The Group Dentistry Now Show: The Voice of the DSO Industry – Episode 201

Ranked the #1 DSO Podcast!

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

We welcome special guests Dr. Tony Molina, partner at Guardian Dentistry Partners, and Bob Edwards, National Accounts Director for Jazz Imaging.

Join us as we dive into the evolution of imaging in dentistry, the challenges and successes faced by DSOs, and how Guardian Dentistry Partners is revolutionizing support for dental practices. Dr. Molina shares his journey from private practice to Guardian Dentistry Partners, a DSO with 170 offices across 12 states, while Bob discusses Jazz Imaging’s innovative subscription model, the Jazz Club, which is transforming how dental practices manage their imaging needs.

In this episode, you’ll learn about:

• The importance of imaging in modern dentistry
• The challenges of integrating different imaging systems across multiple practices
• How Jazz Imaging is addressing common pain points with their unique sensor solutions
• Insights into the future of the DSO industry and the digital transformation of dental practices

Whether you’re a dental professional, a DSO leader, or simply interested in the future of dentistry, this episode is packed with valuable insights and practical advice.

Don’t forget to subscribe to our channel for more episodes and visit groupdentistrynow.com for the latest DSO news and updates!

To learn more about Jazz Imaging visit – https://www.jazzimaging.com/ or email Bob Edwards – bob@jazzimaging.com

To learn more about Guardian Dentistry Partners visit – https://www.guardiandentistry.com/

Guests: Dr. Tony Molina, Guardian Dentistry Partners & Bob Edwards, Jazz Imaging

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DSO podcast transcript:

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 enjoyed today’s show. you 

Bill Neumann: Welcome, everyone, to the Group Dentistry Now show. I’m Bill Neumann. And as always, thanks for watching us, whether it’s on YouTube or on our website, groupdentistrynow.com, or maybe you’re listening to us on Apple, Spotify, or Google. But however you consume the content, we are happy you are here. And we’re coming up on, or we may at this point be at, episode 200. So we have quite a few of these podcasts under our belt. And this is A lot of fun, get to know people, I think in a way that you don’t always have the opportunity to. And I know both Dr. Molina and Bob pretty well. These are the two guests we have on the show here today. But I always learn something new when we’re having these conversations. So I’d like to welcome Dr. Tony Molina. He is the lead partner at Guardian Dentistry Partners. Tony, thanks for being here today.

Dr. Tony Molina: Oh, thanks for having me on. Appreciate it.

Bill Neumann: This is going to be fun. And we have Bob Edwards. He is the National Accounts Director for Jazz Imaging. And if you go to any DSO shows, Bob’s probably there. So good to see him.

Bob Edwards: Good to see you. Thank you for having me today. Pleasure.

Bill Neumann: Yeah, this is going to be a lot of fun and we’ll get to know Tony, his role at Guardian Dentistry Partners a little bit more about Guardian and then also get to know Bob and what Jazz Imaging is doing really to revolutionize the industry as it comes to imaging and just their model is really, really unique and serves DSO as well. First up, why don’t we start with you, Dr. Molina, a little bit about your background and you know, your role at Guardian. And I guess before you do that, I just have to say, Guardian holds a special place in the group dentistry now companies, organizations heart, we’ve had the opportunity to attend your Dr. Kartner meetings, and you have really yet to know the team really, really well. And just kind of have grown up with Guardian as Guardian has started. Back in 2019, I believe, you were also on our 2020 Emerging Groups to Watch winners. And I knew, Dr. Molina, you were there at the beginning. So I’ll stop and I’ll let you fill in the rest.

Dr. Tony Molina: Sure. So my background is I was in private practice in, uh, Key to Skane, Florida, which is a, uh, it’s kind of a suburb of Miami, Florida for 25 years. In 2012, I moved to Dallas and at that point got into the, uh, DSO business. I was approached by some people about, uh, accumulating some offices. I found a business partner and I, uh, went from one to nine offices in about a eight, nine month period. I did that from 2013 to about 2019. And then in 2019, my family decided that we wanted to move back from Dallas to Miami. And I was looking for someone who I could partner with and maybe move some of my offices. And I met the people at Guardian. And so in 2019, five of my nine offices became part of Guardian Dental Partners. They were offices 8 through 13, and so I then came back to South Florida, became a business development partner, met people, started a Florida group. Fast forward to today, we have 170 offices in 12 states. Um, uh, we don’t do as much business development meeting with new partners. We’re with that slow to a bit, but I’ve managed some of the vendor relationships. And one of the ones that I manage, which I enjoy tremendously managing is the jazz imaging, uh, partnership that we have. Um, we’ve been working with them for, I guess, a little over what a year and a half to two years, two years. I’m not, I’m not, I don’t remember, but. Um, it’s been a great relationship and I look forward to talking about it here.

Bill Neumann: Thanks, Dr. Molina. Bob, a little bit about your backgrounds and your role at Jazz and then what Jazz does.

Bob Edwards: Yeah, thanks, Bill. Appreciate it. My background, I have been in imaging now, shoot, since 1998. Got into medical sales in 1997 right out of Oregon State University and got into medical sales. and then got into imaging right away in 98, contrast media on the hospital side, and got me into every modality of x-ray. And then from there, actually was presented with an opportunity in dentistry, being married to a dentist, to switch over to imaging on the dental side. And I did that 2008 all the way up until now. And moved jazz, and have mainly been a sensor, with a sensor company the entire time, that is it.

Bill Neumann: Well, that’s great, Bob. And Jazz is definitely kind of shaking things up with their model. It’s an organization and we enjoy working with Jazz. And first of all, I should thank Jazz for sponsoring this podcast and being a part of it. gives us the opportunity to bring people like Dr. Molina on so our audience gets to know more about what he does and how Guardian and some of the DSOs operate. So let’s talk, because Bob, it sounds like you’ve got a lot of experience with imaging and sensors, but Dr. Molina also does, and he… maybe get a little bit of a history lesson from both of you on, you know, the evolution of imaging and maybe, Dr. Molina, over your years of practice, maybe what you’ve used, what you’ve experienced, the good and the bad, and then maybe how you ended up partnering with Jazz. I mean, it’s a lot in one question, but we can take a little bite-sized pieces.

Dr. Tony Molina: Sure. I would tell you that I started my initial foray into digital dentistry was buying an AccuRay from Henry Schein. And this was probably around 2000, I think somewhere maybe. Yeah, probably around 2000. It was not a great system. We had a lot of issues with it. It was very, very buggy. I remember that from there we They kind of, we’ve went over and my, this is when I was in private practice, we got the Texas radiographic system and that worked very well, a lot better. Um, obviously from, you know, that what lasted me for probably, so that was 2000. I sold my office in 2012. That point I was, uh, I, I started acquiring the practices in Dallas. They had XDR. If I go into the history here, XDR, and I forgot the software, the software program was XDR, it was a sensor out of California. And so I have, that was, we probably had 15 to 20 sensors across all the offices, so there was always something going on with the sensors and a lot of sending back and overnighting and whatnot. Then when Guardian started, the way we acquired practice is we partner. And so we’ve had every kind of sensor across all of these offices that you can think of. And at some point we were looking for a way to standardize the relationship. And that’s how we began working with jazz. And I mean, I can get into it more. I don’t want to monopolize the time here. So, um, um, we can get into that a little bit more, but that’s sort of my history with sensors, uh, good, bad, um, and, and now very good with, uh, jazz.

Bill Neumann: Sure, and so when you’re acquiring or partnering with different groups and practices, they’re using whatever system they have, right? And so you’ve got all these different partners on different systems, and so then I guess that led you to Jazz, and we can talk a little bit about why and how that’s working out. How about you, Bob? From your perspective, I mean, is that a pretty similar story? Do you see a lot of DSOs in groups where they’re using different types of sensors and systems?

Bob Edwards: Yeah. I mean, that’s exactly it. Usually it was, if you have the software in the office, you also have the sensor because a lot of the sensors, majority of the sensors only work with that software the way it’s intended to do it. So a lot of times, you know, Dr. Molina is not really getting into it, but the headache of when you acquire an office, it’s not always the same software. It’s not always the same, you know, backbones and it’s definitely not always the same sensors. So, There’s a lot of times you have to put different vendor hats on when you have to see if your sensor is under warranty, if you have to send it in, what company does this sensor belong to. But yeah, for the majority of it, that’s exactly it. A sensor and a software went together and now we don’t have to necessarily do that anymore, which is nice with jazz imaging.

Bill Neumann: So you’re really leading into the next question, which is really, you know, the stressors and some of the pain points with sensors. Dr. Molina, maybe a little bit more insight into that.

Dr. Tony Molina: Sure. Um, so obviously the, the, the stressors are, uh, when a bot to Bob’s point is that a lot of times you have to match the software and the, um, and, and the sensor to each other. Right. And so once you pick a software and you go with it, you’re now sort of married to the sensor, uh, because it’s disruptive to change the software. If you decide to change the sensor or go with another company. Uh, that’s one of the pain, I would say one of the big pain points. Another pain point is that upfront cost of the sensor, right? Um, they’re very expensive to buy. I know about enough of them. And, and so when you look at, at pain points, uh, those are two, the other, the third one is support, right? And, and having to pay for warranties and having to pay and, and what, what level of support you get. Um, if I want, if you want, I can get into the benefits. One of the reasons we, we, we, uh, one of the, well, among those three pain points jazz solved for a lot of those, right. When we were looking. So at one point, as we got to a larger number of practices, we were looking for a vendor to work with that we could, that would help solve some of those problems. Right? Because we didn’t want to be going to five, six, seven different vendors trying to, you know, get a relationship going with them. If we could go to one sensor vendor and get a relationship that worked for all of our offices, that would be ideal. And Jazz did that because Jazz works with all the different softwares. So now we don’t have to disrupt the offices and they’re, you know, And their software, because anytime you have to change software in an office, you have to retrain the teams. It’s very not, it’s not, it’s a difficult process. Uh, the pricing was a very reasonable, it was a lot better pricing. And, uh, so that helped, uh, obviously any ESL or any office is always price conscious. So, uh, you know, the pricing helped a great deal. And then also the, um, The, the, the relationship in terms of support to support has been excellent because we want to make sure if, if we’re, as we convert to being primarily a jazz sensor company, we have one point of contact for support. And it’s very easy to, to, to, to just point doctors in one direction. So what we’ve done over the last year, year and a half is slowly every time a doctor needs a new sensor. We don’t really dictate to them, but we say, Hey, we have this great relationship with jazz. Can you, let’s give this, let’s give this a try. And I would say 99% of the time it works out the, the central works just fine. Everybody’s very happy. And if some issue comes up, I’ve been on the calls with their technical support people and they’ve handled them very well. So, you know, it’s been very beneficial to us from not just a good product, but a good product. that is supported well. And that’s my responsibility is to make sure that if I, if we as a company decide to go with a product that, that people, that we don’t mess up anything in the offices, a lot of offices. So, uh, it’s been a great relationship so far.

Bill Neumann: Yeah, that’s great. And you’ve got a whole host of questions I have based on what you just said there. But, you know, you talked about something which is change management. And so you’re, you know, you’ve got docs that are using a certain sensor and, and then, you know, you’re, you’re, well, you have the relationship with Jazz. Are they, are they open to that? I mean, I’m sure in some cases you probably get a little bit of pushback, but it sounds like most of the time, you know, if they, there’s, they get the buy-in, they’re happy with the, The solution, I mean, is just change management in general, I guess, is probably more of an over. Is that a big challenge that you have as a DSL?

Dr. Tony Molina: Oh yeah, definitely. I mean, you know, one of, one of the, uh, strengths of, of, of Guardian is as we partner with our practices. So as partners, we try to be the least disruptive possible, right? We don’t change management softwares. We don’t change a lot of processes. We may change a payroll vendor or something like that, but that’s usually pretty neutral to the office. Patient facing the patient, no patient should know that Guardian exists in any of our offices. We’re very, in the background in terms of our support structure. So when we go and when we decide that we want to partner with somebody on a vendor relationship, we have to make sure that it’s the least disruptive process possible. So, I would tell you early days, the first maybe 10 or 15 people who needed a new sensor, there was a little bit of an introduction and a process of getting comfortable. Several of the doctors wanted to demo them. And, you know, Jazz Sensor, Bob, and Jocelyn were great about letting people demo them. We even had a couple of partners that wanted someone from jazz to help them integrate it into the practice. And they were very great at accommodating it because honestly, it’s not that necessary. You, again, across a lot of offices, everybody wants different kind of support levels. Most offices, it’s a plug and play very easy with some, uh, support that we can get online. We, you know, we worked out how we were going to do that and it’s been a great relationship, uh, that way. So, um, Yeah, a case I, we do have one or two partners who still stuck with their sensor because they didn’t like the, you know, something about jazz and, and we support that. We allow them to do that, but it’s once they’ve tried it, 99% of them have loved the sensor and have no problems with it.

Bill Neumann: That’s great. That can be certainly a challenge, especially with the number of locations and partners that you have. Bob, talk a little bit more about that because, Dr. Molina, really, you touched on the support and the training aspect of things, and I think it’s important because When you’re servicing somebody that has one or two locations, that’s relatively easy to do. But when you have multiple locations scattered all over the country and different levels of support needed, that can be a real challenge for an organization. So can you talk a little bit about how Jazz handles that?

Bob Edwards: The sensor is a very unique product because it is usually purchased by the dentist who never takes an x-ray. It is handled by everybody in the office and moved from operatory to operatory, plugged in, plugged out, cleaned in a mouth, out of a mouth, in a sheath, out of a sheath. And then it’s handed off. And really, it needs to be able to produce a very nice picture so the doctor can see it and make sure and treatment and produce and treatment plan accordingly with it. And you have to be able to do that. If you can check those boxes, you’re doing OK to start off with. But a lot of times, you know, you can’t if you didn’t have the right, if you had a software you had to kind of use that sensor. With us, with Jazz, and what we do, we make two products, we have two sensors, the solo and the minor, and really we made sure that we could plug into all software natively without the pain of twain, the way it was supposed to. So before when I was kind of saying a lot of companies out there, you know, a jack of all trades, they cover all these imaging products, master of none. I like to think that we really are the master of sensors because that’s all we focus on when you call in for support. You’re not hitting, you really are hitting our phone tree of two, two lines, one for sales, two for support. It’s not an all or nothing. A lot of dentists think that, you know, oh, hey, cause they have that, they have that mentality of, I have to switch software. I have to switch all my sensors. That’s not it. We want you to keep, we want you to maintain your workflow, keep it safe, keep it solid. And then with that, you can just add a jazz sensor. You know, and I can go, I can go on and on about it, but really add a jazz sensor in there. It’s very easy. Our support is excellent. When you call in, we really remote, take a look, see if there’s something we can fix inside internally. 90% of the time, it is the sensor, because they are, I hate to say it now, in 2025, it’s a commodity. It’s a tire on a car. It’s the most traveled piece of equipment in a dental office, and they all break, and they all go down. None of them are bulletproof, and none of them last forever. So, like Dr. Molina, they’re always having to Think about replacing sensors, especially when you have that many offices. A sensor goes down. Being married to a dentist, I know what her day is like when a sensor is out of rotation. And usually she will say something like, I didn’t get a lunch. We had to kind of move it around fast, and I didn’t get to get my break. And I was like, OK. And sometimes that makes my night a little interesting.

Bill Neumann: Well, let’s move on to how Guardian and you, Dr. Molina, evaluate sensors. So when you were starting to look for maybe a single option or limiting the options, not limiting the options, but really focusing on one partner, what’s the evaluation process like? And maybe it just doesn’t have to be just for sensors, but in general, how do you evaluate bringing in new vendors and new

Dr. Tony Molina: So we’ll go out to, uh, the different vendors. If we’re trying to look for a specific solution in this case, obviously sensors. We’ll look, we’ll go out to the various vendors and assess what that relationship would look like. Right. So what does it look like from a, um, uh, um, a support structure, what it would look like from ease of use, obviously cost is also part of the process. Once we decide, okay, we like these two to three sensors, then we put in a pilot program into one of our groups. where we’ll do five or six offices, usually with one of our lead partners, and also with our clinical director, Dr. Barakat, to let them assess. And obviously, as Bob mentioned, one of the key people here when we want feedback on these is the dental assistants who are actually using the product, right? So if it’s in the sensor, if it’s an intro camera, whatever it is, We want feedback from all the teams on, okay, what did you think of the ease of use? What did you think of the ease of installation, right? Because you also don’t want to make it something difficult to use, to set up. And so we take all of these factors into account. and then basically put it into practice because you know everything sounds great on paper but you know when the rubber hits the road that’s when you really know if the if the image quality is there how difficult it is we also like to if if it’s something where It plugs into our software. We want to see it work across three or four different software platforms, right? Because it may work great with one, might not work as good with others. And so that’s all, all of the part of the evaluation process that we use. And at the end of the day, then we kind of sit down. You know, clinical director, uh, obviously finance people, myself and, and, and sit down and decide, okay, this is, this is the direction we want to go in and then, you know, present it and, and make the decision that way. And then we talked to our CEO and CFO and, and, and go for there.

Bill Neumann: Maybe we go to what I find really unique about jazz is the jazz club. So Bob, maybe you can kind of lead the discussion on what is jazz club and why is that? So why does that resonate so well with group practices and DSOs?

Bob Edwards: One, the Jazz Club, let me back up with that, you know, kind of piggyback on Dr. Molina, you know, the things that we try to make sure, first and foremost, is, you know, patient comfort. Is the sensor comfortable with the patient? What’s the ease of use? How easy is it to use? How easy is it to integrate with their software, which we can do very simplicity. And then also, the image quality. making sure that we produce that nice picture for the doctor and the staff. And then on top of that, two other things are support and warranty. So with the Jazz Club, We make it very easy. It’s a subscription-based model that we do. One, because Dr. Molina mentioned the prices of sensors are very expensive when you have to buy them. I always tell people there’s the initial cost of purchase and then there usually is the continuous cost of ownership that you have to pay for that warranty or that insurance program that you have. With Jazz Club, we make it very simple, very easy. It’s a 30-day agreement. Being a privately held company, we can easily do this out of San Jose, California. It’s $498, $498 to sign up, activate a sensor. And then with that is $139 a month. per sensor, and the sensor is fully warranted, fully supported, meaning that we will do the installation. It’s a quick, easy installation of us just loading the file drivers for your software, for the Jazz sensor, and away you go. It’s a very quick, easy process. And then with that, Um, if anything happens to the sensor, this is the most important thing. Everything happens to the sensor. It’s like saying that you have the same exact tires and you’ve never changed your tires ever. And you drive your car every day, thousand miles, and you just, and it doesn’t happen. You’re eventually going to have to get new tires, new sensors. They go down, they go flat. You’re on the side of the road. And so with jazz, we make it very quick and easy to get you back up and running. Meaning that if one of Dr. Um, late his office is if a guardian dental partner, um, has an issue with a jazz sensor. They would call you as support. We’re remote in for about 5-10 minutes, most. We’re not here to keep you on the phone. We’re not here to convince you it’s your fault. We will just want to see if it’s a software related problem. If it’s not, majority of the time it is sensor. And what we’re going to do is proactively put a brand new sensor in a box with a return label. and then ship that out to you immediately. And then all we want you to do is to put the old sensor back in that box, use the return label and ship it back, plug your new sensor in and you’re right back on the road. Easy. And that’s the Jazz Club is that it’s a 30 day agreement. You have 30 days to test drive it all around. We want you happy. We don’t want people, we’ve had some people and like Dr. William mentioned, it doesn’t happen a lot. But it does happen every now and then to where someone just wants to stick with what they have or creatures of habit. It’s okay. We understand. No harm, no foul. At least you tried us. And we just want to make sure that we part friends. And there’s always an opportunity again to look at jazz if you needed to be. But again, that doesn’t really ever happen. But we want to be easy to work with. We want to be simple. We want to take, there’s a lot of other things that Dr. Mullen asked to worry about with all these other offices. sensors should not be one of them because they’re going down. I mean, in all his offices, I guarantee there’ll probably be one sensor today that needs to be replaced somewhere.

Bill Neumann: And Dr. Molina, maybe you can talk a little bit about how that subscription model, the Jazz Club has, has worked for Guardian.

Dr. Tony Molina: Um, well, it’s worked very well because obviously it, your upfront costs go down to your CapEx on goes is, is not as A lot less than if you’re going with what I would consider a more traditional sensor model and acquisition model. And then the monthly is, you know, not just warranty, it’s also updates. So, I mean, any kind of thing, software updates, things of that nature are run all along with that. The monthly cost, if you compare that to paying for a warranty for a traditional sensor, it’s about the same. So what we’re getting is, we’re getting a plug-and-play sensor with really good cost and really great quality. One of the things I didn’t mention was the image quality. We have to satisfy 170 plus doctors on terms of image quality. So, you know, obviously you can’t, that’s hard to do, but we’ve been able to solve that with, with jazz, with, you know, minimal problems here and there, maybe a small lit or so, or, or a one doctor who just preferred his old sensor. So.

Bill Neumann: And I know that we talked a little bit about this before we started the record, but there are, you know, you mentioned the pricing, you’re really transparent at Jazz. Guardian, you know, maybe has a little bit of a different program because just how large the organization is, but very, very similar. That subscription model works well where you have a single practice or you’re a small group or whether you’re somebody like Guardian, that is one of the larger group practices that exists.

Bob Edwards: Yeah. One thing we do that’s really nice is, and Dr. Molina was correct. I mean, when I was representing sensors in 2008, we were selling sensors for $9,000 each, and it came with a one-year warranty. So at month 13, we would hand the customer, the office, a bill, if you will, an insurance policy saying, hey, do you want to keep this sensor warranted and supported? If you do, you need to pay this fee and we’ll replace your sensor. But again, they just got done paying, you know, if they wanted two sensors, they paid $18,000 up front for two sensors that came with a one year warranty. And then month 13, they would have to usually pay something around another $2,000 for the year to keep those sensors warranted, something of that nature. And I’m being a little conservative there. The majority of the companies out there come with a two year warranty. But with us, with the Jazz Club, it’s very, very inexpensive to get started with jazz. It’s very, very inexpensive to add another sensor and then do it on a subscription-based model. So $4.98 and then really $1.39 a month. I always tell people, do your own numbers, run it, and it usually, usually makes sense for them. And again, we have to make sure we check all the boxes. It doesn’t matter if it was a free sensor. If you don’t have image quality, if you don’t have support, if you don’t have warranty, and you don’t have all those other things like patient comfort, ease of use, it doesn’t mean anything. So we make sure we check all those boxes. We do it very well. And people were satisfied. People were happy. We’ve been around since 2017. Really, really tapped into the DSO space around 2022. I got invited to come over and started with Jazz in 23. I met Dr. Molina, I believe, in Nashville, Tennessee at one of his meetings and really kicked it off from there. We got their attention and we just showed them what we do. And again, the proof is in the pudding. We have to make sure we put some sensors out there, show them we can do this. The proof of concept is there. And they said, yeah, this works. The thing we love about it too is that we don’t force jazz upon people. Dr. Molina will always recommend it to his partners and say, hey, give us a shot. When people see the numbers, they say, okay, for that price, let me give it a shot. Sometimes the price can be deceiving because they think it’s inexpensive or they’ll use the word cheap. And so they will think it’s a cheaply made sensor, something cheap. Nope, it’s not. It is a premium product. We just do it privately on a subscription based model, which really, really helps the office, really helps the entire dental service organization. And, you know, when you can keep doing that and keeping people happy daily, you start to have good relationships and it’s nice and it’s just really, really nice.

Bill Neumann: Yes, Melina, feedback from some of your practices, because Bob does, he makes a great point, which I was going to bring up, but you made it for me really is, I think it’s sometimes when you have a subscription model like this and the pricing is as reasonable as it is, everybody thinks, well, it must be an inferior product. And that’s just not the case. Dr. Molina, you mentioned you have 170 clinicians out there. You know, to try to keep the majority of them happy with the imaging, right, can be a real challenge. And it sounds like you’ve been able to do that with Jazz. But, you know, tell us a little bit about the feedback that you’ve had.

Dr. Tony Molina: So again, what’s interesting to me is in the early days when we first started working with jazz, I think there was more trepidation. There was more of a hesitancy along those lines because people would see it and say, okay, is this sort of some knockoff brand? Is this something like that? And so there was a bit of an education process on my part and on guardians part to say, listen, we’re not going to bring you a product that’s inferior. What we have here is a really good product. That’s a very well priced. So don’t think of it as cheap. Just think of it as the, you know, because of the size of our organization, we’re going to be able to get some breaks on pricing, but. It’s not something, and again, we refer to the pilot program, and we involve our clinical director in it, so that if anybody has questions about it, you know, you can validate to them, this is not a cheap product. It may be a well-priced product, but it’s not cheap, and then at that point, you also have to highlight some of the advantages. One of the reasons it may not be quite as expensive is that we’re not including a big software platform that you have to install in there. So it works with you. So you start to say, well, listen, the pricing is good. We hope you like the image quality. If you don’t, we’ll work on it or we won’t use it for you. And we eventually got over that. I don’t hear much anymore now that we’re about a year and a half into it. I don’t hear a lot of feedback from people uh, who have any doubt. And in fact, kind of as we go through our partner meetings and everybody kind of talks to each other and at different meeting at different levels, they’ve learned that, Hey, oh, you, you’ve been using it. What do you think? And, you know, we’ve gotten a lot of acceptance among existing users so that now it’s just, you know, it’s just accepted. Oh, I need, what are the issues we run into as someone with two sensors will call up, Hey, I need to replace my two sensors, but I really want four. And then I’m like, okay, wait, you got to make a business case for four. And you know, we have to work that out because they think, oh, it’s, it doesn’t cost that much. Let me get more sensors. So, you know, sometimes you have to control that a little bit, but you know, other than that, I mean, that’s, that’s been our experience. Once you get over that initial kind of. new product trepidation, and you back it up by having your docs talk to other docs that they know very well about who are using it, then we don’t have that problem. And then what they see it as is a value, something that’s a value at a very, very strong cost.

Bill Neumann: Well, that’s great. And I think as we get to the end of the podcast here, I’d like to try and get your final thoughts from both of you. And then I’d really like to get your thoughts on where the industry’s headed this year and where your organizations, any kind of insights you can give us as to what’s cooking at Guardian Dentistry Partners in 2025 and also for Jazz Imaging. So Tony, why don’t we start with you?

Dr. Tony Molina: So Guardian, what we’ve been focused on a lot is internal processes and make sure that everything that we do internally is best in class. So we’re working a lot on just making sure that we’re supporting our doctors. When we look at the letters DSO, we’ve switched from being a dental service organization to being a dental support organization. All we’re doing now is looking at all of our internal processes and making sure that we are supporting our doctors the best way we can. As far as where the industry is going, everything’s just becoming more and more digital. And to Bob’s earlier point, some of the early digital products are now getting a little commoditized. And so, you know, you’re seeing a great Uh, cost benefit there. And you’re also seeing that you’re not really risking quality because of course. The, the best, the most important thing that the sensor has to do is give people a good quality image they could use to diagnose. And so if it’s easy to use, it gives them a great image and it’s got a great cost. It’s a win-win for us. So.

Bill Neumann: Well, that’s great. Bob, how about you? What’s what’s a 2025 look like for jazz?

Bob Edwards: It’s been, it’s been wonderful. It’s going to be, uh, continue to grow again. Uh, I have to say 24 was a fabulous year for jazz. Um, and really because 23 was that great as well. We, we develop relationships, we get sensors out there. And once we can show, um, kind of all the things that Dr. Moina mentioned, and you can check all those boxes, make it easy, make it simple. Uh, people will pay attention and, uh, and a dental support organization like Guardian, um, they want that and they see it. And so then word of mouth gets out there. I’m now starting to see people come by from other dental DSOs that say, hey, my good friend over at this one is using it. Told me I have to take a look. Can you show me? And we say, absolutely. And we show it to them. And once they see it, we go through the same exact process of proving what we can do, showing what we can do, backing up what we say we can do. It’s a support and warranty. and people are taking notice and it’s a very easy, simple way to get involved with jazz imaging right away. The other thing is too is that we are, we’re a privately held company in San Jose, California, but we manufacture our sensors in San Jose. That’s why we’re able to keep all of our costs down and pass those savings on to the DSOs, pass them on to the dental practices. is because we don’t outsource anything. We don’t outsource. 90% of the sensors nowadays are made overseas. And a lot of now support companies have now outsourced their support out of the United States as well. Jazz Imaging, we’re all under one roof in San Jose, California. We manufacture the sensors in-house. So right where our sensors are made is right next to where our support team sits. It’s right next to where Jocelyn, who’s our VP of Business Development, she sits in the same office. Todd Miller, our president, founder, CEO, is in the same office. Our software engineers are all there. So the nice thing is they’re all there together as a team. We make two products and we get those out the door. We answer the phones and we just want to get you back on the road running quickly and easily. And that’s really, once a sensor just does what it says it’s supposed to do and you don’t have the headaches, people take notice. And that’s what we like to do.

Bill Neumann: Well, thanks, Bob. If anybody in the audience wants to contact you or find out more about Jazz Imaging or about Jazz Club, how do they do that?

Bob Edwards: Well, great question. Two, they can always get a hold of me, bob at jazzimaging.com. It’s a very simple email. Again, bob at jazzimaging.com. But we always want to send people to our website as well. We try to send them over to jazzimaging.com. We try to be full transparent, full disclosure, take a look. All of our pricing is on there. We’re actually an e-commerce service. So believe it or not, you actually place your order just like you would like Amazon. Uh, you set up an account, you hit shop, you check out and your sensor is sent to you. It’s very easy. Uh, everyone can look at their own accounts. They see it. And so, um, I encourage everyone to go to jazz imaging.com. And if you have any questions, anything at all, if you want to try a sensor, please let me know. Email me, bob at jazz imaging.com. Happy to help you out. Happy to get involved and happy to have you see grow just like a guardian dello partners.

Bill Neumann: Yeah, that’s great. Thanks, Bob. And we’ll drop the URL jazzimaging.com in the show notes and then your email address as well in the show notes. And Dr. Molina, if somebody wants to contact you to find out how you do things at Guardian Dentistry Partners or maybe we’ve got somebody out there that is looking to work for a dental support organization or maybe partner with a dental support organization with their practice or their group, how do they do so?

Dr. Tony Molina: Yeah, you can find me Tony Molina, uh, in LinkedIn would be one of the sources there, but the other one would be dr Molina at guardian dental partners.com, uh, would be, is, uh, uh, is the way to reach me. Um, uh, there are, there’s our website also guardian dental partners. And so there’s just multiple ways to reach out to me. So, and if not just come up to me, if you see me at a meeting or whatever, and we can chat.

Bill Neumann: That’s great. And we’ll make sure we drop all those, your LinkedIn handle. Bob will put yours in there too so people can reach out. Everybody seems to like to reach out on LinkedIn. But you can use old-fashioned email as well or go to the website. So thank you both. Great conversation. And it was awesome to get to know you both a little bit better. We appreciate everybody watching us today or listening in, and we appreciate the support from Jazz sponsoring this and giving us the opportunity to find out more about how Guardian works and about Dr. Molina. So until next time, I am Bill Neumann, and this is the Group Dentistry Now Show.

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