Anne: Hi, everyone. It's Anne Duffy and welcome to Dental Entrepreneur the Future of Dentistry podcast. I'm so glad you're here. I'm so glad that I have this new friend, fast friend with us today. Jackie Joachim. Am I saying your last name right?
Jackie: Joachim? You are. Yep. You are in. And I'm so excited to be here and to be here with you.
Anne: You are something special. We met in Toronto at the Women in Dentistry conference. the first year. So I've been, this is my second year there. And boy, did we connect. Oh, it was in the dinner. That was the
Jackie: dinner the night before that FE organized. Yeah. And we sat
Anne: across from each other and boy, did we connect and, you know, good dues, ladies, good people, find good people and good dues, find good dues.
little bit about. Jackie, before we get started, Jackie Jom is the Chief Operating Officer and one of the main appraisers at ROI corporation Since 2013, Jackie's 30 year experience includes leading a successful team in the banking industry. Jackie has taken great pride in helping practitioners understand the business side of their practice along with the factors that affect their value.
Jackie has been a keynote speaker, contributed to industry publications. And delivered many webinars for the intention of educating and empowering owners. Jackie, welcome to the
Jackie: podcast. Oh, thank you. And I appreciate you having me. I'm just so excited to be doing this with you.
Anne: Me too. And then when we first talked, we had that great conversation in Toronto.
You know, So I really want you to write an article for us. First of all, I love the name of your company, ROI Corporation. That's like... wow. You guys were really forward thinking on that. And the fact that you're the chief operating officer, so you are in the C suite. And of course we look to bring women into the C suite because that's where you make the decision.
So, you know, you are really modeling a dental entrepreneur woman. And I think you are the future. So your article, Great Leaders Trust Their Instincts. Was so well written and it just kind of gave me goosebumps through it because I've got a lot of decisions that I make every day. tell us a little bit about how you came up with the idea and what you've seen in your work with dentists and the owners of their practices.
Jackie: So before I say the idea, our firm ROI our founder was Roy Brown. He recently passed away at the age of 93. initially the company started as Roy management, but of course, ROI, return on investment. And it just was a play on from there.
Roy Brown's mantra was that he wanted a dentist to retire profitably and with dignity and that's, been our guiding principle throughout our firm, throughout our history because we've been doing this now for 50 years. So the article that I wrote I find that there's always a lot of people out there that want to tell.
Dentists, business owners, you have to do this program, you have to do that program. there's always value for any type of learning that you incorporate. But sometimes I feel that, we can all get to a place where we forget to trust our instinct. So we might try something that intuitively doesn't feel good, but because an expert has said, That's the thing to do, you'll get results with it.
But I think you can only get results with things if it's congruent with who you are, if it feels right. And I think a lot of times in business we try to remove the feeling because we wanna be all about facts. And obviously facts are important. And I know for me as a woman, growing up in the financial industry, I've always been in male dominated.
businesses and, always one of the few women at the table. when I was younger, you try so hard not to show the feelings that, we have to be tough. We have to be a certain way. And then you grow up a bit and you realize but that's who I am. And, Listening to my inner voice and listening to my instincts is really, really important.
And I think people don't trust themselves enough and I think that they should, and that, that was the point of the article.
Anne: it's interesting because we were talking before we got on here. It's, really a sign of female leadership when you can lean into your gut and your intuition.
It's something that I think women have a. I don't know. It's a special magic about that. And, you know, I think that you work with so many female practitioners. I do. So what are the challenges, the biggest challenges that you see that they're facing in this day and age?
Jackie: I think for women, I think unfortunately it's been the same challenge for the longest of times, is the balancing act.
And whenever I speak to a group of women, I always start off saying, you're an owner, you're a dentist, and if you're married or you're in a relationship, have a partner, and kids. So you can never give up being a dentist because that's who you are. You can never give up your children because you gave birth, or you adopted, or whatever.
They're yours. At some point, something has to give. So if you're in a miserable relationship, well that's easy thing. Get rid of the partner. But if you're in a good relationship if the ownership component is really draining you, which it is draining a lot of, women for sure. And I'd say a lot of people in general women, because of the balancing act, then I reassure women that have to own at some point, it's a great way to create wealth.
An autonomy for yourself, but there will come a time where you feel like you're burning out and at that time, don't let your ego get in the way. It's okay. It's okay to sell the practice. It's okay to being just a dentist again. You don't have to be an owner. It's nice to just be able to walk out that door at the end of the day and not worry about certain things that you have to worry about as an owner.
I think for women, that's the big challenge. And I still remember years ago when I worked for the bank and I was, again, the only woman in the elevator somebody said to me, Jackie, what do you want for Christmas? Cause it was like two weeks away. And I just looked at him and I said, I want a wife.
And he looks at me and goes, what are you talking about? And I have a great husband. I love my husband to death. He really tries very hard to be supportive. I said think about it. Who's buying the presents, who's decorating the house, who's organizing the dinner and all these things. And I went, your wife, right now, do you see why I want one of those? we try to do so much for so many people. And I think we sometimes forget to take care of ourselves. to me, in my opinion, is one of the biggest challenges. Oh,
Anne: I see that so often, especially even in the Duke community because they're running businesses not necessarily a dental office, but there's so many things that fall on women's shoulders and we take them and we do them and we spin those plates.
And I, that's what I say that, you know, dental entrepreneur is woman is. Every woman, because we're all entrepreneurial and how we run a home and I think even if you have a man, I have a lot of friends that have men that are like, you would say, stay at home dad or helping,
There's still something there that we take on way more of the family load, if you will. put your business on top of it. I love that. just as an aside, I love the fact that you just had a retreat recently yourself explaining some of these things. we all need help
The intuition is in your gut. This is not easy for me. What can I unload? What is it that I need help with? And then to have the vulnerability to ask for help, we're mighty, we can take
Jackie: on a lot. We're fierce, that's for
Anne: sure. But at some time take us down. well, and we know, female graduating dentists are on the rise. I've heard 56%, I've heard 61%. The market has changed for female owners. And tell me what you're seeing, How have you seen it
Jackie: change?
100 percent it's changed. Back in the day, our business was, typically a white haired gentleman, 65 plus, who had reached the end of his career and was looking to sell for retirement. Fast forward to about the last I'd say four or five years, so I wear two hats.
I have my chief operating officer hat, which is the business side of Roy Corporation. But then I also have a sales hat where I do represent vendors in the sale of their offices. And I would say in the last probably four years, 80 percent of my sales have been female owners.
And there are women that are not 65 waiting to retire, ready to retire. I mean, There are a couple, but I would say the average age of a female vendor is probably late forties, maybe even 50, because she's just tired. She's tired of that juggling at trying to be everything to everybody and not really taking any time for herself.
So that's where I see that the market has changed. I also see a lot more females. Purchasing, which is fantastic they've graduated, they've paid off the student debt. They've associated for a little while. And that's why I said before ownership, I fully recommend it.
But it doesn't have to be forever. It should be for a period of time. But then it's okay to sell and become that associate again, and then, know a few other women who seem to like to start up, get the practice to a certain point and then sell it. And then they, repeat that a few times and initially, you know, they struggled with the idea of like, well, why am I doing this?
Is it that I'm just not happy? And then, you encourage them and say, well, no, it's not that you're not happy. You've just found a very smart way of doing business for yourself you know, what works trust your instinct and keep going. Oh,
Anne: man, I love that. There's a lot there to unpack Jackie because could first of all understand why women in their late 40s, maybe early 50s are tired because that's when you have your kids in middle school, and it's very tough and you've got to be there and there's a lot of games and there's practices and there's craziness going on in the world. I could see where that would lend itself to a little bit of burnout. That's cool. Because you actually have built something. really nice to have built something that's yours that you can make decisions is myself being an owner of a business. enjoy that. like the freedom it gives me because I can do whatever I want.
Just the, legacy that I'm, I feel like I'm building and maybe leaving, which I love. The other thing that you said what you stand for in your firm is to make sure that you're leaving the owner doc, with a life. Time of building a practice with a great legacy looking back and saying, wow, that was great.
And my transition is great. So those are a couple of things that I think, what I would want to work with you because you understand the mentality behind that. It's not just the numbers. It's a lot more than that. But I also think have you seen that women are taken advantage of a little bit more than men in the work space? you ever get clients that have tried to do it on their own and then they come to you and they say, Hey, how do I get myself into this situation? I need help because I always want them to look for the expert. Someone that's used to working with dental industry.
Jackie: I would say women are better at that than men, to be honest because the majority of women know that they can't be everything. you know, it's that idea of delegating a certain task to the person that does it the best. I find that women are, are naturally more inclined to do that. And I mean, selling an office is. A very scary process because you've got the kimono open, someone's doing due diligence, they're picking away and saying well, how come your thing is like this?
How come your patients aren't coming every whatever? it can be a very judgmental timeframe, which is where we come in and we buffer that so we can have the tough conversations rather than having the two doctors having that. brutal conversation and nobody's feelings are hurt. In terms of women being taken, I mean, I'm fortunate that I've only had to really step in on one or two cases where I did feel the purchaser was male.
My client was obviously female and they were trying to negotiate in bad faith. the first thing that I always tell my client is We don't have to put up with this. Let's just politely decline and walk away. Because nothing is worth selling your soul and your feelings and this is a baby, right?
This is another baby for people. Your business is a baby. You've watched it grow. It's now either a teenager or a young adult and you have a lot of attachment to it. And there will be people that try to take advantage and it's okay to walk away from that.
Anne: Yeah, I love that too. And also it's to be fair to men, it can go either way.
I mean, you could have a female owner doing the same thing. It's just that's all ethics. And you said something that I think also will resonate women do ask for help and can delegate a little bit more. They don't know it all and they know that they don't know it all. again, that's when they look.
To the expert to guide them, hold their hand, walk them through that. and how fun would it be? And also some gals and some men, we see this across the board. They like the startup. They like the startup and they hand it off. They do another startup. They hand it off. It's almost like, I mean, I hate to say it.
It's kind of like house flipping if you enjoy that. And that's to make it exquisite and beautiful for someone else And take care of it, right? Because they don't, you certainly wouldn't do that if you didn't want the person that's buying it to, you take care of your baby, if you will going further down the road.
But do you see, or do you think that women run their practices a little bit differently than men
Jackie: counterparts? Oh, a hundred percent. I mean, Women. I think by default, and I'm glad you made that point earlier about, it's not just men that take advantage for sure. And I was glad you made that because I didn't want it to come out sounding that way.
But I think women are more relationship focused. like when I'm doing an appraisal women seem to be more focused on their team. What can I do to make the team more, cohesive? They'll invest in training. They'll invest in retreats. at our retreat one of The practitioners was building a little yoga studio in her office so that they had a room to meditate, do a little bit of exercise and stretching in which I thought, wow, that's really cool.
So I think women will try to be. a little bit more collaborative and bring their staff in, and building it together. And again, not to take away from men, I think men are just trained. From birth to just be natural generals like this is what you need to do.
This is what I want. Go out there. and do it. And I think we care about the feelings like we don't want anyone to be hurt to be bruised. Sometimes that can go to a fault when tough decisions have to be made. But I, I do think that in, in general, That's how I see it.
Being run differently. Yes, I
Anne: can see that. I've always said, men are wonderful. I love all white guys. I've said this before, because I married one for 48 years and he's the best, but they're laser focused. He is totally laser focused on what his task is. And I'm like all over the place.
cause you know, it has to get done. And they say, you want to have something done well, and on time, ask a woman to
Jackie: do it. Yep. A hundred percent. And again, I think women we have to be more flexible when you made your comment about the stay at home dads, who do children call out for at three o'clock in the morning when they're not well, it's always mom.
by nature we are those nurturers and we give people a lot of calmness and make them feel that they're taken
Anne: care of. Yes, and I love that we're all both involved involved in organizations of women in dentistry because, you know, we love the relationships.
We love the community. We love knowing that we're not alone. the other thing that just struck me funny was, They call out mom, but actually, they may have called out dad, but dad doesn't hear because mom has that hearing.
Jackie: It is so funny. You just reminded me when, so my daughter's 22, but she must've been, I don't know, six or eight weeks old.
And she went through one of those crying spells that literally lasted for two hours. And finally, out of exasperation, I yelled out to my husband, can you please help me? And he's like, Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, sure. For sure. How long has she been crying? 10 minutes. I'm like, Seriously, you did not hear this howling for the last two hours.
It's, not like we lived in a mansion so, oh my God, God bless them. God bless them for being asleep, standing up .
Anne: we gotta keep 'em 'cause we love 'em and uh, absolutely we are. we talked about our husbands at that dinner the night we were together. So, Lucky us, lucky them.
And. And lucky that practitioners in dentistry have someone like you that has their back, the intuition that they may not carry knows how to ask the questions, how to, get the deals done so that both parties feel really good about it. That's the key of a great, Transition.
That's what we try to
Jackie: do for sure.
Anne: Jackie, how do we get in touch with you?
Jackie: we're a Canadian company. We have friends in the U. S. If you were to call, I'm very happy to refer you to some friends in the U S.
Technically we could do an appraisal anywhere. My Timothy Brown, my boss, he's actually going to grand Cayman, I think next week to do an appraisal. Cause the easy part. We can do an appraisal anywhere. but when it comes to the selling component, sometimes. territories get tricky with that, but we're definitely well connected.
And if people want to get ahold of me, I'm hoping, so I've got a challenge going with our team here because we've got so many younger members that are not on Instagram. They're on it for personal, but not for business. And I love Instagram. So if people would be willing to follow me, cause I have to win, I have to win the challenge this year.
Oh, so I'm on Instagram, Jackie Joachim. You'll find me there and I'm always happy to give my cell number out because I think that's such an easy way to communicate with people. And I'm always happy to answer questions that people don't need to feel obligated that I'm going to be chasing after them for business.
If I can be a resource. I'm happy to be one.
Anne: That's wonderful. And we'll have all that in the show notes that people can follow and just a delight to know you. I can't wait to continue our relationship and same for me and, and I'd love that you have partners in the U S because it goes right back to the beginning of good people find good people.
Oh my gosh. The teamwork.
Jackie: This is on my desk. This is not my desk. I love it. And I love the gorgeous woman that's on the cover. Oh, you are so sweet. Let me just say
Anne: this one then. Oh,
Jackie: I need to get off my little video here. All right, come on. you guys are gonna all see
Anne: my, messy office but it's all good. That means I'm in good
Jackie: shape that's a great office.
Anne: you were in this edition of our summer dental entrepreneur, and this was Rebecca Merrill. Have
Jackie: you met Rebecca Merrill yet?
Haven't had the pleasure.
Anne: So this is what I want from all of my authors. So reach out, you've read her article, reach out to Rebecca, get to know her because she
Jackie: is amazing
Anne: and I think that she could learn so much from you and then here's your article, which I just love. So everybody read it.
It's on our website, by the way. And again, the article is called great leaders, trust their instincts. So go to dental entrepreneur. com and you will find it in the summer edition. So Jackie joking. Thank you so much. Have a great
Jackie: day. Thank you. And you as well. And again, a pleasure to be here. And I'm so grateful that I met you last year and our friendship continues to blossom.
Thank you. Oh, you're
Anne: welcome. Thank you. All right, everybody. Thanks for joining us today. And remember, most importantly, keep doing you. Thanks, everybody. See you next time.
