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What My Grandfather Taught Me About Market Research, with Stephanie Stuckey, Stuckey’s Corp.

November 16, 2020 by John Ray

Stephanie-Stuckey
North Fulton Studio
What My Grandfather Taught Me About Market Research, with Stephanie Stuckey, Stuckey's Corp.
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Stephanie-Stuckey

What My Grandfather Taught Me About Market Research, with Stephanie Stuckey, Stuckey’s Corp.

Stephanie Stuckey: [00:00:00] My grandfather really believed in people, and built the company based on trusted relationships, and he was less interested in whether somebody had an academic background that fit the business needs because, I think, he had to drop out of law school at the University of Georgia because it was during the depression, he couldn’t afford to finish. So he was largely self-taught with a lot of his business practices. And so, he looked for people who just had grit, and determination, and were hard workers. And so, he hired good people, he trained them up, and he believed in them, and he supported them.

Stephanie Stuckey: [00:00:42] A great example of his business method is how he ran his franchise operations. They were mostly husband and wife teams, they actually lived in the stores, they made a modest upfront investment, but my grandfather largely invested in the stores, and he told them, “If you’re not profitable, I’m not profitable, and I will buy the store back from you if you’re not profitable within a year.” So, he believed in them, and he empowered the store franchise owners to really be successful. And so, they had ownership shares in their stores.

Stephanie Stuckey: [00:01:19] The other thing he did was anyone who worked at Stuckey’s – so, he had a billboard company, he had a trucking company, he had a candy manufacturing plant at our peak – almost all of his employees had some ownership interest in the Stuckey’s stores. And so, that not only gave them ownership, but it made them work even harder because they were part of the brand. And so, that’s something I really value about my grandfather. And then, I will tell one anecdote that I love to repeat-

John Ray: [00:01:49] Please.

Stephanie Stuckey: [00:01:50] … about how he really just did shoe-leather learning. He was boots on the ground, he would go to his stores, he would observe how people shopped. He was an undercover boss well before that show ever came about. And he just observed and he learned by doing. And so, the story I like to tell is the way he figured out how far apart to space the stores, he would get in his pickup truck, and he would get a cup of coffee, he would drink it as he was driving. And when he needed to use the facilities and pull over, that’s how far apart he would space the stores. So, it’s that kind of just learn by doing and real practical stuff.

Stephanie Stuckey: [00:02:31] I was actually talking to some professionals and the roadside convenience store business, and they said, “Well, we’ve got all these metrics we use, and we figure out how long it takes between gas tanks, like you need to fill up every 300 miles based on having a full tank of gas.” And I said, “My grandfather’s method is so much better than that.” Anyone who’s ever traveled with kids knows you do not pull over when the gas tank is empty. You pull over when your kids need to use the restroom.

John Ray: [00:03:05] Yes, they’re in control.

Stephanie Stuckey: [00:03:06] So, I think that’s just common sense learning that I really take from my grandfather.

Stephanie Stuckey, CEO, Stuckey’s Corporation

Stephanie Stuckey is CEO of Stuckey’s, the roadside oasis famous for its pecan log rolls. The Company was founded by Stephanie’s grandfather, W.S. Stuckey, Sr. as a pecan stand in Eastman, Georgia in 1937 and grew into over 350 stores by the 1970’s. The company was sold in 1964 but is now back in family hands and poised for a comeback.

Billy Stuckey, son of the founder and former U.S. Congressman, reacquired Stuckey’s in 1985. Stephanie took over in November of 2019 and, under her leadership, Stuckey’s has purchased a healthy pecan snack company, undergone a rebranding, added three new franchised stores, expanded its B2B retail customer base, ramped up its online sales with a new website and will soon acquire a pecan processing and candy manufacturing plant.

Stephanie received both her undergraduate and law degrees from the University of Georgia. She has worked as a trial lawyer, elected to seven terms as a state representative, run an environmental nonprofit law firm that settled the largest Clean Water Act case in Georgia history, served as Director of Sustainability and Resilience for the City of Atlanta, and taught as an Adjunct Professor at the University of Georgia School of Law.

Stephanie’s achievements include being named one of the 100 Most Influential Georgians by Georgia Trend Magazine and a graduate of Leadership Atlanta. She is active in her community and serves on many nonprofit boards, including the National Sierra Club Foundation, EarthShare of Georgia, and her local zoning review board.

Connect with Stephanie on LinkedIn and follow Stuckey’s on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

Listen to the complete North Fulton Business Radio interview with Stephanie here. 


The “One Minute Interview” series is produced by John Ray and in the North Fulton studio of Business RadioX® in Alpharetta. You can find the full archive of shows by following this link.

Renasant Bank has humble roots, starting in 1904 as a $100,000 bank in a Lee County, Mississippi, bakery. Since then, Renasant has grown to become one of the Southeast’s strongest financial institutions with over $13 billion in assets and more than 190 banking, lending, wealth management and financial services offices in Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee, Georgia and Florida. All of Renasant’s success stems from each of their banker’s commitment to investing in their communities as a way of better understanding the people they serve. At Renasant Bank, they understand you because they work and live alongside you every day.

Tagged With: Stephanie Stuckey, Stuckey's

Should I Have a Big Family Gathering at Thanksgiving?

November 16, 2020 by John Ray

Dr. Jim Morrow
North Fulton Studio
Should I Have a Big Family Gathering at Thanksgiving?
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Dr. Jim Morrow
Dr. Jim Morrow, Host of To Your Health

Should I Have a Big Family Gathering at Thanksgiving?

Dr. Jim Morrow: [00:00:00] We’re a week and a day past the election of 2020, and the pandemic did not end with the recent election. Hell, the election didn’t end with the recent election, so the pandemic certainly never had a chance. But please continue to be aware of your surroundings and who you’re with, how long you’re with them, where you’re with them, and what you’re wearing when you’re with them. We know now, like we didn’t know for months and months, we know now that the biggest threat is indoors without a mask, more than 15 minutes of contact in a 24 hour period and being within six feet of each other. So the classic example that I think, is going to dinner with somebody you don’t spend a lot of time with, you might be being very careful, they might be not quite so much. And you end up with COVID-19 three days later. So be very careful and be smart about what you’re doing.

Dr. Jim Morrow: [00:00:50]Thanksgiving is coming up. I’ve been getting asked a lot about what my thoughts are about Thanksgiving. And I think if you’ve got brother John and sister Sarah coming from Texas and Florida, I think is a terrible idea. I think it’s a good year to not do the big Thanksgiving with people that you’re not around most of the time anyway, or people who have not been sheltering, certainly. So be careful about that, because if you’re old, like John and I are, you are definitely at risk.

Dr. Jim Morrow, Morrow Family Medicine, and Host of “To Your Health With Dr. Jim Morrow”

Dr. Jim Morrow is the founder and CEO of Morrow Family Medicine. He has been a trailblazer and evangelist in the area of healthcare information technology, was named Physician IT Leader of the Year by HIMSS, a HIMSS Davies Award Winner, the Cumming-Forsyth Chamber of Commerce Steve Bloom Award Winner as Entrepreneur of the Year and he received a Phoenix Award as Community Leader of the Year from the Metro Atlanta Chamber of Commerce.

He is married to Peggie Morrow and together they founded the Forsyth BYOT Benefit, a charity in Forsyth County to support students in need of technology and devices. They have two Goldendoodles, a gaggle of grandchildren and enjoy life on and around Lake Lanier.

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MorrowFamMed/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/7788088/admin/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/toyourhealthMD

Listen to the full To Your Health interview with Dr. Morrow here. 


The “One Minute Interview” series is produced by John Ray and in the North Fulton studio of Business RadioX® in Alpharetta. You can find the full archive of shows by following this link.

Renasant Bank has humble roots, starting in 1904 as a $100,000 bank in a Lee County, Mississippi, bakery. Since then, Renasant has grown to become one of the Southeast’s strongest financial institutions with over $13 billion in assets and more than 190 banking, lending, wealth management and financial services offices in Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee, Georgia and Florida. All of Renasant’s success stems from each of their banker’s commitment to investing in their communities as a way of better understanding the people they serve. At Renasant Bank, they understand you because they work and live alongside you every day.

Dr. Jim Morrow, Host of To Your Health>/strong>

Lauren Fernandez, The Fernandez Company and Tom Burgess, Christian Brothers Automotive Cumming (Family Business Radio, Episode 14)

November 13, 2020 by John Ray

The Fernandez Company
Family Business Radio
Lauren Fernandez, The Fernandez Company and Tom Burgess, Christian Brothers Automotive Cumming (Family Business Radio, Episode 14)
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Lauren Fernandez, The Fernandez Company and Tom Burgess, Christian Brothers Automotive Cumming (Family Business Radio, Episode 14)

Lauren Fernandez, The Fernandez Company, joins host Anthony Chen to share how she helps restaurant owners broaden their revenue channels and improve operations. Tom Burgess, Owner of Christian Brothers Automotive in Cumming, also joined Anthony to discuss his journey in building his auto repair business from the ground up. “Family Business Radio” is underwritten and brought to you by Anthony Chen with Lighthouse Financial Network.

Lauren Fernandez, Principal, The Fernandez Company

The Fernandez Company
Lauren Fernandez, The Fernandez Company

Lauren Fernandez leads The Fernandez Company, a consulting firm which develops new revenue channels for companies by creating franchise programs, licensing opportunities and consumer product lines. She advises primarily small to mid-sized restaurant groups, serving both as both a restaurant developer and investor.

Ms. Fernandez has served for nearly two decades as a trusted brand consultant and legal advisor in the restaurant and hospitality industry, from start-ups to multinational companies. As the co-founder and President of Origin Development Group, Ms. Fernandez has also been both a multi-unit franchisee and investor, serving as a strategic growth partner for brands such as Chicken Salad Chick.

Lauren previously served as the General Counsel for FOCUS Brands where she was instrumental in the rapid growth of the licensing and franchise programs. Lauren holds an undergraduate degree from Stetson University, as well as a Juris Doctorate and MBA from Emory University. A Florida native, she has called Atlanta home for almost two decades.

Company website

Tom Burgess, Owner, Christian Brothers Automotive Cumming

Tom Burgess, Christian Brothers Automotive – Cumming
Christian Brothers Automotive is a faith-based franchise that started 38 years and currently has 229 owner-operated shops nationwide. The company has the highest Net Promoter Score of any aftermarket automotive repair/maintenance franchise by far, and was #1 in customer satisfaction per JD Powers survey in 2019. They are listed in the top 10 franchises to own by Franchise Business Review Magazine, they have never closed a shop in 38 years which is unheard of in the auto repair business.
Tom Burgess opened his shop in 2015 which was the 10th CBA facility to open around Atlanta. His shop was voted the top new business in 2016 by the Forsyth Chamber of Commerce, and in 2017 was #1 in customer satisfaction of all CBA shops nationwide. Thus far in 2020 they are the 4th fastest growing CBA shop nationwide (gross sales) and currently they employ 11 people.

Company website

Anthony Chen, Host of “Family Business Radio”

family owned craft breweries
Anthony Chen

This show is sponsored and brought to you by Anthony Chen with Lighthouse Financial Network. Securities and advisory services offered through Royal Alliance Associates, Inc. (RAA), member FINRA/SIPC. RAA is separately owned and other entities and/or marketing names, products or services referenced here are independent of RAA. The main office address is 575 Broadhollow Rd. Melville, NY 11747. You can reach Anthony at 631-465-9090 ext 5075 or by email at anthonychen@lfnllc.com.

Anthony Chen started his career in financial services with MetLife in Buffalo, NY in 2008. Born and raised in Elmhurst, Queens, he considers himself a full-blooded New Yorker while now enjoying his Atlanta, GA home. Specializing in family businesses and their owners, Anthony works to protect what is most important to them. From preserving to creating wealth, Anthony partners with CPAs and attorneys to help address all of the concerns and help clients achieve their goals. By using a combination of financial products ranging from life, disability, and long term care insurance to many investment options through Royal Alliance. Anthony looks to be the eyes and ears for his client’s financial foundation. In his spare time, Anthony is an avid long-distance runner.

The complete show archive of “Family Business Radio” can be found at familybusinessradioshow.com.

Tagged With: Anthony Chen, auto repair, Christian Brothers Automotive, Christian Brothers Automotive Cumming, Lauren Fernandez, Lighthouse Financial Network, restaurant consulting, The Fernandez Company, Tom Burgess

Brian Mould, Better Office Systems

November 13, 2020 by John Ray

Better Office Systems
North Fulton Business Radio
Brian Mould, Better Office Systems
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Brian Mould, Better Office Systems (North Fulton Business Radio, Episode 308)

Brian Mould of Better Office Systems joins host John Ray to share why businesses need an audit of their office equipment, security risks to avoid, and much more. “North Fulton Business Radio” is produced virtually from the North Fulton studio of Business RadioX® in Alpharetta.

Brian Mould, CEO and Owner, Better Office Systems

Better Office Systems (BOS) is a unique Single Source provider for office system and solution needs. BOS has the best array of products, at the best price, supported by the best people. They focus on small and midsized businesses and are able to provide all the products and services needed to efficiently run the office environment, from copiers and printers to VOIP phone service, from Digital Document Storage to Managed Network Services. BOS wants its customers to focus on growing their business while they focus on reducing their office costs and increasing productivity.

BOS is a long term relationship company, committed to their customer’s success, and treat everyone as a major account.

Company website

LinkedIn

Questions/Topics Discussed in this Show

  • office systems and equipment for small and midsized businesses
  • office equipment vendor management
  • phone systems
  • security issues for equipment such as copiers which are connected to a network
  • onerous leases on office equipment

North Fulton Business Radio” is hosted by John Ray and produced virtually from the North Fulton studio of Business RadioX® in Alpharetta. You can find the full archive of shows by following this link. The show can be found on all the major podcast apps by searching “North Fulton Business Radio.”

Renasant Bank has humble roots, starting in 1904 as a $100,000 bank in a Lee County, Mississippi, bakery. Since then, Renasant has grown to become one of the Southeast’s strongest financial institutions with over $13 billion in assets and more than 190 banking, lending, wealth management and financial services offices in Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee, Georgia and Florida. All of Renasant’s success stems from each of their banker’s commitment to investing in their communities as a way of better understanding the people they serve. At Renasant Bank, they understand you because they work and live alongside you every day.

Tagged With: Better Office Systems, Brian Mould, copiers, digital document storage, managed network services, office equipment, office systems, phone systems, printers, VOIP phone service

Jeff Berman, Berman Fink Van Horn P.C. and Brian Olson, Café Intermezzo (ProfitSense with Bill McDermott, Episode 15)

November 12, 2020 by John Ray

Café Intermezzo
North Fulton Studio
Jeff Berman, Berman Fink Van Horn P.C. and Brian Olson, Café Intermezzo (ProfitSense with Bill McDermott, Episode 15)
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Jeff Berman, Berman Fink Van Horn P.C. and Brian Olson, Café Intermezzo (ProfitSense with Bill McDermott, Episode 15)

Host Bill McDermott welcomes Jeff Berman to discuss merger & acquisition activity in the pandemic, and Café Intermezzo Founder Brian Olson shares his passion for the European-style coffee houses he has developed in Atlanta and Nashville. “ProfitSense with Bill McDermott” is produced and broadcast by the North Fulton Studio of Business RadioX® in Alpharetta.

Jeff Berman, Managing Partner, Berman Fink Van Horn P.C.

Jeff Berman, Berman Fink Van Horn P.C.

Jeff Berman has practiced law in Atlanta for more than 30 years and genuinely enjoys being a lawyer. He works with clients who are creating and growing innovative companies. Throughout his legal career, he has had the opportunity to work with exceptionally successful business owners on a wide range of legal and business issues that directly affect the business owner and his or her business.

Jeff heads Berman Fink Van Horn’s corporate and business practice. In addition to day-to-day business matters, his practice includes mergers and acquisitions for middle-market companies, employment agreements, succession, and estate planning for business owners, commercial real estate, and contracts and agreements of all kinds.  Jeff partners with clients to make their businesses run smoothly, make processes easier, avoid surprises and, ultimately, help them and their business grow and succeed. He believes that if your business moves fast and runs lean, you need an advisor who can do the same and be an integral part of your business.

Jeff has been a shareholder at Berman Fink Van Horn since January 1997 and managing partner since 2004. He was admitted to the Georgia Bar in 1982. He is a member of the State Bar of Georgia, the American Bar Association, the Lawyers Club of Atlanta, the Corporate Lawyer Network, and the Business Law Section of the State Bar of Georgia.

He is First Vice-Chair of the Jewish HomeLife Board of Directors and serves as Chair of the Business and Strategic Planning Committee.

Jeff is a Georgia native.  After graduating from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1979, he obtained his law degree from Emory University School of Law in 1982. He is married to Kimberly Richardson Berman and they have two children. They are enthusiastic international travelers, with France, Southeast Asia, and Jamaica being among their favorite destinations. Jeff is an avid reader and a collector of first editions of award-winning mystery and science fiction novels. He also enjoys biking, boating, and scuba diving.

Brian Olson, Founder/President, Café Intermezzo

Café Intermezzo
Brian Olson, Café Intermezzo

Café Intermezzo began in the mind of Brian Olson in 1971 as he first visited his maternal heritage homeland of Germany. First landing in Berlin, his cousin took him to a konditorei, which is a German term for an elegant European café/coffeehouse. A seed was planted for a dream to grow of one day opening his own European coffeehouse in America.

As a respite in a person’s day, a place to stop, to relax, to think…as an “intermission ” between all of the activities and responsibilities, Olson believed that the Kaffeehaus would provide a distinct and wonderful refuge in the ever-expanding world of fast-food and environments designed to expedite takeout beverages and foods. The European coffeehouse represents the antithesis of food and drink in a hurry. Here the music, the aromas, the art, the sheer nature of the Café all represent the essence of the coffeehouse experience.

Today, Café Intermezzo has five locations in the southeast. Learn more at the company website.

About “ProfitSense” and Your Host, Bill McDermott

Bill McDermott

“ProfitSense with Bill McDermott” dives in to the stories behind some of Atlanta’s successful businesses and business owners and the professionals that advise them. This show helps local business leaders get the word out about the important work they’re doing to serve their market, their community and their profession. The Show is presented by McDermott Financial Solutions. McDermott Financial helps business owners improve cash flow and profitability, find financing, break through barriers to expansion and financially prepare to exit their business. The show archive can be found at profitsenseradio.com.

Bill McDermott is the Founder and CEO of McDermott Financial Solutions. When business owners want to increase their profitability, they don’t have the expertise to know where to start or what to do. Bill leverages his knowledge and relationships from 32 years as a banker to identify the hurdles getting in the way and create a plan to deliver profitability they never thought possible.

Bill currently serves as Treasurer for the Atlanta Executive Forum and has held previous positions as a board member for the Kennesaw State University Entrepreneurship Center and Gwinnett Habitat for Humanity and Treasurer for CEO NetWeavers. Bill is a graduate of Wake Forest University and he and his wife, Martha have called Atlanta home for over 40 years. Outside of work, Bill enjoys golf, traveling, and gardening.

Connect with Bill on LinkedIn and Twitter and follow McDermott Financial Solutions on LinkedIn.

Tagged With: Berman Fink Van Horn P.C., Bill McDermott, Brian Olson, Cafe' Intermezzo, Jeff Berman, ProfitSense, ProfitSense with Bill McDermott

Dr. Jesse Jakubowski, Bay Center for Oral and Implant Surgery and Dr. Frank Yeh, Coastal Virginia Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery

November 12, 2020 by John Ray

Jesse-Jakubowski-FrankYeh-DBR-Album
Dental Business Radio
Dr. Jesse Jakubowski, Bay Center for Oral and Implant Surgery and Dr. Frank Yeh, Coastal Virginia Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery
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Jesse-Jakubowski-FrankYeh-DBR-Album

Dr. Jesse Jakubowski, Bay Center for Oral and Implant Surgery and Dr. Frank Yeh, Coastal Virginia Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery (“Dental Business Radio, ” Episode 8)

Dr. Jesse Jakubowski and Dr. Frank Yeh are representative of a new generation in oral surgery, and they join host Patrick O’Rourke to talk about getting into the industry, how they operate their respective practices, and the challenges presented by DSOs. Patrick also provides commentary on recent dental insurance industry maneuvers (example: fee reductions) happening now as we enter the homestretch of 2020; and how the choice of approach by the individual carriers to the provider community is acutely sensitive with long-term risk/reward impact. “Dental Business Radio” is underwritten and presented by Practice Quotient: PPO Negotiations & Analysis and produced by the North Fulton studio of Business RadioX®.

Bay Center for Oral and Implant Surgery

Bay Center for Oral & Implant Surgery has been providing oral and maxillofacial surgery to Pinellas and neighboring counties for over 30 years. They pride ourselves on providing the highest standard of care to their patients in a comfortable and safe environment. They have three convenient locations, all with the latest state-of-the-art technology needed to serve you and your family.

Jesse Jakubowski, Oral Surgeon/Owner

Dr. Jesse Jakubowski is the newest member of Bay Center for Oral & Implant Surgery, joining Dr. Horner and Dr. Jones in 2013.  He was born and raised in Wisconsin, attending the University of Wisconsin for his undergraduate education and is truly a “midwesterner” at heart.  He then decided to follow his father’s footsteps into the career of dentistry, moving to Fort Lauderdale to complete his dental training at Nova Southeastern University.

While at dental school he served in multiple leadership positions, including Student Government President and still is involved in leadership and community service to this day.  It was also during this time that he developed a passion for Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery and completed six externships throughout the country in this field.

After dental school he stayed in Fort Lauderdale and completed his Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery training at Nova Southeastern University and Broward Health Medical Center.  During his final year he served as Chief Resident of his surgical service and was also voted “Resident of the Year” by his peers.

Upon graduation Dr. Jakubowski and his lovely wife Kinga, an Optometrist, moved to St. Petersburg and joined Bay Center for Oral & Implant Surgery.  This allowed them to settle down closer to her hometown and family in Palm Harbor.  Together they enjoy almost any outdoor activity and love to involve their two boys, Carter and Bennett, and their fun loving Labrador Chloe.  They are avid sports enthusiasts and enjoy cheering on their hometown favorites from both Wisconsin and Tampa Bay.

In addition to his position at Bay Center for Oral & Implant Surgery, Dr. Jakubowski was previously Predoctoral Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery Course Director at LECOM Dental School in Bradenton.  He truly enjoys being involved in academics, to both help educate the dentists of the future and also advance his own education.  He has published multiple articles in a variety of journals and most recently co-authored a book on lip cancer.

Dr. Jakubowski is board certified by the American Board of Oral & Maxillofacial Surgery and practices all aspects of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery.  He is a Diplomate of the American Association of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery and a member of the Florida Society of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery, American Dental Association, Florida Dental Association, West Coast District Dental Association and Pinellas County Dental Association.  He is also a Diplomate and Fellow of the International Congress of Oral Implantologists, a member of the Academy of Osteointegration, and is certified in Basic Life Support (BLS) and Advanced Cardiac Life Support (ACLS).

Coastal Virginia Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery

At Coastal Virginia Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery, patients come first. Their primary focus is to provide the highest level of compassionate care. From the very first phone call, they treat patients and their family like one of their own. They strive to provide exceptional oral and facial care in a comfortable and safe environment.

Their doctors constantly challenge themselves to stay abreast of the forefront of the specialty in order to provide the highest quality of treatment to every patient.

Their team is dedicated to excellence in patient care and aim to be empathetic, caring and efficient. They pledge to you, our patients, and each other our commitment to provide and inspire outstanding value: because WE CARE.

Frank Yeh, President, Oral Surgeon

While Dr. Yeh is from Lancaster, Pennsylvania, he headed to the University of Pittsburgh for his undergraduate studies, where he majored in Exercise Science. He decided to stay in Pittsburgh to complete his dental training, and it was while he was a student at dental school that he discovered his true passion for all things related to oral and maxillofacial surgery. This motivation allowed him to study under some of the most renowned oral surgeon experts in the field.

After graduating from dental school, Dr. Yeh headed to Newark to complete a one-year surgical internship at Rutgers University.

Show Transcript

Intro: [00:00:03] Live from the Business RadioX Studio in Atlanta, it’s time for Dental Business Radio. Brought to you by Practice Quotient. Practice Quotient bridges the gap between the provider and payer communities. Now, here’s your host, Patrick O’Rourke.

Patrick O’Rourke: [00:00:18] Hi there. Welcome to Dental Business Radio friends of the dental industry. This is your host, Patrick O’Rourke. And we appreciate you listening to the show. It’s brought to you by Practice Quotient. Practice Quotient, PPO negotiations and analysis. You could do it yourself. You could have an office manager do it. You can also do your own taxes and represent yourself in a court of law. It doesn’t mean it’s a good idea. So, if there’s a lot of money on the table, you should go and give Practice Quotient a call.

Patrick O’Rourke: [00:00:51] So, with that, I want to welcome our guest, Dr. Jesse Jakubowski of Bay Center Jaw Surgery.

Jesse Jakubowski : [00:00:58] Hello. Thank you very much for having me, Patrick.

Patrick O’Rourke: [00:01:01] It’s a pleasure to see you again, Jesse. And Dr. Frank Yeh of Coastal Virginia OMS. How are you, Frank?

Frank Yeh: [00:01:09] I’m doing great, Pat. Thanks for having us.

Patrick O’Rourke: [00:01:11] It’s my pleasure. So, you know, as I was kind of talking to you guys prior to the show, you guys have a relationship with each other. I’m not sure which one of you I met first, actually. And you have some other compadres in your circle. And so, I talked to a lot of oral surgery practices and I’ve spoken to many, many of them across the country, and I consider you guys to be kind of the young guns of growing OMS practices. So, you’ve already done it. You’ve established yourself. And, you know, I’m sure you’ve learned quite a bit along the way. And so, that’s really what the theme of the show is. How did you guys meet?

Jesse Jakubowski : [00:01:56] So, Frank and I were co-residents in residency at Nova Southeastern University, Broward General. So, we met – oh, jeez – we would have started residency in ’09, so we probably met at interviews in ’08. And we spent four years side-by-side in Fort Lauderdale. And so, we became pretty good buddies at that point. Then, I would say to this day, we probably talk, at least by text, almost on a daily basis about work, and patients, and things of that nature.

Patrick O’Rourke: [00:02:31] Gotcha. I think that that’s terrific. We all need others around us, they’re going through the same things. You know, as a business owner/entrepreneur, you guys have it a little bit tougher, even. Because it’s like, well, hey, you’re a partner, you’re an owner, so you need to understand all the aspects of the business. You know, you’re the butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker, the website guy, the H.R. guy. You know, you need to understand the building. But, also, you need to put patients to sleep and make sure that you’re delivering quality care all at one time, you know, so that can be somewhat challenging. Could that be a correct assumption?

Frank Yeh: [00:03:12] Yeah. I mean, absolutely. You know, you learn all the stuff to be an oral surgeon in residency, you learn how to take wisdom teeth out and put implants in. But no one ever teaches you the business side of running a practice, no one teaches you the H.R. stuff, staff management. So, for me, it was kind of learn on the go.

Patrick O’Rourke: [00:03:35] You know what cracks me up? When I did the chat on your website, I was like, “Hello, does this work?” And then, Frank answered and he was like, “Is this Patrick?” And I was like, “Is this Frank? Are you answering your own chat?” He’s like, “Yeah. I just want to make sure everything works fine.” That’s me. I kind of do the same thing too. I think that’s awesome. So, what are some of the challenges that you’ve overcame? Either one of you, feel free.

Jesse Jakubowski : [00:04:09] Well, I think in general, like Frank said, they teach you how to do the surgery and how to take care of patients, but they don’t teach you how to run a business. So, I don’t know that it’s overcoming a challenge, but it’s definitely learning a lot more than just the basics of going to work, seeing patients, and going home. You know, you spend, at least, as much time on the business end and trying to figure out how to run a business, how to manage staff, the insurance end – which, obviously, you came in and helped us out on that side tremendously – just learning all of those things. And we’re a little bit over seven years out of residency, and I would say it took five years, probably, to figure out what you’re doing from a business standpoint before you could say, “All right. I can comfortably do this on my own.” And that’s just something that would be nice to have some sort of education on that prior and to leaving residency. But it’s not really operating, you know, dentistry, medicine. Nobody gets that training until you’re out on your own.

Patrick O’Rourke: [00:05:16] Okay. Frank, thoughts?

Frank Yeh: [00:05:18] I completely agree. I mean, I think the biggest stress as an oral surgeon, as a business owner, is not so much the oral surgery side, not so much the putting the patients to sleep, and doing the surgeries, and taking care of the patients. It’s more of all the other business stuff, keeping staff happy, keeping the practice afloat. Especially during this COVID time – holy cow – we were shut down for two months, you know, trying to navigate through that. What a struggle that was. That was the most stressful part of our job. I think we all just come on and do what we are trained to do and take care of patients would be a lot easier. But, like Jesse said, I mean, we learn on the go. And it took us four or five years to finally get comfortable in where we’re at. The beauty of Jesse and I’s friendship is we’re always talking with one another, text messaging with one another, and bouncing ideas off each other. So, that’s the beauty of our friendship. But, yeah, I mean, I feel the same about Jesse.

Patrick O’Rourke: [00:06:18] You know, when I started this business – you know, I came from corporate America and they were like, “Well, five years as an entrepreneur. It takes you five years.” And I was like, “Whatever. I’ll get this done in two years.” Five years goes by and you’re like, “Whoa. All right.” Now, I know what they’re talking about. There’s just a lot. You don’t know what you don’t know. And, you know, you get in there and there’s a lot of things that kind of suck your time, distract you. What do you think is an important part of being an oral surgeon that you aren’t taught? Is this aspect the most important thing that you wish was there? Or is there some other stuff that you feel, like, is critical from an education perspective?

Jesse Jakubowski : [00:07:11] I’m sorry. Could you repeat the question? I kind of —

Patrick O’Rourke: [00:07:14] What do you think is the most important part of being an oral surgeon that you aren’t taught in school?

Jesse Jakubowski : [00:07:22] You know, kind of like we talked about, I think a lot of it is how you treat people and how you deal with people. Now, you learn some of that in residency. But it’s more than just the patients. You know, you come out and you just have to treat people right. You have to treat your staff right. You have to treat your referrals right. You definitely have to treat your patients right. And, really, do what’s best for them and kind of go from there. And, really, it’s about people, a lot more than you would ever think. It’s about relationships and developing those relationships. And if you have strong relationships with your staff, and your patients, and your referrals and care about people, then, I think, you’ll be well, regardless.

Patrick O’Rourke: [00:08:09] Fair. The golden rule. I like that.

Frank Yeh: [00:08:13] I completely agree with Jesse. I think it’s all about relationships. It’s not just relationships with patients and staff and referrals, but, you know, we’ve spent a few minutes here talking about the business side of our practice and how to be successful. You know, if someone taught you, “Hey, develop relationships with other professionals that are either insurance minded, accountants, attorneys.” If you get a successful network, have a successful relationship with all those people. You’ll be successful in practice.

Patrick O’Rourke: [00:08:51] Gotcha. And so, as you’re five years past now – so oral surgeons, it takes a little bit longer to get through school, then you have to do residency – now, you have a business. And so, now, you turn a corner. And, now, do you feel like you’re hitting the gas? Well, Frank – and I kind of know the answer to this – it’s like you had one practice. You’re an associate and you become a partner. And, now, you’re like, “How am I going to grow?” Right? And so, do you feel like it turned the corner? Are you mashing the gas pedal or are you just trying to get a speed limit?

Frank Yeh: [00:09:28] Me, I’m always trying to mash the gas pedal as fast as I can, you know. That’s just the type of guy I am. But I think I’m still learning in every single day. You know, there’s always a new challenge that I’m met with every day. I mean, just recently, you know, we’re having problems with our practice management software system. And it’s a jump from that software system to another. It’s just whole different. It’s something you learn something every day. But I feel like I’m comfortable enough to know, what business ventures I want to start getting into. Like, you kind of mentioned I started off as just one practice, one office, gotten to two. I was 50 percent owner. Now, I’m 100 percent owner. And then, we went from two offices to three offices. So, I feel like I’m kind of getting the comfort level of the business aspect of it, where, now, I’m ready to just kind of take off.

Patrick O’Rourke: [00:10:24] Gotcha. So, you have, like, a mogul clause too. You have to get special clause in order to be a mogul.

Frank Yeh: [00:10:31] Oh, yeah.

Patrick O’Rourke: [00:10:33] So, you’ve been reading Mogul Magazine, I hope.

Frank Yeh: [00:10:35] That would be great.

Patrick O’Rourke: [00:10:37] Very good. So, Jesse, in your situation, you walked into three successful practices in Pinellas County. Pinellas County, Florida, part of the Tampa Bay region. Go Bucs.

Jesse Jakubowski : [00:10:52] Go Bucs.

Patrick O’Rourke: [00:10:52] That’s right. And we’ll give a little shout out to all of our friends and family back home in Tampa in a little bit. For those of you who don’t know, your host, Patrick O’Rourke, is a Tampanion. I’m born and raised in the City of Tampa. That’s correct. Proud of it.

Patrick O’Rourke: [00:11:07] So, Jesse, when I met you guys, you already kind of had a nice machine going, right? And so, now, it’s even nicer. So, as your pivoting, and you turn this corner, and you see some open ground – COVID has been a little speed bump, that’s for all of us. But, you know, I think that’s just temporary and a test of our gumption, if you will. So, I don’t want to get too deep into COVID, but I know it’s challenging. We all have a rut. But yours, still, the future is bright. So, what do you see as you pivot?

Jesse Jakubowski : [00:11:47] Yeah. So, I had a little different situation than Frank did. I joined a group practice seven years ago. It was two practices. Pretty much right after I joined, we bought a third practice. I became a partner within about a year from that point. And, yes, I am less than very happy and lucky to get the partners that I got that treated me fairly and equally from day one. And I walked into a relatively well-oiled machine – not that it’s a machine, but you get the point. I worked in a very nice practice, a very well-respected practice that I’m very happy with. And so, we continue to be partners to the day. There’s three of us. This past summer, we did bring on an associate as well, so, now, there’s four of us with the three locations.

Jesse Jakubowski : [00:12:41] And we’ll always be a group practice. You know, as soon as you guys are ready, you can join us as partner and we’ll keep doing what we’re doing. And the practice is doing well. Whether or not we’ll grow or we’ll expand, you know, I think that’s obviously a conversation I would have with my partners as opportunities arise. But at this point, I don’t think there are any plans for that. Just to continue working hard and, you know, the future is unpredictable. And so, you know, I’m always kind of the same way as Frank, and I like to keep my foot on the gas and just be prepared for anything that might get thrown at us. I’m very happy with what’s been handed to me as far as this location and my partners.

Patrick O’Rourke: [00:13:33] Absolutely. I mean, you guys already have three and a very good footprint with an established reputation. You know, you don’t want to grow just for growth sakes. In my humble opinion, you know, we’re not growth oriented. We’re a bit of a boutique. I hate that word, but it’s kind of true. We’re not volume based. And it makes it to where you’re able to pick and choose and take only projects that you are sure that you’re going to be successful with, and work with people that you want to work with, and not run around with your hair on fire. So, that’s one part, for me, that I’ve learned over the years is that, there’s a little bit of a balance. You know, I’ve got two small kids. I know you guys have kids, too. And, you know, professional fulfillment is important. But, you know, one of the reasons – I assume is true for you guys, too – that we all work is to provide for our families and be good fathers, right?

Jesse Jakubowski : [00:14:32] Absolutely.

Frank Yeh: [00:14:33] Yes.

Patrick O’Rourke: [00:14:34] And so, kudo’s to both of you, though, too, because you’re both still very involved in your professional community. Frank, are you the president now of the Virginia Society Oral and Maxillofacial Surgeons?

Frank Yeh: [00:14:48] Currently, I’m the vice-president of the Virginia Society of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgeons. Next year, it’ll be president.

Patrick O’Rourke: [00:14:56] Gotcha. Very good. So, I’ve sat on some boards before. I mean, it’s a commitment multiple years, because you’ve got to go by secretary, treasurer, vice-president, president, which is like a whole second job, by the way.

Frank Yeh: [00:15:09] Oh, my gosh. Absolutely.

Patrick O’Rourke: [00:15:10] And then, you’re the previous past president, which still has its obligations. It’s like after you work out, you have to have a routine afterwards, and the president is doing okay. So, that’s a lot to take on in addition to being a father, being a husband, and a business owner, and a mogul. So, what’s been the most satisfying thing about that type of time and effort spent for you?

Frank Yeh: [00:15:42] With the VSOMS?

Patrick O’Rourke: [00:15:44] Yes, sir.

Frank Yeh: [00:15:46] I’ll tell you what, no one ever tells you when you first commit to VSOMS to an officer position that, “Hey, this is a four year or five year commitment.” And I committed when I just had two kids and everything was going smooth. And, now, I got a third kid and I’m running around with my head cut off. But, you know, I really love this organization. It really helps, especially here in Virginia, keep our specialty in the forefront. It basically fights for our specialty, whether it’s in a [inaudible] rights, insurance rights, licensors. That’s really kind of the gratifying part about being an officer is, as you get inside scoop of what’s really going on with my profession. And I feel like what I’m really trying to do is try and protect my profession, try to protect my specialty here in Virginia. That’s always gratifying.

Patrick O’Rourke: [00:16:41] Yeah. It’s key. It’s key. And, you know, you do some education and some professional development yourself, Jesse. Why don’t you to tell us about that?

Jesse Jakubowski : [00:16:51] Yeah. Sure. I’m involved in a couple of things. I, actually, just became executive board on our County Dental Association, and so that’s a five year track to president. So, in five years, I’ll be president of that. So, that’s relatively new.

Patrick O’Rourke: [00:17:08] Congratulations.

Jesse Jakubowski : [00:17:09] I’m looking forward to that commitment. And I’m sure I’ll be struggling with the time commitment once it gets down in a few years from now. But, now, I’m happy with the decision, so that’ll be good. In addition to that, as far as other things like we talked about, we do some lecturing and clubs for the dentists and staff in our area. So, we do that as a practice, probably, five or six times a year. And that had been a pretty big group, 150 or so per study club. And we did start that back up this fall. But we’re kind of limited in space, so we’re down to about 70 attendees and we’ve had two lectures this fall. So, we do that, which is a great way to get out there and talk to dentists, and teach, and educate, and get feedback from them.

Jesse Jakubowski : [00:18:05] In addition, I lecture at a local VA. It has a general practice residency, and so I go there and lecture to their residents. It’s a year. So, I’m still active with lecturing to some of the LECOM groups. LECOM is Lake Erie College of Osteopathic Medicine, which has a branch down in Bradenton. And so, I had taught at that school for the first two years I was out of residency. I was oral surgery program director there for two years. And then, I went fulltime at private practice. But I’m still involved with them and I still have students that come up and shadow me from the school as well. So, kind of a little bit all over the place with the education. But it’s still nice to stay involved and to talk to people and teach.

Patrick O’Rourke: [00:18:57] Gotcha. It’s nice to help people, right? It’s fulfilling giving back. You know, trying to say, “Hey, look out for these potholes too.” Do you ever get involved in the business conversations?

Jesse Jakubowski : [00:19:12] Not necessarily. But the dental students are so focused on dentistry and oral surgery. You know, the funny thing is, like, I love finance, I love personal finance, I love tax law. Honestly, if I go back and teach again at LECOM, I would love to give them, like, a little mini-finance course or business course or something like that just to prepare them more than I was prepared, because that’s really key to that.

Patrick O’Rourke: [00:19:41] I think you should for sure. I think that’s a brilliant idea.

Jesse Jakubowski : [00:19:48] Yeah. Yeah. It’s on my radar for the future, so we’ll see how things unfold.

Patrick O’Rourke: [00:19:54] And this has just been my observation and this is anecdotal, but, you know, just kind of two schools – and I say the new school. But the new school of doctor/owners are more entrepreneurial in mindset and spirit. They tend to be more – they’ve done their research. They’ve done their homework. You know, they have a pretty firm grasp of, at least, where they want to go. And they thirst for that knowledge. And they’ll just kind of I’m going to do my work and I’m going to be the best at this. They understand that it’s business as well. And you guys are like the tip of the spear of that new school.

Jesse Jakubowski : [00:20:38] You know, I think everyone carries so much more debt now that if you’re not business minded, you’ll never be able to tackle the half-a-million dollars in debt you’re in after you’re done with residency. And so, unfortunately, it’s an unfortunate/fortunate consequence that you become business minded because you need to.

Patrick O’Rourke: [00:21:01] That’s a really good point. Really good point.

Jesse Jakubowski : [00:21:07] Absolutely.

Patrick O’Rourke: [00:21:07] Frank, anything to add?

Frank Yeh: [00:21:07] Absolutely. I mean, you learn all the necessary tools that you need to be an oral surgeon when you come out of residency. You know, I think Jesse and I are just down to earth generally nice guys, so we treat our patients well. We’re always going to do the right thing. But what we’ve kind of learned over the years is that, if you look at the trend of not just oral surgery, but dentistry. Dentistry is probably more ahead of our time than oral surgeons are. But, you know, if you look at the trends of Google, outpatient marketing, public marketing, you really need to start having that kind of business mindset if you want to be successful in life or successful in business. And just like Jesse said, our debt load these days is just astronomical, that if you just sit back and just expect patients to come through your door because of just your name and the way you treat people, that’s old times now.

Jesse Jakubowski : [00:22:05] Or if you are extremely good looking like Frank Yeh.

Patrick O’Rourke: [00:22:13] Is that what you do in Norfolk and Virginia Beach, you just put on big, like, billboards of your face, Frank?

Frank Yeh: [00:22:19] Oh, man. Billboards with my face on it or I’ll just have signage on corners of some streets, newspaper ads.

Patrick O’Rourke: [00:22:29] You should do it like you and your wife, though. I think you’d get better results that way.

Jesse Jakubowski : [00:22:37] There you go.

Frank Yeh: [00:22:37] You’re more good looking than I am.

Patrick O’Rourke: [00:22:40] So, yeah, I think the days of just hanging a shingle and, you know, being fine is great. You know, “Hey, people come in to me because I’m the doc.” Like, those days are gone. And, you know, there’s been corporate or, you know, private equity money in dentistry for a while. I got into specialist fairly recently within the past few years. And I’m sure you guys are somewhat aware of it, neutral towards it. You know, but there’s one thing that I’ve observed and I tell a lot of clients and I’m like, “Look, bud. If you just go out and go shake some hands and kissing babies and make yourself available in the community, your local Chamber of Commerce. You know, maybe even if you don’t like people, like, why don’t you send somebody out there.” If you’re not a good looking guy like Frank Yeh or Jesse, you know, go hire somebody that’s very friendly and personable and have them go out and represent your practice. Because familiarity breeds trust, you know. And so, you know, your website is important. Google reviews is really important. But it’s also, you know, health care always has remained and will be inherently local, in my opinion. You know, just health care is local. That’s that. What do you think of that statement? Frank, we’ll go with you first.

Frank Yeh: [00:24:08] That health care is local? I absolutely agree. I absolutely agree. I think you make a name for yourself in your local community by treating patients right. I mean, talking about external marketing, you know, you treat these patients right. They’re going to tell their family members. Their family members will come to you. Yeah, I think for sure, health care is always going to be a local thing, if I’m understanding that question correctly.

Patrick O’Rourke: [00:24:38] Yeah. I mean, I was just kind of making a statement, so I guess not too much to comment on there. Jesse, would you like to add anything.

Jesse Jakubowski : [00:24:45] No.

Patrick O’Rourke: [00:24:45] No?

Jesse Jakubowski : [00:24:45] I agree.

Patrick O’Rourke: [00:24:46] Fair enough. Is there anything special that you guys do besides – you know, hey, were all surgery practice, but is there a niche that your practice does differently and/or better than most people or most other oral surgery practices, you know, with all due respect? What do you think sets you apart? And we’ll go with Jesse first on this one.

Jesse Jakubowski : [00:25:13] Sure. You know, it’s funny, when I joined the practice, the practice name was Bay Center for Jaw Surgery, because before I had joined and well before I joined, they weren’t even doing orthognathic surgery anymore when I joined. But one of the big niches of the practice was orthognathic jaw surgery. And over the years, we did less and less and we did a lot more dental alveolar and implants. And so, pretty quickly after I joined, we changed the name to Bay Center for Oral and Implant Surgery because it more accurately described what we were doing on a daily basis. We’re doing oral surgery, office based oral surgery. And we’re doing a lot of dental implants.

Jesse Jakubowski : [00:25:57] And so, not that implants is a niche to our practice because, obviously, a lot of practices do implants. But more specifically, within that niche and one of the things that I’ve grasped on, too, personally, are immediate implants. And I would say that’s my niche within a niche. You know, majority of the implants that I place are placed at the same time of the extraction. And this is something that I feel like I’m well known for in the area, that if somebody has a patient and they want to have the implant placed at the same time of the extraction, they’re going to send them to me because they know that if it can be done, I will be able to do it.

Jesse Jakubowski : [00:26:39] And so, I feel like that’s something that I’ve grasped onto and I’m able to provide that for the referrals, for the patient. You know, it’s less time of a wait for healing. When you’re looking at, you know, four or five months total versus eight or nine months total and you’re looking at less surgery, if you can do everything at once, ultimately, happier patients and happier referral, if you can do that at the same success rate and the same results, which I feel like I can. And so, that’s kind of my little thing that I do and I really enjoy doing. It makes the cases slightly more complicated, but I’m doing them all day, every day, and so I love it.

Patrick O’Rourke: [00:27:22] So, can I restate that in my own words to make sure I understand?

Jesse Jakubowski : [00:27:27] Yes, sir.

Patrick O’Rourke: [00:27:28] So, I’m the patient, what you’re saying is, let’s say, I need to have five teeth extracted out of the lower portion of my mouth – so I forget. Which mandibular – is that the mandibular?

Jesse Jakubowski : [00:27:42] Sure. The mandible.

Patrick O’Rourke: [00:27:42] The mandible. All right. The lower mandible. I can have them extracted and then you’re going to put implants on the same day?

Jesse Jakubowski : [00:27:53] Yeah. And, you know, obviously, I can’t do it for everybody. So, I’m clinically evaluating. I’m taking a CT scan on pretty much everybody to see what the bone looks like, making sure there’s no active infection, making sure there’s adequate bone to get me primary stability on the implants. And then, a lot of times, I’m at least immediately placing them. Now, this doesn’t mean that they get teeth on them necessarily the same day. That would be immediate placement and immediate provisionalization, which we can do in some cases. But you need to have a very compliant patient for that.

Jesse Jakubowski : [00:28:25] And so, immediate placement means that I can take the tooth out and put the implant in, and leave it in there for four months, and then they get a tooth back at the end. Versus a more conventional way, you take the tooth out, your bone graft, you wait four months, you’ll re-evaluate, you place an implant, you wait another four months, and then they get the tooth back. And so, that’s a conventional way to do it. But majority of the time, I’m taking the tooth out and I’m putting the implant in the same day. And in some cases, I’m taking a tooth out, I’m putting the implant in, and we’re putting in a provisional tooth on it the same day. So, it just kind of varies case-by-case. But I’m doing that, more than half of the implants I place are that way.

Patrick O’Rourke: [00:29:08] Well, it sounds like a whole lot of awesome as a consumer, because it’s one thing I can’t make more of is time. So, if I need something done, you know, I don’t want to wait for months and make a bunch of appointments. So, the more we can knock it out, especially if we have an established high degree of quality, you know, that’s attractive to busy people. You know, I mean, everybody’s busy. But as a business owner, time is money. I think that’s awesome. I learn something new every day about oral surgery. I did not know that you had the extraction, then you wait – then you put it in the screw?

Jesse Jakubowski : [00:29:49] Implant.

Patrick O’Rourke: [00:29:50] Right. Right. To a layman, right?

Jesse Jakubowski : [00:29:52] It looks like a screw, yeah.

Jesse Jakubowski : [00:29:52] Not all oral surgeons listen to this show. Tom Brady could be listening to the program.

Jesse Jakubowski : [00:29:58] He is. I texted him earlier, so he’ll be listening.

Patrick O’Rourke: [00:30:02] Antonio Brown is listening to it too. Listen, you guys are doing a great job as a lifelong and in long suffering Buccaneers fan. Bravo.

Jesse Jakubowski : [00:30:12] This is going to be an interesting year, that’s for sure.

Patrick O’Rourke: [00:30:14] So, to us regular patients, it’s a screw. I got to pull it out. You’re going to put a screw in there. And what happens is, I’ll walk out with a screw mouth?

Jesse Jakubowski : [00:30:29] So, you know, everything’s usually covered with tissue and bone when we’re done. So, you walk out, it looks like nothing happened. You look in there, you just see a hole where the tooth was. It undergoes a phase called osseointegration, which means the bone fuses to the outside of the implant. It kind of becomes a part of your body. And that can take around four months or so. And so, it just sits in there. Usually, you know, if it’s a front tooth, we get something temporary, removable made that you can wear while it heals. If it’s a back tooth, we kind of usually just leave it out and you just go without the tooth for four months.

Patrick O’Rourke: [00:31:03] Like Dracula teeth?

Jesse Jakubowski : [00:31:05] It could be. I mean, if you wanted it, we can make that happen. But usually normal teeth.

Patrick O’Rourke: [00:31:09] Gotcha. It’s all done. So, all right. I did know know that. So, you have the interim, then you come back, and then you’re putting on the top – which I’ve seen many times like almost. You know, I’ve seen the demos – and then you put the cap on, which looks better than my normal teeth, basically.

Jesse Jakubowski : [00:31:29] Yeah. Definitely. Definitely better than your teeth. Definitely.

Patrick O’Rourke: [00:31:32] Yeah. I’ll be coming down there. I need stuff. I didn’t know I could get it done that quick. We could do it over Thanksgiving. Yeah, I definitely need to. I know sometimes clients look at my mouth and I’m like, “Hey, eyes up here, buddy. Eyes up here. I see what you’re looking at.”

Jesse Jakubowski : [00:31:47] You have a beautiful smile. You have a beautiful smile.

Patrick O’Rourke: [00:31:55] Well, thank you. Thank you very much. I don’t want to be too pretty. You know, Frank Yeh, you can’t use Jesse’s.

Frank Yeh: [00:32:05] No.

Patrick O’Rourke: [00:32:06] So, you’re going to have to come up with something else that’s cool about your practice.

Frank Yeh: [00:32:10] You got it. So, no, we don’t do that. We are your typical wisdom teeth implants, dental extractions, but we don’t do nearly the volume that Jesse does. I feel like our niche here in our practice would be orthognathic surgery. And it’s funny that I got into a practice that does a lot of orthognathic surgery. In residency – oh, my gosh – that was not a procedure I enjoyed. I don’t know if you enjoyed it, Jesse. But doing it down there at Nova, I did not like it. It took us eight hours to do a double jaw. So, I got out of residency thinking I’m not going to do another orthognathic surgery. But things happen for a reason. I got into this office, it does a lot.

Frank Yeh: [00:32:58] We do, probably, about ten to twelve double jaws a year. And I found that I’ve grown to really enjoy it, to really like it, to change someone’s life by just changing their smile. Just putting their jaws in a better position. Correcting their bite, whether it’s a bite problem, a TMJ problem. Some patients come to me and say, “Hey, I have sleep problems. I have sleep apnea and I hate my CPAP.” So, let’s do orthognathic surgery. And I find that procedure in itself to be very, very gratifying, very life changing.

Patrick O’Rourke: [00:33:33] That’s interesting. I’ve heard that. So, orthognathic surgery, from what I’ve been told – we have a lot of oral surgery clients – is very satisfying and it’s also complex and very labor and time intensive. You have to create models. This is not a small procedure at all, right?

Frank Yeh: [00:33:52] No.

Patrick O’Rourke: [00:33:52] And it’s not one of the things – it’s a high frequency. So, I mean, I’m an insurance guy, you know, it’s not something that shows up in the claims report as, you know, a spike claim or something that has a high degree of cost risk. And so, it doesn’t get much of a second thought, really. So, the people that are doing the underwriting on it in medical, they’re dealing with dialysis, they’re dealing with chronic conditions, they’re dealing with, it’s not millions, but billions of dollars. So, orthognathic doesn’t get the time and consideration that it deserves. And they don’t have the time to, you know, compensate folks appropriately.

Patrick O’Rourke: [00:34:36] So, for those of my insurance friends that are listening to the show, hello. And there you go, there’s some work to do on orthognathic. I realized it’s not a slice of the health care cost buy, but it does make a difference in patients’ lives. And I’ve heard this from several oral surgeons across the country and they struggle with it, they stopped doing orthognathic surgery because the reimbursements are so awful. They just can’t afford to put in the time and labor to do it right, which is sad.

Frank Yeh: [00:35:07] Absolutely. That’s one of the biggest downfalls of orthognathic surgery. That’s why oral surgeons don’t want to do it. Let’s face it, you spend about five or six hours in a hospital to do a procedure, take on higher risks, where you probably just stay in the office and do two or three sets of wisdom teeth and make the same amount of money and take the lower risk. Here in our practice, we feel like we want to offer that service to our patients. Not just our patients, but to our orthodontist. You know, we know that not all patients can be corrected with braces or just Invisalign, so we want to provide that service to them.

Patrick O’Rourke: [00:35:43] Excellent point. I think that’s very noble of you. And you’re probably one of the very few to do that in the Greater Virginia Beach-Norfolk area, right?

Frank Yeh: [00:35:55] Mm-hm.

Patrick O’Rourke: [00:35:55] There you go. What are you guys seeing out there that is troublesome or that’s causing you to lose sleep at night? Jesse, we’ll go to you.

Jesse Jakubowski : [00:36:08] I would say, in general, from a business standpoint, and not from COVID or from the election or things of that nature but from a business standpoint, the expansion of DSOs buying private practices and converting, just in the seven years I’ve been in practice here, I think between our three offices, there’s, maybe, around 200 practices that could refer to us that are in our area.

Jesse Jakubowski : [00:36:40] And I would say over seven years, I’ve seen close to 10 percent of those sell out and be bought out by a DSO. Even if it’s a smaller one where they only have four or five locations, in seven years, seeing almost, probably, around 10 percent or close to 10 percent of private practices not being private practices anymore. It’s a disturbing trend that, ultimately, from a specialist standpoint, you know, when you say, “Well, why does that matter to you?” Well, obviously, there’s less people referring us patients. You know, I don’t know if people know this, but most of DSO’s model is to keep all procedures within the practice. And that usually means that they are hiring an outside oral surgeon or periodontist to come in to their four or five locations and do all of their oral surgery. And someone else to do all of the perio and someone else do all the endo. So, they have their own specialists.

Jesse Jakubowski : [00:37:44] And so, although DSOs aren’t buying specialty practices, they don’t want to. They don’t need to. They want to buy dental offices and then put specialists inside of them and increase revenues secondary to that. And so, that’s probably the biggest threat out there to a private practice. Not just oral surgeon, but specialists in general is, as more dentists get bought out by DSOs, there’s going to be less and less patients referred out to us. And if I saw 10 percent go in seven years, does that mean in, you know, within 70 years that everything’s going to be DSO? Probably not. But you see where the trend is going.

Patrick O’Rourke: [00:38:30] And so, what’s your observation, would they bring in specialists in-house? Or they own the general dentist to do the implants and put people to sleep? Or are they going to get the kid that’s got half-a-million dollars in debt and having them run six practices all over Pinellas, Hillsborough, Hernando, Pasco Counties?

Jesse Jakubowski : [00:38:49] Yeah. I mean, some of them will try to get the dentist to do as much as they possibly can. So, if the dentist can do implants, if the dentist is going to take a weekend sedation course, you know, different things like that, they might try to do that. And then, like I said, a lot of them will hire somebody, a specialist, to come in and do the special treatment that needs to be done and not refer that out.

Patrick O’Rourke: [00:39:15] Can I learn to put people to sleep in a weekend?

Frank Yeh: [00:39:21] To quote, “Yes, you can.” There are courses out there, you can do it in a weekend.

Patrick O’Rourke: [00:39:30] That, I could. Right? That’s disturbing.

Jesse Jakubowski : [00:39:33] Well, not you. But, you know, there are courses for general. So, Frank and I went to residency for four years, where we were sedating people on a daily basis for four years, where we were doing a four month rotation in an OR with an anesthesiologist intubating patients and sedating patients. And this four year process to get to where we are, and that’s where our training came from. That’s how we learned how to sedate patients safe. And there are options for people who don’t go that route to do continuing education courses and get certified in conscious sedation as a general dentist or as a different specialist. So, you can undergo that training and get a permit for conscious sedation as a general dentist. Yes.

Patrick O’Rourke: [00:40:30] Got it. All right. So, if somebody is not a doctor, “I don’t have any health care background. I can’t do it.”

Jesse Jakubowski : [00:40:34] You still have to become a doctor first and then take the weekend course.

Patrick O’Rourke: [00:40:38] Being a doctor would make my mom real proud. Hi, mom. But none the stars for me. Okay. Well, that makes me feel a little bit better. And I was like, “What can I learn in a weekend? Get a rubber mallet?” I know how to do that now, anyway. But I don’t know what the actual health care outcome would be. All right. So, that makes sense.

Patrick O’Rourke: [00:41:06] And so, if they’re keeping everything in-house, I can see that. Not really any solution there except to be vigilant and make sure you do a good job. And, you know, luckily you’re in a pretty good market and you’ve got a mean well-oiled machine going on.

Patrick O’Rourke: [00:41:28] Frank, is it the same thing for you or is there anything else keeping you up at night besides COVID, the election, your kids, and corporate dentistry buying up all of your referring general dentist practices?

Frank Yeh: [00:41:42] Yeah. You know, so we got DSO here too. For Tom Brady, if you’re listening, DSOs are just basically business ventures, you know, non-dentists businessmen who are going out and buying dental practice to put on their portfolio. So, the difference in that mindset is, they’re business first and then patient care second.

Frank Yeh: [00:42:05] Whereas, Jesse and I, we’re always about patient care first. Yeah, we’re business minded folks, but we’re about patient care first, then we’re about the business. We got DSO here in the area as well. They’re kind of getting big. I think my CPA once told me, you either get succumb to it or you play their game. And, hence, I went ahead and bought another oral surgery and bought out his office. And I considered doing that here in the near future. Not so much to have the same business model. It’s just to have a bigger presence in the area. And that’s less to worry about if DSOs are coming in and and taking up all these dental offices.

Patrick O’Rourke: [00:42:51] Market power.

Frank Yeh: [00:42:52] Market power, absolutely. But I think what really keeps me up at night is, like I texted you a couple of days ago, where we got this nice little postcard from one of our insurance carriers that said, “Hey, we got a deal for you. We’re going to get some new patients for you.”

Patrick O’Rourke: [00:43:11] New patients. Good news, new patients. It’s always new patients. That’s bad news, baby.

Frank Yeh: [00:43:18] I’m like, I’m sold while we go online and find out our fee schedule has been decreased about 10 to 15 percent. And it is so demoralizing, because after COVID, as offices – I know, Jesse, you’re the same way – we’ve taken on more expenses with PPEs, gloves and gowns. The prices have gone up and the medical supplies have gone up. The medications have gone up. To run a business, everything has gone up. Now, to hear the insurance companies kind of reimburse you less and less, that’s what’s really disheartening. And that’s what really keeps me up at night.

Patrick O’Rourke: [00:44:01] Well, that would make two of us. You know, thank you for bringing that up. Actually, it’s something that we’re trying to get the word out. To my friends and colleagues in the insurance industry who may be listening to this, this is the challenge, right? So, I can see Frank right now and his beautiful face. You guys can’t see his face. You guys are all in board rooms. You’re making decisions. And I’m a little bit disappointed and some of us being in the insurance industry that, you know, I figured that COVID would kind of bring us all together and we’d be somewhat reasonable and not use it as an opportunity to – you know, I get it. Hey, it’s business. You got to control your costs of care. We see an opportunity that we can bring our costs of care down for years to come. I get it.

Patrick O’Rourke: [00:44:55] At the same time, you got business owners out there doing the best that they can and they’re buying all this equipment. And it’s not like they’re charging your full fee. I’m familiar with the contracts. The discount is fair. And so, now, we’re going to slice them even more. You know, and I’m sure to be fair to everybody and respectful, I know that there’s two camps in that boardroom. I know there is. And there’s one camp that says we’ve got to do what we got to do. And the other camp is like, “You know what? Our product here is the doctors. It is the network.” And the last thing I will say to all of you who are listening, you can only tax the people so much before they throw your metaphorical tea into the harbor.

Patrick O’Rourke: [00:45:54] And I will leave the rest of the conversations to be in private. But thank you very much, Frank, for that. That definitely keeps me up at night. There’s not just one carrier right now. There’s a couple of them. And some of them, you know, to be fair, carriers are all different. They’re not all doing the same thing. Some carriers are doing really awesome things, helping out the provider community, helping out the member community, helping out their own local communities. And some of them are using this as an opportunity to be unfair, and I’m being as polite as I can.

Patrick O’Rourke: [00:46:36] So, with that, let’s see here, what else do we want to talk about? What is unique about the Virginia Beach ecosystem? You know, your market there, what do you love about Virginia Beach and Norfolk?

Frank Yeh: [00:46:58] Oh, my gosh. So, you know, first I had no ties to Virginia Beach whatsoever. I am a Pennsylvania guy, so I grew up in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. I went to Pittsburgh for eight years for undergrad and dental school. And then, I moved down to Fort Lauderdale for all sorts of training. When I got out, I realized, man, Fort Lauderdale was too damn hot. Pennsylvania is too damn cold.

Frank Yeh: [00:47:23] So, I literally took a map and I told my wife – my fiance at the time – I said, “Listen, let’s look on the map. Virginia Beach, North Carolina. In the middle between Pennsylvania and Florida, so that’s got to be the best of both worlds.” So, we took a shot and came up here and we’ve been up here for seven years now. We just love it. So, living in Virginia Beach, we got, obviously, the beach. When you want to go to the beach, it’s right down the road. But if I’m tired of the beach, I want the mountains, I drive three or four hours west of the pier, past Richmond to Charlotte, I got the mountains. If I want to go to D.C., it’s a four hour drive up north of D.C. So, it’s got a little bit of everything here. It’s a great community to raise kids. There’s a lot of cool events and farms that kids love up here. So, from a community standpoint, we just love it up here. There’s so much to do.

Patrick O’Rourke: [00:48:17] That’s why I like that area too. And being from Florida, it is too hot. That’s why I’m here. And then, you keep going north, there’s snow. I can’t. This is as far north as we’re going to get. My wife is also a native Floridian from Broward County. She’s East Coast Florida. I’m West Coast Florida. There is a difference for those of us that are Floridians know. Jesse, are you native Floridian? Are you from the sunshine?

Jesse Jakubowski : [00:48:44] No. I’m from Wisconsin.

Patrick O’Rourke: [00:48:47] Okay. So, you got down here like, “Holy smokes, no snow. This is awesome.”

Jesse Jakubowski : [00:48:54] Yeah. So, I did move to Florida just with the thought of getting out of Wisconsin for a while. And then, I would go back to Wisconsin, where my dad was a dentist and I would join his practice, and the rest would be history. That being said, I ended up in dental school, decided I wanted to do oral surgery. I also met my wife, who is from Clearwater, Florida. And so, we set our sights on the West Coast after residency. Ended up in St. Petersburg.

Patrick O’Rourke: [00:49:28] West coast of Florida, you mean.

Jesse Jakubowski : [00:49:30] West coast of Florida, correct. And you’re right, there is a difference. You know, the East Coast, and particularly Fort Lauderdale and Miami, people are not as nice as they are in the St. Petersburg area. I will leave it at that. So, we ended up in St. Pete’s, closer to her family. And the same thing, I love it here. Summers are hot, okay. But, right now, for the next eight months, it’s going to be beautiful here. You know, just get out on the water. You know, I love fishing and we’re going to be doing the big King of the Beach Kingfish Tournaments this weekend, so I’ll be doing that with some friends, which are fun. And, you know, we’ll be fishing while everybody else is shoveling. So, you know, we got that going for us.

Patrick O’Rourke: [00:50:18] I’m coming back home. It’s gotten gotten cold all of a sudden, I’m like, “Okay. We’re going back to Tampa for a little bit.” My son loves fishing. That’s the only thing he loves more than video games. I don’t know. He just digs it. He watches, like, fishing shows and stuff too. Like every chance I get to, you know, I take him out fishing. He digs it.

Jesse Jakubowski : [00:50:40] Awesome.

Patrick O’Rourke: [00:50:40] And he’s, like, not hating me for pulling him off of the video games or making him play basketball or something. So, yeah, this is the time of year where I really miss Florida. And, you know, sometimes people call me, like, from Cleveland or even Wisconsin and they’re like, “Hey, Pat.” – non-COVID times – “will you come speak at our study club or meeting.” And I’m like, “In February? Nuh-uh. No.” I don’t own the clothes that would get me, like, from the airport into the car and get around safely without freezing to death. I don’t think. You have to have special clothes and underwear. So, those of you that are up north, God bless you. I really hope that you are enjoying this show. We’re not judging. We’re just saying that you guys have it harder and so you’re tougher. Rock on.

Patrick O’Rourke: [00:51:31] Let’s see here, so before we wrap this program up, is there anybody that you would like to give special mentions to? We’ve already talked about the Virginia Society for Oral and Maxillofacial Surgeons. Laura Givens, how are you? The Florida Society for Oral and Maxillofacial Surgeons. Hank, how are you? The Florida Dental Association. I’ll give a little shout out to Mike being down there, the association partner. I’ll send this to you. I’d also like to say hello to the Catacali family, Aparicio, McCain Love Nunez, Mike Cole in Tampa, Argus Dental, the Zambrano family, my family, everybody in Tampa. I’ll be coming back soon. Anybody who like to say hello to, say thank you for your support. Frank, we’ll go with you.

Frank Yeh: [00:52:26] I just want to thank, first of all, Jesse, actually. Really, he was the guy who introduced me to you. So, thank you, Jesse, for hooking me up with Patrick. He’s done wonders here in our office in the past two or three years, and so we’ve really got to know one another. But, more importantly, I just want to thank my oral surgery program professors, my attendings out there, Dr. Coleman, Dr. McClure, Dr. Lopez. I mean, you guys are the ones who are the reasons why we’re capable of doing what we can do, teaching us the necessary tools and lessons that we can go and treat patients. So, thank you to them.

Patrick O’Rourke: [00:53:12] I like that. Jesse, you’re up.

Jesse Jakubowski : [00:53:16] Sure. Sure. Well, thank you, Patrick, for having us on your show. I appreciate that. And Frank Yeh for helping make that happen as well. And the same shout out to Nova Southeastern University and our faculty there. You know, they provided us with a great education and gave us the building blocks to build on for what we’ve become today. You know, obviously, my wife and kids as well for supporting me through my education and my career. And then, my partners at the practice for just giving me the opportunity to join and really join something special here in Pinellas.

Patrick O’Rourke: [00:53:57] Terrific. I’d like to thank both of you, not just for being guests, but for your confidence and, you know, your business place in Practice Quotient. I’m pretty sure you guys are happy with it. I appreciate your referrals and all the nice things that you say about me in public and in private. And I’d also like to thank John Ray and all the team at Business RadioX Studios for making things happen. They do a great job producing the show. And, of course, we need to thank our sponsor, Practice Quotient, PPO Negotiation and Analysis. A national firm that specializes in strategic guidance on all of your PPO, UDHMO, and EPO contracts. You need to talk to an expert when the stakes are high. So, thank you very much to Practice Quotient and everybody on the Practice Quotient team. Scott and Nikki, hello. You guys do a great job. Thank you very much. So, with that, this is your host, Patrick O’Rourke, with Dental Business Radio with the young guns of OMS signing off. Until next time.

About Dental Business Radio

“Dental Business Radio” covers the business side of dentistry. Host Patrick O’Rourke and his guests cover industry trends, insights, success stories, and more in this wide-ranging show. The show’s guests will include successful doctors across the spectrum of dental practice providers, as well as trusted advisors and noted industry participants. “Dental Business Radio” is underwritten and presented by Practice Quotient and produced by the North Fulton studio of Business RadioX®.

Practice Quotient

“Dental Business Radio” is sponsored by Practice Quotient. Practice Quotient, Inc. serves as a bridge between the payor and provider communities. Their clients include general dentist and dental specialty practices across the nation of all sizes, from completely fee-for-service-only to active network participation with every dental plan possible. They work with independent practices, emerging multi-practice entities, and various large ownership entities in the dental space. Their PPO negotiations and analysis projects evaluate the merits of the various in-network participation contract options specific to your Practice’s patient acquisition strategy. There is no one-size-fits-all solution.

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Tagged With: Bay Center for Oral and Implant Surgery, Coastal Virginia Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery, dental insurance industry, Frank Yeh, Jesse Jakubowski, Patrick O'Rourke, PPO Negotiations & Analysis, Practice Quotient

Pancreatic Cancer- Episode 44, To Your Health With Dr. Jim Morrow

November 12, 2020 by John Ray

pancreatic cancer
North Fulton Studio
Pancreatic Cancer- Episode 44, To Your Health With Dr. Jim Morrow
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Pancreatic Cancer – Episode 44, To Your Health With Dr. Jim Morrow

Popular “Jeopardy” host Alex Trebek just passed away from complications caused by pancreatic cancer. On this edition of “To Your Health,” Dr. Morrow covers pancreatic cancer, its possible causes, including genetic factors, and the limited effective treatment options. Dr. Morrow also offers a Covid-19 update which includes advice on how to handle family visits for Thanksgiving. “To Your Health” is brought to you by Morrow Family Medicine, which brings the CARE back to healthcare.

About Morrow Family Medicine and Dr. Jim Morrow

Morrow Family Medicine is an award-winning, state-of-the-art family practice with offices in Cumming and Milton, Georgia. The practice combines healthcare information technology with old-fashioned care to provide the type of care that many are in search of today. Two physicians, three physician assistants and two nurse practitioners are supported by a knowledgeable and friendly staff to make your visit to Morrow Family Medicine one that will remind you of the way healthcare should be.  At Morrow Family Medicine, we like to say we are “bringing the care back to healthcare!”  Morrow Family Medicine has been named the “Best of Forsyth” in Family Medicine in all five years of the award, is a three-time consecutive winner of the “Best of North Atlanta” by readers of Appen Media, and the 2019 winner of “Best of Life” in North Fulton County.

Dr. Jim Morrow, Morrow Family Medicine, and Host of “To Your Health With Dr. Jim Morrow”

Covid-19 misconceptionsDr. Jim Morrow is the founder and CEO of Morrow Family Medicine. He has been a trailblazer and evangelist in the area of healthcare information technology, was named Physician IT Leader of the Year by HIMSS, a HIMSS Davies Award Winner, the Cumming-Forsyth Chamber of Commerce Steve Bloom Award Winner as Entrepreneur of the Year and he received a Phoenix Award as Community Leader of the Year from the Metro Atlanta Chamber of Commerce.  He is married to Peggie Morrow and together they founded the Forsyth BYOT Benefit, a charity in Forsyth County to support students in need of technology and devices. They have two Goldendoodles, a gaggle of grandchildren and enjoy life on and around Lake Lanier.

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MorrowFamMed/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/7788088/admin/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/toyourhealthMD

The complete show archive of “To Your Health with Dr. Jim Morrow” addresses a wide range of health and wellness topics, and can be found at www.toyourhealthradio.com.

Dr. Morrow’s Show Notes

Overview

  • Pancreatic cancer begins in the tissues of your pancreas —
    • an organ in your abdomen that lies behind the lower part of your stomach.
    • Your pancreas releases enzymes that aid digestion and produces hormones that help manage your blood sugar.
  • Several types of growths can occur in the pancreas,
    • including cancerous and noncancerous tumors.
    • The most common type of cancer that forms in the pancreas begins in the cells that line the ducts that carry digestive enzymes out of the pancreas (pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma).
  • Pancreatic cancer is seldom detected at its early stages when it’s most curable.
    • This is because it often doesn’t cause symptoms until after it has spread to other organs.
  • Pancreatic cancer treatment options are chosen based on the extent of the cancer. Options may include surgery, chemotherapy, radiation therapy or a combination of these.

Symptoms

  • Signs and symptoms of pancreatic cancer often don’t occur until the disease is advanced.
  • They may include:
    • Abdominal pain that radiates to your back
    • Loss of appetite or unintended weight loss
    • Yellowing of your skin and the whites of your eyes (jaundice)
    • Light-colored stools
    • Dark-colored urine
    • Itchy skin
    • New diagnosis of diabetes or existing diabetes that’s becoming more difficult to control
    • Blood clots
    • Fatigue

·      When to see a doctor

  • See your doctor if you experience any unexplained symptoms that worry you.
  • Many other conditions can cause these symptoms,
    • so your doctor may check for these conditions as well as for pancreatic cancer.

Causes

  • It’s not clear what causes pancreatic cancer.
    • Doctors have identified some factors that may increase the risk of this type of cancer,
      • including smoking
      • and having certain inherited gene mutations.

Understanding your pancreas

  • Your pancreas is about 6 inches (15 centimeters) long
    • and looks something like a pear lying on its side.
    • It releases (secretes) hormones,
      • including insulin, to help your body process sugar in the foods you eat.
      • And it produces digestive juices to help your body digest food and absorb nutrients.

How Pancreatic Cancer Forms

  • Pancreatic cancer occurs when cells in your pancreas develop changes (mutations) in their DNA.
    • A cell’s DNA contains the instructions that tell a cell what to do.
    • These mutations tell the cells to grow uncontrollably
      • and to continue living after normal cells would die.
    • These accumulating cells can form a tumor.
      • When left untreated, the pancreatic cancer cells can spread to nearby organs and blood vessels and to distant parts of the body.
  • Most pancreatic cancer begins in the cells that line the ducts of the pancreas.
    • This type of cancer is called pancreatic adenocarcinoma
      • or pancreatic exocrine cancer.
    • Less frequently, cancer can form in the hormone-producing cells or the neuroendocrine cells of the pancreas.
    • These types of cancer are called
      • pancreatic neuroendocrine tumors,
      • islet cell tumors or
      • pancreatic endocrine cancer.

Risk factors

  • Factors that may increase your risk of pancreatic cancer include:
    • Smoking
    • Diabetes
    • Chronic inflammation of the pancreas (pancreatitis)
    • Family history of genetic syndromes that can increase cancer risk,
      • including a BRCA2 gene mutation,
    • Family history of pancreatic cancer
    • Obesity
    • Older age, as most people are diagnosed after age 65
  • A large study demonstrated that the combination of
    • smoking,
    • long-standing diabetes
    • and a poor diet
    • increases the risk of pancreatic cancer beyond the risk of any one of these factors alone.

Complications

  • As pancreatic cancer progresses, it can cause complications such as:
    • Weight loss.
      • A number of factors may cause weight loss in people with pancreatic cancer.
      • Weight loss might happen as the cancer consumes the body’s energy.
      • Nausea and vomiting caused by cancer treatments or a tumor pressing on your stomach may make it difficult to eat.
      • Or your body may have difficulty processing nutrients from food because your pancreas isn’t making enough digestive juices.
    • Pancreatic cancer that blocks the liver’s bile duct can cause jaundice.
    • Signs include yellow skin and eyes,
      • dark-colored urine,
      • and pale-colored stools.
      • Jaundice usually occurs without abdominal pain.
    • A growing tumor may press on nerves in your abdomen,
      • causing pain that can become severe.
      • Pain medications can help you feel more comfortable.
      • Treatments, such as radiation and chemotherapy, might help slow tumor growth and provide some pain relief.
    • In severe cases, your doctor might recommend a procedure to inject alcohol into the nerves that control pain in your abdomen (celiac plexus block).
      • This procedure stops the nerves from sending pain signals to your brain.
  • Bowel obstruction.
    • Pancreatic cancer that grows into or presses on the first part of the small intestine (duodenum) can block the flow of digested food from your stomach into your intestines.

Treatment

  RESECTABLE LESIONS

  • Surgical resection is the only potentially curative treatment for pancreatic ductal adenocarcinomas.
    • Approximately 15% to 20% of patients have resectable disease,
      • but less than 20% of patients who undergo surgery survive five years.
    • Although immediate postoperative mortality is less than 5%,
      • the median survival is about 12 to 19 months.
    • Studies support the recommendation that pancreatic resections should be performed at high-volume institutions,
      • generally those that complete at least 15 pancreatic resections annually.
    • Higher-volume centers have reported
      • decreased mortality rates,
      • shorter hospital stay,
      • and lower overall cost compared with low-volume institutions.
  • The classic surgery for resection of a carcinoma of the head of the pancreas is a pancreaticoduodenectomy,
    • also known as a Whipple procedure.
      • In this surgery, the gallbladder, common bile duct, second portion of the duodenum, and the head of the pancreas are resected.
  • Tumors involving the body or tail of the pancreas are rarely resectable.
    • They are usually advanced at diagnosis and cause symptoms late in their development.
  • There is no standard for providing adjuvant treatment of pancreatic ductal adenocarcinomas postoperatively.
    • Chemotherapy improves survival by two to three months compared with observation alone.

UNRESECTABLE LESIONS

  • More than 80% of patients present with disease that is not surgically resectable.
  • Although a histologic diagnosis is not necessary before surgery,
    • it is required for treatment of locally advanced,
      • unresectable,
      • or metastatic disease.
      • Some studies have addressed the use of chemoradiation with or without chemotherapy to convert unresectable disease status to resectable.
      • Postresection, these patients have survival rates similar to those with disease initially determined to be resectable.

LOCALLY ADVANCED LESIONS AND METASTASIS

  • The primary goals of treatment for advanced pancreatic cancers are palliation and improved survival.
    • In some patients who have good performance status (i.e., adequate nutrition and pain control),
      • some effect on survival may be achieved.
  • The National Comprehensive Cancer Network recommends
    • systemic chemotherapy
      • followed by chemoradiation therapy as a treatment option.

PALLIATIVE CARE

  • Very often, when this is diagnosed, there is already nothing that can be done for the patient. It is just that bad a disease.

Prevention

  • You may reduce your risk of pancreatic cancer if you:
    • Stop smoking.
      • If you smoke, try to stop.
      • Talk to your doctor about strategies to help you stop, including support groups, medications and nicotine replacement therapy.
      • If you don’t smoke, don’t start.
    • Maintain a healthy weight.
      • If you are at a healthy weight, work to maintain it.
      • If you need to lose weight, aim for a slow, steady weight loss — 1 to 2 pounds (0.5 to 1 kilogram) a week.
      • Combine daily exercise with a diet rich in vegetables, fruit and whole grains with smaller portions to help you lose weight.
    • Choose a healthy diet.
      • A diet full of colorful fruits and vegetables and whole grains may help reduce your risk of cancer.
  • Consider meeting with a genetic counselor if you have a family history of pancreatic cancer.
    • He or she can review your family health history with you and determine whether you might benefit from a genetic test to understand your risk of pancreatic cancer or other cancers.

Tagged With: Cancer, Dr. Jim Morrow, Morrow Family Medicine, pancreatic cancer, To Your Health With Dr. Jim Morrow

What to Consider Before Starting or Buying a Business, with Paul Wilson, UGA SBDC at GSU

November 12, 2020 by John Ray

UGA Small Business Development Center Paul Wilson
North Fulton Studio
What to Consider Before Starting or Buying a Business, with Paul Wilson, UGA SBDC at GSU
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UGA Small Business Development Center Paul Wilson

What to Consider Before Starting or Buying a Business, with Paul Wilson, UGA SBDC at GSU

Paul Wilson: [00:00:00] One of the things that I would say off the bat is to really look at what you already possess in terms of knowledge, skill set, your resources, your network, and really kind of analyze and evaluate. Is it the right time for me to pursue something on the business side or do I need to go look for another job because it could be that certain companies are hiring? Because it’s interesting that whenever you have these difficult economic situations, you actually have some businesses that are thriving because they’re able to leverage the environment.

Paul Wilson: [00:00:38] There’s a chemical company I’m familiar with that came to us and said they actually had one of their best years ever, but they happened to sell barrels of alcohol. So, in that case, they’re in a perfect place at the perfect time but, of course, we know that’s not everybody’s situation.

Paul Wilson: [00:00:38] So, analyzing. Do I have a skill sets? Like if you’re a healthcare worker right now, you have healthcare skills. There could be certain things or certain niches of the market where you actually could be doing very well or take advantage of an opportunity for somebody else to say that’s completely disconnected from, really, what’s in demand right now.

Paul Wilson: [00:01:15] So, I think that’s kind of one of the things to say, “Let me just kind of take a personal inventory to say whether or not I have something that’s actually in demand right now or is this something on the decline?” And that’s really done from a personal standpoint but, also, if you put that kind in the business context too. “Am I interested in pursuing a business that is just not growing right now? It is flat.”

Paul Wilson: [00:01:39] So, one of the things that we have access to, which is I think one of the most effective things that we can do for clients is market research. We have a lot of different types of databases. Some of it is national data that can show, let’s say, trends of specific industries, what’s happened over the last five years and what’s projected to happen over the next five years.

Paul Wilson: [00:02:01] So, you come to us with an idea and say, “Hey, I want to sell shoes.” “Okay, great. Let’s see what’s happened across the industry.” And there’s a certain type of thing you want to sell with the shoes or anything, and we can say, “That industry’s actually been in decline over the last five years. Is that really what you want to do right now from that standpoint?” And so, that’s some of the information that you can get, again, for free, only invest a little bit of time, without investing a whole lot of money yet to do something that may be on the decline.

Paul Wilson: [00:02:30] We have other additional information, not just national, that’s very localized. So, we can go to almost any address in the country and find demographic information, find customer behavior information, find other trend information, find who are the other types of businesses that may be your competitors? If you’re trying to start, say, a shoe store – I guess, we’re on shoes right now – a shoe store, we can put an address where the shoe store is going to be. And if we tell you that there’s actually 20 other shoe stores within a five-mile radius of where you want to put that, that may not be where you want to put it. Now, hey, maybe we find another place that has no shoe stores, right?

Paul Wilson: [00:03:09] But that’s the type of analysis that a lot of people skip. And going into the question about the mistake, that’s where a lot of people skip that research step because it’s not fun, it’s not interesting. If you watch and listen to social media, it makes you think entrepreneurship is easy. Just match it with your skillset and just take a risk.

John Ray: [00:03:09] That’s right. That’s right. Follow your passion, right? Yeah.

Paul Wilson: [00:03:33] Right, just follow your passion, that’s all you need to be successful.

John Ray: [00:03:35] That’s right.

Paul Wilson: [00:03:36] But we know that’s not true. So, they missed a step in there and one of the key steps, market research. This is if somebody wants what you’re selling other than your spouse or your mom. And just find out, where’s your market at? And we can help you to do that. And to me, that’s some of the best steps you can take. Again, whether you’re thinking about going in entrepreneurship or even if you’re already in business, you’re trying to figure out what to do next, to me, I think that market research piece is often skipped because, again, it’s not fun, it’s not sexy, if you will, but it’s one of the most important things you can do for, really, moving forward with your business.

Paul Wilson, Jr.  Area Director, UGA SBDC

Paul Wilson, Jr. is an innovative and effective entrepreneurial leader with nearly 20 years of experience creating and delivering high caliber consulting and training solutions to large corporations, small businesses, non-profits, and professionals at all levels. He currently leads the UGA Small Business Development Center at Georgia State University where his team provides consulting services, market research, business resources, and educational support to startup, growing, and mature small businesses to help them achieve their short and long-term goals.

He has extensive industry experience that spans leadership roles in supply chain management, supplier diversity, and small business development. His expertise includes strategic planning, organizational development, process improvement, leadership development, government and corporate contracting, and curriculum design and development.

Prior to joining GSU, he had the opportunity to work with several Fortune 500 companies, consult with multiple NFL teams, and teach at a university. He is also a published author, actor, and youth development advocate. He is passionately driven by a strong desire to create a significant impact with under-resourced individuals and communities.

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Listen to the complete North Fulton Business Radio interview with Paul here.


The “One Minute Interview” series is produced by John Ray and in the North Fulton studio of Business RadioX® in Alpharetta. You can find the full archive of shows by following this link.

Renasant Bank has humble roots, starting in 1904 as a $100,000 bank in a Lee County, Mississippi, bakery. Since then, Renasant has grown to become one of the Southeast’s strongest financial institutions with over $13 billion in assets and more than 190 banking, lending, wealth management and financial services offices in Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee, Georgia and Florida. All of Renasant’s success stems from each of their banker’s commitment to investing in their communities as a way of better understanding the people they serve. At Renasant Bank, they understand you because they work and live alongside you every day.

Decision Vision Episode 91: Should I Become an Adjunct Professor? – An Interview with Gary Clement, Clement Asset Management

November 12, 2020 by John Ray

Clement Asset Management
Decision Vision
Decision Vision Episode 91: Should I Become an Adjunct Professor? - An Interview with Gary Clement, Clement Asset Management
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Decision Vision Episode 91: Should I Become an Adjunct Professor? – An Interview with Gary Clement, Clement Asset Management

Gary Clement, Clement Asset Management, joins host Mike Blake to discuss his experience as a financial services professional who also teaches as an adjunct professor. “Decision Vision” is presented by Brady Ware & Company.

Gary Clement, President, Clement Asset Management

Clement Asset Management LLC is an advisory firm that offers financial planning services and recommends investment management strategies. They have been providing services and financial expertise to assist clients since 2006.

Gary O. Clement, CFP®, CRPS®, CRPC®, MPAS® is President of Clement Asset Management, LLC and a lead instructor in the Kaplan Schweser Certified Financial Planning Program. He has been educating clients and helping them reach their financial goals since 1998. Even before 1998, and steadfastly since then, Gary has been an ardent student of the financial services and investment world and considers himself both a lifelong student and teacher of personal finance. He enjoys educating groups, large and small, about money, personal finance, and the myriad financial products, vehicles, and strategies available to them.

Over the past 19 years, Gary has worked with various discount brokers, independent broker-dealers, and wirehouses. Today, Gary, as President of Clement Asset Management, LLC, focuses on providing comprehensive financial planning and investment management services to help clients achieve their financial goals.

Gary has held FINRA Series 7, 63, 65, 3, 31, and 24 licenses, and has been a Certified Financial Planner since 2006. Gary also holds the Chartered Retirement Planning Specialist, Chartered Retirement Planning Counselor, and Master Planner Advanced Studies designations. He’s also taught Financial Planning, Investment Management, Retirement Planning, and Estate Planning courses for the Certified Financial Planning programs at Oglethorpe University, the Terry College of Business at the University of  Georgia, and now teaches for Kaplan Schweser.

Gary is a proud graduate of Cheyney University of Pennsylvania, a graduate of the Oglethorpe University Financial Planner Program, and holds an M.S.F.S. degree from the College for Financial Planning. He is also currently pursuing a Ph.D. in financial planning at the University of Georgia.

Mike Blake, Brady Ware & Company

Mike Blake, Host of the “Decision Vision” podcast series

Michael Blake is the host of the “Decision Vision” podcast series and a Director of Brady Ware & Company. Mike specializes in the valuation of intellectual property-driven firms, such as software firms, aerospace firms, and professional services firms, most frequently in the capacity as a transaction advisor, helping clients obtain great outcomes from complex transaction opportunities. He is also a specialist in the appraisal of intellectual properties as stand-alone assets, such as software, trade secrets, and patents.

Mike has been a full-time business appraiser for 13 years with public accounting firms, boutique business appraisal firms, and an owner of his own firm. Prior to that, he spent 8 years in venture capital and investment banking, including transactions in the U.S., Israel, Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus.

Brady Ware & Company

Brady Ware & Company is a regional full-service accounting and advisory firm which helps businesses and entrepreneurs make visions a reality. Brady Ware services clients nationally from its offices in Alpharetta, GA; Columbus and Dayton, OH; and Richmond, IN. The firm is growth-minded, committed to the regions in which they operate, and most importantly, they make significant investments in their people and service offerings to meet the changing financial needs of those they are privileged to serve. The firm is dedicated to providing results that make a difference for its clients.

Decision Vision Podcast Series

“Decision Vision” is a podcast covering topics and issues facing small business owners and connecting them with solutions from leading experts. This series is presented by Brady Ware & Company. If you are a decision-maker for a small business, we’d love to hear from you. Contact us at decisionvision@bradyware.com and make sure to listen to every Thursday to the “Decision Vision” podcast.

Past episodes of “Decision Vision” can be found at decisionvisionpodcast.com. “Decision Vision” is produced and broadcast by the North Fulton studio of Business RadioX®.

Visit Brady Ware & Company on social media:

LinkedIn:  https://www.linkedin.com/company/brady-ware/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/bradywareCPAs/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/BradyWare

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bradywarecompany/

Show Transcript

Intro: [00:00:01] Welcome to Decision Vision, a podcast series focusing on critical business decisions. Brought to you by Brady Ware & Company. Brady Ware is a regional, full-service accounting and advisory firm that helps businesses and entrepreneurs make visions a reality.

Mike Blake: [00:00:20] Welcome to Decision Vision, a podcast giving you, the listener, clear vision to make great decisions. In each episode, we discuss the process of decision making on a different topic from the business owners’ or executives’ perspective. We aren’t necessarily telling you what to do, but we can put you in a position to make an informed decision on your own and understand where you might need help along the way.

Mike Blake: [00:00:40] My name is Mike Blake, and I’m your host for today’s program. I’m a director at Brady Ware and Company, a full-service accounting firm based in Dayton, Ohio, with offices in Dayton; Columbus, Ohio; Richmond, Indiana; and Alpharetta, Georgia. Brady Ware is sponsoring this podcast, which is being recorded in Atlanta per social distancing protocols. If you like this podcast, please subscribe on your favorite podcast aggregator, and please consider leaving a review of the podcast as well.

Mike Blake: [00:01:07] So, the topic for this episode is, Should I Become an Adjunct Professor? And I want to cover this topic because I think almost every accomplished professional at some point or another gives thought to this particular path, whether independently you start thinking about what would it like to be a professor or maybe you’re recruited, maybe somebody sees you out in the wild, so to speak, and they think you’d be a great professor and they try to recruit you in. But whatever the path is, I think most people are confronted with it.

Mike Blake: [00:01:49] And, you know, I’ve been a guest speaker for more classes than I can count, but I haven’t been an adjunct professor formally, necessarily. But it is rewarding. It is fun to get in there into a classroom and teach people who want to learn. And to lead an audience through an education experience of some kind. And I imagine being able to do that over the course of a semester where there’s a long narrative, a long instructional narrative that you’re leading your students through, I think, has the potential to be immensely rewarding as well.

Mike Blake: [00:02:31] And I think some people look at becoming an adjunct professor relatively early in their careers. It might be something they do to help build their personal brand. It might be something they do to build a resume. It might be something that they do to, frankly, get extra income while they’re getting their main career or their business off the ground. I’ve even seen the case where you might want to be an adjunct professor because it’s a great way to source young talent for your business. But, you know, whatever the reason, you see a lot of people who are, you know, early to mid part of their career, they decide on that path.

Mike Blake: [00:03:12] And then, there’s the other category where it’s somebody who’s kind of in give back mode. It might be somebody who’s already retired or somebody who’s contemplating retirement. They’ve more or less made their dollars. They’ve made whatever brand they’re going to make. And now, you know, they see being a professor as a second act or, at least, part of a second act and which is a side gig. And unless you know an adjunct professor, it’s hard to kind of understand exactly what you’re in for. And there isn’t actually a ton of material on the Internet. There’s some, but not necessarily a lot. So, I think I know I’m going to enjoy this interview. And I think you, the listeners, are going to as well because if you’re thinking about this at all or at some point you will be, I think, getting inside the head and getting inside the life experience of somebody who’s walked this path is something that you’re going to find very helpful.

Mike Blake: [00:04:08] So, to that end, joining us is my friend, Gary Clement, who is president of Clement Asset Management. And is a newly retained assistant professor at the University of Alabama. And he is speaking with us from Tuscaloosa today. Gary is a financial services professional with 20 years of experience in the financial services industry with discount brokers, independent broker dealers, and wire houses. He has extensive knowledge of financial service business models and delivery channels, investment strategies and approaches, and investment products and vehicles. He’s a passionate instructor and financial coach, both to individuals and large groups. Gary is an accomplished communicator with proven leadership qualities and holds just about every license that FINRA makes you hold if you’re going to be in that industry or can offer for you to be in that industry. It’s more than you need to.

Mike Blake: [00:04:59] Gary has been an adjunct professor at the College for Financial Planning and adjunct professor at Clark Atlanta University and an instructor with a CFP certification program. Gary, himself, is a graduate of – Gary, you have to help me pronounce this. It’s Cheyney University?

Gary Clement: [00:05:17] Cheyney.

Mike Blake: [00:05:17] Okay. Cheyney University of Pennsylvania with a Degree in Mathematics, summa cum laude. I did not know that. That explains why he kicks my ass in chess all the time. And has passed Level 1 of the CFA Institute’s Chartered Financial Analyst program. And is a doctoral student at the University of Georgia’s Financial Planning Study. All around good guy, phenomenal chess player, Gary Clement, welcome to the program.

Gary Clement: [00:05:41] Thanks for having me, Mike. Thanks for having me.

Mike Blake: [00:05:43] So, what does it mean to you, just sort of definitionally, to be an adjunct professor? What is it?

Gary Clement: [00:05:52] Well, I think, a lot of the things that you talked about in the intro are really important in terms of thinking about being an adjunct instructor. But, you know, one of the things that I think is important is, you got to have a vision for why you want to do it, what do you want to accomplish in doing it, and who do you want to impact by doing it. So, when I think of the idea of adjuncting, one of the things that comes to mind is, do you have a love for teaching? Do you enjoy teaching? Do you enjoy being around people that are learning? And that, I think, fuels a lot of it. When I look at it, I look at it as something that should be fun because, although, it’s rewarding in a lot of different ways, it’s not really rewarding financially.

Mike Blake: [00:06:39] So, nobody is thinking they’re getting rich by being an adjunct professor?

Gary Clement: [00:06:45] No. And I don’t think that that should be the purpose for doing it. One of the things that I found in doing it immediately after I got my CFP was I wanted to have some adjunct as I was building my business. I want to have some adjunct means of earning some money. But I found that I enjoyed it so much. But I also found something really important. I found that it was really synergistic with what I do. So, as I got better as an instructor, I got better as an advisor. As I got better as an advisor, I got better as an instructor. So, I think that if you’re looking at doing something that will build your skills, keep you engaged in a way that you wouldn’t normally be engaged as a professional to get better continually, incrementally, adjuncting is a great way to do that.

Gary Clement: [00:07:34] And part of the reason is, you really never know what the limitations of your knowledge really are because you don’t necessarily have to confront that. But when you have to study hard enough to present a class and when you have to respond to questions that you may not have anticipated, it gives you a great opportunity to continue to learn on a much deeper level. And, of course, just the repetition of doing it over and over and over again, you know, you get to be really fluent in your subject matter. And there’s no other way to do that other than by teaching. And then, it gets down to how we learn as people. And they say that, you only learn a small percentage or retain a small percentage if you read it. You only retain a small percentage if you attend a presentation. But you really retain a whole lot more if you teach that subject matter. And I think that all of that is really true.

Mike Blake: [00:08:35] You know, one of my mentors – I have not had many in my career, but one who I did have – told me that, if you want to ever learn something, teach it. And I found that to be invaluable advice because I found – I’m curious if you found this as well – when I am called upon to teach something, and sometimes it will be a very advanced subject matter, sometimes it will be very basic, but in either case, when I think about presenting it and I think about how I’m going to explain it, I realize that there are some things that I’ve sort of taken for granted and never really fully explored the why. There are some things where, maybe, my knowledge isn’t state of the art. There are some places where I’ve gotten to bad habits. There are places where I thought I learned something and I didn’t. And it was only because I was forced to look something up and nobody ever caught it. And I think that happens a lot or nobody ever called me on it. But there’s something about knowing that you’re going to present to an audience that just makes your focus that much more and sort of take care of the rigor. Have you found that as well?

Gary Clement: [00:09:55] Absolutely. I mean, I think you really encapsulated that. You know, you really do have to study much, much harder. You have to anticipate some questions, particularly around subject matter that’s a little bit more challenging. But then, there’s going to be those questions that you could never anticipate, you just never thought about. And that’s where the real learning opportunity comes from. Aside from the work that you have to put in to prepare, it’s those questions that just come out of the left field that cause you to really stretch. And you may not have an answer for them, but it’s just another opportunity to go look something else up and figure out an answer. So, all of those things happen when you’re teaching and, especially, if you’re teaching on a regular basis.

Gary Clement: [00:10:40] Now, for me, lucky enough, when I started out, I was teaching adults. So, these were folks that were industry professionals for the most part or career changers. So, people within the range of 30 to 40, sometimes a little bit younger, sometimes a little bit older. So, it was great to get questions from people that were actively engaged in the field and get an opportunity to pursue some areas of inquiry that were really within their wheelhouse, but not yet in mine. So, that really was a good way to do that. So, that’s absolutely true.

Mike Blake: [00:11:18] And you know, that highlight something that I’d like to share an observation. As long as I’ve known you, you’re a low ego guy. That doesn’t mean that you’re not aggressive, it doesn’t mean you’re not driven. But you are a low ego guy. And I think that a low ego personality both is more effective as an instructor and I think benefits most from being an instructor. Because when somebody asks you a question to which you don’t know the answer, you don’t try to tap dance your way around it. You don’t get defensive. I’m betting that when you’re asked that question – and you have. You’ve been around too long not to – your answer is, “You know what? That’s a great question. Let me figure it out and get back to you.” And then, you both learn, right?

Gary Clement: [00:12:09] Yeah. I think that that’s a whole lot safer than trying to fudge an answer that’s completely wrong. And you’re right, I mean, a lot of times teachers want to be right. They want to have the answers. But sometimes you just don’t have the answers. And it’s not only safer to say, “I don’t have the answer at this time. But I can find the answer and get back to you.” But it also gives you a certain amount of cachet as an instructor, because we don’t have all the answers and we shouldn’t fake it if we don’t have the answer. And at the same time, it really leads to being a teacher with integrity because you’re not trying to fake it. And I think that that really helps students understand that this is all a process. It’s a process for students and it’s a process for instructor.

Mike Blake: [00:12:58] So, what was your first position? I know it wasn’t Clark Atlanta. Was it College for Financial Planning? Was that your first?

Gary Clement: [00:13:09] No. No. It was actually Oglethorpe.

Mike Blake: [00:13:14] Oglethorpe. Okay.

Gary Clement: [00:13:14] Yeah. And to be honest with you, a lot of that ties into what we just said. You know, one of the things that I think is important about being an instructor, especially a new instructor, is what I mentioned just a second ago, it’s a learning experience. So, when you’re coming in and you’re teaching for the first time, you can’t expect to be great the first time. You know, but what I think is, you’ve got to really make peace with in order to be good, sometimes you have to be bad. And I’m going to rephrase that a different way, if it’s worth being good at something, it’s also worth being bad at it until you can get good, as long as you learn from the lessons that you take day after day after day.

Gary Clement: [00:13:56] So, you know, the first class that you might teach might be kind of rough. You know, maybe you’re asked to teach something that you haven’t taught before. I always looked at that as an opportunity to learn something better that I didn’t know as well, even though, I had to take my lumps in the classroom by not understanding things well enough to explain it well, not being able to answer their questions really well, and really having to rely on coming back to folks to answer questions. But if you can make it through those times – and relatively short if you put the time into really learning the subject matter – it’s a really great, great thing to go through that and be good enough to teach that with confidence as time goes by. But it’s a process.

Mike Blake: [00:14:42] And for those of you who are not in the Atlanta area, Oglethorpe University is a private institution that is here in Atlanta. And, actually, it’s about three miles south of where I live so I’m very familiar with it. So, you’re so right about if you want to be good at something, you have to be willing to be bad. Not that I’m a great cook at all, but I’ve always thought and told people that, every great chef got to that point by making a ton of lousy food. And I like to think in my profession, you know, the best appraisal that I ever do or the best strategic advisory engager I ever do is the last one that I do. I’m not going to get better. I just walk off the floor and off we go. That may or may not be realistic. But you’re right, I mean, it is a skill and it may be rough. So, I want to dig deeper into that. So, your first teaching gig was at Oglethorpe. How did you get it?

Gary Clement: [00:15:45] It was just pure luck, to be honest with you. It was a situation where I knew that I wanted to teach. I didn’t know how to go about getting the job. I inquired. I didn’t really get too much of an answer on inquiring. And, basically, I just fell into the position at the right time. Oglethorpe had a program director in a CFP program that defected and went to University of Georgia and started their certification program at their location at Lennox in Atlanta. And it just so happened, I sent a huge package over to Oglethorpe right after that happened. So, they had a new program director. A program director that was there before it took almost all the instructors. So, they had a need for somebody and I stepped into that void. So, it is that easy for me, but it was just something that was just luck at the time.

Gary Clement: [00:16:46] I think, though, that colleges have a pretty consistent need for adjuncts. So, I think that it’s important to continue to really pursue those opportunities, make relationships, or establish relationships with people in departments. Because when they do have a need, you know, they’re going to think of you and calling you to take advantage of that opportunity. And that’s what happened at Clark Atlanta. I wasn’t pursuing that. It’s just that I knew somebody who was the program director there and they had a need. They called me up with that need. I was able to do it and it worked out fine.

Gary Clement: [00:17:26] So, those are the things that can make the road a little bit easier for you. But I think that even if you just really just pursued it on a regular basis, colleges do have those opportunities that come up all the time. And one of the things that makes that something that you can really latch on to is the fact that when we talked about it, there’s not a lot of money in adjuncting. So, you know, you’re doing it for lunch money for the most part – maybe a little more than lunch money. But it’s not a lot of money. So, there are times when people that are adjuncting, [inaudible] a lot of those jobs because they have other opportunities. So, those opportunities are continually coming up.

Mike Blake: [00:18:11] So, while, perhaps, there was some luck involved just because of the timing, they knew to call you because you said you sent a package to the program director. When you say you sent a package, what does that mean?

Gary Clement: [00:18:25] I sent my resume. I sent some articles that I had written. I really put it together with color and all kinds of things. And I put it together in somewhat of a portfolio. So, it was more than just a resume. You know, it really was a well-rounded idea of what I could bring as an instructor to the university. So, it was more extensive than a resume. But I think a resume might have done just as well, to be honest with you.

Mike Blake: [00:18:57] Well, you’ll never know. But I think the approach is interesting, right? Because, to me, it makes perfect sense. If you’re going to pursue an academic position than demonstrating that you have an academic mindset, meaning that you research, that you communicate, and you have an interest in making an intellectual contribution to your field, I think that that’s helpful. Just putting myself in the hiring position, if I had somebody that not only sent me a resume and not a CV, but here’s, also, you have to go looking for it, here are my three favorite articles or four, whatever you did. Here are the three favorite things that I’ve done and that I’m passionate about and I think I’m an expert on, I mean, it just makes it easier to hire you if nothing else, right?

Gary Clement: [00:19:54] I would like to think so. But like you said, I’ll never know. I think it was a combination of that and being in the right place at the right time.

Mike Blake: [00:20:03] So, I do want to explore this and I think a lot of people they think about being an adjunct professor. I think they’re in your shoes. They’re, “I’d like to do this. I have a passion for teaching.” And the things that we talked about, how do you get started? And what you described to me is it’s really no different than landing any other position. It’s about networking and building a brand and building relationships. And the more that you do, the more likely it is that you’re going to “get lucky” because you’re going to get more opportunities.

Gary Clement: [00:20:40] Absolutely. Absolutely. I think that puts it together in a nutshell.

Mike Blake: [00:20:46] Now, when you got started – now, you hold a master’s degree, if I’m not mistaken, correct?

Gary Clement: [00:20:52] Yes.

Mike Blake: [00:20:52] And is that kind of the table stakes to get into an adjunct position? Do you have to have a master’s degree or are there people that hold less advanced degrees than that that are able to find adjunct positions?

Gary Clement: [00:21:07] You can. You can get an adjunct position without a master’s degree. However, it’s easier if you have a master’s degree. And part of the reason I went forward and got the master’s degree is this, when I went to Oglethorpe, I went into the CFP program as an adjunct, which didn’t require that I had a master’s degree. But what I noticed was that a lot of the certification programs were being pulled into degree granting programs and colleges. So, knowing that I wanted to continue teaching, I knew then that I would have had to at least get a master’s degree, to at least make sure that I was going to continually have those opportunities. So, I went forward and got the master’s degree and it just made it easier, because many schools do require it, some do not. And if I had to say, I’d have to say that most of them do require master’s degree. So, it just made it easier for me to step in and teach in programs.

Gary Clement: [00:22:03] And then, of course, going through the master’s program, I got attracted to the idea of doing a doctorate, which makes it even far easier. And if you wanted to go further with teaching and be a full time teacher or even a part time teacher in a regular program, this is really a great way to do many of the things that you talked about a second ago, find new talent and provide opportunities for them. You can also find a way to ease into retirement because teaching is great. And as you teach the same subjects over and over again, it gets a lot easier. And being an academic in that regard is a really good way to, not only ease into retirement, but if you’re doing it full time with a big university, you’re talking about a whole lot more money that you’re making as well. So, these are all things that you can do while you’re running another business. And if you find that it’s time to transition out of the business, you’ve got a soft landing space that you know is almost hard to beat.

Mike Blake: [00:23:07] Now, how is the subject matter chosen? I suspect that many people considering an adjunct role think about, “Okay. I’ve got this great class that I want to teach. I really want to teach somebody on option theory. I want to teach medieval Russian history. I’ve got a specific subject that I want to teach.” How does the subject to be taught get chosen or assigned and/or match with the instructor? Do you have any say? Or is it decided, “Hey, we need somebody to teach this class, do you want to teach it?”

Gary Clement: [00:23:52] Initially, you don’t have any say. You really have to go based on what the needs of the college actually are. And they’ll let you know what they need you to teach. But one of the great things is, after you teach at an institution for a while, when they get to know you, if they have a need, or if they’re thinking about bringing on a new program, you’re now in that institution. And if you’re one of the people that can actually teach that class, you’ve got an opportunity to create something new. But generally coming in, you know, they have their needs, they know what they want. And you’ve got to teach what they have available for you to teach. But beyond that, you can create some new opportunities.

Mike Blake: [00:24:36] So, in your mind, looking back at how you started and how you’ve developed, you’ve probably observed other adjuncts as well, you know, if I’m taking a skills inventory for myself, I’m thinking about becoming an adjunct professor, what skill set do you think sets a person up for the greatest success?

Gary Clement: [00:24:56] Well, a couple of things. I mean, of course, being able to communicate is important. But not just that. You really have to be somewhat of a performer. You know, you’re presenting in front of a class, it could be 12 students, it could be 100 students, we don’t know. But you’re in front of the class and you’re no different than any other person who’s on stage doing something. So, I always think that being a teacher and being a presenter is not just about the information. You have to present the information in a way that people can grab onto that information. You have to make it somewhat enjoyable. That’s one of the reasons why I say you’re somewhat of an entertainer or a presenter because you want to make it come alive for people. And at the same time, you want to be able to develop relationships because it’s not just about presenting to students. You have to make a connection. And that connection is a personal connection. So, all of those things are important.

Gary Clement: [00:25:53] And then, the most important thing is just to have a great deal of inquisitiveness yourself, because you’re going to be dealing with the subject matter. You’re probably going to go forward and do more study around the fringes of the core of the class. So, those types of things are all very, very important. But the most important thing goes back to what we said before, you know, you can’t be afraid to fail. You have to have that muscle. You have to be able to say, “I’m going to go in here and give it my best shot” knowing that, you know, it may not be great, but the next time a bit better, the next time will be better. And each time after that, you’re going to be better. And you have to be able to do that. And the bottom line is that, if you do that enough, you’re going to gain the kind of skill and confidence to go anywhere after that and then teach in any kind of environment.

Mike Blake: [00:26:48] Now, in order to be sort of an adjunct type instructor, do you necessarily have to teach at a college or there are other outlets that are available for that kind of energy or that kind of design?

Gary Clement: [00:27:02] Oh, yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. Now, you know, I teach for Kaplan as well. So, Kaplan is a business, not a college. Although they merged with College for Financial Planning, at least the division that I’ve been in. And there’s all sorts of classes that can be taught. There are classes that help people prepare for exams, standardized tests. There’s classes that are designed to help people get a little bit more knowledge in a specific area. So, all of those are opportunities and those are actually opportunities that don’t require an advanced degree. But you do have to have a lot of experience and have the ability to present the material well and bring something to the table.

Mike Blake: [00:27:49] You know, and I think that’s an important area to be mindful of if you’re thinking about getting into teaching, is that, although, your obvious target might be universities or colleges, there are lots of adult education outlets that need and want teachers, particularly ones with experience. But, you know, they need people that can do that content. And, you know, frankly, it’s not everybody that wants to do this. You know, a lot of people still have stage fright. And it’s like the person that’s simply willing to get on the ladder to get the job to fix the gutter, basically. And I think, you know, instructing can sometimes be that way, if you’ve sort of overcome the inherent fear of performing that many of us have, you know, there are lots of outlets. And I would imagine it can be that gig at Kaplan, for example, can help set you up for that university gig later because they see you have that teaching experience.

Gary Clement: [00:28:57] No question about it. I’m at University of Alabama today because of Kaplan, because of Oglethorpe, because of University of Georgia. So, it takes that first opportunity to gain not only the skill and confidence to take on the next opportunity, but these things snowball. So, Oglethorpe was my first opportunity. I taught there for five years. I left there and went to the certification program at University of Georgia, and was there for a year. Then, got the opportunity with Kaplan. And then, got the opportunity with College for Financial Planning. And, ultimately, here. So, this can be something that you build incrementally. And each step builds on the next step. So, absolutely, that is true.

Mike Blake: [00:29:44] So, you’ve talked about building the muscle and becoming better over time. Can you say, specifically, where do you feel like your skills have improved or, at least, your confidence in them has improved over time throughout your teaching career?

Gary Clement: [00:30:00] Well, it’s really just a matter of being around and going through this over and over again. And I happen to be a glutton for punishment with regards to studying this stuff. So, you know, it really is repetition, study, really taking note of things that happened in the real world, things that happen in practice, things that went well in class, things that didn’t go well in class. You know, I’m like you in this regard. What really drives me continually is to be better. And what drives me to continue teaching is I’m always looking for the perfect class, knowing that there’s not going to be a perfect class. There are going to be things that come up. There are going to be things that I can’t answer right off the bat. There are going to be things that I say I could have explained better. And it just drives me forward to get better and better and better at it. And that’s the type of thing that’s exciting and never ends. And I think that as you do that, you’re going to get better, and it’s just a desire to keep doing that.

Mike Blake: [00:31:06] Now, you mentioned before that also being an adjunct professor has helped your business, which is in the investment and wealth advisory space. Talk a little bit about that. Talk about how your time in the classroom has made you more effective in that side of your professional life.

Gary Clement: [00:31:23] Yeah. It’s really been very synergistic in that regard. When you’re used to going over concepts over and over and over again, it makes it easy when clients have questions. And I always look at myself as an educator, whether I’m in the classroom or dealing with clients. So, the ability to explain things and break it down to a level that anybody should be able to understand is a skill that really cuts across either type of endeavor. So, that really is the basic thing that has really been helpful.

Gary Clement: [00:31:57] The other thing is, you know, when you have a wider base of knowledge, then you’ve got a lot of different tools that you can use to help a client meet a specific objective. So, those things are really helpful in practice. But the major thing is just being fluent, being fluent in all the things that you need to explain to someone. Even though, again, you may not have all the answers for your client, but if you’ve got a lot of the answers, they roll off your tongue like you’ve talked about them a lot and you have it if you’re a teacher, it’s going to be easy for you.

Mike Blake: [00:32:29] Now, what about the time commitment outside of the classroom? I liken teaching to what John Elway said when he retired from football. He retired after having won two Super Bowls, finally, at the end of his career. And when asked about why would you retire on top of the game and he said that, “If all I had to do was play on Sunday, I’d still play. But it’s the other six days that I can’t do anymore.” And I think teaching is like that too. The glory part is that performance time, the hour, the two hours, or three hours in the classroom. But talk about the investment time that’s required away from the classroom so that you can do that effectively.

Gary Clement: [00:33:12] Yeah. Initially, it’s a lot. So, you could probably count on doing two, maybe three hours for every hour that you’re in class just to prepare, make sure that you’re ready, make sure that you’ve got an idea of where the questions may come from. And then, be practiced enough to go in there and really do a good job during that particular hour of teaching. Over time, however, if you do it over and over again and you’re teaching the same class, that prep time goes down dramatically. And if you’ve done it for years, then that prep time might be close to zero, which is great when you get to that point. But it does take time. Initially, you’ve got to put in a lot of time just to be relatively good at it. And I say relatively good, again, because, you know, you’re not going to have everything in place in terms of your knowledge and your ability when you step in the door to teach something for the first time.

Mike Blake: [00:34:09] So, let’s change gears here for something, this is a question, I think, is very broad application. And that is, you know, have you been put in a position since the pandemic, or maybe you’ve done it otherwise, where you’ve had to teach remotely?

Gary Clement: [00:34:25] Yes.

Mike Blake: [00:34:28] And I have a view on this, but I don’t want to skew it. How do you find that as a teacher? Does it make it easier? Does it make it harder? How do you have to adapt to be in that environment?

Gary Clement: [00:34:41] Well, you know, lucky for me, I’ve been doing it for a while. Because when I went with Kaplan, which is eight years ago now, that was all virtual. And even though it was set up in a situation where the students can see me, I can’t see them. And it was a little weird at first. What I found was, it’s not that different than being in a regular class. The major difference is you don’t have spontaneous conversations. So, that’s a little bit of a missing. But for the most part, you know, you can really approach it like you’d approach any other class.

Gary Clement: [00:35:14] Now, last year was different, because at Clark Atlanta, we went virtual when things hit in March. So, we went to Zoom and we’re doing a lot of that here at Alabama. And that’s a little different. But, again, I pursue it just like I pursue any regular class. The students are there. And in that scenario with Zoom, you can see everyone and they can see you. So, it’s even more like a regular class. Where it’s different is, if you’ve got an asynchronous class, which I do with College for Financial Planning. So, there, you don’t really have that connection. And you’re really interacting with people who are posting things and discussion checks and sending in assignments. So, you don’t have that same kind of connection.

Gary Clement: [00:36:00] And the only thing I would say about that is, you want to try to create that kind of connection in other ways, whether that means meeting with students outside of class, on Zoom, or FaceTime, or emailing them back and forth. That kind of gets you that kind of connection. It’s tough, but it is a good transition to anybody or for anybody that can do it, because those are the opportunities that are going to be coming up more and more and more.

Gary Clement: [00:36:34] We see now a lot of people have to do that. A lot of people that didn’t expect to do that have to do that in this particular timeframe. But I think colleges are going to really note that there’s a lot of opportunity there. Because so many more people in the classroom, they’re not bound by any geographic location. And it just makes sense because the technology can support it.

Gary Clement: [00:36:57] Here’s the other thing I would say too – and this even gets beyond adjuncting. You know, it is the opportunity to create the class that you want to create and market and sell it yourself. So, I think that that’s something that people should think about as well as they’re going through the process of considering being an adjunct.

Mike Blake: [00:37:16] Well, that certainly is an option. YouTube makes it easy and you might even be able to put on Udemy or something like that. So, you’re right, we haven’t even talked about the virtual delivery platform in that way. I have taught some classes virtually. I did one that was asynchronous. Asynchronous was rough for me. And that was also very long and it was right after COVID hit, so I was not prepared for what to expect. And, quite frankly, it’s probably one of the worst classes I ever taught. But the thing that hit me was, you realize how much energy you receive from your audience when it’s not there. When you have to produce every amount of energy yourself, that is mentally and physically a massive toll that I think you have to be prepared for if you’re going to teach virtually. And I was not prepared for it. It stunned me how hard it is.

Gary Clement: [00:38:23] Yes. I can underscore that a thousand percent. If you are teaching a class asynchronously where you’re recording yourself doing a lecture and there’s no audience, not having an audience makes it really incumbent on you to build the enthusiasm, to present as though there’s somebody there, and to create the kind of excitement around the subject matter that is easy to do when you’ve got an audience, but very difficult to do if you don’t have an audience. You have to generate that all yourself. And sometimes it’s a pale second to actually doing it live with somebody in class.

Mike Blake: [00:39:09] And that’s probably the new skill that is going to be in demand, as people are going to develop remote presentation skills and techniques and such. And somebody that I follow on the Internet told me that what he’s doing, he started using a standing desk for delivering virtual presentations because he just finds he has more energy when he does that. I think that’s an interesting idea. And that that in itself, I think, is going to evolve into a separate skill set, virtual instruction versus physical analog instruction.

Gary Clement: [00:39:45] I think you’re right. I think you’re right. Because when you’re sitting down doing it, it’s not the same. It is not the same at all.

Mike Blake: [00:39:53] So, as an adjunct, I’m curious if you ever had a chance to interact with full time faculty. I know there are full-time faculty at Clark Atlanta, for example. So, maybe that’s going to be the case study. Have you ever had a chance to interact? And what I’m getting at is, you know, there’s all kinds of data suggests that the market for full time captive instructors, professors, is drying up and tenure is really hard to come by. And those positions are being replaced, frankly, with adjuncts. And no industry is happy when they see their jobs being taken by another group. We live in a country where that is an ongoing discussion front and center, whether we like it or not. How do you find your interaction with full time faculty? Are they willing to be accepting of you? Do they put you in a distance? Are they, in some cases, hostile?

Gary Clement: [00:40:55] Honestly, my experiences have all been pretty good. But I will say this, it depends on when you’re teaching. Like, if you’re teaching and your classes are evening classes, you’re not going to have that much interaction with other professors. But if you’re teaching during a normal college day, yeah, you’re going to have interaction with them. And luckily for me, you know, I’ve always felt like I was part of the team. But one of the things you have to recognize also as an adjunct is, those people that are there that have tenure, you know, they’re safe. They’re not really feeling threatened by your presence. And a lot of times they know that you’re needed.

Gary Clement: [00:41:29] On the other hand, the great thing is, if there is an opening that comes up, and in the rare times that there are, you know, that person who is adjuncting has a leg up because of those relationships they have. So, if they wanted to transition to a position like that, they could easily do that. So, no, I have not felt any other way other than part of a team. And it’s always been a good experience.

Mike Blake: [00:41:59] We’re talking with Assistant Professor Gary Clement of the University of Alabama, and should you become an adjunct professor. We’re coming up on our hour time limit here but I do have a couple more questions that I want to get through. And, one, I think really resonates, I think, with your personal life experience. So, you’ve done something kind of interesting, I would like to get your input on this. Is that you’ve moved from kind of gig professor, to adjunct, and now you’ve gotten a full-time position as an assistant professor. In the university world, assistant professor means that you’re a professor, just not tenured, basically. And, first of all, congratulations. And second is, how hard is that to do? I mean, when you start off as an adjunct, is that a realistic path? Or, frankly, are you kind of a unicorn in that regard?

Gary Clement: [00:43:05] I don’t know that I’ve considered myself a unicorn in that regard. And I should be where I am now to having gone through the process at University of Georgia in the graduate doctorate program. I think that if you’re willing to do the work that it takes to get a doctorate, then that’s certainly a possibility. As far as having a master’s degree and going on as a full-time professor, that’s a little bit more difficult. Not to say that it’s impossible. But it’s certainly more difficult. And having a doctorate makes it far easier to transition into a position like that.

Mike Blake: [00:43:44] Gary, this has been a great conversation. I think people that are interested in pursuing this path will have learned a lot by listening to this podcast. If somebody has more questions that we weren’t able to cover today, can they contact you? And if so, what’s the best way to do that?

Gary Clement: [00:43:58] LinkedIn is probably the best. It comes straight to my phone. And I like having that connection, so I can see who’s actually reaching out. So, that’s always helpful as well.

Mike Blake: [00:44:11] All right. Well, thank you so much. And that’s going to wrap it up for today’s program. I would like to thank Professor Gary Clement so much for joining us and sharing his expertise with us. We’ll be exploring a new topic each week, so please tune in so that when you’re faced with your next executive decision, you have clear vision when making it. If you enjoy these podcasts, please consider leaving a review with your favorite podcast aggregator. It helps people find us that we can help them. Once again, this is Mike Blake. Our sponsor is Brady Ware & Company. And this has been the Decision Vision Podcast.

Tagged With: adjunct professor, Brady Ware, Brady Ware & Company, Clement Asset Management, Gary Clement, Michael Blake, Mike Blake, teaching, teaching in college, University of Alabama

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