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    Explore " big picture" with insightful episodes like "0535 Pinkie The Pig Podcast/ Every Cloud Has a Silver Lining", "#85 ~ Frequency Writer: October-November 2021+ Marinades: Eagle Is Rising, Big Picture Vision & Missions, 1776 Independence", "Big Picture Budgeting: What should you be focusing on in your dental practice? (Part 1)", "Your Remodel needs a Master Plan not a Floor Plan" and "25. The Importance of Taking a Step Back" from podcasts like ""Pinkie The Pig Podcast", "Whole Soul Mastery", "Tooth and Coin Podcast", "Mid Mod Remodel" and "The Finance Diaries"" and more!

    Episodes (79)

    #85 ~ Frequency Writer: October-November 2021+ Marinades: Eagle Is Rising, Big Picture Vision & Missions, 1776 Independence

    #85 ~ Frequency Writer: October-November 2021+ Marinades: Eagle Is Rising, Big Picture Vision & Missions, 1776 Independence

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    In Part 2 of this 2-Part Video Series, I share timely insights & empowering messages about these epic and biblical times. I discuss key themes in Red October & Epic November 2021, including that Eagle Is Rising, Seeing via Bigger Picture Vision & Bigger Picture Missions, Two Earths and their Ecosystems of Beliefs, & this 1776 Planetary Declaration of Independence Unfolding.  Thanks for joining me for these messages and marinades today!

    Part 1 of this 2-Part Video Series is an energy update and timely transmission received from The Arcturian Collective that offers bigger picture vision to assist humanity in spiritually navigating these epic times and the profound shifts in human consciousness that are unfolding. In this transmission, The Ultimate Storm, Red October, Epic November, the 2nd Harbinger, Eagle Rising, Justice, Freedom, Joy, and The Great Awakening are spotlighted, explored, and described.  You can tune into the original transmission here: https://youtu.be/nDK9F5Ri1p4

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    Big Picture Budgeting: What should you be focusing on in your dental practice? (Part 1)

    Big Picture Budgeting: What should you be focusing on in your dental practice? (Part 1)

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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 and 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 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 toothandcoin, T-O-O-T-H-A-N-D-C-O-I-N to 33444. Again, that's toothandcoin, all one word, no spaces, to 33444.

    Jonathan VanHorn:

    Reply with your email address, and we'll email you instructions on how to get into the Facebook group, as well as add you to the 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. Hello ambitious dentist. Welcome to the episode that I'm probably going to call, Why Budgeting is a Waste of Time. It's a topic that I think is going to be confusing to some, why a CPA or an accounting person would talk about that, especially considering our last episode, we talked about how important it is to do on a personal level. But this episode, we're going to talk about the budgeting of a business. And specifically in general, single-office owned dental practices, usually doing what an average dental practice would do, which is somewhere around a million dollars a year in revenue, maybe enough where it's two or $3 million a year in revenue. And we're talking about that.

    Jonathan VanHorn:

    So I've got Joseph with me obviously. Joseph has a lot of history of doing this as a CFO in the prosthetics company that he worked for before he joined us at Tooth and Coin. And we're going to just talk about it, and what our thoughts are about budgeting, some of the pitfalls of it, some of the benefits of it, and then maybe some alternatives that people should be thinking about as well. So, yeah. So welcome to the episode.

    Joseph Rugger:

    Yeah. Thanks for a good intro there, Jonathan. I think probably what would be worth it to just talk about first at a high level is, what is budgeting and who typically does it. So you guys may or may not be familiar with all the different stuff that's out there, but typically budgeting really has to do with trying to make a plan for where your money's going to go. And one of the things that budgeting is, is going to work off of a forecast. And that's something that can be really difficult to tie down and pin down in different organizations, different industries. So, your typical business that is, let's say $10 million or more in revenue, typically has a team of accountants. They've got people that are maybe a CFO, maybe they've got a controller, maybe they've got an AP clerk, maybe they've got somebody that's in charge of AR. They may have somebody specifically in charge of budgeting, somebody that actually has a season of their life that they call budget season.

    Joseph Rugger:

    So if we ran a calendar year budget, this person may start sitting down and making the budget out in September, and then spending time in October and then reprioritizing in November and then in December. So as I described this big, robust accounting and finance department, that typically doesn't happen until you get pretty far along in revenue. And you may hit that at $2 million and you need those people, or $5 million or $10 million. But typically it's until you get to that really big growth stage where you've got to have multiple people that are running your accounting and finance. And as you mentioned, Jonathan, if we say that the typical dental office has a million dollars in gross receipts or in revenue, they're probably not going to have a team of five accountants that they've got full-time employed.

    Joseph Rugger:

    They're not going to pay 60, 70, 80, $100,000 for a controller or a CFO, and then an AP clerk or all that kind of stuff. So from a corporate level perspective, if you've got enough resources and you've got enough people and you got a big team, it can make some sense to do some budgeting. But one of the things that I wanted to get your thoughts on is, when you're looking at a typical dental practice that does 500, a million, 1.5, $2 million, what are your thoughts, Jonathan, in general on, as we talk about... One of the things they taught us in Accounting 101 was the cost benefit ratio. How much is whatever it is that we're going to do, going to cost versus what's going to be the implied benefit? So maybe talk to us a little bit about your experience in talking to practice owners across the country, and what people's maybe conceptions or misconceptions are of budgeting and how useful it is in this industry.

    Jonathan VanHorn:

    Yeah, absolutely. And I think a good way to do that is to... And I know it's hard to do on an audio thing, but to talk through the math of it a little bit. The companies that you're mentioning that do the budgeting, they're much larger, they're typically operating under a very slim profit margin. So when I'm talking about profit margin, I'm saying that for every dollar that comes into those bigger businesses that are not dental practice in the medical industry, they're hoping to be able to capture as profit of every dollar, of every 100 pennies that come through, a lot of them are hoping to catch maybe five to 15 cents per dollar that comes in. And it fluctuates a lot. There's a lot of variables that come into play, and there's a lot of meticulous effort that goes into finding that five to 15 cents per dollar that comes through.

    Jonathan VanHorn:

    Now in dentistry, the math of that is just very different. So if you're a big company and you've got, let's say 90 cents out of every dollar going to some type of expenses associated with generating that revenue, then you've got to be really careful. And you've got to know exactly where every dollar is going and minimizing that number as much as possible. Because if you're at 90 cents on a dollar and you're going to reduce your total spend by 5%, or let's call it 10% since the math's easier to illustrate, you were at 90 cents a dollar, now you're at 81 cents a dollar. Your profit margin went from 10 cents a dollar to 19 cents a dollar. That's almost double in profitability. That's a big, big, big difference. And when we talk about all those variabilities that come into play in those bigger businesses, there's a lot of little things that you can sometimes influence that will help get you across the board, for example, if you have a different supplier.

    Jonathan VanHorn:

    If you're manufacturing things, and you can find someone who is giving you your supplies at a much lower rate, your supplies could be 40% of that total dollar that went out, the 90 cents that got reduced to 81, that could be 40 cents of every dollar going towards the supplies. And if you can reduce that and find better people, it makes a lot of sense on why you'd have somebody ahead of budgeting. And it's a decent management tool too, for having multiple layers of management, having a bunch of different people that have a bunch of different responsibilities inside of your business.

    Jonathan VanHorn:

    You pointed out, Joseph, in dentistry, in single-office dentist practices. You don't definitely have very many middle layers of management so to speak. In a dental practice, it's a pretty reasonable estimate that people can get from every dollar of revenue that comes in, it's pretty reasonable for an average-sized owned practice to beginning to keep somewhere between 40 and 50 cents of every dollar that comes in, and having that be coming back to the owner as earnings or cashflow, so to speak. So when you think about that, you're comparing big business, five to 10, 15% margins versus dentistry, single-office owner, 40 to 50% margins. If you can reduce 5% of your expenses or 10% of your expenses, you're only going to add another 5%, which is only another 10% increase your profitability. Sounds great, but the question is how much effort is being put forth and what could you be doing instead of spending the time trying to find the 10%, how much effort does it take to lower your cost by 10% compared to just increasing your revenue by a very small amount?

    Jonathan VanHorn:

    So in terms of how I view it with dental practices, there's this concept called diminishing returns, which means that after you've done something once, the next time that you do it, it doesn't generate as much of a benefit. And what we used to do as a CPA firm is, we'd have clients that say, "Hey, we want you to give us a budget. We want you to help us keep up with it. We want you to talk to us about it every month and to see how we did with that budget and things like that. So that we can be better steward of our money and making sure that we're spending the least amount of money as we can." Purely from an accounting standpoint. So, we kept up with how much they paid in supplies, we kept up how much they pay in labs and staffing costs and occupancy and things like that.

    Jonathan VanHorn:

    And if those numbers were too high, then the result's called a variance. And then we had to try and figure out how to affect that variance. In dentistry, what we found was that no matter what the variance was, there was always a reason why the variance was there. It was very rare that it was like, "Oh, it's because we double paid this vendor and we got to get a refund," without even the vendor saying, "Oh, by the way, you double play at us." So, the way that I tell dentists is this, is that you need to have an understanding of how you're spending your money. You need to make sure you're not getting basically screwed in terms of having really high costs for certain things. And you need to make sure that you're keeping up with who you're paying your money to.

    Jonathan VanHorn:

    But my argument is that I think that you really only have to do this maybe once a year. And I think the first year that you do this is going to be the highest value year that you ever do it. And then every year after that is the diminishing returns. I don't think that this exercise should take you... It definitely shouldn't take you more than probably a half of a day, probably after the first time you do it, it probably shouldn't take you more than an hour a year to do this. And the problem with budgeting is, that's not how budgeting works. If you're actually budgeting, and you're setting up these parameters, you're trying... Like you said, you have to forecast what your revenue could potentially be. So you have to have an understanding of your new-patient metrics, you have to have an understanding of your dollar per rep, dollar per patient coming in per visit.

    Jonathan VanHorn:

    You have to have an understanding of your cancellation rates, your occupancy rates in terms of your utilization of your chair time. There's so many things that you have to understand to be able to appropriately forecast revenue, and then go in and say, "Okay. Well, we're going to do this many of this procedure. And this procedure takes up this much cost per lab. And so we have to forecast that expense out, and everything with that." And at the end of the day, for a dental practice is doing these things, what value is that? Why would you want to do that? I would make the argument, if you're actually budgeting and you're doing what a actual budget in a small business needs to have, you're likely paying a professional quite a bit of money.

    Jonathan VanHorn:

    I would say at least $1,000 a year, maybe upwards to two or $3,000 a year, just to do the tracking of everything. That's not even to do the forecast for you, that's just the tracking. And you're probably going to be spending anywhere from 10 to 30 hours a year on this. And what are you going to be getting out of that compared to what you could have been putting that time into instead? So to me, that's where the real question lies. I mean, is that a good explanation of what we see in this industry, Joseph?

    Joseph Rugger:

    Yeah, I think so. And I want to go back to the margins that you mentioned. So, a typical business may be anywhere in the five to 15% margin. And I'm sure that everybody in our audience has heard about the different varying governmental budgets, right? So whenever we look at what the tax base is for my hometown of wherever I live, they've got a really good idea of how much they're going to have in tax revenue. They have really sophisticated pieces. So, that's why they're able to really focus on the expense side because they don't really have a whole lot of control over the revenue side.

    Joseph Rugger:

    So if you don't mind, Jonathan, maybe walk us through... You mentioned that the profit margin of dentistry is somewhere in the 40 to 50% range of every dollar that comes in, that that's going to be profit. Maybe walk us through maybe the bigger chunks of that and how that looks. And then maybe, let's just run a couple of quick numbers on, if we spent our time getting one new patient, what that looks like, versus how much we maybe even save, and to shave off a percentage point. So maybe walk us through how we get from 100% to 40 to 50%, and then what the returns would be like if we're able to really shimmy some costs off.

    Jonathan VanHorn:

    Yeah, absolutely. So if you take the big picture of... And again, the way that people should be perceiving this, or creating an image in your head if you're a visual learner, literally think you're sitting down at the kitchen table with your grandmother, she's teaching you about money and she's got 100 pennies sitting in front of you, and it's talking to you about, "This is what 100% looks like. Each penny is percent." Those represent every dollar that are coming into your dental practice. If we're saying that you get to keep 40 to 50 cents of every dollar that comes in, that means you're spending between 50 and 60 cents per dollar that comes in to generate said revenue. Now, obviously the caveat to this is, this is based off of a single-office owner practice doing about a million dollars a year in revenue, doesn't have an associate, usually it's just one doctor. The numbers change a bit depending on where you are in the country and all these other things, but that's a pretty general good generalization.

    Jonathan VanHorn:

    It also does... If you're in a startup, obviously of those 100 pennies, almost all 100 pennies are going to be coming out every month because you're spending that on different things. It's dependent on your age and a bunch of different things. So a standard practice, 50 to 60 cents of every dollar is coming out and going to expenses. Usually for a good average number to come up with is, of that, let's cut it in the middle of that 55%. So I said 50 to 60, let's say 55 cents of every dollar is going out, the owner is going to keep 45 cents of every dollar.

    Jonathan VanHorn:

    You've separated 45 cents on one side of the table, you've got 55 cents on the other side of the table. Now of that 55 cents that are expenses, about 15% is a pretty good number for a lot of dental practice to have that will be allocated towards supplies and labs. So you've got your supply costs for all of the things that you use up throughout the day. If your lab fees, whenever you have a case, and you've got to send something out to the lab for that case and have it sent back, that's a lab fee. Obviously some practices have more, some practice have less than that, because some people do things like implants, some people do things like Invisalign, some people don't. And so some people just only do fillings all day long, I guess.

    Jonathan VanHorn:

    So it's depending on the practice, but a good standard number is to save 15%. So of the 55 cents in expenses, you'd separate 15 of those out, and now you got 40 cents left for your other expenses. Of those of that 40 cents, typically 25 cents of that goes to your staff. So now you had 40, you separate that out, now you've got 15, because 25 cents of that is going to your staff. Now you've got 15 cents leftover. And that usually is going to be to pay for things like your rent, things like maybe some type of loan payments. The assumption of the 55% is usually that loans are not included in that. We'd have clients that like to have that included in terms of their numbers, but in general, that does not include that. But it goes to things like utilities. It goes into things like advertising.

    Jonathan VanHorn:

    It goes into things like just a general occupancy expenses, office supplies, things like that. It's little things like that. We have some clients, they'll spend 10% of their revenue in rent just because of the area of the country that they're in. So that takes up a big percentage of it. [crosstalk 00:17:44].

    Joseph Rugger:

    Or like in California and New York, yeah.

    Jonathan VanHorn:

    Exactly. So that last 15 cents is really where it's highly dependent on your situation. We find that that 15 cents over there, the last 15 cents, not the 15 cents for supplies and labs, that last 15 cents is usually very practice specific and usually cannot be that influenced very much. Usually that's just what a lot of people have to call their fixed cost, so to speak, on a monthly basis. So that's a very static number. So the other two numbers that we might be able to influence are our staff and then our supplies and lab. That's all that's really left. I can make an argument that in the fixed ones, the advertising expense, that number goes up and down a bunch, depending on what the goals of the practice are. But in general, that's usually a pretty standard amount. And there's things we can talk about in terms of what you should do for that as efficient business owner, but not really in terms of a budgeting piece.

    Jonathan VanHorn:

    So everything in that context, we've got really 40 cents of every dollar we might be able to influence in some ways. And really at that point, it's not really budgeting, because your employees are going to... I think most business owners want to pay their employees more, because if they're paying the more, that means that they're doing more for them and probably generating a better return on their dollars. But that doesn't mean you can just have people wasting hours there. So you have to have make sure your schedule is efficient. But it's another one of those things that, if you think about the context of this, I'm talking about the 25 pennies that are sent off to the side in the staffing column, and think about that for a second, if that number goes up, what should be occurring if that number goes up? Joseph, what would you think should be occurring if that number is going up?

    Joseph Rugger:

    I would hope that if our staff costs go up, so to are our revenues, right? Hopefully we've-

    Jonathan VanHorn:

    Precisely.

    Joseph Rugger:

    ... hired people, added hours, increased salaries, added bonuses because as a factor of, or because of an increase in top line revenue.

    Jonathan VanHorn:

    Yeah, exactly. So absent and efficient scheduling of people's work time, them working more is actually a good thing because it should be influencing an extra 75 cents return on that 25 cents of expenses. Now, again, I've got 75 cents, some of that's going to those other categories, but it's generating more dollars, so you're willing to accept that. So again, that's absent, inefficient scheduling for your staff and their hours. Now we've had clients that have had really bad overtime, that had a lot of employees that just, they just always have overtime. In those types of situation, yes, that that could be fixed, but I wouldn't really call that budgeting so to speak. I wouldn't say that's what... In the context of what we're talking about, what actually budgeting is. The last part of the other 15%, staffing or supplies and labs. I can think on very few examples of where I've ever had a client say, "Hey, we were able to really reduce our costs in supplies this month." Now, you have to make sure, again, like I said earlier, that you're not paying out the nose for staff costs, or for supply cost.

    Jonathan VanHorn:

    You have to make sure that you're not paying out the nose for labs, but there's some people that want to pay out the nose for labs. There's a lot of people I'll talk to that are like, "Yeah, my guy costs 200 bucks a crown. And I love him because he's amazing at it. He does the highest quality possible." And some people that are like, "Yeah, I want to pay $70 for a crown, for my lab." And that's very much a personal preference, but you should be hopefully, in an efficient market, the $200 you're spending on that crown should be hopefully being able to allow you to charge a little bit more for the work for that crown. Anyway, so that's how the buckets work out in terms of everything. So to recap that, of the 55 cents in this hypothetical practice, in an average practice, 15 cents is going to supplies and labs, 25 cents is going to staff, and 15 cents is going to occupancy, advertising, consulting, professional services, the things that people typically pay for. And then the other 45 cents is profit.

    Joseph Rugger:

    Yeah. So when we talk about diminishing returns, really what we're talking about is that spending four to five hours in year one, you might get some benefit out of doing some budgeting and doing some forecasts. Year two, year three, year four, after we've dug in and looked at some stuff, we're probably looking at less than an hour a year, if we want to do that. So if what we're saying, Jonathan, is that budgeting and forecasting is a diminishing-return game for the dentist, if someone came to you and asked, "Okay, what should I be doing instead? Budgeting is not a good use of my time. Where would be a better use of my time if I'm going to work 'on the business' instead of in the business?" And you're telling me that budgeting and this forecasting probably doesn't have the cost-benefit ratio, where do you think the biggest returns would be?

    Jonathan VanHorn:

    Yeah. So just to clarify that, yeah, in terms of budgeting and forecasting, I think if you're actually doing budgeting and forecasting, you're probably looking at an investment of at least 30 hours a year from you and your management team, and thousands of dollars to probably accountants and consultants and people like that. The better use of your time is the thing that we were talking about now, is taking a look at those different segments of your business, just analyzing to see if you're being effective in the way that you're spending that money. So to run down that list, starting with supplies and labs first, make sure that you're not having a whole lot of waste when it comes to your supplies. Make sure that your practice has a good policy of making sure we don't throw away $30 worth of supplies every day. We need to make sure that we have a staff that doesn't take home a whole bunch of supplies every day.

    Jonathan VanHorn:

    If you can do that, and then you're making sure that you're maybe once a year looking up the prices of the things that you pay the most for out of your practice. The number of supplies that you actually have, how many of those go to waste, how much gets thrown away, how much just expires, because it's a medical industry, so you have things to expire. And just be effective in the use of supplies, make sure that they don't walk out the door. And finally, make sure that you're paying competitive amounts for those things. You can do this very quickly. Larger offices has an assistant that's ahead of buying supplies for the practice. And one of the things that they tell them to do is just, "Hey, once every few months make sure that we're not paying out the nose for something that... For the prices."

    Jonathan VanHorn:

    I mean, typically the person will, if they've bought these burs every month for two years, and then all of a sudden they notice the bur price is up 50%, they're now more, "Hey, maybe I can go buy those somewhere else and get a little bit better deal for it." So that's really the best way to do it. From the labs, it's the same thing, make sure that we're not having a whole bunch of redos. So we're having to pay the fee over again, because we didn't send the right stuff to the lab. Make sure we have a well-trained staff to make sure that those labs are being done... That we're needing the labs. Make sure that we're billing the patient for the services that we do. And also, make sure that the fees are competitive. I mean, like I mentioned, some people, their lab is their lab. They ain't going anywhere else.

    Jonathan VanHorn:

    And if that's the case, that's fine, but it doesn't hurt to ask that lab like, "Hey, by the way, you're charging me $200 a crown. The competitor down the street's charging $85 a crown. Can you maybe help me out a little bit with this? Or is there anything that you can do to affect these prices, or that we can do better as a company when we send them to you to lower your costs so we can get a little bit closer on the fees?" Because I guarantee you, in today's day and age, those lab people are probably aware that guy down the street is charging that. And if they say no, "If you want the service that you're getting now, you got to pay me that fee," that is there right. And if you like that lab, you should continue paying it. But that's completely up to you, and you're going to understand that your costs are going to be a little bit higher. So we just talked about the 15% that are supplies and labs.

    Jonathan VanHorn:

    I just want to point out, if you can save 20% on your supplies and labs on a yearly basis, which is a big number, saving 20% is a lot, you're really only affecting those pennies. You're finding three pennies, that's what you're finding. But if you're finding 20%, I guarantee you, you're not going to find 20% every month. That's the diminishing returns part that we're talking about. If you did this exercise every month, you're not going to find 20% every time, which is three pennies. If there's waste or inefficiencies going on, you will likely almost immediately find those three pennies. And then every month after that, it's just going to stay the same. You're not going to find more pennies after that. So to the staffing part, I already talked about it a little bit, just make sure you're scheduling your people effectively.

    Jonathan VanHorn:

    Make sure that people aren't just standing around doing nothing for no reason. Make sure that we have patients that are being scheduled efficiently to be able to come in, and utilize that capacity so that we're generating revenue whenever we're incurring that expense. I'm not a scheduling guru, I don't know anything about the, "This is how you get to the minute of everything or whatever it may be." But watch out for areas of waste, which is things, like I said, having people just be up there whenever they don't have to be up there, make sure people are clocking out for their lunch, make sure that people are not putting in overtime if it's not needed. You do those things, you'll typically be okay. The last piece is the everything-else bucket, which is a bit more complex, but I can tell you the highlights. In today's day and age, you're probably not going to be like, "Hey, by the way, Mr. Landlord, I'm only going to pay you $500 less than what I was paying you a month ago." That's probably not going to work.

    Jonathan VanHorn:

    They're probably not going to be okay with that. So you can't really do a whole bunch about rent, which is the biggest chunk of that 15 pennies that are left over for most of our clients. Now if you own your own practice on your own location, you should still be allocating a fair rent rate to yourself, just for tax purposes and for arm's length rules and things like that. But you still can't do a whole lot about that number, even if that's the case, even if you own the real estate free and clear. So what's left after that is typically things like utilities, which I mean again, when talking about diminishing returns, most places don't have a whole lot of places you can go to find electricity. Most places don't have a whole lot of places you're going to find water. Just make sure you're not wasting it. If you got those things, those switches that turn off when you walk out... The sensors that turn the lights off when you walk out of the room, that's about as good as you can do.

    Jonathan VanHorn:

    You're not going to find 20% of those leftover. So of that 15 cents that was leftover, let's say that there's maybe six cents left after doing all of these things that are just normal things. What you have left is usually something like advertising, office expenses and things like that. And we have some practices, they don't spend anything in advertising. And so what I'll tell people to do is, think of advertising as an investment in your business. And just like any other investment, you want to make sure that that investment is reaping its rewards, having a return. So you should be aware of what your advertising is generating in new patients. And you should also be aware of how much those new patients are generating in revenue so that you can understand if, "Hey, if I'm spending $5,000 a month in advertising, am I getting $5,000 of value every month?"

    Jonathan VanHorn:

    If you are, then that may or may not be what your goals are for that advertising, and what your goals are for your business as a whole. But I can tell you, there are people out there that would spend $5,000 in advertising every month if that meant that they got one patient in a month, because it's worth it to them. They're growing a practice, and that patient could be worth 10 to $20,000 depending on that practice. So that's a good return to them and they're fine with it. It may not be for you in what your goals are for your practice and what your utilization is in your office. Because if you're a practice it's cram packed and you have no more room for more patients, and it's three months before somebody can get in, why are you paying for advertising? You don't really need a whole lot... I mean, you're set, unless you have an internal goal of growing, which means you have to expand your capacity, so that you can then generate more patients in to service that capacity.

    Jonathan VanHorn:

    So that last 10 to 15 cents that's leftover, again, you could spend a Herculean amount of effort on that 10 to 15 cents that's leftover to try and reduce it by maybe 10%, and you're going to find one and a half pennies basically. And again, you're going to do this one time a year, and that's typically all you're going to need. Now, the advertising, well, I can make an agreement, you can do that more frequently. The employee piece, that's just good management and understanding your management, it's not budgeting. It's just making sure that you're not wasting your money in that regard. And so let's say that you did all these things and you can come in, you can influence these numbers, you've done an amazing job if you've been able to influence all these expenses and lower them by five to 10%. Not five to 10% overall, but five to 10% of the 55%, which would mean that you've moved from 55 cents of every dollar down to maybe two and a half to five pennies extra that you're going to get out of every dollar.

    Jonathan VanHorn:

    And I know of practice owners that spend tens of hours a month trying to do this, and trying to reduce these expenses, because they want to spend less so they can keep more of every dollar that comes in. But to me, that's missing the picture. That's missing the bigger picture, because instead of trying to save that five to 10 cents, why not just, around the other side of that table, pour out 100 more pennies in which you could then move 55 cents of those over and keep the 45 cents. Hey, everybody, Jonathan checking in really quick here. This episode got a little long, so we cut it into multiple pieces. This is episode one. You can find episode two next week or in the following weeks. So make sure that if you listen to this episode, you listen to the other episode as well so you have the full context around everything that's going on. Thanks for tuning in. And we will see you next time.

    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 CPA services, head on over to toothandcoin.com, you can check out more about our CPA services. We help out around 250 offices around the country. I 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 are about to be an owner of a practice they're acquiring, about to be an owner of a practice they're 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 are currently building, just text the word toothandcoin to 33444. That's toothandcoin, no spaces, T-O-O-T-H-A-N-D-C-O-I-N to 33444. Reply with your email address, we'll send you instructions on the Facebook group, we'll send you the resources when they're available. And we will see you next week.

    Your Remodel needs a Master Plan not a Floor Plan

    Your Remodel needs a Master Plan not a Floor Plan

    A great home remodel needs more than a good floor plan. It needs a master plan.

    Having a master plan is more than pinning a bunch of things you like. It's more than having the furnace guy or the roofing guy come out and say, 'Oh yep. Your home inspector was right. Plan for a remodel.' And it's more than having a perfectly tidy, organized blueprint for your house. 

    A master plan is your guide for the entire remodeling journey. It's a travel book you create for yourself to set the home update on the right track.

    I believe no homeowner should remodel without one. I create a master plan for every one of my clients with my Mid-Century Master Plan Package.

    It's also what I teach people to create for themselves in my Ready to Remodel program. This online course takes people through every step they need to plan a perfect MCM remodel. The community we create around the process is made up of homeowners all working through the same steps.

    So sit back and close your eyes or grab a notebook. Because today we're going to talk about the hows, the whys and the whats of the master planning process.

    Grab the show notes at www.midmod-midwest.com/601/.

    25. The Importance of Taking a Step Back

    25. The Importance of Taking a Step Back

    Sometimes, we need to take a step back.
    Whether its in our career, finances, relationships or elsewhere, taking a step back can help us figure things out, regain our passion, rest, and recalibrate.

    There is no shame in taking a step back.
    There is only shame in not knowing when to take a step back!

    As always, you can find more here on Instagram @thefinancediaries and on TikTok @thefinancediaries

    PERSPECTIVE: Are You Looking at the Big Picture?

    PERSPECTIVE: Are You Looking at the Big Picture?

    Many of us tend to have a narrow perspective...meaning we zoom in on problems. Today, I'm telling you to Zoom Out! Life is made up of more than what you are zoomed in and ruminating about.

    All episodes available at www.mydailymindset.com

    Find more on TRUE PATH at www.truepathsystem.com
     
    Please Comment and Share...sharing is caring. 
    Subscribe to get an Inspirational, Educational and Motivational message daily 

    Apple - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/my-daily-mindset/id1546811878

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    Insights Into Teens: Episode 106 "Perspectives Part I"

    Insights Into Teens: Episode 106 "Perspectives Part I"

    This week the podcast goes back to it's roots to ask a series of questions to Madison and get the perspective of a teenager on a number of topics. First we talk academics and find teen perspectives on how much emphasis colleges place on standardized test scores to whether or not the cost of college tuition is too high.

    Then we'll delve into the realm of politics. We'll find out if our election process is fair, is our tax system fair, should the government provide free healthcare, should there be term limits on all political offices, do campaign contributions distort our political system and much more.

    Finally we'll address some "Big Picture" questions like is global climate change man-made, is the death penalty effective, should smoking be banned, do we have a throw-away society, are professional athletes paid to much and more.

    An original podcast by a husband and wife team of self professed pop-culture geeks. It is a discussion about all things entertainment from movies and music to television and pop culture. We examine some of the more obscure aspects of the entertainment industry.

    #115 - Trouble on Sanity Street

    #115 - Trouble on Sanity Street
    ***IN THIS EPISODE...*** Mike the Mic offers to translate the tedious (yet mysterious) gravelly utterances of Greta Thimble, but only if International succumbs to his veiled extortion threat by rendering $20 per translation to a certain Venmo account belonging to a very pushy microphone Boone gets a little too graphic while recollecting intimate moments of selflessly satisfying Trouble’s carnal needs and then carries on recklessly about wanting to do the same for Slave Wife, causing Mike the Mic to practically blow a gasket ***IF THAT WASN’T ENOUGH, IN THIS EPISODE INTERNATIONAL ALSO...*** Realizes that mistakes are not possible on the show, because getting things wrong is what makes humans valuable and entertaining to the Divine Bravely continues to search for the synthesis between all his creations and the important work that needs to be done in the world ***AND SO MUCH MORE, IT’S CRAZY!!!***

    #114 - We’re All One, Man

    #114 - We’re All One, Man
    ***IN THIS EPISODE...*** Mike the Mic declares that relying on International to exist is a fate worse than death and threatens to leave until he realizes neither Fluffy nor Joe Rogaine could ever offer him the kind of connection he has with International; Ory reveals himself to be a powerhouse sleeper character, when he gives International some much-needed compassion, makes Mr Fucking Coffee misty, and (unlike a certain microphone) humbly claims his connection with Slave Wife ***IF THAT WASN’T ENOUGH, IN THIS EPISODE INTERNATIONAL ALSO...*** Compares Core Chat forcing him to do the podcast to an owner tugging a reluctant mutt down the street, finally yanking so hard that the mongrel’s head pops completely off, scattering crusty clumps of eye-jam everywhere; Leads a rousing rally to unite all the negative people of the world, proclaiming that there’s nothing wrong with being negative, and that it’s time for them to come out of the closet, mostly because it’s totally annoying being stuck in small spaces with negative people ***AND SO MUCH MORE, IT’S CRAZY!!!***

    #113 - A Snoozer and a Half

    #113 - A Snoozer and a Half
    ***IN THIS EPISODE...*** When Mike the Mic claims Greta Thimble is his favorite Playhouse character, International suspiciously questions whether he might be a star you-know-what-er; The long-awaited, much anticipated Mickey D finally arrives and turns out to be an energetic blend of Steve Irwin, Bert from Mary Poppins, and a bawdy pirate from the high seas ***IF THAT WASN’T ENOUGH, IN THIS EPISODE INTERNATIONAL ALSO...*** Is compelled to repeatedly re-start the show because every time he belches he is infused with a reinvigorating vitality that resets the incredible-meter on his podcast performance (the drops are working!); Reads a horribly un-woke article that makes him feel excluded and triggered and sends him searching for a safe space to do some adult coloring; Makes an outlandish claim that Steven Spielberg is in love with Tom Hanks and wants to have sex with him (if he hasn’t already done the deed) ***AND SO MUCH MORE, IT’S CRAZY!!!***

    #111 - Magical Threads and Weiner-Dog Noses

    #111 - Magical Threads and Weiner-Dog Noses
    ***IN THIS EPISODE INTERNATIONAL...*** Invites a long-time listener and co-host on other NWB podcasts to pester him with questions and help explain what the hell this show is all about; Gets interrupted by Mike the Mic when the show gets boring, but thankfully Mike holds both International and his guest accountable to getting honest with each other and sets things back on track ***IF THAT WASN’T ENOUGH, IN THIS EPISODE INTERNATIONAL ALSO...*** Recalls the indestructible cockroaches at Harvard University that would withstand being stomped, squished, and roasted with a freebasing torch, only to scurry away unscathed; Talks about the evolution of the podcast and how the characters have taken on a life of their own ***AND SO MUCH MORE, IT’S CRAZY!!!***

    #110 - Take Me, Equus!

    #110 - Take Me, Equus!
    ***IN THIS EPISODE...*** Mike the Mic and International read a badly written review of a teen novel with quasi-pornographic undertones about Tara Cummings - a foster child with bad hygiene who’s saved by horse therapy and then has to rescue her equine therapist, Trouble the Horse, in order to save him from being sent to the glue factory by his manipulative owner and his hooves being rendered into Jell-O dessert for sugar-addicted brats; Boone Ryder wants to outlaw and incarcerate every women on the planet except Slave Wife, because she is femininity perfected, even if that means giving up his sweet, honey prostitutes ***IF THAT WASN’T ENOUGH, IN THIS EPISODE INTERNATIONAL ALSO...*** Gets to the bottom of Mike the Mic’s inflammatory claim that Boone Ryder is responsible for the death of Marlboro Man #1, a fact revealed in a poem written by the reclusive and enigmatic Emily Dickus, basement-dwelling Playhouse roommate to She of the Eternal Scowl, Greta Thimble; Celebrates spending an amazing day with his wondrous, force-of-nature Slave Wife building awesome trust after hitting, then breaking through the wall of addiction - slam, bam, thank you ma’am! ***AND SO MUCH MORE, IT’S CRAZY!!!***

    #109 - Change Is Afoot, Unless It’s a Knee

    #109 - Change Is Afoot, Unless It’s a Knee
    ***IN THIS EPISODE INTERNATIONAL...*** Resists taking Mike the Mic’s guilt-bait when Mike dramatically accuses International of leaving the Playhouse characters to stew in a soup of their own misery and neglect; Is moved to tears by reading the lyrics of “One Tin Soldier” until one grammar mistake plunges him into judgement and prevents him from experiencing any further enjoyment of the song’s poignant message ***IF THAT WASN’T ENOUGH, IN THIS EPISODE INTERNATIONAL ALSO...*** Makes a miraculous discovery that the world’s greatest wisdoms are hidden within the lyrics of a compilation album entitled One Hit Wonders, but mysteriously this is only the case for One Hit Wonders, Volume VII, as the other volumes contain no wisdoms at all; Has a brief conversation with a font on a website whose typeface he recognizes, but is embarrassed when he can’t remember the font’s name and stumbles awkwardly with the uncomfortable exchange, never really explaining why he’s talking to a font like it’s a person (talk about awkward) ***AND SO MUCH MORE, IT’S CRAZY!!!***

    #108 - Choking on Vitality

    #108 - Choking on Vitality
    ***IN THIS EPISODE...*** Mike the Mic reveals he’s the Greta Thimble whisperer - according to him she finds Ory delightful, despite her face being frozen in an eternal scowl of disdain; Poo emoji makes a cameo and demonstrates his new, more authentic giggle as a result of deeply effective psycho-ANAL-izing by the world’s premier (and only) practitioner, Michael the Microphone, DAS (Doctor of Anal Sychiatry) ***IF THAT WASN’T ENOUGH, IN THIS EPISODE INTERNATIONAL ALSO...*** Jokingly recollects when he first found Slave Wife at the pound for wayward children; Emphasizes the importance of cultivating a relationship to the unknown in order to allow for the magic and wonder of creativity to unfold ***AND SO MUCH MORE, IT’S CRAZY!!!***

    #107 - Critter Lust On the Range

    #107 - Critter Lust On the Range
    ***IN THIS EPISODE...*** Boone Ryder brags to International about his irresistible sexiness and tells the story of one fireside evening on the range when he looked into a chipmunk’s eyes and saw that animal’s raw desire to mount him; International explains the purposeful necessity of conflict and the role its resolution plays in the raising of humanity’s consciousness ***IF THAT WASN’T ENOUGH, IN THIS EPISODE INTERNATIONAL ALSO...*** Receives a memorial in his honor, named after him, for no real reason at all, from the Naming Things After People For No Reason Committee; Pretends to be fascinated whilst reading a Wikipedia article full of droll facts about a dinky airport located in a neighboring county he dubs Los Angeles’ spitoon ***AND SO MUCH MORE, IT’S CRAZY!!!***

    #106 - There's No Plan In the Vastness

    #106 - There's No Plan In the Vastness
    ***IN THIS EPISODE...*** Boone Ryder gets a little too graphic while waxing nostalgic about the two things he loves most in life - his dear friend Marlboro Man #1 (who tragically died a degrading death from cancer) and any random, post-cattle-drive prostitute splaying her labia across his rot-gut-drenched moustache; Jesus stops by the show to offer some constructive feedback, admire the studio International doesn’t have, and commiserate about his father issues with International since they both have famous dads that can be wrathful ***IF THAT WASN’T ENOUGH, IN THIS EPISODE INTERNATIONAL ALSO...*** Attempts to explain his relationship to productivity by comparing himself to a carousing Tomcat with furry testicles out roaming the alleyways in search of elusive accomplishments that will lead to nothing but a brood of mangy bad results that will have to be spayed; Explains the inextricable interplay between doubt, inspiration, and the heroic act of artistic creation ***AND SO MUCH MORE, IT’S CRAZY!!!***

    #105 - Single Love Glove

    #105 - Single Love Glove
    ***IN THIS EPISODE...*** Mike the Mic is determined Greta Thimble must be from Jupiter due to the fact that her farts mimic the planet’s gaseous ammonia atmosphere, and he attempts to rally everyone together to determine the location of her spaceship: International re-imagines On Golden Pond as a macabre murder mystery for which actor Henry Fonda wins an Academy Award due to his exemplary acting in a scene where he beats the annoyingly-optomisitic Katherine Hepburn to death with a candlestick that looks just like an Oscar ***IF THAT WASN’T ENOUGH, IN THIS EPISODE INTERNATIONAL ALSO...*** Invents a superhero character whose pitiful whining and incessant complaining is so excruciating that the supervillain nemesis actually chooses to be incarerated and suffer ass-rape as a means of escape; Declares that the modern hero mystic has a duty to dive into the black-on-black chasm of bleakness that most people spend their entire lives avoiding ***AND SO MUCH MORE, IT’S CRAZY!!!***

    #104 - Pooping for Peace

    #104 - Pooping for Peace
    ***IN THIS EPISODE...*** Dr Hosenscheisser reveals the real reason behind his trouser turds and hints how he will not stop scheiss-a-ing his drawers until humanity regains a dignity that has been long lost; Mr Fucking Coffee has a celebratory spring in his step due to finally getting a little love from Mrs Fucking Coffee then begrudgingly admits that their coffee coupling was more instant than drip ***IF THAT WASN’T ENOUGH, IN THIS EPISODE INTERNATIONAL ALSO...*** Receives a harsh and unexpected awakening when his character children unanimously declare him in desperate need of sensitivity training and specifically gets accused of being microphonist by Mike the Mic; Hurls himself off a metaphoric cliff of creativity into a wild freefall that produces a jetwash of spectacular magic in its wake ***AND SO MUCH MORE, IT’S CRAZY!!!***

    #103 - Humor is a Hope Wrench

    #103 - Humor is a Hope Wrench
    ***IN THIS EPISODE...*** Mr Fucking Coffee’s eyewitness testimony unmasks the scowling sour puss of the Playhouse scone thief’s true identity, thus vindicating Ory from Mike the Mic’s vicious accusations of scone-thievery; International attempts to deal with his catty jealousy of Fluffy’s considerable voice-talents by making up a random story about why the comedian is no longer able to blink, due to a terrifying King Cobra encounter in India ***IF THAT WASN’T ENOUGH, IN THIS EPISODE INTERNATIONAL ALSO...*** Offers a steamy, scintillating preview for his ground-breaking new podcast that consists entirely of him typing on his computer keyboard, then ridiculously assumes that this would be Slave Wife’s ultimate dream date because of the animal attraction each keystroke would surely arouse in her; Celebrates America’s ultimate rebirth with everyone’s favorite Chumbawamba anthem about getting knocked down and then getting up again and how nothing is going to keep this star-spangled Phoenix Bird from rising ***AND SO MUCH MORE, IT’S CRAZY!!!***
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