Welcome to the Group Dentistry Now show, The Voice of the DSO Industry. Kim Larson and Bill Newman talk to industry leaders about their challenges, successes, and the future of Group Dentistry. Visit groupdentistrynow.com for more DSO analysis, news, and events. Looking for a job or have a job to fill? Visit jointdso.com. We hope you enjoy today's show. Welcome to the future of employee training for DSOs. The Group Dentistry Now learning hub is the dental industry's most innovative solution for DSOs to fulfill required compliance training, continuing education, and new employee onboarding. An enterprise subscription provides you with a white-labeled learning management system, tailored to your organization's branding and design. Effortlessly run your organization's very own online academy, streamlining training across all locations. Your employees will have access to dozens of AGD-PACE-approved CE courses, instructed by the dental industry's leading experts and educators. Employees will earn a certificate of completion for each course completed, boosting their engagement and professional development. By utilizing the platform's course-authoring tools, you can create and distribute your own custom courses, allowing you to deliver personalized, engaging, and impactful learning experiences to all your employees. The grouping feature allows you to organize all your locations into their own groups, with multiple levels of user permissions including enterprise managers, group managers, and learners. We provide custom reporting and analytics, delivering dashboards with the exact metrics you want in order to measure learner progress and program success. For organizations already utilizing their own LMS, we offer course licensing options with SCORM versions ready to import into any LMS. Dentistry Now Learning Hub can empower you to easily establish and manage your organization's exclusive online academy, all while streamlining your training processes and saving you valuable time and resources. If you are looking to adapt, innovate, and scale your DSO's learning and development efforts, then contact us today! Hello and welcome to the Group Dentistry Now podcast. Today is a very exciting day for us. We are launching a new educational CE platform called the Group Dentistry Now Learning Hub, and it's powered by DentLogic. So today we're going to have Bill and Kyle Rodriguez, and we're going to talk about the platform. Do you guys want to say hi? Yeah, thank you guys so much for having us. This program, what we're doing together, really is a dream come true for us at the Atlantic. So thank you so much. Yeah, we've been looking for a long time. We see all the educational platforms out there. And this one really stands out to us as being unique. No one else is offering anything like this. So that's why we're really excited about it. There's a need in the market for DSO's, whether they already have an LMS or they need a new one. And this is already being implemented in a number of DSO's. So it's working really well, and we're very excited. It's flexible. It's customizable. It's affordable. You can measure your ROI and pace-approved experts are the ones who are providing the educational content. It is pretty incredible, very sophisticated, professional, and yet affordable. So let's start with Kyle. Could you give us a little bit of background on your work history, Kyle? Yeah, so I've been in the business development realm for probably about seven years now. The majority of that has actually taken place in the veterinary industry, which for those of you who may not know, quite a similar vertical to dental, a lot of things in common. So the transition to the dental side has been really smooth. And you know, the people have been so nice to us. And that is just, it's been phenomenal to have such a warm welcome into the industry. And you know, people appreciate what we're doing, and we couldn't be more excited to be in the industry and to be able to help these groups out. Bill, do you have anything to add? I'd just like to add that, you know, I'm super happy about this partnership. I mean, we, as Kim mentioned earlier, I mean, we get a lot of requests from DSO's and practices. We know there's a huge need in the market. There are definitely some other options out there. But we didn't really, as we kind of searched for partners and solutions, really couldn't find anything quite like what is now called the group Dentistry Now Learning Hub. And Kim kind of touched on some of the benefits, just the affordability, the flexibility, which Kyle's going to get into. So, Mikhail and his team are the ones that have really built this platform, so he's the expert. And you know, we're going to rely heavily on him. It's kind of explained things, but just some of the feedback that Kim and I heard from groups that have partnered with DentLogics and the group Dentistry Now Learning Hub and just how satisfied they've been. So, yeah, that's it, we're really happy to finally be able to launch this. And Kim, I know you have some questions for Kyle. I do, but let's start out with the, because there is nothing like this on the market. There's no training platform that has custom branding, custom courses, and custom reporting. So let's start with that, Kyle. Do you want to expand on that? Yeah, so what we're really trying to do is build a custom online academy unique to each one of our partners. So we understand that no two organizations are the same. Even practices within the same DSO organization, you know, can be very different. So our goal is truly to tailor something for our partners and, you know, not only the custom branding, but also, you know, the custom content. So a lot of our DSO partners, they have a lot of great education and, you know, it could be on a PowerPoint, it could be, you know, on a document. And one of the challenges is to put that all in one central place to where the entire organization has access to it. And so with debt logics in the group industry, now learning hub, we really allow everything training to come under one umbrella. And then we also bring that tracking into it. And a lot of the times when we get started working with a DSO partner, they show us all their training and it's, you know, fantastic and it's for them. And one of the questions we ask is, well, you know, how many people have taken this training and, you know, what have the results been? And sometimes they don't know the answer because there's not a follow through mechanism to where we could see how much time they spent, you know, was there a quiz at the end, can we customize a quiz to put it at the end to ensure that people not only had it on, but actually retain the knowledge. And that really is a lot of what we're doing is taking this already great, you know, content library that we have that's all been made in the last couple of years and very relevant to the industry and combining that with their training content specific to their organization and almost mixing and matching it to make it unique for them. So we curate learning tracks and courses and we change up the order. We make custom quizzes or there's all kinds of different accountability things that organizations love to put in place to make sure that their training is working most efficiently for them. And that's one of the really cool things about the group dentistry now, learning hub, along with, you know, working various reports, various metrics to ensure consistency and that everybody's getting the opportunity in the organization. So do you want to name some of the DSOs that are currently using this platform? Yes, so super proud to be working with organizations like OMS 360, DCA, Mortensen, Catalyst, Positive Impact. We're up to about 15 different DSO groups that are using the platform now in some various type of way. And some of those organizations are using our platform and then other organizations are, you know, they already had their own platform, but they found so much value in our content that they, you know, asked to put our courses into their existing platform, which ultimately is a great tool to you. So for the organizations already have their own LMS or the user HR platform for training, again, we want to meet you where you want to be met. And if you already have a great successful training program, then we really kind of help by providing our content that you could supplement into that existing platform. But I just want to say how grateful I am for the organizations that are already using our training. And, you know, when you're new to the industry, you know, it's a tough thing to break through. And we started this in 2022. It's actually kind of funny. I, in 2022, I looked up when we were getting started before we went to the, to our first dental forum in Scottsdale, I had looked up dental education, you know, variety of searches, you know, dental knowledge for dummies. I mean, anything that you could find. And that is how I got introduced to group dentistry now. Ironically enough, it was finding you guys, listening to the podcast, learning so much, and then the next month, and I actually got to meet you and Bill in Scottsdale. And we had arrived, you know, not one single client, you know, but, but we knew, we knew what we had was going to be a hit. And you know, it was just a little bit scary. Think about risk, obviously, but seeing you and Bill and one of the things that you guys talked about while you were, you know, hosting the forum was education when, when you and Bill, or I think it was Bill going through his deck, and I'll never forget towards the end of his presentation, when he was talking about how to support your DSL, how to support your teams. One thing that Bill said that I'll just always stuck with me is education, education, education, your teams are always looking for more education. And that is what planted the seed really for this dream about two years later to become a reality. So again, just couldn't be happier to partner with you guys, because we know that you see the value in training. We know that people, you know, admire and respect what you guys say, and we know that you have a heart for helping people the same way that we do. So again, this partnership is just a dream come true for us. Well, we couldn't agree more Kyle. We share your passion for educating the industry, and anyone who's had the pleasure of working with you probably would agree with us that you are one of the nicest people, the most accommodating people we have ever dealt with. So that is an incredible asset that you bring as well. So kudos to you and all the work that you've done. It's very nice of you to say, it's very, very nice, you know, you golden rule and I, you know, we try to, you want to treat people that way that you want to be treated. So you only get one name, you only get one reputation. So I think it's really important to respect people and to do the very best that you can for them. Well, without passion, and that's something that you share with us, the passion for the space, you're not going to get anywhere in this space. You really have to, it has to be like a fire in your belly and you have that. And we appreciate that. Talking a little bit about issues that DSOs are facing, one of the major things that they're dealing with right now is recruitment and retention issues. So they're bringing people into the practices all the time. Maybe they've never worked in a dental office before. They have no idea what's going on. But when you sit them down to these very professional videos, can you talk a little bit about the experience that DSOs have had, because I would assume that you're seeing a lot of people coming in and out of these practices and these groups, just to have something that they can rely on, a reliable platform, where they know that the people are going to walk away from the learning videos. They're short, they're succinct, and they deliver the message that the practice or the group wants to share. Can you talk a little bit about that? Yeah. So beyond just how much it costs to bring in a new team member and then to lose them and to have to bring more people in and then retrain all that recruiting, beyond all of that, I like to even get further than that, because of course there is a cost-effectiveness and an operations efficiency to bring people in and keep them. I want to focus more on the people that are coming into this job for the first time, and Kim, you nailed it. Maybe they're coming in to bring a client service and front desk team member, but they don't really know anything about dentistry. They've gone to the dentist, but they've never worked in a dental office. How can we give these people truly, honestly, the very best chance that they can to succeed? And luckily a lot of the groups that we work with, they have fantastic management teams, they have fantastic operations teams, and I'm very grateful for that, for these team members. But with the logics, you are getting taught by industry experts who have a long history of helping, whether it be onboarding, continuous improvement, you name it, and you're really ensuring to your team that it kind of hit on this earlier, an equal opportunity for success. And not only success in the job, but how about feeling safe on the job, and in our offices, there's all kinds of equipment, and you can get put in a spot you're not familiar with really quickly. So it's not only to us about giving them the best chance to succeed, but let's make them feel safe on the job, let them feel confident on the job, and let's show them that with this organization, we care about you, we care about your process, we care about your improvement, we don't want you to end in the position that you start with, we want you to move up and be more valuable, and we know that to do that, we're going to have to pour into you, and we're going to have to invest in you. And training is really one of the best ways that we can possibly do that, and I don't know about everybody else out there, but I particularly, I had a job in college where the training was unfortunately not very good, and I got thrown into this job, and they're like, okay, get started, and I remember looking around literally asking, well, what do I do? And it's just such a hopeless, helpless feeling, and if I would have had a program like Dead Logics at the time, something curated for what I was doing specifically for the organization that I was working with, I would have loved to lean heavily on that because nothing makes you feel more insecure than not feeling safe, or not feeling prepared, or not feeling adequate. So let's eliminate that. Let's give everybody the opportunity to have that confidence, to feel safe, and know that they can help the organization, and I think that's what we're doing. I agree, and that's a great way of looking at it. It really is the Group Dentistry Now Learning Hub powered by Dead Logics is really empowering employees, and that's fabulous. You want to talk a little bit about compliance? Yeah, so as you can imagine, that is really one of the top things that DSOs are coming to us with. Again, they have the right heart, and they want their people to feel safe, but the other side of that coin is when we don't have the right compliance training, and people haven't had documented training where we can show, and we can prove, hey, they got their pay C.E. certificate, they complete this OSHA, they complete this HIPAA, this Fraud Waste Service. I mean, you name it. It can bring up all kinds of problems. We all know that options are getting audited pretty frequently, and not having this training in place can cause serious harm and serious damage to your team, but the other side of that coin is it can cost your organization tens and thousands of dollars. Obviously, Kim, our ROI on training, we really try to base that off of the industry and not even get into violations. I hear organizations, they say, hey, well, if you get this violation, it could be offset by this training cost, so we'll even get it down to that level. We try to stop that before that comparison can ever happen, but the last thing that any organization wants is for people to get hurt, or to face heavy fines for not having this compliance training, and in different organizations and different states, they all have different things. It's very unfortunate, I hate to say this, but we got asked by a group to do an active shooter training, and that breaks my heart, but you know what, we're making people feel safer on the job, and unfortunately, we have to live in the world that we need to be prepared for everything. Even though we don't want it to happen, I built the house right now, I'm building the storm shelter in the house that I live in Oklahoma, and of course, I don't want a tornado to hit my house. I don't want to ever have to test this thing out, but I want to have it in case. I don't want to be left being unprepared, and I think the compliance part of our training solution is not only help guaranteeing safety, but it's also helping protect the organization financially. Absolutely. It adds to the health of the organization. Empowering employees is just one component, and we're happy to be a part of providing that for DSOs, because violations can be quite costly, 14 to upwards of $50,000 per violation. So if you want to talk a little bit about the cost of this learning hub, and how that works in terms of how there are a eye on that. Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, typically for debt-logics online training, you know, depending on the organization side, in a customization, the breakout of that, you could be looking at, you know, anywhere from $50 to $80 a year per person, and I would encourage everybody, you know, before you land on any type of, you know, training platform, do your research, do your homework, that tends to be on the lower end of the training options. So again, one of our goals is how can we provide the very best training solution and also provide the most cost-effective way to do it. Because again, we do not want any barriers between the organization being able to provide the training that the teams need to succeed. So when you go out and you look at other compliance platforms, the price of debt-logics tends to be more cost-effective than other platforms that are only providing the compliance. And of course, we know how important compliance is. We touched on that quite a bit. But our goal is let's make it more cost-effective, and let's offer all this other training. Let's offer this client service training. Let's offer in this practice management training. Let's offer, you know, insurance coordinator trainings. Let's offer hygiene trainings. You know, certain state-required trainings. So we're truly trying to be the all-in-one, and Kim, I think that kind of goes back to trying to be unique, is to truly do everything training. Not just compliance, not just client service, not just management. So you know, we very much expect to see an ROI on day one, because it's immediately cost-effective. But we also try to see a long-term ROI by the team getting better, practices becoming more efficient, and we have various different types of courses that help practices where they are. So what I mean by that is, you know, for a practice who's calendar, the schedule is not, you know, full. They're going to lean heavily on our client service courses, like, you know, case acceptance, burning callers, the clients, things like that, to help fill that calendar and to keep our doctors, you know, happy and keep them busy. And then for teams that are really, you know, overload, you know, tons of appointments, we want to help them operationally to become more efficient, you know, to work together more cohesively, best practices, communication. So different practices, even in the same DSO organization, can really have different goals. And again, that's kind of the beauty of what we're doing, because it allows people to take advantage of what they need, being an on-demand platform. I wanted to just ask a couple of questions here. So there's a lot of content that you have already, it sounds like it. It's not just compliance, and it's not just focused on the office staff. You also have a lot of clinical education as well. So what's the size of the current library you have now? And then it sounds like you're adding courses all the time, which is great. So those are a couple of questions there, kind of, what's the size of the library? So if I signed up today, what do I have access to? And then you also mentioned that you work with a lot of DSOs that already have existing content that they can either plug in to the group Dentistry Now Learning Hub, or if they have an existing LMS, it can take your existing library and kind of plug it into what they have. So talk a little bit about how that, I know it's like seven questions there, but. Oh, it's all good. And I'm very thankful to say, you know, that we're approaching 400 training videos via our library, and a special most sincere thank you to our content partners. So for those of you who have created content with us, I can't thank you enough. You share in our passion, you share in our vision, we're very grateful to be approaching, if not already at 400 by the time this is released. And yeah, Bill, you nailed it, new courses come out, at least quarterly. Normally, you know, kind of try to shoot for monthly, but quarterly for sure. And one of the best parts about making this new content is we really get to work with our partners, and we try to be great listeners and what they and what they want to see next, you know. So, again, like, you know, whether it's an active shooter drill, whether it's, you know, they need a chemical dependency course, you know, the pretending on different state bylaws, you know, we really like to work with our partners and have a really good year for them to say, what are we missing? You know, where do we need help at? Can, you know, can you tell us your opinion on some of the gaps we can fill? And the best part is, is we get the same answers from all of our organizations, normally. So, I think it's really important for us to be a good listener and really let our partners decide what content we make next. So I know that that was a couple of, oh, and then regarding the, for our partners that already had a learning management system in place. So if just, you know, for my two cents what it's worth, if you have a learning platform in place that you enjoy, you're getting the right reporting, your team likes it, it's easy to use, I would highly encourage you staying off that platform. It's rare. It's rare to have something that you love. There's no learning management system that's perfect. So if you find one that you like, I would really encourage you to stick with it. But where we would love to help you is by supplementing our content, to enhance it, to make it better. And the way that we do that is, we have our courses in the form packages, again, that could be customized in our platform and essentially connected to your platform. So you can pick and choose, you know, the courses that we have, the supplement, your existing learning system, your existing library. And of course you have to take all of it. You can really pick and choose. So one thing that I'm really proud of is even our off LMS partners who already had their own platform, it's extremely customizable for them to, to allow them to pick and choose and allow them to place it wherever they see fit. And of course, if you don't love your existing platform, we're happy to show you ours as well. But it's really, I just like to encourage people that you got something that's working for you and the team likes it. I would be very hesitant to change. I think it'd be a better fit to look at our content, to be able to plug into that existing platform that's going well. Oh, that's great, Kyle. I'm also interested in talking a little bit about the customizable part. If, if a DSO or a group has content that they want you to produce, are you flying out there with a production crew or what does that look like? What does that process? Exactly. Yeah. Now you nailed it, Kim. So we are truly trying to be the very best partner that we can be for, for, for the organizations that are using the platform. And oftentimes we include a couple hours, a year of finished content for that organization when they sign on with that logics or the group industry now, learning hub, just as thank you to them. But it really resonates when an organization has their own team members in the training, whether it's, you know, a CEO, welcoming them to the organization and giving some background and talking about core values, you know, you name it. It really takes on a life of its own in being their platform and we have no problem being in the background. And Kim and Bill, I know that you feel the same way and, you know, we want these team members ultimately to think, Oh my gosh, my leadership team made this just for me and just for our team. So yes, flying out, filming custom content with them, giving them a couple hours when they sign on to be able to do those types of videos, or maybe, you know, there's certain trainings that they do, you know, a completely unique way. And their organization is the only one who could benefit from that training. Those are topics that we love to do with them in those custom hours. And then we have topics that they're requesting that again, everybody needs. So you know, that can be done in a more general sense that way everybody can benefit from it. But yeah, a number of our organizations that are on our platform, they have their CEO or somebody from, you know, ops that's on there, doing some talk and doing some welcoming. And it's really neat because again, it really becomes theirs, which is really our goal. We want it to feel like it's just for them. Absolutely. It's a platform. Before we wrap things up, let's talk a little bit about AI and the future of education. Do you want to talk a little bit about that, Kyle? Yeah. So I'll preface with this. I'm a huge fan of AI artificial intelligence. I know it's a little scary. It's scary to me too. But I do believe that, you know, the people who embrace it, you know, when you look back are going to be a lot further down the road than the folks who are maybe hesitant to pass on it. And so one of the things that logic, you know, we're always thinking, how can we be better? How can we make this platform better? And AI is a way that we are trying to leverage AI to make this training solution even better. And what we're working on right now is, you know, we have all this great training, right? You know, I reference, you know, the 400 training videos, plus all the content that the group puts in there themselves. So there's all this great training, right? But what if I have a question and, you know, there's hundreds of hours of training? But what if I have a question and I'd like an instant answer to that question? So what we're working on now is for a team member, he'll type in that question and go through our training database and give them an instant answer to that question. And of course, you know, our training is on demand short bursts. So it is, you know, very easy to get in there and navigate it. But you know, in a pinch, if I have one minute, we see this is a great alternative or if it's a video that you've already watched, you know that information's in there, you might not have time to go in there and try to find it. So again, what we're working on right now is giving teams the opportunity to type in their question and get an instant response, pull directly from our training. So we know that the information is true. We know that it's right. But again, just trying to get better. How can we put this at their fingertips even more? And I'm really excited about this. That feature should be out this summer. So you know, great timing on what we're doing and we'll be, you know, showing demos and examples of that new feature as well for new organizations. Well, speaking of demos, you're going to be a daikama. Is that right? We will be a daikama and I'm so excited to see everybody. Yeah, we'll be there as well. So it would be a great place to meet people and be able to share demos. Also, we have a tab on the group dentistry now website specifically for the learning hub. You can go in there and you can see some sample videos. Just kind of get an idea of what it's all about, schedule time for a demo or to meet Kyle or someone at the dot logics team. They put together some very professional videos. It's very impressive. Bill, would you agree? That's why we partnered with them for sure. And yeah, we're excited to be at the daikama meeting Kim mentioned that would be a great chance to not only talk to Kim and I, but get a chance to meet Kyle. He could give you a demo there and we're fortunate enough to be a partner of daikama. And so we'll have a table in the back of the main room. So if you can't sign Kyle, where you forget to reach out online, you'll see you'll find Kim and I in the back and just grab us and we will make sure that we get you connected with Kyle. And you can also email us at ce@groupgenestrynow.com or our regular info@groupgenestrynow.com. Do Bill or Kyle, do you want to add anything in here at the end before we say goodbye to our audience for now? I'll just say one thing again, happy to have Kyle on it, great in depth and knowledge about educating people and the industry platform. I did, I learned a couple of things on this podcast, I didn't realize how big the library was. I love that AI tool, I'm excited and I think that something, you know, when you think about education, sometimes DSOs might look at that as a half to half, but it's great, but how much do they really retain? And so even if somebody doesn't retain something and they need that information in a pinch with AI now, they can get access to that and use that right away. That information that somehow might have been lost, but they knew they heard it somewhere. So we're just really excited. Yeah, I just, you know, Kim, Bill, think the world of you guys always have kind of celebrities to me for when I joined the industry. So very thankful for you guys. And I also just, you know, one more time when to reiterate how thankful I am to our content partners, to our DSOs, you know, joined us when we weren't really, you know, anybody and just so thankful for you guys. It means the world and we're gonna keep going, but never forget the people that were in our corner and there for us when nobody else knew who we were. So if you've helped us develop content or you're using the deal of objects, but it's, you know, soon to be the group dentistry now learning out my sincere thank you from the bottom of my heart, really. Thank you. Well, that's great, Kyle. It's a great way to wrap things up today. So just want to say thank you to our group dentistry now audience until next time. I'm Kim Larson and Bill Newman. The group dentistry now show has listeners across North and South America, Europe, Asia, and Australia. If you like our show, subscribe today and please tell your colleagues about us. [MUSIC PLAYING]
