Dr James, 8s:

Hey everybody, welcome to the DennisDentists Moon Invest podcast with my good friends, Dr Vishal and we're here to talk about everything and everything systemizing our dental practice, systemizing what we do as associates, systemizing our way to success, because this is so flipping important and, by the way, that's coming from the person Never appreciated this stuff until like a year and a half ago, and now I have a massive. I had a massive revelation as to how much it can help on the business front and we're going to talk about everything on that front today. Vishal, how are you, my friend?

Dr Vishal, 39s:

Hey, I'm good. Thanks, mate. How are you?

Dr James, 42s:

10 out of 10, mate, as always. Thanks for asking, vishal, this is your very first time on the Dennis Moon Invest podcast. It'd be lovely if you could go a little bit of a bio about yourself.

Dr Vishal, 52s:

Sure, absolutely. So yeah, I'm Vishal. I grew up in South London, in Croydon, you know. Carried out pretty much well. Actually initially started off in Portsmouth where mum and dad sort of had an off license and we were travelling back and forth to London and then carried out sort of lots of trips up and down and moved over to back to London because dad was finding it very difficult to keep up with that travelling, eventually went to high school here in Croydon this is home to me and then moved to Liverpool for university. So that was. It was quite a change getting out of London, which was quite nice, but, yeah, loved it. I mean, I think initially I was a bit gutted because I didn't really sort of make it first time round to take a gap year, kind of a forced gap year, and then when I actually got to Liverpool it was amazing, probably the best five years I've had. So wouldn't regret it at all.

Dr James, 1m 51s:

Super good.

Dr Vishal, 1m 52s:

And then yeah, that's it. And so yeah, started off as an associate, got back down to London in the whole process of that, met my wife Smita, who's from Leeds originally, and she moved down to the Big Smoke and that's how we met each other. She moved in with a couple of mutual friends from Liverpool and then it rested history really, and then carried out dentistry back in home and then we bought a practice in 2021. It's been two years now.

Dr James, 2m 23s:

Top man and then went from strength to strength with the practice, success to success, which is what we're going to talk about today, because you've now got three. Is that right, Two or three? A?

Dr Vishal, 2m 35s:

practice. Yeah, just the one actually for now.

Dr James, 2m 39s:

Oh, where do I start from Thinking about getting to you? I?

Dr Vishal, 2m 42s:

think, maybe you, maybe, yeah, exactly 2024. That's the plan for 2024.

Dr James, 2m 47s:

Awesome, man. Well, you know what Even one in itself is a flipping feed, so hats off to you. And that actually brings us to what we're going to talk about today, which is systemise in a way to success. Do the unappreciated things that we can implement into a practice to bring us more wealth. Because, ultimately, what is efficiency? Efficiency is productivity per unit time. Right, you can measure that with anything. That can be money, it can be output, it can be whatever it is that you're trying to achieve. So the greater your output per unit time is, the more efficient that you are right, yeah, yeah. So, for example, if we can provide really good standard of work, really high quality work, and do that in 10 minutes less than what we would do otherwise because we've got great systems, or our diaries are that much more organised so that we can see the same number of patients do it in less time However the heck that looks and still provide valid quality care, we've got to ensure that that doesn't drop and ultimately we're going to make more money. Ultimately, our business is more productive.

Dr Vishal, 3m 49s:

And that's what in my opinion.

Dr James, 3m 52s:

In my opinion, from what I've seen, the people who are the flipping killers when it comes to business. They're the people who think about efficiency and actually iterate how efficient their practice is every single day. So, just before we get into how that's done, what do you think and what are the potential as a principal yourself?

Dr Vishal, 4m 7s:

I think it's key. I think time is really really crucial and what you're doing that time and how you fill it is obviously going to maximise your output. Like you just said, I think efficiency is massive and we in our practice thrive on that. I couldn't agree with you more.

Dr James, 4m 26s:

I love that and that puts you in a really good place For us, the conversation today on efficiency.

Dr Vishal, 4m 32s:

So you know, what?

Dr James, 4m 33s:

How about we start this off like a little bit of a story official, because I know that you purchased your practice from someone else. It wasn't a squat, right? No, it wasn't a squat, it was. You purchased it right. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it was a pretty existing business, amazing, right, and I'm going to read between the lines and I'm going to guess that you've come in and you've implemented a lot of stuff which has ensured that the business has become more efficient and, inevitably, it becomes more profitable as well. Have I got that right? Absolutely, yeah, cool, awesome. So I'm curious to know you know at the very start that story that we were talking about just a second ago how did the practice look? What was going on in the practice? What did you inherit from the previous owner?

Dr Vishal, 5m 14s:

I think it was a practice that you know. I mean it was around from 1930s, so it had a very long history and I think internally I think it kind of showed as well, so it's very ancient, you know, like almost Victorian. Like inside, when you step in there, there's carpets and you know things falling apart and I think it means Mito were like almost shocked as if to say, what have we bought? But one thing we did sort of gauge from the initial meeting with the previous owner was that he was just a very humble guy. He was just very, very humble, down to earth, you know, not flashy or anything like that. And we could see that was I think we were originally. Just the first sort of immediate thought was that we could definitely do something with this. This is just great. It's like a platform. It's got the foundation, the blueprint, but there's lots to do. But yeah, I mean immediately, we just our eyes are just wandering everywhere when we went to sort of see it. But we could see where we wanted to change things there Basically.

Dr James, 6m 18s:

Some say that those are the practices that are the best investment, in a way, because they got the most off.

Dr Vishal, 6m 24s:

Yeah, yeah, exactly, I think we already had a preexisting criteria of what we kind of wanted, and one of them was that we didn't want to buy something that was already, you know, top notch and there's nothing you can do to it, because there's not going to be any upside at the end of it, right, or when you exit, there's nothing there. So we always wanted something to grow and develop and put our stamp on it as well.

Dr James, 6m 48s:

Very cool, my man. So on the industry side of things, was it NHS, was it private?

Dr Vishal, 6m 54s:

So it's predominantly private with super small NHS contracts.

Dr James, 6m 59s:

Sorry, sorry, sorry. Just what I mean is when you bought it.

Dr Vishal, 7m 3s:

Oh yeah.

Dr James, 7m 5s:

Yeah, to keep us in that moment where we're painting the picture of the practice that was predominantly NHS, was it?

Dr Vishal, 7m 11s:

No, it wasn't actually, it was always predominantly private.

Dr James, 7m 13s:

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, oh, I got you man, sorry about that.

Dr Vishal, 7m 15s:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, that's good. It was predominantly private and he just had a really super small NHS contract. That way he sort of saw kids to be honest with you Right Under the National.

Dr James, 7m 26s:

Health? Yeah, amazing, okay, cool. And how many surgeries? Just a little curiosity Three surgeries, right, okay cool.

Dr Vishal, 7m 34s:

So you went into the practice.

Dr James, 7m 35s:

This was the practice that you inherited and it was obviously a functional business, you know. It was obviously making us some money because it had been around for a while. And when you began to unravel the inner workings of the practice and look a little deeper, what were some of the things that you found that you thought to yourself this needs to go or we need to fix this. This is crazy, or was there anything? Was there anything that extreme, or was it more just a little tweak, some things like that.

Dr Vishal, 8m 3s:

No, it was. I mean, in this day and age I think obviously the cosmetic of the practice had to change. I think when I walked in there I wouldn't want to be a patient walking into something like that. It was just very old school and also I think within the first week of us actually buying and sort of being in the business, we just knew that the team or the staff were just very much like dinosaurs, like everything they did was very slow paced. You know, I remember in the first week I think every day the kettle would go off about within one hour. The kettle would go off about 10 times. So everyone was just having tea and coffee all day long and it very much felt like the previous owner let the staff run the business rather than him. He would just sit in his surgery, kind of thing. So I knew there was issues with the building, the cosmetics, but also the actual running of the business was key and that I think we had to change that. There was no way we could have done anything if we didn't change that.

Dr James, 9m 10s:

Alright, because I'm itching to ask this next thing that's just popped into my head, because the building and doing that up, yeah, that's kind of, you know, it's pretty not simple. You know, you get the team in, they renovated and that's fine. It's just a really, isn't it A bit of effort as well, let's talk about the culture of the team, because even though maybe a lot of people are listening, they don't have a team, which is how can we say where that team was quite to that level in terms of, let's use the amount of tea and coffee they have as some sort of metric? It's actually a really good idea. That actually probably is quite a nice metric to understand just how much time your staff have in your hands to be able to measure the assumption of tea and coffee. Just throwing that out there, just coin that right there. That could be an interesting thing to explore. But anyway, on that topic, I'm sure there'll be a lot of people out there who maybe they're not quite to that level, the level that you just described, but to a greater or lesser degree they want more cohesiveness in their team and they come up against the winds of inertia and people resenting them being the individual who wants to introduce that positive change. So I'm curious how did you do it, man? Because that's tough, because, to add an extra caveat to what you're about to say you were always doing with a new guy as well. It wasn't like they knew you and you had that rapport. You were coming in, you were facing the rapport issue and then also an inertia issue.

Dr Vishal, 10m 33s:

Yeah, 100%. I have to say, the first couple of weeks were probably the most difficult. Even though we had bought the business and we were the owners, the first couple of weeks we were almost like treading on eggshells because for us it was very important not to go all guns blazing. I took the first couple of weeks to go in there and really just understand what's happening, just how it's running, how it's operating, what the staff are like, because, like you said, I didn't know any of them, even the owners, because essentially there's two separate owners the 50% was one of the owners and the other 50% was a young dentist as well. So it was just getting to know them and just how they ran it. And I think for me it was. Being the new guy was difficult. It was difficult, but all I knew was that we've bought this for a reason. We've got our vision, we've got our set ethos of how we run dentistry and if people aren't on board with it, then they're not the right person. It's nothing personal, it's just that we just don't align in terms of visions. So, yeah, the first couple of weeks are very hard, but I just had to. Sorry, I was just saying I just took a lot of notes. I just made so many notes on my phone and a notepad of all the things that were happening, just so I've got an idea of exactly what areas we need to work on.

Dr James, 12m 1s:

And what would a brilliant frame for looking at that problem in VertiCommerce that we had just then. Yeah, or you described just then that issue and the frame was. The frame was, for anybody who missed that that we just simply say hey, do you know what? Here's where we want to go in life, here's where the other person wants to go in life, and they're just not aligned, and that's cool yeah. You know how many times do people avoid having those tough conversations and they keep themselves in this perpetual state of not being content, not being happy. I can't remember who said this quote, possibly Steve Jobs or something along those lines. He said success in life is directly proportional to the amount of conversations tough conversations that you're willing to have day to day.

Dr Vishal, 12m 41s:

And I think that's really cool.

Dr James, 12m 42s:

You know, you know what I need to do, something like that you know, and thankfully I've actually feel really lucky. It's really rare that that's happened to me. Gotta be honest, I think it happens probably a lot more in dental practices because there's a lot more people involved. There's just so many moving parts whenever it comes to people. So yeah, I love that quote, and when I feel like I'm in that position, as uncommon as it is and then frequent as it is, fortunately, I always hear those words playing in my head yeah, you're right. And then my plan your head too, official next time as well.

Dr Vishal, 13m 15s:

It's not like hey, you know what, if I want to grow and I want to build?

Dr James, 13m 18s:

whatever I'm trying to build, then actually this is part of the process. It's essential, you know, but it doesn't mean that we go out looking for confrontation of course no, actually not. What it means is that there's something that needs to be said. We can say it from a place of interest, because you actually can say it from a kind place as well.

Dr Vishal, 13m 34s:

Yeah, 100%. Yeah, yeah, and that's kind of the route we took to be honest with you, and then you just work out if people are on board or not.

Dr James, 13m 45s:

Cool, yeah, all right. So anyway, that was one thing that needed to be improved. You know what I often have heard about practices that are in that state. They usually have the best mastery of their numbers. Yeah, did you find that as well?

Dr Vishal, 14m 3s:

I don't think he had a clue, to be honest with you. I mean, I personally did, and maybe he did look like I said I didn't really know him that well, but yeah, I mean, there was no way of having recollection of what's happened previously, so they had no data. It was all just, you know, squeeze it in here or fit it in here or we'll write him a piece of paper and that paper gets thrown away. There was nothing like that, so you can never look back and say this is what worked or what didn't work. But yeah, I mean, in terms of numbers, yeah, I genuinely don't know. Maybe he did in the background, but I definitely knew what we were trying to look for and what we were aiming for.

Dr James, 14m 42s:

Cool, and what systems did you implement on that front to get a real handle on cash flow in the business and just how much you're spending and just how much your income is?

Dr Vishal, 14m 54s:

So, as an associate, it was always key. I think the biggest thing that we learned and probably one of our mentors was someone who you've sort of done a podcast with. Well, that's it, and it's very key to kind of keep things in terms of keeping your day list. So, rather than looking at what you're making in a year was what are you doing on a day-to-day basis? So I just stuck to that and it was key for me to work out what each surgery is generating, obviously, what your liabilities are, what you need to make per day in order for you to at least break even. And so that's what we kind of worked out, and as long as we're generating that figure, then we're comfortable. And then we start sort of from looking at the day list. Then we can analyze what's working, what's not working, and then we do more of that on a day-to-day basis.

Dr James, 15m 43s:

That's actually a really cool way of doing things, at least at the very start, because it's sometimes people come into these situations and they have no bearing on it whatsoever and to be able to just say, right, okay, how much do we need to just survive? What is that number? Let's make that number, then we can breathe and we can think of stuff.

Dr Vishal, 16m 1s:

Yeah, I agree, I think it's work because when you've got a squat and look, I've not run a squat, so I don't fully know, but from what all the people I've spoken to, you can set everything your way. But when we're talking about an existing practice, these patients are already seen someone, they've already sort of been used to one way of having a checkup or whatever it is or a hygiene visit, and they've been used to a certain way of coming into the practice. And when you're, as a new guy, trying to change that and trying to change the, let's say, the treatment plan is very different to what they've been used to and it's hard work, it's very hard work. It ain't easy, man, and I think that was our biggest obstacle was always the comparison to how that dentist used to see us 15 years ago and what he used to do was a five minute checkup kind of thing, whereas you guys are taking your time. It was trying to get them out or shifting their mindset.

Dr James, 17m 4s:

Because they don't always immediately trust you either.

Dr Vishal, 17m 8s:

No, they don't.

Dr James, 17m 9s:

Takes time right, and even when you're doing a textbook examination to them, that's weird because that's not what they're used to. And then that adds onto that low level mistrust that they have subconsciously and they're like, oh okay, so to your mind you're doing it as textbook, to their mind you're just doing it differently and they don't like it. And then that obviously can lead to confusion and miscommunication. So I'm sure you encountered that. Yeah we did Big time Cool, all right, nice one. So I had another thing that I was going to say, actually as well. So, obviously, whenever it comes to the staff that were always and then there was a little bit of headwinds that you came up against in terms of the culture of the practice. Let's talk more about. So that's more mindset to me, really. Let's talk about more the practical skills of the team that were there in terms of training. Where did you need to invest to get the staff's knowledge to where it needs to be and how did you go about that? And there's a reason why I like this question. This just came into my head. The reason why I like this question. This is benefit to principals, but also is benefit to associates as well. Yeah, they both those parties will be able to recognise where they need to invest in others or themselves respectively, to be able to get a career to the next level, based on how you did it in your practice and how you achieved that.

Dr Vishal, 18m 41s:

Yeah, no, you're right, it's a good question. I think for me it's always been about trying to get, say, for example, the nurse you're working with or the reception team on board, by asking them how they feel about trying something different, as opposed to just saying this is the way we're doing it. So if we're going to I don't know if, if, for example, in the mornings when I get in, I want all my trays set up in the morning, it's not about saying you need to set my trays up. It'll be something along the lines of look, I really want to make sure that you don't have a stressful time during the day. Would it be okay if we just tried a couple of days of just setting up the trays first thing when we first get in, and just see how your day is, and then you let me know how that's working out for you? So I think that's one of the things that we started to implement was just adding little bits that we wanted, but asking them how they'd feel about it and giving it a go, almost like a trial and error, and then getting their feedback, and I think that was key for us at the start, because I mean half, I mean the whole practice, never heard of a rubber dam. They didn't have a rubber dam kit. No, no for me, yeah, and for me I was like what? Like you've never heard of rubber dam, come on, are you serious? I was like I can't live without rubber dam, like I have my own kit, I've my own clamps, whatever. So it was important for them to know how, how. We kind of want things done, but you need to get them on board in a certain way rather than just stamping your authority and that that's again. That's just my opinion.

Dr James, 20m 10s:

No of course you want to keep them on board. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Actually, that's where you have to manage your own energy sometimes, because if you're a big changer and a big doer, you actually get a buzz from doing that.

Dr Vishal, 20m 22s:

Yeah.

Dr James, 20m 23s:

Whereas the majority of society 80, 90% they like things to be same same, same, same same. Are you with me? That's it. Or at least, if there's going to be change, gradual change. So it's a self-awareness thing.

Dr Vishal, 20m 36s:

Yeah, and I think it was key for them to know that we weren't just coming in not wanting to grow and develop ourselves. Like you know, we wanted to. It means me to thrive and we go on so many different courses, but it was important for them to see that we're trying to do this not just for our own benefit, we're trying to do this for the patients and as long as everything came back to the patient, then hopefully they were on board with that if they genuinely want to be there.

Dr James, 21m 1s:

Cool man, where did you notice the biggest ROI in terms of a course or program that you invested in on behalf of your staff or even for yourself?

Dr Vishal, 21m 16s:

For me was two, I'd say two main courses, but one was a communication course. We did that I became a trainer or a mentor on, and the second one was a practical one. So I don't know if you're happy for me to name them Totally cool Asif Sayeh.

Dr James, 21m 35s:

Shout out to Asif Sayeh A communication course.

Dr Vishal, 21m 38s:

Yeah, 100%, like I genuinely I mean, I didn't really know much about Asif and it's me too was the one that introduced me to him and I thought, okay, what's this guy about? And then he did like an introductory sort of webinar and yeah, just, it just worked with me, it just clicked and I just thought let me just go on in. From then I haven't looked back. It just gave me like you talked about systems and it just gave me such a structured way of doing or carrying out an examination completely different to dental school obviously, but it was such a game changer. The other practical one was big one was Aspire, so by Richard and Rahil. So, yeah, they massively helped in terms of the clinical aspect. That's where our ROI comes in.

Dr James, 22m 23s:

Bro, like you know, when it comes to soft skills as in how you speak and present information, the soft skills or the hard skills bro To use.

Dr Vishal, 22m 31s:

Absolutely my God.

Dr James, 22m 33s:

Yeah, to use a Gary V quote, the soft skills, or literally the hard skills.

Dr Vishal, 22m 37s:

Yeah.

Dr James, 22m 39s:

And you need both. You're never going to hit your potential and profitability. Now I reckon you're never even going to hit like you might hit like 30, 40% tops of your potential unless you develop your soft skills as well, especially when it comes to remuneration. It's that critical yeah it's so important. And you know from hanging around with Aspire and from going on this course as well. There was one thing that he said that really stuck out to me and he said hey, do you know what? If you survey virtually all the dentists up and down the country, you ask them how good are your communication skills out of 10? All of them will say eight out of 10. Yeah, which makes no damn sense because there has to be a standard deviation distribution. There's going to be a bell curve, right? Yeah? Yeah, of course, some of us are going to be five, most of us are going to be five, some of us are going to be three and only some of us can be eight, certainly not all of us. So it's interesting because, again, it's like it's like an awareness thing. You know, how good do we think we are versus how good are we actually? And if we're in that mindset we think it's not something we can improve then we'll never actually realize how good we could be. And I definitely look back at the start of my dent and Claire, you think you're. Everybody thinks they're hot shot, everybody thinks that they vibe with their patients on that front. But I promise everybody who's listening you're open and receptive to that information. Even if you can just be open to it. That's all you need to start and I promise you it's well worth it. That stat really stuck with me.

Dr Vishal, 24m 14s:

Yeah, I think you've just got to be changeable, right. You've just got to be mindful of you can be, you can have that vibe, like you said, with your patients, but ultimately there has to be, like you said, about efficiency. You've only got a half an hour or I don't know. Let's say you have half an hour checkups, then you've got them, you can vibe with the patients, but if you're vibing for 30 minutes, then what are you getting out of it? But you've got to have some sort of structure in that half an hour to allow you to get to the end goal of it as well.

Dr James, 24m 41s:

Boom, awesome, all right, cool. Well, listen, thank you for all of that. Wisdom, knowledge, official. Any more top tips whenever it comes to systems and processes in the practice that you have which really allowed you to shift the efficiency of practice in a positive way, anything you can think of, cause for me, we've covered the biggies.

Dr Vishal, 25m 3s:

Yeah, yeah, I mean, look, I think, as the owner, I think for me was just having a set date where I do certain things. So if it's to do with so, my calendar, if I ever went through it, there'll be certain days where I'll be paying the suppliers or sorting out an associate schedules or pays, or you know, if there's everything scheduled and if on that day it has to happen, you can't sort of veer away from it. That's one system I have. The other things will be. The biggest thing I find now and I still do it to this day is having a list of the different treatment modalities you have. So if you're doing, like I don't know, a composite filling or a root canal treatment, then have a list of all the stuff you want set out for that treatment, and so then what it does is the nurse comes in the morning, they look at this list and they say, oh, this has got, I don't know, composite bonding. Fine, we need to set up for it. Let's look at this list so we know exactly what he wants. So we take all the brain power, all the energy, from thinking about I need to get this or I need to get this, I need to get this, whereas when you've got a list of everything you need, it's just there. It's black and white. See, that's cool as hell.

Dr James, 26m 11s:

And anybody listening to this podcast. You're all 30, 40 minutes investment, shall we say, in terms of time. Have you just been paid for right then, with that? That's awesome, man, that's so valuable. You can take that and implement it tomorrow and make a huge saving in terms of efficiency.

Dr Vishal, 26m 26s:

Yeah, 100% Like. So each surgery has got a folder of all the different treatments. So we asked all the associates and luckily we're quite lucky because all the associates that we have have all done the same skills and whatever but each surgery will have a folder for the different treatments and all lists laid out. So nurses just don't have to think about what to set up.

Dr James, 26m 46s:

Systems and protocols. Bro, Are you a fan of putting labels on drawers? Yeah, yeah, yeah, that was a definitely out right there, Because it works right.

Dr Vishal, 26m 57s:

Oh my God, yeah, that label maker. I think we've been for like two or three label makers just because we overused it. But it's yeah, 100%. There's nothing more. Yeah, there's nothing more joyful than going into a cupboard and just seeing it's all neatly organized with labels.

Dr James, 27m 13s:

Do you know what? I'm going to share this with you, and I've never known that. I practice to make that very clear. But you know what I find really helps a lot of stuff that I do Having some scripts that you can use, even if it's just a reference point. So I'm wondering if you do that One of these scripts would have mean is for certain conversations that you have and over and over again, if you just document what's said, what people typically want from the conversation, just so you've got some sort of reference point you can refer back to it.

Dr Vishal, 27m 37s:

Yeah, I mean, I don't necessarily have a set script, but there'll be things or nuggets that I'll put in the records or notes or whatever that might bring my attention back to that particular patient or something along those lines. But then you've got something to go off on topic with, because you can't remember every single patient and every little information about them, little bits of information.

Dr James, 28m 2s:

You can't, and that's why sometimes I used to put in the notes like ask about dog or something like that. Or last time she told you her daughter was getting married or something, that's it, that's it, that's fine. That's okay to do that, guys. That's totally cool Because ultimately you're building a report.

Dr Vishal, 28m 21s:

All right.

Dr James, 28m 23s:

Listen. I love to keep these podcasts to about 30, 40 minutes and that was certainly a value packed one. Got any words of wisdom that you'd like to round off on in terms of systems and processes from the practice, improving systems and processes on a practice, ultimately to make them more profitable. Putting you on the spot like a little bit.

Dr Vishal, 28m 42s:

I would just say look, I think systems and processes are the absolute key in order to drive the profits. Be yourself, but make sure that everyone else is on board with your systems and processes. Make sure they understand them prior on them, practice them, make sure they're working for you before you try and sort of mass produce it. I think that'll be key.

Dr James, 29m 4s:

And actually can I just share one more thing I just came into my head just then when you were talking. You know, when you have a written down system or process or protocol, then what can happen is your staff can actually improve it on your behalf because they can add little things to it, which is really cool, Because then it means business is more successful and you don't have to think as much either you actually make more money with less effort when you write stuff down.

Dr Vishal, 29m 30s:

Yeah, absolutely.

Dr James, 29m 32s:

It's cool, like, for example and I'll give you a tangible example on that let's say for composite bonding, let's say you have some sort of rule where it's like and I'm just pulling this out of the air let's say it's like two capsules of composite per tooth. And it's not that, let's say it is, and your nurse is like hey, I find we're wasting a lot of capsules composite. Why don't we make it 1.5 per tooth? You with me? Yeah, They'll never know that. Then we'll never actually be able to amend that protocol unless you have it on the first place, which is ultimately saving money for practice. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, there's another guy called Andy Andy, andy, andy Andy McDougal. Have you ever heard of him? No, he is this and, by the way, I have no affiliation with or anything like that. He runs this company and it's purely about it's purely about getting a really good handle on your numbers as a practice principle. So he goes through your numbers in such grand detail. It's absolutely mental, like he figures out how much your cost of a checkup is based on your time, based on your overheads, in terms of your electricity, in terms of your water and also based on materials you use. And then what you can do is you can calculate how much you need to charge for certain things so you can grab your margin. Basically, you can figure out what you need to charge to make a margin on that appointment. But that stuff that's super granular. Like nobody really goes to that level of detail. But in business what I've always found is the devil is in the detail and it's worth doing stuff. The people who are the most successful do the stuff that most people can't find the time or energy to do. So that is the killer thing that distinguishes those between those who are very successful in business and people who maybe just do all right.

Dr Vishal, 31m 22s:

Yeah, no, I agree with you. And on that topic I say the one big thing that helps me in terms of a business or looking at that side of things, is zero. You've probably heard of the platform zero X-E-R-O, right? Zero, yeah, that for me is just yeah. And then from that you've got all your data, you can extrapolate it and then just make sure you do a management meeting. I do one with Smita once a month, just so you can run through the numbers, those granular details.

Dr James, 31m 50s:

Boom, some pearls in there. Vishal, thanks so much for your time. Thanks, I've got to get you back on the Denysund best podcast because I bet there's more where that came from. There is you can even talk even more. So it's a shame to wrap up now around the 30, 40 minutes mark, but that's cool because we can definitely do that in a little soon.

Dr Vishal, 32m 7s:

Thanks so much for having me. It's been a pleasure.

Dr James, 32m 9s:

I'll see you soon, bye.

Dr Vishal, 32m 11s:

Take care.