Dental Unscripted

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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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