2:00

Actually, Mike, you know me, I'd

2:02

have like three or four tears. Three

2:04

or four tears. Yeah. That's about the

2:06

fourth grade. Like it was violent. Each

2:08

street's a boot in township in the

2:10

country, man. Holy cow. It was rough

2:12

growing up. Hey, Liz, what inspired moving

2:14

over to this kind of format? We

2:17

got some video going now. Well. All

2:19

the cool kids are doing it. So

2:21

I'm going to say full on peer

2:23

pressure. Um, but truly it's, we were

2:25

having some technical difficulties and we all

2:27

live on zoom. I know that people

2:29

like to see who they're listening to

2:32

and it gave us more flexibility. So

2:34

I think, you know, this is a

2:36

fun experiment. Thanks gentlemen for letting me

2:38

play with this. I, I, uh, I'm

2:40

excited. I'm still in the studio. So

2:42

now I'm just lonely in the studio

2:44

and even, and I have this weird

2:47

background. So it looks like my shoulders

2:49

keep. Yeah, you keep disappearing and fading

2:51

out. I think the invisible woman, it's

2:53

fine. It's always my dream, so it's

2:55

fine. But no, I think it's going

2:57

to be fun and then we can

2:59

play with it on, we can add

3:02

it to all of our YouTube stuff

3:04

and people can still listen as usual

3:06

on all of their podcatchers. And to

3:08

our listeners, thanks for bearing with us.

3:10

If we mess up, Bubba Cook is

3:12

going to cover us. So let's introduce

3:15

our guest. His name is Bubba Cook.

3:17

He is an entrepreneur and innovator with

3:19

over 45 years of experience in accounting.

3:21

financial management, consulting, and coaching. I've worked

3:23

with 400 and more, or more than

3:25

400 dental practices across all of the

3:27

U.S. and North America. He specializes in

3:30

cash flow management, overhead optimization, and profit

3:32

maximization. We are joined today by Boba

3:34

Cook, and we're going to talk about

3:36

how you can use simple tools that

3:38

you already have to transform your clients'

3:40

cash flow, plus profitability, plus performance. So,

3:42

without further ado, Boba, welcome to our...

3:45

Oh, my. So loud. Thanks, Michael. It's

3:47

a pleasure to be here. It's good

3:49

to see all you guys. Yeah, it's

3:51

pretty unique. Did you just get a

3:53

Michael? A Michael. Hello, Michael. Oh, wow.

3:55

No, that's good. That's fine. I'm just

3:57

not going to show off the trails.

8:00

There was a 30 for 30. This

8:02

is a sports thing about the stack

8:04

exchange in New York. Yeah. Yeah. So

8:06

they show the pictures of Marc Gasineau,

8:09

Duel Salon, and Joe Cleco. And my

8:11

wife just happens to walk in and

8:13

she goes, oh, she was that young

8:15

Frankenstein pointing at Joe Cleco. I am

8:18

so happy you didn't say, she said,

8:20

is that Ron? No, I thought you

8:22

were going. So I don't want to

8:24

hog all the questions here, but how

8:27

do you get someone started? If they've

8:29

been so focused on the offense, new

8:31

revenue, new patients, how do you get

8:33

them to start playing the defensive side?

8:36

You know, it really goes back to

8:38

fundamentals. And one thing we had to

8:40

do was go into their QuickBooks and

8:42

reorganize their QuickBooks into more or less

8:45

a, you know, if you look at

8:47

it, just a standard set of QuickBooks,

8:49

a P&L, it's... it's alphabetized. There's no

8:51

rhyme or reason to how they structure

8:54

their accounts. So we set up their

8:56

accounts into something that makes sense. For

8:58

instance, the first thing you look at

9:00

is called team expenses. And then we're

9:03

very fortunate in the dental industry where

9:05

they've developed benchmarks. And so they have

9:07

percentages that you need to arrange, you

9:09

need to fall into for your team

9:12

expenses. And so when you organize your

9:14

P&L and you have all these major

9:16

overhead categories and you have these benchmarks,

9:18

and you set it up for an

9:21

owner doctor, the owner doctor described to

9:23

me as like turning the lights on.

9:25

It's like he looked at his P&L

9:27

before we worked with him and it's

9:30

like I see a bunch of numbers

9:32

but they don't really make a lot

9:34

of sense. So all I see is

9:36

revenue and profit. I don't really understand

9:39

anything in between. And then when we

9:41

get finished organizing things correctly, he can

9:43

look at all the various departments and

9:45

see those benchmarks and see if he's

9:48

within benchmark or out of benchmark. And

9:50

it's really easy for him to really

9:52

zero in on where his overhead is

9:54

running out of control. So that's awesome.

9:57

So you're providing clarity on fiscal happenings

9:59

through it. the

16:00

story, um, and real quick caveat. Did

16:02

you happen to win anything at profit

16:04

con, Bubba? Oh, John, you know, I

16:07

forget what was that. Oh, sorry. Why

16:09

did you win an award? Hey, what's

16:11

up, rookie of the year? Yeah. So

16:13

anyway, holding up for podcast. Oh, this,

16:16

oh, this old thing. Oh, no. There's

16:18

a lot of talk about storytelling. If

16:20

you want, maybe I'm missing something. How

16:22

does Excel tell a story? Well, like

16:25

I said, Ron, you know, like, I'll

16:27

give an example. You like that, Mike?

16:29

I know. That was a good question.

16:31

Yeah. Yeah. How does it tell? Well,

16:34

OK, for instance, let's I had like

16:36

providing a narrative that goes along with

16:38

it because like, you know, I see

16:40

ups and downs, ups and downs, but

16:43

it doesn't tell me the story. It

16:45

just says up and down. So let

16:47

me give you an example. Last year

16:50

we had a client and we developed

16:52

a really good tool. They're doing about

16:54

$15 million a year, two locations, two

16:56

dental practice, two locations. And we developed

16:59

this really sophisticated tool with their leadership

17:01

team and we were really excited about

17:03

it. And they were going to be

17:05

setting, setting some pretty. pretty lofty goals

17:08

and they were going to be doing

17:10

some pretty good things with respect to

17:12

revenue. And then on week two a

17:14

snowstorm hit and they shut down their

17:17

dental practice for two weeks and then

17:19

about week four they lost two of

17:21

their highest producing doctors. So all of

17:23

a sudden now the story is uh-oh

17:26

you know we have this great plan

17:28

but our actual numbers are way way

17:30

under and so we had this conversation

17:32

about do we adjust our plan or

17:35

do we go with our plan and

17:37

see what we can do to make

17:39

up for it and so you know

17:41

we all made this decision that we're

17:44

just going to keep our plan in

17:46

place and we're going to see what

17:48

we can do to get back on

17:50

plan and so every month like we

17:53

would do certain action plans and then

17:55

we would see that that trend graph

17:57

starting to edge back toward the plan.

20:00

sale is in real life situations.

20:02

So like when you're developing something

20:04

specifically for a client,

20:06

trying to solve a problem, you know,

20:08

you can go in and find any

20:10

kind of Excel video on any type

20:12

of special thing you need to do

20:14

in Excel. And that's how I learned

20:16

Mike is just doing it by watching

20:18

videos and then trying at trial and

20:20

error and just developing them. So

20:22

I got a really neophyte question, but

20:25

the integration of QuickBooks to

20:27

Excel, is that something the data? connected

20:30

live, so to speak, or is it

20:32

you export it, work with the data

20:34

that's been exported and you repeat the

20:36

process of export import types? Yeah,

20:38

so we're going through this iteration.

20:40

So it's all manual right now. We all

20:43

have to cut and paste, but we started

20:45

a project about three months ago. So

20:47

we're moving to more like a

20:49

computer application where it'll be integrated

20:52

and it'll be online real time. And

20:54

so we'll be able to just,

20:56

it'll just be automatically downloaded every

20:58

day. Okay, but our listeners, if they've

21:00

never done this, they could just

21:02

do an export of a CSV

21:04

file or whatever. Yeah, start working

21:06

with it. Exactly. Very easy to do

21:09

using Splash.to. Have you found using

21:11

Excel, these other tools, when

21:13

presented to the customers, does it

21:15

show them something that they

21:17

aren't aware of, but now become

21:19

consciously aware of it? Because, you

21:21

know, we all trust our instinct.

21:24

My gut says this. Have you been

21:26

able to show them stuff and they actually

21:28

believe it to be true or do they

21:30

try to override it with, well, I know

21:32

my business better than the system

21:34

itself? You know, our clients, our doctors

21:37

are like hungry to learn. I have

21:39

never run into a situation where they

21:41

want to know. And when they see it,

21:43

just like that doctor told me, it's like

21:45

you turn the light on for me now.

21:47

I couldn't see it before, but now I

21:49

see it clearly. Like I'm running like.

21:51

Notoriously what happens in a dental practice,

21:54

just so you know, the front desk, someone

21:56

will come in there and say, hey, we're

21:58

overworked. Let's hire somebody else. the doctor

22:00

doesn't know. He just says, okay, go

22:02

ahead and hire whoever you need to.

22:05

And all of a sudden, their admin

22:07

wages are like way over Benchmark killing

22:09

him. And he feels that he knows

22:11

that he just didn't know how to

22:13

see it. And then when I show

22:16

him in graphs, it's like, Oh yeah,

22:18

I should have hired that person. So

22:20

having those tools prevent him from going

22:22

there and doing that. Real quick question

22:24

about knowing that you're in dental practices

22:27

and I assume you've worked with other

22:29

types of businesses. Would you say, what

22:31

is the one thing that you would

22:33

share with your other fellow accounting firms

22:35

or financial coaches that dental practices need

22:38

to know? What's the number one most

22:40

important thing that your dentists are hungry

22:42

to learn? I wish they had more

22:44

clarity on. Yeah, like what's really fun

22:46

and what's really interesting is like most

22:49

doctors they have an idea in their

22:51

mind like how much money I want

22:53

to make. They just don't know how

22:55

to get there. And so when you

22:57

put together a complete package like a

23:00

plan where you show them here's the

23:02

revenue that's going to come in and

23:04

here's how much you want to make

23:06

and then here's how much you have

23:08

left over to cover your overhead expenses

23:11

and then build budgets around that. That's

23:13

the one thing that they really, really

23:15

value. And then what I do is

23:17

I use the allocation tool. And on

23:19

a weekly basis, they'll share their allocation

23:22

tools with me. It's kind of an

23:24

accountability thing to make sure they're allocating

23:26

their money to the right bucket every

23:28

month. And I kind of watch that

23:30

for them so that there's no surprises

23:33

at the end of the year. But

23:35

I think that's the one thing that

23:37

they really value is that entire package.

23:39

They need the whole package. And they're

23:41

not, they don't get it typically unless

23:44

you have the right tools in place,

23:46

like the allocation tool and then the

23:48

Excel and all those things working together.

23:50

So that's awesome. The alarm, sorry, I'm

23:52

on my side. Time flew by. We

23:55

got to wrap it up. You have

23:57

that alarm set up? That's nice. I

23:59

do. It's my wife straight, my picture,

24:01

my wife comes up. So I'm like,

24:04

Oh, it's time. I was quick. I

24:06

got some good questions left over. So

24:08

I'll ask them to you offline, Baba.

24:10

Okay. Before we let you go, Baba,

24:12

can you share where our audience can

24:15

get more information, learn from you, connect

24:17

with you? Yes, we, our

24:19

company is dental profits Institute.

24:21

So we have a website,

24:23

dentalprofitsinstitute.com. And then our CFO services,

24:26

it's a sister company called Railhead.

24:28

ceo.com. So those are the two best

24:30

places to reach us, find us. And I'll

24:32

discover, recall, and we'll be able

24:34

to hop on there and have a

24:37

good conversation. So put that in the

24:39

show notes. Thank you for joining

24:41

us today. Thank you. And again,

24:43

congratulations on your award. You really

24:46

are nailed that rookie year, my

24:48

friend. Well done. Thank you very

24:50

much. Well done. All right. Listen, Ron,

24:52

we got a job in front of us.

24:54

We have to recap what we learned.

24:57

We have wrote Obi-Wan's inside her

24:59

axis. I got a GMAT now to

25:01

ask. But first. Hold on. I'm coming.

25:03

I got it. Oh, God. I stretched

25:06

it for you, Tim. I've got

25:08

a trippy question, I think. I

25:10

do. Well, it's not such

25:13

a trippy question, but it's

25:15

a simple question. It is,

25:17

in business, in your experience,

25:19

what do you think is the

25:21

ideal age? What do you mean?

25:23

Ideal age for what? Just of

25:26

what idea like business your business

25:28

career. What was your ideal age?

25:30

Like, what was your favorite age

25:33

as a business owner? It could be

25:35

your age or the business's age.

25:37

Oh, OK, OK. My favorite age as

25:39

a business owner was my very first

25:41

business. And so I think I was

25:44

in seventh grade renting out cassette

25:46

tapes because it because you

25:48

there's no no rented cassette tapes.

25:50

Yeah. And so like Striper like

25:53

I had the Striper album.

25:55

to hell with the devil and

25:57

Scott Schneier took it and

25:59

then Just

30:00

because we're putting numbers in doesn't mean

30:02

we're going to get good information out.

30:04

Or that we like the information that's

30:06

coming out. Look at the data, really.

30:08

You know what I mean? Don't spin

30:10

the data. Yeah, definitely don't spin it.

30:12

Yeah, the truth. You can't deny the

30:15

truth. All right. Where's that lightsaber, Liz?

30:17

Oh! Oh, you know what? That is

30:19

loud. Oh, and look, he's so excited.

30:21

He could really show it. In his

30:23

office, he's waving to listen to our

30:25

podcast, his real lightsaber. He's trying to

30:27

ignite it now. He's looking for his

30:29

Darth Vader helmet. It's all going on

30:31

at once there. It's illuminated. Ron, this

30:34

is a strategy used in-house that we

30:36

think our listeners could use. What do

30:38

you got? One of the things that

30:40

we were talking about last year is

30:42

just being more empathetic in general as

30:44

business owners. I think it is going

30:46

to be the new power strength of

30:48

a leader. But in conjunction to that,

30:50

how do you do that, right? How

30:52

do you help your staff, your teammates,

30:55

your peers? Well, one is understanding what

30:57

some of their personal goals are, what

30:59

some of their business goals are, what

31:01

some of their life's goals are. So

31:03

every year, We have our year-end meeting

31:05

and everything. This year we decided to

31:07

say, hey, what are your top three

31:09

goals? What's your business goal? What's your

31:11

personal goal? What's a family goal? And

31:14

in that way, we can all help

31:16

each other be better human beings, not

31:18

just from a business perspective, but from

31:20

a life perspective. And so if you

31:22

guys want to help your staff out

31:24

even more, find out what they're into,

31:26

what their goals are, and help them

31:28

accomplish it. Yep. Nice. Nice. Very nice.

31:30

Wow, scary. Some things are so loud.

31:32

It scares me and I push the

31:35

button like it's still when you're blue.

31:37

Yeah, mind blowing bombs. Can you hear

31:39

this or now? No. I got one

31:41

last thing for you. It's the GMAP

31:43

now tasks. One task. If you do,

31:45

you'll see results. You know, in this

31:47

conversation, we're talking about industry averages, compare

31:49

yourself. You may have heard this before,

31:51

but You would never go to your

31:54

child I assume and say, hey, what's

31:56

the average of your class? I hope

31:58

you aspire for the average.