The Group Dentistry Now Show: The Voice Of The DSO Industry

Brandon Halcott, Co-founder of Seva Dental Team joins the Group Dentistry Now show. Brandon discusses:

How he got into the dental industry
His time with Tru Family Dental
Starting another DSO, Seva Dental Team
Current market conditions
Much more

To learn more about Seva Dental Team you can email Brandon Halcott at bhalcott@sevadentalteam.com

If you like our podcast, please give us a ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ review on iTunes https://apple.co/2Nejsfa and a Thumbs Up on YouTube.

Choose your favorite listening app below and subscribe today so you don’t miss an episode! Full transcript is also provided below.

Full Group Dentistry Now DSO Podcast Transcript:

Bill Neumann:
Welcome everyone to the Group Dentistry Now Show. I’m Bill Neumann, and as always, thanks for listening in or maybe you’re watching us on YouTube. But again, we appreciate your support. Great support. We wouldn’t have great guests like the next guest we have on here. You may have seen Brandon Halcott in the past. He was just at, well, just in December at the ADSO Next Level. And he actually had a session, see if I’ve got this right. He was talking about navigating the path to a successful DSO sale. So we’re gonna talk a little bit about that. he experienced that and maybe he can give you some tips. But Brandon Halkot, who is the co-founder of Seva Dental Team, welcome to the Greek Dentistry Now Show.

Brandon Halcott:
Thanks so much, Bill. Happy to be here. I’m really excited and appreciate everything that you’ve done for the industry in the last couple of years. To see where we’re at now from where we were in the early, early teens, it’s phenomenal and looking forward for the industry to keep growing alongside dentistry now.

Bill Neumann:
Yeah, this is, uh, well, you know, it’s, it’s interesting. So I think your timing getting into the industry was very similar to our timing group dentistry now coming in and 2013, 2014 timeframe, somewhere right around there. Are you 2013? Is that when true family started?

Brandon Halcott:
We started looking in 13 and closed our first deal, uh, first affiliation in 2014.

Bill Neumann:
Yep. So very, very similar. So we’ve seen a lot of change in the industry in, in 10 years. So let’s, let’s talk before we get into all that, because we’ve got a lot to talk about. We have true family dental to talk about. We have save a dental team. Uh, and there was quite a bit of time in between the two. Uh, so maybe before that, your background and then how you got into dental.

Brandon Halcott:
Yeah, absolutely. I always start with, But I was born and raised on a farm in central Illinois, 30 minutes from a stoplight, uh, graduated high school with 50 kids. So it was, it was very rural. Um, we had corn, soybeans, and then black, I guess, Hefford beef cattle. Um, so those are the crops or the livestock that we had a non-traditional background. I always just start there because that’s a big piece of who I am. And then went to school, used sports to be able to get to a good school at the University of Chicago, played football, ran track. And then after that, I went on a career on finance. And I did okay in finance, worked really hard, personable. did well in terms of connecting with management teams. I think that was that background in terms of, uh, farming and other things there. But then after that, uh, I, I, it wasn’t that I was in, in having a ton of success. I just hadn’t found what I was great at yet. And so I went to business school and then after that, a more entrepreneurial path. And at that point in time, um, you know, there was a car repair company that I worked on for a bit. It was performing services similar to safe flight. And then a beauty school roll up. And then finally, True Family Dental. And hey, how’d you how’d you make that connection or get that the leap into in the dentistry? When I was before business school, I worked at a private equity fund that owned a physical therapy roll up. And so we were either opening up new clinics or buying clinics in an area and putting them under one umbrella. So I got to see the multi-unit outpatient health care game from an operator perspective, investor perspective, and had known that dental was around. I mean, Midwest Dental was here at that time, Smile Brands, Heartland, Pacific, Aspen, some of those were doing. Affiliations and some of them were DeNovo only. But I had known that that existed and really thought that like the skill set that I had developed until that point in time would be really applicable for the industry, which was very fragmented and continues to be fragmented and had low technology adoption. I struggle with a blank sheet of paper. But if there’s a painting and my job is to make that painting better, I do better there and I enjoy that. And I guess I do well there. So, hey, that’s how I came to dental and have had the opportunity to build and sell one company, as you mentioned, and then Save a Dental as our new holding company that we’re building here. And so continue to love the industry and the opportunity available.

Bill Neumann:
So 2014 TrueFamily Dental starts based in Midwest Group, right? Talk a little bit about the model and was it all acquisitions? Was it DeNovo? Was it what we would consider a traditional DSO or was it more a partnership model? What was TrueFamily?

Brandon Halcott:
So the all affiliation base, so we were buying offices, mostly from retirees. We always share the story that the first individual that sold us their practice, he had passed away, so he couldn’t get anyone alive to sell us an office, so we bought an office from an estate, and that’s how we got started. Three chairs, couple hundred thousand in revenue. Fantastic story with that practice, because now, It’s doing phenomenally well, I think approaching 2 million in revenue and going to be at 12 operatory office very soon. So that’s where it all started. But we were very traditional in the sense of GP focused and retirees and putting them under one Holtzco. and then bringing new associates in. Those associates could buy into the Holtco. There was no practice level economics or the JV structures that we’re hearing about today. So I’d call it a very vanilla, typical DSO or what the industry had seen for a long period of time with the caveat of the Holtco equity that we were selling. And that took a while to get to that type of, Uh, model that we had. And I mean, uh, another story that we always share is we affiliated with an office and the office manager asked about two offices and she kind of oversaw both of them and said. what are you doing for credentialing of the doctors? And we looked at her, Neha Shanai, my partner, with the blank stares. So that was mid-morning, like late morning. And so that afternoon, her resume was up on Indeed because she had no faith in Tweedledee and Tweedledum being able to carry the business forward or succeed for that matter. She shared that story with us maybe a year or two later at a holiday party. I mean I think you know we’ve had a pretty. Ram rev cycle for us and- has joined us again actually for. For save us so- yeah we- we were. We learned a lot out of Never lost an appendage and bled out, but it was a trial by baptism by fire and kept growing, kept learning, and ultimately was able to put a great group of practices together and do a lot for our patients and the team members, which was what we set out to do out of the gate.

Bill Neumann:
So early on, we have a farmer that goes to college, right, and then starts a DSO. And the reason I bring up the farmer side of it is, it’s not uncommon, right? We have Rick Workman, who started out that way. And we also have Wayne Mortensen of Mortensen Dental was a farmer as well. So it’s not as uncommon as you think. So there has to be something that you learned on the farm, it’s translatable to running a multi-site dental group, right?

Brandon Halcott:
And Effingham wasn’t far from Streeter and I’ve made the pilgrimage down and even before the transaction that we were able to do together with Heartland, so Rick and Pat and the rest of the team, gotta meet all of them, but yeah, there is that thread of uniformity there amongst a couple of us and it’s, I think the problem solving is the interesting piece because you can’t take the combine to the 7-Eleven and fill it up and you have to pre-plan and you have to be very prepared. And then if something happens, it’s on you to figure it out. And the beauty of the DSO model in terms of a practice had that same type of experience where they’re on their own. But then when they join a DSO, they’ve got all these other services and support that can happen. And so I see that, hey, you’re not just, maybe you’re a co-op farmer then where you’re not just taking your crops to market on your own. You’ve got a support of a co-op there to help you do it. And I mean, it works great, but yeah, the problem solving and other pieces that I had to work through every day while working with my father, I mean, I still leverage those skills today all the time.

Bill Neumann:
So we’re a true family dental, uh, started 2014. And as we, you know, move through the decade, we get to, we hit COVID and so we’re in 2020. And then you ended up finding that strategic partner in early 21 or late 2020, somewhere around there.

Brandon Halcott:
Yeah, that’s correct Bill. So December 21st, I believe was the day the transaction closed of 2020. And we, we were building something, um, that we thought would continue to go on and Heartland approached us and there was an opportunity. I mean, we knew them very well, as I mentioned that it spent time with them and we had markets that they wanted to be in, uh, that, that helped them out from a geographic footprint perspective. And COVID made it hard for the, the solo practitioner transactions because They didn’t know what was going to happen. I mean, no one knew what was going to happen. And so we got out, we had always been in touch with Heartland and they said that they hinted at, Hey, we’d love to do something together if the time is ever right. And during COVID, we just kept talking with them and ultimately was able to consummate a transaction, created a lot of shareholder value. And I think of the 50 some providers that transition to Heartland, there was one had one had left in that first year. I mean, we had we cared a lot about the culture and the team and what we built and Heartland provided a incredible opportunity for our team to keep growing and to keep serving their patients at a higher level. I mean, we’re all aware of the world-class CE that they have there and the, uh, commitment to great technology. And those were something that, uh, we never would have been able to do on our own in the near future. And, and that opportunity was really important to us. And I think the, the true family, the offices and the partnership with Heartland has continued to go well. And so we’re very excited that that’s how everything turned out. And, and, but at the same time, like we weren’t building something to sell to a strategic. We’d always thought that a sponsor would be more interested in the, uh, in true family. And we’ve, we built it that way in terms of the amount of, uh, management team and corporate overhead that we have to, to continue to grow. And so that, uh, there was no plan. You look at the 19 when we were putting our plan together for 2020, there wasn’t a plan to, Hey, we need to have a transaction this year. Uh, all came about very quickly and. And at the end of the day, very, very happy with how everything turned out.

Bill Neumann:
So again, I go back to what we were, we talked, or I’d mentioned at the beginning of the podcast, you’re at the ADSO and you were talking, you had, you’re talking about navigating the path to a successful DSO sale. So do you have any, you know, tips, maybe some things that, you know, worked out really well? Like you said, you really did plan for a sale in 2020. You certainly didn’t plan for a sale to a strategic. You were looking more for a sponsor. So anything you might’ve done differently, or just like you said, any tips for the folks that weren’t at that ADSO next level meeting?

Brandon Halcott:
Yeah, absolutely. And we wanted to, our belief was that if we built something that could work for a strategic or a sponsor, that there’d just be more demand, right? It’s always supply demand in the world. more people are interested in the asset, then it’s a B. hopefully you’re creating more shareholder value at that point. So we thought about that in terms of building it. For your question there around lessons learned and things of that nature, you have to be prepared in terms of the business with your ability to produce financials and data and analysis. So if there isn’t one practice management software, so maybe you have a couple that are in there, But then there’s a way, either with a program over the top or a data pool with business intelligence on top of it, that you’re able to get that data. Like, that’s very important. Also having clear documentation from all of, I mean, as I mentioned, we were an affiliation-based organization. So having each of the deals that we’ve done, the pro formas that we did at close, as well as the performance of them thereafter and positives, negatives, things of that nature. The documentation pieces, I just look back and that was all very well received because we had all those pieces together and they could look back historically and see why this deal was done, what the pro forma was and what it was on a go forward. Some of the other ones that are just blocking and tackling are around PCI compliance, HIPAA compliance. Really having all of those, Having that buttoned up and having the proper documentation, your payroll system or your human capital management system, being able to show when everyone has taken a HIPAA compliance log, OSHA, those type of things. It’s really important to have all of those things that could prevent the deal, not from happening, but just cause a problem in it. Get all of those handled at the beginning. Another piece that we shared there ADSO meeting was around, if you own your buildings or you own your practices, those type of things, creating leases for when you go into the transaction, the leases that you want to create. Now, if it’s going to be more favorable for the landlord, that’ll obviously be a hit from an EBITDA perspective. And so you got to weigh the pros and cons, but just know that when you’re going in, you want to have anything that you have, like have that buttoned up into the future from a go forward perspective, because they’re going to be assuming those leases. So you’d want to if you are the landlord and the tenant, make those get those set up prior to and have those long term relationships or long term leases that you might want to have there, get that get that done beforehand. So those are a couple bits of information that we shared there at the ADSO media, as you mentioned, Bill.

Bill Neumann:
So you’re on the other side of the transaction. Now you’re part of Heartland. What did that look like? You were there for a little while. And then how did you transition from being part of Heartland, leaving that and starting Seva Dental? Why Seva Dental Team? Why would you want to do it again?

Brandon Halcott:
You’re not the only person that’s asked me that. Some people are a little more aggressive in terms of, are you crazy? And that was a couple of times that ADSO people asked me that. So really enjoy building businesses. And what’s great with Donald is you really get to serve your patients and help them. I mean, the link between oral health and overall health, That’s, that’s life changing for some people. And so I really enjoy those facets of it. Uh, in terms of the, the piece around Heartland, we, we transacted and then, uh, we’re responsible for helping them transition the business, uh, to the Heartland operating system. And once they got, once they had everything done there, I was, I was on call if needed, uh, and, and kept working for them through, I think it was August of 21. And then at that point, hey, what do you want to do next? And our family, we’ve got young children. At that point, we had three, now we have four. And we went to Nicaragua for a year and spent some time down there and decompressed. I was at home with my wife every day. And the empathy of understanding what that’s like, I just talk about the kids like they have no incentive to do anything that you really want And so I’d be like, hey, do you want a you know, a purple crane? Yeah, I want a purple crayon Okay, so that video my son or daughter saying I want a purple crayon that I’d go to the store get the purple crayon and then come home and Let’s say, you know, I was I said green. It’s like no. No, no, look at this video I’m gonna get it on my phone and hold it up. And no that wasn’t me. That was someone else just crazy. It’s so hard and I And my wife and I both agreed, Hey, it’s, it’s, uh, you really enjoy my brand and you really enjoy building businesses and, and you have a lot of fun with it. You get to see the team grow and those types of things. So what do you want to do again? And, uh, Namish and I talked a bunch and we really just love the opportunity that continues to exist in dental and, and believe we can keep, uh, keep growing and keep building, uh, a larger business as time continued and to serve. patients and team members on a very high level. And I think being rooted in that from a cultural perspective, hopefully that’ll lead to similar success that we had with TrueFamily.

Bill Neumann:
So tell us a little bit about Save A Dental Team, maybe like what’s behind the name and then how is it different than TrueFamily?

Brandon Halcott:
Yeah, absolutely. So Save is a Sanskrit word for service. Uh, and, and that’s where we come from in terms of what the organization will be, will be entirely based upon. Right. So service is so important. It’s service to, uh, each other is colleagues and team members and it’s service to our patients. And if we have that at the, as our focal point, and that’s our true North, I mean, the sky’s the limit in terms of what we’ll be able to do, uh, with the business. uh geographically we’re starting in the in the midwest um so similar to true i think that we’re going to bring well i don’t think we are going to bring more technology into the practice uh and immediately and that would be uh the scanning capabilities both for uh removable orthodontics and then uh crowns and and other pieces there so we’re going to really push that forward and really try to bring that into the organization earlier. There’s a couple other small strategic differences, I’d say, but I mean, we’ll still be GP focused. We’re still going to be doing affiliations to grow. So we have no desire to do any de novos at this point in time. But then we’re going to stretch the geography because we’ll start in the Midwest, but then want to go to the, to the Southwest, to Utah, Nevada, Arizona, Colorado, take advantage of some of those tailwinds from a population growth perspective. So do plan to, to build density in the Midwest first and Hayes density 15 to 30 offices in an area probably, and then we’ll expand from a geographic perspective, as I mentioned, to the Southwest.

Bill Neumann:
This is a question that I’m always curious about because everybody seems to have a different answer, and some of it, I guess, is definition. Where does it seem like we are as an industry from a consolidation perspective? We hear percentages thrown around a lot, but you’ve got a really good perspective because you’ve been doing this for over a decade now. So does it feel more consolidated and is it more consolidated in certain markets?

Brandon Halcott:
I were definitely more consolidated. You look at the, the deals, just the consolidators have done over the last 10 years, but at the same time, like, I mean, when we both got started in this industry a decade ago, it was still a little, a little edgy. There were some providers who would, who wouldn’t talk to a DSO. And at DSO, and I mean, ADSO did a tremendous amount of job and a tremendous job and all the other groups out there to make sure that those the negative sentiments were what actually I mean, that wasn’t reality. But there was there were negative sentiments in the market. And so You’ve got, you’ve got an amount of providers that before they wouldn’t have considered affiliating with the DSO. And, but now that’s something that’s able to do so. I, yes, the market, you know, 20 ish percentage points that in terms of consolidation of the 160 DSOs that are out there in the country. But now there’s that population that only would have sold to another provider that is way more comfortable with a DSO transaction. And so even though there’s, I think it’s, there’s, there’s more competition. I mentioned the number of DSOs, but there’s at the end of the day, there’s, there’s, I think a larger deal flow because your broker network has increased considerably within the space. So it’s a little bit. Starbucks, Dunkin’ Donuts ask where Starbucks and where the market, Dunkin’ Donuts has a smaller pie, but the market’s so much bigger. I mean, there are a lot more brokers out there and I think there’s a larger supply of practices. Your question around geographically, I think that, I mean, obviously the Sunbelt States, they’ve had a lot of penetration and there’s a lot, I mean, there’s people moving there, and that’s why the DSOs want to be there. So you’ve got those pieces of Florida, Georgia, Texas, but then you’ve got Arizona that’s growing so fast and so new. There’s ample opportunity from the Novo perspective there. So those are a couple of thoughts that I had and what I’ve seen over the, I mean, yeah, like when we started there was, a broker or two per market, like per geography. And now there’s five to 10 brokers in each market that are, that are doing deal, doing affiliations on a recurring basis. So I think the, I think the supply is greater. Um, and, and which is, which is great. Cause then you can, you can have your pick in terms of the strategy of the organization and how you’re, how you’re thinking about serving patients.

Bill Neumann:
You mentioned the dentists that have become maybe less negative to the DSO model. And the models are all so different now, right? You’ve got your traditional DSOs. You had some providers that maybe weren’t necessarily doing what’s best for the provider or the patient way back when. And now I think you’ve got, you have more competition, so there’s more to choose from. The models are different. I think they’re, I would say the majority, 99.9% of the DSOs are providing excellent patient care and also doing right by the provider. So what are you, beyond like, Dennis warming up to the idea of possibly partnering with the DSO. Yeah. What else are Dennis looking for? It seems like they’re certainly they understand that now it’s not just, you know, the value of their practice isn’t based on a percentage of their revenue. They understand EBITDA a little bit more. What else do you see from them and what are they looking for in a partnership today?

Brandon Halcott:
Yeah, your your point around there’s the different models, I think that’s this industry, a multi hundred billion dollar industry. And you can be you could serve our we’re a front teeth only thattle office, right? There’s so many ways to segment the market. And you can build out a great little bit or not a little business, a great big business in any segment of the market. So if they’re the proliferation of different flavors, so only purchasing retirees is, you know, one model might be only gonna only get a partner with people that JV structure where they’re owning some of the practice and continue to know that and will be running the practice, the Nova model, in terms of where you’re hiring from age of dentists that are coming out of school, there’s, there’s a lot of different ways that you can go to market because of the size of the market. And so your question around what are dentists looking for? I think it depends on what, I mean, it matters what the dentist actually wants, because now you’ve got an incredible supply of different types of DSOs that they might choose to go work with, partner with, sell to, and retire, all these types of things. So it’s, I mean, there’s a tremendous amount of choice available, and that’s what’s really important, and that’s what’s important to Sava is really understanding what the what the provider wants to accomplish with affiliation with the transaction partnership, and seeing if we’re the right partner for them, because we’re not the right partner for everyone. And just conversely, other groups that are out there, they’re the right partner for some and not the right partner for others. So it’s, it’s really at this point in time, as the markets maturing, There’s a lot, there’s more opportunity and more choice and people can find specifically what they want. Like if you’re, if you’re 40 some years old and have a 15 year runway, well, what’s going to make more sense for you because you still want to treat, manage the team, provide X, Y, and Z. And there’s groups that make sense for that, that type of, uh, that, that type of desire of what the provider wants to do with, with this transaction.

Bill Neumann:
So I’ll flip the question. What type of dentist or what type of practice does save a dental team? What?

Brandon Halcott:
I mean, we’re, we’re trying to be, our goal is to be the best practice in the neighborhood where we’re serving patients. It’s not save us goal to be the best DSO in the country. It’s the best in the neighborhood we’re serving. Cause we’ve got, those are the patients that we care about and that’s where we’re trying to really get them to an optimal oral health perspective. So it’s a, neighborhood practice, a provider that’s been providing quality care. And you can see that in terms of reviews of patients and chart audits and things of that nature. And we’re really trying to step into that. And they’re there, what they care about is someone who’s going to take care of their patients and someone who’s going to take care of their team. Because I mean, as I mentioned, you know, hey, it’s all about service here at the beginning. That’s our true north. And so we’re looking to serve a team, and then we’re looking for the team to serve patients. So that’s what we care the most about. And it’s finding a provider that’s got that those type of philosophical alignment, and then make sense for us and someone that you know, they’re they’re ready. In short order, what period of time is that? Is that a year is that three years but looking to sell their practice and then slow down and bring an associate in to continue to serve their patients and to work with their team. And so that’s the optimal type candidate for Save the Dental Team.

Bill Neumann:
So what are you seeing in the market right now? You know, we’ve obviously, things are quite a bit different in 2024 from an, you know, the economic perspective. We all just go to the grocery store and we all can see some of the differences. But what are some of the challenges that you see operating at DSO today, even that you didn’t have? You mentioned technology. You certainly have a lot more opportunity for technology. It’s amazing the advancements that we’ve had in the past 10 years. Sometimes it’s probably difficult to figure out what’s the smartest investment. You can invest all your money in technology and that might not be the best route to go. So there’s a lot of opportunity there. You had talked more of the technology you were looking at. was more around maybe digitizing some things, 3D printing, opportunities like that. What type of technologies are you looking for? What challenges do you see? Again, this could be a podcast unto itself, but maybe what are some of the things you’re seeing right now that you didn’t experience with True Family?

Brandon Halcott:
Yeah, I mean, look, you mentioned the grocery store. you know, in the grocery store, the items are more expensive. Well, why are they more expensive? And it’s the cost to create those items that have gone up. So just like, just like every other industry, uh, in the DSL world, in the dental industry, there’s been inflation from a wage perspective and then, uh, in a, in a supply and lab perspective. And, you know, those are major, major buckets from a P and L perspective. And so at Sava, we’ve looked at ways to streamline more of our processes, and that could either be at a support level, so the office that’s supporting all the practices in terms of how we’re doing accounts payable, maybe payroll, any of these things. What’s nice is we’ve started from a blank slate, and so we had a bunch of learnings from True. did this differently, if we set this process up, because we care deeply about the efficiency there, because look, you’ve got the pressure that I mentioned around some of your major costs, your labor labs and supplies. And so where are areas that we might be able to win back there? So we’ve been focused as we think about software within the operations or support of the practices. And then if you look at within the practice, the growth in technology, that was I mentioned early on like fragmented industry and low technology adoption. It was hard to move, uh, a practice previously, like we’ve, uh, third of some affiliations that we did, we converted every software to one single PMS. And that was challenging to make those transitions and then get a new imaging system in there and things of that nature. As we circle back now, a decade later. Uh, when we’ve talked with teams of offices that we’ve affiliated with about the software conversion, it’s not met with, um, you know, like an incredible amount of anxiety and stress that it will create at that very moment, not even having started it yet. But, and that’s been a piece that we’ve seen where like, okay, more technology has been brought into the practices in general. And so this won’t be as, as, as a large of a hill to climb. Uh, around the, um, so that’s like number one from a single practice managed software. The other piece is what tech can we bring in to help with, uh, getting someone from an optimal oral health perspective. And the, the scanning technology that I talked about earlier, like that’s able to people, patients are able to see real time. What’s what’s transpiring and what’s changed in their mouths since their last visit. And that just helps get someone to really be more comfortable with saying yes to any of the treatment plan that a provider’s diagnosing. And I think there’s those pieces and patient education around treatment plan and what the actual product is doing. Another piece would be the recare from a software perspective of communicating with patients, not only over email and text and phone, working in the software, the practice management software to see when the last time a patient has been there, if they’ve lapsed, reactivating them because look, there’s, I mean, it’s about 50% of Americans that are going to the dentist on a regular basis. And what can we do and what tech, how does technology help America get back to a higher rate of consumption of dental care because oral health and overall health. So those are, those are pieces that, uh, are important to us. And that’s how we’ve thought about technology, even coming into the practice more to mitigate some of the challenges that have taken place in the last couple years around pressures on three very large line items on the P&L.

Bill Neumann:
As we start to wrap up the podcast, what does the rest of 2024 look like for SEVA dental team? Yeah, I’ve had a couple of acquisitions recently. Certainly, the people that are watching or listening, you can follow SEVA on LinkedIn right now and you can see that you guys do a great job of keeping things updated there. But what does 2024 look like for SEVA?

Brandon Halcott:
Yeah, I mean, this is our year of building the foundation to have that, to, to, to then grow in 25. And, and right now we’re focused on the technology pieces that we mentioned. Uh, so getting one software within the practices and, and starting our, uh, our growth there to have that putting in other, uh, other systems and tools really that, I mean, this is a building year. We just got started. As you mentioned, we’ve affiliated with three offices to date. We have another affiliation on Friday, and then there’s a couple more LOIs that are signed. It’s been great growth, but what we really want to do is not grow too fast where we don’t have the systems, resources, and capabilities to serve our team and serve our patients. spending a lot of time on getting all of those, getting all those systems built. And then, I mean, for 25, we would really look to start operating with some of our systems and continue to grow from an affiliation perspective. So it’s a, it’s, it’s the year of, it’s a year of work and building the foundation for the house, so to speak, but excited that we get this opportunity because there’s just so many new great products and, and services from a software and other IT and there’s so much great stuff out there to be able to build a business now and really looking forward to getting that all done and then and finding some great offices to affiliate with next year and some great team members to bring in from a support perspective for those offices. So that’s where we’re going to be mainly focused, mainly focused this year. And, you know, the, our overall performance so far for our practices has been good. There’s not, it’s a, it’s still a, you know, dental overall is, a couple percentage point type growth per year. And a lot of that is driven by your children’s dentistry that states are supporting. So the cohort that you’re a member of, Bill, and that I’m a member of, we haven’t been consuming dental appearance. So that’s our job, as I mentioned, to serve patients and get them to their oral health. And yeah, there’s a lot of people that are not coming to the dentist every year, and we’re trying to use everything that we can to help connect with them and bring them in.

Bill Neumann:
So, so Brandon, if people, uh, in the audience might have some dots that have practices that might think they might, they could be a good fit for, for save a dental, how do they get in touch with you? How do they find out more about save?

Brandon Halcott:
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, just shoot me an email or giving me a ring. Um, but the email is just be halcot at save a dental team.com and no look forward to connecting with anyone. Not only if they’ve got a, practices they’re thinking about selling. But what I love most about the industry is how open and sharing everyone is. In 14, when I had no idea and rang Doug Brown and Jeff Moose and Pat Bauer and all of these individuals are just outstanding human beings, like great people. And I’m just looking forward to carrying it forward what they did for me. And the Collectively, I mean, I mentioned this to you when we caught up in January, the, what’s been so great about the industry is how we’ve brought out all this incredible content for one another. And we all continue to get better at the same time, because that’s, what’s most important is what’s like, who’s that going to serve then that’s going to serve the patient. And so it doesn’t have to be someone reaching out if they’ve got a practice for sale. No, if you’ve got a question about how we did water. And you want to learn from some of my lessons. So you don’t make the same mistake, please reach out. I’m happy to spend time and because so many more, I look forward to paying it forward and continuing to help this industry grow together. And, you know, really appreciate what you do all the time, Bill, for the, for the industry. And, uh, that’s how we’re all going to get better. So definitely abundance and please reach out, like happy to help and share what we’ve learned. And hopefully, uh, hopefully she don’t make some of the same mistakes that we made.

Bill Neumann:
Well, we’ll drop your email address in the show notes. And I definitely hear that. I appreciate what you’re saying. I mean, you’re right. 2014, there weren’t as many resources out there. There weren’t as many places to go to get information. And now today, there’s probably an overabundance of information, which sometimes can be challenging too. So it’s great. I appreciate you. making yourself available to not just people that may want to partner with Seva, but just may want to just leverage the knowledge that you’ve had over the past decade. So that is important in this industry is. It is great that you see people like that, that it can be competitive, but you can still share knowledge and not be worried about sharing that secret sauce, right? Because inevitably, you may have a very similar model than somebody else, but a lot of it’s in the execution, right? That’s really where it comes down, where the rubber meets the road. But thank you everybody for, first off, thank you, Brandon. It’s been a long time. I’ve been wanting to get you on the podcast for a long time, so glad we were able to do that. And again, thanks to the audience for listening in. Appreciate it. This is the Group Dentistry Now Show. Until next time, I’m Bill Neumann.