Episode 128 - Healers vs. Stealers: David Harris on Protecting Your Dental Practice From Embezzlement

The Dental Amigos Rob and Paul are back, welcoming licensed private investigator, forensic CPA, and certified fraud examiner David Harris for a conversation about protecting your practice from financial crime.  

Returning guest David Harris is CEO of Prosperident,  a firm dedicated to investigating financial crimes committed against dentists. Today, David walks the Amigos through the alarming danger financial criminals pose to practice owners, provides insight into the criminal’s thought process in planning and executing the crime, and offers his basic formula for proactively shielding your practice from embezzlement before it happens.

Listeners who want to reach David or employ his team’s services can fill out his inquiry form at www.prosperident.com/dental-nachos or call Prosperident’s toll-free phone number at 888-398-2327. You can also check out his definitive book on dental embezzlement, Healers Versus Stealers: How to Outsmart the Thief in Your Dental Practice. To hear more from David and the Amigos, listen to our first podcast with David by clicking here.

Listeners who want to reach out to Paul can do so at Paul@DentalNachos.com and those who want to reach out to Rob can do so at Rob@RMontgomery-Law.com.

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Full Episode Transcript

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Bumper: Welcome to the Dental Amigos podcast with Dr. Paul Goodman and attorney Rob Montgomery, taking you behind the scenes of the dental business world. All the things you didn't learn in dental school, but wish you had. Rob is not a dentist, and Paul is not a lawyer, but since Rob is a lawyer, we need to tell you that this podcast is for informational purposes only and shouldn't be considered legal advice. Listening to this podcast does not and will not create an attorney-client relationship. As is always the case, you should formally consult with legal counsel before proceeding with any legal matter. Learn more about the Dental Amigos at www.thedentalamigos.com. And now, here are the Dental Amigos.

Rob Montgomery: Hello everyone, and welcome to another episode of the Dental Amigos. I'm Rob Montgomery, and I'm joined, as always, by the Head Nacho himself, Dr. Paul Goodman.

Dr. Paul Goodman: Great to be here, Rob.

Rob Montgomery: Paul, it's good to see you as always. And got another great guest today, a friend of the podcast, round two. Rocky II. David Harris is going to be talking about the exciting topic and scary topic of embezzlement and related issues, and kind of what practice owners should really be thinking about along those lines,

Dr. Paul Goodman: Another topic they did not cover in dental school.

Rob Montgomery: I guess they kind of cover this stuff a little bit in law school, maybe, but it's oftentimes it sounds a little sexier than it actually is, but, it's certainly something that that people need to be need to be aware of, for sure. And it's like one of those things that, oh yeah, it'll never happen to me until it happens to you, and you'll wish that you had done things to plan for it. And as we said, David may have the coolest job in dentistry. You know, he gets to chase and catch those who steal from dentists. A self-professed rule breaker in his youth, David changed his direction and has spent much of his adult life in the world of investigation and enforcement, where he uses his unrivaled ability to understand the criminal thought process to help educate and protect dentists. He's the chief executive officer of Prosperident, the world's largest firm investigating financial crimes committed against dentists. And David is a licensed private investigator, a forensic certified public accountant and a Certified Fraud Examiner, and folks that's a cool thing to have, all those certifications, which really is what gives David his special niche to do what he does for the folks in the dental industry. He's also the author of the definitive book on embezzlement, the most recent of which Healers versus Stealers: How to Outsmart the Thief in Your Dental Practice. And in addition to being a prolific author, David is a frequent presenter at regional, national and international dental conferences. We've run into each other at some Nacho events in Nacho Headquarters in Philadelphia. And David has a really a vast wealth of experience, and coupled with his keen sense of humor, makes him both an engaging and entertaining speaker. And I personally, always enjoy hearing David speak about these topics, and in recognition of his long and distinguished service to the dental profession, he's one of a handful of non-clinicians to be honored with a fellowship in the International Academy of Dental Facial Esthetics. And now, without further ado, here is David Harris, welcome amigo, and thanks for being on the show.

David Harris: Great to be with two old friends. Good to talk to you guys and look forward to our chat.

Dr. Paul Goodman: I like to start with a hard hitting question, David, since you know, nachos are my favorite thing and of we were in your town, where would we go for nachos and what is your favorite topping? Tell us where your town is as well.

David Harris: Well, I live in Halifax, Canada, so right on the east coast of Canada, my favorite nachos come from a little neighborhood restaurant about half a mile from where I live, called Darrell. And I am a spicy kind of guy. So my favorite topping, of course, is jalapeno.

Rob Montgomery: Sounds good. So David, how much danger does embezzlement pose to a practice owner?

David Harris: This is probably not good news for practice owners, Rob, but right now is probably the most dangerous time ever to be a practice owner in terms of embezzlement.

Rob Montgomery: And why is that?

David Harris: Yeah, I say that for a couple of reasons. First of all, the way that money flows through a dental practice has gotten infinitely more complex in the 35 years that I've been in this business. When I started, which I'll date myself, was 1989. There were basically two ways to pay a dental practice, cash and check. And you compare that to today, and there are a lot of different possibilities, and now also money coming into a dental practice gets divided between what I call physical payments like cash and checks and electronic payments, where the doctor never really sees the money. And while all that's going on, thieves have gotten smarter and better at what they do, and we definitely see more sophisticated ways of stealing than I saw five years or 10 years ago.

Dr. Paul Goodman: I've been a dentist since 2002, practice owner since 2005 , and I know we're going to touch on this multiple times, someone who's listening to us and saying, oh, man, this worries me. You know, I just took over a practice. I'm so overwhelmed. Not sure if the people are doing things right. If you just gave someone like one tip, they can go back to their practice and say, hey, check on this thing. Make sure this isn't happening. What would that be for a practice owner who's overwhelmed, but also now you've kind of scared them into saying, I better be start, I better start thinking about this.

David Harris: Yeah, and fear is exactly the right emotion, Paul, because roughly 77% of dentists will be stolen from at some point in their careers. Doesn't mean it's happening now, but sooner or later, the majority of dentists will get stolen from. Fear shouldn't paralyze you, though, it should move you to action. And the one tip I'll give people, and this is not an exhaustive list but it's one tip, but it's a starting point. Your practice management software tracks how much money comes in. And the first thing that every dentist should do once a month is compare collections according to their software with how much money went into their bank. If you don't do that, if you don't do that basic step, then the dumbest, laziest thief on the planet could successfully steal from you. When you do the collections versus deposits comparison, you could still be stolen from, there are plenty of ways to make your software lie about how much money was collected, but you will instantly rule out the bottom quartile of thieves.

Dr. Paul Goodman: So that one simple step. And I'm assuming, when people call you and I won't get into this with the “Oh no, David, I think I'm being stolen from.” And you ask them about this, my assumption is many of them have not been reconciling. Is that the right word? Or checking that monthly?

David Harris: Reconciling is a great word. Subjectively, probably 80% of dentists don't do that basic check. Or they assume that somebody else, like their accountant, is doing it, or they assume that their practice manager is doing it, which is kind of like asking the fox to hold the keys to the hen house for an hour while you go to the gym.

Rob Montgomery: I this is one of those things that you just need to have routines and processes. It's easy. It should be easy to just bake this into whatever you're doing on a monthly basis, to look at your financials. Hey, this is the reconciliation. I got this report. Here's my PNL, great. Show me. Show me that. Show me the collections and show me the deposits. You can do this if you if you tee it up, so this just becomes like an automatic, automated thing, almost, and you get it in front of you. And once you know, I would think you know, Paul is a practice owner, once you've baked that in, you should be able to continue to do it, month to month.

David Harris: I'm going to add a couple of things to this. And I know you asked me for one tip, and this is going to be kind of an extended tip, but there are a couple of extra facets to this that I want to bring out. The second thing is that the report from your practice management software that you used to do this comparison should be one that you printed yourself. In other words, as soon as you allow somebody to hand you a report, you open the door to selective reporting, where you think you're looking at the whole practice, and in fact, you're not. And I know there are a lot of dentists out there who would like to spend their whole careers without understanding the first thing about their practice management software, and that's a really bad idea, that software is more important to your financial well-being than your hand piece is. And yet, almost every dentist I meet knows that hand fees like it's their third child, but when it comes to software, they're really worried that they might break something. So your software is not going away. You need to embrace it. The other piece of this is that I know a lot of dentists spend a reasonable amount of time looking at their day and reports, and that's really important. But one of the questions that needs to be addressed is whether the day-end reports tell the whole story. In other words, if my practice was open 18 days last month, and in my left hand, I have 18 day-end reports, and I in my right hand, I have a month end report. Those day ends might not articulate, and I'm using that word very deliberately, might not articulate with the month end report. So I need to verify that. In other words, I need to take the total of fees adjustments and payments for the 18 reports and see if they're exactly the same as a month end report. If they're not, what it means is somebody came in after hours and they did some stuff they did not want me to see. So that's how we make sure that the month end report that you're comparing against the P and L, or my personal preference, is to compare it against bank statements. That's how you're ensuring that that month end report does not have something that was kind of slid in without your knowing it. In other words, that that everything that has been entered in your software is on a daily report that you have in your other hand.

Rob Montgomery: How long does that all take to do David? Roughly?

David Harris: If you are organized, and you set aside the day and reports each day after you review them, and you have a spreadsheet to do this, and we have one that we're happy to share with any listener if they email us, and I expect contact information will be coming to them at the end. If you have that spreadsheet, this should be the combined activity of comparing bank deposits against collections according to your software, and also verifying that the month end report has nothing that's been kind of slid into it, that combined exercise should be probably 30 to 45 minutes. Not bad.

Dr. Paul Goodman: Well, well worth it. I'm glad you asked that question, Rob, we're going to get into wigs, but I want to ask the question. David, so I run Dentist Job Connect, one of my favorite things to do. We help people hire associates, but people can be reactive or proactive. So some people text me and say, Hey, Paul, I need an associate dentist. I say, Oh, great. When they say tomorrow, and I say, maybe you could have come to me a little earlier than tomorrow. And it's great when people say, hey, my associate's going to a specialty program. I have six months to plan, and then I can proactively plan to help this. So when people are listening, I find you, since I'm the practice owner here, I go to these lectures on cyber security, David, and I always go, I think I'm doing this all right, but I want to make sure I'm doing this all right. And then I know someone sitting next to me might be saying, in their mind, I'm not doing any of this right at all, but both of us need to reach out to an expert. I'm just curious for this is when people are reaching out to you, what are some of the reasons they are I mean, are they wanting to make sure things are done right? Are they worried? You know, give us a few examples of dentists who've reached out to you with the first call and what motivated them to do so?

David Harris: Sure, and the easiest way for me to do this is to talk about the two calls that I've had so far today. The first call was with a dentist who really has no particular reason to feel like anybody has their hand in her pocket right now, but she's seen the statistics, she does not want to be one of those willfully blind people who gets stolen from because they won't face this issue. So she said to me, can you help me put the systems in place, and can you teach me how to be a practice owner in a financial sense? So those things I just talked about with day end and month end, she wants some instruction on those things, so we have a proactive program, and we sent her an engagement letter for that, and she signed it within an hour, and now she will get some proactive help in putting financial controls in place and, most importantly, in understanding how the finances of her practice works. So great approach that has a lot of long-term value to somebody. It's not a terribly expensive program, and at the end, she'll be comfortable in her financial skin as a practice owner. The other call I had this morning was with a practice owner who is now almost certain that he's been embezzled and he wants us to conduct an investigation and ultimately get as much money back for him as is possible, and make sure that this person gets placed in the tender care of law enforcement and probably ultimately incarceration. So that's the other thing we do.

Dr. Paul Goodman: I know you can’t say exact details, Dave, but just because I really appreciate this breakdown, what were the that second person who's almost sure? Like, what is that almost sure thing? I mean, I don't want you to reveal anything that's confidential, but like, those sound like two very different calls, right? Proactive versus reactive. But when that person calls you up and says, Hey, David, you must know in a few minutes that they've waited too long to call me, or they've been ignoring this, or something like that. What are those? What are those things that they bring to that call that might help our listeners, where you're like, oh, they probably are definitely being embezzled from.

David Harris: He’s saying two things at once. The first is anomalous transactions in his practice management software, deletions that really don't look like they were deletions and things like that. The second thing is that he has a staff member who is, in my opinion, acting very much like they're up to something probably embezzlment. And Paul, when you when you see those two things at once, you see a somebody in the practice acting out, and you also see financial anomalies, that's when the risk of embezzlement starts to increase geometrically, and that's exactly where this guy is. Should he have called me a year ago or three years ago? Probably. But as we all know, hindsight is an exact science for where he is now. The best thing he could do is get this situation investigated, find out what has gone on and if he has been stolen from, get back as much money as he can. And everybody who's stolen from makes some amount of financial recovery, whether they get back 40% or 60% or 100% of what they lost depends on the circumstance, but first step for him is stop the bleeding. Once that's happened, then I would love to have the same kind of conversation with him that I had with that other doctor this morning, where we talk about how to how to lock the barn door so that it doesn't happen again, right?

Rob Montgomery: I mean, to me, David, I've heard you speak before, and I think that point you make is really good. I'd imagine that seldom Is it enough to catch the person. It's way better to prevent it, you know. And, and I would be surprised, personally, and I'm curious to hear what you think when you talk about recovery. I would be surprised if the average recovery was greater than 50%. I mean, what I would typically see or expect is, once this money has been stolen, it's gone, you know, it's been spent, and you're trying to, oftentimes, probably recover money from somebody that doesn't have resources. You know, they may have done this because they were in dire straits. It's not like they've got the money that was stolen is sitting in a segregated bank account, real easy to grab. I mean, it's been spent on paying a mortgage or a trip or a car that's depreciated like it's not just like laying out there for to be easily grabbed.

David Harris: You’re absolutely right. There are some other sources of recovery, and I'll get into those in a second, but I'd love to deal with the first point you made, which is that prevention is better than getting the disease. And I always analogize to dentistry. You know, Paul, if I'm if I'm your patient, and I say to you,  Dr. Goodman, I'd like to spend the least money in my lifetime on dental care. What should I do? Your answer to me, I think, would be, David, become a really good friend with your toothbrush and your floss, and see our hygienists like clockwork every six months, because the aggregate cost of those things is going to be a whole lot less than when you spend time in my chair because stuff broke. It's insulated.

Dr. Paul Goodman: David, I'll just kind of interject that if you're above the age of forty and you really want to be in good health, you should probably see your hygienist every four months. So that's just my public service announcement for people my age or older, which might be all three of us on this podcast, maybe I am in that category.

David Harris: As a matter of fact, I see my hygienist every three months for more or less the reasons you outline. But my point in all this is that prevention and having the systems in place is going to be far, far, far better than having David Harris go around after with a broom and a dustpan and clean up the mess. To your second point about recovery, as I said, everybody gets some money back. The place, they get money back. First of all, a lot of dentists don't even realize this, but they actually have insurance coverage for employee theft. It typically doesn't cover a lot of employee theft. The default amount that we see is $25,000 whereas the average theft that we see is over 100,000 so it's, you know, it's a down payment. It's not likely to make somebody whole. You're absolutely right about thieves, typically, they are at least as good at spending as they are at stealing. So there tends not to be a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow anywhere, although sometimes third parties will come along. One of the things about the way that the justice system treats embezzlement, is that if somebody pays the doctor back, the chance they will go to jail is pretty close to zero. So we do see a fair number of thieves who will go back to their parents and say, Look, I've done something really stupid. You know, would you remortgage your house and give me the money so your darling daughter doesn't have to go to prison? Then some, some parents have the means and the motivation to do that. So sometimes we get pleasant surprises. The other place where money comes back is we see a lot of thieves who take checks, typically insurance checks payable to the doctor, and they find a way to cash them. And that should be really hard, and it's not. The banking system has gotten really automated. But the silver lining to this method of stealing is that a bank that allows you to cash a check payable to somebody else is actually on the hook for that, right? So whether or not a thief has the means to repay their bank almost certainly does. And when we find those situations, as I say, there's a silver there's a silver lining.

Dr. Paul Goodman: Just so our listeners are clear. You're an awesome sponsor of my group, and you do the work of the Lord jevi Black, that's a famous dentist, for anyone who's listening, who's not a dentist, which in this room is everyone but me, but that joke is really going to do well, when it comes out, you're doing the work of the Lord GV Black, David, so they're basically engaging with you to do this proactive preventive care, or a full scale investigation into their situation, which you might not know how long it's going to take to get to the finish line of finding out is that, is that accurate way to look at it?

David Harris: We have a pretty good idea. Our investigations typically take 10 to 11 weeks, and on average, when we find embezzlement, we find it about the middle of that process. In other words, about week five or six, we're normally in a in a position to confirm embezzlement

Rob Montgomery: When you're doing that David, is that something that's known to the team and the practice? Or are you able to do it behind the scenes so as not to tip people off to them so they start trying to cover their tracks?

David Harris: Oh, great question. Rob. Our investigations are 100% discreet, so staff in the practice have absolutely no idea that we're on the file. And I'm not going to get into a lot of detail about how we make that happen, but I will say that we have complete ability to investigate and keep staff in the dark, and that's important when somebody calls us with suspicion, because we all know this, and it's talked about a lot in dentistry these days, it's hard to find people. So you certainly don't want to let innocent staff know that you trust their you mistrust their loyalty. Yeah, and if somebody is guilty, I don't want them to have any sense of the piano that's about to fall on their head.

Rob Montgomery: Right? Let them dig a deeper hole for themselves.

David Harris: Yeah, and I have no objection to somebody trying to cover their tracks, because that actually makes what they do more conspicuous, and it also can say to a judge or a jury somewhere, a criminal mindset. In other words, I get spooked and I start trying to hide what I've already done that's not the act of an innocent person. So I have no objection to people trying to cover up. What concerns me is that they might do something really crazy like and yes, this is real. In one case that I'm aware of, burn down the practice.

Rob Montgomery: I have an old friend that always used to say that you know, through history, it's not the first mistake that does you and it's the second. If you think about it, the cover up is usually what gets people in trouble.

David Harris: That's interesting to hear and not to turn the conversation dark, but I'm aware of at least three cases, and we were not involved in any of them, but I'm aware of three cases where dentists were murdered by their embezzlers. So if you're a dentist, listening to this, and now or next year you have embezzlement concerns, it's incredibly important that you not alert the suspect to the fact that they are a suspect, because they may do something outlandish, and you do not want to make yourself a guinea pig in a sociology experiment about the limits of human behavior for somebody who thinks their liberties in jeopardy.

Rob Montgomery: Yeah, desperate people will do desperate things, right?

Dr. Paul Goodman: We've touched on a little bit. David, I think it's what the would-be thief decide and commit a crime. I know you're very responsible. When you came to speak at my group, you had a lecture that you were happy to have live streamed, and then also one that you preferred only give in person. So I want to make sure I'm asking this question, right? But there's right? But there's something you know would be thief deciding to commit a crime. Was there any kind of insight you wanted to give us that would help our listeners?

David Harris: Absolutely, let's, let's think like a thief for a minute or two. Paul, let's assume your office manager, and for some reason, I decide tomorrow morning that I'm more entitled to money from your practice than you are. What does my thought process look like? The first thing I do is I look at what my job duties entail and what opportunities that gives me, for example, if I'm not involved in payroll, you know, if there's a bookkeeper somewhere who does the payroll, then there's probably little opportunity for me to steal in payroll. And I just kind of mentally close that door. If I'm not involved in paying accounts payable, like paying your bills, then same thing, there's probably not much chance there. And I'll rule that one out. The place where most thieves go in dental practice is stealing revenue, in other words, incoming money from patients or insurance companies. That is the most stolen thing by number of times it happens by the amount of dollars stolen. So that's where I'm going to focus. And then the next question I ask is, Well, does Dr. Goodman do that comparison that we talked about earlier between collections and deposits, and if the answer to that is no, then very simple theft. Money comes in. I record payments in your practice management software, but I divert some of the deposit. And whether you make the deposit, Paul, or whether I make it, matters very little. The salient question is, really, does Dr. Goodman know how much money should be in the bank deposit? And if you don't, but you're making the deposit, you're just a poorly paid courier. So that's the first question I ask, and if the answer is no, Dr. Goodman is really busy and he doesn't look at that, then, as I say, very simple theft. I record payments in your software because I want patient account balances to be accurate, but then I don't deposit all the money. If I decide that you do look at collections versus deposits, or that you might or that there's some third party doing it, like a bookkeeper or maybe your accountant. Now I have to get a little bit more creative, and I start thinking about how to make the practice management software under-report the amount patients pay. And I'm not going to get into a whole lot of detail here about how that happens for the security reasons that you mentioned. What I am going to say is that it's really easy to do, and we all look at this practice management software, you know, a lot of which is made by Fortune, 500 companies as sophisticated and smart, and surely it wouldn't let that happen. I can tell you, we see that every day, right?

Rob Montgomery: So really, to summarize, and this is what seen, what I tell clients when it comes to this sort of thing, this is a crime of opportunity, like many crimes, but this one. I think what you just said really validates that where, where the where the opportunity is, somebody that's got the motive is able to find a way to do it.

Dr. Paul Goodman: I'm gonna give a slightly different interpretation, because I always view crimes of opportunity as being the unplanned crime that somebody stumbles across. So I'm walking down the street and I see an unlocked bicycle, and I get on it and start riding. To me, that's a crime of opportunity. This is a very premeditated crime. It's done by somebody who's put, typically, a lot of thought into the environment in which they function and how they can remove money from that environment without anybody noticing. And sometimes they kind of stumble upon it, you know, they do something, they make a mistake, and it results in money being left over, and they notice that nobody's really come and ask for it back. But there's a lot of premeditation that goes into this crime.

Dr. Paul Goodman: Example, someone's looking to steal a bicycle, right? They're premeditated, and then they see one unlocked. That's an opportunity I'm just reinforcing. You can help train people to remove the opportunities, right? So it's like leaving the back door open, right? So people can practice owners they want to, you know, say, hey, I want to make sure. Like, you know, even I have one of these people who's premeditated, can they lock everything up? Am I using the right language in their practice management software?

Rob Montgomery: David, let me ask you a different way. Is there a way to foolproof this? Knowing that there's no 100% way to ever, I guess, prevent anything from happening. But like, can you get pretty close to fireproofing this, your practice and your practice management software to prevent this?

David Harris: You can get a lot closer than most dentists do. Something my dad said to me when I when I was a kid, stuck with me forever. He said, You know what? There's no such thing as foolproof, and the simple reason for that is fools can be incredibly ingenious. And you know, I still, I still carry that with me. It would be very difficult to remove all opportunity from would-be thieves in most dental practices without imposing such a crippling administrative burden on the practice that the poor doctor would never get to pick up a hand piece, right? So, so let's say zero risk is probably not achievable. On the other hand, every practice owner I have ever met can lower their risk, and typically, they can do it without a major time commitment. One of the things that I talk about in terms of risk reduction is division of duties. So when we think about what I'm going to call the revenue cycle, and what I mean by that is the series of activities that happen to put money in your bank account, there are basically six activities in the revenue cycle. Somebody enters treatment into practice management software, the patients and/or insurance company get billed, payments are received. Those payments are recorded in practice management software. There's an end of day balancing activity, and then money gets deposited. Okay, so again, you've got enter treatment, Bill, receive payment, record the payments, reconcile at the end of the day, and deposit. Those are the six activities. What I see in a whole lot of practices is four or even five of those in the same person and that's a huge danger zone. I give people three rules. Treatment should only ever be entered by the clinicians who did it so and if we're talking about the doctor's operator, it's the doctor, the assistant who enters the treatment. If we're talking about hygiene, it's the hygienist. From the remaining five of those six things that I gave you two simple rules, nobody should do more than two of them, and the two that somebody does should not be sequential. So the person who records payments and practice management software should not be the person who balances at the end of the day, the person who balances should not be the person who deposits. In terms of risk reduction, that's one big thing you can do, and the other big thing you can do is what we talked about earlier, comparison between collections and deposits and articulation to make sure that the 18 day end reports that you review. Tell the whole story.

Dr. Paul Goodman: That's a great breakdown. David, so very valuable, as we kind of wrap up ish, I wanted to make sure I didn't leave this point out because one of our mutual friends, you helped my friend, Dr B, as the dentist here, if someone steals $100,000 from you, most dentists, it's not going to ruin their financial life, but it can have a devastating emotional impact. Of course, if they kept doing that year after year after year, it could. But when I met this dentist, before he met you, he was saying, I'm not sure what's wrong with my practice. I'm struggling talk to a minute about the emotional impact this has on dental practice owners, which I'm just assuming or sharing, could be even more devastating than the economic impact.

David Harris: You are so right and it's easy, because I'm a financial guy at heart, to reduce this to dollars, and think that that tells the whole story, but it does not. I have seen dentists leave dentistry over this. I've seen careers shortened. I've seen people who said, I don't want to be a practice owner anymore. I'm going to sell to a DSO. I have seen dentists where the trust pendulum swung unworkably the other way. In other words, they went from trusting everybody to trusting nobody. And Paul, I think you know this about me. I admire you and your profession tremendously, because I know that emotionally I could not do what you do. I think you're in a difficult profession with demanding, entitled patients, and those insurance companies that you have to deal with that think that you should be quite happy to get the same, the same amount for patients that you got in 2002. I mean, there are a lot of pressures on dentists, and when you layer on top of that mistrust of everybody around you, I think your career longevity is going to be very short. So there are a lot of emotional issues that come with this.

Dr. Paul Goodman: Somebody’s someone's done this, David, it's the person you've been working with side by side that now is stealing from you, right? It's betrayal. It's not someone who runs in at the middle of the night. You know, the hacker who hacks into your practice. You never meet them face to face. As I talk about this, it gives me, you know, just chills because you think of the person who's been working with you shoulder to shoulder. We can have even another Rocky Three, Mr. T will come back for your next episode, David Harris, and get that joke. But I'm, I'm assuming that these practice owners are just, geez, this is Betty, and I personally, was at Betty's child's wedding? Am I accurate?

Rob Montgomery: Well before David answers too, on top of that, then it's like, I'm sending Betty to jail. Do I want to send Betty to jail? Because I would imagine too David, like, people probably still feel conflicted in some instances about doing what needs to be done. To really put it to these people.

David Harris: Absolutely right, in all cases, I mean, a lot of dentists I find are nice, altruistic people who probably would treat patients for free if their accountant would let them. And the fact that somebody would use that kindness and that altruism against them is very hurtful for them. And that comment about the daughter's wedding, I get a lot Paul, and you know what's, what's going with it is, of course, this person, the dentist, who's talking to me, is slowly starting to realize how much of that wedding they actually paid for, what one thing we see and it's, it's kind of an interesting phenomenon. A lot of people who talk to me initially about their concerns, they're hiring us to investigate, they'll make statements like, I don't want anything to happen to Betty because she is like extended family. I mean, I want to know if it's happening, and of course, I'll fire her, but I really don't want anything to happen to her. And what I say to those people is that's fine, and that's that's very easy to implement, but what I'm going to ask you is to hold off on making this decision, because you don't have to make it yet, and eight or 10 weeks from now, when we give you your final report and you see what's really happened, then you can make the decisions about what sort of action you want to take on. And a lot of times, what happens is that there's much more money stolen than the doctor actually realizes. And I can think of more than a few cases where somebody initially made that statement to me, but I want to be sure nothing's going to happen to Betty. And 10 weeks later, they're saying, David, I don't care what you have to do, I want her standing in front of a judge.

Rob Montgomery: Yeah, you like Betty $20,000 or do you like Betty $320,000?

David Harris: Well, that's right, you know, when you start adding zeros to the problem and also to your point, Rob when, when people see how they've been manipulated and the cynicism with which Betty carried this out, you know that that love and fondness that they felt for Betty when they made the initial call to me is kind of wearing a little thin.

Rob Montgomery: Yeah, I'll bet. Good stuff, David as always, your content, it's just fascinating, and I think really, really impactful and great for practice owners to know, and if people want to get in touch with you and learn more about your business and what you're able to do to help them, I think you mentioned too that you have a spreadsheet that you're willing to share. How can people find that or get in touch with you?

David Harris: They can reach us on our website, and there it's www.prosperident.com. If they're a nacho, they should add at the end slash and then dental hyphen nachos. So prosperident.com/dental-nachos and that will take them to the page that we have made specifically for that flock. The other way to reach us is our toll-free phone number, which is 888-398-2327, and in either of those places, they can, they can leave us the right information, and we'll get back to them fairly quickly.

Rob Montgomery: That's great. All right, awesome.

Dr. Paul Montgomery: David, you're always helping us be more prepared, aware and responsibly scared about our practices, so we really appreciate it like that. Thanks for coming on again. David, it's pleasure.

David Harris: Well, always great to talk to you guys.

Bumper: Thanks for listening to another great podcast with the Denal Amigos, and don't forget to tune in next time to have the dental business demystified. If you're looking for more information about today's podcast, you can find it on thedentalamigos.com. If you're looking for Paul, you can find Paul at drpaulgoodman.com and if you're looking for Rob, you can find him at yourdentallawyer.com. This podcast has been sponsored by Orange Line Media Group, helping dentists and other professionals create content people love, find out how we can help you take your business to the next level at www.oranglinemg.com. Until next time.

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