The Pacific Aesthetic Continuum's Podcast
Wondering what other dentists are experiencing and what solutions there are to the challenges in dentistry. Listen to what your colleagues are doing to improve the quality of their lives.
The Pacific Aesthetic Continuum's Podcast
The Triad of Success: Skill Set, Data Set, and Mindset An Interview with THRIVE Dentists Founder Dr. Galen Detrik
During an interview with Dr. Michael Miyasaki and Garrett Caldwell, Dr. Galen Detrik shares his journey from a disillusioned dental school graduate to a highly successful practice owner and founder of THRIVE Dentists, revealing how dentists can design their ideal practice life instead of following traditional models.
• Dentistry offers the privilege to design your own practice rather than accepting what others claim it should be
• Dr. Detrik practices just three clinical days per week while achieving exceptional productivity
• THRIVE Dentists was founded to challenge dentists to design a life around their truest interests
• The name THRIVE stands for Time, Happiness, Relevance, Income, Value, and Experience
• Marketing to existing patients is more effective than constantly seeking new ones
• Most THRIVE members are either associates wanting to become owners or owners seeking to improve
• The transition from insurance to fee-for-service typically loses 20% of patients initially, but half return within two years
• Three essential practice metrics to track: production per hour, collections, and overhead
• The framework for success combines skill set, data set, and mindset
• Young associates should build their personal brand by securing a domain name and creating educational content
Design your future and take action today. Don't let things happen aimlessly without a plan, and don't put off starting until tomorrow.
For more information contact the Pacific Aesthetic Continuum at https://thepac.org.
I'm Dr Michael Miyazaki, and today's recording is one that I'm really happy that we did. You know, as a doctor that's kind of at the far end of the career curve to be able to talk to younger doctors and see that the profession has these leaders that value education, they value personal growth and really value. I think what we at the Pacific Sec Continuum try to stress is you can design the practice life that you want. Don't let it just happen to you. Don't let somebody tell you it has to be a certain way if it's not the way you want to practice In dentistry, we have the privilege and it truly is the career and professional privilege to practice the way we want to practice, at least at this time in dentistry. Really excited to have our listeners with us today.
Speaker 1:We are talking to Dr Galen Dietrich, who is the CEO and co-founder of Thrive Dentists, and I think I'm really excited to learn more about Thrive and Dr Dietrich is just a very unique individual. So Thrive was founded to challenge dentists to design a life around their truest interests, and I think one of the things that the PAC, what we, have tried to message is that you have to be able to design your own future. So you know, born and raised in New Mexico and I guess that's where you are today You're a man of many talents. You know anybody that can do music and video and dentistry and all that. I mean you've got like the perfect package for, I think, a dentist today. And now you have a virtual platform that hosts, you know, a lot of different masterclasses and you have your global reach and I was reading where you've done podcasts with millions of listeners. So we are very honored to have you on the program today and you're still an active practitioner working in fee-for-service practices and on the website.
Speaker 1:I know it was this sentence that I think just resonates with me is that you can produce more per hour than five or six dentists normal dentists combined. So I think that's really the message that we've been trying to share with our doctors is that it's possible to do that as long as you've got the skills and the interest and I don't know, there's just a certain flow you get into in your practice and when you get into that flow you can actually make it work. So I'm super excited to learn from you, dr Dietrich. And then we have Garrett Caldwell, again CEO of the Pacific Aesthetic Continuum and Core Dental Lab. So the three of us are on this conversation, so I am looking to get started. So welcome to both of you.
Speaker 2:Thank you for having me man. I appreciate it. Thanks, Welcome. Thank you. I mean, I'm going to have to start out every morning with a recording of Mike giving an introduction to me. I think I'd feel really good about myself if I did that.
Speaker 1:You know, I, I, I was, I mean, I really we're, we're just really honored to have you on because you know, I think in dentistry one of the things that I like is that you're not quite as old as we are but you know you're, you're motivating the younger docs to really design their future, to not do the status quo in dentistry, what everybody else says. This is the way you have to practice. But you're giving your doctors kind of the confidence to go out there and not be a run-of-the-mill doc and not say this is okay but to think that hey, I can do better and if I do better the rewards will come. And I think when you think about how you've designed your life, how you design your practice and again you know you're looking for that balance. You want to have time for the family, but you want to have time for your practice and then for your Thrive Tribe and that balance. You know a lot of doctors can't manage their practice and their family and yet you have so much on top of this.
Speaker 1:So today we want to know what the secret is. Can you tell us a little bit about? Let's start with the basics. You know, are you practicing today? What kind of practice do you work in? And then we want to learn more about Thrive.
Speaker 2:Sure, yeah. So I practice in Santa Fe, new Mexico, and this is my coming into my 12th year practice clinically practicing. I've got a partner up in Santa Fe so we co-own Vita Dental Studio and it's a phenomenal setup. I work three days clinically, so does he. So he's there Monday, tuesday, wednesday. I'm there Tuesday, wednesday, thursday and both take off Friday. That's kind of the structure of things. That's a standard eight-hour day.
Speaker 2:But you know, I think that the backdrop to all this is kind of what you said I think every generation has always kind of sought after like how do I create a life that when it's done, I can look back and really be proud about what I did and felt like you used the time that you were given and we all come at it from different angles, but I've always been very motivated, oddly enough, by like the end. At some point. I you know you'll be some point, I'll be at the end of my life and I really look at that as a motivation to do everything that I can in any given situation, moment, relationship and conversation, to hopefully learn and to better myself, and those are my goals. So that's really the you know, I think that's the linchpin that's coming.
Speaker 1:So, um, so you got, you had your clinical practice, I guess you you got going, and then where did Thrive come from, or what drove you to do that? Because now you're taking on a big chunk of work on top of what you're already doing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, I got a great team. I got a great team on all those fronts and they don't get nearly as much praise and attention as they should get. But it didn't all happen at once. So Thrive came about, actually because I was very disenfranchised with the way I thought dentistry was marketed and sold to us. Dentistry was marketed and sold to us, um, in our dental school class.
Speaker 2:So my wife I met her in dental school and we graduated, moved back to new mexico, got married a year, uh, later and we would talk about it, you know we'd be sitting there. She was commuting three and a half hours a day to this public health job. That was out in kind of the boondocks and and the first associate ship that I got was about an hour and 15 minutes away one way. So I was doing about two and a half hours. She's doing about three and a half hours of driving every single day and these were five days a week and I think you know there's just. There are days as an associate where I made less money as an associate than my hygienist, certainly my hygienist, certainly my hygienist, sometimes even my assistant's mate, you know, and that's the lot of an associate. Sometimes you don't really realize that that's not what people tell you. You know and you're like you hit the lot or you're a dentist. And then you get out and you realize there's a lot more to this game than just fixing some teeth, and I think that's so much to the credit of what you guys are doing with the pack.
Speaker 2:I ended up doing the pack actually in 2000,. I think it was the tail end of 2000, early 2015. And it was an incredible experience. But it was the first time that I realized you could do dentistry a really different way. It was about the same time that I decided to kind of skip out of doing dentistry, that traditional model of five days a week, plug it and chug it. I said what if I was to do something totally different? And that different looked like renting a practice from colleagues around me that were not practicing on a Friday or not practicing on a Saturday, and I would rent that practice and then I would market to anyone that I put on social media what I'd been doing for the last couple of years and see if I could get them in for stuff, and I would be reducing my overhead and allowing myself to then do great dentistry at the pace that I wanted on the people that I wanted and also, bless a practitioner who's not there on a Friday. They get to make a lot of extra money. I get to make some, get to treat some. So that's the way the model began. Actually, it was this kind of almost Airbnb type of approach. And then that cut the bar.
Speaker 2:A lot of dentists started seeing cases that I was posting and I would talk very frankly about the overhead and the style of dentistry that I was doing and the lab that I was using. I was using I was using core. I've used them, you guys, since 2015 and that was fascinating, because they're in the grind too, and no one has that transparency. You know my like. They just don't. People don't want to say that things are a lot harder than they actually are. We don't want to talk about our numbers. We don't want to talk about when we're depressed and sad and down and like the relationships are suffering at home because we're just trying to get together at work.
Speaker 2:So it was a very interesting experience to have these docs being really, really raw with me and saying, like, how are you doing? And that's when we got the idea for drop let's, let's build something special, that and actually at least teach one or two of these skill sets that we have as a business model. Two docs and let them do what they want, and that was really the genesis of it. Thrive stands as an acronym. It was the six kind of value sets that Davina, my wife and I really got, which is time, happiness, relevance, income, variety and experience. Those are the six things that we wanted as millennials, as true millennials, and so we decided let's build a program that focuses on that, not just the clinical skill set, but how do you actually make those work and help you create a life that's worth it?
Speaker 1:No, I think it's great. You know that's funny because it's the same message that we try to convey, but you say it in a lot better way. Um well, let me ask you something first. I mean, do you know what your average tribe member is? Are they younger docs and looking to kind of find their way in dentistry, because it has changed so much in the last 10 years?
Speaker 2:so yeah, no, you're absolutely right about that. You know we follow bell curve just just about every company, but um, it's pretty true to a 1080 tent. So I would say about 10 percent of our population, of our tribe, is, you know, in that, like really early age, they were the gunner in school they just right away, away I need to do something special.
Speaker 2:So that's typically the person who decided I'm going to scratch a practice and I don't know how to do that and I don't know what the pitfalls are, but I'm willing to invest in myself to learn, and that's a rare person. So about 10% of that is in that age range of around 28 to 32. And then we've got a really large demographic, that is about 75, 80%, which kind of falls between 35 to 45. Up to 50, but usually it's 35 to 45. And that's a doc who's been practicing for, you know, anywhere from five to 10 years and they've had some knocks and they realize that there's probably something more than just um.
Speaker 2:We always call it striving, thriving versus strife. A lot of us are not in the survival mode. You know, we're not barely barely making it by, but we're working really hard for maybe less of the return that we think we deserve. So that's the difference between striving and thriving and that's what we really look for. And then there's another group that um has definitely come to us a little bit later and they're in that 50 range, uh, years old, and you know what more power to them. I think it's fantastic. Um, it's very humbling to me to have somebody say you know what like I'll learn from this young kid that, to me, has never lost on me. I take that very, very seriously.
Speaker 1:That's an incredible thing that it was. Yeah, that's great. I'm way off of the bell curve, way off to the side, but I'd still love to learn from you. So you know one of the things that the Pacific Aesthetic Continuum is we really value education because, you know, my thing is, in order to grow the type of practice that I think you work in, where you see more opportunity, your eyes have to be able to see the opportunity and to do that they have to be trained right. So you know, I'll do a lecture, and it could be on aesthetics, and I'll have doctors come up to me saying you know, I don't have any patients that need veneers or cause, you know tooth movement or anything like that, and I go really, you don't have anybody in your practice. And they go no, you know, and it's just, you know what size, how many patients do you have in your practice? So, like you know 1500, 2000, and you don't have anybody that wants aesthetics, you know it's just they don't see the opportunity.
Speaker 1:And then what we see is, you know, we hold one of our just smile design how to talk to your patients. And now, when the doctor leaves, that it's all of a sudden they see all these patients that, could you know, benefit from aesthetic dentistry. And so then they go out there and they start talking to the patients. They're going to do more cases because now they can see it. You know, I know one of the core things with thrive is the education part, cause you have all these masterclasses. What is it about education that you see as being so important? Because I know it's something that you really stress within your tribe.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think there's a thought that some of us have towards education, which is that you're really there to learn, to absorb, and that's fantastic. We should all be on the receiving end of learning absolutely in education. But it should never stay dormant. It should never stay with us. I think that every person is meant to teach in some capacity, whether it's your kids or your friend group or your patients. We have that opportunity to share what we've learned and pass that on. To share what we've learned and pass that on, and so it's such a core principle to me, because I've found that when people can absorb content and information at such a level that they actually implement, when you have that kind of integrity, you're going to find your practice just blows up, because you now start to teach those same principles to your patients and patients start. You see them connect with us and having these aha moments that they had not had.
Speaker 2:I can't tell you how many times I have in my practice someone said why didn't someone tell me this before? That's an education. How did I? How come I went to this practice for 10 years and they never said this could be done? And I'm talking to them about maybe doing some clear liners and some composite and maybe some ceramic veneers. It's just an awareness, so that's why it's such a pivotal thing for us. Is that that unlocked the door to your point. That's what makes practices really sore.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, I think you're obviously right. You know the um. I was having the conversation. Uh, about a month and a half ago our daughter joined our practice again, so she graduated from dental school, oh, thanks. So she graduated five years ago, worked for us a little bit and went off and has just come back and we're having that conversation. So she's been out of school for five years and so you know, she kind of sees where our you know same patient base but how our production levels sometimes differ, you know.
Speaker 1:And she's like well, you know, am I not doing something right? And I said well, you know, when you look back, and it's only been six weeks since she started with us and we only knew two weeks before that that she was. So I said we didn't have a chance to adjust the schedule or anything like that for you. I said but the thing that that I noticed is in six, six weeks, have you started any clear liners? No, have you started any implant cases? No, have you started any veneer cases? No. And I said that's the difference is that you see, she sees it, she's been trained to see this. She's taking our aesthetic courses, implant courses and everything. So she knows what.
Speaker 1:And I told her. I said the problem is right now, you see it, but you haven't got gotten the patience to do those services and as soon as you do that like if you have a 10-year in your case, instead of doing one tooth you're going to be doing 10 teeth and that's going to make a big difference in your revenue and the patients are going to appreciate that service. So I told her that's where she now has to progress, where she's got her license. Now she's got the education to provide those services and now she's really got to slow down and diagnose those services. And you know, talk to the patient so they want that also and then I think she'll do. You know, like you're saying, you know I I look at her and her ability. She could do what five other docs, normal docs, would do, because they're just doing that same. Here's a feeling, here's a crown type dentistry that just kind of drives me crazy, because I think they could do so much more, you know oh yeah, and it just becomes fun again.
Speaker 2:I think that's part of what we've lost a little bit. Yeah, it's not as enjoyable, um, and it's not as enjoyable not because of what this is. It's because we don't have this structure around it that we that allows you to really, really blossom. Yeah, so in our continuum we always start with the systems, data points, metrics and structure of a practice, because to me, that's the environment that you practice and that's where you live. So if your schedule is just emergency patients and and hygiene exams and these little dinky, rinky dink fillings next to each other, you're never going to be productive and so it's a really easy way to get into a bad rut and to really hate to do it.
Speaker 2:But if you clean up the environment, then you have the opportunity now to perhaps have a bit more breathing room and talk to your patient and in that communication style and having a little more time with them. Now you start to see larger cases being accepted. I always tell our docs pricing and presentation. It always comes back down to one very simple principle, which is I call it value calibration. You have your external value, which is discount is $2,200, say full month rehabilitation is $35, whatever it is. But if that's your external value, their internal value, the patient has to calibrate to that value. People have no problem saying yes to something they've already calibrated to. But it's that discrepancy and that's why I harp so much on teaching, because just because they don't see it right now doesn't mean that they can't right. Right, your job is not just to fix the thing, it's to help a person value themselves and what they can aspire to as a patient more. You just have to be able to say yes, you know and work on it.
Speaker 1:It's a skill set no, I think that's well said. You know, I always tell the doctors we have to create a gap, because they don't know what. They don't know our patients and so we have to create the knowledge that creates a gap between where they are today, where they would like to get to or be. And then it's not about the price, it is about the value, you know. I mean, whatever you charge, if they see more value in the service you're going to render over that fee, then you're good to go. But we have to be able to communicate that and help our patients appreciate what it is that we can deliver. So you know, going on that too. How are your doctors? Are they DSO doctors? Are they fee-for-service? What do you see? Are you trying to help them in either situation where they're in the career?
Speaker 2:it's a very good question actually. Um, so the majority of our docs are either associates wanting to become owners or owners who just haven't figured out the rest, um, so I would say about half are fee-for-service and the other half are not but are looking to not be as PPO-dependent. They would like to go more fee-for-service and personally I do think that dentistry is really it's been headed there for a long time but it's going to be a two-tiered system. You know, I think 60% of the market, maybe a little bit more, is going to be insurance dependent, going through a DSL, and then there's going to be a 35% somewhere around there 35, 40%. That's still going to be in your service and is practicing more comprehensive way.
Speaker 2:Right, they're using labs like Boar, they're taking classes like the the path. They're doing things in a comprehensive level because that's the way patients should be treated. It's just that not everyone can afford that and there's definitely a reason that DSOs exist. You know, some people don't want to understand this. They don't care. I want to check in, check out, I get that, but yeah, but the majority of our docs are are the form. They want to know. They want to know how to create freedom, life and, in practice, and business yeah, no, I think that's great garrett you have.
Speaker 1:I see you taking notes, so I'm wondering if you have anything. No, you you.
Speaker 3:You took all my questions and my last question was going to be the question you just asked. No, I think it's great. I think one of the challenges that we've been talking about here is connecting. If you have great communication skills and you have a great ability to diagnose, you still have to be able to have the third leg of the milk stool, which is being able to do the work predictably and confidently. And I know if the doctors don't feel confident in doing the work, they're not going to diagnose. So I'm sort of curious.
Speaker 3:Philosophically, I think we can deliver a lot of information. We'll be lecturing to doctors so we can get them motivated and excited. We can get them to see what they don't know. But still, at the end of the day, when they go back to the practice, the only way that they're going to truly diagnose if they have great communication skills, if they have a great what we call chair side manner with their patients, that's fantastic. But if they don't feel confident in actually picking up that handpiece and prepping a case, understanding what materials to use, that is the limiting factor just as much as the first two. So how does Thrive address that part?
Speaker 2:It's a phenomenal question, see, you were sitting on one, we knew it. Just one, probably several, just one. So we have a continuum and in the continuum, 12. It's like 12 steps. Okay, that's our version of aas, but we build it off of three main components, which is your skill set, your data set and your mindset, and I think those three, when they work together, you've got something really special. To your point, gary, if you don't have the skills, what are you selling right? What are people saying yes to, and how can you possibly progress and evolve and grow and be continually challenged unless you're doing those kinds of things? So you've got to always elevate on the clinical side.
Speaker 2:The way we've structured our program is we always start with, like I said, you're going to start with your business assistant and once you've got your environment in such a way like it's going to be very hard, even if you know how to do full mouth rehab, if you are seeing very, very boilerplate dentistry over and over and over again and this is a very common problem the practice is almost so busy, but it's busy in like a cyclical way, not in a exponential way. So they're like well, I just need to get an associate so that I can now focus on the industry that I really want to do. But then they have a really hard time letting go because they're controlling and many of us are programmed. So there's this mindset that has to change as well. We start with the structure and the environment, then it's case acceptance and communication, then we talk about marketing, because you've got to be able to showcase what you do as that second arm, almost right, you have your communication skills, but also your visual skills and you see before and after. Can you document that? Well, that's one of the things that people really come to us for is they love our photography, they love our video, they love the way we showcase what we do. Then, once we've got that ecosystem, we pour in all of the indirect and direct skill sets that I know how to do.
Speaker 2:I don't teach anything that I don't know. So I don't do a lot of implants. I restore them but I don't place them, so people are going to go other places when it comes to full mouth rehabilitation, cosmetic smile design, composite veneers, um, laser, things like that. That's stuff that we teach. So clinical skills all around, and then finally we finish everything up with. Now you've got this great engine running for you. How do you create well, how do you focus on health and how do you create a lesson? And those are the final.
Speaker 3:So do the docs docs seek a third party clinical education or in the hands-on environment on their own outside of Thrive. Is that what you encourage?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I sure do. I, you know, I don't see any reason ever to to come from that scarcity place of like. You got to do everything here. I've learned from so many great clinicians, you know, and I hope to learn from more. And so if there's something that I teach and I teach well, and it is in our ecosystem for example, if a person, if a doc, comes to me and says I really want to learn how to do chair-side land, so I really want to learn how to do smiley and I want to use a great lab, those things that I teach, and I teach at a high level, I have no problem doing.
Speaker 2:But it also could be that they really want to do a hands-on portion of that, and coming out to our practice may not be what they want to do. They want to be in a group, they want to be handheld. Every last step through that, the back's great right. That's how I learned and I'll tell them that hey, this is where I learned. If that's what's best for you, we're going to get you there. I'm going to replace implants. I got two phenomenal places for you to go, All right, so always get them set up, and a lot of our tribe a lot of our doctors. They're not just learners but they're all people who teach. So we've connected. We have a great biologic dentist in our midst. He's a phenomenal clinician. We globally recognize clinician, globally recognized. We get persons kind of got more of that bend to them, we're going to send them over there. So it's a lot of sharing and that's the hope see, garrett, that's what I'm doing wrong this week.
Speaker 1:I'm doing endo on Thursday, implants on Saturday, our aesthetic program the week after that and then occlusion a couple weeks after that. So I'm I need to be like Dr D here focus.
Speaker 3:You've got a lot of fishing lines in the water.
Speaker 1:That'sa business tactic, that's okay well, you know, one of the reasons why is because you know I tell the docs that come to our courses that 25 years ago if you went to a veneer course it was just how to prep teeth and temporize and cement them, whereas today, you know, it's just so different.
Speaker 1:Like, if I've got a tooth I've got to treat endodontically.
Speaker 1:Well, I need to treat that so that when I'm done doing the endo part, that it's still an aesthetic prep that I can work with. If I'm missing a tooth, I'm going to put an implant in there. But I need to know how to do the implant so that when I'm done it looks aesthetic. And if the teeth are crooked, instead of prepping in all that enamel way like we used to do 20 years ago, then we're going to move the teeth first, straighten them out and then do minimal prep if any prep at all. So I look at aesthetic dentistry as kind of incorporating everything in dentistry occlusion and endo and implants. And so that's why, like in my practice, I sit down and go okay, I need to learn how to do this and that because I think you're absolutely right. You know when you, when you force yourself to teach others, you learn it better than if you're just doing it by yourself in your office, and so it's just a way to push an undisciplined me to actually learn more, which has helped me.
Speaker 2:I love that, bro. I actually I've been asked that same question and I do think that you're right. I think that cosmetic dentistry is an amalgamation of art fields. You really have to know and be disciplined in all those different areas to achieve a truly aesthetic outcome and a conservative and biopreservative outcome. So I applaud you for doing that your daughter's in a phenomenal environment to learn from.
Speaker 1:We hope that you want to learn more, so go to the pack T H E P A Corg to learn more. I don't know. I think she feels like she's going to year five of dental school and she'll never graduate.
Speaker 2:We can all feel that way at times.
Speaker 1:Hey, you know you, you mentioned, you mentioned a lot of great things. So I think if you've got five more hours, I think we'll get through this, we've got time yeah.
Speaker 1:But you know you were talking about where you start off on the business side, because a lot of times these podcasts we focus more on the business education side of dentistry than on clinical procedures. So you were saying you know, when you look at a practice you kind of look at certain benchmarks. Are there three key benchmarks that you would look at that clinicians should? Because you know, one of the things that Garrett and I have talked about is we know that there's certain there's more than just three, but there's a lot of things we should be looking at, but as busy clinicians in a fee-for-service, non-dso type of practice, we just don't have time. So are there some things that you see that we're missing that you would advise a clinician to look at their practice as being able to make a change for the positive?
Speaker 2:I'm a huge believer in being able to. If you can't measure it, you can't do it. Yeah, and so if I had to pick three, I would say production is incredibly important. You've got to understand what you're producing, and a lot of people will say that that number is not as real as collections. True, those collections are what's hitting your bank account, but production is an interesting one because it's going to show you what's the discrepancy between what's hitting your bank account and what you're charging.
Speaker 2:Shockingly or not shockingly, a lot of dentists write things off and like a lot of it. You know, and so you can be just losing money in your business. That's all your profit, especially as a business owner. So I strongly suggest that people know their production slash production per hour. How many hours are you working and what are you actually producing per hour? You are your highest paid employee and so you need to know are you worth production? Production per hour. Got to know your collections and then, um, at some level you've got to understand your expense, right, so an overhead um analysis. We technically have 10 dials that we teach and how to measure those and to keep close tabs on those every single month. But if I had to pick three. Those are the three production collections overhead.
Speaker 1:You know, garrett and I in past conversations we've talked. You know, before when I'd go out and lecture. It typically be lecture on Wednesday or maybe Friday, and then it was Fridays because everybody started working Wednesdays and then it began can you lecture on a Saturday? Because I was working Wednesday and Fridays. And then it was Fridays because everybody started working Wednesdays and then it began can you lecture on a Saturday Because everybody was working Wednesday and Fridays. And then it became can you lecture on a Sunday? And I was asking the people that I'd be lecturing for why a Sunday? And they said well, because now clinicians are working Monday through Saturday and Sundays are day off.
Speaker 1:So what I've mentioned in past recordings that Garrett and I have done is, unfortunately, I think some doctors don't realize that if your profit isn't as big as your expense column, like you just mentioned, that you could be working more hours and actually making less, because one of the critical things is to make sure that you're making more every hour than your expenses are to work that hour. But you're right, because of the squeeze, especially where I am in California, the, you know the insurance reimbursements gone down, inflation, wage inflation, everything is driven costs up, and when those two lines cross. We're actually making less by going to work, and so, you know, working six days a week doesn't necessarily solve the problem. So I think what you brought up, just those, just those numbers you brought up, if a doctor looks at that and sees, oh, my profitability isn't as great as my expenses, I've got to make a change. Well, then it goes back to another thing that you brought up.
Speaker 1:A good point that we've talked about was the marketing side.
Speaker 1:So you've got these fee-for-service practices, and so go back to the 1970s, where you're a group of docs having a conversation like this today, and you know what we might've said is you know, if we start this thing and we collectively bring our practice together, you know, in a so-called insurance plan, we can actually create this great marketing plan, because what we'll do is we'll tell patients now it's not truly insurance, because we're not going to insure you for a million dollars of dental work, but we'll give you a thousand dollars of fee reduction, right, like a save, and.
Speaker 1:But in order to get that thousand dollars savings, you have to go to one of these doctors, and so it's probably one of the greatest marketing machines that our profession has ever seen. So now, as insurance is taking control, what I see is doctors don't want to leave insurance, because if I leave insurance, that's where all my new patients are coming from, and so your education as far as marketing is like one of the key things. You know, I tell doctors, if you're going to become fee for service or less dependent on insurance, you really need to bump up your marketing, because, especially if you drop insurance, you're going to lose your largest marketing arm for your practice, and so I think you brought up a great point. Do you have some tips there of what doctors should be doing?
Speaker 2:yes, this is probably one of the best questions you could ask, um, because it gets to the. It strikes at the heart of where people's disgruntled. We're disgruntled. There's so many practitioners that are tired, stressed, burned out, but they're misdiagnosing the problem, much in the same way that dentists who come out of tooth by tooth don't zoom out and look at the comprehensive side of things. They're probably misdiagnosed as well. Right, and so I think that what the question is really getting at is where do you start? And we can go, we can talk for hours, hours, about marketing, how to do that well, and what it takes, and all the rest, but the real question is where should a person start? That means you have to know where you are. You can't be delusional about what. It means being incredibly honest about what you're capable of.
Speaker 2:Skill set wise to garrett's point um, what's your skill set? Case acceptance that's one of the dials that we tell you to look at. Yeah, are people saying yes to you? And if they are, what are they saying yes to? You know, 20 of your patients are paying for 80 of your overhead, and so what is that 20 saying yes to? What? Then double down on what we do. Is we chase bright, shiny objects and it's like I'm gonna take this seat. I also want to learn this skill set. I want to do that and the only reason why I don't necessarily encourage to be a jack of all trades out of the gate. For you it makes complete sense. But if a doctor is 30 years old, 35 years old, no, focus on one or two things and be really, really good at that and then add to that skillset, because the only way you're going to really good at them and then add to that skill set Because the only way you're going to get really good at that is putting in hours on that particular skill set, which means marketing that skill set to the people who say yes to that. I would tell docs, understand what you're really good at and where your weak spots are. Double down on what you're good at, find out who's saying yes to you and then start to photograph and really market that skill set to the people that are already in your practice. I mean you could go spend thousands and thousands of dollars.
Speaker 2:In our practice we try to spend between 8% and 10% of our annual collection on marketing. That is not what the average practice should do, but we're in a place now where, because of our cash flow and because of where we're at, we can do that, and I think too often we say I want to be like so-and-so. Well, if you're not anywhere close to where they're at, you're copying a model that's probably very, very far away from you, from a sniper's job. You have to be careful who you're learning from and what you're actually trying to implement. Start with your patient pool. If your patient pool is 1,000 or 1,500 people, that's a phenomenal batch of people who are ready to say yes and they need you to show up and to focus and to not get distracted by other things. Trends, when we start talking about marketing docs will go on these trends, because that's what's working for so-and-so. Every year. I would tell you shut off your phone. Just focus on your practice and you and what you do well. Simplicity is what leads to success. Yeah.
Speaker 1:You know, like what you mentioned. Just to put it in perspective, we've talked about this where you know, if you've got, let's say, $100,000 of revenue a month and you're going to invest $8,000 to $10,000, it seems like a lot of money but, as you mentioned before, you could have that $100,000 a month practice and you could be writing off $20,000 to $30,000 because you're taking insurance. So if you became fee-for-service and invested $10,000 in your marketing to compensate for not being contracted with the insurance plan, you could be making $10,000 to $20,000 a month more. So when you look at those numbers as percentages, actually you could make more money paying a higher percentage towards marketing than belonging to certain insurance contracts. So I just want to bring that up. That's totally true, because you're going to lose.
Speaker 2:So our very first force is that it teaches you how to essentially get off insurance, become insurance-free. And so we've got a lot of statistics, and one of the things that's interesting is that the average practitioner, when they drop insurance and they focus on going to give service in a two-year span you'll have, so typically about up to 20% of your population will leave in that first year. By the time two years have elapsed, that's shrunk all the way down to closer to 8%, because about 12% total have actually come back to your brackets. Because they appreciated you, you had a relationship, and because the insurance that is going to be taken is probably going to be a four. If they got used to you, you probably treated them well. Now they're going to start to miss that.
Speaker 2:Really, if you take all those numbers we've got them all charted out exactly how it works out from a dollars to cents perspective. You're right. You're writing off 25% on average for your insurance. You lose 20% of your population to go. Another practice that 80% that's dated with you. You'll make more money off of those 80% of your fee-for-service prices, even with 20% never coming back, and it's probably going to come back, and you're going to attract new people. So I'm not a big insurance guy. I think you probably aren't either. I think it interrupts. It's a middleman and the industry's not supposed to have a middleman.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and then on the brand, just for the younger listeners, that may be an associate or may be in a maybe an associate or maybe in a corporate type of practice setting. My thing is, when you market yourself, is to build your brand. Because one of the things I see is you know, a lot of these docs are going from one office, another office, another office and at the end of five years they have no patients that are their own Right. They've kind of been patients of that office and at the end of five years they have no patients that are their own right. They've kind of been patients of that office.
Speaker 1:But my feeling is, if you're a doc trying to get to the point where you can have your own practice is build your brand. So when you, if you do kind of work in multiple offices or you move from office to office, that when you do start your own office people seek you out right, because they're just like you mentioned with insurance they know your brand, they know who you are and if you're you know somewhere in the geographic area, they'll probably seek you out and you know, come to your practice. So just because you're working as an associate or you're working in a corporate setting. Don't dilute yourself, you know. Still try to develop your brand, and that's one of the messages I try to carry, because I think that really will help you in future years.
Speaker 2:I love that idea just in general, because one of the most difficult things to get a young doc to understand is you're a business owner. You don't run that business that you're working. You're responsible for the business of you and that's why a brand matters. So one of the tricks or the hacks that we'll give people right away is buy a domain name with your name. You know wwwdrdiedrichcom, and the purpose for that is number one.
Speaker 2:You can start to create educational content for your patient, and why? Because you're not trying to steal from another practice that has been blessing you and has got you an employment, but you can definitely serve them in an additional way and it's just building a relationship sounds a hard sale, right? You're just providing content and values to the people who are already your patients. You create that loyalty and that trust in the patient. You can also push your before and afters. So it's going to force you to become much, much better at documenting your work and learning how to be good at it, and you're getting this bolus of content that now exists and lives on the web, and that's a beautiful place to your point of creating a brand. So in time, you have the freedom you have that alternative to create your own practice and you've now got a thriving ecosystem and a list of people Collect emails. There's nothing wrong with doing that. Collect those emails. That's a group of people you can now reach out to talk to.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, you know what I love what you're doing. I love your philosophy. I love that you're building a tribe and you have common values within that tribe that you are, you know, getting your doctors to have a good lab, because you need to have a good lab to do bigger cases so you can be confident that everything's going to go in and fit. That you're building your tribe on education because I think that's one of those big pillars that every clinician needs to have, because unless you grow, your practice isn't going to grow. And you know, one of the sayings is that to change the fruit you have to change the roots, and I think that's kind of a it's a good way of thinking about it. You know, like if we stay the same, we're going to get the same, and I think that's kind of a it's a good way of thinking about it. You know, like if we stay the same, we're going to get the same. And I love that you like to challenge the clinicians to move out of their comfort zone, because a lot of us stay in the comfort zone.
Speaker 1:I know I meet clinicians that have been practicing 40 years and I go what, what kind of cement are you using? And they'll say, oh, the cement that I was using when I was in dental school and I said I mean, after 40 years, nothing's gotten any better, you know. And they tell me well, that's the way I was taught. I go, yeah, but you know, things have progressed beyond. Even if you've been out of dental school for five years, things have progressed and so I think the clinicians need to be taking that education.
Speaker 1:They have to be open and willing to change, and whenever we change, it's uncomfortable. I know, if you know, if I change the way I do my root canals with my files on my arrogance and I try to do it a different way, it's uncomfortable, but I know that I have to go through this discomfort to get better. You know anything. It's like your golf swing. You know. If someone says, change your golf swing by holding your elbow slightly differently, it's a small change but just really uncomfortable. So I love that you're creating that type of community and you know the Pacific Asset continuum. We look to support your community. Core Dental Lab looks to support, you know, your community too. So if there's anything we can do, please let us know. Garrett, any last.
Speaker 3:I think we hit on everything, Mike, and I apologize. Galen, I'm fighting a cold here, or a little bit of a flu, as you can probably see.
Speaker 2:I didn't know, so that's how well you're masking it.
Speaker 3:No, great. No, I think it's great. I think we hit on everything. I think we hit on everything today. It was really enjoyable having you here.
Speaker 3:I think dentistry has evolved and we talk about this at the beginning of most of our lectures and our podcasts. It's not just a dental practice anymore, because that means you're going to take years and years and years to evolve. It's a dental business now and it's much more complex. It's a large investment of not just time and dental school and expense for dental school, but also for the learning process. To shrink that as much as we can and seek mentorship through folks like you at Thrive so you can accelerate that. It's so important and that's really our passion is combining the business of dentistry with the clinical of dentistry and then understanding the philosophies of how to bring those together.
Speaker 3:And, of course, now there's always that third leg, which is dental insurance, where these things didn't exist.
Speaker 3:These issues didn't exist 20 years ago, I think.
Speaker 3:We all saw them coming but they didn't exist, and so many doctors are still stuck in that loop and struggling to figure out how to get out or how to navigate it.
Speaker 3:So it's great to have guys like Mike and the PAC and like yourself at Thrive, to be able to help the doctors work through this, and that's really our goal at the PAC and myself and Stephanie at the laboratory working with doctors one-on-one on the business side of the dentistry, just so they can understand, I think it's a big. My observation, my kind of side of it, is the business and my observation is that having a really good blueprint is very important to start out blueprint on where you want to do, where you want to go, how you want to practice, how you want to live your life, what type of dentistry, what are your financial goals, how many days a week. All those things now have become very important questions to answer where I think in the past that they weren't. So I think really the message for us is that it's important to get involved with somebody like you at Thrive or the PAC or hopefully both in the future to sort of support answering those questions.
Speaker 2:You know things are changing rapidly, so so fast, and it's easy, I think to be on this side as a clinician and to think well, it's always tomorrow.
Speaker 2:You know, I can say yes to the opportunity. But what you don't really realize is that when you're not consistently surrounding yourself with a great lab, with great mentors, with people who will give you the cheap notes, um, you're actually going the opposite direction. It's not a level playing, you're actually falling behind and you're missing opportunities. And I think that's the mindset shift that I would really encourage people listening is if you get struck by something, it feels a little uncomfortable, that's your signpost. That's not saying stop, that's saying jump, and it doesn't mean you can jump at every single one of them, but if you're feeling one right now, you should do that Right.
Speaker 2:I mean, plenty of people I'm sure would be like oh, you know, I can get a crown made for $37. Oh, I can get a crown made for $37. Why can't I just do that? And it's a cost thing in their head. But they're not racking up all the other things that have a price tag associated, from remakes to patient complaints, to the stress of oh, they didn't give it to us on time, to how much do I learn from Jason and Gary, amazing people who are working on my restoration, making me a better clinician. You can't put price tags, and so yeah.
Speaker 2:I think that's what I would encourage people. You have an opportunity.
Speaker 3:That's really our message. Is that trying to find added value, Like Mike said, we could go on for five hours here, but I think leveraging one. I think I can sum it up this way it's very important to leverage the assets you have that exist around you already and most doctors don't see that there's a lot of leverage, a lot of information, a lot of knowledge, a lot of help already around you. That doesn't involve paying for it or even taking extra time, but leveraging guys like Gary and Ryan at the laboratory to help you get better at what you do, and then not looking at that as a $37 crown or a $67 crown. Even aside from fitting well and aesthetically being there and trusting the case is going to come back and go in. Those are important. Those are sort of the benchmarks for how you would choose a lab.
Speaker 3:But really now I think beyond that is how is everyone that you associate with, how are they helping support the growth of your practice? That's really the question I would challenge every doctor with to take a look at every vendor, every person that you work with, and say how are they helping me grow my practice? And you'd be surprised that there's. I think that philosophy is trending now more than ever, with companies that are supporting dentists from a consulting side, material side, is everyone's very willing to help. You just got to reach out and open that door. I love that.
Speaker 2:Not just look at the dollar. Yeah, there's a lot of free stuff out there and a lot of very inexpensive stuff out there. Ways to learn they just I think people are too distracted. Get focused and then ask for help. Yeah, amazing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know I'm gonna close it. I just want to say uh, dr dietrich, thank you very much for your time. Um, a lot of pearls in there. Um, I'll have to listen to this a couple more times to get them all. And then, garrett, thanks for joining us. I know you weren't feeling well today, but really appreciate you being part of today's program. And then to those that are watching, I would just say really design your future and then take action today. Don't let things happen, don't go aimlessly without a plan and don't, if you design a plan, don't put it off till tomorrow. Just start working it today. And if you do those two things and you get that from this recording, then I think we made some progress, but we look forward to having everybody back. This was a great interview, so thank you very much. Thank you, dr.
Speaker 2:Dietrich Very honored. Thank you, guys.
Speaker 1:That was a really good recording and we look forward to seeing you again next month. On behalf of the PAC and Core Dental Lab. Thank you very much.