Dentistry Uncensored with Howard Farran

How to perform dentistry faster, easier, higher in quality and lower in cost. Subscribe to the podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/dentistry-uncensored-with-howard-farran/id916907356

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Howard:

I am here with my buddy Tiger Safarov. How are you doing?

Tiger:

Fantastic.

Howard:

He is with Zensupplies.com. He has an amazing story. Tiger's journey ... By the way it's Tiger like Tiger Woods. A lion would never drive drunk but a tiger would. Tiger's journey in America began when he emigrated from his home country of Russia to the United State in 2005. At the start, Tiger began learning english while driving to work and singing along to Frank Sinatra. With a strong drive to succeed, he started in his early years working multiple jobs during the day, and attending night classes at the local community college.

A few years later, in 2007, at the age of 22, Tiger started Siegel Construction, while pursuing his bachelor's degree in engineering at the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago. Over the years, Siegel Construction became one of the premier dental and medical design build firms in Chicago with aspirations to continue growing throughout the Midwest. In early 2015, Tiger successfully transitioned from Siegel Construction and today the company continues to thrive and achieve big goals. An entrepreneur at heart, Tiger is currently developing another start-up called Zensupplies. Beyond his business, Tiger loves spending his free time with his family, traveling and interviewing doctors and dental industry professionals for his YouTube show called Dentistry Unveiled, I'm subscribed to your show.

Tiger:

Fantastic.

Howard:

Adventure world traveler and marathon runner, Tiger is always on the go but when he finds a minute to kick back and relax, you can always find him wearing his favorite jersey, cheering for the Blackhawks, "Go Hawks!" That's a hockey team.

Tiger:

It is.

Howard:

Those guys have no teeth.

Tiger:

I mean-

Howard:

How can you support a sport that just knocks out teeth?

Tiger:

I support the industry.

Howard:

You're building business.

Tiger:

Of course.

Howard:

It's funny, I'll never forget the funniest World Cup, I forgot what state it was, it was in the last one or two or three years, and they said I think Boston [inaudible 00:01:57], "Boston won the World Cup." There wasn't a single person on that team that was even born in America. They were all Russian-

Tiger:

Yep.

Howard:

Ukrainian, Canadian.

Tiger:

Switzerland.

Howard:

Yep. And somebody pointed that out, I read an article and it said, "It's funny how Boston thinks they won the World Cup when there's not even an American born citizen on the team."

I love hockey. We bought the team from Edmonton.

Tiger:

Yep.

Howard:

Now its-

Tiger:

Arizona ...

Howard:

Coyotes.

Tiger:

Yep

Howard:

It's an amazing sport. I just absolutely love it. So was it scary starting ZenSupplies when last November, at the Greater New York meeting, which is one of the biggest meetings in all of dentistry and half the people there are from around the world-

Tiger:

Yep.

Howard:

Out of nowhere Amazon.com had a dental booth.

Tiger:

Yep.

Howard:

At the Dental Trade Manufacturers Association meetings, for about four years, there have been two guys from Amazon like Men in Black.

Tiger:

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Howard:

They're just there observing and they'd gone I think four years in a row and then "boom" they're at the Greater New York. So what did that make you think?

Tiger:

I'm pumped. The market is the market. When you started DentalTown, did you worry about somebody sitting down and thinking that this was going to be the biggest media company? You were the underdog, right?

Howard:

I was number 40 out of 40. In 1998, I was dead last and it took one or two years to just beat one guy.

Tiger:

Yep.

Howard:

It was a 20 year grind to get to the top.

Tiger:

Exactly, but then the problem is, everybody would look down at you. The same thing is gonna happen but the market dictated that you were going to be needed. So the market came in and said, "We want to be part of DentalTown." That was the unique part of it and that's how it grew. Same thing is going to happen. It's been forever, Schein, Patterson, Benco are the top three companies who own and control the market. God bless them, but it's gotta change.

Howard:

And why does it gotta change?

Tiger:

There's gonna be the transparency part right? Not blaming anybody, I don't blame the dentist, I don't blame the distributors, I don't blame anybody but-

Howard:

I blame my parents every time.

Tiger:

You do?

Howard:

Anything goes wrong I call my mom-

Tiger:

And say it's your fault.

Howard:

And tell her ... It stems back to my childhood.

Tiger:

Exactly.

Howard:

Somehow.

Tiger:

Exactly, but here's what happened. I think what's going on is if you have one practice and you're buying CaviWipes for $14 and then the same distributors that have been making money on you go to somebody else across the street and they have five options, they gonna sell the CaviWipes for 9.25? And if you have 55 locations, they gonna sell to you at 6.25. I don't think it's right. The transparency's gotta be there.

Howard:

But you know what? Not to take any of your thunder away-

Tiger:

I got it.

Howard:

I'm so glad you got it, but the dentist, I know my homies, I've been a dentist for 30 years, I know my dentist. Their number one cost doesn't even show up on a P&L chart. It's adjusted production that they determine-

Tiger:

Yep

Howard:

$1,000 for a crown, when they sign up for insurance PPOs and they're only [inaudible 00:05:07]. The number one cost for the whole industry for general dentists is a 42% adjusted production a year. Your $1,000 crown just got knocked down to $600. Number two, labor because every American wants a $1 an hour raise every time the earth goes around the sun because it's all based on astrology. Number three is lab, 10%.

Tiger:

Yep.

Howard:

So by the time-

Tiger:

Number four.

Howard:

So supplies is clear down there at six.

Tiger:

Yes.

Howard:

I know they're always to steer at the PPOs, the labor, the lab. Do you think they'll pay attention?

Tiger:

Here's why I'm pumped about it.

Howard:

Will they pay attention to the little number four?

Tiger:

Exactly. Yes, they will, here's why. For example, when you say savings on dental supplies. They will say, "Now I have to go on Safco, Net32," all these different companies and say, "I'm going to price compare everything."

Howard:

What did you say? You said Safco?

Tiger:

Yes.

Howard:

Safco and Net32?

Tiger:

In all these different companies.

Howard:

[crosstalk 00:06:06] a lot of them?

Tiger:

I hope you're not going to list them in the description. You know like-

Howard:

No, I mean I don't buy it.

Tiger:

Right, but this is what is going to happen, so if the dentist want to save money on dental supplies, they have to spend two hours doing research and then the funniest part ... Can I drop an F-bomb once in a while because I hate it.

Howard:

There's no F-word worse than Farran, so yes.

Tiger:

Okay.

Howard:

That's the bottom of the barrel [inaudible 00:06:29].

Tiger:

This is what I really hate, when you in Net32, the Net32 will show you that the CaviWipes the same thing, will cost 7.25, you say, "Add to cart," and then it shows up at 10.75, why? Because either you have to buy 40 or they're going to add the shipping cost, so all of that, like the dentist will tell me, they will say, "I'm not going to fucking waste my time on finding the best dental supplies because I'm going to have to spend 30,45 or even an hour trying to find a deal on something, I'm just going to go with Patterson." That's it. If we build the tool that's going to be so easy to use, super easy then the number four becomes a number one because it's a one sign up and you're ready to go.

Howard:

Okay. Now what I want to get out-of-the-way first is, I know you guys are driving 85% of the emails to Howard at Dentaltown.com said I'll listen to it on the way to work, so retweet ... I always like to retweet [inaudible 00:07:24], I am @HowardFarran and you're @Tiger_Siegel. S-I-E-G-E-L. Why Siegel and not Safarov?

Tiger:

It's just when I was playing around, when I set up a Twitter account for my old company Siegel Construction I put it under my name and I never changed it and I was like, "Oh [crosstalk 00:07:42]."

Howard:

I thought maybe you had a love affair with that Bugsy Siegel who started Las Vegas.

Tiger:

I mean if you want to, we can go there.

Howard:

It was Bugsy what was-

Tiger:

His last name I think was [inaudible 00:07:50].

Howard:

Not Bugsy Siegel?

Tiger:

I think it might be spelled differently but I might be wrong.

Howard:

And also I need to get it away, you're Russian. You know why I don't like Russians.

Tiger:

I know. We're going to work on it.

Howard:

Because I'm Irish and only 38% of Ireland is alcoholics but Russia beats us at 40%.

Tiger:

I know, I'll lose for you tonight if you want to.

Howard:

I want 2% of Russians to stop drinking so the Irish can be number one.

Tiger:

So one and a half percent.

Howard:

I'll tell you what, I thought that the most amazing vodka bar in the world is in Moscow and the bar is a hockey rink.

Tiger:

Yep.

Howard:

Have you seen that?

Tiger:

I think I've seen pictures on the-

Howard:

They give you a shot of vodka and it's sitting on a four inch ice rink, it is so amazingly cool-

Tiger:

And they have pickles next to it.

Howard:

When you go to Ireland and drink your Jameson Whisky, it's in like some Dixie cup or you know-

Tiger:

Yeah, and the bar looks like it's been there around for like 500 years.

Howard:

Yeah, yeah.

Tiger:

Yep.

Howard:

You think these guys are going to start getting serious of saving cost by going to your website, which I'm now on? Your website is Zensupplies so Zen. Whenever I think of Zen, I used to remember in high school I read this book Zen and The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance Repair.

Tiger:

Zen of [inaudible 00:09:12].

Howard:

Did you read that book?

Speaker 3:

[inaudible 00:09:15].

Howard:

That is a 10 million units sold book. In the 80s that was like the hippy religious book of all time. It was such a great book and it was given to ... I didn't to buy it, I went to Catholic primary school, a priest gave it me, he said, "Howie you got to check out this book." Anyway, what did Zen mean to you and why did you call it Zensupplies?

Tiger:

The reason is, it's very simple, every time you go to a dental office and remember we are first inventory management company, like we're first inventory management software. The whole price comparison and the whole like saving money came later. We first ... One of my buddies Scott Goldman who's got a big practice in Chicago, he called me up he said, "Tiger, this whole dental supply thing is total mess. I go in the office, I don't know how much light it can have. I had a patient today [will it have a heavy body 00:10:03] what do we do?" I'm like, "I'm going to figure it out."

I went, I sold my Siegel Construction, I put all my money into this and we figured out, we built the system. Then what happened is, we are sitting on a ton of data, like a ton of data right now, so Schein, Patterson, like all of the prices, I got it for this one company. I'm looking at it and Scott comes back to me, he says, "Who's got the best better price? I'm like, "What do you mean? You have the best price from Benco." He said, "But what about Schein?"

Now we started aha, so it's interesting now we're sitting on so much data and now Schein started approaching us and saying, "What do we need to be, in order to get that deal with that client?" I'm like, "Okay, I can't disclose that information, you should contact their client," and these and that, but it was interesting that now we're sitting on all this data and now we have solo doctors who are saying, "Tiger how much this should cost?" Then I say, "Well, how much did you pay?" They say, "$15." I'm like, "Well, it should be 7.99. I don't know from who and where, I'm not going to disclose that information," but I tell them that, that's where it needs to be. Then essentially it just became so easy that we need to build a price comparison tool where people can see what, where and how it's all going to work.

Howard:

You know what? I think Sam Walton was one of the greatest Americans of all time-

Tiger:

Walmart?

Howard:

Yeah, of Walmart in Bentonville, Arkansas, most of those great companies come from small town rural America where your word is your word, handshake.

Tiger:

Yeah, exactly. This right here.

Howard:

What he said that he thought that, "Mom is not stupid, you've had her going at a business sale every year for the last nine years, you're obviously not going out of business and why would everything cost cheaper on a Memorial Day, Labor Day, 4th of July and Samson you know what? I'm not going to play games with mom, we're doing everyday little cost and the secret to lower price, lower cost and all this marketing for the Labor Day sale and the Memorial Day sale and all this bullshit." He says, "I'm not playing games mom, we're doing everyday little pricing, we're going to make markup everything straight 12.5%." They don't do that in supplies, it's all a game-

Tiger:

Yep, it's all a game.

Howard:

Are you buying 40? Are you buying four? Are you buying for multiple [inaudible 00:12:07]. It's not everyday low cost and I'll you another thing, Bernie Marcus whose Atlanta Falcons almost won the Super Bowl this year except that they forget to show up for the second half, Bernie Marcus and when he had Home Depot, he four locations in Atlanta and he almost went bankrupt and his last desperation deal, he flew from Atlanta to Benton, to Little Rock, drove to Bentonville and the greatest CEOs always make a religion [inaudible 00:12:34] and he walks in there and he basically cried his heart out ... It's in his book, Built From Scratch Home Depot and Sam looked at his overhead, and he says, "You spent $100,000 for ..."

The new hot thing at Home Depot was the ceiling fan, everybody is buying a ceiling fan. He said, "You spent so much money marketing this 4th of July bullshit, would you like to have $100,000 cash, quit playing games, go to everyday low cost shopping." Walmart figured out, has 4,000 stores dead, Bernie Marcus figured out, now he is in the NFL Football but no one in dentistry has figured that. That you just quit playing games, just a box of this and I shouldn't have to buy 40 boxes in my little dental office-

Tiger:

Yeah, because you're not a warehouse.

Howard:

When you're a warehouse.

Tiger:

Yep.

Howard:

When do you think the game will come out of dental supplies?

Tiger:

See, this is what I tell your homies, somebody is got to do it. It's either us or somebody else but somebody is going to come in and say, "Okay, enough is enough. Enough playing games, enough of these free goods, enough of these buy two get one free, all of these," because you know it's all games, because the price is the price is the price.

Howard:

There's nothing free on earth.

Tiger:

Exactly. The price is the price. You got to pay the price and so one day somebody is going to come in and do it. I just hope that it's us because I'm willing to sit down with anybody and work with anybody, meet with Schein, meet with Patterson, meet with Benco, all these guys. I'm very friendly, let's get it done, lets ... But our mission is the mission.

Howard:

How would you work with them? I mean would you be their competitor?

Tiger:

I mean we do ... We talk to them.

Howard:

Oh, you're [inaudible 00:14:06]?

Tiger:

Yeah, we have a discussion. It's all interesting, nobody likes our model. This is what we've heard from one distributor telling us and say, "Tiger, so that you know, we hate you. We know if you will gain attraction we'll have to work with you but we will prefer not to," and our problem is this.

Howard:

How would you work, I mean ...

Tiger:

this is the problem. This is what distributors tell us, because we work, we can send the orders to Benco, to Schein, to anybody. We have 125 distributors on the platform.

Howard:

Oh, I see. You don't have a warehouse.

Tiger:

No.

Howard:

You don't sit on the stuff.

Tiger:

We're just a software.

Howard:

Oh, you're just software-

Tiger:

Yeah, we're just aggregating.

Howard:

Finding the best places. Okay.

Tiger:

Yep, so for example-

Howard:

Who are you mostly buying from?

Tiger:

Again we have no preference.

Howard:

Just lowest price?

Tiger:

Right, for example if you use Patterson-

Howard:

How many is on the total list?

Tiger:

Over 140 distributors.

Howard:

140?

Tiger:

Yeah.

Howard:

Just in the US?

Tiger:

Yeah. You get Ultradent, Top Quality Gloves, Benco, Schein, Patterson, all of them.

Howard:

When you said Ultradent, that's a manufacturer that sells direct.

Tiger:

Yep.

Howard:

So that 140 [crosstalk 00:15:07].

Tiger:

-One of those two.

Howard:

Companies who sell direct.

Tiger:

They sell direct and the distributor, so you will find somebody called Dental City. I don't who they are. We'll probably have five or six products from them because if we sign up a client for the inventory management, part of the process, they give us all of their invoices and they say, "Tiger we'll buy from all these companies." They send us their invoices, then we scan them, we upload their inventory in. If there's a distributor that we've never heard about, we will add them in the platform. Then they're not preferred, they're not verified, none of that. They're just on our platform.

That means if the customer wants to buy these five products from this distributor we'll fulfill the order. We'll make sure to grab it, send it to the distributor and figure out how to do it. The client should not worry about it. Now, one we have all this data though I can go back to Schein and I say, "Look guys, this client buying from Dental City who knows what, why don't we just send these orders to you, just give it to them at a dollar less expensive." You start funneling on this order. That's where ... We're in that aggregating orders.

Howard:

Would the dentist be getting supplies from UPS? Is it all UPS?

Tiger:

Yeah. Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Howard:

Would it be coming from all these different places?

Tiger:

It's if they want to. For example on our price comparison page, they can pick their own distributors, they can stick to their distributors. If somebody says, "Tiger, I love Patterson, they're my buddies. Go on a golf course with them, just knock your socks off. Keep that line of distributors but if there's one off or two, three products that you want to try out from our distributors that we have relationship with for example, they will say one product goes to that distributor so it's going to be less packaging but I have clients that do not care at all. They will say, "Lowest price, like that button. Everything is the lowest price and it can go to 55 different distributors if it has to.

Howard:

I want to talk about another, this is dentistry uncensored so we always talk about everything that's dark and creepy and eerily. Let's go right to price discrimination.

Tiger:

Yes.

Howard:

The United States [reports there're 00:17:00] three degrees of price discrimination, number one is ... I forgot what it's called but Bill Gates would have to pay $100 for a [inaudible 00:17:09] and I don't have to pay a dollar and Supreme Court says that's discrimination. What is that one called? Price discrimination, not volume, not geographic ...

Tiger:

My buddy Scott Drucker would know about that.

Howard:

Yeah. Are you Googling-

Speaker 3:

[inaudible 00:17:26] price discrimination-

Howard:

What is first degree price discrimination? Anyway, first degree I think is what the ... I forget what it is but the rich people would pay more and the poor people pay less. If you go to Los Angeles and you go to a Beverley Hills and all the way to Compton and went to Mcdonalds, hamburger [inaudible 00:17:52], gallon of gasoline, gallon of milk and bread it'll pretty much be the same price.

Number two is volume discount and the Supreme Court said that's legal but you got to show your math obviously if I buy one Barbie doll from Mattel and Walmart buys 10,000 obviously they're going to get it better, but you go to show your math because there's a lot of discrimination with that, with cotton farmers in the south, black guy [inaudible 00:18:15] than the white guy.

The third degree price discrimination is huge especially in dentistry and that is different geographies quite different prices. I see what I am paying for a bottle of bonding agent and then I go I [inaudible 00:18:32] in dental conventions in Sao Paulo, Brazil, New Delhi, India, Cambodia and that same bottle is 90% less. In pharmaceuticals, they'll sell Viagra $10 a pill, I don't buy them, I buy them for Ryan and I'm sorry Ryan. There're $10 a pill here and there're 50 cents in ...

Tiger:

Yep, the same pill.

Howard:

Then when Walmart said, "Well, you know were going to start buying our prescriptions in Hong Kong and then moving them back in." Then George Bush's infinite wisdom passed a law that banned the re-importation of prescriptions like how did all these old lady grandmas vote for a president and then he passes a law so that the Communist Chinese guy can buy the pill 90% off? There's a lot of third degree price discrimination in supplies and then if someone buys it in New Delhi and ships it back in then they say it's the gray market or the black market, what do they call it?

Tiger:

That's the gray market.

Howard:

The gray market, so what is your understanding of the gray market? How would you define my homies what the gray market is and what are your dentistry uncensored thoughts on the gray market?

Tiger:

It's very tricky, it's very interesting. A lot of companies do sell gray market even though we may not know, so when it's something that ... Let's just say a bonding agent or impression material or the mixing tips,  that something has to be stored in a specific temperature and all of this and I'm not a chemist, I don't know all the details but I've been told that these are the products that you have to make sure there're not a gray market ...

Howard:

That would be things that would break down in heat, like bonding agents.

Tiger:

Like mixing tips-

Howard:

[inaudible 00:20:15] little parts of mixing tip.

Tiger:

Yeah, I don't know why, I've been told that this is like a lawsuit against some company that was a gray market.

Howard:

Mixing tips and then what was it-

Tiger:

Like impression material.

Howard:

Impression material.

Tiger:

Right, something like a chemical related, I would have a concern about that.

Howard:

Yeah, we have got concerned [inaudible 00:20:30] because the inside of a UPS truck for six months in a year in Phoenix where it's 118 degree outside is an oven.

Tiger:

Yes, it's 150 degree probably inside.

Howard:

Oh, my God.

Tiger:

Yeah.

Howard:

I mean you get your supplies and somethings you can't even hold onto the box.

Tiger:

Yeah, and that's the problem. With these products it would a problem but then at the same point if somebody is selling a gray market tray cover paper, I don't know if it's an issue.

Howard:

Right.

Tiger:

Right, truthfully talking about it. Now, what we do with Zensupplies we vet everything, we actually go and visit the distributor right before we call them Zen verified or Zen preferred distributor, I actually meet them face to face and believe it or not this is a funny story. When we just started about seven months ago, we realized that we need to do price comparison and so I started reaching out to companies and everybody is like,"Fuck you, fuck you, I don't want to talk to you, I don't want to talk to you. We don't want to do this," and all of my dentists, all my clients are like, "Tiger, we really need this."

I found this one company, I won't say their name, in New York. I called them and I said, "Guys, I have the orders, give me the bank account information and we're going to wire you the money, just let's get a deal done." They said, "Fuck you." I said, "All right, it's not going to work." I flew to meet them, I stand at their office, outside the building, the guy shows up I'm like, "Yo." He's like, "I think it's a scam, like you're telling me you're going to give me an order and the money and I don't have to do anything for that?"

I'm like, "Yeah, just fulfill the Goddamn order, send it to where I want you to send it to, that's it?" He didn't believe it so we had to sit down spend two hours, he needed to see face to face and now it's one of our best distributors. We literally send them the orders, they're fulfilling, their prices are great.

Howard:

In New York, who is it?

Tiger:

I won't tell you.

Howard:

Well, I know there's a lot of them but one of the big ones in New York ...

Tiger:

They're very small, super small but give good prices. Like they have house brand-

Howard:

Why did you say [inaudible 00:22:22]?

Tiger:

Zen is like, you see how much mess we have with dental supplies? Between the gray market, price fixing all of that. When I looked at all this and specifically inventory management, that's where my passion is when I go in the office, and I see that they don't know how much they have products, the biggest thing about our platform when we're set and done, we tell them, we will tell your homies and we'll say, "Look, right now we have $35,344.79 worth of dental inventory." No one can do it. There's none software out there that will do it for you and so that's our thing and that's why we-

Howard:

You were down here and I was very impressed that ... When you were coming to Phoenix you got Mark Costes [inaudible 00:23:01]

Tiger:

Mark is a great friend.

Howard:

He's been on the show. How many offices does he own now?

Tiger:

10 or 11.

Howard:

Yeah, and how old is he?

Tiger:

He's like 32 like me.

Howard:

Yeah, and he's a baby, and he's crushing it and what I like about Costes is he reminds me so much of ... Who's the guy, SouthWest Airlines Herb Kelleher?

Tiger:

Yes.

Howard:

Herb Kelleher wanted every, he said, "The secret to lower prices, is we're going to have every plane be the same."

Tiger:

737 yep.

Howard:

All these other companies are learning to maintenance all these planes, all these work and you go to Mark Costes he's got a dozen offices and you go into any operatory and open the third drawer and it's the same thing.

Tiger:

It's the same thing, yep and that's why he got it.

Howard:

Just that little attention to detail, and of his doctors can walk in any office and if they need this, they pull that drawer and I need to get him to come down [crosstalk 00:23:56].

Tiger:

You know his story? You know that he applied to dental school 21 times?

Howard:

Really?

Tiger:

Yes. That's why I love him. This is the thing, I don't know if you'd agree with me but there're only few people in dental industry that do things first and then go talk about it. There're way too many people that will try to tell you that, "Buy my course or do this and do that," then when it's actually to work, they don't even know the details. Like Gary Takacs for example one of them, he's got the practice, he will test things out and then he'll go and coach people. Mark is, he will try things out and then go and try to give it to his mastermind people. Like he will always try it first.

When I approached him a couple of months ago, first I just wanted to be friends because he's a great guy, same as you are, I just wanted to approach him, make sure that we have this relationship and then he said, "What do you do?" I said the Zensupplies, he's like, "Well, let me try." I said, "Well, let's give it a time." Now he said, "Let me try it in one office and then I'll tell my people if it's a good product or not."

I said, "No problem let's do it." Another part is I get people that approach us and they say, "Can we try it but we're not going to pay for it." He's the one who said up, paid the whole thing, he's like, "I want to experience everything. I want to experience the payment, how it goes, this and that so when I put my word on it, I know 100% that it's going to work." That's why I love him.

Howard:

Nice, nice. How long has this company been out, how many-

Tiger:

20 months.

Howard:

20 months, so your brand is spanking new. How's [inaudible 00:25:27]?

Tiger:

I'll be very honest, I expected a lot more, but I also know the market is the market. That we're adjusting, we're learning, we're learning what the doctors want, we're learning how the sign up is going to go, so we're signing up, we're almost at 90 locations.

Howard:

90 offices, if you were to get a job as rep for Patterson, Benco, [inaudible 00:25:49] you wouldn't have a 90 offices buying from these first?

Tiger:

We're a software company, we should do it all different play.

Howard:

You're in Chicago, that's where the American Dental Association is at 211, North Chicago Avenue

Tiger:

North.

Howard:

Have you talked to anybody there?

Tiger:

No.

Howard:

What do my homies find if they go to Zensupplies.com? What's going to be on there?

Tiger:

They will have a green button on the top right corner that will say,'Schedule the Demo' and they will be prompted to my schedule, they will schedule the time that's convenient for them and I'll be personally on the demo to make sure that we give the best. On top of it they have all ...

Howard:

What do you think ... A lot of Dentists they always say [inaudible 00:26:37], what should the overhead of supplies?

Tiger:

4.5%.

Howard:

You think it should be 4.5%.

Tiger:

It's should be 4.5. There's no reason why, it should be more.

Howard:

What do you think the range is in dentistry today?

Tiger:

69.

Howard:

69.

Tiger:

Yep.

Howard:

If it's 69, if you were the nine you could cut it in a half.

Tiger:

Yes and you know the biggest thing is the habit. Their habit is holding one or two percent of the overhead. The habit of, "No, it's convenient for me to call this rep. No I actually like this bonding agent because it smells better," and all these things. If they really want to save, I can get them to 4.5%.

Howard:

Yeah, and the other thing I've heard, I mean I've met a lot of dental supply reps and a lot of ... and something those supply reps say, well a lot [inaudible 00:27:24] is because everything they buy is a Mercedes Benz another thing they mad at is, "Okay this office has two dentists and three hygienists and they order five different kind of gloves." There's a lot of ... You coach them on ...

Tiger:

It's all there, it's all in the platform. They can see it because you see, this is what I love about this conversation.

Howard:

When you [inaudible 00:27:49] you'll ... And you schedule the demo, you ...

Tiger:

I'll show them the system.

Howard:

But I mean, this platform we're talking about can they see that?

Tiger:

Mm-hmm (affirmative), they'll have to sign up, upload all their inventory and-

Howard:

How much does it cost to sign up?

Tiger:

The set-up fee is 2.99 so that we get the inventory, we convert that inventory, and we coach them and then-

Howard:

Also you get their existing inventory.

Tiger:

Yeah, all of the invoices, whatever they bought in the last 12 months we upload it all up. You give me Ultradent, [inaudible 00:28:18], all of the invoices, my team will convert that into virtual inventory and then we'll coach them what to do with our product in the inventory and things like that. We'll tell them how to use an iPad so now they walk around with an iPad to control their inventory.

Howard:

You know this whole distributor direct model is even ... There's people who sell direct like Ultradent, [inaudible 00:28:38], there's people that only sell to distributors like [inaudible 00:28:41] but now there's companies so big like Dentsply, Sirona, where they own divisions where like [inaudible 00:28:49] dental product is one of their division who sells direct and then other ones of their divisions only go through distributors and it's kind of ... You're seeing that more and more, some companies that [inaudible 00:28:59].

Tiger:

Yeah, and I think it's going to be an interesting shift. Amazon like we started the conversation will help with that, if anything else Amazon will just try to bring this ... At least will shake the industry. I don't think Schein is going to go anywhere, and I don't think Patterson is going to go anywhere and Benco. Patterson might have some changes but Benco and Schein, they're very, very sure, they're very good companies. I have a lot of friends in two of these companies and they're very, very good people.

Howard:

Have you talked to Chuck and Rick?

Tiger:

Chuck and Rick at Benco?

Howard:

At Benco.

Tiger:

No, I talked to Mike Burns and couple of other guys.

Howard:

Chuck and Rick are totally, totally available. Have you talked to Stan Bergman?

Tiger:

I did. Do you know how I met him?

Howard:

How?

Tiger:

Chicago, [inaudible 00:29:39] conference this past February, so I have my little iPad Mini, I walk around and I see him there. I never met him before so I roll up to my seat-

Howard:

Is he Russian?

Tiger:

No.

Howard:

German?

Tiger:

He's from South Africa.

Howard:

Oh, that's right.

Tiger:

He's a baller. I roll up to my guys at Schein, the regional managers, "Hey guys you know this is Stanley Bergman can you introduce me?" They're like, "Buddy you're on your own." I'm like, "Okay fine, I roll up to him I shake my hand." He's like, "What do you do?" I said, "I have this Inventory management software." He's like, "No way." I pluck the buttons and I say, "Look, I can control everything and I can see prices and everything." He's like, "Why do you have Patterson there?" I'm like, "Well, because it's a software."

He called like two of his right hand guys, they come up and I show it to them and we have a little conversation and one of the guys, really awesome guys, he's like, "I'm going to email you." I'm like, "Bullshit. I had that before like from so many people." The next morning I get an email saying, "Do you do online demos?" I say, "Yes." He's like, "Let's schedule one." Then they scheduled the demo within a week. That's why I think they're always pro-active, they're always looking ahead, I think those companies will succeed.

Howard:

I was most impressed with Stan Bergman, [inaudible 00:30:45] in 87, started my little black and white newsletters [inaudible 00:30:49] 94 and then in 1999, instead of a $10 subscription magazine, which went to 4,000 dentist a month, I went to DentalTown and changed everything from Farran because it was no longer [inaudible 00:31:03], it was a flat organization as DentalTown and a Website and I'm sitting at a patient and Stan Bergman called my office and said, "Tell me about this DentalTown." I started telling him, he goes, "No, come and tell me." I said, "When do you want me to come?"

He goes, "I don't care, whenever you're in New York." I said, "What time do you get to your office?" He said, "Eight o'clock." Oh my God, I finished up my patients, one of [inaudible 00:31:28] called and there was a Red-Eye flight from Phoenix to New York. I left, flew clear across the country on my own, got to his office at 6 o'clock in the morning and sat on the pouch and My God I couldn't believe it called he took me to his office, he talked to me for like two hours. I said, "How does a CEO of Schein have two hours with some punk ass kid from Phoenix?" He's so damn cool. We've been trying to arrange a time to do this. I want to Skype him and he don't want to be Skype I think [crosstalk 00:32:00] New Orleans. New Orleans do that.

Tiger:

He's very old school.

Howard:

They're going to upload all this stuff, do you think ... What are their barriers to resistance you think you've got from our staff?

Tiger:

The barriers we get, first of all the team members will say, "Well, I'm so busy right now. I don't have time, I don't know if I want to do this. I don't know if it's worth my time, we're okay with inventory. The biggest thing that I fight against is the rubber band. Have you seen the rubber band in the office? How they're managing inventory with the rubber band?

Howard:

You put that, [inaudible 00:32:39].

Tiger:

Yes. I did the funny video on Facebook for people because literally you lose the rubber band, and go somewhere, how are you going to manage the inventory? We have some team members who resist sometimes and then sometimes we have people that ... Literary last week one client, he looks at the order, we show him that we're going to save 27.6% on the order, 27.6. Some products are generic against the brands but a lot of products are brand to brand. Now, we're saving 27.6%, he said, "I get free shipping from one of my big bucks distributors. I'm okay, I'm going to stick with my distributors." That was about $200 per one order that we were saving. I was like ...

Howard:

I always tell people that if they've got and intelligent business decision that's black and white, start forcing corporate, they're the only one who make black and white decisions like that. Like Costes, he's already doing it, he's already got a dozen offices. Corporate is just more [crosstalk 00:33:42]-

Tiger:

But then essentially we turn ourself to the solo doctors because we want to help the solo doctors. Our system is not that difficult. It's super easy to use, you just got to rely on it. You can use it, it's a good system.

Howard:

Well, I mean corporate is obviously someone with 700 locations and [inaudible 00:34:01] obviously they would do this internally but long time corporate is where I see most corporate size is a [inaudible 00:34:12] who has a location North, South, East, West in Sydney, three or four because the only corporate I see really delivering value is, it takes four or five offices where you can have a level of management, we can have someone focus on HR-

Tiger:

Yep, supplies.

Howard:

Advertising, supplies. The general dentist, the family practice field you have to wear so many hats. The only time I ever see it working is if one spouse is doing the dentistry and the other spouse is doing the business. I know [inaudible 00:34:48] all the farmers, whether it was wheat, dairy cattle, the 20% who when dad is out on the tractor and mum is at the kitchen table like this with a calculator and doing all this, they were crashing it.

The 80% where dad was on a tractor and no one was doing the business, like so much of private dentists. You work with 90 offices, do you see anything that the more successful, profitable, growing businesses are doing that the least less profitable-

Tiger:

Yes. One thing.

Howard:

One thing what?

Tiger:

Mindset.

Howard:

Mindset.

Tiger:

That's it. You know it. I always talk about this. The days of opening an office and hanging the dentist sign and hoping that somebody is going to come in are gone.

Howard:

Disagree, disagree.

Tiger:

Tell me why.

Howard:

If you're two hours out of a town away from the airport, if it takes you two hours to drive to Phoenix airport or the Chicago airport, everyone, two hours aways away from a major airport, goes out sets up, they don't any either PPO fees so instead of in Phoenix where I charge $1,000 for a crown but I have to adjust it down to 600, [inaudible 00:36:04] the rural, I'll say, "I'll charge 1,200 for a crown." Those guys will do, they'll do one crown in Phoenix, 1,000 but it's adjusted to 600 and their overhead might be 500 on it, then you go to Maricopa-

Tiger:

Two hours away.

Howard:

And you can do a crown for 1,200, no adjustment, so there's two Americas.

Tiger:

Yeah, okay.

Howard:

There's 147 big cities where two thirds of the dentists go and half of America lives, then there's a 19,000 towns where the other half of America lives and only one third of the dentists go to and by the time you're two hours away from the big city's airport, you're freaking doing $1000,000 taking on 350 a year and all you have is a sign. Plus one more thing not to cut you short but if you go to a town of 5,000 and you open a dental office, how long does it take every person in that town to figure out?

Tiger:

I mean, if you're the only dentist.

Howard:

No, I mean a new dentist. Like, either I know so many dentists way out in the middle of nowhere that they to Walmart and Walmart sells off parcels of their parking lot because they want an end destination, I mean they don't want you to drive two hours in from the farm and that's it.

If someone wants to open up an ice cream store, restaurant, dental office, they want it to be the end destination and this sounds so weird to big city slickers but you know when you're out there in the middle of nowhere on a Friday night what are you going to do? And the family wants to go to drive into, they might be some chicken house restaurant or an IHOP so then [crosstalk 00:37:43]

Tiger:

Yes, I can see that.

Howard:

Then that dentist goes in that parking lot and he builds a freestanding building and Walmart is like ... They're like we want to build a [inaudible 00:37:49], Walmart is like, "Freaking build it." They build that dental office, that first Friday and Saturday night, everyone within an hour drive to that Walmart knows-

Tiger:

That there's a dentist.

Howard:

That's another reason why they're so clever, they also let the RVs park there in a store for free.

Tiger:

For free, yeah.

Howard:

For two reasons, one is the money, when you park your RV there and [inaudible 00:38:13], they're going to go in there and restock their RV, so they'll buy couple hundred worth of stuff but the flip side of that is you're out in the middle of [inaudible 00:38:23], Oklahoma and you talking to some guy that drove all the way from New Jersey driving across the flyover state and it's just cool, he's sitting out there and they break out the lawn chair drinking a beer.

Those dental offices will open up in that Walmart parking lot, they'll do no marketing advertising ever and they'll 300 patients a month and do $1,000,000 collection the first year and in those small towns, the average, a $10 an hour job is kick-butt and everything is cheaper.

Anyway there's two Americas, the urban where two thirds of the Kids are going to go, so now like the fancy restaurants, the [inaudible 00:38:58] they have to get sophisticated and they got to be business [inaudible 00:39:04].

Tiger:

You agree with that model, the sign dentist will not work, you got to hustle.

Howard:

In the city.

Tiger:

Yeah, in the city right because you might be competing with somebody who's already there, whose already doing Yelp previews and Google reviews and crushing it right? Now you come in with a sign you're not going to succeed and so I think it all comes down to the mind set and what you wan to do.

I always talk about, if the dental profession is so amazing you can literally finish your dental school and you can become an entrepreneur by opening up one office and you can set your schedule 6 to 2, 7 to 4, however you want to do it or you can work 24/7 including Saturday, Sunday.

It's your choice how you want to work but everything outside of dental, if you want to an entrepreneur there's no way you can work 7 to 2, you work 24/7, all the time and the chance of surviving is less than one percent or five percent.

In dentistry, you can have one office, you can have a nice life but I'm talking about somebody who has one office but not happy, wants to grow, they need to have the right mindset. They have to have the systems in place, they need to make sure that they understand what they're doing.

Howard:

It's almost like there's all the noise about corporate dentistry and then I must be staring at a parallel universe because corporate is gone from like zero to 12% in the last decade of all the dentistry, so they're thinking, "Oh, we're going to ... [inaudible 00:40:29] 12 we're going to 24 to 48 and 2010 on [inaudible 00:40:33] like dude, I don't care if you're the 90% of the social jobs which is in the private sector individuals or the 12% at corporate, no one is keeping associates.

When you go in and you talk to those CEOs,"So how long is your average associate on?" They go, "You're not going to quote me are you?" Some of them will say, "We can't keep the average one a year." They good ones are saying, "About 80% I'm leaving two years." Then you talk .... Like all my friends in Phoenix, every single one who's my age, been doing it 30 years, I'll say, how may associates have you had? "Five, usually they'll stay two, three." In my 30 year I've had three ... I think a couple stayed a decade, three stayed seven and that the A pluses and there's a lot of them, one or two start their own practice.

I don't see where these people are, that want to go to eight years of dental practice to be your employee, I don't want to work for you. Almost everyone wants their own damn, Homo Sapiens wants their own damn cave, their own damn house, doesn't want neighbors, doesn't want neighbors, doesn't want to live under thumb, they don't like checks and balances, they don't like transparency and yet all of a sudden we're going to turn into Zombies , we're all going to work for-

Tiger:

Corporate.

Howard:

The SP500. I don't see any evidence of this.

Tiger:

I think you're right. I think what's happening, if you look at it from a bigger standpoint, I think again this is all good because there are dentists out there that just don't like the business aspect. I'm so happy that the corporate is growing because there're so many GSOs that will actually give a damn about what you're feeling are.

They will sit down and say, "So what do you like?" You say, "Well, I love this, I love this, I like doing this." They'll say, "Okay, so give us 45, " whatever the percentage, however they decide to do it and they will get it done. Now, the dentist can focus on the dentistry and do what they love to do. I think it's a great thing, but at the same time you're right, that a lot of dentists have that entrepreneurial nerve within them that they want to have their own office and I don't think it's going to go away.

Howard:

Have you talked to John Miles?

Tiger:

Not yet.

Howard:

You know who he is?

Tiger:

Not yet.

Howard:

We had a guy on the show who is the most connected man in corporate, again corporate is got a [inaudible 00:42:44], there's like 35, we have like 50 locations or more and they get all the noise as corporate. Then you got all the individual dentists and almost all of them are incorporated LLC, so the name corporate dentistry is completely insane. When was the last time you met a dentist who didn't have an accountant, make them an LLC or [inaudible 00:43:03] whatever, but there's this middle market of corporate, not the 35 ones that have 50 or more locations, not all the individuals that have one location but-

Tiger:

Five to 15.

Howard:

I would say actually four. When you go to so many of these towns that have like 10,000, 20,000 people, they realize, well, if you're going to do radio, if you're going to do billboard, if you're going to do advertising, they're not going to drive all the way across town, why don't we do a north, south, east, west and then downtown we can just have five, six employees.

There's someone in HR, someone in advertising, someone in supplies and these guys are really adding value because the dentist who doesn't have a stay home spouse to do all the business now they're getting all these efficiencies that pay for that [inaudible 00:43:58].

I don't see the efficiencies like ... Say you had a corporate in Arizona, not matter what efficiencies are doing, they need money, but then they got to ship 15% to a headquarter location and what could that headquarter location do to lower your overhead 10%, 12%, 50% but that first layer, I say they [inaudible 00:44:21] nine to four and a half, they got you better deals, that they were doing your HR-

Tiger:

[inaudible 00:44:25].

Howard:

Yeah. People, employees, every day they need motivation, inspiration, perspiration, deodorant, floss, all the HR stuff, the evaluations and I think that would be my target market because those guys, when they see a straight forward, black and white business deal, they jump on it.

Tiger:

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Howard:

Yeah, but I'll fix you with that guy, I think we're seeing him in New Orleans in two weeks but he's the number one consultant with all those people who have five to 10 offices.

Tiger:

Okay.

Howard:

They're all over and they're mostly all over the Midwest, North Dakota, South Dakota, Iowa, Kentucky, Tennessee and they're just crushing. You said mindset was the number one thing. I always say you got to stay hungry, you got to have a hard work ethic, obviously you're a hustler.

I think Grant Cardone says it all the time, if you're American and you hustle you're going to make it. If you're lazy and entitled and sitting on the couch waiting for your humble, humble people listen to their customers, they listen to their employees, they listen always.

Here's the one that really freaks out is they're curious. There's just some kids even when they're two or three years old they just say, "I don't know and that's the end of it." There's that other kid like, the smart as curious Thomas Edison who made 10,000 light bulbs before [crosstalk 00:45:50] and there's just some dentist I know whether it's, "Why did that root canal fail? Why did that implant not work or why is my overhead high?" Those dentists are so damn smart it just comes from what are they curious about? If they're just curious about clinical they usually can be some of the best dentists in the world.

Tiger:

100%

Howard:

With really high overhead. If you're curious about business, my God, they can crush it. [crosstalk 00:46:19].

Tiger:

It starts with that curiosity it all starts again with just the very simple asking questions. Why is it this? Why is it that? How is it this and is this? It doesn't make sense? It doesn't mean you're always going to have answers but it's like just process, starting the process, like having that within your routine of continuously asking yourself questions.

Howard:

Yeah. I see rural over urban, you see mindset. We both agree on mindset and I also see fearless and when [inaudible 00:46:59] May 11th, I had my link signed, my office open, I was seeing patients September 21st. These freaking kids want to walk around the swimming pool for three or four and go, "Well, I should do a GPR. I should go work at corporate or I should pay down some debt."

When basically what they're saying for three or four or five years, "I'm just a chicken shit I'm not going to dive in the pool," and there're some of us who just walked out dental school and went to the swimming pool and dove in head first because they ... I don't know why you can fear if you buy a dental office in America, not even .4% default on their loan, so it can't be a competitive industry. What percent of restaurants, if you started a restaurant, what percent of restaurants-

Tiger:

80%.

Howard:

Yeah, 80% will be bankrupt within how many years?

Tiger:

Five.

Howard:

Yeah, 80% fail rate. Dentistry, .4%, what are you afraid of? When people tell me and [inaudible 00:47:51] we're going to start a restaurant, I always say, "Dude, don't do it." They say, "Why?" I say, "Because there's a 45% chance you'll fail and you're not young and dumb and single, you got a spouse and three kids." Then in dental school they come out and ... Why do they live in fear? Why does it take them three or four years?

Tiger:

Because I think ... I'll use somebody's else philosophy on that, is I think lately the fear has been fed to us because there's so many blue pills for that that people are willing to sell you. I think it's the ...

Howard:

You mean like, Zoloft ... You mean antidepressant?

Tiger:

[crosstalk 00:48:31] I'm more like, there's a consultant for that, there's a seminar for that then you can go in and then you can do instead of actually doing. There was a Facebook post recently by [inaudible 00:48:43] on dental [inaudible 00:48:44]. He did a ...

Howard:

He's [inaudible 00:48:46]?

Tiger:

He's a great guy.

Howard:

Yeah, he's a great guy. When he spoke at Arizona State Dental Association I think I cried twice during the presentation and then [crosstalk 00:48:56].

Tiger:

He's got an incredible story.

Howard:

Oh, yeah.

Tiger:

They're going to kill it, I mean there's no question about it. He did a post on some seminar, I won't say the names but dental, the [inaudible 00:49:06] market and how you're going do this and this and how little amount of people sign up and so he opened up for people to ask questions and that was primarily targeting for somebody to go from one to go from one or two or three or four offices.

I did a big post there and I said why do you need to have a seminar for $1,500 dollars on how to build a DSO, how to go from one or two or three offices when you can listen to your podcast, when you can listen to Mark Costes  podcast where he shares everything he does, not pay a damn dime and just learn yourself, because now it's just so cool to go in a seminar, spend $1,500 and somebody will tell you what to do and you're not going to do it.

Howard:

Well, I tell you what, the reason I've haven't done the multiple locations, what I did differently is I did turn the keys. What I would do is I would go, I'd say, they're just not getting it done. What I'd do is I'd say, I'll just get it done for them.

What I would do is kind of flying under the radar and go rent 2,000 square feet and the landlord would say, "Well, I'll charge you $10 a square foot for three year lease." I'd say, "No, make it $20 square foot for a five year lease and you do the built out, because you built this 18 acre parcel obviously what I would pay to have that built out would be twice of what you'll pay," and they all said, "Okay."

Then I go to, at the time it was [inaudible 00:50:24] I'd say, "Okay, you stock out the whole deal, load it all up and that be like $70,000, $80,000 dollars and I say, "Well, I'm not going to give you a dime, it's going to be a five year lease and to own." I got my free build out, stocked it all in equipment.

Then I go back to my office and get rid of the three little hanging fruit in my worse receptions, my worst assistant, my worst hygienist, put them over there then I hire a great associate and I'll say, "I'll pay you 25% of whatever this house collects."

I have no money down, I've got an associate there making 25%, after 24 months of data, I go down to my bank, to the small SBA department, I give them all the doctors data, the revenue, the sales and I'd say, "Can you give me ... Can [inaudible 00:51:21] $250,000 and they say, "Absolutely." Then I don't [inaudible 00:51:25], "By the way here's your pay cheque, but if you sign here, it's your practice."

They look at it and they go, "Are you serious? God day." They didn't even ... I mean they just shit their pants because 24 four year payment for quarter million dollars and boom and I'd sit there and say, "I have no money." I couldn't even figure the return on invest of that because I have no money into it and I made a quarter million dollars.

I used to do that because I still, this is what I firmly believe, whatever the business model is for corporate dentistry has not been discovered yet. I think if you're going to find it, it will be for more models like a law firm, I'll tell you why. If I have the lawyers or individuals and have the lawyers, work in corporate but you know what, if I go work in a law firm and I'm young like you, I'm hustling. I'm getting new business, I'm all that stuff. If I'm just really crushing it, one night we'll go have dinner and I'll say, "You made partner." Now you're not an employee-

Tiger:

You're a partner.

Howard:

You're a partner, you can't [inaudible 00:52:30] but in corporate dentistry there's no light at the end of the tunnel, it's like you're an employee now, and you'll be an employee five years from now, 10 years from now, 20 years from now, 50 years from now.

Tiger:

I just recently heard from Tom Larkey that ...

Howard:

[inaudible 00:52:44].

Tiger:

Yeah, so I'm sure you know about him. His is I think Lexington, Kentucky. He's a very, very cool guy.

Howard:

Dentist?

Tiger:

Yes.

Howard:

Okay.

Tiger:

He's been around ... He's a great so you might want to have him on the podcast, very, very good guy. I think he works somewhere right now where he matches associates with-

Howard:

The guy right here, Lexington, Kentucky?

Tiger:

Yeah.

Howard:

Yeah.

Tiger:

That's him.

Howard:

Okay.

Tiger:

He matches associates with the practices and he said some stories where the doctors would hang their assistants for three to four years say, "Well, it's going to come, it's going to come. We're going to figure out, we're going to figure out. We're going to figure out."

The associate is like, "Come, like let's figure out." Then boom, they leave just because they just don't want to wait. I'm always surprised like why can't you have a clear path and figure out, "Okay so this is what I'm going to do."

Howard:

You made a great point, when you're a young dentist we all see this every year for 30 years, you want to go get a job and the old man says, "Well you know, I'm 63 and I'm going to retire when I'm 65, come give me the two best years of your life and I'll sell you the practice." Okay, at 65 they never sell their practice, you know how much money you have to have to never have a paycheck again? Because two years later does his wife need a new car? Probably, do they want to go on a vacation, probably, do the kids need a [inaudible 00:54:02]?

They never retire. They string you along, string you along, string you along and you quit. Why doesn't he want to sell you a partnership? Because when you get married and have great sex and children and go on vacation together that fills half the time. Now you're married to a dentist, no sex, no kids, no social blues and you're married to him. Again I think the final solution for corporate would come from these big accounting firms, Price Water Consulting law firms but it has not been discovered yet in dentistry. Nobody is keeping their associates.

If you come out there at 25 and you're going to set up four or five locations and you're going to practice til you're 65, your average associate is going to be somewhere between one to two years in big corporate for 80% of associates and all the private it's the same thing. Two years, seven years, like Sam had a couple for a decade but that is a couple out of three years. I don't see where that model is coming from and then there's so much misinformation, they'll say, "Well, she's a soccer mom, she's mostly [inaudible 00:55:15]." A soccer mom is some one who says, "You know, my daughter's got a fever, I'm not coming in." She [inaudible 00:55:21] get permission from the office manager.

Maybe it's two o'clock in the afternoon, the school calls and it says, "Your kid just vomited," and she says, "Cancel my last two appointments, I'm out of here." A real soccer mom owns her own business, calls the shots, again I see no evidence for a dentist, for my homies I see no evidence that there's this large pool of people who want to be your employee. What I see on Dental Town, you can't get two dentists to agree that today is Thursday. I mean why don't you go ask a dentist, what is the best impression material? Are you kidding me?

There's 400 dental implants for sale and every know it all dentist can tell you why his is the best one and you're a fool ... I mean, and now they're going to be our employee and behave? And be told what to do and use this impression material in the end? They're too highly educated. It's like military with a three star general in their office, his name was [inaudible 00:56:22] is my rough and tough assistant and she goes, "[inaudible 00:56:26] military, do you think [inaudible 00:56:30] military?" That goes, "Hell, no." She like, "Oh my God, she thought everyone is going to agree with her." She's like, "Ed, I'm a girl. Why should there be women in the military?" He says, "The only people dumb enough to take that hill with bullets flying out is a boy between about 17 and 22."

By the time a boy is 30, he's finally smart enough where a girl is at 15 and says, "I think we do that really [inaudible 00:56:58] and they just want young and dumb and young and dumb." I just don't see a ... I see big companies that have half a million employees, they're like Walmart. Most of their employees didn't finish high school, they're young, they're poor, they're undereducated. By the time you get into like ... You're an engineer.

Tiger:

Yeah.

Howard:

By the time you get into engineers, lawyers, CPAs, it's like hurting cats. If you told me, "I want to have a company that had half a million people." I'd say, "Well. They're going to be young boys in the military under 22. Too young and dumb to ask questions or maybe just a bunch of poor uneducated people." But could you imagine running ... Like say there was one dental office in America and you owned it. There are 211,000 alive today that have [inaudible 00:57:55]." 150,000 practice general dentistry [inaudible 00:57:59]. 30,000 are specialists but say all 211,000 worked for you.

Tiger:

I would be insane, I would lose my mind.

Howard:

What do you think the age of a partner would like? You would have to drop acid on the way to work just to even try to take in what the hell these guys were saying. I mean managing 211 ... I'd rather teach 211,000 cats to swim in the English Channel. That would be a shit load easier than getting 211,000 dentist to agree on anything.

Tiger:

You're right. You have a good point.

Howard:

They're too educated.

Tiger:

Again it's really hard to say, there were cases in the history of other industries that was impossible to do, someone came in and figured it out. We'll get to see, the market is the market, we'll figure out but it think the points that you're saying, you're absolutely right because it's just so hard to imagine that that will be dominated. Everybody is saying, "Well, the medical did it and then the dentistry will go then same way." What do you think?

Howard:

Well, the medical had ... That's a great point and it's actually worse but the technology in medicine, the CAT scanner, the MRI, the equipment got so crazy that you couldn't buy a $5,000,000 MRI machine and have one guy use it [inaudible 00:59:17] but at the same time the insurance companies took over the distribution. Right now, you got al these PPOs that what would happen to dentistry if all the ... What would happen if [inaudible 00:59:31] Delta Dental bought [inaudible 00:59:32] Dental and Pacific Dental and [inaudible 00:59:35] Dental so they controlled selling the insurance and then they controlled filling the orders. In healthcare, the people selling the insurance started buying the hospitals.

Then another thing that the government to a blind eye to is, every body is complaining about how Obamacare, all the rates, the [inaudible 00:59:56] and you don't really see a lot of evidence for that. What you really see a lot of evidence for that, where you really see a lot of evidence is that the last 15, 20 years every single market in town and the rural where there were two major hospitals, they're all consolidated into one. What happens when two competitors consolidate into one?

Tiger:

There's no competition, the cost goes up.

Howard:

The raise their prices.

Tiger:

Yeah.

Howard:

The real problem in healthcare is the people selling the insurance bought the hospitals, that was their first move, then all this merger and acquisition deal right there on your New York Stock Exchange where everybody is watching as they consolidate, they even [inaudible 01:00:32] report by merging and consolidating, we can raise our prices. I would say medicine dentistry will follow medicine if Delta and Blue Cross [inaudible 01:00:46] but ... That would be a deal. What's funny is the people that complain the most about corporate dentistry on the [inaudible 01:00:53] circuit are always the same people telling you you need $150,000 [inaudible 01:00:58], you need $150,000 CVCT, you need $100,000 laser. It's like dude, If you bought those three things you just forced corporate because now I got ti go from one to two or three and then if I got three people in group then maybe we'll join another group then it will [inaudible 01:01:14] will come and buy both of us. I would say, I would be worried about buying all the high price stuff and I'd be keeping an eye out on your insurance companies.

Tiger:

Yeah, and in between managing the business. Simple.

Howard:

I just want to say this, I think you are young and hungry and humble and you're hustler and I respect that and this is not a commercial, [inaudible 01:01:43] did you pay me money?

Tiger:

I mean I left [crosstalk 01:01:47].

Howard:

What your favorite restaurant [inaudible 01:01:50]?

Tiger:

No, the Russian standard.

Howard:

That's what it's called.

Tiger:

Yeah, or drink [inaudible 01:01:54].

Howard:

What I would say about the Russian ... Did you ever hear about the Russian [inaudible 01:02:01]?

Tiger:

No.

Howard:

This is really, really interesting so the brain has what they call blood-brain barrier and it keeps everything out. You'll notice that people who are serious about their drinking, when you drink dark stuff like Jack Daniels Whisky, there's like three or four hundred per million impurities from the barrel, everything that makes it brown so then when you drink it dilates your arteries and your veins, those impurities get in there and then you have a hangover.

Your hardcore alcoholics learn all those lessons, they stay away from all the darks, the browns they migrate to a vodka but the Russians wouldn't just make the vodka once, they'd filter it again and they'd it again and some of them, like you go to Moscow I think there's a level four vodka, it's been charcoal filtered four times. You go to Moscow [inaudible 01:02:53] but some physician he was realizing that and he says, "I wonder if we need to get the antibiotics or the medication into the brain, I wonder if they take the medication with a shot of Vodka-"

Tiger:

Would it go faster?

Howard:

The Vodka would dilate the arteries and veins if we can get it and he started doing these experiments, where you take the medication, they do [inaudible 01:03:15] fluid no trace of the antibiotic, give out the medication. Give the medication with a shot of vodka and it show up in the [inaudible 01:03:22] fluid. It opened up a new door that says, "Hey, these areas that we thought can never get medication before, there are ways to open up the blood brain barrier and the most obvious one is Vodka and every alcoholic figured out that it must dilate the [inaudible 01:03:37] because when you drink the brown stuff you're massively hung over the next day.

Tiger:

Yeah, or two.

Howard:

But, hey stay young, stay humble, stay hungry, stay curious. Thank you for coming.

Tiger:

Thank you for having me. This is awesome, it's an honor to be here today.