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AUDIO - HSP #278 - Henry Wachtendorf
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VIDEO - HSP #278 - Henry Wachtendorf
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- Respect the business of dentistry
I have been treating patients and their families for over 25 years and I still love being a dentist. My goal is to make your dental treatment comfortable, attractive and long lasting. I always ask myself when I’m diagnosing a problem if the treatment I’m proposing is what I’d want for myself or my wife, or my children. I always present multiple options for treatment if possible and let my patient chose what level of care they want.
My wife Tina and I moved from San Antonio to our ranch in Miller Grove, Texas in 1997. We have two grown children, Natalie, James and our daughter-in-law Dorothea. We have two grown children Natalie and James. We enjoy living in the country, gardening, art and spending time with friends.
Education:
B.S. in Biology from the University of Houston
B.S. in Psychology from the University of Houston
D.D.S. from the University of Texas in San Antonio
USDI Certificate in Orthodontics
Continuing Education courses in:
Endodontics, Conscious Oral Sedation, Oral Surgery,
Dental Material Update, Orthodontics, Occlusion,
Cosmetic Dentistry, Periodontics, Implants
http://comfortcaredental.net
Howard: I'm here with Dr. Henry Watchendorf from Royse City, Texas, which is a suburb of Dallas.
Henry: Yes.
Howard: You're at the tail end of your career. You said you're on your way to retire.
Henry: On my way to retiring.
Howard: We've had a long relationship for years. I remember decade and a half ago you driving all the way out to my dental office in Phoenix.
Henry: Yes, you're a big influence because in dental school we didn't learn anything at all about the business end. We learned all the technical stuff. We got out and I knew so little about it I actually took a magnifying glass, took catalogs, and figured out what was on each one of the different health questionnaires and made up my own health questionnaires based on what they were asking. It was really sad.
Then I got a set of your tapes. I thought, "Man, this is really great." Later on then, I got a set of your MBA tapes. I thought, "Wow, this is awesome." It just made a big, big difference because I never had any trouble with the technical part of it. I just had a hard time with the business part of it. Figuring out just different things.
I remember one of the things you said was ... You said ... You didn't have a lot of hair at the time, you have less now, but you didn't have a lot of hair at the time but you always went to this barber. She would spend 10 minutes rubbing your head and telling you how great you looked. There's nothing you can do. I don't have much hair to work with, but it was a good experience. You said, "Why would I go to a dentist who every time I go there they fuss at me and tell me I'm doing a crappy job, not taking care of my teeth, not cleaning them and everything?"
Even if a person not doing great, I always try to tell them a positive, something positive about it. I think it paid off. I really did.
Howard: You know what's amazing? The reason I pulled you in here is those tapes that you were talking about, to these younger kids out, that was ... The original was "The 30 Day Dental MBA."
Henry: Yes.
Howard: You can listen to those. Those are now all for free on iTunes. On iTunes, I have ... You said you were a fan of podcasts.
Henry: Yes.
Howard: You didn't know I have a podcast.
Henry: Didn't.
Howard: I was sitting there thinking, "Okay, well, I'm going to put you on my podcast so that you'll see" ... I know you'll check out my podcast if you find out you're on it. Yeah, I got a podcast. I think a lot of the people on podcasts don't realize that I have a separate podcast channel with all my tape programs from back in the day. "The 30 day MBA" was about ... What was that, Ryan? About 1999?
Speaker 3: '99.
Howard: Then, 2005 was the 11 hour of "Virtues of Profitable Dentistry." Then this is about 2012 was the "One-Day Dental MBA." Those are all ... You can hear them all for free on sound on the iTunes.
Henry: I didn't know.
Howard: Or, if you go to YouTube, you could actually watch the video. We upload those videos. Those were so fun to make over the day. I'm so glad that you liked them over the years.
Henry: [crosstalk 00:03:01] very influential.
Howard: What advice would you give these young kids? Now, how old are you now?
Henry: 64, soon to be 65.
Howard: You're 64, soon to be 65, and you're looking to sell your practice, retire. You're talking to thousands of dentists on the other end who are seniors in dental school to about 5 years out. I seldom ever get a email from a podcast listener who has even entered their own practice yet. It's almost all kids. They're working in corporate. After 2 or 3 years they want to start their own. What advice would you give them now that you've already done it and at the other end? What would you tell them to do?
Henry: I think some of the big things would be don't listen to a lot of the salesmen, listen to other dentists. The salesman's job is to sell something and the dentist has no ... He doesn't have a dog in the fight. He can tell you what's really in your best interest. Howard Farran was an awesome influence in my life for the whole business end of it. I would try to join a dental society, a local dental society, and try to go to their meetings, especially if you have a study club. Study clubs are great.
Couple of things I ... Some of the things I'd highly recommend is use a really first class, topical anesthetic. That's a big thing. If you can't give a painless injection, you're not going to do well. Don't expect to drive a Porsche the first year you get out of school. If you watch your nickels, the dollars will follow.
I always try to leave the patient with a positive experience. Don't fuss at a patient when they come in with a crapped out mouth. Realize dentists scare the heck out of most people. They've had bad experiences. They don't need to be told that they're doing a lousy job. I think it's just very important to stay ... Develop personal relationships with your patients. Find out about their kids, take notes, write a note about that they have a dog that they love, if they have 3 kids and one's in college. Stuff like that. Always try to encourage young people to consider dentistry as a profession. That's my thing.
Howard: I love that. If you watch the nickels, the dollars will follow. You said something else. If you can't give a painless injection, you're in trouble. What topical were you using?
Henry: You talked a topical that you had made for you. Originally it was available in Canada, you said. You gave the formula. I didn't remember the formula now, but I just have a compounding pharmacy [crosstalk 00:05:42].
Howard: You're compounding your own?
Henry: Yes. I just go to a pharmacist and he compounds it. Well, it's expensive compared to HurriCaine, but HurriCaine doesn't work. I work on a lot of kids. I start at 3 year old children. A 3 year old kid, you're not going to talk them into not hurting. It either hurts or it doesn't.
Howard: You think the topical, the HurriCaine topical, is not strong enough.
Henry: No.
Howard: Do you know what percent you're compounding this in?
Henry: It was a formula. I can't remember, to be honest.
Howard: I wonder if it's on Dentaltown. Are you on Dentaltown much?
Henry: Yes.
Howard: Are you on the app and the phone?
Henry: No, I just get on my [crosstalk 00:06:18].
Howard: I hope that you and your wife will download the app.
Henry: I will now.
Howard: And we took a selfie. I wish you would try to upload that selfie because it's kind of my beta test site when I'm out lecturing or at a convention. Sometimes they'll upload it on the phone and they'll get a error, and then I tell my programmer's like, "Oh, I didn't know that was an issue with that type of cell phone." There's so many cell phones out there. I use it as a beta site.
You said you watch your nickels, the dollars will follow. Don't expect to have a Porsche the first year out. If you can't give a painless injection, you're in trouble. What other things are you thinking of?
Henry: Well, you said one time in one of your tapes that you should have a sign that's internally lit. Period. That's the best ... That was my very best initial start. When we first opened our practice, my wife and I, we walked ... I believe we walked past, if not every house, at least 3 out of 4 houses in the town, and we dropped off a little brochure about ourselves. We got into parades, we made a ... You said you rode a unicycle.
Howard: I did.
Henry: Well, I wasn't going to do that one. I can barely ride a regular bike.
Tina: We did the chew chew trains [crosstalk 00:07:24].
Henry: We made a thing called a chew chew train. We drag it with our riding lawnmower. It was a couple of 55 gallon drums on wheels and it was called a chew chew train.
Tina: We had the tooth booth.
Henry: We had little kids ...
Howard: Oh, chew chew. C-H-E-W. Chew. Oh, I love it.
Tina: Yes. [crosstalk 00:07:36].
Henry: We put little kids riding in there.
Howard: I love it. Can I steal that idea?
Henry: Oh, yeah.
Howard: We just had ours last week where ... The Christmas [inaudible 00:07:47]. There's in [inaudible 00:07:48], where you came to visit our office, we have an Easter parade every year. Then we just have the Christmas festival of lights where they just lit up all the lights. We had a booth there and everything. I love the chew chew train. That is ... Did you think of that yourself?
Henry: I think ... Did Naddy think of that?
Tina: My daughter actually gave us the idea.
Henry: I think, yeah, my daughter.
Tina: We also had the tooth booth, which everyone now knows.
Howard: And the tooth booth.
Henry: Yeah, we have a once a year ... What's it called?
Tina: It's called Fun Fest.
Henry: Fun Fest.
Tina: It's a fair, it's a [crosstalk 00:08:16].
Henry: Yeah, it's just a fair.
Tina: Festival.
Henry: We give away toothbrushes. Believe it or not, that idea right there is worth anywhere from 10 to 30 patients, new patients, off the street. They would say well they're not ... I'm only looking for high quality patients. That's a crummy attitude. Any patient is a patient. If you do a good job, they have friends.
Tina: Bring their family [crosstalk 00:08:40].
Henry: You may only be doing an emergency visit on them, but their mom might need work, their kids might need work. One person ... You know what? Somebody said, "Well, I only get 3 new patients a month," but if those people are worth 10 patients, in a matter of a short time you have a lot of patients. You're not going to retain all the patients because a lot of the patients, they're going to get insurance. There's a lot of H ... What are those called? Not ...
Howard: HMOs?
Henry: Yeah. DMOs.
Howard: Oh, DMOs.
Henry: Yeah, so they have to go to certain dentists. We've had a lot of patients that have gone to DMOs and they still come and see us because they don't like the treatment they're getting. Show the patient that you care. I give every one of my patients my home phone number. Every single patient. I probably get called less than once a month. For real. Yet, they feel special if you give them your own home phone.
Tina: Also, we got totally involved in the community.
Howard: Speak closer to the mic.
Tina: Yes.
Howard: This mic.
Tina: Oh.
Henry: This is my wife, Tina.
Tina: We got totally involved with the community. We give out a scholarship every year at the high school. We do the Education Foundation, which will give another $1,000 to every year. We do [inaudible 00:09:48] Wednesday. They're all dental information and knock knock jokes about dentistry. Patients have come to look for those. They come to the office and they go, "Oh, I just read your ad where you said that such and such."
He gives out oral hygiene tips. Sometimes they're just cute, funny dental jokes and they just like to read them. They totally connect with Dr. Henry. Because our last name is Watchendorf, he's become Dr. Henry. Everyone in town knows him as Dr. Henry. Keep it simple, use a kiss principle, and it works out great.
Howard: I agree on the name. I had a friend a long time ago and his last name was 14 letters long. He was from Asia. I said, "Well, just go by" ... His first name was Cena. I just said, "Go by Dr. Cena [inaudible 00:10:34] Dr. Steve." It was a perfect marketing. What is Watchendorf? Is that Scandinavian?
Henry: German.
Howard: That's German?
Henry: Very German.
Howard: It's not very common in the United States and it's 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11. Is that right?
Henry: Something like that.
Howard: W-A-T-C-H-E-N-D-O-R-F. 11 letters. 11 letters is kind of hard. Remember when we were little it was Kentucky Fried Chicken? Then it went to KFC? Then there were some there ones they shortened. Burger King went to BK. Watchendorf. You just went with Dr. Henry
Henry: Right.
Howard: Tell us more about the scholarship. What did you say about that?
Tina: Yeah, we give a scholarship to a worthy student from the local high school. Our office is right near the high school, so all the parents go by. What we did is we put in one of those marquees, so the student that gets the scholarship, they go on the marquee. It's put in the paper. We also do, involve, [crosstalk 00:11:30].
Howard: How do you determine the scholarship? A scholarship for literacy or athletics or ...
Henry: No, we just pick one.
Tina: Through the high school. No, it's academics and total involvement in the school. They give us a stack of essays, actually. We go through them and read them carefully. Some of them break your heart. We feel that we give them to most worthy students. We really do. That's an excellent thing.
Henry: It's a scholarship for all the different scholarships. If you're looking to apply for a scholarship, you have to fill out one of these applications. Anybody who's given a scholarship gets a stack of those to read.
Tina: If the student maintains a 3.0 average.
Henry: It's renewable each year.
Tina: GPA, we renew it.
Howard: How much is the scholarship?
Henry: $1,000 a year.
Tina: Yeah, it's $1,000 a semester and then we renew it.
Howard: $1,000 a semester?
Henry: No, a year.
Tina: Well, some of the ... We have different ones.
Henry: Yeah. We switch back and forth.
Tina: We change it out.
Henry: Now it's $1,000 a year, $4,000 total.
Tina: We also do the Education Foundation, which is really for teachers who come up with innovative, creative ideas for students. This $1,000 goes into a pool and then they pick certain teachers that are really, really contribut-
Henry: Innovative.
Tina: Yeah. Contributing to student education. We do that as well.
Howard: How long have you guys work ... Have you guys worked together since day 1?
Tina: Yes.
Henry: Yeah.
Tina: [crosstalk 00:12:48].
Howard: What year did you guys open up your office?
Tina: In '04. 2004.
Henry: '04.
Howard: 2004. This is 2015.
Tina: Yes.
Howard: You guys ran a office for 11 years. Man and wife.
Tina: Right. Yes.
Howard: Did you work together? Were you the front office?
Tina: Yes. I did everything from picking the baseboards in the office, the color of the chairs in the [inaudible 00:13:11], the ADA compliance in the office. He made me pick everything, so pretty much we've worked it together. Yeah.
Howard: What advice would you give? You're at the tail end, you're selling.
Tina: Yes.
Howard: Out there right now ... Podcasts are all about multitasking. They're all driving to work right now or they're on a StairMaster. What advice would you give to a young woman or young man who married a dentist and they're going to open their office together? You've successfully done this for 15 years. Take this from my hand and hold this and talk into that mic. What advice would you give them?
Tina: To get together and come up with a plan. See what you've got to start with. Most importantly is lay out a plan, honestly. Yeah. Lay out a good plan then make a list of the things that you want to incorporate in your plan. Divvy up what it is that you're going to do and what he's going to do, and work in tandem. Continually support each other and make sure that you're always open to new ideas as well.
My thing is marketing because that's what I've done in my other jobs. Of course, his is the dentistry. Between the 2 of us, and then we hired a girl that was really good with the office part of it and all of the [inaudible 00:14:29] and so forth. We just all worked together as a team.
Henry: Oh, and tell about the ... We also went to a ... There's a university about 15, 20 miles away. Anyway, we went to their computer design department.
Howard: The computer lab.
Henry: Computer lab. We hired the lady that did all of our brochures and stuff.
Tina: Oh, yeah. One of the things that ... This is a good tip for everyone. We wanted to come up with really nice brochures and different flyers and things for the office to hand out in the neighborhood. What I did is, believe it or not, I went back to school late. I went to the business department at the university, A&M Commerce, and I spoke to the head of the department. I said, "Who's your best student in graphics?" They said, "Lisa Martinez." I said, "May I speak with her?" I said, "We'd like to hire her." We hired her and that gave the student some extra money to make and that gave us all the creative ability that she had. Came up with some fantastic stuff to use in terms of our brochures.
Howard: Hold that a little closer. What would you say to people who they're married and they're thinking, "Okay, I'm [inaudible 00:15:43] dentist, you're my husband. We're going to work together?" Then other people are saying, "If you [inaudible 00:15:48] with your wife or your spouse, you're going to ruin your marriage. The best thing to do for your marriage is not work together." What would you say to that?
Tina: Well, I will tell you this, and be very honest, Henry did ask me on occasion to become the office manager. I said, "No, I really don't want to be your office manager, but I will oversee your marketing. I know what my forte is, which is marketing. I will do your accounting, QuickBooks, and so forth." I knew what my abilities were. I made sure that I found an office manager that clearly understood what our philosophy was, which is Rose Fritz. She is amazing. Because we picked the right person it just all melded together. You know what? It works.
I try not to get involved in things that I know are not in my arena of responsibility, but I make sure that I do talk to Rose. I know what's going on in the office, I make sure that Henry knows what he needs to know, but Rose is the office manager. We give her the authority to make decision, and that's critical because you can't make somebody a manager and not give them the authority. Because we work so closely together, it all absolutely works.
Henry: Plus you have to love your wife.
Howard: You have to love your wife?
Henry: Yeah.
Howard: Well, she'd be easy to love.
Henry: She is.
Howard: What I just heard her say from years of doing this is that, rule number 1, when you go in and you see the spouse and it's a disaster, 99 times out of 100 [inaudible 00:17:17]. Do you really want to work there? She'll always say, "No, I don't want to work here at all. My husband makes me." What you were is true to yourself. Your husband said, "Do you want to be the office manager?" You said, "No." You stayed true [crosstalk 00:17:30].
Tina: I have an office there and I do [crosstalk 00:17:31]
Howard: You have an office manager. Rule number 1 if your spouse, and it doesn't matter if you're a woman [inaudible 00:17:35] office manager's a man or vice versa, doesn't matter, rule number 1 is you have to go up there and say, "Do you want this job?" If they say, "Oh, yeah. I really want this job." Are you passionate about this job? "Yeah, I love it. I'm passionate." Then it's a good thing. If they sit there and say, "No, I'm only here because my spouse makes me. I'd rather be at home raising my kid or my career was something else." Any other advice to the young kids who are starting their own practice?
Tina: No, but I would like to say one other thing about the whole wife thing working in the office. That's the fact that, sometimes for a wife to be the manager in the office, it tends to put the other employees on guard. They kind of alienate themselves because they feel, oh, well, here's the wife. She's going to tell us what to do because she is the dentist's wife. That kind of, in and of itself, it just creates a kind of stressed environment.
I thought it was better that they not view me as the manager but simply as the person that's there to do my jobs. They all worked together. I didn't need to be known as the manager of the office. It was good enough that I was the dentist's wife. That worked out extremely well.
Henry: Yeah.
Howard: Any other thoughts?
Henry: You have to have digital x-rays, you have to have a digital pano. If you can't afford it when you first got out of school, save up for it, but you have to get a scanning system. Impressions are old, they're passe. Even panos are ... I just bought a brand new pano. They're going to deliver it next week. [inaudible 00:19:21]s are it. You've got to be able to do that. I really think you should join the AG ... American Academy of Gentle Dentists. AGD.
Howard: AGD.
Henry: If you really want to be a high quality dentist, you should really at least consider doing [inaudible 00:19:37]. I didn't do it, but by the time I found out about it, I thought, "I'm only going to be in this for about 10 more years. I don't really want to change everything up." You have to hold yourself to the standard.
I do have one more thing. When I went to dental school, our instructor ... We had a course in ... What do you call it where you do everything, the rules? Like, don't do things. You'll know what I'm talking about. Anyway, our instructor came in and he said, "I'm going to tell you basically the right and the wrong of it." He said, "This is a simple thing. If you wouldn't do it to your wife, you wouldn't do it to your son or your daughter, then don't do it to somebody else. The second thing was if you touch a tooth that doesn't need to be touched, you're going to go to hell. Does anybody have any questions?"
He turned around, he looked up, he says, "Okay." He walked out. Honest to God, everyday I'm doing dentistry I'm thinking, "Would I do this to my wife or my daughter?" It's so easy to get into a habit of saying, "I only do crowns on anything with more than 2 surfaces. I only do that kind of thing." I'm saying that you really have to individualize everybody's treatment. You have to ask yourself, "Would I do this to my daughter?"
Here you have a young girl come in there and the parents say, "Yeah, go ahead and put 6 veneers on her front teeth." You're thinking, "Crap. With Invisalign, she'd be perfect." I can knock out those Invisaligns in hour and a half, 2 hours, put them on in another hour. I'm $6,000 in the pocket." That's the attitude a lot of young dentists have.
I'm saying instead look at it, everything you do is going to fall apart. I don't care how good you think you are. Everything you do is going to fall apart. There's going to be another dentist have to redo your work down the road. You need to give him something to work with and don't do work that doesn't need to be done. That's it. That's my [crosstalk 00:21:26].
Howard: I would go another deal is I think it's a red flag when your staff doesn't let you do their dentistry and they go to other dentists.
Henry: I agree.
Howard: They take their spouse to other. I mean, when I see a dental assistant come into my office and I'm working on her or her husband, I'm like, "Well, why don't you go to your dentist?"
Henry: I have that all the time.
Howard: She says, "Because." She doesn't philosophically agree with their diagnosing, treatment planning. Too aggressive, whatever. I've always thought, "You know what? If you can't even sell your own team on you and your dentistry and your treatment planning, you need to go back to the drawing board."
Henry: You're absolutely right. I agree. Always try to judge your work when you're finished with it. Don't just get in and get out. A lot of times you'll have a contractor come in and do a work on your office and the guy just does a half-assed job. He doesn't really care, he's trying to get paid and go onto the next job. He's not interested in doing something that's going to last. When you look at it, I see a patient come in sometimes. They'll have a crown. I had a guy come in with a crown that was 52 years old. He had it done when he was 25, had me redo it when he was 77. He said, "Do you guarantee your work?" I said, "For you, I do." There's no way I'll live long enough to redo his work.
Howard: You have your practice up for sale now, right?
Henry: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Howard: Do you have a buyer yet?
Henry: Yes.
Howard: You're going to sell it. What's your post retirement plan?
Henry: Well, I'm going to keep working for him for full-time 6 months so I can introduce him to all the patients. I want it to work for him.
Howard: What's full-time?
Henry: I'll work Monday-Friday, 8:00-5:00.
Howard: Monday-Friday, 8:00-5:00, for 6 months.
Henry: For 6 months.
Howard: Do you work for a percentage? I mean, if you're doing dentistry.
Henry: I really want him to do the work as much as possible. I'll get a percentage. I get 30% of what I produce. No lab bills, everything is okay. I told him, I said ... Okay, I don't recommend every dentist do this or nothing like that. I tell him, I said, "I'll work for $40.00 an hour for 6 months so you can get everybody ... I want everybody to convert over to you." You know? I know that's not much money. We're pretty much set. We bought real estate when the market was good.
Tina: [crosstalk 00:23:41] doing it to help him transition because he's so concerned because he knows how entrenched Henry and our office is in the community that he wants to make sure that the patients still see him there when they walk in [crosstalk 00:23:55].
Howard: Is your community a suburb of Dallas to where ...
Henry: No, it's a hole in the wall town. It's my hole in the wall town.
Tina: Well, it's outside of [crosstalk 00:24:00] Rockwall, but Rockwall's expanding. Our area's growing.
Henry: Yeah. No, it's a super growth pattern.
Tina: We're right next door to an elementary school and they're getting ready to build 500 new homes across the street, and a new subdivision down the street. We're a block from the high school. It's grown quite a bit, so yeah. We're close enough.
Howard: In 6 months you're going to be done?
Henry: In 6 months I'll work for him a couple days a week. He can tell me to quit whenever he wants.
Howard: What does life look like now without working? Do you think you guys will get bored? Do you have a hobby?
Henry: Oh, no.
Tina: We also got into the real estate business.
Henry: We have real estate.
Tina: We have rental homes and we do that. Stay very busy with that.
Henry: Rental homes. We bought those when the price was down. That's another thing. When the market drops again, if you're a young dentist, it's going to drop again. It goes up, it goes down, it goes up, it goes down. It's been doing that since Jesus. The point ...
Tina: We do that together as well.
Henry: That ... Yeah. We do that together. Whenever we had extra money, we would go ahead and just buy a rental property. We took some classes on it. It's something we enjoy doing. Tina's very good at it. It's just like dentistry. You learn how to do a class, too. It's a same thing over and over and over. Just follow the steps, just a little variation, but it's the same theory. You clean out the decay, you ...
Howard: Tina, what would you say to these dentists? I've seen this for my whole life. From '93-'00, when stocks are doubling every year, every dentist is buying. Everybody's buying. March of 2000, it's like, 5600 on the NASDAQ. It plummets to 1200. At 1200, when everybody should be buying, no one will touch them. How many real estate bubbles have we lived through? When real estate's just doubling everybody's buying. As soon as it collapses, which is you should buy low and sell high. Every time it collapses, everybody's like, "Oh, I'm not touching stocks." It just collapse. "I'm not touching real estate. It just lost half its value." It seems like everybody listening is ... They're only going to buy when all their friends are buying and they're never going to buy if they're all by themselves.
Henry: That's a very bad ... That's a bad plan.
Howard: How do you go against that?
Henry: Well, in real estate, it's a simple rule of thumb. The simple rule of thumb is if you can buy it, if the mortgage ... If you can rent it for 1% of the mortgage, you won't lose. Ever.
Howard: If your monthly payment can be 1%.
Henry: If your monthly mortgage, with the rent payment that you receive, is 1% of the mortgage. You buy $100,000 house. If can rent it for $1,000 a month, there's no way to lose money.
Howard: And that'd be a 12% return, right?
Henry: Yeah.
Howard: 12 months.
Henry: It's a lot more than that. It's probably more like, 26 or 28% because you also have depreciation allowance. You have appreciation, you have ... There is nothing like real estate.
Howard: Yeah, and ... Go ahead.
Tina: I was just going to say that together we came up with a list of criteria that we use when we buy a home, and also in looking for prospective tenants. We already know where we want the house to be, in a residential area. We know what price range we want it for, we know we want a 3/2/2, we know what the profile is for renters. We make sure that the homes that we buy fall in the profile that's going to be desirable to the tenants.
Howard: A 3/2/2 is 3 bedroom, 2 baths, 2 car garage?
Tina: [inaudible 00:27:33].
Howard: You like that because it's in the middle of the liquidity curve where that's what most people are buying and selling?
Henry: Right. Right.
Tina: Right, and the standard also is that the tenants make at least minimal 3x the rent in terms of their income so that they can afford to pay the rent. That's critical.
Howard: Yeah. Another thing you got to realize is 70% of all millionaires in the United States make their money in real estate.
Henry: In 10 years, we went ... It originally started I was working ... I sold my practice in San Antonio and I came up here. I'm sorry. I came to east Texas, which is where my farm was. I live on a farm right now. I sold my farm. I bought my farm a long time ago. I wasn't getting any closer to it. Took me forever to talk her into marrying me.
Tina: 12 years.
Howard: Really? It took him 12 years to talk you into marrying him?
Henry: 12 years.
Tina: [inaudible 00:28:30].
Henry: Anyway, I finally ...
Howard: You guys dated 12 years?
Henry: Yes.
Howard: Now you've been married how many years?
Tina: 17.
Howard: Dated 12, married 17.
Henry: Yeah.
Howard: Good job.
Henry: Anyway, she finally saw the light. I just wore her down. Either way, anyway, the point was is that when we started out ... When you buy real estate, you just don't do willy-nilly. You don't buy a house that you want to live in. If you buy a house you want to live in, you buy a $250, $300,000 house. How many people are going to rent, spend $3,000 a month in rent? Those people are going to buy a house. If they can afford $3,000 a month, they can afford their own house. If you buy a house that you can rent for $1,000, they'll line up. We probably get ... We just had one for rent. I bet you we got at least 25 phone calls on it the first day.
Tina: Yeah, it was unbelievable. [inaudible 00:29:22].
Henry: You're not trying to hit a home run. Your profit on it's only maybe $300 a month. You put your money in. In 4 years or 5 years, you get all your money back. All the money you put in is back. From that point on, you're making $300 a month [inaudible 00:29:39] getting out of bed. That includes all the little crap that happens where they try to flush a teddy bear down the commode. One did. All the other cornball stuff that they do. It's a game. You have to enjoy it. Some people don't. Some, "Oh, I want stock. I don't want to get up and fix a toilet." I have never fixed a toilet. I call a plumber who goes and fixes the toilet. Problem solved.
Tina: The fact that we work so well together doing the dental business. The key was staying organized. That just transitioned into the real estate business. We took what we learned working together in the dental business and [crosstalk 00:30:15].
Henry: Also, read "Rich Dad Poor Dad" by Robert Kiyosaki. Required reading. If you're a dentist, read "Rich Dad Poor Dad" by Robert Kiyosaki. Essential. You also had a book, I can't remember the name of it, about setting up a dental practice. I don't remember the name of it. Memory's about this big.
Howard: "The Business of Dentistry?"
Henry: Yes. Great book. Required reading. I'm not trying to sell you, I'm trying to tell young dentists that you can reinvent the light or let you can let somebody who's already invented the damn light show you how to use it, then use the light. Why would you [crosstalk 00:30:48]?
Howard: I know you got to go. You're [inaudible 00:30:50].
Henry: Yes.
Howard: Tina, thanks for coming by.
Tina: Pleasure.
Howard: Thank you so much for ...
Henry: Oh, thank you, Howard.
Howard: Coming by and talking to us.
Henry: You're really a big deal in my life.
Howard: Oh, thank you. The honor and pleasure is all mine. Have a rocking hot day.