Dentistry Uncensored with Howard Farran
Dentistry Uncensored with Howard Farran
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979 Grow Your Practice with Kiera Dent : Dentistry Uncensored with Howard Farran

979 Grow Your Practice with Kiera Dent : Dentistry Uncensored with Howard Farran

3/30/2018 7:39:22 AM   |   Comments: 0   |   Views: 461

979 Grow Your Practice with Kiera Dent : Dentistry Uncensored with Howard Farran

Kiera is the owner and founder of Dental Placement Pros and Kiera's Dental Consulting. She is partner in Zen Dental Supplies, consults in 50 client offices nationwide, recruits for over 60 dental offices nationwide, owns dental offices, and has decided that she would find a way to positively change the world of dentistry and constantly pushes herself to hold true to this vision.  

Kiera has been featured on podcasts including: Dentalprenuer podcast with Mark Costes, The Thriving Dentist with Gary Takacs, Start Your Dental Practice with Jonathan Vanhorn, Shared Practices with Richard Low, and Growing Dentist with Naren Arulrajeh. 

Her recruiting company is for purpose and sponsored part of the Midwestern University Glendale, AZ's College of Dental Medicine's mission trip to Tonga along with sponsoring a student to continue to grow and impact the world of dentistry by providing scholarships to up and coming students.

Furthermore, Kiera is passionate about helping new grads and soon-to-be grads know how to find jobs in private practice, how to buy great practices, and give those new dentists the help and resources needed to be successful early on.  She is also partnered with a very successful female dentist and they have created an online Women In Dentistry community to help mentor female dentists as students, brand new grads, and those in associateships or wanting to transition to ownership.

When she isn't working, Kiera loves to travel. In 2017 alone she visited all 50  USA states, traveled to 6 countries, and ate some really incredible food while traveling! She loves to meet new people, relish in new cultures, and finds joy in seeing the world through new perspectives. She's an avid runner and will always say yes to cotton candy ice cream and a day trip to the beach. 

www.kierasdentalconsulting.comwww.dentalplacementpros.comwww.widconnect.comwww.becomingdentalmasters.com



VIDEO - DUwHF #979 - Kiera Dent




AUDIO - DUwHF #979 - Kiera Dent


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979 Grow Your Practice with Kiera Dent : Dentistry Uncensored with Howard Farran


Howard: It's just a huge honor for me today to be podcast interviewing Kiera Dent. She is the owner and founder of Dental Placement Pros and Kiera's Dental Consulting. She is a partner in Zen Dental Supplies. She consults in fifty client offices nationwide, recruits for over sixty dental offices nationwide. Owns dental offices in a society that she would find a way to positively change the world of dentistry and constantly pushes herself to hold true to this vision. Kiera has been featured on podcasts, including Dentalpreneur podcast with my buddy Mark Costes. The Thriving Dentist with Gary Takacs, Start Your Own Dental Practice with Jonathan van Horn, Shared Practices with Richard Lowe and Growing Dentists with Naren Arulrajah. How do you say his last name? 


Kiera: I think you got it. Let’s go with that, it feels good.


Howard: I got it. Her recruiting company is for purpose and sponsored part of the Midwestern University Glendale, Arizona’s College of dental medicine's mission trip to Tonga along with a sponsoring a student to continue to grow and impact the world of dentistry by providing scholarships to up and coming students. Furthermore, Kiera is passionate about helping new grads and soon to be grads know how to find jobs in private practice. How to buy great practices and give those new dentists the resources needed to be successful early on. She is also partner with a very successful female dentist and they have created an online women in dentistry community to help mentor female dentists as students, brand new grads and those in associateships are wanting to transition to ownership. When she isn't working Kiera loves to travel. In 2017 alone, she visited all fifty US states, traveled to six countries and ate some incredibly good food while she travels. She loves to meet new people, relishes in new cultures, and finds joy in seeing the world through new perspectives. She's an avid runner and will always say yes to cotton candy, ice cream and a day trip to the beach. Did you know cotton candy was invented by a dentist? 


Kiera: I did not know that, but it works.


Howard: Yeah and you know it was first called fairy floss, yeah. If you go on Dentaltown one of the categories ‘Dental History’ or if you just go Dentaltown go to the search and type in cotton candy, but it's pretty neat. He patented it and it was fairy floss and then known to be cotton candy. 


Kiera: Perfect.


Howard: But your last name is Dent so you were destined to be a dentist. I mean is that just an abbreviation for dentist or dentistry?


Kiera: You know one would think my husband and I tried to get in to be a dentist because his name is Jason Dent and Jason means healer and dent is tooth obviously, so I'm like you were destined to be a dentist and he is actually a pharmacist. So it all just worked out. I think it'd be a little crazy if both of us were in dentistry so ... 


Howard: Well he is in dentistry because I don't think we could do our job without the pharmacological industry. I mean with the antibiotics and the vaccines, gosh, oral cancer, the number one way to prevent oral cancer's, the HPV vaccine.


Kiera: Totally.


Howard: And it still really makes me crazy when I'm a dentist with nine years of college and I can't give the HPV vaccine in Arizona, but if I walk over to Walgreen's, a pharm tech with nine months of school can give the HPV vaccine. Same thing with the flu shot. I mean you see grandpa on a cleaning and if he doesn't come back in six months and he's dead, the top would be heart attack, cancer and usually the flu is in the top five or ten each year.  It kills eight thousand to thirty-five thousand a year and this is going to be a bad year.  The last year we were close to thirty-five thousand was about 2009 and they're saying this year's going to be a doozy too. And my hygienist with four years of college can't give a flu shot. I can't give a flu shot as a doctor in dental surgery. 


Kiera: It's crazy.


Howard: But if I go to Walgreens the pharm tech who couldn't tell me the twelve cranial nerves can give me a flu shot.


Kiera: You know it works.


Howard: But it's kind of crazy. So you're a woman, so my first question to you is when I was graduated thirty years ago, my classmate was Fred Flintstone and Barney Rubble.


Kiera: Totally they're the best I've heard because they're fantastic.


Howard: They were and Dino was my dental assistant and but it was considered a man's profession and now you go into any dental school in the United States, it's half women. How do you think that's going to change dentistry because some people think that, oh, the women don't want to be owners? They're going to be moms and they're just going to want to work at Heartland and Aspen and just do an eight to five so they can go home and be Mister Mom. But a lot of other people say if you want to be a supermom, the way to do it is to own your own business because if your girls got a play tomorrow at the school at one o’clock and you just want to cancel your afternoon, you can do it because you're the owner. So if you were going to be a super mom and you were going to try to be the dentist, the spouse, and the mom, do you think that'd be better being an employee, an associate somewhere or owning your own business? 


Kiera: So it's a super good question. I get asked it all the time because I'm not a dentist. I do a lot, but I'm not a dentist but I do coach a lot of female dentists and this is something that really does come up all the time and I think it's just the work-life balance. It depends on what your goals and aspirations are, but definitely, I think a lot of females, I think it's changing as we evolve. But a lot of them are scared of ownership because they think that they're so much more involved and they think the path of associateship will be easier and give them the lifestyle that they want. And that is a myth that I am actively trying to debunk because I feel like really you can do it all and the female dentist that I'm partnered with she is a mom and she is that supermom and really her being a practice owner gives her the flexibility to have the life she wants to have. But like we said, that's not the life for everyone and so I really think it just depends on what as a female, what your goals and aspirations are, but don't be afraid to practice ownership because it really can give you so much more than I think a lot of people are willing to accept. 


Howard: And this Me 2 Movement that you're seeing in all the news, all these comedians, actors, Harvey Weinstein, we've had a senator resign. When you travel around the world I mean the women in Saudi Arabia just got the right to drive a car.


Kiera: Right.


Howard: In Iran, right now in the last week they sentenced several girls to ten years in prison for taking off their head covering but you still see, those are the extreme other end. But in the United States I still see women all the time and I've had them cry and bawl in my home because they own a practice here in town and they're doing a million dollars and taking home two forty and their husband makes seventy-five thousand, but he just got a promotion to make eighty thousand and he's telling her pack up, we're moving town. And she's I own my land and building and my clients and so she has to pick, do I destroy the family because my husband is a Neanderthal or do I keep the family together? And she chose to keep the family together and I know so many women dentists and women and male dentists married where the woman will tell me it's crazy. I mean we both work eight to five at the office. When we come home guess who does all the cooking, cleaning the homework all the school stuff, so we still live in an extremely, culturally sexist society. And people don't talk about it's natural because when you look at all the great apes, humans, gorillas, chimpanzees, orangutans only bonobos is a matriarch society. All the other ones are patriarchs, so they're genetically this is what they think is right. Where's like a blue whale is the biggest mammal that ever lived on earth. It's bigger than any dinosaurs and the little girl, it's a matriarch society, so the little girls swim down the middle and the big male's twice the size on the outside. So I think they should fund a lot more research on bonobos to find out how our cousins deal with the matriarch society and I think that would make us understand our patriarch society. But it's tough, it is just tough.


Kiera: Right. It is and it's hard because I go into offices I coach a lot of male and female dentists and I'm realizing like the reason we even came up with Women Dentists Connect was because a lot of women struggle with like, how do they even talk to their employees? How do they talk to their team members and not come across as this raging jerk of a boss but yet if their male dentist would say the exact same thing it's totally normal and like you said, what do they do? Do they pack up or are equal partners with their spouses and some people will say, "Kiera you're kind of being sexist in this." But really it's the reality of that's not for everyone but that's also a very real reality for a lot of people and it does need to be addressed I think. I think women are coming in a lot stronger but they're having to learn how, and that's why we're coaching a lot of them and we're doing it female to female because for me to tell you, "Hey, you're being a raging crazy lady. You need to calm it down." As opposed to a man coming in and saying the same thing or just like different ways to talk to their teams and when you get all those women together, there's a lot of estrogen sometimes and there's a lot of craziness that I don't think male dentists understand as much. So it's this weird world but yet I'm so proud of the women who are coming in because I think that they're impacting and they've got this empathy and they've got different attributes that their male dentists don't necessarily possess. So I think it's a really good balance and I'm really happy that the female dentists are coming in and I think the last study I saw said almost 60% of classes now graduating were female. So there is that transition where these actually more female coming out than there are males. 


Howard: Well you know why I love female dentists the most and you know why I tried to pick all my doctors and physicians as females because when you travel around the world, and I've lectured to dentists in fifty countries. It was all male-dominated in the twenty richest countries because men always show up where the money is, but when you go into a rich country like America they say there's no money in teaching. So what percent, Google what percent of teachers in America are women. It's all women because men show up where there's money so when you go to countries where there's no money in dentistry, it's all women. And this one lady made me cry in it was in Kathmandu, Nepal, and I was looking at her office and how ... what part?


Ryan: Seventy-six.


Howard: 76% of teachers are women. 


Kiera: That's crazy.


Howard: They're always there for the right reasons, but anyway so she was showing me her office. She had five chairs, she had three employees, she's running this practice and I just said,  "Well, in US dollars, do you know the conversion from US dollars to your currency?" And she said, "Yeah." And I said, "Well approximately how much money do you make a month, net?" And she goes, "Oh, she goes, I'm so lucky because my husband has a really good job, but my office loses $50 US a month." So she works five days a week to lose $50 and $50 in Kathmandu Nepal would take your family tree to the nicest restaurant. I mean unbelievable.


Kiera: It's crazy. 


Howard: And I say, "Why do you do it?" And she goes, "Well, and she goes, I always think about that, she goes, but if I didn't do this, I don't know where all these people would go for care."


Kiera: Right.


Howard: And then the men are always there in a three-piece suit trying to tell a beautiful woman like you that you need bleaching, bonding, veneers and Botox and they're trying to sell, sell, sell, and I mean, I just trust, I inherently trust women more than men. I think men are always trying to sell you something and I think women are hard-wired at birth with maternal instincts to have more empathy and sympathy. And with the staff, the women dentist have to understand that, those assistants were hard-wired at birth to be in a paternal tribe and when the four hundred pound gorilla beats its chest and says, "Get me coffee." They just run and then they grew up at a house with dad sitting there watching sporting events all Saturday and Sunday and tells us, "Honey, get me a beer." And she jumps to get him a beer in between doing laundry and dishes and vacuuming and all that stuff. It's a crazy society. But, so …

 

Kiera: But I think it's transitioning too. I really do. I watch these female dentists come through and even though that's been the trends and the statistics in the past, I feel like a lot of these millennials coming through, they're very intelligent and I think it's been this transition. I mean women weren't working in the workforce for so long, it was very abnormal and now they're coming in and they're being very strong and I think that I'm watching as I consult. I work with Mark Costes in the Dental Success Institute, we see a lot of clients and as I consult and we watch them, I feel like there is a change that's happening and it's happening pretty quickly. But you're right, there's still a lot of those like deeply rooted planted seeds from so long ago that they're having to constantly work against changing. 


Howard: Well, change is slow. You know what the biggest change for woman in the workforce actually was and my grandmother, Mary, traumatically told me the story several times. It was World War 2. So World War 2 six million boys were shipped overseas while you had to ramp up all the industries. My grandmother Mary, Mary Wilcox in Parsons, Kansas the sheriff showed up at her door and she had three kids, my mom being one of them, and he said you are assigned a job. You're going to work at the ammunition factory. And she said, "No, I'm a stay home mom. I don't work. My husband's a butcher." And she goes, "I'm not asking you if you want a job, you're going to this job Monday through Friday and, or you're under arrest." And she had to go, she was scared, she had to go there. But it's an ammunition factory so she had to take off all of her clothes in this room with a bunch of women, which just mortified them all. I mean it's just mind-blowing because they couldn't carry in anything that makes a spark or shoes with the metal heel or anything and then put on this uniform and then go make ammunition. And, but the pay was mind-blowing. I mean she instantly was making more than her husband. So all these women in all these small villages and towns in America were forced to go to work. 


Kiera: Right.


Howard: And then when the war was over, they thought, I kind of like this $50 a week thing. I don't know if I ... so World War 2 was the transition.


Kiera: It was a huge change.


Howard: It was a huge change and that was 1940 and this is 2018. That was sixty years ago. So it's a slow generational thing. I know dentists and I get it. I'm a dentist. I mean I'd rather pull four wisdom teeth than go play golf. If someone came in swollen in pain and crying, I would rather do that than see any stupid movie at AMC. I don't want to go shopping at the mall. I don't want to do any of that stuff. And dentists they just want to do dentistry and so to be a leader in dentistry, I don't have to try to egg them on to go learn how to do implants and bone grafting, Invisalign. That's what they dream about. The hard thing for me to do is say, "Buddy, isn't it kind of weird that you could lecture all day on bone grafting, but you don't know what your overhead is, your return on equity return, your return [inaudible 00:15:20], your supply costs, your labor costs. I mean and you ask him [inaudible 00:15:23], "Well, what is your labor cost?" He'll say, "25%." And I'll say, "Really does that include FICA matching, workers comp, health insurance?" So my job is to try to get people like you to come in the show and say, "Buddy, you can't be a great dentist if you don't have a great business." So some of them say, "Well, I don't want to do it." I know a lot of women dentists say, "I don't want to do that." So they have their husband be the office manager. If they're a man they have their wife be the office manager. And then a lot of dentists tell me they don't believe in office manager and I'm like, "Well, do you believe in gravity or what else do you not believe in? Is the earth flat?"


Kiera: Right.


Howard: What percent of dental offices do you think have office managers versus don't and what's the pros and cons? 


Kiera: All right. This is a good one because you're going to get me on a pretty good spell, but …


Howard: I want to hear you rant. 


Kiera: My rant, I feel like I would say in all the offices I'm in because we also just launched another company for office managers solely for this purpose because I walk into offices and I'll say that probably 80% of the offices I'm in have a quote, unquote "office manager." However, I feel like office managers are not actually office managers. A lot of times it's the dentist being too controlling. They don't want to let go of it so the office manager is more just a front desk personnel who's helping with the front office and so it's really funny because I think this world of office management is so ... I think people don't even understand what it entails, what it means. It's very abstract. And I was noticing over the past year, this is actually why I created another company, it's called Dental Masters and it's for specifically for office managers, because people don't even know what an office manager should do or what they should look like or what their responsibilities should be. And as I was paying attention, I was a dental assistant before, and there's schooling for dental assistants. There's schooling for hygienists, there's schooling for dentists. There is nothing really for office management at all. There's nothing for front office and I think that that's why so many dentists, whether you're male or female it doesn't matter. That's why there's this obscurity of what does the front office, what does it even mean? What does it even entail? You don't learn it in dental school. I worked at Midwestern University for three years at their dental college, you don't learn about what the business aspect is so I think it's so obscure and that's why I think that there's really not office managers per say truly managing your practice in the bulk of the offices that I go into. Now that's pretty bold to say, but it's because either the dentist is trying to control because they don't even know what to let go because they don't know what reports to run or it's because office managers likewise don't know what reports they should be doing. What they should even be trying to manage and so they're trying to fumble through this world of we don't even know what we should be doing or we shouldn't be doing and I just think it's so obscure that no one really knows that whole front office area and it gets really jumbled and really garbaged and that's why I think a lot of dentists are intimidated by that and they don't even want to do it. So they just hire somebody or they push it off because it's so far removed from them, but they don't really know even how to help. 


Howard: Well, you kept saying I'm controlling and that's another thing people have these thoughts and they don't know where they're coming from. Well controlling is a huge built-in thing at birth because it has a lot to do with controlling your environment so that you survive and you survive long enough to reproduce and have offspring and that's a whole genetic thing. Just like racism is actually tribal. I mean people don't equate racism. When they want UFA to be ASU they don't realize that that's a tribal instinct. When you see a female lion lose her tribe and she tries to enter another tribe of lions, they all look exactly the same, but they kill her or run her off and we call that racism. And if you understood how your hard wiring, so everyone's controlling, everyone's tribal. Hopefully, you're just tribal in sports and not in ethnicity and, but these are hard-wired things that people need to understand their tool, what they were born with? Why they act that way? But you're right, I mean dental assistants in Phoenix they go to school for nine months and they get massively trained. Hygienists four years, dentists eight years, specialists nine to twelve years to be an oral surgeon. And then the office manager is hired off the street no training and the worst thing the only connection to the outside world is the person answering the phone and they have no training. How much is a crown? A thousand bucks.  Okay, thank you, bye. They hang up.


Kiera: Exactly.


Howard: They didn't get any contact information. And dentists will tell you forty thousand reasons why he uses his bonding agent and not another bonding agent. And I'll say, "By the way, what is your new patient call conversion rate of people calling your office that are not patients to actually come in for a treatment?" He's like, "What?"


Kiera: They have no idea.


Howard: And then every April the God of dentistry comes to Scottsdale on Good Friday and the whole morning he talks about bonding agents and I say, "But is that really your problem that your bonding agents all fail? What you did fillings they all fall out? Then you come back in the afternoon and the whole lecture is on [inaudible 00:20:32] of fillings. So let me get this right so your whole problem is your fillings fall out and the ones that stay in all wear down?" I'll say, "On your website, think about this, we know that for every hundred people that land on the average dental website, only three call the office. For those three to call the office only one will come in and three people have to come in before you get one to do a filling because they only have a one third conversion rate on the treatment plan. They only have a one-third rate of a new collar conversion to come in. So to get one filling done, you need three people to come in. For three people to come in nine had to call. For nine to call nine hundred people had to land on your website. Do you think any of that matters?" And they're like, "Well, Howard, what bonding agent do you use?" 


Kiera: It's because it's so far away. I've learned with a lot of dentists working at the school they like to talk about the things that they know. It's comfortable, it's a safe space for them and so anytime you challenge them, like when you were talking about the business of, "Hey, do you guys even know what your overhead is? Do you actually know about all these things." It's so far removed it's such an uncomfortable space and dentists I think by nature tend to be more that perfectionist that really like they can hunker down, they're really good at those things and so when you ask them these uncomfortable questions, we're going to deflect and we're going to hope that potentially by deflecting and going back to the bonding agent that we're really comfortable with we're going to be able to continue to cover up the problem. And the reality is it's not that hard. It's just uncomfortable for a little bit until they learn it and then they're pros, they can do it. So I love that because they all go back to it. 


Howard: And when kids in college tell me should I go to dental school. I tell them if that's your passion, that's what you like ... like dental students will say, "Should I go to specialty school and be a pediatric dentist?" I say, "Well, there is people like me who, if I had to be a pediatric dentist, I'd find the highest cliff and jump off of it. There's not enough alcohol …


Kiera: You'd be playing golf every day, right. [inaudible 00:22:43] any kids.


Howard: Yeah, if I had to be a pediatric dentist or work the night shift at the I-hop, I would work at the night shift at the I-hop and live in a one-bedroom apartment, but you got to find your passion. 


Kiera: Ryan, [inaudible 00:22:58] Ryan's real lucky. He made it to adulthood, right? 


Howard: Yeah, right, but the bottom line is all my multimillionaire friends that own any one of the franchises you know like McDonald's, I-hop. I have a buddy who owns eight waffle houses in the valley. Their practice management system has all their accounting built in. Only dentistry do they have all their patient information, insurance and billing and account receivables in one pile and then another software system in QuickBooks, QuickBooks Pro, I use peach tree, in another file. So when my dad owned nine sonic drive-ins, his cash register was made by NCR, National Cash Register that later got swallowed into IBM. His cash register knew more about the overhead when I was ten than any dentists graduating from Midwestern in 2018. So from 1972 to 2018 we still have Dentrix and Eaglesoft the two main players and it's not hooked up to Accounting, which is why after thirty years I switched to Open Dental. Not because they do it, but at least the CEO, Nathan Sparks, it was founded by a dentist, Jordan Sparks, at least he came on the podcast. He's listening. He's on Dentaltown, and he says, "Okay, we don't have that today, but I see what you all need. So maybe in one year, five years." But what practice management system do you recommend now? Some kid came out of school, what are you recommending? 


Kiera: I'm Open Dental a 100%. Even though I'm a die-hard Dentrix love and I'm way smarter and I'm better with Dentrix because I've used it longer. I just recommend Open Dental it makes more sense. Somebody put it really well. They said it's like Microsoft Word and Excel got together and had a baby and that's what produced Open Dental. Really it's so easy. It's user-friendly, the price point's perfect, and I just think that they understand, they get it. And I agree with you the fact that they even recognize that those are needs that we have. Fantastic. And I mean just the way that that whole system is built. I mean all their online training is ... they don't have trainers that come in which is a little frustrating, but they were smart and they have all the videos so you can pretty much learn everything on the Internet which is what people want and their price point you can't beat it. I have an office in Canada that I consult and they, "Kiera, what do we do?" And I was, "Go Open Dental. I know it's not totally built for Canada yet, but that's hands down Open Dental is where I'm at?


Howard: But here's what Open Dental's all about. So he was in Montreal and he said well I need all this in French. And Nathan's, "Well, dude, it's Open Dental go in there and change out all the words to French." And that's why it's taken off over countries because it's open, whereas all the other systems are in lockdown. But I remember Dentrix invited me to a user convention, this is a couple of years ago and I thought, "Really, have you ever heard one thing I've ever said about your company and you're inviting me over?" So I thought well maybe this is an [inaudible 00:25:23] branch. They're going to listen. The guy starts out with 85% of the features are never used, so let's talk about all the new features we're coming out with and he gives this whole spill and what dentists don't realize is that the 85% of the features you don't use is the biggest problem because you bring someone in a dental office and they open up a screen with eighty million things to do it's overwhelmed. But when you go into like Hertz rent a car and you check out a car, they have a little iPalm and there's only six things they do and when you return the car there's only six things they do. When you go to Marriott it's a function deal. So I was telling Nathan at Open Dental the first thing you got to do is you've got to set this up so that if a dentist says, “look, we don't use all this stuff. We don't want the clutter. We don't want the confusion. We're going to axe out close all this down and then set up a system.” But Kiera what I wish you would do, and your amazing Buddy Mark Costes is, Nathan's an open book. I mean he will come down to Phoenix and we can meet at Dentaltown, have Mark Costes come down and you come down or we could all go there and meet them, but we have a long-term partner and he's hiring two new programmers every month. He's basically hiring all the programmers in his area because I really believe that my homies are smart. How many people in your town know the difference between Geometry and Trig? Hell, a dentist spends a thousand hours in the library, they know how many ATP come out of a glucose molecule in the Kreb cycle. They're not dumb. They just don't have a franchisee like you would if you owned a dairy queen, which is owned by Warren Buffet or any of these franchises. The franchise systems are all built in to help them manage so that's why you see in the dental industry, you see so many consultants and when you see all these dental consultants the first thought is why do all these really smart doctors need all these consultants. Well there's a structural problem and the structural problem is their practice management information system has two multiple personalities, ones in QuickBooks Pro and one's in Dentrix and Eaglesoft and when I hear a dentist come up to me and say they love Dentrix or they love Eaglesoft, I mean it's just like a kindergartner coming up to me and saying they love ice cream. Okay, you don't realize that at the end this is going to give you diabetes. You'll weigh three hundred pounds. [inaudible 00:28:08]


Kiera: It's comfortable, right. It's just comfortable. It's what they know and that's why I think they love it, right? I am so much more savvy in Dentrix when I go into an office because I've used it longer. It doesn't mean I know everything in it and I think that that's where dentists come from, is it's comfortable and we don't like change just as human beings and so, but Open Dental, I agree, if they could combine and ... because half the problem we struggle with, like Mark and I with all of our clients, the biggest struggle is they don't know their numbers. And so if there is a way to combine, if there's a way to teach the front office those little pieces like dentists are unstoppable at that point in my opinion because that's the biggest hang-up that they have. They can produce, they know the dentistry, they know how to sell treatment plans and if they don't let's work on a few little [verbiage? 00:28:51] things, but beyond that, it's really the front office and those numbers that just hang them up on so many levels. 


Howard: So if you're born in '46 to '64, you're a baby boomer. I was born in '62. My uncle, my mom's brother got a job with Mobile Oil in the mail room when he was sixteen and he stayed with him until he's sixty-five.


Kiera: Wow, that was a good hire.


Howard: The generation X is born '65 to '79. Xennials are '75 to '85 and the generation Y, the millennials, are 1980 to 1994. But one of the problems with millennials, actually, you should never start a question like that's a negative start. One of the interesting attributes of the millennial is that even if you work in Silicon Valley where they claim to have the nicest work environments at Fang, the Stock Bubble, Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, Google, Microsoft, their average millennial only stays with them one to two years. And then when you go into dentistry a lot of dentists on Dentaltown saying, "Well, at these DSO's  they have a lot of turnover with their millennial dentists, they only stay there one or two years." And I'm like, "Buddy, it's the same thing in private practice. It's the same thing at Facebook and Apple and Google." And a lot of dentists on Dentaltown are thinking, “I don't want to hire a damn associate dentist because every time you do they come in here, they do a bunch of work, they're gone in two years and I have to do all the warranty work for the next three or four or five years for their failed implants and all this stuff.” And then the DSO's are asking me what can they do to keep their associates working longer. And I said, “well if Facebook, Google and Apple and Microsoft and Netflix and Uber can't figure it out, why are you going to figure it out?” So what do you think about the turnover and then last and not least, if you're in dental school and you're saying, “well you know what the perfect panacea for me is I want to get married, have two kids and I'm going to work at a DSO or get a job as an associate.” Okay, well that was a great idea. How come everybody that graduated the five years before you all quit their job in a year or two? So you got to tell ... and then the dental students are brainwashed because the DSO's go in there and tell them that the sky is falling. Private practices dominating. That they're going to have half the market, 50% of the dentists are all going to be working at McDentals, which is a joke because if you look at corporate dentistry, one of the biggest funders and loaners that was the East West Bank in Charlotte, they quit loaning to DSO's because they've had so many defaults and not one DSO could do an IPO and go public today because all it is a roll out to buy his earnings. They'll buy an office that does a million a year for a million bucks say, "Look, we grew from zero to a million." So now what are you going to do? "Oh, we're going to  borrow ten million more, buy ten more offices and say “oh, now look we're at eleven." So as they grow their sales they grow their debt sheet so as soon as they reach a hundred million in sales, they have a hundred billion debt and it's toxic and their dentists are flipping every one to two years. Every time they buy out a dental office that owner dentist only stays for the absolute minimum guarantee he had to stay. If they say you have to stay there three years they quit in three years and one nanosecond. So it looks like private practice is the only thing that's profitable could go public and the only thing that's working. Not what, should or could of or I hoped it ended up this way. The only thing that's really working his private practice. 


Kiera: I'm a huge proponent for private practice. I think once again I think people they need to choose what fits best for them, but I agree like corporate corporates has never been my jam. I agree that people rotate through and it's because they're not connected to it. Then people ask, well how do I keep my associates? And my answer to that is l believe partnership it keeps people tied to you. It helps them invest in a long-term. It's kind of like buying a car versus having a rental car. You drive a rental car terribly because it's not yours. You have zero invested to it. Whereas if you buy it, you're going to have it for the long haul. You tend to take more care of it. You're going to be more invested in it. You're going to put the gas in a generally speaking because you want it to last longer. Same thing buying into those it's how you keep those associates, that's how you keep them. You can have a trial partnership and there so many things that I have on partnership because I do help a lot of students get jobs. I review a lot of these. I am all about the students in getting jobs and helping them find it, but I agree with you to the point I mean I don't think the private practice is the only solution. I think that there are other solutions. However, I think that private practice makes sense. We have so many options out there as a private practice owner. As long as you know your numbers, as long as you're remotely smart in business, I believe that you can do it really, really well. It doesn't even have to be all demographics. I mean I was talking with Tim McNamara the other day and he popped up a startup in the middle of the worst place in the tri-cities and he is wildly successful. So I really think it's all about mindsets and I think so many millennials, one thing that when I was talking to the students at Midwestern that they struggle with is, I think one of our biggest problem, the reason why things aren't working as well now and that people are turning over all the time is because a lot of millennials the very first job that they've ever had is being a dentist. They don't know any other job. They don't know what it's like to work in other places and that's not saying all of them, but a lot of them the students are telling me I've never worked in another job. My first job is being a dentist. And so I think that there's this disconnect of, I don't want to say hard work because they work really hard, but it's just the understanding. Like why don't they stay at Apple? Why don't they stay at Amazon? Because there's so many other opportunities out there that they're so accustomed to having that I think that that long-term commitment is getting lost as we evolve. And so I think getting people to partner and having a reason for them to stay with you long-term, helping them to actually have that long-term commitment, even if they don't understand the benefit of it right now is how people are going to get it and you're going to keep them. But I do agree that I think corporate has its place to help train a lot of dentists to become even better business owners, but for a long term I don't think corporate is the solution for most people. So first time definitely, but for the bulk. 


Howard:    Well, the best advantage of me being my age at fifty-five is not just that my four boys turned into four grandchildren, but the fact that when you've been around the sun fifty-five times you've seen this rodeo before. When I got out school orthodontic centers of America was this big roll out and they got a big hundred million dollar line of credit. They bought a hundred offices, did a million each. They made it to the New York Stock Exchange and it imploded and there were a dozen on Nasdaq. They're all gone. Nobody survived and now they're back and it's the same damn roll-up. It's the same. There's no innovation and it's headed down the same path and everybody knows it on Wall Street, which is why you see none of them traded on the Nasdaq, so everyone in Wall Street knows it. I know it, you know it. The only people that don't know are the ones that own the DSO's. They're the only ones who don't know it. 


Kiera: Well, I think DSO's have their place. I will say I'm a little bit of a bandwagon follower on the DSO. I see a lot of flaws in it, but I also can see benefits in it as well. I think it's a hype right now. To me, DSO feels like the buzzword of an [inaudible 00:36:00] right now going through and I'm curious to see how long, like you said, how long will it really ride out.

 

Howard: I'll say it in a more positive way because I don't want to be a negative Nelly. I just want to say that the DSO business model that will work has not been invented yet, but like you said, you promote partnerships like Comfort Dental, Rick Kirshner. He has three hundred and fifty offices, but every dentist is a partner.


Kiera: Right.


Howard: And that's scary in itself because when you marry a person you have sex and babies and share holidays and that fails 50% of the time and the loving, kissing, snuggle baby, grandbabies, vacation, those are all gluing things that make the relationship more sticky and stay together. Now you're marrying a damn dentist that you don't make out with. You don't have kids with. Don't go on vacations with and then five years down the road he wants to turn into a boutique practice and you want to turn into a low-cost PPO provider. And I mean I've just seen so many. Just search divorce on Dentaltown and not only will you find [inaudible 00:37:14], but so many of them say that their breakup with their partner was worse than with their spouse. The breakup with their partner legal fees were three times the legal fees of breaking up with their spouse that involved children and houses and grandkids. So I mean it's tough, but I do think some part of the model has to be ... when you're managing humans it's not what's right and wrong. It's what works. It's like in Arizona when I'm talking to anybody in Arizona that has a free dental clinic. I say, "What's your number one problem?" They say, "Well, half the people don't show up for their appointment." Because they have no skin in the game.


Kiera: Exactly.


Howard: And then you tell anybody in the government, like if you told Bernie Sanders, "Well, how about they have to pay $10 out of their pocket to make their free appointment and it costs $10 to make an appointment." "No, it should all be free. Everything's free in Wally World." And, "Buddy, that doesn't work." Why is ... 


Kiera: What's the reason for them coming in, right? They can keep it or they don't keep it. It doesn't matter. There's other people that they can go to. Your time's not valuable because you'll just get them in the next time. It's free. There's zero like you said zero skin so what's the consequence? I mean so we don't see them for six weeks. Fantastic. What does that really do?

  

Howard: So if I ask a dentist, what stresses you out the most? He never says how to do a crown. He never says that. It's always what stresses him out the most is his employees.


Kiera: Yep.


Howard: And if it's not his employees it's his patients. At the end of the day what it is is the dental schools created this artificial natural selection that you can't get into dental school, med school or law school unless you get straight A's. So you always get this introvert geek who lived in the library for four years. Wasn't in a frat, never had a date, never had a hobby. And you watch in every dental office in America after the dentist gets done working on their patient when they're done, they get up and they go right to their private office and shut the door and then lock it. And now this selected librarian geek that knows the difference in Geometry and Trig now has to be a leader. Has to sell dentistry, has to attract and retain and keep employees for life. Attract, retain, and keep people for life and he's, "Dude, I hate people. I want to do a Physics question problem." How do you work with this group of naturally selected brainiac, librarian geniuses who have to switch from Physics to people? 


Kiera: It's a solid question. What I tend to do is I play to that. They're brilliant. Dentists are brilliant. They really are and so if you are able to figure out all these different things, even though you might not like people, they understand that people are what are going to propel them to what they ultimately want. They want to be successful. They want to be profitable. And so I play to that all the time with [inaudible 00:40:07]. Okay, just look at it as an equation. Look at it as a transaction. Look at all these different things and yes, you still have to have feeling and heart to it which comes later, but if they can start to relate with their patients and literally if you just give them an expectation or and I break it down into steps with them, that becomes manageable. It's not, "Hey, go be friends with your patients or become best friends with your team." It's literally, "Let me break it down. These are how you have your team meetings. This is how you interact for a treatment plan presentation." And then offices that I work with I do have the doctors were I almost have them do high fives. Where's that uncomfortable moment to give their team the warm fuzzies at the beginning of the day to kind of look for those compliments because it's forcing them to utilize a different part of their brain that they're not aware of doing and then they report back? And so it's really just strengthening a different muscle that they're not used to working because they're smart. They can get it if they just are pushed to try and do it and they're given the tools to do so. So I push them and they don't necessarily love it, but they end up becoming very, very good at it and they'll master that skill set very quickly if they're willing to try.


Howard: And I used to tell them also look at Hollywood. I mean who's that guy who played in The Shining, Jack Nicholson, playing in The Shining.  He's not really a psychopath, walking around with a sledgehammer in real life busting out walls and stuff. Kathleen Bates really isn't a lady who she saw someone wrecked on the side of the road would start busting their kneecaps with a baseball bat. They're Hollywood. I wrote an article on that say you just need to be doc Hollywood and so introverts refuel by themselves. They like to refuel by being a recluse go home quiet, read, have their glass of wine or whatever. But man when you show up to work, you can just pretend that you're that extrovert, basketball coach walking the line. You just got to pretend that you like people and that you like all this stuff and you have to pretend that you want to shake their hand  and give every grandma a hug and a kiss and you can pretend to just try to show up at work and say, today I'm going to get an Oscar. And …


Kiera: And do it because the more you do it, it's that first step, right? It's that uncomfortable first step but once you start doing it and you start playing on that, you start showing up. You start pretending it becomes so much easier. But doctors get stressed and like, "Kiera, it's going to be really uncomfortable and I don't want to tell my team that they did a great job today and I don't want to talk to that patient." And I'm like, "I am aware that you don't want to and it's never going to knock on your door and tell you, hey, high five like today's the day that you're going to feel like you really want to do it." It's not going to be there. You just need to go. You just need to show up and then it will become more natural. It's working a new muscle. It doesn't feel good to go to the gym the first day, but after you work out a few times it becomes a lot easier. 


Howard: Really? I've heard that line of bullshit for fifty-five years and I still hate working out. I even have three Iron Mans. I have three Iron Mans. I did Arizona Iron Man three years in a row and I still hated every mile of the run, the swim, the bike, Oh my God, but anyway, but here's the big problem they have is again they'll get their fellowship and their AGD I did, their master-ship and their AGD I did. Their diplomat and international congress [inaudible 00:43:13] that I did. But they take HR they don't even take it serious. I mean imagine if the Arizona Cardinals just said, "Oh hey Kiera we need a quarterback. Would you mind giving it a try?" 


Kiera: Absolutely, I'm so good. 


Howard: You're like, "Dude, she's a hundred pounds." I don't think we should have a hundred pound girl being the quarterback and they have full time HR people. Like at the Arizona Cardinals there's a guy there who knows everybody playing quarterback in college football. He knows every person and then here's a dentist his dental assistant calls him up and says, "My husband's getting transferred. He's in the Marine Corps and we're shipping out in two weeks." So he put ads on Craigslist. One girl shows up on Monday, she's hired. They take HR I mean if I look at my five last hires I would say the average that maybe we interview thirty-two to fifty people. We had a nightmare one where we actually interviewed fifty-one people and then hired the first one we interviewed [inaudible 00:44:23].


Kiera: It happens all the time.


Howard: Oh my God, l thought of all the wasted time and money. What was our problem, but the bottom line is they're never going to have a great team because they don't take HR more serious than how you do a root canal. How do you get them to understand that the only way to win the Superbowl is you got to get the fifty best players on your team. I mean you want to be the Cleveland Browns who didn't have a single win last year. What do you think that problem was with the Cleveland Browns? You think it was their facility? Do you think it was their marketing? Do you think it was their Facebook page? 


Kiera: It was the grass. The length of grass, definitely.


Howard: The Cleveland Browns got an A. I think they have one of the best looking uniforms. They're a rocking hot city with Cleveland with the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. I mean Cleveland did everything right, but one thing HR and what does a dentist do, he thinks he's going to compensate for HR by having a Facebook page.

 

Kiera: I think it's important to realize do you want to be the team that has the one all-star where all the chips are on one person or do you want to have multiple all-stars on your team, so you really ramp it up. It's like if only the dentist is good and that's the only thing you focus on. Fantastic. But you can only go as far as you can go solo. If you get your entire team on board you really do hire those great players, you can go so much further and it's not as hard for you. So it's kind of that it's a mind-shift. It doesn't feel natural. It feels like don't just work hard, focus on the dentistry, focus on that. It doesn't feel natural so people tend not to do it, but it's like you said, if they can reverse it around or do the reverse engineering really hire well get the right people around them. It's going to be easy for them and they're going to be more profitable and more successful, but it's just that mind shift of changing that. 


Howard: I always tell dentists when their business is going south they say, "Well, you know what I need to learn how to place implants." I'm like, "Okay dude, you graduated $350,000 student loans. This is what you're going to, you're going to dig yourself a deeper hole. You're going to buy $100,000 CBCT. You're going to buy $50,000 of training and education all the way to Dominican Republic with [Iroon Garg? 00:46:27] You're going to buy a system and [inaudible 00:46:30] you'll probably be $200,000 in debt before you do your first implant for a thousand, But I tell them. They say they're going to get into lasers. Well, okay, well those lasers are seventy-five to a $150,000. I tell everybody that the number one return on investment in dentistry is always a dental consultant. Everybody I know that does two to five million a year. You say, "Well did you ever use a dental consult?" And they go, "Dude, I've used probably every dental consultant that's ever done work in Lafayette, Louisiana my entire life." And I'll say, "Why did you use everyone?" They say, "Well, I've never hired a consultant that didn't come in get the team, train with the new skill. Something different, maybe it was the hygiene, maybe it was something with something and whatever I paid them I got that money back." I mean say it was like X thousand a month. Well, starting the next month I collected more than that and then more and I tell every dentist when they say, "Well, should I buy a laser or a CEREC machine?" Really, really a CEREC machine in your house. I mean when your house is on fire you don't go buy a new couch and start looking at new furniture. Your freaking house is on fire.


Kiera: Right.


Howard: Let's get the house not on fire and then we can re-decorate it with cad cam and lasers and all this like that. Wow, in fact, I tell consultants if I was a dental consultant if you hired me I'd give you some shiny machine with a bunch of buttons and lights on it, and an antenna and a Bluetooth connection because they just want to buy shiny objects.


Kiera: Yeah.


Howard: Why do you think that is? Do you think it's because they're embarrassed that they're a doctor? They walk on water and I do not want Kiera to come in here and realize my house is crazy. Do you think it's that? Do you think it's pride or do you just think they don't understand investments and return on investments and that they pay their bills monthly and you need to get that money back with a return on investment monthly? And the only thing that's guaranteed to do that is consultants, not cad cams.  


Kiera: Gosh, I think it's a little bit of both, but more than that I think it's kind of like the diet pill syndrome. They think that buying the next big thing or going to the next implant is what's going to create. They think it's going to be easier to work for them. It's something that they're interested in. They know bringing in a consultant means change. It means that they're going to have to work hard. We're going to be working on your [burbage?00:49:03]. We're going to be changing certain things in your office. We're going to be fine tuning and I think there is a vulnerability piece of when a consultant comes in, we expose some of those things that you don't necessarily want exposed, right? But I think the real question is what do you want? What is your endgame? Do you want to grow exponentially or do you want to try all the magic diet pills, CEREC and implants and this root canal system and all these different things? Do you want to try that route and keep trying different ones and keep spending money after money or do you want a couple and in a little bit of hard work that's going to produce the money so you can buy all those different objects and actually implement them and get the ROY? I think it's just a mind change of they're just trying to look for those magic diet pills or looking for the easiest path of resistance, which human beings do. We all want the easiest path so they're thinking if I just throw money, dentists love to throw money, they make a lot of money. So they just keep thinking if they buy the most expensive thing, then they're going to get there. And same thing with consultants, sometimes the highest paid consultants not going to benefit you with the best result as a lower paid consultant, it just depends. And I think it's the more the diet pill syndrome of wanting the easiest path with the highest results. We all want that, but more than anything I think bring in somebody who can see beyond you, who has a bird's eye view. Who's not emotionally attached to you that's going to give you the honest feedback. A CEREC machines not going to do that for you. It's going to give you a great new fun thing to learn, but it is not going to tell you how to fix your office and actually make it efficient. 


Howard: Yeah and all those hours of learning, because when you buy a machine CEREC machine or a D4E4D from a plan Mecca at Helsinki, Finland. I mean it's like buying a grand piano. It's going to take you a thousand hours to learn how to play Beethoven. 


Kiera: I think no, that there is a pride piece to it, Howard, I really do. I think you telling your buddies that you just bought this CEREC machine or you just bought this or you're doing this implant, I think it feels good. It's like locker room talk that people like to share with each other because it makes you have a status Whereas I brought in a consultant, ooh, you have problems. You had to bring in a consultant. I think so there's a stigma of how they are as well. 


Howard: Kind of like a marriage counselor. Going to a marriage counselor to try to save your marriage and all your friends are saying, "Oh man, you must have problems."


Kiera: Right.


Howard: It's like probably all the people that got divorced never went to a marriage counselor. 

Kiera: Right, exactly. I think it's locker room talk. It feels good to share all those numbers. One of Mark's favorite quotes that he says is, "Production feeds the ego, collections feed the family," But it feels good to tell everyone that I can produce this much and I can do these things and I can afford to buy this and I'm going on this trip and I'm going to CE when the reality is those aren't the big problems and those aren't really the issues. But those aren't fun to say like, "Well really my problem was that I didn't do route slips or I'm really bad with my [inaudible 00:51:38] treatment planning." That's not flashy or fun to express so I really do think it's the locker room talk and there is a little bit of pride and ego. None of us like to be exposed to our vulnerable areas. 


Howard: The other ego thing they love is they have a million dollar practices. They collected a million dollars. I can tell you, you know what the sweet spot is for bankruptcy in dentistry is between the one and $3,000,000 mark because when you're doing seven-hundred and fifty thousand you can have an insane supply ordering system, insane payroll, but you kind of make it. But by the time you get to two or three locations that little dysfunctional Doberman Pinscher is now a Tyrannosaurus Rex and takes you down. I cannot tell you how many dental offices do a million dollars a year and the doctor and that's one eighty versus how many dentists do seven fifty a year and take home two fifty. So it's the ego that says I want to collect a million, but you say, "Well, do you realize that you take twelve different PPO's and four of them you lose money on every single patient so you just doing dentistry for free."


Kiera: But it feels good.


Howard: Yeah, but I love that Costes quote, "Production is for ego."


Kiera: Production feeds your family.


Howard: "Production is for ego and collection feeds your family" 


Kiera: Feeds the family.


Howard: And the golfers always say you drive for show and you putt for dough.


Kiera: Seriously.


Howard: Everybody goes to the range and gets their big driver out and tells everybody their ego, "Man, I always hit them three hundred yards."


Kiera: Right.


Howard: Yeah, "Dude, and they were in the next fairway."  And …


Kiera: But it feels good. It feels good to say those numbers. It feels good to say. When students are coming to me and saying, "Kiera, which job should I take?" I'm always like, "Pay attention. You're looking for that thirty, 35% adjusted production that they're offering, but of what?" You might get an offer of 28% adjusted production of a practice that is producing and skyrocketing, but it's a lower percentage or you're getting the 35% of the practice producing what, thirty thousand a month. High five, you lost, You took the worst deal. But we're all about this comparison and we all want it to feel so good of I'm a rockstar. I can produce this much because that's the only thing that's an equal compared and so if you can get past that and you can drop your ego and you can lower your pride and you can see it for what it really is, then I think you're able to actually make the changes. I mean I have a friend he's got a way small practice. He freaking kills it. His overhead is 47% and he produces a hundred and fifty a month. He's crushing it out there and his life is not that hard.


Howard: Can I marry him?

 

Kiera: You should. He's a pretty awesome guy, but ... 


Howard: When I sell my dental office, I'm only selling it if it's a woman. For once in my life, I want to get a million dollar check from a woman. 


Kiera: You'll get it.


Howard: I'm tired of paying them when they leave, millions. I want one woman on earth before I die to write me a check for a million dollars. Well, if they want help what is your website? I mean you've got dentalmastersnow. You have kierasdentalconsulting.com. You have a lot of websites. 


Kiera: I do.


Howard: What is the website that my homies should be finding you on today?

 

Kiera: I think the easiest one, kierasdentalconsulting that's going to kind of encompass them all or dentalplacementpros. Dentalplacementpros is if you're looking for jobs and help. Kierasdentalconsulting, if you're looking for consulting. We can talk about office management help, practice acquisition, you name it. If you want... women dentists if you want to have that one on one consulting with a female dentist, just shoot them over to kierasdentalconsulting. Any of these really come on over to kierasdentalconsulting and I can help you with whatever. I purposely stopped working with a very successful practice because I felt like being tied to one office meant that I could not help as many people. My goal is to help in whatever way I can and that's why we've created the companies we have, so …


Howard: Well how should they contact you? Should they go to Kiera, which is, k i e, i before e, so k-i-e-r-a-s kierasdentalconsulting.com or they could go to dentalplacementpros.com or they could go to becomingdentalmasters.com


Kiera: It's dentalmastersnow. I apologize you have the wrong one for that. Dentalmastersnow we wanted it to be more affirmative. So dentalmastersnow, that’s for the OM.


Howard: Right on. And then do you have dentalplacementpro. What's that all about? Is that an old guy like me looking for an associate or an associate looking for a job? 


Kiera: Umm, either one.  It's a match.


Howard: Either one.


Kiera: It's kind of like matchmaking. Yep, so it's a recruiting site or if you're not even an associate you just need help with front office or back office or team players. We hire for them and then we have our womendentistsconnect is the one specifically for women dentists.

 

Howard: Well if you see someone register on that. Their name is Halweeney Farran. It's [inaudible 00:56:27] 


Kiera: I'll know who it was. I'll know exactly.


Howard: I'm impersonating a girl, but final question you worked at ...Phoenix has two amazing dental schools, Midwestern and Glendale, which you worked at in A.T. Still in Mesa. You worked there three years. What happened to your journey to go from Glendale to Reno? 


Kiera: So my husband he was in pharmacy school there and I am always been entrepreneurial minded and I found out of all the schools that he got accepted to that Midwestern offered a spouse discount, so I definitely worked so hard and I was super lucky to get a job at Midwestern in their dental college. And then my husband got …


Howard: Wow.


Kiera: Yep, so I got a discount on his tuitio. Worked at the dental college, which was fantastic. I met over six hundred dentists while I was there, so super fun. Helped teach radiology. Love Dr. Smith, all of them and then my husband took a residency in Reno and he now works at a hospital out there and I ended up going and working with one of the grads from Midwestern. We opened a couple of practices, had some great success, and then I decided to start consulting after that. So that's how we're now in Reno. 


Howard: So out of six hundred students that you met over the three years, was Richard Lowe your favorite student? 


Kiera: Absolutely. No, Richard Lowe was brilliant. Richard Lowe just has me... He is so brilliant it's incredible. I could just sit and listen to him all the time. I'm like Richard, "How do you know all of this stuff?" And he's so giving and so kind. He's fantastic. 


Howard: Yeah and what's amazing is when I first met him when he was an undergrad, he was already an old soul.


Kiera: He is.


Howard: I mean he was already a mature, married with a kid. Knew all of life lessons. I'm like, "Dude when you talk you should be like seventy-eight years old. Why are you just a baby?"

 

Kiera: Right.


Howard: And you've been on his show. 


Kiera: He's amazing. I have yeah.


Howard: Been on his podcast.


Kiera: Umm.


Howard: Alright, well I'll tell you what, thank you for all that you do for dentistry. Thank you so much for coming on the show. The only reason my shows a success is because I'm able to get people like you to come on the show. Thank you so much for coming on the show and I hope you have a rocking hot day. 


Kiera: Thank you so much. Like I told you before I got started, I hear all about you so it's been really fun. So thank you so much and for all you're doing as well. I appreciate it.




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