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Guest: Syed Shahabuddin
Practice Name: 311 Dental
Check out Sundar's Media:
Website: http://www.311dental.com
Email: 311dentalfam@gmail.com
Other Mentions and Links:
Joe Ross and Associates - Real Estate Broker
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Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/2031814726927041
My Key Takeaways:
- Performing a happiness exercise can be a great way to find what's really important in your life and align your values for the future!
- It is a privilege for us to see patients every day, so show them that they matter with a warm greeting and recognition!
- You do NOT need the most fancy piece of dental gear to impress patients. Get something they will actually talk about like a massage chair!
- All team members need to buy into the vision of the practice. When everyone brings their ideas and support to the practice, that's where it really shines.
- Personal touch can be lost in the fast-paced lifestyle of corporate dentistry. Honing in on one practice can really nurture and develop quality relationships with patients.
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Episode Transcript (Auto-Generated - Please Excuse Errors)
Michael: All right. It's time to talk with our featured guest, Dr. Saed Shaha. Budin. Saed. How's it going?
Syed: It's going well, man. I'm blessed. Blessed to be here. Thanks for having me,
Michael: man. What do we gotta do to get one of them shirts?
Syed: It's a tough uh, a tough ask man.
That's where I got 'em from. Oh,
Michael: nice man.
Syed: Nice. I like that bunch brand new materials, man. This is just the beginning. This is, this is just the beginning. Yeah. Studio
Michael: 88 made that for you, right?
Syed: Studio 88 did the logo for me. Yeah. So I can't take any credit. I chose it. So I guess that takes some work, but yeah.
Michael: Yeah. That's a big decision. Yeah, no, that's true. But also say, can you tell us a little bit about your past, your present, how'd you get to where you are today?
Syed: Sure man. I'd love to. So, I grew up in Chicago land, Chicago land area, about 40 minutes west of city of Chicago. In the suburbs. You know, one of the only brown kids in my entire class.
Always had a little bit of a chip on my shoulder, always had some prove, you know, grew up. I wanted to always be I wanted to be a psychiatrist. Weird thing for a kid to want to be, but my uncle was a psychiatrist and I just saw the kind of respect that people gave him. He had his own business and I knew that he talked to, you know, his business was dealing with people and talking to people, and I loved that.
And that's really kind of what I wanted. Started a little, learn a little bit more about that and decided, nah, actually that's not what I wanna do. The field isn't what I thought it was. You know, you're kind of just pushing pills more than anything. But I, I can say that my sister's like psychiatrist have, at the same time that I was like, you know, late high school I was getting braces.
My orthodontist, I don't know how, what kind of language I could use on this. But he wasn't a very, like, he wasn't, he was nice, but he was kind of like full himself. So he I mean, I would go in and I'm a 16 year old kid, and this guy was just your typical uh, like Indian guy who always wishes that he wasn't Indian, he wishes he was white, you know, one of those guys.
So I have vivid memories of going in there and him just bragging about his life and where he is and where, how he got there. You see that girl up front? That white girl, that's my wife. And I'm like, okay. he pulled out his appointment book. He goes, look at all these patients. They all pay me $200 a month.
And I'm like, okay. He's like, see that car up there? That's mine anyway. Full of himself. Right? And I was like, man, this guy, I never wanna, I don't wanna be this guy. But when he would talk to me about why my mouth was the way that it was, I had some crazy issues. You know, I looked like a vampire canine teeth coming in weird ways.
He would talk to me about why my mouth did that, how my teeth got to where they were. And I just thought it was like, I thought that was so cool. And I was fascinated. So I was like, I wanna do this butt be this guy. So, that started my fascination with dentistry, man. You know, fast forward through college, I thought about nothing else.
I didn't have any backup plans. If I didn't get to dental school, I was gonna be a hand model in California or something. I didn't have anything. I had nothing planned. So, yeah, man. Went to dental school in Indiana. I feel weird just talking this long by myself, man, by the way. But
Michael: you're like, I've never done.
You feel like you're orthodontist guy. Yeah,
Syed: man, man, we're going full circle here. That's crazy that
Michael: he was like that though, that he was real quick. Backspace a little bit though. Psychiatry. When was the pivoting point where you're like, Nope, nevermind.
Syed: Good question. I, I just started to learn more about it and it was late.
And I just like, sat with my uncle and asked him like, what's, you know, what's like your life? Like, what's the day in the life like for you? And it's a lot less, I mean, what I realized is that I wanted to be something more of like a counselor or like a psychologist rather than a psychiatrist, because you spend like a couple minutes with the patient, I would hear him on phone calls and a phone call goes like this.
You know, this is Dr. Whatever. Dr. S. Yeah. What's going on? Okay. That medication's not working for you. Okay, let's try this other medication. I'll call it in for you. That's like mainly your conversation with patients. Sometimes it's like, okay, and they're very like, just deadpan. Okay. Yeah. You're thinking about hurting yourself.
Okay, let me get you started on this other medication. And that's all it is. It's a lot less of like, you know, Tell what, what's your, how are you feeling and what all that kind of stuff. I dunno, the, the connection isn't really there the way that I thought it would be, at least not for adult psych. Mm-hmm.
You know? that was the pivot when I was just like, it's kinda, you know, it's not what I thought. Yeah. It's not what, so you've always kind of had like any psychiatrist out there. If you're a psychiatrist, man, do your thing. I can't do it.
Michael: I can't, you know, you've always kind been, or it sounds like, I dunno if you've always, but like, You wanted to help, but more like on the internal, you know what I'm talking about?
Syed: Yeah.
Michael: Yeah. So why, why did, why did dentistry
Syed: have, how did that happen? I was fascinated by the science of it. My parents were typical Indian parents. We barely went to the dentist, like barely ever. But I just was like, I know I wanna do something, help. Because I wanted to make people feel better.
But I also wanted to have that connection. So like general medicine was kind of in the back of my mind, but then I started looking into dentistry as well. And I dunno, there, I think there was a website or something that I saw and it's talked about pros and cons of being a dentist and all that jazz.
So I was looking into this, you know, looking into, started looking into it and I was like, this is it. Own your own business, which is a big thing as well. I wanted to do. Big, huge part of wanting, wanting to be a dentist, and you build connections with people and you can make them feel better pretty easily.
So yeah, man.
Michael: Okay, nice man. So then fast forward and then you decided to open up your practice. How long were you an associate or working for an
Syed: associateship? Yeah, good question, man. There's a story there, but Graduated in 2017. I worked for Heartland Dental, big Corporate.
Mm-hmm. Dentistry they're like almost double the size I feel like, than they were when I started working with them. Worked with them for four years and then moved back to Chicagoland area. When I was working for them, the first, I really only had a plan to work with them for like a year, and I'm like, I'm just gonna work with them for a year, maybe learn some things, get my speed up, and then I'm go do my own thing somewhere.
I lost track of the vision. the vision was I wanna have my own business. I wanna be a leader. I wanna have my own practice throughout dental school. This is what I was thinking. And I'm like, you know, everything that I was learning at dental school, additional CE and stuff that I was doing in dental school, additional leadership, things I was learning was all to set me up for that.
But when you work for a place like like Heartland, again, I'm not trying to throw shade, but you drink the Heartland Kool-Aid, everybody tells you there's no way out of this corporate thing. You gotta work with us and this is the best option. All these people who have practices, they're gonna be gone.
We're gonna buy them all out, all that jazz. And it was just, you know, I was just listening to it and I should have paid no money to it, you know? So I lost track of the vision, when I was working for them.
Michael: Okay, so when did you snap back into reality, I guess you can say, and been like, nah, man, like, I'm gonna do my own thing.
Syed: That's a good question, man. You're a good interviewer. Can we just take a second? Appreciate
Michael: that'll. I'll Venmo you somebody later. Yeah, yeah. Cool, cool, cool.
Syed: Corny, I did a happiness exercise. My wife and I did a happiness exercise. This is what the exercise is, and I always advise everyone to do this Wherever you are in life, whether you've already started working, or you haven't started working, you haven't even thought of your profession yet, here's the exercise.
Sit down, think very, very deeply about everything that you need in life to be happy. Everything that. Money, what kind of money you wanna make? What kind of material things do you wanna do? You want a Ferrari? Are you okay with a Corolla? What kind of house do you want? What kind of life do you want? Do you wanna have free time?
Do you wanna go and travel? Do you wanna have time with your family? You wanna live close to family? All of that jazz, literally everything. And take like a full day and just do that. And then you have a vision. You have a life that you've built out for yourself in the future. You've decided these are the things that are gonna make me happy and just never compromise on those things. What happens is you get caught up in the chase. I'm sure that you know, you can sympathize. I'm sure that a lot of you guys can sympathize.
You get caught up. This other person, this other, this friend that I went to dental school with is now they have three practices and I'm still here as an associate or whatever it is. You know, my friend who was went into, didn't even go to college, is driving a freaking Maserati and I'm out here with my whatever, it's, the chase clouds you here and it's it's dangerous because it keeps you from again, You lose track of your vision.
What's gonna keep me happy? What do I need to be happy? So, in that list that I wrote up was living close to my family. I didn't live close family when I was working with Heartland, having my own thing, I would, that wasn't the case for me. So just a whole list of things,
Michael: you know. That's interesting. besides that, besides owning your business and living close to family?
What were some of the things that you needed or you need to be happy?
Syed: I need to be fulfilled in what I'm doing, and part of that involves just providing like a great patient experience that, I can only do if I'm doing my own thing. So that's one thing is being fulfilled, you know, in my job, I'm not even gonna mention the the money thing because I'm making my less money right now and probably will be for a year than when I was working with Heartland, probably for the next three years, to be honest with you.
But I had a number in mind and it's actually, it doesn't cost that much to, to keep me happy. Personally. I wanted to be stress free and be able to spend time with my wife, like a lot of time with my wife and not just like two, three hours in a day. I needed to be close to my parents.
there's a lot on the list, but Yeah, I dunno. Okay,
Michael: man. No, it's good. Its good now. No, it's good. It's good. Like, uh, right now, does your wife work with you or no? Yeah. Okay. So you're close, right? Yeah. Like it's good. Yeah. And then so the other stuff is I can't get away from her, you know?
You don't want to either, man. It's nice like, yeah. Yeah. That's good. It's good that you're, you know what I mean? You did a happiness test and like realized and pivoted. How easy has this process been? So let me ask you like, When did you start looking for locations?
Syed: I started looking for locations. It would've been around like May, June last year. Officially started like, kind of like looking at locations and turning off the idea of buying a practice and then turned to the idea of starting out my own. Oh, so you were looking
Michael: for an acquisition first?
I was. did you not find one that you were looking for or?
Syed: yeah, partly that is part of the thing. For the longest time. So I'm really risk averse. I mean, this is the biggest risk I've ever taken in my life. I really try to make calculated decisions and I play it safe.
Like I play it really safe. So my first thought was if I'm gonna have, if I'm gonna buy, if I'm gonna get a, have a practice of my own, I want something that's already established where I already know it's gonna be successful. I already know there's a guaranteed income already coming in. There's patients already there.
So, I started looking into different brokers and talking to them about what kind of practice did they had and nothing was it, you know? and then I started realizing, as I talked to like more and more people outside of brokers, the way that the dental market is the, for offices, there's a couple of people, especially if you're in a big city like I am, Chicagoland.
There's a couple of people who have, the brokers have them on speed dial because they're gonna offer the best price. And Heartland Dental's one of them, all these corporate places, you hard to compete with those people. If you don't have that kinda capital, you don't have anything to really show for it, you know?
So, the only other option really was to then hit up dentists who are gonna retire or people practices that I liked, and then tell them, Hey, when you retire, would you be open to me buying this practice? Okay, when are you gonna retire? Two, three years? Two outside of my time zone, you know, it was like it was gonna take too long.
Had a conversation with a friend of Farhan. I'm gonna shout. He was gonna start up a practice and I was gonna buy a practice. We had that conversation and we flipped. He bought a practice and then I started up my own practice. Mm-hmm. Cause he was just like, these are the, here's the pearls for having a practice, start a practice.
Like you can set everything. That sounds really good. That sounds awesome. It's gonna take some time, but it's my own thing and I made every decision and it's a startup and it's something I'm always, I mean, it's sounds like it's a lot of fun. And he just realized like, I don't think I wanna do that. I think I just wanna buy something more established.
It was weird. We did this 180 thing, both of us, but
Michael: So then you found the location, you, was it immediately the first location you found, or were you like,
Syed: no.
Yeah, I worked with I worked with a couple of real estate brokers here. Dental real estate brokers. Mm-hmm. Actually not just dental, but health. Joe Ross and Associates. I gotta give him a shout out. They gave me kind of like a list of all the places that were sort of available and I went and checked out a bunch and I was like, okay, sure.
Yeah. Maybe this one. Maybe this one. They checked some of the boxes. They weren't checking all of them, but I was like, I have to. And then I just went on a drive one day and I just found this spot here and it's the perfect size widthwise that I wanted. And it looked nice. Like it relatively new built like 10 years ago, I think, 19 years ago in the location that I wanted.
before we scouted locations, my wife and I made dental appointments at a bunch of offices. Like in the area, and I was like, okay, I know what my competition is now. Yeah. Hold on, hold on.
Michael: Why'd you do that? Why'd, why'd you, what was the point of that?
Syed: The point of it was to, I'm always trying to learn.
I'm always trying to improve. I picked up little things here and there from some of these places. Like, a little thing that I put into the patient experience here, but mostly to see, okay, what is my real competition care if I open up? Is there somebody down the street who's gonna do a better job than I'm?
And if that's the case, I can't have confidence in myself and if I can't have confidence in myself, how is anybody else? But, so that's, that was kinda the reason why I did that. did you go,
Michael: you went to these locations and got the,
Syed: my wife and I did. Yeah. What were some of the things you
Michael: picked up?
Syed: One of the places that I went to wasn't even in the areas that I was looking at, but they're a huge name in Chicago, land area. I won't say their name. Mm-hmm. But they're a huge name here and you've probably heard of them and everybody probably has. their design was incredible. It was impeccable.
Whoever is designing those offices, freaking kudos to you. And there was a lot of stuff like, they're really like one of. Cool offices, you know, so they had little, little things that I was like, that's, that's a thing that I'm gonna try to put incorporate later on, you know? But then there was things about the patient experience that I didn't enjoy.
And the sad reality is that, single location practices are kind of few and far in between. That I have found, at least in the big city like Chicagoland, even that place that I'm talking about has like seven locations. They're opening their seventh and eighth location, and when that happens, man, the patient experience just falls by the wayside because the owner of the practice, the, the person who has the most stake in that business is not in the practice.
And when that's not the case, then who's overseeing this? Somebody that you just pay. An office manager or somebody, they don't have the same stake in the practice as you do as a practice owner. So yeah, that stuff just falls by the wayside. And then you, you know, because the patient experience is suffering, now you gotta, now you've gotta compromise on cost for things.
You gotta compromise on the time you spend with patients. It's all related. Mm-hmm. It's all related. So then you gotta change the vision for your whole practice and. I'm just gonna start thinking now mold seven, eight locations and just getting my profit that way versus just honing in on that one practice and providing the best experience.
That's just kind of what I have seen working with the corporate places that working with Heartland that I, you know, I did for four years and then just kind of looking around and being like, look, there's a practice here quarter of a mile down the way, literally two minutes you turn here and there's another practice there.
Three on the street over here. There's like so many practices that are around here, and every single one of them is one of X locations, and the patient experience is not there, you know? Mm-hmm. So that was my vision now then was to, I'm just going to hone in on that and that's what's gonna be, that's what's gonna be our shake.
It's gonna take us a little time to get there. In terms of, success, let's call it. But if my patient experience is the way that I have envisioned it and the way that my team has envisioned it, we've come up with it together, people will be happy So then
Michael: when it came to the specific things like the design, what was it like? You're like, I'm gonna, what was it, what was it and the design that you're like, I'm gonna take that, and what was it where you're like, dang, they're patient experience cause of this specific thing sucks.
Syed: Design was the way that they engaged, like social media was a thing.
Mm. I was like, I wanna do that. Cause people want that. People would love for their dentist to have that. So this is the way that they engaged with their audience was good. Like, there were hashtags things, there were QR codes everywhere. Why are my teeth bleeding? QR code? It takes it to a video of theirs.
You know, it was like that kind of stuff. Mm-hmm. So that's down the line. That's where I'm going. That's where I would like, I would love to have that kinda thing. The list of things that I picked up that were negative is way longer. as simple as when you walk in, are people even noticing you?
Mm-hmm. Are they taking you for granted as a patient? Do they appreciate you as a patient or are they just like, yeah. we're here and it's a priv, it's your privilege to be here and have an appointment with us. It's really the opposite. I mean, our field has changed. It's more customer service oriented and you have to have the mindset because it's true that it's our privilege to treat any of these people.
It's our privilege. So that they let the, that they let us put our hands in their mouths and, for even to have 'em sit in the chair, we spend the money to get them in. so you have to realize that it's a privilege to see patients. And I didn't treat, I didn't, I wasn't treated that way when I was at these places.
Like I walk in nice. Two gals at the front, none of them acknowledged me. I went up and I'm like, Hey, they're like looking up to me bored and not fulfilled with their jobs. So they're just like, yeah, can I help you? I'm like, yeah, I got an appointment. what do you mean? What do you think I'm doing over here?
selling you watches? Like what do you think is happening I have an appointment. My name looks like it might beha. Just do your little research, you know? Little things like that, There was just no clarity on who's gonna even see me and who's gonna do my cleaning.
Like Mm. Just it was clear that it was the male, you know? And then after I come in, there were like 10 people who came in after me. People were waiting. Wow.
Michael: so then you mentioned something you're like, I'm gonna keep doing, I want to hone in on this, which is the patient experience, right.
Until you reach success, what's success look like to you?
Syed: Great question. Success for me is we are able to provide care for a lot of people and not compromise on our patient experience. That's success to me. And I pay my bills. pay my bills and I keep myself happy and my wife happy. and that's really it.
That's success to me is being able to provide patient experience, enough that I am happy and my staff is happy and my patients are happy. That's vague. I know. And I'm sorry, but, I don't know if I have a number in mind, you know, but what's your, what's your breakeven number? there's some things that I spent a lot of money on.
There's some things I did not spend a lot of money on, but, per month it's around like $35,000 would be breakeven.
Michael: Okay. Okay. So
Syed: it's for a seven operatory location, 2200 square feet. Uh, Around there, you know, that's including, that's the loan, that's everybody's salary and included, excluding mine, Which, yeah, I mean, I saved up some money. I'm not paying myself really a lot. Yeah. I pay myself a little bit, but I'm not paying myself a lot. Yeah. I'm paying myself, my wife and I on the same salary.
Michael: Okay. Gotcha. Gotcha. When it comes to, uh, what you spent a lot on, in little on, what was that?
Syed: I don't even say a lot.
I spend money on things that when people come into the office, it's the things that they talk about. I got a massage chair. Mm-hmm. Um, It's not a lot. It's $1,600. One of my, one of my chairs is $7,000. My dental chair at $7,000. So like what's $1,600? Anybody who comes in? The UPS guy. Anybody who delivers anything.
My cleaning people when they come in, Patients when they walk in, they walk when we're giving them the tour, I don't even point out to massage chair. They walk by and they, they walk like this and then they go, what is that? And they do a double take I'm like, well massage. What is that about?
I'm like, if you have to wait a long time, I don't want you to have a bad experience. You can sit in the massage chair or even after today. Why don't you sit right now? And I give 15 minutes in massage chair and walk out and. where do I sign up? It's small things like, dude, I, I have sat in my chair, massage chair like once, but and it's a great one, but it was just an Amazon massage chair.
It's nothing special. But one of the things I learned is that if you just go, if patients expect this, you just gotta be just right, just right above that and they're gonna be minds blown minds. Mm-hmm. You know? Thousands of dollars on 3D printers and all of this stuff. Some of it to market to patients.
I mean, if you're gonna use it, do your thing. I mean, I'm probably gonna get one too eventually. But they just like spend all this money on things that, for the patient experience that patients never pick up on. Like if ate a chair. Mm-hmm. Chair, it's not me. If you do it, that's cool. A deck. No shade, but I just didn't feel like patients ever cared.
I've been in offices where there were eight egg chairs and patients never mentioned it once, but my cheap chair has a $500 massage in it. And patients comment on that all the time. Yeah, just like these little balloons that rise and fall behind you, like right here. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. They just love it.
They love it, man. So, the things I spent a lot of money on were, I didn't even, I negotiated. Tenant improvement. I didn't even negotiate rent. I was like, whatever your rent number is, that's fine. I'm probably paying a lot for this area. It's gonna be like rent and my maintenance stuff in by close to $9,000.
Mm-hmm. So I don't know if that's a lot or not, but I I feel like it's,
Michael: yeah. $9,000. Yeah. Yeah it is. Okay. So then these are some of the things I like that the, the cook for marketing, the massage chair. Right. Like, you know what I mean? Yeah. It's really, really interesting. Yeah. When it comes to um, the, well, actually, let me rewind a little bit.
How much was your build out?
Syed: Build out was, I just wrote the check yesterday, the build out, the final one. 300, like 34, 30 5,000.
Michael: So it was three around $335,000. How was the construction process?
Syed: You know what, man? I hear some horror stories out there.
I did not have that. Thank God. you know, the guy that I went to, he builds a bunch of offices around here. I know several people who, he was definitely quick. But he was quick, but I had no idea when he was gonna do what, like there was no schedule. So it was kind of like unpredictable.
But I'm grateful to be where I'm, where I am. We started, we broke around in October and then we were built out mostly February. like, I had equipment and it people come in. So, you know, like four or five months I hear some horror stories where it takes people a year, I think if you're gonna go through that process, that's an important question to ask of contractors is how many projects do you have going on right now?
How long does it usually take for you to build out an office from where it is right now to the final, you know, thing? So that's a question I asked everybody. He was like, I take four months, just write, like, just right off the bat. And I was like, oh, okay. Other people were like, ah, it depends, you know, this, this, so he took four months.
He did a great job. There were small things that I wish I had more input in. It definitely wasn't a thing where we sat down and came up with the vision for the practice. He is like, yeah, okay, we gotta layout together. He just started doing it and I was like, wait, wait, wait. What about uh, this? He's like, okay, I guess we can do that if you wanna do that.
And I'm like, well, you already did the whole other thing. Let's just go that route.
Michael: Yeah. Yeah. What were some things that you wish you had more input on?
Syed: Man. Design stuff. It's all just finishes mostly. Mostly finishes. The floor plan I had input on, we sat, we, we did as something. We sat together and were like, this is where I want these ops and all that jazz.
I want them this big. But design stuff like, you know, we have a sink in the hallway and he just put up this blue tile and this ugly gold little border. And I was like, dude, this looks like my mom designed it, but. I mean, yeah, it would've been nicer if I could have found a better thing. To be fair though, now that everything's built, it actually looks pretty nice, so, ok.
He knows what he's doing. I don't, but, you know, no, that makes,
Michael: makes sense. Right Now, how many employees do you have?
Syed: Four, including myself. When did you open this week?
Michael: wow. Wow.
Syed: Okay. Okay. Technically this week. So we I mean we had a soft opening. we've been technically seeing patients for like two weeks.
That's just been friends and family. We started seeing our outside patients this week. Technically Thursday actually, but last Thursday. Okay. Okay. It was an accident, but yeah.
Michael: Lemme ask you, lemme ask you what, are you open? Did you feel like. At the end of the day, once your first opening day or once this weekend, would you like we were prepped, we were prepared, or were you like, I forgot this, I forgot that.
Or I should have thought about this, or We should have done this.
Syed: Yeah, no, I mean, we're prepared. Okay. We're good. I don't, we're not like, we're not crazy. Busy, busy. So there are things that I wish I had done earlier, which is where a schedule would have, I think helped. You know, a schedule for my contractor, but I wish, I wish I started marketing efforts earlier.
I wish I started ground marketing earlier. I wish I did all these things earlier, but, it is what it is. So, like, you know, that first day we saw, like we saw three patients, the appointments, there's I do something called a tour appointment that I got from spear. Education. basically it's like a 90 minute appointment and I take them on a tour of their mouth.
I take photos of my DSLR camera, we take an interoral scan, we do a bunch of stuff. so that's like a 90 minute appointment. And we had three of those first day. And then the next day it was like, you know, a couple, this has been a couple every day. It's not like I'm packed. No, I get, we have the time.
I to also just sort of. It's not like we're slammed and we're like burnt out, I'm still going home at six every day. We close at six, we go home at like six 15 every day. But it's because I put in a lot of prep work. We started training like I hired in January and for the first week, We were just at home just learning stuff for the software.
We, we use Cares Stack. Mm-hmm. So we were just learning Carest Stack for a full week and then we spent a good month training outside of the office on our vision. We spent two days just getting to know each other, learning new personality types and all that stuff. We went an escape room together. But basically just coming up with the vision for the practice together.
I needed my everybody to buy into the vision of the practice, to buy into the experience, to buy into what kind of things we're gonna be doing for people. And they really did. I'm so grateful we, I did that because now anything that's going up on our social media is them. Anything that, any new ideas that we have, marketing wise, it's them.
It's not me. I'm not great at that stuff, you know? Mm-hmm. So, they really bought in and made it theirs. It's been awesome to see. I'm proud of them. Nice man.
Michael: That's good. What are you guys doing for marketing and advertising then?
Syed: Good question. We so Studio a, d a, you would mentioned them. So they built out my website.
I have SEMO share doing my online marketing, SEO and ads and stuff like that. We just started like maybe a month ago with that stuff, ask me in a couple months how it's going. But and then we've got MVP mail house. We're using them for print marketing and your ground marketing course.
Have you started ground marketing or no? Yeah, so we did. We did, but so many people were asking, are you guys open yet? And we're like, we have to say like, no, we're not yet, but in a month, check this out. Ha ha. They're like, oh, ok ha. And then you can see them just the interest just weighing down. And part of that is to us, we probably could have done better things during the, during our scripts, but now, like next week, we're gonna hit it very hard.
You know, we're gonna hit ground marketing very hard every day. We're going as we have a couple hours planned. Yeah. And we're just gonna be on the community. We're doing a couple of things here and there. Like next week we have a middle school, we're going to a career fair, so we're gonna have a spin wheel.
I think it's gonna be cool. We've done a couple of daycares and sent home some stuff with the kids, you know, being like, Hey, we're three 11 dental to their parents. So we've done a couple of things here and there. We're gonna be at farmer's markets and all that stuff. So yeah, we had meetings where we decided this, we're gonna hit up this event, we're gonna be at this event, we're gonna be at this event.
That's what we wanna be. We wanna be that office that is very active in the community and that like, you know, you're a little annoyed with because of how much they, they're in your face. Yeah. We're not gonna do a billboard or anything, but I wanna be out there, you know?
Michael: Yeah. No, that's good. So hold up real quick.
Rewind. You didn't get their information when they're like, are you open yet?
Syed: We did. And then some of those people when we called back, we got some people scheduled. It's not like, yeah, half the people that we have scheduled were from those lists. But a lot of them were like, oh no, I need to find somebody like right now.
And I was like, you can't just wait. They can't wait like a month. You can't wait. Well, you know, two months actually. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Some of them are like, yeah, you know what uh, call me back at this time. You know, call me back in a couple months where you guys are. So we have called those people back. We're gonna hit up those businesses again.
Yeah. It's not a big deal. We're gonna get it again. You know? Yeah. Now that everything is built out, now that this place is like, it looks so nice. I'm trying to be aggressive with getting people into the office and meeting us. Cause we're on conversion there. Who much and us. it's good.
So we're trying to be aggressive. So, at first I was like, I don't know if I should offer free whitening. Sounds like it's gonna cost a lot per patient, but now I'm like, yeah, whatever. I mean, whatever gets people in I'm confident that they'll stay. Yeah.
Michael: Okay man. Yeah, I mean, remember like as long as you're following up and calling them right and following up or, you know, you can text too.
They feel like people reply faster with text now, but however you wanna do it, like keep it up man. You know what I mean? When it comes to these leads. Cause they, they were interested in you. They're like, yeah, gimme my information. They already do that first transaction,
Syed: you know? Right, right. Yeah.
Michael: So do you have, are you doing that or is it your, somebody in your team doing that or?
Syed: It was me and my team. My wife would be answering calls. Sh she wouldn't be with me. She's also not like a crazy people person, but my front desk assistant and my dental assistant, they don't think they are, but they are. Yeah. So, I take them with me and we go, and sometimes I just send them, you know, they have different conversations that they had, they can have with people when I'm not even there.
Sometimes I just send
Syed Shahabuddin DRAFT-cm: them
Michael: out. Okay, man. That's good. So then, sorry, throughout this process, I guess from the moment you decided I'm gonna do my own practice, right? Maybe you were still in Heartland, but you decided it. Right. So today, what's been some of your biggest struggles or fails or pitfalls?
Syed: From the moment that I decided, just believing. In myself. And like I said, I'm risk averse. I don't take big risks. So overcoming that and being like, if you have a set vision and if you believe in yourself, you believe in the experience that you provide, what's gonna stop you?
Sure. It'll take a little time, but you'll be good. You know? Mm-hmm. That's just, just having confidence. That's kinda the biggest thing. I mean, I'm confident in my clinical ability, and I'm confident when I talk to people and case acceptance wise, that kind of stuff, I'm confident there.
But, you know, as far as like the business goes and then going out into the community and getting people and. Having a brand of your own to be proud of and to be confident in is kind of a different thing. So, it didn't take me long though, to be honest with you. Mm-hmm. It took a couple, it took just some, some time just to think about myself and my wife and just talking about it and what really sped that up was going to these other offices and being like, okay, you know what, nah, I think we're fine.
Yeah. You know, That was my biggest pitfall, I would say. But I mean, it's just small things here and there. Every day there's a new pitfall, there's little things every single time, you know? Yeah. Like, you know, we, we, we had got these hip out bins for organization and putting those things together was like a freaking pain and a half.
It took whole day, went back and forth to Menards, got the wrong thing, those stupid little things like that. I'm grateful. It's been nothing big. Yeah. Getting was an issue. That was kind of a big issue, but you know, I don't know if you want me to talk about that, but Yeah,
Michael: no, we, we, we can dive into that a little bit.
I just wanna back to the confidence thing. Yeah. You still feel like you struggle
Syed: with that?
I'm gonna sound like a douche bag. No, I don't. Yeah. I don't, I'm
Michael: what helped. What helped? Because it sounds like maybe you don't struggle with that part of the confidence, but when it comes to like, I dunno, ground marketing or anything else, you're a hundred percent confident or Now I am.
Syed: Okay. Why? Because I've seen what's out there.
I've seen what's out there. I've gotten a couple of patients in and they're, I, I see what they enjoy and I just see the look on their faces when they walk into an operatory and it says, Hey, Saed. And there's a customized thing to them based off of a menu that they filled out, you know? Mm-hmm. And I just hear the comments from people, things like I walked in and I didn't, I thought I was in the wrong place.
I didn't know it was a dental office. That inspires confidence. people who are like, okay, for instance, like my, one of my assistant's moms with my, my first patients here has been a little afraid to go to the dentist for years. Came in, met me, saw the place. She needs some extensive treatment and she's excited about the treatment.
Now after having gone through this whole experience here. So that inspires confidence. I mean, it's just little things like that, you know? I think the lack of confidence was, are people going to enjoy it? Are I spent so much time building up this vision, building up this experience, picking little tiny things, you know, I spent all this damn money on this place.
Are people gonna enjoy it enough to. am I gonna be able to pay these bills? So, seeing how people come in and seeing what's out there, what's around me in terms of like, you know, the other offices that are here, they're all corporate. That inspires confidence. The phone calls that we get, listen to them and then people being like, I just came from this other office and bike.
I don't know what they're doing, but that's they, the whole thing just went downhill. I was a patient with theirs for years, and now I feel like I'm a number, Yeah. I mean, I'm kind of being kinda redundant, but all of that expires confidence for me.
Michael: honestly say, I feel like you kind of had always, or you've had that hope, and then once you met it here halfway, they were like, Yes.
They, they confirmed your hope, right? They confirmed your faith or your, or whatever you wanna call it, confidence, right? And then boom, right. Confidence. You're like, I thought this was gonna happen. This is happening, right. Kind of thing. Yeah. That's a good,
Syed: yeah. You should be a psychiatrist, dude.
You needed
Michael: medicine. And uh, yeah. So then one of the last questions I wanna ask you is, throughout this process, how is it affecting your personal life?
Syed: You know what? My wife works with me. It's not, if anything, it's improving our relationship, honestly. I mean, like I said, we talked about the happiness, my happiness I dunno what you wanna call it.
That dude the exercise, the happiness exercise. Mm-hmm. She was a big part of it. We went through that together, so, it's improved my personal life as far as my wife is go. I don't see friends. Yeah. Like at all anymore. I haven't met up with friends for a long time. I used to meet up with them on the weekly, you know, and I, we used to be fairly social, but in the past six months, Yeah, I can count on my hands the number of times I've hung out with people.
Family, you know, I try to see family on the weekly. I see my parents at least, but I definitely see them a lot less. But I know that that's temporary and that's right now, but my wife was the biggest part of my life. Mm-hmm. I see her every day. That's great. I mean, I see her for hours. I see her every single second pretty much.
Yeah. Yeah. You know, which I advise if you can make that happen and you like the person that you were married to.
You? Yeah. Good. Cause this sucks, man. When I started working and when you first get outta dental school, you know nothing. So I spent, I would come home from work and you'd already be burnt out. And then I spent three hours on spirit online education, just learning stuff for like five months. I did that and then, you know, and my, my wife is just, She's working as well.
But then, you know, there, we didn't spend much time together and we were relatively young in our marriage. Like three years in when I, that was happening. I spent five months doing that. And then even still, I come home after that and it's three hours and two, three hours. I'm burnt out, I'm tired. It's like, are we gonna talk about now?
It's just watch TV and go to sleep and just repeat. Mm. You know? And so I just didn't like that. Yeah, I don't
Michael: at all. Yeah, it's not a good way to, you know what I mean? There's no
Syed: communication. Yeah, but that's the average, that's your average marriage, right? I mean, think about it nowadays, but nowadays people are working from home and maybe it's different, but um, this is before Covid, so I mean, that's just your average marriage and it's just you have the weekend and you have some evenings to each other if you're not burnt out, and then that's when communication fails and all of that stuff, Yeah, we're really getting into more marriage counseling here, but,
Michael: No, no, but it's good man. It's good. It's, that's why I asked the question about how it affects your personal life, right? It's of course cause um, yeah. It's a good thing. But some, I guess some people are like, oh man, you know, it, I'm, I spend less time with my family.
All this does cause my startup, but it's also a good side to it, right? it doesn't have to be that way where you spend less time with people, right? Yeah. You can be spending more time with people. Yeah. So it's really, really good. Awesome side, man. Yeah. If you can, can you tell our listeners where they can find you if they have any questions or they wanna reach out to you or anything like that?
Syed: Sure. Well, if you're in Chicago land, just come, just come check me out, dude. I'm at Bowling Brook Southwest Chicago Land. Come check with the office. That'd be awesome. I'd love, I'd love to show people I take pride in it. You can tell. you can just reach out to me by email three 11 Dental fam like family gmail.com.
If you have any questions, I'd be so happy to help.
Michael: Awesome. So like guys, that's gonna be in the show notes below. And sai, thank you so much man, for being with us. Before we sign off, any last piece of advice or favorite quotes you wanna share with us?
Syed: Any last pieces of advice? Man, I've been talking for a long time.
The biggest piece of advice I have is do that happiness exercise. If you have not done that, when people give you advice, take it with a grain of salt. Even when I give you advice, take it with a grain of salt.
Do your own research. Learn things on your own and take a little bit from everyone and never just take just one person's word for everything. I've had to do that.
Michael: Awesome. Awesome. So thank you so much for being with us. It's been a pleasure. Yeah. And we'll hear from you soon.
Syed: Thank you so much. Appreciate it.
