Welcome to Dental Unscripted.
Where Mike Dinsio and Paula
Quinn break down the
practice ownership journey,
one episode at a time.
Starting up,
buying and running a
successful dental practice.
What up, what up, guys?
Welcome back to another
episode of Dental Unscripted.
My name's Mike D'Incio.
You guys know me.
We are super excited about
today's episode.
We're live casting right now,
and we've already got seven people.
This is nuts.
So I think this is going to
be a hot topic tonight.
but uh yeah tonight's a
special episode we are we
are actually broadcasting
out of tacoma I got doctor
from tacoma I got uh nick
and from the east coast and
nicole in washington so we
got four people on the on
the call today but
Real quick, guys, what am I trying to say?
A little housekeeping.
If you're listening to this
episode on Startup
Unscripted or even Dental
Acquisition Unscripted,
those are two podcasts that
have been going on for the
last five years,
and we are merging them all
into one program called
simply Dental Unscripted.
So if you guys have been
subscribing to the other ones,
I want you to stop.
and pivot and and I want you
to start following dental
unscripted that's where all
the episodes are going to
be and I'm super excited
about it because
historically it's all been
about how to start how to
buy um but now you guys are
in ownership you've been
all you you now own and and
it's been five years we
started the program
during COVID and a lot of you guys own.
So now we're gonna do
practice management tips.
So we're gonna be bringing
in other coaches.
And today we got a new coach
on the podcast, which is super fun.
And so we're gonna be bringing in,
Next Level is gonna be
bringing in a lot of other coaches.
And so practice management
tips coming at you guys,
along with still startup
and acquisition stuff.
So again, subscribe, follow,
do all the things.
And we're excited about the new program.
But without further ado,
tonight is special because
we have a new partnership in Candid.
If you guys have not heard of Candid Pro,
just check out the sweet
shirt they sent me and all
the gear behind me.
If you're watching on YouTube,
I'm totally decked out in red right now.
But yeah, Candid is an awesome,
awesome opportunity for you
guys to grow your businesses and
Um, a lot of you,
there's a lot of options out there,
but we chose Canada for a reason.
If you haven't heard of Canada,
let me just give you a
little bit about them.
They gave me some things to read.
I totally suck at this and
you guys know that,
but I'm gonna do my best here.
So Canada is an orthodontic
technology company that
strives to make high
quality oral healthcare
more accessible and
affordable to dental
professionals and the
patients they serve.
The company's flagship product, Candid Pro,
sweet shirt right here and
all the stuff behind me,
is a clear aligner system
and is the number one
orthodontic system built, guys,
built for General Dennis.
So we're going to be talking
about what that means for you,
General Dennis.
But again, continuing on,
Candid Pro offers predictability.
efficiency and profitability
to dental professionals
through its unique
combination of
state-of-the-art aligner
manufacturing so I'm super
excited about this
partnership being a next
level client you get you
get a sweet deal getting
right in with these guys at
an awesome awesome level
And if you're interested in that,
reach out to Next Level.
We'll hook you guys up.
But without further ado,
let me get into who's on the call here.
It's not about me tonight.
It's about you three.
The first one I will
introduce is the wonderful
and beautiful Nicole Young,
one of our executive coaches.
She's our ortho specialist.
We're super excited about
Nicole's ortho program.
Nicole, welcome to the show.
Thanks for being on.
Thanks, Michael.
Excited to be here.
And then next,
I'll introduce the CEO of Candid.
So Nick Greenfield is the
CEO and co-founder of
Candid and is one of the
founding partners of Redesign Health.
Candid is a venture backed
company that works
exclusively with dental
professionals offering
advanced orthodontic technology.
Via its flagship product, again,
Candid Pro, the clear liner system.
A little background, which is super cool,
is that Nick was part of
one of the OGs at Lyft.
He was the CEO there.
And we all know how successful Lyft was.
So Nick brings really cool
stuff to this program.
So we're super happy to have
you on the show, Nick.
Say hi to everybody.
Hey, everybody.
Thank you so much, Michael, for having me.
Oh, dude.
Of course.
And I'm really excited to
tell everybody a little bit
more about the Candid Pro solution.
Yeah, we're gonna get into that.
You're the guy at the top,
so maybe we'll put you on the hot seat,
but we're excited to have you.
And then Candid brought us a
really cool expert.
And Dr. Arvind Petri is a
graduate of University of
Pittsburgh School of Dental Medicine.
He went on to complete an
advanced education in general dentistry,
AEGD, in Spokane, Washington,
Washington before returning home to Tacoma,
the town where I'm from right now,
to found Petri Advanced Dental.
He's helped.
This is super cool.
He's one of the founders and
has served on the board of the AACA.
For those that you don't know what that is,
that's the American Academy
of Clear Liners.
And he's been doing that for
several years and currently serves.
So that's super cool.
So wealth of knowledge on the panel today.
I'm the dummy today.
You guys are the experts.
Let's get into it.
Nick, give me like,
what are you guys up to?
Because you're taking market
share by storm.
um we know a lot of people
that's at your company and
they're impressive and uh
next level chose you guys
for a lot of reasons but um
how would you describe what
you guys are doing over
there at candid yeah so
first of all um it's really
awesome that we have dr
petrie on dr petrie can
share much more wisdom
about starting up,
building and growing your
practice with clear aligners than I can.
I can give you a little bit
about what we deliver,
which is the most predictable,
efficient and profitable
clear aligner system for
general dentists on the market today.
Specifically,
if you are starting up a
practice or you're new
to orthodontics you're new
on what does it mean to
introduce clear aligners
for your patients we have a
great system for you or if
you are very advanced and
you want to scale and
continue to grow we also
have a great system so this
the way we've built this
product is for the novice
user all the way up to the
most advanced user now I'll
walk you through what that means
Every case,
there's a US licensed
orthodontist who actually
will review and support you
in the treatment planning of that case.
Which means if you are a new
dentist to orthodontics,
you're always gonna have
that support and backup
from an expert on how to set up the case,
which is super important.
That's included
complimentary as part of the case fee.
The second component is
you're gonna have monitoring.
which means as patients are
going through treatment,
they're gonna be using
their mobile phone to scan
their teeth using the most
advanced AI technology and
the only FDA cleared
monitoring tool out there
in the market to monitor
their teeth during treatment,
which is gonna reduce office visits.
So the average Candid Pro
provider is doing three
office visits per case
versus competitor solutions
where the average is closer to ten,
which means seventy percent
reduction in office visits.
If you're building out of
practice or you're a busy
practice already saving
seven office visits,
you're talking about over a
thousand dollars in chair
time productivity lost,
which again helps you from
a bottom line perspective
and helps keep your patients happier.
So I think that if you look
at those two components coming together,
this is how we drive, again,
predictability and
efficiency for individual practices.
And if you're an advanced
doctor who's done a lot of cases,
who is really kind of
knowing what they're doing,
then I would suggest you
would listen to Dr. Petrie tonight,
because Dr. Petrie is a
very advanced clear aligner provider,
and he made the switch over to Candid Pro,
and he can tell you a
little bit more about what
that looks like.
Yeah, let's do that.
Let's do that.
Let me pivot real quick
before Dr. Pichu just takes
us all by storm here and
how he incorporates this
and how he's exploded his
company and is having crazy
success with the product.
Nicole,
with your background as an
ex-territory rep and big
into clear liners and even
being part of an ortho
practice and all of that,
What's one thing that you're
excited about this new
partnership with Candid?
Because I think it's unique
for a consultant to really
go all in with a clear liner company.
And we did.
And I think it's pretty cool
what you can do with our
clients and helping them
grow their practice.
Yeah, no, that's a great question.
And for me, again,
it's Candid's mission statement.
It's the predictability, efficiency,
profitability.
But when you kind of
unravel that and peel the
onion layers back, if you will,
then for me,
it's really that these doctors,
especially in what we're working with,
a lot of our demographic or listeners,
our clients, our newer doctors,
and having the clinical
confidence of knowing that
an orthodontist, a trained
US-based orthodontists
looking over their cases,
to me is absolutely huge.
In my experience,
when you're incorporating
this into a GP practice,
Candid's specific to GPs,
it's the only product
that's built for GPs.
The other one started with Ortho.
So now to me with the other,
with competitive companies,
you started with Orthos,
but now you're implementing
the GP practices.
You are
kind of having to unravel
and rewind on on your
scripting and your training philosophies,
because it doesn't look the
same in ortho as it does
into a GP practice.
So to me,
candid for any newer GP in the market,
anyone again, look again, the scale,
but specifically our newer
doctors that are looking to
grow and add a different
service candidate is hands
down going to be the best
option for them.
Yeah, no, I'm thinking like our startups,
right?
So if you're a startup and
you're starting from ground zero,
you have no sales,
popping a couple ortho
cases can really make your
projections look a lot different.
than just chasing hygiene
appointments all day.
So not that that's what we don't wanna do,
but as startup,
you guys are just trying to
pay your bills.
And so incorporating ortho right away,
not having to be like a
total pro at ortho,
that's a game changer.
And then I think of like
some of our acquisitions
where I'm analyzing the
practice and if the
practice is doing a ton of
clear aligners and you're
not comfortable doing
clear line of therapy or ortho,
you can easily jump into
this and offset that risk.
Because if the practice is
doing a lot of that,
you don't want the practice
to fall and the collections to drop.
So for a GP or really
anybody that's not an
orthodontist to have this
kind of in their, in their back seat is,
is huge.
So doc, I like, I gotta,
I gotta ask like how, how,
How do we do this?
How do we be successful with
Candid in offices?
Has it been a game changer?
Would you mind sharing your
story and kind of how your
journey of how you got into
clear aligner therapy and
how it changed your whole business?
And then why Candid,
it's kind of a loaded question,
but why Candid is the X
factor now in your office?
What time do you have?
Nah, we we got we got plenty of time.
Just go.
I think the audience is
starving for how to be
successful in this world
where dentistry and
business dentistry is challenging.
I'll tell you, like, you know, Mike,
you don't know my backstory completely,
but I've been there.
I've been in the trenches.
I've been beat up, sucked up.
Cheat up, spit out.
You know,
I bought my practice nine years ago,
two years out of school,
and I didn't know anything.
I was by myself.
I could talk to some people.
I thought I knew the game, right?
I actually took a minor
training one month before I
started my practice.
Got into it.
I did three team members, I believe,
off the get-go.
I put inscriptions just level in the line.
I didn't know what the hell I was doing.
Okay, two months into practice,
I'm bankrupt, just so you know.
I'm working two other jobs on the side,
growing my business here.
And little by little is
trying to figure some things out.
Ortho, ortho is a tough thing for docs.
We get very little training in school.
In fact,
the training we get is like refer
to the orthodontist.
That's my classic training.
I'm a twenty ten grad.
You know, I'm not brand new,
but I'm not out of the game a long time.
And you go into your own
practice and dentists,
we treat what we know.
And then we refer out.
Back in the day,
we take a model here and we
put a cast on it, sit there.
We'll get, we'll figure this out.
You know, Canada has been so,
so good at what they do to
come in with the partnership.
and the fact that you get to
level your treatments up
with an orthodontist that
knows what they're doing.
Because a lot of ladder companies here,
man, their refinement rate,
I was at three hundred percent before.
Three hundred percent.
Nick, I had five finishes this week.
Two of them went to refinement.
Three was perfect in the first round.
That does not happen in
other ladder companies.
So wait,
I just want to pause there for a
second because that is a game changer,
right?
An actual ortho.
I just want to say that out loud.
An actual ortho is looking
at every case that you sent.
Yeah?
And that doesn't happen?
That doesn't happen with other companies,
right?
No, because you've got a lot of AI.
You've got overseas techs
and some other things that
are creating those treatment plans.
And over the last two and a half years,
three years, I've worked with Candid.
I've actually developed some
friendships with my
orthodontist that I'm partnering with.
And I wanna put this out there.
It's like,
why would you listen to another
GP about another product?
Okay, because again,
I went from a bankrupt
company ten years ago to a
solo practitioner,
produced over three million
and collecting this year, two point five.
The numbers speak for themselves.
Wow.
Nice.
All productive dentist,
GP doing a ton of general dentistry.
And I got to say that for me,
like the biggest thing with
Canada was like my chair time,
trying to cram in my five
off my six off and do all
this different dentistry.
My production per hour can
be up to fifteen hundred dollars.
And getting patients out of
my chairs into a systemized
approach that can be taken
over by different people in my team,
not just me, that's valuable.
And that's what we talk about,
like the profit in your chair time.
We guys know when your chair is valuable.
As an early GP,
you don't have a lot of time.
You try to figure out your business.
You're just trying to hold your,
you know what, together.
Yeah,
to have that powerful partnership
with someone that knows
what they're doing.
I get especially even the
even the seasoned GP,
there's different ways the
company benefits you for Candid.
And I just can't keep
hammering down about what
that looks like to the
general dentist because again,
Candid is catered for the GP,
not the ortho market like
the other liner companies started out as.
Well, we we talk a lot.
And next time we talk a lot
about like bringing in
specialists into your office.
Right.
Because because you can't do
it all and you only feel so
comfortable doing so much.
Right.
And and we're always talking about like,
oh, well,
let's stack a Saturday of some implants.
Right.
That's that'll change your
bottom line quick.
Let's.
whatever,
let's say you're a pediatric dentist,
let's bring in some ortho,
like whatever you can do to
try to bring in more procedures in-house.
And ortho is kind of one of
those things where like from an outsider,
and you guys are the kings
and queens of ortho,
but like from an outsider, again,
me being the dummy in the room,
it feels like as an industry,
it's really exciting
everybody wants to try to
do it and then they try to
do it and it doesn't really
work super well and I know
nicole can speak to this
because um she's had some
experience with some of the
others other companies out
there and and nicole like
what are the pitfalls of
gps and doctor doc please
you guys go off of each
other like on this but like
why doesn't it stick why
why is it hard to get ortho
in a gp practice
Arvind,
I'll take this one and I know you agree,
but number one,
it's clinical confidence
from the doctor's perspective.
When you're being, again, like Doc said,
when you are in school,
your ortho training is minimal.
And then you get out of
school and you want to
implement this into your practice.
There's a clinical confidence piece to it.
And that has to be huge.
But the second component is team training.
If you go to a course, you go to a CE,
you come back and you tell
the team at the morning
huddle on Monday morning,
we're going to implement ortho.
Good luck.
Here you go.
This is what I want to do.
I love my doctors dearly,
but I saw that model fall
flat on its face many, many times.
Unless you had a diamond in
the rough one time out of
twenty accounts that someone
did want to take it on or
had some experience with it
in a in a previous practice
but we want to get the
entire office thinking of
ortho treatment as a
standard of care and what I
mean by that is you're
you're setting your
restorative cases up to
finish better right so you
rewind it's not just a
cosmetic benefit we're
going to look at this from
from a restorative aspect
so there's been a lack of
the team training and
implementation and pull
through which I think is
huge and what candid offers
again is that clinical
confidence of having an orthodontist
look at your cases, it's predictable,
it's efficient,
where there's not a lot of
chair time because there is
that confidence and
responsibility of the
patient to getting their
records over to doctor.
But Arvind, anything to add on that?
My question is like,
why doesn't Ortho stick to the GP?
Because we are afraid to fail.
We're an awful driven position.
Because you're afraid to fail?
Is that what you just said?
We're afraid to fail.
Of the ortho case.
We're afraid it's not going to turn out.
We're deathly afraid of, good God,
I took on a case and I've
got to send it to somebody else now.
How's that going to look at
my social media?
How's it look at my Google reviews?
How's it look in front of my team?
How do I feel going home
every day looking in the
mirror and being like, yeah,
you jacked this up, Petrie.
You know, it's a horrible feeling.
Nobody wants to fail for it,
but when you give yourself permission,
now here's where it really
opens up the door.
Truly.
I think when you get the docs,
give yourself permission.
I can't fail now because I got backup.
I'm going to have community.
I'm going to have clinical
confidence and I've got a
product that works.
Yeah.
And that's what you guys are all about,
right?
Is backing these guys up
from a risk and giving them support.
That's always been kind of
part of your model, right?
It's about providing maximum
support through a
combination of the
orthodontist and technology.
And the monitoring
technology does an amazing job,
not only of keeping folks
out of your chair for
unnecessary appointments,
but driving patient compliance.
About ninety percent of
patients take their scans
on time every one to two weeks,
and that keeps them going.
So if a patient is going to go off course,
you're gonna know about it
and you're gonna know about
it early so you can intervene.
But so much more often than not,
that patient, because they're monitoring,
it means they're more
likely to wear their aligners.
They're gonna get their cases done faster.
You can hear that from Dr. Petri, right?
Three out of five cases that
finished this week,
those cases didn't end up
going into refinement.
I think the other component
here that's really critical
is the patient and the patient desire.
Again,
if you're a doctor with a startup
practice or you're thinking
about buying a practice,
and you think about your
patient base that's in
there most of those
patients have some type of
orthodontic need right
you've got sixty seventy
eighty percent of those
patients have have some
type of malocclusion and
they need permission to
treat that whether it's
because of an aesthetic
desire a functional desire
they have tmd there's
something going on ortho is
part of that solution for
them even if it's pre-restorative
And I think that's really
important to understand and
believe in that
orthodontics is part of
that standard of care,
but you have to be
comfortable with delivering it.
And if you didn't learn it
in dental school,
but you have an
orthodontist to partner with,
with Candid Pro,
that can help you get over that hump.
And just starting one case a month,
or sorry, one case a week,
if you start one case a week,
let's say you're doing three
thousand dollars in take
home on that case and
you're starting fifty cases
a year that's a hundred
fifty thousand dollars but
that is a massive number
for you as a doctor and
your patients will be
happier they'll get better
outcomes they'll need less
reactive dentistry and they
will believe more in coming
back and refer more
patients so I think when
you look at that holistically
Offering orthodontics and
doing it well in
partnership with Candid Pro
is a great way to continue
not only to drive same year bottom line,
but long-term growth for your practice.
We see Jack every day.
Yeah.
I, uh, one thing that I picked up in the,
over the last whatever time
that I've been in dental is that like,
I always used to think like, well, gosh,
like, um, why,
why don't the orthos hate you guys?
You GPs, right?
Like, like you're,
you're stealing some of
their market share, but then like,
I think it was Paula,
my co-host on this program.
A light bulb went off and it's like,
if dentists now are
comfortable because they
have the predictability to
diagnose and they focus on
the more simple cases,
they're probably referring
more out because they're
talking about it more.
Nicole,
is that kind of like the concept of
just getting the whole team?
You touched on the team.
The team is everything.
You go to these like,
these conferences in
Scottsdale or whatever the
doctor comes back all
jazzed you talk about this
all the time but then this
team has no idea what the
doctor's all jacked up
about but he's all excited
or she's all excited and
the team's like what is
this dude talking about um
but is that what happens
once you start building
building on this and having
a predictable system
Yeah.
I mean,
I always at least love to coach that, hey,
as a GP,
I want you to keep your
relationship and that
strong referral base with
your orthodontist, period.
There are simply certain
cases we don't want to touch.
I'm sure Arvin probably,
correct me if I'm wrong,
but you probably don't want
to touch a crazy class
three or maybe not all the teens, right?
So we're still keeping that
relationship strong with
our orthodontist.
But what we're trying to do
is to Nick's point,
those seventy percent of
people that we know that
suffer from malocclusion,
that we could be talking to
them about this within our own practice,
that simple patient base.
Again,
this is from a pre restorative angle.
Some of it's going to be from cosmetic,
of course,
but those are simple six to
nine month cases.
I've worked with so many
orthos that would rather
that their GPs take on that case.
Yeah, they would rather not.
They love the two year, three year stuff,
right?
Like they they do.
To be honest,
in my experience and doing
this for thirteen years,
they really do support the
GP having that and owning
those simpler cases, if you will.
I think it's a great relationship.
I don't think it may have
disrupted the market at first,
but I've seen that evolve over the years.
I mean, what's the stats in this country?
Three hundred plus million people.
Am I right on that?
Somebody at the Almanac.
Eighty percent of people can
benefit by some orthodontic intervention,
malocclusion.
OK, there's no shortage of dentistry.
What is it?
One in three people have
insurance to come in and out of it.
We keep doing these math out
of all those millions.
There is plenty to go around.
And I've always said this
from just a general standpoint,
like you're not.
You're not really in
competition with each other.
You're in competition with yourself.
You're in competition with
all of the commodities that
are out there.
There is plenty of dentistry there.
And keep those relationships happy.
As Nicole mentioned,
send those class threes out.
Send your bilateral cross
bites if you want to.
Send your elastic cases out
for your team orthodontics
so you can finish them properly.
Can you do it?
Yeah.
Should you start out with it?
No.
As Nick's talked,
start out with the stuff
that's predictable.
Yeah, I love that.
So predictability is is
obviously is probably the
first pillar before you
even get into this next topic,
which is profit.
Right.
So so you got to believe in it.
You got to trust in it.
You got to know that you got
the ortho behind your back.
Right.
And and and I'm like a risk taker.
I'm an entrepreneur by spirit,
but I'm not a clinician.
So I I don't know what it
feels like to like do clinical and not,
you know, actually
I don't want to screw something up.
I'm sure that's a big weight
lifted up off your shoulders,
knowing that you do have a
specialist reviewing those cases.
So predictability, we covered that.
I think that's huge.
I think that's really good.
It's a big,
big reason why Next Level
partnered with you guys,
because I think that's what
we hear all the time with our clients,
what Nicole can speak to that.
But let's talk profit.
That's my favorite.
I'm an ex-banker.
I love profit.
I love business.
We don't do this for free.
Let's talk profit.
So so I think, Nick,
you touched a little bit
about this and that and that is
it was a light bulb when I,
when I met with your team
and they started talking
about the number of visits and, and, and,
you know, you know, as a consultant,
I get asked how many
clients can you take on?
Do you have too many?
And what they're,
what they're asking is capacity, right?
And I think every business owner,
every person has a capacity that, that,
that, that there's a break point, but
When you have less visits,
you can increase capacity.
That's a game changer.
That's called scaling, right?
So, Doc,
were you with some others before
you went all in on Candid?
And if the answer is yes,
I think I see your head shaking.
Has it been a game changer
with the amount of visits?
Because that's going to boost profit.
It's just simple math.
Dude, it's huge.
I'll answer here before Nick lies.
Nick's chopping at the bit.
Nick wants to talk.
I'm happy to stay here.
Stay quiet.
Let Dr. Petrie do the talking.
I've used several aligner systems.
I've been predominantly with
one for a very, very long time.
Big name player in a game.
I'll tell you,
it was so... I call it the matrix.
You're just in this
day-to-day going through.
It's kind of like a rat race
of life with that aligner.
You're constantly paying high fees,
high refinements, a lot of chair times,
time attachments, a lot of IPR,
all of which cost overhead, right?
These dogs coming out of school, I mean,
what is it, five hundred thousand bucks?
I've heard of it.
For tuition?
Well, not in Spokane,
but New York City for sure.
Yeah.
You're coming out with all this.
So overhead and profit is
keen on your on your eyes.
Yeah.
Out there.
Yeah.
So you talk about chair time
and what it costs.
And I'm kind of losing my
train of thought because I
want to talk about so much.
But you said why for me?
Right.
Well, I got challenged.
my two and a half years ago
by a good friend of mine,
who's also in a kind of coaching space.
And he's like, Arvin,
what do you got to lose?
And he literally kept saying,
I don't know what I'm going to lose.
I'm a, I'm a provider doing two, four,
maybe six cases per month, going along,
talking ortho, got a scanner, got,
got almost two scanners.
Now I have three.
And it's like, damn,
what do I have to lose?
Truly?
Because I was like, I know this product.
I know this system.
I know how to do all this stuff.
And I said, you know what?
I might, my,
My director, practice director, Jamie,
was like, let's just try it.
I said, fine, let's go all in, okay?
And just basic metrics and math.
In the timeframe I worked with Canada,
the timeframe that I worked
with my previous allowed company,
two hundred thousand
dollars in ortho for that
timeframe previously,
six hundred thousand
dollars in ortho that
timeframe currently.
Dude, extra profit?
Or extra revenue.
Extra revenue.
Jeez.
So, okay.
But so revenue is one thing,
but then chair time,
I'm thinking dental assistant support.
So, so there's the overhead of,
of wages and support.
Right.
But then there's also lab
fees and the actual cost.
Yeah.
Both of them,
both of them are squeezing or
not squeezing.
They're,
they're eliminating costs and that
what happens that that
means more falls to the bottom line.
So I, from a,
from a profit profit perspective,
it takes less people to
service this product and it
costs less in general, in general,
especially with next levels
program that you guys so
generous generously gave us.
But again,
um and our clients the the
level in and and the
affordability I mean you
saw you saw it hit your
bottom line within how long
just just switching in six
months I mean it wasn't
that long but the actual
time frame now when I've
done my numbers and did
some stuff where I came on
I was looking to go man
that's a four hundred
thousand dollar increase of
the same time period prior
wow you know not as much
ipr going through and you
know the clear liner market
is so crowded it's so
crowded there's a big
player in the game right
And everyone's competing for that.
Now,
how do you compete with a guy charging
thirty three ninety seven?
How do you compete with the
big orthodontists, right?
That have lower fees are
getting that traction.
How do you as a young GP come in?
Can you do aligners at three
thousand dollars with a lot
of these companies?
Sure.
You're going to be losing a
lot of money if you get
going and get that traction.
You're just a pig at the trough here.
I call it the matrix here.
Sometimes you just got to stop and say,
man, everybody's going this way.
Everyone's doing that.
Well,
can it pro off with something different?
And then monitoring,
that's the freaking deal changer.
That was the game changer right there.
And I know he knows it.
So when you say the monitoring,
I actually I want to throw
that throw that this last
part about profit to Nicole.
Any are your wheels turning
anywhere where where where
you could see our clients
maximizing the opportunity?
Did I did I hit both of them?
And and is it a real thing?
Am I talking out out the
side of my mouth here?
I mean,
doctors can see more profit with
this model.
Absolutely.
I mean, absolutely.
For us,
we go in and we do a specific
breakdown on what could be
just based off of their patient base,
what we know,
who within that patient
population suffers from malocclusion,
who could benefit,
where their baseline is.
and saying, hey,
if we train and we get
candid in here and we start
talking about this, we make it a goal,
right?
We're big on goals and
coaching and setting those
quarterly goals or monthly goals,
what have you.
We're really breaking it
down to them from a profit
standpoint and what they
could be getting and what
they could be bringing in
with the amount of time
that they'd actually be spending on it.
I think if we went in and
did an analysis on that,
it'd be a no brainer.
Yeah.
I mean, it's very easy to do.
I think I think we should
talk a little bit about
team because because it takes a team,
takes a village.
Right.
You got three scanners.
You got a lot of people
serving those scanners.
Nicole,
that's what you're such a pro on is
getting the team dialed in, you know,
with this system, with this partnership.
How do you see the team
taking taking hold of
something like this versus
maybe some of the other players?
And I don't I don't really
want this to feel like a commercial.
It is.
I'm wearing a T-shirt for Pete's sakes.
But the point the point is,
is like this is different.
And I think we got to we got
to talk about it.
And I just I'm just curious, like,
did they have they removed
some barriers for the team?
Well, yeah, I mean, it starts at the top,
right?
And we talk a lot about that,
just even within our own
company at Next Level.
And if my doctor is
confident in this product,
if my doctor knows that
he's got the backing of an orthodontist,
that it's predictable,
that cases he or she's
dabbled in have turned out great.
I mean, it starts there, right?
So you've got that piece.
We've got doctor communicating it.
To me,
it's identifying really a strong
player in the front and a
strong player clinically.
Does everybody have to be on
board and be an ortho guru?
No, not necessarily.
But we want to identify at
least those two key players,
one in the back, one in the front.
And to me,
it's going in and training on that,
making sure we're all
saying the same thing,
walking the same walk,
talking the same talk.
And that goes with any
procedure that we're talking about,
making sure that the
doctor's vision is being pulled through.
And I think that when you do
spend that one-on-one time
with that leader within the
practice that wants to take
on some sort of clear
aligner therapy initiative,
then then it doesn't take much,
especially again,
when doctor when doctor is
super confident in the product,
the efficiency and predictability of it,
which that is going to
exude down to the down of the team.
So it's all about pull
through and how you
implement and making sure
that that team believes in
that vision and believes in
the product as well.
And sometimes that does take
a third party coming in.
I mean, unfortunately,
we know our doctors often
again go in and they want
to offer a product or start
something new.
And again, it's that blank look.
But if you are saying the same thing,
they hear doctors saying
the same thing over and over,
you've got a third party
coming in and saying the same things,
then eventually that's
going to stick and they're
going to start to see and believe.
So for me,
that's a huge win once you get
everyone in a cohesive manner.
Yeah, no, that's that's awesome.
I guess that that's a great
place to pivot to partnership.
So, you know, Nick,
what do you guys mean about partnership?
Like what?
That's one of the three P's for you.
And you guys are big on on
the partnership part.
What's what's the
partnership mean to you as
the the leader of this
organization down to the
GPs that are using your product?
Well, I think that, you know,
you get the combination of
your executive coach that
you're working with, right?
And that's really important
because they're helping
goal set within your practice.
But then you need your
Candid Pro account
executive and the marketing
support that our team is
able to provide to help you
with three core components.
One is training.
We do a great job of setting
up foundationally so that
your front office and back office,
your clinical and your
business can be set up appropriately.
Do you have the financing
system in place to drive
patient acceptance and have
the right conversations?
Does your hygiene team
understand and know how to
talk about malocclusion and
have the right workflow and
system built in.
That's really critical.
Do you know how to talk to
patients about malocclusion
and what teeth shifting over time means?
Do you know the right
prompts and the right questions?
And then are you driving patients,
both existing patients, but if you're,
again, building a startup practice,
new patients into the practice,
raising their hand and saying,
I want orthodontics.
What can I do here?
And we provide, again,
through our in-person account executives,
through our clinical support,
through our general customer support,
through our US licensed orthodontists,
through our faculty members,
and through our marketing team, right,
six different layers from the company,
all built and designed to support you.
And it really is choose your
own adventure.
If you want to lean in,
we're going to lean in with you.
If you want to dabble,
we'll help you dabble.
Right.
And I think that the amazing
thing about this
partnership is that you
have an executive coach.
You're going to help drive
that accountability with
you in your practice,
but also with your team.
And this is a team sport.
You mentioned it before, right?
This doesn't work if you
don't get hygiene and you
don't get treatment
coordination and you don't
get office management,
you don't get everybody playing together.
But when you get that,
like Dr. Petrie has in his office, right?
He has fantastic team support.
That's where you start
having more malocclusion conversations,
which lead to more patients
accepting treatment,
which leads to more referrals,
which leads to more positive reviews,
all those things coming together.
So again, we help you do that.
And we want to lean in with you.
But you've got to want it also, right?
That's the other component.
I love that you said that
because half the time we're
talking about stuff as
executive coaches and we
want it more than our clients.
I'm glad you, I'm glad you said that.
But, but doc, uh, I want to ask you, so,
so like,
were you always a big ortho guy
like day one,
or this is just something
that you just kind of got into and,
and then to parlay that, like,
how did you get the team behind you?
Because I think that's,
that's the big thing is, um,
you came home from the seminar or whatever,
and you're like, I want to do this,
but just saying it doesn't
make it happen.
How did you do it?
Because it takes a village.
You know, when I established my practice,
I put advanced in the name
because I was always forward thinking.
I want to be a digitized office.
I want to use more modern technologies,
techniques,
and continue to advance what
we were doing in our field
and bring that into my patient flow.
Part of that was Clearlight Orthodontics,
which when I came out in
you know,
top straight wire in school and
coming into my practice,
I never really took off
much with the ortho and then, you know,
do some work with ACA and
then getting a community,
which I didn't have.
That was huge to get my numbers up.
That started about in twenty seventeen.
And then that went up and
kind of just sort of stagnated there.
And then it occurred to me a
couple of years back that
the rate limiting step in
my practice was actually me.
Because I was trying to be
the center of the universe.
I was the one going through my CE.
I was going through my events,
my retreats.
I'd come back, like Nicole mentioned.
And it's like,
how do you rob some troops
when they haven't woken up
in the matrix and done
anything different?
And part of this candid
leadership pathway and the
pathway in general is the
people component.
Okay.
And basically go into and
find someone to take over
the clinical backside beyond me,
beyond the dentist,
somebody in the front side
to take over on the financial aspect,
the treatment coordinator,
whoever's doing the money, you know,
not enough to close her.
This is, this is big three.
And that has to come down to
the rest of the team.
Candid had come in and done
some great introductions in office.
We've gone through as a team.
We set goals.
I'm going to put this out
there right now because we
did something which I never
thought in my life was possible.
But on our ten-year anniversary day,
I did a hundred and fifty
thousand dollars in services.
Thirty-four clear liner
starts with Canada.
Wait, the first in one day?
One day.
What?
We've got a few of these
events now with similar numbers.
And I never thought that was possible.
It was possible though,
because I gave the team a
goal and we made it fun.
Okay.
And we, we blew our goal out of the,
out of the.
out of the water.
And part of that was like,
let's have fun with this.
Right.
I actually, you know, I like my team.
I love my team.
You should like your team.
If you don't know how to manage,
you can get rid of it.
Yeah.
We got, we got,
we got other stuff to talk about,
but we took the team to the
weekend in Suncadia, got a nice house.
We had a fantastic time bonding.
You know,
and we continue to try to have
these events and set these
goals that Nicola talked about earlier.
They're really, really important.
But mostly even back to like,
what's the purpose of what
we're doing all of this?
You know,
you've got to get down to what's
your why for the practice.
And part of your why is to help people.
People want two things out
of dentistry big time.
Okay, they want white teeth.
They want straight teeth.
Straighter teeth and whiter
in general here.
So there's a two for one, right?
Forget clean teeth.
They want white teeth.
They want clean areas.
I don't know.
but they want,
they want to look good
because what is this?
This is emotion.
We want to look at ourselves.
We want to feel good about
ourselves as a client, as a consumer.
Okay.
So give them that.
Yeah.
That's awesome.
Nicole, anything to touch on that?
Because I, I just, I think, um, uh,
you can hear it in doc,
in doc's voice and his passion.
And we, we don't,
we get to see that sometimes in our,
in our clients.
And I, and it,
and it does start with the
leader at the top.
Um,
Yeah, I, I, I just,
so the partnership's a
little special where you guys are truly,
what I'm hearing is you're
truly trying to help that
doctor just take their, their,
their level where they're
at and take it to like another level,
but it doesn't have to be
Dr. Petrie's level.
It could be just dabbling,
but you'll meet them.
Nick,
that's what I heard you say is you'll
meet them where they're at.
A hundred percent.
Yeah.
That's awesome.
Yeah.
I think that's huge, Michael.
I'm just going to say one more thing.
To me,
with some of the other liner
companies out there, unfortunately,
their support is trained to
get them to be the top tier provider,
that top two, four percent,
and it's not realistic.
So to me,
Candid and the partnership they offer,
that it's okay, they give you permission,
that it's okay that you're
dabbling and that we're
building your clinical
confidence here as we go, that's huge.
It's absolutely huge.
Well, I mean, that's good.
I mean,
because you can't just be the top
performer right out of the gate.
You got to start somewhere,
especially startups, you know?
Yeah.
And it's like we talk about all the time.
You implement one thing and
you do it really,
really well before we move
on to the next.
That's right.
Yeah.
You can't,
you can't be number one as a startup.
You got, you got to take baby steps.
So I love it.
I love it.
Guys,
this is kind of the moment of the
show where we got to shut
down and start closing out any,
any last things that we all
want to get out,
get out there about the
topic and getting aligners into,
into your business and taking,
taking your business to another level.
Whoever wants to jump in as
final thoughts.
I would say, look,
there's a reason that nine
out of ten dentists who go
through clear liner
training with other
companies end up doing one
case or fewer per month, right?
There's a reason for that.
It's because other systems
are not built around you.
They're not built
for the general dentist to
make you successful.
And so I would challenge the
assumption that just
because something's been
around for a long time,
or it's a brand name or a
company that you know,
and there's a lot of them,
it's not just one,
there's all the big public
dental supply companies,
they've all got something.
I would challenge you to
open your eyes in a similar
way to what Dr. Petrie did
and give this a shot
because I think you will
see from a predictability
standpoint and then, of course,
the efficiency and
profitability coming
thereafter that you can do
orthodontics and you can be supported.
And we want to help you do that.
And yes,
you might start with one case a
month or one case every couple months,
but our team is there to help you grow.
So if growth is something
that you care about, then, you know,
again,
this is, I think,
the best option in the market for you.
Doc, anything to add to that?
I mean,
that's about as good as it gets
right there.
I really want to speak to the dentist,
you know, with docs.
It's like, man, give yourself permission.
You know,
I hammered down on permission
here because I gave myself permission.
I gave myself permission to fail.
And I didn't fail.
In fact, we blew it up.
And it was the opposite of
what I expected there
because of my mindset.
So give yourself permission
to do something and I'll
know that it's predictable.
You're going to make money at it.
Okay.
And you're going to have
partnership and support
around this community because we dentists,
we hate being alone.
We feel that way a lot of the time.
Okay.
So when you get into this,
speaking from a doc,
that's been every little paper imaginable,
Nicole has been someone
I've known for a few years,
even through the rep world,
we know what we struggle with.
Right.
And Ken is offering
something that you can
bring into your practice
very predictably.
That's awesome.
That's perfect, dude.
That's perfect.
Nicole,
anything to put a cherry on top
before we shut this down?
Yeah, absolutely.
I would just invite our
clients who are listening to this,
our prospective clients, reach out.
Let's have a conversation.
I'm happy to give you my opinion.
I've been doing this for
thirteen years with experience.
Many different aligner companies,
Bracket and Wire, all the things.
And I just invite you just to call,
pick up the phone, reach out to us.
Let's have a conversation on why.
And I'll give you the pros
and cons of all of them.
But at the end of the day,
I think you'll find that to me,
what Candid can offer you
individually and wherever
you're at in your journey,
it's really going to stand out.
So I do invite anyone to reach out to us.
That's perfect.
You got to have fun.
And to the listeners out
there thinking ownership
and maybe holding back, to me,
this is something like a lot of things.
But dentistry is the
business of dentistry with
the DSOs and some consolidation going on.
You have to be a business owner now.
You can't just kind of hang out,
do some dentistry and think
it's going to be fine.
um fortunately the industry
is so solid still default
rates are crazy low uh
still but um there is a big
difference between someone
crushing and someone just
kind of making it and you
gotta just put more tools
in your toolbox and maybe
it's a coach like us maybe
it's candid maybe
Maybe it's something else,
but you got to find more
tools to put in your
toolbox so that you can
differentiate yourself.
And it's things like this
that get me excited about
the industry and you all to
think about startups and acquisitions.
Get in the game and start
having fun like Dr. Petrie is.
And so...
I guess with that being said,
guys and lady,
thank you so much for
spending time with me tonight.
Down below in the description,
we're going to have some information,
some links,
and some opportunities for you
all to get in touch with the Candid crew.
Even Dr. Petrie,
I'm sure you'll be
available to support people
if they have some questions or some
about maybe even buying.
You bought your practice and
you went through an almost
bankruptcy situation, it sounds like.
So he's got some grit.
He's got some grit as his
ownership journey unfolded.
So again, guys,
thanks so much for your time tonight.
And let's close it down.
Thanks, Michael.
Thanks, Nick.
Thanks, Doc.
See you guys.
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