Ep. 13: From the Fairway to the Dental Chair (feat. Vin Ciarlone)

Part 10:00

This is Podpopuli, podcasts for the people. Hello and welcome to another episode of Beyond the Arches. I'm your host, Dr. Daniel Noorthoek. With me today, we have a special guest, a special treat. We have Vin. I don't really know how to say your last name because I mess it up every time. You know how to spell it. I guess in English it would be... Carlone? Charlone. Charlone. In Italian it's Charlone. Charlone. Okay. Okay. Well, we have Vin. Vinny.

That's good enough. Vinny is near and dear to my heart because not only is he a patient, not a full-arch, but a regular patient, but he is also my golf coach and friend at the golf course, etc. And so we've gone through a bunch of stuff talking, you know, in terms of dentistry, but also you've coached and worked with me through golf. And believe it or not, we're going to be able to re-pull this all back. Into sort of dentistry and how it relates to patients.

So what I'd like to start with, though, is kind of a background on Vin. So Vin, when you were young and starry-eyed with your career, you know, why don't you give us a story of just kind of who you are and how you came to be Vin? Okay. I'm born in upstate New York, the capital district. Okay. Albany Troy and Schenectady and played sports. I was like any other young guy from when he was six years old all the way until college and thought he could play Major League Baseball and found out real quick that there's some players out there.

When did you start golf in terms of, like, was baseball first or golf? Baseball was first. And when I found out that I wasn't a baseball player, I decided to try golf, and probably around 23 I started, and 24 I got in as a golf professional. Twenty-three years old is when you started golf. So you picked it up quick. I mean, to have a career in it. A lot of the athletes, you know, especially hockey players, which are probably the best non-golf golfers.

Oh, yeah. I've played with a few. It's pretty wild. And baseball players are very good. There's some great football players. Even at our club, we have some. There's some great players that are probably baseball, football, and basketball. So after 23, I got in as an assistant golf professional and did a year in upstate New York and then moved to the Poconos of Pennsylvania and eventually started work with a corporation known as Caesars out of Las Vegas, Tahoe, and Atlantic City.

Yep. Did probably about 18 years. 18 years with them. Wow. Went out and taught with John Jacobs for five years, traveling the country. Okay. And then learned how to teach. When you say traveling the country and teaching with him, what kind of, what would your day look like when that was happening? I'll give you an example. It would be in the winters, we were down at the Bonaventure Resort in Fort Lauderdale, and in the summers at the Seaview where the girls just played.

Okay. Outside of Atlantic City. And we taught golf schools. Okay. Would they be clinics at different clubs or the same one kind of over and over, same people, or was it kind of changing all the time? It was probably, it ranged from 15 to 20 people, depending, five players for one instructor. Uh-huh. And we would be at that place for a week, stay there all through the summer, unless they needed you, another teacher at another place. So I was always flying in and out of Atlantic City.

Or driving up to Philly and flying out to Portland, Maine, up to, down to Hilton Head and going all over. Then in the winters, come down to Bonaventure, work mostly out of there, and go to Marco Island, Orlando, to other sites that... You were all over the place. Yeah. East Coast. Yeah. And what did you teach? Sarcasm? No, I'm not very good at that. Yeah, right. Right. Well, the philosophy of John Jacobs was grip, aim, stance, and posture.

And if you could teach those four things to somebody in five days... Sure. Most of the time, they were pretty happy. Were you working with extreme amateurs, people like myself, who put an exorbitant amount of time into the game but don't get any better, or more pro-level? With everybody, and to correct you real quick. You are improving a lot. Yeah, I'm coming around. You have improved from when I first started with you. You're really doing much better.

Yeah, it's a dedication, though. It's a big dedication. Now, when you were doing that, would you find that teaching helped you some, or was it more just instruction and you didn't get much time to work on your own game, or were you able to... Well, we were doing like a nine to four with the... You're assigned five players for the week. And if there's four instructors, you have 20 players. And you did the lunch, and then you did dinner together at the resort that you were at.

Oh, so these camps were kind of like an all-day kind of thing. Five-day camps. Wow. They had weekend camps also. So it's almost like a ski school kind of thing where you're attached to your instructor for that full day, or for those five days. Your full swing instructor was your main instructor, but then you went to different sites like short game. Yeah, chipping, putting. You know, chipping, putting, sand. I see. So short game, full swing, and then trouble shots.

And they tried to give you a whole area of their expertise to get you a little bit better. And there were some players that got... A lot better. Sure. There were some that didn't grasp it. And the non-athletic golfer was having a hard time. But, you know, they got their good share of time. They got... At the end of our classes around 2, 3 o'clock, we went and played nine holes with them. Okay. That's fun. So we had on-course...

Uh-huh. Course management. Management. Where your bad shots go, how to recover from them, not try to stick it through that. Tiny gap in the trees. Things that we've worked on. Well, that's exactly what I was just thinking of. Yeah. Not to mention names, but we had a situation where a guy duck hooked it over in the trees. And it's looking through that little two-inch hole. Yeah. And it pulls out two iron. And I go, what are you doing?

Yeah. Yeah. He says, oh, I'm going to hit it through that spot there right on the green. And I went, with all due respect, you just missed a fifth. 55-yard fairway. Yeah. And you want to hit it through a two-inch. Yeah. It's always the draw. Chip it back out to the fairway, take your penalty, hit it on the green, and go from there. And that's what, you know, I think that's the natural draw to golf, whether you be a dentist or a plumber or an electrician or whatever it is.

We all, we say it constantly in this podcast, but, you know, we're all human. We all enjoy the human struggle to some degree. ▶And golf tests your resiliency against yourself, and you don't always end up in great spots. I mean, Tiger Woods can't even look at himself and say, even in a full round, that everything went the way that he went. But managing it, fighting back from it, that can be rewarding. That can be a good feel.

Well, it's the only sport that you're on your own. Yeah. Totally independent. Baseball, you got eight other guys out there trying to help you. Yeah. True. When you think about it. Yeah. Exactly. Basketball, you got four. And football, you got another 10. Plus, plus, plus, plus, plus. Exactly. For golf, it's you against all that grass. The little ball. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And the iron, and the weather, and the grass. And there's a lot that goes into it.

The sand. So, tell me, before we move on to kind of relating it to sort of teaching and coaching and more or less patient stuff,

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you told me a story a long time ago about going to, I think you were in California, and you got some irons there. You were playing in a competition or something that I always found sort of fascinating. It was the one, and you flew. What I found fascinating was when you were playing, there were advantages to being a pro where they would take you out and host you, right? And we went out to probably two or three times a year over the winter months.

We went to Pebble. Okay. And played Pebble, Spyglass. Spyglass in the Spanish Bay. Wow. I've been there one time. I've been privileged enough to play there one time, and it was incredible. Yeah. I think the best that I've ever had is staying in room 101 at Pebble, which is right behind the 18th Green. Gorgeous. Looking out at Stillwater Cove. Yeah. I could have easily, when we went to Pebble, I could have easily just walked and not picked up a golf club.

Just walked with them. And actually, our buddies, the reason why we went was, for our 40th birthday party, my good friend, my best friend, and his father, who played golf and was the reason why he plays golf, his father came with us, but he doesn't play anymore, and he actually walked. This was during COVID, so they kind of got away with murder. You could kind of do anything you wanted to because there wasn't anything else to do in the resort.

And so he was able to ride and walk along with us the entire time, which was stunning. It was epic. Yeah. He took one shot on, is it 6 or 7, the par 3? 6? 7. 7. 105 yards. He took one shot, probably put it to maybe 15 feet. It was not a windy day, so it was just a 100-yard club. And he goes, used to play the game, boys. That was the only thing he said about playing and the only shot that he took.

So that was quite the memory. So when you would play there, you said twice a year? Two to three times. Two to three times. Would you get to play all three each time? I mean, you've played these courses quite a bit then. Well, I had a very good friend that was like the tournament organizer. Okay. From a place in the Poconos called Shawnee on the Delaware. And he sort of took care of me on practice rounds. ▶A lot of guys had to play Spyglass, had to play Spanish Bay, and I always played Pebble.

I see. Is that your favorite of the three? I think it's a favorite of the three. All. Any golf course I've ever played. Yeah. It's just, if anybody has been there and they've played six, seven, eight, and nine, and 10. Yeah. It's that string of holes is just beyond words. I think my wife even enjoyed it when we were there. They began going back to the COVID thing. There was no spa, nothing open. So they went and shopped in the beginning of the round that we played there.

We played all three of them as well, but specifically on Pebble Beach Day, they didn't have much

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to do. And so they met us on maybe like hole 16 or 17, and it was everybody we were with, the parents of my buddy, his kids, our wives. We all got to take, all the women got to take tee shots off of 18. Probably shouldn't be telling us, like somebody's going to give us a call, like, hey, you weren't supposed to do that. But it was cool. Yeah, exactly. But I have a picture of all of us going, walking down 18, which was pretty unique and different because it wasn't just the golfers.

It was all of us with our spouses and everything was pretty neat. So definitely some memories there. But also, didn't you tell me when you went there, they had like irons for you. They had like a gift there for you and you flew. I remember you told me you flew in like a prop plane. I went into San Francisco and took that 40-seater down to Monterey, which was, that plane landed very fast. When it stopped, I was the happiest guy in the world.

You're still shaking from it. Oh, gosh. But not to get mixed up with that, I had flown out to play Torrey Pines. And just north of San Diego is Carlsbad where Taylor made and all the major companies. ▶R Callaway and there's probably about five places out there, but Taylor made is the one that I went out and got fitted for my own set of irons and woods any year I wanted to get new clubs. Tell me actually, you just sparked an idea of something we could talk about for a little bit.

When you say fitting, probably not for the average person, but how important would you say fitting is being a teaching guy? Extremely. We all know that the shaft is the most important thing in a fitting because from a lady's shaft to a senior shaft, to a regular shaft, to a medium shaft, to a stiff shaft, to an extra stiff shaft is a big, big factor. Yeah. And where it flexes. Right? So now we have the graphite. And for the people listening that don't necessarily play golf, what we're talking about is what attaches to the head of the club, the shaft.

It seems like, well, it's just metal or it's just a graphite shaft. And I find that a lot of people that I play golf with don't even realize how big of a deal that is as well. But there's different flex points. It can be in the middle. It can be down towards the bottom. It can be in two different places. And that all relates to your swing and how to keep the ball sort of on track. They now have steel fiber, which is a mixture of graphite and steel.

Oh, wow. Just mixing the two together. But yeah, it is important to be able to appreciate and see. And when you go through a fitting, it takes time, right? It takes the expertise of the person. It takes a couple hours. You can't just go to a regular place and get it fitted. No. Most of the companies have club fitters that go to your site, say you're a member where you are at Seagate. Yeah. And they come and you book a time.

And a couple things that we didn't talk about besides the shaft and the grip, because now you can go with a regular thin grip, a midsize, or you can go to an extra large, and that's a big factor.

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But one of the better and more important things would be the club itself in the irons, whether you have a cavity back, which is how it's routed out in the back of the club. To make the sweet spot a little bit bigger, as opposed to a blade, which is solid right across. Very difficult to hit. The hitting area is very small compared to a cavity, which spreads out your hitting area. Helps the higher handicap. Cheat codes, if you will.

Can be. Well, you have to get every advantage you can in the game of life and without cheating, obviously. But... And that's... I was thinking about the fitting. ▶We spend a lot of time fitting teeth in, right? There's a lot that goes into it that you can't even see, because at the end of the day, well, it's just 12 or 14 teeth, or however many anybody has. There's a lot of steps and there's a lot of expertise into getting those correct.

And one thing that I think is interesting is that when we're talking about getting fitted, right? And you go to a, let's say, club champion. Where they have clubs. They have kind of everything there. I mean, how many different clubs and combos do they have? I'm sure it's in the billions, because you couldn't even put them all together if you tried. So there's a lot, but those are also custom fitted to you, but they're also not extremely custom.

They're not just made for VIN. They're made for anyone that is similar to VIN. Along with the handicap system. Yeah. If you're a zero to 10, you're probably going to have a stiff or an extra stiff shaft. Sure. If you're a senior, you're going to have a senior shaft, which makes it more flexible. Right. But what I'm saying is it's not like somebody went into a lab and just made it for VIN. And actually what's kind of cool is while our teeth are totally custom, they are made as one offs.

There are features that are in there that are kind of in a lot of people's because it is a little bit, you kind of start with that one size fits all of sorts and then fit in a way you kind of go through a process, which is ours. Right. And we take seven days or five days or however long it takes the person to select the teeth is we want to make sure that that shaft, if you will, that club is going to fit their mouth for good chewing, biting and be functional for a long time.

We want it to perform the way that they need it to perform because everyone's bite and everything is going to be different. And so there's a lot of similarities there. Now moving on, you spent a lot of time teaching. Right. Yeah. Yeah. And you know, in many ways I kind of see myself as a little bit of a teacher in a lot of different capacities, but one main one is my job is to meet somebody and teach them everything that I know about dentistry and everything that I've learned about dentistry within a compact 30 or 40 minute visit and try to parlay as much as I can into them, which as I'm thinking was thinking towards this discussion that we were going to have in many ways is probably relatively similar.

It was, you know, you have 3% of, um, you know, when you go to the company and basically based because you're not just teaching another pro how to continue or give them feedback. So in some cases you're dealing with an extreme amateur who doesn't know anything about golfing. And so I wondered if there was anything you took away from teaching that was sort of that level of, uh, or a takeaway of, you know, I found this was most effective where I know what you're saying.

because you're trying to teach somebody that doesn't know anything about it and that can be difficult to break that barrier. You have to teach that person in a different way and it can be difficult sometimes to train that. That's a great point because let's face it, there are different levels of play and how I would approach a very good athlete and how I know that he understands it might not be something that the lower average or ranked player knows about.

So you have to walk into it and change your verbiage to most people to where you basically get them back. You're teaching both people the same thing but you're using different language. If I were to go to a ranked beginning golfer and talk about verticals, vertical axis and centrifugal force and he would look at me and go, thanks for the science lesson but do I have to pay you for that lesson? I don't understand what you said but I can go to a two handicap.

He would probably understand all of that after five, 10 swings. Yeah, it's very similar. I mean, when I'm doing a consult, it's how is this patient, where is this person located? How is this person's level of understanding? How much research have they done beforehand? They don't need to do any, by the way. I mean, this isn't to talk bad on anyone that's not but it is very much as a teacher in that type of role, you do have to alter your communication techniques and you do have to change the verbiage, right?

I can't be talking about these high level dentistry things when they really just want to hear whether or not the teeth are going to go in. And one thing with our process because it's kind of a high dollar, high stakes, game, it is very, very important that you deliver the most clear message to your audience as possible. There's a world in which a person will come in and they don't care about any of the specifics and they don't care about anything negative that can happen.

And when those people come through, rather than just kind of pushing them off to the side of my golf clinic, if you will, right? And letting them do their thing. Just make their own assumptions. I'm sure you dealt with that occasionally. I have to make sure because I'm responsible for that person's level of play, if you will, that person's understanding and their ability to overcome and be understanding to the process. I have to double down and change my verbiage maybe a little bit and come at it from a different angle and really sit down and make them listen to a portion of it even if they don't care or they are thinking, already think they know.

It's important that we kind of impart our aspect and our approach to the process. I think it's amazing what you've accomplished with, quote, done in one. Well, thank you. I mean, it's, as a good example, I mean, I've been so impressed. Your staff is probably the most professional and well-trained, I guess might be the right word, but you're a professional. Everything that they discuss with you is down to... Yeah, we've always really pushed on the communication part, being really connecting with people.

And it's not about metrics. It's not, of course, we review them. You had to wait for me to get out of my meeting today. But, of course, there's metrics and things that we look at, but that isn't what the engine that runs done in one. The engine that runs done in one is finding good people, whether or not they have the knowledge immediately. We'll give that to them. We'll give that to them as we go through. But finding the good people has been important.

Well, just to give you an example, the girls behind the desk, I'm not sure they need to know about the dental end of it, but they're so professional with their answering on the phone and how they treat you when you walk in. It just makes you feel so comfortable. Let's face it, how many people want to go to a dentist and... Zero. Literally zero. Open your mouth. Zero. It might be negative, negative numbers. The dentist doesn't even want to go.

But they make you feel so comfortable. ▶The girls behind the desk are the best. The rest of the staff, besides being professional and so educated, you have staff that worked with my teeth that were just...

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I think they need a raise. Of course they do. Yes. Well, they always deserve a raise. Whether or not we can afford it is the issue. But, you know, to again bring it back to golf, you know, when you walk into... There are places that you walk in to some level, occasionally at Seagate. It hasn't always been that way. But the improvement came from what, right? Recently in the last eight years, there's been a huge improvement. The improvement came from what?

The personnel changing, the personnel improving, the experience improving, the facilities improving. But giving that... I draw a lot of the way I run things off of experiences and just like anybody, right? And a country club experience is what I'm looking for because I want that feel to this day if I walk into a club that I've never been to, a friend invites me or whatnot, and when they treat you like you're a 10 out of 10 and you're not just some riffraff and what are you doing here, it completely changes the experience.

And the golf course doesn't even matter. The quality of the golf course doesn't even necessarily matter. If you feel like a million bucks when you walk in, that's important, you know? And a lot of our listeners, a lot of our patients, a lot of our people have dealt with big self-confidence issues. They've dealt with not being able to smile. And one thing that's nice for us, doing what we do in full replacement, is it doesn't take a genius to say those teeth need to be fully replaced, right?

And so when you have an interaction with us, when you come for a consult, I always say it's cheating. It's a little bit like cheating because we don't have to make the patient feel bad, right? Even if I go to the dentist and I open my mouth and they take an x-ray or two, there's something that they can find and put on the screen and I feel like I'm doing a good job. It can be made to feel bad, right?

And so people associate that a lot with dentistry, sort of feeling bad. And it could be the dentist, but more or less it's kind of the work that you do. Like, you see this is messed up and this is messed up and this is messed up. We all feel like kind of self-conscious about it. We don't want that to come to light. What's nice about us is these patients, they know that their teeth are messed up. We don't have to make them feel bad because guess what?

You need them replaced. I don't care why. They just do. I also think that title you have, Done in One, as soon as I heard that, I went, really? Wow. And I was so interested. In fact, that's when I originally walked up to you and said, what the heck is Done in One? Because when you think about it, I mean, how are you going to replace, what is it, 2060, 2080? It depends on who you're talking about.

For a hybrid? ▶Generally, you're replacing first molar to first molar, which is 12 teeth. And so it's 24 for a top and bottom set of a hybrid Done in One.

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And you walk out of the office after getting told what it is, you go, wow, that makes me feel a lot more relaxed. Yeah, it does. And it's, like I said, it's cheating. It allows us to level with the patients and not feel bad about their lack of self-confidence, but we have the confidence that we can restore it. And giving them that feeling from minute one all the way to five years post-operatively, it just feeds into itself.

Creating that community is important. And I'm glad to know that you feel that way because that's the entire intention. You made a great point just by walking into a golf shop. You could walk in, and I've done it in the past where they didn't know what I did for a living. And I felt like they didn't even care if I was there. You walk into Seagate's Golf Shop, and I've been there now six years, and Sonny Grasso was the director of golf.

That whole staff back then was perfect. It made you feel great. Sonny's gone. Now Frank Lestaglia has taken over. And it's the same way. The girls behind the counter, they just make you feel so much more relaxed. Outside bag room staff takes pretty good care. The facilities are improved. Everything has really, really changed. When I joined, it was basically a nickel to join. Now it's a bazillion nickels. But I was lucky enough to join when it was a nickel.

And the change that I've seen is unbelievable. And it all goes to, more or less, personnel. They didn't make it the number one golf course in the country, but they made it so that it feels... It feels good, and you know where you are, and you feel welcome. And my visitors feel welcome, people that come from out of the area, the guests. And, you know, I play a bunch in different places, and I can tell you there's one prominent one that is on our list now of places we can play.

And they kind of looked at me like I was a criminal. And, you know, I'm fine with that to some degree, but it wasn't the same warm and cozy. And so... You know, you can feel... You can have an office that feels and operates like a municipal, just everything haphazard, and get as many in as you can. You can play in one that's epic, that doesn't have as much play volume, and is better conditioned, and has much more professional, higher-paid staff that make you feel warm and welcome.

And that difference across the board is really very similar to dentistry, really almost anything, I'm sure. But I see it as that. And I don't want to be... I don't want to be municipal and just crank people through. I also don't want to be crickets in the clubhouse and have nobody work. You know, I want everyone to feel like there's a little bit going on, but it's not overwhelming. I want it to be nice, but not too nice.

And, you know... All you have to do is treat the people nice. Yeah. I'm sure for you, too, all of those years... I'm sure you have friends that go way, way, way back from times of training and teaching, and me, you know, and just from... More or less, being a nice guy. ▶Well, since 1977, so that's 48 years. That's more years I've been on this planet. But I'm sure you have friends that go way back from just essentially initial interactions, getting along with them, being a nice, amenable person you're very easy to get along with.

And that can't be said by everybody, right? And that probably comes from your teaching nature. Being a teacher, forces you to sort of accept all walks of life. Patience is a big factor. Right. I mean, there are times where you get frustrated because you keep saying to yourself, am I teaching him the right thing if he's not grasping what we're supposed to do? So you... I mean, if I showed you at home my books of every person that I've given lessons to, I take notes when I get home at night in case that person wants to come home.

I continue on. Sure. And when we sit down for the next lesson, we went over, here's what we went over, trying to get our club back to where our arms are pointing in between our elbows. Yep. And there's so many things that you try to get accomplished so that they start feeling comfortable and relaxed. Yeah. Because that's what it's all about. I mean... Good people making the environment relaxed, getting through to a person, getting them relaxed, like you said, that's...

You could go to a hundred teaching conferences or I don't know, actually, I haven't met there, but I've never heard anyone talk about getting a person to be relaxed to be able to then teach them, which is a very important part. I think. Probably one of the most important parts. Yeah. Because a lot of people are very nervous. Yeah. When they first start out. Because a lot of people, if they're not very good at it, they don't want other people to be nervous.

They don't want other people watching them and feeling embarrassed about the whole situation. If you get them to at least advance the ball forward, that makes them feel a little bit more relaxed. For sure. Easy on the golf course. Yeah. I mean, we've all... Anyone that's played golf before knows that nervousness when you have to hit the ball in front of a group of people that you've never played with or that are staff. You just get nervous.

And, you know, not to beat a dead horse, but to pull it to our patients as well. Same thing. What you find eventually as you play golf is no one cares how far or not far that you hit it. They're not judging you. And it really just took you making the effort to see through that. Same thing here is when patients, they're nervous to begin with, but when they finally make the appointment and they finally come in and they finally see that no one's looking at how far that ball is going to go, how far that ball goes, no one's looking at how ugly or embarrassing those teeth might be or they may be embarrassed, then things can really start to go.

Because once they feel relaxed that we're not judging them, then they see, oh, well, I can take this the whole way then. And I'm sure you see that like you just said. Let's face it. The best players in the world are nervous. First tee on Thursday morning on a tour pro. They were all... Somewhat have a nerve going through that's bothering them. You know, whether you're playing in front of 25,000 people like on the tour. Example, a couple of times you saw Tiger playing where there was 20,000 people following them.

Everybody gets nervous. ▶And if you're a beginning golfer, you get nervous. I can remember a whole bunch of years I qualified for the National Long Drive and I came out of the tunnel up at the Atlanta Athletic Club. And there was 5,000 people on the tee. And I just... If you've ever seen a candle melt real fast, I felt like I was... You know, the first couple of swings, you just don't realize how nervous you get. 5,000 people is a lot.

Most people I think would be nervous hitting a golf ball in front of four or three. Multiply that by 1,000. You get six. So the first three weren't very good. Yeah, it's okay. Move on. But it was... What was that experience like? Apart from being intimidating. Well, I qualified down here at Turnberry. Okay. Turnberry Isle, I think it is. Because in the winters, I was with Caesars and they had a facility known as the California Club in North Miami Beach.

And five miles over, they had a director of golf whose name was Julius. Burroughs, who was pretty famous back in the days of Sam Snead and Ben Hogan, etc. And his son, Nick Burroughs, was a good friend of mine. On certain days, he would bring four people over, three people over and play our facility. And I would bring three or four over to his facility on other days. And when he saw that I hit it, I think 311 off the tee.

And this is going back... Back to the... Sure. Persimmon woods. Sure. No metal woods. Yeah, this is not the fitting that we were talking about earlier. So, you bought four woods for $100. Now they're 600 apiece. He was down the fairway registering all the yardages and he saw on the sheet my name and you could hear him talk back on the walkie-talkie, Vinny, is that you? Yeah. But... It was an experience. It was an experience going up to Atlanta.

Yeah. That was the week of the Atlanta Golf Classic. So, on the tee was Fuzzy Zeller, Tom Watson, you name it, and then me. And I'm sitting there, what am I doing here? Yeah, yeah. Because they're just banging the ball. What was the length of drive that ended up winning? 341. Woo! With a wood. With a wood shaft wood. Wow. I don't even come close to that. With fittings and everything in practice. It was on the first tee at the Atlanta Athletic Club.

Phenomenal facility. Yeah. Let's say I didn't do well there. That's okay. But... You did it. You had a story. It's great. And the guy said, I'll see you next year. Yeah. Did you? No. I had enough. Yeah. So, kind of as we wrap this up, I hate to ask you this question because I know what the answer is.

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But as a teaching guy, what is your number one thing that a person can do for golf to improve their game? For anyone that's listening that plays golf, is it the golf ball? Is it the shaft? What's the secret? Practice, practice, and practice. Yeah, I knew you were going to say that. I didn't want to ask it, but I had to. A practice and practice the right thing. Sure. You know, it's such a difficult game. You're standing on unlevel lies.

You're standing in high grass, low grass. Ball's stuck in a hole. I mean, the ball could be in a bunker. Sure. Have you seen that there's a video that's out there that's hysterical or like a meme or whatnot? And it's a guy that says, practice the way that you play. And so, it's on the driving range, which is usually a perfect condition. And he had drugged like half of a tree in front of it, you know. I haven't seen that, no.

Yeah, that pretty much sums it all up, right? But, yeah, it's been good talking to you, Vin. I'm sure that when you sat down here, you didn't think we were going to relate it to patients or dentistry at all. Well, it's the country club I work at and where you're a member. If we can compare it to anything being number one, it's got to be done in one. Yeah. Your facility to me. Might be one of the, probably top five in the country.

Well, I appreciate that, Vin. We've put a lot of time and effort, blood, sweat, and tears into it. And I appreciate you taking your time out of your schedule today to talk to us and relate us. It's always a good time to talk to you. And I could talk to you for hours about, of course, golf and your stories. Now, we've got to go back out and practice. Now, we're supposed to go practice. Well, to the point, I ended up having that meeting this afternoon.

You know, we were supposed to go this morning before this. And so, you know, people let life get in the way of making the appointments and needs. So, and I guess, you know, truly practicing is the way to get better as well. Like, in terms of my work, like any surgeon that's out there, the more you practice and the more opportunity you get, the better you'll be. I know I was just wrapping it up. There's a big world in surgery, in perio surgery or an oral surgeon doing the surgery.

When you do this and you're trying to, let's say, I'm trying to find somebody to take my job or me train them up to do what I do. There's always this air of you guys charge that little and you will pay that little, which is not that little, by the way. It's a very good living. But relative to what you could make as a one-off, it is. It's minor, okay, or less. Well, it never made any sense to me why you would want to do that only 10 times a year at a higher fee when you then are not going to become an expert in your craft, right?

I can't, no matter what, I get paid per ball that I hit, right? ▶If I'm practicing golf, if I only have 10 balls per year to hit, it's a whole lot different than the guy that goes and grinds on the range every single day. It's just a different feel. It's a different mindset. And so that's always been sort of our attitude is it's a high volume model, but it's not any compromise of quality. It's just getting out and actually doing the repetition so that you feel comfortable and so that things aren't foreign.

And I don't need a trophy at home that says charges the most per tooth of all dentists, right? They don't make that trophy and I don't want that trophy. But that's always been a mindset. I couldn't understand if you have the access to the, and I'm telling on myself here because I don't practice near as now, but you know, if you have access to the facility and you have the driving, the ball is sitting on the driving range, use them, right?

There's no need to just sit on them and let them not be part of your regimen. And so, you know, again, we'll wrap this up, but that you just said that and it made me think of dentistry because there's a lot of people out there that are sitting. Maybe listening to this podcast or there's a lot of dentists that are sitting there with without a whole lot to do, wondering why somebody isn't coming in to pay $60,000 for a set of teeth.

▶It's not because they're not worth it, but it's because if you charge less, it's going to go to the guy that charges a little bit less, a more reasonable fee, but also does hits thousands and thousands of balls. You know, that's and that's how I was able to get to the volume that I was as I was willing to grind harder, accept less.

Part 842:35

And ultimately charge the patient more of a fair fee, which, again, there's there's hundreds of hours here that we could pull analogies out of golf into what I do. And that's probably why I get along with the game so well. Well, you put an awful lot of hours in from school all the way to now. Yeah, I thought you were going to say golf. I was like, well, don't don't tell on me here, Vin. No, I do put a lot of hours into golf, but you're in that office every time.

I go. I get there. I mean, it's by hook or by crook, right? Still have a great staff. Yeah, yeah, I do. Yeah, they take care of everything. I don't have to be there, which is great. But again, thank you, Vin. I appreciate you. For those of you watching, like, subscribe, smash all that button, et cetera. Again, I try to mention it every time, but this this podcast is just opinions. It's just it's meant to be an informal kind of thing.

I'm not here giving demos. I'm not here giving personal advice or actual advice or trying to offend anyone. I'm just trying to sort of draw parallels with people and kind of relate to patients to to some sort of thread that they might might hit with. Right. Maybe we have a woodworker on here and there's other woodworkers. But, you know, for the golfers that might tune in to to listen to this, there's plenty of analogies. There's no reason to be concerned about being judged.

All of the things that we talked about here today were more than happy to. Treat you and take care of you and look forward to the to the listen on the next episode. Thank you. Thank you for coming in. My pleasure. Thanks for having me. Thank you. Thanks, everybody.