Episode 791
791: The Slow Dentistry Revolution: Why Dentists Are Changing the Way They Work – Dr. Christian Coachman & Dr. Miguel Stanley
Whether it’s pasta or dentistry, good things take time — and great things take even longer! To help you slow down the way you practice, Kirk Behrendt brings back Dr. Christian Coachman, founder of Digital Smile Design, along with his friend, Dr. Miguel Stanley, founder of Slow Dentistry Global Network, to explain the slow dentistry movement and how it will change dentistry for the better. Faster isn't better when it comes to dental care! To learn how to slow down for you and your patients, listen to Episode 791 of The Best Practices Show!
Learn More About Dr. Coachman & Dr. Stanley:
- Join Dr. Coachman on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/christiancoachman
- Follow Dr. Coachman on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriscoachman
- Learn more about Digital Smile Design: https://digitalsmiledesign.com
- Register for the DSD Provider course (October 7, 2024, and November 11, 2024): https://digitalsmiledesign.com/dsd-provider
- Register for DSD Residency 1 On Demand: https://digitalsmiledesign.com/dsd-residency-1-on-demand
- Listen to Dr. Coachman’s podcast, Coffee Break with Coachman: https://open.spotify.com/show/4ADCrWhqsUKbHmZtkhhgoB
- Follow Slow Dentistry Global Network on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/slowdentistryglobalnetwork
- Learn more about Slow Dentistry Global Network: https://slowdentistryglobalnetwork.org
More Helpful Links for a Better Practice & a Better Life:
- Subscribe to The Best Practices Show: https://the-best-practices-show.captivate.fm/listen
- Join The Best Practices Association: https://www.actdental.com/bpa
- Join ACT’s To The Top Study Club: https://www.actdental.com/ttt
- See the ACT Dental/BPA Live Event Schedule: https://www.actdental.com/event
- Get The Best Practices Magazine for free: https://www.actdental.com/magazine
- Please leave us a review on the podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-best-practices-show-with-kirk-behrendt/id1223838218
Episode Resources:
- Watch the video version of Episode 791: https://www.youtube.com/@actdental/videos
Main Takeaways:
- Patients are starting to understand that fast-paced dentistry is not as great.
- You don't need training to do slow dentistry. You already know how to do it.
- Preparation is everything in healthcare. Take the time to do things right.
- Some of the best dentists in the world only see a few patients a day.
- Quality dentistry is not scalable. You can't rush excellence.
- Value likes from real patients, not likes on social media.
- Ethical dentistry will ultimately lead to longevity.
Snippets:
0:00 Introduction.
1:31 Dr. Stanley’s background.
2:33 Slow dentistry, explained.
24:21 Teeth are as important as your heart.
27:10 There's no police in dentistry.
30:48 An example of slow dentistry.
31:31 Value likes from your patients, not likes on Instagram.
34:42 An example of true longevity.
45:14 It’s a marathon, not a sprint.
51:53 The power of saying no.
58:32 Final thoughts and more about Slow Dentistry.
Dr. Christian Coachman Bio:
Combining his advanced skills, experience, and technology solutions, Dr. Christian Coachman pioneered the Digital Smile Design methodology and founded Digital Smile Design company (DSD). Since its inception, thousands of dentists worldwide have attended DSD courses and workshops, such as the renowned DSD Residency program.
Dr. Coachman is the developer of worldwide, well-known concepts such as the Digital Smile Design, the Pink Hybrid Implant Restoration, the Digital Planning Center, Emotional Dentistry, Interdisciplinary Treatment Simulation, and Digital Smile Donator. He regularly consults for dental industry companies, developing products, implementing concepts, and marketing strategies, such as the Facially Driven Digital Orthodontic Workflow developed in collaboration with Invisalign, Align Technology. He has lectured and published internationally in the fields of esthetic and digital dentistry, dental photography, oral rehabilitation, dental ceramics, implants, and communication strategies and marketing in dentistry.
Dr. Miguel Stanley Bio:
Dr. Miguel Stanley is the founder and clinical director of the globally renowned White Clinic, a leading dental center of the world for over 24 years with a large team of highly skilled doctors. He is also the co-founder of the Slow Dentistry Global Network, a nonprofit organization.
Dr. Stanley is also the vice president of the Digital Dentistry Society, as well as a member of many international scientific and academic organizations. He has published several studies and articles over the years. He is a consultant and key opinion leader for leading dental tech companies and holds a license to practice Portugal as well as the UK and Dubai.
Dr. Stanley is an adjunct professor at the University of Pennsylvania School of Dentistry and has lectured extensively in over 50 countries on many fields of modern dentistry, from cosmetic dentistry to complex oral surgery, practice management and ethics to his “No Half Smiles” treatment philosophy. He is also one of the first dentists to ever give a TEDx Talk and host a documentary on dentistry for National Geographic. He was recently nominated one of the top 100 dentists in the world by his peers.
Transcript
Yo, yo, yo.
Speaker B:Hey guys, welcome back to another awesome edition of the best practices show podcast.
Speaker B:I get to do some pretty cool things and interview some dentists from all over the world to share some great concepts to help you improve your practice and your life.
Speaker B:And today was a great one.
Speaker B:My friend, Doctor Christian coachman brought on one of his friends, Doctor Miguel Stanley.
Speaker B:Now, I've only heard about him.
Speaker B:This was my first time meeting him and he's created this thing called the Slow Dentistry revolution.
Speaker B:It's a movement and why dentists are changing the way they work.
Speaker B:And so we interviewed him about this movement and he described it perfectly.
Speaker B:So please listen up.
Speaker B:I hope you guys enjoy this and we'll see you soon.
Speaker B:Hey guys, welcome back to the best practices show podcast.
Speaker B:You know the j we're on here.
Speaker B:Our job is to find the greatest thinkers, speakers, influencers anywhere in the world and share great information with you, help you improve your practice and your life.
Speaker B:In our ongoing series with Doctor Christian coachman, he always finds these amazing guests, many of them I've heard about, and today's guest I've heard plenty about, and I am super excited.
Speaker B:I'm meeting him for the first time, doctor Miguel Stanley.
Speaker B:We're going to be talking about slow dentistry, so you're going to want to listen to this.
Speaker B:So Christian, if you would do the honors and introduce our amazing guest today.
Speaker A:Our amazing guest.
Speaker A:Yes, it is an amazing guest, and I'm very grateful that he was able to open some space on his crazy busy life to talk to us about this topic that I think it's a super important topic, super relevant topic.
Speaker A:It's all about a movement that he started, I believe, more than a decade ago called slow dentistry.
Speaker A:And it's something that matches perfectly to what I believe should be part of what modern dentistry should become.
Speaker A:Ideal dentistry, complete dentistry, comprehensive dentistry, ethical dentistry, whatever name you want to give.
Speaker A:He started this movement that is growing.
Speaker A:Many, many of the DSD clinics are part of his movement.
Speaker A:Many of our main colleagues, speakers and influencers are also joining the movement.
Speaker A:And yes, let's hear from the inventor, the creator, the father of this movement.
Speaker A:What is slow dentistry?
Speaker A:My friend Miguel.
Speaker A:Thank you.
Speaker A:Welcome.
Speaker A:The stage is yours.
Speaker A:Tell us, what is slow dentistry?
Speaker C:First of all, thank you very much.
Speaker C:Really cool to be here.
Speaker C:And slow dentistry is something that came to me when I was cooking a pasta.
Speaker C:And I was wondering why when I go to these, you know, somebody's home, the pasta always has a lot more flavor than when you go to one of these fast chain restaurants.
Speaker C:Taste was a bit different.
Speaker C:It wasn't only the ingredients.
Speaker C:Or was it that some stews, when left, cooking a little bit longer?
Speaker C:And if the person preparing the ingredients took time to go to the right market to get the right ingredients, the right kind of tomato, the right kind of pasta, that every little bit extra matters to get the perfect flavor, the perfect textures.
Speaker C:Now, why am I talking about pasta if we're dentists here?
Speaker C:Well, you see, the French, I would argue, have some of the best restaurants in the world.
Speaker C:They have this thing that when a chef prepares a meal, you have to do the mise en scene, and the mise en scene is the preparation, the prepping of the kitchen, of the ingredients, so that the master chef can have everything ready to go.
Speaker C:Now, I would argue that some of the best service restaurants in the world are in us, in the USA.
Speaker C:I've spent a lot of time in New York, a lot of time in Los Angeles, a lot of time in Miami, Chicago.
Speaker C:And things are fast paced.
Speaker C:And everything has to be fast, because the better and the faster you can get your orders out onto the table, the more profitable it is for the restaurant, because you can keep your guests, keep in and out.
Speaker C:Quality has to be high.
Speaker C:You can't make any mistakes.
Speaker C:And you've seen all these tv shows around the world about master chefs and all of these awards and the prizes.
Speaker C:Chefs have become industry leaders.
Speaker C:They win awards.
Speaker C:They become pillars of society.
Speaker C:For something that you poop out 24 hours later.
Speaker C:Maybe we should give a little bit of importance to teeth that go in your skull.
Speaker C:And I don't understand why we're not giving the same importance to the preparation of your treatment room prior to engaging into altering people's anatomy for profit without any oversight.
Speaker C:It's a self regulated profession we have.
Speaker C:Dentists are self regulating.
Speaker C:I believe I can do this.
Speaker C:I have a license to do this.
Speaker C:I'm going to go.
Speaker C:And the patients are also consumers of good pasta.
Speaker C:But when a patient goes to a bad restaurant and the pasta's undercooked, the spices missing, the sauce is missing, the meat is stale, they instantly, whoa, this stinks.
Speaker C:I'm not eating this.
Speaker C:Or, oh, there's something wrong with this meal.
Speaker C:Just take it back.
Speaker C:There's something wrong with my order.
Speaker C:And if it's really bad, you leave.
Speaker C:And if it's not really bad, maybe they can fix it, and, you know, the chef comes in and fixes the meal and saves the day.
Speaker C:But in dentistry, humans don't have any warning, any understanding of what poor quality dentistry is.
Speaker C:They don't have any trigger warnings.
Speaker C:There's no way that a human being knows that the dentist is giving them something bad, something toxic, something low quality.
Speaker C:So how do we, how do we fix that?
Speaker C:How, how do you.
Speaker C:Christian's been going around the world for decades telling everybody how to do great dentistry.
Speaker C:And he comes from a background, a five generations of dentists, that's in his DNA.
Speaker C:And moreover, he's created softwares and tools and technologies to allow you to reverse engineer treatment planning.
Speaker C:He's the best in the world at that.
Speaker C:And he's always said that digital technologies don't make you a better dentist.
Speaker C:Right?
Speaker C:So you have to understand the basics to be a good dentist.
Speaker C:But it's somehow, something happened along the way when we stopped having your single unit practice, one person in a chair treating their community, a pillar of society.
Speaker C:That kind of ended in the late nineties.
Speaker C:And we started industrializing the dental practice.
Speaker C:We started breaking things up and super specializing, you have your surgeon, your prior, your prosto, your ortho, sometimes even in different practices requiring incredible intercommunication and tools.
Speaker C:And then nobody was paying attention to the labs.
Speaker C: nd some labs are still in the: Speaker C:And no ones looking into supply chain, no ones looking into the quality of the materials, no ones really looking into that.
Speaker C:So could somebody explain to me why were giving so much attention to this amazing multibillion or trillion dollar industry that is the food and restaurant, food and beverage, f and b in any hotel, in any restaurant around the world that we love to go to, we engage with, we have our favorites, food and we millions of years of evolution, we know what's good, what's not in our taste buds, but dentistry, we don't know how to do that.
Speaker C:So I've been thinking for many, many years, how do we know how to tell what is a good dentist from a bad dentist?
Speaker C:Well, you can't.
Speaker C:You can't.
Speaker C:And I've been asking a question for the longest time, what is a dentist?
Speaker C:There was a documentary going around in the US asking a question.
Speaker C:I'm not going to get into it because it's quite politically divisive, but if I were to ask, what is a dentist?
Speaker C:I bet you, Kirk, you would get a different answer from every practitioner.
Speaker C:And I would even say, and I say this, it's not my sense.
Speaker C:Somebody said it to me.
Speaker C:If you're going to quote me, quote the year that I said it, because I'm a different dentist today than I was ten years ago, because I'm older, I'm a different phase of my life.
Speaker C:I know different things.
Speaker C:I did things.
Speaker C:I've been a dentist for 26 years, 27 years now.
Speaker C:And the stuff I did in my first five years, I'm not doing today.
Speaker C:But I'm the same person.
Speaker C:I've got the same driver's license, I've got the same I id card, the same moral values.
Speaker C:But I do things different, not just because I have more experience, but the technology, the mindset.
Speaker C:I say no, a hell of a lot more than yes.
Speaker C:All right?
Speaker C:And so I would say that a dentist depends on where they are in their life, how much money they make, how they're getting paid, how much training they have, how much experience they have, what kind of team do they have, what ecosystem do they have, what's the infrastructure that supports them, how good is their lab, what technologies are they taking impressions with?
Speaker C:But most importantly, how much time are they given to think, plan and execute their treatments?
Speaker C:Because a young, inexperienced dentist might know how to do it, but might need a little more time to double check to create redundancy into building that out.
Speaker C:An experienced dentist, it's a habit done.
Speaker C:Team is experienced, the outcome can be identical.
Speaker C:So I started thinking about this.
Speaker C:You can't say that dentist a is better than dentist C.
Speaker C:You can't really argue that product a is better than product b.
Speaker C:It's arbitrary.
Speaker C:Let's say there's a top 20 implant brands, the top 20 ceramic brands, there's a top 20 types of ortho, so you can't really argue on material.
Speaker C:So a good dentist can use cheap material and actually do great things, and a great dentist, you know, a bad dentist can use great materials and do terrible dentistry.
Speaker C:So what's the algorithm that would define a certain metric of success?
Speaker C:And here's the punchline that a patient consumer can understand as being something in their benefit.
Speaker C:So when we look at how humans today identify clinics as being something good, here are the top things that I've learned in my journey as part of the.
Speaker C:As the founder of the slow Dentistry global Network.
Speaker C:It is referral, location pricing, insurance scheme, Google.
Speaker C:And, you know, maybe it was just nearby, their home, on their walk home.
Speaker C:That means that today humans choose their dentist pretty much the same way they choose a restaurant, something that they go in and they enjoy, but they poop out 24 hours later.
Speaker C:I'm sorry, I'm joking.
Speaker C:But I don't think, you know, you wouldn't choose your heart specialist that way, you wouldn't choose your eye doctor that way, you wouldn't choose your.
Speaker C:I don't know, gynecologist or urologist.
Speaker C:That way you would want the best one for your organ.
Speaker C:But somewhere along the line, things got mixed up and dentistry didn't matter.
Speaker C:It just didn't matter.
Speaker C:It became mechanics and it didn't matter and it became a consumer product.
Speaker C:And I could argue that a lot of treatments in dentistry are a consumer product.
Speaker C:Bleaching if you have no underlying health issues, simple aligner cases if you have no underlying health issues.
Speaker C:All right, there are a lot of things that can be consumer products, like a night guard, a dead mouth guard.
Speaker C:These basic things can be, but there has to be a medical component to that.
Speaker C:So why are we choosing dentists based on pricing, location, referrals alone?
Speaker C:What could be an extra metric that would help consumers make more informed decisions that no dentist could argue was not credible?
Speaker C:And so I thought a lot about this and I'm eating my pasta, my slowly cooked pasta, and it hit me, to answer your question, sorry for the long introduction, but it's time.
Speaker C:Usually a dentist can be rated on experience, their materials and technology.
Speaker C:And I would say that the third one is the time that it takes for them to do things.
Speaker C:Because if you have a great treatment plan and you have the best materials and the best technologies, but you don't have the right amount of time to allocate it to that therapy, because the company that owns it, your boss, whatever, is giving you 16 appointments a day, or 20 appointments a day, or 30 appointments a day, and you're not going to believe this coke, but in some countries, I'm not going to name names.
Speaker C:100 appointments a day, all right?
Speaker C:And this one is public in the very fractured NHS in the UK, every 15 minutes.
Speaker C:How do you do that?
Speaker C:And so I was really thinking about this and I thought, it's time.
Speaker C:So I just understood we need to slow down.
Speaker C:We need to slow down, we need to do that.
Speaker C:And then let's look at the work of Kyle Stanley.
Speaker C:I know he's been on your show many times, just talking about mental health and the breakdown of mental health in dentists and dental care professionals, the dental assistants.
Speaker C:It's a tough profession.
Speaker C:Maybe it's tough because we're overworked with too many patients in our agenda.
Speaker C: n I came out of university in: Speaker C:So at the white clinic, under my supervision, no dental chair in my clinic has ever booked more than 1 hour, one patient per hour per dental unit.
Speaker C:So that means that if I have five chairs, it's five times eight a day.
Speaker C:We don't have more.
Speaker C:And then many consumer dentists, like, capitalist.
Speaker C:I'm a capitalist as well, don't get me wrong.
Speaker C:But they're like, hey, what if it's just changing a rubber, a rubber band or polishing or just checking occlusion?
Speaker C:What if it's just a 15 minutes?
Speaker C:What do you do with the 45 minutes extra?
Speaker C:We think, we plan, we organize, we write emails, we read, we calm down, we train our staff, we do all the systems that Christian's been talking about.
Speaker C:If you're working all the time in the chair, how do you have time to run your business?
Speaker C:And an old banker once said to me, miguel, you work way too much to ever make money.
Speaker C:A lot of dentists believe that it's the drilling teeth that is the profit.
Speaker C:It's not, it's the talking, it's the communication.
Speaker C:So an average sale or an average treatment planning session at the white clinic is broken over two visits and takes about two and a half hours for big cases.
Speaker C:And when you tell this to the average dentist, two and a half hours.
Speaker C:How do you have time to do that?
Speaker C:Slow dentistry.
Speaker C:So slow dentistry is a self identifying organization, meaning anybody who wants to be a part of it can be a part of it.
Speaker C:We're not controlling, we're not supervising.
Speaker C:There's no absolute rules.
Speaker C:It has four very basic cornerstones.
Speaker C:One, proper room, disinfection in between appointments, and then I'll break them down one by one.
Speaker C:Two, waiting till the anesthetic, when needed, takes its full effect prior to engaging in treatment, because every human is entitled to a pain free treatment.
Speaker C:Three, dental dam or rubber dam on all dentine restorative therapies and 100% of root canals.
Speaker C:And last but not least, assigned valid, informed consent with all the risks and rewards of every intervention, of all interventions, including the hidden costs.
Speaker C:Now, these four things are ubiquitous.
Speaker C:Nobody can argue that you're not trained to do this in school.
Speaker C:They are easily identifiable by a consumer as being in their favor.
Speaker C:Right?
Speaker C: d, despite being around since: Speaker C:I show them sometimes to patients and they're like, what's that?
Speaker C:They've never seen one.
Speaker C:So that's.
Speaker C:We'll get there in a bit.
Speaker C:So these four cornerstones are very simple, easily identifiable by a consumer, and require the dentist to slow down, most importantly, in between two appointments.
Speaker C:So we had a 500% increase in adhesion during COVID Why?
Speaker C:Because we've been telling pee patients for over a decade to properly disinfect treatment rooms in between appointments.
Speaker C:So let's say you've just taken out a tooth or you've just done a big filling or whatever.
Speaker C:There's aerosols that go everywhere.
Speaker C:You can't do that in 1 minute.
Speaker C:You cannot disinfect.
Speaker C:It's not called tidying up the room, it's room disinfection.
Speaker C:You can't do that even with the dentist and the hygienist doing it, sorry, the assistant at the same time in under 1 minute.
Speaker C:So how can you have a turnaround between two patients in 1 minute and properly expect that room to be disinfected from HIV, hepatitis C.
Speaker C:Forget the COVID im talking about all the other pathogens that are present in aerosols.
Speaker C:It takes up to five minutes to let the disinfectant properly kill spores, bacteria, fungus, virus, protozoa.
Speaker C:Thats science.
Speaker C:Thats not anything else.
Speaker C:So how youre doing this in, you know, in such a short turnaround time?
Speaker C:The problem is if you're seeing, let's say, eight patients a day with a five minute interval, five times eight is 40 minutes.
Speaker C:All right, roughly 40 minutes.
Speaker C:If you're seeing 16 patients a day and doing the five minutes now you're looking at 80 minutes, they're not doing it.
Speaker C:Do you understand what I'm saying?
Speaker C:So I believe that consumers have a right to a disinfected treatment room and they just don't think about it yet because they trust the dentist has done it.
Speaker C:But we know that that's not happening.
Speaker C:And obviously the dental dam, which is very sad because everyone's taught to do it, everyone understands why it's important, but because it takes anywhere between three minutes to eight minutes to get a rubber dental dam in, and that's in the hand of a guy who knows what he's doing.
Speaker C:All right, that just takes too much time.
Speaker C:And I've actually spoken to DSO leaders and they say we just don't have the time.
Speaker C:If we start setting up dental dams, we're going to have to see two or three patients less a day.
Speaker C:I'm like.
Speaker C:Exactly.
Speaker C:But since dentistry's the consumer side of it, is immediate transaction, not longevity, something Christian's talking about, it's, well, look, if this has a problem, they'll come back in six years or seven years time with an infiltration, and then I can judge for a root canal.
Speaker C:That's not what we're trained to do.
Speaker C:That's a moral compass that's being twisted.
Speaker C:We have to do the right thing.
Speaker C:So in summation it's all about doing the right thing.
Speaker C:And slow dentistry might be the wrong name because who wants a long appointment and a dentist that's boring right?
Speaker C:And has nothing to do with speed of care.
Speaker C:It has everything to do with speed of preparation, preparing the kitchen for the day, prepare to prepare the meal properly, getting the right ingredients, getting the right cooking times so that the meal at the end of the day the best possible.
Speaker C:And thats really what allows for longevity in dentistry.
Speaker C:And I think that consumers are slowly understanding that the fast paced clinics are not as good as the ones that take more time.
Speaker C:And Christian ill ask him this question in a bit but im sure hell tell you that the best dentists in the world only see two or three patients a day and they take their time and they do.
Speaker C:Instead of doing, how do I say it?
Speaker C:Instead of doing one thing on eight patients a day, how about doing eight things on one patient a day?
Speaker C:At the end of the day it's the same amount of cash in and you can do better work.
Speaker C:So it's all about treatment planning, slowing down thinking, strategy preparation and it's a long road till this is implemented and well established and accepted.
Speaker C:So I'm sorry for the long introduction but I think I did my best explaining it.
Speaker A:No, besides being a great dentist, a great human being, a pioneer in so many things, you are also a great communicator.
Speaker A:So you did the perfect intro.
Speaker A:And by the way, slow dentistry is a great name in my opinion because it makes, yeah it does make people some, a little bit uncomfortable and I love making people uncomfortable because that when you, that's when you have a bigger chance to create an impact, you know, to make changes, you need to be uncomfortable.
Speaker A:If it was a comfortable aim people wouldn't change.
Speaker C:And if you think about it, DSD that you created and you know, not many people in the world at your age and looking as good as you get to actually make such a dramatic change in, I mean that's a real thing.
Speaker C:There was pre DSD and post DSD and you did that to do DSD.
Speaker C:By definition that is slow dentistry 100%.
Speaker C:It's by definition that's actually the main.
Speaker A:Complaint of dentists about it takes too long, it takes too much time, you know it takes too much time.
Speaker A:I say yeah it takes too much time to do the right thing.
Speaker A:So what do you want to do?
Speaker C:Yeah you can't, you can't.
Speaker C:Excellence, you can't watch.
Speaker A:I talk a lot about something that matches perfectly slow dentistry.
Speaker A:I know I say it in all my lectures, and we had actually a episode just about that.
Speaker A:In my humble opinion, quality dentistry is not scalable.
Speaker C:No.
Speaker A:And I believe in that so, so much.
Speaker A:And I don't.
Speaker A:I don't judge.
Speaker A:People that are scaling.
Speaker A:I don't judge.
Speaker A:I have amazing friends that are growing and multiplying, becoming mini dsos or hiring multiple associates, expanding, opening 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th location.
Speaker A:I don't judge.
Speaker A:I have nothing against it.
Speaker A:But I know one thing, that that dentist was doing better quality when he had one location.
Speaker A:When we had a certain number of employees, a certain number of associates, and a certain number of dental chairs.
Speaker A:We know that.
Speaker A:Gold standard.
Speaker A:Well, Miguel, for me, you have an example.
Speaker A:I have a few friends that were able to fight or were courageous enough to resist the temptation of scaling.
Speaker A:You are one of them.
Speaker A:You have gold standard practice that I know for ten years, and it stays.
Speaker A:And all your investment is to make that practice better and better.
Speaker A:And of course, that as you grow quality, you can charge more, but there is a ceiling, there is a limit.
Speaker A:So you need to be open to not make more money.
Speaker C:That's very true.
Speaker A:This is the right thing.
Speaker C:I know.
Speaker C:And here's a number that Americans, and again, I have a lot of patients that fly in from LA, from Chicago, from New York, and they don't come here because we're cheaper.
Speaker C:All right?
Speaker C:And I'm very proud of that.
Speaker C:But what if I told you, Dirk, that of every hundred patients that come to the white clinic seeking treatment with us, we only keep 30%.
Speaker C:The other 70, we say no.
Speaker C:Why?
Speaker C:Because they don't want to do occlusion driven aesthetics.
Speaker C:Meaning they just want to do the smile aesthetics, because they don't want the cost of restoring function.
Speaker C:Or they've got infections, deep infections.
Speaker C:That's for a conversation.
Speaker C:Another conversation, another time, you know, and they don't want to do what I believe is the best for them at an immunological perspective, something I'm quite.
Speaker A:They're not in for the comprehensive perspective.
Speaker A:It's kind of like they want to.
Speaker C:Yeah, it's.
Speaker C:It's like, imagine I'm a cardiologist now, I'm biased because I'm a dentist.
Speaker C:I think teeth are as important as your heart.
Speaker C:All right, well, I could argue, of course, without a heart, you die.
Speaker C:I.
Speaker C:But without teeth, you have a miserable life.
Speaker C:Okay, so, I mean, I would even argue that teeth are probably as important as your eyesight.
Speaker A:I would say teeth, I would say oral health.
Speaker A:Oral health.
Speaker C:Okay, so.
Speaker C:And now, thankfully, there's a lot of data coming out that Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, cardiac, you know, all of these things.
Speaker C:But now let's step back.
Speaker C:So remember the beginning.
Speaker C:I said we're choosing dentists based on the wrong metrics.
Speaker C:Now, understandably, not everybody can afford five star dentistry.
Speaker C:I understand that, but there's different levels of complexity.
Speaker C:You don't have to come to the best dentist in your neighborhood for a filling or a cleaning or simple bleach.
Speaker C:You don't need to.
Speaker C:But when you have a big problem, you should go to the best guy in that neighborhood that really knows what he's doing, much like in cardiology for your checkup.
Speaker C:Fine, you have a good heart.
Speaker C:You don't need the best guy in the USA, but if you need a heart transplant, you better find the best guy in the USA.
Speaker C:Imagine you don't need a heart transplant.
Speaker C:You need a triple bypass.
Speaker C:You go to the doctor, you say, hey, doctor.
Speaker C:Oh, my God, my heart.
Speaker C:Oh, you need triple bypass.
Speaker C:Oh, you know, how much is that?
Speaker C:Oh, you know, I don't have insurance.
Speaker C: we can do the third stent in: Speaker C:How does that sound, doctor?
Speaker C:And if you don't accept my treatment plan, I'm going to go to your competition.
Speaker C:This is every day in dentistry, and it's.
Speaker C:Imagine, I don't know, it's not my case, but imagine, I don't know, you've got three ex wives, five kids, you're paying alimony, all of this.
Speaker C:Hey, some money looks better than no money, and nobody's controlling you.
Speaker C:Come on, let's go.
Speaker C:All right.
Speaker C:And I have a very famous slide.
Speaker C: In: Speaker C:Now, the beauty of what Christian's doing is that he gets to see how people are working, so there's kind of some kind of quality control, remotely practicians.
Speaker A:Kind of do that side.
Speaker C:So I bet.
Speaker C:I bet you that terrible dentists don't want to work with DSD because they don't want nobody to see how they're working.
Speaker C:So it's a good thing because they can kind of.
Speaker C:Hey, doc, do you know that impression you might want to do it a little bit better, maybe you want to improve.
Speaker C:I know they do that because I've worked with these guys since the inception.
Speaker C:So thank God that that exists, because now you've got some kind of quality control, and I believe certain dsos in America also have that happening, and you can only do that with digital technology.
Speaker C:But here's the punchline.
Speaker C:It actually takes longer to do an iOS scan than a silicon impression.
Speaker C:Think about that for a second.
Speaker C:That's a fact.
Speaker C:To open the laptop, to put the new sterilized head inside the iOS scanner, to put the patient's name in, all right?
Speaker C:To set everything up to make sure that the mirror is good and to scan.
Speaker C:And I'm talking with a brand new modern scanner that's going to take you at least seven to ten minutes, and then you have to compress that image and you get to do amazing things with it, and it's better than an impression.
Speaker C:But if you're working with a cheap impression that takes three minutes to set.
Speaker C:So there's a lot of going on in dentistry today, and I think that to take it back to the point of slow dentistry, that slowing down isn't for those whose business model it is to drill, fill, pay the bill, and do volume.
Speaker C:Dentistry.
Speaker C:Now, don't get me wrong, Dirk, I believe that there's a place for everybody.
Speaker C:But much like in the hotel business, you have one star, two star, you have your motels.
Speaker C:When I go to a motel in, I don't know, middle America, I don't expect chocolate on my pillow.
Speaker C:I might even expect that there's a cockroach in my bathroom, I'm not going to freak out.
Speaker C:But if I go to the four seasons and there's a cockroach in the bathroom, I'm going to freak out.
Speaker C:Do you understand?
Speaker C:Because it's a different experience, a different cost, there's different services, there's different prices.
Speaker C:That doesn't exist in dentistry.
Speaker C:So you've got terrible dentists that are smooth talkers, great salespeople, and they're really nice and they're very smooth and everything.
Speaker A:Whoa.
Speaker C:Yes, please.
Speaker C:And you've got guys that are terrible salesmen.
Speaker C:They're some of the best dentists in the world.
Speaker C:And so I just think that humans need to understand that preparation and healthcare is everything.
Speaker C:No surgeon, no heart surgeon will do a heart stent without meeting the patient and talking about risks and rewards, and that time has to be rewarded.
Speaker C:And here's, I guess, one of the things that a take home message charge for that consultation, much like a lawyer that doesn't produce anything except spoken word or written word.
Speaker C:That's all lawyers do, and they make millions.
Speaker C:A good lawyer makes millions thinking, talking and writing.
Speaker C:Why are dentists not paid to think, to talk and to write?
Speaker C:Why are we only paid to do the mechanics of dentistry?
Speaker C:Do you understand?
Speaker C:So I think if the ecosystem could change whereby they feel more comfortable to, say, pay me to think, pay me to talk.
Speaker C:Which is the inception of DSD at its core.
Speaker A:Pay me to avoid dentistry.
Speaker C:There we go.
Speaker A:Not to treat you.
Speaker A:Pay me to prevent, pay me to forecast, pay me to diagnose.
Speaker C:I'll give you an example.
Speaker C:This is a true story.
Speaker C: Back in: Speaker C:His brother in Madrid, he was.
Speaker C:I think you were already in Madrid back then.
Speaker C:And I sent a scan off and I thought I needed to do twelve veneers, or twelve crowns on the patient's mouth.
Speaker C:I sent it in and they sent it back, said, you only have to do six.
Speaker C:And I'm like, now, if I wanted the money, I'd be like, no, no, no, right?
Speaker C:And I showed that to the patient.
Speaker C:I said, look, the money that you paid for doing the DSD actually saved a.
Speaker C:You know, you need to do six extra crowns.
Speaker C:Wasn't that worth it?
Speaker C:So I guess slow dentistry is all about speed of preparation.
Speaker C:Now, I jokingly, let's pivot this to.
Speaker C:I like metaphors that are shocking, because the shocking metaphor, people retain information.
Speaker C:Now, I was born in South Africa.
Speaker C: I was born in: Speaker C:I'm very old and I.
Speaker C:He's younger than me.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:1970, 419, 74.
Speaker C:All those push ups that he does, man.
Speaker C:It's like, God damn it, he's the Brad Pitt of dentistry.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker C:He can't be this talented and good looking.
Speaker C:It's upsetting.
Speaker C:So many people think that he can't be that good because he's too good looking.
Speaker C:But he is.
Speaker C:He is that good.
Speaker C:I've seen him do wax up by hand.
Speaker C:That'll blow people's mind.
Speaker C:The guy's the real deal.
Speaker C:Now let's get back to so sub saharan Africa.
Speaker C:I was born in Durban and Africa.
Speaker C:South Africa has one of the highest rates of HIV AIDS in the world.
Speaker C:Right now, we know that if you use a prophylactic, if you use protection, the incidence of HIV AIDS goes down 99%.
Speaker C:99.
Speaker C:It's not like 10%, it's 99%.
Speaker C:Yet it has the highest into one of the highest in the world.
Speaker C:It's a tragic, tragic time.
Speaker C:And there's been 30 years of education in the population of saying, guys, why is it so high?
Speaker C:I'll tell you why.
Speaker C:Because at that moment, that, hey, let's get it on.
Speaker C:Going to the pharmacy takes too much time.
Speaker C:I want it now.
Speaker C:I want it now.
Speaker C:And fasten to the risk of losing your life.
Speaker C:I've been educated and trained.
Speaker C:I know, I know the risk, but I'm going to do it anyway.
Speaker C:Because maybe, and it's a very strong metaphor, it's a very tragic metaphor, but perhaps dentists need to understand, especially young dentists entering the marketplace wanting to be superstars and valuing likes on Instagram over likes from real patients in the clinics a decade later, because that's how you measure success, is your feelings, ten years later, being in the patient's mouth, because trust me, those likes aren't going to be worth nothing when your feelings start falling.
Speaker A:Repeat that.
Speaker A:I like that.
Speaker A:We should change the immediate Instagram, like with the patients, like ten years later.
Speaker C:You can use that.
Speaker C:Put that on.
Speaker A:I'm gonna, I'm gonna write that down.
Speaker C:I'll give an excellent.
Speaker C:I.
Speaker C:Please do.
Speaker C:I had a patient come in my office yesterday.
Speaker C:I did tv shows back in the day.
Speaker C:She.
Speaker C:I did ten upper crowns, emacs, layered, emax, so, you know, felt layered.
Speaker C:I mean, promoting layered, lithium, disilicate.
Speaker C: These are so: Speaker C:That's what, 14 years ago.
Speaker C:14 years ago.
Speaker C: No, it's more: Speaker C:It's more.
Speaker C:It's 18 years ago.
Speaker C:18 years ago, they were perfect.
Speaker C:She had a post and core that had cracked and one of the crowns came loose.
Speaker C:I hadn't seen this woman in 18 years.
Speaker C:She hadn't been in a dentist in 18 years because she's brushing well.
Speaker C:I looked at this, I was looking at a time machine and I was like, man.
Speaker C:And I felt really happy to see that that work had lasted that long.
Speaker C:Read about it, you hear about it.
Speaker A:And that's because I have a story to complement that.
Speaker A:When I was bragging about digital to my dad, when I just started with doing procera crowns and things like this, and I was doing some digital work and showing my dad and say, look, and this is longevity, and it lasts very long because it's strong and so on.
Speaker A:And I remember him looking, that was like 20 years ago, and he was looking at me and saying, let me show you some slides here.
Speaker A:And he took me to a dark room in those days, we had those old slides, and he said, look, I'm going to put this against the light for you to see, these are slides from patients that are our patients from 75 years, 80 years of being a patient.
Speaker A:These patients are now 90, 95 years old.
Speaker A:These are patients from your grandfather.
Speaker C:Okay?
Speaker A:So do you want to see longevity in restorative dentistry?
Speaker A:Let me show you what longevity in restorative dentistry is.
Speaker A: ur grandfather working in the: Speaker A:Everything was vibrating like this.
Speaker C:And the work still there today.
Speaker A:And look at the preps.
Speaker A:The preps were so clean, so crisp and so minimally invasive.
Speaker A:Look at the gold restorations.
Speaker A:These gold restorations are in the mouth for 77 years and still functioning.
Speaker A:This patient is 95.
Speaker A:The gold restoration is 75 years in the mouth.
Speaker A:And you know what is the best?
Speaker A:Whenever I have to remove one of those, when I remove that gold, that was done with so much care and so much time in a very slow manner, loving the details.
Speaker A:When I remove this after 75 years in the mouth, you know what is in there underneath the gold?
Speaker A:Nothing.
Speaker C:No decant.
Speaker A:Dentin is white and is crisp.
Speaker A:And you go with the instrument and the noise is beautiful.
Speaker C:Crack, crack, crack.
Speaker A:There is nothing.
Speaker A:Now you look at your proceed Emax crowns.
Speaker A:After ten years, remove them and tell me, what do you see underneath with your 6th generation bonding materials?
Speaker A:These gold restorations were cemented with zinc phosphate.
Speaker A:And that's it.
Speaker A:Perfection.
Speaker A:That put things in perspective.
Speaker A:And it changed completely.
Speaker A:The way I lecture about technology.
Speaker C:You know what?
Speaker C:You're completely right.
Speaker C:And I.
Speaker C:Sometimes you get these old patients that went to, you know, Japan.
Speaker C:I have some patients coming from Japan and the quality of the work and, you know, the Japanese have a.
Speaker A:They have a.
Speaker A:Japanese are perfect representation of slow dentistry.
Speaker A:Huh?
Speaker C:Oh, we're big in Japan.
Speaker C:Ultimately, we're big in Japan.
Speaker C:Slow dentistry, it has to.
Speaker C:So because they.
Speaker C:Everything is taught, everything, the tea ceremony, everything, the details, the way they cook, the way they prepare.
Speaker C:So, you know, and I, and I just think that, yeah, we.
Speaker C:There were fewer people 80 years ago, Christian.
Speaker C:You know, there were people would take time to do things properly because you were a community doctor, you were a pillar of society.
Speaker C:Nowadays, you're wheel in a cog, you know, a cog in a wheel.
Speaker C:Sorry.
Speaker C:And you're.
Speaker C:And we're always rushing and fast paced.
Speaker C:And I honestly think my wife, you know, my wife sometimes, Shannon, we cannot.
Speaker A:Allow this business mentality.
Speaker A:You know, it's okay to have some kind of a business mentality, but we cannot, cannot take over the business mentality.
Speaker A:Takeover dentistry.
Speaker C:And the only way to fix it, Christian, is through patient education.
Speaker C:And that's why the slow dentistry global network.
Speaker C:And if you're listening, I'm doing a quick plug, slowdentistry.com or slowdentistryglobalnetwork.org dot.
Speaker C:It's the same thing.
Speaker C:If you go to slowdentistry.com comma, it'll lead you to the website.
Speaker C:And basically we're there for young students, young dentists.
Speaker C:Empowering dentists.
Speaker C:It's more like a badge of honor, right?
Speaker C:So if you get one, you're part of a global network, a geolocator, and you can tell your patients, look, I'm going to charge you a little bit more for my time, okay?
Speaker C:So I'm not like the other dentist.
Speaker C:I'm not going to see 20 patients a day.
Speaker C:I'm going to talk with you.
Speaker C:I'm going to communicate.
Speaker C:This is happening globally.
Speaker C:We are.
Speaker C:I think the world is going back to basics.
Speaker C:My wife and I, we now have a farm.
Speaker C:We make our own eggs.
Speaker C:Well, we don't make them.
Speaker C:We have chickens that make our own eggs, but we have to build a chicken coop.
Speaker C:We have to find the chickens, and we wait for the chickens to lay their eggs and our little girls go out and pick up the eggs.
Speaker C:And that's how we have our eggs in for breakfast.
Speaker C:We grow our own corn, we grow our own apples, we grow our own potatoes.
Speaker C:We're farmers.
Speaker C:I'm a farmer now.
Speaker C:Ten years ago, I could.
Speaker A:It's just slower.
Speaker A:It's much faster to go to the supermarket.
Speaker C:A man, you come to my house, my wife's ukrainian.
Speaker C:Yesterday we had a borscht, which is the national ukrainian soup.
Speaker C:Every single ingredient in that soup grown outside in the garden.
Speaker C:The joy, the elation, but most importantly, the flavors, man.
Speaker C:Now I keep on talking about food because you use your teeth to chew and, and everything's tied into the same mindset.
Speaker C:We've got it.
Speaker C:We've got to slow down.
Speaker C:We've got to slow down.
Speaker C:And I tried to say this, I went on Sky News because the first slow dentistry meeting, and by the way, if anybody hearing this wants to organize a slow dentistry meeting, go for.
Speaker C:It's a nonprofit.
Speaker C:It's not here to make money.
Speaker C:It's here just to, just to grow, to spread.
Speaker C:It's aware.
Speaker C:It's my legacy.
Speaker C:It's just awareness, okay?
Speaker C:There's been some bad actors out there that have tried to register the name.
Speaker C:I'm not a negative person that tried to do that and try to monetize it.
Speaker C:There's no courses, there's no training.
Speaker C:There's no education.
Speaker C:So if anybody's selling you something for slow dentistry, don't buy it, except for the yearly annuity, which is to help the team just with the social media and the marketing budget.
Speaker C:And it's like 299 a year, so it's like almost nothing.
Speaker C:All right?
Speaker C:There's no courses.
Speaker C:Why?
Speaker C:Cause guess what?
Speaker C:You don't need to train how to do slow dentistry.
Speaker C:You already know how to do it.
Speaker C:You just gotta cancel stuff from your calendar and just hold your ambition a little bit.
Speaker C:Just like change your vision a little bit.
Speaker C:You know how to do it.
Speaker C: first meeting, I think it was: Speaker C:You got the pundits on Sky News going, and now a group of dentists talking about slow dentistry.
Speaker C:And the other one goes, slow dentistry.
Speaker C:Oh, when I sit down on a chair, I want to get out there like that and they start giggling about slow dentistry.
Speaker C:I will not forget this.
Speaker C:I will come and find him.
Speaker C:But my thing was, is that the perception of how rock, you know, nobody likes to spend a lot of time in the dental chair.
Speaker C:So I guess that I'm looking forward to all good dentists out there that are, even if you're not a member, that you just say, look, I want to change the mindset of what it means to be a good, wholesome family practitioner.
Speaker C:I'm not even dsos can do this as well, by the way.
Speaker C:I'm going to take time to do the right thing.
Speaker C:You know, a psychiatrist can at, on the hour says time's out, we got to go.
Speaker C:Okay, that's, that's our.
Speaker C:But in it, if you're taking out a truth or you.
Speaker C:I don't know, something's complicated, patient doesn't open the mouth.
Speaker C:Well, you need a bit of more time.
Speaker C:And if I'm a little bit inexperienced, I need a little bit more time.
Speaker C:You can't turn off the clock on dentistry, man.
Speaker C: : Speaker C:Maybe he did, but he knew how to.
Speaker A:No, he didn't.
Speaker C:You need to respect people.
Speaker C:Slow down.
Speaker C:So I don't know the answers, guys.
Speaker C:I don't know how to do this, but I know that you can't just teach dentists.
Speaker C:You have to also educate communities and people and empower people.
Speaker C:And I think the first step, and the easiest one for me is just about charging for your time, making sure patients understand that a dentist has two roles, to think and to execute.
Speaker C:Treatment planning is a skill that requires time, and you shouldn't expect dentists to do it when they're at home with their families.
Speaker C:They have to do it in the clinic, and that takes time.
Speaker C:So I tell my patients verbally, I said, look, I've now seen your x ray, and tomorrow I'll be online with the Massachusetts, well, I don't know.
Speaker C:There's a timestamp here.
Speaker C:So I will be online in September for the Massachusetts Dental Society talking about treatment planning, how we do it.
Speaker C:And you get the data acquisition, I get the information from my patient, I can talk a little bit how we work.
Speaker C:And I say, now let me think about it.
Speaker C:So what do you mean you think about it?
Speaker C:Give me the quote.
Speaker C:I don't know everything about your case.
Speaker C:I have to do some, you know, there's pros for this, cons for that.
Speaker C:When do you want me to think about this?
Speaker C:When I'm brushing my teeth, when I'm with the next patient?
Speaker C:When do you want me to think about this?
Speaker C:So, you know, I need some time to think about this.
Speaker C:There's going to be a fee for that.
Speaker C:I don't want to pay.
Speaker C:All right, that's cool.
Speaker C:Thank you very much.
Speaker C:You can go now, and you can find a cheap dentist, because obviously, you're not the patient for me.
Speaker C:And you'll be surprised at how patients that really want good work are happy to pay to have a little bit more time.
Speaker C:So those that are listening to this, trust me, just start on Monday, start seeing fewer patients, charge a little bit more, and do the right thing.
Speaker A:I think a big thing about a big reason for that is that for, unfortunately, people see us as doctors that fix a problem, right?
Speaker A:We are not there to prevent problems.
Speaker A:We are not there to diagnose deeper issues.
Speaker A:And we need to change that.
Speaker A:You know, we need to become physicians of the mouth, and then people will naturally start respecting us to find issues and to prevent issues.
Speaker C:So I will take that on.
Speaker C:Christian, think about this.
Speaker C:A dental degree.
Speaker C:What is a dentist?
Speaker C:You know, we discussed that in the beginning, and it's kind of like whatever they want it to be, right?
Speaker C:I wrote an article on dental Tribune about ten years ago, and it was called low risk dentistry versus high risk dentistry.
Speaker C:So low risk dentistry is a form of dentistry that even a person with basic skills, not very experienced, cant really mess up that much.
Speaker C:A simple restoration, you can figure it out.
Speaker C:A cleaning, whatever, on easy patients within not too many, you know, health issues, you know, because even a simple treatment can be complicated if the patient has pre existing health concerns.
Speaker C:And that leads me to believe that dentists are allowed, and this is going to probably be not well received, are allowed to do too many things with the same degree.
Speaker C:Meaning a GP anywhere in the world is allowed the same license.
Speaker C:In Portugal today, a guy who just got his degree is allowed legally to do everything I'm allowed to do.
Speaker C:With all my years of surgical training, all of my expertise, all of the failures that I have, all of the safeguards I have in place, he's allowed to do the same thing.
Speaker C:And all it takes is that's an ignorant patient that's willing to pay whatever.
Speaker C:If he gets that trust, he will go with that patient.
Speaker C:And I think we need to kind of create pockets of dentistry where you have people that just do diagnostics, easy dentistry, family practices, a low risk dentistry, and you have different levels of this.
Speaker C:And if the consumer understands, I'm going to a motel that does simple stuff, it's okay, what can go wrong?
Speaker C:My mouth is pretty okay, or I have these really complicated health concerns.
Speaker C:I really need a top guy, I'm going to go to the top guy, and that guy better slow down and do the right thing, because quite frankly, you can do a filling in ten minutes.
Speaker C:I'm not exaggerating.
Speaker C:Without a rubber dam on an enamel, on our patient, without any health concerns, if it's a small little spot on the enamel, you can do that, no problem.
Speaker C:But if it's a deep restoration, a class one that goes into the dentine, patient can't open their mouth, Wells has hyper salivation, maybe got Parkinson's going on.
Speaker C:You can't do that in ten minutes.
Speaker C:That's going to take maybe an hour or 2 hours.
Speaker C:But the modern dental practices doesn't regulate time.
Speaker A:What you're doing is even beyond that.
Speaker A:That is also true.
Speaker A:You need more time in certain situations, but even more time to identify that beyond needing a composite on that restoration, there's a chronic infection on the bone below that tooth that is affecting systemic health, that 99.9% of the dentist will not even take the time to even identify that right.
Speaker A:And that is, of course, missing link, my brother.
Speaker C:That's our next podcast.
Speaker C:That's our next podcast requires time.
Speaker A:You need to be okay on, you need to feel the pride of giving up on making more money for the benefit of your patient.
Speaker C:I would argue you've said the word longevity a few times today.
Speaker C:If you want longevity in this profession, Christian, you and I, we've been around a long time.
Speaker C:You're one of the most consistently high performing.
Speaker C:You're an athlete of the mind of dentistry.
Speaker C:You're an athlete.
Speaker C:You are continuously not just working your body, but your ideas and your mind to the benefit of humanity.
Speaker C:It's unbelievable what you do.
Speaker C:And history will give you your due respect, because honestly, man, you care so much about this profession.
Speaker C:You've taken on the self anointed, the role that somebody say, hey, man, I want to make dentistry more equitable, fair, and democratic for everybody.
Speaker C:I wanted to make it a better place.
Speaker C:I want doctors to make fewer mistakes.
Speaker C:And I guess that longevity in this profession, you've seen guys that ten years ago were lecturing everywhere for one year, two years, and then it disappeared.
Speaker C:Never heard about them again, right?
Speaker C:You know, I've been around for a very long time, bro.
Speaker C:All right?
Speaker C:And what I'm trying to say is that longevity in this career, and there's many like that, John Kois would be the number one guy, and I'm really glad to see you're going to be talking with him soon here in Miami, because that's going to be amazing.
Speaker C:John Kois, what a legend.
Speaker C:And to have that level of consistency over the years, I bet you he's not rushing his appointments with his patients.
Speaker C:If you want longevity in this business, you can be the most.
Speaker C:He's, you know, you can have a lot of money, you can have an amazing lifestyle, but you've got to plan this methodically.
Speaker C:You've got to be very careful, and you've got to take your time to do it.
Speaker C:It's not.
Speaker A:Not money next month.
Speaker C:It's a marathon.
Speaker C:It's not a sprint.
Speaker C:It's a marathon.
Speaker C:You got to take it slow.
Speaker C:You got to rush, you know, and there's that joke about, there's a young bull and an old bull, and they're looking down at the field, and the young bull says, hey, dad, let's go down there and we can spend some time with those cows.
Speaker C:No, with that.
Speaker C:With one cow.
Speaker C:And the father says, no, we can walk down there slowly and spend our time with them all.
Speaker C:It's a little joke to say, you gotta take time.
Speaker C:Nature takes time, everything.
Speaker C:And if you look at nature, trees, fruits, everything.
Speaker C:Why are we rushing dentistry?
Speaker C:Our teeth are so important.
Speaker C:You cannot rush it.
Speaker C:You cannot rush excellence.
Speaker C:And I really want to give a big shout out to all the dentists out there suffering from mental health, from anguish, from anxiety, from stress, from burnouth.
Speaker C:It's not the job.
Speaker C:It's not dentistry that's hurting you.
Speaker C:It's that you can't get it done properly.
Speaker C:And your pillow hits there.
Speaker C:You know, your head hits the pillow at night, and your ideas are rushing through your head like, my God, my God, my God.
Speaker C:Imagine that stress if you had half the workload and you had a little bit more time for every one of those cases.
Speaker C:You can do it.
Speaker C:You can do it.
Speaker C:You just need the right time to prep and to execute, and you can do it.
Speaker C:It's right there.
Speaker C:You can't treat everybody.
Speaker C:You can't treat everybody.
Speaker C:But the ones you treat, you got to treat well.
Speaker B:Very well said.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:Now, I know we can't keep you for.
Speaker B:I have so many questions, Christian, so go on.
Speaker C:Let's have.
Speaker B:I would be respectful to your time, too.
Speaker C:No, let's go another ten.
Speaker A:He has a few more minutes.
Speaker C:He has.
Speaker A:Okay, bring it.
Speaker C:We.
Speaker C:Did I speak you questions?
Speaker B:Well, uh.
Speaker C:Bring it.
Speaker A:I.
Speaker A:I divided in two episodes.
Speaker A:Bring it.
Speaker B:I would love to have you back for another episode because I probably have a couple more questions.
Speaker B:But at the beginning, you said, I.
Speaker B:You now say no a lot more than you say yes.
Speaker B:And I think, Miguel, what you're talking about is beautiful, and I think it's a timely message.
Speaker B:I think the speed of the world has picked up so much, and I think a big piece of this is, you don't have to be everyone's dentist.
Speaker B:You don't have to see all these patients talk about the power of saying no.
Speaker B:Like, how powerful is that?
Speaker B:Can you just.
Speaker B:You mentioned it earlier, but go deeper on it?
Speaker A:That's a big topic for him.
Speaker C:Just like Christian.
Speaker C:I said yes to my wife on the altar, and I said no to every woman afterward.
Speaker B:Very well said.
Speaker C:If you want to stay out of trouble, you got to say no a lot more than yes, my friend.
Speaker A:That's wisdom.
Speaker B:That's wisdom.
Speaker B:Now, take that into it.
Speaker B:I get that because I've been married for 25 years.
Speaker C:I'll break it down.
Speaker C:We are in charge, not the patient.
Speaker C:And my ego shouldn't be involved in the equation.
Speaker C:So when a patient comes in and says, I would like you to do this, and it isn't what the dentist thinks is the right thing, and then the patient says, well, if you don't do it, I'm going to go to that guy down the road, call him an uber, and pay for it.
Speaker C:And it doesn't make.
Speaker C:It makes you a smarter dentist, not a worse dentist.
Speaker C:And if you are working in dentistry just to make money, then we ain't friends.
Speaker A:You are a different type of dentistry.
Speaker A:Yeah, we need to classify dentistry into.
Speaker A:You mentioned that we are.
Speaker A:We do one dental school and we can do everything.
Speaker C:It's an art form.
Speaker C:It's an art form.
Speaker C:I mean, this is.
Speaker C:This is a ten.
Speaker A:I knew a dentist that cares about general health.
Speaker A:That's the first classification that I would generate.
Speaker A:You know, do you care about general health?
Speaker A:Or you're just making your patients a better smile next week?
Speaker A:Because it's completely different.
Speaker C:And Christian, you've been based in Brazil most of your adult life.
Speaker C:You worked in the US, in the best clinics in the US, and now you're based in Europe.
Speaker C:I would classify you to have more of a european mindset than an american mindset.
Speaker C:And don't get me wrong, USA is the greatest country on earth.
Speaker C:Period.
Speaker C:Okay.
Speaker C:Period.
Speaker C:Best universities, best minds, brightest minds.
Speaker C:Thank God for the USA.
Speaker C:All right.
Speaker C:However, capitalism, uncontrolled capitalism in dentistry is wrong.
Speaker C:Yep.
Speaker C:Period.
Speaker C:Uncontrolled capitalism in dentistry is wrong.
Speaker C:To go into the patient's mouth to mine for work that doesn't exist is a reality that there's a lot of people that do it, and there's no understanding of when it happens and it doesn't.
Speaker C:And my question is, who's there to safeguard?
Speaker A:And our brain is so powerful, we can generate the excuses to support us, to continue to do that.
Speaker A:So the narrative we repeat over and over that it becomes our new truth.
Speaker C:So I'll give you an example, Kirk.
Speaker C:Patient comes in, and their front teeth are like, you're not a dentist.
Speaker C:They're bucked, right?
Speaker C:They're sticking out.
Speaker C:Patient says, I'd like to have twelve veneers.
Speaker C:I want to have a Hollywood smile.
Speaker C:Could you prep all my teeth now?
Speaker C: Me in: Speaker C:I would have said, hell, yeah, sit down.
Speaker C:I would have ground the teeth down to little pegs, taking an impression.
Speaker C:My lab, I would have free hand, made a nice smile for the patient.
Speaker C:My lab, twelve days later, beautiful ceramic crown veneers, whatever put that in.
Speaker C: e, but that was acceptable in: Speaker C:Then everything changed, and minimally invasive came the way that we had to do it, but that was a self identified thing.
Speaker C:I didn't have to do it.
Speaker C:So now, because I have some moral values, comes.
Speaker C:You know, we've been working with aligners for a very long time.
Speaker C:And then Christian and all these companies, everybody's working together, and all of a sudden it's like, the right thing to do is to use aligners to straighten those teeth for a year so you don't have to do so many veneers, a or b, so aggressive b, which is the objective.
Speaker C:But now you're having to sell a patient.
Speaker C:Look, I can do this in two weeks for $40,000 or $30,000 or whatever, or I can do it in a year for $12,000.
Speaker C:And do you know how many times I have finished an aligner case that I sold veneers at the end of the Aligner case?
Speaker C:I finished the Aligner case, and they're like, I love my smile.
Speaker C:I don't want the veneers.
Speaker C:Can we just do some bleaching?
Speaker C:And you're like, financially, like.
Speaker C:But you know what?
Speaker C:Ethical dentistry, first, longevity.
Speaker C:And that is the greatest marketing any dentist could ever have, rather than the greatest.
Speaker C:I saved enamel, and I saved money for my patients.
Speaker C:Forget about it.
Speaker C:It's nothing like it.
Speaker C:But you don't know it until you do it.
Speaker C:So saying no, not just to the patient, to the wrong form of dentistry, is an act of courage and bravery in this modern world that we're in.
Speaker C:And I make a hell of a lot less money.
Speaker C:Christian said this than I could if I had a little bit less ethics.
Speaker C:And I didn't know so much about biology.
Speaker C:Trust me.
Speaker C:Like, trust.
Speaker C:And I'm like, God damn it.
Speaker C:Having to do the right thing, it's like you're in the.
Speaker C:And there's nobody to clap hands, there's no prize.
Speaker C:You're making less money, and nobody's patting you on the back for being a good guy, and you, like, go home.
Speaker C:You're like this silent hero that nobody knows about.
Speaker C:It's like, where's.
Speaker C:I want an award for being a good dentist, and there's no award.
Speaker A:I didn't prep 20 teeth today.
Speaker C:It's like the silent hero in my getting nagged about everybody and life being difficult.
Speaker C:But I know.
Speaker C:I know in my heart, man, and it's a sense of bravery and courage and strength, and I walk into any room with my head held high, and it's a powerful thing, man.
Speaker C:I can't.
Speaker C:I can't say it any other way.
Speaker C:I love it.
Speaker B:Very well said.
Speaker A:Amazing.
Speaker C:That's the mindset for success, man.
Speaker B:Yeah, I love it.
Speaker A:Long term success and doing dentistry for decades and decades and feeling like we.
Speaker A:We could do it even more.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker C:I think the best statement on my website was, the golden age of dentistry is yet to come, but keep on going.
Speaker C:Dirk.
Speaker C:What else you got for us?
Speaker B:Well, I want to talk about that.
Speaker B:That's going to take a whole hour.
Speaker B:I know, Christian, you have.
Speaker B:Maybe we could break this into another episode and create a couple more themes.
Speaker B:But I'd love to do this.
Speaker B:I want to respect both of your time.
Speaker B:I know you guys are very, very busy.
Speaker B:Let's give us some final thoughts.
Speaker B:So, miguel, you go first, and the Christian, you wrap us up some final thoughts on today's conversation.
Speaker C:I would love to come back.
Speaker C:I've got a lot of topics, and I want to thank Christian and you for getting me on this.
Speaker C:I've lectured in over 50 countries on a lot of different topics.
Speaker C:I love prosthodontics, cosmetic dentistry.
Speaker C:I love surgery, implant dentistry, practice management, and I've also got an AI that I'm very passionate about called missing link.
Speaker C:And we talk about that on our next one, hopefully, if you have me back.
Speaker C:But regarding slow dentistry, I'd like people to sign up to slowdentistry.com, if you can support us.
Speaker C:Share, grow.
Speaker C:It's a community.
Speaker C:You can reach out to other colleagues.
Speaker C:It's a really good community.
Speaker C:It's a slow growing community, but we're doing the right thing.
Speaker C:And in order to be a digital dentist, by default, you have to be a slow dentist because it takes a bit longer to acquire all of that data.
Speaker C:And I think that in this fast paced world, if you want to make it cross the finishing line in your sixties and seventies with a sense of, I did a good thing.
Speaker C:My patients love me.
Speaker C:They're not going to love the guy that made all the money and left a wake of destruction in their path because they saw 100 patients a day.
Speaker C:They're not going to remember that guy.
Speaker C:And again, I would tell guys to go look at, you know, legends like John Coyce, and there's a lot more like that.
Speaker C:But he's probably the most famous name in America.
Speaker C:Look at his secret for success, the amount of time he puts into planning cases.
Speaker C:Everything about John Kois is planning preparation.
Speaker C:That's slow dentistry by default.
Speaker C:And there's a reason he's the number one.
Speaker C:It's because of that.
Speaker C:DSD by default is slow dentistry.
Speaker C:So I hope that slow dentistry in the future is not necessary.
Speaker C:I hope it becomes just this urban myth.
Speaker C:Oh, yeah, of course.
Speaker C:Of course we're slow, you know, and I hope that people start brushing their teeth and remember, we don't create the problems, we just fix them.
Speaker C:And, you know, you can't fix the whole world's problem, but we can fix those that come into our homes, those that come into our clinics one at a time, but do the right thing.
Speaker B:Love it.
Speaker B:Christian, your thoughts?
Speaker A:No, I'm just.
Speaker A:I love speaking, you know, interacting with Miguel every time.
Speaker A:Every time we meet and we have a few hours, we sit down and we.
Speaker A:Our conversation just goes to places that you cannot even imagine.
Speaker A:And I love being idealistic.
Speaker A:I love being naive.
Speaker A:And he's very similar, you know, thinking about things that people may think it's impossible, you know, changing dentistry for better.
Speaker A:It's not about pointing fingers.
Speaker A:It's not about criticizing everything that was done so far.
Speaker A:It's about continuing to evolve.
Speaker A:And this is the natural evolution of dentistry.
Speaker A:I really believe that dentistry needs to change completely its perception to aesthetics.
Speaker A:The definition of aesthetics.
Speaker A:What means looking beautiful?
Speaker A:It sounds cliche, but it is a disaster.
Speaker A:Where we are now, the sensation of achieving perfection.
Speaker A:What really matters about a smile?
Speaker A:What is that smile that will gain your attention when you see somebody smiling?
Speaker A:And it's not what we see on Instagram.
Speaker A:It's not that perfect before and after.
Speaker A:That is not beauty.
Speaker A:That is not aesthetics.
Speaker A:That is not health.
Speaker A:That is not dentistry.
Speaker A:That is something else.
Speaker A:We need to name it.
Speaker A:We need to put it apart.
Speaker A:You want to be that type of dentist.
Speaker A:You can be.
Speaker A:You can be whatever you want, but you need to be fair with patients.
Speaker A:You need to be honest with patients.
Speaker A:You cannot fool people saying that.
Speaker A:You're delivering that and you're giving health and you're giving happiness because you're nothing.
Speaker A:You're just giving cosmetics superficial treatments, and you're trying to fit everybody on the same box, and you try to be more efficient to make more money.
Speaker A:And that is wrong.
Speaker A:And I'm saying this even though I am pointing fingers, I'm pointing fingers to myself, to remember myself every day.
Speaker A:That that is not the dentistry that I want to support.
Speaker A:You know, dentistry is awful.
Speaker C:Stop, man.
Speaker A:Exactly what dentistry needs.
Speaker C:I appreciate it.
Speaker C:And you know what?
Speaker C:Let's do something.
Speaker C:Cook and Christian, let me do something.
Speaker C:Let me reach out to management, and I'm going to get a QR code for anybody listening to this.
Speaker C:I'll get them a discount on their first year membership if they want to.
Speaker C:I remember the money is just to help market and spread the word.
Speaker C:Right?
Speaker C:And have your team follow up with me, and we'll offer everyone a discount that listened to this podcast.
Speaker C:All right?
Speaker C:So we'll make that happen.
Speaker A:That sounds great.
Speaker B:Thank you.
Speaker C:Thank you so much.
Speaker C:All right, Kirk, thank you for you and your team for organizing this.
Speaker C:And Christian, thank you.
Speaker C:I love you, man.
Speaker C:Thanks, buddy.
Speaker B:Thank you both, gentlemen for an amazing episode.
Speaker B:We will do a follow up and answer some of these bigger questions.
Speaker B:And thank you guys for listening to the best practices show.
Speaker B:If you weren't taking notes, don't worry, we're taking notes for you.
Speaker B:We're going to put all those links.
Speaker B:We will put that special offer from Doctor Staleye down in the show notes.
Speaker B:If you're listening to the podcast, you can flip up to the show notes.
Speaker B:You'll be able to click on the link, it'll take you right there and you can check it out.
Speaker B:So until we see you guys next time, or you hear from us next time, keep watching or keep listening to the best practices show.
Speaker B:You guys enjoy your day.
Speaker B:So there you have it.
Speaker B:Another great episode.
Speaker B:Hope you guys enjoyed it.
Speaker B:And thank you for showing up.
Speaker B:I just want to thank you for being here and sharing the good word with your friends.
Speaker B:And if you're really enjoying the podcast, could you do me a favor?
Speaker B:Could you go to wherever you consume the podcast and just give us a four or five star review?
Speaker B:Here's what that does.
Speaker B:It allows us to find other great people like you.
Speaker B:I love this profession so much.
Speaker B:I'm going to spend the rest of my professional life finding great information so that you can consume it in your, your friends can consume it so that you can create a better practice and a better life.
Speaker B:So keep spreading the word and we will see you guys soon.
Speaker B:Have a great day, everybody.
