How to Quickly Increase Your Purchasing Power – Episode #361

Would you like to level the playing field when competing with big DSOs? Start by joining with thousands of practices to improve your purchasing power. On this episode of the Dentist Money™ Show, Ryan and John Stamper discuss how Dental Whale offers dentists a central place to shop, to learn more about technology, and to join with other practices to beef up their buying power. 

 

Show Notes
www.dentalwhale.com

 

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Podcast Transcript

Ryan Isaac:
Hello everybody. Welcome back to another episode of The Dentist Money Show, brought to you by Dentist Advisors, a no commission fee-only fiduciary, comprehensive financial advisor just for dentists all over the country. Check us out, dentistadvisors.com. Today on the show, I was live at the Dental Whale Business Immersion Summit 2022 at the Aria in Las Vegas. And I sat down with John Stamper. John is Learning Leader at Dental Whale, and this was his show and his event, and it was a huge success. We had a great time and met a lot of great people, saw a lot of old friends. John sits down with me on this episode to talk about the future. I asked him a lot about the future of these big events, how they’re kind of put on, what people expect out of these and what they’re getting from them and what they mean in the future for dentists, dental CE, and helping dentists make better financial and practice and business decisions in their life.

Ryan Isaac:
So, many thanks to John for sitting down. He was [chuckle] really busy, had a lot of stuff going on, obviously, that weekend but he is very kind to spend some time and sit down with me and talk about this event that they had put on. It was a great time. I look forward to going next year. So, thanks again, John. And if you have any questions for us, go to dentistadvisors.com and click the “book free consultation” link. If you have any money questions whatsoever, you can get a fiduciary dental specific financial advisor on the phone and ask your money questions to them. And we are very nice people, I think, my opinion, biased opinion, but we would love to [chuckle] get on the phone for a friendly chat and help point you in the right money direction. Thank you for being here everybody. Enjoy the show.

Announcer:
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 everybody. Welcome to another episode of the Dentist Money Show, where we help dentists make smart financial decisions. I’m your host Ryan, and I’m here with John Stamper at the Dental Whale Business Immersion Summit 2022, Aria, Las Vegas. What’s up John?

John Stamper:
How’s it going Ryan?

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah. First of all, you saw Tiesto last night…

John Stamper:
I did.

Ryan Isaac:
At concert…

John Stamper:
Yep.

Ryan Isaac:
Big show.

John Stamper:
Amazing.

Ryan Isaac:
Amazing.

John Stamper:
Amazing.

Ryan Isaac:
You’re a DJ.

John Stamper:
Yep.

Ryan Isaac:
We’re gonna get to all of this. I’m… These are the things I’m learning five minutes previous to hitting record and I [chuckle] wanna talk about all of it. We’ll talk business, but I wanna talk DJ and music.

John Stamper:
Let’s do it.

Ryan Isaac:
‘Cause that’s really fascinating, man. Well, first of all, it is quieting down, actually. So that’s… Sometimes we do these interviews and it’s like a party behind me, and then like music playing. [chuckle]

John Stamper:
Yeah.

Ryan Isaac:
But it’s cool. It’s cool…

John Stamper:
It’s nice and quiet now. Yeah.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah, it is nice and quiet.

John Stamper:
It shows the ambience of the event.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah. So the Aria, how many years is this for Business Immersion?

John Stamper:
So, this is the second one that we’ve done, so we did it in 2019.

Ryan Isaac:
Oh, yeah, and then had to take a big break.

John Stamper:
And then the pandemic… And so yeah, this is the second one.

Ryan Isaac:
Wow! Okay. Where was the first one at?

John Stamper:
Here, it was in Vegas, at the same hotel.

Ryan Isaac:
Same, same time. How is it the second time around? How’s it been?

John Stamper:
It’s been amazing.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah.

John Stamper:
When you think about, Ryan, dentist and their teams taking time out of their practice to come to an event, from our perspective at Dental Whale, we wanted a couple of things. We wanted to make sure that they learned what they wanted to learn, we wanted to make sure that they had time to spend with the companies that are here, that are sponsoring the event, learning about the products and services and then of course have a little bit of fun as well.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah, I was just in the exhibitor hall, they were doing the raffle giveaways.

John Stamper:
Yes.

Ryan Isaac:
[chuckle] One of the prizes had a value of almost $20,000.

John Stamper:
Yeah, yeah.

Ryan Isaac:
[chuckle] I was like, wait, what? Usually they giveaway key chains.

John Stamper:
Yeah. That one got my attention.

Ryan Isaac:
[chuckle] They showed up. They showed up to this thing.

[laughter]

John Stamper:
They did, they did.

Ryan Isaac:
So, how would you describe the purpose of the Dental Whale Summit? Like, what would you hope a doctor and team takes away from this?

John Stamper:
Yeah, I think a couple of things. I think, it is… It wasn’t always apparent, but it’s very apparent now I think that learning of so many of the business principles is crucial to growing a successful dental practice.

Ryan Isaac:
Totally.

John Stamper:
And so I think that they left here, whichever courses they attended, they left here grabbing some business principles that they can apply in the next couple of weeks.

Ryan Isaac:
Totally. Like immediately. Go back, implement…

John Stamper:
Immediately. Yeah, go back, do some things that they can do. I think that that’s the first one. We’re very excited about this lane that we’ve created for ourselves, which is the DPSO, Dental…

Ryan Isaac:
Explain what…

John Stamper:
Yeah, Dental Purchasing Services Organization. So, we fit this middle lane that really nobody has done. We’re not your traditional GPO and we know that there are a lot of practices out there that want to take advantage of discounts from companies and things like that. And so, that’s how we positioned ourselves.

Ryan Isaac:
That’s cool.

John Stamper:
And of course we launched our platform My Dental Whale, the show, so we wanted to make sure people knew about that.

Ryan Isaac:
Very cool man.

John Stamper:
Yeah.

Ryan Isaac:
So, the structure of the event, we’ve just been hanging out in this awesome lounge, [laughter] basically.

John Stamper:
Yeah. It’s pretty sweet.

Ryan Isaac:
Feel like the most comfortable couch I’ve ever been able to sit on.

[laughter]

Ryan Isaac:
But you’ve had a main stage going this whole time. And then multiple breakouts at the same time.

John Stamper:
Yes.

Ryan Isaac:
Right?

John Stamper:
Yeah.

Ryan Isaac:
Run through some of the people who have been here and what they’ve talked about. What stood out to you?

John Stamper:
Yeah. So a couple of things. On Thursday we had our pre-summit events.

Ryan Isaac:
Oh yeah.

John Stamper:
So we had the team from Practice on Fire. We had Carrie Strain, our own Dr. Scott Luna. Did his…

Ryan Isaac:
He was just on our webinar and podcast the other day, like a couple of weeks ago.

John Stamper:
Excellent. Yeah I love that. So, he did his business masters. There was 150 doctors there.

Ryan Isaac:
Awesome. He’s so smart.

John Stamper:
Yeah, Dr. Chris Phelps had a course. So, that was the pre-summit.

Ryan Isaac:
Cool. Yeah.

John Stamper:
And then I think some of the other courses, we were very excited. We had Darren Hardy, who was our keynote, that was really cool.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah. Author?

John Stamper:
No. Yeah, author…

Ryan Isaac:
No. Or I’m mixing that up.

John Stamper:
No, yeah, Author lot of different things of SUCCESS Magazine.

Ryan Isaac:
Yes, okay, that’s a new one.

John Stamper:
Now, he’s really speaker and just a big believer in keeping things simple and focus on…

Ryan Isaac:
He’s… Someone earlier on the podcast today was dropping some quotes from Darren Hardy from his speech here. And it left us both kinda like, Oh yeah, that was deep, [chuckle] that was really deep, man.

John Stamper:
Yes, and I think what was great as well is that we did a Q&A afterwards.

Ryan Isaac:
Oh, fun. Okay.

John Stamper:
And I think just the questions from the dentist, just them being vulnerable enough to talk to Darren… He’s just sitting there on stage, and him sharing his insight of studying successful businesses…

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah, totally.

John Stamper:
And that was really cool. It showed us that there’s such a need for the dentist out there to have somebody occasionally from outside of our industry that they can draw insights from.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah, totally man. There’s so… I mean, I don’t have to tell you this, but there’s just so much outside of the clinical aspect of dentistry that impacts the entire operation. How it’s gonna run, the team, how much money you’re gonna make, how successful, the longevity, everything. And it’s tough because a lot of that stuff is so far outside of the wheelhouse of what an average dentist goes through in training and education, and even CE, which is so clinical focused that, this stuff is really cool. How did you get involved? How long have you been with the organization and what’s your role?

John Stamper:
Yeah. So I started with Dental Whale in January of this year and was brought on to run our learning business, education. And that consists of the breakaway seminar and all of the stuff with that. And then Laura Nelson’s Front Office Rocks.

Ryan Isaac:
Front Office, yeah.

John Stamper:
So both of those brands, Scott and Laura, very well known and respected in the industry. So we’re excited to continue to grow those. And we’re also building out a library of content providers. We know that on-demand CE is something that more and more professionals are taking. And so we wanted to have one place where they could come in and when they need a particular course on a different category of subject that that’s available.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah. For sure, man. I’m curious like, you did, the first one you did pre-pandemic, now we’re a couple of years after. What’s changed in the, I guess, maybe the industry of dentistry or the messaging to dentists and the things that they’re learning?

John Stamper:
I think that what the pandemic, at least for a lot of the doctors and teams that I speak with, I think what the pandemic taught so many was that they really needed to know and understand the business aspect of their practice. Because in a situation where you were forced to shut your practice down for a couple of months, that… Okay, you’re looking… You need help with cash flow. And so, maybe they took their AR serious, but not maybe as serious… Not as serious enough.

Ryan Isaac:
Not as serious enough. Now they’re like, Oh, it’s serious.

John Stamper:
So, now like, Okay, I understand that. I think a lot of the technologies. One of the things that’s changed is, as you know, is that staffing has been hard. There’s been this big…

Ryan Isaac:
Still is.

John Stamper:
Still hard. And I don’t think that that’s gonna change. And I think that the practices are having to pay their team members more which is not necessarily a bad thing.

Ryan Isaac:
Totally.

John Stamper:
But I think what they’re gonna have to do is have less team members and utilize the technologies to help fill in those gaps.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah, for sure.

John Stamper:
So that they can continue to offer the care that they want.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah, team, business systems, yeah, all around business outside of the clinical side of dentistry is big theme. Any takeaways from this year that’ll take you… I’m sure you guys start planning like a couple of months from now, [laughter] for the next one.

John Stamper:
Yeah, exactly.

Ryan Isaac:
[chuckle] These things are so big. Any takeaways or ideas that you’re excited about for next year that you’re starting to think about?

John Stamper:
Yeah, I think just the continuation of growing our membership. We’re just now north of 2000 members which is really exciting. And I think continuing to do that and then just closing the gap between our partners that we work with, the products and services that they have, and more of our members being aware of that and utilizing them.

Ryan Isaac:
Very cool. So how about, let’s stick on that, Dental Whale as a whole, being a member, that’s what you’re referring to, right?

John Stamper:
That’s correct, yes.

Ryan Isaac:
Talk about that a little bit. What does that mean to be a member of Dental Whale?

John Stamper:
Right. So, what we’ve done as I mentioned, is we’ve coined this lane that we’ve created for ourselves, the DPSO. So, when you become a member of our DPSO it’s a couple of things. You get an account on My Dental Whale. And inside My Dental Whale, the whole goal of that was to have like a single place where you could shop for your supplies and things like that. Learn more about equipment and technology.

Ryan Isaac:
Do you have like, is it even possible to throw out average discounts or discounts across different categories, is that even…

John Stamper:
Yeah. In some categories, 30 to 40%.

Ryan Isaac:
Oh yeah, significant. Yeah, huge.

John Stamper:
And I think the other thing as well is that it’s the awareness. When we look at some of the older models of the industry, what we’re really trying to establish is this new model, which is, we want the practices to know what’s out there. As consumers, we all do. Like, we could go anywhere we want now to see what the options are. And it wasn’t always like that in the older models.

Ryan Isaac:
Oh, yeah.

John Stamper:
So they weren’t, didn’t always, weren’t privy to maybe some of the other companies out there because the companies didn’t have, they weren’t large enough and so they needed to work with the distributors in an effort to be able to get the awareness out. But then there was a lot of politics there too. So, I think to answer your question, we’re excited to just see this mature, more members that can take advantage of the benefits, and then as well as a lot of our partners.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah. So you mentioned that, and that was my next question. So, talk about who are some of these main partners? And when you say you want to be able to keep pushing the connection between partners and members, how do you envision that? What does that connection mean? That interaction?

John Stamper:
Yeah. A couple of things. So, one of our top sponsors here, NDX, on the laboratory side, and so they’re offering discounts there. We work with the Straumann and ClearCorrect, companies like that. And then we’ve got some of the newer and upcoming companies. Companies like Rectangle Health which are doing things to make things easier on the payment side. And then companies such as the ones that have been around for a while Nobel Biocare and some of those. And so I think the goal is, is just for the practices to even know that they’re members, so we need to make sure that we continue to build that awareness and just deepen that relationship with them.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah. Throughout the year, aside from things like this, I assume there’s probably smaller events that go on year round? I don’t know, like CE events or educational things? Like what’s the awareness like during the year outside of events like this?

John Stamper:
Yeah, so what we’re gonna start to do is Laura Nelson, she did this several years ago but through the pandemic, has been out and doing like a two day live event with Laura. So, we’re gonna do four of those next year which we’re excited about, office managers and team training and things like that. And then with Dr. Scott Luna we’re gonna continue to do his breakaway. But he’s putting together something we’re really excited about, which is an 18 month continuum. So, we’re gonna take a lot of the content, half of it’s gonna be digital, half of it’ll be in person.

Ryan Isaac:
Oh, yeah.

John Stamper:
And the whole goal is to create this track that the dentist can really help themselves on their business principles.

Ryan Isaac:
He was talking about that on our show.

John Stamper:
Yeah. So we’re excited about that. And so, what that means is live events, and what we just recently did with Dr. Luna is we’ve opened up the door. So at his events we did it here in Las Vegas, we had six companies. So we now have companies that are in there, companies that he believes in.

Ryan Isaac:
Got it. Yep.

John Stamper:
And that are in the room, so that when he talks about them, it’s…

Ryan Isaac:
They’re right there.

John Stamper:
They’re right there.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah. And then that’s the connection you’re talking about.

John Stamper:
That’s it.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah. That’s really cool. I’m curious like kind of a side note, but did you learn anything new or different about events like this in… What’s the place for huge, large scale in-person events with vendors and exhibit halls and multiple stages in the future of Dental CE? Is it still gonna keep being a big thing? Is it as big as it used to be? Do people want that mix of… We all got Zoom-ed out? We all are. Nobody wants to get on a Zoom anymore. [laughter] But what do you think about that, the future of these big events?

John Stamper:
Yeah. I think what I see happening, Ryan, is that I feel like there are some events that have created their own niche.

Ryan Isaac:
Totally. Yeah.

John Stamper:
And I think in that regard, we’re gonna have situations where dentists and their teams, they’re already looking more at the value of their time. And so if they are gonna go, they’re gonna make sure that they’re gonna wanna learn specific things when they’re there.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah. Okay.

John Stamper:
Not so much the broad of what it used to be. And I also think that we’ve seen a lot of consolidation in the industry with different companies partner with other companies. I had a conversation with one of our partners a little while ago. And one of the things he took out of this was to be able to network a lot of the other companies, which I thought was good. So, I think if those things are still in play where you have the energy of networking with other colleagues and learning things, I think it’s here to stay. But I do think it’s gonna be, again, less events, and I think it’s gonna be the events that have found a way to niche themselves.

Ryan Isaac:
Very, yeah, very specific kind of niched out. And probably coupled with… I’d love the idea of live events with an ongoing track of remote events later. And on-demand kind of classes, like self-learning, self-paced learning later, that coincide with the live events. So they’re not separate things that live differently. Yeah. That’s really cool. Are you guys gonna be here at the same spot next year?

John Stamper:
We’re working on that. Yeah, we’re working on the…

Ryan Isaac:
To be determined.

John Stamper:
To be determined, as far as what we’re gonna do. But we’ve just been so pleased. Our goal here, like I was sharing with you before, was to make sure that the experience for the attendees and for all of you that are here, it’s been great to have you guys here, to spend time with a lot of the great people here and same thing with the companies.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah, so cool. That’s John the business guy. John the DJ, I gotta ask. You’ve been DJing for a long time?

John Stamper:
Yeah. Yeah. It’s probably… Music has been a part of my life since I was a little kid.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah, mine too. Yeah. Huge.

John Stamper:
I don’t think there was a time when my parents didn’t have something on or my aunts… To think about the time that we grew up, I think about being able to listen to Led Zeppelin on a 45 when I’m being babysat by my aunts.

Ryan Isaac:
Crazy. Yeah.

John Stamper:
That’s the music that we grew up to.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah. Wild. Yeah.

John Stamper:
And so I think it just stuck with us. And about 12, 13 years ago I had a friend of mine who, his brother had a bar that he had closed down, he had a digital jukebox and they had the hard drive, it had a lot of music on there. And so I was able to get access to that.

Ryan Isaac:
Oh, crazy. Yeah.

John Stamper:
And so that was kind of the… You get access to all this music. Okay, what am I gonna do with this?

Ryan Isaac:
Now what? Yeah.

John Stamper:
Now I have this library and made the connection to go get some equipment and start to DJ. Had a friend of mine that had me do their Halloween party.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah. Okay. [chuckle]

John Stamper:
And I was hooked. That was it.

Ryan Isaac:
And then that was it.

John Stamper:
It was just the energy of being able to do that and…

Ryan Isaac:
What’s the funnest party you’ve done or event that you’ve done? You probably have a lot, but what sticks out?

John Stamper:
Man, yeah. There’s been some. When I worked for Mortenson DSO in Louisville for two years straight, I got to DJ their annual summit. 700 people…

Ryan Isaac:
A lot of people. Oh, yeah.

John Stamper:
Big ballroom, connecting things into the house.

Ryan Isaac:
Oh, cool.

John Stamper:
Lots of fun. And small events. Small events over the years. I’ve had the opportunity to do it here, which has been great.

Ryan Isaac:
I was gonna ask it, did you do it this weekend or no?

John Stamper:
Yeah. Yeah.

Ryan Isaac:
Oh, you did?

John Stamper:
Yeah. So, I’ve been… So we had the DJ booth set up in the exhibit hall just to kind of keep the energy up and keep music going.

Ryan Isaac:
Last night? Was that yesterday?

John Stamper:
It’s been kind of throughout the whole, about the whole time and what have you. So we had a reception last night, we’ve DJ’ed that. We’re gonna have a little celebration for all of our Dental Whale team members tonight.

Ryan Isaac:
Cool.

John Stamper:
So we’re gonna… We’ll DJ that.

Ryan Isaac:
Cool.

John Stamper:
Kinda the resident DJ.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah. Well, thanks for having us out here and it’s been really cool to connect with all you guys and to do this and, yeah. There’s so many good stories you’ve been telling on the show and it’s been cool. So thanks for spending time. Thanks for the invite.

John Stamper:
Absolutely.

Ryan Isaac:
Look forward doing it in the future. And where can people find all these resources? What’s the best place to turn to you and look in?

John Stamper:
Yeah, dentalwhale.com.

Ryan Isaac:
That’s it?

John Stamper:
Yeah, dentalwhale.com, and you’ll have information there about our DPSO membership, all of the different services in there that we’re offering, information about our repair business, with Dental Fix, which is really exciting. It’s one of the things that a lot of people are not aware of but all that information is on dentalwhale.com.

Ryan Isaac:
Okay. We’ll put all these links in the show notes and everything as well. So John, thanks for taking some time and I hope you have a good rest of your time here. Where do you live? Do you live here?

John Stamper:
Louisville, Kentucky.

Ryan Isaac:
Oh, yes. You’re heading home a couple of days. Tomorrow?

John Stamper:
Yeah, yeah. Got Bourbon company, so early flight tomorrow morning and…

Ryan Isaac:
Oh, really? Okay.

John Stamper:
Yeah, be back home the evening.

Ryan Isaac:
Late night, early flight.

John Stamper:
There you go. There you go.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah. Well, thanks everyone for listening and tuning in. If you have any questions for us, go to dentistadvisors.com and click the “book free consultation” link. We’d love to have a chat with you. We’ll throw all the links in the description below. John and Dental Whale and the summit’s been great, man. Thank you very much. Have a good time.

John Stamper:
Yeah. We really appreciate you guys being here. And I think it adds to the component of people being able to talk with you and just spread the word of…

Ryan Isaac:
Connect and share.

John Stamper:
Just connect and share.

Ryan Isaac:
I love it, man. Thank you so much. Look forward to it. We’ll do it again next time. Have a good one. Thanks everybody.

John Stamper:
Sounds good, Ryan. Thanks.

Ryan Isaac:
All right. Bye-bye.

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