From $50K a Year to $500K a Month: Dr. Arun Garg’s Journey from Professor to Dental Empire Builder
What happens when a chemical engineer accidentally stumbles into dentistry, becomes a university professor for 18 years, then crashes and burns in private practice—only to rebuild and scale to eight clinics, 80 DSO locations, award-winning restaurants, and a hotel on the beach? Dr. Arun Garg has lived one of dentistry’s most remarkable entrepreneurial journeys, going from earning $50,000 annually at the university to collecting $500,000 per month in private practice—a literal 52X transformation. In this powerful episode, Dr. Garg shares the hard lessons from his “school of hard knocks” crash, why today’s younger dentists face different challenges than the 40-55 year-old avatar of a decade ago, and how he’s trained more general dentists on implants than anyone in the industry. Whether you’re considering adding implants to your practice or looking to scale beyond your first location, this conversation delivers the real-world wisdom only decades of entrepreneurial battle scars can provide.
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Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:
- 00:00 – Introduction and sponsor shoutout to Marketing 32’s performance guarantee
- 00:31 – Shoutout to Marissa and Chris from the Dental Practice Management Agency on their fraud and embezzlement episode
- 01:52 – Meet Dr. Arun Garg: Renowned dentist, educator, author, and multi-industry entrepreneur
- 02:24 – The accidental dentist: How a chemical engineer tagged along to dental school “on a lark”
- 03:19 – Rising through academic ranks at University of Miami over 18 years
- 04:26 – The private practice shock: Discovering he knew nothing about systems, hiring, or software after leaving academia
- 05:16 – The crash: How a phenomenal first six months came crashing down due to lack of business knowledge
- 05:45 – The 52X life transformation: Going from $50K/year salary to $500K/month collections by moving 12 miles
- 06:12 – Taking every practice management course available and finding the nuggets in each one
- 06:37 – The 18-month climb: Why implementing systems takes time to ingrain
- 07:18 – Scaling to eight clinics: Half built de novo, half purchased—pros and cons of each approach
- 07:38 – Becoming equity owner and Chief Clinical Officer of a DSO now at 80 locations
- 08:08 – Comparing models: Fee-for-service private practices vs. insurance-driven DSO approach
- 08:38 – The restaurant empire: Multiple Michelin awards and top rankings from New York Times and Esquire
- 09:08 – James Beard top eight bakeries in America and a beachfront hotel in the Bahamas
- 09:44 – The education mission: From training residents to founding Implant Seminars (now Garg Institute)
- 11:39 – 20,000 dentists trained: More successful graduates than any program in the industry
- 12:08 – Expanding beyond implants: 28 different specialties and subspecialties for GPs
- 12:57 – The mission defined: Empowering general dentists to expand their scope safely and profitably
- 14:17 – The demographic shift: From 40-55 year-old attendees to 30-45 year-olds with massive student debt
- 16:12 – Slashing costs by 65%: Condensing from 11 weekends to 4 while maintaining curriculum quality
- 17:40 – When Implant Seminars started, they were the only GP implant training—now there are 50 competitors
- 18:09 – Being the “Invisalign” of implant training: Making it okay for GPs to place implants
- 19:07 – Focus areas: Minimizing complications, maximizing predictability, streamlining GP workflow
- 19:37 – Easy entry points: Two-day versions and $99 symposiums with 16 world-class speakers
- 20:32 – Tax-deductible vacation destinations: Hawaii, Miami Beach, Las Vegas symposiums
- 22:08 – The industry shift: Why implants are now essential for being perceived as a quality, growing practice
- 22:51 – What happens when patients ask about implants and you say “we don’t do those”
- 24:06 – The PPC reality: How pay-per-click costs have skyrocketed from $1 to $20-40+ per click
- 25:31 – The open bid system that ratcheted costs up across all dental practices
- 26:29 – The front desk bottleneck: Why offices don’t answer phones even when complaining about low patient volume
- 28:38 – The ROI reality: A few hundred dollars per scheduled consultation but 9X return on ad spend
- 29:18 – The golden nugget: “Just do it”—the Nike philosophy and why delayed decisions are the only regrets
- 30:48 – How to connect: ImplantSeminars.com and Dr. Garg’s personal cell for direct text messages
Dr. Arun Garg’s path to becoming one of dentistry’s most successful entrepreneurs started with an unlikely detour. Growing up around medicine with a physician father, he was told to avoid healthcare’s long hours and pursue engineering instead. After completing a chemical engineering degree and realizing it wasn’t his passion, he tagged along with a friend applying to dental school—and discovered he actually enjoyed it. For 18 years, he rose through academic ranks at University of Miami, eventually becoming one of only two full professors in his department. The university handled everything—hiring, firing, legal issues, marketing—while he focused purely on clinical work and educating residents. When he finally left for private practice, he collected $500,000 in his first month, a staggering 52X increase from his $50,000 annual university salary. Then everything came crashing down.
The crash came because clinical excellence doesn’t translate to business knowledge. Dr. Garg admits he was “atrocious” at hiring, joking that he’d recruit cashiers from grocery stores. He didn’t understand systems, software, or the operational side of running a practice. After six phenomenal months coasting on pent-up demand from patients who had been waiting for him, reality hit hard. He responded by taking every practice management course he could find—industry-specific and general business alike. While 80% was repetitive, each course offered nuggets of wisdom. It took 18 months of implementing and ingraining these systems before the practice stabilized and began growing again. That’s when his latent entrepreneurial streak emerged, leading to eight fee-for-service clinics (half built from scratch, half acquired), an equity position and CCO role in a DSO now spanning 80 locations across half the states, award-winning restaurants with Michelin stars, a James Beard-recognized bakery, and a beachfront hotel in the Bahamas.
Through his education company—now rebranded as Garg Institute—Dr. Garg has trained over 20,000 dentists on implant placement, more than anyone in the industry. But the audience has fundamentally shifted: a decade ago, attendees were typically 40-55 year-old practitioners with established practices looking to expand services. Today, they’re 30-45 year-olds still carrying massive student debt. In response, he condensed the program from 11 weekends to 4, slashing both tuition and travel costs by 65% while maintaining curriculum quality. For those wanting to dip their toes in, he offers two-day introductory courses and $99 symposiums featuring 16 world-class speakers in vacation destinations like Hawaii and Las Vegas. His mission remains consistent: empowering general dentists to safely and profitably expand their scope. As Dr. Garg powerfully summarizes his golden nugget—channeling Nike’s famous slogan—the biggest regrets come from delayed decisions. Once you’ve done your due diligence, just do it. Those two years he spent mentally ready to leave academia but physically staying are his only regret from an otherwise extraordinary career.
Resources mentioned in this episode:
- Implant Seminars / Garg Institute: Dr. Garg’s comprehensive implant training program that has graduated over 20,000 dentists, now offering 28 different specialties and subspecialties for general practitioners
- Dental Practice Management Agency: Marissa and Chris’s consulting firm featured in a previous episode about fraud and embezzlement in dental practices
- Marketing 32: Performance-based dental marketing agency with a growth guarantee, having helped over 260 practices across the US, Canada, and Australia
- Marketing 32 Last Weeks Episode: Last weeks episode with Dawn Scott
Quotable Moments:
“I was literally taking out in a week more than $50,000—what I used to take home in a year. So I literally 52X’d my life just by moving 12 miles down the road.” – Dr. Arun Garg
“Then it came crashing down. I learned things through the school of hard knocks.” – Dr. Arun Garg
“I was atrocious at hiring. It was kind of like I go to the grocery store, I see a cashier—you’re the cashier here, you can be my cashier. That was kind of my mentality.” – Dr. Arun Garg
“I took probably every practice management, practice growth within our industry course out there. 80% of them were similar, but there was always little nuggets I got from each one.” – Dr. Arun Garg
“It didn’t climb out immediately. It took time to implement the systems and really learn them and really ingrain them. It took about a year and a half. And then we took off.” – Dr. Arun Garg
“That’s the way I see myself—to be that guy that has made it okay for GPs. I’ve always been there not just training GPs, but encouraging them and empowering them to say, yes, you can do this. You can do it as good as the surgeons out there.” – Dr. Arun Garg
“Today, to be perceived as growing and quality, you almost have to add in some aspect of implants—maybe the surgery, maybe the prosthetics, maybe at least the treatment planning.” – Dr. Arun Garg
“If a patient comes in and your response to implants is ‘nah, we don’t do those or we don’t recommend them,’ they’re going to think in their head—they’re going to make a judgment that maybe he’s not up with the times.” – Dr. Arun Garg
“We call doctors who expressed interest in signing up for a seminar. We call the office, nobody picks up the phone. And the same guys that I saw in my class are complaining they’re not having enough business.” – Dr. Arun Garg
“When I thought about leaving the university, I thought about it for two years until I actually made the move. The only regrets I have about my time there are those last two years when I was mentally ready to move on but hadn’t physically done it.” – Dr. Arun Garg
“The things that I delayed on are the things that I have regrets on. So now when something happens, I get the opportunity, I’m excited, I see it—as soon as I’ve done my due diligence, let’s do it, let’s implement it.” – Dr. Arun Garg
Action Steps
- Audit your implant offerings honestly: Determine if you’re offering at least treatment planning—if patients ask about implants and you deflect, you’re being judged as “not up with the times”
- Start with low-risk exposure: Attend a $99 symposium in a vacation destination to explore implant training before committing to a comprehensive program
- Evaluate your front desk phone answering: Call your own office anonymously to see if leads are actually getting answered—this is often the biggest bottleneck in converting marketing spend
- Calculate your true cost per patient: Work with your marketing team to understand not just cost per click, but cost per scheduled consultation and return on ad spend
- Consider the demographic shift: If you’re a younger dentist with significant debt, look for condensed training programs that respect both your time and budget constraints
This episode is brought to you by Marketing 32—the only dental marketing team with a performance guarantee where if you’re not growing, you don’t pay. Marketing 32 is truly invested in your growth, helping practices across the spectrum from solo practitioners to 30-location groups acquire new patients and break through growth plateaus. They get patients to your front door through proven digital marketing, SEO, and patient acquisition strategies. But as Dawn reminds us, what happens when patients walk through that door is up to you. If you need help with the marketing side and want to see if you’re a great fit to work together, reach out to Marketing 32 at marketing32.com for a quick discovery conversation.
Episode Transcript:
Brett Allen (00:19)
Hi, Brett Allen here, host of the Marketing 32 show where I connect with leading dentists, dental influencers, and industry experts to uncover the latest and greatest, to provide you guys the insights and innovations and strategies to help your dental practice grow and thrive. As always, our episode here is brought to you by our team at Marketing 32. We are the only dental marketing team that I know of with a performance guarantee that if you’re not growing and we can’t prove that impact for your practice, then you don’t pay us.
So we’re truly invested in who we work with. We’ve helped over 260 practices now across the US, Canada, and Australia. If you need help with growth, if you need help with marketing, reach out to us at Market32.com. Quick shout out to Marissa and Chris from the Dental Practice Management Agency. Recently had them on the show. We talked all about fraud and embezzlement. And I was not aware of how big this is impacting the industry and how many teams have to deal with this and docs have to deal with this. So check out that episode. A lot of good.
advice in there and tips on how to rein that in and discover it. So super excited to have a new guest on the show, longtime friend and ⁓ contact in the industry. His reputation precedes him. You guys know Dr. Arun Garg. He is a renowned dentist, educator, and author who has built an impressive entrepreneurial track beyond founding one of the nation’s leading dental
continuing education companies. He has successfully scaled businesses ranging from dental clinics and a DSO to restaurants and even a hotel. With decades of experience building, ⁓ blending clinical expertise and business acumen, Dr. Garg brings unique insight into what it takes to build, grow and sustain thriving ventures across multiple industries. Dr. Garg, welcome to the show. Excited to have you on.
Arun Garg (02:12)
Thank you.
Brett Allen (02:13)
Yeah, this will be a fun conversation. You have such a wealth of knowledge and experience in this industry and in entrepreneurship in general. I’m really going to enjoy our conversation. So thanks for coming on. Yeah, so let’s kind of start, go wind the clock back. How did you get into dentistry and take us on that journey of, okay, I’m a doctor. Now I want to get into CE. I want to get into multi-location DSO.
Arun Garg (02:25)
Hey, thanks for having me on. Yeah, thank you.
Brett Allen (02:41)
Grow, grow, grow, like all of this. Take us on that journey briefly.
Arun Garg (02:44)
Okay,
yeah, it definitely didn’t start out like that. And I wasn’t one of those that dreamt of dentistry growing up. I wasn’t one of those with family members in dentistry. In fact, quite the contrary, my dad’s a physician. So I grew up around medicine. And a lot of times, you know, physicians don’t know a lot about dentistry. The one thing he told me to stay away from medicine, he says long hours and weekends and nights. So go into engineering. So I actually in my undergraduate did chemical engineering.
So I’m an engineer. I realized as I was graduating, this is not my passion. It’s not what I want to spend my life doing. And I thought at that time about applying to med school. And my closest friend in undergrad was applying to dental school. And sort of on a lark, I tagged along with them. I took the DTs, did well on them, applied and went to dental school. And it turned out I enjoyed it.
Brett Allen (03:13)
Okay.
Arun Garg (03:39)
And I came down to Miami and ⁓ did a residency in Miami. I did my training at University of Florida for undergraduate chemical engineering and for dental school. Came to Miami Jackson Memorial Hospital for my residency and then joined the faculty there. So I joined the faculty at University of Miami. It’s a medical school. There’s no dental school, but there’s a division of oral, max, and facial surgery. And I became a professor there for 18 years. And I rose through the ranks.
Brett Allen (04:07)
well.
Arun Garg (04:09)
You know, I about 10 faculty members. I was, of course, the most junior one when I joined. And I started at assistant professor level, then quickly got promoted to associate professor and quickly became promoted to full professor. And by the time I left 18 years later, there’s only two full professors in the department, it is myself and Dr. Marks, who was the chairman. And so really kind of steady rose through the ranks there. And then I decided to leave and went into private practice, which was…
a huge difference to me after 18 years where the university hires and fires and I got a huge HR department. And if there’s any legal issue, the huge legal is department and marketing easy because the whole university and the whole medical is marketing team behind it. So I didn’t do none of that. All I did was clinical work, clinical work, a little bit of university politics, of course. I go into private practice in the first four or five months. Things are great. I already had the reputation. People.
Brett Allen (04:46)
yeah.
Arun Garg (05:06)
that did not want to see me in private practice. I mean, did not want to see me at the university, came to me in private practice and so a lot of people very quickly, but I didn’t know systems. I didn’t know how to, is what kind of software to use. Cause that was not a decision I needed to make. Is I didn’t know how to hire and fire. And I was atrocious at it. I mean, it was kind like I go to the grocery store, I see a cashier, you’re the cashier here, you can be my cashier. That was kind of my mentality. Yeah, really I’m embarrassed to say.
Brett Allen (05:11)
Mm.
Hmm.
⁓ gosh, yeah.
Arun Garg (05:36)
And so I learned things through the school of hard knocks. You know, after six months, the practice started crashing. We had a phenomenal first six months. was because people are waiting for me. I’m a fast operator. I do big cases. And so we had crazy numbers. Five, $600,000 a month that I was collecting. When I left the university, I was earning $50,000 a year as a salary, no opportunity to moonlight. And now I’m doing $500,000 a month, even with overhead.
Brett Allen (05:40)
Yeah.
Wow.
Arun Garg (06:05)
is I was taking home about half of that. So literally I was taking out in a week, more than $50,000. What I used to take home in a year. So see these billboards, 10 extra life, I was literally 52 X in my life just by moving 12 miles down the road. Then it came crashing down and I took a lot of courses. did probably every…
Brett Allen (06:05)
Yeah.
Yeah.
wow.
wow.
Arun Garg (06:31)
practice management, practice growth within our industry course out there. A lot of repetition when you take that many courses, 80 % of them were similar, but there was always little nuggets I got from each one. And I wouldn’t advise anyone to take all of them like I did. That was definitely overkill, but that’s just the way I’m wired. And then I took all the course outside of dentistry that I could find ⁓ about growth. And so we started climbing out of that. And it didn’t climb out immediately.
It took time to implement the systems and implement the things and really learn them and really ingrain them. It took about a year and a half. And then we took off. And it’s only then that I realized that, you know, I had this latent is entrepreneurial streak that I didn’t even know was there. And then after the clinic, I got a second clinic, third clinic, fourth clinic, fifth clinic, sixth clinic, seventh clinic, eighth clinic, and now I’m to eight clinics and was able to
is some of them I built de novo, some of them I purchased. So about half of them were purchased. ⁓ About half of them were built de novo. So it actually gives me experience. Yeah, if someone asked me, is, what should I do? I can actually say the pros and cons, having lived it and gone through it. Here’s the pros with all the de novo. Here’s the pros of buying. Here’s the negatives of each. can side by side comparison is them. ⁓ And then it turned out,
Brett Allen (07:38)
You start up scratch,
Yeah.
Arun Garg (07:58)
and offer from a DSO to be an equity owner and a chief clinical officer. And so we’ve grown that now to 80 offices ⁓ nationwide, not in 50 states, but it’s about half. Okay. About half the states covered. Our goal is to get that to 300 as the next step is offices. ⁓ The model for my private practices is all fee for service, all eight of them. The model for our DSO
Brett Allen (08:12)
Yeah. Yeah.
Arun Garg (08:28)
⁓ where I’m equity and CCO is primarily PPO, probably is insurance driven, is different models. I’m able to compare that as well, is de novo practices with purchasing practices with DSO model. And then along the way is ⁓ a good friend of mine. He was voted number one chef in America, 2019. So he left where he was at before. He was at a Mission Star restaurant. So he and I together opened a
Brett Allen (08:33)
Okay. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah.
Arun Garg (08:57)
a restaurant in Miami, got admission award the following year. I went on to open a second and third restaurant, all of them admission awards. I’ve opened a fourth and fifth restaurant. One of them got the top 50 restaurants in America award by New York Times Magazine. One of them by Esquire Magazine voted top eight restaurants in America. And then with a different friend of mine, we opened a bakery and voted James Beer top eight bakeries in America.
Brett Allen (09:06)
Wow.
Arun Garg (09:27)
⁓ so that, just went on this entrepreneur streak, bought a hotel that was been in existence for about 30 years on the ocean. Five acres is on the beach in the Luther of Bahamas. ⁓ and I’m just having fun. It’s kind of learning new industries, growing myself is being able to maybe implement that into conversation or in teachings is, or for example, podcast like this.
Brett Allen (09:30)
You.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah. And I think also, don’t think we’ve touched on it yet, but a lot of the industry knows you from your symposiums and continuing education and the trainings that you do to help dentists place implants and have confidence in that. Yeah.
Arun Garg (10:03)
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, as a university
professor, you know, I’m a professional educator. So there I was educating residents and I’m not really students because we went to dental school so we didn’t have dental students. But residents, I was training them and I was being invited to symposiums around the country, around the world and lecturing at them. And so I was doing a lot of education for both full-time residents in the hospital. I was doing training for invited guest lectureships.
And I was doing about one or two programs a month when I was at the university. And I would typically do them on the weekends. I could be at the university, of course, Monday through Friday, fly out Friday night, do something on Saturday or Sunday or both, and then fly back and be back for Monday morning. And I kind of joked that if a month went by, I didn’t have something like that, you I got withdrawal symptoms, okay? And I usually had one or two a month to do that. And about…
Brett Allen (10:55)
Thank you. Yeah.
Arun Garg (11:01)
One a month was international. And so I did about 12 international trips and lectures a year and probably about 20 domestically. And then when I left the university, I took that same idea and still lecture for other institutions and other associations and et cetera, but started my own is, and we simply just call it the implant seminars. I didn’t put my brand or anything about it is more recently, you know,
Brett Allen (11:07)
Wow, yeah.
Arun Garg (11:30)
folks such as yourself, know, Marcus said, should we be Garg Institute? So more recently in the last couple of months, we’ve started to brand it as Garg Institute. Prior to that, it was simply implant seminars. And then we trained and now we to, you know, we have a comprehensive program that is, it started out six months long. We’ve now been able to trim it down because people have busy lives, did four months. And through that comprehensive,
Brett Allen (11:39)
Okay.
Yeah.
Arun Garg (11:58)
what used to be six months now, it’s four-month program, we’ve trained 20,000 dentists through that. It is more than anyone in the industry has done with any dentist. They have graduated more and is more successful dentists through that program. And then what happened after that is a lot of these, our alumni would say, well, I’d like a course on oral sedation.
Brett Allen (12:04)
Wow.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Arun Garg (12:27)
That’s not something I do. So I hired the best oral sedation instructors in the country is to come in and do it under our umbrella. And they gave that course. Folks asked us about soft tissue surgeries, perioste surgeries, crown lengthening surgeries. We hired the best in the country and to do that under our umbrella. Folks asked about Botox and Phyllis for Dentist. That I do some of. So me and we hired the best in the country.
Brett Allen (12:33)
pull that together. ⁓
Arun Garg (12:57)
is do those courses. And so slowly we went from implants, which is my passion, to now 28 different specialties and subspecialties of dentistry courses. But the main thing behind all of this is all for the GP. That’s my mission, empowering general dentists. So if it is something, for example, zygomatic implants, that’s not our focus. That’s not for general dentists.
Brett Allen (13:17)
Yeah. Yeah.
Right, that’s the LS2 and
invasive, yeah.
Arun Garg (13:27)
It is for general dentists expanding the envelope, expanding their scope, expanding their offerings to patients, is in a way that they can do it easily and predictably and profitably and safely. so ⁓ all of these things are things to incorporate into GP practices if they so desire.
Brett Allen (13:48)
Yeah, that’s amazing. I want to pick your brain a little bit on that target dentist that you are trying to help and grow them in their services. Obviously, you’ve accomplished a lot. And you are a driven, individual, entrepreneurial, business-minded. I think you’re unique in the dental space, right? The average dentist out there, we do have entrepreneurial dentists that are wanting to grow. But the average dentist who
currently doesn’t do implants, but is considering it, or even the dentist that started doing this, what’s some advice you can give to them to really help them grow their confidence in it, grow their patient base with it, the number of cases they’re doing, ⁓ and level up in that way? What do you see when you’re working with dentists? What’s something that you can help them with?
Arun Garg (14:37)
Well, first
let’s look at that avatar. ⁓ 10 years ago, is that avatar, the most of the guys in the room were usually between about maybe 40 and 55 years old. That was the typical attendee between 40 and 55 that had 10, 12, 15, 20 years of doing crowns and bridges, of doing fillings. And now they’re…
Brett Allen (15:02)
Yeah.
Arun Garg (15:05)
either were doing for more profitability or just because they’re bored with what they were doing or for new excitement or new adventures and new growth. And that was usually the driving force and that was kind of is who was taking it. And so there already is a lot of fundamentals with dentistry were already under their belt. And so back then is my curriculum focused on that. Today, it is a much younger audience.
Brett Allen (15:31)
Hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Arun Garg (15:35)
And so instead
of 40 to 55 or 60, it is probably closer to between 30 and 45. So a big demographic shift. And with that demographic shift, now we’ve got to deal with when they come in at 30, number one is just on the course itself. I mean, they’re still on major debt because it’s graduated, it’s huge debts because that’s exploited in this country and they’re coming in younger.
Brett Allen (15:57)
Yeah. Yeah. ⁓
Arun Garg (16:02)
They haven’t had 20 years in private practice to pay that off. So they got a lot of debt. So we’ve done in conjunction with that is we have dropped the cost and you go, well, how did you drop the cost? Because we had the expenses. What we did is we condensed the program. You know, the program when I first was doing it is back then was 11 weekends. So 11 weekends I needed rental hotel rooms, 11 weekends audio visual, 11 weekends of hands-on workshops, et cetera. I’ve condensed it down to eight.
Brett Allen (16:25)
Hmm.
Arun Garg (16:32)
to six to four. And by condensing it, saving our overhead is trimming it by 65%. We may have trimmed the tuition by 65%. And yet keep the information intact, right? And you go, well, how do you keep the information? Well, we can still give them the rules and maybe instead of giving three or four examples of it, give one example of it, right? And so keeping the entire core curriculum, perhaps we just less examples of it.
Brett Allen (16:42)
nice nice
It’s still quality, yeah, and what they need.
Hmm.
Arun Garg (17:01)
And now what it means is we’ve able to slash the tuition by 65 % is because we recognize is and they the travel costs gets cut by 65 % because is less travel, less Ubers, less outside meals, less hotel nights. We offer now the virtual option. So then really trims that down. They still got to come at least one time to get all the hands on workshops, of course, but is the other sessions. So.
Brett Allen (17:14)
Hmm.
Hmm
Right.
Arun Garg (17:31)
is we’ve modified it to really make it easy. I haven’t seen this. And now you see, when we started this, we were the only ones is training general dentists on implants. At that time, it just wasn’t available is implant training for general dentists. Today, it’s ubiquitous. There’s 50 different doctors, guys, institutes, symposiums offering implant training is out there.
Brett Allen (17:48)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Arun Garg (18:00)
is we’ve really seen that, well, we’ve got to make it accessible if there’s a desire in that 30 to 45 year old. And we’ve really aggressively have slashed and sharpened our pencils on it to make it easy for them. And then make it reproducible. know, is ortho at that time was also not for GPS. It was for orthodontists. And today is who changed that field? Who changed it was Invisalign. It wasn’t a person per se, was the liners. And in
Brett Allen (18:09)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, they are liners. Yeah.
Arun Garg (18:29)
That’s the way I see myself and have seen myself is to be that guy, not in a line or company, but that guy that has made it okay for GPs. So I’ve always been there, not just training GPs, but encouraging them and empowering them to say, yes, you can do this. You can do it as good as the surgeons out there. And then showing them how they could and show them how to minimize their complications because they might have more trouble managing complications.
Brett Allen (18:52)
Right.
Arun Garg (18:58)
than a surgeon whose management is on complications. So we’re focusing on trimming the cost, aggressively. We’re focused on teaching how to manage or eliminate, minimize his complications, is maximize predictability, there streamline the workflow in a general dental office, is not the workflow intended for a surgical office applied and overlaid on general dental practice, but streamlining is everything for a general dental.
Brett Allen (18:59)
Mm. Yeah, that’s.
Arun Garg (19:27)
is practice and teaching from that perspective. So those are some of the things we’ve done to make it easy. And you go, should someone get started? You know, there’s easy ways. And sometimes we think, well, I’ve got to make an investment of a course. And even if it’s the pricing is 65 % discounted from what it used to be, it’s still an investment. But there’s easier ways. We made a two day version. So it’s not even four week and just a two day version. And maybe that’s enough for you.
Brett Allen (19:28)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Yeah
Arun Garg (19:56)
Maybe it’s enough to dip your toe in the water to see, really super, super low investment, super low investment in terms of tuition, in terms of travel costs, in terms of anything. And if you want even lower is, you know, we do symposiums and the symposiums are not in the thousands of dollars. I literally do a two-day symposium with about…
Brett Allen (20:00)
Get some, yeah.
Get the exposure, see if this is a fit you want to expand into, yeah.
Arun Garg (20:22)
One speaker per hour, so about 16 speakers, as you can imagine, world-class. I get people like Dr. Marks who invented the whole hyper oxygen protocol, leading mind, one of the leading minds in maxillofacial surgery, the guy that developed all the protocol for bisphosphonates, et cetera. Folks like him, 16 of them, and I do it in exotic, fun places around the country, Hawaii and Miami Beach and Las Vegas, and I make the tuition $99. That’s it, $99, and if you…
Brett Allen (20:49)
Nice. Wow.
Arun Garg (20:52)
put it through the practice and you’re able to tax deduct it, then that means if you’re in a 40 % tax bracket, Uncle Sam is paying $40, it’s $60 out of your pocket for the tuition, plus whatever your flight is. And that’s a vacation destination. So you can make a vacation out of it and make it tax deductible. That’s how easy it is. Is $99 tax deductible. You come to symposium, 16 world-class speakers, 15 different vendors to talk to.
Brett Allen (20:56)
Yeah.
Yeah, that’s amazing.
That’s amazing.
Wow. We’ve been the sponsor at one of those symposiums and worked with you before like that. They’re phenomenal, you guys. You got to check them out. In fact, with more and more, let’s talk about the industry a little bit. I don’t think there’s a dentist now when we’re doing marketing in different markets that we go to to help our clients. If you don’t have implants listed as a service on your website or in your repertoire of services that you offer,
Arun Garg (21:21)
We made it super easy.
Yes. Yes.
Brett Allen (21:50)
You’re missing out on revenue, not only that, but you’re also from a competition standpoint, you’re missing out on ⁓ leveling up in your market so that patients wanna come to you. ⁓ It seems like more more GP practices and just the regular dentist have that ability now. So if you don’t, you’re missing out.
Arun Garg (22:14)
You know, there was a slide at the American Dental Association meeting, a speaker, about 15 years ago, and I was in the back of the room, and he had a slide up that if you want to be a quality growing practice, you must offer dental implants. And I was in the back of the room, this is 15 years ago, and most of the audience heads were going, mm-mm. Because 15 years ago, you could be a growing GP practice, and you could be a quality GP practice without offering dental implants. You could do it as veneers, via crowns and bridges.
Brett Allen (22:28)
Hmm.
Yeah, cosmetic. Yeah.
Arun Garg (22:43)
via a lot of different ways. But
today, to be perceived as growing in quality, you almost have to add in some aspect of implants, maybe the surgery, maybe the prosthetics, maybe at least the treatment planning. But it’s gotta be at least some aspect. Today, if a patient comes in and says, you look at them and go, wellness, Jones, your option is a bridge or a partial, they will say, about an implant, doc?
Brett Allen (22:50)
Yeah.
Right.
Right?
Arun Garg (23:11)
And if
your response is nah, nah, nah, they’re experimental or something along those lines, and nah, nah, nah, we don’t do those or we don’t recommend them. They’re going to think in their head, they’re going to make a judgment that maybe he’s not up with the times. And so there will be a judgment. so you’ve got to at least do the treatment plan if you want to be growing in quality. Now, if you’re not growing, you’re a tail end of your career, you don’t want to grow, that’s fine. If you don’t want to perceive this quality, that’s fine.
Brett Allen (23:15)
This is not good.
Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah.
Arun Garg (23:39)
at least the treatment planning, even if you don’t offer the prosthetics and or the surgery. And most often, as you said, as maybe the prosthetics and the surgery because they’re highly profitable.
Brett Allen (23:51)
Yeah. So let’s transition more to the doc that does implants now. A lot of times when you get doctors that come to us, they may even know you, hey, I did the Dr. Garg training. I can do implants and I want to grow that. So the practices out there who want more implant cases, let’s switch to marketing a little bit. What have you seen? I know you’ve worked with a lot of marketing companies, ours included. What is…
becoming ⁓ the successful way to get implant patients and grow that part of your practice.
Arun Garg (24:25)
you know, is pretty much in any industry, is when you’re the cutting edge, you have a competitive advantage. And when everyone is doing it, you no longer have a competitive advantage. And so whether it’s early on when you’re doing the implants and you can charge this fee, and now if everyone’s doing it, the fee either drops that you can charge or basically doesn’t rise for 20 years and just kind of…
Brett Allen (24:38)
Hmm.
Price comes down.
Arun Garg (24:52)
based on inflation, kind of relatively drops, right? And so what happens is if you’re doing, know, pay per click, there’s, you know, and that’s kind of what it’s called, right? PPC, pay per click. And they click, is Google charging you a dollar, they lend on your website. Click, dollar, click, dollar, click, dollar, click, dollar. And that was kind of what we said is about a dollar is years ago. And even a month, I mean,
Brett Allen (24:56)
Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, in the early days.
Arun Garg (25:21)
And in small towns, it might be even less. Okay. Today, nobody says a dollar. Because the way the competition is. Because is, and they were very clever. They didn’t simply raise the price. They just did open bid system. And if you say, I’ll bid a dollar, and then the dentist down the street says, well, I’ll bid a dollar 50 cents. They send him his ad. So then you catch on and say, I’ll bid two dollars.
Brett Allen (25:28)
Yeah, the competition has raised the prices for sure.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, yeah.
Arun Garg (25:51)
and they send you the ad. And then pretty soon he gets one and he says, I’ll bid 250. And then third office opens up down the street and he catches one, he starts at $3. And we’ve all ratcheted each other up. It is truly like what you see in those TV auctions, where just price, and now it’s gotten to be a place where it is this price. And I don’t know, you would know those numbers, but it’s not.
Brett Allen (25:52)
It keeps ratcheting up and ratcheting up.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Yep.
Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah.
Arun Garg (26:19)
$20, $30, $40 for a click. And that’s not even a reward. That’s a click. And then from the click, you got to have the website to grab them. Okay. And then there’s the website. And the website costs is not going up because they got to be more and more more clever to differentiate yourself. And then if they do call, now you get our front desk that takes that lead and gets them in.
Brett Allen (26:23)
Yeah, some of them get really expensive. Yeah.
Yeah. And how are you differentiating yourself there? Yeah.
Yeah.
Arun Garg (26:49)
because between the click costs and because not every click is gonna call is, it might’ve cost you several hundred dollars to get that phone call in. And so is the office staff number one, do they answer the phone? And we know from our seminar business is we call doctors about they express interest, I would like to sign up for the XYZ seminar. We call the office, nobody picks up the phone. And the same guys that I saw in my class,
Brett Allen (26:53)
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, yeah, the front desk can be a bottleneck.
Arun Garg (27:17)
complaining that they’re not having enough business. I think, well, maybe the fact your staff doesn’t answer the phone has something to do with it. Okay. We see it as you probably do is we’re not trying to make a research project out of it, but just by the very nature of this side of what I do, my seminar is we’re calling dentists all the time and are astounding the number of them that the call. Right?
Brett Allen (27:23)
⁓ yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Oh yeah, for sure. That’s
why we built a call tracking AI system that helps the front desk see how they can do better and when a patient’s not scheduling, why they’re not scheduling. Because we saw that disconnect. It was like, hang on, what happened on these 50 calls? Why aren’t we seeing the growth? Oh, there’s a bottleneck at the front desk that we need to help with. But you’re absolutely right. When you speak about marketing costs rising, competition.
There’s so many different marketers out there now that are encouraging dentists to use online ads and so those costs are going up. ⁓ There’s a lot of things that we can do to differentiate ourselves and tell the story of why you’re different and why you’re better and why they should trust you and book that appointment. But yeah, it’s an expensive ⁓ form of marketing, but the revenue is there to support it and that’s why so many practices are going after it.
We’ve built out a process where we can help you with that. If you’re listening, we can help you generate those leads, qualify them, get them scheduled. And yeah, our cost per patient now is in a few hundred dollars to get that patient scheduled for that consultation. But what we’re seeing on the back end, if you’re doing it right, you see a 9X return on the ad spend. So yeah, there’s a lot that goes into adding implants into the practice, as you know. ⁓
But yeah, this has been a great conversation. We’re about out of time. I wish I could keep picking your brain. ⁓ Let’s close with ⁓ that golden nugget, right? This is the format of our show. If you could, in all your years of experience in dentistry, DSO, group practice, implants, all of it, ⁓ what do you think is that one golden nugget, that one epiphany that if our listeners could just have this shift in their practice, in their life, what?
What would be that thing that would have a ripple effect for them?
Arun Garg (29:38)
You know, it may or may not have a ripple effect for them, but for me, I can tell you, and maybe, and hopefully it does for them, is it’s almost like that Nike commercial, okay? It’s about just doing it. You know, when I thought about leaving the university, I thought about it for two years until I actually made the move, okay? I loved my time there. The only regrets I have about my time there is those last two years when I was mentally ready to move on, I hadn’t physically done it, okay?
Brett Allen (29:57)
Hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Arun Garg (30:08)
And so the things that I delayed on are the things that I have regrets on. So now when something happens, I get the opportunity, I’m excited, I see it, I understand the vision. It doesn’t mean I’m leaping before I look, okay? But as soon as I’ve done my due diligence on something, let’s do it, let’s implement it, not let me still drag this out.
Brett Allen (30:30)
Yeah, yeah, I love that. I think of so many things in my life, yeah, I think of so many things in my life that I wish I had done sooner and taken that risk sooner and tried something sooner. So yeah, just do it. You can always learn to swim and figure it out. And there’s plenty of resources, yourself included, of experts that have been where you are that can help lead you down the path. So love that.
Arun Garg (30:32)
So that would be it. Yeah.
Brett Allen (30:58)
Thank you, Dr. Garg, for coming on the show. If a listener wants to get in touch with you or learn more about your programs or how they can get your help with any of this, where do we send them?
Arun Garg (31:07)
It’s easy.
Yeah, it’s easy. I don’t know if you can have a link or what, but my website is ImplantSeminars.com. Very simple, very straightforward. And my personal cell number is, and that just comes directly to me, is 305-331-6481. I do better with text than actual phone calls, but yeah, either way.
Brett Allen (31:23)
Great.
Yeah, we’ll put that in the show notes. You guys can text Dr. Garg. He’s a great resource, super nice guy. I’ve texted him a lot over the years. Thank you again, Dr. Garg, for coming on the show.
Arun Garg (31:45)
Thank you really
for the invitation. I really appreciate it. love working with you. I love being on this. Thank you.
Brett Allen (31:52)
Yeah, well, thank you again. until next time, everybody on the Marketing 3-2 Show, have a great day.
