Ep. 9: Mastery vs Marketing: The Unspoken Divide

Part 10:00

This is Podpopuli, podcasts for the people. Hello, welcome to another episode of Beyond the Arches. I'm your host, Dr. Daniel Noorthoek. With me today, we are blessed to have Nadia Davis yet again. Thanks for having me again. Welcome, welcome. Like, subscribe, all that stuff, right? Yeah. We haven't said it in a little while, but it goes without saying, everything we talk about, everything I say is my opinion. There are no doubt other people that have different opinions that think that my opinion is awful, et cetera.

This is not meant to be medical advice. Just wanted to kick it out there and be very, very clear with everyone that this is meant to be sort of informal, opinionated discussions with people that I hold near and dear to my heart in this whole world of full-arch dentistry, so like full-tooth replacement. So, today, what we're going to talk about is mastery versus marketing. We already talked a little bit about marketing and the flash, but I kind of want to get a little bit more into the social media side.

Nadia is a lot more on social media, not that you're the social media queen. I'm not an influencer or anything, but. Right. Like, it's not like we said, oh, Nadia's on Instagram all the time. We got to get on her for being on her phone. But Nadia, actually, truly, you're. You're a person that has been around dentistry a long time with me, seen my career develop and flow, and as such, has seen a lot of dentists sort of come through the office when we were just a lab service.

You were a part of that when we would film, you know, implant compare. We would film cases and live stream them. Right. So, you know, you have, over the years, seen a lot of different trends and moved through a lot of different platforms. And talked to a lot of different doctors and maybe, say, followed them and such. So, I thought it was a good time to get you in today to talk more like from a social media angle, right, and talk about there's a lot of different ways that an office can be presented.

And most of the time, what you're going to get is that sort of refined, here's the really bright office and the smiley patient and thing, you know, those kind of attitudes and things. And sort of portrayals. But you seeing both sides and a lot, you know, different offices and things, I wanted to kind of bring you in and kind of get your sort of opinion on sort of the status of dentistry. And I'm going to let you jump in in two seconds.

Here's the stage that I'd like to talk through a little bit. To me, when I look through my Instagram, I see a whole lot of Dr. So-and-so is the greatest and they took care of me. And I think if I had tooth problems. Earlier, I should have gone in earlier, right? And you have that like sort of forced in a corner sort of interview, right? And then on the other side, you have a couple, let's say orthodontic clinics, because God, I hope it's not the full arch guys, but you have the whole office dancing in the middle of the office behind the door, which we're never doing.

Please don't make us do that. Never, ever, ever. And then the third category is sort of dentist to dentist. And. What I want to sort of start this discussing with this. Do you think that's just a function of the following that I have? Not the following, but the feed rather that I have that I see that? Or is it a trend that a dentist immediately sort of jumps to when they get a little success, when they get a little traction with the system?

Do they jump to talking to the dentist? Because I feel very much that if I was a patient, I would feel alienated where most of these guys, they're talking towards just other professionals. And there's definitely a need for that. Yeah. And we will get way into that in the future. But do you think that that's the function? Or like, if you look at that, knowing what I'm saying, do you see the same thing? You know, what are you?

I mean, the way that I see it, like you're saying, like, how does it come about? Or no, do you see that same sort of do you see it the same way? Or do you see it where maybe it's just my feed that shows dentists talking to other dentists? I think it's like they they get a little good at what they do and then they want to like kind of brag about it. And then it turns into this kind of like showboaty.

Hey, look what I can do type of thing at the expense of the patient. Like, I've seen that a lot. Say that in a different way. Like, describe that a little bit better. So different. Not to name drop offices, but like when we used to like go live with the surgeries, that was more more towards fellow dentists. Not not patients, because that would probably drive a lot of them away watching the surgery. But in speaking to other dentists, it's like, OK, here's my process, this and that.

▶And then it just from there, I remember seeing other dentists jumping on that bandwagon and live streaming their surgeries, whether it be a single unit implant or full large or what have you. And sometimes it just it just looked chaotic. Like it got to a point where it was chaotic. Like the patient is. Having surgery, the doctor's like talking one hand in the patient's mouth, the other one holding a sandwich like it would just look like a.

Yeah, circus.

Part 25:38

There's also a lot aspect of that. Now I know what you're saying. There's an aspect of that that also. Will generally tout. When a dentist is looking for a case, they'll generally do that as sort of a cheaper surgery. Cheaper, free, less expensive or free. Yeah. And then they sort of. Try to make it a little bit of a media thing, too. So you see that person sort of have to puppy dog around with them, you know, on show.

That's a big problem, too. Right. And we've tried. It's inevitable that that happens. And no doubt I'm guilty of what we're saying here. I streamed a lot of surgeries and a lot of them were free or low cost. But we've really tried to get away from that. I mean, we still do a ton of pro bono work. But I never. Ever tried to put that in front of the patient and be, hey, you know, I helped you and why don't you help me?

Because I feel like the consumer that's on social media is generally going to be able to see that see through that a little bit easier. But also, you don't have to do that. Your patients jump up to do that like they're not, you know. Right. But it took a long time to get to that point. Yeah, I can see that. Because I think. I'm biased, but I think we tried to. Present it in a way that we're just trying to be excited and cool people, human to human.

This is exciting that your life has changed. Yeah, this is exciting. You have to take a vacation to Boca. This is exciting. It finally got done simply. And presenting that story is a whole lot easier than. Hey, you're homeless and let's, you know, do you want to be my little follow puppy? Yeah, a bit, you know, around around town. Yeah. That always kind of ends up in a negative. Position and it does because it's like it's like giving them a bum a couple dollars and like, but while you're holding your camera doing it, it's like, is it really a good deed if you're having to put it on camera?

Yeah. In terms of dental influence, do you have you noticed any surge? Like, have you ever do you follow any social media accounts? And you can tell me afterwards. Do you follow any social media accounts that you would say do a better job? Sort of presenting. Results and before hands. Or is it just. ▶Unfortunately, the cookie cutter has to be. I went to X office. I wish I did it sooner. This was awesome. That's all I've seen.

Yeah. Yeah. It's not. It's not as in debt. But do you think there's a better way that you were answering my question? I'm sorry. I jumped in there really quick. It's fine. That's all there is, is what you're saying. Yeah. That's all I've seen. Yeah. I wish there was better. I try to rack my brain in the morning. You know, every morning. About X, Y, Z. And that's something that comes up in my brain quite often is, is there a way to present this in a humble yet promotional type way that gets the message out?

And I'll parlay that with currently we're struggling a little bit with Google marketing not being as effective and the reason why. And it's and it's not just noticeable. It's worrisome. It's unnoticeable. And that is because we think or the world is starting to see a big shift where people are searching things on AI more. Yeah.

Part 39:10

And they're sick of the social media feed. Right. Like, is there a social media burnout? Do you see social media burnout? Do you do you see social media burnout slash? Do you ever comment on any posts? Are you pretty silent? I'm pretty silent. I just I just lurk in the background. Yeah. I don't know how to answer that question. Sorry. That's OK. Did. Have you seen with all of the different tools and things that we have for capturing video?

Have you seen social media get better for dentists? Have you seen overall quality of the message get better? Because that could be something that's that's helpful, too. Right. If there's only one really way to get the message out, which is that person did awesome. Yeah. And before I could define it by having a seven thousand dollar camera where, you know, the next guy over is using a razor flip phone. Yeah. I don't think it matters. You can see a big difference there.

But can you see things sort of evening out in terms of the competition in terms of like quality of the video? Yeah. I don't think the quality of the video matters because, I mean, we've had several patients um, document. Their progress themselves, and that proved to get way more views than what we got pushing our own stuff out. Yeah. User generated comment. Yeah. Content is amazing. Yeah. Whenever our our patients can generate content for us, it's so much better.

Yeah. Um. ▶Word of mouth is the best type of advertisement that you could have that any office could have. So. Yeah. You used to do a lot of editing for me when it came to. Yeah. Videos and promotional stuff for the Insta. I had a surgical Instagram account. Oh, like back in the surgery, strictly surgery days. Strictly surgery. Those are my favorite. Yeah. All the blood and goods. I missed that a little bit. When when Nadia and I first started, we took a lot of pictures together, a lot of surgical pictures.

I still have them all on my computer. But when we would take those, it required a it was almost a full time job. I mean, I really respect the people that have the longevity. Yeah. The longevity and the and the mainstay in the in the system to sit there and take those pictures day in and day out because it requires a lot of editing and a lot of vision and understanding. And sometimes your pictures just didn't turn out.

Yeah. It was frustrating because you never get that surgery, that moment in surgery back. Mm hmm. But it did provide us a lot of content to learn and work off of. Of course, patients didn't like it either. You know, that was a. That was another aspect. There's kind of two media personalities. You almost need to have the surgical side and then the social personal side. Right. Correct. And you probably even working restorative and surgery through your time on social media, we'll call it Instagram, have had to sort of censor yourself depending on the people that are.

Depending on my audience. Yeah. They're like, oh, I don't want to see this. What is that? Somebody is like gum tissue. Yeah. Yeah. Is that sutures? Yeah. Yeah. When when I started Instagram, I had a lot of friends that were like, oh, implant Viking. Let me look at that. I want to support you. All of that. They were. Yeah. Great supportive friends and family. And almost all of them were like, I used to follow. But I just.

Yeah. Or I ignore you or I blocked you or whatever, because I couldn't tolerate it anymore. Silent your stories. Yeah. And I think that that negatively affected me. Because I now have that. That people come in when I tell them about the podcast. Yeah. They kind of instantly go, great. I guess I'll listen. Maybe they're not as supportive because they think that we're going to be sitting here talking about just, you know, you ever have that bone just crack underneath your hand and that feeling, you know, that they don't want to be grossed out.

Yeah. And that's a tough part, too, is we're trying to sell surgery to a population that needs it. We are trying to sell it. ▶We're trying to sell something that hurts to take care of a problem that is going to require pain. It does require risk and big financial commitment. We're trying to sell that as something that's sexy and fun. And you can only go so far with that, you know, but it's the reward. It's it's what comes at the end of that.

They get their smile. They get their respect back. They get their their health back. So. Yeah. There's the other side, too.

Part 413:54

I'm speaking directly of our prior. Prior work experience that the cameras and the lights don't always tell the whole story. Right. Yeah. Even if you're watching this today, you can't tell whether or not I run a really tight operation or a sloppy one. I'd hope that people would assume that it's a tight one. It's a tight, good one. But, you know, we've been a part of some some offices that were pretty, really flashy and great marketing wise.

I mean, we had, you know, remember, Chris, he he did video for. He I think he did some work on Avengers. Yeah. He did some work with Avengers or like Walking Dead. I know one of them. There were a couple of different camera crews. One of them was on the walking dead. That's some of that. I don't remember exactly what movie it was. Maybe he turned down Avengers. He he's I know he specifically did the video for most of the Jon Hamm.

Mm hmm. What do you call it? Narrated Mercedes-Benz. Yeah. Yeah. I remember those. So he did some really high, high end level work. Yeah. And then behind the scenes tended to be somewhat more chaos than you can imagine. ▶You know, and we fought through it and got through as best we could. But sometimes those cameras in that flash don't always tell the whole picture. And so managing that like. We may know that that's not that important, but is it important to the patient?

Right. Is that something that's required for success is having the budget, if you will, to afford the high end sexy lights? I would argue that through this process, I've found that the world is sort of changing to the point that it's really just if you can get a person, a real person and a camera in front of them and they say this is awesome and it went fine. It's a whole lot better than how beautiful blue, yellow and strobing lights.

You're you can make your machinery look. Yeah. Which is a big change since I started, because when I first started, that was what you got patients with is how tech forward you were, how beautiful the camera shots and the angles were very minimal user generated content of sorts. I've always wanted to do a segment or wanted to really get focused on getting content. This is for patients. If they're listening, shoot a video because it's amazing stuff for us.

Well, I think one of your surgeries was like recording yourself. We've had a couple come in and like just record themselves and make a little montage of their experience here. Yeah. And passing that on to us so we can repost the weather or whatever you want to do these days. But, you know, social media is a great foundation for sort of grassroots movements. I mean, we're still growth. We're still very much grassroots movement. And so it's been important for us because it allows us to get a presence without having to justify this insane budget or sell our souls for said camera time or.

So it's been great because we can kind of be small and kind of create this little community. You know, we've got the community of Facebook and so social media is very important. It is.

Part 517:21

▶But I think that there again, going back to it, the first thing that always hits me when I open my Instagram is. I don't know if I'm just the only guy that doesn't see that it doesn't work or something. But there's this huge category of dentists speaking to other dentists, selling their advice and selling their the way that they do their morning huddles or whatnot. Any number of things. And they're not even masters at what they do.

Like that. Potentially. Yeah. Right. I mean, there's there's usually a reason why somebody is looking for extra income selling a conference. Because I can tell you, I am not a rich person and I'm not like overly filled with cash. But I can tell you that I'm not looking to go teach dentistry or conferences to groups of people any longer. There was a period of time. Yeah. But I was actually random. But. I always had a I had a professor and I would talk about or I mentioned one time.

This guy's got three offices. He has one in Tampa. He has one in, you know, North Tampa. He has one in East Tampa. I don't know where they were. But he looked at me dead in the eye. He goes, if you have to have three offices with your time to make one income with all of the outflow of money that it takes to run three, then you're probably not very good at your job. Because you should be really busy at one.

Yeah. That kind of always stuck with me. And now now as we're I go to Tampa for the surgery. Certainly it's like, oh, that guy. No. ▶But very soon that'll be gone. But, you know, it's it's interesting to watch as the the world and landscape changes and social media changes and what works with patients changes. Right. Yeah. What is it going to be? I think that there's going to be a little bit of a surge of the local.

The local results with the local dentists are in terms of like. I'm sorry. Since we started this podcast, I've been sick twice. I haven't been sick in like three years. I've been sick twice. So I'm all congested. Every single podcast we've done so far. But I think with AI. You know. If you go on and you say. I don't know. Let's just say that you're looking for who to get your hair done with. Right. And you say, like, what to look for in a hair salon in AI.

It's not allowed to advertise yet. So it can't say you should go to Sally's hair salon. Yeah. Or some big. You should go to Supercuts. I'm not saying that. Yeah. Woman in particular. But for example. It can't say. And it can't have a sponsored link for Supercuts. Cuts at the top. And so what you're going to get is you're going to find out the questions to ask and what to do and how to do it without this algorithm until they allow advertising.

Part 620:33

They're sort of pushing you towards really what is at hand to you, which might be your local dentist. Yeah. So I think we're going to see a little bit of a surge to the local dentist, to be honest with you. Yeah. Because if I can't advertise to a guy in Idaho as well, then that means that the guy that's in Idaho, he's not going to just not get full arch, more or less. He might do a lot of research, but I think that there's a higher likelihood that he ends up he or she ends up in that local area.

That's my own gut feeling because they're not able to. If you can't push your agenda from across the country and where people are getting the resource, the AI suggestion through chat GPT of who to look for and what to look for, you'll probably keep your circle a little bit smaller because you don't even know that those other things exist. Just random thoughts from Dan. It's all good. Yeah. So as we kind of look towards wrapping this sort of topic up, is there anything in social media that is being done that you think that we should do?

Any dances, any trends? No dances, no trends. Thank God you said that. Yeah. Sorry. I'm not. I mean, I'm a big dancer, but at home, not here, not for work, not for the cameras. But no, I think maybe just more authentic footage, like when patients do their own and they put up their own stuff that that I don't know, that just stands out to people. ▶More than you popping up on the camera saying, hey, look, this is Tim and we did his teeth and look how great he looks like.

Tim was good looking, but it's better if Tim goes on and says that himself. Right. Right. And I agree. And I want that to be. I want our social media and our presence in the world to be this very grassroots movement of these people do good. Therefore. Send work there. Yeah. Rather than me trying to push the agenda or you trying to push the agenda. Yeah. It creates, as we talked about before, it creates less stress on us and our relationship.

I don't have to say, hey, Nadia, I thought you were going to think of great ideas for X, Y, Z. And yeah, it allows us to get along better. It allows us to work better together and allows, I think, that the patient to get better information, you know? Yeah. Because I mean, on our Facebook page, patients are talking to me. They're talking to each other and they're getting information from each other, you know, advice from each other.

Hey, you know, I'm about to have my surgery. What should I pack? What should I take with me? What advice do you have for me? And to parlay on that, it's a very sort of strange connection I just made. But I'm thinking through creating that community is hard enough on its own. Yeah. But keeping that community or sustaining it and keeping them. That's even harder. And fans is much harder. Yeah. And it's sort of one of the main intentions of the lifetime warranty that we're doing.

It's not for it's not a play on finances. Yeah. It's keeping both parties responsible to, you know, there is work involved to keep these things clean and taken care of. Yeah. But it also keeps that connection and it creates and builds that community feel such that if there is a problem, we'll know faster and can fix it faster. Yeah. I just did a case on a guy who I did his surgery many, many years ago to a different office.

▶We restored it in different teeth and we redid his case for free. Full set of teeth. And because he hadn't taken care of them or come in for cleanings and such. Yeah. And then disappeared again for what amounts to essentially two years. And I had to redo it again. And that. That problem is more or less created because of the absence, not because of the process itself. And so keeping that community sort of tight knit and communicate communicative and willing to record things has been very difficult.

But I think we're getting better at it. And that's sort of like the point of everything that we're building, like doing this. Yeah. Like, you know, the lifetime warranty, things that allow people to sort of stay engaged and be mentors to the needs. New people. And I think it also helps them to, just my opinion, keep each other accountable. Like, hey, you know, Dan was really nice to do this for you. Like, you weren't there for two years.

Like. Great point. I hadn't thought of that.

Part 725:27

Well, it's an interesting topic. ▶Social media is always an interesting one and always an interesting view. But I appreciate you coming in and talking to us and giving us some insight. Thanks for having me. I don't feel like I said much. It's okay. You don't have to say much. It's a comfortable, easy conversation. But it's always good to have you in the office. And I really do, this is heartfelt. I do appreciate you coming back and giving us a shot and being the leader, master of our awesome results.

So it's been a pleasure to have you back. It's been a pleasure to be here. And on the podcast. Yeah. So. It's been fun. Like, subscribe. Yeah. Smash the red button. Again, this is only our opinions. There are lots of, lots of them out there, probably better ones, probably worse ones. But continue to listen in because we're going to keep delving back in or delving into and pulling back the layers of the onion of full arch dentistry.

And we look forward to your listen next time. Thank you.