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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