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
True Confidence: What YouTube Can't Teach You
The journey from dental knowledge to clinical confidence isn't found in YouTube videos or TikTok trends. Dr. Michael Miyasaki and Garrett Caldwell dive deep into why hands-on education transforms practices in ways digital learning simply cannot match.
Drawing from nearly four decades of experience, they explore how dental education has evolved from textbooks and lectures to the game-changing live patient programs that began in the 1990s. These programs created not just better clinical skills, but fostered valuable relationships between doctors and laboratories that elevated patient care beyond what was previously possible.
The conversation reveals a stark truth many dentists face today: watching procedures online creates interest but rarely translates to the confidence needed to implement new techniques. Through engaging stories and practical insights, Miyasaki and Caldwell explain how seeing instructors manage unexpected challenges during live cases accelerates learning in ways impossible to replicate through passive education.
Perhaps most compelling is their discussion of return on investment. While quality education requires commitment, they've witnessed thousands of doctors transform their practices through advanced training. The ability to confidently provide aesthetic, implant, or full-mouth rehabilitation services creates extraordinary growth opportunities, with many practitioners generating millions in additional revenue from their educational investments.
Whether you're an associate in a DSO, a solo practitioner, or transitioning to a fee-for-service model, this episode offers valuable perspective on how mentored clinical experience builds the confidence needed to meet today's elevated patient expectations. Ready to take your practice to the next level? Visit thepac.org to learn about upcoming educational opportunities.
For more information contact the Pacific Aesthetic Continuum at https://thepac.org.
Well, welcome everybody. I'm Dr Michael Miyazaki again, and we're doing another YouTube and podcast for the PAC and CORE Dental Laboratory, and today it's going to be Garrett Caldwell, who is the CEO of the PAC, the Pacific Aesthetic Continuum and CORE Dental Lab, and again, what we thought we would do today is talk about kind of what we've seen on the education side. Now, garrett's worked on the lab side, but he's worked with thousands of doctors in different types of education programs live patient, live lectures, online education and my past is kind of the same, being a dentist and participating in live patient programs, live lectures and online. So I really look forward to this, because what we want is to show you different perspectives and how I think we both value education, and we're going to talk a little bit about the evolution of education and what we see moving forward.
Speaker 2:Garrett nice to have you on again. Thanks for being here, Good morning.
Speaker 1:Michael, how are you today Doing great.
Speaker 1:Let's start off with the talk about education.
Speaker 1:We've both been in this for almost four decades and when you go back way back, you know we were the traditional you would read information or you'd go to live lectures to gain information.
Speaker 1:And I think for me that's how the first five years of my practice went.
Speaker 1:And then it wasn't even on aesthetic dentistry but I attended my first over-the-shoulder program where I went into a doctor's office and actually back then it was Dr Stephen Buchanan who was an endodontist and Steve would bring groups into his practice and he would lecture, and then we do the benchtop exercises and then he had an operatory set up where we had a chance to watch him actually work on a patient. And that was like my first time since being out of dental school where I had a chance to watch something really live. You know there are other opportunities to watch things live, like I bought Larry Rosenthal, Bill Dickerson's VHS tapes and so you know, at different meetings people would film their lectures and I'd watch the lectures, but that's when I really felt like watching another clinician work had so much value. And then from there we did live patient and I don't know what have you seen, garrett, on the effects of education and how it's evolved with some of the clinicians that you've worked with in the laboratory?
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, for me for sure. We were talking a little bit about the history of. We were talking a little bit about the history of live patient hands-on programs. So for me, I was introduced to this back in 1996 when you and Bill Dickerson were forming LVI. Back at the time, and you know, back then I don't even really recall any opportunity to participate as a lab in the education of a doctor. Our relationship was based on price and on quality and there was a big gap between the laboratory relationship with the doctor in terms of personal relationship. Professional relationship was. Here's the impression. The impression is not that great. Can you take a new impression? Or I have an open margin, or this is high and I'm sending it back, I'm getting a remake. And that was the relationship that the laboratory had back in the early 90s and probably before that.
Speaker 2:I've been involved in laboratory business since 1990. And so for me the first introduction to live patient was with LBI. We had an opportunity to go in and visit with Bill and you and participate in some of the early programs, and for me what I saw from a laboratory perspective was the great opportunity that the laboratory had to create a relationship with the doctor that was beyond a phone call from one to the other. It was more working as a team and taking those barriers down and creating more of a collegiate relationship. So what I saw for the doctor was an opportunity to participate the same way with their colleagues, because dentists, we always say dentistry is a lonely business.
Speaker 2:And again, back then, what did you do for education? Postgraduate dental education I mean you can speak of that probably better than I can. Postgraduate dental education I mean you can speak of that probably better than I can. What did you do prior to 1993, 1994, when you wanted to learn a new process? My guess is you read about it, you talked to the sales reps about it that were your detailer that was coming in and you practice and you might take years to evolve before you were confident in delivering that and developing that process to where you were as part of your daily quiver of processes that you could offer to your patients.
Speaker 2:So, that said, what I saw for the doctors was they had a place.
Speaker 2:Now they could go to interact with other doctors and of course, the main thing that the education does is it accelerates the time you have where you can land those processes in your practice, because instead of doing one case, you're now doing a case but you're also observing 10 or 15 or 20 other cases. You're getting a bunch of information all in a compressed period of time. So for me that's sort of where we started and that's sort of the value I think it brought to the laboratory was to be able to create a relationship with the doctor and to be able to be a colleague with the doctor, as opposed to just being a lab on a phone that didn't have a relationship with the doctor, and, of course, evolving from there, from LVI, into the educational programs that we're involved in through today. There's been a lot of changes and there's been a lot of growth, but I don't know what your thoughts are, how education impacted you prior to 1996 when you were involved in LVI, were involved in LVI.
Speaker 1:You know, I think the biggest part about attaining a live program, either a live lecture or a live patient type of program, in today's world of learning is we went from, as we were talking about live events. Then COVID hit and everything went online and web-based and a lot of the young dentists today kind of grew up in that environment because we've been in this environment of learning for five years now. So if you are a new grad in the last five years you're used to learning on social media. You know even TikTok videos and watching what other clinicians are doing. You try to extract from that some education and I think what it does. And when I talk to a lot of the younger dentists they have an interest in doing those procedures and they watch the videos and they think, okay, I really want to do that, but they don't have the confidence to do it Because the first time you do it especially if you do a veneer case and I think that's why sometimes they start out with two veneers or four veneers or six veneers, because they want to limit the difficulty of the case, the difficulty of the case, Whereas when you let's just take a live patient training program like the one that we have going on now, where doctors are doing 10 units of upper, 10 units of lower and full arches. Now we're managing the bite and we're changing the occlusion, the function and the aesthetics.
Speaker 1:I think once you take a course it's a live course it gives you what I would say true confidence, because I think there's a lot of clinicians today that watch things on YouTube and, as I mentioned before, I'd watch the VHS tapes. You know, I'd watch a lecture and it just wasn't really the same. You know, I could watch a video, I could watch a YouTube and think, okay, now I understand how to do it, but am I brave enough to actually do it? That's the big part, because even when we do these live patient courses, I always tell the doctors if we give you a set protocol and you're going to follow these 20 steps to either prep or cement the restorations in, and if everything goes perfect, then that's great. But that's not really what you want to learn. What you want to learn is when things don't go perfect and, as you're mentioning, if you're in a group with 10 doctors, you've got your case, and if your case goes perfect, hey, that's great. But if in those other nine cases, if there's some big challenges in, let's say, three of them, then that's really where the learning occurs. You know, sometimes it's a margin, wasn't as clear as it should be.
Speaker 1:So maybe we have to figure out can we repair that or can we fix it or modify something? And if we had the lab there, the lab a lot of times can help us do that. If the contours are slightly off, say a midline is off, because it could be that our reference stick bite wasn't correct, so lab got the alignment right according to our records, but maybe it could be off. Well, it doesn't mean that we have to redo the case. A lot of times we can do some post-cementation recontouring and those are the things that are really hard we talk about in the lecture, but it's really hard to show unless you're doing it on a patient. So there's a lot of things that I think can go wrong when you're doing 10 or 28 units. It's just nice to have an instructor by your side that can say don't worry about it. You're right, we've identified a problem. The bike could be off, the alignment contours could be off, whatever it may be, but we can work around that.
Speaker 1:I think that's where, once you see that done a few times with different cases. Then you go back to your office and look at your patient and think I could do 10 units or I could do 28 units or whatever it's going to take to do your case the way you want it to be done, because you had that true confidence. So that's something that's really hard to get from a YouTube video and, as somebody who makes YouTube videos to provide education, I understand that. What I'm trying to do is I'm trying to provide information. But it's still, you know, even if I did a YouTube video on how to do full mouth rehab, do I think the doctor should go out there and do full mouth rehab? No, but you know, we need to give them the information of how to do it, because some doctors can take that information and they take their rich history of experience and they can make things work, but others can't because they don't have the experience. They're just watching a video and trying to figure out how to make it work.
Speaker 1:So I think what holds doctors back? It could be a couple of days out of the office, like our program is Friday, saturday, so it's really only one day out of the program and we have one program this year that we might do. That's a Saturday, sunday, so you wouldn't even have to take time truly out of the office. And then the other thing that holds doctors back is I know there's some live patient treatment programs in other parts of the country that are $13,000, $14,000. And so the financial investment, and these aren't even live patient treatment programs. These are you get to watch somebody over the shoulder but you're paying $13,000 to be there at the lecture and at that actual clinical preparation or cementation time, whereas ours, you know, we have one set fee and that fee is basically for the lab work and so let's say it's $5,000.
Speaker 1:Well, if you're doing 10 units of veneers, and in your office that would normally be $15,000 or $20,000. You know, you could tell the patient hey, you know it's normally in my office it's $20,000. I'll give you 50% off, it's $10,000. And out of that $10,000, you're charging the patient. The lab and the educational costs are going to be $5,000 of that and depending on travel, hotel, whatever, that other $5,000 is going to take care of all of that. In most cases, or if the program is local to you, there's not going to be any transportation or hotel expenses to even have to worry about and so basically the program costs you nothing. And if you attend a course it's on a Saturday, sunday. You have really no time out of the office. You have no time while. You have no cost to cover your patients covering the expenses, and I just think that that is a life-changing experience that you really can't get anywhere else.
Speaker 1:But once you do those live patient training programs, you're gonna start to see, like what we've seen, we will have a group of 10 to 20 doctors in a room and we'll ask them how many of you are doing veneers? And most of them have done maybe one or two cases in their career. And so we'll ask them well, why don't you do more? Well, I don't have patients that need veneers. Well, it's just their eyes haven't been trained to identify the patients that need the veneers. And even for those doctors that have done a couple of veneer cases, they can see. You know, their mind sees the before and after possibilities, but they don't have the confidence.
Speaker 1:So I think a lot of clinicians that are watching this know that we can go to a course and we can say, wow, maybe it's an implant course. You know, I really like what I saw. I like the before and after and I get the protocol and so you like it, but you've never done it before. And so when you're in the office and you see a patient missing a tooth and you think that patient needs an implant, but I've never done an implant, or maybe I've never used a system before you're a little hesitant to recommend doing an implant. Or if you are brave enough to say, hey, you need an implant, I can do it for you, but you don't have a lot of confidence when you say that, then a lot of times the patients sense that and they don't move forward. So what we try to do is we try to provide the information, walk the doctors through on a live patient, try to show them how we handle all the challenges that arise.
Speaker 1:And I think the third part that I really like about this is the community. As you kind of had mentioned before. There's really this I don't know if we say brotherhood and sisterhood these days, how we describe that, but there really is this collegial bond that we develop. And I was teaching a course yesterday in Chicago and it was an occlusion course, and one of the doctors came up and she said you know what? I took one of your courses 20 years ago and I still use that information even today. So for me it's really fun because I run into doctors all the time as I go throughout the country that say I saw you 30 years ago or 20 years ago, 25 years ago, and that information I got from you I still use today.
Speaker 1:And when they look at the investment that they made back then and we were talking about it back in those 20 years ago the investment was probably $10,000. Yeah, and so with inflation it's a lot more. But think of all the money that they made with that ten thousand dollar investment. You know, I look at it. I did the same thing. I invested ten thousand dollars, but that ten thousand dollars over the last 20 years has probably made a million dollars, you know. So it was a great investment. If you like listening to these conversations, either on youtube or uh as a podcast, get more information go to the pack th, e, p, a c dot org to learn more no, I think so.
Speaker 2:You said a lot there. So if we talk about investment number one, we talk about podcasts podcasts or TikToks or webcasts getting information. You're right, it is. I think what we see is that there are doctors that have a lot of experience. We have doctors in our programs that have been practicing for 30 years, so they take the knowledge that we're delivering. It might just be more the material science that they're adapting. They might be better understanding it where they might already be doing full mouth. They might approach occlusion a different way, but that's what I think.
Speaker 2:One thing great about the hands-on experience is there are different levels of doctors in those programs and there is a collegial relationship, there is a bond, there is a dentistry is a lonely business and it is great to get with a group of doctors over a two-day period of time for two weekends that's 40 hours together with 10 or 15 different doctors that have different levels of experience. I think that online education is very linear. It delivers good information and we see that the majority of our doctors they want the information, they want the data, the science. They definitely want that. But then how do you make that leap, when you have the science, into applying it in your practice. That's where we see the big cliff, right there, and not every doctor learns the same. So we have a group of 10 doctors that are prepping and some have more confidence, some have less confidence. But it's great because sitting in the seat next to you is somebody that pretty much anything you do, they're going to prevent any major failure and anything that we do do that's a quote unquote failure can be resolved and we learn from it and the great thing is you can be leaning over the shoulder, watching that failure and then understanding how to correct it. And in an environment where I think you have a large group together, there's no spotlight. There's certainly a spotlight on you when you're in your office with the patient trying to deliver a procedure that you might have learned online and you're a little bit lack of confidence with. That's going to keep you from diagnosing 100%. But when you're with a large group and you've been with that group for one or maybe even two hands-on courses, you look forward to the opportunity every six months or every year to get back with that group, because you realize that that group you're all in the same boat, so to speak. So I think online education is very linear and it delivers the science and I encourage that before the hands-on course, to learn as much as you can. However, I do believe that everybody learns differently and at different skill levels, so I think there's a value for that.
Speaker 2:What you talked about with regards to money, back in the 90s we were charging $10,000. We had PAC Live at UOP with Dr Hornbrook. Those programs were about $10,000. Lvi, I think, was about $10,000. I think Aesthetic Advantage was about $10,000. Those were doing hands-on veneer courses but no one took one course. A lot of folks came to the first course thinking, geez, that's a lot of money and it is a lot of money and I'm going to sort of blindly hope that this has value. But writing the check the second and the third time was much easier because they immediately and I honestly know this to the listeners out there in our podcast you really have to take the first step and you have to trust that there's a reason that this small group it's a very small group, I would say.
Speaker 2:Maybe those early adopters might have been only 10% of the doctors that are practicing in the country stepped out to learn these new procedures and that's all the way through. Today, with implants, looking at delivering implants and delivering ortho and doing those other systems. That is a big payoff so it was expensive back then. It's sort of evolved now and now the laboratory is driving the education, whereas before the educators were driving the education. And with the support that we have, we're able to offer the doctors that scholarship if you will cover those, those expenses related to the lecturers, related to the clinic, and just charge them enough to cover the, the veneer fee.
Speaker 2:So I, when I'm talking to doctors in a program, I always ask the group the first thing who in here has been practicing for 10 years, for 50 years?
Speaker 2:So the guys that were practicing for 20, 30 years, I asked them would you like to have all the money back that you invested in education?
Speaker 2:What could you do with that money? And most of them say, wow, I've invested hundreds of thousands of dollars in traveling, whether it be dental conventions, whether it be hands-on programs, whether it be lectures. When you find an opportunity, I think like the PAC, where you're getting the same high level of education. In fact, in most cases these are the doctors. Our instructors are the doctors that are delivering. We're delivering at those other programs. In fact they are and they're only having to cover their laboratory fee for their patient. Put those resources back into your practice and I and I, and I, so I, so I really think again. For me, online education is great, but I think you really need to get your fingers wet and you need to be around a group of doctors that you could support you and support each other and and sort of take the burden of stress off of you so you can really then learn and apply. So I agree with everything that's in there and that's what we've seen.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, you know that's interesting. This last week's course where I was teaching in Chicago, you know we're talking about occlusion. So occlusion is a little bit different than you know. I think it's a little bit of a different doctor that's going to an occlusion program, because we talked about TMD, airway full mouth rehabs and things like that. And it was interesting because I thought about it on the flight home that when, as I was talking to doctors, more than half of them were fee for service. And so I think what happens is is you start to do these more specialized services I don't want to say necessarily higher end, but whether it be occlusion or implants or aesthetics that allows you, if you choose to want to, to take your practice to a different level. You know fee for service and these practices, they are fee for service in different parts of the country. We had doctors from the East Coast, florida, iowa, I mean all from all different parts, seattle, so we were like the four corners of the United States there and more than half of the doctors were now fee-for-service and many of them wanted to move that way.
Speaker 1:But I did another podcast last week it was actually a YouTube and in that I was saying you know we're not dogmatic. You know you don't have to be a solo practitioner. Or if you're in a DSO or associate doctor, we just want you to be successful and happy with how you practice. But in that YouTube I was saying if you're working as an associate, be the best associate you can be. Just don't go to work but have that passion. I think that's what these courses help to ignite. If you're working at dso like more of a corporate environment you want to be the best of the dso doctors working in that that office. Again, have that passion and in a situation like that, if you're doing larger cases and you're allowed to do that, you're going to produce more revenue, which the dso is going to love. Or if an associate, your senior doctor is going to love. And then if you're a senior doctor, maybe you're a sole practitioner or maybe a multi-practitioner type of fee-for-service office. It's going to make you more successful as you learn how to do these types of procedures. So if you're just learning, I was talking to a doctor who was fee-for-service but had recently made the change, and we were talking about those doctors only do crowns and fillings, because that's what we're taught to do in dental school. It's going to be really hard for them, because they provide such a commoditized service, to ever kind of break away from being insurance dependent, if they choose to ever do that. And, like we've mentioned before, we're not dogmatic that you have to be fee-for-service. But if you're working with insurance you just want to manage your business really well, because the margins start to get a little tight. And even in that situation if you could do an occasional veneer case or an implant or your root canals, that's going to help your practice, I think, succeed financially.
Speaker 1:So, and one last point now I'll turn it back to you is just that aesthetic dentistry today is different. Like in our groups, we talk about veneers, preparation of veneers and crowns and tissue management, but we talk about direct restorations. We talk about implants, we talk about endo endoesthetics how to restore endodontic teeth because today everything has to be aesthetic. You can't make a or place an implant and not have it turn out to be aesthetic. Or you can't do a root canal on tooth number eight and have it turn dark on you without managing the aesthetic. So I think today the bar is much higher for everybody. The patient's expectations are higher because they're watching TikTok and the YouTubes and everything. They know what the possibilities are. And I think in order for the practitioners to succeed today, they really need to know how to manage all these different clinical situations. And that's what we try to do with the education we provide.
Speaker 1:And before Garrett and I got on, I was telling Garrett.
Speaker 1:I said I don't want those that listen or watch this program to think, oh, you know, they're trying to get me to go to the PAC or the core program.
Speaker 1:But I think the message is we want you to find a program that you feel comfortable with. Maybe it's closer to you than most of ours are in California this year we'll have one in Chicago but find a program where you have the opportunity to interact with other colleagues, that that you get along with and you know it should be. It shouldn't be a it's not like dental school where you've got an instructor and a student. You know when you take these courses. It should just be collegial. You know we're here to support you and I'm going to do whatever I can to make you successful and from you and your experience I can extract information to make me more successful. So this is like give, give to each other and if you can find that environment and belong to that community. I think you're one. You're going to enjoy dentistry so much more. And two, I think your clinical practice will hit a different level of success, and I think that's what makes what we're talking about today just so important.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, mike, you hit on so many great points there and I encourage the viewers to kind of look back at the last few podcasts. But you know, mike, you talked about, you know, I think, our last podcast. You know, when you're an associate in the practice or in a DSO or you're just getting started, you're really developing your brand for yourself, for your future there, and I think a lot of docs don't think of it that way. We focus a lot about business and business development, but brand development starts from the day you start practicing, even if you're not in your own practice. I think it's a great message to remind the doctors that if you're in a DSO, if you are an associate, you want to be learning these procedures and delivering them to your patients, because at some point there may be a time when you want to break off and become independent. And building your brand early is important in these kind of programs and doing these kind of procedures allowing you to build your brand. And doing these kinds of procedures allow you to build your brand Even, maybe more relevant, what we call the aesthetic revolution.
Speaker 2:Back in the 90s, when there was a big paradigm shift in dentistry, what went from delivering single crowns and those fundamental restorative processes, to doing more of what we call aesthetic dentistry. We call it now comprehensive restorative dentistry, finished aesthetically, because we're dealing with moving teeth. We're dealing with a whole new generation of of options for the patient that were never delivered by a single doctor before. So we have the early adopters during the aesthetic revolution learning to do veneers and learning the new material science to bond to dentin right. That was pretty much what the big ship was there and it was a tidal wave of information and that small group of early adopters.
Speaker 2:Well, now we see doctors breaking away from and going insurance-free okay, and being fee-for-service. So probably, if I was going to advise a doctor based on my experience on what are the first things you should do, of course we want you to understand your business and what your overheads and manage your practice well, but we also need you to create a revenue stream that's going to support insurance free and you talked about this in your last seminar production versus profit, producing a lot and then not keeping a lot versus producing a little and keeping a lot more. So I think for doctors that are going fee-for-service, that may be and should be the new early adopter for these types of opportunities For doctors that are breaking away from insurance, that are going independent. They have to get the knowledge. They have to seek knowledge and apply, if they don't already have it.
Speaker 2:Apply how to do implants, how do I do anterior aesthetics? How do I do orthodontics? How do I? Because these kinds of procedures are what we used to call the discretionary procedures. These are the ones that patients are willing to pay for because there's a big known advantage or value to them for these, as opposed to getting the filling done or having a toothache.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, definitely. So I think that's where we started. Was we really wanna talk about the value of education, to encourage those that are listening or watching to continue that educational journey and not say in a negative way, but not to get stuck in a rut doing all the YouTube or TikTok or whatever type of education you're getting right now, but to really seek out a true collegial program where you can learn? And I think if we thought virtual learning was as good as it could get, then all the dental schools would just go away and we'd just go to YouTube videos and that's how you'd learn. But you know, again, think about it the value of your education was not the book stay that you necessarily did while you're in dental school, but it was all the either the lab sims and then moving into clinical situations where an instructor worked with you as you did your first crown prep or as you did your first composite.
Speaker 1:And think about how that really changed your experience and your level of understanding from where you started. The first couple of years in dental school, where you did the book work, you did the sim labs, you had that down pretty well. But once you got into the clinic it was a totally different situation. And that's where, again, you can watch a lot of CE on YouTube. But when you get into a clinical situation it's totally different. And if you've got your colleague helping you out, hey, what do I do here? What do I do with this bleeding tissue, how do I make the temporaries? And we show you where we put our fingers, what the materials we use, and it is a totally different level of learning. So, again, you know, we've got the Pacific Aesthetic Continuum, we offer education courses and we work with Core Dental Lab, so we have our technicians at the course to help the doctors out.
Speaker 1:But I would encourage you to just find a course anywhere and take these live courses. It's just like the implant situation right now too. You know, there's a lot of the clinicians I'm running into are taking implant courses, but they're taking the live patient courses where they actually do the surgeries, and that's what gives them the confidence to do implants versus. I meet the other doctors that take lecture-based implant courses and they never really apply it and I'll ask them well, they'll tell me, hey, I attended this course here, this course, and they're just lecture courses. And I ask them well, do you place implants now? And most of them will say, no, I don't. But the ones that I talked to that actually go to a live patient course and they place implants. When they come back they take their implant services to next level in their private practices.
Speaker 1:So again, I would just encourage everybody to check out what we have, but check out other courses and try to just go for the quality education, because I think that's where you're going to get the greatest ROI. If you're going to spend an hour watching YouTube, you may not really get that much in return. If you come to our live patient or live lectures because we do have lectures that are hour, hour and a half, we have ones that are one day lectures and we have the live patient experiences I think what you'll find is from that hour and a half that maybe you come to a study club meeting. You'll get a greater ROI from being there and listening to that than you would listening to YouTube for an hour and a half. So I would encourage you to find a program that you feel comfortable with, and we're doing our best to make the education that we offer accessible and affordable for our colleagues.
Speaker 2:I agree Mike Well said and yeah, I think we covered it. I think that's the value is there. Mentorship is how we learn and finding a good mentor is invaluable. We've seen literally thousands of doctors go through our programs and I can't think of even a handful that would say it wasn't not just a good experience, but it wasn't a life changing experience for me, and those things that you learn in those programs, like you said earlier, are still being applied in our practices today. And you know it goes beyond.
Speaker 2:Like you said, the social part of it is. It's great to be able to be with this group of like-minded doctors that you can call on and talk to. It's great to have a lab that you can call up and say, hey, I'm working on a case, can you mock up this case for me and can we get on the phone and can we actually talk about it. And, even more importantly, hey, I'm going to be bringing a case to the course and be able to spend 40 hours really understanding that case and why we're doing things and then, like you said, looking at 10 or 15 other cases mentorship, live patient hands-on programs, I think, where you have a chance to have an opportunity to really get your fingers wet with folks that are sitting next to you that are competent.
Speaker 2:That's, I think, coming back again. That's, I think, coming back again. I think prior to COVID. I think COVID, there was a big paradigm shift in educational learning because we couldn't do these programs again, and I think what I see happening I don't know about you, what I see happening is I see it's coming back again. I think it's very important for the docs to get involved in that.
Speaker 1:Yep, yep, yep, no thanks, so we'll wrap it up here. So thank you, garrett, for your time, and we'd encourage everybody again you know those that listen to the podcast or watch the YouTube portions of these programs. If you like it, hit the like. If you want to subscribe, hit subscribe. And if you want to learn more, go to thepackpacorg and go to the website. Get some more information if you're interested in the courses that that we offer. But, um, we look forward to seeing you all next month. Thank you very much for being here. Thanks, garrett. Thank you, mike, take care.