Investment Strategies & Practice Management: A Conversation with Dr. Sunny Pahouja
Episode Description
Join us for an insightful discussion with Dr. Sunny Pahouja, founder of the Dental Investment Group, as we explore investment strategies, practice management, and building dental communities. Learn how this Ohio State graduate built a 20,000-member Facebook community while managing his own successful practice, and discover valuable insights on balancing clinical excellence with business acumen.
Episode Navigation
- 00:02 – Introduction and welcome
- 01:01 – Dr. Pahouja’s background and education
- 03:46 – Practice ownership journey
- 05:21 – Creating the Dental Investment Group
- 07:44 – Staff management and culture building
- 13:10 – Investment group evolution and goals
- 25:11 – Investment strategies and community feedback
- 31:17 – Simplifying dentistry and work-life balance
Key Takeaways
Practice Management
- Building the right team takes time and strategic planning
- Spontaneous bonuses can be more effective than structured incentives
- COVID-19 created significant staffing challenges and opportunities
- Focus on matching employee goals with practice vision
Investment Insights
- Community feedback provides valuable investment perspectives
- Market cycles influence investment discussions and strategies
- Importance of considering contrary opinions before investing
- Balance between practice growth and personal investments
Meet Our Guest
Featured Expert
Dr. Sunny Pahouja: Graduate of The Ohio State University, practicing dentist for 13 years in Cincinnati, Ohio. Founder of the Dental Investment Group, a 20,000-member Facebook community focused on dental practice management and investment strategies. Known for creating collaborative spaces for dental professionals to discuss business and clinical aspects of dentistry.
Featured Discussion Topics
- Practice ownership transition
- Staff management strategies
- Investment community building
- Market analysis and trends
- Work-life balance in dentistry
- Mental health awareness
- Practice management evolution
Connect With Simplify Dentistry
- Website: simplifydds.com
- Dental Investment Group on Facebook
- Simplify Dentistry Podcast
Topics: dental investment, practice management, dental community, staff development, business strategy, work-life balance, dental practice ownership, investment strategies, dental practice solutions, mental health in dentistry
Transcript
00:02
Dr. Sunny Pahouja
Welcome to the Simplify Dentistry Podcast. Join us as we discuss clinical, operational and financial aspects of your practice, help you enjoy life and dare to simplify dentistry.
00:14
Dr. Mustafa Shah-Khan
Welcome back to the Simplify Dentistry podcast. I’m Dr. Mustafa Shan-Khan along with my co host, Dr. Richard Offutt. We want to welcome today’s guest, Dr. Sunny Pahouja. Dr. Pahouja is a graduate of the Ohio State University and is a practicing dentist in Cincinnati, Ohio. He is the owner and founder of the Dental Investment Group, a Facebook community of 20,000 members that has a goal of discussing investment ideas. We’d like to thank our sponsor, Kettenbach usa. From restorative to preventative to TMJ and world class impression material, Kettenbach Dental offers award winning German manufacturing materials designed to innovate and simplify existing dental practices. Visit kettenbachusa.com for a risk free trial. Tell us a little bit about you, kind of your background, where you came from and what’s going on. A little bit.
01:01
Dr. Sunny Pahouja
Yeah, so I’m a full time practicing dentist. I’ve been practicing for 13 years now. I, I graduated from Ohio State, went there for undergrad and went there for dental school. I, I guess I should call it the Ohio State University.
01:17
Dr. Richard Offutt
That’s right, the Ohio State.
01:20
Dr. Sunny Pahouja
It’s a big deal. So it is the Ohio State University.
01:24
Dr. Mustafa Shah-Khan
Because there’s another, because there’s another Ohio State University, I guess.
01:27
Dr. Richard Offutt
Well, there’s Ohio U. Over there.
01:29
Dr. Sunny Pahouja
Right, right there is Ohio University. That’s the, that’s the big party school. But I think Ohio State’s not too far behind in partying. So. But yeah, I guess we just got beat by Michigan again. So I, I hate to say that on this podcast, but it is true. Maybe next year, who knows, right?
01:49
Dr. Mustafa Shah-Khan
Yeah. The crazy thing is Ohio State is 10 and 2 and people started talking about firing Ryan Day and I was like, ryan Day is 10 2, number three in the country or whatever. And you’re g, you’re talking about firing him.
02:02
Dr. Richard Offutt
What were the first words that Belichick said at Carolina the other day? Yeah, what did he say? Beat Duke.
02:08
Dr. Mustafa Shah-Khan
Yeah, he said his first words as a kid were beat Duke.
02:10
Dr. Richard Offutt
Beat Duke. Yeah. Is what he, his first words. Well, at Ohio State and you got to beat Michigan.
02:16
Dr. Sunny Pahouja
Yeah, yeah, it’s the game. It’s the game. That’s the, that’s the only one that matters. And what’s sad is you could win a national championship this year, but at the end of the day it’s going to be, you want a national Championship in a year while you lost to Michigan, right? Yeah.
02:35
Dr. Richard Offutt
Right? No, no, no. You’re 100% right. Growing up in Ohio, it was, it was just, it was just so such a big deal. And then you look at Michigan. Hell, they’re a 500 team now. I have no problem against Michiganders, but. But the fact of it is that they’re a 500 team, but they beat Ohio State.
02:52
Dr. Mustafa Shah-Khan
Ohio State.
02:53
Dr. Richard Offutt
The Ohio State.
02:54
Dr. Sunny Pahouja
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So I, Yeah, I grew up in Columbus and decided I wanted to buy a practice. So I moved out to Chicago actually for about a year and change. Worked in Dayton for a couple of years and then bought my practice here in Cincinnati. So I’ve been here for 10 years, ever since I’ve owned my practice. Actually, the 10 year anniversary is coming up in just a couple of weeks here. So it’s kind of surreal to see the whole concept of owning a practice and really developing into what you want it to be and shaping your employees to do what your visions are. So it’s been a wild ride because I think one of the things we talk a lot about in the group is ownership is great, but it comes with its own set of headaches and that kind of stuff.
03:46
Dr. Sunny Pahouja
There’s a lot at stake. There’s a lot of nights where you just feel like, man, I don’t feel easy about what I’m doing. But you keep pushing yourself and making sure that you keep growing your practice and keep becoming a better clinician, keep becoming a better business person. But we’ll talk about that later. So. So really my goal was when I first bought that practice back in 2015, I was looking for a community to be able to talk about investing. I was looking for a community that can talk about the finance of the practice management, how to become a better leader, how to become a better boss, how to become a better clinician. And there are, you know, there were some groups out there that would discuss a lot of that stuff. But then I was like, there really isn’t one that focuses.
04:37
Dr. Sunny Pahouja
So I knew a few doctors and I said, okay, let’s. I feel like Facebook groups are a growing thing right now. And this is back in 2017. So I decided that I’ll open one up and we’ll call it Dental Investment Group. So open this group, add a few hundred people that I knew, and from there on it slowly but surely grew. And long story short, to date, Today there’s over 20,000 doctors in the group, and it’s just grown to such a wonderful community of doctors that really, you know, try to look out for each other, try to give advice and have fun at the same time. You know, there’s so much that goes on, and I think what the.
05:21
Dr. Sunny Pahouja
The craziest part about some of that is that whenever you’re talking about money, when you’re talking about investing, you know, politics end up playing such a role. So I have to walk a fine line, you know, what kind of content you allow, what kind of content you don’t allow, and really try to make sure that the. The group stays as. As productive as possible, you know, but at the same time, having given people the right to voice their opinions and really be. Really be who they are, essentially.
05:51
Dr. Mustafa Shah-Khan
Yeah. You know, and. And I think that makes a lot of sense. You know, funny that you did talk about kind of the politics aspect of it. You know, there was. Fluoridation is obviously an issue right now, and we had a topic kind of on fluoridation. My older brother has been in municipal law forever, and he. He’s a part of our group, and he kind of put something out there, and he was like, well, you know, this county kind of removed it because of the conservative. Because of the conservative city council and this. And. And, you know, somebody said something there or trying to not have politics, and I jumped in there, I said, look, you’re. You’re absolutely right. What our goal is objective information presentation. You know, we don’t need to call city council conservative. We don’t need to call them liberal.
06:38
Dr. Mustafa Shah-Khan
We just need to kind of present the information. And I think that’s kind of what we want, and I think that’s what you guys want as well.
06:43
Dr. Richard Offutt
You know, you said something that I. That. I know this may not be what we’re supposed to talk about this morning, but I thought you said something that’s really important where you start. You. You didn’t reference it quite this way, but you talked about the culture of your staff and the culture of your office and how it fits and feels and getting everybody on the same page. And I think there’s been some great conversations on. On. On your Facebook group about that, you know, about. About the culture of building. Building that out with your staff. Maybe. Maybe I never did that. And that’s why we worked.
07:12
Dr. Mustafa Shah-Khan
That’s right.
07:12
Dr. Richard Offutt
421 or 20 days a year. But it was, you know, it all seemed to have worked out. But. But it. Talk a little bit about that. I mean, how did. How did you go about building that when you bought your practice in 2017. I’m sorry. And, you know, so you go in and, and you buy a practice, you inherit employees, but there’s a new. There’s a new boss, right?
07:42
Dr. Sunny Pahouja
Yeah.
07:43
Dr. Mustafa Shah-Khan
Yeah.
07:44
Dr. Sunny Pahouja
And, and, you know, the truth is, you know, 10 years later, I really don’t have any of those employees 10 years ago, you know, you start coming in as the new doctor, you know, you’re going to have some level of complacency with employees. You know, they’re used to doing things a certain way. The retiring docs slowing down, they’re doing things at a pace that’s more comfortable for their retiring doctor. They’re doing things that they’re retiring docs expects them to do. But there’s that level of complacency, there’s that level of comfort that I’m okay doing what I’m doing because I’m near retirement. You know, I really just got to make sure that. But I keep these employees as stable as possible.
08:21
Dr. Sunny Pahouja
So when I get ready for the sale, you know, you have a staff that’s going out because, I mean, that’s the goodwill of the practice at the end of the day. And so when you come in, you know, as a younger doctor, you’re like, look, I do implants, I do a lot of oral surgery. I do endo and all these procedures that the other doctor’s not doing. So you have to kind of figure out how do you really get people on the same page to do more? And, and the thing is, what’s hard about some of this stuff is that a lot of doctors find that when they’re inheriting staff from a sale of a practice, they’re most of the most times they’re getting that top dollar. So you don’t necessarily have a lot of room to give out raises.
09:08
Dr. Sunny Pahouja
You don’t necessarily have a lot of room to really do a lot with their pay. But then I think the, what the culture seems to become over the course of the next one to two years is that, well, I’m working more, but I’m not really getting paid more. And I think. Well, I thought of it as an opposite. Well, you were really underutilized before, and I’m just really trying to get to your full potential. And I think as that happens, you really start to figure out who the weak players are, and maybe they’re just not the right fit for your practice. And you start to find people that are Willing to work, find people that are willing to get trained and be able to do things that you envision for your practice.
09:51
Dr. Sunny Pahouja
So as time goes on, you really try to focus on what your goals are, what the goals are of your employees and try to match them up as much as possible. And I think there’s. There’s always that mentality where, you know, a lot of employees are getting paid hourly and they’re used to, whether you give them.
10:12
Dr. Mustafa Shah-Khan
It’s an hourly mentality, this much work.
10:14
Dr. Sunny Pahouja
Or this much work, I mean, they’re. They’re getting paid the same, and you can incentivize them with different things. And one of the things I didn’t want to do initially or even to this date was, you know, tie everything to a bonus. Like, I look at it this way, if I do the right thing for my patients, there’s plenty of dentistry to be done. I don’t like tying a bunch of things with numbers and bonus this on. If we reach these numbers, that. Numbers and there are practices that do that and they thrive on that’s perfectly fine. And I feel like, you know, what I started doing was something called spontaneous bonuses. So completely unexpected. Completely, you know, just a gratitude to. For. For doing the right thing.
10:58
Dr. Sunny Pahouja
If you’re taking care of your patients, if you’re doing the right thing, then I want to be able to reward my employees for doing that. And that’s something that’s worked out pretty well because you start to recognize employees that are stronger, that go above and beyond and really reward them for doing the right things. And then the weaker players, unfortunately, just don’t, you know, survive after a few years. And then. And then you just have to figure out who are. How do you create a team that’s going to be all in with. With your mission? And I think what’s hard is, you know, five years into ownership, Covid happened, and all of a sudden now you’re like, wait a minute. Now there’s a lot of movement happening. Employees aren’t working. What do you do? And when.
11:41
Dr. Sunny Pahouja
When a lot of that stuff was going on, that’s when, you know, I pretty much had that. That turnover, you know, so you have the stability for these years from 2015 to 2020. And also there’s this global event happens and no one’s working, and you’re trying to figure out what’s going to happen. And I’m dealing with things like everyone else was. My hygienist is not coming back because she’s afraid of sure not being able to make it all that kind of stuff. So, you know, that’s where things change and then you start to kind of, you realize like you’re pretty much starting over with a lot of new people.
12:17
Dr. Sunny Pahouja
And I think that’s the challenging part of about being a business owner, being a practice owner, is that no one gives you a guide to say you followed this and you’re going to be successful at it. You’re basically trying to figure this out. Every day you’re trying to figure this out how to do the right thing for your patients, how to do the right thing for your employees and keep moving that chain forward.
12:40
Dr. Mustafa Shah-Khan
Yeah, you know, so I mean, I think what you’re saying is spot on. And schools don’t teach you anything like that. They, they’re designed to make you mentally clinically competent. So let’s talk about Dental Investment Group real quick. You know, so kind of a lot of what you’re talking about I would think kind of falls into what your goal is with Dental Investment Group. You know, obviously there is a financial component. What, what is your ideal format for dental investment group? What, what do you want it to be?
13:10
Dr. Richard Offutt
And, and, and a follow up then has that changed over time? Other words, from what you know, you talked about when you first started, you had some docs, you grew a group and the goal was to share information. Has that changed over the time? You know, because you’ve had enormous success and, and as the success has happened, has the kind of, the goal morphed a little bit?
13:36
Dr. Sunny Pahouja
Yeah. You know what’s funny is that the investor, the group can also go in these cyclical times where when the market is on a tear like it has been back when it was back in 2020, 2021, there were so many, much conversation around trading. There was so much conversation about, you know, what stocks to buy, what do we do with this and the technical aspect and you know, this might happen to this stock. And then as the market starts to retract, as the market starts to take a breather, you know, the conversations kind of shift more towards practice management and how do you really preserve the capital that you accumulated over the years, how do you invest the best possible way. So what’s strange is that these conversations are so much around what’s happening in the current world right now. Elections just happened.
14:35
Dr. Sunny Pahouja
So now there’s all this conversation about how a new presidency could affect people’s investments over the next four, five years or so. You know, what was going to, what would have happened if the current presidency had stayed in place. So you’re seeing all this stuff that there’s so much movement. There’s a lot of conversation around crypto. You know, what would have happened if maybe Trump wasn’t elected. Because all these conversations that were happening before the election about what might happen to crypto if there was a lot.
15:06
Dr. Mustafa Shah-Khan
Of talk of regulation of crypto. And now crypto is kind of, it’s.
15:13
Dr. Richard Offutt
In a golden period right now.
15:15
Dr. Sunny Pahouja
Yeah, it’s taken off bitcoin, over a hundred thousand. So it’s one of those exciting times where you’re excited about the markets, but you’re cautiously optimistic just because you feel like things have been on a tear. You’re trying to make sure that you take advantage of what’s out there, but at the same time find ways to preserve your capital. So what’s happened is it’s really kind of like up and down with these conversations about investing. You know, when people are guarded, when the market is in a down phase, people are trying to see what kind of investing makes sense. And then there’s a group of people, they’re like, look, I don’t care what happens in the market, whether it’s going up, whether it’s going down. I’m a, a DCA investor. I’m going to basically invest every week, every two weeks, every month.
16:05
Dr. Sunny Pahouja
No matter what happens, I’m going to continue to invest.
16:09
Dr. Mustafa Shah-Khan
Dollar cost, average dollar cross averaging.
16:11
Dr. Sunny Pahouja
So that’s their goal. At the end of the day, you know, there are people that are, that enjoy the trading aspect. There are people that really enjoy talking about some of that stuff. And they’re like, look, I’m willing to play the game. I’m willing to, you know, trade. And then there’s, obviously, you know, we talk about, there are studies out there that show that trading doesn’t necessarily, you know, win over dollar cost averaging or so, but, you know, it’s to each their own. There are people that have done, that have been widely successful in real estate. There are people that have done amazingly well by owning multiple practices. But there are also people that have owned more than one practice, their second practice, and have gone almost bankrupt. So you get this perspective from all kinds of people out there.
16:59
Dr. Sunny Pahouja
You, you learn about yourself by reading some of this stuff. What kind of investor are you investing in yourself by buying more practices? Are you investing in Real estate by leveraging the capital that you’ve earned from your practice or are you investing in stocks? So there’s def, there’s all kinds of risks out there. But I think what the cool thing is that a lot of people, a lot of us learn about ourselves by reading all this content out there and trying to figure out what, where do I fit in with all of this stuff?
17:34
Dr. Mustafa Shah-Khan
Guys gonna say, you know, community is interesting to me. And, and when you’re dealing with investing in that, you know, you brought on, brought up practices that fail. You know, you almost wish that community were more open and more transparent and people would talk about the bad things. Nobody ever wants to talk about the bad things. They want to talk about the good things, their success. Yeah, yeah. You know, I, you know, I think it’s important for people to kind of look at things and understand you’re in the social media world and social media world tries to paint everything in rose colored glasses. For our listeners, I think it’s worthwhile to check out Sunny’s group, dental investment group on Facebook.
18:09
Dr. Mustafa Shah-Khan
You know, we also want our listeners to check out Simplify Dentistry, which we’re kind of trying to partner with Sunny and kind of develop the same type of thing, but along the lines of community. You know, you’ve always wanted to develop community. Where do you see community going is, do you see there being lots of different spots where community can be or do you, where do you see it?
18:34
Dr. Sunny Pahouja
Yeah, I think there’s room for all of that. I truly believe that, you know, people that are, you know, focused on the clinical aspect, they are driven more towards those groups, communities that have more clinical content, people that are geared towards, and it can depend from day to day. I mean, you know, I can have a, a difficult day at work and I can have a difficult patient. I’m trying to figure out some answers to what might have happened with such and such case, one might go to a different community, different group and try to post my question there and try to get feedback from doctors over there. Or I could have a day where I just had a tough time with my employees and trying to figure out what, how do I fix this problem?
19:18
Dr. Sunny Pahouja
Then I’m geared more towards my own group trying to figure out, you know, doctors can help me try to figure out practice management questions, employee management questions, really HR related type of questions or so. Or you could have this, you know, a day where, you know, the Nasdaq shoots up 300 points and everyone’s excited about the markets. Let’s talk about some of the hottest stocks out there. What was making a lot of noise? Was it Microsoft? Was it Tesla? Was it Apple? Was Nvidia. So the nice thing about all these communities and even like yours, where there’s a comprehensive approach to, you can talk about clinical, you can talk practice management, you can talk about how to deal with CPAs and all that kind of stuff.
19:59
Dr. Sunny Pahouja
So, you know, being in your group, I feel like there’s that approach where there’s room for every community out there as long as the information that’s in there is valuable to doctors. I mean, there’s only so much time in a given day. You know, if someone says, look, I’m going to dedicate an hour, two hours a day to browse these communities and try to figure out, you know, what matters to me, what is valuable content to me and really try to see what I can learn today is the goal. At the end of the day, you know, I think as in general, we get spoiled with these social media. I mean, there’s so much out there, right? I mean, there’s Instagram, there’s Tick Tock, there’s Facebook groups.
20:43
Dr. Sunny Pahouja
And so all this stuff that’s out there, you’re trying to really focus, figure out how do you have the best content out there, how do you get people to really help each other out as much as possible and really be there for each other. I mean, I feel like I’ve met so many wonderful doctors from not just my group, but also a bunch of different groups that really become your friends over the course of many years. And people that are there for you, people that you can call, text and really have a conversation, meaningful conversation about your practice, about your life, about. I mean, there’s people that are life coaches that have offered me so much help over the years. There are people that are, you know, practice management gurus.
21:26
Dr. Sunny Pahouja
I mean, they’re doctors that own multiple practices, you know, to talk to them about how they scale their practices there. So there’s all these things that people are doing to really grow and make sure that they can provide enough value to the doctors that they’re talking to and really be there for each other.
21:46
Dr. Mustafa Shah-Khan
Yeah, it’s amazing the amount of things that you can kind of pick up. You know, I learn something every day by being on these podcasts. You know, they’re tidbits that I pick up. There are tidbits that you pick up from the Facebook communities, 1.8 billion people in the country, are part of a Facebook group.
22:01
Dr. Richard Offutt
You know, Sunny, you said something to the point that you and Dr. Shakan just said is that, you know, you, I find myself. So I read your posts and, and I find myself saying, you know, you kind of do a little introspective review of yourself and you go, well, do I agree with that or do I not agree with that? You know, or is that how I, you know, or is that how I would play that game? Or was, you know, if I were dealt the same hand, would I play it that way? Would I not?
22:28
Dr. Mustafa Shah-Khan
Right.
22:28
Dr. Richard Offutt
And I, I think that’s the thing that has been most amazing to me about the whole podcast world.
22:35
Dr. Mustafa Shah-Khan
Yeah.
22:36
Dr. Richard Offutt
One thing. And then the second thing is, you know, dentistry can be kind of a lonesome business. You’re out there by yourself, you’re in your office. You know, I practiced by myself for many years before I had other doctors. And, and in. What I think that these communities do is they provide a voice to those individual doctors. Like you’re saying, you know, you had a question about something, you went on another side, you put, you started a conversation to try to find solution to what your question was. Right. And I think that’s just amazing. I think in your group is, it’s, it’s very dynamic to the point you’re saying it almost keeps pace with current trends. Right.
23:18
Dr. Richard Offutt
And I hadn’t thought about it that way until actually until you brought it up today, is that it keeps pace with what’s going on in the world around it. Right.
23:29
Dr. Mustafa Shah-Khan
You know, one thing I think of from what you were talking about too, you know, with things that are progressing, what people you ever track? You know, somebody comes out today and says, you know, I’d buy Microsoft. You ever track how those recommendations go? Because obviously you’re getting a recommendation from everybody, you know. Right?
23:48
Dr. Sunny Pahouja
Yeah. So it’s funny you say that because we do go back, you know, just referencing posts that might have happened a year, two years ago, and somebody just brought up a stock that they had talked about a year ago and I think it’s up over 100% in, in that 12 month period. So, you know, obviously people will talk about different stocks that are out there. I mean, there are some that have gone bankrupt and there are some that have done extremely well. So you know, at the end of the day, people discuss these things as a way to figure out like, you know, is this an investment that I believe in?
24:26
Dr. Sunny Pahouja
And if I do, then I’m going to talk about this in a group and I’m going to talk about it with my peers to see what their opinion is on some of these things. So, I mean, you know, I’ve looked at some stocks that I’m thinking about investing and then you post about it. And then there are people that will put valid, you know, good information, good content out there that, on the no behind, like why we shouldn’t invest in certain stock. Right? Because it’s easy to say yes to investing in something. But my goal is to connect with people that might say, no, don’t invest in it for this or that reason. Now, yeah, there can be a lot of noise out there. Obviously they could be wrong, I could be wrong. But the easy answer is always yes.
25:11
Dr. Sunny Pahouja
Here’s a proposition on a first stock for an investment. You know, invest in some of this stuff. But then you always want those critics that might say no and try to understand the why behind it. Because there’s sometimes when you’re, when your mind is biased because you are trying to convince yourself that you should invest in something, you’re going to end up doing it. But when you talk to other people that might have a different opinion and try to understand the why behind it, you might have, you might say, you know what, this makes sense. Maybe this company doesn’t have the growth prospects as you thought it would. Maybe I shouldn’t invest in it. Or maybe I need to research more before I invest in this company. And that’s saved a lot of people a lot of money.
25:58
Dr. Mustafa Shah-Khan
Do you ever hit yourself over the head? There’s some things I see on your group where somebody be like, oh, yeah, the market went up this much and this stock went up this much. And they post their portfolio and their portfolio is $27 million. And like, dude, do you really have $27 million? You know, I mean, or did you just make this up? You know, I mean, or somebody that I thought saw one thing one day, guy had been out of school for a year and posted a $25 million house on Lake Michigan. Yeah, I’ve just saved real well. I mean, what, do you just laugh at that or do you think any of that is legitimate?
26:34
Dr. Sunny Pahouja
Yeah, so, I mean, I know here and there some of the posts are just, you know, made as a, as a joke. But some of these doctors, I mean, you’d be surprised. I mean, some of this, what they’ve saved, what they’ve done, it’s legit. I mean, I’ve had these conversations with, you know, the Nvidia doctor that. Sure, yeah, he decided he was going to buy Nvidia, I think, 10 years ago, and he never looked back. He never sold a single share. He did what he had to do. And, and it’s worth over $25 million now. So it’s just one of those things where it. He didn’t invest. I think he invested maybe, I think five or six hundred thousand dollars in it. But the growth that Nvidia has had in the last 10 years has been astronomical.
27:26
Dr. Sunny Pahouja
So, yeah, there are things like that exist. I mean, there are people, I’m sure they’re exaggerating what they have and whatnot, but there are some legit doctors out there, I mean, that have done extremely well. And, and I think the ones that make the least noise out there are usually the ones that have, that are legitimate. Yeah. That have done well and they’ll talk about it, but they don’t, you know, go out there and post.
27:56
Dr. Mustafa Shah-Khan
I can tell you the minute my portfolio is $25 million, first thing, that thing’s going into a bond fund. And, and I am never cutting on another tooth again.
28:07
Dr. Richard Offutt
These days are over.
28:08
Dr. Mustafa Shah-Khan
That’s right.
28:09
Dr. Richard Offutt
Well, Sunny, tell me this. So, so you’ve had, you’ve been tremendously successful with dig. You’ve, you’ve, you know, I don’t know if when you first started, if you’d have thought you’d ever have, you know, 20,000 people, you know, hanging on to what you’re saying. And, and so where, where to now? Where does it go next? Where, where do you see it going?
28:31
Dr. Sunny Pahouja
Yeah, so one of the things I started doing a few years ago was connecting with companies that were willing to work with the group, you know, obviously back in the day. I mean, you’re just trying to enjoy, you’re just trying to figure out what kind of doctors exist out there, what, how are they running their practices, how are they running their lives? I mean, you know, a lot of doctors are solo practitioners in that group.
28:57
Dr. Mustafa Shah-Khan
I, I see what you guys do. I see what we’re trying to do. I see what other groups do. You know, building community is important. You know, I kind of see, you know, people ask us all the time, you know, what. What’s the end game? And I was like, you know, we don’t have an end game. You know, we’re just trying to, we’re trying to contribute to the profession. We’re trying to. It’s, it’s pretty altruistic, except it burns a hole in Rick and I’s pocket right now and our other partner. But yeah, we just want to bring community because we think community is missing in the profession and bring good community. You know, if I had my, if somebody said, well, what is your goal?
29:31
Dr. Mustafa Shah-Khan
I was like, you know, my short term goal is, you know, I want to get with somebody like Sunny. I want to get with somebody like David Yang. I want to get with some of these guys. And I think we can collectively put together a meeting, you know, where we’re kind of reaching. You know, we have different pools of people. We’re reaching and kind of all come together and have, you know, content that’s kind of provided by, you know, the guys that are members of our group. There are some really accomplished people that are members of our group. And then there’s also, you know, people will actually listen to Rick occasionally. They’ll listen to you a little.
30:04
Dr. Richard Offutt
Not, not at my house, nor my practice. That’s, what is it, 50 miles from here. I’m a damn rock star.
30:09
Dr. Mustafa Shah-Khan
That’s right.
30:10
Dr. Richard Offutt
But right here, not so much.
30:11
Dr. Mustafa Shah-Khan
And I think, yeah, I think our listeners and I think our community would like that. And it’s different than it’s the Dental Town meeting or this thing. I think it would be a nice thing to do if we could ever figure out how to do it. Yeah.
30:22
Dr. Sunny Pahouja
Hey, talking about rake, I have to say that my very first. And, and you probably don’t even know this, Rick, but my very first interaction with you, so I do listen, was on Dental Town with you. I think this was like back in 2014, 2015. And. Yeah, so. So, Rick, people do listen to you.
30:43
Dr. Richard Offutt
Well, thank you. Thank you for remembering. I’m going to pass that on to my family.
30:46
Dr. Mustafa Shah-Khan
I try not to.
30:47
Dr. Richard Offutt
Yeah, pass that on to family and friends. I don’t have employees anymore, so. So. But, but I will pass that on to people that don’t. But thank you very much, though, Sunny. That’s very kind.
30:57
Dr. Mustafa Shah-Khan
So, Sunny, kind of to wrap up. You know, we always like to, you know, our mantra in this whole thing is, you know, let’s dare to make dentistry simple. Kind of what is your, would your takeaway to our audience be? You know, is there something that, you know, you would say that kind of simplifies dentistry or kind of Achieves the mission that you’re looking at.
31:17
Dr. Sunny Pahouja
Yeah. So I think the way I look at things is dentistry. You look at the clinical aspect, you look at the running, your practice aspect. I mean, all in. It’s. It’s hard. I mean, there’s a lot of moving parts. You’re trying to be a good clinician, you’re trying to be a good businessman, you’re trying to take care of your family, you’re trying to take care of your employees. There are so many moving parts. And I think there is some real concern about the stress levels out there when it comes to running your practice. When you being. Being a dentist. You know, there’s obviously some unfortunate things that have happened in our community where people. And this is just such a hard conversation because, you know, people have taken their lives because of the stress that comes with being a dentist.
32:05
Dr. Sunny Pahouja
And I think we need to have more and more conversations. We need to really be there for each other as much as possible. And the way I look at it is, the way I try to simplify it is that, look, you can only control so much. You know, there are certain things that you can control. There are certain things you can control. Running a practice is a completely separate beast than running the clinical aspect of your day. So when you’re focused on some of that stuff, you really got to make sure that you’re. You’re trying to not cloud your judgment to the point where you just get so frustrated that you’re not paying attention to what’s in front of you. So pay attention to what’s in front of you. Try to really make sure that what’s.
32:49
Dr. Sunny Pahouja
What matters at that moment in time is what you’re focused on. And I think reaching out to people, doing the right thing. And if you. There, there are doctors, they’re like, look, I’m so frustrated. I’m so defeated. Working five days a week. Maybe it’s not all about the money. Maybe it’s. And it should be more about your mental health. It should be more about finding that balance. But at the end of the day, you know, when somebody is on their deathbed, nobody’s saying, like, hey, I. I worked so hard. I have all this money because you hope that you had those good relationships. You hope that you lived a fulfilled life. That really gets you to think about that you’re happy with what you did and not. Not feel that it was a hard life.
33:39
Dr. Sunny Pahouja
And I think part of that is just a lot of dentists are spread so thin that they need to figure out how to take time out for themselves and really just take care of their bodies, take care of their mental health and really just focus on some of that stuff as opposed to just focusing on their practices alone. Because I think just about every doctor will say, you know, all I do is work. I’m one of those. Right. But then, and it’s easier said than done because you feel like you got to be there for your family, you got to be there for your patients, but you really have to take care of yourself first before you can take care of others.
34:16
Dr. Mustafa Shah-Khan
Yeah. You know, I’ve modified my life kind of along those things. You know, my wife, kids, she goes, you know, dentistry is the world’s greatest part time job. And I was like, come on now, but give me a little credit. We do, we do a lot. But I, but I think you’re right. You know, you just have to achieve balance and you have to achieve success. And somebody said one time, you know, are you going to miss that one crown that you did that day or are you going to miss going to pebble beach to play golf?
34:43
Dr. Richard Offutt
You know, watching your daughter play a basketball game?
34:46
Dr. Mustafa Shah-Khan
Yeah, yeah, those are the things that I think are valuable. Yeah.
34:50
Dr. Sunny Pahouja
And that’s so true because, you know, you’re going to remember those stories. No one’s going to remember, oh, yeah, you stayed extra to do that extra crown or, you know.
34:59
Dr. Richard Offutt
Yeah, yes.
35:00
Dr. Sunny Pahouja
There are times where you’re like, look, my patient’s in pain. I’m gonna stay and take care of that. But I know me would have been like, oh, let me work through lunch and somebody came in and I have an opportunity to do, you know, this extraction and, or a crown. Let me do that now. You know, if somebody’s not in pain, I’m gonna tell them like, hey, we’ll get you back in as soon as possible and take care of this for you. I don’t want to give up my lunch hour anymore. I want to try to relax and just clean my headspace and really just get ready for the second half of the day. So.
35:34
Dr. Sunny Pahouja
Yeah, it’s crazy how things change as you get older, but then sometimes you wish that you had realized some of those things early on so you don’t look back at that, you know, what you did for the last 10 years. So.
35:48
Dr. Mustafa Shah-Khan
Yeah. Well, thank you very much for joining us today. We really enjoyed having you here. Look, look forward to talking a little bit more with you kind of in the future. Having you on again and, you know, love to kind of interact with our different groups because I think it’s valuable you guys present something that we don’t have. We present some aspects that you don’t have. And I think there’s a good, you know, congruence of information in there. So thank you very much for taking the time.
36:11
Dr. Richard Offutt
Dr. Thank you so much. Enjoyed talking again.
36:14
Dr. Sunny Pahouja
Yeah. Thank you.
36:15
Dr. Richard Offutt
Thank you for your kind remarks about our first meeting. I appreciate it. Yeah.
36:19
Dr. Sunny Pahouja
No, thank you both. You guys have a great group. I enjoy it. I, you know, I want more people to know about it, so. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you for doing this.
36:28
Dr. Mustafa Shah-Khan
Yeah. Well, thank you, Sunny.
36:30
Dr. Richard Offutt
Take care, Sunny.