Warren Bobinski started in the dental business with his father when he was about 6 years old. His father worked for a well established supply house in Canada called Ash Temple. His mother and father were divorced for many years, and Warren spent the summers and vacations driving all over Saskatchewan in his fathers car selling dental supplies and servicing equipment. His mother moved to Winnipeg, Manitoba where Warren completed high school.
After graduation from high school in 1983, Warren started a career as a produce clerk at Superstore. About 9 months after graduation he thought this may be his future. As a rebellious teen in school, Warren didn’t get the high marks necessary to pursue an academic career. He was however a very ambitious young man!
His father invited him to join the family owned Dominion Dental Supply company in February of 1984.
Warren learned “everything dental” in his many decades in the business. Constant improvement is a driving factor in his career. His education involved learning everything about dental supplies, tearing apart dental equipment, understanding pneumatics, electronics. He learned business. Taking orders, inventory management, marketing. Profit margins. Human resources.
Dominion Supply operated for a few years and eventually formed a partnership with Sinclair Dental when it was still owned by the Sinclair family. This partnership existed until the business was purchased in the early 1990s by Dr. Arjang Nowtash. Dr. Nowtash then bought out Warren’s father…and Warren decided to move on about a year later to a company called Arcona, which eventually was purchased by Henry Schein.
Over time, Warren has developed a large network in the dental business. CEO of major manufacturers, top sales people, consultants…and even met with Dr. Howard Farran to discuss an app and electronic magazine!
https://www.henryschein.com/
VIDEO - DUwHF #1039 - Warren Bobinski
AUDIO - DUwHF #1039 - Warren Bobinski
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Howard: It is just a huge honor for me today to be podcasting one of my idols, Warren Bobinski. Thank you so much for coming by the house. He started in the dental business with his father when he was about six years old. His father worked for a well-established supply house in Canada called Ash Temple. His mother and father were divorced for many years and Warren spent the summer vacations driving all over Saskatchewan in his father's car selling dental supplies and servicing equipment. His mother moved to Winnipeg, Manitoba where Warren completed high school. After graduating from high school in '83 Warren started a career as a produce clerk at a superstore. About nine months after graduation he thought this may be his future, as a rebellious teen in school Warren didn't get the high marks necessarily to pursue an academic career. He was, however, a very ambitious young man. His father invited him to join the family-owned Dominion Dental Supply Company in February of '84. Warren learned everything dental in as many decades in the business. Constant improvement is a driving factor in his career. His education involved learning everything about dental supplies, tearing apart dental equipment, understanding nomadics, electronics. He learned business, taking orders, inventory management, marketing, profit margins, human resources. Dominion Supply operated for a few years and eventually formed a partnership with Sinclair Dental, and the founder of that just died.
Warren: He did.
Howard: And that was a sad day. When it was still owned by the Sinclair family, this partnership existed until the business was purchased in the early 1990's by Arjang Nowtash. Dr. Nowtash then bought out Warren's father and Warren decided to move on about a year later to a company called Arkona, which eventually was purchased by none other than Henry Schein, who we had the CEO of Henry Schein on, Stan Bergman. Over time Warren has developed a large network in the dental business, CEO of major manufacturers, top salespeople consultants, and even met the short fat bald guy named Howard Farran to discuss an app and electronic magazine. And I want to tell you why I did this. First of all, this isn't a advertising from Henry Schein, no one's ever paid me to come on the show. I've had a gazillion offers. I don't take money. This is my hobby, I do this for free. And the reason I wanted Warren on is because first of all, let's go back to Dentaltown when we started in '98, I called it Dentaltown and all these people like Warren started joining and people saying, "Oh my God, he's a salesman. He sells stuff." I'm like, "Oh my God, how evil. What are you, a volunteer dentist doing free dentistry?" How come when you sell a thousand dollar crown, you're the pope and then when the guy that sells you the thousand dollar dental supplies is a salesman. If you think business is bad then get out. We're in capitalism, we're not communism, but the reason I like people like Warren is because he has seen ... how many dental offices have you walked into in your life?
Warren: Hundreds.
Howard: And you live in your little bubble. So you live in this bubble and these guys drive around so they see what's best practices, what works, what doesn't work, and you got to listen to this people and you know it's right and I'll tell you why you know it's right. We just had the CEO of 3M Dental on here a couple of weeks ago. He's sitting in the same chair you did. He sells a billion dollars of stuff. I've had Stan Bergman, CEO of Henry Schein and we all know last year at the Greater New York meeting, Amazon had a booth and everybody's like, "Oh my God, Amazon's coming. It's the end of Henry Schein. It's the end of everything we know it." And I went through this in '98 when we started Dentaltown. We asked them, do you want us to sell supplies? And they all say, "Well, you know what I kind of need my rep," because when I'm asking what file I don't care what the rep thinks of the file. I want my rep to say, "Well, who else uses his file?" There's three Endodontists in town, can you find out what file they use and it was their only connection to the outside world, which is why I started Dentaltown so that no dentist will ever have to practice solo again. And I asked the 3M guy I said, "Are you going to start selling on Amazon?" And he goes, "You know what everybody in the industry asks me that and everybody at 3M, he says not one dentist has called me up and says, I want to buy this on Amazon Prime. To this day, I mean the rep is your outside connection. We see in dental implants, every single dentist I've ever met that places one implant a week, which is my definition of critical mass. You're not good at it, you're not profitable at it. If I was going to get a vasectomy I wouldn't want to get it from some guy who cut a vas deferens twice a year. I'd want the guy that did it every damn hour so he didn’t hit the wrong nerve and everyone places an implant a week buys from a local rep and you'll ask those guys, "So what's your favorite implant?" "Well, I mean there's six or eight good ones. I mean Zimmer, Straumann, Nobel Biocare, Neo Dental, you know the big household names. But the reason they went with, say around here, like Straumann was because of the rep and the rep has probably witnessed more implant surgeries than anybody in Arizona. So Warren I brought you in to use you and abuse you, to have you share, on your vacation from Canada in Phoenix, share on your vacation when you're driving around, what are the dentists that are happier and more profitable doing that the ones that are miserable and unprofitable and going broke doing?
Warren: I think the main thing is that they enjoy what they're doing. Just like we discussed when you're sitting here with me right now and it may be my holiday, but it's not. I love what I do. I'm here because I enjoy what I do. I integrate all of that with my everyday lifestyle, so my moniker is always been success in dentistry and life. And I think when you can integrate the two, I heard you just speaking a moment ago about why people are planning to retire at fifty and I try to find that same reasons with my dentist. I'm why are you retiring? Do you not enjoy what you do? How can we change that? How can you enjoy what you do every day? The guys who are enjoying what they do they're not going to retire. The one dentist I was going to have meet with Dr Christianson recently he retired at eighty years old. My dentists who enjoy what they do have long, successful careers and it depends on what you call success as well. I don't always measure success by financial gain, success is happiness, so they may have a high overhead practice, but they enjoy going to work. They enjoy the team that they're working with. There's different ways to measure success so I don't necessarily think that you have to make a million dollars a year to be considered successful from the outside. Some people might look at you and go, oh, he's making a million. It must be good, but he's got a shitty life at home. He's about to go through a divorce. His kids hate him. He spends no time, he is stressed out every time he comes to work and he's just a production machine.
Howard: How come you're looking at me when you're saying that? He's staring right at me when he's saying that.
Warren: I've only known you for a while.
Howard: Yeah. I tell my four boys, I say all I want you to be is happy and healthy and so many people always torture my boys like, "Well, how come you're not going to be a dentist like your dad?" And I tell them, I said, "Boys, I went through this with my dad." My dad was in Sonic Drive-In. He had nine Sonics and he was crushed that I didn't go into ... and I worked with my dad from ten to twenty and I never called it work one day in my life, I mean I loved going to Sonic being with my dad and eating hamburgers and onion rings. I just didn't want to do that. And I tell my boys I didn't have you because I own a dairy farm and I needed four boys to milk cows every morning and night. I say I had you for you. All I want you to do is go find what makes you happy and healthy. So when you find dentists that are not happy and healthy, I know it could be a barrier, but is there any common elements or what would be the top three or four ...?
Warren: Probably the most stressful thing for any dentist is human resources, dealing with people and dealing with the public. The typical personality for a dentist is the kind of guy who would enjoy being in a library, just reading books and maybe not interacting with people. So it's stressful to deal with the day to day mostly with your own team members. You can go in and you can clinically look in a mouth. You know exactly what needs to be done. You make your treatment and then you want to go to the next room. It's scientific and there's an end result. Where dealing with people day to day, the dental assistant who's coming in and she's the one coming in to get her check and she can't wait to get away from the chair and from you and you know as soon as she's off of work, she is trying to get an extra five minutes paid today and she's going to clock in and take advantage of that, and she really doesn't enjoy being there. Especially the market that we're in Saskatchewan we have a very big shortage of dental assistants right now and so we need to proactively start to recruit dental assistants in Saskatchewan.
Howard: I'm not even going to try to spell it, I'm not even going to try. Sas ... Oh, I need to learn how to do voice, map of Saskatchewan, Canada. You're in Saskatoon, which Saskatchewan s it's British Columbia, which has Vancouver, which is my single favorite city in North America, hands down.
Warren: That's because you haven't been to Saskatoon.
Howard: We have haven't we, Ryan.
Ryan: I don't recall ever going there.
Howard: I was in Regina, I think. Then there's Edmonton and Calgary and which one has the Human Rights Museum?
Ryan: Winnipeg, Manitoba.
Howard: Winnipeg, Manitoba, that was just badass. And you're in in the middle, you're between Alberta, which is right above Bismarck, North Dakota, right?
Warren: Yeah.
Howard: Bismarck, North Dakota, in Montana, you said?
Warren: Yep.
Howard: Okay and that's where you live in Saskatoon?
Warren: I live in Saskatoon.
Howard: And how many people live in Saskatoon?
Warren: About three hundred thousand to ...
Howard: So about the size of Wichita, Kansas.
Warren: Yeah.
Howard: And how many people live in the whole province?
Warren: The province above one point one million.
Howard: One point one million so that's in North Dakota right?
Warren: Yeah.
Howard: And so how many dentists are in Saskatchewan, how many dentists are in Saskatoon.
Warren: About four hundred and twenty practicing in the whole province so we a very good ratio of dentist per capita. It's around, I think we're the second highest in Canada, our ratio of dentist per patient.
Howard: And what’s the economy is it mostly one season of small grains.
Warren: No, we're big oil actually.
Howard: It's oil?
Warren: Yeah, we're oil dependent, potash, we do mining.
Howard: Potash is what you need for cement.
Warren: Yep and then, of course, we are the breadbasket of the world.
Howard: See down here in Arizona we just want the pot.
Warren: Yes.
Howard: And up there in Canada they want to potash. Very, very ...
Warren: And they'll probably grow it for you someday.
Howard: So yeah, so the natural selection of the DAT they're just looking for people that can get A's in Calculus and Trig and Geometry and Physics and all this shit that you'll never use one time during a root canal and because of that you get the librarian geek.
Warren: Yes.
Howard: And so is he trainable, can he ever loosen up and get happy and have fun.
Warren: Yes, I ...
Howard: What do you think he needs? I'm not saying this kidding or anything because I've seen a lot of success stories with guys that just went and got a therapist. They say you know I started talking to this guy once a week, took a year, I already answered two emails on this, this morning and other people that are different cases need medication. Some if they don't need medication, if they don't have organic pathology, then a lot of times if you just join Toastmaster or what's the other one? Toastmaster, take a Dale Carnegie course, but you know what I always say because I'm an Irish and 38% of us are alcoholics and we're not as good as the Russians they're 40%. The Americans are only 14% because they don't know how to drink, but you know how many consultants, we've been saying this for thirty years, so many of these dentists if they just got a job Friday night or Saturday night as a bartender, just go to the local bar and say "Dude, I'll work for free. I want to start with drunk people and work my way up to sober patients," because if they just learned how to communicate and lighten up and have fun, so many of their problems would be over.
Warren: I agree. I think another important thing, I do see a lot of very social young kids coming out of school now ...
Howard: So you think they're selecting them better than they were?
Warren: I do think that ...
Howard: I do too.
Warren: I think there's an interview process that it's very difficult, you have to have those geeky marks, but you also have to have a personality to pass the interview so ...
Howard: Geeky marks, I never heard that. I love that. Can I steal that from you?
Warren: Sure, you can use that.
Howard: Your geeky marks, yeah, there's some dental schools that I podcast here with the Dean and they don't want to give away their game on a podcast, but they're like if they don't see in the resume, well how could you love dentistry but you never volunteered at the St. Vincent de Paul Center or you never went on a missionary or like you say, okay, well your dad was a dentist for thirty years. Did you guys ever do a missionary dental trip? No.
Warren: Right, yep.
Howard: And you're a geek and you got straight A's and it's like really? But they're really starting to understand because it hurts the patient outcome if the dentist can't communicate with the patient.
Warren: It does and nowadays the more important part is, I talk a lot about this is a business as well so you need to understand that communication is a skill that you need to learn and if you can't do it, you need to hire the right people that can do that for you.
Howard: But it's an attitude problem. Like when you say that you don't like to sell dentistry, I say, well, what do you love the most? What have you bought in the last five years you love the most? And they'll say my car, my iPhone. Then get out of dentistry and go work for Lexus and go work at the Apple genius bar.
Warren: I agree.
Howard: I personally know that when people are in pain and get out of pain, they really love that. I know your wife if you lost your front tooth, would you like, I don't care. I'm from Canada. There's lots of people without a front tooth. If you lost your front tooth, it would it be a little deal, big deal or a huge deal?
Speaker 1: It would be a big deal.
Howard: It'd be a big deal and then you say, you don't like to sell dentistry. I mean dentistry's a huge ... hell Americans spent a hundred and twenty two billion on it in 2017 and you say you don't want to sell dentistry. I say you should sell your attitude down the river and get your head screwed on straight. It still pisses me off that the average American between sixteen and seventy six will buy thirteen new cars with a median average of $33,500 and 90% of the people listening to the show will never sell one $33,000 case in their life and then they'll say, "Well, the problem with the [inaudible 00:14:54] is Trudeau and Trump and [inaudible 00:14:54]" Yet all their patients will buy a new car every five years and they don't even have the self-esteem to say, you know what, Warren, let's just start from zero, we need to take all this junk out. All the cavities need two implants, three crowns and when we're done with you, you'll have a movie star smile and we'll do the whole thing for the price of the average new car of thirty three thousand five hundred which no one ever pays because they pay $400 a month for sixty months and we just did a credit check on you and you've been approved, so everything that we've been talking about we can do for $400 a month for sixty months. Does that sound like something you want to do? And you go into every zip code in America and one out of every twenty, that's their Friday case. They work Monday through Thursday, 8:00 to 5:00 and then they come in Friday for this one person, they're going to do a complete, you know that's their big case of the week. So every Friday they do a twenty, I mean an All on 4's twenty five thousand an arch and every Friday they got a $25,000 case, fifty weeks a year. They're in a medical-dental building with eight people and the other seven guys have never sold one in their life. How do you fix that?
Warren: I think it's an attitude. It's like you say you need to teach that part that this is, I think right of school they're taught to act like a doctor, like you go to your doctor when you have a problem and they are trained to fix it and it's almost an ethical issue that it's something wrong with trying to sell dentistry and I think that's where the problem is. I think it starts right from the schools.
Howard: If you look at all the pictures on Instagram, look at Snapchat did an IPO and was worth twenty billion out of the gate. Why? Because women, by the way, YouTube is 80% men, but Snap is the opposite because women they take their selfie and Snapchat knew they wouldn't like what they saw, so they had all these filters and lightning and add-on and all this stuff like that. I mean women are huge into beauty and it makes them feel better. Women hate it when they feel like they don't look right or they look wrong or ... I mean the number one cosmetic surgery in America, do you know what it is?
Warren: I'm going to guess breast implants.
Howard: Well, I like the way you think, but wrong.
Warren: No?
Howard: It's eyelid surgery. Have you ever looked at a woman and thought something was right or wrong with her eyelid? I need to go back and start looking at women like, do you even have an eyelid? What is wrong with your head when you go to a surgeon and pay thirty-two hundred bucks to do surgery on your freaking eyelid? What was your next best idea, the bottom of your foot? You know so it's all in the head and dentists should embrace this.
Warren: I think they're looking themselves in the eyes and that's what they see.
Howard: Exactly.
Warren: Maybe they're looking at their smiles as well.
Howard: And that's why the Orthodontist I have they're thinking in fear and scarcity, that Invisalign is going and Align technology bought Invisalign. [ITaro 00:18:03] now what is it, Smile Direct.
Warren: Right, yes, they own 16% of Smile Direct.
Howard: Smile Direct. And what they don't realize that the ortho market is growing like amazing because when we were little, the only person who got ortho looked like they could eat corn on the cob through a chain link fence. Now forty-year-old women are coming in saying, "Well, these teeth are slightly crooked." And she's ready to plop down $6,000 on Invisalign to rotate a couple of teeth and then you sit there and do some bleaching and just a little direct bonding and she's just all giddy, which is when I was little from '62 to '72, they'd line up them big Catholic families. They'd only pick the one child that could never attract a mate they were so messed up and that'd be the only one that got ortho and the rest are ...
Warren: Look at Invisalign and look at Zoom whitening, look at where the marketing's coming from. I don't think the marketing for those things started in the dental office with dentists saying we needed to find a new way, another revenue stream. Let's start promoting something inside. It was another company, another business that started and identified here's an opportunity. They built the business and they're doing the marketing directly to the patients and driving the traffic into the doctor's offices.
Howard: Do you know my buddy, Yar Zuck?
Warren: I do know the name.
Howard: Where's Yar Zuck? He's in Redwood or Red ...
Ryan: What's the name again?
Howard: Yar Zuck, Y A R Zuck. He's the guy that bought John Lennon's tooth at an auction.
Warren: Oh yeah, okay, that's why I know the name.
Howard: And exploded his ... Oh, my God, he bought Deerwood redwood.
Ryan: Red deer, Alberta.
Warren: Oh yeah, okay.
Howard: Red deer so ...
Warren: That's right, sure that made the newspapers.
Howard: It actually got him $10,000,000 in advertising. I mean he was in every newspaper around the world, but it was amazing that it just got him instant celebrity fame that I've seen no dentist achieve. The only person who ever beat it was Walter Palmer who shot Cecil, the lion and so one of these nights if I ever slow down, I'm going to go down to the Phoenix Zoo and just shoot me a hippopotamus or a giraffe or a penguin or something. But anyway the pushback he got from his own province in Canada, I mean everybody thought it was fun and cool and fascinating and it had so much marketing about dentistry and all these literally tens of thousands of articles around the world from here to Kansas to Kathmandu to Taiwan talking about when they'd interview him, he's talking about all this dentistry and all the things and all the possibilities and blah, blah, blah blah. And who was mad? His own dental society.
Warren: Right.
Howard: Who was pissed at him, the dentist in Alberta. I mean any other industry would celebrate it.
Warren: Well, Canada's very conservative with marketing of any type. You can't identify yourself in the public as if you're better than anybody else and so maybe a part of the problem, and this may be the controversial part of dentistry uncensored, is that we try to present it that all dentists are equal, and as a matter of fact, in Saskatchewan if you advertise that you have free parking you will get a fine from the college saying that you're indicating that you're better than the other person across the street because they don't offer free parking so you're saying that you're a better dentist. So if you bought a tooth and you advertise that you bought the tooth you might be advertising something that is indicating that you're better than the dentist next door and I think it's anti, I don't know I understand trying to keep it as a profession because you don't want cheesy marketing. You don't want bad dentists doing bad dentistry and giving the industry a bad look, but free parking is that really going to make a patient's big difference. If they're going to you because you have free parking and they're not going to the dentist, they didn't have a relationship with that guy. He was probably too busy looking the other way every time he came in and they're not going for the free parking. I don't understand how we control the marketing and ...
Howard: So it's funny, so again it's always their province, their dental society is enforcing a race to the bottom. It's the same thing we see with elephants. These people have big hearts are their biggest enemy because they don't like Math, they don't like Economics, for instance, we're coming up on eight billion humans, a billion cows, four billion pigs, four billion sheep and twenty-five billion chickens and we're down to thirty thousand elephants. And why? Because you can't sell the ivory and you got to protect ... well, they have no economic value. If all of a sudden those tusks ... where if every millionaire you walk in the house and have the two biggest African elephant deals and he was willing to pay a million dollars apiece, that thirty thousand population would swell to three hundred thousand and there'd be elephant farms in Saskatchewan.
Warren: Right, yeah.
Howard: And so when you set up the egalitarian, which is Marxism, which is Communism, which is insanity, then the consumer says, "Well God, all the dentists are the same." And so my insurance says if I go there, it'll only cost this much and there's no out of pocket and this guy doesn't take my insurance, so I'm going to go to this guy. So then this guy starts losing business because the perception, in fact, the biggest problem with dentistry we have today is that we got so good. You know a hundred years ago everybody in town knew, oh old man Johnson was ten times better than old man Cranston and blah blah blah blah blah, but this egalitarian communism, no differentiation is a race to the bottom because the insurance companies just keep lowering the fee, lowering the fee, lower than the fee and the consumer's thinking, well, they're all the same. For instance, if I was going to have my ... I'm not talking about me, but I'm talking about the average American public, I was going to have my appendix taken out. Well, they just figure well you get an ambulance, no one says, "Well take me to this hospital, not that ... “They’re just, "Well, yeah, they took me to the hospital. It was one in the morning. The doctor said I had to have my appendix out." Everybody just assumes that everything's the same and that is a set up for the race to the bottom. When they don't look at the data that when you have a surgery Monday through Friday from 8:00 to 5:00 when all the guys with ten, twenty, thirty years’ experience were doing it, there's significantly higher outcomes than when you do it in the middle of the night, which is an intern. But the people don't talk about that so everything the province is doing is what is killing dentistry and what is cheesy marketing to you may not be cheesy marketing to me. I remember one of my favorite movies with Woody Harrelson, the People versus Larry Flint? I mean, it's a classic. Have you seen that movie?
Warren: Oh yeah.
Howard: It's a classic because the Supreme Court said you either believe in free speech or you don't. And even though this guy is vulgar and gross, it goes all the way back to Washington when some guy wrote a cartoon and he was leading a donkey to ... walked into Washington DC and they said that the ass is leading, which one's the ass or something. I forgot what the goal was, but the bottom line is if you start censoring pornography, well the next thing you know, they're censoring dental advertising and censoring dental advertising, I mean I don't watch porn but they're moral equivalence and taking away free speech for dentists to differentiate themselves, which is put onto the dentist in Hong Kong, in Romania, in Canada and then when you go to where it's no bars hold capitalism the dentist industry does better. The people do better. I might attract these type of people, you might attract these type of people, but we get higher people. I'll give you one last example and I'll shut up. In countries like America where it's a two-party system where you only have two choices, half the people don't vote in every election. But as you look at the democracies around the world by the time you get to, I believe it's seven parties, it's over 95% and like my dental assistant, she's a single issue voter her whole life and the only thing she cares about is dogs and when nobody connected with her that you're going to be better for dogs than her and you're not going to euthanize them and you're going to fund all these deals on [inaudible 00:26:45] And she's like, "Well, neither of them care about dogs. They just care about money." But when you go to countries that have green parties and animal rights parties and environmental parties, everybody feels connected. Same thing with cars there's nine major car companies selling cars in America. If there were two people wouldn't be as excited by cars.
Warren: You'd probably take a bike.
Howard: So we believe it's HR. We told them become a bartender, take Toastmasters, what else could they do with HR?
Warren: With HR sometimes I encourage a dentist to go and do something different and I have motivated dentist to sell their clinics and pursue a different career. Sometimes you're just in the wrong place. If you're not going to enjoy what you do why do you keep forcing yourself to do it every day.
Howard: Do you see that as a higher incidence in people whose mom or dad was a dentist and kind of family get them into a job they didn't want.
Warren: The few that I can think that actually moved on there. There is another problem is you've spent a lot of money to become a dentist. You made a big investment in a business. You've got a half a million dollars invested in an education. It's hard to decide to just go and make music you know.
Howard: How many cases have you lived through, that you got them out of dentistry personally?
Warren: Personally a couple, just a couple, yeah.
Howard: Two, is it two, one, two, three.
Warren: I can think of one in particular right now because ...
Howard: Okay, but was her dad a dentist?
Warren: No, actually he was going to be a pharmacist. Then he didn't like that so he went back and became a dentist and practiced for maybe five years and he thought he was stuck because he didn't think he could sell his practice. This was some of the first practices I got involved in selling as well. And I said, "Dude, I can sell your practice next week if you're that unhappy, why are you doing that? You do really well with real estate investments." He had investments in Costa Rica. He was developing some property, he had some stuff on the east coast in Canada and he was making, it wasn't just that he was making money, he enjoyed it. It was something he really liked doing. I said, "Why are you practicing? Why do you want the next patient in your chair and you hate them. You don't want to get your hands in that dirty mouth, you know. Why don't you think of doing something?" And he thought he was stuck and I helped him sell his practice. I'm like, "I'm seriously going to bring you somebody next week. I'll bring you somebody who wants your practice." And helped him move on. I encourage people to pursue their dreams and that's why I say, when you look at success, Howard, it's not necessarily that you're making a million dollars that you're running at 80%. We kind of put that pressure on each other too. You look at your colleagues and you think they're successful because their practices are doing so well and that guy three years out of school, he's billing one point five million and you're only doing seven fifty, but sometimes that other guy's feeling a lot of pressure and he's not as happy as the guys billing half as much.
Howard: And I remember my thirty years in Phoenix, every year I can give you a name of two to three dentists who take their own life. I mean you think Phoenix, if you look it up on Wikipedia you think it only has a million people and that's true. It only has a million people, but the metro is three point eight million. There's a lot of dentists here, two to three take their life, so really you have a million dollar practice you [inaudible 00:29:53] and the thirty years I practiced in Ahwatukee, I'm only aware of three murders. All three murders were a domestic murder inside the house and I know because I live here and I'm a dentist out here. I know where those three houses are and they were all, every one of them, every three for three, the house worth over a million dollars.
Warren: Yeah, so ...
Howard: So you want a million dollar house, a million dollar practice and then you kill yourself or your spouse and ...
Warren: Yeah, there's way more rewarding things in life. Monetary things are important like ...
Howard: But back to your deal, do you realize that's why I've had Grant Cardone on my show, how many times, Ryan?
Ryan: Two Times.
Howard: Two times. You know why? Because just like you said, I know so many dentists, there's a podcast on Dentaltown, what's the real estate one called, Ry? The dentist freedom blueprint. He's got a hundred and fifty-three podcasts. He's got a gazillion, Dr. David Phelps and me and him have the same inside joke. He's like so many dentists are just miserable making their money and then they fly out to him and they're just in heaven, buying sixteen plaques and renting it out or twelve plaques or whatever they have. I've had Grant Cardone on twice, I mean I know so many dentists where their day job is dentistry and then their happiness and vocation is real estate and I always tell them the same advice that you do. It's like, "Dude, this isn't making you happy and you're never going to be Grant Cardone. If you're spending your day job Monday through Friday 8:00 to 5:00 doing something you hate. Just have the freedom to go." But you know why they don't have the freedom, because when a normal person buys a house, a physician, dentist lawyer, had to buy two big house. Normal person buys a Honda, they had to buy a luxury Beamer, whatever. Normal people go camping at the lake with a twelve pack, they have to fly to Hawaii. I mean they can't do one category.
Warren: You're making a good point actually like you ask them ...
Howard: They can't live within their means.
Warren: The guys that are happy actually that I mostly know are happy if you want to sum it up, they live pretty modestly. They actually, I think of my young guys that are coming out of school I can think of one dentist in particular and he's going to listen to this blogcast and he stayed at home while he was buying clinics and he was working at clinics that he just purchased. He dropped a million dollars to buy. He's still coming home to mum cooking him supper. He's paying off his student debts and paying off the clinic for a few years before he went and took on buying his own home and starting the rest of his life into his thirties. And I do see a lot of the guys I play hockey with that I've been friends with for many years, live very modest lives. Very modest people too and they're very happy at their clinics. They do well.
Howard: So you're very passive aggressive then if you support hockey, I mean ...
Warren: I am.
Howard: You can't be fixing teeth in the day then drink a beer watching them get knocked out at night.
Howard: Well yeah, that's ...
Howard: Come on, pick one team. Either you like teeth, or you hate teeth. But you know what Arizona has got two dental schools, Mesa AT Still and Midwestern in Glendale. They dump out two hundred and seventy kids a year and I say go back home and live with your mom, your dad they would love it. "Well, I want my own place." Okay, well you know you're going to be miserable. I mean, you've already borrowed four, and your mom feels bad anyway that she couldn't pay your four or $500,000 deal. When you say, "Mom, can I come back to the room or live in the basement or whatever." Live below your means, minimalism, but I always ask dentists show me one category you live below your means because I know the median on everything. Like one point nine kids, oh, you had five, Mormon, was that living below the means. Seventeen hundred square foot home, oh yours is four thousand, a Honda Accord, oh, you got ... I mean, where were your last three vacations? I mean the most miserable dentist I know in the world they can't pick one category where they're even at the median for the US, which is the richest country in the world with a $19,000,000,000,000 economy. Not one thing is even below the median and the happiest ones, like Warren Buffet still has his first house, some of my best drinking buddies in Ahwatukee still living in the first house they bought thirty years ago. Well below their means, they don't have to do anything. They're not stressed out. Yeah, so HR, live below your means, what else?
Warren: Well, I think when I do sit down I sell about $10,000,000 clinics a year or I'm involved in the process because officially I don't sell clinics. I do it as a courtesy and as a service to my customers.
Howard: Why don't you do it as a profit and take a 5% commission?
Warren: It's a conflict of interest to be a Henry Schein rep. As Henry Schein rep I get paid to sell dental supplies, Howard so ...
Howard: So Henry Schein says you can't do it?
Warren: Right. In Canada I have a contract saying that that's a limitation for me.
Howard: Is that from Stan Bergman up top or ...
Warren: It may be a Canadian thing because I think in the US they actually have a division.
Howard: Because that doesn't sound very Stanley Bergman.
Warren: No and you know what we're expanding, right? There's lots of possibilities but I've been involved in clinic appraisals for thirty plus years. I understand the business so ...
Howard: What did Henry Schein just say they're going to spin off? It was an animal.
Warren: The vet division, yeah.
Howard: Yeah, their animal ...
Warren: Or animal care.
Howard: So was animal care a big part of Henry Schein in Canada where you are at?
Warren: Nothing to do with us really and really in Canada not a lot. We're 98% dental, we have some medical division as well that does okay, yeah.
Warren: Yeah. In Canada when your animal gets sick, it's dinner and it's very, very different than in California.
Warren: It could be.
Howard: I want to go here because this is dentistry uncensored. They're coming out of school just five years ago in this town, they were coming out like $300,000 in debt, but these schools especially the private ones, are the worst. They know that every time they raise the tuition, $10,000 a year, they have no decrease in applicants. The tuition is inelastic to demand so they've rapidly gone to 100,000 a year.
Warren: Wow.
Warren: So now they're coming out $400,000 in debt, but they feel like if they're going to be a happy, successful dentist, they've got to build a million dollar Taj Mahal and have a chairside milling machine and a $100,000, CBCT and $100,000 millennial laser, and they're like, my God, does high priced toys matter? Does a Taj Mahal dental office with all the fancy toys, is that a better decision than a middle-class blue-collar rented office without all the bows?
Warren: I don't think so. I think everybody ...
Howard: You don't think so, what?
Warren: I don't think so and we talk about salesmen, I think that I'm more of a treatment planner and I help my friends succeed in their practices. I don't think every dentist needs a toy to make their practice more successful. I think they need to evaluate that. Sometimes cad-cam machines, I think sometimes you're working to make that payment. Some of those people are putting them in and then they're trying to find treatment in order to make that payment.
Howard: Okay, so of your ... where's my numbers here, so of your, you said there's four hundred and twenty dentists in the State and how many in Saskatchewan or Saskatoon?
Warren: Saskatoon has about between eighty and a hundred.
Howard: Okay, eight to a hundred. What percent of them, and let's just say instead of four twenty-four, what percent of them have a chairside milling machine?
Warren: We're pretty high so I'll go with digital scanners in general, so digital scanning one out of three dentists.
Howard: No, not, okay one out of three digital scanning, but I'm talking about scanning it to your own milling.
Warren: So CAD/CAM milling which is way more expensive. I'd say 10% of our market so maybe ten to fifteen dentists is my guess.
Howard: Okay so 10% have chairside milling.
Warren: CAD/CAM
Howard: Chairside milling.
Warren: Chairside mill
Howard: Chair-side mill and of those, but 33% or a third have digital scanning.
Warren: Yes.
Howard: Okay so those are two very separate deals because what's a True Def scanner, from 3M, seventeen thousand bucks?
Warren: Well, in Canadian about two million. the True Def is about twenty grand so twenty thousand ...
Howard: Twenty grand US or Canadian?
Warren: Canadian, twenty thousand to fifty thousand depending like Go Trio is like a 3Shape product will be fifty.
Howard: But that's fifty thousand Canadian.
Warren: Fifty thousand Canadian.
Howard: So that'd be thirty-five thousand US.
Warren: Thirty-five thousand US, yeah.
Howard: Okay so but the chair side milling would be ...
Warren: Yeah, at about a hundred K.
Howard: I mean a CEREC machine.
Warren: Yeah, add about 100K to that, plus you need an oven and other ...
Howard: Yeah, but so only 10% bought that, but of those 10% that bought it let's just say it was ten. How many of them bought it and regret it?
Warren: Half.
Howard: Half. How many bought it and never even use it.
Howard: I think they all give it a try, Howard, but there's a big learning curve there [inaudible 00:39:14]
Howard: Okay so here's what I want to tell you, okay, you were in dental school with these hundred people for four years, there weren't dumb people in your class. You can't get into dental school, med school or law school, being dumb. You might not like the person, you might think he dresses dumb, you might think [inaudible 00:39:32], but they're not dumb. When 90% of your colleagues make the decision to pass, really, you’re just all that and a bag of chips. And then when a guy who sees more offices than you'll ever see, says half of them regret it. Then why are you sending me the hate mail? That, "Why are you bashing CAD/CAM? Why are you bashing chairside?" Shit, they buy advertisements in my magazine and I still bash them and there's a lot of my sales team says, "You really makes it hard for us to sell ads for these ...?" I don't give a shit, I don't give a shit. So the bottom line is stop doing that. What is wrong? I've been using impregum gum I say thirty years in my practice, thirty years but I used it in dental school so I don't know when I took my first impression in dental school probably '85. And when somebody says, "Well, instead of Impregum, you should try this vinyl poly ... "Dude, I've never had a problem with impregum for thirty two years. It's like what, fifteen, seventeen bucks for an impression and then, I'm spoiled because I'm in Phoenix. Within ten miles of my house here, I've got ten amazing labs. I mean I got labs where if I say, can I send them over for a shade guy? They're like, "I'll be at your office in five minutes." Now I understand it's completely different if you’re in northern Alberta and the only ... do they even have uber up there or is it just like penguins carrying a cart or .. .
Warren: No, yeah wish we did, but that's a good point let's talk about Uber. I'm not going to bash CAD/CAM. I think and part of what I sent you and what I do when I evaluate. I think there is a spot for CAD/CAM dentistry. I think that the important part is the business of dentistry and understanding your business, your demographic and you need to know your costs and whether it would be a benefit to your patient. If you have the right demographics, the right type of practice, it can be very beneficial to your practice. If you're doing it to keep up with the Jones, it's probably not. If you haven't put the math into it and you don't understand your business, it's the wrong thing to do. You can kill your overhead. You can put yourself out of business. If you're a small little family pizza place and then you go buy a $150,000 oven when you could have got by with a $10,000 one because everybody liked the way that you made it with a $10,000 oven. They didn't want that other one that makes the pizzas in two minutes. They wanted your half an hour pizza. Why are you changing everything? Some people are geared up, they need to understand their business, they need to understand their costs. So I think that there's a spot for CAD/CAM, I also think that the price was obnoxious where it was, but I think it's getting to be more mainstream and I think it will change. But I do think that the growth of, you say you still take an impression with an impregum. I think if you evaluate your costs and the benefit, scanning is just getting to a point, Howard, where you might want to think about looking at it and weigh the cost of $17 of that impression, but not just that you're good at it. I can guarantee you with the right training, you could be really good at digital scanning and your patient is going to enjoy that experience.
Howard: But see here's why I give them it's expensive, I have a CEREC machine. I got all the toys.
Warren: And do you use it?
Howard: But for me they're toys. Yeah, we use it, they're toys. That's very different when you're twenty-five and five hundred thousand dollars in debt when versus fifty-five. I'm at the end, almost dead and you're starting. I just got word of another, I won't say any names, of another grandchild, I got proof today of the ultrasound and it's obviously a boy.
Warren: Congratulations.
Howard: And, yeah, but that's very different. These kids they haven't even started their family yet, but I got them out of curiosity, intellectual curiosity, fun, whatever, whatever. But I mean I just have no problem. I just like the way I do a single unit crown and I'll do pack cored and impregum and a sinus [inaudible 00:43:38] triple tray, been doing that for thirty years and I just don't know why I need to ... well, the reason I'll tell you why, like the oral scanner, okay, you buy it from True Def. They say, "Well instead of a $17 impression by a $17,000 True Def." And you're, "Okay and why is that?" And then they want you to sign a software agreement that's two hundred a month.
Warren: Exactly and True Def is ridiculous expensive
Howard: And then I'm sitting here, you know, call me stupid, but I'm looking at ... where's my calculator? $2400 a year divided by $17, that's a hundred and forty-one impressions just for the software agreement. I mean I applaud 3M for their stock because you want the subscription revenue, that's why Netflix on the Wall Street is worth seventy billion the same as Disney because Disney is this old model where they release a movie and they'll say, "Well we did a hundred million opening season." Netflix doesn't give a shit about any of that because they're growing this user base where every month they ding a gazillion people for twelve bucks and Wall Street wants to sell a subscription model because it takes a lot of effort to sell you to go see this movie. But Netflix’s just coasting and the highest multiples on Wall Street are subscription. I applaud 3M because there's more money to be made on the ding and all these dentist two hundred a month for the software than it was to give them the seventeen thousand True Def. In fact if they were really smart about it they'd give you the damn oral scanner, and just start building up the $200 a month subscription revenue, especially during a downturn because during a downturn people don't buy anything, but they're still getting dinged for Netflix and Spotify and now YouTube has got the YouTube red, so I understand the subscription revenue model, but I'm not falling for it. I’m not going to sign some contract where I got to give you $200 a month in perpetuity.
Warren: I'm curious because you have an MBA as well, you said a hundred and forty-one impressions for that price. How long does it take you to do an impression and how much does it cost you for your time or your assistant's time? Have you broken down the cost? Like you know that the impression materials $17, but how much does that chair time actually costing you?
Howard: Well, I know that most of my drinking buddy, alcoholic friends schedule an hour and a half to do a crown. I know I schedule a half hour so ...
Warren: It's interesting if you look at it, this is why I developed time factors about twenty years ago and it was a matter of showing, it came out when curing lights ... remember when you were using the old curing light with the bulb in it that would burn out every two weeks and a hundred and fifty bucks for a new bulb, and then the plasma arc lights came to the market and they were the best thing since sliced bread because they could cure in one point two seconds, but they could also burn off ...
Howard: The [inaudible 00:46:35] sapphire.
Warren: Yes, exactly, but they'd burn a hole through your patient's head if you left it on for a little bit too long. They generate a ton of heat and they were also $25,000, but the whole point was that was the first indication I had that there's something to this because doctors were willing to pay $25,000 instead of doing multiple thirty-second cures to do a one second cure because they wanted to get rid of that monotony. And I looked at it and I thought, but and they sold it on this, this is the smoke and mirrors and this is where it's important to know what your production is because some doctors are working at a different pace than other doctors. Some doctors have three chairs going all day, some have one. Sometimes it's not worth the $25,000 to reduce your chair time. If you're a busy dentist and scanning saves you five minutes every time and you're working at a $1000 an hour of total production time or if you want to break it down and get really accurate, how much time you're physically actually scanning or your assistant is scanning? A lot of times that breaks down to make sense, but most of the time people don't know [inaudible 00:47:35]
Howard: Okay, but when you walk into a dental office, how many dental offices do you visit a week?
Warren: I have eighty-two loyal customers.
Howard: Okay, eighty-two loyal customers.
Warren: In a week I see half of those.
Warren: Okay, but you have eighty-two loyal customers. Well, you can't say because they might see your podcast.
Warren: Well now they may not want to deal with me.
Howard: But just say, be truthful anyway, when you walk in eighty-two offices it's a random event. It would be like a UFO flying over and just taking one snapshot. What percent of the time is that doctor in his office when you walk in the office, he's back in his office?
Warren: Oh, like not at chairside?
Howard: Yeah.
Warren: Very rare, they're usually ...
Howard: Nice.
Warren: We're very busy in Saskatchewan. Very high amount of patients per [inaudible 00:48:19]
Howard: So out of eighty, how many would be ...?
Warren: Will be, 95% will be busy chairside.
Howard: Nice.
Warren: Yeah, we have good stats. We're probably, I think in North America Saskatchewan is not ...
Howard: Because that's one thing that there's so much fluff on the practice [inaudible 00:48:35] and all this stuff like that, but bottom line is all the rich people I know work really, really hard and really give a shit about their customers and their employees. And if you really work hard and you really give a shit about your employees first and your customers second, your customers don't come first, anybody who says that is a sociopath because you come in my office and you start cussing out one of my staff, I will fire your ass. And I've called 911 twice and I drove down there for the first one because I really wanted to tell this judge how bad this was and I didn't get to say a word. You know why? Because this mean old woman judge she just sits down [inaudible 00:49:15] and she says, "What did I tell you the last time I saw you?" And I'm just like, what? So I wasn't the first guy, but I was the last guy. He went to jail and so how could you say the customer comes first? You can't abuse my staff. But if you really work hard and you really give a shit about your team and that makes an atmosphere where you really give a shit about your customer it's all going to fall into place and we're all multifactorial. What makes me love lasers and chairside the most is just very few people where it becomes their identity, it's their marketing, it's their life. They just love dentistry because of their technology and it's like the difference between an iPhone user and android. Android just needs a phone, but the iPhone people they take it to bed with them and they sleep with them and they have all these apps and they're just psychotic about it. If it makes you run twenty red lights to go to work, buy it, because I want you to be happy and healthy and as soon as you get unhappy and hate your job, and again, I always got to tell these kids this, what would you like in US dollars to have for yourself for a nice retirement income per year? When you have your last day, what would you like your yearly income to be?
Warren: Me personally?
Howard: Yeah.
Warren: Three hundred thousand a year.
Howard: Okay, well, okay, you're a greedy Canadian.
Warren: I am.
Howard: But even three hundred thousand a year ...
Warren: Oh, I forgot you said US funds.
Howard: Yeah.
Warren: Two hundred thousand.
Howard: Okay, okay that would be normal two hundred thousand, okay. Bonds are only paying three percent so take two hundred thousand divided by point zero three, you'd have to have six and a half million dollars cash in the bank. That's why I'm telling you that the happy guys they don't retire. So let's just say that he loves what he's doing because he fixed white, the things he didn't love, he fixed. He fixed his attitude. He quit doing the things he hates for money. Whenever you do things you don't like to do for money, it leads to depression. That's why your hooker is a heroin addict and so if you love what you're doing and you keep working at making two hundred thousand a year, that's like having an additional six and a half billion dollars in your savings account. So it's so important, so when you tell me, and there's big threads on Dentaltown, it's, "Well, you know I'm forty two and hopefully God help I can retire when I'm fifty." It's, oh my God, don't sit there and look for an eight-year end of the line, find out why you're miserable. Fix why you're miserable, get happy and healthy now and when you're miserable, then they do a lot of dysfunctional stuff. They start drinking the Listerine and eating the Vicodin and kicking the dog and turning over staff and turning over patients and you just got [inaudible 00:52:23] and we're all different. I don't know why you're not happy, but you need to solve that first. Get flipping happy. And I've had a lot of dentists get a lot of success by talking to someone once a week, some needed medication, some needed more exercise. I think the worst addiction in dentistry is not alcohol, Listerine or Vicodin, you know what I think the worst addiction in dentistry is, is when you're addicted to a toxic staff member and they say, "You know I can't let her go. She's been here ten years, she's been here twenty years. I bought this practice, she was here thirty, everybody knows her." But he hates her, he freaking hates her. He's addicted to a toxic employee and I am like my favorite song of all time has to be Janis Joplin when she said, "freedom is when you have nothing left to lose." And dude, you're a doctor if you can't fire that toxic away, never, ever, ever give someone money that you hate and you should be driving to work ... when I drive to work, the thing I want to see the most is not some laser or CAD/CAMeras CBCT, it's not my schedule. I want to see Yoni, I want to see the team. I'm like, "Hey, what'd you do last night?" I want to see my buddies and once you're driving to work and you got people you don't want to see, I've even been in dental offices wherein the private office one of the hygienists pulls up and he's like, "Lock the back door so she'll go around." I'm like you have a hygienist that you don't want her to ...and then you start talking to him and he hates her, but he thinks that for the business he's got to keep her. I think being addicted to a toxic employee or even a toxic patient, if you can't say no to a patient, people say, well, do you do all your endo? Do you do all this, all that? You know what why number one list is on a referral, not that I'm incompetent and can't do it. I don't want to work on you. I don't like you.
Warren: Yeah, somewhere else.
Howard: Yeah and I wouldn't want a doctor doing a bypass on me who said I hope this guy doesn't make it through the surgery. You know what I mean. So what other pieces, we were on technology, we're talking money. This is dentistry uncensored I know your bride wants to leave, but probably the biggest controversy I can smell in Canada is the rise of corporations.
Warren: Yes.
Howard: And people are almost thinking it's almost like you've been invaded by the Russians or the Nazis or what are your thoughts on corporate dentists? Has it made it all the way inland too?
Warren: Well, it's coming and ...
Howard: So it's not there yet?
Warren: No, no, we have a big corporation. There's one very large, five years ago, maybe ten, but in the last five years, I figure last year there was about $1,000,000,000 of dentistry performed in Canada by dental corporations. Five years ago it didn't really exist so my timing might be off there a little bit, but in the last five years it's grown significantly and it's probably going to double again in the next five years, very aggressively buying practices and the business model's the same worldwide. They take the guys that are older and they've driven up the market values.
Howard: What's your definition of older?
Warren: I shouldn't say, they like young practices. They're trying to find anybody who doesn't, in my opinion, understand the business of dentistry, offer them a very good amount of money for their practices probably at or above market price so that they'll sell their practice because to me in the short term, the guys who are starting the idea, it's like the startup company, they have a nice plan for the next five to ten years. They're going to pay out a three to five times multiple and then they're going to ...
Howard: Three to five times multiple of what, EBITDA?
Warren: Earnings, EBITDA.
Howard: Earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, amortization, so three to five, that's a big spread, three to five.
Warren: It is a big spread it depends on the market that they have to buy in. If they're in Toronto or if they're in Saskatchewan depends on how competitive it is.
Howard: So in Toronto, they'd only have to pay ...
Warren: It might be higher wherever it's competitive.
Howard: So in Toronto, they'd be paying five.
Warren: Yeah.
Howard: But in Ontario, it'd be closer to three?
Warren: In Saskatchewan maybe three, yeah it just depends and it depends it could be rural practices compared to ...
Howard: And when they're buying the office is it the old man staying on or does he get the money and run?
Warren: It's the same kind of thing that happened here, they'll give you a five-year contract. You need to produce X number of dollars or not. I got to say I don't know all the ins and outs. I haven't been privy to see the contracts, but from what I understand the current doctor has to practice and maintain for the next five years. They get paid the associate fees, so they're giving up their profits to the company. In my opinion, the fifteen to 20% which is usually what they're after for earnings are almost paying off the company. So they're getting the supplies a little cheaper, they're getting 5% extra out of the million dollar a year practice. They're generally after the bigger practices right now trying to go for the two to three million, but my concern is the future of dentistry and I see that we have, Henry Schein has a very good relationship with corporations and we can't change what's going to happen, but I don't think that there's a lot of people advocating for the individual practices and I think understanding the business of dentistry is super important to keep our business alive. Give to independent owners, going understanding profit margins and their cost of performing a procedure and keeping people happy. They think that they're free from having to deal with the assistants and the hygienists and the team because then they can focus just on their dentistry and corporations are making business owners, turning that into just jobs, so I do have concerns about it, but it's also ...
Howard: Now not to be sexist, since your wife is at the other end of the table.
Warren: Yeah.
Howard: Can they see her on this camera?
Warren: She's beautiful.
Howard: I know if you're watching us on iTunes you should subscribe to our YouTube channel. What is it, Ryan? You just say subscribe to dentistry uncensored.
Ryan: Yeah, just Dentaltown. All of our podcasts are posted on the Dentaltown YouTube channel. You can get youtube.com, search Dentaltown magazine or just search dentistry uncensored, Dentaltown, Howard Farran and it'll show up.
Howard: Really, you could find it on podcasters, Howard Farran.
Ryan: Yeah, if you go to YouTube and type in Howard Farran it will definitely ...
Howard: Is it a porn site?
Ryan: It is a porn site.
Howard: Yeah, you know seriously I own dental porn.com.
Warren: Really?
Howard: I do. It was a big joke. If you click dental porn.com, you go to Dentaltown, but I never started the word townie. They called themselves townies twenty years ago, so they call them that and some of the most amazing threads on Dentaltown are called are called dental porn. And dental porn is just you see this surgery case or before and after and you're just like, wow. I mean they're just fun. It's just amazing pictures, so what'd you call it? What'd you call it? I'm stealing your term, geeky marks?
Warren: I can't remember that was the first time I used that so ...
Howard: You know you're a geeky mark when instead of going to porn, what is it, Pornhub? Is that the big one?
Ryan: That's the big one.
Howard: Instead of going to Pornhub, you go to dental porn, but anyway enough of porn.
Warren: And I don't think there's enough people advocating when you go to the dental meetings ...
Howard: But this is going to be my sexist question.
Warren: Okay.
Howard: So thirty years ago it was a man's profession, now it's half and half. Some people are saying that the corporations are being fueled by a lot of women who just want a job.
Warren: Right.
Howard: Do you think that's true or false?
Warren: I have very entrepreneurial young ladies that are in clinics right now that are very good. I don't think so. I think it's an education thing. I think we're missing something here. I think if you go to a meeting who's sponsoring, I don't know what it's like here, but the big educational meetings at every province we'll do some of the major sponsors now are the dental corporations that are putting up a lot of the bucks and they get time to talk to the crowd after. Who's up there advocating for understanding the business of dentistry. Where's the Howard's that are training people to understand how to be happy as a dentist. This is why I like what you do, Howard, and I'm a big advocate of what you're doing with this, bringing this together. You're building this huge database for a young dentist to go to, to learn how to be successful in dentistry and maybe not have to have a job working for a dental corporation or a dental services organization. Maybe they can still have the dream and own a nice little family business. You have this huge database of successful people that are there to teach them and a lot of it is free. You don't have to go into another. You spend half a million dollars to get your degree in dentistry. You can almost get the rest of the advice for free. We love each other. We're doing this for no charge.
Howard: We should start a mutual admiration club.
Warren: Yes.
Howard: Where we just sit there and adore each other. Yeah, and you know what my thirty day dental MBA, that's a whole nother iTunes. That's free too. I also put on YouTube. I mean I did thirty one hour lectures of the Dental MBA and everyone's given you everything for free. I mean his times free, my time is free, but here's what I'll do, success leaves clues and if you think working as an associate in private or in DSO public corporate bottles, if that's awesome, I'm an old-fashioned guy, show me the data because I've been watching this rodeo since Orthodontic Centers of America went public when I got out of school and made it to the New York Stock Exchange with [inaudible 01:02:26] Nasdaq. And here's how the scam roles, if they say okay I'll buy your practice, but you got to stay three years and in three years in one nanosecond, the doctor runs out the door. They all crash and burn and that's all I've seen and then if you say, well, I'm going to come out of school and I'm going to work for McDentals because that's just great. Fantastic. Let's roll the clock back three, four years show me all the kids that are still there. They're burning and churning associates so when these corporations and I don't like to badmouth corporations because a lot of them are owned by some of the finest people in the world, like Rick Workman of Hartland and Steve Thorne of Pacific Dental, it's the same in private practice. It's the same when they go work for their own mother, it's I became a dentist because my mom's a dentist and after a year or two, what did she do? She doesn't want to listen. The same reason she moved out of the house and didn't want to live with her mom. I just don't see associates working. I mean I almost never, ever, ever, ever meet an associate that said, yeah I've been an associate for five years, just love it.
Warren: Right.
Howard: So the way humans are is you want your own cave, your own bad station, your own bad channel. And monkeys hate it when they're under someone's thumb, they want independence, they want freedom. You would rather live in a box under a bridge than in a castle and be miserable and as soon as the corporations are saying, well, you got to do this and you got to use this lab and once you tell a dentist three times he has to do something, they quit.
Warren: Right.
Howard: So you're a monkey, you're a talking monkey without a tail and you want freedom, that's all you want, freedom. And the happiest dentists are the ones that work for themselves. They have freedom. They live below their means and it's never about how much you make, it's about how much you spend.
Warren: It is, I agree.
Howard: Anything you want to add to that rant?
Warren: Yeah, no I don't want to be anti-corporate either because there are some good people in there I agree with you. Some of my clinics are corporate as well that I work with and I am concerned about the future and the business model. What happens after the experienced dental dentist has built that practice and is doing that gross. What happens after? What's in the next stage when the associates come and are they going to be motivated because the practice got to that point and it was built by that dentist because of his passion for owning his own business? Is the associate going to have the same feelings? Not everybody wants to be an employee forever. They're going to stay for a few years and move on. I don't know about how that corporate business model's going to keep working or I wouldn't invest in it. I'll just say that and I do well with my investments.
Howard: You just said it. Wall Street want to invest in them. After the Orthodontic Centers of America fiasco, there's not one DSO in America that go public. Look at the valuations on Snap. Snap could go public, but the big dental corporations can't. They can't go public. There's not one publicly traded dental company on the New York Stock Exchange or the NASDAQ and think of how many shit bulk companies are alive and traded on NASDAQ today that will be gone in the next downturn like that. And yet no dental deal comes because there's nothing, it's just a rollout.
Warren: We're a personal services company.
Howard: Yeah, so get happy, get small, get minimized. Quit living over your head. You know most of these dental students if you broke into their house and wanted to hide something from them, you just put it in the oven and they'd never find it. Did you know that when we were little, we actually had coffee pots? We didn't have to go to Starbucks and give someone $7 for a cup. In fact, when I was little, did you know coffee at every gas station was free? I'm serious. Every gas station had a coffee pot, these little styrofoam cups and another cup with some sugar packets and a stick. I've gone from coffee is free to these people coming out of dental school eighty gazillion dollars in debt and what do you think the average Starbucks coffee is? Ryan, what does it cost for the average person to go get a Starbucks?
Ryan: Let's see.
Howard: I mean, what would you guess?
Ryan: About seven bucks probably.
Howard: She said five ninety-five. What would you say, Ryan?
Ryan: I said seven. She's probably closer I guess it just depends ...
Howard: Okay. $6 and let's say you work fifty weeks a year, so fifty times five, be two hundred and fifty times a year, times two hundred and fifty times a year. Oh, that's a fifteen hundred and then you go it from age twenty-five to sixty-five, okay, so that's $100,000. So all these little, again, I keep asking you, I know where the mean line is for income, household income, median household income, I know the means, the modes, the muse. Show me one thing that you live even below the median. The thing that drives me batshit crazy with dentists, physicians, and lawyers, is that they [inaudible 01:07:22] shoes. You'll go to a party and some dentist will say, "Oh my God, he's got a pair of [inaudible 01:07:28]" And it's like, I think you're messed up just because you know the name of his shoes. And then you find out that he's wearing a $200 pair of shoes and they don't make coffee at home. They spend a $100,000 in their lifetime on Starbucks. Their cars too nice, their house is too big, their vacations are too big and then they want to know why they're hanging them self on a ceiling fan.
Warren: That's also why dental corporations are able to come in and buy practices.
Howard: Yeah, so Ryan, what was that video you had me watch, that minimalistic philosophy that you were, minimalism or stoicism or ...?
Ryan: Gosh [inaudible 00:01:08:10]
Howard: You mean I'm watching YouTube videos that you're sending me and you don't even know what the hell.
Ryan: What you talking about?
Howard: No, you sent me this YouTube video. It was a couple months ago about...
Ryan: [inaudible 01:08:20]
Howard: It was a philosopher, some philosopher of minimalism.
Ryan: Oh God you know I ...
Howard: You don't remember, okay.
Warren: Was it that San do Guru or something like that.
Ryan: Oh Sadhguru.
Warren: Sadhguru. I bet you, you sent him Sadhguru.
Ryan: [inaudible 01:08:34] to my dad.
Howard: Okay. I had never even heard of it, but hey, seriously dude, to come on vacation, to come by my house to talk to my homies. Thank you so much.
Warren: Hey Howard, I appreciate it too.
Howard: Alright. I hope the rest of your vacation is rocking hot.