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Summary:

Patient-centered care, strategic growth, and community impact are redefining success in dental practice. 

In this episode of the Secure Dental Podcast, Dr. Jonathan Theis, the Full Arch Coach and President and Co-Founder of Smile Score Solutions, shares how he built and expanded successful, patient-centered Full Arch dental practices by using strategic business models, innovative patient financing solutions, and collaborative buying power for private practitioners. He developed the Full Arch Buying Group (FABG) to empower private practice dentists by giving them the purchasing power of larger corporations while preserving a patient-centered approach. Dr. Theis talked about his humanitarian initiative, Orcaa, and how it addresses severe dental care shortages in Guatemala by training local surgeons in advanced implant techniques, and improving access for underserved populations. Within the conversation, he also discusses upcoming projects, such as Smile Score Solutions, a credit-improvement platform for patients denied financing, and software solutions to streamline operations and enhance data retention in implant-focused practices.

Tune in to uncover the strategies driving modern dental practice success, from patient-focused care to innovative growth and community transformation! 

 

Secure Dental - Jonathan Theis: Audio automatically transcribed by Sonix

Secure Dental - Jonathan Theis: 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. Jonathan Theis:
All right. Hey, everybody, welcome.

Dr. Noel Liu:
To another episode of our Secure Dental podcast, where we bring in many different talents from inside and outside our industry. Today, I have a very special guest, Dr. Jonathan Theis. Now, before we dive into it, I just want to give a shout out to my sponsor, which is DentVia. It's a virtual dental administration assistant company that does all the back end office tasks to supercharge our front desk, So definitely visit them at DentVia.com. That's for DentVia.com. Now, without further ado, the introduction to this man. One thing that really caught my eye with this bio was he's an entrepreneur, a true dental entrepreneur. He has multiple expertise and experience in private practice as well as DSO space, and now he runs a group called Full Arch Buying Group. Dr. Jonathan, man, there's not enough things to say about you. Why don't you give your intro? Because you are probably the perfect person to tell us exactly what you're doing and how we got started here.

Dr. Jonathan Theis:
Sure, man, I was in, I graduated from Temple 2009, came out, I did private practice for about nine years, actually practicing clinically. Started my own practice in 2014. It was a, it was your startup. Like I bought a dump, it was cheap, and I turned it around. I worked really hard. I learned a ton about the business side of owning a practice, and I was able to turn that thing around in a couple of years and make it profitable and successful. And then, from there, I partnered with a lot of my best friends who were also dentists, and we created a group. And in 2018, I took over that group. I had the opportunity to take the reins and run it, and it was something I was always interested in. I've always had that entrepreneurial spirit from the business side of things, and I was able to take that group over, and we had on the back of the discovery of the Full Arch model and just learning a ton and putting into play stuff that successful groups that I learned about were doing. I didn't reinvent the wheel in any way. I basically looked at what are other successful groups doing, and I put those things into play in ours, but where it made sense and we turned that thing into being very successful. And from there we ended up getting purchased by private equity. And that was in 2020. And so then we were part of a large group, 85 offices. I was the VP of operations overseeing Pennsylvania as well as the regional clinical director over at Pennsylvania. So I had a couple hats on while I was there. And after about a year of integration where whenever they join all these offices together, they've got to get everybody using the same suppliers, using the same management systems. Everything has to be integrated. And so that took about a year to get the PMS, everyone on the same PMS, everyone doing the same thing. And then, from there, they turn their focus to our Full Arch business that we created a subdivision called Smart Arches Dental Implants with my business partner, Dr. Simon Oh. And so we co-founded this what we intended to be a national brand for Full Arch, and implant-focused offices, and I believe they're now at about nine offices. And so I had lots of experience from my the first one we did, we, it was like a failing office. And that was Dr. Oh's office, and we took it and turned it into an implant and Full Arch focused office. And within about two years, it went from about half a million to 5 million. And so it was just explosive growth. And we were like, wow, this is amazing. And so we started doing that at another office that was a de novo of ours that was like on the other side of Philadelphia. And that that was already doing about 800, some thousand. It was pretty successful de novo. We started adding in Full Arch, and that went to 3 million. So, pretty quickly. And so that was very successful. So from there, we started to, we added it to another office, and then we started to do De Novos where we were taking offices that either building up brand new offices or taking closed offices and just redoing them and opening them up, rebranding them and opening them as smart arches. And so I was involved in all of that. So I got to see it from every level and be involved in creating all that I created all the operations. I created the sales department and helped guide them. And then, as time went on, my vision for things didn't really align with where they were going. And I'm not a big fan when it comes down to it of DSOs. I believe they're a little bit more profit-driven and not as patient care-focused. And as a doctor, I was looking at a vision that was more patient care-focused, and I sold my shares. I separated from them, and I rekindled my entrepreneurial spirit, and that's when I decided to create the Full Arch Buying group to put the power back into the hands of the private practice doctors and help them get the same type of negotiating power that these large groups have. That's where all this idea born from.

Dr. Noel Liu:
No, I love it. I want to dive into a little bit about like, how you took that $500,000 office turning into a $5 million office. What were some of the challenges or some of the wins if somebody were to take, let's say, a private practice, and we have a lot of doctors looking into making Full Arch centers, including myself? So what would you give as an advice, like some of the pitfalls to watch for and some of the wins that you really need to go and hunt down?

Dr. Jonathan Theis:
Sure. So the way that it all started was this office was, I think, doing about, oh, I think it was like 430,000 or 450,000. We were losing a lot of money. I think it was 80,000 a quarter we were losing. And so at the time, what we were doing was we had 11 offices and we were looking at we only had we didn't have a lot of capital to invest. And because we were our company at the time, we were struggling and when I took it over and so we didn't have good credit to borrow, we didn't have a lot of free capital. I was, what I was doing was we were shrinking to grow. So I was looking to cut the loser offices so that we could take our profits and reinvest them in the offices that were doing well so that we could maximize what we had without overextending ourselves and having to pay for some of the offices that were losing money. So I and we had turned our attention to doctor office in Langhorne. At the time, he was a part-time doctor there, and it was losing a lot of money. And he was like, we were at a partners meeting and he had said, hey, before we close this down, I think that there's potential here. But if we turn our focus to Full Arch, I think that's where I see the potential in this. And he was a partner, and I respected his opinion, and we together decided, okay, let's give that a shot. And so we started to just do some light marketing and kind of we did some mailers and we started doing some Facebook marketing. And when you're a $450,000 office, and that means you're doing like 40, 50, 30, 40,000 a month in production, it's pretty low. And so you start, you get a couple cases a month, a couple arches at $20,000, $30,000, and all of a sudden, like, you've tripled your revenue. We're like, Holy cow. So within the first couple of months, we were like, this is amazing. We've tripled our revenue and some of the things we went through, all the difficulties figuring this out. We had to retrain the staff on the workflow. He was it was a tiny little office. So we had to really focus on our systems and where the patients were going to be at the office when and like we were bringing in third-party anesthesia. So figuring out like when we could schedule them. And one of the other difficulties that can happen at the time that we were lucky enough to have a connection to, was we had a really great lab tech who would come to our office and he would convert all the cases. Okay. And so that because we were analog.

Dr. Noel Liu:
The digital age, right?

Dr. Jonathan Theis:
Oh, yeah. This was, yeah. So we were, we first start off, you don't even know if it's going to work. You don't even know if it's going to be viable. So you're not going to invest in a full digital workflow on something you're not sure if you're even going to do. So we started off doing analog figuring out that way, which actually I think is, I think it's always good to know where you came from first, like the basics and how to do all that gives you a great understanding when you do go to digital of exactly where that technology comes from. It's like learning how to do a full hand map and then understanding, yeah, understanding why the calculator is so nice. But as we grew. So one of the things that I did that I think was unique was when we did our Facebook marketing, I actually did all of the messaging myself. Okay. And so we would have ads, and I would be I'm working, and I'm all over the place, but I always have my phone with me. And every time a message would come in on Facebook Messenger from one of our ads, I would answer it. And an advantage because you've got a doctor answering all the messages. And I was Johnny on the spot, which I think gave us an advantage to anyone out there that was in the area because these patients were clicking on the ad, and they were immediately getting responses, and they were getting responses from a doctor. And so because of that, I was able to drive these patients into the office. And then we started using, yeah, and then we started to use a marketing agency as well. And so as we started to grow, one of the big bottlenecks that we found was anesthesia. Dr. Oh, is actually a general practitioner, and but he's trained in oral surgery, and his belief was the best thing for the patient is to have proper airway during these procedures. And the only way to really do that is with general anesthesia. So we used a third party, and we would bring in anesthesiologists into the office, and they would bring, and the company that we used was actually really nice. They would bring everything. And the only thing we needed to supply was the oxygen. So that was really nice. And what we would do is we would charge the patient for the anesthesia. And because we were trying to be very competitive, we would just charge it as a break-even for us, we just because we wanted to keep the price down as low as possible. And I think one of the other things that we did, in the beginning, was just to get reps for Dr. Oh to get his name out there. I think we were probably not, we were probably not super profitable with the procedure in the beginning. We kept it very low. I think when we were doing it back in 2018, we were charging like 14,000 to 15,000 an arch. And with analog, what's even more expensive, yes, than it is with digital. And so the profits probably weren't great, but because we were so well priced, we were getting flooded with patients. And what we did was we started to utilize that through social media with testimonials, started building authority, and pretty soon patients were coming in not because of our ads, but because they just had heard about us. They started to see us organically through social media or word of mouth. And so as we started to get demand, then we could raise our price a little bit and we would slowly raise our price over time as we became the place to go in the area. Then, we could get ourselves aligned with a proper business model that was actually profitable. But we used that, that drawer in the beginning to really bring those patients in. And that really helped Dr. Oh get a ton of reps so that he was very proficient. You know what I mean? And then one of the other things that we noticed is in the beginning, we had to turn some patients away. They had severely atrophied backs. And we, Dr. Oh didn't have to do those cases yet. So he went down to Brazil. He was trained on zygotes. And then when he came back, and we started to do those, and then as he took more education and really started to become proficient with Zygomas. Now, every case was coming to, we could do, and not only that, but he was starting to get known as the zygote doc. And actually oral surgeons were sending their cases to Dr. Oh, but they didn't want to do that. Yeah, some of the most complicated cases. And so now we're not only getting word of mouth and getting from our marketing, but also getting referrals. And so, these are the things I talk about to docs that are Full Arch. Like it's very competitive, and so you need multiple ways, supplementary ways of getting your patients besides just your marketing. You can't expect to just dump market money in the marketing and and be able to reach your goals. So you want to look to have set up referral networks, right? So what we used to do was we would send our GP patients to doctors. When they would come in, they didn't need that much and say, hey, we're an implant-focused office. We're not looking to do like ... filling that is in a cleaning. So, those doctors in our network around the area, they would get new patients from us. And then, in exchange, when they saw a patient with dentures that was struggling or anything like that, they would send them to us. And so now we've created a referral network as well as a marketing network. And then you eventually, as you build your authority, you're getting that word of mouth more satisfied patients. And that's what really built us up over time from doing starting out at 2 or 3 arches, building up to ten to eventually get into 30, 40 arches above.

Dr. Noel Liu:
So tell me something. I know Dr. Oh is pretty quiet. How important is it when you guys are closing sales or closing patients? Like, is he the one who's, like, actually interacting with patients, or were you the one or did you have somebody else, like a treatment coordinator? Because I feel like the doctor really needs to have very well-oiled communication with their patients. What, do you have any insights on that part?

Dr. Jonathan Theis:
Sure. It's, it all matters, right? It's all about the process and how that patient feels from the moment they're contacted all the way through. But for instance, on the doctor's side, it's very, what we did was we built a lot of authority and familiarity. The patients would see them over and over again, whether it's providing education to them. Teaching them about implants. Teaching them about Full Arch via these videos that we would make and put out on social media and we would use as ads as well, just free education, but then also the patient testimonials and things like this. And so when the patients would come into the office, it was so funny. They would, you, it would be like, oh my God, it's you. Like I've seen your like it was like a celebrity type of thing. So we're already winning by the time the patient even sees the doc. And so now all he needs to do is go in. And one of the things that we did was we would take an extremely thorough medical history. And the reason we did that was one, because that's the best thing to do for a patient that's going to be going under major surgery, right? You have to have that. But two, when a patient goes to a normal dentist, it's pretty hard to fill out this form. There's not a lot of questions asked. And so that really they knew when they were being asked that all those questions by the doctors, oh man, this is different. This is something else here. And that really makes an impression on them. And then, of course, the doctor's ability to connect with the patient. And so not every doctor is the same in their charisma and their ability to connect, but that you can make up for that by your preparation of the doctor. We didn't let the doctor in there 20, 30 minutes talking to the patient. That's not productive. But at the same time, we've got to create that emotional connection to that patient so that they want to move forward. And so the best way to do that is to make sure that doctor is well prepared beforehand. What we would do is our sales consultant would do a discovery portion of the sales process ahead of time, collecting all that data. And then when about the patient, the personal things and especially like things like why they're in there in the first place as far as do they have a special event coming up, a wedding? Things like that that they're really like that's pushing them to this goal. And so then when you review the CBCT with the doc, and you go over everything about the patient that we've learned, he goes in there fully armed and able to shorten that time span. Now he's not asking all of these questions and doing discovery himself. He's going in and immediately knows the points of emotion to hit on, to really get that patient to connect to him. And so that's where he can be efficient with his time, but really still get that connection to that patient so that when they get done, they feel very good about the office that they've chosen and they're, and as long as finances are in line, they're able they want to move forward.

Dr. Noel Liu:
Man, you just dropped like several bombs over here. That's awesome. These are some golden nuggets which, I think, like anybody and everybody, should listen to and get a takeaway from this. So that's great, man. I love it, I love it. So, let's switch gears a little bit. Let's go to ... What's Orcaa and.

Dr. Jonathan Theis:
Yeah, man. So Orcaa was, we had an opportunity and I was I got in after it was discovered. So, the founders are Dr. Eldad Drori and Dr. Simon. They're the first ones that had connections down in Guatemala. People that he knew down there. And he brought Simon in because there was this huge humanitarian need down there. One of the crazy and surprising things is there's such a lack of access to care down in Guatemala, in the remote villages, that it's actually common practice for families to bring their 15-year-old daughters and sons into the city and as a gift, have their teeth removed and fitted for dentures at 15, if you can believe that. And that's considered a gift, because if they get infections and anything like that as they age. There's so little access to care. It could be life-threatening, and it just causes misery for them. And so that's their solution, and it's looked at as a gift. And so there were so many people down in Guatemala that had done this. And there was decades of maxillary resorption and just the inability to chew their indentures. The dentures don't fit them. They're suffering. And that's just the way of life for them. And it's horrible. And so we really saw an opportunity down there because they had not been trained on these remote anchorage techniques like your pterygoids and your zygomatic. So the first thing that Dr. Oh did was he went down there, and he trained all their top surgeons at the University of Guatemala on how to do zygomatic. That was the first step. And then also on how to take care of and handle complications post-surgery for these patients, Setting them up to be able to take care of their own people. Okay. But because there's such a huge volume, could, you know, he also wanted to help these people. And so we, and we also saw an opportunity to help spread knowledge, and across the globe really of this of these techniques to help people all around the world. And so we said it was, Orcaa was created, and we partnered with University of Guatemala so that we can bring doctors from all over the globe to train and learn these remote anchorage techniques so they can go back to their country, their office, and help their patients, but then also at the same time to be to help a ton of people in desperate need down in Guatemala. So it's really just like this perfect storm that created this really wonderful event. And it's extremely fulfilling. It's all about the very top people in the industry all meeting down at the University of Guatemala, which is actually an, it's actually a really nice facility, top of the line. I went in there; I was like, this is nicer than my dental school. I was blown away. We do the, we, these and these patients are all level three ones for zygotes are done under general anesthesia in the OR, so it's in the very best setting possible, and we've got very best faculty. And it's really it's like 2 to 1 ratio. So you've got two trainees and one surgeon, one faculty member overseeing them the whole time, and one is doing the surgery and one is assisting. And then they switch out on the second case and it's just huge volume. So we're doing 50 plus cases in that one week that we're there, or 50 plus arches about usually about between 30 and 40 patients we see in that one week. And we are changing so many lives down there, and it's just tremendous.

Dr. Noel Liu:
So each participant is probably getting, what, about 5, 4 to 5 arches?

Dr. Jonathan Theis:
Yes, exactly. So it depends on their experience. So we've got a level two and a level three. The level three is your remote anchorage. That's going to be your advanced surgical techniques. And then level two is your conventional Full Arch training. And within each of those, there's different levels too. So like, for instance, the conventional Full Arch, you could be a newbie who's placed maybe 300 or 400 implants, and maybe you're just getting into it, and you've tried a few cases, and you've done a few cases under your belt, but you want to get proficient and they come into the course. And with those, we pair them up with someone of similar experience, and then they're given particular cases that are like home run cases, right? So that they can just practice on getting proficient and learning from the very best on how to approach those cases. And then within level two, there's also docs that have maybe done 30, 40, 50 arches, right? But they want to get better. And also, anytime we're doing a maxilla in level two, we always do what's best for the patients and play centers, and creating that AP spread is always ideal unless it's contraindicated. We're placing pterygoids on any maxilla that we're doing in level two, and if the participants are ready for that, if the faculty deems them ready for that, then they'll be trained on pterygoids in level two. So, the level of advancement depends on your experience in level two. And then, of course, in level three, we're seeing we're doing a lot of maxilla, mostly maxilla, because we're training them on zygotes and ... and trans nasals. And you're seeing and that even within that, you've got your standard place of two zygotes to the most advanced cases where you've got quad zygotes and severely atrophic maxilla, and patients with complicated health histories and other issues going on. And this really gets you ready to be able to treat any patient that walks in the door at your private practice.

Dr. Noel Liu:
I don't think I've heard of any other course that offers this kind of like comprehensive training.

Dr. Jonathan Theis:
Yeah, I think it's unique in that way. The volume, the quality of the faculty. But I, and I think the big factor there is that in Guatemala there's such a need for it. And because of that situation that I told you about, with so many people not having to teach for so many years, we end up getting so many cases that this is like the best place where you could find the most difficult cases to train doctors along with people that really need it. There's no overdiagnosing here. It's so many people need this that they're there, and they need their help.

Dr. Noel Liu:
And is that still the case right now, currently as we speak with 15 year olds?

Dr. Jonathan Theis:
Oh, yeah. Absolutely. And we're even doing other cases, too. We do charity cases there as well where people come in with huge, mild blastoma, and we bring in microvascular surgeons and fly a man down there. And we're resectioning jaws and using the tibia and reforming the entire jaw. And those aren't ones that we're training on. Those are just. We're just, we're trying to help as many people down there as we can. Yeah, and we've recently added an advanced prosthetic digital workflow training course to this that runs coinciding. So you've got the surgeries going on, and alongside that, you've got an advanced prosthetic course that's training doctors on how to plan these cases, what proper records need to be taken, how to troubleshoot occlusion, everything that you need from the restorative side so that it's one thing to be able to do the surgery, but you also want a good outcome you want. You don't want all those problems of not understanding how to properly restore the case. And so now we've got this comprehensive course where doctors can learn the restorative side of things and also learn all the surgery that you're needed for this.

Dr. Noel Liu:
So go from level 1 to 3 and then restore, love it. Absolutely. So talking about helping you help a lot of people down there. So now with your Full Arch Buying Group, you are also helping dentists and doctors like solo practitioners to get that volume discount and get that group buying power. Tell us a little bit about this FABG. Is that what is that how we say it?

Dr. Jonathan Theis:
Yeah, FABG. Absolutely. Yeah, FABG.

Dr. Noel Liu:
Right, FABG. So what is this group? How does somebody get involved with this and what is the significance? What is it that you're trying to do with this group?

Dr. Jonathan Theis:
Sure. So I'm noticing that there's a lot of large groups and dentistry in general, right? Being taken over by ... we've been seeing it over the last 10, 20 years being taken over by corporate dentistry. These groups are coming in, and they're purchasing private practices, grouping them together, and creating these large corporations. And although that's good for business, from a business standpoint, it's not good, in my opinion, for patients necessarily, and I believe that the private practice for my time in the DSO space, what I noticed is that private practice doctors are more focused on the best patient care and not as much just strictly myopic when it comes and focused on profits, right? And so I want to keep corporate dentistry at bay as much as I can. And the way to do that is to organize private practice doctors together, much in the same way a DSO, but allowing them to keep their anonymity and their business ownership to themselves. And the buying group takes Full Arch doctors. And what I've done is I've, I went to all the top people in the industry, and I said, hey, who are you using? What vendors do you use? What brands do you use when it comes to everything that you're using in the office? Who do you use? What do you like? And so then that's how I created my target list of who I wanted in this buying group. So any company that I use in the buying group that's in there, it's because they've been recommended by the top people in the industry that want to. I wanted to make sure that every vendor in there was if I'm telling a doctor about this group, it's, listen, this is what the top people, the most successful people in the industry use. And so, wouldn't you want to emulate that? And then you also want to get a great deal. And so I did that across every category: implants, biologics, Full Arch focused labs, surgical instruments, anesthesia equipment, surgical supplies, operative supplies all the way down, you name it. Even down to like, surgical chairs and headlights. Everything that a doctor needs and spends on whether digital technology, everything so that cumulative savings across all of those categories is going to help bring their overhead costs down so that they can compete better in this. In what's becoming a very competitive environment now, I believe Full Arch is probably the fastest-growing sector of dentistry in the past ten years. And so it becomes more and more competitive. Costs of marketing are going up, and it's becoming more expensive for patients with interest rates going up. And with inflation and people have less money, it's more expensive to borrow. Costs of everything are going up, and the landscape is becoming more competitive. It's becoming more expensive to market. So what is a doctor to do if the large corporation down the street is offering a very low price and patients are hurting for money, and he is forced to to have to charge much higher, that becomes a big disadvantage. And us organizing together as a buying group enables us to get that power back and negotiate prices, much like a DSO would, and able to help us lower that overhead and be more competitive in the space.

Dr. Noel Liu:
So does a dentist have to be placing implants to join the group, or is it something which anybody can join? What is the barrier of entry? Let's put it that way.

Dr. Jonathan Theis:
Yeah, I would say this. This is tailored to Full Arch doctors and implant-focused offices. If you're not placing a lot of implants, there's plenty of other buying groups out there that would probably that have a larger that have been around longer, and are probably going to be more beneficial in comparison, right? But if you are placing a lot of implants, doing a lot of bone grafting, surgery, stuff like that, then this certainly could be something that could save you a lot of money. And then, of course, if you're into Full Arch, that's where it's going to really start to save you a ton of money, because we're looking at specific pricing for Full Arch doctors, whereas the digital workflow technology, the Full Arch Labs, or if you've got your own in-house lab, zirconia pucks, lab equipment, mills, furnaces, everything that you need for your in-house lab and for your Full Arch workflow.

Dr. Noel Liu:
Oh, that's awesome. That's awesome. That's great info. What are some of the other requirements? Let's say I'm a Full Arch doc. I just got started maybe a year ago and I want to be part of the group. How does it work? So it's very a long time.

Dr. Jonathan Theis:
Yeah, it's very easy. All they need to do is they go to the website FullArchBuyingGroup.com. And that is the, that's the portal. And they can create an account right there. They log in, I get a notification of every member. It's got to be a doctor, join the group. So, I vet everyone that comes in. But beyond that anybody can. Any doctor can join. And it's as easy as going to the website, FullArchBuyingGroup.com and creating an account. And what we do is generally, we'll be running different promotions and stuff that kind of give you a trial. You try it out for a couple months. That way you can see what the value is before you're ever charged. I want to make sure for me, this is about being a win for your business. And if it's not a win for your business, I don't want you to be a part of it. I want this to be something that helps you be more successful. And also, some of the stuff that we do is beyond just saving you money. So I've created a litany of different vendors that help provide support and resources, and that could be from staffing to social media management to marketing to sales training to business consulting software. There's just a bunch of different resources on there, and they're all been ones that I've either used myself successfully or have been recommended by the top people in the industry. So the idea is you don't need to look anywhere else or wonder you go there and you just you can see what you need, pick it out and what's going to work.

Dr. Noel Liu:
Like a full-service center, I love it.

Dr. Jonathan Theis:
That's absolutely, we're creating a Full Arch ecosystem to breed success, yeah.

Dr. Noel Liu:
One question for you. What's your future and where is this this Full Arch Buying Group going to go? And what are you going to do as an individual? What are your plans and goals?

Dr. Jonathan Theis:
Sure, I've got a brand new family. I've got a new boy. Yes, I've got a newborn, thank you. Three months, and I've got a toddler of 20 months, so I've got two under two. So I've been I on top of trying to start all this business. It's been very busy, and/but the plan with all of this is also we're going to take this to the next level. Okay. So, the foolish buying group is just the beginning. We're creating something that eventually will become what's called Full Arch 360. Okay. So Full Arch 360 will be everything besides the buying group. It'll be a ton of other businesses and services that you could get involved in to help you be more successful. For instance, there's another business that I'm now that I'm about to launch right now as well, called Smile Score Solutions. And what Smile Score Solutions does, it is a platform that a doctor can subscribe to. And it is a full library, video library of educational videos, and a step-by-step process that your patients can go through that educates them on their on how to improve their credit and gives them a step-by-step process on how to quickly improve their score and also remove negative items that helps them junk their score up. And so what we do is the doctor pays a subscription to be a part of it, and then they will get a link to their own customized portal with the full library of educational videos and pre-made letters and templates that go along with the step-by-step system that the patient just fills out and sends in to help them remove negative items, and so the doctor can hand this link out to every patient that comes in. 50% of patients that come in are declined for financing, and 60% to 70% of your leads are not qualified. And what do you do with those patients usually after they're declined? Or what if they're not even qualified? Usually you don't even bring them in for a. You just put them on a drip campaign to keep them, keep your office in there in the forefront of their brain. Or if they're been if they came to your office for a consult, they've been declined. Usually, you put them on a drip campaign. There's really not much you do for that patient. They feel hopeless. And so this is something where the doctor can say, hey, you're not a lost cause. Here's a free course from us to you. Normally, it would be like a $600 value, and you're able to give this away to all of your patients and give them the ability to take this course and over the next few months, improve their credit. And because they're on your portal, because it's branded for your office, it keeps them in your ecosphere. And so when they improve their credit score, they are ready to come back to your office to change their life and get that procedure that they've been, that they were declined for in the past. And so that's called Smile Score Solutions. So that's another business that we're about to launch. And then we've got a bunch of other ideas lined up, whether it's software that's going to help track all in one, your operations, your clinical, your marketing, and your sales for Full Arch. And it's going to be focused towards like implant focused office. But to bring all of the, all that data under one dashboard, it doesn't really exist. A lot of times right now, you're probably not like some marketing agencies will give you data on your sales, but it's only related to their leads, right? It's not right. What about all your other leads that are coming into your office? How are you tracking your sales performance? Really. And so we want to capture sales as a whole. We want to capture your marketing. We want to provide a CRM for you so that when you if you decide to switch marketing companies, you're not losing all of that data because the marketing company owns it. You have your own that they just plug into, right? So we're trying to create this so that doctors have this. They have they're self-sustaining. And then they can just hire who they want and try out different companies because everything they need is right there. It's right there.

Dr. Noel Liu:
No, I love it. I love this idea because right now, currently, we are using our own CRM, like with Go High Level. And the problem is it's all these guys coming in. They all have their own data, but they do not want to sync with ours. And that's we understand everybody has their own business. And what I think what you're explaining here is it's going to make perfect sense, because that's really going to keep a good track of everybody, because all us sudden we get taken advantage of every single day by these marketing agencies.

Dr. Jonathan Theis:
100%. I see it all the time, and the key there is to get them to be more honest. The ones that are out to take advantage need to drop away, right? They need to be exposed and drop away and fail. And the ones that are actually there to really help you succeed and are honest in what they're offering and do what they say. They're the ones that need to rise to the top, that we need to use their expertise to help us be more successful. And that's hard to find in this industry, sometimes.

Dr. Noel Liu:
Very hard. Jonathan, man, thanks for your time. This was great. Is there anything you would like to add last minute?

Dr. Jonathan Theis:
I mean, I think we covered a lot today, man. I'm really excited about the future and what we can do to help docs. And if anybody wants to reach out to me, I do consulting too. So, like on the when you're when you're a Full Arch buying group member, you can book time with me, and I do one-on-one coaching some of the stuff that we talked about today. I've got tons of advice to give. I've got all the blueprints, all the everything that I did. I can share that knowledge, and I want to share it. And I want to help everyone be successful. When everyone else wins, I win, too. We all win. And that's the idea behind all of this. Anyone that wants to join the group, there's one-on-one coaching. And so that's why my email is Jonathan@TheFullArchCoach.com. And so that's how anyone can reach out to me with questions. And of course, you can go to FullArchBuyingGroup.com and sign up for your membership. Anybody that uses the actually, I've got a two-month trial code going right now. It's GROWTH24, so anyone that uses that code will get two months free.

Dr. Noel Liu:
GROWTH24. I'll make sure I put all that information on the link. Awesome, man, I appreciate it.

Dr. Jonathan Theis:
Yeah, very excited about the future of this. And I just want to help as many docs out as possible. We've been on the side of training docs. Running offices and seeing patients. And now I just want to help. I want to help. I want to have as big of an impact on this sector of dentistry as I can. Love it, love it.

Dr. Noel Liu:
Hey, thanks so much, everyone. We're going to land the plane here. Thanks for watching, and make sure to like and subscribe. We'll come back with another episode and in the meantime, reach out to Jonathan. He's on his site, and hit him up. Thanks a lot. Thanks, John.

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. Jonathan Theis:

Dr. Jonathan Theis is a general practitioner with over a decade of clinical experience, specializing in cosmetics, implants, and aligner orthodontics. He graduated from the Maurice H. Kornberg School of Dentistry at Temple University in 2009 and began ownership of his first private practice office, Legendary Smiles, in 2014. Over the past six years, he has focused on the business side of dentistry, building private practices, multi-practice groups, and corporate expansions.

He is the co-founder of Smart Arches Dental Implants with Dr. Simon Oh and serves as the Director of Sales and Finance for Orcaa, GP. A dentist and entrepreneur, Dr. Theis recently launched his own full arch consulting firm, The Full Arch Coach, and is developing a full arch-specific buying group and a company called Smile Score Solutions, which helps patients improve their credit scores for dental financing. Dr. Theis is committed to making any business he is involved in successful, and he has the experience and expertise to help doctors achieve success in their own practices.

In his leisure time, Dr. Theis enjoys writing, playing, and recording music. He is skilled in multiple instruments, including guitar, bass, and drums, as well as singing and songwriting. Additionally, he is passionate about health and fitness, is an avid weightlifter, and considers himself a nutritional enthusiast. Dr. Theis has a loving wife, a one-year-old daughter, an infant daughter, and a toy-sized Goldendoodle. On most Sundays, he can be found cheering on his favorite NFL team and checking his fantasy football stats.

 

Things You’ll Learn:

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  • Establishing authority and trust through social media, patient testimonials, and educational content can significantly increase patient engagement and reduce the need for aggressive sales tactics.
  • Utilizing third-party resources, like anesthesiologists and specialized lab techs, can optimize operations and improve patient care while keeping costs manageable. 
  • Forming a buying group allows private practitioners to leverage collective purchasing power, which helps them compete with larger corporate entities while maintaining independent ownership and patient-focused care.
  • Building referral networks with local general practitioners can increase patient flow and create mutually beneficial relationships that support specialized practices. 
  • Innovative financing solutions, like Smile Score Solutions, help patients improve their credit, allowing practices to retain potential patients who would otherwise be declined for financing.

Resources: