MSD Insider 0:00
Welcome to med shark insider with Bill Fukui, your expert host on all things medical, marketing, and SEO.

Bill Fukui 0:08
Hello, everyone, and welcome to another episode of med shark Insider. And today I’ve got a unique opportunity that I actually stumbled on to a little while ago, through one of my former relationships I had in the dental industry, Mike Gergen, he turned me on to an organization called the Seattle Study Club. And consequently, I got introduced to this young man on the other side of the screen here, Greg Tice, who is the managing director of the Seattle Study Club. And we’re going to talk of a really about kind of the the collaborative spirit and the opportunities to share and engage with other colleagues and the strategies that they incorporate to really help elevate practices and the quality of life with a lot of our their clients. So welcome, Greg.

Greg Tice 1:06
Thank you for having me. I appreciate it. Looking forward.

Bill Fukui 1:09
Well, do me a favor. Because I’m, I’m not as detailed with your personal background, kind of how to give me a little bit of background on where you came from and how how you came to, you know, to the Seattle Study Club.

Greg Tice 1:22
Ah, okay. Well, we have to go back 26 years now, okay. No, we started with Dr. Cohen, who Michael, who’s the founder of the Seattle Study Club, club in January, actually January 3 of 1995. Prior to that, when I got out of university, I went into the event industry, my background was in political science, psychology and education. But I ended up as an event producer, okay, the I was doing fundraising with the MS Society, cystic fibrosis, and after a few years of that, and being still young and naive, I knew at all. So I stuck out on my own and started my own event production company, primarily doing mostly concerts, I worked with the likes of Reba McIntyre, and Willie Nelson. So country focus, but I was a concert promoter. Then I had twins. And when you’re promoting concerts, basically, it’s professional gambling, or it was at the time I was either making money or losing money. And my wife encouraged me to find something a little more steady. So I applied, Michael was actually advertising. Dr. Cohn was actually advertising in the Seattle Times the new people still read newspapers back then. And I applied for he was looking for an event producer for their second symposium for the second Seattle Study Club symposium. So I applied one in for my first interview, I felt like we hit it off really, really well. The rest of this I learned kind of years later, but apparently he wasn’t going to hire me. Even though we had hit it off really well. He wasn’t so comfortable. He was a dentist, a periodontist. And his staff his team had always been female, the people who would work for him had always been female. He wasn’t sure how he get along with a male employee. But he decided to take the leap called me and sorry, this is a little bit of a long story. But know if I’m, there’s a semi punch line to it. He called me in for a second interview. And I went in December 28, for my second interview, of 1994. And the second interview lasted maybe a minute. It was very quick pleasantries. How are your holidays, blah. And he said, Okay, great. Here’s the deal. And if you’ve ever met Michael, you know, this is exactly how he speaks. said, here’s the deal. Your uncle was the keynote speaker at our symposium last year, which I had no idea about that connection, right. I mean, I know my uncle. I loved him, but didn’t know that he had done that. And Michael said, If Lou sends me a letter of recommendation, today, you’ve got the job. Like, okay, I don’t even own a cell phone at this point. Can I use your phone? So I call uncle Lou uncle Lou. Can you remember Michael Cohen? Oh, yeah, I remember I said, Can you send him a letter of recommendation for me? Of course, of course. Give me the fax number. Still faxing back. Gotcha.

Bill Fukui 4:50
I believe me, I was there.

Greg Tice 4:54
So he sent in the letter recommendation and I started in January 3. Yeah. Okay. up, I don’t know, maybe five or six years down the road. I’m sitting in Michaels office in Dr. Collins office. And he says to me, did I ever show you the letter that loosened me? And I said, no, never saw it. So he went back into his file room came back out a minute or so later. And you know, the the old fax paper, was that kind of waxy that Oh,

Bill Fukui 5:22
yeah. The scrolling kind of Yeah.

Greg Tice 5:25
And it’s fading, but he hands it to me, and I look at it, and it’s one sentence, and I can’t say it verbatim, I will give you the gist of the day. It is Michael. If he screws up, I’ll kill him. Blue. And this is my letter of recommendation.

Bill Fukui 5:47
Hey, that’s great.

Greg Tice 5:51
But only Lou would write that. And only Michael would accept that as a recommendation now.

Bill Fukui 5:57
I mean, understand the relationship and, you know, rapport that they have with with one another? I don’t think a lot of words was necessary.

Greg Tice 6:07
No, not at all. So I’m a 28 year old kid, basically, in January of 95. At my first real major conference in dentistry, like I had no dental background, at all coming into this meeting. But I know my way around an event. So we’re, we’re running this program. But I was hooked from day one, it was a week long meeting and I was hooked from the very first day because I am sitting down not recognizing who they are at the moment. But I’m sitting down with Neil star mort, Amsterdam. You know, D, Walter Cohen. Ryan’s there. I mean, great in dentistry, and they’re calling me over to sit down and hang out with them and have a drink after you know, the sessions done in the evening. And treating me like a human being. Right. Right. This kid they don’t know from Adam, but they know I’m working with Michael. And to listen to the conversations, they had the openness they had with one another the I don’t get this or this doesn’t make sense to me, or here’s what I’m struggling with. That level of vulnerability. Yes, from clinicians, was addictive. I was I was instantly hooked. And 26 years later, they can’t get rid of me now.

Bill Fukui 7:35
Oh, no, that’s, that’s a great story. And I think you use the word vulnerability, which is a really powerful, you know, when you’re talking about personnel, as well as practice growth, you got to acknowledge those types of things and be willing to, you know, acknowledge them, if you have any chance to grow.

Greg Tice 7:59
Absolutely. But you also have to have the environment for that to work. Oh, that’s true. I can’t walk into a room full of strangers and just start spilling my guts, right? Unless I start to see them do it first. Right? If I’m new in a group, or, and they’re already tight knit, there needs to be some way to engage me to welcome me and I need to feel like, Okay, Bill, you’re, you know, you’re up there in this group, you’re well respected, but you’re throwing an issue or a problem out on the table, something you’re struggling with, all sudden, that makes it safer for me to do it. Right. That guy can do it. I got it. I’m good.

Bill Fukui 8:39
In fact, it’s almost I wouldn’t call it peer pressure. But you’re, you’re almost feeling like you, you want to participate. Yep, you want to participate, you know, and, and it’s, it’s not only just I have, it just lowers the bar just lowers the bar in order for me to engage, you know, to share, you know, share things I wouldn’t share with, with, you know, many of my other colleagues. You know, I think that’s, I think that’s great. So give me an idea. You know, we’re talking about this collaborative spirit. This willingness that I see is unique to someone in dentistry, because I also work with, you know, plastic surgeons, you know, med spas, you know, the cosmetic industry. And I don’t see nearly as much of that, which is kind of surprising. I’ve got about 150,000 dentists across the country, but I only have maybe 8000 board certified plastic surgeons, you would think with a smaller group, you’d have a lot more collaborative, you know, rapport with one another because there’s just, you know, it’s a lot less competition, I think, in general, but I don’t see that as much as I see in dentistry. So give me an idea. Give me a little background about you know, the Seattle Study Club, who makes up the Seattle study club who, what makes for good You know, you know, practices that, that participate and get value out of what you guys do?

Greg Tice 10:06
Certainly. So if you’re thinking about Seattle Study Club, the way I like to picture it is really as a network of educational pods all over the world. They’re currently about 260. Seattle Study Club affiliates around the world, the vast majority of those in North America. We have clubs in China, Japan, South Korea, Spain, Germany, Trinidad and Tobago of all places, so we’re all over the place. But when you think about them, they’re their pods, or educational communities, where we are through, typically a singular director, a clinician running a study club, okay. And many are specialists but they don’t have you don’t have to be a specialist to run a study club. We also have many general practitioners running study clubs. But typically, there’s an individual we would refer to as the director of the club, who will invite other clinicians in the community to participate in this, to use your words collaborative environment, this environment where dentists are getting together to share information with one another. Because that’s where the real learning takes place. I mean, you know, as well as I do, you know, there are a million lectures and now that we’re all over zoom and web based, Oh, yeah. You can go consume information anywhere you want. But that doesn’t create real behavior change. It’s a lot like watching television, right? If you’ve got a favorite TV show, and you watched it last night, or Sunday night or Saturday night, whatever it was, Can you even remember what happened? Yeah, not without prompting, not unless I sit there and discuss it with you, then you start to recall and it starts to come back lectures the exact same way. lecture based education is cotton candy. Goo great in a moment doesn’t last very long.

Bill Fukui 12:12
I got to remember that the next time I take kids over to the ballgame or so this goes great now.

Greg Tice 12:20
It feels good in the moment. And we need those experiences. Yeah. But until we can sit down and discuss a case discuss an issue and start to look at how those ideas and concepts that we’re picking up in the lectures, how they apply to our existing armamentarium. We’re not going to carry them back into our practice. Okay. So that’s really the foundation of the club. So from a structural standpoint, the vast majority of participants in our study clubs are general practitioners. Okay. Every club has a smattering of specialists involved as well, ortho endo Oral Surgery perio. Lab, I mean, a lab is a critical component within

Bill Fukui 13:04
treatment planning. No, absolutely.

Greg Tice 13:06
And the foundation of each one of those clubs is a focus on comprehensive diagnosis and treatment planning. Okay. So when I look at us, we are an enabler in the positive sense of that word for these individuals to create a safe environment for clinicians to get together and decide what works for them. Really, our sole purpose is a focus on creating complete clinicians who are focused on comprehensive diagnosis and treatment planning. Okay. Right. With that as a foundation, we don’t need to get involved in promoting a particular clinical religion. And I don’t use that negative sense of No, absolutely. Versus that approach. I don’t care which one you use, in fact, let’s put them both on the table. So yeah, and figure out which components are important to you. Right.

Bill Fukui 14:02
Right.

Greg Tice 14:04
And that’s, I think, long term than the magic, the the people that are attracted to a study club like this, because it’s not sit and listen, it’s not easy. You’ve got to work. You’ve got to engage, you’ve got to break into group discussion. The people that are attracted to this are the people who want to get better. Right. And that’s a pretty amazing group to be able to work with. I mean, that’s the that’s the joy I think most of us here find is the types of individuals we get to work with, are going to be successful with or without us, we happen to be the tool they choose to use

Bill Fukui 14:44
right now. I think you’re you know, one of the things that I when I first spoke with you to learn a little bit more about the study club, was this. I guess the closest thing I could relate to that was In the business world, you have the CEO mentoring programs, and you pay big bucks for those things. You can pay 10s of 1000s of dollars to be part of the CEO, mentoring groups, Vistage or whatever they are. And we actually did the engaged with that with our agency with with my previous agency, and our owner was mentoring with other, you know, non industry competitive CEOs. And, I mean, they, they, they drop trial, they share their books, they share their financials, they do everything. And, you know, I think one of the things that I think this engagement back and forth, as opposed to just this one way flow of information, where it just kind of washes over with you is there is a there is an ongoing sense of accountability to your, to the people that you’re you’re in the group with, there’s part of that accountability, you know, which I found very unique, I thought that was really, really helpful in that situation. What’s the relationship? You know, when you’re getting these other group members in there? What’s your relationship with with one another? And, you know, what type of communication do you have with other ones, you know, with other practices, et cetera, kind of give me an idea of the day in the life of an average practice. Say I’m, I’m the group leader, and I’ve invited an endodontist or an ortho into the group, what’s kind of what what should they expect? Sure.

Greg Tice 16:36
So when you look at the study club itself, at the local level, the programming the curriculum, that’s how we refer to it, because it’s really designed to help individuals move predictably, from point A to point B, the curriculum runs on an academic calendar. So all of our clubs run pretty much September through May or June, with one program every month. So over the course of any given study club year, you’re looking at nine to 10 programs, okay? On average, those sessions are roughly four to five weeks apart. So really, what we’re trying to do there is create the consistency of going back to school, right? This is just a regular, this is a group of friends was what we’re moving towards, that gets on a regular basis, to learn from each other. Of those nine to 10 programs, to the three of them, and really to the three Max, our full day lectures, were about looking someone in from the outside, right, any new information to the table? You know, and I know earlier, I was Dain on lectures a little bit, and I don’t want to make it seem like they’re irrelevant, it’s important to have that new information coming to the table. But the balance of the programs are built around interaction, doctors sharing information with each other. Because that’s where the real learning takes place. And we structure these sessions to, for lack of a better term, force the interaction and engage right. But in a safe environment, they might do a treatment planning session, they might do a problem solving workshop, they might, we might set them up for an evening and political debate. Okay, where we’ve got a pinky alarm and an LBI alarm going head to head political debate on occlusion. And, you know, they’re passionate about

Bill Fukui 18:40
Sullivan. Absolutely. And

Greg Tice 18:44
it creates the nominal dialogue, yes, that dialogue and my engagement with you through that dialogue that gets through our cognitive in particular, it gets through the filter system that if it doesn’t fit what I already know, I don’t even hear, right, when I’m engaged in discussion with you, I give it more weight, I give it more consideration. And the more often I do that, through repetition, with people that I trust, and that’s a critical component, right? The more often I do that, the more likely I am to start to incorporate some of those things into my daily behavior.

Bill Fukui 19:23
You know, the, the idea of stimulating thought processes beyond what your conventional wisdom or what you believe is conventional wisdom, and stimulate this idea of what ifs or maybe I’m maybe I was wrong. You know, I don’t think that that, you know, let’s face it, most of the practitioners that are dealing, you know, in the study clubs, let’s face it, every one of them, I mean, every dentist out there, they were always the smartest kid in class, you know, they always got good grades. They were you know, Really success driven, they wouldn’t be where they were, you know, are today without that. So a lot of times, you know, we let our own egos or our own self confidence sometimes kind of get in the way of personal as well as professional growth, and really even stimulating our, you know, our energies within in the practice when you’re talking about the passion that these guys have, whether they’re talking about treatment plans, etc. I think that’s a huge component of what you guys bring?

Greg Tice 20:34
Well, when you think about it, it’s not just dentists, as human beings, we operate based on the truth, as we perceive it to be not the truth, the truth is we perceive it to be. And the only way to break through that is if I’m engaged with people that I trust, who have the courage to disagree with me. Again, in a safe environment, I mean, I keep bringing it full circle, but when we’re engaged in dialogue and discussion, you’re going to open my eyes because you practice differently than I do you behave differently than I do, your experiences are different than mine. And you’re because we have this faith and trust in one another, I may still disagree. I’m going to recognize those things rather than just in one ear and out the other because it doesn’t fit my currently held belief system.

Bill Fukui 21:28
Right? Well, I think with every perspective, there are nuances. Yep. And that it is not black and white. And yes, I may disagree in in theory, or, you know, overall, generally speaking, I disagree with you on that. But there is this one point or this, this area that you know, what I, I think there’s some legitimacy to, to that, and then you can incorporate not, it doesn’t have to be an all or nothing, or a one size fits all kind of thing, I think you’re gonna be able to take away certain aspects, that we’re not here to change your opinion of everything. But it’s there are going to be like you’re saying, there are going to be things that fit in my practice fit in my, you know, way of thinking that, you know, I can adopt that which is new to me, even though we may disagree on, you know, philosophically on, on, you know, 30,000 foot level, but in the details that, you know, the devil is in the details. You know, we find we find that, you know, there are things that we may have overlooked or just assumed, I think that’s probably a bigger, you know, problem is people, we just assume certain things. Oh, as

Greg Tice 22:45
well. And you made an interesting point in when you said, not one size fits all. And I think that’s been a key component to the long term success of the study clubs as well. When you think about the average life expectancy, roughly in the study club in dentistry in the United States is about 18 months, maybe two years, if you push it, the average life expectancy of the Seattle Study Club today is 14 years. Wow. So and I, I believe, because it’s not one size fits all. Every club has what we call a bespoke curriculum. Meaning if you’re running a study club, we’re sitting down with you and building a curriculum with you that fits the needs of the people in your community. Right. And that’s going to be different from Seattle to Miami to New York, June, you know, Tullahoma, Tennessee, right? And not one is better than the other, the structure remains the same for that curriculum. Right. But the content is customized to meet the needs locally there. And it’s that level of customization that I think keeps people coming back then in the relationship. You set him when we talked the other day dentistry is an isolating industry. I mean, it’s truly isolating, especially for the dentists. Yeah, I mean, really, you think about it, eat whether whether it’s male or female, as a dentist, they’re running their own little fiefdom. And they have the members of the court their team, but that’s their world. Yeah. And the opportunity again, I keep coming back to it but in a safe environment to get together with other Dukes and duchesses thinking, Yeah, wait,

Bill Fukui 24:37
that’s a theory we’re putting in is huge. Yeah. You know, some of the things that you were talking about intern, you know, refer to a lot, a lot of the political philosophies, and in addressing a lot of that. One of the things that I noticed when I was on your website, was there’s also a slant on On the business of medicine, the business of dentistry, you know, the business academy that you guys refer to, I think that’s, you know, as much as the the clinical part is what drives a lot of practices, you know, because that’s what we do. Yeah, clinical side. The business side isn’t always the stuff that the practitioners really like to deal with. Even though they recognize, you know, let’s face it in my own, you know, Kingdom or five dumb. I’m also the business manager, I’m the Marketing Director on the, you know, I ultimately make those decisions that affect the profitability, the quality of life, the environment in my practice, where does the, like the Business Academy and the business side of, you know, practice management practice development come when they’re, you know, when they’re dealing with colleagues in the in the study club? Yeah,

Greg Tice 26:05
sure. So there are really two components here, there’s within the study club itself, and then there’s the Business Academy as well. Okay. So let’s stay for the moment inside the study club. Every club, every year, we’ll have one or two programs that touches on topics outside of but related to dentistry, okay, meaning health and well being financial management, practice management, personal and professional development. Those are all critical components. And within the study club environment itself, if we’re not helping the dentists that are in the club, grow personally, professionally. And clinically, we’re not doing our job. And that includes helping their team members be educated and grow, right part of that philosophy is, the clinician can get as good as they want to be clinically. But if their team members aren’t being educated, if they’re not growing and moving forward, the practice isn’t going anywhere. So they’re a critical component of that as well. So we will help them build in those pieces. Then you will jump on top of that the business aspect of dentistry itself. And most dentists and I don’t want to over state this but many dentists run a practice not a business. Yeah. And through no one’s fault, right, there was just no training No, no structure around that. When we recognize the need for that was actually back in 2006, Dr. Cohen decided he was going to focus an entire Symposium on the business of dentistry, we would go for a week without showing a single tooth on screen for our and it was a major risk, right? I mean, with no teeth is is a frightening prospect. Isn’t the standpoint what people even show up? Yes. And the feedback we got was phenomenal. So we started to work on that and incorporated into the local clubs. And about two years ago, we launched the Business Academy and the Behind the Business Academy is it’s not practice management. Right. And it’s not dental management. It is literally learning from people outside of the world of dentistry, the basic business principles that we all need to have right? Leadership branding, understanding your p&l, what are the ratios that I should have on my p&l? How am I defining profit in my practice, right? What’s a fixed costs? What’s a variable costs? And how am I defining those without even that as a foundation? I’m not really ever going to run a business. Right? So we develop this business academy, using people we knew as well as we were referred to, again, outside of the world of dentistry, to bring these concepts into the world of dentistry for us, so we’re not reliant on just practice management people who have a certain belief system. This is how you build your hygiene schedule. We’re not playing there, right. We’re playing in the business, the physical business side of the practice.

Bill Fukui 29:44
You know, probably the human you’re talking about having certain, you know, time allotted for the business side and dealing with the business side. I have a feeling over the last year Obviously with, with restrictions and COVID, and all this other stuff that that’s probably maybe played a bigger role in some of the engagements with practices that are, you know, when you’re talking about struggles, or what do we do, there is a sense of, I don’t know if it’s a sense of panic, but I mean, let’s face it, it’s, it’s highly stressful. What do you see, I just see the value of, I can’t even imagine being a solo practitioner. In a practice where I don’t have this network of people to, you know, in the midst of what what we have today. If you had to go through that completely alone, I get the feeling you would have made bad decisions. You would have done some stupid things. Simply because you’re doing them out of stress and panic. Yes. As opposed to the collaborative. Hey, let’s talk about this. What is everybody seeing? What is everybody doing? You know, what are ideas that that we have? I think there was, is I just after we got off the phone, or, you know, earlier, I was just like, going, Wow, if, if I was a practice, and not that this is, you know, once COVID XOpen over with or maybe it’s behind us to a large degree, that doesn’t mean other crisis’s aren’t going to keep happening, just assume that this is almost the course of life, these challenges will happen, whether it’s it’s this or politics, or you know, the OSHA or whatever it is, yeah, there’s always things happening, you know, HIPAA, whatever it is, it’s gonna keep impacting us, you know, as an industry. And to do that in isolation is a, it’s a scary proposition. You’re right, it’s isolating.

Greg Tice 32:07
That’s part of the beauty of a network like this as well. And it doesn’t have to be Seattle Study Club. But that’s the beauty of a network like this. And going through something like the pandemic we drew, we didn’t have all the answers. We drew on the experiences and experiments of people with in the network. How are you dealing with PPE? What are you doing to set your practice up for success? How are you managing patient flow? What are you doing with this? And nobody was the expert, people were trying things, some things were working, some things weren’t. But because we could get together as a group and share them, whether it’s nationally or internationally, or even at the local level, just Yeah, Zoom meetings, and, and draw on those experiences and what other people were doing. That’s the full advantage of having a network of like minded individuals. Not everybody thinks the same. But people are looking to grow and get better. And they’re willing to open up and share with, right. So when the pandemic first started, we we started what we call virtual classroom. Okay, we brought in some speakers from outside to do some sessions, but we also brought in people from within the network, to share how you handling PPE. We did a session on Okay, your staff is scared. Yeah, right. We’re in April, your staff is scared. Yeah. What do you do? How do you manage this? And that was a really powerful dialogue. Yeah. So drawing on those components of the network, I think really helped a lot of people thrive through this pandemic.

Bill Fukui 33:56
I think the other thing too is is we see camaraderie build in the midst of adversity. Yes, we have a common cause. Now, we in the common enemy is not each other. You know, it. Unfortunately, we we live in a, in an environment that is let’s face it, it’s competitive. We live in a competitive society. It is about, you know, success driven people and businesses and it is competitive. But I think in the midst of, you know, of adversity, and stuff, we, I think the relationships that you form in these groups and these types of, you know, organizations that help facilitate this trusting kind of thing. I can’t see that as not being you know, that group not being more there’s more adhesives there now, than before. I mean, really, how could it not?

Greg Tice 34:57
Oh, absolutely. And, and we’ve seen that And we get that feedback from the membership in the network as well. So as we communicate with them in their replying, whether it’s emails or on these zoom calls, or whatever it is, the feedback we’re getting is the contact has actually increased, the frequency of contact is increased, yes, the quality of that contact isn’t the same. But the frequency of contact is increased. And it has been appreciated, whether it’s Whatsapp group, WhatsApp, discussion groups, or, you know, Zoom happy hours, or whatever it is. Right. Just that release has been important. Yeah,

Bill Fukui 35:42
I think that’s, and, again, I’m gonna go back to when we first started this conversation, most of the industries I’ve worked in, outside of dentistry, they really don’t have this. But I think this concept can translate for sure to, you know, you don’t have to be a dentist or in dentistry to benefit from, you know, from this type of, you know, collaboration.

Greg Tice 36:11
Oh, absolutely. Yeah. Really, when I think about it, so my wife is a massage therapist. And when I think about the classes she takes, she takes them with a group of other therapists that do this together. In essence, that’s what that is. It’s a familial group learning together. And she’ll tell me invariably, and I don’t have to prompt it. She’ll say, the class was good. I learned more at the dinner afterwards. Yeah. When we, when we did that together. Yeah, the class itself. Yeah. And that, I think, you know, Brooks, no industry, there’s, there’s no issue there. I don’t care if you’re a hairdresser, a med spa, a plastic surgeon, a car dealership, the ability to, to sit down and commiserate, but in a positive and negative way, but right to share with one another experiences, challenges, opportunities, really opens us up, it gets us out of those blinders, right. This model focus typically, again, as human beings, and the ability to take those blinders off because you’re forcing me to Yeah, is a huge event. But that’s got to be scheduled. Right. That’s, it rarely happens. Ring. Yeah. And it goes back to this was one of the programs Dr. Cohen actually gave several years ago, it goes back to the old coffee houses in England, when, like industries would get together in their own coffee houses, the miners would get together and the hikers will get together over coffee, at the end of the day, and talk with each other. That doesn’t happen anymore.

Bill Fukui 38:08
We I think, you know, I’ll, on a personal level, you know, we just finished the holidays. And I think back before the internet before, we had all these other pseudo ways of communicating with it with everybody. When I was you know, and again, I’m dating myself, you know, back in the late 60s, I would be getting into the car, my, my dad, we lived on a farm, we put together these fruit baskets, and you didn’t send things through Amazon as a gift. You physically drove to their house, and handle every, you know, a fruit basket, or whatever it is. And these were all family, friends. And those days don’t, don’t happen. And you know, those things don’t happen today. In general, I still hand deliver gifts to a handful of friends, I don’t mail them, I don’t send them through Amazon is physically I hand, make their gift. I put it all together, because I know who they are their personalities, what they like, I put those things together, and I hand deliver them because I those relationships are so valuable. And I continue to both mutually get benefit from them. And I think that was that personal communication, that relationship. I think that that is what’s missing. Many times that that we take for granted.

Greg Tice 39:52
Oh yeah. Well, and when we think about it today, bring it back to where you started with this, you know, Amazon and the age of the internet and room at all that the digital communication tools and web based programming that we have available today is great for creating information consumption. But if you want critical thinking, creativity, behavior change, real learning that requires in person face to face interaction and engagement are very different components. And there are places for both very different components. Yeah,

Bill Fukui 40:33
I would agree. Hey, you know, Greg, I want to thank you for all your time, today, you’ve been more more than generous with your time and insights, I see you as one of you. And this organization is one of the really the, you know, pillars of where it’s going to take us to the next level, as an industry. And I think the quality of life of the dentists can be completely enhanced, as long as they’re willing to embrace some of the concepts that you’re promoting. So do me a favor, what would be the best way that if somebody is interested in doing study clubs, and I would even throw out people even outside of dentistry that have a, you know, an interest in possibly doing something like this, within within their own industry? How can they get a hold of you or get some more information from you?

Greg Tice 41:30
Sure. So they can contact me directly. And they can call my direct line, which is 425-448-9005. They can reach me through Instagram. And that tag is on screen aerelon, and my phone number, and my email address as well. So you can reach out to me any way you choose. If you’re interested in joining a club will connect you with a club in your area. If you’re interested in learning more about how to take this concept into your industry, please reach out I’d love to have that conversation. So

Bill Fukui 42:08
that sounds great. I appreciate all your openness. Greg, thank you again for all your time today. And we should do this again, I think we can. There’s so many topics that we can address in this, that you know, this is more of just kind of the the 30,000 foot view. I’d like to maybe have another conversation with you where we can kind of maybe peel back the onion a little bit and maybe you know, get under the hood and really see some of the value that the practices are getting out of this. Be happy to do it anytime. Super. Hey, thanks again. Greg. Have a great weekend. Bye bye.

MSD Insider 42:41
Thanks for joining us for the med shark insider with Bill Fukui join us next week for another dive into all things medical marketing. All episodes can be streamed at WWW dot med Shark digital.com/med Shark Dash insider

Transcribed by https://otter.ai