What if you could cut appointment times nearly in half and reduce total visits without sacrificing results? On this episode of The Golden Age of Orthodontics, Dr. Leon Klempner and Amy Epstein talk with Dr. Brandon Owen, founder of KLOwen Braces, about the power of digital customization, indirect bonding, and how to ease your practice into next-gen efficiency. Don’t miss this conversation to explore how tech changes the game for patients and doctors, direct-printed brackets, and self-ligating systems. Remember, there has never been a better time to be an orthodontist!
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Brandon Owen, DDS, MS, is President and Founder of KLOwen Braces and a practicing orthodontist at the Owen Orthodontic Center in Lakeway, TX. He won the OrthoInnovator Award in 2019 from the American Association of Orthodontists, Honorable Mention for the AAO OrthoInnovator Award in 2024, and has created eight original patents and numerous continuation patents.
Dr. Owen is a Board-Certified Orthodonticist and a member of the Angle Society. He also consults for over a dozen digital orthodontic companies and conducts research at the University of Alberta on the OSIM as an adjunct faculty member. Dr. Owen named his company KLOwen in memory of his oldest son, Keller Logan Owen, who passed away suddenly in 2011.
Golden Age of Orthodontics - Ep 71 - Brandon Owen, DDS, MS - Owner and Founder of KL Owen - Audio Transcript
[:[00:00:28] KL Owen is revolutionizing orthodontics by turning the chaos of conventional braces into custom control, their custom digital solution. Helps you achieve consistent results while saving on average, over seven appointments per patient. It's custom done right so you can focus on delivering amazing smiles.
[:[00:01:12] Grin provides you with dedicated assistance, enabling you to focus on providing exceptional care, all while saving valuable time for you and your patients. New customers can save up to 35% on their starter package. Transform your practice better Care begins with grin. To find out more about our podcast sponsors, visit ppl practice.com/partners.
[:[00:02:00] How will digital orthodontics, artificial intelligence, clear aligner therapy, remote monitoring, in-house printing, and other innovations change the way you practice? Join your host, Dr. Leon Klempner and Amy Epstein each month as they bring you insights, tips, and guest interviews focused on helping you capitalize on the opportunities for practice growth.
[:[00:02:32] Dr. Keon Klempner: Welcome to the Golden Age of Orthodontics. I'm Dr. Leon Klempner, a retired board certified orthodontist, director of orthodontics at Mount Sinai Hospital here in New York. Part-time faculty at the Graduate Orthodontic Program at Harvard and the CEO of People in practice. I'm joined as usual by the Brains Behind People in Practice Marketing and my lovely [00:03:00] daughter, Amy Epstein.
[:[00:03:03] Amy Epstein: Hello. Thank you for that lovely intro. I am Amy Epstein. I have 20 years of marketing and public relations experience, and, uh, together my dad and I co-founded people in practice so that we could bring the branding and marketing strategies that I was implementing for companies, both large and small, um, multinational and domestic.
[:[00:03:55] Saturday morning.
[:[00:04:14] Amy Epstein: That's right. Yep. So we hope to see there. We're also going to be exhibiting, our booth is, uh, 31 20 and we'd love to meet you.
[:[00:04:44] On this podcast today, uh, he's on a mission to advance custom digital orthodontics. He founded KLO and to bridge the gap between clinical expertise and modern technology and to create a platform that merges customized [00:05:00] appliances with cutting edge digital treatment to elevate not only the doctor experience, but also the patient experience, which we're very interested in as marketers to patients.
[:[00:05:34] He's very accomplished, and we're very happy to have him here today. Brandon, thank you so much for being with us.
[:[00:05:43] Dr. Keon Klempner: Great. So, um, Brandon, let's get right to it. There, there are a lot of options that orthodontists have with regard to indirect bonding. Um, anecdotally, when I was in practice, you know, I be, I did some indirect bonding and the way I [00:06:00] did it was with, uh, uh.
[:[00:06:39] Could you talk to us a little bit about how it works and, and how you can have customized prescription without direct printing a bracket?
[:[00:07:04] And when you're new and a novice being able to like, manipulate the models and, and see them in three dimensions, I was so much better starting out, you know, as, as someone who's a novice, it did gimme a leg up. And so when I got out into practice, uh, because of that experience with me. I just went straight in with, uh, analog and direct bonding using stone models as well.
[:[00:07:44] And then I would come in and, and manipulate them quickly. And so. I think if I would've been a great direct bond orthodontist, I would've probably had the similar experience to you. But because I was new, that that ability to kind of manipulate in three [00:08:00] dimensions really helped me try and vie for kind of, i, I always wanted to be the most efficient for the patient.
[:[00:08:43] But I think the big benefit to me was. I didn't have to train a new staff member. The, the digital work can basically let you go from zero to 60 without having to manually show every step. Because I always like to ask the residents or people when I lecture, what's the [00:09:00] most important step in indirect bonding?
[:[00:09:22] They hate it, they stop using it. Uh, but digital's let us get most of those steps dialed in. So it is just the final few that you really have to focus on. And so I think digital indirect bonding's really allowed us to. Bridge the implementation gap. And so that's where I think the success of it is. And so I think you're seeing more people successfully implementing the process of indirect bonding into the office.
[:[00:10:06] His findings were that he saved about two to three visits, converting from direct bonding to indirect bonding. The, the biggest difference really when you look at custom is. Indirect bonding or direct bonding, either one. Even if you are the best bracket positioner in the world, you're using a one size fits all solution.
[:[00:10:45] But the problem with that is you have these teeth that even if you get the brackets right, you have an infinite number of possibilities of where each tooth might end up. The doctor now has to reposition or wire bend their way out of it to [00:11:00] get to the optimal goal. And so what I love about, uh, the aligner workflow.
[:[00:11:25] And so what prescription does someone who gets aligners get? Is it a Roth? Is it an MBT? And the answer is it's whatever prescription they need. It's, it's really reverse engineering that final occlusion based on the individual morphology. You have this tooth versus this tooth and this side of the mouth versus the other side of the mouth.
[:[00:12:17] And so I think there's gonna be a whole bunch of custom platforms out there. But the revenue per visit, the, the amount of doctor time per visit, when you look at the aligner workflow is really trickling in, and we're seeing it as well with the custom orthodontic fixed appliance workflow as well. And so rather than two to three saved visits, I.
[:[00:12:55] Where the doctors, the bottleneck. 'cause a wire change is easy to recover from, but it's [00:13:00] the. Repairing loose brackets, wire bending and repositioning. The doctor kind of has to drop everything and the office slows down. And so I really think it's gonna be the future.
[:[00:13:22] How do you Yeah, you could, you know, how do you do that
[:[00:13:40] Um, because I was using a lot of those systems, lingual systems, um, the labial system that you'd see and see milling. The problem with those is they, they took forever to manufacture and they were really expensive to manufacture. And so when I kind of tried to tackle this as, as a way to hit the masses.
[:[00:14:17] It's super, it's like a clown shoe on you, but we're gonna spend three or four hours sculpting some foam to serve as kind of an interface between that one size fits all offering that we off, that we could have in the office and your foot. So you'll walk out with, with something that at least gives you protection from the gravel and everything on the, on the surface.
[:[00:14:56] I am gonna measure your right foot, measure your left foot, and over the next [00:15:00] six weeks I'm going to make from scratch a right shoe and a left shoe just for you. And I dunno how many shoe stores you guys have been to over the last few years, but I, I haven't seen one that operates with that methodology.
[:[00:15:37] So the brackets get thicker and they also have. Torque angle switching. And so if you need a seven degree prescription, the software will pick the negative five degree bracket and hold it with a two degree orientation in the indirect bonding trace. So when you glue the bracket to the tooth, you get exactly seven degrees.
[:[00:16:30] But to me, what I love about it is you give the custom experience. With conventional pricing. And so that's, to me, the best way to deliver this to the masses is you don't need to have. A perfect fit bracket, you just need to have it fit well enough that the bracket doesn't fall off continually during treatment and in our white paper studies, we actually found a 50% reduction in loose brackets, so we know we have enough of a fit there where we're getting as good, if not better [00:17:00] delivery on retention on the tooth.
[:[00:17:10] Amy Epstein: I mean, that's a, that's a significant value proposition I would imagine, to orthodontists who, um, are in traditional brackets and wires right now. Um, you know, I, I hinted earlier in the podcast that I had two tech enthusiasts on the, actually three, if I, 'cause I grew up with a tech enthusiast, so we always kind of had the.
[:[00:18:03] Bring it into his practice. Um, and it, you know, sometimes wasn't as he, his team members maybe weren't as excited as he was at the end of the a a o, um, just because they knew that change was afoot and, and that it wasn't always super, super well received, um, by the staff. So, um. What kind of resources do you afford?
[:[00:18:48] Brandon Owen: Yes, absolutely. And I think you kinda hit the nail on the head a little bit that, um.
[:[00:19:20] I'm going out partying with my friends tonight. I would've said, you don't show up tomorrow. You're fired. Uh, it's a different thing today because the leverage that they have over us, because the, the challenge to replace that person is so profound that, um. Where we used to, you know, you think about, I, I, I like to use the analogy to staff when we're going in is the process of digital and direct bonding.
[:[00:20:07] I mean, I had 'em all stick, the trays were sticking, they were falling off. I had to redo individual ones. And, and then you get five or six under your belt and then it's SM sealing. And if we had the same leverage of staff today that the, the staff has over us today, back. As we do. Back then, I don't think we, and the liners would've taken off because they would've all revolted just like mine revolted back in the office.
[:[00:20:51] You know, you think about the offices because of the staffing shortages that they're working through lunch, they end up leaving the office at five 30 or six o'clock. The [00:21:00] office is always behind, so patients are upset and they're having to like put out fires, just emotional fires. Minute after minute throughout their day.
[:[00:21:26] Contributing as much or or driving friction in the office, you might be able to still manage the schedule without some of them. Um, I think that's, that's what we really have to plant as the, the carrot at the front end of this. And then we have to be very honest with them that it is gonna suck. The first three or four times, you may have failures and you may feel bad about yourself and your skill.
[:[00:22:10] Setting the psychological and mental landscape for why are we willing to do the painful things to, to actually make this be part of the practice is, is really the core foundation. But on top of that, we have a 12 month kind of onboarding process that really we've, we've really started focusing a lot more on the treatment coordinator and how they communicate to patients and how they schedule those.
[:[00:22:57] So if you're trying to figure out a quick [00:23:00] resource, but there's a curriculum that we actually ask everybody to follow so you can build the score, the, the key. Foundational, um, didactic elements, but it's also a great quick search guide to how do I fix a loose bracket? And you can pull up a video that shows you in 90 seconds, because I think that's what the assistants don't want to feel like is okay.
[:[00:23:59] [00:24:00] If you're not trying to make yourself more efficient and you're gonna just do the things the same way that you've always done them, don't do it. You need to also have a mind shift as the doctor of learning about how am I gonna strategically reallocate my scheduling? How am I gonna strategically learn the new clinical protocols to optimize this?
[:[00:24:31] Amy Epstein: Yeah.
[:[00:24:38] Change management is really hard. Yeah. And the other thing I'll say is that. We love to my, my vision for this is that it totally transforms the patient delivery experience to where I know my office, I treat cases, our comp case average is 10 months, so I know that one year in braces is possible. I. Do I think offices should [00:25:00] do that?
[:[00:25:17] Dr. Keon Klempner: Yep. You know, Brandon, you know, when I, when I listened to you and I think back to when I was in practice and when I looked at the day sheet, let's say when I came in in the morning, had my cup of coffee, you know, I looked day sheet, you'd see certain patients that you didn't want to see and they were coming in and, but when I saw a lot of aligner cases, I said, oh, this is gonna be an easy day.
[:[00:26:02] It cost money. I, I just, uh, yesterday got a text on the gauge Q1 data and you know, exams are down, production collection starts, you know, one to 2% up year over year, but basically flat. So ortho's a feeling, the squeeze right. Now. I wondered if you could walk us through, if you don't mind sharing this, your price structure, you know, what does it cost for somebody to.
[:[00:26:32] Brandon Owen: you? Yeah, that's a great question. And so we have two different pathways. When somebody signs up with us, we have something called the Unlock, where you basically can just do one case if you want to, we'll give you the training support. And so that one has kind of a. A little bit of a front load of costs just for the supplies.
[:[00:27:07] I'll tell you, I don't recommend it because if you're going to do one or two cases here and there. Your staff's never gonna learn it. Every time those patients come in, you're not gonna feel the efficiency gain. Um, but you'll feel a lot of the training burden and your staff will be very vocal about it.
[:[00:27:45] Is, is the value of this system there in your office or is it not there? Um, Scott Fry had a really interesting post, uh, last year sometime on. How he thinks that the structure going forward is gonna look more at [00:28:00] the lab bill, plus the staff costs being kind of the new metric of, of that staffing overhead.
[:[00:28:26] With an aligner, even if the case is going off track, all I have to do is tell my staff, I delegate this to my staff. Hey, let's do a new scan for refinement. Right? I, I get to punt that off to them, so I'm still gonna run on time. The whole rest of the day. There's nothing that could come up where I'm like, oh, great, now I've gotta drop everything for 45 minutes and, and get back on track.
[:[00:29:14] Uh, everything else is, I can look at. The remote monitoring, we say, oh, this, we're looking great, we're doing this. I can check cr uh, just to make sure we don't have any weird functional slides, but I can say, oh, the, this is what your teeth started, like this is what they look like today. And we're gonna put these wires, these ties, and these rubber bands.
[:[00:29:48] But if it's a, oh, we're gonna repo 20 brackets, or I've gotta put a whole bunch of wire bins in and I've got three of those stacked up right next to each other, and we have a new patient exam and we have an ec, all of those things [00:30:00] are me. Right? And so I'm the problem, it's not, it's not anything other than me, it being the problem.
[:[00:30:33] I could have done it in one detailing appointment, but I did it in two or three because they weren't quite class one yet, and I needed to see canines. And so just even trying to optimize and look at your own office, what you're doing at the Dand analysis and say, could I have done better? Could I have shaved out a visit here or there, or could I have done less doctor time, less of chair time, have not brought the patient in for an appointment where.
[:[00:31:20] And so to have all of that for the parent. Just at the end of the day to say, oh, we really don't need to do anything. Things look pretty good. Um, and for you as the orthodontist to incur the overhead of that right, is every time a patient walks through your front door, you're gonna have fixed and variable overhead costs that basically are impeding your ability to, to maximally produce, right?
[:[00:31:58] Amy Epstein: Yeah.
[:[00:32:02] Amy Epstein: Well, I mean, you're, it's a perfect segue, um, into something that has been on my mind, but just to, to frame up my, my, uh. Question. I am the parent of a 10-year-old girl who, um, you know, her, her first consult with an orthodontist is coming up.
[:[00:32:41] They complain about this very thing. They go into their appointment and they're doing everything you just said. They're pulling them out midday because they're so precious. Few after school appointments, um, they're missing math and they, you know, the kid's missing math. The parent is missing work and they go in and there's not much to [00:33:00] be done.
[:[00:33:22] Yeah. Yeah. So how do you articulate the benefit to them when they don't realize necessarily, unless you say like, well, if you go for traditional, you might have these problems, but with us you don't. How do you flip that script to all positives so that you can market to parents in, in your community the benefits of what you provide to, to patients?
[:[00:34:13] Um, versus we know the US average is 18 months for kind of a comprehensive fixed appliance case. So boy, if we can save eight trips to the office for you, how valuable is that for you as a commuting parent? I can tell you because I set my office up because I, it's always just been a passion of mine to see how, how quickly can I get a high quality finish on a patient, even when I was using conventional.
[:[00:34:54] The comments from the parents are all their friends are still in braces, and they got 'em on a year before. [00:35:00] They, they even started. And so you start seeing this internal marketing when you go for that. But it requires, like I said, a scripting in the office at the, at the consult payment plans. We have a whole bunch of things.
[:[00:35:30] And so I think both are very sellable. I also want to answer Leon's question 'cause I, I, on the last one, basically, the way I like to talk about our pricing point is if you look at just fixed direct bonding, uh, uh. Practice to do digital indirect bonding. You basically have to save about one visit to hit break even, you know, office overhead being between 150, maybe $220.
[:[00:36:10] For custom, at least at our price point, you basically have to save two office visits. So if you can save two office visits, then it justifies the expense of. The appliance, just in terms that, the only metric I'm talking about though is office visits. I'm not talking about all the intangibles we talked about where doctor intensive throwing off the schedule and all those other things.
[:[00:36:59] 'cause [00:37:00] I think a lot of people are worried about root resorption and some of these other things is. If you think about flying across the country with a direct flight that's custom, right, is we're going exactly from where you are to where you want to be with the fewest number of detours possible versus with conventional.
[:[00:37:35] Or do you wanna do all of those adjustments and everything else?
[:[00:37:57] You don't need as large a footprint when you're starting [00:38:00] out. You don't need those 10 chairs. You don't need a huge staff. If you think about incorporating. Um, some sort of remote monitoring and digital customized, uh, appliances into your workflow right from the beginning. You could, you have an advantage.
[:[00:38:45] Is there anything that you're featuring this year at the A A O?
[:[00:39:06] I, I know self ligating brackets are, you know, something that not everybody uses. I think the, the problem I found with them early on was that they had, um. Play the, the slop at the beginning was so advantageous in getting on the unraveling and I, and it, it is incredible with Twin versus sl, how much you can unravel that initial alignment.
[:[00:39:46] And we prop, we have the tightest tolerances of any metal bracket that's ever been made because it matters when you put that finishing wire in. And so I would say that that's the swan song is if you want the most efficient bracket. Uh, from my opinion on [00:40:00] the, on the planet right now, it's the SL bracket.
[:[00:40:26] Where the roots are in the bone, you know where the roots are relative to one another. And so where I might have, on the rare occasion, some distal rip tip that I need to add to the wire. Now with our setup, it, it really takes that, that one element out of the equation altogether. So that's, I think, the big stuff.
[:[00:40:59] We [00:41:00] want you to be able to approve cases like this. And so, um, being able to have that and being able to innovate on that software, it's, it's already, it gets better every month. That's the fun thing now that we kind of control our own destiny. Um, so I think the software, CVCT, the SL bracket, those are the big things that I'm excited about.
[:[00:41:20] Amy Epstein: Yeah, we look forward to, uh, visiting the booth and learning more, and, uh, visiting with you at the a a O. Listen, thank you so much for being with us today. Um, it, this has been a great episode. We, we appreciate your time, have learned a lot. If our listeners would like to learn more, connect with you, have a question, what's the best way that they might be able to reach out?
[:[00:42:03] So, super excited to see you guys in person. Yeah. And uh, anyone else who's listening, this should be a great show.
[:[00:42:28] Another thank you Brandon for joining us. We hope to have you on again soon and we will see you at the A A O.
[:[00:42:51] Um, there's an opportunity on our website, ppl practice.com. We have a partner page and there is a special offer there for our [00:43:00] podcast listeners. So you can book a demo and if you mention people in practice, you get $250 off KOL system. So, um, you can link there and we'll put the link in the, uh, in the show notes as well.
[:[00:43:36] We currently are in the golden Age. Take advantage of it. Bye for now.
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