Listen on iTunes
Stream Audio here
|
AUDIO - DUwHF #284 - Weston Lunsford and Kirk Behr
|
Watch Video here
|
VIDEO - DUwHF #284 - Weston Lunsford and Kirk Behr
|
In business you make something, sell something, and watch the numbers. Learn how watching the numbers is essential to increasing profitability, and how merging financial and practice-management software is vital for a healthy practice.
Weston Lunsford, CEO:
As CEO of Dental Intel, Weston oversees the strategic direction of the company and its products. He manages Dental Intel’s revenue growth and future expansion plans. He also dedicates a large part of his time to be intimately involved with our clients, the dentists, to fully understand their needs, wants and experience with Dental Intel’s products and solutions. Weston has spent the previous 10 years as the principal partner in Lunsford Peck Certified Public Accountants providing services for medical and dental professionals with nearly 2,000 clients. Weston’s vision and desire to create value has emanated passion throughout the company. “We are passionate about what we do… We trust in each other and in our abilities to create something special, something unique, and something impactful. We make incredible happen!”
www.dentalintel.com
Kirk Behrendt, President:
Kirk Behrendt is a practice performance coach, international speaker and author. Kirk has invested his entire professional life studying the elite practices in dentistry and the leadership that guides them. As the founder of ACT, his vision is driven by the commitment to provide highly personalized care to the dental profession. By creating a talented team of experts, Kirk and his team continue to positively impact the practice of dentistry on practice at a time. The Pankey Institute and Dr. Peter Dawson's treatment philosophies influenced Kirk early in his career. Since then, his mission has been to provide the most ethical and value driven service known to the dental coaching profession. His personal mission is to use up every ounce of his potential. Kirk lectures all over the world to help individuals take control of their own lives. Kirk has competed internationally in 4 Ironman Triathlons and 9 Half-Iron Triathlons. He currently trains with some of the best triathletes competing in the world today. His feeling is that there is no greater parallel to optimal business performance than optimal athletic performance. He loves cycling, basketball, stand-up comedy, and most all, spending time with his wife, Sarah and children Kinzie, Lily, Zoe & Bo. His email address is kirk@actdental.com.
www.actdental.com
Howard: Today is going to be a huge honor and a very fun podcast for me. I've got the co founder and CEO Weston Lunsford of Dental Intel, something I've been harping on for my whole career, for, since I started lecturing in the 1990s, dentists don't do their numbers. Then Kirk Behrendt is my friend Jim Bell, or James Bellfield, Jim Bellfield who I believe is in the Caribbean right now with some of my other classmates, he's your biggest fan. He's been telling me about you for literally 20 years. You guys are just crushed. You're in Overland Park right now?
Kirk: Yeah, Overland Park, your old background.
Howard: Yeah, I went to the University of Kan City. I was amazing during the Royals when they won the world series, they were saying they haven't won it for 30 years and I was saying, "Oh my God, I must be old," because I was in dental school when they won it the last time and the city went crazy. I had never lived in a city like that and it looks like they did it again. That was the biggest turn out I think I've ever seen for someone winning the world series.
Kirk: Absolutely, it's awesome. We've got a lot of Kansas City love here. Got a Sonic right around the corner. I know you grew up working at a Sonic didn't you?
Howard: I actually lived a decade of my life, from 10 to 20, I basically lived there. It was the only place I'd ever see my dad. When I woke up, he was at Sonic, when I went to bed, he was at Sonic, seven days a week until he dropped dead. He was my idol, my role model, he taught me all the business I know and I cut my teeth in business at a Sonic drive in. I love Kansas City. I'm in Phoenix, I've always said I wished Kansas City was down here in the desert because Kan City is a much older, mature, nicer town. Phoenix didn't really exist before the air conditioner in 1950. Our historic museums are old Walmart's and old Quick Trips and Circle K's.
Hey, you're talking to several thousand dentists right now. The pod show has exploded I think, because it's a multitasking game. Number one, they're free, they're on their iPhone and everybody that I talk to has an hour commute to work and even if they only have a 30 minute commute, they list to half there, half back. They love the show. I don't think I've ever done anything that I've got this much positive feedback from. 30 Day MBA, Virtues of Profitable Dentistry, I don't think I've done anything that's gotten this much amazing feedback. [crosstalk 00:02:29].
Kirk: How many do you do in a week?
Howard: Well, I like to release one a day. Why do one a day and the reason I'm going to keep doing this is because I still haven't done one yet where I didn't personally learn something. I'm always thinking, "Hell, if a 53 year old dentist who's done it for 28 years wrote down five or six things, this is just awesome. If I'm learning something at 53, imagine the 30 and under kids." It's free. It's tough. At the end of the day, what are their substitutes in the marketplace? Once a month, they have a study club, it's Tuesday night after work, they're tired, they want to go home and now they've got to drive across town and eat some rubber chicken, rice pilaf and listen to some speaker, it's not even the subject they want to listen to and then they drive home. Where as by releasing one a day, most everyone is telling me is every time they get to one, once or twice a week, they scroll down and say, "I want to do that." I'm trying to spread the knowledge, root canals, implants, practice management, marketing, I've just got to spread it out.
Weston, let's start with you. Tell them what you do at Dental Intel and I know my book was Uncomplicate Business, you only manage three things, people, time and money and they never know any questions about their money but they can tell me 40 million things about their bonding agents. Then I say, "Business only has three functions, you make something, sell something and watch the numbers." All they want to do is learn how to make more dentistry. You ask them any dental Intel information and they look at you like a deer staring into headlights. What are you doing? You're up there in Provo where God was born, Gordon Christensen and he's 80 years old and still just crushing it. Tell us from Provo, what do you see ... This here is my lead question. When you talk to a dentist, do they know their numbers?
Weston: That's the first question we ask dentists when we first interact with them. We ask them, "What are you measuring today?" I'll give you two guesses to get both two things they're looking at. What do you think those two things are?
Howard: Over head.
Weston: Over head and ...
Howard: Production.
Howard: Production. They know those two numbers. They look at production, they look at their cost and they look to see if their improving and then we'll always ask, "Well if it's not where you wanted to be, what do you look at next?" That's where it's silent. They don't know. Some dentists do so I can't stereotype them all but Dental Intel was created to really create data visualization, to where an entire team can come around, collaborate together, look at the data, discuss it, discover things that are working, discover things that are not working, then create a plan, then go act and have a data visualization tool at their finger tips where they can immediately see what their actions are doing. Is it improving or is it not improving? At a glance, they can make changes very quickly if it's not.
We have one simple goal in our company and it's to help dentists and their team improve team performance, culture and the over all value of the practice through visualization and we've been having a lot of fun doing this, lighting up practices. That's the term we call it, we light up practices with the dashboard so that they can see what's going on.
Howard: I've always said the holy grail that we shall be going for is that the dental practice management software, Dentrix, Eaglesoft, all of them, they don't merge with your accounting software. If a hundred people go to McDonald's and buy a Big Mac, they all pay the same price. If a hundred people come into a dental office for an MOD composite, depending on which one of the dozen insurance plans, PPOs and fee schedules this dentist is on ... I will go into an office and they're doing an MOD composite anywhere from $200 to $300 dollars and then I say, "Doc, what is your break even point for an MOD composite? You scheduled one hour, you did an MOD for $200, are we making money at $200 and if we are, are you really making $100 dollars net income when you do it for $300?"
Weston: They really don't know that. They don't know they are breaking even.
Howard: Nobody knows. The big chains don't even ... Heartland Dental doesn't know it. Pacific Dental doesn't know it. No one knows it because Henry Schein's best idea was not to hook up accounting to Dentrix. That was their best idea.
Howard: Hold on. Don't give them ideas, don't give them ideas. That is one thing that is great about Dental Intel is that we do integrate your practice, your practice management software or anything else. If you have data, throw it at us. We'll take it, we'll denormalize it, we'll capture the things that are important and then well turn around and display it in a meaningful way that is action driven.
Howard: Okay, well let's talk specifics. My deal is that no one has prac solo on it. You're talking to a lot of people 30 and under. They're starting a practice. What dental software do you like, what accounting software do you like, what is best for you to do your job, merging these two things together?
Howard: We integrate right now with all of the Dentrix products, EagleSoft products. We're finishing up Carestream so we'll be done with that first quarter of 2013 or ... Wait, what year?
Howard: Carestream is Soft Den?
Kirk: 2016 coming up.
Howard: 2016, we'll finish with our Soft Den practice works and then Open Dental. Those are the main softwares that we integrate with right now. There's others that we're working on, especially in the cloud. We're working with Curve right now. We've been talking with Planet DDS so we'll be, we'll be integrating with several other practice manager and softwares. Our goal is to make sure that we're working with best in class, too. One of the best in class practice management softwares is Nathan Sparks software which is Open Dental. He's just done a phenomenal job with the data, with making sure things are accurate there. We have less discrepancies when we're pulling the data because most practice management softwares, they'll massage the data, put it in the report and it's not always right. Sometimes when you're looking at your reports, for example the day sheet from Dentrix, you're not getting accurate data out of that day sheet. They'll see that they're performing or producing a certain number but then when we go add up all those procedures that actually hit the ledger, it doesn't add up. Open Dental ...
Howard: Why do you think Dentrix doesn't do the opposite? Do they just not see it, do they not get it, do they ...
Weston: I just don't think ... Here's the reality, we're good at what we do. Dental Intel focuses on data visualization, taking meaningful information and displaying it in a manner that's going to make you want to improve or see where you're at in relationship to where you should be. The practice management software's goal is to make sure that they're capturing all the stuff needed for a patient but just that they haven't really done a good job of pushing that information back to you as a user to help you to understand what you're doing well at, what you're not doing well at.
Howard: Okay, now [crosstalk 00:09:28].
Weston: I think it's okay. It's okay. It's like us. When I run into problems and I have a customer that tells me that, "Yes, I'm struggling with my reappointment percentage, how do I fix that?" We don't coach, that's just not what we do. That's where there's great organizations like ACT Dental that can come in and really help people understand what they're hygienists need to do to make sure that people are rescheduling.
Howard: I was told ACT Dental was a mouth wash. Act mouth wash. I saw it at Walgreen's buddy, right there. Now go back to what accounting software, if a dentist was trying to run their business ...
Weston: Right now, we've built our integration with Great Plains. You see more of the Great Plains accounting software at some of the larger DSOs and corporate locations. It's a large double entry accounting system. The most easy accounting system that we integrate with is Quick Books and I would probably say that at least 67 plus percent of all dental practices are using Quick Books and you know ...
Howard: Be specific, there's a lot of Quick Books. Are you talking about Quick Books Pro, Quick Books Online?
Weston: Quick Books Enterprise, Quick Books Pro, Quick Books Accountant edition, all the Quick Books we have integration built.
Howard: What do you recommend? What do you recommend for a dentist and their practice?
Weston: For a dental office that has a single location, just Quick Books Pro. They don't need anything more than that. If they have multiple locations, then I'd probably recommend Quick Books Enterprise, once they hit into the three location.
Howard: Quick Books Enterprise. Speaking of Enterprise, when you talked about Dentrix, Dentrix has two products. They have their Enterprise which is the big one and then they have their solo. Do you work with Enterprise ... What's the basics of Dentrix called?
Weston: Right now their newest release is their G5. They're coming out with G6 and we integrate with G5 Plus and as far as Enterprise, we are building that integration right now.
Howard: Have you had Quick Books, I'm just greedy. If I was on Quick Books Enterprise and Dentrix Enterprise, would I have a lot more high end data to be able to look at ten different insurance plans and see what my breaking point is for a filling?
Weston: No. The only thing that's beneficial about Enterprise in Dentrix for example, is you're able now to aggravate data together. They're able to bring your three and four locations all onto one roll up so you're able to see that very quickly. Also, if I have a provider in a location, I don't have to re-enter that provider into another location. If doctor's working here today and tomorrow, he's going three blocks down the street, he's already in there. A patient can go to this office and be in the practice management software and be seen at this other location as well. Enterprise makes that a little bit easier and the flexibility it gives to the office and in the teams to manage that.
In regards to Enterprise in Quick Books, same thing. The only thing that's really making easy is you can now have consolidated reports. I can look at all of my practices in an easy roll up feature and say, "Let's look at how we're all performing together rather than looking at each practice individually." The great thing about Dental Intel, even if you do not have Enterprise solution or on either Quick Books on the financial side or on the project management side, we can still take your three or four locations and roll them all up so that with the click of a button, you can start seeing how you're doing compared to each location or your Enterprise, all as one.
Howard: Okay. Talk money, how much would it be for Quick Books Pro versus Quick Book Enterprise versus Great Plains Accounting because isn't Great Plains Accounting a little bit more expensive?
Weston: Yes. I wouldn't recommend any solo practitioner or any practitioner that does not have an accountant going to be dedicated to doing the accounting work for you to get into Great Plains. It's complicated, it's [crosstalk 00:13:20].
Howard: That is still my main beef with Bill Clinton. Of everything that guy did right and wrong, him blocking Microsoft's acquisition of Intuit, he wanted to roll Quick into Microsoft and he blocked that so then Microsoft went out and bought Great Plains accounting. I'm like, "Bill, that would have been so good for American small business if every farmer would have had standard Microsoft Word and PowerPoint and Excel and accounting all in there." That was such a great, genius idea of Bill Gates and Bill Clinton blocked it. That was crazy, but anyway.
Weston: I didn't know that happened.
Howard: Tell us what Dental Intel, tell us this dental visualization, tell them what you're tracking and why? What are dentists seeing, what kind of data are they seeing and what kind of decisions are they making so that they can do dentistry faster, easier and lower in cost?
Weston: Our dashboard is focusing on leading indicators. There are two types of indicators. We feel that there's lagging indicators and leading indicators. Leading indicators are metrics or key performance metrics or whatever you want to call them, they're indicators that will identify actions in a practice, something that I can specifically change today and it will affect the outcome of a lagging indicator. For example, most lagging indicators all have leading indicators and some leading indicators have additional leading indicators.
Let me give you a couple of examples of this. Let's take production. Let's say that a practice wants to hit a $100,000 dollars of production every single month. Well, what makes up production? There's two things that really make up production, there's your production per visit so how you're doing with the patients once they're sitting in your chair and then there's the actual visit itself. How are you doing on getting patients in the chair? If we keep going down that tree with each of those, now we have two different areas that we're looking at, you may be struggling on getting patients in the chair or you may be doing great on that or you may be struggling on how you effective you are with the patients in the chair. Let's just take that one down. Let's say you've got the patient in the chair but your average production per visit is just extremely low. You're not very efficient with those patients coming in. What's the cause of that? It's either a cause of not diagnosing in hygiene, it's a cause of not diagnosing in your exams or you are diagnosing well and it goes down to you're just not presenting the treatment well enough or you don't have any financial mechanism to really help patients to be able to afford the treatment that you are presenting.
You can start going down into all these leading indicators and really identify, very specific, what area are you struggling in. How we look at that is we're bench marking. We're looking at where you're at in relationship to where the industry is. Where you're at in relationship to where you really should be. Those that know where they want to be or should be have a much better chance in getting there than those that don't. The concept of looking at these metrics is easy. You glance really quickly, you look at it, you identify and discover where you're at, if you're not where you should be, then you discuss it, you come up with a plan, you execute the plan, then you evaluate and monitor again and you make a quick change.
A couple of key things that we measure for example, we ask a question almost every single time when we ask this question, the number is astonishing to us. We ask the question, how many of your patients that are active, that you would consider your active patients, how many of those patients do you feel have a scheduled appointment right now to come back into your practice? Howard, you have a practice. We just asked you that question, out of your active patients, I'm not sure how many active patients you have, but out of those active patients, what percentage of those patients do you think have a scheduled appointment to come back?
Howard: I just want to know what percentage of my relatives have a free appointment scheduled right now. Seems like every day I'm doing free dentistry. At this point, I wish I was adopted and had no family. First of all, what is your definition of an active patient because I would say that the definition of an active patient is anyone scheduled for an appointment, whether it be a six month, three, if they're not scheduled, by my definition they wouldn't even be an active patient.
Weston: I love that. I love that you're taking it to that extent. Our software right now, we define active patients by someone that has at least had a completed visit in the last 18 months.
Howard: If they weren't scheduled, but if they weren't scheduled for their next cleaning, whether that be three, four, six months, then would they be active? You're saying they're active if they've been in in 18 months.
Weston: If they've been in in 18 months, we're measuring those patients and we want to keep those patients active. We don't want to lose them. When we ask people, out of these people, out of your patients that you've seen in the last 18 months, how many of those have a scheduled appointment? It will shock everyone. Every time we ask people, they always say at least 70 or 80 percent of them. Then we light up their dashboard and we still have yet to come across a practice when we first lit them up that they've had more than 65 percent of their patients scheduled.
Most of the time, it's down into the low 30s and 40s. Super majority of time, it's down in the low 30s and 40s. They'll say, "Why?" Well, the great thing is about data is that it never lies. It always tells us what's going on. Now, we're able to see and look at why and a leading indicator to whether your patients are scheduled or not is your hygiene's reappointment. Are they rescheduling for that cleaning or not? That is a metric now that is very focused on activities today. Every single day, we have a metric that shows the number of hygiene visits that came in, meaning they either came in for a prophy, an SRP, peromaintance, some form of prophy and out of those patients that came in for a prophy or a perio problem, did they reschedule or not before they left? Either they did or they didn't. That's our reappointment. If we start making sure that we're measuring and monitoring that, performance in that area is absolutely going to improve and your active patients are going to stay scheduled and you're going to have less attrition. That's just an example.
Howard: Can you add a feature to that, for me?
Weston: Sure, probably.
Howard: The whole planet after aids, the whole planet knows that below the belt, you can transmit diseases that kill each other. Before aids, there were many continents that didn't get it, sub Saharan Africa for one. Because of aids, the whole planet knows that below the belt, you can transmit bacteria, fungus, viruses and kill each other. You still go into dental offices where they will see Mrs., the mom, every three months for perio maintenance, they've never seen her husband, they're kissing every night and the epidemiologist is like, "Okay, if I saw you every three months for Chlamydia and it just was there every three months, after a year, I'd probably say does your spouse, who are you sleeping with? We think you're sleeping with someone with chlamydia."
Then you go above the belt, and the dentist and the hygienist don't get it. You talk to the epidemiologist and they'll say, "I can't treat the mom for periodontal disease," because saliva, a nickel is a CC. One nickel of CC of saliva has one billion bacteria, fungus and viruses and there's seven billion people so seven nickels worth of spit is the population of humans on earth. "I can't treat you for perio when your husband hasn't been in in three or four years." I wish you'd make a report that said, "You're seeing Mary every year for periodontal disease but we have yet to see who she's kissing in bed at night and I need to see the husband. I have to treat this disease epidemiology. I have to treat the family. I can't treat one half of an STD."
Weston: I love where you're going.
Howard: That would be a great report. That would really start knocking this disease back by treating, everybody treating saliva for gum disease.
Weston: We have a feature that we're building right now that's called A Daily Call List. It'll be out very shortly but it will encompass all of that so that we know what's going on with the family as well so that when I have a patient come in that's getting treated for this, we'll also at a glance be able to see that patient's family members and know when they're last visit was in or not so that when they're sitting chair side with that patient, they can have that conversation about either their daughter, their son, their father, their husband or whoever it is, to see if they might be able to get them in the chair. That's an awesome feature, I love where your mind is at.
Howard: How do my homies demo this? Do they go to DentalIntel.com, is there a ...
Weston: If they go to DentalIntel.com, they can fill out a little web card there and they get a call back very quickly. I've got some awesome account managers that work with our organization that love the business of dentistry and they love dentistry so when you're talking to anyone of our account managers, they get it. They understand what's going on in the dental office. They'll work through and talk to you about what you're looking for, about what you're measuring, about what you're wanting to know but ultimately, it's simple. Within five minutes, I can do a sync, just send you an email, you'll click on the email, it's going to download our sync application tool and then within five minutes, we're generally integrated within the practice management software. There are some archaic dental offices, meaning they're software and they're technology is so archaic that it may take us just a little bit longer to get the integration done but literally in most cases, it's done within five minutes and we can see their dashboard, they can see their dashboard. We have a lot of fun.
I had just an example of a doctor that called up Rob Bay, my co founder. He called him up in 2013, right when we were getting started. He called us asking if we could help him value and sell his practice. Rob said, "I don't, we don't do that. I don't know where you saw that we do that but we don't do that. Why are you wanting to sell?" Rob could actually hear in his voice that he was a younger dentist, in fact, the dentist was 38 years old so he was still pretty young. In regards to wanting to sell the practice, he just started open up to Rob and saying, "I'm not doing well. For the last eight years, I haven't taken home more than 80 grand." He was struggling. He was stressed, he was [inaudible 00:23:36] so Rob says, "What do you want to do?" The doctor said, "I want to sell and work as an associate. People in my community," he practices in Park City, Utah. If you guys are familiar with Park City, it's a resort area, big skiing, have you been there?
Howard: He's a ski bum, he's probably not even working.
Weston: He's a ski bum, he wasn't working. He wanted to be successful but he felt all the people in the community didn't think he was a good dentist and so Rob helped him say, "Look we can't help you sell your practice but we can look at a value or we can at least look and see what's going on in your practice, let's light you up." The doctor said, "Fine," and we installed our sync tool and the very next day we sat, and honestly Rob and this doctor, getting him to laugh a little was a struggle, but they started laughing because they started seeing very quickly some areas of concern in his practice that once the doctor saw it, he knew immediately how to fix it. He knew what he needed to do. There were some areas that he didn't know how to fix and he needed to get some help and some training from some consultants. For the most part, he saw very quickly what was going on. I'll just skip now ahead. Within four months, this doctor was on track to take home $200 grand that year. Last year, he took home, him personally, he took home just over $412,000 out of the practice.
Howard: I've always said, dentists are wickedly smart. They got A's in calculus, trig, geometry, physics, biochem, they're wickedly smart. They just don't have a management information system.
Weston: They don't have access to the information they need. [crosstalk 00:25:06].
Howard: Okay, well bottom line, this is Dentistry Uncensored, bottom line, how much does this cost?
Weston: Our retail is $599 but in most instances with different practice management consulting firms and also promotions that we're getting, majority of our dentist are coming in at $499. We have different ...
Howard: $499 a month?
Weston: $499 a month, it depends on the service that they're looking for. As low as $499 a month, they can get in and have a dashboard within a day.
Howard: You should market it that it cost a half of crown a month.
Weston: Yes, good idea.
Howard: Half a crown a month because a crown prep is five minutes and when you start talking into their walnut brain, it's like come on dude, a half a crown. What is that, three minutes work?
Weston: Here's the reality of it though, by seeing the data and identifying even one area where you have opportunity, even something that I would call low hanging fruit, that one area will pay for the subscription cost for the next five years. It's easy to see where you're struggling if you have data staring at you in the face. It's difficult to see where you're struggling if you have no access to that data.
Howard: Who's this super model that you're sitting next to?
Weston: Oh, we love Kirk. He is a super model by the way.
Howard: Kirk Behrendt. Now before you start, I want you to tell me the most embarrassing story about Jim Bellfield in Kansas City. I want you to tell a story that makes his license get pulled.
Kirk: There's like 9,000 people that listen to you podcast per day. Jim would never forgive me.
Howard: Oh my God, I love Jim.
Kirk: I've got some good ones on you though.
Howard: Oh, I'm sure you do. My classmates of '87, they say when they go to conventions and stuff and people find out and they say, "Tell me a Howard story," and I always say, "Which story do you tell me?" Oh my God, they crack me up. Yeah, there's some good ones out there.
Kirk: He told me one time you flew in to a lecture and you changed right in front of the entire audience. You showed up late for a lecture or something like that, is that true?
Howard: Yeah, I was in sweats and a tee shirt and I had to throw on my suit but I had to do it right where I set up my carousel. I couldn't find a phone booth. I needed a phone booth, I couldn't find one. Really, seriously, Jim Bellfield is your biggest fan and he's a really sharp guy. I love Jim. I've been trying to get a hold of you. I've emailed you several times. I've been trying to get you to do a podcast and I didn't even know you were going to be on today.
Kirk: Well I actually called, is it Howard Goldstein?
Howard: Yeah, Howard Goldstein.
Weston: About two weeks ago. I'd love to, I'd love to. I speak and travel so much, it's been a crazy, great year.
Howard: You know what I wished you would do is you should, for marketing, you should put some online course on Dental Town. It's crazy. We put up 350 courses, they've been viewed over half a million times and especially specialist, specialists will put them up there and their referrals will explode because the local dentists in their state are like, "I didn't even know you existed here and I really like your program."
Kirk: I'm in, I'm in.
Howard: You know why I want you to do this, because my passion on Dental Town is ... First it was a PC and Dental Town rode the PC. There's two million dentists on earth and they all have a smart phone. I've never found a dentist in Ethiopia, Tanzania, anywhere that didn't have a smart phone. We're putting those online CD course on there and I've been in over a dozen dental schools where the whole damn curriculum is for free because I make it free in the third world. I go into some of those classes and the deans just start crying because they got all these courses for free and they're all watching them on a Samsung, or an Iphone, or a laptop, and when you do [inaudible 00:28:36], your business would be the United States or Canada but you wouldn't realize, you're helping dentists do [inaudible 00:28:43] in Kathmandu and Nepal. That's a 15 hour flight. You're never going to go there.
I really like the leverage play. I make all of my money off the 20 riches countries paying for all my 50 employees but then the other ... We've got 205,000 [inaudible 00:28:57] but then the other dentists around the world, I really think they're really catching up rapidly. I talked to a dentist in Tanzania and he was telling me how he did a deposit before Dental Town and then afterwords. I was ready to cry. That's why I wish you would put a course up. Anyway, tell us what you two are doing. How did you guys meet in Overland Park when I know Kirk, you're from Kansas City but you're from Provo, Utah, what's going on?
Kirk: Our companies gone exponentially in the last couple of years. I speak all over the world to dentists and when we coach practice, we track a lot of numbers. A lot of it is done manually and you know that the struggle with the software. We've been doing our homework for quite a long time. I came across these guys a couple of months ago and I was blown away. The visualization, the accuracy, it is on the money, it's beautiful, it's easy to use. Their whole company, and these guys are all here today to show our team how to use it and how we're going to better the lives of the people we serve so I couldn't be more fired up.
You mentioned data doesn't lie but the cool part about our business is that there's no emotion to it. When you show a hygienist her numbers, there's no emotion. A lot of dentists don't want to approach these things because they're afraid of the reaction. When you show the numbers, it's completely emotionless. All of our recommendations can be backed by data. Makes our job so much easier.
Howard: You need to back up just a bit because I've always felt a lot of dentists won't get a consultant because they're ashamed. It's in the closet and if they call a consultant, they're going to have to open the closet and I think that's one of the biggest emotional barriers to pulling the train so talk to my homies because a lot of them feel embarrassed, they feel shameful, they need you to come in there and say, "Dude, you're dumb, you're not smart. These numbers are horrible." I think that's a huge ... I think being humble is what builds the greatest CEOs. A lot of dentists, physicians and lawyers aren't humble. You're talking to thousands driving their car, they're arrogant and talk to them about it's okay to show them that they're not perfect.
Kirk: Yeah. Two things, number one, I totally agree with you, is that your hardest job, if you're listening to this right now, and you're a dentist, you're hardest job, hands down, is keeping everybody else in the right mindset. That's your hardest job. The dentistry is actually quite easy. It's the fact that you've got to manage people in your practice, in your chair, that's your ... That's the thing you didn't burden for. The second thing is that when it comes to data, this stuff is the incredible, important piece that allows you to be able to make the changes. You mentioned the dentist earlier, having this data at your fingertips, it ultimately becomes your GPS for how you're going to improve your practice and improve your life. I'll say one more thing. Howard, you've seen this. In coaching and consulting right now, our best clients that come through that door, we are not their first rodeo. We are their fifth or sixth or sometimes even seventh consultant and those are the highest producers, hands down because they are constantly looking, not to be perfect but to be better and so ...
Howard: That's a point I always make that, okay, I'm 53. When I look at the 60 year olds with the greatest brackets I've ever seen in my life, I'll give you one example, Jermone Smith. He's at a $50,000 consultant come in there every year, every other year, his whole career. I had multiple ones in my office from Sandy Purdue to Sally McKenzie, lots of them. It seems like the people that are always getting consultants are always going for it and just building these unbelievable, perfect practices but the ones that need you so bad, so bad, they never ask for help. If Jermone Smith pays a consultant 50 grand, it'll take his office up a percent. There's a ton of other offices where a $50,000 dollar consultant will double their whole show. Why is it the ones who need it the most never raise their hand and the ones like me who are getting it, we're just fine tuning and saying, "God, can it even be better?"
Kirk: I think it's just a human condition. I work with a personal trainer three days a week, they make me do things I would never do for longer than I would never do them. I sit through those work outs and I think to myself, "There's no way I would ever do this on my own, ever." He says this, "Don't do this for me, do this for you." I can't short cut him on reps. The same thing applies for a coach. The thing that a coach makes you do, you would never do for yourself, ever.
Howard: I can't believe I'm going to be giving you advice on personal trainer. I just finished my third Iron Man.
Kirk: Oh, yeah, yeah, I've done four.
Howard: What I do, I'm even better. I have two personal trainers that train off every other day, Wendy and Jane and they are the two hottest 50 year old women I've ever seen in my whole life. I get to wake up to a hot personal trainer and you're using a man. You need to up your game.
Kirk: Let me ask you a question. I've done four Iron Mans, doing the first Iron Man, would you ever attempt ... Let's say somebody on this podcast said, "I'd love to do an Iron Man." What would your first piece of advice be?
Howard: My first piece of advice was basically every year, from 45 to 50, my physician kept saying, "Dude, you need to get on a high blood pressure, you're 140 over 90, you've got to get on a statin," and I kept saying, "No, no, no, no." Then 50 years old, my granddaughter was born, Taylor Marie and I realized that my dad died at 60, my two grandfathers died at 60 and I was going to be dead before Taylor was 10 so I signed up for the Iron Man and at the end of the Iron Man, my blood pressure went from 140 over 95 to 112 over 68. It cut my pulse from like 88 to 48. I cut my ... Anyway, my physician said, "I could not have lowered your blood pressure and your cholesterol with medication this low." What I do, is I do it every day at five am so that I can see Taylor graduate from high school. Now she'll probably drop out from high school and sell drugs but maybe I'm wasting my time, but just in case she stays in school and graduates from high school or college, I want to be there.
Kirk: Let me use the same example. You probably work with a coach, you probably do a heart rate monitor, you probably log all that information. They can see your resting heart rate and your coach can say, "Howard, I don't want you to do the long bike ride this weekend. I want you to get some rest, stay off of your feet and drink a lot of water," because they're looking at one thing, it's called data.
Howard: Right, it's a Garmin watch right out there in Kan City. In fact, I think that's where you are, Overland Park, Kansas isn't it?
Kirk: Right around the corner.
Howard: Yeah, Garmin. It's all Garmin. They upload it to their computer, they monitor all these numbers and I just had my third Iron Man and my third psychical and my physician looks at me, he just cracks up laughing. He goes ...
Kirk: Good job buddy.
Weston: That's awesome.
Kirk: The same principal applies in your business. If you want to become the Iron Man finisher in dentistry, you've got to have a coach and you've got to have data.
Howard: These guys go to ACTdental.com, ACT, where does that name come from, what are they going to find on the website, how much do you charge, what do you do, what do you focus on, tell them your story because I know you've been doing this for decades.
Kirk: Yeah, I've been doing this for a while. ACTdental.com is where you can find us. There's a lot of different ways that you can get engaged. It actually started years ago with advanced case training, that's where the name came from. It was the boom of the internet. The domain was available, I grabbed it. We were bringing in some of the best restorative docs in the country and just teaching them how to be better communicators with their patients but we ...
Howard: Advanced Case Treatment?
Kirk: Advanced Case Training.
Howard: Oh, training.
Kirk: It's evolved into much more than that. Actually, it's just get your act together. If you're thinking you've got to get it all together, we're the people that do that for you and with you. We do a lot of things. We do seminars, we have work shops, we've got DVDs. There's a lot of ways to get involved. The biggest way to get involved is just to get on the website and get involved. We have video blogs, we film ....
Howard: How long's your DVD program?
Kirk: How big is it?
Howard: How many hours is it?
Kirk: It's probably about 32 hours long. I got it in six different sets.
Howard: Yeah, you have six ... It's 32 hours over six different sets?
Kirk: Yes.
Howard: Your best marketing, you should go on Dental Town online and you should put the first CD of each one of those sets for free and then they watch that and then if they want to watch the rest of it, then they sign up here, give you money, whatever, whatever, it'd be ... Give away the first one for free so they get to see you, they get to see you're real, they like you, I think that'd be your best marketing.
Kirk: Let's do it. After this call ...
Howard: Email, I'm Howard@dentaltown.com. We hired Howard Goldstein, he went with Hogo@dentaltown.com so Hogo. Email Howard@dentaltown.com and hogo@dentaltown.com because I think that ... I know my homies, I've been on Dental Town four or five hours a day, every day, since '98. I've lectured 1,500 times. I know these guys and gals and I think if they ... They're very cynical and they're very non trusting. They don't like to delegate. They don't even like to delegate to their assistant who's been living with them for ten years in a dental office. They're just non trusting cynical people.
I think when you have a really low cost, they just get to see you, they get to meet you and they build up a little trust. They say, "Okay, I hear him, okay," then they'll get out their credit card and do it. I also think this with the consultants. I think the counter-intuitive consultants, the consultants always saying, "Well, if I tell them on my seminar, or online how to do it, then I will not have a business." Exactly the opposite. The dentists knows algebra, physics and chemistry. He wants to know what the menu is. He wants to know if I'm ordering a steak or fish or french fries or onion rings. He wants to see the menu.
If he likes how you think, then he only writes you a check because she knows she ain't getting an implemented. She's like, "Basically, I want to order this, I like what you're saying and I know I'm not going to get the five year olds in my office to do this so I'm going to write you an implementation." I don't think consultants are consultants, I think they're implementation artists. They got to see what the menu is. When they agree, because some consultants are going to come in and say, "Quit taking insurance." I wanted to ask you that. There seems to be a lot of holy grail dentists on Dental Town that blame everything on third party insurance. Do you see a lot of successful dentists that just do not take dental insurance?
Kirk: Well, here's the thing. We just had this conversation with the dental Intel team. This is going to be a huge part of practicing in a great practice here in the future. These guys have the ability to pull an incredible dashboard and see exactly where the numbers are. The first thing I say to everybody, I get calls every week, Howard, people are like, "I hate Delta." I'm getting a lot of calls from South Dakota now because Delta Premiere is going away and they're realizing because of Delta PPO, these kids go, "Oh my goodness. Look at the reimbursement rates. That's like half of my practice. I'm dead." They thought they were cool because they were on one insurance that reimbursed pretty well.
The number one thing you've got to do is you've got to know the numbers and then over time, what we do is we help people titrate it. I had a dentist recently call me and they're freaking out. They go, "I hate Delta, I hate it, I hate it." I go, "Oh no, why are you telling me this?" She goes, "I wrote the letter. I am off Delta. I want you to help me build my practice [inaudible 00:40:11]." Well, I'm like, "How many patients is that?" It was like half the practice, gone, over night. It is what it is.
The other thing that people have to be very aware of is that just because you buy a practice that's a Delta Premiere provider and that dentist is a Delta Premiere, it doesn't mean that you're a Delta Premiere provider. A lot of brokers won't tell you this. You're dead in the water. You're buying something that doesn't even exist because you have to be a Delta PPO provider, does that make sense? There's a lot of these games that these insurance companies are playing.
Here's what I'd say to your question, Howard, you have to know the numbers. What we do is we put them on a dashboard with their help, it's incredible. We can actually titrate it overtime, build a fee for the service side of the practice and the one thing we do as coaches, is I want to pull that net into that gross as close as we can. We're obviously going to grow the gross, pull the net with it, but sometimes these guys don't even know how much they're writing off. They're writing off a third to a half and I'm like, "Do you know how many weeks you're working for free?" Then they get mad, make it an emotional issue and write a letter. That's the wrong approach. It's actually pretty bad marketing. Number one, know the numbers. Number two, make sure you've got an expert that understands this and over time, you can titrate it, build an incredible practice in this amazing profession.
Howard: Insurance are definitely going to be getting the upper hand because of the fundamentals, they've opened up six new dental schools in the last six years and there's three or four more people trying to pull licenses. There's going to be a lot more dentists. Do you think insurance will have more power ten years from now than they do today? Are we going to see more of this versus less?
Kirk: You're going to see more gains than anything because it's a number thing. Howard, you've been doing this longer than I have. Do you remember 20 years ago, people were saying, "PPOs are gone, it's going to be cash or HMO." Hell, dentists were supposed to disappear when fluoride came onto the scene. The nations sugar consumption went up 700 percent around the same time. As far as predicting the future, we never know. The one thing I do know is this, dentists will be around forever. The biggest problem with this country is not necessarily economy of health care, those are definitely huge problems, it's the aging population. We're going to be a nation of old people everywhere and they all got to do one thing, they've got to eat. Old people can't go, "No, no, no," ...
Howard: I want you to have more of a father-son talks with these kids. Tell me if you guys believe this is true, this is what I feel. Business only has three functions, you make something, you sell something, you watch the numbers. Every time they're stressed and then the staff is driving them crazy and the accountant calls up and says, "You owe the IRS $40,000," and they look in their savings account and they have 4,000, every time they're stressed, they say, "I know what I'll do, I'll fly to an institute like Pankey, Scottsdale Center or [inaudible 00:43:05] and I'll give them $5,000 dollars a weekend and I'll learn to be the best ... I'll buy a CEREC machine, a laser, I'm going to go, I'm going to go spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on technology and CBCTs and learn how to place them." They always got to solve their problem by learning how to make a new recipe.
Then they get the CBCT and they start placing them and I'm sitting there telling them, "Dude, I can give you the names of a thousand offices where they collect a million, the dentist takes home $400,000, they don't have a cat cam, they don't have a laser, they don't place implants, they don't even do molar endo." Why do they always want to give an institute all their money and not a consultant? Why is the holy grail, I'm going to go learn the secret recipe from the Scottsdale Center and Panky and LVI and then my office will be a panacea, when in fact, they should be talking to you?
Kirk: Yeah, well I would just say this, number one, I love all those places you mentioned but you know what better than anybody, that's easy. The brain. These guys go to those institutes, they come back and I say, "How was it?" They go, "Awesome." It's where their brain exists. You went into dentistry to work with teeth and what you do is you wake up years later and you realize, it isn't necessarily a tooth business, it's a people business.
Howard: It's true. I'm a dentist. When I went to Scottsdale Center and watched Frank Spear on the restoring the worn dentition, I called it dental porn. It was just the coolest thing in the world. You can't learn dental porn if you don't have your business in order. They always think that treating the worn dentition is going to fix their economics. I'd like them to get their house in order then you can do all of that for fun. If you told me that I could never pull a set of wisdom teeth again, I'd probably cry, I really would. If your office is successful, you can always go in there and play wisdom tooth removal till the day you die but if your business isn't in order, hell you can lose your business.
Kirk: Yeah, absolutely. When you think about it, where's the best place you can put your money? There's nothing that'll give you a return than putting it into your business and doubling your income. You can put it into anything, nothing will give you a return in your business.
Howard: This is Dentistry Uncensored, I like to not talk about what everyone agrees on. I want to talk about what's uncomfortable. These dentists are coming out of school, $350,000 in debt. They're lead to believe I can't be successful unless I buy $150,000 CEREC machine, $100,000 CBCT X-ray machine, a $75,000 biolase laser, do they need those three big toys if they're going to be a successful dentist?
Kirk: No, no, not at all. The happiest people I've seen in dentistry have most simple, uncomplicated lives. There's a place for all that.
Howard: They refer out everything they hate. They hate molar endo, they don't do it. The person who thinks I have to do molar endo that I hate in order to survive and I have to learn how to place these implants when I hate surgery, they're miserable and they burn out.
Weston: The best thing, Howard, that a dentist coming out of school can do is know what a healthy practice looks like. Understand it. Understand what systems look like and starting that practice and understand what the numbers should look like in a healthy practice. Not necessarily in the practice they're buying, but look at the practice that they're going to buy and then evaluate it in a relationship of what is healthy and then create a road map and guide yourself to get to that healthy position. If they do that one simple task when they buy the practice, if they know where they're at in relationship to what really should be at, they will have success in a far less amount of time than those that will struggle through it over the next five to ten years.
Kirk: Totally agree and if you're listening to the podcast today, know that if you walked in, whether you stumbled in or you did it intentionally, you picked the best business in the world to get into. Google, right now, Google most profitable businesses in the United States. Fortune Magazine ranked it number five. You couldn't have lucked out to pick a business. Do you know that one half of one percent of dental lending notes fail in the United States? That's crazy low in lending.
Howard: You know what those are about? You know what those are about? You know what those one's that fail, do you know what those are always about?
Kirk: What are those about?
Howard: You know the three things that fail a marriage, a third substance abuse, a third money, a third sex, those are usually substance abuse issues. If you're ... Yeah, so when those guys fail, they're failing personally. They like waking up to a glass of Vodka.
Weston: They're stressed and they don't know where they should be in relationship to where they are.
Howard: Let's change gears. Talk about why you two are together. What are you doing together? Also, the one thing that you just said, Weston, that's so brilliant, if you're listening to this and you're an associate for old man McGregor and he's 65 and the plan is that you're going to buy his practice, I would start getting this information right now because what Weston just said is, don't buy something you don't what it is. Let's see what this practice is all about before you turn around and go buy it for $500,000 dollars.
Weston: And what it could be. I look at practices every single day when we're lighting up new dashboards and I look with my associates and colleagues and think, "This is a practice we want to buy." We don't buy a practice because it's a conflict of interest but I look at practices and I think, "Man, this is a gold mine." They have it all carved it, they just haven't grabbed the gold off the walls. It's just all sitting right there. It's really that simple. You look at where you're at in relationship to what is healthy. Where is the practice in relationship to what is healthy?
Howard: Why don't you email me a link to that deal and I want to sit down with my Chief of Financial Officer and I want to sync that. I'd like to get you, me and my office manager and my CFO ...
Weston: Start buying practices.
Howard: No, no. For my off, for my Today's Dental.
Weston: Oh yeah, let's do it. Now Howard, we've talked to your team a couple of times, I think. What practice management software are you on right now?
Howard: Well, we've been on Soft Den since 1987 and we want to switch. On Dental Town, the only raving reviews are with Open Dental. That's the only ...
Weston: We're going to help you, I will make the phone call, I will guide you guys through the transition of Open Dental. I will get ...
Howard: We're wondering if we should do Dentrix Enterprise, that's the fork in the road.
Weston: No, no way. Absolutely no. Not only no but the data is not always right in there anyway. There's no reason to go to Dnetrix Enterprise.
Kirk: Hey, and Howard, after you do this, I'll send one of my top coaches to your office to show you how to use it all and get you guys set up in the right fashion.
Howard: Are you going to bring Jim Bellfield and a pint, a pint of tequila?
Kirk: We'll do that. We'll do that on the side, how's that?
Howard: You know what he's planning now? He's going to rent a jet and all of our classmates, I think it's a Gulf Stream G20 or something and everybody's going to go to the Caribbean.
Kirk: He told me. I'm in, I want to go.
Howard: Are you going?
Kirk: If you're going, I'm going.
Howard: Oh my God, that would be so fun. You don't think Dentrix Enterprise because a lot of people are thinking I don't have what I need, maybe if I bought the deluxe version of Dentrix, the Dentirx Enterprise, I'd have what I need. You don't see that.
Weston: All practice management softwares are very similar in nature and regards to giving people what they need. Really, they can get out of all the softwares what they need. It just takes a lot of time, it's arduous, it's gathering that data, some of it has to be manual, they have to put stuff together and normalize it in some form of Excel spread sheet.
Howard: If you do a search on Dental Town for ... By the way, when you go to the Dental Town app or you go the website and we have that little search, that little magnifying glass, that's a Google box, you know that cost me 50 grand? It goes through those four million posts on Dental Town in like .001 second.
Weston: I love it. I can type in Dental Intel and then it pops up Dental Intel and I can see what everyone's saying about Dental Intel. That's the best place to go see what people are saying about our product.
Howard: It seems like in all the practice management softwares, if you Google Dentrixs or Soft Den, it's just all the moaning, complaining session. Then you put in Open Dental and people are like, "Oh my God, this is great." You know what, I'll challenge you. I'll switch to Open Dental if you get Nathan Sparks to do a podcast, you and Nathan and we can Skype two or three people in. I can Skype both of you and Nathan and ...
Weston: [inaudible 00:51:43] you hear that? We'll get Nathan Sparks on a podcast.
Kirk: He won't do it with you?
Howard: Well Jordan won't because he says he's too shy, he says, "I'm just too painfully shy of the camera." I'm like, "Come on dude, you're a dentist." Yeah, Jordan's too shy but is Nathan, is he real shy too?
Weston: Nathan's awesome. We've loved having conversations with him.
Howard: Well, let's do a podcast because then I can show that to my team, too because my team ...
Weston: You know Nathan's running the shy now, too. Jordan went off into ...
Howard: Cryotherapy.
Weston: There you go.
Howard: Cryogenics, it's basically you freeze your brain and they're going to thaw you out a thousand years from now.
Weston: Yep, freeze. I don't know if I want my brain freezed and if I want to be here in a thousand years from now but that's what he's focused on. Nathans' doing an awesome job with this.
Howard: Basically, he's going to freeze his brain and then a hundred years from now, some zombies are going to have a frozen brain treat and they're going to say, "Ah, look at these frozen brains," and they're going to pour strawberry syrup over it and the zombies will eat him anyway. Yeah, I'd like to do that with Nathan.
Weston: We'll get it set up.
Howard: I want this to be such a good decision. I would go to Oregon, where's he at in Oregon?
Weston: He's in Oregon. What part of Organ is he in? He's northern Oregon but do you know what city?
Male: Medford.
Weston: Memford ...
Male: Medford
Weston: Medford.
Howard: Medford, that's a beautiful place. He could come down here but I really ... Another reason, I'll tell you the truth, if I switch, that's going to make lots of people switch. I don't want to pull the trigger. I don't want to put an office through ... I don't want dental receptionist saying to me, "Oh my God, you switched from Soft Den to that and our whole office had to do that because you did it," because there's a lot of guys where if I buy something, it's a bi signal for some of my homies because I've been doing it for 30 years ad a lot of the young kids say, "Well, Howard did it." I don't want to pull this string unless it's really the right one.
Weston: Open Dental is growing rapidly fast. There's an absolute reason behind it. They're the best.
Howard: Explain the reason, explain the reason.
Weston: They are best in class. Their data is good, their usability of the actual software is good. They don't have multiple options on how to be able to use the software. Looking at broken appointments, you know if it's a no show or a cancellation. It's not based off of how someone enters in the broken appointment. It's very, it's very disciplined software and it keeps everyone on the same playing field. When we're looking at data, from someone that's using Dentrix to someone that's using Open Dental, if I compare other dentists, I can always almost guarantee 100 percent of the time that data is going to be exactly the same going into the practice management software in Open Dental users than it's absolutely not the case in dentrix.
Howard: Maybe we should do a conference call. Send me an email and I'll set up a conference call with my president Lorie Xelowski, my office manager Robert Northcott, and my CFO Dan Robinson and we'll talk about this and maybe 2016, we'll pull the trigger.
Weston: Let's do it. Let's light you up.
Howard: Again, I'm sorry I keep interrupting you guys but why are you guys working together? What's all that about?
Kirk: We've been doing our homework for years now, looking for the solution and three months ago, we found it with these guys so today, we are working together on the integration, some of the customization pieces before we roll it all out. I couldn't be more thrilled to be working with these guys. It's like looking for the ultimate solution and when you found it, it was better than what you were searching for.
Weston: Seeing data is one thing. Understanding data is entirely different thing and then taking it to one more level and even seeing it and understanding it and then being able to take that and put a system together is the next level. We're really good at giving people the data. Sometimes, dentists will be able to figure things out but they might have one area. Maybe they're struggling on diagnosing perio cases. That one area needs some training. They might have three or four and we work with the best in class. Our company's always focused on that. There's multiple consultants out there that are in a dire need to get good, quick access to data so that they can help their practices make decisions. We've turned several of them away because they're just not the best in class. Kirk is incredible. Most people have seen his videos. They've watched him on YouTube. My son, my 13 year old son, and I watch them almost every single night, we're watching Kirk's videos. It's just a lot of fun ...
Howard: Well send me ... No, put them on Dental Town so I can watch them.
Weston: Yeah, they're awesome.
Howard: You know when I was proudest of my boys, when my boys went to college, they were always saying that Business 101, Business 102, they were saying, "Dad, every time they try to teach something, I can remember you telling us that on your white board in your office when I was 10 years old." Some of my boys said all through business class, they didn't learn one thing that their old man hadn't taught them in my numerous lectures on the whiteboard. Every time they had a question, I'd take them in my office and get on the white board and explain so I was proud of that.
Sounds like you're going to do, get the data, get the dash for the diagnosis and treatment plan and then, Kirk Berhrendt is going to help them implement the changes necessary, is that a fair assumption?
Weston: We provide a dashboard. Anyone can get the dashboard through Dental Intel. With Kirk, now his customer, they can all get the dashboard through his services. If someone signs up with Kirk, they're going to have Dental Intel included with that.
Howard: Okay. Kirk, tell us, what's the best dentist that sign up for you? How much does it cost? They go to ACTdental.com, what is it that you're selling? What is your consulting package, is it a monthly rate, is it a one time fee, is it like 50 grand and I'm married to you for two years, is it month by month, tell us what the ...
Weston: Before he answers that, let me ask you this, Howard. What's more important, how much a practice will turn around, increase production, better culture and atmosphere, or how much it cost?
Howard: I know but, everyone else, see you said he's best in class, I've been told I have no class. I get right to the nitty gritty and go for price. I know my homies are thinking, they're driving to work saying, "Well, what does this cost?" Yours cost half a crown a month but what do you cost, what do you do, what are the terms on your deal and who ...
Kirk: You get the whole suit of services. You can go with the platinum package or you could just start something simple. One of the seminars we do is called Activate. It sold out in 28 days. Our course in January, we've got another one. It's $2,900 dollars. You come for two days. We'll give you everything I've ever seen that was best in class in dentistry. You'll see actual systems inside of a practice, you'll see the best financial arrangements we've ever found. It's two solid days. Now sometimes, people, that's all they need. They'll come back form a seminar like that, they'll take their team members and they say, "Man, this will give us enough work to do for a year."
I believe in so much of what you said, Howard, we don't hold anything back. We'll pull back the curtains, I'll show you everything and then you decide. I'll give you a manual that's 500 pages thick with all the secrets I've ever found. Go to it. You nailed it on the head, we're implementation experts. There's a lot of go to manuals or how to manuals, our job is just to make it all happen. I'd say the easiest way, if somebody's listening to this, just come to our flagship seminar, it's called Activate, it's here, it's with me, it's two days. I'll show you everything you ever wanted to know about building a great, private, care fee private practice and then you can decide if you want more hand holding or that might be it. We'll see you again next year or the year after at the next version.
Howard: Well you know what, Phoenix is really ... There's 3,800 dentists in the metro. It's like a small country. We've been holding seminars, there's a casino right north of us called Talking Stick Casino. If you ever want to put that on at Talking Stick, we'd help you come down there, put on your seminar, we'd help market it locally. That'd be good for me because I've got 50 people that wouldn't have to fly to Kansas City.
Kirk: Here's the deal, here's the deal, you have to speak at it though, that's the only deal.
Howard: All right, all right. Shoot me the details, I'd like to get my team there. That would be great.
Kirk: Okay, sounds great. We'll set it up.
Howard: Speaking of my team, today is one of the saddest days of my team. I'm almost ready to cry. My assistant of 13 years, her husband got a transfer to San Francisco and they're going today, it's her last day and we're having a party for her.
Kirk: She could commute.
Howard: I swear to God I told her, "Is there anyway that you can divorce your husband and just stay here with me?" Oh my God, I'll be crying like a baby at five o'clock today.
Weston: Oh, that's hard.
Kirk: Oh, sorry to hear that buddy.
Howard: It's just tough. The circle of life continues. I don't want to fly all my team to Kansas City and you guys, there's more customers, you guys could both never grow your business just outside of dentists in Phoenix for five years, there's so many dentists. Well you know that, you're in Utah.
Weston: We love Phoenix, we're down there quite a bit.
Howard: We call Phoenix south Utah because I swear to God every fifth dentist has a root to Utah somehow. It's their cousin, their mother, their brother, fifth of this town is related to Utah. Let's do that. Let's do that at Talking Sticks. This is fun. This is another reason why I won't quit doing podcasts because I'm always growing my business on these podcast. I'm always growing my Today's Dental and I always think to myself, "Hell, this was fun, I love it." People keep saying, "How could you do one every day?" How could you not do this? I just had a blast for an hour. Thank you so much guys for spending an hour with me today. I hope the journey continues.
Weston: Thanks Howard.
Kirk: Sounds good, Howard. Thank you very much
Howard: Can you promise my homies that you'll put some teasers of your online, of your dental videos on Dental Town?
Kirk: Yeah, I'll do that today. I'll send you a list of things and I'll put it all together and we'll make the seminar happen, the DVDs, I'll send you a bunch of videos and I'd love to do some courses for you, man, I'd love, that'd be a treat. I can talk for four days without breathing. If people want to listen, I'm in.
Howard: All right buddy, thank you so much for your time, both of you.
Weston: Thanks Howard.
Kirk: Thanks Howard.
Howard: Bye, bye.
Weston: Take care.