Welcome back to the SPG podcast. I'm your host, Alex Sharp. And today we have a special episode. It's going to be the first in a new series on the SPG pod called the SPG Doctor Spotlight series. And I cunningly chose the first guest on purpose. We got Dr. Mike Scharp, cousin Mike Scharp here with me today.
And with this series, what we want to do is to allow everyone, all of your listeners, both internally to the company and externally, to get a bird's eye perspective in not only the day in the life of an SPG doc, but also origin stories, how we got here and what we're excited about for the future. So without any further ado, cousin Mike, how's it going? It's going great. How you doing? Man, I'm great. It's October and you can saw the leaves are changing. Pumpkins are being carved.
Prostumes are being made in the, in the, in this, in sharp beast, I guess you're sharp west. So in household sharp beast, lots of Halloween decor going up and operations are being made for trick or treating. But what about you guys? Yeah, we're getting ready. We got some trunk or treats coming up with the kids. My life's working on Halloween costumes.
They're wearing their old Halloween costumes from last year that are, you know, the legs that end at their shins because they're, my kids are growing so fast and so much. But we're, we're excited. It is pretty fun. It's a fun time of year. It's an eventful time of year. And I wanted to start out our conversation because I'm frankly curious about this, but why dentistry? Why dentistry? Like my origin story. Oh, yeah. I mean, this, I think this will sound pretty familiar to most people.
I went to this dental conference and this guy had this cool dental laser. And while he was using it, this little spider went down in the laser beam and then happened to bite me and just, um, didn't happen to be blue and red too. And there's a blue and red spider that bit me just made me want to be a test, you know, got the got the bite for it. Let's see. I was actually going to do graphic design in high school and, uh, I was, I was in Texas. I was a missionary for my church and we met this guy.
And I remember he told us he was a doctor in this small little town and he said, he's like, guys, I make bags of money, but I'm never home with my family. If I could do it again, I'd be a dentist. I was like, huh, maybe I'll look into this dentist thing. And I, I called my, my dad's dentist who he worked with and was obviously a patient with that guy. They worked together ultra dent. And my first day shadowing, he offered me a job. So I started working there just as a hygiene assistant.
And then when I was up at Weber State doing pre dental, I met a pediatric dentist up there and I started working for him. And I just found that I loved working with kids. It was a blast every day. So I full gear was going to be a pediatric dentist. I went to dental school. Like I was the main, you know, front runner. Everyone knew I was going to be the pediatric dentist. And then like year three, I was like, nah, I'm done with this. You started working on kids.
And then you're like, oh, you know, it wasn't as bad during dental school. It was more like, I don't want to do three more years of school. But then definitely I got to Oklahoma just in a GP on DSO practice. And yeah, with kids, it was just like, they're really fun. When you're the assistant, you just get to polish their teeth, but it's a whole different ballgame. You got to have them hold still while you're trying to do fillings. It's not as much fun.
It's interesting because the actual work involved in pediatric dentistry, like if you were doing it on a type of dog, dead simple, but it's not the, it's not the teeth part. It's the everything else around the teeth part. I will say though, on a type of not doing two stainless steel crowns back to back is a cinch. But in the mouth, it's a nightmare trying to give both those things on. So I was doing, you know, just regular GP. I was in this small town, Oklahoma doing a lot of dentures.
And I remember the old doctor who had kind of retired and sold his practice to the DSO. Anytime he came in, just like talk to people, he'd see me doing a denture and just tried to talk me out of it. How much he hated dentures and they're not profitable. It's just horrible. But some that I kind of like doing dentures and I found I hated fillings. And then it was actually a buddy of mine who, you know, I'd listened to shared practices through the years.
And we're at a baseball game and he told me that he was talking with Matt G about some practice locations to do this denture implant kind of model. And I had no idea what that was. I was like, do tell me more about this. You mean I don't have to do fillings and stuff all day, every day I get to just do surgeries. And that friend was actually the one who was talking about Idaho Falls, who was trying to figure it out. But he always wanted to be his own owner. His own owner, that sounds funny.
He always wanted to own his own office. But he actually bought an office one town over and you know, when he passed on this office, I was like, Hey, you're you're you're out of your Idaho Falls. You good if I jump on it. So then I called Matt G. and we figured it out, got here and the rest is history.
It's interesting when I talked to someone like you who had a similar origin story to me where you experience enough about the other side of dentistry to appreciate the simplicity of dentures and implants, because some people come in just full bore. Like think about if you would have gone to Peds, right? You would have gone full bore into Peds.
You would have done your dental school, your residency gone and been a pediatric dentist and been relatively none the wiser as to what those other adjacent opportunities might have been. And I almost did the same thing. I thought I was going to do Peds and then I graduated. I did GP stuff for a while, Medicaid, mill, dentures, fillings, and canals, all that stuff, surgical extractions. And I was going to go back to Peds residency, but then I just ended up not doing it.
But I think for those of us that have experienced the alternative that have lived the life of doing back to back to back to back, interproximal fillings under the gun and like it's very, very hard, but back, back, back breaking work for relatively little compensation, high degree of complexity, not a lot of fulfillment relative to what we're doing today.
I feel like those of us that have experienced that have a different appreciation for the relative simplicity, even though it's not easy, it's more simple, the relative simplicity of certainty and dentures, et cetera. So is that what you found where you you appreciate the more truncated menu of treatment that you offer? Definitely. You know, I had two hygienists that I didn't get along with that great. And we were just running all day every day. I actually have two herniated discs.
So my back wasn't so much pain. For a little bit, I was actually talking with a dental insurance guy, like, you know, like it's sit for 10 hours a day and deny crowns or something. Like, because I was, I was in that much pain that I was trying to figure out what to do. You and the words were there.
So you know, one of the things that attracted me about this is that you can do a couple of big surgeries and I honestly, my back doesn't even hurt that bad after those surgeries, because you know, my other time I get to spend focusing on the patient. It's a lot better as far as getting that relationship with the patient because, you know, before I've got a patient sitting in the chair waiting to get numb.
I got another patient that I'm trying to finish, you know, those inter proximal fillings and I'm sitting with one hygienist. The other one's waiting for me and I'm trying to have a good copy exam getting to know this patient. Like, there's no way I could have that relationship with those patients. So huge difference being in this type of dentistry where like Dr. Vorthold always says, we're a little more like a boutique, you know, we get a, I get to spend an hour with this patient.
I get to chat with them, get to know them and then do this amazing life changing stuff is it's certainly better than the old way, the GP way. And I'm, you know, we're biased in this company, but my buddies and I, we still, we still chat and we have a text group and they're usually sent, Hey, check out this crazy number two root canal. They had an extra mesial buccum canal and something. I'm like, Oh, I don't miss it at all. Yeah. Yeah. Well, there's so much to say in response to that.
And so many follow up questions to ask, but the thing that I come back to, I'm in this text conversation with several dental school buddies. And in that, in that text conversation, there's six of us and we run the gamut of all the different types of dentistry that you could be doing. Like one's a surgeon or a surgeon, one's a small GP office with like two team members, one's like a big mega group guy up in North Arkansas.
The guy that is, he bought his dad's practice and he inherited the two team members from his dad. He still dips x x rays and, and does his thing. And it's just interesting to me how our perception of dentistry is so colored by our direct experience because we only know what we know. And so when I try to leave little bread crumbs of like, Hey, have you thought about this? Or have you thought about that? Or have you listened to this podcast? Or have you, have you considered x, y, z?
For some people, there's just like this reticence to even consider the adjacent possible to think about there's another way to do it because they haven't experienced anything else beyond what's in their own four walls. And so I love hearing your, your experience and your origin story around like, Hey, I listened to podcast. I talked to people. I saw I tried my hand at these different types of dentistry before I sort of landed.
I, I, I pinballed my way around and then found out, Oh, this is, this is what I want to do. So what do you think led you to that level of security? I guess you could say around the choice to say, you know what, dentures and implants is my thing. I know there's countless other ways to practice dentistry. And for me, in addition to the, the fact that you can spend time with patients and, and achieve, you know, slits in one thing, like what attracted you to this model?
And maybe this wasn't like what attracted me or what's keeping me. My buddies and I, this tech group we talk about, it often comes up about how much people hate the dentist, right? I mean, how often, and I see, you know, memes on the real world dentistry Facebook group about like, you know, you meet that patient for the first time, you say, Hello, I'm here to help you not be in pain and they're just yelling at you. I hate you already. You know, like I hate the dentist.
That's the first thing that comes out of the mouth to meet you too. Yeah, like it's, I feel like it was a pretty common thing. And my buddies still always talk about it. And honestly, I can't think of a patient that has said that to me in this model. Like patients coming. I have maybe can ask the other doctors, but I don't know if I'm just that good. Just to say it's got to be the name, right? It's the name. It's the name. I think that patients are coming to us because they need us, right?
They want to chew again. They want to smile. Their confidence is is shocked versus, you know, a regular patient. I'm going to the dentist every six months because I got to keep my teeth clean. Ah, I need a flipping root canal. Like, of course, the dentist wants a new BMW. So he's giving me this crown. Like there's just a different perspective in a GP model that patients, you know, even though I do a filling on you and now you're mad at me because that tooth is sensitive.
Well, yeah, I just cut into a living tissue. But here everyone is wanting to see us. They want this change in their life. They know that we can do something to improve that quality of their life. And they just are so much more appreciative. And I didn't realize how much that resonates in my deep in my soul. You know, it makes you just excited to wake up and makes you excited to want to get to work and see the new patient that you're going to be able to help.
Dude, I don't hear how mentally resilient you are when you hear nothing against you, but I hate the dentist. I hate to do that. Only times a day, like there's days where I went that 20 times a day, whether it was a new patient or an existing patient, or they made some kind of off color, uh, slight against the profession or the role that we play. And it's, it was generally ingest.
It was generally tongue and cheek, but you hear them however many times a day, every day, five days a week for how many years you eventually internalize part of that. And it definitely affects your view of coming to work every day, the work that you do. And as you were talking, I wrote down that it seems like part of the distinction between the insurance driven recall patient that's in for maintenance and is in the dental hamster wheel year in your house.
They view it as either obligation and or commodity versus when we are at SPJ, we're marketing the rep to the patient. So we're, we're selecting for and filtering for patients that are seeking us out, like they're explicitly looking for what we do. So there's a self-select and that happens. And I think what you're experiencing is the result of people identifying that they have a need.
They have that itch and they're looking for the right person to scratch it, which puts them arguably in a much, much healthier psychological place in general, coming to see us than what you might see in your garden variety GP office. Definitely. Yeah, I think, I think that's an important thing to bear in mind because I've been doing these SPG focus days with several of our doctors recently and I want to schedule one with you because I want to come to medical and I want to hang out.
So that can be an excuse to do that. It doesn't. Together. Yeah, we'll make it happen. One thing that we talk about in those focus days, particularly for people that are newer to dentures and implants, newer to surgery, is it's easy to get bogged down in the lows and the low lows.
And what I tell some of our newer doctors is dentures and implants, it's the highest of the highs and the lowest of the lows when dealing with the procedures that we do, the impact that we can have, the transformations that we're able to assist in. But then at the same time, because we're doing these larger cases that are more transformational, there's more moving parts, more potential for people's biology to not cooperate fully.
And sometimes things happen because it's a complicated service that we render. And so a lot of time is spent on handling the troughs and not necessarily appreciating the peaks. So how have you learned to evolve your mindset around appreciating the peaks while at the same time getting more resilient against the troughs? Well, yesterday I had a patient that he paid in full three months ago for a double all-on-four teeth are really bad shape. And his A1C was just so high.
So the idea, he had paid in full obviously, so we've just been keeping in touch with them and okay, it's going to be three months before you can get your A1C and he's actually getting it checked tomorrow. But we had those in-office A1C tests and he came in yesterday to, he had a tooth that broke. So he was wanting to go, essentially I just kind of smoothed off a sharp edge so it wasn't cutting his tongue.
So I asked him if we could do an in-office A1C test just to kind of make sure it's calibrated, he's going to go get his official one with his doctor. And it was 9.7. Well still, I mean before he was like in the 11 range. And I mean, I had another patient that she dropped a ton of points in three months. So that was surprising. So this guy, only three months time, he did drop some numbers, that's good.
When I said, you know, we're at a 9.7, he was visibly like, ah, it was the low up of lows, right? He was just, he knew that that meant, I mean, my test isn't that far off, probably from the official one. So he knew that that means he's not getting his teeth right now and I can tell he was visibly, you know, not happy with that, bummed out. So with that low of the low, my goal in that moment was to be very positive. Like, yeah, these bad things happen, but not, not put it on myself.
Not like, Hey, this is my fault. This is where that implant failed. That's what I, you know, obviously I'm trying to learn what I can do better. But like, this isn't necessarily my fault. Like let's talk to the patient. Let's get them excited. Let's say, Hey, you know, Dr. Voreholt in a recent podcast with you guys gave the, the quick bullet points of implant complications. Like, unfortunately, this is what I'm seeing in my experience. This is happened. You know, this is what's going to happen.
And my best recommendation is we do this and get these results. So I took that with him and said, you know, unfortunately it didn't drop quite as fast, but that's, that's totally normal. It's not going to necessarily take three months. Like that was, that's pretty rare to have it that fast. So you're doing awesome. We obviously dropped, I think almost two points, like keep working at it. Keep on those medications.
Do an awesome with your diet and we're going to get there soon and give them some options. So I mean, the, the highs are easy to be excited about the lows. It's taking those times and saying, how can I put a positive spin on this? How can I get the patient to be excited about? Okay, we're not quite there yet, but we're going to get there, you know, I think that's a wonderful framing. And again, shout out to Voreholt for that wonderful heuristic that we can use to, to die in that conversation.
And I think too, with a situation like that, like you said, there's a lot to celebrate because the other option would be, okay, we plow forward without any care for your A1C, knowing full well that we could put you in a compromised condition. If we don't do everything we can on the front end to be successful, because if we built the house on a faulty foundation, six months down the road, then we're restarting and then we're even further behind.
And so being proactive sets up the high likelihood of his investment being protected by being patient on the front end. Yeah. And then you mentioned the highs. I mentioned this in the, in the SPD, SPG doctor chat, but the other day we delivered our first Zirconia final. And it was, it was a little bit nerve wracking this patient. She always was giving us our time. She was this patient that she wouldn't pay us before the procedure. She brought two checks and was like, here's one.
I'm not going to give you the other check until the day of the procedure, but we're like, well, we need to jump a little higher, jump a little higher. Really? That's 100% what happened. But we were like, like, Sorin had already booked his flight out, but she wasn't paying. So we were just like, all right, let's just go forward with it. She's probably going to bring that check. She she's been interesting lady. We've had a couple of hiccups with her case and it's taken a lot longer.
Even her smile line on our first PMMA was like kind of visible. So to make a new one, but we put on that Zirconia final. And I'll be honest, even as I was putting it on, I kind of saw the transition line and I was like, Hey, grab me that PMMA. I'm trying to compare them to make sure that this not get quite milled just right. But when we sat her up, I had her smiling as she laughs a lot and it was pretty funny. She was smiling her biggest and couldn't see the transition line.
The teeth looked amazing. Like I mentioned in the in the chat that I didn't expect it to be as emotional as I mean, I almost teared up like it was such a cool experience to take her from the initial appointment to this amazing new smile and just looks like a different person. It was so when you have those high moments, it's remembering those letting those last and make an impact to look forward to the next time that's going to happen again.
Oh, well said, because there's there's levels of how big of a win that was. Obviously it was a win for the patient. It was just as much of a win for you because you got to say, all right, this is rubber stamped done start to finish roof of concept of what we do in this model. And every time there's a first in a practice, it's amazing for your confidence.
It's amazing for the team's confidence because then they get validation of a sort of saying, like, this is what we talk about all day, every day with all of our patients. And when they could see it and they can sense it and they can understand that, oh, my gosh, we did this patient's crying, patients thrilled. Oh, that's a new lease on the opportunity that we have to work with the next person. Another theme from the recent focus days is every single practice you try to dig.
And I try to say, okay, who is that one patient? That if you could clone them and bring them in all day, every day to get them to agree to treatment, see the value of what we provide, receive the care, get the transformation, and then just have a whole assembly line of those people. Who would that person be? And we talk about that person by name.
We, we get really clear on what about the consultation went well, what about the execution of the procedure went well, what about the restoration went well, and then what made us use that person as kind of the mascot of the poster child for what we do at our denture and implant practices.
And when you look at things that way, you understand that every patient that comes through the door, if we handle our discussions the right way and we build sufficient value, has the potential to be that next person. And it's really tough for the teams to resonate with that until they've experienced what you just described, which is the proof of concept, the consummation of all that work months and months and months, and like any hiccups and any revisions and any weeks to the PMMA.
Like once that patient gets across the finish line, it's huge for that patient. But I would argue that it's even bigger for your team. Yeah. I like that perspective on scale. What do you think changed? Like when when your team experienced that, did you notice any, any modifications and how they approached their work, how they adjusted their patient care or what changed for them, what light bulbs might have gone off before that case compared to after?
I mean, there was, you know, I, the whole me feeling a little bit emotional during that case. I think part of that was even like my team was starting to tear up. So I think what changed is just like you said, a rubber stamp, seeing the, the fulfillment and the completion of this amazing case and giving some extra energy to us to say, hey, like this is awesome. What can we do to get more of this? I mean, even I jumped on with you a few minutes late.
We were having a huddle and just my team was like in a really positive way, trying to figure out, hey, we saw these ads for, you know, for our office that were just like, hey, get implant dentures and they're like, we got to be telling people that this is the all on four. We got to be pushing for this and more so that patients understand this isn't just a dentures. You know, before they even come in, we're seeing that this is an all on four.
They were just so excited about that procedure to get the word out there, even more, more patients are able to understand what change could happen in their life. That's so, that's so key. Like we have to be so cautious with how we position ourselves. That's wonderful feedback on the ads. One thing that I talked about with Dr. Garrett in Springfield yesterday at our focus day was that, you know, at SPG, obviously all on four is the premier option.
It's the offering for whom most for which most patients are candidates and can benefit the most from. And sometimes we can articulate that value more adeptly than we can with other patients. But we're talking about how sometimes you have to crawl before you run. And for some patients, that means. Finances are what they are. They have a lot of infection in their mouth.
Sometimes all you can really do under the circumstances is get the teeth out, get them in a healing denture and then count your wins that way, setting expectations appropriately and then laying the groundwork for future work for next step is rather than like, hey, this is this is it. This is all you got. Good luck. Go get them tiger with your with your dentures. It's this will get you by this will give you something to smile with and hopefully function with.
But when you're ready, when the when the stars align, we're here to be able to convert those healing dentures into your your prototype teeth to to carry you forward until we get the finals. So what have you learned about nursing those leads, even if even if the patient has done some level of care, but you know, hasn't quite reached the pinnacle of what's possible with with their restoration.
How do you handle those people that are maybe in the intermediate stages that you see, like, man, well, they really need this, but they aren't quite ready. We actually just had that. Yes, or two days ago, there was a husband and wife that came in. Both sets of teeth are pretty rough. Needing something, but they discuss with us that they just bought a house or they built a house and they were like, we just had to pay to closing closing costs because you had to do a closing at the construct.
And then we're going to have a little bit of a construction loan and a closing on the actual closing. So like we are just like bare minimum expenses. We can afford right now. But we really want to get our teeth fixed. Now, I could have taken that a couple of different ways. I could have said, great, you have no money. Let's just talk dentures. Like you said, I could have said, well, the option is all on four or bust. You got to leave. Sorry, go somewhere else.
I made sure to highlight the the big benefits of all on four, discuss it. I don't remember who told me this, but a way, a good way to word that is I would be doing you a disfavor if I didn't at least tell you the benefits of this all on four. But then because I knew that they probably couldn't financially do that, I didn't want to harp on that too much. So I spent a lot of my time saying, look, your best option then is going to be this immediate denture.
But I really stressed about how awful a lower denture is without some type of implants. Like you're going to hate it. You like really, I know you can't afford a lot right now, but let's look at even a two implant over denture option. And I mean, they haven't for sure done it yet. They're going to get back with us. I think today or tomorrow. But they both left really positively interested in getting it to snap in with a regular upper.
Like with the goal, like somewhere down the road, we can do that. I don't know if that answers the question. But I think that situation was just great about this is what the best option is. Let's get there Sunday. I know you're not right here right now. So I don't want to rush you out the door, but like your second best option is here. Let's really avoid this other option because I know you're going to hate a regular denture.
Give them their options, help them know what's really going to be best in their current situation. That is the perfect way to handle that. Because think about everything that they told you, right? They've deferred dental care for a while because their teeth are in the shape that they're in. So you know that they're more reactive than proactive. That's a data point.
Another data point is that they have some degree of financial literacy and ability because they're closing on one house, playing another. So they aren't completely destitute. They have options. So that's another data point. You know that right now they are in more of a financial crunch than they typically are or they wouldn't be selling one house and building another. So you know that they tend to have access to capital. This is just not one of those times.
And so this is a perfect example of someone who needs a longer sales cycle to get to the end goal that they want and that you built value for. So I love the idea of saying, this will get you by. This is step one. Ultimately, I recommend that we go steps two and three down the road, but we can build the groundwork now to get you out of pain, get the infection out of there, let your overall general health benefit from getting the bad teeth out.
Give you something that can that you can function with and smile with and live with for a while, knowing that we can always upgrade whenever the situation changes. What do you feel like when when you're connecting with patients like that? I've listened to a lot of consultations in my day.
I've done tons of mistakes when I've tried to connect with patients and these types of appointments where they come in for a free consult and sometimes you paint yourself verbally into a corner and then you're just like, stupid, stupid. Why did I say that? What have you learned about making your language accessible to patients? Because I think as dentists, this is not something that's the case across the board.
So I don't want to paint with too broad of a brush, but in general, if there's a miss in the doctor's part of the consultation, it's that we tend to overcomplicate and over explain and over educate out of the purest intention of leaving no stone unturned and to have patients go in eyes wide open, we tend to run in circles and then at worst, completely scare the patient off by oversharing. So what have you done to hone your approach to simplifying that message to patients?
Maybe it's just a sharp last name. I mean, I can I could get talking, you know, one big thing is the watching of watching the replay, right? Filming it, looking back at it, seeing what I'm doing that's wrong. The first time I experienced that when I worked at that pediatric dentist's office and they brought in a secret shopper. And the idea was it was going to be an actual secret shopper, but my boss called me and said, Hey, we're going to use this as a training tool.
And I need, I don't want any other assistant to grab this patient. I want you to grab this patient so we can have a good training video. So then as a as an office, we watch this back and I'm having to watch myself interact with this patient and the whole time I'm playing with my ring and stuff. I didn't even know I was doing that. So it was very obvious, like, wow, I need to stop doing that thing. So I recently, you know, we've sent a couple of videos over to Derek and Heather.
I feel like I'm a pretty personable guy. I I and they even said, yeah, I can help the patient feel relaxed, but it's easy for me to get talking to my own stories and not spend time double clicking as our new term is on what their needs are. So that's been a big thing I've been trying to work on. And I even heard it one time. Years ago, someone said, be interested. Don't be interesting. Think about them, ask them follow up questions, figure out what's going on.
Then don't try and tell your own stories and make yourself seem like this, this cool person. So by being vulnerable, by sending those videos for people to evaluate, by rewatching them myself, and then just taking that information that they're giving me. And, you know, sometimes it's hard in the middle of a of a consult.
But if you're constantly doing, you know, reviewing that, thinking of those options, of better ways to interact with them, I feel like that's helped me slowly get better at double clicking. Still got work to go. What I think is a misguided notion is that we are fixed commodities. We are we are we are the way we are, that how we communicate with people, how effectively we build value for treatment, like people treat those facets of each person as a constant.
When in reality, to your point, the more you value listening to game film and and dicing it up and thinking about what could have done, been done better or man, that explanation took two and a half minutes and it was clunky and I could have been 30 seconds.
Those little things add up and that SPG denturing implant model is nothing, if not a big amalgamation of a bunch of little things like that, that got up into either yes or no. And to your point, I mean, and I want to show you for being in like the top 2% of people that see the value of doing this type of thing, like Derek will listen to this and he'll be grand and near to ear.
But I think for a lot of patients going back to the the psychographic profile of that couple that came in to see you, people that are reactive, people that put things off, people that allow their wealth to get into those dire straits to be a candidate for what we do, they're reactive. They don't make those types of big earth shattering life changing decisions lightly. And so for someone like that, that's oftentimes looking for an excuse to say no, me, because to me, that's a logical next step.
If someone hesitates to that degree to where their teeth are non-restorable, then it stands to reason that they're coming into an office and looking for any little thing, any little excuse to say, ah, it's not the right time. I wasn't meant to be or I wasn't the right fit for me.
And what I used to train my my GP team on was the whole concept of links in the chain that lead to case acceptance from the marketing pieces, from how the phone is answered, to how the office smells when you walk in, to how they're greeted when they sign in, to how they're brought back into the the dental layer, you know, on, on, into the, the heart of the practice, all the different things add up. And in order for success to happen, those links in the chain have to be solid.
And all that takes us one little thing, like, ah, the, the arm on the extra unit looks gross, or I have a speck of blood on the ceiling, or there's too much dust on the dental lamp, like whatever, whatever ridiculous thing it is, people are scraping any type of excuse.
And so for you, to your point, any type of fidgeting or things that we say that we don't realize that we're saying or verbal ticks or crutches that we, that we use, the more that we remove those from our vocabulary and from our tendencies, we're just removing excuses from, from, from people when, when they could potentially say no. So I love that concept.
I love that you, you see the benefit of doing constant improvement, in addition to the, the fidgeting, because we all fidget sometimes when we talk to people, what are some of the verbal things that you've, that you've heard yourself say that one further investigation, you think, maybe I could have substituted this for that. Well, the fidgeting is funny because I'm sitting on my office chair. So if you're, if you're watching this, I, I realize I'm moving back and forth a bunch.
I will say one thing with the verbal fidgeting, using the correct language. Since I've been in the dental field for years now being an assistant, I feel like I'm pretty used to speaking in layman's terms, using hopefully words that are more understandable to the patient. But as far as things I'm saying, I think it was, again, it was either Derek or Heather talking about like there are details of the patient. Don't that the patient doesn't care about.
And if I ever find myself drawing on their panel, the angled implant, I'm like, why am I drawing an angled implant? Like they don't care that there's an angled implant, right? They care about, am I going to have teeth again? Am I going to be able to chew? So that's something verbally I'm trying to lately focus on, of not geeking out on the details. Again, they don't really care about this specific thing.
Let's figure out what they want in their life and talk that treatment towards what their goals are. That to me at least seems like a little bit of vocal fidgeting when I'm saying words that even if I'm dumbing it down, it's details that don't need to be discussed. Keeping first things first and keeping what's most important front and center. And yeah, it's for them. It's establishing, can I am I candid it?
Because the more that we promote some degree of scarcity around like, yeah, some people are candid. So we got to make sure that you're a candidate. Like that's a great, like little scarce door to walk through so that I'm a candidate for the for the best procedure. That's awesome. And I think you're right. There's a fine line between any type of visual cues and then overdoing it with like angles and stuff.
Like what I really enjoyed was when I was watching Grady do consoles and Reno, he had the big screen in front at the toe of the chair, the six o'clock position. And he was on either the laptop or the desktop. I can't remember. It could have been an iPad, but on the front screen and he was just drawing different lines to say like, here's your draw bone. Here's what we look for to see if you're a candidate. Luckily, I'm checking the measurements here.
And fortunately you fall into that camp where you are a candidate. Here's what I recommend. And so pictures worth a thousand words, but you're right. It can be very easily overcomplicated if you're not careful. What have you learned about when you're explaining some of the minutia? Because even even if we speak about it super high level, there's going to be some degree of dental lingo that has to get communicated to the patients.
What are some of your favorite ways to explain convoluted dental terminology? Cause I always teach about, let's say procedure instead of surgery. You know, let's, let's say, um, to like prototype teeth rather than temporary teeth, because there's a subtle difference in the perceived value of prototype teeth versus temporary teeth. This came up shout out to Sarasota.
When we were in Sarasota, we spent an hour and a half going through all the different steps to all the different appointments that we do because there was a newer dental assistant. And that was the best use of our time because we wanted all the team members to be able to explain things the same way using the same language. There was consistency because they had a situation where a patient was coming in for a wax try in, but the patient came in thinking that they were getting their final teeth.
And so we were, we were thinking about, okay, how, how could that have happened? How could the patient have received that signal when we thought we were sending a different signal? And what we came down, what we came to understand was that a patient doesn't have a freaking clue what a wax prior is. If, if to the uninitiated for all we know that could be, that could be final teeth.
So coming up with lingo that's more explicitly describing what we're doing, like measurement appointment or like prototype check or just something that is more easy to understand. What have you learned about using that patient facing language to your advantage? Just the other day I heard and not no problem at all to her, but my assistant told the patient, hey, we're going to go take a panel and I try and put my patient, myself and that patient spots afterwards.
I was like, hey, you know, obviously it's a panel, but like, what are we doing? We're taking a panel with the hexapano. So just saying, hey, we're going to go take another image. We're going to get another x-ray or, you know, a scan or something using, trying to put yourself in that perspective of what the patient is thinking.
As far as the, the confusion about appointments, again, I'm trying to think of ways that, like, hey, this next visit is another like, you know, sometimes I'll say the wax try in, but then I'll take an extra second to say what that is, is we have teeth in wax. I'm such a hands guy. I have to like use my hands. It probably doesn't help the patient at all. In fact, funny side story, I talk with my hands so much that one time we were driving somewhere.
I was sitting shocked at my wife's like, sit on your hands and keep telling me that story. And I physically struggled to tell the story because I couldn't move my hands. Anyway, I, I tell the patient like we're putting teeth in wax. That's movable so we can try it in your mouth. But then if there's issues, if there's problems, you don't like the shade because those teeth are in a hunk of wax, we can pull them out and change them to however you want.
So maybe even just a slight extra explanation, like this is not your final set yet. Even then you explain all that. The next visit, they're still going to come and say, this is my final teeth, right? Like, no, it's not. You remember the 10 minute discussion we had, but thinking of ways to explain that better. Even just, I was looking at a panel the other day with a patient and right on the edge of if there's enough bone for an all on four because of the sinuses.
So I'm trying to think of like, how do I explain this to the patient with some level of urgency to say, hey, right now we can probably do an all on four. But if we wait six months, a year or two years, the sinus is going to lose less bone. So I, I said, hey, the sinus is kind of like a balloon. Look here. This is where the line probably used to be. You lost your teeth years ago and like a balloon at sinus is growing. It's going to keep getting worse and worse.
You're going to have less and less bone. Again, I guess I'd an interview the patient afterwards to see if that made sense. But in my mind, that was a good explanation to help them hopefully have some urgency. Yeah, urgency is the name of the game.
And this is something that I talked about with our doctors that are at the GP office here in Arkansas recently is we were talking about case acceptance and we were talking about, hey, we've seen patient acceptance, like the percentage of people saying yes to something has been going down. And it's easy to say like, okay, insurance driven people. They're wanting to wait till the first of the year to start care, whatever it is.
And my question was, how much emphasis are we placing on creating urgency and highlighting the problem that we're solving rather than tripping over ourselves to be the answer guy? Because the more that we talk about the true nature of the rodent need, how the time is now by delaying care, we open up the door to a litany of potential problems that could stem from this early stage problem right now.
And if done well, you're piloting enough of the challenges and problems and potential pitfalls that they're asking you for the solution, which is a completely different place to be psychologically as a patient than if you're just being clunked over the head with you need an all on form. Like it's it's subtle, but it's really, really important to do what you said. And because some people come in, they don't need a problem with the urgency reverting.
They have a wedding coming up, like the urgency is there. And then you spend your time. Building value for something else. But if someone comes in and doesn't really understand the predicament that they're in, then you're right. You spend a little bit extra time talking about what could happen if things are left undone. Well, Mike, why don't you excited about for 2025? I mean, that'll be, you know, we started December of, I guess, 2023. So we're coming up on a year now.
So just the, you know, getting busier, we're still definitely in that kind of startup stage. It feels like sometimes. So getting to a point where our names getting out there more, where people in Idaho falls in the surrounding areas, when they think of, I need this, they call us. We have a funny all the time we get phone calls for dentures by design. It's a, a denturist in town. I mean, I had a guy yelling at me. I'm so sick of my denture.
You guys put my mouth and I'm, I got my appointment at nine o'clock. And I'm like, we don't have you at nine o'clock. What's your name? And he says, I'm like, where, where were you seeing a dentures? My design, like, yeah, that's not us. Um, so I feel like that denture, that, that, then, then tourist has been here years and is kind of a household name. People think of dentures. They think of dentures by design.
So what I'm excited for is to be that alternative place because nothing to throw them under the bus, but we get a lot of patients that say that maybe it's not as friendly over there. They really like the dentures, but maybe the staff aren't as friendly. So us putting our name out there that we are a great place to come, that when people think I need dentures, I need implants that they're coming to us first.
I will say we get so many patients in this model that have told us how frustrated they were, that their dentist sent them to the period on us to put the implants in and they have to go back to the dentist. Like that they hate that. So I couldn't tell you how many times people have said, Oh, I wish I would have known about you guys last year. Cause I could have just got this all done with you guys.
So getting to the point where we're not, I wish I would have known about you guys getting to the point where we're like, Oh, hey, let's, let's go over to item of files. Interesting. You just articulated so well.
Our reason for existing because too often patients are put through that wrist mill of they go to the GP, they get a consultation with the period on us, then they go to the world surgeon and then they get all their teeth out and then they have to go back to the general dentist and they're paying tons of people for lots of different work and it's hard to understand. It's hard for the right hand to know what the left hand is doing.
And in our model, top to bottom, one person's responsible for the outcome, all of it. And we pass the savings along to the patient. And so the market needs it. People benefit from it. People themselves, patients themselves understand how inefficient the other options can be.
And so that just speaks to the need that, that we are, that we are filling and the, the inch that we're scratching and, you know, those big flows out, Mike, I just want to shout you out for, you know, learning so much over the past year, being such a sponge, you're, you're one of my favorite people to talk to and work with just because you have some of the strongest indications of that commitment to constantly improving that is so necessary for success in this model.
And I would argue in life in general. So I just want to say thank you for, for, for working with me and for, for being in this company and for doing so much for your team and for your patients. Yeah. Thank you. It's a pleasure. Well, this was another great episode of the shared practices group podcast. Tune in next week and we will do another SPG Dr. Spotlight. See you later.