The Group Dentistry Now Show: The Voice of the DSO Industry

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Welcome to The Group Dentistry Now Show: The Voice of the DSO Industry!

Insider Information on the 2026 Dykema DSO Conference – Use Code GDN26 to Save $250

Brian Colao, Member & Director of Dental Service Organizations for Dykema joins the show to share details about the 13th annual Dykema DSO Conference that you won’t learn about anywhere else. Brian shares:

The current state of the industry
What to expect at the Dykema conference
Save $250 with code GDN26

Don’t wait. Register now at https://dso.pub/Dykema26

The 2026 Dykema DSO conference takes place in Aurora, CO at the Denver Gaylord Rockies, July 15 – 17.

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DSO Podcast Transcript – Insider Information on the 2026 Dykema DSO Conference – Use Code GDN26 to Save $250

Welcome to the Group Dentistry Now Show, the voice of the DSO industry. Join us as we talk with industry leaders about their challenges, successes, and the future of group dentistry. With over 200 episodes and listeners in over 100 countries, we’re proud to be ranked the number one DSO podcast. For the latest DSO News, analysis and events, and to subscribe to our DSO weekly e-newsletter, visit groupdentistrynow.com. We hope you enjoy today’s show.

Bill Neumann (00:38):

Hey, everyone. Welcome to the Group Dentistry Now Show. I’m Bill Newman, and as always, we appreciate you joining us. It’s actually so great to have Brian on because he’s done this podcast and many others so many times that there’s really no prep at all that we have to do. Normally, there’s 10 minutes of prep prior to this, and Brian looks down, he’s got notes. He’s like, “Okay, I’m ready to go 15 seconds later.” So it’s good to have you back, Brian.

Brian Colao (01:04):

Always love being here, Bill. And I say this every time, it never gets old. I always love sitting down with you and talking about my favorite topic, some aspect of the DSO industry we always end up talking about, and it never gets old for me. Thanks again for having me.

Bill Neumann (01:20):

Yeah, and it’s always changing. It’s never the same conversation. So we are going to talk about the, which I can’t believe it, but it’s the 13th annual Daikema DSO conference, 13th, son of a gun.

Brian Colao (01:38):

I mean, you wrote that incredible article. I think it was the third one. It was the one we had in the train station. You didn’t miss much. I don’t think you were there for one or two, and I’m glad because you probably wouldn’t like us too much if you were. But you came at the third one, which was really the first one that I think we have substance. We had a few hundred people there, and it was down in the train station. And I always remember you wrote a really kind and a really nice article about it, and we weren’t nearly as well known then, and I really appreciated that.

Bill Neumann (02:10):

Well, thank you. And I’ll have to say sitting in the audience, I didn’t understand half of what the heck anybody was saying, but I learned. So it took me a little while, but there was a lot of great information. I think you had somebody there from … I don’t know if it was the Texas Dental Association or there was a lot of talk about some of the legislation that was going on in Texas at that time. But really, really interesting conversation. I think it was in the basement of the Aloft Hotel, if I remember.

Brian Colao (02:39):

There used to be a train station. They turned it into the Aloft Hotel. And yeah, we got about 300 and something people there, and we’d only planned on about a hundred or so at the Omni because we had, as the story goes, 41, then we had 75 and I thought, “Well, maybe I could get to 100.” And I never thought I’d get to 300. So we had to move out of the Omni. They didn’t have any space for us. And the only thing, I mean, the thought Bill of doing that today in 2026, securing space in 30 days or something is ridiculous. But our event team back, that would’ve been about 10 years ago, was able to secure that space. It was a brand new hotel. It just opened their basement, which used to be a train station was available, this big cavernous space. And we were able to secure it one month’s notice.

Bill Neumann (03:33):

I had no idea. That’s a great backstory. So we’re, of course, back in Denver at the Gaylord Rockies, July 15th through the 17th, although those dates are a little deceiving because so many people get there early and so many people leave late. So it’s become pretty much a week-long event.

Brian Colao (03:55):

Yeah, it has. It’s become like whatever people say Oscar’s week or this week or something. It really starts people come in often on that Sunday or that Monday and they stay till Saturday or even later sometimes.

Bill Neumann (04:12):

So we’ll dig a little bit deeper into the agenda that you have in front of you and it’ll be soon on your website and we’ll have it on our website as well. But first, let’s get an industry update. Like I mentioned earlier, things change in this industry. We’re always talking about something different. And as much as you can talk about it, there seems to be a lot of conversation about some DSOs still struggling. You hear about practice closures or selling off locations. So there’s some negative things maybe going on or maybe some right sizing. Maybe it’s not negative, maybe it’s just something that should have happened a while ago. But some interesting things being talked about. Of course, most of these organizations except for park dental partners now are privately held. So we don’t always necessarily know what is really going on. So give us a little bit of an idea of what’s going on in the industry.

(05:08):

And I’m sure you’re going to talk a lot more about this at your conference, but just maybe a little bit of a highlight of what you might talk about there.

Brian Colao (05:16):

It’s still choppy out there, Bill. I mean, it’s kind of a continuation of the challenging conditions that began. I pinpointed them to around June of 2022. The Ukraine war started, the interest rates skyrocketed, inflation skyrocketed, and all of a sudden organizations, DSOs that maybe had, just by way of an example, $100,000 of free capital or free EBITDA every month went from having $100,000 of free cash to maybe having to lay off 10 or 15 people to break even. It was dramatic. It was breathtaking and not a good way. And we’ve been working through that. For really going on the last four years, we’ve been dealing with those really choppy conditions. I think the really, really bad things that were going to happen happened in 2023. There were some organizations that, as you know, went out of business, went into receivership. A lot of that stuff, the banks took the keys.

(06:14):

That stuff happened in 2023, maybe some of 2024. Most of that is over with now. There are some organizations though that are finishing up their sort of workaround or they’re restructuring as a result of those conditions. So you do hear about some instances where they are restructuring some things. Maybe a bank now becomes a shareholder. The lender was a lender and now they become a shareholder of the company. You’re seeing a little bit of that still go on. You’re also seeing certain situations where unprofitable locations are being sold off or a couple organizations are downsizing and selling pieces of it off. And these things take years. Some of that is still going on, but we’re on the downside of all the … Or we’re on the, however you would say, things are looking up and we’re on the downhill portion of the race and we’re working through the last little bits of most of these issues.

(07:19):

Yeah.

Bill Neumann (07:20):

Well, that’s good to know. And I was having a conversation a couple days ago with a large DSO that had not done any M&A. As we know, a lot of M&A just ceased since 2022, 2021, and now they’re back at it differently than maybe they were. But I’m hearing more and more of that. And it seems with some of that DSO deal Roundup that Kim puts together every month, it seems like there’s more and more activity. So that’s encouraging.

Brian Colao (07:50):

I mean, the challenge will be to build premium organizations that people want to buy. I’m saying on the big deals, I shouldn’t say most, but a lot of the industry is maybe back to highly selective M&A. It’s not like we’re going to buy everything in site like Pac-Man in the ’80s. Remember that one, Bill, it just gobbled everything up. We’re not gobbling everything up anymore, but we are going to do highly selective M&A and we’re going to buy the things that make sense for us to buy. And that’s good. And the organizations are now continuing to grow. But the real challenge becomes making an overall premium organization that the next buyer wants to step up and buy, or maybe you even go public that the public markets are interested in.

Bill Neumann (08:36):

Yeah, that was exciting. Park Dental and them, it was a small piece of the organization that went public. I think they raised about $20 million, but it’s very interesting. And I think it’s going to give us a lot of insight now that they’re publicly traded. I’m going to get a real chance to see how they do and certainly really enjoy the team there. So I’m hoping for the best and they seem to be an organization that’s built to last, so it’s encouraging.

Brian Colao (09:06):

Yeah. I mean, that was a microcosm of what you’re going to see now. Obviously, 20 million was, I think everybody would agree, a rather modest size to go public, but still they followed the roadmap, they got it done. And I think it is sort of paving the way for some of the larger organizations to look at that when the market improves a little more.

Bill Neumann (09:29):

So beyond that, M&A may be coming back a little bit, do you see any growth? What I’ve kind of noticed is there’s still this change in the way dentists practice, not so much the way they practice, but what a traditional dental practice is. So it’s moving from that solo practitioner, one location, one dentist to either multi-site or maybe one location, but multiple dentists. So the modality is changing. Dentists aren’t working by themselves anymore. They’re certainly, we see this dentist entrepreneur, like these smaller emerging groups that seem to become more prevalent. Are you seeing a lot of you working with a lot more dentist entrepreneurs?

Brian Colao (10:20):

I mean, a lot of them. I’ve continued to work with dental entrepreneurs. I mean, as you know, my 31st year, I almost want to stop talking about it. I used to brag about, I got 20 years, I got 25. Now I don’t want to talk about it anymore. It means I’m just old or something. But yeah, for 31 years consistently, I’ve worked with dentist entrepreneurs and they’re still sort of doing their thing. And I do think we’re at an important inflection point. The economics are such that it’s harder than ever just to have one office with one dentist. Now, I’m not saying you can’t do it. So those that listen, don’t call in and yell at us. You certainly can still do it, but the economics are very quickly not in the favor of that operation anymore. And the economics are quickly becoming in the favor of organizations that scale up.

(11:10):

Even if they don’t join a private equity backed DSO, you can scale up and do three, four, five, six, seven, eight offices as a dentist entrepreneur. I see it all the time. And the economics are such that you kind of have to do that to be really successful in the marketplace. It’s becoming tougher and tougher to do the old-fashioned one dentist, one chair solo practice model. Not that you can’t, but it’s becoming harder than ever to do that.

Bill Neumann (11:37):

So let’s move on to lucky number 13, the Daikema DSO copy.

Brian Colao (11:42):

That’s one of my roulette numbers. I don’t know what you do when you go to Vegas. Most conferences, not ours, are in Vegas, Bill. So I don’t know what numbers you bet on in Roulette, but 13’s one of my numbers.

Bill Neumann (11:52):

There you go. People say it’s unlucky for them. It’s lucky for other people. So I think this is going to be a … I really enjoy going to the event. It’s become a staple. And I always say that if there’s one event, if you only had one event to go to in the DSO space, it should be the Daikma Conference for sure. And I want you to talk a little bit through what we should expect this year. You kind of shared a couple of things with me, but you’ve got the agenda about 85% complete, so you’ve got a lot of it there. Maybe what are some of the topics? Let’s start with some of the topics that you’re going to cover at the event and anything new this year maybe that hasn’t been covered in the past.

Brian Colao (12:42):

Yeah. I mean, the theme this year is Journey Through DSO History, not just from a nostalgic standpoint, although I’ve got a great video. I’ve commissioned a movie studio and I’ve got a short film called Journey Through DSO History. I can’t wait to show that to the DSO community as part of the event. It’s going to be from the beginning of time through July of 2026, and it’s going to be a fun journey through DSO history, but that’s a little more nostalgic. But the whole point of journey through DSO history is to learn from the successes and the mistakes of the past, because we now have close to 30 years of history. If DSOs really started to form in the mid to late ’90s, we’re right on around 30 years of history, and we’ve learned some valuable lessons along the way. The problem, Bill, is many of the people that are operating today have only been operating for five or 10 years.

(13:36):

They weren’t there 30 years ago, like I was the dinosaur me. I was there 30 years ago, and maybe they don’t understand everything that occurred 30 years ago and certain patterns repeated themselves. Some were successful, some weren’t. So we’re going to take everybody on a journey from the beginning of the DSO history to where we are now and talk about the successes we can learn from, and also some of the mistakes that were made and how we learned from them. And certainly I’ll kick it off with Journey through DSO History. And then we’ve got Steve Bilt, CEO of Smile Brands leading right along that theme. I think one of them is mine is Journey through DSO History. Then we have sort of lessons through DSO history. Then we have a panel called Turning Points in DSO History. And I know Steve’s going to do a presentation and then he’s going to be joined by an expert panel of CEOs and other experts in business on successes on a longitudinal basis, if you will, to talk about lessons that can be learned from the beginning of the DSO industry to where we are now and how we can build organizations in 2026 for success.

(14:45):

So sort of the theme this year is journey through DSO history, lessons through DSO history, turning points through DSO history.

Bill Neumann (14:55):

Yeah, I think that’s important too. I remember early, early on in our existence at Group Dentistry Now, you wrote an article, really kind of talked about DSO 1.0. And I mean, really DSO, it’s a relatively new acronym. They weren’t always called DSOs. That’s within the past probably 10 years, I would say.

Brian Colao (15:20):

Yeah. Yeah, around 14 or 15, 13. I think the ADSO came up with the name, it was interesting, dental support organizations around 2014 or so, something like that. Before that, they were dental service organizations. Of course, you can still call them a dental service organization. You can call it a dental support organization. Before that, if we go back to the early 2000s, they were called practice management companies, DPM dental practice management companies, MSOs, either medical service organization or managed service organization. I mean, they had a whole bunch of names that they went by, but yeah, probably the last 10 years, they’re either called dental support organizations or dental service organizations, DSOs.

Bill Neumann (16:10):

So this kickoff that you’re going to do followed by Steve Bilt and the panel discussion, that’s going to be on the 15th, but you also have, there’s quite a bit the day prior. So that’d be on

Brian Colao (16:21):

The 16th. Remember, the 15th would be the Wednesday, and we’re going to kick off with a whole bunch of workshops and certainly our opening reception on the 15th. And we got some really good workshops this year. We’ve got to take out

Bill Neumann (16:34):

The workshop. So a lot of people arrive super early. They might arrive on Monday or Tuesday, and then Wednesday is, you can sort of call some of it pre-conference workshops, and then there’s the official networking event, the night of the 15th. And then the 16th is when you kick things off in the morning with your journey through DSO history.

Brian Colao (17:03):

Yes. Yeah, that’s exactly right. And throughout the day, Woman in DSO has an incredible panel. Larry Benz from Dental Care Alliance is going to give an incredible keynote later in the afternoon. It’s about, he’s coming up on his one-year anniversary, and it’s going to be what I learned in my first year as CEO of Dental Care Alliance. I’m really looking forward to that. Appreciate Larry making the time to do that kind of presentation. We’ve got a private equity presentation we’re going to do that I’m really excited about that’s going to talk about the options for how you restart the M&A markets and what we can do to maximize value of organizations. So I’m really excited for that one as well. And then we’ve got some of our, remember the most powerful three hours in the history of the DSO industry. We’re not quite doing that this year, but everybody loved the 15-minute segments.

(17:57):

And we’ve got three or four, 15-minute segments on things such as patient finance and how to get the most from a psychological factor, how to get the most out of your employees, and how to create high performing employees at organizations. We’ve got a panel that we’re going to discuss about AI, how to work through the background noise, what is value added AI versus AI that’s just sort of a shiny object. Planet DDS, again, Bill, is going to do their KPIs. They’re capturing all that DSO market data and they’re going to walk us through KPIs. Last year they did it as a breakout, and it was the most well-attended breakout in the history of our event. I think they had like 125 people, which for a breakout was just incredible. Now they’re going to do that on the big stage. So I’m really excited about that as well.

(18:47):

And then we’ve got two sort of celebrity motivational coaches. We’ve got Rick Patino, who’s now coaching St. John’s. He’s a two-time NCAA national championship coach. I think one at Kentucky, one at Louisville. He’ll be speaking on Thursday to sort of end the day, and he’s a terrific coach, real motivational coach. Everybody’s going to be inspired to maybe run out of that room after he’s done on Thursday. And then on Friday, we’ve kind of got Nick Sabin under contract, and he’s a great speaker, one of the all- time winningest coaches in football history and college, and really excited to have him.

Bill Neumann (19:27):

So we got a lot going on for sure. So we’ve got two big celebrities, and that’s Thursday, late afternoon, early evening, and then we’ve got Friday with Nick Sabin.

Brian Colao (19:43):

Yeah. Yeah. Friday to end the conference like we’ve done. I mean, it’s been great. We’ve really maintained really high attendance on both days of our conference. You know this, Bill. People sometimes don’t like to talk about it, but you attend a ton of events like me. And it’s always sometimes sad when you’re there on the last day and it’s almost empty if there’s good speakers. Sometimes you’ll sit there and there’ll be a speaker and you’re like, gosh, this person’s got a great message except maybe there’s 30% of the people there that were there the day before. We’ve been really lucky to maintain very high attendance on that Friday. And I think one of the reasons we do it is to kind of reward people for hanging around. We bring some really powerful speakers. And I think Nick Saban’s about as good a speaker as you’re going to get from a motivational team building proven winner sort of standpoint.

(20:33):

We’re so excited he’s coming on that Friday and he’ll end the conference for us.

Bill Neumann (20:39):

What about some of the nighttime activities? What do you have planned at night? You always have a band. There’s always something going on late into the evening or morning.

Brian Colao (20:49):

Yeah, there is. You and I talked about this last year. I can’t remember if you quite showed up or not, but obviously we’re going to have the drone show again. Everybody loves that one. We’re going to have the spasmatics. I got people threatening me. Don’t ever cancel the spasmatics. So they’re coming back, even though it’s probably year five or six of the spasmatics. Everybody loves the spasmatics of the 80s. They’re going to come back. And then sort of when that kind of wraps up, because it’s got to, due to the curfew, I think around 10:00 PM or 10:30 or something, that wraps up because of the neighboring houses. Everybody notices how much the Gaylord has grown up by the Denver Airport. There’s all these neighborhoods around it. We’re going to do the Club Fuego again, Bill. And you and I talked about this. I think you said you were going to bed last year.

(21:36):

I can’t remember if you ever made it over there or not, but I made it over there at 11 o’clock and it’s 11 to two. The thing went from like 11 to 3:30. Talk about getting shut down. The fire marshal, the Gaylord personnel, they kind of shut the thing down last year because it went way over time because everybody was having such a good time. I think it’s booked 11:00 to 2:00. Lane Terrio from CEO of Independence Dental, who used to DJ many years ago, has agreed to do it again. We’ve made a big investment. We got LED lights, pyrotechnics. It’s going to be an incredible club environment last year, and they’re going to do that thing from 11 till 2:00, or if it’s like last year, maybe even till 3:00 or 3:30 again.

Bill Neumann (22:20):

I did not make it. You told

Brian Colao (22:23):

Me you were going to come for a few minutes at 11:00. So I’m going to call upon you again this time and say, look, I understand if you want to go to bed by midnight or something, but you need to get there at 11 o’clock and see this thing so you’re not next time we do this show saying, “What is that thing you’re doing?” You need to show up so you know what it is.

Bill Neumann (22:42):

All right. I’ll be there at least for the first half hour. How about

Brian Colao (22:46):

That? 30, 45 minutes, Bill, you can do it. You’re not that old. You can hang

Bill Neumann (22:51):

In there for

Brian Colao (22:51):

Bill Neumann (22:52):

Minutes.That is funny. That sounds good. But

Brian Colao (22:56):

People loved it. I mean, before we moved, people loved it and they said, “Please do it again because so many young people go to this event. I understand, Bill, you want to go to sleep.” But so many young people attend this event and they don’t want to go to sleep. And they’re like, “Hey, we understand that the party outside has to end at 10:30, 11:00 because of the neighboring houses and we can’t blast drones in the sky and rock out with bands and stuff because we’re going to wake them up, but you got to give us something to do. ” And that’s what Club Fuego is about. And people had a blast last year. So we’re going to do that well into the night again on that Thursday. And then I guess we’re going to wake up Friday. Hopefully everybody gets up. You can party all night, but you better get up on Friday because we’ve got an international panel again that was incredibly successful last year.

(23:43):

We’re bringing back people from around the world from Europe and Australia and Canada, and they’re going to be on this panel. Then we’ve got, of course, buy side and sell side. And it’s important this year because the M&A markets are starting to pick up a little bit again. So understanding what is going on buy side now, what is going on sell side now are really, really important. We’ve got sort of a CEO round table also on Friday. And then when all that kind of ends, we’re going to end up with Nick Sabins. So that Friday will be an incredible day to do this.

Bill Neumann (24:17):

Excellent. And I would be remiss if I didn’t give you all a discount code here. And Brian and the team at Daikema were very generous with the discount that they provided us this year. So the code is GDN, like group dentistry now, GDN26, like the year, GDN26, and you save $250, which is no joke. And I don’t know if Brian was super thrilled about that 250, but we got it out of them. So take advantage of it.

Brian Colao (24:51):

No, we like to see people come. We really, really do. And like I said, I’m sure it’s not me. I’m sure my event team that watches the P&L on this, yeah, if somebody’s going to be, probably everybody in the industry by now knows Laura Blaine. Probably Laura’s not too thrilled about it. But look, I really believe it’s important that people attend this and we want to do everything we can to make it as affordable as possible for people to attend because it’s just an incredible event.

Bill Neumann (25:20):

Yeah. And speaking of that, how is it, and we know you run into this issue every year with hotel room availability. So we want to make sure that people, if you’re going to go, you register early and you get your hotel room.

Brian Colao (25:38):

Yeah, we did something a little different this year. Some people didn’t like it, but I think on the whole, it was really good to do it this way. Everybody wants DSOs to attend this event. Obviously, the DSOs need to be there because it’s a DSO event. All the vendors that sponsor want the DSOs there so that they can talk to the DSOs and network with the DSOs and hopefully make sales and do things like that with the DSOs. So what we did this year, Bill, is we offered hotel rooms first because everybody should remember if you don’t, the thing always sells out by April. It’s always all the rooms are gone. The conference is July or August, but it sells out by April. So what we did this year is we offered rooms to the DSOs first because everybody wants DSOs there. And they very aggressively gobbled up a lot of the rooms.

(26:25):

There are rooms left, but the DSOs had 30-day period to kind of go in there and get first opportunity to get their rooms, all the executives and CEOs and people like that. That period has come to an end, or it’s going to end, I think, in the next couple days here. And then we’re going to open up rooms to everybody else. But when we open up rooms to everybody else, my belief, Bill, I might be a little bit off, but we’re already 60% sold out. I mean, just by offering these rooms, which is the right thing to do so we could get as many DSO executives there as possible because everybody wants to network with the DSO executives and the decision makers. But now that we’ve gone through that process of giving them first opportunity, there may only be like 40% of the rooms left when it opens up here in the next couple days.

(27:15):

So more so than ever, people that listen to this need to pounce on those rooms because they’re 100% going to be sold out.

Bill Neumann (27:22):

Yeah. And all’s not lost if you somehow don’t get a room. I mean, the good news you talked about the neighborhood growing up around the Gaylord, where there are more hotels than ever that are now relatively close within a couple of minute Uber ride. I don’t know if there’s any that are walkable, but there’s certainly some that are pretty close by that if you have to, if you can’t get in, then you can always … There’s some … And you’ll probably have no-

Brian Colao (27:50):

A couple intoxicated people that did make the walk last year to a couple of the closest ones in the middle of the night. And they made it, they lived. So I can confirm for you that it may not be your first choice, but there are some that are walkable, in fact, that people have made that trek and done it. But yeah, there’s probably 15 hotels within a five to 10 minute Uber ride. And look, we’re going to have another 26, 2,700 people there. So some people, just until they build another tower, they are building a tower at the Gaylord and we’re under contract for another five years and that tower will be open in two. So we’ll see that during our contract term. But until they open up that next tower, we are going to be a little challenged on the rooms and there are many, many hundreds of people that stay at different places offsite.

(28:40):

And look, maybe it’s not totally ideal, but they have a good meeting. They get to get all their networking in. They get to see everybody they want to see. You can participate in every single thing we have going on, even if you’re staying offsite. I think some of the people, Bill, that went to Club Fuego till about 3:00 in the morning, the Uber might have been a little off and they had to walk. But with the exception of like 3:00 in the morning, you can participate in pretty much anything that’s going on and easily get back to your hotel.

Bill Neumann (29:13):

Oh, that’s great. Well, I appreciate the update on the event. Like I said, lucky number 13, this is July 15th through July 17th. Again, a lot of people come in early and leave late. So there’s always events pre-meeting, of course, during the meeting, a lot going on. That’s the other thing that I always fail to mention, but is really important. And people go to these meetings, I don’t know if you’ve ever done a poll, but I would bet that number one is probably the networking and secondarily, probably pretty close is the content, but people really are there to talk to other people, whether it’s vendors talking to DSOs, DSOs talking to vendors or DS So talking amongst themselves, and you’ve always built in a lot of great quality networking time, which is important.

Brian Colao (30:06):

Yeah. Bill, and we’re doing something a little different this year that I should point out before we finish here today. We’re ending the event, not ending it, but we’re ending the main stage at 4:30 on Thursday, because we used to go till 6:00, 6:30, and I noticed something, and we used to break for the breakout sessions, I think around 1:30 or 2:00 or something like that. And what I noticed is the people that want to go to the breakouts, they’re passionate, they’re going to go. They’re going to go no matter when I do the breakouts. And the bar started to fill out last year, I think a little too early. While it was great that we had networking going on, and I understand we had more people at this event than any other event in the history of the industry. And I know people want to get down to that bar and start networking, but it was a little challenging for me starting at around 3:00, 3:30 in the afternoon to see the room really start to thin out.

(30:59):

So what we’re doing this year is we’re going to end the big stage at 4:30, and we’re going to end it with Rick Patino. Everybody should want to hear Coach Patino talk. So my hope is we’ll go back to say three years ago when that room was packed right up on Thursday until we were done. And then people can start their networking at 4:30 if they want. If they want to go to the breakouts, that’s when the breakouts will be, 4:30 to 6:00. And I know everybody that wants to go to the breakouts will go to the breakouts, but the ones that just want to network, you can start that at 4:30. And the hope is that you’ll stay most of the day on Thursday and not abandon some of the panels and some of the presentations to go network. That’s a new thing that just sort of started happening in the last year or two because the networking has just become next level that people are starting to skip out a little early and start their networking a little early.

(31:52):

So my hope is by restructuring this year, nobody has to do that. Everybody can hang with the main stage till 4:30, and then you can start your networking at 4:30 instead of 6:00 or 6:30. So you got all that extra networking time.

Bill Neumann (32:07):

And I’ll just give everyone someone who has a decade of experience going to this event now that I get a lot of my quality networking and meetings in on Tuesday and early Wednesday before things really get started. And then I can focus my time on all the great content that you’ve put together. So I learned that the hard way, coming in on Wednesday and just being there for the cocktail event, the kickoff dinner and really having to juggle networking and the content that was there. So I think if you can try and do some on the front end, then that seems to have worked out really, really well for me anyway.

Brian Colao (32:57):

I mean, Bill, last year, for example, let’s say we had 2,600 people at the event, which is roughly what we had. We had about a thousand people there, maybe more, maybe 1,200 there Monday and Tuesday. Most events, as you know, Bill, if you just get a thousand people period, they think, “Yay, that’s a great event.” We’ve had a thousand people there on Monday or Tuesday. And the reason those people are there is they want to get pressure-free networking. They want to say, if you’re wandering around the Gaylord Monday afternoon or Tuesday morning, it’s pressure-free. It’s not frantic. People aren’t running around. There’s no main stage going on. Nobody’s late for anything. And you can make appointments or meetings with people and just sit there. And I see people relaxed. And it looks like a lot of people have told me, a lot of sponsors, they closed a lot of deals on Tuesday because they had an uninterrupted hour, sometimes 90 minutes to sit there with a prospect and really answer questions.

(33:54):

I’ve seen people in the lobby and at the bar doing demos on their laptops. I mean, you’d never be able to do a demo on Thursday in the middle of all the action, but on Monday, on Tuesday, even Wednesday morning, people are doing full-blown demos. Some of the vendors have reserved rooms with permission of Daikema up there to have the rooms Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday for those people that are there to have really pressure-free extended meetings where everybody’s got plenty of time to talk about everything. Because once you get to Wednesday night, you’re at that Woman in DSO event, which is incredible. And then you get to the reception, it moves quick. Next thing you know, it’s Thursday morning and fireworks or I guess drones. We don’t have fireworks. Drones are going off Thursday night. Next thing you know, it’s Friday morning and the event’s wrapping up.

(34:49):

I mean, it just happened so quick.

Bill Neumann (34:52):

Well, I’m excited. I’m registered and I already have my flight, believe it or not. So I’m ready to go. And again, everyone, if you’re considering this, if it’s your first time, I mean, where have you been unless you’re new to the industry, but we’ll give you a pass if you’re new to the industry. But definitely make sure you register, use our code GDN26, save 250, and it’s the 15th of July through the 17th of July in Denver. And just make sure you do it well in advance. It’s word of advice. And if you can get in early, I would say do that as well, and you won’t regret it. Appreciate it as always, Brian. It’s been great partnering with you and being able to share this history. I feel like we’ve shared a good chunk of it, 10 years of the 13 that it’s been around.

(35:50):

And I’m really excited to see this journey through DSO history that you’re all putting together. I can only imagine it’s going to be high production quality. There’s going to be

Brian Colao (35:58):

Some- It’s a big budget. I’m not going to tell everybody what I spent, but a lot. It’s a big budget production. It’s not some small thing because just before, I know we’re wrapping up, but I wanted to create something that whether you’d been in the business for 25 years or you were a brand new person, you would want to see. And virtually every DSO of any sort of substance, it’s possible there’s a two office DSO that we miss somewhere, but any DSO of substance is going to be featured in some way in this video. And there’s going to be milestones and all sorts of things that occurred in the industry that were landmark things that occurred. So whether you’ve been in the industry for 25 years, you’re going to be curious to see where your organization ended up in history. And by the way, group dentistry now is featured in this as well.

(36:52):

I just should say that to everybody. And I want people like Bill and Kim will be up there like, “Hey, where are they going to talk about group dentistry now?” I want that kind of excitement. So whether you’re brand new and you don’t know anything, of course it’ll be really educational then, or you’ve been in the space for 25 years, you’re going to be curious as to where your organization’s place and history is. So I’m just really excited about the journey through DSO short film.

Bill Neumann (37:19):

Excellent. I think we’ll leave it there, but I’m super excited. I wish it was coming up sooner than it is, but it gives everybody plenty of time to get … Yeah, I don’t want to rush it for you. You still got a lot of planning to do.

Speaker 1 (37:31):

Yeah.

Bill Neumann (37:32):

All right. Well, thank you, Brian, and thank your team as well. I mean, you’ve got a lot of people behind the scenes that make this event what it is. So it’s a big deal and has become the main event, one of the biggest … I mean, it is the largest meeting in … I don’t know if it’s the largest meeting in the dental industry, because I guess there are some other things that are going on out there, there’s CE base, but certainly in the DSO space and definitely rival. I think from a networking perspective, I don’t think there’s anything out there that touches it from networking, which I find to be probably the most important thing, at least to me. So we appreciate you doing it for the industry. It’s not easy and it’s not inexpensive and it’s a lot of your time while you’re also doing your other job or jobs.

(38:25):

So we’re looking forward to it. And thanks everybody for watching this podcast. We appreciate your support and we’ll see you all in Colorado in just a couple of months really. So thanks, Brian.

Brian Colao (38:40):

Thank you.

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