 Hello everybody, welcome back. So this is part two, part one, I talked about five things that you do need when you start your own dental hygiene business, things you might wonder, do I need to spend the money right away? Do I don't hide? Well, yes, you do. So this is part two where I talk about five things you do not need right away for your business that can really help you save money. Now, number one, I do want to talk about first because it was a need for me, but it might not be a need for you. And this is purchasing a sterilizer. So I purchased a Statham sterilizer for my home, obviously, so that I could sterilize instruments. It's about $10,000. Okay, I want to say with taxes and everything, it was about $10,000. Now, what a lot of dental hygienists are doing is they are talking to a dentist that they know or who they currently work for if you're still working at a dental office and asking if you can use their sterilizer, either when it's not in use on different days or however you want to do it. And do that. A lot of dental hygienists do that when they're first starting because they don't know if they're going to be busy. They might not be seeing a lot of patients and that is a way to save a lot of money, $10,000, until you start making money. Now, for me, that didn't work because I knew I'm ambitious, you guys. Okay. And that's what I'm trying to give all of you guys is my motivation, my ambition. I knew I was going to be busy. I knew I was going to see a lot of patients. So I didn't want to have to plan out when I'm going to go to a dental office to bring my dirty instruments to sterilize, having to hang around to make sure that no other staff member takes my dirty instruments by mistake. I just didn't want to do that. It was so much easier for me and I wouldn't change anything about it. It was just so much easier to have a sterilizer in my own home. I didn't use it a lot initially. I was maybe running a load a week, so I probably could have gone to a dental office, but I just simply didn't want to. It's something that if you want to save money, that's one way to do it, is sterilize your dirty instruments at a dental office if they allow you to do so. Another thing is, which might seem kind of counterproductive, but number two of things you don't need is advertising materials, some of them. Do you need business cards? Do you need advertising materials, posters, a sign for your card, that type of thing? I will tell you in the course that I have, Mobile RGH Academy, that those are things you should definitely save up the money for right away and purchase so that you're advertising your business, but you don't need them right away. I'm just thinking about myself when I first started in my dental hygiene business. I didn't need to handle business cards. I didn't need to get posters, flyers, a magnet for my car so that when I drive around, you know, people can see my advertising. I didn't need that because when somebody asked about my business, all I did was give them my page on Facebook or my website and that didn't stop anybody from just simply going there and that's free. I didn't have to spend online when somebody asked about my business. I gave them my Facebook page so I didn't have to spend a couple hundred dollars on advertising materials, depending on what you want of course it could be upwards to a thousand dollars who knows. But those are just little things that do you need right away, not necessarily. You can save up your money and get the advertising things which I do suggest you do once you start making money. Okay, so does that make sense? So the three are uniforms. I don't know about you guys, but when I first started my business, I was excited. I mean, obviously you're excited, but I was thinking to myself, oh my goodness, I'm going to have the nicest uniforms, they're all going to be matching. They're going to be brand new. Oh, they're going to be so good. I'm going to spend like $100 on a top, you know, $100 on, you know, whatever. Yeah, you guys honestly work with what you have assuming you are all dental hygienists and have been working for a while before you want to start your own business. You probably have lots of scrub tops, you have lab coats, you have name tags. You don't need to spend the money to get brand new amazing uniforms right away. You're going to know they're brand new and no one's going to care. Of course that's up to you, right? If it makes you happy to get these new things, then go for it. But it's so easy to spend $600 on new uniforms and not even realize it until the bill comes in. So there, I just saved you guys $600 on new uniforms, just work with what you have. The thing that you really don't need right away that I feel a lot of us want to do right away is get all new instruments. So it's kind of the same thing with getting a new uniform, new outfits, right? When you have your own business, you think, oh my goodness, I'm going to buy all new instruments. I'm going to get the best ones. I'm going to spend all my money to just get whatever I want. So a little tip for you is, and I actually talk about this in my course too. I talk about everything that I purchased my first month, two months, three months, first year, all of that. And one of the things that I noticed was I didn't buy any new instruments because I had them all from school. I didn't use them since school. So like we're going back 15 years maybe, but they were sharp and they were perfectly fine. Obviously, I sharpened them again, but I checked them afterwards. The tips, the integrity was all perfectly fine. I didn't need to get new ones. Did I want new ones? Of course I did. But guess what? I bought new ones a couple months later when I made the money from my business. So you don't need the newest instruments. You do not need 20 different cassettes of full instruments. Work with what you have. Of course, if you don't have any instruments, buy instruments because you need them, right? So buy 10 new instruments per kit. Buy four that you really need. You know, buy a mirror, buy a probe, which you don't necessarily need in every kit because you might not be probing on every patient. Buy a good posterior scaler. Buy a good anterior scaler and maybe buy a good posterior curette, maybe an anterior curette. Obviously, you're going to want more, but when you first start out, instruments are what? $40 a piece adds up fast. So you don't need all the most amazing things. Another thing that I made a note of are dental hygiene aids. So this is something that I do spend a lot on. I'm talking about $500 a month, maybe $500 every couple months depending on how many patients I see that month. And that's oral hygiene aids such as toothbrushes, toothpaste, mouth washes, like different types of toothpaste. So I love the company Oral Science. That's where I get like different types of toothpaste depending on if they have sensitive teeth, if they have caries. So I buy different types of mouth washes depending on their oral hygiene condition. See, I buy all of those because I like to have them on hand when I go to patients home so that if I'm recommending a mouthwash to them, I can say, I actually have it here for you. That will be $20 or whatever. But you don't need to do that right away. You can say this is the mouthwash that I'm recommending you can either go to the store to buy it or buy it online. There's the link. So you can save a lot of money by not doing that. I don't know if a lot of dental hygienists think of that right away, but you really don't have to do that. I do suggest buying toothbrushes though, but you don't have to get the more expensive ones that I get from Oral Science. They're amazing. You can get those cheaper toothbrushes by them in bulk. I like for toothbrushes to buy in bulk, smile makers. They have one for US. They have a site for Canada too. They have amazing toothbrushes, amazing things to buy in bulk. I can actually, the link for you guys down below. They have fun stuff for kids too. So was that five things? No, that was four things. No, that was five things. Sorry guys, I'm looking at my notes. No, I think that was five things. But one side note, so this might be a sixth thing, is an intraoral camera. I say this because I do recommend getting one right away because ever since I started using an intraoral camera, every patient loves it. And when I tell them, you have advanced gum disease, look at all the gums that are bleeding. I take a picture. They look at the picture and they go, oh my God. Every three months, no problem. Whereas if I didn't have that intraoral camera, I couldn't really show them their mouth. I couldn't show them their teeth. They don't really take it as seriously until they see it on your laptop. So I talked about an intraoral camera. I bought mine from Amazon. $200. I can leave the link for you guys down below. Do not buy the ones from dental supply companies. They're $2,000 plus. My intraoral camera is amazing. It's perfectly fine. I promise you. You don't need to spend $2,000. Unless you want all the bells and whistles of one, like maybe you want to zoom in, zoom out, change the color, do this. No. I might be, I've had my practice for two years. I can spend $2,000 on an intraoral camera, but why? When you can get one for $200. So I'll leave the link for you guys down below. I hope this helps. There is a part one, as I said, where I talked about five things you do need for your practice right away. And these were five, six things you don't really need right away. Okay, so let me know. Comment below, though, you guys, if you have any questions, if you're interested, I do have a full course mobile RDH Academy where you learn online at your own pace, how to start your own business. You get full support by me anytime. We meet typically once a month to talk about business stuff. It's a great group of networking dental hygienists who are starting their own business. We need help. We need support. We're not dentists. We're, we're glad we're not dentists, but it's so much easier sometimes to just kind of talk to other dental hygienists, right? We don't always have to ask dentists who have their own business for help. Let's ask each other. So thank you guys for watching. Please click like if you like this video. Make sure to subscribe. There's lots of videos coming and I'll talk to you guys in the next episode or the next episode, the next video. Oh my God. Clearly I've been doing a lot of teaching marketing lately. I apologize. Bye guys.