For more information contact the Pacific Aesthetic Continuum at https://thepac.org.
For more information contact the Pacific Aesthetic Continuum at https://thepac.org.
One of Todd superpower is process business management and discipline. I've always thought that, and then he combined that with great community, great clinical skills, and great chair side manner and, boom, the result is, predictable. Todd, we knew when we met you in New York. Long, long time ago. You were going to be a rock star. I wasn't even shaving back then. But, you think about it, we talk about all the business sort of things, which, I'm aware of just because we're associated, but at the end of the day, also, we struggle, Mike, and I struggle because the younger doctors don't see the value in the opportunity to learn whether it's with a senior doctor who's going to offer them the opportunity to work together to teach them The diversity of skills they need now to be successful as a young associate going into the practice, or in your case, in Mike's case, paying six figures by six figures for that opportunity to learn through education, meaning, you came to our programs with Larry Rosenthal and paid probably 100 grand out of your pocket at the end of the day to learn this, as did most of the doctors that You know Mike did as well as most of the doctors that he taught with LBI anyway, bottom line, I think we should talk about that too, because there's two parts of this, there's the business side, but also the challenges of young associates, not understanding that, Hey, maybe I'm not going to do five interior cases, every quarter, but what's the importance of education. And if it's already getting economically difficult, you be a dentist, to buy a practice to go through all the expenses for that, having the opportunity to learn as an associate and recognizing that value when you're with somebody like you or Dr. Miyazaki, and I still see you guys have challenges with the associates not making that connection. Oh, yeah, I really do. And I think you and Mike can talk about that on the clinical side. We're getting the pack started back up again. And we have the opportunity to offer 10 scholarships. And it's just amazing to me how these young associates don't realize what a gift that is when the guys that are sitting on this podcast. paid literally hundreds of thousands in postgraduate education dollars to take that risk with no guarantee and still have to go back to work on Monday morning and pay the bills. Yeah. So there's, I'd like you guys to talk about that a little bit too, because that seems to me to be the biggest frustration now is as we get a little bit older and look back at the chances and risks that we took, that it seems like the younger associates are not willing to take what, why that is. I think today's, we're going to have a great podcast. We have a special guest today, Dr. Todd Franklin, who's been a long time friend and doesn't practice too far away from where I practice. And we have Garrett Caldwell again, CEO of the pack and core dental lab. So Todd's going to be our special guest. Garrett and I are just going to be along for the ride. So we're going to grill Todd really heavy. Yeah. But anyway, real quick background. Dr. Franklin has been in practice now for 31 years, has had a longtime practice in Lodi where he's become very successful. And We'll let Todd fill it in more. But it's a great town, in wine country of northern California. A great community though. And I think one of the great stories, and Garrett can add more, is just that Dr. Franklin went into this little bedroom community and has just really become a big part of the town, which has really helped him grow his practice. And I've also been impressed by your social media presence, your TikToks and things like that. So you have to fill us in on that. I think that's marketing. Yeah. Then he also has a second practice in Stockton and again, in Northern California. About 45 miles south of Sacramento and Lodi is about 20 5 to 30 minutes of South of Sacramento. To hear how you balance that out is going to be interesting. You also have three associates and we have become associated because Dr. Franklin is a talented clinician and helps us teach our live patient treatment programs with the pack. Many different facets of Dr. Franklin, which I think I think we'll all find very fascinating. So let's just break in learning more about you. You have been in practice for a long time in Lodi and now are branching out to two, sometimes three practices, and maybe in the future even more. You've got the three associates that we were talking about before we started this recording, and we'd love to hear about how that's working out. I found having associates has just been difficult because I look at my associates. I would like to think of them as maybe transitory partners that will, would eventually become a little bit more invested in the practice, but it's hard to, I think, to get that sense of ownership. So why don't we start wherever you feel it's important. What, is contributing to your success? Just personally, before we get into the associates because you've done so well. And you're able to expand and share your success with your associates. Why don't we start there? Yeah, I it's just been interesting coming into Lodi. I was in Stockton at UOP for undergraduate and that was my exposure. To the area, and I just I didn't want to stay in the big city. I didn't want to stay in San Francisco. My side of the family's from Marin County. I didn't have a desire to go back there. And the Central Valley is very centrally located. And the fact that you can get to the mountains very quickly. There's a lot of waterways. We enjoy boating and that type of thing. So if you need to get to the city cost of living is reasonable. Yeah, so the opportunity I was approached by a retiring doctor back in the mid 90s to take over his practice, and at the time I was working as an associate down in Stockton, and finished one day in Stockton, and the next day we started in Lodi, and haven't looked back. Back in the nineties there wasn't a lot of marketing. I saw the opportunity to put our flag out there and say, Hey, here we are. The previous owner had been a long time Lodi resident born and raised here. He was in his late fifties and decided, Hey, I've done my thing. I need to get out of town. And so he packed up retired and never looked back. So it was a great opportunity. I feel very blessed to have that jumpstart and, I just muddled around for, four or five years and then a colleague of mine said, Hey, I'm in New York. I'm with the Rosenthal Institute and Aesthetic Advantage and you need to get your butt to New York. That, that started the whole crazy journey, that was in the early 2000s and met Garrett. That's where that all started. It's crazy how many years have gone by, but it was a moment in my career where I knew that just doing general dentistry and, having a strong family practice was not gonna suffice enough to whet my appetite for what I wanted to do. I got on the the aesthetic bandwagon and met wonderful people like you, Dr. Mike, and a lot of other people came along the way. I, when I talked to the associates. I think the biggest thing that I try to instill with them is find a mentor, find somebody who is where you want to go and where you want to be and follow and listen to them. And I think a lot of the young doctors right now, maybe don't see the value in that. And back in my early stages of the career, I think that's what helped propel the the Lodi office. I eventually then in 2016 went back and purchased. the office in Stockton that I was an associate in that doctor had gone through our PAP courses and, tapped me on the shoulder for four or five years saying, hey, you need to come take over my practice. And, I was busy in Lodi. I didn't see the opportunity, but. As we kicked around different ideas we said, yeah, we can take our management team and take over and allow him to work but also allow me to take over and grow another entity. That was in 2016, but even before then, just getting the exposure with the hands on programs, I think gave me a lot of confidence to do the type of dentistry that I wanted to do. And it's parlayed or created some other avenues during COVID and went and got fellowship in implantology and, marrying the two of those. All these different types of of skill sets together has been beneficial. So it's been a fun journey. It's as you said earlier, having associates, sometimes you enjoy the process and sometimes you want to pull your hair out. But all in all, I think in Lodi it's been good because I do take a lot more time off now, which is nice, but I know that the associates are going to be here to take care of the patient base when I'm not here. A lot of good positives amongst all the other things that we deal with as a business owners and clinicians. I think you're absolutely right. I always tell the young dentist, design your future. And I think that's one of the things you've done really well, instead of letting your future just happen. And like for all of us that have been in practice for over 30 years, we know how fast those years go by. And there are certain dentists that just go to work every day and they don't really know what the future is going to hold. And then 30 years later, you look back and go, I don't have much, to show for it, but you're totally the opposite. What you've done is you've always had your plan. You've been working your plan. If you could share some of that discipline or how you got the discipline and the advantages of you having that discipline to get you to where you are. And again, talking about the exit strategy at the very end. Yeah, what I think, I think you just said it perfectly. Things just don't happen. I think if we sit in our little islands of our practices and just assume that Things are going to take care of themselves and are going to happen. I think you got another thing coming. Discipline, I think I, I captured that from my dad. He was an engineer, mechanical engineer. As a kid, he was also a pilot. Like you, Dr. Mike, and both my parents were in private aviation, and so as a kid, I remember going flying with him, and he was very structured about how he approached things, and more specifically in flying, and I think as a young kid, I got a clearer understanding of processes, and I'm an analytical thinker, for the most part, so I think, that transpired into the growth of the practice was looking at systems. And I think, back in the early 2000s we spent a lot of time with a business coach and creating the systems that we run by, to this day. And I think when When we don't have a success in a particular aspect of the practice, we can always go back to the system and say, okay where did we fail in applying the system or the protocols? And it's not something that we just fly by the seat of our pants, but day in and day out, we're always doing our huddles. We're looking at, where do we want to go today? Where do we want to go for the month? We do monthly staff meetings. And at the end of the year, we just finished a big retreat. We brought both of the offices together, and we looked at what we did last year. We looked at where do we want to go this year? Is there certain CE courses that we all want to take as a, as an office? What socially do we want to do as an office? What kind of growth from new patients are we looking at? What type of services are we not necessarily providing to the level that we would like? And how do we go about, Developing those services into our menu, so to speak, so it's all process driven. I'm a very numbers guy. The numbers always tell the story. So we're constantly looking at, you know what our metrics are. And when a particular metric is not where we want it to be, how do we go about tweaking that or deep diving into it? So it's all a process and it's, I think it makes it easier for the team to work cohesively together. And I think that's the most important thing is I can only provide dentistry, but if the team is not successful and empowered to do their jobs the protocols and the systems that we have allow them to communicate amongst themselves and strategize. And if I'm not here. They're able to, put their thinking hats on and tackle those challenges. And at the end of the day, then we have a successful practice. Yeah, that's all great. Just before we go too far into this you were mentioning your training aesthetics and implants and I want to put this in perspective because as I travel around the country, some doctors will say, Oh, our town's the hardest town to do this type of dentistry and whether it be implants or aesthetics or I don't want to learn how to do veneers because I don't have patients that want veneers, but if you could tell us a little bit, Lodi is a small town and, in the years when you talked about the early 2000s and you were going to this small town, I don't know if you remember what the population was back then, but, it was small not a big mega city, and you're going into this town with aesthetics. Maybe you can give us a little background of how that worked back then. And then Stockton is not known for its high earnings per capita. And yet you go in and with the aesthetics and implants and to see like Stockton. So can you give us a little bit of a background of. How that worked, going back to the early 2000s, because you're one of the first ones to go into that foray, like you were talking about following Larry Rosenthal into aesthetics. Yeah. What was it like? And is there advice that you could give doctors today? Yeah. It has been challenging. We're not in a high rent district, so to speak. Lodi's population now is probably around 80, 000 and it was probably in the mid 50s when I was here in, in the mid mid 90s. So yeah, it is definitely growing. There's a lot of new growth over the last four or five years that's coming into town. So a lot of younger families. And I think that's where our focus is. It's not always been aesthetics. I think that was a byproduct of a solid family practice. Seeing, young children all the way up to elderly but letting people know that we do cosmetic. So we. We did step out, in the early 90s and start doing some social magazines that were in the area, lifestyle magazines. And so that really propelled the awareness of the fact that we can do these smile makeovers and do the aesthetics that people are looking for without having to go to, San Francisco or even up to Sacramento in that regard. Stockton is a fairly large city. Probably 350, 360, 000 people. So there's enough dentistry there to be able to do the type of dentistry that we do. I think in Lodi We're seeing a lot of people who are commuting to Sacramento, commuting to the Bay Area, so they're creating a much better lifestyle financially, but they enjoy the small town feel as far as living in Lodi. No, I think it's been, I think it's been very good. It's not, if I took the skill sets that I have and moved to a bigger city, we would probably be able to do a lot more cases, but I'm doing as many as I would like amongst all the other things. That, that pretty much sums it up. I don't want to be doing, three and four cases every other week, but we do plenty and it's fun to be in that arena that people, when they come and do a smile consult with us, they said we. We know that you can do this. Your reputation has preceded you. And it took a long time to get that reputation established. So clinically, what are some of the things that you do in your practice that you think sets you apart? Like you're saying the aesthetics, are there other services that do the same thing to set you apart from the other doctors, whether it be in Lodi or Stockton. Yeah. I think one of the things that we routinely hear through our feedback and reviews and follow up with new patients is that we don't beat around the bush. It, when somebody comes in with a problem, they want to make sure that they're getting well taken care of, that the treatment is comfortable. We. We remodeled the office back in 2005. That was one of the first steps, after getting back from New York and getting the training is we got in the office and started over. We've also done that since with the Stockton office. So people, first off, they want to have a nice office where they can go into that's clean. It's up to date. We've got, obviously the latest in equipment and accessories. Okay. That's the first step. Secondly is being able to deep dive into a patient's immediate. Concerns. If they come in with a toothache or they've had some experiences in other offices, I think we run a nice ship. There's we don't beat around the bush. There's no smoke screens or anything. We get right down to it. We make sure they're comfortable. I wouldn't necessarily say from a financial standpoint, we're going to be the cheapest, but we're not the most expensive. So I think we're right in the sweet spot. So there's a lot of different things that patients look for when they're looking for a new dental home. And at the end of the day, If they can walk away and we've exceeded their expectations then we've created a fan base and that's, there's no magic wand or anything that I wave and say, okay this is the one main item that we do above and beyond everybody else. I think we just, our team is well trained. They get the job done and they get it done efficiently patients like when we're efficient. So I think it's the overall package. Yes we do know how to do good dentistry. You can have offices where the patients are going back and forth and having post ops and just not. feeling comfortable. But at the end of the day, I think the dentistry is probably the least impactful aspect of running a successful practice. I think it's just the patient experience. And I alluded to it earlier, though, but the marketing that you do, can you give Doctors that may be listening to this kind of tips on marketing what's worked well for you, it's they always say out of sight out of mind and I think with as much that social media has been ingrained into our culture I don't think you any office can avoid doing social media. Now, this last year, that was one of the big decisions that we made was to hire a person to come on to our team that's all they do is our marketing. They do in office marketing. They do our external anything that has to do with public relations. She is taking care of that. So you've probably seen an uptake of our posts and things like that. So Again, it's some of it is just fun. People also want to know that the office is not overly stuffy, that we're human just like everybody else. So we do try and bring in some humor. We're working on holidays that come on. So we just finished Valentine's and we're gonna be working on ST Patrick's Day coming up and then you know, we'll be moving into the spring with Mother's Day and Father's Day and. And all that so creating themes. But we're also showcasing our befores and our afters. Also different services. Mainly right now, our focus is is all on fours and all on six and then single tooth implants. Adding a nice mixture into the marketing so you can spend as much or as little money as you want when it comes to marketing. I know what we spend in our Lodi offices. It's pretty much almost on autopilot. As far as the number of new patients that we want, 85 percent of our existing patients come from or new patients come from existing patients. So there's not a lot of marketing dollars that we put into place in the Lodi office. Stockton's a different nut. We have a marketing company that we work with. We're doing a lot of Google stuff. So we're paying a lot more money towards that because we need to. Todd, let me jump in for just a second because I just want to take a small step backwards. So 85% Of your clients come from referral, correct? But I obviously we've been associated together professionally and as friends for many years talk about community because before social media You decided to create a discipline within your practice for marketing To make yourself very aware in the community I go anywhere. I go anywhere in town in your town and I sit down anywhere For lunch. For a cup of coffee and they, Oh, you're, Oh you're partnering with Dr. Franklin. Oh, he's my dentist or he's my cousin or the police officer that gave me a ticket three months ago. He's your patient. So take a step back because 85 percent of referrals, but let's talk. Can you talk a little bit about community? Because I'm the old guy here and I get the social media thing. When you started out the first 10 or 15 years, I was really impressed with what your plan was regarding that. Yeah. Right off the bat as I said earlier, my focus when I came into town was really to try and. Put our flag out there and I wouldn't necessarily say disrupt the status quo, but I'm an impatient person. I like to grow and I like to move forward and I knew just sitting in the office waiting for things to happen wasn't going to happen so we started doing some external marketing. Back in the mid 90s there We had a couple little tiny magazines. Nothing like Sacramento Magazine or San Joaquin Magazine that we have these days. But it was, getting involved in some of the the service organizations that were here in town getting out, meeting people going to chamber, that, those were the basics that we did back in the day. One of the things that we started we did a patient appreciation barbecue every year. So we cordoned off the the parking lot. We brought in caterers and we would throw a big barbecue for all of our patients. And we'd usually have between 200 and 300, patients showing up. But a lot of times we'd see people who weren't even patients who would come with friends and family that were patients. And so a lot of exposure. We're on a pretty busy street right here in the middle of town. And when you have, all these tables and chairs and everybody's enjoying themselves, word gets around that Oh, Dr. Franklin's doing his patient barbecue. So we did that for 20 years. And then, during COVID, we didn't do anything. We're trying to kick around some ideas of doing something similar, yeah. It was getting to the point where it's getting it's almost like throwing a wedding every year. There's just a lot of efforts that went into that. So that really was one thing that people look forward to. There's quarterly for a long time, we would do different charitable organizations that we would earmark. And so we would have some sort of internal competition we have a kennel or a a dog and cat center here and they were building a new facility and we wanted to figure out some way to be able to contribute to that. So we did some fundraisers for them. 180 teen center, which is a big teen center. For young adolescents underprivileged kids that they can go to. So we've been a big sponsor of them over the years. Every year we have a big golf tournament. And those types of things, those charity organizations, we, you get out and you meet people. And again it's name recognition. Yeah I, no I see it. And I think Todd, you're one of the best, you've gone out into the community, apart from social media. You've gone out into your community and become a big part, like you said, with the charitable organizations, with the fire department, I know with the police department, I know with the general public, I know with the social part of it, with the animals, pets in the community and you've just touched such a diverse part of the community. And then. That's just created, it seems to me from the outside, it's created a huge referral base that's supported now by social media. So are you planning on doing the same thing, or are those days gone? I think there will always be. I don't care if you're in a community of 400, 000 people or one with, 75, 000 people. I think you need to be involved and plugged in, into the community. As Lodi continues to grow, I think it becomes harder and harder to get that name recognition just because there's a lot more influx of new people, but word of mouth is always going to be the strongest growth factor when it comes to a practice and you just have to keep your finger on the pulse. You can't, as we said earlier, you can't sit in your practice and just assume that people are going to come flooding in. We track all of that, as far as who do you know and, how did you come to hear us? And time and time again. Oh, it's a family member or a coworker or whatever it might be. At the end of the day, you take care of people and people will continue to spread your good word. And we do a lot of thank yous. We're constantly writing handwritten cards to People that have referred in and we have a gratuity program that we take care of those that take care of us. Yeah, and again, it gets back to what I said earlier that there's not one magic wand when it comes to running a practice and creating that that community presence or the marketing presence. I think with social media now, it makes it a lot easier. There are certain aspects of social media that an older segment of the population partakes in, and then there's the younger generation that are using different social media platforms. So just playing around with What works and what kind of exposure that we're getting. So yeah, it's a lot of fun. I don't necessarily like to be the one in front of the camera, when it comes to a tick tock video or something like that. But once in a while, they get me in and it is a lot of fun. Let's talk a little bit about associates because I know many of our listeners are always challenged with that. Talk about the associates, Todd, about the importance of education and when and how, when do you ask them to get involved in postgraduate education and how and what's your perspective when you communicate to your associates regarding that? And as an owner, yeah. And as an owner, the second part of that question is when do you think the best time for them to engage in that is as a, it's, that's an interesting question because of the three associates that I have once a brand new graduate she's like deer in the headlights big bright eyes and she walks into a practice that's busy and sees what the other associates doing and what I'm doing. And. Constantly she's saying, I can't believe you prep that crown already, and she's doing some filling. No, I, and then I have one associate that has been out for four or five years, starting to come into her own and create her own identity. And then. The one associate is in his early 40s. Has a small practice about an hour away and likes to freelance and other offices to, just get out of the rut and the mundane. But, he sees what we're doing. I think it's been an, a valuable opportunity for him to be able to say, okay this is a well run office. I can take things that I'm learning here and apply. In my own office. And so even though he's in his forties, fortunately, he's still open minded enough to be able to learn and take new things into his office. When should an associate get on the bandwagon and hands on live programs? Obviously sooner the better. It really becomes what they're comfortable with. But if you wait till you're comfortable, you're not gonna get stretched. There's a million dollar statement right there, Yeah. So I think we all have to be taken out of our comfort zone and and seize those opportunities. So whether it's an aesthetics course and doing, eight to 10 veneers or taking an implant course or my one associate really doesn't. Feel comfortable doing extraction. So she's been going off and taking some C. E. Courses that are also live patient courses to get better at learning how to do good extractions. Myself, just a couple of years ago, spending, before COVID spending a couple of years didactically, every third weekend going over to San Francisco and going through an implant. Yeah. Residency and then, getting the hands on program. Going out of the country and doing a bunch of implants. It got me out of my comfort zone. I thoroughly enjoy putting implants in now. It's a lot of fun. And then, just recently going and taking the next step and applying the all on four into the practice. And whether you're a brand new graduate or a seasoned practitioner, if you're sitting there. Not growing, you're actually dying. So you need to be constantly looking at things that are going to give you excitement about being a practitioner advancing your skill sets. By no means do I know everything, nor do I want to know everything. I always say, find out what you like to do. And get really good at it, you can't be everything to everybody, those are some of the things that the different associates have different levels of interest in if I was to sit all three down right now, I'd probably be able to say, yeah, one would probably from a mindset standpoint, be willing to go jump in and do a hands on course. Is the skill sets there yet? Maybe not. But I think if I was to sit down and say, okay, do you want to take a hands on course, they would get a little nervous, but they would probably say, yeah. And as I said earlier, I think we need to encourage them to be mentored find that desire to be mentored. Get out of their comfort zone. I think a lot of the young graduates, are very comfortable showing up, doing the work, going home and getting paid. But beyond that, really looking at the bigger picture and saying, okay, where do I want to take my career? Do I want to be a practice owner? Do I want to just be an associate? Do I want to be a partner? Those are the million dollar questions that they all have to answer, but to begin with. They have to be comfortable being clinicians. They have to be really good about doing bread and butter dentistry and and then taking the CE courses and expanding their knowledge and expertise in those particular areas. I get excited about this stuff. I get all these accessible doctors all around me. And I just think it's interesting if we take a look in the rear view mirror. Pretty much all of the doctors that surround us are doctors that were involved in education. They're all doctors that took a chance on themselves when they couldn't afford to and when they clinically weren't prepared to. As somebody who's an educator and an administrator of postgraduate educational programs for close now to 30 years, I've had the luxury of being the coach on the sideline rather than being the player. And as the coach, one of the things that I consistently see is the clinical at the beginning, what the doctor takes out of the first course has nothing to do with retention regarding clinical skills. They get over number one, the fear of being in an environment where they can learn and grow. That might be the most important thing. I think everyone remembers the first hands on course they took and probably were freaked out until after lunch the first day. And then after they sat their case, they wish we could start all over again because they realized we're not bad guys. They realize it's not a fear based environment that It's a community. And so I think when I talk about education and I get a little bit frustrated with the doctors that because originally, you k to 1995, it was i practitioners deciding to on themselves pretty much is we're dealing with guy and Mike making decisions There's been a big paradigm shift, and we don't see as at least Mike, from my perspective, we see many more of our students coming from an institutional based environment where they're not necessarily making the decision that they can get involved in a postgraduate program. Also, back in the 1990s, the doctors had to write a check for 8, and they had to do that three or four times. In order to get through a course. It wasn't one course. It was a three year program that was 10 grand twice a year for three years to get all the way through those five levels. So it was 50 75, 000 investment. And one of the things that again, I digress. It wasn't so much the clinical skills. But it was being able to look at other doctors, being able to get over the fear that learning is okay, that there's other people in their same place, creating mentorship for them, somebody that they can call and talk to, learning not just the clinical skills, but all the other things come with it. Patient case diagnosis, learning just how to look at a case differently. Todd, if you can think back to Rosenthal program where we met, you remember the first thing that you learned in there? Was it? Yeah. that you looked at the smile or you looked at the mouth differently. You may not have come out of there being exactly confident in dental bonding and prep, but you definitely never looked at a mouth the same way, right? No I completely agree with you. I think dovetailing into what you just said about visualization, I just did a veneer case on a patient the other day and my one associate was looking over the shoulder. And I think that's. a huge value that you can't really put a dollar figure on being able to have somebody mentor you and look over the shoulder on a daily basis and look at cases. But it was a pretty crowded lower anterior veneer case. And I was As I was prepping, talking her through my thought process of looking at the case because, the first question that she had was how do you know where to prep and shape and everything else? And I said one of the things that we were trained back in the day. Is being able to visualize the end result before you even touch the burr. And being able to walk her through that. And at the end, looking at the preps, and then in her eyes, she could say, okay, now I visualize what you were talking about. And the same thing with aesthetic advantage. You're sitting there in the Auditorium at NYU. And, you're looking around and saying, okay, am I in the right spot? And just making sure my mind was open and taking it all in. But, as you went through, one course, and then a second course, and then a third course, and continue to refine and hear them. Those same topics over and over again allowed us to start to visualize. And I think when we're teaching our hands on courses, we can see those doctors. All of a sudden, the light bulb, turns on and they go, okay, now I get it. This one associate on Friday, came and said, I think I've got the prep done the way that I should have it done, but I want you to take a look at it. So I said okay, I think you've gotten us, 90 or 95 percent of the way there, but let me, as we do in all of our courses, let me sit down and just refine a few things and talk you through what I'm seeing. And so I did that. And all of a sudden it was like the light went on. She goes, Oh, now I see and that's part of the value of going through all these courses is if I was a young young dentist, I'd be looking for a mentor to ride their coattails and say, okay, I'm Where do I go next? I remember having that conversation with you. We met, we finished in New York and I looked at you point blank and I said, now what do I do? I remember, no, I remember that. And I think of Dr. John in Roseville which is a neighbor community of where you practice. And I remember John, he was ready to quit dentistry. I met him at the laboratory and, okay. He walked up the stairs and said, I don't think this is for me. I'm not cut out for it. I'm just going to go be an associate. And I remember saying, John, you need to come to New York and take this course because you need to get in around so you can see it. And boy, if you look at him now, I can't even imagine it's the same guy. But again, it was the courage. Todd so so everyone listening here knows that Todd, dr Franklin is an instructor with our program now and has been for decades And we used to say it's one thing to learn But we need to learn enough to where we're confident enough to teach it and when you're competent enough to teach it That's when you really get traction in your practice The one thing that I see happen when we get these doctors that are new to the program into the program is after the first course the light bulb comes on, they know what they don't know and they know they're around good people. Number two, they know what they don't know and they know they're around good people and they can't wait to continue. So our challenge is getting folks into the program, whether they're observing. or whether they're prepping a case. I think you have to prep a case because when you're prepping a case in the first program, you're not prep, you're there with a lifeguard, you're and you're around your patients are so safe. The patients are going to get the best case. they could ever possibly get because they have the best clinicians and the laboratory there with them, but they get an opportunity to step back and observe, but be part of it. Like soloing, you're both in aviation. It's like the first time you take the plane up by yourself, you're freaked out, but there's somebody sitting on your shoulder, talking to you down on the field. And it's the same way. I think you We have to figure out how to get these young associates in and realize the value. It's not just, Hey, do they have their basic clinical skills now? So they're going to go through this course and prep. They're not going to go through the first course and go back and diagnose a case and prep it. They're too afraid to do that. They're not going to prep and pray as we say, but I think it's important to get the doctors in so that they learn to visualize so that they learn, so they get exposed to the systematic approach that we teach to understanding how to look at a case. and then evolve into preparation design and then into ultimately aesthetics. I think at the beginning, when these doctors come to the courses, the laboratory is really the key of the whole thing for their first part of their career. They'll prep a case and send it to the lab. And if it doesn't come back absolutely perfect and fit perfectly, they don't have the control to finish it. That's where the fear is to get it to see. But ultimately, the doctor evolves past the lab and becomes in control, and then the expectation of the case fitting is one thing, but the aesthetics and the creativity and the expertise of the doctor then really comes shining through. So I really think it's important that what you talk about visualizing a case, unless you learn to see something other than a single tooth. You're never going to evolve in your practice, and I don't think you'll ever see that unless you get into postgraduate education, unless you get into a hands on course. So that's how I feel. That's how I feel. No, I would agree with you. And, ironically, you brought up Dr. He's the one that, I ran into at a conference and he says, you need to get your butt to New York. It's funny how things come full circle. So you encouraged him. He encouraged me and the rest is history. But I see it, now that we've been teaching these hands on programs for so many years that you have a, whether it be a young doctor, who's taken the hands on program, or even I've had, senior doctors who were, 10 to 15 years older than me taking the course. And, I remember being down in Dana point. Teaching a course and this older fellow, said son, I was doing crown preps before you were even born. And, I appreciated the humor. But I said, there's more than one way of doing things. But let me just sit down and show you how we do things from a pack perspective. Not saying that you have to incorporate this into your practice, as far as your preparations, but let me just show you how we approach it. And so I sat down and at the end of the course, he pulled me aside and he goes, I was a little abrupt with you in the beginning, but he goes, I really want to thank you because I've learned a lot. And I think whether you're a brand new graduate or a senior doctor, there's always opportunities to learn a different modality. And I think when they see it and they're doing it, that light bulb all of a sudden goes on. And, when we're doing a hands on course and we're, prepping a hundred veneers in a weekend, you go back to a single crown on Monday morning and, you whip through it and you get it done. You're like, wow, that was super easy because you just spent the whole weekend, doing a lot of complicated preparation. I think. Any doctor who goes through a hands on program and whether they do it once or twice, we always recommend at least three because by the time you get to the third one, you're really incorporating 70 to 80 percent of what we've instructed the first time you might remember. 20%. The second time you're probably going to remember 40%. But you get through those three hands on programs and the rest of your dentistry just seems to come along a lot easier. And I think you become a much better clinician and that dovetails, into some of our marketing too, when we do a lot of meet and greets for patients who were, so to speak, kicking the tires as far as wanting to get a new smile, we do a lot of second consultations for patients who have, they're coming from their General dentist or another dentist for a consultation and they come in to see us. And I think a lot of times when we are able to get the patient to do the case with us. It's, I think a lot of it is confidence. Granted we have a lot of cases that we can show them that are similar to their particular situation, but when we're from the front office to the back office and we're running a nice smooth consultation and there's a lot of excitement that we bring into those consultations I think they, they feed into that and that confidence of us being able to provide that type of service they they see that. And so that confidence only comes from the experience of taking hands on programs, we say this all the time when we're getting up and doing the first weekend lecture that, you're going to see, 10 cases done this weekend. You're not in your. little practice that you're working in, you're not going to see that amount of cosmetic dentistry done in probably a year or maybe even two years. So the ability to be able to see it and do it in a weekend is pretty phenomenal. So Mike, there's your legacy, Mike being a senior administrator and developer at LVI. for several decades. There's your legacy, Mike. You don't need to. Now you just turn up. Now you just earn a living, Mike, because your legacy is all these doctors that literally you've changed their lives. And I think you and Larry and even David Warnbrook, you guys were the you guys were the pillars of education back when these things change. And I think it just evolved that concept. whether it started with aesthetics or dental bonding, whatever you want to talk about, I think that concepts carried through all the way over now to all on three, all on four, blah, blah, blah, implants, everything you guys do right now. really is stemmed from the hands on live patient hands on opportunity taught by doctors that are good guys that aren't the dental school, guys, the guys that are a lot of fun, cool guys that are fun to be around that understand where you've been, that have been there themselves and you can be part of a group of guys and gals where there's camaraderie, which I think is interesting because that's the other part of it, which is we've all become friends. There's probably, 2 to 300 doctors in my world that we've all gone through education together. And grown and all started late implants, Mike, you're teaching implants now, but a decade ago, you weren't doing any of that, and now you're, now that's the new thing. I feel like our course is very fundamental to growing into those other courses, whether it be ortho or implants. I feel like if you haven't taken a course on that incorporates smile design and facial aesthetics, I think it's more difficult to get into selling dentistry to your patients that the implants and so forth and so on, because it's comprehensive restorative dentistry. So I don't know, Mike, I don't know how you feel about that. I absolutely agree. I think as we talk about aesthetics, a lot of times our colleagues that might be listening to this might, might think in their brain about veneers. Oh, this is the practice teaches veneers. And if you go back, you're right. I'm like one of those old columns in the Roman architecture. We talk about a pillar. been there for centuries. But, I think people think of veneers when we talk about aesthetics and, but you're absolutely right. Today, aesthetics is so much more. So Dr. Franklin is doing his implants. In order to do a great all in four case, he has to know smile design. He has to know how to position the occlusion, the function, the vertical dimension, because you're rebuilding the entire mouth. But the way you have to do it is with aesthetics in mind. Gary, you're absolutely right. Facial aesthetics and tooth aesthetics the materials to use. So today, aesthetics encompasses so much more than I think it did even 30 years ago. We were talking a lot about veneers 30 years ago, whereas today, now when we do an aesthetic case, we may want to be minimally invasive with that. That means we have to do some. orthodontics or tooth movement in order to not have to prep a lot of tooth away when we have crowding. Yeah, I think there's a lot to learn when we talk about aesthetics that will help a clinician's entire practice do better and prosper. And I think in today's economy where people are always talking about the dreaded recession, if we know how to do all these different procedures, whether it be endo implants, aesthetics, occlusion, airway. And evaluate all that really helps to make our practices recession proof. And I think the last thing I'll say is talking about education. And Dr. Franklin's talked about doing these live programs and how important it is. I think a lot of times we've been spoiled since COVID the webinars and the YouTube. If I want to figure out how to do a root canal, where do I go? I don't take a course. I go to YouTube to figure out how do I do a root canal? It's just not the same, and I think that is where our listeners have to understand that. You can learn things from YouTube, but there's nothing better than actually having your mentor or colleague supporting you as you're prepping out a case to point out some areas where maybe you can improve or before you even take a bird of the tooth, as Todd was mentioning, just talking you through how you're going to purchase the case. So you go in patients in the chair, you have the confidence, how you, how are you going to prepare that case? or how you're going to place the restorations. There's just so much more that you cannot get from a YouTube or a webinar that I think these live programs offer the clinicians. So I think it's been a great conversation. I know talking with Dr. Franklin and with Garrett. You two have made some great points and I hope our listeners understand real quick recap that Dr. Franklin Is not from a big metropolis, not from New York, but has succeeded has designed his practice in his mind and on paper from the very get go and then monitors his practice to achieve the goals that he has set to achieve has expanded his repertoire of clinical skills by taking live patient treatment programs and through that has now become a mentor himself. And I think that is really lent itself. To help him succeed in his clinical practice, we talked about marketing. He doesn't come from a big town. So Lodi, when you first started Todd with 50, 000 people, now you're up to 80, 000. And yet, yeah, and yet you're able to push yourself to learn aesthetics and implants where, many times I talk to doctors and they just go, it's not worth it for me to take programs like this because. I'm not in a community where patients would benefit from me offering those services, but obviously, you've taken those thoughts and made it just the myth that they are no, I think this has been a great time for us to have you share your thoughts and experiences. And we really want to thank you for doing that. Oh, you're welcome. Thanks. Thanks. Thanks for the opportunity. I feel honored. Garrett, give you closing comments. No, I just want to thank Todd. Todd, you've always impressed me since the day we met and all throughout your career. You've lived up to every one of our expectations and even exceeded them. So I'm proud of you. I'm happy to be a small part of that success. And. I'm happy that you sit on our board and you're part of this. It's really exciting to see that, as Mike just said you hit all the elements. All the elements equally of equal importance to you, the way you develop them in your practice and have the courage. But I would say you have the courage to continue that commitment and every one of those levels on your discipline, on your marketing, on your community, on your personal commute, on your personal clinical skills, and then on your mentoring and. Simply put, I think you were able to understand that bringing that into your practice by having a mentor early on in your career, telling you that would be a good thing. And boom and look at where you are right now. So I'm proud of you. And I know that this last chapter of your career, which is, passing this off to the next group and then riding off into the sunset enjoying your young retirement after your success. I know it can be duplicated. I know it's duplicatable by these other doctors, these other young doctors, and if there's another young doctor out there listening, we've all been in the same place, and Dr. Franklin's proof that, you can be in a small town, or you can be in a big town, and if you have the discipline and the courage, I think we can all achieve that success, so thank you. Yeah, you're welcome. I think, one last comment that I'll make, I think with these young doctors who are sitting and listening and saying is it for me or is it not for me? I think you just have to have the courage the belief in yourself and listen to the mentors that you have in front of you and just go in faith and know that they're going to hold your hand and walk you through the whole process and Once you get through that first program Then there's no looking back. That's for sure. You got to be careful what you wish for because it's life changing. That first program is life changing. Mike, thank you as always I appreciate you guys taking the time. We appreciate you. Thank you.