“Practice Less, Earn More, And Love What You
Do!”
With special guest - Dr. Ron Schefdore
UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT
Welcome to the Madow Brothers Audio Series with Rich and Dave Madow
Madow:
Hi, this is Dr. Richard Madow and our guest today
is Dr. Ron Schefdore. How ya doing today, Ron?
Schefdore:
Fantastic. I woke up today; it’s a great day.
Madow:
That is always good to hear, always. Yeah, I’ll tell ya, when our guests don’t wake up, it
makes for really boring interviews, so glad you’re here with us. I’m sure most people
listening know your name. You’re a dentist who’s done so much to help other dentists but
I’ll give you an introduction anyway, just in case people don’t know what you’re up to.
I’ll start by saying before your introduction that we actually kind of met in person
recently at the Chicago Midwinter Meeting. Dave and I were lecturing there and you
were in the audience, and I’ve gotta say, it’s always flattering when a dentist who’s so
accomplished, you know, like someone like you who’s got a fantastic practice and you
lecture and you publish, you write, you help many other practices; it was just kind of
flattering to see you in the audience, and I’m guessing you were one of those guys who
just loves not only teaching but continually learning.
Schefdore:
Absolutely, and I’m honored that you asked me to come on, and if I could help several
guys and ladies improve their practice, great.
Madow:
No question. Well, let’s do it then. Now you’re a full-time practicing dentist, and we’ll
get to that in a minute ’cause I have an interesting question for you about that. You’re in
the western suburbs of Chicago and your dental practice profits are always in the top five
percent for all general dentists, which is just fantastic. Your practice is one where you
focus on exceptional service and you really like documenting the improvement of a
patient’s overall and oral health; I know you’re big into that. You’re a big communicator.
You like to work with the medical professionals as well, to do like a mutually referring
relationship kind of thing, so you’re really doing some things in your practice that a lot of
dentists need to hear about. You’re a seminar leader, you’re always recognized by
Dentistry Today magazine as giving some of the best seminars in the country. You’re
also, I don’t know how you do all this but you’re also president of Pharmaden
Nutraceuticals and Top Search Video. You wrote the book “Better Service, Better
Dentistry, Better Income.” Over fifty of your articles have been published; not only have
been published but you were a cover boy! You’ve been on the cover of the American
Academy of Cosmetic Dentistry Journal, Dentistry Today magazine, Dr. Woody Oakes’
Excellence in Dentistry magazine, his Profitable Dentist group; I know you’ve done a lot
with them. You’ve been in U.S. News & World Report, Wall Street Journal, Prevention
magazine, Reader’s Digest, an NBC report called “Can a Trip to the Dentist Save Your
Life?” and you were also one of the guys behind the major paradigm shift in dentistry
where dentists are being called upon to be, like, we’re kind of like front-line people in
disease detection now, and I know we’ll talk quite a bit about that later but I guess the
basic generic question is, what the heck, man, how do you have time to do all this stuff?
Schefdore:
Well, first of all, you make me sound like I’m really something important, so thank you.
I’m very humbled by all that, but how do I do it? You know, there’s one key that I’ve
learned in my life; surround yourself with the best people.
Madow:
That is a great tip.
Schefdore:
And it’s true. I mean, staff members in your office, right, when you’ve got a nice strong
team in your office, man, you can move mountains. You got a few weak links
surrounding you, oh man, it’s just awful, so you know, you kind of hire slow and fire
quick.
Madow:
I was just discussing that line with my wife this morning.
Schefdore:
Well, that one could be kind of expensive. You don’t want to be firing your wife and…
Madow:
Oh no, no, no, I didn’t mean firing her; that will never happen, never, ever, ever. No, but
she’s hiring someone in her firm and they’re having trouble finding the right person. I
just said, take your time, you know, it doesn’t matter how long it takes, just make sure
you have the right person.
Schefdore:
Yeah, that’s absolutely, and even when you think you have the right person, you know
that I found through the years too is hiring two or three people for the same position and
basically, you know, in the next couple of weeks have them fight over it and see who,
you know, the cream of the crop will come up.
Madow:
Wow, interesting theory; that’s pretty cool.
Schefdore:
Yeah.
Madow:
Hey, something we were actually discussing before we went live on the air for this
interview is that you’re, you do all these things and you’re still a full-time practicing
dentist and we were just talking about the enjoyment of that. I mean, some of these other
things I know take a lot of your time and you love doing it but the question is, do you still
enjoy practicing dentistry?
Schefdore:
I do, and I think the reason is, is because when you get to the point that you have
treatment that you know so well and you can predict how well the outcomes are going to
be, it’s so addictive because patients, I mean, hug me, give me tons of money, and
through my efforts and my own hands of creation can get outcomes that I’m just so proud
of. How do you quit that?
Madow:
Well, getting hugs and getting tons of money are two great things; that’s for sure.
Schefdore:
Well, that when I know I did it right, and that’s kind of a rule in our staff, with our staff
too, is when we get done with treatment or we’re doing treatment and somebody gives us
thousands of dollars and gives me a hug on the way out, we did it correctly that day.
Madow:
That’s a, yeah, that’s like a benchmark; that’s pretty cool. Right, ’cause if they give you
thousands of dollars but they’re unhappy, in the long run, nobody wins, that’s for sure.
Schefdore:
Oh, everybody’s gonna be, I want to overdeliver as much as I can. It doesn’t always
happen that way, you know, nothing’s perfect, and I don’t do all my cases perfect, but,
boy, you know, when you’re really well trained and you’re really well at what you do and
you don’t have to do tons of things. I want to make sure dentists get this because I think
the young dentists, I think all dentists, they try to be everything to everybody and you just
can’t; just do what you really like and focus in on that area but be really, really good at it,
and it’s just so much easier.
Madow:
So that’s a great point. Let’s talk about your practice. Just kind of in a general sense,
what’s your practice like? I mean, you said do what you really like, so why don’t you tell
people what you really like doing and what’s it like for a patient in your practice?
Schefdore:
Ok, before we have to get into that, let’s go back thirty years from the beginning or
thirty-one years ago so we can understand how I got to this point. Thirty years ago I
bought a practice from an existing doctor, and that’s another thing about how that
worked, but they were doing things that, you know, wiping their hands on the back of the
towel and, never mind, oh, it was…
Madow:
Sounds horrendous.
Schefdore:
Thirty-one years ago it was just not the way it is today. So I got that practice and for the
first six months I was an associate and then he worked for me after that; then he retired.
And it was just a two-chair practice, a small practice, and I, he bought, he owned the
building so eventually, you know, I got busy, hired one associate, went into the other side
of the building, hired another associate, got busy, hired a third associate, and so it was in
about, now, three, four, five years, I mean, we went from a hundred fifty thousand to a
million, and what I learned, during that time, is that I was doing everything for
everybody. I mean, I saw a two-year-old in one room; the next room I’d be doing a
denture; the next room I’d be doing an extraction; the next room, and it was kind of
overwhelming trying to be really, really good at everything and communicating with such
a variety of people, that, how do you do that perfectly? I mean, it was just really
frustrating and almost overwhelming. At the end of the day, I was, like, oh my God, how
can I do this for another thirty years? So I said, well, maybe I should just, because I know
how to build a practice quick, let me do another practice and then do a third practice and
maybe move into the administrative part of it because it was kind of overwhelming. So
we did a second practice and the same thing happened and exploded and the third
practice and so then I had to get to the point where I’m either gonna administrate the
practices or practice, and when it really got down to it, I really loved helping people. I
just didn’t like the way my day was so frustrating and so pressured. So what I decided to
do is go with the love, take a pay cut and be a dentist, ’cause administrating practices was
a whole much more financially rewarding, but I went ahead and I sold the practices to the
associates that helped me build, and this was over, like, a fifteen-year period. And what I
did is I stayed in the third practice, which was the smallest practice by my house in a
demographic area that could support what I really love to do. And I was trained in dental
school to do full-mouth rehabs. My senior year, I was done a year early with my
requirements, and so they said, what do you want to do, and me and the prosthodontist sat
there for twelve months and did nothing but full-mouth rehabs, so that was awesome
training. So I wanted to go back to that love, and we didn’t call it cosmetic dentistry then;
we just called it full-mouth rehabs, but we were doing a lot of cosmetic dentistry. So I
had that in my heart, you know, right from the beginning. So I sold the practices and said,
ok, I’m gonna write the rules on how I want this practice, who I want to see, how long I
want to take; I don’t care about the money, just let me design my day around the way I
want it. And the other thing I did, these practices were running my family and running me
and I said, that’s done; we’re not doing that anymore. I had to design my personal life
actually first and then design my practice around my personal life, and I really would
encourage all dentists to do that. I know it’s scary because you’re in such debt but when
you’re losing your mind and you’re pressured all day and you gotta survive at thirty or
forty years in this profession, you have to get your personal life the way you want it so
you’re happy. And then design the practice around your personal life and don’t let it mess
up your personal life. And that’s, I think the, one of the best things that I can give any
dentist ’cause I see so many unhappy, very pressured dentists, and it’s just, they never
took the time to design their life with their spouse the way they want, and then the
practice will fit into that, and don’t worry, it won’t cost you any more money; you’ll
make more money.
Madow:
That’s a great tip, and I think a tip for people of any age, even though maybe, you know,
it sounds like it’s intended for the younger people, but at any age, if you’re not happy
with your personal life, you can do it, so I’m really glad you brought that up.
Schefdore:
Yeah, if you have a lifestyle that you really like and then you’re doing the treatment that
you like, people you enjoy and work with the staff that you enjoy, then the money rolls in
and that’s what life is all about. It’s about that balance, that’s how to create that balance.
Without that balance, I absolutely guarantee that you’re gonna be miserable. I’ve been
there. I wanted, can you imagine, I even wanted to quit dentistry just because I couldn’t
figure out the balance or didn’t have a mentor to help me and tell me, hey, look, we gotta
get a balance and this is how we’re gonna do it. I wish they would have told us that in
dental school; that would have been some great advice.
Madow:
“I wish they would have told us in dental school” is a line you can never say enough.
Schefdore:
Aw, it’s just awful when they don’t. You know, the other thing is, you know, we’re
small-business people and they don’t give us any business skills. It’s just awful. I mean,
how could you do that in a three- or four-hundred-thousand dollar education?
Madow:
Well, that’s why people like us are around, helping dentists get all facets of their practice
in place, so maybe we should thank the dental schools; I don’t know.
Schefdore:
Well, yeah, you’re right. I mean, it’s a lot of fun, but geez, this is the best profession in
the world. If they just prepared us students a little bit better on some of the things that are
more important than clinical skills. I mean, clinical skills are great and you have to have
’em but you have to have that balance in your life first so you could do good clinical
skills.
Madow:
So hey, let’s flash forward to where you are today.
Schefdore:
Ok, so today, what am I doing today? So after I opened up the third practice and made
my rules, my energy level is really good from seven in the morning till three in the
afternoon, so those are my office hours, and I don’t like to work weekends; in fact, I
don’t like to work Fridays at all. I like working on me and my family on Fridays,
Saturdays, and Sundays, so I work Monday through Thursday seven to three; that’s just
kind of my hours. I have an hour lunch and the reason I have an hour lunch is, isn’t to sit
there and eat the whole time; I eat a real healthy, vegetables every day; I’m just boring as
can be, fresh vegetables and a little bit of protein, and just to keep the energy up, but that
hour gives my staff a chance to catch up with everything, return calls, just kind of put
some order back in my day. So I take an hour lunch and don’t work evenings or
Saturdays or anything like that, and new patients. New patients, when they come in,
typically we’ll have a forty-five minute to an hour interview and we’re, I’m basically
interviewing them and they’re interviewing me, and there’s certain things that I do to
attract a certain clientele and there are specific questions that I need to ask. So what I’ve
learned is when I ask these certain set of questions and I listen to their response, just shut
up and just listen, you got one mouth and two ears, so I learned I better listen twice as
much as I talk. When I do that, they tell me what I’m going to do. I don’t have to sell ’em
anything; basically they’re giving me my marching orders, and the only words out of my
mouth, you know, at the end is “When were you thinking of getting started?” right, and
they go, well, right now, and I go, ok, and we just fit ’em in as soon as possible and we
work out the finances. The finances don’t become that big of a, that bigger of a deal to
’em because they’ve already told me what they wanted and when to get started and we
just work out the finances, you know, and we always tell them, look, how about can you
afford X amount of dollars per month with no interest? Instead of giving them, look, this
could be eighteen thousand dollars, you know, not a lot of people have eighteen grand
just sitting around. But, you know, we do it in phases. We work out the finances with ’em
that time and start treatment. So our acceptance rate’s high and I end up doing a lot of
bigger cases only because I’m willing to listen and spend the time. In fact, I wrote that
book, that you mentioned, “Better Service, Better Dentistry, Better Income,” just for this,
a short, twice to the bathroom and a dentist will be done with it; it’s a great little book.
But it kind of outlines how we took two practices from producing two hundred thousand
to a million in a short amount of time. And so, anyway, I guess that’s a plug for the book,
but it’s a really good little book.
Madow:
Yeah, plug it all you want, but I could, back up for a second, ’cause I, it’s funny ’cause I
talk about this in our seminars and I kind of do a tongue in cheek ’cause I’ve heard some
just horrendous interviews between the dentists and the patients or horrendous things
recommended by seminar leaders. I’m just curious; what are one or two of the key
questions you like to ask during your patient interview?
Schefdore:
Well, this is the most important one you’ll ever ask ’em. Introduce yourself, shake their
hand, use both hands, look ’em in the eye, smile and say, “Hello, Mrs. Jones, welcome to
our practice, how may I help you?” Sit down and shut up.
Madow:
I guess you hear all kinds of things when you ask that question.
Schefdore:
Oh, I hear everything and a lot of times they’ll end up crying. I mean, I’m not saying
anything; they’re going on and they’re crying, they’re telling me about very personal
things that you would never get, in fact, half their family members probably don’t even
know about this stuff. Just shut up and listen and write.
Madow:
Always a great tip. Hey, also let’s just back up a little bit even more because when I
introduced you I said that you were in the western suburbs of Chicago, and for people
that might not be familiar with that area, there aren’t too many dentists there, right? Only
like one every square foot?
Schefdore:
We breed like rabbits; we’re on every corner.
Madow:
Yeah, every corner. It’s a really competitive area but you’ve done an amazing job of
distinguishing yourself, and as you said before, you somehow attract these patients who
kind of know what they’re getting into. You know, it sounds like when patients walk
through your door, they know they’re getting really high quality dentistry in a great
environment and they know they’re gonna pay a lot of money for it. How do you do it?
Schefdore:
Well, it is, you know, too, they have to be presold, right? I mean, when you see an ad for
Walmart, you know what you’re getting, right, because they’ve presold you before you
ever go in the store. When you go into Marshall Field’s or an upscale place or restaurant
or store that you’ve never been to before, didn’t they do just a great job of preselling you?
What about Mercedes versus a Yugo? I mean, you know what you’re getting into before
you go. So I just learned from the people that were selling me, it’s, like, ok, how did they
sell me before I got in the door? And I hate to say “sell”; it’s educating them and having
an image that you want to portray, which brings up a really, really good point. Every
dentist has to decide what dentistry they’re gonna focus on and what patients they want to
work on and what price point, and then you design your staff, your office décor, all your
marketing materials from that. Not all of us, and the way I practice today is not the way
any practice, any dentist has to practice. I just had to figure out what was good for me and
my life and my universe; it doesn’t mean it’s the right way but it works for me and my
family.
Madow:
That’s, you constantly keep coming back to that topic, how you’re kind of doing things
your way, the way that makes you happy, and I think that’s why you’ve been practicing
for many years and you still love it and you’re still energetic and you’re still making a ton
of money ’cause you really have designed it so you enjoy it, and it’s a super cool theme
to keep coming back to. But let’s get to some of your marketing in a second because I
think a lot of times when you talk about a practice like yours, which is, you know, highend, high-priced, cosmetically-oriented, whatever you want to call it, you know, we get
sick of some of those clichés, and you’re comparing it to Mercedes and a high-end
department store, you do some marketing that some people might not associate with those
kinds of practices. ’Cause I know a lot of people would say, oh, we only do word of
mouth because like refers like, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah… But you’re a big Google guy
for example. You’ve kind of found out how to make Google work for you. How do you
do that?
Schefdore:
Oh, well, that’s pretty cool. I try getting my website, you know, on the first page of
Google ’cause all people look at is the first page, maybe the second page, and then today,
fifty percent of the patients that look for a dentist use their iPhone and iPad, so if you
look on an iPhone and iPad for a dentist and you look on that first page, you can’t even
read the things; it was just awful. So I had to figure out how do I get my presence on the
first page. I hired, I’m not kidding you, I spent twenty-five, thirty thousand dollars over
the last, oh, three, four, five years ago trying to get my website up by reputable
companies that swore they can get me there. It never worked. So I was so sick of getting
screwed, you know, my daughter was graduating from Ohio State, so she’s a nerd, I’m a
nerd, and there’s a room full of nerds that are friends and I kind of presented this problem
to ’em after a few beers. I’m really trying to get my website on the first page. They said,
ah, we’ll figure it out in thirty days. Guess what? They did. They, ok, if you look at
Downers Grove Dentures, ok, that’s just one of sixty search words that I have on the first
page of Google. Look at it on your iPhone; I’m the only one that you can see a phone
number on, and it’s a short video; it’s gotta be coded correctly; it’s gotta have the right
time. I mean, they figured this out, however Google’s rules are, took ’em a while, but
they figured it out. So within a couple weeks I had like fifty videos on the first page of
Google and the iPhone. I’m the only one on there. When that, things like that’s just one
example. When that happens, this just gives you so much credibility because people
today do not want to go to websites. It’s too long, it’s cumbersome, it’s just a pain in their
butt. For example, before I came down here to Florida for a little break, I had two patients
come in. One was an accountant. He owned his accountant firm. The other was a
physician that works in the emergency room. Both of them, I asked ‘em, everybody that
comes in, how’d you find us? And they go, well, I saw your video, and I said, why did
you see the video? And they go, well, basically, you know, the physician said I was in
between patients and I wanted some veneers; I’ve been reading about ’em; I just
Googled, you know, Downers Grove Veneers, and you popped up with this little icon,
this movie, and she says, within thirty seconds I got all your contact information, saw
your before-and-after pictures, and knew you were the right guy for me, and I called you
right away.
Madow:
Wow, what a story. Unbelievable.
Schefdore:
That’s an eighteen-thousand-dollar case for me.
Madow:
Not bad from the iPhone. Pretty cool.
Schefdore:
On an iPhone, and, you know, the accountant that owns this big accounting firm in
Chicago, he said the exact same thing. He said he was in between clients, he wanted
some dental implants, he says I Googled Downers Grove Dental Implants, you came up, I
liked the icon, I liked the little video, and in thirty seconds I got all the information I see,
and man, you look like you’re the man. They’re presold, they know what they’re getting,
they know it’s not gonna be cheap, and I’m solving their problem all because, that was
another, that’s probably a twenty-five thousand dollar case.
Madow:
You don’t need too many of those.
Schefdore:
Well, that’s the point, you know, if now for me, I like doing adults fifty and older that are
train wrecks that need a lot of work. So I do full-mouth rehabs because really that was my
training right from the beginning and I love doing it. They’re very, very challenging so
they challenge every part of my skill, my skill level, but the rewards to me personally are
really, really good because it’s almost like painting a picture when you’re done and
you’re so proud of it, and then you get paid really well for it.
Madow:
That’s always a good conclusion. Hey, let me ask you something because I’m sitting
here, in the studio, and I’ve got my laptop open. I’m looking at your website and I know
you said a lot of your patients are using their mobile phones, but I think people still use
the website, so I personally love websites more than phones but I’m just curious about
this offer you have on your home page of your website. I’m gonna read it too ’cause I
think it’s really intriguing. It says, “Ten dollars gets you up to one hour” and I’ll prep it
by saying it’s not cheesy looking, it’s in a very nice little box, it just looks classy but,
“Ten dollars gets you up to one hour of Dr. Schefdore’s time to do a thorough exam and
private consultation with you. Why would a top doctor spend up to one hour of his time
for ten dollars? He knows the ten dollars will change the way you look at dental care.
Everyone deserves great care and a great smile that will last a lifetime,” and then there’s
some contact information, call today, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Is that a pretty popular
thing on your website?
Schefdore:
Yeah, everybody that comes in gets a ten-dollar consultation exam and I donate the ten
dollars to local charities.
Madow:
Wow, do they know that, that you donate it?
Schefdore:
They know that when they come in. I mention it to everybody that comes in because I
don’t want to give ’em too much on the website, but everybody’s curious, what’s the ten
bucks for, why do you even bother because it’s such a low amount of money, and I go,
you know, if I pick up a hundred, two hundred patients a year, you know, I could donate
a couple thousand dollars to some area charity.
Madow:
And that ten-dollar consult, you do a full-examination in that time?
Schefdore:
Yeah, well, you know, it’s without X-rays, so we talk first, and then when the time is
appropriate and they allow me, I ask permission, is that ok if we take a peek here, and
what I’ll do is I’ll do intraoral, I’ll do a cancer exam, I’ll check the lymph nodes, thyroid,
TMJ, temporalis muscles, you know, for any clenching or grinding, check the occlusion,
check the perio, as long as they don’t have any heart problems, no being premedicated,
and check the teeth. So I’m doing the most thorough exam I can without any X-rays and
they’re really impressed ’cause no dentist has ever done that for them ever. So yeah, I do
that and it’ll take me an hour, hour and fifteen minutes to get through it and listen to ’em.
Sometimes if they want to talk more than this, I’ll have to get ’em back to do the exam. I
mean, sometimes I, they’re just talking for an hour; nobody has ever listened to ’em for
an hour. They say, oh my God, how could you give up an hour of doctor time? Well,
because they end up spending five, ten, fifteen, twenty-five thousand dollars or more with
me.
Madow:
Yeah, I mean, but it’s just continually interesting that you attract the patients who kind of
know that going in, which I think is also one of your overall themes. You’re not doing a
ten-dollar consult for somebody who’s not right for your practice. Well, I’m sure it
happens but it just doesn’t seem to be the norm.
Schefdore:
Yeah, and I wish I could put my finger on it. I mean, the people that come in are not
young; they’re always forty-five, fifty, and older. They always need a lot of work and
they need somebody to listen to ’em because many times, I hear this often, you know,
I’m like the third or fourth or fifth guy that they’re interviewing because, you know, the
last guy put a crown on, didn’t listen to ’em, and it fell off and this guy did some bonding
and it looks like poopoo and the next guy, he’s so busy with his other stuff, he goes in
with a hygiene visit for three minutes and he can’t run out the door fast enough. I get that
one an awful lot. This is gonna blow people away; I’m gonna get all kinds of hate mail
for this one or a lawyer. I do my own hygiene.
Madow:
No kidding.
Schefdore:
Yeah, I knew that would surprise you.
Madow:
Oh my, I’m shocked.
Schefdore:
You’re going, that can’t be possible. All I could tell dentists in my universe is that it’s a
more relaxing practice; I don’t get bothered when I do restorative by doing prophy checks
every five minutes; that would drive me up the wall. There’s no way that I could
concentrate doing crown and bridge and doing the stuff that I do and get zapped every ten
minutes for a prophy visit, and then when I go in there, I’m doing a half-assed exam
because I have to hurry up and get back to what I was doing. That’s just crazy. To me,
that’s craziness. I can’t do it.
Madow:
But how the heck do you have the time to do? I mean, you know, in a busy practice you
could have two or three hygienists fully booked every single day.
Schefdore:
Not at my prices.
Madow:
That’s a good answer.
Schefdore:
Well, because they’re all so cheap. I mean, what do you want? To run a volume practice
like Walmart or do you want a high priced practice? You want to sell one Mercedes a day
or do you want to sell fifteen Yugos?
Madow:
That’s definitely an interesting way to look at it, but I have to admit, I’m like, I’m
shocked that you do your own hygiene.
Schefdore:
I know. Everybody is, but one of the reasons is because very few hygienists are so strict
as I am with the hygiene. We start with the hygiene. That hygiene has to be impeccable
before I move on, and I’m sure we’re gonna talk about my hygiene.
Madow:
Your personal hygiene?
Schefdore:
No, well, that too but, you know, my perio program.
Madow:
Yeah, as a matter of fact, let’s get to that and some other things. Maybe we don’t even
have to start with your perio program but let’s talk about some of the things you do to
differentiate your practice. I know you gave me a nice list of ’em. I don’t know if you
have that in front of you right now but what are some of the things you do? Let’s just
kind of pick out a few that really make your practice different.
Schefdore:
I listen. I take as much time as the patients want. We treat people with respect. We’re
kind. We don’t rush from patient to patient. We’re always wanting them to, you know,
take a break or if they’re cold there’s a blanket. You know, we treat them, we really treat
them like my spouse coming in. I mean, it’s just nice. We have a thirty-two inch TV in
front of them with a thousand stations, Pandora music if they need it. We have NuCalm.
NuCalm is, that’s a real good thing, nucalm.com, I suggest any dentist go to that…
Madow:
And just to clarify, it’s Nu Calm, NuCalm. Yeah, what is NuCalm? Why don’t you tell
our listeners about that.
Schefdore:
Ok. NuCalm is a nutraceutical that the patient chooses; a nutraceutical is a natural food.
It’s better than a vitamin because it’s all natural and it absorbs really well and then there’s
a couple of, like, TENS units that you put right behind their ears to make sure it gets
absorbed into the brain, and then they put on, we put on these headphones and behind the
music are the same wavelengths that the brain makes when it’s sleeping, and it works,
and then dark glasses, we put on ’em so they can’t see any light to activate the brain. But
when you give ’em, the patients, this, maybe fifteen minutes before you start, it really
relaxes them without drugging them up, and, you know, I tried this ’cause I thought it
was BS, you know, when I first heard this, and, you know, the NuCalm group came to
my office and I gotta tell ya, after about five or ten minutes, I mean, I’m trying to fight
this and I’m going, why, this is, like, oh, this feels so good, let me just lay here and listen
to this pretty music.
Madow:
What’s in the stuff?
Schefdore:
Um, it’s just a nutraceutical; you’d have to ask the company to get the, I don’t want to
misquote anything.
Madow:
Ok, fine.
Schefdore:
But there’s no drugs or anything with that, but I gotta tell ya, I was in such a relaxed
state. They did take a little video of me and I’m sitting there with my mouth open,
drooling. I didn’t even realize it.
Madow:
Wow, that sounds great.
Schefdore:
Yeah, it was really, really nice, and what it does, it gets me through those really nervous
people that are difficult to work on because, you know, a lot of people are so nervous
with us and when you’re doing the bigger cases, you know, I’m able to do six-thousand
dollars’ worth of dentistry in a couple hours when somebody’s just really relaxed, and I
can just, you know, just keep going from one step to the next. The other thing that we do,
if you want to go onto the next thing…
Madow:
Well, let me ask you a little bit more about NuCalm, well, maybe a lead-in from NuCalm.
I was thinking before when you were describing your practice when you say you deal
with the train wrecks, I would imagine some of those people are beyond nervous; they’re,
like, you know, totally scared out of their wits and maybe too scared for NuCalm. Do you
do any IV sedation in your practice?
Schefdore:
Well, you know, when they’re in the waiting room crying before they ever meet me,
that’s kind of a clue that maybe they’re maybe a little bit nervous. So those particular
patients I’ll actually interview ’em a lot of times out there in the waiting room. I mean,
they’re so scared they can’t even go in the back and it’s just a shame on what some
dentist did and treated them so brutal to get them to that point. I mean, it’s just, I really
feel sorry for ’em, and so what we do is we have IV sedation. Now, I have a lot of people,
I’m gonna get some more hate mail, but my personal opinion is I can’t do a full-mouth
rehab or a bunch of dental work on somebody and watch the sedation at the same time; I
just can’t do it, and I really don’t want to hire a ten-dollar an hour person to sit there and
oversee. I mean, in my office I want to do the dentistry, get paid really well for it, and so
I actually hire a physician to come in, and it’s a real physician and they do the IV and
they monitor that. Yeah, it’s expensive but I, that’s just the way we do it.
Madow:
Just curious. What’s the typical patient charge for the physician-assisted IV sedation?
Schefdore:
Oh, varies from five to eight hundred dollars an hour. Five hundred is after a couple of
hours, then they’ll finally come down. I think it starts at eight hundred and then it
gradually works its way down to five hundred. So a typical patient, you know, three
hours, let’s say, eight, seven, six, a couple grand.
Madow:
You know, it’s funny. I wonder how any of us were feeling if we were going to the
hospital and they said, oh, you know, Dr. Schefdore’s doing your kidney surgery and he’s
also going to be monitoring your sedation and your breathing and your pulse. I mean,
they just would never do that.
Schefdore:
Would never, never do that. Now I know there’s some real controversies on that. I know
guys really make a living off doing that. I, it just, in my world it doesn’t work. That
doesn’t mean everybody else can’t do it. It doesn’t mean other dentists are doing
something wrong. Just for me, in my happiness level, I can’t do it.
Madow:
Yeah, but it also sounds like you kind of cultivate the type of patient that would maybe
not demand but would be totally cool to that level of service, so to speak.
Schefdore:
Yep, totally cool with it, and we help ’em afford it. I mean, money always comes up and
even wealthy people get, you know, live beyond their means and, you know, they don’t
have tons of money either, so we just try to make it a way that we could help afford
treatment. So, you know, everybody’s got CareCredit but there’s also three or four other
companies out there. Sometimes I’ll have to use three or four companies just to finance
the dental treatment. You know, they’ll get a bill from four different financing
companies.
Madow:
But as I always say when I talk about CareCredit, it’s not your problem at that point;
you’re leaving the financing to the financing professionals and you’re doing what you do.
So you do some things that a lot of dentists don’t do. One of them is blood screening.
What’s your, what kind of blood screening are you doing? What’s your protocol?
Schefdore:
Well, that’s, you know, you mentioned on the cover of Dentistry Today, that was about
seven, eight years ago. What I did, I discovered about eight or ten years ago is that when
I started my perio, you know, years and years ago, actually it was way more than this, let
me go back how this even came into effect. When I started a lot of the perio programs,
right, you’d refer somebody thirty years ago, you had to refer someone to a periodontist.
So I started doing that. When they came back, if the patient ever came back to me, they
were really upset, you know, going through a full-mouth of surgery; it was just torturous.
I mean, they were really angry or they just left the practice and probably never went back
to any dentist. So I said, well, that wasn’t working so good. So then I think, like, the
Rotadent came out and then after that the CloSYS came out. It was a periodontist that
developed a mouthwash and toothpaste that we still use today; it works great. It’s
CloSYS. I really recommend you carry it in your office.
Madow:
Yeah, that’s really good stuff.
Schefdore:
Ah, it’s worked tremendous. So we tried the Rotadent and then the CloSYS and then,
like, the RotaPoints came out because they weren’t flossing, and that’s just the stupidest
thing in the world to teach someone to floss. Yeah, it’s just the stupidest thing. Ok, think
about this. We did a survey when I had three practices. What did we have, like, eight
thousand patients in the practices, and we took a survey. Out of all those patients, you
know, five percent of ’em actually floss correctly every day.
Madow:
Wow, and those, and some of them were lying.
Schefdore:
Right, and so, how, why would we teach somebody when ninety-five percent of ’em
aren’t gonna do it? Well, that’s just dumb training, in my opinion. So I said, look, we’ve
gotta think of something else to do. So, you know, we tell the patients, look, you’ve gotta
get in between the teeth and clean it out. I know you’re not gonna floss. Here’s floss, just
in case you ever get something stuck, but we’ve gotta do something on a daily basis. So,
you know, they came up with the RotaPoints, which people love. Those are just little
plastic toothpicks to go in between their teeth, they’re Soft-Picks, there’s Waterpiks, a
hydrofloss; I lay out all the options and say, just pick your weapon, but you’re gonna use
one of these daily to get in between your teeth, and so most of the time they just pick the
plastic tooth picks just ’cause they’re so easy to use, and so now we have the Rotadent
and then we use the CloSYS. We have ’em brush the mouthwash in first and then use the
toothpaste, make sure the tongue and roof of the mouth ’cause there’s more bacteria there
than there is on their teeth, and nobody’s ever told ’em that before. But we get ’em to do
that and then clean in between their teeth and then there was still, you know, my perio
results were still ok but there was still a lot of people that just still had bleeding. So it
occurred to me that nutrition was a big deal and that was definitely part of the perio. So I
had ’em taking vitamins and I’d learned that vitamins didn’t work well; they’re synthetic
and they’re poorly absorbed, and so we started to go into natural vitamins. We got a little
bit better result and then we did more research, and so we figured out which supplements
my patients needed and we really got better results. Well, at the same time, unknowingly
to me, a company called Pharmaden, pharmaden.net, Pharmaden came up with almost
exactly the same ingredients that I came up with except they put ’em in one pill, and then
they went to Loma Linda and double-blind tested it on sixty perio patients. So we know
the efficacy, we know it works to reduce pocket depth, bleeding, and plaque. Well, we
included those with our treatment and that helped tremendously. That was definitely a big
piece of the puzzle, and so about eight years ago there was still a small percentage of
people that I couldn’t get well. It just drove me nuts when they’re not perfect, you know?
So I said, there’s something else, so I said, you know, just for kicks, I want to send to
their physician or go have ’em get a blood test. I want to see if there’s something
medically going on. And I’ll be darned; twenty-five percent of those patients were
diagnosed were diabetics that were never diagnosed. I go, that’s just crazy. I go, and then
it occurred to me that the dentist is the perfect person to catch up, to catch on early
medical issues. We’re the perfect ones, especially diabetes. Diabetes is going off the
graphs. If you read the current research, and in fact, I just read a study the other day that
they randomly took a bunch of dental patients and they got the same results that I’ve been
talking about ten years now, that about twenty percent of your patients are gonna be a
diabetic or darn near it, and nobody knows it. So I started coming up, I said, ok, that’s
nice, now Dr. Ridker in Harvard at the same time wrote a book on high sensitivity Creactive protein being an inflammatory marker. Now we all know that inflammation is
the basis of all disease; that’s just the basis, that’s just the way it is. So it occurred to me
what if I at least give ’em a diabetes test and give ’em an inflammatory marker A1c,
HbA1c, inflammatory marker and one if they are high on the glucose, send ’em over to
their physician for a diagnosis and treatment; I would never diagnose that. I just want to
screen ’em and then the inflammatory level, I would treat their periodontal condition,
include the nutraceuticals, and then in thirty days retest the inflammation level. Do you
know we consistently got a reduction of the inflammatory blood markers fifty to ninety
percent, fifty to ninety percent within thirty days? There is no drug on this planet that can
do that and dentistry is perfectly positioned to help people reduce their inflammatory
markers, which is the basis of all disease.
Madow:
Wow, now do you test every patient this way or just your patients who have perio that
you’re not happy with?
Schefdore:
Well, at first, you know, I started doing my patients inside the office and for those of you
saying that dentists can’t do this, I was actually the first dentist that had a license to
actually do this inside my office. Now since I have gotten that license, the government
says, oops, we thought you were an MD ’cause I’m a DMD, we made a mistake, so we’re
not gonna allow any other dentists to do this. Like, oh great, so then what we did was I
teamed up with some guys and developed a finger stick, lab accurate test. So all the
dentists had to do was test on the strip, send it in and, you know, we would send ’em a
report and it was totally legal because you’re just transporting one drop of blood and
inside the mouth we deal with a lot more blood than that. So I really, really tried when I
was on the front page of Dentistry Today, trying to get dentistry involved and hygienists
involved in this movement. We only ended up with about two hundred and fifty dentists
and I needed five hundred dentists just to break even ’cause, in our blood testing facility,
’cause it was the first one in the world, you know, and we had an overhead and, you
know, a medical director and everything. So about two years ago I had to close it down. I
was just bleeding money for like four years. So today I’m back to sending ’em to Quest,
getting a blood test. The problem with that is that half the patients that you send over to
Quest aren’t gonna go, and so it’s really, really frustrating, so, you know, we’re back to,
back to the old ages, but blood screening in a dental office just makes all the sense to me.
I send everybody over to their physician if they need a, you know, I tell ’em, look, the
first sign of diabetes is poor perio, and along with other medical conditions, I just want to
make sure there’s no underlying medical conditions, so I need you to go to your
physician, get a physical, and just make sure everything is ok.
Madow:
Interesting. Hey, let me as you something too, ’cause I know you just mentioned a whole
bunch of things but maybe to just kind of simplify or clarify ’cause you’re obviously
really, really knowledgeable about perio and systemic and all this kind of stuff. Let’s just
take the typical patient, they come into your practice, you know, you do your ten-dollar
consult, whatever…
Schefdore:
Yeah.
Madow:
…then you do your exam and you do your full set of X-rays and you see some, you
know, mild to moderate bone loss and they’ve got, you know, some fours and fives and
maybe a six millimeter pocket here and there, a little bit of bleeding, you know, the
typical adult perio case that, as you said, you’re not gonna refer to a periodontist. Do you,
what’s kind of your routine at that point? Where do you start, where do you go, how do
you, what’s your whole perio program all about?
Schefdore:
Ok, the perio program is, and you know, I’ve got this ADD, so I’ll go all over the place;
how much longer do we have left?
Madow:
Oh, we’ve got five to ten minutes.
Schefdore:
Ok, good.
Madow:
Let’s say we’ll give you ten cause the information’s so good.
Schefdore:
Ok, so how is our perio program? Ok, the most important thing is, in my opinion, is
getting the patient to own they have the disease because all the rest is easy if you, ’cause
you just do treatment and that’s easy, we could explain that. The hardest problem is
getting the patient to own they have it so then they’ll pay for it and they’ll do something
at home and that’s the big thing. So how do you do that? Well, most people are visual
learners. I mean, just ask Playboy, right? We got a whole industry based on visual effects.
So you have to give ’em a visual effect, the patient. So I would rather have an intraoral
camera before a handpiece because what we do, ok, the first step, for example in the
perio. You tell the patient the expectation before you do anything. So, ok, Mary, today
we’re gonna go ahead and I just want to do a gum exam on you so I’m gonna be, you
know, just touching the gums going just a little underneath the gums to see where the
bone levels are, and when I do this on these upper right-hand side we should see no
blood, no pus, and you should have no pain.
And use the word pus; they don’t understand exudate. So I go ahead and probe, you
know, from the distal, buccal, mesial, and I go; I don’t add a lot of pressure but it’s the
right amount of pressure that we’re taught, right? You don’t want to bury it in there but
on most, almost all new patients you’ll get a ton of pus, blood, exudate, just ugliness.
Well, I have to hurry up and get that right on that intraoral camera and right on TV. I’ve
got a thirty-two inch TV right in front of ’em, right, mounted on the ceiling, that comes
down, and so I snap the picture and I go, ok, Mary, go ahead and rinse out that pus and
that blood.
Madow:
Oh, gross.
Schefdore:
Exactly, they go, oh, you’ll never have to sell ’em another thing.
Madow:
You know, it’s interesting because intraoral cameras, they’ve been around forever, that
some people say they’re like a loaded gun, you know, but you always picture, you know,
the big ugly MODBLXYZPDQ broken-down amalgam on the screen but I don’t think
too many people really would put a perio exam on the screen; that’s really interesting.
Schefdore:
Do you know when I train doctors how to do this and how to present this, I’ve increased
fifty, sixty thousand dollars a month, a month, in their practice, just off this training?
Madow:
Yeah, it’s easy to believe because, you know, a great perio program is such an essential
part of the practice that most people neglect.
Schefdore:
Oh, well, just imagine, just imagine getting one more patient to say yes to go into a two
thousand dollar perio program, right? That’s just two thousand dollars a day more. Add it
up at the end of the month, I mean, and that’s just one more patient a day just because
you’re learning to present this properly and say the right words.
Madow:
Not bad. Ok, so we’ve got, we did the exam, we’ve got the ugly, bloody, pus-filled gums
blown up on the big screen. Ok, now they’re convinced they own the perio disease, so
where do we go from there?
Schefdore:
Ok, so now I have this custom brochure that I have, I give this to anybody, you know, got
my name on it but what it talks about in just a couple of pages is all the connections that
perio has to overall health. So I go, Mary, you know what, obviously there’s blood and
here’s the pus and you’re not supposed to get any of the pain, obviously you’ve got gum
disease. I’m gonna give you some information about it and I’ll be back in five minutes
cause when I come back, we’re gonna be on the same page. This is the best way to have a
cup of coffee, put your feet up and look out the window for five minutes. That’s the
hardest thing for dentists to do. They think they gotta always keep talking and they gotta
rush to the next patient. I’m sitting in my office with my feet up and looking at the birds
out the window.
Madow:
Sounds great.
Schefdore:
It is fantastic. Go take a break for five minutes. The patient’s gonna look at that screen,
the intraoral picture, and be reading this at the same time, and they’re gonna go, holy
Christ, I’m in deep stuff here, oh my gosh. When I walk back into the room I say, Mary,
there’s two ways to treat this disease. I could refer you to a periodontist and they focus on
surgery or we have a nonsurgical method here. What would you like to hear about?
Madow:
99.999999 repeating, I don’t want surgery.
Schefdore:
So they say, Doc, what do ya got? Now instead of me selling them, which is like a
forward motion, it’s the opposite, the patient asks me, it’s they’re asking me, so I don’t
ever have to sell anything. They’ve asked me to tell them about my program. You see
how that flow is kind of different than trying to sell them?
Madow:
Absolutely. It’s fantastic.
Schefdore:
So when the flow is the patient to the doctor, then all I am doing is showing and telling. I
go through the mouthwash, toothpaste, the nutraceuticals and why they’re important, and
then I go, now, Mary, is this something you think you can do at home? ’Cause I’ll show it
to ’em, it takes me about five minutes, and they go, oh yeah, I could do that. She goes,
you’ve got this written down, right? I go, yeah, the first couple times we’ve got it written
down it’ll be a little bit, you know, dicey, the first couple times ’cause you don’t quite
understand, but within a day, you’ve got this down. They go, ok. I say, Mary, can you
afford a hundred dollars a month with no interest or a hundred and fifty dollars a month
with no interest, and it’s either yes or no. If it’s no, then we go down a little bit and I say,
Mary, what’s comfortable for you so we can get this done? Just tell me what’s
comfortable monthly payments. And whatever they say, my finance person comes in and
works it out. So if they don’t qualify for CareCredit, then we, if they got a Visa card,
we’ll do some in-house financing, we’ll do something, we’ll work it out while they’re
there. So does that answer your question?
Madow:
Yeah, so then, let’s just, can you kind of summarize then the clinical steps they kind of go
through? I mean, is it what you would call a traditional scaling and root planing program,
so you have a little kind of Ron Schefdore twist you put to it, what happens then?
Schefdore:
Oh man, I’m gonna get more hate mail, but all right.
Madow:
Oh no.
Schefdore:
But here it comes.
Madow:
We better make sure we give your email address like ten times at the end for all the hate
mail you’re gonna get.
Schefdore:
Oh my, oh, I’m gonna get spears in the back on this one. Well, to scrape teeth I think is
silly; there’s gentle, warm-water ultrasonic cleaners that you can put some bacteria, I put
CloSYS in there, and when you do a warm-water ultrasonic cleaning, it’s so thorough and
it’s so good and I know there’s gonna be arguments saying you’ve gotta scrape teeth. But
just hold on there, just listen to me. The first appointment, oh, and here’s the other one
that just drives me crazy; they gotta scrape teeth one quadrant at a time each appointment,
and to me, ok, let’s say that they do half the mouth and they gotta scrape half the mouth
and then, you know, get you back two weeks later and scrape the other half of the mouth.
To me, that’s like wiping half your butt. Why would you do that? You gotta get the
bacterial load down throughout the whole mouth. So what I found better, and there’s tons
of hygienists I’ve trained that now have converted to my way, and if you read the
research, the researchers are agreeing with me now too. Go through the mouth with an
ultrasonic cleaner, the entire mouth, and don’t really, you know, the gums are so inflamed
that first session you really can’t do a whole lot anyway. I use Oraqix, you know, let that
set for a few minutes, and then gentle, warm-water ultrasonic cleaning with CloSYS, and
then we go in and just knock off all the big stuff, give ’em a really, really good hygiene
program to work at home that I described plus the nutraceuticals, get ’em back in two
weeks, completely go through the whole mouth again, and then, you know, adjust any of
their hygiene, and then go through it a third time. Well, I can guarantee you at their third
appointment, all that tartar is off. You don’t have to hand scrape and brutalize the mouth
so much. Just take your time, ultrasonic cleaning, that third session, if you got some little
tartar hanging around, then you can go ahead and maybe hand scrape some areas. If you
got a few deep pockets hanging around, go ahead and use your laser and it just works so
much better. And then if you do that scraping and laser that third session, those tissues
are so noninflamed that it’s just so much easier to do; it’s not painful to the patient; it’s
just a nicer system.
Madow:
Wow, you continue to make me drop off the chair here but it does make sense.
Schefdore:
Well, it does to me. In my world it makes sense and I can get some offices to duplicate it,
but we just weren’t taught that way and it’s, this is kind of like pushing a boulder up a
hill. I really wish we would have been taught this way.
Madow:
Yeah, but I would imagine that you’ve done everything kind of the old traditional way in
your, during your path of discovery and just kind of figured out what way to make things
better.
Schefdore:
Well, that’s the exciting thing about dentistry, and I think if all dentists just every day
went to the office and said, how can I do this better, how can I do it more convenient for
the patient, how can I just improve? That’s kind of the challenge that I have every day.
That way we don’t get bored, you know, sit there and do crowns all day long; it can get
boring, but if you say, you know, how can I do it better, what’s the new material, how
can I do it quicker and better, you know, that’s a real challenge. You know, do you
remember the guy that did the five-minute crown prep?
Madow:
Was that Omer Reed? He was like ninety seconds, I think, wasn’t he?
Schefdore:
Ok, and he really didn’t do it in ninety seconds; it was the time the bur was on the tooth,
but it really got me thinking years ago. Wait, just because you do something fast doesn’t
mean it’s gotta be poor quality, you just gotta be really, really good if you want to do it
fast and good.
Madow:
And the patient should love fast.
Schefdore:
Oh, patients love fast.
Madow;
Hey, a couple things before we wrap here because I think everybody’s heads are
spinning. I don’t know if I’m using the right tense there. Everybody’s heads are spinning
after hearing this stuff, including mine, so really just to use a cliché, you think way
outside the box, but it seems to work fantastically. Now again, you’re in the western
suburbs of Chicago, pretty nice area, high income, I’m sure you have patients of all
income levels but that’s generally a highly populated, high-income area.
Schefdore:
I’ve got a few billionaires in the practice.
Madow:
Not bad, wow.
Schefdore:
And here’s the interesting thing. I’ve got homeless people, honest to God’s truth, call my
front desk and talk. I got a homeless person that we treated six months ago, a homeless
person that came in, did my ten-dollar interview, which I gave him for free. He managed
to get ten thousand dollars to get his mouth done.
Madow:
I don’t even see how that’s possible but…
Schefdore:
I’m still shocked that he got it. He knew relatives, he says, forget having a home, I don’t
really care about that; I want my teeth healthy.
Madow:
Wow, amazing, but anyway, my question was can the things that you talk about be done
anywhere, small town, big city, high income, low income, diverse patient population, all
that stuff? Have you trained doctors in all these different situations?
Schefdore:
Well, let me ask you a question. Does every person on the planet want to be healthy?
Madow:
I would say just about.
Schefdore:
Just about, if, you’re right, there’s some people that don’t care. Poor people, it doesn’t
matter what their income level is, all of us are the same. We want to be healthy, have a
good life, not be stressed out, we’re looking for love. There’s things that people do that
we all generally want to do and one of them’s being healthy, and that’s what I’m selling;
that’s what I’m educating people. My, the challenge is, for the people that don’t have the
funds is help them find a way to afford it. Even if you have to do it in phases over several
years.
Madow:
Yeah, I’m a big believer in that too, as you know, so… I hate to end the interview but
we’re coming close to the end but I think it’s really important for the people that either
want to find out more about what you do, maybe learn more, maybe even be trained by
you or contact you in some way, or the people that want to send you hate mail, cause I
think we got two groups here.
Schefdore:
Oh, I’ll get some.
Madow:
Or just a question, you know, about something, whatever. How can people reach you?
Schefdore:
Probably the easiest one is my email address; it’s celebritysmiles@aol.com.
Madow:
AOL’s still in business?
Schefdore:
Yeah, can you believe I’m still on AOL?
Madow:
Oh, I won’t give you a hard time about it cause everything else you do is so progressive,
so we’ll let that one slide.
Schefdore:
Thanks.
Madow:
So it’s celebritysmiles@aol.com.
Schefdore:
Yeah, and then if they want to be, like, on the first page of Google in the next few weeks,
I mean, I could do that. It’s our video company and if they went to nutraceuticals, I could
train ’em on that. If they just want to increase their production on just perio, which is
everywhere, I don’t care if you’re rich, poor neighborhood, what practice you have, you
got perio in that practice and you need a higher patient acceptance so you need to learn
the words and the techniques to get there.
Madow:
You know, it’s funny, Dave and I used to do quite a few in-office consults, we really
don’t do too many anymore, they’re just too demanding on the schedule and pretty
expensive also for the dentists, so for whatever reason, but I swear, every single office I
stepped into I felt there was so much undiagnosed and/or untreated perio.
Schefdore:
Yep.
Madow:
It’s amazing.
Schefdore:
Yep.
Madow:
Yep, so wow, you just mentioned a bunch of cool things. Your whole perio program,
your fantastic nutraceuticals, the Top Search video to get people high up on Google
rankings, or just any kind of questions, hate mail, whatever they want, you can reach Dr.
Ron Schefdore at celebritysmiles@aol.com.
Schefdore:
Oh, one last thing. If you got the hate mail, just save it because this is what works in my
world; what you’re doing is ok, you’re right for your world. So just, you know, don’t get
your prejudices on me and I won’t send you my prejudices. You’re right, whatever you’re
doing; I’m not trying to convince anybody to do anything different.
Madow:
Nah, but it’s good to expand your world too. There’s a lot of great stuff out there and
that’s one of the reasons we love doing the audio series to, you know, present some of the
things that great dentists like you are doing and hopefully people get inspired.
Schefdore:
Well, it’ll keep ’em interested, it’ll keep ’em excited, you know, it’s a good income, I
mean, it’s a great, we’re well-paid slaves, let’s put it that way.
Madow:
I love the people that hug you and hand you money, that’s…
Schefdore:
Yeah, I do too.
Madow:
…always good. It’s like one step above a prostitute, so…
Schefdore:
It is. It’s a wonderful thing but, you know, the true appreciation when somebody really
appreciates your hard work, it’s just, there’s no feeling like it in the world; it’s so
addicting.
Madow:
No question about it. Well, unfortunately, we do have to wrap but I’ll thank you one
more time. I know our listeners would do the same if they had a direct line to our
interview here. It’s Dr. Ron Schefdore, you practice outside of Chicago, you’ve done so
many great things teaching other dentists, writing articles, developing all these fantastic
systems, so thanks for taking some time out of your busy day to be with us.
Schefdore:
Yeah, I’m looking at the palm trees, but…
Madow:
I should rephrase that because you are a big believer in relaxing and taking time off and
doing it your own way, which is a great lesson within itself.
Schefdore:
One last thing?
Madow:
Please.
Schefdore:
I encourage all dentists to take six to eight weeks off a year and you’re gonna say, oh my
God, I can’t, and almost every dentist I talk to takes one or two vacation weeks a year,
and I’m like, dude, I’m tripling your income, trust me, start with a month; if you can’t
handle more than that, but you’ve gotta have time off to rest your mind, rest your muscles
in your back, spend time with your family and go laugh.
Madow:
I totally agree. Well, thanks for the great advice, all the good tips; you’ve been very
inspiring. Dr. Ron Schefdore, it’s been a pleasure speaking with you.
Schefdore:
Oh, thanks, it’s been fun.
Madow:
You got it, man.
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