Dr. Kenny Wilstead is a young dentist in East TX most recently known for many of his videos that grabbed global attention when many international news agencies like Inside Edition, Abc news, Yahoo news and dozens more wanted to share his videos on their program. Dr. Wilstead was most surprised how filming just a few reactions of his patients could change so many lives and warm so many hearts. He is currently living in Longview TX with his wife of 17 years and his 3 teenagers. His road to success has been adventurous to say the least and for any of those who know him, he is the first to help any dentist who wants to learn how to be fast, confident and competent. He currently runs the most successful practice in East TX, called Marshall Family Dental. As an associate in that office still, he produces over $170k/month as the only dentist. This is the same office that was about to close its doors permanently before his arrival Dr. Wilstead is currently making necessary arrangements to start his own practice in Longview TX. East TX is his home and he is excited to bring some new ideas to the field of dentistry.
Dr. Wilstead’s biggest passion is sharing his experiences, successes, and failures with the entire profession. He can be contacted via his Facebook page and Messenger under Kenny Wilstead if you would like him to be a part of any of your upcoming speaking events.
http://www.marshallfamilydental.com/
VIDEO - DUwHF #992 - Kenny Wilstead
AUDIO - DUwHF #992 - Kenny Wilstead
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Howard: It's just a huge honor for me today to be podcast interviewing Dr. Kenny Wilstead all the way from Marshall, Texas. Like I've said a thousand times on the show, you need to get two hours away from a major city. That seems to be a huge verbal. He's two hours away from Dallas in Marshall, Texas, a town of twenty-five thousand people with only six dentists. How damn cool is that?
He is a young dentist in East Texas most recently known for many of his videos that grabbed global attention with many international news agencies like Inside Edition, ABC News, Yahoo News, and dozens more who wanted to share his videos on their program. By the way, Kenny, can you email me any of those videos that we can play at the end of this podcast?
Kenneth: Definitely.
Howard: Right on. Just send them to ryan@dentaltown.com because I'm a big fan. I love those videos. I watched them all again today. Dr. Wilstead was most surprised how filming just a few reactions of his patients can change so many lives and warm so many hearts.
He is currently living in Longview, Texas with his wife of seventeen years and his three teenagers. His road to success has been adventurous to say the least. For any of those who know him, he is the first to help any dentist who wants to learn how to be fast, confident, and competent.
He currently runs the most successful practice in East Texas called Marshall Family Dental. As an associate in that office still, he produces over $170,000 a month as the only dentist. This is the same office that was about to close its doors permanently before his arrival.
Kenny is currently making necessary arrangements to start his own practice in Longview, Texas, East Texas, in his home, and he's excited to bring some new ideas to the field of dentistry. How far away is Longview from Marshall?
Kenneth: About thirty minutes.
Howard: Okay. Are you going to have two offices then?
Kenneth: I'll have kind of a piece of this office. I'm not the owner of it. I'm an associate. So they gifted me 10%, so I'll be coming back here about once or twice a month just to kind of service some of the patients I'll be leaving.
Howard: You were born and raised right up the street from me in Mesa, Arizona.
Kenneth: That's right. Just down the street.
Howard: What high school do you go to?
Kenneth: Westwood.
Howard: Westwood. So why did you not stay in Mesa?
Kenneth: Well, I went back there after dental school with all the intentions in the world to stay, but I kind of just started driving down the street. I was looking for kind of a good location, and I found out that wherever there was a good location there was already like seven dentists at that intersection. I did linger there for about a year. I worked for Eric Kerbs. I worked for Mark Costes, different people for that year just to kind of see what I wanted.
At the end of it all, I just realized that it was just so overly saturated in my honest opinions that I saw the prices were going down in the services and the expectations were going up. In all reality, I just didn’t like where every patient was really determining good dentistry based off of prices.
One time, I was looking for a different job or something and I remember going on Google. I found this one dentist who had like two and a half stars on Google. I looked up and I thought, "Man, he must be a bad dentist." I started reading some of the reviews, and I realized that they were all based off of his high prices. Here's someone's reputation being tarnished all because he felt like he merited a higher price tag for his services and people are actually like bad mouthing him and giving him that kind of a score just because of that alone.
That's when I realized a little bit that I didn't want my reputation to be based off of my prices but more just their treatment and the way that they're cared for.
Howard: You worked for Eric Curbs. Is that C-U-R-B-S?
Kenneth: I think it’s K-I-R-B-S.
Howard: K-I-R-B-S. Then you worked for Mark Costes. He's one of the most famous dentists in Arizona.
Kenneth: Yeah. I used to work for him when he was basically up in Prescott.
Howard: In Prescott, yeah. Eric is going to be working in Prescott next week. So I'm going to be driving in Prescott. I got to go stop by and see Mark. It's so funny. I mean demographics matter. I've had on every practice management consultant that I can think of. My gosh, they all said the same thing that you need to fly somewhere on Southwest Airlines, and then you got to be at least two hours away from that airport.
Kenneth: That's exactly right.
Howard: I mean like when I moved to Ahwatukee thirty years ago, I mean, god, there was no fluoride in the water. There are no dental schools. Now, there's fluoride in the water and dental school in Mesa and in Glendale. Do you know the graduating size classes?
Kenneth: Geez, you mean there? I don’t know.
Howard: Yeah in Glendale. Can you find that on the web? It's crazy. I mean there's a hundred dentists now in Ahwatukee.
Kenneth: You couldn't pay me to work. I mean I love going home to visit family and my kids would love to know their cousins a little bit better, but it's just not worth it honestly.
Howard: How did you find Marshall then?
Kenneth: Gosh, I was going to go to Alaska, and at the last second I just got kind of a feeling that I should pick a different state. I think Alaska at the time was already getting kind of that oversaturation point. At least, it felt like that there was already a wave that had hit there.
So I kind of was like, "You know what? I know one or two people." In fact, Mark Costes used to have a partner who had left Mark to go to Texas. I thought, "Wow, if Mark is this good of an employer and a friend and a dentist and he had somebody actually leave him to go to Texas," I thought, "there must be something in Texas."
Mark at the time, he didn't have another practice ready for me to completely move into at that time. So I was like, "You know what? I'm just going to look into this." Also, my wife wanted to live in a different kind of scenery as well.
I called up his ex-partner in Texas and talked to his wife actually. She said that he was doing so good here. The sound in her voice was like a twinkle in her eye kind of thing. So I changed my tickets from Alaska to Texas and scooped up some interviews here.
Howard: Wow. Yeah, demographics matter. A lot of these people, they're always crying that they graduate $350,000 to $400,000 in debt. Then the next thing out their mouth you say, "Well, if you drive from Phoenix to California at the state border is a city called Blythe. They don't even have a dentist. How did I know that? Because Pew Research has done the research for every state, and they're out there trying to get a dental therapist passed in all these states, and they're very transparent. I mean it's a non-profit. So they've done the research.
I'm from Kansas. I just got back from visiting my mom last night. 11% of the towns don't even have a dentist. Anybody that I know that went to one of those towns, I mean it was a million dollar practice year one. But people say, "Ah well, you know, I don't want to go live in a small town." It's like, well, it's a huge impact on your life, isn't it?
Kenneth: Oh my gosh. I mean you take away money problems. I get to go to the movies every other night with my wife because I'm like, "What else am I going to do?" I mean, yeah, I practice in a town of twenty-five thousand, but you'd be surprised how many towns are next to those towns that are within driving distance easily.
I mean you know Phoenix. You know that area. I mean usually anywhere you live there you have to drive at least forty-five minutes to get to work where you're at. Here, I drive thirty-five minutes to get to work, and I'm in the city next door making a killing.
Howard: I know. Okay. I'm in Phoenix. I have a friend in Queen Creek. On the interstate, it takes me an hour to drive there. I mean I'm going sixty-five the whole time. Then I have another friend in Sun City in the other direction. It takes me an hour to get to him. If I left [inaudible 0:07:56] in Queen Creek and drove all the way to Central, I mean it's two hours. I hadn't even left Phoenix.
But I think the whole mindset of this commute is going to be completely gone as soon as driverless cars are here. I mean they're really here. Google chose Phoenix as their area, so you can see driverless cars everywhere. In fact, one just killed someone in Tempe. Did you read about that?
Kenneth: No.
Howard: Two days ago, a driverless car killed a person in Tempe, and everybody is freaking out on it. But there's no balance in the reporting. I mean forty thousand Americans die in their car every year. I'm sure the driverless cars are going to be a thousand times better than a talking monkey driving the wheel.
That two hour commute as soon as that car turns into a box with a bed and a big screen or a desk and a computer, you'll get off work. You'll just go crawl in bed and take a two-hour nap. The next thing you know, ding-ding, you're here. I think the whole driving concept will be killed with driverless cars.
Kenneth: Yeah, I can see that. I mean I like the drive honestly. I mean for me to drive thirty-five to forty minutes it really is just easy driving. It's just down a highway. I'm not in and out of traffic at all. It's not bumper to bumper in any way. It's really to me just really relaxing. I get to listen to some audio books. I get to make a few calls or voice to text a few things here and there. It's probably my favorite part of the day honestly so it's nice.
Howard: So what advice would you give? I want to get you on the show. What dental school did you go to?
Kenneth: Temple.
Howard: Temple in Philadelphia?
Kenneth: Yeah.
Howard: Did you ever consider staying there?
Kenneth: I like Philadelphia a lot. My wife, she was actually working for a dentist out there that I was really close with. I like that area honestly a lot. I mean it was probably just one of the prettiest places to live. I liked the different demographics there. You just go twenty minutes and you're in another country. It feels like every twenty minutes you change a country.
We liked it, but we just wanted to go. This is where we're most familiar. We have a lot of family around here. My wife has eleven brothers and sisters. I have seven. They're all in Arizona in different places like that. We just wanted to get back to where our roots are, but at the same time not be so far away that it makes it impossible to visit.
Howard: Wow. Your wife has eleven brothers and sisters?
Kenneth: Those Damn Mormons you know.
Howard: If you practice where they lived, all you'd be doing is free dentistry the rest of your life.
Kenneth: Yeah, you're right. I have over a hundred cousins in Arizona and I wouldn't get much done that's for sure.
Howard: Oh my god, yeah. It's a full time practice when you're doing free family dentistry. So what advice do you have for the young kids?
Kenneth: Well, a few things. First of all, I guess the biggest thing to start really quickly was about being an associate, which is what I am. I've been practicing almost eight years now. Originally, I obviously wanted to practice by myself. Sometimes that's not possible with what banks will tell you, yes or no. Really, I got told no in that first year of getting my own place. I'm like, "You know what? That's not a bad thing. That just means I get to learn off somebody else."
To me, every dentist has been practicing over twenty years. I mean can you imagine all the CE courses, all the mistakes that they've made, the countless amounts of dollars that they've spent especially the ones I worked for to learn their craft even better? And here I get to swoop in and steal all of their information and work and see it every day, and if I get myself in a bind that they're there to bail me out. I mean it was by far, and you're not getting paid any less. You're using their twenty-year reputation to get you patients. As long as it's a viable practice that's doing well in an area that's doing well, you may not be making as much as you'd like to, but to me what you're gaining an experience completely trumps anything now that you kind of take all that experience.
I think I did four years as an associate. I'm still an associate now, but I'm by myself. But in those first four years, I was working shoulder to shoulder with another dentist. In fact, I actually worked for fifteen different offices since I graduated. I'm not ashamed to say any of that because to me I look at it as fifteen locations where I got to learn how to do it or how not to do it. I get to offer dentistry that not very many dentists in Texas are able to offer at a high level, so the more experience you can get moving around.
I loved Arizona. I think I worked in seven or eight different places in Arizona while I was there. That's the first thing that I would definitely preach about a little bit. It's just don't be afraid to be an associate. I mean right now I'm still an associate. This month I have on the books worth $240,000, I think. As an associate that is going to net me like $65,000 this month. That's not bad for an associate.
Howard: Not bad? Oh my God, I mean that's just crazy. If you're going to do 240 and you get paid 65, are you paid a percent? What percent is that?
Kenneth: I'm paid 30%.
Howard: 30% of production collection, adjusted production?
Kenneth: Adjusted production, but it's seems like it's about yeah.
Howard: Yeah 30% adjusted production. I mean that's just crazy good money. Crazy good money. How many dentists do in Arizona that will make $65,000 this year?
Kenneth: I mean after they pay everything, there's not much left over there.
Howard: I know. Did you have a lot of student loans or did you have a rich daddy pay for the whole thing?
Kenneth: Oh no. I took out every loan that they would give me. I have three kids all through nine years of college. So I took out every private loan. I think I came out of school over I think it was $550,000.
Howard: Wow. 550. That was how many years ago? Eight years ago?
Kenneth: Yeah.
Howard: Eight years ago. How's that loan now?
Kenneth: Well, it hasn't gone down very much because if you don't own it. I mean I've spent the first few years gaining all that experience, Whenever you put yourself next to another dentist every single day, they're getting a lot of the work. You're getting some of it. You're getting a lot of experience, but you're not getting a lot of pay. So you're getting a lot of deferment in your student loans in the beginning.
What I did though is I did calculate it experience gaining while I knew that on the back end I would just catch up. Now, I'm able to start chunking away at it, but the problem is the interest rates. Then you add the deferment penalties and just things like that. It doesn't go down. Now that I'm obviously in a position now where I can go out and get my own office, it's going to start whittling down pretty fast.
Howard: What motivates you more to get your own office even though you're crushing it there or pay down the student loans?
Kenneth: Just get my own office. Definitely get my own office just because for doing the same amount of work, I can get an extra 15% of what I'm getting now. I could easily this month have made close to $100,000 instead of $65,000 in one month.
Howard: That is amazing. What type of dentistry are you doing? Are you placing implant s? Do you do molar root canals? Are you pulling wisdom teeth? What are you actually doing?
Kenneth: There's not a single thing I don't do. For example, I mean in the last thirty days I did two hundred crowns total that included the bridge units. I did about thirty-two root canals in the last thirty days as well. I do about ten implants a month. I don't do Medicaid. I am a PPO office, so we take mostly insurance. We take over thirty insurances here.
Really, I guess, which brings me into my next point though is that numbers like that really for most people they're only possible if you have a certain mindset about one category that I don't think is really touched on very often and that is speed. I mean if you are not actively and consciously looking and trying to really, really - people think that the first thing that happens when you cut down on your time is quality. I don't know why. I've done things my whole life where I'm like, "Can I do this faster?" And I never once felt like along the way that that's what happens. I mean you just get more efficient. You get better. You think of your steps faster.
I remember one time I had a friend of mine who wanted to switch the engine out of my car, and he said he would take all weekend to do it and stuff. I didn't know how much it costs to do it. He said like 1500 bucks and he's going to spend the weekend doing it. I'm like, "Okay." Then afterwards, he fixed it and it worked and stuff. Then I found out the next week that the guy down the street that said that he would have done it like in a few hours at his shop on a Friday evening for like 400 bucks. I thought to myself, "Wow." Do I automatically assume that just because the guy does it down the street in his shop in four hours that that meant that he was going to do it with less quality? No, he's just done so many more of them and he's done it so often that he knows exactly what he's doing. He has all the stuff there and he can just knock right through, and it's perfect.
To me, that's really been my mindset, is how fast can I do this? How fast can I do this? The only rule I have is don't sacrifice quality. You can look through my Facebook because I post everything that I do virtually on Facebook. It's not on my Marshall Family Dental account. It's actually on my personal account, Kenny Wilstead.
Quality has never once been a problem. That's what the four years I was talking about earlier really came down to is learning how to do it perfectly over and over and over and over again. Now, all I got to do is just duplicate that, just do it faster, and how good is my assistant.
I mean I do crowns in ten minutes. They're in the office for thirty minutes total and they're out and that's not unusual. That's sometimes with a buildup. That's me using a slow speed to get out the soft decay as well. It's not me skipping that step because it takes too long to grab my slow speed and a slow bur bore out the dentin that's soft. No, I do that too. You just got to know exactly what you want. You got to go after it. People are just like, "You're done?" I'm like, "Yeah." I mean if it takes me a tooth over two minutes to extract, I'm not doing something right. Everything is about speed. If you can't do a root canal in under thirty minutes, then honestly you kind of suck at root canals. I mean I genuinely do so many root canals I don't have anybody coming back.
I used to be a dental assistant back when I was twenty-one or twenty-two in Utah. For two and a half years, I watched this dentist do work that kept coming back all the time like this is sensitive or I still have an ache right here. We kept having to redo his work twice. The only thing I ever told myself is like I'll make sure that whatever I do that nobody ever comes back for that process ever again unless it's a different tooth. If my crowns are coming off, if my fillings are coming out, if my contacts aren't good, and all those things really mattered to me, so I really just made sure that everything of those concrete things are there.
I don't know why people take so long to do some of this stuff. It just doesn't take me that long. I know that has a humongous effect on the bottom line at the end of the day. I mean it's nothing to do for me to start a day out with $4,000 on the schedule and end with like $14,000 on the schedule just because the treatment came in. I said, "Do you want to do that right now?" They said, "Yeah." I said, "I'll have it done in less than an hour." They're like, "Really? You're going to do this bridge in less than an hour?" I'm like, "Yeah." It's I pull the tooth, shape the other ones, put a temporary bridge on. I don't even impress that day because obviously I want that hole to close in and heal and get to its final kind of resting place. Then I'll impress. But to drill two teeth and to pull a tooth and put that temporary bridge on is if that takes more than an hour, I mean that's $3,300 for the day and that should take an hour.
It's just to me about speed. If you're not really looking at that clock, you're really sacrificing a lot of potential for what you can do that day. That's just my main thing, but nobody ever does it or thinks about it or talks about it because they hear all these numbers of how long it takes. The first thing they think about is, "Well, then he must be cheating the system or doing something some way." I'm like, "Well, then I'll just wait for these patients to come back." So far, I don't get phone calls. Other dentists who have seen my work, other specialists in the city, they say my margins are perfect. My labs say, "We love getting your work to build your crowns from it."
Until somebody starts telling me in any way, shape, or form that it's sacrificed quality, then I'm going to keep doing it this way, and it seems to be working.
Howard: Regina Herzlinger was the first woman tenured faculty at the Harvard School of Business. She's got a doctorate in business administration, a DBA. She's been writing about associating speed with quality for years. Dentists all know that. I mean obviously the oral surgeons are faster than the general dentists on pulling wisdom teeth. The endodontists are faster than general dentists doing molar endo.
I think she started with - I forgot what it was. It was either appendectomy or something, anyway, a procedure. She started studying their times. The doctors that did it under four minutes had no failures. In like six minutes, it was like 5%. By the time the doctor took like twenty minutes to do the same surgery, they had 10% failures. I mean she's been harping on this for years that the reason people are slow is because they actually don't know what they're doing. They don't buy the equipment. They don't get the training.
I asked the question on dental town yesterday. No one even answered it. The New York Times said that the average NFL game is three hours. In that three hours, there's only eleven minutes of action.
So I posted. What percent of the crown appointment, how long do you think the average dentist schedule for a crown?
Kenneth: An hour. Four or five or six units at least.
Howard: Yeah. An hour is the average. An hour. I have a lot of friends that schedule an hour and a half, an hour and a half for a crown. But say an hour a crown, what percent of the time of that hour do you think you're actually even drilling on the tooth?"
Kenneth: Gosh. I mean I don't know dude. Seriously. For me if it's more than five to nine minutes, I'm like, "What am I doing?" Are we going over the same exact spot like over and over again? It doesn't make sense.
Howard: Drill, rinse, dry, look. Drill, rinse, dry, look. Drill, rinse, dry. They just do that for like twenty or thirty. It's like, "Dude, just prep the damn tooth and stop it. Just do it once and right." So you only schedule thirty minutes for a molar crown?
Kenneth: Yeah. You want to know what? I'm not going above. I'm not on top of the gums either. I'm still subgingival. You think, "Oh he's probably not going subgingival." I'm like, "No, I go subgingival on the interproximals and on the fascia." I go to the gums on the lingual, but I'm suggestible on all the three sides of the tooth.
The only thing I do different though is I do Traxodent. Traxodent to me is perfect. You put that on for five minutes. You have them bite down on a cotton roll that totally goes over the whole entire prep. You have them sit there for five minutes and you come back. Come back any sooner, you're going to still get a tiny bit of bleeding. But after five minutes, man, I think it's bone dry for five to ten straight minutes. The cool thing about it is it reflects the gum level. The tissue is reflected. You're honestly getting an amazing impression and I was subgingival. Again, like I said, I'm not allowed to cut those.
Howard: Go through your thirty minutes. Just go through the procedure what you do for thirty minutes.
Kenneth: I mean the patient usually knows. We do a quick pre-impression. If a tooth is missing a little chunk of it, my staff knows to put a little wax in that portion of the tooth. If they don't, they know to drill it out of the blue bite. So either one of those, they're not going to screw it up.
Howard: So you take a blue bite for a pre-impression?
Kenneth: That's right.
Howard: Who makes blue bite? Is that Blu-Mousse? No.
Kenneth: Yeah, it's Blu-Mousse.
Howard: But it's not the company Blu-Mousse blue bites from something.
Kenneth: I don't know. I just use what the staff gives me.
Howard: Okay. Blue bite or Blu-Mousse so that's your preop.
Kenneth: So I did my pre-op and I get them numb, and I give them a few minutes. Obviously, we want them to be numb. As soon as I know that they're numb though, I sit down. I take a fatter, shorter, what I call a lawnmower bur. I named it that because it just mows through the tooth. I take the top down in two stages. I'd take one down in an incline. I'd take the other one down in a decline. I'll take it down at least two and two and a half millimeters.
Then I'd take the same version of that, which I don't like long burs. These are shorter ones. When you flip it to that lingual side, you don't want the tongue to be able to sleeve up in between the head of your handpiece and that bur and get wound up by it. If you get the shorter bur and the shorter shaft, you can sit there and work on that lingual side really fast.
Then I get the same bur but it's the skinnier version of it, but it's still the shorter shaft. I literally right then take the entire thing around the whole facial, the whole mesial, the whole distal. Then I'll actually use that same bur and come above the gingiva on the lingual. I'll check usually the distal lingual as the only area that I need to glance at with my mirror to see if I got it. If I don't, then I'll just connect it and I'll just work on it for about thirty seconds to make sure that I like that seam between those two line angles.
Then I'll soften the corners on the top, so that now the sides and the top don't have a right angle and don't have a really sharp angle. I'll soften all of those. My staff knows that as soon as I'm softening those, they're getting me out the Traxodent. As soon as I soften that, they gave me the Traxodent and I put it around the gums. Then they'd give me the little cotton thing I have them bite them down and say, "I'll be back in five minutes."
Then after five minutes, I'll come back in. Usually in those five minutes, I'm actually in another room doing a root canal or something. I'll come back in, and they've already sprayed it off. Then I just go in there and I say, "Okay. Start." Then I'll do a little hand motion. I don't do all of the scanning and all that kind of stuff. I'm just simple quarter tray with heavy body on the quarter tray. I take the light body around the tooth, and I have them bite down. I make sure I watch that bite really closely to make sure their bite is on basically is what I'm doing.
If I like it, I walk back out and my staff can pretty much pull it out. They'll bring it to me after five minutes, and I'll approve it. All the while, they already got the temp in their mouth setting up.
Howard: It blows my mind what people think when they make a website. I'm looking at Traxodent on Premier USA. It’s P-R-E-M USA. They have a photo of that. I was going to post that photo on Dentaltown, but they won't let me save it. It's like why would you not want to let someone save a picture of a product that you're selling? I'm very amazed at a dental.
But Traxodent, so I looked at that.
Kenneth: If I didn’t use Traxodent, it would take me at least double the amount of time to do everything I do.
Howard: Wow. That is so cool. Isn't that weird?
Kenneth: It's not white milky. It's not viscous, not at all. It's very pasty. You just put it around. It's very easy to aim it. It looks like a little flowable tube kind of thing, but it's very pasty. You just squirt it right in and then push a cotton pellet down that goes right over the whole top. I think it comes with those pellets, those cotton things. You'd bite down on that and put some pressure.
Howard: What impression material do you use?
Kenneth: For the temps, it’s Integrity. The impression material, gosh, I don't even know. I just don’t., honestly. To me, all of them pretty much do the same thing. It's like Impregum quality.
Howard: What would you say to a kid who graduates with a lot of student loans like you did but thinks they need to buy a CEREC machine? Why are you using an impression and sending it to the lab and why are you not using a CEREC? What are your thoughts on all that?
Kenneth: Because I want the patient to leave. I want them gone. I want them to leave. You got to put them somewhere while [inaudible 0:28:26]. I'm like if they're out in the waiting room, now you got to track more parts and more pieces throughout the day. When I got that impression and when that temporary is on, I get to say bye. These people, no one ever is going to bitch about that like ever. In fact, it actually enables me to charge only two thirds down and one third on seat date. Where when you give them a CEREC, now you have to charge the entire thing because they're seating at that day.
I mean obviously demographics matter. If you're in downtown Dallas and people are very busy and you got a busy practice and people don't ever want to come back in. They made that slot for that day. They don't want to come back in a month. Fine. But for everywhere else, you now get to charge two thirds down of whatever portion their portion is and then the other third on seat date, and they like that. If the insurance pays this and their portion is maybe 500 or 600 bucks, "Hey, today you only owe me 300 bucks. You can the other 200 in a month." And they say, "Oh good," and they say yes.
I just get a lot more yeses when I can split it up into two visits, and the next visit is pretty simple. You're just ten minutes and ten minutes out. You just pop one in and pop the other one on and you're done.
I just don't like CEREC because I just don't think - I mean I've used them. I wasn't really that impressed. It seemed every office I ever went in that have a CEREC machine, it was sitting next to the wall more than it was being utilized. It's a very expensive to just sit there, and it takes a long time to pay itself off.
I just didn't honestly think the quality was you're doing it for posterior teeth. I don't know. I just saw them sitting around a lot. It's a lot of extra time to sit there and scan it. Then you got to go back around, and somebody's got to digitize it before you can start milling it. It’s just a lot of work.
Howard: What would you say when you were an associate, how many places were you an associate?
Kenneth: Fifteen places.
Howard: Fifteen places. When you were an associate in fifteen different places, how long do you think they scheduled that patient for a crown where they were going to mill it and scan it and do the whole thing?
Kenneth: Two hours every time. That's chair time. That's a ton of time.
Howard: Two hours. Was that the average?
Kenneth: Oh yeah.
Howard: Did you ever see some people scheduled longer or shorter?
Kenneth: We just didn't use it enough to get every scenario like that. It just seemed like it was a nice idea. It was like an advertising ploy, same day crowns. It's something that they can advertise for, and it's something really pretty that you can put your milling machine in the middle of the hallway so that everybody can ooh and aah about it.
To me, it was just more of something to show off more than it was practical.
Howard: I podcast 844 with Julie Charlestein, president and CEO of Premier. I love that lady. I let her know that you can't copy and paste any of the pictures on their website, which I don't understand. You're not a fan of a CAD/CAM.
Kenneth: I just don't like anything that's used as just a marketing gimmick than it is practicality. To me until CEREC machines, I don’t know. To me, they're pretty. They're really cool to watch the blue lights and to watch little pin thing and go through and make people feel like that they're really special and that their office is really high end. But at the end of the day like I like the experience to be easy on everybody and I don't know. To me they know their bank worth.
Howard: It seems like all the fans of CEREC are the ones all lecturing on it. Then when you go around in your offices of the fifteen places you're associate, what percent of those had a CEREC machine?
Kenneth: One. Maybe, I think, two out of all of them. One just got one right before I left, and then the other one had one the whole time.
Howard: And the one that had one the whole time, did they like it? Were they using it every day or was it a coat hanger?
Kenneth: The boss bought it. Well, he had it. The first thing he said when I got there was, "Okay, you're going to learn that," so that he wouldn't have to. He didn't want the headache of it.
Howard: You take an impression. Is there a local lab there or are you mailing it for a long distance? What lab are you using?
Kenneth: There's a lab out of Dallas named Highland that I really like a lot. The units aren't very expensive, and their quality to me is really reasonable for this area. I mean I can spend a lot of money on crowns. I really can. I've seen things go from my prices to all the way to $500 a unit. To me, I'll use a lab depending on what I need back. Sometimes if I really need something amazing, then I'll send it to Frontier out in California. If I need something that's just really nice that works, it's going to fit right in and not give me any problems and the patients are still going to be happy. Then I'll send it to Highland.
Howard: Highland Dental. Yeah so I don’t understand. You can take an Impregum impression for 17 bucks. Send it to your local lab man up the street who's made ten thousand crowns a decade for the last ten, twenty, thirty years. Then people say, "No, no, I'm not going to do that. I'm going to just pay $150,000 for a chairside milling machine." Take that thirty-minute appointment to two hours, and then push it onto my assistant to have her learn how to do it and she's never made a crown.
33.24 Kenneth: That's exactly. I'm like, "Why not let the people that have done thousands of them do it instead of us trying to just like pussyfoot through it?" I mean that to me is just like the worst thing I could do for my patients. Just the quality wasn't there because I was doing it or somebody else that was doing it were not that great at doing something. We'd have to do a straight thousand of them before we started bragging about it.
Howard: You always schedule thirty minutes for a molar root canal.
Kenneth: Yeah.
Howard: Walk us through that.
Kenneth: It's not I'm triple booked. It's not so much that like, yeah, it takes me thirty minutes. It's probably set for forty. I just have three other things going on at the same time. I usually got something staggered. I mean just the other day all three rooms were booked all throughout the day from the second I got here to the second that I left. I was doing smile makeovers all morning. I think I did two or three in the morning time, and then I did a bunch of a bunch of fillings and root canals and other things in the afternoon.
It's how much you can do all at the same time. It's not about thirty minutes. Now, I get to leave the room. No, I was only in there for six minutes to start, and I'm going back into another room to do something there. The patient's experience was thirty minutes, but I was only in the room for a few.
Howard: Highland Laboratory is Jason Jones, president and owner Jason Jones. So he's getting it done for you in Dallas two hours away. That is amazing.
Kenneth: His crowns are less than a hundred bucks apiece, so I'll take it.
Howard: Is that PFM or is that zirconia or what is that?
Kenneth: The average price, I think, I'm paying is like eighty bucks no matter if it's E-max or PFM, all of them.
Howard: The average tooth crown is a six year molar, first molar. What's your go-to crown on a six-year molar?
Kenneth: I like PFM still honestly.
Howard: Right on.
Kenneth: I think I'm paying seventy bucks a unit for a PFM.
Howard: So advice for the kids, what other advice are you passionate about?
Kenneth: Okay. The importance of confidence and competence as a dentist. Really what the patients are going for is they're looking at so many things that you're not even saying that it's not even fair. I mean if you've got people saying, "Okay, I'm going to go home and talk to my wife," usually you didn't do something right. If that's the comment that's coming out of most of your patients, that usually means that you didn't sell them very well. So they're going to now just do it at their own convenience, which could be in another six months from now. Maybe you'll get them back into your office, maybe not.
To me, if they don't love you and love your office before they ever even get there or by the time that they leave, then there's more improvement to make. A lot of the way that they're going to like you is just, are you cocky? I say it's way more than confident and competent. It's straight up like are you so good you're just like just kind of cocky and a little bit arrogant.
To me, I find that the dentists that struggle the most are the ones that I would call a nice guy. The dentists that I also consider just to be very polite, very professional, and very conservative, those dentists to me struggle the most because they're just very forgettable. Everything they do, they didn't rub anybody wrong. They didn't make any waves. But they sure as heck also didn't imprint anything into that patient that says come back.
To me, when you're trying to trust somebody with a root canal or cosmetic work or anything like that of any consequence or a substance, they're really looking for a lot more than a nice person with a professional attitude.
They're looking for a guy that just knows that everything he touches turns to gold. That everything you do that your prices are going to be fair for them. You can be arrogant and cocky because you're charging $2,000 a unit. That's one thing.
But I'm not talking about a downtown Dallas or anything like that. I'm talking about in these towns. They really want to know that are you honest in the pricing? Are you really fair? And at the end of the day, are you going to just going to give them a really, really, really good product that's going to look perfect?
You know what I tell my patients? "You know what? If you don't like it, then I'm not going to charge you for it. I don't want your money if you're not excited to give it to me." If you have that mentality, then you're going to make sure that everything is flawless.
To me, that's what really the patients are looking for and that carries over. You add that up times a hundred days or two hundred days, and suddenly people are going home. If they're not going home after every one of visits with me, if they're not going straight home and telling everybody about me, then to me I could have done more.
That's not me being over-pretentious or overconfident. That's actually I go in the room and I usually kind of like a lot of times you think that you have to stand in front of them and sit down and lean into them and get at their level. Half the time, I'm in the doorway with my arms like folded. I'm just like, "What's up?" Or I'll walk in the room and I'll do a big clap. I'll walk in there and I'm going to be like, "What's going on?"
I think I walked in the room yesterday, and the guy looked at me up and down. He was from Michigan. He saw me in jeans. I wear this like a button down shirt like this, but I wear always some jeans and some boots. He looked me up and down and he's like sizing me up. I think he had to get a tooth pulled. At the end of the visit, he's just like, "I will tell you like when I first saw you come in the room like I didn't really know what to think. But man, you're the coolest cat I've ever met in my life and that extraction was perfect." He's just like, "I'm telling everybody about you."
That's a normal reaction. If you're not getting that, then I just feel like, in my opinion, I could've done more. To me, it's a very relaxed setting. The last thing I wanted to come off as is professional. The last thing I like. I hate that word because to me it means just unapproachable, distant. You're going to get sued more often.
If you're just casual and more on their level, I feel like that they're really going to respond 10,000% better and that's obvious. I think I get a hundred and thirty new patients a month.
Howard: That is amazing. You also talked in your bio, which is news to me, that mistakes happen that you had a problem a few years ago. You can let it break you or bounce off of it. Do you want to talk about that or not really?
Kenneth: Yeah. No, I would love to. Basically, I was in Abilene, Texas. That's actually the first job I got when I came out to Texas. I was there for three years. Abilene has about a hundred thousand people in it. I was working in probably the best office they have there. Dr. Bob Leedy is the owner there. I've been there for a few years.
What happened is I had a patient, a friend of mine at church. My wife actually was the one that came to me and said, "Hey, this guy wants to know if we are allowed to prescribe phentermine. My wife and I are familiar with that. It's an appetite suppressant. I'm like, "Let me check." I went and asked my boss and he's like, "I don’t see why not. Just call a pharmacist and if the pharmacist says okay, then it should be fine." I'm like, "Okay."
I called the pharmacist and he said, "Yeah, I'll just send the script over." He sent it over and he filled it. I was actually kind of pissed because the doctor that I go see if I want a script for that, he won't even see me. He'll actually take a phone call, and then he'll be like, "Okay." He'll call it in and then all of a sudden I'll get billed 200 bucks for an exam fee. I'm like, "Okay, so I got to pay 200 bucks for that script to be written in, but he'll charge it as an exam fee." I'm like, "Well, that's not right."
Of course, I'm super smart. I decided I wasn't going to go to go see him for that next script of mine and decided to write it for myself. Well, I was even more smart by saying, "Well, I'm not allowed to write scripts for myself." In my office, I'm like, "Oh I'll just sign Bob's name," which that's only fraud so that's a lot better apparently. Nothing happened. I never did it again.
About six months later though, I had a DPS officer show up and ask me about another particular patient that was receiving a lot of narcotics. He was in Invisalign basically. He was at a nine millimeter overbite here in the front and he grinds at night. His bottom teeth are literally moving and pushing against all of his top teeth, and they have nowhere to go because he can't wear his night guard. He has to wear Invisalign. He wakes up every day in extreme pain, and we couldn't touch it with anything less than seven point five by three twenty-five Norco.
Every month, we'd get a new script for him. I guess the total after ten months, he was almost done at eleven months. But after ten-month mark, this pharmacist got a partner and he kind of saw this and he's like, "Well that's a lot of pills." He calls the DPS. He doesn't even call me. He calls the DPS and said, "Hey, this guy is prescribing all these narcotics to this kid. I don't know who this kid is if he knows him or what."
So the guy shows up and asked, "Is this your buddy that you're prescribing these pills to?" I said, "Well, I mean I know him. He's my patient." I explained to him the reason. The guy looked at me really skeptical like there has to be another reason, I guess. I just kept looking at him. We were like, no, like it's for a dental like related procedure. He's like, "Okay."
Well, he came back the next week, the same DPS officer. He couldn't get me on one thing. So he looked up every script I'd ever written and found the phentermine. I immediately felt bad. I'm like, "Yeah, I did that. I shouldn't have." He's like, "Oh so you do admit to doing it." He's like, "What about this signature? Is that your boss'? If I ask him right now, will he say that he signed that for you?" I'm like, "No, I signed that." He's like, "Oh." Then he immediately downplayed it. He's like, "It's cool, man." He's like, "Just come down to my office. We'll write something up saying that you didn't know and stuff and you won't do it again and that kind of thing. You can go home."
I went to his office and he wrote something up and it was accurate. So I signed the bottom of it. As soon as I did that, his partner started laughing on the couch because immediately when I did that, he shows me his badge underneath his jacket and said, "You have the right to remain silent." He proceeded to ask me if I wanted him to come down to my office the next day and arrest me because he was charging me of two third-degree felonies apparently.
I turned myself in, I guess, and I was just really surprised. I'm like I just got duped basically. I knew I did something wrong, but I felt so bad about it that I was willing to just take any consequence that came my way and that's actually what I told him. That night I went home and told my wife what happened and stuff. I had to post bail and everything, but I was mug shot at that night. I finally got back home after I posted bail. I was telling wife everything about it and she's like, "Oh my gosh."
All of a sudden, our phone started to ring off the hook because apparently I was on the six o'clock, seven o'clock, and eight o'clock news. The news was talking about how I was prescribing all of these narcotics to a personal friend, and it didn't even say he was a patient receiving dental care. They just said it was a personal friend. Either way, it was extremely like inflammatory and it was bad. I mean it sounded awful. It sounded like I was seriously dealing drugs to the whole city.,
I went to work the next day with my boss. We're partners at the time. I'm like, "Listen. I don't want to mess with your reputation. You've been working on that for twenty-five years here. If we need to dissolve our partnership, I understand." He's like, "No, that's probably the best thing."
The next day I didn't have a job and it all ended. That was kind of the beginning of whole different pretty extraordinary and hard challenges. All my kids were in school. My oldest daughter was 16 at the time and swore she was in love with this boy. We ended up having to move to San Antonio. I thought there'd be tons of jobs out there, but apparently in bigger cities that everybody wants a background check.
I'm like telling everybody. I didn't know that it wasn't going to be on my background check for quite some time because I wasn't even convicted. I was just charged. I told everybody what was going on, and people just give me a little stints of jobs here and there. For a straight year, my wife had to sell the house. I was just out there living. If I got a job, I was literally asking them, "Do you guys have any place I can live?"
One of the associates that was at one of these places was kind of a bachelor, so he had an extra room. I just slept on a blow-up mattress for a while I worked there. It was just like that for a long time, and it was really hard. I just kind of was in fight or flight mode for quite a while. I went from job to job in San Antonio, just looking really for something that I could make a long-term deal.
I knew I had a lot of skills. I knew I could do a lot of good quality dentistry. I was probably doing almost high-end dentistry that that city had ever seen at the time. I was used to doing some pretty amazing cosmetics and implants and everything. I got a lot of work, but at the end of the day it was just really only the shadiest offices who were willing to hire me, the ones that worked until midnight.
I eventually got the charges dropped. I had to do a lot of drug testing every month. I had to go back to Abilene to do urine samples, and I did do community service. I had to get a psychiatrist or a therapist to kind of like judge my mental capacity to make decisions. I'd take some CE in California about ethics. I had to do a hair test to make sure I haven't done drugs in the last year. It goes back like ten months.
Anyways, I'd never done drugs in my life. I've never even drank alcohol before still to this day. It's just really funny to kind of be doing all this drug testing just because I did something pharmaceutical related for another person and for a weight loss pill basically. Suddenly, I was entered into the biggest like drug rehab program that was out there. I got in into the PRN program, Professional Recovery Network.
That was fun. I mean really at the end of the day it was kind of like good to learn how all that stuff actually works.
Howard: You had to go inpatient?
Kenneth: What do you mean?
Howard: You had to go to a facility?
Kenneth: No, no, no. It was all outpatient.
Howard: Oh it's all outpatient. Okay.
Kenneth: Yeah. So I didn't have to go anywhere. It was like we met every month kind of thing around a table, and everybody talked about their addictions and things like that. They got to me when they got around the table and I explained my story. They're just like, "So wait. So you've actually never done drugs before or drank alcohol and you're in a drug recovery program?" I'm like, "Yeah." It was fun. I got to meet a lot of people, and I got to really see what's out there because I'd never really been introduced to anything like that.
In the end, we just take what experiences we can gain out of it and try to find something positive, and that was really my main goal after all of that. In the end, I finally got a phone call though that said, "Hey, you know what? We heard about your story. We have an office in Marshall that we can't seem to keep a dentist in. You would be the fifth dentist in two years," because this doctor died out of nowhere and the widows sold her practice to this dentist in Tyler. That dentist in Tyler had been putting these newer dentists right out of dental school in this practice, and pretty much all of the original patient pool had totally vanished.
When I got here, we pretty much had the worst reputation in town to not go here. Really that's how I had to start. I had no real choice because I couldn't find a job that was really that valuable, but it was my job to really take everything I had learned before that and implement it on my own and see if everything that I believe in as a dentist would actually pan out and work out. In fact, it's obviously doing really well now.
Howard: How long have you been there?
Kenneth: Three years.
Howard: And it’s so damn good. What makes you want to leave this? It's because you just want to own your own place?
Kenneth: Yeah that's going to be better. I mean, honestly, I'm moving down the street but you don’t know. My patients don't come from Marshall. My patients come from all of East Texas. I mean I get patients driving here from Pennsylvania, from California.
Howard: Because of your videos?
Kenneth: Yeah. I mean when people saw that I really just get contacted all the time by everyone. They legitimized me here in East Texas. Everybody that knows anybody pretty much has - I mean my video got shared just in East Texas alone it got shared, I think, nine hundred and thirty-five just here in East Texas. There's not a lot of places that can go other than to everybody when it gets shared that many times.
Just on the other stuff, I mean I had one video that was shared forty-two thousand times.
Howard: Holy moly. Is that the one on the Yahoo?
Kenneth: This one's called On the Rise Up, but it got six million views, eight thousand comments.
Howard: So that's a big part of your marketing then huh, those videos.
Kenneth: That was actually just the last of it. I was probably doing about a hundred and thirty thousand a month before anything ever went viral. The way I was doing that is I just posted everything on my Facebook page. I mean I have all five thousand followers. The way I do it is basically I friend strangers, complete strangers. I use Facebook. Basically, every day, I'll friend about ten people. They don't know that I'm a dentist. I don't say I'm a dentist. They look like what I would consider a decent quality patient and I'll friend them.
Howard: The people that live in your town?
Kenneth: Yes.
Howard: In Marshall.
Kenneth: And then the surrounding area actually, Longview, Tyler, or whatever. They don't know I'm a dentist yet, but what'll happen is that you do that for a straight week and you have an extra hundred followers all of a sudden. Then I suddenly post something that I just did or a case that I just finished, and all those people I just friended suddenly get a sweet before and after and a testimonial by the patient. Then they get all these comments and all these questions and I answer them directly. The patient will even get on and answer them directly and talk about their drug use and talk about their abuse or domestic violence.
My Facebook is extremely interactive with this area. I put everything out in front of people, where most professionals, they choose to leave their private life way hidden and they keep everything strictly professional, where I'm the exact opposite. I want to be the anomaly. To be an anomaly, you have to do things that are different than everybody else.
To me, that's actually what I think has been by far the biggest reason for my success is I'm real, and I wanted everyone to know that I'm a real person with real personality. I put things about my kid and my daughter making the cheerleading team. They all get on there and put 500 likes on one picture about my daughter making the cheerleading team. It's like a family and they all feel like family.
When people want to know what dentist to go to and they post a question what dentist in this area should I go to and somebody will say, "Look, if you're willing to drive two hundred miles to go see Dr. Kenny Wilstead, I would do it." You really just want to be on the tips of everyone's minds whenever somebody is asking, what dentists should I go to?
To do that, you really just have to serve the people in a way that everyone can be extremely proud of. Sometimes you have to drop your price. Sometimes you have to do it for free. But at the end of the day, if you just do right by people and you're not afraid to put yourself out there and be vulnerable and just do good work and back what you work, people really start to resonate with that. They just figure out that you're not going to shark anybody to death that you're there to give them the best treatment for the best price.
Howard: When you were going through that whole ordeal, I mean that would break so many dentists. I mean that would be their worst nightmare. They're quiet. They're shy. They're introvert. Now, they're on the evening news. How did you and your marriage and yourself and your family? What was that like? How did you survive that?
Kenneth: Well, to me, I mean I know it sounds stupid, but what doesn't kill you makes you stronger. To me like the more I talked about it, anybody that wanted to know. I wasn't one of those that's like, "Oh crap, I hope they don't look me up on Google and see this." I mean it was hard for a long time. I mean seeing yourself as a criminal even though I got the charges dropped and everything finished. I think I got a reprimand by the board. Everything came out right.
For a long time, I mean it was hard. I really felt like my name couldn't be used anymore without feeling like a true criminal, Kenny. I actually had to change my name. When I got this job here in Marshall, I actually changed it to my middle name, Edmund. You started going, which I hate that name. It was really, really hard on me to introduce myself to every patient as Edmund Wilstead.
Then when I realized I started to get a huge, huge following here, slowly I felt like this is where I belong. This is family. No matter what they find out about me, they're going to accept me. I just started to just change it back to Kenny Wilstead. I've never once felt like there was any fallout from it.
To me, it wasn't easy. But at the end of the day, it just comes down to you just take one day at a time. You have control over today and so what you plan on doing. I mean I was taking portfolios of all my work and putting them in a Walgreens book that you order from Walgreens. I'd like print off like nine of them for 150 bucks. In every office that looked like a promising office to work for, I would literally show up, put my card in it, sign it, put my phone number in it, and drop it off and say, "Hey, you know what? If you're looking for a good quality associate, please give me a call."
Now, when they saw all my work in there, they got really excited and I'd always get the call." Then I would tell them what was happening with me and that gave them a chance to decide if that was something they wanted to work with or not able to. To me, it was though it was just putting it out there the best you can. I mean you just do the best you can.
I've always felt like as one door closes, if you work hard enough, you can get so many more. I mean what I'm doing now because of that is leaps and bounds better than what I had before. Anytime you're willing to really sacrifice a few things just for change, to me, change has always been better when you are willing to accept it. Every job I've ever gotten seemed to have been better than the last. So if people really take on that mentality.
Howard: Do you think you're a personal faith was a big part of getting through that or not really?
Kenneth: It was just my personality. Honestly, it straight comes down to my personality type. My personality type is extremely resilient. I just plain feel like every failure in life is actually an opportunity.
Howard: That is so damn cool. That's just a damn cool story. I mean it's a great story. Unbelievable. That is just, god, that can be so tough. Some people just get some bad luck. You know what I mean?
Kenneth: I'd say really the best attitude to have as a dentist is just to go out and just make mistakes. I mean people say don't do this or else or don't do this or else. I'm just like why? I remember one time in dental school they said, "You can't fail a class." I had three kids at home. I'm not that smart when it comes to the bookwork at all. I was really struggling.
There was this course that was histology, and I had to decide between all these classes in midterms to study for. I'm like, okay, you're not allowed to fail, but I'm like, screw it. I want to find out what happens if I do. everyone. I've asked a thousand people. Nobody would tell me what happens if I fail a class in dental school. So I decided to do it on purpose that I would pass these six classes for sure. I picked the one that I thought had the coolest teacher like so if I fail that one at least I feel like that teacher would be kind of reasonable as far as what he would do to me because I found that as a teacher-by-teacher basis.
I did it on purpose. I only failed that course, unfortunately, by like 1%. So really had I studied just a little bit I would have passed it, but anyways.
I asked him at the end of it. I said, "So what do I got to do to remediate your course?" He's like, "Just take it sometime in the summertime." I'm like, "Wait. So I have the whole summer to just study for it?" I'm like, "What happens if I fail it?" He's like, "Then you just take it again the week later or something." I'm like, "Wait, I can just study freely. I got nothing else to do this summer except for some clinical. You're just going to let me really study all free and clear, and I'm going to get the same score?" He's like, "Yeah." I'm like, "So here everybody in the whole school is killing themselves trying to like not fail. I go out and I actually do it on purpose just because I wanted to know what happened."
I know that sounds crazy, but to me that was a value. What will happen if I fail? To me, it's just because but people play into that way too much. They assume that everything that could be this negative has to be catastrophic, has to be life ending, has to be career ending. Really at the end of the day, if people would just allow themselves to fail a little bit, they'd find out that not only did none of those things happen, but you actually learned a crap ton about that thing. That has value always, a lot more than anyone really gives it credit.
In fact, most of my success comes from all my failures. There's not that many, but they sure had a lesson to learn. To me, those lessons are paramount for success because they give you that much more confidence. How can you be that confident if you've never failed and found out that you wouldn't die? If you have to cross some ocean and you didn't die, I mean it was hard, but you did it. It's like you really can tackle almost anything at that point. But have you never do anything that you would consider hard or difficult or impossible, then you would never know what you're capable of.
Most people are scared because they just don't know anything as far as what is out there. To me, I like to know what is out there. So I go look in the dark room. I open up the doors that no one else is opening, and I find out there's nothing in there. It really was just dark. At the end of the day, we're only as good as our strengths, and hopefully, our strengths are a lot more due to our failures than they are anything else.
Howard: I can't believe that was the fastest hour ever. We already went over an hour. My last question is I think of you as the Facebook marketing guru. Facebook has been under siege lately. Their stocks are falling. You've read all the stuff in the news. What is your thoughts on this Facebook and privacy issues and all these things like that?
Kenneth: Well, they'll fix it. I mean at the end of the day.
Howard: Well because it seems like you don’t care about the privacy. You're that rare bird who's completely natural to fly above the radar.
Kenneth: Yeah. I mean the more people know about me. I mean the first thing my neighbor told me is like, "Oh my gosh, I see that your friending strangers. What if they find out where your kids go to school?" I'm like that doesn't matter. You act like everybody that knows a dentist is just going to assume that we're going to get robbed tomorrow or something like since when does a dentist like the King Tut. We're nothing. We're just a person with a job just like anyone else.
They know something about us. Why is it so important that we hide everything?
Howard: But all the dentists live in fear and scarcity. I mean the majority are shy, introvert, fear and scarcity. Do you agree with that or not?
Kenneth: Yeah which is why I became a dentist because I knew that the majority was not like me, and so, I knew that it was a niche that I knew that I could put.
Howard: To me, it's so bizarre because like you say. They said, "Oh well, if they friend you, they'll find out where your kids go to school" There's so many weird thinking patterns. My walnut brain says, "Okay, look. A hundred and eight billion humans come and die before I was born. Now, there's seven and a half billion, and I'm never going to meet 99.999% of those. Then if you look at the seven and a half billion alive plus a hundred and eight billion that have died, so I'm never going to meet 99.9999999. Then someone gives a shit about what Mabel thinks or what Dr. Cranston said. I can't fathom to my mind how many people are obsessed what other people think when 99.9999999% of all the people that ever lived will never even know you exist.
Kenneth: I mean you have everything to gain when they know you. Everything. Because the only thing that every patient is judging you off of is if they can they can trust you as a person. Are you going to back your word? Are you a hard worker? I mean you are trying to gain the trust of your patient. That is the primary goal when you walk in the room. So why do we think that we can gain their trust in two minutes of -