How Dentistry Will Likely Change in the Aftermath of COVID-19 – Episode 227

A market-trend expert offers thoughts on how dentistry might be different after COVID-19.

On this episode of the Dentist Money™ Show, Ryan interviews BJ Sorensen, Senior Manager of Marketing Strategy and Research at Ultradent. While we may have a front row seat to the economic effects of COVID-19, BJ’s job is to understand how current trends might alter the future.

What will be the behavioral impact on dentists? Where is practice ownership headed? What jobs will today’s dental students find? BJ and Ryan offer their answers to these questions and many more.

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Podcast Transcript

Ryan Isaac:
Hey everybody, welcome to the Dentist Money Show, thanks for being here with us today. It’s April 2020, still kind of a different time. We’re still in the middle of the COVID-19 shutdown and a lot of uncertainty around the country. In an effort to continue bringing relevant topics to the show during this time, for things that we can work on and think about while we’re all shut down and slowed down and ways to prepare to come back.

Ryan Isaac:
Today on the show we have BJ Sorenson, senior manager of market strategy at Ultradent. BJ is in charge of tracking trends and data in the dental industry, and he shares some insight on the trends that he was tracking before all the COVID crisis happened and what to think about during this time. So thanks to BJ for being on the show. I hope this is helpful data for you guys to think about and give you some ideas of things to work on, as we come out of this crisis over the next few months.

Ryan Isaac:
If you have any questions for us directly, just give us a call, 833-DDS-PLAN, or go to the website, dentistadvisors.com, schedule a consultation with one of our advisors. Thanks for being here, we hope everyone is doing okay. Enjoy the show.

Ryan Isaac:
Consult an advisor or conduct your own due diligence when making financial decisions. General principles discussed during this program do not constitute personal advice. This program is furnished by Dentist Advisors, a registered investment advisor. This is dentist money. Now, here’s your host, Ryan Isaac.

Ryan Isaac:
Hello and welcome to the Dentist Money Show, where we help dentists make smart financial decisions. I’m your host, Ryan Isaac. Today joined by a new friend of the show, glad to have him, it’s BJ Sorenson. BJ, you’re joining us from Ultradent in Salt Lake city. How you doing, man? Thanks for joining us.

BJ Sorenson:
Good. Yeah, definitely appreciate you guys having me on and excited to talk about dentistry today.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah. Man, it feels like we were just joking about how long the last few weeks have felt. Let’s just start with Ultradent, it’s just a name I think everybody knows, but let’s just begin there. Give us a brief intro. If a few people don’t know who Ultradent is, give us an intro about Ultradent and what do you do for them and how long have you been there? What’s your role?

BJ Sorenson:
Sure. Yeah. So Ultradent products has been around for 41 years now. Started by Dr. Dan Fisher. Founded by him, his family helped him build the business from the early days and he’s still active in the business, so it’s pretty unique I think in that sense. I kind of jokingly call Ultradent, FUBU if you think, “For us, by us.”

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah.

BJ Sorenson:
It’s kind of dental by a dentist for dentists. Right?

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah. That’s cool.

BJ Sorenson:
Yeah, kind of a unique company in that sense. So I’ve been with Ultradent for, actually this week is my five year mark.

Ryan Isaac:
Oh cool, congrats.

BJ Sorenson:
Yeah, thank you. Started with them as a brand manager for the whitening line, which I think most people will know as Opalescence. In the past, I think a lot of people assumed Opalescence was the company name and Ultradent was something else, but it is one in the same. So that particular brand has been around for I think 26 years now.

Ryan Isaac:
Wow, that’s crazy man.

BJ Sorenson:
Yeah.

Ryan Isaac:
So in the five years, where did you begin in Ultradent and what are you working on now?

BJ Sorenson:
Yeah, so like I said, I started with working in brand management on that product line. And then a couple of years in we started a market research department based on some of the work that I’d been doing for Opalescence. And that’s what I manage now, is market research. So the primary function of market research at Ultradent at least is to gather, analyze, and communicate data about the dental industry that our executive team can use to make better informed decisions.

BJ Sorenson:
What market research means for us is talking to our customers. And that could be through surveys. It could be through one off feedback, emails, phone calls. We gather a lot of data about category or product category trends, share, general trends within dentistry, and then kind of really just looking at well what’s interesting in dentistry right now or where should we be looking for the future?

Ryan Isaac:
Okay. So, and that’s kind of where we’re going to head today with the podcast is your unique perspective on industry trends and some of the things you guys are working on. So maybe let’s just before, I mean right now if anyone’s listening to this episode in the future we’re in, what month are we in, April?

BJ Sorenson:
April.

Ryan Isaac:
Even though, I just wanted to say February. So we are in April, 2020 we’re still in the middle of the COVID-19 shutdown. Every dentist’s office right now is going on, are approaching the three to four week?

BJ Sorenson:
I think the sixth was the three week mark or the second was the three week mark.

Ryan Isaac:
Four year mark, somewhere in there.

BJ Sorenson:
Yeah.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah, and as of right now, the feedback I get is everyone’s kind of expecting this whole month to be still out and even into May, nobody really knows because supplies are limited. Some of the the PPE supplies are limited. So let’s just talk before we get into what’s happening now and how that might change things, and what you’re seeing. Can you give us just some interesting overview on trends in dentistry in general? Some of the things you guys are measuring and paying attention to, things you find interesting in the research and the data you’re tracking?

BJ Sorenson:
Yeah. It’s interesting because I think that has shifted in the past five weeks. So what was interesting before is not as interesting now. Now it’s still kind of on the radar, but it’s kind of back burner, it doesn’t have a [crosstalk 00:05:58] right now.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah.

BJ Sorenson:
So some things that I saw, even in late February, early March. I think there was obviously a lot more investment happening with some of the major dental manufacturers, dental distributors. I saw some news that Henry Schein was partnering with ups to do drone delivery. So as the cost of batteries decrease and as I guess the reliability of autonomous flight was getting better and better, that was becoming a more important topic about delivering goods.

Ryan Isaac:
This is like in February 2020?

BJ Sorenson:
Yeah.

Ryan Isaac:
Oh, okay.

BJ Sorenson:
And I haven’t heard a single drip about that again.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah.

BJ Sorenson:
So, and I imagine that will probably not come back on the radar until sometime next year.

Ryan Isaac:
What else was on your radar up until all this stuff happened?

BJ Sorenson:
I mean, like I mentioned before, one of our main focuses is keeping tabs on product categories and the trends in those categories and understanding what categories we play in and if they’re growing, if they’re receding, if there’s anything new within that category. And then there’s also looking at new product categories that we might want to go into. And so that’s kind of understanding, what do our customers want from us? Right. What do they find that’s valuable? And so now it’s changed a little bit to shift gears to say, well, okay, those are still important to understand how product categories are changing.

BJ Sorenson:
But because the industry is all kind of on the same page right now, it’s more about what can we do to help our customers through this time. Right? That doesn’t necessarily mean products, a lot of it can be an education.

BJ Sorenson:
So we’ve long offered CE courses for dentists, but obviously that’s becoming, they’ve got a lot of time right now in their hands. So that type of thing is more important. But really helping dentists kind of see through the short term of however long this shutdown could be and into the longterm I think is where we really connect with the dental community. Again, being around for 41 years kind of helps with that.

Ryan Isaac:
You’re really in touch with how things have trended, and I want to get into like some of the insights you guys have and things you’re seeing during this time and coming out of this, how it might affect things. For all the dentists listening, are there any trends that have been developing over the last couple of years that would be helpful for them to understand where practice ownership is headed, where jobs are headed, is there more and more consolidation of small practices into big businesses or anything that would be kind of helpful for listeners to hear?

BJ Sorenson:
The one thing that comes to mind is exactly what you mentioned and it’s that big business DSO’s, right? So the last stat that I heard is that DSO’s will, I think it was by 2021, would reach 30% of total practices. And I’ve heard some differing numbers and it was I think more than maybe five years ago, it was 8%, something like that. So regardless of what the number actually ends up being, what percentage of the total dental practices, DSO’s represent, it’s more about the growth that matters in that, right?

BJ Sorenson:
So it’s more about, okay, we’ve got a pretty fundamental shift in the way that dentists are able to approach a practice. Whereas before it was an independent private practice. Maybe you partnered with another contractor.

Ryan Isaac:
Kind of one model.

BJ Sorenson:
Yeah. Now there’s another model to go towards. And so I think obviously that’s been a huge shift and a huge impact on the industry, partly because of the buying leverage that those large organizations have, right? So just the volume that they want to buy in. All that has an impact on the dental industry for sure.

Ryan Isaac:
Do you, since we’re on the topic, what is your research pointing to as far as those trends of consolidation and just bigger DSO groups forming? Is that going to like speed it up after all of this stuff or slow it down or will it be kind of just neutral?

BJ Sorenson:
Yeah, I think that’s interesting. I don’t like to make projections about this kind of stuff because it’s like we’ve seen in the past five weeks, things change day to day. I think as we get more clarity around what this shutdown looks like and the spread of coronavirus and all that, we’ll have a better picture of what this means in the long run. But for right now, when it comes to DSO’s most of them are private equity owned and so they’ve got financial backing to weather the storm.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah pretty deep.

BJ Sorenson:
Yeah. And you compare that to an independent dentist. Obviously it’s a different financial situation. And so I think what could happen is, we’ve already seen it, it was March 23rd the ADA did a poll with 70000 us dentists, 20000 of them responded.

Ryan Isaac:
Wow.

BJ Sorenson:
So statistically it’s a very good response rate, almost unheard of. So of those 20000 dentists, 20% had closed their offices even to emergency procedures.

Ryan Isaac:
This is March 23rd?

BJ Sorenson:
23rd.

Ryan Isaac:
Okay.

BJ Sorenson:
So we’re three weeks later.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah. It’s going to be higher at this point.

BJ Sorenson:
So, okay. At that point, 20% of practices were closed, not offering any services at all. It’s probably gone up from there. We have to consider that a fair amount of those practices will not reopen.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah, that’s what I’m wondering too.

BJ Sorenson:
Yeah. Now obviously that’s a pretty Debbie Downer thing to say, but it’s a small business. Ultimately it’s a single owner, maybe a couple of owners running a small business, so they’re pockets aren’t as deep to weather the storm. So I think that we will see some private practices ultimately closing for good. Maybe you’ll see some doctors that were on the brink of retirement wanting to get out faster.

Ryan Isaac:
Right, close anyway.

BJ Sorenson:
Yeah. Just so you know, I’m going to sell this thing for whatever it’s worth at this point. I’m sure we’ll see DSOs, I mean, they’re going to be hit like everybody else. It’s not to say that they’ll be totally unscathed, but I think that they might be in a stronger position coming out of this just because of the nature of their business model. And they’re willing to stick with it too, they got into it for a reason, right?

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah, these things were a setback.

BJ Sorenson:
Yeah. And that could be one of the outcomes of this is just the shift in the makeup of DSO versus independent.

Ryan Isaac:
As you’ve listened to our podcast, maybe there’s a question about your finances you’ve wanted to ask. It’s easy to get an answer. All you do is just pick up that phone, give us a call at 833-DDS-PLAN to set up a consultation. Or if you don’t want to call us, you can just go to the website at dentistadvisers.com. Click the book free consultation button and set it up. It’s free, do it today.

Ryan Isaac:
I’ve been thinking about this for the past couple of years, being that women now make up more than 50% of dental students.

BJ Sorenson:
Yep.

Ryan Isaac:
And historically women haven’t owned practices though at the same rate, have held usually just associate jobs. So that’ll be interesting to see how that the trend continues as well with this DSO model of needing more associates.

BJ Sorenson:
Right.

Ryan Isaac:
Will more women own practices in the future now that there are more women in the field of dentistry, no. Will it continue to be the same and therefore just create a higher need for bigger DSOs and group practices with more associate jobs? That’s going to be kind of interesting.

BJ Sorenson:
For us, it’s more about what is dental behavior like, right?

Ryan Isaac:
Okay.

BJ Sorenson:
And you can segment on gender, you can segment on a region of the United States. There’s all these different ways to segment it, but really understanding, regardless of those demographics, what are some of the driving motivations of dentists and that kind of helps clue us in to the why behind what they do.

Ryan Isaac:
So that’s interesting. You used a phrase I haven’t heard before, what did you just call it? Dental behavior.

BJ Sorenson:
Yeah.

Ryan Isaac:
How it’s a little independent than some of these demographic measures. Can you give some examples of that? I think that’s pretty interesting.

BJ Sorenson:
Yeah. So I think there are seven core motivations that every human has. I didn’t establish these, they’re just kind of the standard.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah, [crosstalk 00:15:44] philosophy you guys invented.

BJ Sorenson:
Exactly. Yeah. I’m not going to remember all seven offhand, but it’s are you doing something for power? Are you doing something for money? Are you doing something for a position? Are you doing something to help others? Are you doing it because of intrinsic interest? So there’s five out of the seven. And I’ve surveyed our customer base over the past couple of years on this specific topic to understand what really motivates dentists to do the job that they do. I think all of healthcare is interesting in terms of what motivates people to be in healthcare, especially dentistry where it seems like it still has that negative stigma of going to the dentist, that still exists.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah.

BJ Sorenson:
It seems like it’s a childhood thing and then it just carries on through adulthood for some.

Ryan Isaac:
It just keeps going man, man.

BJ Sorenson:
Yeah.

Ryan Isaac:
It’s so funny, I’ve always thought about the irony that I have spent a career so far working with dentists, but I am still kind of scared to go. And they hate hearing that, I always feel bad because I always hear a dentist say what a bummer it is to hear patients joke all day long about I hate seeing you and it hurts and it costs me money, you know?

BJ Sorenson:
Yeah.

Ryan Isaac:
I hate add and pile on that. But yeah, that’s true man.

BJ Sorenson:
Yeah. It’s interesting because it made me think, well what, despite all of that obviously there’s still a lot of people that want to go into this profession and why is that? What’s the driving, what’s the motivation for that? And it didn’t take much to find out that the core motivation is helping others. So I thought that was really interesting. Money was not high on the list despite being a well paying job for sure. That wasn’t the highest one.

Ryan Isaac:
Okay. This is from survey data or just things anecdotally from experience customers?

BJ Sorenson:
This is from survey data.

Ryan Isaac:
Okay.

BJ Sorenson:
Yeah.

Ryan Isaac:
So the money was not number one motivation to become a dentist?

BJ Sorenson:
Correct.

Ryan Isaac:
Cool.

BJ Sorenson:
Interesting.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah. It reminds me of a book called Drive by, I think it’s Daniel Pink who wrote it.

BJ Sorenson:
I have not, no.

Ryan Isaac:
Okay. It talks about, because that is kind of an interesting thing. I think a lot of people would assume that’s the case. Dentists tend to be listed as some of the highest income earners in the country by profession, which by the way, it’s all sorted by W2 data, which is not where most dentists get the bulk of their income anyways.

BJ Sorenson:
Right.

Ryan Isaac:
It’s probably even higher. But the book talks about that, that people assume that money’s a big driver for human behavior motivation, but it turns out that it’s not as influential as we think.

Ryan Isaac:
So anyway, that just reminded me of that. Yeah, it’s very interesting. So what did you find that is still driving people to get into dentistry? And I guess what would be interesting to know is how do you think all this stuff changes that in the future?

BJ Sorenson:
Yeah. I haven’t spent much time thinking about the behavioral impact of the Corona virus on the profession yet, but there’s some things that spring to mind, right? So I think of if somebody is interested in dentistry for whatever reason, maybe they have a family member who practices or whatever the inspiration is for it, that I think at the core of that person, you’re still going to find that they care about helping other people. And so that’s probably one of the ways that they kind of find their way to that profession.

BJ Sorenson:
When I think about what would keep a student, a dental student in school right now? If they’re looking at this situation and they’re saying, “Why should I stay in dentistry?”

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah.

BJ Sorenson:
I think that kind of comes back to what’s your motivation for doing it? Are you passionate about dentistry, and is it something you can see yourself doing for the majority of your life? Because it’s not one of those practices or one of those professions where you get into it and then five years down the road you’re like, “Man, that was fun. I’m going to go do something else now.” And that happens to people for sure. But that’s not the case, I think you get almost married to dentistry.

Ryan Isaac:
Oh yeah.

BJ Sorenson:
And it just kind of draws you in.

Ryan Isaac:
And it’s such a giant commitment. I mean, you’ve probably met dentists before too, that don’t like being a dentist after they’ve gone through the schooling and taken on the debt and started a practice, they’re kind of just like, “I don’t really like being a dentist.” Definitely not the majority of people, that’s a more rare thing to hear. But that’s tough because the price of becoming a dentist, time, energy and money is pretty steep.

BJ Sorenson:
Yeah, exactly. And I think …

Ryan Isaac:
And growing.

BJ Sorenson:
Going back a little bit, that’s one of the reasons we’ll see DSO’s continue to grow, I think. Is because they’re helping new students with some of the costs.

Ryan Isaac:
Do you, in a lot of the research that you’ve done and seeing behavior and dentist, do you think the upside to that though is, because I’ve thought this a lot before, that there’s just some people who are just so much better off not being owners of businesses? It takes a toll on them in a lot of different ways because it’s just not either their core competency, they don’t like it, it’s too overwhelming or stressful, it’s not what they got into it for, do you see that as being an upside of more associate jobs, more DSO kind of driven businesses for people to find their natural fit in dentistry that might not be ownership?

BJ Sorenson:
Yeah, I think that’s a really good point. I don’t know what the curriculum looks like at every dental school. I don’t know how many classes students receive on business management. I’ve heard it’s …

Ryan Isaac:
Spoiler alert, it’s very little.

BJ Sorenson:
Yeah. So let’s assume they get one course throughout their dental studying career that says, “Hey, here’s how to run your practice.”

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah.

BJ Sorenson:
It’s a small business and it’s not even that small, honestly. It’s a decent sized business, right?

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah.

BJ Sorenson:
So to be the sole practitioner and to have to be a subject matter expert in dentistry and to be, I would assume that most dentists tend to be extroverted, right? They like to be around people. They like to serve other people. Right? And so having that mind I think is a good baseline for okay, do I want to be an owner? Is that really important to me? Is that the goal of why I got into dentistry? Right?

Ryan Isaac:
Sure.

BJ Sorenson:
So I think there’s some interesting questions that come out of understanding what goes along with owning your own practice and what kind of things you need to be aware of. It’s not to put, I don’t want to bash dentists because they just, most of them weren’t taught how to manage business. And most of them are more focused on dentistry than they are on operations.

BJ Sorenson:
So there’s probably, I think for people that are interested in that, it’s a good idea to look at, “Okay, am I willing to take the time to understand financial management?” Cash flows, P and L’s, margins, inventory, does this stuff matter to me? Do I care enough about it to make it a part of my life? And I think if they do, then that it makes a little bit more sense for them to consider ownership, and that’s true of any business, right? Like if you love dogs and you want to start a dog focused business, do you love dogs enough to deal with the financial part of operating that business?

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah. As we kind of look forward then through some of this COVID stuff and the effects, I mean we still don’t know what the longterm effects are going to be. It’s starting to be interesting to hear, I’m sure you hear this too, dentists talk about going back to work and being a little apprehensive about it.

BJ Sorenson:
Yeah.

Ryan Isaac:
First of all, there’s a lack of some supplies in the first place to even get back soon. But now we’re just wondering about health and safety and [inaudible 00:24:32] happens again in twelve months and is this worth it? And so let’s just maybe look forward here at the last few minutes of the show, looking forward coming out of this. What kind of advice would you give maybe for students, what advice would you give for people mid career? And how what you’re seeing might change the future of dentistry at all?

BJ Sorenson:
Yeah, there’s a lot to unpack there. I like the way you split it up into different groups, right? If you’re a student, if you’re somewhere in the middle of your career, and maybe you’re toward the end, I think maybe if you’re toward the end of the answer is a little bit more clear.

BJ Sorenson:
But I think it goes back to understanding, okay, we don’t know what the future of this totally looks like in clarity, but we can assume a few things, right? We can assume that there will be some new standards in dentistry as a result of all this, probably sterilization techniques, maybe infection control. Maybe it’s as simple as maybe there could be some new screening questions before patients are allowed to come in.

Ryan Isaac:
Come in to the office. Yeah.

BJ Sorenson:
Yeah. Maybe operatories get closed off, you think about how many droplets are spread just in a normal cleaning process and four feet away is another patient with their mouth open, right?

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah.

BJ Sorenson:
Yeah. You’ve got cabinets in between, but does that really prevent?

Ryan Isaac:
This will change the way we think about just our general health in public around other humans. For sure.

BJ Sorenson:
Yeah. Yeah. So I think those kind of things, probably, we’ll see some of those changes for sure. I also go back to the last comment that we had about business management skills, right? So I think this time it’s a good time, it’s a good lesson in what skills you’re going to need in the future as a dentist. Right?

Ryan Isaac:
Okay. Yep.

BJ Sorenson:
I guess the lesson that I’ve learned that I’ve seen through this is if a business can’t sustain itself after a week of no income, then something’s wrong. So having that financial aptitude as a practice owner, I think is going to become more important. And for a lot of dentists, that might mean getting external help, right? That might mean reaching out to somebody that understands business management to say, “Hey, I don’t need you full time, but I need you to come in and take a look at my operations and just tell me where am I leaking cash? Where are my opportunities to improve margins? Am I leaving anything on the table that I could be collecting on?”

Ryan Isaac:
Hey everybody, here’s a few reasons why you should listen to our next webinar. First of all, the webinar format allows us to teach financial principles in a more interactive way. You get to see live graphics on your screen, sometimes I draw pretty pictures and we have a live discussion that helps explain financial concepts in more detail. You can even send in questions live during the webinar and get an answer. And then we always do a Q and A after. So join us next time. Go to DentistAdvisers.com/events and sign up for the next webinar.

BJ Sorenson:
Obviously right now is a pretty unique time. We haven’t seen anything quite like this in terms of layoffs. So I don’t want to sound flippant when I say this, but the gut reaction in these moments is cost reduction, right? How do I cut costs? How do I stay afloat? And I think that’s the right way to look at this right now. But in the long run, cutting costs is not a growth lever.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah.

BJ Sorenson:
So I think dentists need to, or practice owners need to look at what do I do in the longterm to help my practice not only survive this, but be able to sustain another hit like this if it ever happens again. Right?

Ryan Isaac:
Yep.

BJ Sorenson:
And again, I think that’s where an external third party, maybe somebody has good experience with financial management and business operations can look at their situation and say, “Here’s what’s going on, here’s some opportunities for you.”

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah, that’s something we talk about a lot too. It’s kind of just developing your team of core advisors. Like a big company has a board of directors and everyone’s kind of got a specialty. So a CPA, a bookkeeper who really understands your position and your situation, a financial advisor, a consultant, a marketing person.

BJ Sorenson:
Yeah.

Ryan Isaac:
I mean are those things that probably need to be rethought then, hours of operation, convenience and scheduling for patients. The way people think about marketing, and it’s something you’ve said too, I think is interesting that you’ve said cutting costs is not a lever, that kind of used to be the main way for practices decades ago to really get ahead of the game. Right? Is you just trim as much as humanly possible and just keep that thing small but really, really lean. It seems like older practices I’ve met, that used to work a lot just to make more money. But I’m not sure that’s like you said, it’s not a growth lever you can pull anymore.

BJ Sorenson:
Yeah. I think it probably depends on what that owner wants out of their practice. Right?

Ryan Isaac:
Okay.

BJ Sorenson:
If they want to grow their practice, not just in terms of volume, but maybe its locations, whatever their goal is, I think that determines the way they look at cost-cutting. Right? When we talk about marketing and some of those budgets that a practice could do. Here’s the reason I think that’s important and right now, again, 20% of practices are closed. We know that more will probably close beyond that.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah. Sure.

BJ Sorenson:
Marketing budgets right now are probably not the most important thing, but when we look beyond this down the road, I think it’s important for practice owners to think about, how am I marketing my practice? And ask yourself, I mean, we could all ask ourselves this question, although we’re kind of a biased audience because we’re so involved in dentistry. So maybe ask your neighbor who doesn’t know as much and say, how did you find your dentist? What makes them a good dentist?

BJ Sorenson:
And a lot of people will say, “Oh, it’s because my family member goes to them.” Or, “I’ve been going to them since I was a kid.” Or, “It’s because they’re right next to my work.” Or whatever these reasons are, right? How do you know they’re goo? Word of mouth?

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah.

BJ Sorenson:
They had a billboard?

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah.

BJ Sorenson:
I don’t know. I don’t know how they’re good. So I think dentistry, coming out of this era of the coronavirus, it will be a smaller playing field, unfortunately. But I think it’s also an opportunity for practice owners to say, “Okay, well what makes me stand out as a dentist?” I mean, I’m sure you’ve seen plenty of dental marketing, whether it’s print advertisements or Facebook or whatever. It’s all stock photos, of a happy family, nothing stands out. Right? It’s all very bland, it’s all very much the same. The dentists that do really well with marketing, just like any other business, have a niche that they’re going after.

Ryan Isaac:
It’s personal, it feels like you’re not interacting with a brand, it almost feels like a human entity at some level.

BJ Sorenson:
Yeah.

Ryan Isaac:
It’s very personal.

BJ Sorenson:
Yeah. And it should, I mean that’s like one of the most vulnerable positions you can be in as a patient. And you’re allowing essentially a stranger to go to work on you.

Ryan Isaac:
To inflict pain on you for money.

BJ Sorenson:
Yeah. So I think creating that personal connection and really telling potential patients why they should trust you, why should they believe in you? What makes you different if anything? Those are the types of things, I mean really the fundamentals of marketing is what we’re talking about.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah.

BJ Sorenson:
When we talk about how to do that, that’s a totally different podcast for sure.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah, what you were saying earlier too, that’s where you bring in people who that’s their field of expertise, you don’t try to wing it yourself.

BJ Sorenson:
Right.

Ryan Isaac:
Bring someone in.

BJ Sorenson:
Yeah. Yeah. Get somebody who knows how to market a small business.Some of this stuff is pretty cheap too, Facebook ads done well or one of the lowest cost types of acquisition for customers that exists And they’re easy to experiment with too, right? So I think that’s a good example of a way to think longterm about this. One of the things that that comes up a lot is that there’s a lot of fear right now. Fear causes poor choices and it causes inaction. And it’s really, I think we can understand why, because you want to feel like you’re protected, you’re in control of something during times like this. And so we draw inward, right? To focus on ourselves. To focus on the things that we can control.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah.

BJ Sorenson:
But I also think that right now is a very good time to maybe flip that and look outward a little bit more and say, “Okay, how can I be looking? What kind of perspective should I have on my practice in the future? What do I want out of my practice?” It’s kind of that whole Simon Sinek theory of the why. Right? So I think these are very theoretical concepts here, but they’re very important.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah, they are, and if there’s ever been a time where you’ve just wished and so many of us do like, “I wish I could just slow down for like a month and just think, just like stop everything and just think for awhile.”

BJ Sorenson:
Yeah. Here’s your chance.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah. I mean it’s a crappy chance, none of us would really choose the chance, but here it is. And yeah, someone on a podcast a couple of weeks ago said the same thing. A lot of us have always wanted a chance to just stop and slow down and just put some brain power into thinking about the future and changing something. Do you want to go back and do the same thing you were doing a month ago?

BJ Sorenson:
Right.

Ryan Isaac:
Or do you want to do something different?

BJ Sorenson:
Yeah.

Ryan Isaac:
Not meaning like a new career, but run the practice a different way or bring someone else in or, I think it’s great man. How about any other parting words for advice you would give while there is this downtime and as of right now kind of beginning of April, we might have another month of this, maybe a couple months, it just seems insane even consider. But any advice on things people can do while they do have this time?

BJ Sorenson:
Man there’s so much. I think this goes beyond dentistry, but just being aware of what’s happening in your own head I think is important. We’re all in a very strange time being isolated and video is great. It connects people in one regard. But I think taking that step back and just realizing people are experiencing different emotions right now.

BJ Sorenson:
There was a Harvard Business Review article that came out within the past couple of weeks that talked about how we as a global community are going through some sort of grief. The stages of, grieving, right? We have lost something that we were used to, which is a way of life. And we’re now going through the stages of grief, dealing with that loss and kind of creating this new norm. So I think for everybody, just step back for a minute, recognize your emotions, understand where you’re at. Just chill out a little bit and try to think through things a little bit more. You’ve got time to not be reactionary. You’ve got time to think.

BJ Sorenson:
Very tactical things, again, look at your business operations, understand maybe Q4 of last year , Q1 of this year, how things went. Really do a deep dive and understand, and like you mentioned, what have I always wanted to fix with my practice? What has always bugged me? Well, now’s your time to address it and figure it out.

Ryan Isaac:
And it doesn’t have to be big. I mean, you don’t have to change your whole life around it, but I guess now’s the time to implement one thing.

BJ Sorenson:
Yeah, very simple things.

Ryan Isaac:
That HBR article you’re talking about is called, the title is That Discomfort You’re Feeling Is Grief.

BJ Sorenson:
Yeah.

Ryan Isaac:
On Harvard Business Review. Yeah, I’ve read that, that’s really great man. For the audience, you mentioned that Ultradent does do a lot of education. Maybe you’re doing more of it now, I don’t know. Is there some resources you’d like to point people to where they could find some of the things you guys are doing?

BJ Sorenson:
Yeah, I would just say go to Ultradent.com, in there you’ll find everything that we’re doing to help dentists through this time in terms of education. Obviously we’re still supplying dentists with the emergency essential products so you can find some deals on the website there, but again it’s just Ultradent.com and you’ll find everything you need there.

Ryan Isaac:
Cool. Well BJ, thanks for taking time man, and sharing some of your experience and expertise with us. We really appreciate you doing this. Good luck to you and your crew. Stay safe and stay sane and we’ll probably be back another time, appreciate it, man. Thank you.

BJ Sorenson:
All right, definitely appreciate it. Thanks Ryan.

Ryan Isaac:
Thanks everybody.

Ryan Isaac:
All right, my thanks to BJ Sorenson and Ultradent for taking some time today to share his thoughts and expertise on insights of dental trends and data that he’s been tracking over the years. That was a really fascinating interview and really interesting to think about how things were moving previous to the COVID-19 problems and where they might go from here.

Ryan Isaac:
Thanks everyone for listening to the show today. My thanks to BJ Sorenson for being with us and taking time to share some trends and some data. It was interesting to hear where dentistry as a whole as an industry was heading before all this COVID stuff, and where it might be going from here.

Ryan Isaac:
If you have any questions, go to the Facebook page, DentistAdvisers.com/group, post a question, we’ll answer quickly in there or go to the website, schedule a time with an advisor at DentistAdvisors.com, we’d love to hear from you. Again, thanks for the support. We’re really pulling for everyone out there. We’re hope you’re okay and we’ll catch you next time.

Practice Management