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VIDEO - HSP #237 - Dan Marut
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Dan Marut started Quality Dental Plan. Is it slow out the gate, or has QDP hit the ground running?
Dan Marut, DMD established Quality Dental Plan in October 2009 after three years of rigorous testing and development. His vision for QDP is to connect dentists looking to make a difference in their communities with new patients, while giving people without dental insurance a compelling reason to go to the dentist. Dr. Marut is committed to helping dentists achieve a sense of financial well-being and independence from insurance companies and provides the program structure and marketing materials to support them in this endeavor through QDP.
Dr. Marut is also sought-after lecturer whose articles have been published in several dental trade publications, including Dentistry Today and Dental Tribune.
A native of New Jersey, Dr. Marut always dreamed of moving out West. He realized that goal in 2002, when he bought a dental practice in Ashland, OR. He has been honored as the “Best Dentist in Ashland”, which he grew from one outdated operatory to a state-of-the-art, two doctor, eight-operatory dental practice in only five years. He is committed to giving back to his community and the world through his profession, and founded his practice and both of his companies with that vision in mind.
Today, Dr. Marut lives Bend, OR and in his free time enjoys kiteboarding, mountain biking, coaching lacrosse, canyoneering, snowboarding and adventure travel with his wife and best friend, Samantha. One of his most memorable experiences was a two-week dental volunteer trip to Nepal, where each day he treated dozens of patients in remote mountain villages, and even had a run-in with a Bengal tiger.
Dr. Marut completed his undergraduate work at Penn State University, earning a BS in Science, and received his DMD from Temple University. He has also attended the Kellogg School of Management for Executive Management training.
Dan Marut, DMD
Founder - Quality Dental Plan/MemberDent
www.QDPdentist.com
office: 888-960-1221
MemberServices@QualityDentalPlan.com
Howard: It is a huge honor today to be interviewing a friend of mine Dan Marut who I was just talking to my son Ryan. We're trying to think of when you were last in the front room of my house. He must have been or two old. Do you remember what year that was?
Dan: I think it was around 2001, 2002 around there probably 2002.
Howard: Yeah and I don't think you've aged a day. Because unlike me who didn't start working out until I was 50, you always held the line man. You were either working or working out.
Dan: Hey work hard play hard. That's what it comes down to.
Howard: What is your workout routine?
Dan: I got into doing the obstacle course racing like the spot ins, the tough matters those kinds of things. I train because it keeps my mind sharp. I love doing it but I'm working out five days a week. I coach high school lacrosse; those kids keep me busy as heck.
Howard: Lacrosse but you're out of the West Coast isn't that a North East sport?
Dan: It is but I'm originally from New Jersey and they have it out here now. I figured I'd show them a thing or two from the East Coast out here so it's a good thing.
Howard: I remember when I went to [Clayton 00:01:09] only the kids from New York and New Jersey would go out in the park and play that. I'd never even seen it; I'd never seen a hockey game or a lacrosse game until I went to college. Now there's hockey out there in the desert. The reason I brought you on today is I just keep hearing so much about your qualitydentalplan.com. That's qualitydentalplan.com and if you want to get more information about that you can email him after the show danmarut@qualitydentalplan.com. How's that going? Is that a big part of dental offices these days?
Dan: It's huge Howard. You know from being in dentistry for so long. That the number one reason that people aren't going to dentists is cost or perceived costs. What we're looking at trying to do is increase access to care. How can we as dental professionals bring more people into the fold? Get more people into the office so they can get healthy. In our own practice when people would ask me, "Can you recommend dental insurance for me?" Or, "Can you recommend a plan for me?" I really didn't have an answer for them because I knew they'd be better off if they saved their money and came to see us.
Than to pay into something that was filled with hassles and limitations in that traditional dental insurance model. We looked for a solution and when we didn't find one, we developed QDP. With the idea that we wanted to keep the relationship between our practice and the patient the way it should be. With that in mind we set about creating what we call nowadays a dental savings plan. It's been fantastic. The past five years or so it's really exploded onto the scene. Because it's a low cost alternative to high dollar dental insurance that patients just love.
Howard: QDP by the way that was quality dental plan [inaudible 00:03:04] off your head. How does it specifically work?
Dan: The best way to think about it is like when you go to Costco or Sam's Club. You're saving on anything you need but you're not paying into it just in case you might need to save on something. In the traditional health insurance model and dental insurance, it's a risk bearing model and people are paying into it. It's run by a third party. With QDP, third parties are eliminated. What we're doing is we're providing real world savings to patients. That's wrapped around the prevention model because we want people to be in a preventative state of mind.
Then offer them savings on anything that they might need like crowns, implants, if they want cosmetic dentistry, advanced [inaudible 00:03:51]. Whatever it might be, they're always saving on anything they need. They're not paying into something if they don’t need. What we do is we incentivize prevention. Actually have savings for anyone who needs restoration. A great way to think about it is and the value behind it all and why it all works out. We've all gone to Costco or Sam's or BJ's. Those are some the large retailers around the world. Which one do you go to Howard? What's your favorite?
Howard: For groceries?
Dan: Yeah.
Howard: Safeway, right next to my office for 28 years.
Dan: Even Safeway has these membership savings, club savings. You save when you're part of it because what they're really trying to do is convey value. We know as dentists how many times someone comes to our practice. No matter what we charge for a crown, whether its $1,500, $1,200 or $800 a patient thinks it's expensive. Because they don't understand what it takes to deliver that quality of care. How do we bridge that gap? What we're doing with QDP is we're bridging that gap and showing value by offering them savings. I went to Costco to buy a Curry coffee machine. Everyone know what a Curry coffee machine is, you put in the pod, you press a button out comes coffee pretty simple device.
I walk into Costco, I see this gigantic stack of Currys and the sign tells me it's going to be $140 for a Curry coffee machine. I say to myself $140 for a coffee maker that's pretty expensive. I mean, how could it be so much? You just put in a pod, press a button out comes coffee. On the same sign it tells me I'm going to save $30 because I'm a Costco member, it's only going to be 110. Guess what I did? I bought it. I bought it not because $110 made any more sense than $140, I bought it because I was saving $30. That's where you're bridging that communication gap with value and cost in a dental office. Patients don't understand the costs of dentistry. To them it's always expensive. When you start to offer them real world savings that's when you're bridging that value gap.
Howard: I understand that because last time when I went to Safeway they had four boxes of macaroni cheese for a dollar. I thought my God, so I bought the whole pallet. Backed up my SUV in the double doors. Someone's driving to work, all my fans are pretty much podcast [inaudible 00:06:07] multitasking. They're all driving to work right now. How do they pitch this to their dental office manager who does financial arrangements? What are you going to say to that person? How does this work? Is there a demo?
Dan: Yeah.
Howard: If they go to qualitydentalplan.com, you got a YouTube video that explains it to the staff or ...
Dan: Absolutely. You know the best place to go for information for a dentist is actually qdpdentist.com. Quality dental plan so qdpdentist.com. That's our professional website, qualitydentalplan.com is more of our consumer website.
Howard: Okay so I missed that. Quality dental plan is the B to C consumer site.
Dan: Exactly.
Howard: What's the B to B dentist to dentist site?
Dan: That's qdpdentist.com.
Howard: You're a huge fan of dentaltown, you've been a member since 2001. You've got 5,000 posts, I feel like you're my brother I really do. I've followed you, what is this 2015? You should do a dentaltown SE course that explains it.
Dan: I would love it. Howard it's interesting ...
Howard: Why don't you do that? The infinite details because I know when I talked to an office manager two days ago. It was when I first emailed you. He asked me like 20 questions I couldn't even answer.
Dan: You know what? Because a lot of times in dental offices we're all used to the traditional insurance type model. Where you have maxes, you have filling out claim forms, you have submitting x-rays, following up on claims. You have all of this administrative work that goes into dealing with third party insurance companies. What I try to do when I explain it to teams is let's take that off the table. Let's completely take it off the table. Let's whittle down the relationship between your office and the patient. You're offering them a preventative package. Let's say somebody is coming in to get their cleanings done for the year, their x-rays or whatever it might be.
They're paying X cost to you and that's the relationship. It's a very straightforward relationship. Then if they need any type of dental work that there might be like a crown. Or maybe they need a full mouth reconstruction, whatever it might be. They're going to be saving a certain amount off of your master fee schedule. Because they're now part of your office. They're now members of your office, they're part of that club that you've established that allows people to save on dentistry. I always try and keep it super simple. When you're explaining it to team members say, take away the claim forms. Take away the follow ups, take away everything.
What are you going to do if that patient comes to see you and they want a plan but you don't have something to offer? When people out there are looking for a plan because every single day they hear on the radio, they hear on the TV, they see on billboards. You need to have a health plan. You need to have a health plan, you need to have a health plan for your healthcare. That translates to dentistry as well. For years I swam upstream trying to educate patients that didn't really need a dental plan. That when they reached the max of their benefits they could actually still get dental care done. When people reach their max benefit they say, "Oh let's wait till next year till they renew." I said let's stop swimming upstream. Let's go downstream with the current, let's give people what they want. Let's listen to the consumers. People want a plan, let's give them a plan, makes sense.
Howard: You started this in 2009, how is the roll out going? You've had six years. How many dentists are doing this? How many states?
Dan: It's going great and townies are leading the pack. We have over 500 clients right now in about 47 states. It's going gangbusters. Really what we do is we try and educate. We try and educate offices on what it's going to accomplish for them. How it's going to decrease their administrative costs. How it's going to increase the treatment plan acceptance and how it's going to increase their base fee for service patients. Lots of practices out there are feeling the pinch from dental insurance companies. Either conning reimbursements, conning benefits to patients. Where in this model, dentists got to control their fees, they can charge whatever they want, they keep the relationship between dental office and patient right. They also get the control of benefits they want because dentists understand what best for their office, what’s best for their philosophy. Not some you know third party agency somewhere.
Howard: Go through specifics, you saw this plan for an individual, the family, how much I mean do they is there one of those deals where they give you a credit card and you automatic bill the credit card each month. How’s the logistics of it work?
Dan: You know we always wanted to customize the plan and what we do is we work with each office to customize a plan that makes sense for their business model. So to take all those questions into consideration let’s start off at the beginning. How do you price something like this for a patient? Well we actually have a formula, we have an equation that you can use, you plug in your fees. You’re getting a recommended fee that makes sense for your area of the country. As you know in Phoenix dental fees are different than in rural Nebraska than in South Florida.
We really want to take into consideration what the fee is going to be for the local areas. The phases of how we work with the practice, during our implementation phases where we help to structure that and what part of that are the fees? We want to come up with a fee that makes sense. Now as far as patient’s paying, let’s take that into the consideration. Lots of times when I first started this and offices were coming on board it was an annual payment, people paid annual. As time went on we saw more and more people needed some extra help so having monthly payment plans available made sense.
We actually have a software that really it’s second to none out there. It works fantastic and it actually syncs with most practice management softwares out there. You can actually manage your entire plan automate processes, so your team is taking care of patients and not worrying about processes that they have to go through. So you can automate monthly payments, you can automate yearly payments. Patients actually have a portal that they can check on their benefits and self-manage their plan at your office, saving your team a ton of time.
As far as getting all that structured, we help offices to do that, get that structured, come up with a plan that makes sense. We know what works, we know what doesn’t from our years of experience, we’ve been doing this longer than anybody else out there. You’re getting a very refined plan right from the start. Again Howard you know, as you know lots of dentists want to remain in control. That was one of the big things I wanted to have with this program was, let dentists decide if they want to raise their fee by 50 bucks does that make sense for their business model, go ahead and do it. If they feel they want to lower it by 25 bucks go ahead and do it. If you want to include free fluoride for every single patient out there, go ahead and do it, it’s your plan. We’ll let you know what works, we’ll let you know what doesn’t but at the end of the day it’s your plan and you can do whatever you want with it.
Howard: Well you know finance is huge, it’s basically the backbone of America, that’s why they have Andrew Jackson on the $10 bill I mean he wasn’t the president, started the mother bank. Financed this whole thing and when you look at Henry Ford put out 10 million Model Ts and he basically almost went bankrupt and had to shut that down because GM, and Alfred Sloan they started financing and the financing just killed Model T. Because Henry Ford wanted his $660 upfront and you could go to General Motors and they introduced installment credit. GMAC financing makes more than GM.
The other thing is, we ask anybody what's the most famous sewing machine in the world and everybody says Singer. Singer was like one of the hundredth sewing machine company out there but old man Singer realized that these, a lot of Irish immigrants they couldn’t get a job because they didn’t have a sewing machine, and he knew they made a dollar a week if they had a sewing machine. He just financed them a sewing machine of like 25 cents a week and he sold every Irishman off the boat them.
Dan: Smart business people.
Howard: Yeah in the United States 90% of everything bought over $1000 is paid on installments credit, I mean houses and cars I mean hardly only 10% like cash count for a car or a house. The other 90% do installment credit. If you look at the nation’s close rate on decay for every 100 cavities dentists diagnose they drill fill about 38 of them. Basically the most powerful dentists in the world would be a financier who could come pick up those other 62 out of 100 and say why is this guy not getting his disease treated. He needs installment credit and that’s what you’re trying to do and I’m proud of you and I know you have amazing fans. I won’t ask you this, you’re out there in a Band Oregon.
Dan: Yeah.
Howard: Open Dental, where is Open Dental out of, they’re out there in Oregon aren’t they?
Dan: Open Dental I’m not sure Howard, I’ve got to look that one up, I’m not really sure where they are. I think they’re out of Oregon.
Howard: Nathan Sparks and Jordin Sparks, does this merge with Open Dental?
Dan: Yeah well absolutely it syncs wonderfully with Open Dental.
Howard: You should go meet those guys because they’re in your backyard. On Dental Town when I read a thread on Dentrix, Eagle Soft or what I have Soft End or Practice Works, it seems like it’s just a complaining mourning session. Every thread on Open Dental it’s a rating affair, I’m trying to get the founder Jordan to do a podcast or his brother … Jordan is the dentist who started but his brother Nathan runs it. They're certainly on your backyard you should go do something with those guys.
Dan: Got to go look them up, got to go look them up and chat with them.
Howard: Another thing I was thinking, you know what might be a fun article that you should do for Dental Town? Every five, 10 years or whatever but I don’t think we’ve done a national fee schedule you know where you have a two page folding map that kind of go through the basic deals. You probably would be the best person, you probably have more data on fees.
Dan: That would be interesting, yeah that would be very interesting to do, why not, lay it all out.
Howard: Yeah. Then we put that on Dental Town, on the digital version of the magazine. We might be able to mine down deeper and say you know maybe click your State and open up you know what I mean and mine down.
Dan: Absolutely. Data is so important to practices. You’re hitting all the right notes here. When you’re looking at software and what software can do for you, software that we’re using it’s geared towards running the plan, it’s not a one-size fit all, try and plug a square peg in a round hole. The beauty of using our software is that sure it can automate processes but it gives you the data. What are patients utilizing, how are they utilizing, are their payments on time, when are they coming in?
I mean this is data you can use to actually help your patients you know. Where the dental insurance model it’s interesting that everything seems to be done so patients don’t get treatments. In our model we said we want those patients to come in, we want them to get their treatment done because that’s what’s in their best interest, that’s what’s our best interest as a dental office because we’re accomplishing our mission, we’re treating more people.
One of the great things Howard when I was in practice, we had a patient come in and if the patients said to me, “I haven’t been to the dentist in 10 years because I lost my dental plan.” Okay and you can ask well why don’t you just come in anyway? Well in his mind he needed a plan, well we offered him QDP he saw that we offered it, he came in because of that and had something like you know a $10,000, $15,000 worth of dental work done because he put off his care for so long.
It made me smile that we actually got him in because who knows if he waited even longer you know how much more he would have spent. We want to bring people in, increase that access to care and keep costs down for people and get them in the preventative model rather than a reactive model.
Howard: Okay so my question B, what’s the difference in just some dentist listeners and wants to be a do it yourself for instance, I’ll just let the patient make payments. I mean I don’t need to do all these QDP stuff, I’ll just quit saying, “I got all my money upfront and you can make three monthly payments Mrs. Jones.” What’s the difference between that and what you do?
Dan: Sure what we do it’s important to distinguish, is you know we’re helping the infrastructure of setting up a plan. We help practices get the foundation set up, we help practices come up with a fee that makes sense, we train their team. I mean we shine in the training aspect because we have a complete written implementation packet with easy to follow check lists. We back it up with what we call our QDP University online, that each dental office team member gets courses that’s specific to them.
The dental assistants are taking courses, the hygienists are taking courses, the business team members are taking courses that’s geared to the business team. What we want to do is really train them so everybody is on the same page. You know Howard, one of the things that comes to mind when you’re implementing something in an office, ideas are great implementation is the hard part right. A fellow by the name of Guy Kawasaki said that, huge Silicon Valley marketer.
Lots of people have these great ideas but as dentists we’re pulled in so many different directions. We have to be producers, where we’re performing dentistry. We have to be managers, and we have to be CEOs. How much time do we have for our home life? To have hobbies that we enjoy, one of the great things Howard that I remember from your 30-day MBA, you talked about I think it was you know are you going to mow your lawn or are you going to pay for dentistry.
I mean are you going to perform dentistry so you can utilize your time where it’s best spent. That’s what I tell people all the time. A company like ours we help make this process successful from day one and it took us years to go ahead and get there. Dentists and townies especially, we’re a lot of do it yourself phrase out there but just because you can, doesn’t mean you should. You know why spend your time doing something that you don’t enjoy.
On the flip side man if you enjoy coming up with a new business concept, enjoy coming up with forums, training your team, going through all the experts to make sure you’re Ts are crossed and Is are dotted, then go for it. If you want to continue to work with patients, use a company that can provide with what you need in order to do more dentistry. It’s my saying, I like to say do what you do best and delegate the rest.
That’s what I would say is, use a company like ours so you get something successful from day one. When you’re working with the public and putting something like this out there, there’s a lot of what … You understand to be devils in the details. There’s a lot of little details, it may seem easy on the surface but once you start drilling into things it becomes a little more difficult. Simple things like what do you call it and what you don’t call it.
Obviously you can’t call it an office insurance because it’s not insurance. Some States you can’t even call it a dental discount plan because those are regulated by the government. You have to understand what you’re getting yourself into, when you move forward with this type of plan.
Howard: Then it’s not insurance and …There’s actually really no such thing as insurance in healthcare. Insurance in MBA school at ASU they taught us is an actuarial risk analysis versus moral hazard of lying, cheating, stealing. Like everybody pays a little car insurance. Because one guy wrecks the car and we all pay little and cover that big casualty. We all have fire insurance in our house and I’ve lived out here in Ahwatukee for 20 years, I’ve only seen one house burn down. We all pay a little bit in case you know there’s one drunk Irish dentist smoking in bed and burns his house down.
How do you have health insurance or dental insurance when A everyone’s going to get sick and die at the end, we’re all going to die and be lowered down in a box, we all have teeth, we all eat sugar, we all don’t brush and floss, we all … I had a lady yesterday saying, “Well why did my tooth die?” I’m like, “Well you’re 52 years old, you’ve lived half a century, shit dies and one day you’re going to die.”Between now and if you live to be 85 you probably get to have a lot of teeth just get up and die.
It is not insurance. What insurance is the benefit and if you can get your employer to pay for your dental that’s great, you can get …The whole thing with Obamacare that these people don’t realize that you’re all going to pay for health insurance. I mean you can’t tax, if you took all the billionaires money, if you just took everything they own you wouldn’t pick up 10% of the tab. Then what is this thing? You said it’s illegal and some say it’s the call of benefit. What is it?
Dan: It’s more of understanding what the definitions are and it varies from state to state and that’s the crazy thing you know there’s not one uniform thing. Most of the times insurance commissions and stuff are set up to regulate the insurance industry and like you said how traditional dental insurance even be called insurance.
Howard: It’s a benefit.
Dan: Yeah it’s a benefit so when you’re setting up something like this, this is more when you look at it at the very bottom line. It’s almost like having an accounting adjustment that you’re providing for patients by them coming to your practice, bundling services together, whatever that might be, whatever that looks like. Again you know you have to understand what those small nuances are in certain places. Because you don’t want something like this to look like insurance. You don’t want this to look like a dental discount plan. Those types of things are run by third parties and regulated by State insurance commissions because again there’s a third party now that’s part of your relationship between your practice and the patient.
It’s like this triangle we always talk about. You have a patient, you have your dental practice and then on the top you have the insurance company. If you can eliminate that tip of the triangle and just keep that relationship between dental office and patient, that’s the relationship that you want to have, that’s where you want to go with this. You don’t have to go through all the rigmarole of setting up a third party company to manage and regulate all this and be essentially an insurance company. Take the insurance company out of the equation, keep the relationship between dental office and practice.
Howard: How often does a dentist get paid?
Dan: With QDP its immediate, it’s the day off. There’s no sending in claim forms, it’s getting paid that day. As you know a dollar collected today is worth more than a dollar collected tomorrow, a dollar collected 30 days from now. Dentists need to need to understand what some companies are doing out there in the market place. These dental discount plan companies up there, or some companies that will say, “Yeah we’ll help you set up this plan, we’ll help you do this,” but it’s almost just like an insurance company where you have to wait 30 days to get paid. Why would you wait 30 days to get paid if you can get paid today? That’s what we want to do is encourage that payment today.
Howard: How do you get paid?
Dan: We get paid by the dentists, it’s a flat rate to help them to get everything set up and to support them. Use of the software, use of the methodology, everything that we provide. With QDP and I’m glad you asked this because with QDP that’s our brand, everyone hears about QDP and that’s our branded plan that we have and it’s backed up with print, radio, TV, online media, posters, brochures, post cards, campaign pins. I mean literally everything you could think of to help market this program.
We have another program that we offer and this is a lot of times for the do it yourself first. We have that program called membered in. With membered in, we do the same exact thing. We help people set up a plan, structure it, we train the team, we support them along the way if they have thoughts, ideas, questions, concerns but it’s not branded. Those dental offices come up with a real brand like Dr. France dental plan and the marketing to back it up. We can always help with it but it’s on a la carte type basis. We really want to come at the market place for people who want to a full service option backed by a brand or people who want more of a create your own brand option with our membered in option.
Howard: Okay I love it, do what you do best, delegate the rest. I try to connect to the dentist that because they have a hard time delegating, I always tell them and say, “One day you’re going to be dead. Ray Crock is dead and 40,000 McDonald's go on. Sam Walton is dead Wal-Mart is going on, you mentioned you went to Costco and Price Club, what was Price’s name Mr. Price, they’re gone but their legacies go on so you just have to delegate. These dentists I want them to just get her done, she’s driving to work, her office manager is going to have 48 million questions, what would you recommend as they go watch a video on qdpdentist.com or do you have someone that they calls them and pitches it to the south? Then if they were going to implement it, do you have someone that will fly to the office and get it implemented or …?What’s the logistics of get it done?
Dan: Great question Howard. We could do it a bunch of ways. Most people go to qdpdentist.com for initial intro into what we do. Like you said there’s hundred thousand questions that we go through. From there what we usually do is myself or one of our reps actually will talk to the dental offices to help walk him through it to understand it a little better. As far as implementing goes, we leverage technology, we want to keep our cost low. Just like you and I are on Skype right now you know we can do this virtually. Why go to an office, take up time? That’s part of why we created what we call the QDP University. It’s a learning management system where people can take the courses and go through exactly what they need to understand what they need to set this program up.
We’re then there to follow up with them and say, “Hey what else do you guys need, how is it going in the office, what more can we do for you?”Oh you have a new team member come on board, let’s go ahead and get them trained. Oh you have a PR interview coming up.”Because local media loves this type of story. We’ve had such great success with local media across the country because people want to hear about healthcare stories, they want to hear how local healthcare providers are making healthcare more affordable and more accessible for everybody.
With QDP you know just last week local here in North West we had a paper pick up the story, talk about QDP and talk about how there’s an alternative to traditional dental insurance out there. We are there to facilitate that and make that happen. Like you said Howard a lot of questions, we’re there to make sure dentists understand, part of it is the education.
Howard: You’re in 47 States, are you not in three States because of the State laws or statutes or just hadn’t had a something like that?
Dan: Just really haven’t had anybody there yet.
Howard: What three States?
Dan: Gosh I want to say one is Alaska for sure I know that, another is North Dakota and I want to say it’s either Hawaii or South Dakota.
Howard: Well I know why Alaska and North Dakota, they’re frocking in North Dakota. I know dentists could always had opening to their chairs and we are charging 700 for a crown. Then with frocking and their fees were 2,000 a crown and no openings for three months. Alaska it’s pretty much the same way. You know the coolest thing about the dentist office I went to in Alaska? They don’t have locks on their front door because it was North of, it was North of I don’t know that Arctic Circle line or whatever.
Dan: Sure, sure.
Howard: Their culture is that if you get caught in the storm or you’re freezing out, they don’t want you to come to the dental office to have the front door locked. They said they don’t even have locks on the doors because everybody is looking out, because sometimes you’re going to need to make a right for a house. Then when you drive in their parking lot, you plug in to electricity that keeps your block warm.
Dan: Yeah I’ve seen that, people have that in Minnesota too.
Howard: You got 500 dentist client, you said most of them came from Dental Town?
Dan: A lot of them came from Dental Town. I wish I had the stats from it but I mean…
Howard: What I’m getting at is of those 500 people, I'm trying to … These people listening to the podcast are all alone. The whole model with Dental Town is that, Dental Town no one has to be alone. I’m wondering in that 500 do you see any patterns that I mean is it more rural than urban, is it more urban big city than rural, is it more poor areas, richer areas, is it more Beverly Hills or Parsons [inaudible 00:29:49], do you see any rhyme or reason in those numbers?
Dan: You know Howard I love numbers and delving into it. We actually looked at this. It really, there is no trend as far as big city, small town, rural area suburbs, the whole idea behind it out there is that people want a plan. Doesn’t matter what part of the country you're in whether in rural America or big city America people want a plan and if you're offering them a plan that make sense, they're going to jump on and be part of that plan.
As far as the docs coming on board, it’s anyone who’s looking to increase their fee for service patients, okay? They want to get more free for service patients in. It’s also people who are looking to increase, docs who are looking to increase access to care for their communities. Because this is a way to get those people to come into dental office. That applies anywhere. I tell people, don’t get so focused on the dental business side of it, this just makes good business.
Think about Costco if you’ve ever gone into Costco, there is a whole strata of socio and economic people who visit Costco. From millionaires down to people who might be struggling that go there because they know they're going to save. They enjoy the deals that they're going to get. When you look at the people who are coming in to the dental office, the patients, it’s all kinds of patients from every type of socio-economic strata but they're coming in because they don’t have a plan and they want a plan.
Now somebody has an employer paying for their dental insurance for them and like you said this, they're probably not going to be interested in something like this. The employer might be because the employer is paying for healthcare and if they see that they can save on cost by doing something like this through the local dental office, that’s something that could be of value to them.
Howard: Do you think in a way Wal-Mart has their Sam’s where not anybody can walk in, you’ve got to be a member. Costco from day one, you had to be a member. Amazon was reporting that their Amazon prime members, members who pay like $99 a year in their Amazon prime members and they get all these benefits. I guess the average non Amazon prime member, the average Amazon customer order like $500 worth of stuff a year, but an Amazon prime person orders like $1500 a year.
The point I'm going with this is, do you think having a Quality Dental Plan in your office is kind of like that seem a fact that if you're an Amazon prime membership that you're more likely to keep coming back, more stickiness with that business, that dental office more trade going on?
Dan: Absolutely Howard. I know you like studies, you like looking into business concepts and ideas and consumer psychology. There's a study out there called the Fee Savings Link. That actually talks exactly about what you're talking about. People are members of these retailers out there, they're spending more because they're seeing value in that membership. They also see those stores as being more attractive because they're offering that type of membership. It drives choice of their shopping experience where they're going to go because they offer that exclusivity. They're their exclusivity to their customers.
What you're hitting on is right on the nose. What we've seen statistically speaking from some of the offices we are working with, including my own when we were doing this. We saw an over 20% increase in treatment plan acceptance compared to the standard patient with the stand patient not being part of QDP. Even also the standard patient having insurance. You know patients hit that 50,000-dollar mark, it’s like okay, I'm done. Let’s go ahead until next year till it goes ahead and renews.
What we are seeing is just not just general restore of dentistry that they're getting more treatment plan acceptance for, its implant dentistry, its cosmetic dentistry, its orthodontics, its advanced [pariel 00:33:31], its full mouth reconstruction. Because they're seeing the value in the savings that they're getting. Again you're bridging that communication gap between dentistry being expensive and now they're saving on those costs because of QDP.
Howard: What's the whole American express credit card, what's the whole advertising thing based on?
Dan: Membership has its benefits.
Howard: I know, yeah.
Dan: We hear it, we hear over and over again.
Howard: Humans are so complex and they have some little ties, some little connections, I'm a member, I'm part of your tribe, it just works with humans.
Dan: It does and again it’s about how can we get more people to want our services because we know it’s in their best interest. If somebody is putting off dentistry because of cost, how can we decrease that barrier of entry, okay? How can we go ahead and lower that barrier so people can come in and get our services? It’s been handled traditionally by third party financing and by having dental insurance, well now if you have a plan that you can offer because people want a plan, you're decreasing that barrier even lower allowing people to step over, come into the office, become part of your practice and move forward with the dentistry that they want and need.
Howard: Dan about 15, 16% of the people listening to the show, by the way this show is freakish, I mean it just exploded. A good 15, 16% are in another 209 or so country, will this work in Canada? The biggest countries are United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the English speaking world basically, India. Do you have customers outside of the great state of the United States? Can someone do this in Toronto?
Dan: Yes, we've been beta testing in Canada and their system is little bit different than ours.
Howard: Yeey.
Dan: Yeey. Right, there you go to our Canadians. I have some great Canadian friends. I was in dental school with a lot of Canadians. They're just a boat load of fun.
Howard: I think Glen [inaudible 00:35:30] is the coolest dentist I've ever met. He's got to be the classiest, coolest dentist and he's a Canadian.
Dan: You’ve got to love them up there, up north. Their systems are a little bit different. From talking with the dentist up there, if somebody is coming in and getting their dental work taken care of and they have dental work, I think if I recall correctly, it’s almost like car insurance here. You get into an accident and your premiums go up. If you need dental care up there, you're paying more, your premiums are going up.
They like to see this as an alternative to actually using that state benefit to keep their costs down over the long run. Again it’s all being beta up there, beta tested up there to make sure it can actually work. It’s different down here in the states as you know just as far as consumption and the delivery of healthcare goes. We are trying to find out …
Howard: If you're Canadian its beta, it’s in beta?
Dan: Yeah it’s in beta and we want people to come on board and say, “Hey, let’s go ahead and make this [crosstalk 00:36:24].
Howard: Did you have to get a lawyer for the Canadian legislation and laws and all that stuff or did you just figure that out yourself?
Dan: Part of it is using the docs up there who are beta to help along the way in figuring all that out. Because there are so many hoops to jump through even here in the states. There are so many things you have to be aware.
Howard: Have you started the UK?
Dan: I haven’t done UK yet. I had some interest in Italy which is really interesting because I'm brushing up my Italian, I want to go over there and get this to fire.
Howard: Are you Italian? Is Marut Italian?
Dan: No, it’s Polish actually …
Howard: Really, is it?
Dan: It is Polish.
Howard: Have you been to Poland?
Dan: I haven’t.
Howard: You should beta test this … You should email me and I will reply to you with [Machi Delaki 00:37:10] he's the big practicing manager, guru leader out at Warsaw. Poland, their GDP per person has been growing like twice the as the Russians since the Berlin wall fell and the Polish economy is just on fire. What's interesting, I got a school in 87, 99% of all the 20,000 UK dentists were all NHS. Now it’s on the 56% and everybody is predicting, it’s going to be just like, this year, next year where it falls below the 50 percentile and they're screaming for stuff like this. You should beta assess because they’ve got twice as many dentistry as Canada.
Dan: We've got to get out there and we’re looking to get out there. A lot of it is managing the growth. As you grow a business, it’s managing that growth and you want to be able to provide the level of service that we do. One of the things, Howard again 30-day MBA, what can you compete on? Price, quality, service? You taught me that back when I was really young. We want to keep our service really high. Part of managing growth is to be sure that we don’t outgrow delivering quality service to the people that we work with every single day to the dental office that we do. Its managing growth, we will get out there. I have no doubt about it, we’ll get out there and we are going to do it in a way that maintains the quality of what we do.
Howard: Okay. This is Dentistry Uncensored. Let’s go right to the uncomfortable questions, what's a dark size? Dentists like we are using it, complaints, where are the stickiness issues? I mean you talk everything good about it, but why do you dentists complain about it? Why does someone stop using it?
Dan: I love, Howard I love it and the reason I love this question is because you're so direct and straight forward with it. Lots of times I get this question in round about ways. What it comes down to is when doesn’t it work? Does it fail? Has it not worked? I’ll say this, my answer is always this, QDP the concept, the methodologies, everything that we do will work everywhere. Big cities, small towns, rural areas, suburbs because you're supplying a need. People feel they want to plan, you're delivering a plan. Its economics 101, okay? Business 101. When you're looking at the concept itself, anywhere it works. The only reason it will fail is if there is no leadership and no accountability in the dental practice.
Unfortunately dentists are pulled in a lot of different directions. Lots of times they're so focused on the technical aspect of the dentistry, they have nobody watching the business aspect of it and they tend to delegate to someone who is not trained enough or not prepared to implement any office system. Any time you don’t have any leadership or accountability in the dental office, no matter what you're trying to do, it’s not going to work. That’s the bottom line. I say that to every dentist that comes on board.
We provide everything you can possibly think of from implementation, to training, to marketing, to support, to follow up calls. We are not there at your practice, we don’t run you're practice, we don’t want to run your practice. We will help you create the practice of your dreams using a plan like QDP but you’ve got to do some work. You have to do some work to make this happen. We make it easy if that work doesn’t happen, it’s not going to fly. That simple.
Howard: Dan you and I are, really I mean we are kind of identical twins except for you're good looking and I'm not. Other than that, I mean really because we both love clinical dentistry. I remember when you were in my front room, you couldn’t take your eyes off this oral surgery text book I had on my desk. Do you remember that? I said, “Dude just take the book.” Remember that?
Dan: I think they're back there somewhere.
Howard: Yeah. I had already read it and you kept looking at it and I just said, “Take the damn book.” We both loved clinical and we both loved the business. Why do you think some of us can delegate to a strong team members, office managers, how come some of us can get strong personalities then we just hand them the ball and they run it in for touch down like a beaver or duck. By the way are you a beaver or a duck? Which one are you?
Dan: I support both here and Oregon I'm a transplant from New Jersey, graduated from Penn State. I'm a [inaudible 00:41:14] at heart.
Howard: That’s a big rivalry. That might be one of the biggest rivalry I've ever seen in this state, is that right?
Dan: It’s huge out here, the beavers and the ducks, the silver war game it’s gigantic. I went to one of their games at Austin stadium. It was the University of Oregon home game. They had their stuffed beaver on a rope tied up and every time Oregon would score they’d swing the beaver and smack and the whole stadium would count like, 1, 2, 3 and then they danced, it’s hilarious. They love their football out here.
Howard: Well it’s the only rivalry where I see dentist flying back home to the game. I mean from Phoenix even, they literally fly back for that rivalry.
Dan: It’s true.
Howard: I lost my train of thought. Why do you think some of us have no problems getting people that are strong willed, stand up to us, hand the football, not micromanage and I would rather go do clinical dentistry than figure out insurance and billing and statement? I don’t even want to do it. What is it about some of us clinical dentists who can do, what do you think, put on your Dr. Phil hat. Because a lot of these dentists are driving their thing and I just don’t time and I don’t know when I'm going to have time to do this. Damn I have time for everything because I don’t do anything. I would just go in and tell one person to report back to me and at the end of the week, I mean this is, what is it? A Wednesday? I would just walk in there and I would go either Don or Robert and say, “Hey, Don and Robert check in this and one week from today tell me what you think of this.” By the way have talked to Meyer Robert, Miles Major or Don?
Dan: In the past I think Don I spoke with but nothing as recent. We’ll get in touch with them about it and talk about …
Howard: Yeah, its don@todaysdental.com or robert@todaysdental.com and CC me howard@dentaltown.com or howard@todaysdental.com. Put on your Dr. Phil hat. Why can’t some of us just delegate and get it done and other people can’t just delegate and have to micromanage and always seem to be the most stressed out and miserable.
Dan: Howard it’s interesting because from my standpoint of wanting people to succeed that we work with, I look at this and I observe. I observe some of the best dental offices that we work with. Just for example, we had a client sign up with us two weeks ago. They launched their program this last Monday. They’ve already signed up five people. All ready just since Monday. Two days they signed up five people and they just started. Teams are a little nervous but they're still doing it.
We had a practice who just start offering it two weeks ago, they already signed up 15 people. On average a dental officer we work with is signing up 15-20 new QDP members a month. Some of the best practices we work with are signing up over 60 a month. What's the difference between that? What's the difference between one office who excels and other office that may does okay. You read a book Howard I'm sure called Good to Great.
Howard: Oh yeah, Jim Collins, my favorite.
Dan: Jim Collins, that’s right. I think with dentists a lot of times we are comfortable and we get in the mentality of good to get to the idea of the concept or the experience, the greatness, there's a lot of work that need to take place in little details. If we are pulled in a million different directions by doing clinical dentistry, by being managers, by CEOs of our practice, by trying to go home to our family, enjoy our kids, enjoy our free time, when do we have time to go into that gap and go from good to great. Some of it is personality, some of it is training and again some of it is comfort level. Lots of time dentists and I think it’s not just dentists but people in general is reactive.
When are you going to start feeling the pain and then let’s go do something about it, right? You talk to patients who come, they have a toothache. They come in on a Friday, they're about to close for the weekend at 5:00 and you ask them when the pain started they say on Monday. Why wait so long to do something about it if it started on Monday, right? having self-aware, being self-aware, having goals but just from what I'm seeing, the solo practitioner, the small groups, it’s a lot of dentist and leaders being pulled in the different directions, I think it all starts with training.
If you can train your team members, have responsible people that come on board, give them what they need to make them successful. In my practice, I always talk to my team members. When I first started I said, come in anytime you need something to help you accomplish your job better, let me know and I’ll give it to you. Then I’ll expect results. I'm going to hold you accountable to it, right? If you're going to ask for something, it’s going to make your life better, it’s going to patient’s life better, you're going to use it, I'm going to give it to you but I want to see the results from it.
Part of it is dentists, we are technicians Howard. We work in people’s mouths. That’s what we are trained to do. How much business training did you get in dental school? How much leadership training did you get in dental school? We are trained to perform dentistry, to pass a board exam. Then we are led out to the world. That’s my answer, that’s kind of my side thoughts.
Howard: You know what, it’s amazing. I think this is our podcast, I think it’s 220, I don’t think anyone’s ever brought up Jim Collins and I just have to pine in there. When I went to MBA school and of all the millionaires and hundred millionaires that I know in dentistry and beyond, everybody agrees that Jim Collins is their favorite business mentor. He started, his first book that I read, I got out of high school in 1994 it was called Built to Last. Basically he said, “Okay, so why did all these companies last versus the other guys. Great book but that was in 94.
I wouldn’t recommend going back to reading 94 because it’s 2015 and that’s a long time ago, 20 years ago. 2001, he came out with Good to Great. I think that’s a timeless classic. I don’t think anything has changed in 15 years on Good to Great. It’s an amazing book. Then he wrote in 2011 Great by Choice which is really just another amazing book. Because how this guy writes is he runs a business school and he’s got grads and so he spends five years, his research grads do all the work for five years just crunching the data and then after five years of data, they make a deadline and say, what does the data say?
My favorite book was why I asked you that unfederal question. My favorite book by him was instead of saying why everybody does great, I liked the opposite book, How the Mighty Fall. Just having the book on what all the great companies did, he said, “These are the guys that all died.” In algebra you inverse it, two verses four, so its four minus two to check your work. That’s why I like to ask the people that try this and it fails and they don’t like it, what's their case versus the ones that are signing up 60 people a month.
Dan: Absolutely and Howard we provide the support and its interesting, there's been a couple of stories on Dental Town where office did struggle the first few months with it. We went, we delved into the numbers, we looked at how it was being presented, we looked to say, we are following the recommendations that we've given as far as presenting it to patients. We have something that we call the magic questions and magic numbers that’s part of what we teach them.
Trying to understand, okay, why isn’t this working because we know it works everywhere. Well once we got to the bottom of everything, now the practice is flourishing. Signing up patients daily, weekly, monthly and it’s just those attention to details, getting the details done, holding the team accountable to a certain standard of what you want them to do. Part of what we do as a company is to help them achieve that goal. That’s what we want to do.
Howard: Okay so Dan if some of these listeners are like, okay, I think Howard’s insane and I think Dan Marut is trying to sell his company. Dental Town I know there's a monster thread of this, is there a certain thread on Dental Town that you like that’s kind of like FAQ, questions asked?
Dan: Oh men, there's a ton of them. If you just look up or just Quality Dental Plan QDP, lots of different things come up. It’s always great because Dental Town, you're getting raw answers, you're getting people on there that discuss things. It’s always great. The biggest question we always get is the whole do it yourself, let’s go ahead and get this done myself and then let’s go ahead and do this. 70% of our clients Howard have either tried to do it themselves, went down the road of doing it themselves. Even maybe had their own plan but it just wasn’t working out or the details weren’t right.
Now they’ve been working with us for years and seeing the results with that. That’s what I mean by do what you do best and delegate the rest. When you really look at where you're spending your time and you remember this name on Dental Town, Bruce [Bayad 00:49:57] in PDA. I learnt from him, what are you producing per hour. If you're producing $200 an hour, $300 an hour or $500 an hour or $700 an hour why in the world would you try and reinvent the wheel doing something else? When you can just work some extra hours? Get more patients in do what you're trained to do rather than trying to figure out systems and protocols and everything else that goes into making a plan like this work.
Howard: Dude I'm on my phone on the dentaltown app and I have just been quoting dental plans. You could scroll down for 10 minutes on all the threads talking about this. Refresh me, [Bruce Baird 00:50:34] is a legend out there. What's the difference in what you and Bruce Baird are doing?
Dan: Bruce is all about financing. Bruce with his company they've gone into the financing of it. Instead of going to a bank to finance, offices can now do this in-house. With their software and what they do they make that easy for them to do. I mean, let's go ahead and finance it in-house. Let's go ahead and make a percentage off in the money we're lending to our patients. From my standpoint, it's again let's cut out the insurance company. Let's deliver a plan that makes sense to the patient. That's the big difference, it's two sides of the same coin where we want to go ahead and get more people to move forward with dental care.
Howard: My point is that it frustrates me when everybody you talk about a quality dentist. Usually when a dentist thinks he's a quality dentist it’s because he goes to an institute and learns the longest way to do it, a procedure. My favorite joke, I say this all the time and it's redundant. A study club, one dentist stands up and says, "I [inaudible 00:51:38] my own dyes." The next dentist stands up and says, "I quarry my own stones, then I turn my own dyes." The next says, "I grow my own beehive. I raise my own wax. I quarry my own stone, I pour up my own models." Warren Buffet even says it all the time. Warren Buffet says 95% of all the CEOs in America go to work all day to try to figure out how to do everything more expensive and slower and more costly. It just blows his mind.
That's the definition of work for a monkey. The monkey looks at something and when someone raises their hand and says, "Keep it simple stupid." They're like, "Are you not into dentistry?" If you were really into dentistry you'd make a mountain out of every mole hill. It's just amazing how people try to make everything so complicated. What I detest the most is that people think they're quality dentists, are usually doing the most complicated, most expensive dentistry for the least. I think the greatest dentists in the world are the ones that realize that if 9 out of 10 things in America bought over $1,000 worth of finance. If you don't focus on the price. My dad used to say, "God gave you two eyes. To keep one eye on the customer and you keep one eye on cost." He gave me a God given brain to figure out how to drive down your cost, so that your customer has the freedom to afford what it is that you sell. The minute you take your eye off cost.
The minute your mind starts wandering, you're not thinking about how can I do this faster, easier, more efficient, lower cost like you cutting out the middle man. Just making it faster and figuring it out what is it that this monkey needs? The monkey needs financing. 9 out of 10 times the monkey just can't pay for a $1,000 crown. That's what the data has shown. We're not talking crowns we're talking just fillings. Fillings is the lowest cost restorative dentistry and only 38 out of 100 are drilled, filled and built. Everyone wants to start a thread on some 18th generation bonding agent. Get into this nano-molecule bullshit. Who cares about what generation of bonding agent you use? Because 6 out of 10 times you don't even remove the decay.
I'd rather all the cavities are removed and filled with [Pakel 00:53:45] butter, oatmeal or cheese. Just get the infection out. I think what you're doing is a big part of that. You have raving fans on dentaltown. I only got you for six more minutes. What I want you to do for the last, I want you take the mic away for the last six minutes and try to succinctly pitch this in the dentist’s head. She's listening, she's going to go to work. She's going to walk in and she's going to do what she does best dentistry delegates are us. How does she pitch this to her office manager? What should she say to get just to get it done?
Dan: Just to get it done, you mentioned something before, the kiss principle. We like to say, keep it super simple. Keep everything super simple. If you're going to be talking to your team about this, ask them how would it be if we didn't have to file any claims anymore? Or decrease all the work that you're doing to follow up on insurances, file insurances. Try to get a fee schedule reimbursed for something that actually makes sense for your business model. How would it be if you had a dental practice where you actually diversified your patient base if you accepted insurance and got more fee for service patients? How would you feel about that? How would you feel if you got away from even accepting insurance and went to a more fee for service model?
If you're a fee for service dentist, how would you feel if you weren't feeling pressure to join a PPO contract? That's what this is. That's what this allows you to do. It's you going after what, 50, 60% of the population that doesn't have dental benefits and they want a plan. Why not fill your practice with people who are easy to work with? That are going to accept more treatment. When we look at statistics too, people who are part of QDP are 70% more likely to refer someone else to this practice. You know Howard, dentists out there know that I've been doing this for a while. Referred patients are the best patients to work with because they usually show up on time, they pay on time. They accept more dentistry and they refer others. Because they already come to you with a built in level of trust.
Howard: Right it's the trust.
Dan: It's the trust.
Howard: Someone comes in off the yellow pages and they don't have so much trust. When someone refers you it's trust. That's why internal marketing is superior to external.
Dan: This is a huge, huge internal marketing stream. Because the more people that get signed up the better. When I first went into this and I was thinking of this. I said, "How's this going to work in my practice?" I said, "What am I going to do if all my patients sign up on this? What's going to happen?" Because they're coming in, they're accepting some dentistry. I had about a 70% insurance based practice, 30% fee for service. I said, we have to do something. Because we have to increase access to care. We want more patients to come in. We don't want to rely on dental insurance. Within two years Howard what we say happen was that statistic was almost flipped.
We went from a 70% insurance based practice down to a 35% insurance based practice. A 65% fee for service practice, trending in those directions. With those 65% of our practice we didn't have to file claims any more. We didn't have to send x-rays. We don't have to hear how an x-ray never was received. We didn't have to fill out pre-authorization. That really didn't mean anything because if we did work and it was pre-authorized we can then get a letter saying, "Okay we're not going to cover it anyway even though it was pre-authorized." It's crazy so why not increase that part of your patient base. Why not get more patients coming in? When I looked at it, at the end of two years I said, if I can have an entire practice filled with cutie pea patients I would do it in a heartbeat.
The existing patients that's another question I get. "What about existing patients?" I had existing patients that I was recommending implants for years on. They didn't move forward because it was too expensive, just too expensive. Didn't want to do orthodontics it was too expensive. They didn't want to do whatever it might be, cosmetic dentistry just seems out of the ballpark. I really don't need that now. Now we offered them a plan that allowed them to save money on those procedures. Those existing patients for years that I recommended things on, they then moved forward with treatment. It was amazing. Like I said, treatment plan acceptance went up across the board. I said, hey I'll see these patients all day every day.
Howard: Well you're an amazing man buddy and thank you for all you do. Maybe I think you should, I don't know. If you've got a good module, did you have an hour course on your qdpdentist.com explaining all this? What kind of videos do you have?
Dan: What we do, most of our videos are organized around our training for our client to come on board. We have informational videos on there but those are just informational. What I'll do for you Howard, what I'll do is this. We'll come up with something specifically for dentaltown and for the townies because I love the townies. It's kind of come full circle with me. I started off as a dental student, you may not remember this Howard.
Howard: I do, I do.
Dan: Do you remember the study that was done out of Temple University about dental potholes. I think it was 2000, the year 2000. I was part of that study and my job was to look at dentaltown. Get the numbers and get what's going on behind the scenes with dentaltown. That was in 2000, then I graduated. I become a dentist and I'm on there being mentored by you, by guys like Bruce Baird. People on there that are taking me under their wing. Fast forward I'm mentoring other people on there and now I'm on the other side of it. I have a business that actually services the dental industry. I've seen dentaltown from all different aspects. I want to come up with something specifically for dentaltown for the townies. That they can benefit from and I'd be happy to do that. I'll let you know.
Howard: I've never [inaudible 00:59:15] lecturing schools but this 56 schools it's just so hard to apply to all of them. Now I do these, I Skype into the class. I just love the dental students but it's so hilarious [inaudible 00:59:26]. When so many have come up, they whispered to me. They go, you know what we do? We just sit in the back row, we read dentaltown all day during all the boring lectures. Because that teacher, that's just one person. They like to go on that thread on dentaltown say it's about root canal. They want to see 100 different people argue instead of just one person saying here's the [inaudible 00:59:48]. They want to hear all the arguments. Hey dude, I'm your biggest fan, please pitch us hard to my office manager Robert at rober@todaysdental.com and Don. He's the one who does all this stuff and I want to hear more. All right Dan, thanks for your time buddy.
Dan: Howard always a pleasure man, thanks for having me on here. It was a blast. Great doing this with you, take care.
Howard: Does my son Ryan look at any differently after 20 years?
Dan: Yeah just a little bit.
Howard: Can you believe he's 6 foot 1. How did a 5.7 man make a 6 foot 1 son? Unbelievable.
Dan: They grow man, they don't stop. That's how, it's crazy.
Howard: All right, go beavers and go ducks.
Dan: Later Howard.