As I’m finishing my book in Puerto Rico right now, I’m dropping another “Best Of” episode, once again from Dr. Mark Costes!  Enjoy! – M

One of the most common hurdles we solopreneurs face, especially those of us in the service industry, is making the shift from being self-employed in our businesses to becoming business owners.

Joining us for episode 127 is a dentalpreneur who has this locked down. Mark Costes is an entrepreneur turned dentist turned multi-millionaire and he’s sharing his secrets on this edition of The Solopreneur Hour.

One of the real keys to his business (besides the fact that he’s pretty much “The E-Myth Revisited” in living color, is that he pays SO MUCH ATTENTION to small, minute details that make a HUGE difference for his clients.

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The fact that Mark Costes is an entrepreneur isn’t a big surprise. Just take a look at his family lineage and you’d guess he’d end up working for himself.

His dad’s story is similar to many immigrants: he had a great career in his home country of the Phillippines as a professor, which he left to live in the United States. Coming over with not much more than a hundred dollars and a suitcase, Mark’s dad rebuilt his life with a lot of hustle and willpower.

And if that wasn’t enough, Mark’s mother’s side also boasts several successful entrepreneurs. His grandma was a loan shark who sent his mom out to collect payments! She, Mark’s grandma, also had a prawn business (that’s shrimp if you’re from the States), a fleet of rental cars among other businesses.

To say entrepreneurism is in his blood might be an understatement; it’s more like his blood IS entrepreneurism.

So it’s no surprise that by the age of 23, Mark ran a lucrative food truck business and was also pursuing his MBA.

But while he was doing all of that, he was still dreaming of becoming a dentist. So much so that he applied to dentist school 20 times before he was accepted! Clearly Mark was not going to be deterred from his dream, no matter what.

You’ll also discover things like:

* How he builds rapport and a connection while seeing 40 patients a day.

* The Yellow Sheet: what is it and how does it pertain to your business?

* How his mindset is different from other dentists, and why it matters.

* The day he became a millionaire – and why he sold 4 of his 6 practices the very next day.

* How he lost almost 7 figures in the process – in one year.

* And so very much more!

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After he completed his dentist school, he did something hardly any other dentists do: for the next year he worked as an associate in a friend’s practice and spent his off-hours learning the ropes of the business. He learned the systems and learned how the office actually made money.

Being the solopreneur he is, he took that knowledge and applied it to his own practice; he didn’t build just one, he built six! And one day his accountant told him to check his financial statements. When Mark did, he realized he had earned his first million dollars that year.

The only problem? He was working 80 hours a week and had a wife, a child and another child on the way. It was time for a shift.

And shift he did. He began investing in different businesses, none of which took off. But he eventually created a curriculum to train dentistry assistants, he also trains other dentists on how to create passive income in their practices and has a mastermind group.

Mark is truly a shining example of turning a traditional service-based profession into a business with passive income streams. And in this episode, he talks us through the steps he has taken (and the missteps), to be where he is today.

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