THE MILLIONAIRE DENTIST PODCAST

EPISODE 43 TRANSCRIPTION

Announcer:
Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Millionaire Dentist podcast, brought to you by Four Quadrants Advisory. On this podcast, we break down the world of dentistry, finances and business practices to help you become the millionaire dentist you deserve to be. Please be advised, we do speak with an honest tongue and may not be safe for work.

Casey Hiers:
Hello and welcome. This is Casey Hiers back at it and today we have a special guest joining our podcast, Dr. Leonard Ostrowski is a very young and successful dentist in the Midwest. He is someone who strives to be the best at what he does and I asked Leonard to join us today on our podcast. Leonard, thank you for being a guest with us today on the Millionaire Dentist Podcast.

Dr Leonard Ostrowski:
Thank you for having me, Casey.

Casey Hiers:
Absolutely. I asked you to join us today because I wanted to share with our listeners the idea and the benefit of potentially learning how to do implants. And I know some folks want to do them out of the gate, others learn to do them throughout the course of their career. And so really just want to dive into your experience with implants, how you started with them, your take on them now and just sort of, kind of, jump in that way. Does that sound okay with you?

Dr Leonard Ostrowski:
Sounds great.

Casey Hiers:
So my first question is how did you come to the conclusion that you wanted to learn implants or offer implants? Talk to us about where that journey, the implant journey, began.

Dr Leonard Ostrowski:
So before I had purchased a practice, I'm currently at, I worked for quite a large group practice and they had a periodontist that did the implants there and it came to the point where I had a lot of close friends and also family members that needed implants. And I knew I didn't want to stay at that large group practice forever. And when I did decide to finally break out on my own, that was going to be something I wanted to provide for my patients. So fortunately there was a neurosurgeon, there was a friend of mine and he offered to mentor me and basically look over my shoulder while I placed implants on close friends and family and that's how I got my training essentially.

Dr Leonard Ostrowski:
I used this couple of different systems in the beginning. I started with the Taulman and then I used the Implant Direct. So I got a taste of different systems and it was really nice having that one-on-one training. I'm sure most people, that's probably going to be hard to find but that's how I got my start and I'd always knew that was going to be something I did want to offer at my practice. So

Casey Hiers:
Now let's go back. So friends and family, when they reach out to you for those implants were they looking for a referral, or they said, "Hey, Leonard, I need you to yank my tooth out. Can you do it tomorrow?" What would that look like? That's fascinating.

Dr Leonard Ostrowski:
So, I think the very first one I did was a friend of mind and it was his mom and she was on hard times and she worked at a jewelry store and she's like, "Oh my God, Lenny. This tooth, it's got to come out and I can't walk around without a tooth there. What can you do? Can you help me out?" And so that was where I was like, if I could offer her an implant at a good reasonable price and if she's willing to let me learn on her, this is a win-win for all of us. So that's kind of what sparked it and the first one was an immediate placement actually and it went quite well. I mean, she still has it and it looks great, but that's kind of the first family friend that sparked the whole, started my implants.

Casey Hiers:
And then you had that hands-on experience with the oral surgeon. Kudos to him for pouring into a young dentist. But talk a little bit about that hands-on training you received from him, what that looked like because obviously a lot of folks have to go find that training and spend their weekends over the course of months or like an implant course as we know. So talk to us about how you got this one-on-one hands-on experience and were able to work on friends and family, that's really nice. But talk about that training, the level of training and how that kind of poured into your confidence to do these.

Dr Leonard Ostrowski:
So Gabe was willing to, I think I did most of them, if not all of them on Fridays when his schedule is done. I think he worked about noon and then I'd have a friend or a family member come if they needed one and we'd get all set up and he would kind of give me guidance, this is what you want to do. I'm going to stand right here and it's all on you, but if you need me to step in or if you need any help, just let me know. So and it was the beginning stages. It probably took me close to three hours to sync one or two implants and I learned the whole process though.

Dr Leonard Ostrowski:
That's the main thing is you don't want to rush it. You want to pick and choose your cases and take your time, that's the main thing. You certainly don't want to rush through this, especially in the very beginning. But having him there, it kind of, as a crutch, definitely helped my confidence just in case things were to get a little uncomfortable for myself or if I hit a roadblock and was like, "Hey, I don't know what I should do moving forward." He was there to help. So that was huge. So for people starting out, you definitely want to get very good training, but take your time. Pick and choose your cases certainly.

Casey Hiers:
Nice. So my next question, it's a little bit of a loaded question, but generally speaking, talk about the financial demographics of your area. And I say a loaded question because we find that sometimes practice owners can have the misconception that you must be in an affluent area if you're going to offer implants or take the time to do that training. And I'm just curious, do you find a correlation between needing to be in an affluent area to offer implants versus there's many areas that people need this. Do you want to touch on that?

Dr Leonard Ostrowski:
So where I currently practice is very blue collar, middle-class. It certainly is not affluent, but I'd say very blue collar middle-class. And I wouldn't say that I do a ton of implants each month, but I do enough. And just because it's not an affluent area, people still want implants. When it comes to the option of a bridge or an implant, most times they're, cost-wise, pretty darn close, and they're going to opt for the implant where you don't have to have more teeth in the game or essentially have to bring more teeth into the game. If you have teeth that have not been worked on and they got a missing tooth, you certainly don't want to go grinding down perfectly good teeth to go replace one missing one.

Dr Leonard Ostrowski:
So I don't believe that you have to be in an affluent area to offer implants. And not only that, aside from just replacing single teeth with the dentures, lower denture implant, retained dentures, that's huge. Most people hate having lower dentures. And if you're able to offer the service of sinking a couple implants and giving them much better retention, where they aren't absolutely hating their lower denture, that's huge. So again, back to the question, no, I don't believe that you have to be in an affluent area to offer this.

Casey Hiers:
Really just having those options for any area, it sounds like is what's important and you can talk through the different options that they have. From your perspective, in terms of let's call it case acceptance or explaining and describing the different options for your patients, talk to me about that. Have you had to polish that a little bit with the implant option versus what you just mentioned or is it one of those things when you just present the facts, typically, a patient will gravitate towards one option?

Dr Leonard Ostrowski:
When I have a patient for the first time and go over the treatment plan, if they have a missing tooth, or if there's a tooth that is going to need to come out and they're looking to replace it, I explain to them. With bridges, bridges can be a great option, but they're not always the best option. And I explain why, and then also when you have bridges and if it's a longer spanning bridge and you have more teeth in the game, one tooth out of that, say it's a five to six unit bridge, if one tooth goes bad, now that whole thing is compromised. Where if you have one tooth that you're looking to replace, or two teeth you're looking to replace, and you can offer two implants, then you're eliminating the issue of having other teeth compromise your restorative plan. So I try to make that pretty clear with patients that if you can keep it a single tooth problem, it's always better than involving more teeth and making things much more complicated down the line.

Casey Hiers:
Makes sense. I love the simplicity of it. That makes total sense and in reality, you're probably saving a lot of heartache for these folks having that offering. Are there any unintended consequences of being trained in implants and offering implants and doing X amount a month? Anything, if a listener out there is considering learning this or adding this to their practice, is there anything to be aware of or unintended consequences?

Dr Leonard Ostrowski:
I would say that there is a pretty good financial investment upfront. Initially with the training, from what I've researched, implant training certainly is not cheap, but also what I have found is that if you do decide to place implants in your practice, it is much more beneficial to yourself to have a variety of sizes of implants. So you're going to have a pretty good size inventory, which again, depending on the particular brand that you're using, it can be very expensive. So I guess that would be the one unintended consequence, just having a lot of that money sitting on the shelf and hoping that you're going to use them. But I have found that it makes things much less stressful when you have a variety of implants and extra inventory when you're placing them, just in case things don't go exactly as planned.

Casey Hiers:
You mentioned it earlier, and also we'll sort of start to wrap it up with this, but you had mentioned for anybody getting involved in implants, really take your time. I think that was a real good portal of wisdom. But I guess, what sort of first steps or initial steps would you suggest to a practice owner who is thinking about adding implants to their practice? Obviously you had mentioned that there is some training and there's a cost associated with anything. But I guess on the front end, how would you maybe suggest someone gets started? And then maybe talk about the costs that you will incur, but then to your practice and your patients, the overall picture of you love offering implants and you wouldn't want to take them away. Kind of a three-part question there, but just want to get some feedback from you on those things.

Dr Leonard Ostrowski:
So I, I guess if I were starting fresh, I do my research. I would either reach out to other dentists that are placing implants or have had formal training at different institutes and maybe get their opinions. So get a good idea of where you want to invest your money in terms of training. And after that, you just start very simple. Start with an abundance of bone. Start somewhere where you know complications are very unlikely to arise. I would make sure you're comfortable doing surgical procedures.

Dr Leonard Ostrowski:
If you get a little uneasy extracting teeth then I would say more than likely placing implants is not going to be your cup of tea because it's surgery. So you want to make sure you're comfortable with surgery first and foremost. But yeah, research the different training institutes is what I would suggest. And when you start, take your time. I would make sure [inaudible 00:13:24] blackout, your other op column and give yourself adequate time and just make sure there's an abundance of bone and start somewhere where it's very unlikely you're going to run into any problems.

Casey Hiers:
Could you imagine not offering implants at this point, now that you've been in it? Could you imagine not offering it?

Dr Leonard Ostrowski:
Not really, no. I would hate to see that going out my door to be quite honest.

Casey Hiers:
No, I appreciate your honesty because that's obviously a big part of this is practice owners have to balance that the time and the money versus what the payoff is. And most folks that we talk to and you included, it's a really nice offering to have and couldn't imagine not having that revenue on a monthly basis, whatever it is. Yeah.

Dr Leonard Ostrowski:
That is true. Yes. And the other part to it, as well is, say you were to send it out, it ends up back in your hands to restore. So being able to complete the case from start to finish and take responsibility for the whole aspect is pretty nice as well, because ultimately you're going to be the one restoring it. So you then, by placing it are able to put it where you want and that helps also with the restorative end.

Casey Hiers:
What a great attitude on that. And I think most patients would want that from dentist, somebody who wants that ownership wants that responsibility and accountability to do a really good job for them. And this helps you keep that control and that's great. Well, Leonard, I want to thank you for joining us today. We just wanted to dip our toe into the world of implants and I just felt that you would be great to have on and I appreciate the information you've shared with our listeners. Thanks so much.

Dr Leonard Ostrowski:
Thank you, Casey. I appreciate it.

Announcer:
That's all the time we have today. Thank you to our guests for their insight and for sharing some really great information. And thank you to you, the listener, for tuning in. The Millionaire Dentist podcast is brought to you by Four Quadrants Advisory. To see if they might be a good fit for you and your practice, go on over to fourquadrantsadvisory.com and see why year after year, they retain over 95% of their clients. Thank you again for joining us and we'll see you next time.