Secure Dental-Elijah Desmond: Audio automatically transcribed by Sonix

Secure Dental-Elijah Desmond: this mp3 audio file was automatically transcribed by Sonix with the best speech-to-text algorithms. This transcript may contain errors.

Dr. Noel Liu:
Welcome to the Secure Dental Podcast. Through conversations with the brightest minds in the dental and business communities, we'll share practical tips you can use to scale your practice and create financial freedom for yourself and your family. My name is Dr. Noel Liu, CEO and dentist at Secure Dental, and also co-founder of DentVia. I'm your host for the Secure Dental podcast, and I'm so glad you're joining in.

Dr. Noel Liu:
All righty, welcome to another episode of our Secure Dental podcast, where we bring in many different talents from both inside and outside our dental industry. Today, we have a very special guest, Elijah Desmond. Many of you guys probably know him through DJ Smiles, his cruise ship that he does all the CEs with various talents that he does with, collaborating and getting everybody together. So Elijah is going to be sharing some insights about what he does, how he got started. And, like always, this is your host, Dr Noel Liu. Elijah, my man. Welcome. Thanks for coming in.

Elijah Desmond:
Hey, thank you for having me. I appreciate being here.

Dr. Noel Liu:
All right, Elijah, let's start with a brief intro for some of the guys who's been living under a rock and don't know who you are.

Elijah Desmond:
Hey, listen, I actually love when people don't know who I am. That means I still have more work to do. I'm only 37 years old. I'm not Gordon Christiansen's age yet, so I don't ever expect everybody to know who I am. But for those of you who don't know me, I first want to start off by saying I am a proud father of a five-year-old and ten-year-old little girl, and married to a beautiful woman who supports all of my dreams. I live down here in South Florida. All my businesses are nationwide. I take things that work outside of our industry and that are already established, and they look really, really fun. I do it in our industry. I graduated from the Ohio State University in 2009. Dang. Time flies. I moved to the beautiful islands of Hawaii when I graduated from Ohio State and found out very fast that I was not employable, so my hygiene career ended real fast. I have a knack for business, and I didn't like to be trapped inside of a building, let alone a three-walled clinical laboratory. I also have the ability to, like, make money out of thin air, and to me, it didn't make any sense at all to be taking home $300 or $400 a day when I was making my dentist $3,000 to $10,000 a day, whether it's doing Invisalign cases or doing this high producer. Anyhow, I got my run in business there in Hawaii, and by 2012, I had made my first exit. Fast forward to today. I've started just over 20 businesses. I've successfully failed at seven of them, and I have successfully made seven exits, closed a couple businesses because they weren't passion projects. I only have two businesses left, and I'm a motivational speaker for kids. I have a passion for saving little kids' lives from the stage, specifically high school kids. Nothing dental related, but get off the stage. And when a kid tells you that they were going to take their life but they didn't because of the words you said from the stage is something very powerful. So that's me at a high-level, two-minute intro of who I am, what I stand for, and I'm happy to be on the podcast. I'm grateful for you. Thank you.

Dr. Noel Liu:
Thanks, man, I appreciate it. Your dental hygiene career. Let's dive a little bit into that. What made you decide and go into dental hygiene? You know, what were you thinking at that time?

Elijah Desmond:
Yeah, I was at the time. Well, first off, my uncle's a dentist. My aunt's a hygienist. My mom practice as an office manager for 20 years, and I was raised on a really big farm. I was used to shoveling. Yeah, yeah. Shoveling pig, I'll use the word pig crap, and baling hay. Working really, really, really, really hard. And, I mean, I'm a hard worker. Period. This is how I am. It's in my blood. However, while doing that hard work as a kid, I would tell myself, when I grow up, I'm going to do something in air conditioning, and the only time that I am going to use, like my muscles and sweat, is when I go to the gym and when I run or play a sport. But I'm done working hard like that, and so I use my brain to make my living. Ultimately, I don't work hard like that anymore. That's how I got into dentistry. I got a full-ride scholarship to Ohio State University.

Dr. Noel Liu:
Nice.

Elijah Desmond:
And the story there is pretty unique. I never read a book in my life. I have a learning disability. Actually, I can read you a book out loud, but what I can't do is remember anything that I read. So, I managed to get around through school other ways. I believe in tutors. Personally, I don't think it's a negative thing. I think it's very positive. It means you care enough to actually focus and get that good grade. Teachers really care, and even educators that are in dentistry right, really care. It doesn't matter if it's a college instructor or high school instructor. You really care. So I got good at asking for help and I got great grades at a 4.0 GPA. I tested in a college at at 15 years old full time, and here we are today. Still have never read a book. And it started audiobooks though.

Dr. Noel Liu:
So, man, I love audiobooks, and that's how I pass my time. Audiobooks and podcasts. It's one of those things where I would go back and I would listen to my guests exactly what kind of nuggets they dropped, and I think that's a huge way to do it. Otherwise, me, like you hate reading books. If you tell me to open up a book and start reading from chapter one till the end of the page. I mean, it's not happening. So I feel you, man, I feel you. Yes. So tell me, this year, right, you got involved in dentistry through dental hygiene, and then after that, you said your career has just stopped. What was the transition like? What were you doing after that?

Elijah Desmond:
Yeah. So when I actually stopped practicing altogether. Well, first I started at staffing agency. That was my first business. It was called Hawaii Smiles Dental Temping Agency, and I then started temping and I would go through all the all the islands and I practiced a different dental practices. I had about 80 dentist hygienist assistants working with me through the temp agency.

Dr. Noel Liu:
Wow.

Elijah Desmond:
And then in 2012, I moved to Las Vegas. That was the official transition. I wasn't temping any longer. I'd moved to Vegas and I would go back to Hawaii once a month. I was consulting dental practices at the dental at the time, and so that's what allowed me. After I made I sold the staffing agency, number one. Number two, I was consulting dental practices all over the country. And that was really the big transition for me to completely stop and get out. I just felt like claustrophobic when I was practicing clinically. I just felt like my chest would get tight. I would look at the clock and I'm like, oh my gosh, it is not 11:00. Lunch break isn't till one like it feels like it's like should be 7 p.m. already. It is. Personally, it was not for me. I love my clinical providers, but I just couldn't be one of them.

Dr. Noel Liu:
You're such a honest, I mean, this person and this character that you realize that this is not for you, and you realize it way, way sooner than most of our colleagues. And I remember you saying that at the podcast about your, how your career started and how it ended right away because you made that choice, I love it. So today, what's happening today? Like once when you got to the dental consulting company and you started that, how did you get from there to where you are today?

Elijah Desmond:
Yeah. I mean, I just, I'm going to make it short. I've learned how to make long stories really short. So, I've started just over 20 businesses. And I actually condensed that into a book. When I was at 13 businesses, I made a book Serial Entrepreneur From Startup to Success. It's in the book I made in 18. But how did I get from there to there? Well, I think the number one thing is, is I mastered helping people And what do I mean by helping people? Be very specific because anybody can say they help people. I went out and I created Facebook groups, and I created Facebook groups because I was tired of answering the same email over and over and over again. And so I said, you know what? I'm going to create a Facebook group so I can respond to this one burning question one time, and hopefully, I reach hundreds of people. Sure. Now, fast forward to today, my groups have one group has 26,000. I have another group of 15,000, another one with 6000. A ton of special groups with like 1000 each. And I basically, I've been helping. I've been serving our industry and helping people get on the stage, helping people speak and spread their message. I create influencers; I create dental influencers. I give them the shortcuts to go and help other people. And I put other people before me for mentorship from helping. Biggest thing is, is telling people how I fell on my face. I am not afraid to say I failed. A lot of people are trying to be, you know, Mr. Big Shot, you did this, that really nobody's going to be sitting here clapping authentically for somebody who's did it all. People will clap authentically if you failed on your face and you tell them and you explain the way you got up from your face, right? That's when people will really clap because then you're relatable and you're being real and authentic. And that's what I've always stood for. And so from then when I say then, I mean from when I lived in Hawaii till now, where I live in Florida, I've focused so much on building people by the masses, not by a couple people here or there, not just one-on-one phone calls. Not that I don't do that, but literally through helping thousands and thousands of people through mass communication, like you have a podcast, you're helping thousands of people. My original way of helping everybody was specifically through Facebook and through magazines and just writing articles, writing books, and pouring my heart into people. And now I'm to the point, like even to today, my bank account is small and a small bank account compared to many people, right? But my relationship bank account is bigger than most people in the entire room put together because I have put that much time into growing everybody else. And I really did that because I felt it was hard for me at first coming up in our industry. So because I know how it feels to be the underdog, I don't want anybody ever to feel alone. So, I constantly help and serve. So now I'm to the point in my career to where I can tap that bank account at any time and blow up any business, because I spent the time in the trenches working for free, serving, mentoring, helping people, and that's really how I got from there to here today.

Dr. Noel Liu:
You know, you just nailed it in the head. A lot of times, people are looking, how do I get something out of for nothing? And in your case, it's like, hey, how do I provide value? How do I provide something which the other person can use? And that's use value that you're providing? Love it, man, love it. So I want to touch you a little bit based on failures. Many people are afraid of failures. What's your take on it and how would you say that has helped you grow?

Elijah Desmond:
Yeah. First off, I think a lot of people are afraid to fail. Start with that. I'm not afraid to fail. If I believe in something, I will do something until I'm sure that I have failed at it. Here's what's so crazy. I have failed so many times that I don't have to fail that many times now. Now, do I still fail today? Of course, I do normal, but I fail so much less than I used to. But here's what I've done. I've picked up all of those failure pieces, and I've actually put them together, and this way, I don't have to fail anymore, and I can help. I've helped people. So like, I'm able to help so many people because I wasn't afraid to fail. So, I failed a whole bunch of times.

Dr. Noel Liu:
Wow.

Elijah Desmond:
Right. And so I believe that it's not really true failure. It's just part of the process. Any successful person has failed multiple times. I have added all of the failures I've got, put it together, and now I can help people with all those failures, and I'm more prone to succeed because I have failed, and I failed fast. I didn't tiptoe around. I don't like kind of do stuff. If I say I'm doing something, I am going all in. I'm not tiptoeing around because you don't really know the end result. If you just, you kind of went, I don't kind of do anything. I play full out with everything I did. So when I fail, it truly is a fail because it was impossible. And since I made that happen, I then can tell the next person turn left, don't turn right. And here's the reason why you don't turn left. There's an alligator on your left. There's a huge cliff like 50ft up there. If you don't jump right before you hit the cliff, you will not make it to the like. I can give you specific examples instead of just saying like, don't turn left. So, those failures have made me successful.

Dr. Noel Liu:
So, if you look at an endeavor right now and you have something that you want to tackle, how are you taking it? Like you go like, hey, you know what? I fail so many times in the past now, I'm not going to be feeling that much, but you still have that in the back of your mind that, hey, you know, something might happen, and if it happens, then what?

Elijah Desmond:
So I think your specific question is how do I approach something new so I don't fail? Is that pretty or.

Dr. Noel Liu:
How do you approach something new that you don't fail? But you know in the back of your mind that you may fail still? Yeah, I actually is that going to stop you.

Elijah Desmond:
From, I don't know, in the back of the mind, I'm going to fail. If I think I'm going to fail, I will. I'm not going to do it. I don't think I'm going to fail. I know I'm going to win, but I do know that I have the cushion in my head to where if I do fail, then I'm not like paralyzed and depressed and like, oh, it was the end of the world. Know this failed. No big deal. Get back up, do it again. And the reason that I don't fail as much is not because I know at all. There's a lot of things that I have gathered, a lot of wisdom that I've gathered along the journey to get to where I'm at today, to make it to where ultimately I know way more. But if I go into an area that I'm not the expert in. Okay. I will find the expert, and I will pay for the shortcut.

Dr. Noel Liu:
Love it.

Elijah Desmond:
I'll bend time by going and finding somebody who has been there. I'll find it. Me? In that space, I will pay them whatever it takes to make it to where I fail fast, or I succeed fast. But I'm not afraid of the fail part. If I thought I was going to fail, I wouldn't have did it. Why in the world would I could do anything in the world? Why am I gonna do something where I think I'm going to fail? There's no chance of me failing if failing is not an option. However, when I get to it, and I fail, okay, I failed. That's fine. But I gave it my. It was impossible. I gave it my all. I have no regrets. It was not something in my mind like, oh, sure, I think I'm gonna fail. This might not work. No. I'm winning.

Dr. Noel Liu:
You know, you nailed it right there with the Law of Attraction. And it's like, if you're going to think you're going to fail, you're failing for sure. I mean, I think you probably believe that as well. And if you think you're going to win, absolutely, there's no chance you're going to fail because there is no way out.

Elijah Desmond:
Yes, exactly. I mean, perfect example. It's a life example, not like a dental example or a business, but I have been working on my fitness for a while and I told myself I got up one morning. I hadn't run in like a week and a half, and I basically said, I am not going to run this short path. I'm going to run the long path today, and I'm going to get the best time that I have got in the entire year. I went out that day, that morning. This is like a week ago. I got up, I had a perfect attitude on I'm going to win today. I went out, I ran the long path, and by two seconds, beat my best time that I've had all year. It is a mindset thing, and I believe in the law of attraction to a certain point. I think that's part of it. Believing you can. Seeing that you can have this vision. But at the end of the day, it takes action. I had to lift my feet up. I had to make sure that I was not getting in my brain, and oh my God, I'm tired. I had to actually take action and do it. And so mindset is a big part of it. But actually taking the action steps is the other part of the law of attraction that I feel is a little bit missing from the whole concept of attraction.

Dr. Noel Liu:
Massive action. All right, Elijah. Let's switch gears a little bit. Man, let's dive a little bit into your current business that you're doing with acquisitions. You help dental practices sell and buy.

Elijah Desmond:
Yeah.

Dr. Noel Liu:
What are some of the biggest challenges that you see from a buying side and from a selling side, or mistakes you may call it?

Elijah Desmond:
Yes. Well, so first off let me give some background to I think it's important to have the background to the challenges and I'll come right back. So first I do own a brokerage firm and it is a sell side brokerage firm, however.

Dr. Noel Liu:
Yep. Okay.

Elijah Desmond:
However, we have a very good relationship with all of our buyers. We have 55 buyers in our network. Why do we have a good relationship? We call balls and strikes. We say exactly what it is. We know all of our data. We know all the numbers. Since we do a quality of earnings, we can defend the seller's EBITDA on their behalf. So we're sell side broker, but we have a very good reputation because we call it like it is. Here is the math. Are you going to pay 4 or 5 or 6 or 8 times? Whatever, it may be multiple, but that's the quick background on sell side. Next, I don't know if this is a video podcast or is it a live podcast, but for those that is an audio podcast, I'm wearing a leopard shirt or what? What's that? Yabba dabba doo. The Flintstone shirt.

Dr. Noel Liu:
Yep, yep.

Elijah Desmond:
We are very different, I am different, I am unique, I am my authentic self. I don't do things the same as everybody else. I love and respect the paths that everybody has made in this industry, including the brokers. They do great things. We're not them. We do it different. And how are we doing things different? We didn't talk about this part, but like I'm a DJ, I've been in nine countries and 25 cities, and this the past couple of years, DJing at dental events throughout the entire world, right? So, I basically remixed an idea. Djing is a thing. Like people like to dance, to have fun. I remixed a thing that already worked outside of our industry. I brought it into the broker space and people were like, oh, that's too fun. It's a serious setting, and you can't fun selling your dental practice. So we basically have an event to where we bring ten qualified buyers and put them in a room, confidential setting. We have a full AV setup in the room with a stage audiovisual setup, and we have the music cranking. When the seller comes to the room, the seller comes in the room. And what do we have? A walk-on song. We have a walk-on song for them to sell the business of their dreams. They've been working their butt off for this. They get on the stage and they interview in front of the buyers and we ask them, question me or my business partner. We ask them questions, and then the buyers ask the questions. They already have all the financials two weeks ahead of time. So the buyers ask questions, and they can have up to ten meetings in just one opportunity, one shot, one event. And so that's our background. That's who we are. That's how we're different. I brought music and Brokerage space. And I'm not all like I wear a three piece suit. Sometimes, I actually wear scrubs. Sometimes, I still have a license as a hygienist, but I'm just myself. Whatever I want to wear, today I'm wearing a leopard shirt, but it's unique. It's different. And so that's why we've attracted so many people because they're used to like the same thing. Well, this is totally different. And then full circle, since I gave you the backstory, what are the challenges I'm seeing on the buy side with the challenges on the sell side? Well, can I say top three on the sell side? I would say that dentists are going to sell their practice when it's time to retire. Number one mistake that I've seen.

Dr. Noel Liu:
Okay.

Elijah Desmond:
They're selling when it's time to retire, and there's not that many buyers, and they've a lot of them have built up this big practice. So, say you build up a practice to $2.5 to $3.5 million in collections. That's a thriving practice. It's going to be kind of hard for an average dentist coming out of college or one solo dentist to go and buy the practice. It's a lot of money. And then for the dentist who is looking to just retire, that is a perfect practice, by the way, for a emerging group small, midsize, large DSO, private equity family office. The perfect group to buy. I mean, that's amazing. 2.5 to 3 million in collections. As long as you have great margins, you're getting ate up quick. However, you should stay. They want you to stay. They want you to continue to stay in that practice for 3 to 5 or more years. Now, if you would have thought about selling 3 or 5 years ago, you'd have been made in the shade drinking pina coladas in five years. But since you didn't, you got to stay in the practice unless you want way less for your practice. So will it sell? Sure. But number one mistake I see is you're waiting way too long. Have the conversation now, because guess what? I'll say 50% of the conversations we're having, we're telling the dentist like. And it's just the best advice, right? Your margins really low. Like you got a 12% margin. 13%, 15%. You should probably bring that margin up to 20% or more to get a healthy sale. But right now, is it worth it? So we basically see them not thinking about the sale early. So that's the first thing. The second thing is, is going into the sale and not knowing what perfect looks like for them. We've got to the one-yard line before and got a tremendous offer, both on their real estate and on their practice. And then they go to their financial advisor and they're like, oh, it's not going to be enough for me to really have the lifestyle that I want to have. Why didn't you have that conversation four months ago before we started? Because like, we only pay at the office, get paid if the office sells, right?

Dr. Noel Liu:
Precisely.

Elijah Desmond:
And so, if you would have had these conversations ahead of time to know, here is my number. Because you can work backwards from there, you can know, okay, I'm going to grow my practice to X. That way, I can get x. So that's the second thing that I biggest issue I've seen on the sell side, I want to say the last piece is growing in a small space. That's probably the third one. What do I mean by growing in a small space? Well, you're maxing 3 or 4 operatories out, and you want to sell even if you're going to stay. It leaves very little room for growth. So these offices is not going to be a bidding war, that's for sure. And by the way, I got my auctioneer license a little bit less than a year ago.

Dr. Noel Liu:
Congratulations.

Elijah Desmond:
So it's not going to be a bidding war. I'm not bidding practices, by the way. They're benefit auctions. But anyways, my point is, is 3 or 4 operatories is not enough. If you want to get max value for your practice, you really need to be at like the six or more operatories range. So growing a practice and maxing it out and then you're locked in that lease, just basically go with the mindset of I'm going to grow into this space, buy bigger than you need. So that's the third mistake there. You may go to the to the buy side or you good for that.

Dr. Noel Liu:
I'm good for that. I want to go back and kind of touch base on what you said. Okay. So you said 20% margin. A lot of times, these guys are like, hey, you know what? I got a 50% overhead. I got a 40% overhead. I got a 60% overhead. Whatever that number is, right? They are really, really confusing that overhead versus what the actual profit is.

Elijah Desmond:
Because their income, they're not including their income.

Dr. Noel Liu:
Exactly. So that is one thing I want you to share a little bit. Like, what is it they're doing wrong and what do they need to start thinking about that part?

Elijah Desmond:
Absolutely. So when you think of margin, the money that's left over after everything is paid okay, including your salary.

Dr. Noel Liu:
Boom.

Elijah Desmond:
So, it's okay to take a standard salary and just take distributions each year, right?

Dr. Noel Liu:
Sure.

Elijah Desmond:
Take distributions to yourself that's not counted as your salary. But understand the salary that you're taking. Make it so it's fair because when that next buyer comes along, ultimately, that's a huge part of your sale, right? What are you paying yourself? Is it 30%? 35%? Is it 25%? I don't know what that is, but the point is that when you talk about your margin, you need to also include your pay. And your pay should be a base pay or your regular salary. And then your distributions, your distributions will be part of the EBITDA but not your pay.

Dr. Noel Liu:
That is such a huge, huge point because so many times these guys go like, oh yeah, this place is only a 20% profit. No, no, no, I don't want to touch it because, for my current practice, I have over 50%. And I'm like, no, no.

Elijah Desmond:
Right? It's rare. Now, have I seen it before? Yes, I have seen it before with very high margins, very high margins. And typically you see that in a specialty practice. Specialty practice is where I've seen it, whether it's PDO or a heavy implants implant centers kind of thing. I've seen that where, but not in a GP setting. It's not really normal to have that. I've never seen in a GP, but you talk about specialty, that's when you could potentially see higher stuff from about 40%. Realistically 40%. I've one time, I've one time seen 50% as a kind of a unicorn. I wouldn't even say that exists, but it did. But I would say the average is around 20% where you should be if you're trying to look to exit for the best, exit that or above.

Dr. Noel Liu:
And if someone is actually trying to exit within, like let's say 5 or 6 years, their time is today.

Elijah Desmond:
Yes. Thank you. Yes, the time is today. And I'm going to tell you, you may not think like, all right, I want to be done in five years, doesn't matter. Like start having those conversations right now because you can get yourself in a position, know your number, and then you can build your life from there. I would recommend sitting down with a financial advisor and discussing what does that look like. And hopefully, you've invested and whatnot along the journey to get there, right? So it's not just your practice, but at the end of the day, knowing what your number is. Like, for me, I know my number. I know my personal number. And I, by the way, I had, like, recently just transitioned. I just exited for businesses myself. We won't talk about that on the podcast, but I know my number. I know exactly what it is. I know what my number is right now, what I need in which I can invest, and I could live off of the interest. I know my like, OMG, that would be so amazing. That's the middle of the road. I know what that number would be. And then there's this, like yeah, right? You live in like a celebrity, you know what I mean? Then there's this. And I know that number too. And I'm 37 years old. I will get that other number, the right one. I'll get that in five years, 100% for sure. I'm going to do it. But I know how much I need to make in my businesses to exit. And these aren't like crazy numbers. I know what my EBITDA needs to be, and I know the realistic multiples on what the EBITDA will sell for, and I know I needed to get to, so I know in advance where I need to be in order to get there. Does that make sense?

Dr. Noel Liu:
Absolutely. You know, for some of the new audience, I just wanted to touch base on, you mentioned about quality of earnings. What does that entail? What is the significance of that and how does that affect the EBITDA?

Elijah Desmond:
Yes. First off, I'll explain that there's a quality of earnings, and then there's what we are very close with. We recommend everybody get done. We make everybody do quality earnings late. So it's like a lighter version of a quality of earnings. So, this typically came primarily from the buy side. So the buyers who are purchasing your practice are going to do I'm going to call it, a deep financial analysis in the past three years or two years, plus rolling 12 in the past three years of your practice; you're going to basically know what the EBITDA is, what it was, what the adjusted EBITDA is, what the payer mix is. They're going to know every piece of data as it relates to that EBITDA, where it comes from, what's high, what's low, what are the percentage from each area in that practice of where it is compared to where it should be. So, that is a financial snapshot. I highly recommend wherever you're at in your practice journey, get a quality of earnings. It's called being exit-ready at all times, and anything happens. You know this is where you're at. This is where you need to be. It's like having a goal but not putting a number on it. I just want to grow. Who cares? Everybody wants to grow. What area do you want to grow? And once you know what that number is, it's so fast that you can get there. But if you're just growing, I'm going to work every day.

Dr. Noel Liu:
Like no goal.

Elijah Desmond:
Right? You don't know goals. And where are you going? You're not going to go that far like that.

Dr. Noel Liu:
Awesome. So, EBITDA briefly. What is that?

Elijah Desmond:
Earnings before interest taxes, depreciation, and amortization.

Dr. Noel Liu:
So that's essentially your net income, correct?

Elijah Desmond:
Basically, your net income. So, let's just say you have the easiest way to put it. Say you have a $1 million loan out, and that loan is going to say you're paying 10% interest on. Okay. So that's $100,000. Okay. So, if you're taking $100,000 out of your practice each year because of that loan, it's okay. No problem. You just add that back in. That's probably the easiest piece for that. Then, you have your depreciation of equipment and amortization. And so I will tell you this. My business partner actually wrote the handbook on EBITDA. He wrote the Dental EBITDA Handbook. It's free on our website Dental Pitch Brokerage. You can download it for free. I would just tell you this: if you want to know an easy way to calculate your EBITDA, look at your net profit. Just look at what your net profit is and make sure that you are fully aware. Is your salary in there or not? Is your salary in there or not? Or I would say a healthy practice is probably about 20% is a healthy practice. So if you're a $1 million practice, it's probably about 200,000. A healthy practice. Double that for a $2 million practice, etc. but get your quality of earnings taken care of, I think it's super important. And here's another thing you are thinking about selling. Even if you're not going to use a broker, if you don't use a broker, it's okay. But here's a couple pieces of advice. The first number one piece of advice is get that quality of earnings done. Number one. Number two is talk to someone else that you're selling to in that group. That means if let's just say you're selling Heartland, go find a few Heartland doctors on your own and ask them how it was that DCA. Go find a few DCA dentists that already sold. Ask them how that was super important. Ask them how it was. Also, when you're going on this journey, whoever you're going down the journey with, whatever broker that is, or if you're by yourself. Super important to get that broker wall down and meet the person that you might be selling to early. Don't wait till you're 50% or 75% in. It can be the biggest waste of time ever. Just meet them early. You'll know if it's a cultural fit or not. There are some very hands-on group, and there are some very hands-off group. There are some groups that have just the management services, a high level, you know, you, HR, your payroll, your revenue cycle management, your marketing. Then there's people that go in, and they try to change everything. And maybe that's what you want. But I think it's super important to understand what that group is all about before going down those rabbit holes and back-and-forth negotiations. And the terms are more important than the amount of money that you're getting. The terms are more important.

Dr. Noel Liu:
I've heard this again and again, and a lot of times, it's not about the money that you'd be getting. It's about what you're locked into. I love it, yes.

Elijah Desmond:
What you're locked into, for sure. It's been so fun. Just. I mean, I was on the consulting side for a while. It's consulting dental practices, 2011 to 2017, '18. It's actually really, really fun to. I mean, I've practiced clinically, you know, I didn't like it. I practiced clinically, I've been on the consulting side. I've been through all of these sales myself. I've also been through failures. It's important to understand. And now I'm able to, like, comprehensively look at everything. Yeah, I get it. Like, I'm a clinician, I understand. I get it; I have a science degree. I also understand from a practice growth standpoint, I don't do that. I can't say if this is wrong. I'm not going to fix it. But I say this is this number is way off. This is wrong. This is wrong, and actually know it. There's one thing to be like: you should do this, or you should do that. It's a completely other. Another thing to say, in my experience, this is exactly what I did, and this is the exact roadmap to get there to actually know and be in the trenches.

Dr. Noel Liu:
Absolutely.

Elijah Desmond:
And, you know, my business partner, Matt Ornstein, he himself, like he went from 20 locations to 71 locations in three and a half years, buying practices one at a time. And he worked with all the brokers' firms. And so to have that know-how and that's my team. That's really cool. Like I got to me and Matt. We both own the business equally. Nice. I got to jump from my event background, right, and business background. I got to jump in, and automatically, I have two full-time attorneys on the team. I have Jason Brown, who is our managing director, who literally took it from 20 to 71 locations. He went through the whole M&A process for all of those groups, right? So he's the one that's on our team with Pitch Brokerage that's actually doing the back end of the work. The hard part after they sign with us, they're taking he's taking them to the finish line. And just like you and Matt have in common, he's been in the real estate world for a really long time. He's got nine car washes, commercial real estate. He's building Amazon warehouses. He's a superstar. But us together, yin and yang. It's been an amazing journey.

Dr. Noel Liu:
You got a dream team going on there.

Elijah Desmond:
Dream team, yes.

Dr. Noel Liu:
I got the last question for you, man. Yes. So you got this Mastermind going on, right? Yeah. A lot of people have been asking about like, how do I learn more about the business side? How do I learn more about what you're doing? How do I learn more about what Elijah is doing with speaking engagements and etc., etc.? Tell us a little bit about your Mastermind. What's all that about?

Elijah Desmond:
Thank you, well.

Dr. Noel Liu:
I'm curious myself. Let's put it that way.

Elijah Desmond:
Yeah, so this might be a question for after the podcast, but I gave a shout-out to the people in my Mastermind at Dental podfest for the first time. It was 25 people that came out to support Glenbow. And I won't speak necessarily about my Mastermind just because it's not open to the public. Okay. It's invitation only, but I can't tell you the power of a Mastermind in general. Yeah. Mine is specifically for dental entrepreneurs. It can be a dentist, but the dentist also has to have a business outside of the dental practice, meaning they have to have a service, a software, a product, or they have to own multiple locations, basically, right? But at the end of the day, a Mastermind is a setting in which you can put a whole bunch of brains in the same room, and it acts as if you have a super brain. I believe in coaching. My business coach is Dr. Eric Roman. I've been with him for over three years now. I've always had a business coach. I've always invested every year between 30,000 and just over $100,000 on my personal development every year, and Eric has been a part of it the past three years. I believe that when you get a coach, a coach will tell you one side for the most part. Outside of accountability, they're going to tell you their personal experience and their view on what they feel that you should do. That is a coach. Now, what is a Mastermind? A Mastermind is when you get multiple people in the same room that are of the same growth mindset. So, for example, my Mastermind, nobody is getting in unless they're an entrepreneur that has these three core values. Kindness, number one, we have no jerks, which is awesome. An abundance mindset. What is an abundance mindset? One plus one equals 11. Not one minus one equals zero. We believe iron sharpens iron, and we share blueprints. We share cheat codes, right? So that's the second core value, which is abundance. The third one is fun. We love we love having fun. And loo,k 30% of our group is sober. They don't drink. So, I don't necessarily mean partying. But what I mean by fun laughing, dancing, singing, traveling the world while growing our businesses, that's fun. And then the last piece is they all have to be of the mindset of; I'm going to grow my business to sell it within the next 3 to 5 years. It could be next year. It could be the year after. It's a group of individuals. But the point is, with a Mastermind, you don't have one person coaching you. You have many people sharing their experiences, so you can get a shortcut. I personally am a time bender. I'm 37 years old. When you see me, I was 371 years wise. I am now today day 375 years wise since we seen each other last in January. How is that? Well, it's because I take his brain, her brain, and then your brain, and I will pick out what you've already did. I'll put it in my brain, and I'll apply that to the rest of my life. And so, I have been able to skip years because I am a lifetime student. I am far from knowing it all. And Masterminds advance you forward so fast. So, I pay for shortcuts every single place that I go. Just like in the beginning, we said something along the lines of if you're thinking about you're into doing something newer, or you think there's a chance that you could fail, what are you going to do? Said, I'm paying for a blueprint. If I fail, I'm going to be locked arms with someone. We're failing together, or many people, or I'm going to be lifted from so many people I can't fail. So that's what a Mastermind does, is there's a meeting of the minds. It's a place to share. Like, if you have this great idea and you've done all these things, it's a place for you to go and share. If you're a private person, probably a Mastermind in general is not for you, but if you're a person that's full of abundance and wants the world to be a better place and likes to share your ideas and give your ideas to people, you don't see competition, and that is absolutely something you should do is join a Mastermind in general. So, hopefully, that answers the question the best. Like I said, I've never talked about it ever on a podcast, but you did hear me say that from the stage, and it was because I was so happy to have 25 of our 35 members out supporting Glen. Glen is one of the members in the Mastermind.

Dr. Noel Liu:
And that's one of those things where we always talk about investing in yourself. And I've heard time after time people are like, oh, why should I pay for a Mastermind? Why should I invest in Mastermind? I have to travel. I have to do this. I have to do that. But, you know, at the end of the day, it's like you got to invest in yourself. That's the biggest asset that we carry around every single day. And the way you put it up is it's like you got best of all the minds together and then everybody just pitching ideas, right? Yeah. So 1,000%, my man. 1,000%. Well, hey, Elijah. It was great, man. It was great having you. I'm going to land the plane very soon before we land the plane. In a short sentence, what does success mean to you?

Elijah Desmond:
Well, success is broken into three different departments. To me, it means three things. To me, success is broken into disorder, health, family, and financial. Financial could be business or not. And success is having a balance of these three. That can not always be a 50/50 balance, but having a balance. And it can move between the three fluidly. If you can master the fluidity of moving between family, health, and finance, then you've hit your success, and it's different for every person.

Dr. Noel Liu:
Love it, love it. You know, one thing that you changed up last minute was you. This is a fluidity, like trying to go back and forth. Not a lot of people understand that part, by the way.

Elijah Desmond:
Yeah, they think it's, oh, half family, half it's all.

Dr. Noel Liu:
Yeah. It's all work-life balance, right? You got to be able to switch. And, you know, move.

Elijah Desmond:
Yeah.

Dr. Noel Liu:
Well, I mean, hey, it was great. Any last-minute statements or where people can find you?

Elijah Desmond:
Yes. I'll give a last-minute statement after I give where people can find me. First off, I'm on almost every social media platform outside of TikTok. It's me. It's not somebody else. So reach out in any. Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn. You can find me there. Just type in Elijah Desmond Dental Brokerage. Go to www.DentalPitchBrokerage.com. You can reach out to me there. My business partner's two books are there. You can download them for free. One is normally $99, but it's free on the site. You can personally reach out to me at Elijah@DentalPitchBrokerage.com, and I'd love to help. Conversations are free, and I love helping people. That's how I've got where I've got today. I'll leave you with this note help and give first. Give pure. And what does giving pure mean? That means giving without looking for something back. When you're giving, that should be what you're getting. The gift of giving is ultimately what you are personally getting. That's called giving pure. Don't wait until you have it. Don't wait until you get the time. Give now, don't wait. That's my biggest advice I can give to anybody out there.

Dr. Noel Liu:
Boom. And that's a mic drop right there.

Elijah Desmond:
Thank you.

Dr. Noel Liu:
All right. Thanks, Elijah. Well, ladies and gentlemen, thanks for hearing and watching our latest episode of our pod. And make sure to like and subscribe. We will catch you on our next episode.

Dr. Noel Liu:
Thanks for tuning in to the Secure Dental Podcast. We hope you found today's podcast inspiring and useful to your practice and financial growth. For show notes, resources, and ways to stay engaged with us, visit us at NoelLiuDDS.com. That's N O E L L I U D D S.com.

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