 Hello, everybody. Andrew Maesky here with Dental L Tutoring. So I wanted to talk to you guys about my mobile hygiene practice because a lot of you are curious how that works. And depending on where you live, though, you might not be able to start your own independent hygiene practice. So I'm sorry if you're not there yet, but if you are in a province state where you can, then excellent. Listen up. This will be exciting for you. So I first started my mobile hygiene practice a year ago. And when I would ask hygienist questions, nobody was a mobile dental hygienist. And the funny thing is I started because I was looking for a mobile dental hygienist for my grandparents in a nursing home. There was nobody out there. The one person I contacted, she was from a couple hours away, but I was really looking for somebody. But she charged about $80 to go out there. I'm not saying that that's not okay, because I'm sure it is. But I didn't want to pay $80 just for her to go there when I wasn't even sure if my grandparents would let her clean their teeth. They have severe dementia, so they're in a good mood sometimes. Bad mood usually. Good mood sometimes. You know, you get the idea, right? So, but you might be wondering, well, why couldn't you just clean their teeth? Well, I thought about that afterwards because I thought, okay, well, I don't have air. I don't have water. I can bring my instruments, but is that the best treatment for them? Probably not, right? But then I got to thinking there's nobody else out there, so I might as well get the ball rolling and do it myself. So to make a long story short, that's what I did after all of the expenses. I spent about $30,000 on everything that I needed. I said, well, I can see other people too in nursing homes. It just makes sense. Word got around fast, which is exciting about my mobile hygiene practice. So I would have parents contacting me and say, I have six kids. Can you come to my house? Because that would be amazing. Yes, of course I can. Or, you know, people who can't get out of bed, they have special needs of some kind. It's so nice to be able to go to their home. Well, let me talk to you guys about that a little bit and how I make things successful in my mobile hiding business. And I say that because I did talk to two or three mobile hygienists who I thought were mobile hygienists. I talked to them and they said that they're actually not doing it anymore. They're just doing it on the side. And I kind of thought, really, like there's such a need out there. But they said, well, I would end up going to, you know, one place and then two hours away see somebody else and then half an hour away see somebody else, but then have to go back here. That's a lot of work because that's the thing about mobile hygiene is you have to lug your equipment in and out of the car, right? So that's one of the cons about it. It's not just you walk into a house. Everything's there for you. You're all set to go. If you forget something, you just have to go into the next room and get it with a mobile hygienist. You have to bring everything you have to prepare. You have to bring twice as much stuff than you think you need. You can leave it in the car if you want to, but, you know, you have to think about all of those things, right? So that's the hardest part for me is lugging everything in and out. So you have to find things that are portable. When I first started, I kind of had this big suitcase and I just shoved everything in there as much as I could thinking, well, that's just one thing that I have to wheel in. Well, guess what? What if a patient has steps? What if a patient has a basement apartment in a house and there's steps leading, okay? So that big luggage thing quickly didn't work out for me. It was better for me to have a couple medium-sized totes to bring all of my stuff in. So even now I probably make about four trips to the car, which may seem like a lot, but that's not as bad as when I first started, right? And I don't have to carry anything super heavy. My compressor is the heaviest thing because that's about, I don't know how many pounds it is. I'll have to double check that for you, but it's really heavy, so you need two hands. But what I find works so well, and I am able to do this now because I have built up patients, is I go to one city a day. And I don't see more than two different households. When I first started, like I would just see whoever I could to make the money to see the patients to spread the word, right? But I find if I go to three households, I'm very tired and I'm a little bit sore at the end of the day. Notice how I said a little bit. I've been very lucky. I'm not super sore or in pain when I get home, but I can feel it. My neck, my shoulders, my hips, my hips have always been my issue for some reason. That's where I get the most sore. But I find if I see two households in a day, that's good enough for me. It's a bonus when there's more than one patient per household, right? So that's what I do try to see more than one person per household. If a patient tells me that they want me to look at their two-year-old son, I do tell them that for my mobile practice, I do like to see one adult two at the same time. So then that way I'm not lugging in all of my stuff in and out, travel time, all of that, seeing a two-year-old that I could probably only do an exam on, right? It's not about the money, no, but I could see more patients. And I tell them, if you're not okay with that or you only want your son to be seen, then you can come to my home office, no problem. So, because a lot of people contact me because they don't want to go to a dental office, they're nervous, they have severe anxiety. In my home office, it's not a dental office, right? It's a non-traditional dental office. It's in the house setting. If they want to come to me, if not, I have no problem going to them. So you might be wondering how much do I charge for my mobile hygiene business. Right now I don't charge anything because that's what my business plan was made up of, is going to people's homes. So I was just happy to get the patients. But now that I have a practice in my house, I might charge an extra $10 to go to their home because that would cover money for gas, you know. $10, maybe $15. I haven't decided yet, but I would not charge more than that. So that way I can tell people, you know, if you're not happy with that, you can come to me. And I think that that's a very good price because even that, like this has been a while, but there was a painter that was highly recommended by a friend of mine. But they lived about an hour and a half away. For them to come to us, they were charging $45 for transportation. We said, heck no, that's ridiculous. $10 to $15 I feel is fair, right? Especially for that service going to your house. But that's the key, you guys, is see certain people, or sorry, certain cities on one day. Don't go one place and then half an hour away to another place and then two hours away the other way. You know, don't do that and only travel as far as you want to. Like I will travel up to an hour and a half if there's a lot of people in one house, an hour, no problem. But past that, I kind of have to say, okay, if three people are booking no problem, but otherwise, no. Because it's a lot of work, you guys, and being in the car, but I must say I love it. So having that said a lot of work, I love it and I would not change a thing. It's the most amazing thing to just be able to go to people's homes and they're so thankful that you are seeing them. You're doing your job, you are able to do what you love to do. I love that so much. So let me know though, if you guys have any questions about a mobile dental hygiene practice, because I love to talk about it. If you're an independent dental hygienist and you want to start your own mobile practice, I do have a course actually where I teach. Dental hygienists start their own practice because we all have questions. I didn't really get a lot of answers and I was first starting so I kind of learned as I went. I've learned a ton. I've made mistakes and I want to teach everybody about that too. So a recent note, tomorrow I am going to look at a dental software that I'm super excited about because I do, I do, what's the term I'm looking for here. I do send everything to insurance first so I'm creating more work for myself where I offer direct billing, but that's a lot of work. So but I needed, I need a dental software that will allow me to do that so I don't have to write everything out. So I'll keep you guys posted on that. But let me know if I didn't answer something. Thank you guys so much for watching and I'll see you in the next one.