With over 20 years of dental experience, Dr. Eric Markowitz, took over his father’s practice in Washington D.C. bring new specialties such as implant and reconstruction therapies. With the competitiveness of the dental industry, Eric believes specializing in only one area makes customer flow difficult to come by. On the other hand, to be politically smart, he does not do practice in all aspects as there are other specialists in the area. Dr. Markowitz also shares his knowledge on implementing changes gradually to allow adjustments in workflow and to keep debt low.
Full Transcription:
Shaun Keating: Hey everybody, Shaun Keating here, I would like to welcome you to this week’s Dental Up podcast. Today we have Dr. Eric Markowitz from Washington, DC. Eric, what’s up dude?
Dr. Markowitz: Not much buddy, how’s it going?
Shaun Keating: It’s going good. Thank you so much for taking the time to talk with us today. I’d like to start off a little bit about sports. I know you’re a big sports guy. What do you got going on out there in your neck of the woods? Who you pulling for? What’s going on?
Dr. Markowitz: Oh, we got it happening here, man. We got Caps in the playoffs, Wizards in the playoffs, nationals in first place. It’s all going well here.
Shaun Keating: Yeah.
Dr. Markowitz: They got to do their usual choke, which is what they’re known for, but we got our hopes up high this time around.
Shaun Keating: No kidding. That’s awesome. Yeah, we have our Ducks in the playoffs, second round starting tonight. Yeah, old Getzlaf, man he’s doing the best he’s done in the last several years. He’s really doing great on offensive scoring, but we’re excited because we don’t have a lot here in Orange County. We got LA’s about an hour away, and-
Dr. Markowitz: You got the Real Housewives.
Shaun Keating: Yeah, we got the Orange County Housewives.
Dr. Markowitz: My wife watches that crap, so I know you’ve got the real housewives up there.
Shaun Keating: Hey man, I like the Atlanta housewives the best, but I ain’t the one watching those things. Those girls are freaks.
Dr. Markowitz: Yeah, we got one over here too. Real Housewives of Potomac.
Shaun Keating: No kidding.
Dr. Markowitz: [inaudible 00:01:28] Caroline’s kind of pathetic.
Shaun Keating: How cool is that? Hey dude, what about on your football? I know you’re a big Washington fan and you’ve been let down a lot lately on the last few years with RG3. What do you think? How you guys looking this year, man?
Dr. Markowitz: Not so good. We’ve got some turmoil in DC. GM’s gone, quarterback’s not happy, the wide receivers left. I think they were all too upset about Donald Trump, everybody left.
Shaun Keating: Yeah. I bet, man. I bet. That’s just got to be tough around Washington, DC now with all those Democrats with the long horse faces.
Dr. Markowitz: There’s a lot of long faces in town, that’s for sure. I’m not one of them, but there’s a lot of them out there, as in a little shake up isn’t such a bad thing.
Shaun Keating: Absolutely. Well, we’re hoping we’re in the same boat with the Ram’s. We’ve got a quarterback, but man, I don’t know about him. We gave a lot away to get golf and we’re hurting in some areas. This kid didn’t look good.
Dr. Markowitz: Well, the Redskins gave up a lot for RG3 a few years back and they got literally nothing for it.
Shaun Keating: That’s crazy. The kid was such a stud, and so exciting, and then I think blowing out that knee was the start of the doom of the end of it all, man.
Dr. Markowitz: That was a problem, but also they took a guy who his entire life was a run first guy, and they turned him into a pocket passer. It just wasn’t his thing.
Shaun Keating: No kidding. Well, we got the draft tomorrow night. That starts at 5:00. It gives me a reason to go out and hit the pub and watch, I’ll probably watch it at home. I’ll say that I’ll go out, but it’s Thursday night. Maybe we’ll able to, maybe [Momma 00:03:03] will go out for a couple hours and watch the draft, but it’s pretty boring. I think we’re 37th, we get to pick.
Dr. Markowitz: It’s like four hours til you pick.
Shaun Keating: Yeah, forget that. It’s like, gosh, we need some DB’s, we need receivers, we need a couple more line backers. We need some O-Line guys. We need a little bit of everything. Well hey dude, so let’s get into the dental talk here. I want to thank you for all the work that you do with us. You’re really a high end practicing dentist. You’re very demanding, but that’s good. You know what you want. I think it starts probably with your dad. I think your pops was a legend, man, Sydney Markowitz. We’ve had a few presidents that work with me of the AACD and I think your pops was president back in the day, awhile back, wasn’t he in the 90’s or what? Tell me a little bit about your dad.
Dr. Markowitz: 93, 94, he was a general dentist in DC and always into aesthetics. He’s a very artistic guy and when the opportunity presented back in the late 80’s, a group of guys were getting together and trying to start something, he jumped on and was there from the get go. He went through the reigns and was president, I think, 93, 94, something like that. Then we worked together from when I came out of my prosthodontic training, which was 95, we worked together for about 15 years. Then he retired about 5 years ago.
Shaun Keating: No kidding. Where’d you go to college, Eric?
Dr. Markowitz: Maryland.
Shaun Keating: Maryland, yeah. I remember when Maryland said they’re going to burn it to the ground with some basketball game. You guys lost it or something.
Dr. Markowitz: According to the [inaudible 00:04:46], we did. Yeah. I went to Maryland for undergrad and then University of Maryland Dental School and Prostho training was there too in Baltimore.
Shaun Keating: No kidding. Now, I’m kind of an idiot when it comes to geography or whatever. How far is Maryland from Washington DC? Is that far or no?
Dr. Markowitz: No, I’m talking to you from Maryland now and my office is in DC. It’s about 7 miles to my office.
Shaun Keating: Oh, you’re kidding?
Dr. Markowitz: Baltimore is about 45 minutes from DC.
Shaun Keating: No kidding.
Dr. Markowitz: Yeah, then you got down … Chesapeake Bay is down there and then you can go three hours East would be, you hit the ocean and three hours West would be up in the mountains, six hours side to side.
Shaun Keating: So pretty much you’ve been there a long time, all your life, huh?
Dr. Markowitz: Yep.
Shaun Keating: What about on your practice, dude? How did that start up? Tell me a little bit about your practice. Did you take over pops or did you just start your own? Tell me a little bit how you started off if you could.
Dr. Markowitz: I went in with him out of Prostho school, he was a high end general dentist. He’d do as much with the reconstructive work and the implants. I got trained after Prostho residency to have a one year fellowship for implants, so we did surgical placement and implants, and all restoration aspects of it, so I brought that to the practice. We just worked together for about, actually for about 15 years. Then I took over the practice and grew it significantly, but started with his base.
Shaun Keating: No kidding. Any associates you have with you or no?
Dr. Markowitz: I have one associate with me now and she’s been with us, a little before dad retired, she joined in. She does most of the real bread and butter general stuff. She does the fillings, she does the assembly units. I do all the implant work, all the cosmetic work and all the reconstructive work.
Shaun Keating: No kidding. Do you do your own endo or do you send out endo or do you do the-
Dr. Markowitz: No, I don’t do any endo. I haven’t picked up a file since 1993 except for to put some stain in a filling or to take the cotton filling out of a [inaudible 00:06:44] hole. Other than that, I don’t mess with endo.
Shaun Keating: Good for you.
Dr. Markowitz: I’ve never liked it and I was never real good at it. I never enjoyed doing it, so I [inundated 00:06:53] that for my life. When young guys come out, they ask for some advice about what to do and what not to do. One of the good things to do is go get continued training, and continue learning new stuff and go back to your office and try it out, but you’ve also got to know your limitations, know what you’re not so gifted at. For me, one of those things was endodontics. I didn’t enjoy it. Thus, I never took the time to get good at it, so I don’t do it.
Shaun Keating: What about with you with some short term ortho at all, or no, you don’t even mess with that?
Dr. Markowitz: Yeah. We’ll do some Invisalign. That’s about it. Even though I took over my dad’s general practice, I’m still working with a lot of other specialists so politically, it’s not great to do everything in office. I’d still want what was in town.
Shaun Keating: Absolutely. How’s that work now? What’s the etiquette of … because my brother, he tells me all the stories with him. He’s in a town where a bunch of GP’s in there and just a few practices, limited endodontics. He’s an endodontist and he tries to take them out monthly and bi-monthly or whatever, take certain dentists out that do refer and stuff. How do you do that with who you refer to? Do you know the guys or do you meet up with them? Do they woo you a little bit? Some new guy’s coming into town and say, “Hey, I’m going to try to get Dr. Markowitz to refer me my endo, to refer me my perio, refer me my oral surgeries.” How does that work?
Dr. Markowitz: The guys who are true one dimensional specialists only do and limited to their specialty. They really have to do an awful lot to stay relevant, to be there when you need them and [inaudible 00:08:38] ropes and they know that you hustle until they get you to work with them. Same as probably you have to do some of that stuff with your laboratory. You and I, same thing. Several years back, I got referred to you, gave you a chance and it’s become a great relationship. Same thing with those guys. They’ve got to get you to send them a case or two and if there’s good chemistry, then you continue on. If there’s not, then you cut bait and you move onto the next.
Shaun Keating: Tell me a little bit about on managing your finances and overhead. Did you have to take out loans for college and/or when you started your practice, I know your dad’s with you, probably pretty lucky in that area, how did you handle financing or just overhead or just growing a practice money-wise?
Dr. Markowitz: For me, I’m very conservative about that stuff, both personally and professionally. For me, you can’t do everything at one time. You’ve got to pick and choose what’s important to you, implement that, and then move onto the next item when you’re ready. That way you don’t get into too much financial burden. You don’t want to necessarily start doing ten things at one time and find out that seven of them aren’t working out for you, so I like to do one major piece of equipment or one major change in my office at a time. Then when that’s working out and you recoup a little bit, then go ahead and do the next one.
Other than when I renovated my office, which was obviously, that’s an all or nothing, other than that, I’m not a big believer in throwing everything against the wall at one time. I like to do it incrementally and logically. That’s the same way I like to grow my practice now. I don’t need to put in ad in X, Y, or Z journal and have 100 new patients call, 25 of them made appointments, 5 of them show up and 2 of them do treatment. That’s not what I want. I want to get a phone call from my existing clients where someone I work with is a referring doctor who sent me a patient.
That patient already knows me through their friend or through their other doctor. They trust me already. They know what they need and they want to come to someone with quality to get it done. That’s the same kind of philosophy when I’m trying to decide what to do economically, purchasing. I’ve purchase other practices. I’ve purchased major pieces of equipment. I just don’t do it all at one time. You might purchase a practice, it works out well for you, and 5, 6, 7 years later, another one comes along. You might want to take another stab at it, but you don’t want to end up, put your entire career and your future on the line and find out it didn’t work out for you and now you’re bankrupt. That’s just not a very wise [inaudible 00:11:21].
Shaun Keating: Oh, I bet. Now, you think you’ll be out [while 00:11:24] getting into another second or third practice in the future, or what do you think?
Dr. Markowitz: I don’t think so. I’m a quality-based, not quantity-based kind of guy. I think for me, that works better. I’m a bit of a micromanager and particular about what I want and how I want it. If you start having multiple places and you’re relying on multiple people to do things the way you want it done but you’re not there, to me that’s looking for trouble, if you know yourself to be someone that wouldn’t like that. That wouldn’t really work with my personality very well, but a lot of folks it does. Quite frankly, they end up a lot more successful, but I just don’t think I would enjoy that.
Shaun Keating: Yeah. It’s tough. I’ve got guys that have had success with it and I’ve got guys that have lost their ass on it just trying to push it and push it. It takes a certain kind of person and to find the right people that they’re either buying in or they’re associates and they’re helping you out on off days in these other practices. It could be a real boon, and it can be also a real disappointment for some guys that you take an eye off them, you’re giving like 20, 30% to each practice where you can just give 100% at the one practice and not so much the quantity, it’s the quality. I think you have peace of mind, you sleep better at night.
Dr. Markowitz: Also, in terms of staffing three offices and all that, it’s really a major headache. It takes away from what you’re focused on doing, which for me is doing the best I can to provide high quality dental care. I can’t do that if I’m getting called away ten times a day to put out fires in other locations where I’m not even at.
Shaun Keating: Yeah.
Dr. Markowitz: That just is too distracting.
Shaun Keating: Absolutely.
Dr. Markowitz: For me, but some folks like that. It’s just not my style.
Shaun Keating: Well, that’s cool. Do you specialize in any specific area? I know we do a lot of veneers and stuff with you, and implants, but is that kind of your go-to? What’s your go-to procedure? A lot of guys, I bet it’s a lot of GP’s send it because you’re prosth trained, a lot of them sending you the tough nightmare cases because I know some of the stuff we do is bigger stuff, bigger stuff and you’ll be calling me or texting me, “Shaun, I’ve got a big one coming, and you’ve gotta get your A team,” but you’re really structured real well. You do it by the book, and I love that, but is that pretty much your specializing and just the bigger rehabs and the bigger cases, or what do you think?
Dr. Markowitz: It is, but those cases are very time consuming and very energy consuming, so I don’t really quite frankly like doing all reconstructive work all the time. I like doing bread and butter dentistry as well, a couple crowns here and there or a quadrant here and there. I like doing veneer cases, but those guys that really call themselves cosmetic-only dentists, to me, depending on where you work, in DC that’s a little bit of a tough road to go. You’ve got to really be able to offer more than just that. I’m not in New York City or in Beverly Hills. In those places, you can kind of [inaudible 00:14:29].
Even though I enjoy doing [case study 00:14:32] dentistry first, it’s just not an all day, every day thing for me. I still like a restorative-based practice still, mature. It’s mostly 50 year old average patients, most of them just downtown DC, lawyers or lobbyists or politicians or any of that kind of stuff, and they don’t all need or want only cosmetic dentistry. They want good solid quality dentistry.
Shaun Keating: Absolutely.
Dr. Markowitz: Sometimes that means a gold crown on a back tooth and sometimes it means six veneers on the front teeth.
Shaun Keating: Absolutely. How’s that? Do you ever get Marion Barry into that office at any time? Remember Marion Barry back in the day?
Dr. Markowitz: No. The current, I do see the current Mayor of DC. She’s quite nice, but Marion Barry came in one time and he was trying to sell credit card processing.
Shaun Keating: You’re kidding. I remember back then. He’s a character. I remember back in the day, there was drug problems and stuff. There was a joke. It was like, “Marion Barry is going to take care of the coke problem in DC one gram at a time.”
Dr. Markowitz: He just died a couple years back, but he was something. He could never not win the election. They loved him.
Shaun Keating: Oh, I bet. Look at Donald Trump. What’s it like with Trump being in office and what’s the whole Washington DC area? Is it kind of just … I bet the first week or two has been crazy but the first 100 days, what do you see out there? Tell me a little bit about it. I’ve never been to Washington DC so it’s just amazing, I’m sure, but tell me a little bit about what you’re seeing there in the landscape? What’s going on?
Dr. Markowitz: Well, a lot of our patients do work in the federal agency, so there’s a lot of uncertainty, a lot of them. For instance, folks that work at the EPA, they don’t know if they’re going to have a job next week or next month, so I don’t think it’s going to be quite as harsh as [inaudible 00:16:36] is going to be. In reality, working in DC is you can’t get done everything, you’re not going to a hotel construction site and firing everybody. That’s not how it works in [inaudible 00:16:49] agencies, but there’s a lot of uncertainty. People are a little squeamish now. They’re not sure about what’s coming.
We feel a little bit of that pinch because these are folks who might not be getting done everything they want to get done or need to get done because they’re really unsure about where they’re going to be in the next year or two, so there’s a lot of people who are worried, but the reality is, the overall economy in DC is better than the majority of the country because these guys, they certainly don’t want their lifestyles to be any worse than they used to so they don’t go out of their own way to make their lives any more typical. There’s still plenty of work for all these lobby groups and all these consultants. It’s just a [inaudible 00:17:34].
Shaun Keating: No kidding.
Dr. Markowitz: They’re not as, I don’t think they’re as worried because whatever change in administration comes opportunity. I’ll see … Look, we had eight years of Obama and I had a lot of, tons of patients who were in that administration. Now he’s gone so some of them leave town, some of them just find other jobs to do and then a new batch of people come in, so there’s always a cycle you can see. People come and go and it’s kind of atypical for both cities. Very few people are DC born and raised. I am, but there’s not many. Most people we see are from someplace else, and whether that’s people who just live here or people that work here, they come and go with different administrations and then when these congressmen retire, they all become lobbyists. They take their staffs up to Kay Street and they do the next phase.
Shaun Keating: Kay Street like the big restaurant, big restaurant street?
Dr. Markowitz: Kay Street is where all the, that’s where all the influenced peddlers historically have been, all the lobbying firms, so now they’re spread throughout the city. DC is really expanding a lot with construction in the last 10 to 20 years. Used to be, they were all on Kay Street. Now, they’ve kind of scattered around, but it’s still historically where a lot of the big league lobbyists set up shop, so on Kay Street.
Shaun Keating: That’s so crazy. You see pictures and stuff of the White House and the National Monument and all that. Have you been and seen any of that, and go out there to-
Dr. Markowitz: Sure. My office is only a couple blocks from the White House.
Shaun Keating: No kidding.
Dr. Markowitz: Six, seven blocks, so it’s all right. Now DC is a very compact city because it’s split up into quadrants. You’ve got Northeast, Northwest, Southeast, Southwest with basically the Capitol building being the middle.
Shaun Keating: No kidding.
Dr. Markowitz: Most of the action has been historically in Northwest DC so that’s Georgetown and that’s where the White House and all the business district, and most of the [inaudible 00:19:37] and historic events. Even though DC is spread out quite a bit, most of the action takes place in one-fourth of the city, historically. That part of town, everything is pushed close together.
Shaun Keating: You probably got a lot of tourists there every day, too, in there just from everywhere. Kind of tough driving?
Dr. Markowitz: Oh terrible. Terrible.
Shaun Keating: We got our typical LA traffic in Orange County. The freeways here, man, crazy. I just hate traffic. Tell me, man, you got any crazy dental stories? I’ve had guys tell me stuff. I remember this one guy, he was telling me, and he’s got a bunch of older patients, like soiling themselves in the chair. What kind of crazy dental stories you got with me? Anyone swallow a tooth? Talk to me.
Dr. Markowitz: I’ve had two people swallow teeth, swallow crowns, in 25 years. One of them was sound asleep but she was talking to me the whole time so I thought she was awake. She swallowed her tooth and then I said, “You just swallowed your tooth. What happened?” She goes, “Oh. I don’t know.” I said, “Are you awake?” She goes, “Yeah, you told me you were going to go to the lab and add a contact to your crown.” I said, “Yeah, but that was like 45 minutes ago,” so she was asleep the whole time. I thought she was awake.
This other guy, much older guy, this one is pretty funny, he swallowed his crown. It was a new crown. I just finished trying it in and wiggled around, and it popped off. I said, “Don’t swallow.” The next thing you know, he swallowed. I said, “Oh, your crown just went down the tubes.” I said, “I’ve got to make you another one.” He goes, “No, I’ll find this one.” I said, “No. Please don’t. I’ll make you a new one.” He calls me a week later. He says, “Dr. Eric, I’m in San Francisco and my wife packed my luggage. In there, she packed a strainer for me. I’ve been straining it every day. Guess what? I just found it.” He brought it back to the office and we sterilized it and into his mouth it went, at his insistence, not mine. That stuff happens.
I have a lady recently that I was working on who thinks that the ambien light in any room causes her face cancer so I have to work with the lights off in the office. I can only use my light from my [loops 00:22:08]. She puts a towel over her face and when she goes to the restroom, she says, she has her hat, her special golden bathroom hat and she claims that if she does not wear that specific hat to the bathroom, she gets the runs.
Shaun Keating: That’s like that movie Saul, Better Call Saul. You ever watch that?
Dr. Markowitz: Oh please. In DC, there’s some nutty people to begin with.
Shaun Keating: Yeah. They’re everywhere.
Dr. Markowitz: Weird stuff happens. We’ve seen and heard it all. People cementing their anterior crowns back on with crazy glue backwards, or cementing a lower [veneer 00:22:44], upper front tooth. They do it all.
Shaun Keating: Oh, I bet.
Dr. Markowitz: We [crosstalk 00:22:48] with weird problems.
Shaun Keating: You know what?
Dr. Markowitz: But that keeps it interesting.
Shaun Keating: Well, working with silly humans, there’s a bunch of crazy humans out there but it’s just tough. Here’s a lab guy, we just work on models, man. I always try to think of the person behind them but a dentist, man, I can’t imagine being a dentist. It’s a tough job. You’ve got to get a good staff, but to deal with people all day every day, it’s just the quirks and just having the bedside manner to deal with it and the patience. I see a dentist, I could never be a dentist. I have no patience and I’d be smacking people in the chair saying, “Hey, sit up and knock it off with that tongue.” You know what? I just wouldn’t last.
Dr. Markowitz: You’ve got to be pretty politically correct in lots of different ways to be a dentist. You’ve got to be half dentist, half therapist.
Shaun Keating: Oh, I bet.
Dr. Markowitz: All these people that are acting up for all kinds of reasons and you’ve just got to sit there with them and hold their hands and all that. By the time you come home, you’ve got nothing left for your family. You use it all up during the day.
Shaun Keating: I bet. Dude, what about with you, what’s something that you could bring … I’ve got a lot of younger guys starting off and guys that have been doing it for a little bit. Did you do any professional management courses, any occlusion type guys or anything like that? Tell me a little bit about what you did in your years?
Dr. Markowitz: Well, I like to going to some of the AACD meetings, they’re good. You can do more now some of the courses online. I go to a Prostho meeting in New York City every December where you learn a lot of cutting edge stuff from international lecturers. It depends on what you try to get into. Some of these guys swear by LBI or Dawson or [Sphere 00:24:45] or [inaudible 00:24:45]. Those are all great. I haven’t attended all of them as the three day course or [inaudible 00:24:53] course, but I’ve taken courses from all those guys. It depends on what you’re interested in.
Some people are really fascinated by occlusion, some people really don’t care much about it so you’ve got to know about it to be a good dentist, but there are different [inaudible 00:25:07] people get into. Some people love TNJ treatment. Some guys, like me, don’t like doing TMJ treatment, so depending on what your into, you can go to some of these offsite courses, go for a couple days and really learn a lot. My key advice to folks is find something you’re interested in, go take some courses and then when you get back Monday morning, start doing it.
You have to know your limitations of what you’re not particularly good at. You don’t want to go to a weekend course and then come back Monday and start a whole ortho case and get stuck somewhere in the middle and have to call an orthodontist. You can ease your way in. Take some of these cases that aren’t quite, a little more straight forward, not quite as tricky and start with those. You don’t have to start with the full mouth reconstructions after taking a Dawson course.
Shaun Keating: Nope.
Dr. Markowitz: Start with quadrant. Work your way up to it. There’s that kind of advice. The other thing is, hook yourself up with a dental laboratory where you can have communication with the folks you work with there. Don’t get wooed by these guys coming in your office telling you they could do $99 crowns for you because quite frankly, I spend a lot of my time fixing $99 crowns.
Shaun Keating: I bet.
Dr. Markowitz: Find yourself a good laboratory. Don’t get excited by cheap … You never want to be going with the cheapest guys for any of this stuff.
Shaun Keating: Absolutely.
Dr. Markowitz: Offer quality products to your patients and thus demand a quality product from your [inaudible 00:26:41] and get a good relationship going with a laboratory. That’s a good way to really keep on top of things too because you end up having a lot of good conversation back and forth with technicians about different material options and what works best in certain spots and why. Then you can inform them about which worked real good clinically as opposed to doing it in the laboratory side but not seeing the clinical side effects all the time. Those kind of things are good.
In terms of practice management, you’ve got to go with your gut on that stuff. That stuff, those courses are very expensive and they teach you a way to do something but it just might not fit you. Like you, Shaun, if you took $100,000 practice management course and the first thing they told you is, “Make sure you don’t use any four letter words, and [inaudible 00:27:29],” it wouldn’t work. You’ve got to be comfortable with the advice you’re getting.
I did have someone come in from a two day course and I think he spent about 20 grand. I think it was about 20 years ago. To me, it really wasn’t very beneficial for me. That’s not saying that … In my position, I had an established practice with an established dentist working with me. If I was out by myself and just stuck my [inaudible 00:27:58] on the sidewalk, I might be more inclined to take some [better 00:28:03] courses, but before you do something like that where you’re signing up for a 20, 30, $50,000 course, just make sure you go to your local dental meeting.
Talk to some folks that have done those kind of courses and get some good feedback because [inaudible 00:28:16] great and you don’t want to get stuck investing that big chunk of doe and something in change in the way you practice dentistry for something that isn’t going to mesh with your style.
Shaun Keating: Good advice, dude. Good advice. Hey, Eric tell me, how did you find out about Keating Dental Lab? Where did you meet someone from my company and how did it start off? I don’t remember.
Dr. Markowitz: Well, I got originally referred to you from another dentist who lives in Texas who I like quite a lot.
Shaun Keating: Yeah.
Dr. Markowitz: We were just chit chatting one day and your name came up. I was in the market for getting a new lab to do my higher end aesthetic cases so I got referred to you from that guy. Then since, we’ve been up at some conferences here and there, but that was the original … I’m a big believer in asking people that I respect a lot for what they like in terms of materials and laboratories or equipment. I don’t like just picking out of a magazine or walking up to a booth because quite frankly, a booth, usually the same stuff at every booth. Find a way to pick through and see who’s really doing a good job. Good recommendation from someone I trust a lot and that was many years ago, so there you go.
Shaun Keating: That’s awesome. We’re doing a pretty good job for you or what?
Dr. Markowitz: Evidently.
Shaun Keating: Evidently?
Dr. Markowitz: I have to say yes. Yeah, you guys are doing a great job. Yeah, you guys are very knowledgeable, very quality-oriented. Everything comes in on time. [inaudible 00:29:52] time, nothing is ever late and the work is always really very, very good. You guys are really open to communication with the doctor and you’re really trying to do your best to do what we ask for. Nobody bats that [inaudible 00:30:08] so there’s always some times where some things have to be tweaked. That’s a part of dentistry, but all in all, I like the working relationship I’ve got with you guys a lot.
Shaun Keating: That is just, it makes me feel so good and I’m going to end it on that because man, I know I’ve kept you a lot. I know your kids are in the background. Dude, we’ve had a few hiccups on the connection here. Sorry about that. We’re working on this. Man, we don’t know what we’re doing. We’re just trying to do a podcast. We know not what we do, Lord, but we’re trying. I want to thank you for coming on, dude. Dr. Markowitz, you are the man. I really appreciate it.
For anyone out there listening, if you could subscribe to us on iTunes, and it’s on the Dental Up podcast on iTunes, if you subscribe to us and leave us a review. Let us know what you think. We really appreciate it. If you want to keatingdentallab.com/promo, you can check our promos out. Again, I want to thank everyone for listening to this week’s Dental Up podcast. Dr. Markowitz, I really appreciate your time, appreciate the work. I guess we’re going to see you out in July. You’re going to bring the family out to the OC here. We’re going to get you out on the boat, get you fishing with us, I think, huh?
Dr. Markowitz: That is going to happen for sure.
Shaun Keating: That is so cool. We’ll get those kids pulling on some marlin, man, and we’ll get them on, put them on a video and they’ll be looking at that the rest of their life.
Dr. Markowitz: Sounds good to me, man.
Shaun Keating: All right, dude. Well, thanks again everybody and we’ll see you next week. Thanks Eric.
Dr. Markowitz: You got it, bro.
Shaun Keating: Dude, I’ll talk to you soon.
