Mastering Clear Aligners CandidPro and The Digital Advantage for GP Dentists!

Welcome to Dental Unscripted. Where Mike Dinsio and Paula Quinn break down the practice ownership journey, one episode at a time. Starting up, buying and running a successful dental practice. What up, what up, guys? Welcome back to another episode of Dental Unscripted. My name's Mike D'Incio. You guys know me. We are super excited about today's episode. We're live casting right now, and we've already got seven people. This is nuts. So I think this is going to be a hot topic tonight.

but uh yeah tonight's a special episode we are we are actually broadcasting out of tacoma I got doctor from tacoma I got uh nick and from the east coast and nicole in washington so we got four people on the on the call today but Real quick, guys, what am I trying to say? A little housekeeping.

If you're listening to this episode on Startup Unscripted or even Dental Acquisition Unscripted, those are two podcasts that have been going on for the last five years, and we are merging them all into one program called simply Dental Unscripted.

So if you guys have been subscribing to the other ones, I want you to stop. and pivot and and I want you to start following dental unscripted that's where all the episodes are going to be and I'm super excited about it because historically it's all been about how to start how to buy um but now you guys are in ownership you've been all you you now own and and it's been five years we started the program during COVID and a lot of you guys own. So now we're gonna do practice management tips.

So we're gonna be bringing in other coaches. And today we got a new coach on the podcast, which is super fun. And so we're gonna be bringing in, Next Level is gonna be bringing in a lot of other coaches. And so practice management tips coming at you guys, along with still startup and acquisition stuff. So again, subscribe, follow, do all the things. And we're excited about the new program. But without further ado, tonight is special because we have a new partnership in Candid.

If you guys have not heard of Candid Pro, just check out the sweet shirt they sent me and all the gear behind me. If you're watching on YouTube, I'm totally decked out in red right now. But yeah, Candid is an awesome, awesome opportunity for you guys to grow your businesses and Um, a lot of you, there's a lot of options out there, but we chose Canada for a reason. If you haven't heard of Canada, let me just give you a little bit about them. They gave me some things to read.

I totally suck at this and you guys know that, but I'm gonna do my best here. So Canada is an orthodontic technology company that strives to make high quality oral healthcare more accessible and affordable to dental professionals and the patients they serve. The company's flagship product, Candid Pro, sweet shirt right here and all the stuff behind me, is a clear aligner system and is the number one orthodontic system built, guys, built for General Dennis.

So we're going to be talking about what that means for you, General Dennis. But again, continuing on, Candid Pro offers predictability. efficiency and profitability to dental professionals through its unique combination of state-of-the-art aligner manufacturing so I'm super excited about this partnership being a next level client you get you get a sweet deal getting right in with these guys at an awesome awesome level And if you're interested in that, reach out to Next Level.

We'll hook you guys up. But without further ado, let me get into who's on the call here. It's not about me tonight. It's about you three. The first one I will introduce is the wonderful and beautiful Nicole Young, one of our executive coaches. She's our ortho specialist. We're super excited about Nicole's ortho program. Nicole, welcome to the show. Thanks for being on. Thanks, Michael. Excited to be here. And then next, I'll introduce the CEO of Candid.

So Nick Greenfield is the CEO and co-founder of Candid and is one of the founding partners of Redesign Health. Candid is a venture backed company that works exclusively with dental professionals offering advanced orthodontic technology. Via its flagship product, again, Candid Pro, the clear liner system. A little background, which is super cool, is that Nick was part of one of the OGs at Lyft. He was the CEO there. And we all know how successful Lyft was.

So Nick brings really cool stuff to this program. So we're super happy to have you on the show, Nick. Say hi to everybody. Hey, everybody. Thank you so much, Michael, for having me. Oh, dude. Of course. And I'm really excited to tell everybody a little bit more about the Candid Pro solution. Yeah, we're gonna get into that. You're the guy at the top, so maybe we'll put you on the hot seat, but we're excited to have you. And then Candid brought us a really cool expert.

And Dr. Arvind Petri is a graduate of University of Pittsburgh School of Dental Medicine. He went on to complete an advanced education in general dentistry, AEGD, in Spokane, Washington, Washington before returning home to Tacoma, the town where I'm from right now, to found Petri Advanced Dental. He's helped. This is super cool. He's one of the founders and has served on the board of the AACA. For those that you don't know what that is, that's the American Academy of Clear Liners.

And he's been doing that for several years and currently serves. So that's super cool. So wealth of knowledge on the panel today. I'm the dummy today. You guys are the experts. Let's get into it. Nick, give me like, what are you guys up to? Because you're taking market share by storm. um we know a lot of people that's at your company and they're impressive and uh next level chose you guys for a lot of reasons but um how would you describe what you guys are doing over there at candid yeah so

first of all um it's really awesome that we have dr petrie on dr petrie can share much more wisdom about starting up, building and growing your practice with clear aligners than I can. I can give you a little bit about what we deliver, which is the most predictable, efficient and profitable clear aligner system for general dentists on the market today.

Specifically, if you are starting up a practice or you're new to orthodontics you're new on what does it mean to introduce clear aligners for your patients we have a great system for you or if you are very advanced and you want to scale and continue to grow we also have a great system so this the way we've built this product is for the novice user all the way up to the most advanced user now I'll walk you through what that means Every case, there's a US licensed orthodontist who actually

will review and support you in the treatment planning of that case. Which means if you are a new dentist to orthodontics, you're always gonna have that support and backup from an expert on how to set up the case, which is super important. That's included complimentary as part of the case fee. The second component is you're gonna have monitoring.

which means as patients are going through treatment, they're gonna be using their mobile phone to scan their teeth using the most advanced AI technology and the only FDA cleared monitoring tool out there in the market to monitor their teeth during treatment, which is gonna reduce office visits. So the average Candid Pro provider is doing three office visits per case versus competitor solutions where the average is closer to ten, which means seventy percent reduction in office visits.

If you're building out of practice or you're a busy practice already saving seven office visits, you're talking about over a thousand dollars in chair time productivity lost, which again helps you from a bottom line perspective and helps keep your patients happier. So I think that if you look at those two components coming together, this is how we drive, again, predictability and efficiency for individual practices.

And if you're an advanced doctor who's done a lot of cases, who is really kind of knowing what they're doing, then I would suggest you would listen to Dr. Petrie tonight, because Dr. Petrie is a very advanced clear aligner provider, and he made the switch over to Candid Pro, and he can tell you a little bit more about what that looks like. Yeah, let's do that. Let's do that.

Let me pivot real quick before Dr. Pichu just takes us all by storm here and how he incorporates this and how he's exploded his company and is having crazy success with the product.

Nicole, with your background as an ex-territory rep and big into clear liners and even being part of an ortho practice and all of that, What's one thing that you're excited about this new partnership with Candid? Because I think it's unique for a consultant to really go all in with a clear liner company. And we did. And I think it's pretty cool what you can do with our clients and helping them grow their practice. Yeah, no, that's a great question.

And for me, again, it's Candid's mission statement. It's the predictability, efficiency, profitability. But when you kind of unravel that and peel the onion layers back, if you will, then for me, it's really that these doctors, especially in what we're working with, a lot of our demographic or listeners, our clients, our newer doctors, and having the clinical confidence of knowing that an orthodontist, a trained US-based orthodontists looking over their cases, to me is absolutely huge.

In my experience, when you're incorporating this into a GP practice, Candid's specific to GPs, it's the only product that's built for GPs. The other one started with Ortho. So now to me with the other, with competitive companies, you started with Orthos, but now you're implementing the GP practices. You are kind of having to unravel and rewind on on your scripting and your training philosophies, because it doesn't look the same in ortho as it does into a GP practice.

So to me, candid for any newer GP in the market, anyone again, look again, the scale, but specifically our newer doctors that are looking to grow and add a different service candidate is hands down going to be the best option for them. Yeah, no, I'm thinking like our startups, right? So if you're a startup and you're starting from ground zero, you have no sales, popping a couple ortho cases can really make your projections look a lot different. than just chasing hygiene appointments all day.

So not that that's what we don't wanna do, but as startup, you guys are just trying to pay your bills. And so incorporating ortho right away, not having to be like a total pro at ortho, that's a game changer. And then I think of like some of our acquisitions where I'm analyzing the practice and if the practice is doing a ton of clear aligners and you're not comfortable doing clear line of therapy or ortho, you can easily jump into this and offset that risk.

Because if the practice is doing a lot of that, you don't want the practice to fall and the collections to drop. So for a GP or really anybody that's not an orthodontist to have this kind of in their, in their back seat is, is huge.

So doc, I like, I gotta, I gotta ask like how, how, How do we do this? How do we be successful with Candid in offices? Has it been a game changer? Would you mind sharing your story and kind of how your journey of how you got into clear aligner therapy and how it changed your whole business? And then why Candid, it's kind of a loaded question, but why Candid is the X factor now in your office? What time do you have? Nah, we we got we got plenty of time. Just go. Just go.

I think the audience is starving for how to be successful in this world where dentistry and business dentistry is challenging. I'll tell you, like, you know, Mike, you don't know my backstory completely, but I've been there. I've been in the trenches. I've been beat up, sucked up. Cheat up, spit out. You know, I bought my practice nine years ago, two years out of school, and I didn't know anything. I was by myself. I could talk to some people. I thought I knew the game, right?

I actually took a minor training one month before I started my practice. Got into it. I did three team members, I believe, off the get-go. I put inscriptions just level in the line. I didn't know what the hell I was doing. Okay, two months into practice, I'm bankrupt, just so you know. I'm working two other jobs on the side, growing my business here. And little by little is trying to figure some things out. Ortho, ortho is a tough thing for docs. We get very little training in school.

In fact, the training we get is like refer to the orthodontist. That's my classic training. I'm a twenty ten grad. You know, I'm not brand new, but I'm not out of the game a long time. And you go into your own practice and dentists, we treat what we know. And then we refer out. Back in the day, we take a model here and we put a cast on it, sit there. We'll get, we'll figure this out. You know, Canada has been so, so good at what they do to come in with the partnership.

and the fact that you get to level your treatments up with an orthodontist that knows what they're doing. Because a lot of ladder companies here, man, their refinement rate, I was at three hundred percent before. Three hundred percent. Nick, I had five finishes this week. Two of them went to refinement. Three was perfect in the first round. That does not happen in other ladder companies. So wait, I just want to pause there for a second because that is a game changer, right? An actual ortho.

I just want to say that out loud. An actual ortho is looking at every case that you sent. Yeah? And that doesn't happen? That doesn't happen with other companies, right? No, because you've got a lot of AI. You've got overseas techs and some other things that are creating those treatment plans. And over the last two and a half years, three years, I've worked with Candid. I've actually developed some friendships with my orthodontist that I'm partnering with. And I wanna put this out there.

It's like, why would you listen to another GP about another product? Okay, because again, I went from a bankrupt company ten years ago to a solo practitioner, produced over three million and collecting this year, two point five. The numbers speak for themselves. Wow. Nice. All productive dentist, GP doing a ton of general dentistry.

And I got to say that for me, like the biggest thing with Canada was like my chair time, trying to cram in my five off my six off and do all this different dentistry. My production per hour can be up to fifteen hundred dollars. And getting patients out of my chairs into a systemized approach that can be taken over by different people in my team, not just me, that's valuable. And that's what we talk about, like the profit in your chair time. We guys know when your chair is valuable.

As an early GP, you don't have a lot of time. You try to figure out your business. You're just trying to hold your, you know what, together. Yeah, to have that powerful partnership with someone that knows what they're doing. I get especially even the even the seasoned GP, there's different ways the company benefits you for Candid.

And I just can't keep hammering down about what that looks like to the general dentist because again, Candid is catered for the GP, not the ortho market like the other liner companies started out as. Well, we we talk a lot. And next time we talk a lot about like bringing in specialists into your office. Right. Because because you can't do it all and you only feel so comfortable doing so much. Right. And and we're always talking about like, oh, well, let's stack a Saturday of some implants.

Right. That's that'll change your bottom line quick. Let's. whatever, let's say you're a pediatric dentist, let's bring in some ortho, like whatever you can do to try to bring in more procedures in-house.

And ortho is kind of one of those things where like from an outsider, and you guys are the kings and queens of ortho, but like from an outsider, again, me being the dummy in the room, it feels like as an industry, it's really exciting everybody wants to try to do it and then they try to do it and it doesn't really work super well and I know

nicole can speak to this because um she's had some experience with some of the others other companies out there and and nicole like what are the pitfalls of gps and doctor doc please you guys go off of each other like on this but like why doesn't it stick why why is it hard to get ortho in a gp practice Arvind, I'll take this one and I know you agree, but number one, it's clinical confidence from the doctor's perspective.

When you're being, again, like Doc said, when you are in school, your ortho training is minimal. And then you get out of school and you want to implement this into your practice. There's a clinical confidence piece to it. And that has to be huge. But the second component is team training. If you go to a course, you go to a CE, you come back and you tell the team at the morning huddle on Monday morning, we're going to implement ortho. Good luck. Here you go. This is what I want to do.

I love my doctors dearly, but I saw that model fall flat on its face many, many times.

Unless you had a diamond in the rough one time out of twenty accounts that someone did want to take it on or had some experience with it in a in a previous practice but we want to get the entire office thinking of ortho treatment as a standard of care and what I mean by that is you're you're setting your restorative cases up to finish better right so you rewind it's not just a cosmetic benefit we're going to look at this from from a restorative aspect so there's been a lack of

the team training and implementation and pull through which I think is huge and what candid offers again is that clinical confidence of having an orthodontist look at your cases, it's predictable, it's efficient, where there's not a lot of chair time because there is that confidence and responsibility of the patient to getting their records over to doctor. But Arvind, anything to add on that? My question is like, why doesn't Ortho stick to the GP? Because we are afraid to fail.

We're an awful driven position. Because you're afraid to fail? Is that what you just said? We're afraid to fail. Of the ortho case. Of the ortho case. We're afraid it's not going to turn out. We're deathly afraid of, good God, I took on a case and I've got to send it to somebody else now. How's that going to look at my social media? How's it look at my Google reviews? How's it look in front of my team?

How do I feel going home every day looking in the mirror and being like, yeah, you jacked this up, Petrie. You know, it's a horrible feeling. Nobody wants to fail for it, but when you give yourself permission, now here's where it really opens up the door. Truly. I think when you get the docs, give yourself permission. I can't fail now because I got backup. I'm going to have community. I'm going to have clinical confidence and I've got a product that works.

Yeah. And that's what you guys are all about, right? Is backing these guys up from a risk and giving them support. That's always been kind of part of your model, right? It's about providing maximum support through a combination of the orthodontist and technology. And the monitoring technology does an amazing job, not only of keeping folks out of your chair for unnecessary appointments, but driving patient compliance.

About ninety percent of patients take their scans on time every one to two weeks, and that keeps them going. So if a patient is going to go off course, you're gonna know about it and you're gonna know about it early so you can intervene. But so much more often than not, that patient, because they're monitoring, it means they're more likely to wear their aligners. They're gonna get their cases done faster. You can hear that from Dr. Petri, right?

Three out of five cases that finished this week, those cases didn't end up going into refinement. I think the other component here that's really critical is the patient and the patient desire.

Again, if you're a doctor with a startup practice or you're thinking about buying a practice, and you think about your patient base that's in there most of those patients have some type of orthodontic need right you've got sixty seventy eighty percent of those patients have have some type of malocclusion and they need permission to treat that whether it's because of an aesthetic desire a functional desire they have tmd there's something going on ortho is part of that solution for

them even if it's pre-restorative And I think that's really important to understand and believe in that orthodontics is part of that standard of care, but you have to be comfortable with delivering it. And if you didn't learn it in dental school, but you have an orthodontist to partner with, with Candid Pro, that can help you get over that hump.

And just starting one case a month, or sorry, one case a week, if you start one case a week, let's say you're doing three thousand dollars in take home on that case and you're starting fifty cases a year that's a hundred fifty thousand dollars but that is a massive number for you as a doctor and your patients will be happier they'll get better outcomes they'll need less reactive dentistry and they will believe more in coming back and refer more patients so I think when

you look at that holistically Offering orthodontics and doing it well in partnership with Candid Pro is a great way to continue not only to drive same year bottom line, but long-term growth for your practice. We see Jack every day. Yeah. I, uh, one thing that I picked up in the, over the last whatever time that I've been in dental is that like, I always used to think like, well, gosh, like, um, why, why don't the orthos hate you guys? You GPs, right?

Like, like you're, you're stealing some of their market share, but then like, I think it was Paula, my co-host on this program. A light bulb went off and it's like, if dentists now are comfortable because they have the predictability to diagnose and they focus on the more simple cases, they're probably referring more out because they're talking about it more. Nicole, is that kind of like the concept of just getting the whole team? You touched on the team. The team is everything.

You go to these like, these conferences in Scottsdale or whatever the doctor comes back all jazzed you talk about this all the time but then this team has no idea what the doctor's all jacked up about but he's all excited or she's all excited and the team's like what is this dude talking about um but is that what happens once you start building building on this and having a predictable system Yeah.

I mean, I always at least love to coach that, hey, as a GP, I want you to keep your relationship and that strong referral base with your orthodontist, period. There are simply certain cases we don't want to touch. I'm sure Arvin probably, correct me if I'm wrong, but you probably don't want to touch a crazy class three or maybe not all the teens, right? So we're still keeping that relationship strong with our orthodontist.

But what we're trying to do is to Nick's point, those seventy percent of people that we know that suffer from malocclusion, that we could be talking to them about this within our own practice, that simple patient base. Again, this is from a pre restorative angle. Some of it's going to be from cosmetic, of course, but those are simple six to nine month cases. I've worked with so many orthos that would rather that their GPs take on that case. Yeah, they would rather not.

They love the two year, three year stuff, right? Like they they do. To be honest, in my experience and doing this for thirteen years, they really do support the GP having that and owning those simpler cases, if you will. I think it's a great relationship. I don't think it may have disrupted the market at first, but I've seen that evolve over the years. I mean, what's the stats in this country? Three hundred plus million people. Am I right on that? Somebody at the Almanac.

Eighty percent of people can benefit by some orthodontic intervention, malocclusion. OK, there's no shortage of dentistry. What is it? One in three people have insurance to come in and out of it. We keep doing these math out of all those millions. There is plenty to go around. And I've always said this from just a general standpoint, like you're not. You're not really in competition with each other. You're in competition with yourself.

You're in competition with all of the commodities that are out there. There is plenty of dentistry there. And keep those relationships happy. As Nicole mentioned, send those class threes out. Send your bilateral cross bites if you want to. Send your elastic cases out for your team orthodontics so you can finish them properly. Can you do it? Yeah. Should you start out with it? No. As Nick's talked, start out with the stuff that's predictable. Yeah, I love that.

So predictability is is obviously is probably the first pillar before you even get into this next topic, which is profit. Right. So so you got to believe in it. You got to trust in it. You got to know that you got the ortho behind your back. Right. And and and I'm like a risk taker. I'm an entrepreneur by spirit, but I'm not a clinician.

So I I don't know what it feels like to like do clinical and not, you know, actually I don't want to screw something up. I'm sure that's a big weight lifted up off your shoulders, knowing that you do have a specialist reviewing those cases. So predictability, we covered that. I think that's huge. I think that's really good. It's a big, big reason why Next Level partnered with you guys, because I think that's what we hear all the time with our clients, what Nicole can speak to that.

But let's talk profit. That's my favorite. I'm an ex-banker. I love profit. I love business. We don't do this for free. Let's talk profit. So so I think, Nick, you touched a little bit about this and that and that is it was a light bulb when I, when I met with your team and they started talking about the number of visits and, and, and, you know, you know, as a consultant, I get asked how many clients can you take on? Do you have too many? And what they're, what they're asking is capacity, right?

And I think every business owner, every person has a capacity that, that, that, that there's a break point, but When you have less visits, you can increase capacity. That's a game changer. That's called scaling, right? So, Doc, were you with some others before you went all in on Candid? And if the answer is yes, I think I see your head shaking. Has it been a game changer with the amount of visits? Because that's going to boost profit. It's just simple math. Dude, it's huge.

I'll answer here before Nick lies. Nick's chopping at the bit. Nick wants to talk. I'm happy to stay here. Stay quiet. Let Dr. Petrie do the talking. I've used several aligner systems. I've been predominantly with one for a very, very long time. Big name player in a game. I'll tell you, it was so... I call it the matrix. You're just in this day-to-day going through. It's kind of like a rat race of life with that aligner.

You're constantly paying high fees, high refinements, a lot of chair times, time attachments, a lot of IPR, all of which cost overhead, right? These dogs coming out of school, I mean, what is it, five hundred thousand bucks? I've heard of it. For tuition? Well, not in Spokane, but New York City for sure. Yeah. You're coming out with all this. So overhead and profit is keen on your on your eyes. Yeah. Out there. Yeah. So you talk about chair time and what it costs.

And I'm kind of losing my train of thought because I want to talk about so much. But you said why for me? Right. Well, I got challenged. my two and a half years ago by a good friend of mine, who's also in a kind of coaching space. And he's like, Arvin, what do you got to lose? And he literally kept saying, I don't know what I'm going to lose. I'm a, I'm a provider doing two, four, maybe six cases per month, going along, talking ortho, got a scanner, got, got almost two scanners.

Now I have three. And it's like, damn, what do I have to lose? Truly? Because I was like, I know this product. I know this system. I know how to do all this stuff. And I said, you know what? I might, my, My director, practice director, Jamie, was like, let's just try it. I said, fine, let's go all in, okay? And just basic metrics and math.

In the timeframe I worked with Canada, the timeframe that I worked with my previous allowed company, two hundred thousand dollars in ortho for that timeframe previously, six hundred thousand dollars in ortho that timeframe currently. Dude, extra profit? Or extra revenue. Extra revenue. Jeez. So, okay. But so revenue is one thing, but then chair time, I'm thinking dental assistant support. So, so there's the overhead of, of wages and support. Right.

But then there's also lab fees and the actual cost. Yeah. Yeah. Both of them, both of them are squeezing or not squeezing. They're, they're eliminating costs and that what happens that that means more falls to the bottom line. So I, from a, from a profit profit perspective, it takes less people to service this product and it costs less in general, in general, especially with next levels program that you guys so generous generously gave us.

But again, um and our clients the the level in and and the affordability I mean you saw you saw it hit your bottom line within how long just just switching in six months I mean it wasn't that long but the actual time frame now when I've done my numbers and did some stuff where I came on I was looking to go man that's a four hundred thousand dollar increase of the same time period prior wow you know not as much ipr going through and you know the clear liner market is so crowded it's so

crowded there's a big player in the game right And everyone's competing for that. Now, how do you compete with a guy charging thirty three ninety seven? How do you compete with the big orthodontists, right? That have lower fees are getting that traction. How do you as a young GP come in? Can you do aligners at three thousand dollars with a lot of these companies? Sure. You're going to be losing a lot of money if you get going and get that traction. You're just a pig at the trough here.

I call it the matrix here. Sometimes you just got to stop and say, man, everybody's going this way. Everyone's doing that. Well, can it pro off with something different? And then monitoring, that's the freaking deal changer. That was the game changer right there. And I know he knows it. So when you say the monitoring, I actually I want to throw that throw that this last part about profit to Nicole.

Any are your wheels turning anywhere where where where you could see our clients maximizing the opportunity? Did I did I hit both of them? And and is it a real thing? Am I talking out out the side of my mouth here? I mean, doctors can see more profit with this model. Absolutely. I mean, absolutely.

For us, we go in and we do a specific breakdown on what could be just based off of their patient base, what we know, who within that patient population suffers from malocclusion, who could benefit, where their baseline is. and saying, hey, if we train and we get candid in here and we start talking about this, we make it a goal, right? We're big on goals and coaching and setting those quarterly goals or monthly goals, what have you.

We're really breaking it down to them from a profit standpoint and what they could be getting and what they could be bringing in with the amount of time that they'd actually be spending on it. I think if we went in and did an analysis on that, it'd be a no brainer. Yeah. I mean, it's very easy to do. I think I think we should talk a little bit about team because because it takes a team, takes a village. Right. You got three scanners. You got a lot of people serving those scanners.

Nicole, that's what you're such a pro on is getting the team dialed in, you know, with this system, with this partnership. How do you see the team taking taking hold of something like this versus maybe some of the other players? And I don't I don't really want this to feel like a commercial. It is. I'm wearing a T-shirt for Pete's sakes. But the point the point is, is like this is different. And I think we got to we got to talk about it.

And I just I'm just curious, like, did they have they removed some barriers for the team? Well, yeah, I mean, it starts at the top, right? And we talk a lot about that, just even within our own company at Next Level. And if my doctor is confident in this product, if my doctor knows that he's got the backing of an orthodontist, that it's predictable, that cases he or she's dabbled in have turned out great. I mean, it starts there, right? So you've got that piece.

We've got doctor communicating it. To me, it's identifying really a strong player in the front and a strong player clinically. Does everybody have to be on board and be an ortho guru? No, not necessarily. But we want to identify at least those two key players, one in the back, one in the front. And to me, it's going in and training on that, making sure we're all saying the same thing, walking the same walk, talking the same talk.

And that goes with any procedure that we're talking about, making sure that the doctor's vision is being pulled through. And I think that when you do spend that one-on-one time with that leader within the practice that wants to take on some sort of clear aligner therapy initiative, then then it doesn't take much, especially again, when doctor when doctor is super confident in the product, the efficiency and predictability of it, which that is going to exude down to the down of the team.

So it's all about pull through and how you implement and making sure that that team believes in that vision and believes in the product as well. And sometimes that does take a third party coming in. I mean, unfortunately, we know our doctors often again go in and they want to offer a product or start something new. And again, it's that blank look.

But if you are saying the same thing, they hear doctors saying the same thing over and over, you've got a third party coming in and saying the same things, then eventually that's going to stick and they're going to start to see and believe. So for me, that's a huge win once you get everyone in a cohesive manner. Yeah, no, that's that's awesome. I guess that that's a great place to pivot to partnership.

So, you know, Nick, what do you guys mean about partnership? Like what? That's one of the three P's for you. And you guys are big on on the partnership part. What's what's the partnership mean to you as the the leader of this organization down to the GPs that are using your product? Well, I think that, you know, you get the combination of your executive coach that you're working with, right? And that's really important because they're helping goal set within your practice.

But then you need your Candid Pro account executive and the marketing support that our team is able to provide to help you with three core components. One is training. We do a great job of setting up foundationally so that your front office and back office, your clinical and your business can be set up appropriately. Do you have the financing system in place to drive patient acceptance and have the right conversations?

Does your hygiene team understand and know how to talk about malocclusion and have the right workflow and system built in. That's really critical. Do you know how to talk to patients about malocclusion and what teeth shifting over time means? Do you know the right prompts and the right questions? And then are you driving patients, both existing patients, but if you're, again, building a startup practice, new patients into the practice, raising their hand and saying, I want orthodontics.

What can I do here? And we provide, again, through our in-person account executives, through our clinical support, through our general customer support, through our US licensed orthodontists, through our faculty members, and through our marketing team, right, six different layers from the company, all built and designed to support you. And it really is choose your own adventure. If you want to lean in, we're going to lean in with you. If you want to dabble, we'll help you dabble.

Right. And I think that the amazing thing about this partnership is that you have an executive coach. You're going to help drive that accountability with you in your practice, but also with your team. And this is a team sport. You mentioned it before, right? This doesn't work if you don't get hygiene and you don't get treatment coordination and you don't get office management, you don't get everybody playing together. But when you get that, like Dr. Petrie has in his office, right?

He has fantastic team support. That's where you start having more malocclusion conversations, which lead to more patients accepting treatment, which leads to more referrals, which leads to more positive reviews, all those things coming together. So again, we help you do that. And we want to lean in with you. But you've got to want it also, right? That's the other component.

I love that you said that because half the time we're talking about stuff as executive coaches and we want it more than our clients.

I'm glad you, I'm glad you said that. But, but doc, uh, I want to ask you, so, so like, were you always a big ortho guy like day one, or this is just something that you just kind of got into and, and then to parlay that, like, how did you get the team behind you? Because I think that's, that's the big thing is, um, you came home from the seminar or whatever, and you're like, I want to do this, but just saying it doesn't make it happen. How did you do it? Because it takes a village.

You know, when I established my practice, I put advanced in the name because I was always forward thinking. I want to be a digitized office. I want to use more modern technologies, techniques, and continue to advance what we were doing in our field and bring that into my patient flow.

Part of that was Clearlight Orthodontics, which when I came out in you know, top straight wire in school and coming into my practice, I never really took off much with the ortho and then, you know, do some work with ACA and then getting a community, which I didn't have. That was huge to get my numbers up. That started about in twenty seventeen. And then that went up and kind of just sort of stagnated there.

And then it occurred to me a couple of years back that the rate limiting step in my practice was actually me. Because I was trying to be the center of the universe. I was the one going through my CE. I was going through my events, my retreats. I'd come back, like Nicole mentioned. And it's like, how do you rob some troops when they haven't woken up in the matrix and done anything different? And part of this candid leadership pathway and the pathway in general is the people component.

Okay. And basically go into and find someone to take over the clinical backside beyond me, beyond the dentist, somebody in the front side to take over on the financial aspect, the treatment coordinator, whoever's doing the money, you know, not enough to close her. This is, this is big three. And that has to come down to the rest of the team. Candid had come in and done some great introductions in office. We've gone through as a team. We set goals.

I'm going to put this out there right now because we did something which I never thought in my life was possible. But on our ten-year anniversary day, I did a hundred and fifty thousand dollars in services. Thirty-four clear liner starts with Canada. Wait, the first in one day? One day. What? We've got a few of these events now with similar numbers. And I never thought that was possible. It was possible though, because I gave the team a goal and we made it fun.

Okay. And we, we blew our goal out of the, out of the. out of the water. And part of that was like, let's have fun with this. Right. I actually, you know, I like my team. I love my team. You should like your team. You should like your team. If you don't know how to manage, you can get rid of it. Yeah. We got, we got, we got other stuff to talk about, but we took the team to the weekend in Suncadia, got a nice house. We had a fantastic time bonding.

You know, and we continue to try to have these events and set these goals that Nicola talked about earlier. They're really, really important. But mostly even back to like, what's the purpose of what we're doing all of this? You know, you've got to get down to what's your why for the practice. And part of your why is to help people. People want two things out of dentistry big time. Okay, they want white teeth. They want straight teeth. Straighter teeth and whiter in general here.

So there's a two for one, right? Forget clean teeth. Forget clean teeth. They want white teeth. They want clean areas. I don't know. but they want, they want to look good because what is this? This is emotion. We want to look at ourselves. We want to feel good about ourselves as a client, as a consumer. Okay. So give them that. Yeah. That's awesome. Nicole, anything to touch on that? Because I, I just, I think, um, uh, you can hear it in doc, in doc's voice and his passion.

And we, we don't, we get to see that sometimes in our, in our clients. And I, and it, and it does start with the leader at the top. Um, Yeah, I, I, I just, so the partnership's a little special where you guys are truly, what I'm hearing is you're truly trying to help that doctor just take their, their, their level where they're at and take it to like another level, but it doesn't have to be Dr. Petrie's level. It could be just dabbling, but you'll meet them.

Nick, that's what I heard you say is you'll meet them where they're at. A hundred percent. Yeah. That's awesome. Yeah. I think that's huge, Michael. I'm just going to say one more thing. To me, with some of the other liner companies out there, unfortunately, their support is trained to get them to be the top tier provider, that top two, four percent, and it's not realistic.

So to me, Candid and the partnership they offer, that it's okay, they give you permission, that it's okay that you're dabbling and that we're building your clinical confidence here as we go, that's huge. It's absolutely huge. Well, I mean, that's good. I mean, because you can't just be the top performer right out of the gate. You got to start somewhere, especially startups, you know? Yeah. Yeah. And it's like we talk about all the time.

You implement one thing and you do it really, really well before we move on to the next. That's right. That's right. Yeah. You can't, you can't be number one as a startup. You got, you got to take baby steps. So I love it. I love it.

Guys, this is kind of the moment of the show where we got to shut down and start closing out any, any last things that we all want to get out, get out there about the topic and getting aligners into, into your business and taking, taking your business to another level. Whoever wants to jump in as final thoughts.

I would say, look, there's a reason that nine out of ten dentists who go through clear liner training with other companies end up doing one case or fewer per month, right? There's a reason for that. It's because other systems are not built around you. They're not built for the general dentist to make you successful.

And so I would challenge the assumption that just because something's been around for a long time, or it's a brand name or a company that you know, and there's a lot of them, it's not just one, there's all the big public dental supply companies, they've all got something.

I would challenge you to open your eyes in a similar way to what Dr. Petrie did and give this a shot because I think you will see from a predictability standpoint and then, of course, the efficiency and profitability coming thereafter that you can do orthodontics and you can be supported. And we want to help you do that. And yes, you might start with one case a month or one case every couple months, but our team is there to help you grow.

So if growth is something that you care about, then, you know, again, this is, I think, the best option in the market for you. Doc, anything to add to that? I mean, that's about as good as it gets right there. I really want to speak to the dentist, you know, with docs. It's like, man, give yourself permission. You know, I hammered down on permission here because I gave myself permission. I gave myself permission to fail. And I didn't fail. In fact, we blew it up.

And it was the opposite of what I expected there because of my mindset. So give yourself permission to do something and I'll know that it's predictable. You're going to make money at it. Okay. And you're going to have partnership and support around this community because we dentists, we hate being alone. We feel that way a lot of the time.

Okay. So when you get into this, speaking from a doc, that's been every little paper imaginable, Nicole has been someone I've known for a few years, even through the rep world, we know what we struggle with. Right. And Ken is offering something that you can bring into your practice very predictably. That's awesome. That's perfect, dude. That's perfect. Nicole, anything to put a cherry on top before we shut this down? Yeah, absolutely.

I would just invite our clients who are listening to this, our prospective clients, reach out. Let's have a conversation. I'm happy to give you my opinion. I've been doing this for thirteen years with experience. Many different aligner companies, Bracket and Wire, all the things. And I just invite you just to call, pick up the phone, reach out to us. Let's have a conversation on why. And I'll give you the pros and cons of all of them.

But at the end of the day, I think you'll find that to me, what Candid can offer you individually and wherever you're at in your journey, it's really going to stand out. So I do invite anyone to reach out to us. That's perfect. You got to have fun. And to the listeners out there thinking ownership and maybe holding back, to me, this is something like a lot of things. But dentistry is the business of dentistry with the DSOs and some consolidation going on. You have to be a business owner now.

You can't just kind of hang out, do some dentistry and think it's going to be fine. um fortunately the industry is so solid still default rates are crazy low uh still but um there is a big difference between someone crushing and someone just kind of making it and you gotta just put more tools in your toolbox and maybe it's a coach like us maybe it's candid maybe Maybe it's something else, but you got to find more tools to put in your toolbox so that you can differentiate yourself.

And it's things like this that get me excited about the industry and you all to think about startups and acquisitions. Get in the game and start having fun like Dr. Petrie is. And so... I guess with that being said, guys and lady, thank you so much for spending time with me tonight. Down below in the description, we're going to have some information, some links, and some opportunities for you all to get in touch with the Candid crew.

Even Dr. Petrie, I'm sure you'll be available to support people if they have some questions or some about maybe even buying. You bought your practice and you went through an almost bankruptcy situation, it sounds like. So he's got some grit. He's got some grit as his ownership journey unfolded. So again, guys, thanks so much for your time tonight. And let's close it down. Thanks, Michael. Thanks, Nick. Thanks, Doc. See you guys. Let us know how you like the show. Rate us on Apple and Spotify.

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