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Transcript

Jonathan VanHorn:

Welcome to the tooth and coin podcast, where we talk about your adventure of being a dental practice owner. In these episodes, we're going to be talking about problems that you will likely face as a practice owner, as well as give an idea about actionable solutions that you can take so that you can get past this problem in your practice. Some of these concepts are really big ones. Some of them are very specific, but we hope that these episodes help you along with your journey. Now, a very important piece for you to understand is that this is not paid financial advice. This is not paid tax or legal advice. We are not your financial advisors. We are not your CPAs. This is two CPAs talking about informational and educational content to help you along with your journey. It's a very important piece for you to understand.

Jonathan VanHorn:

Another thing that you need to know is if you enjoy today's content, join us on the Facebook group. So we've got a Facebook group that is active with dentists that is going to have content talking about what we're talking about today, to continue the discussion. Agree with us. Don't agree with us, have a story to tell, have something to share. Join us in the Facebook group. If you go to Facebook and you search for tooth in coin podcast, click on it to join it and be able to join us there. Finally, if you need some more help, we're developing a list of resources that are going to be centering it around our topics of discussion, to be able to help you a little bit more than what the content is doing. So if you'd like access to that, whenever it becomes ready, all you have to do is text the word tooth and coin T O O T H a N D C O I N 2 3 3 4 4 4. Again, that's tooth and coin all one word, no spaces, 2 3, 3, 4, 4, 4, reply with your email address. And we'll email you instructions on how to get into the Facebook group, as well as agita list, to be able to send you those resources when they're available. And if they're available, we'll go ahead and send them to you as well. So onto today's episode, hope you enjoy it.

Joseph Rugger:

Hello, ambitious dentists and welcome to another episode of the tooth and coin podcast. I am Joseph Rugger. One of your hosts joined by my good friend and colleague and confidant, Mr. Jonathan van horn. How to guys, we are excited to bring you another episode of the tooth and coin podcast. One of the things we try to do is we try to kind of reach through our own mailbag and think about what are some of the things that are top of mind for our clients. And we get a chance to kind of share some of that wisdom and knowledge and expertise with you guys. So I want to want to delve in today to a topic that is not something that I am a subject matter expert. And I, I don't know if Jonathan would call himself a subject matter expert. So Jonathan, as, as I look at the way you've marketed our business, we're going to talk about marketing and advertising today and get a chance to kind of scratch the surface of that big, huge, huge topic that's out in dentistry. But when you had a chance to talk a little bit about that, and as I look at the way, you've kind of marketed our business here at tooth and coin and just learning, learning every time I get a chance to get on the call with you about the things that our clients are doing, that are successful in the advertising and marketing world, just wanted to have you pick your brain on some of that stuff that day. So as that sound for, for an episode,

Jonathan VanHorn:

I'm looking forward to the conversation, I will say, just, you know, and this is important that we have this out there. This is not a dental specific marketing discussion. I will talk a lot about my experiences anecdotally working with, you know, two, 300 dentists and, you know, talking to thousands of dentists over the past, you know, five to 10 years about different topics, including marketing. So I am not like you said, I am not a subject matter expert when it comes to marketing to dental practices or for dental practices and trying to stir up patients. But I have had a lot of conversations and this, this is more kind of reaching into the, so the, to the, to the textbook versions of marketing from my book, business education and experience and ma, and combining that with that anecdotal, those anecdotal conversations, I've had over many different conversations with dentists over the last, you know, five to 10 years in people building their practices and things like that. So I want to make sure that we get that out there, that we're not pretending that we're, you know, marketing URIs or anything like that. We are not. And if you think that a couple of CPAs, our, our marketing areas, then we got some Oceanside land to celly Irene, Arizona. So, so anyway, so yeah, so I love talking about this kind of stuff. Cause it's, you know, there's a lot, a lot, a lot of people have new questions about advertising in general and things like that. And it's a, it's a really interesting discussion.

Joseph Rugger:

Sure. Well, one of the things that we've got on our monthly deliverable that we get to our clients, we have a four questions report that we have. And one of the things that we put on every single four questions report is what percentage of your business are you spending on what we call growth expenses? And that really comes in kind of three main, big categories. One is advertising slash marketing. One is consulting and one's continuing education, you know, in our message to our clients is, you know, as we get a chance to look at that, the more that you're spending on these growth expenses, the faster the practice should be growing. So I'll be interested to kind of dig into that a little bit and kind of get some of your thoughts, I guess, kind of first and foremost, Jonathan, I guess we probably needed to tackle the why, or like, what's the, what's the purpose? Like why do we care about marketing? You know, and maybe, maybe getting a chance to kind of drill in and, you know, just some questions that our audience can kind of ask themselves when it comes to advertising and marketing, like, like what's the purpose of what it is that we're doing. So maybe just kind of speak to maybe some, some different, different places that we can go when we talk about the purpose of the marketing.

Jonathan VanHorn:

Yeah. Like on a high level marketing is effectively just trying to, to create awareness around your, whatever it is you're doing. So whether it be about your dental practice or, you know, some type of new service that you're offering or, or something of the, of the source, you know, marketing is, is, is creating awareness. And it's doing that in a way that can be received by the masses. And then, you know, I guess you could also make an argument that marketing is also attempting to get a certain group of people to do a certain thing that you're trying to spur or something you're trying to have someone receive your message. And so in marketing, there's the three M's or I'm sure there may be more, this is just how we've, you know, a couple of CPAs have dumbed it down and that's a, there there's the message, the market and the medium, we're sure the three, again, it's the PRI you know, dozens of other things that are included in this, but this is just a, like a textbook example of some of the ways to dumb down marketing, but you know, the purpose of all of the, of the message of when you're doing marketing is to try and have someone act and do something that usually means in create, which is usually spurred to create an interaction between that person and whatever it is you're doing.

Jonathan VanHorn:

So in this example, to be a dental practice, to try and call the dental practice or interact with the dental practice in some way is typically what a mark w typically the purpose of marketing and the dental practice.

Joseph Rugger:

So as we look at the, kind of the different things, like why would a dental practice want to do marketing and advertising? Like, you know, as we, as we maybe kind of, kind of siphoned through the stuff that you've seen, that's worked and not worked, you know, I think there's kind of the old adage that says, if you don't know what you're looking for, you don't have a target to shoot at you'll, you'll hit it every time you don't hit nothing every single time. So maybe talk about some of the, the different pieces that might make sense for our audience to kind of think through when they're thinking about, well, why are we advertise?

Jonathan VanHorn:

Yeah, that's a really important question for every, every person to consider whenever they're considering doing marketing in the first place, the simple answer is that they want new patients, the, or to grow their dental practice, I guess, is an even simpler answer. They want to grow the dental practice, which usually means they're trying to grow revenue, which usually means that they're trying to make more money. That's usually the reason they're trying to do it, whether it be making more money in the short term, through income or in the long-term and through building equity into a better, bigger, better practice, that can be more valuable to people down the road for some type of an exit inside of the business marketing is kind of the, the, the energy that the spend on marketing sometimes can be considered to be the energy that's fueling that growth, which surprisingly it's not always the case, but you know, that is that's in general, the reason why people try to do marketing, you know, the, the really important thing for the people for everyone to consider is, you know, you know, you're going to be doing marketing.

Jonathan VanHorn:

Why is that? If you've already made the decision, you're going to start marketing for whatever reason and why, why is it now to me, you know, and this is anecdotal, but the reason people typically market or start marketing, or one of the big errors people make in marketing is by just casting that really wide net, like, I just want to grow my practice. And like, so I'm just gonna start marketing because I've been told that's what I'm supposed to do. And that, that does typically see, or that does seem to be inefficient. It seems to have a lot of cost involved and not create a lot of return on the spend of that advertising spend. So, you know, whenever there people are considering advertising, they have to meet, try and be as specific as possible of what you're trying to accomplish with that marketing campaign.

Jonathan VanHorn:

Now, if you think about it, if you're a startup dental practice, or if you are a, say a, you know, an established multi-doctor office, you know, you should be thinking of marketing in very different ways. And people always seem surprised by this, but some of the fastest growing dental practices that are more established spent almost nothing on marketing. It's one of these things that, you know, just because you're spending the money, it doesn't mean that you're being efficient and actually growing in ways it can be done in other ways. So, so, yeah, so consider very carefully why you're doing the marketing some big categories, and then just examples of, of different, you know, campaigns of what people are trying to do in marketing is, you know, we're trying to gain new patients. Okay. Well, what type of new patients are you trying to gain? Are you trying to get any patients or are you trying to just, you know, grow your patient count because you've got all this excess capacity and your business of like, you know, I've got, well, I've got nine operatories and I've got two doctors working and I've got, you know, three hygienists that are going, but, you know, we've got, so we've got room for another, you know, I dunno, 800 more patients.

Jonathan VanHorn:

So I need 800 more patients so that this practice can be operating at the capacity. It should be in order for, to be able to make the percentages that I need, if that's the case. Okay. Well, what type of patients, you know, what type of new patients who, when I say type, I'm not saying like, you know, well, it's, you know, it's this, this or this, I'm saying, what's the demographic of the type of patients you're trying to attract your business, that fits your culture, that fits your niche area, that fits the things that you're trying to do. Another specific examples, you know, trying to market for specific cases, let's say that you're already an established office and you've got, you know, you're a one doctor office and you're pretty, you know, pretty booked most of the time, but you're starting to add something like implants to your practice as a new service line, and you want to attract to implant patients.

Jonathan VanHorn:

Well, that could be something you could create an actual campaign around after maybe you've exhausted your current patient pool to make sure that your patients are educated, that this new service exists and things like that. So, yeah. So that's a bit longer of an answer, which, you know, obviously I tend to do, but, but that, that those are the things that you need to consider whenever you're going to be taking on marketing. Some people today may actually not know, not actually know this, but marketing actually used to in a lot of states, I used to be illegal for Dennis to do it just because it wasn't considered to be perhaps professional, but eventually, you know, you know, logical minds prevail that, Hey, if, you know, if you're, if you're doing this, you need to be able to tell patients that are out there, that you're doing this. So the best way to do that is through marketing.

Joseph Rugger:

Got it. So we've got this really simple, this really simple concept of the three M's the market, the message and the medium. So can you maybe just go through a couple of examples of just kinda walk us through just at a very simple high level, maybe a couple of examples. So you mentioned implants, right? So maybe talk through, you know, if somebody came to us and said, Hey, I'm thinking about doing some marketing for implants. So maybe like walk us through the market, the message and the medium, just to kind of simplify things down and just get our audience thinking about, you know, what may make the most sense for them.

Jonathan VanHorn:

Yeah. So, you know, the first thing I would say is talk to a marketing person. I'm not a marketing person, but what I, the in terms of the, in M and M for the market might be something just as an example, maybe you're in Northeast Arkansas and, you know, you're, you're trying to start implants and something like that. And your you're looking at your market, you know, you have to think about what, what type of people, you know, usually we want to get implants in terms of, you know, I know there's wide Ray of wide varying reasons of people are getting an implant, but, you know, maybe it's, you know, it's for cosmetic reasons, maybe they don't want to have just the, you know, the tooth be pulled or something like that. And so sort of thinking about who it is you want to attract to your practice and you always have to kind of weigh like, who is it that I want to attract versus, you know, do I just want to try it to literally everybody too, that might want an implant.

Jonathan VanHorn:

And there's probably some mathematical like numbers out there that could help quantify that in a way. But I would think that probably the most marketing people would say, you just want to really get the message out there to the people that might need it and then try and pull them back in. So that would be, that would be the market. The message would be, you know, how you would craft whatever story you're trying to tell and that marketing message to get that person to create that interaction, that, that reaction. So they're were, they're either aware, number one, they're aware of your practice offering the service. And number two has that creates that interaction has a call to action for you to actually do something inside to where, or when I say you, I mean, the, the, the receiver of the message to actually do something, to call into the office, and then hopefully, you know, create that interaction that turns into an appointment, which hopefully turns into a case.

Jonathan VanHorn:

And then the medium is how you're casting. You know, that message now today's day and age. There's a lot of different ways to do it. You know, you can do it from a, he knew a postcard you can do through a mailer, you'd have a magazine ad. You could be doing presentations, you could be on social media, you could be doing Facebook ads. You could be in Facebook groups, you could be a thousand different places. And mediums nowadays advertising is like the is very, very, very ingrained into our life. Nowadays, 20 years ago, we would receive something like seven or eight marketing messages a day. And like now it's like a thousand or something insane like that. Like we just, and so it's really hard to actually see some of these things come in and sometimes it looks like it really caused ya. It's, I'm sure there's a lot less than a thousand, but it's, it's a lot. So, so going to say those, those are the three ends and again, have a marketing person talk to you about these things. Don't talk to me about these things, because I'm not, I'm not going to know everything about what you guys are going through, but that's, that's that in general, and like on a, on a educational level is, is, is something that conceptualize,

Joseph Rugger:

Well, you were talking about the message. And, and back in the back in the days that actually used to run a big, big healthcare business, they talked about that in marketing and advertising in, in crafting your message in healthcare, you don't sell the drill, you don't sell the drill bit. You sell the hole. In other words, we're not selling the big, fancy new machine that we just bought, or the big attachment that goes on the new fancy machine we're selling the result. Right? So if we, if we think about the dentistry world and how that applies, you know, we're not selling, you know, the newest, latest, and greatest technology we're selling, how you feel about yourself and what your smile looks like. We're, we're selling results and, you know, smile open mouth again for the first time in years, because you're proud of your smile.

Joseph Rugger:

Like those are the why's behind the message. So however it is that you're going to craft your message. I would just encourage you to think in terms of, we don't want to sell the drill. We don't sell the drill bit. We want to sell the whole, we want to sell the result. What is it that, what is it that we're able to do? You know? So what are, what are some things that have kind of stood out to you, Jonathan, as you've probably seen tons and tons of different dental marketing stuff. So like you, and I both know, like we go out to Google and we search for a dentist in prosper, Texas, and all of a sudden we're going to have all kinds of stuff, start popping up all over our stuff. I go do a search for Henry Schein. And now all of a sudden, my Google is now inundated with all kinds of dental equipment and dental supplies and that kind of thing. What are some things that maybe have stood out to you? Just kind of from a marketing and advertising standpoint?

Jonathan VanHorn:

Yeah, I mean, so the, the thing that has stood out to me that I think is the most surprising to people. Is that just because it works in prosper, Texas doesn't mean it works in little rock Arkansas or in, you know, Olympia, Washington. It just because, just because, you know, it works from one place doesn't mean it's going to work somewhere else. And the story I tell people about this one is I had a long time ago, there was a guy who did a startup and escapes me where he was from, but he was sitting in a startup and he was talking about how he was going to make a hundred dollars, 120 new patients a month. I was like, man, this guy's killing it. Like, he's just crushing it with the new patient numbers. And because like an average for a startup is somewhere between 30 and 50, that's pretty average for a startup of new patient flow.

Jonathan VanHorn:

And this guy was just destroying it. And he said an awesome, so happy for him. I asked him in a very plainly, what is your dream for marketing? It's like, the only thing I'm doing for marketing is this postcard only thing I send it out to all these people. And like, I mean, tons of new patients and like that. And I was like, man, that's amazing those I do you mind that? And again, since we're virtual, we've, we've, you know, we had a lot of crazy ideas over the years and our firm to try and provide extra value to our people. Like if you, do you mind, if I share this postcard, I'll find just, you know, like hide your, your contact information and your pictures and stuff like that that are on here. And just like share this for some other people that are doing startups that are not in geographic areas that you're in so that they can have some similar success to you.

Jonathan VanHorn:

And like, yeah, sure know, great. I was like super excited. I was like, Hey man, I'm going to share these people. This postcard that gets like a hundred, 150 new patients a month or whatever, it's gonna be like super high value. We had all these thoughts of like, maybe we should, you know, create this big marketing vault and our company or our bike and have marketing staff. And we could create all these formulas and like have this, this extra value, like to add as an additional service for our CPA firm. And I share that, that postcard with a few people, and I had followed up with a few of them seeing how, how it had done like three different geographic locations and like, pretty much all of them were like, yeah, I didn't get a single patient out of it. Oh my goodness. I was a slide or, you know, well, if I shared it with four people and you know, two of them did it, one of them got like nothing out of it.

Jonathan VanHorn:

The other one was like, yeah, maybe, you know, five patients and it basically paid for itself, which is okay. And so, you know what, that was that what the big, you know, moment of that was like, okay, so this can be a, a huge success in some areas and be completely, you know, inefficient in other areas. So a big lesson, one thought is that, you know, it, it really depends on where, who you're marketing to and how you're marketing. And everybody is different. Like one of the, probably one of the most complicated things to do in this world is to try and have someone else try and subliminally, subliminally, have someone else do something, or it makes someone else do something like that. That's a very hard thing to do. I mean, there are multi-billion dollar brands out there that spend billions of dollars doing that, trying to do this now, trying to get you to drink.

Jonathan VanHorn:

Whenever you sit down at a restaurant to order a Coke, instead of a Pepsi or to order, you know, to drink a monster energy drink, instead of a Gatorade, there are so many different things that by, you know, an affliction shirt instead of a button up or a polo or an Underarmour. I mean, there are so many things, things out there that try and do that, and it's really hard to do well. And the reason is, is because everyone's unique. Like we're all different. What ha what, what pulls us together? You know, what ma pulls us to do? Something is very personal in nature. And so like, I, that you're not going to get me to do something the same way. You're going to get someone else to do something in different areas of the country. That just, it just varies. The medium matters. If I had to guess why it didn't work for those other people.

Jonathan VanHorn:

And it wasn't because of the, the, the, the message was any different or because it just didn't resonate with that area that, that the town that they were in, it was probably just that the people that they were being marketed to in that area were wasn't really successful. That medium is one that is more likely to work. Whereas in the other areas, the country that was tried out were just areas where mailers just didn't work very well. That, that that's to me is the, and that that's very frustrating for a lot of people to think of because us as rational individuals, usually one like say, okay, everything fits into a box. We can create this statistical model to where, you know, we can find the most efficient way of doing something every time, the end of the day. It's not like that. You've got to test and test and test and test and test to what you said about, you know, selling the whole yeah.

Jonathan VanHorn:

You know, whenever you're trying to get someone in and you're not trying to sell them because of the fact that you're usually, you're not trying to sell them like, oh, you know, I'm, I, I, I am very good at doing crowns. So I'm going to try and sell you a crown. Now, you're usually trying to say, you know, Hey, we're gonna be able to help you not have pain, or we're going to try to help you sleep better at night, or you're going to feel better about your smile afterwards. You're selling a result, not a, you know, not, not the way that you do it. So that's the kind of my, my story about, you know, some, a surprising thing about, you know, the, the, the three M's of every situation is different. And the only real way that you're going to be able to know what to do next is by trying something, and then having fail, assuming that you are trying to grow your business and practice.

Joseph Rugger:

Yeah. Yeah. So interesting about the medium. So I remember the first time that I learned about Yelp. I don't remember when it was 10 years ago. Let's just say it was that I first learned about Yelp is probably longer than that. And a buddy of mine, we were, I was hanging out with him and he was in the bay area in California. And he's like, yeah, there's this review system it's called Yelp. It'll help us find the best place to eat with the best food. It's like, you can even set up separated by this. And, and I get out to California and the bay area, and we're hanging out and I'm like looking at these Yelp reviews. And these restaurants would have like 200 Yelp reviews. And I'm like, man, what a great tool that must be awesome. I bet that's driving new business. And then I returned home to Northeast Arkansas to check out the Yelp reviews.

Joseph Rugger:

And there was like no Yelp reviews on anything. So if those restaurants would have spent all of this time and energy on something that wasn't helpful, the medium's not right. Maybe Northeast Arkansas would have responded well to a postcard in the mail versus a Yelp review. If you're in the bay area, very tech savvy place, right. Silicon Valley's right next door. That's probably going to be a lot, lot more, you know, I think that, I think that I've heard a lot of practices having some success with making sure that they've got good Google reviews. I don't know about you Jonathan, but whenever I go out and look at something and buy something, one of the things I'm trying to just take a quick peek at is, is any kind of online review that can kind of give me, give me an indication of what I'm, what I'm working with and what I'm looking at, you know?

Joseph Rugger:

And, and like, even if it's like, I'm going to buy something on Amazon, like a product on Amazon, first thing I'm going to do is I'm going to know that they've probably had a couple of buddies that went out and wrote them five star reviews. So I'm also going to know that there's going to be some crazy people that are out there that are never happy that have written some one-star reviews. I don't know why maybe it's like that train wreck thing, but I'm like, like geared towards going and reading the one-star reviews first to see if I can actually find any legitimate, any legitimate, real complaints about the product or the business or the location versus, you know, being able to tell these are crazy folks that are out there. So what are some of the, what would you say are some of the more successful mediums? I mean, do you find that a lot of practices are successful, you know, trying to encourage their patients to do Google reviews? I don't know if even Yelp is still a thing, is Yelp even still a thing, does that even even apply to the dental world, you just have it in the bay area. What are some things that you've seen in that, in that whole, that whole area be successful?

Jonathan VanHorn:

Yeah. So I mean, it, again, it really depends, like if you're in an area that is, has a lot of, you know, people in there, you know, from their young families, like from Tony, from the age of Tony to the age of probably 50 ish then, or if you're an area that has people that are mostly up from 40 to 75 or something like that, like what's successful in one area is going to be very different than another. And just because of their age, that doesn't mean that it's, you know, a slam dunk. It just means that there's a higher probability that something might be, you know, be better in that medium than the other one. So, you know, the amount that, how tech savvy it is, cause you gave an example at Northeast Arkansas with Yelp and like, nobody really cared about Yelp in Northeast Arkansas because it didn't have any saturation.

Jonathan VanHorn:

No one really used that technology, but that was, you know, probably 15 years ago at this part. Right. I would assume like somewhere in that, and nowadays, you know, there probably is some type of a reviews. I do that with restaurants. Like I will look at reviews on restaurants and usually it's like Google reviews or, you know, like TripAdvisor, if we're traveling out of town, I go to TripAdvisor and look at reviews for things like that. So for me, like if you're marketing in that way, that is a good way of getting me. Now, if you have like a Google ad, I'm actually a person that's a little bit more turned away by Google ads than I am someone who like actually likes to look like that that gives priority to Google ads. Because I think, well, it's someone who's spending a lot of money on this.

Jonathan VanHorn:

Maybe it's, you know, maybe the reason they're having to spend the money is because, you know, because the product doesn't speak for themselves. Right. So that's why I usually go and look at the reviews and things like that. So in terms of what's successful, everything's successful. Everything is how it works. The only thing that I would probably say it doesn't really work or seem to work anymore is yellow pages, which I think, again, I don't know if those are a thing, but they used to come in and drop one off by our office door. I guess they finally stopped doing that and probably went straight to the recycle bin. Didn't it? Yeah. So, but that, that's a good question because it leads us into another thing is, you know, is, you know, we have, when I came on and started doing this, you know, even seven, eight years ago, we would see, you know, a thousand, 2000, $3,000 a month for yellow page ads.

Jonathan VanHorn:

And we'd go in and say, Hey, how many people are finding us through yellow pages and black nun? I was like, well, how many, what was the last time you looked to the yellow pages? I don't know what years at 2021, I guess 1996, maybe 97. You know, so sorry. If anybody out there is like, there's some, I know there's one person out there is like, oh, I love the elevators. Where are you guys giving him so much crap? Well, in and out of the elevators are on your phone. I mean, I think Yelp is Yelp. Yelp is the elevators, right? Like I'm about the same company. Yelp stands for is yellow pages like that. I was assuming that, but anyway, so you know, it, it just depends on things. And whenever, whenever you're doing this, you gotta have a way you need to have some type of, of a tracking mechanism to see if what you're doing is working to, because those people that were to spend that money on the L pages, you know, I, I challenged a few of them to just say, Hey, just cut it off for a year or six months.

Jonathan VanHorn:

And like, if you start seeing new patients drop, then dude pick it back up. Maybe like if it's worth it. And if you know, then, you know, Hey, it is what it is. I would say universally though, in terms of marketing, I think every dental practice will find success in an internal internal referral system, having your PA doing a really good job for your patients and then having them go out and, you know, talk about your practice is a really good way of growing a business. I don't think, I think that works in every market. I don't think the only market that won't work in is the markets where you're not actually giving doing it that good of a job out. I would probably make an argument that is where that wouldn't work, because you, you would have people that are going out and spreading negative messages about you.

Jonathan VanHorn:

Now, I'm not saying that every, every person who patient that comes in has the correct perception of what type of service they received. Not saying that. I'm just saying that you got to hit, you know, the majority of them to do a good job and hopefully promote that, that, you know, that, that, that snowball effect in our practice now, obviously for like a startup practice, that's very hard to do because you know, maybe one in 50 patients is going to actually refer you to somebody. Your job is just to hope that hopefully I've provided enough value to that patient to have them become a referral for you.

Joseph Rugger:

Good stuff, good stuff. Well, Jonathan, I always get a chance. I always love to get a chance to pick your brain and talk a little bit about all the different business stuff that you've gotten a chance to see out in the dental space. And hopefully you guys have found this helpful, don't forget your three M's of marketing. Since we're going to have a quiz, a pop quiz, you got to make sure you've got your market. Right. You've got to have your message, right. You've gotta have your medium, right. So those are our textbook three M's anything else to add as we kind of wrap this thing up?

Jonathan VanHorn:

Yeah. The only other real point that probably is important for people to under, to, to, for me to circle back on is make sure that you understand why you're going to be doing the marketing. We've seen so many practices succeed and do so well. And when you go and look at those growth expenses, it's like 0.2% of the revenues going to marketing nothing almost. And then we'll have other practices that are spending 10 to 15% of the revenue trying to drive growth. And it just doesn't seem to be, you know, didn't seem to be doing the job. Like if you just cut away at that 10 to 15%, you would just be, you you'd just be making more money and then could hopefully go and spend that in, in, in more efficient and more efficient manner inside of your business or grow it better, whether it be through, you know, training your staff or training yourself, or, you know, just providing a better patient experience.

Jonathan VanHorn:

There's a lot of things that, that money could have been used for now. I do believe advertising works. I believe that, you know, a strong marketing campaign is, is incredibly valuable. And, but I just believe that you need to have ways to track that internally. So where you can, you know, be, give a fair analysis to your advertising, spend every six months to see if w what you're spending the money on is working for you. And again, don't just rest on your laurels that, you know, Hey, I'm using this company that someone else used and it worked for them just because it worked for them. Doesn't mean it will work for you. You still have to go in and do the, do the work, or have somebody in your team that does the work to be able to analyze if that was correctly. And it gets a really quick disclaimer there, you know, your CPA doesn't typically do that. We don't, we don't do that for our clients. That'd be something that if you wanna have a conversation with us about that, we could give you some ideas of, Hey, here's, here's the way the math behind this and how you'd contract this too. But that's not like a service that a, a CPA firm typically does for, for dental practices. So, yeah. So that's, that's the, that's the last point I have on that.

Joseph Rugger:

All right. Well, thank you guys again for joining us. It's always a pleasure to have you, and we'll talk again

Jonathan VanHorn:

Soon, I guess

Jonathan VanHorn:

That's it for today, guys. I hope you enjoyed this episode of the tooth and coin podcast. If you are going to be a practice owner or a new practice owner, and you're interested in CTA services head on over to tooth end coin.com, you can check out more about our CPA services. We help out around 250 offices around the country would love to be able to have the discussion about how we could help your new practice. We do specialize in new practice owners. So people that have are, are about to be an owner of a practice they're requiring about to be an owner of a practice. They are starting up or has become an owner in the past five years. That is our specialty. We'd love to be able to talk to you about how we could help you in your services with your tax and accounting services.

Jonathan VanHorn:

And if you enjoy today's episode again, go to the Facebook group. Talk to us about what we've talked about, join in on the discussion, and let's create an environment where we can talk about some of these things so that we can all help each other, get through these things together so that this adventure of business ownership is more fun, more productive, and better in the longterm. Lastly, if you want access to those resources that we're going to, that we are currently building, just text the word tooth in coin 2, 3, 3, 4, 4, 4 that's tooth and coin, no spaces. T O O T H a N D C O I N 2 3 3 4 4 4. Apply with your email address. We'll send you sending instructions in the Facebook group. We'll send you the resources when they're available, and we will see you next week.