hey it's dr amanda with straight smile solutions street smile solutions.com and i normally make
content based on interest of doctors and whoever's contacting me and you y'all have been asking for
this for a really long time like there's been a lot of questions a lot of interest a lot of it
just might be curiosity i'm not sure um i've kind of stalled on it because and i'll explain the why
behind it and then i'll get to the opportunity just because i mean true honesty i'm not hiding
this it's in my linkedin it's on my cv it's in all my bios i'm actually quite proud of it i'm not
ashamed of it all but i did i was on the original team that helped to start smile direct club that's
the best way i can explain it i was their first dental director what it was back in 2014 is not
at all what it is now it's a very different company than what i had originally been part
of starting um as for you know i was with him for almost two years i loved every moment of it it was
absolutely exciting i'm not ashamed of what i helped start at all it's definitely different
and maybe not the vision i have to be careful what i say because when i say things ultimately
things happen so um you know i'm gonna try to be as unbiased as possible but i'm not ashamed of
being part of it i loved it it was so incredibly exciting going from being a regular orthodontist
in an office to doing something totally different with a startup that ended up going public
um you know is incredibly fascinating and you know at the time i was upset with invisalign and i was
upset with the options that were available as we had started really digging into and talking to
consumers and what they were looking for it was really an elite product at the time it was only
for rich people there was nothing available the prices were too high for regular americans and
now it's not even just americans right it's all over the world but for regular people who just
wanted minor movement who just wanted to have a little control over their own treatment plan hey
i just want to have my gap closed i don't want my bite fixed that was not an option back in 2014.
you're going to pay seven grand for invisalign and the doctor's going to do it the way they want to
do it so we wanted the consumers to have access to care in areas of the country that had no access to
aligners at the time which was huge parts of our country based on our data so anyways fast
forward i'm not ashamed of it so now i'm gonna start reporting when you guys ask on different
opportunities now i'm gonna preface this that this is not my content okay anytime something's not
my content i preface it if smile direct club sees this video and you do not like it not a problem at
all you do not need to send me any type of legal letters or anything to ask you through the mail
all you have to do from your team is shoot me an email you know how to reach out to me my email
has not changed and say can you please take this down no problem it'll be down same day that's all
i'm asking for i'm gonna try to be as unbiased as possible in my reporting almost like a reporter
you know but i did preface it and i told you there was an affiliation many many many many
years ago there's no longer and has not been since 2016. i don't even know anyone on the team
anymore my original team has not worked there for the most part excluding a few people but um
it was a really really fun thing anyways all right so let's see so i happen to get this in
the just like a regular dentist i happen to get an email today asking me to join this network which
i thought was hilarious right it's like hey do you guys look at who you're emailing okay i'm slightly
honored but thank you um so this is the partner network and a lot of you must have got it too
because a lot of you are sending me emails saying well what do you think about this opportunity and
i'm just as confused as you are i don't know so i i replied to the girl who contacted me i
was like okay i'm interested i'm not gonna do it because i'm not practicing anymore
but if you tell me about it and you're okay with me unbiased making some content around it i'd be
glad to hear about it and you know what if it's a good opportunity you might get tons of doctors
signing up and if it's not a good opportunity i'm just gonna say what it is so basically the i mean
i'm gonna i'm gonna give feedback because i think they could make this opportunity
way more clear and way better but in any case um it sounds like you're joining their network
and you're having your patients do smile direct club you're basically giving them your referrals
um okay um i'm assuming if you're doing this you are not doing ortho in your practice already and
patients are asking for it and you want to have maybe a little more control over the situation
do i understand how the liability works nope have no idea i guess it would really come down to what
you're signing um if i'm scanning and impressing my or impressing my own patients obviously that's
going to take time so i'm assuming i'm getting compensated for it i have no idea what the
compensation is the margins are super slim already because their prices are crazy low so i don't
see how they can afford i'm assuming if they're doing this whatever they normally would spend on
marketing their you know their cac their customer acquisition [ __ ] their cac is being given to you
and that's how i would do it if i was the vp or the you know um the ceo right now of smile direct
club or the dental director that would make sense to me i mean whatever their normal cac
is i would give to this doctor for basically giving me this lead so i mean i'm guessing they're
paying you 100 200 300 i just this is just a guess okay uh it doesn't say in here what you get for it
um but you are taking you're using chair time um i'm assuming you are indemnified and you are not
it looks like you're not doing the treatment plan therefore you are not liable for the
um for the any type of bad treatment that might happen or or issues that might come up in writing
you know and in paper however um i don't know if it really works that way i think patients still
might complain to you and come you know if there's an issue they might come to you
so i don't really it seems like a real gray area to me um i mean obviously i'd
be really careful about the patients you select and i'm just i'm gonna do a couple sidebars here
you know listen y'all there are so many doctors i know that ever since smile direct club came
out they're doing attachment-less aligners duh i was doing these before i was doing these in 2012
when i was also doing remote monitoring back in 2012. it's all about picking the right case
the right patient and i have lots of content about attachment liners i know a lot about them
of course it's going to work better if you have a higher trim line that's why small drawer club does
what they do it's not invisalign has a higher trim line so they have retention so they don't need
attachments that it works it does work i can tell you i've seen i'm not going to tell you the amount
of cases i've seen from smile direct club but i've also seen lots of small direct club patients when
i was not working for them from in the last six years since five years since i stopped working for
them from my own personal clients that are just happen to be um my clients patients that happen
to be going through smile direct club that's not their ortho patients but they're still watching it
right they're watching it they're like ooh let's see how this is going i'm kind of curious right
so they send me the the results and like what do you think you know so for the most part it's
pretty darn good and you guys would love it if i said something different but guess what i'm not
i mean if it all comes down to case selection and if the right patient is chosen and if the patient
is compliant and if the doctor who's doing the treatment plan is doing the treatment plan right
there's a lot of moving pieces that have to fit together when it's done right right and
right guess what it works out just fine it looks great and the patient's super happy and it's all
nice and i know you don't want to hear that but it does work okay but hey you can do the same thing
in your office you don't have to put attachments and this lane has a zillion attachments because
they need it for retention and also because their material is crazy flexible okay the crazy flexible
material is really really comfortable i can tell you i have a daughter who has gone through
i did attachment list aligners for her as phase one with clear correct which by the way you can do
it's basically the same thing you can do attachment list worked out great for phase one
and then now that she's in phase two it's a much harder situation i can't do attachment list
so we did a time we're doing attachments regular stuff and she's like oh wow i really like these
invisaligns better like a hundred times better it's way more comfortable so i mean it is more
comfortable even though even though the hatch sprints are kinda attachments are really not
ugly if you shade match them well no one can tell they're there i mean i can tell they're
there but most people cannot but anyways that was a sidebar but um in any case as far as i
know you probably are compensated yes you have to take the scan i'm assuming you're indemnified
you're not responsible for it someone else is doing your tripod personally i want to know
who's doing the treatment plans and i kind of want to talk to them and to be honest i
kind of want to look at them but then if you look at them then you're responsible right
so that's a gray area is what i'm saying the the more involved you are the more responsible you are
so i mean for the most part i mean personally i think it would be a way better opportunity
if i didn't have to use my own patients if i became a scan shop for small direct club i would
like to do that and if they gave me the scanner hey that would be cool to lease rent own um that
would be really cool or if i had my own scanner then maybe my margins are better you know maybe
my production is better or my fees are better or whatever compensation is better that would be
really cool i would do that and then if there was patients that came in to get scanned that turned
out not to be a good um you know a good fit for smile direct club then maybe that could become my
invisalign patient hey now that makes sense to me so i like that opportunity better but that's not
as far as i know that's not the opportunity they're presenting here based on what i'm
reading but anyways i just thought i'd throw that opportunity out in case the powers that we hear my
my thing or i do the treatment time myself hey yeah that would be neat or i thought at
one point i'm pretty sure because i got an email about this that i could use their lab for my own
patients and i do the treatment plan but i'm not i don't have to do remote monitoring i just pay
the normal lab fees and i'm assuming they're cheaper because they do these things really
really efficiently you know and and i could use it i could do attachment list aligners on my own
patients and just pay a normal lab fee per aligner wouldn't that be awesome almost like white label
i think that sounds incredibly awesome and if i were smiling during club at one point they were
definitely talking about doing this because i got something some type of email from them as a doctor
saying that they were gonna do this and i could sign up for this network and they would let me
know for my own patients maybe i misunderstood it maybe this was it but i think that would be
freaking awesome because white label is huge but attachmentless and light label nobody doing
that i mean yeah you could do that but you know i really really do believe y'all and again you can
say i'm biased i i'm not compensated in any way for this so i'm telling you that i'm telling you
i've seen a lot of cases and i do in terms of the what is the word i'm thinking of in terms of
the intel uh proprietary what's proprietary for smile direct club obviously there's certain things
in proprietary that they own certain things that aren't and i'm familiar with a lot of
that so i'm not going to get into that but one thing they do they have done really really well
is they've created a lot of algorithms and way more than invisalign knows
about how attachmentless aligners work and it's something that no one else has access to but them
and i believe that this property of theirs this ip intellectual property has a huge value now i can't
give you suggestions on where to put your money in terms of investing that would be illegal with me
but i can tell you i invested heavily in smile dry club recently because i think they're going to go
somewhere again i don't work for them anymore i get nothing from them but i believe there's
a value to this in the dental world their ip i know they have it you know clearly because they
they're creating tons of data you know they're they're there's they've created you know finish
millions of patients there's got to be data there that invisalign does not have you know and this
data is of value because if i had three doctors ask me today alone how to do attachment list
aligners in their practice with invisalign i'm telling them it's not gonna work because their
their material is too soft and their trim is too low i said you need to use a different company
well which companies have it well no one really does they don't really have they don't efficiently
it's not like there's a toggle i can say i want attachment list and i want this to track
you know i want to know will is this a good case for attachmentless aligners what is the
what is the possibility that this will track i want to pick a case i want to set this up so
that it'll be successful as an attachment less aligner no one else has that that
functionality yet but there's a value to it so again i've hesitated putting this out because i'm
kind of keeping quiet about it but i had three questions alone today about this so i'm gonna
go ahead and put it out there you guys do with whatever you want with it if you're interested
i don't work for them so you contact them yourself and smell jerk club if you hear this and you don't
like what i'm saying although i think it was highly favorable so you're welcome um you all
you have to do is email me nicely and ask me to take it down that's it have a nice day okay bye