Learn How to Start and Grow Your Dental Practice with Dr. Sky Kurlbaum

Get ready to hear the incredible story of Dr. Sky Kurlbaum, who created a successful dental practice from the ground up! On this episode of No BS Dental Marketing Podcast with Chris Pistorius, you’ll get insider tips on establishing your dental practice and achieving success – without any fuss or unnecessary roadblocks. Tune in now for an inspiring talk that just can’t be missed!

Dr. Kurlbaum’s success working in dentistry can be credited to more than just his family having connections; the ability to handle business principles and the commitment to understanding himself were two crucial elements.

His knowledge of running a tomato farm alongside his family taught him valuable skills that would be useful in managing a private practice; he had an appreciation for corporate dentistry and the unique factors a private practice could offer, making him well-equipped to handle any challenge that may arise.

His advice for staying successful involves paying employees well so they will form long-term relationships and improving them with appropriate training.

A thorough understanding of these practices has helped Dr. Kurlbaum succeed as an entrepreneur in dentistry, allowing him to build equal respect for corporate dentistry and the value a private practice can provide.

Other subjects we covered on the show:

  • How could Dr. Kurlbaum jump into not just one but two practices almost immediately?
  • Drawing on the strengths of both corporate and private dentistry, Dr. Kurlbaum seeks to craft a model that allows for localized customization while maintaining the productivity expected from a larger-scale operation.
  • Wrapping up, Dr. Kurlbaum gave us an inspiring insight into what dental care might look like in years to come!

AND MORE TOPICS COVERED IN THE FULL INTERVIEW!!! You can check that out and subscribe at https://pbp.li/tnobsdmp20.

If you want to know more about Dr. Sky Kurlbaum, you may reach out to him at:

Transcript

[00:00:00] Welcome to the Dental Marketing Podcast, a podcast that helps dentists win in the online world of modern day marketing. Each week, we cover the most cutting edge marketing tactics and strategies that are working right now across our client base to drive leads, phone calls, and more new patients for dentists.

Now here’s your host and founder of Kickstart Dental Marketing, Chris Pistorius.

Hey everybody. Welcome to the No BS Dental Marketing podcast. I am your host, Chris Pastorius, and on this show we talk about straight to the point, no BS tactics, tricks, and strategies to help you grow your practice. Now, there’s no fluff here. Just great to the point information that you can start using today to help increase your bottom line.

So if you’re a dental practice owner, a manager, a front desk professional, or really whatever be sure to click the subscribe button so you can keep up to date with all of our latest tips and tricks. Now, today [00:01:00] we’ve got a really special guest, Dr. Sky Kurlbaum. Dr. Kurlbaum is the owner of Kurlbaum Dental. He is out in Kansas City, Kansas.

Celebrating a recent Super Bowl victory from his team, the Kansas City Chiefs. We’re just talking off air about this, and I’m in Denver, as most of you know, and we’re obviously a big Broncos fan. So Dr. Sky and I kind of bump heads a little bit when it comes to football, but what I will say is Dr. Kurlbaum has created an an amazing practice. And we definitely want to pick your brain today, Dr. Kurlbaum on what’s made you so successful, and just kind of what’s going on out there. So thanks so much for being on the show today.

Of course, thanks for letting us be on here, even though we’re Chiefs fans, so we appreciate partnering together.

Yeah.Right. I hear you man. Just, I one of these days, the Broncos will get it turned around. I just gotta hope. Right?

So tell me about your journey a little bit. You know, we bring on some, we bring on Dentists here and, you know, everybody’s got a little bit of a unique story, but [00:02:00] why dentistry?

How did you get, did you grow up as a five year old? Just, you know, wishing you wanted to be a dentist someday, or how did you get this journey started?

Yeah, pretty much. My grandfather had a dental lab that he started in 1935. And then he had 11 children, so they all ended up working in that lab at one time or another.

Some of them became dentist, hygienists. So, you know, when I was five, you know, my favorite hygienist was my aunt who would clean all our teeth. And then I ended up being the oldest of five and there’s a six year age gap. So she got tired of having to clean all of our teeth on a Saturday. So she’d put me to work, you know, even as a little kid and have me polishing teeth at like 10 years old of all my little siblings.

So I probably never stood much of a chance, you know, to get into another field. It was pretty much dentistry from the beginning and just getting enough schooling to make it legal and stop doing those illegal, you know, prophies on my brothers and sisters growing up.

Yeah, man, that’s pretty cool. So you’d kind of been in your blood [00:03:00] for a while, right?

Yeah, Thanksgivings, you know, you guys were maybe talking Broncos and cowboy football and whatnot, and I had my uncles over there discussing whether PFM bomb strength was better than old, you know, this and that. And so, I probably never stood a chance.

Yeah, you didn’t have a chance. All right. So, how long have you had your own practice?

Just since August, so, you know, I’ve been pretty much looking, that’s like six months, seven months. I’ve been looking ever since I graduated, but kept getting in with practices that I thought I was gonna be able to buy into.

And then one thing or another that never materialize. So eventually it just came down to gotta wait around till I can just buy a practice and finally came together last August. And then quickly after that, a second location popped. That was just too good to say no to nearby. So we got that one in January.

So we went from having no practices, you know, seven months ago to having two practices, you know, pretty quickly after.

Yeah, that’s a cool story. And you know, what was your trigger, [00:04:00] I guess I wanna go to the second location here in a few minutes, but what was your trigger to start your own, I mean, was that always the plan?

I mean, from the beginning or were you just kind of waiting for the right opportunity?

That was always the plan from the beginning, but you know, really pretty, a lot of people kind of put out there that you shouldn’t really start on your own from day one. You know, you should go work with someone else, learn.

And I think that turned out to be very, very true. Cause I’m getting to apply things that I saw from other people I worked with. You know, the good, the bad, all of it. Put it all together kind of do our own recipe but always wanted to be an owner. Grew up helping my family run a tomato farm, you know, so not only doing cleanings as a 10 year old kind of thing, but then helping in high school run a business where we sold tomatoes and things like that.

So, I’d always kinda been geared towards running my own business and that was definitely the appeal that made me not waiver off of going into dentistry was the idea of being a business owner. So again, that was always, I was always gonna end up [00:05:00] owning a business. It’s just a matter of when, where, you know, how I made it come together.

Yeah. Would you agree that, you know, dental schools do a great job of producing dentists, but not so much running a business or learning how to run a business? Do you think that’s the case?

Definitely you know, we had a business class the entire way through and I don’t wanna pick on our faculty in case he ever had, you know, he did a great job.

But I think it’s an impossible task to teach, you know, 200 future dentists business because, you know, a hundred of them don’t care cuz they’re never gonna own business. They’re gonna work for someone else. The middle 50 might care a lot and he can speak to them and then there’s another 50 that, like, they’re gonna run it, but then they’re gonna hire someone else to kind of do everything.

So I think that’s kind of the difficult challenge at dental school is how do you, you know, train, but you know, to your point, like a crown, you know? Yeah. We all have to know how to do a crown so that curriculum can be very the same but you know, a business curriculum, they almost should break it into three different classes or something.

And what you pick, how involved you tend are gonna [00:06:00] be.

Yeah. And, you know, it’s a big deal because you know everybody, you know, this isn’t just dentistry, but you know, and people that have listened to this, my podcast before have heard me, you know, kind of harp on this, but most people go into business because they’re good at something, whether it’s baking pies or you know, they’re a dentist or whatever it may be.

And you know, they’re the technicians of their work, you know, they’re doing all the work. Well, that’s awesome. But if you don’t have the skills to be able to hire, to scale, to do processes, to do accounting, to do marketing, there’s a good likelihood you’re gonna fail. And it’s actually one of the top reasons why most small businesses fail is because people get into business because they’re good at something, but it’s not always necessarily running a business.

So I think it’s really cool to hear you, you know, at a tomato farm, I mean, I’m sure you learned some good business life lessons about, all right, we sell here, you know, we buy here, sell here.

You know, basic business sense on, you know, how to run things would, I mean, did that help kind of develop you [00:07:00] being able to jump into not just one, but you know, almost two practices, almost immediately?

Yeah, definitely. Because, you know, as a high schooler helping manage, you know, teams that would go out and pick tomatoes, then we’d have to go deliver tomato, you know, there’s such a resource management kind of there, and then HR and kind of.

And then, here I am in high school, you know, organizing other high school kids. So it really kind of forced me to grow up, grow it quickly in a business sense that way. But kind of to your point, you know, Dental school designed to produce dentists, not kind of the other thing.

And you can be a fantastic dentist and not kind of get the other, so yeah, definitely having that background in business kind of helped me be ready for where we are now.

Yeah. Now you had a, you’ve got obviously a lot of family involved in dentistry, but other than family, did you have a mentor kind of to helping you out with this at all?

Other than family. I kind of, I should have thought of it that way, but when I said it, you know, family members jumped to my mind. Cause like you said, I have a [00:08:00] lot of them. You know, I’ve had good mentors You know, since I graduated that I’ve worked for, you know I won’t necessarily drop them by name, you know, because for mentors you’re gonna learn good things.

You’re gonna learn bad things, you know, I got, I’m very grateful for the experiences I got, but you know, you’re not doing your due diligence if you don’t learn from them what to do and what not to do. So, yeah. I got a lot of different experiences, a lot of different mentors, but you know, as far as people I’ve worked for are non-family, none of them stick out as like that’s the person.

For me more, it’s that I had a lot of different mentors that I looked for, so I really got to kind of pick and choose and say, you know, you’re good at this, you’re good at this, you’re good at this, you’re not good at this, you’re not good at this, and kind of put it all together.

Yeah, I think, you know, a lot of the people listening or a lot of the dentists that are thinking of maybe starting their own practice or adding a practice are curious, and I get this question a lot too, about stress levels, right.

You know, so when you’re an associate, you know, you kind of clock in, clock out, you get your paycheck, and things are pretty chill, [00:09:00] right? But when you start your own business, that changes, right? Because you got people that depend on you. You’re just starting out, you know, you just started your new practice, you just added another practice.

You know, undoubtedly stress levels are gonna be increased, but how do you manage that? How do you manage like the work life balance? Maybe you could help some of our listeners out that may be having those types of questions right now.

Yeah, I think you have to be careful because grass is always greener on the other side. you know, whatever struggles you might be having as an associate, you’re like, oh, this will all be better when I’m an owner.

But kind of to your point, you know, you’re just trading off different stressors. But I think for me personally, you know, as an associate, you know, kind of being more of a leader where I’m the oldest of five, you know, I’m an Eagle Scout.

There’s just, my whole life I was put in leadership positions. So even when I was an associate, I was getting pushed into that leadership role. But for me it was very unfulfilling because these people were looking to me to lead. But as an [00:10:00] associate, I couldn’t really deliver on promises, or things.

Solutions. They wanted me to give them to the proms. So kind of to your point. Yeah, there is a lot of stress there. There’s a lot of responsibility. But, you know, I might be the wrong one to ask cuz I might, you know, talk some people into doing it who maybe weren’t ready. But that’s where I’d kind of say, you know, know yourself, kind of know what you need.

And for me, good, bad or ugly, I needed to be able to make those calls for people, and I needed this stress, not the other stress. So, that’s how I’d caution people thinking about getting into it, is don’t just think it’s gonna be, you know, sunshine and roses, it’s perfect running your own practice. But if you know yourself well enough to know which kind of stress you’re gonna deal with better.

For me personally, this kind of stress is much better cuz you know, win, lose or draw, you know, succeed or fail. Now it’s on me and I can’t blame anyone else. And I’m much more comfortable with that than sitting here going, you know, man, these people I’m working for are gonna run our business into the ground and I can’t do anything [00:11:00] about it.

Right. Yeah. Yeah. You know, it’s interesting. I remember when I started my business, it’s almost been 14 years now you know, I was like, man, I don’t wanna have a boss anymore. I’m gonna go start my own company. And man, I screwed that one up because, you know, I went from having one boss to, you know, when you take on clients as an agency, you know, really now I have like 60 bosses, right?

It’s just a different way to look at, you know, who your boss is, I guess. But I think that’s a pretty valid point. So, you know, you jumped in, you know, you hit the ground running your new practice is, you know, on its way, and then all of a sudden you get this opportunity for a second practice.

Right. And so tell us, you know, this early in the process, because you’re probably one of the few that I’ve talked to that jumped into a second practice as quickly, what was your thought process there? Was it just that good of a deal that you had to jump on it or, you know, was there any hesitation at all or were you just like, let’s do it.

I think the timing of it being that quick had to do with it being that good of an opportunity, that good of a [00:12:00] location. But I think why we were ready to do it is we knew we were always gonna have to take on another practice. Because all the ones I’ve been an associate on were more like, eight chairs, nine chairs.

Bigger practices. And my wife had gone to dental school and graduated in May, and the idea had always been to kind of work together. So I’ve been searching for that eight chair practice, that nine chair practice. And I don’t want to give out all my secret sauce, but I guess I will a little bit.

That’s the point of this podcast. Right. You know, I had to kind of think outside the box when I couldn’t find that eight chair, nine chair practice I wanted. So when the first practice in August came available, they only had two, you know, chairs that even operated. So I immediately knew that it was too small, even for me, but definitely for two dentists.

But we kind of had the vision to look at the 1300 square feet and say to ourselves, you know, in fact I’m sitting, this used to be the waiting room that I’m sitting in right now. We use the room up front, and we turned it into another operatory. So, you know, step one, kind of with the [00:13:00] first practice was to take it from two operating chairs to four which we were able to do pretty succinctly and quick.

We had that done, you know, August by December we had four chairs operational in here. But even at four, you know, it wasn’t gonna be big enough. You know, I knew we needed that eight to nine. And my wife was kind of getting ready to join us. So the timing of it, you know, I think that’s why it came together the way it did is we knew that was always the next step and we just kind of had our eye out for, you know, okay, is the right practice.

And it just popped at that timing and we just had to make a move on it. But I kind of liken it to having like Irish twins or like, you know, being diapers one. So, cause we bought the one practice. So to turn around and do it again, it was all fresh in our minds. Everyone on the staff kind of knew what we were doing.

And actually I think made it a little bit easier because we hadn’t settled back in. We were just still uncomfortable from the first one. So it’s like, you know what’s, one more? Come on. Bring it on. We’re ready.

Yeah. Yeah. What about hiring? Do [00:14:00] you have any tips on like, you know, how to hire people?

What are you looking for? I mean, have you had success so far hiring? What’s your experience with that?

Yeah, I know it’s very difficult to hire right now, and I don’t want to backseat drive anyone else’s situations. And make it sound easy, cuz it is definitely not easy. There’s no secret formula here, but I’ll just kind of share like what we do and then maybe people can relate to, you know, so what we do is, one, make sure we’re very, very nice to our employees because you know, they’re not dime a dozen, you know, if you’re mean to people, they’ll leave.

And you’re gonna spend more money training and finding new people. It costs you money to not have continuity. So when we have people, we hold them. And even when we bought the practice from the beginning, you know, we had three or four people that we’d been working with over the years and other practice that were just ready to come on with us from day one, just kind of looking for us to have a practice for them to relocate to.

So that made it kind of easy in the beginning. And when we were getting ready for the second [00:15:00] practice it was definitely a challenge to kind of say, you know, are we gonna retain staff? Are we gonna start kind of a new, and for us personally, it just made more sense to start a new just because we had so many existing employees already.

We had so many connections to people we’ve worked with before. But kind of tips or tricks or things like that. I mean, again, there’s no secret sauce. We pay very well because we don’t want to have to be turning people and we see the value of having those premium employees that aren’t gonna be a dime a dozen.

You know, and the other thing that we’ll kind of, so we either pay very well, but we also are willing to train people. So that’s something that we kind of will do differently maybe than some other offices is, you know, we’re the last couple assistants we’ve brought on, you know, one of them worked for a water delivery company, the other one worked in a warehouse.

We’re willing to train though, because. You know, you can’t train someone to show up on time to work. You know, you can’t train someone to value what it is you’re giving them. So when you can take someone who was, you know, making good money, but not really, you know, [00:16:00] and you can give them a raise to come over to, you know, get an introduction into healthcare as I always kind of talk to them about, and maybe take someone who thought to themselves, you know, I can never do that. I didn’t, you know, I only graduated high school. I didn’t go get a degree and kind of say, then it’s okay, we can train you and you can get into, you know, a healthcare kind of job. That joy that that kind of brings those people, it’s really special.

And then the patients kind of feel that because you know that employee wants to be there, you know, they’re not like, you know, I only, you know, they want to be there and the patients can feel that. So.

Yeah, you’re helping them start a career sometimes, you know, versus just a job. So, yeah. And you know, I think you’re onto something there with, you know, the training because like you said, you know, we look for people that you know personally, that you know, is gonna be a good culture fit for us first. Right.

They’re just good people, right. And they’re, you know, they’re nice to people and their personalities are good. Cuz that’s the stuff you can’t train. If they don’t already have that, it’s gotta be hard to train that. Right. So that’s kind of where we’ve [00:17:00] shifted to is, you know, it’s marketing.

We can teach that, right? But we just can’t teach some of the, some of the other core concepts, so.

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All right, cool. So, you know, you’re a few months into this now. What’s surprised you so far? What’s one thing about starting these businesses that’s, you know, maybe not shocked you, but surprised you that it was either a little bit harder than you thought, or maybe easier than you thought?

Probably surprised me a little is, you know, dentists or just people in general tend to be pretty. We have a high self, you know, we think we’re, you know, cooler than we are. [00:18:00] We think we’re more special than we are. And you know, I kinda reflect on that myself where it’s like, oh, these patients love me and I’m their person.

I’m always gonna be their person. But you know, you get some humility when, you know, we take on two practices where. You know, this practice the patients had been here 30 and 40 years. The other practice had been there, you know, 20 plus years and just seeing how, you know, as long as we’re nice and treat the patients the right way, they can just very smoothly transition to us.

And that surprised me a little bit. I think I anticipated a little more turnover than we actually ended up having. But then again, it’s kind of humbling cuz then you think about it and go, well, am I really that special? So if they’re with me for 20 or 30 years and then I go retire, they’re not gonna all, you know, I don’t know, cry themselves asleep for a night, they’re just gonna move on to the next person.

So, but, and I think the key there is that, you know, we treat people the right way too. You know, we put a lot of hard work into making sure that those patients felt valued. And like this could still be their dental home and that they didn’t have to. [00:19:00] Yeah. So, there’s some finesse that goes into that to make sure you’re doing it the right way.

But that kind of surprised me. I anticipated a lot more turnover than we ended up having, so.

Yeah. Well, that’s good. What do you think of. And I’m not trying to put you in a corner here, but I get asked a lot, you know, in marketing realm of, there’s a lot of individual private dentists out there that are concerned about corporate dentistry and just the presence that they have in their local markets.

And, you know, it seems like DSOs have different models. Some of them are obviously, you know, DSOs and other ones like Heartland kind of just keep, you know local names and, you know, you can’t really tell that they’re corporate dentistry. Do you feel any pressure from corporate dentistry and, you know, how do you see how your private practice may differ a little bit from corporate dentistry?

I definitely feel that pressure and I’ve worked for several, and I currently work for one DSO too on the side doing Alzheimer and dementia patients and nursing homes. And that’s all based outta [00:20:00] Texas. So, you know I don’t think you can work in dentistry and not feel their constant presence.

And I think you’re doing yourself a disservice if you just ignore them being there. I think you have to make every decision thinking about them and kind of preparing, and figuring out, you know, what makes us, you know, why would someone pick us over one of those practices? And then under understand also that those places are gonna have advantages that you don’t.

And if you don’t recognize that, then you’re just kidding yourself. Yeah. You know, so there’s pros and cons to both you know, for our practice. I mean, you asked about the second practice, you know? Okay. So technically we are a tiny little DSO. But being aware of, you know, the pros and cons of DSOs and corporate dentistry you know, we’re positioning ourselves, you know, that would be like a Heartland or a Pacific or anything like that, but you know, we’ll keep growing hopefully, and maybe grow towards being like a mini DSO kind of thing.

But being aware of the advantages of private practice, the advantages of the corporate, and then maybe trying to [00:21:00] hybridize somewhere in the middle where we can kind of keep that, you know, private practice, local flare where you really feel like you’re coming to see the dentist and not going to, you know, the Walmart of dentistry or whatnot.

But still key into some of those advantages. You know, like the big like Patterson and Henry Shine and places like that will give discounts to bigger accounts and things like that, that’s just business. It makes sense, but so if you can get some of that while still kind of keeping that local flavor I think walking that line is kind of our differentiator or what we’re trying to do well, so that people don’t just feel like they’re gonna see a different dentist every time they go.

Yeah, tell me about, you know, we’re starting to see, not really starting, but we’ve been seeing more and more general dentists trying to do more services in-house, right? I mean, you see GP’s now placing implants. You see them doing Invisalign, you see all kinds of different types, even Botox, right? What are your thoughts on that?

Do you think that’s the future of dentistry where there’s gonna be more [00:22:00] services offered by a GP in-house, kind of all one shop? Or where do you think this is going?

I think that the pressure is kind of always been there and you really see it, you know, in the past with like root canals and things like that.

A lot of the dentists that are retiring right now will look at dentists like me that are newer and be like, oh, you gotta do all the root canals for your patients. You know, molar Indo, you know, that’s their big thing that they want us kind of doing. And to your point, I think the newer generation is more like, yeah, on implants, on Botox, on some of these other things that patients want.

But you know, we’re not different than any other field. You know, the consumer will drive things, the patient will drive things. And I’m seeing this a lot with my wife, you know, Dr. Nicole where, you know, she was talking to me about referring different services. And what she’s kind of starting to see is there’s such a strong connection that’s made between the patient and the dentist that they don’t want to be referred.

Yeah. So a lot of that driving force is coming from the consumers, coming from the patient where they want you to do that service for [00:23:00] them. And they want you to go get the training for it. And if you tell them you’re gonna get the training for it, they’re like, all right, I’ll be your first patient to get that sign slip with you when you’re done.

And it always kind of surprises you and says, you want me to do that when, you know, I’ve just got the training for it. You don’t wanna go to the specialist, but people connect to you. They trust you, you know, they trust the training that you’re gonna go get. So I do think it’ll continue to always be kind of a pull that way, especially for dentists that can connect really well with their patients.

It’s a funny tiny story on that that’s directly related is our little daughter Ruth you know, she has a tight tongue, so they might do like a little tongue tie, you know, procedure on her. And we went to the pedodontist that we were very, very familiar with. You know, she’s our person, you know, so like we went to her and said, hey, can you help our daughter with this?

And she was kind of sitting there going, you know what, I gotta be honest with you guys. I don’t do this all the time. We are about to go get training on this. You know, you should go to this other dentist, this other specialist in town. He can take care of you. So kudos to her for knowing that she’s good or not.

But it’s funny cuz even [00:24:00] two dentists, who, you know, my wife immediately looks at me after we left and she’s like, should we just wait for, you know, her to get her training and then happen? And I’m sitting like, man, I’m living this is, it’s like you connect to one person and you’re like, this is the person I trust.

And I want this person to provide all my services, not to other people. And so I think that that’s, It’s been constant. I think it just kind of shifts on what procedures, you know, before it was crowns and root canals and things, and now to your point, it’s shifting to implants, Botox, you know, I want to do all my things with you.

Can you do my taxes too? You know, like I do everything for me.

That’s a good idea actually. Yeah. I mean, we’re seeing, you know, we’re seeing more clients reach out to us that are kind of, they’re really branding themselves more as like dental spas, right? Like where it’s, you know, Botox and, you know, they’re doing a lot of other stuff as well.

So it’ll be interesting to see, you know, how that evolves and, you know, I just know for myself it’s a convenience thing, right? I mean, if you referred me out [00:25:00] to for implants or whatever it might be, you know, then I gotta schedule another appointment. You know, they might be booked out a month, right?

And then I probably gotta get to know the person and, you know, it is a convenience factor as well. So, okay. So what’s the future technology? I mean, you’re a younger dentist, you’re outta school. I mean, what’s the latest, what’s the things that are you’re most excited about in the future of dentistry from a technological stand point?

Yeah. So you know, I think 3D scanning with our, you know, iTeros and, you know prime scan and just all the different scanners out there that can kind of digitally recreate what we’re seeing in the mouse. Like that’s a huge area of growth right now. There’s a lot of different technologies, but like that’s specifically the one that I’m most excited about and and most comfortable with cuz I’ve been doing that the entirety of my career since I’ve graduated is scanning teeth instead of taking their traditional impressions and things like that.

You know, we just see a better [00:26:00] fit with crowns and partials. And everything we do with that cause it’s just so much more precise. Kind of dovetailing in with that though too is, you know, we do go into the nursing homes, and do you know, but kind of doing that we kind of pulled those two technologies kind of together.

And this is kind of related to your question as far as we’ve been using a lot of those scanners to be able to do tele dentistry and remote dentistry. And in fact, we have a pending patent on a system that we were doing with that, with our remote and pin. Remote and tele dentistry over on the mobile side of things.

So where we really want to grow in the upcoming years, you know, with these two practices. And if we eventually grow past that we’ll be kind of using some of those things that we’ve kind of perfected over on the mobile side of thing, and bringing that to our private practice. You know, patients where, you know, if they want to be seen on a Saturday, but you know, I can’t come in on that Saturday, you know, using the laws that have changed in 2023 to allow, you know, a hygienist to work a whole office on a Saturday if she wanted, but then be [00:27:00] remotely monitored, checked by me the dentist.

So, we have a lot of those things kind of growing, but you know, you gotta have the patient base kind of flowing through, so, you know, yeah. That’s kinda our hustle to kind of get these offices, you know, gain the trust of our community and earn that trust. You know, get a strong patient base and then start offering these things to people.

You know, seven o’clock at night appointments where, you know, you run in shifts and you have a hygienist that’s there working, but I don’t necessarily have to be there in person. If you have perfect teeth, you haven’t had a filling in five years kind of thing. I can look at your x-rays and pictures remotely and say, you’re good.

So just, just kind of, you know, using some of these different, yeah, because that’s something that’s really popped up the last couple. I mean, we’re talking on a Zoom right now. We didn’t even know what Zoom was in 2018. So, you know, the remote technologies, the tele dental technologies. You know, most people think of tele industry and they think, oh, I’m gonna talk to a dentist on a phone.

You know? Yeah. Maybe that’s how they thought [00:28:00] about it at first. But as we’ve kind of, you know, explored different ways we can apply, you know, those rules and laws we’re just kind of excited to offer those advantages to our patients.

Yeah. Awesome. Well, Dr. Kurlbaum, I know you’re busy. I really appreciate you taking the time with us today.

If you don’t mind, I’d like to follow up with you in six months or so. See how many practices you have by then, and just get an update on what’s going on. Would that be okay with you?

Yep. Sure.

Awesome. Well, thanks again for being a part of it. And everybody, thanks so much for listening in today. And if you like today’s episode, please do hit that subscribe button.

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