The Doers Podcast | Episode 3 | Michael McCarthy | Healthcare Strategy & AI Consultant

CareStack presents The Doers Podcast. In this series of candid interviews with successful entrepreneurs and changemakers in U.S. dentistry, we dive deep into their journeys, what drives them, and the insights they've gained along the way.

Hosted by Dan Hall, VP of Sales at CareStack, this episode features Mike McCarthy, a 25-year industry veteran, renowned dental consultant, and one of the most sought-after speakers in the dental space. Known as the “CEO Whisperer,” Mike shares his unconventional path into dentistry, the shifts he's witnessed over the decades, and his mission to elevate the profession by bridging the gap between clinical care and business acumen. From tackling inefficiencies in practice operations to harnessing AI and championing the patient experience, Mike’s insights offer a masterclass for leaders navigating the future of dental care.

Transcript

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Welcome back to The Doers, the podcast where we dive into the real stories of building, struggling and thriving in dentistry. I'm your host, Dan Hall. In each episode, we explore the challenges, the victories, and the lessons learned from the leaders in the trenches doing the work and shaping the future of dentistry. Today, I'm joined by Mike McCarthy, one of the most in-demand dental consultants and keynote speakers in the industry. He's been a veteran of the industry for 25 years. Part CEO Whisperer and part strategy consultant. Mike, welcome to the show. Dan, thanks so much for having me. Honored to be here. Yeah. So, Mike, let's start from the beginning. How did you find your way into the dental industry? It was not textbook. We'll leave it at that. I came out of business school and went to work for Eli Lilly Pharmaceuticals and was given a little drug called Prozac. So right time, right place, right drug. And, this was in the late 80s, and we started using Usenet groups. We thought this internet thing might be a thing. So, I wound up working with a lot of agencies, health care agencies, Madison AV agencies. And wound up starting one of the first digital advertising agencies in health care. So that and I was on a plane next to, a woman CEO who ran a boutique dental agency. And, I was on a non-compete where I couldn't work for another health care agency for five years. The ironic and sad part of this was that dental was not considered health care competition at the time. Really. So I joined with her, had some great partners, and we created, the largest dental marketing communications advertising firm. And, I had a great business partner, and we grew it from a very small agency to a massive powerhouse. And, I've worked with everyone, every brand, every association. I kind of got tired of being on a plane 99% of the time and thought I'd retire, and fly fish for the rest of my life about eight years ago. But fortunately, the clients just didn't stop calling. And my personal goal is to leave dentistry better than I found it and elevate it to the ranks where it deserves to be. Front line health care. The mouth is the gateway to the body. Well, so when you came into this industry, I'm just curious what stood out when you compared dentistry to the mainstream health care industry when you first got here? Absolute night and day. I remember my first Greater New York Meeting. I walked in and I felt like I was at a Turkish bazaar. Like, what do you mean by that? It's, almost, if you've ever been to the spice market in Turkey, and I'm not, a snooty tooty guy, but it's almost like a swap meet. You have spices, you get this. But It was booth after booth after booth of exhibitors, and you'd see signage like buy one, get five free. And I'm like, what is this insanity? These people are training dentists to be cheap and everything's a deal. And I just came in and said, wow, this is going to be a hurdle to overcome the mindset. And then you think about you have doctors. Let's just take not even a specialist, a primary care physician who's most likely owned by a hospital system. They stock consumables of gloves, gauze, tongue depressors, maybe an otoscope. I learned quickly that a dentist who is not owned by a hospital system can stock 10,000+ individual SKUs. Eight parts to do a restoration, 20 different types of gloves. And I said, wow. And then I looked at the education of the dentist. Great clinicians, great clinical skills, but zero on business and business acumen. So it was eye opening and I had my work cut out for me. Yeah, that's shocking. On the number of SKUs. And I mean, it's different now if you walk into a trade event, it looks and feels different. I don't know what in your opinion you're seeing out there. Definitely. Okay. I mean, you still see some of the kind of. Maybe not buy 1 get five. Yeah Maybe buy one, get one. It hasn't that. But the dealer distributors have elevated their game. And I think that's because the private companies really wanted the booths is about an experience education. Sure. You go to trade shows for selling, but I've seen trade shows in general become much more focused. The giant come once a year. Shows are losing market share to very well planned, calculated user group meetings or interested people. And it's not about fun or who's on stage at night. It's about I have a limited number of time as a dentist. I have a limited budget. Give me the biggest bang for my buck, let me learn. Well, this kind of rolls into my next question then is what are you seeing as the biggest challenge out there faced that, dental leaders are facing today? The world is shaped. And when we talk about dentistry now, we have to talk about group organized dentistry, DSOs and private independent practice. Let's make it very clear. No one should ever think of these as enemies or us versus them. What we're doing is creating more dentistry. And I think the challenges out there are I want to hearken back to what I said. I'm, adjunct faculty at UMDNJ School of Dentistry, and I'm with the PY3s who have no business acumen. This is their world. They want to work here. I don't know about EBITA I don't know about accounts receivable. I'm buying a practice. Someone's telling me to finance it. So we try to educate or we're seeing more education at the dentist level before they get out, trying to give them some sense of business acumen. The DSOs are in a constant race to have more clinicians as well as more butts in seats. Patients. And we're seeing that on the independent side as well. How do I, get more patients coming in? Well, how do you see them doing that then? I mean, I know you're you're you're throwing all these challenges out there, right? They get they are upskill on their business acumen. Yep. They got to get more people in the seats. They gotta improve efficiencies, especially when you're DSO and you got economies of scale. So what are they doing to achieve those. I think the strongest force of change that I've seen has been social media among dentistry and the younger generation of dentists, and I'm talking 40 and under. They're not as affected by the key opinion leaders anymore. The giant and I pay total homage to like Gordon Christiansen and others. But they're listening to each other and some of it may not even be public. So we see a lot of social media groups where products, processes are influenced and people have discussion about it. So that's the activator. What I'm seeing though is, I work a lot, I have limited time and I have limited budget. If I'm going to experience something, I'm going to do my research. I hope you have a good sales structure. And it's not just marketing, but I hope someone has informed me about your product or service and then tell me how I can immerse myself and get on board quickly. So technology from social media to education to communication with the customer, the dentist customer, and that goes DSO or, small independent practice, the touch points, the high tech, high touch is so important right now. Okay. So what do you see. And any advice to leaders out there? I encounter this on a daily basis here at CareStack, and some of the other business units we run is getting the change management piece in there, right? I mean, I see that there's a lot of great resources, right? There's the social media. There's I don't want to call them influencers, but maybe key opinion leaders on topics around implants, revenue cycle management, all these really key items. But how do they go back and put this into practice in their business? It's a hopefully these are smart people who are looking at the bottom line. Bottom line, dentistry is a business. Can't do it for free. Can't be continually losing money year after year or month after month. So, I'm going to speak specifically to the DSO side of things, whether you're a small, midsize or a large DSO. You have to look at your business objectives. Okay. The obviously, let's not just say profit. Let's say happy customers who refer word of mouth to other, maybe bring in their family as opposed to just themselves, but create an experience that's profitable and beneficial. And we do good dentistry. I've seen the DSO side where there's more business acumen, from a management administration side and what it's about is efficiencies. We're bigger. We have to move more people through. What products or services can make the process easier. How quickly can I analyze how the business is doing on a daily basis? What software am I using to amalgamate these data points that I need to function on a daily basis? So if I'm hearing you right, it's got to be as easy as you can make it and show some tangible results to get the buy in. Am I making a good assumption there. Yeah, without a doubt. So this kind of go like I'm glad you brought up the topic. You've been called the CEO whisperer. So I'm curious what leadership style do you see that drives the best results in these practices or DSOs? What I see, and it's a very unique quality and I see it a lot at the midsize, DSO level, or the independent practitioner who's not a ruler. What patients want to see in a leader is a unified team, a team that's happy the customer experience is the most valuable point to any business in dentistry. So from the moment they make that initial call to schedule an appointment or online, that experience process has started. So the leaders over this, they listen to their team, they listen to their patients. They're not slave driving beaters of we've got to increase productivity. We've got to increase productivity. What they do are look for ways to make what they have more efficient. Listen to the team. And I'm not talking about bellyaching, whining, I need Wednesday off for my kids T-ball game. That makes a great leader too. If you have a balance. But what is going to make our team's job easier? There may be a little. And with any service, any product, there may be a little pain. Onboarding something new. A new radiographic piece of equipment, a new software. The practice management field, which you know well. yes. There is a little pain in converting. I mean, I'm 58. I still have someone do my Excel spreadsheets. Should I hunker down and really learn Excel? Absolutely. It's also an investment of time. I mean, there's a phrase that I've heard often and I think I'm glad to see it coming into dentistry is mapping the patient journey, right? I mean, you put it really well from the time that that phone is ringing, because I see so much effort by individual practices, DSOs being put into making the phone ring to get patients to the practice. And then how are we charting that the whole way through? And I've heard that phrase especially a lot in the 2024 and 2025. Is that something you coach on and work with groups? Absolutely. And you've got to remember, the leaders of these organizations are looking at PNL, EBITDA. Patient experience, customer journey, not top on their radar screen. So I'm trying to flip that. And one exercise that I use that makes people go leaders go, “Whoa Mike!” is you have Janice is a busy single mom. She cracked a crown. She hasn't been to a dentist in two years after the divorce, and she's moved to a new area. She does her research online. She calls to make an appointment. Someone answers and said, Doctor Smith's office. Please hold. That is her first experience with that dentist or that dental group. So think of what's going on in Janice’s mind at that. They're really busy. Oh, they don't value my call. Wow, seven rings before someone picked up. The customer service level just wasn't there. Try calling an auto dealer right now or your primary care. The experience is different. They don't want to let you off the hook. They want to keep you engaged. So I encourage everyone, kind of is eye opening. Your brand is formed with that first point of contact. So make it count when you answer that phone. Every time. Answer it, every single time or have a mechanism that will. Without a doubt. And yeah, sure, you're busy. The practice is busy. But just think about that Doctor Smith's office. Please hold. Oh, yeah. You better off having, an AI scheduling assistant. Grab that call. Start booking the patient when making their request. I mean, the tech is there. We could do it. I mean, they can do your spreadsheets too Mike, by the way. Thank you. Good. So I want to go. We've been talking a lot on how things are changing. So it's been an a rapid change. Things are evolving. What's the most significant change that change you've noticed in the last ten years in the industry? I'd probably say technology. Digital dentistry has has evolved light years. And I don't just mean and diagnostics or things like that, but digital scanners replacing traditional impression material. Nobody likes that impression material. No. And especially there's a patient who has swallowed. Yes. Multiple things. No thank you. But what I've really seen and I don't want this to be a token throw away. The advancement of AI into process and procedure as well as diagnostics is starting to drastically change. But I'm looking at, out at the next five years. It just revolutionizing what we do. AI I mean, great diagnostic against hundreds of thousands of patients. You've got Pearl, you've got Overjet, you've got some great leaders out there who are doing wonderful things. Every dentist, every management company of dentists should look at AI for diagnosis. But on the other side, how can AI not replace my people, my staff? But how can it make them more efficient? Whether it be from ambient listening while you're consulting with the patient and it's taking patient notes, to just not writing anymore, not data entry anymore, have these things done for you. And my goal is this has been going on in medicine almost parallel. Dentistry, believe it or not, leads in some areas. That was going to be my next question. I was you're you're bringing up a lot of good points. I mean, it's an augmentation, right? Not a replacement of our employees. Without a doubt. And with your health care background, I'm curious if you see dentistry outpacing medtech in any areas in particular? I am. And in it's a really good question. I wasn't ready for that one. Sorry. I'm usually more prepared, but I'm thinking of two areas specifically. Emergency medicine is a trainwreck. Given great circumstances, you never know what the patient's going to get that's coming in. You never know what equipment you're going to need. Every decision is made spur of the moment. And I'm not saying it's a train wreck in a bad way. You've been watching the pit. I mean. I am a fan. Not going to lie. Old time. I remember many of those are happening, right? Without a doubt. And I have several friends who are heads of E.R., one of my college roommates. And it's something you just can't plan for. And dentistry. If it's a first time patient, you don't know what you don't know. Someone says this hurts someone says, I want this. So optimizing time while you've got the patient to do diagnosis and assessment, don't keep the patient for a half hour filling out paperwork. Get inside. Do some diagnosis, do some treatment planning. Communicate well with the patient and make it an enjoyable experience. So I'm seeing dentistry outpace medicine in that. Now mind you. Emergency medicine patients usually aren’t conscious. But, the worst thing that can happen. I'm seeing smart technology, come to dentistry where what people don't understand is, a vacuum or a compressor. The stuff in the back room, if that goes. Yeah. Making the everything function. If that goes down, that operatory is down. You're losing thousands of dollars. It was something that wasn't planned for. I'm seeing dentistry outpace medicine and smart technology. So maybe someone left a vacuum or compressor on when they went home for the weekend or sunday. Technology is now available or coming to the market where a dentist, an office manager can get an alert. Hey, we left this on or hey, something's wrong with this piece of equipment. So it's like a garage door, right? You can. You'll be able to open an app and turn off that suction and make sure you don't burn it out. I mean, that's it's not flashy, but necessary to run the practice. It's not. But where it gets flashy is okay. It's telling me I've got a problem with suction and there's an O-ring problem. Okay. On a Friday night and I gotta be up and running Monday. Let me reach out to an e-commerce dealer distributor, order a replacement O-ring and have it sent. So it'll be there Monday morning. So let me call the repair person, whether it's my dealer or an independent repair, and say, I need you out there over the weekend. So this smart technology is preventing downtime. That's amazing. So I'm wondering where you see dentistry going in the next five years. What's the big change you're predicting here? We're not going to hold you to this. So all right. If I had the crystal ball crystal ball in front of me. Technology and software making practices more efficient, giving them more efficiency. Where the future of dentistry is going, and this is my personal journey is to align it with true health care, make dentistry first point of care, health care professional. The mouth is the gateway to the body. But what has been overlooked for years and years and years is the amount of health care data that dentistry can collect. Where I see this going is an assimilation of medicine and dentistry. A lot of routine examination parameters blood pressure, pulse ox can be taken in the dental practice and built for against medical health care insurance, which is truly insurance, not a dental benefit insurance. I see us moving closer. More and more dentists are exploring sleep apnea. Oral maxillofacial surgeons are already well down this road, of medical billing. And not just because most are MDs as well, but the surgical procedure. So I'm seeing a lot in perio moving towards a more health care focus. But what we need is an association, a big manufacturer, to step up and let patients know about this. Everything's happening at the granular level. I can get 100 great hygienist, 100 great dentist, 100 great specialists who ad nauseam speak to the patient about the importance of oral health care. We need some surround sound, and social media, in traditional media, maybe we need the Super Bowl commercial of hey, that aching tooth left untreated could get really bad. Here are ways you can find a solution. And how many pharmaceutical commercials when you watch TV do you see? There's plenty though. So you're saying it's going to take a path of getting more tightly aligned with health care because it is part of your your overall health? Right. Without a doubt. Have it be treated as one. That's interesting. I'm going to jump over to one of the question here. I'm just going to play pretend for a moment. Let's say you have a magic wand. Yep. And you see in dentistry, what is one operational pain that you'd wave the wand they have disappear. You see DSOs, individual practices struggling with, Scheduling efficiency and what I kind of mean by that, and I'm sorry, it just it just hit me. I'm thinking about the brand experience of the patient journey again. The last thing you want is to come in, and that practice is not ready for you. And it's going to be about 40 minutes. The world has changed. It's not 1965 anymore where you schedule a whole day for, for treatment or bringing the kids in for, and they get to go to the treasure chest. This is about immediate gratification, the patient having a good experience. And if you are going to be late, make sure they're engaged. My magic wand would be more efficiencies. And that goes corporate dentistry to private. If the team is off, you better have a backup plan to keep things running. And whether that's driven by efficiency and software, whether it's staff gets sick, things like that. But have a backup plan. You can't shoot from the hip every day. So if I were to like tie this back to your your thoughts on the patient journey, you're you're tracking that and having a plan B throughout that journey as well too. So if Bill, Sara, whoever's at the front, there's another individual so that that journey looks the same no matter who's coming into that practice that day or who's calling into the practice. Without a doubt. Okay. And with the magic wand, if I can do one more shake, it would be to get whoever owns the practice, corporate or private on private clinical as everything. I bet every dentist is worth their salt and really is the best at what they do. But if they're not thinking about the business side of things, the marketing to patients, the efficiency of filing claims, if they take dental benefits, making that process easier for themselves and the patients, then the dentist has a great journey as well with right along with the patient. And that's the marketing. You can't pay for a happy patient in a community. We'll talk about how wonderful their journey or experiences. I'm going to tell everybody about a professional service that's doing really well. I mean, that's where they grow, right? And you want to see them, you almost want to be a good partner because the better they're doing and the more patients they have, the longer they're going to be around and the more sophisticated and probably going to get more efficient as well, too, like you said, and get you in and out faster, that instant gratification. Well, thanks for that perspective. Where you see dentistry going in the next five years, I want to go and do a quick fire on you personally. So it's just as it comes to mind. Just fire away. Let me get a sense. So, what's one book podcast that's helped shape you and the way you lead in what you do on a daily basis? I'm a huge Malcolm Gladwell fan. And I've probably gone back and reread The Tipping Point, time after time after time, because it's so experiential and I'm a firm believer it takes years to build a brand a minute to take a brand down. Love his books as well too, Talking to Strangers. Oh yeah. Come on. Yeah. He's a brilliant man. But it's really a philosophy that I embrace. It's about that moment in time. And what goes back to, like, what you said. I mean, if Susie's. I don't know if you use the name Susie calls in, is dropped on hold, and seven minutes later, somebody, if she's still there, right. And they come back Tipping point. Yeah. So there you go. What's way one way you recharge when you're off the clock. If you're ever off the clock what do you do. You should know this because I'll be visiting one of your 10,000 lakes soon. And I'm an avid fly fisherman. I live on a small farm in Jersey, and my therapy is fly fishing, so put me on a trout stream, put me on a lake. Freshwater fishing. I'm there. I get to commune with nature, and the only noise I hear are mosquitoes and flies. I'm with you on that. It's. It's a great way to just decompress. Gather your thoughts. So, Mike, this has been a fantastic conversation. But before we go, I got one question. When you look back on your career and the impact you've had on dentistry, what makes you the most proud? I think my efforts at elevating the profession itself, the brand of dentists over the past 40 years in media, has usually been mocked. Their the pain causes. I'll never forget the movie The Hangover, where the one star is a dentist and someone says, oh, well, you're not a real doctor. Elevating and empowering dentists to believe that they are affecting that patient's front line health care profession and getting consumers to understand that this is just not the rich person who's taking my money and getting me out of pain. Yeah, it should be a respected profession. That's been my goal. I think over the past 25 years, I've seen it elevated. And the future of dentistry is female. If we look at the numbers. So, having great women clinicians who can do it all, and do it well has been a personal thing. And, women dentists are not just part times. It's not just a flex career. There are great women dental practice owners, women dental DSO owners who are doing it. And, I love saying that. That's awesome. They get up on your soapbox and to elevate the profession. So thanks again to Mike McCarthy and thanks to everybody listening. That's it for this episode of The Doers, where we share the stories behind the work, the wins, and the lessons learned. I've enjoyed this episode tremendously with Mike, and be sure to follow us if you enjoyed this episode and listen for what's coming up next. This is awesome. Thanks, Dan. Thank you.