Going The Extra S.M.I.L.E.

Transcription

1 Going The Extra S.M.I.L.E. Audio Program ~ Transcript Part 2 ~

2 David: And how, if you re at Sturgis and you re walking around, what are the two words someone could say when they walk by you that would just totally make your day? It was, Nice bike. And talked about how, you know, Starbucks makes really great coffee and a lot of people like it. It s a very strong brand. And Nike is amazing. And there s all these companies out there. But think about Harley-Davidson and what they accomplished. Their customers tattoo Harley-Davidson on their body. And do you think that someone who buys into a business by inking their arm with the company s brand is ever gonna go somewhere else? They re never gonna do it. When you talk about go the extra smile, like, culture in life, what a culture that is. So is that the idea for your practice, is to, under sufficient Novocaine-Xylocaine blend or whatever, start tattooing your David: I don t want to tattoo my patients but I mean, you talk about creating, like, missionaries for your business and, internally, marketing. That s what you want. You want every patient to verbally have tattooed your dental office to the community. That s an amazing place to be, when your patients, your customers run out there and they just They love you so much that they can t wait to go tell the next ten people. They can t wait to bring them to the Sturgis Rally and hang out with other people who drive a Harley-Davidson. So how do you do that in a dental practice or any kind of business? How do you get those kind of clients, patients, who are so [ in like or in love ] or whatever it is that they want to bring in their family, share it to the community, become your evangelists. David: I think the greatest The hardest today, this economy, is and as hard as the business world is today, for me, my honest opinion is it s the best thing that s happened to our dental practice because it allows us to separate ourselves so far from everybody else who s in this rat race. And trying to compete based on price, trying to compete based on time and You know, there s always gonna be somebody cheaper than you. I don t care how inexpensive you want to make your service, somebody will beat your price. Look at Groupon. All these businesses are jumping on Groupon and they re literally giving away their services with the hope that someone s gonna go there and come back again. And some people will, right? Some people use Groupon and it s an introduction and they get to go do something and they just want to test you out. But who are most people who use Groupon? They re the people who are saying, Hey, if I can go get a massage for $30 instead of $100, I m gonna go there. And where do you think they re gonna go next? Where the next Groupon is. The big picture in your dental practice or any business is I mean, people will shop inherently but you re not looking for shoppers. You re looking for people that you can forge a relationship with who, if you charge twice as much or three times as much as the person down the street, that they do love you enough to keep coming back over and over again. And for us, it s all about the relationship that we form. And if somebody is willing to tattoo Harley-Davidson on their shoulder, and we know that, then why not engage them to continue to build. And it all starts with them having a firm grasp of we know who they are as people. Most businesses today have no clue. People are just a number. And probably second to that but equally important is they trust that we re going to do right by them at any cost. Whatever is in their best interest is what happens in our office no matter what. And when people really have faith that that is what s gonna happen when they put their trust in your hands, you can t put a price tag on that. You could charge whatever you wanted and people will pay for that everyday because it s so rare today. [4:48] Everybody s just trying to make their money today. How can I make it happen right now? And people are desperate for companies and businesses that they re not just here for today. They re here for tomorrow.

3 They re here next month, next year, ten years, twenty years. And that s what a relationship is. That s what it is in our life. It might be fun to go and have dinner with somebody and have a great time. But really, what we re all searching for is that person that we re gonna have a great time with forever. We want to feel like we belong. And we want to feel like we re needed. And our patients want the same thing. So when they come into our office and they feel like they re a part of something It s not just a dental practice. It s their respite from a busy crazy life. It s a group of people who not really treat them like family but it s a group of people who care about them. When they really understand that and they know that, your business really blossoms. And it s really fascinating to think of a dental practice as a retreat from life. But you do create that there in a number of ways. Some of it is the physical comfort of the room but a lot of it is something that you can t fake. You know, it has to do with the character of the people that you bring into your culture and how you treat each other inside the organization as well as how you treat your vendors and suppliers and customers. And there are some practical takeaways here for people to consider. One simple one is kinda going back to your Groupon or price thing is, if you do buy clients or patients through Groupon or whatever, do you have a follow-up conversion process in place? David: True. No matter how you buy your patients or clients, it s important to have a follow-up process in place and being true to your mission, a sense of belonging. You have also created a practice that is not a pricebased/insurance-based practice. It s not good for you. It s not good for the patients because they re limited as to the kind of care they can get. But you also deliver on that. You created a premium practice people are trained, your technology and everything else. So you re not amongst the bottom feeders. Now the public doesn t all necessarily know that. They may think they re getting the same care from a dental mill or a cheap dentist. And for a business owner listening, they may need to consider, What do I need to do so that I m delivering something that s worth more, that s worth a premium price, that I m charging appropriately so that I can build a kind of business that delivers on that promise, buys the right kind of customers? And then how do I market that to them? How do I let people know, besides the feeling they get, how do I attract them to my business in the first place? There are a lot of lessons and takeaways in what you re sharing that an astute business owner or practice owner would really do well to really consider, even turn off the tape or the CD, the audio or whatever it is right now, and go away for an hour, grab a pen and paper and figure some of that stuff out. Because that s where the prosperity and the profitability comes from many more than the manipulative techniques or procedures and processes. David: Yeah. And you know, we talked a little bit earlier about what it would be like if every customer you had brought in just one customer. So one of the things we did in our practice that was really effective is we sat down as a team and we just We asked, you know. If we could pick out the top 10% of the people who come here that we really, really like to see more than anyone else We like everybody but these are the people that, no matter what happens, we just They re on our schedule and we just can t wait to see them. [08:57] You know, chances are that they feel the same way about us. And you know, you talk about a simple way to transform a business is to start with the people who like you, and recruit those people who really, really like you and figure out some things. Where do they come from? Where do they live? What activities do they share in common? It s not about an address. I mean, you can go buy a list of people who live in a zip

4 code and maybe they have some things in common. But these are people who ve already proven that they love what you do and they love who you are. So what if you learned as much as you could about a very small segment of your business and you leveraged that small segment of your business. And maybe they re the first focus. They re the people that you re going to ask for their help. What is it that you love about us? You know, what are we doing really, really well? What don t you like about what we do? And really learn from that group and then take those lessons and bring them to the rest of your business. One of your overall guiding principles you ve expressed is: Go the extra smile. What does that mean to you and to your practice and your people and your patients? David: It s interesting because although we have a unified vision, I think it means something a little different to all of us. Go the extra smile, I guess is about doing whatever it takes to get that patient or customer of yours to really feel like they are a part of something and to really know that you re on their side. Part of it is doing things that other people aren t willing to do. It might be leaving your family and friends for a little while and going to learn something. It might be putting your ego aside to admit that you need help to learn a new skill or putting your ego aside to admit that someone on your team does something better than you do and to give that person the freedom to do it. But it s really about the patient or your customer genuinely coming first, not just saying it out loud but really living it. It s a culture in our office but it s really I think it s the way we live. It s what your mom and dad taught you when you were five years old, how to treat people, but living that. And your team seeing that you live that, so they inherently live it. And then your patients or your customers just get it. vision. You can t really force it upon your team. You need to live it, model it, hire to mission, hire to David: Yeah. I mean, the whole "starts with you" is, you can preach anything you want to anybody. But if you aren t living it and you re sending a very different message than what you speak, no one will ever follow you. And I think it was Jim Collins who talked about, you know, get the right people on the bus and then make sure they re in the right seat. Once you have a vision, once you know where you want to go and you embody that vision, then yes, you need a team of people around you who follow and do the same. And if you create that core, then getting patients to see that is really That s the easier part. It s what you do internally that s the hard part. I want to dig a little more into that in a minute. And first though, there s a real simple takeaway for any business owner or practitioner listening is to just get a piece of paper, draw a line down the middle, and on the left side, write Expectations. And on the right side, put Extra Smile. Because delivering what s expected is Going the extra smile in many businesses. A lot of us fall short on delivering the expectations. You have to know what people expect coming in. So sometimes, that s enough just to meet the expectations and manage the expectations, too. [13:41] But then what could I do as a business owner, as a practitioner, as a service provider that s delivering more than my clients, my patients, my staff, my vendors and community would expect out of me. And those are the deliverables that go the extra smile. It s a little exercise of starting to put those into practice. And they can be little things, little tiny things that are free to provide, too, and make all the difference. David: Absolutely. And you know what, one of the things I learned in life is I get a whole lot smarter when I put myself in a room full of other people. And your team, the people that you ve trained so well who buy into the same vision that you ve created... sit down with them. You know, do it by yourself and then bring

5 it to the team and I guarantee you, when you pick any one area How do they answer the phone, how do we not just meet expectation on the phone but how do we blow a patient away? I mean really, the goal is when that person hangs up, they say, Wow, I finally called the right place. That s how you create a missionary in a patient as opposed to somebody who just comes in because they need to. And your team members get buy-in and ownership and ideas you never would ve thought of yourself, too. David: Yeah. And as a leader, one of the most important things to do is allow your team to be a part of something and give them the freedom to bring all their great ideas to the table. And that s part of the culture, too, because we ve all sat in a room before where somebody said, Hey, I would like some great ideas. And let s talk about great ideas. But people are afraid to raise their hand because they know somebody in the room is gonna make them feel silly. And you have to create an environment that gives people the ability to say whatever it is that s on their mind because it might not be that first idea that makes sense for your business. It could be the second idea or the third idea or the fourth person who takes that and translates it. And we ve created a lot of tremendous systems in our office by sitting our team down and saying, Hey, here s what we do today. How could we do it better tomorrow? If you were a patient and you were sitting in the chair and you had to go through this, what would make that the best possible experience for you? It s amazing what comes from the people who work with you, just a little different perspective that sometimes you get in that little glass house and you lose reference. Oh, yeah. David: It s easy to keep doing the same thing over and over again. It s hard to see what could be different. And another way to do that is to involve the patients or clients or customers in surveys or questions, too, whether formally or informally. David: Yeah, that s the same thing we talked about the top 10% or top 20% in the business. Why not ask them too, get their feedback, get their input. You do something that, you know, whenever I m helping a client brand or position themselves, that I try to encourage them to do, which is to get everybody in a room and say, Here s what we say to the public. How do we live up to that? Here s our slogan, our marketing position. How do we live up to that in every step? And I know you do that regularly with your team and your staff. Hey, we go out there telling people we re gonna go the extra smile. How do we do that? [17:23] David: Yeah. We spend Again, most dental offices feel like, they have to go and be with a patient every minute of every day because they re paying someone to answer the phone, they re paying someone to clean teeth. And they spend more time doing and less time stepping back to plan to do. And we do We probably spend, I m gonna say 15 hours a month, planning. And yes, we pay our team for that time. And yes, we re not seeing patients. We re not co-productive with our time. But what we found is that the more time that we plan, the less time we need to be treating patients to be effective. And it all comes back to you can go have 10,000 patients if you think you can build that many (which is today s world is next to impossible for most practices), or you can develop a really great relationship with 1,500-3,000 people and have them say yes every time. And sure, there will be exceptions to the rule, but the more time we spend together as a team planning, the more yeses you re gonna hear.

6 David, with the little bit of time we have left I know you could talk for hours in depth in a lot of these topics. And I know that you ll be providing other resources and other ways that people can learn this and work with you. But for now, in the little time we have left, I kind of want to drill down quickly through your various points of SMILE, your acronym SMILE. And it s the S-M-I-L-E is Start with yourself, Maximize your communication, Inspire your team, Link with others internally and externally, and Expand that circle and vision in business. So let s just kind of step through those one at a time and talk about the number one importance of starting with yourself. David: So we talked a little bit about vision. And a simple analogy. I ve been accused in my life of being geographically challenged. So I have a GPS, like many people have. But if I don t know where I m going, then I can t expect that great technology to take me there. I ll just drive around neighborhoods all day. In your dental office, your business, it s the same way. If you don t know where you want that business to go, then you can t give that vision to a team of people who know where it is where you want to go, how will you ever find your way there? So sitting down and figuring out where that place is is really important. And a great first step is if you could just look at one day and design your perfect day in whatever business you have, what would that day look like? How many customers come in? What do they buy or not buy? What s gonna give you ideal? Because if you start with ideal as you destination, then you can create a map on how to get there. So that starts with yourself. As the leader, as the owner of the business, you have to be the person or persons in a partnership that lays that destination and map out for people. So start with yourself and then maximize your communication internally and externally. David: Yeah, we ve spent a tremendous amount of time learning about human behavior. You know, talking earlier about people make decisions in life with emotion and then they justify those decisions later logically. It s really the key. And an example I like to give is, have you ever purchased anything in your life that maybe you really didn t need but you really, really wanted? And how does that process work? You know, you go to a store or maybe today you go online and you look and you see something that you want. And you really decide you re gonna have it. Maybe it s some clothes or a car or a piece of furniture or whatever it is. And you attached yourself to it. And then when you ve made the purchase already, you tend to go home or log off the computer and you start thinking of all the reasons why you did it and it made sense. [22:05] So maximizing communication with your team and with your patients is all about learning how to get that emotional buy-in. Because whether you re a dentist and you ve trained in school for all those years and residency and you ve gone to extra courses or you re in any other business, you ve done the same, you ve spent a lot of time on your technical skills It really boils down to how to get your customer to buy in emotionally first. So you want to start with yourself, your leadership and your vision. You want to maximize the communication you have inside and outside the organization. And then inspire your team. How do you do that? David: I think if you love what you do, if you re passionate about whatever it is that you do, you need to show that to people. And that s where we spoke a little bit earlier about faking it. You can t fake passion. Eventually, if you ve created a story in your head that isn t 100% you because you think you re just gonna go out and make a lot of money doing it, you just can t maintain that. So the team surrounding you sees it. And then that translates to your customers.

7 So inspiring your team is all about living the business life, living your personal life exactly the way you d like to live it and then bringing that excitement, bringing that passion to them every single day, engaging them, making them a part of it. Like we said earlier, people like to belong to something bigger. If you re just looking for people to come and punch the clock in and punch the clock out, you re gonna have an okay business. But if you want to have a great business, everybody in there needs to be proud of where they are and, it sounds silly but, happy to be at work. And then work goes away. It s just a group of people who come together and spend some hours together to create something better. So we start with ourselves, maximize communication, inspire the team, and then linking with others in and out and making that connection David: Yeah. And you know, for us At some point in any business, you sort of reach a maximum where you need to go out and create business in a different way. But your best audience is the one you already have, the customers that you re working with. And if you can engage your team and engage your present customers and you can do, like we said earlier, create missionaries. Get each person to bring you that one person. You really That connection really brings your business to a whole new level. And sometimes it s tough to ask for a referral in a dental practice. But there s a system you can create to make that process pretty easy. And you can do that in any business. Learn how to maximize the people who already like what you re doing. That s the simplest way to grow any business. So we Start with ourselves, we Maximize our communication, Inspire the team, Link/connect, and then Expand. You want to expand your circle, your vision, your existing business. David: Right. So I guess when you get to that point where you feel like you truly have engaged everyone who s within your four walls who comes in and repeats on a regular basis, and you want to grow more, then you need to step outside the present circle. So you know, we always talk about getting in as many different circles as we can. [26:02] And we do that through our patients first. And we try to get into their circles and connect the dots. We do that next by looking at those top 20% of our patients and doing all the homework, doing all the research to see what brings those people together to expand into another circle. And then at some point, you need to go out and externally drive the train. And expanding your circle and your vision outside the four walls of the building is all about how do you get the community that you re in to see your vision so they make that phone call, so they walk in your door that first time. And there s a lot of great ways to do that, too. Let s talk about a few practical things here, too, because yes, it is culture and mindset and such. But just a few quick In the few minutes that you have left, David, some 1-minute/5-minute things that we could do everyday, some simple steps to take to achieve any of this going the extra smile in growing your business David: You know, we re definitely a team. But depending on the size of your business, you may need to divide and conquer a little bit. So once everybody has a common vision and everybody understands where you re going In our office, we literally break out our administrative team (the people who answer the phone, the people who are the patient's first experience and probably the last experience) [Check] Let me take a different tact...

8 David: Yes. This is a lot to accomplish A lot of great insights, there s mindset, practical tips And I know you re gonna share a few more tips but where do people fail? Where s the mistake that people make too often in trying to build a practice or a business? David: The biggest mistake, I think, is feeling like you don t have enough time or the resources to make it happen so you continue to do the same things you did yesterday and the day before and you hope somehow that you re gonna get a different result. And somebody once told me that was the definition of insanity, doing the same thing over and over again and expecting something different to occur. And that s the biggest mistake. Another big one is the sense that economically we re in a bad place but we re gonna come out of it. The reality of life is, this is the economy that we have. This is life today as we know it. You re not gonna wake up tomorrow and have jobs pouring into your community. You re not gonna wake up tomorrow and every employer is gonna say, You know what, we ve saved enough money in the last five years. So here s your insurance back. That mistake is to think that somehow something wonderful is gonna happen that s gonna drive your business to a new place. You have to figure out what you can do differently today than you used to do in order to improve your business. That s reality. [29:32] And some of that is really listening again, getting the transcripts and really working through some of the ideas that you ve been talking about. And along with that, I know there are many practices and businesses that you ve helped out. You do something that s kind of like a business check-up or practice check-up where you kind of, like, x-ray their business (what are their root problems, where are the holes and cavities in the business) and then recommend some ideas that can be put to place to grow and improve the business. When you do that, what are a couple of the things you look for and a couple of the things that you usually see that people could think about right away and start making some changes that would make that huge difference to them? David: That s a big question, too. What do you look for when you come into a business or a practice? David: I guess the first thing that I m looking for is that culture that we talked about. How do the people who work there interact with one another and interact with customers. Are they happy to do it or are they just grinding their way through the day. And when I come into a business Again, people can fake it for an hour. But at some point in the day, something goes wrong like it does every single day and you can really see what s behind the scenes. So the biggest thing that I m looking for is how people play well together, with each other and with their customer because that s what a customer sees, that s what a customer feels. And then, I break down a business from front to back. If business walks in the door, then we need to see how that customer is greeted. And everybody says hello. That s really nice but does somebody really feel welcome when they walk in the door? And what steps can we take to change a business and how somebody feels when they walk in the door? How do they interact with people on the phone? Do they have solutions for problems or is it just, This is our protocol. This is our system. And one of the things I m a big fan of, a good friend of mine brought to

9 light to me is to create a yes practice, and I would say creating a yes business. And one of the big pitfalls in most businesses, people tend to ask us questions that we feel like we need to say no to. And I would challenge any business that "no" is never an acceptable answer. The answer is either yes or what can we do to get to yes. You know, how can we lead a patient or a customer down the road where the answer becomes yes or they understand? If you can accomplish that in a business, you ve done more than 80% of the other businesses out there. David, how would you sum up, then, the whole idea of going the extra smile, doing business with a smile. How would you kinda I m not gonna say in 20 words or less but in 20 words or less, what s the core idea here? David: The core idea is that no matter what business you re in, it has nothing to do Your success has nothing to do with the technical aspect of your job, which is a hard pill to swallow. As a dentist who s spent a lot of money and a lot of time training and doing dentistry. And what I would normally take pride in, all things considered, my patients and my practice has grown from building relationships with people. My business is about people. And I would challenge anyone else out there that your business is about people and you have to be able to technically execute what you say you can technically execute but nobody buys from you because of that. And that is disconcerting to many people, but if you want to double your business, triple your business, you will learn how to build relationships with people. And that s what sets you apart. [33:57] As we wrap up, here s a little quick bonus for someone who wants to know, How do I find and choose a good dentist? Because they may like somebody who s not technically competent or ignore someone who s technically competent because they don t like him. How do we find and choose a good dentist, David? David: Ask another dentist. You know, in whatever community you re in, there are specialists. And typically Not that there s never a bad specialist, there are. But typically specialists have gone the extra smile and kind of continue their education. If I m a lay person, I d simply ask them, Where do you go? Who do you entrust your family to? If you want to cheat and that s a tough question to ask, we ve got a great questionnaire. You can come to our website and you can have it for free, and it ll just It ll share with you a lot of the things that we ask our patients about a previous practice with the goal of understanding what kind of care, what level of care they ve had in the past. And we do it in dentistry and you can do it in any business at all. idea. That s a great takeaway to someone who really listens to what you just said and borrows that David: Yeah. You want to set yourself apart, create a checklist of all the things you know separate the top 10% from the rest of the pack in your profession. Live those top 10% and then let the community know what those top 10% are. Because if you re going to set the bar high for your business, and you know the other businesses in the community can t possibly meet it, that you ve really truly gone the extra smile, then the best way to let the community know is where the bar should be set so when they walk into anyone else s business, they re gonna be very disappointed when those businesses don t achieve that checklist you ve created.

10 David: You ve shared a master system for success. It s huge. It is huge and it does raise the bar. It s figuring out what the best is and even better, what going the extra smile means Doing it, building the culture and the training that supports that, letting people know about it so that they re attracted to your business, and everything else charging sufficiently, having the team in place that can deliver so that you continue to grow and build. It s a major master system for success. David: Yeah. I ll tell you it s really tough for us and unethical for us to have a patient walk in the door and tell them how bad the dentistry that they ve received is. But it s really much easier for us to set the bar high, live by that standard, and watch other people in the community fall short. And then patients figure it out all on their own. It s same for any other business. We ll share one more tip, then, because it very often happens in a business that a customer comes in, doesn t know the difference, isn t trusting, they ve had a bad experience We want to tell them, You got a bad haircut. I can do better. How do you tell them that? [37:25] David: We apply that same Call it the top ten list of all the wonderful things you should be looking for in an office. So when we have a patient, our system (when we finally get to that diagnostic phase, when we re finally in a treatment room), we make sure that our patients hear everything that we re doing. And a great psychological principle is people tend to believe a whole lot more what they overhear than what we tell them. So in our office, my assistant and I (as a team), we talk back and forth to one another over a patient s shoulder so they re hearing us have a conversation. And all we re doing is describing what it is we see. And it s shocking to watch somebody s eyes light up when you re having that conversation. And the moment we take the instruments out of a patient s mouth, the first thing every patient does is turn to us and say, What does that mean? You know, whatever it has to deal with Now, our patient is engaged. And every business can work the same way. If you re going the extra smile, they need to know it. And telling them directly is a whole lot less effective than letting them hear it on their own. Excellent. And wrapping up, too, you talked about going the extra smile. You re talking about having people feel like they re a part of something, being a part of the top 10%. Now, a lot of people don t know this, but you re involved in education and bringing up the up-and-coming dentists and students. In fact, you founded the Dental Success Center of America to help improve how a practice is run and how dentistry is delivered. How important is it for someone that owns a business, maybe they don t set up something like that, but to be mission-driven, to try to do better than anyone s done before and try to maybe even take charge and leave their field. How important is that in growing something beyond their business, maybe a legacy business? David: I think it goes to that same philosophy that people want to belong to something. It s something bigger and better than just going and collecting a check everyday. And mission-driven businesses always succeed because there s a purpose behind it. And the purpose isn t just to go and collect checks so you can go live your life at home. When work isn t work for your team, if it s just part of their life and they re excited to be there, you can t help but prosper.

11 I think you ve going the extra smile in delivering your ideas and your inspiration and your content. And there s a whole lot more that you ll be making available and I ll be sharing those resources. But I really would encourage anyone healthcare field, whatever field it is to really listen hard, stop listening every once in a while, take notes, apply the ideas, share the ideas. Kind of helping you go the extra smile yourself tomorrow morning, this evening, depending when you re listening. By adapting that mindset and those principles and practices immediately. That s really how you start to grow and double or triple, increase your business, your effectiveness, your happiness. David: Yeah. You know, sometimes change is hard. And change seems big. So if you shrink the change and just pick one aspect and work on it for a month until you feel comfortable and you see how well you ve done by implementing just one little change and then bring another change and another change and another change And then it s not so overwhelming for you or for your team, whatever business you re in. And success breeds more success. So you don t have to take a big bite. But take a bite. Start tomorrow. Do something different than you did today because if you want better, that s the only way to make it happen. [41:47] David: And always remember to floss. Yes, indeed. Which is another principle. That s something you said, too. What is it, like, 60-70% of oral health is flossing? Even in the business, things that are behind, below the surface that aren t cleaned up are what cause the most trouble, right? David: Well, I mean, I tell you there s some alarming statistics out there. And as a man, and I m not quite there yet but, there s a statistic, and I m pretty sure it s if you have any form of gum disease at age 50 or over, you are 70% more likely to have a heart attack or stroke. That s a staggering number. That makes me actually want to take care of my teeth and my mouth. It s amazing. And that s part of the equation of going the extra smile is learning those things and being able to introduce those numbers to patients who want those numbers. But just for myself and for our team of looking at a patient very differently now because it s not about just keeping your teeth. It s about being healthy. So this conversation we re having, forget business, could be life-saving. David: You know, before I heard the last group of statistics, I always You know, oral health, overall health, we know there s a connection between cardiovascular disease and diabetes, and all sorts of other things. But I never quite looked at it the way I look at it today. And although I m in the business of keeping teeth, if you were unhealthy and walking around like that all day long, if you re not going to fix your teeth, I d rather see you lose them and be alive than not lose them and be unhealthy and be in that 70%. That doesn t sound fun to me. David: A sobering thought but you are the guy that tells it like it is. Dr. David Rice, thank you very much. You re welcome. Thank you. ~ END ~