Episode Transcript
[00:00:04] Speaker A: Hi, I'm Eric Whedon, a seasoned go to market software executive, team builder, and a catalyst for revenue growth. My journey is fueled by a profound passion for ushering in a new era of dental healthcare through cutting edge AI technology.
[00:00:17] Speaker B: Hi, I'm Liz Strickwarda. Since 2008, I've been immersed in the world of dental marketing and business technology. At Truelark, I I focus on explaining how generative AI can help multi practice dental organizations scale while redefining the patient experience. Together, we welcome you to navigating DSO innovation, where we have unfiltered conversations with dental leaders and discuss how they are using tech to win in this booming market.
[00:00:48] Speaker A: All right, hey, we are excited here today to have Doctor dipesh Patel with us on navigating DSO innovation. Doctor Patel is the founder and CEO of Blueprint smiles, and recently, Blueprint made the Inc. 5000 list of the fastest growing private companies. Congratulations on the accolade, Doctor Patel, and welcome to the show.
[00:01:10] Speaker C: Thanks for having me and thank you. It actually meant a lot. Even though we're lower on that list, it was a lifelong goal to see that business trajectory kind of unfold. So we really do appreciate that.
[00:01:23] Speaker A: That's excellent.
[00:01:24] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:01:24] Speaker A: And excited to talk to you about kind of that trajectory and some other topics. But before we get into that for our listeners, would you mind, Doctor Patel, just sharing a little bit about yourself and your background for those that are watching the show?
[00:01:38] Speaker C: Yeah, absolutely. So I am technically a first generation immigrant. My parents immigrated from India when I was about two years old. So I, in my immediate family, I was the first dentist in my immediate and extended family. So a lot of family doctors, a lot of people in the business side of things, but first dentist actually in my family. So it was weird how that kind of translated and why I went to dental school to begin with. But I graduated in 2012 from over southeastern dental school. I bought a practice pretty quickly out of school. It was I think in January 2013, I bought my first practice. And then, you know, fast forward about 2018 is when the group was really created and our DSO was created. And from that point on, we have six locations going on our 7th, one in about a month from now.
[00:02:27] Speaker D: Great.
[00:02:28] Speaker C: That's great.
[00:02:29] Speaker D: So touching on your history, I thought it was interesting that you graduated from dental school in 2012 and I guess in late 2023 you stopped practicing chairside, is that correct?
[00:02:43] Speaker C: Yeah. So it was about last year, 2023, I was down to about two days a week and I knew slowly kind of creeping out of the chair, but as most people know, that I've actually done that jump from being a clinician to completely on the business side. It's a big financial hit.
[00:02:58] Speaker E: Right.
[00:02:58] Speaker C: So, you know, I practiced a good ten years and did everything I wanted to do in dentistry. So it took me a little bit longer to get out of the chair than I probably needed to do. But about six months ago, I went from two days completely to zero. Now my full time role is the CEO of the organization to help grow at scale, it support our doctors. Doesn't mean that I won't go back chairside for a day or two. I do enjoy that aspect. But, you know, coming in the CEO role, I get the best of the kind of both worlds. I get to see how the business part affects the dental clinical side.
[00:03:32] Speaker E: Right.
[00:03:32] Speaker C: And being a dentist, so I can, I find it more relatable to our clinicians. So I think I will continuously be their chair side. Even if I'm not practicing, I'll be there because the boots on the ground ultimately determines the success of any organization.
[00:03:48] Speaker D: And I would think I got to imagine.
[00:03:50] Speaker A: Sorry, go ahead, Liz. Yeah, you do it. Take it.
[00:03:54] Speaker D: You know, in the dsos we've worked with, I see quite a difference in doctor owned to non, you know, non clinical. So what do you think? And you touched on a little bit would be the greatest advantage for blueprint smiles as you being the CEO and with your, you know, expertise, I think.
[00:04:16] Speaker C: It'S you kind of get garner a different respect level. And not, not saying that other CEO's and other leadership teams shouldn't get the respect from the office level, but until you've been there and you've done it, sometimes the perception is you can't relate to me.
[00:04:32] Speaker E: Right.
[00:04:32] Speaker C: You don't really understand how it feels. You're just looking at data, you don't know how it actually reflects that. The, at the office level, which is somewhat true to some degree right now, there's a lot of CEO's that may have never been chairside, but they've been in organizations long enough that almost feels like they were chairside. So I don't want to take that away. But I think that is a differentiating factor for our organization. Myself and our co and chief dental officer, Doctor Ravi Patel, we're both practicing dentists and we are still chairside. So when a doctor, or we were chairside, but when a doctor asks about anything from composites to patient behavior, we're not that far off from that.
[00:05:10] Speaker E: Right.
[00:05:10] Speaker C: So we could be a little bit more relatable. The stresses that they're kind of going through, whether it's financial, student loans, dealing with teams or patients, we've been there because we've dealt with all of these things. So I think that does give us some form of advantage. But then again, you know, a lot of great leadership and CEO's and CEO's, they come from a business background. I didn't come from a business background, so inherently, I've had to learn that on the other end.
[00:05:37] Speaker A: Yeah, that's exactly what I was chiming in on earlier, Liz, and on that topic was just that relatability. I got to imagine that's been an advantage, especially as you've gone through this very fast growth.
Can you maybe share a little bit about what set you up for success to grow the way that you did and maybe a little bit about why blueprint is unique and some of the things that you've learned along this journey?
[00:06:04] Speaker C: Yeah. So first of the audience, I want to kind of frame it wasn't really fast, right? Like, it almost seems that way over the last years, but like most things, they take a lot of iteration. So my first practice is in 2013.
[00:06:16] Speaker E: Right.
[00:06:17] Speaker C: So by the time we got to our 6th location, it was 2023.
[00:06:20] Speaker E: Right. It was.
[00:06:21] Speaker C: It was a long time in between that. That span. But, you know, like, if you guys look at the lifecycle of a lot of organizations, it almost looks like a hockey stick kind of approach. They're like, hey, for five years, they're losing money. They didn't do anything, it seems like. And all of a sudden, something worked out. Well, during that time, there's a lot of innovation, a lot of boots on the ground, a lot of messing up and figuring it out. And I go, you know, failing forward, right. I think one advantage that I personally had is because of my upbringing, right? I didn't kind of grow up with a silver spoon by any means, right? My parents immigrated. You know, I. You guys know my background. I grew up doing hotel rooms and laundry, and that's what my lifestyle was. So I had no problem working my way up over time, and I had no problem with the struggle. And I think that struggle ultimately led to us innovating over and over and over until we finally got, you know, pun intended, a blueprint that we think works right. And that works for us. So I know it might seem like it's like an overnight success, but in reality, one thing or one core DNA of our organization is we tell everyone on the leadership side, we will fail, but we'll fail fast and we'll move on.
[00:07:34] Speaker E: Right.
[00:07:34] Speaker C: And we're not scared to fail. And I think that's ultimately what it kind of comes down to, that we get up, you know, faster than most people will right after, you know, any type of hardships.
[00:07:45] Speaker D: So I'm quite fascinated by business systems, and I heard you emphasize the importance of the workflows and systems that any kind of organization, specifically a dental business. So what do you think are the processes in both overall DSO management and practices that are most ripe for optimization, for automation and additional technology?
[00:08:21] Speaker C: Yeah, and if I can kind of backtrack just a little bit before I answer that, there's, there's plenty, and I'm going to kind of get into that. But I actually think it actually starts with culture first.
[00:08:30] Speaker E: Right.
[00:08:31] Speaker C: There's always these great business sayings, culture eats, you know, systems for breakfast or whatever they call it.
[00:08:35] Speaker E: Right?
[00:08:36] Speaker C: I think it's both. I think you have to have culture and you have to have systems, and I think that's really the formula for business success. You have culture, and if it's a great culture and then you have great systems, then you have success if you're lacking in either one of those. I could have the best system in the world, but if I have a terrible culture, I don't have people to implement it.
[00:08:53] Speaker E: Right.
[00:08:53] Speaker C: I can have the best culture in the world, and those systems and the business could still suffer and fail.
[00:08:57] Speaker E: Right.
[00:08:58] Speaker C: So I want to kind of let the audience know about. Always focus on the culture part, because you can't do it without humans either way. As much as we're talking about innovations and AI, you still need humans to do it. So your second question or your original question dealt with what systems or which places that this can happen in. I actually think it's everywhere.
[00:09:17] Speaker E: Right.
[00:09:18] Speaker C: In a digital organization. So if we start with what everybody knows about is the admin duties, everything in the front, right? There's a lot of technology for the front, but there's also a lot of technology for hygienists and doctors and the back teams as well.
[00:09:33] Speaker E: Right?
[00:09:33] Speaker C: So we always started with the front.
[00:09:36] Speaker E: Right.
[00:09:36] Speaker C: I think it's a position that requires a lot of attention to, and hate to say, it's a lot of task orientation stuff as well. So if you can use technology to eliminate some of those tasks and or augment that for your teammates, well, then they could do more with less.
[00:09:53] Speaker E: Right.
[00:09:53] Speaker C: And ultimately that speeds up operation, speeds up flow. You know, our number one core value in our company is actually respect time.
[00:10:01] Speaker E: Right.
[00:10:01] Speaker C: And we say it for yourself, your patients and your teammates. Well, we kind of go into that deeper and deeper into our systems. Everything we do is how can we milk out a little bit more time, right? That's the big equalizer for everyone. All of us here sitting here have, that's a limiting factor. I can't create extra time.
[00:10:21] Speaker E: Right.
[00:10:21] Speaker C: I can manipulate time, but I can't go get more than 24 hours in a day. Neither can you guys.
[00:10:26] Speaker E: Right.
[00:10:26] Speaker C: So because of that focus, everything that we look at, we look into the lens of can it speed up time? And if it can speed up time, ultimately, if things are more efficient, you can see more patients and that drives, you know, revenue at the end of the day.
Yeah.
[00:10:45] Speaker A: Out of curiosity, on that topic, where have you seen the biggest gains in speeding up time? And I guess where do you hope to see bigger gains that maybe you haven't realized yet?
[00:10:59] Speaker C: It's so weird because we implement so much technology that I think every little bit has incremental changes. Yeah. If I look, if I start with the front, you know, I think when we all went paperless, I think, I know it seemed like everybody's paperless.
[00:11:13] Speaker E: They're not.
[00:11:14] Speaker C: I think you should be right. Because there's so many good automation systems now where, you know, patient can schedule and instead of you sending paperwork or having them fill out paperwork, it can be so automated to the point where if they're scheduled and they're getting a text to fill out paperwork, and once they fill out that paperwork, it goes into your pm's system and, you know, your other team can take it to verify insurance. And even that has a lot of AI components now with a lot of great vendors out there that are figuring that space out where they can take that data, go verify your insurance for you.
[00:11:44] Speaker E: Right.
[00:11:44] Speaker C: And so you can think about all the workflow steps and just that how much could be sped up. So, you know, that's one element for the front, one thing that we're adopting in the back, and I won't name which company we're going to use because try to keep it agnostic as much as I can. But, you know, we're going to be using AI technology for our clinicians in the back, right. So reading radiographs and things of that nature and all that's going to help is lead to less decision fatigue for our clinicians. Ultimately, they're going to be able to see the same thing that they're always seeing but have a different set of eyes on it and not have to waste all their precious time and energy on that one thing.
[00:12:22] Speaker E: Right.
[00:12:22] Speaker C: And so instead of taking them five minutes to red x rays, it's going to read in 30 seconds for them.
[00:12:27] Speaker E: Right.
[00:12:27] Speaker C: And it's just an adjunct which frees up them to ultimately do what they want to do is, which is serve the patient in the chair. But all these little adjuncts need to happen for that process to happen.
[00:12:39] Speaker D: So with the proliferation of consolidation in the dental industry and so many more practices choosing to be affiliated with a DSO, we work with many practices during the transition, which I think is a really critical time to set the stage to be successful in a new group. So what would be your recommendations to the managing team, you know, both administrative and clinical, for a practice going through that transition to be, you know, managed by a DSO?
[00:13:17] Speaker C: Yeah, I think the most important thing is, from the business side, what we tend to look at is just metrics, right? We go, hey, does the numbers look good? Can we make our tweaks? Are the numbers going to look better?
[00:13:29] Speaker E: Right.
[00:13:29] Speaker C: That's kind of easy after a certain point, once you have your benchmarks and you know what your company is good at, it's easy for me to go, hey, our supply cost is this, I'm buying something. Their supply cost is that. That's going to give me a spread.
[00:13:41] Speaker E: Right. That.
[00:13:42] Speaker C: That's the easy part. But I think the part that's the most important is an evaluation of the team and their culture.
[00:13:49] Speaker E: Right.
[00:13:50] Speaker C: I think you really have to know what you're about to inherit, because even for something as simple as, oh, I'm just going to lower supply costs 2% because we have the ability to do that, doesn't mean the team's going to be okay doing it. So what I recommend anybody who's purchasing a practice, this could be your second practice, or you could be our 100th practice, right. Is to really get into the weeds of the organization that you're about to inherit.
[00:14:15] Speaker E: Right.
[00:14:15] Speaker C: Get into the weeds of the personalities and the culture and the core values of that and see if they align with what your core values are. Because, for example, if our core values are all about time, teamwork, you know, accountability, and we have five of them, but let's say those three I'm kind of focused on. And I interview an office that we're going to take on, and, you know, they haven't done anything to stay with the times, for example.
[00:14:43] Speaker E: Right.
[00:14:43] Speaker C: Evolve with the times. Well, that's going to be a big friction point for me. Or let's say every single person on the team was on their own individual bonus system. We have group owner systems. Well, that's not going to fit our other core value, me, to we, because I'm going to go in and have to take that apart. I'm going to go, you know, Betty in the front, you don't, you're not going to have your own individual bonus system. You're going to have the same one as Susie and Doctor John in the back, right. And so I think we have to dive into knowing that if what we're inheriting or buying isn't going to fit what we already kind of believe in, and if not, the numbers could look great on paper, it might not be the right practice to buy.
[00:15:25] Speaker E: Right.
[00:15:26] Speaker C: Or if you're on the other end, if you're trying to affiliate with an office organization like ours or a bigger DSO or group, these are things that you want to check out, right? The numbers are one thing, but then afterwards, what is it going to look like post.
[00:15:40] Speaker E: Right.
[00:15:42] Speaker C: Our organization, for example, we're four days a week and every other Friday, right? So we're Monday to Thursday, eight to five, and then we're open every Friday. But that's when we have two doctors at least, right? So they alternate. So do all the teams, all the systems alternate, all the hygienists alternate, all the fronts alternate. So everyone in our organization gets every other Friday off the Friday they work or half days, right. So if you're accustomed to that kind of lifestyle, if you have a private practice, well, don't sign up with the DSO. That may tell you that we do eight to five Monday to Friday and some Saturdays, or we do staggered hours. 07:00 a.m. To 07:00 p.m. Some days that may not fit the values that you're looking for, even if they can give you a higher price tag, it might not be something you want to live in afterwards. So on both sides of it, I think that alignment has to be there. And if the alignment's there, I think it turns into a very successful relationship.
[00:16:39] Speaker A: Out of curiosity, do you, do you find that process of learning if there's alignment or not fairly templatized and straightforward? Or is each case different to get to the truth and get to alignment? And is it just spending time with people and interviewing or what tactics, I guess, or strategies could you share with others that might help them seek a lot in realizing.
[00:17:04] Speaker C: It's always really tricky, right. Because usually if somebody's trying to sell their practice, they don't want their team knowing that they're trying to sell it, right? So the owner doctor doesn't want you to have access to the team. So then, in that regard, I'm interviewing the doctor a whole lot more, right, the. Whoever's trying to sell.
[00:17:19] Speaker E: Right.
[00:17:20] Speaker C: And I'm diving deep into it. At the end of the day, numbers don't really lie, right. And so, like, we're talking about, like, team versus individual bonuses. Well, I'm going to get a payroll sheet, right. And I'm going to know how they're paid ahead of time, and I got to see if that's in alignment as well. So I would ask question after question until you get to the answers about their teammates, right. That you need to get to. Now, it's great when they allow you to talk to the team. So if they allow you to talk to the team, then, yes, interview them. But interview them like you're interviewing somebody else to come join your current office, right. To see if they're a good fit. Like for us, we interview based on our five core values, and then we also interview on what we call, you know, our five star team member. We call it a high five document, right. You know, and it's ambitious, upbeat, reliable, humble, smart. These are the things that we look for. So when I'm interviewing people, I need at least four of those to fit, right. If four isn't going to fit, they're most likely not going to probably survive in our organization. There's going to be too much conflict. We're going to be. And it's not fair to them and it's not fair to us and the rest of the team. So it's. They're probably just not gonna be a good fit. So these are the tactics that we kinda look at when we're evaluating a practice or evaluating any teammate to come join our organization.
[00:18:37] Speaker D: Do you see any change in employee retention and turnover from when practices come into your DSO or others that you've seen in the industry? Um, what's been the trend there?
[00:18:56] Speaker C: I think it's extremely high, right? Uh, I. I think it's extremely high because of what we're just talking about.
[00:19:02] Speaker E: Right.
[00:19:02] Speaker C: Because it's hard to dive into all these elements. Um, now I think you see more consistency if there's, like a partnership, right? Like we're a partnership group. Uh, so if it's a partnership, you get a little bit more alignment because that doctor's coming over. They're going to stick on, stay on board. You're going to keep their team on board. So the leader of that organization is probably still sticking around with you. Now, if you're acquiring a practice where the doctor's retiring. That's where I see the biggest turnover of teams.
[00:19:29] Speaker E: Right.
[00:19:30] Speaker C: Because now a different leader is going in you. We may be part of that leadership team. We're going in, we're making some changes, and the other team got used to certain habits.
[00:19:39] Speaker E: Right.
[00:19:39] Speaker C: And not everybody likes change. Most people do not like change.
[00:19:42] Speaker E: Right.
[00:19:43] Speaker C: So as a result, we do see a higher turnover when that happens, honestly, that's why, you know, we're actually more of a de novo model than acquisition now.
[00:19:50] Speaker E: Right.
[00:19:50] Speaker C: For those specific reasons. What we found is it's a little bit easier for us to open our own office, hire from the get go the behaviors and core values and teammates that we like, and then put our systems in place, then take over something that might be doing well, and then try to infiltrate all of these things in there.
[00:20:11] Speaker A: That makes a lot of sense, starting with the foundation of a group that is built on the same core values rather than really putting a lot of effort into change management and trying to change behaviors that maybe have been locked in for decades.
[00:20:29] Speaker C: Right, right. And I don't. I don't blame the employee either.
[00:20:34] Speaker E: Right.
[00:20:34] Speaker C: If you've been doing certain things for 20 years and it's been working for you, you go, why change?
[00:20:40] Speaker E: Right.
[00:20:40] Speaker C: It's been working. Most. Most humans inherently don't like change.
[00:20:44] Speaker E: Right.
[00:20:44] Speaker C: There's a few of us, I think most entrepreneurs thrive off of change into some regard.
[00:20:50] Speaker E: Right.
[00:20:50] Speaker C: That's why we can't just sit around all the time. We're always looking for Max next, and we drive our teams crazy sometimes in that process. But. But most humans aren't. Are not like us.
[00:20:59] Speaker E: Right.
[00:21:00] Speaker C: And we have to understand that.
[00:21:01] Speaker E: Right.
[00:21:01] Speaker C: Most humans, they go, I've been doing this this way for 20 years. Why do I have to do it differently? It wasn't broken.
[00:21:07] Speaker E: Right.
[00:21:08] Speaker C: And so the time you try to make a change, they're not always receptive of it, and then at some point in time, that leads to, you know, some conflict and. And as a business person, I have to make that change.
[00:21:19] Speaker E: Right.
[00:21:20] Speaker C: The reason I'm buying a practice at a premium is because I believe I can instill things that the office may not have to get a result out of it. I can't buy something at a premium and stay status quo to some degree.
[00:21:34] Speaker D: So back to you. Talked about operating hours and, you know, a couple questions ago. I'm curious, have you tried to expand them to try to increase same store growth, you know, in a practice?
[00:21:50] Speaker C: Short answer is no, and we won't.
[00:21:53] Speaker E: Right.
[00:21:54] Speaker C: So I'll tell you why the organization actually was created, right? So the organization was actually not created to create a DSO. What ended up happening is my business partner right now. I had my office, he had his office, and we both functioned very similarly. And he was my roommate in dental school. So we. We thought very similar. We got into dentistry because we like serving patients. We wanted to grow a business, but in reality, we didn't want dentistry to be the end all of our life.
[00:22:22] Speaker E: Right?
[00:22:22] Speaker C: I didn't want to, you know, work to live. I wanted to, you know, live to work or whatever they call it. I might be saying it, right? But ultimately, I didn't want work to be my only thing going on, right? Even if it could squeeze out some extra dollars. So going down that trajectory, we decided ultimately that, hey, we want to work four and a half days a week. I don't want to get burnt out. I don't want the random hours that I want to be able to drop off my kids and pick them up.
[00:22:48] Speaker E: Right.
[00:22:49] Speaker C: I want to go to soccer practice afterwards.
[00:22:50] Speaker E: Right?
[00:22:51] Speaker C: I don't want to have to worry about that 07:00 p.m. Patient or that Saturday patient where I want to go watch some football, right? So it was more of a lifestyle thing that started, and then as we got into it, we started realizing that more and more people kind of want the same thing. So we decided, hey, what if we created a group that sits on those core values, that actually sits on the core values of life thriving as much as work thriving now, does it make it harder to become profitable? Yes.
[00:23:22] Speaker E: Right?
[00:23:22] Speaker C: It's so much easier expanding hours and days and stuff like that, right, to add more capacity to your organizations. But that's where efficiency and time kicks in, right? I like to think we're one of the most efficient dental groups there is, right, of how we function. And we. And that goes back to that respect, time. We are manipulating that time over and over. So we tell our teams, for us not to be open a full Friday, not to be open extended hours, not to be open on weekends. We have to be smarter with how we function in the hours we have, right? So we have to be able to see a few extra patients. And if we can do that, because we're optimized, we're systematized. And what we do then, guess what? We don't have to open on weekends or late days. I mean, I use a chick fil a analogy all the time. Chick fil a is the most successful fast food chain right now, right? They're open 52 days less than every other fast food chain.
Now, how's that possible? If you watch Chick fil A's operations, they're operationally very, very sound, right? They're fast in their approach. So we kind of took that approach to things. And that's why we have to like technology, we have to like innovation, because we do have to scrape away that time. We don't have those extra 8 hours. So to answer your question, we won't do it, right? It doesn't fit our DNA. And the irony of all of this is we started doing that in 2018 when the company was kind of more founded. The group was founded, and we just. Now we seem like we're ahead of the curve a little bit. But if you look at the new HR world, everybody wants part time. They don't want 40 hours, they want like 30 hours, right. They want the flexibility of life.
[00:24:59] Speaker E: Right?
[00:25:00] Speaker C: We already have built that into our DNA, right? So for us, recruiting became a little bit easier when that the world was kind of changing on the HR front because we essentially are a private practice feel with all the DSO support, right, and not the DSO hours. So we just took the best of what's best in private practice that people love. What's the best that dsos do that people love, got rid of the worst that both sides do. Right now, we can't be good at everything. And we go, can we fit that into a model and still be successful? And I think we're starting to prove that out a little bit now.
[00:25:37] Speaker A: Sounds like an incredible place to be part of.
[00:25:41] Speaker C: I mean, I'm biased, right? But I think ultimately, our providers, our teammates, they're all really happy. And our vision, if you look at our vision statement, it actually doesn't say to be the biggest or the most profitable. It literally says we want to have the happiest. We call it people service organization, because we're in the job business of serving our people and they serve our patients. So we say we want to be the happiest PSO in dentistry, and happiness can be quantified. I know people have fought me on that, but there's all kinds of books about happiness and what that can actually lead to organization.
[00:26:14] Speaker D: So I want a four day work week for sure.
[00:26:19] Speaker A: Well, I think we. We should have you back in, get. Get a little bit more into that topic. I think that's a good one to explore.
[00:26:25] Speaker D: Yeah. So we appreciate you being here. Anything else you'd like to share with our listeners about blueprint smiles or, you know, all your adventures? You're involved.
[00:26:37] Speaker C: I mean, I guess the biggest thing is, you know, everybody always talks about following purpose, right? And so I think it goes multiple layers. Everybody has like a business vision, right? They have a business vision, then they have a clinical vision for what, how their practices want to operate. No one really, really talks about their personal vision, right, and does it backwards, right. They always go, here's my business vision. That equals my clinical vision. And then whatever's left over is for my personal stuff, right? I say do it the other way around, right? What if you can have a personal vision of what you want out of life and then actually build your clinical and business vision around that?
Because ultimately, if you figure that part out, you're not going to feel like you're working ever. In reality, you're going to. Like, most days, it's work. It's work. It's hard, but it doesn't actually feel like work, as crazy as that may sound, right. And it's because you're fulfilling a purpose that's truly your personal purpose, not a made up purpose, not a business purpose. It's a personal purpose. The business is a reflection of it, right? And when you do that, things start aligning a whole lot more clear. So I would tell anybody who's watching, whether it's dsos, groups, or even private practices that are listening in, remember that that is, in my opinion, the key element of success. And your definition of success should be different than mine, that should be different than somebody else's, right? And so define, find that definition of success, that definition of purpose, and then build your career and your business around that instead.
[00:28:12] Speaker D: You know, I think that goes to personal identity. You know, are we our job role? Are we, you know, whatever role we play in our family, relationships and that kind of thing. And I think it's a lot better to think about what you want out of life before you know, what your specific profession is or skills. So I really like that idea. So tell us if, what's the best way to get a hold of you if any of our listeners want to talk to you?
[00:28:45] Speaker C: Yeah, I mean, I'm on LinkedIn and it's my first name, Depesh Patel. You can find me on Instagram. I don't really stay on the socials too much outside of like, LinkedIn, but. Or you can email me dipeshrinsmiles.com dot comes straight to me. So find me out of this. I'm willing to help in whatever way possible. And so I appreciate you guys giving me this platform to kind of talk about it.
[00:29:07] Speaker D: Okay, well, thank you, doctor Patel. And as Eric mentioned, we would love to talk to you in six, six to eight months, hear how it's going. And thank you again.
[00:29:18] Speaker C: Yeah. Love to be on. Thank you.
[00:29:20] Speaker E: All right. Thank you.
