Kaitlyn Cole 0:00
Hello and welcome to the dental education podcast with class solutions. This podcast is a community of dental professionals who share their knowledge and experience in order to provide value to you and your dental practice. I'm your host, Caitlin cool, also known as the K in class. In today's episode, Phil Cole sits down with dentists and fourth class solutions, premier partners to take questions from dentists on how to handle for specific assets of their dental practices during COVID-19.
Phil Cole 0:29
First of all, welcome to the first cover your assets webinar, there will be more every Thursday we're planning on doing this. There'll be a different group of professionals every time you'll see these guys more than just this time, though. But the whole idea of covering your assets is a seminar that we started about a year ago. It was a live seminar that we would turn around and have my one of my analytic coaches Nancy McNaught speak about all the assets inside the practice. But then all what we did is then pull together other professionals from what I consider my team of professionals that I work with all the time, through my business, to sit there and help you understand all the other assets and how to protect them and so forth. So today, we have four other of my team of professionals with me. So there's Daniel Cole, my brother from Northwestern Mutual. Joe has from BT law, or Barnes and Thornburg, Noah Bradley is with chirality. And then Jason Swisher he is with ELS, dental marketing. And so brought these guys on, because all of us are getting pounded with questions during this COVID-19 I think it's pretty fair to say, and one of the things is, is people ask us all kinds of questions that I personally and I know, these guys are the same way, do not like to answer if it's not in our realm of understanding. So I thought the best way to be able to help everybody to get a better understanding is to bring those professionals in so that you can learn from them personally. So, once again, like I said, our our objective is to do this every Thursday at noon, to give you guys have the ability to ask those questions. Once again, you can email us personally. But if anybody else has anything, gentlemen, are you guys all ready to go? I am going to start off with the first question that has come to us. And Joe, since you're the lawyer, you're going to get hit first. Because this is one of those things. And this, this question has come to me several times. But I know that it's something that I hear amongst the team. And that is what are my legal rights if I can't pay my landlord.
Unknown Speaker 3:26
Yeah, and that's that's definitely one of the biggest questions that that I've encountered. I'm sure, Noah, you've you've probably faced similar questions, as well. So I represent a lot of dental practices, who are tenants and buildings and as well as some that own the buildings as well, too. But the biggest, biggest issue that's coming up is they're cash strapped and they really can't afford to pay the rent right now. So what are the legal rights that they have to the first thing you want to do is look at your lease agreement to see if there's any sort of language in there that excuses payment or performance on the lease, and that's typically found under a clause called force majeure. There'll be certain items in that clause that talk about acts of God, labor, strikes, hurricanes, those type of things. That would excuse performance. Some force majeure clauses do contain disease or pandemic language, which is exactly what we're all experiencing right now. Some don't, but some do. If you have one of those clauses in your lease agreement, you want to carefully review it with your all of your advisers to fully understand what it means. Some force majeure clauses completely excuse performance for a certain time, others suspend it. And even if there is a force majeure clause, a lot of times you'll see in a lease agreement that the monetary aspect which is what the tenant is concerned about, so paying rent is still not excused. So you got to be Be careful that even assuming that there's no force majeure clause, in a lease agreement, I've been working with multiple of my own clients on just just trying to work with the landlord on not paying right now. And then potentially extending the lease for an extra month or maybe renegotiating a new lease and most landlords that I've worked with have been pretty sympathetic because everyone's going through the same thing.
Phil Cole 5:28
So I guess to stay on that topic, then real quick noises, of course. Errol, you hear in the news with all the COVID and stuff like that everything going on with, you know, can I stop my rent payment? Blah, blah, blah, you know, can I stop my credit cards and so forth? So what's what do you feel? Since you deal with lease negotiation, so what do you feel is the best way to approach your landlord for
Unknown Speaker 5:55
you, I'm coming at it from a real estate perspective. And that's where Joe and I collaborate on things like this, and most of the conversations I've had with my clients who are tenants are, again, have a conversation with your landlord. Don't be aggressive. Although having an attorney is important in time like this. I think Joe would even agree, don't just threaten to go right to your attorney, have a conversation first with the landlord, fill them out, see what they have to say about it. Again, I agree with what Joe said a lot of landlords are being sympathetic. But also there are relief programs, right, we've got the payroll Protection Program, and all these things going on that might give small business owners a little relief from the government. My opinion is that if you can take pay rent, pay rent, landlords are keeping score, no matter how nice they are or not. They're always, they're always keeping keeping tabs, right. So if you think things are going to get tough, and you're going to need to put your rent and hold, it's case specific to right, if we've got a local landlord, who only has maybe a few buildings in town, they're gonna feel this in a different way, or be impacted in a different way than maybe a large national real estate investment trust, who owns medical office buildings and things like that, right. So that is why it's really case specific, but I'm seeing a lot of positive things in terms of people getting some leeway, on that I think all of us are week to week, at this point in our lives professionally and personally. So I haven't run into too much yet. But again, my advice is if you can pay rent, keep paying it. Maybe get creative with things like approaching your lender, see if they can reduce any rates on loans you have maybe there's a refi potential, there are ways to kind of free up money potentially in other other spots. Right.
Unknown Speaker 8:07
I add to that, yeah, absolutely. Do things completely agree with everything you said. And if you don't want to involve an attorney, or don't want to have the attorney like myself, interface with the landlord is completely fine. I agree, it's probably the better way to do it. What I've done is just essentially kind of walk the client through scenarios, and maybe even ghost write an email or a letter, meaning I write it and then it just goes to the tenant, the tenant puts it on their letterhead, and they send it along. Number two, is a great point to reach out to your lender in these situations so that you can pay rent if you have extra money, because one of my one of my client, multiple my clients, but recently I just heard today that through a through a big national bank, that the bank has allowed my client to just pay interest only on his loans instead of the principal. So that'll free up some cash.
Phil Cole 8:59
So I guess then the next question that I think everybody hears about, too, is and let's go to you, Daniel is is, you know, everybody's nervous about all their money. You know, they saved it in the market. Now it's taken a big crunch. And I know with just my circle of dentists, friends, and so forth, there's that nagging thing back and forth of, you know, I'm, I'm investing now some are saying no, don't invest and so forth. So what's your what's kind of that that thing that you're thinking is because there's that scare factor, right? Is the stock market going to go down? Even more? What should I be doing to protect myself and so forth? So what's your ideas?
Unknown Speaker 9:45
I guess if we all had the golden idea, we'd all we all wouldn't have any worries at this point right now. But I would say a lot of it comes down to you Getting back to call a blocking and tackling, so to speak, and making sure that you sit down and understand your whole plan. That's what we're focusing on a lot right now. I think it's a great thing from a stress management perspective is just kind of sitting down. And should I be invested in if you have a lot of cash assets right now, and you're not worried about that kind of stuff? And you've got you've got freed up cash? Well, yeah, I mean, if you if you want to put money in a market, it's it's 25 to 30% discount, it doesn't it's not a bad time to invest by any means. But the bigger question is, is how does it affect the overall plan? And making sure there's a lot of what we're, when we're talking with folks right now is, it's not just about investment strategy right now. It's really taking a look at the overall structure and really focus in on those what ifs. Because we kind of we were kind of humming along in 2019, loving it 2019, the market was killing it. Now, it's like who whoever saw this coming? So a lot of our people are stating, you know, hey, I don't want to have this happen in retirement, what do I need to do? Blood, I don't feel this when I'm not putting anything into my 401k or not. You know, when when the market is so, so fragile when we're when we're in retirement? So yeah, I made a lot of this is just stress management. From our perspective, looking at the whole, the overall picture of where things are at reallocations are a great tool, right? Now, Roth conversions are great tools. But I would just say no one particular person is there's no cookie cutter design to this thing. So it all depends on your own individual situation, and really what your overall goals are. And I would say this is a great time to, for everybody to just kind of refocus on what you really want to accomplish in the short term in the long term, and then create a strategy from there. So.
Phil Cole 12:13
So there's been a bunch of people that have joined on, since we started everything. So I just thought I'd take a quick second just to explain how this is working. So everybody has been muted. And that's just for the simple fact of so that we can get through everything. But if you notice, if you've never used zoom before, at the bottom of the video screen, you should see a little bubble, and it says chat. So what we've done is as we've accumulated some questions that we're getting hit with constantly, in our, you know, throughout our couple of weeks here being quarantined, and so forth. But what we do want to do is give you guys the opportunity to ask your specific questions, if you have any. So if you want to just go into that chat, and type in your question, and we'll get to it as soon as we get a chance. So and then once again, I wanted to introduce since there's been probably another eight people that have joined and just recently, and that is I have Daniel Cole with Northwestern Mutual here. Joe has with Barnes and Thornburg law firm, Noah Bradley with car reality, and Jason Swisher with EOS marketing. So Jason gonna go to you next, because as a coaching company, we're getting questions all the time of a what do we do during this downtime, and we've created a recovery list and so forth. And so our past and current customers are, are constantly going to be getting little things. But one of the things brought up to us a lot of time is is you know, what things should I cut out? Or what should I be doing during the the downtime? And I think one of the things that they should be doing absolutely is marketing. As this is the time to make sure that one you stay in touch with your your current customers. But to where I know it may sound bad, but a great opportunity for those dentists that aren't paying attention to their patients to sit there and show maybe some love and respect from from your office. Maybe pick up some new patients. So what is your thoughts on what you should do for marketing during this downtime?
Unknown Speaker 14:39
Yeah, that's a great question. And, and some of the things that some of the other guys on the call have said it applies here that it's it's a little unique office office practice, practice, but the general rule that we're advising clients right now follows in that same vein is number one. Messaging is really important right now and If you haven't done it yet, get something up on your website, on your social media, just acknowledging everything that's going on, and that you're aware of it. If you are still seeing emergency patients, make sure that you're relaying that, that would probably be the easiest first thing that we were telling people to do. We're also advising people, any type of passive marketing. So things like search engine optimization, continuing your blogging, or posting or, or, or any sort of content you're doing. These are not aggressive forms of marketing, but they're really important for your overall online help and visibility of the business. We are we're advising, obviously, keep that going. Any sort of marketing that is that is in place to capture need in the marketplace. We're transitioning that a little bit, but we're still advising to keep that going. So things like Google AdWords, if the practice is open, and taking emergencies, Google AdWords are a great use for that they can be transitioned specifically to capture people that need help with emergency services in the local area, you can run them at certain times on days that you're able to do that. So it's being smart with those types of tactics. And then the aggressive type of marketing, things like direct marketing, things like aggressive social media, display, advertising, those types of things. Right now we're advising, almost like an era in an aeroplane circling the airport, pause those things, but be ready to deploy them as soon as you can get your practice open. Because we think there's going to be huge opportunity in the marketplace, when that happens, potentially. And we want to make sure that that type of marketing is ready to go. So we have a lot of clients that we've got those things on pause. And we've got a lot of clients that we're we're preparing that type of marketing for at some point, hopefully over over the next handful of weeks or month or two here. So
Phil Cole 16:57
Okay. Well, Joe, I'll go back to you. Since I haven't seen a question come in yet. And at least not that I see of double check and put the chat up there just to make sure I'm seeing by asking questions. So I got another one for you too. Because this is, once again, a couple of our customers that we're working with are actually looking at purchasing practices. And this, they were right in the middle of doing that, and then turn around and of course, this thing hit. So the question that I get all the time is, you know, I've signed the purchase agreement, from my dental practice, and this is actually from one of the clients and she says the real estate. She's doing the dental practice and a real estate. And during this time, what should she be doing as far as and holding off, continue through, you know, the closing scheduled to go on, before the state of emergency is going to be lifted? And so the question is, is, is what do I do? How is that going to affect the situation?
Unknown Speaker 18:09
So, I've been advising clients on both sides of the deal. And maybe people have different views on this. But I've kind of said, let's take a big time out here and not go through. And I'll tell you, you know, just from my own personal experience, I've I've four active acquisition deals right now and including real estate is involved. Dental Practice, and real estate is involved, where the purchase agreements on both documents were signed, let's say late February, early March. And then there was a 30 or 45 day due diligence period before the closing and then COVID hit so you know, we're stuck with with signed purchase agreements. And the closing is supposed to occur right now, essentially Derek during COVID Or even, you know, week or so ago. So you know, what can you do? First, going back to the how I originally started my talk, look at see if there's any sort of force majeure clauses in your contracts to see what they say, there's probably not going to be best course of action. What I've done in all, all four of my deals is just reach out to the other side, buyer seller and their counsel and work on amending the effective dates of the purchase agreement for the dental practice and the purchase agreement for the real estate. And we don't really know here in Michigan when we have an idea maybe we don't really know when dental practices are going to be fully operational again. So so what I've been doing is creating amendments, those documents like I said, and then tying the new effective date to the He later have the following when Donald practices can be fully operational or when our governor lifts the executive order that shutting down all the other businesses as well. And the reason that I'm tying it to the later those dates is because with real estate being involved, surveys need to happen or environmentalists need to be done. And we want to make sure those businesses are up and running again, before we prematurely pick another closing date. So and the bottom line is just address the issues quickly the other side in an amendment in place. Because if you don't you mean, you're risking defaulting under the dates and various reps and warranties in the agreement itself.
Phil Cole 20:40
So what if you have a situation now where someone is is working on, on closing on and the bank is telling them that they should close by the end of April, because of the bank interest rate situation, and they're telling them that the interest is most likely going to go up soon as its lifted? Are you in agreement with that? Or do you? Are you kind of like, once again, that puts a person in a peculiar spot when it comes to the signing all the paperwork, the agreements and so forth?
Unknown Speaker 21:15
I mean, my my advice would be to try to wait, and hopefully the bank they locked in the interest rate, hoping that you could extend it. If not, I don't know. I don't think I would do it, particularly from the buy side, I don't think I would want to close and buy in a practice when you're not even able to operate right now.
Phil Cole 21:32
Right? Okay. No, so here's the question, too. And then we're gonna we got one in so but I'm gonna ask you this real quick. Get people asking, Can we renegotiate our leases during this time? Since this has happened? Is this a good time to try to go after the landlord for for better lease negotiation?
Unknown Speaker 21:56
Yeah, I think timing. Timing is critical in terms of still when your lease is expiring, right? So yes, could you prematurely negotiated, that's even the way you want to put it, you could, now could be a good time, because remember, one of the things that you can take advantage of is some of this uncertainty right now meaning landlords, like some of you are going to be a little freaked out about things. And if you can give them the security of a five year lease a 10 year lease, then absolutely, you've got some negotiating strength, right now we're going to see, you know, the markets not going to come back where it was the real estate market, when you know, prior to being shut down here, so we're gonna see a dip, nobody knows how much that's going to be is there going to be a 10%, differential 20% 30%, I don't think anybody knows. That said landlords aren't panicking. They're not just, and sellers for that matter. They're not just slashing sale prices, and an offering maybe lease incentives that they weren't before, I think it's going to take a little time to get there. But that doesn't mean that you shouldn't take the time while you're at home. You know, having somebody evaluate a lease, that's something we've been doing a lot of and spending our time doing these last couple of weeks is doing pre lease evaluations for people. So we're just looking at them and assessing it, whether that lease is due in 18 months or five years. This now is a is an opportunity to GamePlan for your practice and for the future, and prepare for ways to save in the coming months, and maybe over the next couple of years. So that's one thing you can do immediately is just find out how your lease looks right now. And maybe if you're under two years, depending on how long you're willing to stay. I think there is an opportunity to renegotiate. Absolutely.
Phil Cole 24:01
All right, so our first question in is from Elliot. And he says how, how best is it to handle employees who are still coming in, but with reduced hours file for unemployment, but still pay them? Joe? You got to get an answer for that one.
Unknown Speaker 24:23
I'm more of an employment law realm question. I'm understanding the question correctly. Our best known players are still coming in reduced hours. So you have employees that are coming in you reduce the hours they're still working file for I mean, yeah, you you have to pay them if they're coming in and working. Simple as that. I mean, what am I interpreting the question correctly?
Phil Cole 24:54
Yeah, I know the one thing that I get hit a lot of times and unfortunately this time we don't have an accountant on This one. So that was we'll have them on the next session. But I do know that there's a lot of questions on that eidl versus the PPP. And, you know, it's one of those things where I think that no one still to this day, I think it's getting clearer. But I don't think there's anybody that still has a clearer picture on what it is. Now I know that what I hear and from people is we're still getting that. If you want the PPP, your employees have to be being paid, if they're on the unemployment. And that's it. So I know I do have dentists that say, well, and maybe Elliott, if you can chat one more time, and ask again, I do know that I've had dentists asked me, Can we turn around and have a part time and then haven't claimed unemployment haven't be paid part time and still go for the PPP? Once again, wording on everything that I get from several different accountants that are partners is basically that it's an it's a no as of the way they read it, but I think it's a it's one of those things. It's a it's a difficult question. So
Unknown Speaker 26:23
yeah, I can chime in if you'd like. So I, I have 10 employees, eight of them are furloughed now. So they're, they're violently filed for unemployment. But I still have my office manager, and my dental assistant, we're coming in about three, four days a week for just a couple of hours each. And so you and I filed for both the the idle and the PPP. But my accountant is still kind of wondering. And I guess the latest is I should have the other two employees that are still coming in with reduced hours. Go on unemployment, which I guess probably gets them about $400 a week, I think I can pay them half that amount that says an additional 200. And then the $600 kicker from the feds would give them about 1200 a week. But again, do I still pay them off of regular payroll? I mean, I just don't know how clear those those things are.
Phil Cole 27:27
So I don't think there's anybody on the panel right now, today, that's going to be able to give you a clearer picture. What I will do for you though, is I will talk to Chris quadros. He's with Crossroads tax advisory. He's one of our partners. And what we'll do is I'll ask him exactly what you did and get you a an email response from him so that you have some clarity. That'd be great. Thank you. Yep, absolutely. Amanda has questions. She says I had a dental independent supply consultant asked me if he can qualify for both the bridge loan and the PPP. Once again, if the bridge loan, if you're talking about Amanda is the I, II IDL. I, once again, there's a bunch of dentists that have I know, rushed to get both. And I have been told by several accountants, once again, don't go after, do one or the other, don't go after both of them. Because the language that is written in there is not jiving to be able to help you out with both. So once again, I know Joe, I'm putting you on the spot a little bit. But do you have anybody for, you know, specific law? Or is that you want to just stick with just that's a totally accounting situation? I think it's totally accounting.
Unknown Speaker 29:07
is I know, I know, I mean, I have clients that have been applying for both, and I fit again, I can't profess to be an expert in in following all the PPP in E IDL loans. I work for a law firm and we have we have various sub set of sets of attorneys that are following all those things. But it's my understanding, there was some question on whether or not you could get both luck, get a PPP loan, if you had not received the E IDL. Loan by April 3, and particularly Dennis raise the issue with the American Ada and apparently there's a call between the FDA and the government and that got cleared up but that's really the extent of my knowledge on that.
Phil Cole 29:54
Yeah, I mean, it's still Yeah,
Unknown Speaker 29:57
I personally apply for both I'm because I'm self employed. Essentially, if it happens that you are eligible for both for whatever reason, chances are that most dentists are going to get more out of the PPP program, which would then Trump that the idle. Right? And you would you would have to pay that i the eidl. Back. Okay, look, so you can't get both? If you're smart, I think you try to find out what, how to maximize that which one is going to be greater, you know, the eidl is capped at 10,000. So and these rules are changing to guys, I think nothing is set in stone. So ask your I would ask your tax planner, your your CPA, they should be the ones who you're deferring to on this. And if you don't have somebody like that, go to the sba.org. And all the guidelines around there. Yeah, and
Phil Cole 30:59
I think, if anybody else has late, but like I said, at the end of this, we are going to put all of our emails up. And since I'm one monitoring it, monitor, mine, that monitoring, whatever, you know what I'm trying to say, send me the email Elliot out, like I said, I'll get back to you too, because I want to talk to like I said, Chris, I want to talk to SVA there are another accounting firm as partners with us. So and we'll get we'll get some answers for that. The other thing is too is if you would like you can we have a cover your assets Facebook group that you can ask to be in, it's invite only, but it's it's meant just to be able to like this, ask the professionals questions and be able to get that help for you. So something else that you can you can do so that we can stay on top of that. We're trying to as all of us as team members are trying to push that information to that facebook group page just so that we can help out in anything like that. So I'm gonna go since I don't have another question at least I don't think so give me a second just scroll down you know, I got something for you because big news has popped out about at least that I've get in my emails that Prudential is canceling all of their 30 year term life insurance and disability policies. And then when you read the article, it was basically saying that this is going to become a huge issue since you deal with disability policies and so forth what's what's the issue with that?
Unknown Speaker 32:44
They well mean just like everything else that we talk about right now it's the it's the fear of the unknown the actuarial guys for all the insurance companies are kind of going crazy right now because you just don't nobody knows so I Prudential has uh, they're not canceling any policies or doing any that they're what they're doing is is temporarily suspending applications. For Life Insurance, we're still trying to get some feedback on disability. This is this, they're a fairly large organization. I deal with them I deal with Northwestern Mutual I deal with a lot of other insurance companies it's a it's a key time right now that you guys definitely make sure to look at your risk management. Because with everything that's going on the attorneys, the attorneys that write up the disability language, the write up the language and the contracts are going to be reassessing some of that language inside of the risk management contracts. So if if you're getting to a point where you're going to have to re up your term coverage re up your your whole life coverage, read up your disability, maybe you are a dentist that's looking to buy a practice and you're going to need a significant amount more for disability because now you've gone from being w two to being an owner and making a lot more money it's hits really imperative right now that a you look at the companies that you are going to choose to provide that service please make sure they are one of the top rated companies out there. solvency at this point right now for for insurance companies is a huge deal. You want to make sure that you are you got a company that's going to be around but then also take a look at Hey, Are they are they making any changes? I mean, it's it's kind of a big deal. When when Forbes put that out online and now Oh, Reuters put a put out that, you know, Prudential Holden, hold an applications on 30 year term policies. That's that's kind of their bread and butter. You know, definitely a time to reassess your risk assessments and make sure that you are properly outfitted. And you you truly understand the language of what you own. So I know for my team, when we sit down with dentists, and really every client is a understand your group benefits, especially for dentists that may have spouses that work in other not in dentistry, but maybe work for a corporation, stuff like that. We're really doing education on, you know, what happens if you're laid off, you know, you just, if you have your life insurance, and all that stuff tied to group benefits, it's a big deal, those those benefits are gone. So you really need to take a look at this right now. Because every day, we're seeing this stuff come out, and insurance companies are gonna start changing either a language or application process or more stringent underwriting guidelines, all that fun stuff. That may that makes sense. Yep.
Phil Cole 36:23
I am going to include John. So he said that he's got some help with us on the unemployment for employees and stuff. So how are you, Johnny?
Unknown Speaker 36:37
Like, oh, my gosh, I'm calling. Yeah, it was.
Phil Cole 36:42
John doesn't know that. I was talking to him so
Unknown Speaker 36:45
much for touching me. Everybody else? Wow, you're following me? And I'm again, we just wanted you to know, you know.
Phil Cole 36:56
So, sorry about that. Ben's got a question here. Do you recommend everyone file a claim with their business? Interrupt interruption insurance? Any thoughts on claiming supply chain PPE availability issues as interrupting for Office versus COVID-19? As a factor on your claim? Who wants to take that question?
Unknown Speaker 37:24
Oddly, I'll just touch on this briefly. I've been advising we have an insurance team and my law firm too. But their approach their recommendation is yes, every insurance company is is denying any sort of business interruption claim at this point from my understanding, but at least put them on notice and file the claim because there may be legislation that's changed down the road, that would entail that you'd receive some sort of money. So I would do it regardless, regardless if you don't think you have a claim or not still put your insurance company on notice.
Phil Cole 38:00
All right, Jason. So question is, is that I once again, going back to with this time off? I know you mentioned the marketing, what they can do right now and stuff. But what are some of the things that you feel they could also be doing? Just I mean, I guess it's I look back at what kind of Daniel said risk management portion for their office, that probably when you sit when you look at, you know, with you being a marketing and doing web design stuff, different things like that, what's kind of the thing that they that you find? Dentist probably let go. And don't pay close attention to that, to me is kind of that risk management, get back into it, make sure that it's cleaned up and so forth.
Unknown Speaker 38:50
Yeah, I think any strategic marketing type of activity requires a lot of planning and preparation, I think now is a good time to be doing those types of things. To your to that I think more directly answer that question is messaging is going to be really, really important. So making sure that things like your brand, your website, your social media presence, if you have one, that those things are still active, that you're still, you're still putting some messaging out there under those things. If you've been unhappy with the look and feel of those, you've kind of let them slide in in keeping up with them in the past, now's a great time to go kind of fix some of those things up if you're able to do it. If your website doesn't work the way you think it should or you don't feel like it represents properly anymore as a business. Now's a good time to go work on some of those things and bring those things up to speed the way you want them.
Phil Cole 39:52
So let me real quick. I totally understand what you're saying. But when it comes to what When it comes to the website, yep. How do people know whether it's working well or not? Because I will tell you on my end of things with coaching and mentoring and so forth, I don't think there's probably maybe five 10%. And I mean, once again, you do it, you do it as a as a living. So would you agree with me five 10% of the dentists get any type of understanding where their website is that?
Unknown Speaker 40:27
Yeah, so this, that's it? Yeah. So kinda like Noah said, assessing, now's the time to kind of assess where you're at with your lease. And when did expires, and what your options might look like the same thing for your brand and web presence. We do this and we actually are doing this pretty frequently right now, assessing website performance, there are a lot of companies that will do that for you. And it's either very cost effective, or we do it complimentary. So we get in and take a look. Does the website operate the way it should? Is it is it functioning properly? Is it is it working fast? One of the things that we are anticipating isn't probably going to be an influx of activity when when things start to get back to some sort of normalcy. Is your website prepared to potentially handle that type of thing? So there's actually health assessments that can be done on your website? And this is a great time to do that. See, is it up to speed? Is it working properly? And there a lot of companies that do it, we're doing a lot of those free for free right now.
Phil Cole 41:27
So okay, I think that's important, just because I find that so many times that there's, you know, when you actually do an assessment on the website, the doctors had no clue that their websites were grading in at a D or F level.
Unknown Speaker 41:44
Yeah, yeah. And that's a big deal for web performance, too, for Google ranking. So it's kind of a new thing over the last few years with Google, they actually will, they will judge and grade and rank your website, not just based on how it's written and designed, but literally how its operating. Is it working fast? Is it is it opening seamlessly and at certain, certain bandwidth? So yeah, it's this a great time to look at that stuff.
Phil Cole 42:13
So no, since we're getting close to the end here, quick question for you as as maybe things, you know, with what you're talking about as negotiation, stuff like that. But you know, the other question is, is when this is all over, and let's say that everything is lifted, I know, in Michigan, the date is April 30, what they're hoping for, there's other people saying could go another month. So whatever the case may be, what do you feel is going to be the impact of your, you know, your realm of lease negotiations, and so forth? When this is all done? Do you? What's the impulse?
Unknown Speaker 42:56
I think we'll see a lag, I do think there will be, again, some property owners who remember 10 years ago, what happened and you know, be a little concern, and there will be values, like there will be on the stock market, right, you're gonna have discounted properties, if you have cash, if you are thinking about buying. Absolutely, that'll be an interesting time to start thinking about that not Not, not being cautious, necessarily, if it was something you had planned to do anyways, meaning, I don't think you have to abandon any of your real estate plans, those can still happen. Dennis didn't go out of business. The last time we had a downturn here, maybe they weren't making as much, but they were still able to make good real estate decisions. There's people who did ground up projects back in 2010. And, and I'm certain they're, they're glad they did because they they got a discount. And as you know, in February, the real estate market here in Michigan was as hot as it's ever been, you could argue. And so this is some little strange blessing in disguise in terms of people being able to maybe allow that market to cool off, get some discounts. You know, Joe was talking about what should you do right now, you know, if you're coming close to the end of a transaction. That's generally been the case, right? A lot of my clients have put things on hold. But there's also a couple who said, I've got a piece of property that's so good. I'm not going to I'm not going to walk away from it. Right. I this is this is something I'm going to hold for 2030 years. I'm going to weather multiple storms in the market. And in those instances, they they proceeded because money's still very cheap right now. So that would be my thought. We personally are going to be doing a lot of lease renewal negotiations. Over the next, you know, two quarters, I would guess. So it'll be a little bit of a shift for us, where generally we're helping people with relocation, startup, and, and expansion projects, I think now people are going to be in a little bit more wait and see mode. And again, where right now, the shoe has been on the landlord's foot, I think things are going to even out can be more level playing field, having some buyers are going to have more leverage than they did the first quarter of this year. So that's, that's going to be exciting for us and for those who we service. And again, last thing I'll say is, you know, get your lease looked at, have somebody look at it, who knows the market? You know, Joe will tell you we collaborate with a lot of clients. He's there to protect you on the legalese. And now there's a new precedent that said that's something that's positive coming out of this is people like Joe, we're going to develop new language to protect those moving forward, you know, if new leases are written leases are renegotiated Joe and his firm will have new language to protect from these types of things, because there were no protections because it was kind of unprecedented. So get your lease looked at, I can provide a link to where we can provide feedback if you like in the in the chat here.
Phil Cole 46:21
So I got a question. And then I know what.
Phil Cole 46:32
I had a little bit of a lag. There's my still on. Yeah. So I know that. Daniel, this kind of leaves you out a little bit, but real quick, I know one of the real hot things that was happening, we were getting a lot of calls for it was the startups, doctors that basically wanting to start a practice from scratch just because of the market itself. A lot of people were asking for demographics, people were looking for places to you know, start from scratch. Joe, no. And Jason, you guys think that after this is all over that, because here's the thing that we were getting a lot is a lot of offices, calling us and saying how can you help me build my practice back? Because I wanted to sell it. And we've also, through discussion had a few officers say, you know, I don't think I'm going to be able to build my practice, I'm just going to walk away because they've fallen into the mass of fear monger of things. So my question is, is what if if that's happening in startups were so popular, do you think startups will get even more popular with with this coming on, or when this is all done I should say.
Unknown Speaker 47:59
I'll go I can jump in and experience I'm saying we do a lot so we we have a real time demographic model that we use to power our marketing we also use that to help doctors research areas where they want to start up so I actually worked a lot with Noah and his colleagues on that we are still getting a lot of young Doc's coming out as even I talked to three earlier today. One in New York City that is very interested in learning what's going on demographically there right now and as soon as this again as soon as I'm who knows yet exactly when that'll be but when life starts to get back to normal here they are ready to go like he's ready to go out find a property and and potentially start a project so as of right now we're still getting a normal flow of those requests to look at demographics and assess areas open a new office.
Phil Cole 48:53
Okay, sorry, got my computer here is deciding to act up with me a little bit. So last but not least, I guess Daniel risk management since we've been bringing this up quite a bit with some things. What is What are you going to what would you say as far as risk management is the best thing for our people to take a look at on your side of things.
Unknown Speaker 49:21
We got you got two sides, right you got the personal side and you got the business side. Personal side obviously, review your stuff, make sure your family is taken care of. Make sure I would say more more than life insurance make sure your disability is up to date. And you know, what you have and your disability on the business side. I would really be looking at your buy sell agreements, making sure that you have your if you don't have disability overhead expense in place, that you make sure that you have that Look at your pool amounts with the overhead expense. And it makes sure that you're not paying an astronomical fee for a low pool amount that's going to get a kick out. Understand that stuff because Joe, maybe I see Buy Sell agreements all the time. But there's never any funding to them, right? So they don't, they might have the legal paperwork for the Buy Sell agreements in place. But then if something is to actually happen, where's the money going to come from? That that's a time where you need to get you gotta make sure life insurance is a huge tool right now. To be able to fund Buy Sell agreements inside of a practice. So there's a lot of different other areas of your risk management. But really understand you got to you got to know your personal strategy first, before we can really attack the business and look at the business, but you really need to be while you got the time right now. Be looking at both and protect yourself just in case something comes up. Joe,
Phil Cole 51:19
any, any last words? For everybody? Since we're gonna close down? I don't have any other questions right now that have come in. Does anybody else have any last resort questions that they would like to ask? Joe, would any any other suggestions or anything else that's popped in, that comes across with things that you've hit during this time that you want to make last comment on?
Unknown Speaker 51:50
Nothing else really, I mean, the main areas that that myself and my friend were getting questions about are, what do we do with acquisitions that are going on? What do we do with insurance? What do we do with employees. So just reach out to your advisors. And if you have counsel reach out to them. And this is just it's a troubling situation for all of us. So we're all trying to work together and figure out solutions. And I think Phil had mentioned this, at some point during this press presentation, why these rules and regulations relating to all of the laws that are coming out are just fluid, and they're not. They're not fully vetted yet, so it's a difficult situation, but just rely on your advisors.
Phil Cole 52:31
Alright, sounds good. No one any last words? The two of you want to let anybody know?
Unknown Speaker 52:38
Um, I don't think so. Other than I posted that web address, and like I said, if anybody on this call has a lease or just general questions, you can you can reach out to me and, and that's pretty much what I've been occupying my time with. I'm not an essential myself. So I'm, I'm here, doing whatever I can to help folks, even if that's just a simple phone conversation, so thanks for having us today.
Phil Cole 53:04
Oh, absolutely. As always, and then Jason, any, any last words for yourself?
Unknown Speaker 53:11
No, I would echo that sentiment from NOAA. We're here. We're willing to help. We're doing assessments and things like that complimentary right now to help people out. So in terms of having the market around your practice, research demographically, having your website looked at to see if it's performing the way it should. That's all stuff we're helping out with right now. So we're here, same thing. We're here to help. Anything we can do. We'll do that. So
Phil Cole 53:37
thanks so much, guys. As always, love working with you guys. And then if anybody else has any questions, you can email everybody directly, and we will see you next Thursday. Appreciate it. Thanks, guys.
