An Honest Conversation With Dr. Howard Farran Of Dentaltown About The Future Of Dentistry

 

Chris Pistorius (00:04):

Hi, everybody. This is Chris Pistorius here again with the Dental Marketing podcast. Today we’ve got a super special guest. I’m a little star struck because I’ve been listening to and reading his stuff for years. I’m so glad to have him on the show today. This is Dr. Howard Farran. He does a lot of stuff and we’ll get into that in a second, but he’s actually the creator, founder, owner of Dentaltown, which I know a lot of you use as a major resource to help run your dental practices. So Howard, thanks so much for taking the time to be on today.

Howard Farran (00:41):

Hi, it’s an honor. We should start a mutual admiration club because I’ve been a big fan of yours for a decade too.

Chris Pistorius (00:47):

Awesome. Well, thank you. I’m going to get right to it. As you know, you’ve got tons of experience. You’ve forgotten more things about dentistry than I’ll ever know. So what I’m after here and to pick your brain is how to help my clients, how to help potential clients, how to help dentistry in general, which I know that you’re a big part of as well. But why don’t you tell me a little bit about how you created Dentaltown first and how that idea started, and just a little background there.

Howard Farran (01:16):

Oh man, you got to go back to… I got out of school in ’87 and then it was about 1994, I saw Amazon go public and I couldn’t figure out what all the hoopla was, but I kept an eye on it. Didn’t buy a share of it, and I just kept watching, watching, watching through ’94, ’95, ’96, ’97. And then about ’98, I finally realized, “Oh my God, this really is going to be huge.” I never had an original idea. My next door neighbor was a dentist. I went to work with Kenny Anderson and my dad, and my dad owned a Sonic Drive-in making cheeseburgers, and Kenny was a dentist. And I thought the x-ray machine was a helluva lot cooler than a grill.

Howard Farran (02:00):

But I was on the ESPN website and they started this message board thing. And we were talking about football and I’m like, “Gosh, darn, I wish I could be doing this with dentists and talking about root canals and fillings and marketing.” So I hired Ken Scott and then we started Dentaltown and we’ll be the first who would beat Facebook by five years. And that first mover advantage, the [inaudible 00:02:26] versus Harvard, only because it’s first. Coke was launched 11 years and for Pepsi, they’re still number one. And that first mover advantage, it’s kind of like a hall of fame website.

Howard Farran (02:37):

Then we also have Orthotown too. The orthodontist were the only specialists who wanted their own site. All of the other specialists and all of the orthodontists are on Dentaltown, but they just wanted a private community of just orthodontists. But it’s really been cool to watch social media. We had a first generation, the first 20 years and the first is always the worst and everybody’s learning how that’s going on and everything, but it did change the world.

Howard Farran (03:05):

Facebook, which owns Instagram and then Alphabet, which owns Google and YouTube, they sucked out about 80% of all the advertising dollars in America and that killed billboards, it killed radio, it’s killing TV. And that’s why these dentists got to get sophisticated because they’re competing now against DSOs. And DSOs have enough skill where they can sit there and say, “Well, let’s just get the one billboard on the corner of the two highways.” And radio, for $100 you can get an hour commercial. ClearJoy, that implant company has been served five times and now Bob Fontana of Aspen owns it because my gosh, they can do 30 minute infomercials on implants in a day. So now we’ve got this individual dentist.

Howard Farran (04:04):

And the first guys I noticed that were really, really smart about advertising was the orthodontists for a couple of exact reasons. Number one, they knew each of their new patients was worth basically 6,500 bucks and they knew where their overhead was. So if they went on Shark Tank, and if you were on Shark Tank, then obviously, the smartest man on Shark Tank is the bald guy. It’s always the bald guy. Have you noticed that?

Chris Pistorius (04:28):

I have.

Howard Farran (04:29):

And who picks your dental office, and Mr. Wonderful, first thing he says is, “Well, what’s your cost of new customer acquisition?” No dentist knows, but orthodontists, that’s an easy figure. What is the average customer value? Dentists are like, “God, I don’t know.” Orthodontists like, “It is actually 6,500.” [crosstalk 00:04:51].

Howard Farran (04:51):

So on my journey, when I got out of school in ’87, you got to remember the Yellow Pages just became Regal after a Supreme court decision where two lawyers in Phoenix said, “Well, that violates my free speech not to advertise.” It happened in Arizona first, but even by the time I got out, it was a very underused taboo thing, and the first guys that jumped out on it were the orthodontist, and it was an orthodontist who was the first guy I ever met that 3% of collections went straight to advertising. Now, I could name you 100 orthodontists where that is eight to 10% because they say, “Well, I get $6,500 for Invisalign, and here’s my marketing costs and here’s my overhead.” It’s like shooting fish in a barrel.

Howard Farran (05:39):

So the orthodontists, they get their money back in tow years. General dentists, that takes about five years, and since they have a whole distribution of just a cleaning, just a filling, all the way to a big old case, they’ve always not understood their marketing. But what’s going to really bring it to their attention is when they’re no longer competing against a single dentist across the street, but now they got some DSO that’s got 1,000 locations and they’re extremely sophisticated. So dentists, if they want to play in the big leagues with the professional players, we’re probably going to have to outsource some marketing to someone like you.

Chris Pistorius (06:23):

Yeah. I think you hit the nail on the head, several nails on the head actually in that we talk with clients a lot about that, about they’re struggling with competition and it’s not just local competition. It’s a lot of pressure from DSOs. And a lot of our strategies are around how to compete with that and there are ways to compete with that without breaking the bank also. So you just have to get a little creative, grassroots about it and you can still compete and relieve some of that competition for sure.

Chris Pistorius (06:57):

Let me ask you this. What do you see as right now, other than the competitive struggles with DSOs, but what else is really threatening local dentistry right now, would you say?

Howard Farran (07:11):

Well, I think all dentists would say it’s a very competitive environment. I would say that the reason the 20 richest countries all want socialized medicine by the government is because the same government is the one that blocks out all their competition. If you’re a dentist in India, you can’t move to Phoenix, Arizona and start doing dentistry. I’m on the Mexican border, and every time a Mexican dentist comes up here and goes to Guadalupe, which is 100% Mexican and native Indians, and starts practicing dentistry on the poor, the government arrests them, puts them in jail or deports them, or whatever.

Howard Farran (07:50):

So it’s hard to say that healthcare is competitive because when I was a little kid, they couldn’t import cars from Germany and Japan. And General Motors had half market share, they were very expensive and the cars never worked. When I was a little kid, if I walked down the sidewalk on a Saturday, every third or fourth garage was a dad, his son and two uncles trying to fix this piece of crap Chevy and get it running.

Howard Farran (08:17):

So it’s crazy to say that healthcare is competitive because they block all foreign competition from entering with their immigration policy. But within the realm of United States, competing against DSOs, competing against insurance, I’d say what threatens them the most right now is the onslaught of inflation. I turned 59 this month. I hear no one talking about it unless they’re my age. I graduated high school in ’80, and in ’81, interest rates were 20 and a half percent. Unemployment and inflation was double-digit.

Howard Farran (08:56):

And so inflation is just completely back. When this pandemic, the stock market dropped about $850 billion, not quite a trillion. And the Trump buying response was $5 trillion. So you’re looking at a global economy where three out of every $4 in circulation today were printed in the last year. And people compare this to the percent of debt to GDP as in World War II, but you got to remember those bonds were paid by real money from Americans taking their money out from underneath their bed and buying a war bond, which you pay them a nickel a year.

Howard Farran (09:39):

So the deal is, I went to Creighton in 1980. Warren buffet is from Omaha, so was his partner, Charlie Munger and Warren came over and spoke to our business class. And I remember a business 101, someone jokingly said, “Creighton was known for their medical school, dental school and law school.” Someone jokingly asked him, “Which one would you go to?” And he told me to answer and I didn’t listen, he said, “Well, I would never go into healthcare because it’s very capital intensive and someone else sets your fee.” He goes, “I want to go into a business with low capital intensive.” Like if Geico insurance doubled their business, they just need to double the number of cubicles where people are dialing for dollars and typing on a keyboard.

Howard Farran (10:21):

But you double a hospital, you got all this stuff. I’ve seen dental office routinely that by the time you do the land and the building and the Taj Mahal, they’re looking at one and a half to $3 million. So I would say if you’re locked into an insurance company and they say, “You get $1 per filling,” and your costs are going up five, 10, 15, 20%, is the insurance company going to rapidly adjust the fees to keep you up with inflation? Or are you just going to start making less and less money?

Howard Farran (10:54):

So I think the inflation on a fixed third party fee is terrible. And that’s why Invisalign… If we ignore the dentistry, for decades, selling stuff to dentists, about 40% of the market is US and Canada, 40% Europe and 20% is the rest of the world. And when you look at their numbers, it’s a 200 year old profession that started with G.V. Black in Paris, France. So it just really just grows and contracts with inflation.

Howard Farran (11:26):

The only thing that’s growing double digit is orthodontics, clear liners and implants. And the reason they’re so lucrative is because a third party is not setting your fee. They tried to set fees, like remember when the insurance companies said that you couldn’t charge you more than X dollars for bleaching and it went all the way to SpringBoard in Tennessee, I think it was. You don’t even cover bleaching. How could you set our fee?

Howard Farran (11:52):

So the dentists haven’t been fighting for equality in the eyes of the consumer. I expect that will go to a different legal dimension. But that’s up to the ADA and government and things like that. But I would say that when a dentist gets out of school and says, “I don’t know what I want to do,” you got to pick one, you either got a lot of bin guts and get into implants, or are you going to get into the soft and Invisalign?

Howard Farran (12:21):

I can usually tell by looking at their x-ray, because if you’re like me, when you do a root canal and you want to get all the way to the bottom and puff a sealer out the apex, you’re an able barbarian and you just love blood. And all of your assistants, when they see a big puss thing pop, all those assistants go to, “Ooh, yeah.” If that stuff just grosses you out, you go into bleaching, bonding, veneers, clear liners, whatever. But I’m telling you that the number one goal of the species is to survive long enough to reproduce that offspring. And the way the animal kingdom is, unlike the fungi and algae, we just don’t divide into two, we split our DNA into two pairs and we got to go mix gametes with someone.

Howard Farran (13:08):

And going out there, I think this pandemic has been a huge boom for dentistry, it’s already proven, because if you’re a man like me, think about it. I brush my teeth and floss in the shower. I don’t stand around looking in mirrors all day.

Chris Pistorius (13:25):

Me too. I do the same thing. I thought I was the only one that did that.

Howard Farran (13:30):

I grew up with five sisters, man. They’d spend an hour in the bathroom before they’d go to grammar school. So now there’s all these men on Zoom and they’re looking at their face and they’re looking at their teeth and they’re like, “Oh my God.” And male makeup, which isn’t really even a thing, it’s already up 400% since the pandemic started. When I went into Walgreens, I went to the makeup counter booth area and talked to that lady. I read there, I said, “Is this true?” She goes, “People you would never expect. ‘I want to cover up this thing or this, that.’ And they’re asking me…”

Howard Farran (14:08):

So now that the pandemic’s got everyone looking in the mirror that used to never look in the mirror, like a bunch of old ugly men, they’re ripe for Invisalign. I think the ultimate close if they say, “How do you like your Zoom conference look? Are you liking what you see in the mirror?” And I used to call old dentists…

Howard Farran (14:30):

I remember when I got out of school, the big cosmetic guru was Jim Pryde, and he was sitting there in the lecture. And another one was Walter Hailey. I made this remark twice and got the same response from them. He’s up there pontificating at the Arizona Dental Association saying, “How could you not sell cosmetic dentistry? They all want to do it.” I raised my hand. I said, “Well, why don’t you do it? You’ve got some of the darkest, brownest, gnarliest, ugliest teeth I’ve ever seen and you’re a dentist speaking to dentist.” He lost it. I mean, he almost couldn’t continue. And everybody I was with were just laughing their ass off.

Howard Farran (15:11):

And then Walter Hailey, when I talked to Walter Hailey, I was with actually great cosmetic guru. I was with David Hornbrook, and Bill Dickerson, the two cosmetic legends who had started LVI, and they told him, “It’s true, Walter, and we’ll do it for free. You’ll get $15,000 veneer case, look [inaudible 00:15:34] free.” And he’s like, “Ah, I don’t care.” He’s some good old boy from Texas. Couldn’t even give a crap, and his business was lecturing to sell cosmetic dentistry to dentists and he wouldn’t even do it.

Howard Farran (15:44):

So I think the Zoom is going to make people see the truth that, wow. I remember I lost the… I was able to keep in shape the best when I used to do Bikram yoga, because you’d go into a room in a bathing suit, and they had mirrors all over the wall, and that’s the only time you ever get to stare at yourself in a bathing suit. And I’d look at that mirror and think, “God dang, you’re fat. You need to stop eating crap.” And that whole 90 minute yoga deal was this really reminder that, “Dude, you don’t know what you look like naked.” And so I think this is going to be a big… it is already a big boom for cosmetic dentistry.

Howard Farran (16:28):

And by the way, implants, the same thing. Every study I’d seen on implants, dentists always say… I’ll give you a true story of my first major implant case. Her name was Catherine. It was back in ’87, ’88, ’89. I never had asked her about implants or anything. And she told me she wanted them. And I said, “Well, Catherine, you always told me that you had no problems eating, chewing, that you can even eat an apple and all this stuff.” I said, “So what changed your mind?” She goes, “Well, you know what,” she goes, “at my age, my girlfriends just keep dying and they keep dying while they’re asleep. And I can’t wear my dentures when I’m sleeping and I’m afraid of dying in my sleep and having them find me without my teeth.” And I thought, “Yeah, dang man.”

Chris Pistorius (17:22):

Wow.

Howard Farran (17:22):

So even they, when you look at implant cases, if you really get to the crux of it and you really ask them, they’re not doing it because they can’t eat a cheeseburger, they’re doing it because there’s a missing space there and they’ve got mold and mixed gametes and it’s a complicated meeting, ritual meets like a peacock. All the animal kingdom meeting rituals are insanely complex and having your teeth not being negative and just being neutral is a good thing. If we can make them whiter, brighter and sexier and make the peacock feathers all come out, it works better.

Chris Pistorius (18:04):

Wow. Well, I tell you what, you could unpack a whole webinar just in what you just said. That’s awesome information, and it’s going to help a lot of people watching this. But I did have a question. If you had to do it all over again, the dentistry side of this, what would you change, what would you do differently?

Howard Farran (18:24):

Yeah, that’s a great question. What would I do differently? I definitely would’ve done it because you got to go back. A lot of people, they look at… All of our heroes are failed men. They think they’re a genius and they found out that some great man had a great flaw. They never said he walked on water, but you got to go back to, I was one in 62. There wasn’t any of this technology. There wasn’t computers and this and that. When I first saw my neighbor, Ken Anderson take an x-ray through the tooth, and then you got to go in a dark room with the hottest dental assistant in the world and develop this x-ray. And then I go worry my dad make a cheeseburger and onion rings.

Howard Farran (19:06):

The technology blew me away. And the other thing that blew me away, it was just like physics in the fact that… Well, look at Stephen Hawkins. He lived his whole life and he died before they even knew what a black hole is and what’s on the other side. Is it a white hole? And I realized that dentistry was bigger than any dentist that ever lived and that you could be a dentist and study your whole life and still go to the grave with unknown unknowns that you would never even have known. And it’s part of the human body.

Howard Farran (19:40):

Health is wealth. If you lose your life, you have nothing. The health, the wealth. It was so easy for me to find a real purpose and passion when we were trying to learn, discover, and help someone else stay alive on an earth where 98 and a half percent of all the species before us are extinct and they’re going extinct every year. And the chance that we will go extinct is absolutely positive. We’re not going to go through the black hole. When this whole Milky Way goes through the black hole, I doubt my teeth are going to make it, but I just had a lot of purpose, a lot of passion.

Howard Farran (20:22):

I got accepted to med school too at Creighton, and I didn’t want to do that just because dentists forget of all of the politics that goes on in hospitals. And now it’s something like seven out of every 10 physicians is an employee for a hospital, it’s about 50%, or a big corporate DSO for about another 20%. Only 30% of physicians own their own building. And the thing I liked about what Kenny Anderson did is he owned his own land and building. He was a dictator. If he didn’t want you to work there, you didn’t go. If he didn’t want to treat you as a patient, you can’t go. Just a simple life in a small kingdom where you’re the king and you’ve got a half dozen helpers and you have your own people coming in. Gosh, I love it and I can’t really think anything I would’ve done different.

Chris Pistorius (21:18):

Yeah. Well, that’s awesome. That’s great. One struggle that we see with some of our clients is especially the ones that they’ve been an associate for a little while maybe, and now they want to start their own. And the question we get sometimes is based on your experience, is it better to buy an existing practice with a a base of patients, or do you start off scratch? What do you think?

Howard Farran (21:45):

Well, that’s another great question you have. I can tell you’ve been in this a long time, but I just want to tell you about when these DSOs popped up, the first round was way back in the days in the eighties, when Orthodontic Centers of America went public and there was a dozen on NASDAQ. And what was their business model? Their business model was if you go sell a house in Phoenix, so that’s three bedroom, two bath, you’ll get a offer today. If it’s four bedroom, three car garage, it’s totally liquid. But if you’re an NFL player and you custom built a 19 bedroom house with a seven car garage, most of your professional players, their number one mistake was the house they bought because it’s illiquid. They can’t sell it.

Howard Farran (22:30):

Orthodontic Centers of America, that founder, Gasper Lazzara knew that if your orthodontic practice did a million dollars a year, you could sell in an hour. But if you built up to three or 4 million, it was a illiquid. So he was buying all the illiquid ones and that’s what Heartland was doing. So when I look back at every single general dentist that had a dental office doing three to $5 million a year, they all had the same strategy and that was this, which to answer your question, they graduated school and went to a small town that had 10 dentists. And every five years, this guy would retire. In most towns, there’s the old guy who would just sell to some new young guy with a lot of energy, and the competition stayed vicious. And these guys would say, “Well, I’m going to buy out the old man’s practice and I’m going to have him rule all this practice, and then I’m going to tell him, ‘Well, you say you’re going to retire, but if you want to stay a day or two a week,'” and they always do.

Howard Farran (23:23):

And so what they did is when they graduated school, they were the 10th dentist in their town. Five years later, there was only nine and then eight and then seven. And now they’re 65 and there’s only four dental offices in the town. But one office has five dentists and they’re doing $5 million a year. And you know what, that was the exact same strategy that Thomas Watson Jr. did of IBM. And the reason he became big is he inherited that from his dad. He drank his way through college and swears he didn’t learn a damn thing and doesn’t even know why got the degree.

Howard Farran (24:01):

But he only notice one thing. They grew up in this small town and they were three hardware stores in this little small town. And he’d go to one lie and belong, and he’d got another one lie and belong. So he’d go to this other one. One and they had two employees and he got there faster. And one day he realized there’s three locations, but there’s just four salesmen. And each salesman has a quarter of the market. So it’s not based on locations, it’s based on salesmen and nobody knows what they’re supposed to buy to fix this, what nuts to bolts they got now. And he goes, “No one knows software.”

Howard Farran (24:38):

So when he took over IBM he told his head scientist, “Look, I’m going to stay out of your way. I don’t know what you’re doing. I don’t even care. Just go to your thing. I’m going to focus on sales.” And he started with IBM sales div. And everyone six weeks, he got 20 new salesmen, and they got him a three-piece suit and a briefcase and went through the whole sales pitch. And he once said, “If 70% of all the computer salesmen in the world worked for IBM, we will have 70% of the market,” and it came true. And they asked him. They said, “Well, why didn’t you go for 80, 90 or 100?” He goes, “Well, then I knew the government would have to step in and they would grate me up. So I just thought that was about the most I can get away with.” And it’s just absolutely true.

Howard Farran (25:19):

So we only know this about a practice. Why would you go in and start a new supply when you can buy out an existing supply? In fact, let me tell you this. There’s 168 hours in a week and the average dental office is open 32 hours a week, which is 19% a week. So if you had a uber dental op where a patient said, “I want to make an appointment,” and all these other dentists uber had dental offices they can rent… 80% of the dental operatory capacity is never being used. So it’s just insane to go build another dental office when every dental office in America is not being used four out of every five hours a day.

Howard Farran (26:11):

As far as competition with the DSOs, every major DSO guy is already on the record saying, “I’m not going to the rural,” because they tried that and by the time the kids get out of dental school, they’re at the prime time to attract a mate to mix gametes, and they have better odds in the city of Phoenix than they do two hours out in the middle of nowhere in Eloy, Arizona.

Howard Farran (26:35):

So by the time they’re well put in the rule, on any given day, 10% of the officers didn’t even have a doc in the box. So you know there’s no DSOs rural. And so that’s a haven. So I would say go to the rural. And by the time you’re two hours away from where a Southwest Airlines plane takes off, they drop insurance. You’re one of only three guys in a town of 3000 and they sell you a ticket. And you could only sell if [inaudible 00:27:09]. Well, how much is a root canal? $1000. How much crown? $1000. How much partial? $1000. How much denture? $1000. Everything’s rounded off to $1000, and they all have about 40% overhead because in a small town, labor, a 15 hour dollar a job or Walmart’s considered a bank and you have to pay a hygienist $50 an hour in San Francisco.

Howard Farran (27:30):

So I would say get two hours away from the airport, go rural, buy out an old guy instead of building more capacity. And if you’re a helluva programmer, you ought to make a Uber dental lab so that patients can meet these young dentists out of school in any office they want you. They could be working for a DSO who won’t let them do that, but on their day off, they could be meeting a dentist… Like my dental office when it’s closed. It’s closed every day at 7:00 PM. It’s closed Saturday and Sunday. So I know that was a long-winded answer to a very short question.

Chris Pistorius (28:03):

No, that was awesome. That was great. We’re going to wrap up here in a minute, but to any of those that are out there, I can’t imagine there’s many that don’t know about Dentaltown. Why don’t you tell us a little bit about what people get out of Dentaltown, how it works and why somebody should pay attention to Dentaltown.

Howard Farran (28:21):

First of all, all your scientific institutions like NASA, the jet propulsion laboratory, I’ve been to many of them, they only use the message board format. And social media that people are used to is called LIFO, last in, first out. And it’s just almost entertainment. But on a message board format, all 6 million posts made on Dentaltown are still there. They’re archived, they’re searchable. When we look at all the studies on Facebook and Twitter, it’s scientifically factual that everybody bulkinizes. So if I’m pro dental insurance, and you get on there and say, “Don’t take it,” they’ll just unfriend you. So everybody’s in this hardened position.

Howard Farran (29:06):

But when you go to Dentaltown, you can’t unfriend someone, you can’t delete someone. So a lot of people are very in a bubble, and they believe something like say that implants cause gum disease, you got to do ceramic and on their Facebook page they’re a guru. No, on Dentaltown, people just start popping holes in their bubble, and they either are on the scientists and want these observations to grow with, or they’re emotional and they run from it. So I just think it’s a treasure.

Howard Farran (29:41):

And the thing is on Facebook, I know who you are, but on Dentaltown, I know who you are registered, but you don’t want to call yourself Smiley Tooth… There has to be a place for a stupid question, like a specialist. An endodontist can’t get on Facebook and say, “Here’s a case of mine that failed. Does anybody know what went wrong?” All these competitors would be sending that to everybody. But he could on Dentaltown. So I want a place where, no, you’re not going to go and put yourself in some bubble. And you’re still a doctor. And you have to be aware that there’s people that think other thoughts. And so I think it’s a beautiful thing.

Howard Farran (30:22):

As far as the business on Dentaltown, I have my 30 day dental MBA. It’s free on Dentaltown. It’s also on YouTube. It’s also on iTunes. And my gosh, when I went to MBA school, I took my laptop, took notes just towards my dental practice. And then I came out, I ran it out the notes, it was 30 hours long. I call it Dr. Farran’s 30 day dental MBA. It still gets 1000 downloads a month just on iTunes. The views on YouTube are insane, but that’s what’s neat about the internet and Dentaltown. All the information you need to do a root canal or run a business is zero cost. You just need your time.

Howard Farran (31:06):

When I was a little kid, all that information was hidden in expensive universities that only rich kids went to, and you couldn’t do that in a poor town or a poor country. And now it’s all there on the internet at zero cost. So if you really want to work like no dentist has for a decade, you can still live like no dentist has for three decades.

Howard Farran (31:29):

So if you just want to get out there and work your butt off and hustle and do what everybody knows what to do, it’s all spelled out on my 30 day dental MBA. It’s all on Dentaltown. The opportunity is sitting right there, but it’s not going to be delivered to you. It’s not going to be easy. You’re going to have to do it the faster way, which is get out of dental school and work your ass off for a decade.

Howard Farran (31:54):

But here’s my last piece of advice regarding you and me. Number one, this isn’t a paid endorsement. He didn’t give me any money. But if he ever does come out and visit his grandma in Phoenix, you got to invite me. One beer, that’s all. That’s all I was asking.

Howard Farran (32:10):

But the deal is, dude, stay humble, stay in your real house. You think you’re an expert in everything and you’re not. And my gosh, you think you know everything about marketing, but you probably don’t. And I’m telling you that the DSOs, I’ve met their marketing agents and it’s a department. It’s five, six, seven, eight people, and they are not kidding around. So then for you to sit down as a dentist say, “Yeah, anybody can be an excellent marketer and understand Google and Facebook and all,” no, no, no. You need someone that specializes, all they do… You know an orthodontist can do Invisalign better than you. And you know that there’s a marketing guy that can do marketing better than you.

Howard Farran (32:55):

So stay humble, stay in your real house. I’m still always meeting dentists that run into a disaster with little things like their lease. There’s a dentist in Phoenix and on his lease, it was a triple net lease and three doors down, it flooded the whole room. Long story short, he was the only tenant in a 10,000 square foot building who had the money to pay for it. The yoga studio, everybody else just walked out on their lease and said, “Call it a bankruptcy.” So you need a lawyer before you sign a real estate lease. You might meet a guy who’s spent a decade in dental marketing before you start your ad campaign.

Chris Pistorius (33:37):

Yeah. I think that’s great advice.

Howard Farran (33:41):

Stay humble in your real house.

Chris Pistorius (33:44):

I really appreciate this. And if you don’t mind, I know you’re a busy guy, but maybe in a few months we can hook back up and tackle a couple more subjects if that’s cool with you.

Howard Farran (33:52):

Any time you want, man. It’d be a blast. I can talk about dentistry until the cows come home. I just love it.

Chris Pistorius (33:58):

That’s great, man. Well, Howard, thanks again. And thanks to everybody out there watching today. I know you got some great information out of this. Be sure to join us next week for another great episode of the Dental Marketing podcast.