 Hello everybody. So let's talk about one of the first things that you really do need to do and that is to get organized and truly think about what your ideal practice looks like. And this might not take five minutes. It might not take two days. It might take you five days. This process probably took me a couple days just to really think and decide. I still remember thinking about it. You might have heard me share the story before, but I was looking for a mobile dental hygienist to see my grandparents in their nursing home to clean their teeth. And there was just nobody out there. I found one person. She was overcharging in my opinion. She was charging $80 minimal just for the mobile fee. And my grandparents had L timers. So I tried to talk to her. I kind of said, I don't know if they're going to let you do anything. I understand I do need to pay you for your time. But are you still going to charge $80 if you can't do anything? And she basically said yes. She wasn't very friendly. If I can be perfectly honest with you, I wouldn't want her seeing my grandparents anyway. So I don't know why it didn't occur to me right away, but then I thought, why don't I clean their teeth? This would make sense. I was a self initiated dental hygienist at the time. That's what you need to have in order to become an independent dental hygiene business owner. But just any time I had the ability or the opportunity to increase my skill set, I'd done it. Whether I knew I was going to use it or not, I did it. So I was thankful that I did do that. But I didn't have the right portable accessories. I didn't have a compressor unit. I didn't have all my own tools. I just worked in a dental office at the time. I felt like I could open up the closet and take out all of my dental hygiene instruments, my polishing pastes, my masks, gloves, all of that. I had none of that. But I thought to myself, why don't I start a business? Why not? But of course that little voice in our heads or on our shoulders that's saying to us, oh, you might not be able to do it. You're going to spend a lot of money. You probably won't be able to do it. Nobody else has started their own mobile dental hygiene business around you. You could only find one person, Andrea. So why do you think you can succeed when nobody else is doing it? So you will hear those voices. And let me tell you, if I can do it, you guys can do it too. But then you will also hear the, oh, you're going to have to spend a lot of money. What if it doesn't work? You're throwing your money away. That's an embarrassment because you tried something and didn't work. But there goes $25,000 that you spent and what the heck are you going to do if you can't get patients? That will nag at you. But I'm here to push those thoughts out of the way because if you want something to happen, it can happen. Of course with all the proper tools and the proper steps, but that's what I'm here to help you guys with. So I remember looking just on Amazon like just for fun. I'm like, okay, so what exactly do I need to start my own dental hygiene business? Let me make a list and let me just look on Amazon, see what I can find, talk to dental supply companies, see how much things are. Because working in a dental office, you don't care how much things are. I know I didn't. I would throw things out like nothing else without even caring, without even thinking about it. But once you start to look, that is when you start to realize and dental supply companies, which is very annoying, they don't share their prices online until you sign up for an account. You can't just sign up for an account. I remember trying to sign up for an account, but you had to contact them to say, hi, I'm thinking about starting my own practice. I know I don't have one yet, but I just want to see how much things are. And they would kind of say, okay, let's book an appointment. I'd say I don't want to book an appointment yet. I'm just looking at prices. Can I not just have an account? But anyways, so once I got all of that done, they do eventually let you set up an account online, but they do still want to talk to you, of course, because they want to sell you things. But as soon as I was able to just simply look at prices online, that helped me figure out how much of a loan I needed to take out. So I help you guys with that too. I will actually log in to my business accounts for some major dental supply companies and show you how much things are like masks, gloves, profi paste, polishers, high speed handpieces, low speed handpieces if you need them, saliva ejectors, high speed handpieces, instruments. What else do I use a lot of? Like toothpaste, toothbrushes, silver dining, fluoride, fluoride varnish, gauze, a piezo unit, piezo tip. So I go through all of that with you. I go through different prices and I go through why I might have chose this over this one. Why I paid more money for this product, but less money for this one. I go through all of that. But this is the first step that I want you guys to do is just start looking at things. Call dental supply companies, look at prices. I want you guys to also decide, do you want a mobile dental hygiene practice only? Do you want an in-home dental hygiene practice only, or do you want both? At the time, I just wanted mobile because the house that I was living in before wasn't really set up for patients to come in. I didn't have enough room. I didn't really have a spare room that I could see patients in. So I actually preferred mobile. Plus, at the time, there were four dogs running around, try explaining that to patients, you know, it just wouldn't work. So mobile just worked better for me. But then when I moved into my new house, I said to myself, oh my goodness, I can make this work. I can have an in-home dental practice as well. Because everybody thinks that's ideal because you can see more patients because you're not leaving. The mobile dental hygiene practice, there's travel time, there's all of that you have to consider. There's the wear and tear on your body, lugging all of that equipment back and forth. But guess what? I teach you guys how to pack everything so you're not lugging things back and forth as much. I'll talk about this more in the next video. But when I first started my practice, I put all of my equipment and stuff, instruments, anything I might have needed in a big like luggage container. Because I figured I could just wheel that into houses, no problem. But then what I realized is this is really heavy. How do I get it into the car? How do I get it out of the car? So having smaller bags, making an extra trip is much easier for me. But I talked to you guys about that too. Well, when you're stopping this video, I want you guys to get organized like I said. So buy a notepad, take out a bunch of paper, have a separate binder for all of this. It's totally up to you. At the top, I want you to put down business loan and leave that blank. You don't know how much money you will need until you go through prices. Prices might be different in your area. I don't know. In my area, to get a business loan, you do not need a business plan, but I had one anyway. So I do suggest developing a business plan. I'm going to help you guys with that. If I can find my business plan, it's probably on my old computer. I'm going to show you guys exactly what I had. It was simple to the point. It was nothing special, trust me, but that worked. The bank needs to know things like that. The bank needs to know how much money do you expect to make? What are your expenses going to be the first year? You don't know that. So let me tell you what they're going to be. So you go prepared, you can take out a business loan, easy. And then I want you to write down things, which I'm going to give you guys a checklist because again, you don't know. I'm going to give you guys a checklist such as a polisher. You will need things like, if you want, a piezo unit or a cavatron unit. You might want an intraoral camera. You might need a laptop if you don't have one to take with you to mobile appointments. Do you want a dental software? Are you going to sterilize instruments in your own home? What type of instruments do you want? How many trays are you going to have? How many instrument sets are you going to have? You need things like biological indicators to sterilize, pouches to sterilize, or are you going to wrap your instruments? You need things like processing, processor challenging devices. I help you guys with all of that, masks, bibs, gloves. I'm going to give you guys a checklist. And part of that checklist is going to be things you might want but you don't necessarily need right away to save money, such as an intraoral camera. You might want that right away, but maybe you just don't have the money. Maybe the bank won't give you that extra $1,000. You don't need that right away. You can start your business without it. So I'm going to give you guys that checklist. But just sit back. Think about it. Get excited about your business. Don't think about things like a business name yet. Don't think about any of that. You can if you want to because that would get me excited and kind of light the fire under me to really look into things if I have a business name in place, if I'm thinking about things, but kind of start small first. And if you guys have questions, just email me. You can now send me a message right through my website, which is easier for me to respond because it notifies me right away. So feel free to send me a message from my main website. If you have any questions and if you're excited, tell me I love to hear this comment below too because that's always fun. And if you haven't yet, please subscribe to my YouTube channel, you guys and click like on this video so I know people actually watch and listen to me. That would be great. And I'll talk to you guys very soon.