​​​Morgan Hamon is a CPA and partner at Eisner Amper, bringing over 20 years of experience helping dental practices take control of their finances, increase profitability, and navigate complex tax strategies. As the former president of HDA Accounting Group, which he co-founded with his father after transitioning from an 11-year career as a Navy F-18 pilot, Hamon built a firm that grew to serve over 900 dental practices across all 50 states. Following a strategic merger with one of the top 20 accounting firms in the country, he now leads EAG Dental Advisors as a subsidiary of Eisner Amper, continuing his mission to help practice owners make smarter financial decisions. His unique approach focuses on monthly practice profitability analysis rather than just tax preparation, emphasizing revenue optimization before expense management to help dentists achieve their business goals of making a nice living, maintaining control over their professional lives, and building appreciating assets.

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

• [01:36] Morgan introduces himself and his unique path from Navy F-18 pilot to dental CPA
• [03:01] The startup journey with his father that led to HDA Accounting Group and specializing in dentistry
• [04:17] How their approach differs from traditional CPAs by focusing on profitability before tax preparation
• [06:22] The two key factors affecting profit: expenses and revenue, and why revenue is often the real culprit
• [08:30] Why dentists feel like they’re working hard but not seeing money, and the diagnostic process
• [14:32] The critical profit margin targets: 35-40% for successful seven-figure practices
• [18:08] Beyond accounting: serving as coach, therapist, and business advisor for practice owners
• [21:02] Marketing budget benchmarks by practice phase: 15-20% for startups, 0.5-2% for maintenance, 5%+ for growth
• [27:02] The golden nugget: focusing on accounts receivable management as the most important administrative function

In this episode…

Are you feeling like you’re working harder in your practice than ever but not seeing the financial results you deserve? Many dental practice owners experience the frustrating disconnect between clinical productivity and actual profit, often assuming they must be overspending somewhere when the real issue lies elsewhere. What if the key to improving practice profitability isn’t cutting expenses, but rather optimizing the revenue side of the equation?

According to Morgan Hamon, CPA and partner at Eisner Amper, most dental practices struggling with profitability have a revenue problem, not an expense problem. With experience serving over 1,000 dental practices, Hamon emphasizes that successful seven-figure practices should maintain profit margins of 35-40%, and when they fall short, the issue typically stems from not producing enough, not scheduling efficiently, not charging appropriately, or not collecting what’s owed. His diagnostic approach examines accounts receivable monthly, fee structures, and operational effectiveness before diving into expense analysis. Hamon’s philosophy centers on helping dentists achieve their real business goals: making a nice living, maintaining control over their professional lives, and building appreciating assets—not just filing tax returns.

In this episode of The Marketing32 Show, host Brett Allen interviews Morgan Hamon about taking a comprehensive approach to dental practice financial health. They explore the critical profit margin benchmarks for different practice sizes, why revenue optimization often trumps expense reduction, and how marketing budgets should scale based on practice phase and growth goals. Hamon shares insights from his unique journey from Navy pilot to dental industry CPA and explains why he believes accounts receivable management is the most important administrative function in any practice.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

• Brett Allen on LinkedIn
• Marketing32 – Performance-based dental marketing with growth guarantee
• Morgan Hamon on LinkedIn
• EAG Dental Advisors – Comprehensive dental practice financial services
• Eisner Amper – Top 20 national accounting firm
• Monday Morning Dentistry episode – Previous episode with Dr. Aaron Nicholas mentioned
• Practice Profitability Analysis – Sample reports available on EAG website

Quotable Moments

• “The profit margin, I can tell you with absolute certainty, the profit margin needs to be 35 to 40 percent… If you’re under that, there’s something we need to dig into.”
• “You have to have the horse before the cart. If we’re going to talk tax avoidance, you got to have the profit there… Let’s talk about that first.”
• “There’s no higher, more important administrative function in your practice besides collecting money. Otherwise, why bother? Why do this?”
• “I didn’t set out to own that business so I could just focus on my tax return… Let’s make a nice living. Let’s have some control over my life and let’s build something that’s worth something over time.”
• “I think more often than not, it’s on the revenue side of the profit equation. They’re either not producing like they could be… you’re either not producing, not scheduling, not charging, or not collecting.”

Action Steps

1. Review your financial reports monthly and analyze them systematically rather than just filing them away—set up regular calls with your CPA to identify action items
2. Focus daily on accounts receivable management, especially the 61-90 day category, to identify and fix systemic collection problems before they impact cash flow
3. Establish profit margin targets of 35-40% for your practice size and regularly measure against these benchmarks to identify when intervention is needed
4. Diagnose revenue problems before cutting expenses by examining four key areas: production levels, scheduling efficiency, fee structures, and collection rates
5. Allocate marketing budget appropriately based on practice phase: 15-20% for startups, 0.5-2% for maintenance, and 5%+ for aggressive growth

Sponsor for this episode…

This episode is brought to you by Marketing 32, the only dental marketing agency with the Practice Impact Formula™ for predictable growth without financial risk.

With a focus on new patient generation, addressing missed opportunities, and expert scheduling, Marketing 32 has helped over 170 practices in the US, Canada, and Australia. Grow in 30 days, or you don’t pay — it’s that simple.

To learn more, visit marketing32.com and schedule a 15-minute discovery call. If you’re a visionary practice ready for impact, Marketing 32 is ready to help you grow!

Episode Transcript:

Brett Allen (00:19)
Hi, Brett Allen here, host of the Marketing32 show where I connect with leading dentists, dental influencers, industry experts to uncover the latest and greatest in dentistry. What is it that you need to know and do to grow and thrive with your dental practice? This episode, of course, is brought to you by our team here at Marketing32. We are the only dental marketing agency that I know of that is truly performance-based.

So if you’re not growing, you don’t pay us. We really are invested in your growth. If you need help with growth, reach out to us at Marking32. We’ll see if we’re a great fit together. Quick shout out to Aaron Nicholas. Dr. Nicholas was on our show recently. He’s with mondaymorningdentistry.com. You should check him out if you’re interested in CE and hands-on CE. He’s got a whole suite of courses, both online and in person, that you should check out. Today’s guest, I’m excited to introduce you to

Morgan Hammond, he’s a CPA and partner at Eisner Amper, has spent over 20 years helping dental practices to take control of their finances, increase profitability, and navigate complex tax strategies. As the former president of HDA Accounting Group, he built a firm that grew to serve 900 plus dental practices across all 50 states, and now following a merger with one of the top 20 accounting firms in the industry.

He’s continuing to help practice owners make smarter financial decisions. So Morgan, welcome to the show. Happy to have you on.

Morgan Hamon (01:50)
Hey, real happy to be here.

Brett Allen (01:51)
Yeah. I’m looking forward to our conversation. We’ve had a CPA on here before, but I think your approach and especially the experience that you have is going to be fun to talk about in terms of profitability, helping the practice. yeah. So tell us more, Morgan. How did you get into dentistry and kind of your background? Walk us through that story to know Eisner Ampere today.

Morgan Hamon (02:05)
So

Sure.

Yeah, well, I took the very long road to becoming a CPA. Before joining that profession, I was a Navy pilot after college. I really wanted to do that. So the Navy paid for my undergrad degrees and then I went right in. So I spent 11 years. I flew F-18s as a West Coast guy and deployed. I was a flight instructor on F-18. There was a lot of great memories there. But then getting into my kind of early 30s,

Brett Allen (02:36)
Sweet!

Is that the photo behind

you?

Morgan Hamon (02:46)
That’s it, yeah, that’s what I flew. And so, yeah, a lot of off the aircraft carrier, which was very rewarding, but then had to eventually grow up and get a real job, right? So I went back to school, got a master’s in accounting, and about that time, my dad, who’s also a CPA, was, we’re both looking for something to do, and so we essentially did a startup that turned into HTA Accounting Group.

Brett Allen (02:49)
Wow.

Morgan Hamon (03:15)
⁓ And then just very early on just through some luck and opportunity found our way into the dental space very quickly realized this was a good fit for us and just never looked back. So it’s always been a very niche firm supporting dentists who own their dental practice, very specific. ⁓ So we did this for many, many years up till ⁓ early this year. My dad, he finally retired and some big shoes to fill there.

And so just the timing was good to combine with just a top 15 national firm to give us a deeper bench and a lot more resources to continue doing what we do. Still very specific, we’re organized as a subsidiary, Eisenhower Emper, EAG, dental advisors on the partner in charge. We’re still doing all the same things we’ve done for years. just now we have…

resources at our disposal to provide a more comprehensive one-stop experience for our clients because there’s just so much more we can do. So it’s super exciting. But our focus always has been and will continue to be supporting dentists who own dental practices.

Brett Allen (04:23)
Cool. You mentioned before the show, we were chatting a little bit, you focused more on just filing returns and bookkeeping. It’s like…

Morgan Hamon (04:30)
So what we do is we do the monthly accounting and then give our clients every month, you we don’t hand out just a generic P &L. ⁓ We give them a full color dashboard style report called our practice profitability analysis. And then of course we do the taxes. What makes us different is most accountants out there mainly just want to do a tax return, maybe a little bit of tax money. They’re very tax oriented. ⁓

I think that’s backwards a little bit. If we think about why, why don’t you to practice in the first place? You know, why own a business have to worry about like marketing and growing and managing people and all that. Like, why do that? Well, it’s not to file a tax return. It is to make a nice living and have some control over your life and build an appreciating asset. And so we want to be with our clients all year to help them achieve that. other words, let’s, let’s hope you have the highest profit possible. Let’s hope you make money.

and then we’ll go to work on the taxes and help you keep as much of that as you can and get the tax returns done. So that’s our mission is we really want our dentist to be successful and then we’ll do the tax work after you’ve been successful.

Brett Allen (05:40)
Got it. Yeah, that’s great. I like more of a comprehensive approach to the health and growth of the practice, not just file the return.

Morgan Hamon (05:42)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Right. And I think to do that in public accounting, you have to be a niche firm. You have to be laser focused on a specific industry. can’t do this as a jack of all trades CPA. mean, you have to have a deep knowledge of your client to, think, be in that position to provide that kind of support.

Brett Allen (06:05)
Yeah, yeah, I agree. I mean, us as a marketing team, there’s just the nuances that you get to understand about the industry that help you have that much better of an impact with the practices you’re working with. Yeah, for sure. So let’s talk about that a little bit more. So I think you said upwards of a thousand practices you’re working with. What are you tending to see as common roadblocks or pitfalls or things that are affecting profitability?

Morgan Hamon (06:22)
Mm-hmm.

Yes.

Brett Allen (06:35)
What are you saying?

Morgan Hamon (06:36)
Yeah,

so there’s, there’s, if you look at the math, okay, there’s two factors that affect profit. There’s your expense structure, and then there’s revenue, right? Those are the two factors. If we look at the equation for profit margin.

is like net income over total revenue. And of course, net income is revenue less operating expenses. So those are two variables, revenue and operating expenses. If profit is not where it should be, first of all, it’s really helpful for dentists to know that. Sometimes they don’t know, like, what should the profit margin be? And that’s where we can come in. Because I can tell you exactly, given the composition of your practice. And specifically, we’re looking at size.

Brett Allen (07:08)
Hmm.

Morgan Hamon (07:19)
you know, is this a de novo scratch chart practice? Is this an established practice? And really important to understand if there’s any associates in the practice, because that can really affect where we set the goalpost for profit margin. So first thing we have to do is to understand, okay, what is acceptable profit? If it’s, if it is that or more, great, let’s keep it there. If it’s less than we need to diagnose, and if we go into diagnosing mode, we’re looking at just the math, it is revenue or expenses.

I think there’s a third factor as well, and that’s just the dentist’s effectiveness as a business leader and just how they run their practice. It definitely has a direct correlation with profitability. But it’s revenue and expenses. I think the go-to, like say profit is just low, right? And the dentist feels that, right? Even if they don’t get reports like ours that tells them everything.

Brett Allen (08:09)
Mm-hmm.

Morgan Hamon (08:14)
Like they’ll feel like I’m working hard, I’m grinding away every week. Like why is there not more money? Like if you had to kind of feel that pressure. Yep, they have that feeling. The go-to spot every time is like, where am I overspending? I must be overspending somewhere. And that can be the case, but I think more often than not, it’s on the revenue side of the profit equation. They’re either not producing like they could be.

Brett Allen (08:19)
Mm-hmm. I have those conversations a lot.

Morgan Hamon (08:44)
In other words, they have a practice that has a certain overhead. And so if you have the six-off practice that costs $50,000 a month just to be open, you have to produce a certain amount of revenue to have that profit. So you’re either not producing, not scheduling, not charging, or not collecting. So if revenue is short, that’s going to pinch the profit in a hurry.

So I think where you and I in marketing, where our worlds kind of collide, right? Where we intersect is if we’re trying to solve that revenue problem. Because we can diagnose that very quickly. Okay, revenue is low. Why is it low? Is it a collection problem? We ask to see our clients’ accounts receivable every month. Even though it has nothing to do with their books or their taxes because these won’t pass through. And if you say ours, they’re irrelevant. Most accounts won’t ask for the AR. I want to see it because I want to know, are you collecting money?

Brett Allen (09:42)
Yeah.

Morgan Hamon (09:43)
Right?

If they’re not collecting money, bingo, like that’s, there we go. But let’s say, let’s say the AR super tight, they’re collecting money, that’s working well, but revenue is still low. All right. Are you charging what you’re worth? Right? Have you not escalated fees or something like, okay, we’re doing that too. Well, then it’s okay. How do we, how do we fill the schedule and see more patients? And that’s where I think the marketing comes in. Right? We got to, we have to grow. We need more engine. I’m sorry. More fuel for the engine.

Brett Allen (09:47)
That’s a big one, yeah.

Yeah.

Morgan Hamon (10:12)
We need more patients. And then of course, I kind of getting back to that leadership and operational effectiveness. Okay, Brett, you have clients you’re working with, you’re doing your thing, getting that phone to ring, you gotta make sure that phone gets answered. You gotta make sure so that it can be all connected. So yeah, I mean, that’s where I think you and I, like what we do.

Brett Allen (10:29)
Right. Yep. 100%.

Morgan Hamon (10:40)
is definitely on that side of the profit equation. And I think that’s the more common cause of low profit than overspending.

Brett Allen (10:43)
Right.

Yeah, we, hear a lot of practices, you know, they turn to marketing because they think they have a marketing problem. ⁓ and a lot of times they do to be fair, but to your point, I think if we can improve collections, if we can improve internal team dynamics around, know, how’s the front desk performing? ⁓ that’s one of the things that we look at is we have, built an AI call tracking dashboard for the front desk. So we can see from the calls that we’re generating.

Morgan Hamon (10:55)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Brett Allen (11:18)
how many of these are actually getting booked, and if they’re not getting booked, why aren’t they getting booked? And so it really exposes for the front desk and helps them with our training as well. like, okay, if we’ve got these different buckets that the call gets categorized into as to why a patient’s not scheduling, ⁓ what needs to happen to improve that? So if it’s question about pricing, is it insurance, is it…

Morgan Hamon (11:21)
Mm-hmm.

Right.

Okay.

Mm-hmm.

Brett Allen (11:47)
Availability, that’s a big one too. ⁓ We help diagnose those things too. It’s not just, I think we’re similar in that way. We don’t just do the lead generation. We also get involved internally with like, okay, how can we improve acceptance of our booking rate? How can we then acceptance and even further, how do get those patients to come back? Right? So. ⁓

Morgan Hamon (11:49)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

RIP.

Mm-hmm.

Right. Yeah.

Brett Allen (12:14)
Yeah, I love that you’re kind of similar in that way. It’s not just about returns. I think also those CPAs that just focus on that, they’re missing a huge component as to, how can we advise this practice on growing the profitability? I mean, it’s not just, are we putting forward the best tax strategy to minimize the tax burden? But how do we really help this practice owner with their finances? What does that tell?

Morgan Hamon (12:30)
Mm-hmm.

Right.

Yeah, you

have to have the horse before the cart. If we’re going to talk tax avoidance, you got to have the profit there to be on that. ⁓ Let’s talk about that first. And that’s what I think we’re working towards. I’ve owned a business for a long, long time. I didn’t set out to own that business so I could just focus on my tax return.

Brett Allen (12:53)
Right.

Morgan Hamon (13:11)
All right. I did it again. Let’s make a nice living. Let’s have some control over my life and let’s build something that’s worth something over time and have a lot of professional satisfaction and pride in doing so. That’s why I’m in the business. The tax return is something I got to do. And of course, as a business owner, there’s opportunities to save money on income tax expense that you don’t have as an employee.

Brett Allen (13:11)
Right.

right?

Yeah, let’s dig in a little bit more from a metric standpoint. think since the wealth of information that you have and experience when it comes to certain numbers, where I think most of the practices we work with, there’s seven figure practices ⁓ just over that threshold there. Where should collections be and where should some of these ⁓ gross margin be? Let’s dig into some of those.

Morgan Hamon (13:45)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

So

yeah, if we talk about that client you just described, okay, seven figure practice, it’s a single doctor practice, successful, it will usually be somewhere 1.0 to 1.0.

you start getting past 1.5, then the doctor starts getting pretty busy. They’re like, only have so much time. And that’s usually when the conversations come up. I saying, I’m thinking about an associate. What’s that going to look like? So if we just focus in on kind of the 1.0 to 1.5 size practices.

Brett Allen (14:24)
Great.

Yeah.

Right.

Morgan Hamon (14:45)
The profit margin, I can tell you with absolute certainty, the profit margin needs to be 35 to 40 percent.

Brett Allen (14:54)
Okay.

Morgan Hamon (14:55)
And if it’s more than that, that’s pretty common. 40 to 45, see that all the time. You start getting to 50 % profit margin, it starts to become a pretty exclusive club. It’s possible, but not that common. But yeah, 35 to 40%, that’s where they need to be. If you’re under that, there’s something we need to dig into that. We need to figure that out. What’s causing it?

Brett Allen (15:09)
Mm-hmm.

that’s where you need to be. you’re under that, there’s some.

Morgan Hamon (15:25)
And if we go into the mode that we’re gonna diagnose, we’ll start with the math, of course. And again, the go-to spot is, where could we be overspending? ⁓ Also need to look at that revenue side. And sometimes they’re related. So if we’re looking at our report, and so we benchmark all the main expense categories for our clients on a trailing three-month ⁓ average. And then we’ll show them our client average right next to it.

in the same trail and three months. So they can say, we’ve got a thousand other private practices in the last three months, these are their expenses. And so we can just quickly identify, there any outliers? Right. And so, you know, sometimes there’s just one glaring item like staff costs, right? So we have to maybe focus in there, but you have to kind of zoom out a little bit. if I see every expense items running a little bit high, I’m going.

Brett Allen (15:54)
cool.

Got it.

Expenses are high. Yeah

Morgan Hamon (16:21)
because if the practice is under producing, under collecting, that’s gonna make all the expenses look higher, right? Cause you’re measuring those dollar amounts against less revenue. So you kind of have to take a holistic view at it. You can’t just dial in on one thing. have to, okay, how are these things relating? And sometimes when you dig into expenses, it can uncover a collection problem. But we just gotta figure out what it is.

Brett Allen (16:28)
Mm-hmm.

Right.

Yeah. What’s a typical collection percentage? What does that look like?

Morgan Hamon (16:51)
So I don’t know if we’re talking about like production versus collection, that we don’t always have that data because the law is with our, so all our clients are passed through entities, whether it’s a sole proprietor and as corporate partnership. And so we have to account for that business income on an income tax basis, which is essentially a cash basis because that profit passes through their personal tax attorney pay tax personally. So the business bank account has to reconcile to the business books, right?

Brett Allen (16:55)
Right, yeah.

Morgan Hamon (17:21)
business tax return. So we see the money that’s collected. So if they did a treatment that, you know, the production was 150, but they collected 100, we see 100. So I don’t always know what that delta is. We see the money that I like to kind of joke with, the money we quite literally count, that’s the money we’re talking

Brett Allen (17:36)
Right. God.

Right, okay.

Are most practices cache basis? they? ⁓ okay.

Morgan Hamon (17:52)
They have to be. We’re not

in the corporate. Get into the corporate big ⁓ heartland down a lot of whatever. They’re going to be on perhaps a cruel, but it’s cash basis ⁓ for our clientele because these are all closely held small businesses. They’re past their 90s.

Brett Allen (17:58)
The group practices, yeah. Right.

Got it, okay. Are there other areas that you guys advise in when it comes to, you know, is it, okay, so we see expenses are high, we see revenues low, or are there other consulting type arms?

Morgan Hamon (18:21)
huh.

yeah,

we get all manner of questions. Sometimes I feel like I’m a coach and therapist, not necessarily, right? Because know, owning a business, it’s hard. I mean, it’s challenging, right? And these dentists, don’t get any training for it in dental school. All right, so you just, you gotta make sure you the right people on right team. I’ve had calls where, I mean, we’re just talking about some leadership and just, you know, being in control of your practice.

Brett Allen (18:38)
Yeah, yep.

No.

Morgan Hamon (18:55)
I’m in a unique position to do that. ⁓ Not all of our team can do that, but those are conversations with me. A common trend in the last few years is ⁓ having a long-term associate buy-in, equity buy-in on the practice. ⁓ Those conversations are always with me, pretty extensive, or conversations of, maybe we are pushing it. We’re at 1.5, 1.6.

I still want so many hours in the day, I still want to grow. Okay, what about an associate? What does that look like? How to structure that? We have all those kind of conversations. Of course, if someone’s looking at selling their practice or buying another one and merging it together, I just had a call earlier today with the client where the lease space is up next door. Pretty nice opportunity if they’re looking to expand to knock out a wall. You don’t have to move and…

Brett Allen (19:45)
Right. ⁓

Morgan Hamon (19:48)
and call up Brett and say, look, we got a location that’s gonna be like two miles away. We wanna get all the patients over there. It’s always, so yeah, there’s really not any limit on what we’ll talk about. We walk a fine line between what I call a profit advisor and a dental consultants, right? So I’ll go up to that line. I’ll maybe dabble a little bit over, but if it ends up getting out of our lane, like I’ll always tell them that and then hopefully.

Brett Allen (19:54)
Yeah.

Okay.

Yeah.

Morgan Hamon (20:19)
to someone who can’t help them. But yeah, it’s sometimes, you know, we get on the phone and we never quite know where that conversation is going to go. And everything’s on the table. like, we can, if we can help them, if we can, say, look, look, you know, I don’t know why I don’t know why your revenue keeps dropping, you know, so, and if it is like a new patient flow, then I’ll say, look, you got to talk to like Brent because that’s just, it’s getting into the marketing lane and it’s out of my, I don’t know how.

Brett Allen (20:31)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Morgan Hamon (20:49)
⁓ but clearly given your overhead structure, you know, if we had, if we could just get at least like 90 K per month, you’re to be really happy with those results.

Brett Allen (20:53)
Right.

Good, One question I always like to ask, and I’ve seen some numbers from the ADA and from what I’ve heard from others, what’s typically a marketing budget that most practices have? Is it a percentage? Yeah.

Morgan Hamon (21:15)
Yeah, I will again, I’ll speak to

my window into the dental world, which is our long-term history with these dental practices. So I think you have to look at sort of the phase of the practice. If it’s a startup, a de novo scratch start practice, they better be, you know, and we measure this as a percentage of collections, right? As the numbers we’ll talk about, right? So as a de novo scratch start practice, your marketing budget, it better be up in the teens.

Brett Allen (21:22)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Right.

Yeah, to get volume.

Morgan Hamon (21:44)
15, 20%, you

got, I mean, you have to have a marketing plan to get that schedule full. If we don’t see it up there, it’s like, we of scratch on our head, like, well, what’s your plan? We gotta get going. So then, we move past startup, okay, now we’re established practice, been around a while. And this is just like my opinion. I say a practice, maybe they’re at that 1.3, 1.4, they’re in just a really good spot, right? They got a nice life, they work like balance and that.

Brett Allen (21:56)
Yeah ⁓

Morgan Hamon (22:14)
you will have some natural patient nutrition. If we’re looking at just to replace that natural patient nutrition so we don’t shrink, because businesses are not, it’s never static, you’re either shrinking or growing, and you kind of want, you know, hopefully kind of keep it even if you’re trying to stay put. You have to replace that natural patient nutrition. I think a budget line item of, we’ll see anywhere from like maybe 0.5 to 2 % on a fully established practice. If they’re looking to, hey, look, I just want to stay put.

Brett Allen (22:25)
Right.

Okay.

Morgan Hamon (22:42)
I don’t want to slowly decline over time as patients, as their cetrition. If the practice, hey, look, we’re wanting to grow, right? With some established practice, maybe they’re not quite up to the million dollar mark. Maybe they’re like 800K and they really want to get up to like 1.5. So they’re growth oriented. Now two, three, four, 5%, you know, totally don’t blow, you’d expect to see. Yeah.

Brett Allen (22:46)
Right, okay.

bright.

Right? Yeah. That’s what we typically say around five percent of

total production.

Morgan Hamon (23:12)
We get into like five, six, seven for established practice. That is like foot on the gas. Like I want to grow. What’s really, you know, can be frustrating to see is when we’re looking at our practice and let’s say revenue is not only flat, but it’s declined.

Brett Allen (23:17)
Yeah, they’re true. Yeah.

Morgan Hamon (23:34)
we see declining revenue, maybe sometimes it’s insidious. There’s always a little up and down with practice, but long-term trend, revenue’s coming down. And then we’ll see a marketing line item of like eight or 9%. And I’ll be like, hey, Dr. Smith or whatever, like, look, we probably ought to look at this, right? Because if I was for practice, for established practice, if there’s 9 % marketing, like, I wish you’d see this thing exploding.

Brett Allen (23:39)
Yeah, the trend line is down. Yeah.

⁓ marketing’s not working. Or.

Right, right.

Morgan Hamon (24:03)
you know so like that’s my question is okay well what’s your ROI on the marketing or and again i’m not a marketing guy i don’t have a metric to tell you what that should be but just how do you feel like what’s your new patient flow per month and i’m like well i’m spending you know nine percent i got 15 new patients last month i’m like you know i’m not a marketing guy that sounds a little late um you know right like how are we quantifying this return um because that’s a huge investment

Brett Allen (24:06)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Right.

Yeah.

Right. I think that,

yeah, and we see that too. And it bugs me that there are marketers, there’s this stigma around marketing that I’m paying this firm, I don’t know what they’re doing. I don’t know what my ROI is. There seems to be a lot of marketers out there that, and it tends to be more of those that aren’t dental specific, where they’re just telling them the data of.

Morgan Hamon (24:50)
Okay.

Brett Allen (24:54)
Hey, this is your traffic. This is your rankings. This is how many clicks we got. This is how many phone calls. It’s like, okay, that’s those are some metrics that you should be aware of as a marketer and as a practice owner. But what does that translate into from a revenue standpoint? And so we really tried it, especially since we have that performance guarantee with our team, we want to integrate and be like, okay, we spent this much on marketing. How much production came from that so we can we can verify

Morgan Hamon (24:54)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Brett Allen (25:22)
that there is growth happening and that it’s in a proper metric for continuing marketing or scaling marketing. Yeah, yeah, for sure. Well, we’re almost out of time. I always like to ask the final question of like, what’s that one tip or piece of advice that you could share with a practice that would really help have an epiphany or something that would ripple effect into the practice for the practice owner?

Morgan Hamon (25:28)
Yes, ma’am.

Yeah.

I guess the one I’ll pick and we’re gonna stay per our discussion here on the revenue side of that profit equation. And I think sometimes dentists, when they’re in, we’ll call it in the grind, right? They’re owning their practice, they’re trying to do everything right. They wanna feel, you wanna feel it as in control as possible, even though sometimes things are out of your control. You wanna feel as in control as possible. And I think.

You know occasionally I’ll visit with the doctrine they really to feel in control Like they really want to focus in on something and sometimes it’s like their financial statement I would say look Review your financial reports monthly Okay, you’re gonna get a report from us monthly ideal. You’re getting something from your account monthly Take once a month go through there Analyze it

You know, set up, set a call with us. We’ll go through, pick up some action items and work on this for the month. If you, if you’re wanting to feel, do something like daily to feel like I’m in control of my practice. I’m, I’m driving, driving the train, so to speak. I would say focus on your AR. If you want to pull a report every day to say, I need to look at this to make sure things are going well. You know, look at your, look at your collections.

Brett Allen (27:03)
Mm-hmm.

Morgan Hamon (27:16)
Focus in on like that 61 to 90. If you saw that patient two to three months ago and it has now moved into 61 to 90, how come you have not been paid? It should be paid by now. You’re looking for anything systemic within your practice that’s preventing you from getting paid. Is the claim not being filed? Is it being filed correctly at all? Is your staff constantly underestimating the patient portion of the fee? just kind of find that stuff.

Brett Allen (27:25)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Morgan Hamon (27:45)
I

would say the one kind of epiphany, Brett, was that there’s no higher, more important administrative function in your practice besides collecting money. Otherwise, why bother? Why do this, right? So make sure that collection process is working like a Swiss watch, right? And then follow up on all those other things too, but that’s the most important.

Brett Allen (27:58)
Yeah, right. What are we doing this for? Yeah.

Awesome, yeah, thank you so much for that. This has been a great conversation. Thank you, Morgan, for coming on the show today. Where should we send people if they want to get in touch with you, learn more? you have the resources you can give them?

Morgan Hamon (28:27)
Yeah,

absolutely. If they want to check us out, our website is EAGdentalAdvisors.com.

Brett Allen (28:36)
EAGdentaladvisors.com

Morgan Hamon (28:39)
Yeah, so that’s Isner Advisory Group, dentaladvisors.com, E-A-G, dentaladvisors.com, that’s samples of our reports. There’s buttons all over the place to start a conversation and that’s personal. We don’t go off to some obscure department. Those all come to me. So, ⁓ yeah, and always happy to meet new dentists and learn about their practice and see if maybe we could fit, if we support.

Brett Allen (28:54)
Okay.

Well, great, yeah, I appreciate you taking the time. You guys gotta go over to that website. We’ll put it in the show notes. So if you’re driving or whatever, you can come back to it. Click on the link. But thank you again, Morgan, for coming on the show. Yeah. Thanks everybody for tuning in. Until next time on the Marking32 Show, have a great day.

Morgan Hamon (29:16)
All right, my pleasure. I’m happy to be here. Thank you.