Dr. Petruska grew up in Hungary and after graduation immigrated to the US in 1988. After passing his dental boards he started practicing as an associate in Santa Barbara, Ca. During his employment he introduced implant dentistry, orthodontics and complex prosthodontics in his employers practice tripling it’s production. He ran two of his own practices for 7 years, but found practice ownership too demanding. He sold his practices and right after was diagnosed with cancer. After his recovery he continued his career as an independent contractor, coaching his colleagues in their own offices to perform molar endos, implant dentistry and surgical procedures. He started a dental advocacy and marketing group to elevate the status and prestige of dentistry within the medical profession, society and media.
www.ILoveMyDentist.Club
VIDEO - DUwHF #1335 - Laz Petruska
AUDIO - DUwHF #1335 - Laz Petruska
Howard: it is just a huge honor for me today to be podcasted everything my mentor my idol Dr Laz Petruska DDS I always say on dental town he's the Socrates Plato Aristotle of dental town he's a self-employed independent contractor in Southern California he does so many things got profitable GPS I love my dentist I love my ortho Club but what I wanted to bring him on today was talking about his 3,000 post on dental town which leave everybody hanging let me read his bio Laz Petruska grew up in Hungary and after graduating emigrated to the u.s. in 1988 after passing his dental boards he started practicing in his associate in Santa Barbara California during his employment he introduced implant dentistry orthodontics and complex prosthodontics to his employers practice tripling its production to of his own practices for seven years but found practice ownership to demanding so he sold his practices and right after was diagnosed with cancer after his recovery he continued his career as an independent contractor and coaching his colleagues and their own offices to perform molar endows implant dentistry and surgical procedures he started a dental advocacy and marketing group to elevate the status and prestige of dentistry within the medical profession society and media I could go on and on and on his bio is 18 miles long but my gosh on dental town it just seems like whenever someone has some general question like I'm burned out I'm fried I'm tired of my staff you always you can always tell that you're approaching this from far far away like like obviously you've done dentistry for three decades what was this your cancer Journal it was at being born in Hungary and coming to America where did you get such a profound compass where you can tell that you don't have these flip it light open you're like in the opinion of the day you're right no dude the North Stars right here where does that come from
Laz Petruska: I think it's basically it's in my personality always had this I was always interested in anything from from art to history quantum mechanics science cosmology society relationships I mean you name it I am interest languages I'm interested anything something that I don't know or I don't understand it bugs the hell out of me and I won't settle until I at least get a tiny concept of it so that's what drives me even today and that is why you know I formed some of my own and certainly borrowed other people's opinion and again I like to I like to basically take things apart and look at components and and then hopefully put something together that that is relatable to people
Howard: so was cancer your rock bottom or not really I mean was that were you looking death straight in the eyes and thinking this is it or did you
Laz Petruska: well I've been blessed with a lot of bottoms in my life unfortunately or fortunately I don't know I will tell you what I think my my greatest death was divorce I divorced about 12 years ago with a nine nine year old child and there was such a such a break for me because I always wanted to have a great family bitch because I didn't have a good one at home I I grew up in a very unhealthy family unhealthy society unhealthy educational system so I really wanted to have a good family of my own and unfortunately after about 20 years that did not work out so
Howard: 20 years that's a long success the average divorce it comes after seven years so you've been that's like being married three times to you like you know that today they say if you go out with a girl for a year that's like millennial marriage so yeah yeah you know
Laz Petruska: so anyways so that was a that was a big big hit but fortunately I recovered and it set me up on a path that that has to become something much more probably than I could have been without this tragedy which is usually works out that way so I was
Howard: so you you consider a marriage of 20 years making your daughter a tragedy I mean 20-year marriage and you made a daughter how the hell do you get tragedy out of that give it to you
Laz Petruska: I mean obviously and again and now we are basically see more and more and more of the fruits of it my daughter is a senior at Stanford free ride doesn't cost me a penny she's gonna be an environmental engineer she's doing her master's for free she gets paid for it actually so if anything I don't sound like she was born from a tragedy that's okay
Howard: so congratulations on being married 20 years and and having this daughter so then what was what was the successful man fall down seven times get up eight so what was your next tragedy or
Laz Petruska: next came shortly after you know once I recovered from the from the disappointment of the divorce and everything basically a month later when we signed the papers a month later I was diagnosed with colon cancer and so that was you can imagine I mean all kinds of things go through your head thank God I sold my practice is about a year before that so I didn't have much to lose in that that way but you know I mean it's really means to you like okay I have no life I I'm done I'm finished you even consider getting up and say no I don't want out even one treatment I just want to go all kinds of things go through your head how old were you when you found out yet go ahead sir 48
Howard: 48 my god and and it's serious because my oral surgeon when I get out here in 87 hmm and I moved from Wichita Kansas the oral surgeon in Tempe he was from Wichita Kansas and every time we'd fly him back for all the holidays you know me my spouse four kids had one row in the back his you know anyway he died of colon cancer you're not that Inge yeah yeah you an oral surgeon people you're supposed to get to colonoscopy starting it at 50 even though bringing thinking about bringing down to 40 because there's so many younger people get you know get hit with colon cancer so same same thing them he died from that before the age recommended to get screened for it right that's already dead yeah so
Laz Petruska: I went through you know ten months of treatment or radiation chemo and a major major major surgery and so it took me 10 years to ten months to get to the end of the treatment and obviously a few more months to recover and then I went back to dentistry and but for another couple of years I have to tell you that and this is one reason I haven't showed up on day note on solely because I was member before but I had all these things going on and so I didn't get back to denote on for another two years because honestly for that long for another two years I thought I have no future you know you go back to recalls every six months and at any any time you can get hit oops you know your numbers are up or something showed up on the CT and you have now your Stage four and that's it so I was afraid to plan my future I wasn't I was I was afraid to even make short-term plans because again that's why saw it and once I figured I would say about a year or so ago when I started seeing like okay well maybe I'm gonna make it then I really started kind of from where I left it at to educate myself start dating again you know I got a great job a dream job very very unconventional but great job for me so this is when dentaltown and I just kicked down the door with a 15-minute second molar and oh and looks like looks like people paid attention to me ever since and I'm and I'm incredibly honored and proud of that
Howard: so um another great thing about you you you've been in dentistry three decades when you see a bunch of dental offices in Southern California I mean that that's not you know that that's the happening place you get to see all these different experiments going on where is everybody listening to you lives in one little dental office caged and so it just doesn't become a transparently obvious difference going around to all these dental dental offices and an independent contractor
Howard: what do you think the keys to success is success me I'm happy I liked dentistry and I'm making money and I'm having fun you know what do you think those key ingredients are well
Laz Petruska: I've been fortunate to get around I would say dozens or dental offices if not hundreds because you know with my marketing and advocacy program I visit personally I visit a lot of dental offices and so I've seen it all from large corporate to tiny one person dentists to you you name it and again this is where my my kind of broad art will comes from because I've seen all kinds of practices all kinds of personalities and you know unfortunately what I see everywhere which I also noticed on demo town is that dentists are not happy they may be satisfied with the money but even that's getting kind of tough but as far as their their professional I especially worked work and life balance is missing for a lot of people and and that's a big that's a big issue for me because God knows I was there before you know I was working my butt off and I had no no time no capacity left to do anything for me or for me before my my family so it is it is very important to me to to try to figure it out for myself and again hopefully passing it to others so work-life balance is is is no good we are too much dentist and not enough people not enough persons we usually tend to talk about dentistry business insurance the trends in dentistry too much and and it's kind of its kind of engulfing us and then we are just basically a dentist and a little left over of a person father husband friend this and that that's right that's what I see and so I kind of created a system for myself where I hopefully tried to find a better balance where like one step was I became very efficient at my work I simply I'm not a great dentist mean like I'm not a crazy good you know especially stories and that but I I simplified everything to the rock bottom and that's what makes me very efficient and that's why I believe efficiency is key because if if you are running behind everything is a drag things are falling apart during the day how can you have a great evening or a great weekend at the end so I really pay attention to to run my days smooth and efficiency efficient anesthesia efficient and fast endodontics you know quadrant composite dentistry implant placement implant restorations simplified and for example I have a great denture program removal prosthodontics program which I will later I would like to add to your site as a as a seee I have 52 CE units by the way I'm certified to give away 52 CE units by a DA so later on we can talk about this but I would like to put these up on on on Dano time so once you are because you are efficient during your day and you plan your evening it's very important to me my trick is I don't go home from work I always go somewhere even if I have my girlfriend at this point even if I have somebody I always suggest let's go somewhere before we go home because I know once we go home it's gonna be laundry it's gonna be cooking gonna be doing dishes and then hopefully if something left we have a little fun but if you don't go home we certainly have a meaningful evening somewhere a dinner we go to Plaza we go to shopping we go to a museum a concert or something like that and then we go home and then even if we fall asleep we still had something at the end of the day that is meaningful to us that balances out that you know hard days of work so that's my trick I I don't go home after work I go always always go somewhere
Howard: so um I want to go all the way back to when you say you think Dennis aren't happy do ya do you think that's true compared to the rest of the population or do you think it's uh it would equal the population do you think they're more or less happy than any other sample size
Laz Petruska: I think I think the dentists are are less happy less satisfied and then let's say comparable professions
Howard: where do you think that's coming from
Laz Petruska: our work is stressful our work is very complex we work in a part of the body that is the most richly innervated everything you do is hurting scary you know causes anxiety so we get that back from our patients 20 30 times a day right so our work is hard new dentists come out with a major stress tensor the loan the student loan which sets them up on a path of anxiety because they have to pay that and then we have this again work-life balance where you know we don't spend much time on a sword on our loved ones so that's kind of another tension because you know your kids your wife your girlfriend your boyfriend once wants to have you as a person and then you go home and your head is still with that hand or or bills or whatever you can't even pay attention to that and the third factor I would say besides efficiency work-life balance is is our the way dentistry and dentist are viewed in society the media and within health professions and let's admit even amongst us amongst us so the thing is that what I do what I started doing about a year ago because I was tired of this I was tired of hearing I hate the dentist I hate to be here you know blah blah blah and I'm like that's that's not cool because I'm giving my heart to you I'm getting my hardest knowledge skills to you I do work past dentistry for you and you still hate this so we set up a system at my office where I'm three days a week at and basically what we do is we help our patients to express their appreciation to us not just their grief and fear you know so we have a little system where with a few little products we we basically help them to express that hey this wasn't so bad dentistry knows not so bad and and we show them that and make them aware of that and help them to express it to us and express it to other people in the community and that is that I love my dentist's Club about so basically we let we make people aware how wonderful treatment they get the dentistry is not so bad after all and and again at least give us some love you know for the hard work we do for you okay
Howard: so you're talking about your website I love my dentist dot Club I didn't even know dot Club was a was a domain name so it's not anything can be not anything can be so I love my dentist dot Club um if they go to that side says welcome to the I love my dentists and I love my ortho Club so what is learn more in order your free your for free see so what are they gonna find if they go to I love my dentist club
Laz Petruska: well they're gonna find a little short paragraph of why this is important why why we have to elevate our our status and and our good name in with our patients amongst ourselves and society and media so that's that's that's what that is about it was which is I
Howard: were to back up first because it's your tagline on dental Don so on dental town he goes by profitable GPS um you can have your post but he in his signature says our ambitions are nothing less than elevating the status and respect of dentistry to the highest levels in the medical profession society and media join our dental marketing and dental advocacy group I love my dentists are club so where does that come from where does that mission come from okay basically a patient gave me this idea
Laz Petruska: I had a patient in the chair and she was very you know extrovert and I going and she says oh my gosh you know I love my dentist and my assistant says well that sounds like a bumper sticker laughing because obviously it's just so absurd right I love my dentist people say I love LA or I love my puppy or I love whatever but I love Paris you know but who says I love my dentist so it kind of made me think I said wow maybe I should create something that is sorcerer that actually people we will pay attention to and that's pretty much what I built the whole the whole system on and so what I do now is ID it in my office I tested it and it worked great I mean the whole the whole office has changed my assistants are happier the receptions are happier we have we have a little banner in our in our waiting room this is not mine this is one of my colleagues if I may show it to you so you see better on the bottom of these I love my dentist and those little stickers are a little hard you know hearts teeth and the patient's put their name on it and at the end of the day the receptionist puts it on this banner so like when my patient is leaving and let's say they are happy and satisfied my receptionist gives them a sticker to sign your name with the sharpie and we put them on and in the waiting room so when my next patient comes in and says oh my gosh like look at so many so many people love this dentist so he must be something so that is one of the things we do and then we give these magnets everybody's laughing at Dentaltown about this because they call me the magnet guy so these are car magnets which you know people can buy my clients can buy and and basically give this away to patients and say hey put this on your car in a parking lot and it is great when you walk into your office in the morning and you have three four cars with this on it other patients and all of all of our employees have this by the way or their cars I have it on my car my girlfriend has it on on her car so these drives are these cars are driving around the city saying I love my dentist and our phone number and then figured after after I tested this and it's looking really good so I started telling this about this to my friends you know other order friend the dentist and people I trained for clinical dentistry and many of them got in on it and bought a little package and they are doing same thing in their offices now and reporting back that it's working great because again we kind of we kind of face the patient and say okay oh you hate you be hating dentistry but we are different we will show you that dentistry is not as as terrible as you think or as as it used to be and so this is pretty much what we do
Howard: and how is that how's that going
Laz Petruska: it's going great I mean you know how I can measure it I don't care about numbers that's another thing my colleagues always always laugh about that I said I don't care about details numbers as long as my paycheck is good so I get paid by percentage and I'm glad to report it ever since we started this program about a year ago my check is up 30% so the office is up 30% as
Howard: well you know some of the things that are most controversial is when you start talking about doing speed I remember the most controversial thing dental town ever did is we had one of my buddies write an article on dental Time magazine called the 15 minute root canal yes and the orthodontist just won insane yeah and and they went insane because it popped their bubble and they never read the article and they never met the guy but it was just amazing I went yeah I went to his office I I would be doing a root canal and I didn't realize that half the time was I unlatching it taking out the the deal putting in the new one putting and he was had a stopwatch and and he had four slow speed setup so I mean he had two assistants anyway he did what all the ended honest did in an hour but he just did it in 15 minutes or less and and they still can't comprehend that to this day they they just don't they don't see themselves um when you would what is the dentistry that you think like you talk about the 30 minute molar endo the 15 minute sinus tap the 5 minute denture bite registration I mean these are things that will just get you a hung and in the small town in rural America so so what rope would you like to put around your neck first the 30 minute molar endo or the 15 minute slightest half are you ready to walk the plank and oh definitely
Laz Petruska: my passion is and oh and Howard unfortunately or fortunately I'm not blessed with like great equipment at where I'm at our is a Medicaid office and especially we have a lot of disabled people in our office we throw a county program which pays pretty much a little bit but they they pay for everything they pay for motor root canals California baby piece 4 molar root canals in Medicaid and in Medicare and so I do a lot of root canals but we get like four head bucks for it and I get 20 27 percent of it so fees are very low so again I have to make it very efficient and what what makes me very efficient in in handle plus my assistants are mainly interns and and fresh graduates out of the local attend assisting program so I can say that I have like the best assistant either but they become the best eventually and then we are doing great I have two two newbies now a few months with me and they are doing excellent I mean I'm just blessed they know everything that I need and so we are doing great so when it comes to endo I my technique is I just reduce the components the steps to the bare minimum III use five files basically three hand files and to agenda rotary files and I use a very efficient irrigation and mainly a very very good and very efficient operation which is the one-step operation which is like a thermal field type operation except it's much more sophisticated it's from Denmark i i order it straight from the factory because we use a ton of it I and I pretty much recommend it to everyone and those people who aren't trained I train I also implement that in their practice because it literally takes one minutes 60 seconds to operate any any molar and oh no questions asked
Howard: so how would you either get a sum that you've trained with your online videos and programs how is it going with this
Laz Petruska: it's going well I sent out my endo program to about 300 dentists already mainly I think young guys a few of them already visited me they shadowed me they hung up with me at my office or at my other office I I trained at and you know I get things like man like my first thing came came out like half 50% less time so the efficiency still is there definitely because again everything is everything is fewer steps fewer components and and everything is super efficient so I'm getting incredible feedbacks for most people who get back to me and I actually I bought my my my colleagues about it I send them emails hey how's it going you know don't don't check out you know send me x-rays so I can critique your work send me pre-op post-op x-rays unfortunately not too many people take advantage of that I would I said I have all the time I need send me stuff ask questions so so we can we can get better at this
Howard: when I talked to dental office consultants our dental transition people they would say the same thing that the the the healthy business of Dentistry in American day is a doing bread-and-butter dentistry yeah seven root canals um if the office doesn't have seven root canals a month it's it's it's dying extractions and oral surgery the most basic Cronenberg's fillings but when you talk to Dennis the right out of the gate you have from say oh I hate more no I I don't do extractions nothing and they want to go into like sleep medicine and vis align cosmetic dentistry and what would you say to the young you know the quarter of our viewers that are still in dental school the rest under 30 you're starting to have visions of the lollipops in their head of just doing bleaching and Invisalign when or you're in Southern California mm-hmm what is the most profitable real-world dental offices on the ground what kind of what kind of Dentistry are they do to make a business today you
Laz Petruska: you may have heard Johnson family dentistry in Santa Barbara I don't know Johnson Steve Johnson he created like a small chain about six offices bread-and-butter dentistry what would you name Steve Johnson's what adoption and he runs Johnson Family Dentistry amazing guy amazing guy they are in Southern Santa Barbara and and their surrounding towns now that's where I started my career that's why I worked for fifteen years an associate so basically when when I started there as a dental assistant and later as a dentist eventually there's three things we did that office was doing great already on that level I don't say numbers because that's not my business but basically there's three things that we introduced actually for one immediately we dedicated a financial coordinator because their production was above a million at that time back in the 80s so we introduced a financial coordinator a nicely dressed lady who was just doing payment arrangements this and that and then just skyrocketed everything because be previously either I did the selling or my assistant did the selling was trying to set up the next year so that was amazing so I recommend to people who have larger offices I would say around a million dedicate someone as a financial coordinator and she just does that had a little private office for her civilian clothing and have her take care of the the finances of your of your treatment plants and the other thing that we did is was clinical basically I I went to the only I said listen I want to do implants I want to do ortho I want to do surgery I want to do I want to do complex prosthodontics I'll do the education you provide the material and again smart guy he went for it then so we basically introduced everything there and of course obviously that that when when through the roof as well so I would say we probably made at the end of a night when I left we made about six times of production banned then we begin not all my not all my doing I don't want to say that because again that person is amazing but guess what our main money he was still coming from molar root canals build ups and preps at the same time at the same appointment dentures feelings you know quadrant dentistry fillings all that stuff and later we introduced this special teeth stuff but it was hard then but is it's much easier today it's much easier today to do that and again I'm what I'm saying to young dentist if you think today that you're gonna make a good living let's say above twenty thousand dollars from filling amalgam fillings or fillings and occasional crowns and Profis and little cleaning little this it's not gonna happen and even if it will happen you're gonna hate it you know what what makes interesting dentist interesting is is the challenge you know that you do some amazing stuff I mean I've done thousands of root canals in my life I still get the jitters when I look at a nice word that I get today or the same thing of fulfilling a composite feeling I do I stop at the end of the procedure and I show it to my assistant I said look at this look what we have done here in a half an hour and then the girls just smile and say yeah that that's nice I said yeah it is nice so this I kind of give myself a feedback that that what we do is important what we do is great and in front of the patient I make them aware of that so pretty much deaths and again we got into ortho I did braces for many years later on it became just too complicated ortho is very difficult to fit into a general practice by the way unless you have so many patients that you can dedicate an entire day or at least a half a day just for ortho it's tough to do it in GP practice the Invisalign I do not but Invisalign now again braces are great but for a GP I think Invisalign is kind of a priest compared to braces
Howard: so you like Invisalign hmm but you don't do the hard wire braces
Laz Petruska: I used to do it for seven years but but you don't do it anymore I gotta give up on that because what I learned and the offices that I was working at obviously it was much easier to just do in this line and the things we can do obviously we refer out
Howard: yeah I I always thought it was good to do for burnout I you know everybody that I know they they they always say to keep you know it's a repetitive thing you're doing all day long so you gotta add especially every five years I've had so many people on this show tell me that what saved them intellectually from burnout was even though TMJ and Dawson might have only been one percent of their revenue but spending five years learning all that kept him going and then they went and did you know Brock rondo or Richard Lynn ortho they did that for five or six years but you know to just sit there and do quadrant mo D composites all day long I mean you just stop it just it's not good for a smart person but but but you think so if they were in school you would say what skills they have to learn you'd say molar endo Invisalign yes what about implants has two composites class two composites that's a big that's a big producer for me I do about 20 30 40 large composites in my office a day obviously I have to be super super efficient with that and good with that so so what you take me how do you do how many composites you today about twenty thirty forty and and how many at a time you usually do quarter in earth or the porter dentist at least four sometimes five six fillings yes on one patient yes and how long would that appointment be about thirty minutes holy moly that's crazy and you have this on online courses well I don't have a video of it but people asked me to do it so probably I'll get it done but Howard I didn't believe it either but you know people were bugging me and I'm like I told my sister okay okay measure the time so we start when I started with cavity preparation not anesthesia but cavity preparation right so we did it we did for mo DS I have it online I have the picture of the x-ray up we did for mo D fillings in one quadrant in 25 minutes and I did it so that I know I'm gonna pose this so you can imagine that I paid attention so but again I'm not a great dentist I just I just simplify the the tools the steps the everything about it and that's what makes it that's what exists on a thread right now on downtown I don't know if it's a thread on its own but I posted this regarding - regarding - something relating to something was it on the another sectional matrix thread or do you remember matrix bed and people somebody posted that you know they always have difficulty with class - again by the way I sent this Technica to probably hundred people because see when you see I follow advertising what what owners and and corporations advertising for who they want a dentist 90% of the time proficient in molar endo is there 90% of the time you know this you know that how how much people who hire want to have someone who does handle more endo so what I'm telling a young dentist number one thing after graduation learn endo molar and oh and you're gonna be the top 10% as far as getting a chance at a great job then that in itself will increase your chances by 90% over the others molar endo second class - composites because it's very it's dotted everywhere again it's very time-consuming the way it's taught and and there's a lot of work that a lot of amalgams need to be replaced by now and the corporation's have a ton of class ii composites so that's the second one second procedure you have to get in molar endo and class two and for those who for those this is for new graduates because implant is a little bit further out the way maybe ortho is a little further out the way but but these are the things that a young graduate has to get into molar endo and good good plastic maybe maybe prosthodontics removable prosthodontics that's another big okay I'm gonna go back to the
Howard: okay so you you can do for so if you if someone needs for mo decomposes in a quarter you'll only schedule you only need a half hour right okay but I take 30 minutes is the patient in the room an hour I mean no like setting up the room see the patient getting all ready so you're just I'm at doctor time correct oh
Laz Petruska: the way we are with Medicaid Medicare and with this regional program we have to do such a thorough admin administration and x-rays and and photographs and and narratives that a lot of times half of that one hour is gonna go to x-rays right photographs this that you know I'd have to tell my manager what to put down in order to get get accepted right so they're they're so so demanding in their x-rays that that's why I scheduled an hour dr. stands is 30 minutes the rest is x-rays follow-up this and that because that's that takes up half of our time okay
Howard: so that makes a lotta sense made the dark time and and folks what he just said so clearly is why Southwest Airlines is the number one leader in America they keep their planes in the sky twelve hours a day and United an American only eight hours a day yeah and the difference four hours means they have a 50% lower cost structure and every time I ever like like over Christmas I mean when I visit mom in Kansas and I'm my grandkids and I'm always walked I walk into any dental office I see I I mean my daughter-in-law almost wrecked the car stops I thought there's a dental office I don't want to go to I don't want to go to that stupid mall for an hour just drop me off and every dental office you've ever walked in your life the doctors back in the private office waiting for a damn room it's like yeah so the doctor gets 35% staff gets 20 25 % lab 10 supply 6 and what is this guy doing waiting for a chair they just and then when you say to them they'll say what's your overhead and I'll tell you everything I'll say well what percent of the 168 hours in a week last week where your operatories being used had a human in there and and you're talking about nobody in the industry uses their chairs 15-18 percent and then and then they say they want to build another office because they want to bring in an associate and it's like dude you're you're your office isn't used 80 percent of the hours in a week so in it so anyways so you so all the money people understand that the cost is labor and how and productivity what can your labor produce an hour a time it's not the electric bill or how much your supplies cost so I'm back to that 30 minute back to your composite so do you use a rubber band what type of composite is a bulkier can you any more details of the the composite
Laz Petruska: okay for composites I don't use rubber dam okay I did not use rubber dam friendo either but when I started this endo thread all the bugging and this and that now I get into rubber dam bead and OHS much more okay but when you say you didn't use your brand did you lose something else that was an isolate conventional the convention isolation basically bread-and-butter cotton rose suction just pay paying paying it I was I wasn't trained in Europe for rubberdam so again it's not an excuse absolutely not excuse but as far as this office the time we have the the the equipment we have in everything sadly it would be just very difficult to to fit that in there and again I came up with with a system that works great for me so now Robert and for my for my for my composites one great thing that I have as far as doing a great work besides usual isolation is every every single treatment I have a syringe with ferric sulfide stranger than with a brush tip so anytime I have a little hemorrhage but it's a crime prep and oh cool part of me class to composite any any anything I basically stop the hemorrhage bleeding right away then I placed my matrix and you are getting to like how do I do for a Modi's in such a short time basically I set up my sectional matrix bands all of them at the same time I pre band them set them up secure them with the with a with a anatomical wedge I don't use rings by the way I just use cotton pliers to to contour my matrices until I'm happy with all eight of them let's say and then then I I don't do total edge technique anymore for about ten years now I use a self edge whether prime primer and bond but usually one step now and then obviously by the way we use decay indicator with everything cramp reps endo cavities then the decay indicator I love it it gives me a peace of mind so we do the one-step bond and then obviously flowable composite my biggest trick with composites because that's what I see it everywhere and unfortunately it's being advertised to us it's just fill up the cavity now we have this block filled thing is global block fear just fill up the cavity curate and then chisel the rest of it away well that's gonna take up probably a third of your appointment so my trick is I make my anatomy my occlusal Anatomy as close to the final as possible before I cure it so the primary Anatomy is there at least that the terminal edges are there everything immaculate and then that's when I cure it so my finishing time is literally ten seconds or two because I barely have any any leftover and in any flash so that's what that's what makes makes my composites really super fast is that I very little finish very little finish to do at the end so went back back to this unhappiness thing it seems like and there's always someone
Howard: when I got out of school in 87 we've both got out of about the same time yeah it was capitation and you know it's always something and now it's corporate dentistry and woody what do you see in California that that impact and what does it mean to you I mean um is it gonna rune dentistry is it gonna get bigger what does it mean to you
Laz Petruska: obviously it's a slow process it's much faster than I thought I did not believe that corporate dentistry will take such a big part in dentistry by the time I finish working it's it's happening much faster obviously it's all over the place you know small offices are still around you know like old established offices are still around I started two small offices to part-time offices back like in 2005 ish and I did okay you know I triple the practice in a short time because again I introduced new procedures to it I bought a pedo practice and I open it up to family soul parents aunts and uncles started coming so that just like what a great boost but what I'm telling young people today and pretty much anybody that at least in an area like this like cosmopolitan area if you want to start a practice from scratch or from very small it's a suicide forget about it if you ever consider buying your own office running your own office you at least have to buy an office that produces about a million dollars to have a chance but small office is is basically I hate to say this but really don't have a chance definitely don't have doesn't have a future so young people have to face have to realize that they are gonna have to deal with corporate dentistry one way or another whether they create a corporation like my friend Steven Johnson did he has again six eight offices now starting basically from one or you're gonna work for a corporation in one way or another so make peace with that is it said well you can argue about that but is in the future definitely now how do you write this corporate wave same thing you become efficient you become efficient at ando composites implants you you learn some specialty you go to a corporate office and you can make your little fifteen hundred two thousand dollars a day and basically no headaches it's not a bad way to live not a bad way to practice when you make your little fifteen hundred ever my goal is fifteen hundred dollars average pretty much anywhere I go so that's that's how much what would your outward what's your daily average as far as I start production no no what is your what is your daily pay I mean you do a minimum a hundred fifteen hundred yes as an independent contractor yes gross I mean that's huge money well when I when I trained or when I contract I will there are days when I make three four thousand as a contractor and I only get twenty seven percent oh that's not your net twenty seven percent that's your gross production so so the three four thousand that I make in these more high-tech offices that's my take home money a day three four thousand three or four thousand would be your your what percent or what what is the terms are you I get 27 percentage so the 27% is three four thousand so I'm by production is obviously twelve thousand or so and
Howard: is there so your is that the going rate or is that what you can command is 27 percent of color is at production or adjusted production collection for production mm-hmm so is that the norm in California that they'll pay you twenty seven percent in production I think it could be higher because those those places
Laz Petruska: I do implants sinus lifts I do surgical extractions bone grafting molar endo so these are basically specialty things little ortho I think I could get a little bit more than that but they reimburse me for my material like there was a discussion like okay what should be a percentage and so my the way I do it I get twenty seven percent of production but they pay they pay me for the implant I bring they play me for the components they pay the lab fee so this way you know net as far as my net compensation I'm happy with twenty seven percent again many times I make three four grand a day in those offices and god bless them that is that is fine with me yeah so would they pay you twenty seven percent do they pay a hydrogen a lab bill any benefits any malpractice that's on me I'm a corporation so that's all on me okay only that fee and they provide everything assistance disposables all their basic stuff
Howard:you live you live in a boat with your girlfriend in the harbor you still do that yeah yeah yeah you post pictures that you could see yourself on a deck so talk about that you're worried where do you live okay so the marina in Los Angeles cord is near santa monica / venice beach best place
Laz Petruska: in town it's called Marina del Rey right so it's a big it's a big Bay 5500 boats all around and well it's oh it's an old dream of mine even though I came from a landlocked country to be close to water I mean to me ocean is mesmerizing the beach is mesmerizing because I grew up in again a landlocked country you know cold winters and all so palm trees even today they they give me what such a wonderful happiness and I always wanted a boat I didn't know anything about boats but I would say about four years ago I found out that is not very expensive to keep a boat in a marina it was actually at that time about $400 a month so I started learning boats I decided I'm gonna get a sailboat instead of a motorboat I bought a boat in San Diego I've had it brought up and I incurred it and I learned sailing and I don't live there like permanently but we my girlfriend at at this point she is living there because she works there all the time but I spent about I would say three nights four nights a week down there
Howard: Wow now you went to dental school in Hungary right thread that was in the second largest university in Hungary um what what do you think is the different the most major difference between being a dentist in Hungary in the United States there's a lot of people who will never get the advantage of seeing all these countries I still think that's the greatest gift I ever received was seeing all these countries well what do you think that how the dentists in Hungary and the United States I don't know about each other
Laz Petruska: okay even though it's a little different now but our dental school was five years because we don't have colleges from from high school high school is incredibly difficulty in Europe it's it's it's insane if you want to get into a good school law school med school dental school you have to be just perfect and you have a very difficult entrance exam but if you get in you start dental school at 18 and then you go through general education biology chemistry this and that in third year you start doing some dentistry and you graduate after five five years very strict 40% over 40% of his student had to repeat an entire year at least so they just kick you back if you failed an exam so it takes you an extra year or extra two years there was no tuition didn't cost a cent that was good part very strict we got great academics but the dentist we were taught at the time was about 50 years behind the u.s. so I when I left Hungary in 1988 my dentistry was about half a century behind the developed world you can imagine that we had no porcelain crowns barely in the end oh it was just metal crowns with like a plastic facing and stuff like that now that's education dentistry is basically socialized dentistry base with the government basic used to be government used to own old offices during communism but then during the changes in the 90s they gave it to the dentists and they in order for dentists to take care of their districts right so the other you're a dentist you got a dental office with 2,000 people and the state gives you a cap check for those people who take care right like it's looks like a state-run HMO basically and then unfortunately well now whether you do a good job or not they don't care you get your money and the less you do the more you save so even though dentistry has really developed especially in the cities like Budapest has basically world-class dentistry now and technology but in our countryside dentistry is still quite behind and and unfortunately it was very prominent during communism today's patients still pay under the table to the dentist expecting better materials better treatment and unfortunately that's also so in medicine so if you have an operation you have a tomb or you have a you have a appendicitis you're gonna give cash to the doctor to treat you better and
Howard: what year did you graduate University of a driba can School of Dentistry I'm sorry what what year did you graduate 80
Laz Petruska: 80 right before the end of communism yeah and they there are you ever attempted were you ever attempted to go back to Hungary I'm your real where you're from no and what wait
Howard: why do you think it's been in a decline a population decline ever since the Berlin Wall fell down and it still just continues to slide were but why and and and they can't attract a great mind like yours that was born there so they lost you I always think it's amazing when people are against immigration it's like are you out of your mind they just left their team and want to join your team you should made it yeah you should meet him with a dozen roses you know they're proud that oh this Hungarian now works in the u.s. they are proud of it in Hungary they're proud of it but but white why do they lose you to immigration and why are they still declining and why why
Laz Petruska: okay this is a complex problem Hungary is about 10 million people as you said slowly declining but when Hungary became part of the part of the European Union the board has opened up in the hope of better life about 10% of the population left so 800,000 people left Hungary over the years and of course the best ones the most ambitious ones left Hungary and unfortunately it shows on the economy I'm imagining like all the good doctors all the good teachers all the good mechanics painters artists economies leave the country and sadly the effect of the European Union membership was also that the Union basically deteriorated or destroyed the local production so the factories were closed the we had in agriculture we had these community farms in heavy they closed so people lost their jobs and it's basically there's no production in hungry little assembly work and people just basically do this and that so no no major production definitely almost nothing to export and again people just leave because there's you know ain't nothing to do nothing to grow so therefore about 10% Hungary's population left within a few years that and the
Howard: other thing geography I mean I can you look at history I mean when when you're landlocked between monster companies of Poland Ukraine Romania Germany Russia Prussia I mean my gosh I mean the United States is such a little bumpkin country on the other side of the world it's kind of ocean on each side I mean it's so uh it's so isolated and then hungry all through history I mean it's like it's like you it's like the country is born in the middle of a four-lane intersection yeah I mean but we have this one thing in common
Laz Petruska: we have a great mixture of genetics that is very beneficial for creativity and smarts right ah yeah I just so much with all the immigrants have this great versatility right from all over the world hunger didn't go anywhere but certainly these big empires you were talking about certainly went through Hungary so we have a great genetic makeup oh you mean of all the different peoples coming through
Howard: I remember I'm the first time I went to Japan the most shocking thing was like okay why is this the most challenged english-speaking country and I mean this is the most isolated I've seen yeah and this Japanese I love when Japanese when they then just bring in you know you you have someone that's that can tell you everything and he's like Duty goes on they're out in the middle of the Pacific Ocean their largest city faces the Pacific which covers half the globe he goes do you realize that Genghis Khan didn't even come through here Marco Polo didn't come here he goes nobody came here for ten thousand years and it's just a just amazing all that I'm on dental town what do you think I'm do you think there's a difference between what do you think the challenges are of the young versus the old on dental town I mean you have a lot of young Millennials and a lot of old boomers what is your sense on dental town
Laz Petruska: there's some commonalities I think young young dentists are are scared or concerned obviously a lot of all dentists are concerned because they can't they don't see much growth they see you know corporate dentistry taking over maybe in their area maybe they simply burned out they are obviously concern about retirement so they have a commonalities I think I think maybe maybe the middle segment like that the the the middle-aged segments who is still growing who still optimistic who still ambitious are doing better but either end the young or the pre retiree group I think they have they have concerns and I think these have to be addressed maybe certain certainly a similar way maybe different ways but with older generation it's very difficult to convince somebody that hey you should still you know we could still pick this up you could still become passionate about this either work or your life in general and that's what I'm trying to that's what I'm attempting to do because I'm doing it myself I preach what I do and I hope somebody gets inspired if one person gets inspired by it I already done my job so all you know when retirement comes guess what you still gonna have to live you still gonna have to create a good life for yourself probably gonna be harder because now you don't have this structure of your work so now you have to start over and then so what are you gonna do for another 20-30 years after you retire so I always tell people prepare for your retirement basically not just financially but start creating yourself a life a social life or what our hobbies sports canting whatever you are into start preparing for retirement right now I know exactly how I'm gonna retire I know exactly how it's gonna look like right now and because why because I already experienced so many things I tried so many things I know what's good for me so I am but I retire I try to retire in about five years I'm gonna be 60 in five years so when I retire I know exactly where I'm gonna live how am I gonna live I don't know how much money I'm gonna have but that's kind of we will see but I certainly will know how what its gonna look like and that's what I suggest to to the to the elderly colleagues is prepare for your time it's not just financially but as far as lifestyle and and make the rest of your life the the fruits of your work make it make it great because that's when you're supposed to enjoy it the most when you don't have all these headaches
Howard: so if the person is listening to you right now and he says look dude I'm burned out I'm fried I hate dentists for me you see that thread of Dentistry I hate dentistry with every fiber of my body what would you tell that guy
Laz Petruska: don't touch that for now don't touch dentistry you'll be running your office good or bad for so long it's very difficult to change your office right now leave that alone for now and start building a great personal life after work in the evenings on the weekend on vacations basically tune up your personal life as far as getting excited and get a different point of view you know when you are in the office and you are 90% dentist how can you think for yourself as far as like what you like to do what gets you excited what kind of people you get along so leave your dentistry for a little bit and just start building a great personal life during the week and on the weekends every single day pay attention to that invest so invest as much into your personal life like you invested into your professional life early on that's my number one advice yeah and
Howard: I like how you're always saying that I'm you know when you go when you're done with a really stressful day you're tired so you go home and what do you do you sit on the couch and watch TV or whatever and you recommend that you go out to eat that you go to a museum that you go do something and catch your second wind yeah and i also see so many dentists that they'll tell you that you know and they reach everything they dreamed of when they were a child yeah if they would have reached that as a child they would have bought boats and jet skis and they'd have been busy playing with all this stuff and now they have all that money and they're not playing so something's wrong that they're not happy it's no other fun and is there anything you want to talk about that you thought we were talking about and we didn't
Laz Petruska: let's talk about quantum physics ah Niels Bohr I love Niels Bohr I got into physics I was very very pissed that I don't understand physics so I got into it somebody took me to magnets and again people don't believe me but I am the one person in the world in the entire world who knows how magnets work how to attract and repel each other I I know how the the right magnetic field is and a bunch of other things so that's my passion my current passion now is quantum physics field theory cosmology gravity and things like that that's why I mean - and I wrote already six articles that I'm trying to publish as you can imagine it's not easy because I'm an outsider and it's difficult for anyone but still and I have another 20 articles that I'm working on recently and
Howard: how do you think magnets work
Laz Petruska: the model of the magnetic field that that we know today around a magnet is wrong is absolutely wrong so I took I took a time and I I discovered that the the geometry of a magnetic field around an imp around a magnet is is totally different basically imagine a magnet in the center and you have two Donuts one on top one on the bottom right the donuts are the actual magnetic fields and the magnetic field comes out on the equator and goes back on the top as a vortex like a little vortex like a tornado and back on the bottom and basically when you put two magnets together if these tornadoes enhance each other they attract if they decrease each of the power then they repel each other so fundamentally this is man this is magnets
Howard: well that's another thing I love about dentists is I'm they're always in the top 1% of years of education in any society go to they're always in the top three to five percent in income yeah and so every country I've ever been to I have some homie who's a doctor who's born and raised there showing me every little detail of just a little nuances that and it's funny how yeah the dentistry is different but so is just like the sink or the toilet or how they made you know a sauce or a bread or whatever I just love dentist and my boys know it - they're just I mean over Christmas we saw so many dentists and they always say the same thing you go damn Dennis is just smart man they read so much I mean here you are you got eight you're a dentist and you're reading Niels Bohr but other than that hey man I'm a huge fan of your post love reading your stuff thank you for all that you've done for dentistry and it was just an honor to podcast you today
Laz Petruska: it's my honor I'm very surprised that you noticed me at all or other people but I'm very very grateful for that because I'm having a ton of fun on Daniel time again I hope we can work together on the issues we talked about I would love to elevate the dentistry to its proper place that would make us happy and dentist itself and again I like to see almost similar to the to the pink ribbon movement for breast cancer I would like to see this I love my dentist every variant of some in the country and I encourage people who are into this who look at this as a common goal that instead of being hated or feared I hope that especially young people we can turn this around and we can make people of dentistry and therefore we can love it more ourselves
Howard: and it's really profound if you think about it because I can't say to a fat person a fatty shut up yeah but they can walk into my office and say I hate going to the dentist yeah cuz I'm like well if you out there nice say I hate you know people from Paul still or whatever I mean it's open hatred on dentistry yeah and it's not just the insult of it it's the fact that I learned very very early because I watched my the older dentist and I used to remember this one he go in there and he'd give a shot and then when he came out he would he would take such a deep breath yeah that I realized he didn't breathe through the whole shot yeah yeah and and he was just and I thought oh wow so when I started trying to breathe hmm and then when I would start noticing that I was feeling something was wrong I was feeling stressed or edge here whatever I realize we don't know what's going on but it's coming from this this animals right here saying coming from orbit yeah and and so I knew talk about magnetism I mean you know there's magnetism and and all these things like that but if you say I believe in ESP they think you're crazy but I can tell you when this human is laying next to you stressed out it's affecting me and dentists have feelings too I'm doing a filling on you but I got feelings too and if you just walk in there saying I hate you I hate come how come you know Obama doesn't pay for this or my boss it's like you know shut up you know I you know Obama didn't make you eat dr. pepper and chocolate and why the hell if your employer's got a pain I mean when they say health care is a human right I'm pretty sure it should first be oxygen than water than food I'm pretty sure health care would be at the very end of that train especially since one yet into that yes dozens one out of three Earthlings never die of a disease they die in an accident you know yeah and murder-suicide you know car racks collisions so one in three will never even get a deadly disease they're dead before that but I do think that people need to realize that the time for open season on dentistry where you can just go in there and say you hate everything you don't want to pay you you want your teeth to fix up perfectly but the rest of you looks like crap you know when they say you know well why do this tooth broke I'm I always want to say have you seen a mirror you look like you fell out of a car and are dead I mean how old are you and they're like 68 is like well how can you be 68 and wondering why your tooth broke I mean you look like there's nothing working left on you and and not only are you shocked it broke but you want someone else to pay for it yeah and so I love this it's just kind of slight standing up first I was like you know love your dentist man it's a tough job yeah well now all you got is a bunch of people who uh likes a moat when they say half of America sees a dentist every year yeah they see the dentist every year at Taco Bell or the grocery store or on the beach but it's not in a dental office but Laz I thank you so much for all you do it was great seeing you today my pleasure all right buddy have a great