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VIDEO - DUwHF #793 - Keith Washington
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AUDIO - DUwHF #793 - Keith Washington
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Keith Washington is the VP of Products for ProSites and has over 30 years of software product management and development experience. Keith has a degree in Accounting from the University of Maryland and has led product transformations at many successful companies including Intuit, Active Networks and other software companies in various industries. Keith started in Product Management at Intuit’s TurboTax division where he led a transition to web-based tax software. Later, he became the VP of Product Management at a leading Financial Planning software company and most recently worked at Active Networks, the largest SaaS event management company in the world.
www.ProSites.com
793 | Website Design and Marketing with Keith Washington | Dentistry Uncensored with Howard Farran
Audio Length: 67:40 mins
00:07
Howard: It is just a huge, huge honour for me today to be podcast interviewing Keith Washington, all the way from Temecula California. He’s with prosites.com, that’s P-R-O-S-I-T-E-S dot com. Remember there’s no commercials on Dentistry Uncensored, Keith didn’t call me, I called him. There’s no money exchanging hands but I am big into, you got to know the business side, not just the clinical side. Keith Washington is the vice president of Products from Prosites and has over 30 years of software product management development experience. Keith has a degree in accounting from the University of Maryland which is such a huge honour since that was the first dental school in the entire world in 1840 and was the birthplace of the DDS degrees, so you actually went to a very sacred, holy dental school or University of Maryland and has led product transformations at many successful companies, including Intuit which owns QuickBooks, right?
01:04
Keith: That’s right.
01:05
Howard: And Active networks and other software companies and various industries. Keith started in product management at Intuit’s TurboTax division, where he led a transition to web-based tax software. So, later if you want to learn how to cheat the IRS on your taxes we’ll get to those questions later. He became the vice president of product management at a leading financial planning software company and most recently worked at Active networks, the largest SAAS event management company in the world. Keith, it’s an honour for you to be here today.
01:37
Keith: Thank you so much for inviting me, I appreciate that. I do want to say that I went to Maryland long after 1890.
01:43
Howard: 1840.
01:48
Keith: 1840. So, I didn’t go that year. I was there much later
01:49
Howard: I was 10 years old when they opened that school. Now if I tell people I’m 54, they go “damn, dude, what happened?” So I tell everybody I’m 74 and they go “dude, you look good, what’s your secret?”
01:59
Keith: You look great.
02:02
Howard: So, you know dentists, all they really care about they want to learn a new recipe to fix a tooth, I mean all dentists are surgeons, we work in (02:11 operatori), we just wanna fix broken teeth all day. What should they know about websites? Because, Keith seriously I think I see as many dental websites as anybody out there. Because when somebody sends me an email, I’m always wondering who I’m talking to, so I’ll hit reply, I’ll click their website link and I’m telling you, 80% of websites looks like they bought them 5 or 10 years ago. There’s no video of the doctor, it looks like a still photo, it looks like the photo that’s going to be used in their obituary, you know. They’ve got all this alphabet soup crap behind their name which whenever I get junk mail, and it’s always a realtor, a CISQBZWX it doesn’t mean anything to me, what do dentists need to know about their website? Now that the Yellow Pages is dying and everybody is finding us on their smartphone. What do they need to know?
03:09
Keith: I’ll tell you, I really appreciate you saying that what dentists want to do is service clients and service their patients because that is a focus so much for dentists. You mentioned my long career in software and I want to point out that long before I came to Prosites I’ve gone on maybe 10-15 dental mission trips with dentists. Just by chance I had no idea they did websites, I had no idea about some of the challenges but I’ve never found a group of people so committed to what they do in terms of helping clients and I’ve been all around the world, from Africa to Micronesia, all around the world working with them but what I find is that when it comes to websites, marketing, communication – it is a weak spot with dentists, it’s something they really don’t like to focus on and so, as you said, a lot of times there are websites of 5 years old, 10 years old. Our biggest issue is making sure our customers or practices know that you have to have a compelling website because being found online is difficult these days. Google is really making sure that only the best websites, only the best communication vehicles are showing up when people do this simple thing “find me a dentist” or “find me a dentist in Phoenix” or “find a dentist in Temecula”. So you’re really right in terms of talking about it, it has to be compelling, it has to be something that attracts someone both on a desktop or on a mobile device. More than 50% of people are searching for a dentist on their phone, they’re not looking on their desktop. So if you have an old website, that website won’t even show up correctly on a phone. You have to also be found which means you have to make sure your content, the information on your website is current so if you haven’t even touched your website in 3 or 4 years, the search engines are deprioritizing you against your competition. So there’s a lot that’s going on in the online world and we really think about online marketing and online communication with finding new patients as something that really dentists need to focus on.
05:22
Howard: I wish every dentist listening to you right now, when you get to work, not when you get to a red light, just google your own website.
05:32
Keith: Yes.
05:32
Howard: Just little things. Like if I Googled “Keith Washington DDS” and Google has that little deal on the side where it says name, address, leave a review – I would say 80% of the dentists… is that they don’t even have their website button clicked up.
05:48
Keith: On the Google. Yeah.
05:50
Howard: On the Google deal.
05:49
Keith: Right, and what do people see when they log into and they go and find that search on the right hand side there’s Google and the first thing is reviews, we should talk about that a little bit, what’s important about, in terms of reviews, two, is you’re right, the website button and three is the phone number. And so you have to make sure those small things are accurate, those small things are correct or within that 2-3 second period people are just going to move on to the next link, the next potential person.
06:17
Howard: You know what my secret source is on getting so many reviews?
06:21
Keith: What is that?
06:24
Howard: They’re all written by my five sisters and their friends.
06:27
Keith: You know those days are also gone too, because...
06:30
Howard: Are they?
06:30
Keith: Yeah, Google and search engines and Yelp, they all know that… they have ways of being able to find that out.
06:38
Howard: So they know my mom wrote “I’m the best dentist in the universe?”
06:42
Keith: It says “mom”, because it says “mom”. She has to identify herself these days. You know, one of the things that a lot of practices thought was a good idea was to set up a review station in their office, so just before you leave “hey, would you like to leave us a review?” – You shouldn’t do that either, you should make sure you send emails to your patients to ask them for reviews on their own devices because search engines will deprioritize reviews from the same computer. So these are things a lot of dentists maybe don’t know or some of them are starting to find out. But reviews and reputation is king, it’s probably one of the most important things.
07:28
Howard: How about this idea? Right when the bartender says “last call, it’s almost two in the morning” I say “okay but before I write your tip, take out your smartphone and write me a review on the Google” – would Google figure out that all my reviews are written at two am in the morning?
07:44
Keith: No, I think that’s a great thing to do. Before you leave, or as soon as you leave because it’s hard to get a lot of reviews, you see a hundred patients a week and maybe one of them is going to leave a review and chances are the people who leave a review are the ones who want to complain about something. So you want to make sure that you do what you can right upfront to encourage them to leave you a review. Even if it is “Hey, before you leave, would you mind leaving us a review?” And as we talked about, reputation is really important, I’ve talked a lot to practices who, even though you’re getting a lot of reviews, you don’t know what to do about bad reviews, even if you don’t do something wrong. Maybe a customer is just dissatisfied, a patient is just dissatisfied. And I tell people respond to them right away, call them up, make sure they’re taken care of and once you do that, ask them to update their review, ask them to leave a review that says it was taken care of because crowd-sourcing of information is much more valued today than what you say as a practice. it’s what all of my friends say, or what my network says, or what the community says about you that’s much more powerful that just what you’re saying about yourself.
08:58
Howard: Now Keith, in the United States we live with they say about four different types of age group thinkers, like the senior citizens think differently, the baby boomers, the generation x, the millennials, I mean, do you really think grandma and grandpa are reading online reviews or is this a millennial thing? Is reviews and the Yelp crowd and the SnapChat crowd all the same? I can’t imagine all my grandmas and grandpas that come into my office even knowing what Yelp, Snapchat or Google review is, or am I just wrong?
09:30
Keith: I would imagine that less so your grandma and grandpa. However, do not underestimate their desire to quickly look on Yelp or quickly look on Google to see whether or not your practice has negative reviews, and this is driven or has a positive experience because this is driven primarily by restaurants. Doctors, restaurants and car repair shops are the three most searched for in terms of reviews.
10:00
Keith: so don’t underestimate their desire to make sure that there’s nothing negative or there’s no bad experience that they would see if they were going to come into your practice.
10:10
Howard: What three did you say? Restaurants, Car repair..
10:13
Keith: Restaurants, car repair and doctor slash dentist, top three in terms of, in terms of...
10:18
Howard: Why do you… What do those three have in common?
10:20
Keith: They’re something first of all that most people do on a regular basis. For restaurants, I can’t remember the last time I went to a new restaurant that I didn’t just quickly search to see what someone else said about them and car repair shops, they’re looking for, you know, trying to make sure they don’t have people who are going to rip them off actually, unfortunately. You’re just looking for someone who's honest.
10:43
Howard: Well, you know what my tip is on restaurants? You know how you can separate the best restaurants from the worst?
10:48:
Keith: I’m waiting?
10:50
Howard: If you want the best food for the lowest price, they always have pictures on the menu, like the (10:55) and all of that. If there’s no pictures, it’s overpriced food.
10:58
Keith: Right.
11:01
Howard: If I get a menu and there’s no pictures, I just leave. Just go to the Waffle House.
11: 06
Keith: And you know what? You can’t go wrong at the Waffle House. Everybody knows that. There’s something for everybody at the Waffle House.
11:14
Howard: So, restaurants, car repairs, doctors and I think what the car repairs and doctors have in common, I’m not sure about the restaurant but what the car repairs and doctors have in common is you’re selling the invisible. I mean, you know when you’re buy an iphone what you’re buying, you know when you go buy a pair of Asics, you know what you’re buying but when some dentist says you have four cavities, is that true? When someone says he can’t fix my air conditioner, you need a new one. Is that true? When I take my car to the dealer and he says you need a whole transmission, it’s like I don’t ... I don’t know how to check if that’s accurate. Or like you say, are you just trying to rip me off and sell me a new transmission?
11:50
Keith: Yeah, and so the point is that, what you think about yourself, and you even pointed it out. The number of letters behind your name is becoming less important than what the community is saying about you. So, what your presence is online, starting with your website, starting with being found, then moving to your reviews, is so important because people, believe it or not, are no longer looking in the yellow pages to find a dentist. Even though I still keep my yellow pages in my closet, and I haven’t looked at it in ten years.
12:25
Howard: Ok, so what are you doing with it? You’re using it..
12:28
Keith: I don’t know. I don’t know.
12:28
Howard: You’re stacking them up so you can reach onto the top shelf and pull down that pair of boots you haven’t worn in nine years.
12:36
Keith: That’s a different discussion about clutter, we can talk about that..
12:41
12:51
Keith: So what they would find is an overview of a company that provides online marketing. We think about ourselves as much more than a website provider, but an online marketing partner. They’ll find designs, some example designs, they’ll find... probably the most important thing is to look at our white papers and look at our webinars that we do, not just based around trying to sell products but provide information to the dental community, so that people can become more educated, and then hopefully see that we actually know what we’re doing. They’ll also see a discussion around, what we consider to be most important which is, you need to attract new patients. Which is great because you need to make sure that you’re constantly getting new patients, but finding out that keeping your current patients coming back year after year, after year is cheaper and easier to do. And focusing on how to communicate with current patients to keep them from going to the practice next door. I’ll give you a quick example. My friend who has been my dentist for years decided to move to Australia and he sold his practice, and this practice is at a convenient location for me, I like the front office staff. But that practice reached out to me once, and never again. They sent me one email that said “Here’s our new practice” but they never sent me an email asking me, don’t forget your appointment, make sure you come back, telling me about the value of coming to that dentist and I just went somewhere else. So in a transition, they didn’t even think about the fact that they needed to keep their current patients and really reach out to them, much more than trying to find a bunch of new ones.
14:31
Howard: By the way, my homies are commuting to work listening to us now so they can’t take notes, so what I do is I always retweet my guests last tweet, I’m @HowrdFarran, you’re @Prosites P-R-O-S-I-T-E-S, I just retweeted your tweet that says “The effective website design is a bit like dating. You want to put your best foot forward. Learn what to avoid here.” But what you’re saying is very interesting. I would think that most all dentists would think that a website was only there to get a new patient, they would never associate with anything that could help keep an existing patient.
15:11
Keith: It’s true that the website is not the component that necessarily keeps a new patient but we also focused, and I knew this a year into working at Prosites that patient retention is most important too, so that’s why Prosites purchased a product called Practice Mojo, and a company called Practice Mojo which does automated patient reminders, appointment confirmations, email marketing systems to communicate to current patients, and then also combined with not just emails but phone calls, print and all of the different strategies so that you can keep your current patients coming back. And we found that not just having an online presence today is important but also making sure that you’re communicating with those patients on a regular basis. So when you ask what you find when you go to Prosites, it’s what we consider to be an online marketing partner. Whether its attracting new patients or keeping the ones that you have.
16:12
Howard: So you guys bought Practice Mojo?
16:15
Keith: We did.
16:18
Howard: When was that?
16:19
Keith: Back in February, on February 9th we did, it’s been 5 months now, 4 or 5 months.
16:24
Howard: I did not know that, and when was Prosites started?
16:30
Keith: Prosites was started 12 years ago, I think now. Almost 12 years ago.
16:36
Howard: So this is 2017, so 12 years ago so 2005?
16:42
Keith: That’s right.
16:43
Howard: And now Mojos added. Why did you buy Practice Mojo?
16:48
Keith: One thing we found... being able to attract new patients costs a certain amount of money, and its cost a certain amount of marketing dollars. And we fundamentally believe that we were experts in being able to help do that, and we’ve grown over time with search engine optimization and pay per click and social media management, but the piece that was missing, the piece that really drives interest in a practice was being able to regularly communicate with your patients. And we found that Practice Mojo, as a solution, was unique in that it provides the same thing that a lot of companies do which is you can send out an appointment confirmation by text or phone, you can send out an appointment reminder. But we can also send out postcard reminders for those patients who would prefer to be reached in that way and be able to combine that with your entire brand, so we found that this was a solution that was really needed by our customer base, and we think that we can do a really good job with it. It was a great company, they were owned by SmartPractice…
18:02
Howard: Oh, they were.
18:05
Keith: Right. And so we continue our relationship with SmartPractice and as you would know, you being an Arizona person know all about who SmartPractice is, and it’s a great company as well.
18:13
Howard: That was started by Naomi Rhodes and Jim Rhodes. And Naomi was the president of the National Speakers Association.
18:26
Keith: That’s right.
18:27
Howard: And when I first got to Arizona when I was in Tempe, one of my favourite Mexican restaurants over there and I saw the NSA and I actually thought it was the NSA, the National Security Agency.
18:36
Keith: Security Agency.
18:37
Howard: The national whatever and it turned out to be a speaker association, but I think they retired and I guess their daughter’s a dentist, and she married a physician, I guess now they run the company.
18:50
Keith: Doctor Hammond, that’s right. Doctor Kurt Hammond is the owner of SmartPractice.
18:53
Howard: Have you met him?
18:54
Keith: I have. I have, multiple times. And I’ve been out to Phoenix and he runs a great golf tournament to support dental healthcare for kids.
19:04
Howard: Sorry for my ignorance but again to help my guests find you and everything you’re talking about, I went to Twitter and I retweeted Practice Mojo, just write it as Practice Mojo M-O-J-O, but I notice some of the tweets say Practice GPS Communicator.
19:24
Keith: Yes.
19:25
Howard: One says “Patients confirm their appointments within five minutes of receiving a text message from our servers, Practice GPS Communicator.” Then the next tweet says “We’ll help you add on average two new appointments a day to your practice, Practice GPS Communicator.” So what is Practice GPS Communicator?
19:47
Keith: It’s the name of the component actually… it’s the name of the component of being able to communicate with patients by text or phone or email. And so what we really fundamentally believe is that your patients, if you reach out to them on a consistent basis with a structured campaign, we will get two and a half to three new patients… patients coming back to you who otherwise would not have returned on a daily basis. And so the return investment on that solution is pretty high. And it’s based on a method that Doctor Kurt Hammond and Naomi actually figured out how to communicate in a way that will get your patients coming back for their six month appointment, for their recall appointment, for their unscheduled treatment plans. So imagine rather than just spending all of your money trying to find new patients, you can get your current patients coming back and then it reduces your need to find new patients as much, attrition in the dental business is just like any other business and being able to reduce that attrition and keep your current patients coming back year after year, after year is so important.
00:21:04
Howard: Well, it’s so funny, you are kind of a unicorn in dentistry because you have a degree in accounting, that’s the other thing dentists…
21:10
Keith: Yeah.
21:10
Howard: Don’t know, they don’t know any other numbers. They know...
21:14
Keith: Yeah.
21:14
Howard: Every bonding agent, they know all their megapascals, they know the periodic table, the Krebs’s circle, they even know the difference between geometry and trig.
21:22
Keith: Yeah.
21:22
Howard: And then you ask them: “What…
21:25
Keith: What’s ROI? Yeah.
21:27
Howard: ...does your new patient acquisition cost?” In fact, what’s funny is I have a list of the 30 most common questions asked on Shark Tank, and you can literally go into a dental office and say you have to answer one of these questions correctly or I’m going to shoot you right now, and they will all be dead, they don’t care. But here is the problem as I see it, they don’t track their incoming phone calls and the very few that do, say that it takes three new patient opportunities before the receptionist converts one into an appointment. So then they come in for an appointment and they have a cavity, you need three people with cavity for one to convert to Treatment Plan Acceptance. So if you want to do one cavity you need three patients in a chair, to get three patients on a chair you need nine people to find your website, your marketing, your direct mail, billboard or flyer. So you need nine people to do a filling, then out the back door the hygienist cleans eight but she only pre-appoints six for the next cleaning, so two fall off. And then the six months recall come in and only six are supposed to come in, one cancels or one needs to reschedule, and another two fell off. And by the time the average dentist gets to 5000 charts, 4000 of them are gone and have never been in one time in 24 months. So how do you address the front door to the back door? I mean it’s very neat how you are adding more portfolios, you’ve got ProSites, you’ve got Mojo, but how can they go from three opportunities to convert one in the chair, three in the chair to get one to do the filling and then the back door is wide open?
23:12
Keith: Yeah, our data supports what you just said, and so let me tell you how I think about it. We know how many people visit a website, we can see that, you can use Google analytics to see that, so we know visits. If a practice is really going to focus on conversion rate of patient opportunities. You start with how many people are coming in the door, and it’s not just through looking at the number of visits but how many are filling out a contact me form? how many are filling out an appointment request form? and then how many are calling? So we encourage every practice to use call tracking software and then listen to those recordings and make sure that you’re converting those potential patients into treatment plans, because what we found is that it’s not just about having a compelling website but actually converting the leads that come in. And I will talk about something that’s probably not as popular in terms of a topic because I talk to practices about this but a dentist needs to know what’s being said on the phone when someone calls. If I call the practice and I ask, ‘do you do dental implants?’ and the answer is, ‘yes we do’, I may hang up, ‘thank you’, I may hang up the phone at that point. But if the answer is, ‘yes we do, let me collect your phone number really quickly so that if we get disconnected. Let me tell you about our treatment plans, let me talk to you about some of the options, let me see if I can get you an appointment because we can help you’, that’s a conversion and that’s important. And so we have found that really return on investment goes from the time they hit that website and us making sure that you’re are getting found, whether it’s through Pay per click, or Google’s SEO results, but then that your people are calling, that you’re optimized on the mobile, that your reviews are well founded so people actually will click or call, and then once you click or call that your are responding to the appointment request forms right away, and that the experience that the person has that you want as a practice to have, actually is something that’s happening. We have found that if you listen to the calls, and we don’t listen to dentists calls but we work with them to listen to calls, we have found that they are losing twenty to thirty percent of potential patients right there on the phone.
25:48
Howard: Twenty to Thirty percent? I put it at more sixty-five percent.
25:56
Keith: There’s a lot of people who... and it really comes down to training. Training the front office staff to be able to... It’s not about selling, it’s about engagement. What is the patient concerned about? I’m afraid, you are supposed to make me feel less afraid and welcoming when I come into an office and you can convert a lot more people into patients if you do some training with that practice. And we’re now starting to focus in those areas, reviews, not just a compelling website but how do you convert a lead into a patient.
26:30
Howard: My column this month on Dental Town, but you can go to the app if you’re on the app, if you hit a magazine… there’s a magazine by Howard Speaks. It’s talking about that, it’s called Drive-Thrus and Dentistry. Talking about the similarities between the insanity at a drive thru window versus the dental office. I mean, you go to McDonald’s and you order a hamburger and a fry.
27:01
Keith: Yes.
27:01
Howard: And then she starts repeating the order, ‘okay, we’ve got hamburger and fries’, she doesn’t know that there’s four people in the car. And then the next person orders and then as soon as they get that order she starts repeating it again because somebody’s best idea was she shouldn’t see it. Then when you go to the window to pay…
27:18
Keith: Was it a hamburger and a fry?
27:20
Howard: She’s not paying attention, she is talking to the next order.
27:21
Keith: Yes.
27:21
Howard: And then you drive across the street to In-N-Out Burger, and they put that little girl on a iPad.
27:27
Keith: That’s right.
27:27
Howard: And she is walking to the car, she can look in the car, she knows there’s four people in the car, it’s just such a better experience. And then I compare that to dental. But I wish you can go in there and comment and say I just did a podcast with Howard, what do we have for the viewers because they are asking what telephone tracking software do you use? Do you have that service?
27:51
Keith: We do, we use Callrail, it’s a call tracking service, but we also integrate it with customer websites based on the requests.
28:03
Howard: Is that ProSites or a part of PracticeMojo?
28:05
Keith: ProSites, that’s part of ProSites.
28:06
Howard: That’s part of ProSites.
28:06
Keith: And so we will integrate that with their website and the push back that we get with a lot of practices say but my phone number is important. I don’t want anyone calling you know, I bought this phone number and everybody knows it and I try to ask them do you know what your husband or your wife’s phone number is? Nobody knows a phone number anymore.
28:31
Howard: I know.
28:31
Keith: We have no idea, I don’t even know my own phone number. So push back on phone numbers, you should really focus on call tracking software, as well as with companies like Callrail or CallSource is another one, you can track …
28:47
Howard: But you use Callrail.
28:48
Keith: We do.
28:49
Howard: That’s part of the website.
28:50
Keith: We do. It’s something that we do as an extra but we can easily add it.
28:55
Howard: So that dental offices are recording their phone calls?
28:59
Keith: That’s correct.
29:00
Howard: I personally think just the fact that your receptionist knows that now you are recording the phone call all behaviour changes. I mean I’ve seen studies that just by putting a camera above a cash register…
29:13
Keith: Yes.
29:13
Howard: The stealing falls off almost to zero.
23:16
Keith: Right.
23:16
Howard: And you take the camera away and let everybody know you are no longer doing this, the stealing takes off again. What percent of Fortune 500 companies, when you call them, says at the very beginning, ‘this call may be recorded’?
29:29
Keith: Ninety-nine percent.
29:30
Howard: And what percent of dental offices do that?
29:32
Keith: Very few, I’d say five percent.
29:37:
Howard: Yeah, at most. You are an optimist, you are and...
29:43
Keith: And the reason why that is changing, by the way, is that we see a growth in Pay Per Click and we require call tracking software for Pay Per Click.
29:53
Howard: Pay Per Click is Google Adwords?
29:54
Keith: That’s correct, when you are using Google AdWords, if you’re not tracking calls in addition to clicks then you are wasting your money.
30:00
Howard: So Google AdWords, a lot of people say what’s better, Google AdWords or Facebook ads?
30:09
Keith: We are seeing a growth in Facebook ads but primarily people are searching for dentists still today on Google. They are not necessarily, you can do Facebook advertising and we do. We’re starting to get ready to roll out Facebook advertising where you can do targeted advertising to reach, or if you have a special, to reach certain communities, we are seeing the growth in that, but really Pay Per Click still drives. And you can see it, you can’t even go to search for a dentist today, you know what it looks like, if you search it you’ll see five ads and on the right hand side it’s the Google search component, it’s not until after that, do you actually see what we call organic search or what’s called organic search.
30:50
Howard: So you like Google basically, and if Peter Lynch on Beating the Streets taught anything he said, don’t listen to experts, don’t listen to Wall Street, you know, if you want to know if Boston market is a good restaurant to invest in, go down there.
31:07
Keith: That’s right.
31:07
Howard: Be there. Are the people happy? Ask them. Do you eat here often? And I only see people use Google, I’ve never seen anyone use Bing, I’ve never seen anyone search on Yahoo and I don’t think they go to Facebook to look for a dentist, they go to Google. I mean that’s just obvious.
31:25
Keith: For sure, you said I like Google, it is the dominant search platform, it doesn’t matter whether I like it or not, it’s what I have to use to search. But we do see a rise in Facebook or social media advertising, especially among the younger crowd. So if you want to attract younger patients, it’s very interesting, I have a young person who works in a social media department and he said, ‘you know, we really should focus on Instagram advertising, really should’. And I said, ‘why is that?’ ‘Because all of my friends are on Instagram’, then I said, ‘how many times do you go to a dentist in a year?’ he said, ‘I’ve been once in three years’, I said, ‘exactly, you are worth $20 to a dentist, and it’s going to grow over time, Instagram posting is going to grow over time but people who are spending money on dental services are still on Google.
32:25
Howard: Do you think Google’s lawsuit with Uber has anything to do with why the Uber CEO just stepped down?
32:30
Keith: I don’t know. That part I don’t know. All I know that what an amazing… that’s going to be an amazing story to tell.
32:40
Howard: I mean it sounds like…
32:40
Keith: Yeah.
32:40
Howard: It sounds like they paid a Google employee to give them all the...
32:45
Keith: To give them all the information. Yeah. Well, that could be but...
32:48
Howard: Or maybe they’ll get a big settlement and then the cost of Google AdWords will go down.
32:52
Keith: This thing I’m going to tell you, the cost of Google AdWords is not going to go down.
32:58
Howard: But you know that’s still a scary thing about their stock because they’ve been a king forever, I mean they invented that space.
33:06
Keith: That’s right.
33:06
Howard: But it’s still like ninety percent of all the revenue, it’s not a diversified company, I mean Facebook and Google all make all their money from advertising.
33:14
Keith: Advertising. That’s right.
33:15
Howard: And Google has tried harder than anyone to try and get another cash cow.
33:22
Keith: But that’s not anything different though really, newspapers made all their money from advertising, right, television made all their money from advertising, it’s just a different medium of being able to advertise, which is still now moving away, you know, newspapers are dying and you saw that Amazon is into the food business, so you are just seeing a shift of the money to a different medium.
33:46
Howard: They just bought Whole Foods
33:48
Keith: They did. That’s right.
33:49
Howard: And I like Whole Foods, because when you go to a healthy place they have isles of chocolate and bottles of wine, you just feel better when you buy it, it’s like I’m getting health foods stuff because I’m at whole foods right?
34:00
Keith: Why buy M&M’s when you can spend ten dollars for a candy bar?
34:04
Howard: Maybe I’m biased since I’m fifty-four, but one of my biggest complaints about going to a website on the internet is I can’t read it. I mean I’ve got a six plus, I’ve got the biggest phone screen they make, I wear readers, but it seems like so many of those websites they are not... what is it called when the website doesn’t adjust to the screen of your phone?
34:26
Keith: So it’s not responsive.
34:28
Howard: And you can’t read it, you’re taking your fingers and pulling apart stuff trying to read, I mean I imagine that people getting all the implants and All-on-4’s are older than me, I image that all the people that need root canals are not on Instagram and SnapChat.
34:43
Keith: That’s correct.
34:44
Howard: They’re older people and I think older people have a hard time seeing on their iPhone.
34:50
Keith: I totally agree and you have to have a responsive website that doesn’t have, as you pointed out, a whole bunch of content write up front where it talks about so many things that I have to scroll and scroll, what am I looking for? I’m looking for, as you said, a particular keyword, ‘implants’. I’m looking for restorative dentistry, I’m looking for cavities, and then I’m looking for a phone number, somebody give me a phone number and on a responsive sight putting, you know, your reviews are testimonials right up front so that you can provide the information quickly and easily, and then you can have the content on subsequent pages or below the fold. And it’s important, by the way, for you to have compelling content. Maybe it’s few years ago, we’d see people who say, ‘ Well I can just go to GoDaddy and get a website really quickly’, and yes you can and it’s pretty cheap but Google is not going to promote a website that doesn’t have content that changes and that’s updated based on your expertise, so you should really have content behind that. But having a responsive website is critical.
36:00
Howard: Most people bought their website at a dental convention five or ten years ago and they haven’t looked at it since.
36:06
Keith: That’s right. Please, if I say anything, please go look at your website, make sure it’s up to date. Companies like ours provide you with the ability to update your website theme at no charge. So all you have to do for our customers is you go in, you know we have hundreds of themes and we can customize it for you and then you can update that within minutes to a responsive site. We spent a lot of time over the past two years communicating to people, please just go update your website because it’s impacting your ability to be found.
36:36
Keith: So, this is dentistry uncensored. So, I’m sure you are not a volunteer, what does it cost when a dentist says, ‘you are right Howard, I bought my website at the local state DE Lamay 10 years ago, what’s the new website cost of ProSites?’
36:52
We have a no contract website for sixty-nine ninety-nine a month, that’s a base price for a website, it includes hundreds of different themes, it includes five hundred plus pages of content that you can choose, you can change that website at any time you want. It also comes with our team who will help you get up and running. It comes with all of the support at no additional charge. And then we charge customers separately for search engine optimization. We have standard search engine optimization in every website, but if you want to make sure that you are having someone regularly updating your content we have that plus services for Pay Per Click and a growing and surprisingly growth market in posting content for practices through social media management.
37:41
Howard: That was a lot, so that’s damn cheap, seventy bucks a month for the starter website, right?
37:49
Keith: That’s correct.
37:50
Howard: And then the next upgrade will be how much?
37:53
Keith: Search engine optimization, the prices for search engine optimization range from three forty-five to seven hundred and ninety-five dollars per month, and the difference is how competitive of an area are you in because we may have to spend hours and hours each week making sure that you compete. If you’re in New York City and you want to implant dentistry you have a lot of competition, so we make sure that we take your website and we build content and manage that content on a regular basis to make sure you get found. Pay Per Click is two hundred dollars a month and then we don’t charge you a fee based on how much you spend. We tell you what we expect that you should spend and that money goes directly to Google, and so you manage monthly spends through Google.
38:47
Howard: So they pay you two hundred dollars for the Pay Per Click and then they give you the amount that they want to spend?
38:52
Keith: That’s correct, but the amount they want to spend on a monthly basis goes directly to Google through them.
38:57
Howard: But here is the million dollar question.
39:00
Keith: Yes.
39:01
Howard: What’s the better strategy to try to earn your SEO by doing everything right and all the keywords and everything right, or say ‘screw it’ and just do the AdWords because, like you’re an implant dentist in Manhattan you could just buy the top ad, so can you just earn it or buy it?
39:16
Keith: You have to do a little bit of both if you’re in Manhattan, you have to do a little bit of both, and the reason is because there are number of people-there’s still a community who won’t click on an ad, they just won’t, so you want to make sure that those who will quickly click on an ad that you get seen, especially if you’re trying to promote a specialty that you want to drive through. So you should spend a little money on Pay Per Click and spend money on search engine optimization and look at your entire marketing budget and try to do it, and that way we can help people determine, especially where you are located. If you are in Idaho you don’t need to spend as much money on Pay Per Click but if you’re in Manhattan you know that you have to spend. What is the amount that you say you should, that practices should spend on their marketing budget per month?
40:05
Howard: Well, thirty years ago it was zero. In 1973 it was illegal and then there were two lawyers…
40:11
Keith: That’s right.
40:12
Howard: ... in Arizona who took it all the way to the Supreme Court and said lawyers, doctors that’s free speech. So it was illegal until 1973, I got out in 87 took a full page ad in the Yellow Pages. And that earned me a free dinner from the Executive Director of Arizona Dental Association to tell me how wrong that was…
40:28
Keith: Yeah.
40:28
Howard: How uncouth that was that I was ruining the profession, and then I’d say by 95 everybody was saying three percent, and now it’s 2017 people are saying five to seven percent.
40:40
Keith: Yeah, what I’ve seen is five to eight percent of your revenue should be spent in marketing. Then it’s a question of where you spend that marketing. Do I spend it on Pay Per Click, SEO? Do I spend it on some print ad, I may do some mailer, you spend the time and by the way, you track everything. That’s where call tracking comes in because you are tracking your Pay Per Click ad with a certain phone number, you’re tracking your post card or your mailer with a different phone number, you’re tracking your website with a different phone number.
41:18
Howard: Another upgrade then, was that the fourth upgrade, call tracking?
00:41:22
Keith: Call tracking is something that is part of our SEO packages and part of our Pay Per Click package.
41:28
Howard: Oh okay. What was the fourth upgrade you said. You said…
41:32
Keith: Social media management.
41:35
Howard: Okay. Social media management, so that is, what does that cost and what does that include?
41:41
Keith: So social media management, it ranges between One forty-nine to three hundred dollars per month, and what we do is we, of course, make sure that your Facebook page, many practices have a Facebook page, but it doesn’t match your brand. So we make sure that your Facebook page matches your brand and then, based on the different package that you buy we post compelling information on your Facebook page on a regular basis so that you are getting found by your patients on Facebook and on Instagram. So we’re posting on your behalf really interesting or compelling information about dentistry, not about your kids, not about, you know, what you would do on your personal Facebook page, but things that will keep your presence on Facebook current. I found when I started looking at this three years ago, that many practices set up a Facebook page and they post it, something that says we are here, and that was the last time. I don’t know if customers know this, practices know this, but Facebook doesn’t show everybody everything. Facebook decides what I see on my news feed based on my interest in things on my news feed, so you have to be getting yourself and getting your word out against competition, even on Facebook, and now we are seeing that happening more and more with advertising. By the way, if you, I don’t know if you look at Facebook, but for some reason Facebook thinks that I love Chevy trucks. Chevy is out there posting ads for me on a regular basis and so advertising is becoming more and more part of the Facebook model.
43:18
Howard: You know why I think everybody loves Facebook? It’s because their icon on app is a ‘F’, and when they look down they all think they are looking at their grade card all through high school and grad school and they go, ‘hey that’s me, I’m the one over there with the ‘F’, how did my report card get on my cell phone?’
43:34
Keith: That’s great.
43:34
Howard: So when you say social media, at the end of the day is it pretty much just Facebook because Instagram is owned by Facebook too.
43:43
Keith: That’s right.
43:43
Howard: I mean do you think there is a reason to pay attention...
43:47
Keith: It’s really Facebook and Twitter for us.
43:50
Howard: Okay so…
43:53
Keith: We take that content and post it on Twitter as well.
43:57
Howard: What about Pinterest, Google plus, Snap Chat?
44:04
Keith: Yeah, so on my research it shows that those things, Pinterest is certainly a niche market. So you are less careful about what you say on the podcast than I do, but I would say that Pinterest is something that my wife would look at much more, I don’t even have a Pinterest account.
44:20
Howard: It’s mostly female. I’ve read that several times.
44:24
Keith: It’s mostly female and you are looking for things that help in terms of art. Linkedin is a compelling platform but we have found that Linkedin is something that I go to when I’m thinking about other businesses or thinking about my network of businesses, not necessarily looking for a service. It may change its model over time, but just like Google it’s dominant.
44:49
Howard: Luckily, Microsoft just bought Linkedin.
44:51
Keith: Yes.
44:51
Howard: So I’m sure it will be riddled with bugs and go to hell in a handbasket, I mean. When was the last time you had a Microsoft update that didn’t make your IT manager start drinking again?
45:02
Keith: You cannot talk to me about upgrades of computers because I just did it last week and I was so afraid I wouldn’t even be able to Skype with you today. And I had my IT team...
45:12
Howard: I don’t know why they even let Microsoft (inaudible 45:14). I mean Microsoft they’ll sell you a piece of software for a hundred and fifty bucks.
45:20
Keith: Yes.
45:20
Howard: But then you have to pay your IT man three hundred bucks because they don’t even fix their bugs before it’s out, I mean it’s just, God. And then you always see Bill Gates out there he is giving all this money to charity, it’s like, dude.
45:36
Keith: Give some to you.
45:36
Howard: You were the worst guy for thirty years and now you’re Gandhi? I mean, the US sued him, twenty states sued them, the EU sued them, and they are still doing it. Why can’t they just ..Microsoft release one software update, just one time where they got all the bugs out at first, crazy, crazy.
46:04
Keith: Well, I will tell you, I do understand the platform though, my wife has a Mac and even though I’m an Apple iPhone user, iPad user, I cannot use a Mac.
46:16
Howard: Same here. I’m exactly the same.
46:14
Keith: Just can’t figure it out.
46:15
Howard: My son Ryan here, when he got into college he said, ‘dad, look, I’ve been telling you, you are an old ancient idiot, you need to get this DELL’, so he convinced me, so fine it’s okay, I will do it, I know it will suck but I will do it for a month because I love my iPhone. My God, if I had to be a CEO of my company on an Apple just wouldn’t…
46:37
Keith: I would be in trouble. I just tell my wife when she wants to work on something, ‘just forward that document to me on my computer and I will work on it then because I can’t figure’.
46:43
Howard: Well, hopefully if Microsoft has a brain, and they don’t, that now that they own Skype and Linkedin it would be so nice if I went to your page on Linkedin and I could do like a facetime call on iPhone.
46:53
Keith: That’s right.
46:53
Howard: I mean I might just go to your profile, tap your picture on my thumb and we are Skyping each other.
46:58
Keith: Yeah. Yes, exactly.
47:00
Howard: I don’t look for that to happen because that would be way too obvious.
47:02
Keith: Yeah.
47:02
Howard: So basically, the thing that I was always wondering about these stocks, you know like when you look at these publicly trading companies is, I’ve never given Twitter a dollar or Pinterest or Skype, I mean the only the only person you see anybody buying ads is Google and Facebook. But I mean, what’s the future of Twitter and Linkedin and Pinterest and Google Plus if nobody knows anyone who’s ever given them a dollar?
47:33
Keith: You know what, I was thinking about this yesterday and I don’t know how to look forward as much in that realm. But I will tell you this, because one of the things I was thinking about, what’s different in the last six months? And I think that when it comes to dentistry and marketing and technology we have to be willing to adapt, and I’ll give you just an example that is not necessarily dentistry. Six months ago, over the past six months, our family spend on Amazon is up three hundred percent, just in our family alone. Something happened, a tipping point happened in our home that all of a sudden we spent a tremendous amount of money online to buy things than we did just six months ago, so I’ve learned that I have to be and we have to be willing to adapt to technology as it comes on, and as a company I have to be willing to be in front of it all the time to make sure that when the dentists are ready. But dentists and practices really need to focus on adapting and changing rapidly and not letting things stick around for a long time, you have to have an updated website; you have to make sure that if you don’t have the right front office person that you train them or find a new person. You have to start to think about the business of your practice much more that it is I just want to take care of a patient.
49:03
Howard: That is exactly what Peter Lynch would say in investing, you know, what’s happening in your family?
49:09
Keith: Right.
49:09
Howard: What are you doing. I mean I cannot believe that you’re saying that because just literally, I mean I think it was just one month ago I downloaded the Amazon Prime video.
49:19
Keith: That’s right.
49:20
Howard: Because I would always ask my staff, ‘can you do this?’ and they would always say, ‘Howard I know you are intellectually challenged and your mom dropped you when you were little but I swear to God’, so one day someone just said, ‘come on, let’s just try it one time’, and it’s like that was the easiest damn thing in the world, so now it’s easier for me to go to Amazon Prime and click it than it is to call my staff or email them or text them and say can you get me this or that.
49:50
Keith: Correct, and it just shows up sometimes the same day.
49:56
Howard: And then the next worst idea was to give it to all four of my boys.
50:00
Keith: You did that? Like yes.
50:01
Howard: That was the worst idea.
50:03
Keith: We have a 14 year old who somehow decides he wants to buy candy through Amazon, and the next thing you know a big bag of candy shows up.
50:10
Howard: So is that your oldest?
50:13
Keith: No, my oldest is 24. We have two children, one at 24 and one at 14.
50:18
Howard: Both boys?
50:19
Keith: Both boys, both our kids and we thought we were done and then 10 years later here comes another one and it’s been a great joy.
50:26
Howard: That was so cool, we had the same thing is my family where my little baby sister Shelley was, I was 17, a senior in high school so she was a freshman in high school, so she was 14, my mom and dad were devoutly Catholic, they went to Mass every day, so they had the Vatican birth control going on and my little brother Paul.
50:44
Keith: Yes.
50:44
Howard: And everybody was so like oh my God, this is the end of the world. And looking back, that was such an amazing gift.
50:53
Keith: Yeah.
50:54
Howard: The gift from nowhere.
56:55
Keith: It’s a gift; my wife would be stuck with me without our 14. And one thing, by the way, that you haven’t asked me about and I don’t know, it makes me wonder if it’s not well known in the industry, and that’s the Americans with Disabilities Act, and its impact on the dental practice. I see you are looking at me hesitantly about this.
51:21
Howard: Well, I think the American Disabilities Act is the handicap parking, the wheelchair ramps, how does that apply to a website?
51:29
Keith: Yeah, great question. So this came about six months ago, maybe even a year ago where an attorney in Texas started sending medical companies, small businesses and dental practices a letter that says either pay me two thousand dollars, your website is not ADA compliant and a website needs to be ADA compliant with respect to being able to be read by screen readers for people who are visually impaired or if you have the audio content, hearing impaired. And he sent out a letter and said give me two thousand dollars or I’m going to put you on a class action lawsuit. And this caused a great stir, by the way, I think the same person did the same thing for ramps thirty years ago. And so we started getting calls and everybody in the website industry started getting calls and said what are you going to do about Americans with Disabilities Act, so we did some research on it and spent a lot of time on it. First it went to associations Texas Dental Associations and Arizona Dental Association, and they started asking questions and finally the American Dental Association made a comment on it, maybe four or five months ago saying, you know, you should take a look at this, you should make sure that your website is ADA compliant.
So we took this very seriously and over the past month we released a version, we released an update to our software where any customer of ours can turn on ADA compliant version on their website with a click of a button. So I find that things like HIPAA and security and ADA compliance to be a growing issue as people are thinking about their practice, so I just wanted to make sure that those who knew about it, I found that some people don’t know about it but we saw a tremendous number of customers of ours turning on this feature for their websites.
53:27
Howard: And if that pisses you off I want you to know that it’s a fact that the number one highest place bet on Ad-Click is a personal injury attorney in Manhattan, the most converted market, so if lawyers, whenever lawyers piss you off, you just google Manhattan personal injury attorneys and start clicking on the ads, because every time you click one it’s about twelve hundred and fifty dollars, Sergey Brin and Larry Page, the founders of Google will love you and touché to those attorneys, in fact everybody just pull over to the side of the road now on their way to work and start clicking Manhattan personal injury attorneys. Now I’m going to spin this completely on your head.
54:16
Keith: Okay.
54:16
Howard: And turn this completely upside down. It seems that the Fortune 500 is a generation ahead of dentists and the fact that the dentists, like say in 1974’s illegal advertise, it was taboo in the 80’s and it has just started going in the 90’s and it got solid in 2000, now everybody is full speed ahead, but the Fortune 500, they split their advertising with loyalty programs, I mean people like Cosco and American Airlines, every Americans already used them once, it’s not about trying to find a new patient, how do you find a new patient if you are Walmart? I mean if you haven’t gone to a Walmart they are spending so much money on loyalty programs like Flight Mile and those deals. So that’s the next frontier of dentistry, how do you think ProSites, PracticeMojo, how do you think we can start pioneering loyalty programs because who cares if you just keep getting any more new patients if by the time you have 5000 patients 4000 of them never came back, what is the loyalty program logistics that dentists should be thinking about? I’m trying to shut the back door to keep customers for life instead of always trying to replace everyone leaving with new ones?
55:30
Keith: I think that’s a good, you’re right; you did turn it around upside down on my head. We have talked about this and I totally agree with you that having loyalty programs and getting customers to come back time after time or patients to come back time after time is critical. We don’t have a program to help them do that today and I certainly, if the community thinks that it’s important or something that will help, we certainly have ways to doing that, but I agree with you that for me personally being part of Cosco or being part of a loyalty program for me being part of the Delta Airlines program is critical to the way I think about hotels. I haven’t thought much about it with dentists. We’ve talked about it a little bit, but I would like to get feedback on that and see if they find if that’s something that’s valuable.
56:24
Howard: You should ask that on my column as well.
56:25
Keith: I will.
56:25
Howard: Because I’ve seen some dentists simple things like they will get a card and every time you come in they will punch…
56:31
Keith: Punch your card. Right.
56:32
Howard: … it all the way around and you get something. And another thing that I’ve noticed is that sometimes you’ll be in a crazy mood and my car is a 2004.
56:41
Keith: Yip.
56:41
Howard: And I didn’t walk out of dental school because if I did I would have a brand new stinking car, they are all out of their student loan debts because they all buy brand new Japanese cars on student loan money, I was kind of dumb old school, I had a used car and sometimes I would sit back and say I might go test drive buy I noticed this, you go test drive a car, that salesman, oh my God, they will call you and call you.
57:07
Keith: Forever.
57:07
Howard: Until you’ve got to block the number, but a person will come into a dental office and you’ll say, yeah you need three fillings, like well, I don’t know, I’ve got to go check my schedule, three fillings, seven hundred and fifty dollars, or maybe it was two fillings and a crown, thousand dollars or more, they leave that office. That dentist will never call that patient ever again in his entire life and then he’ll just say, well I need to put up a billboard or direct mail or I need to do more advertisements. Dentists don’t even really try to get into those cases, and you have an accounting major, you’ll say how many sales opportunities have to call before your receptionist converts one in? I have no idea. How many people even call your office in a month? No idea. And then you will say what percent of diagnosis, not veneers and implants and electives, just cavities, out of every 100 cavities you diagnose, how many are converted to a filling? I don’t know. The can’t tell you a single damn number and that’s why I think corporate is growing at an alarming rate because they’ve got an entire division of people, headquarters that works on the business all day while their dentists are working in the business all day and that was the e myth book that came out when I went to college that if you spend all day long working inside your restaurant you never work on the business of your restaurant.
Corporate, you know, they have call centres, they have people in marketing, they have a whole group of people who only work on the business and never stick their hands in anyone’s mouth.
58:44
Keith: Well, I would say that they death of the individual practices is premature but that’s why software like PracticeMojo is important, unscheduled treatment plans is the way we think of it as a tremendous opportunity. And you are right, if you’ll not calling that person back, who may be worried about how am I going to pay for that thousand dollars, they don’t know that they can get financing, they don’t know what their insurance can provide, and they just walk out of there and think, well, I’ll just wait until it hurts more, or maybe in a lot of cases, I don’t deserve to get this type of treatment because I don’t have that kind of money. But being able to follow up with them in an automated way, both through a phone call and with an email and let them know that we can help you, that’s what software like PracticeMojo does because it reads your practice management system, weather you are using Dentrix or Softdent, whatever you’re using, and notices which treatment plans were created but not scheduled and then provides that information in an automated way to you and you just click a button and communication goes out.
59:54
Howard: Okay, well, that was the fastest hour ever, I can’t believe.
59:59
Keith: I can’t believe it either.
59:59
Howard: We are five minutes over an hour, but can I ask you one over time question?
60:03
Keith: Yes.
60:04
Howard: We just had six thousand of our Sovereign Professional colleagues just graduate from dental school last week, six thousand are coming out, if you were giving the commencement address, what advice would you give the new dentists coming out of dental school that are going to start up their own practice? I graduated May 11, 1987, I had my office opened September 21, 1987, and the only reason it took that long is because the contractor I used was horrible and now whenever a patient comes to this contractor I try to spend a lot of time with them because I know I never will see a contractor when I’m in heaven. I could’ve had mine opened in sixty days that that idiot could have worked. So what advice could you give to new millennial babies walking out that are going to start up a Denovo practice in Bohmont Texas?
61:00
Keith: Right, first of all you have to pay all your loans off, and I just learned from you that the student loans which are upwards of three hundred thousand dollars were from the school, I didn’t realise that it was from them buying a new Mercedes.
61:12
Howard: Oh my God, I had two dental schools in my back yard.
61:16
Keith: Yeah.
61:16
Howard: You take those student loans and they all buy cars, on spring break they all go on cruises, they are all flying on airplanes. Imagine your 14 year old
61:27
Keith: Yes.
61:27
Howard: Imagine if you gave them a credit card with a hundred thousand dollars lying in credit and told them, when he was 16 would he have a new car?
61:35
Keith: Yes.
61:35
Howard: So the only reason they have that much debt is because someone gave them that much credit. When I was in school I didn’t have a car in undergrad, I didn’t have a car the first three years of dental school, we lived in an old house eight blocks from school and walked eight blocks. Kansas City is like Canada half the year, I mean I don’t of know anyone who flew on an airplane.
62:01
Keith: Right.
62:01
Howard: On a vacation, I don’t remember anybody flying on an airplane in all my years at college let alone going on a cruise. The good news I always tell them is that three hundred thousand dollars sounds like a lot of money but it is nothing compared to their first divorce.
62:26
Keith: Let me tell you what I think about. I think about this the way I think about a business and any business too the way I thought about it in the past 30 years. Number one; and I hope you can agree with this and you’ve written about this, the business of running a practice. Number one, you have to choose your team well, whether it’s your inside team or the outside team because that team that you have is something especially on your staff is going to be critical to your success and I think it’s really important inside of your office and outside of your office that you choose your team well. Number two, that I talked about just a minute ago is you have to be willing to adapt and change rapidly. The world that we live in today, even though it seems like you are just doing the same thing over and over again, you have to pop your head out as you pointed out and be willing to adapt. If things aren’t working fix them right away. Number three, and probably the most important thing is, there is still, I think the average age of a dentist is in their 50’s, there are a lot of experienced people, a lot of experienced practitioners out there, and I hope that the younger generation will take the time to learn from those who have experience and don’t just come into practice and think just because you know how to do everything that you know everything, and really focus on spending some time with those who have been around and learning from how they have been successful and primarily learning from their mistakes. So those are three things that I think of.
63:55
Howard: And you’re right about finding those older dentists in their 50’s, I still don’t get why the smartest people in dentistry are always old, fat dentists in their 50’s.
64:05
Keith: Do we know anybody like that?
64:08
Howard: If they’re bald, fat grandpa’s especially if they’re exactly fifty-four. But seriously, my column this month was right on this, that is why I called you to come on this show last month as I was writing this, still I wish you would log on to dentaltown.com and go to the magazine and go to my article this month because it talks about what do drive thrus and dental offices have in common, this is something that if a dentist worked at Macdonalds he would only want to focus on building the perfect Big Mac and that’s cool, and I want to go to a dentist who only focuses on fixing my tooth. Unfortunately, when you graduate to dental school you find out there’s a lot of crap you didn’t sign up for which they never taught you in school, they never taught you payroll.
64:57
Keith: That’s right.
64:57
Howard: Accounting, they never taught you insurance. You know these kids going out of school don’t even know one single insurance code?
65:03
Keith: Right.
65:04
Howard: And yet half of their revenue will come from insurance companies. And then the first Friday they are going to do payroll, they don’t even know how to QuickBooks online and used to work for Intuit.
65:15
Keith: That’s right.
65:15
Howard: These kids come out of high school and they spent four years in algebra, geometry and trig, yet they can’t balance their bank statement from Chase or Bank of America. It’s like what the teachers teach, and the skills necessary to be successful, it’s like Mars and Venus.
65:35
Keith: And that’s in any business. I just happened to be in accounting but they didn’t teach you in accounting how to manage a cheque book.
65:44
Howard: You know the funniest story I ever heard which made me just shut up, so my oldest sister is a Catholic nun and she had a friend who is a priest and she sent the priest to me. So he goes to the seminary for eight years. All they do for eight years is read the Bible, right? He graduates, eight years, a Roman Catholic priest, so what they do is they send him to a small town, it has got a church and a school, a million dollars in debt, all the teachers want a raise, all the parents are pissed off, he is like, I’ve been reading the Bible for eight years, what the hell happened? So my sister calls me and says, I’m pretty sure if you just give him your 30 day dental MBA he could just take out root canal fillings and crowns and put in teachers and students and the PTA. And that priest wrote me a letter and said, ‘I’ve got more training on how to run a school and a church and all that stuff from a bunch of dental tapes than I get from eight years of studying. So I guess it’s across all lawyers, priest, rabbis, politicians, activists.
But I’m a big fan of yours. Thank you so much today for spending an hour of your time, coming on my show, talking to my homies, I really enjoyed talking to you.
67:08
Keith: It was a great pleasure and I appreciate you taking the time. I love what you’re doing in this industry, I really do appreciate that.
67:14
Howard: And I’m not sure but you are in Temecula California, I’m pretty sure I put Temecula on top of ice cream one time. Is it an ice cream topping at Dairy Queen? What the hell is Temecula? It sounds good.
67:24
Keith: The best wine country south of Napa.
67:28
Howard: Really?
67:30
Keith: It is, actually it is.
67:31
Howard: Well, I think it should be a flavour at Dairy Queen, I would order it today. Have a rocking hot day and Happy Fathers’ Day to you.
67:38
Keith: Happy Fathers’ Day to you and have a great weekend.