Leslie Espinola on Why Most Dental Practices Fail for Business Reasons Not Clinical Ones

What's something that most practice owners think is an operations problem, but it's actually a leadership problem? The failure of practices is not a practice doesn't fail because of clinical failures. They have to be there to do everything. In other words, nothing happens when they're not in the office. Let me hire somebody and hope that everything runs well, but I'm going to step back because I don't want to be involved in the business part of it. They get all these bells and whistles, you know, they have all the dashboards and they're trying to monitor their KPIs and where their failure rates are, then do nothing about it. Dentists are not taught the business side of their practice in school. Welcome back to the Dental Economist Show. I'm your host, Mike Huffaker. If you're getting value from the show, please take a moment to subscribe, leave a review or share it with a colleague. Genuinely helps us bring more of these conversations to you. Today's guest has seen just about everything that happens within a dental organization. Leslie Espanola started in dentistry as a dental assistant and treatment coordinator. She learned the business from the inside out, working her way through practice management, regional operations, multi specialty leadership and executive roles across some very different dental organizations, including Urgent Care Dental, A Florida fqhc, Pepperpoint Partnerships and now the deo. Today she serves as fractional COO and executive coach at the Dental Entrepreneur organization where she works directly with practice owners trying to build more profitable, more sustainable businesses. She also recently launched her own advisory firm, High peak dental advisors. 25 years, multiple specialties, multiple, multiple models. And she started by handing instruments across a dental chair. Leslie, welcome to the Dental Economist Show. Thanks Mike. That was wonderful. I need to take you with me everywhere I go for the introduction and I wish it was only 25 years because that'd make me much younger. Actually. 35 years. Now it's 35 years last September. 35 years. All right. Yeah, yeah. Thank you though. Of course, of course, absolutely. Well, I've been looking forward to having this conversation. You know, to start out, you know, you started as a dental assistant and a treatment coordinator. Many people with your title today come from a business or consulting background. How much does the origin story of yours shape how you operate today? Well, it definitely helped me to be boots on the ground and learn from being an assistant, being in the the weeds of the practice, you know, learning dentistry that way and actually hands on working with dentists and not just general, but it was ortho. I worked with oral surgeons, periodontists, so from my beginning, and it just helped me to understand dentistry much better. And then I was given an opportunity, you know, at a certain stage in my, you know, being clinical, somebody gave me an opportunity to head on the path that I'm on now. So I'm, you know, forever thankful for that organization that gave me that opportunity. Yeah, can you, can you talk about that a little bit more? Was it something that at the time you envisioned happening? Was it a door that was open, that was unexpected? And when it was presented, you kind of said like, wait, this seems really compelling to me and is the path that I want to take? How did that kind of come about? This is a, it's a good story and it's a long one, so I'll keep it as short as possible. But my father was the dentist. I worked for him for 15 years. And when we started, we were small, five person office. By the time I left 15 years later, we were 22 operatories, two surgical suites, all specialty, you name it, all the bells and whistles. And I was a treatment coordinator and my father's office manager. She and I had worked together all those years. As a matter of fact, she trained me when I came to work for my dad out of college and as a clinical assistant. And one day that, that 15th year, I came to her and I said, I want to be an office manager. I want to take that next step. Because at that time my father had partnered with the dso, so there was opportunity there. And I said, I, you know, I want to apply for this office manager position. And she looked at me and she said, you, you're not trained enough for that. And I'll. And it, it sparked something inside of me. I'm not going anywhere, you know, here. And so I had to take that leap. And I left my father's practice after 15 years and moved on. And an orthodontic MSO, I uploaded my resume. You know, I'd never had to do that before, put a resume somewhere. And they saw it and they saw that I had ortho experience. I was certified in ortho in general. And they reached out to me and said, you know, we're looking for a practice consultant for our organization. And I jumped on it. And that, that was my supervisor in that position is still my mentor to this day. And I credit her with a lot of where I am today. So forever thankful. Yeah. Well, let's go back to the multi specialty piece because you've worked across general, ortho, pediatrics, specialty. From your perspective, what model is the hardest to scale operationally. And why would that be? Oh, general, by far. I stick with that. And it's hard because, again, it's general dentistry. We offer so much and there's a general dentist on almost every corner where ortho pedo perio oral surgery, there's not nearly as many out there. So you don't have as many options as you do with general dentistry and general dentistry, they're all trying to do the same stuff, right? It's like, what can we do to grow our practice and make us different? So now let's look at the services we can provide to our patients. So that's going to be, you know, class one ortho clear aligners. It's going to be all on X implant, you know, all of those great things. The technology that's out there, let's add all this technology and let's make it real special. But the guy down the street's doing exactly the same thing. So it's a much harder division to scale than it would be for ortho pedo. You don't have to work to scale, it's just there, which is kind of nice. And then, you know, oral surgery. So that's all fairly easy to do. So what is, what are, I guess some of the paths when you're looking down the street and the other practice is doing many of the same things that you are. How do you differentiate? How do you distinguish yourself? What are the levers that can be pulled to grow and scale? Well, people keep coming back to the practices because of the way they're made to feel when they're there. So if you can capture that patient, then it becomes a customer service base keeping them scenario. So people don't know if they have good or bad dentistry in general. Right. So you're coming in to get a crown, you're coming in to get an implant. They don't know if there's an open margin on the crown or anything like that. They just know that they love their dentist, they love the team, they love the atmosphere. And that's all built on culture. And I think that's what keeps people. So then it becomes a matter of not only do we need to keep them, but how do we get them in the first place. So then it's a kind of a marketing edge. And I am not a marketing expert, never claim to be, but there's so much happening in that side of it now with AI and with the marketing that can be done that once you capture those patients and they call, then it becomes an operational opportunity. So we have to capture them, answer the call, get them in the door and then make them feel like that's where they belong. Speaking of operational opportunities, what's something that most practice owners think is an operations problem, but it's actually a leadership problem? Oh, turnover culture. The shallow candidate pool is a big one. I was going to say just the overall, the overall operations of a practice really stems from leadership. And it's funny because I was just thinking about this earlier today. I was having this conversation with someone else and that, you know, the failure of practices is not, you know, a practice doesn't fail because of clinical failures, it fails because of administrative failures. And dentists are not taught the business side of their practice in school. They're taught, you know, individual excellence. They're taught, you know, the clinical skills, not the operational tasks that it takes to run your practice. And so, you know, there's a couple of failure paths that happen in there. You've got your dentist owner failure path where they have to be there to do everything. In other words, nothing happens when they're not in the office. You know, there shuts down. They're the most productive of all their associates. It just doesn't work when they're not there and they take full. You know, they blame it on everything else, but really it's. We're trying to manage everything and then you have your hire and hope. Right. So let me hire somebody and hope that everything runs well. But I'm going to step back because I don't want to be involved in the, the business part of it. I'm a dentist, I want to be clinical. I want to help my patients and then hire a leader and hope that everything works well. And then you've got your spreadsheet dependent offices where they, they get all these bells and whistles, you know, they have all the dashboards and they're trying to monitor their KPIs and where their failure rates are and then do nothing about it. Yeah. So. And they stagnant. What does a healthy relationship look like in a dental practice between the dentist owner, the office manager, the staff? What's the division of labor look like when it's working well and where the responsibilities sit and how, you know, to delegate and who kind of takes charge for different situations that may come up and kind of. How do you think about that dance that I think happens within every practice? Yeah. And we lovingly call that our organization chart. Right. So you've got your dentist that is the top leader in any practice. And the dentist should know everything that is going on in the practice, whether they want to be a part of it or not. Because how many dentists do we hear say if there's interpersonal conflict with the employees, I don't want to be a part of it? Because that's right, you deal with that. That's the last thing they're thinking of when they come out of school is, yay, I get to deal with that. So the dentist should know everything. But as a high level, I mean, we always say at the DEO what we're trying to help our dentists be, our entrepreneurs, the CEOs executives. And then you hire your leadership team. And your leadership team needs to know the ins and outs of that practice at every level. They're the ones that you go to, the dentist goes to that the front desk team or support teams are going to, to ask questions of how do you want us to, to be more effective? How can we be better? So that's that leadership team. And you can have a coo, you can have a regional director, depending on how many locations you have. You can have just that office manager level. If you're a single location or two locations, one being a satellite, you can have one office manager. But that leadership level is super important in what they're overseeing. And then you may have departments like your, your hygiene department. So an office manager who's not a hygienist, how effective are they going to be trying to lead a hygiene department? So you may want to have your, one of your hygienists as a lead hygienist, you know, kind of overseeing that department. Your doctor owner is going to oversee his associates. In the clinical side, you may have a clinical lead who handles the assistance and making sure that things are running on the schedule, the workflow is there on the back end. And of course your front desk is going to answer to the office manager, as it always should be, because they're administrative. So that's the org chart that we always recommend. And it really depends on the size of your practice. How many locations do you have? How big are you trying to scale? What are your goals? And so with the right people in place, it's easy to reach those. But I often find that that is the gap. That's a big gap and a lack of understanding roles and responsibilities in each position. Sometimes they're often very unclear and there's no systems in place. And that's what I hear from doctors and owners all the time. I need systems in place that will scale so with what you just described, what do you say that those are the reasons that like not having clearly defined roles and responsibilities, the org chart, the operations piece, why groups will start to break down between say location 2 and 10 when you're looking to scale or when you're looking to grow even maybe between two and three and four practices. So what are the most consistent reasons where that effort fails? Yeah, because they don't have those things in place. And so what we find is that somebody who can have two practices is doing great. You go to the third practice, you start opening the third one. Sometimes that's where the failure happens. Because what you need to scale is a plug and play. You have to have those first two operating exactly the same. The same, the same systems in place, the same processes that they're following. It needs to be run identical. So two practices, it's easy to do that. When you open a third, it becomes much more difficult. Like I said, you know, one office manager can kind of oversee two, you add in a third. There's no way. And so we have to have those processes and systems in place before that we can plug and play. Before you open any additional locations? Yeah. So the DEO's pitch is 50% more profit, 50% fewer hours in 12 to 24 months. When that doesn't happen for a member, what is usually the reason? Repeat that for me, Mike, if you don't mind. Yeah, yeah, no problem. So the DEO's pitch is 50% more profit, 50% fewer hours in 12 to 24 months. When that doesn't happen for a member, what is usually the reason? Yeah, it's because we are here to give you the recommendations based on our experience and our knowledge and what we've seen works and doesn't work. And we find that a lot of members will join and they, they want to be a part of it, but then we'll give them a recommendation that is very difficult for them to see through or see a big picture of and they just don't follow through. And that's the problem. So it's the lack of follow through. Or it could even be that, hey, you know, I've worked with my team for five, 10 years, I've hired the DEO. I've got a coach who I've only known for three, four, five months who's telling me these things that I should be doing. I'm scared to make these changes. I could lose some of my team if I make them, you know, is it going to work? I don't know. Do I take that chance? And so a lot of them, they hear it, they want to do it, but they just can't take that step forward and actually see it through. And that's where a lot of the members will do some fractional work, because they'll say, look, I can't do it. I don't have the capacity or the wherewithal to see this through myself. And I don't know that my leadership can do it either. Can you just do it for me? Right. Do it for me. And that's where fractionals come on board and we just play that role and we actually do it. And with all of our backgrounds and leadership and people. Right. So we can usually do it where there is no turnover. You know, we're not worried about that turnover situation where some of the owners are, and we can actually see it through that change management is what's so important. Yeah. Let's follow up on that a little bit. What's maybe one of the hardest coaching moments that you've had where you had to tell an owner something that they. They really just didn't want to hear? Yeah. And that's been real recent. As a matter of fact. I'm dealing with it. I. I have a dentist. No, a dentist who is going through some things right. In their own life, and it's bleeding into the practice. And it's. It's three. Three locations. Lot of turnover. A lot of the way this dentist is seen is that they are right. Their ideas are the way that it needs to be because they know what's best for their practice. And the turnover is probably 70% at this point because of. Because of those personal situations bleeding into the practice and bringing them in. The tension, the culture is really bad. And because of the choices your employees have now, they're not standing for it anymore. And this doctor doesn't understand that it's because of them that this is happening. So having to sit down and have those tough conversations of, doc. The reason this is happening is not because they found a better opportunity. It's because of the way you are presenting yourself. It's the way you are handling yourself and treating your employees. The expectations you have of them are unreal. And you're not understanding that when you talk down to someone, they can go. And then you don't understand what's going on and you're blaming it on other people within the practice or you're blaming it on the. On the systems that you've brought in or that you've hired someone to bring in. And you have to start taking accountability. It's an accountability and ownership issue. Yeah, it can be really hard to get somebody to hold up that mirror and see what part that they play in everything that's taking place. I imagine that's absolutely a challenging piece of the coaching and on the subject of coaching, and I know I can ask you this question because you're not this. And maybe it would possibly offend some other coaches out there in the dental space, but it sometimes feels like there's a version of dental coaching that's really just motivational content that's kind of dressed up as business advice. How do you make sure when you're in a practice, when you're working with owners, that what you're doing is really moving the needle? Well, I definitely, you know, I'm going to lay it out for them first and foremost on what, what we want to do to move that needle so they understand what that is and what that change management looks like. And then it's really about proof is in the pudding. So if I come into a practice, well, let me start out by telling you the first thing I always ask people and doctors, owners, you know, what does your AR look like? And most of them will say, oh, it's pretty good. Or, you know, I'm sure it's good, I know it's good. And that's the first thing I'll do, is run that AR report for me. So if I'm hands on, if I'm a fractional for them, I come in, I'm going to pull that report and say, no, your AR is outrageous, it's bad. You need to know this stuff. And I will physically go in and start working it for them and just getting it done. And that moves a needle. I can give them resources. Another scenario would be supply cost. We always want to stay within benchmarks of, of expenditures and, you know, supply cost. Our benchmark is 4 and 7% and they're spending 15%. Well, the first thing I can do, and it's, it's quick to move a needle, is let's get you with some resources to help you do that. And those resources are proven to be effective and that can happen within just a week or two where they start seeing savings by the following month. And so I think it is a prove it right? So it's not just talking it through, putting on somebody else to do. Here's what I want to do for you, here's what I'm going to do for you. And you are going to see the results within 30 days in these areas. And if you don't, then we can have that conversation where I'm not being effective for you. So proof is in the pudding and I really believe that. Yeah, I don't want to call that low hanging fruit because there's a really strong impact that it has. But it sounds like the approach is let's get some wins right off the bat. Let's find areas that can be high impact that don't take a significant amount of time at least to start to see that impact. What are some of the other areas that are high impact but become a little bit more complex to operationalize or a little bit more of a long game where it's going to take some more time to ensure that that system or process or whatever the case may be is being implemented across the organization? Yeah, I think that's gonna fall under the salary categories. That's always one that is typically high. And they don't understand how to get that within a workable level or benchmark. And so there's several avenues we can take to fix that. But it is a long game sometimes, depending on what we're looking at. So the short game would be, you know, if your, if your payroll is high and we just can't afford to bring someone else in, if you're shorthanded clinically, you know, we're not going to hire somebody else and elevate your payroll anymore. What we're going to do is we're going to cross train your front desk team. Right. So that's, that to me is a low hanging fruit and a quick fix for that. So they can go back there and help you clinically, not so much with the patient, but they can do other things that are super helpful. The other thing is you might be overstaffed. So do you have too many people that are overlapping in their positions? And that's where a great evaluation needs to come in. Let's analyze what each person is doing, let's analyze their skill level and their knowledge. And you know, I'm never in any business, any industry to terminate someone's position. That's I don't like doing. That's not what I want to do. But let's use people for what they're the best at and let's make sure that we are utilizing those skill sets and leveraging them to perform in the practice at the top of their training and skill set. And I fall into this clinically a lot. So you can, you know, doctors will hire expanded functions, you know, expanded duties, dental assistance and not use them to the top of their certifications, which is such a waste of money because they turn that over. So we go through that as part of the analysis that we do and we will find ways to fix that. But that's, it's. That can be a short game and a long game and one of the hardest ones sometimes to fix. I love to talk a little bit more about some of the benchmarks because I find it really fascinating. So the supply piece I've heard before, the 4 to 7%, what is typical spend on labs for general dentistry? I'm also curious, as a technology guy, I don't know if a lot of people are thinking about it in this way. Is there a benchmark for percentage of technology spend that people think about inside a particular practice either as a percentage of production or as something else? When you think about the these stacks that people are building. So I guess kind of two questions there. Sure, sure. So we'll start out with the lab piece of it because that lab piece is anywhere between 4 and 7% of production as well a month. And that is a big gap. When you're talking about dollars, that 4 to 7 is a huge dollar difference. So the way I explain that is if you are a bread and butter practice, if you're doing single unit crown, simple extractions, fillings, you have, you know, a hygienist doing a lot of profis, very little SRP perio treatment, then you're going to be that bread and butter of 4%. But when you start transitioning into having a robust perio department, if you're doing all on X implant, if you're doing, you know, invisalign cases or not even invisalign, just any clear aligner or you are making in house crowns, multi unit crowns, you know, things like that, then you're going to be at that higher 7% lab and, and then talking about the technology piece of it depending on what you're using that technology for. So if you're using technology and it is taking place of some previous in house employees. Right. And again hate going down that road, but where we are, then your technology benchmark can be a little higher. So if you are adding technology that is not increasing your production and yet you still have a high payroll, that's not where we want to be. So technology either needs to a take place of someone that you are paying an hourly rate for that is doing, you know, a decent job, where technology is going to come in and do an excellent job is what our hopes are. Created to do or it needs to be technology that's driving revenue into your practice. Right. And it's redoubling what you're paying for that technology. And technology is from one end of the spectrum to the other. Right. So. And we all know that now it's just really coming into this industry and creating some really great things for us. And. But we need to be very specific. You can't bring it in and use it, but using it for the wrong reasons or not using it to its full capacity. Yes. Thing. Yeah, I'd be interested in your take. There's become more solutions in the space that are doing voice technology. And I'm not talking about the automated AI technology where, you know, you're, you're filling a schedule or you're working as an AI receptionist or it's a call recording of conversations. Like all of those I think have maybe clearer paths to ROI that could be analyzed. But I'm talking about the clinical voice technologies. And so a voice perio technology, a voice restorative technology, maybe it's voice notes or ambient listening technology where it absolutely makes the life of the clinician easier than it would be otherwise. You could make an argument that it elevates the ability to treat the patients and you're not missing anything and you're keeping better records of everything that's taking place and you're making sure that patients feel seen because you're not sitting there typing, you're actually face to face while you're having the conversation. But those all require investments. And I don't know that there's a clear line that you can just draw that says this is going to increase production if we're using that metric of a production increase for a technology investment. But maybe I'm missing it. We, we do this ourselves, by the way. And I'm still like evaluating what the, what the actual ROI is, what the return on investment is. Part of it, I think is going to turn into a retention play or a recruitment play, one or the other where providers that are being recruited into an office want to have the support of these technologies and you're less likely to hire them, which is a whole different kind of ROI analysis. But I'd be curious. I know it's pretty new technology, so I don't know if you put a lot of thought into it, but what your viewpoint is on that function specifically. Yeah, well, I do have a lot of thoughts on that and what the return on investment this is going to be because this is happening. It's coming into the Space. And I love that it is being added more and more. Let's look at this from a personal standpoint alone, just at the end of the day. How many providers are trying to write their notes at the end of the day or the next day after they have either worked on the patient 24 or 48 hours prior to not locking their notes at the end of the day, trying to remember exactly what they did. So the time savings alone on the personal side of this, getting home in a decent hour, so you're not sitting in your office writing up all the typing in all these notes. So that's one aspect. I'm looking at it from a personal standpoint and the efficiency on that side. But then look at it from another side of if you're just talking in and you're doing your perio charting through this or you're doing your notes through this and saving, saving 10 minutes or possibly even 15 minutes, what is that going to do for Your schedule? Saving 10 or 15 minutes at every appointment. You know what that says to me as a coach and an operator? We can add another patient into the schedule. Yeah. So there's your revenue generation from it. Because if you're saving that kind of time throughout your day and just the convenience of it, the ease of use, first of all. And then that personal gain of time back, I think is invaluable because that's the only thing that we could ever gain back for ourselves is time. You know, time is so valuable for us anymore and, you know, the efficiency part of it. So there is, I think there is a financial return on investment and I think there is a personal gains return from it. No, I think that makes a lot of sense. That's a great way of thinking about it. Do you think there's any validity, maybe not today, but in the future from a retention or recruitment perspective? I think there probably is now. Now moving into the future when everybody hasn't. It's a very common part of practice, then it's not. It's not going to be as prevalent. But for now, absolutely. Because there's a lot of people that ask me, I have a lot of doctors that ask me, you know, what can I do to make it easier for me? You know, how can I ensure that my hygienists are doing their notes? How can I make sure my associates are doing their notes easier? And how easy would it be to do that? You how easy would it be for a hygienist right now to be able to tell a hygienist you know, instead of waiting for an assistant to come into your operatory to do your period charting for you, you know, jotting it down in the system or for you having to turn around and do it, you know, how easy would it be to just talk into that while you're doing it? And I think that that is your retention, that is your recruiting element right now. And it. I don't know how long that will be because I don't know when it's mainstream, but that's where that falls into. Yeah, let's zoom out a little bit and talk about the industry a little bit. You know, you've been in the industry for 35 years across Independent Practices, FQHC, Urgent Care, DSOs. What are some of the biggest, like structural shifts you've seen in that time? What are some of the big changes or milestones that you've seen take place and where do you think we're at now? Well, I think, you know, early on, you know, DSOs and I love every model that's out there. Right. I'm in this industry to love them all. DSOs were big. People were partnering with DSOs to get the most out of what they had and what their end game would be in that. I have now found more and more that owners want to try and keep what they have independently as, as much as they can. They're looking for ways to either form smaller DSOs for themselves with people they know, much smaller segment and just to gain just, you know, for certain aspects of having that DSO model rather than going into a big one. So I'm finding that a lot with independent practices when it comes to urgent dental care, which I think is a fascinating model right now and it is really hitting hard. And I started out years ago with someone that, that I thought was a brilliant mind. He created this down in Florida and he was one of the first I'd ever heard of to do this. And that's where I gained my knowledge on Urgent Dental. 24 hour 365 a day, which is basically a dental hospital. Yeah, that looked like. And now I'm seeing that become more mainstream and more, more organizations building that model that are specific to urgent dental. I love that. And then when it comes to the FQHCs, I mean, what do we say about that? They are there. They will always be there. They are helping a community that a lot of us in the mainstream just either can't or just don't have the ability to do so. They are helping the underserved population that need it. So much and they are protected group so that these people can go in there and feel safe. And I admire that greatly. I was in that industry for a very long time and and so I just think the big change is coming. Private sector and PE backed. Yeah. What is your perspective on practices working full schedules on Fridays or even being open over the weekends? Part of where the question comes from is we recently did a pretty big analysis across all of our data set and all of the locations that are mostly affiliated with DSOs. Like 85% of the practices on our software solutions are tied to multi location groups and DSOs. And the average across the entire client base for growth year over year had to be on the the platform for two years for to be counted in this analysis in 2025 was 4% growth. But what we saw in averages, you know, could be dangerous. There were 30% of the practices were over 10%, 15% were under 10%. So there is definitely a span across there. But one interesting takeaway and it was a small sample size but groups or I'm sorry practices where your largest production day was Friday actually grew at over 8% compared to practices where that was not the case. And again I don't think that's all that common because dentistry often is not as available on Friday. But maybe your perspective on is there an obligation of practices for access to care for patients, to have extended hours or is it okay to run a business where it's like hey, this is meeting my needs, this is meeting the needs of my team and my staff and maybe it's a little bit less challenging to navigate if I don't have to work, worry about staffing on a Saturday or on a Friday. Right. Well, I think it goes both ways and that's, you know, that's a really complex question and scenario in my mind. I do think you need to be available for your community, whatever relation that is. So for me, you know, most general practices are open four days a week, Monday through Thursday. But I find that if you stack your hours, let's say that you are, you know, staggering a Tuesday until 7 o' clock at night. So you're open from 9 to 7 or 10 to 7 instead of the 8 to 5 or the 8 to 4. If you stagger those hours to make it convenient for working families, people who just can't afford to take off of work or take their children out of school. Right. You've made those hours convenient for them to come in Fridays. Being open on Fridays, I think that's really a 50, 50 scenario. Because if you've got extended hours hours, then that's great. Fridays are another working day for most industries. You know, most of us work Monday, Fridays. I just think a lot of people, if they're going to take off the day to do anything, it's going to be a Friday leading into the weekend. So that that could gain some more revenue into the practice by being open at least half a day on Friday, you know, in the morning, I think the weekend holiday, late night, extended hours. Leave that to the urgent care facilities that are opening up now. You know, let them know that they're not in the industry to take your patients. That's not what they're doing. But what they're allowing is for the owners and dentists of these general practices, or any practice for that matter, to have that family time that they so need from working a Monday through Thursday or Monday through Friday schedule. You know, have your time, have your vacations, and refer to an urgent dental facility to handle those emergencies that your patients might have. And then if you have a great relationship with those facilities now, it becomes like a, you know, a hospital and doctor relationship. When their patients are going into a hospital for something, it can be the same. And we've been advocating for that for decades in this industry is having that same type of relationship, you know, with those urgent care providers. So I think it goes both ways. I do believe in extended hours, whatever that looks like for the practice. Wherever you are, what your patient base is, what your demographics are, I think that has a big play in it as well. Yeah. So a question I ask everyone on this podcast is, why are you still bullish about dentistry? You've been in the industry for decades now. What is it that when you wake up, still gets you excited and that you're excited about the future? That's a big question, too. I can tell you. I love the industry. I have been in it for so long. I don't know anything different. Right. And I just feel like my knowledge of this industry expansive because of everything that I have experienced. And I am proud of what I have gained and what I've learned over these years and what I can offer someone else. So I wake up in the mornings and I say to myself, people are coming to me because they want my help and they want my knowledge and they want my skill set. And I want to provide that to them. And I want to be somebody that years down the road, somebody says it's because of her and what she did for me that I am where I am now. So that's I wake up every day and I just try and live that and know that hopefully I'm going to make an impact on someone else at some point. So last one for a practice owner listening right now, they're maybe they're stuck, they're doing okay, but they know they should be doing better. They're not really sure where to start. What is the first thing you would tell them to do? Reach out and ask questions. Wherever that might be, whoever that might be, whether it be a colleague, whether it be a study club, whether it be someone who is having coaching from somewhere else, someone who is more successful than them, they can always learn from, ask questions, do research and, and then just, you know, you can. It doesn't hurt to have conversations. It doesn't hurt to make phone calls and say, here's where I am. How can you help me? Doesn't mean you have to dedicate your life to it. But ask the questions and ask for help because there's people out there that know more, that have more experience and that can guide you over that hurdle that you have have right now. Thank you so much, Leslie. For people that are looking to find you, how, how do they go about it? Yes. Well, you can either look me up on LinkedIn, you can go through the DEO. I am a coach with the DEO. So yeah, either way I have social media as well. Awesome. Thank you so much for joining. It was a real pleasure. Thanks Mike. I appreciate it. It's a lot of fun. The Dental Economist show is brought to you by Planet dds. To find out more about how cloud based dental software by Planet DDS helps unleash dentists and their staff to focus on patient care, visit www.planetdds.com. stay tuned for upcoming episodes by following wherever you listen to podcasts. Thanks for listening.