Howard: It is just a huge honor for me today to be podcast interviewing Doctor Joseph Barker with rapiddentures.com. He graduated from Arkansas State University in 1992 with a Bachelor of Science degree. He then graduated from Louisiana State University in ‘96 with his doctorate in dental surgery degree. He received the Operative Dentistry Award and Outstanding Senior Dentist Award in 1996 as well as the New Dentist of the Year for Arkansas in 2006.
After graduation he moved back to his hometown of Newport Arkansas. There he worked with Doctor Mike Brown as an associate dentist for eight years. He then purchased an office in Brinkley, Arkansas where he worked for 11 years before selling his practice. In 2016 he opened his current practice in Searcy, Arkansas. Doctor Barker lives in Newport with his wife, Lori, and their son, Tyler. He’s a member of the First Baptist Church where he teaches Sunday school class. He enjoys mission work and helping those in need.
In his time off he also enjoys spending time with his family and their labrador retrievers. The entire family enjoys spending time outdoors. Thank you so much for coming on the show.
Joseph: Thank you.
Howard: The reason I want you to come on the show so bad is I really believe that unless you do something once a week you never really get good at it. You never get fast at it. You never get profit on… If you're… I look at the people who go to learn to place implants and they'll go buy a hundred thousand dollars CBCT, they'll fly to Dominican Republic with Arum Garg.
That's another guy we got to get on the show. We've been talking to him a long time, let's email him today. Arum Garg… and they'll go buy an implant deal. And then you come back and they're doing like one implant every two or three months. And then when that implant patient comes, that whole day they’re trying to remember how to set up and do it all. And they never really reached critical mass and if you're going to get into sleep apnea you got to do it once a week or you're not going to get profitable at it. Implants, invisalign, if you're not doing it once a week stop doing it. Either get to critical mass or stop doing it.
But you… and then when I talk to anybody about their… like they're filling technique. Yeah, they'll change their composite and bonding agent and their technique maybe every five years or whole career. But then when you switch to dentures, oh my God, they haven't changed their denture protocol since dental school. They only do one every year, they hate doing them and they reason they doing those because they only do one a year. And here you've love dentures.
You're the weirdest unicorn in dentistry to sit there and love dentures. How the hell could you love dentures. What percent of dentists do you think hate dentures?
Joseph : Over fifty percent. Easy.
Howard: Yeah.
Joseph: Easily over fifty, and then…
Howard: So, how did you learn to love dentures?
Joseph: Well it was kind of a situation where all my patients… when I practice in Brinkley, it's really, really rural. So all of my patients would go to Little Rock and Memphis and they would go to these denture clinics, then they come back to me to fix it. And sometimes you can't fix that, so I said, ‘well I will come up with a way to maximize this. And I'm going to learn how to do it efficiently, and I'm going to do it… and I'm putting my own lab,’ so I have my own denture lab. And I learned how to do it so I could give them like something… a product… a service that I knew it's going to last a minute and they stay with me. So, that's what I did. And you know we went from doing like one or two dentures a month, when I put the lab in, to where… for about the last seven years we average about thirty units a month.
Howard: For the last seven years thirty units a month.
Joseph: Yes, sir.
Howard: Yeah.
Joseph: Now when I (inaudible 03:54) my office there was a lag for about a year and a half because I was just getting this one up and going but we’ve crept back up into that twenty-five to thirty range in the last six months.
Howard: Who is a denture patient? Is still grandma and grandpa or have the demographics changed?
Joseph: Pretty much grandma and grandpa… your younger ones… I don't see as many of the younger ones as I used to. Crystal meth does have an effect on them and so we see meth patients they may be twenty to twenty-five years old. You're going to be pulling those teeth and making them dentures as well. But for the most part it's a forty year old plus.
Howard: Yeah. I remember when meth just started happening and it's clusters. I mean certain cities are killed by it. In other cities are not affected. It's very weird like… what's it called in California? That… Bakersfield just completely overran by it, far higher levels than any cities nearby. And in Phoenix for some reason it's out in Apache Junction, and that was my first full mouth rehab that I lost completely in a year and a half. Because I was too dumb to realize that this thirty year old kid, that the problem was meth. Basically root canalled and crowned and every tooth in his mouth.
Joseph: And mom and daddy paid.
Howard: And mom and daddy paid. And it was a thirty year old kid. And we basically rehabbed his entire mouth. I mean it wasn't even eighteen months and it was mush. I'm like, what the hell. I mean I was completely confused. Well, it turned out he doesn't have any saliva. He was a tweaker.
Joseph: Right.
Howard: And so, what percent of tweakers end in edentulism?
Joseph: Well usually, when I see him it's on the tail end.
Howard: Yeah.
Joseph: I can't give you an honest percentage but…
Howard: How long do you think they were on it when they're at the tail end losing all their teeth?
Joseph: Probably years. I would say. Because what… this is my understanding that they all… first of all they make… they start out a little bit then they gradually increase their usage to where… then all of a sudden they go on these binges where they don't eat or drink, and then when they're coming down they crave sugars. And that's part of the problem. The other problem is once they start making it, this stuff has what muriatic acid and other chemicals in there. They don't put it on their gums when it's still wet and the muriatic acid literally eats your enamel off.
Howard: Yeah. And you know who bust all that meth labs in Arizona? It's never the police station. You know it is?
Joseph: The people down the street smell it?
Howard: It's the fire department.
Joseph: When they blow up?
Howard: Every time a trailer park bust out on fire and they're cooking meth and in Phoenix… I'm serious. My police officer patients tell me that the fire department finds four meth labs than the police do.
Joseph: I don't disagree. Where I live is pretty rural so it's not uncommon for us to see. Like if you're driving down a country road you might see an ice chest or something over in the hedgerow. You don't go over there I can tell you that. You leave it alone.
Howard: What was that?
Joseph: Because it’s probably a meth lab cooking in that ice chest.
Howard: Amazing.
Joseph: They have these… they have them now… I used to have a lot of police friends in other cities so… but they tell me they can make it in a coke bottle now, like mix all the greens shake it up and set the coke bottle somewhere in the ice chest, and let the chemical reactions occur then they get their meth out of there somehow.
Howard: So if my homies went to rapiddentures.com you have a complete system. DVD. Talk about your system… lots of you listening right now are saying, ‘Man, I haven't changed my denture technique since dental school’. What are you really going to teach them on your DVD series? How much is it? How many hours is it?
Joseph: It’s about two and a half hours long. It's two DVDs. I'll show it to you here. Can you see that?
Howard: Yeah. Rapiddentures. Open your Doors to Predictable, Efficient and Profitable Dentures Training Volumes one and two. Hold up a little higher. One and two techniques that save you time and money. And you got one of my idols endorsing you. Doctor Chris Griffin.
Joseph: Yes, sir.
Howard: Where is he from? South Tennessee?
Joseph: Ripley, Mississippi which is just below the Tennessee line just a few miles.
Howard: Ripley, Mississippi.
Joseph: Yes, sir. And so with our system though, when you say no one has changed their denture system. You're right. The vast majority of people who still make dentures… we still do it the way that they taught us in dental school. Preliminary impressions and then the patient goes home. And we make a custom tray and the patient goes home again after we take a final impression. And we have five appointments, six appointments in a denture case and we wonder why it's not profitable. And so I just set out on a journey to learn how to do it. So I visited a lot of people and came up with a system, and here's how it works.
We teach you how to take your primary impression, and I use a system by Iva Clark. It used to be system one and system two. They've changed it now to a new system. We just got into stuff. But what it is you're doing… it's an alginate system. And so you take a preliminary impression of that, we send the patient home. But on that preliminary impression I'm gonna go ahead and get all my… where my lip line is, through something called a burner quarter. And I'll show you… I’ll have bring it in here in a minute. A vertical quarter… I have a… we take the vertical dimension with a… with this vertical quarter and so it sets through their video on the first appointment.
I also take their lip line on the papillameter. I said that wrong a while ago I take their lip line with a papillameter. And in doing that I've got all that information and then the cool thing is I take a bite with a Blue Mousse. I use actually Blue Bite by Schein because it's cheaper. And so I've got their upper and lower impressions, their lip line, their video, everything set in a Blue Bite. And so when it goes to the lab that's the first appointment. Second appointment I'm trying their teeth.
And then I take a wash impression inside of that white strand and some people say, ‘Well I don’t have good luck with the wax. I just have them make an acrylic base and set the teeth on that. It doesn't matter’. So the third appointment my patients are getting their dentures and I have better success with that than I ever did the other way.
Howard: Man, that's a lot of knowledge you'd have to know. What percent of your secret sauce is having a lab tech in your office?
Joseph: I would say less than thirty to forty percent. Because most labs… here's the thing about labs and I know this for a fact, because I've had other people come work for me out of other labs. We spend I don't know twenty bucks twenty-five bucks per final impression tray, that the lab’s gonna pour up and throw away. Then we spend about thirty something dollars per white trim so for a case of upper and lower you're spending an extra hundred dollars, one hundred and twenty bucks for wax rims and a final impression tray. Okay.
So I've eliminated all that and that's a savings… but this is what a lot of labs don't tell you. You don’t… unless you ask you don't know what teeth they're using. And the reason I say that… most labs are willing to make you an economy denture, or make you a middle-of-the-road denture, or make you a premium denture. And yet as dentist we don't do that. We just assume they all make the one kind. And there's, as you well know, hundreds of people out there making teeth. I'm talking about lab manufacturers manufacturing the dental teeth themselves. The acrylic and the porcelain, I don't use porcelain but the acrylic as well.
And so what you have… these guys… for a lab bill of about four hundred to four hundred and fifty bucks per arch. And so you know if you're willing to negotiate, ask your lab some questions. You can negotiate that down to a couple hundred bucks.
And so to answer your question about what percent does it help having my lab tech, I would say about thirty or forty percent. Because anybody can set your teeth. I mean you send it off and have the teeth set. The biggest thing is having a supply of teeth that saves me money. And also the way I do it… I send it to any lab… I've done it. Sent it to other labs the way we do it, and every one of them sends me back exactly the same thing. It's perfect.
Howard: Do you advertise as a market like economy, middle-of-the-road high-end? I mean how many price point dentures do you market and what are the fees for those?
Joseph: I market an economy, a deluxe, and a premium. I used to just make an economy and a premium and I had a friend come to my office one day and he said, ‘What dentures do you make?’ and I showed him. And we had premium teeth. We were using some Heraeus called Mondial at the time for a premium, and then we were using a tooth probably cost me about six bucks an arch for the economy. Now I don't use that particular tooth anymore, it’s an artic tooth.
But now he goes, ‘What you need to offer middle-of-the-road’. I said why, he said ‘They always pick the middle’. I said, ‘Okay.’ So at that time we were about seventy-five percent economy, twenty-five percent premium. The moment I added the deluxe, the middle-of-the-road it immediately went to sixty percent deluxe, twenty-five percent premium. That stayed the same and then the rest were economy. And the only difference in our…
Howard: So how much was economy? Fifteen?
Joseph: No. Economy was four hundred and eighty-nine per arch.
Howard: No. No. You said… you said that when you offered the deluxe, the premium stay the same at twenty-five percent.
Joseph: Yes. Yes.
Howard: The deluxe went to sixty percent so the economy went down to fifteen percent?
Joseph: About fifteen percent.
Howard: So it went from seventy-five percent to fifteen percent by offering a middle-of-the-road?
Joseph: Right.
Howard: And that's what every PHD economist will tell you the research says, that you don't do high and low you do high, middle, low.
Joseph: Well, I didn't… he told me that. I did it. Just stepped out in faith and immediately profitability shot up.
Howard: So what are you charging for economy, deluxe, and premium?
Joseph: I charge four eighty-nine per arch for economy. I charge seven eighty-nine per arch for deluxe, and I charge twelve sixty-nine, I believe it is, for premium per arch.
Howard: And the only really difference between all three of those is the teeth you’re using?
Joseph: The difference between economy… the economy and the deluxe is the teeth. That's it. And it's a two hundred… it's a three hundred dollar swing. So for a set of dentures my cost went up ten bucks per arch, but my profitability went up three hundred bucks.
Howard: So what teeth are you using in economy versus deluxe versus from premium today?
Joseph: I use Z-Dent. It’s a company by Schein. It shines tooth and if you buy them in bulk sometimes I get them for one dollar to a dollar fifty a card and you have to two cards per arch.
Howard: And they're called Zadita?
Joseph: Z-dent. Z slash Dent.
Howard: Okay, Z-Dent for economy and then for the deluxe?
Joseph: It's called Ele-dent.
Howard: Ele-dent.
Joseph: Yes, sir.
Howard: And who makes that?
Joseph: My lab guy orders them for me.
Howard: And then for the premium what do you use?
Joseph: We usually use Mondial which is from Heraeus Kulzer and sometimes we will use the porcelain… not porcelain but the IPN teeth, TruByte.
Howard: IPN from TruByte?
Joseph: Yes, sir.
Howard: And are all these acrylics or do you use acrylics or porcelains?
Joseph: I use all acrylic. I don’t do porcelain.
Howard: Okay, we’ll talk about that. Why do you like acrylics and why do you not like porcelain?
Joseph: One, the acrylics now look really good. The older acrylics you know as you know from long ago the acrylics didn't look as natural life-like as the porcelain but now they've got those acrylics where they look really, really nice. But the other thing is it bonds to the acrylic. And so you have less… I find less trouble with them popping out. The patients coming in… because the porcelain tooth is only held by mechanical retention. Period. Whereas acrylic is held by… we do the mechanical and the chemical bond so it makes a big difference. And the porcelain, you don't hear them clacking with acrylic teeth like you do with porcelain. When those patients come in and it sounds like they got a marble in their mouth? So that's why I like the acrylic. Plus I have a wider range of choices and that really makes a big deal.
Howard: Man, that is… so everybody is afraid of doing a denture, because they're always afraid they're gonna get that patient, who comes in every week for the rest of their life with an ill-fitting denture. What percent of your cases turn out to be that nightmare?
Joseph: Less than ten for sure.
Howard: Less than ten percent?
Joseph: Oh yeah. Yeah. Most of the time… but it's all… we all… I shouldn't say we, but most of my buddies and I, we all wanna help people but we don't want to tell them the truth. We're not gonna tell them you don't have any gums, your bones… And I just found it's better to be good honest and say, ‘Wow, you don't have any bone left’. You've got a knife edge raised on the lower. And I just tell them everything on the front end, and I'm very good honest about it. And then I say, ‘I may can help you but I want you to understand you're going to have limitations and you may have to wear adhesive’. And so if you set that up versus ‘Man, you can be eating corn on a cob and biting apples off the core’, that's two different conversations. And so I think it's all about getting realistic patient expectations on the front end and then following through with that.
Howard: Yeah. Satisfaction equals perception of what's happening minus what I expected. And what everyone should be doing is always lowering patient's expectations but dentists always raising it. They'll say the dentist, ‘Well after that root canal have any pain? No, you'll be fine maybe a little Aspirin or Tylenol. Why the hell would you say that?
Joseph: Yeah.
Howard: I tell them, ‘My god, when this anesthetic wears off I hope you have a pistol in your house, because you're gonna blow your head off’. And you just prepare them for death.
Joseph: Yeah.
Howard: And then they'll just survive they think you're a saint.
Joseph: That’s right.
Howard: And they'll do a woman on cosmetic case and say, ‘when I'm done you won't even be able to tell that it's an implant and a crown on your front tooth’. Are you out of your mind?
Joseph: Yeah.
Howard: You know, I mean crazy. I tell people on a denture it's like having a wooden leg. You can walk from point A to B but you're not going to run, skip, and hop. I mean It's a wooden leg. So what percent of your dentures do you think end up using adhesives?
Joseph: About fifty percent or more.
Howard: And what adhesive do you like?
Joseph: Well I have… I used to just be a Fixodent guy. This Fixodent, it’s fine, whatever you can get at Walmart. Then I had a patient about two years ago come in my office and she told me about something she had ordered offline from Europe, it’s called Secure. I'll have them bring some in here in a minute. But this Secure is the best I've seen. I'm not telling you it's the greatest thing ever but it's the best adhesive I've seen. And so I became a dealer just so I can get it for my patients. And if you go online now you can find it at Walmart and Walgreens they've now started carrying it. But it really does work.
Howard: Walmart and Walgreens?
Joseph: Carry it.
Howard: In the store or online?
Joseph: Some stores but for sure online. I'm gonna send Dana a message and have her bring some Secure.
Howard: I recently became a dealer too. But my attorney says I can't talk about it on my podcast.
Joseph: Well, I'm in Arkansas that's how we make our cash money.
Howard: So yeah. I see a Secure denture cream.
Joseph: Right.
Howard: And they also have a zinc free…
Joseph: Right.
Howard: Does the zinc concern you or are you a zinc-free or do you like cushion strips or…
Joseph: Well, there's uses for all of them. Hang on one second and I tell you. I got patients that use it all. I’ve got… If you have an elderly patient and they don't want… they’ve had this denture for twenty years, longer than they've had their own pair of shoes. They're gonna benefit from Secure… from like the cushions, you know what I'm talking about? The C bonds and those type things. Because it's going to fill in a void and it's kind of like a makeshift reline. But if your denture fits well, and fits their tissue what they have well. Then they don't need to be using C bond. What they need to be using is something along the lines of a powder or a cream. And that's where you get into the Fixodent. Here's a secure right here.
Howard: Secure. The waterproof denture adhesive. Twelve hour holding powder. Good value. One time per day. It says holding powder. Is that a powder or is it a cream like a toothpaste?
Joseph: It's a cream. It's a power that's not… it says power, holding power.
Howard: Oh, power. Twelve hour holding power.
Joseph: Yes, sir.
Howard: Okay.
Joseph: But so if your denture fits well then the C bond is not gonna help you. You're gonna have to have something like a cream or a powder. And I would say about twenty percent of my patients like the powder and the rest of them use creams. You know in a very few… if I make them a denture C bond’s not gonna work. I just had a case probably about a month ago maybe two months at the longest.
I made an elderly gentleman, he's partially blind, elderly gentleman I made him a denture. Well he's used to putting in C bond and going for a week without changing it out because he can't see. Well I made his denture fit too good and he couldn't use C bond. So he had to start using cream and he's adapted. But I told you I said, ‘you're not gonna be able to do this once… if I make you a new one. So, anyway he's adapted.
Howard: Do you place implants?
Joseph: Yes, sir.
Howard: Yeah. So what percent of… when you market for economy, deluxe, premium denture and people are come in. What percent do you upgrade to denture over two implants snap-on, or four implants and a hader bar or… what percent do you upgrade to an implant?
Joseph: Ten to fifteen percent depending on the month. And right now I average placing somewhere in the neighborhood of about ten to twenty implants a month.
Howard: Oh my gosh. You are crushing it. Ten to twenty implants a month. And what is the standard… I mean on the implant upgrade is that you have an economy, deluxe, premium, I mean is it mostly on tooth?
Joseph: Well, this is what I've learned. This is what I've learned and I just learned this probably in about the last six months since the last time we talked. I was letting them pick. I don't care which denture you get. I don't care if you get
the economy, deluxe or premium. And we'll put two implants in, four is better. And on the top I tell them they need at least four, six is better. I don't care what they get I mean I just want… it's my job to tell them what they need, what's going to work and then they can pick. I don't care.
But what I've learned is that my economy and my deluxe is a pour technique acrylic. Okay. And the teeth are a little bit weaker. And I find that they wear the teeth a lot faster with the implants in place. And so I tell them all if you're considering implants you really need to get the premium denture, because the teeth are going to hold up. And on my premium, you ask…
I hate to regress but a while ago you asked me about the difference in my dentures, my economy and my deluxe are the same except for teeth. However my deluxe and my premium the difference is, I use a heat-injected acrylic on the premium and then I also use a real high-grade tooth whether it be IPN or whatever, Mondial, you know a high-grade tooth. So when I tell them if you're getting implants or considering… you really need to consider the premium because it's going to hold up.
And I tell them what we're finding is that we used to allow our patients to get deluxe and economy. But now we're seeing that it's not holding up, and so I don't want you to be coming in because your dentures don't fit different. You're going to increase your chewing power with the implant, and when you increase your chewing power sometimes the teeth don’t hold up.
Howard: Absolutely.
Joseph: I let them pick.
Howard: It's like everybody loves your upper denture, but they have all the problems in the lower denture. And then you make it at the lower denture implant retained, snapping onto just two or four. And now their upper denture is the problem.
Joseph: Right.
Howard: Because the upper dentures used to be really good because the lower one that is so horrible. But now the lower one's better than the upper, it's so secure it’s knocking the upper one all around.
Joseph: Right.
Howard: So when you do a ten to fifteen percent upgrade to implants. What kind of implants? Are you talking about mini implants, full implants?
Joseph: Actually both. Whatever the bone will allow. I want the biggest one I can get in there. And that's… I mean that's Arkansas terminology but they proven that surface area is what holds the implant in. And so I want the biggest one within reason but I prefer to go like a three point two five up to a four point three or five. I use OsteoReady and I use OCO Biomedical implants.
Howard: Okay, OCO Biomedical, that's out of Albuquerque, New Mexico.
Joseph: Right.
Howard: What was the other one you said?
Joseph: OsteoReady. They used to be… it was Brady Frank are you familiar with Brady Frank?
Howard: Sure. In Seattle?
Joseph: Yes.
Howard: Right.
Joseph: It was his implant company. And I don't know if he sold it or done something with it, but now it's on the East Coast. The implants stayed the same so I kept using them.
Howard: But it's now… is Brady Frank involved with it anymore?
Joseph: I don't think so.
Howard: So he sold it to someone on the East Coast?
Joseph: Well. I don't know. I don't know who he sold it to.
Howard: Well. Were you on the East Coast?
Joseph: I had no idea. I just called a 1-800 number.
Howard: See, I'm always calling 1-800 numbers but that's a whole different… it’s a whole different…
Joseph: 800. 1-800.
Howard: It’s a whole different implant.
Joseph: Yeah.
Howard: So that is… so what percent would you say… or who do you use for a mini?
Joseph: If it's… if it’s on the upper I will use OCO.
Howard: OCO's biomedical.
Joseph: Right.
Howard: In Albuquerque has a mini implant.
Joseph: Right.
Howard: Okay.
Joseph: And I like OCO because they've got implants from I think two point four millimeters all the way up to six or seven millimeters in diameter.
Howard: So basically a mini implant by definition is anything under three point zero.
Joseph: That's exactly right.
Howard: Is the three point zero considered an implant or is that a mini? Is it two point nine, nine, nine and less is a mini or is it three point… ? Is three point oh a mini? Or is that a reform?
Joseph: All I know is that they just keep… they hammer one way or the other depending on who you're talking to. What you're reading.
Howard: Yeah.
Joseph: Three point oh is the cut-off for both. Three point oh and greater they say is a standard conventional implant and then anything three point oh and less is a mini. So a three point oh, I'm not sure what it is.
Howard: And 3M, one of the greatest dental companies in the world, they had a mini implant and they quit selling it. What was the name of their mini implant?
Joseph: Imtec?
Howard: Imtec. And I can't find anybody who will tell me why they stopped Imtec. Do you have any idea?
Joseph: No, sir. I know who makes one similar to it though, is Glidewell Labs out of California. They make one that's similar. But to answer your question if it's on the lower, I like those lodis. Are you familiar with those?
Howard: No.
Joseph: L –O – D – I.
Howard: L – O – D – I.
Joseph: And it's a LOCATOR Overdenture Implant and it's from Zest.
Howard: Zest. Yeah. That's been their core competency for a long time.
Joseph: They've got a new locator out now but I like the other one so well I hate to change.
Howard: Yeah.
Joseph: But the lodi comes either two point four or two point nine and it really works well on mandibular hard bone, but when you get into maxilla I finally had a guy tell me what it was. The thread pattern is wrong for maxillary cancellous bone, you need hard bone.
Howard: Well. The… who just made a change in the female part of the ball and socket where you're always having to change out the o-rings.
Joseph: Right.
Howard: And someone came out with a different o-ring that pretty much doesn't almost never has to be changed out. Have you heard of that?
Joseph: No, sir.
Howard: Was that the Zest one?
Joseph: Well, Zest… LOCATOR has housing and it's got a nylon insert inside that housing that snaps onto the implant.
Howard: Yeah. I think it's that nylon that has to be… is the key there because the other ones are more of a rubber material that went south on you pretty quick and this nylon one is going to last so much longer.
Joseph: Right. I have to change those out. And changing them out is really, really fast. But I can change out a nylon… two implants… less than five minutes on having back on.
Howard: Nice. So what percent of… so on these upgrades implants you say ten to fifteen percent upgrade. What percent are doing like a two or fours? How do you break that out? I mean…
Joseph: The least… Here's what I tell them. I don't like to. And I know like in Australia they're doing that now, I think it is where they put just one implant.
Howard: Yeah.
Joseph: But I tell them… I'm like… I don't like to. Because if one fails there's always a thirty-five percent chance your body's going to reject this. I never say the implant is going to fail because the implant doesn't fail. The body rejects it. You know titanium doesn’t change. So I tell them…
Howard: That’s crucial warning. I like that. The titanium is still fine.
Joseph: Yeah.
Howard: But your body didn't accept it.
Joseph: Right that's why I tell them.
Howard: And what percent of them are smokers, drinkers.
Joseph: Yeah.
Howard: Diabetes I mean it's not like you're doing this denture… overdentures on a yoga instructor.
Joseph: No. They're not eating apples in organic all day long. I can promise you and living on grilled chicken, and asparagus, and broccoli.
Howard: And they’re older.
Joseph: Right. So here's what I tell them. So I don't like two but I prefer three or four. And most of them get three. And I don't know the exact percentages. Some get four and then occasionally very few times did I do two.
Howard: So you know the Australian doing one?
Joseph: No sir. I just don’t they’re doing it.
Howard: But that was his point. With the fact that when you have two and one fails then you get this cockeyed deal. And he thinks the whole forces of just the whole thing just works better just pivoting off one right up the middle. And he swears by it.
Joseph: What I do is I'll put two about the canine position and then I'll put one dead center.
Howard: Yeah.
Joseph: And I tell them, look. If one of these fails, we still got two. And what we'll do is clean out this other one and we’ll put you another one in.
Howard: Yeah.
Joseph: And I don't get too caught up about the cost, meaning if I have to pay to put another implant in. I don't care.
Howard: What do you charging to place an implant? So you're saying you got to use the premium.
Joseph: Right.
Howard: So that's the twelve sixty-nine?
Joseph: Right.
Howard: That's twelve sixty-nine. Then how much for adding additional implants underneath it?
Joseph: I charge thirteen ninety-nine per implant. And I charged I think almost five like four eighty-nine or something like that for the abutment.
Howard: The abutment. You mean the casing in the denture?
Joseph: No sir. The LOCATOR if I attach that or…
Howard: Okay. So are you doing at two surgeries? So you'll place the implant. And let it completely heal up. Then go back on a second surgery and place the attachment.
Joseph: Very rarely. Most of the time I place the attachment same day. I’ll do first…
Howard: So thirteen eighty-nine for the implant and four eighty-nine for… what do you calling it?
Joseph: The abutment.
Howard: The abutment.
Joseph: Right.
Howard: And then any cost for the LOCATOR in the denture?
Joseph: No. It's all included. Charles Blair… I was wanting to add a fee for that. Because I still know I'm cheaper than most people on implants. But Charles Blair in his book on insurance coating said that you can't do that. That's part… the housing inside the denture is part of the abutment fee.
Howard: Did you watch his podcast I did with Charles Blair?
Joseph: No sir.
Howard: Oh, man. You got to go back and watch that. That was an amazing, an amazing podcast on… people just don't maximize their insurance billing. So you're basically getting eighteen hundred and seventy-eight dollars per implant then.
Joseph: Right.
Howard: So that's a nice fee. That's a nice fee. I mean you’re getting seven hundred and eighty-nine for the denture and then another eighteen hundred and seventy-eight. Yeah.
Joseph: (inaudible 34:54).
Howard: The podcast it was number 780 for Charles Blair's podcast. 780 Online dental coating with Dr. Charles Blair.
Joseph: I will watch it because I like him. I like his books.
Howard: Oh, yeah. Gosh. My, gosh. So you cover all this in your DVD series?
Joseph: I don't cover the implants. I was going to… go ahead.
Howard: Are you going to add another DVD someday?
Joseph: I want to do… I've had a lot of people ask me to do a DVD on partials. Removable partial dentures. And then some have asked about the implants. But a lot of guys just won't do implants. I just say, ‘you got to do them’. I mean you got to offer your patients something, and they don't want to go anywhere else. Especially if you're very ruled they don't want to go… they want to drive to Little Rock. They don’t want to go to Jonesboro, and those kind of places that are hour, hour and a half away. They want to get it done right here. They trust you.
Howard: So you did something that hardly anyone does. You had a practice for 11 years in Brinkley, Arkansas and you sold it and packed up. And then in 2016, you went to Searcy. I mean so you already have this well-established practice in Brinkley for over a decade. What made you pack up and leave Brinkley and go to Searcy?
Joseph: A ten year old boy. He's ten year old now. My wife and I adopted our son six years ago. And Brinkley was an hour away from my house. I was driving about an hour to hour and ten minutes a day. One way.
Howard: To where?
Joseph: From my house is in Newport, Arkansas and my office, the old office, was about an hour and ten minutes away from my house.
Howard: In Brinkley.
Joseph: In Brinkley. So I was driving there every day and I was on the road. So I was… I would leave about the time he got up and I would be getting home about the time he went to bed. So I was a part-time dad at best. My wife and I talked about it and said, ‘Hey, he's only going to be young once. I need to be a dad and he needs a dad a whole lot more and I need to be working and being gone’. So we just kept praying about it and this opportunity came open. I sold it and we came here. Last year’s a little bit of a struggle but this years… we just been blessed.
Howard: Wow. Why did you adopt a boy? I would give you all four of mine.
Joseph: Oh well.
Howard: I hired a U-haul and set them all your way. Poor Ryan, he has to stay here next to me and hear this shit all day long. One day in the middle podcast I mean he's probably just going to hit me over the head with a frying pan. Yeah. What is it work, family, friends, health? I mean it's like your whole life you juggle these four balls of work, family, health, friends. And work is the only ball that's a rubber ball. You drop work it'll bounce right back up. But the family, the friends, the health, those are porcelain balls, glass balls. You drop one of them and they shatter.
Joseph: That's right.
Howard: And you'll always have plenty of work. You can be a workaholic all you want, but man you can blow relationship with one of your four sons or your best friend or your health. I mean how many rich people got there and they skip the gym and they had a Starbucks in the morning, they ate McDonald's at lunch and then they're fifty something sixty, and they dropped dead of a heart attack. And it's like you can… Work as a rubber ball, family, friends, and health, that’s a glass ball. So if you're going to drop one, drop the work.
Joseph: Correct.
Howard: So that was cool.
Joseph: Let me show you some stuff.
Howard: My ex told me I should work more hours when my kids were young so I wouldn’t mess them up. She said, ‘you're really a bad influence so we really need you to work twelve hours a seven days a week and please don't ruin your children’.
Joseph: Yeah.
Howard: But it's too late they’re all ruined.
Joseph: Yes. This is what I do. So because I want to make sure you don't… I got the DVD. And then I had the… this is a transcript of the whole thing. So if a doctor buys this he can follow along.
Howard: We know it's tough because to help you market this I wanted to do a podcast. You ought to write an article in Dentaltown magazine about your system.
Joseph: Well I can. And I also…
Howard: Or would that… or would that… or would you be afraid you’d exploit it too much that they wouldn't need your system.
Joseph: No. I can… I mean it wouldn’t be hard to write this one article and explain it all. I do have this though as well. I was going to show you. I came… Doctor Griffin. Chris Griffin. He does a algorithm kind of thing for every one of his systems.
Howard: Right.
Joseph: So I put this together. It’s pretty fine print but for every system I have that. So it's just a flowchart of how you can follow along. And so what I decided to do, is that everybody who buys this system I'll just throw these flow charts in. Like this one is a new patient that's totally dentureless. The next one here is a new patient that has teeth and they want to get their teeth extracted. You know what I'm saying?
Howard: Yeah.
Joseph: (inaudible 40:13). And so there's a whole flowchart that says, ‘hey this is how you do it. One way or the other’. Then I have this one. This is my dentures here. It says what they cost and it's an economy, a deluxe, or a premium on the partial. And so I don't mind including that for people to see what we do. And then the last thing that I have here… and this right here is my checkoff list that my patients have to sign. This is probably worth more than anything.
Howard: Yeah.
Joseph: This is where I have them initial that they like, the color, the size, the shape, the link, the width, and the bite before I ever process it. And then I have down here, there will be a fee if you change your mind after it processed. I've never charged the fee but it cuts all that stuff out. All the wishy washes. And I have them sign it and have a witness and then I sign it.
Howard: You have a witness.
Joseph: Yeah.
Howard: That's all that's true though, isn’t it. Yeah. Well you know what? I wish… I’m emailing you right now with Tom Jacoby is the editor, and I wish… I wish you… and I also like Chris because the bottom line… there's something different about the South. I mean you're in Arkansas. And one of the greatest companies in the world, Walmart, was born in Rogers, Arkansas in 1962, the year I was born. Then they had their headquarters in Bentonville and Chris Griffin, he's over from Mississippi. And the boys in the South have one eye on the customer and one eye on cost.
And they always figure out… Another one is… who's that guy? Cory Glenn. I mean Cory Glenn… I mean if you gave that guy a quarter it squeeze thirty cents out of it. I mean they just… you guys just… I think it's because your customer base has less money. There's more poor people in Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi, Kentucky. And there's a lot of throw away money in California, and Connecticut, and Manhattan. I mean when people are coming in for a veneer in Manhattan it's not a price of (inaudible 42:24). And you boys just always find that entrepreneurialism, one eye on the customer, one eye on cost. You always figure out how to do something faster, easier, higher in quality, lowering costs. And I love you guys for that. Because I was from Kansas. I remember the first curriculum I ever went on. It was with the Pankey Institute in Key Biscayne, Florida. The guy’s opening lecture. I'll never forget. Here I am from Kansas. Parents from Parsons, Kansas. Completely born on the wrong side of the tracks. We’re all born in a barn. That's why we all leave the door open.
And they're talking about the A patient, the B patient, the C patient, the D and the F. My entire pedigree was the D and F patient that you're not supposed to treat. And I was just more Larry's like dude I'd rather own McDonald’s than Ruth Chris. And there's a hell of a lot more money. How many lectures you go to and they talk about Nordstrom’s, Nordstrom’s, Nordstrom’s. Well would you rather own Walmart or Nordstrom's?
Joseph: Walmart all day long.
Howard: Oh my god. And Sam Walton, do you know until the day he died his desk was a door on two… what do you call those? Sawhorses?
Joseph: Yeah.
Howard: It was a door on two. And when he died, he actually was transit flying back and forth to Houston interferon clinic. And when he died, they found him on the floor behind his desk. I mean he worked till he died. And his top managers, a couple of really big boys back in the day, got fired. Because when you work for Walmart, when you guys traveled. You stayed at the Motel 6 two-door room. And some of these guys… the Walmart stock was worth you know hundreds of millions of dollars. They're like,’well I'm going to go stay at a five-star resort’. And he says, ‘that ain't the culture of Walmart. And I don't want all your boys staying at the Motel 6 and you up there at the Marriott and they got fired for it. I mean he did not like… just because you were rich… But anyway I just love that whole story.
Joseph: There's a statue or a monumental in Newport because the store that fired him, that inspired him to… was a Ben Franklin store was in Newport. He got fired… my hometown. He got fired there and he told them, he said, ‘when I… I'm going to come back and I'm going to put you out of business’. And when he opened his store at Newport, Ben Franklin went out of business. And there's a monument at the old Ben Franklin store right now.
Howard: And what was Ben Franklin doing wrong? Why did you want to put him out of business?
Joseph: Because they fired him because he wanted to bring it to the masses. He wanted to have a… what we know as a Walmart philosophy and mentality in business and they didn't like that. And they fired him and he said, ‘when I come back I will put you out of business’ and he did it. He was friends with my grandpa.
Howard: He was… Sam Walton was?
Joseph: Yes sir.
Howard: Oh my god. I still got a picture. I was in Wichita… so that was six hours, and my dad… Let me tell you how weird my dad is. He's always, ‘Howard, there's all Muslims. They all try to make it back to Mecca once in their lifetime’. He says, ‘Well, we're capitalists. We are capitalists. We're gonna drive to Benton, Arkansas, or Rogers, Arkansas and we're gonna see the birthplace of capitalism in America’. I’m like, ‘Okay, whatever. You’re my dad’.
And we’ve got this big old Lincoln town car and we drove six hours all the way to Rogers. My dad he was telling me all these stories about Sam Walton and Ray Kroc and he was telling me about how Sam Walton would fly around. He met the owners of a JC Penney and Gibson's and TG and Y and he was a humble man. And he thought it was… he would go to all his major competitors and ask the owners. Well what do you think I'm doing right? And you know why they would tell him? You know why they would all give away their secret sauce? Because he was in Rogers and Bentonville. And all those other stores were only in the big urban cities.
And Sears said, ‘well the people of Rogers and Benton I mean the only thing they're good for is to send them a catalog. I mean you're not going to go out there and build a store’. And Sam was like, ‘well that's half of America’. Half of America lives in these little towns you never heard of like Rogers, Bentonville, Searcy. All these places Brinkley, Arkansas. No one's heard of Brinkley, Arkansas. They only hear of Little Rock. And dentists are still making that mistake. Now Sam Walton and Ray Kroc are dead. And two-thirds of all the graduating class goes to the big cities like Little Rock and says Brinkley, Searcy, Rogers, who the hell's gonna go there?
Joseph: They know nothing about demographic studies or nothing. Before I built this office I did traffic studies, demographic studies, I knew what the competitive ratio was before I… People don't know that stuff. They just want to go because it looks good.
Howard: Yeah.
Joseph: Hey I got something to show you. I showed you this once before but I just want to tell you, this is what inspired me.
Howard: You’re too kind. Is that Fred Pett on the cover?
Joseph: I believe it is. It’s either him or that Brady guy from the Patriots. I'm not sure.
Howard: The business of dentistry. Consumer dentistry of the ‘90’s‘. Ryan we have to make that audio book. So do you remember what year you bought that?
Joseph: 1994 or 5.
Howard: Wow. I wasn't even alive back then. So could have been me. That was too many years ago.
Joseph: I bought it in New Orleans. You spoke at the New Orleans… I don't remember if it was ADA or…
Howard: It was an ADA meeting.
Joseph: Yeah. You spoke there in like ‘94 or ‘95 something like that.
Howard: Yeah I spoke there ’94, ‘95 and then was banned from ever speaking for them again. You would not believe the letters I got from the ADA on that. I mean my God. You said fart eighteen times. You said shit. You said damn. And it's like dude that's PG-13. I mean rated-R there's nudity, the f-bomb. I said I'm the cleanest act you had. And they were just… it's so funny you go talk to a thousand… I mean that was a big audience. It was in New Orleans. I was so excited. I crushed it. I mean when I left there… I was loved there. I mean I crushed it.
But there's always that one, two, five percent. And they're all… and they only listen to that. I told the guy. I said, ‘dude I'm lecturing. I saw their faces I saw people spit up coffee and coke on the floor. Were you not in that room? And then they, ‘well look what she said said’. It’s like, ‘I don't care what she said. You're trying to please everyone. You need to die today’.
Joseph: I don't know if you remember saying this. You gave a lecture one time in Jonesboro, Arkansas. You remember that?
Howard: Yeah.
Joseph: Alright. So I had my brother there and one of the funniest things I ever heard you say. Was when you… I actually… when you say spit stuff on the floor. I did. I promise you. I had a mouthful of some… I don’t remember what it was but they got a shower.
You told the story about your how a vet and a dentist get it wrong. The vet cause all the people who supply him and they pay for his sign. And a dentist calls and says, ‘hey why don't… 3M won’t you sponsor my sign? And they said, no, no part of that. But a vet, Purina’ll sponsoring it, and all the heart guard and all that will sponsor his sign’. And you said so here's the difference in Americans. He said, ‘my dog got sick’. That's what you said and you went to the vet. And your dad bent down and kissed that dog. You said, ‘you're going to get to meet Jesus’. You remember that?
Howard: He’s name was Nippy and he gained… and he like doubled his weight in three days. I think I was about ten years old and dad was off doing something some sonic and my mom kept saying, ‘Well when your father gets back you can talk to him about it’. So my dad came back. I'm like, ‘dad, Nippy he's really sick’ and all that. So we drove down to vet. My dad got his big old Lincoln Town Car and he's got all these sonic drive-ins. He's got Bank.
And the vet looks at Nippy and he comes back and he says Nippy he's sick. He needs operation and it's gonna be a thousand dollars. My dad leaned over and kissed him and said, ‘Nippy, you're going to see Jesus’. And I'm like, ‘No, dad. No. Give him the thousand dollars’. He’s like, ‘I'm can get you a damn dog for free. I ain't paying a thousand dollars’. He said, ‘a fool and his money are always part. You don't invest a thousand dollars to a blankety-blank damn dog’. And so I cried, cried, cried.
So my dad negotiated with me. He said, ‘I'll tell you what. I’ll tell you what. I’ll take him to my buddy. He’s got a farm and we'll let him loose on that farm. And he'll run around and I'm sure he'll be fine’. And I bet when my dad took him to that farm, Nippy ran. He probably only ran about ten feet. And dad blasted him. He didn't even pay to put him down. He put him down himself. But yeah. That was tough.
And now… and now I practice, can't make this up, across the street from a veterinarian. Thirty years. I've been on my side a 48th Street. He's on his side. My office 3800. His office 5500. He is a million dollars a year more than me. And I can't tell you, in the last thirty years, how many times I told people they needed to get this dentistry done. They go, ‘I don't have the money. I just spent three thousand dollars on my cat’. It’s like cat. A cat is dinner in many countries. You paid three thousand dollars for your dinner?
Joseph: Yes.
Howard: How the hell do you spend three thousand dollars on dinner? But yeah. So I'm sure we just lost a lot of viewers. Sure a lot of people never listened to Dentistry Uncensored ever again.
Joseph: Okay Ryan edit that part out.
Howard: Ryan says he won’t. He wants this show to die more than anyone. There's no one that wants this show to come to end more than Ryan. But he's still regretting things as well. But yeah so let me ask you this question. So God dang I can't believe we already gone over and hour.
Joseph: And I got one thing too… I got one thing to say. You sent me an email one time asking me to do something for CE on Dentaltown?
Howard: Yeah.
Joseph: So I actually got it. I got the rough draft done. I've got the PowerPoint made. It’s on troubleshooting dentures and I was going to put that on your website on Dentaltown if you wanted.
Howard: You mean for the online CE?
Joseph: Yes sir.
Howard: I would absolutely love that. I mean that would be amazing.
Joseph: I’ve got… I’ve got… I don't know it's probably hour and a half, two hours worth of stuff on why people hate… why dentists hate dentures and why patients hate dentures. And if you can troubleshoot both of them, everybody's happy.
Howard: Well I will send you an email right now. So I am howard@dentaltown. The guy who does the online CE is Howard Goldstein. So since there was already a Howard, he’s HoGo H-O-G-O for howardgoldstein@dentaltown.com. I will send you guys an email right now. Well I would love that of course.
So my final question is this. She’s been listening to you for an hour. She's commuting to work. She graduated two months ago. She’s working as an associate of some office. And she's listening she's saying, ‘Joe, I hate dentures. I just hate them’. What would you say to her? I mean do you think she's a potential customer to go to Rapiddentures.com and learn this stuff or she hates it, she'll always hate it. I mean can you hate dentures and then one day you love them?
Joseph: Yes. Absolutely. Because if you stick strictly to the way they taught us in school, everybody's going to eventually hate them. And the way they taught us in school, it robs you of time, it robs you of money, it robs you of everything that's fun. Because I mean I won't say all of my friends are compassionate or passionate about dentistry, but I still am. I like it. It’s a good living. I'm not outside sweating when it's hot. I'm not you know outside freezing to death when it's cold. I'm in a controlled environment. So I like what I do.
But it's like anything if you don't know how to do it, or if the way it's always been done is horrible. Then no. You're always going to hate it. But if there's a faster, easier way that takes the stress off of you, it makes life a lot sweeter, a
whole lot sweeter. So yes, it's possible for anybody to learn to love dentures.
You know even a guy that's been doing it fifty years, forty years. You know the only problem with the dentist that's been doing it thirty or forty years, they hate change. They’re old dogs that don't like change. I don't like change as well as I used to. But I still welcome it because that's the only thing… only way progress happens is if I change. And so for a new person graduating dental school. Learn all you can take as much CE as you can. And yes, you may not have a good background in dentures but you can do dentures. Anybody can.
Howard: And another way they'd say that in Kansas is dogs bark at things that don't understand.
Joseph: That’s right.
Howard: And you hate dentures. You hate endo. You hate all this stuff because you don't understand it. You didn't get good at endodontist thing barking at root canals. The endodontist digs it. The endodontists gets it done. The oral surgeon gets out wisdom tooth out.
And another last thing is that, Regina Herzlinger is a PHD medical economist at Harvard University. And she showed everybody some very interesting research back in the day in her book. I think it was her book was Health versus Wealth, I forgot the name of it. The way she said that, the faster you do something, the higher the quality. And people wanted to think well it's really slow, you must be taking the time to do it right. She said, ‘no that's absolutely wrong’. If you do your hernia surgeries under five minutes, you mean to have a one percent failure rate. By time your hernia operation takes the surgeon ten minutes, he is five percent. By the time that hernia operation takes a half an hour, this guy's got a fifteen percent failure rate.
Well look at an oral surgeon. He'll pull all four of them wisdom teeth ten minutes. And then you've got some dentist taking around an hour with just one impacted tooth. Same thing with the endodontists. I mean I've seen these endodontist offices. They only schedule an hour for a molar root canal. They get them all done. So if you are…
Joseph: That’s right.
Howard: A lot of dentists say well when I tell some dentist that, ‘okay this guy across the street only schedules thirty minutes for a single crown’. ‘Oh Hell, he's a hack. My god I schedule an hour and a half and he's going too fast’. No. I guarantee you. You have a… this guy numbs and while it's soaking in, he's taking the shade and the impression with the temporary. And then when the timer goes ding, he's using septocaine. Set the timer for four minutes. You don't even set a timer. You just give him septocaine and go back to your office and start playing on Facebook.
And then as soon as that four minutes he packed his zero cord in a one card, so he pushes a tissue down and out then he preps it. And then he makes a temporary with his assistant because four-handed making a temporary. You make that temporary in three or four minutes and in that temporary, you find out when you're trimming the temporary that, where the margin go? You don't have a margin. You learn a lot about your prep when you're making a temporary. And then you're just the exclusion and you just through the temporary.
Well that's why you're getting reduction coping because you made the temporary after you took the impression. So that guys got that the temporary completely made. He's got the margin. He’s got his clearance. He takes the impression while that sets up. He goes his hygiene check comes back. The impression is good. Cement is temporary gone in 30 minutes.
And the guy dinking around for an hour and a half is a guy who gets a reduction coping back or remake. ‘Well I delegated my core back to my assistant, because I like to delegate because then I'm more efficient’. Dude you left the room for fifteen minutes for the cord packing delegation when you could have stayed in the room and done it yourself in two minutes. And they leave the assistant in the room alone to make the temporary and they give her a half an hour to do that. when they could have made the temporary in four minutes.
Joseph: Yeah. My temporaries are three to five minutes every time. Very soon I’m not going to take any longer than that. I was going to tell you I got it buddy who’s a cajun. Okay. And I went to school to LSU. So he called me one day, I'm in school. And I practiced this way the rest of my entire career. He said… he called me Barker. He said, ‘Barker don't be spending all day on that tooth’. He said, ‘I can wash my truck forty-five minutes. It’s a big old truck’. He said, ‘forty-five minutes I'm all the way around my truck, got the inside clean, the outside clean’. He said, ‘that tooth is about five millimeters across in about ten millimeters tall. Don’t be all day’. He said, ‘cut that tooth’. And I practice that way. I don't… we don't see any extra endo because of it. Our patients are happy and they didn't have to sit in the chair, and that's the way I practice my whole career.
Howard: Yeah
Joseph: Truck.
Howard: I got four fingers they stand for faster, easier, higher quality, lower cost. And if you're not doing everything faster, easier, highering quality, lowering cost, you're wasting my time. And so many people they're always asking to sign an NDA. I get a request a sign NDA every damn two weeks. And it's a nondisclosure agreement. I won’t sign one because number one, I'm in dentistry.
Joseph: Yeah.
Howard: You want me to sign some deal about… and I say first of all two things. Number one, every single person I've signed to NDA for has never brought the product to market. Every single one. Because you shouldn't be worried about someone going to steal your idea. You should get your idea to market. And your protective mode around your business is you've got it to market. You've got it to market faster and easier and higher in quality and lowering cost. Then you think your salvation is going to be because I signed a nondisclosure agreement. I mean imagine explaining that on Shark Tank to Mark Cuban. Well I can't give you the pitch today on Shark Tank until you sign a nondisclosure agreement. What do you think mister wonderful would say to you if you said that on Shark Tank? Sign my NDA.
And again love you guys in the South. Love Chris Griffin. Love Cory Glenn. Love Joseph Barker, you. Please go to his website, rapiddentures.com and learn how to make dentures faster, easier, higher in quality, lower in cost. Learn to love dentures. Again Joseph, I can't wait till you do an online CE course or write us an article.
Because I remember when I got out of school in ‘87, they predicted that dentures would go the way of the dinosaur. And now I'm out of school thirty years later and they make more units of denture today than they did in 1987. A lot of it's because we get 1 million legal immigrants a day. I mean a year and two million illegal. A lot of the dentures I'm making they’re people immigrated from Romania, Mexico, Central, South America, so dentures ain't going away. They told me it was going away thirty years ago and it's bigger today.
There's a lab.... I'm in Phoenix. If I drive to the Mexican border Nogales, there’s a lab down there where all the impressions are sent to Nogales, Arizona, United States. Then they put them in a van, drive them across, and they have the partial framework in Nogales, Mexico. They make twelve hundred partial frameworks a day. A lot of these labs that do dentures and partials don't actually cast the framework and all their customers are dental labs. But man they're doing twelve hundred partial frameworks a day. So trust me a removable is going to be here for the next century.
Joseph: I don't worry about anybody coming in and hurting me. I don't. Because it's not that I think I've got it figured out. It’s just so much out there. There's a ton of removable to do for everyone. And then if you can do the upsell and get the implant, that's even better.
Howard: Yeah. And my sister lives in… she lives in Fort Smith, Arkansas. How close are you from Fort Smith?
Joseph: It's about three hours from where I'm at right now.
Howard: Yeah and I'll tell you what. There’s two states that are the most beautiful that no one talks about and it's Arkansas and North Carolina. You got four seasons. It's gorgeous, the seasons are mild like you still get the spring and the fall but you don't have the… I grew in Kansas. Those… in Nebraska. I mean those winds… and I mean Arkansas. And is it the White River?
Joseph: Yes sir. That’s why I moved home for the White River.
Howard: Yeah. So when my dad and I went to see Ben Bill. Birthplace of Sam Walton, we went trout fishing in the white river and I would trout fishing there two or three times with dad. And that was the most amazing trout fishing, the beauty. Now is there a place where the White River meets the Brown river? Is there a Brown River too?
Joseph: No. It's a Black River.
Howard: Black?
Joseph: Yes.
Howard: So it's where the White meets the Black?
Joseph: That's where I live. Is right near...
Howard: That’s where dad and I went trout fishing with Dan and Beverly Carney, the founder of Pizza Hut. A bunch of sonic guys.
Joseph: No. That's North Fork River. That’s on up. I live where White and Black meet but white meets the Buffalo up there and it also meets the North Fork River which is kind of right up in that area where around Rogers, Bentonville. Around Mountain home.
Howard: God dang that was fun. Just caught trout all day long. I think all we were using was a little gold hook and a kernel corn.
Joseph: Yeah. That's what I used to this day.
Howard: Yeah. Unbelievable. Unbelievable. All right buddy. I hope you… thank you for spending your Friday afternoon coming on the show, talking to my homies. I hope you just have a rocking hot weekend. How old’s your little boy now?
Joseph: He’s ten.
Howard: Just remember this. Don’t ever forget this. Right now you're like sitting on the beach and you're enjoying the ocean. You have no idea there's a hurricane hundred miles out to sea, packing four hundred mile an hour winds. When my boys before, the oldest one got his car keys. I thought you know my boys are so perfect. I should write a damn book how to raise four perfect boys. They were perfect and then one by one got their car keys and got in more trouble an hour and a half than they did their previous sixteen years. So you got about six more years. It just smooth sailing and you think you're the best parent in the world and you give them a pair of car keys and he'll drive on the other side of town. And it’s usually always trouble has something to do with either a six pack of beers, a girl or the craziest friend from their school. But between those three things, enjoy the next six years.
Joseph: I think of something I told my wife. I said, ‘I figure we got at least fifteen or sixteen tops’.
Howard: Oh yeah. Yeah. Man there's nothing more dangerous on earth than to giving a boy a set of car keys. That is the worst idea anyone ever came up with. I should dig up Henry Ford and shoot him twice and bury him again for inventing that damn assembly line. All right buddy have a rockin’ hot day.
Joseph: You too. Thank you. Bye. Bye.