The TRUTH about Starting an Ortho Practice That the PROS Know

[00:00:00] Welcome. You're listening to the Grow Ortho Podcast presented by HIP. This

[00:00:05] podcast is dedicated to orthodontist who want to stand strong in their market

[00:00:10] and be leaders in their community. Now, on to today's show. Well, we are here on a

[00:00:18] beautiful kind of gloomy Saturday in Pensacola Beach. We just wrapped up

[00:00:24] Fish Find Fundamentals. We're doing a special Grow Ortho Podcast episode in a advanced education grad program in Houston and he had like one day to get over there. A little more than a day but a very short amount of time. So he just packed up everything that he could in his little Volkswagen, Jetta, and drove down to Houston, didn't have a place to stay, and just pulled into Houston,

[00:01:41] found a part, well, hotel the first night or two, and then search for apartment,

[00:02:42] I was driving back to Houston from San Antonio. I was just thinking to myself, I'm like, man, why did it?

[00:02:45] Like, I totally blew that.

[00:02:47] And then, you know, long story short,

[00:02:49] ended up matching there.

[00:02:52] And so when I matched there, she was in her third year.

[00:02:55] I was starting my first year.

[00:02:57] And yeah.

[00:02:58] We had talked a little bit via social media,

[00:03:00] like Snapchat in the day.

[00:03:02] And yeah, so it was like, I could tell you,

[00:03:05] he's kind of flirting.

[00:03:05] I look for opportunities to try and stay in touch.

[00:03:07] I had to ask her, like, where'm done. And finally, I like basically just told her, I said, I'm not really interested in hanging out with your friends right now. I want to get to know you. And so she said, okay. And she came over for dinner one night. I looking for a friend I said I really do like you. I said no, I don't know much about you but somehow I really do like you and I want to tell you about me because I think you're gonna like me back and Then I guess it worked For advice right this is how I coach

[00:05:43] Single guys is like you just got to go for it. It is

[00:06:42] lined up in Jacksonville. Same type of thing where I approached my wife.

[00:06:44] I had known her since I was 15.

[00:06:46] I won't tell the long story, but essentially,

[00:06:49] it was like the only option in my brain, okay?

[00:06:52] Like it's her or like nobody.

[00:06:56] So I asked her if she can meet up around Christmas time

[00:07:01] when we both came home,

[00:07:02] because she was at University of Alabama, I was in New York.

[00:07:05] She's like, well, family's in town, she has a big family, I'm going to be a little bit

[00:08:21] more than I can. I'm going to be a little bit

[00:08:23] more than I can.

[00:08:24] I'm going to be a little bit

[00:08:25] more than I can.

[00:08:26] I'm going to be a little bit

[00:08:27] more than I can. stay in Texas, who we love and where we love, and we have friends, and life was great. It was some of the best years of our life. Or do we go back to New Mexico where she's from, or do we go back to Georgia where I have family in? For many reasons, we chose to go back to Georgia, a lot of them being that we wanted to raise a family together,

[00:09:41] and we wanted to be close to family.

[00:09:47] I don't want to say she didn't want to go back to New Mexico, the listeners. I've known the gases now what's been over here. Over here. I've known this people and I've been pronouncing the name of their practice wrong for over a year. And then you got our team pronouncing it wrong. And then pass forward to this weekend. And I've been called Dr.

[00:11:01] Linear a time or two as well. That's okay. I'm convinced that you guys just didn't say anything, all that COVID mess that kind of got done. And when we moved out there, the board kind of stopped all the board exams. So we moved out there. Luckily, I had a job, but Kelsey wasn't able to get licensed and they wouldn't tell us when she would be licensed. So there was a little bit of kind of fear in our hearts of, okay, we moved out and we were living in

[00:12:20] my mom's guest bedroom with our golden retriever and his crate in a very small area. all that. We got really lucky. We found a house with a great neighborhood. We have some of the best neighbors in the world that are some of our closest friends now. And that's essentially how we got to Georgia, which then I guess transitions a little bit into how Kelsey kind of secured her plan whenever I got this interview with Dr. Koch and met him and his wife and hit it off with him, personality and everything. I feel like the way we view things is all very similar and then kind of hoped and prayed that that might be the position. He called me back for a second interview, made me go

[00:15:00] to the office and meet the team. His you have no idea what to do. You're just like, okay, this is a lot. This isn't great, easy cases. You were just having to learn and deal with difficult patients. I learned a lot through it, but I was really excited when I could leave that opportunity. Yeah, she really, she did grow. I got to watch her grow despite being stressed many nights,

[00:16:22] but seeing the excitement on her face

[00:16:24] when she was offered the position to dinner with him frequently and he's a mentor of yours. I mean, I would say most doctors would, you know, once they were open, another location didn't see anything as a threat, even when West ended up working in the same town as one of his offices. He said, come on, I'm not scared. Like, I'm here for you. I'm here to support you. And I wish our profession did more of that instead of making it more of a competition of,

[00:19:01] oh, I can do this.

[00:19:02] I'm not going to support you.

[00:19:04] Collaborate versus compete.

[00:19:05] Our next door neighbor is not our competitor.

[00:20:06] to go work for. There was three locations involved with it. And one was two miles from his office. And out of respect, I wasn't going to take it without his permission. But at

[00:20:13] the same time, I kind of needed it. Like, I didn't want to only work part time. There

[00:20:18] was no sense in me working part time. And so it took him to dinner and asked him like,

[00:20:23] Hey, I know this is going to come off or whatever. He's like, yeah, Earl, yeah. And he's like, you know, the strangest secret. Oh, love that one. Listen to it for 10 years every day. And you're like, oh, okay. Like, it's very rare that you bring stuff like that up and people in orthodontics know that stuff because like these are mindset or personal development

[00:21:43] people who lived, you know, in the 30s and 40s and 50s.

[00:21:46] And like, he obviously people like that. But you know, Dr. Koch is, he's probably a top 5% practice for a reason. Conservatively. Maybe, yeah, maybe even more, especially with, you know, private practice and how, you know, the DSO and OSO market has been very aggressive with that. He's private practice, a sole owner,

[00:23:02] and has an amazing thing going.

[00:23:04] So let's talk about y'all's practice our startup process. There's a lot that obviously goes into it, but we ended up purchasing our real estate. And it was amazing opportunity once in a lifetime. We can thank our amazing real estate agent, Peyton Robach, for that. And the one downside to it was we don't have a lot of visibility. We're in a very growing area where I know in six months, a year from

[00:24:24] now, it's going to have visibility, but we'd gone on the interview campaign with and then ended up finding out that Dr. Kote, you know, worked with you guys. And so those are to me three very solid individuals giving me really good feedback.

[00:25:40] So I was like, okay, well, let's schedule a call.

[00:25:43] So we scheduled this call with Harrison.

[00:25:46] And at this point, life is really crazy. with the video call and the professionalism and like how timely you were with the call. And then just the amount of things we went over was far exceeded what I thought the call was going to be. Otherwise, I would have tried to not be an empty shell for when we were doing it. And so that was kind of like our first interaction.

[00:27:00] And what was the timeline like? Because that was kind of drawn out where we got the website up,

[00:27:05] right? Well, there was not even more getting the website. up before like we were going for the loan and we had to do these spreadsheets and less was like I got a call all the vendors I need the most accurate numbers possible which I don't think a lot of people do as much as we did so we called and we got information on everyone which probably annoyed vendors because we're like we're not really buying anything yet we're just making a spreadsheet and

[00:28:21] we don't know when we're actually going to start this out. So I was just trying to figure out, what does a budget for this look like? And one of the biggest things that we learned along the way

[00:29:41] is to surround yourself with good people,

[00:29:45] that we didn't go to school to know going to do a startup or in the process of it, have a real estate agent that you trust. If you're in the southeast, reach out to Peyton, just a salt to the earth guy who's expert in communication and timeliness and will help inform you. The best part is if you're on our side doing the startup, there should be zero cost to

[00:31:03] you for us.

[00:31:04] There's literally no risk at asking one of an art building that we bought. We got a little tight-taught.

[00:32:20] But...

[00:32:21] Tell you about us first interaction with you.

[00:32:24] The funny thing was, I don't know if this is our second

[00:32:27] or third call with you, And we already, I mean, we already loved you guys. We were just trying to figure out like, can we make this work? Can we make this work? Like, and at the time we also didn't know all the other things that go into it, as far as some of the coaching

[00:33:40] and things like that.

[00:33:41] We were just like, okay, can we literally afford to do this?

[00:33:44] And she walked in there and like Kelsey said,

[00:33:46] she was like, so when are you hiring them?

[00:34:42] and taking care of each other. I'm in post-modern or home, but just the...

[00:34:43] Once every couple years we get stuck there.

[00:34:46] Yeah.

[00:34:47] But it's not the worst airport.

[00:34:48] No, it's really not.

[00:34:49] At least you got a wide variety of places to go.

[00:34:52] Yeah.

[00:34:53] Yeah, it's not terrible.

[00:34:54] The Delta Lounge in Atlanta Airport, B concourse is pretty much my second home.

[00:34:59] Yeah.

[00:35:00] B concourse delta.

[00:35:01] B concourse.

[00:35:02] I'm always in there.

[00:35:03] A little depressed when I fly out of A, because A is not...

[00:35:06] The A delta lounge.

[00:35:08] It's top notch. Steak, they've got ramen. The, the, it's a small menu, but they've got the variety there. Yeah. Yeah, we'll send them this for free. Maybe they'll give them something. Shouted you out on an orthodonic podcast. It's free sponsorship. Terminally, got it E and Atlanta.

[00:36:20] There's all the conferences.

[00:36:20] People travel through it.

[00:36:21] Yeah. Yeah.

[00:36:23] So you get things going.

[00:36:24] And obviously when we came be honest with you, didn't really even know that there were leads coming in because I didn't have a phone setup or anything like that. And I went back and looked after we opened.

[00:37:40] I was like, oh, those were probably like 15 or 20 leads

[00:37:42] that tried to reach out to us

[00:37:44] and we were not paying attention because.

[00:37:46] You didn't even have a phone.

[00:37:46] We didn't have a were going to open and it was one of those things that we didn't want your patients calling in and us not know what to do with them. Yeah. So how's it been since then? How, what's, what's the practice look like so far and what do you guys see in the future? So we opened in May.

[00:39:00] We hired one employee.

[00:39:01] She's kind of our, um, office coordinator.

[00:39:03] She does front desk. us. I think we've had in the realm of 450 or so leads come through and of those 60 or so of those have started treatment. Obviously not every single lead came in for a consult or anything like that, which never would expect that. But I mean, my goodness,

[00:40:23] that's just so helpful to, Expo, whatever. A lot of what Fishbein talked about today, their team, but

[00:41:41] holistic buying journey for a lot of people is not an opt-in. A lot of people won't click an opt-in for whatever reason they just

[00:42:42] And that'll come in like an organic call off your Google My Business.

[00:42:43] Yeah.

[00:42:44] And you won't even connect the dots.

[00:42:46] And so sometimes we have things where like practice

[00:42:49] beacon directly, it's like it's working,

[00:42:51] but not to the extent of going bananas.

[00:42:53] But the practice is up 30%, 40%.

[00:42:56] And we say, hey, well, when did the growth start to happen?

[00:42:59] Oh, well, yeah, when I started working with you guys,

[00:43:02] but it's not showing in practice.

[00:43:03] And it's like, yeah, you have to zoom out

[00:43:05] and look at attributes.

[00:43:06] Where did it come from?

[00:43:07] Complete, you know, the complete picture. since Thursday night. Was this your first time? Yeah. Okay. So Dr. Koch's been like... I know he's been a few times and he's since stabbed multiple times. I think Koch's been like 20 of them. Yeah. He's been to at least four and sent his team, I think. To you, yeah. So what was your big takeaway from the event?

[00:44:20] I'm just curious for people listening,

[00:44:22] maybe they've heard about the event.

[00:44:23] Like what would you tell people who are maybe

[00:44:26] have heard it thinking about it? at during all that on top of the real estate and stuff and definitely started to see kind of some fatigue mental fatigue physical fatigue come up and so coming here being around so many other successful practices and getting to learn from you know Dr. Fish that to our practice and our craft, just so helpful. And then to get to see how are they implementing this? Because it's one thing to sit and talk about it. It's another thing to actually go home and put it in and got to take away like great

[00:47:00] tips on how are we going to go back and they don't know where to start or they

[00:48:22] want to learn more about their journey. They can always reach out to us. I'm happy to share anything that we did and went through with them and