Adapting to Dental Industry Shifts: Expert Insights from Glidewell’s CEO (E.123)

“As long as financing rates continue to stay at the levels that they are, you’ll probably see fewer people financing large cases” ~Stephenie Goddard

Welcome to the latest episode of the Investment Grade Practices Podcast with your host, Dr. Victoria Peterson. In this insightful episode, Dr. Peterson sits down with Stephenie Goddard, the dynamic CEO of Glidewell, a leading force in the dental lab industry. With nearly two decades at Glidewell, Stephenie offers a unique perspective on the challenges and opportunities facing dental practices today.

From discussing Glidewell’s impressive scale—serving over 120,000 units weekly and boasting a workforce of over 5,000—to sharing her views on the current economic climate, this episode delves into the intricate balance between market trends and practical business strategies. Stephenie brings a wealth of knowledge from her background in finance and consulting, offering valuable insights into the shifting landscape of dental care and practice management.

Listeners will gain a deeper understanding of how economic factors, including interest rates and consumer spending patterns, impact the dental industry. Stephenie also touches on the evolving role of technology and the importance of adapting to market changes, emphasizing the need for dental professionals to remain proactive and agile.

In addition, Stephenie sheds light on Glidewell’s innovative programs, including their Guiding Leaders Program, which empowers women in leadership roles within the dental sector. This conversation is not only rich in industry-specific knowledge but also offers practical advice for navigating today’s economic uncertainties.

As you listen to this episode, we want you to think about the following questions:

• How do economic shifts impact my practice’s patient flow and case acceptance?
• What steps am I taking to adjust my practice’s strategy in response to changing market conditions?
• How can I support leadership development within my own practice? Are there opportunities for innovation and technology integration that I might be overlooking?

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Dr. Victoria Peterson: Today I am so blessed to meet Stephanie Goddard, the CEO of Glidewell Dental Labs. Stephanie, welcome to Investment Grade Practices. We have been having an amazing conversation. I was compelled to turn on the record button so that you and I can have this conversation with our listeners. Welcome.

Stephenie Goddard: Thanks for having me. I know I wish you were here recording and I’m like, I hope I can sound as smart now that I’m being recorded.

Dr. Victoria Peterson: Give us a background on you and your company and, and what you do for those of who who might be hiding in a rock and don’t know who Glidewell is.

Stephenie Goddard: There’s a there’s a lot of them out there still. So, um, yes, Stephanie Goddard. I’ve been with Actually, September, I will have been here for 18 years. I know I don’t look old enough to offend that way. Um, the 18 years in September. Um, so I actually started out here as the VP of human resources and, uh, sort of slowly moved my way, um, up the ranks and became CEO two and a half years ago and for those of those people out there who don’t know who Glidewell the largest dental lab. Um, we believe globally. Um, and I had somebody asked me the other day, do you rank that by size, by revenue, by employees, or so I can, I can give you a little bit of detail on us. We have, um, a little more than 5, 000 employees. Um, about a million square feet of space, and, um, and we do about 120,000 units a week. Um, so if that gives some perspective on, on size and why we, why we, why we tend to call ourselves the largest.

Dr. Victoria Peterson: Dentistry. That’s a lot of dentists.

Stephenie Goddard: It’s a lot. It’s a lot of teeth and then, um, we had, you know, as you know, we had a group of, of, um, DSO executives in our offices last week and I was telling them just 2 weeks ago, we did our 35 millionth Bruxer crown. Wow. Yeah. And we didn’t launch Bruxer until 2008, 2009, somewhere. So in that time frame, just, just 35 million Bruxer crowns alone. Um, and yeah.

Dr. Victoria Peterson: It’s weird, right?

Stephenie Goddard: Exactly.

Dr. Victoria Peterson: Well, one of the reasons I wanted to hit record was because you also have a very strong financial background and it sounds to me like you still watch trends and you watch the marketplace. And we got into this great conversation about reports coming out from UBS and Morgan Stanleya nd, you know, what’s happening in dentistry today, 2024. Do you want to share some of that?

Stephenie Goddard: Sure. I was just telling you.

Dr. Victoria Peterson: And the message on you,

Stephenie Goddard: Don’t blame the messenger, but, you know, it’s, you know, 2024 has been a bumpy year, I think for everybody and, and, you know, you talk to people. I’m always curious to talk to people because Glidewell was privately held and, and a lot of. Most labs are privately held entities. So getting information on how labs are performing is very different than getting information on how like a major manufacturer like a Henry Schein or a line or one of those other companies who’s publicly traded. You can read quarterly reports and get a sense for how the industry is trending and so, you know, I’m always talking to other lab owners, but like I was telling you earlier, I just got a, uh, some reports this morning that showed a gloomy outlook for 2024 and I was like, “Oh, it’s not a great report to open up on a Thursday morning,” but, um, but yeah, I mean, you know, the, the, the market has been from a lab perspective, you can see it in, in trends and the way that, you just in the market in general is when you, you know, that there are some constraints on spending, um, specifically when you see a decrease in implant cases coming into your lab and more specifically, a decrease in like a full arch rehabilitation type of like all on 4 type of case when you see a decrease in those, and then you see a large increase in dentures, flippers, ethics, retainers, those sort of cheaper or more, more affordable sort of temporary solutions and so, like, I was telling you, we’ve, we’ve seen that trend for the last year and a half higher number, record setting numbers and things like dentures, flippers, partials and significant decreases in single unit implants, large, large implant cases. Even when you look at, um, you know, full, full mouth, um, restorations, like six through eight veneers, though, those have decreased. Um, and, and as this report was saying, you know, it’s a soft 2024, the beginning of the quarter, and they’re predicting a softer second half, um, to the year. Um, and so what does that mean? Specifically, they call out implants, uh, being down again for the rest of the year and, and aligner therapy also being down, and that’s really comes down to you know, most of those things are financed. Most implant cases, I would think, in a doctor’s office are financed, and I think a lot of aligner cases probably are too. So, as long as financing rates continue to stay at the levels that they are, you’ll probably see fewer people financing large cases and hopefully, when the feds decide to start lowering rates, you might see some changes in that. But I think, yeah, and you know,

Dr. Victoria Peterson: For September. Yeah. That would be wonderful.

Stephenie Goddard: Yeah. And I, you know, a lot of people are also sort of hesitant with the elections coming up. I lived in DC for a long time. So I, uh, um, I pay a lot of attention to politics. I don’t know if a lot of other people do,

Dr. Victoria Peterson: You know what, as a consultant, I do at Productive Dentist Academy, every election site, like major federal election cycles. Yeah. Which is I said, this is a year to stop emphasizing the scripting of if I could wave a magic wand, what type of smile would you have? This is not the year for that year for we’ve been watching this for a long time, it’s time I would recommend this if it weren’t necessary, because consumer confidence wanes when there’s uncertainty in the marketplace and so

Stephenie Goddard: Exactly.

Dr. Victoria Peterson: We’ve got a double whammy with the elections, with the economy, with the interest rates, uh, inflation on the consumer level, I don’t think it’s being accurately reported as to how it actually feels, you know, in people’s homes. So,

Stephenie Goddard: Yeah.Yeah and I think, you know, just in general, people are just being a little more cautious. The, the sort of, Checks aren’t coming in, you know, the sort of the support checks that the government was sending out. Those stopped a while ago, more and more companies are doing layoffs or pulling back. I know a lot of companies are doing return to work mandates, which are, you know, for people who maybe moved out of state or, you know, can’t physically go back into the office and they’re faced with a mandatory return to office. They’re faced with, do I quit my job or do I find a new job? Um, and so there’s a lot of that turmoil going on in the industry as well. Um, quarterly reports for many companies are not turning out the way that, you know, they’re, they had forecasted. So they’re reforecasting, which then obviously adds to layoffs or uncertainty and which leads to people pulling back in their spending.

Dr. Victoria Peterson: Yeah. Well, those are the very topics we talk about with our, our clients who are building Investment Grade Practices. We always say that there’s above the line and below-the-line conversations, very above-the-line macro look out over the horizon. It’s not one to be afraid of, but it’s one to like, put your eyeballs on the windshield and see And so I, my encouragement to anybody listening is, If you’ve got this sense that things are kind of slowing down in your practice, maybe cancellations are up a little bit, or there’s a little more open time, or case acceptance has slipped a little bit, because like you said, it’s, it’s a softening, it’s not at a, you know, meteor shutdown like the pandemic was, it’s not an obvious, but yeah, I was just talking to one of our clients today and I said, Um, in fact, they, they graduated there. Their practice was perfect. They graduated in December. I said, “You’re great. You’re good. You’ve got all that you need. Um, but I’m going to be watching you.” So I was watching their dental Intel and watching their numbers and I checked in with them in April. I’m like, “What happened in March?” And they’re like, “Yeah, we went to Korea. We took a vacation. Family there.” I was like, “Yeah, that’s the time of year you do that. That was expected,” and then I called him like this week and I said, “Wait a minute. June was off too. What’s happening?” And we got on the phone and they said, “You know, it just, it, it’s not any one thing. It was just, it’s just kind of slow. It just sort of slowed down,” but when you’re armed with data, so there’s the macro. So on the macro, the economy, people are being a bit more conservative. They’re being a bit more thoughtful. Then there’s the micro, like when you see it in your practice, don’t sit back and just hope. Like, well, I hope that that was a bad day. I hope it turns around because we, we looked at it and I said, “You know what? I think some of the settings on your collection system have been changed. Do you have in your practice?” And they go, “Yeah, right at the beginning of the year, we hired somebody new at the front desk and she’s doing collections,” and I said, “Well, you’re over 90 days is through the roof and check your settings on the software, you know, that, that helps and supports that.” I said, were they, “Let’s look at training.” So just because there’s a macro trend in the economy, Okay. Implants are down, or this is soft. There’s all these little micro-economies within your practice that are we reappointing people? Are we offering multiple options on their finance? Can we do something different? You know, small changes make a big impact in a dental practice. You don’t you don’t have to shrink when others are shrinking, but you do have to be very conscious and very proactive. You know, yeah. Very proactive.

Stephenie Goddard: And I think, you know, in, in this day and age, and even from the data that I saw, like, new, new patients are down for practices in 2024. So new patient volume and,

Dr. Victoria Peterson: you know, I think the consumer confidence.

Stephenie Goddard: I don’t know, you know, um, cause I didn’t see anything that says what’s driving it. What, where my head goes to is, you know, to get new, you have to have people moving and the number of people moving has decreased since the pandemic, right? Because when people don’t want to sell their house, if they’ve got a really low interest rate, they’re not interested in selling. Two, maybe they’re not selling their house because they are working remote. So they like the number of moves Corporate moves that are happening across the u. s. I would assume have decreased significantly since the pandemic. So You may not be picking up as many new patients because you don’t have as many new people coming into your state anymore. Like you had that massive influx when people started leaving California, going to Texas and Florida with those

Dr. Victoria Peterson: In some places had other pieces, like last one out, turn off the lights, but yeah, the merry go round on, on shifting and changing and moving. Uh, Um, I love to watch real estate markets, especially here in Hawaii, so much fun and, um, uh, in fact, when my husband and I were dating, he brought me to Hawaii and we both love real estate so much that we ended up buying a property together before we were engaged. That was, uh, 15 years ago. So it tend to work out. We now have it on the market because you know, real estate prices here are still top of market, but just in the last three months, I’m seeing that, um, there’s a reduction in home, home sale, ask, ask prices, properties that were above 2 million, I’m seeing like a decrease in 10%, 15%, but they were rock solid, you know, for the last two years, nobody was budging or multiple offers, um, properties that are in the five hundreds, I’m seeing like 10, 000, 15, 000 reduction. So I’m, I’m seeing that the, I feel like there’s just a right sizing, like everything went a little crazy with supply chain,disruption and hyperinflation and, and real estate, it just got stupid crazy there for a minute.

Stephenie Goddard: Yeah. Um, I would say the same thing in Southern California where, you know, houses you a day and you’d have multiple offers. Now you’re starting to see them stay on a little bit longer and then they’re doing that price decreases, you know, like dropping the prices. So I, yeah, obviously anything that goes up comes, you must come down, right? Isn’t that the old saying? So everything tends to stabilize over time. It’s just how patient are you, but you know, when you think about patient traffic flow and just in general, how do you get new patients, you know, I talked to a lot of dentists. Like I told you earlier, I have that women’s program that, um, I have and it’s so hard to compete for, um, space nowadays. It’s like, how do you advertise yourself? You know, they’re trying things on Instagram and, um, You know, Facebook and all the social media stuff but, you know, it’s, it’s an interesting space when you think about it for dentistry. Like, do I go to Instagram to go find my dentist or do I go to Yelp? Or like, what, or do I just talk to a friend? You know, how, how, how do those networks happen? And, and, and it’s, um, it’s, you know, like social media has become the, the great, um, you know, sort of, um, moderator in that everyone has access to it. So it’s no longer the dentist on the side of the, on the street corner who makes the most money, who can afford physical advertising and, you know, um, paid, um, postal services, right. So I think it’s becoming a struggle with how do you gain the attention of that group of people?

Dr. Victoria Peterson: One of our divisions is the Phoenix Dental Agency and, and we do a lot of authentic marketing and storytelling and it has shifted even in even digital advertising consumers are so savvy now. I think the old stock photography and we do crowns and bridges and this and that just having a menu of service and I call a pomegranate and all of it. Yes. Yeah.

Stephenie Goddard: Exactly.

Dr. Victoria Peterson: People, I think social media plays a big part of that, but it also is like people are looking for what is genuine, what is real, what is tangible, what is accessible. And so, yeah, we, we probably doubled in clientele because they’re looking for a way to tell authentic true stories. Now I’ve never had a dentist come to me and say, “I’d really like to tell my authentic true story.” What they say is, “I’d really like to connect with my patients. I’d really like the patients.” I’m like, “Are you willing to like really you, because we want you to be you cause that’s your competitive advantage right there,” and it’s, it’s, it’s interesting to, this is such a great conversation. You know, we were introduced as two female CEOs, and you two know each other, and now we’re talking about the complexities of social, economic, and cultural change through the lens of a dental lab and a consulting firm, right?

Stephenie Goddard: I know. Who would have thought, right?

Dr. Victoria Peterson: I do we just have a few more minutes. I want to touch on your guiding leaders program. Uh, and you rightly pointed out that more than 50 percent of graduates today are female. Dentistry’s always been female-centric, led by a small core of mostly white men and I’m going to say that I’m in the baby boomer generation industry since 1979, and we certainly have more color and complexity today than ever and I love it and it’s shifting and it’s making way for new opportunities and I’m like, just congratulations and thank you for creating this program to empower women to move up in leadership ranks. Can you tell us about your guiding leaders program?

Stephenie Goddard: Yeah, I would love to, it is, it is my, it is my baby. So I. I, I always love to talk about it a little bit, but yeah, I started it in 2019 and as I was telling you earlier, I didn’t come from the dental space. You know, I came from consulting and, and, um, and finance and, um, and, you know, where I, I had a lot of women and a lot of women of color who were, um, leaders that I got to work with and then I came into dental and I, I just ended up being the only one in the room that looks like me. Um, you know, so I had a lot of meetings and, and you know, I, I love men just like the next person. I don’t have anything against them but, but I also feel like, you know, we all have to pay it forward in society some way and, um, and I saw something that screamed to me and I thought, well, how can I pay it forward and how can Glidewell pay it forward in particular. So, you know, we, when I was, it was typically myself in, in board meetings or meetings with other manufacturers. And like I was telling you, when I went to dental conventions, you know, mostly women in the audience. Mostly men almost on the speaker speaking at the podiums. Um, and so when I was trying to find some speakers for Glidewell, I was being given the same men and they’re lovely and they’re brilliant, um, but I wanted something new and different and so when I started looking for women who could speak for me, there just weren’t very many and so I created this leadership program. It’s seven months long. They come out to Glidewell. Every month is a different curriculum, you know, open mindset, uh, negotiations, finance, presentation skills, practice management, it’s two days a month. Um, and then they, they get a mentor from a previous cohort and then they get an executive coach three months in and the intent is really to get this strong network of women who are there to support one another, because like I was telling you earlier, just because one person is successful doesn’t mean the other thousand of you can’t be. So how do we, you know, rally and support one another because your success is not my failure. It’s your success. So let’s celebrate that and then we can celebrate everybody’s have to get comfortable with that. Um, and so, you know, we’ve been able to find some amazing speakers for Glidewell. In fact, last year we started it and this year will be our second year. We have an entire two-day symposium where all of the speakers are only women, um, and they’re all graduates of Guiding Leaders from across the different, um, cohorts, and, and, um, they get to come up and speak on clinical, um, topics, so they get to pick their clinical topic that they want to speak on, and some are on, on main stage, and then some do hands-on courses the next day, but it’s a really great way to get give them their first for most of them, their first platform and for all of them, hopefully not their last. So, um, so it’s, it’s been a real joy and journey watching it.

Dr. Victoria Peterson: That’s amazing and not, not just for women, but for the next generation of doctors navigating a totally digital world, you know, it’s much different than, uh, when I started, uh, you’ll laugh, we still had belt-driven hand pieces

Stephenie Goddard: Technology is changing this whole space and you have to be comfortable asking the questions you don’t feel comfortable asking. You know, ask him in a safe space and then maybe you get more comfortable asking them in a less safe space and, um, but you have to, you have to be able to drive your business and, and, and, uh, you know, drive your future.

Dr. Victoria Peterson: Well, speaking of technology, I want to say thank you to glide. Well, you’re 1 of our prominent technology partners and September at our 20th Anniversary Productivity Workshop, where we’ve had a clinical calibration program that we’ve taught for many, many years and now we’re expanding that and launching the Clinical Calibration Institute and. So thank you, Glidewell, for coming. I believe you’re bringing your fast mill technology hands on, but that is like as a conference planner, that is such a special thing. That is a dream. That is a big ask to have. Yeah, but we have YOMI robots. We have right global mannequins and and simulated training for doctors. We have a line technology and I terrors and lasers and it’s our 1st, big sort of tech symposium where people can put their hands on digital workflows and what it’s going to feel like and it’s primarily geared towards associate doctors.

Stephenie Goddard: That’s, I think that’s amazing. I like, when I heard about it, I was blown away because I think that’s what’s missing, like people, like adults are like, learn by doing, right. It’s very rare that you learn by reading, right but we’re mostly doers and, and, um, I just, when the team was telling me what you were doing and how we were participating, I was so excited. So we’re, we’re just honored to be, to be included in it. So thank you.

Dr. Victoria Peterson: Well, thank you. It would not happen without support from strong companies like yours. So thank you. Oh, my gosh. So I appreciate your willingness to be on investment. Someone with a price, waterhouse, financial background, a powerhouse. CEO, you’re also HR certified and just a warm human being. I appreciate the spontaneous conversation about the economy, about what doctors can do about what you see, you know, from the lab point of view, I think this huge insights, uh, and I love these spontaneous conversations. Sometimes you can plan a podcast and it’s a little stiff in its agenda.

Stephenie Goddard: Yeah, no, it’s perfect. Well, thanks for having me, Victoria. It was really fun and I’m really glad the team connected us. This is such a random meeting, I guess, you know,

Dr. Victoria Peterson: David Porritt, this one’s for you and Sandy. We would fall in love and they were like. Hey, if people want to get ahold of you or get more information about Glidewell, where could they reach out?

Stephenie Goddard: So the best way to find me is on LinkedIn. So Stephanie Goddard on LinkedIn, or you can send me an email at stephenie.goddard@glidewell.com. Just remember there’s no A’s in my name. So it’s Stephanie with all E’s.

Dr. Victoria Peterson: Stephanie with all E’s. Stephanie with all E’s, that’s wonderful. Let me get your contact information in the show notes. And I appreciate this really wonderfully deep, spontaneous conversation.

Stephenie Goddard: Thanks, Victoria. It was fun.