Dental Practice Heroes

A Dentist's Embezzlement Nightmare and Recovery with Josh Cochran

• Paul Etchison, Josh Cochran • Episode 590

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Embezzlement usually starts with someone “you’d never suspect.” Dr. Josh Cochran thought he was building a strong team after opening his practice, but the financials told a different story. In this episode, he shares why it took him so long to realize his employee was embezzling, the red flags he missed, and how he would do things differently today. Learn what systems to put in place to protect your business and the most effective way to prevent embezzlement in your practice!

Topics discussed in this episode:

  • Two things you need to learn in your practice
  • Dr. Cochran’s early mistakes
  • Common red flags of embezzlement
  • How he addressed the embezzlement in his practice
  • Writing exercise for managing stress
  • The emotional impact of embezzlement
  • How to prevent embezzlement

Connect with Dr. Josh Cochran:

https://www.youtube.com/@TheDr.JoshCochranShow

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Paul Etchison:

Embezzlement. It is a dirty word that no one wants to think about, but it happens more often than you think. My personal friend, dr Josh Cochran, experienced it firsthand at his practice and today we're going to hear about how it happened and why it took him so long to notice. You're going to leave this episode knowing the signs of embezzlement, how to take action and, most importantly, what you can do to make sure that it never happens to you. You are listening to Dental Practice Heroes, where we help you to create a team and system-driven dental practice, one that allows you to practice less and make more money. I'm Dr Paul Etcheson, a dental coach, author of two books on dental practice management and the owner of a five-doctor practice in the south suburbs of Chicago. I wanna show you how being intentional about ownership can create a practice that supports your life instead of consuming it. So if you're ready to create a true business that runs without you, you're in the right place. Let's get started. Hello and welcome back to the Dental Practice Heroes podcast.

Paul Etchison:

So excited for my guest today, a good friend of mine, dr Josh Cochran, and man, this guy has a great just a long list of things he's done. He's grown a dental group from scratch to like 160 team members, lots of locations he exited, spent more time with his family. Just recently he's a real estate developer over 150 million in development with his uh construction company, his development and construction company, cm development and construction. And right now he's helping people with tax mitigation and investment strategies through cochran capital. And his latest project, as if he didn't have enough to do, is the dr josh cochran show and that's on youtube and where you would get a podcast. So, man, he's done a lot of things. This is somebody who personally spent many hours with me me when I was on my practice. He was my home base man because him and I were going through the same thing, and so much appreciate you for that, josh, and appreciate just being your friend. So glad that you made it on the podcast. I'm excited about our topic.

Josh Cochran:

So glad that you made it on the podcast. I'm excited about our topic. Yeah, happy to be here, paul. It's a pleasure, always fun, and hopefully we can provide some good stories and things that will really resonate with people and help them on their own journey.

Paul Etchison:

So, yeah, it's great because if you clicked on this podcast because of the title, you probably know what we're talking about. But we're going to talk about embezzlement today and before me and Josh hit record. I was just like I just said, man, I was like you are the only person I'm good friends with that this happened to. And he's like oh thanks, thanks for hitting me where I'm vulnerable. That's really good. So I just asked him man, can you come on? Let's just talk about this experience. So Josh, man, set the stage for us. Can you give us a quick version of what your practice setup was at the time that this happened to you?

Josh Cochran:

So this was like general story associated for probably three years, right. And I just always had that need to paint my own business right, like I just needed to build something and locally things, practices had been done the way they've been done for 30 years. I didn't really see innovation, I didn't see really anybody committed to the future or committed to what patients wanted, right. So I decided that like, look, I'm going to do it how I think it should be done and I'm going to do a startup to do that. And, as you know and everyone listening here has been through new endeavors, you know you can read the books, you can go to the conferences, but the real learning comes from the application. You just got to do it right, right. So I think you know I did the whole process, found a location, went through all that and you know, when it was finally time, like the session was wrapping up, you know you got to start setting things up software, blah, blah, blah employees, and for office they didn't really have anybody, right. So I just put out ads. And what's interesting about certain industries is there's literally no education system for the job role. So when there's no education system for the job role, you don't know what you're going to get and you have no idea the level of training right.

Josh Cochran:

And I think one of the biggest failures in dentistry is dentists should all learn insurance. We should all learn front office right. Is the money part of our business? It's so important. So when people talk to me now like the first thing I say is learn front office. Like force yourself to do it right, because you spend all this money on education like a doctor's job and like doctor production right and you're producing X amount per hour as a doctor. Like why learn like a 20, 25 hour, $25 an hour job? Right, it makes no sense. Right, it seems like a massive waste of time but like now where I'm standing, if I ever went back into dentistry I would know insurance and front office like so well.

Josh Cochran:

One is it's the money coming in your door, right, and so you got to like audit financial, make sure everything comes in. That really ties into the embezzlement piece, but the other pieces are is like there's so much opportunity. Like the highest income dentist I know knows insurance back and forth. Whenever he gets like an interesting insurance come in the door, he figures out like where that came from, why it came from how can he optimize it right, and he has.

Josh Cochran:

He makes so much money every year like doing the same amount of work we're doing right, making 10 times less right, 20 times less. Because he's're doing right, making 10 times less right, 20 times less. Because he's optimized it right. He figures out what patients' needs are and he delivers on those needs. So that's probably the biggest take home I would say today, just on the front end, is like force yourself to learn front office and learn insurance well, and then you can actually hold. When you bring these people in where there's no education system, you can actually hold them accountable right, because you've done it, you know it, so you can train them and hold them accountable.

Paul Etchison:

A lot of people that reach out to me for coaching. I say, like what was the thing that happened that caused you to reach out? And a lot of them just say, like my front end is just a mess and I don't know what to do with it. And I just don't know what to tell them to do because I don't understand any of it. And there was just times when I was putting together my OmniPractice program I sat down with my front desk lead and I said show me all this stuff. And what's interesting is it's not the mystery you think it is. It just requires a few hours of just sitting up there because you know more than you think. You just don't know exactly what they're doing. Do you have any recommendations for people on how they might actually learn more about the front desk and the admin part of their practices, the insurance part?

Josh Cochran:

Yeah. So it's always based like education, right, and then doing so, educationalize, read books on it right, but then you have to apply it. I also think Travis Campbell like. I've never signed up for his stuff, but when I see his posts and stuff I'm like, oh gosh, you have to learn this stuff, right? So I think Travis Campbell would be a good resource. So learn it. But then, like Paul said, like, start doing it. Like go up front and start doing it right. That's the best way to learn.

Josh Cochran:

You will have so much more peace of mind now that you know what's going on up front, right, and you will. I tell you, you will make so much more money. I can't even tell you, right, it's not about making money. It's like making money in dentistry is very hard. Revenues don't go up, but costs do right Every year, or getting the same insurance for you 30 years ago, right, or at least benefits. So it's like you have to figure this out so you don't go crazy, just making no money and stressed out and doing volume. Dentistry. It's just like own that front office, you'll be so much happier.

Josh Cochran:

Okay, let's go back to my story. So, because I was making excuses, why not to find my pain point and own it. I'm a dentist, I'll find somebody to do this. Yeah, I mean, I can just pay somebody 20 bucks. Why would I learn this?

Josh Cochran:

I went out, put out ads, started interviewing folks right, we all read like interview, like how to do it best. And you know, I did my best I could and maybe interviewed three, five people and found a woman and I actually had filled in at her office one time. I don't know if we did that then, but she seemed great. I brought her on right and I was like okay, I'm going to do the dental side, the clinical, I'm going to focus on this. I need you to run the front office Like.

Josh Cochran:

You know how to do this, this is your experience. But how do you even vet them? Because you don't even know, right, you don't really know. This is all just like you're trusting your instincts and during that first year you know you're just so busy that you'd rather trust than trust would verify, right, I don't even know how to verify, and so you have little things that go on in your head like and so you have little things that go on in your head like huh, like that seems a little off, or gosh, I wish I knew if that really was how it was, but I just don't know enough, so I'm just going to accept it and focus on what I do know, what I can control right, can you think of a?

Paul Etchison:

specific situation.

Josh Cochran:

You know, you see like write-offs, right, or you see like reimbursements, and you're like that seems off to me, right, but I don't really know.

Josh Cochran:

Or like patient's accounts on bigger cases, like implant cases. You know, sometimes it'd be like, oh, we owe this person like $1,500. And you're like you're running through it and you're like going through like the what was charged and what was reimbursed, and like the insurance company, and you're just like this seems off to me, right, and you know we'd be doing the end of days, right, but like, even on the end of day report, I'm like like I don't really understand how this works, like I'm checking things, that kind of jives, but there's like still like all these barriers. You don't really understand. And so you know. But you see your revenue going up every month, right, and so you're like, hey, we're growing. You see patients aren't pissed off. So you know, like customer services, these, and as you're hiring new team members, you see like they're getting along pretty well up front. You don't want to rock the boat, right, and you don't want to micromanage people and give the PE, give people the feeling that you don't want to micromanage people and give the people the feeling that you don't trust them. Right, like trust, but verify was a really good phrase for me to learn.

Josh Cochran:

So part of this is I delegated payroll, which is not a good idea. Like super busy, right, I delegate payroll. You delegate payroll. Okay, when you delegate payroll to a team member who pays themself, right, it pays other people, yeah, now, and they don't have like an HR background. They don't have, like that isn't where they came from writer, bookkeeping or trained that way. Me too, you know, I'm going to take full accountability for any like bad happenings in my life. Right, like, I chose to hire this person. I chose to not learn front office. I chose to delegate a payroll to them, right, because I was so busy. I don't want people to miss that as a dentist, right? Ultimate accountability.

Paul Etchison:

You know what? There's so many people listening right now that are doing the exact same thing not verifying. They're trusting and I think many people are just not even looking. I would say that I had some reports that I would run. I don't know if they're sure free, but I mean like where the write-offs were very different than the anticipated write-offs. If it was had to over a certain percentage it would show up Looking for after hours computer activity. But it's like you can only spend so much time looking but you have to, you have to bite.

Josh Cochran:

This is not pushed enough. In dentistry you have to bite the bullet. You have to learn it front to back so you can set up the systems and hold people accountable. So, getting back to the story, so you know, on some levels very successful. I don't remember what our first year revenue was. First, it wasn't very good the first couple of months. It started to grow by the end of the first year. Maybe I don't know what it was, maybe a million, right Collected, maybe a million. My first year, after being super slow, I was like, wow, I worked all this hard. I was still working as an associate as well, right, but working my butt off, working late, whatever, 14 hour days, you know, 12 hours clinically, plus days on top, hours on top of that, just grinding. And I looked at the financials for the year and I made no money.

Paul Etchison:

No money.

Josh Cochran:

Nothing.

Paul Etchison:

Zero.

Josh Cochran:

Zero, zero dollars. So I'm like, huh, okay, that's interesting, right, worked my butt off, no income.

Paul Etchison:

Like no money after your W-2 or no money.

Josh Cochran:

No, like I hadn't even been paying myself. Oh, okay, so no W-2 either. So it wasn't no profitability, it was just like no money. So it's like we're getting a ton of new patients, we're like taking care of people, we're getting a ton of good reviews, like things are growing. We're hiring team members, like things are going really well, but we're making no money. Okay, and so it's like, okay, there's a red flag right, like I need to stop and analyze what I'm doing.

Paul Etchison:

What was the relationship like with this person personally, you and this person?

Josh Cochran:

Yeah, I mean I liked her a lot, we got along, we communicated well, but I always had concerns, just because her life and her lifestyle are my life and my lifestyle, right. I'm like 100% family values. I'm like super work ethic not flashy, right. I was driving my 2007 Toyota 4Runner, right. Like just different value system, right. So you have concerns, but you want to practice radical acceptance of others, right.

Josh Cochran:

So, anyway, so that was the first year, okay, and, as you know, like one of the best catalysts in life, you have a coaching business. You're very good. I try to send folks to you and our other buddies who coach because you guys are great. You've done it Like 100% believe in your ability to be a catalyst for others, right, thank you. So they're not banging their head against the wall, they're getting where they want to be, whatever that is as quick as possible. So, you know, I think I brought on a coach at that point and I'm trying to remember how. But John Meese, do you remember John Meese? Mm-hmm, yeah, yeah. So I signed up for John Meese's. It's like, hey, let's get there as quick as possible.

Josh Cochran:

And I don't remember exactly when. That was maybe a year, year and a half in, and John has his coaches that work with him okay, and they have one that works with you. And the one with the front office team member okay, and the person with John Mises team member, like was meeting with my front office, right. And then she started picking up signs Like this was not her first rodeo, right, this woman had lots of reps, so she's picking up these signs because her spidey sense is finally tuned for this, because she's seen it over the years, right? So she and John come to me and Josh and they're like Josh, like you know, have you ever thought about, you know, this team member potentially embezzling from you? And I was like I mean, I just don't know enough. Like I always have those worries, right, but is that my fear? Like I don't know. And then they started like listing off of, like the signs of embezzlement, right, and this kind of like locked it in for me. So reluctance to share duties or delegate, right, like this person would stonewall, like nope, I'll handle all that. Nope, I'm good. Like, nope, you do this, this is my job, I do this. Right, she was very defensive about her stuff and anybody getting involved in anything of hers. It was all her. That's a total red flag, right, and one of the solutions to embezzlement, I mean long-term. I think we might talk about this pre-call like AI, right, it's like AI gets more involved in front of office. It's like AI gets more involved in front of office. Ai gets involved in the insurance piece, like you're going to be able to code for these types of things and identify risks, and I mean it'll get a lot better through AI. Yeah, but that's major one. Unusual working hours you know doing things and no one else is there, because you know that's when they can get the stuff done. I don't want to see people seeing defensive or secretive behavior.

Josh Cochran:

Lifestyle match this girl was. I've been driving my old Toyota, beat up Toyota 4Runner right. She's driving a Range Rover, a black, nice, newer Range Rover. It might have been brand new. I mean super expensive, right, and so those are kind of red flags, right. I'm over here and my entire income for the year was zero, yeah, and I'm putting in crazy hours, right, and so those are kind of red flags right. Like I'm over here and my entire income for the year was zero and I'm putting in crazy hours right and grinding, and she's driving a Range Rover right From the outside it's like what? Are you some sort of idiot, josh? Apparently I am, yeah.

Paul Etchison:

Well, I'm sure in retrospect you probably look back and you're like damn damn, oh yeah, damn that time. That time it's like that whole thing. You can't read the label on the prescription when you're inside the bottle. You know what I mean. It's like yeah.

Josh Cochran:

I have financial troubles. She was always short on money, right. So it's like OK, this, if she's going to go get more money, where is she going to get that right? Well, if she's controlling all the money in your office, it makes it pretty easy for her, right, just how she is as a human being, with her spending Refusal to take time off her vacation, right. If you take time off her vacation, then someone else has to do your job, right, and then they might notice what's going on. So, yeah, she didn't take vacations either.

Josh Cochran:

You know, I thought it was a good thing because it was like oh, it works for a work ethic like me. But then when you look at it from this perspective, you're like oh, and then like, payroll was just kind of like didn't always like kind of match how I thought and the bonus system didn't really match how I thought. It's just like those kind of like little fakes. So Mies and this team member of his like kind of clued me in. I started looking at things. Now, I really started looking at payroll, I really started looking at all these things and we just started looking at numbers and picking it up and it wasn't good.

Josh Cochran:

So we hired Prosperident right to help with this. They put together a report, we sent it to like the cops, right, hey, this is what's going on, let the team member know. And just kind of went through that whole rigmarole, right, which is hard because you don't have like another office manager to take over, right, you don't have like another office manager who's better of a financial. You don't have another office manager who's better of a financial. So you're going from what was stable but maybe not good with this embezzlement stuff, to like who do you even have to replace them, and where do you even find somebody? And how do you know you're doing better next time?

Paul Etchison:

I know one of the recommendations is, if we do find out, we are not supposed to confront the person. When you found out, what was that moment like, where you knew it was true?

Josh Cochran:

Yeah, I mean it's super stressful. It's super stressful that you care about this person, right? I mean you don't want to accuse somebody of something that may not be true, right? So you A care about this person. You feel like a jerk, right? You have some self-doubts. You always doubt, even if the numbers are in front of you, Well. And then the business, right, when you're just super busy, you know you get all those new patients. You're trying to serve your patients, you're trying to serve your other team members.

Josh Cochran:

Do you really want to add like one more thing, one more giant problem to solve, to the pot of giant problems you're already facing, right, and you don't want to do that either. And I don't know about you, Edge. But like, if I'm feeling stress, I just like write down like where all my stress is coming from. So, step one, identify it, right. Step two, kind of break it down, Like why is those things stressful, right, and now, like I'm not feeling, like I'm just not like ambiguously feeling stress and just coping with it. I'm like what is it? Why is it there? And then I just commit to making that my top priority. Whatever my stress is right, Not hide from it, not hope it goes away. I just don't do that anymore.

Paul Etchison:

Talk about how you utilize that in this situation.

Josh Cochran:

This is a tool I use now just identifying my stress, breaking it down, and then clear action steps. Right, what clears stress? Action, right. So, like my issues here were no money right, the practice wasn't making money like it should. We had the leader of the practice, after myself maybe being having like an ethical quandary, right, and so what you permit, you promote, right. So you got to root out that cancer ASAP, right.

Josh Cochran:

So ethical quandary, and it wasn't just the past money that maybe I'd lost, it's like the future money. Like every day you put this off it could just get worse. Right, confrontation you know I was afraid of confronting her, right, legal and law. Legal and like the law, like law enforcement. I think we're most of us are trained to be real followers, right, so we don't like to bring up like legal issues, we just want everything to be copacetic, so, yeah. So I just kind of like broke those things down and like where all my stress was coming from, right.

Josh Cochran:

And then I just like, broken down any further, like no money, well, I got to support my family, so I can't tolerate that, right. And two, like ethical stuff Like, at the end of the day, you know, dentistry is not going to be on my tombstone. Money's not going to be on my tombstone, like, I don't care. What I care about is, like integrity for myself, my respect for myself, and then integrity, and like my relationships with people I care about, right, and so this is an integrity gap. I was not doing the best for my family by bringing in the money. I should be right, my wife was taking care of the kids. She was doing these things Like I have responsibilities to them. This is an integrity gap. For my other team members right, I brought in a leader who was outside of me, like the second leader, and this person maybe didn't have the best value system, right, so I wasn't really supporting them as team members.

Josh Cochran:

And then same with my patients right, like, who knows what could be happening there? I mean, there's another fear, right. Like, maybe she was stealing from patients too, like you don't know. Right, that's another major fear. Confrontation, yeah, like, you just have to do it. Right, we all love that quote. You know you're only as successful as the number of uncomfortable conversations you're willing to have. Yeah, that's one of my favorite quotes. You just lean into that, right. Like, oh, this is going to suck and I'm going to be more successful, because this sucks.

Paul Etchison:

See, I feel like every time I hear that quote, I shudder, because I go, I know, because every time somebody says that to me it's because I'm putting one off.

Josh Cochran:

But it's what gets me to jump in the ice cold water right. Every time I'm like, oh, I'll just jump in the ice cold water, right. Every time I'm like, oh, I'll just jump in the ice cold water because I know it's going to be better off right, yeah. So just do it right.

Paul Etchison:

What I love about what you're doing is I think this is a great tool for all practice owners because, like what you're doing is you're taking out a lot of owners are stressed because there's just so much going on and there's so much unknown and it's like once you create a plan, you know that comes from accurate information. Once the plan is in place, then everything feels like it just falls into place. It's like there's that unknown is gone and that you feel so much better and you start moving forward and having forward progress. But what we see so often is people never get to that exercise. They just are just miserable and they just don't know why. So talk about when was the moment that this all came to a head and did she get carted out? Tell the story.

Josh Cochran:

I don't even remember the story. It's been seven, eight years. I'm getting old, but yeah, I remember.

Paul Etchison:

Wait, did you know it was happening that day? Did you know the day it was happening?

Josh Cochran:

Can't remember, I'll tell you what I think happened. But typically when it's like this, you choose a time to confront somebody, usually before work or after work, right. And so if, like, it's like 8.10, right, and most people showed up between 8.10 and 8.20. You're in their office with like a third party, like a cop or something right, and you're like, look, this is what's going on. We're going to need you to leave right now, but this is what's going on. We've seen financial discrepancies. You know the cops know we have attorneys working on this. As a person, I really appreciate you, but this is not something. If this is all true, that's okay. So I need you to send me home Because there's also EHR liability too, right, easier to never know.

Josh Cochran:

So you have to follow all those EHR laws. So you basically escort the person out. The team is there, hey, what's going on? Right? And you can't make any acquisition or assumptions, right, when it's under somebody's accountability that the financials are correct and the financials are not correct and not matching up. You know it's our responsibility because this is what pays you guys right In the office, pays you as employees, and make sure that that is so disappointing.

Paul Etchison:

I feel like that is so disappointing that, like we've got to script. I feel like that is so disappointing that we've got to script something like that because of legal reasons. I would want to be like what the F is this and how could you? What the F is this? I trusted you. What is wrong with you, with your Land Rover, range Rover. Yeah, the Range Rover, here I am. I'm driving a freaking Pinto from 1974. What the hell, dude? How did she react?

Josh Cochran:

You know, there's always kind of that shock right For them, like nobody can like mentally be ready for that. There's always shock, there's emotion. You know there's embarrassment, right, and so they don't really want to stick around, right, because they're so embarrassed. So she went home.

Paul Etchison:

She went off. I don't know where she went. It was not carted off in the back of a cop car or anything.

Josh Cochran:

No, no, I mean, there's investigations that need to take place, right. There are attorneys that need to get hired and defense attorneys and prosecutors and all those things right. But you can't wait three months, right. You got to like have some evidence, right, and then just cut it right. Otherwise it's just, it's like a cancer you got to got to get rid of it.

Paul Etchison:

Is there a part of time where you know what's going on but you have to allow it to continue to provide, to gather evidence and you're just watching money getting stolen?

Josh Cochran:

Yeah, yeah, yeah, but you've already had it happen, you know what I mean. So it's not like it's like it's already been happening. So it's not like that painful, right, you're just like.

Paul Etchison:

Well, I imagine, like I lost a lot of money and the listeners have heard me talk about this and you actually know this I've lost a lot of money, and the listeners have heard me talk about this and you actually know this I've lost a ton of money, not an embezzlement, but in a complete false Ponzi scam, and the emotional toll it was like the only thing I can compare it to is grieving, like you had to grieve the loss and like you had to like come to reality with this new world that you just can't believe. I mean the amount of just how stupid I felt. I mean, did you go through that same process?

Josh Cochran:

Yeah, there was definitely a process. The money never triggers it for me, it's the emotional, it's the human connection triggers it for me. Money, like I literally don't care, I don't know why. Have you ever seen Band of Brothers? Mm-hmm, okay, one of the best seasons of Band of Brothers was the head guy, lieutenant, the main character. They're finally in Germany.

Josh Cochran:

He sees this like German kid soldier on the other side, right, and it's just a, it's a human just like him, it's a kid, it's not like some bad, evil person, right, he looks at him, he pauses for a second and then he just clicks in, he shoots him. And so I remember that moment and I think my brain is wired that way that I do not have attachment to physical things. I don't have any attachment to physical things. So I learn from things very quickly, like, wow, I really effed up on that one. Learn from this, don't eff up again. And then I'm past it.

Josh Cochran:

Move forward. That's good advice. I don't think that's normal, but I do think, like they talk about, like a shooter, right, he misses a shot and then he keeps shooting. Right, he forgets about the shot, like in the NBA. Right, that's what those guys say. It's shooter mentality. And so I think when you're in business, you have to be highly attention to detail, like highly caring about the people around you and your business, right. But when you lose right you just have to move on and forget about it.

Paul Etchison:

That's great advice. I think what helped me a lot is I was part of this guy's group and one of the guys in there was like a wealth advisor and he's like dude you don't know how often I see this and he's like if I had one piece of advice for you, you did the best thing you could with the information that you had. You didn't try to make this happen, you weren't careless, you used the information presented to you and you made the best decision you had, and it wasn't a good decision, so all you can do is learn from it and move forward, and I found that helped me a lot, and that's kind of what I'm hearing you saying is like you recognize that you know, it happened, I did it, I learned from it, not going to happen again.

Josh Cochran:

Every time and I'm glad it happened when I was small, right. When we got big and seasoned, right, that loss could have been 30 times larger, yeah, so I value those learning opportunities early on and I want to say this to all the dentists right, we're trained in school. Get perfect grades, don't make mistakes. Right, we're trained as dentists like do perfect procedures, don't make mistakes. Right, we're trained in school. Get perfect grades, don't make mistakes. Right, we're trained as dentists like do perfect procedures, don't make mistakes. Right, you have to be very careful with healthcare. Right, because you're taking care of somebody else's body. Right, so that is the right mentality to have. But on the business side, fall for it like make mistakes, own those mistakes, learn from them and move forward. Don't be so afraid to make mistakes on the business side, because you'll really just halt the growth of your business and help your own learning potential right, become the best version of yourself if you're so afraid to make mistakes on the business side or leadership or anything like that.

Paul Etchison:

All right. So coming up to the end of this, I mean it happened, you went through it. You know we all hope nobody goes through this, but I think the statistics are something like. I mean it happens to 50% of dental owners and sometimes I wonder if that statistic is accurate. Sometimes I think if that's including somebody stealing electric toothbrushes, that's a different level of embezzlement and theft, but who knows? But either way, if you had advice for dental practice owners that are listening right now, what would that be?

Josh Cochran:

I'm going to come full circle back to where we started. So, number one stop making excuses. Learn the front office job and learn every insurance, every piece of insurance, until you're like an A-plus student. Know that in and out. You will learn from that experience and preserve the money that's already coming into your practice and you will find so many opportunities to bring in more income for yourself. It'll be the best return on your time. Number one do that. Two, it will give you so much peace of mind.

Josh Cochran:

Okay, you, you will understand what's going on. You'll have peace of mind. You will understand what's going on. You'll have peace of mind about it. You will not stress. You will be able to hold front office team members accountable If you lose your front office team member. One of our buddies I remember him saying his front office team member was having a baby right and so he had like $250K worth of checks sitting in a box under the front office desk. You remember that. That is the best solution I have at this point. This is this is dentistry, right. This is ridiculous. Right. If you, as a dentist, understand it right, you can train like hard-working, good people to do a great job up front. Okay, okay, you are your number one problem here, right In relation to this, this is you. So commit this year to learning front office and learning insurance. It will just be a game changer in your life. That is where I would come back to this.

Paul Etchison:

Awesome man. But, dude, thank you so much for coming on, spend some time with the listeners and me today. Thanks for being vulnerable man. These are things that a lot of people I don't think would want to admit. We hate admitting our failures. I love your attitude about it. Just learn, go forward. I think it's the right way to think about things. I think it's the way successful people think and I honestly think the attitude that you presented today is a huge indicator of the mindset of success. This is how people you, I and our circle that we know Josh is in a mastermind group with me and there are traits of people in this group and it's pretty special and it's things like this accountability and learning from mistakes, not dwelling on it. I think you're a little better at not dwelling on it than me. I like to lay in bed and think about things that happened six years ago that I did. That was stupid. I just lay there and I think about something I said at a party Like damn it, why didn't I say that?

Josh Cochran:

Why didn't I say that? Yeah, no, I appreciate you so much, your take on things, your approach to life. I learned so much for you and much for you and, yeah, I'm very grateful for your friendship and thank you for your podcast and your service to all the listeners. The amount of discipline and consistency it takes to do a podcast yeah, it's just amazing. So thank you for that.

Paul Etchison:

Thanks so much. Hey, and go check out Josh's podcast on YouTube, the Dr Josh Cochran Show. I was a guest on it. I will be sharing it with my listeners when it comes out. But great conversations on there. I think a lot of people would really enjoy just the banter that you have and the things that you talk about. So go check that out, listeners. Thank you so much for tuning in and we'll talk to you next time.

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Dr. Paul Etchison

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