Twenty years ago, Ivoclar introduced IPS EMAC Barbara: Twenty years ago, Ivoclar introduced IPS EMAC and we all know how that has turned out. Hi, voices, of Venures. Barb Warner here and I would like to personally invite you to IACLAR'IPS Emacs panel discussion which is on Friday, February 22nd, starting at 3:00 at the LMT Lab Day in Chicago. I will be joined on stage with Jessica Barrell, Stephanie Goddard, Mike Roberts, Jed Archibald and Dr. Ken Malamn as we dive into the world of vmax. After the panel discussion, Ivoclar will be hosting a happy hour to commemorate this 20 year milestone. So amazing. So. So please join us by registering@labdday.com Ivoclar and I cannot wait to see everybody in Chicago. Voices from the Bench podcast coming out after the Super Bowl Elvis: Welcome to Voices from the Bench, a dental laboratory podcast. Send us an email@info voicesfrohebench.com and follow us on Facebook and Instagram. Greetings and welcome to episode 359 of Voices from the Bench. My name is Alvis. And my name is Go Che O. Oh my gosh. If you don't know, we were recording this before the Super Bowl. Barbara: Yes, we are. Elvis: It's coming out after the Super Bowl. Barbara: I know it's coming out that Monday. So after they win we can. Okay, we'll celebrate that Monday. Elvis: How did you become a Chiefs fan of Isn't that. What Kansas City? Barbara: Yes, I'm a Patrick Holmes famam. I know everybody hates the chief, so I'm just saying I get it, but he's a bad and so it's Kelsey and that's, you know, see the quarterback. Elvis: What about Taylor Swift? That's her team, right? Barbara: Yeah, I wasn't even going toa mention her because I don't even think it's about her. But I want to see a good game so that's really all either way. Kelsey and a Kelsey. His brother played for the Eagles and so yeah, I could go either way, but I'm for the Chiefs. Keith Clens: There you go. The doll household had a new toilet installed Saturday morning Barbara: I need to know about your toilet. Elvis: So our usual recording time on a Saturday morning was disrupted because the doll household had a new toilet installed. I have to say this is the first toilet I've ever purchased in my life. Barbara: Literally. Elvis: I don't know what age most people buy their first toilet, but I've gone 46 years without buying a toilet. Barbara: That's pretty impressiveeah. But you didn't just buy a toilet. You can bleep me out. You bought a what? Elvis: A bougie toilet. a top of the line. Barbara: even the Dogs liked that. Elvis: It heats the seed, it shoots water, it blows warm air. There's a light. It probably plays a song. Who knows? Barbara: Oh my. Elvis: I don't know, man. I wanted the dollar toilet. She wanted to. Barbara: Well, she won. And I bet you're gonna end up enjoying it. You will enjoy the hot sea. Cause I know you live in a very cold area that put. I'm down with. But, yeah, the whole water on my booty thing. not happy with. No. Elvis: I don't know. Barbara: Hey, you may. Yeah, don't tell me if you do. Elvis: Because this will be a secret I will die with. But hey, guess what? Keith Clens: yes. Next week it all starts. Cal-Lab Lab Day Chicago. To say we're excited is an understatement Elvis: Next week it all starts. Cal-Lab Lab Day Chicago. To say we're excited. That's an understatement. We are. Barbara: I'm doing a backlip in my brain. Elvis: love it. So we have to do this. And we only have two more weeks to do this. But in case anybody wants to come and find us and be on this podcast, we're going to be at the Cal-Lab Cocktail party, which is Thursday, February 20th, from 4:00 to 6:30. And then on Friday, we're going to be in the Ivoclar Grand Ballroom from around noon to 5ish on that Friday and then all day Saturday. Barbara: Damn, it's gonna be awesome. Elvis: But we want to remind everyone that if you don't want to be on the podcast, that's okay. Still stop by and say hello. We love to meet you. And if you've been on the podcast before, it's okay to come by and give us and the listeners a follow up. yeah. Unless you'just on the podcast and you know who I'm talking about. And because Ivoclar is so amazing, if you're with another company or a vendor, it's okay for you to come on too, because Ivoclar is a great company that sees the benefit. Barbara: Heck yeah. Elvis: And if you come by and Barb and I are talking to somebody, we got the headphones on. Just hang around the Ivoclar Ballroom, check out some of their amazing products, their materials, or even who's on stage speaking. Barbara: Right? Elvis: And then when we get done recording, you'll be next. Barbara: And you know, Elvis and I love Chicago. We love Ivalar. Best location ever. Always get great interviews. We usually have lines, so please don't get deterred. Just come back because we want. Elvis: We want it all. Barbara: And a bidet to go with it. Elvis: Of course it's gonna. I have to use a regular toilet in a hotel. I'mnna be used to this thing by. Barbara: Then'M I know you are. All right, we'talk about this in a month. We'll update everybody in a month. Elvis: No we will not update everybody on the cleansliness of my okay, all right, I got some Edin to do. This week on Voices from the Bench the interview features Arman Gerboach So this week brings us a conversation about what amazing things are happening over at Arman Gerboach. So most people know about Arman Gerboach in their line of mills that's you know, the motions or that beast of a thing called a matic. Barbara: I love that name. Elvis: But now they are working on the experience that goes along with getting that new shiny mill. Less than a year ago they appointed Keith Clements, the CEO who came out of semi retirement. When presented with this opportunity, Keith believes in surrounding himself with the right people. So we also get to meet Nick Pizo who comes to AG with a ton of logistic and customer service from both Miller Coolers and Amazon. Barbara: Yeah, and I like the ag. I'm digging the ag. Elvis: Yeah, but of course you can only do great things if you include those that made AG great to begin with. So we also get to talk to Maurice or as everybody knows, Mo Whitlock. Barbara: He's so good. Elvis: All three tell the story of taking AG to the next level by creating a better experience. When choosing your next mill, sometimes it all about the service rather than the product. But you know what, it helps if the product is good too. So join us as we chat with Keith Clements, Nick Pizo and Mo Whitlock. This February, there are a lot of vendors to visit at Lab Day Chicago and one you don't want to miss is Aite at booth E26. They will be showcasing their exciting new products and cutting edge solutions in digital dentistry. Attendees can explore hands on demonstrations of Biomix stain and Glaze techniques, something many guests have mentioned on here before. Along with some of their other innovative technologies, ADITE will also host engaging lectures and Grand Suite 2 that's in the east tower covering topics such as Ezir 3D, Prour digital dentures and their Aite cloud design service. And even before you go, you can stay updated by following aiteort America on all social media platforms. And don't miss this opportunity to see how adite is shaping the future of dental labs. Tell them you heard them on Voices from the Bench and we appreciate your support of the podcast Adite Voices from the Bench the Interview we are super excited today to have a full crew from the Arman Gearbox company we have with us. Let's see the CEO Keith Clements. How are you doing, sir? Doing great Let's see the CEO Keith Clements. How are you, sir? Keith Clens: Doing great, thank you. Barbara: Good morning. Elvis: Director of Operations, Nick Pizzo. Nick Pizo: That's correct. Elvis: Hey, Barb. Barbara: Well done, Elvis. Elvis: All right, Piezo Paizzos going either way. And then the legend in our industry who pretty much I think you're at every show I've ever been to, Maurice Whitlock. M. Mo. How are you, sir? Maurice Whitlock: I'm doing well this morning. How are you guys doing? Elvis: Awes, doing fantastic. Now Mo, I know we've met. You've actually been on the podcast. We were just talking about that God loaded four, almost five years ago. Maurice Whitlock: I think it was five years years ago. Elvis: Yeah, yeah, 20, 20. January. That's crazy. And you're still with Amann Girrbach. Maurice Whitlock: I love the company. I love it. Love the company. Elvis: Awesome. Maurice Whitlock: Still here. Keith Clens: Great. How did you end up at Amann Girrbach Elvis: So let's kind of just go through everybody and kind of talk about how you ended up at Amann Girrbach. Let's start with the CEO, Keith. Give us the lowdown. Maurice Whitlock: Yes. Keith Clens: Hey, good morning. It's good to be here. Yeah, it's been quite a journey. I started back in March of last year. And before that you, you know, I was 20 years, in dental. Long, history and greatadeer career with companies like Den spplly, Serna and Young Innovations. And I was kind of like in semi retirement, five grandkids, but you know, just doing, helping some startup companies and so forth. And then I got a call from AG out of Austria, I'm in Gerbach, and I knew the lab business somewhat, but I did not, was never in the milling business. And all I knew was, wow, big Austrian company, strong in Europe, lab based. And then I started learning more and more about it. Talked to a lot of people that were in the space because I'HISTORICALLY have been a consumable guy and everybody I'd call and ask, I'd say, tell me about ag. And they're like amazing company, incredible product line. You know, like the Maserati of the mills, the Mercedes of the mills. Heard it all. And I'm thinking, wow. So I continue to look into it, continue to speak with the team at ag and they're looking for, you know, us to you know, to invest heavily in North America. And they know I'm a big distributor. I have a long history of dedication and commitment and loyalty to the distribution market. And they knew that they wanted to go back into distribution. So we kept talking and then I joined in March and I've just had a blast. An absolute Blast here. Creating a great culture, you know, here in North America, hiring, bringing in the right people, you know, working with our dealer partners. we have, tremendous value proposition we're offering to the marketplace today. And our dealers are leaning in heavy and we're excited to partner with them. So we had a great 24 and we're going to have a bigger 25. So it's, having a lot of fun and I'm glad I took the job. How does it feel to go from being semi retired to CEO Barbara: So how do you go from being semi retired to all in CEO, like mentally? Keith Clens: Oh, well, first off, it's the shortest commute I've ever had. That's my offices here are 20 minutes from my home on Lake Wiley here and right outside of Charlotte. So it's the shortest commute I've ever had. So that's really cool. Secondly, you know, to me it took a lot to come out of semi retirement and it had to be for the right opportunity. And this is it. This is what's happening in the mill technology today. And what's happening, in the lab space as well as in the chairside clinical space presents a huge opportunity for ag. I see that. and our dealers see it as well. So I'm having a lot of fun creating something special and that's why I'm here. Barbara: Well, you're bringing a lot of energy. I can feel it. Keith Clens: Right on Barb. That's the only way I roll. Barbara: Same here. Elvis: I hope I have that energy when I'm semi retired. So you mentioned distribution. Does that mean you used to go through vendors and now you're going direct So you mentioned distribution. Does that mean you used to go through, like vendors and now you're going direct? Keith Clens: Oh, no, no, it's the opposite. So, when, when I had original discussions, AG had a hybrid approach. They would go through distribution and they also could go through go direct. I've always said, I said to the leadership, when I was talking to him, I said, you can't have it both ways. You can't have one foot in selling direct and one foot in selling through distributions. The dealers won't trust you then if that means you're going to have to. Even though you're hybrid, you're really direct because the dealers won't touch it because they don't trust you, because you can always go direct. So to me, I said, look, if you want me to do this, we're going back into 100% distribution. If you're going to stay direct, you need to invest millions in infrastructure. And they weren't ready to do that. So we're back to. So we're back to 100% distribution. And the dealers trust me, I ve have a long history of working with them and they're leaning into us heavy so they see the opportunity and that's how we're going to win, you know with our dealer partners. Elvis: Nice Nick. Jeffrey Johnson moved from Amazon to AG North America eight months ago What about you sir? Give us a low down. Nick Pizo: Where start? Yes, I here. I've been here for a little over eight months with AG North America and I've been in supply chain and logistics pretty much my entire career which is about 35 years starting with the air Force and global supply chain there and then going through a ah, Middle Corps brew company. the last 10 years was as a senior operations manager with Amazon. yeah, so several. Elvis: So beer and Amazon a little bit bigger scale what our industry does. Nick Pizo: So be honest, I'll get to it. You know with my discussion with Keith when I first met Keith. But yeah, so I mean anybody who knows or anything about Amazon or Red all of storage, you know Amazon's it's a beast to work for both emotionally and physically but also just career wise. It's a lot of movement and a lot of expectations which is. Maurice Whitlock: Yeah. Nick Pizo: And you either love it or hate it. And I absolutely loved it. I thrived. But you know you get to a point where you're like okay, this is a lot. I think I made my contributions to Amazon. and it came time to where you know I really need to start looking for that work life balance and really started looking you know Keith and I connected and I think sitting down and talk to Keith within like the first 30 minutes we talked that work life balance portion of it and then he moved into describing his vision of what he wanted to do for as of North America and you. He had me. I was like I'm in. It was a big move going from such a large corporation to accompan the size of AG on a scale. But you know just the description of what heith envisioned and what he wanted to do for North America, again moving out of the hybrid model bill and distribution. I thought that was a perfect opportunity for me to bring what I understood and what I knew in the logistics world to help this company be successful. most of 2024 and I go into 2025. So like I said for me to move was the main focus was on the work life balance coming from Amazon. and now once I got in the door and working with the company both locally and with our headquarters overseas, I'm really enjoying myself. work with Great people like MOA in the field. so yeah, great move for myself and my family. I love it. Elvis: And what do you think of our little dental lab family now that you've witnessed us for a few months? Barbara: Eight months in. Yep, we're great. Nick Pizo: I know it's big learning experience for me. Like I don't come with any sort of dental background. So learning, the dental industry as far as the supply chain, it'all new to me. But I love it. I think everybody. The funny thing is how it's such a small world. Like you said, everybody knows everybody. So, I'm looking forward to getting out into shows like Chicago, telling the story of AG in North America. and what we are bringing to the table now that we've made some changes m in that service area. But like I said, I'm enjoying myself. Barbara: So I gotta ask you guys keep saying ag normally I've only heard I'ON good back. Is that something that's new? I like it. Nick Pizo: Really? It's AG North Agn A we just call ourselves just toinguish ourselves as between us and headquarters overseas. So the Austrian group is AG and we are AG and A so we call ourselves Agna. it's just a, just a short instead of going through the entire alm Manaak North America. Barbara: I like it. It's cool. Elvis: It's a mouthful for sure. Barbara: Have to start using that now. I like it. Yeah, that's cool. Nick was part of launching Prime Now, which is the one hour delivery service Elvis: One email address so Nick, the question I know is on everybody's mind. Are you going to get to the point where I can get a mill by the end of the day? Like Amazon? Is that o my part of the plan? Nick Pizo: My record with Amazon is from when someone made it purchased to when it was placed in her hand was less than 15 minutes. Elvis: What did they live next to the hub? Nick Pizo: Well, I was part of launching prime now, which is the one hour delivery service and an order came through and it was at a restaurant right down the road. And I was like, I'm taking this. So I grabbed the order as soon as it came in. I the p And then I walked into that restaurant, found the couple that was having dinner and I handed them the product and I was like, there you go. And they were absolutely amazed because it was like right at the infancy of Prime Now'when hour deliver. Elvis: They were there eating and they placed an order. And you showed up at their table? Nick Pizo: Yeah, it was Do Gentlen's birthday and it's. And his wife's sister. The wife's sister didn't get him a present. So she said, oh, there's this new thing called Amazon Prime. Now you can get it with the one hour. They didn't believe her. So the sister ordered a pair of drumsticks for the husband. and the bet was if we were able to get the delivery there or if the delivery arrived before one hour, the sister would have to pay for dinner. so I walked in, handed it to the guy, told happy birthday as den note stated, and they were just in disbelief. Barbara: Sweet. Elvis: What I love is you can get drumsticks in an hour. Who needs drumsticks in an hour? That's hilarious. Nick Pizo: My goal, yes. My goal is to when we place the order that we can within a specific amount of time be able to ship and deliver that order. No know if it's going toa be same day or three day delivery. Elvis: Sure. Nick Pizo: But my goal and my operational team's goal here is to make that where the turnaround time on an order is as soon as possible, as soon as we could possibly get it there and have inventory in the right place at the right time and make that happen. Elvis: There's a lot to be said for that. Because I remember my last lab where I was more involved with operations. We would order a milal and it'd be like, okay, you'll get it in about three to four weeks. I'm like, yeah, but I made the decision. I need it now. This is why I need it. Nick Pizo: Yeah. And that's kind of my process has been, forward looking rather than looking back and seeing, okay, what is our sales forecast? Make sure that we have planned ahead and we have the equipment here. you know, it's all dependent on the shipping and how long it takes to pack and ship. and then also what fits the customer or the doctor or lab's office, what's their timeline look like? They got a scheduled training and having downtime. Barbara: Sure. Nick Pizo: But my focus again, what I bring from Amazon to the table was the customer centric, where how does the decisions we make impact the customer first? And if it's a negative impact, how do we mitigate or how do we remove that and focus on that aspect of it? More and more doctors are buying Chairside mills, Elvis says Barbara: You mentioned clinical. Do you guys have a pretty large clinical base where the doctors are ordering a fair amount of mills? Keith Clens: I could chime in on that. I think what we're seeing on some of our mills, because we have a full range of mills from our drs that does single unit crowns all the way up to 36 puck changer with the matic and everything in between. but what we're seeing is, you know, like Jim Glidewell came out and said, in the article back in November in Chairside magazine, he said that he's betting big on Chairside mills because there are doctors that are bringing these N labs in. And obviously we support, our lab companies and our lab dealers. at the same time we see what is going on in the market and we have to be prepared to deal with that. And if somebody wants to bring, an in lab into their office, we have the most advanced, technologically advanced mills in the industry. so we are seeing some migration. whether that continues to stay that way, we don't know. But we'll be prepared either way just. Maurice Whitlock: To add to that, whatit just said, Elvis. I think when we talked five years ago, that was a topic that we discussed that I noticed was growing and it has grown even more. And that's a doctor with an in house lab. You know what I mean? Instead of, you know, there used to be a clear delineation between this doctor is doing Chairside, the labs, doing any everything else. You know, we're now more and more we're seeing the doctors that are purchasing the mills. And I'm still training technicians, you know what I mean? I call it Dr. Funded but still training lab techs that now have left a big lab and maybe gone down to, in house, you know, partnered with that. So that has grown even more than, you know, what we talked about five years ago. Elvis: So, yeah, we're seeing it a lot more. We're talking to more people on this podcast that are in office technicians. And I think it's a great career for a technician. Maurice Whitlock: absol. Absolutely. Because when I talk to doctors, you know, because we get a lot of questions during the purchasing process where, you know, a doctor might say, hey, I want to do all on force. And I was like, okay, do you, do you have a technician? You know what I mean? And because I said usually that's, you know, it's. If anybody knows me, I always do car analogy. So it's like, I want to drive F1 racing. And it's like, okay, do you have a driver? The owner can buy the car. We need it, we need somebody to drive it. So, yeah, hundred percent's kind of where we were at. And most of them, the ones that are successful, they've done really well. Had look at that as a partnership, you know what I mean? So you have the doctor running the show and then you have a lab technician in house, you know, running all the work software. Elvis: I was just in the office the other day and, they had a whole setup and an assistant was sitting there designing a crown on software. And I was like, you know, you're a technician, right? I mean, yeah, just an assistant anymore. Maurice Whitlock: Yeah, I, that, that's the second most common situation is, you know, we have, they either have a technician or do you have the assistant who's done chairside and now they're ready to do more complex restoration. So, I've seen quite a few, you know, assistants turn into technicians, you know, over time. Elvis: So I just leave them my card and say if they're ever wanting to become full time technician, let me know. Mo has been with Amman Gurbach for almost 10 years So, Mo. Yeah, we talked five years ago. Give us a quick update. It seems like you're the, veteran of this group. Maurice Whitlock: Yeah. So I think, almost 10 years now with Amman Gurbach. and I love it. That's why, that's why I'm still here. You know what I mean? It's M h. I've had people that, you know, I spoke to, I haven't seen any years, and they're like, hey, you're still with A.G. i'm like, still there. Still there. And a lot of different reasons. Keep the highlighted. Some of the reasons, you know, it's. I believe in a product. You know what I mean? It's a great product. How we present it I think is much better now. You know, everything that encompasses that customer service support, training, installation. But the equipment has always been fantastic. So I just, you know, just loyal to the company and love it. Elvis: Who can give us a little history? Barbara: Yeah, O. Elvis: Right. I want to be cool now. AG who can give us a little history of ag like, when did it come to the market? How did it kind of start? Was it always Mills, you of thing, actually. Maurice Whitlock: So the, Oh, you guys, you guys want me to. Keith Clens: Yeah, go. Maurice Whitlock: You want to take this? You want me to. Want me to. Okay. so, you know, historically it was two separate companies, two families, one in Germany, one in Austria. So we have AM family and the Gerbach family. Yeah. So every once in a while in some of the labs you'll see some, some older like equipment that says I'm on and red. And that was when, you know, it was a, supply company. So you had the Gerbach family, which was a big lab company, and then you had the AM on, which was more on the products. And originally the two leaders of those Families that gotten together, they'known each other and decided to merge into what we call Amman Gerbach now. Elvis: And when was that? Barbara: That's fascinating. Maurice Whitlock: Yeah, it was Oh my goodness. I used to have that whole thing memorized, but it was, I think it was. Elvis: You can give me a decade. Maurice Whitlock: I want to say 90s maybe. Elvis: Okay. Keith Clens: Yeah. Maurice Whitlock: And. And so. Yeah, so. So the Art Tex articulator is really what put us on the map. Like that Wasember that. Barbara: Yeah. Maurice Whitlock: and that's another reason like I said with, with our company, a lot of people, you know, they hear us and they think mills. But we have so many products to keep track of, to keep updated on. So it always keeps us on our toes. But so art start off with our Tex. That kind of put us on the map. They decided to jump into CADC cam in the 2000s and then they decided to go with the high quality route, you know what I mean? So they. From the beginning we had cutting edge mills. We had first ones to come out with custom abutment, special custom abutment holders for in house and not a big commercial type mill, you know what I mean? So, yep, growth from articulators, which is kind of our DNA, our backbone to now where we have so many products and you know, amazing zirconia mills. So to see that growth, is pretty exciting to be a part of. Elvis: What was some of the early mills, were they just like 4 access to access. I mean how far back do we go? Maurice Whitlock: Yeah, so we had one of the few first hand mills. So remember the what? The hand mills back in the day. I should have, I have to send you some photos. But yeah, our history is pretty interesting because we had the hand mills that would handml the zirconia. then we. Elvis: What does that even mean? You'd turn a knob. Maurice Whitlock: So you have like, you have like a. It was like a handpiece and you move one piece over the restoration like a wax up and then it would actually carve the zirconia on the handpiece. Nick Pizo: Wow. Maurice Whitlock: Yeah, it was. Barbara: I can't even visualize that before the automation. Maurice Whitlock: Then it was the four axis motion, the original motion. And then we grew to you know, 5 axis, 5 axis wet dry multi changers, C clamps, all the things that are out now. It was exciting. Like I for example when I first started we had two holders and now we have like 12 different holders. So in 10 years, that's a, that's a pretty rapid climb. We have special holders for different partners, um, that we've made Elvis: Let's see Puck Block abutment. What else holder is there? Maurice Whitlock: Puck block abutment. We have denture. We have special holders for different partners, that we, we've made. We, we've had holders that will hold 12 blocks at a time, nine blocks at a time, three blocks. Nick Pizo: Jeez. Maurice Whitlock: Titanium puck holders, chrome cobt. I mean every, you name it. we've got a holder. Cause what we did is kind of instead of making a fixture and trying to jam all these different materials into that one holder, which most of our computeitors have, we have attachments, we have detachable holders that you just take out, put the other one in when you're doing a different indication. You mentioned a lot of other products other than mills, because honestly I really thought Elvis: So you mentioned a lot of other products other than mills, because honestly I really thought you were only mills. What else do you have? Maurice Whitlock: We have fabulous zirconia. So our zirconia bion all the way to FX multiayer. so our catalog looks like a distributor catalog. You know, when you look at all the things we do. So, and you're right, a lot of people, they see our mills, our mill are impressive. Just walking by. But when you actually check out all the different things we sell to our customers, it's kind of unique because, you know, we're a CAD cam company, we're an analog company. And it really allows us to go into any facility, I can go into any office and we can provide a solution for what they're looking for. Keith Clens: Yeah, yeah. One of the few companies too that Mo that I've seen, like, really, that's out there. From A to Z. I mean we've got it. We have everything from consumables to the technology, equipment, software, I think it's safe to say, right Mo? It's like we've got it from A to Z. Ablly million. Absolutely. How do you create a vision for a company such as ag Barbara: So that leads me to a question for you, Keith. When they're a CEO of a company such as ag, like how do you create that vision? Do you have like a two year, three year, five year plan? And like, I know it's gotta be time consuming, but what is that like to be able to create a vision of taking a company from here to there? Keith Clens: Yeah, great question. And you know, when I came here, the team knows I did a 60 day assessment of the business. So one of my things my dad taught me at a very young age, he said, son, don't have, strong opinions on things you know little about. So I came in. I love that. Did assessment, interviewed every employee in the company. They spent 30 minutes with them just to find Out. What are we doing? Well, what do we need to stop stop doing? And what can we do what we need to start doing? Right. So I took all that information down, came back to the organization and I said, here are the things that you told me that we do good, we do bad, and here's some things we need to start doing. And people loved it. And that's always been my approach is to say, this is what you're telling me now. Let's work together with a plan to really build this out. Ye so there was a culture piece. we had a good culture. There's some things we want to leave behind. We kind of created a vision for a culture because at the end of the day, you can have the best mousetrap in the world, best price, what have you, best technology. If your culture's not good, you're goingna rot from the inside out and you'll never get the best out of your people and you'll be minimal impact for your company. Barbara: Totally agree. Love that piece. Keith Clens: I started with the culture piece. We put together what we called the Culture Club and selected people from all various departments and they kind of created the vision of the culture. And then it's my job to ensure that we bring that culture to life over the years ahead. So that was the first piece. Second piece, we again, we assess the things that we have to do to really turn the business around and get it really moving, here in North America. And I told the team, I said, we can do anything, but we can't do everything. All right, so let's just pick the one areas we that we're going to have the biggest impact. And I would say the biggest impact that we were capable of making that where I saw an opportunity in the market was the customer experience. And I go back to a book in the 90s that I'm a fir firm believer, from Ken Blanchard and Sheldon Bollles called raving fans. So when they came out with this really a revolutionary but simple approach to customer service, right. And, and I said, look, when I did the assessment, I also looked into the channel, looked talk to a lot of customers. And the service out there, which is hard to do for companies, is terrible. People are not happy with the service and support they're getting from across multiple businesses and multiple different types of segments within the dental industry. So every company is struggling with it, right? So I said, look, that is a huge gap and a huge opportunity for us. And it really just distills down to this number one. And from the basic Just to get a ticket to the game, you got to basically meet their basic needs. And that is when I order something from you, I want an on time in full every time. Every time. Right. It sounds simple, very hard to do. Right. But if you can do that right and you can nail it, what do you do? You get the end result from the customer is I can trust this brand, I can trust this company. That's the basic. Then after you do that and do it very well and they can count on you, then the second thing you have to do is make it easy. So it's like, I love this. This company can deliver on time in full every time. And you know what? They're easy to do business with too. Don't be complicated. Don't be complicated. And lastly is you do that over and over again, easy to do business. Then you lean in heavy too. With additional resources and things that we're doing, we call it AG360. We basically blow them away on everything from installation to on and then ongoing service. And that takes them to the level of what we call, what I would say is that it'they trust us, we're easy to do business and we give them a great customer experience that they want to continue to get each and every time. So that's what we're creating. That's the vision. And we believe that if you look at our Google ratings back in March, they were sitting around 3. Today we're at 4.9 on our Google ratings. Our customers are telling us and basically telling us how we're doing and how we're changing the game. So that's excellent. Elvis: How'd you do it? I mean, it's one thing to say this is what we'renna do. It's another thing to do it. I mean. Did you just said mo everywhere? Keith Clens: Yeah. One of the biggest pain points with labs is when a mill goes down Barbara: Really rot Nick in? Keith Clens: Yeah, well, we do that a lot too. Maurice Whitlock: He knows it. Keith Clens: But, yeah, so, well, the first thing we did is we had like, I'm a commercial guy, so I don't know, I don't know logistics. Don't know, you know, you know, on the financial business as well. So I got to bring surround yourself the people who, that, you know, have strengths that you don't have. So bringing in and basically rev, you know, somebody that's working for by far probably the greatest logistics company in the world with Amazon. He brought all that, knowledge into this business, our little business, and he's transformed it. So he understands like what customer service. He used to tell me the story. He says you know, when we have our board meetings, our staff meetings, you know, our senior management meetings, you know, we're talking about decisions and things we're going to do. He always said, he goes, you know, we had in the room, he goes. Every time we had an empty seat in the room, and anytime we would make a decision, we would say, and the seat represented the customer. And he say, he goes, you know what? We're going to make a decision. How is this going to impact our customer? And I said, I knew. When he told me that story, I said, I knew I had the right guy. Elvis: I wow, that's cool. Keith Clens: Yeah. So he's come in and transformed it. Got Matt Harris, who, you know, coming over from Caterpillar as my controller. So he's helping us be more profitable. And then you just have to build the infrastructure, you know, so you got to bring in tech, you know, additional technicians that, you know, probably aren't as good as M.O. but they're close, right? You just, you surround with M.O. with additional, product specialists that, you know, that want to aspire to be as great as mo, Right. And he can train and develop them. And then you hire help desk. Like one of the biggest pain points with labs as well as chairside is when a mill goes down. That means your mill goes down, production goes down. It's cost you bleeding money, right? Nick Pizo: O. Yeah. Keith Clens: so now you got to know hopefully, how do you get it fixed? Well, you got to schedule a technician to come out and you know, that's going to be a week, might be two weeks. Then they get out there, they assess it, and they don't have the parts. Now you're just, Right. so that's a bad customer experience. So one of the things that we do here and what Nick has really, I think mastered and that is our remote repair. So the one of the cool things about dealing with AG mills is that most of our mills have these high resolution cameras inside them. We can. So if that mill goes down, they call us, we remote in to that mill. Remote in. We'll play back exactly what happened. We can look at it both from, from a, computer perspective to see where that problem came from. And then we can visually see it by playing back that camera. Elvis: Right now it's constantly recording. Keith Clens: Yes, the camera is recording all the time. When it's milling, we mills don't have a camera. But what this means at the end of the day, that sounds cool, but what does it mean to the customer? What that means is that 7 out of 10 calls that we got basically coming in now we're fixing them, on the spot remote repair. And nobody can say that, right. So that way we're doing it on the spot. We are avoiding having to spend another week or two to get a technician out there. And sometimes we have to do that. We understand. But now we're seeing the majority of the time we can get them up and running same day. And that's kind of the technology and some of the infrastructure. But you have to have really, really good remote help desk people to do that. And that's what Nick has done, you know, since he's been here. Elvis: So what, you're talking to somebody at the lab to walk them through fixing it? Maurice Whitlock: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Elvis: How does that work with someone like me that strips every screw and can't put in a nail straight? Maurice Whitlock: So that. Actually, Keith made a good point. The. The camera has helped so much. For example, last week where I was at, I was pretty big facility and they had nested. I'd shown nesting, did all the steps. And then of course, after training, I let them do it and they were, you know, took off with it. But they. One of the pucks, they forgot to screw all the way down. So. So yeah, so they're like, hey, Mo, we got a problem with one of these mills already. What's going on? You know, I said, well, let's look at the video. You know, so it's almost like replay, in football. So I go back, we look at the video because we had a tool break, and we go back and look, and you can actually see the puck moving around in the holder because it wasn't screwed down all the way. So of course the tool was thinking, I should. There shouldn't be material right here. But there was because it snapped the tool. And immediately we were able to address it. Where normally if we didn't have a camera, we would have been troubleshooting, we would have been mil calibrating, we would have gone through all these steps. So. So the technology combined with Nick and his team, from. You know, I don't sound like the old guy, but as long as I've been here, this'the difference we've added. You know, Keith has added some amazing people to our team. So I'm excited, because, you know, the structure we have moving forward. Nick, what was it like going into the dental space Barbara: So, Nick, take me through your vision. Sounds like you're kind of, All of the experience that you had with Amazon and fulfilling orders and doing all of that, what was it like going into the dental space and how did you create such a short time, what sounds like an amazing customer experience. Nick Pizo: From that aspect of it? While it is customer centric and customer focus and how do we best serve the customer? A lot of the work through my experience both down Amazon, but each company, I've had some, the ability to work for some really good companies. And the best part about it was each one of those companies had really good leaders who taught me how to lead a team. Nick Pizo: You know, and the basics of the whole thing comes down to three things. Can you plan, can you execute? And then the most important one is can you develop people to the next level? And that's really where it's at, where you have a team who they want to do the right things. You have to come in with the attentive. I have a team. No matter what's going on, when you're first coming into a company or a business is you have to have that mindset of people want to do the right thing. They just need to be able to be trained or be calibrated or really just set a process in place for that. So for me it was how do I develop this team to be able to execute really what Keith's vision is, which then trickles down to what my vision is, is how do we best serve the customer. That's where division starts. And then you work your way backwards and you start building processes around to support that. you. I always tell the story when we have people come visit about. I think it was my first day here where I walked in and I was walking past our help desk who are pretty active on the phones and I heard one of our technicians tell a customer, you know, hey you, you have to call your distributor first or your level one technician service. Let me give you the number. And then it help the phone and you. So I sat back and I went over to that person. I was like, why did you do that? Like, what do you mean? I was like, why did you hand them off to the distributor technician team? I go, we not able to fix that right here, right now. And you know, they were like, no, we could do it, but we're not the level one support. So right there, you know, I gathered the team together and I said, we will never, ever, ever. It's like if they call us and we pick up the phone, we're gonna solve the problem and then we'll go back to distributor or whoever their technician staffing is, create that case and then follow through with them to make sure they understand what we Worked on. But if someone's calling and ask for help, we'ren help there. And then that was, that was where it all started. Barbara: Yeah. Nick Pizo: Then backing off into where was our capacity, and what was our capability within that capacity. So one thing I noticed was a lot of the concerns we were hearing or I was hearing from customers came from mostly on the west coast. And I was like, what's going on the west coast? That's ah, not working very well. So rather than going through and trying to look up all the old data, all that, I just called some doctors up and some labs up, hey, what's going on? I'm new to the company, here's what I'm doing, here's what I'm trying to do. You know, what are some of the things that are not working well for you and how serving you. And it was, well, first and foremost, nobody's there to pick up the phone. Barbara: Yeah. Nick Pizo: So what does it mean? Well, we're on the east coast, they're on the west coast. If we shut down at 5:00use, it's the end of workday, you know, that's halfway through the west coast working day, they're still up and running. So first thing I did is I went and hired a couple of m remote technicians. One in Chicago and one in Houston. You know, I was like, hey, you guys are you're gonna start late, you're gonna work your ships, gonna work through to cover the west coast. I'm working right now to hire one more person specific for the west coast. the other Barry was, you know, there were some language challenges for the west coast. So I make sure that when we do hire people, you know, they speak Spanish, so they can help the technicians in a lab. You know, just again those things like, you know, what is the barrier for that customer? Not necessarily baried for us, but what's the barrier for the customer? And then work your way backwards and then the rest of it for me for vision, I break everything down to a mathematical problem. What is the task? How long should that testask take? And then how many times does that occur? And then this, how many man hours I need. And then you hire to that man hour staffing, and you manage it and you measure it and make sure that we're working towards that. So that gave me the confidence that we had the right staffing to be able to support our customers. So that when they do call, someone generally picks up the phone and if not, you know, we call back within an hour? Barbara: Yeah. Nick Pizo: then we created a concierge position. So we have one of our techns here we made into a concierge. So they are good like a triage. So they're goingna call in into that number, they're going toa pick it up and they're going to find out what is that issue there. If it's something that's readily be solvable, that person can solve that right there. And then if not they will go through and they will put them through to the technician in their region or the area, to make sure that they can service them. Then again we looked at the technology. So not only do we utilize the high definition camera that's in the machine, we've also had where we've had. Because not everything happens in the machine in the chamber. so we've had FaceTime where we've had our technicians FaceTime in with a technician to walk arounds and to look at things that are on a server or looking at the dongle or any of the software issues you so that helped that a lot. And then our field service technician team, who are the ones if there has to be on site repair, who go out and do the repairs, you know, they were very at the time they were specific to a type of machine that could repair. so Peter, who's also pretty well known in the industry, Albertus, I test him with his team to do cross training and to expand the capacity and the training of our team so that every technician can work on every machine at any time. Barbara: Wow. Nick Pizo: You know, so all those things, what they do is they nip away at the amount of time it takes to get a machine back up and running. When I first came on board we have what's called an MTTR score which is being time to repair, which is measured in days. And we had a greater than eight day repair timeline. I think it stopped measuring it eight days. So they could have been eight to 15 to whatever. O but just looking at the case load and the open cases that we had, it was huge. And it wasn't answering the questions I had of being able to measure what are we seeing issues with, how can we make it a preventable, get back with headquarters if there's like something that's a defect and have them address it at that time. But anyway, by the cross training of those technicians by the help desk and doing a weekly review of open cases, reaching out and talking directly to customers, we dropped our MTTR score from greater than eight Days down to less than three days. W. year. So that is all. Again, you started to customer work your way backwards. What are you like he said with the raving fans, you know, what do I need? I need a team that has to have a capacity and the capability to service our customers. And then you transfer to the customer. What does the customer needs? The customer needs their machine. They need their st on time, but they also need their machine up and running as soon as possible when it does go down. So that was my vision was how do we best serve the customer and what are their needs and then make a plan and work our way backwards to putting processes in place to be able to support that vision. Remote machine repair can help a lot of labs easily repair broken equipment Barbara: Great answer. Thank you. Elvis: Yeah. Where do you find your team? I mean, you keep saying technician in my mind's dental technician. Are you hiring dental technicians? Nick Pizo: So we look for, I think the people that we had the last couple that we hired, we made sure that when they had the experience e that came out of the lab space had a, ah, CAD cam experience so that, you know, they, when they jump in, they could jump in both feet and just get, get up and running. Then we bring them here and we put them through like a two week training with Peter on machine repair. M. So yeah, so we've got real lucky. There was the people who were already working here, knew of people in the industry who were working in labs who were looking for other opportunities. Sure. And you know, so we reached out to them, found what the capabilities are and where we maybe had to do a little bit of training. and we brought them on board. Elvis: Because it's a whole new world once you take that cover off, man. Nick Pizo: It is. Yes, it is. Elvis: I've seen the inside of some of those things, which is great. Nick Pizo: The remote repair, being able to do that with, you know, on your cell phone, you could just, you do a FaceTime and walk them through the repair that way. Mean a lot of repairs where it would have taken a couple of days to get somebody out there on site to go in and plug an ethernet wire back in that came loose where on the phone you can say, oh, wiggle that wire. Elvis: Yeah. Nick Pizo: Green would flicker. Hey, push that in, lock in, boom, you're up and running again. You stuff. Barbara: That'simple and that's really sweet. When you're running in a lab and you're producing product and it easily repaired, I mean you just freaking created a miracle. Especially if it's two, three days that you're down. I mean, that could kill some labs, honestly. Nick Pizo: Yeah. The other Side of that is when we do have to go out and do a repair, you know, do we have the parts available for that repair? So, I went through with our team and headquarters and we did an evaluation of our entire spare parts list. and then we set that up on a min max order schedule so that we don't run out of parts again. We pull the data, we look and see what the trends are for parts that are being replaced, whether it's warranty, or just PMs and maintenance that generally get worked on, and make sure we have the parts here, available before we even schedule to go out and do any type of, payments work. Barbara: Good call. When I started, we didn't have this, you know, structure Elvis: And mo, what do you do? Do you mostly train on new systems or do you spend a lot of time maintenance and repairing? Maurice Whitlock: When I started, we didn't have this, you know, structure and you know, people basically, you know, we were a lot smaller. So I was, I was trained, you know, I was a trainer, you know, CDT trainer, installer. But also I learned repair, because we just did not have the people right. So, which actually helped me learning the repair and learning the mills inside out. You know, it helped in troubleshooting, it helped in training, you know, I mean, because I knew, yeah, I knew if they did something wrong, what the result would be. And I was able to explain that in the training. as we've grown, we have, you know, specific repair technicians and then we have product specialists which are, you know, more on the training side. But we do cross train, like Nick said earlier, and it just makes it more available. So if I'm doing an install and I am m in Miami and we have an issue with another customer in Miami, I can go over there and do the repair and not, not have to have that customer down. Like, like Barb said, if you're down, you are down as a lab. And that's money. Every second is money. So our ability to do repairs, you know, on the fly because we're in that location just gives us that, you know, that flexibility to take care of the, take care of the customers. So. So right now, currently I'm, training my responsibility as the other product specialist. And I'm really excited moving forward as we grow ca. Because that's what I mean, we're growing. So it is, it is an exciting time having these teammates because, you know, you hear team throwing around a lot. but as you hear Nick, you hear exactly how we're improving and you can hear it in Keith's voice. It's funny we just hired a new product specialist and she had her first meeting with us and she called me right afterwards and she's like, is this real? You know, said, is this, is this real? And I was like, what do you mean? She goes, you know, cuz she, she joined team. So she's seeing our history, our chat history is, is our history of our culture and how it s changed and how it's grown. So she's like, is this real? And I go, what, what are you talking about? She goes, the meeting I just went through, she's like, you guys, the teamwork, the culture. And I said, no, this is, this is it. Elvis: It was productive. Maurice Whitlock: I go, this is Monday. I told her it doesn't change. I go, this wasn't anything special. This wasn't like beginning of the year meeting. Let's get everybody fired up. I'm like, this is every meeting. This is consistency. This is our team. And she'like wow. You know what I mean? So it's exciting, it's exciting what we're bringing to the table. The relationship to me starts after the sell, right? So we do Elvis: And you're, you're the one that if someone purchases a mill, you kind of show up and you install and you train. Maurice Whitlock: Yeah. Elvis: What's that look like? Does everybody get that when they buy a mill? Maurice Whitlock: So we, we do. So what we've done is, we understood how important that for first touch point is with our customer. Right? Nick Pizo: Yeah. Maurice Whitlock: I've always said from the beginning, the relationship to me starts after the sell, right? Because there's a lot of times, there's a lot of people out there, they feel like, okay, I'm getting all this love, I'm getting all this attention, I'm getting all this communication. And then once I sign and I sell, I don't hear from that. Elvis: Yeah. Maurice Whitlock: And to me, it, the relationship begins at thell. So when I, when I show up first, they treat me like Santa Claus. Barbara: Because they, I'm teaching how they're excited. Yeah. Maurice Whitlock: I try to match that excitement and teach. You know what I mean? I love teaching. So I'm training customer, on how to use what they just purchased. You know what I mean? So it keeps me on my toes because what we said earlier about the catalog, we have so many different products, which has been awesome because you never get caught in a rut. You know what I mean? So people, you know, they'll talk to me like, mo, you still with ag? And I'm like, yeah, but I'm, you know, every single install, I'm doing something different. I'm teaching something different. Nick Pizo: Yeah. Maurice Whitlock: So our team, that's our team's job is to make sure once the sales team, you know, sells it, Nick, and his team provide the equipment. My job and my team is to make sure they have, an amazing experience, when we show up and show them how to use that equipment. Elvis: Be honest, do you enjoy delivering that matic more than anything else? I mean, that thing's like, what, 30 discs? Is that what it is? Maurice Whitlock: So you've. Anybody's known me or anybody has, listen, they know I have a bad memory, so I make sure I do not lie because I don't want have to remember what I said. So the matics difficult on an install, on the, on the installer, because it's a lot, right? Elvis: It's like what, 36 PCX or what is it? Maurice Whitlock: Yeah, it's 36. It's a beast. Like we call it the beast. Yeah, it's a lot of work. I make sure I get some sleep when I do those. it's easier to, to drive a SUV than a semi truck. Right. But the semi truck hale a lot of stuff. And that's how I look at it with the Matic. now our matron, our new mill, Absolutely love it. it's kind of that, you know, when we talk about the proper fit because we've had customers walk in and see our Matic and just go, oh, it's too much without even. Elvis: It's a lot. It. Maurice Whitlock: Yeah. But, you know, the matron kind of fits to me. Options. I love options. So we have, we have that beast for that, that lab that wants to load 36 pcks and they want to just mill. You know what I mean? Keith Clens: Yeah. Maurice Whitlock: And then we have that Matron that fits a lot of customers, whether it's a small lab trying to be big or big or this growing or a bigger lab that wants to buy two of them. You know what I mean? I installed two last. So to me, having options to provide that, that fit for our customers is what's exciting. But yeah, it's a lot, It's a lot, a lot to it. But. But we have the right one for customer. How do you stay ahead of the curve with mill installation and service Barbara: I was going toa ask Keith. So how do you stay ahead of the curve? Like, do you have an actual team that recommends, hey, we need this mill or we need to look at this material or these instruments. Like, how do you keep that going? That's got to be a whole separate team. Sure. Keith Clens: You know, the Austrians are very, supportive of us, so they, you know, we've got some tremendous R and D, folks over there, so they are always looking, you know, five years out and we have a very, very healthy pipeline of R and D coming especially and even this year. So we're going to introduce a new mill at the Chicago Mido. So we're looking forward to that. And we've got other things coming too. Maurice Whitlock: So. Keith Clens: Takes a village, as they say, right? I mean we've, we're getting support from our, our Austrian support group out there and the R and D team. But we are, you know, creating, you know, our own North America Ag and you know, with everything from, you know, from service to obviously it starts from installation to ongoing service to you know, we, one of the things we love to do and I, because I said to some, I said to the team, I said, look, if somebody's going to buy the Maserati of the mills, Mercedes, the mills, they need to have amazing installation. Right? So at the end of the installation and the training after three days typically is there's a bottle of Amman Gerbach champagne labeled with ag glasses, flowers, balloons and we basically pop the cork with the customer and we cheers. And, and I tell you, just a little thing like that, the VIP installation, the little thing like that. Barbara: Yeah. Keith Clens: I mean the customers, it's like that's the first impression that you want to give. Elvis: So you do that for every mile. Keith Clens: Everyone that we install. Barbara: Nice M.O. Elvis: You did two last week we just o. Maurice Whitlock: The customer bought two. So they bought, they purchased two of our matrons. So we did the champagne. Elvis: you only had to do it once though. Maurice Whitlock: And only one bole. One bottle for the two mills. Yeah. O last just to add, to answer that question too because where Keith was talking about strategically and our R and D is really awesome about looking forward to what we do. Also on a ground level, we do a lot of teams meetings with the customer. So it'll be the customer, the cam and the product specialist. And we kind of listen to what the customer is wanting to do and what they're looking for and then we match, we kind of match that middle that fits them. Because not everybody, you know, like for cars you have a minivan, you have suv, you have a sports car. We provide those different mill. We match it to that customers needs. Barbara: Y. Are there mills in America that are doing better than the ones in Austria Elvis: Are there mills in America that are doing better than the ones in Austria? Like are they doing the Maddox out there? Or is that mostly because America loves big and big and. Barbara: Yeah, we love big. Maurice Whitlock: Yeah, actually, it is. It. It's usually so we're of Course, that's our. You know, where they mill, where our headquarters are. So Austria and Germany, especially Germany is pretty strong. They're leading. They're leading our. Our company. And then we're. See, we are always looked at as, okay, we're the next one, you know, as far as the matron. The matic. But I'd say our matron has been. I'll let Nick and Keith comment on that, too. But from what I've seen is by far what we've been installing the most. Elvis: But they're working out all the bugs in Germany before it comes over here. Nick Pizo: I. Keith Clens: Here. Maurice Whitlock: Yeah, they do a lot of testing. A lot of testing before. It's actually really. I actually was able to go for the Matron, before it was released. And they left me alone in there a couple days and I milled. They were like, go ahead, mill what you want. And I was like, I'm the wrong one to tell that to. So. And I milled all the things I wanted to meal. Just having fun, you know. And, that is fun. And that's what they're doing. They're like, let us know if you see any problems, you know, and it was. Yeah, that was really cool to be able go do that. Barbara: And they like the letter M because it's Matron Maddox. What am I missing? Maurice Whitlock: Are there more Moteah? Motion. Motion two. Motion three. Barbara: Oh, so it is an M thing. Maurice Whitlock: So everything'ss. Keith Clens: Yeah. and that Matron can mill anything, any material. And, you know, we have. When we're at, Greater New York, we actually had a titanium puck. We, milled. Maurice Whitlock: Ah. Keith Clens: A, Iron man, you know, from the movie the Iron Man. Barbara: Oh, great. Keith Clens: And detail. The detail of it is unbelievable. It's out on LinkedIn, a number of different social, websites. But we also did a Statue of Liberty. I mean, that's the capability. So our whole point is, you know, look at the detail on this. Just imagine what your restoration's gonna look like. Right? Elvis: That's funny. Cause most people are printing things to get the detail, but you're milling it and get that detail. That's awesome. Keith Clens: It is. It's amazing what these machines can do. W. truly amazing. Motion 3 is our next step up to do more than single unit crowns Elvis: So somebody briefly mentioned releasing something in Chicago. I believe this episode will be coming out before lab day. So give us what's going on with you all at your booth, your room. You got some speakers. What's going on in Chicago? Keith Clens: Yeah, I can start Mo, you can know, fill in, too. But we're excited to release our new version of Motion 3, which you know, really from a product portfolio perspective, this, this is really fits really well with what we want to offer the marketplace and that Iseah. you know, you have a built in compressor with this Motion three. You know, obviously it'll do blocks and zirconia, you know, single poc. But to me it's like, you know, we'll be in within our dealer booths, you know, milling there at the show. And basically if you are ready to do something more than single unit crown, this is the natural step up. Right? So this can basically do, you know, crowns, but it can do a lot more too. And you can do zirconia as well. So, so this would be the next step up. and then with that, if they want to do, if somebody wants to do more advanced work, metal and so forth, then they can move to the matron. So now we've got your next step up to do more than single unit crown. And if you want to do everything, the matron, is there too. And you know, so I think it's an exciting addition to the line that we're going to introduce in Chicago. So mo, feel free to jump in too. Maurice Whitlock: Yeah. In the ballroom will have some amazing speakers, with different topics. We, we will ll have the list coming out, but we have great speakers. I'm really excited about the crew we have coming, this year. just, just you know, because you know, we talk about it. I love my company, I talk, I do lectures, I get excited when, when our customers are talking about our product. You know what I mean? So we have that. We definitely. We're gonna have all our meals showing. We'll have some really cool stuff milled out so you can see what we're talking about because you know, as a lab tech, I'm a CADC cam nerd and a longt time la touch it. We mil, you know, we mill traditional dental stuff and then we want to see what kind of cool stuff we can mill, you know. O yeah, so we'll have some of that'have zebras too. Keith Clens: Mo right? Maurice Whitlock: Yeah, zebras there. I don't travel without that, so we'll have plenty. Elvis: Wait, the what? Maurice Whitlock: it's our digitalbo, and jaw movement tracking. Elvis: Oh, that's. We talked about that years ago. Maurice Whitlock: I still carry that around, so. Well, they're ready to go for the team, so lot lots of things in that ballroom. a lot of fun, a lot of hard work. But we'll have stuff for our customers. Elvis: Yeah, I think your ballroom is right across the hall from registration, right? Maurice Whitlock: Oh, yeah, yeah. We're right in between, actually, we're right in between Zon and Iaclare. Barbara: Sweet. Elvis: We'll be right next door. Nick Pizo: Right. Maurice Whitlock: So you can sneak over. We'll show you all the goodies. We'll show you all the cool stuff. So. Nick Pizo: Awesome. Elvis: yeah, I kind of want to check out that matron. That sounds interest. Maurice Whitlock: Definite. Keith Clens: We'll have the champagne for you too. Barbara: That's for me. Elvis: Barb. No, no Barb. Keith Clens: Fantastic. Elvis: Go ahead, Mo. Maurice Whitlock: Oh, no, I was just trying to. I couldn't remember which night was the. Our cocktail party. I think it was Friday. I can't remember. Elvis: Oh, you guys are doing a party on Friday, right? Maurice Whitlock: In the ballroom. I can't remember if it's Thursday or Friday, but it's right there in the ballroom. Elvis: Let's just make it both nights, shall we? Maurice Whitlock: That sounds like. Barbara: Sounds good to me. Elvis: Well, excellent, everybody. Thank you so much. It sounds like you're really kicking. I've always said this on the podcast, and half of the stuff in our industry, it's not about the product, it's not about the equipment, but it's about the experience and the customer service behind it. And it sounds like you're killing it. Barbara: Congratulations. Keith Clens: Yeah, I totally agree. What you just said is everything. Because why do people continue to buy from companies, their favorite companies? It's because of the experience. Right. Whether you're consumer, you retail, whatever, you don't really care what it costs. You want the experience. So that's what we're striving to do each and every day here at AG North America. and we've made a lot of headway. We're on the journey. still a lot more to do. And, we want to continue to provide an amazing experience for our customers because when we know we'll continue to have them for a lifetime. Barbara: True. Yepk you. Elvis: We're excited to see what comes next. Keith, Nick, Mo, thank you so much for joining us today Nick Pizo: Yeah. Barbara: Good luck, you guys. Elvis: Awesome. Maurice Whitlock: Thank you. Keith Clens: Thank you. Elvis: Keith, Nick, Mo, thank you so much. And, we'll see you in Chicago than. Barbara: Thank you. Elvis: All right, have a good one. Maurice Whitlock: You too. Elvis: Bye. Maurice Whitlock: Bye. Bye. A huge thanks to Keith, Nick, and Mo for coming on our podcast Barbara: A huge thanks to Keith, Nick, and Mo for coming on our podcast and talking about the important part of running a business, and that's the customer. And that is just so important nowadays, or in this case, the lab and the technician. There are a lot of options, everybody in our industry and many different mills to get, but maybe AG is the one to check out. I mean, who wouldn't want to toast champagne when you get the next MIL install. Honestly, Elvis, you know I'm that girl. I would like to toast champagne. Elvis: I think we should start doing champagne for every unit we put out of the lab. Barbara: Really good ide. Elvis: How's that? We'd all be alcoholics. Barbara: So everybody head over to Armandrbach.com to see all the mills and all of the other stuff they have for your lab. It's not just mills. It's every. Elvis: It's a lot. Barbara: And of course, if you want to see them in person, you've got a week or so. Head to their ballroom during lab day Chicago. They're right next door to, us and Ivoclar. So thanks again, you guys. Great interview. Elvis: All right, everybody, next week we're all packing, and we're heading out to Chicago, so we'll hopefully see you there. But until then, we'll talk to you next week. Barbara: Enjoy your toilet, Eld. Bye. Doesn't a bidet clean your booty? Elvis: Yeah, like, shoots water, and then this thing actually blows hot air. 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.