The Pacific Aesthetic Continuum's Podcast
Wondering what other dentists are experiencing and what solutions there are to the challenges in dentistry. Listen to what your colleagues are doing to improve the quality of their lives.
The Pacific Aesthetic Continuum's Podcast
Care Before Commerce: Designing A Practice That Lasts
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What if you could design a dental practice that values time, trust, and lasting results over churn and write-offs? That’s the story we explore with Dr. Rhys Spoor, who traded a research career studying seals for a lifelong craft in aesthetic and comprehensive dentistry—and built a thriving, insurance-free model around it. We talk through the mindset shifts that matter most: care before commerce, value over discounts, and reputation as the ultimate moat.
We dig into practical moves you can use right away. Learn why dropping PPOs overnight can crater your new patient flow, and how to plan the exit with skill-building, team training, and a case mix that supports your numbers. Hear how a simple dinner-time check-in call turns into word-of-mouth that compounds, why advocating through an insurance denial can return tenfold in trust, and how to measure the only metric that counts: what you keep per hour. We also unpack flexible marketing that evolves with the market—from building outreach to magazines and radio—guided by relentless metrics and quick pivots.
Clinically and operationally, we connect the dots between longevity and ethics. Function drives form, ceramics can last decades when done right, and comprehensive planning is the bridge between beautiful smiles and durable outcomes. With the “magenta line” borrowed from aviation, we show how to set a clear destination, correct course as conditions change, and buy back your most precious asset: time. If you’ve wondered whether a fee-for-value practice is possible in your market, this conversation offers the playbook—and the push—to start.
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For more information contact the Pacific Aesthetic Continuum at https://thepac.org.
Meet Dr. Ryze Spohr
SPEAKER_01Hi, everyone. Dr. Michael Miyasaki here today with Garrett Caldwell, the CEO of the Pacific Aesthetic Continuum and Core Dental Laboratory. And we have a great guest today. We have Dr. Rye Spor. Dr. Spor uh graduated from the University of Washington back in 1983. And after that period, he he developed what I would consider a very unique type of practice. Um just through his education, he's he's got great hands, great skills, and he was able to develop a practice that I think many of us would aspire to uh try to accomplish. He's a great educator, he's he's taught, written articles, spoken internationally. And so uh Dr. Sporas, thank you very much for joining us. I know you've got a busy schedule and you're very accomplished. So it's great to have you on. Thank you. Good to be here. And I think one of the things I forgot to mention is you know, I've known you for probably around 25 years, and I've I've always had great respect for you and your skills and just the type of person you are. So uh just wanted to let you know that. So let's let's go back. So 1983, um, you get out of dental school.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_01How'd you feel? And how did you figure out how you wanted to take your practice the way you did?
SPEAKER_02Well, when I started in dentistry, it wasn't a first choice. In fact, the only reason I got into dentistry was that I was in a graduate program with the University of Washington, of all things in fisheries. And I was supposed to go to Antarctica on an icebreaker to study seals. That's where I was headed. Well, the funding for the project got cut. And the reason I got into dental school is because literally it was across the street. Wow.
From Fisheries To Dentistry
SPEAKER_02That's why I chose that building. I thought, well, I think I'll go do that. And they let me in, and I found out I enjoyed the people part particularly. I mean, I like the technical side, but I really like dealing with people. So when I got out of school, I had no clue what to do. I mean, none. A friend of mine who was about two years ahead of me, he graduated and he went out and bought uh bought an office from a guy that was selling, and it had like nine dental chairs, and he was occupying one of them, literally one. So I literally went in and rented a chair from him for $50 an hour that first year. Wow. And and I I and my marketing was I took, this was when we were doing mimeographs. I made some flyers, literally walked down the neighborhoods and stuck them on people's doors. That's what my first marketing was. But what I figured out pretty quickly is that there were certain parts of dentistry I liked and there were other parts I didn't like. And the part I didn't like was I've never been a rule follower. I mean, I follow rules, heck. I'm a pilot, you're a pilot. And you know, you got to follow the rules. But on the other hand, any chance you get to kind of break the rules, you will. You just don't really talk about it. Well, one of the things I never liked was the idea that someone was going to be looking over my shoulder, even though we have to meet certain standards and all that. And I I was okay with that. But what I wasn't okay
Rejecting Insurance Oversight
SPEAKER_02with was the insurance industry looking over my shoulder. So immediately I found out that there were these things called insurance consultants, and I didn't know who they were. Um, turned out they were people that were employed by the insurance companies, we all know. But what they said had more weight than what I said. And I that started to drive me. I didn't like that scenario. I didn't think it was good patient care. So I decided to go into an arm of dentistry that I think you can do well outside of insurance, and that's aesthetics. The other is implant reconstruction, so you can do the same thing. So I think those are two routes you can go down. And, you know, when I got out of school, I'd only heard of an implant right before I graduated. I mean, it just wasn't common. And certainly no one in my at my level, as a general dentist, was placing them. So that's obviously all changed. But I did find out that I not only was uh I like the idea of the aesthetics because I like making people feel good, but I was actually good at it. And I got better at it. In fact, I got really good at it, and I loved teaching it. And it's a lot of times I'll hear doctors say, well, my practice is different than yours because my patients don't want that. And I would argue you're wrong. Um, I ended up with a practice in a high-rise in downtown Seattle, and it was alone in a building that was 76 stories, and I was on the 46th floor. And I mean, it looked great looking out the window, but you might as well have been on Mars because no one knew I was up there. So I had to market myself in a way that I got known to the community. And that community within four or five blocks of the office I was in had over 200 general dentists. There was a building called the medical dental building, and it was a concentration in that area. And I was able to carve out a practice that did extremely well outside of insurance, 100%. I practiced being a participant in the insurance, you know, a uh provider, uh, for about the first two years. But after that, I dropped and I never went back. It wasn't necessarily easy, though. I mean, a lot of people get an illusion. It's like, well, you get away from the insurance, it's all good. No, it's not. You have to work at it a lot. And what I found at first was there was a huge variation in the work
Building An Aesthetic-Driven Practice
SPEAKER_02I would do one month compared to the next. So I'd have big ups and downs. I have some months where we produced a lot, we collected a lot, and then I have other months where we didn't collect anything. And that's just the way it went. And most of my career, it still did that. It leveled out, certainly. Um and what I also found out though is you really had to treat patients with their best interest at your heart. Because if you didn't, you weren't gonna go anywhere. Because I think that if until a patient really trusts you to give them what they really desire and it's in their best interest, they're not gonna go anywhere with it. I don't care what how many people come in, um, what kind of marketing presence you have in your area, if you can't one, produce a product and people don't trust that you're gonna follow up with it, and follow up with it especially when it doesn't go right, which as you know, sometimes it doesn't. But you're always there with them. And once they understand that, they tend to follow through. So I found pretty quickly that if you got good at it, I did a lot of CE training, you and I met at LBI, and it was a good start. Um, I took thousands of hours over my career. Um, I found out that pursuing perfection was about all you got to do. You never get there. And it was a little bit difficult at first because I always felt like I was falling a little short, always. So I always looked at the glass as being almost full, but that empty part was a big deal. But I've switched that around in my latter years. And when I do coaching with other dentists, I really try to get them to see that. You know, if you get 90% there, you're still 90% there. That other 10% you can work out. And I jokingly say nobody ever dies from ugly teeth, and that's really true. They just don't. This is not life and death. It's important, but it's not life and death, and you have to keep it in perspective. So, with that attitude, uh, having a good skill set and being available. So, one of the things I always suggest to everyone is when you get a new patient and they're a patient of significance, the first thing I always did was I put their name in my phone. And I that's they were in there for good and they're still in there. But the reason I did that is when they would call me or I'd call them, and I asked them to put my name in the phone. We knew who it was. So even though everybody knows how these phones work, when someone calls me and I answer that by their name, it surprises them. And that's a good thing because it takes that barrier down, it takes the temperature down so that they're whatever the problem is, and and a lot of times I'll hear docs say, Well, I don't want to give out my number, they're gonna abuse it and call me all the time. They don't. These kinds of practices, an emergency is not like an emergency practice where you advertise and well, the yellow pages, I don't even know if those exist anymore, but in the yellow pages, you know, everybody call because you call at 2 a.m. and I've got a toothache. Well, these patients are well treated. There's a good treatment plan in place, they understand the value of what they're doing, and consequently, there really aren't any emergencies. An emergency might be a fractured temporary, which and then some people say, Well, you can just wait till Monday. No, you don't. You go in and you take care of it right then. But I rarely had to do any of that. But again, patients knew that, and we were still most of them became my friends, and they're still my friends.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, no, that's great. I think you're absolutely right. I mean, it's a it's a great story. You went from seals to sealants,
Trust, Follow-Up, And CE Mastery
SPEAKER_01and then you just you developed this practice. You know, one of the because you you became very successful at this. So um on the business side, how were you growing your practice or how are you acquiring patients in later in your practice? Was it were you doing more um like Garrett has talked about this? That if you want to be successful like you did, you you go out in your community and get to know the people there, right? So they're you're close to them, they're close to you. It's like the perfect um patient to have. But then as you grew, what did you find? I'm looking for secrets. Did you find any secrets as far as the market to uh those patients seeking out more of the the aesthetic cases?
SPEAKER_02Well, I think your reputation makes a big difference. And I always realized that once I got a reputation, hopefully it was a really good one, but you need to guard it. You need to be squeaky clean on that, and nothing can taint it. And and for me, luckily in the practice, it worked that way the whole time. But in the community, when I was doing it, it was a little different. The way I got out in the community, one is I was in a building with like 4,000 people sometimes. So we first just worked inside the building, and yeah, there were people. Um, almost all of them had dental insurance, which I didn't take, quote. Uh, but on the other hand, they still used it. I mean, most of my career, when we look back at what the breakdown was, about 85-90% of the patients that came in had delta dental, and I wasn't a provider. So what would happen is, now they may have changed the rules because I don't know. It would surprise me if they didn't, but the way it would work is patient would come in, they pay us, we'd submit a claim for them. So we still got in the middle of it. We didn't say, hey, this is yours. We take care of it. And uh then their insurance would reimburse them. It was always interesting to me how fast they would reimburse the patient compared to how they'd reimburse me. It was slower when it came to the practice. So consequently, we started being advocated for them, and they saw it that way. I remember one lady once, I did like $25,000 worth of treatment. It was a smile and you know, whatever it was. And the insurance was going to cover something like $1,200 of it. Well, they didn't. In the end, they denied the $1,200. So we went to bat for her for about two years, submitting all the you know, crap that the insurance asked for. And in the end, she finally got that money. And in in her world, we walked on water because we were willing to do that. Now, from a business standpoint, did it make any sense? No, because one, we got and paid before we started. Two, what it was really about was the next potential referral from her that came into the practice. And that was the thing about gardening your reputation is that you wanted to take care of people in a way that was extraordinary. So
Marketing In A Crowded Downtown
SPEAKER_02I would purposely, for example, every day after I finished, I would call every patient. I don't care what I did, if they were in the office, I called them. And I purposely called them right around dinner time. And the reason I did that was because I was in a downtown area, and a lot of people, you know, would go out to dinner. So they'd be out to dinner, they'd pick up their phone, and they'd be with someone else. And the conversation would come up, who is that? Well, it's my dentist. I bet your designist doesn't call you. Yeah, that you can't buy that kind of marketing. And that worked. And I oftentimes, well, I you know, so-and-so is a patient of yours, and so it was a lot of word of mouth, surprisingly. Um, at the time, our community was served mainly by magazines, not the internet, although I had a website. Uh, but the magazines worked really well at first because we were different. We were the first ones in it, people weren't used to seeing it, and then that kind of went away. And then what became my mainstay for the most of my career was I hired a radio personality. And he was somebody I just randomly called. Turned out we connected. I paid him a lot over the years, but he also produced a lot. And so he just every and it was kind of a talk show thing. And what's one of my coaches told me, she said, be careful of that because you're gonna get polarized in the community because his political viewpoint, which he talked about politics a lot, is going to become yours. Whether or not you're the same place or not, it doesn't matter. People are gonna perceive that, and they did, but it turned out it was okay enough that it still worked. That's good. Yeah, yeah, it's a good thing because it could definitely work against you. Um, but I had a constant presence in the community, and that by far worked the best. Now, today, I don't know if that worked anymore, but that was the other thing, is that I found that as you went through your career, you needed to measure your response to your marketing with metrics that were definable and then act on whatever they said. Because the only thing I found out that was constant was it always changed. 100% of the time, no matter what you did next year or next month, it wasn't gonna work as well as it did. So you need to be nimble enough to, you know, change the position and go with it.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, no, I think I think all this advice is great advice. Um, I I tell the doctors the same, you know, insurance is kind of like your marketing machine. And if you're gonna if you're gonna drop insurance, you've you have to compensate by having some of the type of marketing. In your case, you know, great word of mouth, the calls after the hours and things like that. I think that's perfect. The doctors next will say, well, if you don't take insurance and you have to do marketing, because today, like in our practice, we do more online marketing than yellow pages, but still it adds up. So you're paying, let's say, $5,000 or $6,000 a month for that. And the doctors will say, Well, I can't afford to pay $6,000 or $5,000 for the marketing. But I tell them you're writing off your delta dental fees probably $20,000 a month. So if you didn't have to write off $20,000 by spending $5,000, that's that's a good investment. So look at it that way.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. And I think in the end, most doctors don't understand the business side of dentistry because in the end, what matters is what's left over. So I coach quite a few docs right now. I coach about 16 a month. And we have an analysis sheet that at the end we figure out what they get to keep per hour or per day.
Reputation And Patient Advocacy
SPEAKER_02Doesn't matter. Just pick one. And what you what you do is if you can figure out how to calculate that, and it doesn't really matter how you calculate it. How in the end, you just want to calculate it consistently. So you start looking at it over time, and if you see that number slowly creep up, you're doing well. I mean, that's just the way it works. If that's going down, you're not doing well. And it doesn't matter what the gross is at all, it matters what's left. Because the other thing is, you know, I when I first started into this process, somebody used the term work-life balance. And I would argue it's life work balance because life comes first. Work I I had a great career, but I I wouldn't want to go back and do it again. I mean, I like the life part better. I mean, I had to work to get the life, but so what I recommend for most is get efficient as soon as you can. Um you're a pilot. I talk about the magenta line quite a bit. So in a GPS on a in an airplane, uh, you can pick a point you're going to and it will calculate a line straight to it. And it's usually a magenta color. So that's your course to get to wherever you want to go. And if you can develop a magenta line, you know when you get off of it. So when you're flying, you have some instruments to tell you left or right of it. Well, you just turn and go back the other way. It's an analogy that works well for a practice. Most stocks though don't have a magenta line, they have no clue where they're going. And the best thing they can do for themselves, first of all, is decide where do I want to end up? I found that if you got to be careful what you wish for, because it'll probably come true. The wish for the right thing. So I think if you do that and you pay attention, what you can start doing fairly early in your career is buying time. And because that's the one thing, no matter how much money you make, you can't get the time back. And as I've gotten older, I mean I'm 70 now, and I can't believe that, but time is much more important to me now than when I was 50. And certainly way more important than when I was 20. I mean, I always thought there's gonna be lots more left, and none of it's guaranteed, not a bit. You know, you might be here tomorrow. Uh you might. So there's a couple things I realized. The only thing we really have control over is our attitude about all of it. And you can't change the past. We think we can affect the future a lot more than we do, but I'm not so sure we affect the future at all. The only thing we can do is what's here right now today. And when it comes to that, the only thing is you can react with an attitude that's either positive or negative. And that's it. It's kind of discouraging in some ways, but on the other hand, it's can be refreshing too.
SPEAKER_01Hey, so I hope you're enjoying listening to Dr. Sport talk about his vision for his practice. And I hope you've been inspired. If you want to learn more about what Dr. Sport is talking is talking about, that comprehensive dentistry restored aesthetically, check out the pack, th e pac.org, and just check to see if there's a program that might interest you. We'd love to see you there. All right, let's join Dr. Spore once again. Yeah, no, I I think everything you mentioned is right on. You know, I always talk to the doctors, it's about reframing things. So, you know, when I wake up in the morning and I have
Radio, Metrics, And Adapting Strategy
SPEAKER_01Have a challenge ahead of me instead of powering back from that challenge, I reframe it as, well, you know, I'm alive today, and it's a privilege to have that challenge in my life. So let's just, you know, head on. And I think another way, you know, we have Garrett on the call, and Garrett's a, you know, he sails. And so the thing, the thing that always interests me about sailing is, you know, when you fly a plane, you know, our planes, we have engines, we're not uh gliders. So we can kind of direct where we go. You know, if you're if you're sailing and the wind's coming from in front of you, you can still find a way to go upwind, you know. So, you know, when when we have all these challenges in our profession or in our life, wherever it may come, those are kind of the headwinds. And being a pilot, we we always take off towards the headwind, right? Because we get better lift. It's better for us to take off shorter distance. We're gonna get more done, we're gonna get more altitude in a shorter uh length of space than if we're going with the wind. So, you know, even as being a pilot, we want to go into the wind to get started. So I think that's that's a a way that I reframe this. But then when you're sailing, you just have to keep tacking and you can you can go right into that wind. And some people, like when you watch the uh sailboats race, it's amazing how you know a different path, as you mentioned, will will end up um, they end up they end up in the same place at the finish line, but some get there faster than others. And so I think one of the nice things is having somebody like you who's traveled through his dental career, being able to share these experiences because I think a lot of the young dentists uh still don't really comprehend the value. You know, they grew up in a different time. Um, they maybe didn't have that personal service. And I think you're absolutely right. You know, my my daughter who works for me now, when she started, I said, write a write a note to every patient that you see. You know, just pick out at least a couple of patients and just send them a note because it's just like that call. You know, they get home and they have a not a text, not an email, but they have a note that they can open up saying, you know, it was so nice to see you today. And yeah, those types of things when the patients come back, they go, Oh, thank you for the note. You know, and so it's really nice to have that personal touch. And those are just the small things that will make a big difference in the economy of your practice, because I was just talking to a group of dentists a week ago, and I was telling when we dropped, well, we've dropped Delta twice now, but when we when we put our UCR fees up against our our Delta PPO fees, our PPO fees were about half of what our UCR fees, maybe even a little bit less than half. So by just being able to get out of that PPO scenario and just be able to collect our UCR, and our UCRs weren't extravagant or anything like that, but it was just nice to get a fair fee for the work that we did so we could use a good lab, could invest in education, like you were talking about, and that way keep growing and expanding our value to our patients. But it doesn't just double your income, it could triple your income. And I always tell tell the doctors, it's not about the activity, but like you were saying, it's it's a profitability, right?
unknownRight.
SPEAKER_01You could be seeing 40 patients a day and not making much to cover any of the overhead and not take much home at the end of that day, or you could see five patients and make a fair
Profit Over Write-Offs And KPIs
SPEAKER_01fee and have something to take home. So you, like you said, you can live your life and your work is providing that privilege.
SPEAKER_02Well, and it's not so much about the cost of it, it's more about the value of it. So early in my career, I decided I met a dentist that I bought a practice from, and he did a lot of gold inlays. And, you know, in dental school, I actually had to do a gold inlay to get my license in Washington back then. Um, but nobody ever did them because one, insurance didn't cover them. Uh, two, amalgam was way cheaper and easier to put in. But I looked at his work that was in these patients' mouths, and I mean, some of them have been in there 50 years. So it's like, okay, now wait a minute. So there's this process, it's more quote, expensive initially, but when you look at the value that patient got over their lifetime, it was so far ahead. Yeah. So I did the same thing, except I switched to ceramics. And so early on, I mean, we were using felt spathic porcelain as inlays, and people are going like, that's not gonna work. Well, it did work. And I've seen patients come in, you know, 35, 40 years later, they're still there. So a lot of practices end up practicing with supervised neglect. I mean, I hate to say that, but because of the parent, because of the restrictions that they agree to, the doctors agree to this, from the people that are paying the bills, the the insurance industry, they provide, I believe, a lot of times a substandard product, a substandard level. And I decided I didn't want to do that. That was the main driver right there. And I found out there's a group of people out there, a lot, that want that. And again, you know, sometimes I'll be somewhere and uh someone will say, Well, my practice isn't have those patients because they don't care about the way they look. Yes, they do. And the reason I'll uh say, how many of you looked in the mirror this morning before you came in this room? Everybody looked in the mirror this morning. If you've got a mirror, you look at it. And that's just the way we are. And I thought about if I don't know if you've ever read the book The Invention of Surgery. I can't remember the author's name. He was a physician, but he talks about the invention of glass by the Venetians in like the 1500s. And he points out because of that, the first mirror was developed, and there were no mirrors before that. And you start to realize that people that were living before 1500 rarely saw themselves. I mean, they just didn't. You know, then here we've got these smartphones
Life-Work Balance And The Magenta Line
SPEAKER_02that you are looking at yourself all the time. I mean, all the time. So people have a self-awareness, and our smile, our teeth are part of it. And the thing is, you just can't make a good-looking teeth. If they don't function right, they're not going to hold up. Period. Form follows function, not the other way around. So consequently, you got to be a comprehensive dentist, which means you get to do it all. And so the lean-in is the aesthetics, the reward is the comprehensive dentistry, which gives you the time, makes a good income. And like you said, it's a fair income. Yeah. I was doing a lecture at a group in New York once, and we were talking about fees. And this guy stands up and he says, We should get $10,000 a unit for a crown. And I said, Now, okay, let's stop right there. I said, Do you really believe that? And in the end, he didn't. He was just saying that to make a a little bit of noise. I think whatever the fee is, it has to be the right fee. And it varies, it depends on the lab you use, depends on your overhead, depends on a lot of things. But I also think you shouldn't sell yourself short. You provide a good product and it lasts 20 or 30 years. And I've personally done that. That was a good value.
SPEAKER_01It was a great value. You should have charged $10,000 for that.
SPEAKER_02Maybe. Yeah, maybe. But on the other hand, the fee I charged felt good. Yeah. And the patient felt good about it. Everybody won.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. No, I think those are all great points. You know, I hope people that are listening and watching are being inspired by this because again, we know so many of our colleagues who don't think they can do this or they don't think they have the right practice. I think most clinicians can do it if they follow a path, like you said, the magenta line, just so that they know. You know, one of the things is if you're uh a typical dentist right now, taking insurance and you're doing crowns and fillings, and you were to listen to this and be inspired and say, okay, I agree with Dr. Spohr, I'm going to drop insurance today. Is that a good thing to do? Or is that a bad thing to do?
SPEAKER_02To not do that. Okay. No. Okay, part of the magenta line is that you think about it. There is the first thing with the magenta line is you don't do it on your own because most of these people, male, female, they have a family. And the family is a big part of this. That's why we do this. So you need to decide, you know, how this is going to work overall. So you decide on what the path is, and then you get down to the details. Don't be stupid. Okay, if you've got to practice, it's you know, you've got this flow of people coming in. Don't just go in and shut the spigot off because that's exactly what will happen. And I did that, and it almost sunk me at one point. So you bet you've got to be ready. And what being ready is is one, you need to get enough training so you can produce the product. That's
PAC Invitation And Reframing Challenges
SPEAKER_02really important. You guys do a course right now, a teaching, and I do that. And I love doing that because anyone can learn to do this, but and get good at it. And at first, you may not get your full fee. That's fine. Practice. It's like anything else. The more you do it, the better you get at it. At some point, you will you will have somewhat of a mastery of it, if that's even the right word. But you'll be competent enough you can produce a result that patients are going to be happy with. And then you can go out and really start selling it. And then if you decide you want to get out of that insurance uh treadmill, you can't, but you need to be ready for it. Because what's going to happen is when you stop taking the insurance, the number of people that will come see you will drop dramatically. And that's all right. You need to know what your numbers are, you need to know what they come from. One of the things I did the first time I quote dropped insurance is I did an analysis of how many of the patients in the practice at the time were delta dental. Turned out it was 20%. And at that point, I'd see like 30, 40 people a day coming through this practice. That was normal. So I made a huge mistake of sending out a letter that said, I'm dropping your insurance. That was dumb. I mean, it was just dumb. I didn't know it was dumb, but I can tell you right now, it's dumb. Do not do that. You tell them in person when they come in that the next time they come in, this is what we're doing and why. Now, some of them are gonna say, Oh, okay, nice knowing you, Doc, but I'm out of here. That's okay. But if you don't do that, you're gonna lose a lot more. But what I didn't do in my analysis is I didn't break down of that 20% where what it was what it was. So it turned out that it was 20%, but most of it was things like profane recalls. So it wasn't any substantial work, but it was numbers. So all of a sudden I went from 30 or 40 people a month or a day
Personal Touches That Drive Loyalty
SPEAKER_02to uh well, 30 or 40 new patients a month coming in to two or three. And those two or three, if they if you can close those cases and do comprehensive care, that can still support you. But if you're not ready for it and you're doing a filling on the two or three, I can tell you right now, you won't be in business very long. So you have to be ready. And uh being ready means again, getting the training. And it's not only your training, it's your team's training because you cannot do this alone. It takes a team, and an excellent team makes it not only more profitable and efficient, but also makes it a lot easier. And everybody wins. Everybody wins. I remember one time I started trying to buy time pretty early on. And at first when I started, I was working about 220 days a year, and then I got down to the 170s, then I got down to the 130s. I like the 130s, and now I'm still practicing, and I practice a day a month. I'm down to 12 days a year. Yeah, I mean, I still enjoy it, I still have enough to do, but um, I think we have a lot more control over how that process goes. But again, you need a plan.
SPEAKER_01No, I I love that you've got the discipline of a pilot, but you love to break the rules and kind of do things the smart way, so and that's good.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I agree with everything you're saying. It's it's great. I can only reinforce everything you said tonight, Rise. I I saw a video today on Facebook of a parasailer who had attached himself to a trailer in his backyard and climbed into the wind, and he was and he was gonna teach himself by attaching himself to the I was looking at the comments section. And beside the comments you can imagine, a little longer tether or you know, hillbilly, you know, practice. I think getting mentorship, I think what everything you said I agree with. Um, I think it's I think it's really important to to set a target and set a goal. But more importantly, so many folks that listen to us, they just don't believe that they can do it. As you guys are talking about being a pilot, first time you get into the airplane, you see all those buttons and dials and switches and things that you're unfamiliar with, and it's just overwhelming. And I think what you're talking about tonight is simplify the fundamentals. You have to get you have to get help for sure.
SPEAKER_02You don't you don't need to keep reinventing the wheel. Somebody else has done it.
SPEAKER_00It really is. It's just really back down to the fundamentals and the practicing the fundamentals. That's the business side, that's the clinical side, that's the marketing or integrating yourself into your community. I think those are very, very fundamental things that end up in the same place. And as you get really good at practicing landing and taking off, landing and taking off, landing and taking off, what's happening around you is you're already backfilling all those small things that you're not really sure about. And then, of course, finally, and I think really importantly, is understanding how to read an income statement, how to set that magenta line, how to track your goals. Um, being a doctor is one part of it, you know, managing your staff and your team, human resources. All those things at the fundamental level will move you ahead to the more sophisticated level where you're starting to play with the radios in the airplane and starting to play with your eyes, all those things, none of that stuff matters at the beginnings. Um I think that's my message that really reinforces what you and Mike are talking about tonight is get help and focus on the fundamentals in each of those areas. And if you don't know what those are, it's real easy to hire a pilot instructor like yourself to say,
Value Dentistry: Ceramics And Longevity
SPEAKER_00hey, let me just show you these basics and we'll scrub those basics. And once you have those basics down, you're gonna end up where you want to be, I think.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, no, I agree. I agree. And you know, one thing is you expand out and you you build a team and delegate more because that there's only so much you can do yourself. Um, just always make sure you can verify what happens. Because sometimes what happens is people will delegate, but then they don't follow up. And then that person may go off on a tangent or sometimes you know something nefarious. So you don't want that because this is this is kind of the core thing. It's one of the things I always did when I fly, even though I knew the gas tanks were full, I never ever got in a plane without literally sticking a stick in the gas tank and saw the gas in there. I just didn't trust it, it was too important because Mike, like you said, I mean, they're airplanes, they're not gliders, they're not very good gliders. So when they start to glide, like you don't have a lot of choices, it's very it happens fast. Yeah, uh, so I just you know verify, always verify.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, that's that's great advice. Yeah, I think uh a lot of good information tonight, Rice. Thanks. And I just I just want to reinforce the doctors that it you can have anything you want, and it doesn't take a lot to get all of it. It you don't have to look at the end and get uh nervous or get overwhelmed. I think just take a step at those first those first few fundamentals that you talked about tonight, and I think it'll all come.
SPEAKER_02Well, and you know, it's not it's not very complicated. I mean, this is care, and care should always come before commerce. I mean, that's that's the given. And that gets mixed up, especially in some of these corporate models. They put commerce first, and that that doesn't work. But I think if you just treat someone, a patient, so uh people oftentimes ask, how do you treat my plan? Your treatment plan is like see somebody you love. That's it. It's really easy at that point. You would know what you do for yourself, your child, a mother, a father, a wife, a husband. Uh that makes it easy. And then the other part is just be nice. You know, call people, be nice to them, and it works a hundred percent of the time, every time.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, you're absolutely right. No, I think it's all great advice. I'd recommend that you listen. Well, everybody who's on here right now, listen to it once, and then you go back and listen to it two or three times because there's a lot of information there, and I think there's a lot of really good ideas. So, no, Dr. Spohr, I really appreciate you joining us this evening.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, that's fine.
SPEAKER_01Well, I hope you enjoyed that interview with Dr. Ryze Spohr. A great guy, a great clinician, truly is. If you want to learn more about what was discussed, comprehensive dentistry restored aesthetically, check out the PAC and the programs the PAC offers you. The PAC is THE PAC.org. We hope to see you soon. Thank you very much.