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VIDEO - DUwHF #822 - Amol Nirgudkar
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AUDIO - DUwHF #822 - Amol Nirgudkar
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Amol Nirgudkar helps dentists grow their practices and reach their goals.
He is in an unusual position to offer practical insights. As a certified public accountant, business consultant, author, entrepreneur, and owner of a dental practice, he has 19 years of experience in working with dental practices, both large and small.
Through the three companies he founded, Amol has served more than 500 dentists across the United States.
With Dentist Profit Systems, founded in 2013, he successfully challenged the common ways that dental practices marketed their practices online. Dentist Profit Systems also created new ways for dental practices to measure the effectiveness of their marketing investments.
Through that work, Amol saw firsthand a growth challenge that all dental practices face. No matter how successfully they may market their practice, they lose many new patients because their front office is ineffective in handling phone inquiries.
To help solve that problem, he founded Patient Prism in 2015 as the world's first immersive call visualization platform. The software uses both machine learning and human learning to evaluate the way dental offices handle phone calls in near real time. It has helped more than a hundred dental offices convert more new patient calls into booked appointments.
Amol co-invented two patent-pending technologies used in Patient Prism. He continues to work with artificial intelligence and machine learning to help dentists build commercially successful practices.
He wrote and published a paperback book called Profitable Niches in General Dentistry (2014). He also authored and published an ebook titled 6 Secrets to More Patients & Higher Profits. Both are available through Amazon.com.
In his spare time, Amol also runs a quantitative hedge fund, manages a dental practice and travels the country with his 12 year old piano prodigy daughter to piano competitions.
www.patientprism.com
Howard: It is just a huge honor for me today to be sitting in my house with Amol Nirgudkar, who is a CPA. This guy has so many things he can talk about. I don't know how are we going to get in for an hour. But we'll give it a shot.
Amol Nirgudkar helps dentists grow their practices and reach their goals. He is in an unusual position to offer practical insights. As a certified public accountant, business consultant, author, entrepreneur, and owner of a dental practice. He has nineteen years experience in working with dental practices, both large and small. Through the three companies he founded, Amol has served more than five hundred dentists across the United States.
With Dentist Profit Systems, founded in 2013, he successfully challenged the common ways that dental practices marketed their practices online. Dentist Profit Systems also created new ways for dental practices to measure the effectiveness of their marketing investment. Through that work, Amol saw firsthand a growth challenge that all dental practices face. No matter how successful they market their practice, they lose many new patients because their front office is ineffective in handling phone inquiries.
To help solve that problem, he founded Patient Prism in 2015 as the world's first immersive call visualization platform. The software uses both machine learning and human learning to evaluate the way dental offices handle phone calls in near real time. It has helped more than a hundred dental offices convert more new patient calls into booked appointments. Amol co-invented two patent-pending technologies used in Patient Prism. He continues to work with artificial intelligence and machine learning to help dentists build commercially successful practices.
He wrote and published a paper book called Profitable Niches in General Dentistry in 2014. He also authored and published an ebook titled 6 Secrets to More Patients and a Higher Profits. Both are available through Amazon.com. In his spare time, Amol also runs a quantitative hedge fund, manages a dental practice and travels the country with his twelve year old piano prodigy daughter to piano competitions. I don't know, I'm thinking that that is one spoiled rotten little twelve year old girl to have daddy flying her around the country to piano recitals. Would you say she's spoiled completely rotten at this point?
Amol: She's well deservedly spoiled.
Howard: She's well… well nice… good dad.
Amol: She is she works hard and she's an amazing pianist, and I support that.
Howard: Well I've… I'm so glad to have you on show. We met at Mark Cooper's DSO convention. What is that called? The Mastery's of…
Amol: The Mastery Company, The Summit.
Howard: The Summit.
Amol: The Summit. The Summit in Phoenix right here.
Howard: And the reason I went to that, big fan of Mark Cooper, he's one of the few people in eight hundred shows and we brought on him twice. Because it's my belief that DSO's just make better business decisions. I mean… because McDonald's showed the whole world and did you see the movie, The Founder?
Amol: Yes.
Howard: That was such a great show. Because it was basically it changed all of America. Because in America every hamburger place, mom and dad owned it, they went to work all day. And at the end of the day they were exhausted, went home. So they just worked all day everyday inside their business. And then a franchise came along and say, ‘we're going to have a manager on team. That's not going to do hamburgers, fillings, crowns, or root canals all day. We're just going to work on the business of delivering hamburgers’. And wherever Mcdonald's went they slaughtered mom and pop. I mean they… I mean… I think… I mean… how many Mcdonald's are they up to now? Forty thousand locations?
Amol: How many billions sold? I don't even know.
Howard: And that's why I also don't let believe in patents. Like I will not sign a NDA. People always want me to sign NDA, I say, ‘I don't play with lawyers’. And we go to Mcdonald's down a major intersection. It served hamburger, fries and cokes. Have a drive thru. Where is the patent? Where is the rocket sign?
It's execution. And you cover so many of my peppy projects. I'm trying to be a leader in dentistry, and I know my homies cause I am a homie. I love dentistry. I'd rather pull your wisdom teeth than play golf with you any day of the week. I mean I just love… I love it when someone comes in broke tooth, in pain. I can fix that. But you… but where… I need to leave them too as they don't know their numbers. And you've ran a dental CPA… I mean you've had a CPA firm, for… how many years have you had your CPA firm?
Amol: I have been partner to Reliance for fourteen years.
Howard: And it's called Reliance?
Amol: Reliance Consulting LLC. It's based out…
Howard: Reliance Consulting LLC out of Tampa
Amol: Out of Tampa
Howard: And you've had, what? Five hundred dentist clients?
Amol: Five hundred dentist clients.
Howard: For how many years? You said…
Amol: Almost over fifteen years now.
Howard: Fifteen years you've been doing the numbers on five hundred dentist. I wish someday you would write us an article on Dentaltown of just benchmarking numbers.
Amol: Absolutely.
Howard: I know that growing your CPA firm isn't your passion right now. But my homie they never know their numbers.
Amol: Absolutely. And knowing what to measure is so important and critical. Right. Most of business owners that I have dealt with over the years, whether it is dentists or other guys? Sometimes they got stuck in their way of doing things and it… and just that's the way they do it. And if they don't know what to measure. It's not sometimes the bottom line, it's sometimes it's you have to look at internally and you have to make sense of those numbers.
And you can't just look at lab fees and say okay they should be this much. You have to look at what are you getting for that and is it convenient for you for… I mean the discussions I have with my dentist clients is, should I own a Cerec or not. And should I get a CBCT or not? And that's how detail we get into with our clients. Because if don't understand the business as a CPA, it's not just about the numbers it's how do you make sense of it. How do you make sense of the numbers.
I mean yesterday I had a client, a dentist client of mine, and they do six hundred crowns a year. And we were talking about this whole cerec and should they invest or not invest. And again, they're back into thinking about ten years ago when it used to take a lot of time and commitment and we said we can sit down and figure out. It's not just about the number. It's also about delivering better care to your patients. And that's what… that's the conversations we have with our dentist clients.
Howard: And what's that website Reliance?
Amol: CPA.com.
Howard: reliancecpa.com. Well we can't say all that without answering those questions.
Amol: Okay.
Howard: Because you know they're coming out of school $350,000 in debt. What's your view on… start with Cerec chairside milling for a hundred and fifty grand. Because they all say, ‘well if I buy that’. Let's say… here's what Sirona's going to say. Dentsply Sirona. They’re going to say, ‘okay it's a hundred and fifty grand’. What would the monthly payment on that be approximately?
Amol: I mean if you do it hundred fifty grand maybe $700, $800 a month.
Howard: $700, $800 a month. They're going to say, ‘well you'll have $800 less lab bill’. So it's…
Amol: Well it would be a lease which means you would have to buy it. I mean there would be structured in a way that… it's a lease for five years then you would have to buy it at whatever fair market value is. It's not for everyone I believe, I think if you're coming out of school directly, I think you have couple of choices. I spoke to a dentist yesterday. A periodontist came out, want's to start his own practice and I encouraged them. I said, ‘absolutely, it's not something you should shy away from’.
The DSO lab is a good lab. I mean over the past five years I feel DSO's have really improved their game significantly. Their managing practices better. Patients are being served better. There's a lot of other bad players that are out there. They're going or going away. And I think the good players are rising to the top. The DSO's doing…
Howard: Who do you think the bad player is just an (inaudible 07:49).
Amol: I wouldn't want to name the bad guys but…
Howard: This is dentistry uncensored man. Threw them under a bus.
Amol: No. I would… the good guys.
Howard: Who are the good guys floating to the top?
Amol: I think, Pacific is doing a phenomenal job.
Howard: Steve from Pacific.
Amol: Smile brands is doing a wonderful job. There's a DS out in Wisconsin, it's a client of ours. Is Dental Associates. Really wonderful job.
Howard: What's it's name?
Amol: Dental Associates. Sage is great. Sage is doing good job down in South Florida with Joe Garcia. He's doing a fantastic job. There's a lot of good guys out there that are truly wanting to improve dentistry and truly want to deliver better patient care to their patients. And not just reducing cost but also enhancing quality of care. And that's why I feel they are in need of good metrics to improve their practices. And they need visibility in all different aspects. How's my scheduling doing? How's my hygiene doing? How's my front office doing?
Howard: But is it… but as a CPA does it seem bizarre to you, that in every other industry the accounting would be tied into the software, the practice management software. Does it seem bizarre to you that the data for the schedule, the incoming phone calls isn't connected to the payables, the receivables, the statement.
Amol: Well. Well.
Howard: The finance statement, the cash flow, the balance sheet.
Amol: The traditionally the CPA rule in an accounting firm is always been a compliance rule. Which means we're just going to just do the books to prepare them to file your tax returns.
Howard: So that's just tax accounting?
Amol: That's just tax accounting.
Howard: It's not managerial?
Amol: It's not managerial accounting at all. And so I think CPA's… dentist who are out there, they need to work with CPA's that understand not just the tax aspects of it, but the business aspects.
Howard: And I've told you that I tell my homies on the show several times that they try to do the right decision, like to come out of school and they’ll say… they go ask their pastor, ‘I want a trusted accountant’. And he’ll say, ‘Joe, he's a deacon on the church board’. So you think you're making a right decision? And that guy, you’re his only dentist and the other clients are wheat farmers, and dairy farmers, and dry cleaners. And you need a CPA that’s specialized in dentistry. Just like just your wife does, she's does obstetrics.
Amol: She does high risk pregnancy.
Howard: What would you think of someone who had a risk pregnancy that they went to me, as a dentist, to deliver their baby? How good of an idea would that be?
Amol: It would not be a good idea?
Howard: So why would you go.
Amol: But here's…
Howard: To a CPA that does a hundred obstetrics and no dentist? It just…
Amol: I have an answer to that. The answer is very often today likeability and competence is very easily confused.
Howard: Absolutely.
Amol: Just because you like somebody doesn't mean they're competent.
Howard: That's everybody refers their doctor. I've watched them my whole life. ‘Oh, you should go to my doctor, she's amazing’. And I'll go, ‘well is she a board certified?’ ‘I don't know’. ‘What school did she go to?’ ‘I don't know’. ‘Do you know anything about her?’ ‘She's… I love her’. Likeability.
Amol: It's likeability. And then somebody at your church, wonderful guy, fantastic being, would you buy insurance from them? Probably not. Right? And because they don't know… how do you know they know what your needs are? Just because somebody goes to your place of worship. And they might be wonderful to be as friends but do you need to do business with them? And lot of times this is the problem with small businesses that I've seen. We serve over one thousand small businesses, five hundred dentist but other business as well. Most of them…
Howard: Are your dentists your main business? I mean…
Amol: Dentist is my main.
Howard: It has to be, because that’s half.
Amol: It’s pretty much…
Howard: And what’s the mix of the other half?
Amol: So we do real estate, investors, big private equity funds. We do franchises like Subways and not Mcdonald's. We do pharmacies. So there's a lot of smorgasbord of clients we do. And the biggest challenge I feel that small businesses face is decision making. Everybody wants to buy a quick product, they want to fix something by buying something. And decision making is only influenced by their quarterly of people that are around them.
And sometimes that's not enough. Sometimes you need an objective somebody outsider. That tells you, ‘hey you don't need to buy that $2,000,000 house for asset protection or tax reasons. You don't need to buy the cone beam CT to fix the problems in hygiene. Right. You don't need to buy a big SUV to save you money on taxes’. Somebody needs to say… because a lot of these decisions come from the gut for most of this business owners. And gut sometimes is not the best teacher.
Howard: Well I’m an expert on gut, because mine's three times bigger than yours. Right. Maybe your wife could help… there might be a baby in here. I might be a high risk pregnant.
But I think dentist are… it's the same rodeo as a congressman or senator. They go to Wash DC and they don't feel like they'd done anything unless they passed a big bill that cost billions of dollars. And I think it's the human condition where you walk and you always say, ‘Well I want to be successful. So if I buy something big like a chairside milling or a CB. If I spend a shit load of money doesn't that show that I'm serious? And it will make me feel good. And it's got to be a good decision because I committed $100,000.
Amol: And it's not just dentists, it's all business owners. I mean Jim Collins in his great book Good to Great, one of the best business books ever written. Talks about the need for business owners to find a silver bullet. Everybody wants that one silver bullet to find. Okay. If I do this, then everything will be fixed. Right. If I buy that cone beam that's going to fix. If I spend $10,000 attending this course, it's going to fix it all. And you can't buy yourself out of a problem usually… another Jim Collins quote is, ‘success is a marathon it's not a sprint’. So you got to do the right things, it's a twenty mile march he calls it. You got to do the right things, maybe different ways, and eventually you'll succeed but there's no one way. It is nothing you can do one thing.
And there is many like in dentistry there is… you got to look at five, six things a lot of… there's dental consultants out there that will tell you, you look at front office convergence, you got to look at scheduling, they'll look at your hygiene. And what I've learned from working with all this dentists is, some of them have incredible business acumen. And some of them are incredible dentist too. And when that gets combined it's magical.
Howard: Right.
Amol: Dentistry is a phenomenal field over the next… the technology has surpassed… (inaudible 14:18) there's allowing dentist to do so much more than they used to do. I'm preaching to the choir, excuse me if I'm overstepping. But now you can do mouth guards very easily for you football teams across the… school football teams. You can do so much… and as it makes such a big impact. The oral saliva testing, the oral cancer stuff and the whole oral systemic movement at the forefront of health care. And I think there is a tremendous opportunity.
Howard: Well you wrote a book Profitable Niches in General Dentistry and you’ve seen the accounting books
Amol: Right.
Howard: For five hundred dentist for almost two decades. Any low hanging fruit lessons that could you share from that kind of knowledge?
Amol: I think the idea for writing a book was… is for general dentists to get into niche areas that might be suitable for the demographic that they serve. If you are in an older demographic like Sun City Center or Sarasota or Naples in Florida, then you may want to think about going about and getting implant certification and start placing some.
Howard: You know what my niche would be down there in Sarasota?
Amol: Yes.
Howard: I want to find a eighty year old woman who's worth a hundred million dollars.
Amol: That's it.
Howard: And just marry her.
Amol: That would be a good niche.
Howard: Do you have any leads that I can follow up on?
Amol: There's plenty of them. There’s plenty of them.
Howard: I will find one.
Amol: There's plenty of them.
Howard: I want the oldest one you could find.
Amol: But that's it. So my idea was, was you got to figure out what the low hanging fruit is. I mean if you're on a bunch of millennials town where they… you have to be able to offer some sort of ortho. Some sort of clear brace options. And that's what I've been telling dentists is that you got to look at what is it that your demographic wants. And one of the things that I was able to do with my marketing company is able reverse engineer some of the content strategy from Google and harnessing the Google algorithms. And say okay what do my customers in my area want? Are they searching for dental implants? Are they searching for invisalign? Are they searching for mouth guards, sleep apnea whatever it is.
And if you understand your community better. If you understand the five to ten mile radius around your office better. And then see where you’re deficient in terms of offering your services. If you are in a neighborhood of forty or to fifty year olds and they have young children and they're all… and you don't offer any kind of orthodontic treatment as a general practice, especially with any of the clear base options. You're losing out. You’re losing out.
So that was the point of my book is you have to look at areas where you practice, you got to look at what you offer. And if you are going to be good at that, obviously, again I bring Jim Collins a lot. You got to be a hedgehog. What are your best in the world at and what are you most passionate about. And if you can figure that out and what drives your economic engine. Then you become that hedgehog, if you're expert, if that's what… if you love to do root canals. Great. Go do them be the best in the world at them. And you can market them that way.
Marketing root canals is hard but anything else. So that was the point of the book was… is to figuring out the niches that are coming about whether it's oral saliva testing, whether it's sleep appliances, whether it's orthodontic clear aligners, whether it's implants. And not everybody who’s going to do everything. But if you like surgery and if you have an aptitude for that, by all means you should go about and get certified, and start doing it. Because it's the need of the hour. Implant is becoming the need of the hour. That is the preferred way to deal with broke, I mean, missing teeth. And that's the lectures I was giving these guys.
Howard: And when you're working with five hundred dentists doing your CPA numbers if some kid is was coming out of school and said what practice management information system do you like? Do you like any of them more than others?
Amol: I don't recommend practice management systems. I the only thing I tell people is be aware of bells and whistles. Be aware of shiny objects, anywhere you go. So we are… we love as humans we love judging book by it's covers. And just because something looks nice, something has all those nice reports and this and that has five hundred reports, does it mean are you going to use it. Right. So any system that gives you the benefits are more than the cost, I would recommend it. Whether it's Dentrix, or Eaglesoft, or Open, or whatever that might be that serves your purposes. Don't buy something just because it looks cool. Just because you like the rep. Or you they took you out to drinks. That doesn't matter. What matters is are you going to be able to use the data to maybe make a difference.
Howard: Every (inaudible 19:15) I say when they go into any dental office, you can go to report generator and see what you've used.
Amol: Absolutely.
Howard: Eighty-five percent of all bells and whistles have never been used one single time. And it's so funny. I can personally name dentists in this town. Who switch from Dentrix, or Eaglesoft to the other one.
Amol: Right.
Howard: Because they wanted this feature and we’re like dude that they both have the same feature.
Amol: Just use it man.
Howard: So I mean they’re switching. They're switching for a new belled whistle and they don't even know their own computer has that bell and whistle.
Amol: The one thing to answer you quickly, is that I tell my dentists is that figure out what you want to measure on a daily, weekly, monthly basis. Make sure you make those reports automatic that somebody hands them to you. So that you can see how the health of your practice is doing. That's it. You don't need fancy bells and whistles, you don't need… there's lot of jargon out there. In the cloud, not on the cloud, in the ground. All the stuff you don't need jargon. You just need good information at your fingertips, to make the decisions timely to that problems don't grow over a period of time. And you can fix them before they get bigger. That's it. And that's to have battle in most of this businesses.
Howard: So your… so now your new passion is, one of the most interesting parts of dentistry, and that is… the dentist has eight years of training. I have nine years of college. There’s a lot of specialists that have twelve, thirteen of college to do what they do. And what's amazing with that is after eight, nine, ten, twelve years of college to be a dentist. The only successful dentists are the ones that do like a hundred hours of CE a year. Yet now the government's best idea is introduce dental therapist. Who have half the training, it’s like can you imagine going into your wife's high risk OB GYN and someone’s, ‘you know what? We think that nurses now should start delivering the babies? It’s like your wife… how much… how many year of college did you wife go to do the high risk obstetrics?
Amol: So
Howard: Undergrad. Med school
Amol: Five years in med school, four years of residency, three years to fellowship.
Howard: Plus four years undergrad?
Amol: Yes.
Howard: So how many years all that?
Amol: That's fifteen. Right? I mean almost… no she went to a (inaudible 21:26)
Howard: Four years undergrad.
Amol: She went to… no she went direct to medical school. She's just smart. So she went to…
Howard: Out of high school?
Amol: Out of high school. Right.
Howard: Are you serious?
Amol: Yeah. She's a smart girl.
Howard: Oh my gosh.
Amol: So five years of direct medical school, no undergrad.
Howard: Five years MD.
Amol: Four years of residency and OB GYN.
Howard: OB GYN.
Amol: And then three years of Fellowship in Maternal Fetal Medicine. So five plus, four plus, three. That's twelve years.
Howard: Okay. And how many hours of CE do you think she does a year?
Amol: I think she does about hundred but she is required only forty but she does a hundred.
Howard: And it's… she’s required forty and does a hundred. So what would she think if Florida said… she practices down in Tampa?
Amol: She practices down at Tampa.
Howard: And Tampa. What would you think if she said, ‘well the government thinks that now we should have midlevel providers, and have nurses start delivering babies’.
Amol: That…
Howard: What would she think of that?
Amol: She would tell me this one thing, she always tells me. Education didn’t really teach me what to do. It tell me what I don't know. Education really, really frees you up and it tells you that hey, you need to be aware. And you need to look up something when you don't know it. And that's what it does, it makes her better as a professional because she know that she doesn't know everything.
Howard: And then these organizations, these big government organizations, I don't want to mention any by name, like The Pew Trust. Where they like say there… they want to take these midlevel providers and put them in under served areas. It’s like well you know what? You’ve got a bunch of kids here with $500,000 of student loans. Why don't you go work on the schools being half the cost.
Amol: Right.
Howard: Why don't you go offer a hundred of those kids, ‘we’ll pay off your $500,000 of student loans if you go out’. And their answer is they don't want to do any of that.
Amol: Right.
Howard: They want to take someone with half the training and send them. And I’m like, ‘dude even when you're a dentist. I mean when you get out dental kindergarten you barely know your butt from second base. And it's a lifetime journey’. I mean would you want to send your kid to a dentist with half the training?
Amol: I would not.
Howard: It's like… I think they just want to… I mean the problem is, the schools are too expensive, the kids have too much debt. It's not the solution to send someone in there with half the training. Put your money where your mouth is. But the point I was… the segway was leading into is the hygienist has got four years of college.
Amol: Right.
Howard: She's like a registered nurse in any hospital. The front desk, no training.
Amol: No training at all.
Howard: And this dentist, I love them. She wants to do the best root canal in the world but when she's back there doing a root canal for an hour. She wouldn’t know if UFOers were calling her front office.
Amol: That's right.
Howard: She wouldn’t know of drug dealers were buying drugs at her front desk. And when she's done with that root canal say, ‘how many incoming calls happened during the last hour? No idea. How many went to voicemail? No idea. And then when I tell her, it takes ten people to land on your website before your horrible website converts one to call.
Amol: That's right.
Howard: Three people have to call before your untrained receptionist can convert one to come in.
Amol: That's correct.
Howard: And three people have to come in with just a cavity.
Amol: Right.
Howard: Before you can convert one to pay you money.
Amol: That's correct.
Howard: To fix the one cavity. And then two of them don't get their cavity fixed, and then your best idea is to go take another course on how to do cavities better.
Amol: That's correct.
Howard: God dang, to do a cavity three had to come in with a cavity. Which mean nine had to call, which mean ninety had to land on your website, why don't you fix some of that? In fact my biggest joke in dentistry is, when they are taking courses on how to do the fillings I say, ‘you know what? Why don't we just agree to remove all the decay and pack them with butter?’ Because that would be better than just treating one out of three cavities. Because two out of three people… I mean imagine if the fire department let two out of three fires burn in the ground.
Amol: Absolutely.
Howard: Would you say, ‘well you need a new fire truck’.
Amol: Yeah.
Howard: ‘Or you need a new course on putting out…’. No. no, dude, you don't show up at two out of three fires.
Amol: That’s correct.
Howard: That's your problem. I don't care… that's your only problem.
Amol: It is the biggest thing in dentistry and other business is you usually don't know what is wrong. What is really wrong in the stuff. If you look at the marketing funnel, patients sixty-five, seventy percent of new searches for new dentists happen online today. Right? And most of them are happening on your mobile phone. They find you, hopefully you have a unique experience on mobile or website that promotes them to actually call your office. Then when you call the office you have to convert them. Maybe it's a one and three chance that you ask the right questions, expressed the right empathy, don't put them on hold, don't have attitude, don't be… I mean I've seen some calls. You would be amused by them.
Howard: I'm amused by my… I mean I have amazing ladies been answering my phone for decades.
Amol: Sure.
Howard: And we record their phone calls. And I mean we're talking about some of the smartest, classiest, most amazing women in the world will still say some of the craziest things in the world.
Amol: And it's just human nature. I mean you…
Howard: It's human nature that all humans are crazy monkeys, that…
Amol: We are to an extent and it’s (inaudible 26:36).
Howard: But earlier… but back earlier you said, as your CPA firm five hundred were dentist and other ones you said Subway.
Amol: (inaudible 26:43) state Subway. Yeah.
Howard: Yeah. I know a kid who just got a job at Subway. And before his first day he had to go home, on his own computer log on, and watch instructional videos, and pass the questions. It took him eight hours to watch instructional videos before he could work on his first day.
And I'm like, God dang, if you were got to got a job at a dental office, you would’ve had zero training. And you would’ve showed up the first day and they say, ‘hey can you get here's your training. Bottled water. If you need anything we got a break room at the back, we got some muffins back there’.
Why is it that subway trains sixteen year old’s better on how to make a turkey sandwich, than dental offices train a receptionist to fill a incoming sales call, asking questions as complicated about dental implants and root canals and…
Amol: I think… I think… I think in the healthcare business whether it's dentist or physicians, they feel that clinical… all that’s required to be successful is you have the right clinical skills and everything else is not as important. And sales is not… and selling sometimes they feel is a bad word. But you’re selling something to a patient that they potentially don't need.
Most of America has a perception that the dentist want's sell them treatment that they don't need. So somehow there is this… maybe some… there's some guilt on part of a dentist to not have a great receptionist answer this phone calls. But some of them is just that, ‘hey it doesn't matter I'm a good dentist I've taken training. I’ve done Spear, Pankey, DOS and I've done everything, and I'm the best guy. I'm going to figure this out. So all we need somebody is to answer the phones at the front. And book the appointments. That's the mentally.
And I'm going to spend only $12 an hour. I'm going to spend the least amount of money that I can because it's a dumb job. And here you are having a… somebody who will answering the phone potentially could be selling $40,000 patient, and your hands have this lady puts the patient on hold that has an attitude, then forgets to mention care credit or any other financing options which is the biggest reasons why people don't book. And then there it is, you've lost that opportunity because you felt that you don't need a sales person right at the front doing a good enough job that's in the best interest of both the practice and the patient. Okay. You don't think that's important? A lot of dentists just don't feel and because they don't go through business school. They don't go. And a lot of business… I was a business major. I have three majors. Accounting, economics and finance. Right. Masters.
Howard: Damn.
Amol: And I have the masters in Accounting. Don't go through the school of real world, where we understand the importance of customer service. When Howard Schultz introduced… when Starbucks introduced… let me segway a little bit. When they introduced food in Starbucks chains all over the world, one of the problems that occurred they realized the same stores sales went down as a result of introducing food. The opposite was expected. Right? What they realized is, and this was Howard's genius…
Howard: Oh, Howard’s a genius.
Amol: Howard's a genius.
Howard: And what was I saying about a Howard that wasn’t a genius. Howard the duck.
Amol: What he said is that the smell of the food was interfering with the smell of the coffee, and it was interfering with the experience that they Starbucks customer had when they enter it. And number one rule that Howard created when he created Starbucks, is as soon as they enter they should smell coffee. And now they start smelling sandwiches. It interfered with the process and that's why the store's sales decrease. Eventually they figured out to get… the cheese was burning at low temperatures. So they figured out get a substitute new cheese that would burn on higher temperatures where by would not interfere with the smell of the coffee. And they got back on track. It's all about the customer experience. If the Starbucks is charging $9 per coffee
Howard: Can I just interrupt one thing on that?
Amol: Sure.
Howard: Every Kroger which is the third largest distributor. It's Walmart, Costco, Kroger then Amazon. Kroger says that their grocery stores, when they take out the bakery their sales go down. That when your wife walks into the grocery and she's smells things cooking. She starts salivating, she goes in the food mode, she buys more stuff. The only other variable as important than that is the size of the cart. When they go into their stores and take a ten cubic foot cart and replace it with a fifteen cubic foot cart, the sales go up proportionally. But… and then… so think about all what I just said. Walk in to a dental office, what it's smells like?
Amol: A dental office?
Howard: Oh my God guys. I mean part of that whole fear, and grossness of a dental office is smell related.
Amol: It's smell related.
Howard: And Starbucks focuses on that. Kroger focuses on that. And I walk into my own dental office sometimes and I’m like good God.
Amol: Right.
Howard: I can crack the door open in a beautiful winter when it's seventy degrees and blue skies, but when it's a hundred eighteen outside, you got four one ton air conditioner's cranking. So then if I said to you well should think about aromatherapy.
Amol: Yes.
Howard: He’d think I was a quack. And Howard Schultz doesn’t think aromatherapy’s a quack.
Amol: I mean… say when… spends a million dollars a day at Bellagio to produce good aromas when you enter Bellagio in Las Vegas. Right. There's a reason that company is sent air by the way. They provide to all the Vegas casinos. And one of my dental offices that we did marketing for, they said, ‘we want our office to smell like the Cosmopolitan Hotel in Vegas’. It's a wonderful hotel with the big chandelier bar and they got the same scent. And it's amazing how… I was sitting in that dental office in the chairs and I literally heard five patients within an hour saying that, my God, this smells nice here. It’s fantastic.
Howard: And what is the first impression… you're talking about a smell. That's when you come into the office. So someone's already converted…
Amol: Right.
Howard: You come in the office.
Amol: Correct.
Howard: Two out of three didn't even get converted. What is the absolute first impression? It ain't smell. It is whose answered that phone call.
Amol: Absolutely.
Howard: It is the most important person. And I got to ask on your CPA experience again. In most company who's the highest paid, besides the owner and the CEO, who's the highest paid people? Sales, or manufacturing, the installation?
Amol: Yeah.
Howard: So in any other business… if you're the dentist
Amol: Right.
Howard: So you think you're all that and a bag of chips because you're the actual guy doing the filling.
Amol: Absolutely.
Howard: But if you're the guy installing the air conditioner on the assembly line making whatever it is you make, would you make more or less money than the person out there selling it? The sales person…
Amol: The sales people should make the most amount of money.
Howard: Almost every six figure income job in America is the sales person of the company. Would you agree with that?
Amol: Absolutely.
Howard: Oh my God, you go to any small business from coast to coast. And you walk in there and take out the owner…
Amol: Right.
Howard: Who’s making bank…
Amol: Who’s the next highest paid person in this organization? Oh it's Henry. He sold a million dollars. He got to plaque Million Dollars Seller.
Amol: That’s right.
Howard: And then here's a guy, ‘well I was a million dollars seller two years ago’. Then you go out into the factory floor, that's the middle wage people. And in dentistry, the person out there selling is named after a piece of furniture. Oh you’re the front desk lady.
Amol: That's right
Howard: Go get them.
Amol: That’s right.
Howard: No training and no videos go get him.
Amol: You're the least paid.
Howard: Here's your twelve bucks baby.
Amol: That's it.
Howard: Go sell some dentistry.
Amol: You're the least paid.
Howard: And it's the most important.
Amol: And it's the most important.
Howard: And you tell the dentist that and they go, ‘what do you mean they're the most important? I'm the most important’.
Amol: Right.
Howard: ‘I'm the doctor’.
Amol: It is.
Howard: She's a piece of furniture.
Amol: And I think as solo dentists all across the country wake up to the reality of DSO's intruding in their market share. They're going to realize… I think that understanding this, understanding it's a team effort. Understanding that we have to have all components of the dental practice work. And it's not going to be good enough anymore, to just have a group of patients just refer you. And your referral business will continue in perpetuity and you will retire on that. It's no good. You have to have a steady stream of new patients that are (inaudible 34:46)
Howard: Well I would say this, I would say that my office turns thirty years old September 21st. I know I look like I'm twenty-four, but I'm actually fifty-four, and when you got out thirty years ago it was a hell of a lot easier. These kids get out $500,000 in debt. Demographics matter, answering the phone. They can't make as many dumb mistakes as you could thirty years ago.
Amol: Absolutely.
Howard: Thirty years ago you could be the dumbest guy in the class and do well. Today with corporate dentistry.
Amol: Absolutely.
Howard: And increased in loan debt, and the fact that they added another half dozen dental schools.
Amol: Right.
Howard: You need to be… it's raising the competitive level. You got to be more competitive. So you're… so that's… you mostly your passion now. So my homies go to patientprism.com.
Amol: patientprism.com
Howard: What are you going to find at patientprism.com?
Amol: What they're going to find is a very unique system that not just looks… that looks like your front office. And analyzes it real time. Right. So here's a conversation between nine thirty of patient calls in. And has two broken teeth, so needs extractions, potentially would be the bridge or an implant. Are you receptionist Michelle, let's say, or Mark. They answer the phone call at nine thirty in the morning. Somehow they answer the phone, can you hold please?
So Mark's on hold for thirty seconds, and they get back and they asked… and the receptionist forgets to answer the… asked Mark's name. Conversation goes on, how much does it costs? Between five and ten thousand for an implant, per implant it's five thousand. And then the conversation goes in a way that, by the end of the conversation the patient has not been asked some other basic, basic things like, are you in any discomfort. Right. First of… have I asked your name first? And, let's say, nine thirty five the call is over.
What patient prism does is, within one hour it sends the dentist and the office manager an alert, and shows a visualization of what went wrong in that call. You know what? At minute number… at thirty second mark you should have asked for the patient's name, you should have asked if there were in discomfort, you should have built a rapport. Now we're going deep into conversations that are happening between the front office and the patient, and telling you in a color coded way… what we've developed called CallViz which is our first patent pending technology.
Howard: What's your first patent pending?
Amol: It's called CallViz.
Howard: Call visualization?
Amol: The call visualization.
Howard: Call visualization? You call it V-I-Z?
Amol: V-I-Z
Howard: Call visualization.
Amol: Call visualization. So what it does it looks at a call and now instead of having to listen to the entire phone conversation. Now you can look at a color coded annotation of where the ball got dropped. Where our receptionist did really good job. They had a great greeting, okay, we're going to give you pat on the back for that. Now within ten seconds of that, you’re going to know what I did wrong, what I did right, what I should have done. Right. And you're going to have, on the bottom of that calls, you're going to have some training videos associated with the specific failure that happen on that call. So for example, if you didn't know how to triage a extraction patient. Because a extraction patient obviously could be a bridge candidate, could be a implant candidate. And if you didn't know how to do that, you going to have small video that tells you how to handle implant opportunities in the future.
Howard: Now is this being monitored by live humans or artificial intelligence?
Amol: So artificial intelligence, as cool as it sounds, it's not there yet. What we use artificial intelligence for, is understanding when a call comes in it's a new patient, or an existing patient, or general call which is a lab calling for whatever or somebody calling for directions. And artificial intelligence also feeds into our second patent pending technology which is called CallViz Keyword Cloud. And that keyword cloud basically looks at, what are my patients asking for. What are they asking for, are they asking for crowns, bridges, implants. Are they asking for zoom teeth whitening and now I'm able to monitor those conversations. And those keywords. And then correlate that back to whether I booked them or not.
So for example, I could go back in the month of June for a particular practice. And say, ‘okay, no, nineteen patients last month called for dental implants’. Nineteen patients spoke the word implant, that they needed implant. If I click on nineteen, I can go back and see all my nineteen calls that and see whether they are booked or not booked. So now I have such great visibility into what's happening in the front, and whether these patients are booking or not. That instantly, one of the things my favorite mantras of Silicon Valley has been, how do you… if you can figure out a way to fail fast and fail often, you can actually get back on your feet and actually succeed quickly.
So now having… within forty five minutes you understand… now you’re in your opertory, you're doing your root canal, or you’re doing your crown. And you come out you got a text message and you see the visualization. Oh my God, we lost a $30,000or $10,000 case. Why is that? Okay, here's the reasons why. And boom we have you calling, we have somebody in the office calling that patient back saying, sir you called us at nine thirty, here's what we have going on implant opportunities. Here's… we’re offering a free x-ray's, a free CBCT scan. And we want you to come here, because we have the best guy in town that does amazing implants.
Howard: Okay. You're selling, you’re selling, you’re selling. You’re preaching to the choir, this is dentistry uncensored. How long have you been doing this? What is it cost? How does my homies sign up? And it goes…
Amol: Sure.
Howard: How long you've been doing this? How long has it been live?
Amol: So it's been… so two years.
Howard: Two years.
Amol: Two years. We file for patents.
Howard: And you have a hundred clients on it?
Amol: No, hundred and fifty.
Howard: Okay. So let me back up a little bit. You had five hundred clients for your CPA.
Amol: CPA firm.
Howard: And then when you started your dental marketing, which you don't do anymore. When you started Dentist Profit Systems, you do the advertising for a hundred dentists. And those all hundred were your CPA clients.
Amol: Well most of them were.
Howard: Most of them were.
Amol: Most of them were.
Howard: And you don't take any new clients for that because…
Amol: No more clients because…
Howard: Because you’re focused on?
Amol: Well I'm focused on the front office conversions.
Howard: And so that you have a hundred and fifty.
Amol: Hundred and fifty.
Howard: And how many those in hundred fifty were your five hundred CPA clients?
Amol: About… I would say about fifty to sixty.
Howard: So now… so now you've growing this. And what does it cost?
Amol: So it costs for a solo practitioner, not a DSO. It costs $579 a month. That includes unlimited phone calls tracking, coaching, including her learning management system. Which is constantcoach.me. Which allows you to train your people like you talked about Subway.
Howard: And you have two hundred short videos.
Amol: Well almost five hundred videos now.
Howard: Five hundred videos.
Amol: Five hundred videos in the learning management system, that are short two to three minute videos, that you can actually take a pretest and a post test. You can assign all your employees. Okay you need videos on this aspect of the stuff, so go ahead and train that. and if you score ninety percent you get a certificate.
So there's a whole system behind training you to how to answer this calls correctly. We're now building new videos regarding other aspects of dentistry. But right now we have maybe two to three hundred regarding this front office conversions. How to handle this, how do you handle it. Irate patient how do you handle this then, how do you handle somebody who doesn't have the right insurance. How do you handle medicaid calls. We have a five series on implant opportunities. What does all-on-four mean? How do you deal with all-on-four patients if you have that kind of case. So that includes $579 a month per location. Right. That’s per location price. That includes unlimited call monitoring recording, coaching. And unlimited access to all the videos on the platform, which we’re growing almost twenty to thirty videos per month.
And usually the ROI we've seen… we've seen dentist's in ROI within about twenty-one days. They've seen entire years of ROI because they have got that patient back in the chair. They have been able to call a patient that was gone, now that patient's back in the chair because now you called them back. Within twenty one days you should see an ROI for the entire year recovered. For the entire year. We’re a premium product, because we give premium service, we are not just a software company that does, ‘okay I'm going to show you pretty graphs’.
We have human coaches that have… ten percent of the job is currently done by artificial intelligence, ninety percent is still done by dental professionals who are sitting in Tampa not in China, or anywhere else in the world, or India, where I'm from. They're sitting in Tampa. They’ve been through dentistry, they’ve been dental receptionists, dental office managers. All these guys that are making sure that the information that we're giving you is relevant. So you can actually call the patient back and get that patient back in the chair. That's the beauty of the system, it's still driven by human intelligence because you can still replace them. Machines are great. Apparently we have that IBM Watson guy or girl watching our stuff. But Watson is not smart enough yet to figure out the mood and all that stuff. It you need humans to do that.
Howard: Last Halloween a pirate came to the door. Dressed as a pirate and it’s a little kid and I said, ‘you look like a Tampa Bay Buccaneer’. And I said, ‘hey pirate where's your buccaneers? He said, ‘on my head’. Get it? Buccaneers. And he said Effingeers.
Anyway so what… from what you've learned from your Dentist Profit Systems where you did the marketing.
Amol: Right.
Howard: And now what you've done on the call centers. What do you think the hours should be… well first of all, what hours you answer me? If you're on east coast you're three hours ahead of LA.
Amol: So, yeah… so we answer all, East coast and West coast. English and Spanish both.
Howard: English, Spanish and… but what hours would you recommend they'd be answering a call. Because I know… almost every dentist I know is open Monday through Thursday, eight to five.
Amol: Sure.
Howard: And so how many calls come in?
Amol: So one of the things that are systems will do…
Howard: Outside those hours.
Amol: Our system will tell you that. That, ‘hey, by the way, you had ten phone calls that went to voicemail on Friday's, but five phone calls that went to voicemail on Saturday's. So our system will give you all the metrics to see what's happening. And if you realize… it will also tell you by the hour. For example, guys you're missing a lot of calls at lunch time. So everybody's going to lunch at the same time. So you're missing all these calls.
It gives you… our system it goes so deep. It gives you information on when you're missing the calls, why you're missing the calls, why you're not booking the calls, who’s leaving voice mails at what time. Are they leaving during business hours, non business hours? So there's a report that, for example, multi location DSO's love a report which is called a dashboard. With one click you can see by location, how many phone calls, how many voicemails were left during business hours yesterday or today.
Howard: Okay. Is this a VOIP system, Voice Over Internet Protocol. (inaudible 46:09)
Amol: So it's not… so we don't replace your phone system at all. We sit on top of it. So we don't actually take over your numbers. You maintain your numbers, we assign tracking numbers to all your marketing mediums. We assign a tracking number to your website, your Google Maps, your Adwords, your Facebook, to your post card campaign.
So one of the other benefits of that… because we were a marketing company when we developed this, we made sure… one of the purposes of the system was to give dentists a clarity on a daily basis. That, ‘hey, today I got two patients from this website. Oh, I got one patient from the Yellow Pages today. Oh, I got one patient from this little flyer I send out. So on a daily basis you know what marketing is working and what’s not working.
Howard: And you can tell when a dentist isn't sophisticated just from what you just said, you go to their website, same number on their Facebooks, same number on their Twitter, same number I mean, on their business cards, same on the yellow page, it’s like… and what's amazing is some of them… one of them is my friend in the valley who’s on the back of the phone book, lawyer, billboards, everything. Because he's in love with this one eight hundred number.
Amol: Right.
Howard: I’m like dude you're… I mean I'm fifty-four and you're older than me. You're just showing everybody you're a sixty year old crazy man. Because the one eight hundred number, he didn’t know how they were coming in. They were coming in on Google.
Amol: Absolutely.
Howard: On Facebook and their searching personal injury attorney.
Amol: Nobody remembers… I mean except for my family’s numbers
Howard: And he doesn't know where any of this marketing is working.
Amol: Absolutely.
Howard: Because he's just keeps pitching this one eight hundred number.
Amol: And that's one of the reasons why people wonder why they are not getting new patients, is they're spending money in the wrong place. They're not spending enough money. One of the big lessons I learned from the marketing company was, people did a lot of Google advertising, through Google Adwords. And in some markets they, ‘oh, I'm going to spend $500 to get an implant call’. And it cost $25 a click. So… and if you do $500 a month, $25 a click which means in the morning at eight o'clock somebody clicks on your ad, your ad doesn't show up for the whole day. Right. So it's not enough.
Howard: What do you mean?
Amol: So if you have a…
Howard: Oh, a $500 budget.
Amol: Yeah. So let's say you have a $500 budget, and let's say you open twenty five days. Right. And so…
Howard: That's $500 budget per month.
Amol: Per month for Google Adwords to attract implant patients.
Howard: Okay.
Amol: Let's say you opened twenty five days of the month. And so $50… so $20 dollars a day is your budget. Now you're in Miami, or Fort Lauderdale, or Tampa, where an implant click cost $25 a click. Your ad doesn't even show up. So here you are over a period two days, you used the budget, only one person has clicked on your ad. You wonder why the $500 is a waste. You need at least a $2000 budget in that market. And if you're in Hiram, Georgia maybe $500 is enough.
And a lot of this guys, because they have these preconceived notions from their CPA's or whoever it is, that x percentage of your… x percentage should be going to marketing and advertising, and you're stuck in that little percentage. And you're not. You're a brand new practice you’re trying to grow it, you're trying to get new patients, you have to understand how much you need to spend and sometimes it's seventy-eight percent.
Howard: You know what the highest, most expensive Google Click ad is?
Amol: I think it's $25 a click in Miami.
Howard: But do you know what's the most expensive click is?
Amol: Personal injury attorneys.
Howard: In where? Manhattan.
Amol: Manhattan.
Howard: Personal injury in Manhattan. And they're paying $3500 a click for that.
Amol: Yeah. Absolutely.
Howard: So when I get in a really bad mood, and I've been drinking I just Google New York personal injury (inaudible 49:35) to get back at the lawyers. No, I’m just kidding.
Amol: So you have to…
Howard: But let's follow that on so. Let's say they go $500… let's say they go $2,000.
Amol: Right.
Howard: And they get ten clicks to a website, well okay that's just land on the website.
Amol: That’s right.
Howard: What's the conversion on the website to call in the office.
Amol: So you have… now Google says you have ten seconds to get them to call you. Right. Ten seconds, because of them are doing in mobile phones. So if within ten seconds if you don't have a social proof in terms of reviews right there, you don't have a video that kind of catches on. You don't have the right content that relates directly to the ad.
Howard: Social proof. That's reviews.
Amol: Right
Howard: Video.
Amol: Videos. And then content that…
Howard: So half of them don't even have a still picture of themselves.
Amol: That’s correct.
Howard: And if they do it looks like a mug shot.
Amol: That's correct.
Howard: On video.
Amol: So for example…
Howard: Well social proof, video, what was the third?
Amol: And targeted content that directly relates to the ad. So…
Howard: And pushing the button that automatically goes to a call.
Amol: That's correct. That’s correct. And you obviously push to call…
Howard: And what's the other one where the website adjust to the site.
Amol: Well that's basic now. That's just…
Howard: But what’s that called?
Amol: It's called responsive design.
Howard: Responsive design. Okay, but… okay, I know these guys. What percent of them do not have a responsive website design so you open their ad on iPhone.
Amol: It looks…
Howard: About what percent?
Amol: I would say more than sixty percent.
Howard: Yes. You said well that’s standard response. Shit. That’s standard response two out of three homies don't even have that.
Amol: That's right.
Howard: And ninety-nine percent don't even have a video.
Amol: That's correct.
Howard: And so you're saying social proof reviews.
Amol: Social proof reviews
Howard: And a video.
Amol: Video and then…
Howard: Targeted content.
Amol: Targeted content is really important to understand because what a sixty-five year old diabetic man with a A1C level of 7.5 is looking to see whether a dental implant is the right treatment for him. He's typing a long tail keyword into Google saying that, high A1C level, is dental implant appropriate for me? And if you don't have a targeted content directly that talks about A1C levels and the impact of… and what you need to do, then you can't convert them. If you have a content that talks about ‘hey, we deal with a lot of diabetics we have to make sure that your A1C level comes below a certain point for us to place the implant. But implants are wonderful they last for… all that stuff.
Howard: Well I'm really luck, I'm right across street from a very successful veterinary practice.
Amol: Okay.
Howard: And we’ll just refer him across street.
Amol: (inaudible 52:03)
Howard: Yeah. You just… you just… you’re at the end of the road.
Amol: So targeted content is so important and it has to be dynamic. Dynamic targeted content that talks directly… because if I'm interested in… I'm a diabetic I'm interested in dental implants. I need to find something that… a dentist that talks about that. Then I convert, then I call.
Howard: Now would that search land on a landing page within your website?
Amol: Correct.
Howard: Or still just go to your homepage?
Amol: They would not go on the homepage. It will go to a specific landing page that directly talks about what your issues are. The number one thing I should that… your website has to look nice. That's the period. Right. Because it's all the perception that matters. Nobody really understands what dentistry do in their tooth. They understand the experience. They understand how you make them feel.
Howard: Well what do you think. Let me ask you this more specific. There are some companies that put up hundreds of websites but some people call them canned.
Amol: Right.
Howard: And there's custom.
Amol: Right.
Howard: Do you think… do you think some of this big companies that have a thousand canned websites for dentists is just good as an individual custom?
Amol: Well ideally it should be custom. And the content should be custom. That's what Google says. They punish duplicate content. Right. But if you're going out there and you want to spend $100 a month on a website. What are you going to get? Because they serve all types of clients who want the website but don't have the budget. If you only have a $100 budget, and if you want a website going up and running tomorrow, and all you can spend is a $100 a month, that's what you get. But if you really want to make a difference you have to spend money on creating good custom content, creating videos, creating targeted ads and advertising on Facebook and Google to them in the door.
Howard: What do you think is the average conversion is from… from everything I've read the number one search is dentist near me. So dentist near me. That's what I'm hearing. And so they land on a website. What do you think the average dentist on a Google search… how many people have got to land on that page before they bounce off and go to the next Google search? What do you think the conversion is?
Amol: I would say it depend on the quality of your site. But on…
Howard: Just an average.
Amol: On an average.
Howard: In the United States of America.
Amol: On an average I'd be happy with a couple of percent.
Howard: But number… but…
Amol: I would have be happy between two and five percent. I'd be happy if they called.
Howard: So you're saying a hundred people have to land before, between two and five to convert?
Amol: Yeah.
Howard: But you think that's what the scorecard is?
Amol: No. It's much lower than that. Actually.
Howard: What do you think the scorecard is on average?
Amol: I think it's a one to two percent.
Howard: But do you have any data?
Amol: I have data on my clients. I don't have data on me. There's no…
Howard: Your data on your clients when you took them on this clients?
Amol: I have data on when I took them on as clients.
Howard: And when you took… when you… and you have a hundred clients on Dentist Profit Systems.
Amol: Correct.
Howard: Were those mostly in Tampa?
Amol: They're in Florida, in Florida.
Howard: So you had a sample size of a hundred dentist from Florida. And when you took them on this clients, what was the average conversion rate?
Amol: I would say half the one percent.
Howard: Damn. It's that bad. Wow.
Amol: It's really bad because…
Howard: So a hundred… so when someone search dentist in Tampa that means it would go to a hundred more sites before they would find someone.
Amol: No. No. No. Conversion rate I mean that they actually get the call. Not whether they landed on their website. Because that's meaningless. At the end of the day, if you don't receive the phone call. It's pointless and people can be visiting websites all day long. A lot of these sites, and again it depends. Right. On an average it depends. Now once we got them on the first page of Google or the Google Maps their reviews went up then their rates start climbing, and climbing, and climbing. But not everybody can be on the first page of Google, because there’s only so much real estate there. Right.
Howard: Well depends on what’s happening on the first page of Google I mean…
Amol: That’s right.
Howard: It depends on what the search is.
Amol: And there's no way we can establish that.
Howard: I mean that you said dentist near me. Ahwatukee dentist I mean there's so… First page of google I mean so they’d know what the search is.
Amol: But back to sites, I think some of the big website companies are serving a need that dentist have. Because they don't have the appetite to spend money on custom websites, custom content, custom videos, all of that stuff. So they need something.
Howard: So basically then at the end of the day. You want them to go patientprism.
Amol: patientprism.com
Howard: And then you want them… is it a contract when they… it's $579 a month. How long is it?
Amol: It's a one year contract.
Howard: So they have to sign up for…
Amol: One year.
Howard: $579. So a one year contract would be how much?
Amol: How much is that?
Guy: $579 times twelve.
Amol: That's right.
Howard: Well I knew that. My gosh $579 times twelve. So you're looking at a $6,948. So seven grand.
Amol: About seven grand a year.
Howard: So 6-9-4-8… so seven grand and what do you think that return on investment will be for a calendar year. If one of my homies gave you seven grand what do you think that would turn into in their dental office.
Amol: So read this wonderful book by Fred Joyal yesterday, called Becoming Remarkable. Wonderful guy, liked him a lot, Futuredontics one of their dentist. His quote was, in chapter twelve of the book, was, ‘on an average dentist are losing between $100,000 to $150,000 a year because of poor front office conversion skills.
Howard: He said $100,000 to $150,000?
Amol: Correct.
Howard: That's actually much bigger. I love part two. And everybody on Amazon who bought Fred's book… my favorite Fred book, Becoming Remarkable was great. But what was the one before that?
Amol: Everything in Marketing.
Howard: Everything is Marketing. That… Everything is Marketing is one of the only dental books I think I read twice. And people who bought his book… well my book (inaudible 57:57)
Amol: I actually… I read twice…
Howard: But anyway.
Amol: So I think $100,000 to… if you are a six operatory practice. Right. Six to eight operatory practice. You… I think you don't want to over promise and say, ‘oh my God, hundreds of thousands of dollars’. But I think you're missing out about in my opinion $50,000 to $100,000. Thank you sir. I will get this read within the next couple of days. But $100,000 to $150,000 a year, I would say $200,000 if you're decent size practice a year of losing this out. And the thing is when you spend money with us, you're going to know this because we send you a daily dashboard. Right. That comes in your email. Not that you have to… it's not like you have to go to a software download report, none of that stuff.
Everyday on your phone you got a report saying that how much money did you win, and how much money did you lose and why did you lose it. And here's how could fix it. Right. So there is no guessing here of how much money you're making as a direct result of this. Right. It's right there in your face. So that's what we I felt was important in my years of accounting practice. Was it was important for me to be accountable to my clients. And if was not accountable, if they didn't feel that this was worth at least twenty times what they're spending on and I don't want to be in this business.
I was kind of going through a thirty-five year old mid-life crisis, when I started these companies, when I said I need to do something more that makes a bigger impact on my clients. And as an accountant and CPA I was doing a wonderful job. I was learning the ropes. I sat in dental offices, learn how to read x-rays and do all the kind of stuff. Because I wanted to learn the business. This patient prism was an accidental experiment, we said can we solve this problem once and for all, front office conversions. Can we solve it, in the shortest amount of time and we actually fix it, right there and then.
Without having to… and it helps but the staff training helps a lot. Because the millennials today, that are out there are wanting that kind of feedback. Millennials are not all about money. They are about where their purpose and meaning in their job, and are they feeling that they're going somewhere and if they feel that, I think constant coaching with patient prism allows them to be trained, and when they get those certificates, gold certificate and silver certificates. They feel that man I've done a good job for this practice, and I'm a better version. It's not all about money all the time. Yes. You have to pay them well, but you have to also give them the satisfaction that they are doing good job and pat on the back, and that's what we're… we're completing the loop with that.
Howard: I like a lot of things on your website like you say, ‘chase problems and not money. Solve a problem and you’ve achieved a lot more than money. Measure the right things where you can't measure you can't improve. Fail fast, fail often and succeed. People first, profit second’.
I can't believe we already went over an hour, but final question, this is… we just had six thousand dental students graduate. A lot of them are questioning whether or not they made a good decision becoming a dentist. A lot of them want to ask me, they say ‘do you think the golden days were thirty years ago when you graduated? So my final question to you is, what advice would you give the young dentist?
Amol: I would say the golden days are ahead of you. I think this is the most exciting time to be a dentist. You just have to… what you have to do is, when you come out of dental school, then you're trying to make these decisions. Try to assemble a good team of people that will actually give you good advice, without a conflict of interest with them. Right. So talk to people, look at mentors, like Howard and mentor… and seek mentors that will actually tell you how things actually are, and then decide whether you want to go in a corporate route and work there when you start a practice.
Even if you have $500,000 of debt and you want to start your brand new practice, you can still make it and you can still pay that debt off in seven to eight years. If you have the focus. But it's very easy to lose focus in dentistry. It's very easy to focus because we are in a product oriented world. We want… we get… we get influenced by beautiful shiny bright objects and then we kind of gravitate towards that. But we don't realize that, oh my God, there's a whole world out there.
Yesterday I was talking to a periodontist $450,000 in debt and says ‘Amol, I'm scared to start a brand new practice. What should I do? Should I just work for somebody?’ I'm like ‘if you want to start a practice you should start a practice. And don't worry about the debt. Don't worry about the interest rate. Worry about can you assemble a good team? Can you do whatever it takes? Can you be the best periodontist in town? And when you worry about all those things don't worry about money, don't worry about chasing money. Just worry about making a difference in the patients lives. And doing good for the community and being the champion for your patients. And building the right team for your staff and building a great staff. And when you deliver that trust to your community, you will build that trust in the community you will succeed no matter what. There's nothing that can prevent you from amazing success. You can build a million dollar practice in two and half years guaranteed, if you have the right mindset. But if you don't…’
Howard: So here's what I’ll do. I bet you my Lexus in the driveway. Here's what he’ll do, he'll be $450,000 in debt, which the only way he could pay that off in ten years is to go buy a million dollar pediatric dental practice with amazing patient cash flow, and pay off the practice and your student loans in ten years. He won't do that, you what he'll do? He'll go get a job at Aspen and then after a year or two, he'll buy an $85,000 BMW and then he'll go buy $600,000 house in the suburb.
Amol: Yes.
Howard: And then when he's sixty-five years old, he'll still be paying interest on his mortgage, his student loans and he'll probably buy a new car. And he'll never get from the paying interest on other people's money to debt free and earning interest on his own savings. Because he used other people's money to get to $300,000, $500,000 in debt and then stopped and became an employee and he'll use other people's money the rest of his life. And the only way he can fix that… if you use other people’s money, you've got to use it to buy something that pays it back.
Amol: That's right.
Howard: And that's a business.
Amol: And it's amazing, as an accountant, we talk about assets and liabilities. Right. A house people think is an asset, Robert Kiyosaki says it's perfectly.
Howard: He lives up the street here.
Amol: Oh he does?
Howard: Yeah.
Amol: I don't know that.
Howard: (inaudible 64:41).
Amol: In Rich Dad, Poor Dad is like people think buying a house is an asset. But asset by definition of accounting, means something that brings money to you. When you buy it, it brings you money. House doesn't bring you money. A rental property is an asset, because you rent it out you can pay the stuff. You can make a profit on that, a house just sucks the money out of you. You got to pay the pool guys, landscape guys, and all this guys. But you are absolutely right. That's the mentality people don't understand.
Howard: Final, final, final question.
Amol: Final question.
Howard: Because you are talk about… and you also run a hedge fund. You mentioned Kiyosaki… Grant Cardone is a big real estate expert and he was ripping Kiyosaki a new one yesterday because Kiyosaki thinks we're due for another major economic correction. The last one was 2008, a decade ago. You run a hedge fund.
Amol: Right.
Howard: I know nobody can predict the future. Nobody predicted the Berlin wall fall, the Tiananmen Square, 9/11, the Arab Uprising. Nobody predicts anything… you can't predict anything, but when you think of Kiyosaki thinking the sky is falling, Cardone saying it's not. And you have a hedge fund, where do you weigh in on the general health of the economy.
Amol: So our hedge fund was started by me and two of my professors of finance. And we came up with the concept that, we're not going to be able to predict the market, we're not going to be able to predict whether it's go up or down, we’re not going to be able to predict stocks, we're not going to be able to predict sectors, we just cannot predict anything. All we care about is as long as there is chaos in the marketplace, we'll make money.
Howard: And volatility.
Amol: And volatility. So we have a lot of committee based fund that takes advantage of volatility when it happens. Right. When the Braxted happened we made money. When Trump spoke about North Korea, we made money. And so my advice to people who are going to put money in investment, I have very strong opinions on an investment advisers and industry which has become a retail industry. Which most of them they aren't selling your product that may or may not fit your goals. Is that having your money hundred percent invested and hoping for it all to go up, is absolute stupidity. The number one killer of wealth is volatility. Right. If you have $100,000 and if you invest in S&P 500 Index Fund for twenty years at ten percent, with ten percent volatility would be $4,000,000. If it's five percent volatility would be $6,000,000.
So the big… what kills you is every time a $100 goes to $90 you lost ten percent. But then now you have to gain thirteen percent just back to hundred. So that ups and downs, and ups and downs is what kills your wealth. So you have to really make sure that your financial adviser is equipped to not only look at the market when it's going up, but most financial adviser don't. That's why hedge fund. That's why the rich get richer. Is the hedge funds have figured out the way the sources of the world, and ackman’s of the world they don't lose money.
They don't lose money in markets when markets are going down. So you have to able to figure out a way to somehow hedge your portfolio against downfalls. Now you can do this for everyone, you can do this as a… if you have a $4,000 IRA, you can have a hedging strategies. But you should just be in the market. And not pay financial adviser fees. Fees and volatility will kill your wealth over a period of time. And you have to be very careful about that.
Howard: He says fees and volatility. I said divorce courts. So that… we're just going to have to agree or disagree, hey?
Amol: Yes sir. Thank you. That's been a pleasure.
Howard: Thank you so much for coming into the show.