E15: How Focusing on a Niche Can Boost Your Profitability | Dr. Davis Morgan
What if doing less could help you earn more?
In today’s episode, we discuss how narrowing your focus to a specific niche can lead to higher profitability. Dr. Davis Morgan shares the story of transitioning from a general business to a specialized, premium service model.
Learn how to make strategic cuts, develop a clear vision, and seek out the right mentorship to achieve business success. Perfect for entrepreneurs looking to streamline operations and maximize their potential.
📒 Show Notes and Resources 📒
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Kellen Ketchersid
Kellen is a co-founder of Stag Business Coaching, business strategist, and a systems thinker. He leverages his extensive experience in biotech and consulting to empower entrepreneurs to navigate complex challenges with strategic growth solutions.
Albert Gillispie
Albert is a serial entrepreneur, business efficiency expert and co-founder of Stag Business Coaching who has founded several multimillion-dollar companies. With expertise in optimizing operations and innovative systems, he mentors business leaders who want to unlock their business’s full potential.
Dr. Davis Morgan is truly passionate about dentistry, with a particular interest in aesthetic restorative dentistry and implantology. His commitment to using the finest technology, his artistic talents, and his enthusiasm for people have helped make Dr. Morgan a premier dentist.
Dr. Morgan considers himself a true West Texan. Growing up, his dad’s high school coaching career took him to several small West Texas communities, finally settling in Seagraves.
During the Coronavirus lockdown, Dr. Davis Morgan became convinced that Lubbock was a better place to be. The idea of continuing his career in a new state-of-the-art dental facility in Lubbock became a goal and he relocated to Lubbock from the DFW area. Dr. Morgan is excited to bring his advanced cosmetic and implant skills back home to West Texas.
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EPISODE 15 TRANSCRIPTION
Introduction
[00:00:00] Albert Gillispie: Welcome to the business growth masterclass, where business growth is made simple. Listen, as we discuss best practices to streamline your business, increase your profits, and ultimately create healthier, more stable, and more valuable companies. Today's episode was with a local dentist, a very unique guy by the name of Dr. Davis Morgan. Kellen, what did you like about today?
[00:00:28] Kellen Ketchersid: I mean, Dr. Morgan is so wise in how he seeks out counsel. But I think my biggest takeaway from him was how he picked the area of his business that he enjoyed doing the most, and he found a way to make that his specialty, his niche. And even when he's doing less work or he's less busy, he's more fulfilled. He's probably making more money too, to be honest. He found a way to do it the right way. And I think a lot of business owners struggle with knowing what that would look like for them. So, I think it's cool to see somebody who's figured it out like that.
[00:01:06] Albert Gillispie: What stuck out to me was how he has continued—you're describing how he's continued to hone his craft. You know, he's been doing this for 35 years and is continuing to go to continuing education. He's continuing to seek out mentors, which was fascinating. His story there was approaching others with humility and vulnerability and just asking questions—how do I get better at this? How do I do what you are doing? And he's just done that over and over for 35 years, continuing to hone his craft and create, you know, this business that fits his lifestyle.
[00:01:47] Kellen Ketchersid: Yeah.
[00:01:48] Albert Gillispie: What he wants his perfect day to look like, down to the smell of the office.
[00:01:52] Kellen Ketchersid: Yeah. Yeah. I liked that—that he has crafted his ideal lifestyle business. It's a theme we see with so many successful business owners. They're not afraid to ask for help. They're not afraid to ask for advice. It's just cool to see people who are thriving that way.
[00:02:08] Albert Gillispie: All right, enjoy the podcast. I think you'll get a lot out of it. Welcome to the podcast, Dr. Davis Morgan. How are you?
Early Career Beginnings
[00:02:17] Davis Morgan: I'm doing good. It's good to be here. Thanks for inviting me and having me here.
[00:02:22] Albert Gillispie: Well, we are a business podcast, business improvement podcast, and so kind of want to hear—what do you do for a living, and how did you get started?
[00:02:30] Davis Morgan: That's a long story. I don't know if we have time for that, but I, um, I'm a dentist. I'm a general dentist. So after graduating from high school in Seagraves, Texas, close by Lubbock, I went to what was then WT, West Texas State, which is now West Texas A&M. So that'll tie in the theme there. Yeah. After I graduated college, I went to Dallas to Baylor College of Dentistry, which is now Texas A&M [00:03:00] School of Dentistry. So I graduated in 1989 from dental school and I went to where I always envisioned that we would be coming back to West Texas.
I'd even looked at a couple of offices—one was for sale, one was going to be for sale—but the timing on both of those just didn't work out. I was offered an associateship by a guy I had become friends with in the southern suburb area of Dallas-Fort Worth, Ferris, Texas. He had just opened up a second office over in Red Oak, so he wanted a dentist to go there. It was growing. It was growing, and I did learn some business things from him.
He was a very, very high IQ individual, and he was always bigger, better, and more. You know, sign up on every kind of insurance plan you can, the more patients they send you, the more opportunities he had. At that time—this was around '89, '90—he said the average person has about $500 in discretionary income, which most of dentistry, unlike a lot of medicine, is really elective treatment. Even if someone has a toothache, it’s really kind of an elective type of deal. So discretionary dollars are what dental practices really compete for.
[00:04:38] Albert Gillispie: Have your expenses grown since 1972?
[00:04:42] Davis Morgan: They have, they have. So that kind of plays into the whole topic about your business and how you have to set your fees and things like that. We’ll get into that a little bit later. Anyway, he offered me an associateship, and I took it. In retrospect, when I look back on it, even though he's a friend of mine and I still love him, he was basically paying me just a little above what a hygienist would make.
Starting a Business and Learning from Experiences
[00:05:08] Davis Morgan: Yeah, but that area of Red Oak wasn’t growing as fast as it’s exploding now. At some point, we got together, and he's like, "Hey, you can work part-time for me and part-time for one of my other friends who had an office." He said, "If you want to open up your own office, I do know of a place." It was in Duncanville but had a Dallas address because of how the [00:05:43] zip code thing worked. In Dallas city limits, any of their major highways or interstates have a corridor on either side that extends into some of these communities quite a ways. So after having said I would never practice in Dallas, my first office ended up with a Dallas address, but it was situated in Duncanville.
[00:06:06] Davis Morgan: At that time, it was a vacant office. A dentist had gone bankrupt, which does not happen very often throughout the history of the profession. So I started putting things together. I liked the location. It was in a strip center near a large grocery store, like an Albertsons. I mean, it was a nice center at the time and had very good visibility as everyone knew where it was because Highway 67 ran right down beside it.
[00:06:32] Davis Morgan: So it was a busy intersection. I had to get a loan, and it was difficult to get. We started the practice. There was still some equipment in the office; they had come in and cut lines, disconnected everything, but left the core equipment—chairs, compressors, the heart of a dental practice—there. So I didn’t have to buy a ton of equipment. I had to get some instruments and things like that, but I was able to secure an SBA loan.
[00:06:59] Davis Morgan: Okay, okay. That was a process, though. I mean, there’s a lot of paperwork to fill out, a lot of red tape, and many back-and-forth conversations. Even the loan officer wanted to know if I’d be willing to have my parents or my in-laws cosign. I just told him no, I wasn’t interested in that. I was just about to give up. Then I had one break. I went and talked to a banker—I'd talked to several bankers about getting a traditional loan—and there was a banker in DeSoto who, after I told him what I wanted to do, said, "So you’re a dentist?"
[00:07:40] Davis Morgan: I said, "Yes, sir," and he asked, "Why do you want to be a dentist?" I told him I had always liked it and gave him a few reasons. Then he said, "Don’t dentists have the highest suicide rate?" I laughed and said, "You know, there was some data a number of years back—in the early seventies—that showed that, but it hasn’t been that way for 10 or 15 years."
[00:08:00] Davis Morgan: I’ve heard that before, too. So I tried to correct him on that, and he just shook his head and said, "No, I think you need to find something else to do." At that point, I felt my blood pressure going up, but I just tried as politely as I could to tell him, "You know, I’m sorry you feel that way."
[00:08:31] Davis Morgan: I said, "I love what I do, and I am going to get a loan. I am going to get a loan, and I will have a successful business." And I said, "I don't want to see any of your mail trying to recruit any of my business in the future. Just remember that."
[00:08:49] Davis Morgan: So I left there, and I did. I went on to have a successful business. We had that office in Duncanville for about four years. There were some things that went on there in that shopping center that were not very desirable for having a professional office. It was one of the favorite parking lots for the Dallas Sheriff's Department for their vice operations.
[00:09:16] Kellen Ketchersid: Some drug deals going down next to the people?
[00:09:18] Davis Morgan: Yeah. We had a guy running around in the parking lot with a gun one day, and everyone was trying to figure out which office building he was going to run into. I heard all this commotion. My office was narrow and deep, so I'm in the back, and I hear screaming, "He's got a gun, he's got a gun!" I ran forward to see what was going on. My assistant had my son—who was just a few months old—under one arm like a watermelon. Her eyes were as big as plates. She said, "There's a guy running around with a gun!" The hygienist and my wife ran over each other.
Challenges of Running a Dental Practice
[00:09:51] Davis Morgan: I busted into the reception area, thinking someone was in the office with a gun. Like an idiot—I think about it now—I wasn’t armed. I didn’t even grab one of my mirrors to throw or anything; I just went running up there. When I got to the reception area, I saw all the commotion in the parking lot. They had just got the guy on the ground. I didn’t see them throw him down, but they had him pinned with about four or five officers on him, getting his hands up and cuffing him. I saw someone putting a gun in the back of his waistband.
[00:10:32] Davis Morgan: That was the day I decided we're moving. I just imagine being the guy in your chair with the spacers in my mouth, hearing all this going on.
[00:10:42] Davis Morgan: That's funny because the guy was a postal carrier. And he wasn't an angry postal carrier. He was joking about stuff all the time. So, he'd come in, and my assistants would get frustrated because they were like, "We gotta get things done, but you're just telling jokes." I was making him a new denture, and we were doing what's called a try-in. I had just put it in his mouth—since the teeth were in—because I didn't want the patient to put it in and bite down too hard. So, I literally just got it in there when all this commotion started. I turned around and ran off, and he's like, "You didn't even take your fingers out!" He said, "When you turned around, my teeth went flying across the room."
[00:11:24] Davis Morgan: I don't know. He came running after me. After I saw what was going on, he's like, "What's happening?" We watched, and then a wave of adrenaline hit me like I'd never experienced before. I realized, "I didn’t really think that through." If someone had been in the office, it was just instinct kicking in. So, I thought, "You know, I think I'm done." I had to go home and think about it. I told my wife Trina, "I can't practice there anymore."
[00:12:00] Davis Morgan: She asked, "What are you going to do?" I said, "Let's see if Dr. Williams—the guy that employed me before—wants to expand into another office." Sure enough, he did, and it worked. He bought that office from me, and he helped me get a more substantial loan, obviously because I was going to have to buy all the equipment, do the construction from the ground up, and all that. With his bank, he helped me get a loan, and we built from scratch. I started that practice, and I was there for 28 years. I owned it for 27. I didn’t quite make it to a full 28—I ended up having to take some time out for back issues that I had to get taken care of.
[00:13:00] Kellen Ketchersid: Where was that practice?
[00:13:00] Davis Morgan: That was in Midlothian.
[00:13:02] Kellen Ketchersid: You went further south?
[00:13:03] Davis Morgan: Yeah, I went a little further south and opened from scratch. Again, I took my friend Dr. Williams’ idea of how to run a business, and that's how I was doing it.
[00:13:20] Davis Morgan: I had signed up for everything from traditional insurance to what we call capitation plans, where they recruit dentists. They say, "Here are the fees for all these procedures. If these are acceptable to you, we'll send you patients every month." It's a family plan, a real inexpensive dental plan. Whether you saw the patient or not, you'd get anywhere from five to six, seven, eight dollars a month. So, if you sign up and they say, "We've got 20,000 patients," you sit back and collect your money, right?
[00:14:00] Davis Morgan: Anyway, but there were a lot of free services on there like hygiene appointments, exams—those things were free. It would book you up fast with instant patients. That's how I started that Duncanville practice. When I sold it and started the Midlothian practice, I just continued on. But I was starting to have some frustrations.
Transitioning to a Specialized Practice
[00:14:20] Davis Morgan: In dentistry, there are just so many different facets. As a sole proprietor, you wear a lot of different hats. You're the owner, the boss, the doctor. If something needs to be done, you've got to do it. It's a lot to juggle. I was having some frustrations. I wasn't really living up to what I had imagined being a dentist would be.
[00:14:35] Davis Morgan: When I sold the practice, building a new office was exciting, and that carried me for another year or so, but I started to realize that maybe private practice wasn't for me. So, I began thinking about it and started doing some higher-level continuing education. I realized that the idea of signing up and trying to get as many patients as possible, just going, going, going... you never feel like you're getting anything done.
[00:15:00] Davis Morgan: I had worked with Dr. Williams, and he'd been doing it for a while. He'd do these big, full-mouth cases, like full upper or lower restorations. He did a lot of things, including surgery. I would do some of that, but I wasn’t getting great results. To get good results, I was having to see the patients way too often, and I was losing money.
[00:15:25] Davis Morgan: So, I started reaching out to other dentists. I went and shadowed some guys who I felt like were living more of the dream than I was. They had offices in Dallas and other places that were doing well. I would take a day off, call them up, and ask if I could come hang out with them. I was trying to make some changes to my business, and they were all very agreeable and kind of a constant with all of them, different ages and different locations.
Importance of Education and Mentorship
[00:16:33] Davis Morgan: But one of the constants with them was that they had done some very serious continuing education, and they weren’t seeing such a high volume of patients. Like, they weren’t on some of the insurance plans and that kind of stuff. So, as I started seeking out more education, I found some common threads in the places these guys had attended, so I started going to those.
[00:16:59] Davis Morgan: A lot of dentists won’t go to these kinds of things. That’s what I found out. For example, the young guy who bought my practice, even before he bought it, he wasn’t long out of dental school. But he spent a lot of money, like $20,000 to $25,000, to do an implant bootcamp. He knew that’s what he wanted to do. He knew my practice was in the location he wanted, and he knew the type of dentistry he wanted to do. So, he invested, took a loan out, and went and did that.
[00:17:18] Davis Morgan: But when I talked to other dentists about some of the places I was going for continuing education, I’d get different responses. Some would say, “Oh, that’s fancy,” or “I can’t afford that.” It was expensive, not just in what you had to pay them, but also because it might take a whole week out of the office, which is a week of income you’re not making. So, you have to factor that in on top of the cost.
[00:17:38] Davis Morgan: But what I started learning was how to recognize the problems that were going on, how to treatment plan them, and how to use the right methods and materials to get the results.
[00:18:10] Davis Morgan: The first time, so that you're not remaking stuff, so that you're not losing money, and you're making your patients happy. And as I started putting that to the test, it was true. So, then I sat down and started analyzing our business, like which of all these insurance programs or capitation plans were working. The capitation plans were the first ones to go. We just cut those, and we told those patients, "If you want to stay on with us as a patient, we’ve come up with what we call our family plan."
[00:18:32] Davis Morgan: I’ve known these patients for a while. They’re like part of the family, you know? So, we offered a discount. It was pretty steep—about 30% off my regular fee—but even with that, I was way more profitable than the fees on their plan. We put a lot of thought into that. My wife, Trina, had started working with me by that point, and she’s pretty savvy as well. We just started analyzing things.
[00:19:00] Davis Morgan: We began to get off some of the insurance plans. It was probably a five- or six-year process, so we didn’t do it all at once. I’ve got some definite opinions about it. My advice is don’t cut them all at once, or you might go into a panic. Evaluate the ones that are the worst, the most hassle, or the least desirable patient base, and cut those first.
[00:19:41] Davis Morgan: Today, instead of doing that, you could still do your own in-house plan if you want to retain patients. There are also companies now that will help you administer a practice, kind of like a concierge service, but with your own fees and that type of deal.
[00:20:03] Kellen Ketchersid: Well, there’s something you said, or in this whole thing that you’re telling us about the way you evaluated and how your practice evolved, that I think even though you’re doing something very specific, a lot of business owners could learn from. Which is, you know, maybe you start out with a broad service and you’re doing lots of different things, but it always pays to specialize in something that is like a premium offering. And then you might be doing less work overall, and I’m assuming you’re doing better than you were when you were enrolled in all these different plans. So, that’s a good takeaway for a lot of the people who are listening, I think.
[00:20:41] Albert Gillispie: Oh, yeah. There’s so much in that journey. There were so many tidbits of business advice that, for one, getting started, right? You sought out people who were doing it bigger and better. And, you know, you weren’t getting the result that you wanted, and this is a problem that a lot of business owners have, whether it be a plumber, a manufacturer, or whatever. They’re like, "Man, I know this guy’s doing it better than me, and I don’t know what he’s doing." And you had the humility and the vulnerability to reach out to these people and say, "Hey, can I come watch what you’re doing? I admire what you’re doing. You’re doing something right, and I’m just trying to get a little bit better."
[00:21:24] Albert Gillispie: Was that surprising to you how willing they were to, maybe not give you their secret recipe, but just help? Was that surprising to you?
[00:21:40] Davis Morgan: You know, I mean, with the guys I called and asked them about it, it was, it was a little intimidating because a couple of them, I just knew, like, we knew who each other were— we were acquaintances, you know? It’s not like we were friends, we didn’t run around.
[00:21:56] Davis Morgan: So it’s a little hard to, to reach out for help. It can be, you know, in various things. We’re talking business, but it’s, it’s hard sometimes to make that, make yourself make that initial call.
[00:22:10] Davis Morgan: But man, you know, the fact that they all were like, “Absolutely!” No, it really, you know, after the first one, it got a little easier.
[00:22:20] Davis Morgan: Yeah, it’s worth it. Yeah, it was worth it. I did find it worth taking a day out. You know, that was taking time away that I could have been sitting at the chair, which my former employer would have been going, “You do that stuff after hours.” I’m like, no, I need to see how they’re operating, I need to see their systems, you know?
[00:22:38] Albert Gillispie: My contractor buddies, listen up to that, make, make the call, make the ask. People want to help. Absolutely. Another piece to that story—you’re almost describing one, one of our key exercises that we help clients go through. Where you... I guess first you had to acquire and get started. You did some of the work that, it’s kind of grunt work. You’re not getting paid super well, but you started building traction, building a business, and building systems, and figuring out how to be in business.
[00:23:20] Albert Gillispie: Yes, and then, like Kellen was saying, you sought out a niche and maybe a little more premium service. And then you looked at every offering that you were doing, every procedure, whatever, and you were looking at, you know, what you were describing is like, you're looking at the profitability of this. Given what these insurance companies are going to pay me, what I have to pay my employees, my material, my labor, my yada yada yada. And then you started making educated cuts of, all right, there’s not enough margin here. If I filled up my schedule full of that, I’m going to be in the red.
[00:24:00] Albert Gillispie: And, you know, you slowly but surely, which was also super wise, you didn’t just go in with a machete and hack it all off. You were very strategic, patient, cutting little by little until your new niche premium could support the business. And I mean, that’s... that’s a masterclass right there. That’s amazing.
[00:24:15] Davis Morgan: Well, you know, there's a lot, yeah, it covers a lot. You have to have a vision, you know, you do have to have a vision. And you actually have to, there's some exercises that you need to do to clarify your vision.
Developing a Strategic Vision for Success
[00:24:29] Davis Morgan: I had never done any exercises on that. I always just kind of had this general notion that I'm a dentist, and you live... And, you know, my mom had been a dental assistant some when I was young, and so we knew—my dad was a coach. And so, in both places where she was an assistant, he coached. The dentist, the local dentist, kids, and we got to know them because mom was an assistant. We got to know them, and...
[00:24:56] Davis Morgan: So I had this kind of idea because we... I thought, you know, it looked like something that would be good. I liked health. I liked the idea of health services. I didn't really like the idea of, you know, like a doctor being called up all times of the night to go to the hospital and do... yeah, I didn't really understand how all that worked, but... yeah, my parents had a friend whose son was a very prominent surgeon, actually here in Lubbock years and years ago. But he was about burned out from it, or maybe forever.
[00:25:33] Davis Morgan: And so, as I went through—like before I went to college—I had a pretty good idea I wanted to go to dental school, but I was still kind of... it could be medicine, you know, there's other areas of medicine. But then, by the time I got about, you know, my second year or so in college, I was for sure it was going to be dental school. I liked dentistry because there's art involved. You definitely have to have—it helps a lot to have an artistic eye.
[00:26:00] Davis Morgan: And so, that plays back into the deal of like sitting down and writing out your vision. For a guy that's artistic, for a lot of us, it's like, "That's no fun." I don’t want to do that, man. I just, you know, I got an idea.
[00:26:18] Davis Morgan: And yet, it's so good when you do it, right?
[00:26:21] Albert Gillispie: It is, yeah.
[00:26:22] Davis Morgan: You know, so when I was frustrated, one of the—one... I, there was a guy that I called up that did practice—he was a practice broker and did business valuations and things like that. And he had helped me with negotiating my lease in that space, my first office. It’s the only thing we haven’t built from the ground up, physically.
[00:26:38] Davis Morgan: And so, I called him. I talked to him about some of my frustrations because I was thinking, you know, maybe it'd be more fun to do it in like the Air Force and live—you know, we could live abroad, that kind of thing. So really, a lot of pipe dreams still going on. But he's like, he had a client that was a dentist that was kind of forced into early retirement because of issues with his hands.
[00:27:08] Davis Morgan: And he put me in touch with him. Well, it just so happened, he had been through one of the programs that I'd just started. And so when we met and we got to talking, oh, he, he was a good guy. We hit it off well, but he was like, "Okay, well, I know you've..." you know, I actually hadn't started going to the institution there. He had done a lot of his training at this place called the Pankey Institute, but I was studying with a guy that was considered their master class instructor.
[00:27:48] Davis Morgan: He was an older dentist, and he really didn’t do a lot of hands-on demo work anymore because he was lecturing so much, but his group practice was still very active. And so, I was doing that, and he knew that. He’s like, you know, that made him very excited. He said, "Well, you're doing some things right." So I was kind of like I told y'all, I called some guys, observed, and like Dr. Dawson and the Pankey Institute—those were some names that kept getting thrown around.
[00:28:07] Davis Morgan: And so I started doing Dr. Dawson because I could go out on a Wednesday night to Florida, to St. Petersburg. And it'd be Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and come home Sunday, you know, so I didn't miss as much time out of the office. Cause you know, you have to count—you do have to figure out, yeah, I want to do that. I want to do that whole full one-week—it’s, you know, awesome and blah, blah, blah. But it’s like, it’s also $10,000 and I’m not seeing patients. And my wife’s like going, "How much is it?" You have to take all that into consideration.
[00:28:39] Kellen Ketchersid: Well, then you have to believe in that strategic vision that you, that if you don't have that written down, then it's hard to commit to something like that, right? So, and that's, that overlaps so well with so many things. When we work with our clients, the first thing we start with is a strategic vision exercise where we help them kind of map out: Where are you aiming for? What do you want to accomplish, say, 10 years down the road?
[00:29:05] Davis Morgan: And this guy that I met with, and he knew that I had gone out to see, he's like, "Well, you're starting down the right path, but have you written down your vision yet? Your mission statement, your values?" And so he's like, "All right, well buy you several yellow pads because you're going to need them. You might even want to use pencil." And so then we would meet once every week to two weeks, and he'd give me homework to do. So that's how I started developing like a mission statement and vision, you know, getting it clarified.
[00:29:45] Davis Morgan: And just simple things like, "What would be the ideal day?" And he's like, "I mean, how does the office smell when you walk in? What's it look like? Who are the people you're working with?"
[00:29:53] Davis Morgan: Down to the very specifics, like, "What procedure do you enjoy the most? How would you like that to all flow?" It took a lot of time. Like I said, for the artistic side of me, it was kind of just fighting it.
[00:30:07] Davis Morgan: But it really did help a lot to shape my core business values and give me more of a guide instead of just a concept.
[00:30:20] Kellen Ketchersid: Well, and I know it's powerful. I don't know if I've told you this, but we were talking to a dentist here in town and your name came up, and she said, these were her words: "He's taken Lubbock by storm." And so we haven't gotten to that part yet, where you came from Midlothian recently to Lubbock. But the fact that somebody who was kind of a competitor knows that about you, and you're definitely noticed here in town as the new guy who's just taking things by storm, speaks to that vision. You know what you're doing, and you're executing on it. I love even thinking down to the smell you want whenever you walk in the office, like down to every detail.
[00:31:00] Kellen Ketchersid: So with that, can you just tell us what so far has been maybe the biggest win for you? I mean, in terms of not necessarily... it could be related to what we're already talking about, or...
[00:31:16] Davis Morgan: Yeah, I mean starting this business, you know, from scratch. Literally, I had a handful of people from West Texas that had come out to see me for some really, you know, more complex, really the constructive type of dentistry. But, I mean, it's certainly not enough to start a practice on, you know. And we had, you know, we'd taken good care of people. The practice was very healthy and thriving there in Midlothian. The market for selling our house was really favorable at the time. We had some ranch property, we sold that.
[00:31:52] Davis Morgan: So, all of that springboarded us into Lubbock. And really, probably one of the biggest wins for me is I knew that I was going to have this non-traditional type of practice for a general dentist. Everybody thinks a general dentist has to have a hygienist and this and that, and I wasn't going to do that.
[00:32:13] Davis Morgan: So tell everybody what your practice does. My practice just focuses on complex care. And that can be a smile makeover—someone wants to change their smile and get some veneers and have a pretty smile. But a lot of our patients, probably the bulk of them, they know they have a mouthful of problems. They're frustrated maybe with dentistry, or they've just put it off. They haven't been going to the dentist for years. And it's like, "I probably need to do something besides just teeth now," that type of thing.
[00:32:54] Davis Morgan: So, we'll rehab. Some patients come in, they've got a good foundation—their gums are healthy and that kind of thing—but they've worn their teeth down, like they're severely worn, and it's definitely causing problems. Maybe they've even lost a few teeth because they've busted them up. They don't have a mouthful of cavities or that kind of stuff, but you know, that severely worn patient we can treat, rehab their teeth, and reestablish a normal, functioning, nice-looking smile.
[00:33:13] Davis Morgan: Not just a smile, but a mouth—a mouth that works right. Then for those who are too far down the line, where the teeth aren't worth investing in anymore, we take those out and put in multiple implants. We have the "teeth tomorrow" approach, where we do the surgery, take the teeth out, place the implants in.
[00:33:32] Davis Morgan: It's a long process—it can be five or six hours in my office. I mean, there are some oral surgeons and other guys out there who do one of these cases in the morning and one in the afternoon. I had some back issues, so I had to have some stress relief. I have to tailor what I do to what I can physically manage, but we'll print.
[00:33:55] Davis Morgan: So I wanted to do everything digital too, so that was different. And we'll print their teeth. We work in conjunction with a dental laboratory that knows how to handle digital stuff.
[00:34:00] Davis Morgan: Okay. That's cool. And 3D print, 3D print. So we've already given them all the records prior to the surgery, and they've already got a smile design. We've approved it, that kind of thing. And then the day of the surgery, they just have to take this digital smile design and convert it into something that will screw on to the implants.
[00:34:30] Kellen Ketchersid: What are they made out of?
[00:34:32] Davis Morgan: So what are they 3D printed out of? They're printed out of a ceramic resin.
[00:34:37] Davis Morgan: A ceramic resin. So they're temporary. Those are temporary. Patients will be in those from usually in our office. It's about a five to anywhere from five to eight-month process, just kind of depending on each patient. But the taking the teeth out and putting the new design in is the next morning.
[00:34:58] Davis Morgan: So I get them out of the office. I've tried doing that teeth-in-a-day thing. Like I said, I'm not the fastest gun in the West, and so it's like you're going to be less than 24 hours. You're not going anywhere, and I don't want you going anywhere and doing anything anyway. So just go home and literally chill, ice packs, all that good stuff. In the morning, we're going to have teeth to put on the implants.
[00:35:18] Davis Morgan: And I guess maybe some of the digital things with dentistry, it's just evolving so rapidly. It's hard to keep up. I'm learning so much new. But I have a friend back in Midlothian who is a prosthodontist. So he's a board-certified dentist for complex care. So there's a difference. He went to extra dental school to become a prosthodontist. I just went about it differently.
[00:35:39] Davis Morgan: He was in a three-year residency and came out being able to do everything I can do, and I went about it over about a 20-year course—weekends and weeks and that kind of thing. But we hit it off. He was all digital. I'd come home, and he was in Midlothian. He opened up about three years before I moved. I'd come home, and my eyes would just be glazed over.
[00:36:00] Davis Morgan: I told her, "If I look like I'm kind of glazed over, it's because I stopped by John's office and learned a lot." I said, "If we ever opened another office up, it's going to be all digital."
[00:36:19] Davis Morgan: And so that's what we did here. And my biggest, as far as dentistry goes, is they have a system for registering where the implants are accurately. Like, extremely—it has to be precise. When we put those teeth on, we've got multiple implants that could be going all sorts of different ways, but when we put those teeth on and we start screwing things down, every screw has to fit completely passive.
[00:36:51] Davis Morgan: And taking impressions for that, there's all sorts of different ways to do that. I've done it for years with what we call analog dentistry, and I don't like it. Patients don't like it. It's brutal. It's brutal. And it's multiple appointments. So, before I even—while we were still doing the rehab on this building (I bought a shell of a building and just finished it out)—but I hadn’t opened here, we were kind of in limbo. But I bought the system that is what we call photogrammetry.
[00:37:31] Davis Morgan: And it's where—if you've ever seen commercials where they crash test cars and you see all those little black and yellow circles on them—those are transcribed digital markers for a digital camera, and it can measure things like distortion and all that. So, it's extremely accurate. And now, the day of the surgery, when I put the implants in, instead of having to do all this fancy impression stuff, we screw these digital marker things onto the implants, use a photogrammetry camera, and it captures it.
[00:37:55] Davis Morgan: Then we send those records electronically to the lab. They convert the smile design into something that screws onto that. And the first time I had one of those—drum roll—yeah. And it's like, I put a screw in it. I put the next screw in it, and I was just like, it was perfect.
[00:38:16] Davis Morgan: And so that has been one of the... you know, I'm always still—I've been doing it now for a couple of years—and it's still like, each time I do that, it’s like, that is so cool. Yeah, it’s more accurate than anything we’ve done in dentistry so far.
[00:38:31] Albert Gillispie: Well, you're very forward-thinking. Yes. And, and so you described, you said your practice doesn't have hygienists. So what does your team look like?
[00:38:39] Davis Morgan: I have a hygienist, but she's my daughter. Okay. And when we told her that we're going to do this project, I said, it's going to be a very different office, and I'll still want you to do some hygiene services, but it's going to be really limited. So she's my main content gatherer, photographer, and all that for our marketing and stuff.
[00:38:59] Davis Morgan: So, all the marketing you see, Haley has gathered the content together. We work as a team, but she's by far the one that gets it, puts it together. We do work with a marketing team, so I have spent more money on marketing. Um, but I'm a believer in it because I was the guy years ago, whenever it was, you know, some meeting or something, the speaker would say, "You need to be spending 5 percent of your gross on marketing." And I'd look at that number, and I'm like, no way, man, I can go, you know, I can get that. No, the Cadillac.
[00:39:26] Davis Morgan: Yeah, but it's one thing when you have a more traditional practice and you get patients from, say, insurance, things like that, and then word-of-mouth referrals, and you're doing a lot of different services.
[00:39:47] Davis Morgan: This is very specific, and I didn't have any real connections out here other than just some family and friends and a few patients, you know, that we'd seen. And so, it's amazing to me how fast we came up to speed. I mean, we were probably at six months in where I thought it might take us almost two years to get. And I can only say it would be the marketing. So, you can't be afraid though.
Navigating Risk and Marketing for a Niche Business
[00:40:18] Davis Morgan: You can't be afraid to not spend the money. That camera, that photogrammetry camera, is forty thousand dollars. Yeah, I bought a hundred implants. Well, that's a lot—27,000. I mean, I was close to 500,000 indebted on top of equipment and stuff, on top of the note for the building, before we ever opened. And we hoped we'd open in June, but we opened in November of 2022. Oh boy. So, you know, Trina, she's the much more sane, "let's think this through" person. You know, I'm always like, "let's just do it." I said, I'm the idea guy. And she's the one that helps carry it all out. But it was stressful. It was very stressful knowing it. I had all the confidence, but you really don't know how it's going to go. But if you just sit back and you're not willing to take that chance, then you'll never know if you could do it or not.
[00:41:03] Davis Morgan: And so together, we work pretty good. I'm a risk taker, and I think to own a business, you have to—it's a risk. Yep. Yeah. You know, and that deal about, I mean, yes, it is true it's your business, you're in charge of your own schedule and all that. But then again, are you really? With whatever you do, because you gotta have a client base, and you gotta keep them happy. And if you're never there, you're only there when it suits you... then you do kind of have to conform to other schedules, whether you own the business or not. But I do have a lot more freedom with that—the things we do and what we do with our money and things like that by owning it.
[00:41:55] Kellen Ketchersid: Well, you've been such an example with thinking ahead, taking advice or seeking out wisdom, and then taking risks. And also just being the kind of guy who will invest, you know, you specialized, so now you need to market, right? And you've got to get the word out that you're doing this, and there's so many lessons in all the things you're saying. I'm just curious now, when you look back, can you think of a time where you took a risk and maybe it didn't pay off, or there was a, there was a little bit of falling on your face, but you learned from it.
[00:42:29] Kellen Ketchersid: Can I text Trina?
[00:42:32] Davis Morgan: She knows them all. Yeah, she's got a bunch. She never forgets. No. Yeah. You know, I think some of those earlier frustrations that I had in practice, it was really, I really kind of had to look back in the mirror, uh, and, and, and it wasn't because someone was doing it to me. It was because I'd made choices. And one of those choices was, uh, I didn't, I'm not, I don't like to look at numbers. I don't like to do that stuff. I don't, you know, my vision of being a dentist was when I got through at five, I got to go home and play or go golf. You know, that kind of thing. It's like, you own a business. You put a lot of energy into it, you know, you do.
[00:43:14] Davis Morgan: And so, you know, when I look back on some of the things that were frustrating me early in my career, it was just, you don't know what you don't know. And if, you know, you come out of, like, I came out of dental school thinking I knew a lot, you know, I'm a doctor, you know, that kind of stuff. And although my son says that he's a true doctor. He's an MD. And all he wants to do is play his guitar. But I digress. But, you know, it's just like, you have to, you actually have to do them. You have to do the work. And if you want the reward, you have to do the work. So I haven't had any major business failures, but we've had some, we've had some tough times and there've been things that I've bought that I thought, you know, Hey, this is going to be great. And it wasn't, you know, I did learn fairly early in my career. I mean, you just have to be on the watch, you know, the people that are sales reps and, and reps for different companies and things like that, you know, it's not that they're bad people. Some of them just tell you what they've been told, you know, they're not always told the whole story, but, you know, definitely, it's worth doing your due diligence over whether it's a piece of equipment, materials you're using, employees you're hiring, you know, you want to check references, you know, I didn't use to do that. I didn't like doing that, you know, but you get burned a couple of times on some employees. It's like, you know, maybe next time you got to check some references. So, you know, it's been the hard thing for me because I am, I'm kind of more of the, I, I really am kind of more of the idea guy and I'll let somebody else do all that footwork because that's meaningless. It's just, I just don't enjoy it. That's not my passion, you know, creating a beautiful smile, but I have learned that, you know, if you don't do your due diligence, that's how you get burned.
[00:45:05] Kellen Ketchersid: So if you're not going to want to do it, or if it's not your passion, that's fine, but make sure it doesn't get, or it does get addressed by somebody, right, somebody?
[00:45:13] Davis Morgan: Who's good, a good team around you. That, that, that is true. That's, that's extremely important. You know, definitely do your due diligence on hiring people. Yeah. I, you know, used to, used to always do working interviews. And this team that I've got assembled here in Lubbock, we really didn't have the opportunity to do work interviews, but we already knew one of the, Haley was my daughter, so that was a given. And then another co-worker of hers, which happens to be married, kind of, not married into the family, but her brother-in-law is my wife's nephew. And so she knew that we were, and she's already, she told Haley, she's like, when your dad comes down, I want to talk to him. And so that one was, was good. And we just interviewed, we interviewed a lot of people and sat down, talked to them, and I would write some interview questions down, but basically stuff that I know, so I'm not just looking at it when I was younger, you look at your paper and ask them a question, you know, you do it long enough, you kind of know what's the important stuff to ask. And I felt like I knew when the, when the fit was right. And, uh, so, uh, you know, the team that we've got together here has worked out really well, but yeah, you've got to do the homework, you know, you gotta do your due diligence on pretty much anything it is.
[00:46:16] Davis Morgan: That's right.
[00:46:33] Albert Gillispie: Uh, and a lot of, a lot of what he said is like very juxtaposed and opposite to what so many business owners are seeking to do.
[00:46:42] Albert Gillispie: Right. Yeah. Of like building this team. Who can do all of these things without you. And he's, he's like flipped that on its head that he's niched down and niched down and niched down to find this like thing that he is uniquely gifted and passionate about. And he has kind of this skeleton crew around him that just allows him to do that. It's, you know, this like high need, highly profitable thing that it's, it's such a different paradigm than.
[00:47:16] Albert Gillispie: Most business owners, but you've been so intentional about this for 30 years, you know, crafting and crafting and crafting and seeking knowledge and talking to mentors and talking to people that you admire that you've, I'm. It's such a different paradigm, my head's spinning.
[00:47:36] Davis Morgan: Learning is always important. I believe, you know, you should be a lifelong learner.
[00:47:40] Davis Morgan: Yeah. But early on, back to when I was frustrated, one of the first places I saw that was a guy by the name of Dr. Pete Dawson. And he's no longer with us, but he was, he was one of the finest, not only dentists, but individuals that I've ever met. And, um, just a, just a great teacher and nice person. And one of the, one of the things when what got my attention, he came through Dallas.
[00:48:06] Davis Morgan: So about the time I was thinking about, you know, these guys are telling me, I don't know what I don't know. And I need to go to here. I need to go there. It's expensive and all that was got Pete Dawson comes through town and it's how to put your practice in the top 10%. And it was like one, two day lecture.
[00:48:23] Davis Morgan: It was cheap and I'm like, okay, I can go see this guy. Maybe this, maybe this, I need to, you know, and I, and it did, I ended up like, I really liked him, but one of the things he was talking about is he was explaining. He said, a lot of you guys out there, you think you guys had more and more and more. And he said, but you, go into your office.
[00:48:39] Davis Morgan: He says, run from here. Did you run from there? And people are always saying, doctor, I need this. And it's a very hectic, very chaotic. And your schedule looks just crazy. And they call it calf roping. And you get done with one is I'm done next year. And he said, wouldn't you rather have it? So he started describing how, you know, like what his practice.
[00:49:00] Davis Morgan: How he did and how he came, you know, it's kind of his vision and stuff, you know, I hadn't done all my homework yet, you know, I hadn't written all this down, but he started describing it and how he's like, you can, if you've done this and this, you can do this type of care in a timely manner and you can do more dentistry.
[00:49:22] Davis Morgan: on fewer patients. And that really stuck with me. And then how he was getting the results, you know, on that one. And I'm like, okay, buddy, if I'm going to try this and it better work. Well, as I started following his kind of how he went about setting cases up and all that, and communicating with lab technicians and understood what to do and that kind of stuff.
[00:49:45] Davis Morgan: It did. And so it made a believer out of me. So the more we worked on that, the more it became, well, when I hired, I finally hired a marketing firm and that was, I had worked with some consultants and things off and on through the years, but just for short projects and things like that. I’ve never hired a marketing firm. It's just, who needs that? And so finally decided, you know, to really kind of build that. So I was trying to kind of build this thing at Midlothian. I'm like, maybe, maybe we should specifically market for what it is that we want. And so I had been, so worked with the same marketing company now for about six years.
[00:50:23] Davis Morgan: So we worked with them for about three years, maybe a little more in Midlothian. And when we first started working with them, most of the dentists, any of the dentists out there listening, you're going to know this is the case. Everybody wants more new patients. Everybody wants 50 and if you could get a hundred, that's even better. If you get 150, that's great. And I told them the first time we met, I said, we're going to do this marketing. If you guys try to send me 30 new patients in a month, we're going to have problems.
[00:51:00] Davis Morgan: And so I told them about the concept. And so here's what we want to do — more dentistry on fewer people. And man, it, it took a, it took a full year of our relationship for them to finally get that. And really it came down to a meeting with the two owners, the guys that started the company, and sitting down with them. And I wasn't going to tell them this, but I had already told Trina and she did all of our finance. She was our bookkeeper. She did everything except prepare our taxes and that kind of stuff.
[00:51:22] Davis Morgan: So she’s very integrally involved in the practice. And I said, just, and she was frustrated with them. And I’m like, well, how much are we paying them a month? Like fire them. And just go ahead. I said, our financial advisor has been after us for years to put more money into our portfolio, take that same amount that we're spending with them, because they’re not doing us any good, and put it in our portfolio. We can obviously afford it. And so, yeah, I’m saying, well, we're going to have a meeting with them.
[00:51:40] Davis Morgan: So we had our meeting. I’m like, guys, you know, y'all are just kind of having a hard time with this concept of fewer patients, more dentistry, specific patients, you know, that are looking for that, you know, I don't know, I don't know. And Trina’s like going, well, are you going to tell him? I’m like, tell him what? He told me to fire y'all and put the money in his retirement account.
[00:52:00] Davis Morgan: And I kind of laughed and I was like, they were both like, okay, she’s right. I did. I told her that, man. So, you know, I don’t know, I don’t know where it’s going to go from here, but something's got to, either y’all got to see our vision or we’re just not going to be able to work together. Yeah. And that’s, I gotta go, I got a patient, you know, so that was, and after that, they really did. And now they, they really, they're like, but they still, most of their clients want more new patients.
[00:52:36] Kellen Ketchersid: Yeah. And I think a lot of business owners think that way — busier is better — and it’s, and that’s not the case.
[00:52:43] Kellen Ketchersid: And the fact that you, a lot of people, it takes a while for them to understand what, what that even looks like. So to be able to articulate that vision so that other people can get on board, whether it’s a marketing agency that you’ve hired or for other people who are listening, maybe it’s your team, being able to clarify to them exactly what that should look like.
[00:53:00] Kellen Ketchersid: It’s so powerful. And once you get it, it’s like, okay, let’s go. And it can really help your business in so many ways. Are we ready for a fire? For a fire? All right.
[00:53:14] Albert Gillispie: So, so we, we have a handful of questions that we want to end with that are just kind of quick. Okay. We’ll fire them at you pretty quick. So let’s start with an easy one.
[00:53:23] Davis Morgan: What is your favorite movie? Man, there’s some good ones. Young Frankenstein.
[00:53:26] Albert Gillispie: Jumpstart.
[00:53:27] Davis Morgan: Young Frankenstein.
[00:53:29] Albert Gillispie: That’s a good pick, right? I haven’t watched it in a while either.
[00:53:32] Kellen Ketchersid: I have never seen that one.
Final Thoughts
[00:53:34] Albert Gillispie: You gotta check that out, Albert.
[00:53:36] Kellen Ketchersid: All right. What’s your favorite book and bonus points if it’s a business book?
[00:53:40] Davis Morgan: Since dental school, I have been horrible about reading books.
[00:53:42] Kellen Ketchersid: That’s all right.
[00:53:43] Davis Morgan: Is it the, um, one of the, one that really impacted me a lot. And it carries over into business life is The Road Less Traveled. So that’s, that’s a good one. I mean, especially for any young business people out there, anything like that. Cause it starts off, life is hard.
[00:54:00] Davis Morgan: It’s life is the first, the first line of life is hard.
[00:54:05] Albert Gillispie: The Road Less Traveled.
[00:54:07] Albert Gillispie: Your motto. What, okay, what purchase of a hundred dollars or less has most positively impacted your life in the last six months to a year? So what’s something you’ve bought a hundred dollars or less in the last year that, that you’ve really enjoyed?
[00:54:28] Davis Morgan: Uh, that’s kind of tough, man. I would have to say, a hundred dollars or less. I bought a lot of stuff lately with all the office expenses and things, but nothing under a hundred dollars. Sure. I just bought some new pop-up windshield screens the other day. I’m really happy with that because the ones I had were a little bit too big and had gotten to where they didn’t want to fold back over on themselves. And they were causing me some major frustration. I’m like, “Oh, you drop by an auto parts store, almost like on every corner. Just go get some new ones.” And they were like $20. It’s great.
[00:55:04] Kellen Ketchersid: Oh, you live in West Texas. So you gotta have this.
[00:55:06] Kellen Ketchersid: I need to go. I need to go do that.
[00:55:08] Davis Morgan: And you can’t be getting mad and wrestling with the ones that you have. Yeah. So if you got that, get rid of them. Burn them. Make it fit. Make it something that’s easy.
[00:55:17] Kellen Ketchersid: All right. All right. Last question. What words of wisdom or quote do you try to live your life by?
[00:55:24] Davis Morgan: Man, I really, you know, I don’t want to sound cliché, but you really need to try to treat others as you would want to be treated. You know, I try to do that with my life. Business and things, you know, when I was talking about being frustrated and having to do things over and over. So I knew, I knew what it was — the right way things were supposed to look and the way it is. And I would, and when I wouldn’t get that, and even patients, oh no, we can’t. And so, you know, just always try to do it right. And, um, no matter what it takes, treat others the way you want to be treated.
[00:55:58] Kellen Ketchersid: I love it.
[00:55:58] Kellen Ketchersid: That’s a great way to end it today.
[00:56:00] Albert Gillispie: That’s a great way to end. Thank you so much for coming.
[00:56:07] Davis Morgan: Thank you for the conversation. I think I talked too much. It probably wasn’t much conversation.
[00:56:07] Albert Gillispie: That was fascinating. Thank you so much for coming.
[00:56:12] Davis Morgan: Hey, thanks for having me. Maybe one of these days, we’ll update it in a year. See where we’re at.
[00:56:17] Albert Gillispie: There you go.
[00:56:17] Albert Gillispie: Thank you guys for tuning in today. If you enjoyed that podcast and you want to get more where that came from, go ahead and click subscribe, leave us a five-star review, help us get this podcast out to more listeners so that we can impact more people.
[00:56:33] Albert Gillispie: We would love your help. And if you are struggling, if you feel stuck in your business, go to our website, www.stagcoaching.com, and click the free business assessment. In just a few minutes, with just a few questions, we can help diagnose where you’re stuck. What are the pain points? What do you need help with to take your business to the next level?
[00:57:00] Albert Gillispie: It’s free and it’s easy, and it’s on our website. Thank you so much.
