Latest / Straumann® ProTalk / Dr. Eirik Salvesen: How to scale dental practices beyond clinical excellence

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Dr. Eirik Salvesen: How to scale dental practices beyond clinical excellence · Straumann® ProTalk

0:00
Eirik: I think we have the best job in the world.
0:02
Andreas: I know you have a big passion for data.
0:04
Why do you have this passion for data and what does it do
0:08
to the success of your company?
0:09
Eirik: In a playful way?
0:11
I always say I have no feelings.
0:13
Trying to create a culture where data is basically the
0:18
first question of what we do.
0:19
George: What got into you that put you on the path to become the
0:23
CEO of a very successful large DSO
0:25
Eirik: You have to strive, you have to have a passion for what you do.
0:29
You have to actually believe what I'm saying, that this
0:32
is the best job in the world.
0:47
Andreas: Welcome to ProTalk.
0:48
Welcome to the Pules of Dentistry.
0:51
Today, together with my cohost George, we are very happy to welcome
0:55
Dr. Eirik Salvesen from Norway.
0:57
Welcome, Eirik.
0:59
Thank you.
0:59
Great to have you.
1:00
Pleasure to have you.
1:02
And if you ever wondered, how can I scale something meaningful?
1:06
If you lead a big team, if you lead a practice, and if you want to learn
1:10
about how to scale from being a solo clinician in a single practice to
1:16
scaled DSO being the CEO of a successful DSO in Northern Europe, then this is
1:22
the podcast you don't want to miss.
1:24
So I glad, great to have you.
1:26
I think you have a lot of experience and inspirations that
1:31
you can share on this topic.
1:33
Looking forward to this, but first, who is Eirik?
1:35
Salvesen in one minute.
1:36
Eirik: Yeah, that's a good question.
1:37
Who am I?
1:38
I'm a dentist by origin, by training.
1:40
I'm also a father of two children.
1:42
I'm a husband.
1:44
Norwegian being for sure.
1:46
Largest hobby I have is actually wine, which is outside of dentistry,
1:51
is still a hobby that I actually do.
1:54
I do run a wine bar as a hobby, which is besides dentistry.
1:57
Okay.
1:57
So that's an important picture of who I am.
2:00
And I share my clinical tower, my, basically my time I share between being
2:05
clinical and then also leading the company as the CEO of Oris Dental in than
2:09
what you call Northern Europe, which I call then the Nordics, which is Norway,
2:13
Sweden, and Denmark at the moment.
2:15
And happy to do it's been dentistry has been a big part of my life since 26
2:20
years old back, so I'm that's basically sums up quite easy what I'm doing.
2:24
Andreas: Okay.
2:26
George: I had the chance to be in that wine bar, and I
2:28
can say it's a magical place.
2:29
So I understand your passion that you have for that.
2:32
Eirik, to start, let's go back to the beginning.
2:34
So you could have lived a comfortable nice life in beautiful Norway, just
2:39
being a single practice owner, but then something obviously happened.
2:43
What got into you that put you on the path to become the CEO
2:47
of a very successful large DSO?
2:50
Eirik: First of all, I'm still comfortable so that, that
2:52
needs to be taken into account.
2:54
I've, I love my life.
2:55
I love my work.
2:56
I've been I think we have the best job in the world.
2:59
Basically being in dentistry is the best job in the world.
3:02
Happy patients autonomy, ability to balance.
3:06
Work life and your family life is in there.
3:09
And also the ability to change people's quality of life.
3:12
It's, it is all in that mix, it doesn't matter if you are a solo clinician
3:16
or heading a DSO, you're, you still have the same focus on making these
3:20
small ambitious goals in this it needs to be correct a little bit.
3:24
I was never a solo clinician in a small practice.
3:27
I started my work 20.
3:29
Six years ago now as a dentist in a group practice already at that time
3:34
with what I would call in 1999, quite visionary colleagues that actually went
3:39
together started what was at that time a large clinic had 10 treatment rooms
3:45
and we were expanding through this one.
3:47
And that kind of stimulated me that we will never be satisfied
3:51
by what we do today because we can always go better and we can always
3:55
increase the size of what we offer.
3:57
If you do that, you will basically automatically scale just by default
4:02
because patients and your employees, your colleagues will still be happy
4:06
because you have the same focus that you want to improve all the time.
4:09
You want to improve the patient journey, and you wanna make sure
4:12
that everybody around you is happy.
4:13
So there's no easy answer to the question.
4:16
How do you go from being single one to leading A DSO, but several.
4:21
Sliding doors has opened and shut at the right time.
4:25
Making some basic some, things happening that just made it
4:30
possible to move in that position.
4:32
And that's basically where I am today.
4:34
So it's a, there's no easy answer, but you have to try, you have to
4:37
have a passion for what you do.
4:40
You have to actually believe what I'm saying, that this
4:42
is the best job in the world.
4:43
Andreas: What inspired you to found an or stand and to scale?
4:47
Was there a moment where you thought, wow, that's the idea?
4:49
That's the idea I wanna follow.
4:51
Eirik: I think it's a maturation of 15, 16 years of working in a larger
4:57
practice where I was part of developing it, creating an academy, creating a
5:02
patient journey, creating a learning path for everybody that was involved.
5:07
Moving from one.
5:09
Floor of the practice to two floors of the practice, to three floors of the practice
5:13
and then ending up that you don't have room for everybody, so you build another
5:17
one to make sure that everybody gets room.
5:19
So it's a developing phase.
5:20
It's nothing that it doesn't happen like this.
5:23
Andreas: So what would you say you had a scalable model already that you
5:26
-. Eirik: No.
5:26
Not at all.
5:27
Most people in this industry, and most people in this industry
5:30
are like made or dentist.
5:32
We have an idea that we are, what we are doing is so brilliant
5:37
that we can always scale it.
5:39
The limitation comes to everybody if you believe that you as a person
5:45
can personally scale it, 'cause your hands are only at one place at a time.
5:50
Your head is only at one place at a time.
5:52
So this is the biggest misunderstanding I see in dentistry is that if
5:56
you're running a great practice,
5:58
George: you can just multiply.
6:00
Eirik: Yeah, because I can just put up more of them.
6:01
Yeah.
6:02
George: That doesn't work.
6:02
Eirik: But you are still yourself, so how do you actually scale it?
6:05
How do you pass on the knowledge?
6:08
How do they develop mini-me of yourself?
6:11
How do you create a culture in this?
6:13
No it's not something that comes from just being a successful clinician no
6:17
matter what you are and this is to me, one of the biggest mistakes I see in
6:21
dentist misunderstandings that I see in dentistry, we, we still believe that just
6:24
being a good clinician, just running one good clinic is the opening door to scale.
6:30
Andreas: Today, Oris has around about a hundred clinics, a bit
6:33
more than a hundred clinics in the countries that you mentioned.
6:36
How would you describe its structure that you have in this DSO and how
6:40
do you personally stay connected to what happens in the clinics?
6:44
Eirik: Yeah, but it's a-, as again, we are we're more than 140 sites now,
6:49
so it's gets, it's getting north of a hundred and we are a, how to put
6:54
it, the geography of where we stay is there's quite long distances.
6:59
So from the northern part of Norway to the southern part of Norway
7:02
we're gonna drive it, is gonna take you a couple of days to get there.
7:05
So that's not, it's not connectivity that's easy.
7:08
So making sure you stay in connection with them is by building an organization.
7:13
To make sure they are connected to the organization.
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So whenever people think that you can do it by yourself,
7:19
you will never be successful.
7:21
Whenever dentists think, like me, think that we could do it just by
7:25
being dentist around building a DSO, we're never gonna make it.
7:29
We have to include people that actually has a knowledge in other areas that,
7:33
what I would call the band around.
7:35
We have a lot of rockstars.
7:37
Which we call the dentists.
7:39
And around that rockstar, there will be a lot of band, there
7:41
will be a support organization.
7:43
There will a tour manager, there will be everybody around.
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That's what we are doing around dentists.
7:47
We're trying to make sure they keep on being rockstars, but we
7:50
build the organization around.
7:52
That organization is the organization that I can stay in touch with.
7:55
And through all these things, through the leadership that's local.
8:00
Always a lead dentist, always a clinic manager.
8:03
They need to have the responsibility and the ownership of that clinic
8:06
because that clinic is most often different from the other clinics.
8:10
They have a, they have something they do in their geography that's very special.
8:14
They keep in contact with patients on a very specific level.
8:17
They need to be an ownership of that clinic.
8:19
If you think you put 'em into one size fits all.
8:23
Then I think you miss,
8:25
George: so your expectation is not to create these
8:26
mini-me in these local heroes.
8:29
So you want them to stay also who they are and do their job as they, would
8:35
also or have been doing in the past, which made them successful before
8:38
they joined let's say the network.
8:39
Eirik: I think that, that's a extremely precise point of what we're doing.
8:43
If we ever acquire a clinic and a clinician that we
8:46
would like to join our DSO.
8:48
It's because we believe that what they have been doing is a good job.
8:52
And a successful job.
8:53
And they've been creating a culture and a patient experience
8:56
that is, you fit with us.
8:57
You can have our team shirt.
8:59
We're not trying to make everybody do the same 'cause it is.
9:02
It is different in the whole part of Norway, between Norway, between Sweden,
9:06
between Denmark, there's differences and you have to play upon the strength that
9:10
they have and make sure that they align on the backside, on the system level of what
9:16
we need in quality systems, in HR system, in financial system, in academy training,
9:22
we can do that, but towards the patient, they have something they created there.
9:26
Andreas: Would you say this is the biggest differentiator you also have
9:29
relative to other DSOs in your area?
9:32
Or is there any other differentiator you would mention?
9:34
Eirik: It's a good question again, because differentiators are most easy to see
9:38
when you look upon them from the outside.
9:40
But what I would see from our perspective is that we are very, concerned or focused
9:47
on the autonomy that is within the clinic.
9:51
This specific leadership of a lead dentist and a clinic manager, they know
9:55
how they would act in this clinic if they have an ownership to what they do.
9:58
And if you, once again, you try to fit them into one size fits all,
10:02
you're just gonna you're gonna destroy the ownership of this.
10:05
You're gonna destroy the thrive of what they want to do.
10:09
And the development, once you ask people, they agree with me, they have
10:13
the best job in the world, they have the best job if they can be themself.
10:17
They should be able to be themselves.
10:19
That's the whole point of what we are doing.
10:21
So instead of having a centralized top down way of controlling clinics and
10:27
clinicians, we instead encourage the local leadership on each clinic and make sure
10:32
that we have control in the background to, to all the regulatory issues.
10:36
To make sure that it systems are working to make sure we do everything
10:40
good in compliance and governance so that every of these rockstars that we
10:44
have, and they are rockstars, that's why we attack them the first time.
10:49
They are real rockstars.
10:51
That's why we go for them and, Hey, do you want to join our team?
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They should be able to spend more time being a rockstar.
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And dentist in general.
10:59
They are the most peak of their rockstar performance when they are with patients.
11:03
George: Let's talk a little bit about leadership because I think that influences
11:07
a lot on how you actually build up your team and how you select your rockstars.
11:12
Because I believe you still need to have certain foundation, a common
11:15
understanding of, what good leadership is.
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What is good leadership to you Eirik?
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Eirik: Good leadership is basically to me all about passion.
11:28
I think if you are just driving by and being asked to do a task, you will do
11:34
it with half the passion as if you have the real interest in what we're actually
11:40
creating as the why of what we're doing.
11:42
And creating real leadership and making sure it's sustainable not
11:46
just by me or the mini me and my colleagues and my co-founders and stuff.
11:51
It's creating a culture that has some points where we never go beyond.
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We know where we are aiming for.
11:59
And leadership to me is realizing that you are not the only
12:03
brain force in the company.
12:04
Most likely there will be people that know so much more than you on
12:09
specific topics that if, once again we go back to dentistry where I have my
12:14
origin, where I have all my experience from, and I meet a lot of dentists
12:17
from all over the globe and this the same thing comes to me all the time.
12:23
We're a group of educated persons that have an idea.
12:27
We actually think we know quite a lot about different areas of
12:30
this business that we don't know.
12:32
But this is to me where we should be very honest with ourselves and
12:36
say, Hey, I don't know too much about HR. I've trained as a dentist.
12:41
I don't know too much about cybersecurity.
12:43
I'm trained as a dentist.
12:44
I don't know too much about finance and scalable finance
12:47
and systems in the background.
12:49
'cause I was trained as a dentist.
12:50
So if we go into the leadership part, it's building a team.
12:54
It's making sure you're honest enough to say, I'm not the best in this.
12:57
I need a bigger team to create them.
13:00
And once you get these people.
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There's the second part of the culture, so creating the team
13:04
and realizing you can't do it by yourself is the one leadership point.
13:08
The second one is making everybody aware of the big point of what we're doing.
13:13
Where is our value created?
13:15
Where's is the actual thing that creates value in the company being created?
13:20
Is it being created by the support staff, the tour manager and everybody around?
13:23
No, it's being created at the time.
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With the patient in the chair where there's a treatment team in the room.
13:31
That's actually, that's the only place we create value.
13:35
The rest is supportive staff.
13:37
So the balance between getting dentist to realize that they need
13:42
support to make sure they can be the biggest rockstars, and then
13:46
also for the support ones to realize that we have rockstars in the room.
13:49
So whatever we can do.
13:51
We'll create them the best and they will create value return for us.
13:55
George: It sounds a bit like a contradiction because typically a
13:58
rockstar is not someone that is known to be very humble and understanding
14:03
that, okay, I can't be the rowdy at the same time and carry my stuff.
14:05
So they expect, the things just to fall in place.
14:08
So h how do you manage those kind of I would say ambiguity.
14:12
You want drugstores because they create the value with the patient.
14:15
At the same time you want them to also understand.
14:18
That's, they need to be team players.
14:20
To me it's still a bit of a contradiction.
14:21
Eirik: No, but it is contradiction.
14:23
And it's a contradiction in terms by just being a dentist
14:26
'cause they want to do all this.
14:29
But again, there's bands and we even made live aid and bandaid work
14:34
with big egos, A lot of big ego.
14:36
Yeah.
14:37
It worked in the end.
14:39
And I think this is where we play it the right way.
14:41
We get people.
14:43
Onboard that realizes that they're never gonna be the great rockstars if
14:47
they're not also taking care of the band.
14:49
If they're not realizing that they're playing together with somebody, that
14:52
they're a, they are a part of the team.
14:54
So the one thing we never negotiate on is you are a team player.
14:59
That's the only thing we put, but we want to keep people that has this
15:03
ability to make patients feel good, that are able to perform the treatment
15:08
in that high level that they're doing, but they still are team players.
15:12
The only way you can avoid having the egos that won't be a team player
15:18
is making sure that you recruit or.
15:21
Us as a buy and build company, you don't buy people that you have a
15:26
feeling of not being a team player.
15:31
Sad is said shortly, and which my team and my organization knows and not sure if the
15:36
words are allowed, but don't buy assholes.
15:39
Andreas: I feel at this point we also have to speak about culture.
15:42
Because you define pretty much also a bit what your culture is.
15:46
Can you be a bit more specific?
15:48
What is the culture you would like to create in Oris?
15:51
And we already realized there's one non-negotiable that is you have to
15:55
be a team player, not negotiable.
15:57
Are there any others?
15:59
Eirik: There's a lot of small specifics on the culture within Oris.
16:02
Everything defined by the normal set of or putting up values.
16:06
You have your internal values, you have your external values.
16:09
It doesn't matter if you don't live the values, if you don't live the culture, if
16:13
you're not the person that actually does what is described of how we put ourselves.
16:19
So we've spent a lot of time defining our DNA.
16:21
So what is our DNA, how do we act on our DNA?
16:24
And I think that is the biggest culture building block that we have is that this
16:29
is how Oris is perceived internally in the professional community, externally
16:34
by our customers or patients, and also by our supporting industry, the
16:39
partners that we work together with.
16:42
We've defined how we're gonna look and we work upon that as a program.
16:46
Everything from the management meetings to our yearly summit meetings where we gather
16:50
all the clinic managers, the lead dentist, the management, the academy, everybody
16:54
together through our backend business arrangements to our smaller things in the
16:58
clinics is all based on the same culture.
17:00
And it needs to dribble down all the time.
17:02
And we have to, as the leaders of the company, make sure we always
17:06
stay aligned with that culture.
17:07
We defined.
17:08
And the culture is defined by team play.
17:10
It's defined by the interest of the patient's best.
17:13
This curiosity of how we can actually do the best thing we can do, it's aligned
17:18
by being honest enough with each other to also put out the, if I tell you something
17:24
that I want you to change, it's because I want you, it's not because I want to
17:27
be bad with you, but because you know I love you and that's why I'm, I'm giving
17:31
you some correctional advices and I think this culture built around trust is the
17:37
best way you can actually build a culture.
17:39
It's still the most challenging one.
17:40
But I think we've shown now since nine and a half years ago,
17:43
we've, oh, sorry, nine years ago.
17:45
We have a 10 years anniversary next year, but we've shown that
17:48
it's possible key people in this culture because you actually care
17:52
and because you live what you say.
17:54
Andreas: Is there one central statement that would unite all your employees?
17:58
Like a purpose statement that everybody's looking at?
18:01
Eirik: We are-
18:02
George: It's in Norwegian, so.
18:03
Eirik: Yeah.
18:03
It's in Norwegian.
18:04
Hey, translate it.
18:04
No.
18:05
It's improving the quality of life of patient.
18:07
This is the wide thing we have.
18:08
Everybody knows that.
18:10
The magic happens in the treatment room where we take care of our patients, but
18:16
we also redefine the treatment room as the whole 360 degrees patient journey,
18:22
not only in the treatment room before you visit up, when you find us, how you
18:26
read upon us, how you connect with us.
18:28
Digital availability information, pre-visit, onsite visit and
18:33
experience post-visit experience and follow up, and the whole 360.
18:37
That's basically what we say.
18:38
So there's a whole patient experience that is more than just in the treatment room.
18:43
So being able to define it goes into increasing the quality
18:47
of life for the patients.
18:48
And also the thing that we've said, which is I think a very important
18:51
thing we're trying to define.
18:53
Sorry, we're trying to.
18:55
To define the dentistry on the terms of the patient, meaning that we are
19:01
trying to adapt what is important to a patient when they choose us.
19:06
Andreas: How do you align, let's say, personal, ambitious and interests
19:10
of your employees with the culture and the greater good of the company?
19:14
'cause I imagine you have a lot of talent as well that would like the progress.
19:18
Eirik: There's been, there's many things in this one.
19:20
First of all it comes into talent recruitment.
19:24
So just talent recruitment is finding right, people having the
19:28
systematic way of recruiting people based on our value and our culture.
19:33
So everything around a an interview, everything around being qualified
19:37
goes into the same values.
19:38
It doesn't, we're not looking for, we're not looking for extreme clinical talent.
19:44
Which isn't a team player.
19:46
'cause you will find that you're not compromising on the team player.
19:48
No, we're not.
19:49
We're not compromising on team player.
19:50
Because then it then everything falls apart is gone apart.
19:52
Yeah.
19:52
It will fall apart if you're not a team, if you can't share.
19:56
That's basically where we would do our best by being very
19:59
non-negotiable on being a team player.
20:02
So I think this is.
20:03
The short answer to your question, and I think it's, I
20:06
think it's a very critical one.
20:08
George: You're a very dentist centric organization and the
20:10
culture is very dentist centric.
20:12
Now critics might say your major shareholder is private equity, and
20:18
aren't you sometimes under pressure to prioritize business over patients?
20:23
And how do you manage these different interests that might
20:26
come from, your shareholders versus your very dentist centric culture.
20:31
Eirik: We're lucky enough to have private equity on our team that is supported to
20:36
the idea of what we're actually doing.
20:38
The whole strategy of putting dentists in like this, the dentist centric culture.
20:43
So that's not under pressure.
20:45
Everybody that is a shareholder company, meaning private equity and all our
20:49
dentists that are also, many of them are shareholders like us and management.
20:53
We still have the same id.
20:54
We think that good dentistry.
20:57
Good autonomy, good patient care creates good business.
21:01
We haven't yet seen the other way around.
21:04
In the whole world, we haven't seen that good business necessarily creates
21:09
the quality of care out in the clinics.
21:11
And being sustainable always starts with the core of what you do.
21:15
We're not creating value in the, in, in the organization behind.
21:19
We're creating value out in that specific meeting patient in chair meeting.
21:24
That's basically where we create value.
21:26
So if we keep on and as we've been doing now for our period, being
21:29
very concise about what we focus on.
21:33
Then good business comes by default.
21:36
By being specific because you retain people.
21:38
You retain patience.
21:40
You make sure there's a how to put it.
21:42
There's a professional career ladder that you can go you come in as a
21:48
talent, you get to do your stuff.
21:50
You have our academy in the background that will support you and mentor you
21:53
and develop you to the next stage.
21:55
You can go on from being a junior dentist.
21:57
To going on to being a senior, going on to be a lead dentist, moving on
22:02
to a clinical advisory board, maybe being in the academy in this one.
22:05
And a lot of these people that work with us, even if they're not dentists, they've
22:09
gone the same way in the organization.
22:11
A good nurse has been a clinic manager.
22:13
Clinic manager, been an area manager and area manager now
22:15
working in the group management.
22:18
So it's all about creating opportunities, which you are limited on.
22:23
If you have a single office.
22:24
George: Definitely.
22:25
It's gonna, it's gonna hit the roof path.
22:26
No, there is not, it's not so easy for a single practice.
22:28
Yeah.
22:29
Eirik: And again, I think it's to young dentists that will
22:32
come into our organization.
22:34
They have an interest of being as good professionals as they can be
22:37
because that's the interest of what they want to, they want do that.
22:39
They want to create a career ladder on the professional part.
22:43
How do you do that?
22:44
Normally you will go to educational activities through showman or
22:48
other partners or something.
22:49
But what is most important is that you need some mentoring locally.
22:53
You need somebody that has your back.
22:55
So coming into a practice, you need somebody that has your back.
22:58
If you're doing a difficult extraction of a tooth.
23:00
You got, you're gonna go onto that because you know you have a backing.
23:03
And that's the team culture that we are proud of and also so concerned
23:07
that we are maintaining and making sure we get the right people.
23:11
George: Maybe coming back a bit to this this question before
23:14
regarding, who owns the company?
23:17
I'm pretty sure that they are I some very difficult discussions
23:19
that you also have to have with with the key stakeholders that lend you
23:23
the money basically for the growth.
23:24
So can you make an example of one of the discussions or that
23:28
you had where maybe clinical performance won over business KPIs?
23:34
Eirik: It wins all the time.
23:35
It wins all the time.
23:37
Sounds very easy.
23:38
Yeah, I know it, it sounds easier, but wins all the time.
23:40
No, honestly, we know that there are backbone of our structure.
23:45
That's very important.
23:45
You can't do this without a solid background, solid structure,
23:49
a solid system, a solid way of keeping things scalable,
23:54
sustainable, shareable, all that.
23:56
'cause the, we started this one by talking about the misunderstandings of dentistry.
24:01
You run a good practice and then you think you can just scale it.
24:03
Doesn't work like that.
24:04
You have to have the systems in the background and
24:06
George: that costs money.
24:07
Eirik: You need, it does cost money.
24:08
You need to finance.
24:08
But you need to invest in it.
24:09
Yeah.
24:10
But by investing in specifically strategical areas that make sense, both
24:15
to business and also to clinician, and making sure that clinicians in general are
24:20
also informed of why we are moving this way, if we have anything happening that we
24:25
want to invest in, like in your HR system.
24:28
To many people.
24:29
Sounds oh, the most boring thing.
24:31
Yeah.
24:31
What's, why do we do this?
24:32
Yeah.
24:33
Because when we can do the governance that we need to do, making sure
24:36
everybody's well taken care of, everything's done according to any
24:40
regulations, and we also have control.
24:42
We got data of that.
24:43
We can make every statistics that we can because we do it as a common thing
24:47
in the whole part of our organization.
24:48
Norway, Sweden, Denmark, and whatever country.
24:51
So I think this understanding the value of the background.
24:54
Is important.
24:56
But again if we have the difficult discussions, they come, you report
25:00
on finance, you report on numbers, but we don't ev we don't only
25:04
report on numbers revenue wise.
25:06
We don't only report on numbers on earnings wise.
25:11
We report on patient satisfaction wise.
25:13
We report on employer net promoter score and we re, we report on
25:18
our carbon emission footprint.
25:21
And we report on our CSRD report.
25:23
We all these things.
25:24
It's like a large company.
25:25
Yeah.
25:25
Yeah.
25:25
It's a large company.
25:26
Come on this, it's near 2000 people in the organization.
25:31
It has a high revenue, so it means, it, it will be a part of every governance things.
25:36
This is also what a board and what actual stakeholders will look for.
25:41
They want all this to be in place, not only the earnings, because
25:44
it's never gonna be sustainable.
25:46
So if you invest in something and you don't care about patient satisfaction, you
25:51
don't care about employer satisfaction, you don't care about governance, but
25:55
you earnings, it's not sustainable.
25:56
There you go.
25:57
It's gonna go like what we've seen in dentistry, in DSOs, in many
26:02
markets, we've seen a rapid growth.
26:05
And a quite quick fall.
26:07
But because it's all everybody, and this is my statement, that could always be
26:12
said, everybody can buy another clinic.
26:15
You can start from wherever you want in the world and you can buy a dental
26:19
clinic and you can probably buy 10 as long as you have enough money.
26:23
Everybody's gonna sell that free enough money.
26:25
They will sell.
26:26
Can you run it?
26:27
Can you make it sustainable?
26:29
Can you organically grow it?
26:30
Or just you just.
26:32
Spend too much money, too much too little systems, and then try to make the earnings
26:37
maximized on a short term perspective.
26:39
Andreas: For our listeners, I think there are two topics that we should also
26:42
touch for you, they come very natural.
26:45
The first one I would start with data and digital is the second one.
26:48
I know you have a big passion for data and I think it's a topic that
26:52
is largely underestimated even in our company to be honest but even
26:58
more probably in private practices.
27:01
Why do you have this passion for data and what does it do
27:04
to the success of your company?
27:07
Eirik: I'm in a playful way, I always say I have no feelings
27:13
very often stated in my company or our company, is that I have no feelings,
27:17
which people will misunderstand but we use it as a playful tone of saying,
27:21
'cause I don't care about that.
27:23
Because 'cause we, you can't feel up to a decision.
27:26
You actually have to have something that provides me the evidence of what we do.
27:30
And not all things can be summarized in data.
27:34
A lot of more things that dentistry thinks Yes.
27:36
Can actually be summarized.
27:37
So getting these data is to me, has been one of the biggest things for me since I,
27:42
I took on the role as the CEO has been.
27:45
Trying to create a culture where data is basically the first question
27:50
of what we do in all meetings.
27:52
The comms proposal, we are gonna do this, and I would say, what is the data says?
27:57
What is it saying?
27:58
Do we have any?
27:59
No.
28:00
We have trouble of getting it because it's not clean because it.
28:03
The data gets from different sources, it gets from she's using
28:06
a journaling system with one code and somebody's doing another one.
28:09
So in developing a DSO or.
28:12
Creating a more mature DSO, you think about how do you create systems
28:17
that provides you with clean data.
28:19
And that's, I think that's a company growth thing for everybody.
28:23
Not only in dentistry, but to us, once again, going back to an HR
28:27
system or going back to a financial system or a patient management
28:30
system, ERP systems and all of this.
28:33
Once you start leveling on the potential of having then common cross borders.
28:39
Then you start getting real data.
28:40
And then you can actually make sure that you can differentiate your
28:44
decision making by having clear data.
28:46
Andreas: And I think it starts with asking the right questions, right?
28:48
The right questions which lead to what is success critical to the company, right?
28:53
And then, putting the data behind.
28:54
I think you're a really good example put on, I remember when we spoke
28:57
about the Straumann registry, you've been really on fire.
29:01
This because you saw of potential about what a, a system
29:03
like this could do to your.
29:05
Clinic network, huh?
29:06
Eirik: Yeah.
29:07
I think this is the, once again, the, maybe the second
29:09
misunderstanding in dentistry.
29:11
First one is being able to scale everything.
29:13
Everything.
29:14
Yeah.
29:14
Just okay.
29:14
I think the second one is we have a lot of data.
29:19
Yeah.
29:19
That's the statement I hear in dentistry.
29:21
I say, yeah, we have, all the journals and the records and the x-ray of patients.
29:26
I said they're not structured data.
29:28
You can't compile them to, you can't compile them to anything.
29:32
Yeah.
29:32
Make sense out of them.
29:33
Yeah.
29:34
How do you make that?
29:35
Yeah.
29:35
You can go through all journaling stuff and you can make some
29:38
statistics, but they're not structured.
29:40
They're not analyzed.
29:41
They're not put into a system.
29:43
That's why when the registry came up as a discussion.
29:46
5, 6, 7 years ago, I don't remember anymore, long time ago.
29:50
I said, Hey, that's a good idea.
29:51
Let's make it and let's make it into a platform which is easily accessible
29:54
for people in dentistry, like our professional peers and make sure that
29:58
it's easy, flowable, and make sure that you get data so that you can
30:02
act upon on your local clinic or you have a DSO, whatever you have, but
30:06
you can get data in a systematic way.
30:08
And they need to be structured.
30:09
They need to be connected.
30:11
They need to be clean so that you can actually use them and don't
30:15
always take like your precautions about drawing conclusions.
30:19
George: And that's a lot of work.
30:20
To get this to get to this point where you have structured data I mean for every
30:24
organization and also for ours, it's it's a lot of work, but it's also a beautiful
30:28
moment because it becomes so clear actually it takes this power to, to do the
30:32
right decisions and that that's very good.
30:35
I remember when I visited you once you actually, you, you showed me,
30:38
your IO scanner usage dashboard, and I think it connected all the clinics
30:43
that you had at that point in time.
30:45
Yeah.
30:45
And you could basically go back to the individual dentist, what
30:48
was the scan time for a specific indication or patient situation.
30:52
And it was very instru for me to understand, for you it was not
30:56
about, well pointing out the dentist that underperforms, but it's like
31:01
the question, do we need a new scanner or do we need to train?
31:05
Dentists can then be answered and I think that's a very powerful example.
31:08
Yeah.
31:08
It's the
31:08
Eirik: easy example.
31:09
George: Yeah.
31:09
Eirik: You get to a clinic most of these the people that will be listening will
31:13
have a clinic or a few clinic, and most of them will also have an intro scanner.
31:18
Yeah.
31:19
And most of them will have colleagues that will ask, I need
31:22
a new, we need a new scanner because it's so busy, that scanner.
31:24
And then being able to ask, what's your average scan time compared
31:28
to how, what's the average utilization rate of the scanner?
31:32
That makes sense.
31:32
So either we train or we buy, and most often it's.
31:36
More cheap to train than buy.
31:38
But again, but this is this easy example.
31:40
Good example, but an easy example of decision making based on data.
31:44
George: Now you have to run digital clinical workflows on dozens of practices.
31:49
And you also probably need to have a certain standardization
31:52
that you can get structured data.
31:54
So how do you scale digital workflows and, where do they usually fail?
32:01
Eirik: Digital workflows, first of all, is a challenge in just in the wording because
32:07
what is actually full digital workflow?
32:09
What are you used to do it?
32:10
And I always say that everything starts with a scanner.
32:13
So we're not discussing where to start the digital work,
32:15
where you need an intro scanner.
32:17
And I think standardizing that is with us has been, we
32:21
actually have different scanners.
32:22
We're okay.
32:24
Dealing with different scanner systems.
32:25
As long as we can connect the data in the background, that's where we need
32:28
to pick up our lag in the background.
32:30
But scaling that is being very clear on what is the patient
32:34
experience when it comes to digital.
32:35
The whole thing on patient experience is, I always use the
32:38
example, if you ever started doing intro scanning, I know we have a
32:45
average penetration in the European markets on.
32:49
Intra scanners, they definitely need to be higher.
32:53
But if you go to any person that has been scanning for a period and you
32:56
ask, did you ever have one patient?
32:59
They'd ask you if you can remove the scanner out of the mouth and
33:03
put back that beautiful impression material that tastes so lovely and
33:08
strengthens, hardens in seven minutes.
33:11
I will be very happy.
33:12
It doesn't happen.
33:14
And that's the way we have to start standardization.
33:16
We have to Is it good for, what would you do for your patient?
33:19
It's better for a patient.
33:20
Yeah.
33:20
Thank you.
33:20
So digital workflow, digital di digital technology.
33:25
Everything we invest in needs to have a meaningful impact
33:29
to the patient experience.
33:30
That's basically where we start our standardization.
33:33
Andreas: Hi.
33:33
Thanks a lot.
33:34
That was a very interesting journey from your early days when I learned,
33:37
you've been a clinician, you learn from some other clinicians, you scale
33:41
the practice, and then you moved it into a network of 140 clinics Now.
33:48
Very successfully, but I'm sure there have also been learnings on the way.
33:51
So I wonder, if you could meet the young version of yourself again,
33:56
looking back maybe 20 years, what would be the one or two
33:59
recommendations you would give the guy?
34:01
I said,
34:02
Eirik: that's a,
34:02
Andreas: and
34:02
Eirik: that's a big question.
34:04
It's like looking back at your life and what would you teach your kids?
34:08
I think once again, the first thing I would tell, and I do tell 'cause this is
34:14
not a, this is not a theoretical approach.
34:16
I do this basically every week.
34:19
'cause I meet young colleagues in our system.
34:21
I'm luckily, I'm lucky enough to work with young colleagues in our
34:24
system as I'm doing my clinical work.
34:26
What I always say is, be happy about the position you chose.
34:29
You chose to be a dentist.
34:30
That is probably the greatest job in the world.
34:33
Make sure you also appreciate it.
34:35
That's the one thing because if you're not, if you're not calibrated
34:38
on how good and fun and thriving and interesting and motivating this job
34:46
is, it doesn't matter what I tell you.
34:48
I can't tell you anything about a business mind if you don't
34:50
really enjoy and have a passion.
34:51
I'm going, coming back to passion again about what we're actually running.
34:55
So this passion needs to be the first thing.
34:57
Second one is make sure that you are always reflecting on what you can do,
35:05
what your knowledge brings to you, as put on the professional level or what you
35:10
can treat patients with, but also what you can create on the other end of it.
35:14
Meaning do you want to create a business for yourself, a big
35:16
clinic, something you need help?
35:20
Honestly, you need help.
35:21
Please don't do it by yourself.
35:23
You need more people that knows about the other parts of running a bigger
35:28
clinic or running a bigger business.
35:29
You need help.
35:30
So passion and honesty about your own limitations.
35:35
It probably is the two things that I would choose.
35:37
Andreas: Okay.
35:38
Thanks for sharing.
35:39
I still remember vividly one of your presentations, you presenting the therapy
35:43
about a theory about the mount stupid.
35:45
Oh yeah.
35:46
I'm very happy about that.
35:47
It's coming back to this one.
35:48
Eirik: I do that.
35:49
Oh no.
35:49
I've even been lecturing today using this same illustration.
35:53
That's a very powerful, that's a strong one.
35:54
It's a very powerful it's so important.
35:57
Yeah.
35:57
And it's so important for everybody of us.
35:59
We need to be realizing that very often we don't know enough to actually
36:05
have a strong opinion on something.
36:06
So always be a little bit gracious.
36:08
You can have your passion on where you want to go.
36:10
Because that's a tribe of insight that I'm going, we are going this way
36:14
because this is something I believe in.
36:17
But you also need to acknowledge very often that you don't know enough.
36:20
And then this ever lifelong learner perspective is.
36:25
It is just making everybody's lives much better.
36:28
I think it's good for everybody and the whole society and for countries and yes.
36:32
Regions and everybody that, we should be
36:35
George: more learners.
36:35
Life would be better, world would be better.
36:37
So world
36:38
Eirik: be better for sure.
36:39
So I think this if we could once again passion and this honesty,
36:43
humbleness, admitting that
36:46
George: to combine that.
36:47
Yeah.
36:47
Yeah.
36:48
That's strong.
36:49
Eirik, maybe, to close the circle.
36:51
Extending on, on, on the rest of your question regarding
36:54
advice to your younger self.
36:56
Would you still, let's say, go work in a private practice to start,
37:00
or would you join A DSO right away if you would do it again?
37:04
Eirik: I see this I don't see any difference between
37:06
private practice and A DSO.
37:08
We, we are trying to run it as a model of working in a private practice.
37:12
I think in, in many instances, I. My first year running was in 1998, a summer.
37:21
I was at the fourth year of my study.
37:24
We were then allowed to work on what was called a temporary license.
37:28
I agreed upon taking responsibility of an office of a an a colleague.
37:34
I was having some heart disease.
37:36
I was alone at the office during summer.
37:39
I was quite clear at that time.
37:41
I've never, I'm never gonna do that.
37:43
That's not gonna be my life.
37:45
That's never gonna be my life.
37:46
I didn't have the available mentoring.
37:49
I didn't have the available support staff.
37:51
I didn't have the technology, the equipment, I didn't
37:53
have anything around me.
37:54
And I thought that was gonna be a struggle.
37:57
So to me, if you wanna be the best professional, if you want to really
38:00
be, what is the biggest honorary title you can have in our DSO is nerd
38:05
or geek or whatever you want to do that's when you are, we only award
38:09
that to people that really deserve it.
38:11
And we're searching for nerds.
38:13
So if you wanna be that one, if you wanna be really good at something
38:16
which also increases patient satisfaction, increases your earnings
38:20
because you're, you're doing more.
38:21
So it's all good.
38:23
Then let us take care of the backbone of that one and make sure that
38:25
you can, if you wanna run your own practice in the end, feel free.
38:29
That's not a competition for us.
38:31
There's a lot of great single practices out there, but they're
38:34
probably not working just by themself.
38:36
And the culture of being a dentist and spouse, which used to be
38:41
a part of our world, has gone.
38:43
'cause 80% of what comes out is gonna be female dentists.
38:47
So everything's changing.
38:48
And that's why I say that come into a system, at least choose a clinic
38:52
that has some mentorship for you.
38:54
Making sure that you have support to do the right one.
38:56
Making sure that you can actually get up that educational ladder.
39:01
You don't have to have a big academy like we have, but at least have somebody that
39:04
will support you through the journey.
39:05
George: Have a chance to learn Yes.
39:07
And to grow.
39:07
Andreas: I think we also have a question from the audience.
39:09
We asked this through Instagram and the question's not coming from us.
39:13
I said from the audience, but it's related to us.
39:15
It says, in building a large scale, DSO.
39:19
Dental organization, what made Straumann stand out as the right partner,
39:25
and how important are high quality products for you and for your success?
39:29
Eirik: It feels like a Straumann employee posted that question.
39:31
Yeah, but it was not, it's probably That's a it's a good question.
39:35
I like it.
39:36
'cause 'cause then I have to be and this is the honesty
39:39
that you are used to with me.
39:40
We work with several implant companies in ours.
39:43
Once again, going back to the autonomy, how we run clinics, we
39:47
don't force clinicians and clinics that we acquire and get into our DSO
39:51
to change well-functioning systems.
39:54
If it goes into implantology itself.
39:57
We make sure that they have quality systems, the premium systems, but we still
40:02
make them run them as they're used to.
40:05
We make sure we have a deal with the company and make sure all that's good.
40:08
Why did basically I choose Straumann?
40:10
'cause that's more of a thing is that our company is still doing more
40:14
Straumann than the other competitors.
40:16
But I personally chose Straumann as a clinician also because everything that
40:21
happened within Straumann since the last.
40:24
I would say 10 years.
40:25
I've been a Straumann user since 25 years, but I've also been using other
40:29
systems as a period where Straumann was not inventing the product that I liked.
40:34
But the last 10 years has been really impressive in what you produced
40:37
on innovations, you've been strong on culture, you've kept people on.
40:43
I've met the same people through the journey for many years.
40:46
That's very important to us.
40:47
Consistency in the relationship.
40:50
Otherwise, we always have to build up another relationship.
40:53
We have to tell about the legacy.
40:54
We have to go through all that.
40:56
So to me that those are very important.
40:59
On the solid, building blocks is always premium quality global player, all
41:04
the best products as in the world.
41:06
That it's all that, but that is like hygiene factors to me.
41:09
The other things are, to me the longevity and the sustainability in
41:13
your team, which I'm very impressed by and for sure if I was to add a small
41:18
thing in, this is creating a culture.
41:21
In Oris has also been influenced and also stimulated and yeah.
41:26
Adapted to what I've seen in Straumann.
41:28
I've seen so many good cultural initiatives in Straumann and that I've,
41:33
and I'm lucky enough that you have shared a lot of what you're doing in the
41:36
company with me, so I'm, I've been able to also translate it into something that
41:40
works on a minor company that we have.
41:42
Compared to Straumann.
41:43
Andreas: Yeah.
41:44
Thanks for the feedback, I reckon.
41:45
And I think that's something we are very happy to share and a lot of the
41:49
clinicians working with us know, it's something that I think we can share,
41:52
and to help others to, to be successful.
41:55
And thanks for sharing all the insights.
41:56
That was a very interesting conversation.
41:58
And George, what stood out for you over the last 40 minutes?
42:02
This is hard to summarize.
42:03
That's hard.
42:04
To summarize,
42:04
George: honestly, no.
42:05
First of all, thanks a lot.
42:06
Also, Eirik, from my side, it's it's such a pleasure.
42:09
To have a brilliant mind and such a authentic person with
42:12
us and what stood out to me.
42:14
Let me start with with the high level learnings.
42:16
I would say you, you came up with two misconceptions in dentistry that
42:21
I think are very easy to remember.
42:22
It's not easy to scale, so don't think you can just scale by doing
42:25
the same over and over again.
42:27
And we also had a conversation about, data is not structured data,
42:31
so these are, I would say two.
42:32
To misconceptions that we can remember and that I fully agree to.
42:36
Then we had a lot of discussions about or culture, and I think this is resonating
42:42
very well also with our culture as we came to the conclusion in the end
42:46
that there are some similarities.
42:47
I think being very.
42:49
Convinced about what you want to do, but still hold those opinions loosely
42:54
so that you can learn and have the humility to also learn from other people.
42:59
And the understanding that you know by yourself, you cannot do it.
43:02
I think this is a beautiful statement or let's say takeaway that I have
43:06
from your explanation of the Oris culture, keeping the autonomy.
43:11
Of the clinicians taking the best that they have been doing because
43:15
you're choosing the rockstars, but you also choose them wisely
43:18
because you only want those that actually are also playing as a team.
43:22
I would say these are, let's say the highlights for me.
43:25
On top of everything, I think it's your conviction.
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You have such a passion to do the things that you're doing, and this is contagious.
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I think that's a very strong superpower that you're having, that your conviction
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is contagious to the people that you actually choose to work with.
43:40
And that makes I would say always a very strong DSO.
43:45
Andreas: I think the only thing I would add is leading with data and leading
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with the heart is not a contradiction.
43:51
I think this is what you're proving and this is very impressive.
43:54
So thanks a lot to everybody for listening in.
43:57
I'm sure we didn't promise too much that today was a great real world
44:02
learning example and the blueprint of what to do if you wanna scale bigger
44:06
and to run a successful practice.
44:07
So thanks a lot for sharing this.
44:10
Look around for the next episodes to come around on all of the
44:13
podcast players that, that you have.
44:15
And please also answer the poll that we put out on the Straumann Global Instagram
44:21
account today on what makes actually a great leader in dentistry and 2025.
44:27
We are very curious to have your answers.
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And thanks for listening in.
44:31
Looking forward to the next time.
44:33
Thanks guys for the conversation today.