The Group Dentistry Now Show: The Voice Of The DSO Industry

Dr. Aman Kaur, Founder & President of Women in DSO, & Brian Colao, Member & Director of the DSO Industry Group at Dykema & Founding Board Member of Women in DSO, join the Group Dentistry Now Show to discuss:

The history and importance of Women in DSO
The Empower & Grow event – March 6 – 8, 2024
The value of being a member of Women in DSO
New programs & initiativesMuch more

Register for the Women in DSO Empower & Grow event at the Conrad in Las Vegas on March 6 – 8 – https://womenindso.regfox.com/women-in-dso-empower-and-grow-2024

To find out more about Women in DSO visit – https://womenindso.org/

If you like our podcast, please give us a ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ review on iTunes https://apple.co/2Nejsfa and a Thumbs Up on YouTube.

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Full Transcript:

Bill Neumann:

Welcome everyone to the Group Dentistry Now show. I’m Bill Neumann, and as always, we appreciate you watching or listening in. You might be watching us on YouTube or listening in on Apple, Spotify or Google. Without a great audience like you, we wouldn’t have guests that want to come back year after year like Dr. Aman Kaur and Brian Colao. We are really going to focus this podcast on Women in DSO. So we’re going to talk a lot about the organization itself. We’re going to focus on the upcoming event that they have in Las Vegas. But first off, welcome Dr. Kaur. We appreciate you coming back to the show. How are you doing today?

Dr. Aman Kaur:

I’m doing great. Thank you, Bill, for having us. It’s always a joy and I look forward to doing it every year.

Bill Neumann:

Thank you. And Brian, welcome back. How are you doing?

Brian Colao:

I’m doing great, Bill. Always a pleasure to be on your show. We’ve been doing this for many, many years and it never gets old.

Bill Neumann:

Well, thank you. This is always fun. For the couple of people that may not know they’re new to the DSO industry, might not know who you are ’cause we know the majority of people do, Dr. Kaur, can you give people a little bit about your background and maybe just high level what Women in DSO is and then, Brian, we’ll let you do the same thing.

Dr. Aman Kaur:

Hi, my name is Aman. I’m a dentist by trade. Been in DSO space for over 15 years now. Worked in different dental service organizations in various executive roles. Currently, I work with a few private equity groups for acquisitions and exits, and we found Women in DSO three years ago to address the need of seeing more women into leadership roles. And it’s been very gratifying the last three years to see the improvement and the changes we are making in the industry.

Bill Neumann:

Thanks, Dr. Kaur. Brian?

Brian Colao:

I’m the director of Dykema’s industry leading DSO industry group. I’ve been in the dental space 29 years. Our primary business or our day job is we’re the industry leading legal group to DS, group practice, solo practices. We represent hundreds of DSOs in all 50 states, in Canada and Europe and places like that. But we also have a big DSO vent of our own, the Dykema conference and we’ve been at that for 11 years. So that’s my role and what I do.

Bill Neumann:

Thanks Brian. And Dr. Kaur is the founder and president of Women in DSO. And Brian, besides his day job at Dykema, he is a founding board member of Women in DSO. So that’s why they’re both on the podcast today. Dr. Kaur, would you mind going over a little bit of the history? You talked about Women in DSO three years in now, but maybe talk about the why behind the organization and a little bit about the history.

Dr. Aman Kaur:

Absolutely. So, Bill, we found Women in DSO in actually 2019 and afterwards, due to COVID, we took a year back and we figured out what our mission and vision and… I was able to have this team of amazing founding board members. So that’s how we started. And the reason to start it was we saw all the time women doing the lions share of work in different dental industries. We know dental industry is women dominated, but what we have noticed is if 10 women start at the bottom and 10 men start at the bottom, by the time you get to the top leadership roles, there is a huge change there. You see six men in leadership and maybe one women in leadership. So our work is to see how can we make sure, when we get to the top of any organization, we have similar number of women in leadership roles.

That’s where we started. And this question was asked for long time why there are not women in leadership roles. So we could continue to ask the question or do something about it. And that’s why we found Women in DSO. And since we started Women in DSO, we were launched formally in summer of 2021 at Dykema conference and we now have over 40 organizations are members and individually we are approaching thousand members in Women in DSO. So it has been gratifying and we are noticing more women being visible in the industry, being promoted into senior leadership roles. Some publications have also reported that there’s been more than 30% increase in women getting promoted to VP level and C-suite level. And we feel it’s just a matter of making women visible.

Bill Neumann:

And Brian, maybe I’ll address this to you. You are the only male as a founding board member. Why did you become part of this organization? Why did you think it was so important?

Brian Colao:

That one always seems to come up, Bill. Well, the easy answer is they asked me to be a part of it and it was a great honor. So that’s why I became a member. I think Women in DSO board wanted to have the perspective of at least one man. We’re going to be changing the board here soon to have a couple other men on it, but at least at the very beginning they wanted the perspective. So they asked me to do it and I said, “Yes,” because I simply couldn’t say no to this powerhouse board. It was an incredible board of directors. People like Dr. Aman, people like Kathleen Titus, Susan Greenspon was on that board, Andrea Hight, just a lot of really, really powerful folks that have been in the industry for a very long time and that I’d known for a very long time and couldn’t say no to them. And it’s been the professional highlight of my career, really furthering the mission, the very powerful mission of access opportunities and mentorship to the women of the DSO industry.

The DSO industry, Bill, is mostly women. It is. So it’s absolutely essential that we have an organization that promotes opportunities for women in the industry and it’s really even changed the way I operate my group and it’s really been a professional highlight of my career and I really enjoy being on the board.

Bill Neumann:

Well thanks, Brian. Let’s start with the event side of things and then I think we can focus on the membership side because you have a lot going on. In a short period of time, as an organization, you just mentioned this earlier, Dr. Kaur, that you’re almost a thousand members, which is incredible. It is amazing. So let’s talk about, this is going to be the third year that you have an event. It’ll be in Las Vegas again. Can we maybe touch on the past couple of years and the success of those two events?

Dr. Aman Kaur:

Yeah. It’s been really amazing to see. First year we were a little over 600 attendees. It was also in Vegas and then following year we had more than 860 attendees. This year we have capacity around 900 and we are approaching that very quickly. A room block was sold. We had to get more rooms added recently. So it’s been really amazing to see how many people want to be at this event. And the energy, I have heard it from everyone, it’s much different than they have felt in other events and what we feel what is the reason behind the successes. The kind of networking people get at this event. It’s much more heartfelt and the connections people have formed are much deeper.

And even for our vendors, they have shared that even if they don’t close during the event, because of the relationships they form during our event, it has helped them throughout their year and it has led to some great success for some individuals, for organizations who have attended and our content has been really point on that’s been in all of our feedback after the event. And I think it’s not a surprise because our speakers are the one who are doing this work within the organization. So every year we try to bring on some new speakers at the forefront, and these are the people who are actually in the weeds doing the work. So everyone seemed to get a [inaudible 00:09:23] from that.

Brian Colao:

Bill, this is an incredible event and I just want to just reiterate a couple of things. The first year, it was coming after COVID, we were hoping to get three or 400 people because it was still scary. People were worried about getting sick or what was going to happen and the thing completely sold out. It completely sold out. It was well over 600 people. It was standing room only at times. Last year we got 860 people, we blew through 600. I have never seen the energy and enthusiasm. Those that know me know I go to a lot of events, probably hundreds over the last several years. This one is unique. It’s one of a kind event. It’s incredible energy and enthusiasm and probably the most special thing about this event that I love is one of the whole points of the organization is to highlight and promote women and often women in the industry that maybe don’t always get a chance to get on stage.

And it’s incredible to see, one, these women that maybe don’t often get on stage, get on stage and just absolutely kill it, do an incredible job and then it’s a springboard. Once people see them, the other conferences start asking them to be on stage. So you see it becomes like a spiral effect. I’ve had several people on the stage at the Dykema conference that I didn’t know existed before Women in DSO and then I saw how talented they were at Women in DSO and then we said, “Look, we got to get them on our stage at Dykema.” So the energy and enthusiasm, there’s nothing like it in the industry and the fact that it highlights a lot of folks that maybe don’t always get to be on stage, that becomes a springboard and you see them become really in demand on other stages. It’s one of a kind event in that respect. And I think we’re headed, as Dr. Aman said, we’re headed towards another sellout this year. We’re going to be well over 900 people.

Bill Neumann:

I think those are some great points from both of you. And I recall being at the event and feeling the same thing where there were speakers that I hadn’t ever seen before, people that are doing the day-to-day work that maybe don’t get the accolades or the attention that they deserve. And so that’s what I think really makes this event stand out, is you’re seeing people are being highlighted that have never been highlighted before. Positions that may not necessarily be top of mind but are extremely important are now… People are actually getting their message out. So yeah, it’s incredible. Let’s talk about 2024. New location this year. Still in Las Vegas, but you’re at the Conrad. So let’s talk about that move and then maybe talk a little bit about the agenda, March 6th through 8th at the Conrad.

Brian Colao:

That’s a new property. I know, Aman, you’re going to talk about the details. Let me say a couple of things. That’s a brand new property. They got that big ball there. It’s really, really cool. There hasn’t been a DSO event there yet. I think it’s going to be incredible and I think we’re going to get in trouble with the fire marshal. I think we’re going to be sold out. People are going to be standing in places. The fire marshal’s going to tell us we’re not allowed to stand there because there’s going to be so many people there. I didn’t mean to interrupt, Aman, I know you’ve got the details, but I’m really excited to be a part of the first DSO event ever at the new Resort World.

Dr. Aman Kaur:

Yeah. Brian, thank you for sharing that. Yes, it’s a new location. We haven’t seen any other dental industry event there. So we are a little bit of risk-takers and why we chose this is, Bill, it’s a different kind of venue. Everyone when think of Vegas, they think of casino. So this is a unique property where casino is not the highlight. It’s very digital version of… I think it’s very futuristic property. We like that about it. It’s intimate, it’s much more closer networking. But once people get there, I think it’s a way to experience new property. We wanted to keep it in Vegas because our audience really gave us, in the feedback, that they love that to be the city where this conference continues to be. So this was our pick and we wanted to maintain our dates and being a not-for-profit within that budget. So it worked out nicely for us.

And our agenda, it’s a little bit different. We learned from the feedback from surveys. We are still starting our event with advisory board meeting and that is invitation only on Wednesday. And after advisory board meeting we have a reception on Wednesday evening and followed by Thursday is our general session. We are introducing breakout sessions this year. This was asked by our audience. So we have six different breakout sessions coming in this year. One of my favorite is about helping women about closing the wealth gap because we have noticed women want to learn about negotiating salary, but there’s a big opportunity in closing the wealth gap for women. So there’s a breakout session dedicated just to that. And in addition to, we have a lot of business best practices breakouts. One of our partners, they had a huge success with revenue cycle management. So they’re going to come and talk about the details under the hood about revenue cycle management. So it’s a good combination of business best practices and professional developments in our breakout sessions. Really excited about that.

And we will be introducing some big change that happened this year is our that we have a female CEO of a billion dollar DSO for the first time in United States, Rahma Samow. So she will be one of our featured story. We will be announcing it on social this week, so I feel comfortable sharing here. So stories like that. So I’m really excited about this year’s event and we will have similarly, Thursday night, we call it a Thursday night bash, but everyone dresses up, gala kind of setup. And then we conclude on Friday noon. That will be, I think it’s going to be a strong day and a half of learning, networking and connecting.

Brian Colao:

Bill, it’s really an incredible mix of content at this meeting that’s really, really unique. You’ve got some very, very solid business content, people can leave with really actionable items and things that are going to help improve not just their business, but improve the way they conduct themselves in the industry as professionals. Really incredible stuff. Then you’ve got networking, you’ve got really good networking with people you don’t often see and you can really… That’s the thing that I love the best, getting to know, every year at this thing, there’s probably a hundred people literally that I was not aware of before they came to this event and you get to know them and you get to network and then there’s just some inspirational stories. I always walk away from this event really, really fired up and I always leave with some new approaches as to how I’m going to lead my group and how I can support the growing number of women that we have in the Dykema DSO industry group.

Bill Neumann:

Thanks, Brian. And probably, this is a good place to say there is a bit of a sense of urgency. While we have a little bit of time to register, Dr. Kaur, you mentioned that you had to expand your room block, so I think you don’t want to wait too long. You definitely want to make sure you get a room at the Conrad and you register for the event sooner rather than later. So we’ll have all that information in the show notes but relatively easy to find. It’s womenindso.com so it should be… .org?

Dr. Aman Kaur:

.org, yes.

Bill Neumann:

Okay. So it’s womenindso.org. It’ll be in the show notes, I stand corrected. And you can also find it in our events section on Group Dentistry Now. So if you can find groupdentistrynow.com and you can find the events tab, it’s right there. So we’ll add that in the show notes, .org. Let’s talk a little bit beyond the event. You’ve been really busy in 2023 and in 2024, you’ve got a global initiative, you have mentorship programs, you have a wellness program. Talk about those highlights that you’ve really focused on for your members. A lot of great things going on.

Dr. Aman Kaur:

Yes, 2023 has been a really busy year. We felt like we were about to become a toddler from embryonic stages. We launched mentorship program. In our first year, we have almost 90 women that have gone through our mentorship program and we received feedback that it’s comparable or even better than some of the mentorship programs people have gone through from large organizations like Align Technologies and others. So that has been very good to hear. And I think what makes our programs great, is these are the people who have gone through some of these and we have put all of their feedback together. And anytime we, Women in DSO, we do something, we have two industry panels every month and when we conduct those, we make sure there are tangible takeaways that people can leave and put to use next day and start seeing some results.

So that’s how our mentorship program has been really excited. It’s a quarterly program and every quarter we have around 30 women that are going through our mentorship program and they kept coming back for, because we focus on one area every quarter for one individual. We also launched our wellness program. Women in DSO wellness wheel is consist of four components. We will be focusing on financial wellness always in Q1 and then professional wellness is Q2 and then third one is self, being, health. That is Q3 and Q4 is relational joy. So that’s our wellness wheel and we have been focusing each quarter on different areas. We are working with outside speakers who are experts in these areas to bring them on. So that’s been our ’23. Another big thing we were able to launch was we have now over seven international organizations member of Women in DSO.

So in 2024 we will be doing a members only wellness event in fall. Really excited about that. And we will also have our global launch event around late summer, early fall. So those will be two big things. And the other big thing we are launching that I am really personally excited about is male allyship program because we can’t change future without engaging present and present is men in leadership role. And they are good guys generally, but we want to make them from good guys to allies to women where they sponsor women, support them, even in their absence. And there is a little bit more to it. We have engaged and Australian company to help us launch that program. So those are our big initiatives this year and I’m really excited about getting deeper into all these programs.

Brian Colao:

Bill, one thing that I should have said earlier, and I’ll say it now, based on some of these remarks is this is not for women only. This is an important organization for women and it promotes a powerful mission of access opportunities and mentorship. But when we go back to the conference, we were talking about, this isn’t just for women. I get phone calls ’cause I’m the only guy on the board, so sometimes they feel comfortable calling me like, “Hey Brian, are we allowed?” These guys call me? “Are we allowed to register or is it just for women?” It’s not just for women. And in fact, I encourage or even insist professionals in the DSO industry go out and support their female team members. I know we’re going to be there, all the senior partners at Dykema are going to be there supporting all of our female team members.

That’s the first thing. This isn’t just for women and a lot of these programs, in particular male allyship, and some of these others, we need the men in the organizations to support these things and show up and not just necessarily write a check. Money is important, but also be there to support the female members of their team. So I just wanted to make that point earlier in talking about the conference and also in discussing a lot of these programs. It’s not just for women. We need all the men to show up and be supportive.

Bill Neumann:

Important point, Brian. It’s good to know. That really leads into next topic, which would be, what are the different membership options? So Dr. Kaur, can you talk a little bit about what those options look like, maybe for the women in DSO themselves that want to become members, for DSOs, the actual company, and then for industry partners?

Dr. Aman Kaur:

Yeah, absolutely. First, I also get questions sometimes if someone is a dentist or a hygienist, can they be a member? We know how DSO evolution has happened and it’s still going to continue to grow. There are over 40% practices that are not currently DSOs, but we know there’s more room for DSOs to grow as well. So if there are individual memberships, there’s annual membership and we are about to introduce three year membership for individual members. All the information is available on our website. There are young emerging DSOs or mid-size DSOs and we have large DSOs, our member. Once they join us, the benefits change because then they can have multiple women from their organization participate in different programs. And that has been actually mostly everyone’s favorite kind of membership. And DSOs have joined us at organizations level and they have been able to bring around 25 to 30 women to join our programs. They get to participate in committees, which that’s where real relationships are formed, and they’re able to navigate what Women in DSO is focusing on as an organization. That’s been everyone’s favorite kind of membership.

And then industry partner membership is for any organization that is interacting with dental industry or DSO industry and want to get deeper into DSO space. So that is for industry partners and we also have an association membership and ADA just joined us. We will be doing a press release around that later next week. So there is an association level membership that we are really excited about because we all want to work together and further this mission throughout dental offices. Even dental schools, because we know now more than 60% dentists graduating are women. So we want to make sure they know there are resources available for them as they graduate.

Bill Neumann:

So a lot of opportunity, different levels of engagement from a membership perspective. As we start to wrap up this podcast, I want to get final thoughts and make sure we didn’t miss anything. So, Brian, why don’t I start with you and Dr. Kaur can finish us off.

Brian Colao:

Yeah, all this stuff, organizations are stronger with women in leadership. I just want to say that. And when the male members of the organization support the women, the organizations are stronger. I can’t tell you, my involvement in this has taught me a lot about the marketplace and about how to support women in the organization. I’ve always tried to do that. But some things that maybe I thought were supportive, as a result of this organization, I’ve learned they were okay, but maybe this is the way you really need to do it. And my team has been so much stronger by supporting Women in DSO, by supporting the women members of my team by promoting opportunities. On the whole, my group operates a lot stronger. And I would just say that across the board. Go to this event, don’t just support your women and let them come. If you’re a guy, go to this event, see it firsthand. You’ll be stronger for it and participate in the male allyship program and participate in some of these other programs.

And when somebody writes a check, don’t say, “Oh, well times are tight this year. That’s not in the budget.” Go the extra mile, find the money because it really, really, really will pay off for you. I promise. Firsthand experience. I’ve got 72 people that work for me and a lot of them are women. And this has really paid off and been probably one of the biggest value adds in my career.

Bill Neumann:

Dr. Kaur?

Dr. Aman Kaur:

Thank you Brian for saying that because I hear this, “Times are tough,” and I would say it’s not just writing a check to an organization. The organizations that have been engaged with us, it has seriously helped them retain and recruit more women to their organizations. And this industry is women dominated industry and not because of us, it’s despite of us, because the kind of roles we have in our organizations, women are just better fit because we know that more than 75% to 85% household financial decisions are made by women. So once we have women in leadership role, we just become automatically closer to our consumers. To conclude this, we need membership, we need support. This is a mission that’s going to help organizations show they’re supporting their own people because their people are women. And it goes way further than just saying, “What is the ROI?” There is silent ROI, there is emotional ROI that you will be providing to people who are working hard for you. And we are working on programs that are going to support the mission of each organization.

Bill Neumann:

Thank you Dr. Kaur. And you can just look at the growth of the event throughout the past couple of years and realize there’s a huge need. This has been a long time coming. We appreciate you putting this together. I’m looking forward to the 2024 event. It’s called Empower and Grow for a reason. It’s going to be in Las Vegas again at the Conrad this time, which sounds really like a cool hotel.

Brian Colao:

No, the fire marshals are coming after them. I’ve told Aman this. The first couple of years, she’s been able to escape the fire marshal, but we’re going to be sold out this year. People are going to be standing in aisles and hallways. The fire marshal is coming for us this year. But that’s a good thing in the context of… Maybe it’s not a good thing if there’s a fire, but in the context of conferences, the fire marshal coming after you is a good thing. It means you’re sold out and every square inch is packed with somebody. And I think that’s what we’re going to have this year.

Bill Neumann:

So I think with that being said, you are going to want to register for this event sooner rather than later. So March 6th through 8th, make sure you get your hotel room, make sure you register for the event. We’ll drop a link in the show notes to womenindso.org, and so that way you can get there and register before you’re sold out. If there’s a fire marshal or no fire marshal, you won’t be able to get in.

Brian Colao:

We want to stay at the hotel too, Bill. There’s plenty of rooms in Vegas, we all know that. But this is a new property. It’s really, really cool. I’m looking forward to staying in that Resort World. So everybody, the earlier you register it guarantees you get to stay at Resort World and enjoy this pretty cool property.

Bill Neumann:

And Dr. Kaur, if people want to email someone at Women in DSO to find out more about membership or maybe they have some questions that aren’t related to the event, what’s the best email that you have so they can reach out to you or someone on your team?

Dr. Aman Kaur:

Absolutely. It is info@womenindso.org. And my email is aman@womenindso.org. We all try to work through those emails very quickly. Please send us a brief note. We’ll be sure to get back to you within 24 hours. It’s info@womenindso.org.

Bill Neumann:

That’s great. Well thank you, Brian, and thank you, Dr. Kaur, for being on the show. I think this is the third time, maybe fourth. I don’t know. I know, Brian, we might’ve had you on one other time, but you’re veterans and we appreciate your time.

Brian Colao:

Never gets old, Bill. Always a pleasure. It never gets old.

Bill Neumann:

Thank you. Thank you everybody for listening or watching us. We’ll see you all in Las Vegas real soon. Looking forward to the event. And until next time, this is the Group Dentistry Now Show.