Membership Plans Made Simple (E.299)

“Membership isn’t just revenue, it’s peace of mind for your patients and your team.” – Ryan Corby

Brief Overview of the Episode

Running a dental membership program often starts with great intentions but quickly gets bogged down in spreadsheets and missed renewals. In this episode, Ryan Corby, CEO of Smile Advantage, explains how his fintech SaaS platform eliminates administrative stress, automates billing, and empowers practices to focus on patient care. Dr. Chad Johnson shares his experience transitioning from a DIY model to a streamlined system and why his team is thriving because of it.

What This Episode Reveals

• The breaking point where DIY membership plans stop making sense
• How to turn membership programs into a predictable revenue stream
• Why modern payment automation is the key to scaling
• Real patient stories that highlight the emotional impact of seamless membership programs

What You’ll Learn

• How Smile Advantage helps practices break free from insurance dependency
• Strategies to automate renewals and reduce administrative overhead
• How to improve patient loyalty with a white-labeled membership experience
• Steps to create scalable, recurring revenue for your dental practice

If This Sounds Familiar

• You’re manually managing a membership plan with growing administrative pain
• Missed renewals or lapses are costing your practice revenue
• Insurance restrictions are holding your team back from delivering full care
• You want a membership plan that feels effortless—for both staff and patients

Next Steps

Listen to this episode to see how modern membership management can give your practice freedom, predictable revenue, and happier patients.

Guest Bio

Ryan Corby is the CEO of Smile Advantage, a fintech SaaS company revolutionizing how dental practices grow through in-house membership programs and modern payment processes. Smile Advantage integrates subscription billing, PCI-compliant payment processing, and real-time practice data to create a seamless, scalable system for dental teams.
Under Ryan’s leadership, the company empowers practices to automate renewals, reduce administrative overhead, and generate predictable, recurring revenue while giving teams the freedom to provide unrestricted patient care.

📍 The future of your practice isn’t outside, it’s already in your system.
Learn more at the Clinical Calibration Institute.

TRANSCRIPT

Dr. Chad Johnson: Listeners, many of you have been to the PDA workshops, PDA conferences, uh, you might have run across our CEO guest today, Ryan Corby, and I ran across a problem in my office. I was trying to grow my membership plan, but the more members that you have, the more administrative nightmare that you have. So, as biased as I am now, a year later, Ryan Corby has helped me organize and get my butt in gear. So my co-host and I, Regan, Robertson and Chad Johnson, years truly here are going to interview Ryan to talk through what it looks like for an office to do just that, organize and be more efficient and more productive, and I collective, I don’t know what the best word would be, profitable because you are letting the computers do the administration on membership plans, and then you also get to use your own plan if you have one in place and just make it more efficient. So Ryan, thank you for joining us and let’s talk about Smile Advantage. How you doing today?

[00:01:25] Ryan Corby: I’m doing great. Uh, yeah, warming up here in Arizona, so shock back from a little summer vacation back to reality, um, but yeah, thanks for the info. Thanks for the intro, um, and yeah, you know, Smile Advantage really has existed. It’s kind of born out of a necessity. I think most great companies, um, come out of that, I instead of an napkin sketch idea, it’s to solve a problem. Right. Think that’s what they say in the business books. Right, um, and I’ve been fortunate to, I’m not a dentist, although I’ve been accused of a couple of times, um, to work with some great dentists and, and my partners that started Smile Advantage, um, to really figure out how do we put together a solution that helps dentists and now membership is sort of what we know as it is now, and that’s sort of just funnelling some services and putting it together in sort of a nice pricing package that’s easy, uh, for patients to understand, um, but ultimately what we feel like, uh, membership is doing, um, under sort of the umbrella of fee for service industry is just, um removing barriers to treatment really is kinda what our, our goal is to create a tool and a platform that helps dentists do more of what they went to dental school to do and that’s to learn how to care for patients and treat patients and provide the health and care that they need, and unfortunately, like so many business, so many been many businesses, you know, the business side of it gets in the way and, um, you know. We just saw that as a problem with membership, obviously in the insurance, and it’s easy to jump on that anti insurance bandwagon, um, that’s not necessarily the, the flag that we wave. While we agree with that, um, we do see that there’s sort of need for bur both. But really what we think that membership can do is, is provide a very strong and leading path for offices that, that wanna minimize or entirely reduce, you know, the insurance dependency.

[00:02:48] Dr. Chad Johnson: As we all know, just fit into any, any office’s existing plan in the sense that if someone’s like, “Hey, we’re heavy, PPO,” it’s like, cool, let’s roll, or if someone said, “We don’t do any PPO,” cool. Let’s roll. Right. 

[00:03:00] Ryan Corby: Yep, absolutely, and, and that’s really where we, uh, we’re very heavy in, in customer service and sort of almost consulting. We don’t say that we have a product that we sell. We don’t encourage you to sell Smile Advantage plans. We want to take what your plan in place and we can help you create something obviously, um, but we want to build off a set of tools or a suite of tools to help you do that. So again, you come up with your plan, your ideas, and we fully customize it just like you would do with your office. You know, you kind of have your whole flavor with lots of different, you know. Many family members and these many family members and, um, we really don’t try to stuff you into our box of framework membership. It really just, I loved.

[00:03:32] Dr. Chad Johnson: Right. So Reagan, before you jump into bigger picture, I have one more weed question. Okay. So I’m just curious, Ryan, um, after. We got organized, you took my existing plan and just made it happen, which is awesome because I’m sure that’s a lot more work than if you could just, you know, use a cookie cutter, right? If someone said, I want a specific kind of cookie, as opposed to just using your cookie cutter. Cookie cutters are easier than making a, you know, a new tailored cookie. So, yeah, um, how many people use your cookie-cutter version. Let’s just say that you said, you know what, we’ve got a couple different plans. How many pe, like is it a third of people, two thirds of people? Like how many people end up just saying, “Hey, Ryan, whatever plan you have, let’s roll with that,” versus we really like our plan. Can we use that? Like what’s that ratio look like for you currently?

[00:04:20] Ryan Corby: I would say, you know, it’s obviously changed a lot in five years as membership has really adopted even more memberships have been around for a long time, but as it’s become more mainstream in the last 5, 6, 7 years or so, um, a lot of people or most offices already have some sort of concept of that and they have something they wanna carry off. So we have a few. 10, 15% maybe of our clients that come and they say, “Hey, we’re brand new. We don’t know what we need to do. Can you just tell us what to do?” Okay, and we are very quick to say, we’re not, not gonna, you know, we’ll look at your fee schedule and give you a general idea, but here’s some sort of framework or, or averages, you know, based on your demographic, where you’re at, here’s what most offices would do or, and, and there is some calculations. Uh, it’s funny, we see some offices really get into the weeds with, down to the penny of our membership plan should be $43 and 74 cents, and it’s like, I understand that that’s. 10% of your fee schedule collected divided by 12 and whatever , but it’s like, just make it simple, you know, make it 400 bucks a year or, or $50 a month or whatever, um, so the ones that are coming brand new with nothing in place, um, it’s a smaller amount. Most people have an idea already what they wanna do, but, uh, that’s usually what we do because there is a wide range. Are you in New York City? Are you in the middle of Iowa? Are you in Southern California? Um, you know, there is somewhat of a thread there with what your, uh, treatment codes are, um, and what your fee schedule is that we can kind of give some guidance, but at the end of the day, it’s really just about making it simple, and I think that’s where we do speak into offices quite a bit and say, yeah, I know you’re a dentist, you really did care about the details, but let’s just make this simpler for the patients, and, um, some of that comes down to the pricing.

[00:05:48] Regan Robertson: I’m curious Ryan, uh, you are a fairly new leader for Smile Advantage and I follow you on LinkedIn, which it’s my pleasure to do so, and I’m really curious, what was the moment that kind of maybe shifted your mindset or got you excited about even wanting to lead Smile Advantage?

[00:06:06] Ryan Corby: Mm. Uh, that’s a great question, um, I came from sort of the, uh, freelancer solopreneur business for a long time and was a videographer and marketer and different things like that, and, um, when I saw the opportunity to grow what we have now with a technology first, never, never thought in the world I’d be a software developer, sort of kind of guy, but, um, always just wanted to fend for myself and come up with a great business that would support my family and do the things we wanna do, um, but then all of a sudden you start seeing people do great and people developing, developing people, and I’m a very much a people person and a community builder, and uh, I actually had a business coach that sort of flipped that switch for me and said, look at building your team in the community of your small business in the same way that you bus, you know, our church community and our neighborhood community and my family community, and, um. When I saw that, sort of like, that gave me excited about growing a team, ’cause come from small businesses. My dad had a lot of terrible employees that just have this mindset of like, deal with employees, eh, you know, oh, deal with, um, deal with them, and as, as most dental practices, no building teams, um, but when you have a little spark of somebody going the extra mile and, and noticing that the team is doing things that allow me to do even more of what I want for my family and I can kind of develop them, um, it definitely was more of a community team person building thing, and also you need that to, to build a company, uh, as well. So, um, there was kind of a moment, there was like switching, you know, flipping a switch about like, this is my community now, and when I looked at it through that lens, instead of like, uh, employees and getting bad employees come and go, but, um, you know, looking at that developing and then seeing the support, what we can collectively do together in our little community, uh, you know, this was pretty exciting. So. somewhere along the way that kind of flipped.

[00:07:39] Regan Robertson: I’m curious, I’m curious that the, I, I love passion and I think you’re a very passionate individual and it take, it does take a lot, even though being your, your own and I know it can get exhausting at times, but that call to serve your community and, and build something together as a team being very strong. What was that? Maybe it was spoken, maybe it was unspoken, what’s the challenge, you know, that you feel like you’re really, really solving for, um, be, you know, that’s beyond efficiency and profits. What gets you up in the morning and makes you say, I really wanna make a difference?

[00:08:13] Ryan Corby: You know, I, being in small business my whole life, um, I saw dentistry later on. You know, I, when I first got into dentistry, I was like, “Oh, I’m medical and big business,” and I didn’t really realize how most of dentistry is small business owner, operator, family owned sort of idea, and when I saw that as like, wow, we can actually, the things that we can do can make a big difference to an owner operator, to a small business, um, versus just a cog and a giant wheel of corporate, um, that, that made a big difference to me and, and what we can do for families to impact the, the business owners. I’m a business sort of guy, so I like to do that and put tools and solutions in place for guys and, and teams and, and ladies that own offices and businesses. So I get to me excited to the things that we can build and develop, really can make a difference to the bottom line. Now, if I’m making their business work better than they’re able to do their job better, which is to treat patients and sort of back to that full circle of, of humanity and building community and stuff. So ultimately it’s us having that ability to, to, to find a problem, fix something that’s gonna help them be able to treat their patients better.

[00:09:12] Dr. Chad Johnson: So is there a moment when dental practices are dealing with insurance and, you know, struggling under those constraints, is there a moment, uh, that they realize in terms of you guys thinking, wow, this just isn’t sustainable? How does your customer show up at your door? Like, what does that look like? How, how are they?

[00:09:35] Ryan Corby: Um, fewer of the new dentists coming outta school, I feel like, have that earlier adopted. So whatever sort of newer, uh, modern dental offices, that’s definitely well adopted. So they’re coming outta school with that in mind, and they’re either maybe going fee for service right outta the gate or they’re already looking for those businesses. So we’ll kind of set them onto the side. They’re kind of already sold, but offices have been around for a while, um, they know that insurance is getting difficult for them, and so they’re looking for better solutions, renegotiating fees, all that stuff is still part of the equation, but when they come to us, they’ve either tried it themselves. Like you, and they’re kind of either hit a, hit a limit, or they’re realizing really how much money is falling off the table just from inefficiencies, um, or they wanna see that as, or they’re seeing other dentists that are, that are using their membership as, as a revenue generator and as they’re leading, um, you know, they’re leading efforts in their office, and it’s not just this like afterthought like, “Oh, you don’t have anything else. Well, we have this like other thing we offer in the back now, right?” Like successful offices are leading with their membership and if you don’t have insurance, that’s really the only other way to kind of come to their practice, and so the ones that switch that and say, “Hey, we’re gonna lead with our membership now, um, get it,” and so when they come to us, they’re either frustrated or they’ve seen that and they think, how do we do that? How do we get our membership, be our leading, um, you know, product or whatever, if you wanna call it that. So there’s one, yeah. There’s basically inefficient or they have no idea where to start. ’cause this seems overwhelming.

[00:10:55] Regan Robertson: Yeah. Chad, I have

[00:10:57] Ryan Corby: The, the third bucket I’ll just throw in, sorry. The third bucket in there [00:11:00] is that using another membership company and to, you know, you to, don’t need to throw any names out there, but earlier oth earlier companies did a good job of sort of paving and pioneering the way with the model and putting technology in place, but the pricing models early on take huge advantage of offices, and there’s a, there’s a new way, you know, there’s the pa per patient model, which is kind of our biggest, um, we fight against, you know, offices think cool, great. I pay three or $4 per patient, um. That gets a little scary once you hit a hundred or 200 patients and it gets really expensive. So, um, that’s really the original reason why we went with our pricing model is just a fixed fee, no matter how many, and that really incentivizes growth, obviously, and increases your ROI instead of costing more. So offices that were early on that were really successful and you used another competitor that has that pricing model now they’re like, oh crap, this is still going up and up and up. Now they’re looking for other alternatives, and so we’ve worked really hard to figure out an easy transition for them to, to come to Smile Advantage as well.

[00:11:52] Dr. Chad Johnson: To be fair, my biggest, yeah, but was that I was concerned that, and maybe paranoid is a better word for it. I don’t know if it was based in reality, but that I didn’t want a company saying, “Hey, we’ll be in charge of this membership list. Then at some point, if we mess with stuff enough and you don’t like it and you want out of this, you know, relationship. Then what we could do is we’ve got this list and we can write them and say, Hey, you know, who else takes this as this other dentist up the street?” And then pull just the same that Delta does, and I, it took some of your assuring to be you like, whoa, we don’t do that. It’s actually not in our contract. So do, can you kind of expound upon that?

[00:12:39] Ryan Corby: Yeah, that’s a, that’s a really great point. I mean, we want Smile Advantages to be the, the like, uh, in the background technology and we really push that. It’s you, it’s your membership, it’s your name, it’s your, all that stuff. We just wanna be the technology in the background that, that supports that. So to your point, even how we set up our, our fee structure, whatever, we don’t ever touch your money like we set up your bank account all your payments goes through our payment process and our technology, but it goes directly to you. So we don’t even have that control. Whereas some of our competitors collect all the money all month long and they kind of hold it and then they give you the rest at the end of the month sort of idea, and not everybody’s that same way, but it’s that sort of model, um, of it’s a lot more like insurance than it is membership, and so this decentralized model of it’s you and your relationship with the patient is really obvious what we, where we align with. So, um., yeah, we really say it’s entirely yours. Of course, because of technology, we have that information. But, you know, our agreements and our, our, uh, data protection, all that stuff, states that this is yours and if you wanna leave, you know, you can do that. You can take your list and. We would never, you know, never market to your list, do those things. So I’m glad that you brought that up. I forgot that we talked about that earlier on ’cause that is an important, um, thing.

[00:13:44] Dr. Chad Johnson: Regan, I saw your, Ooh, because, 

[00:13:46] Regan Robertson: Well, I have a curve ball. Okay. My curve ball. I just heard data and, you know, we’ve had Brian Laskin on, we’ve been Okay. Talk about, okay. You’re gonna talk about that too. Let’s talk about data protection and what we’ve been seeing. Like Heartland just has a, you know, had a class action filed against them through Ring with RingCentral, um, how has that, has that impacted you at all on the, on the technology side of things, have you been paying attention to it? Do you feel buttoned up and secure? What are your thoughts around, around, um, you know, hit the compliance and, oh, I have attention to it.

[00:14:19] Ryan Corby: Yeah. Yeah. Uh, um, no, you’re right. It is very important, and, and we actually have, we kind of get hit from two sides. We have the medical, dental, HIPAA, world data protection for patients, but then we also, ’cause we live in the payments world, we have PCI compliance and PA payment data and credit card terms. So, uh, it’s exponentially more stressful, and, um, as we’ve built our company and, and earlier versions of our software, we, we used other software vendors and other providers. You know, payment partners and things like that, that, uh, just for, you know, everybody was compliant and it was secured, but, um, there was less control for us to have over it, and as we’ve moved, especially in the last year or so, to bring our own payment processing in house, our own gateway and our own security and a lot of those things under our own control, just for ease and, and customer service purposes, but also us having more control over that and  I can’t speak to all those certifications, all that crap. I just know we’re all compliant and PCI compliant and secured, um, but us doing that ourselves and owning that data and then being super ultra secure, um, has been very important to us for our own butts, but also our, our clients as well, um, but then again, because of the patient data with our integration for practice management software, um, you know, our integration has to be, you know. What do they call tighter than nuts on a new bridge sort of idea with patient compliance and, um Right, and because of, you know, it’s one thing if we’re just running payments, but we do a lot of patient communication as well, and, um, that sort of version, I think three and four of what membership industry is gonna be is, is even marketing side of it and, and other patient engagements and utilize utilization as we monitor patient behavior and stuff like that. Like how do we. Just go from signing somebody up to make a payment and paying their bill on a regular month and then the dental offices treats ’em and that’s it to how do we spur on more engagement and get them to use their benefits? You know, early on, I dunno what somebody said, but I repeat it all the time. Insurance is something that you want somebody to sign up for and never use. Membership is the other way around. You want them to sign up for your membership and use it, and the more that they’re in your chair, um, the better for them, the better for you, and so how do we get them to utilize, for example, if somebody signs up for a plan, they should get alerted throughout the year. Like a recall message would do or something we like, “Hey, you’re six months in, you’ve only used one of your two allotted, you know, cleanings. Why don’t you schedule and come in and use it?” Or, um, “Hey, you add a proposed treatment, don’t forget you get a 15% discount on this treatment that you need to have done.” So that patient engagement, uh, which comes from the pmms integration that we have, um, skys limit, and that’s, that’s really what the next big phase that we’re kind of pushing into. We’ve got the payment thing figured out, the patient behavior thing, but now how do we like, encourage that relationship of communication and engagement and utilization between the patient and the practice, and, uh, I’m excited about stuff that we’re launching in the next year, so to, to make that even more efficient.

[00:16:54] Regan Robertson: I’m curious, I’m, I’m curious about the trends that you’re seeing right now. For example, in my little hometown, uh, it seems like our community Facebook page, at least once a month, has somebody commenting and said, “Hey, can you find a, a dentist around here? Tell me who ha, who takes Delta? We don’t know anybody that takes Delta anymore.” I rarely see. See membership programs being talked about, and that drives me crazy because I feel that that could be such a wonderful solution for it, um, what, when you look at the market like nationwide, what are you seeing as far as, uh, you know, how much of the market do, do, does membership plans like impact right now and where do you see that going?

[00:17:35] Ryan Corby: I mean, we, we’ve seen years ago just the idea of non-insurance, you know, concierge medicine, cash pay medicine, everything from med spas to everything else has definitely been adopted, and now that we’re in the subscription model, you know, of everything, um, I think people do come to expect that, obviously COVID. It took a huge turn with people that lost traditional insurance, and so that left people looking for other things. I mean, that was a big sort of wind in the sail of this concept or model as well, uh, um, you know, getting it out into the public. We, we love working with, uh, if we have a dental practice that works with a marketing company, um, marketing agencies knowing, being a marketing guys love to market memberships because it’s a great thing to market and there’s a lot of opportunity for, so it’s a, it’s a low hanging fruit, so to speak, when offices do externally market that. So as far as community awareness, I feel like just neighbors talking to each other, um, there’s still, I think, an awareness issue. Just between neighbors about that and, and, and, uh, nextdoor.com sort of idea. So there, I think there is still some onus on the dental practices in their community and then technology companies like that to, to get the awareness out there. So as far as trends, I mean, it’s definitely going up. I don’t see insurance getting any more favorable to the patient or the dentist any, anytime soon, um, so it

[00:18:45] Regan Robertson: It would have to be the biggest PR campaign.

[00:18:48] Ryan Corby: It would, it would, and you know, and I read a lot of little things here and there that you can see like, you know. Insurance companies, CEOs are looking for shifts and they’re trying to make it look less like insurance. At the end of the day, they’re all get paid. You know, one of my presentations I have all the CEOs of the top companies is how much money they’re making. We’re not giving that up and not to give it up easily, and it would take a long time to change that model entirely. So I think there’s still a massive opportunity for companies like us and also dentists to take advantage of that just ’cause I, I really don’t believe that that model of direct relationship, cash pay, is going anywhere. I feel like we’ve gone so far out of the, you know, other side of the world with insurance and people are realizing it’s terrible, um, that they wouldn’t have just direct care. At my, myself, my wife’s a college professor, she has decent insurance. We don’t even take advantage of that with our dental because I have a membership with my dentist and it just removes the pain in the butt for everybody else. So I do really feel like further adoption is just. You know, going on and on. I think more people would be aware of it if their dental practices offered it, obviously, which is why we’re gonna hear support grow that.

[00:19:46] Regan Robertson: Chad, I have a question for Chad.

[00:19:48] Dr. Chad Johnson: Do it.

[00:19:50] Regan Robertson: I’m curious because, well, I get hit every single day with lots of, um, requests from business owners. They’ve got a new software, they’ve got a new feature, and everything is designed to make my, my time easier and everything more efficient. I have to have like a decision-making, you know, tree in place in order to figure out what’s actually gonna really, you know, benefit me, and then there’s a point where I think we just have technology overload and it’s just too much for the team to try to adopt. Maybe it’s too fast or too many things, and, um, and I love Chad how contrarian you typically are, and I, I think I was standing with you, if not you, it was two other PDA doctors. Just, it’s Liam, not sorry. I distinctly remember being at a workshop and, and a couple of alumni doctors were like, they did this. They go, don’t, don’t get a membership plan. You can just make your own. You can DIY it. So there’s an inflection point when DIYing it becomes, uh, too much of a burden and it it sends you backwards. So, Chad, from your perspective, it sounded like you did do a DIY model for a while, and then there came a point where you were like, you realize, and you’re such an engineer too, I know how you do your spreadsheets. So can you walk us through that process of like when you realized I, I, this is, this is not, this is not beneficial. I need to have a, a solution in place like, like Smile advantage.

[00:21:06] Dr. Chad Johnson: What that looked like was, I talked with my team about it and um, Ryan was very, uh, compassionate to my DIYing. Like, he was like, “No, I get it.” Instead of like, “Oh, well, I don’t know if you know this, but this company we’re way better at it and you are probably royally sucking at it, so you need to give that up.” So like there was, he was very amenable to just being like, no, I get it. I mean, like, ’cause here’s the fact, Ryan, you, you’d probably, I don’t wanna put words in your mouth, but you’d probably agree with this. People can DIY and that’s part of the problem, and it’s, and, and yet, you know, sometimes that can work. What mattered for me was I, I simply actually asked my team. I was like, “Do you guys want to give this a try and see if this doesn’t help with our, uh, administration of it?” And, uh, Kate on my admin team, uh, was like, absolutely, and like, and so basically this is what it came down to. She wanted it, and so I said, let’s give it a go. Let you know, um, I, feel like we could have kept DIYing it fine enough and, um, Ryan, I think she’s right. I mean, in the sense that when, whenever we sent over our, you know, data and stuff, we are probably pretty quick to get it done versus the average office and getting communication and details sent back and forth, um, but you know, so we’re on the ball about that, but at the same time I was like, it seems like you’ve brought it up before the critical mass idea of if we have a hundred people on this, how do we get it to 500 and do we want to be spending time with like doing 50 people, no big deal. So like I and I, I, I hate to, you know, say this with Ryan on, but if an office has 20 people that they’re doing, uh, you know, a, a an A program for an in-office, um, in insurance alternative program 20 people. Okay. Do that yourself, administrate it fine. You know, like, I know Smile Advantage would still win. Like it still is great to consider, but I get it, you have 20 people, fine. You have, then you grow it to a hundred and it’s just like, now are you wanting to pay someone? Maybe you do. I don’t, uh, you know, to administrate it and it’s really cool. Then like the transaction was, was easy, and then I get an email that updates me on, you know, uh, where th, the dashboard is and everything like that. It’s, it’s pretty slick, and so for that regard, I think because I was open to what my team wanted to try, that’s, that’s also what made a big, big difference for me. It wasn’t, it wasn’t top down driven. I just said, “Hey, uh, Dean,” you know, was, uh, in charge of like, looking at the details. So he did a little bit of investigating on the details. He presented it to our, our management leadership team, um, meeting, and I was like, “What do you think, Kate?” And she’s like, “I actually really want to give it a try,” and I was like, well, blow me over. I thought maybe she’d be like, nah, and so, but, but she was like, yeah, I really do, and I was like, okay, then let’s do, and that’s, that’s all it came down to was I was just like, I don’t see why we shouldn’t give it a try and see how. Uh, see how either it grows the membership and, or it reduces our head space for that. Mm-hmm. That’s all. Oh, Reagan, let me also let you mow on that and say, Ryan, you wouldn’t hear the, the, the heart of this, but I want to thank you because our program, we had someone that had a heart attack and the doctor’s protocol she wanted, the doctor wanted her to wait 12 months before her next visit, and she was like, “Okay, but how’s that work? Like when I have this membership plan?” And I just said, “That’s fine. We’ll, we’ll just honor it, and it’s really cool because it’s not hardcore that it’s like, sorry, your insurance terminates June 31st. Mm-hmm. We were, we got to still have a say in just saying, it’s no big deal. We’ll just honor that and that latitude. Is where the personability connects with the human. So like you’re working on a side that you don’t get to hear some of those stories. 

[00:25:38] Ryan Corby:  That’s awesome. 

[00:25:39] Dr. Chad Johnson: It is really cool, you know, because yeah, he’s just thinking, what about my human, um, uh, factor that’s playing into this that’s going to mess up? And it’s just another problem that I have, and it is like, don’t worry about it. We’ll, we’ll get you covered. Like, and for her to be like, “Oh wow.” Like, okay, out of the a hundred things that I’m anxious about in life. This isn’t gonna be one of them fake, and that was really cool. So kudos to you and you. 

[00:26:00] Ryan Corby:  Oh, that’s awesome.

[00:26:01] Dr. Chad Johnson: Isn’t that it?

[00:26:02] Ryan Corby: Yeah, that’s really cool. Yeah. Our, I, I think has a great. It’s a great usage of that, like, and I’m thinking, I know exactly what that is. You just change the future charge date and you’re extending it and renewing without the payment, and that’s the stuff that we hear back from people who are coming from another platform, or if you’re just using your credit card company to run charges, you don’t have that flexibility. So in two clicks, she was able to go in there and just future date that membership to show active until she’s there and it sort of tracks the activity. So that’s awesome. Thanks for sharing that.

[00:26:28] Dr. Chad Johnson: That’s great. Yeah. Yeah. I knew you’d like that.

[00:26:29] Ryan Corby: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:26:31] Regan Robertson: I’m curious if you, if you could be like my eyes and ears Ryan, um, since I’m not a dentist either, but what are some of the questions that you get, um, from doctors who would be really in a great position to take on a membership program or what are like maybe three things they could look at, like listeners, if you’re listening right now being like, Hmm, I don’t know if this is for me or not, what’s something that, that people could go and look at to, to help them decide whether, you know, picking up the phone and making a call to check this out is a good idea.

[00:27:02] Ryan Corby: Uh, lots of things there, and I had a whole bunch of lead magnets going in my head too as we were coming up with questions and stuff, um, but to, to the point of like people that have, uh, you know, offices that have very few memberships or they’re managing it themselves and, you know, a lot of it does come down to the numbers and, uh, hours that payroll hours and things like that, and we always kind of come back and say, it only takes missing one payment when it should be renewed or not to kind of basically pay for a software. So there’s, there’s a lot of AI-generated stats and stuff like that that I can show your ROI and your time well spent and all that stuff, um, very easily. So, you know, we have that if, if an office has a number of patients, they wanna know what their ROI could be or whatever, we can kind of talk through that and sort of help forecast if they’re really that interested in the business side of it. It’s funny, I feel like more dentists are., everybody wants to make sure that they’re not losing money and they’re making more money, but ultimately they wanna say what’s making this better and easier for our mm-hmm, office and patients, and patients. Yes, um, and make it working in the background and let us do our job, which is ultimately treat patients, um. So there’s a lot, I mean, I’m kinda gonna skipping past your question a little bit there, Regan, but you know what that, I mean that’s really the lens that we look at everything through, like adjusting the renewal dates and um, tracking notes and having a note system influenced from my dentist partner that said I need to be able to write basically like a chart note in the membership to say so and so had a heart attack we’re prorating her seven months or so and so went away to college. So we’re gonna pause their membership or whatever, and um, that’s the stuff, you know, thinking about the heartbeat of a dental practice that that. We’re fortunate that we have really close friends and partners and my business partners that are dentists, we can get that feedback day to day. Maybe our development cycles are a little slower ’cause we’re like, “I wanna do all this cool, this new stuff,” but it’s like, “Oh, but we have an immediate need for this little fix here, so let’s do this cool thing,” um, but I think really that’s, that’s really core is what we wanna do is build a tool that’s gonna make most sense for a dentist and our dental practice and dental team to let them do their job better, which is to treat and care for patients, um, so as far as like people are looking, uh, you know, want to talk to us about how we can help or issues that they’re thinking about, how much are you spending? I am shocked how many times I meet with, uh, you know, practice owners at a event or whatever, and they say, oh yeah, I have a membership, and I say, how many members do you have? And they’re like, I have no idea. I’m like, how do you not know? You know? Uh, but what Chad mentions earlier is that our Monday morning huddle report. You get a Monday, Monday, Monday, Monday morning huddle email that tells you how many patients you have, how many are active, what your revenue is, how many expired are, so it’s literally a Monday huddle in your inbox, um, that the team can discuss that, and so we want everybody to know there, there’s no excuse for not knowing how your membership is performing, um, and so we, we try to make that, make everybody aware of that. So, uh, information about it. So I think how we can help practices the most, if they’re curious about that, let’s talk about it. Give us some of your ideas. If you’re using another system, you wanna know how much efficient can it be? Is it worth it or not? I think we spend a lot of time with our clients and, and our, Shelly on our team is great at that. She’s a longtime office manager and spent a lot of time in the trenches with them and knowing that, and she’s just a ray of sunshine, obviously, and she can talk through that with practices and, you know, yes, I’m a tech guy and we’re a technology company, but ultimately it’s that, and so she speaks that language. So we’re open to all kind of conversations and, and, uh, practice can ask us if they’re spending too much money, they’re losing too much money or whatever. We’ll, we’ll help you through all those questions.

[00:30:12] Regan Robertson: Major shout out to Shelly, um, she is incredible. I’ve never worked directly with her because I’m not in a dental practice, but every time I see her at an event or on a Zoom call, she is exactly that. She is like a ray of sunshine, which, you know, I mean, I’ll get out of the, I’ll end up getting out of the product and talk about brand and brand experience, but, um,

[00:30:32] Dr. Chad Johnson: But it’s just really, my coach is best friends with Shelly too. So I know Joanne listens to every episode. My Kansas City crew, Shelley, Joanne.

[00:30:42] Regan Robertson: Well, there’s a couple of things that have really surprised me just in the few minutes we’ve spent together. One, um, you know, because of Shelly Ann and her disposition and how helpful she is and in meeting you and then Chad hearing that it’s customizable and it’s essentially white labeled. So it really speaks, um, you know, it speaks to the practice itself and so the brand isn’t disrupted there in any way, I think is phenomenal. I’m curious Ryan, um, I loved Chad’s story from the office manager’s perspective. So yes, there’s always the data, uh, uh, you know, crunching the numbers and, and doesn’t make sense for me to, to put it in and, and what type of potential growth can I get. There’s that side of it, but then there’s the emotional part of it, which is so important, and especially with AI exploding and will be continuing to explode. The human connection part is big, uh, I’m, I’m curious if you’ve heard other stories from offices who have implemented it, um, and, and been really successful, what that success looks like to them or how they’ve expressed it to you, uh, from that emotional or office manager perspective.

[00:31:49] Ryan Corby: You know, I, I think a lot of offices that have a membership and they’re comfortable with it, they, the, the level of anxiety of having to communicate with patients, I think is really just brought down, and if somebody’s paying for their membership, let’s say it’s an existing patient that’s on an existing membership, the, the, the like, uh, dance around, you need a crown, it’s gonna cost this much, or this is not included this much. I think a lot of that anxiety is really brought down for sure on the staff side and the patient side as well. So when you remove the, like, uh, you know, there’s still gonna be expensive dentistry, obviously, but I, I think that the, the concept of the model of membership is you feel welcome. You’re already here. We’re, we’re, I’m, I’m on the team. I’m in the, you know, um, branded dentistry family here and, and you’re bringing down a lot of anxiety and emotion, excuse me, between the practice. So I think that gives a lot of less, or brings less, excuse me, less anxiety to the team to have to communicate. So what does that do? That creates a deeper relationship. I think you’re, you’re, you’re removing some of those fears and, and anxiety from them, and, um, that allows for a deeper emotional connection.

[00:32:49] Dr. Chad Johnson: Ryan, what’s on the horizon for Smile Advantage the next few months? Next year?

[00:32:54] Ryan Corby: We want them to have the ultimate flexibility and then get in and do as much as they can and need to do with the platform and the memberships, but we also want it to run as seamless as possible, um. So a lot of the things that we do, like if you have, you know, your office, Chad has a lot of, we’re just gonna pay for it one time at a, you know, one year at a time and not be on Autorenew.

[00:33:12] Dr. Chad Johnson: Yes.

[00:33:13] Ryan Corby: Well, if they ignore it, there’s bunch of things we, we figure out a way to sort of allow the patients to renew it. They get a lot of communication and say, “Oh, I only wanted to pay for one year, but I do wanna renew it myself.” So it’s like this pseudo auto-renew and that has, instead of it expiring. The staff has to reach out. They have to re-run their payment again or whatever else. We’ve kind of put this middle ground where they’re only one time, they’re not on autorenew, but they get enough communication that they can autorenew it themselves or they can renew it themselves, um, we have that built into place. So, um, I. That being said, we try to have it be as flexible as possible and customizable, but also no human in the loop is sort of a concept, um, that it can run by itself. So to ask the question of what other things have we we’re working towards, what other ways and problems that we can consolidate some other dashboards, is where I was going, uh, to some of these other payment tools into our dashboard, uh, into our platform. So we are actually Beta testing right now, whole office payments, so all of the payments that go through your practice, um, can run through our platform, and, you know, we do memberships now, but we’re gonna have payment plans coming out pretty soon, and that’s a $3,000 ortho case and they can make a hundred dollars payments until it’s paid off and then it kills, um, all office in, in-office processing with a terminal tap to pay terminal and really replace another vendor, uh, to come wholeheartedly. ’cause we have all the infrastructure to do all that stuff, and so now with our PMS integration, uh, this is what we were talking about via email a little bit recently, Chad, about, you know, posting the payment back to the ledger and the integration of the payment back payment activity, and the ledger ultimately is, uh, is wanted and is desired by practices. So we’re doing that with membership. So how can we do that with in-office payments? So we have a whole lot of like other payment tools that are kind of coming down the pipeline to just further serve more things that might cut other vendors out and simplify anything payment related within the dental practice.

[00:34:55] Dr. Chad Johnson: Ryan, thanks so much for coming on today and kind of talking through your product. I’m a big fan. I know that Maggie is going to be, uh, upset that she missed it. I mean, she wrote and said, but she wasn’t feeling the hottest, so we’ll let her off this time. She had a little bit of PTO built up, so we’ll let it go.

[00:35:13] Ryan Corby: We’ll have to do a part two with her on it then now. 

[00:35:15] Dr. Chad Johnson: That’s right. 

[00:35:16] Ryan Corby: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Awesome. Well, yeah, thanks for having me on. I, like you said, it’s a passionate thing. I. I love working with the offices that are passionate about it. When you ask the question to offices that are kind of fun, you know, fumbled a little bit with memberships, we will work with anybody, but we really love to work with offices that are really excited about the growth and opportunity and the potential for that. We like to work with winners, you know, and we like to work with people that are, that see the opportunity and then we can sort of fuel that fire and then they’re successful and very successful and can help everybody get there.

[00:35:41] Dr. Chad Johnson: Our podcast is called Everyday Practices Podcast because it’s the, the things that you do every day, and this would be something that people should highly consider implementing so that way their everyday practices can be focused on their patients and also on alleviating the administrative hassle that the team has. This is a win-win in that regard. So Ryan, I’m a big fan of the product. Thanks for coming on today.

[00:36:04] Ryan Corby: Thanks for having me. Thanks, Reagan.

[00:36:06] Regan Robertson: Thank you too.