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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 it.
And does a new studio also mean new toys?
Yes. And of course, we recently brought in 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, As easy as that, pretty much.
The quality off the machine was excellent. So that means also no hand finishing and the milling Sometimes 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. Aw.
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 438 of Voices from the Bench. My name is Elvis.
My name's Crazy.
What's up, Crazy? On vacation, not vacation. Yeah, exactly.
What's happening with you? We should just talk about you. I don't even want to talk about me.
Oh man, Barb, that's what's going on with me. Let's see, it's raining and huge storms blowing through here these days. So it's kind of been weird. I mean, now that I'm back at the lab, I'm waiting for the rain to stop so I can go up and look at the gutters. That's my life now.
And that's a good thing.
I don't know. I mean, I miss making teeth and now I have to do building management and checking gutters.
I'm assuming that you love that though. I mean, us people in the dental technology industry, technician, we're crazy.
We are crazy. In a good way. And getting up on the roof sounds a little fun. I know. I don't want to do it on the weekend because I want people to be around in case someone needs to find me on the ground. That's pretty awesome.
Good luck to you. I know you guys are back in the lab. I think it's just too fun.
It is fun. It is fun. It's challenging and fun all at the same time. So I'm excited for it. But hey, just a quick reminder to the listeners, I have officially, as of like 10 minutes ago, signed up for the Race for the Future. It's only about a little over a month away on September 27th. Last time we mentioned Fort Worth, Texas, it's actually Valley View, Texas, which I guess is I hear is about an hour north of Fort Worth. I don't know the Texas area, but amazing good time. This is where a bunch of people in our industry, they go out there, they're running, they're biking, they're swimming, and we're raising money for the Foundation for Dental Laboratory Technology.
Which if you don't know, give scholarships and. grants, scholarships to if you want to have higher learning, if you want to become a CDT, like it's unbelievable. So you've got to.
Yeah, and so many people don't even realize all you got to do is fill out an application. I mean, it's so easy. So if you're thinking about getting your CDT, you go online, you fill out your application. And there's a chance that you can get it paid for, which is huge. I know. But hey, see the link on this episode show notes to learn more. Sign up if you're in the Texas area. We'd love to have you join us, racing or not. And then you can donate. And of course, now that I've now officially signed up and you follow me on social media, check out. I'm gonna start hitting you up for money.
What are you signed up for? The 10K.
Just the 10K, yeah.
It's not just the 10K. Do you know that like 95% of Americans cannot run even close to a 10K? That's a bar of fact, but it's a fact.
It is. It is. And I do take it for granted that, you and I, we both run quite a bit. So I mean, when people say, how was your run? I was like, yeah, it was a short five mile. And they all look at me with wide eyes. They're like, what?
And I'm like, You run 5 miles before work? Are you kidding me?
Yeah, that was short too.
I feel so good.
Speaking of crazy.
Yeah.
This week we have a teaser episode that's a super real treat. We all know Shawn Nowak, who's one half.
Was that a like Shawn Nowak?
Shawn Nowak, which is one half of the Nowak Dental Supply Company. We're not gonna say which half.
Yes.
There always been the great company that does great things for the lab business. But Sean himself has spent countless hours and dollars giving back to this industry.
True, true.
I really think it would be hard to find another company that has done as much as Sean has. Between the donations, he's always doing the race for the future, participating on so many boards, and just providing good education. So last year, he and his sister Brandy put on the very first lab fest in New Orleans. Yeah, see I've been practicing that. I know you start working for a company in Louisville start to learn Nolens. So the keynote speaker last year was this karate guy or is it karate guy named Jude Grayson We went to this show last year with this big question of why is a karate guy on stage? Well, Jude blew the room away and he's coming back to lab fest this year So this conversation has both Sean and Jude talking about the similar similarities between martial arts and the lab business. Jude has some great outside insight into our industry and puts a really good spin on the race to the bottom business technique.
Which we hate.
We hate. And also pivoting your lab in a crucial time of technology. We also talk to Sean too. So join us as we chat with Sean Nowak and Jude Grayson. Voices from the bench. The interview. So we are super excited today to welcome back to the podcast good friend Sean Nowak. How are you, sir?
I am doing very good. How are you guys today?
Awesome. Friday.
Doing great. We're months and months away, but super excited for Lab Fest again.
Oh yeah.
As are we. And look, it has been a very long time since I've been back on this podcast. I think you guys have a grudge against me or something, but I think I was like episode 6, maybe. So it's been a pretty long time.
I thought we've had you on. Didn't we do like a COVID update?
What was that? Not good enough for you? I don't know.
I think you missed Miss Elvis. Yes, thank you.
You're not alone today because we don't want to talk to just you, obviously.
No, nobody wants to talk to just these. But no, we have in our midst today Jude Grayson, who did our keynote speech last year in NOLA. And everybody enjoyed it so much that we have him coming back again for NOLA LabFest 2.0 and then also doing a breakout session.
So I remember last year's Lab Fest. Everyone was like, why is a karate teacher talking at a dental show? And he blew everybody away. Jude, how are you, sir?
Hey, I'm doing great, man. Thank you guys so much for having us on to talk about Lab Fest.
Awesome. Absolutely. But I want to also talk about more of your background. I want to get into that and how you met this crazy guy named Tom and this whole family.
Yeah. let's talk about it. But first, you know what I I want to tell you a story about last year.
Yeah, I love it.
Last year, y'all had Mary Beth and y'all had Brandy on. And somewhere in there, you guys started talking, like I popped up as one of the topics of conversation about NOLA Lab Fest. And I was on a plane and I was listening to it and I hadn't met you yet. And you said this sentence and I remember recording it and I told Brandy, I was like, I want this to be my intro for when I walk on stage. Now Sean like switched it to Jay-Z, but just so you know, it is like my favorite intro of all time. You were like, what the hell does a karate guy know about the lab industry? Something to that effect. And I was like, this is the best intro ever. Because it asks the perfect question. And I know that was on everybody's minds, but man, you nailed that.
Yeah. I mean, let's be honest. They always try to bring in like outside people. Like visions is real big on that. It's like, who I worked at Google or whatever. And we're supposed to relate. But I mean, karate.
We're all fighting for our lives, right? So wouldn't it coral even match this?
That's a great point. I don't disagree.
Absolutely. Yeah, actually, I think that Sean nailed that and I do talk about that a lot. I've been doing martial arts since I was five years old. The business industry, entrepreneurs in particular, use fighting language all the time inside of the ecosphere of their business. they talk about, my God, that chick, I couldn't get the sale. She had her guard up. And you're like, oh dude, it's a war out here. Everybody talks about in language of the battle that you do every day, but you know who has really good strategies for winning fights? I love it. And so for years, the concept of business really laid itself down to me in that language. And it really made a lot of sense. And I'm happy to go through some of my background with you guys. But for me, that's what really opened up my understanding of business was my understanding of martial arts first.
Well, why did you get into it so young? I mean, I don't know how old you are, but was Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles an influence?
I don't know how you could throw a dart at a wall and hit it so accurately, but yes. When I was a kid, I wanted to be a Ninja Turtle, man. The martial arts school's owner, his daughter came and taught at my daycare and apparently I was sneaking out of class to go take karate lessons and my parents got a call and they enrolled me. That was a wrap. I knew instantly I wanted to own a martial arts school. I started competing really young, and it's the only thing I've ever done, actually.
They taught fighting at your daycare? This seems to be something everywhere.
Daycares in the New Orleans area are pretty rough.
Absolutely. I mean, when you say it like that, it does sound terrible. Maybe we could reframe that a little. I think we were learning like the self-defense martial arts discipline portion, but yeah, fighting's in there at some point.
I like the discipline part of it because I always heard that teaching a child young about discipline is one of the greatest strengths that you can give them.
Absolutely. I mean, the name of our schools is Live Confident Martial Arts. Confidence lives on the other side of competence, and it lives on the other side of doing hard things in a capable way. Our job is to teach usually the youth, but obviously adults benefit as well, particularly families, and we teach them how to do martial arts in a way that becomes incredibly empowering. Many people have never dealt with conflict. They've never stood across the other side of a ring from somebody who wants to and has permission to harm you and giving you the tools and the assets to test out your abilities against another person. This type of staged conflict in a safe manner can really unlock something inside of your mind and your belief system and teach you a lot about who you are, especially if you're unlocking those things in a young person. If you take all of that then and you battle test it in competitive arenas, there are just absolute tons of life lessons They can pour out of an experience that is the goal system of belts mixed with the competitive arena all around something as primitive as standing eye to eye in a physical conflict.
I am so in your brain right now.
We throwing on the gear at Lapfest.
Oh my gosh.
Let's do it.
Oh, I would love to see that 'cause as we all know, Barb is very competitive. I know this personally from the years of going up against her for a race for the future. A couple times I've beaten her, maybe once or twice she's beaten me. I'm not gonna name those years that I'm in second place, but yeah, that'd be amazing, right?
Yeah. But I just can visualize a child getting so confident and so ****** especially if they were not, and then they grow and they change and they build and they just become a completely different person, but forever, not just when they're five or six, but literally forever.
Yeah, 100%. And I'll tell you this, and this will kind of segue into the business world too. You know, I have, outside of owning 5 schools, I also own several education seminars that travel the world to teach martial arts instructors how to teach certain things. And I do often get asked about why I travel so much to teach. It's not the norm. And the best explanation I've come up with is something we call the five year old board break moment. And when I explain that, that's my best way of explaining why I enjoy educating. For me, Every martial artist has taught a five-year-old, or every Taekwondo martial artist has taught a five-year-old how to break a board. And I always kind of illustrate and ask this question, do you think this is what happens? And I take a five-year-old and I have them break their first board. Do you think that five-year-old then steps back so filled with self-empowerment and gratitude that they bow to me and go, thank you, Master Grayson. Thank you for pouring your knowledge and wisdom into me and helping me become strong enough and understand how to use my body to be able to conquer this goal and have this moment. No, that has never happened. They're not filled, absolutely not. So I'll say, okay, let's try it again. Maybe this is how it goes down. I have a five-year-old break a board and then they step back and they turn and they look at their mom and they bow and they go, mom, thank you so much for the hours and hours of work and overtime that you put in to be able to afford this program. Thank you for the years of sacrifice of traveling half an hour across town to bring me here so I can do this. Do you think that has ever happened with a five-year-old? No. They break a board and this is what happens. They step back. They don't look at me, their instructor. They don't look at their mother. They look at their hand. They look at their hand and they go, I'm a god. And here's the most empowering moment, because they realize that the skill was in them the whole time. I'm just the guy that unlocked it. And that is what I call the five-year-old board break moment. So I travel the country and then also through my schools, through my team, through my staff. I'm trying to create five-year-old board break moments in everyday people all the time. That's what translates to business outside of running multiple successful businesses. I work with business owners to create five-year-old board break moments.
I need one.
Girl, let's open it up today. That was definitely what happened on the stage last year. I heard a lot of feedback about, my topic last year was pricing. Sean and Brandy really helped me understand elements of the industry and how pricing affected the industry. So I created and curated my keynote to help create some five-year-old board break moments with all of the lab owners and operators in the rooms, even some of the vendors, to try to help them unlock small things in their business. And if I do it just right, what I'm hoping is they don't even take the time to thank me. They stare down at their hand and they go, holy **** I'm a god. Look, I just made 10,000 more dollars and they forget that I was ever part of the equation, just like a student does. And that's how it's supposed to work. If the truth is good enough, if the advice is good enough, if it's actionable, if you can really execute against it and it works, you're going to feel like it's the way you've always done things. So that's the spirit of what I'm always trying to deliver whenever I do business education.
Look, and the part that I absolutely loved about his speech last year, talking about the race to the bottom, right? Everything in the pricing world that we all know very well, but all of us have been in this industry for a very long time. We hear it all the time. is Jude hit a great point. Look, you can be the guy that races to the bottom, but there's only going to be 1 winner in that race, right? You know, look, we've got out there in the world the Dollar Generals, right? They've won that war. They know what they're doing, but they're also saying it right in their name of their company, right? They're the dollar store. So if you want to win this race, why aren't you the dollar dental lab? But at the end of the day, there's only going to be one winner in that game. The guy that is willing to go down to the rock bottom that nobody else can touch, and that's it. So it's either you go play that game or you pivot and go to the next level and raise your pricing and find the customers out there that are worthy of what you guys do.
Well said.
And I said the pivot word in there, and that's a lot to where Jude's talk this year will be going towards. Like I think we all know this industry has changed A lot. Like I've been doing this for 26 years now and I feel just in the last, what, four or five years, It has changed more than it ever has. the speed of things, the technology, everything in the AI world that's coming, things are evolving a lot quicker than they ever have and it's not slowing down at all, right? So how as dental labs are we pivoting in these moments to make sure that we are still relevant for the next 5, 10 years in this industry?
Well said, but I have a question for you. How, Sean, did you get introduced?
So I was introduced. How did you guys find him? So Brandy, my sister, her little girl Kenzie has been a student of Jude's for, I don't know, 10 years now at least, right? So, Brandy was the one that found Jude or Jude found Brandy or however that world, intersected. And then about a year ago, Brandy introduced me to Jude. You know, we kind of talked about business coaching and what that looked like. I had been a member of an organization, Vistage, for the last six years now. And that's kind of what they did, right? So it was business education, business coaching, all that kind of stuff. But it was more of a group effort at that time. It's not really curtailed exactly to our company. And so we sat down with Jude and went through a couple days worth of just talking about our business and what we are trying to achieve as a company. And it fit. It worked well. What I loved on Jude's story that he mentioned about the five-year-old breaking the board, right? The power is in all of us, right? Look, he is the key that unlocked a lot of it for Brandy and I. think we've grown exponentially in the last year as leaders. And look, again, I've been doing this for a long time, but we get stuck in our ways and we just kind of coast along a lot of the times. So that's really been the most powerful thing for us is her and I, we now have meetings every single day. Sometimes I want to kill my sister. I love her to death. It forces us to be in a room together every single day. And we work through some of the problems that we have in our company and where we want to go as an organization to get there and how.
Love it.
And Jude, you've become a personal consultant to the Nowaks.
Coach.
Yeah, I'm their executive coach. We just hit a year together, working together as a company.
And how many boards has Sean broken?
Oh, I have not broken a single board yet. I saw Brandy break one just a month or two ago, but yeah, no, they have not allowed me to break. Look, I am still a white belt at this point. You know, I have it ranked up. up at this point. So I think that'll come eventually.
Maybe we'll do it at Lab Fest.
On stage.
On stage. Yeah, let's do it. Let's have him lock it out at Lab Fest. We'll work it into the itinerary.
I would like the rubber boards that I see the forest boards use. Those look a lot easier than the women.
I was going to say, we're all going to have to inspect this board for any pre-cuts or anything.
Yeah, I was thinking that myself.
You think I would cheat? Come on.
So Jude, I'm curious. I mean, you said you got into it at a young age. You started doing competitions. At what point did your brain go from, I just want to do the martial arts to I want to teach others? What was that like?
So it started from competitive spirit. So in my youth, how we would compete is we would compete in forms, which is like a demonstration of your martial arts technique. that's rated against other people's performance of that technique. And then you would fight and every medal you earned, you would get points. Those points were tracked all year. The kids who won the most in those two events had the most points. The kids with the most points, they basically just put us in a ring and the top, yeah, I know it sounds a little crazy when you explain it like that, but we'd fight off. And the person at the end of the year who won, won something called the national championship. So I won my first national championship at 10 years old.
And then I- At 10 years old.
Yeah. And then I was undefeated for seven years.
Oh my gosh.
When I was 17, I went to Korea for three months and I fought with two collegiate Olympic fighting teams. And the actual timeline for that was my instructor passed away in March. I spent almost three months in Korea immediately after. And when I got home two weeks after that, Katrina destroyed our city. So we had this kind of coming of age moment where I'm about to enter my senior year of high school. And I was like, so what am I doing? My instructor's gone. This school may not make it out of this. The community is wrecked. And I bought my first company at 18. I bought that company from my instructor's family. And in that time, I've owned probably 15 companies. I think right now we own seven companies in the foundation. I've opened schools all across the country. Of our five schools, they're in four different states. So the competition unlocked the ability to share the knowledge. Turns out I had a real deep desire to share knowledge and create those unlocking moments. And that was something I found out early, something I unlocked in myself. I found myself in my youth teaching every single day. And then when the opportunity came to own, I did that. And turns out I absolutely love entrepreneurship. everything about it. I love the competitive nature. It felt like I was in the ring every single day, but in a completely different sport. I absolutely adore working with the market and the local community and the pricing structure and the value that I deliver and trying to find ways to be competitive in the space and duke it out and try to find a a way to make my schools have a more interesting way to win. And then over the years, people who were attracted to that version of the personality, along with my education style, wanted me to go sit outside their ring. You know, if I had a way to explain what it is that I do for Sean and Brandy, it's that. And I use that analogy with them all the time. Sean and Brandy are the ones in the ring. They're the ones fighting. This is their company. I can't get in the ring and punch for them, but I can coach them. I can sit outside the ring and go, hey, that guy's hands are down. See if you can take advantage of that. Hey, there's a moment right here. If you turn, I see an opening. Do you guys see that? So they're the ones who have to fight. They're the ones who have to take the hits. My job is just to call out the next play from outside the ring.
So what's it like coaching like Sean and Brandy, for instance? So are there topics of conversations that you guys bring up and then you listen and then you coach and counsel to get their brains to think larger?
Absolutely. So I've built a lot of frameworks and one of them is something that I created I call the Reaper Method. And that's actually what my workshop is gonna be on. So when in doubt, we will go through the Reaper Method with their company and it will stimulate problems. In the martial arts world, you would just call that, or any sport, you would call that, do the basics. Have your coach watch you do the basics and somewhere in there, they're gonna notice a flaw, a spot for improvement. Then they both put sparring gear on and I let them fight in the room. That's not true. They don't fight ever.
I just had a great visual, by the way. I did. Sorry, John, you were losing.
At some point, I'll go back, way back in Brandi and I's childhood, right? She always picked on me as a child, right? Until I was big enough to pick her up and pin her up against the fence and shake her and say, leave me alone, right? So she knows not to pick on me anymore. I am bigger than her, right? But now we have our verbal spars at this point. which are fantastic. And I will say she bests me most of the time on those. But look, we have a great partnership between the two of us. And like Jude said, he just kind of unlocks those things. He's the mick to our Rocky in the middle of the ring, right? Like he's the one calling out things that we as leaders constantly have blind spots to and it's great to have a different perspective that we don't have and another set of eyes on things that we're just going through the motions sometimes of going through our business and doing things that we need to do. So he's that guy that helps point things out for us.
Are you willing to share one of the flaws that he helped you see?
No.
Okay, fair enough. They must be really bad.
No, look, I think, look, as anybody that is in the position that Brandy and I are in, personnel issues happen sometimes, unfortunately, in all of our organizations, right? And just, I gave Jude the goal that I am setting for for the company and our vision. how to get there. He was pivotal in the part of the ETI acquisition that we did just a few months ago. So that's part of our strategy now is acquisitions and looking at other companies to buy. And that was definitely out of the wheelhouse of Brandy and I. Brandy is more fearful than I. She's the end of my yang. And I'm I'm the more aggressive one in the company. And she was always reeling back. And Jude helped open her eyes as well on those kind of possibilities. And yes, they're scary, right? It costs all of us money. And it's our entire team that is depending on us to make the right decisions. But it helped open up our eyes and our minds on what is truly possible for this company.
So what I've seen, and it's a compliment, I think, to Jude and the whole group, but I've seen more of Brandy now.
Yeah, and I love Sharman. I'm so glad that you said that, right? Because there's like you and I have known each other for a very long time and I have been the face of this company, right? Not the not the prettier face, but I've been the face of the company. I'm always the one out there and Brandy loved to be behind the scenes and doing her things in silence behind the shadows. She was still a huge part of the company, but now she's really, I think, embraced herself and gotten out there out of her comfort zone, right? Making her weekly videos with AI and everything that she's been able to do and going to more shows and being out there so people know her personality, right? You guys are over my personality at this point. So it's good to have hers in there now as well.
But I can just see that change. Obviously, Jude was an influence in that, but she is out there. She is speaking and she's got so much to offer and I'm just so proud. I think it's awesome because you were always the face, but you guys are a team. And so definitely think that that's probably Jude's influence. And then you, Sean, I see your videos, the way that you think about things and talk about leadership and then you add it all in and you launch it on Facebook and it's pretty sweet. I like it. I enjoy it. It's like a pearl.
I would say that is definitely out of my comfort zone and that is more Mary Beth pushing me out there. And like she knows that those are the kind of things that audience loves to hear instead of just with a picture that AI may or may not have written for me. But behind most of those videos I'm doing, it's just something I thought of that morning and I'm doing one take and that's it. It's not clean, it's not cut, it's just raw and unfiltered. And these are the things that just pop up in the middle of my mind. And I think, as leaders, it's good to have those moments that we all talk about those things, right? Look, it's not all great and roses behind every organization that we run. We all have those moments that we struggle with. And I think that's very important to be raw and that people realize that, look, yeah, we've got a great company and we're doing amazing things, but at the end of the day, we're humans and we make mistakes. And that's how we learn, right? There's been so many products over my 20 something years that I brought in that have been absolute failures, but I've learned from every single one of them, right? I learn more from my failures than I do from my victories.
For sure. Because they hurt a little bit and you're like, that, I don't want that to happen anymore.
That's exactly right. And most of the time they hurt in the checkbook, right?
Yeah, for sure.
So Jude, what are you talking about at LabFest this year? What is the topic? You mentioned the breakout.
Yeah, let me go through some of demystifying that process. So last year, Sean and Brandy sat down with me in one of our sessions and they were like, so how would you like to speak? And I'm like, dude, yeah, that sounds great. I'm happy to. I want to talk about something that's going to emotionally connect with the crowd. Where are the pain points in this industry? Where are they passionate? Where are they hurting? What are things that if I had only 90 minutes to speak to a room of professionals in this space, where can I make the deepest impact and really help Labfest have a connective moment with the people who are the movers and the shakers in the space that want to do better. If there was a group of people who were willing to move their company a certain direction, where are they hurting right now? And Sean almost immediately was like, pricing. You have got to talk about pricing. And he was like, I'm going to put you in a couple Facebook groups. I want you to kind of over on the side. I want you to watch. And he goes, I bet you'll see what I'm talking about. And boy was he right. I'm in a few of y'all's Facebook groups. Holy ****. Y'all must talk about pricing every ******* week in this place.
Yes.
And you nailed it. So I started almost every session going through a few of my philosophies on pricing. And they kind of got to mine through them and go, okay, this one's incredibly relevant to our system or no, that one's a little bit more for like a different like a service industry. We don't really, that one's not gonna hit. So a lot of it is curated in a way you probably wouldn't have guessed by Sean and Brandy. Just because I have something to say on a subject doesn't mean that it's relevant to the industry. And so I really audited a lot of that. So we had that same conversation this year and I said, All right, well, if I'm not talking about pricing, where's the pain? And Sean actually already alluded to it. He and Brandy worked together and said, pivoting. How do these lab owners and operators and small teams, big teams, how do they know when to pivot? What's AI going to do to them? What's technology going to do to them? What's gonna happen? And I said, okay, well, tell me more about where they're hurting. What's gonna cause this industry to pivot? What's the stimulus? And another one was, forgive me, I'm gonna speak y'all's jargon a little, so I'm gonna mess it up, I'm sure. We're like, well, you know, we've got these doctors who are starting to do some of the lower level versions of automatic printing, and they're printing these things themselves. And it's creating conflicts in the industry. And some labs have already responded, already pivoted their business model. Other people are going to be late to respond, but the subject matter as a whole isn't going away. especially as technology gets better. So that's what this year's talk is going to be about. This year's talk, it's a different subject than the workshop, but the talk is going to be 90 minutes. And I'm going to discuss the concept of pivoting. And what we're going to talk about is how do you know whether or not to pivot? What is the mental decision of pivoting look like? Then as I walk through those mental decisions, we're going to take a couple of real world examples, A lot of the feedback I got on my talk last year was people really enjoyed the ability to execute against my tactical advice at the end. So I'm gonna come with that same flavor. Not only am I gonna talk about the concept of pivoting, what does pivoting look like, what are the mental steps of pivoting, I'm also gonna talk about the ramifications of pivoting. How do you know when is right? How do you know when to bail out on the pivot? How do you know when to hold a little longer, push And then I'll get tactical at the end of the talk and say, specific to your industry, here's a couple of pivots that you should be looking at. Here are some interesting moments that are backed in data outside of your industry that if you can unlock them for yourselves, can create an immediate five-year-old board break moment. They can create an immediate change where you're going to go, holy **** my business had the ability to do this the whole time. That's what we're going for.
Damn.
That's interesting. I think a lot, and maybe Barb and Sean will agree with me, but I think a lot of people in our industry, there's those that pivot often and early, and a lot of us wait for them to work out the kinks.
Or some never at all.
Let's actually talk about that. If you got a few minutes, I think that's, you bring up something fascinating, right? So people who pivot often and early Are they trend chasers? Is it the new shiny thing or are they right? That's a really fascinating question.
Yeah, but there are some labs in our industry that are known for doing these things early and often, and I don't want to name labs, but I think we all know who they are. And sometimes they're very successful and sometimes they get burned, but the pivot still happens. They just did it too early. I mean, let's just talk in general terms. I mean, 3D printing, when it first came out, it was great, but they were expensive and slow and inaccurate. And a lot of people invested early. I just threw away at this lab I met a very early printer that was very expensive and huge.
Look, I mean, but that could also go back to the days of lava mills, right? Like, so I mean, what was that? $150,000 milling machine when it first came out? Right now we can get a $25,000 rolling mill at this point. But you did have those labs that followed that early trend and jumped on it. And I think most were pretty successful with that. So I think it's how your organization is kind of set up. If you want to be that early adopter, you have to realize though that you're going to be the one that's kind of setting where the paces of the industry and the industry is looking at you and saying, all right, what mistakes did you make that I can do Sometimes it's great to be the first one in the stage, right? You're ahead of everybody else and sometimes it's good to wait, right? But you have to, on your own, figure out where you want to be in that space, right? When your pivot moment is ready, when your organization is ready to make those changes. Like if you're that guy, you know, Elvis said, you probably all know who these people are, right? That loves to be the first one to do it.
We need those people too, don't get me wrong. We need them to pivot early.
Those guys to do it and jump in and figure out what's the process looking like. Because our industry is great that most people share that information and they go back to the vendors and the manufacturers, work out some of those kinks early. and figure them out, right? But that's just, that's a more of a personality thing as well of how acceptable you are to risk.
I like the fact that Jude's gonna teach those that don't do it now how to mentally go through those steps to be able to launch a pivot where some people are scared or don't know.
Absolutely. And look, there's, I'm gonna go through in the talk the three different mindsets to approaching pivoting, but on the very specific one you just did, being the first to market in any industry on any subject matter always has pain involved. And there's no truer experience of that than if I was to give you a fighting analogy. When you're fighting, the most expensive real estate in any fight is the gap between the two fighters. Whoever chooses to engage is always taking on the larger risk. That is 100% true in any martial art. The person who closes the gap of engagement takes on the larger risk. Larger risk, bigger reward. If you pivot first and you're right, You end up being the biggest educator in the space. You end up being the person who gets to get all of the credit to the market for being the one who saw it coming first and who more deeply understands. However, if it flops, you run into a problem. So let me give you an analogy. I'm gonna have to do some research to find out where this happened, but there was a study that was done and two groups were given an assignment with pottery and they had one semester and they had completely different goals. And by the end of it, they were only gonna be judged on which team produced the overall best group of pots. Y'all still with me? Yeah. Okay, so group one, here was their metric. Volume. They said, group one, you will only get graded on two things. Did you get better pots than the other group? And what was the total number of pots you made? So all they focused on was volume, volume, volume, rep, rep, rep, volume, volume, rep, rep, rep. The other group was focused on quality. Their whole shtick, their whole encouragement, their whole source of advice was create the best pots you can. Well, the second group had a little more paralysis by analysis. They had a little more trying to be perfect at every small step. And what you ended up with was the group that did volume by the end of the semester produced more of the better pots. And it was because they had the reps. It's because they burned through it. So sometimes when people on the outside go, oh, thank God I wasn't the first to market or thank God I wasn't the first to jump on that trend, need to zoom out and ask themselves this, whoever that person y'all are talking about is that always jumps on trends, have they ever been right? And did the one or two times they were right disproportionately pay off and cover the times they were wrong?
I'm gonna say yes.
In business, you don't have to be right 100% of the time. You only have to be right a few times. You only have to be, the knockout punch only takes one punch.
That reminds me of a speaker we had at Visions or Cal Lab. You know, they all blend together over the years, but somebody came on stage and talked about all the businesses Amazon failed at. Does anybody remember that? It was so fascinating. And they were like, do you all remember Amazon web services were like, no, they tried it and that kind of thing. And it was like interesting.
Totally.
A bunch of them that don't work.
People are never going to remember the losses. And this comes from years and years of competing. If you really point blank ask me, hey, tell me in what year did your student lose the world title, I would go, oh man, I have no idea. But the gold medal they won hangs in the school. I don't remember what, now they as a competitor, they remember the loss, but the industry doesn't. And I think sometimes people get confused on that. Like, yeah, you're the owner. I know you remember the time you tried and you failed. That's literally called the lesson. You're supposed to remember losing, but the industry doesn't. They have a short-term memory. Keep going. The only time you really lose is if you never compete again. So let me give you this. For any entrepreneur who bit off on something in this industry too quick and you were wrong, I'm not going to be giving this speech at the talk. at Lapfest, so I'll give it now. Yeah, nice. When I have a kid, like we just got off of world championships, the biggest competition our organization has every year, and I had a bunch of kids win, but I also had several kids. They competed all year. They go in for the big win and they lose. And I always give them this analogy. So I'm an artist and I have a bunch of characters and they all represent something. I have this little angler fish that I draw and he's covered in hooks and scars from being fished. And so I would say the same thing to an entrepreneur who tried and failed. I would say the same thing to a kid who competed and lost. So here's the story. You ready? Imagine you're a fish and you're swimming in the ocean and you see, let's call it a shrimp and you bite down on that shrimp and boom, a hook rips into your cheek and pulls you out of the water and all of a sudden you're caught and you're on a boat and you're dying. Now you're flopping around, you're trying to breathe and you're flopping around. You feel yourself dying and with your last bit of energy, you take everything you have and you rip as hard as you can and bang, it works. You pop the line and you're back in the water, you're swimming away. Now, you have a hook in your mouth, you're permanently scarred and you're bleeding everywhere. Did you lose?
No.
Okay, Barb, you answered very quiet, very fast, just like a kid would. So I'm gonna ask you a follow-up. Why? didn't you lose?
Because you saved yourself. You're alive. Yeah, you're bruised, but you're freaking alive.
So this is the game. If I asked a kid, hey, did you lose in that same thing? They would go, no, and they would say exactly what you said. If I asked an entrepreneur, they would say no, and they would say exactly what you said. And I would say, right, the only way for the fish to lose is if they never swim again. So my question to you is, did you lose or did you just make one bad entrepreneurial choice? You got hooked. That is not the same. Okay, lick your wounds, learn how not to bite that ******* shrimp again and get back out there and compete again. The only way to actually lose in competition is to decide to stay on the ******* boat, is to never swim again. And I would say the same thing in business. When you stop taking risks, you ******* lose.
That's amazing. I love that. Sean.
Yeah.
It's great. I'm just like, I'm almost at a loss. I know.
I needed a moment there because I'm visualizing myself right now. So yes, thank you. That was awesome.
Sean, let's talk about LabFest before we wrap up. What else is going on this year? When is it, October?
Yep, it is October 15th through the 17th. So again, two days, I guess technically three days this year, right? So we're doing a dudes class on Thursday, followed that night by a distillery tour. The next day we will start our education sessions on Friday, all day full of education. That night we will have a masquerade party at a plantation home. followed by the next day, another day of education seminars. And then once again, we will have our vendor space for all the vendors that are supporting us. So we'll be there. Look, every class that we pick this year is things that I feel this industry needs, right? Not only Jude's class, And we reached out of the industry, right? We have one gentleman that's a friend of all of ours that owns a hair salon company, but he's really, really good at social media marketing. He's gonna be talking about the Instagrams, the Facebooks, the LinkedIn marketing side of things. Brandy's doing AI classes. And no, this isn't our typical, let's go to Chicago and learn from some of our vendors how to design our crowns in AI, right? This is things that Brandy has created for our company that we are using to better our organization and our lives for all of our team in the AI space. And look, and that is three months away until October. And I'm sure her speech will be changing on a daily basis. We all know how quickly AI is advancing. And it's almost impossible to create something towards that is relevant right now that is extinct in three months. We have all of our good friends, Mr. Bennett Napier, coming to join us, talk about just employees, how to get the morale up, how to get that whole culture going. We have Rob Nizal basically doing his version of that speech. We have another gentleman that's going to be talking about the DSO space again, because I think that is very relevant for our industry, regardless if you are a small lab or a medium, large, That space is becoming larger and larger. And again, there's the dude's point, the pivoting, right? Are you ready to pivot into that space? And look, and not all of us are going after the Aspens and the Fordables of the world, right? There is much smaller 5 to 10 organizations that are considered DSOs, right? So the word DSO is changing as well. It doesn't mean 600 locations across the country either, right? So you can find those smaller DSOs and work with those And it's sometimes it's not even about pricing with those organizations. So I think everything that we have is things over the last year that we see talked about on a daily basis on dental laboratory technician Facebook page. That people are wondering what the industry is going to look like. How do they continue to evolve? How do they continue to thrive in our space and be relevant for the next, what, 10, 15, 20 years even? Look, because I'm younger. I don't want to go anywhere. I love what I do. I want the dental laboratory space to stay around for as long as we can. That's one of the missions of Novak Dental is to make sure dental labs thrive. And we want to make sure that holds true to our organization. Pretty awesome.
Love it. Speaking of thriving, what's this about you building another location?
I see that on Facebook.
Yep, not another location, right? So we did do the acquisition of ETI last month out in California. So we will have shortly, once they are ready, we will have supplies out on the West Coast. So that's one part of the pie, right? The second part is we realize in our facility in Mississippi, about 10 years ago, we had expanded onto this warehouse here. We've grown enough that we needed more space. So we've got about a 25,000 square foot warehouse that is currently being constructed right now. It's very exciting to see it on a daily basis, how it is progressing. And that will just allow us to have even more supplies on ourselves until we get down to the point that we're at 99% fulfillment rate. Right now we're at about 92%. So we're getting better and better, but I need more supplies on the shelves for all the labs that support us. That way we're able to ship products out on the same day.
That's one hell of a goal.
Yeah, the warehouse you're building is there in Mississippi.
It is in Mississippi. is attached directly to our offices now or our existing warehouse. So luckily, about 10 years ago, we purchased all the land all around us. So we had plenty of room to continue here in this space.
And what is this company you purchased?
So ETI Digital was a smaller dealer out on the West Coast out in Anaheim, California. It was really easy to sell it to Brandy because all I had to do was say we have a company out in Anaheim. Much of a Disney, I'm going to call her a freak, even though Dude is also one of those Disney people. That was it. Brandy's like, oh, so I could travel to Disneyland and go check on our new company all the time. I was like, yes, right. So that was an easy decision for her.
Yeah.
And the other part of NOLA that we wanted to make sure, like we all go to all these trade shows throughout the year. I wanted to make sure that this was not only worthwhile financially, but that you come out of it at the end of Saturday and really feel like you have something to go back to your lab with a nugget, that you can say, yeah, look, it cost me, the cost for the event is $325. Very inexpensive for everything that you're getting. But we also want to make sure that you receive value out of that number, right? So I want you to go back in your lab that Monday morning and say, yeah, I actually learned something. it cost me some time and money to get there and be part of this event, but we actually learned something and we had fun, right? And that's where the part that I feel like a lot of trade shows back in the day that we all got together on Thursday night and Friday night, there was fun events going on and everybody was all together. I feel like that sense of community is kind of gone away in the last, maybe it's since COVID, right? But that's why we do these distillery tours, the masquerade party. Last year we were all on a boat out together cruising up and down the Mississippi River, right? So everybody loved that community outside of being in the continuing education sessions.
Correct. And that's so important because people love that stuff. Hanging out, having a drink, networking, talking, laughing, dancing. I mean, it's all community. driven.
And the vibe last year, I know, Barb, you couldn't make it. You had some, I don't know, cruise or blah, blah, blah. But it was, the vibe was amazing. I mean, we go to a lot of shows and this one, just everything from during the sessions, between the sessions and especially the events in the evening. It was just fun. And that's what keeps people engaged and wanting to come back. And I'm hopefully you'll allow more people to attend this year.
Oh yeah, we have a much bigger space this year. We pivoted again. to a new hotel, the Hilton Riverside, which is again right on the river, just like we were last year, right down the street from it. But it is a much larger facility that we can host a lot more people. I think we can hold somewhere around 350 to 400. So look, we are ready for signups. Everything is live on our website at nolalabfest.com. You can register there. You can do the general admission. You can add Jude's class if you want to also attend that on Thursday. So everything is live and ready to go. All of our vendors are set at this point. We have over 30 vendors that will be there participating, showing off their products that they have. So we're super excited. This has been something we've talked about for many years. We did smaller little regional shows and kind of those Topgolf events for the last four or five years. And finally, last year, I came back from our last one in North Carolina and said, why don't we do a large one? Why are we doing all these smaller regional shows that 15, 20 people are showing up at? Topgolf was great. It was fun. But I wanted to do something that truly gave back to our industry because it's been so good for our family over all these generations, 82 years now in business. And like you guys know me, I've been on the foundation, the NADL, back on the foundation, Fat Lab 14 years. I love to give back to this industry because it has been so powerful for me and for my family.
Yeah.
I love it, man. And we appreciate everything you've done personally and as a company.
You were our first sponsor.
That's true. Yeah.
He believed in way back when.
Yep, that's right.
Yep.
And you only asked for your money back twice.
I don't know. And look, and I am hoping, I know Bar, I mean, Elvis and I, you have talked about this, but we are hoping you will come back as the MC for Family Feud.
I was going to mention, a lot of people have asked me. You've said I was doing it, but I've never officially been asked to do it.
But I guess now I'm officially asking Ms. Elvis, will you come back as MC? And look, and I hope you change your jacket, even though it's fantastic. But look, you are the only one that loves to be out-of-the-box, let's call it, right?
I think he was perfect and I think he was perfect.
And that was so much fun. And there's that fun aspect of that weekend, right? Like, Nobody's ever done a Family Feud event up on stage or interacted with the audience in that way that makes it just enjoyable. And that was a blast. I really enjoyed watching the teams up there compete against each other and watching them answer dental questions and sometimes-- Risque. It was really nice.
Yes, I would be, I'd love to do it again. I had a ton of fun doing it. I'm just gonna this time start it with a warning for any children in the room. They might want to leave because there are a couple questions.
Yeah, I got a little risque at moments. I didn't expect it. I turned to Brandy at some point. I was like, The martial arts events don't get like this. is getting a little crazy out here.
Hey, look, there's always those Steve Harvey moments that they don't air, right? Like that, right? So it's just following that same trend.
Yeah, that's right up the technician, that's how we roll.
Exactly.
Perfect.
Our minds are dirty. Well, Sean, Jude, thank you so much. Jude, it was really great to learn more about you and your philosophies. And I mean, I I saw you last year and I'm excited to see you again this year.
I really appreciate your time.
Thanks a lot. Yep.
Absolutely.
And I'll plug it one more time in there, right? October 15th through the 17th, nolalabfest.com, right? We hope to see everybody there.
Awesome.
Awesome. And we'll be there.
Yep.
Thanks guys.
All right. Appreciate it. Have a good one. All right.
Bye bye.
A huge thanks to Jude and Sean for coming on the podcast and talking about how running a lab is basically like being in a fight, which I'm fighting, so I get it.
And sometimes it feels like we are constantly losing, unfortunately. Maybe that's why the wins feel so good.
You can see how much Sean and Brandy have grown their company with the help of Jude.
Guys, it might be worth coming to New Orleans October 15th through 17th and checking it out. If you don't like how we bleep out the bad words on the podcast, I'm pretty sure Jude will be uncensored for your listening pleasure.
And plus, let's not forget all of the other great speakers and amazing evening events that they have planned, like we're gonna party hard and have fun and network and learn. It's gonna be amazing. And if you didn't get a chance to see Elvis host Dental Lab Family Feud, guys, you're definitely missing out. He's gonna wear a sparkly silver jacket with gold over it and purple hair. Maybe. Head over to nolalabfest.com for all the details and to register and we will see you there. I am so excited for this meeting.
I am ready to get back and see my friends. Right on. All right, everybody, that's all we got for you. And of course, we'll talk to you.
I'm going on vacation, so see ya . Say bye, Barb. Bye, Barb. See ya . You're funny today.
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.