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Month: October 2023

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Podcast

Revolutionizing Smile Restoration

Summary:

Imagine a dental world where innovative implant techniques preserve bone and offer patients more options than ever before.

In this episode of the Secure Dental Podcast, Dr. Noel Liu sits down with Dr. Logan Locke, dentist, owner of Smile Clinic, owner of Capture Oral Health and Beauty, Vice President and Co-Director of the Smile Systems Institute, to talk about the development and promotion of a new dental implant technique called 3 on 6™. Dr. Locke shares insights into the evolution of their company, Smile Systems, highlighting their transition from dentures to screw-retained fixed prosthetics. They discuss the importance of providing patients with various options and stress the significance of proper training and experience for the 3 on 6™ procedure. Dr. Locke touches on the ethical aspect of patient care, emphasizing the need for comprehensive patient education and awareness. He also expresses his aspirations to expand services nationally and to raise awareness and knowledge about the innovative 3 on 6™ technique through various educational channels.

Tune in and discover the ethical commitment behind Smile Systems’ mission to empower patients with comprehensive knowledge about their dental implant choices!

Secure Dental Podcast_Dr. Locke.mp3: Audio automatically transcribed by Sonix

Secure Dental Podcast_Dr. Locke.mp3: this mp3 audio file was automatically transcribed by Sonix with the best speech-to-text algorithms. This transcript may contain errors.

Dr. Noel Liu:
Welcome to the Secure Dental Podcast. Two conversations with the brightest minds in the dental and business communities will share practical tips you can use to scale your practice and create financial freedom for yourself and your family. My name is Dr. Noel Liu, CEO and Dentist at Secure Dental and also co-founder of DentVia. I'm your host for the Secure podcast and I'm so glad you're joining in. All right, guys, this is Dr. Noel Liu here with our Secure Dental podcast. Now, today, I'm doing something really different. I'm not in front of a screen. I'm here live here with Dr. Locke. And this gentleman has flew in from Utah for our show here at Signature Art Smiles. So, let's start. Tell me a little bit background about yourself.

Dr. Logan Locke:
From Salt Lake. So we got, my partner and I Randy Roberts got into implants long time ago. And we started kind of seeing our patient population change as far as old mouth rehab goes. And I don't know if you've.

Dr. Noel Liu:
How did you and Randy meet?

Dr. Logan Locke:
His nephew worked for him, and I knew his nephew, so I got out of dental school.

Dr. Noel Liu:
Wow.

Dr. Logan Locke:
Okay, okay. And got in contact with them. And so they brought me on and credit to Randy, he let me do anything I wanted to do. We were doing some really inexpensive implants, and we just got just a crazy amount of experience, tons of.

Dr. Noel Liu:
Start somewhere, right?

Dr. Logan Locke:
Yeah, you could start there. And it was experience that kind of drove us through the fields, getting further and further into the full mouth rehab.

Dr. Noel Liu:
So that's a great story, because when I started, I started doing implants for free. Yeah, you just did for free. And I was like, you know what, let's just charge for the crowns. And we got tons and tons with those four. We think we hit four digit implant numbers in, like in a matter of a couple of years or something. Oh yeah.

Dr. Logan Locke:
You just push them out. Yeah. People flock to lower cost implant and you do what you can for as long as you need it, and you got the experience where you're doing the best work.

Dr. Noel Liu:
No. Absolutely, absolutely. You know, for for me, my mentor told me that if you're going to place 500 implants, right, the next 500 would be the first 500. You fix it. Yeah. Yeah. Was that the same scenario for you? Yeah, yeah.

Dr. Logan Locke:
You make some mistakes, you learn and figure out what stuff works and what doesn't, and you take more, and you start seeing what other guys are doing and incorporating that into your practice. And then you incorporate bone grafting and all this different stuff. You just add and add and add nice, nice point where you can, you know, take on whatever you want.

Dr. Noel Liu:
So when you got out of dental school, did you start implants right away or did you like go through the process of doing general dentistry?

Dr. Logan Locke:
I started I went to Creighton and my school, a really good school, and they had a really good program for implants. So by the time I had left, I had placed or participated in placing like 30 implants in school.

Dr. Noel Liu:
School.

Dr. Logan Locke:
Wow. Okay. Left. I had a really cool mentor from South Dakota, Dr. Lewison, and he let me do a ton. And I went up to his office frequently and we just kind of hung out with him. He just did a lot of implants in South Dakota.

Dr. Noel Liu:
And so that is where you got the passion?

Dr. Logan Locke:
Yeah, it was just nice. I loved it when I was in school. And so afterward when I actually got into a residency program, that kind of a hundred implants or so in a year, which I thought was great.

Dr. Noel Liu:
Did you get to place 100?

Dr. Logan Locke:
You know, I ended up kind of bailing on that when I met Dr. Roberts.

Dr. Noel Liu:
Oh, okay.

Dr. Logan Locke:
And so I bailed on my residency because they kind of had a more promising experience. I ended up probably doing triple that.

Dr. Noel Liu:
First-year out of school. Did you place any implants?

Dr. Logan Locke:
Oh, my first year out of school, I probably placed 300.

Dr. Noel Liu:
Wow.

Dr. Logan Locke:
So it was a good choice. It was a hard choice to make in the moment to skip the residency program, but I got really good experience.

Dr. Noel Liu:
Did you ever do any general dentistry?

Dr. Logan Locke:
I do a lot, I still do, I enjoy okay, okay, molar root canals I enjoy.

Dr. Noel Liu:
You still do those.

Dr. Logan Locke:
Oh, I still do that all. Yeah I enjoy veneers.

Dr. Noel Liu:
Oh, nice.

Dr. Logan Locke:
I'll still do I like and I think the aesthetic side of dentistry doing a set of veneers can contribute to success. And the.

Dr. Noel Liu:
Full arch is.

Dr. Logan Locke:
3.6 full arch right? Right. Same thing, same thing with dentures. I tell everyone if you can do a really solid wax rim because people don't do wax rims as much anymore, but learning how to do a wax rim if you can get incisal positioning in your midline and lip posture, all that kind of stuff. That's what in the operating room.

Dr. Noel Liu:
So it's kind of like learning how to do dentures.

Dr. Logan Locke:
If you can do a really good denture.

Dr. Noel Liu:
You can do this three on six.

Dr. Logan Locke:
You can do the prosthetic side of this. Now you've got to you've got to. That's the hard part with FP1 is you're incorporating the prosthetic side, the surgical side, the tissue, and everything together. You've just got to merge it all.

Dr. Noel Liu:
And perio and yeah all of all of it surgery. So no that's great. So tell me something real quick. When did you move to Utah?

Dr. Logan Locke:
I grew up in Utah, so I've been there.

Dr. Noel Liu:
Oh, so you went to school? Okay, I understood school.

Dr. Logan Locke:
I actually did my first year of dental school with the students at the University of Utah with med students. Oh, wow. Was a program that doesn't exist anymore. So we did one year at the University of Utah, then three in Omaha. Creighton.

Dr. Noel Liu:
Oh that's great. That's great. So today, what's going on in your life? Like what do you kind of tied in?

Dr. Logan Locke:
So, Doctor Shore, he came to us for a training and this was one six.

Dr. Noel Liu:
Last year or some some earlier this year.

Dr. Logan Locke:
A few months ago.

Dr. Noel Liu:
Few months ago.

Dr. Logan Locke:
We weren't that that long ago. So, Dr. Shore, he's passionate about this stuff. As you know. He loves it, right? He came to our training. We've been developing 3 on 6™ for a long time. There's a couple of things special. Think about 3 on 6™

Dr. Noel Liu:
So what is 3 on 6™

Dr. Logan Locke:
So 3 on 6™ is a classification of FP1 okay. Which is keeping your similar tooth shape and size okay when you're doing full mouth rehab, and the way we do it, we break it into three bridges once the healing process is complete.

Dr. Noel Liu:
Okay? Which is why. The first one was three. Yeah. Okay. Okay.

Dr. Logan Locke:
Three bridges on six implants. Gotcha. So there's a couple things that have really helped with 3 on 6™. The patient side, you're getting a lot of people and a lot of patients with the way the internet is and the way people do research now. They're starting to realize that there's an option beyond Fp3. Correct? Correct. And this is where I was kind of getting to at the beginning, our patient base, is getting younger and younger.

Dr. Noel Liu:
Exactly.

Dr. Logan Locke:
It's I mean, you're seeing a lot of extradition that's just annihilated the teeth really broken down the dentition. And I'd had to do a young lady from Atlanta, she was 26 years old.

Dr. Noel Liu:
Oh wow.

Dr. Logan Locke:
That was you know, so if you think about doing an Fp3, sometimes that's the only option. Right. And we're not playing the use of Fp3. But in a 26 year old that has good, relatively good tissue, relatively good health, sure. Bone levels, they've just got broken down dentition. So what are they doing that amount of bone. Yeah.

Dr. Noel Liu:
So what are they looking for typically like when they want to let's say want to extract. Otherwise before FP1 what was the other option, like a denture maybe? Right.

Dr. Logan Locke:
Yeah, a denture, or they're going Fp3 in there and then.

Dr. Noel Liu:
Just taking.

Dr. Logan Locke:
Bone off you know. And in a 26 year old. Yeah that's tough because what if the implants fail.

Dr. Noel Liu:
And then now you got no bone, right.

Dr. Logan Locke:
Where are you leaving them? Even if they have to go to a denture.

Dr. Noel Liu:
See that was my whole issue with Fp3 is because they're treating it like one size fits all. Yeah. And cleaning up the arch and just placing four implants. Six implants.

Dr. Logan Locke:
And you've seen these bone trophies. You know, that was a big thing for a while. It's kind of slowed down a little bit. But we saw a lot of and when I got out of school, we were seeing a lot of people posting bone trophies where they were just even with the implants.

Dr. Noel Liu:
Right. Well, they were.

Dr. Logan Locke:
What they were doing. You see, the guys that would just saw off, they would leave the teeth in and they'd just take a 5-57 and yeah, yeah, flat plane it, break that all off, and then pick the root tips out, which is a quick way to do it, obviously. But when you're moving that amount of bone on a healthy patient, it just doesn't make any sense.

Dr. Noel Liu:
So the way I look at it this way, it's the FP1, it's more like an option. Like you have a separate option for younger patients with good alveolar ridge. Right. Good height. And why take it out when. Yeah when the patient has good bone.

Dr. Logan Locke:
If you think about it. And we do this frequently, if you're an implant dentist you've probably done an implant bridge 7 to 10. Right. Someone that's lost those front four teeth. We do it all the time. We do a bridge 7 to 10. You're not hacking off a lot of bone, right? And when we're doing that, it's the same thing.

Dr. Noel Liu:
Same concept.

Dr. Logan Locke:
Yeah, we're just extending that to the posterior as well.

Dr. Noel Liu:
So any listeners like listening out there. Right. They're not they kind of need to understand. It's like doing immediate implants. Yeah. Right. And then doing immediate with like a bridge.

Dr. Logan Locke:
And immediate and it we're immediately loading the majority of the time.

Dr. Noel Liu:
Right.

Dr. Logan Locke:
Reason being we're trying to develop Pontic sites. We're trying to create tissue. You can do that without immediately loading, it's just a lot harder. Once the implants have integrated tissues kind of healed into a flat, it becomes a lot more difficult. So you can immediately load it and you have a good prosthetic design, takes a good lab that knows how to do it, and then it takes a good amount of training in order to figure out where you're positioning everything in order to create the tissue. A.

Dr. Noel Liu:
Absolutely, I was here this morning, and this patient you guys did a case last night yesterday finished up last night. Patient was walking out. Looked amazing. He was happy I mean yeah he was excited. Yeah he's excited I mean he was even that older kind of a gentleman. And and you guys really rocked it out.

Dr. Logan Locke:
Alex did a Dr. Shore did a great job. Yeah. Crushed it yesterday. Timing went really well. Patient woke up super smooth. And today he was ecstatic.

Dr. Noel Liu:
So today you are. We are here in his office in Chicago. You guys flew out of Utah, right.

Dr. Logan Locke:
So when we after we do our training, this isn't hard thing to do. Yeah. And we don't ever downplay that. We actually when we bring people into our training, we kind of make sure they're qualified for it. At this point. We used to take anyone on.

Dr. Noel Liu:
So based on that statement, who is it for?

Dr. Logan Locke:
This is for...

Dr. Noel Liu:
Who would be like an ideal student coming in, into the course?

Dr. Logan Locke:
Someone like, Dr. Shore that's done FP3 okay, that has an extended amount of implant experience. Sure knows how the bone graft that just needs a little bit more training and skill in order to do that arena, the FP1. If you haven't done a lot of implants, we need that experience beforehand. You're going to experience failures. Anyone that places implants.

Dr. Noel Liu:
Correct. Correct.

Failures. And you have to know how you're going to deal with those.

Dr. Noel Liu:
So so in your definition of experience, what would it be for someone who is placed, let's say, you know, 1500 implants? And is that are they...

Dr. Logan Locke:
A good place, five, 600 implants? Okay, of course, of a career if you, you know, you know how to do socket preservation. Sure. I think ridge augmenting is a really good thing to know about. We try and avoid sinus work if we can. So but, occasionally we've got to do some sinus lifting, that kind of thing. So if you have that good surgical background and if you've done FP3 and you've dealt with the complications, right, it's not much different going into FP1.

Dr. Noel Liu:
Just tweaking it a little bit here and there.

Dr. Logan Locke:
Right. And we're figuring out how to be a little more conservative. And the tissue management, that's where tissue management, tissue management becomes more complex.

Dr. Noel Liu:
I'm really intrigued with FP1 and 3 on 6™ is because there's not a lot of bone reduction. And I think that's huge. Yeah. You know people need to understand that as providers we need to give our patient options. Right?

Dr. Logan Locke:
And that's what it's about. It's about being able to think ethically. We have to present those options and say, even if you can't do FP1, the patient should know that that is an option out there, right? Correct. And that they have good enough bone that they can keep it. It just needs to be done properly.

Dr. Noel Liu:
So with that being said, do you still do FP3s?

Dr. Logan Locke:
Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I mean sometimes that's the only thing you can do. Correct. Right there in a denture. And they come in, they've lost a lot of alveolar, lost height. You've got to build back up. Then FP3 is the option to, you know, FP2 you can do some longer, longer teeth. So it's good to have all the.

Dr. Noel Liu:
All the options on the table. Right. So 3 on 6™? Tell us a little bit about it. Who are the founders? What's going on? And what's the projection and what's the future for 3 on 6™? Yeah.

Dr. Logan Locke:
So Smile Systems is the parent company Smile Systems that was started by my partner Dr. Randy Roberts.

Dr. Noel Liu:
Okay.

Dr. Logan Locke:
I partnered in with him at our clinic in in Taylorsville, Utah, and then in me and him. I was kind of at the beginning process when he started doing that.

Dr. Noel Liu:
Oh, wow.

Dr. Logan Locke:
And we were doing them with Cerec. We were doing them for 10,000 an arch.

Dr. Noel Liu:
So you guys just kind of like, what were the Warriors,right? The trailblazers. Right? Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Dr. Logan Locke:
Figuring out how to do it because we weren't keen on the idea of just chopping off all these people. So we started off, really humbly and designing things ourselves, and it took forever. And it was hard. And we did start off with dentures and then we would we would load afterwards.

Dr. Noel Liu:
Wow!

Dr. Logan Locke:
And then we slowly we, we started building our own lab that was able to handle these cases. And we brought on more experienced people and, and eventually we got to the point where, well, and then we were doing it cement retained which was fun difficulties.

Dr. Noel Liu:
Okay.

Dr. Logan Locke:
But it worked, it worked and it worked well. But then screw-retained complications were harder to manage.

Dr. Noel Liu:
Correct, correct.

Dr. Logan Locke:
And then we, we we had a really good partner in that helped us kind of move on to more screw retained. And that's kind of where we are right now as a screw-retained fixed prosthetic immediately loaded. We did the whole.

Dr. Noel Liu:
What did the whole process look like? Like how many years?

Dr. Logan Locke:
Let's see. I think I did my first 3 on 6™, that was designed by Sarah probably 5 or 6 years ago. Wow. Okay. 5 or 6 years of development and.

Dr. Noel Liu:
Just perfecting.

Dr. Logan Locke:
The system. Perfecting the system. Right. And Randy, he started off doing maybe 1 to 2 a year, and then it worked into it started to get a little more popular. And then the name became well known. We created the content, and we're starting to help patients be aware that there's another option.

Dr. Noel Liu:
Another option. Absolutely.

Dr. Logan Locke:
They don't understand FP1, FP2, FP3, no, no they're not going to research FP1.

Dr. Noel Liu:
So how did you guys come up with 3 on 6™? The name?

Dr. Logan Locke:
I think it was probably a play on all on right.

Dr. Noel Liu:
Right right.

Dr. Logan Locke:
And so it was well let's how many implants do we need to look at the bridge. 7 to 10.

Dr. Noel Liu:
Sure. Sure.

Dr. Logan Locke:
That all the time or we do a bridge in the posterior if they've got bone and we say okay, well how many do we need to get that in? We need three on six. We also.

Dr. Noel Liu:
Hold it. That's a great name by the way.

Dr. Logan Locke:
Four on eight. So some people, if they have a little bit more bone in the posterior and they want to split the midline, which is a little more aesthetic. Right. We can because right now our implant positioning basically goes 3-6-7, 10-11 four. Oh wow okay okay. That's kind of the what we're training is a standard implant positioning.

Dr. Noel Liu:
Correct. Correct.

Dr. Logan Locke:
And then we deviate from that if we need to.

Dr. Noel Liu:
So you could have eight implants. You could have six implants. Yeah.

Dr. Logan Locke:
So four on eight. We'll do four bridges over eight implants. Sure. That creates a split right at the midline, which is the aesthetic option for some patients. Gets them a little bit more teeth in the posterior. So that's not true.

Dr. Noel Liu:
So what's the future?

Dr. Logan Locke:
Future is patient awareness. We're we're growing. We've got YouTube channels. People are watching our videos. They're starting to learn. We've got a lot more out there on social media than just once you get this.

Dr. Noel Liu:
Awareness right, right.

Dr. Logan Locke:
Patients understand that you're getting these these younger people and they're going in and they you don't don't know if you've had a consult for an all in four. You generally don't tell them, well, I'm going to shave off ten millimeters.

Dr. Noel Liu:
And that does not go very well with someone.

Dr. Logan Locke:
It's not going to go super well. So a lot of times they don't know. We had a video of a young lady that had it done on, it was a TikTok video. She had it done and she opened up her mouth and she was showing the camera the picture of the full FP3 on her lower, and it was a good looking FP3. I think it was done really well, but it was synthetic. It's thick, it's thick. So she wasn't aware that that's what it was going to be. And so we had one of our 3 on 6™ coordinators made a video kind of explaining the difference with three on six, the size of the bridges being a lot more natural feeling. And I think within two days that had 90,000 views or something like that.

Dr. Noel Liu:
Wow!

Dr. Logan Locke:
You're starting to get patients aware of this being out there. But the other trial is getting the providers that are able to do it for one's heart.

Dr. Noel Liu:
It is, it is, very, very technique sensitive. Right. You guys are making the patients aware, the community aware of it. What about the education portion? Like, are you guys like actually taking time to explain to patients and on your YouTube channel?

Dr. Logan Locke:
Yeah. So on the channels we're explaining what it is, why it's important to know about it, the how you can preserve bone.

Dr. Noel Liu:
Very nice.

And then like I said then it's okay, we need a provider and Doctor Shore he's done, and Smile Systems is kind of designed to not only provide the training for it or we also help with the marketing. We're creating the content.

Dr. Noel Liu:
Exactly.

Dr. Logan Locke:
And Doctor Shore being here in Chicago, he's just...

Is he like A one-off for you guys?

Dr. Logan Locke:
We have we have a lot of providers that are doing really well. This is start. This is probably the first big market we've entered into. And we've got a few more coming from bigger markets San Diego, Austin I think. So these bigger markets are starting to come.

Dr. Noel Liu:
So the plan, is to spread nationwide?

Dr. Logan Locke:
Yeah. We've got once we can start doing once we have the providers available, then we nationwide marketing in Utah at our office we're getting it's basically Doctor Roberts, myself, and then we have Doctor Weisenberg. This is all we're doing now. Besides, I like to throw in some general...

Dr. Noel Liu:
General Dentistry here in there.

Dr. Logan Locke:
You know, just keeps me know that's.

Dr. Noel Liu:
That's love it.

Dr. Logan Locke:
Skills up. But we're we're doing over 30 arches a month of just...

Dr. Noel Liu:
Wow!

Dr. Logan Locke:
3 on 6™.

Dr. Noel Liu:
Wow!

Dr. Logan Locke:
And we have patients flying in from all over the country. Well, we, ideally we want those patients to be able to get this procedure done close to them.

Dr. Noel Liu:
Right, right.

Dr. Logan Locke:
Do this out of state.

Dr. Noel Liu:
So that's incredible.

Dr. Logan Locke:
Yeah. So we want and you know a testament to our marketing. Dr. Shore has been just getting consult after consult. I think this is already, so we did three arches this weekend. I think he's already done four.

Dr. Noel Liu:
Correct.

Dr. Logan Locke:
Beyond this. So in the first three months and he's killing it, he's got another four arches planned. Yeah he's he's doing really well. He's ramping it up and he's ramping up good.

Dr. Noel Liu:
No that's great. So for a provider like who's looking into this course, how do they get a hold of the course coordinator? Or whoever is putting this together? What is the info?

Dr. Logan Locke:
On 3on6.com There's information on...

Dr. Noel Liu:
3on6.com okay.

Dr. Logan Locke:
They can they can also contact us my on through Instagram. We have three on six on Instagram okay.

Dr. Noel Liu:
Three on six. And so it's number three.

Dr. Logan Locke:
Number three.

Dr. Noel Liu:
On. And number six. Yeah. Awesome. Well any last words.

Dr. Logan Locke:
No no. We're excited to be here. Dr. Shores I know he's we love coming. It's been fun to come out here and see his progression already since his training.

Dr. Noel Liu:
I mean, he called me up last night. He's like, hey, you know what? Doc's coming in and you know he's going to have a team, you know, come out here and help him out. I was like, all right, cool. Count me in. He's like, yeah, you should come over. And I'm like, all right, cool, man. It's been fun. And yeah, it's been so exciting. Like speaking with you and knowing like the kind of a little background about 3 on 6™ and how you guys started. Yeah. So that was awesome.

Dr. Logan Locke:
Yeah. Appreciate you coming.

Dr. Noel Liu:
Well, great. Hey, thank you very much for your time.

Dr. Logan Locke:
You're welcome.

Dr. Noel Liu:
All right, all right, ladies and gentlemen, so this is Dr. Noel Liu checking out. Make sure to, like, subscribe. And we will be in touch, checking out with Doctor Locke. And we're going to finish up the surgery with Doctor Alex Shore. Back in.

Dr. Noel Liu:
Thanks for tuning in to the Secure Dental Podcast. We hope you found today's podcast inspiring and useful to your practice and financial growth. For Show notes resources and ways to stay engaged with us, visit us at noelliudds.com. That's N-O-E-L-L-I-U-D-D-S.com.

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About Dr. Logan Locke:

Dr. Locke graduated Magna Cum Laude from the University of Utah with a degree in finance. He was then accepted into the prestigious Regional Dental Education Program and attended Creighton Dental School on scholarship.

 

Dr. Locke loves all aspects of dentistry but has received extensive training in oral surgery and implants. He is also trained in facial esthetics, including the use of Botox and dermal fillers.

Things You’ll Learn:

  • The 3 on 6™ dental implant technique aims to minimize bone reduction and provide more options for patients requiring full mouth rehabilitation.
  • Successfully implementing the 3 on 6™ procedure requires extensive experience, proper training, and possessing strong surgical skills.
  • It is ethically imperative to provide comprehensive information and educate patients about various treatment options.
  • Smile Systems has a focus on providing training and support to qualified practitioners, as part of their mission to advance the awareness and adoption of the 3 on 6™ approach in dental implant procedures.
  • There is a need for ongoing, comprehensive patient education, and Smile Systems is committed to spreading awareness through various channels.

Resources:

Categories
Podcast

Strategies for Dental Practice Expansion

Summary:

Are you a dentist looking to grow your practice?

In this episode of the Secure Dental Podcast, we are delighted to have as a guest, Vu Kong, owner and founder of High Point Dentistry, who shares lessons and strategies in the dental field that he learned throughout his efforts to grow his dental practice. Dr. Kong discusses the initial challenges he faced when starting his practice, emphasizing the trial-and-error approach and the importance of learning practice management. He touches on key aspects like understanding the revenue cycle, addressing employee retention issues, and delegating tasks for efficiency. In this conversation with Dr. Noel Liu, Dr. Kong highlights the significance of mentorship, collaboration, and having a clear vision for the future in the context of managing a successful dental practice.

Tune in for valuable insights from Dr. Kong’s journey around dental practice management and growth!

Secure Dental Podcast_Vu Kong: Audio automatically transcribed by Sonix

Secure Dental Podcast_Vu Kong: this mp3 audio file was automatically transcribed by Sonix with the best speech-to-text algorithms. This transcript may contain errors.

Dr. Noel Liu:
Welcome to the Secure Dental Podcast. Through conversations with the brightest minds in the dental and business communities, we'll share practical tips you can use to scale your practice and create financial freedom for yourself and your family. My name is Dr. Noel Liu, CEO and Dentist at Secure Dental and also co-founder of DentVia. I'm your host for the Secure Dental Podcast, and I'm so glad you're joining in.

Dr. Noel Liu:
All right, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to another episode of our Secure Dental Podcast, where we bring guests in from in and outside the industry. And today, we have Dr. Vu Kong. He is a practicing dentist in Austin, Texas. He moved from Chicago, Illinois, that's where I'm based off, and he's the owner and founder of High Point Dentistry. High Point Dentistry is top 5000 fastest-growing Companies by Inc.com. Dr. Vu Kong is the owner of High Point Dentistry, and he first received his bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering from Michigan State University. Engineering's technical aspect appealed to him, and he applied them to his dental practices. He is a graduate of University of Detroit Mercy School of Dentistry and is a third-generation dentist, as his father and grandfather were both dentists. That's awesome. He is a member of the American Dental Association, the Academy of General Dentistry, and Dentist Entrepreneur Organization. With a vision, he created a patient-centric dental practice that prioritizes the comfort and satisfaction of his patients. High Point Dentistry has now expanded to six dental offices across two states and providing comprehensive dental services that are privately and doctor-owned. The offices are the top-rated dental offices in their respective area of over 2505 star Google reviews. High Point Dentistry is committed to ethical and compassionate patient care and has helped build a loyal following of patients who are treated like family. Dr. Kong, that's awesome. Good to have you.

Vu Kong:
Thank you. Thanks for having me. I guess I could have kept that bio a little shorter.

Dr. Noel Liu:
No, no, I love it. I love it. So here's the thing, right? In dentistry, we always talking about like Google reviews, we're talking about what do we do different, and for you to do that over six locations, that's awesome. I just wanted to take this time and have you start off, how you got started, what is some of the challenges and some of the successes that you went through when you started right after dental school?

Vu Kong:
Yeah, you know, after dental school, if it's okay with you, I'll go a little bit back, just tell you a little bit of my history. My parents are from Cambodia in Southeast Asia, so if you know the history of the area, there was a civil war that broke out. My parents were fortunate enough to escape that war, and they went to a refugee camp in Thailand, and that's where I was born. We were sponsored by a Catholic church to come to the United States, and for me, I just live the traditional immigrant life. Just, my parents owned a restaurant, worked hard, and just learned all the values of hard work and with them, and that's a little bit of history about me before dental school. But after dental school, we, I just took the job that I could, out in Rockford, Illinois. You remember you were like,

Dr. Noel Liu:
Hey, I was there with you. Yeah, so for the audience, I know Doctor Kong since, I don't know, 2009, 2008, something like that. And we both worked as an associate at a dental company, and that's when me and him, we hit it off. And I just want to know, I know you've been through a lot, right? How has coming to this country and what you went through shaped what you're doing right now?

Vu Kong:
Yeah, I didn't mention ... my father was a dentist too, and his career was cut short, and he only worked in private practice for about a year. And when he came to the United States, he didn't have that opportunity to go back to dental school.

Dr. Noel Liu:
You wanted to make that happen, right?

Vu Kong:
Initially, it wasn't even on my radar. Growing up, I didn't even know he was a dentist, and I went to engineering school, and just didn't really appeal to me sitting in a cubicle all day. And I wanted to own my own business after seeing what my parents went through with their business, I wanted to be able to provide some value to the community. And when I found out he was a dentist, I was like, Hey, that'd be cool. That did, what he did and carry on that legacy. And so, right, I made that last-minute change and glad I did it.

Dr. Noel Liu:
No, great, great. Fast forward now, when you started like opening up your first practice, tell us a little bit about what was it like, what were the challenges, and how did you overcome them, like your first dental practice?

Vu Kong:
Yeah, that was a very challenging time back then. There's not as many resources that everybody has now in the dental field. We've been through that too, but it was just trial and error and learning how to deal with insurances, learning about AR, all that stuff, we just had to learn by yourself, right? And just doing it trial by error and making sure that you figured out what needed to be done before you trained your employees on how to do it. So it was really just figuring things out, Googling things, and,

Dr. Noel Liu:
Wearing all the hats, right?

Vu Kong:
Yeah, wearing all the hats.

Dr. Noel Liu:
No, because when we started off, a couple of things, like you said, like you just brought it up figuring out the AR, trust me, when we started, we, I did not even know compliance was part of it. We need to have some of the, like, disposables in the red bags. Those were all like trial and error, right? You don't know these things 'til somebody comes knocking on your door. And many times when you find out, like when you are starting off, you wish you had a checklist, right? You wish you had something which is going to make your life easier. Okay, go, okay, I need to do this, not knowing anything and just starting off. So tell us a little bit, what did you do to overcome it? You said trial and error, but was it something else that you employed, like in your practice, to make it a little bit more efficient for you and your team?

Vu Kong:
Well, I think from 0 to 8 years, that was the, that's how we figured things out. It wasn't the best way, but it really wasn't until eight years into it. It was really when we started to create these checklists and systems, and we had to, the mentality to grow. For me, I didn't really have a reason to do it, and it wasn't really until probably 4 or 5 years ago. I remember I had just finished a root canal. I was in my office writing my notes, and I heard this knock on my door, and it was one of my first employees, she had came in, and she said, Hey, Dr. Kong, I'm thinking about quitting, and I was shocked. This employee had been with me since we had opened the practice and helped me grow that practice, and she said that there wasn't any opportunity to grow within the practice. And that was really when I realized that, Hey, I've got to do something if I want to retain my employees, I have to grow because I wanted my employees to grow with me. And that was really when we took the initiative to grow from one practice to six in the last 3 or 4 years, because what we're all about is just growth and offering opportunities for our employees to grow with us, but starting to delegate some of those things, employees, it's hard. You want to do everything.

Dr. Noel Liu:
Correct, correct, and that's one of those biggest things that I learned, and I found it challenging, was, how do you delegate? And today, if somebody is doing something which is like even 60% to 70% as good as I am, it's out of my checklist, it's out of my plate, and it's gone, it's delegated to make sure. One thing we have to understand as entrepreneurs, as practice owners, that eventually, everyone leaves, and that is a huge lesson on this part here as well. And you went through that, I go through that multiple stages. It's all about while they are here in the office; how do you create this winning culture? And you brought up a good point, like 0 to 8 years, right? And I feel like if I go back to the consulting breakpoints that we had, I'm sure you're aware of it, right? Like 0 to 1 million, that's breakpoint number one. And when we are going through that revenue breakpoints, we need to understand like is the system and the processes that's at play. And then once when you hit that $3 million breakpoint, what do you do then? Then it becomes like, how do we become more efficient? And then we hit the third breakpoint. Now it becomes the who are we associating with? Who's on, our team members? So I think this is something where we all went through the growing pains and something for us to consider going back and making sure, like anybody who's listening who is in the same boat, they need to understand where they are at their revenue cycle. How important do you think that is?

Vu Kong:
Oh, that's huge, because you don't know what these breakpoints are until you actually get there.

Dr. Noel Liu:
Until we hit them, yeah.

Vu Kong:
Oh gosh. Like you had mentioned, zero three is just all about focusing on your leadership skills and,

Dr. Noel Liu:
Huge.

Vu Kong:
Developing yourself, investing in yourself. And then after that, once you hit certain targets. Oh, my gosh. Yeah, you're absolutely right. Who, right now, we're in that breakpoint, like, trying to figure out who we need to continue to grow, and it's challenging, definitely challenging.

Dr. Noel Liu:
It's challenging, and even right now, we are still navigating through the forest and through the rough waters, right? It's never-ending.

Vu Kong:
Yeah, it seems like you get through one and it gets even harder. I thought it was supposed to get easier.

Dr. Noel Liu:
No, I love it. I love it. One of the things that I started here was something called a company called DentVia. I'm not sure if you've heard of it. It's a virtual assistant company. And what I did was, because, again, when we talk about the who, how do we delegate some of the staff, how do we supercharge some of our team members hoping that they don't quit, hoping that they are going to be around for a while, and that's what I did, getting these agents there. And it's been working out phenomenally right now because these guys are like a back-end office work, so they help the front desk quite a bit, like supercharging the front desk. They're not there to replace anybody but just to help them out, and so that has helped us quite a bit with our retention rate with people. It's, we are living in different times, like after the pandemic, everyone is like an off-site working kind of people. They all want to be like a remote assistant. So, with that being said, any of your offices, do you see like the turnover because they have worked too much?

Vu Kong:
Yeah, that's, I felt like last year, or like last two years, really were all about just the mass migration out of dentistry. And yeah, the problem was like the last two years was just employment keeping, retaining, training. And I feel this year is all about just our margins being squeezed with everything, with the cost of employment, the cost of supplies. But yeah, we've had to outsource some of our staff roles as well. Like we use a company called Zim Work, but it's a remote team that we use, they're out in Zimbabwe. And yeah, because retention was such a big problem that we had to figure out another way to to outsource some of these tasks that we typically do in the office. And so it's been helpful, definitely helpful, when we are trying to grow like we're at this point with the office where it's growing. We don't need another staff quite yet, but we have a remote team, so they act as a buffer for that transition.

Dr. Noel Liu:
Yeah, it helps. And that's exactly where my growing pains started from when we were trying to do our own and trying to figure out, okay, how do we get to some of the remote teams, how do we access these guys? And I'm a kind of a control freak myself, so I want to make sure I have the QC under my belt. So with our team remotely, I'd made sure they are in a secure building, and they are, make sure they have those access cards. And just to ensure, again, HIPAA compliance and the whole nine yards. In your opinion, at this point in time, how important do you think these remote agents are playing for you?

Vu Kong:
Yeah, for sure. It's a big asset to us. I think every dental office should look into that because, like I mentioned before, when somebody calls in sick or you have an employee that goes on maternity leave, you got to be able to fill that gap. And it doesn't make sense for you to hire somebody.

Dr. Noel Liu:
Correct.

Vu Kong:
... somebody when you have another option now.

Dr. Noel Liu:
Exactly.

Vu Kong:
Since you're a company that you've started, I think that's a great resource that you can fill in those voids because a lot of that stuff can be done remote, and I think now we're all starting to realize that.

Dr. Noel Liu:
Realize that, absolutely, absolutely. What would you say if you were to name three things that attributed to your success, just like off the head, like the first things first, what would it be?

Vu Kong:
Oh, I think now it's about collaborating like,

Dr. Noel Liu:
Awesome.

Vu Kong:
What we're doing right now, collaboration, I think, is one. Being persistent is another, and just not giving up on what your dreams are.

Dr. Noel Liu:
Just have the goal there. Eyes on the prize.

Vu Kong:
Yeah.

Dr. Noel Liu:
No, awesome. With the future coming up, what are you looking at? Where is High Point going to be? What's your plan, your vision?

Vu Kong:
I'm sure you may be, may or may not agree with this, but like for us, growing is almost like a, it's not an offensive strategy, it's like a defensive strategy. With where dentistry is heading, the consolidation in dentistry is just going to continue on. And for us to continue to have a provider-owned practice, right, we have to grow because there's leverage that most dentists don't know that these companies have, and we're the ones that are being squeezed, whereas their reimbursements or supply costs are improving, ours is being squeezed. And being able to have at least some negotiating power definitely helps. We're still at a small scale where we have just a little bit. We're starting to see some of those economies of scale. Our vision is continuing to grow. We're going to continue to grow until we feel like the quality of care is being affected, but we want to grow because we want to offer opportunities for our employees to grow within the organization. And that's really what drives me, is just seeing people that start off at entry-level jobs and become managers, and that's really the fun part.

Dr. Noel Liu:
Hey, that's always a fun part because you know what? We expanding, right? We're expanding, We're growing. It's not I met this gentleman, Dave Meltzer. We had dinner last night and this guy is from Sports One, pretty well affluent guy. He said something about an effect of, once when we are in our field, do not think about transition, but think about expansion. And that just hit me because every time we are thinking about, oh yeah, what's going to happen after dentistry, what's going to happen after dental school, right? What's going to happen after the job, the next job, and what do you put in my head was, think about expansion like in your current field and then expanding to the next thing that you're going to do. And I was like, Wow, okay. Never thought of it, not, never thought of it that way. And yeah, that's awesome what you just said because yeah.

Vu Kong:
That's great. I think that thoses are words of wisdom right there because we always get something waved in front of us.

Dr. Noel Liu:
And I love what you're doing and I love what you do, how you think about things like your mindset and my mindset like just we're on the same frequency. If you're not expanding, you are, you're shrinking, pretty much you're just going down, and eventually, gravity pulls out. So it's like a defensive play right there, like you said. So I love what you said. So yeah, With that being said, how many associate doctors do you have right now?

Vu Kong:
General Dentists, I think we have about 12 and then we have four specialists as well, we have the oral surgeon, prosthodontist, and orthodontists. And soon, our next, I think we discussed this off-camera, like we're working on our seventh location right now. It's going to be a ... group out here in Austin and it's going to be our biggest startup ever and we're excited about it.

Dr. Noel Liu:
And that's going to be like a completely specialty.

Vu Kong:
No, we're going to have general dentistry, too.

Dr. Noel Liu:
Okay, okay.

Vu Kong:
When we initially came out here to Austin area, in our Illinois offices, we have a specialty because we have that built-in referral. In Austin, we haven't quite gotten there yet since we've only been out here for about three years. And so now we have the referral base, we're going to start building our specialty program, which has been great. We can offer some of these services in-house. Some of our docs aren't like Super GPs like you are, we got to bring in the specialties in, and that definitely is a value to our patients.

Dr. Noel Liu:
But is any of your docs like looking forward to be like a super GP and taking on some of these roles?

Vu Kong:
That's what we're hoping for. It's tough. I think one thing that maybe we need to work on is just the mentorship side of things. It's tough because we're expected to be the clinical director, especially if, maybe you're not so much anymore, but in our stage, like we, having that mentorship is tough because we have so many things on our plate. It's hard for us to be chair-side with some of these younger doctors.

Dr. Noel Liu:
Absolutely. No, absolutely. I love what you just said because, you know, what you just said resonated with me. How do we create three of us, right? How do we create three more doctors, three more Doctor Kongs, right? How do you do that? Because it seems like, if we want to scale and grow, one of the biggest challenges that we come across is we become dependable on either somebody else or somebody else is depending on us. So I think the best way to expand is how do you create three of you or two of you, and that those guys will be like delegates, right? Like just making sure like quality control, everything is in short, across the board. So no, I think that'll probably be the next step for you, mentoring.

Vu Kong:
Yeah, and maybe you feel the same way too, but I feel like the expectation for some of these dentists right now.

Dr. Noel Liu:
Oh yes.

Vu Kong:
Oh, way different from when you and I had graduated, because with so much information out there right now with social media and everybody's so connected, they hear one person doing X and everybody, expectation is X. And I think that's definitely-

Dr. Noel Liu:
Yes, that has definitely changed. But I think if you still instill the core value of the ethical work, the work values in them, they'll understand that what it takes. Because for us, what worked was, what we learned was having their goals aligned with our goals. And if we can do that some shape, form, or another, or see what sticks for them, I think that kind of works really well.

Vu Kong:
Yeah, just getting those one-on-ones with them.

Dr. Noel Liu:
Yeah. So, hey, Doctor Kong, man, was great. Any last-minute thing you would like to share?

Vu Kong:
Oh, man. It's a tip.

Dr. Noel Liu:
Any tip, word of advice for somebody starting up or someone who is struggling with their office? What would your take be? What would you say?

Vu Kong:
Especially if you're trying to do the multiple-office route, you better have a good reason of doing it. You better have a good Why? Because you can just do really well having one practice. There's no reason for you to grow more than one practice, unless you have a good reason to doing it. Because there's gonna be nights where we're thinking about something and struggling to remember why. What? Why am I putting up with this? And you better have a good Why because it's not an easy journey, but it's definitely doable.

Dr. Noel Liu:
And lastly, do you recommend getting any kind of mentors?

Vu Kong:
Mentorship, like I mentioned before, collaborating is the number one thing right now, is just being able to find a mentor that's going to help you out, because if you can shorten that time, why not? And mentors are the way to do that.

Dr. Noel Liu:
Love it, love it. I think that's, that was great. If someone wanted to reach you, are you open for that?

Vu Kong:
Of course, yeah. You can always reach out to me. My email address is VuKong@gmail.com.

Dr. Noel Liu:
Vu Kong, V U K O N G @gmail.com. Doc, thanks a lot. It was great having you. Those were some serious nuggets we dropped today. Thanks for your insight on your side because a lot of times we talk about stuff that is from my side, so it was very refreshing trying to hear, here you from your side. So with that being said, we're going to land the plane. Once again, this was a great episode. Make sure to like and subscribe. This is the end of our Secure Dental Podcast. Have a good one.

Dr. Noel Liu:
Thanks for tuning in to the Secure Dental Podcast. We hope you found today's podcast inspiring and useful to your practice and financial growth. For show notes, resources, and ways to stay engaged with us, visit us at NoelLiuDDS.com. That's N O E L L I U D D S.com.

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