70% of Dental Ads Don't Make Money. The Report Still Says They Work

0:00Dr. Jim Arnold My guest today is my friend Neil Zemba. He's the founder and CEO of Rise DDS. Neil's career didn't start in dentistry, though. It started with a Nike shoe design competition he won as a freshman at Michigan, a classroom of Detroit teenagers he taught to design footwear, and a sandal outsole he built out of illegally dumped tires. The pattern hasn't changed since then. He finds value a system can't see and then builds the thing that makes it visible. Today that thing is Rise DDS, which connects the practices marketing directly to its patient management system and shows the owners the names and the production behind every single dollar. He's also the founder and CEO of RiseMD, a partner in executive dental partners, and co-founder of Dental Mentors. Neil, welcome to the Foundation Dental Podcast.

0:48Neil Zemba Thanks for having me, sir. It's great to be here. Good morning.

0:51Dr. Jim Arnold Hey man, it's good to see you. We always have a good time. always have great conversation. I'm just excited to to share this one with as many people in the industry as possible because I think what you're doing is is really extraordinary.

1:04Neil Zemba I appreciate that, brother.

1:05Dr. Jim Arnold Yeah, no, absolutely. But I want to go back to the beginning. I'm gonna go all the way back to middle school, believe it or not. I learned in my research of you that you ran a candy ring in middle school that did better than any of the vending machines. So I that's a that's a story I wanna hear more about. But how how did you do that? Who did you hire and how'd you actually pay them?

1:28Neil Zemba That's that's that's really funny. I we I haven't I haven't heard that in a long time and I hope my mother's not listening 'cause that's that's the last time she whooped my ass. So basically, yeah, I mean I grew up in small town Michigan and I think as as a lot of people that kind of are are are born with the entrepreneurial spirit or a little bit crazy or whatever you want to call it, you know, yeah, like I I was in I ran track. in cross country and one of my buddies' dads had like a candy warehouse and he would sell Now and Laters for fourteen cents for and this was in two thousand like early two thousands for like two a pack of two hundred. So I was just like, you know, I don't have to be a mathematician to know that I could make really good margins on those. So we sold it for two dollars a pack.

2:18Dr. Jim Arnold man.

2:19Neil Zemba in class and I had all the popular kids go around and and kind of sell them for me. I didn't really sell them. So I had distribution aligned. And yeah, and then I got in a lot of trouble. So they I would I would give them a dollar. So we would sell them for two dollars, they would keep a dollar, I would get a dollar. And I think I was making like maybe like two to sometimes four hundred dollars a week or something, like in middle school. I know

2:43Dr. Jim Arnold Whoa, in middle school? Come on, man.

2:46Neil Zemba point I'd never gotten in trouble in my life, like ever. So I so the the vice principal comes in to the class, like calls me out and he sits me down and I j I just like immediately broke down. I narked on everybody. I just took it so bad. I was like I knew my mom was gonna be furious and she was pretty upset by it. My dad I think was thought it was cool, but my mom did not enjoy that.

2:59Dr. Jim Arnold Ha ha ha. What I what was the problem? You were selling candy. What's the deal?

3:12Neil Zemba Yeah, th I guess there are there were probably multiple you know, middle school violations that I had overstepped, a number of different things. And and it's funny because on my way out, you know, the the the vice principal just kinda he was a kind of surprised because, you know, I was a I was a ver I was kind of introverted. I was I was a good kid academically, whatever. So he had never talked to me before. So I was I was like, you know sort of in shock. He was surprised, whatever. So he's like grilling me for like 30 minutes. And then as he like kicks me out of his office, he goes, And by the way, just so you know, he was like, How much money are you making? And I told him, He's like, You're making 10 times more money than we make out of the vending machines. When I was walking out, he said something that I think he probably shouldn't have said, which was he's like, if you're gonna do it, just do it outside of class. He was basically giving me a pass to do it.

3:53Dr. Jim Arnold my god.

4:03Neil Zemba I think he thought it was kinda cool too. So he was like, just do it in sports, like the during the sports meets and whatever. So I still did that, but you know, I moved on to bigger and better ventures after that point. I didn't want to get in trouble again.

4:05Dr. Jim Arnold Absolutely. Okay, well good. We we we we can cut that, man. I don't want the law coming after you, you know, twenty years later. You never know. So y you know, one of your great self-descriptions, you you call yourself a Silicon Valley tech nerd with a rural hillbilly twist. So that that's quite a description to give yourself. But I want to know what part of that hillbilly is still running the company and which persona makes the hardest decisions.

4:21Neil Zemba Yeah. Statute is on on candy illegal candy as well. You know it's funny 'cause like I talked to to friends about this too and Bad Oranstein, who obviously you know as well, and it's like, you know, country logic is is there's a lot of wisdom there, you know? So like, you know, you go to college, you get a degree, I think as a lot of dentists, you know, resonate with, like, you know, y you go, you you do very well acad academically, but I've always really just yeah, I grew up pretty rural. we were talking to your colleague Brian the other day, and you know, he said Missouri. I was like, Listen, if you're from Missouri, it's Missouri. Okay. So I spent a lot of time in Missouri growing up with my grandma, my aunt, and then I'm from a very small town in Michigan, originally, but yeah.

5:28Dr. Jim Arnold You know, you told me a little bit about your mom. She's taught I I think third grade for for thirty, forty years, something like that, a long time. Does she understand what you do? And what does she tell other people that you do?

5:41Neil Zemba Not really. She knows I work with doctors. I think that I think that there there have been other things that I've done in the past that are maybe a little bit more digestible. And frankly, Jim, sometimes I don't know what I do. So to be fair, you know, probably yourself as well. Like we we wear a lot a lot of different hats. but ironically, like that's that's what really like I I really always resonated with with dentistry, ironically, because of the entrepreneurial sort of aspect of it. I always looked up to dentists. I used to interview my my dentist when I was a kid just randomly, because I thought it was an i an interesting business model. I was obsessed with business models and I'm like, it's recurring revenue, you know, you get patients back in and they're hy you know hygiene patients, and then you know, you could upsell them different treat, you know. So it it was just sort of I was always sort of interested in that. And then as I went to college, I went to U of which was a really great, amazing dental school. And a lot of my friends went to University of Michigan dental school. And I realized, because I was in the business school at the time, that they don't really get a lot of business training. And so I was kind of fascinated with the dentistry model as a non-clinician.

6:35Dr. Jim Arnold Mm-hmm.

6:49Neil Zemba because I I respected dentists a lot. I'm like, you know, being being a dentist, you know, as you know, I mean it's so much more than just the clinical aspect of it. There's the you th a lot of dentists are running businesses. Sometimes against their will, as you know, right? It's and it's it's it it can it it's a great business. It's an amazing business. It's I would not necessarily say recession proof, but certainly historically shown to be very recession resistant, which is incredible. I mean there's so many ama I think I think dentistry is very, very slept on in terms of how great of a business model it can be. There's so many things you can do with the model and so many places you could take that. but I really respect dentists as pillars in their community. the the trusted advisor, right, for for for dentistry. I mean there's so many so many great things there. And then in in addition to just you know being some sometimes like reluctant entrepreneurs. And that's where I got really excited about, okay, maybe I could be an add value in this space. Cause truth be told, n I'm not a clinician. So I was very self-conscious when I first got into dentistry. I first got in as an owner couple practices in Michigan after I I'd started and sold the tech company and I moved back to Michigan where I'm originally from. And my partners were like, hey, do you want to come in and help us run these two practices? And I had two thoughts. I said, it sounds really exciting and and fun and interesting. I love dental. And then but I was like, it also sounds illegal. Like how do I like own a PLLC? How does that work? And then I learned what the DSO was and I really fell in love with the model. But I realized that, you know, a lot of dentists, especially the ones that are running as they say in private equity single shingle, right? Onesie twosie locations, or even small DSOs, really there's a there's a there's a there's a woeful lack of business training out there. And I don't blame the dentist for that. I blame I think I think I think there's it's the schools, right? I mean there's a there's a lot of reform I think that needs to happen because but but ironically in spite of that you know dentistry has continued to to be an incredibly successful industry despite you know, I mean, ev even through recessions and and things like this. As a matter of fact, that's in in two thousand eight I was doing a bunch of of research on two thousand eight and it was one of the top five industries that, you know, that that survived two thousand eight. And the other one was like the morgue business. And, you know, I mean it it it's pretty it's pretty grim, but then we did well.

9:13Dr. Jim Arnold Wow. Everybody starts life with teeth and everybody's life ends at some point. So those are two industries that are you know, everybody's gonna have a need at some point in that in that journey.

9:27Neil Zemba But in being from the country, not all my neighbors had all their teeth. Okay. So that was another like realiz we recognize the market pretty early on.

9:31Dr. Jim Arnold Yeah. Well, and I mean now I mean there's so many people need their teeth replaced. So with or without teeth. I mean there's always there's always a need. As long as people are eating and and talking there's there's gonna be a need. But to your point, yeah. I mean, unfortunately in dental school, most dental schools don't do much training on business or communication or leadership and you know, that that leaves a huge void and dentists get out and they struggle with those things. So You know, it it's been my mission for the past several years to start to, you know, close that gap and help them. And I know that's a a big part of your mission with dental mentors as well.

10:09Neil Zemba One hundred percent. And I'm re you mentioned Nike, I'm repping Nike and Dental Mentors. Okay.

10:12Dr. Jim Arnold Yeah. All right. I like it. I like it. I've always been a Nike guy. When I ran track in cross country in college, my coach was on the Nike board of directors. And so, dude, we used to get like three pairs of Nikes almost monthly. We get a pair of training flats, a pair of just running shoes, and a pair of spikes, like new monthly. It was it was insane. So I I've been loyal to the Nike for a long time.

10:15Neil Zemba wow. That's it. That's the hookup. That's well, I I was really excited when Jordan sponsored Michigan football. I thought that was cool. So I switched from Adidas over to Jordan. I was like, that's pretty that's pretty cool.

10:45Dr. Jim Arnold That is cool. So I want to get into Rise DDS a little bit here. give me the elevator version. What does it do that nobody else does?

10:55Neil Zemba So we our our our latest elevator pitch is we say we leverage the best in marketing and technology to fill your schedule and maximize your revenue. So we consider ourselves to be a growth partner more so than a marketing company. Our Claim to fame. I mean, we're the we're the first marketing company to actually integrate with virtually all patient management systems to show and and track the ad performance down to the dollar. So the big issue in marketing, and many people watching and listening to this probably have been frustrated with a marketing company at their practices. And that's actually how we started. So we started Rise. I started Rise because I was pissed off at marketing vendors in my own practices. To my knowledge, I don't I don't know of it. I th there's there are a couple now, I think, here and there, folks that do marketing that own practices, but I don't think I haven't seen another company or like agency, if you will, that that that has that comes from that background. And frankly, I I tell people too, it's like we started Rise reluctantly. Like I I wasn't really looking to start an another thing. I was kind of burnt out at the time. But I but I thought that we needed to. So I really wanted to be able to integrate with pay you I'm I'm a tech guy. I spent the first six years of my career in Silicon Valley building building a bunch of tech stuff. And I n at AM at Amazon, they have what they call this big attribution system, an attribution system, which means that they can actually understand to the dollar how all their ads compare to all their other ads. And they and again they measure it to dollars. Anybody listening to this that runs marketing has probably been frustrated if you've ever had an agency come to you and say, Hey, we got you a l you know, ten billion impressions this month or all these clicks. all these conversions and you're looking at your schedule like, well, my schedule's not full. These are not the patients that I asked you for. My phone is ringing with like Medicaid patients or patients that are not the kinds of quality patients that I want. You have a tracking problem. You have an attribution problem is like the fancy term for it. All attribution means is tracking to the dollar effectively. So that's what we built with Rise. and we're going on about eight years now. we work with over two thousand locations across the country. single practices all the way up to you know multi-hundred location DSOs and the the core of our business is just honesty through data. That's it. That's that's how we built the business. You know, sometimes certain ads work, sometimes they don't. Marketing can be seasonal, just like any any anything else, right? I say marketing is challenging because it involves the market. And just like the stock market, it's always going to go up and down. Behaviors are always going to change. There's always gonna be some new shiny object marketing thing, right? That comes out. I mean, during COVID, half of our clients call called us in the first, you know, month or two and go, my god, my daughter's on this thing, this new thing called TikTok and everybody's dancing. Do I have to dance on TikTok to get patients? You know, there's every year there's a new thing like that, right? What's the big thing now? AI sir AI search. Am I showing up on AI? Am I showing up on AI? Am I showing up on Chat GPT? that's called AEO. So the the point is not.

13:54Dr. Jim Arnold Right, right.

14:05Neil Zemba to chase the fads or whatever. The point is that you need attribute we at Rise we say attribution over everything, meaning you have to plug everything in. Think about it like a stock, right? if you think that the SpaceX stock is going to do really well, let's say for example, are you going to put all of your money into SpaceX stock? Probably not. You're probably going to have some, you know, QQQ, you're going to have some index funds, you're going to have a lot of other things that you do, and you're going to allocate maybe 10% of your portfolio into SpaceX stock. And that's if you really think it's going to rip. Right. So the thing the same thing is true with marketing. People and and agencies as well, it's so they jerk you around so much, not because they're evil people, but because they have no attribu they have no proper attribution. So the problem with Google, even come from coming from tech, the mistake that I made for years that all kinds of dentists and and and DSO executives make is they go, well, my agency runs Google ads and they run meta, and they're showing me reports out of Google and Meta that come from Google and Meta.

14:47Dr. Jim Arnold Right.

15:05Neil Zemba Well, I thought, well, Google's a trillion dollar company. Well, of course they have great data. They they how do I say this? They don't have great data for you. That's that, you know, it's like Marlboro science, right? Of course, cigarettes are great according to Marlboro. It's like, you know, Google's data is always great according to Google, and they've really rigged the game in their in their favor. and that's why and the other thing too is like It's the same thing with like AI, right? AI right now is still kind of a master of none when you talk about the foundate like the foundation models like GPT and Grok, right? and and more and more models are coming out that are very niche industry specific, right? Well, this we do the same thing with dental marketing. We take Google ads and meta ads, we're running all the same kind of stuff, but we're filtering it through the our our own Rise platform, which attributes everything almost perfectly now and actually gives you the

15:56Dr. Jim Arnold You know, and I've seen your platform, dude. Like you have shown me what you guys do and how you track it to the nth degree. And I've never seen anything like it. It's it's really extraordinary. I mean, it's something that really sets you apart. that attribution is so important for anybody who's spending money on marketing and and in terms of reloading, you know, re reaiming, retargeting, I should say. It's it's essential to have all of that. And and if it's kneel perfectly with your, you know, how you've described yourself. You're more of a technology guy than you are a marketing guy, but you have a team of great marketing people who use your technology to dial it in and get the best ROI possible.

16:39Neil Zemba Yep. Mark the attribution shows great marketers what's actually working and what doesn't. So this is a little bit in the weeds, but if you hire an agency, right, and they're running Google ads, they're just using Google's data to run their ads. But Google's data counts every call the same as the same value. We know that that's not true, obviously. So that's why.

16:42Dr. Jim Arnold Mm-hmm. Mm.

17:05Neil Zemba Your agencies come to you every month and they go, Hey, we got you three hundred calls. And then you're like, Yeah, but like what was were they good? Were they not? I mean, my offices are in southeastern Michigan. I got calls from Chicagoland. I got calls from Indiana because a call is a call is a call, right? They're all called. So it's good there's nothing qualitative about it, right? So we have a lot of trademarks now and things. So a lot of our trademarks have to do with the term weighted, weighted hygiene, weighted geofencing. What that means is quality. We're looking at like like a heat map, right? You've seen a heat map.

17:19Dr. Jim Arnold Worthless. Yeah. Yeah.

17:34Neil Zemba So in a traditional, when you're running when when a traditional agency is running ads, they just draw like some kind of boundary line and then they just blast it with ads. But but you're it's too blended out. What you need to do is you need to target the best neighborhoods. You need to kind of avoid certain neighborhoods, you need to target the best pockets, like a heat map, and and that makes all the difference. So what that what that what that actually does is like when we when we come in, we're usually you could spend roughly the same amount of money and you're gonna get like thirty to fifty percent more dollars from the money that you spend. And it's funny that you say, you know, I think about this all the time. Like every month our system gets more and more complex with just like all the things that we do. and that's but what's not lost on me is like at the end of the day, I always tell our clients too, I'm like, we do one thing, which is You spend money with Rise and we make you the most money from your money. That's what we do. We have no delusions of grandeur of like, why do you hire a marketing company? Why do you hire a marketing company? To make you money, to fill your schedule with quality patients. You know, let us let us be that brass tac, you know, partner for you. you know, it's not to say like of course of course we care about patient, you know, quality care. Of course we care about all these things. But our job

18:30Dr. Jim Arnold Yeah.

18:55Neil Zemba is to fill your schedule with quality patients so that you can do what you do best. And I think a lot of marketing is very fluffy. People get very upset about it. It's very it it's they're they it's very distracting from like, what am I paying for? What is the point of this? That

19:11Dr. Jim Arnold You've even referred to the Google's attribution at like the emperor has no clothes. And you know, that I think that's an apt description based upon what you've said. And, you know, there are dentists out there who've never even questioned their report. What what would you say to them?

19:28Neil Zemba question it. Question everything. No, but you know, the I have a lot of respect for this too, for this topic because it's like they're busy, right? It's like why I I always say too, it's like this is the problem that I have with like there are some companies now that just do attribution or they just do call coaching or they just do whatever. Part of the reason why we we do everything in one company. It's one dashboard. It's one company. And and a big reason for that is because Why is it our like we we we respect our clients in the sense of like why is it our clients' responsibility to have to quarterback all these vendors and get everybody to work together? If the vendor is so good, why can't they bring attribution themselves? Why would you have to hire a separate attribution company to work with an agency and then like force them to remind me the movie Stepbrothers or they them share a bunk bed? Like they don't want to share a bunk bed. If they wanted to be together, they would have they would have partnered up and come to you first. So And there's more and more of that happening in the industry. And to be honest, like this is not a like a like I I'm actually very happy about that. There's a hundred and sixty thousand dentists in the country. Like we don't I I I'm I'm a very blotioner.

20:31Dr. Jim Arnold Right. It's closer to two hundred thousand, maybe a hundred and sixty practices in the country, but that's a lot of that is a lot of dentists out there. And and that's a such a such a great market for your niche. Again, when most groups aren't doing anywhere near the level of attribution you are. You know, there's just the the value proposition is is unquestionable. But I I wanna jump over to DSOs for a second. I know that you've audited a bunch of them and found that on average

20:36Neil Zemba Yes. Sorry, thank you. Yes.

20:59Dr. Jim Arnold only about 30% of their marketing was actually returning an ROI. Whereas the other 70%, they were just losing money. So what that 70%, what did that 70% have in common that was different from the 30%?

21:14Neil Zemba Yeah, like we I have a chart. It looks like an iceberg. It's like what's above there's only like 30% above the waterline. So we get asked a lot by DSOs to come in and like audit what they're doing. And on the by traditional metrics, by click, like these ads are getting clicks. People are look, people are looking at them, but they don't make money. That's the thing. So my my country phrase is noise versus money. So a lot of ads make a lot of noise.

21:21Dr. Jim Arnold Mm-hmm.

21:39Neil Zemba Very few ads actually make money. So a good example of this is like, you know, we hear this all the time, like, you know, the dentist across the street just made this amazing video, right? And maybe they're a little bit jealous of it. They like the video, it's really cool. They want one for their practice. And sometimes that video makes a lot of money, sometimes it doesn't. Like we have a lot of people that, you know, they they'll pay 20 grand for like this fancy camera crew to come in from Hollywood and shoot this video and maybe it looks really good, but they're not really marketing it correctly. They're not doing enough with that video asset. So it doesn't really make a lot of money. there's a billion examples of that. But the the answer is like ever every every market is different. Every market really is a beautiful little snowflake and you know, ads that do well in one market don't do well in another. We have a way to kind of assess that and audit it out of the gate. So like for example, like Arizona and Michigan are actually very similar. New York is very similar to Houston, you know, and LA in the sense that, you know, you might not think of Houston and Manhattan as being super similar. But they are in terms of density, like pace like you saw Rise Maps. We have this amazing tool called Rise Maps, which is eight literally different AIs with this military grade over like it's an incredible thing that that the team has built.

22:41Dr. Jim Arnold Yeah. Really is. It I I mean, I've never seen anything like that. And I I was gonna ask you about that. Like, what does that show an owner that nothing else does?

22:58Neil Zemba So it at a high level, it shows you right off right out of the gate, it gives you what the best strategy is gonna be. That's the main thing that that it's doing in the beginning. And then over time, the map, Rise Maps plugs into your patient management system as well. So we then heat map out where all your highest spending patients, your best patients, your most loyal patients are living.

23:03Dr. Jim Arnold Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

23:24Neil Zemba in a heat map and then that data then gets imported into Google. Nobody has that. So that allows you to really focus the budget where it needs to go. To to your last point, about seventy percent of ads don't make money. which is true in in and by the way, that applies to single practices as well. It's it's kind of across the board that it's around that number. Seventy percent of the ads don't make any money. but you o but they make a lot of impressions. They generate a lot of calls. So it's like that old there's that old phrase, I know fifty percent of my marketing doesn't work, I just couldn't tell you which fifty. That's what attribution solves. So these are not, it's not like the agencies are like asleep at the wheel. They're looking at stuff, but they're not looking at the right thing. So I always told Dennis, I'm like, how good it would you be at your job if you couldn't see inside the mouth? If you couldn't see it. That's how agencies have to work. That's what Google does not let you see inside the mouth. Meta does not let you see inside the mouth. I thought, like a lot of people do, well, these are trillion dollar companies. They don't have great tools not to let you see inside the mouth. They still don't. They still show other metrics outside of it that kind of allude to it. But and and the reason for that is actually very simple. Why would Google integrate with your patient management system? It's too niche for them. It doesn't make any sense. And if they were gonna to do that, then they have to integrate with all the EHR systems and all the other things too. It would be a whole to-do for them to do it's a it would be a big corporate decision for them to do that. They don't want to do it. So that's why we exist in the middle ground. We connect, if you look at that chart on our site, like it, you know, we connect all the marketing things. to the PMS and then tell you what works and what doesn't. So then by the way, you could you could still work with a great agency and they could they could see, you know, the the data and and and they could make make better decisions.

25:12Dr. Jim Arnold So what what kind of scenarios when do you tell an owner that marketing isn't their actual problem?

25:19Neil Zemba I guess it depends on the personality at that point. That's a really good question. But and that's why we call ourselves a growth partner, right? So I learned this in the first two months of starting Rise. So R like I was a COO of our DSO, right? And I'm going around all these like mastermind groups to figure out how to save money and run a better PNL. And I'm in all these groups, and it's all COOs of dental groups, some healthcare, and everybody is obsessing over like the tiniest little let's do this and cut and we'll save, you know, point two percent. And everybody's like, yeah. And they write it down. yeah, we're gonna cut this. yeah, we're gonna switch from this vendor to this vendor on this supply and just obsess it. And by the way, great. Totally that that's what I want on a COO, by the way. I like very type A COOs. Okay, but at the end of the day, we were saving maybe four percent. It was just fractions of and and the whole time I'm like, my partners had thrown marketing on my table because they didn't want to deal with it because they were annoyed and they're pissed off at agencies, right? So the whole I'm thinking, like, okay, I'm looking at Mark and and one day I just like raised my hand in the meeting. I'm like, hey guys, my schedule's half empty. And I just ran some numbers. And even if I could fill my schedule with 20% more patients, my bottom line could go up higher, you know, higher than 10% more. And we just spent the last three months, ladies and gentlemen, saving four percent. And I was like, Am I crazy? And everybody was like, Well, you're not crazy, but

26:40Dr. Jim Arnold Yeah.

26:45Neil Zemba We're already giving all these marketing companies so much money and they're already just fumbling it. So we don't dare give them more money because we don't think they know what they're doing. And we're so frustrated we've just given up on that. And I was like, man, that's depressing. Like that's because I was like, I saw, I was like, it's right there. Like everybody else, everybody's schedule was half empty. I'm a pessimist. I say half empty. Everyone was half empty. And I'm like, so that that that was kind of the the spark.

27:10Dr. Jim Arnold It's interesting. You know, I think that a lot of groups, a lot of DSOs get into counting paperclips and say s you know, shaving off that one or two percent overhead while they're like leaving that top line growth, you know, dying on the vine, when that's where you really increase Ebitha, that's where you really increase revenue. And I think that a lot of times you can people can be really short-sighted about that. And and man, when you start counting Paperclips and changing the way the practices have always done things after an acquisition, that creates a lot of friction for the team, which is problematic.

27:44Neil Zemba One hundred percent. And I I I tell people do both. I'm like, look, it I I'm the same way, by the way. I'm I'm very obsessive about dumb you know, you know how entrepreneurs and business we we love obsess I love going in a good P N L and trying to but it's more b become like a hobby now because the marketing it's just it's it's it's it's dollars versus pennies. It's hundreds of dollars sometimes versus dollars. It's like It it i if it and I tell people too, it's like, look, this goes back to lifestyle as well. Like, do do do you wanna be doing that? Do you wanna be obsessing over every little thing when you don't necessarily have to? If you can have in marketing we say there's there's two goals that we have, I think at a high level in marketing. One is to fill the schedule, get butts and seats. The vast majority of practices and DSOs are woefully unprepared to do this and they're not doing it.

28:35Dr. Jim Arnold It it's true. And it's so when you look at that, like how often do you feel like the the problem isn't a marketing problem? It might be a problem at the front desk or how they're handling calls and that sort of thing.

28:47Neil Zemba I would say probably probably about thirty percent of the time, maybe more. and and it took me about two months in in the in the business to realize you really have a a two variable setup here to your point. You've got marketing and you've got intake. And then really and then down the line you have case acceptance. So what's cool about we we we ha we kept that in mind from the beginning building out the rise platform. We built we purpose built it from scratch.

29:04Dr. Jim Arnold Mm-hmm.

29:14Neil Zemba So now we can analyze everything going on with intake. We can analyze all of that. You're right. A lot of times the marketing is great or it's it's it's it within the parameters, right? And I I don't even like to use subjective terms, right? We like to say our average every dollar you put in with rise, we try to get you at least I mean our average is between four to eight X a month, every dollar. And by the way, I consider two point two X to be break even, not one. Overhead, all the things, right? So that's a whole other

29:39Dr. Jim Arnold I I agree. And two point two, you're just you're working harder to make the same amount of money. And so it it's a it's a a losing proposition and I I've always felt that way.

29:51Neil Zemba One hundred percent. And and now, you know, several months ago we we partnered with a lot of some of the companies that put the cameras and the microphones in the operatory. So now all within one singular platform, you can also audit what's going on with front desk and what's going on with case acceptance. So you can see the entire funnel. There's no information missing anymore. And that was always our goal to be able to analyze the entire thing. Because now, you know, you you you have everything and you could you could see, and this is not too

30:02Dr. Jim Arnold Mm-hmm.

30:22Neil Zemba It's just like with any operation, right? You're you're gonna have things that are great, you're gonna have things that are not not so great, and you have to you have to understand what to focus on. Sometimes it's case acceptance, sometimes it's in sometimes it's marketing, sometimes it's all three.

30:33Dr. Jim Arnold That goes to the point that there's no one size fits all for anybody. And that's why this customization is is so important. I mean, you even referred to different markets as an their own unique snowflake. I mean, think about 160,000 practices and how different all of them are and the culture and all that sort of thing, too. So I know you you're also doing rise recall, which kind of introduces a human layer into all this technology. And I I find that interesting. So why why why did you go to the human layer instead of just using AI like so many other groups are doing?

31:06Neil Zemba I think that with with recall, so we spend a lot we don't launch new products frequently. and when we do, you you you b you best believe that we've probably thought about fifty different things before launching a product. We really put it through a a crucible. And Recall came about because like a lot of times when I'm speaking about marketing, I have this phrase I call it the PEMDOS of marketing. And I say, remember in middle school math class and you have PEMDOS and parentheses exponents, and it's the order in which you do a math equation. Well, there's an order, it turns out, you know, people always ask me, like, my gosh, you have all this great marketing data, and it's it's stuff that no one else can see, right? I mean, it's our data from our clients. So people are always like Like when when when I speak or whatever, I try to like like I'm a big fan of like Tim Ferris and like I like when people speak.

31:56Dr. Jim Arnold Four hour work week. I love that guy.

32:00Neil Zemba I like when I go to a talk and I walk away with like actual advice. Like I'm not a b I'm I like rah-rah stuff as much as the next guy, but I want to be able to be like, okay, this is exactly so I want people to take huge data sets, distill them down, give me the too long didn't read, and I'm gonna walk away and I'm gonna implement that. I I look at that as compressing time. So I wanna compress time for other people. So we did that and we realized that Google Ads makes the most sense to focus on first. You should 99% of the time Make sure that you're making at least a 4X return on your dollars with Google Ads before doing anything else. And again, I'm not ta necessarily about branding, right? If you don't have a good brand and low like of course do that. But I'm talking about actually butts in seats, doing great marketing. And by the way, the first thing is getting butts and seats filling the schedule. The second thing is then really working to get I'd say get the best butts in the seats, right? Get get if you if you're fully booked on hygiene.

32:55Dr. Jim Arnold Mm-hmm. The pet butts in the seats. I love it. Yeah.

33:00Neil Zemba Okay, now let's start now you're making good return on your your new marketing dollars. You might be making the four to five X. Now let's really focus on more cosmetic cases or these kinds of things. And then Rise Maps, as you saw, also shows you what the market that you're in wants. It's got real time feeds for you know, Google search and all this stuff. So it'll tell you like, a lot of people are are looking for full arch, but there's only two practices in the community that do it. You should and and so that can inform CE, right? Everything should talk to each other, everything should inform each other. There's a huge lack of what we call community data. Everybody's looking at their own internal practice data, but they're not look we call that internal or practice data, but they're not looking at the external or community data. So that's the big thing that I'm really passionate about talking about now because I realized that's the data set that's missing. So that's the community data tells you. This is the data by the way that's generated in the community outside of your practice. What are people looking for? What Google searches are they searching for? That's community data. What what hours do my competitors have? And and y and to your point, is that marketing or is that consulting? To me, that's more consulting.

34:08Dr. Jim Arnold Yeah, absolutely. You know, and that also brings up kind of the difference between branding and marketing. I I've like twenty-five years ago as a multi practice owner, I used to read a lot of books about that, you know, branding versus marketing. And my my philosophy back then, and I don't know that it's changed to this point, is you almost have to do branding before you do the marketing. You know, kind of market awareness so that people know who you are, so that when the marketing hits, it's, you know, a known quantity to some degree. How how do you see that?

34:37Neil Zemba completely agree I I I do think there is still an aspect of like build it and they will come. You do need to spend that time in the beginning of opening your practice again look not only not only thinking about your brand your value what you bring to the market but how does how does that fit in the market that you're in so I always make the joke I'm like if you open a pediatric practice in the villages Florida

34:41Dr. Jim Arnold Mm-hmm.

35:02Neil Zemba You might have a bad time. It's a lot of older people. But then I thought about it, I was like, wait minute, it could be genius because you can get all the grandkids. But the point is, you know, I have a friend who, I will not mention his name, but built an incredible, I think it was like a four million dollar build-out, marble on the walls, gold in the south side of Chicago, when that area was not doing great. Why? But I see dentists do this all the time. They don't really do their great market research. So what we what we did with Rise Maps, for example, because we wanted to make Rise Maps extremely cheap. It's the cheapest thing we offer. It's like you can get it for like a couple hundred bucks a month, maybe probably less than that, depending on what you want. And we have something called Rise Research Mode. So that lets you, you know, consultants will there's a there's a consultant out there that that typical DSOs are used to paying between like three to six thousand dollars per location assessment. Okay. Ours is a couple hundred dollars. And we wanted to do that to kind of bring that to everybody because the data itself is not super expensive, right? So so that was one thing where

36:00Dr. Jim Arnold That's the auditing piece that we talked about earlier. That's that's audit. So like with a DSO with a hundred practices, it's two hundred bucks per location to do that full audit.

36:01Neil Zemba Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, like it depends on the type of audit, but yes. I mean you it it basically starts around there and that but you know, it goes to like five hundred dollars, but they're used to paying six thousand, right? So in all it's data. It's more acc so like a lot of those refer or rely on census data, things like that. I mean, that's ten years old sometimes, it's it's older. we pull from a number of different sources and that was just one of those things, again, we wanted it for our own group too. Like we're building a lot of stuff that we want for our own practices. And I have a lot of friends now that, you know, just

36:18Dr. Jim Arnold Yeah, right, right.

36:39Neil Zemba tell us what they want. and then we kind of crowdsource and we end when and we end up building it. So that was one of those things where it's like, yeah, what's the community doing? What CE should I expand into? Those kinds of things, really understanding how you're and and then to to land that plane about marketing to your point, my argument is you need to know where you are. Like really size up your community. Some communities are hung let's use cars for for example, right? Some communities are hungry for a Chevy dealership because they want that. Some communities won't really want Ferraris and they'll buy those up. You have to look at market demand and and practice owners, absolutely, not even DSOs. No one in dentistry really looks at that nearly enough. They just go, well, this is what I do. I want to live here. And they kind of go from there. And there's certain they just sort of look at weight element metrics that are way too elementary, in my opinion. And they make really bad decisions a lot of the time. And I and I feel for them. And that's partly why we want to make it like cheap, because I like a lot like you know, paying a ten thousand dollar for some analytics package or something or assessment is not feasible for for owners as well. And I understand that. So but you need data. You kinda do

37:53Dr. Jim Arnold Yeah. Well let's be honest, it it there's such tremendous value in that. And I mean, you provide that value and that clarity for practice owners, whether it's a hundred practices or one practice, and they're gonna want to work with you too. You know, I mean it's it's actually something where you both win.

38:11Neil Zemba Yeah, one hundred percent. And and I going back to the blue ocean thing, like, you know, we love this industry. We love this space. You mentioned like we have we have Rise MD as well, but the vast majority of our clients are are in dental. And even in the healthcare space, we're very it's very we're very niched down. Like ETF, dermatology. It's not we're not working with anybody. But in the dental space, the really, really, really great thing about the dental space from a marketing standpoint that I hope that every

38:28Dr. Jim Arnold Yeah.

38:38Neil Zemba every especially GP office, but also specialists could really internalize is the great thing about dentistry from a from a what we call CAC perspective, right? Or you know cost per pay ac patient acquisition perspective, is that virtually every kind of dental patient can theoretically become any other kind of dental patient. That's not true in healthcare. Just because your knee hurts doesn't mean that you're gonna need brain surgery, or it doesn't mean that you're gonna need a you plastic surgery and then have a child through IVF, right? They're very, very all over the place. Okay. And then throw a veterinary in there. Okay. dentistry is amazing. And dentists really do not appreciate this. That I talk to, like I really, really want to get this message out there that from a marketing standpoint, that's amazing. So dentists, I'm always encouraging them. And by the way, that doesn't necessarily mean to bring everything in house. That's not exactly what I'm advocating for. A lot of times it does though. Like really consider getting somebody part time to to do ortho or work with one of those emerging right. There's a lot of companies that are emerging, right, that do one day a month oral surgery. Those are incredible. You can't I really want especially GP dentists to know that's very rare. You cannot do that in healthcare, really. and it and it really it makes you more akin to like a small hospital than a practice and that's an amazing thing from a marketing standpoint because guess what? Now I can bring all these incredible high, high, high ticket patients to you without spending a ton of money. So the last thing I'll say is that you ever seen the movie Moneyball with Brad? It makes me think of that, which is like we call it we have keywords in Google that we call money ball moneyball keywords. It also makes me think of the book Freakonomics. Not every

40:21Dr. Jim Arnold yeah. Great movie. Great book too. Another book.

40:32Neil Zemba Is what is what is what it seems. So my point is like one would think, like I did, okay, hygiene patients are probably the cheapest to acquire, whereas implant patients are probably way harder to acquire because implants are, you know, a higher ticket than hygiene. It's completely mixed up. So what we get to do in our it if you if this is why I get so passionate and nerdy about, you know, great marketing attribution, because if you know your actual cost for for certain types of patients. Maybe we just flood you with implant cases or oral surgery cases, which are extremely cheap. People don't realize how extr how cheap these things are. I have endodontists and periodontists tell me all the time, you know, people don't search for this stuff on Google. There's no point in advertising. I'm like, doc, look at look at this. And I show them these reports. They might not be they might not understand endo. They might not be talking about endo. Like implants is a great example. It doesn't mean that these people are searching for, I would like a Abutment for $400. Nobody knows what the hell an abutment is. Okay. But that's not the point. They're searching for how do I replace my tooth? I'm missing a tooth. Guess where they're searching from? One of the ritziest neighborhoods in the community, right? So you have to put two and two together, right? I'm in Manhattan right now. I always say, like, I have a lot of very successful friends that work in finance. No one knows what an abutment is. Not one person. And when they think implant, they don't they don't they don't really know what an implant is either. Like they might have heard of it, but they don't understand it. We're all in dentistry, so we know these terms. But my point is is that if you can consistently get implant cases for four hundred dollars or less, you know, per patient, you should do this. And the reason why agencies don't do this or can't do this is again, they're just spreading your budget out based on clicks. So they're not looking at that. That's really where the where the money is going to be, to be frank.

42:19Dr. Jim Arnold Mm-hmm. Absolutely. Well I love I love what you said about, you know, patient acquisition isn't necessarily going to be just for hygiene or just for clear liner therapy or whatever. You get in the door and general dentists in particular have such a variety of services and if they do become a new patient, then they get a comprehensive exam and figure out what what the right fit is and what they need. So that's that's awesome. I wanna go back back in time a little bit though, man. I want to go back to your freshman year at University of Michigan because I'm so curious about this. You won I and I mentioned this in the intro, but you won the Nike's Future Soul Award or competition. So tell me, what what did you design and why was it better than everybody else's design?

43:06Neil Zemba man, that's funny. That's like that's that's going back. I so one of my one of my one of my really good friends when I was in college, we were just in class one day and he showed me his phone and he's like, Hey, I made this shoe for Carmelo Anthony and I'm just thinking like, Okay, that's cool. But I but I but I thought he was just saying like I designed it, meaning like he just did it in his free time.

43:09Dr. Jim Arnold Yeah. What?

43:28Neil Zemba Like I'm like, yeah, I made a I do I designed a dress for Beyonce last week. Like, you know what I mean? Like it was But then he was like, No, it's for Carmela. And then he showed me pictures of like him like with Carmelo Anthony. And I like, What? And he was like, There's this there's this competition that called Future Soul. And it was kind of like it reminds me of Willie Wonka for shoes. It was like somebody his name is Dwayne Edwards, who's an incredible designer at Nike and has been there for a long time. And he kind of put out the he was they were looking for like young design talent. And so they put out this kind of call for like shoe sh people to design shoes. At that time I was studying business and industrial design. So I didn't really know what I wanted to do. but I I I I was studying architecture for a little bit. Anyway, and I I I ended up getting into tech after after college, but but I was I but I loved great design and whatever. So so yeah. So we we We I submitted some does I worked all summer on that and I remember I had like one of the shittiest temp jobs ever that summer and you know I worked. I would listen, when you're from the Midwest, like you're working, all right. So I would work like these three hour days when I was this summer from college and then I would come home and then I would design shoes like all night and I had no idea what I was doing. I looked up like YouTube videos and whatever. And what but they they promised what that

44:38Dr. Jim Arnold That's very bad. Yeah, me too.

44:54Neil Zemba if you got to like the finals that your shoe would be reviewed by a designer. That's all I wanted. I just wanted feedback. so I thought that was really cool. So I I made it somehow to the finals and then I made it to the and then they flew everybody out to the Nike campus, which was incredible. So I I really felt like it was Willy Wonka. I wanted my grandpa to come with me so it would be like the movie.

45:02Dr. Jim Arnold Yeah. What a dream, man. That'd be so cool. I really, really. And now did that shoe get pr produced? You know, the one that you designed?

45:26Neil Zemba s so I think they did a limited run with one of them, which was which was amazing. I mean, so my my first job was designing shoes.

45:29Dr. Jim Arnold Okay. But you know, I read that you got a a call with Wilson Smith, a famous Nike designer. You know, what what did a eighteen year old talk to Wilson Smith about for several hours?

45:46Neil Zemba You know what's really funny? Like we we we both love like music. So we really it was really funny. We talked about like everything but shoes for a very long time. Wil Wilson is awesome because so Wilson Wilson I really credit for like just helping me launch my career. I mean Wilson is incredible. We're still friends to this day. I was texting the other day. He's an Oregon fan, I'm a Michigan fan. We like to talk crap to crap to each other a lot.

45:57Dr. Jim Arnold That's awesome. Hey man, both of you had tough weekends, man. Both both pulled it out at the last the last second or the last extra second.

46:13Neil Zemba We just text about that. We're just texting that. I was like, Who's just more dramatic? Yeah, exactly. And I'm like and for some reason the organ's in the big ten now, which you know, make that make sense. But so I think we play each other later in the season, it'll be fun. But anyway

46:21Dr. Jim Arnold yeah. Yes, so No, actually we don't play in the regular season this year. Last year we went to we went to Oregon and that was a fun one to watch for for me who's an IU fan. But yeah, we're we're not playing in the regular season. Hopefully we see each other in either the Big Ten tournament or in the the college playoffs.

46:32Neil Zemba Yeah. Agreed. Yeah. Well you guys listen you guys are I as long as you guys can beat Ohio State again, I'm happy.

46:50Dr. Jim Arnold man, I'm going that game. It'll be the biggest game in Indiana football home game in Indiana football history on October seventeenth. So man, I can't I can't wait to go and I hope it's happy. I hope it's a happy day.

47:04Neil Zemba I I have faith. I have faith.

47:07Dr. Jim Arnold So, you know, going back to like when you went to that Detroit high school and surveyed a bunch of students and everything, I think you found that like the majority of them wanted to go pro. What what did that mean to you and what did you do with that?

47:22Neil Zemba That's funny. So yeah, so that that's so we me and some of the the people that were designing stuff at Nike came back to to this high school even in Detroit and man, that's really funny. We you're really taking me on a mental journey here. So we went back and what is

47:38Dr. Jim Arnold I want people to get to know you. You're a you're a well rounded guy with a really interesting history, Neil. And you know, you can have the best marketing company in the world and and do amazing things with technology. But, you know, I want people to know about you and some just some of the cool stuff that you've done. And I this is this is a really cool story.

47:58Neil Zemba That's very sweet of you. You you're you remind me do you know who Nardwar is in music? You remind me of like the Nardoir of Dentistry. You're just bringing up like stuff that I you're like jogging my memory. we we I took these Nike design these shoe designers and we went to this high school, this community high school in Detroit, and we wanted to I was very passionate about the arts. So I'm I'm I don't know w I don't know if I'm dyslexic or I have some what do call it? Neurodivergent is what the kids are calling it now, whatever the trendy term is. Neurodivergent, thank you. So I always knew I had something, right? So like but I was more into the I'm I'm very into tech, but in a sort of a diff but I I was not I'm not like a big standardized test person. I did thank God well enough to get into

48:30Dr. Jim Arnold like books on neurodivers diversion. Yeah. I yeah, absolutely.

48:46Neil Zemba school that I wanted, but it was not easy for me. But then when I got in, like I I do well with projects, not tests. I was horrible at tests. So I always really resonated with like kids in in art class especially. and I I did I did a lot of like design stuff, you know, when I was in high school. So I just wanna do s do something as is kind of a a hobby with with with with kids. And I s I still work with with kids quite a bit to the to this day, like high school kids. And I'm very passionate about helping them Helping like creative people understand business. Like it's a lot simpler than what they think it is. I think a lot of people in the arts think that business is like not for them. Like they need a manager and a lot of people get taken advantage of, right? Same thing with dentists, right? Dennis get really taken advantage of sometimes by fancy business people and all this, right? So and I and I it's it's a thing that I'm passionate about. So I I love it. I'm like, I love giving the power back to.

49:34Dr. Jim Arnold Absolutely. More now than ever.

49:41Neil Zemba the creatives and and and I I I think there's a big metaphor there but with with artists and dentists, ironically, because you're producing, you're they're artists of the mouth. Okay. They really are.

49:49Dr. Jim Arnold There's no question, and you're dealing in tents of millimeters. I mean, it's it is so precise. I I I mean, we're doing surgery, we're doing art. It there's so many different skill sets that go into that.

50:00Neil Zemba Yeah. But to to answer your question, we went in and I was just curious. We had like a survey for these kids and we thought we were like, and to be fair, these were this was like the whole school wide. It wasn't just the R the R kids, but we were like, what do you what do you want to be when you grow up? And then what do you like realistically plan to do? These were high school kids in Detroit, by the way. And and there was like, yeah, like fifty percent of them said some kind of thing of like like NFL. NBA, something like that. This was like, what do you realistically think you're gonna do? Okay. So then we we we thought it'd be cool to like build a program talking about all the things that you could do around sports that were not being a player, like kinesiology, you know, being a a a med tech.

50:35Dr. Jim Arnold Yeah, that was the realistic thought. Jeez. Mm-hmm.

50:58Neil Zemba Designing shoes if you're more artistic, right? So these are all these are all kids that were really passionate about sports, but we they didn't know. So we we listed we found like a hundred careers. This is way before AI. We found like a hundred careers and we just made this whole thing about like and we and we we kind of put together these plans for them to help them like, okay, and maybe ev it's even going to like certain trade schools or or whatever, but kind of making your way back to athletics in some way. So we just thought that was kind of fun. and there was a there was a number Like things that kinda spun out from that one. But it was it was

51:28Dr. Jim Arnold That's it's brilliant. You know, it it allows them to have kind of some realistic goals and perhaps some direction that is you know, keeps them close to something they're passionate about because they're probably not going to become professional athletes ultimately. So that that leads me into the the the sandal outsole that you built from illegally dumped tires. And you did it with a nonprofit that was employing homeless people. How did you find that project? Tell me a little bit about that. That's wild.

52:01Neil Zemba That was through school. Yeah. That was a school project. And actually I know her name is Reverend Faith Fowler. She's awesome. She's a badass. So she does really, really great work in in Detroit. She has a ministry and a number of different things. But she she I met her when I was a kid because she does like these huge coat drives and things like that. So I I was I got involved with that with my mom. And And then later I realized that like I had just come back from these like shoe internships and stuff. And I was connected with them and they were explaining all these they were they were trying to get rid of all this rubber. And I was thinking about rubber because we were making a lot of shoes. And I kind of we we just kind of assembled this like small team of people and started like taking the sh the tires. When I say legally dumped, they collected them legally, but the tires were illegally dumped. And then they would legally pick them up and get them off the street. so they would shred them up. into little particles like you see in playgrounds or whatever, but then the idea was to like take them and make them into shoes. So that's what we did. We it was cool. We they like there was a team that like designed shoes and whatever and then we figured out how to kinda like manufacture it and they started a company out of that and I think they still sell them today in different forms. And so yeah it's you know i I've yeah it's I've had an eclectic life

53:32Dr. Jim Arnold Yeah you have. And that takes me into the s serve technology. You know, I I read somewhere that you did like fifteen pivots before you ultimately sold. Tell me about that.

53:46Neil Zemba So that was in in in college there was a a incubator called Tech Garb. And so I forget the amount it was, but it was like, if you raise a certain amount of money, you know, this so when I when I got back from Nike, to be honest, the thing that I was most interested in was their I don't know if anybody remembers the fuel band. By the way, the fuel band had the best commercial I think of all time. It's like a found footage, not a found footage commercial, but it's like it's got Bugs Bunny in and whatever. Anyway, it's a great commercial. but it was like a it was like a Nike wearable before they like partnered with with Apple and outsourced that. They were doing their own technology stuff. I forget what they call it. There's there's like a Skunkworks at Nike. And I became very interested in that department. And I was always very nerdy like my dad's a computer science got major and also so I thought that was really cool. So I was I was much more interested in like that than the shoes or even like like the like the like the Marty McFly shoes that like, you know, self-lace or whatever. You know, I thought I I wanted to do that stuff. I wanted to do like I wanted to like help build the future. I was not really interested in like, you know,

54:47Dr. Jim Arnold yeah.

54:56Neil Zemba shoes kind of in in and of themselves because a lot of people are right. So I felt kind of bad because I was like I'm I wouldn't even necessarily consider myself like a sneaker head, you know. I was more into like just crazy designs and weird tech stuff. So so yeah so so that's that's that's a long-winded way of saying that I I realized at that point I was much more into tech. So then when I came back to finish out school, I really wanted to like, you know, there there's a I got a got into that community of people that were building startups and, you know, this kind of thing and and we started a company called Surf technology and yeah, we didn't know what we were doing and we were kids and we painted 80 billion times and we originally were gonna we thought we were gonna make like consumer apps. I mean just all kinds of stuff. and then we went out to San Francisco during school. My partners wanted to drop out. I knew that if I dropped out my mom would again Whoop my ass. So I ended up flying back and forth from San Francisco to Michigan to like I was a senior. Yeah, I was a senior.

55:51Dr. Jim Arnold Yeah. my God, while you were in college, what year of college was that? Okay. And and what did you learn like through that whole process and and like going from not knowing what you're doing to iterating and iterating until you had something of value?

56:15Neil Zemba You know, what I love about, and this by the way, this is true of marketing as well. and it's also true of sports. Marketing, sports, and business are all very similar in that they are all just brutally honest. The market is the market is the market, right? You can have the best idea ever, and you can think you're the best. But if you go out once you go out on the court or you go in the ring, Let's see, right? And marketing is the same way. You can think you have the best ad in the world, but if it doesn't resonate with your audience, it's not. Same thing with business. You can think you have the best practice, whatever. So I say all that because I think that's the main lesson that I learned was Like why does one pivot? Well, you pivot because your idea falls flat and then you collect what you think worked and what didn't. And what's cool about like in marketing, you know, we call it A B testing, right? You run a lot of split tests all the time. You create two ads and then you pit them against each other and you have A and B and even in meta, right? It's part of their infrastructure. You A B test ads, you split test them. But I don't think a lot of people realize you could do the same thing with pretty much anything. You could do the same thing with business. You could, you could split test literally anything. So I think that's the biggest lesson that I learned was how brutal the business world is. No one cares. And what but what's cool about it is like, you know, starting starting as an entrepreneur at a at a young age is also empowering in the sense that it's merit based, which I really appreciated. Because I could be weird and I could be, you know, eccentric and I could just work on the things that I want to do. And if people bought my product and I had a successful company, it didn't, you know, then then it just it is what it was what it was. So when we sold in twenty we sold in twenty fifteen, I moved back to Michigan. I got one corporate job for one year. I did very well, like I wasn't fired or anything, but I just realized that, you know, it really wasn't for me. And I went back to, you know, and that's when that's when my my friends at the time let me know. I was looking for different opportunities to for ownership. I also really I I believe that a lot. I know we talked about backstage. Like I I one of the best things that was ever taught to me and where I where I really hope that dentists can understand how much of an opportunity they have, there's so few industries where ownership is considered is is normal, right? I mean, think about a doctor that's working in a hospital system. How do they have equity? I mean, right? It's like you know.

58:40Dr. Jim Arnold Neither that's that's exactly what my dentist told me when I was in high school, when I was planning on going to med school someday. He he sat me down, he said, Jim, no, no, no, no, no. You'll be an employee of a hospital system. as a dentist, you can own your practice, you can run your practice however you want to run it, you can set the hours that you wanna set and do the procedures you wanna do. You will never be able to do that as a physician, and that's what took me to dentistry.

59:06Neil Zemba That's awesome. I didn't know that. I mean that's i i that's it. Building equity, building wealth and d so dental we started dental mentors. Myself, Eric Morton and and and Matt started that and it it's all about building wealth in dentistry because we believe that Wealth should not be taboo. There's nothing wrong. You know, I I tell my we have a lot of young sales folks that work at Rise. And sometimes like, you know, their their family gets uncomfortable or something like that. We had a guy that's 27 years old that does very, very well financially. And I told him, I sat him down, like, listen, like I I s like the like b it's a good thing. Like, don't be dumb, right? I mean, maybe do a couple dumb things and get out your system, right? But Building wealth is a beautiful thing. If for your he just had a kid, his first daughter. and I'm the one that's kind of egging him on to kind of like do nicer things and treat his family. And I'm like, that's what it's for. That's the point of it. Right. There's and and so I think I think a lot of times in dentistry and in healthcare, and by the way, I completely like, of course, you know, like sales being a dirty word, kind of, right? Like like no one's saying to do anything unethical. I'm saying What is so bad about ethically just achieving great financial success and and and building, you know, a great practice and being a s a great pillar in your community? I think these are, I think it's part of being a great leader, being a man, being a husband, being a father, being a wife, being whatever, being a parent. I really believe in that.

1:00:35Dr. Jim Arnold Hey man, like I I hear I've heard that from dentists my entire career. You know, I graduated 30 years ago and a lot of dentists are like, well, it's it's healthcare, you know, it's not a business. I remember I inherited a team that didn't look at it as a business at all. And I said, but you know, it it really is, and it's incumbent upon us to make that business profitable. Because if we're not profitable, first of all, I'm not gonna be able to pay all of you. Second of all, we're not going to be able to get the technology or the education or you know, upgrade our facility or market. I mean, there's just so many things that you can do when you're profitable. And guess what? You're going to better serve your patients at the end of the day with all of those things that you're able to invest in. If your practice is just barely breaking even, you don't have the resources to invest in things to stay current and to provide the best care possible. So it's there, there are inherent compromises if you're not profitable. So when you when you got into that practice situation with your friends, you mentioned earlier that like you you thought, my God, that that's illegal. I'm not a dentist. How can I own a practice and everything? And, you know, I'd love to hear about that process. Like what what made you decide, okay, I'm gonna do it and how long did it take you to just like be comfortable with that?

1:01:28Neil Zemba One hundred percent. It's a really good question because I I really felt very uncomfortable for a long time because I felt a little bit out of place. And the other thing too, I mean, I I I was I was still in my twenties at that time and in healthcare, right? Like everybody thought I was an associate, which is fine. Like I have no ego about that. It was just it was just odd because you went I went from like running a company for years, having a great exit to coming in and, you know, getting people coffee or what you know like this.

1:02:13Dr. Jim Arnold Okay.

1:02:14Neil Zemba Which is fine, right? It's but it but all I'm saying is like in tech it can look a lot different, right? You you could you could you could hang out with a 17 year old and you don't know if they're broke or if they're worth a hundred million dollars. It's really hard to tell. So it's like in dentistry it's it's a much it's a much more traditional ladder, right? so that was an adjustment. But but the other thing too was like I I I really like to add value. I love working. I love hard work.

1:02:31Dr. Jim Arnold Yeah.

1:02:48Neil Zemba Like I have no issue I mean till the you know, right to t to to this day I I work probably twelve, thirteen, fourteen hours a day, something like that, on all kinds of different stuff. But I enjoy what I do. I like what I do, right? I I I a lot of my hobbies have congealed, right? A lot of like d like everything kind of is relates to everybody. But it's it's fun, right? You build momentum and now I know great people like yourself and everybody and we're building things and it's great. And now with AI and you can rapidly build stuff, deploy it and you get to see it out of the market. Like that's

1:03:09Dr. Jim Arnold Yes, yeah.

1:03:18Neil Zemba Playing video games to me. That's all.

1:03:19Dr. Jim Arnold Mm. Yeah, absolutely. I agree. As long as you love what you're doing, I mean, y th I I always say like I have an unlimited work capacity because everything that I'm doing right now I really do enjoy. But you know, you went from chief marketing officer to COO. Like what what how did your role really change and what what is your I mean, did you like one more than the other?

1:03:42Neil Zemba Yeah, I th I mean to be honest the the the the marketing thing was honestly just kind of hoisted upon me against my will. because everybody just got pissed at agencies and I like, can't we really be that bad? And then like, you know, two years later I was like, Okay, I get it. It's bad. But then I was like, Well, why is it bad? It's bad because of the whole like the mouth thing, like the agencies couldn't see

1:03:48Dr. Jim Arnold Yeah.

1:04:04Neil Zemba What they were doing and I got all the pitches and the BS reports and they love to give you I think about it like Vegas, right? I come to Vegas reports where it's like girls, girls, girls flashing, you know, all these clicks, all the impressions, you know, and they're trying to kind of distract you from stuff. But to be fair as well, they can't see it either. That's the thing. It's not like they're trying to necessarily be sneaky. They can't see the the great data that you need to to make those decisions. So, being a COO, when you're managing a P N L, you're managing a P N L, right? It's it's on your

1:04:21Dr. Jim Arnold Yeah.

1:04:34Neil Zemba It's your responsibility. So I think that I think it was nice because we think about marketing as a as a as an operator.

1:04:41Dr. Jim Arnold Well and and let's be honest, that experience, you know, both of those roles really gave you all the foundation that you needed to start guys. And and and it I mean, it was really predicated, I think, a lot in large part to your frustration. You know, when you go to your marketing vendors and say, How do we get how are we gonna double our the number of p our patients? And they can't answer you. I mean, that must have driven you crazy and really gotten the wheels turning.

1:05:05Neil Zemba One hundred percent. Yeah, and we we still hear it to this day. I mean that's the thing, it's like it's it's you know, the market is so big that look, I I I I really don't I just don't like when practices get taken advantage of. I really don't like when dentists get taken advantage of, whether it's by private equity, acquisition, whether it's by vendors. And I also think that at the end of the day, I love dentistry too 'cause of how damn nice everybody is. Everybody's so nice. Right? Like it's everybody's so nice. I I mean I love it. So I

1:05:35Dr. Jim Arnold Everybody who comes into the industry never leaves. Or if they do, they leave for a brief period and they come back. And they may change jobs, they may change positions, companies, all that stuff, but they're still they want to be a part of this, this I guess community of nice people, right?

1:05:41Neil Zemba Right. Right. Yeah. And that's why I say it's like I don't I don't think the vendors are most vendors are not trying to take advantage. Some are, to be fair. I think they come and go quite quickly, fortunately, but and they and they learn their lesson. but the the market is so big. I I just come from the school of thought that and and this is I think tends to be true in in like a technol like a Silicon Valley mindset too, is like if you provide enough value good things are gonna happen. So we don't really get obsessed over number of clients necessarily or locking people in contracts or these kinds of things, we we develop. We build. We just every day, every week, every month, we just build, build, build more and more and more stuff. Naval Robin Kamp, who I love, who's a big tech oracle, says, if you're doing too much sales, it's because your marketing sucks. If you're doing too much marketing, it's because your product sucks. But how many people are obsessively focused on their product first?

1:06:46Dr. Jim Arnold Ooh that's my gosh.

1:06:54Neil Zemba product is so good, isn't it gonna sell themselves? And by the by the way, what I love about dentists too, in general, is they are really savvy. they see through stuff. They're very skeptical, which is awesome, which they should be, right? Because there's a lot of products out there that are not good. Okay. And a lot of companies focus too much on marketing. a lot some some practices focus too much on marketing and not enough on great clinical care or their reviews are bad. I always tell them like look, if if you're if you're not

1:07:05Dr. Jim Arnold Mm-hmm.

1:07:22Neil Zemba Fixing these things that that patients are dinging you on reviews, I'm just gonna take a magnifying glass and magnify whatever's there. So to your point, you make a beautiful point, which is marketing is really just gonna bullhorn whatever's already there. but I will tell you the vast majority of time, I see the complete opposite scenario. I see a very hardworking dentist that's a bit overwhelmed with certain things. Some people sh they've probably dealt with

1:07:30Dr. Jim Arnold Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

1:07:51Neil Zemba staff stealing money from them. They've dealt with weird business and HR things that they didn't nobody taught them how to do this stuff. And they're dealing with all of these things, plus they have to do great clinical care, plus they have to do tax stuff, plus they have to manage their PNL, plus they have to n negotiate with all these vendors and they gotta look at all these reports and the vendors it's it's a nightmare. It can be.

1:08:11Dr. Jim Arnold It's a lot. And people outside of dentistry really have no idea. You know, like, wait, what? Why are dentists committing suicide? Why are dentists getting divorced and have substance abuse problems? It's it's because there's such a diverse set of skills that you have to have to be successful. And the expectation level is so high, internally and externally. And and we're just not very well equipped to deal with a lot of that stuff unless we find great mentors and people that can kind of help help show the way for sure. You know, when I look at your career, Neil, like when I was when I was researching, it was really fun to research, you know, because cause again, there's so many unique and interesting stories that, you know, nobody in dentistry can tell but you. But I see a through line. It's like every industry, every business that you've started, like you've seen something that everybody else sort of missed. I mean, is that is that an accurate thing? Is that is that how you see it or am I just connecting dots that aren't there?

1:09:12Neil Zemba No, look, I mean I I I I appreciate that. I don't I don't I mean I guess I I've just always thought about it like I'm sort of a a simpleton, I think at the end of the day, ironically, like that's where I go back to like nobody thinks I'm in the con I I'm in New York City right now. I it like I I certainly don't sound it anymore probably, but

1:09:25Dr. Jim Arnold Ha ha ha. Yeah. I mean, gosh, the hillbilly origins and here you are in the in the big apple. I love it.

1:09:38Neil Zemba I just think it's like for me, it's always like, I think I'm maybe a little bit ignorant in the sense where I look at problems, I'm like, well, why can't it be better? You know? Why can't it be that? And then I think just like a dentist has great skill sets clinically, and you could look at a mouth and go, okay, like I know I know how to fix this. I think it's like what what's cool about the technology world is that, especially now with AI, not only with AI, but with everything.

1:09:46Dr. Jim Arnold Yes. Rebooth.

1:10:06Neil Zemba in the back of your mind you realize like, okay, there's all of these tools that are available, but people in Silicon Valley tend to like to build the the tools and the foundational models, but they don't really obsess over how they get applied. And what's

1:10:20Dr. Jim Arnold Mm-hmm.

1:10:21Neil Zemba about being an entrepreneur, just I guess somebody just living and existing in the world and doing stuff in business is you c like what is business if not solving problems, right? Just going around and solving problems. So I think to me it's just very simply like I I look at things that piss me off that that I don't want to deal with. And then we think about building technology and it just so happens that if you have a problem it it you know probably a lot of other people do as well and there's your market. So I think I think it's I think it it at the end of the day it really can be quite simple. and and yeah.

1:10:52Dr. Jim Arnold Mm-hmm. I look at you, you're such a young guy. I mean, you're you're so young, Neil, and you have so much amazing experience already. I mean, it's it's really pretty extraordinary. So this question might be premature actually, because God only knows what you're gonna do over the next thirty years, you know, all of the different innovations and different companies that you're gonna found. I I have no doubt about that. But a lot of people say like a career has a theme. Like, do you feel like your career at this stage of life has a theme?

1:11:23Neil Zemba That's really interesting. Man, you got it you got good questions, Chev. I you know, that's a g I I I would say I like to think that I solve problems and I like to think that that I I I think I think I think a better experience, creating a better experience i is is another one.

1:11:26Dr. Jim Arnold Nice, yeah.

1:11:46Neil Zemba and also just doing it people that that that you like working with. That's another like, you know, as I get older, I'm realizing more and more what I consider to be a luxury and what are not, you know? And, you know, I'm a little bougie, okay, but at the same time, to me it's much more about who you work with and what what your day to day looks like. that's something that I really probably value more than anything.

1:12:18Dr. Jim Arnold That Neil. And I met you, you know, specifically backstage, but you know, through our mutual friends, Eric Morin and Matt Ornstein. And you know, I've talked with all three of you about dental dental mentors and this amazing community that you guys are building, you know, with all of the resources that dentists need. and to your point, it is you get to a point in life where you want to be very selective about who you spend the majority of your time with. And you know, you guys started that together, which is awesome. And I I love that you refer to them as your mentors, you know, rather than like your co-hosts with the with your podcast, for instance. What what have you learned from those guys?

1:12:56Neil Zemba They are now I wanna be Matt and Eric when I grow up. So Yeah, right. you know, well it's funny so it a at Dental Mentors and you we we launched about four months ago. It's brand new. Dental mentors.com for anybody you know, it's it's for owners basically only, and that's not to be, you know, elitist or whatever. It's because we want to have very open conversations, very candid conversations. And so the idea with dental mentors is really two things. One

1:12:58Dr. Jim Arnold Don't we all?

1:13:21Neil Zemba To bring in great mentors that that really are exceptional at either one thing or a couple things, and are also really passionate about a couple things. So I'm kind of the AI and the marketing guy, right? And Matt talks about investing, and he's been incredibly successful in his investing career. He also owns an AD office DSO. so he has that managerial experience. Eric owns Tower Leadership, of course, who I think is is really the gold standard in consulting and operations and he's seen it all. It's it's too long, didn't read. You know, Elijah and at Backstage says, I like to compress time. I love that. I love that idea. How do you compress time? And isn't that a great way that we can all help each other? Right. So I think, you know, you you mentioned my age and stuff like that. The only that's literally just working my ass off while. listening to people that have already done it. There's nothing fancy about it. It's just that I have great mentors that are willing to share things with me that bet on me or just wanted to share certain things. And I didn't want to let those opportunities go. I really want to take advantage of those opportunities that were presented to me. So at dental mentors we have a saying, I'm in the middle. So we want to create a community of all owners or students. So you can be a dental student as well. Owners, future owners, somebody that could be an owner. You don't necessarily have to be a dentist, but you have to be an owner. Because we believe that a principle the the foundational principle of building wealth is ownership in some capacity. It's just like owning stock, right? You you get you gotta what do they say every you know that the the highest the best returns in the market, you know, happen, you know, the five top returns of the market are all kind of on random days. You have to be in the market in order to take advantage of those days. You have to own in order to really, really build wealth. whatever.

1:15:03Dr. Jim Arnold Mm-hmm. And proximity is power, you know, to your point. You know, spending time with people who are doing things at a high level and have been very successful, you know, inspires you. It you learn from that. you raise your own personal bar and expectations of yourself. And and I I've always done the same thing, you know, like my whole career. It's like I those are the people who I want to spend my time with because

1:15:16Neil Zemba What's

1:15:32Dr. Jim Arnold They just have so much knowledge and so much experience. And I love that you're you're one of the the three, you know, guys who are, you know, hosting a podcast. And the podcast, by the way, is excellent. You guys have great guests and great subject matter and and just the co collective knowledge and expertise is through the roof.

1:15:51Neil Zemba It's also just we just have a lot of fun with it too. It's really fun. I mean, I got to ask Ophir Tanz questions, who is just I just I just think he's an absolute freaking rock star and just people that have it's just like, you know, there's certain people like, don't you just want to ask him questions? You know, and so I mean Pat Bauer was our first guest. So we want to basically do two things with dental mentors. One, create that group of mentors, mentees to just have people just kind of self-select and right and just get to know each other and we're all on the same journey. And we don't think it's

1:16:04Dr. Jim Arnold Mm-hmm.

1:16:20Neil Zemba naughty or rude or whatever to talk about building wealth. and support our families and support causes we believe in. And, you know, the thing that I'm probably most passionate in life about is like a nonprofit that we want to do. It has nothing to do, you know, I don't want another car. So it and for my family and you know things I care about. So everybody feels that way, right? I think in at the end of the day and and and why why why work that hard if you can't, you know, not only enjoy it, but also have

1:16:24Dr. Jim Arnold Absolutely.

1:16:49Neil Zemba I don't even necessarily love the term impact or giving back or whatever. I think that they're a little overused, but like just like no BS like what do you wanna do? Like what do you wanna see being done in the world? Well, you can do it, you know, f fin finances are important. Doesn't have to be your money necessarily, but all even having the skill set to raise money for things or or what have you. So

1:17:03Dr. Jim Arnold Yeah, yeah. Well, you know, we talked about that earlier in our conversation, just that in dentistry for a long time, money has been such a taboo subject. And it's it's unfortunate. And you know, especially dentists coming out of dental school with four hundred, five hundred thousand dollars in student loan debt, and then it costs, you know, million or millions of dollars to like buy a practice and everything. You know, that that financial education is so critically important so that they manage their resources wisely, invest wisely, and feel a sense of hope that yeah, I'm gonna pay this dude loan off. It's it's gonna be okay. Right.

1:17:44Neil Zemba Yeah. And and be able to just really excel beyond that as well. And but you're right. I a lot of a lot of newer folks cannot see beyond that because it feels like such a weight on their shoulders. And that's another big thing that we want to do with this with this dental mentors group is just say, look, just find find people who are I I I I really believe in this like almost to a spiritual degree. You you have to find people and speak to people that are where you wanna be. I've had so many professors and

1:18:11Dr. Jim Arnold Yes, right.

1:18:14Neil Zemba you know, folks in traditional academia that I didn't want to be them. I saw their life or people in other businesses, right? They're like, I don't know if I want to go is it the industry that I don't like? Or so I I I think you know, I call the buffet stage, right? I think I think everybody needs to go through that buffet stage, which is kind of like a residence, you know. it's like, but everybody needs to do that. But it but and then and then and then mentors can also be honest as well. Like a lot of people too, it's like people hit me up all the time and I I love to show them like

1:18:32Dr. Jim Arnold Mm-hmm.

1:18:43Neil Zemba This is what it actually is. And yes, you get all these good things, but here's here's all the bad things too. And it's up for you to decide. That's your power. That's what you not everybody, you know, people like Gary Vaynerchuk talk about I w you like I I get I I get I agree with the concept that not everybody is a CEO. Not everybody should be a founder. Some people are a great second, third, fourth in line, and that's great because there's certain benefits that come with that as well. Not everything is on your shoulders. There's a lot of dentists that really shouldn't run their own practices and maybe, but even then, okay, you want to sell to a DSO or you want to, you know, join a a group like MB2 that has a great, you know, potentially alternative model, something like that. just know what you're getting into, right? Ask somebody that's already done it. And so dental mentors, it's like, you're in the middle. And then the other thing that we want to do, that I that Elijah, I've been inspired by you, by Elijah, the power of community, the larger the dental mentors gets, we just get to get. cooler and cooler guests just by virtue of having, right? And it's it's free. It's completely free to join. And so what we want like Pat Bauer, right? These are people that, you know, either, either, you know, like Matt or Eric or myself have relationships with. And so we want to switch up our our content the content structure is is not the norm where we we do a podcast first with a guest, but then usually like a month or so later, they will do a Facebook live in the Facebook, the private Facebook group. So it's like you you can watch the episodes, see what they're all about. Maybe you you know of Pat Bauer, but then and and so we the three of us get to nerd out and ask all the questions we want to know about. But then we want everybody, again, who's an owner, and that way you don't have to worry about, is my office manager hearing this thing or maybe I want to sell but I don't want my team to know about it or whatever. Right. So you can ask more intimate questions and we want to just, you know, make people comfortable to to keep it real. But you can also ask that of of

1:20:36Dr. Jim Arnold Well, and you know, that's that's what we're doing here. You know, that's exactly what we're doing here. And, you know, I had the the pleasure of having both Matt and Neil or Matt, Neil and Eric on the show. And you know, it's I I think when you can just peel back the layers a little bit and be real, there's there's such a huge value proposition because look, a lot of people say the same things over and over again. And the first time I met you, Neil, was at Dykoma.

1:20:39Neil Zemba Right.

1:21:04Dr. Jim Arnold you had been on stage that day and and I told you like I didn't just like what you said, but I liked how you said it. You know, because that authenticity just gives you so much more credibility. And that's why I I love what you're doing with dental mentors. And back to the beginning, man, I got out of school. I didn't know what I was doing with anything. Nothing. I had early in my career 17 mentors. And I had specific things I wanted to learn from each of them. But I I went out and like

1:21:32Neil Zemba Yes.

1:21:33Dr. Jim Arnold found them and sought them out individually. What I love about dental mentors is having them all in one place. Or Foundation Dental Alliance, having all in one place, you know, community where somebody's got the answer. You know, somebody's been there and done that. And, you know, compress time, man. Compress time. Why reinvent the wheel with with every challenge that you have?

1:21:58Neil Zemba A lot of it is just going through a lot of pain, as you know. It's just like don't do that. Definitely don't do that or do this this way or you know, that's it. You know, and and and it's just it it's proximity. It's it's we wanna do of events. we're doing a number of events every year, for the community. But again, it's free. It's free, it always will be free. Like the the main group will always be free. Like, you know, this is It's fun for us as well. And and frankly, it also gives us the opportunity and the excuse to go and interview people that we want to talk to too. And it's all recorded. So I'll get an example. And I've I was I've been extremely interested in like short term rental and and taxes, right? And you can dramatically reduce your taxable income. a lot of my friends have have trusts. some, you know, US based trusts, some overseas trusts.

1:22:31Dr. Jim Arnold Yeah. Yeah.

1:22:50Neil Zemba And because of the power of the community and the brand that we're trying to build, we were like, you know, we we want to get a who who would be a great financial advisor kind of company to come in and just explain what they know. These are calls that we just get on, like a lot the some of it was was a lot of it is personal. Like I'm asking about my own situation and I'm I'm willing to record it. I don't I don't mind. I want people to hear this stuff because I want to know this stuff too. So we did a whole hour on trusts, estate planning, like very advanced estate planning.

1:23:01Dr. Jim Arnold Exactly.

1:23:20Neil Zemba But because of the guests that we've had on and and and and the community that we're building, Goldman Sachs was the one that came to the table and like, hey, we're Goldman Sachs, we're willing, we're willing to answer these questions for the dental mentors community. And we were like, okay. So th that that was that that got us a little too damn excited because we're like, okay, Goldman Sachs is finance. So we're just we're just getting all these, you know, Lego bricks together and really building the the Avengers of Dentistry, okay, is what we're trying to

1:23:34Dr. Jim Arnold Mm. Yeah. And I'm so excited about it and I'm I'm excited to be a part of that too. It's it's it's just a a brilliant concept with, you know, some of the best people in the industry. So, you know, you've talked about ownership and you've called it lonely, confusing, sometimes painful, but it's still like the best tool you've found. Like tell me, tell me more about that.

1:24:08Neil Zemba Well, I think number one, if you're gonna go through pain, you sure as hell better try to get something positive out of it. That's number one, you know, because I see a lot of people that are in jobs that are maybe are a little bit too corporate, maybe a little bit too milky dry. Okay, and I've experienced that myself. so I think I think I think in large part it is it is worth it to own. it's it's more work for sure. but it also depends on

1:24:23Dr. Jim Arnold Yeah, that's Mm-hmm.

1:24:36Neil Zemba how you do it. I I really recommend the book Buy Back Your Time by Dan Martell. Dan Martell was influenced like myself in large part by Naval Robin Kant, who has a number of of great books.

1:24:47Dr. Jim Arnold I literally just started listening to buy back your time two days ago on Audible. Yeah.

1:24:51Neil Zemba Amazing book. Amazing book. And and it and and and it's a short book, right? Because the I it's it's very I love simple ideas. I don't think it's gotta be a large, a large book to to get it. And so same thing with four-hour work week, zero to one is fantastic. The hard thing about hard things, by Ben Horowitz. Zero to one, I believe, is Teal. Peter Teal. So these these are these are a lot of tech books. And the lean there's one called the Lean Startup, which is incredible. So these are books

1:24:58Dr. Jim Arnold Mm-hmm.

1:25:21Neil Zemba about how to build tech companies. But I always challenge Dennis, I'm like, read like think like a tech company owner, because in tech you have the benefit of building something that truly doesn't exist yet. And then you can market the crap out of it, right? But in dentistry, you can still do that. You can you can offer unique experiences. You can it's always going to be a local brick and mortar business at the end of the day. You can bring an experience you have it, you even have a leg up because you can bring an experience to your community that your community could not experience. You can you can take a model that works really well in LA or in the Manhattan market or you could you could you could look at a DSO whose model you really like or an individual practice that just does something that you love and apply that to your practice in Cincinnati, Ohio, or wherever you are. And and so I I think it also just really gets Dennis out of their heads a bit and kind of dissolves a lot of these false boundaries that don't really need to be there. and it also depends on your goals, right? I mean, so many dentists don't want, you know, whether you're reverse engineering an amount of like I want to make a million dollars a year, for example, as a dentist. How do I do that? Go in dental mentors, ask people that are doing it. There's a whole, there's a number of different ways. And the other thing, too, that's kind of cool about what we're trying to do is when we have all this data, we're gonna kind of compile it into like Tim Ferris has his book Tools of Titans, where he took interviews and then, right? But it's

1:26:41Dr. Jim Arnold that actually my laptop is sitting on that book right now. Literally Tools of Titans.

1:26:46Neil Zemba funny. It's a thick book because it's there's a lot of advice in there. So what we want to do eventually is take that and and maybe like run it into like our own AI that we build or something, right? But just to kind of and then and then it distills all of well, you know, well Pat Bauer said this about whatever. you know, Brian Caleo, you know, said about this about legal, you know. and then of course if you want to work with Brian and everybody listening to this probably should because I think I, you know, I think Dykum is the best.

1:26:50Dr. Jim Arnold Okay. Mine of the

1:27:16Neil Zemba Like learn from the best. Just just you know and again I don't mean to be elitist about it, but it's like, you know, they know something. and that others probably don't and that's that's important. Yeah.

1:27:25Dr. Jim Arnold Success leaves clues, man. Success leaves clues. And again, not everybody is is a big innovator and you know, there are just too many things that you can fast track if you learn from the mistakes and the successes of of great mentors who have done what you want to do, to your point. So

1:27:35Neil Zemba You're not moving there. A lot of our interface at Rise, we literally build off of things that already exist that our clients are already using and that love. A lot of our stuff looks like interfaces that everybody has already seen, which I think is important.

1:27:49Dr. Jim Arnold Mm-hmm. Well, you know, a great thing about Neil Rice is just all the different programs that you have, all the different ways that people can jump in. I mean, there's something for everybody. And that's what really struck me because I don't normally see that with a marketing firm. You know, it's kind of a one size fits all deal. And for you to have all these different levels that you could get into and how much you want to commit. And I mean, how what do you want your ROI to be? How many of our tools do you want to use? I I love I love that about what you're doing.

1:28:24Neil Zemba Everything is ROI based, everything is goal based. You know, we talk to our clients. Like if you come on as a client, we'll sit down, talk about your goals, we'll figure out how to reverse engineer those goals. Again, I mean, you know, I myself still am an owner in seven dental practices. I have some medical offices as well that I'm a partner in. So I I I understand it, you know, and and a lot of our the folks that we hire come from really great companies that They're they're they're trained in the implant world, for example, or the full arch world or what have you. And then we teach them the other stuff, but but they really understand dentistry. So we'd rather hire folks like that than people that are too caught up in the agency world because it it it it we find that to just be exponentially better for our clients if they can really speak the language. But you're right. Look, I I we think that anything can be reverse engineered. That's just how we think. And then we believe that whether by the way, whether it's our tools or some combination they're in. There's a lot of vendors that we just really like that we have no formal affiliation with, that we help, you know, our clients set up what they need to be successful. And that to me, that's the difference between a growth partner and a marketing agency. We are a marketing agency. That's one thing that we do. but we have a number of different things that we do.

1:29:42Dr. Jim Arnold Awesome. Well, you know, this has been a great conversation, but looking at all of the stuff you've done, you know, from the shoe design program, social enterprise, tech company, dental platform, mentorship community, all those things, man, 10 years from now, which one do you want to be have mentioned first of all of these different things?

1:30:03Neil Zemba It's a question. I you know, I would probably I would probably still say rise, just in the sense that I for me I'll tell you why. Like I I I love learning from people that are still in the game, that are still in the trenches. So I I really aspire to be a great operator. I wanna be a great opera. That's my goal. That's saying I'm there. I want to be there. And so I think that anything else that we're doing, dental mentors, all of these things. I mean, number one, I think dental mentors has such incredible people in there. They don't even they don't even need me in there, right? So, but with Rise, I just see a huge opportunity to unify the experience. We wanna have one. I mean, right now we have one dashboard. For a client to replace like when you when you go on rise, it's like you're replacing like 20 different things. You're saving like five to ten grand a month just off rip. And that more so than like a business standpoint, I just find that very exciting because we're at a we're at this this this precipice now where tech is getting so interesting and so advanced. For for but and on a personal side, I actually don't really love AI. We'll talk we can talk about that later. But but for for from a business standpoint. I think it's it's incredible. And and and I and I do think that dentistry is one of those industries where, you know, people say like, s spend less time working and more time doing the things that you love. And it's kind of some BS, right? But but that's actually starting to happen right now. So I think it's really cool to build tools and and systems that collapse a bunch of really yucky softwares and things that just give people a lot of heartburn.

1:31:34Dr. Jim Arnold Mm.

1:31:46Neil Zemba And just give people better experience. And I want to build a great company. I really aspire to do that. I think it's I think it's a cool thing to do. and it's a good use of time. And I want to build a great brand and a great company that really but to you I you said this a while back. It's like, you know, you you just let out of the gate with like I I you appreciate people that are successful that that are building bigger businesses because you understand how many people you had to help or or support in order to build a business that big. And I absolutely find that to be true. Like how you you're not no one's building a great business or a great practice if you're not helping a lot of people along the way. So I I think that's I think that's capitalism and commerce and business at its best, at its most ethical. and I think it's great.

1:32:36Dr. Jim Arnold Well, Neil, this has been a great conversation. I'm so so happy to have heard more of your story and share it with You know, what you've built with Rise DDS is really pretty extraordinary. This simple idea that every practice owner deserves. You know, stop guessing what's working and see what's actually working. So thanks for sharing the story behind that and for joining me on the Foundation Dell podcast. anybody watching today, if you received value from our conversation, please share this with a friend and subscribe. Thanks again, Neil.

1:33:11Neil Zemba Thank you so much for having me on. Thank you, sir.