Mentorship and Mastery in Dentistry (E.243)

“We focus on hourly productivity and taking incredible care of whoever’s sitting in that chair.” ~Dr. Jackson Bean

Join Dr. Bruce Baird as he welcomes Dr. Jackson Bean, a trailblazer in modern dentistry and one of the first participants in the Productive Dentist Academy’s (PDA) transformative programs. From early days as Dr. Baird’s associate to becoming a leading mentor and practitioner, Dr. Bean shares his journey of replicating successful practice models, implementing groundbreaking implantology techniques, and mastering productivity in a small-town practice with a $60,000 average household income.

This episode dives into the essence of building a low-stress, highly efficient dental practice, leveraging cutting-edge technology, and fostering patient relationships that drive long-term value. Hear Dr. Bean’s insights on the evolving world of dentistry, including revolutionary implant advancements, and learn about his innovative mentoring program that’s empowering the next generation of dentists.

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

• How am I actively leveraging mentorship and continuing education to enhance my practice?
• What systems and strategies can I implement to increase productivity while reducing stress in my practice?
• Am I cultivating meaningful patient relationships that prioritize oral health and long-term care?

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

[00:00:00] Announcer: The Productive Dentist Academy podcast network.

[00:00:02] Dr. Jackson Bean: We got over 700 Google reviews, five star that I don’t believe in when I read them, they’re so good. It sounds made up, but you know, we try and we ask for the review. That’s what you taught me. Ask for the review.

[00:00:12] Dr. Bruce B. Baird: Hello everyone. This is Dr. Bruce B. Baird, and you’re listening to the Productive Dentist Podcast. In this podcast, I will give you everything that I’ve learned over the last 40 years in dentistry, working with thousands of dentists, and I’ll tell you, it’s not that my way is the only way. It’s just one that has worked extremely well for me, and, and I’d love to share that with you. So you too can enjoy the choices in lifestyle that productivity allows, more time for things you love, increased pay, better team relationships, and lowered stress. Let’s get into it with this week’s episode of the Productive Dentist Podcast.

[00:00:54] Regan Robertson: Doctor, did you know that PDA coaching doctors grew 219, 000 on average in just the last 10 months? If your revenue goals fall short this year and you suspect that patient communication and inefficient systems are holding you back, Productive Dentist Academy can help, but you have to take action. Register today for the PDA conference, March 13th through the 15th in Frisco, Texas. Go to productivedentist.com to snap up your seat. It is the nation’s leading course for growing your practice and your team. Plus, while you’re there, you can set up a free 60 minute session. session to identify your own unique opportunities for growth and if you act fast, you could score a one on one with PDA’s co founder, Dr. Bruce Baird. That’s right. We’re only offering 10 and then his calendar is full. Don’t wait, go to productivedentist.com right now and have a great 2025. We’ll see you in Texas.

[00:01:44] Dr. Bruce B. Baird: Hi, this is Dr. Bruce Baird with the Productive Dentist Podcast and welcome. Today, we are going to be talking to one of my favorite people, Dr. Jackson Bean, and I know many of you know who Jackson is. I mean, he’s been active on Dentaltown for years. Jackson, thanks for being with us. Thanks for being on.

[00:02:05] Dr. Jackson Bean: Glad to be here.

[00:02:06] Dr. Bruce B. Baird: Well, Jackson was an associate in my office. That’s been a long time ago, uh, what, 20 years or?

[00:02:12] Dr. Jackson Bean: Yes, over, over now and so I remember the tooth talk as I was logging on. I remember the tooth talk days, never a take.

[00:02:23] Dr. Bruce B. Baird: We never had a take. We used to do a TV show, a local TV show. My buddy, Dave Euchre was the celebrity in town. And so I just did all of his dentistry right on TV and his buddies and everybody else but it was one of the best marketing things I think I’ve ever done.

[00:02:39] Dr. Jackson Bean: Unexpected great exposure, right?

[00:02:41] Dr. Bruce B. Baird: I mean those are wonderful little gems. I think I was spending 500 a month. So 6, 000 for the year. And I think we did somewhere around 800, 000 worth of dentistry from that every year.

 [00:02:54] Dr. Jackson Bean: It was this magazine we’re doing now and the magazine comes out and everybody says, Oh, 40, 000 for one magazine. I said it brought in three double arch cases the first month, you know, do the math on that. The other nine months are gratis, right? Or bonus.

[00:03:08] Dr. Bruce B. Baird: The longer it’s in there, then people are going to equate that to you. So Jackson also is doing a productive mentor program that I want everybody to know about. Jackson was at the very first productive dentist program we did. The very first one, 20 years ago and just tell us a little bit, and I’m going to go into some other things, but tell us a little bit about that journey and getting your own practice. Just, just give us a little idea,um, of Jackson Bean

[00:03:36] Dr. Jackson Bean: I remember in dental school having you as a practice administrator, you were the kind of guest lecturer like throughout the year and you invited all of us to come out to Granbury and I think of 90 of us, like two went and I thought, what is wrong with these people that they don’t wanna know how to do? Well, I reinvent the wheel. Just check out his wheel. Like his wheel works great. I think it was Dax and I went down there and watched it. I said, man, “This dude’s got it going on,” and so when we worked together. It was just confirmation and learning the systems and seeing everything and it was just a blessing to have a great mentor as my first job out of school, because my perception of reality is distorted. I mean, you were my first job and I tell people, Bruce Barrett is your first job. I mean, come on, that’s just dumb luck. It’s hard to do. better than that. And so the first PDA, I remember you coming back at the break going, Hey, are people enjoying this? Is this any good? And I’m thinking, man, you’re knocking it out of the park and, uh, it was, I think nine of us back there and, uh, oh gosh, it was so long ago, but then I did my own thing in Greenville and I kind of tried to build the Granbury Dental Center, uh, the Replicate the wheel and, uh, put little tweaks on it for Greenville. We’re our average household income is a 60, 000, which is hard to do much, but you’ve got to find those that value their oral health and so that’s been the last challenge of 20 years is finding those that value their oral health. I, for my mentoring guys, I do some math. I say one tooth, you do a class five, then you do a filling. I mean, then you do a crown and it’s sensitive. You need a root canal and then an implant and ortho, you’ve got a 15, 000 single tooth there. Think about the math. I’m 32 teeth. Think about the family of four, you’re over a million dollar value for one family of four. So, I mean, you know, we need to prize those that value their oral health and keep them in our office and that’s what we try to do and it’s in Greenville, we’re doing four point something million and again, I’m working three days a week and not working too hard, but we work efficiently and we focus on PDA principles. We focus on hourly productivity and taking incredible care of whoever’s sitting in that chair, whatever that looks like and take incredible care of them. We got over 700 Google reviews, five star that I don’t believe them when I read them, they’re so good. It sounds made up, but you know, we try and we ask for the review. That’s what you taught me. Ask for the review.

[00:05:47] Dr. Bruce B. Baird: All right. You know, that’s an, it is incredible what happens to your business when you take great care of people, you know, and you have to have a system that allows you to run on time during the day where you’re not behind the eight ball all day long because that’s so stressful and so everyone could have a practice like you or I have. They can, they just have to follow certain things,

[00:06:10] Dr. Jackson Bean: But, you know, I’ve realized the enemy, the enemy is staring right back at him in that mirror. You know, I mean, it’s not, you know, a million dollar tax return from the dental office working three days a week. That’s not the beauty of it and it’s not that it’s in a town with a household income of 60, 000. It’s that we do it and there’s low stress because we assign the risk. We categorize their risk and we let them know their category of risk. And if they want to alter it, great. And if they don’t, that’s okay too but I’m not going to feel responsible as PDA teaches. I’m not going to be responsible for people’s failures. It’s not me drinking that Dr. Pepper.

[00:06:45] Dr. Bruce B. Baird: Boy, that’s so true. Tell me a little bit about what’s your favorite thing going on in dentistry right now.

[00:06:50] Dr. Jackson Bean: Okay. We’ve got an interesting phenomenon going on in dentistry right now, one guy in old Russia. Who’s been walled off and doing this research and, uh, he publishes a book that goes from zero to the number one implant textbook in a matter of two years and reads Mish’s textbook. And all of a sudden a guy from Vilanius, Lithuania goes from an unheard of fellow to the guy in dental implantology, which is Link Cavages. I can’t say his name right, but it sounds like cabbages, link cabbages and so nicest guy. I’m in a group globally of about. 30 of us, and he’s got another book coming out and it’ll be well received just because of his credibility with the first book and he’s discovered some fascinating things, a zero probing depth restoration, actual tissue adherence to zirconia, if you take it one step further in the polishing sequence, 0. 054 RAs, which is a roughness index, but hemi desmosomes will attach to the zirconia and you can’t probe a pocket around it. It’s freaky. He guarantees no food impaction. You can not brush and not floss for five years, no food impaction and I’m not going to tell my patients that. I encourage them to brush and floss, but it’s fascinating what changes when the tissue adheres to the restoration. It’s fascinating.

[00:08:03] Dr. Bruce B. Baird: That’s amazing. That’s amazing. I know that. You got your implant training at MISH years ago. Was Jeff in the class with you or were you guys in different classes?

[00:08:15] Dr. Jackson Bean:  I think. Different classes. I was a fourth year dental student, shockingly for that first one. But you gave me that textbook. You said, here, read this. And I would go in the mornings before school and I’d read it and turns out that was just the beginning of all of it and since then, whoever’s the best in the world at this, Paolo Malo, I’ll go learn all four from Paolo Malo. I’ll go learn Renardo’s. I’ll go, I mean, whoever’s the best in the world. I try to go fam fuller masters, uh, and so I go to see whoever’s the best and learn from Sam Lee out in San Diego’s fascinating stuff and so if you take all that and add it together and you put me with my picture with you and Sam Lee and Paul Amalo, and I, you know, I had some great teachers and mentors along the way, which has really helped.

[00:08:55] Dr. Bruce B. Baird: Same thing I did, you know, and I think I told you years ago, I mean, I just went wherever I thought the best person for doing whatever it was. Yeah. I want to go learn from him. The Pete Dawson’s, the Carl Misch’s, and you go to John Kois, you just kind of go down the line. But the way we’ve been able to put together a practice philosophy using the guidance of all of our past mentors, you know, and it’s, it’s what I, what I love is the fact that, and I’m so proud of you, what you’re doing. I mean, Jackson was the highest producing associate I’d ever seen when he got out of dental school. I was so impressed and the reason you were, it wasn’t because you cut crown preps fast, it wasn’t because you did fillings fast, but you have a knack, you have a God given ability to be able to communicate really well with people. People like you and so that is a blessing and one of the things, you know, I always say is, you know, Dennis, we’re all engineers and we have a tendency to want to speak engineer to everybody, but when we can get away from that and we can just be real with people and, you know, I only want to work on my friends, I want to get to know you and when you do that, success is guaranteed. It’s uncommon but it’s guaranteed if you just do a few things, right. So tell us a little bit about your mentor program that you’re doing and when did you decide that that would be something that you wanted to do? And, you know, just tell me a little bit about it. I think everybody wants to know.

[00:10:20] Dr. Jackson Bean: Let me add to the last answer in that I think I’d been to five PDAs. I think it was the first, and then the light bulb flickered and I thought, okay, now, wait a minute. If we lower the tension level by doing the linking matching merit, we doing what we do PDA and we show them the need for the dentistry and we have enough new patients to where we can present enough that a third are going to say yes and we had that annuity we talked about. We had those large alloys that are in hygiene that we can pull out. If the month is down a little bit, we can pull some of those out of the annuity. We can alter our schedule to where we can control our hourly and predict our monthly income. I mean, I used to be 70. 150 85, you know, and now I can tell you, I’m going to do two 40 to three 30 because of the days because of the hours, because I can pull out of the annuity, I can do, I can alter my schedule. All that goes together, scheduling to productivity, all that the light bulb went off and it was like forever my life changed and as a recipient of a lot of mentorship, 90. Percent of which from you, I thought, well, I need to give back. I want to give back and so I just started helping those around me on Dentaltown. You know, guys would approach and ask this or that, and I would just help them. And it turned into, you know what? I enjoy doing it, but the slides, getting the slides ready, takes time, getting everything ready. It takes time and staying current, getting good information to share like this zero bond loss concept stuff is fascinating and no one, when I tell them, put it six millimeters sub free gingival margin, everybody’s eyes bug out. There’s no way that can be right. But because of who’s teaching me this stuff, I can come with credibility and authority and say, trust me, just watch what happens. And then you see the zero probing depth. It’s crazy. And so, you know, sharing that with others and watching their light bulb moment is so cool. You know, it’s just helping them have that light bulb moment.

[00:12:05] Dr. Bruce B. Baird: Oh, yeah. Now is most of the docs that are coming through your mentor program, are they guys that do implants or is it anything?

[00:12:14] Dr. Jackson Bean: Guys that have been to a course and they went back home and it was like, you know, maybe they got the motor or something, you know, they got the stuff, but they haven’t done it yet. Right and so my first thing was, well, since I have my pilot’s license, I was going to fly to them and hold their hand for the first one but I thought, well, that’s, that’s a lot of time and I’m not that committed to it. So now we’re building a surgery center across the street. And so they’re going to come if they want to the hands on portion, as long as they’re at Texas, a licensed dentist, or if they get their temporary license, then we’ll get to do models. And then I have so many patients that enter for our teeth in a day giveaway that these patients are in need. I mean, real need. So I’ve got plenty of patients lined up for these docs to come work on and it’s worked really well.

[00:12:53] Dr. Bruce B. Baird: It’s what a great opportunity. So it’s an over the shoulder program that now you’ll be doing at your new surgery center. Will that be an education center? Will that be a, also where you’re sending some of your,?

[00:13:06] Dr. Jackson Bean: Slash surgery, surgery slash education center cause we’re doing all this crazy, uh, surf CP is doing all this crazy multimedia, you know, feeds and whatnot to where we can really cast what we’re doing.

[00:13:16] Dr. Bruce B. Baird: All is, uh, Bergario is pretty amazing.

[00:13:19] Dr. Jackson Bean: They know their stuff.

[00:13:20] Dr. Bruce B. Baird: I’ve become good, good buddies with him. Oh, it was last year we went to a Madison square garden with he and his wife to see Chris Rock and Kevin Hart. We were like sitting right down front and it was, I mean, we just had a blast, but I’ve, I’ve spent a lot of time with Paul and I love his connectivity. Everything is connected.

[00:13:40] Dr. Jackson Bean: And he he’s designed this building to where the very physical structure, you go in and the logo on the wall and the lighting’s a little different. It’s that high end and the stewardess hostess girl, she gives you a tour and then she says, “Oh, Dr. Bean, I like your shirt. Why don’t y’all take a picture?” And she puts you up against the wall. Well, she already knows what side Ms. Jones likes on her social media. She likes her left side. So she gets her left side of me in front of our logo, takes our picture. Well, what does she do? Here’s my phone, take my photo and she puts it on her social media and the very physical structure can be a marketing engine in itself and I mean, who thinks this stuff like that?

[00:14:14] Dr. Bruce B. Baird: Paul looks at it and, uh, D Rodrigo, who is an architect friend of Paul’s does a lot of the designs and maybe he’s the one that’s doing the design stuff for you in the background. Cause he is, he is over the top

[00:14:25] Dr. Jackson Bean: . And so we’ve got a travel quarters where someone can travel in, find the DFW. We pick them up. We send a car to pick them up. We have an apartment there, a nice apartment in the facility where they come spend the night. We do the surgery the next day. And then they go recovery is, uh, Your living room where it can be walled off from the rest of the facility. So it’s pretty neat. I can check on them.

[00:14:49] Dr. Bruce B. Baird: Oh, cool. Can I come work for you?

[00:14:49] Dr. Jackson Bean:  Yeah, right.

[00:14:51] Dr. Bruce B. Baird: I gotta come out. I gotta come out of retirement. I was telling everybody I, you know, hadn’t picked up a hand piece in five and a half years now, but I prepped Maggie for veneers three and a half weeks ago and put them in last week and I didn’t forget how to do it. I was pretty proud of myself, but perhaps even look pretty darn good. I had never done a veneer case without taking an impression. It was the first scan I’ve ever done, but the fit was unbelievable and, you know, and screwing in those after using some of the technology, the iMetric 3d or the PIC or whatever, you know, I’m, I’m still studying all of that stuff, but to be able to screw in a full arch and have no squeaky sound when you go, exactly. There’s no, on that last, it’s as good as it’s going to get. Well, we were wrong and it does get better. So that that’s part of the deal. So,

[00:15:43] Dr. Jackson Bean: And wait until you see what we’ve got now, this segmentation workflow, it is where you. Have the skull, it all segmented to where in 10 minutes, AI takes the facial scan, the CBCT and the intraoral scan, and in 10 minutes, stitches it all together and you’ve got your full arch done. I mean, no markers, no more markers. It’s totally different now. Um, it’s fascinating.

[00:16:05] Dr. Bruce B. Baird: I can’t wait to come over when you’re having one of your, with the shoulders. I’d love to come over and just harass people, just mainly.

[00:16:11] Dr. Jackson Bean: Yeah, you should, you should come. Uh, I’m bringing, actually, I’m bringing a big crew to PDA this next time. So there’ll be in the audience that we’ve got some good, good. Yeah. We’re going to the newbies..

[00:16:22] Dr. Bruce B. Baird: We’re going to have fun

[00:16:24] Dr. Jackson Bean: And we went from six employees to 18. So we’ve got some new folks.

[00:16:27] Dr. Bruce B. Baird: Yeah. Um, and for those of you don’t know, Jackson’s been part of the faculty of PDA for 20 years since he was helping me. 20 years ago, I can say that you’ve been around 20 years now that we’re starting this new program called Clinical Calibration, which falls right down your teaching, you know, row, uh, I’m excited about seeing, seeing how we can help docs that are, you know, and not about speed, but maybe, maybe they’re not where they want to be. And, you know, all of a sudden through clinical calibration, they can learn a lot in a short period of time. It’s the study club idea. You know, study pop concept.

[00:17:03] Dr. Jackson Bean: So, and you know, you say diagnose everything in the quadrant, just like it’s, you know, nothing but if you start doing those little things, diagnose everything in the quadrant and treating everything in the quadrant productivity source, just that one little thing. Um, but you’ve been saying it for years and it takes me years. And then I hear it. I think, man, if you just. Do everything in that quad. It’s way more efficient and it’s like, duh, he’s been telling you that for decades now.

[00:17:27] Dr. Bruce B. Baird: It’s just something that I had to say, duh, once upon a time too. I’m just so proud of what you’re doing. I’m just tickled helping docs become more productive and bottom line is helping them enjoy dentistry more. I was talking to Paul Etcheson the other day and I said, “Why didn’t you start teaching? What, what was your thought?” He said, “I don’t know. I just helped one guy and I had fun and then I started helping another guy and I had fun doing that and so that kind of approach, you know, it’s nothing was intentional. It just kind of turns that way. “

[00:17:52] Dr. Jackson Bean: Well, I had a good mentor. You tell me dentistry could you caught me reading a real estate textbook one time? You said, “What are you doing?” And you said, “Dentistry can be a fantastic vehicle to wealth. Just take incredible care of who’s in that chair,” and so I thought, you know what, let’s see. It’s neat not having to worry about money because you get to worry about what’s really important, which is not money but if you don’t have money, good luck, you know, not worrying about it but once you have that squared away, you can work on whatever it is your passion is or what you want to work on without worrying about money and it’s so liberating.

[00:18:24] Dr. Bruce B. Baird: Yes, you know, when you’re doing things that you love, your stress levels go down. People tend to live longer. They tend to have more energy. They tend to have more fun. They tend to smile a lot more. So, I mean, of course, I’ve been working with dentists for, you know, almost 30 years and the sad part is that everybody’s not just tickled to death to be a dentist. I’m sure. I mean, you know, there’s always those that feel like at one point that I got in the wrong occupation, but for most, they have all the skills. They have everything there. They just haven’t quite put it all together.

[00:18:56] Dr. Jackson Bean: And those gut checks where you’re doing some implant related stuff. And you’re thinking, this is, I don’t know about this. I’m not quite sure where I am. Well, if it was easy, everybody would do it. So call in some resources and let’s figure this out and let’s do it and you know what? If you trudge through it, you’re that much better on the other side and can, you know, share that with someone. And so it’s not easy, but boy, it is fun. The journey is just so much fun. A lot of these people, people create their own reality. You know, if we say, “Oh, my patients won’t do that or what,” and it’s like, “Stop saying that. Give them the choice and then if they don’t want to do it.” That’s one thing, but let them decide, stop pigeonholing everybody because you think they can’t afford it.

[00:19:36] Dr. Bruce B. Baird: Oh, because maybe you couldn’t, you know, that’s the, I mean, I’ve tried to where I’m going, like, look guys, uh, you know, I’ve had them all the time say, well, I only really present what I think that they’re willing to accept and I go, but if you went to a heart doctor, would that be a good philosophy for your heart doctor? I just want to. We’re only going to do your LAD. We’re not going to do the others right now because it’s going to be so much more expensive, you know what I mean? Um, but that’s, that’s where we’re at anyway, Jackson, thank you so much for being on with us today. I am so, again, it’s just so proud of you. Of course, I’m going to be seeing you and let me know when you’re having a program. Greenville is not that far. I’ll be over when do you think the building will be finished?

[00:20:17] Dr. Jackson Bean: Well, the city right now is still stuck on I need 27 parking spots. Again, to work on one or two people, I need 27. So we’re having some conversations about parking spots right now but as soon as that’s done, we have our final meeting and then we start. So I’m going to guess seven, eight months away still.

[00:20:33] Dr. Bruce B. Baird: You listening in, uh, thank you so much for voting as number one podcast in dentistry last year and the voting’s open now. So. So please send us a thumbs up. Look forward to the next time. Thanks, Jackson. See you soon. Thank you for joining me for this episode of the Productive Dentist Podcast. If you found this episode helpful, make sure you subscribe, pass it along to a friend. Give us a like on iTunes and Spotify, or drop me an email at podcast@productivedentist.com. Don’t forget to check out other podcasts from the Productive Dentist Academy at productivedentistpodcast.com. Join me. Again, next week for another episode of the Productive Dentist Podcast.