Episode 199 – (REPLAY) How Technology is Revolutionizing Dentistry

“I’m intrigued by new technology and, boy, is dentistry changing rapidly. And I feel an obligation to the doctors who attend our workshops and listen to my podcast to give them the best information possible about emerging innovations in dentistry.”

Visionaries create the future. They see far down the line and are eternal learners. Which is why we’re so excited to have dental visionary and entrepreneur Dr. Bruce B. Baird on today’s show.

Although he stepped back from daily dentistry a few years ago, Dr. Baird is more active than ever in the world of dentistry, exploring new options, investing in new technologies, and sharing his findings with his peers and the next generation of dentists.

As you know, modern dentistry is a technology-driven field. But it’s often hard to judge what technologies are worth investing time, money, and team training into. You don’t just want to buy technology to buy it. You want to take technology and apply it to your daily practice. You want to use it to solve problems for your patients and give them healthier lives.

Join us today as we peek into Dr. Baird’s brain and see what cutting-edge dental technologies are lighting him on fire:

• What new dental technologies Dr. Baird is excited about
• What’s exciting in the world of 3D printing
• How to mathematics and marketing when presenting new technology to patients

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Dr. Bruce Baird  1:25
Thank you, Reagan. How are you today?

Regan  1:28
I’m doing fantastic. You know, I look towards a lot of people in my life who I think are five-plus years, they’re visionaries, they really, they create the future they see they see it before myself and others see it and you are definitely one of those people that I look up to you see far down and you’re an educational junkie, you’re an always learner. Yeah,

Dr. Bruce Baird  1:53
I, I just enjoy it. I mean, I, I know that there’s some stuff I don’t want to learn and that’s good. So I’m saving room in my brain for the stuff I want to learn more about. So that’s my, that’s my game but I’m always I’m intrigued by new technologies and new things that are out there and, and dentistry changing rapidly. I mean, I put the handpiece down two years ago, doesn’t mean I’m retired, it means I’m, I’m probably spending more time now learning about dentistry than I was when I was actively practicing because I really feel an obligation to, to the doc’s that come to our programs and that listen to me on the podcast, I don’t want to become one of those, you know, obsolete old farts that didn’t know that know what’s going on and truthfully, it’s, it’s so exciting. I wish this stuff was around 41 years ago and I would have had a run with it, but I’m I’m I’m doing I’ve got several projects right now that I’m doing that are going to be utilizing the technology. So I’m excited.

Regan  2:56
This is one of the reasons I had to grab a few minutes of your time and bring you on the podcast because I want people to see what I get to see on a sometimes daily basis. You had just wrapped up attending full arch masters, I think out in Fresno, California and we just had, you know, a general phone call of you know, “Hi, what’s up? What’s going on?” And your energy, just jumped through the telephone and you were like, “Oh my gosh, I just you know, learn something that turned me on my head. I think we should be doing dentistry this way. This is some of the new technology coming out,” and so I want to let listeners in on what is inside your brain and, and what new technology you’re seeing today? What is really lighting your hair on fire?

Dr. Bruce Baird  3:38
You know, right now in dentistry, things have you know, it’s all, it’s gone digital, probably for the last 15, 20-plus years. But then scanning technology and intraoral scan and you know, I’ve been usingthe CEREC for 25 years. So we’ve had these technologies, but the ability to be able to take that technology and to solve problems and, you know, not just buying technology for the heck of it, you know, used to be you buy a piece of technology and market that you had that technology so people would come but it didn’t really change what we did, day to day. The stuff that’s happening now, it changes what we’re doing day to day, we can now scan the mouth and have occlusal guards printed in our own office with printers. So you know what we’ve been sending to a laboratory to do, we can now design very quickly with new softwares and print that, that occlusal guard you they have different materials now that you can use and the printers. There is and this has been around for a bit it’s you know, but the technology keeps getting better and better, there’s new materials.

You know, they’re so so you could print. Like what I would do is when I’m prepping teeth, we’re making some progress. originals are temporary, or when I’m doing the same day smile concept, we would spend 5, 6, 7 hours in the op and I had people trained to design them, and then I would look at them and then we would make their final crowns but there was no real preview to it. I mean, I could do a mock up preview for the patient to see it, but it would be close but it wouldn’t be exactly what they were going to be getting well, now you can do digital wax ups, and you can show the patient what it’s going to look like. Not only that, you can prep the teeth, scan that and they have software, Exocad software, which you can use, and it melts the two images together the image of the diagnostic wax up, if you will, but it’s all digital and it melts that with the prep teeth and you then find your margins you hit a button and in about 19 minutes using the Envision tech one printer, you got a full done temporary with a different shades different colors, but the most important thing to me is it fits perfectly to your margins. So Summer is one of the best provisional makers, you know, I would you put the, you put the acrylic in, and you put it in the mouth, and then you have to trim it and there’s some there’s all the excess and it would take Summer an hour and a half to do that work and the margins would be great, but it’s a lot of work, right? This is something that in 19 minutes, it’s a finished product that’s going to fit two margins in the mouth, which is just absolutely incredible. So I began to question the efficacy of using, you know, my eight hours of chair time and you know, and giving somebody a final smile, what I’m going to prefer to call that now is a preview smile, you’re going to get your previous smile and a beautiful shade. They have Flexera resins, which is they haven’t been different shades. So I can and most of the shades honestly are going to B1 or B0, you know that people want white smiles. They don’t right, you know, but but you can do that. You put it in their mouth, and it fits good and it and the bite is good and then with that preview smile, you see him? Oh, three days later, and you ask them how to tell you how do you like it has it feel. So the patient’s only in your office for maybe two, three hours instead of eight hours and I would be sending that case, once the patient says it looks great, I’m sending that case to the laboratory and they’re going to make those transforming. It’s it’s time savings. Yes, there’s more cost on the side where now you have the lab doing the work for you. I’m okay with that. I mean, I’ve never had a problem. I love CEREC and I love using it because of the convenience of doing single crowns and smiles.

It was an unbelievable way of getting people involved in cosmetic dentistry because if they thought they could get it done in one day, that’s amazing. Well, now I can say it’s the same-day smile, but it’s going to be what we’re going to be doing it is this process using the printers and we’re going to give you a preview smile, they come in they say I love it, or I want this tooth a little shorter. We we just change it in our digital workflow and the patient says you know, “I think the shade could be a little lighter, darker, whatever.” Great, how’s your bike feel, we may adjust the bite, get it to where it feels perfect, then scan that bite and that becomes the new bike. So everything is done that way. So it’s very, very efficient, and the patient’s getting an unbelievable final product. So that’s one of the areas in technology with same-day smiles. You can make surgical guides you can make models, you can do you know like oh for ortho, there’s you know different things you can build with ortho software, ortho CAD software, there’s so much stuff going on right now in dentistry, that’s why it’s so darn exciting and the technology compared to buying a $180,000 CT scan or or a you know $130,000 laser or those things this is stuff that the printers are reasonably priced materials are reasonably reasonably priced and when I’ve seen even in full arch dentistry now, everything is going to milling and to printing and with these new materials, this Flexera is three times stronger than our regular acrylics that we use. So gosh.

Regan  9:53
Was that for the final product, is three times or the temporary is three times?

Dr. Bruce Baird  9:57
Actually the temporary is three times stronger but the cool part is in 19 minutes, I can print two temporaries that fit exactly the same way and keep one as a backup in case there was a problem during the two or three weeks where it’s at the laboratory. So I’m I like that, I like the smile preview. There are a lot of dentists out there that can do the same-day smiles, like we were doing was saved but you have to have super-trained people to do it. Whereas this, you know, you’re you’ve really simplified and lowered the bar, as far as training individuals plus, all of your design work could be done by an Exocad. Expert. So you’re not having to train a team member to do it, you actually have someone outside of that team that’s doing all your Exocad. So all of your designs, which is, you know, which is really great, because you know, the quality control is going to be outstanding, doing it that way.

Regan  10:50
So Bruce, you You had me with this preview smile and the messaging around it, the the communication with patients is so key to this. So there’s the financial wins and the element and the time and the training that all to me is like green checkboxes all the way down the line, right? You really caught my ear, though it preview smile. How many in this since I haven’t had a full mouth rehab, and I’ve had actually very little done to my teeth

Dr. Bruce Baird 11:59
Good for you.

Regan 12:00
Right, right. Sure. How, how often is it that patients have reservations about that initial investment? And if they’re having major work done, what that final is going to look like? Do they just trust you all in and say, “Doc, I know you’ll make it a good smile.” How does that how does that work?

Dr. Bruce Baird  11:37
It’s really neat, because now there’s 3D cameras, where you’re going to take a picture of the patient’s face, you’re then going to take a smile and put it within the patient’s face. So that they’ll be able to see what it’s going to look like, before it’s done and then that’s used as part of the digital wax up to say, “Okay, this looks great on the patient, it’s lined up perfectly with the pupils, it’s a great smile, there’s no slant to the embrasures, everything fits in that person smile,” and at that point, you know, they make this digital wax up of that and then it’s transferred right to the patient. So the patient does get a preview smile, before we even prepped the teeth and they get their preview smile that they get to wear for a couple of weeks and what I know as a marketer is there’s nothing like having a patient out that you’ve changed their whole life with a brand new smile and they’re out in town and their friends see them and they go, “Oh my gosh, your smile looks great,” and their next response is, “Oh, this is just a temporary, you’re not even going to believe the final.” So in other words, it puts them as a missionary out there telling everybody about how how great you are plus, you know, the technology itself, you know, I mean, you’re able to make these temporaries for pennies.

I mean, literally, you’re printing it for maybe five bucks and, and so I’m doing something that is quick, much easier for the patient, they get to sit in my chair, instead of sitting all day, being sedated, which I’m still am okay with, but hey, let’s get that preview and let’s let you wear it, let’s get that bike tuned perfectly, and then scan it and make it and we can do the same thing with implants, we can do the same thing, you know, we’re going to design that smile design that case completely digitally. You can print the, like today or in the past we’d have to take a denture drill holes in it and do what we call modify it or rely on that to the implants. Whereas now you’ve got cameras, you’ve got, you actually take note don’t take impressions you actually have these special type cameras, you, if you’ll take a scan of the implants, it tells exactly where those implants are placed. You then design the teeth on top of it, you push a button and it mills perfectly to those implants. So now and I’ll tell you I’ve done hundreds if not 1000s of full arch uppers and lowers and every time you’re putting your final in and you screw that in you hear this little squeaky sound. I don’t like that squeaky sound you know it, you know that there’s tension on it, there’s pressure and for 25, 30 years, that’s just the way it is. Well today with these new scanned abutments and all of this stuff, when I screw it down, there is no squeak It’s just damn there’s no way extra stress, no extra nothing on those implants and I believe by doing that, the implant longevity gets even better. So there’s so much stuff that we can do now with this printing technology. It’s amazing and yeah no question.

Regan  15:02
Bruce, thank you for sharing and going into letting us into your mind and see what’s new and technology. There was something else when we were in Florida together. So Bruce and I, Victoria, the PDA crew, we were all done at the dental festival in Florida. And we were speaking to innovations and you just decided to, to go out to the public and say, “Hey, I’ve been working on something on the side here that’s been really fun for my wife and I and that is mining Bitcoin.”

Dr. Bruce Baird  15:30

Yes, yes, I’m, I’ve been involved in in cryptocurrency since 17. November 3 of 17. I was sitting, it was my wife’s birthday, we were in Colorado, and I had been hearing so much about it. Boy, I wish it would have been, I wish it had been 2011 or 10 but it was 17 and, and I just recently started, we started mining Bitcoin and what is mining Bitcoin? Well, it’s solving a mathematical equation to, to to be paid in Bitcoin and Bitcoin basically is a digital currency. Some people think bitcoins gonna go to, you know, $500,000 per coin, and everybody always says, “What, where’s your coin? What is the coin? Where is the coin?” So, you know, and what it is? It’s a digital currency comparing that to paper currency. People say, “Well, yeah, Bitcoin is not backed by anything,” and well, unfortunately, neither is the US dollar, it’s not backed by gold. It’s not backed by anything. It’s just backed by our government and I’m, you know, so I’ve started wondering about a lot of things, and thinking about a lot of things. So we started mining Bitcoin and it is, is it, is it what I would call alternative investment? Yes, it’s very much in alternative investment. It doesn’t it’s not 100% of my investment portfolio, it’s about 8% but started at five, you know, I’m kind of diversified. I’ve got other things out there but I started at five, but it kept growing now it’s at eight and, you know, if it keeps doing what it’s doing, it may end up being 10 or 15% of my portfolio just because it’s groans, so much. So and it’s basically buying supercomputers and letting the supercomputers solve the equations, and you get paid in Bitcoin and you can withdraw that money from the site, I’m actually using a third party site that is hosting, which I did all the research myself, Charlie Brown, my son in law and the head guy over at compassionate finance. We wanted to build our own farm, our own mining farm. I then worked with guys who one of my buddies who has built the largest solar farm in the world, just over in the Middle East and so we started talking about cost to do that, yes, we could do completely renewable energy, run our miners in a facility warehouse do that kind of stuff. The cost to do it for a small number of miners to 300 Miners or 400 miners, a lot of people are using shipping containers and they’re turning these shipping containers into mining little mining houses, but the electricity

Regan  18:23
The cooling, just the cooling costs.

Dr. Bruce Baird  18:27
And I looked into computers that are dead or dropped in a special type oil with no fans so it keeps them cool. So that I looked at everything for doing it myself because I really wanted to do it myself and it kept coming down to energy costs or startup costs. Yes, if you just want to grab two miners and stick them in your garage, you could do that. As the price of Bitcoin continues to go up, the price of the miners goes up. So in my opinion, this is a good time to do it and that’s what we’ve been doing we’re we’re bringing in we’re bringing in money when we’re sleeping on 24/7, 365 The miners are working

Regan  19:11
And what type of what type of machines are these nowadays? So when I heard about it in 2011 friends of mine were using like, you know, harness together desktop computers, that’s how they were mining. So, what type what size machines are these now?What would one machine even look like?

Dr. Bruce Baird  19:28

They you know, they put out what was called Giga hash they that their computing power. And these are these are fairly large I’m using ant miners AntMiner SJ 19 Pros, which put up that per second are doing about 100 Giga hash per second. So, that’s that comes into your entire, you know, mining and it tells you what you have. So basically what you’re doing when you’re mining as you’re buying Giga hash, you can buy 10 miners that put out X amount, you know, 800,000 Giga hash, we’re mining now, oh, over 5 million Giga hash. So we’re bringing in, you know, pretty nice little, you know, 50 grand a month on mining, so and that’s at current prices, if the price was to go up, you know, the payoff on the miners is about right now at about, oh, 14 months, you know, 13.8 months. So you buy this miner, and it pays for itself in about 13, 14 months, and then it continues to make money for you for the next five years. So you know, so you can, you can do it, it’s got a great return, I’m, I’ve got money in the stock market, I’ve got money in bonds, I’ve got money in real estate, I’ve got money in different places but I’m more excited about this than I am probably anything else.

Could it go to zero? Yeah, I guess it could, I guess I could, you know, it won’t be the first time I’ve ever lost money, but but if you’re not willing to play the game, sometimes, you know, you get big returns, you know, the risk is higher, but I like the returns and I also am a true believer in Bitcoin. I think. So many major companies now are out there they’re building some of the largest Bitcoin mining farms in the world in West Texas using using pop off gas from the wells as their as their energy. They’re using wind turbines. All the Chinese miners, China stopped mining in China and they all move to Texas. They’re they’re east of Austin and they’re putting in some of the largest Bitcoin mining farms in the world, but even with all this Bitcoin mining going on, there’s still opportunity for somebody that just wants 10 Miners or five, and you couldn’t do that in your garage, you could I just want somebody else hosting it, paying for the electricity, because you know, you’re looking at probably nine cents to 10 cents per kilowatt hour. Whereas you go to a large group, they can pre-buy their electricity for five years, 10 years, and they’re giving it three and a half cents. So you’re actually making three times return. Could you do it in your house? Sure, but I’d rather be efficient. And I’d rather have somebody else doing the maintenance. Although that doesn’t, I still reserve the right at some point to have my own farm if I want you.

Regan  22:31
I love your brain. Bruce, I love your brain. It’s so here’s, here’s what’s exciting to me and I want listeners to be inside what I experienced with you, you are even keeled when it comes to investing. So I remember in 2017, because we had annual planning and you flew up to Washington State and you were checking your phone constantly and you’re like, look at this, look at this, it’s changing, it’s going up, it’s going down. So when it when it falls to zero, you’re ready to take that risk and you sound like you’ve done so by really diversifying your portfolio. So you know, it’s not necessarily you’re not putting all your eggs in that basket.

Dr. Bruce Baird  23:07
Yeah, then that’s not smart. You know, I mean, I have got enough other things that but I think it should be a part I think it’s an alternative investment, that should be a part of your portfolio if you’re looking for big returns and just imagine having something pay for itself in 14 months or, you know, let’s say your car, you know, let’s say you bought your car and it created revenue for you and it was paid for in 14 months but continued to make revenue for you at the same level or with a potential, I think, I think that Bitcoin is today at 62,000 I bought Bitcoin when it was at 13 thinking, “Gosh, it’s pretty expensive, but I’m gonna go ahead and get a few.” Well, I think there’s a better chance of Bitcoin going to 100, there is than there is for Bitcoin going to 10.

Yeah, and just with all the research, I read articles on it every single day, and I just, you know, and it’s voodoo, you know, as far as most debt and I say dentists, most people that I know that are really great at investing and everything else when I talk to them about Bitcoin, they, they just don’t get it. They look at you and they just kind of go Bitcoin and you know, because it’s not your you’re the analytic mind, you know, sometimes over analyzes you know, and they just give up on something that whereas there’s other people, oh yeah, there’s people that back in the year 2010, 2011, that had several 1000 Bitcoin because the miners were mining them so fast, and those several 1000 bitcoins now worth billions of dollars.

Regan  24:53
Oh my friend that told me in 2012, he said, “Regan just buy one Bitcoin at like 1200 or whatever it,” he said, “Just buy one. It’s like having a token, don’t go and invest too much in it.” He had many bitcoins and now I’m thinking, “Oh my God, he’s fully retired now.” So do you do Bruce plan on, like, as you grow these as you grow these these Bitcoins, do you plan on transferring them into? Like, for example, would you pull some and buy gold? Would you pull some, as far as the are you just gonna sit there and let it cook for the next?

Dr. Bruce Baird  25:25
I will buy other assets, you know, other assets with that, there’s, you know, there’s tax consequences to mining, you know, when you’re mining, you actually pay the taxes on that. So if you mined $100,000 worth of bitcoin, that’s $100,000 worth of income and the other good news is, is that it qualifies, the equipment qualifies for 179 deductions. So, you know, like, you can deduct up to a million dollars, it’s 1,000,000 this year, but so if you bought a million dollars worth of miners, that’s offsetting million dollars with a revenue, which is kind of nice. Now, everything that comes in later, if you decided to sell one, then that becomes capital gains, if you’ve held it for a year longer, it’s long term if it’s, you hold it last at short term, and who knows what capital gains are going to be with the new administration but I do know that we’ve got lots of you know, there’s a lot opportunities there’s things to learn when you’re doing this and I’ll be doing probably a webinar every couple of weeks just to help people you know, maybe they find a way to make sure that their bitcoin is safe, you know, you gotta have, you gotta have that and, and also the tax ramifications, not being a CPA or a tax accountant or anything along those lines. I’m just sharing with you. This is what I’m doing and talk to your accountant. So,

Regan  26:49
Going digital 2021

Dr. Bruce Baird  26:51
I know man printers and Bitcoin and everything else. Yeah, it’s gonna be awesome.

Regan  26:57
Well, Dr. Bruce Baird, I look forward to many more years with you. We’ll see you in the metaverse. I can’t wait to see your avatar.

Dr. Bruce Baird  27:05
Yeah, I’m going to have to have you create it so

Regan  27:09
We got you covered. Thanks, everyone, for listening. Thank you, Dr. Bruce, for being my guest today on Everyday Practices, and we’ll see you around the corner.

Dr. Bruce Baird 27:59
All right, my pleasure. Thanks, everyone.