In the first episode of Dental Wealth Multiplier, Jonathan Moffat shares the personal story behind why he founded Aligned Advisors and why he’s committed to helping dentists take control of their financial future. As the founder of Aligned and former owner of an eight-practice DSO he built and sold, Jonathan shares how personal experiences and professional lessons shaped a new approach to wealth strategy. This episode sets the tone for the honest, strategic conversations to come.
Find Jonathan at jonathanmoffat.com
Learn more about Aligned Advisors at alignedadvisors.com
Subscribe for new episodes every week and follow along as we help dentists multiply their wealth and freedom.
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Watch the Episode here
Listen to the Podcast here
Welcome To Dental Wealth Multiplier
Welcome To Dental Wealth Mastermind
This is not my first show. I was telling someone this. I was like, “If I had stuck with this, I’d probably have a pretty big show and a big following.” In 2010, believe it or not, I had a show. I started with Dr. Michael Abernathy and his partner, Max Gotcher. That show was called Dental Doc Talk Radio. Great name, right? You can probably still find some episodes out there somewhere. I should probably go look for those and repost them.
Jonathan’s Origin Story And Career Journey
Dr. Abernathy, if you’re reading, I can’t say enough how much I learned from you and appreciated you mentoring me and taking me under your wing early on in my career. I can’t thank you enough for those many words of wisdom and all the things that I learned while working with you. I was talking to our team, and they were like, “Why Align? Why did you start this company?
Why are you working with dentists?” That’s a question I get all the time, like, “Why do you work with dentists? Do you only work with dentists? Why dentists?” When I speak, I do tell this story pretty frequently. There is a very personal reason why I work with dentists, why Aligned, and why our business is structured like it is.
My dad is a retired financial advisor. He was a traditional wealth manager and financial advisor. Growing up, as a kid, I was often asked, “What are you going to do when you grow up?” My dad was a financial advisor. His brother-in-law was an accountant. His brother was an attorney. His dad was a very successful orthodontist. My mom’s dad was a successful doctor. I’d always thought, “I might go into medicine.”
When I was in high school and college, the fact that I had to take Biology 101 more than once was probably an indicator that the sciences and, certainly, medicine may not be the path for me. Math, finance, physics, and things like that always clicked, so I decided to pursue finance and started working with my dad. In 2003-ish, I started working with my dad. I got all my licenses and everything I needed to do to go work in a traditional financial advisory and financial planning firm.
Around 2006 or 2007, we were trying to decide, “Should we pick a niche. Should we not pick a niche?” We did a bunch of research. In fact, we wrote a white paper called The Future of Dentistry with an economist, who is pretty well-known, named Harry Dent. He gave us a lot of demographic research that we used in that white paper. What’s been interesting to see is that all the things that we based on demographics that we said were going to happen, happened. It has been interesting. We have that white paper available on our website if you want a copy of that.
We all decided that dentistry would be a great niche to go to work in. The personal tie was that my dad’s dad was a very successful orthodontist. In fact, he ran such an amazing operation on the business side. He was extremely profitable. He did well. He had multiple locations back in the late ‘80s and ‘90s. He had multiple locations all through Southern California. He was successful, but on the personal side, he didn’t make a lot of great decisions and made a lot of financial mistakes. That would be a good way to put that. He rebounded and had a great attitude about life. He would go back to work and earn it back.
In 1994, at Thanksgiving dinner, he had a heart attack, but not a major heart attack. I was fourteen years old. I didn’t know that he had a heart attack. My grandmother and I went home and went to the doctor a day or two later. It was severe enough that he had to stop practicing orthodontics. He was forced to shut down his practices. Back then, the idea was that with a lot of specialists, their practices weren’t worth anything. He closed down all his practices and didn’t get anything from them. He had a little bit of savings.
Whenever you find yourself facing setbacks and making mistakes, just rebound and keep a great attitude about life. Go back to work and earn it back. Share on X
I remember visiting my grandparents in between semesters. I remember a summer, maybe between my freshman and sophomore year, going and visiting them in their home in LA, walking in, and seeing my grandfather sitting on the couch. I’ll never forget how he was sitting. He had his hand resting on his cane, watching a daytime show. The life had been sucked out of him. Orthodontics was his life, and he was phenomenal at it. He was a great doctor. He was a great businessman. He loved his team and his patients. He was amazing. That was his life. To watch him in that state was so hard.
I remember going up there and helping mow the lawn, clean up the garage, and do some stuff around the home. I remember my grandmother coming in the front door, and she looked exhausted. I was talking to her. I said, “Nana, what’s going on? How are you? You look tired.” She was like, “I’m so tired. I started teaching flute lessons to make some extra money to help pay the bills and help put food on the table.” To my core in my gut, I was like, “This is what I have to do. I need to help people avoid being in the situation that I’m watching my grandparents sit in.” That’s the time when I decided to go into finance and go full-on into working with my father.
Getting Married And First Dental Client
In 2010, my wife and I had been married. We were at a conference with a lot of other financial advisors. I remember being at the conference and feeling like this idea of having to sell a commission-based product never sat well with me. I didn’t like the idea of always having to go find another client to sell something to and make a commission.
In 2008 or 2009, we brought on our first dental client, but that client was looking to buy the building that their practice was in. I had a conversation with our back office, our compliance. I said, “This is what’s going on. I advised him that he’d take some money out of his stock portfolio and buy this building. It is a great opportunity. He is going to partner with someone.”
I got a call from the sub-manager, the guy who was over us. He was not happy that we were moving this money out of the client’s portfolio. I remember thinking, “This is a great move for the client. Why do I want to be put in a position where I’m getting yelled at by this guy who doesn’t understand the whole situation but sees that it’s revenue for the company leaving?” That didn’t sit well with me.
Fast forward a few months, my wife and I were in Hawaii at this meeting. I was listening to a lot of these insurance salesmen. I don’t want to even call them advisors. They’re more insurance salesmen. They were talking about how big a commission they made, how much they sold, and this and that. I was like, “This isn’t sitting with me.” I remember telling my wife when we were walking away from dinner, “I need to find another career.” I was ready to leave the financial services industry altogether.
I ran into a gentleman from Houston, Texas. We were mutual friends. I was searching. I was reading Simon Sinek’s Start With Why. I was on monthly phone calls with a bunch of people, trying to figure out what it is I want to do. One of my best friends was starting what has turned out to be a very successful branding and marketing agency. We had looked at doing that. I was thinking about maybe going to dental school myself because we’d been working for dentists for a few years. I was like, “It’s a cool industry. I like that.”
As I was going down this journey of searching for what I wanted to do. I had a colleague of mine say, “You need to talk to this guy. He had this business in Houston. It’s interesting. I think you’ll enjoy the conversation.” After that conversation with this gentleman, my wife will tell you a spark lit inside of me. I instantly knew, “This is what I want to do.”
Jumping Into Family Office
The business model is that of what’s called in the financial world a family office. A lot of times, when I say family office, a lot of doctors or dentists will think, “Family office.” We hear that a lot in the dental space. There’s the GP family office, multi-specialty family office, and pedia ortho GP family office. We hear that a lot in our space. In the financial world, a family office is one of these models that was reserved for the ultra wealthy, like the Rockefellers, Elon Musks, and Bill Gates’. These people who have billions of dollars are buying teams, franchises, hotels, and commercial buildings. There are lots of big financial decisions made.
The idea of a financial office is that you have your own attorneys, own accountants, own tax CPAs, own bookkeepers, and people paying your bills and paying your payroll. You have this entire team of people looking over every aspect of your financial life, actuaries, and analyzing risk. Every single person you could think of to run an operation like these families would have. Also, as you can imagine, it is very expensive to put together and maintain. We’re talking, a lot of times, tens of millions of dollars to set up and millions of dollars a year to keep going. For most individuals, it’s not realistic.
The idea of having all of these advisors on one team working and representing this one client or this one family is a cool idea. Once I heard about this model, learned more, and dug into this family office and how it works, it started to resonate with me. I was like, “This is what I want to build.” Then, Aligned Advisors was created.
We were created as what’s considered a virtual family office or a fractional family office. How we’re structured is we have our team of what we call best-in-class subject matter experts in all areas of finance. You’ve got your planner, accountant, estate planning attorney, asset protection attorney, bookkeepers, CPAs, tax advisors, and everyone on this team that is working collectively and together under one roof to represent our clients. We don’t just have one client. We have multiple clients. We have many clients, but those many clients get the benefit of that team.
The idea of the concept around this fractional family office is a cool thing. When we sit down with prospective clients and walk them through how we work with our clients and how they get the benefit of an entire team of advisors working together under one roof, they love it. They’re like, “How have I never heard of this?”
Some advisors may say, “We do the same thing.” In fact, I’ve been to several networking events, and I talk about what we do. A lot of times, advisors will come and say, “I work at such-and-such bank or such-and-such brokerage. We do the same thing.” I go, “That’s great. Tell me. That’s awesome. How do you guys do that?” They go, “We call the client’s accountant, and we’ll email an estate planning attorney when there’s something that needs to be changed.” With all due respect, that’s very different from what we’re talking about here.
Our goal is that our clients don’t get involved or have limited involvement with as many of the many moving parts and pieces of their financial life as possible. Where we see progress in a plan is in the execution and implementation of the plan. That is where we typically see things fall apart. It’s usually because, number one, our clients are busy. Number two, you don’t have the expertise or the knowledge to follow up and ask the right questions. It’s not that you couldn’t, but you don’t. Frankly, learning that and understanding what questions are asked is probably not the highest and best use of your time.
Number three, you don’t have the knowledge or the desire, rather, and will to want to do that. The problem is that the traditional model we come out of, this wealth management and financial advisory, is driven by assets under management or selling insurance, annuities, or some commission-based product, which most advisors out there do. I’m not knocking anyone. I’m saying that’s what the traditional model is. I believe that model’s broken.
In a fractional family office setup, clients get the benefit of an entire team of advisors working together under one roof. Share on X
We’re not going to get into this in this episode, but I believe your best way to invest your money is back into your practice, your group, your business, your practices, and real estate, acquiring it along the way as you can. I personally don’t think and have a lot of track record to prove that there’s probably not a better use of your money, your skills, and your time than that. That is a topic for another day.
The challenge is that most advisors are incentivized, paid, and compensated on the contrary. They get paid when you invest more money with them, invest more money in the market, buy more insurance, buy an annuity, and buy a cash value life insurance policy, which we’ll be getting into in some episode in the future. That’s how they make more money.
When there’s a dollar that you have to decide, “What do I do with this dollar?” The question is, who do you have on your team that is completely independent? We tell clients all the time we’re investment agnostic. What we always care about is that our clients achieve their goals and that they stay on track to achieve their goals. That’s all that matters to us.
Who do you ask about what’s the best option or best thing to do with that $1, as an example? If you ask your insurance advisor, they’re going to say, “Buy more insurance.” If you ask your investment advisor, they’re going to say, “There has never been a better time to invest in the stock market.” Your buddy, who is a realtor, will say, “Buy more real estate.” Who do you ask? Who do you have on your team that’s looking at your entire picture, not only as it is, but as you want it to be in the future? Who do you have to sit down and say, “What’s the best decision?” especially when you’re being faced with some of the biggest financial decisions of your life?
If you’re looking at possibly transitioning your practice, selling your practice, or a fractional sale of your practice, which we call practice transition, if you’re looking at any of those options, and whether you’re looking at selling to a DSO, private equity, an associate, or someone walking away, one of the biggest financial decisions you make, who do you talk to about that to get a truly independent and third-party, arms length input? For a lot of people, they don’t have that person. They don’t know who that is.
That, to me, was so important for the way that we structured Aligned Advisors to be this independent, investment agnostic, looking out for our clients’ best interest firm with the entire team with that same belief system, drive, and outlook for our clients. It is so that our clients never have to guess, “Is this the best advice for me, or is Jonathan and Aligned Advisors making a commission or a fee off of this?” That was important to me.
What To Expect From This Podcast
We’ve been doing this for almost twenty years. We’ve seen what works and what doesn’t work. We’ve seen clients go through transactions of selling to other DSOs and private equity. We’ve seen clients grow through bank finance and seller finance. We’ve seen a lot of different options. We are able to give our clients a different and higher level of expertise and advice because of the experience that we have. Not to mention the fact that I, myself, owned a practice DSO and grew that from 1 to 8 practices with my partners and experienced a lot along the way of what works, what doesn’t work, and what’s the truth behind a lot of the things that maybe you are out there hearing.
My purpose for wanting to restart the show was to give you a transparent, no baloney, full look at what’s happening within our industry. It’s not just the dental industry, but all these decisions that you’re having to make. You hear all the time, “Bank on yourself.” There are all these trends that work. It’s so predictable. You know that when the interest rates are down, we’re going to see all these people out here hawking these insurance policies or these insurance products. When the rates are up, you’re going to see some other stuff.
Most advisors get paid when you invest more money with them and in the market. They get compensated when you buy more insurance, annuity, or a cash-value life insurance policy. Share on X
Who do you have that you work with in your team who is that independent voice that you can trust, knowing, “I know you’re telling me to do this, not because you’re making a commission or a fee on it, but because this is what’s in my best interest.” To clarify, because I don’t want to beat around the bush and make sure I’m very clear, at Aligned Advisors, we do not sell insurance. We do not sell investment products. We do not make commissions. We do not take referral fees. We do not do any of that.
One of our core values as a team is that independent advisors who give and provide independent advice for our clients need to be an important staple of who we are. It has been an important staple of who we are and who we will continue to be in the future. It’s very unique. We don’t know of any other firm, especially in the dental space, that operates and works like we do.
My hope to you, as a reader, is that these episodes bring not only some of the best and brightest minds within our industry in the dental space, but also some of the best and brightest minds in the financial space. We’re going to be talking to some of our subject matter experts about various subjects and topics that we see a lot of people out there. If I’m seeing on TikTok or Instagram something being spoken about a lot, usually, it’s probably something we’re going to come in here and go, “What’s the actual truth? What’s the reality? How does this work? Who qualifies or doesn’t qualify?”
There’s so much information that we have access to, especially online and through social media. I get text messages almost on a daily basis from people saying, “Is this legit?” or, “Should I be doing this?” We’re going to be breaking those down, giving an honest, third-party, independent review of those items. That includes topics like private equity, DSO growth, selling to a DSO, and how recapping works when you have equity in a DSO. What are some of the best and brightest minds in our industry doing to run profitable groups?
We have a client who has eight locations. They’re running 30% net income and 30% EBITDA, which is almost unheard of in that space. We’ve interviewed them. We will interview them again, and we will get from them what things they’re doing that are working well. We’ll have one of our sister companies, DSOCFO, which is a bookkeeping and fractional CFO company for single practices and multi-locations.
We’ll have Austin on. In fact, we recorded an episode around benchmarks, budgeting, goal setting, KPIs, and where to focus on as a practice, either at an individual level or at a group level, to move those levers so that you can start seeing progress. We’ll be interviewing doctors who are your peers, who are in the space and in the trenches fighting the fight. We’ll be hearing from them where they are getting stuck, where they are getting hung up, what successes they are having, and what you can do to have and experience those similar successes.
My hope is that through this series of episodes, you get a lot of real-time, up-to-date, honest, transparent, no baloney information, feedback, and real-life stories of what’s going on in our industry,, what you could be doing to avoid some of the mistakes that we see a lot of people making, and what are some of the best practices that some of the highest performers and most successful dentists, your peers, are doing to experience that success and live their ideal life.
Hopefully, that was helpful, beneficial, and insightful as far as who we are and why Aligned, why I created this business, and why we work with dentists. I hope this helps you at least understand our perspective and where we’re coming from. I appreciate you staying tuned because we’re going to have a lot of great information coming up in these upcoming episodes, hopefully, for many years to come. I appreciate you staying tuned. We look forward to jumping into the show with you and bringing you some great and fantastic information. Thanks so much. We’ll talk to you soon.