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=WdIg9YpPirg
Peter Boulden
0:00:00
Alright, we're back.
Peter Boulden
0:00:09
What's up, Craig?
Craig Spodak
0:00:11
What's up, Peter?
Peter Boulden
0:00:12
Alright, buddy.
Craig Spodak
0:00:13
I'm doing great, man. I'm excited to talk to you today.
Peter Boulden
0:00:16
You're always excited to talk to me. That's true.
Craig Spodak
0:00:20
What would you not be? This is the type of thing I could literally have a conversation with you and not record it, but I figured it's probably better to record this one.
Peter Boulden
0:00:26
Is this going to be another rant or do we have something special to talk about?
Craig Spodak
0:00:29
No, we have something special to talk about, but there's a variety of topics, so we'll see how they flow together. Okay. So the first thing I want to tell, talk to you about is I was talking to a friend of mine and, uh, she practices in an area that she doesn't want to live in. She's, she's in the Northeast. She's wants to change. She wants to move to another state. She wants to leave New York City. And I said, well, what are you waiting on? She goes, well, New York got really beat up with COVID and it's gonna take a little time for me to get my profit back up and then I wanna sell. So she's convicted, she absolutely wants to leave. But she said, I'm just gonna work a little harder and get everything back to where it was and then flip the switch and sell it. I was thinking about it and I'm like, well, if we are in agreement here because what I believe is that you could run your plan perfectly and drive 30, 40, 50% net profit to your bottom line in a year or two or whatever the time frame is, maybe even six, eight months, I feel pretty confident that we're going to be in a recession with rising interest rates, maybe not a recession, but definitely in a period of lower valuation. So what I was telling her is like, well, you could get your profit 30, 40% up more, but valuations are bananas right now. And maybe in a year they'd be less. And if you ran your plan and executed your plan perfectly and dropped that profit, but wound up getting three or four times less turns on your business, you'd actually make less money.
Peter Boulden
0:02:04
So I wanted to just hear your thoughts. Well, you know I am a pseudo-economic. Yeah, that's what I'd like to talk to you about this time. So you are right in your hypothesis, I think, to a certain degree. But let me put a caveat in that. There is money that private equity has. Let's say she was selling to private equity, there is money that they have pledged at a certain interest rate. So for a short period of time, probably the next 6 to 12 months, where they get the interest rate that they agreed to on their credit line. Yeah, they're locked for that amount of money. The 30-year mortgage just crossed 6% interest yesterday. The first time, Craig, in a long time, we have had, so economists speculated that we would have in Q1 of the GDP, we would have 1.1% growth, okay? Well, actually 1.4% growth. We actually, when push came to shove, they just released this this week or late last week, it was negative 1.4. So they were wrong. So that's so a recession by definition is two quarters of negative contraction of a GDP. So we've got one or two consecutive quarters, consecutive quarters, but they were wrong by their speculation by 240 basis points. Okay, so the swing was 240 basis points, they were wrong. So we have been on this kind of Red Bull high with the money printing that happened and COVID that happened. So valuations were going crazy. You can see that in technology. So the government just kept printing money, printing money, printing money. Well, guess what? So that was called quantitative easing, right? Yeah. Right. Whether you give money to the economy and everything starts rolling. So when you can borrow money at 0%, which is a lot of what people were being able to do at the top, valuations are bananas. For instance, in like software and tech, it's eight times top line revenue. Not EBITDA, okay?
Craig Spodak
0:04:15
Not your profit.
Peter Boulden
0:04:16
So this printing led to 30 to 50% higher valuations than typically there would have been in a market correction.
Craig Spodak
0:04:23
Okay?
Craig Spodak
0:04:24
Okay, I'm gonna ask you if you're a crystal ball, because you're going deep into things that you're going to lose me on. What's your crystal ball tell you? In 12 months from now, are valuations similar, slightly less, or far less for dentistry? Well, I don't have a crystal ball. Well, just try to give me your best answer. Because this is going to be, you always said, we record all this.
Peter Boulden
0:04:47
So we'll bring this up.
Craig Spodak
0:04:48
History proves someone correct. Yeah, you always say that.
Peter Boulden
0:04:51
Well, where I was going with that was that, so we've had quantitative easing right out of COVID and things like this, where the government was giving people money, and it was helping giving businesses money and it was helping. Well, guess what, Craig, they want that money back. So they've been doing quantitative tightening now, as you know, they've been announcing interest rates will be rising. So they're going to, the Fed is going to be announcing another probably 50 basis points on top of what we have now. So we're going to be in probably 6.5% interest on 30-year money in the next 30 to 45 days.
Craig Spodak
0:05:22
And by the way, you're not even just talking about the printing of the money. What about the money that's just being written, these checks?
Peter Boulden
0:05:28
I mean, the Biden administration wants to pledge $33 billion of weapons to Ukraine. That's a rounding error from the numbers we're talking about though. Well, I mean, just as a placeholder, we spend $15 billion per year on our own national security. So you ask the question, me speculate on where valuations will be. I think this year they will remain relatively the same. Interesting, for the whole year. Yeah, I disagree. Okay. I think, and I think, maybe slightly down, maybe slightly down, I think 2023 will be a full-blown recession.
Craig Spodak
0:06:07
Yeah, okay, that's…
Peter Boulden
0:06:09
And I think there's a lag indication, right? So sometimes these waves take a while to manifest, especially into America. So first it hits, things like this first hit big metropolitan areas, New York, California, you know, Miami. They hit big cities first. The wave hits there first. And then it starts… Why is that? Why do you say that? It just happens. Honestly, like I can remember back in 2008 and 2009, like rural communities didn't really know it had hit yet, right? Because it just, they weren't as leveraged and there wasn't these financial capitals. So the reverberations didn't go inland yet. But eventually things trickle, bad news trickles downhill and it just takes a while to hit kind of middle America, if you will. So I believe at scale, everybody will be affected, probably in the next eight months. But I don't think it's going to be a doom and gloom, Greg. It's not going to be like 2009, where we had- Yeah, like the mortgage back crisis and all that stuff. So much of our economy is based on real estate and healthcare and things like that. So the mortgage, that was just such a complete shit show that there was no way to avoid that crisis. I don't think it's gonna be that way. I think people, I think it's been priced in, as a matter of fact, because we've been expecting it so long that I think that we're gonna insulate somewhat from it. But it's gonna be hard to borrow money. I mean, the days of kind of free money are over for a while because the Fed needs that money back.
Craig Spodak
0:07:36
Yeah, we need to contract it. The Fed is going to try to keep those rates up so that we can slow, cool the economy off slightly. But the delicate balance is trying to cool it without sending us into a full-blown recession. So back to your original question, though, Greg, with how you started the pot about your friend. I don't think you're wrong.
Peter Boulden
0:07:48
So you could – all right, so let me put it this way. Essentially in business, for every 1% increase in interest rates, your valuation is going to go down 15% to 20%. Wow. Okay, so for every 100 basis points, the interest rate rises, you need to increase your top line revenue to stay at the same valuation 20%. Okay, so for every additional percentage point that it takes to borrow X dollars. Your business needs to increase by what percentage to stay the same value? 15 to 20 percent. Okay so let's just call it 20 percent. Okay. So rates have gone up by 2 percent. Easy. Yep. Institutional money. So this person would have to increase their business right now by 40 percent to get
Craig Spodak
0:08:47
the same amount of money as she would have gotten.
Peter Boulden
0:08:50
Next year, she will. Yes, I think this will manifest. Yeah, OK. So remember, I started it with a caveat, though. But I started it with a caveat about that trunch of money. I started with that caveat that private equity and- Some have done that. But there's others that were actually going
Craig Spodak
0:09:06
for funding as we speak.
Peter Boulden
0:09:07
OK. Well, they are probably out of the mix now.
Craig Spodak
0:09:10
Right. So when you have less people competing for the same asset, prices tend to go down supply and demand as well. So this person's idea of a one-year plan to fix their profit and then sell could wind up netting her less money.
Peter Boulden
0:09:26
Absolutely. And here's the other kicker with that, Craig. If they're not at a scale where EBITDA matters, meaning if you're a practice that's doing a million, one-five or less.
Craig Spodak
0:09:37
Or a single doctor.
Peter Boulden
0:09:38
Or a single doctor. Like it's still going to be a traditional valuation, but the end, because dentistry has it. So they're going to say, Hey doc, we'll give you 80%. We'll give you 85%. We'll give you 90%. So her profitability quote unquote doesn't matter as much. Now there's, there's other, there's other DSOs. They don't, that'll give you attribution for an EBIT a thing if that's what you're focused on, but that's for like, you know, usually they don't mess around with that kind of thing because it's not worth the time. Let's just be honest.
Craig Spodak
0:10:03
And also, let's talk about the idea that they're gonna give you X percentage of your money up front.
Peter Boulden
0:10:08
Let me clarify, not worth their time. Hold on, let me put a pin in that because people could be offended by that. Where I'm going with that is their game is to roll up, that's the term, roll up EBITDA as fast as possible and hot potato it to the next person almost. So it almost takes as much work for them to roll up $200,000 of EBITDA as it does $2 million of EBITDA. And if they're borrowing on leveraged money, right, if their money is borrowed, so then it's a game of how fast can I do this before the funds dry up. So I don't want to say that it's not, quote unquote, if you're listening to this and you're saying, screw you, Bolden, you just said it's not worth it. The game is to find unicorn practices that you can acquire that have large amounts of profitability from an EBITDA perspective, because the big boys play that game of EBITDA, not what's your top line. No one talks about top line. Matter of fact, no one gives a shit about top line in business. Yeah, well, we did in the beginning. That's all we used to talk about. Well, I'm saying in business, agnostic business, no one cares. No, I know, I know, I know. In my YPO, in my YPO, in my forms and all this stuff, in my business stuff that I talk about, no one says like, no one talks about what's your top line revenue, because everyone knows it's a farce.
Craig Spodak
0:11:22
Yeah, I know, yeah. It's actually the most upsetting thing when I've had times in my past where my top line was massive and my bottom line was so small that it was, I would have rather had my business shrink by half and make more money. Because listen, you know, 5% of your business is going to drive you crazy. 5% of your procedures are going to be failures. 5% of things are going to go wrong. 5% of your employees are going to drive you crazy. So if you have a large business, that 5% can become a lot bigger.
Peter Boulden
0:11:52
So are you happy with the advice you gave her?
Peter Boulden
0:11:56
Yeah, I am.
Craig Spodak
0:11:57
I am.
Craig Spodak
0:11:57
I just wanted to run it by you. Because also, then there's the idea that, OK, you don't get all your money up front. People think you sell and you walk. They'll hold back, especially if you're producing your own practice. They don't, hey, I'm selling and I'm moving to Texas. Okay, when? You can do that.
Peter Boulden
0:12:12
You can have that deal.
Craig Spodak
0:12:13
You'll have less valuation.
Peter Boulden
0:12:14
You will absolutely have a turn or two less. So the point I was just trying to make
Craig Spodak
0:12:20
when I gave you that advice is that if you're thinking, I would say holistically, and I know there's nuances to everybody's situation, if you're thinking about selling, I would probably do it now versus a year from now.
Peter Boulden
0:12:36
Yes, yes. And you know when you always say you can't time the market, right? You really can't time the market with coming into buying stocks and things like that is not wise, but you can and should time the market with exits. Yeah. Right? And we're not sitting here saying selling is a good idea. It's just that if that's something on your mind and you had a one-year target or you thought you're going to fix something over the next year, then I would strongly consider it. And I want to add to, when you sell your own business, you have to enter into another business. It's just not your own.
Craig Spodak
0:13:14
So if you get a pile of money, you have to go invest it.
Peter Boulden
0:13:17
Yeah, there you go.
Peter Boulden
0:13:17
There you go.
Peter Boulden
0:13:18
You're going to get funds that then those funds need to get yield just like they did in your dental practice. Right. And a lot of changes for you to psychologically when you're a dentist and you have a business or you're working as a dentist, you don't own your own business, you have cashflow and there's nothing like having cashflow, repeating revenue that's coming in the door. When you get money, even if it's a lot of money, I've had friends that sold for big, big money, not just, you know, not Dennis, but business people as well. And it's a funny thing that happens to them because even if it's a lot of money, they go into capital preservation mode and they're not as likely to spend. It's a retirement mentality, right? It's like, oh shit, this is it. That was my one big lick. Even though it could be like 8 million or 10 million or something ridiculous or 20 million. Every time you pull money from it, you're like, okay, now I can earn less. Or when the stock, if you let's say you're in stocks, all of a sudden, you look one day at your, your portfolio and your 5 million went to four. It's very scary. You can't readily know exactly what your dental practice is worth at any given moment. But if you're in stocks and bonds, you can actually flick your phone, you know, turn your phone on and find out, shit, I lost a million dollars today. We may lose a million dollars in our practices, but just never know it. Yeah, but guess what? At least you're in control of that to a certain degree, meaning you can turn on marketing, you can grow your ecosystems, you can add this, you can buy real estate. There's things you can do. Stock market, you have zero control over.
Craig Spodak
0:14:46
Zero.
Peter Boulden
0:14:47
You're in someone else's business. Someone else's business. And you're going to be the last person to know and a lot of macroeconomic climates war Kovats, you know money printing all the thing kovats. Look at me Craig you're uh, you use clear a lot, right? Yes, so we were trying to do it on our own. We tried to administrate a plan, an office plan for our patients on our own, and it was just really difficult. I had a bunch of other ones, and for me, Clear was the easiest. It was the clear way to do it for me. There's been a lot of chatter on that on Bulletproof, on our Mighty Networks, our Bulletproof Network,
Craig Spodak
0:15:30
about people using it and having a lot of success with it. Yeah, Dwight just did a good video on it. It's funny because the average patient, when you tell them, you know, hey, why don't you go to the dentist? They say, well, I don't have dental insurance. They don't realize it's like if you have nothing going on, it's cost less than your haircut's cost. You spend more on gas, and your hair, and your cell phone than you do for dentistry. But we're all used to going to the drugstore and finding out there are prescription drug costs.
Peter Boulden
0:15:54
And like you said, we live in a payment-based economy. Even when you buy cars, no one says, hey, how would you like to pay for your $47,000 car? It's like, hey, $300 a month sound good? So it's a great place where it serves. And they're going to be at Summit, so yeah. I wanted to just chime in about that.
Craig Spodak
0:16:12
Yeah, I'm happy. We've been using it for years, and it works. It's the easy button, for sure.
Peter Boulden
0:16:16
This time, baby, I'll be playing through.
Peter Boulden
0:16:25
This time, baby.
Craig Spodak
0:16:27
Let's take your partners, for example, at ADS. What they know about your business, if it was a publicly traded company and they decided to buy into the company, would be illegal. They can walk around ADS and be like, oh, we're at Maple location, oh, John's Creek, look at John's Creek, it's going to be amazing. Oh, we're hiring that doctor. What I'm trying to say is that in privately held businesses, you have information that's not available.
Peter Boulden
0:16:52
And publicly held companies, you have, you, you have no access to that information.
Craig Spodak
0:16:57
Yeah.
Peter Boulden
0:16:57
So what I'm saying, my partners are on the board, therefore they know the next moves, meaning the right, they know everything, the board of the director, there's the board of directors. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Craig Spodak
0:17:06
They can walk her in the practice.
Craig Spodak
0:17:07
We're like, Oh, look at, you know, dr.
Peter Boulden
0:17:09
Jones, he's kicking, but I'm like, I look at John's. I didn't know we got all these scanners though. Yeah, what's going on? What was that? Well, they would know about all the scanners. But you're right, it's inside baseball when you have the inside track.
Craig Spodak
0:17:24
So that's what I'm saying, with your own business, you know there's inside baseball,
Peter Boulden
0:17:27
you have insider information. Look, it's proven time and time again, there is no better investment when run correctly as an operator. There's no better business from a tax advantage situation, from you being in control of your money, than your own business, 100%. That's why we talk in the mastermind, Greg. It's like we're talking about discretionary money and things like this. I said, look, if you've maxed out your practice to where it wants to be, or you've allocated funds for where you want it to be later, great. Now's a place to deploy discretionarily into the real estate or the market or whatever it may be. Even some speculative investments, right? Alternative investments like some moonshots. Private equity and all that stuff. That's fine. But you want to allocate the funds where they're going to work the hardest, right? I look at all of my dollar bills that I get and I say, you're going to work hard, little guy. You're going to work hard. Now
Craig Spodak
0:18:15
go work. Yeah, Peter Malik says every day your dollars wake up, put a shovel on their back and go to work.
Peter Boulden
0:18:19
Yeah. I look at it and say, now go out there and come back with a friend. Come back with a friend. Yeah, well I just wanted to talk about that because we talked about selling and I just want to make sure people don't hear it as like, the sky is falling and sell now.
Craig Spodak
0:18:31
Because if you love your business.
Peter Boulden
0:18:33
It did kind of sound like that. You did kind of point it out there like that.
Craig Spodak
0:18:35
Well, no, this person has to sell because they cannot stand living where they're living.
Peter Boulden
0:18:40
Okay, well, that's a different scenario.
Craig Spodak
0:18:42
An untenable situation.
Peter Boulden
0:18:43
And guess what? That desperation is gonna come across at the table and she's gonna get crushed.
Craig Spodak
0:18:50
Yeah, I hope not, but yeah.
Craig Spodak
0:18:52
You have to, it's a psychology.
Craig Spodak
0:18:53
Probably the same reason why she wants to leave New York is probably the same reason why many DSOs may not wanna practice. I was just about to say, right?
Peter Boulden
0:18:59
Like you think that's not a pervasive thing that's going on? You think she's the outlier in wanting to leave a scenario where there's societal, like, I don't wanna be here anymore, right? Yeah. And like it's a funny thing that I remember one of my mentors said something, he said, look, when bad shit happens, people run and they drop things. The smart people go back and pick them up, right, or are there to pick them up at discount, right? And usually the people who pick them up are these shrewd business people who can see, you know, but us, we dentists, we just throw our hands up and like, screw this, I'm selling, I'm out of here, right? And you just get your ass handed to you. Yeah, when every, well, listen, Black Friday, when TVs are on sale, people sleep out overnight
Craig Spodak
0:19:43
to buy a reduced sale price.
Peter Boulden
0:19:44
Say $74.
Craig Spodak
0:19:45
When assets are on sale, everybody fricking like flips out.
Peter Boulden
0:19:49
You know that's Warren Buffet.
Craig Spodak
0:19:50
An asset that's on sale? It's Warren Buffet. Warren Buffet's bought more stock in like the first quarter of this year than I think he's bought. I mean, he's on a record tear of buying companies right now.
Peter Boulden
0:20:00
I don't, I'm not a fan of him, but you know, he does have a good quote, you know, be fearful when others are greedy and be greedy when others are fearful. For sure. Right? For sure. But I don't really love Warren Buffett. I think he's a dinosaur. But he's a smart dinosaur, but he's done well. He missed a lot of things. I don't know why we're calling him that.
Craig Spodak
0:20:18
I know you don't like him, by the way. He was recently… He hates Bitcoin, by the way. He hates it. He said the other day, he's like, if you could sell me 1% of the United States farmland, I will cut you a check for $50 billion right now. But if you actually give me 1% of, or all the Bitcoin, I would have paid $25 for it. He hates it.
Peter Boulden
0:20:38
But he was around in the dawn of electricity. So like, who gives a shit? He doesn't understand. And he'll tell you that. He didn't understand Amazon.
Craig Spodak
0:20:44
He passed on that. The good news is history will prove one of us incorrect.
Peter Boulden
0:20:49
Well, his history is coming to a close pretty soon. What do you mean history is coming to a close? I mean he's not going to be around too much longer. I mean what's he going to live to 119? Well no, I don't know. I mean I'm just talking about you and me. Watch this, they'll probably outlive me. God forbid. So talk to me about student loans by the way. Everybody's talking to me about like, don't worry we don't have to pay our student loans anymore. We're all going to be forgiven. Talk to me about that. So dental So that student debt is gone now? No, no, no, no, no. So Biden is trying to throw through an executive order of the first $10,000 of your loans to be forgiven. He's trying to do it on an executive order, but like you and I discussed yesterday, it's actually impossible to do. There's an act of 1965, I don't remember the exact bill, but it prohibits a president that's unprecedented from relieving student loans as an executive order. So I think he's kind of pandering a little bit.
Craig Spodak
0:21:46
The interesting-
Peter Boulden
0:21:47
Well, it was a promise during the election. So yeah, it was a promise, but, and he's saying, oh, I tried, he's gonna be like, oh, I tried. It's interesting the timing of what you're trying to do it. I think they're looking at November to try and buy votes, essentially, right? This is definitely something to put him back in the good graces of the voting population because there is art and you know not arguably the lowest approval rating of any president sitting president right now I think the tides are changing and I think everyone sees the blood in the water that being said so this would be if this does pass hypothetically correct I'm not sure.
Craig Spodak
0:22:25
You're rich, huh?
Peter Boulden
0:22:26
Yeah. Well, I don't think it applies to graduate and I think it's more of an undergraduate and I think there's probably some limitations on income.
Craig Spodak
0:22:34
All those worthless degrees that I told people, like don't get a doctorate in like British or French painting or literature. We're paying for that now is what you're telling me?
Craig Spodak
0:22:44
Yeah.
Craig Spodak
0:22:45
Like the wastebasket degrees?
Peter Boulden
0:22:47
Yeah.
Craig Spodak
0:22:48
I mean. A PhD in Roman history.
Peter Boulden
0:22:53
Yeah, you know, but here's the thing. There's so much some back here. All this is Greg is this is a stimulus. It's just wrapped in a prettier bow, right?
Craig Spodak
0:23:03
Right.
Peter Boulden
0:23:03
So if it does pass, which I don't think it will because Congress actually has to vote this in. If it does pass, then it is going to be it will it will stimulate the economy. And maybe that's a good thing. Maybe that will be the thing that tapers some of this quote unquote contraction of GDP. It will accelerate actually. It will take us out of that contraction of GDP because it is responsible. Student loan is actually equal to about I think 3% of the GDP, believe it or not. Two or 3% meaning that we have, I forget the aggregate amount of, I think it's $1.3 trillion of outstanding student loans. The bill on the table would relieve a lot of this, I think 500 billion of it. So it adds, I think the biggest stimulus. If you can remember, just to put this stuff in context, we lose some perspective because now we're in the trillions and this economic, the COVID thing and all the things that happened in the past two years was a $10 trillion stimulus. If you can remember, I know you can, back in 2009, when Obama was putting through the stimulus of 2008, 2009, and remember how $600 billion was the stimulus back then? In totality, meaning that was enough money to bail out GM and help out Delta and do all the things. In totality, it was 600 billion. Now we're like, hey, let's just do this one. Let's just do this one. Let's just do this one.
Craig Spodak
0:24:33
Yeah, the spending's out of control.
Peter Boulden
0:24:34
Out of control.
Craig Spodak
0:24:35
Spending's out of control. I mean, and too, we've talked about this before, Peter, but there's going to be an inflection point where the schooling is just not worth it, even for specific schooling, like dental school. Like we talked about this in another podcast. There should be like a truth in lending disclosure when
Peter Boulden
0:24:51
you're signing a student loan.
Peter Boulden
0:24:52
The problem is, Craig, is that the government… When you buy a house, let me just tell you this. When you buy a house, you buy a $300,000 house, and you sign up on a 5% mortgage, 30-year fixed, it says your true cost of the house is going to be blank. So imagine if at dental school they were required to say, okay, your total education's approximately this and research shows that you're probably likely to make this, or the average that you'll make it as you would never do it it's not never mind that can't be truth in lending i hear you're saying on this the problem would it be that the problem stems from the government they tell you why the government said hey if you want to go to school we will give you as much money as you need so you're giving eighteen to twenty one-year-olds pretty much limited money the cost of education has not has ramped up threefold tenfold of inflation meaning that in 1970 the cost of a private school year of school was $25,000. Today it's like $55,000. Right? So it so it there has become anywhere there's a bucket of allocation the government saying hey here's a bucket of funds people are going to step in and privatize the education. Things are going to rot. No, no it's not gonna be great. Meaning that they made a business out of the allocation of funds the government provided. Oh, no, no, I was talking about, well, yeah, when they privatized it and still used government money, that's not, I'm talking about completely be independent of government. No, because those funds are still approved, meaning that people can still get loans. They're like, okay, $55,000 a year seems like a good idea. It's cost me nothing because the government's taking the loan, and all of a sudden it becomes a business to raise tuition is what I'm saying. There is money in taking advantage of these tranches of money. So anywhere the government provides a tranche of money people step in and take advantage of it. So the rise of these private schools, these bubbles has been incredible. The rise of tuition has been incredible because there is no end in what the government won't allow you to get a loan for, quote unquote, education. But to your point, now you get out and you are literally in indentured servitude because you have no means to ever get out of it and your interest rates are, you basically can only stay afloat. And if you can only stay afloat. And they're not deductible, right? Like the student, the interest on student loans? It is, it is to a certain degree. But educational costs for families is not like, there's some lack of deductibility and taxes for this. To a certain degree. You start earning out, let's just call it back in dentistry because it's a dental pod, you start earning out of some of your deductions as you make more.
Craig Spodak
0:27:32
Yeah, your standardized deductions.
Peter Boulden
0:27:35
So anyway, yeah, that's good.
Craig Spodak
0:27:38
I just don't know what changes, but I do believe that there's a point in our future where it just does not make economic sense.
Peter Boulden
0:27:46
And people are going to see that. Look, everything has been demonetized. Everything has been democratized. There's digitization of everything. You look at Peter D. Amandason in the 60s, right? He talked about things. I think education… Well, look at specialty, specialty programs. Let me just finish that one real quick, just as I can. So it used to be that like there was a walled garden to education, meaning you had to be able to pay your way to get into that garden to then learn from the people in the ivory tower, so to speak. Now, education is free everywhere, quality education. So it's not that there's not the means to be able to educate yourself. So if the true thesis of college and higher education is learning, well, you could technically do that for free on YouTube or paid courses.
Craig Spodak
0:28:38
It's a paywall.
Peter Boulden
0:28:39
Or the Khan Academy. That's exactly what I'm saying. It's a paywall. So people are going to wake up and say, and look, this shift is going to take a lot of time. I mean, you know, the legacy system that we built, it takes a while for people to be like, wait a second, this was not built in my favor. Potentially. I wonder if specialty applications are declining like Prosto residencies and stuff like that. I mean, like, I doubt it.
Peter Boulden
0:29:02
You doubt it, huh?
Craig Spodak
0:29:04
Yeah, I doubt it.
Peter Boulden
0:29:04
Interesting.
Craig Spodak
0:29:05
I would think it would because there's a lot of, um, there's education that's available, you know, postgraduate level education is available to GPs. And I just, I see more the rise of the super GP. And you know, when I graduated a hundred years ago, you didn't, it wasn't.
Peter Boulden
0:29:23
Well, you're going, you're taking a hard tangent, but, and I do agree with you because I think there's going to be a normalization of what specialists are paid versus GPs are paid.
Craig Spodak
0:29:33
Well, that's happening already.
Peter Boulden
0:29:34
That's what I'm saying. So when that happens, right, it doesn't make sense to quote-unquote specialize because you're not guaranteed to hire money if corporate America is now controlling quote a lot of dentistry right if they're gonna be the one who can pull
Craig Spodak
0:29:48
their jobs and they made it the same percentage between GP and specialty so
Peter Boulden
0:29:52
you are right in that degree right that maybe they care it might be starting to be removed the carrot was like you will make twice as much as a generalist just go to this extra two years of school right if now the longer that is the case then then you are right maybe it's like hey not only am I gonna have to pay I'm gonna lose that miss out on two years of earning and it's not gonna make any sense to do so to specialize you know who knows I'm just
Craig Spodak
0:30:16
yeah I'd love to hear the I'd love to hear your comments below please comment let us know what you think let us know it makes it further away from our graduation point some people may be still in schooling and just the conversation.
Peter Boulden
0:30:27
But this is gonna be, this could be a paradigm shift, Craig, it's not gonna be like an inflection point, I don't think, I think it's gonna be a shift over time, just like I was thinking that education will be a shift over time. People will see less and less value from paying $50,000 a year for just undergraduate education. Well, I don't mean just, but for undergraduate, because, you know, typically, the people who really want to do things, it's going to be an MBA or a PhD or a higher education learning to do that. That's when you start dental school or medical school or chiropractic. That's when you start stacking on big money debt. Coming in with $200,000 of student loans in your undergraduate and then stacking on another $300,000, $400,000 in your professional is insanity. It's crazy. You better be, you better be, you know, the fastest way, people ask me, what's the best way to get out of debt? I said produce your ass off. Learn how to be a good businessman and produce your ass off, make income. That's the only way out. It's the only way out. Because no one's coming to save you on that one.
Peter Boulden
0:31:32
That's for sure.
Peter Boulden
0:31:33
Yeah.
Peter Boulden
0:31:34
It's sad. Let's wrap on let's wrap if you don't have one more I can I have one more economic area to ask you yeah
Peter Boulden
0:31:43
You think we're going to war
Peter Boulden
0:31:45
You know Greg I am NOT qualified on that there are things that I that I'm pretty qualified to top talk on I think geopolitically Charge things I am NOT So I'm not even gonna I'm not even going to speculate on that. What do you think? I mean, you obviously feel a certain way.
Craig Spodak
0:32:07
You know more about this stuff. Yeah, I think we're amping up and escalating towards a direct conflict with Russia. I think what's happening to the people of Ukraine is absolutely terrible. And I feel for what's going on there. It's a modern, sovereign, civilized nation. But I also think it's far from a democracy and I believe that Putin is a maniac and I believe that there's no talk for peace and I think there's has to be room for peace because they can't just be a binary equation of either we win or we lose there's there's a happy medium or not a happy media but a conciliatory medium that no one's talking about. You know, I'm seeing our heads of state going to Ukraine saying things like, we will support you until the very end. I think we wind up losing a lot of lives in Ukraine and possibly more. And I think we'll wind up, you know, I just don't think war is the answer right now. And I see that happening. So when I'm talking about recession and stuff like that, I think a big part of what's going to wind up happening is a war, an extended, maybe not direct conflict with Russia, but a proxy war like we usually have, like the Afghani war and the Iraqi war and all these other things.
Peter Boulden
0:33:24
I think a lot of people lose their lives. Yeah, but even by trying to tiptoe around and be a proxy, it involves you, it implicates you into that. Well, people die and that's a problem for the world. I know. Of course, I'm agreeing with you and I'm just you know I pray every day that there is resolution because no one wins in a war we all know that and it just sucks Well, it's not true that no one wins during a war by the way Peter unfortunately well Politicians in their chat their deals made war is a very lucrative endeavor for institutional politicians And that's what's scary that people would actually it's in the in the cry for support of people. We will arm them against the foe that's much stronger. You know, that's the largest nuclear superpower. And we're sending them long-range missiles now, like $33 billion worth of long-range missiles so they could potentially try to attack Russia from there. You know, that doesn't end well. I wouldn't pick a fight.
Craig Spodak
0:34:20
It's just, it bothers me.
Peter Boulden
0:34:22
Yeah. So, you know, it goes back to kind of how we were talking about the contraction of the economy. I think you look at the stock market, it's a sea of red. I think there's fear and uncertainty right now. So who knows? All we can do is pray that innocent people aren't casualties of war. Yeah, I know.
Craig Spodak
0:34:46
That's my thought.
Peter Boulden
0:34:47
All right, Greg. Well, thanks for making me depressed for the rest of the day.
Craig Spodak
0:34:50
Well, I'm sorry to have to force you to stick your head in the sand and talk about it. You know, I think it's…
Peter Boulden
0:34:56
My head out of the sand?
Craig Spodak
0:34:57
I'm sorry?
Peter Boulden
0:34:58
My head out of the sand, you mean?
Craig Spodak
0:34:59
Yeah, that's what I said, head out of the sand.
Craig Spodak
0:35:00
You said head in the sand.
Peter Boulden
0:35:01
No, I said out.
Craig Spodak
0:35:02
I just don't know enough about it, honestly, to be qualified. I don't either. I just know enough to know that what we're being told en masse that this is the way we're gonna do it. We're gonna support them There's always a nuance to it. There's always some degree and why is there no third option for diplomatic discussion? I mean recognize, you know, I just I just worry about those people I really do and you know, that's a bear that I would not be poking But anyway, leave your comments if you have enough opinion I'd love to read them. We read them all and I'd love to hear what people have to say.
Peter Boulden
0:35:40
Yeah, we do. We read a comment the other day, by the way, which I never read and it was about the book and it was funny. Actually, it wasn't funny, because I laughed and then I kept thinking about it all day long, so I was like, obviously, that guy got in my kitchen. But it was like, I think specifically. Get an editor. Yeah, yeah, the topic was get an editor, which is funny, so just so you know, to your point, Craig, we do read all this stuff, all the comments, when Craig says, hey, put end in it.
Craig Spodak
0:36:09
Yeah, but it's okay. Some people want to just dig at you.
Peter Boulden
0:36:11
No, I know that. I know that. But it is funny because you come off with it, you get so praised by people being like, oh, you're making such impact. And then all it takes is one person to be like, oh, that's not true, Peter. That's not true, Peter. You didn't let me finish. You didn't let me finish. Okay, go ahead. All it takes is one person to… To kind of humble you to the fact that you're like, well, maybe the narrative, maybe the messaging isn't there, right?
Craig Spodak
0:36:40
I don't let that enter my space. I mean, listen, if you live by people's praise, you die by their criticism. When you want to stand out and do something for whatever reason people gonna put hours in your back don't let that just come to the territory mean human beings are trying
Peter Boulden
0:36:54
to know but but are just like in our practices court create we strike we want and I should to be happy right I want to every possible to follows us to kind of be like I did what I'll tell you it's impossible but guess what if you get a better view in your practice today you're not gonna get
Craig Spodak
0:37:09
haha
Peter Boulden
0:37:10
I just whatever you know no no I know, but like, we're talking about promotion.
Craig Spodak
0:37:14
For Bulletproof, what seminar gives a money back guarantee?
Peter Boulden
0:37:19
It wasn't talking about the seminar, it was a book.
Craig Spodak
0:37:20
No, I know, but I'm just saying our organization, what we stand for. If you didn't like what you did, I mean, we had a sponsor that we didn't like what they were doing and we actually gave their check back to them. I mean, so at the end of the day,
Peter Boulden
0:37:33
you can't make everyone happy. And we're not going to. But you try, you try.
Craig Spodak
0:37:37
All right, well.
Craig Spodak
0:37:38
No, I'm not even trying.
Peter Boulden
0:37:41
The people that, listen, there's people that want to stay stuck in their dirty diaper.
Peter Boulden
0:37:43
What was that?
Craig Spodak
0:37:44
That was my sad trombone.
Peter Boulden
0:37:45
I like it. I wish I had that machine.
Peter Boulden
0:37:47
You don't have it. You know, you'd be so annoying.
Craig Spodak
0:37:49
I would be so annoying.
Craig Spodak
0:37:50
You would overuse it and start giving it to yourself. Yeah, I might train one of my trucks out of the way.
Peter Boulden
0:37:52
I'm so annoying with that, too.
Peter Boulden
0:37:53
Oh, my God.
Peter Boulden
0:37:54
Anyway, we appreciate all the positive feedback.
Craig Spodak
0:37:55
I get text messages all the time saying that we're doing a good thing, and that's what we're doing this. We're doing this to try to help the profession and not have everybody skin their knees like we had to skin our knees. So if you like what you're hearing, let us know or drop a review.
Peter Boulden
0:38:18
We really appreciate it. Five regular price tickets left for the summit only, Craig. 30 days out, five regular. The last 50, so it's at 250 or 245, the last 50 go to the next tier. So five discounted regular price tickets. Yep, and I think the room blocks expired either today or yesterday. Don't delay. Don't delay, don't delay.
Craig Spodak
0:38:40
Don't delay.
Peter Boulden
0:38:41
All right, buddy, we'll see you next time. Awesome, guys, thank you, thanks Pete. Awesome, guys, thank you, thanks Pete. Thank you.
Transcribed with Cockatoo
Introduction
Money In Private Equity
12 Month Prediction Of Valuation
Truth And Lending Disclosure
Best Way To Get Out Of Debt
Impending War With Russia
References:
Mighty Networks: Bulletproof Dental Practice
