Summary:
Leadership is a journey, not a destination, requiring continuous learning and growth to achieve lasting success.
In this episode, Keith McLachlan, co-founder and president of Dental Team Finder Group, discusses his journey in the dental industry, from sales at Brasseler USA to his 14 years at Align Technology, highlighting the evolution of Invisalign and its impact on orthodontic practices. Keith shares valuable insights into building a successful business, emphasizing the importance of solving problems and providing value to clients. He details how his company supports dental practices by optimizing their culture, processes, and talent acquisition, ensuring a “triple win” for clients, candidates, and their own firm. Keith also covers the consulting aspect of his work, including advising on commission plans, SOPs, and sales process training for startups. Finally, Keith shares his thoughts on the importance of leadership and culture in a dental practice, and how that helps with talent acquisition and retention.
Tune in and learn how to build a thriving dental practice by focusing on leadership, culture, and strategic talent acquisition!
Secure Dental-Keith McLachlan: Audio automatically transcribed by Sonix
Secure Dental-Keith McLachlan: 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:
Hello, everybody. Welcome to another episode of our Secure Dental podcast, where we bring in many different individuals from both inside and outside our dental industry. And today's podcast is sponsored by our DentVia, which I'm also co-founder of. And basically DentVia is a virtual dental administration assistant virtual company. So what we do is provide back-end staffing to our front desk. We supercharge our managers and take care of all the insurance eligibilities, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, which we all hate to do. So visit them at DentVia.com; www.DentVia.com. Without further ado, I have a very special guest today, Keith McLachlan. Keith is a co-founder and president of Dental Team Finder Group, a dental consulting and talent acquisition firm specializing in helping dental practitioners and dental manufacturers optimize their people, processes, and performance. In addition, Keith also has over 22 years of sales experience and marketing. So without further ado, without taking a thunder away from Keith, I'm going to pass it on to you. Take it away, Keith. It's all yours.
Keith McLachlan:
All right. Thank you, Dr. Liu. It's a pleasure to be here. Thank you guys for listening and look forward to sharing a little bit little bit about our story. Dr. Liu and I were just talking about a little bit about me before we recorded here. But I got my start in dental back in 1994, in a sales role. I'm sure you guys are all familiar with Brassler USA. Worked in a field territory sales role and traveled many miles over East Texas, and it was a humble beginnings, but learned a ton. And then in '99, I was approached by a recruiter asking me if I had heard of this company called Invisalign; and I said, Invisa-what? Like many of you probably did for the first time. And I said, Well, I don't know anything about it, but tell me more. He goes, Well, can you get online? Can you get on the internet? I go, Well, I think I can dial up. This is '99, mind you. So I went to their website, checked it out. I was like, well, that's certainly a little more sexy than selling burgers, I'll tell you. So that was a treat, to say the least. So one thing led to another interview and started with the line Technology back in April of 2000. It was a fun ride. I was there for 14 years. I worked in sales and sales leadership. I was on several cross-functional committees, but learned a ton through that experience, just about myself, but also skills that I could apply going forward and still apply today, quite frankly. So in, you know, around 2012, I was starting to get the edge of what do I want to do differently? You know, business ownership always intrigued me because I wanted, I did not mind being a leader where it's like, Hey, my decisions are on me, be it for positive or negative. I get to call the shots. And it wasn't necessarily from an ego standpoint; it was just, I felt like I had a platform, had a message and that I could call people to that and add value to people, because that's one of my cornerstones. That's kind of how I'm built. So in 2014, we just finally made the leap. I was having a conversation with a consultant friend of mine and we went way back, but we were just brainstorming ideas of where we saw. Because all great companies come from a problem solving perspective, what solution can we offer here? We heard a lot about recruiting. You guys are probably rolling your eyes when you hear that. You know, just trying to find good people, it is the bane of existence for any business owner, but for dental business owners, it's one of the areas that's universally challenging. So we thought, okay, what's the solution? And it's gone through a few iterations. You know, we thought, Oh, it's a dental exclusive website. Yeah, yeah, that's the answer. It's like, no, that's not what they want. They want somebody to bet and screen. So we started morphing into full service, typical recruiting. But then our audience, at least our searches changed from being primarily auxiliary team members, front-office, back-office operations to more clinicians, associate dentist, a specialist. But then also the three categories we work in today are clinical, which are the doctors; sales, marketing, we call those commercial roles for manufacturers primarily; and then we also work on the labs from bench roles up to executive roles and all points in between. So that's really kind of the three buckets of our business. So we were founded in 2014. We celebrated ten years last year. So this is our 11th year. Yeah. Yeah, I'd love to say it's been, you know, compound growth every year, and every year has been a good year. But that's just not the case, especially in a recruiting business that is so far from up and to the right. It's more like a hold on white knuckles roller coaster. It's going to go up, and it's going to go down just by the seasonality, right? You can imagine the holidays are slow. And so you guys didn't come to hear about that. But yeah. So that's a little bit about our story. What do we also do besides recruiting. So many times I work with startup clients, not so much on the provider side, but companies, small companies that are looking to get their start and hire their first employees. So I'll help them just based on my experience in sales and operations, kind of help them build a commission plan, SOPs, standard operating procedures sales process. We've done sales process training. So those are some of the other things that we do to add value in the dental community. I like to say I'm a dental person first and a recruiter second. There's a distance there because we add value in many ways, not simply on just being a talent acquisition or recruiting firm. So, you know, just.
Dr. Noel Liu:
You guys celebrated your ten years. That says a lot because majority of the businesses in the United States, when I see a trend, half of them shut down in like five years. And then ten-year mark, I mean, that's a different ballgame altogether. And for you guys to be in that league, it says a lot. That's like adding credibility to exactly what your leadership, your culture, and your, you know, the whole operation side of things are operating at probably like full capacity, I mean, full cylinders, right? Because very few businesses, they touch that ten-year mark. So congratulations.
Keith McLachlan:
Thank you very much. Yeah. A good friend of mine, Mary Sawtelle, who runs Mary's list, she's primarily on the orthodontic side. But Mary said to me, one year, she goes, Just eke out, get to five years, just get to five years. And not that the seas part, and you'll never have any issues. But she's like, It's a big deal, Keith. And you'll start to get momentum. And she was right. So thank you, Mary. Appreciate that.
Dr. Noel Liu:
Oh excellent. Excellent. So let's go back to, I'm going to take you back in time a little bit with your Align years. Right?
Keith McLachlan:
Yes, yes.
Dr. Noel Liu:
When you were with Invisalign, number one how long were you there for? What was the experience like? What did you bring from that experience over to your business?
Keith McLachlan:
Oh, wow. Wow. So many aha's in there. So the biggest thing when we started my own experience in coming from Brasseler, which is, you know, it's for all intents a transactional sale. I mean, I'm not having to sell a concept or a new idea, but we had some new products that we had to pitch a little bit. But coming to Align, I was thinking as a consumer, not as a provider, I was thinking, this is a no-brainer idea. You have to be an idiot not to get it, right? As a consumer, what I didn't appreciate is you have to actually have the clinical results and actually do what you say you're going to do, at least from a treatment standpoint, because with the digital setup looks great, it looks awesome. The challenge was not all of the clinical results were mirroring that digital result. So that was one. And we were dealing with orthodontic specialists only and just to start. We didn't really start getting into the GP world until 2002. And so I was thinking, Hey doc, how many do you want to just convert your entire practice? And they're like, Oh, hold on.
Dr. Noel Liu:
So you're saying that Invisalign was primarily orthodontist-only when they started?
Keith McLachlan:
It was, it was. We were working with specialists only. Yeah.
Dr. Noel Liu:
Wow. I didn't know that.
Keith McLachlan:
Yeah.
Dr. Noel Liu:
Okay. That's good info.
Keith McLachlan:
Yeah, it was ortho-exclusive because not the founders so much. Because Kelsey and Zia, they were MBA graduates, you know, very, very smart people. They weren't necessarily dental insiders, but Joe Breeland, who was the original VP of sales, came from the ortho background. He had worked in traditional ortho. So he knew that if we take this product, and that was the biggest fear of most of the specialists, that he knew, that if we took this product to the GPs, we would lose all credibility with the orthodontic community. So he was very sensitive to that. And he's like, Listen, we're only going to work with orthodontic specialists. And I think in 2002, there was a class action lawsuit which essentially said, You can't do that. You can't segment your market and sell only to one channel. So again, the orthodontic community was hands up, Yeah, okay, this is exactly what we knew was going to happen. And so the big AHA's were the going from a kind of a transactional product to an idea. Many orthodontists were like, It'll never work. You hear it all over the board. So some were like, I get it, I see it. But the product was not ready for prime time. Anybody that worked back in that day knows that you had to learn how to develop a virtual treatment plan such that you would get the aligners, that would get you the good result. Whereas, it wasn't mapping perfectly digital result to clinical result. So there was some retooling that had to happen around the mid 2000s, 2006, 2007 or so, and then they started actually going, Okay, why aren't we getting this? We need to create some movements. We need to create some predictability. We need to create some different attachment sizes such that we can get the movements that. So when that started happening, we had alienated a lot of the orthodontists. But GPs were trending up because they weren't quite as particular about the results. Not to say that they didn't get good results, it's just that they were like, Oh, well, just prove what you sent me; okay, let's do this. But the orthodontists are a little more skeptical. So, and in 2007, John Morton came, and then things really changed. We got the orthodontists back on board and really had a product that is clinically superior today.
Dr. Noel Liu:
So they were the pioneers basically to get that started. So when did Align Technologies, when did these guys actually said, Okay, everybody else can do it? I'm sure they had a patent that they kind of locked themselves up right for a while.
Keith McLachlan:
Yeah. So they were founded in '98. They started doing commercial business in, I think it was October of '99 was when they shipped their first cases. So the intellectual property was all secured. The biggest ones, I mean, we had so many, and they never stopped, right? They had 68 by the time we shipped our first case. And the biggest one, the one that really sort of built a moat, was the one that you couldn't have three or more successive movements in one treatment plan. That was the one that eliminated anybody from being able to be a viable competitor.
Dr. Noel Liu:
Got it. Got it. Okay. Nice. Good to know.
Keith McLachlan:
Yeah. You saw companies coming up, Oh, you can order three and then you can order another three. Like AOA labs. And so you saw companies just kind of trying to work around that. But it was very difficult. So 2017 is when we started to see companies getting traction. The patents were expiring. But then again, new patents were in place. So every time they would come up with a new technology, they would patent it. So you can't do exactly what Invisalign does. But there are getting close. The disparities, the gap is closing for sure.
Dr. Noel Liu:
So you were with Invisalign, what; about ten years or more?
Keith McLachlan:
14.
Dr. Noel Liu:
14. Wow!
Keith McLachlan:
Yeah. 14. Yeah. Started in.
Dr. Noel Liu:
So what has shaped in those 14 years that you brought over to your business. What were some of the pros and cons?
Keith McLachlan:
Yeah. Well, I liken the sales role at Align to be consultantesque. Now, we represented a product, but in many cases, we were advising offices on closing cases; how to maximize, you know, your presentations to actually your treatment accepted. We were advising on third-party financing because we had partnerships, and we were sitting chairside, I kid you not. We would sit chairside and help offices do these full-mouth PBS Impressions before the scanning technology was there. So we were like a whole office consultant. Now, we did advise on other procedures, but yeah, we were helping offices, especially general offices, that didn't have any orthodontic treatment experience or production to really help them add another incremental production service to their patient population. So that was pretty amazing. And the orthodontists who really understood early on the marketing potential behind it, because there were, David Boskin is an orthodontist in the Bay area and one of the early, early guys who really, really understood that, Hey, if I can be an advisor to these general dentists in my area, they will do the easy cases, I can do the tough cases. So he really got it early on, and he figured out how to set up his clinics in a way that he could get that clinical result. So yeah.
Dr. Noel Liu:
So, you know, you touched a very important point because this is the sole pipeline for a lot of the practitioners, as well as offices and dentists. Because we, as dentists, we are so focused on the clinical that we forget everything else. You touched a good point that you were chairside helping them close cases, because ultimately, if you're not closing, you're not treating. Plain and simple. And the fact that a lot of people, they need to understand that part is the sales process need to be a robust pipeline process. I mean that is one of those I would say bread and butter for every single practice doing Invisalign implants, you name it. Because if that's not happening, nothing is happening on the middle or the back end.
Keith McLachlan:
Yeah. So we would help create kind of a process, like what is our, how do we message patients in the hygiene chair? How do we message patients that are restorative patients? And teaching about the benefits of hygiene to periodontal health and that combination, that systemic link there. And patients, you know, say, Hey, we can reduce less tooth structure if we do alignment before we do the restoration. So there were so many little protocols that we had helped them. Ahh, okay. I see now how I can message this to patients. So it really is.
Dr. Noel Liu:
... what your company is doing right now with consulting?
Keith McLachlan:
Yeah, it was not so much in that vein. Essentially, it's more on, okay, before you get us to help you recruit, how do we optimize your culture? How do we, in fact, I'm working on a book right now, and this is not a shameless plug, but I'm working on a book where I'm like, Make sure you plug these holes, make sure your back door is not bigger than your front door, where your team's leaving faster than you can get them in. Because while we love the business that we get from recruiting, we don't want to see you turn over good team members, right? So we just, okay, so does this person have a job description? Does this person know what their job looks like? Are they meeting expectations. Are they average or are they exceeding expectations? Are they not? So let's have some system, a handbook, whatever we need to do to have all the descriptions and what makes performance standards or what is doing my job look like. So all those little. That's how we usually advise our provider partners.
Dr. Noel Liu:
So you're doing some preliminary work prior to getting them the talent because if the talent comes in they're going to be out the back door.
Keith McLachlan:
Yeah. Exactly right. That's exactly right. And we'll check reviews. Yeah. We'll check Glassdoor, which is Glassdoor, is a review platform for current and former employees to leave feedback on their employers. So that's kind of the, it's instead of Google reviews which are patients, right, or consumers, this is a platform for employees to leave feedback.
Dr. Noel Liu:
And when you do this consultant how important is leadership in that culture? And what are your thoughts on that, and what you want to share with that part?
Keith McLachlan:
Yeah, no, it's central. And so a lot of listeners that are dental business owners are like, Oh gosh! One more thing. I'm not saying necessarily that it has to be the doctor. If that's not your strong suit, and for a lot of you, it may not be, but have somebody that is your person who sets the tone, creates the culture, and manages the execution of what you want to see in your practice. From a what do we want new patients to think of us? What do we want our old patients to think of us? What do we want to be known for? What's our mission? What's our vision? And have that person essentially execute what you want to see. So it doesn't have to be the doctor. That's one thing they don't necessarily have to do, but they have to give somebody. They have to put authority into somebody that can do that for them.
Dr. Noel Liu:
So in your bio, you mentioned something about leadership is not a destination, right? It's a journey. Explain a little bit about that.
Keith McLachlan:
Yeah. Well, because I liken it to the practice of dentistry, right? They call it practice for a reason. You're never ultimately going to perfect; you're going to practice. So leadership is much the same way. If you say, Hey, I've arrived, you see that every day in people that have these tremendous egos, that there's so much damage in their wake because of their ego. And I think that that's an example of somebody who feels like they've arrived, and there's nothing else they can learn. There's nothing else they can do. They have made it. I think that gets you to an unhealthy place. So for me, it's a daily investment, or it's just an investment in general. And continuing to learn and grow and have that ideal in place. And you may not quite get there, but that's okay. It's about the journey, not about the destination.
Dr. Noel Liu:
You know, you and I, we share the same mindset based on the fact that as we age and as we get wiser, we need to start believing in ourselves like increasing the lid, which John Maxwell puts it so well in the Law of the Lids. Right? Like you're not going to get a talent coming to work for you if your belief lid is really low, your leadership lid is really low. So like someone, and I'm sure you see that a lot, someone operating at a level four or level five, they're not getting a level-eight or level-nine talent coming to work for them. And I think that's kind of resonates with when you said about it's a journey, it's not a destination. I love it.
Keith McLachlan:
Yeah, absolutely. And the beauty is that leaders aren't born; they are made. And it's not like, Oh, well, you were just born. No, that's not it at all. I can't say that my birthright was leadership.
Dr. Noel Liu:
How would they know, right?
Keith McLachlan:
Yeah, it's something that I chose and continue to choose to do. So therefore, I feel the need to progress and learn and develop.
Dr. Noel Liu:
So, in a nutshell, if I were to were to ask you in an elevator, right, Keith, what is it that you do? I mean, you have so much areas of expertise. If I were to ask you and you put it in a nutshell, and I come to you like, Hey, I'm a new dentist, I just opened up my practice. What is it that you do that you can help me out with?
Keith McLachlan:
Well, I know it's going to sound generic, but because John Maxwell is one of my favorite authors too, I've adopted his slogan. I add value to people. Now, I get consistently, people will call me, maybe they're a dental assistant, and they're like, Hey, you know, I want to get into sales one day. I was like, Okay, where are you at right now? Well, I'm assisting, but gosh, I really want to see salespeople in our office. I feel like I can do that too. So I kind of say, Okay, well, what's going to take you, get you from here to there? What does that look like? So I'll spend time with somebody like that. It doesn't have to be somebody that I directly benefit from. You know, to me, to take another John Maxwell quote, If you help enough people get where they want to go, you get where you want to go. So to answer your question about the quick pitch, I would say, Oh, what do I do, or what do I do for a living? I usually try to make them go, Oh yeah, of course, I meant what do you do for a living. I tell people, Well, I work in recruiting. I'm a dental person that works in recruiting. Dental person; what does that mean? I've been in the dental industry for 30 years, so I'm sort of a dental enthusiast. So I have a firm where we help a place, dental people. Oh, okay. So you're a recruiter. Yeah, absolutely. Yes. So that what we do, but we do add value in many ways, is kind of how I just expand upon that a little bit.
Dr. Noel Liu:
That's great. The way I understand it is, and I'm sure many of the audience would understand, is like you're a recruiter in the central zone, but then you do the preliminary and you do the post-op. Like how you call it in clinical terms. Right?
Keith McLachlan:
Yeah. The poster. Yeah, exactly, exactly. I was just in an oral surgeon's office yesterday, and we were talking about consult surgery post-op.
Dr. Noel Liu:
And follow ups.
Keith McLachlan:
Yeah. And follow ups. Yes. Exactly. Exactly. So yeah, we liked it.
Dr. Noel Liu:
It was a great conversation. Anything you would like to add?
Keith McLachlan:
Yeah. Well, obviously, if you want to learn more about Dental Team Finder, look us up on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn. We'd be happy to have a conversation again. I hope I can move you from here to there. We like to add value and we do business the right way. We're not here to just, we call it the triple win. You know, we want our clients to win. We want our candidates to win. And we want us to win. So if you want to learn more about us: DentalTeamFinder.com. And hit us up! We've got social media and you can send us a message via the website as well. So we'd love to hear from you.
Dr. Noel Liu:
Great. Thanks so much, Keith. So it's Dental Team Finder, just the way it's pronounced, that's the way it's spelled, .com.
Keith McLachlan:
That's correct. Yeah. Without an s. Some people put an s on the end of finders, but it's DentalTeamFinder.com.
Dr. Noel Liu:
Love it, love it. Well, Keith, it was a great conversation. Thank you so much for joining in today. Like always, there's always room for growth. And I love what you're doing. Keep pushing my friend. And we'll definitely cross paths again.
Keith McLachlan:
Yeah, I look forward to, Dr. Liu. And thanks again for having me.
Dr. Noel Liu:
Absolutely. Well, everybody, we're going to land a plane right now. Thanks so much for our guests for joining in. Until our next episode, take care, god bless, and make sure to like and subscribe.
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 Keith McLachlan:
With over 25 years in dental industry sales, marketing, and recruiting, Keith McLachlan is a recognized leader in talent acquisition and business development. As Co-Founder & President of Dental Team Finder, he connects top-tier dental professionals with career opportunities, serving practice owners, DSOs, and manufacturers with a people-centric approach
Keith’s career spans leadership roles in both consumables and device sales, where he has driven growth, developed training programs, and built high-performing teams. His expertise includes executive recruitment, sales strategy, and process optimization. A self-described “Change Agent”, he challenges conventional methods to create innovative, results-driven solutions.
His core values—integrity, leadership, and a can-do attitude—define his approach. Whether launching start-ups, refining sales processes, or mentoring emerging leaders, Keith is committed to setting new industry standards and empowering professionals to thrive.
Things You’ll Learn:
- Leadership as a Continuous Journey: Understand how leadership is an ongoing process of growth and adaptation, not a fixed destination.
- Problem-Solving and Value Creation: Learn the importance of solving real problems and providing value to clients as the foundation of building a successful business.
- Optimizing Dental Practices: Gain insights into how culture, processes, and strategic talent acquisition contribute to a thriving dental practice.
- Consulting and Sales Strategies: Discover Keith’s approach to advising dental practices on commission plans, standard operating procedures (SOPs), and sales process training.
- The Role of Leadership and Culture in Talent Retention: Explore how strong leadership and a positive workplace culture are crucial for attracting and retaining top-tier dental talent.
