Why Facial Aesthetics Are Trending at Dental Practices – Episode #356

Have you considered offering aesthetic beauty procedures at your practice? Non-invasive treatments for things like pigmentation lesions and acne are becoming increasingly popular and helping dentists add to their bottom line. On this episode of the Dentist Money™ Show, Ryan talks with Sally Bevans, VP at Sinclair Viora, who details why dentists and aesthetics are a good match.

 

 

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Podcast Transcript

Ryan Isaac:
Hello everybody, and welcome back to another fantastic episode of the Dentist Money Show, brought to you by Dentist Advisors, a no commission fiduciary, comprehensive financial advisor just for dentist all over the country. Check us out at dentistadvisors.com. Today, I’m coming to you live and a few episodes coming up here soon from the Aria Hotel in Las Vegas from the Dental Whale Business, Immersion Summit 2022. Fancy, fancy stuff. It was super fun. Had the chance today on today’s show to interview Sally, Vice President of Business Development from Viora Sinclair. And Sally educates me on and our audience on things I know absolutely nothing about, which is the trend of dentists around the country incorporating, aesthetic services, skin, facial services into their dental practice, kind of like a dental med spa type of business. She talks equipment and procedures and costs and revenue and team and training and marketing and messaging.

Ryan Isaac:
It was all really fascinating to hear the kind of numbers that people are doing in their practices, incorporating these services, and especially getting their team involved. I’ve seen some clients and dentists around the country do this. I can see this being a trend and I can see why this would be a trend and why dentists are so perfectly suited to pull this off. My skincare routine is comprised mostly of sea water and sunscreen. So this was all very new to me and I was educated quite a bit. Many thanks to Sally for joining us it was fun to do this live at the show there, at the Aria with the Dental Whale crew. Many thanks to them for having us as the official podcast on site. We had so much fun doing that. We’ll release some more episodes from that weekend coming up soon.

Ryan Isaac:
If you have any question for us, if you specifically have money questions in your life, you wanna ask an advisor, a dental specific fiduciary advisor. It’s easy and there’s no commitment and it’s not scary. You just go to dentistadvisors.com, click the book free consultation button. You schedule a call, you have a chat with a very friendly advisor, and you ask that advisor your money questions. We will point you in the right direction. We will educate. We will teach. We love helping dentists make smart financial decisions. So reach out and let’s have a chat. Anyway, thanks to Sally again, and thanks to you for being here. 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 or registered investment advisor. This is Dentist Money. Now here’s your host, Ryan Isaac.

Ryan Isaac:
Welcome to the Dentist Money Show, where we help dentist make smart financial decisions. I am your host, Ryan, and I’m here with a new friend at the Dental Whale seminar in Las Vegas 2022. I’m with Sally from Sinclair. Sally, thanks for joining me. What’s happening?

Sally B:
Hey. Hey. Thanks for having me.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah, thanks for being here. We, for those that aren’t familiar with this is the Business Immersion Summit. Did I say that right?

Sally B:
Yeah.

Ryan Isaac:
I think that’s true.

Sally B:
Yep.

Ryan Isaac:
Have you guys been here before?

Sally B:
No, this is our first year.

Ryan Isaac:
This is the first time. Yeah. Are you enjoying it?

Sally B:
Yes.

Ryan Isaac:
It’s a good time. We’re in this like giant… I’ve never been to this casino before.

Sally B:
Aria.

Ryan Isaac:
It’s huge. The Aria. It’s freaking huge.

Sally B:
So do you know that this was a… At the time.

Ryan Isaac:
No, I need some trivia.

Sally B:
It was… At the time it was the largest privately funded real estate project, commercial real estate project in the world.

Ryan Isaac:
No way.

Sally B:
Yeah, and they, year after year, they… It was, I think it started like something like several billion, right?

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah.

Sally B:
And then towards the last two years, I believe it took forever to build this thing, right?

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah. Okay.

Sally B:
It increased by a billion dollars per year.

Ryan Isaac:
Oh, I believe that.

Sally B:
To finish.

Ryan Isaac:
Nuts.

Sally B:
So when they finally opened this thing. So many floors were completely unfinished, right?

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah it’s huge.

Sally B:
So the elevator would just skip floors and all of these hotels. And then they would like finish it. They had to have a Sheikh from like, bail them out.

Ryan Isaac:
Really?

Sally B:
Yeah.

Ryan Isaac:
So, I mean, I remember this place when we’re kind of behind the MGM and this was just like empty nothing back here. Or like old buildings. Anyway, it’s huge. We’re sitting in the ballroom, the Dental Whale Business Immersion Summit. I’m gonna let Sally introduce what they do. It’s really fascinating. If I were to paraphrase from what I remember yesterday, I would say that and many of our audience are really familiar with this. There’s an entire side of dentistry that’s being incorporated into practices all over the country. Maybe all over the world. I don’t know actually.

Sally B:
: Yeah, yeah.

Ryan Isaac:
That, has to do with skincare aesthetics not just aesthetics, but medical treatments in the face.

Sally B:
Therapeutic TAP.

Ryan Isaac:
Therapeutic. Yes. Yes. I’m doing a terrible job describing this. That’s what my take is. And I’ve watched… We’ve seen a lot of clients incorporate this into their practices, become a medical spa, kind of…

Sally B:
Dental spa.

Ryan Isaac:
Dental spa. Yeah. Thank you. Dental Spa. And it’s been really cool. So how about elaborate on the terrible job I just did introducing [laughter] That even is because it is really fascinating and I think it’s a huge opportunity. And you guys teach seminars and provide a lot of the technology and equipment. So tell us about this. Yeah. Like what is your company Sinclair? What is this all about?

Sally B:
Yeah, So, Sinclair, so for nine of the 10 years, nine and a half of the 10 years, actually it was Viora, right? Viora.

Ryan Isaac:
Viora.

Sally B:
Yep.

Ryan Isaac:
Okay.

Sally B:
Viora. We are an Israeli based manufacturer. We were acquired by Sinclair. Sinclair wants to be the largest aesthetic company in the entire world, bigger than Allergan. And they are strategically picking different companies and products within the aesthetic space and just growing exponentially. So we were acquired just a few months ago by Sinclair. We’re really excited at that opportunity.

Ryan Isaac:
Oh, that’s new. Yeah, that’s really new. Okay.

Sally B:
But, Viora and now Viora Sinclair Company is the largest provider of aesthetic technology within the dental space. Now, 30% of our gross national revenue is to dental. So 70% is still to med spas, dermis, and plastics, right? But there’s really nobody with our footprint in…

Ryan Isaac:
In dental.

Sally B:
In this space. Yeah.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah. I mean, 70% being outside of dental just means that you know this industry and how to incorporate it into the dental space.

Sally B:
Yeah.

Ryan Isaac:
Okay. So for people who would describe it the same way I did, which was like a second grade level of understanding [laughter]

Sally B:
You did okay.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah I did alright. Thank you. What does that mean to incorporate this technology, these kind of procedures, into a dental practice? What does that mean and where is it heading? And I guess, and why is it going there? Like why are people doing this?

Sally B:
Yeah. So, let’s talk about how we got into it, right? So nine and a half years ago, I was… I met a friend of a friend and we were at the Boat Show in Fort Lauderdale.

Ryan Isaac:
Okay. Yeah.

Sally B:
And she was like, “Yeah, I just started this new job.” And I was like, “Tell me about it.” She’s like, “I work for an academy that teaches dentists how to do Botox and Dermal fillers.” I was like, “What?”

Ryan Isaac:
Did that seem kind of nuts to you? Like dentists doing Botox…

Sally B:
At the time yeah, right?

Ryan Isaac:
And fillers? That seemed outta place?

Sally B:
Yeah.

Ryan Isaac:
What year was this?

Sally B:
Like nine years ago.

Ryan Isaac:
Oh, yeah. Okay.

Sally B:
So my wheels started spinning because that’s how I think strategically. And I was like, “Look, can you get me in front of your boss?” I was a trainer at the time, so I would travel from office to office and train them how to use the devices. So I come from a clinical side of the business and she got me a meeting with the owner of that academy and I said, “Hey, can we work together here.” And we have come so far, even with our modalities and what it is that we can offer from a facial aesthetic standpoint to dentists. But that was kind of like our start. And so I started seeking out other opportunities, other academies only to find that, like back then we would see 10-30 dentists a month learning how to do Botox and dermal fillers.

Ryan Isaac:
Okay.

Sally B:
In fact then you had to be a rodeo cowboy.

Ryan Isaac:
Okay. [laughter]

Sally B:
There were no finite regulations. They were just like, we inject all day every day.

Ryan Isaac:
Bring the cash, come to the office.

Sally B:
They are some of the best injectors in the world. Because that’s what they do.

Ryan Isaac:
They do all day long.

Sally B:
Right. So now we see 40 to a hundred a weekend.

Ryan Isaac:
Whoa.

Sally B:
Yeah.

Ryan Isaac:
Whoa.

Sally B:
So it’s not something that, like, as far as dentists offering some form of aesthetics within their practice specific to Botox and dermal fillers or neurotoxin and dermal fillers, it’s not something that’s new, right?

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah.

Sally B:
They say upwards of 20% of dental practices now have incorporated some form of facial aesthetics within their practice.

Ryan Isaac:
20%?

Sally B:
Yeah.

Ryan Isaac:
Wow.

Sally B:
So what we do then is we come behind with energy based systems. So the challenge with Botox and dermal fillers is it requires a doctor’s chair time.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah. It’s expensive?

Sally B:
Right. And there’s maybe a 50% return on investment with injectables. We come in and we provide a slew of modalities on a single device or investment.

Ryan Isaac:
When you say modalities, you mean?

Sally B:
Radio frequency for skin tightening under eye bags and dark circles, non-invasive lip plumping, facial contouring, some mental volume reduction, hair removal, vascular and pigmented lesion removal, acne clearance, resurfacing, all on one device.

Ryan Isaac:
There’s a lot of things you could do on your face. [laughter]

Sally B:
On one device. Yeah, exactly.

Ryan Isaac:
I’m feeling a little bit like I should look into that, but anyway, continue.

Sally B:
You’ll look great. [laughter]

Ryan Isaac:
We’ll do that later.

Sally B:
So anyway, we come in and we are a turnkey solution. We train and certify their staff to do these treatments. Nine times out of ten it’s being done by their assistants. And so it’s a huge cast…

Ryan Isaac:
Not the injectables? To be clear.

Sally B:
Not the injectables. Right.

Ryan Isaac:
Everything else. All these… Other modalities.

Sally B:
All these… Yep.

Ryan Isaac:
Okay. Which are… Yeah. They’re More than the… Yeah. There’s more of those than the injectables. Okay.

Sally B:
Right. So the challenges too right? The dentist learns, they go through these courses, they learn how to do Botox and dermal fillers. They start implementing it and then they have a patient who they’re like, “Well, what about… Can you do anything for this spot on my face like this sun spot?” Botox and dermal fillers can’t fix that right?

Ryan Isaac:
It doesn’t do that, yeah.

Sally B:
So they’re gonna go to a med spa that has that plus…

Ryan Isaac:
The same equipment that could be…

Sally B:
Plus a Botox and dermal fillers, and they lose that patient.

Ryan Isaac:
And they’re gone.

Sally B:
So this is an opportunity to grow their menu of service, have a more comprehensive approach to a smile makeover, if you will, because there’s more to a beautiful smile than just the teeth.

Ryan Isaac:
Totally. Wait, is that… Was that coined? Is that TM registered trademark.

Ryan Isaac:
That’s yours?

Sally B:
 Yeah, that’s mine.

Ryan Isaac:
Okay. That’s from Sally everybody, you can’t use that. Yeah. She gets rights. [laughter]

Sally B:
[laughter] So we just… We come in and we really change the money making capacity for the office that wants to offer those. But it also changes the field of the practice.

Ryan Isaac:
Oh, yeah.

Sally B:
So patients don’t wanna go to the dentist.

Ryan Isaac:
Yes. That’s true. I don’t want to go to the dentist.

Sally B:
But if the dentist does their Botox, they wanna go to the dentist.

Ryan Isaac:
Then they wanna go to the dentist, yeah.

Sally B:
And then when they can do these kinds of things, this is an opportunity for the dentist to then make money without even being on site.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah. So, okay. So some questions. Is there a typical profile of a dental practice that’s incorporating this stuff? Does it take a certain facility? Is it… Are these general practitioners? Are they oral maxill surgeons? Who…

Sally B:
You…

Ryan Isaac:
Is there profile?

Sally B:
I think on a larger scale it’s you see oral and Maxillofacial surgeons doing this more often.

Ryan Isaac:
Okay.

Sally B:
But on our end, we have a few specialists. Like every once in a while we’ll get like an ortho or paedo… I really feel like ortho should just do it, have like a mommy makeover suite, right?

Ryan Isaac:
I Totally. I was just thinking the same thing.

Sally B:
Yeah.

Ryan Isaac:
I mean Ortho is just like moms and kids.

Sally B:
Yeah.

Ryan Isaac:
Mostly.

Sally B:
We have pediatric dental offices that have a mommy makeover suite.

Ryan Isaac:
Really?

Sally B:
Yeah. And so…

Ryan Isaac:
That seems so intuitive.

Sally B:
I know. Some people are really smart.

Ryan Isaac:
They are. [laughter] That’s true.

Sally B:
But most of them are just general practice.

Ryan Isaac:
Okay.

Sally B:
Yeah. So I would say 80% of our dental offices are just general practice.

Ryan Isaac:
Wow. What’s the… Okay. So if someone’s listening to this and they’re like, “Yeah, I think I should do something,” like how do they begin? How do they learn about this? How do they not only get the training clinically, I guess, and the equipment and everything, but how do they just learn how to put this into a business process? Is that where you… That’s where your seminars come in and your trainings?

Sally B:
Yeah, we’re accredited.

Ryan Isaac:
Okay.

Sally B:
So we offer two different CE courses. We do a three CE dinner program where we like treat the dentist to like a super fancy dinner. And we teach them about how to become a dental spa.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah.

Sally B:
The business side of it. And recognizing through, over the course of the last decade, really, a lot of dentists just wanna know about what it is before they make the leap.

Ryan Isaac:
Totally.

Sally B:
So we have a two day 16 CE course that goes over skin 101 and the five main modalities in medical aesthetics. So that they can learn about what it is that they can… That all of these different technologies can do. Not only in general biologically but also for their practice.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah.

Sally B:
And we do those quarterly.

Ryan Isaac:
Okay. Like all over the country?

Sally B:
Yep.

Ryan Isaac:
And they’re live events.

Sally B:
Yep.

Ryan Isaac:
Okay. We’ll get to how they can find you online. Is it intuitive for the dentist, like how to incorporate this? Are these procedures intuitive from a clinical standpoint? Does it seem really foreign to them? Like a dentist who’s looking at all this stuff they can do?

Sally B:
Sometimes. Sometimes they’re like, “What’s this?”

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah, totally.

Sally B:
And that’s why the education part of it is so important for us, because it does require an explanation. But I do have a lot of females who are used to going to the med spas. You know who really drives this? Is the staff.

Ryan Isaac:
Staff. I was just gonna ask that.

Sally B:
Yeah.

Ryan Isaac:
With the majority of dental teams being female. I was curious if that they’re more familiar with it and more like, yeah. It would seem more intuitive to them. Like, “Yeah, we should totally do this.”

Sally B:
And they get behind.

Ryan Isaac:
And they get behind it.

Sally B:
And they push it, and it becomes really easy to build a business.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah, I was just gonna ask, so what does it take… I guess maybe that answers my question. I was gonna ask if it’s hard to incorporate with the team.

Sally B:
No.

Ryan Isaac:
To say, “Hey, in addition to your dental duties and assisting and hygiene and front desk management and re-care and all that stuff now we’re gonna do all these… ”

Sally B:
So we help with all of that too.

Ryan Isaac:
You do, okay.

Sally B:
So we have the…

Ryan Isaac:
Like the business management side of incorporating.

Sally B:
All of it.

Ryan Isaac:
Alright, yeah.

Sally B:
So that was a big part of making it turnkey for us, it’s not a med spa that’s used to doing this, it’s not a dermis not a plastic. So I created… We created a turnkey solution where we install, we come out clinically, train on site and certify the staff, right? We have a practice development team dedicated to helping them launch this. We incorporate marketing through Dental Whale actually.

Ryan Isaac:
I was just gonna ask.

Sally B:
Yeah, for the first six months to fully, full year after the acquisition of the system, comprehensive digital marketing can be inclusive of website design, social media content creation…

Ryan Isaac:
’cause you would that… You wanna blast the community with that.

Sally B:
Yeah well, the beauty of it is too, though, that these dental practices have an existing patient base…

Ryan Isaac:
Thousands of people.

Sally B:
Over just a stand-alone Anesthetic practice, right? So it’s easy to incorporate this within a practice.

Ryan Isaac:
What about the physical space of the location of a practice, how does it get utilized? Like existing chairs or rooms or how is it used?

Sally B:
Yeah, so the devices are on wheels, so they can move operatory to operatory.

Ryan Isaac:
How big is it? Is it at your booth, I need to walk over there.

Sally B:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. But it’s like it takes up like a corner, you know?

Ryan Isaac:
Oh really? Okay.

Sally B:
Yeah, like I said it’s on wheel so you can dedicate an operatory to your spa, some… If practices have the capability of doing that. That’s often what they’ll do. They’ll design one of their little operatories to be like their spa.

Ryan Isaac:
Think of like little spa kind of feel.

Sally B:
Yeah candle artwork right?

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah yeah little music. Little water feature thats what I picture yeah.

Sally B:
Yeah, exactly.

Ryan Isaac:
I don’t know about these things, but I picture a water feature being involved.

Sally B:
Yeah. I think a lot of dentists do the… Dentist seem to be like, they need to see it here and at the end, and all the things in between first, but there’s a process to building this, so you put it in your columns as it makes sense, until it becomes its own column, right? And so the device just moves operatory to operatory as needed. Yeah.

Ryan Isaac:
Okay, so do you have any indication to the revenue or profits and then costs of implementing this kind of stuff?

Sally B:
Yeah, so the systems that’s in a la carte acquisition. So they can range anywhere from $50,000 to $150,000 depending on how many modalities they wanna include on the device, and we have little starter devices too. My husband, who was just over here. He calls the DermaFuse the gateway. The gateway device.

Ryan Isaac:
He’s a dentist?

Sally B:
Yeah.

Ryan Isaac:
Okay.

Sally B:
He’s a dentist. So he’s incorporated these into two of his practices.

Ryan Isaac:
So DermaFuse is the gateway drug…

Sally B:
Yes.

Ryan Isaac:
To a full-on adoption.

Sally B:
Yeah $18,000 and it can infuse… It’s like Micro-needling without the needle, so it can infuse sterile formulas of a specific molecular size and clarity with an electrical current into and pass the dermal epidermal junction into the lipid layer.

Ryan Isaac:
Wow.

Sally B:
So it can treat for acne pigment Lipolysis so contouring of the face. Collagen-boosting, and then there’s an ultra-hydration with hyaluronic acid, so.

Ryan Isaac:
Wow, okay.

Sally B:
Yeah a lot of stuff.

Ryan Isaac:
So any idea or insight into the revenue side of this?

Sally B:
Yeah so after… It takes about, I would say 90 days, right?

Ryan Isaac:
Okay, yeah.

Sally B:
So they get the system they get the training.

Ryan Isaac:
Totally.

Sally B:
They practice them. We help them launch it right?

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah.

Sally B:
Once they’re up and running, on average, our dental offices are doing somewhere between 10 and $14,000 a month in revenue, so they’re usually paying their device off in eight months.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah.

Sally B:
Yeah.

Ryan Isaac:
And overhead on that is just your team’s time?

Sally B:
Yeah.

Ryan Isaac:
Really?

Sally B:
Yeah, very low consumable, if any.

Ryan Isaac:
Really?

Sally B:
Yeah.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah, that’s so fast… So I’m trying to think again, I’m not really familiar with this. The med-spa industry.

Sally B:
Yeah, yeah.

Ryan Isaac:
I think more men are getting into skin care routines.

Sally B:
Yeah.

Ryan Isaac:
I see that, like talked about a little bit more about it.

Sally B:
For sure. We have to keep it nice and simple, you know?

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah keep it simple.

Sally B:
Actually you know what we’ve found is men are 50% more likely to get aesthetic treatments done at a dental office, simply because of the matter of convenience.

Ryan Isaac:
Okay, I was just… That’s my exact question. I don’t… And again, I’m not familiar, but I don’t notice a lot of med spas around, but there’s dentists everywhere.

Sally B:
Right.

Ryan Isaac:
So it seems intuitive that this would be such a more natural fit for people to kind of have these services in their community through a dental office and the dentist just being so familiar with the face. Anyway.

Sally B:
Yeah, exactly.

Ryan Isaac:
And so much training, so much clinical training. I mean I have no insight on the kind of training people go through in a med spa who are doing these aesthetics and kind of things, but the dentists who’s been to school for like a decade plus clinically, it feels like there might be even more trust there too, from a consumer to go see a dentist to do kind of… And the dentist team to do this kind of stuff.

Sally B:
Right. We were actually just talking about this earlier when there was the presentation on the oral cancer cause, right? So dentists are educated to be able to not only identify lesions within the mouth, but anything outside of the mouth, right?

Ryan Isaac:
Exactly.

Sally B:
Responsible to tell the patient like, “Look, we need to look into this,” and so it’s not something that’s outside of the scope of the dentist, the skin, right? It’s something well within their scope, and I think too, every once in a while, I would say maybe one in four of our dental practices, we have about 300 dental practices in the US, right? Hire an aesthetician. So if they really wanna get into skin and skin care, they’ll bring in an Aesthetician to do that kind of stuff too.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah like full time, yeah.

Sally B:
Yeah, we were lucky. Josh, my husband, his hygienist was an aesthetician.

Ryan Isaac:
Oh, cool.

Sally B:
Before she became a hygienist, so there’s actually a lot more of that.

Ryan Isaac:
Lot of crossover.

Sally B:
Yeah yeah.

Ryan Isaac:
That seems pretty common. Okay, so you might have already said this, walk us through a dentist it’s like, “I’m on board, I need to incorporate this.” What’s the beginning step? Where do they find you? How do they reach out? And then what can they expect as they go through a training? And then getting the equipment and then having someone come out, and I think the marketing side of this has to be gigantic. Like you’re…

Sally B:
Yeah and that was the biggest…

Ryan Isaac:
Like you’re nuts if you don’t push really hard on the marketing, ’cause it seems like such a huge value add for the community, especially man the idea of an ortho or Paedo office doing this, for the parents sitting there while their kids are in the chairs.

Sally B:
Yeah.

Ryan Isaac:
And she seems like such a no brainer.

Sally B:
Genius, right?

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah. Seems totally genius…

Sally B:
Come on, geniuses.

[chuckle]

Ryan Isaac:
Let’s go. [chuckle] Let’s go people. Yeah. So start to finish. What’s the… They sign up… Where do they find you first of all. Where do they go?

Sally B:
So we have vioradental.com.

Ryan Isaac:
How do you spell that?

Sally B:
: V-I-O-R-A-dental.com.

Ryan Isaac:
Okay. One of my favorite new clothing, athletic brands is Vuori.

Sally B:
I have some.

[chuckle]

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah. They are the most [chuckle] Comfortable clothing I have ever…

Sally B:
Yeah.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah. Anyway, vioradental…

Sally B:
Yes.

Ryan Isaac:
Dental…

Sally B:
Dot com.

Ryan Isaac:
Dot com. Okay.

Sally B:
So there they can find out all about the systems.

Ryan Isaac:
Okay.

Sally B:
There’s a white paper for our TMD protocol, that’s our therapeutic protocol. And then they can also find the courses that we offer too.

Ryan Isaac:
Okay.

Sally B:
So if they just wanna sign up for a course and come out and learn about it before they make…

Ryan Isaac:
And they can go to a course to learn just for the sake of learning.

Sally B:
Yeah.

Ryan Isaac:
And then…

Sally B:
And they get their CEs and… Yeah.

Ryan Isaac:
And their CEs… Okay. And these are physical… They’re in person around the country.

Sally B:
Yeah.

Ryan Isaac:
Okay.

Sally B:
Yeah.

Ryan Isaac:
All right.

Sally B:
And then, say they decide, you know what? I’m ready to do this. I wanna do this. They made a great decision. [chuckle] Right?

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah. That is obviously smart.

Sally B:
Right?

Ryan Isaac:
So good job everybody.

Sally B:
Most of them are financed. So we offer some of the best financing out there, great programs…

Ryan Isaac:
In-house or just through third-party.

Sally B:
We have in-house…

Ryan Isaac:
Cool.

Sally B:
Programs, but we work with all of the best equipment financiers in the industry. They have terms that are… Zero money down, deferred terms up to 72 months.

Ryan Isaac:
Dentists have the best industry in the world, ’cause they just get almost free money from banks overnight.

Sally B:
Yeah. [chuckle] Right. [laughter] Exactly.

Ryan Isaac:
‘Cause they have no default rate and incredible cash flow.

Sally B:
Yeah. [chuckle]

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah. Anyway. Okay. Fantastic.

Sally B:
We ship out the device…

Ryan Isaac:
Okay.

Sally B:
We come out, we install the device, put it together, show them the anatomy of the system, make sure everything’s in working order as it should be. They have access to our customer portal that has all their clinical collateral. So if you can think of it, it’s there for them. Marketing collateral, same thing, right? So our social media content that we’ve created for them, before and after there is loyalty programs, membership models…

Ryan Isaac:
Oh. Amazing.

Sally B:
All that stuff. And then we send out a clinical trainer. She comes on site, so depending on which device, how many modalities can be anywhere from 1-4 full days of in office training. They do didactic, hands on, we train and certify. And then typically there’s a launch… A soft launch or a hard launch, right?

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah.

Sally B:
We come out. We help them sell packages. We talk to… We’ll present to the patient base. And then it’s just kind of holding their hand for a while. There’s a marketing piece of it too along the way, of getting the word out that this is what we’re doing, training them how to kind of continue on that path and we provide an annual calendar as a guideline.

Ryan Isaac:
I was gonna ask about that. Yeah.

Sally B:
Yeah. As a guideline to what… Basically, as long as you do this, you’ll be successful.

Ryan Isaac:
So Cool. On the marketing piece, you know how like teeth whitening? Free teeth whitening if you come into our office has been such a… It feels like this could be the new teeth whitening marketing piece.

Sally B:
Yeah. I mean, again, there’s no consumable and the treatments are quick, right?

Ryan Isaac:
Are they fast?

Sally B:
Oh, yeah.

Ryan Isaac:
Oh, sorry I didn’t ask about that. There’s a lot of different things they can do, what’s the timeframe of a patient sitting there getting these treatments?

Sally B:
Usually the appointment time is gonna be somewhere between 50 and 30 minutes…

Ryan Isaac:
Okay.

Sally B:
Right? And they’re typically gonna generate somewhere between $250 and $450…

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah. Perfect.

Sally B:
Within that timeframe. Right? And that’s their assistant.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah.

Sally B:
Yeah. So now what we’re saying is, we want your assistants to generate as much money for your practice as your hygienist do doing hygiene work.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah. That’s pretty amazing. I mean, it seems like a huge next step in the industry…

Sally B:
Yeah.

Ryan Isaac:
For just inclusion of other services, and yeah, a huge benefit to the community. Okay. So vioradental.com. Alright, I think that’s really… Thanks for doing that.

Sally B:
Yeah.

Ryan Isaac:
Thanks for telling us about that.

Sally B:
Thank you.

Ryan Isaac:
We’ve had a lot of clients kind of venture into this, but it still feels a little unfamiliar territory.

Sally B:
Yeah.

Ryan Isaac:
Kinda like, kind of new.

Sally B:
Yeah. I mean, the one challenge that we’ve overcome… Especially since creating a finite protocol for the treatment of TMD through our indication from the FDA for the relief of muscle spasms and pain, was the regulations on a State by State basis.

Ryan Isaac:
Oh, yeah.

Sally B:
Right?

Ryan Isaac:
Okay. Yeah.

Sally B:
So there’s a bunch of different references or platforms that we have to seek out to understand where everything falls, who can do what?

Ryan Isaac:
Okay.

Sally B:
What the delegation is? And it does vary. So that has been the only challenge, but now that we’ve been doing it for as long as we’ve been doing it, we have… I mean, Arizona was one of the ones that was the first State to really come out and be super black and white with everything.

Ryan Isaac:
Oh, really, yeah.

Sally B:
And we have a program that we have created. If they need a medical director, we have a medical director program. We have a Rolodex of different doctors.

Ryan Isaac:
You’ve seen it. You’ve thought about it, yeah.

Sally B:
Yeah, it’s done.

Ryan Isaac:
Well, I was gonna ask… So I was gonna ask common objections or… I don’t know, issues people have when they’re getting introduced to this, but that would probably be at the top of the list.

Sally B:
Yeah.

Ryan Isaac:
Or has been in the past.

Sally B:
Yeah. That and like…

Ryan Isaac:
You’ve figured out how to navigate it now, right…

Sally B:
Right.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah.

Sally B:
Yeah. And then…

Ryan Isaac:
Just regulation, State to State, has been probably the most common objection or?

Sally B:
Just concern.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah.

Sally B:
Yeah. And then just understanding how to overcome that, and explain to them who can and who can’t and all that.

Ryan Isaac:
What’s a… You mentioned marketing for a while through Dental Whale…

Sally B:
Yeah.

Ryan Isaac:
Is that part of what you already talked about?

Sally B:
So I haven’t talked about it, no.

Ryan Isaac:
Oh, okay.

Sally B:
Right? But…

[chuckle]

Ryan Isaac:
I thought you were saying in some of the marketing that you do…

Sally B:
Yeah. We…

Ryan Isaac:
That’s different from the Dental Whale stuff.

Sally B:
So in the past, before we partnered with Dental Whale, we actually worked with a number of other marketing companies, but Dental Whale provides the marketing alongside us.

Ryan Isaac:
Okay. Oh, cool.

Sally B:
So they’ve created specific programs alongside what it is that we know our practices need, and we incorporate that within the acquisition of the system. And so from a Dental whale member perspective, we keep everything in-house and make it smooth and streamlined.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah.

Sally B:
Yeah.

Ryan Isaac:
So cool. Anything else you wanna share…

Sally B:
No.

Ryan Isaac:
About any of this stuff?

Sally B:
I think we covered it all.

Ryan Isaac:
Thank you for doing this.

Sally B:
Thank you.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah. Anyone listening this is… I don’t know what kind of background conversations they are picking up. We are on the lobby of a…

Sally B:
Yeah.

Ryan Isaac:
Of [chuckle] An exhibition hall in a convention center, but this is really, really helpful, vioradental.com.

Sally B:
Yeah.

Ryan Isaac:
They just reach out, straight from there there’s no one they need to talk to directly. I’m sure you got a whole team of people standing by.

Sally B:
Yeah.

Ryan Isaac:
Operator is standing by…

Sally B:
Yes.

Ryan Isaac:
Manning the phones as we speak.

Sally B:
Yes.

Ryan Isaac:
Ready to take calls.

Sally B:
Yes.

Ryan Isaac:
Okay. Well, Sally, thanks for spending some time. Thanks for coming on the show and talking to our audience.

Sally B:
Thank you for having me.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah. And thanks for everyone listening, and if you have any questions for us, go to, dentistadvisors.com and click the, book free consultation link. We’ll catch you next time on another episode of Dentist Money Show.

Ryan Isaac:
Thanks, Sally.

Sally B:
Thank you.

Ryan Isaac:
Bye-bye everybody.

Practice Management