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In this episode of the Dental Boardroom Podcast, host Wes Read, CPA and financial advisor at Practice CFO, sits down with Howard Farran, founder of Dentaltown and one of the most influential thought leaders in the dental industry. Together, they explore the evolution of dentistry from emerging AI technology to the rise of DSOs, the challenges new grads face, and the skills needed to thrive in today’s rapidly shifting landscape. This episode delivers raw insights, bold perspectives, and practical lessons for dentists at every stage of their careers.
✔ New dentists navigating debt and career choices
✔ Private practice owners competing with DSOs
✔ Clinicians curious about AI adoption
✔ Anyone wanting unfiltered industry truth
[00:00:00] Wes Read: Welcome everybody to another episode of the Dental Boardroom podcast. I have a unique and special guest, somebody that I learned about, probably within the first few weeks of getting into dental, way back in 2009 or 10. And that is Howard Ferran, founder of dentaltown. Welcome to the Dental Boardroom Podcast, Howard.
[00:00:25] Wes Read: Hey
[00:00:25] Howard Farran: Wes, I've been a fan of you ever since you, uh, entered dentistry too. So this is, uh, we should have, we should start a mutual admiration club.
[00:00:32] Wes Read: I love it. A little Bromance club going on. Yeah. Bromance Club. Well, what you create on Dentaltown is phenomenal. I don't think that there's a single central sort of, uh, communication platform or.
[00:00:44] Wes Read: Or town center, so to speak, online where you have more of a gathering than what's on Dentaltown. And I don't need to go into too much of a background. You were formerly a dentist converted into sort of tech, into dentaltown, and at some point you made that your full-time thing and the rest is history.
[00:01:00] Wes Read: Why don't you give us a. Some insight. What are you seeing from your perch as the founder and overseer of this huge marketplace of content and threads and communication? What are you seeing on Dentaltown right now and maybe what are some exciting things you have coming out, uh, on your roadmap Before we dive in, dive into how the dental industry's doing.
[00:01:22] Howard Farran: Well, you're right, I am a dentist. I graduated in 87. I was, I did I graduate dental school before you were born? Please tell me. Nope, nope. Me, I'm
[00:01:30] Wes Read: 78. I'm 78. Yep.
[00:01:32] Howard Farran: Oh, oh, okay. Okay. So you were born, you were, you were alive. And, uh, but yeah, you know, I got outta school in 87 and um, I, uh, I retired at 60. I sold my today's dental office.
[00:01:42] Howard Farran: Uh, I really. I really, the, the main problem with me is I, it, it just got harder and harder to see. I mean, everybody's different. My back was fine, neck was fine, but, you know, I had loops and lights and starting about 55, I mean, I, I just couldn't see. And so I, I, you know, that treat other people like you wanna be treated.
[00:02:01] Howard Farran: And I, you know, when I was doing a root canal one day and I said, would you really want you doing a root canal on you? And I said, no, I'm outta here. And, uh, so if you're, if you're, uh. If you're gonna go have brain surgery or a bypass, you might, uh, you might id the doctor and say, can you still see? But if you've got readers.
[00:02:18] Howard Farran: But, um, so I retired and it was really fun for about half a year. I mean, I went and spent two months with mom in Kansas. I went to Texas where four of my eight grandchildren live and stayed with them two months. Then in Arizona, I had spent two months in, you know, uh, Apache Junction where two other grandkids and two months in, uh, Goodyear were another two.
[00:02:38] Howard Farran: And, and. And I, then I was retired and I was just like, uh, it's like, what am I gonna do? People kept saying, well, you should travel. It's like, dude, I've lectured in 50 countries, five or more times. Like seen it all. I've done it all. And then out of nowhere, chat GP came out. I had nothing to do with chat gp and I got four sons.
[00:02:56] Howard Farran: One of 'em is a programmer and he came over and, um, this was about 20, it was two years ago, September. And he came over and he said, dad, and he downloaded the app. And, and it was, it was, it was like 1998 all over again. When. When the internet came out, I mean, yep. And, um, I, I, I remember getting tingly when, uh, a OL said, you've got mail.
[00:03:16] Howard Farran: And I'm like, oh my God. And I was on this Yahoo group with Mike Barn and, uh, and Rude zx with Adonis. You'd open up your, you'd open up your email and you'd be like a hundred emails that people talking about root canals. And it was love at first sight for me. And then I had the same feeling with this ai.
[00:03:33] Howard Farran: And, uh, Dentaltown was, um. You know, everybody on that team had been with me for 25 or 30 years. My, my first assistant, Jan, say me 30 years. Everybody on the Dentaltown team, you know, they were, they, they were rock stars, you know, for 25 years. But this was a whole new deal. So I, um, I basically set up a. Whole new AI team, and I was so dumb.
[00:03:55] Howard Farran: I thought all my dreams on Dentaltown, it'd take us like six months to implement this. Here we are 26 months later and, and with, you know, and it just, the projects just keep getting bigger and bigger and bigger. We haven't really, we haven't released anything. I can't believe we haven't. Anything in 26 months we've been on this thing, but I keep saying we're about two months away.
[00:04:18] Howard Farran: But, you know, I just, I just wanted to, um, I mean, I think AI is so huge and we're sitting on 10 million posts where 10 million questions where a dentist said, you know, how do you find an MB two? And all this knowledge? And all this wealth and, uh, so we're just redoing the whole thing and it, it's gonna be so, so exciting because.
[00:04:39] Howard Farran: I, I, I think the most exciting thing is like my relationship with chat GP is, I'll show you Wes. Uh, I have this little, uh, um, even when my phone's off, I got the new phone, the new iPhone. See, see how it's got that wedge? I do that, that, that's chat gp. That, that's like my, my, my best friend and same thing.
[00:04:57] Howard Farran: And I, there's
[00:04:57] Wes Read: mine right there. Oh. Yep. Oh my gosh. There's mine right there.
[00:05:02] Howard Farran: And every, everywhere I'm at, I mean, like, you know, you'll, like, you'll be in a car and someone will say, I can't believe how, what's the population of Phoenix? And you just, well, let's, let's get the answer. And, and, um, I, I want them to have that type of relationship with Dentaltown where instead of searching for a thread, they can just hit that wedge and say, how do you find an MB two?
[00:05:20] Howard Farran: And then boom, there's dentaltown and there's a. Five, six biggest threads on how to find an MB two. And, and, um, it, it, it's gonna be, it's gonna be super exciting. And the other thing that was causing me, um, I, I, I had also, um, retired from my, uh, my podcast, uh, dentistry and Sensor. We'd done like 1700 shows and, and I just retired from it all.
[00:05:43] Howard Farran: But what really got me back in is all the emails and, and, uh, text messages. Um, the dentistry's split in two and the young ones are not happy. And they're, they, you know, they started pushing back on me and saying, well, you're an old man. You graduated in 87. I mean, that was 40 years ago. And, and life was easy.
[00:06:02] Howard Farran: Dentistry was easy, and now we got DSOs and we're coming outta school with $500,000 in student loans and, and they just, they're just not happy. And they, they started saying, I don't wanna listen to an old man. Like, yeah, I wanna listen to somebody who's surviving, all this guy. So I thought, okay, I need to, I need to get back in on the podcast and I need to get back on Dentaltown and I need to start addressing this, this dentistry, it's split into markets.
[00:06:27] Howard Farran: And first of all, I wanna address some of their, their complaints. Yeah. First of all, dentistry's still the best damn decision you can make. I mean, right now, uh, programmers have been almost completely automated. You know, for the last two years at Chad GP, everybody said, oh my God, you gotta go to college and you gotta become a Python full stack.
[00:06:44] Howard Farran: Software developer. Okay. That's been completely automated. I mean, AWS is automated just with Key Row, I mean, key row alone. I, I mean, I remember when we started this project two years ago, I said, well, you know, someday Chad's gonna be writing the code. And my developer's just like, yeah, right? And then after about a year, they're like, well, you know what?
[00:07:03] Howard Farran: Writes about 85% of the code, but you still gotta go back and edit it all. And now they're on key row, which, uh, um, which is, uh, what Bezos launched with, uh, AWS. He's been working on that for five years. And now the programmers, like son of now my programmers are telling their friends at a SU that are study via programmers to change careers.
[00:07:23] Howard Farran: So, so, you know, if it's like the greatest mathematician alive today, even if you brought back Sir Isaac Newton and Einstein. It's still AI right now because it's so quantitative. But you know what's gonna be really hard, um, to, for AI to do is the soft stuff. Like, like when you call a dental office and you have AI answer the phone, it, it's a nightmare.
[00:07:44] Howard Farran: Hell, they didn't even like the push button stuff. You know, humans talking to humans isn't going away and no one's gonna go to a dentist, uh, that's an ATM machine and a robot and have some R 2D two come in there and start jacking with your mouth. I mean, you know. You know, what AI is not gonna do is replace the, the soft stuff, the human stuff, and AI answering the phone has been nothing short of a disaster on Dentaltown.
[00:08:09] Howard Farran: I can't find one threat on dentaltown where switching to ai, you know, because they, because they, they start thinking, oh my God, if I had ai I can just buy some software and I don't have to have all these people answering the phone. Yeah. If it was that easy. Uh, you'd be hearing about it in other places. I mean, uh, it is just not working.
[00:08:26] Howard Farran: Um, but AI is, is coming like take, take oral surgery. My gosh, Yomi now has placed 40,000 implants. I remember a couple years ago when they passed 20, I remember two years before that when they were trying to get you. Um, when they were just talking about, Hey, we got an oral surgeon to buy. I mean, oral surgeons are not gonna be replaced by an AI robot named Yomi, but oral surgeons with Yomi are gonna replace the oral surgeons without it.
[00:08:56] Howard Farran: I mean, I see oral surgeons in the future running three, four bays of yomis. They're doing all the soft stuff and answering all the questions and making you feel relaxed. But when it comes down to surgery time, do you want a primate with 10 fingers and 10 toes? Who can only see 50 microns? Where when you do the lab work, you can always tell if the dentist was right-handed.
[00:09:17] Howard Farran: 'cause everything's leaning towards the right or left-handed. And, and, uh, I'll, I'll give you an example. Um, the facial biopsy stuff out there in Beverly Hills where all the beautiful people like you live, uh, my gosh, they, uh. They, um, you know, if you, if you have a big bio, if you have a big biopsy like on your nose and you're good looking, you know, per, if, if you're like me, they'd just chop your nose off and send it to a lab.
[00:09:39] Howard Farran: They wouldn't care. But if they were good looking with all your hair and all that stuff, you know, they, they'd wanna, so they cut a little. And then they go freeze it and, and look under the slides and come back and cut a little more. And it, it could be a three and a half hour biopsy if it was a big one on your nose and you did not want anybody to notice this scar at all.
[00:09:57] Howard Farran: Uh, well now a robot, it sees that one micron. So it's looking down there. It doesn't need a, a scap and tell the difference between a cell that's cancerous and a cell that's not. And, and, you know, the, and the hand is steady. There's no shaking. I mean, that yomi goes in there. It's like a. Thickness of a pencil.
[00:10:15] Howard Farran: I, I mean, we're not gonna be able to compete with ai. It's the den, like oral radiologist. Well, you still need to be an oral radiologist, but an oral radiologist with AI is gonna have 10 times the productivity and an or and where they gonna get that productivity from an oral radiologist who doesn't use ai.
[00:10:34] Howard Farran: I'll give you two examples of, uh, at the gym. Every morning I go to OES and um, there's two other old grandpas in there that I work out with, and one of 'em is a, um, architect and one's a lawyer. And the architect told me, like, downtown Phoenix, you, you won't believe this, but you know, they'll, they'll buy a city block and build a 40 story apartment complex and it'll have, when it's filled up, it'll have 20,000 people in it.
[00:10:58] Howard Farran: I mean, I mean, you go to, you go to Douglas, Arizona has 19,000 people and it's all spread out city. You know, big old, big old city. I mean, that's one city block. And the architects say, you know, that used to be a million dollar contract in a year for me. They would come in and they'd tell me what they're doing and then we'd go look up the land and the soil and run the tests and I'd have eight or nine guys on a draft board.
[00:11:20] Howard Farran: That was a million dollar year long contract, sometimes two or $3 million. Now, he said we, we hired a draftsman with, um, an architect with, uh, had a degree in computer science and was on Python. And now you come in and you'd say, hi, I'm Wes and I'm gonna build this apartment complex. And I bought this pad.
[00:11:37] Howard Farran: They, the, the, your voice activated. The AI looks up the pad. They already got all where all the pipes and wires and, and everything. They got satellite pictures of it. They know the ground. They know everything about it. You tell me that it's gonna hold 20,000 people, 40 stories tall. And it's saying, well, Wes, did you want those, uh, apartments at, uh, eight foot ceilings?
[00:11:56] Howard Farran: 'cause this would be your electric bill at eight foot. Did you want it at 10 foot? Here's your electric bill at 12 foot. And, and, and you're talking it out. And what is the color? And when you're done with that hour, hour and a half, meet, greet, meet about your project. It's done. It's all designed, it's done.
[00:12:13] Howard Farran: And then if you come back and say, we decided we're not gonna go cheap PVC pipe, we want the expensive copper one keystroke done. I mean, it's great. The lawyer. This lawyer has nine people in his law firm, and they, they, they said it, you know, when they're getting their next lawyer, instead of looking at GPA and all this stuff, they're just gonna look for someone who had an undergraduate degree, uh, that had a, uh, degree in computer science or computer engineer, something with a full stack software developer.
[00:12:39] Howard Farran: And, um, they, they got one, same thing that guy set up. He said, you come into me, you couldn't get in for two weeks. You come in, we talk, we yak for an hour. And then I got all these books behind me in the library. Then I look all this stuff up and. Two weeks later, you come in and, uh, I, I, he says, now this kid.
[00:12:56] Howard Farran: He just records it all. As you're talking, it's prompting like the best follow up questions. It's looking up all the statutes in Arizona, the United States, all the other countries, and then going back in time to get a full feeling of how, you know, people deal with this type of issue. And by the time the 30 minute conversation's over the lawsuit's done, it's all written up.
[00:13:17] Howard Farran: If it needs to have a court date, they've already emailed the, I mean, it's crazy. And that's where dentistry is gonna go with ai. I mean, AI is not going away. It's gonna be as big as the industrial revolution. And remember when the, when they came out with the steam engine, it took seven, you know, the, the first application it was so big and bulky was just to pump water outta flooded coal mines.
[00:13:38] Howard Farran: And then it got smaller and smaller and it fit on a ship and disrupted shipping. And then when it got to America, they, they built canals and railroads and it took 75 years for that thing to actually get hooked up to an assembly line. 75 years. AI is, I mean, they are investing. I mean, look at the Mag seven.
[00:13:57] Howard Farran: I mean, they're investing billions of dollars a day, billions of dollars a week. They're building one gigawatt data center. A gigawatt is a nuclear power plant. So these gigawatt, these one gigawatt plans take a full-time nuclear reactor, 24 hours a day. It's, it's not going away. But back to dentistry. You know these young kids, they got a lot of student loan debt, but I'm gonna push back on that.
[00:14:21] Howard Farran: I graduated with $87,000 in student loans in 87, which in real and constant dollars is two 50. So I had half your debt. As far as the supply and demand, the supply and demand of dentist of dentists per a thousand Americans is the same in 87 as it is in 25. The big hurdle is. You, you got a big old bottleneck of all these old boomer dentists who are all getting ready for their dirt nap.
[00:14:47] Howard Farran: And, uh, so the, the supply is gonna, is, is gonna, it's gonna fall off. I mean, you can look at the crystal tree kind, kinda like when you look at like, um, countries like China and Korea and Japan, where they got, they're getting a big top with elderly and hardly any replacement kids and the world, the earth's population.
[00:15:07] Howard Farran: When I was. In dental school, uh, when I was in high school, one of the biggest, most popular books, I think it came out when I was in high school, the population bomb, and it had a grenade on the cover that looked like Planet Earth and we were gonna overpopulate until we starved to death and all this kinda stuff.
[00:15:23] Howard Farran: Well, now we know for a fact we're in the third year of a global population contraction. The global population is contracting. Everybody's got a smartphone. And you know what, you know, the, the, the people who are gonna have 5, 6, 7 kids besides Mormons and Catholics is, uh, is, uh, you know, is people start getting an iPhone.
[00:15:44] Howard Farran: They say, Hey, I want a new car. I don't want a kid. I, I wanna, I wanna go to Hawaii. I don't want a kid. And they realize that kids cost money. And money matters. And so matter. They're saying like, my mom had seven kids, I had four, and then my kids are all having two. And um, so, you know, the, the contraction I is real.
[00:16:03] Howard Farran: So I, I I I the dentistry's solid. It's not going anywhere. It's a great profession. And, and what would you have rather gone into dental school? Would you rather been an architect that's gonna be AI automated? I mean, everything's gonna be a, you are a dentist. And, and, and another thing is, when I was a kid.
[00:16:18] Howard Farran: You know, the, if you had seven kids, only the ugliest kid whose teeth were so crooked, they looked like they could eat corner on the cop to a chain link fence. Only that kid got braces because you figured if you didn't, he had, you have to join the priesthood or become a nun. No one's gonna marry this goofball.
[00:16:34] Howard Farran: And now every kid gets braces in in school and then they get 'em again when they're. 30. And then if they get divorced at 40 or 45, they're back in for, I mean, everybody gets ortho, everybody's getting it several times. Whiter, brighter bleaching teeth. You just, you, you know, you can't lose a tooth and go, I mean, if you ask a one, what would your wife do if she lost her front tooth?
[00:16:57] Howard Farran: How much money would she pay to get that tooth back if it was gonna cost a million dollars? Wes, she would make you she'd. She'd make you donate your liver and both kidneys, she'd get that tooth back in. I mean, it would emotionally shutter down. To be missing your tooth. Whereas back, you know, 40 years ago, uh, you know, it just was just, it added character.
[00:17:20] Howard Farran: And, um, so dentistry's rock and roll. But here's the deal. Corporate dentistry is a real thing and they're getting, uh, they're amassing a lot of capital and they're scaling. Um, in fact, I, uh, I, I gotta tell you, um,
[00:17:34] Wes Read: you know what I wanna do? CI wanna, I wanna hear about corporate dentistry. I wanna share a few thoughts though before we pivot into that subject, because you're going into a, well, that could take, uh, a little bit of thought and time into that.
[00:17:45] Wes Read: Can I just comment on a, a couple of, of the, this. Thread about AI and the state of dentistry. Uh, not too long ago, about two weeks ago, I was in San Francisco and they had this really, really cool museum called the, um, computer History Museum, and it's in South Bay. And I went there, I took my daughter. We were college campus hopping, and we looked at the origin of the computer and the evolution.
[00:18:13] Wes Read: Of computer technology over time and the span that we have covered, the innovation that has occurred since, uh, those eighties and nineties era, that era is just phenomenal. And there's this thing called Moore's Law, which maybe you've heard of. And Moore's law states that the number of transistors on an integrated circuit doubles approximately every two years.
[00:18:37] Wes Read: So processing speed, storage capacity, everything gets. Doubling every two years. And when he said that in 1965, this was somebody named Gordon Moore. Very few people believed him. But you know what it proved to be? Completely true. And it kept going. And he said it would go for 10 years and it sort of kept going.
[00:18:56] Wes Read: And I think we're, I think we're gonna see that in AI as well. Think about how far we've come in just two to three years of ai. I mean, they're even talking now about putting these AI data centers, uh, these compute sort of centers in. Space in order to have more room for it. And, uh, so it doesn't consume as many earth resources.
[00:19:18] Wes Read: It's not sort of this loud construction project on everybody's street corner because the amount of invested money that these big companies, these max seven, especially our investing into these data centers in order to have compute power is unbelievable. And their CapEx spend, their, their spend on. On capital improvements or capital, like these data centers is, is unbelievably high and it's one of the first times where the stock price is moving up or down, not based on profits, but based on how much money they're spending on AI and AI development and these compute, these, these, these, uh, these centers.
[00:20:01] Wes Read: That's, I mean, how often is a, is a business evaluated by how much they're spending? Rather than by how much they're making, that's how much of a nuanced, unusual place we're at right now. And then when you talked about, uh, dental Town, having all this data. The millions and millions of threads and data going back.
[00:20:21] Wes Read: It, you know what that reminded me of, Howard, it reminded me of Reddit and how Reddit is a key data source for these AI LLMs, these, these large language models and their data sets. So much of that is coming from companies like Reddit because it's the, the depth of topics covered and threads on these topics.
[00:20:43] Wes Read: You just don't find this anywhere else. You've got the same thing, but dental specific. I didn't think about that comparison until you kind of brought that up, and I love this idea. I go into Dental Town and there's sort of an AI chat search at the top, and I can type in whatever I want. I'm thinking about buying this practice.
[00:21:00] Wes Read: It's got four ops, it's doing 1.2 million. Here's some of the issues I'm running into. What are your thoughts and what should I be aware of as I approach this, this acquisition? And it'll just come up with some really, really helpful subjects there. And it can be on, I would think anything given the, the, the number of topics covered on Dentaltown, I think that's such an opportunity that you got.
[00:21:24] Wes Read: And I, I say keep at it. I think that's great. The other thing I, I'll, you know, for me, I'm kind of thinking of the same thing as well. I want to be able to plug in. Our client's QuickBooks data set, plug in our personal financial planning software, plug in their tax returns, plug in our our own sort of notes and meeting dialogue and then, and, and feed into this thing.
[00:21:50] Wes Read: Uh, a data set that answers a lot of their questions. Like, can I deduct my car in my corporation? Can I deduct travel in my corporation? Tell me about the research and development tax credit, all of those things. Or they could say, how much have I paid to Patterson over the past three years, and what does that change look like?
[00:22:10] Wes Read: Or How has my labor cost changed over time? And because it would pull from all of these data sources, they would log into practice CFOs. Online account and have their own AI chat bot and can have their own practice, CFO specific data set to answer those questions, just like you would use on CHATT PT. Now, here's the thing, I don't think any of this ultimately dispenses with the human involvement, at least not yet, because I think that this AI tool, this incredible resource.
[00:22:44] Wes Read: Will help professionals curate what is the best possible outcome. I know with me there's taxes and accounting and debt and cash flow and labor costs and personal financial planning goals and personal taxes and insurance and all this stuff sort of weaves together. This is what we do at Practice. CFOs, we weave.
[00:23:07] Wes Read: All of these different technical areas into a very customized financial roadmap for a doctor that is very nuanced to their perspective on life and money and what they wanna accomplish with it. And it's so personal, it's so, there's a lot of soft elements to it that I think when it comes to dentistry or when it comes to financial advice.
[00:23:30] Wes Read: There's still a huge need for somebody to curate everything coming out of AI and all the data to create a very specific applied outcome for, uh, for the customer or, or for the client. Or for the patient. So I'm excited for all of that. Alright, let's dive in now to, let's dive into. Y you know, one other comment on, on the AI Howard, I did a, um, AI and dentistry series about three or four months ago, and I interviewed eight CFOs and salespeople from these big AI companies like Pearl and Overjet and others.
[00:24:09] Wes Read: And one of the things I got out of that was there's, there's a race by these companies. To build the biggest data set. It's like an arms race. Whoever can get the biggest, the biggest data set inside of their, their custom LLM ends up kind of being the winner, sort of like Google was the first with the search and Amazon was kind of the first with an online marketplace.
[00:24:37] Wes Read: F trying to get almost first to market with a really large data set. So which company has the largest data set of radiograph analysis inside of it? That one typically is gonna win because it's gonna give the best sort of analysis of a given radiograph of a patient. And that's what I'm noticing right now is this arms race to get the most data.
[00:25:01] Wes Read: So what a lot of these application layers over ai, these sort of softwares built on ai. Are trying to do is just get that data set. They're willing to take a loss. It requires a lot of investor money because they're essentially giving a lot of stuff away at a low cost or free in the beginning just to get the data.
[00:25:18] Wes Read: Once they have the data, then they can start to monetize that better by charging more for their services, which I expect in about. Three years or so, you're gonna see costs go up on a lot of these AI based applications. Once you have clear winners coming out, just like in the.com era, you had clear winners eventually emerge out of that, like Amazon.
[00:25:38] Wes Read: And those are the ones that are gonna really monetize the fact that they had the data, they had the depth, and they're the ones who are going to, who be the winners out of this. So it'll be interesting to see how this all unfolds over the next few years. And I'm really excited to see what's gonna happen there on Dentaltown with your ai.
[00:25:55] Howard Farran: Well, the one thing you gotta remember is, you know, we, we lived through this with the, the.com deal. I mean, h how, how old were you in, um, 94 to two thou. How old were you in 2000?
[00:26:05] Wes Read: In 2000 I was 22.
[00:26:07] Howard Farran: Yeah. So you lived, you lived through this and, and, and, and back then, from 94 to 2000, the, the four horsemen, like we had the magnificent of the four horsemen were Microsoft and Intel.
[00:26:19] Howard Farran: And, uh, Oracle and Dell. And look, look at Intel. I mean, that's how early we are in the game, where Nvidia has the biggest market cap of 5 trillion. NVIDIA's not gonna help make any, all the value is gonna be the company's built on Nvidia chips. We're so early in this, this game. If it's a baseball game, we're in any one where the Intel, the Nvidia chip is still the big player with the highest market.
[00:26:46] Howard Farran: I I, I live in Phoenix with an Intel plant. On all my page. I remember when Intel was the biggest rockstar in the world. I buy the whole company for 90 billion. In the US government, about 10% of it, Nvidia is, is not even gonna, in fact, in 2000 after the crash, the biggest companies that that made the most money, like, like, like Facebook wasn't even born until 2004.
[00:27:08] Howard Farran: The market crashed in 2000. The the big companies and, and as far as the race. The reason everybody's investing so fast is behind the scenes. Everybody knows that, you know, if China gets this first or America gets this first, it's gonna be a winner take all. I mean, I mean, um, because right now it's chat, GP it's a large language model, but it's headed very fast to artificial intelligence and, and then, and then the, the, the programming chips right now in the video.
[00:27:34] Howard Farran: Everybody knows that when the, they ran on quantum computing, in fact, there won't even be any passwords. 'cause quantum computing can compute so fast that all your passwords would be hacked. The entire internet would be transparent to whoever owned that quantum computing network. And I, that's why IBM zooms well, it's getting so much money.
[00:27:54] Howard Farran: The government. It's funding so much quantum computer researching because who, if whoever gets quantum computing and a GI, it, it's a winner take all globe. I mean, you, you could not look at the asymmetry warfare between big old huge Russia versus little bit old Ukraine. You know, the, the high tech company is holding off the, the lion.
[00:28:15] Howard Farran: Um, and um, and, and also back to the, uh, outer space. Well, yeah, the cooling is everything on these centers. So in outer space it's 2.7 kelvin, above zero, and you have unlimited solar. And if you could drop all that data down on a fiber optic cable, that would be the way. But, but back to, but back to dentistry, um, we're seeing it diverged into two.
[00:28:37] Howard Farran: We're seeing corporate and we're seeing private practice, and those markets are differentiating corporate. Um, you know, those guys are using ai. Those guys, um, have better practice management software. They, they can have someone full-time, uh, in, in accounting like you, the only way an individual can compete back with those guys is to have someone like you for the individual.
[00:28:57] Howard Farran: And, uh, but corporate, you know, they, they, they, I mean, when they can come into your neighborhood and corporate bomb Google ads. Um, but, but the one thing I wanna say about DSOs is, um, I think DSOs are exciting and sexy. I just think it's got a very big, uh. Uh, branding issue. Crazy. Everybody thinks when you talk about DSO, they're thinking about Rick Workman's Heartland with a thousand locations.
[00:29:18] Howard Farran: They're thinking Pacific Dental Services, um, with Steven l Thorn and his thousand locations and Aspen. They think of these big old thousands, but. There's 2,800 DSOs and almost all of them, standard deviation two are between four and nine locations. And that's where all the section is, is because, let, let's go back to that.
[00:29:39] Howard Farran: Um, let, let's go back to a, a small city like, um, you know, say, say some small city of a of a hundred thousand and, and you gotta, and you got a, a dental office on the south side. I mean, I mean, how are, you know, if you sit there and go to a north side, east side, west side, and you go to four locations, now you can carpet bomb that area with low cost radio ads, low cost television ads, billboards, and, and, and with four locations, you can have a full-time marketing director, a full-time in charge coordinator, a full-time, um, CPA.
[00:30:09] Howard Farran: I mean, you can have a full-time Python programmer, you know, analyzing your data. You're, you're big enough to scale. And that's where all the, the. Sexiness is happening, and, and every time I meet a dentist, let's take it home, three or four or $5 million a year. They own between four and nine. Now, we don't start counting until four because three is when they all die.
[00:30:31] Howard Farran: If you're a real go-getter, ambitious dentist and you wanna have a a satellite location, you can muscle. And then you decide, oh yeah, I'm gonna go to the third one. And that's a breaking point where if you don't have the systems in place, you break at three, you end up having to contract, you sell off number three, you get you, you fold all the way back down.
[00:30:51] Howard Farran: And when you look at all the greatest companies in the world, like McDonald's, they spend 19 years on their first 10 restaurants. Um, um, Chick-fil-A. I mean the, the, these companies, all the great ones, spend a decade on prototype number one, getting the right people, the right team, the right systems, and, and then when it buds from one to two, they sit there for another year and, and understanding the systems.
[00:31:16] Howard Farran: And then that two, maybe two years later, buds into four. Now they spent 10 years on a prototype and another four years budding to two locations and budding, uh, to four locations. And those guys are crushing it. Um, they, they, they, they can, they, they can own a small town. And those are the ones that, um.
[00:31:35] Howard Farran: There's so much money being poured to DSOs. They love the Rick Workmans of the world because that's their liquidity, uh, that that's their exit strategy. I mean, if you got four dental offices and, and you're doing $10 million a year, who are you gonna sell that to? Some kid that just graduated from dental school with $500,000 a student loans.
[00:31:52] Howard Farran: No, Rick Workman's the only one who's gonna fly into your town in a jet. I've seen it. And, and he'll, he'll write you a check. He, he's the liquidity master. I mean that, that guy. Is, is absolutely the smartest man in dentistry on when he comes to the business of dentistry. I mean, I mean, but, but everybody looks at that guy and thinks that that's, you know, that's the threat.
[00:32:12] Howard Farran: The threat is that in every small town, in every city, half of that market is gonna differentiate into these DSOs between four and nine locations. It's not the Rick Workmans of the world, uh, or the aspens or all that stuff, uh, that you got. And what I love about Aspen the most. Aspen is really high on my list.
[00:32:31] Howard Farran: They're the only one that intentionally went after the Medicaid Medicare market. All the other DSOs and all the dentists on Dentaltown, they all want to go to a 60,000 median household income or more. And when you go up to Scottsdale, not only is there a dentists on every corner, but all the houses are big and take up a lot of land.
[00:32:50] Howard Farran: And then you go to South Phoenix, uh, where you know that same acre of land has. You know, a nine plex on it with, you know, 10 families living in there and, and the density's high and they're on Medicare and dentists just don't know how. Dentists only know how to do Ruth, Chris, they can't get in their skull.
[00:33:06] Howard Farran: That McDonald's makes a. Incredible amount of money and like take Rick Workman at Comfort Dental, he's got a hundred locations at Comfort Dental and that guy's got a jet. And those guys are, and the, the, his doctors are making bank because like, like, like you say, you have a Medicare clinic. You know, if, if, if you got two cars and one's a used car and one's a news car, the dentists are gonna try to sell a new Mercedes Benz.
[00:33:32] Howard Farran: And while getting paid for a used car, I mean, I don't care if you want to just break it down into a Ford Escort or a Ford Taurus, I mean one is, you know, twice as much as the other one. And they'll go in there and they'll say, well, you know, you gotta do, you know, they won't do amalgam, they won't do extractions, they won't do flipper.
[00:33:49] Howard Farran: Aspen Dental goes in there. I lost my uncle. Who got free dentistry for me. I lost him to Aspen. You know why? Because he come into my office, he has to drop off his removable, and then I send it to a lab, and then he gets it back at the end of the day. And he said, all the old guys I golf with, they go to Aspen and you drop it off there and the guy fixes it right there, and you, you leave with your teeth.
[00:34:10] Howard Farran: I, I don't, I don't wanna waste the whole day without my teeth. And, you know, the, so, you know, Aspen's focus and, and if you can't make money on Medicare. Then you need to call up McDonald's and Taco Bell and Arby's and tell 'em they all need to shut down because the Mexican Taco Bell can't compete with Macchas.
[00:34:29] Howard Farran: When I go to Taco Bell, I can get two tacos for a dollar, and then when I go to mackay, two tacos, rice and beans and a plate. I mean, that, that, that's 15, 16. You know, it, it, it's, it's. 20 bucks to to eat a lunch at my house's. They don't understand market differentiation. And the other thing I can't understand is the bad attitude.
[00:34:47] Howard Farran: Do these kids come outta school? First of all, let me address some of that bullshit. They talk about the $500,000 student loans. Okay, well there's two dental skills in my backyard, uh, at still and Base Arizona and Midwestern and Glen. Drive through that car lot. You couldn't count the Teslas in the parking lot.
[00:35:04] Howard Farran: You couldn't count the $70,000 cars. And then on vacation, they go on cruises. They, they, they go skiing. I mean, they live like rock stars. A lot of 'em get married, have stay home wives. They have one kid walking and one in the oven before they graduate. And then they're like, oh, $500,000 in six months. And then I tell 'em, well, okay, live below your means.
[00:35:25] Howard Farran: Go back and live with your parents. You know, they would love it. You got a kid, they got a grandkid. Go back and live. With your parents until you get all that paid off. And what do they do? They say, no, I'm not doing that. Next thing I know, they're talking about buying a house in Gilbert and it's more than their student loans.
[00:35:39] Howard Farran: They were all winding about their $500,000 student loans. Now they're buying a $550,000 house in Queen Creek. I mean, so you know, that's all emotional. The bottom line is the bottom line. If you go, you, when you get outta school, I mean, you gotta do your reps. I mean, you've only done like what, you know, 15 canals of endo, 15 canals of, of, of units, of removal.
[00:35:59] Howard Farran: You need to go work for someone and learn clinical dentistry and there's no, uh, better place. I did, when I got outta school, I came to Arizona and Ed Soer had one of the first DSOs out here. It's called Sunshine Dental, and he had four locations, north, south, east, west. They were open from 10:00 AM to 10:00 PM It took four months for them to build out my office in Alwa and get it up and running.
[00:36:21] Howard Farran: So for four months I worked 10:00 AM to 10:00 PM seven days a week. And my guy, I was doing my, to get outta u Casey Dental School, you had to do 50 amalgams. You had to do, I think, um, 35 extractions, 15 canals of window, 15 canals of room. I was doing that every week. And I was in there in a group practice.
[00:36:41] Howard Farran: So when I pulled out a tooth and I couldn't get all the way out to this guy named Nick Wanni, my savior, he come over and he'd showed me how to get it out. And in that four months, Nick, Nick bailed me outta so many teeth. I, I, I, I could get all my teeth out. And I was doing so many feelings. So you need to get your reps in.
[00:36:58] Howard Farran: And it's either gonna be a mentor, like I had a mentor like Nick Giani, where he actually showed me how to do, you know, dentistry and extractions at a whole nother level. And then, or the business, I mean, I was listening to Ed Sker, you know, he was on four lane intersections. He was doing billboards, he had four locations, he was doing direct mail.
[00:37:16] Howard Farran: And that guy was teaching me the business of dentistry. And then I'd meet guys that worked for, uh. Um, Heartland for a year, or PDS and they're just like, oh, I can't, I, I hate working for Ds. Oh, I just hate it. I said, okay, well, you've been working for Stephen Thorn. He's got a thousand offices. Sit down and show me how to check out a patient on, on the, the software.
[00:37:36] Howard Farran: Uh, oh. I, I don't know how. Oh, you just, you just wanna sit and whining bits. I mean, you know, the opportunity to work at Heartland. For Rick Workman, he owns a thousand offices. I mean, and, and furthermore, look how many studs I know that worked for him for a year or two and finally got all the skill sets.
[00:37:54] Howard Farran: And they could, they could treat a toothache. I mean, the big money is done in cleanings, fillings, exams, and x-rays where Delta Dental is gonna pay you about a nickel more than your cost. Uh, it's gonna be in a toothache where dentistry started with Pierre Fahard over 200 years ago. I'm gonna come give you a coin because I'm in pain and you're either gonna do a root canal and a crown for $22,000 plus, or you're gonna pull the tooth and place an implant for another two, 3000 plus.
[00:38:21] Howard Farran: I mean, th those are the big money. And then they, and then they come out of, uh, of a year or two working and they, they, um, they know how to do endo. They know, they know how to treat a toothache. And if you say, oh, well I don't want to, I don't wanna do toothaches, I just wanna do cleanings, exams, x-rays, fillings, bleaching, bonding, veneers, and Invisalign.
[00:38:40] Howard Farran: Okay, man, that, that you can do that too, is, you know, it's called be an orthodontist. But, um, you know, that's, you're, now you're competing with orthodontist where when you see that Invisalign patient, you know, you're scheduling a half hour to see it and the orthodontist is scheduling 15 minutes to see it.
[00:38:54] Howard Farran: So they're seeing four patients an hour for 50% overhead. And, or maybe 60 and you're, you're doing two patients an hour, so I, I don't know what works there, but they, they learn, and then what do they do? They leave with like the best assistant, the best office manager, and they go set up a practice and they, they, they, they, they, they got great demographics.
[00:39:15] Howard Farran: They do a million dollars of first year, and the biggest hidden valley is those DSOs. They can't go. To those small towns because when you come outta school, you're a prime mating age and you wanna go find a mate in Phoenix, Arizona in a 5 million person metro, or do you wanna go down to Eloy with 30,000 people and find your mate there?
[00:39:35] Howard Farran: So if they come outta school, they're in prime mating breeding, marrying age, and it's very hard to attract associates down in rural. In fact, um, when those DSOs went rural, they said that 10% of their rural stores did not have a dock in the box on any given day. That's how hard it was. So they're staying all in the urban area.
[00:39:57] Howard Farran: They're all staying in the 60,000 meeting household income more. They're gonna kick your butt in marketing, advertising, negotiate better, supplies, all that kinda stuff. But where they cannot compete is the human relationship. I mean, I saw that in Phoenix, Arizona. They come in from big box DSO, we got, you know, half a dozen of 'em here.
[00:40:17] Howard Farran: And they'd say, well, this Dr. West, uh, I went in there and he told me I had three fillings. And I came back and I did two on the right, and then I came back to have West to the other one on the left, and now West doesn't even work there anymore. And this Dr. New guy. Says that I got two other cavities on the left and that the one that was done on the right, one of 'em needs to be redone 'cause it wasn't done right.
[00:40:40] Howard Farran: So I'm like, oh yeah. So I'm doing that and then I go back there again. And now that guy's not even there. I mean, you know, when you can't keep your doctor, you know, these, these DSOs, I mean, I mean, you would be shocked at how short of a career, talk to any dentist that's been outta school for five years and ask 'em how many jobs they've had and they're gonna say five.
[00:40:59] Howard Farran: So if you can't. Retain your doctor, you're not gonna build a relationship. And, and the, the, I think my secret for my today's dental is that I would come in and tell 'em they need this and I'd leave. Well, Jen's been there for three decades. The, I may remember when I left my, uh, my, when I sold my dental office, the new hygienist.
[00:41:19] Howard Farran: That we just hired had been there nine years. It's called relationships. It's like they want to go where everybody knows their name and they're not gonna let a robot treat 'em. They're not gonna let R 2D two treat 'em and they're not gonna go to a dental office where every time they walk in there there's someone different.
[00:41:34] Howard Farran: And the other thing, the DSOs are really you, you can just spot it a dsso. I mean, I mean, you know, there's two types of DSOs and you, you know, when you go into McDonald's. You know the, the, the movie The founder, what's the founder? My, my dad had nine Sonic Drive-ins and I went to hamburger conventions. I actually listened to Ray Kroc.
[00:41:53] Howard Farran: Lecture when I was 10 years old and he was telling me about how the most important thing in the restaurant was the woman's bathroom, because they're gonna get off that interstate and she knows the filling station's gonna look like a camel. Just used it. She knows that she goes to seven 11, they're gonna be liars.
[00:42:08] Howard Farran: They're gonna lie to your teeth and say, we don't have a bathroom. It's like, what do you do? You have a catheter outta your kidney? I mean, come on. And then they're gonna go to McDonald's and mama's gonna know. Oh my God. They have the best bathrooms in the world. Smart. And we're gonna clean the women's bathroom.
[00:42:22] Howard Farran: Smart. Every hour on the hour. It's gonna have toilet paper every, it's gonna be checked every hour. And he, and he said, I remember him saying this when I was nine or 10 years old. He said, men's bathroom, you don't even have to clean it. Hell, those boys will pee on the truck. They'll pee on the tire of their own.
[00:42:36] Howard Farran: One 50 of their own F-150, they'll pee on a tree, they'll write their name and themselves, mama's a squatter. And when she knows you got the cleanest bathroom on the intersection while she's squatting, daddy Bear and Baby Bear are gonna be ordering our delicious, salty french fries and our delicious Coca-Cola.
[00:42:53] Howard Farran: He just knew the people business and uh, and you go into, um. But here was his trick. He would not hire you and this didn't make the movie. And I, I thought it was sad unless you were married to a stay home woman with a couple of kids, and then he was only gonna sell you one franchise. He said that man will just.
[00:43:13] Howard Farran: He, he's a, he's modern day slavery. 'cause he's not feeding his mouth, he's feeding four mouths. And those children and mama bear are what you talking about. Well, Chick-fil-A took it a, a step farther and said, hell, we won't even hire people that would work on Sunday. We're gonna get Christian men that are married, stay home wives, and they, they have family values where it's against their, their heart and soul to work on the Sabbath.
[00:43:36] Howard Farran: And, and the average Chick-fil-A's doing 5 million a year, McDonald's doing 3 million a year. And then you go into, then you go into Burger King. They'll sell you 10 locations and that office manager is running down to 10 locations. The owner doesn't even go in there and you know, he, maybe he retired from the NBA and he had $10 million, so he thought, hell, I'll just buy 10 10, uh, um, burger Kings subway, same thing.
[00:43:59] Howard Farran: Eight or nine locations. When you walk into that DSO when you're outta school, first thing, when they show you the office. You said, oh, you're the office manager. Yeah. How many offices you run? And if they say 2, 3, 4, 5, run, how many just run? Don't even listen. And when she said, oh, this is my only location. Oh, how long you been here?
[00:44:18] Howard Farran: What, two, two. Everybody in the office has only been here two years or three, or has everybody in the office been here 10 or 20 years? And when you meet the assistant, how long you been here? I'll be, be, be 17 years this November. And look at the, uh, the, the dentist is, is he on wife number three? Is he on wife number four?
[00:44:34] Howard Farran: If he's on wife number four and no one's worked in his office two years more. Run. You need a mentorship in either how to run the business or clinical dentistry. And, and, and that, that's why Rick Workman is getting these people to go to Heartland because he's saying, what, what is your goal? You stay with me five years.
[00:44:51] Howard Farran: You'll get your fellowship. The a GD, do you wanna do blood and guts and learn how to do implants and endo, or do you wanna do soft and pretty cosmetic dentistry? Bleaching the, and he's, he's trapping him down saying. Gimme five years of your life and you'll be able to cheat any toothache with a root canal or an implant.
[00:45:07] Howard Farran: What, whatever. But, you know, so you're either getting clinical dentistry, um, it, it's like the med schools. Have you noticed all the med schools are moving their hospital from where the university is to where the big city is because they say, look, we're running a med school. We need more primates. We, we, we, we can't operate in a town of 30,000.
[00:45:25] Howard Farran: We need to be in downtown big city so that we get that one out of a thousand, that one out of 10,000, that one out of a hundred thousand, one out of a million diseases. And, uh, so, so get your right attitude. You're in the right profession. I mean, it is so easy to crush it, dentistry, and just, just find out what your decisions are, but.
[00:45:43] Howard Farran: But DSOs are gonna beat you in everything that can scale. And, and, and you're, and they're all gonna be four to nine. The DSOs that's gonna get your butt. It's the one in the small town that's got four locations in a small town of a hundred thousand. Not the one-off Heartland or the one-off Pacific, or the one-off Aspen.
[00:46:01] Howard Farran: That, that, that's not the one you should fear. You should fear the guy who was born in that town of a hundred thousand and he's got a north, south, east, west location. He don't have the employee turnover. He's doing partnerships. He's doing, you know, he's, uh, I mean, he's. Partnering with a, because he's got a liquidity problem.
[00:46:19] Howard Farran: You can't sell a $10 million office to anyone other than Rick, Rick Workman. But you could sit there and go to your 10 dentist or your eight dentists that work in your four locations and sell a million dollar slice to each one of them, and you could do owner carry financing. And then as far as the individual.
[00:46:36] Howard Farran: You have to specialize in accounting. That's why I'm on your show. That's why I'm your big fan, because these guys will go to their, their, their church, and they'll, they'll ask the priest or they'll ask the temple. They'll say, well, who's a good accountant? And they'll say, oh, Bobby Joe. He's such a good man.
[00:46:50] Howard Farran: And I'm sure he is a good man. He is. He's all a good man. Does he specialize in dentistry? I mean, the numbers are quantitative, but you need someone specialized in dentistry because there are markets where the, the, the people who specialize in like accounting will say, well, all I, you know, I don't know exactly how, but here's nine PPOs and I know that when, when my clients drop these five PPOs, they net more money.
[00:47:16] Howard Farran: And you know, and these are the good ones, these are the bad ones. I mean, you need to get someone like yourself that specializes in accounting, that specializes in retirement, where you say, okay, I came into this thing, $500,000 in student loans. I'm gonna go work and get a job. I mean, get a mentor on how to run business.
[00:47:33] Howard Farran: I mean, how did you keep all these employees and patients look, look at hygiene. I mean, if you get, if you get, you go to an office, it gets. Uh, 30. Uh, well, here, I'll, I'll give you the exact math. I mean, look, look at the, the hygiene math. It's clear if that office is getting 20 new patients a month and keeping them, they would add another full-time hygienist every four years if they're getting 40 new patients a month, every two years they had another hygienist.
[00:47:58] Howard Farran: So you're telling me that old man's had that location for 30 years and is one hygienist four days a week? I mean, it just, whoever comes in the front door is going out the back door. So who's built a dam? And keeping their, their wives, their assistants, their hygienists, their receptionists, their patients, and they've built up to two full-time hygienists and one who comes in half a day a week, you know, a couple other days a week.
[00:48:22] Howard Farran: And, and either you're gonna mentor stuff, the soft stuff, like how do you lead, how do you become a leader? How do you communicate your goals and values and have a successful office? And he might not even be that good of a clinical dentist. Um, and then, and then, and then as far as CE look at the advantage of ce.
[00:48:40] Howard Farran: When I was getting my F-A-G-D-M-A-G-D-I lived in Phoenix in 87. There was no dental schools, there was no fluoride in the water. I had to get on an airplane to every course to learn how to place implants to Carl. Ish. I had to fly to Pittsburgh seven, three day weekends, once a month. When I, when I went up to see Gordy, I had to fly to Provo, I to Salt Lake, and then rent a car and drive to Provo.
[00:49:01] Howard Farran: Um, every weekend. For a year. He had 12 courses. And now with online, holy crap, there are 650 classes on Dentaltown half for free, and the other half costs you less than the cab fair to go from the airport to the hotel you're staying at. I mean, with online learning, I mean, my God, you, you can learn all this sensory if you have the right attitude and you're railing to hustle and you're ready.
[00:49:29] Howard Farran: And, and, and, and my my favorite story is Citibank. You know Citibank. The reason that thing got so damn big, uh, was because, um, he got a job at Citibank and he just, uh, asked a simple question. He says, well, when my mama goes to the butcher and she writes a check, how does it actually get the money outta her account into this bank?
[00:49:51] Howard Farran: And nobody knew the answer. And computers were coming out just like chat. GP came out had nothing to do with you and me. AI just here. And so he would go down the check clearinghouse and he would learn how the checks were clearing. And then he was realizing, oh, they got these computers. Now you could really automate this.
[00:50:08] Howard Farran: He got it. So he started automating departments, worked his way all the way up to the CEO, and Citigroup was the biggest bank ever. And his vice, his, his number two man was, um, the guy at, uh, chase, uh, um, what, what's that guy's name of Chase? Um, um, that I don't know. Oh my God. Oh, my Jamie Diamond.
[00:50:27] Wes Read: Oh, Jamie Diamond.
[00:50:28] Howard Farran: Yeah. Jamie Diamond was, and then he, he got a pissing match with Jamie Diamond. He fired Jamie Diamond. So Jamie Diamond, uh, left and now Citigroup collapsed 'cause that guy was, uh, old. And um, and, and now, uh, Citibank made more net income. Then all the other banks in America combined last year, because Jamie Diamond knows every step, every step of the way.
[00:50:51] Howard Farran: And then I go into a dental office and I just say, okay, check out this patient. They don't even know how to use Dentrix. And they've been on it for 30 years. I mean, they're not even, they're, every time you walk into a dental office, and I've been doing, I'll throw every one of my dentists under a bus right now saying this.
[00:51:04] Howard Farran: I've been, I, I've lectured in every state. A dozen times, 50 countries, and whenever I'm out and about, uh, I don't go to Nordstrom's. I don't go shopping. I don't go get my nails done. I see dental offices. I walk in unannounced. I wanna meet the dentist.
[00:51:21] Howard Farran: Just when I
[00:51:21] Wes Read: walk in there, we lost you there for a sec, but we're good. Keep going.
[00:51:25] Howard Farran: Nine times outta 10 when I walk into a dental office unannounced. Where is the dentist? Where do I find the dentist?
[00:51:31] Wes Read: The operatory?
[00:51:34] Howard Farran: No. Hell no. They're always in their private office. And they, when, when they get done, I, I mean, I mean, you know, they, they, they just go back to their office and shut the door.
[00:51:42] Howard Farran: They don't check out the patient meet and greet, push the flesh with the next patient coming in. They, if, if the girls are all busy, they can't sit down and say, well, here, let me check you out. They're not mastering the systems. Same thing with hygiene. You know, they'll sit there and have someone call up and wanna get their teeth cleaned.
[00:52:00] Howard Farran: Well, my God, you got an assistant, she can go set up the room. She can seat the patient, she can take the x-rays. Then you go in there, you got an assistant you can probe, and then you can scale. And then when you're done, your assistant can jump over and polish and floss and fluoride treatment and dismiss the patient.
[00:52:14] Howard Farran: Check it out. Yeah. You have dentist that haven't done one cleaning in the last 10 years. That is lazy. Lazy, lazy. And, and same thing with the hustle. I hated lunch because, I don't know, maybe my body's different than you, but if I go to lunch and I'd go eat some tacos for lunch, whatever, I come back and get a sleepy wave.
[00:52:33] Howard Farran: I'd rather do a toothache during lunch. I'd rather do a cleaning during lunch. Everybody knew at the morning meeting that, Hey, which dental assistant? It's gonna go through my lunch with me if they need it. And it was always, always the assistance that had kids that needed to leave at the closing time with the kids.
[00:52:49] Howard Farran: And then the assistants that didn't have any kids, they'd always say, no, I'm go to lunch and you can stay late, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But I, I was the first one there when they got there. I went there and unlocked the door. I was, I was, you know, there I was the last one to leave. I would do cleanings. I did cleanings all the time.
[00:53:05] Howard Farran: When you got, when I go into a dental office right now, before COVID, when I got outta school, it was routine to see offices with 50% overhead By the time it was, uh, 2000. It was routine. Everyone was 65% overhead in the, in the urban after COVID. I see 80% all the time. And what do they got? They got way too many staff.
[00:53:28] Howard Farran: The dentist lives in this private office. He hasn't done a cleaning. He doesn't know how to load a autoclave. He can't check out a patient. There's no hustle. So when you're coming outta school and you got $500,000 in student loans and you got a wife. A pregnant wife with a kid at home and that's your dental office will hustle.
[00:53:46] Howard Farran: And same thing with associates. I would never, ever hire a single associate. They were always up there at three o'clock trying to cancel their rescheduled last patient 'cause they wanted to get to the gym, work out and go to the barge and, and look all pretty for the girls. I always wanted a Mormon. I said, come on, we're we're, we're next to Gilbert.
[00:54:04] Howard Farran: 10% of this sounds more, I want a Mormon with a stay home wife with at least she's gotta be at least pregnant or one kid already walking. Those guys, I go to them and say, Hey. I got a toothache, can I squeeze in for lunch? They're like, oh, thank you, Jesus. Thank you for that opportunity. I mean, I remember sometimes we, I remember a dozen times we close at seven and at like six 30 someone called 'em the toothache and they'd say, well, they're not even gonna get there here until seven.
[00:54:28] Howard Farran: And they'd say, I wait. And then they can, they walk in and they would, they would do the whole root canal build up and crown prep $2,500 and they wouldn't even leave till nine. And they thought they were lucky. They thought they thought it was a gift from God. Because they were, you know, these were big producers.
[00:54:45] Howard Farran: Incentives matter. Chick-fil-A figured it out. McDonald's figured out. You figure it out when you get an associate, get someone so damn hungry, they'll murder a grizzly bear and eat 'em with his bare hands. And you're, you're gonna be making money and, and learn all the systems we ground up. And I'll tell you what, if you are gonna stay in one place and you're gonna build relationships with the patients, they're gonna stay with you.
[00:55:09] Howard Farran: They're not gonna change. And, and the other thing is, last but not least. Half of America doesn't have dental insurance. Why is, why is the whole world focused on dental insurance when half of them don't even have insurance and, and when they do have insurance, only gonna pay a thousand dollars? And when you look at 'em in the eyes and say, well, you know, you, I, I know you have insurance and that's good for a thousand.
[00:55:30] Howard Farran: So, you know, look, you know, you, you came in to reline your denture and we can reline it, and that's $175 an orange. We can make you a new denture, and that's gonna be about 750. That's 1500. Or we can place two implants down there so that lower denture snaps in, and that's, that's, that's a 5,000. Or we can put four implants down there and the teeth will snap in and, and they don't even come out.
[00:55:57] Howard Farran: And that's 25,000. So you gotta help me out. You could do nothing. We could do a reline, we could do a new denture, we could do two snap-on implants. We could do four where you don't even take it out. And at least, at least, at least one in 10. Pick the $25,000 arch one. Uh, one outta 10. In fact, the biggest gold mine for Implantologists is these little denture clinics.
[00:56:22] Howard Farran: Like there'll be some trailer in the old retired part of town. It's called Denture World, and they've been doing re lines for. 20, 30 years and they end up going to sell that. No dentist even looks at it. No one even takes it serious. I cannot believe to you how many people that I went to, to uh, um, um, Carl Mitch's, uh, got my fellowship, the missions to with or got my dip diplomat in.
[00:56:45] Howard Farran: And I say, no, no dumb ass. You're gonna go buy that thing. They got a 30 year brand recognition. Every day, 20, 25 people are coming in there for reliance. They go in there and they say, well, these people are poor. They don't have any money. Really dumb ass go. Go look at the car they're driving. They just bought a F for 90,000.
[00:57:03] Howard Farran: They have the money if they want it, and then they go in there and that $300,000 a year, denture mill is now doing $10 million a year because they're presenting treatment. And that that's, that's a thing that dentists gotta learn to do more than anything is Yeah. Diagnosing. And, and treatment planning, that that's a skill.
[00:57:23] Howard Farran: And if you're a young kid, you need to go find a periodontist that you can go take your cases with that, it's gonna take a periodontist that you refer your Perone implants to. It's gonna take 'em two years to teach you how to diagnose some treatment plan and present dentistry. And then once you get the confidence where you can start presenting, treat.
[00:57:40] Howard Farran: It. Money falls outta the sky whether they have insurance or not. So dentistry is your game to lose. It's all gonna come down to your attitude. And if you wanna get out of violin and whine about your student loans and whine about dentistry, overcrowded, when you got the same supply demand ratios I did in 87 and you got the biggest, heaviest top of all the dentists or boomers at the top.
[00:58:02] Howard Farran: And they're all gonna be taking a dirt nap in the next 10 years and it, the market's all yours. And, and you can learn from the DSOs, create your own DSO. You should open, you should go to rural you, you should, you should go set up an office in an area where one day you set up an area where you realize one day you're gonna need four locations.
[00:58:21] Howard Farran: Because that might give you the incentive to sit there and say, my, yeah, this is my office and it's prototype number one, and I'm gonna perfect this system. So amazing. And I'm gonna have such an amazing team. That in 10 years we're gonna pull a Chick-fil-A and we're gonna turn into two locations. I mean, Sam Walton opened up his first Walmart when in 62 when I was born, he'd already spent 20 years working for his competitor for 20 years before him and his wife Helen, figured out what they were gonna do, and then they opened up one in 62.
[00:58:52] Howard Farran: And in 10 years they only had like 12 locations. And then by the time he died, he was open up 40 Walmarts a month. You spend all your time in prototype number one, you perfect all the systems, you perfect it all. At worst case scenario, now you got a million dollar practice and you're taking home three 50.[00:59:08] Howard Farran: And, and then, and then upside someday that might turn into two. That might butt into four, and you'll have a $10 million show going on, and you'll be making bank.
Wes knows what's best for dental practices. He's been doing this for a long time and he sees lots of practices. He can tell me how our practice is doing, and what we can do to increase our productivity. With past CPA's, there were no ideas. It was all coming from me, saying "I think I can do better, but I don't know how." I come in to meet with Wes and he says "You CAN do better, and I know how."
PracticeCFO is in hundreds of dental offices around the country. They know what numbers should look like. They know what percentages of payroll, rent and supplies should be, and they will hold you accountable to those numbers, which will really help you stick to your plan and your path of growth and savings. That is invaluable
Whenever something comes up, whether it's building or practice related and we weren't sure where the numbers would go, PracticeCFO has been instrumental in helping us figure that out. I can't say enough of how important that is - that it goes beyond that initial partnership. They make sure this business marriage works.
When I go home from work, I don't spend a whole lot of time stressing about what my books look like, or how much I owe in taxes. By using PracticeCFO, the burden of keeping track of a lot of the big financial numbers and metrics are taken off my plate.
PracticeCFO helped me develop a plan for the future. I have colleagues that work with other accountants that don't have a plan - they just look at the numbers of the practice and that's it. There's no plan for 10, 20 years from now. But with PracticeCFO, you get that. PracticeCFO makes you feel like you're they're only client.
(In reference to his practice sale) What could've been super stressful, wasn't! When picking John and Wes, it was from word of mouth recommendations and other people's experiences from the past that really did it for me. And it turns out that those recommendations were right on the line.
Wes knows the business side of dentistry. His comprehensive plan will organize your personal and professional finances so you can focus on taking care of patients. Massive ROI.
I can’t say enough good things about everyone at PracticeCFO. Everyone on the team is professional, organized, knowledgeable, helpful and kind. They also respond to emails and phone calls immediately and are always happy to help. They have helped me navigate year-to-year as a business owner. PracticeCFO gives me peace of mind that my business is in good hands.
I love Practice CFO! They have helped me obtain a practice and maintain a practice. They are incredible people who are on top of everything and make owning and running the business portion of a practice easy. They couldn’t be better for my business and my sanity. They have every detail of the business and taxes taken care of where all I have to do is show up and follow their easy steps to success!
Practice CFO has the best tools I’ve seen for personal tax and financial planning in addition to top-tier corporate tax and accounting services. I have been very pleased with the level of quality service. They manage my monthly bookkeeping and accounts payable. It is a great system and saves me a ton of time, and it allows us to have monthly financial statements within a week of month end.
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