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DSO Declassified breaks down industry activities from a totally objective perspective. This is the third episode of DSO Declassified – which is part of the Group Dentistry Now Show. Dr. Roshan Parikh is back with Bill Neumann on this episode. They focus on:
- DentalForum USA conference review
- 2022 Global Dental Procurement Survey Results
- Thoughts on the dental market, economy, technology, 2023, etc.
If you have any questions about the industry, or suggestions for what you’d like to hear on the next DSO Declassified podcast, email bill@groupdentistrynow.com .
To find any of the events or articles discussed on the podcast visit www.GroupDentistryNow.com.
If you like our show, please give us a ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ review on iTunes https://apple.co/2Nejsfa and a 👍 on YouTube.
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Full Transcript:
Bill Neumann:
Hey, everyone. Welcome to the third edition of DSO Declassified. We actually got Ro to come back to this one. We missed him in episode two so I had to do that one solo, but we have Dr. Roshan Parikh here. You may know him from the first episode. You may also know him from Chicagoland Smile, Walmart Health, and now Dental Bar. So thanks for joining us again, Ro.
Dr. Roshan Parikh:
Yeah, no, of course. I’m sorry I missed the second one.
Bill Neumann:
That’s okay.
Dr. Roshan Parikh:
But yeah, happy to be invited back.
Bill Neumann:
If you didn’t make this one, we would’ve had trouble, and he almost didn’t make this one because he had a battery issue with his car and a water heater thing. It’s been a busy day.
Dr. Roshan Parikh:
Yeah, that’s right. That’s right. I got to take a hot shower. That’s important.
Bill Neumann:
So that would’ve been a deal breaker, right, for the show.
Dr. Roshan Parikh:
Yeah, it would’ve been. I would’ve been in a baseball hat or something, and I would’ve been like, all right, I can’t do this.
Bill Neumann:
So the last time we actually had you, you were in New York, so you’re in Atlanta this time.
Dr. Roshan Parikh:
I’m in Atlanta. Yeah, here in Atlanta. Man, I mean, I had a busy travel week. I was at the DentalForum USA in Scottsdale and gave a presentation on, I think the title was how to roar like a lion when you’re the size of a house cat. And then our Dental Bar this week also opened up our fifth location in Manhattan on the Upper West Side so that was exciting. But then I took a red eye back the same night to New York. And I think as you get older, taking red eyes and then just trying to take an hour-long cabin from JFK and just go, it doesn’t work out as well, 20s and 30s, I got to pull it off. It’s not the same.
Bill Neumann:
Yeah, I’m not a fan of red eyes at all. I haven’t done one in quite a while.
Dr. Roshan Parikh:
Yeah.
Bill Neumann:
I’m not saying I’ll never do it again, but I think a lot of people probably listening to this can definitely … Some people can sleep. If you can sleep on a plane, I think you’re okay. I just can’t do it.
Dr. Roshan Parikh:
Yeah, no, I got to sleep a couple hours, but it’s just upright vampire type sleep. It’s just not going to do it when you just get to New York and then just go back to grinding. But it was fine. It was fine.
Bill Neumann:
So I thought it was a great show. You haven’t been there before. This was your first time, right, Ro?
Dr. Roshan Parikh:
Yeah, first time. I remember Great Lakes Dental Partners [inaudible 00:02:53]. We sent some folks. I know the Great Lakes Dental Partners. The Chief Dental Officer was there, this time Dr. Zasso. And I had an idea of what it was, but I didn’t have an appreciation for it until you’re standing in a gigantic ballroom and it’s filled with companies and DSOs and vendors like speed dating and talking simultaneously. And you’re like, oh wow, this is much bigger than what I thought it was going to be. And I was a speaker, but I was also a DSO. And so I had some of those meetings. I mean, I was pretty impressed. So yeah, it was a huge turnout. I don’t know. I don’t know. What was it, like 300 people?
Bill Neumann:
Somebody was asking me that. Yeah, I don’t know. I think from what the team open room told me, they had, I think, just under 48, 49, so just under 50 DSOs there. And so they probably are sending a couple of people, right? So there’s 100 on that side, and there’s probably another 100 on the vendor side. They try and keep it evenly balanced, vendors to DSOs. So 200, maybe there were a couple more with the staff. Maybe it was 222. Not sure. It could have been bigger, but it’s the biggest one that I’ve been to. This is the third time I’ve gone to it in person. I went to their virtual one, and it gets bigger every year. From what they were saying, they’re going to split it up somehow. And I don’t know if they’ve determined how they’re going to split it up, but they’re going to have it two times a year in order to try and keep it as intimate as possible.
Bill Neumann:
Because the way it works for anybody that doesn’t know, it’s worth probably taking a couple of seconds, if you have never been. It’s like speed dating. So if you’re a vendor or a DSO, you know who you’re going to meet with ahead of time, and I think typically it’s somewhere between 15 and 20 meetings that you have. But then, of course, there’s another 20 or 30 DSOs or vendors that you’re not going to meet with. And so if it’s small enough, then you have the opportunity potentially to meet them at the lunch or the dinner, any of the breakouts. And they try and keep everybody together, which is really nice, do it at a really nice resort. This Hyatt Regency in Scottsdale was awesome. And it wasn’t 130 degrees.
Dr. Roshan Parikh:
Yeah. It was 105.
Bill Neumann:
It was 105, but it was actually humid, which was kind of crazy. I was like, it’s never supposed to be humid here and it was. But it was a great resort. And I think they’re going to try and keep it a little bit smaller or not beyond the size they’ve had in order to keep that opportunity to network. But I love the event and I thought it was as good. I presented the procurement survey that we do with them. This is the third time we’ve done it. And just kind of some interesting results. I think we wanted to kind of share some of those results and talk through those.
Dr. Roshan Parikh:
Yeah. I thought that was super. That was right before I went up and I was like, hey. I was paying attention. And it was really interesting to hear because I feel like what your results of the survey were are really where the industry is going.
Bill Neumann:
All right. So let’s do this here. Let me know when you can see my screen. This should pop up right now.
Dr. Roshan Parikh:
Yep.
Bill Neumann:
All right. Cool. And I had 15 minutes, so I was not able to present the entire survey. And it ended up being, well, number one, if you take a look here, we had 60 groups that participated in three different regions. Right? So we had North America, which is the meeting that Ro and I were just talking about. Even though it’s called DentalForum USA, there were some Canadian DSOs there. In fact, there was Fiona Wood from Clyde Munro from Scotland. So she snuck in there somehow. And even though she didn’t have meetings, she was there. So there was actually representation from a couple of countries, but mostly US, a couple Canadians there, 123Dentist was there. There were a couple other Canadian DSOs, for sure. So we had North America, we had Europe that we surveyed, and then we have the Asia Pacific Region, which also includes Australia and New Zealand.
Bill Neumann:
And so, yeah, 7800 practices were actually represented, which is pretty cool, 12 questions and took about 6 minutes to do the survey. So we had a couple fill-in-the-blanks. I’m not going through all of this in great detail because you can read everything at your leisure. The entire survey is on the website for free. So you can just go to the main page and you should be able to find it pretty easily or search and just put in 2022 procurement and see that.
Bill Neumann:
But you pointed something out. If we kind of drill down here, you can see some of the questions, like how many practices do you have? Who makes the decisions for what products become preferred or become part of formulary? And again, if you kind of look at the way this, as I scroll through here, we have the North American responses, the European responses, and then the Asia Pacific responses as well. Mostly everything jives. So US, Europe, Asia Pacific, for the most part, things are pretty similar there. I’ll say in Asia Pacific, the DSOs tend to be much smaller. So they just started consolidation there. So you don’t see a lot of mega groups. You don’t see any mega groups. I think there’s one, much different than in the US and Canada. But you can see it’s kind of broken out here. What Ro actually brought up to me just before we started to record was this one. This is it right here.
Bill Neumann:
The question reads, when purchasing a product or service, rank the following by importance. Now, it’s a little counterintuitive because it says 1 being very important and 6 being the least, when it’s weighed, if you look at the biggest number, is the most important. So it seems a little weird, but anyway, what was most important was quality. And that actually beat out price, which in 2019 and 2020, when we did this survey, they were tied super close together. I can show that in a second, but what did you think about this, Ro?
Dr. Roshan Parikh:
Yeah, no. I mean, in 2015, when Chicagoland Smile Group was kind of growing, my DSO was growing, it was really thought of as there was this mentality of, through consolidation, you’re going to get savings on supplies, on lab, and price was the most important thing. We would bake it into analyses.
Dr. Roshan Parikh:
I think where the market is today, you’re thinking about, I said this earlier on a call, if you’re a DSO that’s kind of a bad actor and maybe you’re just trying to smash past practices together and just try and flip it, people know you’re a bad actor. And this, to me, shows me that a lot of these great DSOs that are out there are really like quality matters, patient/clinician satisfaction matters. That thought of retention of providers and team members matters. I mean, it’s really neat to see because I feel like now that consolidation isn’t just financial arbitrage. It really is a true strategy of value creation. You’re like, oh look, I mean, you care about quality. You care about clinician satisfaction. You care about support training ahead of price too. And then price is like, it’s there, it’s more [inaudible 00:11:13], but you’re like, I would pay more for an Ivoclar product because I get all these other things or something like that.
Bill Neumann:
Yeah. Yeah. It’s pretty fascinating. Can you see this screen right here? Did it switch screens on your side?
Dr. Roshan Parikh:
Yeah.
Bill Neumann:
Or does this still show?
Dr. Roshan Parikh:
No. Yeah.
Bill Neumann:
Okay. So this looks a little bit different. It’s maybe harder to see, but this is the same question. I think we didn’t have the patient and clinician satisfaction option in here. But if you kind of look at this chart, quality and pricing were much closer together. Right? If you take a look at quality and then pricing, the weight, which you probably can’t see there, 5.19 for quality and 4.66 for pricing. So it just goes to show things. And part of it is there’re some different options, but I think that quality means more than it did two years ago. And again, what does quality mean? Right? That can mean availability with supply chain issues.
Dr. Roshan Parikh:
Yeah.
Bill Neumann:
A lot of things that quality can mean for somebody. It can also, and where we see support come in there, that could be rolled up with support and training and education too.
Bill Neumann:
You’ve mentioned something else that you found really, really cool, not surprising. I mean, I think sometimes it’s surprising some of the responses, but we did some fill-in-the-blanks here. And as we get to the end, we talked a little bit about, and go through here. You can see we’ve got a lot of great info. If you do this on your lunch break, make sure you dig through it because there are quite a few responses. And you can see, any type of comments, we actually indicate those here as well so if anybody had a comment. But question 11 was an interesting one. What new products and technologies are you evaluating in 2022? I’ll get back to that one in a second, but what can vendors do to provide additional value for your dental group? I think this is one that you mentioned to me earlier.
Dr. Roshan Parikh:
Yeah.
Bill Neumann:
Yep.
Dr. Roshan Parikh:
Yeah.
Bill Neumann:
So there’s a lot here. I shared maybe four or five of these because there just wasn’t enough time. But the partnership idea, that was number one here. And again, these are responses from DSOs, all shapes and sizes. So we had quite a few large platforms. I think we had eight that had over 300 locations and then we had the other 20 some odd practices with between 10 and about 150 locations. So you look at innovation. Cost control is in here, technology. There’s something mentioning direct purchasing here. That’s interesting. Transparent pricing, digital solutions.
Bill Neumann:
So you kind of see this technology thing coming up and then also the training, CE Lunch and Learn, ideas on how to use the product to increase revenue. And I see training and education pop up in here quite a bit. Listening to our needs. Right? So they talk about employee retention, recruiting, patient referrals. So it’s not just about the product. Right? It’s like, how does this help us as an organization? We’ve got problems. We want to continue to grow. The economy’s not great. People don’t want to work anymore. How can you help us? And sometimes there are technologies, there are products that can do that.
Dr. Roshan Parikh:
Yeah, no, that’s right. I mean, I think when you think about technology in a dental practice, without the training and retraining and retraining and having that kind of clinical support, you won’t get adoption. You could have these fancy scanners and well, at Dental Bar, we have fancy scanners. But if it wasn’t for vendor partners and being able to actually come out and train, and then when we get a new associate or we have a new office train again, if we didn’t have that, you wouldn’t have adoption. People would still go back to using PVS and taking a goob impression and sending it to a lab. And it’s not a good patient experience. It’s probably not a great clinical experience. But that thought of training and being able to look at vendors as partners, I think, will give more adoption to products and technologies. And that is much better than just saying, hey, I have 10 iTero scanners. And the next question is, do you use them? I don’t know.
Bill Neumann:
Right. Right. Yeah. You would hear that quite a bit with the old laser. I won’t mention the brand name, but there was a laser that came out and it became a coat rack, right?
Dr. Roshan Parikh:
Yeah, that’s right. I think every practice we’ve ever acquired has a technology graveyard. And there’s just all this stuff in there. You open this closet and you’re like, huh. Oh yeah, I remember that. Oh, now we have three of these. Oh, okay. Okay. Maybe some of these secondhand marketers, but I mean, I don’t know how popular selling dental tech is on eBay, but there’re a lot of DSOs that are acquisitional by nature that definitely have a tech graveyard.
Bill Neumann:
Well, and back to your point, it’s like if the training and the education isn’t tied to it, you could buy it new or used, it doesn’t matter. It’s going to end up being in the closet, hiding away.
Dr. Roshan Parikh:
That’s right.
Bill Neumann:
So I think some organizations are realizing that, but the thing that really shines through with this procurement survey is, it’s not just about the price. It’s certainly important. We all should get that at this point, but it’s not just about the product too. Right? It’s about what you can do as an organization to support the DSO or the DPO and understand their model. I just found it interesting. So there were 24 different responses there. If you’re a vendor or a DSO, quite frankly, it’s worth a read through to see, if you haven’t participated in this, do you have the same needs and wants that some of these other DSOs have? I mean, technology was at the top of the list as far as what companies were looking for.
Bill Neumann:
Maybe I should jump back to that real quick there. That was question 11, which was, again, a fill-in-the-blank. There we go. What new products and/or technologies are you evaluating in 2022? And AI was number one. So it was AI. And, of course, what kind of AI? Right? So they don’t always specify that, but a couple did.
Dr. Roshan Parikh:
Yeah.
Bill Neumann:
Aligner providers. So a lot of clear aligner interest. Implant, for sure. I saw CT scans. I saw a lot of intraoral scanners. 3-D printing was big. So I think it was AI and then 3-D printing and then some of those others there. But does this all jive kind of with what Dental Bar’s looking at?
Dr. Roshan Parikh:
Yeah, I think so. I think, if I think ahead, AI, of course, 3-D printing, voice charting, it’s something we’ve looked at. If I think ahead to 2023, a lot of this, and you think about that thought around adoption, then you need data. I want a scanner that will tell me per office who’s scanning on what patient and more importantly who isn’t using the scanner? Are we scanning? At Dental Bar, we do a wellness scan. So everybody gets a scan when they walk in. But I’m telling you that as the CEO, does it actually happen? Without data, I don’t know the answer to that question. So if I forecast ahead to 2023, the number one thing that with the technologies that we’ve implemented or other DSOs implement, I’d be like, okay, well, show me the data. I want to know data so I could figure out usage by office, usage by provider. That to me is going to help me figure out, if we’re going to grow and scale, which of these makes the cut and which of these doesn’t.
Bill Neumann:
Yeah. That’s something that you don’t really have a lot of data on right now. Right? So that’ll be the next piece to this.
Dr. Roshan Parikh:
Yeah.
Bill Neumann:
Again, it’s not just about the product, right?
Dr. Roshan Parikh:
Yeah.
Bill Neumann:
It’s about what else?
Dr. Roshan Parikh:
That’s right. I think we’re such a data-driven society outside of dental. I always challenge everybody to know what their Uber score is and then what’s your Uber rating. And most people actually have some idea of where they are. And I think that for us, with all this technology and being such a data-driven society, it’s going to be crucial for … It’s crucial now, but I bet it’ll appear in 2023.
Bill Neumann:
And that’s funny. Well, another tech CEO was just talking to me about their Uber rating. In fact, it was when you and Jinesh Patel were … We were in the hotel and we happened to see each other and the Uber was waiting for him. And he’s like, sorry, I can’t spend much time. I’m worried about my Uber rating. So that was kind of funny. Jinesh is the CEO of UptimeHealth, another tech company. But yeah, I do check mine every once in a while and just see, okay, where did I go after that last drive? Is it up or down?
Dr. Roshan Parikh:
Yeah, that’s right. That’s right. I mean, I think I’m like 488. I had a time where I was 491, but I had a time when I was 475. So I’m happy for that. But then I’m like, I always wonder what brought me from a 491 to a 488.
Bill Neumann:
Yeah. I’m just wondering. You kind of think of your credit score. Right? And so what is that like? What’s the Uber credit score? What’s excellent and should I be getting more discounts? Right? I should probably.
Dr. Roshan Parikh:
Yeah. Yeah. That’s right.
Bill Neumann:
Maybe not me, but somebody that has a 49.
Dr. Roshan Parikh:
Yeah, that’s right. That’s right.
Bill Neumann:
All right. Cool. So, hey, do you want to jump into maybe some of the events that are coming up? And we can talk about what’s going to happen throughout the year. And then I just wanted to go into a couple of articles that we’ve done besides the procurement survey, and then you can share anything else that you’d like to share.
Dr. Roshan Parikh:
Yeah.
Bill Neumann:
So can you see the events?
Dr. Roshan Parikh:
Yep.
Bill Neumann:
All right. Great. So just some events coming up and it feels like, especially this week in particular. I went to the DentalForum USA event. Like I said, they’re going to be doing one, I believe, in March. I don’t know if they’ve determined where it’s going to be. And then they’re going to do another one in the fall, but it’s a great event. I think if you’re a vendor, if you’re a DSO and you really like meaningful time with vendors or DSOs, that’s the place to do it. I don’t really know any other DSO event that does it as well as they do.
Bill Neumann:
So DSO Business Forum, which is a virtual conference, that’s coming up on Thursday, the 22nd. So this podcast will be out right before this. This is a marketing conference, which should be pretty cool. And again, all this information is at groupdentistrynow.com. Just go to the events tab and you can find that. So this is just a webinar you can jump on. This looks like it’s got technology solutions as well, but the company that is putting it on is Dreamscape. So they are a marketing company, DSO Business Forum.
Dr. Roshan Parikh:
Yeah, that looks great.
Bill Neumann:
Yeah. Yeah. And then, of course, they get back to the live meetings and we’re into October. What do we have? We had [inaudible 00:23:52] this past week. We had the DentalForum and then [inaudible 00:23:56] currently, as we speak, is going on.
Dr. Roshan Parikh:
DS World. Yeah.
Bill Neumann:
Yeah, DS World. So jam everything in here. October doesn’t look like it’s going to let up. And on the DSO side, this is the second year they’re doing the DSO Tech Summit. So if you’re a CTO or a CIO or just a general tech geek, this is a good event to go to. And it is October 4th through the 6th in Nashville, which I’m going to be spending a lot of time in, it seems like, this year. And then right after the tech summit, you can use the code to save 100 bucks. It’s GDN 22. Just go to the website and check that out. I wanted to share with you the DSO Leadership Summit, which is an event that we partner with. And, of course, Ro just said he’s not going to be there because he’s got a wedding or two weddings. And I don’t know if I believe him or not.
Dr. Roshan Parikh:
I love Nashville. Believe me, I would be there.
Bill Neumann:
He was there last year.
Dr. Roshan Parikh:
I was there last year. Yeah. [inaudible 00:24:55] that.
Bill Neumann:
Yeah. Yeah. You moderated a session for us. That was great. It’s a fun event. So this is actually right after that DSO Tech Summit is over. It’s a different hotel. It’s the Loews Hotel, which is super nice, by Vanderbilt University, and close to downtown. We are the 6th through the 8th, and we’re doing it for the second time. So it’s the 7th annual DSO Leadership Summit. Second time we’re doing the Emerging Groups to Watch Awards. And we’re actually going to be doing that at the Music Hall of Fame. So we’re not going to be doing the awards at the hotel.
Dr. Roshan Parikh:
That is cool.
Bill Neumann:
They’re taking shuttle buses to the Music Hall of Fame. And there’s actually going to be two hours where we have access to the museum. So it’s just us there. There’s not going to be anybody else. Awards, food, and then get to hang out there. And then if you want to, it’s right next to downtown. You can walk to downtown, or you could head back to the hotel. So that’s going to be pretty cool.
Dr. Roshan Parikh:
That is really cool.
Bill Neumann:
Yeah. And last year, if you remember, we didn’t know how many people were going to come to the awards because it was the first time ever doing it. And we almost didn’t have room, it was so crazy crowded.
Dr. Roshan Parikh:
I was on the other side of the hotel. For half of it, I think I could only hear things. And then I was just listening for my name. It didn’t get called, but I was just like, oh, okay. But yeah, it was jammed, which is cool.
Bill Neumann:
Yep. It’s going to be a lot of fun. So that’s coming up. And there’re still opportunities for DSOs to go. I got a coupon code, 10% off, for that one. And beyond that, there are a couple others here that you can check out on the website. Unfortunately, at the same time, Polaris Healthcare Partners is doing their scaling from clinician to CEO in Denver, but we won’t get mad at them. That’s okay.
Bill Neumann:
The stepping away workshop, which is going on in Newport Beach, what an awful place to go. I mean, I’d love to go to Newport Beach. We got a great code there. You save 500 bucks. I think it goes from 800 to 300, if you use that.
Bill Neumann:
Back to Nashville. I’ll be at this one in Nashville, which is Patterson in A-dec. So A-dec just opened up a new showroom in Nashville, and I’ve heard really good things about it. So they’re going to bring in some smaller groups. So Patterson and A-dec are going to host this. And if anybody’s interested, you can see the agenda here and scan the QR code and go to the event. It’s pretty inexpensive to go to. So that’s another one I’m going to be speaking for about 30 minutes or so. I’m not sure I remember what I’m going to be speaking on, but something.
Dr. Roshan Parikh:
Nice. Something in the dental field.
Bill Neumann:
Yeah. And then beyond that, I guess there’s what, Greater New York? That’s probably the last show that’s going on. Do you plan on attending that one?
Dr. Roshan Parikh:
Yeah, I’ll definitely be there. I have the unfortunate pleasure, I think, right after the DSO Leadership Summit. I’m speaking at the DentalForum Summit in Europe. So I’ll be in Portugal. I know, feel bad for me that I’ll be on the beach in Portugal speaking.
Bill Neumann:
So it’s interesting. I got an invite to that meeting, but virtually so I’m not sure what I did wrong, but I don’t know.
Dr. Roshan Parikh:
I’ll send you a picture. You could make it your background. I feel like that would be helpful.
Bill Neumann:
No, it wouldn’t.
Dr. Roshan Parikh:
You’re kind of there. No?
Bill Neumann:
Anyway. Yeah. Beyond the meetings, I mean, there’s a lot. And then next year I think people are back to planning meetings pretty much like they did pre-COVID because things were always kind of hit or miss. And now I think we’ve got a little bit more planning time. So the AADGP has their meeting info out. In February, you’ve got ADSO has theirs. We could talk about this on a future podcast. I’m trying to think what else is going on. I think DSO Leadership Summit already has theirs planned for Austin next year. I won’t disclose the hotel, but it’s a super nice hotel in downtown Austin. So I think a lot of people are finally getting back to planning a year out or nine months out, which just makes life a lot easier for vendors and DSOs who are going to attend.
Dr. Roshan Parikh:
Yeah, especially now, knowing 2023, going into budgeting and planning for 2023 is helpful for DSOs and vendors both.
Bill Neumann:
Yep. Absolutely. So what else do you have going on? I wanted to share a couple articles, but I didn’t want to just continue to talk. So what else is going on in your world that you want to talk about?
Dr. Roshan Parikh:
I think that that’s pretty busy. So Dental Bar opened our fifth location, Upper West Side, on Monday. So kudos to the team. I mean, it’s really a neat space and turned out phenomenally well. So it’s great. And I think New York City coming out after Labor Day, it’s like everybody is back in town. And so you see definite upticks in volume, even in the first two weeks, because people are back from beach, New Jersey, Hamptons, Europe, whatever it is, places I was not. It’s like they’re all back. Even just walking on the streets, if it’s possible for it to be busier, it’s busier.
Bill Neumann:
Ro, that’s good to hear. So maybe Greater New York will be … We were there last year. It was pretty quiet.
Dr. Roshan Parikh:
Yeah. I mean, knock on wood, I think it’ll be a little bit different.
Bill Neumann:
Yep. I talked to some people that were CDA North, and they said that it wasn’t pre-pandemic. It was definitely better than last year, which was pretty quiet. So people are starting to come back to meetings. The challenge that all the meetings are going … Anybody running a show now, how do you be valuable for both parties, right, the exhibitors, the vendors, and then also the attendees. And I think the larger meetings are going to have a challenge with that because that old style exhibitor, hoping the dentist walks down the aisle, vendors just aren’t going to spend the money anymore. Things are much more expensive now. And they’re more options. I think smaller, more niche meetings are where it’s at. And I think these big organizations, big meetings, are going to have to reinvent themselves or find themselves irrelevant.
Dr. Roshan Parikh:
Yeah, no, I think that’s right. I mean, growing up in Chicago, I think I went to the mid-winter for 14 or 15 consecutive years. And the last year I think some of these big publicly traded manufacturers were like, we’re just not going to go.
Bill Neumann:
Yep.
Dr. Roshan Parikh:
I mean, it’s like a million dollar cost. It’s a heavy lift. I think maybe part of it, too, is that some of the business you can get done in more niche meetings, but then some of the business you can get done this way virtually.
Bill Neumann:
Yeah. Absolutely. And now that we’ve become pretty comfortable with it where we were forced into it because of COVID, some people are like, yeah, this isn’t so bad, saves us some money.
Dr. Roshan Parikh:
Yeah.
Bill Neumann:
So yeah, it’s kind of an interesting dynamic. I think beyond that, I’ll share a couple articles and then I’ve got a question to ask Ro before we sign off here, but I’ll save that till the end because he doesn’t know what I’m going to ask him. Hopefully, you appreciate that.
Dr. Roshan Parikh:
Always great to know.
Bill Neumann:
Hopefully, he appreciates it. So just a couple of recent articles that we’ve done just to get people caught up on things. This is actually a really good one that Solutionreach did and just really an educational piece, which I like. Maximizing dental practice revenue during inflation, just a couple of really cool points here on boosting per appointment production, leveraging incentive marketing to raise per patient production and, of course, recall as well. So that’s a good one to check out. We also have a podcast. If you want to find out more about the DSO Leadership Summit, I would definitely check that out. I forgot to mention that we have Gary Takacs, who was involved in the event a couple years back, and now he’s back to be the MC. And if you listen to podcasts in dental, you probably know who Gary is. So he’s been in the industry for a while. And he owns a couple of practices out in Arizona. The DSO Influencer. We have Dr. Saam Zarrabi of Rodeo Dental, just a really cool model there. And I don’t know, Ro, if you know Saam, but he’s just a super nice guy.
Dr. Roshan Parikh:
He really is. And they have a better mouse trap. I mean, culture being king, yeah, and this guy, yeah, he’s great.
Bill Neumann:
Yeah. Have you ever seen the inside of one of their practices? I mean, I never went to a practice like that when I was a kid.
Dr. Roshan Parikh:
No. No.
Bill Neumann:
I may have never left.
Dr. Roshan Parikh:
No. I know. No, no. I went to a practice that could serve me amalgams.
Bill Neumann:
That’s right. A couple last things on articles. We actually had two with no idea, but this posture topic keeps coming up, just really ergonomics. So we had one from Zirc.
Dr. Roshan Parikh:
We should stand up straighter.
Bill Neumann:
What’s that?
Dr. Roshan Parikh:
We should stand up straighter.
Bill Neumann:
I know, I know. All right. There we go. All right. So now that we are, we can talk about ergonomics. But Zirc did actually an RDH. Stephanie Botts actually put this together for us and Zirc. And then right before that, which we didn’t even know, A-dec had an article on poor ergonomics too. So two really interesting articles there on ergonomics to check out. And I think that’s all I’m going to share as far as content here. Before I ask you the question, do you have anything else you want to add?
Dr. Roshan Parikh:
No.
Bill Neumann:
You’re just nervous.
Dr. Roshan Parikh:
I’m nervous you’re going to ask me about ergonomics and my posture because it’s terrible.
Bill Neumann:
I am not, but I am going to ask you about something. So this is related to the DentalForum meeting. So we were at the DentalForum meeting. You were doing your presentation. You’re showing your slides. And so the question is, do you love Jordi or Milo? Which one do you love more?
Dr. Roshan Parikh:
Oh man. I love Jordi.
Bill Neumann:
Because I saw some preference in this.
Dr. Roshan Parikh:
I know, I know. Jordi. So we have a 5-year-old Goldendoodle and a 1-year-old. The 5-year-old, Jordy, is named after Michael Jordan.
Bill Neumann:
Is that where that comes from?
Dr. Roshan Parikh:
Yeah. Yeah. Not from that Jordy Nelson character in Green Bay, but Jordy, Michael Jordan. Jordi is my favorite, and I’m glad that dogs have brains the size of walnuts. She can’t hear me, but she’s definitely … The background on my phone is her sleeping on my desk.
Bill Neumann:
I could see it.
Dr. Roshan Parikh:
Yeah, so definitely my favorite, but I mean you have human kids. You can’t pick favorites, can you?
Bill Neumann:
You cannot. You cannot, at least you can’t say it, right?
Dr. Roshan Parikh:
Yeah. There you go.
Bill Neumann:
You definitely can’t say it because their brains are not the size of walnuts.
Dr. Roshan Parikh:
We’ll edit this part out. Just kidding.
Bill Neumann:
No, we won’t. We won’t. This is what we like about DSO Declassified. Right?
Dr. Roshan Parikh:
That’s right.
Bill Neumann:
It’s out there. Well, cool. I think that’s all we have. So yeah, if anybody’s going to the DSO Leadership Summit, I will be there. Ro won’t. Sounds like we’re both going to be at Greater New York, and you tend to see both of us around quite a bit. And he’ll be jumping on the DSO Declassified. I know that there are a couple of big, big deals happening, transactions happening, in the space that maybe didn’t happen as quickly as we thought they would. So I think next time Ro’s on, there’ll be quite a bit to talk about.
Dr. Roshan Parikh:
Yeah. Definitely. It’s exciting. I mean, even though there’re two quarters of GDP decline or recessionary, I think that dentistry is still pretty popular in the investment space.
Bill Neumann:
Well, that’s good. That’s good to hear. That gives us all job security.
Dr. Roshan Parikh:
Yeah, that’s right. That’s right.
Bill Neumann:
All right. Sounds good. So thanks again, Roshan Parikh, for being on the DSO Declassified and now two out of the three.
Dr. Roshan Parikh:
Pretty good.
Bill Neumann:
So hope you come back for the next one. And glad to hear you have hot water back at home.
Dr. Roshan Parikh:
Yeah.
Bill Neumann:
And I appreciate you being honest about actually telling us that you have a favorite dog because I would’ve thought you would’ve said I don’t have a favorite. So that was pretty honest.
Dr. Roshan Parikh:
No, I’m pretty authentic. I’m honest to a fault. I think it gets me in trouble sometimes, but I sleep better at night.
Bill Neumann:
There you go. All right. Well, hey, thanks everybody for listening in. We appreciate you spending time with us today. Hopefully, you learned a little bit and had some fun. And until next time, this is the DSO Declassified on the Group Dentistry Now show.
