The Dental Marketer
476: The Dental Industry and Real Estate: What Do You Need to Know? | Dr. Brady Frank
Guest: Brady FrankBusiness Name: Freedom Dental PartnersCheck out Brady's Media:Website: https://freedomdentalpartners.com/
Email: brady@freedomdentalpartners.com
Dr. Frank's Book DDSO Strategies: https://www.ddsostrategiesbook.com/ddso-book
Dr. Frank's Free Real Estate Valuation: https://freedomdentalpartners.com/re
Other Mentions and Links:REIT - Real Estate Investment Trust
Fixer Upper - Chip and Joanna Gaines
BRRRR (Buy, Rehab, Rent, Refinance, Repeat)
Host: Michael AriasWebsite: The Dental MarketerJoin my newsletter: https://thedentalmarketer.lpages.co/newsletter/
Join this podcast's Facebook Group: The Dental Marketer Society
My Key Takeaways:
- Why is it best to partner with other dentists and entrepreneurs?
- What makes a practice ready to sell at a profit?
- What is the current landscape of real estate and how does this affect the dental industry?
- How to maximize your ROI when purchasing a practice space.
- How to get into the cost to benefit mindset and spot a good deal.
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Episode Transcript (Auto-Generated - Please Excuse Errors)Michael: This is the dental marketer the podcast where we teach you how to effectively market and grow your dental practice My name is michael arias and my mission is to help you the practice owner attract new patients immediately And effectively market and grow your business so you can become the go to dental practice in your community Now, what is one of the best ways to grow wealth in the dental industry?
Well, The answer, my friends, may surprise you. And we've got just the expert to break it all down for us. We're sitting down with Dr. Brady Frank, a third generation dentist who has not only carved out a successful career in dentistry, but has also ventured into the world of entrepreneurship. Invention and thought leadership.
Now, Brady's journey is one filled with hard earned wisdom and expertise in various facets of the dental industry. So in this episode, we'll be exploring some key points that could revolutionize your understanding of wealth growth in the dental field. So grab a notepad because you won't want to miss this.
First up, what we're going to be talking about is why it's often best to partner with other dentists and entrepreneurs, and Brady will shed light. On the advantages of opportunities that come with collaboration. Next we'll explore what makes a dental practice ready to sell at a profit. Now this is vital information for anyone looking to maximize their returns in the industry.
And then we'll delve into the current landscape of real estate and how it affects the dental industry. Real estate is a crucial component of any dental practice and understanding the market dynamics. Is key. And then we're also going to learn how to maximize your return on investment when purchasing a practice space and Brady will share strategies to make your investment work smarter, not harder.
And then finally, we'll discuss the cost to benefit mindset and how to spot a good deal in the dental industry. This financial perspective is essential for anyone aiming to achieve financial success. And Brady's extensive knowledge and experience in the dental industry, entrepreneurship, and real estate make him the perfect guide Through these topics.
mean, He's not only a successful practitioner, but also a mentor and author, and he has co founded Freedom Dental Partners, a platform that brings his expertise to others. So if you're looking to grow your wealth, this episode is tailor made for you. And one critical question I wanted to ask you.
What could your practice achieve if every technological aspect worked flawlessly? I mean, Have you ever thought about what your dental practice could achieve if tech headaches were a thing of the past? Well, sTick around for after the interview because I have something just for you. But for now, let's dive in with Dr.
Brady Frank. Brady. How's it going?
Brady: Doing great. Michael. So excited to be on your podcast now,
Michael: man. We're excited to have you. If you can, give us a little bit of a rundown of your past, your present. How'd you get to where you are today?
Brady: great question. I, uh, back in 1999, which means I'm an old guy, right? I, uh, I had a wrist injury in dental school. Um, they told me I wouldn't be able to practice dentistry. So I checked out a bunch of books at the Marquette Dental School Library, realized I'd probably have to own practices, but not practice in them to make a living and put two practices under contract as a senior in dental school, bought the building, Buildings and practices ended up owning seven practices in the first five years had 28 different associates and, um, made pretty much every mistake back in the early two thousands and really just got deeper and deeper into group practice than DSOs real estate ended up.
having a bunch of patents in dental implants manufactured around the world and, uh, really had a big focus on implants through there and where I am today is really just helping dentist groups expand and kind of get to the next level in dentistry. Wow, man.
Michael: So you did a lot. So then real quick, when it came to owning the practices and at the same time working with many associates and team members and everything like that, what were some of the If you can recall major mistakes that you felt like if only we did small pivots, it could have, could have made a huge
Brady: difference.
Yeah, so early on, um, I'd say the first decade of me owning group practices and other practices in real estate, I'll get my mistakes on the practice side and on the real estate side. On the practice side, I didn't create alignment. Or shared ownership or partnership or whatever we want to call it with the doctors in the practice.
I just had them as associates or employees. And so that was probably my biggest mistake early. I ended up selling those practices to the doctors, But I could have created much larger groups with shared interests, with shared equity. And I just didn't understand that back then. Uh, my biggest mistake in real estate was.
Probably just not buying enough real estate. I buy tons of real estate. Now I'm, I got 62 properties going to closing. the founder of Heartland, uh, Rick Workman, he's made billions of dollars on his DSO, but more billions on real estate and 80 percent less time with 80 percent less effort, Pacific dental services, they won't sell to private equity right now.
Because they're doing so well in real estate. Aspen, another big BSO, they develop almost all of their own buildings, and then they sell them to REITs, and that's how they capitalize their growth. Rick Kushner, of Comfort Dental, was at a meeting at Marquette Dental School, my alma mater, and my friend organized it, and he said, he said, Rick, why, you've got, you know, 400 partners, all these locations, why are you still doing this?
He said there's a secret, it's about real estate. So I didn't really leverage real estate to the full extent my first decade, but this last decade I've, made more money in real estate than group practices and I've done a, been very well with group practices. So that's where most of my teaching is and that's where I share on how to really crank it out with real estate and not make the mistakes that I did my first decade in
Michael: it.
Gotcha. Okay. So then real estate is primarily what you're teaching right now.
Brady: So I would say my primary teaching is how dentists can expand like I did using real estate profits. To fund their expansion. Don't go to banks, don't get in debt. Go. Don't go to private equity. Mm-Hmm Use real estate profits to fund your expansion.
So I mainly teach that, but what I also do is take doctors who have done very well and I clump them together. in dentist owned DSOs. In fact, I wrote a book about it, The DSO Strategy, Dentist Owned DSO Strategies. And I might just kind of look back a graph. I'll pull the page out, make it easier. This is kind of groups getting together.
Forming one entity and getting a much higher multiple of sale. So I basically helped docs early, early, our team, I should say, uh, helps docs early phase growth, use real estate to fund their expansion. And then once they've gotten to a certain size. 368 12 locations, how to merge with other successful dentists and get a much higher valuation and then make a bunch of money and do it all over again, basically, and own a bunch of real estate through the process.
So that's kind of my main thing is teaching on DSOs, MSOs, and then how that works with real estate and how it fits in with expansion. The reason 80 percent of my teaching is there is because real estate is actually really a simple investment. and so just a lot of my teaching is on the other stuff.
And then the real estate kind of becomes the bedrock or the foundation of all the other components.
Michael: can you give us like right now, like a step by step system or process on how to use real estate profits?
Brady: Yeah. So going back to my mistakes early on, I would buy a building, a dental building. I would hold it for anywhere from three to 10 years and then I would sell it.
During that time period that I held it, I had cash flow. And when I sold it, I got a big chunk of money. And someone said something, Canadian entrepreneur who did really well. His name's T Harv Ecker. And he said this in one of his seminars. Um, I've never made as much money operating a business. As I have selling a business and he said, same with real estate.
And at that time I realized the longer I held on to a piece of real estate the more time I had into it. The more I had to manage that property, yes, I got monthly cash flow. But at the end of the day, you have to, as a dentist, you're at the top tax bracket, you've got to pay full taxes on that money.
So the timeframe with which I held properties that I bought, went from three to 10 years down to like two or three years. Because of capital gains, you have to hold it over here. But then it got down to like a year and now in many cases, it's down to three hours, like literally I'll put a property under contract, I'll find a buyer.
I'll get it filled and I won't even close on it. I'll close it, but I'll own it for three hours that the buyer comes in, might put 20 million into the escrow company, pay off the seller with 5 million of it, have 20 million of profit. and one of my mistakes was I did real estate alone without partnerships early on when you do big projects, you need partners, other people to go into the building with their businesses, and then we share the profits.
so I would say that I used to do things. Solo, like I can do this. I'm entrepreneur. I can employ the dentist, right? I'll be the guy and I used to have kind of I didn't think so, but other people thought that I thought I was always right like 20 years ago But maybe looking back I did feel like I was right and I had to follow my face a few times to realize Oh, man, there's so many people smarter than I am.
Let me be mentored by some of these billionaires who've done really well And since that time, I've done a lot more partnerships, a lot more collaborative work, and you know, I try to always believe, hey, if this is the amount of knowledge out there, hey, Brady, you're right here. So don't think of yourself as someone with all the answers.
Realize that you're going to learn from each person that, that is an expert in that subject matter. And so, with real estate. I've focused less on buy and hold, more on flipping it, just like the big, the biggest, most successful DSOs and healthcare groups do. And then I have not, I've decided to do it in partnership with others, uh, rather than just trying to do it myself.
So much more leverage with other people's time, other people's money, other people's Business growth. so that's where I am today is mainly doing collaborative work, partnering with a lot of different doctors, hundreds of them. and really, I'm adding value to others, helping them not go through the mistakes.
I have and both real estate and growing groups too.
Michael: Got, okay. So then if we wanted to right now use real estate profits, what are the first steps? Let's just say right now, okay. You know what? I do wanna do this. I do want to do that flip that you mentioned, or you know what I mean? I'm looking to acquire another practice, but I don't know if I should just expand it and keep it, or.
What are the steps for
Brady: this? Yeah. Um, there's kind of two categories of real estate. One category you already own it and you're figuring out what, what's, what's the best thing I can do with this asset, buy and hold it, sell it and get it, get a bunch of liquidity, pay off a bunch of my debt and then also real estate that you don't own yet.
I'll go over both of those, really quickly. the first one with real estate that you do own, you would be like me, 10 years ago, buying it, holding it, getting some cash flow, paying on your debts. Right. And then having this big payday someday, whenever you sell it, I realized that entrepreneurs, which I think most of the people listening to this are are going to do a lot better.
reducing their debt, getting a bunch of cash in their bank and doing more stuff than playing the 10 year game with that, real estate. So if you own a piece of real estate, I encourage you. And if you want, I can, um, even give a link to a software that shows you how much the value of your current property is.
Yeah. I would encourage you to, to, look at what would life look like if I sold some or all of my real estate, what would I do with that cash? What would life look like with less debt and could I expand my practice or practices, um, in my main business? So, so that's number one. Number two is for those that also are like, Hey, I own real estate.
I like it. I'd love to see what that looks like. If I had a liquidity event there, paid off debt, you know, use that to buy more locations. But I'd also like to know, all right, Brady, what does it look like? Buying real estate for the sole purpose of having a massive game, right? And so here's the strategy with that and we can come back into that later and I saw you nod your head I can I can do a qr code I'll hold it up in front of the screen or we can put it in the in the chat and you'll you can plug your Building information.
It'll spit out of value. It's pretty awesome software. so the other component is, Hey, I don't own real estate. how do you make the most in real estate? So most dentists think that if I build a dental building and sell it, Hey, I built it starting to make a profit right now because of inflation, it costs on average 420 bucks a foot to build a dental building with the land and everything.
420 bucks a foot. The buildings that I buy, I never pay over a hundred dollars a foot. Never. It's 30 bucks to 80 bucks a foot. and they call that, that's way below replacement cost. Meaning, if you were to build that today, it cost you 400 percent more. So here is why we're able to do that.
The office and retail markets of real estate Started going down because there were more vacancies because e commerce Amazon went out there and no one, you know what I mean? People weren't buying designer jeans. So that affected then COVID hit and a lot of businesses went virtual. Another big hit to the commercial real estate markets.
And now we've got AI that is supposed to replace 62 percent of task related jobs within three to five years, which means more of a hit to real estate. interest rates are higher now. So whenever interest rates go up, real estate market goes down. The only shining light in real estate right now is the healthcare real estate market.
Anything backed with a dental lease or a healthcare lease. that real estate is skyrocketing. Office and retail is going way down. And that arbitrage is where we're playing. So we buy a building that's vacant, without any tenants. Dirt cheap. You move your business into there, just like Aspen does, or Heartland, or one of the others.
Once you move your business into there, the building is now occupied. Okay. And, um, the software that I'll share, it actually picks out all these vacant buildings that you can choose from around America. Is that crazy? Yeah, that is cool. Yeah. So, so basically you could, and it matches it up. It's the AI component isn't complete yet, but the AI component watching match your, what you plug in to the buildings that are available.
through 20 different databases of buildings, right? So it picks all these on loop net with a remax, all these, and it finds all those buildings, even the ones that are off market at auctions. Okay. So then you're, so then you make an offer on that building and an ideal world, it would already have a build out that is actually fits a dental practice.
Like I did a, I bought a med spa for five 75, put a 15 operatory in there. Sold the building for 2. 4 million, like a year or two later. And that practice was a DeNovo, a startup. It did 503, 000 the first month. Cause I used partner dentists. And one month later I bought a strip mall, vacant strip mall and had a blockbuster in there that was gone.
If you remember blockbuster. Yeah. Yeah. Blockbuster gone. Right. it had a blimpy sobs gone and some drive through coffee thing. And it was near a hospital. It had an oral surgeon near it, an endodontist. I bought it for 330 grand 10, 000 square feet. The seller was a physician because there was a hospital nearby.
He said, I'll sell it to you. But only if you give me 10 percent down, cause I want the cashflow on the 330 grand. So I put 33 grand into it and then the rest was seller financing. And I sold that about two years later for just a little over 2. 4 million. Right. That was a thousand percent return and the tenants paid for their build outs in there.
Right. so those buildings, those vacant buildings, that massive arbitrage of profit, that is what you can use to expand your business. So in that group that I owned in Southern Oregon grew from zero to eight million in less than four years. The group ended up having an eight figure exit with the DSO. And I grew that based on profits from real estate. Not only did I pay cash for everything. equipment, any build out stuff, but I actually had millions of dollars left over just on that arbitrage, buying real estate really low and selling it at market value, which happens to be really high compared to what you buy it for.
So the key is, is this, Michael, Buying buildings dirt cheap that are perfect for dental practices or other health care and then occupying them with a practice, your new practice, a de novo, or moving an acquisition into there, like a merger from a three op guy into there. And then once you are occupying that building.
The lease rate is what dictates the value. And then there's a whole world of buyers out there who buy real estate based on cashflow. Very easy to sell these for market value, but here's the deal. Nobody wants a vacant building. So owner users like us, Dennis are in a powerful position to occupy the building that we buy.
And then basically flip that building, realize the profits. And, and, and the main point is the less and less time that you own the building from 10 years, all the way down to three hours, the greater your returns on an hourly rate, right? Meaning that profit explodes when you sell it.
If you wait 10 years to sell it, you amortize your profit when you sell it all the way back over 10 years, incrementally per hour, your profit on that property is very low. Whereas if you buy a property and sell it a year later, right? Incrementally every hour you've owned that property is monetized based on the sale price.
so that is in general kind of what I've done with real estate and we're in a great time right now. So much vacant dirt cheap real estate and so much opportunity. dentistry is exploding. Great opportunity for groups to expand and use real estate as their tool. Okay.
Michael: Interesting. So how, I guess through all that, how easy is it to occupy one of these vacant buildings?
Brady: So in some buildings, are very, set up for dental. Like that med spa that I bought and put 15 ops in it. Yeah, they had massage rooms. I just dropped dental chairs in each room. Very, very inexpensive. They had a waiting room already. It was gorgeous facility. very low, low, low costs for build out.
The, um, strip mall that I had bought at that time, which kind of started this process for me of DeNovo's and real estate. Um, was a big open space and blockbuster and that took an actual build out inside. So that cost 400, 500 grand now, uh, bought the building for three 30 sold it for 2. 4 million, right? So even after 400, 000 in a buildout, that's still close to 2 million in profit, still worth it.
But basically the buildings that you choose that are better suited to fit dental, the less you'll spend on TIs and the more retained profits you'll have, which can go into your retirement account. Which can pay off student debt, which can go into buying more practices, right? And recycle that. so, yeah, there is a kind of an art to that and the software really, uh, kind of, uh.
Dovetails into what existing buildups look like you can kind of see what those look like and all that good stuff
Michael: gotcha, and so you bought the You started this process without getting a loan from the bank or anything like that to be like, hey I'm going to expand I want to do this you you did it from your own
Brady: or yes so so what happened is that was this was in 2010, which is 13, 14 years ago that I started this de novo and real estate component.
But before then I already sold a couple of groups, owned other real estate, sold it. So I was doing well. So I just self funded. I didn't use debt. I just bought these properties and then occupied them and added other tenants to them, the strip mall. I had a chiropractor and a blood lab. got it 100 percent occupied and sold it to a 1031 buyer.
Um, so for those that are like, Hey, have to take on debt and do that. So we have a big family office network. So doctors don't have to come up with money on the front end. They can be a tenant partner. In these projects, right? our team at Freedom, uh, Dental Partners, we've got a team that just teaches how to do the stuff.
in fact, several of the projects of the 62 buildings going to closing right now are, are just that. One guy is a guy named Kevin up in Chicago. I actually partnered on this building to buy it. we bought it for two million and we're selling it for five million, right? Just a little bit of time later It's got 20 000 square feet.
It's got a total of 40 dental laboratories in it Yeah, it's got perio and oral surgery and He's putting a big implant practice there and we're kind of teaming up on that. so not like you have to pay dirt cheap for them. I mean, you can pay two million for a building and still make three million dollars on it.
So, so we do a lot of those, those as well.
Michael: Okay. And then how, right now, if someone wants to sell, what should they do? What's like your recommendation if they're like, okay, I'm looking to sell. They know the common most way to sell. Right. Yep. Yeah. What are your recommendations?
Brady: Yeah. So first of all, I would kind of assess your building.
what is the, the value look like? And, I don't know if a lot of folks watch yours via video or it's audio, but do you mind if I share my screen and I can kind of... Yeah,
Michael: Yeah. And if anybody right now, if you're listening, uh, definitely go in the show notes below and watch the video version of, especially of this portion
Brady: right now.
Yeah. And I'll just kind of go with this. There it is. So I just spoke, I don't know if anyone gets dental economics. I'm sure you get that magazine. And, uh, I've written a bunch of articles in there and they invited me to speak again in, in Las Vegas and this QR code, Freedom Dental Partners forward slash RE. So if you can't see it, it's just freedom dental partners. com forward slash RE. basically you just plug in, uh, the data on your building and we've got a whole team that basically figures out what the value is based on a few important factors.
And those factors are your lease rate or what your lease rate could be. Um, the ability to have a corporate guarantee on the building, and then we work with several multi billion dollar REITs that then basically are buying a lot of the properties we put together, and we know the value of that. So we can, we'll email you back the value, um, it doesn't cost you anything obviously for that, but it's another example of how dentists can partner together to get higher value, because the average value a dentist can receive from selling their building as part of a group of other dental buildings is about 35 percent higher.
So if a building is worth 500 grand on its own with these other factors, you're making whatever that is. So So that's that I'll unshare right now, but happy for anyone to use that resource and we had a bunch of people use that at the dental economics event and get back their values on their buildings and how that all works and with an explanation.
But anyway, yeah, so that's that's Michael for those that already own their building that want to, you know, have some profit event from the real estate they own. But the biggest, I will say, the biggest profits are in taking these buildings, finding, you know, the ones that are easily, moved into a dental practice component, and then being able to turn those buildings, have a profit, and operate your dental practice there, and effectively expand without any debt and actually making money while you're expanding.
Michael: Yeah. Okay. Okay. And I know, um, I guess, how do you know if a building is perfect? Because I think if you want something bad enough, you kind of can convince yourself like, this is perfect. But if Brady were to walk in there, you can tell us like, man, Michael, this is not perfect at all. This is, this is not a good building.
So how can
Brady: we tell? Yeah, yeah. So, so I look at it from, um, kind of an investment. Objective. If someone's going to do, let's say it's your second practice or your third or your 10th, you almost have to look up, look at it as a cost to benefit ratio. So I really don't look at any buildings or recommend any dentist look at a building unless they can make at least a half million dollars.
if you can buy it and some of your costs are going to be X and you can still make a half million dollars. That's a great deal because now what you're doing is you're kind of getting your dental practice expansion going along for the ride But you're also being a real estate investor And and I think we all know that the majority of the world's wealth was gained or is held In real estate and and what we're doing here really is taking a undervalued asset class office and retail In our market today and just converting it to Basically healthcare, which dental fits in that mix, which is the most highly valued real estate right now.
it's no different than I think Chip and Joanne Gaines that buy a house, fix it up and sell it for more. It's just a lot easier and more lucrative in this market right now because we can buy vacant buildings for such a low price. And sell them for such a high price.
Michael: So this is kind of like, I've heard of this method.
It's like the BRRR method, kind of like that BRRR method where you buy, right? Like rehab, refinance. Yeah,
Brady: it totally is. So Michael, we should delve into that a little bit because I'm sure people don't know the acronym. Buy rehab, rent, refinance. So that's what it is. Now, here's the big cool part about it. Okay, we buy these vacant buildings, right? Rehab, well, you're gonna put your business in there or you might go with a bunch of other businesses and do it in partnership Which is some of my favorite way of doing it more profits than that offer.
Okay, rent Your practice is gonna be renting it, right? Refi. Now there used to be a trend where, hey, I'll pull that money out and I'll just stack up my debt and keep getting more and more debt. and so I used to do that and I realized that the more debt that I had, The less I felt like I could go out there and pursue entrepreneurial stuff because I had a lot of debt.
You know what I mean? Yeah. so the only difference is buy rehab rent and it's yourself as part of the tenant mix your, your own tenant. And then instead of refinancing, just selling, making a bunch of money, not having debt. And now you can focus on being productive, being an entrepreneur, and not kind of stacking up your debt as you go, even though refinancing is still a option in many cases.
Michael: Yeah. Yeah, you're right. Okay. So yeah, it's buy, rehab, rent, refinance, and then repeat.
Brady: Yeah. Yeah. and with these, this model. Absolutely. So, so the key is you need to know how to do a startup profitably. And with Freedom Dental Partners, we are launching a course very soon on how I just in Novos and grew from zero to 8 million.
One was an acquisition, but three De Novos, zero to 8 million, no PPOs, believe it or not. Wow. How to, yeah. How for to market for that, how to add partners. How to get them off the ground, you know, most people say, Oh, you'll, you'll be profitable in two years. My first month on the second location did 503, 000 with 210 grand of profit, the first month, and that was that med spa.
so I'm putting a program together that folks can follow a free program just to go over how that worked. then we got a done with you component where we can have our, four recruiters where you can recruit. a junior partner, who's gonna be there, how does the marketing tie in, you know, is there an implant bent to the practice, all that good stuff, but yeah, it, it, really.
The de novo or startup fits in with the real estate strategy, unless you're going to merge an older docs practice into there. Um, but I found any money that you would have spent on that acquisition. If you just spend that on marketing and you know how many patients per dollar you're spending coming in is, and especially with your techniques, Michael, to have a team that's going to Costco and going to these bricks and mortar places around town doing lunch and It's an incredible way to build grassroots around that.
And once you hit, once you at least break even on that, you know, if you follow the plan really well, you, you know, profit the first month, but let's say it takes you six months to break even. Great. Now you've got an incredible asset, you made money on the front end, and now you're going and doing another one of these things and you're literally growing without SBA loans. of America, right? Without needing to be backed by private equity. And when you do sell your group, now it's just all cash to you, right? You don't have to pay off debt and then have a profit. you're growing without debt. And, and I found you grow faster and you take more risks with your growth when you got money in the bank and you don't have debt.
Then it's like, Oh, I can do this. Let's try this. Hey, it's no big deal if I try that. And, and those that have the freedom to try new things, And to get kind of aggressive in business, they're the ones that usually win because they're actually trying new things. hitting a single, a double, a homerun.
Oh shoot, maybe they didn't do very well on this one, but it didn't affect them. So yeah. So anyway.
Michael: No. Yeah. That's interesting. And then I think that's the tricky part there Brady. It's like, cause it sounds, I mean, to me at least it sounds easy, like, okay, let's be profitable. And then we can sell, right? But I feel like a lot of, um, especially like, you know, startups and acquisitions, they kind of get stuck in there where it's like, dude, it's been one year and I haven't even broken even yet.
Like, you know what I mean? Kind of thing.
Brady: Yeah. So here's kind of one of the secrets with this model. I marketed 30 grand a month, three months before I opened that location where we did 503, 000 the first month. most dentists put in their budget, like instead of 3 percent for marketing, I'll do 6 percent and it just never works.
So you kind of have to do a marketing blitz to do it. I had 340 or so new patients that first month it was hundreds. And we did consults before opening it and treatment scheduled. So, so the key is you have to be able to do a massive marketing budget. And most people don't want to do that using debt, they're just backpedaling them, right? It's like, oh crap, I'm putting all this money into marketing. I don't know if the marketing is going to work. So with that, I had already done a real estate project before that made a bunch of money. And then I'm like, Oh, I've got several million in the bank.
I don't mind dumping 30 grand in the marketing, right? From a variety of sources, radio, TV, postcards. You know, Google AdWords, Facebook ads, funnels, all that, even a local newspaper. And I went on radio and talked and did a little, I was on a radio talk show, they gave me the radio ads. So you kind of have to do anything and everything, and that creates this massive momentum where you get all this press coming in, right?
And then the statistic ends up working out, which is, 80 percent of new patients that come into a practice, 80 percent of new patients, the internal referrals come from those that have been in the practice 12 months or less. So when you do external marketing, you're automatically building your internal referrals and people don't understand.
They think, Oh, this 62 year old doc that's been in town for 30 years. He's getting all the referrals, right? Cause he's been there forever. Nope. He's getting four to six new patients a month. It's the new docs who are marketing heavy that are getting the internal referrals. Cause they're, they're bringing in fresh patients, right?
And so you have to understand that external marketing begets what we all want, the internal referrals. And with a great campaign like what you do, Boots on the Ground, Lunch and Learns, that's huge because you're with folks, they're talking about it, you're in local businesses. So, so that is the key to market really heavily and, and do that.
But, but when you do that, you know, you can, you can literally. take care of your financial future with just the real estate profits and grow a group Debt free.
Michael: Gotcha, man. Okay, that's interesting. Good. That's good to know like kind of getting that momentum started right there. one of the final questions I wanted to ask is Right throughout everything you're kind of seeing and this is just to get into the head of someone who isn't totally involved on the clinical Side of dentistry, right?
What do you dislike or hate about dentistry right now?
Brady: I would say there's this kind of chasm between, private equity backed DSOs and then the rest of independent dentists and dentists getting together and, um, being funded. outside private equity. So private equity back DSOs. That simply means that some corporate body and institutional investor owns the majority of that entity, which means when it recaps what it sells, the majority of those profits Go to the private equity company or the institutional investor.
Very little goes to the actual dentist doing the real work on the ground. On the other side of this equation are yes, individual dentists, but also dentist groups that are funded by their own debts, by their own sources of funding, like the real estate that we talked about. And it's kind of a battle right now.
what I hate is that More dentists aren't doing enough research to understand that these big private equity backed groups are not investing in real estate. In 2016, they wrote something in a private equity journal that said don't invest in real estate, but the founders of those groups have formed exclusive arrangements.
And they get to invest in all the real estate. They're making a killing billions of dollars. And all of these groups that kind of watch the big groups, they're saying, oh, we'll just lease. We won't own the real estate because they don't own it, but the founder is owning the real estate. So what I don't love is that there's not a ton of information being given out.
over here with the huge groups that are private equity back. And there's a lot of dentists that aren't taking the time to research how that really works. And I think that's my goal is to, yes, certainly show a couple decades of failures and successes, but to also show, cause I've, I've looked deeply inside the innards of all these DSOs.
I've helped a lot of them and consulted a lot of them and worked with the main attorney group who set them up. so I think what I don't love is that chasm between the two. And I think the individual dentists, the business folks that are working with dentists, those groups that are watching the big DSOs and emulating them and just leasing space, not realizing there's a huge real estate play there.
and those that don't realize, Hey, we can clump together like at Freedom Dental Partners and have a big group with a big liquidity event and benefit our futures. you know, financially, just like the big boys do. I think it's that chasm that I hate the most. And that's I think what I'm here to do is educate, show how they're doing it and then interpret how that works and make it easy so that Dennis can flourish just like those big groups.
And then I think what's gonna happen is if here's the big groups and here's Dennis and smaller It's going to equalize out because now we're using all the secret tools, techniques and protocols that they are. We leveled the playing field and we actually maybe even have an edge on our side, especially with kind of some of the real estate stuff we've talked about today.
Michael: All right, man. Awesome. And then any final pieces of advice that you'd like to give to our listener?
Brady: Um, I would say if you're young and you're just starting out your career and you did an acquisition or a startup, you're a business person involved with a small group, look at ways of collaborating more like, uh, you know, Freedom Dental Partners, we've got hundreds of dentists around the country who are building small groups together and getting involved, Google Freedom Dental Partners, see some of the deals we've done, some of the DSOs we've bought, we've bought a number of DSOs, and uh, just get involved and look for folks that are really, uh, kind of on the, on the forefront of doing this stuff, look for folks that are partnering with others, that are sharing, and uh, I would say just, look very closely at those that are banding together because those are the groups that are forging, ahead and really competing with each other.
With the big boys. unfortunately it's not the one or two or three location groups that are kind of competing as the big boys. It's, it's those one, two or three location groups or 10 location groups that are banding together, creating a formidable force to elevate through partnerships that are, that are really making a difference out there today.
Okay, man,
Michael: that's good. So then if anyone had any questions or concerns, where can they find you?
Brady: Yeah, just go to brady at freedom dental partners. com brady at freedom dental partners. com and I can I can get to where you need to go
Michael: Awesome. So guys that's going to be in the show notes below. So definitely check it out And at the same time brady, thank you so much for being with us.
It's been a pleasure and we'll hear from
Brady: you soon Awesome, michael. Have a great one
Michael: Thank you so much for tuning into that podcast. And Brady, thank you so much for being a part of the podcast. We really appreciate you coming on and sharing your wealth of knowledge. And at the same time, if you want to ask Brady any questions, go in the show notes below or the description below, and you can click on his links and reach out to him there.
Definitely check out his website and see what he has to offer you as well. Along with any of the freebies that he mentioned in the episode, you can download them in the show notes below as well. So go ahead and do that now. Have you ever thought about what your dental practice could achieve if tech headaches were a thing of the past?
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Thank you so much for tuning in and I'll talk to you in the next episode.
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