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

Blog By:
howard

Dr. Jason Olitsky's Dentaltown.com CE Courses:  
 Picture Perfect-Clinical Photography Made Easy! 
Balancing Esthetics and Function of Direct Composite Restorations   
  

Contact Dr. Jason Olitsky 
 Email: jason@smilestylist.com 
Dentaltown profile: smile stylist 
Lecturing website: JasonOlitsky.com 
Clinical Mastery CE website: www.ClinicalMastery.com 
Book (The Naked Tooth) website: www.TheNakedTooth.com 
Wall Smiles (dental art for your office) website: www.WallSmiles.com
Practice website: www.SmileStylist.com


Products Mentioned:

                        
•             Canon 5D Mark II, the camera Dr. Olitsky uses -             http://www.canon.co.uk/For_Home/Product_Finder/Cameras/Digital_SLR/EOS_5D_Mark_II/
                        
• Canon 70D, the camera Dr. Olitsky recommends for dental photography -             http://www.usa.canon.com/cusa/consumer/products/cameras/slr_cameras/eos_70d
                        
• Nikon D7100 -             http://www.nikonusa.com/en/Nikon-Products/Product/dslr-cameras/1513/D7100.html                        
                        
•             Empress -             http://www.ivoclarvivadent.us/en/products/all-ceramics/ips-empress-system-dentist/ips-empress-restorations                        
                        
•             E.Max - http://www.ivoclarvivadent.us/emaxchangeseverything/            
                        
•             Variolink veneer cement -        http://www.ivoclarvivadent.us/2015/01/variolink-esthetic/            
                        
•             Luxatemp -             http://www.dmg-america.com/catalog/provisional-materials/luxatemp-ultra                        
                        
•             Digital Smile Design 

Howard Farran:  It is a great honor today to be interviewing my friend, Jason Olitsky, and I know that you’re most known and most passionate about dental photography and I love your website, I want you to talk about your website and I mean you’re crushing it there. But before we go into that, which I know is where you want to go, I want to take you somewhere else first. Jason, you’re 39, you’ve been out since 2001. So you’ve been out a decade and a half and there’s 5000 kids coming out of school this year and first I want you to talk about that first of all.

When I go into those schools Jason, they’re saying stuff to me like oh Howard, you’re lucky, you graduated 27 years ago and now dentistry is ruined and it’s all changed and they just see the sky falling and they don’t realize that when I was in freshman year in college in 1980, interest rates were 21%, inflation was 10%, unemployment was 12%, everybody was losing the family farm.

I had three friends in high school whose dad’s were farmers who lost the family farm and went in the barn and blew their head off. I mean we’ve all seen tough economies but you’ve been out a decade and a half, what do you tell these 5000 kids and Jason, these are the specifics they’re asking me: are we all going to be working in chains? This economy is so bad, Jason should I just go three more years and go into one of the nine specialties? What advice, pretend that your daughter is graduating from dental school this year. What would you tell your own daughter who is a senior in dental school?

Jason Olitsky:  I would tell her you should sell something to dentists because that’s who makes all the money, the people who sell things to dentists, not the dentists themselves.

Howard Farran:  Is that a joke, or serious?

Jason Olitsky:  That’s a joke.

Howard Farran:  Okay.

Jason Olitsky:  I love dentistry and I think it really shows when I talk about what I love to do because there’s just so much excitement right now around the dentistry that we provide. I went through a little bit of that depression with you, with the economic downfall and you know we worked with a group practice a few years before we opened up our practice to decide the way we wanted to do things and when we opened we actually did really well.

Our first month was one of our best months on record.

Howard Farran:  You keep saying you, are you talking about you and your wife?

Jason Olitsky:  I’m talking about my wife and I, yeah.

Howard Farran:  So to the listeners out there, his wife is a dentists and if you think Jason is handsome, you should see his wife. She is a model, she has to be.

Jason Olitsky:  Right. Yeah right. She is beautiful, thank you. So when my wife and I opened up our practice we had a really good year and we thought that we were going to continue with that trend into the second year. We were only doing cosmetic dentistry, we were doing smile designs and full mouth rehabilitations and that’s what we wanted to do.

We found the second year we didn’t grow and then the third year we actually started to do a little bit worse than we had in the previous couple of years and we realized that we were going to have to change the way we treated.

Howard Farran:  So the macro economy started compressing your practice. So tell the viewers what city was that in and what year was that in?

Jason Olitsky:  We’re in Florida, we’re in Northeast Florida. We live in Jacksonville Beach, Florida. We practice in Ponte Vedra Beach which is just south of Jacksonville Beach. It’s a nice area.

Howard Farran:  Which is really the south. It’s a lot more to do like Georgia than it does Miami. Miami is like central South America but where you’re at, that’s the south.

Jason Olitsky:  It is the south.

Howard Farran:  What year did it plateau and then start to contract?

Jason Olitsky:  In 2004, 2005 that was really like our first year here and it was such a good year. We were working three days a week, we were doing smiles, we were even turning away patients for cleaning, we were saying you can go somewhere else for your cleaning. It was incredible and then all of a sudden it started to decline and we were saying to ourselves why did we do this to ourselves? Why didn’t we just start with a big general dentistry practice from the get go when the economy was better instead of trying to build a general dentistry practice when the economy was bad. 

Howard Farran:  So is that the lessons learned? Is that what you’re telling these people? Don’t overspecialize in cosmetic dentistry, still try to do? So tell us then what was your lesson learned from being too focused on cosmetic dentistry and then to our viewers, when the economy comes down, in economics it’s called inferior goods, so if you’re spending lunch for $10 at Appleby’s or something like that, those guys suffer because everybody shifts to inferior goods and goes to Taco Bell for $1.

When you’re investing in a recession you want to pull your money out of mid level restaurants like the Olive Garden and put your money in Taco Bell and Burger King and the Whopper so when the economy contracts it’s easy to give up on eating out $10 lunch at Appleby’s and getting your teeth bleaching and getting a boob job and veneers and a tummy tuck, in fact, I’ve still out off my hair transplants. I still don’t have the money to get back into it.

So your lesson learned was that you were too over diversified in something that’s a luxury item, so when the economy goes down- and to these young kids, the economy is going to go up and down until the end of time. It’s never going to be smooth because humans are irrational and make irrational decisions. That’s never going to change.

So it’s always going to go boom, bust, boom, bust, boom, bust and you during the boom, you were crushing it in cosmetic dentistry and then during the bust, what was your lessons learned? Going back, what would you have done?

Jason Olitsky:  Lessons learned, what we would have done would be to build that general dentistry base, because as dentist we’re fortunate that people need us too, they don’t just want us. I love to focus on the want based dentistry but there’s validity to the fact that we do general dentistry and people need us for things and they’ll come to us a couple of times a year and that patient base is really what’ll grow your cosmetic dentistry practice more than needing to keep generating more marketing. Coming up with more marketing materials and things like that. It’s nice to have a general dentistry based to pull front from cosmetic dentistry and they really are some of the better patients to have for cosmetic dentistry because when you over focus or over specialize in the field, you really are pulling in the most particular patient that you could find out there.

Howard Farran:  That was one of my first questions I wanted to ask you Jason. I almost feel embarrassed to ask you this question because I don’t want to sound rude or anything but when I see just guys like you, going after this cosmetic dentistry. Me personally, that’s the last patient I’d want. I mean some beautiful woman who has all of this critique and I know we’re all different.

My most fun, if I could just specialize in one, I want the emergency room. I like the guy coming in with the toothache, swollen, needs a root canal etc. I just want to work in the emergency room and when they have girls coming into my office for 27 years and they have a whole list and pictures and all that stuff, I just look at them like oh my God- and then I send them to this guy up the street who has his fellowship in the academy of cosmetic dentistry and he loves this stuff.

Every time I see him, I tell him I’m so sorry I referred you that lady. She was a freak and he’s like oh no, I loved her. It was great.

So what do you think makes you like a high needs cosmetic woman who’s just like wow. That’s kind of crazy, you’re asking for trouble.

Jason Olitsky:  I’m a pleaser. I enjoy it. You really have to love smile design and cosmetic dentistry to focus your practice on that. I mean you really have to love it because you do find times when you’re with a particular patient and sometimes it’s tough to get that even ground and you just have to be more particular than your patients. You have to really understand it.

Howard Farran:  Take a little time to explain that more because I know there’s a lot of dental students like I see it on, I just went to this missionary dental trip in Chiapas and there was this one dentists, this kid was just screaming his head off, and he’s just all smiling and nurturing and helping him and I told him dude, trust me, you should go into pediatric dentistry. No normal person would be smiling right now. I’m cringing and I’m 30 feet away. So I think kids get it with pediatric dentistry, if a screaming yelling kid doesn’t bother you, you should go into pediatric dentistry.

What would you tell a kid in senior dental school what attributes should you be thinking about when you’re wanting to go into high end, elite cosmetic dentistry like you’ve been doing for a decade and a half?

Jason Olitsky:  Well you have to love being an artist. I think a lot of dentists love being an artist, I think that’s one of the great things about our field is that you can be an artist. But also you have to be able to exercise patience and you have to want to put the time into the profession after hours to understand there’s so much more to it. The continuing education and the different types of organizations that re available to us out there.

Of course the photography is so important and it’s just- you just have to really love smiles and just have a general pleasure in making people happy to do cosmetic dentistry.

Howard Farran:  So let’s go into photography. When did you first get interested in photography and why, how did this passion start with you because if I think of dental photography, dude I only think of you.

Jason Olitsky:  I appreciate that. There’s a growing field of dental photography. It’s a really cool thing, I mean when I went to dental school one of your colleagues there had told me that they listened to my webinar and he’s a dental student and I was like wow, that’s pretty awesome, he said it was a career changer for him. I was like does that mean you don’t want to be a dentist anymore?

I didn’t think about it that way. It’s something I never thought about in dental school and went I got out of school I wanted to be able to match a single central incisor with the laboratory and I got a point and shoot camera and I took pictures.

Howard Farran:  Film or digital?

Jason Olitsky:  Digital. I haven’t had a film camera, I had a digital camera. It was a G5, a Canon G5. Point and shoot.

Howard Farran:  So that’s the difference between you being 39 and me being 52. I had to do a decade of film first.

Jason Olitsky:  Yeah. I couldn’t imagine having to go through that. I hear the stories about using film, especially going through the accreditation process with the academy, I mean trying to use film to take pictures would be incredible.

It’s just changed so much. I wouldn’t call myself a photographer. If something happened and I couldn’t practice dentistry anymore, it’s not like I would take pictures of people’s families and babies and make a living out of that. I never want to quit my day job, I just love what it does for dentistry. I love the fact that it forces me to be able to do more of what I love to do and that’s the cosmetic dentistry.

Howard Farran:  So then you mean it allows you to do it because it’s better in presenting case presentation?

Jason Olitsky:  Everything.

Howard Farran:  Explain more.

Jason Olitsky:  These are people who have had smile transformations in my office and all these people had something in common before they were on my walls, they were uncomfortable smiling in front of the camera and this picture really represents the first time they were comfortable smiling and that’s a big thing because our culture has like this stigma about bad teeth.

It’s like if you have bad teeth, you’re a bad person, you know? Like you don’t take good care of yourself, you’re unhealthy, you have no money. You’re just like an unattractive person and if you have bad teeth and those things don’t represent you then it’s nice to be able to do something about it and being able to take their picture and put it on my walls, it’s a celebration of that and it’s really just like the cherry on top of what I really love to do.

It’s the cherry on top of the cosmetic dentistry. But I think as dentists, a lot of us, especially I’m the sixth dentists in my family, we all went to Temple.

Howard Farran:  No way?

Jason Olitsky:  Yeah. Oh yeah.

Howard Farran:  Are you serious? I didn’t know you were going to say anything that I didn’t already know about you. Go through that, who’s the six dentists?

Jason Olitsky:  My grandfather was a Temple grad and then my father and my uncle and then my uncle, my cousin and then my brother also.

Howard Farran:  Oh my God. So you’re a third generation Temple dentist?

Jason Olitsky:  Yup, third generation.

Howard Farran:  How many children did you have?

Jason Olitsky:  We have two kids.

Howard Farran:  Two kids and what are their ages? Any dentists there?

Jason Olitsky:  Six. We’ll see.

Howard Farran:  That’s amazing. Does a fourth generation get automatic acceptance to Temple, I mean will they even have to fill in an application?

Jason Olitsky:  I did so I’m sure they will. We’ll see.

Howard Farran:  So you’re saying that photography allows you to do more cosmetic dentistry because you use it in the treatment plan presentation?

Jason Olitsky:  Treatment plan, communication, I mean when I was, I’ve never had bad teeth do I don’t know what it’s like for a lot of our patients. I think a lot of dentists don’t really know what it’s like to have that embarrassment about their teeth and I want you to think of a time you went out on a date and you were sitting across the table from somebody who you really liked and you guys were like hitting it off, you’re talking and you’re laughing and when you take a bite of some food you get something stuck between your two front teeth and all of a sudden you’re a changed person. When somebody says something funny, you look away. You cover your mouth, you don’t engage in conversation with them and essentially you’re a different person so maybe you get up from the table, you rinse it out and you come back to the table and then you’re yourself again it’s like phew, those few moments are over and for the patients that we see in our practice, it’s like they’ve had food stuck between their teeth their entire lives and it’s up to us as dentists to take the food out.

That’s really all we’re doing and I think we just kind of over complicate things as dentists in the fact that we’ll spend hours and hours and hours on the details but really what the most important part of the process is like our ability to make emotional connections with those patients in the beginning of treatment and at the end of treatment because if we’re not good at that part then I really don’t think the details even matter.

I think what photography does is it enables us to be able to make emotional connections with our patients to get our treatments even started.

Howard Farran:  I love the way you just said- I’ve had a very lucky opportunity in my life to meet most of the great ones, yourself included, and the only one thing they all have in common is what you just said, that emotional connection. Like in my backyard, Omer Reed probably saw more, bigger cases.

When Omer Reed walks in the operatory, the patient lights up and it’s just how are you doing and how’s your kid and he’s just this bigger than life personality and then you’re in 10 more dental offices and the dentists walks in like how are you, and he points- you have an interproximal lesion here and that’s why you have irreversible pulpitis and you’re going to need endodontic- and you’re just like wow. You walked in the room and started pointing at an x-ray and guys like you, and I want all the viewers to know that, I mean I’ve seen the best of the best in dozens of countries around the world and they all have the same thing you have and that is that emotional connection, that charisma.

They walk in there, they make the patient, they’re people persons and you’re never going to be a great dentists if you’re not a great people person, and if you nail the people person, everything else falls in place and if you screw that up, it’s just there’s not catching up.

Jason Olitsky:  You’re right. It’s about developing friendships with the patients. All of my patients are my friends. I think that’s a common story for a lot of dentists who are successful is that we’re not treating teeth, we’re treating people and we become friendly with our patients just because, and I think it helps to be enthusiastic and enthusiasm breeds your credibility and people are more likely to accept treatments with you if you seem enthusiastic about what you do because you have a true enjoyment or love or passion for what you do.

Howard Farran:  So tell me specifics. Specifically, how does photography- tell us how it is in your regiment, how do you specifically do it, how does this enter the treatment plan presentation, specifics. Down and dirty specifics.

Jason Olitsky:  Okay. Certainly one of the key components of photography is the ability for us to communicate and we want to be able to communicate with patients and the days of holding up a hand mirror are hopefully forgotten because these days we can take digital pictures and show them to patients. That continuity, that contact with patients, not to create disconnects, from say a patient landing on the website that you mentioned earlier, that somebody would land on a website and see nice pictures or videos that we’ve created for them and say wow, this seems like a really different place. I haven’t seen something like this before and it encourages them to pick up the phone and their first contact with the office is a positive one and when they walk in the door, they see pictures of patients all over the walls that are smiling.

And then you’ll be able to communicate with them, you ask them questions and things to kind of get in contact with that emotional side, the reason why they even came to the dentists in the first place, you don’t really rush to the decision process of what we’re going to do. I mean you have to ask them the right kind of questions to get them to open up and then from that point, taking the pictures in a studio and showing them the pictures on computers and showing the similar cases that you’ve done like them, and show them the results that you’ve achieved in your practice and the other happy patients.

I mean the goal of taking pictures isn’t to take a brilliant picture, it’s to show people because people can easily get overwhelmed with too many pictures. The goal is to build your portfolio so that you have that perfect case to show the next patient that walks through the door, somebody who’s a little bit worse, maybe a little bit older that you can show them the results that you’ve had before.

Howard Farran:  So you have a studio then to take these pictures in your office?

Jason Olitsky:  Yes.

Howard Farran:  Describe that.

Jason Olitsky:  It’s something I’ve had, when I built my practice I said you know what, this is going to be something I’m going to want to do a little more, I have five treatment rooms and the guy who helped us built the practice he’s worked with a lot of dentists, he said this is not enough treatment rooms. You and your wife are going to need to move out of this place in five years and he bought us a nice dinner because we’ve been here much longer than five years based on our bet, and what we’ve done is we’ve kind of decided we’re going to work only out of a couple of rooms and we’re going to set up one of our treatment rooms as a photography studio and I’ve got to tell you something, I use it one every single patient.

It’s a room that has a seamless white backdrop in it, I have background lights in there, I have studio strobes, I have tripods, I have microphones, everything that gives me the ability to take the highest quality photos I can and even the highest quality videos I can now with digital SLR cameras and I use that studio on every patient that comes in the practice.

We take a series of pictures in there. I use it continuously through cases. When I see a new patient, we have their before pictures, I take their treatment planning pictures, everything I need for a visualization including video, nowadays we’re doing so much with video it’s almost making photography obsolete. In the future I’m sure that we’re going to get all our information from video and photography is going to play less of a part in what we do than video does.

Utilizing those pictures throughout the provisional stages, throughout cementation stages, being able to show patients what they’ve got in their mouth as an after, before we permanently cement it in, getting that approval, showing them a before and after picture and when they love it, you can go ahead and put it in.

Those days of rushing cases in are over. You know those first couple of years we focused on cosmetic dentistry, you’re so worried that the patient is not going to like it, you rush it in. You don’t want to give them too much of a chance to see something they don’t like, but what I’ve learned over the years is that you really need to slow down this process of cementation. Take pictures. Let them really see those teeth. Give them the opportunity to share their concerns with you so that you don’t put them in.

I’ve cut off too many restorations to go through that again, so the process of slowing down, esthetic visualization and showing patients what you can do. It’s all about the communication with the patient.

Howard Farran:  And for that our motto on Dentaltown, no dentist practices solo again. What camera are you using? Do you have some specific brand names?

Jason Olitsky:  I’m a Canon user, just because that’s what we started with. Nikon is the Japanese.

Howard Farran:  Oh I thought Canon was Japanese?

Jason Olitsky:  Yeah. I don’t think.

Howard Farran:  So you use Canon, but what Canon camera?

Jason Olitsky:  My first digital SLR camera was a 20D and I still have that as a backup camera. My newer camera is a 5D Mark II.

Howard Farran:  It’s a Canon?

Jason Olitsky:  It’s a Canon, it’s like a more professional line Canon camera.

Howard Farran:  5D Mark II?

Jason Olitsky:  5D Mark II. They just came out with the- if you’re trying to keep up with the camera lines as they come out, that’s a job in itself.

Howard Farran:  And what something like that ballpark cost?

Jason Olitsky:  I think the 5D Mark II is probably maybe $2500 to $2800, they just came out with the 5D Mark III which is probably $3500.

Howard Farran:  And that’s video and?

Jason Olitsky:  Yes. Pretty much any digital SLR camera you get now is going to have video. I would say for a photographer, for a dentists who is going to be serious about the photography that probably the camera you’re going to get is a 70D as a Canon or a D7100 from Nikon. They’re both at comparable level. Canon or Nikon and that’s a camera you’re probably going to keep for at least five or six years. So it’s a semi-professional model.

Howard Farran:  And you can put that on a tripod?

Jason Olitsky:  Yes I do. I use it on a tripod for headshots and for video as well. You want to lock it down for video, it keeps it from looking bouncy. It looks more professional.

Howard Farran:  For video?

Jason Olitsky:  For video, absolutely and for headshots too because when you take a series of headshots on a tripod it gives it some continuity.

Howard Farran:  I want to say one thing that I’ve heard for years and years and years is that a lot of patients that have done some big cases with me, they’re extremely impressed when they see that these are your cases. You did these implants, you did these veneers, you did this stuff and I cannot tell you how many women have told me that getting a very personal part of their body, you know breast enlargement, breast augmentation whatever, that they did three or four consultations and people are opening up a book or a brochure or whatever and then they walked into somebody’s office and they showed them their portfolio. I did this, I did that and that’s the clincher.

I mean if I was going to have someone do my teeth or my boobs or my hair or whatever, I’d want to go in and see an artist and say this is what I’ve done. I don’t want to go in there and see your brochure from the American Dental Association. I’d turn around and run. I think all of the high end clients- so I think photography, a huge part of photography is building your resume, your credibility and people can just walk in.

I mean I’m looking at you and I’m just leading all these women in and my thoughts are number one, when you’re taking these pictures, are they topless because I don’t see any clothes on four of them.

Jason Olitsky:  Only one of them was, my wife.

Howard Farran:  Only one of them was? No I just see that, I just think this guy obviously knows what the hell he’s doing. It would be like walking into a Porsche dealership or Lamborghini dealership and say okay this guy knows high end cars, I’m not going to second guess him. But if you were showing me a pamphlet from the American Dental Association or a book you got at the Greater New York Dental Meeting on before and after cosmetics, I would be leery.

And the guy in Phoenix who is doing all the breast enlargements and most all he does are re-do’s. I mean he hardly ever does any initials, it’s all re-do’s and it’s the same thing, you walk in there and it’s just his own studio and he divides them into like four cases. About four situations and he can just rip through 100 classic photographed cases and that’s how he’s getting all the business, and he’s twice the price.

So I think photography is credibility, trust, respect.

Jason Olitsky:  It’s almost like dentists are from bizarre-land I think sometimes because when you look at other industries, can you imagine walking into a car dealership and not seeing cars? Would you buy a car if you walked into a car dealership with no cars? Of course you wouldn’t but a dentists is going to spend thousands of dollars on marketing each month and when the consumer walks through the door they’ve got nothing to show them.

That’s insane, is that not insanity to you? To begin the marketing process, you’ve got to begin with a camera and you’ve got to get good with your camera so you can take pictures that are good for presentation, not pictures that make teeth look scary. That’s a big part of marketing, I really agree with you. If you want to do more cosmetic dentistry, you’ve got to really build your portfolio because patients are starting to realize that there’s a difference out there.

They’re coming to me, they’re driving a few hundred miles away. They’re passing a lot of dentists and they’re getting emotionally connected with the pictures that are on the website. They’re coming into the practice, they’re already ready to accept treatment because when they’re doing their browsing and their window shopping, it’s not like our patients come into our practice and they say oh no thank you, I’m just browsing. Patients don’t do that. They may browse in clothing stores and boutiques but they don’t browse in dental offices. They’re doing it on our websites so it’s really important to have a great website that shows people what you can do because if they land on your website, it’s outdated and they go to the before and after pictures and they’re the same ones they’ve seen on other websites, it just doesn’t look good, they’re going to bounce and they’re going to go to another website until they find a dentist that they like.

Howard Farran:  Out viewers that are watching on video, they can see on one of the pictures that there’s a website: smilestylist.com. Tell me about, you’ve got a couple of websites, you’ve got Smile Stylist, Wall Smiles.com, Clinical Mastery, so if I’m a dentist and I want to start doing these cases, you can help them out right? Talk about that.

Jason Olitsky:  Okay. I’m one of the directors of esthetics with the Clinical Mastery series. It’s a fantastic group. We’ve got some great directors there, we’ve got John Nosti, he’s like a Dentaltown powerhouse, we’ve got Mike Smith, Lee Ann Brady, they’re all directors and we teach functional dentistry. Occlusion, esthetics, photography, really it’s like the basis of dentistry that you can build upon to get from good photography, occlusion and esthetics to full mouth reconstructions and it’s such a great group. We’re just a friendly crew, we like to have fun.

Howard Farran:  And that’s with Jen Janicki?

Jason Olitsky:  Yeah it’s with Jen Janicki, that’s right.

Howard Farran:  She’s a class act, brainiac superwoman.

Jason Olitsky:  Amazing, the woman knows CE.

Howard Farran:  She promotes with the lab?

Jason Olitsky:  Gold Dust Dental Lab is one of our sponsors.

Howard Farran:  To our viewers wondering what’s going on: I’m in Phoenix and she’s next door in Tempe. Is she Tempe or is that Chandler?

Jason Olitsky:  They are in Tempe.

Howard Farran:  Yeah, so I’ve known her for 20 years. She’s an unbelievably amazing woman, that’s an unbelievable lab. So you great Townies, you’ve got a great CE course on Dentaltown, so does Nosti and Lee Ann Brady, just the fourth guy haven’t given me a course yet on Dentaltown so we’ll speak ill will of him until he gets a course up.

He’s in my backyard too. Mike Smith, he’s right up the street and he just got the Arizona Award for most outstanding contribution to the profession of dentistry for the state of Arizona for last year with all the charity he does, so kudos to him.

Jason Olitsky:  He’s a hardworking dentists.

Howard Farran:  Yeah he’s a hardworking guy and he bagged the largest elk I’ve ever seen in Arizona over the thanksgiving holidays. That was amazing. Back to the Smile Stylist, so I want to do cosmetic dentistry. I haven’t been a photographer. If I went to Smile Stylist.com what could you do for that guy? What could you do for that dentist?

Jason Olitsky:  A dentist who went to Smile Stylist.com?

Howard Farran:  Smile Stylist, don’t you sell the before and after pictures for the marketing?

Jason Olitsky:  I do. I have a website called Wall Smiles.com.

Howard Farran:  What’s the difference between that and Smile Stylist?

Jason Olitsky:  Smile Stylist is my practice website.

Howard Farran:  Okay, I’m sorry.

Jason Olitsky:  No, that’s cool. That’s our practice brand so when you go to Smile Stylist.com, that’s our patient based practice so that’s where the patients get all the information about dentistry and before and after picture.

Howard Farran:  So Smile Stylist is B to C and then Wall Smiles is B to B dentist?

Jason Olitsky:  That’s right.

Howard Farran:  So I’m a dentist and I don’t have any of this before and after pictures. What am I going to find on Wall Smiles.com?

Jason Olitsky:  Wall Smiles has pictures to put on the walls, we have a gallery of almost 50 pictures at this point to put on walls, different sizes, they come ready to hang so they’re frameless and they’re mounted on a black gator board which is a nice, clean look and we also have before and after books. We have before and after books that contain pictures that you can put on your walls too, to kind of create a nice seamless transition from books to walls so they appear to be more of cases that you’ve been involved with, to give you more confidence when you’re showing people the possibilities of cosmetic dentistry.

Howard Farran:  That’s amazing and then Clinical Mastery is your actual, Clinical Mastery.com, is actually your lecture series?

Jason Olitsky:  That’s right, yes.

Howard Farran:  One of those courses is actually photography.

Jason Olitsky:  It is yeah, a day and a half course.

Howard Farran:  You know my friend Gigi? I just love her to death and she just loved your course. She just ranted and raved about how amazing and awesome that course was.

Jason Olitsky:  I love that it’s a fun course. I love that we don’t have to get so bogged down to details in photography. We can have fun. We show a lot of pictures and videos and we just experiment and be creative. The fun part of photography.

So we have the day and a half course and we travel around a bit so we get to different cities, make it convenient for dentists to bring themselves and their teams to our courses and I also teach the esthetics live course which is an over the shoulder course for prepping seat of a smile design. So we do photography in that course as well.

Howard Farran:  Well I’m a half hour down, got a half hour to go, do you want to tell us the low hanging fruit of those courses? What do you want to talk about in the second half?

Jason Olitsky:  Yeah sure. You know what, one of the cool things about photography is how much I think it’s changed. The evolution of photography because what I’ve seen in just a short amount of time just like in the last decade is that we’ve been taking pictures with a ring flash or twin light in a certain way and you just get like these medical grade pictures and flat lighting, it’s just not very good for presentation and just seeing what other dentists are doing and trying to stay ahead of the curve is one of the most fun aspects of photography that I enjoy. Just pulling in people like Dan Mazur from Romania or Florine Covin like these people that are changing the lighting situations, we’re using extended bracket arms now, we’re modifying the light, we’re creating more of a dynamic light for teeth and some patients or colleagues see it, they say wow that looks really cool. That’s something I haven’t seen before. And with the integration of video into that as well, I just think that photography is such a quickly evolving field that it’s just really fun to be part of that field right now.

I just couldn’t imagine doing the dentistry without it. The fact that we need to utilize it so much for laboratory communication and the way we share photos now and videos with the laboratory, I don’t know of you ever- did you use to like draw pictures of teeth and kind of color map them and that was the kind of thing you’d mail to the laboratory and I went through the phase where I would put pictures in Photoshop and I would kind of draw on them and Photoshop so I could email to the laboratory, so I started emailing pictures, and then I started putting then on a DVD or CD and that was so painful to have to burn them onto a CD and put them in a box and hope that the CD didn’t break on the way there.

Then we started emailing them to the laboratory but you couldn’t email that many and they’d be out of order and nowadays what we’re doing, we are starting to put them into like Keynote presentations or PowerPoint presentations and sharing them on the cloud in places like Drop Box so that we can have really large files like videos in a presentation format where it starts in one place and ends in another place and share those with the laboratory almost instantaneously. It’s a really cool transition that we’re going through in dentistry right now.

Howard Farran:  Are you also sending your impression in that way? Or do you put the impression in a box?

Jason Olitsky:  Somebody still puts my impressions in a box.

Howard Farran:  So you’re complaining about putting your CD in a box, and you’re emailing that, so you’re not following your own word. I’ve just done my third or fourth case of emailing in the impression. You know scanning and man that is really, really cool and you know what the labs are telling me? When you send in an impression in a box, they average 6% remakes and when you digitally scan it and send it in, they’re averaging 1% remakes. They said it is that much more accurate. And they’re also saying what you were talking about, you know the steel pictures, you were talking about the steel before and after? It’s the video scanning. So instead of taking a picture of a prep they’re video scanning it so they’re getting like thousands and thousands of pictures all put together and they just say that impression is so much more accurate.

But you’re not doing that so I’m challenging you, I’m challenging you that the next time we do a podcast, you’re emailing your photos and your impression.

Jason Olitsky:  Sounds good, by that time my daughter is going to be working for the dental supply companies.

Howard Farran:  Okay so go through more low hanging fruit of these courses that you give.

Jason Olitsky:  Okay yeah you got it. So what we talk about is basic settings. I think one of the things that we have to get over the fact that it’s a scary machine or piece of equipment, a camera, so we do talk about how to use a camera. Just like basic settings and natural lighting photography so that you could take your camera out of the box and take it off of that green box, that automatic setting of your digital SLR camera and be able to actually shoot in some of the creative modes and use natural lighting.

We show you how to set a camera, where the different buttons are so that you won’t be so afraid of a camera. I think when you pick up a dental camera and you’re not used to holding that kind of camera, the first thing you do is try and look through the viewfinder. When that doesn’t work you’re just afraid you’re going to mess up something when you take the picture so we get people comfortable with utilizing a camera so you can take picture of like a party, or your kids playing sports, family events, things like that and then we put a flash on it and I give people like the simple settings for dental photography. We show you the complexities of the camera and make it simple. Just giving you the settings and then we practice those settings in hands on portions of the day.

We’ll go to a clinic, we’ll take picture of each other and we’ll get really good at standardized views. In dentistry it’s hard to compare apples to apples when you take pictures of teeth when they’re not at standardized views, when I was teaching right patient courses, I get dentists sending in pictures of cases that they want to bring to the courses and the pictures would be of cantered smiles at weird angles and it’s actually impossible to be able to determine whether or not that’s a smile that needs improvement or what you need to do to the smile.

The ability to be able to take a standardized view is the only way you can really evaluate the dentistry to determine whether or not, what needs to be done, so we go over standardized views and then we go into specialty lighting, other techniques for getting really cool views. We do video things, we talk about marketing and we talk about portrait photography.

We have a whole half day on portrait photography where we talk about studio equipment but a lot of practices don’t have studios so we do some speed light courses on that day where we talk about how to get great lighting in like a hallway.

Howard Farran:  Jason, how come whenever I go to a studio to get my picture taken, the always turn out the lights? It’s just black, you can never see me. I want to ask you-

Jason Olitsky:  I’ve got to tell you something. That’s something that only happens to you, so you might want to ask them.

Howard Farran:  I want to ask you, dentists a lot of times slip into the fear mode. I bet the two big fear things they’re thinking about listening to you is, number one: do you have to sign some kind of legal release to let that lady, like that beautiful lady to the right there, big hair, big teeth, gorgeous, does she sign something so that you can put that one your website or whatever?

Jason Olitsky:  Yes. Oh yeah we have great photo release that we have every patient sign and not everybody wants to sign it.

Howard Farran:  Is that proprietary or did you? Is that on your website?

Jason Olitsky:  I don’t have it on my website but I encourage you to share my email. I don’t mind sharing my photo release with people if they want to email me.

Howard Farran:  Because we can put that in the podcast footnotes, we put a transcript, if you want to submit that we can publish that.

Jason Olitsky:  Sure, absolutely. I have no problem sharing.

Howard Farran:  What per cent of the people don’t want to sign that?

Jason Olitsky:  Very small percentage. A very small percentage don’t sign it. We use these pictures, we’ve got to share them with laboratories too. A lot of patients will say it’s okay to share it with the laboratories or colleagues but it’s not okay to put on Facebook. They’ll put a little note on their release that says teeth only or only show my picture in your office. Don’t show my picture on a billboard and we have to respect that and if I’m going to make a post on Facebook that includes somebody’s face, I always get a secondary permission. Even though they’ve already signed something that says I can do anything with your picture including sell it, I still get permission from them again saying hey this is awesome, I want to put this on Facebook, how does that sound, I want to tag you on it? They say okay, that’s great or no. Because even though they sign a model release I still don’t want them to be upset with something I did because ultimately they’re happiness is the most important thing. It’s not worth ticking off a patient.

I always get secondary permission if I’m putting it somewhere like a social media format where a lot of people are going to see it.

Howard Farran:  Jason, let me ask you a question. I can’t think of anybody smarter and more well versed to ask than this, I mean you’re a legend in photography and cosmetic dentistry but what I don’t understand, maybe it’s because I’m a guy, but I have seven inlays, on lays and crowns in my mouth. I have seven restorations in my mouth and they’re all gold because I don’t care what anybody says, nothing fits and lasts longer than gold. I know other cosmetic people, you know, they don’t do any gold but what I don’t understand about all these people in the background, they’re almost all women and I see women decorate their body with gold everywhere, they have gold earrings, in their navel, around their ankle, I mean they love gold and then when I say ma’am, the most rocking hot restoration in the world is gold- in Phoenix, the American Indians will do it, the Mexicans will do it, the African Americans will do it and not one white girl in 27 years has done it.

I’m just telling you, it just is what it is. So Jason, why do white women decorate their whole body head to toe with gold but not their teeth and why do all the other women who are not white, Hispanic, Asian, African American love gold everywhere else like I do?

Jason Olitsky:  I think any guy would take offence to you asking them how women think probably except for me, so I’m going to take that question, that’s okay.

Howard Farran:  It probably is pretty dumb, two men having a conversation about how women think.

Jason Olitsky:  I think it goes back to ageing gracefully.

Howard Farran:  Ageing gracefully?

Jason Olitsky:  They don’t want to show signs of wear. They don’t want to show signs that they’ve had a problem.

Howard Farran:  So you think a gold earring is highlighting I’ve got a pretty ear but a gold tooth is like oh this tooth, something was wrong with it?

Jason Olitsky:  This was a rotten tooth that I got fixed.

Howard Farran:  So it’s highlighting a flaw?

Jason Olitsky:  It’s highlighting a flaw as opposed to virginizing a tooth. What woman doesn’t want something to be virginized? When you’re virginizing a tooth that’s better than highlighting a flaw, I think in the perspective from a woman, the way she thinks.

Howard Farran:  Why just white women but not Latin American? Really Jason?

Jason Olitsky:  I haven’t seen that same diversity that you have as far as variations of what they want in their mouth. Most of the people I see in my practice, all the patients that I have I think it’s just that they wouldn’t want anything but white, so we’ve got to be very good at utilizing-

Howard Farran:  A quarter, 25% of the land is Indian Reservation. We’re right next to Mexico so we’re about, I have four groups of people and it’s just the white women group won’t touch gold. If I say to any grandpa man, if I put this in gold, this gold crown, you’ll take it to heaven. If I put it in white, it’s your deal. They go oh, whatever lasts longer. Everybody says whatever you think boss, you’re the doc, but it’s white women only who won’t do gold.

Jason Olitsky:  Oh man. Maybe it’s a little more technique sensitive but I think it’s worth it. I love to do it.

Howard Farran:  I don’t know if you mind if I switch, a lot of dentists are wondering- technically speaking, you’ve got all these beautiful veneers. Are these all Empress, are these all Ivoclar cases or?

Jason Olitsky:  These are Empress cases.

Howard Farran:  Are all of your veneers Empress?

Jason Olitsky:  They are. Within the last few years I’ve been placing more E.Max cases. I did maybe like a dozen E.Max cases. I was happier with the esthetic results at that time with Empress. At this point I’m starting to kind of mix my E.Max back into my portfolio. I’m starting to dabble with it again but I’ve always been happy with the Empress look for the anterior teeth. When you transition back to the posterior I’ll switch to E.Max and when you get back to the premolars, most of the time those premolars are monolithic anyway and I’ll use an E.Max restoration there. The Empress we’re cutting back in layering, similar to E.Max but you know when you cut it back and layer it you lose some strength. In the anterior I’m more confident with the Empress cases that I’ve placed as far as esthetics.

Howard Farran:  Okay and for a senior in dental school who really can’t tell you the difference between an Empress and a E.Max, can you just be a little more specific, what is the difference between an Empress and an E.Max?

Jason Olitsky:  I could share with you, yes, you have lithium disilicates and you have leucite-reinforced restorations and their different strength. Primarily the glass makeup makes them a little bit stronger, actually quite a bit stronger, but the optical qualities are a little bit different.

The way I’ve seen my cases that I haven’t liked as much with E.Max has always been with the brighter cases, with teeth that are starting out a little bit darker so the canvas colors of the teeth are a little bit darker, like when we look at shades like ND5 or ND7 cases so when we use a brighter E.Max veneer on top of those cases, when we start cutting back and layering in some of the effects of the translucency, it looks like an obvious translucency so when I look at that I wasn’t as happy with that kind of result as I was with the Empress which I thought we could make it look more natural and more subtle.

Howard Farran:  What are you bonding these on? What is your adhesive dentistry regiment to put on a veneer?

Jason Olitsky:  I use Variolink veneer cement. I utilize the tack and wave technique with rubber dam isolation similar to a good thread that Nosti has on Dentaltown about the tack and wave technique. We do those cementation techniques the same.

Howard Farran:  Is it called the tack and wave technique?

Jason Olitsky:  It’s got tack and wave in it, but I’m not sure if that’s the exact name of the thread.

Howard Farran:  Tack and wave, I’ll remember that, okay. I’ve got to ask you another thing about cosmetics. Any plastic surgeon doing breast augmentation will say their number one complaint is they would have gone bigger. With your cases, I remember when I got out of school in ’87 the whitest shade was B1. Obviously they’ve just in the last 27 years it seems like B1 has just gotten whiter and whiter and whiter. Is that still a complaint and what should be done because some of these women are walking around town with boobs that defy gravity and they’re pointing up and teeth that you can see a block away.

So can you talk about the evolution of whitest shade and what percent of your cases are the whitest shade and what is that technically now?

Jason Olitsky:  I steer away from that whiter shade, looking at a chronoscope shade guide which is the Ivoclar shade guide, the 010 is that brightest shade.

Howard Farran:  010?

Jason Olitsky:  010 yeah.

Howard Farran:  They didn’t have that in the 80’s.

Jason Olitsky:  They didn’t have that, no. It is not at all white today. If I delivered a B1 case to any of my clients, forget about it. The older population, especially the gentleman, they can get away with that B1, which in the chronoscope shade guide would probably be like a 110 to an 040 shade but when you start getting into the female part of the population, especially younger females, even the older females, they’re looking at the B1 colors in their mouth and they’re saying that’s not bright enough so how do you get to that point with a patient?

You’ve got to make sure that your provisionals are very close to the color of the final restorations so if you’re going to do, if you’re planning a brighter restoration make sure you have a brighter provisional in. We use Luxatemp primarily for our temporization technique and they have a BL shade which is very close to like an 020, 030 on the chronoscope shade guide, so when you put that on a patient’s teeth and there isn’t a lot of show through from the natural dentition, you know what color that is and so when the patient says I love it you know what to ask for. If they say that’s a little bit too dark, you know that you need to bump it up a little bit from there.

We don’t have shade conversations before they have provisionals in their mouth. I just get a general idea that they say I really want my teeth to look white but I don’t want people to know that I have veneers, I just want people to think that I whiten very well. That’s what everybody says so we kind of get that color in there but if you put a B1 in their mouth their like whoa, this isn’t really as bright as I was thinking.

Howard Farran:  Okay Jason, we have viewers in every country and every age range. You’re dropping the word chronoscope, I think a lot of people are probably going to be wondering what is he talking about? So will you explain that versus another shade guide, more traditional?

Jason Olitsky:  Like the Vita Classic which is the classic Vita, they have a 3D Master now where it’s more value orientated. The chronoscope shade guide was put together by Ivoclar and it represents the Empress / E.Max shades so when they’re pulling cases for patients, I typically use the chronoscope shade guide from Ivoclar when I’m talking shade with the laboratory primarily with smile design cases.

That’s my go-to shade guide.

Howard Farran:  That starts with 010 and goes to 020, 030 all the way to what?

Jason Olitsky:  040, 110, I don’t even know what’s at the bottom of that shade guide.

Howard Farran:  So would 010, in 2014, would 010 be the whitest shade?

Jason Olitsky:  It would be the whitest shade. That would just be a really opaque white shade and I really steer away from that shade. One thing you might want to do is take that shade tag off of the shade guide and kind of move everything up to the top. You move that 010 out, take the 020 and put that at the top, kind of bump everything over one so that patients, if you’re going to show it to them, they go oh I want that one!

Howard Farran:  So give us your 80/20, so for your average, standard beautiful woman getting upper 10 veneers, what shade would be 80% of your shades?

Jason Olitsky:  Piece of cake. 020, 030. It would be a 020 at the brightest portions like incisor two thirds and gradually go down to a 030. That would be my go-to color depending on the complexion and the hair, everybody shows the colors a little bit differently as far as the teeth are concerned.

If somebody gets a little bit older they want something that’s a little bit more age appropriate, it’s going to be more of the 030, going to fill in more of the 040 towards the gum line. A younger gentleman, I may start him there, I probably wouldn’t use as much of the 020 and as the gentleman gets older then I would use more of the 040’s, maybe bring in some 110 in the canine areas. You can kind of see how gradually utilizing that scale.

Howard Farran:  I want you to spend more time, I’ve only got you for 12 more minutes, I’m running out of time with you, but you know when you’re trying to sell something, obviously if some guy just got out of jail yesterday and don’t have a job, you wouldn’t be pitching him a Lamborghini. What do you think these dentists should be looking for? What is an average customer? Is it all women, the 80/20, is it most of like women 40-50, is it most of women who just went through trauma like a divorce and are trying to fix themselves up, is it someone who just, is there any red flags of what a dentist might be popping his ears up saying hey this lady might be a candidate for taking the time to pitch her tooth whitening, cosmetic dentistry, veneers, do you see any common threads among your clientele that you could be looking for? Are they just all over the board randomly?

Jason Olitsky:  Yeah I think the reality is you don’t really know. The best way to get there is by asking the right questions. Getting in touch with any concerns they have about their teeth. We do see a lot of consults for people regarding their smiles because of our focus and when somebody comes in the door, you’ve got to get them back to the situation, or the feeling they had that brought them in to begin with.

If somebody comes in and you start talking about porcelain veneers or whitening and what it can do for him, you’re missing the boat because somebody had a strong feeling one way or another that brought him into your office so you want to get in touch with that feeling again and you can ask him questions like when did you first notice this, or what were you doing? Because then they’ll start thinking back in their heads as far as what they were doing. Maybe they were looking in the mirror and they saw that their teeth were looking brown, or they took a picture with friends and their teeth looked horrible compared to their friends and the next question is how did it affect you? What did you do to compensate for that?

Because it’s not a good thing. People don’t like to see themselves that way and the way they normally compensate for it and normally it affects them is they don’t smile as much. People don’t like to admit that they don’t smile as much because when you’re sitting across from somebody and they seem like a really good person and you guys are having a good time, you ask somebody are you someone who normally smiles a lot? Are you a friendly, happy person and the answer is yes so I think that people don’t like to hear that they’re not smiling because of this and they’re actually not being themselves because of their teeth and to know that you can help them with that by improving their smile and how that would affect them and change their lives.

That’s the conversation I have.

Howard Farran:  Okay Jason I think a big fear that the 80% of dentists would have about doing what you do is that they deliver this 10 veneer case to this high needs woman and when she’s all done, she’s going to say no, I don’t like these and you did a bad job. Talk about that, what percent of the cases is a- I don’t want to be slandering and say that they’re irrational, they’re crazy or whatever but you know, you’re thought of what this facelift was going to do to you or your boob job or your veneers or your tummy tuck, I mean you probably thought you were going to walk out of there and look like an eighteen year old Russian runway model and then- what do you do? Is it fair to say those are irrational expectations? How do you deal with those types of expectations? What do you do when that goes south and what percent of the time does that go south?

Jason Olitsky:  You safeguard yourself. You don’t know if that patient is going to be a particular, a picky patient from the get go. I create a classification of patients because I feel like I’ve seen every kind of patient in my practice and it’s like a Piper Scale, it’s like one, two, three a, three b and a four and the reality of it is you don’t know where they’re going to fall on the classification scale.

Usually a patient that’s been to your practice a long time already trusts you. So they’re willing to say you’re the artist, you do what you think is going to look great and then there’s the patients who may be a little picky about the color or one or two things and then there’s the patient who’s picky about everything, but they have realistic expectations and then you have patients who are picky but they have unrealistic expectations and those are the patients you really want to safeguard yourself against. Those are your red flags.

They say things like I just want them to be tighter, I just want them to be in more, you can’t really get at what they’re looking for, and then you have the patients who start out easy, who say you’re the artist and everything’s going to be great and then at the end they become like one of your most picky patients.

Because I’ve seen those kinds of patients quite a bit, those are the patients who can really catch you in the end and you realize that you can’t treat the patient that you think is going to be easy like an easy patient, and just treat the picky patient like they’re going to be picky. So the way to really safeguard yourself against that is to go over compromises and go over expectations from the beginning. The way I do that is with pictures. I take a series of pictures and I sit down with them, I use digital smile design. I’m an accredited master digital smile designer, it’s the techniques through Christian Coachman, that he’s been talking about and we go over these cases with them. I show them their pictures, I show them where the compromises are going to be and they understand that before they start and I think that’s really important because if we get to the end and we’re looking at compromises and the patient points something out to you like say the gingival margin of a lateral is a little shorter than the one on the other side, when you explain to them that that’s the way it had to be at the end, you sound like you’re back paddling, but if you talk to them about it in the beginning with your pictures then they understand that from the get go where you talked about that.

Howard Farran:  Okay be more specific, you said some websites, what’s the exact www dot?

Jason Olitsky:  Just now.

Howard Farran:  What was that website you just mentioned one minute ago?

Jason Olitsky:  I didn’t mention a website. I did talk about digital smile design.

Howard Farran:  Explain that, is that www.digitalsmiledesign.com?

Jason Olitsky:  I believe it is digital smile design.com.

Howard Farran:  And what is that?

Jason Olitsky:  DSD. I’m not sure what the actual website is. That’s a technique.

Howard Farran:  Will you put that in the notes?

Jason Olitsky:  Yeah sure, it’s a technique used really for esthetic visualization with the patient and the laboratory and basically the whole dental team. It’s an ability to put pictures say in like a Keynote program, to use templates and use patterns over teeth and share proportions and things and use digital rulers and help the laboratory align the case and being able to do a complete workup over pictures and then show the patient where you’re headed and show the laboratory where you’re going and you get so much more information shared that way than you would otherwise.

Let’s think about smile design if you will. So quickly dentists narrow the scope of smile design to teeth because all we have is models and articulators but most of the principles of smile design are based on dental dynamics and facial esthetics and the moment you take an impression and send the patient home, that’s it. You don’t have another ability to evaluate facial esthetics and label it dental dynamics so those pictures and videos are extremely important as far as esthetic visualization goes, especially when you’re communicating with the laboratory, yourself and the patient.

Howard Farran:  Now when you’re saying Keynote, is that a Keynote presentation, is that an Apple term?

Jason Olitsky:  That’s an Apple equivalent of PowerPoint.

Howard Farran:  Okay so the old guys like me who are on Microsoft, that’s the PowerPoint version in Apple.

Jason Olitsky:  That’s the PowerPoint. You can do it in PowerPoint as well. I’m just an Apple person but yeah. I enjoy the Apple.

Howard Farran:  How would someone, I mean I’m sure if I just went onto that website I couldn’t figure it out. How would a guy log onto that website and learn how to do all that?

Jason Olitsky:  By taking courses, taking workshops. We talk about digital smile design in the esthetics live program. It gives you a good introduction to what digital smile design is.

Howard Farran:  And that’s your Clinical Mastery?

Jason Olitsky:  That’s Clinical Mastery.

Howard Farran:  When you came over to Phoenix to give that course I wish you would’ve told me. I’m going to give you my email, it’s    Howard@Dentaltown.com. Next time you come to town to do that, I’d like to know. So if someone wants hands on, they should go to Clinical Mastery.com and then you’ve also got an online course at Dentaltown. Will you talk about that? It was a huge success.

Jason Olitsky:  The photography course. That’s a clinical photography course. It goes over how to use a camera in standardized views. It’s like the basics, it just strips it down just to make it simple for you. It shows you the possibilities of photography in your practice as well. It shows you what things you can do with marketing and it’s really exciting. I like to get people excited about what they can do with dentistry and what they can do with cameras and then I show you how to use a camera.

Howard Farran:  I’m going to give you a favor here from one friend to another. We’ve only got three minutes left so you should score some brownie points with your wife- pluck her buck, tell people about your wife. She wrote a book five years ago?

Jason Olitsky:  Yeah it’s been about five years now it’s called The Naked Tooth.

Howard Farran:  Talk about that.

Jason Olitsky:  It’s great.

Howard Farran:  You are really a dynamic duo because you’re both outliers, you’re both phenomenally accomplished in your own right but talk about your wife’s accomplishments.

Jason Olitsky:  My wife is like tremendously supportive for my passion for what I do and I really couldn’t do it without her. She’s my number one teammate and she went through the whole process of writing a book for the consumer called The Naked Tooth and what it does is it just breaks it down for patients. It shared with them the procedures of cosmetic dentistry and how to choose a cosmetic dentist and it lead with how to choose a cosmetic dentist and inside the book it gives them tips, as far as like choosing cosmetic dentists but also how to take care of porcelain veneers, how to take care of temporaries and it’s a book that’s available at Barnes & Noble and it’s available on Amazon.

Howard Farran:  Okay and this is something you recommend putting in the waiting room?

Jason Olitsky:  Absolutely, this is a great book for a waiting room. It shares possibilities of cosmetic dentistry.

Howard Farran:  So tell them exactly the name of it and how to get it on Amazon.

Jason Olitsky:  It’s called The Naked Tooth.

Howard Farran:  The Naked Tooth?

Jason Olitsky:  Yeah the first shot of the cover was the picture of Colleen kind of half naked and publisher pulled it, they said no, we’re not going to do that. You’re going to have to put a picture of a smile, like that’s too bad man, that was a cool cover. I took that picture.

Howard Farran:  When it came out, you know what it made me think of? Before that book came out, The Naked Tooth, my favorite anthropology book of all time was The Naked Ape by Desmond Morris. And I never have read an anthropology book after that that was half as good as the first one I read, The Naked Ape.

Jason Olitsky:  Was there a picture of a naked ape on the cover?

Howard Farran:  It was just a yellow book with a title. So I’m out of time. Jason, what is a dentist want to ask you a question? Do you give out your email address?

Jason Olitsky:  Yes. My email is jason@smilestylist.com.

Howard Farran:  And spell Smile Stylist.

Jason Olitsky:  SMILE STYLIST.

Howard Farran:  Jason I know you are an amazingly busy man and it’s just an honor that I got an elite guy like you to come on.

Jason Olitsky:  It’s an honor to be on the program.

Howard Farran:  When I think of dental photography I only think of you. I don’t even know who else there would be to think about.

Jason Olitsky:  Thanks man.

Howard Farran:  Thank you so much for an hour of your time and you’ve got to promise me your group Clinical Mastery, there’s four of you, I’ve got dental courses from all of you except the one Phoenix guy. You’ve got to put the pressure on him and next time you’re in time, I’d love to have dinner with you or something.

Jason Olitsky:  Thanks man, I really appreciate it. It’s been an honor to be a part of this podcast with you on Dentaltown. Thank you very much.

Howard Farran:  Thank you for all that you do for dentistry, for Dentaltown, for Clinical Mastery, I mean you’re a guy that gives back big time. You’ve made the dental playground better than when you found it and thank you for that.

Jason Olitsky:  Thanks man. I appreciate it. See you!