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Meet the movers and shakers, power brokers and thought leaders accelerating change across dentistry, healthcare, business and media. Hosted by Benco Dental’s senior executives and experts from our company, each episode delves deep into how the brightest minds are shaping dentistry’s future through remarkable innovation—and how you can position yourself for personal and professional success in this fast-changing world.

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Episode 3
Get to Know Mike Cataldo, CEO of Convergent Dental and Why He’s One of Dentistry’s Most Influential People
Hosted by Chuck Cohen

In this episode, Chuck talks with Mike Cataldo about the lessons he’s learned from his favorite “never-give-up” sport, what it feels like when people love your innovation, how skepticism from a “big deal in dentistry” fueled his work with the Solea laser, and what he suggests to help people stop snoring.

Mike Cataldo, CEO, Convergent Dental
ABOUT OUR GUEST

Mike Cataldo, CEO, Convergent Dental

Mike Cataldo is CEO of Convergent Dental. Based near Boston, Convergent Dental is a privately-owned equipment and technology company. Convergent is at the forefront of dental lasers, due in large part to the path-breaking Solea, the world’s first computer-aided CO2 laser system cleared by  the FDA for all body tissue.

A seasoned entrepreneur, Mike founded, funded, built and sold MediVation Inc. to McKesson Corp. in 2000. He has served as an investor, advisor, and/or board of directors in several healthcare-oriented startups and leads with 30 years of experience in healthcare technology companies.

With Mike at the helm, Convergent introduced Solea in 2013 and within three years, its revenue growth totaled more than 2,000 percent. In 2018 it was ranked by Deloitte as the second fastest-growing medical device company in North America.

Cataldo called Solea “an entirely new paradigm in laser dentistry” whose success rests on the hard and soft-tissue work it enables, leading to minimal patient pain despite the fact that its anesthetic free. It works on gingiva, dentin, enamel and bone.

Convergent recently announced a new sleep application for Solea that provides better-than-CPAP relief for snorers by tightening the soft palate tissue in a five-minute treatment that reduces the vibrations that cause snoring and poor sleep. Such breadth of application helps explain why this revolutionary product remains no less influential than ever.

Mike, of Needham, Massachusetts, earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in Economics from Columbia University, New York.

Resources from this episode:
  • Read Benco's Incisal Edge article highlighting Mike as one of the most influential people in dentistry.
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Transcript:

[00:00:18] Hello and welcome. Mike Cataldo, you have been named one of the 32 most influential people in dentistry. And I’m Chuck Cohen from Benco Dental. I’m here to congratulate you and learn a little bit more about who’s been influential for you and what it feels like to be an influencer and dental.

[00:00:36] So welcome. Thank you very much, sir. Great to be here. And thank you for the honor.

[00:00:41] My God. Very exciting. So, like looking over your bio, you got a pretty long technology background before you enter dentistry. Tell us a little bit more about your journey where you started and I ended up where you are today.

[00:00:54] All right. Well, I started my career, I believe, not in telecom for very little bit. I started in sales and then pretty soon after getting to healthcare information systems. And somewhere along the way, I decided I want to start my own company and had this idea of connecting doctors to their own patients over the Internet. Then I founded a company which was actually the first patient portal company ever, and that was a great ride. And so that kept going. Did some other things. And somewhere along the line, somebody approached me with the idea for a dental laser company and it sounded like a good idea, you know, doing fillings without needles or drills. So that’s the short version of how I ended up at at convergent dental, founding the company and getting it to where it is today.

[00:01:45] Sounds to me like you’ve been an entrepreneur for your entire career. What’s it like to be an entrepreneur? Talk a little bit about that and how you feel like that intersects with your ability or your desire to influence.

[00:01:58] Well, I mean, you know, what’s it feel like to be an entrepreneur? I enjoy it. It’s I’m very creative person. I you know, as an entrepreneur, ultimately, you end up being responsible, especially end up as the CEO is. You know, when you run a company, whether you’re an entrepreneur or not, you end up being responsible for everything. Right. Whether sometimes much to your chagrin. But I it’s it’s great. I mean, besides all the challenges, getting to see your idea at first of all, become real, then get used and then becoming, you know, an industry leading technology. I mean, it’s like the patient portal, right? Everybody has patient portals today. I’ll never forget the first time I saw the transactions online going back and forth between patients and doctors, like people are actually using this. What do you mean it works? All right. Excite. Yeah. And then the same thing with the laser except in laser. I was the first patient. Right. So. So it was like, OK, let’s see. And when I had a big old composite filling taken out and we didn’t know what to expect and it didn’t hurt. And I was like, oh, my God, it works. And the dentist was like, oh, my God, it works. And then, of course, patient after patient. Now, I think with seven million patients in. Wow. Yeah.

[00:03:29] It’s you know, it’s great to see your idea actually work and get used and, you know, taking away fear of the dentist. I mean, the stories are endless. So it’s it’s even better when it when people love it. Right. And it makes a difference in their lives. That’s that’s the best part of being an entrepreneur is when you can take it all the way, whether it’s the patients who whose lives have changed, the dentist whose lives are changed, or the employees who feel like they’re doing something great. I mean, that’s that’s the positive side of being responsible for everything. Right.

[00:04:04] Talk a little bit about who you your big influences were as you were growing up, because all entrepreneurs have somebody that maybe they say, wow, this I want to be like this person. Talk a little bit about who are your influencers.

[00:04:16] Yeah. You know, of course, there’s a few. I mean, everybody says, my dad I mean, my dad was a big influence and an influence or in a way, he was a surgeon and he was a very good surgeon, which meant he was a particularly bad business person. He he had no no influence really at all when it came to business, except for one thing, I made a deal with him when I was a kid. I had I had 50 I like 15 houses who I cut their lunch. Right. A big little landscaping business. And I needed to get around and I made a deal with him that I if I could borrow his car to drive my lawnmower, I mean, I put that lawnmower in the trunk of his Chevy Caprice classic. He’d say, if you. Ride me to the hospital in the morning, then pick me up midday in the afternoon and drive me to my office and pick me up at the end of the day, you can have a car. But it’s a promise me one thing. You guys don’t smoke. People don’t smoke. People just never overcharge. Really, just yet. Just charge a fair price and be done with it. Wow. That was I mean, it’s a lot built into that state, right? Absolutely. Do the right thing. Be fair. Never take undue advantage of a position of strength. All those lessons came from that one little statement. Right? Don’t. So people. So he was an influence in that way. And then the other guy. Believe it or not. So when I was in college, as you know, Chuck, I’m still a rower. I’m on the Charles River every morning and I know that a rower. So I can get a bra. But when I when I was in college, you know, I was in the work study program. I had to pay a lot of my own way. And I worked in in the boat shop at the boathouse at Columbia University. That was my work study job. And there was a kind of there named Jimmy O’Hara, who was a full time boat. Right. The guy fixes all the boats. So we used to I mean, we used to fix back then it was wooden racing shells. I’m like, take deposit. And we used to, you know, patch these racing shells with 16th of an inch thick skins and, you know, fix that. Everything from that to fixing motors on coaching launches to you name it. I mean, we used it. We used to put the curve in these skins by cutting the piece of this very thin plywood to a certain size. We’d go into the men’s shower and bend bend. The piece wouldn’t stick it into the slats in the radiator to keep a band on. Right. And then turn on all the showers to steam it close off, all thing. So anyway, the point of that little story is, is in terms of being an entrepreneur, just figuring out how to do stuff. I mean, just straight up innovation. You know, rowing is a never give up kind of sport. A lot of the drive, a lot of the stick to it liveness, a lot of creativity came from the sport, but particularly from Jimmy in the boathouse. He was a great guy. He he you know, that’s where I learned all the the lessons that came back in entrepreneurship and creativity to kind of make things new things that you’d think couldn’t happen. One guy told me, I’ll tell you his story a little bit later. One guy told me early on the laser business that it couldn’t happen.

[00:07:38] All right. Who was that? Well, Chuck, it was you. It was me. I know. I was hoping you’d bring that up. It was there. What? You tell that story.

[00:07:47] Oh, God, what a great story. So we have this mutual friend, Tom, in the town of Hingham, Massachusetts. And as you know, we’re both members of the Hingham Yacht Club, which is about the non yacht club. Yes. The Yacht Club ever. All right. And this guy, Tom, says, oh, you got to meet my friend Chuck. Chuck is a big deal in dentistry. That’s what he said. Got to meet Chuck and. Yeah. So it’s early days. We hadn’t even. I don’t think we built the first prototype of the product and is you know, we’re we’re all down there one day in time. Oh, here’s Chuck. You got to meet him. So, of course, you know the story. I met you and said hello and hey, what are you doing? And, you know, like, you get a million of these introductions a day. And I told you, I’m making this dental laser that’s gonna cut teeth without anesthesia, without a drill. And you’ve looked at me like you poor bastard. And you gave that smile. Right. That that. Oh, very nice. Yeah. I wish you luck. And of course, that’s debt. Just add a little fuel to the fire truck.

[00:08:52] It did indeed. And you. Oh, we overcame that. And you have gone on to big success in spite of my initial skepticism.

[00:09:01] Well, that’s right. You know, and it wouldn’t be the first time I ran into a skeptic. By the way, who became a very good friend. Right. So. So, yeah, it was great. Of course it is. I don’t know if everybody on this podcast will know this, but Benco was the first company to take the leap and distribute Solea.

[00:09:17] So it was kind of what we call it, poetic justice or I think it was irony in that turnabout is fair play. You could put a lot of words on it. But the answer is we came around. You’re right. I was wrong. And now I think you could. Could you repeat that one word? It’s now a public setting. You were right. I was wrong. No, no, it’s all good. I was glad to be wrong.

[00:09:37] Let’s talk a little bit about rolling as an influence, because many people don’t know this. But my son is a rower, too, which is one thing. So I understand a little bit about rowing. What do you learn from rowing and how did it helped shape you into the entrepreneur and the business person you are today?

[00:09:51]
Yeah. So rowing is not just from rowing. It was the fact that I took on rowing. So this you know, I’d love to tell the story if you can name any sport other than rowing. I guarantee you I’ve been cut from it. Where am I? I as you know, I’m fairly big guy. Pretty strong from rowing, but. I could do adding a baseball, basketball, football track, try tomorrow.

[00:10:16] And finally, finally, a friend of my brother’s actually said to me, who is on the wrong team? My high school said, you got to try this. It’s it’s a great sport. And I was scared to death to take it on because I heard rowers have to run to training. Didn’t want to run. But I did for whatever reason. I took it on. I took a leap of faith. He said it’ll hurt for two weeks and then you’ll be fine. So the first thing was taking on a challenge. I didn’t think I could do right. And to say give myself a chance. I’ll give the sport a chance. And it and it worked out. So when I say taking on Johnson, I think I could do. I tried a lot of different things and failed at a lot of right. All those sports entrepreneurship has a lot of trial and error, trial and error. And yet what I learned was you can’t you can’t give up because of failure. Right. And you can’t back away because it’s hard if you do either of those two things. You’re just not an entrepreneur, period. And then once I get into the sport. And it turned out I was better than I thought I’d be. As you know, I had quite a road and career. And, you know, it was that was to stick to wittedness. It was like, OK, give me a challenge. If it’s hard, I’ll get through it. And I had to do that. Oh, and over and over again. Whether was rowing itself when it was learning the technique, whether it was competing for a seat in the boat, weightlifting, running stadiums, I mean, you name it, they all seem like impossible tasks. The things that we thought I couldn’t do. I can’t believe I ever did at this age. I don’t know how I did it, but. But that was, you know, rowing is it is you’ve got to you’ve got to just stick with it. And if you do, you find a way and it’s the absolute same thing in entrepreneurship. Stick with it.

[00:12:12] So let’s talk about influence and let’s talk about your dental journey. Right. So when did you enter the dental business?

[00:12:18] Is it about six or seven years ago believing that it was longer than that was a thousand. 2011.

[00:12:25] Wow. All right. So we’re coming up on a decade. You needed a lot of stick to this to get there. So you’re really gone from start up entrepreneur. Not a lot of there’s a lot of lasers out there, but yours is the one that seems to have worked the best all the way to today. Seven million patients. How many units do you have? Guys out in the field?

[00:12:44] About thirteen hundred.

[00:12:45] So there’s thirteen hundred Solier units in the field. Talk about how it started. This is evolved to become such an influencer. And what does influence means mean to you? And what kind of influence do you think you and your organization have had on dentistry?

[00:13:01] One. One is, as you know, lasers have a very sort in past, especially hard tissue, lasers and dentistry and the industry simply like you when I met you at your club. They didn’t believe it couldn’t work. Yes. So, you know, what’s the influence? The influence, first of all, is, is that, you know, things that you don’t think work can work. Right? Lasers, I think, have been coming along not just our lives or for all tissue, but, you know, diodes have been, you know, gotten hot and cold. And, you know, erbium lasers had their start and troubles. But, you know, the influence is that what I hear more and more is that lasers are the future. That’s what I hear people say. Lasers are the future. And everybody knows it at this point. It’s just like probably like the early days of Invisalign when people said, yeah, it doesn’t work. It’s not good for your teeth. You can name it. You name all those things. But the simple fact of the matter is that whole, you know, segment, the industry has changed. It’s not just orthodontia straightening teeth. It’s general dentists. It’s it’s it’s changed everything. Right. And so what I hear more, more, more and more is that lasers are the future, whether it’s for hard tissue, whether it’s for soft tissue surgeries. As you know, now we have this fantastic treatment for snoring. That’s pretty unbelievable with a ninety nine percent success rate and three minute treatment. So, yeah, I think that’s our biggest influences. Is this growing belief that lasers are the future?

[00:14:45] So what what what influence does late does the Celaya Laser have on the dentist who buy it and add it to their practice?

[00:14:52] Well, that falls into a number of categories. One, and also a lot of it depends on what the dentist individual goals are. So the first thing is by, you know, taking taking anesthesia out of the equation right there. There is a lot there are a lot of time saved. Right. Just that just taking the time to calm a patient down, inject them, wait for them to get numb, you know, being limited to one or two quadrants in a visit. All that all that goes away when you take anesthesia out of the equation. So for the dentist, you know, obviously there’s there’s a big efficiency gain. So that’s one major impact on the practice. You can simply do more procedures per day when you take anesthesia out of the equation. The second thing is soft tissue surgeries. As you might know, most general dentists don’t do soft tissue surgeries, not many anyway. Pretty much all of ours do a significant number of surgeries. And it’s simple. It’s simply because it makes those procedures easier to do. It puts them within reach and gets a dentist comfortable that they can do these things. So that’s another big influence. And Demps practice is that it it enables them to do procedures that they couldn’t do before. And of course, the latest one is now snoring, opening up airways with a simple three minute treatment of the soft palate where the tissue tissue tightens doesn’t vibrate as much in patient time snoring. It’s pretty amazing. So, you know, efficiency gains, new procedures. Obviously, that has a very positive impact on revenue. That goes without saying. The other thing is patient patient experience. So very important that patients you know, we hear over and over again from these patients. I’m not afraid to go to the dentist anymore. I don’t have exciting when I go to the dentist anymore. That’s gigantic. And the other thing that that isn’t spoken about as much, but I know is there because I hear it from time to time, it’s dentists feel that their lives are better. I feel better not because they’re making more money. Their lives are better because their patients aren’t stressed out. They’re not as stressed. They can they’re not running back and forth between opportunities while they’re waiting for the patients to get numb doing this. The other thing, they sit down with a patient, they go start to finish. They finish that job. They go on to the next one. It’s a calmer life. So, you know you know, I guess the big the big things are efficiency, you know, revenue increase, patient comfort and dentist comfort, you know, quality of life. Those are the though that those are the big effects or influences on dental practice.

[00:17:39] Yeah, I don’t want to and I want to go and push a little bit on the patient experience, because if I had to pick one way that you and your product and your company have really influenced dentistry, it’s for the last century or so getting dating all the way back to before the air driven handpiece. Dentistry is viewed as very dangerous and very painful, and patients would avoid the dentist. And today, thanks in large part because of Celaya, that whole attitude that the general public has about dentistry has changed.

[00:18:08] That’s right. It’s absolutely true. And, you know, what you see at the most is with kids. Kids, the pediatric dentists tell us all the time. It’s the second visit with that child. We really see the effect of the laser. So typically the kids come in. They haven’t experienced, you know, the old way and they come in for the next one. And they are kicking, screaming, scared to death. The kids. Guitry with Soliah, the second visit after Soliah. They sit down. It’s like, I’m OK. No big deal. And that’s where you can really see adults are better at hiding their fear than kids. But adults, you know, pediatric dentists say kids are not small adults. That is a very true statement. But let me tell you, the second half of that adults are just big kids. Yeah. They’re just better at hiding their fear. And so when we hear patients talk about they actually say the same thing like, wow, after that, I’m not afraid to come in. All right. It’s that is the patient experience is significant. Interesting.

[00:19:12] If we’re talking about how dentistry is viewed, like in the general public or in the movies. Right. We think about the marathon man seeing we think about Steve Martin as the dentist in the movie with the jungle. Play it right. All in all, this idea that the dentist is really something to be afraid of.

[00:19:30] And a big impact from Celaya and from the work you’ve done is to change the perception, the very perception of dentistry that the general public has.

[00:19:39] That’s right. And, you know, I actually have a great story about the general public’s perception of dentistry. You remember the show Family Feud? Of course, I know that way back when Richard Dawson was the host. Right. The question came up. The survey question was, what do you fear most in your life? All right. Now I can make you guess what the number one answer was, but it wasn’t going to the dentist. Well, it was it was going to help. OK. That was number one. Going to the dentist was number two. Wow. Right. Guess what? Number three was, I don’t know, going to prison. Really? Yes. So the dentist came between hell in prison. Wow. That’s amazing. Yeah. The scariest things in the world. So that’s if you want any family feud, there’s no better source. Right, for a survey. Survey says there it is. That’s how America perceives the dentist. Right. So, yeah. So we are changing that. Seven million in so far. Right. We’re changing that perception.

[00:20:42] Interesting. So if you could wave a magic wand over dentistry looking out over the next few years, what one or two things would you change about dentistry?

[00:20:52] Wow. What one or two things I change about dentistry? Well, of course, that the first one is I’d make sure that every dentist would have a Soliah.

[00:21:01] I would hope I’d be number one on your list. That’s why I asked for two. But. That’s a good one. I agree. Well, of course, the second one is I wish they’d buy him from Benco. Well, thank you for that, Fred. Anything else on your list?

[00:21:14] You know, I do think that dentistry is a little slow when it comes to adopting innovations. I mean, that’s been my experience. Dentists tend to be cautious. I mean, dentists are blessed with good incomes. So I would I would if my child want to be a dentist, I would encourage her to do so. And it pays well. And, you know, there isn’t a lot of prep sure. To take on new things, whether it’s lasers or anything else. That’s what I’ve noticed. So it’s a little you know, I think dentistry would be better off as an industry if if they could adopt new innovations, whether it’s lasers or other things, a little quicker. You know, I think I think that would be it. And of course, that comes from my perspective, because what I’m an innovator in dentistry. So, of course, that’s that’s where I think I would apply the magic one. Yes.

[00:22:14] Do you think we’ll get to a day where every dentist will have a laser like a delay in their practice?

[00:22:18] I have no doubt. I have no doubt. And I can tell you why. I can make that statement with such confidence. Our average dentist who’s active with the laser, knew their new patient flow doubles. That is a mathematical fact. Well, absolute mathematical fact. It doesn’t take much. Right. The average dentist gets about 20 new patients a month and by the way, loses about 50. So they’re netting five. Right. Are our dentists average? About 40 new patients a month. And when patients are treated with the laser, the attrition rate is is about one or two percent. We’ve measured this. So what that means is sooner or later, you’re gonna have a laser or you’re not going to have patients. Right. Whether it’s ours or, you know, it’s actually just not the laser. It’s working without the drilling, the needle that clearly moves patients. If you’re still using a drill, a needle. I don’t know. I mean, like I said about my wish there with the magic wand. It may be 20 years from now. I don’t think you’ll be seeing many patients. I mean, they’re paid dentist who still use film. Right. Don’t you have digital X-ray? So it won’t be forever. But I do. The math says that if 10 percent of the dentists in any given market experience, a doubling of new patient flow, given what we know about attrition rate for anybody else, the remaining 90 percent start to shrink very quickly. Their patient ratio? Yes, absolutely. The data’s very it’s it’s available. It’s proven. So I do think based just on patient movement that we’ve seen across all of our dentists, that it’s inevitable that every dentist will have a method for treating cavities without a drone, without a needle, whether it’s our laser or somebody comes up with a better idea, that will happen.

[00:24:10] So, Mike, let’s talk a little bit about influence. And one of the ways you’re a big influencer is you have been very successful as an entrepreneur in dentistry, and it’s not easy to do that. Talk a little bit about what you’ve learned along the way. And what advice you have for future entrepreneurs in dentistry. Maybe talk a little bit about what you would have done differently.

[00:24:29] All right. Yeah, and it’s a great place to start. So, you know, my advice to entrepreneurs and dancers to big things, right? It’s it’s big. Be aggressive. Right. Be aggressive, especially in the marketing side. Right. So so an example is, as you know, early on we did a little experiment with direct to consumer in in with Soliah. And we it was a good experiment. We got a lot of positive results in terms of patient response. But there are particular things we could have done better. And I actually wish I pushed that harder, put more money into it, took it to the next level, which we’re which we’re doing now. But I actually believe had we. Put more into direct consumer and understood a little bit more, we could have been maybe even significantly more successful than we are today. We want to talk about this this idea that our patients are dentist, new patient flow doubles. Right. We could have accelerated that in a certain way and been very successful at it by getting a little off the traditional path of direct to consumer for medical. So I can’t give away too many secrets or so. But but had we kept going, I think it would have changed the trajectory. The company, quite frankly. Wow. Yeah. And the trajectory has been great, but it could have been even more so. But then again. You know, we’re always I can look back and tell you a lot of things we could’ve done differently, done better, because, as you know, hindsight is 20/20, of course. Yeah. So that’s one. And then the other one is, as I mentioned earlier, dentists are slow to adopt new technology. You can’t change them. You can’t change it. Jeffrey Moore wrote a book a long time ago called Crossing the Chasm, which is one of my Bibles. I had somebody in my marketing department call me a dinosaur because I was referring to a book that was written in the 1980s. All right. But this book is absolutely a Bible. It talks about, you know, the innovators, early adopters, mainstream buyers. Everybody talks about these innovators early. Nobody really knows what they are, but they categories of people, whether they’re dentists or anything else. And it really is talking about their risk profile and their willingness to adopt new technologies specifically. So dentistry is loaded with what we call mainstreamers and laggards. And you you cannot change that. So you have to bake into your plan. The dentists are conservative about innovations and you can’t move them faster. Now, you you may be able to, you know, make tweaks. I say moving faster. You can’t change who they are. So you might be able to move faster through the curve, but you need to bake into your plan, how you market, how you innovate. That these are the people you’re dealing with. Right. And that’s that’s what I would you know, the big advice is right. Be more aggressive specifically in the marketing side, take into account the tenters are conservative and bake that into your plan.

[00:27:36] And it’s interesting. I want to go back to what you talked about a few minutes ago about how as a rower, you learn to really have a little stick to it liveness. Right. I believe that a lesser person than you might have give it up along the way. I mean, that this thing almost 10 years and now you’re at about thirteen hundred installed in the United States. Now you’re finally seeing that curve start to tip, you know, that tipping point maybe other people would give up along the way?

[00:28:03] Well, sure they would. I mean, by the way, I know if I’d call that a lesser person, let’s do this. Let’s say a different person. OK. So one of the things I mean, you talk about rowing. So I used to make this joke, tell this joke to this friend of mine that I went to college with who eventually became a psychiatrist. And I would tell her, I’d say, listen, if you want to find your ideal patients, I want you to go to the crash, be sprints, which is this event. Raleigh’s rowers come together and they compete on indoor rowing machines in the middle of winter and they do this ridiculously painful race on the rowing machine. I said, go to this thing, find the top five people right there. They’re all crazy. They’re missing something. They don’t know when to stop. Right. Right. You know, but, you know, I joke about it. But it is I do tell people you’re missing that something in your head that tells you when to quit. So that’s the way I think about it. In terms of the stick to it liveness, it’s just this insane. Almost like I’m not going to I’m not going to look at the signs. I’m not going to listen to the signals. People tell me like a guy on a dock at a yacht club tells me you’re crazy. This is never going to work. You don’t listen.

[00:29:18] Don’t listen to me. No, I agree. I’m glad you didn’t listen to me. And look where you are today. It’s huge and exciting.

[00:29:26] Looking out over the next few years, what do you see in the future for Soliah boy?

[00:29:32] You know, first of all, I do think we are hitting that tipping point. We’re already starting to see a dentist by a Soliah because they have no choice, that they’re losing too many patients to other dental. So as that, the more we sell, the more that becomes a thing, as the kids like to say, it’s a thing. And we’ll see accelerated sales. It’ll be the rate of acceleration will increase over the next five years. There’s no question about that. You will see more and more procedures that we’ll put within reach of general dentist. I can as you know, I’ve mentioned before, the snoring application, which is unbelievably innovative, simple to do. Hi. Could do it right. So that has turned out to be a big hit. We’ve had a perio application that’s been OK, but there’s a big innovation coming out with that. That’s also you’ll see us move more. More. And Perry, a world, though, is another one. Cavity prevention. You’ll you’ll you’ll see, in fact, the roots. You know, people listening to this probably don’t know that the the actual genesis of this product was it was based on cavity prevention, not treatment. Right. There’s a lot of research. Years of research that talks about how our wavelength of nine point three microns can change the structure of hydroxyl appetite to make it significantly more resistant to cavities. When we’ve been through all the in vitro and in vivo studies, we’re actually in the approval process with the FDA right now. And you will see teeth being treated with a laser lab to prevent cavities. It’s actually six times more effective than fluoride. Six hundred and six times. Wow, that’s exciting. Yeah. So you will see even more so, but you’ll just see us move through this curve of dental procedures. Light. Light is an amazing thing. I mean, I hear about in sports now, people are using ultraviolet no infrared light. I’m sorry to reduce recovery time for athletes. You’ll see it. And that’s part of the same effect that that that you know. All right. Analgesic effect when cutting teeth without anesthesia. But we’ll just continue to work our way, like I say, through the snoring, desensitizing teeth. Endo Perio cavity prevention. We’ll be rolling those out over the next several years and it’ll just be a. You know, it’ll just be a go to tool for more and more things for general.

[00:32:17] It’s exciting. Well, Mike, thank you very much for spending the time today. Want to go back a second and say we started by talking about influence. We talked about the influences that were important to you. And then we talked about two or three ways that you and your organization have been very influential in dentistry, influential in the way dentist practice, the way patients perceive going to the dentist and their experience there and even to the point where changing the perception of dentistry in the general public. So it’s very exciting. And then finally talked a little bit about how you and your organization are influencing possibly the next generation of entrepreneurs in dentistry. So that’s a lot of influence for one guy. Long and lucky, you have a lot broad shoulders. So you’re up for the task, for the task.

[00:33:01] I’ll just try to stay in shape so I can keep up with it.

[00:33:03] There you go. Michael Talbot, thank you very much for being with us today. Very much appreciate it. Good luck in the future with the future of Soliah. And thank you for everything you do for dentistry.

[00:33:13] Chuck, thank you for the honor and recognition that that came with this. And thank you for being the first first distribution partner to jump on with us. And with this leap of faith and help us make this happen.

[00:33:27] Thank you very much, everybody. Have a great day. Thanks, Mike. All right. See, it’s. Ah.


MEET OUR HOSTS

Chuck Cohen: Managing Director

Chuck Cohen graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 1989 with a degree in English, and joined Benco as a territory representative soon after graduation. He’s taken on increasing responsibilities in the sales and marketing areas, becoming Managing Director in 1996. He serves on a variety of industry and community boards, including Wilkes University, the Dental Lifeline Network, and Jewish Community Alliance of Wilkes-Barre.

Rick Cohen: Managing Director

After three years as an IT consultant at Accenture, Rick Cohen joined Benco in 1994 to create Painless, the industry’s first windows-based e-commerce software. Since then, he’s taken on increasing responsibilities within Benco, focusing on Information Technology, Logistics, Clarion Financial, and our private brand. He is Co-Chair of the Benco Family Foundation, a trustee of WVIA public television and public radio, and a Director of the Dental Trade Alliance Foundation.

Chuck Cohen and Rick Cohen