How Marketing Can Recession-Proof Your Dental Practice [VIDEO]

We’ve had some serious talks with our dentists these last six months since we’re starting a recession.

Turns out… ALL of our doctors are facing the same problems:

• “I’m short-staffed…”
• “Prices keep going up…”
• “Nobody is booking high-ticket treatments…”

And our dentists have no idea what to do, so they don’t take action and just hope everything will work itself out.

Well:

As a dental marketing agency, it’s our mission to become your guide to marrying marketing with your revenue, so you finally:

• Get more patients to say “yes” to cosmetic + restorative cases
• Have the freedom + control over your practice’s growth
• Feel at ease knowing your marketing is actually working

Well, that can be a reality, and it’s done through strong systems and a marketing strategy in place.

Why systems and marketing strategy?

Running a dental practice without systems and strategy is like placing a dental implant without x-rays.

It makes your dental practice recession-proof, creating a well-oiled machine and generating a constant stream of patients.

Join me as I video chat with Shannon, lead cheerleader and CEO of Roadside Dental Marketing. You’ll get all the answers to the questions you’re dying to ask, like:

• How do I know I have a strong system and marketing strategy in place?
• Will creating systems in my dental practice really increase my profits?
• What happens if I implement systems and a strategy into my dental practice?
• Where should I start optimizing my dental practice’s strategy?
• How can we make revenue now without overwhelming the team?
• Should dental practices take advantage of text messaging?
• How can I recession-proof my dental practice?

Use any of the quick links above to skip directly to the video you’d like to watch.

How do I know I have a strong system and marketing strategy in place?

Mel: Hi everybody. This is Mel. I’m the marketing director for Roadside. Today I have Shannon with me. She’s our CEO and lead cheerleader of Roadside Dental Marketing! She wants to tell you all about a topic that you probably don’t hear much about (beyond what we tell you to do online).

We’re gonna talk about systems and strategies.

Welcome, Shannon!

Shannon: Well, thank you, Mel. I know if you just say systems and strategies, it’s like, oh my gosh, what am I jumping into? That sounds boring. But no, I promise it’s not gonna be boring.

Mel: It’s gonna be so exciting, so let’s just jump right into it.

We’ve always educated our clients on the importance of a strong online presence. You need a strong brand. You need a beautiful website. You gotta post on social media consistently. You gotta have reviews.

All of this is still true, but we seem to be switching gears here and talking about strategy-first and systems – then dealing with websites, branding, reviews, and social media later.

How did this come to be, and why is this important?

Shannon: Okay, great question. I dove in when COVID happened since it was such a shift, and we’ve had change after change. I talked to masterminds – some brilliant people, not just in dentistry, but out in the world too, folks like E-Myth owner Michael Gerber, Mark Harris, and Ken and David from The Prepared Group. I ran into so many people that were watching the trends on what small business owners really need. And then of course, we looked at dentists and marketing groups.

Basically, status quo and mediocracy is not gonna be a thing in the next year or two or three. So if we don’t make some huge shifts for our dentists, for our small businesses, it’s gonna be catastrophic. It just is.

So instead of being a doomsday proclaimer, I employed these brilliant minds, and we learned from them. I brought my whole leadership team to Oregon and met with The Prepared Group, and they’re partnered with E-Myth and Mark Harris.

We learned all about a strategy-first approach because every client, every practice, and every business is just a little bit different. You have to look at what their assets are, where they’re coming from, their personality, what the industry needs, and what their audience needs first. Then you can look at your strategy by putting all these pieces together.

From there, it’s all about systems, because if we don’t put a sales marketing system into these dental practices, it’s way too heavy. They’re already exhausted.

And they really don’t know marketing systems well. Basically, only the top 5-10% of doctors have implemented this out of the whole dental industry, from what we’ve seen over the past 23 years. I’m like, “They’re not doing this. They don’t know this!”

So that’s where we just jumped right in.

The reason it’s important is because it’s gonna be a game changer for our practices, for the doctors that do these two things and don’t stick to the status quo. Technology, the economy, and people – they’re all changing, and they’re going to keep changing. So getting ahead of the curve is absolutely imperative right now.

Mel: Yeah, I totally agree.

So you talked about these two things, strategy and systems. What does that look like for a dental practice? How do I know I have a strong strategy and system in play?

Shannon: Well, that’s what I dove in to learn for the past couple years. I’ve been teaching practices what that actually looks like.

I have a visual; let me grab that.

So when we’re looking at a practice, Mel, we have to look at the whole health of it. When you’re thinking, “what does a business exist from?” you first have to ask how you’re capturing your new leads.

So we’re looking at this wheel, this “marketing wheel of fortune,” let’s call it.

Our wonderful designer set it up so I can walk through different parts of this with practices. Zero of course, is terrible, and then 10 is great. The colors and numbers visualize their needs analysis to focus on what they’re doing really, really great on, so we can support that. But it also highlights what they need help on and what the most important things to prioritize are.

This needs analysis focuses on answering a few questions: What do you guys need? What are your goals? What are your priorities? How do you wanna grow?

Like I mentioned before, every practice is just a little bit different. When you look at your practice, we’re really focusing on how you’re capturing new leads. It lays out the full picture.

Let’s take your website traffic for example – we can see, are you doing SEO? Is that organic? Are you doing things locally? Are you doing events? Are you doing Google Ads? Is it referral based?

For a lot of practices, the key to their survival is their referral base, but where are people really coming in from? Because people do check this stuff. Is your social media healthy? Is your texting working? Is it emails? Is it calls? Do you know what’s getting people in the door?

Plus, are you responding right away to these new leads?

Here’s a new thought for everybody once you get these leads. I’m in the red zone most of the time with my doctors. It’s all about nurturing these leads because even if they’re doing paid ads, whether it’s Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, or YouTube, they still need to keep nurturing them.

People aren’t ready to buy right away.

So, what is your nurture sequence? How are you staying in touch with these leads that are coming in? There’s a system to do that. So this is, you know, looking at marketing for this small business, right.

Then there’s transitioning with ease.

This basically means, “How easy is it to call you and get somebody?” Is it texting? Can they text you, or can they book online? Do you have your financing in place? We look at all of those pieces to make sure it’s a 10, because people make decisions so quickly and we cannot lose them once they’re there.

The next one we look at is case presentation and closing leads.

There are a few practices that nail it. They’ve got it down. They have visuals. It’s great!

But the majority don’t have a system for their case presentation and closing. They just assume that the patients are gonna say yes, or they don’t provide enough educational material to close the lead, to build that fire, that value to act now. Folks have a lot of decisions to make with their finances, with their health, and with their family. We need to show them that this is very important to them through the case presentation. So we talk practices through what that looks like and how we can get it to a healthy state.

Next up, building a culture of surprise, delight, and wow.

Now this is very different than you’d expect. I asked doctors, “What is your culture for surprise, delight, and wow?” Normally, I hear, “I have a great exam. People go on and on about how great my exam is, how thorough we were, that sort of thing.”

No! That is not surprise, delight, and wow.

I hope you have a great exam. I hope you’re the best dentist on the block so we can market you well in that neighborhood or area.

But it’s really about making something that shocks people. Something that makes them say, “What?! My dentist gave me this? Wow. They gave me a car. Oh my.”

How are we making them think that? There’s so many reasons to create a system around that idea. Folks in the office are really busy. They’ll often do great for a while, or think about it for a few patients, but then the day picks up. A week or a month later, they stop doing it.

Or they miss a lot of opportunities to do that because they’re not doing anything with the six months in between appointments. There’s a lot of time there where you could be nurturing a relationship to keep yourself top-of-mind for referrals, reviews, and treatments through nurture emails. It’s things like that.

Mel: I actually thought of a good example of the culture of surprise, delight, and wow.

My husband and I recently had a designer in. She interior-designed our bathroom because we wanted to completely remodel it. She completed the project, and it was great. But, I just got a care package from her where she bought little knickknacks for each member of our family. She gave my husband and me a $25 gift card to Target, brought my son a little puppet, and got a dog toy for our dog. Plus, we’re having a new baby. So she bought him a little toy.

That was like, oh my god! Wow. That was so unexpected. That’s so cool. We thought she was great.

Shannon: And then referrals happen.

Mel: Right. I was already going to refer her, but now I’m definitely going to.

Shannon: Yep. Now you go above and beyond to talk about her.

Mel: For sure. I immediately thought, “I’m gonna leave her a review. I’m gonna tell her how awesome she is.” It was just so unexpected.

Shannon: Exactly. So, we help our practices do that, beause there are so many different ways to make people say “wow.”

We look at what’s trending – what’s really popping when you’re looking nationwide at different areas, what’s working for people. People need that. It’s part of building a natural connection.

Then we nurture and upsell current clients. It’s not that you’re doing hardcore sells, but a lot of times, patients don’t know all the services you’re offering, or they need more education.

And so, we help create a campaign and build that up. Within a 90-day period, we’re looking at all these sections that weren’t tens and we’re creating a a good marketing wheel of fortune.

It’s amazing to me that most practices’ survival rate is still depending on referrals. They have hefty numbers, but it’s not consistent. It’s just enough to keep the practice going, but if they implemented a better system to make it super healthy they could double, triple, sometimes quadruple their referrals.

And then the last point here is strategic planning with real numbers.

Our practices are just so darn busy that they haven’t taken the time to look at real numbers. They’re afraid of it, or the practice management system is too hard to get, or, they’ve tried it in the past.

We have systems in place to help them. With this, the strategic planning is absolutely mandatory. It’s critical to do this now with how crazy the competition is.

So, in answering that question, you know what this looks like. I would love to pop over, you know, to this subject.

We’re talking to our practices and leveraging their numbers as we’re talking. As you can see, we get an uneven wheel. It’s pretty janky, right? So it can’t really run smoothly.

It’s not the well-oiled machine they need for this practice to get past just surviving, just going paycheck to paycheck, hoping you can make payroll this month. You can’t know how the practice is doing with just your bank account. It’s really about knowing the numbers and making it profitable.

So what you’re really doing is seeing, “Can we gain more profits from this? Can we add more gasoline to this? Or can we fix this over there?” That part of the strategy. So we wanna get rid of all the janky wheels and really help practices.

Mel: Yeah, that’s awesome. Seeing that janky wheel really put it into perspective that you can’t run a full-on dental practice with a janky marketing wheel of fortune.

Shannon: Yeah. They’re handicapped. It’s called Success Chaos. You’re busy enough. You’re okay enough. You’re paying the bills enough that you’re not gonna step back and fix and automate your systems for sales and marketing.

You can see if you’re actually profitable by looking at the providers and what they’re making per hour. If it’s $325, you need to get it up to $725.

That’s no joke, so how are we doing this? When we have those numbers in front of us, and then build a campaign to fix that, normally it’s 90 days to build momentum in the practice. That’s where we’re going with our doctors.

Will creating systems in my dental practice really increase my profits?

Shannon: Absolutely.

There’s ways to do more than that too. The important things for doctors running a successful practice and building a legacy for their family, even in crazy times, is time, money, and impact, right?

So if you’re going along with some of those points, but you have one or two off in the wheel, it’s absolutely amazing. The momentum fixes those few little parts within the wheel. You could double what you’re doing because you have so many other things in place so quickly.

And let me show you another example of what I’m talking about with that. Okay… Here’s another illustration that I use with doctors.

Interestingly, in the industry for small businesses, they always describe your patient journey or your patient funnel, right? And it usually stops right here.

This is the journey: You have traffic. So we were talking SEO local, paid ads, or referrals. There’s still a lot referred. Well, there’s a lot going on behind the scenes. You look at all of this work that’s done to get patients through the practice and then back in the practice, right? Current patients are re-enrolling and coming back in and doing these type of things.

So you have them, they’re scheduling on the website. They have an appointment. They come in for that appointment. That’s normally where marketing companies wrap up like, “Okay, you got the call to the office! We figure the front desk is doing great on enrolling and they’re greeting the patients and their first experience is wonderful.”

Great. But if you can fix those 1, 2, 3 points in your wheel that goes around, you then can make this into a patient hourglass. Instead of just getting a few in on this tiny little funnel right here, you’re going to be able to make your patients’ lifetime value worth so much more because you’ve educated them. You’ve built rapport with them. You’ve established trust and we’re documenting this. And this is in the system.

We’ve answered all their questions by giving them enough educational material, by giving them a great campaign that educated them about dental implants, Invisalign, full mouth rehab, or whatever bigger ticket item that might be. They need that education.

And then when they agree to it, we’re checking that everything needed is implemented in your practice. No insurance, no problem? Do you have finances set up? Is your treatment plan going well? What percentage of patients say yes to treatment? Did we get good-quality leads in there?

When they agree to treatment and then they get that treatment done, especially the higher ticket items, they’re happy. Then, just like we talked about, we do the whole surprise, delight, and wow thing. So we get those reviews. We get those referrals. They wanna shout from the rooftops, they become a raving fan!

If you have that, your marketing becomes so easy and a lot less expensive because now you don’t need to spend the budget on paid ads that you may have had to in the past to get butts in the seats.

There’s a lot of doctors that go, “We’re getting a hundred new patients a month,” and I’m like, “Okay. So how are we taking care of those hundred new people? Are we making sure that that patient lifetime value can expand and grow more?”

Because having a hundred new patients a month or even 30 or 40, it takes a lot out of you. You have to be on your game and it’s a new relationship and conversation, so it’s a heavy appointment. It’s taxing. At times.

So if we can do it right when they go through again, we’re making this hourglass, we’re increasing this patient lifetime value. We’re making it so much easier to get referrals.

So the answer to your question, Mel, is absolutely. If you have one, two, or three slots on your janky wheel or more, the more that we can clean up that wheel and make it round and running smoothly, like a well-oiled machine, the more time you’re gonna get back, the more money you’re gonna make, and the more impact you’re gonna make on their lives and your team’s lives Y.our practice is gonna run a lot smoother

What happens if I implement systems and a strategy into my dental practice?

Shannon: Okay. So what’s happening with our doctors that are doing that, is they’re able to take more time to take care of themselves, which is really important, especially during harder times and recession and all these other things. You have to take care of yourself first, and they’re gaining that time back to be able to do that. They’re also in a way better place to take care of their team and build culture. So then they’re getting even happier.

You’re fixing all these things; it’s not just about making money. Especially now.

It’s about relationships and connections and having inner peace of mind, and then building a legacy that you can be proud of. I mean, this is why these doctors put this blood, sweat, and tears into these practices. They want it to be successful. They wanna love it, right? It really is their baby. They love their patients so much and they really give it their all, but they have so many other things to do to make a practice hum so they can concentrate on what they love to do.

Once they get that janky wheel taken care, they can think, “Oh, strategic planning? Now I wanna do more Invisalign. Now I wanna do this!”

So, now we can do a targeted campaign, and they’re doing more of the dentistry that they love. Now they’re getting an associate to do the bread-and-butter work back here because they have a plan. They have the finances, they know their numbers, it’s all working out.

There’s quite a few doctors that are buying other locations because they realize, “We got this system down. It’s automated. And this marketing thing we got, we can just add another location in there.”

We’re just seeing quite a few different things on how they’re expanding. They’re happier and they’re able to spend more time with their family, or they’re growing their practice in different ways. Whether it’s more associates, a bigger location, multiple locations, or other things like that, it gets easier when you have a good marketing strategy and sales system.

Where should I start optimizing my dental practice’s strategy?

Shannon: You know, it really depends on the practice.

We have to interview them to see what their goals are and where they’re coming in at.

We like to strategize by looking at their strengths, their weaknesses, their opportunities, and their threats. It’s basically about coordinating around the practice’s wants and finding their biggest pain point.

And you have to look at the brand. You have to look at the SEO, you have to figure out what campaigns would work. What have they been doing that’s worked well, but hasn’t been implemented since?

My goal in looking at that is to find quick wins. It’s about how we can give a practice that quickest win, that influx of cash. We can do that!

Is it about making sure that all of the practitioners have butts in the seats and patients to take care of because the team is super darn expensive right now? Then we need to make sure that that production is happening. Do they need people in seats first, or do they have enough people, but want to do more high-ticket things to get more profits in.

So we do that. If they’re not closing enough of high-ticket items, then we help them with education and treatment closing, that sort of thing.

Then they’re seeing two things: 1.) the profits rise up in the practice, but also, like mentioned earlier, 2.), the practitioner’s per-hour can move up from $325 to $725. We’re thinking about how we can make that happen. It’s a per-practice thing.

Our first priority is saying, “what’s your quickest win, and what do you need?”

Or is it the team wanting to pull their hair and needing more culture? We hear, “I just need to stabilize my team.” Then let’s give them a system so when they’re talking to patients, it’s all right there. It’s easy, they’re done in 5-10 minutes. It’s such a stress reliever for them to get that training and that system in place. So then the doctor’s not grumbling, “Where’s my patient? How come my schedule’s not full?” And the morning huddles start being fun again.

To me, it’s about finding your biggest pain point and seeing what the best quick win with that is that you should go for.

Here’s the normal quick win:

I would say, honestly, that 75% of our practices think that they’re closing their treatment plans. But they don’t realize that they have, on average, $300,000, $500,000, or even up to $800,000 in unclosed treatments where the patient hasn’t been nurtured and they haven’t been educated properly.

So how do you prioritize that? That’s strategic planning, because we have to look at the numbers. We have to know what can we really do for the practice. We have to look past the day-to-day “success chaos” type of thing.

Helping practices strategically plan and knowing their numbers is the number one priority.

We don’t even need very much from their information and numbers to do this.

We wanna do the majority of ’em, but let’s say they’re not our client. We actually created a marketing action workbook plan for anybody to use, so they can start looking at that. It really walks them through how they can look at their strengths, their weaknesses, their opportunities, and their threats, and even see their unique value proposition.

We are pushing our doctors so hard to be so much more different. You’re a commodity; there’s a dentist on every block. You really have to stand out and be comfortable with standing out and being different, and then really start nurturing these relationships.

The more that you can plan out and see where those opportunities are to do that within the practice and then within the community, that’s what I would start with.

So download our action workbook! That does it for you.

When we get feedback from clients, when they’ve started thinking about that, their progress for strategic planning and setting up systems goes so much quicker.

Did I answer your question?

Mel: Mm-hmm, yeah. Absolutely. So we’re basically saying, you need to determine your SWOT, so your Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats. You need to find your unique value proposition. You need to know who you wanna serve (AKA your customer persona). Is it strong enough?

Shannon: I mean, people have changed so much.

Are you really connecting? Are you saying the same old things? When you’re sending out information to them, is it a rusty, crusty, dusty newsletter? Or is it something fresh and unique?

Do you put a cause in there? Do you cause them to go, “Oh wow. The dentist just sent me their favorite smoothie, or what’s happening in the community, or here’s this little piece of education outside or inside of dentistry.”

We don’t wanna build a discount world. It’s not about coupon dentistry. What we wanna build is huge value – maybe a gift voucher towards whitening when you do this, but more of a high end “something” so we get people that are truly interested and big ticket.

Depending on that practice and how they’re planning out their marketing efforts and what they wanna be doing for services and the growth that they need to do, it helps if to write it down.

I have to say most practices, 75%, probably 80% (‘cause it’s always the 80/20 rule), don’t spend enough time with strategic planning.

So if someone can help ’em with strategic planning and looking at their real numbers and basing their marketing off of that, and then tying that marketing into revenue, it’s great.

Even more importantly, we can see the marketing we did and how much revenue it brought in. Now let’s dig deeper. Now let’s look at the profits. Were you profitable? Are you making enough money on this? How could we increase the price? Is there more value we could bring? Are there other services that we could offer? You know, what else do they need? What other collaboration can make that happen?

The goal with strategic planning and looking at numbers is to work out one thing at a time. Then, you’re not overwhelmed. It has to be one thing at a time so you can really make it a 10 and it doesn’t overwhelm the practice.

It encourages them, and it makes it run so much smoother. And the doctor’s happy! The team’s happy. The patients are happy, and we’re happy because they’ve gotten the results. What is that, like, a win-win-win-win-win? That’s all we want.

Mel: Well hey, we all wanna win. That’s perfect. Awesome.

How can we make revenue now without overwhelming the team?

Shannon: That’s where the numbers come in. If they have a big enough list… I mean, you could do it with any list, but to really see a big influx on a 90-day campaign, it’s taking a patient list of a thousand and nurturing them.

First, it’s looking at basic hygiene reactivation. A lot of patients haven’t come back since COVID and they haven’t got into the swing of things again. Make sure that the hygiene is humming and the communication with their patients is next-level. Let’s level up that communication with them.

It’s not just, “You’re due in six months, come in for your cleaning.”

No! We wanna build that relationship and have fun with them. Put a little surprise, delight, and wow into play when they’re building those relationships up, because that’s where referrals come from.

Once we clean up and make sure that the hygiene is super healthy, that’s usually a huge influx of cash. We have results, and the beautiful thing about that is that there’s no ad spend.

Then we look at treatment acceptance – who hasn’t accepted their treatment plans, concentrating on crowns, Invisalign, and other services that can bring in a massive, massive amount of cash into the practice right away.

But you have to speak to those patients in a way, that’s connection-based, that’s building them up, that’s short and sweet and fun. They have to have a little carrot, an offer, or a gift voucher, to get them and get their treatment.

Looking at the low-hanging fruit of these practices is huge because they’ve already done so much to build up those relationships when they’re in these practices. We just have this high caliber of practices that we’ve worked with over the last 23 years, where they’ve done the work while they’re in there, but they haven’t nurtured those relationships enough.

So if we can get back in there and nurture them properly and speak to them how they need to be spoken to, they can get a massive amount of influx in cash.

The beautiful thing about this is that once that’s out of the way, you can think, “Now I wanna grow. Now I wanna do more dental implants.”

Great! Let’s do new leads. Let’s do Google Ads, but now, thanks to this big influx of cash, we’re playing with house money. We’ve gotten it from the practice, so we can do some dental implant ads and some Invisalign ads.

That’s where it can really grow.

And a lot of practices are using that cash to update their website because it’s been forever and the branding is just bad.

So now that we’ve made sure that the practice is healthy and they’re getting this cash in, now they need to look at their brand. Now they need to look at their website because it is very competitive out there.

But we’ve paid for it through this influx of cash, with this low-hanging fruit that we’ve done over the past 90 days. I would say it only really takes two or three campaigns to really get them humming.

Should dental practices take advantage of text messaging?

Shannon: 100%. A hundred percent.

Everybody wants to book online, and everybody wants a text message. It’s a balance of quick, witty, and fun. People wanna like you, people wanna laugh. So it can’t be tight and professional. It has to be like, “Hey, just thinking of you! Do you want… dadadada da.”

It’s about how you send the texts and the psychology of how you get them to re-enroll.

In the practice, it’s all about text messaging. It really is. We do like to support the campaigns with email because there’s that 20% that are still there. It makes it heavy, especially when they read the nurturing newsletter that comes along with it, which builds more. Then they’re passing it to other friends and you’re able to give them more content, which is good.

When they see fun texts come in, they’ll actually read it. They feel like they’re in relationship with you. They’ll respond back quicker when it’s a text message.

Then, when they text back, it’s really important that you’re on it and you text back and talk to them.

Mel: It’s like talking to a friend.

Shannon: Exactly. Yeah. Cause they are. You always say, “We’re your dental family.” You gotta live up to that.

How can I recession-proof my dental practice?

Shannon: Honestly, I think it’s just dialing in everything that we’ve talked about. If you’re not knowing your numbers and profitability, and you’re not tying that to your marketing, then it’s a Hail Mary right now.

And then the recession will get worse. It will. All the professionals, all of my masterminds, we’re all gonna be really feeling it like the housing market 12 to 18 months from now. It’s already happening.

So if our doctors can stack some cash, if they can make that profitability really count right now with people’s mindset before the panic of the next year strikes, it’ll be a gold mine.

And if you’re leveling up and building these relationships and really being different and sounding different, you’re gonna be the dentist that people go to. Not the other guys that aren’t putting money into their online presence or their branding or their surprise, delight, and wowing, to where they build loyalty. They’re gonna lose it.

I don’t wanna be all doom and gloom, but heck, my business? If I don’t do that, if I don’t take care of my doctors, I’m gonna lose. If I don’t really care about them and really get serious about what they need then I’m gonna be in the same boat. So I have to walk my talk and really be concerned in that way.

The doctors need to be the same. Think, what do my patients really need? They need quick online booking. They need the whole family seen. Do they need different hours? Is eight to five still okay, or can you do one day a week?

Recession proofing is about really thinking about what your community needs. So, we go through where their practice is, what the community really needs, and what they’re willing to do to recession proof.

But I would say all of those things are all involved in that.

Mel: Yeah, totally agree.

Shannon: Oh, let me say one more thing. If you set up your systems properly, then your marketing is way less expensive. Ad spend is crazy expensive, right? It’s okay for getting the big ticket leads coming in, sure.

But no matter what happens with the recession, if you’ve built up those relationships, if you’ve built up that loyalty and that referral system, then you’re not gonna have to spend gads of money on marketing because you have your marketing wheel healthy and going. It’ll make sure you have more time and money to spare when you really need it.