An interview with Dr. Howard Farran

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 Questions to Dr. Howard Farran ….continued

•         Do you think dental trade dominates dental deliberations?

 

Absolutely. Dentistry is a profession where at least four out of five dentists or practice by themselves, and they need to know what their other two million dentists peers around the world are doing and thinking about dentistry. Ever since Gutenberg’s printing press, newspapers and magazines have been huge. The more dominant form now is the Internet. So the problem with a dental trade publication is that if you read an article on root canals and it didn’t answer your question, you are kind of stuck, and what are you supposed to do? Wait un‘til next month and see if they have another article on root canals that answers your question? I think the most exciting thing about dental trade publications now is a dental trade magazine now acts as an introduction to an interactive conversation via the Internet. So I view Dentaltown Magazine as something mailed out, more like an advertising piece, or an information piece, telling you what everyone is talking about on Dentaltown. About half the people read that and get what they need, and the other half see that article and log on to the website after each article and say, ‘Oh regarding that article, what about this and what about that?’ So I think the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. I think a magazine being mailed to a dental office for free is never going to die. A magazine mailed to a dental office for subscription only, that’s going to be a tough thing, there is just too much interactive information on the Iinternet for free to actually be paying for a one-way communication piece. So I think the magazine is mailed out to 125,000 U.S. dentists and that starts the conversation, and hopefully that answers all your questions, and I think about half the dentists, that’s just the beginning of the conversation and then they log onto Dentaltown for follow up.

 

•         How do you ward of spam & bad comments on http://www.dentaltown.com ?

 

First off we sat down and designed a set of rules that prevents this but is not overly restrictive. For instance, we do not allow spam in the body of the message but we allow everyone to put their contact information and “sales pitch” in their signature area. That way if one wants more information from the person, they can look at the signature area, and  ignore it if they do not want it. We are very strict on editing and deleting personal attacks. For those that refuse to comply and repeatedly ignore our requests to stop, their accounts are inactivated and they are banned from our message board. Dentaltown hired a message board manager to run all this and he appointed volunteer administrators and moderators to help him enforce these rules.

 

•         How was the idea of TOWNIE meeting born ?

 

Townie Meeting is steeped in tradition. It was founded by two long-time members of Dentaltown.com who saw my vision that no dentist should have to practice alone. They created a meeting that embodies what Dentaltown is all about: eEducation, eEntertainment and cCamaraderie. We plan to continue the traditions set forth while growing in size and attendance. This meeting is THE place to grow your knowledge and passion for dentistry. With it now in our control, we will be able to invite every dentist in the world to take part in it.

 

•         Your future plans for TOWNIE meetings

 

Every year Townie Meeting just gets better and better. We have some amazing plans for future Townie Meetings in the works – but we’re keeping them secret. We invite every dental professional on the planet to come to all of our future Townie Meetings to check out what we have in store for them.

 

•         Did your involvement in DENTAL TOWN compromise the care you provide to your patients ?

 

No. Actually my involvement in Dentaltown massively increased the quality of care I did because I only knew at I learned in school, but it was actually posting cases on Dentaltown and seeing other dentists post cases on Dentaltown that I would say that it absolutely made my dentistry faster, easier higher in quality, lower in cost.

 

•         How much time did it take for you to break even in  DENTAL TOWN print edition and http://www.dentaltown.com  ?

One year.

 

•         Your future plans for DENTAL TOWN and http://www.dentaltown.com

 

Right now Dentaltown and Dentaltown.com are both in their infancy. I started Dentaltown.com in the United States of America only because that’s where I was born and raised, but America only has 150,000 of the world’s two million dentists and I have now 160,000 members on Dentaltown.com. If f you count all the hygienists, receptionists, assistants, dental labs, manufacturers, consultants, probably close to 10 million people work in dentistry. So Dentaltown and the Internet are both in their infancy. What I’m most excited about is, as we are writing this in 2013 two of every seven earthlings are on the Internet and we’re adding another one out of seven Earthlings per year for the next four years as they quit making cell phones and only replace them with smartphones – smartphones being a cell phone with Internet connection. So I think Dentaltown is going to explode as the world’s two million dentists from Portugal to Pakistan can literally log on. So I to put an analogy on the Apollo space mission to the moon – I think Dentaltown is still on the Launchpad.

 

•         When you started DENTAL TOWN were you sure you would break even & make a profit?

 

I would say no. Risk equals reward. I  ask everyone when you make a business decision, can you live with your worst-case scenario? I put all my money in and borrowed a lot of money, but I was a very hardworking successful dentist and I could have paid the loan back that I borrowed. When I see people make a business decision and when it goes south they literally decompose, loose it, kill themselves, whatever – they should have never made a decision where they cannot live with the worst case scenario. So you always want to know what your break-even point is and you always want to know what your worst-case scenario is, and you always want to watch how much leverage you use, because things can always go south. A lot of times they can go south for nothing that you did wrong. It could have been an earthquake, a hurricane. Look what happened on 9/11 in Manhattan. Some of those businesses that had been in business for literally four or five decades simply didn’t have a line of credit or cash flow or savings to survive until Manhattan got back on its feet again. Some of my favorite restaurants are gone and they are simply gone because the owner never even had a savings account or an emergency line of credit. So I think a lot of people don’t have enough insurance and a lot of people don’t have enough savings, and a lot of people make decisions where they are not prepared to live with their worst-case scenario.

 

•         How many hours in a week you are not online?

 

I wake up usually at five and I work out until seven, and I log on at seven and I’m checking Dentaltown off and on all day, probably logging off every night between about 9 and 10 p.m.

 

•         How do you select moderators for http://www.dentaltown.com

 

In the past moderators were picked because they were knowledgeable about a particular subject. Now moderators are picked only after they have shown through years of posting that they are fair and not abusive. They all agree to uphold and enforce the rules bye either editing and deleting posts themselves or alerting the Message Board Manager about the offending post. We have private moderator forums where the moderators can discuss message board issues amongst themselves and with the Message Board Manager.

 

 
• Why have language specific editions of http://www.dentaltwon.com been initiated. English is the global language

While English may be the global language and dentists around the world learn dentistry in English, it’s so much easier, friendly and comfortable for people of the same native language to discuss dentistry in their native language. That is the primary reason for opening up separate native language Dentaltown.com forums.

 

 

        

For one to one consultations on dental practice growth and practice management please contact : todaysmedicalmarketing@gmail.com