J&J Talk Dentistry

Hey, guys. Welcome to J&J , where we talk dentistry. Wanna do a quick introduction here, for folks that are watching this podcast. We decided to have a separate, episode just for an introduction so we don't have to bore you with our details on each episode. So my name is Justin Clements, currently the chief strategy officer for Ascend Dental Alliance.

I've been in the dental space for about 11 years. Started out as an office manager, was regional manager, director of operations, mainly in the the corporate dentistry side of the world. But now I'm on the flip side where we are trying to help dentists, that are in the private practice space grow their practices through the means of support similar to a DSO without having to give up equity. And so, I nerd out over all things numbers, data, spreadsheets, and marketing. Aside from from all that fun stuff outside of dentistry, I have twin girls, that are 5 years old. Absolute

chaos. My life revolves around kids and work, in the family. So occasionally, I love to golf, occasionally, I love to play hockey, but, that's about it. That's that's me and good old boring me. John, what about you?

Yeah. Thanks, Justin. I'm the other of J of J and J. My name is Jonathan Rat. I'm the CEO and founder of Archy.

I have been in dentistry for a bit less, time than Justin. I actually founded Archy 3 years ago, but actually got looped in in dentistry through my wife, who is a dentist. And we opened a dental practice in 2018, and this is actually when I discovered really the world of dentistry with, the inefficiency that we are going to talk about, during our podcast. But also got a really passionate about everything that can be improved and how can technology actually help, in dentistry. Now for my background, I used to work at 2 tiny companies that you might have heard of before.

1 is called Facebook and now Meta. The other 1 is Uber. If you actually pay for a ride or if you order food on Uber, the payment platform that is used is the one that I built actually with my cofounder of Archy. So that's that's my background. I am French originally, hence the accent.

Some of you might notice it. Sorry. I cannot change it. I don't force it. I try to decrease it, but it's not going away.

I have been in the U.S actually for 15 years. I'm a proud American now. Outside of work, I don't have kids like Justin, so not yet at least. So I don't have, to deal with that. Kind of, time time, away.

But Archy is my baby. Actually, I have a dog, and, of course, my wife. We love traveling, cooking, as a typical French person. So food and travel are 2 of my passion outside of dentistry. Now how did Justin and I meet?

And that's actually a a fun story. And, it was, like, almost 3 years ago, 2 and a half years ago.

It was. Yeah.

And I had sent just a cold message on LinkedIn to Justin, because I wanted to hire you, at Archy. And what was your response, Justin?

Man, you know, my response was alright. And for context, I'm in the Midwest. I'm in Michigan. Right? John is out in Silicon Valley.

So I get this dude with a headline like ex Uber and ex Facebook. Right? And I'm like, oh, jeez. Not 1 of these. Like, didn't even think I thought it was like a bot.

Maybe there weren't even bots back then, but, like, I didn't know that the guy was real. And he was sitting here, like, pitching me, and, like, I was just like, wait. This dude wants to hire me, and he's talking about, like, a practice management system. Like, does he know what he's doing? Does he really wanna get into this?

And so I was just, like, super skeptical. And, and, listen. He clearly proved me wrong. But, you know, it was an interesting time where the girls were younger. Right?

And it was, like, kind of a no risk mode for me at the time. And, yeah, maybe I kicked myself in the ass a little bit for not doing it now, But, it's it's an awesome story. And, ever since then, we've talked frequently, and then, you know, we try to chat every month, and all of a sudden, we're talking about a podcast. We're like, we talk about some fun shit, and and and we cuss sometimes, most of the times, and and we're unfiltered. And so we're like, you know what?

Like, let's just talk and and talk with the people and see if it resonates. And and hopefully it does. Otherwise, you can you can cancel us, shut us down, do whatever you gotta do, but, I'm I'm excited to to be doing this now. It's fun.

That's right. And I I love actually all the interaction that we have. And why we decided to do this podcast is, again, you might be like, why are 2 known dentists trying to talk about dentistry? And yet it's because actually while we are not dentists, we actually meet with dentists, dental staff on a daily basis. We actually see what work, what doesn't work.

And our goal is to help you, help all of you who are actually working, yourself, trying to evaluate dental practice as efficiently as possible. And so you would actually hear from our perspective, from the data that we know, how we can help you. And, of course, you can always reach out to us if you have questions, if there are any topics you want us to actually discuss, or if you wanna join us, you will see we'll bring guests, time to time who are, expert in their topic. And so if you have what if you have a topic that you want us to talk about, if you're an expert in that topic, reach out to us. We'd be happy to have you in 1 of our episode.

We look forward to talk to you in our next episode where we'll talk about the inability to stay current with technology in dentistry. It's gonna be an exciting 1. We'll talk to you about how you can actually help, be more efficient with your new patient experience. Stay tuned. Looking forward to, that next episode with some of you.