Welcome to Dental Unscripted, where Mike Dinsio and Paula Quinn break down the practice ownership journey, one episode at a time. Starting up, buying, and running a successful dental practice. What up, what up, guys? How you doing? Another episode of Dental Unscripted. We are right in the middle of Dental Shark Week, bringing it back another year. And this week is all about construction, dental construction, so how to build a dental office.
All the questions that go into that, all the concerns, challenges, partnerships and questions that we could get into, we're going to. And so thanks for joining us again, Mike Dinsio, one of the co-founders of Next Level Consultants and co-host of this amazing program. I've got a request, folks, since we're right in the middle of Shark Week, I've got a request, an ask of you. I really need you to give us five stars. Hell, if you want to give us four stars, I'll take it.
But I want you guys to give us some ratings. Review us. I talk to you guys. There's hundreds of you out there every single day. I'm getting positive feedback on the program. Yet we only have ten reviews. What in the heck? Please get on your program, whatever you're into. If it's Apple, Spotify, I don't care. Just hit the five stars or four, whatever. I just need more ratings. All right. That's my ask of you before we get the program started. So without further ado.
today I am interviewing another friend and partner someone that I've done a lot of business with over the years um a fantastic dental contractor in the colorado market chad hill with hill commercial construction chad what's up how you doing brother thanks for being on the program I'm good I'm good mike thanks for having me on I appreciate it it's good to see you Yeah, man, it's been it's been it's been a minute since I've seen you. You look great.
Chad and I did a lot of projects while we were in and when I was at B of A in Colorado. So he's primarily serving the Colorado market and he has done some work nationally and he's a wealth of knowledge when it comes to anything really construction related. I ask some questions all the time.
he'll he'll convouch like Chad just saw this not sure what that is and he'll pop me off the answer so uh today it's all about Chad Hill and Hill commercial construction so Chad why don't you give us just like a like a literally a two minute like elevator kind of pitch on you and how you got where you got and the company and um what makes you guys so great Yeah, you got it. Uh, I grew up with the construction trades.
My dad was a, uh, owned a small residential, uh, concrete company, um, and, uh, worked for him from the time I was until when I graduated college, not a doctor, uh, but, uh, took me a hot minute, um, and got a construction management degree from, uh, Colorado State University Bachelor in Construction Management. Great program. Love it. It's one of the best in the country and it's fed a lot of high quality construction companies, not only in Colorado, but throughout the country.
I started with a small GC, a friend of my dad's golfing, like as we all know, golfing for work, right? That does lead to contacts. And it's like, hey, I want you to check this guy out. And I I met my mentor. My dad was a great guy. At the time, I realized, gosh, I don't know if I want to lay concrete for the rest of my life. I liked it. I was in great shape. I was strong as an ox and worked really hard. And the best part of it was tangible progress. I'd show up.
There'd be a bad driveway, a bad patio, bad steps. When I left, it looked perfect. And really proud of the work we did. And I got to work closely with my dad, which was fantastic. So there's parts of that I missed. It's funny. When I started in the general contracting world, it's funny. You push paper all day and you're like, I don't know if I did anything today, but when I poured concrete, I could walk away and go, that's what I did today.
Yeah. And I know that was a special time in your life because you and your dad were super close. That's special. That's super cool. I didn't know that story, buddy. All these years, I didn't know that story about you. Yeah. Yeah, super nice. This is really dumb and this is kind of a dumb movie, but I was with my wife and I'd met my wife, who I'm still married to, twenty six years later. And God bless her. And I went to a movie and I and I didn't know what I wanted to do.
Right. Like when I grew up, even though I was twenty five years old, twenty six years old, twenty five when I met her. And I saw a movie called Multiplicity. which is Michael Keaton, random movie. And if you watched it, you would never say, that's what I want to do. The whole premise of the movie was Michael Keaton was a residential construction superintendent slash project manager. And- He was just going a hundred miles an hour, too many hats and heads and just couldn't get it all done.
And he, and he went to bed and he, and he made a wish and he said, God, I wish there were two of me. And he wakes up and there's two of him. And so the rest is the comedy of the two of them never being in the same room. And most people look at that like, Oh my God, what chaos? That looks crazy. I finished watching a movie. I turned to my wife and I go, that's what I want to do. And she's like, Okay, well, let's go up to CSU and check it out. My brother went there for a little bit.
So went and checked out the construction management program. I'd always gone to college, but never really knew what I wanted to do, but was always helping my dad. And then I got a degree there, went to work for a small general contractor in Broomfield, worked for him for about six years. Yeah, about six, six and a half years. And mentor, great guy. I wish every worker, every entrepreneur has a mentor like I had. It just was a gift. Just a giant of a man in every way.
And even though he's about half my size, I was scared to death of him. He was like perfect typecast for a mafia movie. But he owned a construction company. But he was a taskmaster. We were... Low bureaucracy, high accountability, and was really a great fit. Okay. And is that when Hill Commercial, when did Hill Commercial jump into the dental scene? Yeah. So it's funny. I was doing that. My father-in-law was expanding.
He was literally expanding from a retail strip that he had been in for twenty five years to a pad site, which is a common term in retail centers. They'll build a retail center and then they'll have a handful of pad sites out front where you can build freestanding buildings. So you can build a McDonald's, you can build a yoga studio, you can build whatever you want. You can build a bank building.
And he bought a plot of land and he's like, hey, not really a lot of guys in the market would you think you guys would price it we priced it we were low um you didn't do me any favors we were a little bitter and uh we got the job and I felt like it was a super easy crossover yeah I was you know as as much technical things as I learned about uh convenience stores um heavy infrastructure underground storage tanks which had to be certified in the pumps which Fuel pumps,
just for your general knowledge, fuel pumps are underground where you deliver the gas to your cars, the dispenser. So people call those gas pumps. Those are gas dispensers. Just a little thing that I learned along the way. But and then we got the PLS system. We've got car washes, lots going on. And the similarity was is I've got a ton of third party equipment that's provided by others that I receive a bunch of specs on. I coordinate with them throughout the project.
when they show up on site with the dispensers, the pumps, the canopy, the carwash equipment, the point of sale equipment inside, the walk-in coolers, all of that has to be what's called plug and play. So they plug it in, or it gets hardwired and hooked up and it's ready to go. So my father-in-law trusted us to build his dental office. Um, and we did that and it was a really easy crossover. So I kind of cultivated that market, did a bunch of work in there while I worked for, uh, uh, Bonnie.
And then I, uh, transferred over to, uh, he'd merge with somebody. Wasn't a great fit.
I was there about eight months and I felt like the culture shifted from, uh, low bureaucracy to high accountability to just the opposite which didn't work well with me so I stayed about eight months I did a couple big projects and I just went to him I said hey I gotta strike out on my own if you're gonna stay here I tried to get him to leave but he wouldn't leave so in oh seven uh with uh no sense no no money uh no idea what I was getting into uh I started a construction company.
My wife created our logo, which is super simple and super cool. And here you are. Here you are, one of the biggest dental contractors in dental. I think that's a great pivot point to really start diving into some of these dental projects and all the things that you've learned since two thousand seven and just all the practices that you've been a part of, the knowledge that you have now from that journey that you just shared to getting into dental.
The first question, Chad, that I have, buddy, is when you're looking at a startup, like a lot of our viewers and listeners are startups, right? And they're trying to figure out where the best place is to go. And they're looking at demographics and they're doing a business plan with me or whatever. And we finally find a space. I think that one of the highest values of a GC is looking at that space and really helping us determine if it's the right space.
Can you just get into a little bit of the things that you look at in the due diligence process that you think is important for a dentist to look at, for a GC to be looking at to help maybe the real estate guy negotiate or for a dentist to think about before they actually take this space on for ten years or more? Yeah, a hundred percent.
I usually encourage clients, whether they come to me first or they come to me second, I always say, hey, pick two or three spots that kind of meet your needs, square footage-wise, geography-wise, demographic-wise. I'll visit each one. I'll evaluate each one. I'll produce for you pros and cons of each. Hey, Need to update ADA accessibility at location A. Location B is a little too big. We need to see if the landlord will subdivide it.
Location C, gosh, great building, good bones, Built a little older, probably going to run into some asbestos. So it's going to raise some costs. We look at what kind of infrastructure they have. And so when I say infrastructure, I mean dental, sewer, HVAC units, water tap, what's available currently, and then what are they going to need to put into the space to make it a working dental space? Love it. So we evaluate each site and then I kind of say, here's my thoughts.
This is my favorite, but I'm not attached in any way. I'll make anyone work. Just know here are the pros and cons. Some will cost you money. Some will save you money, but ultimately location's important, right? Line of sight's important. Yeah. So there's a, there's a business. That's kind of how we go about it. That's why we like the worst thing ever is when I have a client come to me and they say, Hey, not a great space, just signed the lease.
And I go look at it and I'm like, okay, well you got a three quarter inch tap. You've got a hundred amps of power and you've got heating, but no cooling. Okay. That's a problem. So that's why we want to be in early. Yeah, and that makes a ton of sense because I love that you said multiple spaces. I've found a trend, and I said it in the last interview, that some real estate people aren't doing multiple locations these days. It's like it's too much work for them to put LOIs in in multiple spaces.
I do recognize that some markets... it's difficult to find space. And I do want to touch on the due diligence of ground up because sometimes there's no spaces available and we got to look at a plot of dirt. So, I think we covered pretty well here on Shark Week with the rest of the contractors around the rest of the country. Top, top, top dental contracts are in the country. Chad, you got like this Southwest because Southeast, I don't know what Colorado is.
I guess it's West. This market that we've carved you out of for the expert in your area. Yeah. We covered due diligence on rented space. Let's talk really quick about due diligence on ground up because I know you've done a lot of ground up in the last two years. And I think Shark Week needs to cover due diligence of ground up, not to open up a huge, huge can of worms here. We could probably talk the entire episode just on due diligence of ground up, but you want to hit the highlights on that?
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'll try to highlight and keep it concise. What you want to do is you want to look for the right square footage in the right location you want. You want to have a rough idea of how many square feet of a foot, you know, what kind of footprint you need for a building. I think I've shared with you in the past, you know, an acre is forty three thousand five hundred and sixty square feet. A loose, loose, loose rule of thumb.
architects don't cringe when I say this, is you take the square footage, divide it by six, and that tells you what your footprint can be. Now, depending on the zoning, you can go up, you can do one level. You also want to look at soil, right? Whether you've got expansive soil, the history of the property, did it get a phase one report?
So phase one is going to tell you, okay here's what the space was before it used to be a uh and the big scary one is used to be a uh dry cleaners well historically dry cleaners yeah gas station's easy because you can never sell contaminated soil so and I ran into that my father-in-law's job and helped him get rid of that through uh uh shell they were fantastic uh he had some tanks leak into his property and they remediated all that no questions asked so that part's easy but um you
know you're kind of taking the ground as is and you've got to take the good with the bad right so ideally what you want is some good stable soil that lends itself to shallow um footings and shallow walls where you can do a slab on grade um and then uh it's zoned properly for medical use and you're able to park it right it's got the visibility you want so those are the kind of things that that that we look at and then also just price point right because that's a huge factor in uh overall cost
I love that. So soil and the right amount of space. I think that's an important thing. And you're right. We just more recently talked about that. And I think startups are getting more inquisitive about about owning their buildings. They're listening to podcasts just like this and the benefits of owning your building right out of the gate versus literally giving a million dollars to the landlord. So if they can find something they can purchase right out of the gate, they're interested.
The lending is a different conversation. It's always a very big part of the conversation with lending. But if you can get yourselves the right amount of money and Chad can build the building for the right price that fits the budget, hell, that's the best deal you can get. But then it turns into some kind of investment conversation about renting half the building. And gosh, like I said, we could go down a crazy path here. I want to transition this conversation to this idea of plans to permit.
That's the next segment of the program. And I think, again, we've had a lot of conversation about it. There's like this idea where you hire an architect to drive or architect space plan or whatever to drive the whole project or the contractor to assist you or even have in-house this idea of plans to permit. So there's these... these sections along the way that you've got to get it from plans to permit.
And then Chad, the GC picks up and builds, but the plans need to be created to, Chad, walk us through your collaboration with designers, architects. Obviously, you're a big fan of working with them. You don't want to alienate that, but is there a preferred method? Is there challenges, pros and cons of working all in-house? What's your take on it?
yeah so step one would always be if you find an existing building get a dental equipment rep that you trust and they will give you a initial floor plan for free I mean it's implied that they do that upfront work that you're going to buy equipment from them so they'll do a layout and I'll tell you what those guys do Each one of those CAD draftspersons does dozens a day. So they've seen way more than I've seen, right?
As far as layout works, as far as access, as far as flow of the office, as far as squeaking number of ops in, making sure you account for All the treatment areas and patient areas that you want to incorporate into that space. So that would be the first start is to just, OK, let's see if this pencils because let's say I got a site in downtown Denver. Right. Well, that price per square foot is going to be way different than if we are in. Timnath or we're in Colorado Springs.
It just it makes a big difference. So it doesn't cost anything. You find a GC that you trust and you like and you can say, well, that's two thirty five a square foot. Downtown Denver, you're probably two seventy five a square foot because I've got parking requirements. I don't know where to put a roll off. So I've literally got to haul trash every night.
um and I can't uh parking you've got to pay a premium for parking those things now granted there's a premium you can charge for your services but again that goes along with really the space diligence but as far as the process and the flow once we get a floor plan we like hand that off to an architect that that they enjoy working with um and it understands their vision I always encourage dentists to create a pinterest board to say and They seem to focus in on things they love.
And I love for them to put things they hate. So I want them to have two folders. I love this. I hate this. Because that's good. What they don't like is just as important as what they like. Right. because you want to steer clear of that.
And the architect then takes that vision and you want to make sure that the architect you hire is somebody that is a good listener and is building a practice that speaks to a your budget be your level of service um and then um c speaks to your vision right uh I've never I've never met I've I've never met an architect that talks too much about budget that's a joke that's a joke uh but you're you're spot on absolutely right I love I love that feedback on what makes a great architect in your mind?
It's one that communicates super well as creative and does have a general sense of the budget. Is that what I heard you say? Yeah. They want to be, you want them to be budget minded and you also want them to capture the vision because there's really, you know, guys have, you know, doctors have ideas in their minds of, okay, this is my ideal practice. I absolutely want this. I want a toy, you know, a pediatric dentist. I want a prize bin right here. I want it to be this kind of theme.
I love these colors, all those things. And then you get a design back and it's, You know, when you got the wrong architect, when it's like, OK, I don't see one element I spoke about and I don't see any, you know, there's none of my vision in this. Right. It's more of a monument to themselves. And there's a lot of those out there, a lot of them. And so you want to steer clear of those guys are usually more expensive. And it's going to drive the cost of the space up.
So and we're always cognizant of, OK, is this a startup doc? Is this a second location? Is this man? I've had two offices. This is my Taj Mahal. Right. Right. And I always try to find out from them, OK, what's your what's your hot button points like? What? What do you hate at your current office? Like what aggravates you? Is your sterilization way too far away from hygiene? Do you not have a place for cart storage? Is your x-ray too close to the front?
So you want to think about those things that don't work because a lot of docs, you know, some of them do this once, some of them do it twice. three times in their whole life. They'll do a startup, they'll do a mid-range, and then they'll do a freestanding building. That's the evolution of them. Then you've got the DSOs who Just kind of go to town on those things. But we really kind of focus on patient impact areas and then try to make some shush there.
You want to balance the level of the finish of the office with the level of service they provide. So if it's a cosmetic dentist, that build out is going to be different than if it's a general dentist or if it's an orthodontist. I just literally had a conversation with one of my clients, a pediatric dentist, and he's going to be serving a Medicaid population. And I looked at his Pinterest board, and it looked like one of the most high-end websites.
uh cosmetic dental offices I've ever seen before and I was just like hey maybe we need to talk about what what what what this looks like I I think that's perfect chad that you're getting into a lot of this stuff my my my key takeaways is do what you don't like I I find that a lot of clients don't go to like a dental assistant friend or another dentist friend and get their opinion because those poor dental assistants are doing are they're putting the steps in they're going to the
sterilization they're they're they're doing all the hard work and and the dentist has their feet kicked up in the back room waiting for their next hygiene exam um you know what I mean figuratively but but yeah you don't have too many cooks in the kitchen but you want to yeah you where I was going with that was to your point you don't want to you don't want to have too many cooks in the kitchen but you do want to involve your key staff to say okay where we're at now or in past
offices what worked well what didn't work well right again you don't want ten opinions but if you could get two or three of your top people to say Hey, front end, what is the most efficient way for us to do check in, check out? What's the most efficient way for us to present treatment plans? When we're doing treatment, what does the layout look like? Do you want a counter on both sides? And tell me why you want a counter on both sides. You got to push them because these things cost money.
And is it a want to have or need? so uh it's important to involve the whole team if you've got a trusted team around you to really want Well, I want to kind of pivot then. So what we've covered is due diligence. We've covered architect and that process. I'd love to ask the question of this idea of a hard bid. Hard bids are becoming few and far between these days. There's a lot of reasons for it.
Back in the day, there used to be what I call the negotiated bid where you could just talk about a percentage and then it would be open book. That's old school. But this idea of hard bid, I think there's a lot of challenges with it that we've kind of already talked about this week. What... What do you find when you get like this high-end architect that isn't sensitive to budget? How does that impact the hard bid process?
When it hits your desk and you bid it out based on what was provided to you, and then the number obviously isn't really where everybody wanted it to be. Can you go through that process or how you communicate that to the dentists out there? Communicate that to the dentists out there? Yeah. Yeah, communication is key. I always say C is the most important. C for communication is the most important C in construction, right? Everybody has to be reading from the same sheet of music.
And you want to make sure that as you've got design development, you're seeing this kind of come to fruition. And yeah, this speaks to what we talked about. You go back and yep, this makes sense.
uh because the worst thing you want is okay we started here uh startup dentist medicaid um you know to your point earlier why do we have a fountain in the waiting room like who's who's that for like I'm not sure this is the plastic surgeon's office let's what are we doing um so you you want to speak to the level of service they provide um and Uh, so what we do when that happens and it, it does happen is we identify those things.
And like, I always use a simple example of, uh, our particular architect who is phenomenal. They do a crazy laundry area that's built in. It costs like forty five hundred dollars. It looks beautiful. And I'm like, let's spend your money front of house. Let's spend your money on lab sterile treatment, reception, patient waiting room. and let's make sure that we spend your dollars in the smart places, right?
It doesn't mean that the back of house areas are dumbed down or that the break room needs to be subpar. It just needs to be nice enough, right? Because really what's bringing you back, what's bringing patients back are your staff and then just the environment that you bring them into to do practices and selling cases. I'll just use the example of my father-in-law He practiced for twenty five years in a retail center. Great dentist. We built him that building.
I could throw a football from his retail old location to the new location. He quadrupled his practice in two years. And he told me one time at a holiday party, you know, it's funny in my new building, he goes, people walk in and it's nice, but it's not over the top. But all of a sudden, the level of my office finish tells people I'm a good dentist, right? So it gives them confidence to spend big money on larger cases, right? So the environment you work in is great.
And again, speaking to Medicaid and Medicare, you want those to be very nice. You want to be back a house to be hard, durable surfaces, very functional, long lasting. But, you know, maybe we don't have a coffee bar. Maybe we have just a beverage bar. Maybe we have a water filler.
you know water fillers since covet are huge those ones that tell you how many plastic bottles they say and nobody wants to put their mouth on a drinking fountain anymore anyways right so um that's uh that's a problem but yeah we just pull those things out and we say hey doc I love this what you don't want to do is get into to let the architect, if you're working as a team, you don't want them to get so far down the road that when you say, hey, wow, this is a great design, but
You're here, you can afford this. And then you get design regret. And then the rest of it feels like a compromise to them because the architect has gone bananas with, oh, well, yeah, you like that wallpaper? We can do this wallpaper here and there and there. And let's do this niche and let's do this artwork and these vaulted ceilings and all those things that cost money, but take away from their patient base, take away from their vision, take away from their bottom line.
Yeah, I think that's exactly how I would describe the situation because you can really get off kilter quick with budget. That's why I made that joke earlier about do architects really pay attention to budget? Of course they do. But when you're a startup and if an architect, I think that's a good question to ask an architect space planners. How many startups do you do a year? dental startups do you do a year? Because if the number is a lot, let's just say five.
Let's just say I do five startups a year. Then they know how to design a budget-friendly startup. They also know that you can't afford all glass and you can't afford the curved walls and all that. So And it's really tough for a contractor to have that conversation because they're already thinking that Chad's the guy that's making all the money and with all the margin. But really, a lot of it is the design features. All right, let's pivot. Let's pivot to the last question, the last topic here.
And that is, where do you see construction right now? Kind of like a market watch situation. Where are we at with construction? I mean, there's a lot of conversations that people ask me all the time. I definitely don't want to get political on the show, but with the tariffs and there was a problem with inflation a minute ago. My eggs are still ten bucks. I don't know what's going on there. But whatever. Is that affecting construction right now? And are you seeing projects slow down, pick up?
What are you seeing out there?
uh we've got a great back backlog um I'm seeing about the same right um number of projects it was funny right around the first of the year we got all these scary tariff notices and I had a steel guy on a on a vet space we were doing and he said well unfortunately because of the tariff this has gone up thirty five percent so quick ai search the tariff is twelve percent and and the twelve percent tariff does not mean a twelve percent increase in cost right There's many factors that go
into that that I won't deep dive into. It usually boils down to by the time it gets to that guy, a three to five percent increase. So I sent it back to him and said, hey, I'm only seeing the twelve percent there if he never got back to me. A lot of suppliers will use that as an example, right? One of the best things that came out of COVID was it made us more creative. So that was a bigger blow to everything because literally we had rooftop units that were eight months out.
You've got a twelve to fourteen week build that doesn't work. So What we learned to do there is we've got a rooftop unit and it's brand A. We would find brand B that is same performance, might cost a little less, might cost a little bit more. You never know.
But, you know, the opportunity cost of not... being open makes a big difference so we just go out and we source things do that all the time did that with doors we do uh we have a large veterinary practice we do in town um and simple doors and we work with the biggest door manufacturer in the western united states they could not get these eight foot maple doors for Fourteen weeks. I bought the doors from Minneapolis and same cost with shipping. It's fine. Same door looks great.
So it just makes you more creative. Keep showing your toes. And same thing with tariffs. You just got to be creative and try to find other alternatives. And that's why that's the difference between a We talked about delivery system a little bit.
We might get more into that later, but there's the traditional design, bid, build, a model and then there's the design build model where me and the doc and maybe the equipment rep and the architect for sure are sitting around a table and we're going, okay, what do we want to do? How many ops are we going to equip? What's the feel of the office? What's your vision? Give a Pinterest board. And then we're all, like I said, again, reading from the same sheet of music and we go down the road.
Yeah, we collaborate. It's a collaboration. Yeah. I love that. At the end of the day... No, no. At the end of the day, go ahead. Well, I was just going to say. Well, at the end of the day. Go, go. It's your turn. Well, at the end of the day, it's going to cost what it's going to cost for a startup.
a specific location and it's going to cost what it's going to cost for a oral surgeon at a specific location right to be done by a qualified um contractor who knows what they're doing um you know I know a lot of guys give teaser rates for oh square foot wise yeah when when the whole market is to fifty, they'll give a teaser rate of, well, this guy's to fifteen. And, you know, I never sell myself on my competitors. I always sell myself on service.
I look at my job as education and communication, and I want my clients to know everything about the process. I want them to be as involved or as uninvolved as they want to be. but still make sure they get the right finished product they want. Yeah. I love, I love that, Chad. Um, I, this is, um, one thing that's, um, I think you nailed that. I think, um, I agree with you. Projects are not slowing down. They, um, startups are happening.
Established doctors are remodeling, uh, expanding, relocating, you name it. So, um, I think the overall mood is if you want to make a move with your business, expand, make it better, get into business, do it. There's no better time than now because it's probably only going to go up from here. This is the last part. We're at a forty minute mark and I hope we haven't lost anybody on the drive. You know, Chad, you're one of my go to's for leadership tips. I know you're constantly reading stuff.
You can see these books behind me. I've probably read Most of them, not all of them. Chad, what's your leadership tip for the day? You're a big leadership guy. You own your business. You took the risk and now it's paid off. For the listener right now that's thinking about getting into ownership, isn't sure, not sure if they want to bet on themselves or whatever, what might have you, what's your tip for them? What advice do you have to business owners or future business owners, leadership-wise?
Well, just do your homework. Communicate clearly with the team. Make sure you've got the right people in place that are looking out for your interests. um do your research make sure you understand things we love to look at leases we love to be involved I do a lot of free work up front so you know I I've done I can't tell you how many jobs I've taken to the goal line and not and never gotten and I don't care if my partners in the market get it and it's a winner for the doctor I'm good with that.
But what I don't want them to do is is go down the wrong road. You know, business ownership is not to be taken lightly. And you want somebody who you want a contractor who is not afraid to tell, you know, because, you know, example, I had a doctor say, gosh, you know what? We got four ops. I've got two equipped. I've got those other two. And there's a little embarrassment. Right. Which you shouldn't be.
those other two ops are empty and I just kind of feel like you know it wouldn't cost me much to equip those and I go doc that money right now is going to look way better in your account than it is in my mill workers account and the dental equipment guys account. And trust me, if you want to equip those ops, we build them to the point where they're plug and play. So literally all I need to do is send an electrician to wire the light.
Other than that, dental guys can hook up everything and they can go. So I'm a big, big part of the bucket, but I know there's other parts of the buckets.
There's operating capital, there's marketing, there's staff, um you know there's signage um all those things that go into the picture so you want a contractor who's not afraid to tell you you know what not now and when I go to cut things I try to cut things in a way that cut things that we can add later right so man This this niche at the end of the hall. I really want this to be a waterfall. Right. Water runs all the way down.
Or I saw this really cool geode in Santa Fe and I want to buy that and hang it down there. And I'm like, hey, Doc, let's get a print for now. Right. And hang that up. And that'll be your gift to yourself at month three when you're killing it and you're expanding other ops. So I love that. That's the important thing is just be honest with you and just and find somebody who's solution minded. I always pride myself on never sending a doc an email or a text at a Friday and say, oh, man, bad news.
Rooftop units are another three months out. I know we're supposed to open in two weeks. I'll find out more Monday. You know, that's why I have the gray hairs, because I figure out how to make that happen. And then I'll bring them at least one solution. So if I know there's no way around it, it's going to cost them money right now. I tell them.
If I can do that sausage making and then present them with the challenge and then the solution, I'd much rather do that than them to worry because I know whatever I worry about day to day, they got a hundred other things because more times than not, they don't know what they don't know, right? About business, about construction, they're good dentists. It's no different than being a contractor when I started, right? I didn't know what I didn't know about being a GC.
I knew what it was to be a great project manager, but there's all this other accounting piece, there's this marketing piece, and I did a lot of that before. I love that. Really, that's where the education piece comes in and just find somebody you trust. I think that's great advice. I love that. I don't think enough professionals out there say no, Chad, to your point. And I think that goes for all of us. My biggest job is to tell people no all the time.
But I would love to share that responsibility with the contractor, the equipment people, all the people. And I think that's really good advice. And that tells you you've got a partner in this. It's not just a vendor, but a partner. And I think that's really, really key. Well, with that being said, we're forty five minutes in. Great interview, Chad. Thank you so much for your time and your knowledge and investing in all of us today.
Folks, I just want to give you another reminder that we need some reviews. Please pop us off a review if you can for a quick second. If you're Spotify or Apple Tunes. And stay tuned. We're gonna keep Shark Week rolling here this week and continue to give you great information about this whole idea of construction. Thanks so much, Chad, for being on the program. We're gonna put his contact below. If you have a question for Chad, I know him. He would love to invest in you more.
If you've got a question, he'll be happy to answer, so we'll put his contact info below. Thank you so much, Chad. I appreciate you, brother. Yeah, thank you, Mike. Good catching up, and thanks for the opportunity. Appreciate it. Yeah, absolutely, man. Be good. Talk soon, guys. Bye. Let us know how you like the show. Rate us on Apple and Spotify. Subscribe and follow for more.