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Leap of Faith Benjamin Lund, Editor, Dentaltown Magazine

More by this author (119)

Dr. Howard Farran thought fluoridating the water of Phoenix, Arizona, was going to be his magnum opus.

When he graduated from dental school in May 1987, Howard moved out to Phoenix, Arizona, to open up his own dental practice. He had just finished one of his hardest course requirements – pediatric dentistry – in an area of Kansas City, Missouri, where most of the population was low income and black.

"My patients would tell me, 'I don't brush, I don't floss.' Some of them said they didn't even own a toothbrush, but their teeth were beautiful. You were lucky if you could find a single cavity," says Howard. "Then I moved out to Phoenix and I was in an all white neighborhood and kids were coming in daily needing crowns and root canals and things like that. I was initially frustrated thinking, 'How come I just graduated from four years of college and nobody told me that black people have superior teeth than white people?'"

So after calling the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and eliciting quite a laugh from the director of dentistry, Howard learned Kansas City fluoridated its water and Phoenix did not.

"To just sit there on an assembly line of drilling filling and billing for cavities was not the way to go. I decided, being a good Boy Scout, you leave the campground better than when you found it. I thought fluoridating the water of Phoenix was the right thing to do."

Howard readjusted his work schedule and blocked off Fridays so he could work on fluoridating the city. Like any young go-getter just making his way, Howard confidently assumed this would take no more than two or three months. It took two years.

Howard teamed up with Jack Dillenberg, DDS, MPH, the inaugural dean of the Arizona School of Dentistry & Oral Health in Mesa, Arizona. Dillenberg provided much guidance and help, and for two years both dentists worked on convincing the city counsel that the city's water needed fluoridating.

"When they finally took it to a vote, it passed eight to one," says Howard. "The mayor signed it in and I thought, 'I did it. I fluoridated Phoenix.' The CDC had an epidemiologist who figured we saved almost 850,000 cavities per year. Within five years of practicing, I already saw the benefits first hand."

Howard's involvement in fluoridating the water of Phoenix was celebrated throughout the local dental community. Howard received several awards and he thought he really made his contribution to dentistry. He felt he'd finally arrived as a dentist.

He thought that was it...


Above: Dr. Howard Farran outside his dental practice in 1988. Below: Dr. Farran with his staff outside his dental practice in 2008.







Above: Dentaltown.com in 1999.
Below: Dentaltown.com in 2002.







Above: Dentaltown.com in 2005.
Below: Dentaltown.com in 2009.







Above: Dr. Farran taping his 30-Day MBA series in 1999. Below: Dr. Farran taping his Virtues of Profitable Dentistry DVD series in 2005.

 Early Days
Howard Farran was born to Catholic parents Colleen and Howard Sr. in Wichita, Kansas, in 1962. Of seven children, he was the only son. Howard Sr. toiled 12 hours a day, seven days a week as a bread deliveryman. "We'd all go to church and my dad would drive a separate car, sit with the family for 8 a.m. mass, and at 9 a.m. we'd go home and he'd drive over to Rainbow Wonder Bread and start his shift," says Howard. Delivering bread barely paid the bills, so when his father saw the opportunity to do something about his meager income, he jumped at it.

"One day when I was 10, one of my dad's friends got out of bread delivery and bought a Sonic drive-in franchise and it was kicking butt. So my dad took a great leap of faith, with his wife and seven kids and quit his job and bet everything he had on a Sonic drive in. From when I was 10 until I was about 20, we went from abject poverty to being fairly wealthy while my dad accumulated nine restaurants in four states."

Through his father's success, Howard witnessed first hand the power of self-employment, business, marketing and advertising, and the power of human relations.

"All my siblings were girls, so I liked hanging out with my dad," says Howard. "But the only time I got to see my dad was when I went to work with him. He never threw me a baseball and we never rode bikes or camped out. We never did anything like that because he worked all the time. But when I would go to work with my dad I was the proudest little boy in the world."

Of Next Door Neighbors and Meteorologists
After Howard's father's newfound success and wealth, the family moved into a new house in a more affluent part of Wichita, where their neighbor was a dentist named Kenny Anderson.

"Kenny worked four days a week, six hours a day; and my dad still worked 12 hours a day, seven days a week," says Howard. "Every time I came home from work with my dad, there'd be Kenny Anderson on his front lawn chipping golf balls into a hula-hoop. I think my dad told me about 100 times, 'Howie, if you had a brain in your head, you'd become a damn dentist. Those guys make the same money I do and they rarely work a day in their lives. You can't even find a dentist who works 40 hours a week. You don't work for a boss, you own your own building and you own your own business.'"

While that was being ingrained into his head, every time the meteorologist would get on TV during in the brutal winters of Wichita, Howard's mom would say, "Look at Phoenix, Arizona," and point out the Mr. Sunshine icon situated over a temperature indication of 70 degrees. Howard says, "My mom would tell me, 'Howie, if you had a brain in your head, you wouldn't live in Wichita, you'd live in Phoenix.' So my dad was always telling me to be a dentist and my mom was always telling me to live in Phoenix, so I became a dentist and moved to Phoenix."

Of course it wasn't quite that simple. Howard attended Creighton University because at the time it was one of the few colleges in the Midwest that had its own dental school – and it had a strong undergraduate preference. The typical dentist receives his undergraduate degree in four years – Howard attained his in three, an early testament to his work ethic, and was accepted to dental schools at Creighton and the University of Missouri-Kansas City (UMKC). "I ended up choosing UMKC because it was a state school and it was half the price of Creighton," says Howard. "Had the prices been the same, I would have gone to Creighton, but I just didn't have the money."

Howard graduated from dental school May 11, 1987, and opened up his practice in Phoenix, September 21, 1987. At age 23, Howard was married, had $87,000 in student loans, a mortgage of $98,000 and $150,000 in business loans. He was scared to death, but he was determined to work his way back to zero. Like his father, Howard worked 12 hours a day, but only worked six days a week ("I took off on Sundays," says Howard). Any patient who wanted to see Howard Monday through Saturday could get in. In a few years, Howard was debt free.

The Big Idea
With his debts paid off, Howard turned his focus on running his practice as best as he could – and in doing so, decided to obtain a Master of Business Administration degree at Arizona State University.

"The only reason I got my MBA is because I learned all my business knowledge from my father," says Howard. "My father was a massively successful businessman but he did it all on pure instinct. I always wondered how much my dad taught me was reality vs. false. I always wondered if the lessons he taught me even had the right terminology. I was just wondering if I was running my practice the right way. I was a businessman, naturally, but I had no formal instruction. So I wanted to see if there were things I could formally learn that would augment what I'd already knew."

It was toward the end of his coursework when it came time for Howard to fulfill a final thesis assignment. The Internet was a relative infant but it caught Howard's full attention. His chosen thesis topic: "How the Internet Would Affect Dentistry." Hindsight being 20/20, It makes one wonder if Howard could have gotten a better grade were his topic, "How Howard Farran Will Affect Dentistry."

"I really focused [my thesis] on commerce vs. community," says Howard. "What I saw on the commerce side was that dentists were pretty much all solo practicing individuals. They might practice in the same medical building as five other dentists and will have never gone to lunch with any of them in their whole lifetime. The moment a sales rep came into the office to sell something is when the shy introvert scientist dentist would ask, 'What is my neighbor using?' Those salespeople were actually a form of community. Back then, everyone saw the Internet affecting dentistry by merely selling supplies, but I was thinking, 'OK, you're the only dentist in a small town of 2,000, you have a six-year-old girl with a big abscess and you don't know whether to do a root canal or pull the tooth or whether you should put in a space maintainer or start her on ortho, etc.' I thought 'What if these dentists could all get into the same Web site and talk to each other?'"
The Web site would know no boundaries. It wouldn't care if you were from Iowa or Australia. Dentists could all enter a chatroom, post an X-ray, a picture, a case history and get colleagues from around the world to help decide how they should treat this case. This was a way for dentists to connect with their peers and save one tooth at a time. With this Web site, no dentist would ever have to practice alone again.

This was Howard's new mission.

"I worked my butt off for 10 years as a dentist. I paid off my debt. I had saved up a ton of cash and I took all my money and borrowed everything I could on my practice and my house and I hired 19 programmers to program 40 hours a week, 50 weeks a year to get this Web site going with all the functionality that I wanted," says Howard.

In March 1999, Dentaltown.com went live.

The business plan Howard developed while he was getting his MBA anticipated membership of Dentaltown.com to be somewhere between 5,000 and 10,000 registered dentists by year 10. Never in Howard's wildest dreams did he think that this fledgling Web site would surpass 100,000 members from 177 countries in less than 10 years.

"A lot of dentists, when they get home, they give up, pop a beer, put on ESPN and watch a ball game," says Howard. "The dentists who work 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. during the day but want to crawl online for an hour or two are the highly motivated dentists. Dentaltown became the biggest AA meeting for dental professionals, where 100,000 dentists can show up and say, 'Hi I'm Dan and I admit, I'm a damn dentist, and here's my problem.' And then dentists can reply and say, 'Hey Dan, I used to have that problem, here's how I solved it.'

"When I conceived this whole thing, I knew that it would serve a huge need for some. I was realizing how fun that was because everyone was just talking in the way humans like to talk – straight to the point, no punches held and I thought this is the way dentists need to get their information. This was the way dentists needed to talk."

Dentaltown - The Magazine
Ask any media expert about the current lay of the land, and they'll explain how much the Internet has impacted traditional mediums like newspapers, magazines and television. Dentaltown already had a strong foothold in the Internet community market, but Howard decided to start publishing a monthly companion magazine. When I asked him why he took another leap into publishing, he said, "There is still a cultural human reality that dentists like to get in their easy chairs and get a beverage and some popcorn and read magazines. I would get dental journal after dental journal after dental journal, and I was an extremely motivated dentist, but the articles just didn't interest me. They were usually too fundamental in nature, like they'd talk about cancer in rats and weird diseases that you'd never see in your lifetime. I never really read a dental journal and changed the way I practiced dentistry. The message boards on Dentaltown.com had massive amounts of content that I thought we could break down and say, "This is really what you need to know about." You can go online and read any newspaper, magazine or book you wanted, but the human side of you wants to go out on your porch swing and read a book or a magazine."

At the same time Howard was pondering a print version of Dentaltown.com, he came across the history of Sesame Street. Howard was inspired by this group of grad students who wanted to develop an educational program for children, but kept getting shot down by supporters because "kids would rather watch Bugs Bunny."
December 1999 June 2001 June 2004 January 2009

"So these grad students went back and took classes of 25 five-year-olds and they started playing them the top five cartoons, and they were able to factually establish that at any given 30-second interval, only 30 percent of the children were actually paying attention to the TV while the other 70 percent were walking around or playing with their toys," says Howard. "They took that data back to the advertisers and said, "Do you buy into this data that only 30 percent of the kids are looking at any given 30-second interval?" and the advertisers agreed, 'You're right, we're still going to advertise our cereals and toys and things we want these kids to tell their moms to buy.' So the grad students asked the advertisers for funding if they could get 30 percent of the kids to watch. And the advertisers said, 'Yes.' The grad students wound up getting more than 70 percent of the kids to watch at any given 30-second interval."

Howard was so charged up by this notion of measured content that he started to seriously pursue development of a magazine. The book would take the content of 100,000 questions and answers in a month and publish the top three discussions that most dental colleagues are interested in. While other magazines relied on editors who weren't dentists and who used their gut feelings in trying to figure out what dentists needed to be reading about, Dentaltown Magazine armed the editor with data from the message boards and showed, "This subject on CPR – no one cares about, but the subject on TMJ, everybody's going nuts over!" For the first time in dental history, the editor was connected to his or her readers. Actual measured content opened up a whole new format. This publishing model has been a revolution in dentistry.

Dentaltown Magazine has grown leaps and bounds since it was first published. While Dentaltown.com boasts close to 108,000 registered members, Dentaltown Magazine is mailed to more than 120,000 dentists. Its success has also led to spin-offs such as Orthotown Magazine, which uses the same publishing model as Dentaltown Magazine – but for orthodontic specialists.

Dentalworld?
Dentaltown started off as an American phenomenon in dentistry, but if you were to ask Howard what the site's future holds, it's the death of nationalism.

"Look at the names of the journals American dentists read – the Journal of the American Dental Association. The American this and the American that," says Howard. "You can say the same about Italy or Poland. Countries read their own stuff. It's intellectual incest. But through Dentaltown, it can start going international. Continuing education courses are being developed by practitioners from other countries like Australia and China, and they're all using a ton of glass ionomer. In the United States, dental practices are very much insurance driven, but when you talk to dentists in Rio de Janeiro or Hong Kong, there's no such thing as dental insurance. The rest of the world has the Internet and dental companies will tell you that when they sell products around the world there's a different product mix depending on the country you're going to and that product mix is determined by the opinion leaders of that country. Now these international opinion leaders are jumping on Dentaltown.com and debating why they think their products work better. It is really peeling open the eyes of dentists around the world. Your opinions might hold up in the United States, but they could fall flat in Europe or Asia."

Through Dentaltown, the last decade has witnessed a massive shift in the way dental professionals communicate and it has had a great impact on the way they practice. Message boards are certainly the bread and butter of the site, but its evolution has incorporated a massively successful online continuing education program, a media center for videos and Podcasts, and Dentaltown has even become a place where Townies can vote and award their favorite products and services through the annual Townie Choice Awards. What began as a simple vision 10 years ago – to connect dentists with each other and form an online community where they can ask each other clinical questions, solve problems and identify with what each other experiences in the trenches of modern dentistry on a day-to-day basis – is nothing short of remarkable. It has certainly become something much more than Howard ever imagined it would be. While Dentaltown and Farran Media are still increasingly bustling with activity, Howard has relaxed a little – but "relaxed" in Howard's book means he gets maybe an hour more of sleep per night. You can find him lecturing at dental seminars throughout the world ("There's still nothing like connecting with people face to face," says Howard), and when he's back home practicing dentistry in Phoenix, he still jumps on Dentaltown.com in between patients to welcome new members to the Web site, and get down and dirty on the message boards with his fellow dentists in the trenches of modern dentistry.
Dentaltown Magazine
September 2025
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