The Dr. Chris Griffin Show – Season 1 Episode 9

“Good judgment comes from experience and a lot of that comes from bad judgment.” Now who said that?

Welcome to the Dr. Chris Griffin Show. Your resource for leveraging systems and technology to easier workload, increase productivity and provide you with the time off you deserve to live the life of your dreams. It’s time to practice productivity in the passionate pursuit of a better life with your host, Dr. Chris Griffin. The Dr. is in.

Well you probably may have heard that one before, it doesn’t have a lot to do with dentistry but that is from the late great Will Rogers. He was a true American, a true American cowboy, a true American philosopher and just one of the most amazing guys that ever lived. If you don’t know much about him, I would encourage you to just look him up on Wikipedia. I actually went to a play about Will Rogers, the whole play was about Will Rogers on my honeymoon 22 years ago. Okay? And you know I could not condense his life into a couple of sentences but if you don’t know much about him, go check him out or at least Google Will Rogers quotes and you’ll be laughing your head off. Okay?

And the reason that I picked Will Rogers to begin this episode, is because recently, I spoke to the Oklahoma City Dental Society and had a full day lecture there, I had a great time. And this people who travelled there know, you’re flying to Will Rogers International Airport. Okay? So that’s the deal of course, you can pick a 100 quotes of his and it would be applicable to just about anything that you would want to talk about, okay? If you have common sense, so this week, I’m going to let you guys kind of sit in the back row of the lecture hall in Oklahoma City and here are some of the things we’ve talked about. It was an amazingly fun lecture, I had a great time. They were wonderful hosts and I just wanted to share some of the things we talked about with you guys. So sit back, relax, and enjoy some of the lecture from Oklahoma City.

Okay, alright. Now this is you know, this reminds me too I feel like I’m back home at church because nobody sat on the front row right? Everybody tried to get on the back row and then some of you got squeezed up a little closer. But as few…this is not a huge crowd, right? So by the end of the day, one of my primary objectives is I would like to meet every single one of you and be you know, hopefully strike up a friendship that last forever you know. As far as I’m concerned, I mean it’s a 10 hour drive from Mississippi, I don’t really love flying. So you know, it’s kind of a trick. So I’m going to drive out here 10 hours. So really I can meet everybody and get to know all of you guys. I hope that you enjoy what I prepared for you. If you came here and you wanted to see a bunch of slides of me doing implants or see wrecked crowns or stuff like that. I mean that’s not what today’s going to be about.

I do a lot of that but that’s not what today is going to be about because that’s just not what I have found that I think really helps folks. This is the part of the lecture that I like the least. So I’ll just tell you because if I would sit in your seat and somebody gets up here starts talking, I’ll kind of want to know where they’re coming from or else I might not care what they’re trying to say, right? So let me just at least go ahead and tell you kind of who I am, and why that maybe you should listen to me about some of this stuff. if there’s anything that I’m really, really good at, right? So I’m standing up here, saying “Hey I’m this great dentist, I’m this super expert, you should listen to me because I know exactly what I’m talking about.” What I would tell you is that I have made, I think I have made nearly every mistake and had nearly every catastrophe that could happen to a dental office happen, okay? And so over, I’ve now been treating patients for 20 years. And in those 20 years, I mean these all happen. I mean I’m sure the good Lord could send some more stuff my way, you know. Like the book of Job but a lot has already happened. Right?

So I’m going to share it with you guys what else happened to me and how I dealt with it, how I recovered from it, you know. I’ll show you how I nearly bankrupted my practice 3 or 4 years in and how we recovered. And actually got up to 3 times the 88 national; actually also turning my schedule now from 5 days a week to 3 days a week. And like I said, I just want you guys to learn how I made a bunch of bad decisions and how I recover from it. And you’re going to learn throughout this lecture. If you don’t like it, I apologize for some reason, I really like this stick figure cartoons and I’ve got one of those programs where you can customize these things for your lectures so you’re going to see a lot of them.

So, where to start? So I went to dental school in the 90’s. Now and this is…who all, so mostly everybody here is Oklahoma City side, right? Mostly everybody here is from Oklahoma? I guess they’re all of you. Is that true? Everybody here is from Oklahoma. Now do you guys…is it like where I’m from when you have to have an affiliation? Like where I’m from. It’s either Ole Miss or Mississippi State. So is it like that here, OU and Oklahoma State? So what like how many of you guys are OU in the room? Okay, so boomer. I guess I didn’t realize what you say, so that’s good. How many people are in OSU? Oh, it’s really cool, it’s like half and half. I like, where’s Rachel? Rachel you put this thing together, she’s always…she’s awesome.

So that’s good. I went to Mississippi State, so I hate Ole Miss, right? I hate them. But you know, anyway I’ve also got some cool trivia questions and as the day goes on, I’ll ask some trivia questions and maybe you’ll have some prizes for that. But it is true in the, you know, hey footballs can’t even hear in the South, in SCC. And this is the truth…I was, I stopped…I lectured in Birmingham a few years ago and I was coming home and I wanted to get a, you know I do my own yard work. I don’t farm that well, well my kids now do a lot of it; 16 to 15 year old boys. But I do my own weed eating a lot and I heard about these new “Four stroke gas powered weed eaters”. Wow man, I’m going to get one of those things. And so, I’m on my way home from Birmingham because you know, this uses real gas than use the 2 stroke oiling gas mixture.

So I’m on my way home from Birmingham and stop off in Lowe’s, into Lowe’s. And so I go in and get the weed eater, I’m coming out with it. And this is no joke. What appeared to be 2 complete strangers walking out into Lowe’s, one walking in one walking out. I was right behind one and this woman goes “War eagle” and the guy coming in goes, “War eagle.” and then they just crossed paths. So you know, I mean that’s how it is right? That’s how it is in the South if Football rules everything. But, so I go to dental school, I went to Mississippi State. Actually started out in petroleum engineering, I bet some of you guys know some petroleum engineers around here right? because it’s a pretty big oil country but not the petroleum industry right now.

But my roommate, my roommate actually…I left, I obviously left petroleum engineering. He actually went to Houston, Texas, started at the ground floor, worked his way through some deals and now he’s the CEO of a huge oil company in Texas and worth a gazillions of dollars and stuff like that but he’s a multi-multi millionaire. So I sometimes wonder, if I made the right decision getting into dentistry but you know I must have like it because I’ve driven 10 hours just talking to you guys. So I go to University of Tennessee. Now is there anybody here, I guess nobody here goes to the University of Tennessee. Are you serious? No kidding. When did you graduate? 2005? Wow, you’re a youngster.

Well, they still…I don’t know because I left in the 90’s but were they still kind of mean and hard on folks? Well I don’t know, I mean. Well I’ll tell you, so when I went to University of Tennessee, now there’s a guy. He’s an older guy. Have any of you guys have taken some courses from Dr. Big Bob Girdy? The braces man? So if you know Big Bob or if you know Big Bob, you’ll know that he’s pretty rash and he says things he doesn’t exactly watch what he says. He’s not politically correct, you know but he’ll tell you the truth. Now the teacher doesn’t hate us or anything. They wouldn’t do it in front of the patients. They would always, they’d come over and sit down, and you’d say “Hey, what do you think does it look okay?” and if they’d say “Yeah” and if they’d smile and say it looks okay then you’re good. If they didn’t say anything, and they’d get up and they’d say “Come back here”. Yes, you’re about to get a chewing out now.

Anyway, we get together now and we joke about it how much we got and stuff but I do think it helped us you know, because if we made it through that, you’re a little tougher. But I got out of UT and I went in with my home town dentist, alright? The guy I love, I love the guy. I mean I really thought he was the greatest dentist on the planet and I thought that I was going to be his partner and take over his practice and we’re going to rule North Mississippi with his gigantic dental practice right? And did any of you all go into associateships right out of school? Okay. Are you still with the person you went in with? Is anybody still with the same person they went in with? You? Well you know I usually get one, usually it’s a bigger room and there’s still just one. And really I’m surprised that you’re, you know…that’s good. Are you related to him? Okay. That is amazing, good.

So me, just like mostly everybody else, you know it didn’t work out. So after let see, 1999 June 1st, I no longer had a job and I’m in my home, I’m in my hometown, right? Now this is not like I can just go somewhere else in Oklahoma City or Edmond and get another job. I mean we’re 45 minutes into the hindered lands, I mean this is nothing, nothing out there. And so you either have to you know, you either have to stay there and do whatever. You got to drive 45 minutes or an hour to try to get into another job in associateship which probably wouldn’t work out either. Of course you know you’re out of school, you have some debt. I thought I had a lot of debt. You know I owe $60,000 and that turns out these days maybe that’s not a lot of debt. That’s a whole different story, I’m going to get into that.

I mean I talked to a guy, I ate dinner last night with a guy that’s on the Oklahoma Board Administry and he’s also an adviser for the dental school admissions and he was telling me that he thinks that the high cost of dental school is actually failing corporate dentistry. Because when you have so much debt getting out of school, you’re just so scared to take on a whole practice of your own that that’s where everybody’s getting all their feeder dentist and it’s just like a continuing cycle. All of you apparently is working towards trying to figure out a solution to try to combat that, I don’t know. Basically a guy would always say, a barge going down the Tennessee River. It’s going to take a while to get that thing turned around if you can get it turned around.

But anyway, here I am. My wife says, guess what? I’m pregnant with our first kid. So I’m in debt, no job, a pregnant wife, no prospects, we’re in my hometown, her hometown, we dated since high school, got married when we were 19 and 20. So she ain’t going anywhere. Okay? So I just had to get serious with myself saying what are you going to do? So I decided to just go ahead and just hang a shingle. And so I started my own practice. Now here’s interestingly enough, we were just talking about attendance, you see meetings has gone down over the years. In the year 2000, right after I started this practice, I went to the profitable dentist meeting in Destin Florida. Have you guys ever been to one of those? Did you went alone? Did you like it? When did you go?

So in the year 2000, there were nearly 2000 total attendees and right at a thousand dentists showed up. And I go to this and I’m like, “Wow, this is the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen!” I mean this is great, you know. Everybody’s excited about dentistry and I’m on the right profession and you know I’m just psyched. And it’s probably what made me like the idea of speaking someday, you know because the speakers out there were great. Everybody’s fired up and I actually went up and introduced myself to Woody Oakes who’s the editor of the Profitable Dentist Magazine and you know he’s a big basketball fan and we struck up a good conversation and I got you know, I got talking to him. And I told him how that I didn’t have you know, what bad stuff that happened.

June 1st I had no idea what I was going to do. June 7th I bought a piece of property, with 1 acre and a house that had not been lived in for 3 years because the lady had gone to nursing home. It’s right in the center of Ripley and me and a retired carpenter and my grandfather, renovated it into right out there and I saw my first patient by September 1st, 1999. So it’s less than 90 days and we spent less than $200,000 for the property, and all the renovations and all the equipment and everything. And Woody just thought “Wow, that’s the greatest thing I’ve ever heard!” So he put me on the cover of the magazine back then. Right?

But still, even though things were going okay, I’m still in Ripley, population 6500. We’re a very declining industrial town. And back when I was a kid, we had 2 or 3 major furniture factories okay? And basically employed thousands of people but those companies, all but one, have all gone under. And the one that’s still there only employs about 500 people. So as you can imagine, we went from this deal where a lot of people had dental insurance to now, nothing. And I don’t take Medicaid, so it’s a stuff situation. So I’m still in this kind of town, I’m making a little bit of money, but I’m working you know, 5 ½ days a week and it’s just not really fun. And so, I went in search of something else to do because I’m thinking, this cannot be the way that I need to practice dentistry, 5 ½ days my whole life, it’s just not even fun.

So I enrolled up to a dental meeting in Nashville Tennessee, with one of my best friends, Dr. Steve DeLoach from up there. And it was put on by the Las Vegas Institute. Now I am 25 years old, and I go through this meeting. I guess maybe I’m really naïve who’s easily influenced and so when I leave that 3-day meeting, I am a proud owner of a $30,000 tuition to the Las Vegas Institute. Now I really have nothing bad to say about the Las Vegas Institute because I had a great time when I was out there. The speakers were great, it was a lot of fun, I learned how to do cosmetic dentistry real well, but you know, Ripley, Mississippi. I mean how many people are walking in wanting…10, 12, 14, 28 for porcelain restorations, right? Very few, very few.

Let’s see, so I go out there and I’ll tell you what else. So I go to LVI, and so I’m thinking, okay I want to be, and my friend and I agree. We are going to be the greatest cosmetic dentists the South has ever seen. Right? And so we go back and it’s just not really working for either one of us. Then we say, well it can be that cosmetic dentistry’s not going to work for us, maybe it’s the system we’re using. So then, after we go to LVI like 4 times, you know, we fly out to Las Vegas 4 times and spent 30 grand, maybe 6 times and then we say, “Well, I’ve heard about this Pete Dawson fella, let’s go down there.” So we fly to Tampa Florida 4 or 5 times and we take the Pete Dawson continuum. And once again I learned a ton of stuff down there. I mean aren’t you guys Pete Dawson folks? Right? So I know a lot about occlusion and I figured out why some of my stuff didn’t work as well as I’d hoped.

But so I learned a lot and to this day, a lot of stuff I learned at Pete Dawson’s classes I still used. You can use a lot of his stuff just bread and butter. Now what I did I come back from there and think, we’ll now I’m going to get rich by doing occlusion adjustments on people, right? Well that didn’t work either, so I didn’t get rich doing that. I mean I tried a lot of stuff. So I thought, well maybe it’s just some other issue I’ve got. So if this is not working, what else can I try? So when you’re out of these institutes, one of the things that I’m not kidding your verbatim is said is, “If you want to be the best dentist in your area, you can’t have normal prices. You have to have the highest prices in town. If you’re not the highest price in town, people will automatically think you’re not the highest quality dentist in town and you’ll never succeed at this.

So I mean I’m 25, I’m like okay let’s do it. I’m not going to ask you guys what you charge for a crown, that would be impolite but just so you know where I’m coming from, at this time, a PFM crown in my hometown went for about 500 bucks. There was a guy in town that charged 400, every fest about him being slow in getting all the business. So we all charged about 483, something like that. And so guess what I did? I doubled it. I said, well if I’m going to be the highest in town, I’m just going to go for it. So I get up, I think I’m charging like 979 for a PFM which you guys may think is low now. At that time, 979 is pretty high in my town. So I jacked those prices up there and surprise, surprise! The people still didn’t come. Alright? They’re still not coming. And when they do come, they’re like, “What? How many crowns am I getting for that?... What now, is that a denture?” I mean you know, I get all these questions.

Plus, I mean I’m doing…I’m trying to do all porcelain work back then and it’s very difficult. You know, the bonding is super hard. The porcelain by the way is very difficult. You know, if you did a lot of porcelain work 20 years ago, you’ll know. You know, it broke a lot. It’s not like the porcelain that’s today. So that was one mistake. Then I think, well I’ve already got these Delta patients, so maybe if I can convince them they should be paying more than 400 something more a crown. You know, and when I say a crown, I’m not just talking about crowns because it reflects everything from crowns for something; a filling of 79 bucks or whatever. So I did sort of that’s just what I’m saying to give you guys an idea of where I was at.

So if...