Howard: It is just a huge honour for me today to be podcast interviewing Julie Charlestein, President and CEO of Premier Dental, a hundred and four-year-old company, started by Julius a hundred and four years ago. Now you would be his great granddaughter Julie?
Julie: I am his granddaughter .
Howard: Why I love that so much is because twenty-seven million people work for the Fortune 500 and they get all the press, and that’s only out of a hundred and fifty million American workers. The other 82% work for small businesses, family owned. We’re the backbone of every economy of every country since the beginning of time, yet the news only wants to cover Apple and Microsoft and all that big stuff. I love getting CEOs of companies come on my show. By the way, this is not an advertisement. I called Julie, she didn’t know who I was. She didn’t call me or pay for it. She is a fourth-generation leader at Premier Dental Products Company. Started in 1913 by her great grandfather Julius Charlestein; Premier develops, manufactures and distributes innovative consumables for the dental professional worldwide. Julie currently serves as President and CEO. She is a native of Philadelphia. She attended Emory University for her undergraduate studies and Temple University for her graduate work. In her role at Premier, Julie was voted to The Top 25 Most Influential Women in Dentistry by Dental Products Report. She is proud to serve on the Board of Overseers for The University of Pennsylvania School of Dental Medicine, the Dean's Advisory Council of Temple University Dental School, as well as the Board of the Alliance for Oral Health Across Borders. She also serves on the Board of ASDOH, Arizona School of Dentistry and Oral Health. Big shout out to my buddy Jack Dillenberg who started that.
Julie is an honorary member of the Alpha Omega Dental Fraternity, and sat on the Board of Directors of the Dental Trade Alliance, where she Chaired the Government Relations Committee. She also served on the Dean’s Advisory Board of the School of Dental Medicine at Harvard University. She is also a member of The Young Presidents’ Organization, and sits on the Board of Directors for the ALS, Lou Gehrig’s Disease, Association. Do you ever sleep?
Julie: Between that and watching Netflix there is an occasional nap.
Howard: I love getting CEOs on the cover. When I was little my dad’s vacation ,he wanted to go over any Six Flags Over anything, Texas. And we went to them all. And tour factories. So, we would go to Six Flags Over Texas and then go and visit three different factories. My dad used to love that stuff. I have been lecturing forever, I have taken a tour of Premier probably three times. I think the first time I took a tour of that was in 1990. Then I did it again in 1995 and 2000. I love that stuff. When I started Dentaltown, I said it is for the dental community and anybody who works full time in dentistry. When I started a lot of dentists said “oh my god, there is someone on there and they work for a company and they’re trying to sell stuff. It should only be for dentists”. And I say “well what are you, a volunteer? Do you work in a homeless shelter?”. I said “so, you can sell fillings and crowns for $1000?”. What I believe is if I took away about fifty companies like you, I would be sitting out on rug with stuff I bought from Home Depot and I wouldn’t be all that and a bag of chips. The only reason dentists look so amazing is because there is amazing hundred-year-old companies like you giving us the technology we need to make us look like we do. We look like Batman and Robin. I love it when someone comes in in pain, holding their face. I’ve got all the high tech, I can fix that. And it’s all because of you. I used to put companies on the cover but the dentists always said it makes the magazine look like a tabloid and it’s all manufactured so it’s a throw away. So, I said, alright you idiot, I will take it off. So, I took it off, but I really regret succumbing to it. But I am really glad I held my decision to let manufacturers on. Orthotown, to this day, still does not allow anybody who is not an orthodontist come on Orthotown. In fact, I own Orthotown and I am not allowed to go on the site because I am not a sacred orthodontist. So, I want to get you on the show. After a century, what are you most passionate about today?
Julie: I am really passionate about what you were talking about in terms of our ability to deliver better oral health to the population, and to be able to do it continuously to the highest level of quality and innovation and it’s a real gift, real joy, real blessing to be able to do that as part of our passion, our inspired solutions for daily dentistry. That’s really who we are. That’s our tagline, “Premier Dental Inspired Solutions for Daily Dentistry”. We are inspired every day by the work that we do, by the relationships that we have, by the innovations that we are able to bring and by the fact that we are being utilised in the dental offices day in and day out. That’s daily dentistry, and we do it with legacy products like Triple Tray and we do it with new innovations like Traxodent. It is really a wonderful also symbiotic relationship to what you were speaking to before, we’re all in this large dental community and we all help each other to learn and grow and to bring the best oral health to the patient.
Howard: Through the dental office?
Julie: Through the dental office.
Howard: But why don’t you take a page from Invisalign because now they own Smiles Direct and they are just bypassing the orthodontists and going straight to the patient. Why don’t you sell all your scalers and gracies and curettes on eBay and QVC so patients can stay home and clean their own teeth?
Julie: There are certain regulations that don’t allow that.
Howard: Really, you can’t even sell that directly?
Julie: Certain products you cannot. They’re considered medical devices and can only be sold through dental or medical professionals. So, products like Invisalign, it’s amazing that the clear aligners can’t be sold that way, but a lot of products within the industry fall under regulations that disallow that opportunity.
Howard: How about you just call it dental hygiene instruments for your pets, wink wink dot com?
Julie: The wink wink dot com might be a little bit of a giveaway. We have been able to stay in business for a hundred and four years because of our highest levels of integrity. So, I am not looking to wink wink dot nod nod around the FDA.
Howard: You’re afraid Julius might turn in his grave?
Julie: No, I am not worried about that, I am worried about the hundred and four years coming to an abrupt end when you go against the laws of the federal government.
Howard: First thing you said was Traxodent. My job is to guess the questions and I am thinking what is Traxodent?
Julie: Traxodent is the best, most amazing development in innovation by Premier Dental Products Company. Traxodent is the cross where haemostasis and retraction meet. It’s a product that we developed internally and is manufactured with one of our development partners and it is a clay that is utilised for impressions, whether they be digital or traditional, and they really give the best possible result.
Howard: Nice. How long has that been out and how is that doing?
Julie: I think it has been out a while. I want to say six years or so and we’re number one.
Howard: Number one, that is great. I want to ask you, now this is dentistry uncensored, so we don’t like to talk about anything that everyone agrees on, we want to talk about all the controversial stuff. You sell this all through distributors, right?
Julie: Yes.
Howard: which was a great distribution solution for a century. Now there is a technology disruptor, Amazon, who had a displayer booth at the Greater New York meeting a year ago and I notice now that some companies are selling that. What do you think of Amazon being a disruptor to the distribution of your products to dental offices?
Julie: I think Amazon has been incredible in every industry in which it enters. There is certainly value for it in all industries. It is starting to come to dental. I think ultimately, we will see a change in terms of channel, and they will certainly be a huge part of that.
Howard: So, you do see it’s coming. What timeline? The eighty twenty rule that we talked about earlier. SMP 500 only employs 20% and small business the other 80%, how long do you think it will be before Amazon has 20% of the dental sundries distribution in America?
Julie: I didn’t know I was going to be Nostradamus in this webcast.
Howard: Do you think that is around the corner or do you think it is the next decade?
Julie: I think it might be up the block. Not necessarily around the corner, but in the neighbourhood for sure.
Howard: The reason that I don’t buy it is because I watch Amazon and it seems like they are really into the big B to C markets. They spent five billion dollars last year, continent, for creating content for movies and stuff. I don’t see any example where they have gone after a little bitty B to B market and made a difference. So, is dentistry going to be there first B to B niche market? The want to sell razors and deodorant. Things that everybody buys. I don’t see any examples of where they will look at an industry of a couple hundred thousand dental offices and say, yes, we want to focus on that.
Julie: I don’t believe that they have done that yet. They are also looking at medical as well and I think just the overall B to B platform is something that is interesting to them. And, they will probably play in a couple of different areas on the B to B side.
Howard: Do you think a lot of people think of your brand as more instruments. Do you think everybody relies on you for instruments, hygiene, cleaners, rotary, laboratory prosthetic, cosmetic whitening, finish, polishing, restoration? Like endo. What percent of my homies listening right now. Do you think they are aware the Premier has endo products?
Julie: Well I think if you asked your homies if they used RC prep they would say, yes, but they might not necessarily make the connection between that and Premier, which is a big part of the work that we are doing now in terms of a brand building imitative and really creating those linkages between all the successful brand name products that we have, and the overarching umbrella of Premier. We started to do that. You are going to see that a lot. It started with the rebranding of Premier as the Inspired Solutions for Daily Dentistry, building that on our four pillars of deep connectedness, meaningful innovation and standard inspired solutions. We are tying all of that into the brands that people know, but they don’t necessarily know they come from Premier. Because we want them to have the same great experience with all of our products that we do with certain categories.
Howard: So, did you guys start RC Prep or did you just acquire it to your portfolio?
Julie: We’ve been selling RC Prep for maybe fifty years now.
Howard: I was already five at that time. You’re acting like it was a really, really, really, really long time ago. And I am even older than that time. You just bummed me out.
Julie: I will try and think of products that we are currently selling that might be older than you. The RC Prep was actually something that we did in conjunction with one of our development partners and it was one of those familiar relationships -actually was a friend of my grandfather that was actually a podiatrist. He developed it and then we developed a business relationship with them. So, that’s the wonderful thing about being in this business and again, having those deep connections, is you were talking about, a lot of organisations being faceless and I’m so appreciative of you having me on and also having it on video so people can see my face. But, there is a level of authenticity and connectedness and realness when you can really speak to and touch the leaders and also the employees of these companies and that’s really what we have been able to do when developing each of our products. Each of our products have these very unique, fun, cute, scientific based stories as to how they came about.
Howard: RC Prep had a podiatry function? What did podiatrists do with RC Prep?
Julie: I don’t know that it had a podiatry function, but it was predicated, I am pretty sure, by Hemodent, which did have a podiatry function in haemostasis. This guy was also really an entrepreneur and a scientist, having a podiatry background, and that’s what led to RC Prep in conjunction with us and with other dentists as well.
Howard: Here’s a trivia question. What was Julius’ first product? What line was it in?
Julie: His first product was actually instruments. He was a dental instrument sharpener. That was his career.
Howard: Wow, what year was that?
Julie: 1913.
Howard: 1913 his job was a dental instrument sharpener?
Julie: Yes.
Howard: How cool is that?
Julie: Those factory trips that your father took you on, and after you guys got off the roller coaster, were very valuable. There is a lot of important lessons that can be learnt just in terms of American innovation America and industrialisation American entrepreneurship and success.
Howard: Did he go around to dental offices with his sharpening machine to sharpen the instruments? How did that work?
Julie: What he did was, he was a dental sharpener at a company and he used to walk to and from work. And he asked his boss, I pass dental offices on the way here, can I sell these instruments, and that’s how it started.
Howard: Wow. I’ve got to tell you this most mind-blowing story. The oldest dentist was a ninety-five-year-old dentist that I met in L.A.last year. He survived the holocaust in Poland. He survived Auschwitz and was a dentist and went to my seminar in 1995. The second oldest one was ninety-two from St Joe Missouri. When I was talking to this dentist, Jorge Ruiz, I thought I would throw him a soft ball question. I thought, what was the greatest invention in dentistry from when you started. I knew he was going to say the high-speed jaw. It was a gimmick, just trying to start a conversation. And what he said to me blew my mind. The stock market crashed in 29, he graduated in 27, and he said that the greatest thing that ever happened was the stock market crash and the great depression. And I said, why is that, and he said, because when I got out of school in 27 dentists couldn’t afford to rent commercial space and go inside, so we were all outside, we all had barber chairs and to make ends meet we also polished boots and cut hair. He said that when the great depression came all of downtown St Joe Missouri got boarded up and the real estate rates fell so high all the sidewalk dentists we all moved inside. He said, when we all moved inside we became professionals and we all vowed to quit cutting hair and polishing boots. He said by 32 to 36we were what you would think of as a dentist and it’s all because of the stock market crash and us moving inside.
Julie: Wow, that is so amazing. I have never heard that story or that trajectory for the profession. Thank you for sharing that with me. That’s incredible.
Howard: Yes, that was just history, it so damn fun. So, for everyone listening to you, back to instrument, you said he was sharpening. Now you hear a lot of people say, this instrument you don’t have to sharpen. Is that myth, true, what do you think about it when you see advertising that says no sharpening necessary?
Julie: I think it is a little bit of both technologies, in terms of metallurgy, and sharpening techniques have obviously advanced along with everything else. So, there is less sharpening. It also has to do with the curvature of the instrument. So, maybe in the way that you use it doesn’t require as much sharpening because there isn’t as much use that is happening. But there still is a need for a little bit of sharpening. Also, in the manufacture itself, obviously there is sharpening elements.
Howard: Selling instruments, is that still the bread and butter for Premier? Is that half of your business, or a third, eight twenty, is that still the foundation of Premier?
Julie: It certainly is the foundation in terms of the genesis of the organisation. I wouldn’t say that it is foundational in terms of sales. We are so lucky to really work in so many elements, again, of that daily dentistry, of the products that are being used regularly in the office, whether it be instrumentation, restorative, preventative. We are nicely, evenly allocated throughout those different fields.
Howard: Now I am going to go to the most controversial one of your products, is rotary burs. I tell you why. I know the CEO of every dental services organisation that has fifty or more locations, or thirty-five. They tell me, and I agree with this, that they can get every dentist to agree on impression material or gloves or this or that, but when it comes to burs dentists are just bat shit crazy. They can’t even get dentists within a company will say, it’s just for fillings. Just, only for fillings. Can we just agree on fibres? I notice that your bur block has twelve burs. I feel sorry for dental assistants and group practice, because say there’s three dentists there, and here’s old Julie and she needs twelve burs for a filling and then there is Harries next to her and he needs twelve different burs and then Sam is over here. You pull the office together and you can get them to agree on composite and bonding, but when it comes to burs dentists won’t budge. When dental services organisation say, look we are going to have bur trays. We are going to have five burs for a filling, five burs for a crown, end of story. And their dentists quit. With burs, that has got to be the craziest category. I bet you a thousand years from now Premier will probably sell twenty gazillion different types of burs. That’s my prediction.
Julie: I would say you would be wrong but let’s see what happens in a thousand years. I would also say that if the dentists quits over burs he has got bigger issues going on. I think in terms of any product that we use, there is definitely an habitualzsation. You like what you’re used to. And there is certainly many SKUs of burs, but what we found is really very much the eighty twenty rule. 80% of the docs use 80% of the most popular shapes. Everything is available to them, and again, if you are used to one for a certain technique. But I wouldn’t risk your job over it.
Howard: Are you saying that 80% of the burs are the most popular shapes? That’s what killed Blockbuster. When Redbox figured out that 80% of the rented movies are 20% of the deal. When you say that 80% of the burs have the shapes. 80% of the burs, is that 20% of the shapes? Is 80% of the burs sold 20% of your shapes?
Julie: I would say probably yes. The top five or ten shapes. It’s usually about the top five or ten, we have many more than that.
Howard: How many shapes in total do you have?
Julie: We have probably about a hundred. I am failing my own test. I am happy to get you the exact number.
Howard: So, you are saying 80% of your burs sold are ten shapes, and the other 20% are the other ninety shapes? Basically ballpark. That’s a good ballpark?
Julie: Around that, but I will email you with the exact numbers and I hope to get them not very far off.
Howard: What would be better, and what everyone would love, is if you got on Dentaltown and you said, go under burs. There are fifty categories on Dentaltown. There is root canals, fillings, crowns, instruments, and you say, I just did a podcast with Howard and he wanted me to post this because I am telling you I know humans, and if they are ever given a choice between a buying, a company they know and have a face behind it and a faceless institution. It’s all about trust and integrity. They like to deal in relationships. They would absolutely love it. How many of them, if I put up a picture of ten people on Dentaltown, quarter million people. How many would say, that’s Julie Charlestein? She’s the President and CEO of Premier.
Julie: Five, my parents and my kids.
Howard: You should change that. Your abattoir local on Dentaltown, because it is the best R&D stuff, because you strike up a relationship, you will start having dentists and hygienists saying, Julie, you know what I really wish you guys would do? I love it when I get surveys sent to me from companies asking me questions about impression material. You could go on to Dentaltown, six million posts by a quarter million dentists and hygienists and do a search for impression material and you could read for forty days and forty nights, every thought that you have ever thought about impression materials and you’re probably sending this Survey Monkey to twenty-five people. Because that breathes hope, because, the other questions that Ii want to ask you, you have that solo diamond single patent you use. That’s awesome, for central. I’m a logistics guy. I think that ideas are a dime a dozen. If you think you are going to go anywhere on a great idea, the you are an idiot. Look at McDonalds. They sell hamburgers, fries and cokes. They’re on the intersection, they have a drive through which is 60% of sales. Just go across the street and do that. But only Wendy’s and Burger King and In and Out, it’s always operations and logistics. They say that on Shark Tank, every third or fourth episode. Again, back to the dentists, if he can squeeze in one more $250 filling that day, or one more $600 crown. He has already paid his rent, mortgage, (24:07 inaudible), computer, insurance, all that stuff. For that assistant to be able to clean up a room and set up a room in half the time is everything. Solo burs throw away, and we were alluding to earlier, on the bur trays you have a bur tray that has twelve burs, you are just pandering to the crazy people. The biggest bur block should be five. You should just hold your ground. You should call it the disciplined bur block. And then you should call the one with twelve the psychiatric bur block. The solo burs, that are disposables, that’s got to increase flipping a room. Faster and easier, so instead of seeing eight patients a day you might see nine. You know what I mean?
Julie: Correct. Absolutely.
Howard: So, what percent of your burs sold are solo diamond, individually wrapped, use once and throw away versus autoclave and reuse?
Julie: Solo is on the growth trajectory. It is a smaller percent than reusable diamonds, and that is just where the market place is overall. We are definitely seeing a trend. I think, ultimately, disposables will over take reusables. Right now, that is not the case. But that is certainly the direction for the reasons that you are discussing.
Howard: I got out of school thirty years ago. Please don’t tell me you’re under thirty. I don’t even want to know how old you are. Just don’t let me know. You’re probably right there on the line, plus or minus a year, so don’t even let me know. You have another division laboratory and when I got out of school thirty years ago there were fifteen thousand labs, now it’s cut in half, its seventy-five hundred. What is that like for your laboratory division now have half as many labs making all the laboratory work?
Julie: We have laboratory products. We’ve never had a laboratory division. We have a select group of laboratory products and it really is not much of a focus for us. We obviously have seen the change just overall in the industry in terms of dental labs, and I was actually very excited to see Dr. David Penn from Australia’s Southern Cross Dental Labs on your podcast. He is a friend of mine. I have a funny story in terms of how we met. I have often spoken to him about the lab business but it’s not a focus of ours.
Howard: Well tell us your funny story, I want to know about it.
Julie: Dr. Penn. Probably maybe about four or five years ago, maybe even six, I was on my way to the IDS in Cologne. I don’t know how you fly in from Arizona, but from Philadelphia you do not fly directly into Cologne, you fly to Frankfurt and you typically then take the train to Cologne. At the time I was actually on crutches so when I got off the plane I had a wheelchair. When I travel I typically where a Premier t-shirt or a Premier hat or something like that. I was in my Premier Enamel Pro t-shirt and I was in the wheelchair, being wheeled by the airline, Swiss Air, to where the train platform was and then she just plunked me down in an area. The guy next to me said, Premier Dental, how are you? I said, you must be here for the IDS and who are you? He said, I am Dr. Penn from Australia. From there we struck up a relationship and now have a nice friendship.
Howard: That is the greatest meeting in all of dentistry. In America, the meetings are highly fragmented in fifty different states. Europe just has, basically, this one blow up meeting every year in Cologne. I have been to it a half dozen times. Do you like that meeting?
Julie: Yes, it is unbelievable. You really need to plan it out very strategically to ensure that you see everything in the time that you are there. It’s amazing.
Howard: To put it in perspective, if you went to that meeting and you just slowly walked for the five days you couldn’t walk by every booth. Do you agree?
Julie: I do.
Howard: If you talk, I am a talker, you met all these dentists.
Julie: Wait, what?
Howard: You name a country, Tunisia, you will meet a dentist from there. Every single country, you will meet a dentist there. What I also like about it is the City of Cologne knows that all these people here are dentists and they don’t know how to get around and everyone is helping you get on the train and everybody knows you are special. But back to the laboratory. I have some homework for you I wish you would do. You are on the Board for the University of Pennsylvania School of Dental Medicine, Temple. Those two, I don’t even know if they are accredited, but you are definitely on the one for the Arizona School of Dental. That’s the good one. You are on one good dental school and two. But in all seriousness, this is my pet peeve with dental schools, is that they closed down all the laboratory training. Every dentist has a hygienist only because the schools graduate hygienists. It takes four years to bring that person up to be a hygienist. Back when all these dental schools, starting with the first one in Baltimore in 1840, they all had CDT programmes, Certified Dental Technology programme, before they had hygiene programmes. Then they brought the hygiene programmes and then they closed down the certified dental laboratories. It’s just a long-term trajectory, nose diving. We are down to three CDT programmes.
When you go talk to dentists in Germany, or go to the only dental school in Hong Kong, they have seventy-five people studying to be a dentist and a hundred and fifty learning how to be a certified dental technologist. Where are all the labs going? Offshore? Why? You go to Modern Dental in Shenzhen China, he says, I couldn’t do this if University of Hong Kong wasn’t dumping out a hundred and fifty highly trained certified dental technologists. He goes, we are lucky because we compete mostly in America because you guys don’t have any CDTs so they all having to go cad can. Germany is still the only place in the world that has the best programmes in every dental school to be a certified dental technologist and we need to take a page from Germany and China, and say, who’s idea was it that when grandma get a crown and a denture and an implant and an over-denture that the person making it shouldn’t go to school or anything. Let me give you one analogy that will blow your mind. I was visiting a small lab here in Phoenix. It’s a one-man shop. I am talking to him and everything, and he is making this out of his house. His house is his home and his lab. And he is pouring in his stone and he spits in it. He is just talking like I didn’t even notice it. I just said, excuse me but did you just spit in the stone. He goes, I don’t know why it is, but there is something in saliva, you spit in the stone and you won’t get a bubble. I think there is (31:48 inaudible) in the stone. I said, where did you go to school to become a CDT. He said, I never went to school. Whose idea is this? Whose idea was it that all the laboratory people should not go to college. What was their next best idea? That they should have a frontal lobotomy? It’s just crazy. I think you should make in on your agenda that Temple and the University of Pennsylvania and Addos. And now, those three schools are all thinking about adding a curriculum for dental assistants to make them expanded function duty dental assistants. But let’s go back one hundred years. Where are the lab techs at and if you went toe Kong Hong, and went to the University of Hong Kong and you told them that your best idea was that they should close down their lab deal, they would look at you like you were crazy. And if you go to Germany, they are not impressed by America dental lab work and it’s all going to cad cam because with cad cam, someone could run it if they know how to play video games and they don’t have anybody else that can do it. So that’s my rant on that.
Julie: Thank you.
Howard: Will you at least bring it up and see what they say and then post about it under dental laboratories because there are lots of threads on Dentaltown saying where did all the CDTs go?
Julie: I am going to have to think about that one. I’m not going to make any promises that I won’t keep. That’s just who I am.
Howard: That’s just who you are? That’s why the CEOs never come from sales and marketing. With the history of CEOs, if you promote someone from the Head of Sales and Marketing they always over promise and under deliver. That’s why you never put a CEO in from sales and marketing because you need a CEO that under promises and over delivers. Back to prosthetic. You make articulators, impression trays, tissue management. How is that going?
Julie: Very well. Even in the advent of cad cam which we expected to really influence and infiltrate the impression tray business has not done so to the degree that we had anticipated. So that business is still strong, unbelievably, and we manufacture those products, triple trays, at our facility in Philadelphia. Haemostasis and retraction is going very well. I think that is attributable to regular impressions and also digital impressions because I am sure, as you know, the prep is key to any impression, whether it’s digital or traditional. And that’s what Traxodent allows. It allows you to get the best possible prep. We are seeing that continuing to grow as well.
Howard: You take technology like computers and the adoption rates. When I got out of school, again, 1987, my first computer was an Intel 286. You want to know what the pitch was when he sold it to me? He says, they just came out with the 236 and I am telling you, spend the extra money on the 236 and you will never have to buy another computer for the rest of your life.
Julie: That’s why I don’t like predictions Dr. Farran.
Howard: Call me Howard, but the adoption rate now, I would say, is in the nineties percentile. I would say it’s ninety, ninety-two, ninety-three. Then, digital x-ray came out, that’s an 80% adoption rate. I still think the cad cam is maybe a 12 to 15% adoption rate, and my homies are smart, they’ve got eight to twelve years of college and there is a lot of them that have been bought and they are just sitting around. It’s about faster, easier, higher quality, lower cost. And cad cam, it’s coming along but it’s coming along slowly. When you say you have to have a cad cam more than I say, then how come 85% of all the American dentists with a doctorate degree don’t have one. There’s a lot to that. So, cosmetic whitening.
Julie: I want to tell you a funny story in terms of cad cam. I see the numbers that you see and I ascribe to them as well. It’s funny, evolution in terms of technology can sometimes work very rapidly and sometimes very slowly. You were talking about dentists that have their techniques. Ones that use labs, ones that don’t and ones that are willing to change to different products. My grandfather, my maternal grandfather, Premier is on my paternal side, so my father’s grandfather started it. But my mother’s father was also a dentist. He was an oral and maxillo surgeon and was also a Professor at NYU Dental School. He always used to say, as all these impression materials would evolve, he said, I am a very good dentist and I can take an impression in sour cream. So, it really depends on the technique, but what’s amazing is that as things advance those advancements are there for you to experiment, for you to utilise, for you to adopt or to not. It’s our responsibility, our obligation, our pleasure, our inspiration to find those new technologies, to deliver them and to bring them forth. When you started talking about the cad cam and the adaptation it made me think of my grandfather so I thought I would share that story.
Howard: Two shout outs there. One to NYU. They graduated 7% of all the dentists in America that went to NYU. It’s just crazy. It was your mom’s dad who was the oral surgeon?
Julie: Yes.
Howard: Your mom’s dad. Because last week, we lost an oral surgeon, Professor Hugo L Obwegeser, MD, DMD, born 1920, died 2017, at the age of ninety-six. Who was the father of orthognathic surgery. I wonder if your grandfather knew him? I bet he did.
Julie: He might have, I don’t know. Unfortunately, my grandfather passed away a while ago.
Howard: How while ago? This guy was from 1920, what it that while ago?
Julie: No, he passed away probably about more than twenty years ago. Unfortunately. He died young.
Howard: If he died twenty years ago it would be 1997. If he was an oral surgeon he had to know Hugo. What an amazing man to just sit there and have girls literally crying to him because they thought they were ugly and their lives were ruined because their jaws didn’t match. So, he thought and he thought and he said, I am an oral surgeon and these girls have a horrible self-image and he finally figured out how to break their jaws. As you know you are born without a chin. He pulls the lower jaw forward. When the upper jaws hunt down too low, when you smile your liver is showing, how could he break that jaw and lift it up? He figures all that out and now it is just a standard procedure. Rest in peace, Hugo, man, you left the playground better than you found it. Interesting story. What’s your thoughts on cosmetic whitening? Has that moved all over the counter at Walgreens with Crest Strips.
How is the trajectory in dental offices? Is that flat or going down because people are going B to C, Walgreens with Crest Strips, or is this trajectory still good in the dental office?
Julie: It has at all moved and there have certainly been some ups and downs over the years, starting I guess in the late nineties, early two thousands. We are seeing some more through the dental office in terms of more tech looking type products but still the majority of the products now are OTC. There is a little bit of resurgence in the dental office and the truth is the most, and you know this way better than I do, the most efficacious products are the ones that the dentists are offering just based on the concentration of the peroxides that they are able to deliver. The best methods are still the tray delivered because it so customised.
Howard: The key to in-office bleaching comes down to? I have been on Dentaltown four hours a day since 1998, so when you said you liked Netflix, I don’t even know if I have watched Netflix this year. So, watching Dentaltown as I say, all my screen time is on Dentaltown. The way you move bleach is very simple. All the Fortune 500 they want loyalty programmes. They want customers for life. Whereas dentists are this hundred-year-old cottage industry and they always think they want to get new patients. You will go into a town of five thousand, find some dentists practicing from twenty-five to sixty-five. Forty years in a town of five thousand. I go, buddy, what do you need and he will say I need new patients. Dude, you have gone through every person in the town three times. How could you need a new patient in a town of five thousand after forty years? You know what the key is? The biggest joke in dentistry is someone comes in, you do this extensive exam, you tell them that they got gum disease and that they got eight cavities, and when you are all done they say, okay, but can I still get bleaching? They don’t care about gum disease and cavities, they want whiter, brighter, sexier teeth. They want to look like a peacock. They want to attract the other primates. So, what you do is you do lifetime bleaching. They come in for a clean examine x-ray and you make them trays. If they come in every six months for their free clean examine x-rays, paid by their insurance company, you refill their bleach. So, they don’t come in for the cleaning. How many times have you left the gym and some beautiful girl in spandex is on the stair master for an hour and as soon as she walks out of Lifetime she lights up a cigarette and smokes it as she walks to her car. She wasn’t on the chair master for her cardio vascular health, she wants to look good. Half of Americans look at dentistry as something they need to get done so they look pretty for their mental health. They are not there for oral health. Only dentists and hygienists believe in oral health. The consumer wants mental health. Like in World War II, everyone that got their lower mandible blown off, 100% committed suicide. Basically, humans say to you, if I have to go to the store without a mandible, I would rather be dead. And they all took their own lives. They are coming in to get a cleaning because they want to look pretty and sexy and that’s about bleaching. Come in every six months for your free, insurance paid, oral health, and we will refill your bleaching trays. Its bleaching for life. That’s how you move bleach. They are not going to into Walgreens and buy over the counter crest strips every six months because they are expensive, they are fifty bucks, and then you buy this bleach. Lifetime bleaching, just don’t even think about it. Just do it. Everybody I know doing it is crushing it with that.
Julie: That’s fantastic insight and I think I am going to see how we can market that and what you are saying is true. I know dentists that built their practices on bleach. That was the way they moved into a new area and that was how they attracted customers, and as you are suggesting, ultimately kept them. I’m going to see what I can do with that, I think it is a great idea.
Howard: It’s a killer idea. And the other way to be happy with your patients is a lot of patients, I saw this thread on Dentaltown the other day and dentists get so upset because they are trying to do the best dentistry in the world and their patients aren’t complying and all that. They say, let me tell you something now that you been on earth for thirty-five years, the key to happiness is to lower your expectations of people. You don’t go to a zoo and say that the giraffe is crazy and that the rhino is nods and the chimpanzees are something because you have no expectations of animals at the zoo but you have all these higher expectations for fellow sapiens. I had a patient the other day, and I said, where is she and she says, she is smoking outside in front of the door waiting for the deal. I got there, she is in a wheelchair, on an oxygen tank with oxygen tubes in her nose smoking. Now, I don’t know about you, but I am pretty sure that when you get oxygen tubes put up your nose that’s when you are supposed to stop smoking. I am not a pulmonologist I am only a dentist but the bottom line is you can get all bent out of shape and scolder, but she is eighty years old, in a wheelchair smoking and she is probably going to kill herself when the oxygen tank blows up, but you’ve just got to love them. You’ve just got to lower your expectations and love them and I am just telling you that. It is frustrating when you’re trying to do a perfect filling when they brought a Mountain Dew in with them to their appointment. I always stop them and say; do you take your bong to church? You shouldn’t really take Mountain Dew into a dental office, because if you quit drinking this Mountain Dew you wouldn’t have to see me today. But, you don’t talk down to them, you don’t scold them. They’re just humans and they are just trying to get through the hardest thing they will ever have to get through, it’s just life itself. So, go easy on them. And no matter how bad of a patient they are, every human needs a dentist. You have got the best patients in the world and you’ve got the craziest patients in the world but you are a doctor, it’s part of public health, everyone needs a dentist.
You also are in restorative. You have your own adhesive. Cement, Core Build-Up, Etchant, Light Shield, Matrix, Post, Wedges. Talk about all that.
Julie: There is so much to talk about. I would definitely say that you are correct in that every person needs a dentist. They also need respect and they need humanity. We’re so lucky to be able to deliver that to as many people as possible. With you, the dentist is the conduit to deliver that to them. We’re very thankful to you for being able to do that.
Howard: Well said, because everybody’s got a crazy uncle. Imagine if your obese, chain smoking, alcoholic uncle went to the physician and he said, I am no longer going to see you as a patient. I’ve told you to lose weight, I’ve told you to quit smoking quit drinking. I no longer want to see you. Is that really what is best for your crazy uncle.
Julie: No.
Howard: No. So, just lower your expectations and treat them all. Back to restorative.
Julie: Very strong in restorative. Traxodent, Wedges, CompCore, NexTemp, Peck. We have a really wide variety and wide selection. Again, it helps with that daily dentistry. A really great array of materials we that developed in conjunction with our development partners. Partners in Israel, that CompCore, Premier implant cement and NexTemp. We also do things, you were talking about the cement, implant cement, we also have implant scalers. So, we really are in all of those facets of daily dentistry, where you as a clinician are coming in and are grabbing those products that you have come to expect.
Howard: So, Traxodent is basically an alternative to Packing Cord?
Julie: Yes. It is alternative to Packing Cord, cord and solution. We are basically upgrading the prep. When we launched the product, there was a competitive product on the market place that we had looked at and we recognised, we saw the need obviously, but also realised that we could build a better mouse trap. We did, and we realised we would be able to get pieces of the market in both, one coming from the competitive product that existed, the other coming from really the doctors that are just doing cord and haemostatic agents. That’s what we have been able to do.
Howard: Let me scold my older homies on this though. There is a lot of young associates that in school they didn’t like packing cord and hemodent and all the stuff like that and then they go and work for some old, fat bald dentist like me and they use an electrosurge and practice management in two words is patient management and the most intelligent person in a successful dental office is whoever is answering the phones. When they’re calling, that is inbound sales. When you are calling someone that fell off the schedule that is outbound sales. In most businesses those are the people making the big bucks and guy back at the factory on a steel press is making smaller bucks. What you see, these older dentists use an electrosurge, those patients are calling back and they’re complaining, because you are troughing tissue around the tissue with a radio wave and it causes ten days of moderate to severe pain. Then some people think, I am going to buy a laser and I’m going to trough around there. That’s true. There are good parts for soft tissue dialled lasers, but Traxodent, that’s an amazing product. You’ve got to squeeze your time. Let me say one last thing I’ve got to think about. A lot of people they will say, how much is it? When you say how much is it, I want to say this. I see the patient, I numb them up. Well its numbing up with septic, and I use septocaine because it will numb up twice as fast as lidocaine. So then, I sit there and fill out the card, fill out the chart, I can take the shade. And, by the way, if it is a man with a liver spot you don’t take a shade, just an eighty-three five. You don’t ever take a shade on a man with a liver spot because no one is ever going to look at the tooth, they’re just looking at that damn liver spot on their head. Then you prep the tooth, then you make the temporary first because you work out all your pros on the temporary. You are making a temporary, you are trimming the margin. You can’t see the margin then you go back to the teeth and you realise it is not there. You’re trimming the occlusion, you are trimming all the way through the temporary and you realise you don’t have enough reduction. Then when you solve all your problems and your temporary is ready then you sit there and use a tissue retracting paste and Traxodent and then you take your impression. While the impression is setting up you go do a hygiene check, you come back and then you cement the temporary and it’s perfect. And that’s thirty minutes. What you’re complaining about is the PPO fees are 40% lower than what Delta Dental used to pay in indemnity thirty years ago. When I got out of school Delta paid me a thousand bucks for a crown, a thousand bucks for a molar endo. Now I get six hundred or six fifty for each one of those. But the deal is this. You complain about that but you book an hour and a half on a crown. And I can show you ten thousand dentists that do it in a half an hour. So, a six-hundred-dollar crown in half an hour, six hundred, twelve hundred, eighteen hundred. Those guys using high technology, you’re getting six fifty for a crown taking an hour and a half. They’re doing eighteen hundred dollars in that hour and a half. Your cost isn’t supplied. So, your little walnut brain is saying, how much is Traxodent because I am at a PPO practice and I cannot afford to pay for any technology. No, your costs are in people, time and money. And time. When I buy build up paste. If they had two build up pastes and one set up in a minute and one set up in three minutes, the one that sets up in three minutes costs three times more. It’s not the cost of the build-up paste. The cost is in how long does it take me to work, will it save me any time? And what you need to do is, right now, any dental office I walk into, and I have been in more dental offices than I have amusement parks, and I’m telling you the average homie blocks off an hour and a half for a crown. They will numb up and then they will go back in the office and sit down and drink coffee for ten minutes. Dude, it’s your time. Get your times down. Get stopwatches, get timers. Go into the office and say I am going to numb for this procedure and set up my i-phone and I’m going to hit time. How long does it take you to do a MOD composite, because it doesn’t matter what the PPO fee is, it matters how long it takes you to do that? The only thing I would want to know about Traxodent is, does it save me time? If Packing Cord, how long does it take to pack cord. Do you know how many dentists, to pack the cord, they hate it so much they leave the room and take off their gloves and throw them away and have the assistant pack the cord. And then they go back and sit in their office for ten minutes. If that cord costs you ten minutes, dude, you’ve got to get rid of the cord. The real question on the marketing of Traxodent should be, are you one of those dentists that hates packing cord. So, he leaves the room, he removes the gloves, that’s two disposable items, that’s cost. And then you have your assistant pack the cord and then she has to come get you and bring you back. Then you’ve got to wash your hands, put on gloves again, get out. What would be different in time if you switched to Traxodent? I ask you that, Julius Ceaser Charlestein III.
Julie: I have not put a stop watch to it but I will now and I am going to send you a link of videos of doctors syringing in Traxodent because what you are saying is absolutely right. It is a huge time saver and it is also much more comfortable on the patient. You know, packing cord, first of all it does take a ton of time, you also have to soak it in haemostatic solution and you are pushing it down into the sulcus, you are hurting the patient. So, I will take the stopwatch with one of our clinicians and come back to you with the exact time but I will also send you a video of it and I will send you product to use as well.
Howard: Are these YouTube videos?
Julie: Yes.
Howard: When you go to the YouTube video and it says ‘share’, it gives you a link, right?
Julie: Right.
Howard: right next to the ‘share’ it also gives an ‘embed’. You click the ‘embed’ it gives you the code for the embed. So then, when you go to Dentaltown, on that post where you were going to make your first post, you go to the second post and you say, Howard wanted me to post these videos on Traxodent and then there is a little YouTube icon. You click the YouTube icon, drop in the embed code and there’s the video. And by the way, every single person will have some YouTube video that’s been out there for three years and has one hundred and twelve views. Then they’ll post that on Dentaltown in front of a quarter million dentists and they’ll have ten times the views in the next twenty-four to forty-eight hours. It just explodes it. So, go embed those videos. You’re just selling and who is just Julie and she is trying to sell. Just go on there and say, Howard told me to do this.
Julie: I am learning a lot, technologically. I absolutely will do it and I am most looking forward to that explosion because I do believe I have seen it with other things we do, like the eblast, and everything like that. I am sure that we will see a big uptake in the viewership.
Howard: Back to the marketing, you’ve got to start training your customers, don’t look at the price of the product. Like, back to those solo burs, it’s not the price of the bur, it’s do you really want to pay a dental assistant $20 an hour to autoclave a bur and reload it? Get your operational logistics down. Do you know what my staff hates me for the very most? There is a huge vortex of things that they can choose from.
Julie: I was going to ask; do you really want me to guess this? We could have a good time with this. I’m not sure you want to go there.
Howard: What I used to do, because they wouldn’t listen to me, is I got a blow horn, like when you go to Arizona Cardinals Football Team, I know you might not follow the NFL because you’ve got your team, the Eagles, but anyway, in Arizona we follow the NFL because we’ve got a real team, the Arizona Cardinals. You know they have those blow horn things? Whenever my assistant had to leave the room in the middle of a filling, crown or root canal, I would tell the patient, cover your ears as hard as you can and then I would pull out my blow horn and I would blow the horn. The office manager would come out and say, look man, I am doing a root canal. I do a molar or two every day, why does my dental assistant have to leave during the procedure. Then they will come back and say, we only had this one thing, and it was in the autoclave.
Then buy one for all eight rooms. Ii don’t want to be in the middle of a brain surgery or they’re removing a tumour off my spine and everybody has to throw their gloves off and go find something in a drawer. It’s all about operations and logistics. No one should ever leave the room. Once I say go, and we’re going to do this filling, this crown, this root canal, nobody is leaving the room. And if someone does have to leave the room, only the office manager or if the buck stops, that’s what Harry Truman had on his desk, the buck stops here, my office manager is going to have to explain to me why my dental assistant has to leave the room. When you stick to those rules, like every operatory is a South West Airline 737. I can go into any operatory, pull open the third drawer, and I should expect to see the exact same thing. If you get your operations and logistics down you can go faster. Once you have your breakeven point made. Like every dental office, their overheads are the same for the last years, they have the same staff, the same rent, the same everything, and they work about sixteen days a month. You figure out your breakeven point for the day, what do we have to do on average every day to pay all our bills? And if you want an overhead of 50% you just do that before noon. Before lunch. Then you go to lunch, come back and do it again.
Julie: What you’re saying is right. Efficiency is paramount and thankfully Premier’s products definitely bring that highest level of efficiency to the practice. The bull horn technique is certainly unique and maybe we can do those as a promotional item for Traxodent and Solo sales. Buy a box of Solo you get a Premier logolized bull horn. We’ll look into that.
Howard: I really do hope you start tilting your promotion. Are you getting paid today 40% less on a PPO than you were a hundred years ago? That means you’ve got to do it 40% faster. You’re not going to make Medicaid and Medicare and PPOs go away. If that’s your mission you should just move to Antarctica today and work on penguins for the rest of your life. There’s some things that you can change, and some things that you can’t change. When PPOs lower your fee by 40% it only means one thing, you have to go 40% faster. Their bias is that Wendy’s has square patties because they didn’t want to cut any corners and I want to be like Wendy’s and not cut any corners. Going faster does not mean cutting corners. It means using your walnut brain, how can I make this faster, easier, higher in quality and lower in cost? I can show you so many PPO practices where the doc is doing four days a week, 1.5 million a year, or 1.3 million a year, taking home three hundred and fifty. Meanwhile, back in the United States three hundred and twenty-three million people live in a hundred million homes and he medium average income is forty-eight thousand. When you making three hundred and fifty, you are making the income of all the people that live in seven houses in the United States.
Even the average, one seventy-five, you’re making the same money as a dentist as all the people living in three and a half homes. It’s all about efficiencies. It’s all about doing everything faster, easier, higher in quality and lower costs and I know what they do. They always look at the price, of like adding and opportory. Everybody is waiting around waiting for the assistant to clean up a room and dismiss the patient, clean up the room and then set up the room and then seat the next patient while the dentist is standing around. Why don’t you put in a $25 000 operatory and you could have walked out of that room and gone into another room. They say, I don’t want to spend $25 000 on an opportory. Okay, well the dentists in the United States that have an extra operatory they usually net fifty to seventy-five thousand dollars a year more. So, go ahead and save that $25 000 on an operatory and give up fifty to seventy-five thousand a year for the rest of your life. You are stepping over Benjamin’s to pick up a penny. I think they look at dental products like that too. Always looking at the price of the glue, and who cares? I want you to pick the glue that makes you do your filling and cleaning and exam faster. I was retweeting my guest last week, I know my homies, they are all driving to work. They can’t text and drive, unless it’s their boyfriend on the side. So, you’re on Twitter as @Premierdentalco. So, its fourth generation, family owned, hundred year strong. We develop, manufacture and distribute innovative dental and medical products to a Global Dealer Network. I just retweeted that to my twenty-three thousand Twitter followers.
Julie: Thank you.
Howard: I can’t believe. We went into double overtime. We are way over. They are sitting and working in the parking lot right now, saying, I wish that idiot would shut up so that I can go inside. I want to tell you seriously, thank you so much for all your passion and enthusiasm and all that you’ve done for dentistry. Like I say, there is about fifty dental companies that I call the thousand points of light. If it wasn’t for say fifty, or a hundred, dental companies like you we certainly couldn’t look like Wonder Woman and Batman and Robin and Superman to patients. So, thank you for all that you do for dentistry. I hope you join Dentaltown. I hope someday, I hold up a picture of Julie Charlestein and everybody says, that’s the CEO of Premier.
Julie: That will be wonderful. I’m definitely going to have to work on, not Premier’s exposure, but my exposure as it relates to the brand and I really appreciate you having me on and also to you looking at Premier as one of those thousand points of light. It is such a privilege to be able to illuminate the lives of the dentists and the people receiving the care through our innovations. So, thank you very much.
Howard: I want to say one parting thought. One of the best books I read was ‘Beating the Street’ by Peter Lynch. Warren Buffett actually taught a class at my business school in Creighton University, in 1980. I went to Creighton and Warren Buffet is from there. Warren didn’t live in Manhattan, and Peter Lynch didn’t like Manhattan either. Peter Lynch was one of the greatest investors of all times. He said all these stock brokers would sit in their cubicles looking at all these ten fours and ten queues, and looking for all these trading tips in the bathrooms. What he did is he said, here’s ten companies. I am going to leave Manhattan on Monday morning and I am going to drive around the countryside and I am just going to walk in there. Every time I have gone to a dental company I have stolen that line from Peter Lynch and his book “Beating the Street”. I don’t call, I don’t make a deal, I don’t say I’m coming. I just show up like I am Peter Lynch. I just think, what is this company all about? You walk in there, is it clean? Are they greeted? Are they smiling? Do they realise you are a customer, you are dentist. Do they give you a tour, that means they are proud of their facility. I have been in a dental manufacturing practice facilities where you are just like, oh my god. Then you have been in other ones that are just like, wow. This is a class act. You even had museum products in the lobby, showing stuff from a hundred years ago, eighty years ago, all that stuff they got. I called on at least, two hundred and fifty dental companies in fifty different countries and I swear to god, your company is a total class act.
Julie: Thank you so much Dr. Farran. I really appreciate that and I welcome you back at any time. You would be very happy to see, you mentioned Creighton University, I didn’t realise your connection there. So, you would be very happy to see one of our newest innovations, BioCorp Smartcap Technology, we developed in conjunction with Creighton University. Again, just another example of our continued evolution and partnerships with Universities and with people like you. I certainly appreciate the accolades that you’re giving to us as a company. We have amazing people. They give me the opportunity to interact with people like you.
Howard: You’re going to have to explain the product. You can’t just say that and not explain the product.
Julie: I am so excited. Thank you for asking. BioCorp with Smartcap. Smartcap is a platform technology that we developed with Creighton University. What’s very exciting about that is there are these micro-capsules that are developed through reverse emulsion, which you probably understand much better than me, but what that allows the micro-capsules to do, and then the resulting product is, you can put any constituent in these micro-capsules and they will release over time without changing the fundamental material in which it’s embedded. We have put Smartcap in a sealant, Biocoat sealant.
We have filled the capsules with calcium, phosphate and fluoride. That does a few things. Obviously, it releases fluoride, but because of the calcium, phosphate and fluoride it gets better fluoride uptake to the teeth, and because it’s in these micro-capsules, and the way that they are manufactured, these constituents can flow in and out of the material. Every time a patient brushes their teeth with fluoridated toothpaste it refills these micro-capsules and then allows that fluoride again to go right out to the teeth. We have fluoride release for an indefinite period of time. We have been testing for six months and the fluoride release is still constant. When you are putting on a sealant, obviously you know this, you are putting it on to protect and prevent decay, so, if you are constantly releasing fluoride to the field, it is giving you the most efficacious treatment. That’s Smartcap, we developed in conjunction with Creighton and it’s going to be a platform technology that you are going to see in many more of our products as well. Right now, it is in Biocoat.
Howard: That is so cool. I just got a great idea for you Julie.
Julie: Alright.
Howard: How far are you from Bethlehem in Pennsylvania?
Julie: Not too far.
Howard: So, in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania I am Howard Farran. So, I am Howard at Dentaltown. But the guy in charge of the message board community and our online CE is Howard Goldstein. So, he is hogo@dentaltown. I was the first Howard at Dentaltown. So, his HOGO Dentaltown. What I think you should do, is when you go on Dentaltown or any community like Facebook. When you go onto Facebook the average person has a hundred and forty followers. It’s the old eight twenty rule, there is just a few what the call super users. On any community, Facebook, Twitter. LinkedIn, Dentaltown, (1:08:29 inaudible) 1% does 80% of the posting. This is a phenomenon that everybody has been following for years and years and years. We started in 1998, we were six years before Facebook. What you do, is in your categories like dental sealants. You go talk to Howard Goldstein and say, give me a list of the super users in this product category. Then he will say, these five guys are the ones that do 80% of the posting in paediatric dentistry whereas everybody else is just asking them questions. These are the thought leaders. These are the guys that everybody asks the questions and whatever they say, they follow their colleagues.
Then on a product category like that, say it’s sealants, pre extra dentists, go ask Howard Goldstein who are the super users in paediatric dentistry and pick a number, pick five of them, pick six of them, whatever, and invite down them down to Premier, and act like you are running for mayor, press the flash, show them your whole facility and then they are going to get on Dentaltown and do all your marketing because even though I have a magazine that sells adds, when we surveyed dentists and said what do you believe the most? 91% say their colleagues. Find the superuser colleagues that are all following. Hogo knows them the best because he has got thirty thousand posts on Dentaltown. If you have got an area that you are really passionate about, find the super users in that area, invite them down to Premier. They will be totally impressed. I was so impressed I had to go back and see it again and again. Shake their hand, run for mayor and they’ll be your best marketing in all of dentistry.
Julie: That I will do. I said I wasn’t going to make a promise that I won’t keep, I absolutely will get in touch with Hogo and will take it from there. I appreciate that.
Howard: How far is Bethlehem?
Julie: Not far. Maybe a little over an hour or so
Howard: You could drive there and meet me for lunch. That’s a great idea. Because what you explain, I would have a paediatric dentist explain that on the message board of why they are using it. Find out who those super user paediatric dentists are, or whatever you are most passionate about. Find the super users, and like I say, it’s not just Dentaltown, its every category of social media. 1% of sapien is completely hard wired. Most people are afraid of other people critiquing them. Then they post a root canal and then Julie gets on there and says, that root canal, its short and it’s wrong. That’s the worst root canal I have ever seen. Then they will go cry in the corner for six weeks. Super users see that totally different. They want to post a root canal, because if Juliet gets on there and says, dude, you missed a canal. They will be, you’re right. Thank you so much for telling me that. The see everything in a different paradigm. Find the super users in your product categories and invite them down to Premier and press the flash, give them a tour and run for mayor. And then, what’s even greater, if there is something they don’t like then you will have your free market research and then you may decide to change the product or add a new product or come out with a whole different product. On that note I have to go. Thank you so much Julie for coming on the show. I hope you have a rocking holiday.