Your bank won't fund you because you're taking too much cash out

0:00What's up, Alex? >> What's up, man? >> I'm I'm Andrew. I sell uh dental services to people in Florida. Um we do about 25 million a year in revenue. I want to be at about 50 million. >> How many offices? >> Uh 10. Going to 12. Um what's stopping me mainly is talent acquisition and uh access to capital. >> Um Are you doing this all inorganic so M&A?

0:24>> Uh they're all de novos. So we're >> Oh, they're all de novo. Okay. >> Uh second gen spaces. So we're basically finding these old dental offices, signing a lease, we put some equipment in, you >> Yeah. No, I love it. Okay. So [clears throat] basically you So what's uh what's EBITDA right now with the 25? >> Uh we're we're at about 21% so >> Okay, so you got five-ish, whatever, or four and change, um or five, yeah. So you just need to get more dentists out Oops. Um more uh dentists to staff your de novo facilities.

0:55>> Right. Which which has been easy for us so Like I have a dental podcast, we've gotten a lot of dentists from that. Uh-huh. My partner's very involved in the dental community so like that's brought a lot of traffic our way, but the bigger we get, the faster we scale, the harder it is to find those dentists to find sales people, to find leadership positions. Uh so we're kind of running into a lot of those issues right now. Yeah. >> That sounds about right. Um And he was like it's harder to open, you know, one a quarter than it is to open one a year. I'm like, I agree with you.

1:25>> Right. >> Um >> Yeah. >> Yeah, so I think um >> [snorts] >> you're just understaffed. So you Do you have capital to do these cuz you said capital was part of an issue? >> Yeah, so we we like bootstrapped the last couple offices. We're trying not to bootstrap the next couple, but the our bank basically like put a pause on funding. They were like we need to take a breath, we need to take a step back, we need tax returns, we need this, we need a you know, beefed-up business plan. So we've kind of done all those things and they're still kind of making us jump through some hoops so we're right now like I'm keeping cash on hand cuz I don't know if they're going to fund our next couple practices that we've got in the pipeline.

2:01>> it cost to open a practice? >> Uh it's about 250 to 300 with the second gen spaces. It's it's not bad. >> So then why is that the limiter? >> What Why is the limiting factor? >> Is I mean if you're doing 5 million a year like >> Yeah, we're we're trying to open about five to six a year is kind of the goal right now. >> You can more than cash flow that though with like 20 or 30% of your cash reserves. >> We could. You're right. Like we we we would just have to cut back distributions. We we could totally do that or >> Okay. >> Yeah. >> Right. Yeah. >> [laughter]

2:27>> Like I just wouldn't be able to get the yacht I also want this year but >> Exactly. Yeah. >> That was That was hilarious. Okay. [laughter] So the business is fine. You're just taking massive cuts. >> I guess. Yeah. >> Yeah. So you're like I want to grow faster. >> though. It feels less risky to use someone else's money than to use my own money. Like >> Well, it's not I don't think it's less risky >> Yeah, but it just feels that way to me. >> Yeah, you know, I don't think it's less risky cuz they can take your [ __ ] >> Right. >> So. >> Yeah.

2:52>> Um So there's that. Um So So this is a this is a a good a good point though which is um we trade uh profitability for growth. >> Yeah. >> And so if you So I'll make this point which is that you actually have a model that is repeatable and what you're looking at is return on invested capital ROIC. Right? And so if you know that you can do $250,000 in and let's say it costs you $100,000 to recruit the team, 350 in um and that facility is going to make You said you have uh 10 opens so 2 and 1/2 million top line and then you said you had 5 million bottom line so 500k uh in profit on $350,000 invested. How long does it take to get to 500k profit?

3:34>> [snorts] >> Uh our offices are usually doing about 1.5 their first year. Now margins are usually lower in the first year though. It sells. >> So let's say it takes 18 months for you to >> Yeah, that's fair. That's fair. >> Yeah, 12-month payback, 18 months and you're you're for sure good. Okay. So Anyways, back to the point which is uh the trade I mean that's the trade you make. I mean when you take out profit today you trade risk for security and you also trade upside.

4:01>> Right. >> So, I think that one's pretty much solved from our conversation. >> Yep. >> Right. >> Yeah, [snorts] no. Yeah, you're right. >> You have the cash to do with 20 25% of your profits. Um then we have the talent side and that's also the same equation. Which is that you probably are doing a cheaper way to recruit talent and you can spend more to go faster. >> Is it time to have a hiring manager like one person dedicated to talent acquisition within the organization?

4:28>> Uh how many roles do you need to hire a year? If you're try If you're bringing six offices, then it means you got six docs, which is one doc every 2 months plus uh what? Like four or five staff? >> Yeah, and then and then as we grow more leadership like right now we're trying to hire regional manager. We're we're struggling. I think inside the I think we're mainly getting >> You're looking at one hire every 2 weeks. >> Yeah. >> Functionally. >> Basically. >> It's time to have somebody do that. >> Okay.

4:52Other methods outside of Indeed like >> I mean I'm a big fan of head hunters. I'm a big fan of head hunters. Now, that being said, um I'll delineate this. If I have a specialized one-time role, head hunters all the way. They already have networks of that. I don't want to rebuild that. If I'm doing a repeated role that is core to my business, so let's say I'm a a media company and I need editors, I want to have a very well-defined process of uh recruiting, hiring, onboarding, training editors. If I have my sales-driven company, then I want to have a really good process of recruiting, hiring, training, onboarding sales people. I don't want to outsource that cuz it's core to the economic engine that I have. I think for you, dentist is core to the economic engine.

5:26Front desk people is probably core to the economic engine. That being said, you probably are only having issues with the dentist. I doubt you're having issues with the rest of the staff. >> Mainly dentist and sales people or treatment coordinators are like the main ones. >> Yeah, you're Yeah, PCC the patient care coordinator etc. etc. Yeah. Yeah. So, um yeah, those two roles are going to be things that would probably make sense to have a specialized person who focuses on that. Um I look I mean, my favorite way to do this is just go find a firm that does it. Go go in the LinkedIn and go one level lower to person who's actually doing it and say, "Hey, want to do that thing just for me instead of 10 other people?"

5:57>> Okay. >> And they'll do it. And I'll pay you better and treat you better. >> Awesome. Thank you. Your team's been awesome, by the way. >> Thank you, man. Appreciate it. >> If you are a business owner and you are not growing as fast as you'd like, I'd like to give you a free gift. So, my team and I put together the $100 scaling road map, which is basically 200 hours of us looking over all the portfolio companies we've had and what stages of growth they went through and more importantly, where they got stuck and how they got past it. And so, we broke it into these 10 stages and we made this little kind of quiz thing where if you put in your business information, it'll tell you where you're at and the most important part for you, what to do for each of functions of the business across product, marketing, sales, customer success, recruiting, IT, human resources and finance. And so, no matter what you're struggling with, someone else has already struggled with it and solved it.

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