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AUDIO - Tim Goodheart - HSP #77
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VIDEO - Tim Goodheart - HSP #77
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We hear dentists say "soft skills don't matter" or "If I just do good work, people will come see me". The fact is that if you believe some of the dentistry dogmas, you're hurting your practice!
Dr. Goodheart graduated from Fort Hays State University in Hays, KS with a degree in Medical Technology (Clinical Pathology Laboratory Tech). He moved from central Kansas to Kansas City and began working in a large medical reference lab, specifically microbiology and immunology. After five years, he ended up as department clinic supervisor and decided to look into dental school. He graduated from UMKC School of Dentistry and then completed a General Practice Residency at the Kansas City VA Med Center. He then purchased a practice in the Kansas City area and has been solo-practitioner in his office since 1995. He completed his Fellowship in the AGD in 2008 and most recently completed his MBA at Oklahoma State University.
6530 Raytown Road, Raytown, MO 64133 / tgoodheart@goodheartdental.com
Howard Farran: Hey, it is a huge honor for me to be Podcast to you because I mean you have twenty-two thousand posts on Dentaltown. I feel like you're practically my brother, my neighbor, family, blood. I bet you so many people are going to watch this and say, "Who is the man behind all those posts?"
Tim Goodheart: I would love to be able to tell you that everyone of those posts was valuable.
Howard Farran: You're a legend. We're both from UMTC.
Tim Goodheart: We are
Howard Farran: I was class of '87, what class were you?
Tim Goodheart: '93.
Howard Farran: You have to rub in that you're six years younger than me.
Tim Goodheart: Just a little bit, yeah.
Howard Farran: You're six years younger and you have hair. Now where is Raven, Missouri?
Tim Goodheart: I'm in Raytown.
Howard Farran: Raytown? Is that a suburb of of KC?
Tim Goodheart: Yes, I am about four miles straight south of the stadium.
Howard Farran: Oh, okay. You're an Arizona Diamondbacks fan?
Tim Goodheart: I'm an Arizona Diamondback fan? No.
Howard Farran: That's a joke. No, I don't think I should say this in public. When I was in UMTC the Royals won the World Series. Remember it was that ... Was it I-70 or I-80? What's the interstate that goes ...
Tim Goodheart: Seventy.
Howard Farran: I-70, called the I-70 world Series because the St. Louis Cardinals, three hours down the street, on the same interstate. Our Royals won. My neighborhood went batshit crazy until 3:00. That was probably the most exciting night I ever had in my life. Do you remember that?
Tim Goodheart: It was a great day.
Howard Farran: It was a great day, but anyway I shouldn't say this, but I loved George Brett. About three times during dental school, going out with friends or whatever, I actually ran into him at a bar. What an unbelievably fun, crazy guy. Tell us about yourself. How did you even stumble on to Dentaltown back in the day? You've been on there since 2002.
Tim Goodheart: Yeah. I probably wasn't one of the first, but I was probably on in the first three or four, five months, something like that. I don't remember if I got an email blast or how that occurred. That was back in the days of, I was still on AOL, that's how long ago it was.
Howard Farran: Wow. I would say you're known for your dogmas in dentistry. What are your dogmas in dentistry?
Tim Goodheart: I think dentistry, we get a lot of things that stick for long periods of time. I was reading a few months ago that, in dentistry the statistic was that it takes about fifteen years for a new technique, a new technology to become fully integrated in dentistry. That's a long time. Some of the dogmas are that soft skills don't matter, that if I just do great dental work people will come and see me and gladly pay me.
Technology dogmas, this is an interesting one, and maybe you've seen this. I didn't know this after twenty years of dentistry. Many studies out there take two groups of people. We're building dentures. One group we do a face bow, and we do a Gothic arch, and we do a remount, and the whole nine yards. In the other group we take some impressions. We make their dentures, put them on a hinge articulator. In six months statistically, there is no difference in the happiness and the function of those two groups.
Howard Farran: In fact, doesn't the zero degree teeth usually be the happiest?
Tim Goodheart: Yeah, exactly.
Howard Farran: I went to the Pankey Institute for five or six weeks down there in Key Biscayne. I got my MAGD. There's some good boys around me making some amazing dentures. In twenty years it was just problem after problem, problem. They'll walk in and have this perfect thirty-three degree anatomy and whatever and I'll just say, "Let me just slightly adjust it." I'm walking back to the lab, the lab lady and just go, "... (gibberish)"
Tim Goodheart: Like a monoplane.
Howard Farran: Just wipe it out, put it back in their mouth and they're happy as can be. I think that you're right about the technical skills versus soft skills. I've seen it in my own backyard. We had a couple of amazing orthodontists that just did perfect work. I mean it was perfect. One of them is out of business, and the other one is just kind of stumbling along. In came these two Canadians, and they're just nothing but personality. You can't be in the room with them without grinning from ear-to-ear. They're just the nicest guys in the world. It's standing room only in their practices, just because they just totally focus on the soft skills. It's just all about the people. The staff, everybody's having fun.
Tim Goodheart: Exactly, and again, that's not to say that quality is unimportant, of course it is. Boy, you can't have one without the other.
Howard Farran: In my fifty-two years of life, I witnessed a lot of people making a referral to a friend or a loved one about a doctor. I stop and start grilling them like, "Do you know where he went to school? Do you know if he's board certified? Why did you just recommend to your best friend an ObGyn? You don't even know if he's board certified. You don't know if he has any fellowship. You know nothing about this guy, 'Oh my god, I love him. He's the sweetest guy in the world.'" No one's every asked me what dental school I went to.
Tim Goodheart: No, patients only have proxies to be able to judge us. The proxy is usually, did if fail? Did it work? Was the visit uncomfortable? Did the "front desk lady" talk nice to me? Do they act like they're happy to see me? That's really the only proxy that they can use because they can't look in there and know, "Gee, that's a perfect margin," or "Boy, the occlusion is spot-on on that?"
Howard Farran: I think the only thing that every dental consultant agrees on that spent their whole life going into dental offices, that you can tell when you walk in an office in three seconds if it's a million dollar practice with a high net or not because you just walk into this twenty percent of them, and it's just feel the energy, fun, everybody's happy, and they're just crushing it. Then you walk in and the other eighty percent, it's like some library, church, engineering firm. I see that in yoga too. You go to Bikram Yoga, and they run it just like a Catholic Church. There's no talking, your feet can only face the back, it's all serious. If you ask the person that you came with a question you get scolded like, "Hey, shh, shh. No talking." Then you go to the other yoga's and they're playing music, and it's fun. Yoga doesn't need to have the Catholic Church in it, and neither does your dental office. I think the soft skills are everything.
I'll tell you what, if you had to pick between a dentist who had horrible skills and a great personality versus the one who did the best dentistry in the world and had a horrible personality, I'd put all my money on the one with the personality.
Tim Goodheart: It may not be fair, but that's the way it works.
Howard Farran: Oh, yeah, we all know that. Difficult patients, I've seen you post a lot on how to manage difficult patients. What are your thoughts on that?
Tim Goodheart: Pulling out more stats here for you. There's not a lot of dental information out there about this, but if we look to our physician friends, they will tell you that when they track this that, about twenty-five to thirty-five percent of their visits are "difficult patients", and not from the medical standpoint, from the feeling entitled, rude, angry, upset standpoint. I've got to think we're probably no different. We're probably at twenty-five to thirty-five percent. It's hard. That can really ruin a day. It can ruin a day for you, it can ruin a day for your staff. I read these are called "heart sink" patients, it's when your heart sinks when you see them on the schedule.
Howard Farran: I love that, a heart sink patient.
Tim Goodheart: Exactly, and it doesn't do any good. You can fire every patient that's like that because you're going to lose half your practice that way. You have to learn to work with these patients, and figure out why they're behaving the way their behaving and what's going on with them. It's really hard work because it takes time. It takes time to talk to them and find out what's going on up here.
Howard Farran: I think a lot of fault goes with the dental school deans. I tell the dean up the street, I just love my dental school up the street, Jack Dillenberg. He's a seventy-year-old, New York hippie, who used to drive a van back in the 70s. Jack agrees, Jack Dillenberg, who I think is probably the greatest dean that ever lived. Him and the guy from U of P, Art Dugoni.
The fact that when you apply to dental school, if you had a girlfriend, and had a couple of dates a week, or maybe was in a frat, or just a well-rounded guy, and made A's and B's and occasional C's, there would no chance you would get into a medical, dental school or law school. If you're a total loser geek like I was, you sat in the library. I didn't have one date in three years of Creighton or the first two at of UMPC because it was just school, school, school, school. If all you do is study and have no life, no date, no nothing, you get in dental school, med school, law school. That's why they're some of the craziest people on earth because the selection process. Jack says these dental school don't want to let in the great person with the personality because it'll hurt their score or their entrance class GPA and all that crazy stuff.
Tim Goodheart: This will tie in perfectly with that. These same studies that look at numbers of difficult patients, the practitioners, the physicians that have the poorest psychosocial scores, the ones that always have what they call the most difficult patients, the highest quantity. It ties in perfectly hand-in-hand. If you're not so great on those people skills yourself, you're going to see more people as being difficult and impossible to get along with.
Howard Farran: Oh, exactly, like the old adage says, "Everybody sometimes runs into an asshole," that's just a complete jerk. If you run into four or five of these people every single day, you're probably the asshole.
Tim Goodheart: You're probably it.
Howard Farran: The same thing with hiring staff. These introvert geek dentists, the person who passes the interview is always an introvert geek that's like subservient, "Yes, doctor," and "Yes, doctor." You bring in some high self-esteem, well-rounded person who talks back to you like a friend, a dad, a brother, an uncle and they just fire them. I had more than a hundred assistants tell me that sometimes they are putting an impression in a lab box or looking at a person saying, "No way. We've got to retake that." She says, "If I said that to my doctor I'd be fired." I'm like, "Man, that's an abusive environment. You need to quit. Tell your doctor to go fly a kite."
Tim Goodheart: I want people that will tell me, "Goodheart, you're full of crap on this. You need to step back and think about this for a second."
Howard Farran: It's true. The dentists are the most humble by listening to the their staff and their patients always do the most successful. The ones that are the most arrogant are usually the ones that are completely insane.
Tim Goodheart: I find it interesting, and this is probably completely contrary. When dentists are having trouble, oftentimes the first thing is, "More CE, broaden your treatment, the things that you can do to your procedures." Probably the first thing that they ought to do is forget that stuff and take some things on being able to talk to people, talk to patients, find out what's going on in their lives and what might fit for them. Learn now to talk with staff and collaborate with staff. Do the clinical stuff second. Do that other stuff first. I would bet that they would see good success from that.
Howard Farran: Tim how old are you?
Tim Goodheart: I'm fifty-three.
Howard Farran: Fifty-three, so I'm fifty-two. We're the same age, same dental school, everything's the same with us. What would you tell the dentist listening to this? I believe after these things have been up for a couple of months you're going to get about a thousand views on Dentaltown, and about three hundred on YouTube and twenty-five hundred on iTunes. iTunes is the most. More people are seeing you right now, so keep that in mind when you're talking to these guys.
What would you say to that dentist who's got this in his Smartphone, he's got a Bluetooth, he's driving to work, he's got an hour commute to work. He's saying, "Tim, in all honesty, man I'm freaking burned out, man. I've been doing this for ten or twenty years. I swear to God if I won the lottery I'd never see another patient. I'm burned out. I'm fried. I'm tired of the entitled patients. I'm tired of telling someone they've got these five cavities because they drink Mountain Dew all day and never take care of their teeth. They think their boss or mom should pay for it. My staff, every time the Earth goes around the sun they want another dollar an hour. The insurance is denying everything. It's like everyone is beating me up." What would you tell that guy?
Tim Goodheart: It's hard. We talk about that on the message board a lot. Hardly a day comes up that those questions don't come up. It's a really difficult thing. For me, and this probably isn't everybody, but for me the key, is what I recognize that in talking to patients, and seeing patients and dealing with my staff, it's not about me, it's about them. It's truly about them. I've got to find out what's going on in their head. The more I've done this, the more I realize this is just psychology. Yeah, we fix teeth and we're doing things and we've got our technical skills, but it is psychology. That's probably the biggest realization I've come to.
Howard Farran: The same with the hygienists. The hygienists are always getting frustrated with their patients. I've got my three hygienists. After eight years they realize that it's not what you're doing to their teeth. It's not whether you're scraping, cleaning, fluoride treatment or whatever, it's what you're motivating them to do. If you can motive them to want to get up and brush and floss every morning and every night. Just like a coach, remember?
I also believe with boys that the sport that they're drawn to, they weren't drawn to the sport, they were exposed to many sports. They got sucked into the one where a coach had leadership skills and was motivating them and making them feel better about themselves. My god, my mom had put me in baseball, football, every sport known to man, but I just stumbled into wrestling and Coach [Hager 00:16:21] he just ... I got up and ran five miles before school started for Coach Hager. I wasn't even doing it for me. I wanted to see his proud look when I told him I ...
Tim Goodheart: Sure.
Howard Farran: ... did my five miles this morning. You know what I mean?
Tim Goodheart: Yeah.
Howard Farran: That's how you've got to treat dentists, and patients and staff. Just motivate them to want to be a better person in dentistry, a better patient, a better everything.
Tim Goodheart: It's a game. I think I've heard you talk about you'd rather do endo than go golf.
Howard Farran: Absolutely.
Tim Goodheart: You enjoy it more. It's a game. You play that game, "Okay, I tried this motivation with this employee or person, that didn't work. What's a different way I can look at it? How can I approach this different?" It's a game. It's a game to try and figure out how you can get them to go in the direction you want them to go.
Howard Farran: Life's an attitude. I'm sure in the back of my head, golf's hard, molar endo's hard, but one of them gives me a thousand dollars when I do it and the other one costs me three hundred out here in Phoenix. A lot of it is an attitude, don't you agree?
Tim Goodheart: It is.
Howard Farran: If that dentist is in his car and he's burned out and fried, I mean he can say the same thing about his marriage, he can say the same thing about his parents, family, friends. I mean a lot of it's just getting in the right frame of mind.
Tim Goodheart: You get in the right frame of mind, and I think you've got to take the time away and do some other things obviously. You can't do dentistry six, seven days a week for sure. You've got to come in and take a couple deep breaths and yeah, there's that heart sink patient and let's see what we can do with her today.
Howard Farran: You know what, if you want to see some real data on the guys that work six days a week, you know what's amazing on the data? On Monday and Tuesday and Wednesday after they come off a refreshed weekend, they go in there and they see a cavity. "Oh you need an MO and I've got time to do that on my schedule," and blah, blah, blah. Starting by Thursday afternoon, they go in there, "Oh well let's just [inaudible 00:18:23]. Just put a watch." By Friday, someone comes in with an abscess and they're like, "Just give them some penicillin and Vicodin," and it's like really dude? You're treating a toothache with antibiotics when there's no research in the world that says that's going to do what an extraction or a root canal would be?
The guys do hit it hard, I mean just hit it hard three days a week usually net more money than the guys who are hitting it five and six days a week.
Tim Goodheart: Yeah, many years ago I went from five days a week to four days a week because my staff was like, "Why don't we try this," and revenue went up.
Howard Farran: You were five hours, eight to five, now four. Did you do four ten hour days versus five eight hour days or did you actually do less hours?
Tim Goodheart: We do less hours.
Howard Farran: What were your hours at five days a week and what are your hours at four days a week?
Tim Goodheart: We work eight to five, five days a week. Went to four days from 7:30 to 4:30 but Tuesdays we don't start until by 10:30, something like that.
Howard Farran: Is that because you're hung over from Monday night football?
Tim Goodheart: Monday night football.
Howard Farran: Oh my gosh.
Tim Goodheart: Yes, it's technically fewer hours.
Howard Farran: You're doing more money?
Tim Goodheart: Yeah. [Crosstalk 00:19:40].
Howard Farran: Yeah, [inaudible 00:19:41]. At the end of the day, humans, it's just all about motivation.
Tim Goodheart: I've heard that from numerous people on the message board the same thing.
Howard Farran: Okay, so you and I have lived half a century and we've served as sovereign profession, dentistry, well. Then what do you say to that next month, Timmy, five thousand kids are going to walk out of a dental school. I'm just going to just hit you hard with specifics. Does this dentist need to have a CBCT to be a quality dentist? Does this person need a laser? He's bitching about his $250,000 of dental school loans. Does he need to by $150,000 CEREC on those? I'm going to pin you to those three. After all these student loans, do I need a $150,000 3D x-ray machine? Do I need an $80,000 laser? Do I need a $150,000 CAD cam to be a quality dentist like Tim Goodheart?
Tim Goodheart: I don't think you have to have those to be quality. They're the things that people have come to expect. I think one of the biggest frustrations for dentists is not matching their skill and their passion with their location. I think too many people try to practice a type of dentistry in the wrong spot. If you're going to do those things, if you're going to do the CBCT, the CEREC and all that, you need to find the spot where people are going to value that where there's the treatment to be done. Where I'm at sitting right here in my little Raytown, Missouri, those things are not necessary. That doesn't mean they're not good, they're just not necessary. That's not my demographic.
Howard Farran: Do you have those three?
Tim Goodheart: No, I don't. I've got several lasers. I dabbled in CEREC for a long time, it just didn't sit for me. It was my practice model not the technology. [Inaudible 00:21:38], I just don't have a use for that. For me it's dentures, it's fillings, it's crowns, partials, root canals. That's where I'm at, and that suits me well and that's my demographic fits my temperament and what I'm wanting to do. I think the biggest upset for dentists is not matching their skills and what they see for themselves with their location. They're trying to do the wrong things in the wrong place.
Howard Farran: Yeah, it'd be like would you take a Mercedes Benz and a Porsche dealership into Childress, Texas? I mean in Childress, Texas you might get hit if you're not driving a Ford or a Chevy. You could be punched. You could be hurt. It's all demographics.
Tim Goodheart: Yeah, it is.
Howard Farran: There's a hundred and ninety countries around the world and they're all demographics and all that stuff, and I think it's true that you're true to yourself, you're true to your demographics, you're true to your patients and don't you think a lot of dentists sometimes feel shamed or dirty if they're not going to the Pankey Institute and taking full models and mounting them on our articulator and getting a CBCT and getting all these things, and they're in parts of Kansas?
Tim Goodheart: Sure. I'm sure they do.
Howard Farran: Notice on Dentaltown people won't post amalgams because it's like if you did it, they would rather admit that they did crack with a hooker last night than that they did a deal amalgam. Isn't that crazy?
Tim Goodheart: That is crazy.
Howard Farran: It is batshit crazy. Tim, what would your advice be? Let's say that your daughter graduates next month, in May, and she just came out of UMKC Dental School; what advice would you give your daughter?
Tim Goodheart: Oh gosh. I've probably given too much advice on the message board over the year with twenty-two thousand posts.
Howard Farran: Let me back up further. What if your daughter was an undergrad, and she said, "Dad, I'm thinking about becoming a biology major and being a dentist just like you." What would you tell her?
Tim Goodheart: When I first came out of dental school and my first ten years of practice, I probably would have said go for it. The problem is now is debt has gotten to be huge, so that's a definite consideration. You have to look at how much are you willing to go into debt for this career, and it has gotten really pricey. That's a big load to carry. I have a couple of new dentists not close to me, but fairly nearby and I've gone out to lunch with them a couple of times, and that's something that is really at the top of their mind is how am I going to service this school loan, this school debt. Unfortunately they don't see themselves owning a practice very soon, and I'm not sure they're given the skills.
Howard Farran: That's coupled with a hundred other bad decisions they make.
Tim Goodheart: Exactly.
Howard Farran: I'll tell you what. Seriously, every time I do a missionary dental trip, there's at least a dozen other dental students there. Dr. Dillenberg, he pays and subsidizes his dental students to go on missionary trips. They raise money, blah, blah. You sit there and listen to these kids at night, and it's like every spring break they take $3,000 of student loan money and they go to the Caribbean. They go on Carnival cruises. They drive $30,000 cars. I didn't have a car three years at Creighton Undergrad, the first three years of dental school. I walked my six blocks to the dental school and I worked. Then they marry a woman who is never going to have a job in her whole life, and thinks she married a rich dentist or doctor or lawyer and just blows money.
I look at the sixty year old dentist and I think of all the stupid financial mistakes they made, probably graduating from dental school debt was probably the best ...
Tim Goodheart: The best one.
Howard Farran: ... [crosstalk 00:25:49] debt. They live in houses bigger than their office. They drive cars. I mean how come I have more money than most of the dentists I know and I drive a 2004 SUV that has a hundred and six thousand miles on it and I don't own a watch?
Tim Goodheart: You're right.
Howard Farran: I don't have a boat, I don't have a jet ski, I don't have a cabin because I'm smart enough to know I'm not going to buy a boat. I can find a friend with a boat in three minutes. Why would I want to own a boat?
Tim Goodheart: They say boat stands for bring out another thousand. To better answer your question, probably what I'd tell that person is find the location that matches the kind of dentistry that you want to do, get busy, don't believe that you have to buy every piece of technology tomorrow, learn how to talk to your patients, learn how to talk with your staff and you'll do fine.
Howard Farran: Can I tell you the biggest scab on the CBCT, the 3D x-ray machine? Every specialist on earth wants to court and bait the general dentist, and they're introvert geeks so they don't know if they should call you up for lunch or they should bring you cookies or if it's Valentine's Day send hearts. They don't really know what to do because they're not social maniacs. There's not a specialist in Phoenix that has a CBCT that you call them and say, "Hey Dr. Goodheart, I have a patient [inaudible 00:27:14]. Is there any way me or my assistant Jan can take the patient?" A hundred percent will say yes, and they'll love it.
Tim Goodheart: That's what I do. I've got an oral surgeon in Lee Summit, and I just call him up, "Hey, I want to get a picture of this guy. Send him on over."
Howard Farran: How much does he charge you?
Tim Goodheart: He doesn't charge me anything.
Howard Farran: I know.
Tim Goodheart: Because I don't do it very often. I don't do it very often and I probably send him I don't know how many wisdom teeth and stuff in a year I send him. I mean he's my primary referral.
Howard Farran: Yeah. Why do people spend $150,000 on a machine that has zero cost to them from any of their referring doctors and even their non-referring doctors. I want to talk to you about CE because Dentaltown has three hundred and seven online CE courses. They've been viewed half a million times. Another form of CE is hands-on lectures. I go into a class like the Pankey Institute or the Scottsdale Center or LVI, and then there's the third type, which is my favorite. My favorite type of CE is still calling up a referring doctor or one of the specialists in my neighborhood, you call up Brad Gillman, you say he's the greatest endodontist in town. You say, "Hey can I come watch you do endo?" These guys never say no. You can call up an oral surgeon and say, "Can I watch you place some implants?" "Oh yeah, Friday I'm sinking six, no actually five." "Can I come watch?" I never got a no. That's actually their favorite.
Tim Goodheart: They want to show you.
Howard Farran: Sorry that was one of my four boys. Go ahead.
Tim Goodheart: No, they want to show you. They want to show you their stuff.
Howard Farran: Yeah. Talk to the viewer out there, pros and cons. What do you say are the main differences between online CE at Dentaltown versus taking a class versus calling your local periodontist, endodontist, oral surgeon?
Tim Goodheart: That's interesting, and I'd be interested to get your view on that. It just seems like live CE is just dying to a great extent. You can go online and you can watch how to do almost anything on YouTube or some other video. You can find procedures for almost anything. You can do it right at your desk. It just seems like live CE is becoming less and less and less over time.
Howard Farran: Is that a good thing or a bad thing?
Tim Goodheart: I don't know that it's good or bad, I just think that it's the way it is. Once upon a time, if you wanted to learn how to do something you had to go to the master. You had to find him, seek him out and go wherever he was. Now you can do it on your screen.
Howard Farran: I think it's amazing. There's book smart and street smart, and the book smart people don't have a brain in their head and if they want to learn one little thing on occlusion, they have to spend $5,000 at a weekend course, fly across the country and stay at a resort and they come home with one page of notes. Then there's the street smart people who can just figure out everything for a one hour course on Dentaltown for $18 bucks and learn all that. I notice that what I find my four boys doing is you're changing a tire on a friend's car and no one knows where the pack is. They go right to YouTube. Where is the tire changing kit in a 1995 Honda Accord? Boom. Right there.
I was talking to a patient in my chair who repairs aircraft engines. I said, "Where'd you go to school for that and where'd you learn it?" He goes, "Well all that really doesn't matter because I don't care what jet engine you're working on, whenever you get stuck at a part, you just go to YouTube and say where is the fan high speed, hydraulic," blah, blah, blah. Then nine videos pop up and you just start watching it and there's the engine I'm working on made by General Electric or Rolls Royce. I type in my exact question and Google says the searches are growing about five percent a year in length, so they're getting longer and more detailed.
People no longer just type in, "Raytown Dentist" to see if your website shows up. They're going, "I want a dentist in Raytown who works on kids, who does too whitening." The keywords are growing. Back to online CE. What do you think the pros and cons are for online CE versus live?
Tim Goodheart: I like online CE because you can get right to the point and get to the things that you're interested in. There's still a great collegiality about going to a live CE talking to people from other parts of the country, seeing how they do things. It gets you out of the office. I think that's good to not only be stuck at your desk or in the office. Boy, it's just hard to beat for time, savings and money to just dial it up, watch it on the big screen at home.
Howard Farran: Yeah, absolutely. I think looking back at my career, what I take away the most from CE was the friendships.
Tim Goodheart: The friendship, yeah.
Howard Farran: I still only think of going to the Carl [inaudible 00:32:43] as me and Carl and the guy sitting next to me, Steve [Rasner 00:32:46]. I think of going to the Gordon Christians twelve two-day courses with me and my buddy Mike [Tatolla 00:32:53]. I go to the local study clubs here because it's the same guys you've been sitting by for twenty-five, twenty-eight years and it's that friendship and camaraderie. What would you tell a dentist who saying to you, "My office is flat. To me, I've been doing the same $40,000 a month or $30,000, whatever the number is. I'm flat. I've been flat for a decade. I'd like to go from $30,000 a month to $40,000 or from $40,000 to $50,000 or $50,000 to $60,000. I want to grow revenue. I'm serving a lot of debt. I'm servicing a lot of lifestyle. I've got a wife at home destroying $5,000 a month. If I want to hide something from my wife, I put it in the oven. She doesn't cook, blah, blah, blah. I need $10,000 more a month in revenue." What would you tell that dentist?
Tim Goodheart: Me, what I would say is you got to set down and find out what's your new patient flow like, what kind of treatment plans are you presenting, what's your acceptance on those treatment plans. When you treatment plan something, how long is it taking you to get that person in and get things done? If any of those things are on the low end, then you've got to step back and figure out why that is. Do people just not know I'm there? Am I hidden back in the corner of a strip mall somewhere and no one has any idea I'm there? Am I not diagnosing things that are there? Am I not doing a good job of talking to people and finding out what's going to fit for them or what kind of treatment we can do for them? That's where I would start.
Not necessarily start with, okay, I need to expand my horizons and start doing more ortho or more this or more that. Figure out why it's at a low ebb with the people that you've got. How can you get more people and how can you talk with more people to do more dentistry?
Howard Farran: Those are awesome points. Let's go one by one. The first thing you said was new patients. What's the low hanging fruit on trying to get more new patients? What's your experience?
Tim Goodheart: I'm very lucky in that I set right on a corner of Raytown Road, which is a main traffic way through here. Gosh, I don't know, the last I checked, it's been a number of years, something like eight thousand cars a day go by this spot. I get a lot of people simply because of a sign that they can see as they drive by.
Howard Farran: Are you in a commercial center or a medical dental building?
Tim Goodheart: It's just a commercial center. Next door to me is a dental lab. Across from me is a hearing aid place, a tax place, and I'm on the corner right by the road so they see me.
Howard Farran: I want to say for the viewers, Timmy is infamous for a positive guy with a great attitude, but I mean the bottom line is he's not lucky because he lives in Kansas City and has a dental school that cranks out, what, fifty dentists a year? I mean Kansas City is flooded with dentists.
Tim Goodheart: They're at a hundred now.
Howard Farran: Over a hundred year. Timmy, the bottom line is you're in a market that's killed by a dental school releasing a hundred new dentists a year in a city that's only growing by one or two percent in population here. You're saying in a very competitive market like that, a very visible location is important.
Tim Goodheart: Visible location and I'm in a blue collar area. Again, fillings, dentures, root canals. I don't have to compete with Johnson County.
Howard Farran: When I came to Phoenix, everybody was saying, "Oh are you going to go to Scottsdale? You going to go to Scottsdale?" I said, "Dude, I'm from Wichita, Kansas, I don't even like those people. I'm going to Phoenix." People said, "Well where in Phoenix? Are you going to Paradise Valley or Sun City or Sun Lakes or Scottsdale?" I'm like, "No, I'm going to Phoenix." They're like, "You're actually going to Phoenix?" I'm like "Yeah, those are my homies." I just relate to Phoenix people ten times more. When I walked into a party in Scottsdale and some dentist says to me, "Oh do you know Dr. So and So," I'll say, "Which one is he?" He tells me the name of the shoe. I'm like looking at him, like, "Dude, there's three guys standing over there and you want me to look at the what? I'm supposed to know the name brand of a shoe?"
In Kansas that's just not the way it was.
Tim Goodheart: No and that's what I talk about finding a spot that's suitable. That fits my personality.
Howard Farran: I also see the people that are crushing it in cosmetic dentistry there are those kind of people. In Beverly Hills, [Dorfman 00:37:46]. He's totally Mr. Hollywood. In Scottsdale, we had a guy here for years, Steve Hayes, but he had the taste for clothing and cars. He was that type of guy. If I had gone up to Scottsdale, a hillbilly from Kansas and competed with guys like that, I wouldn't fit the part anyway.
Tim Goodheart: I couldn't play that role. I would be a miserable failure at it.
Howard Farran: Yeah. You said new patients. Next one was treatment planning. Are you talking about diagnosing? Is treatment planning a science, like if I sent a person with a mouth full of pathologies to a hundred dentists, would they all get the same treatment plan?
Tim Goodheart: No. I'm a big believer in, I learned a lot of this from Paul Homoly. I think he's a good resource. He likes to say, "Ride the horse in the direction it's going." You find out why that patient is there, what are his biggest concerns. Try and address those first. Don't try and overwhelm him with the nineteen other things you see. Why is he there? Address his concerns and ride that horse in the direction it's going.
Howard Farran: I love that saying. Ride the horse, and I love Paul Homoly. That guys is an amazing person.
Tim Goodheart: He's got a lot of good information.
Howard Farran: I have had a new paradigm shift you might call it in treatment plan presentation. I used to believe that if you presented one hundred cavities, the national average is thirty out of a hundred are drilled, filled and billed, so about one-third's done. If your treatment plan acceptance was lower than that, you need to work on the presentation. Then Blotsford comes along and says that he tracks, but you're only going to do one-third of the dentistry anyway, so if you want to double your production, double your presentation. If you want to do a dollar a dentistry, you're going to have to present three. If you want to do twice as much dentistry, you got to present six. I find that to be very interesting.
Tim Goodheart: Yeah, that is.
Howard Farran: If someone comes in, you're not going to do any Invisalign if you don't present it to anyone, and you're probably going to have to recommend it to three people to do one and that when he goes in and coaches an office, he tries to increase their presentation, explain more options available and you're going to do a third of whatever you present. I found that to be very interesting.
Tim Goodheart: I don't disagree with that, but to me you've got to look at fit. Where's that person at in their life right now? Maybe they're interested in Visiline. They may have a kid a year from graduating college. They have a job that's tenuous. They may be getting divorced. Where are they at in their life? That doesn't mean that you're never going to do those things, but it may go on a back burner. You're building stacks. I can't tell you how many times I've mentioned the same tooth to the same person three hygiene visits in a row, four hygiene visits in a row, and finally that fifth time when you bring it up they go, "Yeah, you know what, kids out of the house, mortgage is paid for. I'm ready to do some things with my teeth."
If you haven't run them off, now you're set to go. Now you've got a good patient and they're ready to roll.
Howard Farran: Tim, I want to tie you down to some more specifics. This is April 29th. There's five thousand kids that are going to roll out of school in thirty days, and the number one question they're telling me is should they do a residency or not. You did a residency.
Tim Goodheart: I did do.
Howard Farran: What would you tell those seniors out there that are listening to this, they're heavy podcast users, about your thoughts on a residency? Looking back twenty-five years after graduation, was your residency a good thing or would you have done it differently?
Tim Goodheart: I did GPR at the VA here in town and it was the best thing I could have done. I had wonderful staff there. They truly treated us as a learning place. We got to go to the OR for extractions. We got to do crown and bridge as much as we wanted, dentures as much as we wanted. It so much prepared me for private practice in the real world. I know a lot of people that do residencies that it's not so good. They get into situations where they're just treated as glorified hygiene help or whatnot but for me it was an excellent thing and I couldn't recommend it strongly enough.
Howard Farran: Then after that, you went on to get your AGD and then your MBA.
Tim Goodheart: I did.
Howard Farran: You got your fellowship AGD. What did that do for you? Do you recommend getting your FAGD? Do you think dentists out there that's maybe been flat for ten years, maybe burned out, do you think that dentist should set a goal and say, "Hey, I should set a goal to become a fellowship at the Academy of General Dentistry"?
Tim Goodheart: I think the AGD is an excellent organization. I think it's wonderful. It does a lot of great things for dentists. Having that CE goal was a great thing. I have nothing but admiration for people that have their MAGD. That's a lot of work. It was a lot of fun when I went to the Convocation after getting the fellowship, and the people that were there getting their Master's conferred on them, you could just see they were extremely proud of it, as they should be. It's a very worthy accomplishment, excellent thing to do. I wish more dentists joined the AGD. I think it's a great organization.
Howard Farran: Tell them why though. Specifically why though? Why should a dentist join the AGD and why exactly should a dentist get their fellowship in the Academy of General Dentistry?
Tim Goodheart: They're there for the general dentists. They're going to help guide you along that path. They've got the categories that you need to study in, so you can't just get everything in one particular area. You're going to get a nice broad coverage of all different areas. Orthodontics, oral surgery, special needs, the whole nine yards. I think that does a really good thing to kind of recharge the batteries. It opens your eyes to some possibilities and things that a person might not have thought of previously.
Howard Farran: Yeah, I agree that the best thing of the FAGD is putting structure in your education, because look up Dentaltown. I look at the data, those three hundred and seven courses have been viewed half a million times. They just keep doing fillings and crowns, fillings and crowns, filling and crowns. They do the same four things, fillings, crowns, CAD cam, root canals over and over until you're filled just [inaudible 00:44:57] and then you put up any course outside of that, especially if it was on practice managing their business and it's like the course is infected with HPV or something. I want to talk about that next because you also went on to get your MBA.
Tim Goodheart: I did.
Howard Farran: In looking back, are you glad you did that? Is that something you'd recommend?
Tim Goodheart: The reason I did it is I was tired of going to my accountant's office and not understanding at all what the hell he was telling me. It was mostly a self-preservation thing. I didn't do it with the intent of actually doing it. I took a few courses and learned a little bit more, and pretty soon I'm halfway and I thought what the heck, let's just go ahead and finish this.
Howard Farran: Was it online?
Tim Goodheart: It was online.
Howard Farran: Yeah? How long did it take you to earn that?
Tim Goodheart: I did it in two and a half years.
Howard Farran: Two and a half years later, do you feel like you understand business more than when you started?
Tim Goodheart: Yeah, I do. You've done it, you know. You're going to understand numbers. You're going to understand strategy better. Heck, just being able to read a P&L statement and putting all those things together so now when I go to my account, I actually understand what he's telling me and it makes a whole lot more sense. Is it imperative to become a good businessperson in dentistry? No, not at all, but if a person has an interest, go for it.
Howard Farran: Are you using a CPA that's just a friend, neighbor, or are you using one of those that there's now two big organizations of CPAs that just do dentistry? On the message board, Tim Lotts in one of those. Are you dealing with a CPA in one of these dental CPA groups or are you just using an individual CPA?
Tim Goodheart: I use an individual but he has numerous physicians, optometrists, veterinarians, dentists, so it's not new at all for him. I've been with the same guy for fifteen years now.
Howard Farran: Yeah, I want to say to the viewers out there that a lot of dentists are stressed out because they'll go to a study club or they'll go to something, they'll hear people talking about their numbers and they'll feel inadequate or they're not as good or whatever, and I just wanted to assure you that no matter what a dentist says their numbers are, when you go actually look at their numbers, there's no relation between what they told you. They don't even know the number. They'll say, "Well my labor's only twenty percent." Does that include FICA matching? Does that include the medical insurance? They don't know any of their numbers. Even when it comes to overhead.
Half the guys that say their overhead is fifty percent, you dig into it, it's sixty-eight percent. Dude, you said it was fifty percent and it's sixty-eight percent. They're like, "Well I mean fifty, sixty." It's like no, it's not even fifty, sixty, it's sixty-eight. "Well I mean in that range." Really? An eighteen percent error is in that range? Is that the way they graded your math test in algebra? Yeah, I just can't recommend enough. I see so many dentists in such financial trouble and they don't understand money. That's why they have so much debt because they emotionally are secreting dopamine or serotonin as they're signing a lease on a new Mercedes or buying a big house, it's making them feel good, and they don't realize that every time they spend a shitload of money that they're going to pay for that in blood, sweat, tears and stress and agony and all that kind of stuff and the first thing they need to is just cut their consumption down. Learn to be happy cooking dinner, not having to go spend $200 going out to eat.
I told so many people, they'll say, "Well I'm looking at new cars." I'm like, "Why are you looking at new cars?" "Well mine's paid for and it's old and this and that." I said, "You know, usually in a healthy mind the minute you have to stop making a car payment you should now love your car even more. Don't you like your car now that it's paid for. Why would you want to trade this car that you've had a relationship with five years and go buy a new just because it's not paid off?"
Tim, if someone's thinking about an MBA, were there any books that you've read along the way that helped you with business that nurtured your love for business, that drew you into an MBA? Any business books or favorite authors or anything these young kids can read?
Tim Goodheart: I'm big on a guy by the name of Marcus Buckingham. I don't know if you've heard of him or not.
Howard Farran: Marcus Buckingham. He sounds British with bad teeth.
Tim Goodheart: He is British, but he has good teeth actually. He's a showman. Marcus Buckingham is very good. I love to read books.
Howard Farran: What was the title of Marcus Buckingham?
Tim Goodheart: He's got four or five different books. Strength Finder, Discover Your Strengths. There's four or five of them. He's really good. I love to read any book that is written by a successful CEO or person that's run a business. I find those guys fascinating.
Howard Farran: I just wrote a book on business. My new book is called Uncomplicate Business, and I'm not even saying I'm a dentist on there. You know what my mission was on writing my book? My mission was I have a granddaughter now. I wanted a little girl when we got married and I had four boys and then I get a vasectomy and now I finally got my little daughter, a granddaughter. Mine intellectual thought a couple of years ago was someday I'm going to die before a granddaughter or great-granddaughter is born. I won't know what business she's going to go into. I don't know if she's going to be a dentist, a vet, own a restaurant, bowling alley, I have no idea. I reduced business to Uncomplicate Business. You only manage three things, people, time and money and I took every column I had written from '94 to 2015 and looked and looked at it and rewrote it, and I have written a masterpiece for business, no matter what business you're in.
Because at the end of the day, we just manage people, time and money.
Tim Goodheart: There you go.
Howard Farran: You make something, you go sell something, you watch the numbers. I would love for you to read my book and tell you what you think.
Tim Goodheart: Sure.
Howard Farran: If I send you this, will you read my book?
Tim Goodheart: Absolutely. I would look forward to it.
Howard Farran: Really? Okay.
Tim Goodheart: Yeah.
Howard Farran: Send this to Timmy Goodheart. I'd love to hear your feedback. I'm going to stick that in the mail today to see what your thoughts are.
Tim Goodheart: I look forward to it.
Howard Farran: What other books have had an impact on your business thinking?
Tim Goodheart: Oh gosh, I can look at my library back here. Coaching and Mentoring for Dummies. That's a good one. Crucial Conversations.
Howard Farran: Crucial Conversations about what? What topic
Tim Goodheart: It's just how to have difficult conversations with people.
Howard Farran: I always think that's funny in your personal life how everybody wants to have all these opinions on someone like the president of the United States. They're like, "Oh Obama should do this, that and that." I'm like, "Oh really? So Obama should cut spending and you think he should just tell a third of the billion people they need to have less benefits and cut spending? Why don't you turn right now to your wife and tell her to cut spending?" "Oh no, I'm not going to touch that." It's like, "So you can backseat drive the president of the United States but you can't backseat drive spouse, kids, moms, sisters, your dental assistant, your hygienist?" Difficult conversations are difficult for pack animals. We're social animals so we want to please everybody, and it's hard to have a difficult conversation, especially with someone you love.
Tim Goodheart: It is. It's hard. Here's one thing that I read many years ago that's very true. It's actually pretty easy to fire somebody. You fire them, and you've got an uncomfortable two or three minutes and then it's done. It's over. What's hard is to have a tough conversation with a staff member, spouse, whatever, and come back the next day and figure out a way to work with them.
Howard Farran: What advice is that? Because these dental school graduates, I think the biggest danger to a dental school graduate is when you sit there for seven, eight, nine years and you get As in calculus and physics and geometry and physiology and anatomy, you think you're all that and you really don't have any experience on interviewing people, managing people, leading people, motivating people. It's just a people game. Just because you got a hundred percent on your physics test and now you have a hygienist that you're going to have to deal with all day everyday and you have no training for that.
Tim Goodheart: Absolutely. I have just been looking for sources and sources and sources, and in the last year, and this is not to plug them, it's because I think it's a good organization. There's an organization called the American Academy for Communication and Healthcare.
Howard Farran: Wow.
Tim Goodheart: Wonderful organization. Wonderful for how to manage the psychology of patients, your team, your staff, colleagues.
Howard Farran: Are you a member?
Tim Goodheart: I am.
Howard Farran: Where are they based out of?
Tim Goodheart: Louisville.
Howard Farran: Louisville. I spent a summer in Louisville. My dad had nine restaurants in four states and one of them was in Louisville, Kentucky. I spent a summer there. Is there a founder or is it a president?
Tim Goodheart: It's a nonprofit. The gal that I've worked with there is just a gal named Laurie, but yeah, it's the American Academy on Communication and Healthcare. Wonderful resource.
Howard Farran: I've only got you for five more minutes. Well first of all, if you can get Laurie or the Executive Director or the President or whatever to write an article or whatever, send it to Dentaltown.
Tim Goodheart: Sure.
Howard Farran: If Tim Goodheart, FAGD, MBA, twenty thousand posts on Dentaltown says it's good, I want to know more about it. Tim, you're an extremist in the fact that on Dentaltown, what we see, and it's not just Dentaltown, I've read lots of research on communities in general. I don't care if it's a programmer's website, dermatologist, engineers, mechanicals, silver, dentistry, it doesn't matter, but on Dentaltown you have this one percent. They're called super users, like you or Mike Barr or Howard Goldstein or myself that have twenty thousand posts, and you got ninety-give percent of the townies who go on there and they spend hours and they'll never comment, they'll never post and you just want to walk up and say, "Boo." What would you say to those lurkers who have a question and they really want to ask you but there's just something in their constitution where they just are afraid to just start a thread and say, "I exist, and this is me and here's my question"? What would you say to that person who's dying to ask a question but they just cannot find it within themselves to do it, and then there's a guy like you with twenty-two thousand posts?
Tim Goodheart: Well part of it is sometimes I guess I can't shut up. That's a personal thing. Just put it out there. Just put it out there. Gosh, the resources and the people on Dentaltown, there are so many smart people on Dentaltown. There's literally not a day that I don't go out there and I'm not humbled by something going, "Holy crap, that is really a smart dude that's saying that there." Just put yourself out there and you'll get some good answers, you'll get some bad answers, but you will get stuff that is helpful, absolutely.
Howard Farran: Tim, everything I've read, something in their site, they're afraid. They're afraid of saying something. Would you recommend that they be anonymous or their name?
Tim Goodheart: Be anonymous. You can be absolutely anonymous.
Howard Farran: They're just afraid. The same thing with programmers, engineers, whatever. Why do you think they're afraid and what do they have to get over?
Tim Goodheart: I think part of it in dentistry is just the way we're taught in dental school. Dental school is a bit of a beat down. I don't know if you remember John [Tillip 00:57:58].
Howard Farran: Yeah.
Tim Goodheart: I had him for three years. I had him for two years before clinic, then in clinic, and he always started a project the same way. He'd always look at it and go "Here's what I see wrong." I think dentists are used to a beat down and used to looking at the bad side of things. Be anonymous. Just put it out there anonymous. We take on the message board very seriously peoples anonymity and if they want to be anonymous they will stay anonymous.
Howard Farran: You know what I still say publicly and I've gotten the most abuse for saying that that people just can't believe I'm saying? I've always said my joke that if you go to study club, the first idiot stands up and said, "I trim my own dyes, I'm the best dentist, and the next dentist not to be outdone, says, "I query my own stone, pour out my own models, then trim my own dyes." Then the third idiot's like, "I have my own beehive, I grow my own wax, I query my own stone, I trim my own dyes." In dentistry it's like the hardest thing in the world and you think you're the greatest, and I am never ever going to beat myself up and redo a filling or send it back to the lab for someone that doesn't brush, floss, came into my office with a Mountain Dew.
If you come in, I'm never going to care more about your teeth than you do. If you come in and you don't give a rat's ass about your teeth and I give you floss, you never use it, and I do a filling and it's just not slightly perfect, I'm not going to beat myself up and redo it. You don't even give a shit. If you don't give a shit, why should I? That just totally lowers my stress. Now if I was working on you or a hygienist or someone that really, really cares, my god, I will bust out all the bells and whistles. I know what the hell I'm doing, but I am not going to sit there and miss my lunch and go home late for some hillbilly who brought a Mountain Dew into the operatory.
Tim Goodheart: Yeah. Sure.
Howard Farran: I just lower my stress.
Tim Goodheart: I wish I could remember who the townie was, but that was an eye opening moment. Many years ago, he put that on the message board. Some people get A work, some people get C work and some people get B work, and that's okay because that's where they're at.
Howard Farran: How is UMKC these days? I don't live in town. They got a new dean. That Dean Reed's gone, right?
Tim Goodheart: Dean Reed is thankfully gone. He was not a nice guy.
Howard Farran: He wasn't even a dentist was he?
Tim Goodheart: He was a BDS.
Howard Farran: So he was a dentist?
Tim Goodheart: Yeah, he was the British version.
Howard Farran: Oh okay. I never even saw him in the clinic one time.
Tim Goodheart: Guess what, I was there four years and I don't think I saw him in the clinic one time either.
Howard Farran: How's the school now? How would you summarize the school now?
Tim Goodheart: I haven't been down to the school in a while. Unfortunately their CE programs are not good at all. They don't have much going on there. I would love to say something different. I haven't even been in the school in about six years.
Howard Farran: Hey, we're out of time. It is one hour. I want to tell you seriously in the last fifteen years, so many times you've made me laugh out loud, spit out my coffee, taught me information, made me look at things different. You've just been a major part of my experience with Dentaltown. Dude, twenty-two thousand posts, you can't go a day without reading a Tim Goodheart post. I love you to death. I feel like you're a brother, and I know if I'm feeling this way there's thousands and thousands of townies. I bet so many townies will want to watch this to put the man, the face, the karma behind twenty-two thousand posts. You're a legend in my mind dude. Thank you so much for all that you've done for dentistry, but also for Dentaltown.
Tim Goodheart: Thanks for having me and much appreciation to you too. Met many, many, many wonderful people and clinicians because of Dentaltown. Can't be that.
Howard Farran: Who are your most favorite townies?
Tim Goodheart: Oh gosh. Obviously love Hogo. It's funny, Hogo and I many, many years ago, we're about as far apart politically as you can get, and we would argue on the message board. Finally met him and he said, "Hey, how would you like to be a moderator?" Here I sit now.
Howard Farran: Both you guys are passionate dudes.
Tim Goodheart: Love Hogo. I hesitate because I'd probably miss somebody but Steve Glass is a great guy, John [Nosty 01:02:47] is a great guy. Mark Fleming is a great guy. It's just so many wonderful, wonderful, smart clinicians out there.
Howard Farran: I'm going to give you a task. You don't need one, but those people you recommended, tell them I want to podcast them. I've done Nosty. I haven't done Fleming and I have done Steven. Will you tell them that you did?
Tim Goodheart: You bet.
Howard Farran: I want to do them next.
Tim Goodheart: Sure.
Howard Farran: Who's the most funny? Whose made you laugh out loud the most? Who's known for the most wildest outlandish funniest posts?
Tim Goodheart: You know Shanks?
Howard Farran: Yeah.
Tim Goodheart: Everybody loves Shanks. [Moddy 01:03:27] is a funny guy.
Howard Farran: I think Moddy's the funniest dentist to ever live. He's down in Florida.
Tim Goodheart: Those two guys are always good for a laugh.
Howard Farran: As a moderator, who makes you work the hardest? Who's in trouble? Who are you giving a timeout the most or have to give a spanking to?
Tim Goodheart: Shanks and Moddy. No.
Howard Farran: I want to say one thing to you and Hogo and Steven and you guys, is that Dentaltown before you guys, I did not understand cyber bully. That was one of my biggest errors on Dentaltown. I thought I wasn't going to have anybody adding any posts because I figured you're all adults, you're all dentists, I'm not going to be your mommy. I did not understand bullying. I never experienced it in school. I never was a bully. There were just some people building up that seemed like the only thing they liked doing is saying mean things. Hogo come in on like, what, four or five years ago and you, and we put that Report Abuse on there. You spend so many countless hours, you and Howard Goldstein and Steven and so many, the patients are beating us up, the insurance companies are beating us, the staff's beating up. A lot of the dentists out there think that, "Well I have freedom of speech."
Dude, the Constitution is only between you and the government. You can't come in my house with free speech. Dentaltown is a private party and guys like you Timmy and Howard Goldstein keep the party going, and if someone's being a jerk or drank too much, you show them the door and thank you for all the countless gazillion hours you've spent keeping the party going in a fun way.
Tim Goodheart: You're more than welcome. That's what's got a lot of the lurkers start to post is cleaning that up a little bit.
Howard Farran: Yeah. If someone says something and makes you feel bad, we can debate whether Tim Goodheart's better looking because he has hair and I don't have hair or we can debate weight, if you think I'm three hundred pounds I can get on the scale and show you I'm only a rocky hot 208, but you can't debate feelings. If someone makes you feel bad, they make you feel bad. If someone's making you feel bad on Dentaltown, hit that Report Abuse and Timmy here and Howard Goldstein and Steven and others will look at that, and if a guy's being a jerk you guys give him a warning and we play baseball, it's three strikes and you're out. With a hundred and ninety-five thousand members, it's not like we need a member. If your only goal there is to make people feel bad, we don't need you, we don't want you.
Tim Goodheart: My whole thing is remember we're all colleagues in this together.
Howard Farran: At the end of the day, when people tell me dentists are crazy, I always reply, "No, all people are crazy, and yes dentists are people," and every one of us is crazy and if you think you're not crazy, you're probably batshit crazy. On that note Timmy we are out of time. Thanks again buddy. Peace out. Thank you for all you do for me and the townies and your patients and everybody.
Tim Goodheart: More than welcome.
Howard Farran: Thanks for giving me an hour. Send those other guys my way. I want to get them on there too.
Tim Goodheart: Will do.
Howard Farran: All right Timmy. Bye-bye.
Tim Goodheart: Bye.