Inside the Rise of Robot-Guided Dental Implants with Dr. Rob Bryan

Digital treatment planning and robotically guided surgery should be, and I am going to make it, the standard of care in dentistry that implants are planned and placed robotically. You've got to kind of embrace discomfort, embrace being uncomfortable. If people think you maybe are a little bit crazy, you're probably doing something right. You've done a lot of great things in the community. Why is that important to you? Your survivability really depends on the entirety, the whole of your community to do well. So, anything that you can do as a person in that position to contribute to the wellness of the whole of your community is important.

Dr. Rob Bryan, welcome to the pathway to peak performance. Glad to be here. Thanks for having me. It's a real pleasure. I'm really excited to hear about this new thing that you're doing which is going to revolutionize the world and make things a lot better for people. I have to say I think you're right. I'm excited about it, too. When you first told me about it, I was like, "Yep, that's going to be big. It's where it's headed and it's going to be big." And you know, you were the first guy in the state of Oklahoma to have the Yomi robot, correct, for placing implants. You were on the digital treatment path, right? A long time before other people were even thinking about that. That's right. There was a lot of press coverage coming out like that was the entire state of Oklahoma was like, "Wow." Right. I think you're on TV. Oh, absolutely. Like 26 times or some crazy number. Right. We could get to all of that, but we got to know how it all started. What was the pathway to this moment in time? Pathway to peak performance, right? Yeah.

So, take us back. I think back on my life and I asked the question, could I repeat this again? And I think if we all ask ourselves that question, probably not. The variables that go into all of it. When I think back to being a child, I was born in Appalachia, southern Ohio, in a little town called, well, I grew up in a small town called Atheelia, Ohio, which is in the tri-state area of West Virginia, Kentucky, and Ohio, Appalachia. You're surrounded by the hills, the Ohio river's running right through it. There are creeks, there's green trees in the fall, there's golden trees. It was truly a magical little place to grow up and I knew it at the time. I could sort of sense that it was a good place to be. Now, it wasn't necessarily an exciting place to be in that there weren't theme parks and extravagant shops and that sort of thing. It was very rural, very rural, and economically very depressed. I didn't feel that as a child, though. I enjoyed growing up there. I had a great group of friends. I was the youngest of most of my friends and they treated me very, very well. They were all kind of like big brothers for me. And each one an example in some kind of way. You know, there's a saying it says every man is my teacher in some way. Whether that be good or bad, you get to see the good and the bad. And if you pay attention, you can learn from that. But you have to pay attention and ask the question, do I want to do that or do I want to do this? And I saw the older kids make decisions and I saw what happened. That's the advantage of being the younger one.

I had an older sister. I still have an older sister. And so it was my sister and I, my parents. My parents did not get along too well, and so they split when I think I was about 12, 11 or 12. And it mostly was my mother and I growing up in the home. She took great care of me. I never went a day needing anything. I had great clothes, yard sale clothes, but they were great. She always had great food for me to eat. It was just a great place to grow up. My mother did a great job. And then I went to a little school called Fairland High School. Poorest school district in the state of Ohio. Had the very best teachers on the planet. They really wanted to be there. They did. And I know from kindergarten through high school, every single teacher that I ever had, first and last name. And I feel like I really got to know them and I feel like they cared. I knew it then growing up. I could tell.

One in particular teacher of mine, I had many great teachers, but this one teacher, Sally Love, she was my English teacher in high school. She challenged us to do a career speech. Well, I had no clue what I wanted to do. I kind of thought medicine. I kind of thought engineering. I didn't have those examples around me, though. No one in my family was a physician. No one had gone to college. No one was an engineer. So, I decided, well, I'm going to go to the library and get a career book. So, I go to the library in the high school, get a book, probably published in the 1960s, and I flipped through it and I ran into dentistry and I started reading it. And I always liked taking things apart. I always loved knowing what made something work. So, I was taking vacuum cleaners apart, taking toasters apart. Now, putting it back together sometimes, not always, but I wanted to know what was in there and I wanted to know what made it tick. And I noticed dentistry, you know, you work with your hands. You're sort of your own boss. You're autonomous. There's science, there's medicine. And my dentist happened to be kind of a cool guy. So that's what I chose. I did my career speech on dentistry and here I am.

From there, graduating from high school, well, actually, I'll tell you my first leadership position was at a grocery store called Kroger. I worked at a Kroger grocery store in Proctorville, Ohio. And I started out, I think I was probably 16 years old. That was my first real job where I got a real paycheck and had to pay real taxes, right? I started out as a bag boy bagging groceries. They quickly moved me onto a cash register, which I love doing. And I they had a little timer and you would do the, see who did the fastest scanner, you know. And then from there, I became what they call a floor supervisor. And so, at the age of 16, I'm running the front of the store and you know there are people there that are 50, 60 years of age. And it felt awkward to me. It felt uncomfortable. Is this where you're in it's always that, um, "I need a supervisor here," the cashier says. "I need a supervisor here." You are looking around to see who the real boss is, you know, where is the boss? But you know, there was a lady that hired me there and she saw something in me or she trusted me or something led her to let me do that and I did count it as kind of a a gift I suppose you could say. And then from there, I went on to work in the customer service desk and it was great. I thoroughly enjoyed working at the grocery store, but it did give me a sense of responsibility and a sense of leadership and it sort of led me into understanding what it was like to do things that were uncomfortable. And it sounds so simple, you know, I'm just working at a grocery store, you know, I'm not working at accounting firm or anything like that. It's not a law firm. It's a simple grocery store. But it did teach me a lot about how to talk to people, how to appreciate people. And I also felt how it was to be treated by the public as a public servant, which is always pretty poor sometimes. And so it really helped kind of mold and shape me in a lot of ways.

And from there, I went to undergraduate school at Ohio University, the, that's coming next, Ohio University undergraduate and pre-dentistry and chemistry. And then on to the Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio. Yeah. And so that is in fact where I went to dental school. Yeah. Ohio University, my undergraduate school. You know that was an interesting experience. It's in Athens, Ohio. A very rural setting as well, in the Hawking Hills of Ohio it is. Very quaint. It's definitely a college town. Has that college feel to it. Undergraduate school was not one of my favorite things. I didn't enjoy it like you kind of hear people talk about it. I spent a lot of time in the library. I spent a lot of time studying and probably it was one of the loneliest times of my life just because I really dedicated myself to the academic side of it. There was no real social life and I didn't really go to football games. I didn't go to basketball games. I certainly didn't go to bars. I never set foot in a bar one time in undergraduate school. And you know, if I had that to do over, I probably would change a few things, but I wouldn't change it dramatically. I have this thing I tell my kids, I hope I get it right. And you know this, we all know this. You can play now and pay big later, or you can pay now and play big later. It's such a great statement. It's so true. Yeah.

And so, from there, Ohio State, and I did love dental school. I loved the things that I was learning. I didn't necessarily enjoy going through it. But I got a great education from Ohio State. And it was then somewhere at Ohio State that I decided that I wanted to be an Oral and Maxillofacial Surgeon. I actually worked in an oral surgery office during my breaks from school while I was at Ohio State. And I definitely know that that shaped me and helped make decisions as far as what I want to do. But I do recall seeing a video of a major jaw surgery and I said to myself, I want to do that. I just knew right away. I mean orthonathic surgery is a serious what we call jaw surgery for the general public, but you know, orthonathic surgery is such a serious surgery and the results are so dramatic, whether you move in the maxilla or the mandible or whatever or both. It is just amazing to see the results of that. Yeah, it's definitely a life-changing surgery. I have a patient that had sleep apnea and he was an adult. He's actually a funeral director and he took care of dignitaries. So he's kind of a, I guess if there's such thing as a famous funeral director, you know, he was one. But he had sleep apnea and I remember the night of the surgery, I went to visit him in the hospital after I advanced the mandible and maxilla and did a geneoplasty advancement. And he was laying on his back breathing and his family was standing around him in awe. The fact that he's breathing without a CPAP machine and I just thought we did change his life for the better.

What did that feel like? I mean, let's, can we, can we dig into the feeling around that? Yeah. You know, that makes it all worth it. I mean that really is when you say I did something hard and now this person is benefiting from it. And you know to get to that point, I remember in my early career we were doing analog surgery, analog planning, meaning I was using stone models and literally taking a saw and cutting them into pieces and putting them back together and gluing the jaws into the new position to make these guides and things. And you know, it's difficult. It's time consuming. But I knew I wanted to do it. And I also knew that at some point that was going to change. How we did that was going to change and become better. So I stuck with it. You know, we talked about doing difficult things and doing hard things. And you've heard other people talk about this anterior mid-cingulate cortex in your brain. It's part of your brain that when you do things that you don't want to do, when you do hard things, it grows. It gets bigger. And it's all about tenacity and toughness, you know, and you know, do I want to get up at 5:00 in the morning every day and go to gym knowing that I have a full day of work ahead of me? Probably not. Especially in the early days, but now it's not even a question. I'm not asking myself how I go to the gym tomorrow or not. You'd look forward to the alarm clock is already on. It's not even a question.

I just recently had this back injury and it was in the middle of a cutdown. And I felt like I had gotten had just too much muscle. And holy smokes, man. You know, when you're out of the gym, the place where you really find your zen for a period, holy mackerel, man, that's tough. And you know, doing cold showers, cold plunging, when you're in a when your back is out is not a great, not a great option. Hey, one thing we should do because I think it's important for people to realize that that there's a significant difference from being a general dentist and being an oral and maxillofacial surgeon. Can you take people through what that's all about so they know the difference?

Absolutely. You know, so general dentistry, fantastic, fantastic profession, really drills down, no pun intended, but drills down onto someone who is truly an expert at a tooth and you look at the nuance of a tooth and the dental anatomy and the function of the masticatory system, how that works. There's a lot to unpack there. So, you know, as a general dentist, you know, you're doing crowns and veneers, you're doing fillings, you're making or you're giving patients information so that they can make decisions for themselves about their oral health. And it's and it's a great profession. You're also finding oral cancer. We are also finding oral cancer. That's right. And so the dentist, the general dentist, the restorative doctor, however you want to term that, is very much responsible for overall health of the oral cavity. But it actually goes a little bit beyond that. You know, they do head neck exams. And so they're looking at your face, they're looking at your skin, they're paying attention to the whites of your eyes. Are they yellow? Are they white? So there's a lot more to it than just looking at your teeth. And one of the interesting things about dentistry as a whole is the technology that goes into it. So you're going to you're going to delve into that world as well with a lot of the digital stuff that's happening now. And I found all that very interesting. And I actually enjoyed doing fillings and I enjoyed kind of the artistry of dentistry and the color matching and the shade matching and the shape design, but I wanted something just a little bit more because I had an interest in the whole body. And so that's what really led me into oral and maxillofacial surgery.

The training that goes into that really broadens the scope, your knowledge scope, your knowledge base in that you know, we'll take rotations in internal medicine. So for a number of months in a hospital setting after dental school, when my general dental colleagues have already gone on and they're currently practicing, now I'm still in training and I'm going to the emergency room seeing patients for congestive heart failure. I'm seeing patients who are having chest pain. I'm seeing kids who have abscesses and other things that are problematic. We do rotations on anesthesia. So, we spend a number of months in the operating room just learning how to put someone to sleep, keep them safe, and wake them up properly from an anesthetic from any number of surgery types. We do rotations on general surgery, so we'll do abdominal procedures. And you know, one of the more interesting rotations that we do is on trauma surgery. I can remember many nights when I was a resident that when the emergency squad is rolling in with a patient who's been in an accident, you know, I'm the person who's at the head of the bed making decisions. Do we need to get a CT scan? Do we need to get a chest X-ray? Do we need to consult orthopedic surgery, neurosurgery, plastic surgery, ear, nose, and throat doctors? And so it really is a training program that puts you as far into medicine as you could possibly get as a dentist. And then you take all of that knowledge during your last few years of residency and you focus it in on now how do I take those general surgical principles and apply them to the maxillofacial area? How do I look at someone and say can I improve their airway and their breathing? Do they have sleep apnea? What does that even mean? What are the treatment options for that? Do they have oral cancer? What kind is it? Do they need to be referred to someone else? Is it squamous carcinoma? Is it melanoma? Is it some sort of unusual cyst or tumor? Do they need a resection? Can we reconstruct that? And if so, what kind of bone do we use? Hip bone. Do we use a fibular flap? Just a myriad of things go into the culmination of becoming oral and maxillofacial surgery.

Yeah. And for the viewer, that's sort of like trying to piece this all together, I want to give them a real life scenario. Sure. You know, it's 2 a.m. you're on call. The, you know, the patient comes in, they've been in a car accident, their entire right side of their face has been crushed. So that's the orbit of, you know, of the eye is crushed in. There could be some forehead damage. You could have a broken maxilla, um, you know, underneath that cheekbone, right? You could have a broken mandible, so that, you know, lower part of the jaw. I mean, you could have a whole bunch of things. So that's just one scenario. Absolutely. That you'd go in and start working on plating and I mean that those surgeries are like amazing. They're fantastic. So the scenario is it's, you know, a patient has been in a car accident and they've received sort of this this traumatic car accident. Immediately, you've got what we call a multidisciplinary patient. You got a level one trauma patient. So what's great about the specialty of oral and max facial surgery is the network that you have available at your fingertips. You've got trauma surgeons, neurosurgeons, plastic surgeons, ophthalmologists, a whole host of people that are there to be a part of this team with you. But as an oral and maxillofacial surgeon, we are responsible for reconstructing both the hard and soft tissues of the maxillofacial region and that includes the lower jaw, the upper jaw, the nose, the cheekbone, the eye socket, the frontal bone, the frontal sinus. So a scenario like that, you know, we will absolutely be looking at CT scans. We'll be doing a clinical exam. And that kind of patient is the one that's going to probably receive multidisciplinary care in one procedure. So the ophthalmologist is going to come in and look at the globe, make sure that's all right. The neurosurgeon is going to be looking at the brain. And then, you know, once all that stuff's been cleared, we can go back and start reconstructing. And it's kind of like putting a puzzle back together. And with all of the training that we have, not only from from being a general dentist, from actually starting our training in dentistry, which is the foundation, the occlusion, how the teeth fit together, then helps us put the rest of the face back together because it's a known situation. We have a set of teeth, we know they fit together just like this. Everything else surrounds that. So, we just build off of that and then we end up putting, you know, the orbit back together eventually. But they're magical. It is. It's, you know, to see the insides of, I mean, I can remember seeing those pictures ago and we're talking I can remember being at dinner with you in Oklahoma City probably at least 10 years ago and looking at some of those things and even just like the lacerations. Yeah. You know what I mean? It's interesting to see the plates and the little things you guys would use and how you place it all back together. But like the laceration, I remember seeing that one laceration that was so crazy and you know, it's a really interesting specialty. Very much so.

You know, it has its roots really in conflict, you know, wartime injuries, battlefield injuries. You know, people were getting facial injuries since the beginning of time. If you look back on some of the archaeological findings, there were attempts to put people back together long before way long before we ever had any of the of the wonderful medical supplies and instruments that we have today. So, it's always been at the forefront of of our minds as humans to put ourselves back together and figure out how to fix our bodies. Does some of the technology start to really kind of pick up around World War I, World War II? Absolutely. Yeah. Absolutely. And really again, you know, the roots of plastic and reconstructive surgery comes from the same thing. So, you know, you start with simple X-ray and that was a big tool. That was a major advancement. Now we can see the bones before we open someone up. What a huge advantage. Maybe we don't have to make that incision because we can see what's underneath. So, just being able to see what's beneath the skin and soft tissues is a huge advantage. And of course that's just a plain X-ray. Yeah. We're not even talking about CT and two dimensional cone, you know, you have those in your offices where you have the cone beam CT where it's like the patient sits there and the thing rotates around their head and you can see, you know, the full, I mean, you can show people like these full, uh, v, you know, visuals of their entire their entire face. Not only that. Yeah. You nailed whole head. You nailed it because you can, you can put the bones only. You can throw some soft tissue on there and now you can see their actual face. You can make that translucent. Now you can see the bones and the face. Then you can change it. You can actually operate on. We'll get to some of that later. But, uh, it, you know, the advances are just, and really frankly speaking, we're still in the infancy. That's the most exciting part and that's kind of where we're going.

Hey, you know, this is a great opportunity. We didn't do normally in the beginning of the show we talk about the tech the charity of that you chose and, um, and so yeah, go ahead. Well, you know St. Jude's Children's Research Foundation. St. Jude's is fantastic organization and there's a big need for it. I love seeing their commercials and and they talk about, you know, not charging families. Can you imagine for one moment, oh my gosh, what it's like to have a child that's that's sick. I mean, just having a child that's sick is bad enough. It's like the biggest nightmare of any parent. It's a nightmare. And now imagine you have a child that has a chronic illness, God forbid, a terminal illness, cancer, something like that, and you're working a nine to five job, or you're a single parent, what are you going to do? And you live in the middle of nowhere, for example. You know, it's funny. So that's a shared charity, right? Because I've been a supporter of St. Jude for so long now and I just I mean, I it's so easy to believe in the mission of what they're doing and and what comes out of it. It's interesting actually I'm on the board of the USS PTOIC that was actually sold or Elvis gave it to Danny Thomas. Wow. And they figured out that, you know, it went on from there. But yeah, I mean, a lot of people have worked really hard to try to help that organization. It's a great cause. It's a great charity. So, thank you for doing that. Absolutely. Yeah. All the all the proceeds from the views of this video are, you know, are donated to that. So, we want to get the word out for them. That's awesome. Yeah.

Okay. So, let's come back. We're talking about oral and maxillofacial surgery. You know, you're still taking rounds in the in the in the hospital today, but you have a private practice and let's talk about what you kind of do in your private practice every day. Well, you know, we have I I I've been in private practice now for almost 20 years. Started practicing in 2006, so we're coming up on 20 here. Have you gotten that old? I've got some gray hairs. I don't know if you've seen them. Best five or six sets at least. Wild, right? You know, they're really good for patients like the gray hair. If they don't see them, I'm sure to show them. Do you see these? At one point in time, I bet there were some patients who were say they're like, "Oh, does this guy really know what he's talking about?" Well, when I first got in practice, they were still looking for the doctor when I walked in the room. Hey, and I count it as a blessing. I thought it was great. Yeah. Yeah.

But, you know, the practice has has evolved. I mentioned two-dimensional X-rays earlier in the show and and that's how I started. You know, I remember standing in front of the X-ray developing machine in a dark room, waiting impatiently for an X-ray to come out so that I could those big blocks treatment plan. And, you know, we have come a long way. I would submit to you and I do so with great humility. Our practice is the flagship practice in Oklahoma when it comes to technology and we have just developed the mindset and we have accepted the mindset and it is part of our culture that we will invest in technology and not garbage technology. There is technology galore. You know, you you walk into Cracker Barrel, you know, you've seen them in the news lately and you see the Old Country store and it's got stuff everywhere. I feel like that sometimes in healthcare. What we've tried to do in our practice is shop in an Apple store instead. We want to find the very best technology that we know that works and that's what we're going to implement into our practice. And that's what we've done.

I remember probably well it was before COVID, probably 2018 or 19. I was just posting something on LinkedIn. I I don't even know what I was doing. And as I was looking through LinkedIn, I saw this little robotic arm and it had a little video and it was just on repeat and it was something about dentistry and I thought that's very interesting. I've not heard of this. So I clicked on the learn more button and it was a company called Neocis and they had developed a robot called Yomi. And I immediately thought to myself, if this does what they say that it does, I'm getting it. I have to get it. And so they brought the robot to our practice in a little bus that you would, you know, ride to the parking lot of the airport back and forth with. And we were able to try out the robot in the parking lot of our practice. Dr. Goodson, my partner, and so we were the first practice in in Oklahoma to acquire and start using the Yomi robotic assistance platform. And from there, we've added a number of other digital modalities to the practice. You know, code beam CT scan technology has been around for a long time. We we were early adopters of that. Interoral scanners early on that we mentioned the robot. We were well forerunners on that. We like to be trailblazers when it comes to technology and that's really what our practice is all about.

You know, I get laughed at by my colleagues. My colleagues back in Oklahoma City, there are some of them that I they laugh at me because I have a robot and I think to myself, okay, keep laughing. And and that's one thing that really frustrates me about oral and maxillofacial surgery. There is still this kind of old school mentality of all I need to do surgery is a knife and a pair of rubber gloves, you know, just just give me a drill and I can put an implant anywhere I want and I'm I'm that good. We've got to get out of that. We've got to lose that that sort of attitude that I don't need anything to make me better because I'm an outstanding surgeon and I'm super smart and I'm super capable. That just doesn't fly anymore because there are things that we know with concrete data with research that backs it up that says if you use this you are better and if you're if you're resisting that because you have some sort of attitude about it, the person that's paying the price for that is your patient. You know, doctors say, I can't get that, the robot's too expensive. Yes, it's expensive. Good things are expensive. Great things cost. And if you don't have those, yeah, you're saving money, but your patients are paying the price for that. You're practicing 1980s, 1990s surgery. And that's what I find very frustrating. And I'm going to change that. I'm going to make that different because our patients deserve that.

And I love doing consultations with patients in the room with the robot and they sit in the chair and they don't even realize that it's sitting there. It's just kind of sitting there to the side and I'm sitting there talking to the patient and I I tell them, you know, we're going to take this tooth out. We're going to put an implant in. It's going to be placed using our robot. And, you know, they're they're looking at me and they they they've heard about it. They don't really understand it completely. And I say, "Look to your left." They, you know, and there it is. And they're they want it. They know that it's good. I don't even try to convince them that they should use it. They're there because they want the best. We don't really even like it's not an option. It's not optional. There's two things really interesting. First of all, you mentioned Dr. Goodson. Jeremy Goodson. Quite possibly the nicest person you'll anyone will ever meet. Absolutely. Anywhere in the world. That guy is literally like, I mean, I don't know what to say. I mean, he he literally is just good. Genuinely good. I don't think he has the ability to say something negative. He's, I don't think I've ever met anybody like that. I mean, you and I, we could chop it up. This this guy, I mean, he, I don't know. And he's brilliant. He's so smart. He's brilliant.

And you know, the thing about Dr. Goodson and I, when he was a resident, I was an attending. I I was on faculty at the university. And he called me up one day and he said, "I've I've got to talk to you about this case. I've got to get your opinion on this implant." This guy's a resident still. He's still training. He's not not a board-certified surgeon. He's still a resident. I said, "Oh, sure. Yeah, come to the office." So, he comes to the office after after work and he brings this dental model. One tooth is missing and it's a molar tooth, which they're large teeth. And he has a red X drawn with a circle around it where he thinks the implant should go. And he says, "What do you think about this case?" And I look at it and I'm like, "Yeah, I put the implant right there, Jeremy." And he just wanted to hear it from someone that he trusted. He He's that kind of guy. He's going to check. Yeah. It's simple. It's not complicated. He's going to check, though, and he's going to make sure it's the right thing. And he keeps me in check. He keeps me We balance each other. I pull him along. Okay, come on. let's let's do this. And he he pulls me back and says, "Well, let's do a little bit of checking." And it's it's interesting because in the early days of our relationship, there was a lot of tension there. But we knew that we needed it. We mutually recognized that the tension between us was good and beneficial. Yeah. I mean, the yin and yang of that partnership, it's like the partnership I have. Correct. And over the years, we have started to meet in the middle more and more and more and more. I'm more grounded. He's a little riskier. And so, it just has worked beautifully well.

And you guys have grown. We have grown. We are now four doctors strong. In 2020, we brought on Dr. Hayden Fuller. She is a board-certified periodontal surgeon and she does a tremendous job with all things soft tissue in the mouth. I'm sorry to say this, but another thing that was sort of visionary, you know, there's always been this competition between oral and max facial surgeons and periodontists. So, you really upset the world, the world around you. I overturned the apple cart. Yeah, you Well, yeah. And you started stomping on all the apples. You brought in Dr. Fuller, another super fantastic person. You brought her in and all of the colleagues around are like, "What are you doing?" But you wanted to do something that was different. You wanted to say, "Hey, I want to actually have kind of going back to your training. I want to have this person here who's really a soft tissue expert. So, when we're working on this, we can produce the best result for the patient," which is, you know, that's a trailblazer move, man. That's not game changer. Yeah. I mean, I got phone calls about that. Yeah. I mean, all the good ones. Yeah. I mean, it's not easy to go to be a risk taker like that. You nailed it. You know, you've heard the saying, the the the the thing about the risky thing about risk is not risking. Yeah. You've got to kind of embrace discomfort. Embrace being uncomfortable. You know, do do things. We talked about that earlier. Do things that if people think you maybe are a little bit crazy, you're probably doing something right. And if you're getting phone calls from people and they're sort of upset about what you're doing, maybe you're on to something and I got those phone calls. And I was glad to take them. I am happy to have those phone calls. I'm happy when, you know, they're kind of laughing at me and that sort of thing. But Dr. Fuller being a periodontist, you know, she really completes the practice in a lot of ways. She brings things to the table and she shows us and teaches us things that we haven't looked at before. So even my jaw surgery patients I see it from a very different perspective now because I'm looking at the soft tissue. And then fast forward to this year, we have brought on board Dr. Burley and Jeffrey, another oral and maxillofacial surgeon. She is from the Oklahoma City area, trained in oral and maxillofacial surgery in Memphis. She started with us. Smart as a whip, sharp as attack, fantastic person, very well respected by, I I checked into her thoroughly. Everyone at the College of Dentistry where she trained said she was fabulous. She has a great personality. She's very mature. She's moldable, teachable, team player, wants to be on the team.

Well, you just nailed something. I mean like after all the years of doing what I I do, which is the cross-section of technology and business strategy and marketing and, you know, working with doctors. I I think you nailed it like the team. There was a book that you guys would read as a as a practice. I always thought was you might want to talk a little bit about that. Yeah. Yeah. So in our practice, we, so let me back up just a little bit. There was a time probably around 2018 or 19 where I thought we needed phone training. I thought let's get some training on how to answer the phone which by the way is very important. You know, people in pra, I divert here for just a second, but people in practice they'll they'll think of the front office person as like a starter position. Huge mistake. Who's the first person that someone talks to and encounters when they contact your office? That person. Do you really want that person to be the person that just fell off the turnup truck? I don't think so. Big mistake. That is a valuable position. There should be heavy heavy training that goes into that position. And I've made that mistake myself. So, we look at that position very differently now. But you know, back up then. We I thought we needed some phone training. I I call in a consultant. She comes and spends a couple of days in my office and I said, "Okay, well, how did things go?" She said, "We need to have dinner." And I thought, "Oh, okay. We're not just, that sounds that sounds dangerous. This is not phone treating." She said, "You've got problems in your practice. You don't have a system. You don't have a team. You have a bunch of parts that are sort of independently working not together. You have systems that don't fit." So, she introduced me to a book called Traction. It's by a guy named Gino Wickman. He is an serial entrepreneur and he employs a system called the entrepreneurial operating system (EOS) and this book, very easy read, highly recommend to anyone who's doing anything period. If you're running anything, read the book, use the book. Anyway, it teaches you how to take any business and give it structure. You create positions, they call them seats. You have an accountability chart. You have who's sitting in those seats and what are their responsibilities and and what is how does the accountability look. It teaches you how to have a meeting. You know, meetings we overmeet. We meet way too much. Amen. You know, bad meetings are usually bad meetings. This teaches you how do you have a good meeting? How do you structure? It's timed. It the book is fantastic. Anyway, it's just changed how how we do everything in our practice. And I highly recommend the book Traction. It gave you a framework. Correct. And you've implemented it and now you've lived it, lived through it.

That's Mike Row has another kind of framework that he uses. What a great guy by the way. Yeah, phenomenal guy. Anybody that's interested to just go check out Row the Row Works Foundation. They they have a a framework too. It's it's a really cool thing. Anyway, back to you. So, you're in your practice on a day-to-day basis. You guys do probably more dental implants than anybody else in the entire state of Oklahoma and maybe you know who knows in the country. But you also take out wisdom teeth for kids and that is pretty important because people don't realize how much better roll and maxill, I didn't know you know what when I first was, you know, came from the medical side of the world, I was like, whoa, oh, okay, wait a minute. I, you know, I didn't know the difference between a general dentist and now we have all these like cosmetic dentist an implantologist. I don't want to take anything away from anybody or say, you know, I'm sure they're talented people in lots of different disciplines, but, you know, having a wisdom tooth extracted is way more in involved and intense and really needs to be done the right way because there's this nerve, you know, that most people don't really know about. I'm sure they talk everybody talks about in the consult. Everybody talks about it, you know, wisdom teeth when when they go well, it's great, you know, especially when they're easy wisdom teeth. And there are certain wisdom teeth that are easy to remove. And when you have those cases and you do those cases and everything goes great, everything is fantastic. But when it doesn't go well, it really doesn't go well. And this I I've seen many many people on Friday afternoons who have started down that road of having a wisdom tooth removed by someone or they call you and I get the phone call. "Can you, can we send the patient over?" And you know, I'm all about helping people, but if you're on my team as someone who I work with on a regular basis and we really have this back and forth relationship, when I get that phone call, I will trip over my feet to help you. But when I get that phone call from someone I've never heard of and and probably someone who shouldn't be be doing that procedure. Yeah. I'm going to help them, but the tone is very different. It's like, why did you try to take this case on it?

Yeah. Because I mean, what people don't, when you say the easy ones, well, those are erupted wisdom teeth that are straight up and they're easy to extract. There's very little wrist. We're talking about wisdom teeth that are turned horizontal. Impacted. Exactly. And that's the great thing about a cone beam CT scanner is you can actually look in there and see where's the nerve in relation to the tooth. How much bone is on either side of the tooth and, you know, what's kind of risk factors are we talking about here? What's the level of risk in taking this tooth out? So we take a lot of wisdom teeth out. Very very important to me because I have a stem cell banking company that exactly like stem cells from wisdom. That's right. So I only we only work with oral and maxillofacial surgeon. could easily work with a whole bunch of other people. The reason why we do that is we want the patient to have the best experience. We very much like the things you're talking about in your practice. We know that oral and maxillofacial surgeons provide the best experience with the best possible outcome for the patient. So, we're unwilling to really change the way that we do things because it puts the patient at risk. Right. And it is all about a team. You know, I I highly respect my general dental colleagues and my restorative colleagues, but we've got to have a team approach. There has to be a team in place. There are things that I am just not good at. Maybe I'm good at them, but I'm not an expert. I'm not going to do those things. I'm going to let someone else do those things who is an expert. If I set my mother to have a procedure done by someone, you better believe they're going to be the best. They're going to be an expert. And that's how it should be. It's not me making something up and saying, "Well, I think this is how it should be." Guys, come on. That's really what it should be like. Yeah. Well, you're a true team player within the ecosystem of the healthcare. We try to be health care system.

Yeah. You've you've done a lot of great things in the community over the years. You really care about the community. I want to kind of relate this back to the pathway of peak performance to you. Sure. You had those teachers that really cared about you and you really saw that it must have had, you know, your mother had your friends, your schoolmates, your teachers. They kind of propelled you into into wanting to also now you find yourself in this position where you've got some gray hairs. But along the way, you've done a lot of things to give back to the community and help the community. Why is that important to you? You've mentioned the word ecosystem probably two or three times since we've been talking today. And if you view it that way, we're all part of that, you know, and so when you recognize it from that perspective, it makes it very easy to understand that it is important for you to give back to the ecosystem because your survivability, it's selfish in some ways I suppose, but your survivability really depends on the entirety, the whole of your community to do well. So, anything that you can do as a person in that position to contribute to the wellness of the whole of your community is important. You know, we happen to have an office that is located across the street from a hospital, Mercy Hospital in Oklahoma City. So, we provide lunch for all of the staff members there occasionally in our parking lot. We'll have a food truck come in. Why do we do that? Well, because they deserve it. You know, those those guys work really hard. They're part of our team. We go over there to do our jaw surgeries and they take great care of our patients. They take great care of us. I walk into the hospital and people that I don't know say hi to me. Good morning, Dr. Brian. How great is that, you know? So, why would I not want to help them have a better life in some kind of way?

Well, it's so important to like contribute to the world in that way, right? We can approach somebody sent me something earlier today and it was like we can approach the world with a great attitude and thought process and that's where we're going and keep things positive even in the face of very difficult situations. I know when I go the other way, I lose. Yeah. Very interesting story. Yeah. There there's this power positivity power positive thinking like we are going to do something great today. Yeah. You know, maybe it's something for teachers, maybe it's something for health care workers. I don't know. We had a patient that we, you know, Second Chance program. We had a gentleman that literally works in the sewer system, cleaning it out. Well, how many times a day do you sit and think to yourself, "Well, I'm so thankful that I have a a properly functioning sewage system today." Just we don't do that. Someone has to take care of that. Holy smokes, whatever it does, it works. Sounds one day. It's a big problem. Yeah. So, you know, we had this guy as a patient on the Second Chance program. He had no teeth. And the guy has a personality that will just explode in a room. It's fant he's a fantastic person. You want to be around this guy. That's a lifechanging thing. That program, that campaign. Yeah. It gets the entire community rallying around and feeling good at a time when we really need more of that.

When you're standing there, oftentimes some news is there. When you're standing there, how do you feel in that moment? It is, I will tell you, first of all, deeply emotional. Deep. Not just sort of like, oh, I feel good about this. This is a deeply emotional thing that you feel and you can almost you struggle to contain it. Yeah. Like you you become visibly emotional about it in a good way. And what's so awesome about it is, you know, we we make the announcement and we we make a big deal out of it because it is a big deal. You know, we have the news there. We've had people from government offices show up. State senators have shown up. Congress people have shown up. You know, obviously the news is there. We have family members there. We have people in our office that are just it's it's just buzzing with activity and excitement. And we're about to announce, you know, who's the recipient of this smile situation. And I I just struggle to contain the emotion of it because I know that it's going to change their life for the better. I know that we're going to do something remarkable for this person and I know that they that they deserve it and they want it and and they need it. They need it. You know, you you think about just imagine for a moment taking your two front teeth out and then going about your business. Just two teeth. Whoa. And how is that going to impact you now? You now you're going to do a Zoom call with someone and that's just missing two teeth. These people, some of them are missing all of them or they have the teeth but they're in significant disrepair sometimes. I wonder if that's not even worse.

Well, I mean, let's really go into this because this is really important for people to really think about because you you really hold your your general dentistry colleagues in high in high regard for the work that they do. And I think that's that's phenomenal. When we think about it, this area has so much to do with how healthy you are going to be. This brain needs to make the right decisions about what you put into it. But if you I mean, I don't look man, you can you can decide that you're going to eat really healthy great food, but if you can't chew it, you can't it's this is much part of the digestive as it is your stomach. Nailed it. It starts right here. It's so important. And then also the bacteria. Maybe you could talk about that. Oh some of the things that we're finding out about that. Oh my goodness. Yes. So, you know, we're now understanding inflammation is the enemy of the human body. It is the enemy of the human body. And one thing that you also said is, you know, the mouth, the oral cavity, it is the beginning of the digestive system. If you think about the digestive system, it is a tube and it's got an entrance and it has an exit, but it is one system from start to finish and it begins in the oral cavity. And so if you can't chew your food, you can't use it and your your digestion is bad, you feel bad.

And not to mention if you if you're not able to or have chosen to not take care of it or circumstances have, I'm not blaming anybody. I'm just saying sometimes you can be find yourself in a situation where it's very unhealthy. There is tremendous inflammation. Number of bacteria that we have in our mouth literally it's like the stars in the universe. Trillions, right? We don't even know what all's in there. No, there's stuff there that we don't even know. It's like the ocean, the depths of the ocean. Animals we've never heard of, we don't know about. And they activate the inflammatory response. It's literally starting right here in the very beginning. Now, what do you think the rest of the digestive system looks like? This is just the part that we can see, you know, gingivitis, periodontitis, bone loss, broken teeth, and and it just goes bad from there. The tongue becomes inflamed, the floor of the mouth is inflamed, the throat is inflamed, you know, acid reflux disease is awful. And so, you know, oral health and the things that our general dental colleagues do is very important. And if we can take someone who has for whatever reason found themselves in a desperate situation, in a situation where they feel hopeless, they they don't want to go for a job interview, they don't want to get up in the morning and go to work, they don't want to socialize, they certainly aren't going to want to go to dinner with friends because they have no smile. And we can make that magically instantly transform. That speaks for itself. It's so it's just it's huge. Yeah. Yeah.

And you know, when you think about what that's going to be like for that person for at those times moving forward, right? How their life is going to change. It's almost like they can't even imagine. Then you see it when they finally when they're finally restored and it's all there. It's like that moment of like, whoa. Like my life just completely changed. It's a process. You got to go through it, but it was a process to get to where they were. I love how you have no judgment. It's really great. It's really great because you know what? Sometimes it's an education issue. Sometimes it just is what it is. Yeah. You know what? It's interesting you say that because I see in my practice, I see people that are very minimally educated from an academic perspective and I see people that are Ivy League, very well known people that have been on Fox News or CNN or, you know, very famous people, very wealthy people, very well educated people. Guess what? They're all the same. They're all the same. Yeah. And I talked to them about oral health and it's the the the level of knowledge is just it's about the same.

There was somebody I worked with at one point in time, very important, brilliant guy. In the technology space, um Stanford, you know, big- time player and he let his mouth go and I really think that led to all a cascade of a lot of health issues that he had thereafter. Right. So, not only do you have issues with the brain, but then you have the cardiac function. Absolutely. Has an impact on the entire system. Yeah. Because those bacteria go from the mouth into your bloodstream. Every time you bite into something, every time, you know, you you brush your teeth, you floss your teeth, you're disturbing the soft tissue and you cause a little bit of bleeding and you know, bacteria get into that. And if you have a mouth full of bad bacteria, you're going to find those bacteria in other places in your body. You will find them in other places. You'll find them in your heart valves. They make you very sick. So if you can just get your mouth healthy, your body will be healthier. I say it all the time to people when they're leaving my office. I say to them, "You're a healthier person." Now, it's interesting. I go to the hygienist, my dentist, but I'm seeing my hygienist four times a year. And the reason that I do it every quarter, every three months, I mean, I floss every day. I brush twice a day. Sometimes three times a day. Sorry. It's because I really became aware of that. I got great education around that. And I also like to have my teeth look good. Yeah. And I want to have a clean mouth. But man, it is so important. I love the education that you do for the kids around that because a lot of them just don't know and their parents have bad or I wouldn't say bad, but they don't have a lot of dental IQ, EQ, I don't know. I don't know what it is that we say that in dentistry. We say, you know, sometimes a patient has a low dental IQ or a high dental IQ.

It It's just like I love basketball. You know, Oklahoma City Thunder, fantastic team, by the way. NBA Finals Championship, first time ever. You must have loved having Kevin Durant. I did love You know what? I think Kevin Durant's great. I loved having him when he was a part of our team. Yeah. Well, that he got us to a certain point. Yeah. And Russell did. What a great big three we had back in the early days. Just couldn't get over the hump. Bad bad timing. Yep. But the organization is so well run. It's been great for the community, great for the state. Yeah, Oklahoma City is a really, you know, having had the privilege of being there, it's like, you know, great people. Great. Yeah. This is a great place. There's a lot a lot of really great things about that. Yeah. All right. So, let's talk about this big thing that's about to happen. Yeah. I remember when you called me on the phone, Jock. I remember that. I couldn't wait to call you. You're like, you're like, "Jock." I was like, "Okay, this is serious." Um, yeah. So, let's get into it. I mean, this is this is going to change. I mean, you're you're on pace for where this is all going. I love the vision and the leadership around this, and that's what this requires to make things better. So, hit us with it.

Yeah. So, you know, I mentioned the robot earlier. We were the first ones in Oklahoma to have a robot in in the practice. And honestly, I think there maybe are four in the entire state and we have two of them. I've just built another office. So, we have two practices now, two locations. And I said, we've got to have a robot in both. I'm not going to have great care in one and crummy care in the other. Right? So, we're getting another robot because we have patients there. So, anyway, fast forward, you know, we have come to realize that this is in fact how things should be done. We should be using robotics in dentistry at all levels. All levels of dentistry should be using a robot. And as I was learning how to use the robot and understanding the importance of it and seeing the results that it gives us and seeing well we have a cone beam CT scanner, we have a a a 3D interoral camera. We have this 3D printer. We have this robot. We have all this technology. We have software that we can take that and make a treatment plan with it, but it just I feel like we have all this stuff that what are we supposed to do with it? I go to meetings and I see vendors with tables and they're selling stuff and yeah, they have this scanner and that scanner and this printer and that printer and and you know this software and that software and the dentist is just well what what am I supposed to do? Well, I find that very frustrating. It has frustrated me for years.

One thing I want to ask you about, we talked about a lot of things, but there's a piece of this show where we always talk about flow state. How do you get into flow state? You probably found it in moments in surgery. You found it in moments of management, of people. It's where everything is kind of just working. Do you have a co are are you aware of a a pattern or way that you get yourself into flow state? Yeah, you know, it's funny you bring that up. When when I find myself in flow state, it's very organic in in its sort of presentation. Meaning it spawns in my opinion from past experiences. It spawns from doing those hard things, doing the difficult things and and failing and reassessing and regrouping and and and as you experience those things over a number of years, this is a crazy analogy. It's almost like you spent time in a rock tumbler. The edges are smooth now. And so when you run into those problem moments, you yourself and your ability to navigate those is smoother because you're drawing from experience and your leadership skills are better. You're a better example. You're a better team player. You're a better educator. You're a better mentor. And the people around you on your team feel that. They know that they may not even understand what it is, but they understand that they are a part of something that is bigger than themselves and they go with it.

Do you feel that when you're in that flow state, you're sort of emanating an energy that is like is contagious like people feel that re we know that people are people react to our unquestionable our effect, right? Unquestionable as a leader at, you know, when I come into the office in the morning, I already know I'm going to walk in the door and there will be needs. There will be six or eight people standing there waiting for me to arrive that have problems and they're looking for some kind of an answer. So if I start my day out behind the eightball, the entire team fails. The whole process is a complete complete disaster. But if I start my day out the night before with a good dinner, healthy food choices, healthy mindset, going to sleep at a reasonable time, getting up early, 4:00, 4:30, 5:00, going to the gym, working out. Now, when I get to the office, I'm ready. I'm ready. I'm already starting to think about what those problems or issues or things could be. And so when I walk in the door, it's easy. It flows. You have you have a pathway to peak performance that exists on a daily basis. Daily that you repeat. Correct. It is repeatable. It's predictable.

You know it's going to happen. It's like when people take the, you know, we have to take a board exam to become board certified and people say, "Oh, I'm very nervous about the oral boards. What are they going to I don't know what they're going to ask me." Yeah, you do. You do know what they're going to ask you. They've told you literally what they're going to ask you. You're going to have a case in orthonathic surgery, jaw surgery. Well, what does that look like? Third mer case. What does that look like? Cancer case. What does that look? You know, all the answers ahead of time. Just prepare for it. You know, when when we're going about our life, we we can accidentally do things or we can plan. And I'm not a big checklist guy. I'm just not I I don't carry a checklist. But I It's interesting. You are a pilot though. That's the one place I have a checklist. You have to have a checklist in the P in Yeah. You know what's interesting about that is I am a pilot and I decided after I had COVID, really bad case of COVID, early 2020, coughing up blood. You know, it was back before we kind of little and I honestly I just thought I was going to die. I really thought I was going to die and I got better and I said, "I'm gonna go do something that is maybe crazy." And I said, "I'm gonna go get a pilot's license." So, I drove to the airport and I found a guy who would teach me how to fly an airplane. And he did. And I did. And I love it. And I say about aviation, the the irony of aviation is that it grounds me because I spend so much time up in the clouds in my head orbiting, thinking, dreaming, visionary type stuff and I don't have a checklist and I don't have a cookbook and and I don't have all of these. I'm an 80/20 guy, too. I might be a 60/40 guy. Explain what that means to when you say that. You know, there's this thing about, well, you know, when you're getting ready to do something, do it. Act with urgency and speed. And if you're 80% there, do it. Don't wait to get the other 20%. It'll never happen. It's the PH, right? Yeah. And so sometimes I think maybe I'm a 60/40 guy. If it's 60%, I'm probably going to do it. You're going for it. Yeah.

And so I don't have all those checklists in my normal life, but aviation is something I fell in love with. And there is a checklist. And you better follow it because that's where you'll get killed. Man, I got to tell you that is really true. You do not want to put that airplane in the air unless you have covered all of that stuff because it's the one thing that you didn't cover. Correct. That's going to get you killed. There's a saying that pilots say, "I would much rather be on the ground wishing that I were flying and be flying wishing that I were on the ground." And those moments happen. Yeah, those moments happen. I I remember when I was learning how to land, you know, taking off is really not as easy, but it it it's it's easier than landing. There's some some things about taking off that aren't all that easy, but landing is is I found it to be very difficult to perfect. You can take an airplane and put it on the ground and do okay a lot of times, but if you want to nail a landing, it's really hard to do. I went to I was on vacation in Florida once and this was when I was learning to land and there was a guy doing a course, Landings by Andy. You Google it, go do it. If you go there and you're trying to learn how to land, go do Landings by Andy in Florida. And so I show up the airport and I have all my stuff, you know, and Andy is this guy sitting in the chair, you know, he's kind of sitting back like this, very casual. He's got his phone. He's doing something on his phone. He looks up and I'm thinking, I'm going to have to sign all this paperwork. We're going have to do all this stuff. And and Andy says, "Okay, let's go." And so we go get in this little Cessna 172 and I'm taking off and I've never taken off out over the ocean before and I'm taking off and we're taking off out over the Gulf and it's an interesting experience because you can lose perspective. There's the landmarks are Is this in Pensacola? Yeah. And so I take off and Andy says, you know, do the pattern and land and there's a crosswind that day. And crosswind is one that's not up and down the runway. So you have to do special things with your rudder. They got Yeah. You got crab and all that stuff. Yeah. And I'm not good at it. And I'm hitting the ground hard. I'm skidding. And I look at Andy at every once in a while. I say, "Andy, I don't have this one." Meaning, I'm coming in the land. I don't have it. He's, "Oh yeah, you've definitely got this one." And I don't think I could have scared Andy if I tried. He just was so accustomed to being in that position of teaching people how to land. And it's just like when you walk in the office in the morning and there all these problems. I was the person now that had the problem and I needed Andy to fix it for me. Andy wasn't scared. He knew I could do it. I walk into my office and these people have all these problems. They need answers and I know they can solve the problems because we've taught them and I trust them. And that's another thing about being a leader. You've got to have you've got to let go of the wheel just like Andy does. He's got to let it go. Yeah.

Often times we say you you got to you got to be able to fail forward. Yes. You've got to let your kids fall down and skin their knee. You know, you don't want them to have a devastating injury, right? But, you know, in our practice, I trust everyone on our team. They wouldn't be there if I didn't because we literally have the life of the patient in our hands. They come to our office, they're going to sleep. They're going to have an anesthetic and an IV. That's big stuff. That's big stuff. So, you know, people say, "Well, it's your assistant. She just suctions." No, she doesn't. No, she literally helps me keep this person alive during a procedure. Yeah. I mean, it's there's a lot to manage there. There's a lot to manage. And all of our assistants, you know, we train them very thoroughly on that stuff. All right. I want to come back to So, we got to kind of get to this spot. Yeah. You're creating a new academy. This academy is focused on robotic and digital dentist. Correct. The future of where things are going. Correct. The idea is to bring as many people as possible to this because AI is going to affect treatment planning. AI is going to be a part of the actual procedures themselves. And it's really about making sure there's good governance and vision to this whole thing. I'm be I'm putting words in your mouth at this point in time. So maybe you could just share what your vision is. Sure us.

Yeah. So I mentioned earlier about the robot and the digital design and all that stuff. There are all these parts and components to dentistry and medicine that are available for you to to buy and acquire, but how do you use them? And it it has always frustrated me that it's this hodgepodge of parts and pieces. And what I've decided is it really needs to be first of all it needs to be the standard of care. Digital treatment planning robotically guided surgery should be and I am going to make it the standard of care in dentistry that implants are planned and placed robotically assisted robotically. So that's the whole idea of what I have founded and I'm going to roll out this September, September 26th, Oral Surgery Specialists of Oklahoma will host their second annual dental implant summit in Oklahoma City. At that meeting, I will announce the formation, the roll out of what I have called the American Academy of Robotic and Digital Dentistry. And the idea behind it is I want to take those people that are thinking like I'm thinking right now and I want to bring us all together and I want us to start designing the workflow, making it mainstream, making it the standard of care for how patients are taken care of. Because there are people out there that think like I'm thinking right now. We're not talking to one another though. We're not communicating. And so I want I want those people to come together.

When we think about robotic dentistry, it should be used in oral surgery for placement of implants. It should be used in jaw surgery. The endodontic folks should use robots to access their the pulps of teeth to to make the access holes conservative. Periodontists should be using them. Do you see a day when hygiene is really done robotically? Absolutely. I can tell you right now. Look, we can already see. You go to the dentist, you get your teeth cleaned, right? And so the hygienist has taken their instrument and they're trained to go to all surfaces of the teeth. All Yeah. They're shaped like this. And wouldn't it be great if we could scan the teeth like we already can and we could know exactly where this tartar is that they're cleaning. And not only know where it is, know which instrument, which shape, which angle. Well, if we had a robot that could just know that, it's guided by the hygienist. The robot's not probably going to go in and do that right now, but it's a tool that the hygienist could use to to more effectively clean without question more effectively clean the teeth. Well, and it's almost going back to the checklist in an airplane because if you have all of that data, all that information on where the tartar is and what needs to be addressed and also areas of potential sensitivity, then you're you're really affecting a better overall treatment plan and patient experience.

Absolutely. And you know, we see these images from space, right? When when we look on Instagram or whatever and we see a picture of Jupiter or Saturn or whatever, we're not seeing the picture as it was taken with some kind of a camera, we're seeing what scientists have interpreted using different cameras and different sensors and putting it in a format that we can see, right? And so, wouldn't it be nice if we could use AI technology, look inside the mouth and find these trouble areas using different spectrum of light or what? I I don't know the science behind all of it. I'm not sure yet, but I'm thinking this is something that should be done from a visionary perspective. I'm looking ahead and thinking someone knows something about how we can use that to to make dentistry better. And I want those people I want those people to be a part of this organization, the American Academy of Robotic and Digital Dentistry to make everyone's life better.

Well, I mean, it all starts with the vision. So many of the things that I've created have been just starting off with an idea. Yeah. A vision and seeing a need, fulfilling that need. Absolutely. And you got to have that team fill in. Bring it all together. It's a super exciting time for you. I mean, we could go on and on. We could talk all day. And as a matter of fact, outside of the studio, we will, right? We got we got lunch and we got a dinner and we're going to, you know, we're going to catch up and all those good things. But for the audience, one thing I want to get from you, a guy that has, you know, come from a place where maybe at times you thought to yourself, can I actually do this? What's that one thing when you have any kind of doubt in your mind, when you have that fear that comes up around making that decision? What do you do to get through that? There are times when when I'm doubting myself and and and I'm thinking, you know, I don't I don't know if I'm the right guy. There's this impostor syndrome, you know, but you've heard that saying and you've heard it before that ordinary people can do extraordinary things. I'm just a guy. I'm just a regular person. But regular people can do things that are incredible. You just have to do it. You literally just have to decide, I'm going to do this. I hear people say, "Oh, I wish they'd come out with something that would do this or that." Come out with it. You come out with it. You do it. You make it happen. Yeah, it's expensive. Borrow some money. Take a risk. Just do it. You know, the Nike thing, just do it. There's something to that. It's funny that you say, it's so funny you say this because Bill Schllay, who is the guy that decoded the Ted Bates, Russell Reeves unique selling proposition, which has the facts of the difference and your own lees and all these things really interesting. The more you study it, the more you'll find it fascinating. But he said to me the difference between successful entrepreneurs and other entrepreneurs after looking at them overall the ones that the the ones that were successful the ones that just just did it do it. At the same time he says that just do it is not is not a true USB. It's just he says it's not even inspir it's not even inspirational which I I don't I don't think that's true but exactly though I mean just do it was pretty inspirational. He his thing was it was like $500 million dollars behind it to make it happen with a bunch of really high high-profile athletes. Anyway, long story short, we could debate that every day, but I I agree with you. It's get out there, make it happen. Absolutely. Yeah. And you're a pro at getting out there and making it happen. We have a great team. It's great to see you, my friend. Great to see you. Thanks for coming all the way out from Oklahoma City to see me. Happy to be here. Yeah, it's really great. Hey, thanks everyone for watching the show. Please remember to like, comment, and subscribe. It really helps us out here at the channel and share the video with someone who might be interested in supporting the charity that our guest mentioned in the episode. Thanks again. We'll see you soon.