What if zirconia could look even more like natural teeth?
Well, Elvis, according to the. Dr. Ed McLaren, and I quote, of all the zirconias that he's tested, the optical properties of Ivocar's Emax zirconia are the closest to natural teeth. And you know what? I've seen it. I believe it. It's an unbelievable material.
Interesting. Well, I kind of want to discover what's redefining the possibilities with this IPS Emax zirconia.
All right, everybody, if you want to as well, join Doctor Ed McLaren for Zirconia Reimagined. It's an informative webinar exploring the latest advancements, clinical insights, and. practical applications of zirconia in modern dentistry.
That sounds absolutely amazing. October 5th at 7 p.m. Register today at vivalearning.com. That's viva, V-I-V-A learning.com.
Be there, guys. This material is amazing.
So Barb, an overdue congratulations are in order.
Oh my God. What did I do now, Elvis?
Didn't you all recently announce the Simply Arch studio?
Yes, we did.
That's awesome. You know that's right up my alley there.
Of course I do, yeah.
And just for anyone who hasn't seen the announcement, what is this Simply Arch thing?
All right, so Simply Arch is our dedicated full arch lab. So it's high quality. Full arch cases are a big part of what we do. And we wanted a team and a dedicated workflow and a production environment built specifically around them.
So basically just no distractions.
Exactly. Just a bunch of full arch nerds doing full arch things.
Oh God, a bunch of nerds sounds terrifying.
It's never terrifying of us.
And does a new studio also mean new toys?
Yes. And of course, we recently brought in exterior as part of the project.
Hell yeah, nice.
Yeah, and then of course came the cam decision.
Ah, here we go, the old cam decision.
You know, Elvis, we tested a couple options, and of course, we landed on Hyperdent.
Like Hyperdent, just as easy as that, huh?
As easy as that, pretty much. The quality off the machine was excellent. So that means also no hand finishing, and the milling time times we're excellent also.
You're right, that does make the decision quite easy.
But honestly, what really stood out to us was the testing and implementation process.
How so?
You could immediately tell these guys live in a world of high, complex milling challenges.
That's got to build a lot of confidence.
You know what? It really did, and it really does. They weren't just showing us how the software works. They were advising us on the best way to build an entire workflow for our lab. You could tell they've done it a hundred times, guys.
That's a whole new different level of expertise. Well, congratulations on the new studio, Barb.
Thank you. Hats off to my dad for the studio. So it means a lot to me.
Welcome to Voices from the Bench, a dental laboratory podcast. Send us an e-mail at info@voicesfromthebench.com and follow us on Facebook and Instagram. Greetings and welcome to episode 441 of Voices from the Bench. My name is.
My name's Barbara. Morning.
What's happening, Barb? Long weekend for us.
Right on.
Yeah, when this thing comes out, it's Labor Day, and I'm hoping no one's working, but I'm sure there's a few that are.
Oh, of course there's a few that are. We're dental lab technicians. I'm sure you'll be in there, no?
Yeah, you know what? I'm actually thinking about going in to get some stuff done.
I'm so surprised. it's all good. Saturday morning, my son just graduated. He is 100% a firefighter for the Pasco County and I'm just could not be prouder of him and I'm just really emotional about it and happy. So yeah.
How does that work? Do they live at the fire station? Is that like a thing or?
He's got to work every 4th day. He works 8 days.
Interesting.
24 hour shifts. So yes, they live there for 24 hours and they go home for four and then they come back for 24. It's crazy. Yeah.
It is crazy.
Yeah, I was thinking it was gonna be like 3 days on, you know, two days off, but it's like one day on, eight days a month. I'm like, well, what the hell else are you gonna do with yourself, buddy?
Are they allowed to get other jobs?
A lot of them do. But I don't know. He's going to train for like this ultra marathon. So I think he's going to be doing a lot of that.
So he's one of those.
Yes, I'm a proud mom. So how are you?
I'm doing really well. I think last time I mentioned that I was enjoying the weather. It's hot again. It sucks. I hate this.
Well, you only have about a week of it, don't you?
Yeah, it won't be long before I'm about the snow.
Yep.
But you know what? We just want to throw out a reminder to everyone that likes to have fun.
Yeah.
NOLA Lab Fest is fast approaching on October 15th to the 17th in New Orleans. I already got my room.
I mean, don't pass out, but I am prepared.
That's insane. That's insane. I did see online that the room block is ending this week when this thing comes out. I don't know the end of the week, but if you're thinking about it, Now's the time to do it. I mean, last year was great. This year looks even better. Filled with great speakers, fantastic attendees, cool evening events, and of course, the second ever lab family food hosted by me. I'm excited for it.
You better get a nice silver jacket or purple. You got a top last year somehow.
Let's talk about how I did it, not how I was dressed. Okay. That's not the only thing that was good about it. That's true. I really put a lot of effort into it.
I bet you did. I heard it was wonderful. So be back.
It was, and I'm excited to do it again. So head over to nolalabfest.com to register and book your room.
All right.
As many of you know, the lab I am currently at purchased the old lab I used to be at, and now I'm actually back running that lab.
Nice.
Full circle, I know. But we're going through, we're updating some equipment, some workflow, some processes. But one of the have is bringing in Magic Touch. During this process, I got to meet a guy named Dan Sinclair who comes on to talk about his role at Magic Touch. But he also brings on the son of the creator and the current president, Amir Bagheeri. Together, they tell the story of Magic Touch, which has a really interesting Glidewell connection. What makes it stand out over the other LMSs and CRMs, and how any lab of any size can take their data to the next level. So join us as we chat with Dan Sinclair and Amir Bagheri. Hey listeners, have you ever wondered what the hell I'm doing when I'm not recording voices from the bench? Believe it or not, I actually have a regular job. I'm a client rep for Derby Dental Laboratory. So I'm in the field all day, all the time. I'm either doing chair sides or I'm building relationships and rarely am I in front of a computer. Well now here's a fun fact for y'all. Dental labs grow by keeping their customers and doing more business with them. Now that's my job, keeping those doctors happy and keeping them coming back for more work. It would be virtually impossible to do that without iCortica. So how do you get visibility with your accounts? Are you exporting data vomit in the form of a spreadsheet that only gives you a small piece of the puzzle? In fact, using Excel makes me angry and you don't want to make me angry. iCortica gives me everything I need. or right on my phone, even when I'm sitting in my car. I can see sales, remake rates, notes from my LMS, and it even tells me exactly what my risks and cross-sell opportunities are. I could even see if a doc just called to complain before I walk in the door, because honestly, that is a door I might choose not to walk in. The key is I'm always prepared and never surprised. I honestly wouldn't be able to do or enjoy my job without it. So head over to icordica.com to schedule time with them today to learn more. Icordica, stop digging for data and start taking action to keep more customers and more revenue. That's I-C-O-R-T-I-C-A.com. Love you, Rob. Attention, dental lab owners and managers! Think about your daily workflow. Are you still hunting through piles of paper invoices? Are doctors texting you to see if a crown is even finished? Are you logging into six different portals just to grab digital scans from your doctors? You didn't start a dental lab to become a full-time paper wrangler. It's time to streamline your business with Lab and Cloud. Built by techs just like you, for you. Lab and Cloud is the ultimate all-in-one platform engineered to run your entire lab. With over 90 powerful features, you can automate everything. You can track cases in real time, generate smart invoices, manage local delivery and shipping, and handle employee time tracking. All from a single, cloud-based dashboard. Even better, your doctors will get a dedicated portal to submit cases seamlessly. In your digital scanner files, they route automatically into your workflow, completely secure with full HIPAA compliance. Stop burning time on administrative chaos, scale your business, delight your dentist, and take back your day. Visit. LabingCloud.com right now to book your free personalized demo. That's L-A-B, the letter N, cloud.com. LabingCloud, your lab simplified. The operating system for dental labs built for text by text. Hey, just mention Elvis is handsome and get one month free. Voices from the bench. The interview. So I'm very excited today because as a lot of people have heard, I've recently went from Derby back to the old lab I was at, Summer Dental. And we are transitioning our current LMS to Magic Touch. And during this process, I had the great pleasure of meeting Dan Sinclair, who's helping us with this progress. And he's come on today with Amir Bagali. I do this every time. I psych myself up. What is it?
Bagari.
Bagari. Amir Bagari. Welcome, gentlemen. How are you?
I'm doing well. How are you, Velvis?
Oh, I'm doing fantastic. We're getting into this moving over to Magic Touch. I know there's a lot to do. There's a lot of work coming my way, but I'm excited to do it because I've been able to use Magic Touch for a while with And I've learned to love it and all of its capabilities. But like most people that come on this podcast, we love to find out how people get into what they're doing. So let's start with you, Dan. How the hell did you end up at Magic Touch?
Oh my gosh, that's a story. So my prior, I'll call my prior life iteration before COVID, I ran my own corporation for 20 years and sales had a whole lot of things. Got out of that and COVID hit and I kind of went into hibernation like the rest of the world.
Yep.
Went back out and my wife was like, I don't want you sitting at home. Go do something. And I found Magic Touch and I came on board there as a customer success specialist implementing new labs into Magic Touch. Love that job, love the people I worked with. Unfortunately, there was a family situation that changed, caused me to have to leave in 2022.
Okay.
Had nothing to do with Magic Touch. I was really sad. Sure.
Yeah.
Did not wanna leave. And I went and became director of operations for a healthcare organization. And man, businesses are so different. I loved Magic Touch and this other company just was a nightmare to work with in the same way. Sure. Last year in December, beginning of January, Amir reached out and said, hey, we have a sales position open. You want to come back? And I went, yes, please. It was not a hard decision for me at all. And so I came back on February 10th, and then Amir said, hey, we're going to the national show next week. Here's your plane ticket.
Nice.
Neck deep in the water ever since.
Nice. So I didn't hear anything about previous lab experience. Did you even know what any of this stuff was when you started the first time?
No, but operations are kind of in my blood, like system systems together. And Magic Touch is basically an ERP enterprise resource system for labs. And so it's really systems within systems that operate together as an entire process to give information so it makes sense to me. It wasn't hard for me to come in and grasp what it was. What was hard is how all the pieces talk together and all the amazing features that Magic Touch has. As you know, people call up and say, can we do this? And I go, yes, how would you like that done? A, B, or C? And we're like, what?
So really, Magic Touch, I mean, to you, it's more of how the process works within the software, not what we're doing.
Yeah, I mean, to be completely transparent, I am gonna spend my first few days inside of a dental lab coming up next month. Just now. Just now. Everything I have learned, I have gleaned from Amir and Jessica and Andres, who are the amazing heart of this group. here at Magic Touch and they're just a wealth of knowledge and they just share it so freely. And I've had amazing customers that have just bent over backwards to help me understand what they're trying to do and just being curious. That's my focus is being curious on how people operate and that just has been very successful for me.
I love it. That's great. So Amir, how did you end up with Magic Touch?
Well, I guess I hope I don't go too far back here, but.
Anytime after the age of five is fine.
Well, I mean, of course, as many know, Gary, my father, is the founder of Magic Touch Software.
See, I didn't know that. Interesting. Okay. Yeah, I'm going to want that whole history. So if you want to start there, let's do it. I mean, eventually you're going to roll into the story. So how did your dad start Magic Touch? What's that story?
Yeah, I mean, going back to the beginnings, effectively him and a couple of founders developed a proprietary app builder, actually. And I think it was a little bit ahead of its time. It was something where you could actually click objects and drop a button and it had its own scripting engine and you could make it do whatever you wanted.
What year was this?
Gosh, he started that in the 90s.
Okay. So this is like real early back when it was still wow.
Exactly.
Now everybody and their mom has an app. But back then.
Yeah. back in the 90s, it was, you know, CRM was kind of really starting to become more mainstream, right? The concept of having that type of relationship management software, right? Contact manager, you know, trying to get rid of Rolodexes and things, right?
Yeah, sure.
But yeah, so from their inception, Magic Touch was kind of a development house. I mean, the original model was conceptually have the app builder and allow back there was VARS, right? Value Added Resellers have them to be able to build their own apps and sell it, and it was this awesome model that didn't quite take off, but the engine itself was sound. Gary was doing some consulting there and it ended up being him and George sticking around together. So, and George is still actually with Magic Touch today. So from there, it was kind of, he was building logistics apps and some CRM tools for real estate and some one-offs there. But he ended up making contact with one of his good friends over at a small little lab over in Newport Beach that we might know of. wait a minute.
We're talking about Glidewell.
Yes, sir. Wow. Yeah, so we, Gary made first contact there with communicating, I believe it was back then working with Ashwin and some of the executive teams there of, you know, trying to untangle a lot of the processes there, right? And of course, you know, Jim being Jim, he's always on the edge of technology and he's always looking ahead and, what's next? How can we do better? And he always had a vision of customer service. He had a big customer service floor and a big team, and I'm sure it's even doubled and tripled by now. But at the time, the phone's not always ringing, right? So he had this idea of what could they be doing? So he always had them thinking about upsell, cross-selling, just kind of a dual hat, if you will. So he had a lot of challenges around managing the data. And at the time, they brought in an LMS system that was very production oriented, as was the case for most of the platforms at the time. They were really focused on getting this case in and processing it on time and getting it out. It left a lot of gaps in terms of just overall processes. So Gary started building actually what ended up becoming the foundation for what was called GCM, Glidewell Customer Manager.
Oh, interesting. Yeah. And so he did it specifically for Glidewell.
Did it specifically for Glidewell. Like I said back then, it was the early start of Magic Touch and it was kind of like, well, let's see where we can help, wherever we could help. And so we built, actually I wasn't even involved yet. I was still in college actually trying to finish up over at UC Irvine. But, and I was kind of helping in the background with him. I'm an engineer by trade and I have a computer science and majored in software development. And so I was kind of doing my thing there, but I always was helping him and we would talk and communicate. I've kind of watched from the sidelines, but as that relationship grew, Gary was realizing he might have something here that, could change the game and how people were doing things. So again, Jim being the amazing man that he is and the executive team there was, very open and letting us to letting Gary to develop that product while maintaining, what operations we were doing for Glidewell. So And then of course it became, well, Gary needs help. So him and two man software team over there were working on things. And Gary came to me and said, hey, I was fresh out of college. I mean, back then, now that we're talking 01, I graduated. And we had, of course, tech kind of took a big step backwards. We had the, the tough events of 9-11 there. And it had an impact on all things business, really. So it was kind of a tough time to graduate. So I ended up doing a fifth year and kind of was dabbling in. I worked at Hewlett Packard. I even got into video games, just trying to see.
There you go.
Electronic Arts at the time. Yeah. I mean, I knew I was going to work in information technology in some way. And so when he came to me and said, hey, I might be on to something. I said, I think you might be as well. So my story really in the dental lab space started for myself as an employee of Glidewell.
Oh, okay. What did you do?
Yeah, so I came on board there full-time and I reported to, at the time was Rob Grice, wonderful man, rest in peace. He believed in our vision as well, and I reported directly to him. But what did I do there? Pretty much everything that was needed. I was running up and down those stairs from the shipping receiving floor and the first floor there to the executive room and the 4th floor, having the meetings in that glass room there with the team. But mostly I was focused on At the time, as I mentioned, LMSs were really production-oriented nothing talks to anything, so we were piecing together an infrastructure there to really make life easier for the team, and so it consisted of an LMS, it consisted of GCM. I think at the time it was called Great Plains Counting. Anyway, other systems were around. And they were not talking to each other. People were having to log in and look at this in a separate place, look at that in another place. And so we were kind of creating an integration between all of them, reading out of different systems and bringing it all together in this thing we call GCM. And so they built us a little office right there on the customer floor. No joke. I mean, again, Glidewall has a team internally to do just about everything.
Yeah, I'm sure he built your desks that he gave you.
That's exactly right. I mean, we were a few desks in the corner over there. It was at the time Paula was running the show. And they threw up two walls and all of a sudden we had an office. So Three of us were thrown in there and then we went to work. We absolutely went to work. And one of the biggest challenges was just process oriented, making sure people could get things done the way they needed to, as optimally as possible. And then of course, all of the data around it. So that's really where I hit my stride in understanding. I call it lab 101. I mean, it was just a crash course.
I bet. What a place to do it in. I mean, jeez.
Exactly. Yeah. I didn't realize at the time I look back on it now and it was just absolutely invaluable to be able to see that firsthand and work with the department managers and, I need this, I need that. And okay, I think we can do something. And then just going back and being able to execute it. I mean, we were doing things. You wanted that, request came in today and we were turning it around that week. You know, it was really fast and furious in some ways. And producing reports and connecting systems, and it was pretty incredible to see that take off, and I ended up spending I think four years almost there working directly with the team and leaving them. I think by the time we had things rolling, I mean, they were Glidewell at the time, I think was still starting to open their operations internationally. And I was flying to different locations, standing up some of their labs there. And I think we left them, they were about 40% up on their monthly case counts. And we were reconciling things, the shipping costs. And it was just incredible to see that to take off. But yeah, that was That was kind of how I got started in lab and really never, never looked back.
Yeah, but how did you end up, what, back with your dad at Magic Touch or?
I mean, Yeah, actually, that's an interesting story. So, as we parted ways, you know, with Glidewell, of course, as all great things eventually come to an end and it was a perfectly amicable terms and, you know, it was just a wonderful situation. And so, At that point, we had this amazing what we called CRM tool. It was something that we thought filled the gap of all the major LMSs out there. So the thought process was, hey, maybe we'll be able to integrate with partners. Maybe we'll be able to bring this solution to the sort of existing players out there. And that didn't go so well. I don't know exactly how or what, but It just wasn't met with the same excitement that we had for partnering. So we ended up saying, what, let's just complete this package and let's continue down the road we're at and implementing our business systems and let's venture into production. So we did just that. And so as at the time I was. still young, met my wife, I was growing my family. And so I had sort of bills to pay, if you will. And so I went and got a job working for the largest healthcare here in San Diego County. And I started specializing in database management, all information systems. I was supporting multiple hospital and practice backend systems and imaging. And I even went into a neonatal NICU to work on an embedded software application.
Oh, wow.
Yeah, that was an interesting thing.
Makes your teeth easy to you.
Well, now I'm ready. Yeah, exactly. Now I'm ready to go. I can conquer anything, right? So flying high on that. And I just continued to work with Gary in that capacity, worked with my dad, and seeing how things were going with Magic Touch and kind of being a kind of a consultative presence for him there as him and the team continued to work on Magic Touch. So that's about the time my sister joined the party actually.
Oh wow, it's a family affair.
Exactly, yeah. So Jessica joined as a support there for him and helping him land the first couple of clients there and really get things going. And so I spent about seven years in healthcare working again behind the scenes with Gary until one day he gives me the call and he says, what? You want to come full time? And I said, all right, we ready to do this? He said, I think so. And I'll never forget that call. It was like 11 o'clock at night. And I was having a moment. Yeah, we had, I think we had our second, we had our daughter at the time. and still in diapers. And I said, okay, well, I think I'm with you, let's do it. And so then I joined full time. So actually funny enough, 13 years this past Monday, where I was officially on my W-2 said magic touch.
Really, 13 years ago, wow.
Yeah, so I think officially I, six or seven years before that. And of course, Clyde Well, but officially here now, 13 years. And I remember working on my first, our first big RFP or big proposal. There was like 75 pages. I was on family leave, just had our son and, you know, and helping him out, get those things going. And yeah, so then I joined full time and it was, it was the three of us, four of us actually. And humble beginnings there, and we started hiring for support, and the rest is history.
Yeah, well, when it was introduced to the labs, how did you roll that out? It's not like you just said, hey, everybody, come sign up. You had to have tested it with a couple labs, kind of worked out some kinks, roll it out slowly. Is that usually the process?
Yeah, absolutely. Well, and that was one thing that we set out to do with Magic Touch was, we were seeing that businesses, the lab businesses were becoming way more complex, right? We were looking at how orders were coming in, right? This fax machine would buzz and hum and out comes an order, right? And it's like, we never know if it actually made it. So we introduced a customer portal, for example, right? But to your point, it was a bit of a challenge. Who's magic touch? Who is this guy Gary? What's going on here? But luckily, we met some really early adopters early on, I should say. Some labs that really believed in the vision and what we were proposing in terms of really just workflows. And again, the concept of CRM in the dental lab space really was somewhat foreign, right? And nowadays it's kind of encompassed in the CX term now, customer experience. But back then, it wasn't really, people weren't talking about it. I mean, I remember at a time, at that time, one of the ways we got the message out was Gary would do these talks of, and we would visit these study clubs and local places. his talk was, are you a technician or are you a business owner? Right, which was, kind of an interesting concept because most, a lot of labs, I should say, started with, a really good technician thinking, hey, I can do this on my own, right? And kind of step out and I make beautiful prosthetics. I make beautiful, teeth and things of that nature. So He would challenge people of, how are you looking at this business? How are you thinking about this business? Are you working on the business or are you working for the business? So conceptually, kind of these things we hear about, he was challenging people with that. And a lot of people were kind of taken back by it. Well, I'm everything, right? And others were saying, you know what, I see the vision. I can't see the forest through the trees, right? So yeah, we were lucky and grateful to partner with so many labs in the beginning that were in tune with that vision, were willing to take that chance with a no name company, so to speak at the time. And that's how we really were able to get things rolling.
Yeah. I imagine at that time there were other LMSs out, right? I mean, there were probably quite a handful, but they just did production. And really what you want is, I mean, all those things are full of so much data. How do you use that data? Is that the vision that you're talking about?
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, among, yeah, a big part of that vision. But what we also saw was that because these LMSs, because these platforms were focused on production, We found people, business owners, smart, savvy people were putting together all these other disparate systems around it.
Oh, yeah.
So that's where we were seeing things like, oh, now I need QuickBooks for accounting. Now I need an external software for. I needed a separate inventory system. I'm paying this logistics company so I can do local deliveries. I'm using a MailChimp or a constant contact for outreach. I mean, we just saw, and then of course, well, how well is, you know, how many campaigns, how effective are your campaigns? What are your top 10 customers? And we were asking basic questions, you know, that would take people 30 minutes, 43 clicks, I'll never forget, I walked into an owner's office and I said, how do you know your top 10 customers? And he's like, oh, right here, I got this post-it note. And it was like 9 steps on there to generate this one singular report. So we were running into things like this left and right, where it was just conceptually, wow, there's gotta be a better way. So that was really the vision of like, okay, we wanna bring everything into one place. We want to be able to, yeah, we want to have it here. We want the data stored in one place and we want to be able to teach everybody that, you know, how to do their job and how to do it effectively. And then of course, don't forget, sprinkle in automation where we can.
Sure.
So that was a big deal there. Our first job processor, our first automation services, you know, where we were creating things that, you know, humans were having to click and do on their own. That was big. in our vision. And so with that type of vision, of course, came, well, okay, how do we roll this out? How do we successfully arm people with the tool set to be successful? And that's where our onboarding process really became our focus, to your point, right? Being able to implement this. And of course, you're going to dive right into it here in your own lab. But that's where we said, okay, Labs need a partner, not a software vendor, right? So, our whole thing was, Okay, we're gonna be a partner in this, because let's face it: you grow, we grow, we grow together, we still have the lights on tomorrow, right? for sure, so that starts at the very beginning. And back in the day, it's like you bought software, it was all about, you get shipped a CD, you install it and use the help file. So we really wanted to do things differently, hands-on, consultative. And that's where we would take the time up front to spend in that onboarding process, that implementation process. Most of the labs loved it, right? If they were ready to run the race, they buckled down. They'd get moving with it. Every now and again, you'd get labs that were challenged by it. Maybe the owner is not so present as they could be and left a lot of decisions to the internal people. It can be challenging. But that implementation process for those that are really buckled down, make the time and have that conviction, that really was part of the way we changed the game in that we would overhaul the entire business. from end to end and conceptually look at every single thing you're doing in the lab.
I mean, that's kind of what I'm excited for, moving over to Magic Touches, because the previous system has had probably 8 different people over the last 10 years be, you know, quote unquote, administrator to it. So the rhyme and reason is like gone. You know, I know it's going to take a lot of work, but I'm excited to get it back into some sort of organization.
I think that's half the job with what we're doing in implementation is we're breaking old bad habits. part of the deal is that, people want to get things done. People want to get work done. So, we'll convert, let's say, the same legacy system across four different labs, right? And we will encounter data in four different ways. People will figure out creative ways to get their job done. So to your point, yeah, people come, people go. But what we try to instill is that the processes, the departmentalization, the ownership, the accountability, these are elements that live on, right? And again, but that also starts with leadership. It's really good. I mean, I've sat in rooms, I've seen Gary sit in rooms where we bring the whole team, managers, everyone, and we go up on there and we say, okay, this is how case entry is going to flow. This is how the system designed to support it. This is your optimal way to maximize things. And you can see the visible reaction sometimes by Yeah, they don't want to, it's all muscle memory. Right. That's not going to work for me. That's extra this, that's extra that. And so it takes that conviction, right? But we always, always win them over. I love it. I mean, I've walked into a lab where or even my Glidewell days. I'll never forget when we would, shipping, receiving, UPS came, 5:00's the cutoff, right? And you can imagine large operations. I mean, I'm watching people throw boxes, you know, one pound cases, throwing them in the truck. I mean, the guy wouldn't even scan them and then put them in. He would scan after, but he would physically have to remove himself from the bay and drive away and then scan because these cases are being thrown out. Get him out, get him out, get him out. You know, we're talking about operations going from that to it's 330, cut off as 5, and everybody's standing around twiddling their thumbs.
Because it's all done.
It's all done. We run in there and we go, wait a minute, hey, what's going on? Are you guys stuck? What's happening? Why aren't we doing anything right? And oh, we're all done.
Yeah.
What do you mean you're all done? No, we got all the cases out. And they're just grinning ear to ear, right? So, you know, that's really what, that's the crux, the heart and soul of why we started Magic Touch.
Yeah. So let's talk about, we all understand what it does, but what makes it different? What does it do the best?
Yeah, I mean, like, as the history there, as I mentioned in the history of how we started Magic Touch, bringing CRM to what we do was just absolutely huge. I mean, that's where, initially we stood out, right? Just being able to set up a doctor on auto pay and being able to have emails fire off, like we've got labs that don't even print invoices anymore. They just, the PDF goes out that evening, right?
That's the way it should be. Why are we wasting paper?
Why are we? Why are we? Or, yeah, you know, and no offense to the labs that do, you know, it's an experience they want to continue. But yeah, I mean, things are evolving in ways that we can save money, we can be more efficient, we can save the planet as well. You know, that's a big deal to me. But I would say that end-to-end business management, I mean, that is something that we continue to pride ourselves in and bringing to the industry. And like I said, the automations, the integrations, the partners we've developed, these are the things that, and then the onboarding process. These are things that really help set us apart in building a partnership. I really just can't stress that enough. The partnership aspect of it is just immense in keeping with productivity, keeping with, you know, you've got the support you need in good times and in bad times. I mean, I remember we had a lab for someone clicked on something they should have, right? And all of a sudden everything is going down and they had no backups and no recovery and they're calling us and you know, they're panicked and here we are at three o'clock in the morning piecing together AR by scrubbing statement files.
Oh, wow.
You know what I mean? And we worked tirelessly through the weekend. And guess what? We built them right back up. And if that lab ends up listening to this, they know they're smiling right now.
They know who they are.
It was an incredible story. But there's countless stories like that. Yeah. we really truly wanted to, we're invested in their success and that partnership really shined through. But getting back to it as a system, I mean, it's just complete package. It grows and scales. And, to me, like when I talk to labs about it and, they're talking about, well, in my next LMS system, I want it to do XYZ. I'm always quick to correct them and say, well, how about this be your last LMS system? how about this be the last time you switch and go through this disruption? Let's do it right. And that's really, I think, the difference when you partner with Magic Touch and what the team that we've built and everybody's, the principles and the integrity that we have here, it's all built on that. This should be the last time. And so far, so good. I mean, we've got some of the largest labs out there, even internationally. And that's really the goal, to continue to be able to grow and scale with a platform that can go with you.
Well, it speaks volumes for me because the LMS we're using, we're paying for, of course, but we also have to have QuickBooks to do all the accounting. We also have to pay for a mail service in order to do any e-mail blasts. We have to pay for a Dropbox account to share files with accounts, or Henry Schein's DDX thing you know all that we'll have you know it all adds and it's all you're right it's not integrated you know something comes in on one platform I got to enter it into the other platform or vice versa absolutely I'm excited I mean I know I've been able to use it with Derby for a while but I've not been on the admin side of it you know just more of the retrieving data Dan, I'm sure you hear a lot from a lot of accounts.
I do.
On saving the day.
I do. And it's kind of interesting because just the other day, Amir and I were on a call together with this company and they were comparing prices because that's what companies do. They're like, tell me your price. And you know, my nature is just to be very curious. And instead of, we talked about price, and then I said, what are you doing for this? What are you paying? And they said, I use this system. And I said, what about this? They said, I use this system. What about that? And then by the time we were done, they were paying nearly double overall what they would be paying if they just, then what they would do for Magitouch is do all of that in one system.
And doing twice the amount of work.
And it just doesn't, it's so unique to Business owners are such a unique breed, the founders especially, and oftentimes they need that person who can come in and take their vision and make it work. Because oftentimes the person who has the vision is not necessarily the best person to implement that vision.
Sure, we all know them.
And so having the people around you that can speak truth to you about what's happening and help you to develop the path for your future to where you want to go, the vision you have is so critically important. And I think that's where Magic Touch comes in, where I come in is to start talking about those things and starting to look at your business as a whole business, not just as your production department, not just as software you're buying, because it's so much different than that and more than that in so many different ways. That is why for me, I love what I do. Like I get up in the morning and I'm excited to go to work because I know I'm going to get to talk to people who are interested in looking for help. And that is why I want to be so curious because when people call me, they need to be seen, heard and valued. They need to understand that what they are doing is important and they're helping people, the customers of the dentist, the patients. and getting their services right so that they're not late on deliveries, they're not having things go, having remakes and having that clarity on the vision is so important and helping them be able to deliver that on time correctly just makes my day.
Yeah. And I imagine you must hear a lot of pain points that labs are having. that Magic Touch can help with.
Well, I mean, one of the biggest ones I'm hearing right now is labs who are having to recognize that digital case entry is here. It's not going away. If anything, it's becoming bigger and bigger. And I will talk to people, they'll call me up. And one of the questions I ask is, tell me your case entry process for a digital file. And they're like, well, we'll go out to the inter-oral scanning company and we'll log in and we'll look for the files we have to get and then we'll download them into our system. Then we'll put them in the files that they need to be in and then we'll print out the Rx and then we'll go to our LMS and we'll manually enter it in. and then it's good to go.
Currently doing that. Okay.
I love saying to them, let me show you, let's just use as a wild example that it's 10 minutes to do that one process for one case. And they go, oh, that's conservative. I said, okay, great, that's conservative. What if I could tell you I could do that? It would take you less than two minutes a case and everything's ready to go. The digital files and the case is all entered into the system. Now you have to just put eyeballs on it to say, hey doc, did you order the right product? Did you give me a shade? All the information you want to have is in the case. done, put it into production.
I love this. I absolutely love this.
Thousands and thousands of dollars a year are saved just with that one feature.
And mistakes. How many times does one forget to hit that one weird scanner that you see every now and again, but you don't look at it every day or whatever. So does it put the files directly into design software?
It can. We absolutely can do that. We can build a job processor to move the files into the FTP file that the designer needs. And this is where I love the fact that Amir and I work so closely together because you heard his engineering background, his database background. And I'll sit in the meeting and someone will ask one of those questions that I'm like, and he'll go, yeah, we can do this, and this. And I go, holy moly, we can do that. That's awesome. So this is really cool for me to get that opportunity.
Yeah, Elvis, you talk about the mistakes. I mean, You're talking about people that are reading XML tags, right? Pull out the patient name, the restoration type, the materials. And I know a lot of labs listening to this are thinking about what they're doing there. And that's the mistakes that can happen or that's the difference of losing an account or being on thin ice with a DSO. Like you said, worse, worse yet, missing a case altogether.
It happens to all of us.
That's digital gateway.
And we don't know about it until they're the due date because they're looking for it and it's just sitting in a website.
Yeah, no kidding. I mean, and that was something we tried to tackle early on before even the iOS scanner companies were even playing nice with us. I mean, it took many, many years to for them to understand what I call the inbox sprawl. There's inboxes everywhere, right? And so now you've got this team of five people instead of chasing cases, they're QCing them and moving through production and then doing other things. So now you've got designers maximizing their time and yeah, limiting those errors. So that's been one of our innovations here that now has become a table stake really in the industry. But we continue to invest in it, continue to improve it. We added, I think, DS Core most recently. So just continuing to partner with those companies that, the scanners seem to pop up here and there. So as we see the business need and the market share grow, we bring them on board.
Do they willingly work with you to be scrubbed, if that's the right term? Or do you have to really like convince them that it's the right way to go for all of us?
Well, yeah, nowadays, you know, they see the writing on the wall. Nowadays, it makes a lot of sense for them. And nowadays, we actually don't have to scrub. They willingly, you know, give us an API door, if you will. Okay, yeah. But there was a time, definitely, probably even fives, maybe longer, where labs were actually getting creative and doing what you called scrubbing there. Yeah. Parsing the website and doing things that were sort of unsanctioned, if you will, right? But now it's absolutely partnerships with these iOS companies. And yeah, we actually get sought after now as opposed to the other way around.
That's great. Yeah. Some way it should be.
I think so. I mean, we were in Chicago, right? And we would have We'd have our customers come to the booth and they say, when are you going to get this integration? I don't want to call any companies out, but when are you going to get this integration? When are you going to get that integration? I said, you know what? When they let us, they're right over there.
Go tell them.
They're in booth, whatever, B12, I'm going to get up. Everybody go over there and let your feelings know.
That's totally the way to do it.
Yeah, we were doing that for quite a while and then lo and behold, it started with what I call the big three in the beginning there. And then from there, everybody else started to really see the writing on the wall that, if you want, and then now there's organizations where it's like, sell our scanners, get the work, there's different models now that really got those scanners into to practices. And so it had to be it was the next step in the evolving business.
But I mean, we touch around the production part. I mean, Magic Touch is still a beefy production software, right? I mean, all your steps and all the technicians, what do you call them, booking on, wanding, whatever you want to call it, the steps so we can follow things through a lab.
Elvis, I'll jump in here about that. There is so many things that we do between case entry, case scheduling, I mean, there's so many things that the production module can do in Magic Touch. I still have to go, how do we do this? How do we change? Because every lab runs differently.
Oh yeah.
And that is what makes Magic Touch so powerful is customers will call me up and say, well, we do this with cases. Can I do that? And then I open up the global settings and I'll say, oh, then you want to have this on and this on and this on. And that will run it just like you're running it now. People go, what?
Nice.
They're used to a software that someone hands them the software and says, here, go use it. And then they're stuck with running it the way the software works. That's why our onboarding process is so amazing, because we're going to figure out how your lab works and then separate the system up and run that way.
Totally. Yeah. And if I can add to that, I think one of the biggest challenges we have really with the labs is helping them to step out of that box. They were kind of pigeonholed in and really think about, hey, what is your actual vision? How do you want to see production working? And we touched on this in one of our webinars is that, have that vision ready and then we'll work backwards. And guess what? The system can be tuned to accomplish that. So And then, identifying your vision is one thing, but also seeing where are you in that journey towards that vision. And so that's where, clarity a lot of times is just not present. we, like Dan said, I don't know how many times we go in and of course, curiosity, as Dan mentioned, is the number one thing is, well, okay, how do we work? How do we do things? Okay, why do we do it this way? Why do we do it that way? innocent questions so that we can understand how we got here. And usually 95% of the time, well, that's how I was trained to do it.
That's how it's always been done.
That's how I've always done it. Yeah, exactly. Right. What do they say, the worst words in business, right? And so we take a step back and even to managers, well, that's how we've always done it. And it's like, okay, well, what if we do this and we change up this and maybe we, you know, do things differently? And it's like, you know, again, crossed arms and, well, I don't know, that, you know, seems like more work, this and that. But it's once we get there, it's, the outcome and the when you see your cases go up 10%, 20%, 30% just organically. Right. I'm not even talking with any sales outreach and, you know, taking advantage of our campaign manager and broadcast e-mail and queries and, you know, data mining, but just focused organically on just running operationally sound, you know, that that's the proof right there. And that's what, you know, we love to see.
And I imagine it's fluid. So as I build out the lab here on Magic Touch, and I know, we're going to copy a lot of what Derby has set up, but I'm going to find out that doesn't work here and I can change that, right?
Absolutely. Yeah. It's a very fluid process. It's something that, you know, owners owe it to themselves, in my opinion, to work with their managers to really understand at least monthly or quarterly maybe is a better way to look at it. How are things doing? lessons learned. I mean, that's a phrase we use all the time. Every project, out of the hundreds of labs we've deployed, we're always looking at what went well, what didn't go so well, how can we improve, what can we double click on, what can we lean in on, right? And so it's absolutely fluid. And so, you want to look at your top 10, top 20, top 30 products. How are things going there operationally? And yeah, it's absolutely fluid. We always want to start out conservative. You know, some of these labs will come in and say, okay, to manufacture this product, these are the, you know, 30 steps I care about. That's a little bit, you know, well, I want to know every minute of every day. Now, ortho labs, I will hand it to them. They've gotten it down to a science. Some of our customers are like, this task is 20 minutes. This task is 18 minutes. They're really dialed in. But for the most part, that doesn't really work for labs. So we typically say, OK, let's just start with 4, 3, 4, 5 steps, right? And then when you identify a point of failure where there might be two points of failure in a given task or step, then we say, OK, let's break it out. And so the flexibility is there to do that. But also, you might have different permutations, whether you're an outsource lab, whether you're a multi-location lab. We start talking about distributed manufacturing, right? You know, they're going to design for us in California and then they might mill in Texas and then ship from there, you know. So there's all different ways that labs might operate. And then of course, We always, we love when acquisitions happen. We love when labs are growing. They've just, and it's as simple as, oh, we bought this XYZ lab, convert their data, train them a bit and fold them in, off you go. Again, one central store for everything. So it's definitely fluid. I mean, all things are, in my opinion. And if you're not paying attention, you know, that's where problems come to a head rather than you're proactively monitoring and seeing things, you know, that are happening. So It's absolutely something that's, it's an ongoing thing.
I think there's a difference between fluid and having the ability to make the changes, but I'm scared to make the changes to mess up everything else and it's a hassle. Does that make sense?
Absolutely. I mean, you know, and that's where we want to test things out and, you know, we're getting into some of the, you know, the details here. But, you know, we want to test things on a test environment, right? And then And then we do what's called an MTL, move to live, right? And we just deploy it to production. It's fully vetted. We're not testing things out in the live environment and having that disruption. We want to do our due diligence, right? And that takes, again, time, conviction. and presence and good people. You want to have that.
Oh, of course.
And I always I always recommend every lab I go to. It's like you need your super user, as I like to call them, and you need their backup and their backup. So usually it's a two or three person team at a minimum where I call it, you know, your internal help desk, your your team that, you know, the rest of the group can lean on. And then, you know, they facilitate interactions with with the support team, for example. So change management is something that we preach as well. It's like, how do we know who's doing what? Like not everybody should have access to the administrative global settings, for example.
Oh, it'd be changed by every whim of every person.
Exactly. And believe it or not, we run into it all the time. Who did this? Well, the audit trail says this person. Oh, the worst one is when they call. who blanked out this catalog? Now all the prices are wrong. And we look at the audit trail and oh, it says it was you, sir.
Love it. You mentioned a lot of size and growth and huge. I mean, does Magic Touch work with the smaller labs?
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, truth be told, when we first got started, obviously coming from, like I said, Glidewell 101 course on lab operations, we were definitely initially focused on the larger operations because they were, frankly, they were hurting the most. As I mentioned, the disparate systems and lack of data consistency. So naturally our services, our products appealed to those larger operations out the gates, right? So yeah, so we spent the first, I would say, five to seven years or so really honing in on on how those businesses were working. But yeah, it got to the point where, and this is where again, as Magic Touch kind of took off, I started to move more into the sales side of things. And so, which was, that's an interesting journey in and of itself as an engineer moving into sales was, it had its unique challenges, let's put it that way.
I'll agree with that, I'll agree with that.
Yeah, Dan's always having to tell me, hey, you're starting to geek out here.
Yeah, Less big words, less big words.
Exactly. But yeah, you know, I sat in our Monday powwow or Monday status meeting and I said, you know, Gary, I'm really, I'm getting tired of telling these smaller labs that, you know, this enterprise signature system here might be too much product for you. So it was that day that we said, okay, let's get something going. And so a lot of people don't know, we actually offer three distinct platforms for, designed to help, labs of all shapes and sizes, no matter where you're at in your journey, right? And so for example, our introductory product, Lab Annex, Very, very basic lab management, free for 90 days. I think it's like 40 bucks right now from that point forward. very simple, very, first LMS, right? That's really what it's geared for. And then we've got our mid-tier package, now known as Magic Touch Lite. It's a step up. And then of course we've got our enterprise system known as Magic Touch Signature. And what we really enjoyed about having three distinct platforms was conceptually it's like, okay, pay for what you need, where you're at as a lab, find something that fits your budget, as opposed to what a lot of other competing systems are, you know, one platform, it's the same platform. And we just charge you more as you get bigger. You know, to me, that's almost punishing the lab for getting successful.
Yeah.
You know, your case count goes up to 1000 cases. Now you're paying more. But guess what? It's the same system, right? So, you know, we took a little bit of a different model looking at, our licensing there and how we do things. And so but anyway, the and the best part about it is every time you move platforms and we've had some labs successfully do that and it's amazing to hear that call. Hey, I'm ready for light. I'm ready for signature. I love it.
Yeah.
And all that data moves seamlessly with you. So that's where we say, switch for the last time or start and stick with magic touch. We've got your back. We've got you going through and through no matter what size you become. So, but yeah, that's been definitely a focus here is, you know, we want to arm, you know, labs that want to compete with the Glidewell, you know, want to compete with the larger labs. Got to get started somewhere, right? So that's always, it's always great to hear. And we've had some, like I said, we've had some owners that have progressed through the ranks, as we like to call it, and it's always an amazing story.
I mean, that's super exciting when someone needs more. It means they're growing and they're looking to grow even more. It's fantastic.
And from my role, Elvis, I'll tell you, I constantly get calls from our existing customers adding licenses, adding more, looking at the new things and trying to grow. So our labs are growing. They're not staying small. They're growing and taking on more business.
That's fantastic. I mean, all that data we're collecting is so valuable to grow the lab and the industry as a whole. I mean, it makes sense to have it all in one package and accessible. And that's what I love about using Magic Touch is, you know, not being in Louisville at Derby, I can access it remotely. And it's almost the full thing, I think. I mean, I don't know. I've never really used the full thing. I've only used the online version.
From what you're talking about with the remote version, yeah, you have full access to all the reports. But as a manager, as someone who's overseeing the company, that's how you manage. I see so many people who I ask them what their plan is for the day, and it's basically they put their finger up and go, which way is the wind blowing today? Rather than looking at the data that they're able to pull out of the system and go, hey, let's look at our remake counts. How come this is happening? And we can drill down to percentages and we can find areas. And when we talk about a business growing, in order for that to happen, we talked about vision and having an idea of where you're going, but you can't get there tomorrow. You've got to make those steps. And how do those steps happen? Well, those steps can't happen until you have the data to say, this is where I'm at. And that's where the reports come in. And now you're looking at that going, hey, accounting, I need you to work on this. Hey, customer service, I need you to work on this. Hey, production, I need you to work on this. And then you assign that accountability to the managers of those areas. And that might be one person. And you say, this is what I want you to work on for the next month. Get this working. And you make those incremental steps down the road and all of a sudden you see things come together that before it was like, let's work on 50 things that are all wrong instead of working specifically on the biggest rocks you have and getting those things taken care of. And that's where the reporting comes in and it's so super powerful.
Absolutely. I love it. What's the best way for people to get a hold of Magic Touch?
Oh, yeah, lots of opportunity there. I mean, e-mail me directly. I mean, probably the easiest is on the website. We've got a contact form. support at magic touch software sales at magic touch software dot com. Yeah, we're we're very open in that. We're also, of course, the the trade shows here. Dan's going to be over at Lab Day East here. Nice. Yeah. So we'll have a booth there and of course we'll we'll be at Chicago as well. And hopefully we'll have some new we'll have some new goodies there to be talking about as well as we continue to bring tools and automations into the process here and develop with strategic partners. But we're always open to do consultations and talk through some of the issues there. I mean, the reality is, most of the time, labs come to us when they're at a breaking point. So we always try to encourage labs to pay attention and see things before they get to that point. But of course, We're all busy, we're all humans.
Yeah, come on, man. We react, come on.
Well, and that's where we're the kind of the reaction specialists, right? Yeah. It's like, let's take stock of what we're dealing with, what are our true challenges, let's architect how we're gonna, you know... resolve it and attack it really. And then that becomes the usually the singular starting point. And then from there, we just unearth everything that needs attention.
Well, if you all are interested, I would love to do a follow up episode after I've integrated here at Summer. I think it would be kind of cool to really talk about that process. And I know we're just diving into it. I mean, just it's gonna it's there's gonna be a lot and I'll be able to firsthand tell you from what I had before to what we're going to have and I'd love to have that discussion with you when we finally get it rolling.
Yeah, it sounds amazing. I would love that opportunity and appreciate the invite there and yeah, that sounds like a great opportunity to discuss it and you know go through it and and really, really peel the onion back. I think it's great for everyone.
Yeah, because I can nerd out on this stuff too. So it's going to be fun.
Absolutely.
Well, Amir, Dan, thank you so much. Super appreciate you coming on the podcast. I know, Dan, we kind of met by accident, but I'm glad we met and I'm glad we got this together.
Yeah, it was super fun to have that coincidental meeting and then realize after we had conversations and conversations, and all of a sudden, someone says, Elvis is the voice on Voices on the Tone. What? I hadn't put that together because I never, I was like, oh, wait a minute, that's right.
Well, and if my, from my perspective, again, truth be told, I've heard about you, Elvis. I've seen you out on the floor doing doing the podcast. we've had some industry friends of ours join you there. And so for me, it's a long time coming. So I really appreciate the opportunity. So glad to be able to come on here and discuss all things magic text. Really appreciate it.
Yeah, and I like hearing this behind the scenes stories here, and I'm even more excited to get it in the lab. So stay tuned, everybody. You're going to see a happier and more productive Elvis someday.
Elvis is more productive.
Don't tell anybody, please. Again, thanks a lot, gentlemen. Have a great weekend, and we'll definitely see you in Chicago.
All right. Thanks, Elvis. Take care.
Thanks.
Thanks, Elvis. Bye bye.
Huge thanks to Amir and Dan for joining Elvis on the podcast to talk about Magic Touch. I was in Oregon, sorry guys, sorry I missed it, but I do like hearing that there's a system out there that is able to encompass so many different softwares in one that should make life a little easier for our labs. So head over to MagicTouchSoftware.com to set up a very hands-on transition of your current LMS to Magic Touch.
I tell you, it's a project that I'm excited for.
It's a lot of work.
Yes, it is. It's a lot of work.
Yes, it is. Big time.
Luckily, we're copying a lot of Derby stuff. Yeah, that's cool.
I know you're gonna be putting some time into that, so good luck.
Oh yeah, oh yeah. So eventually I'm gonna be productive.
Hear great things about magic touch. So good luck.
All right, everybody. That's all we got for you. Enjoy your Labor Day if you're in the States and we'll talk to you next week.
Have a great week, guys. Welcome to September. It's my birthday month.
Yes, it is. You almost turned 35 one.
That's right. Have a great week. Bye.
As many of you know, The views and opinions expressed on the Voices from the Bench podcast are those of the guest and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the host or Voices from the Bench LLC.