The Doers Podcast | Episode 8 | Bill Neumann and Kim Larson, Group Dentistry Now

In the latest episode of For The Doers Podcast, host Dan Hall sits down with Kim Larson, Co-Founder and COO of Group Dentistry Now, to hear how she noticed dental practices starting to consolidate yet found almost no information about it. She realized that if this change was coming, they might need to take the lead themselves.

Together with Bill Neumann, CEO of Group Dentistry Now, Kim shares their journey, offering insights on growing group dental practices and navigating the complex world of DSOs.

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, victories, and lessons learned from the leaders in the trenches shaping the future of dentistry. Today, I'm joined by Kim Larson and Bill Neuman of Group Dentistry now. The two founders that had the foresight to see that that segment of the industry was missing, a reliable resource for good quality content to grow. Kim, Bill, thank you so much for joining me on this episode, and welcome to the show. Thanks for having us. Yeah. Thanks, Dan. This is going to be a lot of fun. Yeah, I'm really looking forward to it. I want to hear your story. And in fact, I think that's the starting point. What was the moment where you're like, hey, there's this gap in the market of a reputable resource for DSOs to go to for good quality content. So that's a great question. This was about 12 or 13 years ago. We were at the CDA and show in Anaheim, and we were walking the show floor, and We heard a lot of people talking about group practices. They weren't called DSOs at the time, and it was interesting. It seemed like they thought that the dental industry was going to follow the medical industry in terms of consolidation. So we were talking about it, And I started to research it on the computer and really wasn't finding any information about it. But the information that I did find which was limited was very, very negative, information. But I thought if it's true, if this is working in the medical industry, if this is going to happen, if it's inevitable in the dental field, then we're going to have to we would like to maybe talk about it with people, and maybe we should consider starting something digitally on our own. And so we did, and it took about a year or two to kind of get our ducks in a row and figure out how we were going to do this, because we were doing different jobs and we had to kind of figure out a pathway to make it happen. And through a partnership that we kind of started to start talking about it with people and building confidence. And then we started the website. And I remember at the beginning, since there was really no information, DSOs we're very close to the chest holding their cards close to the chest. They weren't talking about it because there was such an evolution back a decade ago. This industry looked completely different than it does now. And DSOs were suspicious of us. The ADSO was suspicious of us. Solo practitioners were suspicious was a very difficult space to break into. Nobody wanted us and everybody kind of needed us because we were there to disseminate information to the DSOs, about other DSOs as well as kind of connect them, be a bridge for DSOs and vendors. So that's kind of how we started. I'm sort of hogging it here, but that was how we started. And the first maybe year I was, I wrote. Okay. I had a hand in all articles on our website. But back in the back, in the beginning, I was literally piecing. I was writing every single article, and I was literally piecing the article together with crumbs. I would find a crumb here, a crumb here, a crumb here, and I would take it and somehow make it into a cohesive article. And back then I would wake up in the morning and I would say to Bill, what do we what are we going to put out there today? And there is nothing. So it was a really slow we had to really grow slowly there in the beginning, but then it eventually it took off and now it is a totally different industry DSOs. They had their issues back in the day. It seems like they've corrected, a lot of their problems. Of course, there are always going to be problems. And there will always be problems. It's just typical of whether or not you're a solo or a group. But, now the DSOs are happy to share their story. They want to share their story. They try to put their best foot forward. A lot of that has to do with the fact that it's hard to recruit and retain staff, dentist included. And you really want to make sure that the dentists are in power. And back in the day, maybe it was a different story. And Bill can talk about that. Yeah, I can. Kim did a great job of kind of Okay. summing up. it's really her that, she mentioned we were doing different things at the time and I wasn't really paying much attention to unfortunately, with some people were saying Kim was fortunately. And so she kind of kept going on. What is this talk about the they didn't call them. Do you even you think about it, Dan. Yeah, 12 years ago they weren't called DSO. I was like, that's a relatively new acronym. It used to be Yeah, yeah. Dental group practices. Yes. Yeah. I mean, even the ADSO was originally called the Dental Group Practice Association. And they made that transformation sometime in 2014-2015 to the ADSO. and that's kind of when that acronym was born. Because at the time dental group was like a bad word. And so then of course, unfortunately DSO turned into that bad word with some people. Right. It kind of followed that the, the new nomenclature, but, one funny story, if you kind of go back to, that time frame is Kim mentioned that solo practitioners were really suspicious of DSOs and DSOs were suspicious of us because we all of a sudden kind of popped out of nowhere with this website and they were wondering, who the heck is behind this? Do they have good intentions or bad intentions? So I was it an ADA meeting in Denver, Colorado. I can't remember the year, but it was early on and Gary Picard, who works for Pacific Dental, he's in their, industry and government relations, and Steve Thorne kind of sent him on a mission to figure out who we were. And so I ended up meeting him there, and he hammered me with with a bunch of questions. And until I think he felt comfortable. And now, of course, he's on our editorial board. So, I guess we made them feel comfortable enough that, we weren't a threat to them, and we were actually there to tell the story that, hey, this is a modality that makes sense. This is an opportunity for docs to sell their practices and partner up and in some cases, form a partnership and have some equity. And then also for younger clinicians to find a pathway to a partnership or a great career opportunity. So it's amazing how things have changed. Yeah. And dental schools have certainly like put out the red carpet for the DSO space, probably that's not their intention, but that's in essence what's happened because, the tuition is obviously outrageously expensive and a new dentist can't necessarily hang their shingle, and they're not getting that wet finger experience that they need. So a DSO is a great place to hone your skills to get a mentor. You don't have the money to open up your own practice. Maybe someday you will be able to have that money. You could work at a DSO for a year or two, maybe five, whatever. Ten. So it's a great, pathway to owning your own. Oh, yeah. You see a lot using it as, like, a stepping stone in their career. Right. To get going and decide what path to make. And some stay in that lane because it works really well for them and where they are in life. And others use it as their, their path to a private practice. there's one thing that was interesting that you said there, Bill, and the story that you were talking about, where you had these trust components, and then you met with that individual that now sits on your board, I guess, this is one thing that stuck with me as I was researching and preparing for this interview is, you know, anyone can, start a newsletter or, spin up a Facebook group. There's lots of them out there in the in the dental space, but you all build something that DSOs and I guess I should maybe call them groups. Right. If we look back to the early days, actually rely on, I mean, in my seat that I sit in on a daily basis, I hear your name referenced often, and they're usually referencing other solutions out there to see if they integrate within some of the items that's sit inside of our portfolio or at CareStack and VoiceStack. And, I find it fascinating because they're going there, they're consuming this and then going and taking it on their journey as they vet new solutions. So how did you set it up to make sure Group Dentistry Now stood out as a trusted resource? And I guess I'm touching to that because of your comment there. Bill. Our influence is that we have tried to protect our name at all costs. So what that means on a daily basis is What posts you're commenting on, who you're affiliating with, who you're associating with. who you're featuring. All of that. It's like you're keeping the brand reputation first has always been one of my goals. And I feel like sometimes if we veer off that path, we have to kind of pull the reins in and say, our reputation. People need to know that they can come to us and the information is going to be accurate. We've always been very honest. And if it's something sponsored, we're honest. We never try to pull the wool over anybody's eyes. And We know the way to market to a DSO. And I think people value difficult to get your product into a DSO if you even want to get into a DSO. I mean, not everybody wants to do that because it can be very difficult. for a variety of reasons, which I'm probably not going to touch on today. But, yeah, I think that reputation for us is everything. Making sure that everything and everyone and every word, everything is high quality. And also a huge key to our success is Bill. Bill's reputation for many, many, many years within the industry, building his name in the dental space, so we had that. And, he continues to do that, and he's a consultant and he speaks at these events. And, people look to him as, a speaker and authority and things like that. It's just years and years and years of relationship building and reputation. Thanks. Thank you. Kim. I mean, I think the only thing I'd add to that, Dan, is that, from Kim's perspective because like she mentioned, she's the one that handles, the website and the content and the way it's delivered is there are a lot of publications out there in the dental space. And so what we want it to do is make sure that the content resonated with the audience, which are large DSOs doctors and staff that might be curious about joining a DSO. And a lot of those emerging groups, which we really get excited about, creating content about and sharing with our audience, that, it's still doctor owned and led. They might hit three or 4 or 5, ten locations as they start to scale up. And there's really interesting stories, but what we're doing is we're not we don't we don't spam. We do one newsletter a week. We make sure we have a balance of editorial and sponsored content to pay the light bills. And, and we are dental people. We're not, we're dental people first, publisher second. And we want to make sure like if that if we create good content, then people will the audience will come back and then sponsors will follow. So that's that's the idea behind it. And you have an editorial board. Right. Like that's amazing to ensure that I don't know the role they play. I'm just making maybe an assumption here of making sure you're hit on that content because then I go and look at your board. it's got a good mix of I think you put it really well there, Bill. Like showing that your dental first and then publisher second, making sure it's relative and quality content for those that are going to go out there and consume it. Yeah. We're not we're not assuming that we know what the audience wants to learn about. So it's good to have an editorial board that can go, like I mentioned, Gary from PDS, he's always wanted to text me. And are you talking about this or, what do you got? What are you guys doing? Can we get a call together? So it's, Yeah, they're they're they're good. They kind of push us to, make sure that we're we're staying relevant. And the foundation of the company today is the same as the foundation of the company on the first day, which is we want to be the voice of the DSO space. We want to make sure that people see the benefits of it, both from the team's perspective, the clinician's perspective, as well as for, for the patients and everybody and vendors and everybody in between. So really, our heart is we're focused completely on the success of the DSO space. And that remains our mission and will remain our mission probably forever. Well that's great I mean this kind of tease me up. I mean you you've had a front row seat. So we're talking 12 years. They weren't even called DSOs back then. Right. Groups. Yeah. Everyone a little unsure of everybody in this situation right. The DSO is we're quite sure about you guys and individual practices. Not sure about the DSO. And I think a lot of that is kind of smooth over time. And during that front row seat, I'm just curious if we were to pull out our crystal ball. I'd like to hear from you two. What has changed most in this wave of you as you've watched them evolve? And then, kind of like what potentially is coming in the future. That crystal ball. I mean, I think there's, there's a lot that's changed. There was that rapid consolidation we saw I would say it started maybe around it was pre-COVID. So interest rates were super low. Maybe around 2018-2019. You started to see a lot of private equity get into the space. And there was a lot of growth through acquisition and rapid growth. And, then of course, interest rates start to click up in 2022. And then everything kind of slows down. And a lot of these, groups that grew expand it too quickly. Maybe we're really good at buying practices. Maybe they weren't good at them. Right. Maybe they were overpaying for them and and even buying practices that, really, weren't necessarily they weren't cohesive, right? They weren't the same culture. They were just buying them to get scale and hopefully, Hot potato. Right. Flip them to another PE and then let them, figure out, how to make them all integrated and work together. So I think we, we saw, this incredible growth through acquisition interest rates go up. Sure. Got some challenged acquisition stop. And now all of a sudden there's this focus on cost control and then focused on same store sales growth. Right. We hear organic growth quite a bit. So I think that was kind of like the biggest change that I've seen. And you've got a lot of groups that have been able to do well. And then a lot of them that are really still seem like they're kind of just running in place and stuck in the mud almost. So it's really interesting. And then the one other thing I would say that that I always get, like I mentioned a little bit earlier, is this growth of these doctor owned doctor lead, whatever you want to call them, emerging dental groups, private group practice. But that gets me very excited because the days of, solo practitioner working in one location with one dentist are pretty much over. And so what we're seeing is this shift to group practice, meaning, could be one, one location, but multiple doctors working together. Yes. Leveraging each other, whether they're specialists or whether they're getting mentorship from each other. So the practice, practices are really changing and the growth of doctors that are opening up three, four, ten locations in a in a market and, and really doing well. And I think they're able to do that now because there's so many more resources. we'd like to think that we're one of them. But there are a lot of them out there and back to the early days, not that long ago, ten years ago, there really weren't a lot of resources. And, people like, you at CareStack and what you have on your website and the content that you create in this podcast that you're putting out, it's just another resource for these groups that, didn't exist before. There was no blueprint. And now there are several blueprints out there. Oh, fascinating. So let's shift gears for just one second. I'd like to talk about you two. Right. Because you've, you just create this media company. You built it from scratch, right? And here you sit today, and one of the from what I see, this is, kind of my opinion and when I talk to people in DSO is one of the most trusted resources that I'm seeing people go back and reference for good quality content. But you're also entrepreneurs. What did your journey look like as you were building Group Dentistry Now? Well, thank you for your kind words. I'll start and then you can kind of finish up that, but it was very, very difficult. At the beginning because like we alluded to, there was a lot of anger and it was on the internet. People were coming. He doesn't remember. I remember because I had small kids at the time and I thought, this sounds dangerous, like the hatred, that was coming. And I thought, do we really? Is it really worth it to me? I'm scared. I think these people are going to come for us. was it a Dr. Workman or or somebody at heartland mentioned the saint. Well, I mean, I guess they had a bigger target on their back, so they were getting death threats. Oh goodness! Workman spoke. Yeah. He mentioned that we didn't get actual death threats, but what they people were saying, yeah, the tolerance wasn't there. All right. And what the people were saying, they weren't threatening to kill us, but it was like maybe a couple rungs down from that. It was just scary. And I thought, wow. But we and I remember talking to Bill about it and I thought, I'm not sure we should pursue this. And he said, just let's just keep going. So we pushed through it and that was the right decision. And another part of the entrepreneurial part of this is that every time someone told us we couldn't do it, which was they told us we couldn't do the website, they told us about the web podcast. We couldn't do our podcast couldn't meaning it's not going to work. It wasn't going to work the way we were going that we wanted it to work. And I won't go into all the details, but people all long told us Every idea that we had, They say they said no, but we did it anyway and kind of just, keeping our fingers crossed for giving it 100% effort at the same time. And, Bill's like a visionary. I'm a task person. So he would be coming up with the idea and I would be kind of moving forward with it, right away and saying he was not a good idea or which sometimes it wasn't, or saying, that's terrible. Right. So it was like, but if I thought it was a good idea, I would. I think that was key is I would immediately. We're so small. It's just the two of us. I would immediately run with it. And so we were constantly able to act on our, ideas. If they were, and I think if you're an idea person, which obviously a lot of entrepreneurs are, you need a person who's going to execute Oh, absolutely. You got that person who can bounce you out. Yeah. and that's and I think that's part of the key to our success is that I, I'm just tell me what you think and I will figure out the rest if I like the Idea. so that works well together. Because I'm not necessarily the idea person. I'm not the visionary, but I can certainly make it happen. Yeah. And we had a couple of, smaller ventures before we started group dentistry. Now we had, in, 2008, we started a networking website. It was called DentalSalesPro.com And this is if you go back to 2008 again, which I don't think is that long ago, I guess it's almost 20 years now. We, that was when Facebook had just really started. Right. It was kind of for college kids still, but, it was a website that put, dental distribution companies together with, the manufacturers that they worked with so very, very niche and medical publisher ended up acquiring it from us. We never generated any revenue from it. It was more we had an audience. It matched with what they were trying to do in the dental space. And that's how I got my, really cut my teeth in the publishing on the publishing side of things and saw some things that they were doing that made sense and a lot of things that didn't. So I we learned from that and then had a, we had a little a product that we ended up licensing to, cross tax, the actual infection control sleeve for the iPad when it was being used in, like, medical surgeries and when Ipad just came out. Sure. it's something that we came up with a product called the Ibarrier. So that was kind of fun. So we played around with some really kind of some small ideas. And I think that gave us a lot of confidence to do, what we did. But everything we started out with was relatively, we were very, cautious, very conservative about it. And, we were able, you can start websites and you can do things like that relatively inexpensively. It's, I think the time that it takes to build up, like you mentioned, building up the audience. And it's tougher now. We had first mover advantage. I mean, we were we did it before anybody else did. The challenge was there was no content and there was a lot of animosity. Now there's so much content out there that, our job is to just continue to be that trusted resource. I mean this clearly not the first time. Right. That your, role in three here or so of, starting some, a company up to get you through those tough times and pull out through the struggle. Right. Because that's usually where the good stuff comes, is after you go through some pain, usually you service a little bit better. Is there anything that you've relied upon during that journey, like a coach or while this might have been pre podcast back then, but is there anything that you would always got you through that moment? Philosophy you followed? We only quitted couple of times. Oh that's not bad. Not for long I think probably a week. Yes. It's it's funny story. So, we have differences sometimes. And so she quit which was maybe 2 or 3 years ago. And so she's really, Kim's very popular. You know what I'm starting to tell, really popular on LinkedIn. And at the end of the year. Dan, I don't know. I'm sure you've seen it where you kind of get your results. Yes. I had this many impressions from this many posts. And so Kim was at like 960,000 impressions or no, maybe I don't know what it was, 960,000, views of her articles or her. Yeah, impressions. And so she, I said if she had not quit those two weeks, she would have been well over a million. So she missed it because she had, taken those two weeks of off from so she was not on social media for that time, but she's maxed out. She's at 36 or 37,000. LinkedIn followers. And you maxed out at 34 or 35 somewhere around there. And that's it's irrelevant. But yeah, no, I'd say and during the hard times, except for those times that I, I, I'm not doing this anymore. This is I looked for Bill. Bill was like the person for me who kept me going, especially in the beginning when I thought, this is a dangerous this. These people are evil and hateful, and I don't know how angry they are, but they're certainly angry. And I don't know, Bill, Bill's always reading something or listening to a podcast. And he's got he's got courage, maybe that I don't have. And I think I have probably traits that he doesn't have. So I think finding works well, finding like that person that has the things that you lack, that together it can become like a dynamic force. And, we've weathered the storms, thank God. Yeah. I mean, if we had to look back, like, if we think about it in, like 2011 or something like that, imagine, like thinking what would have happened. Like, we wouldn't probably have believed that not only what group dentistry has now turned into, but the industry itself. Yeah. Like if you had said to me in 2014, at some point this industry is going to be flooded with people trying to get in and vendors and DSOs and just people trying to get into the market. I would have been shocked because it's such a short period of time. It's a decade. And in that short decade we've gone from, 0 to 100 and it's a totally different space now. And, really hopefully the patient is the one who's benefiting from it because, DSOs I always say they can reach customers or patients in, areas that a solo practitioner may not want to go, whether it be the inner city or in rural America. People there also deserve dental care and DSOs are willing to make that, set practices up there buy practices there and and keep people healthy. no. It's great. I think you bring up some really good points. You see that with most great companies is you have a visionary, and then you have your, your operational individual that's going to go and deploy all that. And it seems like you two have definitely taken that and applied that in our space here with Group Dentistry Now and built that, that product that so many of these individuals are running groups and DSO is rely upon for good content. Probably in the early days, the only one producing and now waiting through all the content. Right. So I'm curious as you reflect back over those 12 year journey. I'm just curious, like, what are you most proud of and what you've done at Group Dentistry Now or in the space? just spoke at an event over the last weekend and, Southern California and had a couple, husband, wife team that has the they have one location, but the their practice has 30 operators. So this is a big location, like it's Oh yeah, that's a big operation. massive. And they, they're there's just a great couple. I'm Kim and I see them at several events and they always come over and talk to me and just saying, hey, wejust watch this podcast and we just saw that webinar and we signed up for this cybersecurity one that's coming up and just very, very thankful for the content. So I think things like that where you're actually somewhere and you're getting that feedback from groups that are saying, hey, we saw this podcast and we're working with CareStack now, or we, we did, we did something, we saw something that you did and it really helped us out. It's, I mean, there's it's it's great because, when you're doing especially when you're working and you're an online business and a lot of it is through zoom and email and but to talk to people and get that feedback in person really means a lot. And same thing with vendors. When vendors can tell us, that they well, hey, we did this and here are the results. And, we really appreciate that. Here's some of the groups we're working with now. That to me is probably the thing that I look at and go, okay, this this is what we're supposed to be doing, and we're doing it right. That's that's fantastic. So you've all talked about the Kim. You're mentioning that we look at this ten year span of time, it the change and how it all evolves so quickly. And it's still growing even faster now right. What do you see for group dentistry now. Where does it go in the future? Anything on the horizon we should be watching out for? I mean, I think we're going to continue to do what we're doing now. What, we're working on a couple of things. We want to create a special, access only insider group. So something that really can provide a lot of benefit to both vendors and DSO. So it's something that, be a little bit more personalized where we're getting vendors and, and DSO together. So that means it's a combination of online and in person and, probably be doing some shorter form podcasts just to kind of keep people up to date, like on a weekly basis with what's going on. It seems like everybody, is, challenged to read anymore. So a lot of people like to consume content like this. Yeah. And, we want to give them content the way they want to receive it. So I think and we do a lot of podcasts anyway. And I think that kind of combination of longer form, which we do now, and some shorter form podcasts that are more kind of yeah, breaking news, though, we won't want to say is breaking news. Everybody says that. But you know what I mean. Something like that. We're kind of keeping them, up to date on current events. So those are the two things, something that's, super personalized with a small group of vendors, a small group of DSOs, and then the the weekly DSO declassified. Yeah. I'm curious. Like, because I've thought about that as well too. Lot of the podcast I'll listen to or push out micro content to me that I share with my team internally here at CareStack and VoiceStack, and some of them can be as short as two minutes. Right. But super. How do I say it's breaking news, Bill? Because I think the term I like that I like that my person that I'll consume their content on regular basis is just something that's applicable to that may have just happened that we see a shift in your particular industry, right? Mine is running two sales teams, and it's like, okay, great. This is some shifts we may see in the market. Here's how we're going to have to approach this and change. How long do you think those micro sessions will be. What are you targeting for time wise? Well, it's not going to be 2 minutes Yeah that's really hard to do right? She could do two minutes I probably can't I would say 10. Okay. 15 minutes. We'll see. I mean, we're going from one extreme which our podcasts run 30 to an hour long. So hours are pretty long. Okay. So I think if we can get it down to 10 to 15 minutes and we'll see, I'm speculating. I don't know if we could get to two minutes. And maybe if there is some legit that could be our goal, legit breaking news. Let's make that our goal to do like that. That was an extreme example. They're usually probably about anywhere from 2 to 10. Right. They're falling in that segment. It has longer ones. weekly or daily? It can be weekly than a random one. I'll push out. Like when, the markets went down. Right. He pushed out a lot of content out that week back in April, just knowing that there would be some shifts in with consumers and how people make decisions. And, we'll have to show up on the sell on our side of the business to, resonate with those individuals and also to write it out. There won't be any more just showing up. You're gonna have to show up and really do your best every single time. So it's also just a weekly. And then if it's something that is really impactful. Well Bill, Kim, thank you so much for your time. This has really been insightful. It's been great learning about Group Dentistry Now and how you all built it from 12 years ago and then going through a very real struggle there of, like the of almost physical harm. It just is shocking and how you all drew from that and continued on, and how you didn't just watch this wave of DSOs or groups actually played a role in where we sit today with them. I definitely much more sounds like a friendlier environment now. So yeah, thank you tend to both of you for weathering that for everybody and being the voice of the platform now. So for everybody listening check out Group Dentistry Now. Right. What's the best place to go. I mean Kim's maxed out on her LinkedIn connections. So Oh, no. You can still follow me. You can still follow me on LinkedIn, okay. Follow Kim. or you can follow Bill, I'm not Maxed out. We have a podcast called the Group Dentistry Now show. And we our website is groupdentistrynow.com We have a weekly DSO e-newsletter to keep you, up to date on everything. And you can subscribeon our website. Okay. Yeah. Pretty easy. It's like go to groupdentistrynow.com And then find us on LinkedIn and you can find everything else there. So anybody leading or joining or partnering with the DSO Group practice to go there. Stay connected. Stay on top of what's happening and get some good content. Wade through some of the content. I know we've done some stuff with Group Dentistry Now to go through some of the the noise in the AI space, which is really busy. But I thank you for everybody tuning in. And again, thanks, Bill Kim, for your time today. Thanks Dan for what you do. Appreciate it. Thanks. The Doers, follow us, continue on and got some good content coming out. And as always, keep building and keep doing the work.