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DSO Declassified breaks down industry activities from a totally objective perspective. This is the fourth episode of DSO Declassified – which is part of the Group Dentistry Now Show. Kim Larson, Co-founder and CMO of Group Dentistry Now joins Bill Neumann on this episode. They focus on:
- 2022 and 2023 events
- DSO industry trends
- Overview of the year
- New partnerships
- Emerging Groups to Watch
- M&A and de novo growth
- Advertising opportunities
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.
Our podcast series brings you dental support organization and emerging dental group practice analysis, conversation, trends, news and events. Listen to leaders in the DSO and emerging dental group space talk about their challenges, successes, and the future of group dentistry. The Group Dentistry Now Show: The Voice of the DSO Industry has listeners across North & South America, Australia, Europe, and Asia. If you like our show, tell a friend or a colleague.
Choose your favorite listening app below and subscribe today so you don’t miss an episode! Full transcript is also provided below.
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Full Transcript:
Bill Neumann:
Hi everyone. Welcome to DSO Declassified Number 4. This is part of Group Dentistry Now Show podcast.
We are fortunate to have the co-founder of Group Dentistry Now and Chief Marketing Officer Kim Larson. Thanks. Hi, Kim.
Kim Larson:
Hi. I’m happy to be here. Really excited to talk about the year, 2022.
Bill Neumann:
We are pushing up on the end of 2022. We’re going to talk about what we saw in 2022, what we’ve experienced and a little bit of what we’re going to be doing in 2023.
Kim Larson:
Unrehearsed and impromptu.
Bill Neumann:
Yes as DSO Declassified often is.
What we do typically is do a screen share here so you can actually see what we’re talking about. A lot of it is on the Group Dentistry Now website, which of course is at GroupDentistryNow.com. So here we go.
Everybody should be able to see our screen. If you’re listening to this on the audio podcast, you’re certainly going to want to jump over to YouTube or go to GroupDentistryNow.com and go into the podcast area and watch the video.
Let’s talk a little bit about DSO Deal Roundup throughout this past year since you’re pretty much in charge of that and work with the people that collect that data for us.
Kim Larson:
What’s interesting to me about DSO Deal Roundup is that over the course of when we started this, 2020 or 2021, it was because we had so many M&As going on and we just couldn’t keep up with doing an article for each one, so we DSO Deal Roundup. And I keep waiting for that month to come where the DSO Deal Roundup is not as strong, especially over the course of the past six to eight months, but we just have not seen that happen, more deals than ever. And part of that is, in my opinion, is because DSOs are no longer hiding their acquisitions, they’re no longer hiding their de novos, they want people to know about them. That’s a huge change in the industry since we started Group Dentistry Now in 2014. People are no longer embarrassed or ashamed, maybe a little, but it’s not as much as it once was. And people want their information out there, they want their new hires out there, they want their deals out there. It’s really an incredible time for the DSO industry.
Along with that, we’re seeing a lot of “DSO experts” coming into the marketplace. We see these in their LinkedIn titles. Now, I guess caution… Are they actually DSO experts or are they just jumping on the bandwagon? As we’re seeing a lot of people jumping on the bandwagon, late adopters to it, but want to get in there, so throw that title in there, give themselves some DSO credibility, but not really a DSO expert or a DSO industry specialist as they say.
Bill Neumann:
You definitely are seeing a lot more of that. Before I get into that, because I’ve got a couple of thoughts on that, if you are a DSO or an emerging dental group and you want to get listed on the DSO Deal Roundup, just send us an email to info@groupdentistrynow.com with your updates. We’d like to get these at the end of the month and then we’ll publish them the next month. We’re looking at November’s right now, this was published in December. Feel free, you can email me as well. But info@groupdentistrynow.com, and if you send this to us-
Kim Larson:
And people use this, we know a very high level executive at one of the big distributors who uses this list and sends it to the reps to make sure that the reps know about these newer groups. Also, the newer acquisitions, so people use this list to build their businesses and that’s in part one of the reasons that we started it.
Bill Neumann:
I know. I’ll build on that point. There are some data people out there, people selling data in the space that actually use this list as well and then resell it. It’s just interesting, I mean it’s great that we’re able to do this for free. We’re going to talk about data partner of ours that we have that we’re proud to partner with. But I would just recommend that whether you are looking for data, that you look at all the options out there. And then the other thing that Kim mentioned is there are a lot of these DSO experts out there, as well, so if you’re an emergency-
Kim Larson:
Social media DSO, social media experts, we’re seeing tons of them popping up. They’re very late into the game and it’s interesting.
Bill Neumann:
Anyway, that’s the DSO Deal Roundup and we’ll move on from there. What I wanted to do is-
Kim Larson:
And just a side note on the Group Dentistry Now subscribers, we want to make sure that our subscribers understand that we do not sell their data.
Bill Neumann:
That’s a good point. Even though we work with the data provider, we do not sell anybody that subscribes to our website, any of the data. We send out one newsletter a week called the DSO Weekly on a Thursday, and it is chock-full of great content. We do not send you an email a day or sometimes several a day, like maybe some other publications do, but we try to give it all to you in one week without the spam. Anyway, sign up for that, that is free DSO Weekly, and you can find that on the Group Dentistry Now website.
That is DSO Deal Roundup. And we also do DSO People, as well. We highlight the people in the industry. I probably should show that, which I forgot to do, but I do want to mention that because this is just as important. Again, very similar where we highlight people in the industry that have either been recently hired in the C-Suite, like executive-level positions, typically emerging groups as well as large groups.
Kim Larson:
A side note to that is we have seen, or… This is another list I put together. The incredible number of women who are at the executive level because that’s what we’re featuring on DSO People. We’re not featuring dentists, we’re featuring more C-suite, high-executive level people. Some months we have 60, 70% women. They are very much represented in the space, not necessarily everywhere. You don’t often see them in every aspect of the DSO industry. However, it’s nice to see that, I would say for the past year to 15 months, this incredible lifting up women in the industry. That is something that we will note on the DSO People when we see large amounts of women being promoted in this space.
Bill Neumann:
Yep, absolutely. That’s another thing that you can send your updates to info@groupdentistrynow for DSO People, again, at the end of the month, just like DSO Deals. To Kim’s point, it tends to be executive-level operations, business development procurement. Dentists certainly are on the list as well. Typically, chief dental officers or dentist-
Kim Larson:
Since this is DSO Declassified, this isn’t rehearsed, but we’re seeing a lot of this revenue cycle management directors coming into play.
Bill Neumann:
Of course, Kim.
Kim Larson:
That is not something that we saw. It was something that we saw the DSO Tech Summit in Arizona, but we’ve really been seeing a lot of those upper level RCM people come in into the space.
Bill Neumann:
The Tech Summit in Nashville, definitely had RCM mentioned quite a bit and that is something on the revenue cycle side, it’s becoming more and more… It’s always been important, but actually now there are positions carved out in particular for that.
One other thing, or actually a couple other things here, Kim, you are working on the emerging groups to watch with our editorial board. When will the 2023 be announced?
Kim Larson:
Well, we typically announce them… Wait, can you go up on the screen?
Bill Neumann:
Sure.
Kim Larson:
We typically announce them in January or early February, so I would expect it to also come out in January or early February this year. This is probably our top article of the year, the most read article, obviously for good reason. People use it for different things, to learn about DSOs, to learn how to structure their DSO, to learn what DSOs they want emerging… Sorry, I should say emerging dental groups to join. I know that that’s one way people use our website is we’ve had dentists who want to join a dental group or a DSO and they come to our website to learn more about them and decide who to partner with.
We have the award ceremony at a DSO event later in the year. We had I think our second official award ceremony recently at the DSO Leadership Summit. And that was wonderful. You want to talk a little bit about that?
Bill Neumann:
Yeah, I’ve got that a little bit later on the list to talk about that event. But yeah, you’re right. Anybody that ends up winning this award, actually, obviously is listed on the website, but then gets the opportunity to bring their team and accept a physical award at the DSO Leadership Summit and we did that in Nashville.
Kim Larson:
And then, networking opportunities among the groups is remarkable. They’re comparing success stories, they’re comparing their challenges and ways that they’ve learned to grow their group. And they’re emerging dental groups of all sizes, we have some very small ones and some large ones that would probably be soon considered a DSO or a DPO. Oh, that’s the other thing we need to talk about, all of the acronyms that are coming into fruition here. We’re seeing a lot of that. As a matter of fact, now, we have an implant category, DSO.
Bill Neumann:
DSO. Yes, they’re focused on Implantologists. Go ahead and talk about DPO, it’s perfect timing.
Kim Larson:
We’re seeing a lot of those. It’s pretty amazing. They’re trying to separate themselves from a DSO, usually they’re saying that they’re dentist-centered.
Bill Neumann:
I mean the DPO I think was, in fact, I know was dental partnership organization was coined by MB2, so hats off to MB2 for creating that model trying to differentiate themselves from a traditional DSO. I mean I could spend quite a bit of time on this, but the short version is some of it is marketing, so the structure is similar. And then depending on the DPO, because they’re all different just like DSOs are, the equity participation for a dentist that sells their practice to a DPO, they tend to hold more of that equity at the practice level versus getting equity at the Topco, at that DSO level. So we’ll leave it at that because you get in the weeds, but that in essence is you have more equity in the practice that you sold, you retain more equity, versus-
Kim Larson:
And in today’s difficult recruitment environment, certainly helps.
Bill Neumann:
Well, yeah, absolutely. I mean I think in just trying to differentiate yourself as a DSO, why somebody should work for or sell to DSO or DPO when now there’s not 10 options, there are literally 1,000 options out there, so it becomes more of a challenge. Especially the smaller groups need to differentiate themselves because they don’t have the brand awareness and the marketing power behind them. So really, really interesting stuff. Great, thanks for bringing that up. It was not on the list.
Kim Larson:
I haven’t even seen the list.
Bill Neumann:
The list is right here. All right. Diana, we also have upcoming Thought Leader article that we do every year. So more to come on that-
Kim Larson:
More to come on that.
Bill Neumann:
But that’s always fun-
Kim Larson:
That’s always exciting and it’s great to hear everybody’s perspectives on the past year and the upcoming year because these are some of the industry leaders that really guide the way for so many of us in the industry. What’s our next talking point? Oh, Seattle Study Club.
Bill Neumann:
I wanted to talk about partnership, so we move away a little bit from the content side of things and then we’ll come back to it because we’re going to talk about events. This happened back in October and I’ll talk a little bit about it and you can certainly chime in if you want, Kim. But we had the opportunity to partner with Seattle Study Club to form the Group Dentistry Institute. So far the response has been really interesting because, the idea is that Seattle Study Club and Group Dentistry Now have formed something called the Group Dentistry Institute, which is a customized educational, portal and platform for emerging dental groups and DSOs. If you don’t have any formal continuing education for your clinicians, then, they’re probably getting their education the way they did before they joined your organization.
What Seattle Study Club and Group Dentistry now formed is the customizable continuing education option for your group. Most clinicians know what Seattle Study Club is, maybe some DSO leaders that aren’t clinicians, they may not know, but really high-end clinical education for your staff and for dentist owners, as well. With this idea, there’s a couple, a lot of different options, but one is you basically take a Seattle Study Club and you drop it inside of a DSO. So you in essence have a continuing education platform that you don’t necessarily need to build yourself, it’s already been built. And then of course the compliance side of it, knowing who is up-to-date on their continuing ed and has all their CEs and who doesn’t is managed by Seattle Study Club. But there’s a lot of different options.
Kim Larson:
We’ve had interest from incredibly large, I’ll just leave it at that, DSOs who have built-in education systems already in place for their dentists. But of course the reputation of Seattle Studies Club is second to none. We’ve seen smaller groups, as well, and actually just the whole range of groups interested in this. I guess if you’re interested in that, in learning more about it, just email us at CE@groupdentistrynow.com.
Bill Neumann:
Thank you. And absolutely large groups that we would’ve probably thought wouldn’t need this, but they hadn’t holes in their education platform. And then the smaller groups that don’t have anything put together. We’ll talk more on this in 2023, going to have some podcasts, really dive in and share some of the education with you. Exciting, that’s one of the partnerships.
We also talked a little bit about the data side of things and how there’s some people out there. There’s a lot of data providers out there now in the space and we’ve partnered with DSO Data Connect on a couple different levels. We talked about the DSO Deal Roundup that Kim and the team that she has are putting together that data on a monthly basis with DSO DataCONNECT has done, has really created a portal for you, whether you are a DSO looking for practices to acquire, small groups to acquire, or a vendor looking to connect with chief clinical officers and procurement managers and directors of hygiene or whatever the case may be. They have a platform where you can access this. And I’ll just say it’s updated twice a month. We probably have a couple dozen clients that we have here at Group Dentistry Now that are using this platform. And you can see on the screen 22,000 corporate level contacts, 2,500 DSOs represented and mostly in the US but they’ve Canadian, as well.
If you’re interested, reach out to me personally, Bill@groupdentistrynow.com and we can get you a demo and also get you some type of discount, as well, if you decide to purchase the data. But we’ve gotten really good feedback from our customers.
Beyond that, one other thing I wanted to mention, we started a partnership with the people that started DSO DataCONNECT, we have another newsletter called DSO Pro and we’ve broken it up into a couple of really focused segments. We actually do one per week, but we have one that is focused on technology, one that’s focused on HR and recruitment, one that’s procurement and operations and one that’s happening. If you go to DSOpro.com and you click on Subscribe To DSO Pro, which is right over here, you can get access to this and there’s no charge. Just wanted to mention that as well as the partnerships. I’ll let Kim talk a little bit about the partnership for the Leadership Summit and that can lead us into the events.
Kim Larson:
We’ve been working with HR for Health on that event. They’re incredible at their planning. It was an amazing event. For us at Group Dentistry Now, it was just so nice to see the billboard at the Nashville Music Hall of Fame with the Group Dentistry Now awards there out on their marquee, just to see that people are no longer hiding their DSO, they’re no longer hiding their successes. It’s just incredible to see the growth of consolidation and just seeing their employees so proud of what they’ve done. Clearly, it was extremely exciting for everyone involved.
Bill Neumann:
I think Kim’s point is pretty valid when you started Group Dentistry Now back in late 2014, and you talk about this often, that there was no really little content out there to share. And now we’ve come full circle where there’s so much that we have to do the DSO Deal Roundup and people aren’t hiding anymore. I think a lot of the content that we saw was relatively negative about the DSO model and [inaudible 00:19:29]-
Kim Larson:
And Group Dentistry’s angle was always to shine the light on the good things that DSOs were doing. And back in the day, 2014-ish timeframe, I tried to focus as much as I could on the philanthropic efforts because they have the resources, the money, the time to help those underserved communities, not only in the United States but elsewhere, as well. Of course, we still see the philanthropic efforts of many DSOs, that isn’t the only thing that they’re standing on to shine a good light on them. They’re bringing so much more, the high-tech, the AI, the just incredible resources that they have to share with their communities.
Bill Neumann:
Absolutely. I think the industry’s certainly taken a turn, the DSO industry, that is where-
Kim Larson:
Yes, we’ve rounded the corner.
Bill Neumann:
And now the model is looked at as not just viable but favorable that-
Kim Larson:
I do still see some people out there fighting against the DSO model, but overall, generally speaking, the evil empire, so to speak, as they were, all the derogatory terms that we fought against for so long, it’s just so nice to see it. At the DSO Leadership Summit, for me personally, it just felt like finally, wow, how incredible… For a long time we were saying we were trying to move a mountain and it feels like that mountain is moving and the access to care has always been for us the staple of Group Dentistry Now.
The more people who can have access to dental care and there are DSOs out there who are really pushing that message, the body-mouth connection message strongly because it’s essential. That chasm was so big and I feel like the bridge is being built and it’s closing and at some point, hopefully, everyone will have access to dental care, healthcare of course, but dental care, no matter if they live in the most rural community or the busiest city. And that’s part of why we started Group Dentistry Now. It’s great to see it. And the DSO leadership for me personally was very exciting.
Bill Neumann:
And to Kim’s point, I mean that way back when and the ones that are still fighting the fight against the DSO model… I mean, listen, there are DSOs out there that are not doing the right thing. There are some just from a clinical [inaudible 00:22:04] just like the solo-
Kim Larson:
A solo practitioner.
Bill Neumann:
Right. They’re good and bad in anything. And so to say that the DSO model is bad and solo is good, is disingenuous. So I don’t necessarily-
Kim Larson:
It’s like a parochial view. Personally, healthcare-wise, all my doctors I’m sure are part of the hospital system. I know they are all a part of a hospital system and does that affect my level of care? Possibly because it’s up to the doctor to provide the level of care and we’re seeing that in dental, as well. That people are starting to finally accept it. Now, the question is, this is the next fight I guess, will dental and medical ever completely combine or become closer companions? Maybe not combined, but become closer companions.
Bill Neumann:
Stay tuned in 2023.
Kim Larson:
We see DSOs at the forefront of this pushing for this. And I mean, for example, PDS is huge.
Bill Neumann:
Yep. There’s quite a few out there that are doing things-
Kim Larson:
Advocating for that. And I would keep your eyes tuned to that. That’s our next mountain to move. It’s moving, slowly.
Bill Neumann:
As we move on to events, let’s start with the DSO Leadership recap. You touched on it quite a bit already, your thoughts on it. 451 attendees up from 320 in San Francisco the last year. It was in Nashville in October.
Kim Larson:
I thought there were some great panels. I thought the food was excellent.
Bill Neumann:
Which is [inaudible 00:23:41] to go. I totally agree.
Kim Larson:
The food was just incredible. I think the organizers from HR for Health did a great job. We should probably do a shout-out to some of them.
Bill Neumann:
Marie and-
Kim Larson:
Ralph.
Bill Neumann:
… Jill and Jessica.
Kim Larson:
Jessica.
Bill Neumann:
… and Ali. Great job.
Kim Larson:
Ali did a great job. He was definitely… Oh, and of course Gary Takacs.
Bill Neumann:
And Gary Takacs, who was the MC. Full under pressure.
Kim Larson:
He’s a great personality for that type of thing. And obviously a huge resume for this type of work. So we really appreciated them working with us on presenting that great event. And we hope that if you didn’t attend, see you next year.
Bill Neumann:
Yep. We will be doing the emerging groups to watch there once again. So third year in a row.
Kim Larson:
Is that confirmed?
Bill Neumann:
It’s confirmed.
Kim Larson:
Okay.
Bill Neumann:
We have up on the screen now for next year, we have Austin, which I have been to this Marriott before. A very nice location. If you were at the ADSO in March, it’s right down the street, so Downtown Austin. And this is actually going to be happening in October, October 12th through the 14th. If you are an emerging group or a DSO, please register. And if you are a vendor, you might want to jump in super early because booths and sponsorships do tend to-
Kim Larson:
They did sell out and we had a lot of people on a wait list. Probably some disappointed people because they didn’t get to exhibit.
Bill Neumann:
Absolutely.
Kim Larson:
Any other shows you want to talk about, Bill?
Bill Neumann:
Yeah, I know a couple events maybe that we wanted to maybe touch on a little bit that aren’t necessarily on our list, but Dental Forum we attended, as well.
Kim Larson:
That was a really great event. It’s more intimate. You really get to know and see the DSOs working. They have the great speed-dating round of course where I think it’s like 17… Does each vendor get to speak with 17 DSOs?
Bill Neumann:
Yeah, I think that varies with it.
Kim Larson:
Something like that, around that.
Bill Neumann:
It’s bout right. Yep, 15 minutes with close to 20 DSOs and who you’re going to speak to ahead of time, they know who they’re speaking to and it just works really well. Vendors tell me it’s one of the best events for networking of the year, if not the best event. We’ll talk about the future where they’re doing in 2023, 2 events, one in San Diego in the spring, we’ll highlight that. And then one in San Antonio in the fall. Again, all this is on our website. You can go to groupdentistrynow.com, click on the Events tab. There are just a couple other things, and Kim mentioned the DSO Tech Summit, which I know will happen in Nashville again in 2023. Very intimate. You talked about the RCM, revenue cycle management that was focused on there. Of course, pack a lot of CIOs, CTOs there, we’ll be in Nashville either in, I think August, is one of the timeframes they’re looking at that. That will definitely be in Nashville again.
Beyond that, we don’t have it on the list here, but we attended the Greater New York meeting. I’d love to get your thoughts on that, not a DSO meeting, but-
Kim Larson:
Oh yeah, let’s talk about D… Oh, goodness. So takeaways from Greater New York. Sunday was packed. Monday and Tuesday were very, very quiet and we weren’t there for Wednesday. But the takeaway is for me personally as well as many people I’ve spoken to, is that meeting needs to be shortened. It doesn’t have the same dynamic or feel as a DSO meeting. It’s obviously a very traditional meeting and as perhaps it’s coming off COVID, I don’t know, we don’t see that effect of quieter meetings in the DSO space, but we certainly saw it in that space.
Bill Neumann:
I would agree. I think the older version of these meetings, the traditional trade show where people set up booths and CE is done somewhere else is going away. I think smaller, more intimate focus like a DSO meeting or a hygiene meeting or regional meetings are going to be the future. And I think they’re going to continue to see it, especially with the costs of travel. I don’t think people are fearful now, after COVID, hopefully not. So I don’t necessarily know if it’s that it seems to be-
Kim Larson:
Well, so taking that and thinking about Yankee also a “traditional meeting” is now shifting and this year it’s going to be very exciting. Group Dentistry is one of their supporters is the Yankee Dental multi-site Summit. And they’re going to have a different approach, they’re actually incorporating a DSO track, I group Dentistry Now will be involved with that. But it’s just interesting to look at a greater New York, which is staying traditional. Maybe they’ll take a cue from Yankee.
Bill Neumann:
Yankee and hats off the Yankee for doing this. Tried to pull it off last year and mother nature didn’t cooperate, so there was going to be a smaller multi-site meeting on Saturday, but Boston shut down, with 30 inches of snow or whatever the total snow count was there.
Kim Larson:
Hopefully that doesn’t happen this year.
Bill Neumann:
No, I don’t think it will. It happens every once in a while there, but normally New England can handle their snow.
Kim Larson:
Is there any other meetings that you want to talk about?
Bill Neumann:
I want to talk about this real quick and we’ll go into the next one. Just highlight this since it’s up on the screen. Yankee is doing a separate multi-site summit on Thursday and Friday 26th and 27th, Kim and I will be there. If you are interested in attending, you can use Code20DSO and save 20%. That’s all I wanted to say there. I just wanted to mention that.
Kim Larson:
AADGP?
Bill Neumann:
AADGP is happening right after that, and I’ll be moderating a session there as well. And we have a code GDN…
Kim Larson:
Now.
Bill Neumann:
Or GDnow. Group Dentistry Now, GDnow to save 10%, use that code. And I think this one’s going to be really good this year based on some of the conversations I’ve had with emerging groups, DSOs and vendors. And Aligned Dental Partners is doing a pre-conference on the Wednesday, which is the day before the meeting starts. I think this is going to be a good one and it’s in Las Vegas and [inaudible 00:30:29]-
Kim Larson:
I really hope it’s a good successful event for them because it would be very nice to see AADGP increase their presence in the space, make a bigger mark on the space. Now, is the time, seize the moment. That’s my message to AAGDP.
Bill Neumann:
Love it. In between Yankee and AADGP, I’ll be at the NSK National sales meeting in Nashville to do a little DSO presentation, so I appreciate the invite and looking forward to doing that, as well.
A couple other meetings here, we have the Women in DSO 2023 conference that I was able to attend in Las Vegas last year back in Las Vegas. That is one that looks like it’s going to be another great event. You can find all the details here. It links to their website, the Register Now it is March 8th through the 10th. And then we have like Kim mentioned, Dental Forum USA in the spring in San Diego, which we’ll be attending. And that is the 20th through the 21st.
Kim Larson:
Possibly. We don’t know yet what we’re attending that one.
Bill Neumann:
And then we have the ADSO Summit coming up at the end of March in…
Kim Larson:
Orlando.
Bill Neumann:
Orlando, this is at the Omni Champions Gate and that is called 19 Dentistry. This is the big one, the ADSO meeting and it’s actually Great Hotel Orlando in March. It’ll be certainly a great place to-
Kim Larson:
Do you have to be a member to exhibit at that event?
Bill Neumann:
You have to be a member. On the vendor side, yes, you have to be… It’s a great question. Industry partner. So yes, you actually have to be an industry partner to just attend and then to actually exhibit there is an additional fee, I believe. If you are a DSO, I don’t know if you need to be a member or not, so great question.
Beyond that, we’ve then the Dykema meeting, which is a big one. That-
Kim Larson:
I know. That’s a good meeting. It’s always tough for me to get to that one because it’s in July and July is a tough month for people with kids.
Bill Neumann:
GD, again, very similar code. GD, Group Dentistry Now, GDnow-
Kim Larson:
Underscore.
Bill Neumann:
Underscore 23.
Kim Larson:
That’s a new one. I haven’t seen-
Bill Neumann:
GDnow_23 to save $150, which is great.
Kim Larson:
We usually have the largest discount.
Bill Neumann:
Yes. So go to us.
Kim Larson:
So go to us.
Bill Neumann:
There’s some other discounts and-
Kim Larson:
There are other discounts, but we usually have the highest discount.
Bill Neumann:
Yes, we do.
Kim Larson:
In the past, I don’t know if Dykema was doing it this year, but as time goes on, the price of their conference goes up. I’m not sure. I haven’t researched it.
Bill Neumann:
I think that sounds right.
Kim Larson:
Is it like that again?
Bill Neumann:
Yeah, I believe so. I haven’t checked, but the years passed, it’s been like that.
Kim Larson:
Then [inaudible 00:33:26], it’s October 12th through 14th for the DSO Leadership Summit.
Bill Neumann:
Yeah, absolutely. One thing I did want to mention again, and we’re back to the full screen here, is since we are at the end of the year, if you are a DSO or a vendor, we have some great advertising opportunities for 2023 on the Group Dentistry Now website and also on our sister website, Join DSO for DSO. Do we want to talk about any of that for a second?
Kim Larson:
Yeah, that’s great. Go ahead.
Bill Neumann:
Actually, in the newsletter we’ve got some great newsletter banner ads available, some great spots.
Kim Larson:
Not for long, that’s the problem.
Bill Neumann:
Definitely hit us up there. Content marketing is always super popular and that, we limit to just a couple of opportunities per week. Once they’re gone, they’re gone. Those are really filling up this year.
Kim Larson:
Well, we also have webinars.
Bill Neumann:
We have webinars, which we do one a month and those are… I think we might have three months left. So we have nine already booked-
Kim Larson:
Three spots left for 2023 webinars. Podcasts?
Bill Neumann:
Podcasts are looking good. We can do a one per week, so we’ve got availability for sure.
Kim Larson:
That’s great. It depends on how you want to reach your audience.
Bill Neumann:
Then, we do Facebook or Instagram retargeting too, so there are plenty of opportunities there and some other things, as well. I know we went through quite a bit, but it’s the end of the year, so this is a recap of what happened this year. I mean, for our business personally, best year ever, grew, I’m going to say without looking at the books right now, 20, 24, 25%.
Kim Larson:
And that’s just a testament to the fact that the DSO space is just becoming ever more accepted in the general dental space. That’s nice to see because for so long it was so difficult.
Bill Neumann:
And we appreciate the partnerships. We’ve got just a lot of really cool things going on with Seattle Study Club, DSO DataCONNECT, DSO Pro, the Leadership Summit, some to-be determined later in the year. I mean there’s just a lot going on-
Kim Larson:
There’s growing and growing just like the DSOs are growing and growing, so that’s nice.
Bill Neumann:
You can always reach out to me, bill@groupdentistrynow.com, reach out today. Kim just points to me. So I imagine it’s good and if you want to reach out to Kim-
Kim Larson:
That’s okay. You can reach out [inaudible 00:36:00], too.
Bill Neumann:
What’s your email address?
Kim Larson:
Kim.larson@groupdentistrynow.com.
Bill Neumann:
Okay. And that’s it. We appreciate it. Happy holidays.
