247: How One Dentist Built a Software to Fix Her Practice

So we're never willing to compromise on the patient's experience. We've been really, really close to the clients since day one. So I feel that relationship allowed us to really grow without compromise. And we're currently the fastest growing software company on the market.

Hi, I'm Emmett Scott and just like you, I've had my ups and downs in the dental industry, but times are changing. The DEO has built a map of how to succeed in one of the most challenging industries to navigate. On this show we talk to dental industry leaders, solve problems and the answers you need to face these challenging times and thrive. Welcome to DEO's Growth Secrets podcast for dental organizations. Now let's get started.

Hello everyone and welcome back to the DEO Growth podcast where we explore the ideas, the tools and the people that are shaping the future of dentist entrepreneurship. I am your host, Jordan McIntyre and before we dive in, I just wanted to introduce introduce who we will be speaking with today. So it's Dr. Rania. She is the founder and CEO of Auroch Dental. That is a platform where we are basically refining how dental practices manage their patient care and operations. So a little bit about our guest today. Dr. Started out as a successful dentist with multi practice owner in the D.C. area before she took a bold leap selling her practice in 2016 to start Oryx. Her mission, simple, right? It's to create an all in one cloud based PMS system that helps your dentist deliver better, more consistent care while running more efficient businesses. So doctor, welcome, we're excited to have you. While we kick off a little bit, you want to just kind of tell us a little bit about your journey and, and how what started this journey for you?

So I both my parents are dentists so and my siblings too. So that pushed me into that field to start with. And I really like dentistry. I really like connecting with the PAT. I started my first practice in 2009 in the middle of the financial collapse, I decided to go and open a fee for service practice. Everyone warned me against it, but I

truly there's a boldness in you.

Yeah, I believe there was a better way to do treatment. I just wanted to go for it. So I did it and it grew to multiple locations, multi specialty practice and then 2014 I got pregnant with twins and I had to be on bed rest and I started seeing my practices declining. We started getting our first bad reviews ever. We didn't have the same acceptance rate for treatment so everything was declining and I couldn't figure out why because at that point I wasn't the only practicing dentist. I had a lot of practicing dentists. So the dentists were the same, the office managers were the same. Something had changed. And I realized that a lot of the systems were in my head. After I sat down and I spoke with my team and this is where the idea of putting all of the ideas in my head into a system came from.

Wow. Okay, so that kind of launched your vision for creating Oryx is kind of what I'm hearing is that kind of life change and realization that, oh, the systems live up here in my head. How do I get those into an actual system? Okay, I'm curious, what, what problem specifically were you trying to solve? And then I would ask you like, do you feel like Oryx today is, is solving that problem?

I mean the first problem that we all the problems led to one things like patients were not really happy. They're they weren't referring and we weren't growing anymore. And it's the problem of many dental practices. So to solve to all of these problems, it back to the clinical side. Are the patients feeling that connection with the practice? Are we delivering the same exam, the same diagnosis to every patient, the same journey and experience? Are we leading them to say yes, to understand and to accept their treatment? And in a very short period of time, when we started implementing this, let's do this very systematic exam on every patient, we saw an immediate increase in our case acceptance and our referrals. And that's why this encouraged me to create Oryx not just for my practice, but for all practices.

Got it. Okay. And so I'm curious what specifically when you're saying, like, we have the same exam, we have the same, like, what's the output that this PMS system is offering to dental practices that's giving you that?

So I partnered with the kois center, with Dr. John Kois. I had gone through his courses. I loved his evidence, evidence based approach to dentistry. Everything is based on research. You know that this is the way a treatment plan or an exam should happen. And you know, I've had associates that would tell me, no, I feel this is too aggressive. I don't want to do a crown here or I could do a profi. It shouldn't be scaling. And I always wanted to get that literature out to them to tell them that everything that we're proposing is evidence based on. So we created this perfect exam that takes seven minutes to do. And at the end of it, the patient gets a risk assessment and it's a report that is printed out or shared Electronically, I still like to print it out because it shows the patient their photos, their diagnosis in four different areas. It's going to show them their gum health, their teeth health bite and jaw joint and their smile, and all the medical factors that could affect them. So airway medication affecting their dental condition. Once the patient leaves with that report, one, they're saying yes to treatment because they understand, they want me to do this scaling because I'm periostage, three or I need to do this crown because my teeth are structurally compromised. So they get the why behind our recommendations and they're so excited to see their own photos, to see the depth of the exam. And this makes them better patients, patients that refer other people to our practices. So I think that report is the most impactful thing other than organizing everything else in the practice. But if we had to choose the thing that has the most impact, I would say the report that the patient takes.

That's awesome because it's basically like you said, you have the perfect exam and then as long as we follow these seven steps, it sounds like boom. You get the, you get the output that every patient receives. Same, same thing that's going home with them. Okay, so I'm curious because you've built really two successful companies. So this is, you know, you're not the average entrepreneur, so you've built multi site locations for dental practices. Now you're kind of going in the, the technology. Like I'm curious, what lessons have you learned through that journey that maybe tie the two experiences together?

I think the lessons are very similar. It's finding your North Star and aligning the team towards that. So knowing why you exist, whether it was a dental practice, like we were a fee for service practice. So we knew exactly who our client is, what we are for our patient, what we want to deliver, the level of care. And everyone was aligned on that vision once we were all aligned, everyone was working towards that same thing and the same thing. In Oryx, we believe that the future of dentistry is cloud based, it's patient centered and it's clinically smart. So everyone in our company works towards these goals when we're trying to decide on a future. Like do you want to integrate AI into this or not? We look, is it aligning with our core value? And if it is, we go for it.

I love that. Okay, and you kind of touched on a little bit with the AI. That was going to be a question I kind of led into is how are you guys integrating with that? How does the system? Does the system work? Well, with kind of remote things like that. How does that work?

So AI is integrated into so many areas of Oryx and I love staying on the cutting edge of innovation with everything. So, so when, when we started with Oryx on the clinical side, the way we looked at it is we wanted our, the patient int connect with the exam. So like if the patient says yes to something in their medical or dental history, as the patient is doing the exam, it's going to pop up and remind them. So even pre AI, we were doing a lot of that and now with the AI, like we're recording the patient interaction and we're recording our exam, but not just to give like this lump summary that we see in a lot out there. I think of AI as having a very smart assistant with me in the room. So the way I talk to a very smart assistant, I would say, okay, this is what we're doing, this is what's going on and I'm going to refer this and the assistant could go and gather on that information. We trained our AI to be that assistant. So when I'm doing my examination, if I say missing wisdom teeth, I don't have to go and say like missing 1 16. I don't have to be a robot for my bot to understand. I want to talk to my real smart assistant. And this is how we created a lot of AI tools on the clinical side, but also on the business side, like with communicating with insurance companies, making sure that the claim is great and it's going to get accepted imaging AI. So it's really touching every area of Oryx. How to find the perfect spot. Hard to schedule a patient.

I love that. Yeah, I can see you like glow up with the AI. You're like, yes, this is like, we were made for this. So that's great. And you were, I mean, you were obviously light years ahead of it when you built this cloud based system to be kind of ready with where you were integrating. So that's awesome. So I'm curious because a lot of founders, they normally struggle like balancing speed and quality, so to grow fast without really losing what makes your business great. Um, you've been pretty vocal about growing like without compromise. Can you elaborate a little bit on that? What are you not willing to compromise? What, what does that look like?

So we're never willing to compromise on the patient's experience and on the reasons we exist. So we've been really. Or on our client experience. We've been really, really close to the clients since day one. Um, so we have a lot of Meetings with our users, asking them, what can be better, how can we do things better? And because of the nature of that relationship, these users are pushing us in the right direction, telling us like, this is where we want you to go. This is what we need. So I feel that relationship allowed us to really grow without compromise. And we're currently the fastest growing software company on the market, according to the latest Inc. 5000.

That's amazing. Okay, so I'm curious, you know, obviously we might be a little biased here, but what do you think is setting you apart from like, those that are maybe your competitors? And the easiest way to say what set what sets Oryx apart?

So I see us as a true partner to the offices. Like coming from a dentist that was so passionate about dentistry, so passionate about growth, growing a practice, so passionate about satisfying patients, I feel we check all of these marks. Originally, I only wanted to create a clinical software and plug it into the existing software. And we tried to go that route for a while. Then I realized the whole system has to work together. Like, the office has to be completely aligned front and back. It's not two teams, we're all one team. So whatever is happening in the treatment room is real time communicated to the person at the front. And we created these workflow that make the patient experience really special. And I think this is what makes Oryx extremely special, is the level of communication that happens throughout the office that makes the patient experience perfect every single time.

I like that. So I'm curious, do you guys have like, different dashboards, different, like reporting that's used? What does that look like?

It's not just different dashboards. It's like task lists that pop. It's your like pre appointment checklist. These are the things that we need. And everyone in the front and back know that all of this happened then. Appointment checklist. What do you want to do? Chair side. And this is part of our onboarding. How does your practice or your DSO want the patient experience to be? And how do we make it consistent across all your locations? Do you want these steps to happen chair site, or do you want them to happen at the front desk? And this is how we create these checklists, these flows where the patient could be signing the consent form, giving payments, doing all of that in the chair. And it gets communicated at the front or maybe like just completing the procedures chair side. And then the front is doing the checkout. So these little steps would really help with the patient experience and with the flow. And it's not like sending the patient to the Front and then Olivia popping back and speaking. And what did we end up doing? Did you end up doing the filling and the crown or just the filling today and then. Oh, no, no, no. Just remind her this. What are we doing next? All of this is either automated in certain cases or streamlined, where everyone is aligned on what's happening at any part of the patient journey.

Wow, I love that. And you kind of. You hit on something. So I'm curious, you know, onboarding is. Is super important. So the entrepreneurs and dentists and owners that are listening right now, what can you tell us a little bit about that process? Do they have, like, a person that's a part of this that they're, like, assigned to? Do you have a team that handles onboarding? Does that look like.

Yeah, we have a white glove onboarding for practices, and we spend the time like, you get your onboarding specialist and this is your person guiding you throughout this journey. How do you want your patient? We do the journey mapping for your patient. How do you want this to happen? Because some practices want a lot to happen at the front desk. Some want everything to happen chairside. Some want to give the patients a lot of freedom for online scheduling for any procedure, someone to do just for the patient for the initial exam. So we go throughout all these questions, make sure we map your journey perfectly. We check if the data conversion, for example, as part of this process, this is how your data is going to come. Do you want to move balances to oryx? Do you want to do it a different way? Do you want to connect all your practices together because you share patients across locations? Or do you want the practices to be independent? So all of that is mapped with the onboarding specialist. So we make sure that the journey is perfect for these locations. And if you have multiple locations, do you want the first one to be your main account? And then we duplicate it for all the other ones so it's the same as you add Your location number 10. We know that these are your forms. This is how you go through your patient journey and it's replicated for you.

I love that. So I kind of want to touch a little bit on. So a lot of founders really struggle with kind of making those bold steps when they have an idea, they want to take the next step. I'm curious if you can kind of guide us. Like, what. At what point did you know, hey, I'm making the right decision in this, and I know you brought. Brought up like your North Star. We stay focused, but kind of on a deeper level, I'M just curious for those founders and those entrepreneurs that are listening today, like, you have a story that you should be super proud of. So I'm curious to hear, when do they make that decision? What helped you see that, that it was the right decision that you were making?

I would say the first thing is to never wait for permission. No one would give it to you. If you know that this is what I want to do, this is the right vision. Just get started and you will see the traction happening. I have plenty of ideas. And then I would see that some ideas our users love and cling onto and they're like, yes, we want more of this and some don't go anywhere. So unless you just go for it and try, you would never know what's going to work and what's not.

I love that. Okay, any advice for like any new users? If you're saying, hey, if you're kind of on the fence of Oryx or another software, what would you say to that person to kind of get them to understand the true value benefit fit with choosing Oryx?

I would say anyone should look at every software on the market to see what's out there, what's the right fit for their practice. If someone's values align with ours, and if someone really values patients, really values clinical excellence, we're the right choice. We're the fastest growing. I would never get tired. But also I would say we're the most innovative. Like, we were always a step ahead of everyone else in terms of the features that our users really need. And we're very, very close to our clients. So we know what they want, we know what's next. So we're always innovating for them.

I think that's awesome. And I love that you said the White Glove experience. It kind of shows with having, hey, I took the bold leap and went into fee for service practice. At the time, it was probably very hard to make that leap in two. It was 2009, correct, when you decided, right? Yeah, that was a big, big year, girl. So for you to jump in, take the leap and then you did it again after a life changing story here. So I think just listening to you and kind of those of you that are listening, like what I'm picking up from this is exactly what you said, like, don't do it afraid, like just, just go for it, make one step and if there's traction, keep moving. So I think that's awesome. Congratulations on your success. That's huge. Any last minute things that you want to kind of touch up to any of the listeners that are listening today, any last minute advice or things about your software that you want to make sure that everyone here knows and can get excited behind.

I'm so happy. I want to say I went with the first DEO ever when it was hosting those and I love the concept, I love the growth. And this is, this is where I got my first ideas. After I had my first look, I could have multiple locations and I started seeing these people with back then, like maybe 20 locations was a lot and I'm like, oh my God, someone has 20 locations. And, and it gives you that courage. So it's, it's great to have this, the DEO community. I mean you guys give so much value to dentists. It's a great service. Congratulations.

That is awesome. I love to hear that. So I am curious we're going to end it, but I'm. How many offices did your practice, did your DSO get to? Like how many multi site offices?

It was at three locations and then at that point I started Oryx and I sold.

Oh, that's amazing. I love that for you. Love it, love it. Well, congratulations on all your success for the fastest growing software that we have out here in dentistry. So you heard it from the founder herself. So, Dr. Rania, this has been absolutely fantastic. I love your story. It's, it's pretty motivating. Not just because it's inspiring, but really it just shows what's possible when you really stay true to your values and embracing change as it comes along. So way to stay ahead of the game, keep it moving. Before we wrap up, I just wanted to say thank you for everyone listening today. Dr. Nia, thank you so much again for joining us. It's been absolutely amazing. With everything that you've done for our listeners, where can they find more about you? How can they contact you guys? What's the next steps? What do they need to do to reach out to you guys?

Or extensalsoftware.com you can go there, book a demo, contact us. You have everything on the webpage.

Okay. Love it. Okay, so we got you on LinkedIn, Instagram, YouTube, all the things we can find you there.

Yep.

Love it. All right, we'll have all those links in this show notes. So I'm your host, Jordan McIntyre with the DEO. We will see you again. Until next time, keep smiling.

Thank you for listening to deo's Growth Secrets podcast for dental organizations. Continue the conversation on our Facebook group and meet other dental leaders, get questions answered and the strategies you need to succeed. Plus, we have some free resources for you right there on the Facebook page. Remember, you're not alone. Let's do this together. Join DEO's Growth Secrets Group on Facebook. And until next time, keep smiling.