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You might use a scanner every single day. But that alone won't make you an expert! In this episode of Clinical Edge Fridays, Kirk Behrendt brings back Dr. Christian Coachman, founder of Digital Smile Design, to share highlights from his recent collaboration event with Dr. John Kois, as well as the upcoming IntraOral Scanner Festival where you can take your scanning to the next level. To learn more about this upcoming event and how to join, listen to Episode 876 of The Best Practices Show!Learn More About Dr. Coachman:Join Dr. Coachman on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/christiancoachmanFollow Dr. Coachman on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriscoachmanLearn more about Digital Smile Design: https://digitalsmiledesign.comListen to Dr. Coachman's podcast, Coffee Break with Coachman: https://open.spotify.com/show/4ADCrWhqsUKbHmZtkhhgoBRegister for DSD Residency 1 On Demand: https://digitalsmiledesign.com/dsd-residency-1-on-demandRegister for The IntraOral Scanner Festival (May 15-18, 2025) with code IOS20 for 20% off: https://digitalsmiledesign.com/courses/intraoral-scanner-festival-may-2025Register for The Visionary Dentist Summit (March 5-7, 2026): https://digitalsmiledesign.com/courses/the-visionary-dentist-summit-march-2026More Helpful Links for a Better Practice & a Better Life:Subscribe to The Best Practices Show: https://the-best-practices-show.captivate.fm/listenJoin The Best Practices Association: https://www.actdental.com/bpaDownload ACT's BPA app on the Apple App Store: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/best-practices-association/id6738960360Download ACT's BPA app on the Google Play Store: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.actdental.join&hl=en_USJoin ACT's To The Top Study Club: https://www.actdental.com/tttSee the ACT Dental/BPA Live Event Schedule: https://www.actdental.com/eventGet The Best Practices Magazine for free: https://www.actdental.com/magazinePlease leave us a review on the podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-best-practices-show-with-kirk-behrendt/id1223838218Episode Resources:Watch the video version of...
In this episode of Clinical Edge Fridays, Kirk Behrendt brings back Dr. Christian Coachman, founder of Digital Smile Design, to reveal his latest project, Dentistry 3.0. He explains what this new model of care is, why you need to get on board, and the future of dentistry as technology and AI rapidly evolves in this space. To learn how to stay ahead of the curve with Dentistry 3.0, listen to Episode 855 of The Best Practices Show!Learn More About Dr. Coachman:Join Dr. Coachman on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/christiancoachmanFollow Dr. Coachman on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriscoachmanLearn more about Digital Smile Design: https://digitalsmiledesign.comListen to Dr. Coachman's podcast, Coffee Break with Coachman: https://open.spotify.com/show/4ADCrWhqsUKbHmZtkhhgoBRegister for DSD Residency 1 On Demand: https://digitalsmiledesign.com/dsd-residency-1-on-demandRegister for Dr. John Kois and Dr. Coachman's Optimizing Clinical Outcomes course (March 20-21, 2025): https://www.koiscenter.com/optimizing-clinical-outcomesMore Helpful Links for a Better Practice & a Better Life:Subscribe to The Best Practices Show: https://the-best-practices-show.captivate.fm/listenJoin The Best Practices Association: https://www.actdental.com/bpaDownload ACT's BPA app on the Apple App Store: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/best-practices-association/id6738960360Download ACT's BPA app on the Google Play Store: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.actdental.join&hl=en_USJoin ACT's To The Top Study Club: https://www.actdental.com/tttSee the ACT Dental/BPA Live Event Schedule: https://www.actdental.com/eventGet The Best Practices Magazine for free: https://www.actdental.com/magazinePlease leave us a review on the podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-best-practices-show-with-kirk-behrendt/id1223838218Episode Resources:Watch the video version of Episode 855: https://www.youtube.com/@actdental/videosRead Outlive by Dr. Peter Attia: https://peterattiamd.com/outliveMain...
In this episode of Clinical Edge Fridays, Dr. Christian Coachman, founder of Digital Smile Design, brings in a very special guest. Dr. Dean Kois, son of the living legend, Dr. John Kois, shares what it's like working with one of dentistry's greatest, why the Kois Center was created, and about the upcoming collaboration course with DSD that you don't want to miss. If you want to become a great dentist, be sure to attend this course! To learn more about the upcoming event and how to join, listen to Episode 852 of The Best Practices Show!Learn More About Dr. Coachman & Dr. Kois:Join Dr. Coachman on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/christiancoachmanFollow Dr. Coachman on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriscoachmanLearn more about Digital Smile Design: https://digitalsmiledesign.comListen to Dr. Coachman's podcast, Coffee Break with Coachman: https://open.spotify.com/show/4ADCrWhqsUKbHmZtkhhgoBRegister for DSD Residency 1 On Demand: https://digitalsmiledesign.com/dsd-residency-1-on-demandJoin Dr. Kois on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/drkoisFollow Dr. Kois on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/koisdentistryLearn more about the Kois Center: https://www.koiscenter.comRegister for Dr. John Kois and Dr. Coachman's Optimizing Clinical Outcomes course (March 20-21, 2025): https://www.koiscenter.com/optimizing-clinical-outcomesMore Helpful Links for a Better Practice & a Better Life:Subscribe to The Best Practices Show: https://the-best-practices-show.captivate.fm/listenJoin The Best Practices Association: https://www.actdental.com/bpaDownload ACT's BPA app on the Apple App Store: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/best-practices-association/id6738960360Download ACT's BPA app on the Google Play Store: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.actdental.join&hl=en_USJoin ACT's To The Top Study Club: https://www.actdental.com/tttSee the ACT Dental/BPA Live Event Schedule: https://www.actdental.com/eventGet The Best Practices Magazine for free: https://www.actdental.com/magazinePlease leave us a review on the podcast:
To kick off this Clinical Master Series, Dr. Christian Coachman, founder of Digital Smile Design, brings in Dr. Marta Revilla-León, prolific author and Director of Research in Digital Dentistry at the Kois Center, to talk about a unique upcoming opportunity to hear from the greatest voices in dentistry. Not only will you learn how to become an advanced digital user — you will hear from the living legend, Dr. John Kois, among other dental rock stars! To learn more about this amazing course and how to be a part of it, listen to Episode 846 of The Best Practices Show!Learn More About Dr. Coachman & Dr. Revilla- León:Join Dr. Coachman on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/christiancoachmanFollow Dr. Coachman on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriscoachmanLearn more about Digital Smile Design: https://digitalsmiledesign.comListen to Dr. Coachman's podcast, Coffee Break with Coachman: https://open.spotify.com/show/4ADCrWhqsUKbHmZtkhhgoBRegister for DSD Residency 1 On Demand:
If you've never heard Dr. John Kois speak, now is the time! Kirk Behrendt brings back Dr. Christian Coachman, founder of Digital Smile Design, to talk about an upcoming, once-in-a-lifetime event with Dr. Kois and Dr. Coachman. You will hear two perspectives from two brilliant minds about optimizing clinical outcomes through digital dentistry. To learn more about this collaborative course and how to reserve your seat, listen to Episode 785 of The Best Practices Show!Learn More About Dr. Coachman:Join Dr. Coachman on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/christiancoachmanFollow Dr. Coachman on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriscoachmanLearn more about Digital Smile Design: https://digitalsmiledesign.comListen to Dr. Coachman's podcast, Coffee Break with Coachman: https://open.spotify.com/show/4ADCrWhqsUKbHmZtkhhgoBRegister for DSD Residency 1 On Demand: https://digitalsmiledesign.com/dsd-residency-1-on-demandRegister for the DSD Provider course (October 7, 2024, and November 11, 2024): https://digitalsmiledesign.com/dsd-providerRegister for Dr. John Kois and Dr. Coachman's Optimizing Clinical Outcomes course (March 20-21, 2025): https://www.koiscenter.com/optimizing-clinical-outcomesMore Helpful Links for a Better Practice & a Better Life:Subscribe to The Best Practices Show: https://the-best-practices-show.captivate.fm/listenJoin The Best Practices Association: https://www.actdental.com/bpaJoin ACT's To The Top Study Club: https://www.actdental.com/tttSee the ACT Dental/BPA Live Event Schedule: https://www.actdental.com/eventGet The Best Practices Magazine for free: https://www.actdental.com/magazinePlease leave us a review on the podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-best-practices-show-with-kirk-behrendt/id1223838218Episode Resources:Watch the video version of Episode 785: https://www.youtube.com/@actdental/videosMain Takeaways:Be okay with not being right.Learn to challenge your own beliefs.Master the art of asking great questions.There is value in watching smart people disagree.Register for this event! It is your one opportunity to hear Dr. Kois.Snippets:0:00 Introduction.1:18 About Dr. Coachman and Dr. John Kois's upcoming course.13:04...
Contrary to Ordinary, Exploring Extraordinary Personal Journeys
This week's guest is the rebellious Leon Hermanides, Owner and President of Protea Dental Studio in Redmond Washington. He's also a Clinical Instructor and Scientific Advisor at the Kois Center. Leon's journey began in his native Zimbabwe, where his father was a prominent figure in the dental space who had vowed never to leave the country. However, it was a major surprise when his father decided to move the family to South Africa when Leon was 13.Across his life and career, Leon has embraced the idea of incremental change. At one point, he would make drastic changes overnight, believing that this would help his business evolve. However, he now realizes that the best results come from slowing down and figuring out the best changes over a longer period.ResourcesFollow your curiosity, connect, and join our ever-growing community of extraordinary minds.CariFree WebsiteCariFree on InstagramCariFree on FacebookCariFree on PinterestDr. Kim Kutsch on LinkedInLeon Hermanides on LinkedInProtea Dental Studio Website1. John Kois on Enriching The Heart, The Mind, and Dental IndustryTED Talk: The little risks you can take to increase your luck with Tina SeeligWhat's In This EpisodeLeon's journey across Africa, and then the world.How Leon embraced incremental change.How risk and reward impacted Leon's life.Why we should all strive to be extraordinary.
684: The Evolution of Dental Education – Dr. John Kois & Dr. Christian CoachmanDentistry has undergone many changes — especially in education. In this episode, Kirk Behrendt and Dr. Christian Coachman bring in Dr. John Kois, founder and director of The Kois Center, to take a look at the past, present, and future of dental education, as well as a few simple ways you can become a better learner. Education has no end! To hear more about The Kois Center and how to become a lifelong learner, listen to Episode 684 of The Best Practices Show! Episode Resources:Learn more about The Kois Center: https://www.koiscenter.comRegister for Course 165 at The Kois Center: https://www.koiscenter.com/courses/165-treatment-planning-functional-occlusionFollow Dr. Kois on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/koisdentistry Join Dr. Coachman on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/christiancoachman Follow Dr. Coachman on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriscoachman Learn more about Digital Smile Design: https://digitalsmiledesign.com Register for DSD Residency 1: https://digitalsmiledesign.com/dsd-residency-1-on-demand Subscribe to The Best Practices Show podcast: https://the-best-practices-show.captivate.fm/listenJoin ACT's To The Top Study Club: https://www.actdental.com/tttSee ACT's Live Events Schedule: https://www.eventbrite.com/cc/act-dental-live-workshops-306239Get The Best Practices Magazine for free! https://www.actdental.com/magazineWrite a review on iTunes: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-best-practices-show/id1223838218Links Mentioned in This Episode:Read Black Box Thinking by Matthew Syed: https://bookshop.org/p/books/black-box-thinking-why-most-people-never-learn-from-their-mistakes-but-some-do-matthew-syed/7680742?ean=9781591848226Main Takeaways:Keep a beginner's mind.There is no end to improvement.Educate your mind as well as your heart.Find ways to stay passionate about dentistry.Surround yourself with mentors as soon as possible.Quotes:“I feel that it's important to maintain a childlike curiosity to continue to grow. I always want to be better tomorrow than I was today.” (4:12—4:23) -Dr. Kois“I used to talk to my graduate students when they finished their...
Contrary to Ordinary, Exploring Extraordinary Personal Journeys
Welcome to a very special holiday episode of Contrary to Ordinary. Today, we're taking a look back over some extraordinary conversations from across 2023. The mission of this podcast has been to figure out what makes a person extraordinary. Are they born with it? Can it be taught? Is work/life balance even possible for people who have made extraordinary strides in their careers? Extraordinary people come in many shapes and sizes, but this show has identified a few common traits that they share. They're usually curious, lifelong learners who love to gain more knowledge. They don't waste time and don't sit still for too long. Finally, they don't do it for the money. They do it to help others and the world. Thank you so much for listening. Contrary to Ordinary will return in 2024 with more extraordinary conversations.This episode features the voices of Dr. Rella Christensen, Dr. Doug Young, Machell Hudson, Dr. Philip D. Marsh, Stephanie Staples, Dr. John Kois, and Professor John Featherstone. ResourcesFollow your curiosity, connect, and join our ever-growing community of extraordinary minds.CariFree WebsiteCariFree on InstagramCariFree on FacebookCariFree on PinterestCariFree on TwitterDr. Kim Kutsch on LinkedInWhat's In This EpisodeA comparison of three, very different dental origin storiesSome fantastic advice about following your dreamsA real example of what it means to challenge the status quoExtraordinary people telling their stories
Today we're going to introduce a game changer in the dental practice management software world...This is an innovative, all-in-one, cloud-based practice management software, and it offers an array of powerful features that are custom built for dentists by dentists ready to revolutionize the way you work. If you are a start-up and decide to sign up with Oryx, they will NOT charge you a single dime, until you reached 200 active patients!They are partnering up with all startup practice owners and making sure you succeed, fast! Click this link to schedule a FREE personalized demo and to see more on their exclusive deal!In this gripping episode of The Dental Marketer, follow the journey of Dr. Preeya Genz, from her early dreams of becoming a dentist to becoming the proud owner of her own practice, "the Whole Tooth," in Dallas, Texas. Dr. Genz shares her experiences working in different environments, including high-stress Dental Services Organizations (DSOs), sharing their impact on her career, her values, and her life. Listen as she talks about her dream boutique practice, how it faltered, and the trials she faced while working in her second DSO. Gain insight into her attempt at a practice partnership, the reasons why it didn't pan out, and the leap of faith she took to win her dream by purchasing her own practice on a loan.Tune into The Dental Marketer today to hear Dr. Genz's journey navigating the highs and lows while pursuing her dental dream!Guest: Preeya GenzPractice Name: the Whole ToothCheck out Preeya's Media:Website: https://www.thewholetoothtexas.com/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thewholetoothtexas/Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TheWholeToothTexasOther Mentions and Links:Tools/Resources:OryxDentrixEasy DentalEaglesoftLocations/Establishments:Kois CenterBusinesses/BrandsDoc In A BoxPeople/Communities:Dr. John KoisHost: Michael AriasWebsite: The Dental Marketer Join my newsletter: https://thedentalmarketer.lpages.co/newsletter/Join this podcast's Facebook Group: The Dental Marketer SocietyWhat You'll Learn in This Episode:How Dr. Genz's early exposure to dentistry shaped her career path.The struggles she encountered working in a high-stress DSO environment and how it influenced her values.The ride of running a boutique-style dental practice and the economic downturn that led to its demise.The impact of changing management practices and policies on overall work environment in her second experience with a DSO.The reason behind her decision to buy her own dental practice.The maneuvering skills needed to team build and set professional boundaries, inside and outside the office.How to strike a perfect balance between a career as a healthcare provider and a business owner.Please don't forget to share with us on Instagram when you are listening to the podcast AND if you are really wanting to show us love, then please leave a 5 star review on iTunes! [Click here to leave a review on iTunes]p.s. Some links are affiliate links, which means that if you choose to make a purchase, I will earn a commission. This commission comes at no additional cost to you. Please understand that we have experience with these products/ company, and I recommend them because they are helpful and useful, not because of the small commissions we make if you decide to buy something. Please do not spend any money unless you feel you need them or that they will help you with your goals.Episode Transcript (Auto-Generated - Please Excuse Errors)Michael: All right. It's time to talk with our featured guest, Dr. Preeya Genz. Preeya, how's it going? Preeya: Going great December and we're making it so far, which is great. Michael: That's awesome. And in December you're in Dallas, you said, right? It's super cold out there. I know like in the past it's been frozen.Preeya: It's bipolar weather. So some days it's. It's 65. I think it was 85 last week, but then it was also like 33. Um, so the days will swing from super high to low and then everything in between. So at this moment, I think it's like 63 it's sunny. It's beautiful. But I think tomorrow there's an 80 percent chance of rain and it's going down to the forties.That's crazy. Michael: Last week it was eighties. Oh my gosh, it's all over the place for you out there. Interesting. Does that affect like your I don't know what you plan to do, for example, like practice or is it like, nope, rain or shine, snow or whatever, we're open all the time. Preeya: I mean, sometimes it does, especially if like we have patients who will travel from like East Texas or Oklahoma.And for them, obviously the, the weather matters a little bit more. Um, so there's either delays or they decide. Maybe not the best idea, um, when it's hot and sunny, everyone's just complaining that it's hot and sunny. And when it's cold and wet, everyone's complaining it's cold and wet. And so for the most part, we just deal with it, wear layers and hope for the best.Michael: Yeah. Okay. Nice. Nice. Awesome. So if you can tell us a little bit about your past, your present, how'd you get to where you are today? that's a fun Preeya: question. Um, okay. So I grew up in Canada, moved down to Texas halfway through high school, and then spent the next decade trying to leave Texas. So went to college in New Orleans.Um, Learned I wanted to become a dentist when I was in like 8th grade, did a career survey thing, loved artistic things, working with my hands, Loved the science and healthcare aspect of things and had a dentist across the street who I babysat for and he lived a great lifestyle. And I thought, Oh, this looks pretty easy.I like this. So went to college in New Orleans, then, um, went to dental school here in Dallas. And within, I think, a week of graduation, we had moved out to the DC area. I worked for Doc in a box for about eight months. I think I made it eight months and. Realized very quickly. It was not my favorite place to be for a variety of reasons.Um, and we ended up moving out to the West coast to Washington state where I, um, got to work in what I thought was my dream practice. It was like the dental office coffee shop. Like we had espresso for patients. We had fresh baked chocolate chip cookies. All of the perks and benefits, um, super, super boutique, and it was owned by a clinical instructor at the Coyce Center. and so I learned about John Coyce and kind of Coyce centered dentistry a year out of dental school. And so my perspective has always been post grad has been looking at it from the perspective that John Coyce teaches at the Coyce Center. so I was there, I was in Washington for almost seven years.I worked for the first practice for about. Oh, like six months. And then the economy tanked. That was, uh, 2008 going like a bunch of employees, like everything went sideways. All the promises of what you can do as a dentist were kind of just shattered and broken. And, um, he found me a home at a practice that had four.Other dentists open 6 days a week, 12 hour days, and we all rotated through and the owner was a mentor at the voice center as well. So it was a very different form of voice dentistry. it was a much busier practice. The location was huge in terms of how everything worked. 3 days a week there and really got a sense of.The good, bad and ugly of how dentistry works. after that, I had a, we won and realized that 12 hour days were just not great when you have a newborn. And I ended up doing a start, like working for a startup that was. built by a denturist in Washington state denturists are, they can practice independently.They make dentures and, have a dental practice. So I worked for them for almost six months and it was somewhat disastrous, um, for a lot of reasons. Um, but learned a lot then moved into a practice that was more of like a very, very small DSO in Washington state that was. Privately owned, but he had like five practices along the Puget Sound and, um, did that time move back to Texas when we wanted sunshine, margaritas and grandparents to help with the two year old. worked for a DSO here for a couple of years, realized this was just not, it wasn't, it was a good way to like, get my lay of the land, learn more about. What dentistry is like in Dallas now and what I liked, didn't like location, all of that. And then, um, went into what was going to be a partnership with another colleague. but realized about a year and a half, two years in that I'd not bought into her practice, but. We had talked about doing it and I realized like our values just didn't quite align the way I wanted to practice was not the same as how she was running for practice and never was that going to actually work. ultimately ended up buying a, um, an existing practice that. Lived in a Victorian house where I'm sitting right now, and it was kind of the scaffolding of she had on the practice for 2025 years and really just needed someone to say, Hey, you need to retire. Let me buy your practice and and take over. So it ended up being kind of the scaffolding or building blocks for what I have.Now, so it's kind of like a glorified startup where I had, I had patients, so I had some cash flow, but I had to, you know, I changed out the flooring, took off the wallpaper, changed out the water lines, went from analog film processing to digital, all the things. And then we had to educate the patients in the value of.gums not be being inflamed and bloody and, um, look what we can see in these lovely big digital x rays. And, through this journey, I've always seen things from a risk based perspective where we're really looking at not just the teeth, but the whole person. What is the individual risk for each patient in terms of your. periodontal risk foundation, structural risk with carries and restorations, functional risk and airway.And, um, you know, aesthetically, what risks do we have in place? for me, I can't do that. And Two minutes or seven minutes. Like it's a, it's a conversation. Um, and so through this practice journey, everyone had always told me, like, you need to speed up, you need to talk less, you need to do more of the dentistry and more of the like selling, if you will.And it was always just like, I know, but like, how, how can I treat a stranger? How can I really get to the root of what's wrong with them if I don't take the time? And so. It was something that I mean, it's just been a recurrent theme to the point that when I left the practice, um, that I was going to buy into, I took like a six month sabbatical and really got into podcasts and all the different things learning like what, what do I need to be a business owner?Am I ready for this? What do I want to do? What does this look like? And really kind of getting into like, what would that be in real life as I worked on negotiating to buy this practice? and so a friend of mine was like, Oh, hey, by the way, I contacted the, uh, the dental. Director over at the DSO that I'd worked for for a couple of years just to see if maybe you could work there part time or something and I was like, no, you didn't.He's like, it's okay. He said, you're not a good fit for a DSO. And I was like, he's right. He's so right. I am not a DSO dog. Like I can't, I dance to my own tune. You can't tell me I have to sell a product. I don't believe in, you can't tell me I have to like meet these, Metrics, unless I believe in it, I want to do it.I want to do it for me. that was a big piece of kind of where me owning my own practice really came into play where I was like, I'm so broken. Like, no one does dentistry down here. Nobody does any of that stuff. Like, I need to do it myself and I need to create what it is that I want to practice in.And so that's really where we have landed. Um, circa about 2019, 2020, I realized And when I'm looking holistically at patients, and that's like holistically with a W, well, I also do care about what kind of materials, what kind of, you know, what toxins are residing in our oral environments and especially as dentists, like, what are we taking in as well? so like with my daughter, when she was born, we cloth diapered, you know, They're on organic, all the things like super much crunchier than I realized I was. I am one of those, like a kid has a fever. I'm not calling the doctor, like, let's figure out what's going on and you know, give it some time and see what we can do to heal before we medicate. and so that's my personal philosophy. And I realized like a lot of the patients I was attracting were those kinds of patients too, where they didn't trust a lot of the conventional things. They didn't necessarily, you know, they wanted to understand more than just like, Oh, I didn't brush and floss my teeth.And now I have these problems. Like what else is going on and do about it? That's not fluoride. What can I do about it? That's, you know, I'm doing everything that I should be doing otherwise. Why does this look like this? Why am I breaking down? And so really starting to cater to those patients. And, um, learn more about like what, what kind of dentistry does that was really where my practice, I think took a turn and, um, has allowed us to kind of get to where we are now, which is a biological or holistic dental practice, both with a W and just a straight up H.So crunch here, where we're looking at the whole person, we're looking at how do we detox? How do we reduce the toxic load for these patients, especially the ones who, I mean, they're just, they're sick. They've got Lyme. They've got, they're just more sensitive. They have other issues and everybody looks at them like they're crazy and dismisses them because they ask questions and they need somebody who can kind of be on their team.And even just listen, you know, a lot of what we do is the same as any other dentist stats, right? We're going to drill, we're going to fill, we're going to do local anesthetic, but. For some people, you know, the material matters a lot. for some people, they need to work a tooth at a time and then they need to.Beyond a detox protocol and they need to work with another provider who can help them to reduce the inflammation and just the response to any kind of trauma to their bodies. And so, it's been really interesting and eye opening and I probably learn more from my patients and they teach me at this point in time.Cause I'm like, oh, I don't know anything about that. Maybe I should find out. Um, so yeah. Interesting. Oh, and I guess the other piece of that is I did finish my voice. Center journey finished, but I did graduate like 10 years after I started at the center. And so that also factors big into the practice, um, in terms of how, I mean, it's a really good curriculum for merging, looking big picture, looking at the patient.And then also from a research evidence based perspective, factoring in the other parts and pieces of material safety, material science, biotoxicity, all of that stuff too. Michael: Yeah. No. Interesting. Okay. So real quick, tons of questions. But before we get into those questions, uh, how long have you, this acquisition started when and how long have you had Preeya: it?So I bought the practice in June of 2018, so we're at five and a half years. Okay. Five and a half years. Okay. Five and a half years. Cause COVID was in the middle of that, but you know. Does it count? Yeah. Just a bump in the road. No big deal. Michael: It's interesting. We rewind back. The lifestyle of the doctor you were, you said you were babysitting or you were, yeah, that's what attracted you.Are you, would you say, yeah, I'm living that lifestyle now?Preeya: No, I mean, it was a piece of it for me to it, but no, I mean, he, a, the lifestyle of a male dentist versus a female dentist is so different. I feel like. We need, we all need wives. I need a wife. Like my husband's super supportive. Thank goodness. Otherwise I wouldn't be here right this moment doing this thing. Um, but like, I think part of it too, is like, that was back in what the eighties nineties, how old am I? Oh, I'm going to say the nineties just for fun right now, early nineties, different lifestyle, right? Like the dentist lifestyle of, that era was You didn't have to work to market. people showed up, so you go to work, you do the dentistry and you leave and, like everybody caters to you at the office, right?Like For me, I feel like that's just not. The case, especiallyMichael: what, what, what is it different? And also if you can kind of like elaborate a little bit more on like male and female dentists, Preeya: there's so many things. Um, so I guess, what does it look like now for me? I, and it might just be because of who I am and how I practice and we're very tiny lean practice, but I go to work.I do the dentistry, but then when I leave work, there's more work to be done, right? There's always. At least for me, like, so whether it's chart notes and stuff, or it's some sort of marketing efforts, like, how does this look different? I think also, like, we started with kids later, which if you want to go into the female male dynamic, like, I didn't have children until I was 30. Largely because I wanted to get through dental school and then be married for a while. And then feel like we had a lifestyle established enough that we're ready to have kids.So we really did. We kind of push things out a good while before having children. but because of that, like the kids have been young for, for so much of. My practice now, even that, you know, trying to balance those things and as mom early childhood living child care, making sure they have all of their things requires a lot of me outside the office, but then also I'm required so much within the office.And as a female doctor, I feel like my female team. And I have a fantastic team now. So let me put that out there, but I feel like the team members don't necessarily coddle me as much as they would if I were a male doctor. they kind of, you know, they're like, well, you can do that yourself. Versus like, oh, here, doctor, let me go get this for you.There's just a little bit of a different mindset, um, and attitude. Or maybe I just give off the, like, I can do this myself. Leave me alone. I don't know. But I feel like I hear that amongst other women dentists as well. Yeah. Yeah. Michael: I get you. Do you feel like. Would you ever ask for it? Would you ever ask for like, guys, can you help me like kind of thing or Preeya: yeah, I mean, I would, but I think it's even just stuff like, Hey doc, you haven't eaten lunch.Do you want me to order something for you? even in a practice where I, my co doctor was with a male doctor, they just were asked or provided with more support than I was. And my female counterpart was. So I guess there's a contrast for you. and I don't feel like I necessarily need it, but it's nice.Michael: It's nice to like, to know that people are thinking of you like, Oh, they haven't eaten lunch. You know what I mean? Like, Preeya: yeah, I can have that more now with my team, but certainly there's been significant periods of time where it's like, Oh, I better eat something or I don't know.I think it, it's just a different dynamic. Michael: No, yeah. That's interesting. Especially from the nineties, but also like the male and female. I never thought about that. Yeah. You gave me something to think about. Yeah. That's really interesting. And then if we fast forward, you mentioned doc in a box. What is that?Preeya: It's a DSL. it was, you know, one of the larger internet or national corporations, um, very. I won't mention any names unless you want me to, but it was the very, you know, system from the, the practice management system was like the, it wasn't like DOS, but basically like you had to type everything in.Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Paper charts, um, not up to date anything. And I remember my first day there, I saw 30 patients. Michael: Wow. How did, what did you learn from that? Preeya: A lot. It was painful. Um, I mean, and it was paper charts. so I learned real quick how to template my notes and paper. Um, cause that was a big deal. It was interesting because.The two doctors that had been there previously, both left at the same time. And the only people left were like the support team. So the hygienist and the, the assistants and one of the doctors had, I mean, this man was. He produced a ton. He was top producer, but he was doing root canals and like anything he could access basically.So there'd be like 16 year old girl. Perfect. And Titian had a big old endo number 19 and a PFM and, and you're looking at her going, what happened here? saw a lot of that, which was. It was really interesting and challenging and it was an office where there'd been a lot of turnover. So one of the first things I think that I really had to learn was like, how do you finesse and create a relationship and trust quickly in an environment where there's been a ton of turnover and a ton of transition and, you know, trying to communicate to patients their needs, trying to establish that like, you're not just another doctor who's going to be in and out, which unfortunately I was, but, You know, in the meantime, I'm here.I'm here for you was a really interesting challenge, especially when you're 25 and look like you're not 25, like patients they don't view you as the doctor. And so it was a really interesting learning experience, especially where like, you literally have like two minutes to get through this person and, and be done with your exam and move on. Michael: Do you Preeya recommend like, cause I've heard this before where they're like, Hey. You're just getting out of residency, like, and you're looking for an associate, go to a DSL, get some grit under you and then, or do you recommend like, no, don't do that. That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard. Preeya: I think it kind of depends on, on the individual company and the person.So there's. I feel like I've practiced in all different practice environments at this point over the past 15 years. And there's something to be gained from each and every one of those experiences. What I repeat them, probably not, but you know, from a DSO setting, what you do get is, I mean, they teach you a lot about how to present treatment.They teach you a lot about like standardizing some of the things you do. you don't have to worry about, you know, paying your assistance. You don't have to worry about, um, if someone doesn't show up, like, chances are someone from an office down the way might be able to pop in and and be there for you.So I think that is. There's some value to that, for sure. There's value to just having other people around you who've done it. although some DSOs, you are the sole doctor. So then you're really relying upon maybe a dental director or someone to mentor you. But I think ultimately, like,in today's world, I think it's hard to find a private practice. That you want and trust, you know, their patients and your care if you, you're just right out of school. And so that's a really tough, actually like your first five years of practice, right? It's like, Ooh. That's a little rough, skill wise or just the judgment.I feel like you don't really get that judgment until you're at like year five for me. Maybe I was a late limber, but like year five, when I was like, yeah, I really, I'm good. Like I, I have my mentors. I have people I can rely upon, but like, I feel like I got this. It was like, cool. Yeah, I'm, I'm good. And you're 15.I was like, Ooh, I have a lot more to learn. No, Michael: that's good. That's good that you have that mentality though. Then fast forward, you worked in your dream practice. Yeah. And so if the economy, if they kept you on, do you think you should be working there today? Or would you be like, Preeya: eventually I would have, I would have outgrown it.I think, um, largely because of where it was to, um, where Washington state, it was. We were trying to move to either Seattle or Portland, and we ended up in Puyallup, which is described as a bedroom community outside of Tacoma, or outside of Seattle, and it's like the exurbs, and it was very cool for almost seven years, but I would, the creature comforts of Dallas were better for me, or like maybe somewhere in the Pacific Northwest, but, um, outside of location, like it was a neat practice.It was neat to see I guess, especially going from the, the very corporate minded to this entirely different experience. Um, and I think ultimately I still would have wanted to do my own thing and spread my own wings and design the practice the way I wanted it to be. But, um, I mean, it really gave me real quick insight into like, how would I like to practice and guess why I don't have to see.30 patients in a day, I can see five, I could see three and it would be okay. And we can still be profitable and productive and make a difference and do what I want to do. And I think that was a big, yeah. Michael: Is there anything you took from that practice that you're currently utilizing, like any systems or anything like that, that you're doing today in your practice?Preeya: Um, Yeah. I think we've modernized them a little bit, but, um, So we, instead of serving, um, lattes and chocolate cookies, we do serve hot tea. I actually partnered with a tea maker in New Mexico to have like our own custom blend of smile tea. So, it is the signature tea that patients actually do come into, have a cup or take a bag home and enjoy.So that's kind of a similar, it's not coffee shop, but it's tea. Yeah. Um, and I think really just that concierge level of care, really knowing each of our patients pretty darn well, is also a big piece of what I took from that practice. Um, and then his, he was 1 of the 1st, so the owner of that practice, he was in, like, the inner circle, um, right at the very beginning with John Coyce when he did classes out of his office in 5th, Washington.So he's one of like the, the OG voice guys, everything I learned from him. I mean, I learned photography from him. I learned kind of just intake new patient protocols and that experience. And so I've taken that and I feel like I've elevated it some and modernized it some and added more to it, but that all started.way back when in that office, just in terms of really diving into the questions and really trying to get to know my patients and understand their motivations for being here and for seeking care to begin with. Michael: Gotcha. Okay. Interesting. And then fast forward, you worked for another practice, right? And a lot more dentistry.And then you moved back to, or you moved to Dallas because of it's interesting. What made you move back was a change of lifestyle too. Like you're like, Hey, my family lives there. Right. And then you're like, I wanted I want them to be around our child, right? So when you did that, you worked for a DSO again? Talk to me about that. How was, how was that knowing that you're like, Oh, I just got a good, good, a lot of highs. You know what I mean? Like, and then we're going to go back to. I was,Preeya: it was interesting. So, um. I was initially very even interviewing with them, I was like, Ugh, it's a DSO. Like this is not gonna go well. I don't wanna do this. But I was like, okay. It was, it was presented to me as like the best of the worst. Mm-Hmm. . Nothing against, best of the worst. That's, but for me, who was just not that person at this time or whatever.Um, it was, I was like, okay, so. It was a different experience from the get go. I, like, went to dinner with the dental director and, uh, the office manager of the practice I was interviewing to join somebody else as well. And so, number 1, like, having a dinner meeting as opposed to, like, uh, go into a clinical sterile environment was a neat way to introduce and learn about the practice and the people who are in the leadership.Part of it. Um, this particular DSO at that time, he didn't hire anybody who had less than five years of experience. Um, the tenure of most of their doctors in most of the offices, with the exception of, like, the redheaded stepchild out used to hear, um. Doctors stuck around for at least two plus years.My co doctor had been there for 10, 12 years already. The person I was replacing had been there for five and she was pregnant and didn't want to practice anymore. So I knew that there had been some longevity in the practice. The demographics of the office, the modern technology that was present there, those were all really good things.And I really clicked with the office manager right off the bat. So. Those were some key factors that I thought were important. Um, they seem to have a good commitment to training and, um, kind of allowing us to really do our own treatment plans and manage our own patient pool, which was great. so it was a neat experience that way. things kind of changed after about a year and a half, the, uh, the dental director got sick and there's some changes in the management and they started wanting to, uh, bring on HMOs, extend hours, do weekends. And those were all things that were kind of non negotiables for me. I had worked Saturdays for three and a half years.And, uh, after my last Saturday, I was like, I'm not. I'm not doing that anymore. know more. Um, and, um, I also won't do HMO dentistry because I just, I can't, I value my patients and me too much to, to do that. so that was a big non negotiable for me. And then evenings, I mean, you just don't want me working on your teeth at six, 7 PM.Like I'm Michael: not, you don't want me working on it. That's a good way to put it. You know what I mean? Okay. Okay. So all of these things cause you to eventually just say, Hey, I'm leaving. I'm going to go do a partnership, you said, was it a partnership that you wanted to? Why didn't that work out specifically? Preeya: it was a few different reasons.I always knew I wanted to do dentistry the Coyce way. I just, that's how I think that's how I've learned It's a very different way of practicing than. What we learn when we get out of dental school, a big piece of that is just being really committed to really high quality, continuing education, right?Like we're not done learning ever. the person that I was potentially working with was burnt out. Um, she was like, I feel like I've learned everything I need to learn. Like I'll keep up with magazines and stuff, but like, I'm good. I don't want to drop five, 10, 000 to, to go to a class. Like I. That's not what I want to do.And that's just not in alignment with one of my core values of really always trying to grow and educate and learn and provide the best for my patients and myself that way. Um, so that was a really, really big piece for me, at least in terms of like, when I realized we, that was never going to change for her that we can't be in business together.If we don't share that same, I guess, commitment to education, the other. Our management styles were also very different, which can work, I think, if they're synergistic, but I often felt like I got the blame for creating this, like, environment of chaos in the practice and that I just wasn't doing things.But I also really, I wasn't an owner in the practice. So, like, when you're an associate who might buy in. While you have a lot of, responsibility, you also can't do a lot of things because you're not the owner. You don't write the paychecks. Like, whether the employees are not going to listen to you, or if you do something, you're going to get in trouble potentially, because it's not what the owner would have done.Like, it's a tough dynamic. I think I,knowing now being in the seat of the owner, the decisions you make ultimately are, are yours.And like, I can't share those decisions with anybody else, unless I know that we have like an equal stake in the practice and that we both moving toward the same vision and goal. So like, even my husband, like he has, he'll periodically make suggestions and I'm like, yeah, cool. That's nice, honey. Like back to your Heidi hole.You're not the boss. This is not your Michael: past. You and Preeya: he's like, okay, it's your thing. I think it's kind of the same thing. Like when you have, it's hard, I mean, to do a buy in to partner, um, a friend of mine described it as a, you know, a loveless marriage with no sex, like you're in this together. It's a business relationship.You should like each other and mesh together and share similar, like and vision values. But at the end of the day, like. It's a business relationship. you can't like kiss and make amends. It's just, it's hard to find that person, I think, or people that you can really do that with, especially if you're very strong in, in what you think needs.To happen. Mm-Hmm. , if you like alpha females who think my way is a good way to do it. Like that can be tricky. Mm-Hmm. . But really it just was, compatibility wise, it wasn't, it wasn't gonna work. and this is not anything to speak negatively of that other person, but like I always felt less than, I felt like I just wasn't as good at doing the things, even though I wasn't.That wasn't really my role, and it was hard because there were things I was expected to do sometimes, but not always, and so not really knowing was expected of me as that associate to buy in was tough. Cause when you don't know what, what you're supposed to be doing, it's hard to do what you're supposed to be doing.Michael: Yeah. Yeah, that's true. Yeah. You need, that's why you need like the guidelines set systems, right. Rules to know like, okay, the more of you, the more principles you have, I guess, the more you can be guided of like, okay, this is what we're going to be doing kind of thing, but if you're just like, I don't know, sometimes I feel like partnerships sound like a good idea, but you know what I mean?Cause you don't want to make a sole decision on your own. You kind of want to go out on this risk together. I don't know. Preeya: I don't know. I, you know, I'd like to think that there's somebody out there that would work well with, you know, most people, but it's, I mean, again, like, like a marriage, like how hard is it to find that partner in life?And there's a lot of other things that certainly fall into that. But like, if it's hard to do that, then to find a partner as a business partner too, can be really challenging. I think it might be easier to find a partnership where like the delegation of responsibilities. significantly different.I mean, the partnerships I see that work are typically like, well, they make all the, like the clinical and HR decisions and they do more of the, like, you know, the admin. So you've got really that operational versus the, Michael: like the, yeah, like operations, CFO, CEO, right. COO kind of thing. Yeah, no, I get you.I get you. Interesting. So then we fast forward and now you have your practice acquisition for five years. how did you find your location? Preeya: Okay. So, um, when I was in dental school, I had a big brother in dental school and he has taken that role on as like his lifetime role for me.So. When I told him I was moving back to Dallas, he was like, cool, let me set you up with this interview. So that is how I ended up at the DSM. And then, um, when the partnership thing didn't work out, he's like, well, guess what? We're going to, uh, lunch with this lady. And actually even when I was first moving to Dallas, he's like, I have this practice in mind for you.And I was like, dude, I don't even know where the Metroplex we're living. Like, I don't know anything. I'm not buying anything. Let's table that. So fast forward, I guess, like four years. Yeah. About four years. That same name popped up again. He's like, okay, she needs to retire. You need to buy her practice. We are going to lunch on Thursday.You need to be here at this time. So I went to lunch with him and, um, this woman I bought the practice from, and we talked about her practice and dentistry and all the things. And then, um, I think later that week I came by to, to walk through, walk around. So she was not selling the practice. She was practicing, but she was taking at least two months off a year to travel and do things.She had one employee, and then a couple of temp hygienists who'd come in periodically to, to do hygiene. And that was it. And so, um, but she owned the building and the practice. So I was buying real assets.Michael: Okay. That's good. That's really, really good. So then from that moment on, what did you kind of change when you decided to take over the acquisition? Did you, does that one employee still working there? Preeya: she lasted about a month. yeah. Why? Michael: Why did she last only a month? I think Preeya: she realized. So, my initial plan wasn't to change a lot.I did a hygienist that I worked with at the DSO practice who followed me to the private practice who then followed me to this practice. So we worked together for about eight years, which was great. So she was my person. And so she came into the practice with me as a hygienist and assistant. so we came in and we started cleaning things out and, um, not only had this, the doctor I bought the practice from on the practice for like 20 years, she had.Uh, like merged to prior practices, one doctor had had a stroke and another had had a heart attack, like all their stuff. And so we had this, like, sort of, dentist or pack rats, right? We're going to keep this thing just in case. So every cabinet had, like, all the stuff, just full, crammed in there. So we had to start cleaning stuff out.We started, you know, working on equipment maintenance and stuff and ripped the carpets out, ripped the wallpaper off the walls, repainted all of that. We start looking at water lines and there's like, you know, you open the, the trap and you're supposed to have like the, the clean traps in there. Well, there's like a blue pill and like a thing of like a 2 by 2 and cotton roll shoved in there.And that was it. And so we were starting to ask questions like, what, what is this scenario here? Because then you take it out and it was like a layer of a black crud just inside the trap. Like we had to extricate that trap and like, we start looking a little deeper. And so there's just, we, we ended up changing out every single waterline because there's just stuff in the waterline.And so that was, One example of some things that just hadn't been well maintained while we were not imparting judgment, sterilization bags were being taped closed. And then when it got run through the autoclave, then they would open the bag, take the stuff out and then reuse the bag. and it was a chemical, if it wasn't even an autoclave like that, where we're like, so I know this is how we were doing it before, but this is how we're going to do it now kind of stuff.And I think she's like, Ooh. This is, this is a lot of stuff. And I think it was a lot to take that on. She'd been with the other doctor for 20 years. And so she found her way out. And yeah, so she was there for a month. Um, it was helpful. Actually, one really interesting thing we did was we printed out all the patients.Who were of record in the practice. And I had her go through because she'd been there for 20 years. I'm like, can you just like, write me a note about each of these patients that you know, so that like, I have a sense of who they are, if there's any like red flags or anything like that. So, you know, there'd be one that was like only comes in when something's falling out of her head or make sure you collect first on this patient.Otherwise, you're not going to see the money. So stuff like that, which was very helpful, um, as we did transition and I had a new team and we could not, you know, these patients were the salt of the earth. Like we've been coming here for years. Like we don't want to trust this new human being, let alone a new team who has changed the entire practice.Right. so she was there a month. patients asked about her for about a year like everything was fine after that. Did you Michael: lose a lot of the patient database or you did? Oh, wow. Preeya: It wasn't. I mean, we have like 300 patients to start with. Okay. So I really bought the building and.Michael: How did you feel about that, Preeya, where you're like, you're losing patients, you're losing patients. Does anything ever come to your mind, like, what the heck, like, what are we doing wrong or anything like Preeya: that or no? You know, the first couple, kind of, but then what was interesting is every time we lost a patient, the phone would ring, like we'd end up with a new patient.So it was like this really interesting dynamic of like, out goes one, in comes another, like, hey, okay. And, you know, They weren't my patients and they didn't see me. And they, a lot of them, we lost because we share, you know, we showed them like, Hey, you've been getting like healthy gum leanings for years, but your gums are bleeding.You have bone loss. There's stuff beneath the gums that needs to be removed. Like there's disease going on here and we need to treat that. And they didn't want that. And so, if my Job and my goal. And I'm here because I want you to be better and feel better and have improved health, systemically too.And you don't want what I have to offer, then this is not a good fit. And you need, you do need to find care elsewhere, but we sent out letters from myself and from the outgoing doctor, every single patient that was like a goodbye and a hello that we physically mailed out. but we'd have patients call and they'd be like, so the new doctor, is she from like Pakistan or India or like, where is she from? But in a way, like they were. I mean, they kind of racially profiled me and then they come in and see me and they're like, does she speak English? I'm like, yeah, yeah. my front desk person didn't tell me about it for like six months.And I was like, I don't remember how it came up in conversation. I was like, seriously, these patients were like. Questioning my race like here in Dallas in 2018. Like really? Yeah, but yeah, it was it was interesting Hmm, Michael: what city in Dallas are you located Interesting that that, that occurred though. You know what I mean? I mean, there's people like that though. You know what I mean? That's kind Preeya: of like an older, older population. And I guess they just, yeah. You know, they want to find a reason not to like you Michael: though. Yeah. I think they say like, you can be the ripest, juiciest peach ever, but you're always going to find that one person who's like, I don't like a peach.Right. And then that's what happens. So, but interesting. So then throughout this process, What's been some of the best companies you worked with and some of the worst or ones that just didn't fit with you? Preeya: So the first website I had made, I don't know, I was dumb, I guess. Like they, they touted it as like.They're going to make this video for me and they make a website like 6, 000 or something. It's like, okay, that's not bad. But it that did not just dental, they did all kinds of stuff, but it was like the most like canned website. which thankfully they were willing to change for me.Like we, I just had to give them all the content, all of the different parts and pieces. And it took like six months to get the website live because they just. Couldn't quite get it to where I wanted it to be. And then, they didn't tell me that there was like an annual fee on it, and they waived it the No, they don't waive it.It was not a fee until like two years in, which was like the end of the contract. And if I didn't pay that fee, they would wipe the website and they didn't really warn me. And then I had questions and they ended up just pulling the entire site gone. And so I had no website all of a sudden, I was like, uh, what do I do?So thankfully I actually had a friend who, um, does marketing and she, she made me a site. So So that was, I'd say that was one of the, the more negative experience side. Yeah. Um, yeah. And I mean, we all have our website and those media things, I think that are not always the best experiences.It's hard to, hard to know who to trust. Um, love my practice management software, which is Oryx O R Y X. Um, I spell it when I first started, everyone's like, excuse me, what is that? That's not Dentrix. No, no, no. Nope. It's none of those. but I was an earlier adopter of Oryx. So we transitioned in 2018.after I bought the practice, we had easy dental, which is like a spinoff of, I think it might be a baby dendrix even maybe. but. cloud based based on the principles that Jon Kois teaches, which was amazing because nothing out there is like that. Nothing is able to give you like this risk based profile broken into the four food groups.Like that is how my brain works and sees patients. And it was able to be created into this software that does the same thing. And it makes it easy to present to patients and communicate with patients when they see things in three colors. Which seems like such a simple thing, but in terms of just building credibility and trust right off the bat, having this system that has number one, it has, like, so many different things built into it.It's not just. Charting and, and treatment planning, but also like your communication with patients. So you can text and email them and, there's a review component and there's the easy auto confirmations. All that's built into 1 system, even how you enter the data, you're entering. Diagnostics first.What is the diagnosis? And then you're creating a treatment plan based on that diagnosis. You get to enter in, like, how big is that composite on number 19? Is it, less than a third of the isthmus width? Is it a third? Is it greater than half? And it shows on the, like, odontogram. Look at that big ass filling or like, Oh, that's pretty little.And so when patients see that, or even like your team sees that, if they're not super, dental savvy, like they're able to grasp real quick, like that's real big. what do we think is going to happen? And the system automatically then creates a risk profile based on what you enter in. And so it's very straightforward than to share with patients or even to, like, agree with yourself, right?Because some days you'll look at something and think one thing and the next day that sway kind of kicks in and you're like, we probably watch Yeah. No, look, criteria. We know the data supports this, therefore this is what we should be doing is a lot easier to ration with yourself even I feel like than, just the, the standard software that's out there where you're like, well, I'd see a fillings on that too.That's all I know about. Michael: Interesting. were you shopping around before that or did you immediately get it because of the Koi center? I Preeya: got it because of the Koi Center. I wanted that and I had multiple people tell me like, don't be an early adopter. Like that's. kind of daring my IT company who set everything up was like, we don't know anything about this.I'm like, that's okay. Just talk to them. They'll, talk to you. We'll figure it out. And they ended up, they're like, Oh my God, the backend on this system is amazing. Like the security is phenomenal. I was like, yay. Go me. You should have me. You should have me. You should have me. You should have me. You should have me.You should have me. You should have me. Don't necessarily know. I just knew I had a lot of frustrations with Dendrix and Eaglesoft. Those were the two that I used primarily, uh, through my years prior to this and they're good systems, but like they didn't really leverage the power behind that risk based treatment planning.And even like the medical dental history to be able to have that in a system that just creates risk and allows people to actually look at it and own it and understand. The questions you're asking, so, like, when we have a new patient, they automatically get a link to submit all of their medical dental history forms the history.If every single question has a reason behind it. So, if I'm asking you about your level of dental fear, if the patient has a high level of fear, the little risk thing goes up and there's a little thing on the side that says, Hey, make sure you're asking patient about why they have fear. Like there's this little, little guy on your shoulder who's telling you like, Hey, This is might be important because of this, or if they have diabetes, like A1C, this is what you're looking at.If it's above this or below this, you should be concerned because we're considered cross reactions with whatever. And so, um, when the patients see it, there's pictures that go with, especially some of the dental things, like, is there notching on your teeth? And there's like a little diagram, a little video that'll show like where the notching might be.So the patients can be like. Huh? my gosh. Yeah, there is. And so it's awareness and ownership to some of the things that had, they have going on and then they can come in. A lot of tens are like, oh my gosh, you asked about this. And I never thought about that, but oh my goodness. Like, yeah, I snore when I sleep.should I be concerned about that? And so, Just that level of education that patients are coming in with has been a really big game changer for us Michael: Yeah. Nice. Awesome. That makes us happy. So then from that, throughout this whole process for you, we're coming to a close here, but let's talk about from the moment you decided in your mind, like, I want to, I want to, I want to practice.I'm going on my own. So today. What's been some of the biggest struggles, fails, or pitfalls you've encountered? Great Preeya: question. think like most people, I think finding your people, finding your team been an interesting struggle. I think we all love to love other people and support them. And, I've had kind of three versions of my team over the past five years.So I had the people I started with minus the person who lasted a month, my team. Then I had a version 2. 0 right after COVID and then version 3. 0 as of last March. And with each iteration, it's really actually aligned with like iterations of the practice too, where I feel like I need a change and lo and behold, guess what?A lot of the changes, the people who are part of my team right now. so the source of stress was also me in part, but also like. There was kind of a mismatch and where, where things were going. and so because of that, I think, like, knowing what I want, what my expectations are and being able to lead those people, I think is something that.I'm perpetually working on refining and improving and try to learn like, you know, more to do with that. and especially now, post COVID, all the different expectations people bring into the office when as employees, um, and managing those and managing their lives and their drama. I think that's. It's been a source of stress, but also very fortunate.I feel like all of the people I've employed have been really, really great employees. I have knock on wood, not had any of the crazy drama that you read about on social media and like hear your friends talking about and stuff too. and I think a lot of that has been like really trying to attract the people that I seek, whether that's just, you know, am I manifesting it and putting out there a And also just creating the vibe here that attracts a certain type of person as well, I think is a big piece of that. But I mean, it's a str
Today we're going to introduce a game changer in the dental practice management software world...This is an innovative, all-in-one, cloud-based practice management software, and it offers an array of powerful features that are custom built for dentists by dentists ready to revolutionize the way you work. If you are a start-up and decide to sign up with Oryx, they will NOT charge you a single dime, until you reached 200 active patients!They are partnering up with all startup practice owners and making sure you succeed, fast! Click this link to schedule a FREE personalized demo and to see more on their exclusive deal!Guest: Sundar JagadeesanPractice Name: DentiqCheck out Sundar's Media:Website: https://www.dentiq.nz/Email: sj@dentiq.nzOther Mentions and Links:Kois CenterVenmoPayPalZelleThe Thriving Dentist Show with Gary TackacsEkwa MarketingGoogle AdsBingScheduling InstituteDr. John KoisThe Psychology of Money - Morgan HouselFor more helpful tips, strategies, ideas, and marketing advice:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thedentalmarketer/The Newsletter: https://thedentalmarketer.lpages.co/newsletter/Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/2031814726927041My Key Takeaways:Do you best to stick with your practice philosophy and communicate that to your team! The details become easier when values are understood.If you're a comprehensive service, the extra time taken in patient onboarding is worth it!Don't overload patients with all the ins and outs of procedure details. Keep their health as top priority, but simplify your treatment planning so it's understandable.Cashflow is the underlying issue from most problems in business. Once this is in order, you free up bandwidth to serve more patients!Using a non-scripted approach to patient calls and asking lots of questions can be a great way to add a personal touch and show interest.Sometimes it's better to lock down just the big picture strategy and then brainstorm the implementation with your team.Please don't forget to share with us on Instagram when you are listening to the podcast AND if you are really wanting to show us love, then please leave a 5 star review on iTunes! [Click here to leave a review on iTunes]p.s. Some links are affiliate links, which means that if you choose to make a purchase, I will earn a commission. This commission comes at no additional cost to you. Please understand that we have experience with these products/ company, and I recommend them because they are helpful and useful, not because of the small commissions we make if you decide to buy something. Please do not spend any money unless you feel you need them or that they will help you with your goals.Episode Transcript (Auto-Generated - Please Excuse Errors)Michael: Alright, it's time to talk with our featured guest, Dr. Sundar Jaen. Sundar, how's it Sundar: going? I'm good. It's quite cold down in New Zealand here. I know, I think, Michael: I believe we have quite a bit of listeners in New Zealand, but I, we've never had an actual practice owner from New Zealand, but, We're excited to dive into your practice.Sundar: I've been actually following your podcast for a while now, and I've been listening to you for a while, so it's quite awesome for me to be on the show. I Michael: appreciate that, man. Thank you so much. Yeah I'll Venmo, PayPal, you ze use after this. We'll be like, thank you for the shout out, Zender. I appreciate you, ed.Thank you for the support, but could you briefly introduce your dental practice and the demographic you primarily serve? Sundar: So basically we are a general dental practice fully catering to family dentistry from fillings hygiene work to rehab. Full mouth rehab, fully restorative implants. We place our own implants and I do a bit of microscopic endodontics as well.So it's a fairly good mix of general dentistry and a wee bit of advanced restorative dentistry, as I would like to call it. The demographics here in Napier is basically, a middle to upper middle class group. And we are the fruit bowl of New Zealand. Like, it's quite a horticulturally, quite a big space in New Zealand and we export a lot of citrus fruits, stone fruits and the economies mainly agriculture based.Yeah. Michael: Okay, wait, real quick. What's the currency over there? Sundar: New Zealand dollars. Oh okay. Yeah. Interesting. Around and dollar and a half compared to the US dollars. Okay. Okay. So buys one and a half New Zealand dollars. Yeah. Michael: Gotcha. And that's the main thing over there at the agriculture, like the citrus fruits.You guys export that, Sundar: In this region, yes. But in general, New Zealand has the main industry here is dairy farming. And so we are quite an agrarian society. Gotcha. Yeah. Yeah. Michael: Interesting. Good, good lesson for us. Awesome. So then that's the primarily the demographic you serve. In which category would you place your practice?Would it be, DS o, private practice? Solo doc? Do you have multiple doctors or general. Sundar: So we are fully small boutique practice. I started the practice in 2018 by myself and then in 2021 I had my first full-time associate joined me. And then she worked with us for 2020 and the whole of 2022.She's back in California at the moment. And we've just started another dent associate dentist who started with us early this year. And we had a bit of a three month changeover. So there's two of us with one hygienist. It's a fairly small practice. Michael: Okay, nice. So then how did you know you were ready to bring on the associate full-time?Sundar: So when I set out the set out at the practice, my goal was to get a hygienist at eight months. So, but at six months we did bring her in at a kind of couple of months early. And I told myself like, the day when my new patient booking goes past three weeks point, I'll get an associated.So that, that's what it took me that length of time. We didn't plan it to be in two years or three years. whenever organically the practice grew we were going to do it. But 2020 after Covid hit, we went into this big lockdown and when we came back there was a huge influx of.Patients coming in after the lockdown and I couldn't handle it. And that's when we said we'll get an associate three week point was my cutoff. Michael: That was it. You're like, at three weeks we gotta, and immediately she jumped on us full-time. Or was it part-time and then Sundar: full-time? No, straightaway. Full-time. Ah, straightaway.Full-time. Yeah. I didn't wanna start an associate part-time for a reason because. My practice philosophy is very comprehensive dentistry boutique. You are, you are, You are looking at a patient. You are trying to understand it's more personalized. It's not like a DSO where you are just going through the numbers, kind of.focusing on a very limited number of new patients a month. So I wanted a person to come in full-time who would absorb into my philosophy first. And then go in, like, if I had a part-time, then the dentist has to work in a different practice with a different philosophy and half the philosophy in my place so that there will be a clash in their mindset.So that was my reasoning behind us asking someone come in, you come in full-time. Yeah. And you've been with me. Michael: Yeah. Gotcha. Okay. Was it easy finding an associate. Sundar: It is actually fairly difficult to get experienced associates in New Zealand at the moment. So I'm actually interviewing another dentist from Colorado and he's quite keen.Looks like our philosophies are kind of coming together. And then hopefully in 2024, we'll try and be a three dentist practice. Oh, wow. Michael: I thought you were interviewing associates in New Zealand, but sounds like you're interviewing associates everywhere, right? Sundar: Every anywhere in the world, to be honest. Mm-hmm. in New Zealand at the moment there's a shortage of experience, dentists.So my practice is at a stage where unfortunately I'm not able to mentor a young graduate, come in and. And kind of take them through the learning curve. We've reached a space where we have to kind of hit the ground running And also in New Zealand, because of after covid, especially the, there are a lot of people who expatriates who came back into New Zealand. When the lockdowns happened the rest of the world and they've all gone back out, back to Australia, us, uk, and all these countries. So, so there's a real shortage of experience to clinicians.There are, there's a good pool of new graduates coming through. Obviously new graduates they leave. Two or three years to warm their feet up and kind of get into the rhythm of doing dentistry at an advanced level. So that's where we are a bit stuck. And I think the government migration policy is a bit they're opening it up as well post covid.And so, so at the moment it's a bit easier to get a dentist from overseas, experienced dentist, I mean, Michael: Okay. Makes sense. Makes sense. So you're growing pretty quick. So what has been your experience with, different marketing companies and which strategies have proved to be most Sundar: effective? So originally when we started we were focusing on Ground marketing quite a lot, like newspaper ads, radio ads, print ads.Like, like put inserts into the local newspaper. Deliveries. We did get a good uh, group of, patients from that, but not enough to sustain a full startup full-time practice. It was like kind of half and half. And that's when I started researching and learning about s e o, and digital marketing.And the previous website I had wasn't good enough. one of my cousins he worked in the IT industry in the uk, so I asked him, can he review my website and tell me. From a non-dental point of view, from a patient point of view, do you think it's informative enough to do it?And he gave me a big list of corrections to be done on the website. And so it kind of built up into this whole situation. This was around just before the lockdown, just before Covid. We knew that Just ground marketing is not gonna work for us. so we decided, okay, we are gonna go into digital marketing if we are gonna expose ourselves in the region and also just across the region.Like New Zealand's quite a small country. We are in the north island of New Zealand, four hours drive south of us is Wellington the capital of New Zealand. so we said, okay we are going to concentrate on the region more. And then we went into digital marketing quite a lot, so, And at that stage I was listening a lot to Gary aka mm-hmm. the Thriving Dentist Show. And I came to know about Equa marketing. And then we signed up with them. And we are going on with them for three years now. Michael: Okay. So Echo marketing. Marketing. Yeah. Okay. And so the most effective thing, do you know currently what they are doing for you digital marketing wise?Sundar: Yes. So they manage our website the content in the website, and they manage all our social media handles. They pretty much manage the whole online presence. they keep working on the website quite a lot. Like they keep doing all my, content review.And pretty much every month there's new content being written and updated into the website. I do a bit of writing myself as well. And they proofread it and correct my blogs and they include that into the website and More of educational pieces for patients. So we do that a lot and they, they manage the whole lot of that.Google marketing what is it? Like Google Ads. So they do all that part and then they manage that as well. Michael: Okay. Okay. Interesting. So then how much budget do you typically allocate for your marketing activities? Sundar: for the first two years I decided I'm gonna allocate 5% of my, gross profit.So we did that. And then since we moved into ewa, it's a set fee. I think they charge around 1200 US dollars a month for the whole thing. And that has locked in my. Budget with them 12, $15,000 a year. And then we put another 5,000 US aside for, we still do a bit of print marketing and newspaper marketing and all those things.We just use a wee bit of that kind of a mix. Radio, primetime radio. Drive time, radio. Newspapers and all those things. We mix it up a VB bed. But I think mainly our patients are coming. Like I did review the reports on oryx last night and it was pretty much search engine for, since 8% of my patients are coming from search engine, from Michael: seo, from like their, the search engine, Google or Bing or something like that.Yeah. Gotcha. Okay. Interesting. And how many new patients are you currently getting Sundar: a month? So average we are averaging at 50 patients a month, 50 new patients a month. And for the first two years, obviously, because every patient is a new patient. Mm-hmm. we were, first year we had it good, to be honest.We were averaging close to 1 20, 1 50 a month. Uhhuh. There was a bit too much to start with, to be honest. I didn't have the time to concentrate on the personalized care I wanted to develop in this practice, but then it worked out like not all of them were looking for a comprehensive dentist at that stage.Yeah. Some of them were like, oh, it's a new practice. We'll check 'em out. Kind of people coming in as well. Yeah. And local social media influencers coming in to check me out as well. And there was bit of that happening as well. And it did, we did manage well in the first two years. But digital marketing is where we settled into the.Grew. Michael: Okay. So it was like about 120 at the beginning, but then you realized that was too much in the sense of the quality that you wanted to provide. 50 right now is a sweet spot. Sundar: 50 is the perfect spot for me. we are back at the stage where with 50, we are with two dentists.We are back at that three week mark. So need another one. We decided, we said we'll go for another associate. Yeah. So that's how we are progressing. Okay. Michael: Yeah. Okay. That's interesting. And then how equipped would you say is your team in converting calls into actual patients? Sundar: We did have fairly decent front desk group in the last four years, but I think we have finally nailed it with the two.Ruth and Detroit will come into our clinic now, in New Zealand. First time we have a, probably not the first time, but very rare occasion we have a male front desk person they have got onto the concept quite well and they understood the philosophy and they do a lot of I wouldn't say.A hundred percent. Like they're not filtering people, but they do a fair bit of pre-screening in the phone and then they bring patients on board. I think FrontDesk, as long as they understand the philosophy of the practice and they believe in the philosophy, they'll be able to convert a phone call to a person on the chair.And we spent a lot of time in the last 18 months to train them in the philosophy, and then that has rolled over into good conversion rates as well for us. Michael: What do you do if you can break it down for us to like, and remind us again real quick what the philosophy is, but at the same time, let us know like, in these 18 months, this is the system that we need to start believing in.Sundar: The philosophy of the practice is we are looking for patients who are seeking comprehensive care. say for example, they have a toothache, they come in, emergency patient, that's the limited examination. They're coming, they coming in for an loe, they get them out of pay. But then we explain to them about a comprehensive dentistry like we do a full coe full panel.Full set x-rays, full set photographs and get to treat the whole mouth. And any dental pathology we see in the mouth, we want to treat it and get them back to good health. So this is the one line of the philosophy and I told my friend desk that we are almost like dental evangelists in this part of the world.To me, the patients coming into my practice, we are pretty much our, their last chance for dental redemption. they have to hear what they have to hear. So we need the time and resources to spend time with them, explain what's happening in their mouth in more detail. What I find is people with they don't have the patience to listen to what all is happening in their mouth.They have a toothache or a problem, one single problem, and they want to just get that fixed and they wanna move on to the next part of their life. But challenge for us. Or for the front desk is to convert that single person from that mindset of pain, attendance or pain relief dentistry to a comprehensive patient like once we move them, or at least so the seed that you can be a bit more healthier.You don't have to lose a tooth every two years and you're still paying money for an extraction. At the end of the day, you don't have a tooth to show for the money you spent. And that's something I tell my patients all the time. And if unfortunately you lose this tool, We don't wanna lose another one.And that's the starting point. And then we took the time to kind of do clinical retreat days management retreat days, practice retreat days, with the whole team. And we would sit down and thrash out and we'll take randomly uh, a few concepts out of what is available out there. And then we sit and discuss, okay, this is what we want to do.How we are gonna do it. I'm kind of a big picture guy. I get, get the gist of what I want to do and then I roll the idea to my team and ask them how you want to do it. And when they decide, okay, this is how we are gonna do it, this is how we are going to speak to the patients, and all those things.And then it's their concept. It's, they believe in it and they know how to do it. It's because it's not trained or it's not out of shield for them. For me to come back and say, this is the word b hg gotta use, yes, we do discuss verbiage, but then it's not scripted, it's out of coming out of their core belief.That they want to see good, healthy smiles. And they kind of explain that. And we do these retreats often. And once we do these retreats, often they, over a period of time, they get to understand my thoughts and what I wanna achieve for the patient. And once they believe that, then the phone call conversion happens a bit better.that's what has worked for me. Michael: So there's no specific script that you guys follow? Like, oh, if the person says How much is it for, you know what I mean? Like a implant or do you take my insurance? There's no specific like, oh, we're gonna wanna Sundar: say this. No. My biggest thing for my team or front desk instruction is ask them more questions to understand them.Each call will be different. There's no scripted questions to us. And all they do is just try and question them more. Like, okay, if you are asking for how much it is, why do you ask them? Have you, do you have another call? Or do you have what kind of treatment are you looking for? Say for example, how much is an extraction?Then the next question would be, Is it a front tooth or a back tooth? Oh, it's a back tooth. Oh, how broken down it is? Oh, it's quite painful. I think, you know what may, so the conversation kind of drags on from there, but the main thing for the front desk is to express or impress on the patient's mind that unless a dentist sees the mouth, you're not gonna get an answer precisely.So that's where they're driving and then the conversion happens and they come and sit down, have a chat, and once they're in the chat, then it's up to the dentist to express my philosophy of teach them, educate about having this whole concept of comprehensive dentistry. but we don't have a totally set script.We don't have that. No. Michael: It sounds like you take a lot of time investing in the onboarding, right. Of your team members. You're not just like, guys, throughout this time we're gonna be learning quick systems. Follow what the office managers telling you that it's not like that. It's like we gotta onboard.And a lot of that time, more than 60% is like, It really internalizing the philosophy so you can care a whole lot. Yes, exactly. About the patient. Sundar: Yeah. Michael: I like that. I like that a lot. Yeah, because you almost feel, they say that's like a thing in, in selling, almost like they say when you sell, if they say no, you want to feel bad, that they're like, this thing that I have for you is gonna help you out so much.I feel bad that you're saying no. Exactly. Kind of thing. Okay. Interesting. I like that. I like that a lot. Your philosophy. Sundar: It does take time though. The downside to the concept of the way I do it, it does take time, for a person and I, yes. I have had staff members who come in and they themselves are a bit impatient to get rolling So the whole process gets, sometimes it's a bit, too slow for them and they pull out, but I said like, that's fine. Like you, you might as well go now. So that has happened as well. Michael: Yeah. No, but it's good. It's good that you are, you know, you're sticking to your guns kind of thing. Yes. And making sure not adapting to them.Interesting. Okay. So then, Right now, throughout this process, what have been some of the best companies you've worked with and some of the worst companies you've worked with that it just didn't work out for you? Sundar: one of the companies which did not work out for us was Scheduling Institute. So we did some time, like we spent almost like six, seven months with them. But they were really nice people. The concepts, I liked them. call it cultural difference between the two countries. I don't know, but I felt or my staff felt as well, they were a bit more aggressive or a bit more scripted.And that's where I got my concept of I don't want it to be scripted. I wanted to be organic. I want the patient to feel, be part of like walking into a friend's house, And that's the organic feeling I wanted in my practice. So we said no we will stop scheduling Stuart, we'll come out of that.So Shelling Institute something which did not work out for us, but two people who influenced a lot in my. Two people, two companies, so to speak, one is Dr. John Coce from the Coy Center in Seattle. He taught me the philosophy and the treatment concept and how to do higher value dentistry.at the same time, John also teaches you how to grow yourself as a person. And it kind of, The whole tribe is about being, doing better for yourself, doing better for your patients, doing better for your team, doing better for your family. it's this whole concept of working towards excellence.I learned that from John. And then the other person is Gary Tagus with the Thriving Dentist Show. what I learned from him was the whole concept of co-discovery being honest with the patient. If you don't know something, you don't know something, if you wanna wait and watch, you wait and watch. and if you are not desperate about making that sale, it happens. there's also like, like a subtle element of. Being detached to the sale. You want the health for the person, it's not a sale kind of target driven agenda there.I learned that from Gary ERs and it was an organic move from him to Equa as well. Michael: Yeah, that's true. I feel like if you don't have that monetary value all the time, you more have the, I need to help this person value. Sundar: Yeah. Yeah. Because there's a conflict of interest, right?Like you, we get paid. For the help we do to people. Whereas an NGO for that matter, they don't get paid for it. And then there is a concept of gratification. Like they, they're doing it for the sheer fan of doing it, the sheer satisfaction of doing it. And when we change the practice or the whole practice model, do that part, that's when it becomes easier for me to speak to the patient and say, You know what, you have all these problems, but it's great.Like it's, I'm getting excited. I could do this for you. I could change this for you. If you want to go. If you are ready when you are ready, I'm happy to do it. Yeah, and I did a presentation as last night and I was super excited. I was so buzzed out. The last two hours before the presentation I was just waiting to go into that case presentation and it worked out right?Like she enjoyed it and that's where it is. She wants to go ahead, but she still has to make the commitment financially and all those things. I understand that, especially with this whole new recession happening and the cost of living crisis and all those things. We understand people in where they are in their life and we give them the space they give back, into the practice.another company which has really worked with the comprehensive care, what we are trying to do is, oryx the dental software. Because I feel the software itself should support a clinician to make better decisions. And it should be intuitive and interactive to your workflow.A software should not be just a recording medium. Software should be part of your workflow, and that's what I like about Orx. from the time the patient, the phone call comes in, the interaction new, the welcome. Email, which goes out, the new patient forms, which goes out.Uh, Cause of my time with the Coy Center, this is fully embedded with the coy philosophy, the forms and everything. And that kind of speaks to the patient from the word go. That I've come to a place which is different. I've come to a place where they take care of me as a whole person, Not as a single tooth or a as a number. So Oryx gives me that platform to speak to the patient it's a soft, subtle message which goes to the patient that I am comprehensive, I'm looking to treat you comprehensively, and that's what our excuse is.And the moment the patient walks into the clinic, the way we take them into the room and settle in and we do the whole charting process. They could see the screen and we go through radio. Like the structured exam process. Dr. Coy teaches like radiographic exam TMJ tool structure, head and neck lesions morphological lesions, orthotic classifications, periodontal dfa, airway.I don't think any software, as far as I've seen, is so extensive and patient care centered, health centered, person centered I don't think any other software facilitates this kind of care. At least I've not seen it. Yeah. Michael: No. It's, that's fantastic. How did it take your team?Because you say there's a lot, right, that Orix offers and there's a lot of things and I feel like when it comes to softwares that have a lot, sometimes it either we tend to say like there's too many bells and whistles, or we tend to the team. It takes a lot for the team to get on board to know it, to understand it, you know what I mean?Did that happen with you or no? Sundar: It did not, to be honest, it did not because. I made a very conscious decision to hire people who were non-dental people. From the, so all my staff, a first time into dental industry, except for my first practice manager who started the clinic with me, she had 20 years of clinical experience, like as a practice administrator.But. Her time was done in the first two, three years, and then we made a conscious station to hire people who did not have any dental experience. So they came in with no baggages. They were not exposed to different softwares. They were not exposed to different philosophies. All they had exposure to was their own dental care themselves.Met a dentist, had a filling, had an extraction done, or whatever treatment they've done and that's about it. And another personal project we have as a family like me and my wife, is to encourage younger dental assistants who come to us. We encourage them to go on to a hygiene school or even dental school.So we motivate them to go on and do that. I see. So we kind of get people in from the homeschooling group. From high school dropouts and all those things. They come in, they get a bit of a grounding with us, and then they go back into schools. So we get people who are non-dental all the time.Michael: So it's easier to train them, especially with a oric real quick. Yeah. How much do you, if you don't mind me asking, how much does Orix cost? How much are you paying Sundar: for Orix? I'm paying. hundred and thirty $5 a month. Okay. Michael: Us. Us. Okay. And that's with everything at the very end. If you can tell me two things, what is it that your team, or three things, what is it that your team really loves about Oryx?The patients? What do they love about Oryx Sundar: and you, the team likes about Rx is. It's very easy for them to manage the scheduling. Mm-hmm. And the exam part. And then the treatment part, treatment planning part, I mean. So everything is segmented and everything is, is on a dropdown menu. So it's very easy to use.And that's what the team has told me that's the easiest part. from a patient point of view, all patient communication, is pretty much on a click of a button. Like, for example, one of the smallest things, but I love that feature is save the date, appointment. As soon as we book the patient in the room, we just click a button, it sends them out a text.I've asked this at my. Medical doctors, clinic. Can you send me a text so I don't forget it? I don't have to note it down. I don't have to write it down. They say, oh, we'll send one the day before, but to me, that's too late. So it's instant. And things like that, like small things like that, it's easy.And another thing patient from a patient point of view is, or ex, as soon as you get all your exam data very correctly and put it in then it gives you Dr. Coys diagnostic opinion automatically and it gives you the risk assessment, printout automatically. So that's a big thing for me.Making the patient understand, you know what this is what is happening in your mouth. And it's very easy for us to explain to the patient, especially in a comprehensive setting, you have to look at the whole thing. You have to look at the gums, you have to look at the teeth, you have to look at your, your aesthetics and all those things like it's organic, the whole thing.And patients like that. Patients like that because everyone wants to speak about themselves, right? Like everyone wants to, hear others speak about them. And when I give this report and they read it, and it's like, oh, that's me. Oh, is this what's happening? Oh, is this what's happening?Oh, that photo looks horrible. That x-ray looks horrible. They don't read x-rays, but. As soon as they see it on a piece of paper, physically on their hand, that makes a difference and Orx makes that possible from my point of view. For all these reasons, it makes my life easy. the biggest thing is when I first did the COI Center curriculum, my biggest challenge was how am I gonna implement this?I'm half the world away. I don't have the same kind of support system as a dentist in US has, like, they have local COIST members, easy support system. But I'm here. But then to me, ORX becomes my link back to the coy Center on an everyday level. It's a reminder for me, like, you go through this checklist, you not missing anything.Exam, you go through cavities watching existing illustrations. It's pretty much like what Dr. Coy speaks about. The checklist manifesto the book. Quite big on that in the first couple of sessions. He speaks about it like and how he trains us to, he says, you should not have cognitive overload.You should be thinking how you can make the patient better, but you shouldn't be thinking, have I noted this down? Have I noted this down? Have I, am I looking at this correctly? That's cognitive overload. I don't have that cognitive overload anymore. My energy is spent to interact with the patient, understand the patient, and present a comprehensive plan to the patient rather than, oh, have I noted how, what is the mobility?Have I noted? What is the periodontal pocket depth? Have I noted cavities? It's all there. It's a checklist. You just go through the list. Your exam is done. it's very systematic. You don't have to think it. Think about it. Dr. Coys one of the things he says about not to have to think about things is apparently when he goes to the SeaTac airport, he parks his car at the same place.when he comes back from the trip, he's like, I'm not thinking, where did I park my car? And all those things. He just goes to that spot straight away. He says, as dentists, we should preserve our brain and cognitive energy to serve the patient. Not to think about, oh, have done this, haven't done this.I've done. And that is, that small concept has changed my life as well. In personal life. Now I go from home to clinic. It's the same route, same speed, same things. Like it becomes a routine and it's actually quite liberating. To do that. Michael: Yeah. No, I like that. I like that a lot. So then it makes it a lot easier.Everything, right? Everything. Awesome. Okay, so then switching gears here a little bit, have you ever faced a situation where the promise results were not achieved with the expected timeframe within your marketing or marketing company or previous marketing companySundar: that has been there? Sometimes that has been there with equa as well. But I've come to a stage where I kind of let it happen. Sometimes I feel I take a more philosophical back step and say, I'd let this go. I'd wait and see how it pans out. It does put a cashflow pressure when things doesn't happen a bit faster.From a business point of view, it does put you on the spot sometimes, but, if we manage cashflow better as a business owner, like allocation. And that's another thing which has happened with us is since Covid. I looked at the profit for system. So the profit for system as such that from the cashflow point of view, has helped me a lot.Some months are big, some months are slow. But then there's no consistency. We kind of get frustrated about, oh, the marketing is not working, conversion's not happening. Front desk is not doing their job. Or the DA hasn't followed up with the treatment plan presentation, or the, these frustrations a reflection of your problem.On the behind is your cashflow. As soon as the money part is clear and slow and seamless. And as a clinician, as a business owner, my mind is clear to concentrate on the thing. So the frustrations on a day-to-day life from a marketing point of view or from a, staff performance point of view, I've got to a stage where, I'm not going to force and make it happen.sometimes we do. I, I'll admit, sometimes it does get to me sometimes, but mostly, once we manage the cash flow a bit better, then we have the systems in place. We trust the process and just go through that hurdle and then just move on to the next one. So that's how I've been doing it in the last three years.Yeah. Michael: Do you ever approach them and say like, guys, what's going on, or what's happening or, anything like that Sundar: that has happened? We do have a bit of a heated huddle sometimes in the morning. That has happened. Like, like we, it happened recently last week. We came off a long weekend, first day back.Couple of them were sick. And I was impressed. I wasn't happy. I did tell them, I did tell them the Tu Tuesday we were, and on the Wednesday morning when they were back, I did tell them, this is not on, you have to preserve yourself through the weekend so that you could turn up to work and be at your best.They did something in the weekend, which didn't go well and they were tired of a bit sick to come back. And I do voice my frustration. I think as a business owner, it's also. Important for me to express how I feel for my team to know that I'm human. I have pressures of running a business, cashflow, paying them, paying suppliers.There's a lot of financial pressures on running a business. And to me, it's about being honest and human, to your team. To the pressures of running a business and explaining it to them, like you guys have to sometimes start thinking like a business owner. If this doesn't work out, it's gonna put a big cashflow, press pressure on us, and on the clinical retreat days, another thing we discuss is the impact of today's sale in six months time.That's what's going to translate as a pay rise to you. If that doesn't happen, if you are not helping me to do that today, please don't expect a pay rise to me from me down the line. in the pot. I can serve it to you. If it's not in the pot, I can't serve it to you. I'm not gonna pluck money out of thin air and give it to you.Right. Like so. Yeah. Come on guys. We are a team. We have to settle down, get into the groove and do things so that we can serve people better, get paid better, and we share better. we do have those conversations now and then, in the clinical retreat days, we do explain it to them. Cause staff training days and things like that, we do discuss them team meetings.Michael: Okay. That's good. That's good that you're able to open up about that, you know what I mean? But express it that way. today, if we don't make it the sale, what you do today? Is it gonna affect six months from now? Yeah, everybody's pay. Yeah. That's real good. Awesome. So then one the last questions I wanna ask you.As a practice owner, what advice could you give our listeners who are new to this? Sundar: I would say if you are starting a practice out, be clear in your value system, out of your value system, you deliver the vision for your practice. And once you get a concept of what vision, what philosophy you want your practice to be, and make it unique.From what is offered around the area. Kind of backtrack it a bit, do a good area study, location study, be clear in your philosophy, and then stick to your guns and don't change the philosophy, at least within the first five years to see whether it's working or not. Do all your planning prior to that, before the day, first day you open the clinic, you go in and then you've done all your homework before that you're not there to change things.You all you're doing is just to sit there and let it happen. one other thing I would do differently if I need to, if I'm gonna do a, another startup is. I'd get a fairly decent reserve cash flow, personal cash to protect the family or give the family a good year's living expenses.One full year living expense before you go into it. Because one of the things we get carried away is, oh, we put everything into the new practice and we don't. Kind of keep reserves to take care of the family and cause the reality is, unless your family's happy, you're not able to concentrate on the new startup.You need that freedom to concentrate on the new practice fully. So reserve cash is something I'm quite passionate about. I tell the other dentists here in New Zealand who are starting practices to at least have. Anything between me around at least a bare minimum of a $50,000 reserve, personal cash stashed away to take care of the family.Yeah, and another thing I would say is look into Oryx as a software. I tell that to all my associates and all my dentists, all my friends, because the software itself should support your growth as a clinic. It should not be a recording medium, even for the associate who's gone back to California now.I did suggest her to go with Orex, as a software for the new clinic. She's starting in, California. that's something I'm quite passionate about, having your systems in place. And then grow. And one more thing is, When you come to acute the practice, have the minimum to start with.Don't over capitalize on the practice too early and be slow and adding things into it equipment wise, but have the real estate space ready for it from the word go. So that you don't have to, oh, I want to add another chair, but I can't fit it within this space. I have to move premises. So concentrate on your homework, getting the real estate right.You don't have to put it out all in one go, and you could slowly work your way through. In the first five years. Michael: Yeah. Awesome. Sundar, thank you so much for your time. We appreciate it. If anyone has any further questions or concerns, where can they find you? Sundar: They can find me on my website.dub do do ent.nz. Sj ENT nz is my email. I would love to hear from your audience. Yeah. Michael: Awesome. Yeah. So guys, that's gonna be in the show notes below to reach out to Sunar and Sundar, thank you so much for being with us. It's been a pleasure and we'll hear from you soon. Sundar: My pleasure, Michael. It was an absolute honor to be part of your show also a shout out to my team and my family for supporting me to get where we are today.Thank you so much. Michael: Awesome. We'll talk to you soon. Thank you.
"ICONIC!" - Co-founder of Dental Boot Camp, Dr. Mac Lee and Educator/Author Dr. Pam Marzban talk about their efforts to bring the awareness of Craniomandibular Orthopedics to the public and dental profession alike. Please join us! About Dr. Lee: Third-generation dentist in rural Edna, Tx Retired, after five decades of clinical dentistry and is now writing, teaching, ranching, and being with kids and grandkids. Deeply trained in CR dentistry with LD Pankey, Pete Dawson, and John Kois who all became personal friends. His first dental epiphany was at the Pankey Institute in 1977. His grandfather's records from 1928 told a story of treating periodontal disease as an infection, cleaning the area (SRP), using an antimicrobial, teaching the patient how to keep it clean, and letting the body heal itself. Mac took the antimicrobial his grandfather used, changed the name, got FDA approval, and then sold it through Premier Dental. His second dental epiphany was seeing the mouth through a totally different set of eyes. This led to me becoming a Regent for the International College of Craniomandibular Orthopedics and to his Amazon book, The Life Robbing Pain of TMD; Why Me? He redid Joleen's FMR to a more comfortable and beautiful position.About Dr. Marzban:Graduating from a highly accredited dental school is the minimum requirement necessary to provide quality cosmetic dental care. Dr. Marzban firmly believes that in order to provide her patients with the best possible treatments, it's important to continue studying with the finest dentists in the country throughout her career.After graduating with honors from the Medical College of Virginia, she pursued a rigorous post-graduate training program at the Las Vegas Institute for Advanced Dental Studies (LVI), the leading school for cosmetic and neuromuscular dentistry in the nation. Upon completion of this program, she graduated as an LVI Fellow. The distinction of LVI Fellow is only awarded to a select few dentists who have demonstrated mastery of the entire LVI program, which includes a minimum of 278 hours of dental training in advanced aesthetics and neuromuscular science.In addition, Dr. Marzban has earned several other prestigious accolades as part of her continued post-graduate training:Board certified cosmetic dentistFellowship with the Academy of General Dentistry (a distinction held by only 10% of dentists nationwide)Certified by the American Academy of Dental Sleep MedicineCertified Digital Smile Design (DSD) dentistDr. Marzban's work has been published, awarded and internationally recognized. One of her patients, Admarys, was selected as a model for MAC Veneers.
Contrary to Ordinary, Exploring Extraordinary Personal Journeys
It may be hard to believe today, but opinion was the root of most dental practice in years past. Not in evidence-based research. When the Kois Center opened in 1994, it ushered in a revolutionary approach to dental care. It was the first center to provide a graduate program for practicing dentists that implemented a structured science-based curriculum. The center remains a flagship for science-based advances in esthetics, implants, and restorative dentistry.On the opening day of The Kois Center, founder Dr. John Kois advocated for an interdisciplinary research-backed approach to whole patient care. The Kois Center remains the only continuous learning center for dental professionals that conducts and publishes its own research. Self-funded, the research is not beholden to the interest of sponsors. In today's episode, we explore the elements that make the man behind the legendary Kois Center extraordinary. John has found his Ikigai and shared it with the world. To master the art of living, he embodies his values and tries to be fully present. Hear how he followed his curiosity and changed the way dentistry is practiced. ResourcesFollow your curiosity, connect, and join our ever-growing community of extraordinary minds. CariFree Website CariFree on InstagramCariFree on FacebookCariFree on PinterestCariFree on TwitterDr. Kim Kutsch on LinkedInDr. John Kois BioKois Center WebsiteWhat's In This EpisodeHow values guide Dr. John Kois' every decision.How to master the 'art of living' and slip seamlessly between work and play. What it means to live out the Japanese concept of Ikigai.How to temper an open mind with research and evidence.
This Episode is Sponsored by: Dandy | The Fully Digital, US-based Dental LabFor a completely FREE 3Shape Trios 3 scanner & $250 in lab credit click here: https://www.meetdandy.com/affiliate/tdm !In this episode, Dr. Tom Orent, gives us a behind the scenes view of his 20, 20, 20, new patient exam process. Dr. Orent notes that there are 3 main rules when talking to a asymptomatic patient and discussing treatment:Don't take too much of their time.Don't take too much of their money.Don't hurt them.It's important to remember that new patients will most likely be sensitive to all three of these points when undergoing treatment or treatment planning. Dr. Orent recommends a more gentle approach when immediate attention isn't required. He takes his patients through phases rather than overloading new patients with worries of payments, time, and pain. Phase one of Tom's 20, 20, 20, process involves the lower ticket items that the patient needs, and eases into later phases with more comprehensive treatment.Listen in for more tips from Dr. Tom Orent on higher treatment conversion rates, happier patients, and profitability.You can reach out to Tom Orent here:Tom's 4-Step System to Safely Withdraw From PPOsPPO Exit Facebook GroupOther Mentions and Links:Gordon ChristensenPete DawsonJohn KoisFrank SpearIf you want your questions answered on Monday Morning Marketing, ask me on these platforms:My Newsletter: https://thedentalmarketer.lpages.co/newsletter/The Dental Marketer Society Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/2031814726927041Episode Transcript (Auto-Generated - Please Excuse Errors)Michael: Hey Tom. So talk to us about patient retention. How can we utilize this, or what advice or suggestions can you give us that will help us with this? . Tom: looking at new patient retention, uh, it, it's critical, but before we get into how to do it, let's talk about why you'd wanna do it.Mm-hmm. , why is it so important? Why is it critical? Let's say a healthy new patient flow for a GP is 25 or 35, let's say per month. So I dunno, about 400 patients, new patients a year, The average lifetime value of a new patient in a, in a general practice is over $6,200. So that's a lot of money.Lifetime value for each one who comes in and. . if you could only increase new patient retention, let's say just by 20%, that's 80 more patients a year who are with your practice times, however many years are gonna be there. That one year. Those 80 patients, the average lifetime value multiplied out, you're looking at just shy of 500,000.That's a half million dollars increase in the value of the practice over a few years. So we're gonna talk about something that I call the twenty twenty twenty new patient exam. Uh, before I get into detail on how to. , let me tell you who this is not for, cuz it's really important that I make this clear even before I tell you who it's not for, we're talking about the most common kind of patient, the asymptomatic, no symptoms comes into the office.I think everything is just fine. I'm just here for a cleaning and a checkup. if the patient has an emergency, if the patient has a broken tooth, if the patient says I need a mile reconstruction, that's a different. what we're talking about today is retaining the vast majority of the highest likelihood of the patient coming in, and those are the people who say, yeah, I think I'm just fine.All right, so who, this is not for, if you have the gift that Gordon Christensen or Pete Dawson or John COIs or Frank Spear or, or any of those guys where they can just meet a new patient who has no symptoms, thought everything was fine, sees that they really do need massive work, and within, you know, a short period of time on that first.You're able to get across to the patient, the relationship, the trust, and get them to say yes to let's say, you know, 20, 30, 40,000. Case, then this is not for you. Now, I would say that the vast majority of us, I certainly am not in the category of being able to do that with an asymptomatic patient who walked in and said, yeah, I'm great.I'm fine. I don't need anything. all right, so this is for everybody else. what you wanna do is you wanna make sure that you're not scaring away. The new patient by telling 'em everything that they need immediately when they told you already that they think everything is fine, that they don't have any symptoms.and by the way, I mentioned Pete Dawson. I loved Pete. Uh, he wrote the forward of one of my books, and so I went through all of his courses and, and I learned everything. And clinically, it was amazing. . The problem is I came back into my office after two years of those courses and, and I was much better clinically, but when I tried to do what he said as far as case presentation went, and, you know, going through the whole thing with a brand new patient.not too long into this, Isabel, my office manager takes me aside and she hands me this big legal pad with a bunch of names on it, and I said, what's that? She said, uh, do you recognize these names? I said, no. I said, who are these? . She said, exactly. She said, those are all the new patients who came in once you presented massive cases and they ran out the back door.and she handed me this thing. I was like, whoa. I had no idea. So she didn't know how to fix it. I didn't know how to fix it, but I knew I had a problem. Mm-hmm. . And the problem was I was using great clinical skills, but when I came to the presentation, I was trying to do the, Dawson Pinky presentation and say, this is everything you need.There was no trust, there was no relationship. . So over the years I did a lot of trial and error and I figured out a way to get by this, and I came up with three rules. So four your docs out there. If you're writing anything down at all, write down these three rules. This is for the asymptomatic brand new patient when you meet them.Number one is don't take much of their time, so a treatment plan that requires them to come back 5, 6, 8, 10 times over the next several months. , it's already gonna be too much Friction don't take much of their money. So if the out-of-pocket is, you know, under a thousand dollars, that's fine. But if the out and if five, six, $700, that's all good.But if the out-of-pockets gonna be 4, 5, 6, 8, 10,000 or $15,000, again, you're putting in stress in a relationship that doesn't need to be there yet, and you can retain that patient. If you don't do that at that point, I'm gonna tell you how to do that right now. Number three is don't hurt. Now you may be thinking, Tom, why would I wanna hurt a pa?Well, you don't wanna hurt anybody, but you especially can't hurt a new patient. Cuz if you do, they're gone. So those are the three rules. what you do is you develop what I would call a phase one treatment plan, but you don't mention to the patient that it's a phase one treatment plan initially. this is where the rubber meets the road.All you're doing is developing your phase one. If we were back in dental school, they wouldn't have you treatment plan an asymptomatic patient from beginning to end or any patient symptoms or otherwise. They wouldn't have you treatment plan the entire patient. You would do our first phase and then get that under control, whatever.So kind of back to the roots a little bit. Now, what could be in that phase where phase one plan that won't take more than a few visits, won't take much of their money and won't hurt them, won't take much of their time. . All right. You could do whatever's needed, but you could do perio phase one, deep scaling and root planning.Let's say you found some pit fisher and groove composites that were needed. You could do those. Let's say the patient requested whitening. Okay, that's fine as well. this is some examples, but it's low cost, low impact, nothing major. Not gonna scare 'em, not gonna take much of their time or money.So that's a phase one. . Now, let's say you're looking in their mouth and you see that their posterior teeth have all these wide open margins on th 30 year old amalgams, and you pro probably have recurrent carries and frack, whatever. Mm-hmm. . How can you not tell them that? How can you just do a plan and tell them everything's great other than this?Well, you can't, that wouldn't be ethical at all. So I had to bridge that gap and figure out a way to present something to them that would be easy, but at the same time would be ethical and, just be honest. So the way that I did that and the way that I recommend doing. Let's say you're just about done with your phase one plans.you've actually presented it and she said, yeah, that's fine. Just a couple visits and not much money. So she is, that's fine. Then I would say, Mrs. Jones, I see that you have a number of old Mercury silver fillings in the back teeth and they look like they were done quite some time ago.Is that right? And she would say, well, yeah, they were those redundant as a kid. Now, you know, she's thinking that you're gonna say that you need all this work in the back and, you know, crowns. And she's thinking, oh my God, not this. I hope I don't need all this work. don't even know this guy. These teeth feel fine.Nobody ever told me I need anything back here. I let her think what she wants to think. But I finish up this sentence with, I made a note in my record, and by the way, I did make a note in my record. Mm-hmm. , so I case noted this. I said, I made a note in my record that in the not too distant future, I'd like to have you back for a more complete and thorough evaluation of those back teeth, just so that we don't miss anything important.Would that be okay? And of course she's gonna say, yes, she's, you know that, that's all fine. She's not gonna say no to that. And so now she's happy. Cuz at this point all I've done is that little phase one plant and I. After we finish this first phase that we've just discussed, I'd like to have you back for more complete and thorough evaluation.So now I've told her that this is a first phase, that I've not done a comprehensive exam, that I've not at all addressed all of the back things that we're looking at with all those big silver fillings, but that I do, and I might even mention to her, I do see some areas where, the filling itself isn't as tight against the tooth as it used to be, and it's letting things leak in there.So that is something I'd like to take a look at, just so that we don't miss anything really important. Then I go through that first phase. She accepts it. You're gonna get really high acceptance of that. Again, to be clear, this is not a patient who came in with. a fracture, an abscess, um, or telling you that they need a massive amount of work, those patients know they need it.I would move forward with whatever you think is appropriate at that time with that patient. Mm-hmm. , but because there's no relationship and there's no trust without relationship. and because the patient came in presenting saying, I have no problems. I think I just need a cleaning and a checkup. And that's your classic bread and butter patient who does need a bunch of work.so we don't wanna scare 'em away. 95% of my new asymptomatic patients were really happy and they stayed with me and they came back and then we did the next phase evaluations. not only credible, because you're telling the truth, um, but it's something where when they come back, it's already a seed in their mind that they know that there's other stuff to do and they're happy that you didn't talk about it before.you and I talked a little bit before we started that, um, really, I mean, the big 800 pound gorilla in the room is insurance. I mean, we're not gonna get into insurance today, maybe another time, but, but the big 800 pound gorilla is insurance. Why? Because. The vast majority of gps in the United States are mired in PPOs, and I was, I mean, I had that in my practice.My dad had it in his. and it was what was killing me. and it took me about two years to develop a system, a strategy to get out of those PPOs. But I did it. So I went a hundred percent fee for service. And then when my dad was dying of cancer, he asked me to take over his practice and help my mom out financially, cuz all he had was debt.He had nothing put away as in zero, no life insurance, nothing. Mm-hmm . It took my wife and me about two and a half years in that practice, the Worcester practice to get 13 out of his 15 plans gone and make it a very profitable practice as well. . And so I had mentioned, uh, earlier that, uh, what, what, what I have available for your listener is it's a, uh, free special report.It's called a four Step System that dentists use to safely and predictably withdraw from PPOs and increase net profit. So if your folks would like that, they can get it right where you see over my shoulder. , www dot ppo fo and foe is F oe, so ppo fo.com. And that's, um, that's about it. I, I, I hope that covered it Well, not for Michael: you.No. Yeah, that was fantastic, Tom. I appreciate it. And then we'll, play all that in the show notes below, but real quick, I wanna rewind a little bit to where we talk about, don't take too much of their. The three steps don't take too much of their money. So there's three Tom: rules. Yeah, there's three rules.Rule number one is don't take too much of their time. And what I mean by time is the number of visits. Imagine that you're the new patient, you don't have any symptoms. You presented to a doctor and you said, I'm just here for a checkup or a regular physical, whatever, they tell you you need to come back for a series of additional tests and treatments and and time outta work and whatever.When you thought that there was nothing wrong and even. Maybe you just moved from another town and your previous dentist, who you were with for 20 years who you loved to death told you you were in good shape. again, to just to be clear, and I know I've said this a couple times, but it's important. This is not the patient who has a fractured tooth abscess emergency needs, uh, or massive reconstruction, and they know it and they present that to you that I need this all fixed.This is the patient who thinks everything is just fine. And that's a lot of the patients we see today. So that was rule number one, is not a lot of time number. don't take much of their money, and I don't have an exact number, but I used to keep it well under a thousand dollars, so it might be three, four, $500 maximum.And then they have some insurance that kicks in, you know, for part of it. Uh, but, but not much out of their pocket. Number three is don't hurt 'em. And, um, again, not to be facetious, we don't wanna hurt anybody, but, but especially with a brand new patient. I mean, if you inject them for the first time and you're doing a small filling or whatever it is you happen to be doing, or your, your perio phase.and you hurt them, they're not coming back. I mean, there's a lot of dentists out there who'd be happy to, you know, treat them and do it, uh, in a very comfortable manner. So you just have to be extra, extra kind and careful to make sure that none of that happens and you'll retain a very high level of your, uh, very high percentage of your new patients.It's wonderful, man. I Michael: like the, how you broke that down with the phases too, how you kind of do it all in a slow type of growth, right? But you're building that, but you said you're building that relationship, that trust, but you. Establish the foundation with the relationship first. Right. And I feel like sometimes we just wanna hurry up and, And get Tom: that in there. Well, the, the funny thing is when my office manager in the Framingham office, Isabel, when she handed me that, that, um, notepad, it was a legal pad. Mm-hmm. . And it had pages and scrolled of handwritten names. I was like, what is this? She said, exactly.You don't know who these people are, do you? She said, I said, no. I said, Isabel, what's your point? Get, get to the point she, . Every one of those on those three or four pages is a new patient who you did the long form, you know, full exam and comprehensive treatment planning and so forth. All asymptomatic patients, all patients who came in saying, I, I think I'm fine.I just need a cleaning and a checkup. And you told them they need 10 50 and 2030, what? Whatever you saw, and you were probably right, but you blew them all out the back door and, and again, at that point, We didn't have a solution, so I knew I had a problem, but I didn't have a solution and it took me a couple years to develop what I call the twenty twenty twenty new patient exam for maximum new patient retention, and that's what we just discussed.Michael: Nice. Awesome. Tom, I appreciate your time and if anyone has further questions, you can definitely find 'em on the Dental Marketer Society Facebook group, or where can they reach out to you directly? Tom: First of all, there's pfo.com, which has my information when they download that.That'll have all my, my contact information in there, that special report. The other thing they could do is go to my Facebook group. The FA Facebook group is PPO O Exit. So it's a Facebook group and it's called PPO O Exit. Michael: Nice. So guys, make sure you downloaded the special report. Go on the show notes below.Everything's gonna be in the show notes below. Click on the links. And Tom, thank you for being with me on this Monday morning Marketing. Tom: Michael, thank you so much. I appreciate the opportunity.
Dr. Kois is legendary. Many have heard of him. Many have learned from him. Everyone that comes into contact with him speaks of how amazing he is. Rather than sharing a bio, let me share a little about his teaching style directly from the Kois Center website:When considering a postgraduate teaching program to advance your skills as a practitioner, it is important to recognize the vision that program has for you and your success. Dr. John Kois, director of the Kois Center, wants to “enable motivated dentists to achieve extraordinary levels, expanding knowledge and application skills in restorative dentistry.” This is an admirable goal that will only be achieved if the instruction allows you to succeed in both learning the information and applying the knowledge you have gained. The message has to first “reach you,” and then be accompanied by a realistic process you can easily follow so you can immediately make a difference in your practice when you return. John's first passion is to see you succeed. One of the primary tenants of his philosophy is “integrity.” This is pervasive in all aspects of his teachings. First, all of the information delivered is based on independent scientific evidence reviewed at the highest levels. This ensures that its application will yield predictable results. He is also passionate about relevancy, so the material is updated as new research comes out and is implemented into his teachings. He accepts no sponsorships and is not swayed by companies' agendas. He has developed “systems” so that the clinical protocols will work in “your hands.” He maintains small class sizes so he can interact with you and support you with your questions. John is non-judgmental and encourages you to offer your opinions and views on concepts. He insists that you approach him as an equal colleague and is open-minded and receptive to your questions and concerns. He wants you to have every opportunity to “get it, then do it.” He has developed an extensive support system, with fellow colleagues (the Tribe), that have completed the courses and are accessible for you to utilize in your practice growth.He is passionate about teaching. He takes great pride in seeing you learn and succeed. He truly cares about the evolution of dentistry. He understands that you, as committed practitioners, are critical to this success. His passion becomes your passion.The DINKS start 2023 off like a rocket!
Different Mindset vs. Dangerous MindsetEpisode #505 with Dr. Tracey NguyễnFor an isolating and difficult profession like dentistry, you need a strong and positive mindset. But how do you begin to develop it? One way is through community. And to help you find yours, Kirk Behrendt brings back Dr. Tracey Nguyễn from ASAP Pathway to share tips on where to go, who to seek out, and things to focus on early in your career. Your mindset shapes your life — so have the right one! To learn how, listen to Episode 505 of The Best Practices Show!Episode Resources:Dr. Nguyễn's Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/tracey.nguyen.9085 Dr. Nguyễn's social media: @drtraceynguyenASAP Pathway: https://www.asappathway.com/pediatric-airway-training-events Subscribe to the Best Practices Show PodcastJoin the To The Top Study ClubSee our Live Events Schedule hereGet the Best Practices Magazine for Free!Write a Review on iTunesMain Takeaways:Find a purpose early in your career.Seek out friends, mentors, and a community.Think about the legacy you want to leave behind.To become good at something, learn from the very best.Work with people you respect, and whose work you respect.Quotes:“Early in your career, find a purpose. And once you find a purpose, and you find a goal, and you find what makes you happy, grab the people that will help you in that journey. I don't think that a lot of young dentists have that, but I think it's important for us to seek that. And it's also important for older dentists to mentor other dentists because we represent each other. At the end of the day, we represent each other. So, if one person isn't doing something right, it's a reflection of the whole community.” (5:51—6:25)“I don't think I grew as a dentist, as a person, until I joined the Kois Center, until I had that network of people to support me. When I look back, up until that 15-year [point], I was just working to get paid, working to pay the bills — and working to get paid really well. But I didn't really have a purpose.” (7:37—8:02)“In the first track course, [Dr. John Kois] has a good 30 minutes to an hour discussion on tribe and the meaning of community and taking care of each other. And I think because he instills that in his students, the students do that for the other students. And I've never had that kind of relationship.” (8:30—8:51)“The first Symposium after COVID-19, [Dr. Kois] ended it with, ‘Who's got your back?' And I thought this was so powerful that he said after COVID-19, he realized how many people had the Center's back. And then, he said, ‘For as long as I'm alive, we will always have yours.' And that was so powerful for everybody. And I took that, and I was like, ‘I want to do that for somebody else.'” (8:54—9:23)“At the top of your career, it's about your legacy. What do you want to leave back? And it's interesting because you don't think about your legacy until you're doing well. But I think we should think...
Click here for Spear Live December 2-3 2022. Podcast Website Follow @dental_digest_podcast Instagram Follow @dr.melissa_seibert on Instagram Connect with Melissa on Linkedin Dental Digest Podcast Facebook Dr. Adamo Notarantonio is a graduate of the State University of New York at Stony Brook School of Dental Medicine (2002), where he received honors in both removable and fixed prosthodontics. He completed his residency in the Advanced Education in General Dentistry Program at Stony Brook in 2003, and was chosen by faculty to complete a second year as Chief Resident. Dr. Adamo was accredited by the American Academy of Cosmetic Dentistry in 2011, and recently received his Fellowship in the AACD. He is the only Accredited Fellow in New York State, and the 80th person worldwide to achieve this honor. He was further honored by the Academy when asked to serve as a consultant and examiner for the Accreditation and Fellowship processes. In 2016, Dr. Adamo was awarded the AACD's Rising Star Award. Dr. Adamo has been re-elected to serve on the American Board of Cosmetic Dentistry®, is the most recent past chairman of the ABCD, and has recently been appointed the Accreditation Chairman of the American Academy of Cosmetic Dentistry. Dr. Adamo is a graduate of the Kois Center, where he studied under Dr. John Kois. He also has completed The Dawson Academy Core Curriculum. Dr. Adamo has received his fellowship in the International Congress of Oral Implantologists. He has been published in multiple dental journals and lectures nationally and internationally on such topics as CAD/CAM dentistry, implant dentistry, cosmetic dentistry, composite dentistry and dental photography. Dr. Adamo also volunteers his time at the NYU College of Dentistry where he is a Clinical Instructor in the Honors Aesthetics Program.
Click here for Spear Live December 2-3 2022. Podcast Website Follow @dental_digest_podcast Instagram Follow @dr.melissa_seibert on Instagram Connect with Melissa on Linkedin Dental Digest Podcast Facebook Dr. Adamo Notarantonio is a graduate of the State University of New York at Stony Brook School of Dental Medicine (2002), where he received honors in both removable and fixed prosthodontics. He completed his residency in the Advanced Education in General Dentistry Program at Stony Brook in 2003, and was chosen by faculty to complete a second year as Chief Resident. Dr. Adamo was accredited by the American Academy of Cosmetic Dentistry in 2011, and recently received his Fellowship in the AACD. He is the only Accredited Fellow in New York State, and the 80th person worldwide to achieve this honor. He was further honored by the Academy when asked to serve as a consultant and examiner for the Accreditation and Fellowship processes. In 2016, Dr. Adamo was awarded the AACD's Rising Star Award. Dr. Adamo has been re-elected to serve on the American Board of Cosmetic Dentistry®, is the most recent past chairman of the ABCD, and has recently been appointed the Accreditation Chairman of the American Academy of Cosmetic Dentistry. Dr. Adamo is a graduate of the Kois Center, where he studied under Dr. John Kois. He also has completed The Dawson Academy Core Curriculum. Dr. Adamo has received his fellowship in the International Congress of Oral Implantologists. He has been published in multiple dental journals and lectures nationally and internationally on such topics as CAD/CAM dentistry, implant dentistry, cosmetic dentistry, composite dentistry and dental photography. Dr. Adamo also volunteers his time at the NYU College of Dentistry where he is a Clinical Instructor in the Honors Aesthetics Program.
Join Jeff as he spends some time discussing craniofacial development, TMD management, sleep and smile design with Dr. Pamela Marzban and Dr. Mac Lee.Dr. Pamela Marzban's over 20-year dental career has been one of continual learning, both for herself and her team. Her extensive training in cosmetic dentistry, digital smile design, sleep and airway dentistry and physiologic TMJ rehabilitation has made her a craniofacial and smile design expert. She is an international speaker on dental technology, the business side of dentistry and communication. She is the published author of "Craniofacial Development: from infancy to adult " and writes for the Academy of General Dentistry and Washingtonian Magazine. Her clinical work with TMD rehabilitation and full mouth rehabilitation has been recognized and awarded internationally. Her complex aesthetic full mouth rehabilitation cases have been published in industry journals. She is in private practice, works in the Department of General Dentistry at VCU, serves as a VDA delegate and is on the Board of Regents of ICCMO. Dr. Mac LeeThird-generation dentist in rural Edna, Tx. Retired, after five decades of clinical dentistry and is now writing, teaching, ranching, and being with kids and grandkids.Deeply trained in CR dentistry with LD Pankey, Pete Dawson, and John Kois who all became personal friends. His first dental epiphany was at the Pankey Institute in 1977.His grandfather's records from 1928 told a story of treating periodontal disease as an infection, cleaning the area (SRP), using an antimicrobial, teaching the patient how to keep it clean, and letting the body heal itself. Mac took the antimicrobial his grandfather used,changed the name, got FDA approval, and then sold it through Premier Dental.That same philosophy led Mac to the father of non-surgical perio, Dr. Paul Keyes. They worked together on several programs. At the same time, then famous Dr. Earl Estepp traveled to Mac's office to watch the procedure and philosophy. It changed Earl's concept of clinicaldentistry. He made sure that Dr. Lee got on the road and shared his knowledge.In 1990, he quit his perio seminars to be a co-founder of Dental Boot Camp, a seminar that changed the dental world in North America. That lasted for seven years. Pete Dawson became a semi-business partner of DBC. Dr. Dawson sent his lab man to Mac's office to personally walk him through a full mouth reconstruction on Joleen Jackson (who soldhundreds of thousands of dollars of Pete's Perfect Byte computer program). The case was beautiful but never comfortable; she was over-closed.After Dental Boot Camp, he and Joleen wrote “Nothin' Personal Doc, But I Hate Dentists!” a dental educational book for the layperson. The book caught the eye of Dr. Mehmet Oz. Mac became a consultant and a guest for Oz's Second Opinion series on The Discovery Channel and later on Oprah radio with Oz. He also consulted for Oz's three YOU Health Books. Things quickly changed when the Dr. Oz show was aired. The first time Mac told the producer Oz's information was wrong, he got no response. On the second negative email to the producer, he was 100% shut off from anything Oz.Using all this experience, he and Joleen became in-house consultants to some of the most successful practices in North America. Their expertise was patient communication. Most of these successful offices called themselves Neuromuscular dentists.His second dental epiphany was seeing the mouth through a totally different set of eyes. This led to me becoming a Regent for the International College of Craniomandibular Orthopedics and to his Amazon book, The Life Robbing Pain of TMD; Why Me?
Dr. David Alleman has been practicing dentistry for 32 years since his graduation from the University of the pacific in 1978. The first three were in the US navy and the last 29 years in Utah. In 1995, he started studying adhesive dentistry with Dr. Ray Bertolotti. In 1999, he started studying with Dr. John Kois. These two mentors guided him through a 10-year/10,000 hour review of the literature on which advanced adhesive (Biomimetic) dentistry is based. Other mentors and collaborators are Dr. Gary Unterbrink, Dr. Didier Dietschi, Dr. Pascal Magne and Dr. Geoff Knight. David's son, Davey is now following in his footsteps to teach their theories to the masses and encouraging dentists to think differently about adhesive dentistry.Over the last 15 years, there has been a steady evolution in the restorative approach with a progression from mechanical retention to advanced adhesion. Collectively, the science, principles, and techniques of advanced adhesive dentistry is known as Biomimetic Dentistry. At its core, the biomimetic approach respects the simple philosophy that we must “mimic life” and understand the natural tooth in its entirety to adequately restore teeth. Naturally, conserving more of the intact tooth is paramount to this approach, and pairs perfectly with adhesion. The need for mechanical retention, and excessive preparation for full coverage restorations is eliminated. Properly applied, adhesion is best able to preserve marginal integrity and prevent leakage and gaps. Additionally, the adhesively restored tooth is best able to handle and manage functional stresses similarly to the intact natural tooth. As a result, the biomimetically restored tooth eliminates gaps under restorations and cracks into dentin that develop as a result of deformation and stress concentrations. Post-operative pain and sensitivity are eliminated, and vitality is preserved as bacteria are not able to invade and kill the pulp.
Dr. Adamo Notarantonio is a graduate of the State University of New York at Stony Brook School of Dental Medicine (2002), where he received honors in both removable and fixed prosthodontics. He completed his residency in the Advanced Education in General Dentistry Program at Stony Brook in 2003, and was chosen by faculty to complete a second year as Chief Resident.Dr. Adamo was accredited by American Academy of Cosmetic Dentistry in 2011, and recently received his Fellowship in the AACD. He is the only Accredited Fellow in New York State, and the 80th person worldwide to achieve this honor. He was further honored by the Academy when asked to serve as a consultant and examiner for the Accreditation and Fellowship processes.In 2016, Dr. Adamo was awarded the AACD's Rising Star Award. Dr. Adamo has been re-elected to serve on the American Board of Cosmetic Dentistry®,is the most recent past chairman of the ABCD, and has recently been appointed the Accreditation Chairman of the American Academy of Cosmetic Dentistry.Dr. Adamo is a graduate of the Kois Center, where he studied under Dr. John Kois. He also has completed The Dawson Academy Core Curriculum. Dr. Adamo has received his fellowship in the International Congress of Oral Implantologists. He has been published in multiple dental journals and lectures nationally and internationally on such topics as CAD/CAM dentistry, implant dentistry, cosmetic dentistry, composite dentistry and dental photography. Dr. Adamo also volunteers his time at the NYU College of Dentistry where he is a Clinical Instructor in the Honors Aesthetics Program.Dr. Adamo is an avid golfer and is also fluent in Italian.
Why Most Social Media is BS Episode #476 with Dr. Adamo Notarantonio There are good things that social media can do for dentistry. But there's a bad and ugly side that every dentist should be aware of. And today, Kirk Behrendt brings back Dr. Adamo Notarantonio, co-founder of the imPRES courses, to highlight what we already know: most social media is BS! Every gorgeous image is the result of education, practice, and a billion more of hours of practice. Don't be discouraged by what you see! To learn the good, bad, and ugly of social media and how to stay motivated, listen to Episode 476 of The Best Practices Show! Episode Resources: Dr. Notarantonio's social media:https://www.instagram.com/adamoelvis/ ( @adamoelvis) Dr. Notarantonio's courses:https://imprescourses.com/ ( https://imprescourses.com/) Subscribe to thehttps://the-best-practices-show.captivate.fm/listen ( Best Practices Show Podcast) Join thehttps://www.actdental.com/ttt ( To The Top Study Club) See ourhttps://www.eventbrite.com/cc/act-dental-live-workshops-306239 ( Live Events Schedule) here Get thehttps://www.actdental.com/magazine ( Best Practices Magazine) for Free! Write ahttps://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-best-practices-show/id1223838218 ( Review on iTunes) Main Takeaways: Understand the good, the bad, and the ugly of social media. Don't strive for perfection — no one can be perfect. Practice, practice, and practice some more. Be authentic on social media. Get educated — a lot. Quotes: “A cool part of social media for the younger generation [is] they could see what the possibilities are. But I think they have to realize and understand that to get to the level of the educator that we all look up to, like a John Kois or Frank Spear or Gregg Kinzer or Amanda Seed — do you know how much work they had to do to get to that level?” (9:33—9:57) “Instagram is great to meet people. I have great friends — I use it as advertising for my courses. Obviously, that's great. But the amount of work that I do behind closed doors to get to the level that I'm practicing at right now, the younger generation can't fathom because they want — and not to their fault — everything is so fast; the click of a button on a phone, boom, boom. That's not the secret to success.” (9:57—10:19) “We all have work out there we're not proud of. Maybe the patient loved it. Maybe it wasn't our best. But you learn from it. That's the whole point.” (10:36—10:44) “To do composites at the level I'm doing, I failed a thousand times. I redid 10,000 of them. I practiced a billion times. And I think that gets lost now because, ‘Oh, you need food? Okay, DoorDash. Two seconds. You want this? Boom. Five seconds.' That's not reality.” (10:45—11:03) “I don't want to bash social media altogether and say it's BS — it's not. It's great for certain things. And I see it more with the younger generation, ‘Hey, teach me how to do,' or, ‘What camera did you use?' And I want to reply to them like, ‘I'll send you my camera. You still won't take that picture because you don't understand the settings and the lighting and all that.' The better question would be like, ‘Hey, where can I go to learn that?' And I will say, ‘Take this course. Take that course.'” (11:08—11:32) “Social media shows you the before and the after with the nice car and nice clothes. The amount of work that you need to do to get there, everybody wants to overlook that.” (13:59—14:09) “In the sense of how it's good, [social media] made me what I am or where I am right now.” (14:45—14:49) “The other good part [of social media], you meet amazing people. I'm in a group chat with probably 50 dentists around the world. Their work, every day I'm like, ‘Oh my god. That's insane.' So, it's cool for the exposure, to see stuff that — we would've never heard of half these people. And they wouldn't have a shot to come up if we weren't able to notice them. So, I think that's the good, for me.” (16:02—16:24) “My advice to...
Republishing one of our earlier episodes with one of our heros, Dr. John Kois! Join JB, Chad and Jeff as they talk about the Kois Center, continuing education and in person learning post covid. Dr. Kois is an incredible educator that founded and runs the KOIS Center in Seattle, WA. "He is passionate about teaching. He takes great pride in seeing you learn and succeed. He truly cares about the evolution of dentistry. He understands that you, as committed practitioners, are critical to this success. His passion becomes your passion."
Dental Marketing with Legwork Podcast Website Follow @dental_digest_podcast Instagram Follow @dr.melissa_seibert on Instagram Connect with Melissa on Linkedin Dental Digest Podcast Facebook Digital Smile Design My guest this week is Dr. Christian Coachman and we'll be talking about Digital Smile Design. Speaker 1: [00:00:03] You need to first design the smile. You need to design where you want to be even before knowing how to get there. First set design where you want to be. What is the ideal position of the upper teeth, bone and gum in relationship with the face? Not in relationship with whatever is in the mouth. [00:00:22][19.4] Speaker 2: [00:00:27] Welcome to Dental Digest. Listen, dentistry is rapidly changing and this podcast exists so you can have real time updates to changes in delight occasion research and technology. Dr. Christine Curtin, the founder and CEO of the Digital Smile Design Company. Former president of the Brazilian Academy of Historic Dentistry in Global Phenomenon is back this week. In this episode, you're going to learn about how to incorporate dentistry and true planning in esthetic dentistry. You'll learn what you can be doing differently in your treatment plan and why you should take a basically general approach to your cases. All right, let's jump in. [00:01:03][35.9] Speaker 3: [00:01:04] Welcome to Dental Digest. This is a podcast devoted to. [00:01:07][3.6] Speaker 1: [00:01:08] Following evidence based. [00:01:08][0.9] Speaker 3: [00:01:09] Dental literature. Here's your host, Dr. Melissa Seibert. [00:01:11][2.7] Speaker 1: [00:01:12] She's a dentist currently practicing in the Air Force. With that being said, nothing contained within this podcast is intended to be reflective or endorsed by the U.S. Air Force. [00:01:21][8.3] Speaker 2: [00:01:21] Today's podcast is sponsored by Legwork. Your one stop shop for tracking, retaining and delivering patient happiness attract new patients with digital ads, then convert them into lifelong customers through a dental website that integrates with your office phones and patient engagement software. Keep your seats filled with happy patients using tools like tool texting and automated reminders as a dental digest listener. You can get your first six for no pay at legwork icon slash dental digest. And so talk to us also about your implementation of tooth libraries. Can you tell us a bit about that? [00:02:02][40.2] Speaker 1: [00:02:02] This is another concept that we were able to help spread that I think it's a revolution in restorative dentistry. You know, I was able to to learn back in 2011, 12 from one of my mentors in Brazil, an amazing dentist technician. That was the first one to bring this idea of using natural teeth as your guide to manufacture restorations. Of course, natural teeth were always the inspiration. So we as technicians, we were studying natural teeth to try to reproduce with our own hands, either with wax or with ceramics, and building their morphology with our own hands inspired by the natural morphology. And this teacher, Dr. Paolo Chernoff, he came with the idea, you know, why should we try? To replicate nature with our own hands if we can literally copy nature 100% with scanners. And when he first said that to me, it was so clear. You know, that's obvious in the future. At that time, two dozen, 11, 12, I was thinking in the future, we're not going to shape deep with our own hands because it makes no sense. We going to scan natural teeth and we can scan anybody that has beautiful dentition and save these scams into the libraries of our software. And when I'm digitally waxing up your case instead of designing with my own hands, I'm going to copy and paste the natural morphology of the most beautiful teeth on Earth. And then I'm going to design your mockups, design your provisionals, and design your final restorations with that. The only thing that needs to be done here is to understand that if you want to use natural libraries in your software and they look amazing because they're natural to keep that beauty in the patient's real mouth, you need to accept the principle and the concept of monolithic restorations because you need to milk or you need to treat the restoration. And if you touch the surface or you cut back to layer on top of it, you're back to scratch your back into your own morphology. So the natural library concept comes hand-in-hand with the monolithic restoration concept, and these two concepts together are allowing so many dentists and technicians to finally do beautiful natural work without having to be a michaelangelo of dentistry. [00:04:45][162.4] Speaker 2: [00:04:46] Help me understand a little bit. Is this something that you did? Are you a part of creating these libraries, or is this a technology that you advocate for implementing? I'm sorry. You have to pardon my ignorance. I'm not quite as familiar with this. [00:04:57][10.8] Speaker 1: [00:04:58] So we were the first ones to develop digital 3D libraries and do diagnostic wax in 3D with natural libraries and then design CAD cam restorations with natural libraries, mill these restorations and places in the mouth. So this is what we call the complete digital natural restorative workflow. Okay. Inspired by this initial idea from Dr. Paolo Garneau. That was the first one to mention something like that. We were the first ones to then bring this to the digital world and make it restored. The first two patients back in 2014 with this complete digital workflow with natural libraries. [00:05:43][45.3] Speaker 2: [00:05:44] What ceramic materials do you advocate for using when you're trying to design beautiful interior restorations? Do you like lithium de silicate zirconia feldspar? They porcelain. What do you like? [00:05:54][10.3] Speaker 1: [00:05:55] I like all of them. I like all of them. And the key is beautiful. Natural morphology. Beautiful natural morphology makes every material looks beautiful. We can't beat nature. It makes no sense. So it's amazing, you know, when you use natural libraries and then you manufacture these with natural libraries, they come out of the machine really looking beautiful because it's a copy paste of a natural tooth, you know? So all the materials will work fine. We work a lot with Legion Basilica, we work a lot with film spectacle. So just to emphasize, we do 100% related and we do 100% digital. Everything we do is digital and monolithic with natural libraries. We do hundreds and hundreds of anti restorations every month, and that's how we do all of them. Of course that if we are trying case in the business models and it doesn't look good, we're going to do everything we can to save the case too. So the patience problem and make the modifications that make them happy. And if we need to touch with our own hands and and save the case, we will. So that's one point. But we always do everything digital and most of the times we don't have to really modify them too much with our own lens because they come out of the machine already looking good. So these interior monolithic restorations we usually do with Emacs or Empress multicolor blocks, we also do translucent zirconia. They work fine. We also do hybrid materials, composite blocks. They all look beautiful as well. So it's a matter of mature selection for any biological, functional reason and value selection. How do you pick the right materials to give the value that you want? [00:07:54][118.7] Speaker 2: [00:07:54] One of the things that is such a challenge for dentists and oftentimes overlooked, but this is invaluable. Is shade selection in with your background? How would you recommend Dennis communicate Shade to the lab? Some Dennis would say that they actually have the patient go to the lab and then the lab technician themselves is doing the shade matching. But that's just so rarely practical because oftentimes the lab might be even in the different country. So what information should a Dennis be gathering to effectively communicate shade to the lab? [00:08:22][27.7] Speaker 1: [00:08:23] So we need to we probably should divide this topic into are we talking about cases with one or just the few restorations that you need to match remaining dental of the remaining dentition? So a single central, central lateral, you know, lateral pane. So the case is where you have everything natural and a few restorations that you need to match. This has a complete different protocol than the cases that you're doing, the full smile, right? The cases that you're doing, the full smile. The challenge here, as I mentioned, is value. You need to you want to pick the right event. Okay. You're not matching anything. You just don't want the full set to be too great or too great. You want the right then. Okay, so value communication depends on experience. You need to understand the color of the remaining track, the color that the patient wants, and how much space for the restoration. These three these are the three pieces of information that your technician needs to know to select the material for the right value. Right. So about the color is the right value. So you take a picture with the shade guides and the tooth perhaps, or the something simple. Sent to the lab. You tell the lab what is the final color value that the patient wants? Sent to the lab and in the software, the lab already knows the clearance, so we need to do the math. As we say, initial color, final color and clearance. Now, a good technician and good lab. By doing several cases, hundreds of cases, they're going to become good on understanding the combination of these three factors. What block should they pick to generate the value that the patient's patient want on full set? If you're talking about single restorations to match to natural teeth, then of course the color matching becomes a little bit more challenging. The shape is not the challenge anymore because as you scan the patient, you can use the natural remaining to even just flip to the other side and make the perfect morphology so it becomes, you know, how tricky the color is. If the color of the natural and tissue remaining tissue is not that complex, you can still solve with monolithic restorations, and labs are becoming better and better on matching monolithic restorations to match the tissue. If you see that the natural incision over patient does have very unique internal characterizations. This is one of the few situations where. Cutting back and layering ceramics. Old school is still necessary. And for that, this is the situation where top technicians usually want to see the patient life. But as you said, is very unrealistic for 90% of the dentists. So, again, what you need to do is just. There are some very simple photography protocols that you can use to generate these images to send to the lab to help the lab increase the chances of magic. What I used to do was to then to have the doctor try in before finishing the crown in a certain phase, maybe with two bakes and one final bake to be done, and then make some pictures to understand how close I am. To allow me to fix. To fine tune. The final layering to make the ideal match. [00:12:17][234.4] Speaker 2: [00:12:18] Would you advocate for the use of polarized light and gray cards? Is that effective? [00:12:23][4.8] Speaker 1: [00:12:23] Yeah. People or people? I would say we love to complicate our lives and people like to create new things to just create something. So the polarized photo and it's something beautiful for lectures. I never used it and I was able to match single central without it. You take a very good photo. Normal photo with some tricks to make the light place in the light in a way that you don't have the reflection. So you see the characteristics of the teeth. For a single central if if it is, of course, a full mouth, then it's completely useless. But if you're doing a single central, the polarized photo may allow you to see a little bit better the inner structures of the tooth and allow you to kind of inspire you on the build up to match that. But if you take a very good picture without the polarized filter, I was always able to to see as well what I needed. But yeah, it's possible for single centrals when the natural two is very complex. Maybe it can add some value. The green card is a way to calibrate, to calibrate the color of the camera, to allow, you know, then you can use some people developed techniques on Photoshop that you can kind of define the value in the Chroma on the hue of the restoration through some numbers in the Photoshop. And then they try to link these numbers to the ceramic system saying that if it's Photoshop, whatever, number, X, Y, Z, you go to the ceramic and you mix this and this and this, then this file that you get that same color. Honestly speaking, it's just too complicated. And I can tell you that the best ceramics in the world, at the end of the day, they're using their experience. They're looking at the picture and only the experience by doing dozens, hundreds of times these type of cases to allow you to understand which powders to use in the amount that needs to be used, with the mixture that needs to be used, that this single central case is still today, 21st century. They are still done in a very old school way. You know, it is still an art. It's still an art. [00:14:56][152.9] Speaker 2: [00:14:57] What are these techniques with light that you're referencing? [00:14:59][2.1] Speaker 1: [00:15:00] So, for example, the the traditional flash, you know, the dentist use the ring flash, you know, it generates a straight and strong light. And that's the worse to see things, right? So usually you can see better when the light is not straight is lateral and when the light is not strong is soft. So direct light straight is not ideal. Lateral indirect light is good. So utilizing an arm for your flashes and moving the flashes, a ray from the lens, moving the flashes backwards and putting a bouncer to bounce the light or using certain filters. These are techniques that every artistic technician, artistic dentist has been using for 15 years, you know, to take beautiful pictures of the tissue. The two tricks is indirect and lateral light. [00:16:04][63.6] Speaker 2: [00:16:05] So the question that I've been dying to ask you about as well is how are you using keynote and PowerPoint for digital smile design? This is something that you're renowned for. And it's it's very interesting. [00:16:15][10.9] Speaker 1: [00:16:16] This is what we call the vintage. The yes, the there was the how I started. Right. How the whole. So what happened was that, as I mentioned, lecturing was a passion. So in 2004 five, I started to learn PowerPoint and then keener to put lectures again. And I would finish a nice case and I would say, okay, this is a cool case for a lecture. Fantastic. Let me get grabbed in the documentation and let me put a lecture together about this case. As I was putting the lecture together about the case, firstly I started to identify mistakes that we did on the treatment. Second, I realized that I was learning more about the case when I was building the lecture. Then when I was starting to plan the case. Unfortunately, it was too late because the case was already finished. So when I started to realize was inside Keynote and PowerPoint, you have so many tools and so many tricks that you can play with the images, with the possible manipulations of these images, with placing lines and references and doing drawings. So I was doing all these drawings and guidelines to try to explain to my public, to my audience, how good I was. And instead, I was identified. The mistakes that I did. Right. So I, of course, said to myself, I need to start using these tricks, not at the end to put a lecture together, but at the beginning to make better decisions to treatment plan, to not make these mistakes. So in 2006 seven, I started to use little by little. I started first to demand from my clients dentists to send me facial pictures of their patients, not only intraoral pictures, but also facial pictures. And I started to develop a protocol on how to bring these facial pictures to the slide and transformed PowerPoint and keynote into a dental software. And every day learning a new trick. You know, ways to analyze sizes and shapes and measure harmony and balance and arrangement, facial integration and all the principles that we learn from oral facial norms and denture principles, and so full of measured principles and automatic principles. All these principles that helps you. Design is mine only with the phase I started to bring into into PowerPoint and Keynote. Little by little, it became a protocol I started to use in every single case, and then people started to see it and think, This is very cool. Can you teach me? And then I started to show it to colleagues and friends and then small groups and then little courses and then bigger courses than courses all over the world. And that's how the whole thing started. Of course, that today. Today things changed because at that time there was no 3D software. All I had was 2D PowerPoint keynote. And then from that 2D, I developed a technique that also exploded all over on how to make measurements and guides in PowerPoint keynote and then translate to the stone model to guide to wax it. So it was what I called a facially driven, handmade wax set, and that was the big a big hit until 2014. Or that was my main way to work until 14, when we moved completely in three into 3D. And now everything is inside the 3D software. But but we still use PowerPoint Keynote as the digital chart of the patient and everything we do in the 3D software, those three screens and video recordings that I mentioned to you, everything goes inside PowerPoint and Keynote and PowerPoint. The keynote is where we organize the digital information of the patient and what we use to present to the patient. [00:20:24][247.9] Speaker 2: [00:20:25] I think it's funny that you say that this is vintage, because for many dummies this is still very cutting edge. And I think this technique is phenomenal because, listen, investing in some of this technology is very, very expensive. And this is such a great way for people to get their feet wet and get started. So would you make this actionable? Can you help us understand how are you doing this? Are you actually tracing the design of the teeth on keynote? Would you explain this a little more? [00:20:50][25.1] Speaker 1: [00:20:51] So in Europe, I call it vintage. Of course, we work with 3D technology nowadays, and 3D technology is becoming very popular and very democratic. And of course, everybody is going to go there. But we still have hundreds, even thousands of doctors utilizing this vintage way, and that is very useful and very efficient. And people are doing better dentistry because of that. And I get messages every day from people saying, look, I didn't have the time or the opportunity to jump into 3D, blah, blah, blah. I know this is the future, but I'm very grateful that I have these tools that I can do for free and I can do it myself and I can communicate better with my lab. And my lab doesn't have any technology. We are in the countryside of India, you know, in the middle of Brazil. And all we have is this and it's helping us to do better. So I am very proud of this. And I think that you need to do whatever you can with whatever you have to do the best you can. And that is fantastic. So we still have online the videos that people can access for free on YouTube, on our YouTube channel of how to do the vintage DST, 2D facial analysis, 2D small design on Keynote and PowerPoint. Then the digital ruler that we invented that you place into the slide that you can calibrate and make the measurements between where you are and where you want to be. So let's say you put the patient's picture in that slide, you grab the templates you put over, you design the smile in 2D. So, you know, you see where the patient is. So let's say there's a chef and there's a cat and the teeth are small. You draw the ideal smile on top based on the face. So you have all the lines, the facial midline smile, curved tooth proportion, inter dental proportion, gingival fulfilling position. So what we call the smile frame that we developed, the ten steps of the smile frame that we used. So today on 3D, the same 2D or 3D, the smile frame process, ten steps. So use those ten steps on the 2D. So now what you see very clear is where you are and where you want to be. So let's say the incisal edge is here and the midline is here, and you want them in light to be there and the incisors to be there. So what you do is you take the digital ruler, you match the measurement, so you calibrate the ruler and then you measure, for example, that on the cervical of the tooth you need to shift the midline one millimeter, and on the incisal you need to shift 1.5. And that will fix the shift and the cat. And that on the incisal edge, on the distal corner, you want to lengthen half a millimeter and the medial 1.5 millimeters. So you have those measurements, you start making the measurements, you go to your model, you take a. Caliper. You start making the measurements tomorrow with the pencil and you start throwing the wax on top of it, guided by these measurements, and you can use the barrier probes in the wax to measure the thickness of the wax. You know, you melt the wax and you put the burial probe and you start guiding the volumes and the position of the wax midline in size of large volumes, gingival margins proportions. And your handmade wax can actually look very like your 2D drawings on PowerPoint. Of course, you need to know how to use PowerPoint or keynote, and you need to be a very good waxer. There's no magic here. You need to be a very good wax. If you have those two skills, you'll watch the video on YouTube on how to do it. And you can start tomorrow and you're going to have quite a lot of problems in terms of the misplacement of the midline, the size of add your own proportions and even beautiful lines and all these things. [00:24:47][236.1] Speaker 2: [00:24:48] No, I think this is such a cool innovation and I love that because again, Denis, I might not have access to some of these technologies. This is a great way for them to get started. So why should Denis why should their treatment plans be facially driven? Denis Of the highest echelon in dentistry, this is something that they advocate for. But oftentimes, unfortunately, the default when it comes to treatment planning is we're just thinking of disease control, starting with posterior teeth in the mouth. But why do we need to start with the smile first? [00:25:13][25.4] Speaker 1: [00:25:14] So this is all about what we learned. You know, this is not something that we at DSD invented. We we what we do is to translate into the digital world, the beautiful, beautiful things that we learn from mentors like Rick Rowley, John Kois, Frank Sfeir, Bill Robbins, Jeff Rouse, Peter Dawson, Jack. She's just come one year. You know, they they all they all talk about the same thing, facially driven treatment planning, facial generated treatment plans. What does that mean? It means that you need to design a smile first before you plan the treatment. It's like an architect. First you design the project and after you engineer how to make that project possible. And even though it's pretty obvious, unfortunately in dentistry, too many people invert those things. They start treatment, planning the solutions. And then in the middle of the process, they say, Oh, this is more or less where we're going to end and let's hope for the best. You know, if if you think like an engineer, if you think like an architect, it's pretty obvious. Start with the end in mind. As Peter Dutton said, if you know where you want to go, it's easier to get there. Period. What it means, you know where you want to go. It means you need to first design the small. You need to design where you want to be even before knowing how to get there. First set design where you want to be. What is the ideal position of the upper teeth, bone and gum in relationship with the face? Not in relationship with whatever is in the mouth. Because that will change. May change, and you probably want to change many other things. So you cannot treatment plan based on whatever is in the mouth. You need to treatment plan based on the face and nowadays face and every face. And these are the two guidelines to let you know where the upper teeth should be for ideal facial harmony and ideal and weight. So when you know where you want to be in treating the teeth, bone and gum, this is where you want to be. Now you need to compare where you want to be and where you are and understand the discrepancies. And then you need to ask yourself, what is the treatment plan? And that's only then that you need to use your skills and the specialty skills of your team members to start understanding. This is the ideal outcome we want. This is where we want to be. Is it possible? Do we really want to offer this to the patient? Is this realistic? How challenging it is? How much time do we need? You know, does the patient want to go through this process? And many times, of course, the ideal project is not feasible. It's not possible. It's not realistic financially, maybe to too much time the patient doesn't want for any reason. Many times the ideal is not possible, and only then you adapt the ideal to something that you think is more realistic. But as we say, give ideal a chance. Give the face a chance, give the airway a chance. Start from ideal reverse engineer the treatment plan, start from smile design and then build your treatment plan. [00:28:47][213.6] Speaker 2: [00:28:48] Would you almost say that this is analogous to dentures? You know, some of the greatest minds when it comes to treatment planning correlated to dentures. They say, you know, when we're selling denture teeth, what are we starting with or starting with? Where do we want eight and nine to go once we know that we know everything else? And it's perhaps the same way with Smile Design. Perhaps fewer dentists are doing dentures today, but we can't forsake these principles 100%. [00:29:10][21.8] Speaker 1: [00:29:13] This is exactly what we say. The only dentists that are treatment planning properly always are the ones treating full evangelist's patients and why their treatment planning? Ideally, always not because they're better, but because they have no other option. There's nothing in them up so they cannot treatment plan based on whatever is in the mouth. The only thing they have is the face. So they need to start from the face and then they design over the wax rim. They design where the teeth should be first. Then one of the gun should be first. And then they look at that and say, okay. This is what we're going to do. This is where we're going to place the influence we need to cut the budget. We need to raise the interface. We need to grab. We need to do the after after they set up the T. So this is because, you know, naturally, when you're treating a dangerous patients, you have to think the right way and you need to start outside in. Now, if the patient has teeth and an existing bite, you need to think exactly the same way by allowing yourself to ignore the existing bite for a moment. Ignore the existing teeth for a moment, look at the face, look at the enemy, and envision and plan the ideal and then build a plan. [00:30:38][85.1] Speaker 2: [00:30:38] Dr. Coachman, it has been just incredible to have you on. What message would you like to leave us with? What closing thoughts do you have? [00:30:45][6.6] Speaker 1: [00:30:46] I would say, you know, congratulations to all for picking this amazing profession. There's no better moment in the history of dentistry to be a dentist than the moment we live nowadays. It is definitely the most exciting moment. Of course, the world is going through tough moments, but dentistry showed amazing resilience and we were able to see for the last two years how important dentistry is, how vital what we do is for people, and how strong is our business. Even on super tough moments like the ones we left. So I think we are just very, very lucky to be in the dental business mainly, also because we are just discovering the real power of what we do. I think that the next decade will be the decade, hopefully that dentistry will play the role that dentistry deserves in the medical field. We're going to we're going to enter. This position of really going way beyond just treating decays and doing cute smiles. And we're going to discover the depth of what we do in terms of systemic connection, biological importance, the impact on breathing energy and sleep quality related to dentistry, the relationship between function and posture that impact on people's life emotionally. Even more so, all of these topics that are starting to be explored now will show the world the importance of dentistry in people's well-being. So it's just amazing to be in this moment in time, inside a profession that is reinventing itself. [00:32:44][117.7] Speaker 2: [00:32:45] And you provide a lot of educational resources. If they want to learn more from you, where can they go? [00:32:49][4.8] Speaker 1: [00:32:50] So the best way first is to go to our website. Our website has a lot of information, digital smile, design dot com, digital smile designed icon courses, and you're going to see our main course. The entry course is called DACA residency. That is the residency is a three day course where explain we explain the full concept. It's a three day course that we do in this year. We're going to do in Miami and Las Vegas. This residency, of course, social media. I'm very, very active on Instagram. Chris Coachman or Digital Smile Design, both accounts. We share a lot of content, a lot of insights, tips and tricks. So if you follow us on Instagram, you're going to get a lot of information. And also we talk about the courses as well. So I think these are the two ways to interact with me personally and with my team. [00:33:47][56.9] Speaker 2: [00:33:51] Pay raise, believe it or not, ratings for this podcast on Apple Podcasts app actually really matter. So if you like this show and it's helpful to you, would you please be sure to leave a rating and subscribe on the Apple Podcast app? And as always, please send a direct message on podcast and screen, which is done on that is podcast. All right. I'll see you next week. [00:33:51][0.0] [1995.8]
Dental practice management software. Usually it's not the kind of thing that people get passionate about. Maybe you chose one back in 1998 and have just stuck with it because the fear of change was greater than the frustration of the status quo. Maybe you inherited your software from the previous owner of your practice. No matter how you ended up with your current software, you really should think about how well it's serving you. Today Alan is joined by Dr. Rania Saleh, the inventor/creator of Oryx Dental Software. Oryx is a smart and intuitive cloud based practice management software that was built around concepts taught by Dr. John Kois and the Kois Center. Rania invited two current users of Oryx, Dr. Meredith Gantos and Dr. Ashish Patel to talk about their experience using Oryx and why they chose Oryx in the first place. Some of the topics that the group covered were: How did you choose Oryx and what helped you make that decision? What was switching to Oryx like? What hardware do you use with Oryx? How does Oryx handling imaging? What are your favorite features? What would you tell someone who is interested but is stuck on the idea of change? Cloud software is the future of dental practice management software and these folks are pretty excited to talk about Oryx! Join the Very Dental Facebook group using the password "Timmerman," Hornbrook" or "McWethy." If you'd like to support the Very Dental Podcast Network then you should support our sponsors! 2 days. A bunch of the Spear Education all stars! Literally a Whitman's Sampler of all the greats! (Dr. Frank Spear, Dr. Gary DeWood, Dr. Gregg Kinzer, Dr. Jeff Rouse, Dr. Ricardo Mitrani and Dr. Darin Dichter! Also Adam McWethy! You've heard all of these guys on the podcast and this is a great way to see them all in one huge event! June 16-17 at Spear Education in Scottsdale! August 12-13 in Boston, MA! 14 hours of AMAZING CE! And if you tell them that you heard about it from Very Dental and you'll get $500 off! Go check it out! -- Zirc Dental Products' Color Method will rescue your team from clinical clutter and disorganization and if you use the coupon code “VERYDENTAL” to get 50% off their most popular level of organizational consultation. You'll have a box of all the different trays, tubs, cassettes and other goodies sent ot your office and then have an in depth conversation with one of Zirc's clinical efficiency specialists to help you choose what's best for your office! So head over to verydentalpodcast.com/zirc and use coupon code “VERYDENTAL” to get 50% off Color Method consultation! -- Cosmedent is known for teaching restorative dentists how to make beautiful front teeth with composite. But let's not forget about gorgeous posterior resins! Would you like to learn to make life-like restorations with firm contacts and ideal occlusion? Dr. Javier Quiros is teaching “Become a Cosmetic Dentist with Posterior Composites this July 14-15th! You'll learn proper posterior layering techniques, material selection, how to get perfect contacts and even how to open the vertical dimension using the dentist's best tool…composite resin! I just got back from a course at the Cosmedent Center for Esthetic Excellence and I can't wait to go back! Their classroom is built for hands on teaching with a small class size. You get to use the best materials and you'll get to know your classmates. It's quite literally the best continuing education experience you can have! All overlooking Michigan Avenue in Chicago at the very best time to visit! Go check it out at verydentalpodcast.com/CEE! -- You won't believe all the changes and advances they're having over at CAD-Ray! Now you can get the i700 in WIRELESS! Yes, you heard me correctly, all the goodness of the Medit i700 now is now available with no cables! The i700 wireless is available NOW from CAD-Ray and it ships immediately! If you've been waiting for a wireless intraoral scanning solution, your wait is over! Go check out CAD-Ray at verydentalpodcast.com/cadray or cad-ray.com -- Do you have something you use every single day on every single procedure? I do. There isn't anything I do in dentistry that Enova Illumination isn't a huge part of. I've owned a lot of different kinds of loupes. I've had Designs for Vision, Zeiss, Orascoptic…all of them. My favorites are the Enova's Vizix loupes in the Airon frame. Mine are red. RAWR! Along with the amazing, weightless and cordless Qubit, Quasar or Quantum headlights (all others are just toys) you cannot do better. Oh, did I mention the incredible Zumax 2380 operating microscope with built in still and video? Why haven't you checked out Enova Illumination yet? You can get a killer deal on all things Enova by using the Very Dental link you'll find at verydentalpodcast.com/Enova! -- Do you need help with a logo, website design or anything marketing? Our friends at Wonderist can definitely help! Keep your eyes open for the updated Very Dental Podcast website coming soon! It's amazing and it was designed by the pros at the Wonderist Agency! Want more information? Go check them out at verydentalpodcast.com/wonderist! -- Our friends at Crazy Dental have switched things up again! Now you can get 10% off your whole order from Crazy Dental using the coupon code: VERYDENTAL10! That's right…10% off your whole order! Go check out the amazing prices at verydentalpodcast.com/crazy and be sure to use the coupon code: VERYDENTAL10!
Dental Slang is going all the way to New Zealand to talk to Dr. Andrea Shepperson — digitally, of course. Dr. Shepperson is a dentist and educator who has spent much of her career building an international family of dentists. When she took a year off from school to travel the world, who would have guessed she'd create a network of dentists and mentors from all over the globe! We never stop learning as dentists, she says, and this motto has carried her through her career. When she started her own practice, she was lucky enough to have mentors to guide her and develop her knowledge as both a business owner and a dentist. She shares some of the most important mentors to her, including Dr. John Kois, Dr. Laurence Walsh, and Christian Coachmen of Digital Smile Design. Digital dentistry is a big part of Dr. Shepperson's practice. First, she describes her dream digital dental office for us, then walks us through the digital tools and new technology she is using in her office right now to help patients battle tooth erosion. From wireless servers that make it possible to access files and photos from anywhere in the office, to “patient-specific motion” scanners that capture how individual patients use their teeth, these digital tools are changing the way we practice dentistry. Dental technology not only makes our job easier but can actually help us build better relationships with our patients. Things like digital photography and 3D printing put dental care into a context that a patient can see, touch, ask questions about, and understand. Using technology to take an emotional approach to dentistry like this makes it easier to have those hard conversations about preventative treatments and expensive implants. Dr. Shepperson is flipping the traditional dental process upside down, starting with that first appointment with new patients, and she has tips for how dentists can make treatment plans that fit within a patient's budget. Going digital can change the cost of things and give you the ability to manufacture many things in-house. Dr. Shepperson shares the dental slang she uses to help patients understand tooth wear and the different treatment methods she offers. In This Episode You Will Learn What the pandemic lockdown looks like in New Zealand 1:50 Why you never stop learning as a dentist 14:04 How to evolve your practice style to allow for growth 20:21 How to use new dental technology to track tooth wear 28:00 How to better address and diagnose our patients in this digital age 35:10 The best ways to start the preventative conversation with patients 39:11 Dr. Shepperson's go-to dental slang 52:53 Some Questions We Ask What is dental school like in New Zealand? 7:23 What inspired Dr. Shepperson to take a year off and travel the world? 11:22 Who are Dr. Shepperson's mentors? 17:37 How can dentists use Dr. Shepperson's new book? 24:00 What does Dr. Shepperson's dream dental office look like? 31:56 How can dentists make treatments fit into a patient's budget? 43:28 What kind of training courses are offered at Shepperson Education? 49:47 Resources: Visit our website: www.DentalSlang.com Connect with us on Facebook: Dental Slang Learn from Dr. Andrea Shepperson's lectures and courses: AndreaShepperson.com
A daily dilemma in Dentistry is deciding when (and HOW) to restore that extensive MODL amalgam restoration that was placed over 30 years ago! We go deep in to this, looking at single-tooth factors but also a full mouth 'bigger picture' view with Dr Andrew Chandrapal who has been trained by world-class clinicians including Dr John Kois and Dr Didier Dietschi, https://youtu.be/lulpENm4swo Check out this full episode on YouTube. Need to Read it? Check out the Full Episode Transcript below! Protrusive Dental Pearl: How to make sure your equipment doesn't keep getting lost? Use color coded tapes on your own equipment and tell your team that stuff is super important because it belongs to you. https://www.instagram.com/tv/CNUi20EJ9Pk/ “Using things like air abrasion to then try and remove the apical amalgam whatever you can do to try and be gentle in your removal of that material is a good way to go” - Dr Andrew In this episode I ask Dr Andrew Chandrapal, When to classify the large restoration has failed (12:45)Risk factors of a tooth with large restoration would undergo necrosis (18:33)About restricted anterior restriction or constriction (22:21)How to prevent yellow stains and if you should intervene for a long time restorations? (29:16)Little tip on special burs to use when cutting out caries (31:21)Cutoff point whether to cap the cusp tip or not (33:26)When to decide if you should intervene because of marginal staining and communicating to patients (37:44)What factors to consider moving from direct restoration to indirect restoration? (39:59)Treatment plan to reduce the risks of fracture (42:31) As promised in the episode, if you want to learn more of Composite courses by Dr Andrew Chandrapal - IndigoDent Education If you enjoy this episode, check out this Composite vs Ceramic with Dr Chris Orr Click below for full episode transcript: Opening Snippet: I've shied away many times i've made a treatment plan for a patient for quadrant but i will just work around that upper first molar we've got that behemoth amalgam because i don't want to touch it. Any help you can give me? We should not be responsible for owning the clinical problems that the patient presents with... Jaz's Introduction: Most of my patients are above the age of 60 actually nowadays and when i look into their mouths i see these huge amalgam restorations you know like it's MODB they've got very very thin cusps you can see the amalgam shining through. You can see craze lines, crack lines but they've been there for so many years, they've been there for two three sometimes even four decades i mean you look at these studies about longevity of amalgam and composite and you know my patients are the heavy metal generation patients are a living testament to longevity of amalgam however when things go wrong they can go catastrophically wrong like remember when you find secondary caries around amalgam it can be a huge huge mess and of course we know that in time cusps can fracture around amalgams and that's like the most common emergency we find which is when someone just broken off a cusp and lo and behold there's a huge amalgam left behind. So when should you look at amalgam and say you know what i'm gonna decide now is a good time to crown this tooth or now is a good time to remove this amalgam because i worry about secondary caries or i worry about micro leakage because if they've been like this for 30 years 40 years and i can't really justify enough a good reason to drill into it then why am i drilling into it okay? These kind of debates that i have with myself. So to help answer this as part of this back to basic series for August, i've got Dr Andrew Chandrapal from the UK, who is just such a gifted clinician. He's well known throughout the world actually and i think he's done a really good job of covering this basics of you know when do i need to remove the stained composite like is that staining around a margin,
Lower Risk – Increase Prognosis Episode #321 with Dr. Betsy Bakeman Risk assessment is the most important tool for designing the best treatment. And to share the most effective way to lower risks and have a good prognosis for your patients' teeth, Kirk Behrendt brings in Dr. Betsy Bakeman to talk about a new system of thinking, the four diagnostic parameters, for better outcomes in patients. Veneers are useless if you lose your teeth! To learn more about treating patients comprehensively for the long run, listen to Episode 321 of The Best Practices Show! Main Takeaways: It's important to figure out why something is happening to patients' teeth. Always look to reduce risk in areas of perio, biomechanics, function, and esthetics. You can reduce risk, but you can't always eliminate risk. Risk is a moving target in patients — things change. It's important to help your patients understand their level of risk. Treatment doesn't need to be done all at once. Continuing education is the best gift you can give yourself. Quotes: “The whole concept of lowering risk, of looking at a patient and making a complete diagnosis and looking at where their risk factors for breakdown are and really categorizing that in a very simple way: low, medium, high. Periodontally, biomechanically — which is the structural integrity of the teeth. So, that's the patient's risk for caries, erosion. And then, functionally, load-based failure. And then, also looking at the patient for esthetics, do the teeth show, because that has an influence on where we put the teeth and everything. So, you categorize in those four areas, are they low risk, medium risk, high risk.” (04:40—05:24) “You have to work to lower the risk. Now, that may be treating the decay. It may be saying the decay is too out of control, we need to remove the teeth and move toward implants. Load-based failures. Is this a parafunction patient? Is this just friction? Are the teeth rubbing together, and we can fix that, the way the teeth come together? So, we always are looking to lower risk. And the amazing thing that does when we really think about that and make a thorough diagnosis and we design our treatment plans to lower risk, we increase prognosis and predictability. And patients really get it.” (05:32—06:11) “It's just a different way of looking at things and looking at the whole patient and making some decisions about where to go with things. And people are so appreciative. You end up treating the patient for the long term and you create very happy, very pleased patients. And it doesn't mean you have to do it all at once. Sometimes, we stage treatment over time. But you're going in that direction to lower risk and increase prognosis. And it feels really good. It feels like you're serving the patient.” (07:32—08:06) “You have to force yourself to think [in this way]. [John Kois], he has systems that go through that, that go through perio, biomechanics, structural integrity of the teeth, the function, and the esthetics. And you actually have to write down in those areas and think about it in that way. And in the beginning, you have to fill out the form. You have to start to get your brain to think that way. And you develop the risk assessment, and you say to yourself, ‘Okay. I know this patient wants veneers. But if I don't manage the function, the reason the teeth look this way, this whole thing is going to fail.' Or if the patient doesn't treat the periodontal disease they have, I could do beautiful veneers, but they're going to lose their teeth. And so, you structure things that way.” (08:51—09:42) “The patient that needs the most dentistry, they're coming with the highest level of risk. And sometimes, we can lower risk. But in some areas, we're not able to. We just have to manage it, and to the best of our ability, but we're not able to eliminate it. And so, that's where I find risk assessment is really important as well, because I actually talk to the patient about their
(DUTCH) Naomi Doelen and Willemijn van Susante followed and graduated from the pristine educational program of John Kois in Seattle. This program inspired them to bring his philosophy to the Netherlands and in 2019 they started their own educational program called Bite Functional Dentistry. In this podcast we ask Naomi and Willemijn about their motivation to educate other dentists besides their daily work as general practitioners, and how they are able to manage the balance between a busy dental career and life as a young mother of a family.
Dental digest is a dental podcast devoted to evidence based dentistry. A thorough understanding for advanced adhesive dentistry and biomimetic dentistry is necessary for creating composite restorations that last. In this episode, Dr. David Alleman will clear up several misconceptions related to biomimetic dentistry, advanced adhesive dentistry and operative dentistry. One of the greatest misconceptions in dentistry is that enamel obtains a better bond and stronger bond than dentin. While enamel bonding is less-technique sensitive and more straightforward, extensive literature has been published to demonstrate that dentin can obtain a stronger bond. That being said, dentin bonding is far more technique sensitive. Did you know you can earn continuing education through this dental podcast? Just visit www.dentaldigestinstitute.com to get started! About Dr. David Alleman: Dr. David S. Alleman is renowned as one of the co-founding pioneer of the of Biomimetic dental movement and his contribution to Biomimetic Dentistry. His study of advanced adhesive dentistry began with Dr. Ray Bertolotti. His studies continued to progress under the tutelage of the renowned Dr. John Kois. These two mentors and his passionate dedication evolved into his 10 year/10,000 hour review of the dental literature. This dedication enabled him to formulate the concepts on which advanced adhesive (Biomimetic) dentistry is based. Other mentors and pioneers he has collaborated with include Dr. Pascal Magne, Dr. Didier Dietschi, Dr. Gary Unterbrink, and Dr. Geoff Knight. He formerly partnered with Dr. Simone Deliperi from Sardinia, Italy to pass these techniques on to other motivated dentists. He is a member of the Academy of Operative Dentistry & The International Association for Dental Research. He has published numerous articles on advanced adhesive techniques that focus on caries detection, increasing long-term bond durability, stress reduction and tooth conservation. He and his son Dr. Davey Alleman founded the Alleman Biomimetic Mastership Program. He has mentored over 500 dentists worldwide.
In this episode we’ll be delving into some biomimetic principles with none other than Dr. Dave Alleman. He is one of the renowned vanguards for biomimetic dentistry and scientific advisor to the academy of biomimetic dentistry. We'll be talking about how to use fiber in your restorations as well as the concept of "composite flow." A thorough understanding of these principles will help prevent composite failure, prevent recurrent caries, prevent post operative sensitivity and prolong the life of your composite dental restorations. Dr. David S. Alleman is renowned as one of the co-founding pioneer of the of Biomimetic dental movement and his contribution to Biomimetic Dentistry. His study of advanced adhesive dentistry began with Dr. Ray Bertolotti. His studies continued to progress under the tutelage of the renowned Dr. John Kois. These two mentors and his passionate dedication evolved into his 10 year/10,000 hour review of the dental literature. This dedication enabled him to formulate the concepts on which advanced adhesive (Biomimetic) dentistry is based. Other mentors and pioneers he has collaborated with include Dr. Pascal Magne, Dr. Didier Dietschi, Dr. Gary Unterbrink, and Dr. Geoff Knight. He formerly partnered with Dr. Simone Deliperi from Sardinia, Italy to pass these techniques on to other motivated dentists. He is a member of the Academy of Operative Dentistry & The International Association for Dental Research. He has published numerous articles on advanced adhesive techniques that focus on caries detection, increasing long-term bond durability, stress reduction and tooth conservation. He and his son Dr. Davey Alleman founded the Alleman Biomimetic Mastership Program. He has mentored over 500 dentists worldwide. His meticulous work led him to formulate these 6 tenants of Biomimetic dentistry.
Join the DINK's as they interview an ICON of Dentistry and Dental Education, Dr. John Kois!
We are so excited to have the one and only amazing Dr. Frank Spear on the show today. We kick off the show with an amazing story by Frank that changed his life, and the course of dentistry. It's all thanks to a special teacher that Frank tries to emulate each and every time he steps on stage. Dr. Frank Spear also shares the lean times when he first started practicing, and how he was invited to mentor in study clubs. We also get to learn some highlights from his book, his practice, his teaching, his mentoring, and we talk about the Spear Education Center. This is an interview that you won't want to miss as Sully and Peyray have a candid conversation with Dr. Frank Spear. You can find Dr. Frank Spear here: Dr. Frank Spear Spear Education Spear Education Facebook Page Case Acceptance in the Modern Dental Practice: Break Down Barriers, Increase Referrals and Boost Patient Satisfaction Show Notes: [02:21] Frank grew up in a small farming community. He had no interest in dentistry. [03:38] In the 1970s, his parents said he needed to pick a college. Chico State was ranked the number one party school in America on the cover of Playboy Magazine. [04:40] He didn't get accepted to Chico State. He went to Pacific Lutheran University. [05:46] He had to pick a major. He decided to take anatomy and physiology to get them over with. He ended up liking the courses. [06:39] His teacher was passionate about anatomy and asked him to meet with her. She suggested he go into a medical field. She setup a meeting with the pre-med adviser who was a dentist. This is how he ended up in dentistry. [08:54] He applied to twelve dental schools and graduated in 1979. [09:45] While he was in his periodontics and prosthodontics class, a faculty member named Gerry Schultz who had been running study clubs saw Dr. Spear give a presentation. [10:27] He invited Dr. Spear to give a presentation. He was then invited to speak again. He was a month out of his grad program. [11:31] At the end of this meeting, he was invited to speak by other people. [13:02] Dr. Spear was lucky to be inspired by amazing people and great faculty. His instructors were influential about what was possible. [17:03] Whoever the clinician is, they need to be able to recognize what is outside of their comfort zone. [20:03] Sending more work out can open up room in your schedule to do what you want to do. [20:44] Finding what you enjoy and are the most competent at. Doing what you like the most is more fun. [21:21] At Spears they want dentists to have more fun, be more profitable, have more free time, and to grow clinical in competence and confidence. [25:47] Young dentists need to take some time and examine what they do and don't like before opening up a practice. [26:41] In June of 1982, interests rates were 19% and 20%. He worked six days a week. On Mondays, he rented a space from a periodontist. [28:19] On Fridays and Saturdays, he rented other space from periodontists, and he was seeing a lot of military families. He learned a lot about phasing treatment. [29:35] The rest of the week, he was an associate for the family dentist in the town he grew up in. He covered all of the emergencies and did the work the established dentist didn't want. [30:51] At that time, he was asked to mentor a study club on aesthetics. By 1984, he was mentoring four study clubs. [32:11] There was a powerful reputation from his graduate program. [33:22] In 1985, he and John Kois bought the small family practice and partnered. [34:39] In 1987 and beyond, Frank was spending a large part of his year speaking. [37:36] They also brought in an associate. You also have to set boundaries on what you commit to. [40:31] Frank wrote the book Case Acceptance in the Modern Dental Practice: Break Down Barriers, Increase Referrals and Boost Patient Satisfaction. [41:40] They are three treatment models. The authoritarian model, the scarcity model, and the co-diagnosis model where you present the findings, consequences, how treatment would help. They ask for the treatment plan. [44:37] Give your team a why, and they will be more likely to do it. [45:03] What is the patients attitude during treatment presentation. [50:39] General practitioners have a recall advantage. The challenge is people come in for all kinds of reasons. The consult, the traditional exam, and the comprehensive patient. [52:42] Intake calls are so important. [55:41] Frank Spear and John Kois wanted to have a small teaching center that they ran together for six years. [56:39] In the early 1990's, Frank opened a practice and did seminars and workshops. [57:35] In the early 2000s, his teaching really took off. [01:01:19] What Dr. Frank Spear teaches is what is current and fundamentals of treatment planning etc. [01:03:47] It's so important for dentists to understand the fundamentals. Don't stop learning after dental school. [01:05:31] Technology changes how things are done. But most day-to-day treatments aren't changed. [01:07:37] Dr. Spear would have paid more attention to money and business from the beginning. [01:14:35] It's not selfish to think about money. [01:15:03] Dr. Spear shares a story about the first study club he belonged to. [01:18:36] Dr. Spear encourages Sully and Peyray to let everyone at the club have input. As always thanks so much for listening! If you like the show we would love for you to review the show on iTunes as well as spread the word! If you have any questions or want to get in touch, shoot me an email at millennialdentist@gmail.com. Links and Resources: MillennialDentist@gmail.com The Millennial Dentist Website @Millennialdentist on Facebook @MillennialDDS on Twitter My New Smile John Kois The Crabtree Group On Instagram Dr. Sully…@Millennialdentist on InstagramDr. Peyman…@drpeyray on Instagram Dr. Sully's website and blog
Dr. John Kois lists 4 risk factors which we've already covered, but over the years I've added a few. One is physiologic risk. I see a lot of people with sleep apnea, allergies, and other seemingly non-dental issues and I've come to consider them as physiologic risks. I highly suggest you get training in sleep apnea and go to a course and get educated in this area, it could make a big difference to your patients or someone you love. I'm a good example of this risk factor and I'll talk about some of my personal experiences regarding physiologic risk in today's episode.
This is day three of the Seattle Study Club Symposium Legacy Tour. This is the place where dentists get to learn, grow, and network with some of the best clinicians in the world. Today, I am speaking with Dr. Jeff Rouse a prosthodontist in San Antonio and Dr. Greggory Kinzer who is a prosthodontist in Seattle. We talk about some of the great things about the Seattle Study Club Symposium experience. For instance, being a dentist can be a lonely solo experience. Even though, you are surrounded by staff and patients having another clinician to weigh in on your cases and bounce ideas off of is really useful. The Seattle Study Club Symposium is the perfect place to get new ideas and fresh perspectives from peers and colleagues. You can find Jeff and Gregg here: https://spearaesthetics.com/about/dr-jeffery-rouse (Jeffrey S. Rouse,)https://spearaesthetics.com/about/dr-jeffery-rouse ( DDS) https://spearaesthetics.com/about/dr-gregg-kinzer (Greggory kinzer)https://spearaesthetics.com/about/dr-gregg-kinzer (, DDS, MSD) https://spearaesthetics.com/ (Spear Aesthetics) Show Notes [01:29] Jeff Rouse is here today he's a prosthodontist in San Antonio. [01:36] Greggory Kinzer is also here today and he is a prosthodontist in Seattle, Washington. [01:58] Today, we are going to talk about key moments in Jeff and Gregg's can careers when they were the most productive. [03:37] How having another person or a forum to bounce ideas off of really makes the job of being a dentist easier. [04:36] Using a study Club format enables you to get different viewpoints and ideas. [05:20] You have to find mentors. You have to get into a club and an environment where you can find people to mentor you. [06:13] Everybody has a voice with the true Study Club format. [06:23] When you're setting up a new study Club you have to go into it with the right idea. They shouldn't be set up by an authoritarian or person looking to gain a personal benefit from it. [07:09] The importance of engaging with your teachers. [08:00] Life is about experiences and you need to be in the moment and get as much out of the moment as you can. Especially, as a dentist. [09:31] Jeff shares how he has become a better dentist by observing Gregg work on his patients. [10:05] You don't have to be in a partnership just find opportunities to pick up pointers by osmosis. [10:55] Gregg points out how Jeff is actually changing dentistry with his new work with oxygen and airways. [11:22] The four pillars of diagnosis are different now. [13:42] How the airway peace actually needs to come before the generalized treatment plan. [14:36] You need to understand how the airway piece will impact your treatment plan and how you converse with your patients. [15:54] There has never been a more exciting time than now to be a dentist. [16:27] How they have an airway mockup to show patients how they will feel after their treatment. [17:08] Treating towards airway and the importance of evaluation. [18:08] Airway is the piece that brings the dental field and the medical field together. [18:58] Make yourself better than you were yesterday. Push yourself and find the information. [19:23] Find a cohesive facility that will help grow you by putting all of the pieces together. [19:46] Restorative dentists have to have a foundation. Links and Resources: https://seattlestudyclub.com/symposium/ (Seattle Study Club Symposium) https://www.koiscenter.com/ (John Kois)
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