:04
Are they lions, Peter?
Craig Spodak
0:38:05
I didn't tell you this either. Oh, it's so exciting. We're lighting a fricking fire and we're gonna roll around in hot coal.
Craig Spodak
0:38:11
I thought it was gonna be bullet casings, hot bullet casings.
Craig Spodak
0:38:14
Yeah, exactly. You can have a 50 caliber machine gun mounted on the roof and you're gonna have to walk across the hot casings. I'm excited about this one, I really am. And now, you know, with two a year and the track system will be able to go through. And even if you went to the one in the spring, you'll want to go to the one in the winter as well. Cause you'll want to- Wait, we're doing two a year? Yeah, we are.
Peter Boulden
0:38:36
I didn't get that memo.
Craig Spodak
0:38:37
No, of course you didn't.
Craig Spodak
0:38:38
I'm not kidding you guys.
Craig Spodak
0:38:40
You guys, this is not even like-
Peter Boulden
0:38:42
No, I know it's not. This is not bullshit. No, it's not bullshit.
Craig Spodak
0:38:45
Cause we have an executive director for Bulletproof that and Peter and I as you'll learn as we you know We do this we've done the culture index and we've really learned a lot about her and like what our strengths and weaknesses Peter and I Have redundant weaknesses. It's very poor with detail So we hired an executive director and so Peter has calls with her and I have called her and shit gets done And Peter doesn't get the memo. So it's cool. Well, now you feel like me Wow. We're doing two summits a year.
Peter Boulden
0:39:16
Oh, amazing.
Craig Spodak
0:39:17
All right.
Craig Spodak
0:39:18
It'll be great.
Peter Boulden
0:39:19
All right, Craig. Well, I enjoyed it, buddy. And we'll see you next time.
Craig Spodak
0:39:23
Take care, buddy. Take care, buddy.
3
0:39:24
Thanks for listening.
Transcribed with Cockatoo
Introduction
Communication
Inputs = Outputs
Crabpot
