In this episode of Kind of Different, Dr. Matt Allen engages in a deep conversation with Matt McGaw, founder of DSO Compass, about the intersection of innovation and dental care. They explore Matt's journey in healthcare, the role of AI in dental practices, and the importance of creating human connections in patient care. Matt shares personal reflections on his mother's legacy and how it motivates him in his career. The discussion emphasizes the need for change management in adopting new technologies and the potential for AI to enhance patient experiences while maintaining the human touch in healthcare.

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Matt Allen (00:00)

What's up everyone. Welcome back to another episode of Kind of Different, a podcast where we talk about innovation and dental care. We meet some absolutely amazing people and we talk about how together we can apply that innovation lens to make healthcare more human. I'm Dr. Matt Allen, the CEO and co-founder of Different Kind and your host for Kind of Different. And I'm just super pumped to be back, honestly. I, know, having taken a six month break from recording podcasts after having done, you know, more than 50 episodes over the course of several years, I was like,

I need a little break. And so I feel rejuvenated. All these conversations that I'm having right now, these amazing people are really fun for me. And today is absolutely no exception. I am super excited to have this conversation with Matt McGaugh, founder of DSO Compass. You know him as somebody in the DSO space who is absolutely plugged into innovation in a really serious way. I've been around dental tech for a long time and certainly understands what the landscape looks like.

And so Matt, thank you so much for taking the time to join us. And before I let you introduce yourself, we've had like a couple others, but you also have a new podcast. We've to make sure we plug that as well, right? You also have a new podcast that's just come out. So I want you to make sure you tell us about that, where people can find it and subscribe and do all those things. But please tell us a little bit more about yourself and then we'll dive into

Matthew McGaw (01:33)
Well, I have 49 more episodes to catch up to you Being the fact that I have one episode on the books with Clayton Russell a lot of people watching this will probably know him He's a VP over at DCA now, but yeah, the DSO compass off script It's it's episode 2 will be coming out this this two weeks from now. So yeah, thanks man, but it's fun I I definitely know the pain, you know before this we were talking about trying to give you as little editing as possible That would be my goal here, but yeah, I appreciate the intro and I'm excited to be here and chat with you brother.

Matt Allen (02:09)
Yeah, for sure. Well, yeah, tell us a little bit more, you know, just kind of about your background and kind of like the origin of DSO Compass and what you're trying to help people do.

Matthew McGaw (02:18)
Sure. Yeah, I started in healthcare in 2004 as a drug rep. You you've seen all these pharmaceutical sales rep movies that are out there. I was pretty much that guy that was going in there, know, schmoozing the front desk staff, bringing lunch and cookies and bagels. And I pivoted in 2008 into dental. So I've been around the dental landscape for a while now. They add up quick. I remember in 2008, 2009 being at conferences and seeing people that were like me.

⁓ my amount of years into it and thinking to myself, man, they've been around a long time and I'm pretty much getting there. So yeah, I started at DenSupply, which a lot of people, I think in the dental vendor space started, there's just a ton of experience that you get from that organization. They make you wear a lot of hats and I was the first sales rep hired back then for a new division. I think they were only doing like 15 million at that division. So was almost like a startup. Which is kind of weird to say in the dental in the dense fly landscape. I was out there selling these like Hilliard thermo pliers in a seven state territory. I don't know if you've heard of those things. So like you have Invisalign, right? And if Invisalign fails, or maybe a couple years down the road, you have some minor teeth movement that needs to happen. You could use these pliers and heat them up and then have an aligner and then like put these little buttons on it and then put the trays in the mouth and it moves, move the teeth. And that's what I was selling, like literally like door to door. ⁓ I would fly into like Birmingham, Alabama for a week and Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, I would just go walk down the street and just cold call dental practices. ⁓ I don't know if the tactics were all that wonderful. I would ask him if they did Invisalign and they would a lot of times say yes. And I'd be like, okay, great. Can I talk to whoever handles that? And that would get me in the door. wasn't selling in Invisalign, but yeah, I started there and then I moved into Carestream Dental, which that really started like the technology love. Interestingly enough, like that was a startup division too in the scanners. So we were doing CAD CAM. That was in the early days of being able to scan in mill. You know, I was involved in, know, CBCTs, the overlays, a lot of different software technologies as well as hardware.
⁓ I really loved it and I this is really fun. ⁓ Then I moved over to Align Technology, was there on a pilot program, separate division than the regular Align stuff. So everything I did in my career was always startup related, everything. Even going back to the pharmaceutical sales too, that was a new product. It was a contracted brand new product launch in the space. So it took me a while to figure out that I liked that. I like to be in the stuff. I'm not gonna cuss here, you know, I like to be in it, right? like to, you know, you're a founder. You have to have a certain mentality to wanna get into this mess. ⁓ Yeah. So that's what started my journey working with founders, earlier stage companies to try and help them go to market. It's like, okay, I used all of these things that I learned with the bigger corporations to help founders understand like how to message, how to talk to people within our world. ⁓ Yeah. And along with lately over the past really eight months, trying to help DSOs understand technology better, help with consolidation that's happening in the market and understand like, okay, do these companies really have good products? Like, let's talk to that. Let's help him have him help me evaluate this tech and then all the way to the point of like integration. So it's been a combination of that. And then on top of it, you know, I started the podcast, which in his early stages, and then I also have a newsletter that I've gotten a lot of great feedback. You know, we were just coming from Dykema, right? ⁓I didn't love, I wanted a little more criticism to be honest. Like everybody is, was really nice. They're like, I love it. I love it. love it. I'm like, well, tell me really how you feel. ⁓ but yeah, really great response from the LinkedIn newsletter and the email newsletter. love everybody subscribed to solicit. I I'm trying to take real world examples, things that I'm seeing at a DSO level specifically around technology. Although I did have one, ⁓ last week that was about a real estate conference I went to.⁓ So I'm trying to take the learnings and have them, you know, be really be applied, like real stories, like not sponsored, not pay to play. Nobody's paying me to write what I write. I'm just seeing it how it is. And that's some feedback I got at Dykema too. So I'm glad that it's come across that way. So that's the journey.

Matt Allen (07:08)

Love it, man. Well, as a subscriber to your newsletter, I certainly appreciate it. And, you know, I would encourage everyone to go subscribe because, your perspective is really interesting. And I think it feels very, you know, not not bought and paid for by somebody. Right. It feels like, hey, this is a real honest voice, you know, in the industry and we need those voices. So thanks for doing it. ⁓

Okay, let's dive into innovation because that's obviously like where you've spent, you know, the majority of your career, right, is in this kind of like, okay, how do we implement technology and, you know, bring new technology to market and all those different things. We, you mentioned Dycoma, we just came back to the middle of August on exactly this will come out in September. you know, in a month or so, but not not that far away from ⁓ when when we're recording here. But you know, we we sat down and had a conversation like, please don't let's not have a conversation about AI. I've talked about it too much. But we've got to talk about AI in some way, right? Cause I think one of the questions that I had for you, even just coming back from DECMA, I think this has just kind of been percolating through over the last few days in my mind and, you know, kind of people I've been chatting with in streams and things like that. But, ⁓ you know, I, what's your perspective on the idea that, or where I've made a better way of phrasing it is where do you think the industry is? Where do think the profession is in terms of being ready to implement AI as a, like on top of like solid operational foundations, because I saw this product the other day and I won't name any names, but it's like an AI product built on top of some garbage data. And you're like, well, I mean, it's garbage data coming in, it's garbage data coming out. Like, yeah, like AI sits on top of it, but that's not a helpful thing. You know what I'm saying? And so,

In the same way, right? If you're putting AI on top of some like mess of operations and whatever and expecting it to like perform miracles, I think you're going to be sad to find out that it's not going to work. so where do you think the industry is in terms of that like readiness, I guess, for the power that AI can bring to these practices? And obviously that's going to be different for every DSO and whatever, but just your general, I would say.

Matthew McGaw (09:23)
Yeah, I'm still unpacking some of that from from last week. We could go in so many different directions here and I think it's it's worth mentioning too. I said that because that our meeting was on Friday.

Matt Allen (09:34)
Yeah, totally. After you had done it for three days, right?

Matthew McGaw (09:37)
Yeah, I've been there since Tuesday. So I knew we were friendly so I could break it. But ultimately, how long did it take us to talk about it? Probably two minutes. That's where I, even if you didn't bring it up, that that's exactly where I would have gone as far as where the innovation should be focused on right now. ⁓ and where in a lot of cases it is, but I think we're, we're really in the beginning stages of this. There's a, there's a great deal of education and a great deal of desire to learn and feel comfortable with what's out there. That was shown by the Tuesday AI workshop at Dikeme. It was like standing room only. I don't know. Were you there?

Matt Allen (10:27)
No, I was at a one on Wednesday though, that Overjet put on that was certainly like very full and you know, like lots of talk about AI obviously too.

Matthew McGaw (10:38)
And the fact that I'm asking you if you were even in there means that there was a lot of people in there and then I might've missed you, right? So there, and the individuals that were in there were at all different levels of a DSO. It wasn't vendor packed. Like it was the who's who of C suites and VPs and operations folks in there. So there's this great deal of interest right now, right? But besides that, I'm not seeing a lot of pilots happening, maybe as many as I think could be happening because there's a bit of a reluctancy from the executives that are in the folks that are making decisions in pushing this down the chain. And in a lot of cases, a lot of decisions in tech now, there's folks like, know just first one that pops in my brain is Ray Caruso. I know Ray Caruso, know, Rez and Imagine. You some of these CEOs really give their teams the authority to make decisions on technology. And what I've seen a lot of is when that happens, the conversation with the AI vendor, gets stalled. ⁓ Pilots don't happen because of the level of fear inside the practice level, the AMs, the RMs, those individuals are still afraid. ⁓ It's surprising to me, I think probably YouTube, because we live in it every day, like I use multiple platforms and it drives my business. A lot of us just utilize the technology. But when I did spend time locally here in Salt Lake area with a DSO at a practice level, I asked the question like out of 14 people here, I'm like, who uses AI on daily basis? And two people raised their hand. That was surprising to me. Like in my circle, it's like nine out of 10, right? So the language between the operators at the DSO and the practice level, whether it's the doctor, hygienist, assistants, whoever it may be that's going to utilize these platforms, there's a gap there. And there's probably a lot of reasons for it. But I think one of the reasons is fear. Like I thought it was just because I was seeing stuff on the news. Hey, I saw this crazy commercial. I don't know if you saw this commercial. This guy's literally on the phone with his mom. They took my job. And he jumps off the roof. I'm like, this is a commercial. Is this real life? I'm like, that is a terrible thing to think about that people may be afraid. And in reality, at least how I see it, this technology is going to allow us to have better lives, whether it's a person that is in the practice doing something by taking administrative tasks off their plate, or just making the patient experience better ⁓ from check-in to your images and x-rays to check out to paying, whether it's patient financing, whatever it may be.

⁓ so I don't know if it's kind of a long, long winded answer to your question that we could certainly talk more about, but I'll just say this about finished. I thought the gap was, was here. I really feel like the technology is going to adapt more than typical. If you think back years ago, like mills and 3d printers, took forever for these technologies to come into play. Like now they're commonplace scanners. Like everybody's using Algenet, right? That adoption was super slow. That was over years.


I do see that the AI adoption to be a lot quicker. This is just my personal opinion from seeing things and seeing where the technology goes and how it changes each day. mean, GPT-5 dropped when we were at Dykemon. Nobody even said anything about it, which is weird anyway. But ⁓ yeah, I think we were here, but I definitely think it's further away and that's going to vary based upon the leadership that are within the DSO.

Matt Allen (14:13)
I think that's a really good perspective. you know, one of the things that I think is interesting that you kind of are talking about, just even in like your career arc, right? Is like the, when you're an early, when you're like involved in early stage companies or, you know, even the, know, innovative arms of, you know, bigger companies, right? ⁓ it, it, it's not necessarily like a technology problem. You're like the technology works. It does what it's supposed to do, whatever, right? But it's a change management. It's an organizational alignment. It's, it's all of those things that are not the actual technology itself, it's how do we get people on the same page? And so you're coming back to this, or it was a fear issue, right? Maybe, or, I certainly see some of it too, where I feel like, sometimes it's, from my perspective, it's like maybe just a, not even like a lack of understanding, but it's like, okay, this lever is actually gonna be more powerful if you pull this over here versus this over here. And so, you know, people kind of just being like, all right, how is this really going to drive like the next thing for me versus just being like a nice to have or something that like people don't use, right? ⁓ So I could see that from executive level, executive level too. But all that to say, I mean, whatever it is, right, if those are human problems, not like a can the technology like do the thing for you, you know, and so that's a really interesting, I think, angle for you, because you've had all that experience of like, cool, how do we help bring the change about through the people? So anyways.

Matthew McGaw (15:28)

Yeah, I had a conversation earlier today with somebody. I'm not going to say his name because I don't want him to give away his secrets. But so my process, I'll just tell you right now, is to really focus on when you're evaluating technology, whether it's me evaluating somebody that I'm going to work with or evaluating for a DSO is first of all, like look at the people behind it and then the problem they're solving for the business, then the product. I think the last P for me through my trip to San Francisco is a little bit of proximity. Like where, where are the engineers, where are they located? It doesn't always matter, but I saw it in San Francisco. Like I was in startups. I was meeting the engineers. was seeing the capabilities that exists. Like I was seeing the iteration that they were making in the code and how that was affecting the, the, the actual dashboard. Like it was a great experience for me to see. ⁓ but ultimately, he said to me today, even before people, and it maybe has a little bit to do with people, it's the ability to train and onboard. If a startup or if a company can't even convince him that this is gonna happen, then he's not even getting to the other parts of the evaluation process. Like he might take your meeting, might take your call, email you back, but you're not gonna get a pilot or adoption or conversion, until you can comfortably say these three or four people that are involved in the pilot are going to be okay with it and their jobs. They're not going to be upset because you're implementing it. There's because there's so many people involved in and if you can't train like I'm not like you said, like if the product works, it has nothing to do with it, at least in our world.

Matt Allen (17:42)
Totally, yeah.

Yeah, it's like table stakes, right? So, interesting. Okay, cool. Well, like, I mean, we could obviously sit here and have a two hour conversation about where the industry is here and some of these things. yeah, like one of the things that I really appreciate about you is that you are just like this really human, just like down to earth, easy to talk to guy. don't think a lot of people appreciate that about you. So we always love to learn more about you, kind of hear a little bit more about who you are, what motivates you, whatever. One of my favorite things to hear from people is just something that you're super proud of. ⁓ And so if you'd be willing to share something with us that you're like, man, it doesn't have to be with your job, whatever it is, right? Just something in your life that you're like, this is something that I feel a lot of pride about that's happened that I've been a part of. So tell us.

Matthew McGaw (18:32)

Man, I don't want to get too deep, but I'm going to. For those that know me well, know that back in 2018, I unfortunately, we all do as we get older, we lose our hair and our parents sometimes pass, right? And I lost my mom in 2018 and she was actually the person, know, don't know if you're Rondi, Rondi had all of her family at Dykema last week. And that brought back a memory of my mother when I was 15 years old, taking me to, I think it was like the ADA in New Jersey, the same time as Miss America Badger was going on. And that was my first access into dental. Like she had, she worked for Rembrandt at the time. me and my friends, Steve, my childhood friend were passing around toothpaste to like, all these people walking into the conference trying to get people to come to the booth. And just thinking back on that and then her career and how I didn't follow my father's footsteps. That's for sure. He's an engineer. ⁓ Although I'm my mannerisms and the way I look and an actor a lot like him, I followed my mother's footsteps from sales, business development, management, you know, at her memorial service, there was like a wedding, it like 215 people. It was insanity. That's how much of a connector she was in the space. when I look back to where I am today, the thing I'm most proud of is, I hate to throw this word around because we're such a small minute detail on this massive world we're in, but the legacy that I'm bringing on for her and how she was respected in the space, how loved she is still is to this day. And that to me, when I think about the things that I'm doing, the one podcast and the writing, the DSO compass, the newsletters, the people coming up to me, losing my voice because I talk so much, trying to ⁓ be the legacy that she would have been proud of is absolutely the most thing, the best thing, the thing I'm most proud of at this point in my life. Thinking like what our conversation would be like right now. Like I know she'd be like, well, I knew it. You're my son, but yeah. I think I was too interested in meeting Miss America, that I was like learning about the dental landscape, but yeah.

Matt Allen (21:03)
Hahaha

Hey, you can have multiple goals, right? At one meeting, so. Yes, yes, either or. man, I appreciate you going deep. it's certainly like we all like that. think that's one of the things that, you know, just in general ⁓ that we want to foster, you know, certainly on this podcast is like, hey, there's like authenticity, humanity, right? Like the subtext of this podcast is how to make dental care more human. you know, we really want to meet people, right? And so. I'm sure that there, didn't know that about you, right? I'm sure that there are people out there who have known you for a long time who probably didn't know that about you. And so they'll listen to this and they'll be like, wow, that's awesome. Thanks for, know, so I feel a lot of, ⁓ yeah, just gratitude for you, for you feeling, you know, comfortable to share those things with us. So thanks man. Yeah. ⁓ so speaking of humanity, right? ⁓ so let's, let's dive back in. I love this conversation because literally like we're already at what, like 22 minutes here. And so we'll have, you know, probably one more question and then we'll be like, all right, cool. You know, which try to keep it to like something people can listen to. We're not trying to, you know, create 90 minute episodes here. ⁓ but, ⁓ like I'm sad because I'm like, man, all I want to do is keep talking about this stuff with you. It's just super fun. ⁓ but kind of going back to the humanity piece, right? ⁓ so you're obviously operating in this space of, you know, helping DSOs implement this technology alongside of humanity. I think one of the themes that we did here at Dykama, you know, was about, you know, the importance of team. And certainly Stephanie Crase-Moritz talked about. you know, like creating that kind of Disney moment, right, for people and how important customer experience is and AI will never replace that, right? So in your, from your perspective, ⁓ what are those moments where you feel like currently, like the technology is there to help augment or create the moment for like, hey, that human connection? What do you see out there? What do you feel like? What do you feel like is the technology that is enabling more humanity within dental care.

Matthew McGaw (23:09)
Yeah, my brain goes a couple places with that. ⁓ I think this is one situation, I'll start with this, where it's addition by subtraction a little bit. This might be controversial, but I'm kind of on board with more of a lean dental practice. And I don't want people to lose jobs, that is not what I want. I want people to keep jobs and I want people to have an impact, but I also want that impact to be valuable for those people. And I think some of this technology as we look to the future of healthcare in general, dentistry, like the insurance claims, eligibility checks, the amount of time that the front desk teams have to be on the phone with these people confirming things that exist. Being able to schedule appointments and making phone calls to patients, text messages to patients. So many of those things can be automated through technology and will be and are starting to be automated through technology. And what does that do? That allows the dental practices, the DSOs to be able to hire people that in my mind are are more experienced coordinators versus like front desk staff or office managers. So walking into a dental practice and not having to worry about checking in and not having to worry about filling out any forms, intakes that can all be done digitally prior to being into the practice. And then being able to walk in and not have like the assistant or whoever on the assistant, but you know, it's like the office staff on the phone having like, have, Oh, Hey, Matt. Great to see you and they know about you because they used AI because it told you like what's going on in your life and what issues you're in for. Is just a cleaning? They're able to look at you in the eyes and have a better experience. And then taking it back to the clinical setting, using technology to support the doctor, create better outcomes for these patients. And ultimately, yes, does it take tasks away? Administrative burden, 100%. But it can also augment that with a better patient experience and better care. So that's how I see it. And I think the individuals that are against it, that are working in the dental practices, I think you either adopt or you figure out something else to do. And that's just the nature of what happens in the world. Look, there's plenty of examples with that. So hopefully nobody takes too much offense to that. I'm not sitting here saying, take everybody's jobs, but ultimately make these people open up time for them so that there can be this level of connection and engagement with patients and better clinical care. That's the world I believe in and that's what I preach as far as technology is concerned. Like the fear, fear, fear thing, or I'm not gonna lean on it. Like that's not the way that I believe you should go about it.

Matt Allen (26:07)

100%.

Yeah, there's always going to be that humanity piece, right? And there's we always need like, I just I'm strongly of the belief that like, we're not gonna have, you know, robot dentists overlords, right? That it's like, no, like, even if that were possible, and maybe that like, there is some kind of, you know, it's like, we're seeing it in, you know, surgery, and, know, those kinds of things where people are doing remote surgeries, there's still a person operating that thing, right? And so you're like, well, there's still always going to be this human element to healthcare. ⁓ Yeah, I certainly appreciate that. from the reimagination of what those roles can be then, right? If you are currently a front desk person, your job is probably call, make sure insurances are, whatever it is, Spend a lot of time on the phone, a lot of manual work, right? And what if your job was an experience guide and your job is to guide the patient through their experience and be there for them and support. And hey, if you need anything, we're here for you, please let us know. Whatever it is, right? You're like, cool, that's a. similar type of role that you know in terms of what you what you know you you can do for the patient maybe ⁓ but you know you're there with them instead of just like sitting on the phone with an insurance company the whole time so

Matthew McGaw (27:31)
Yeah, the Ritz-Carlton service experience within a dental practice would be wonderful to think about. If think about it, if you've gone to a spa and had a massage, right? They're so attentive to you, right? They take you on a tour of the spa. This is where the sauna is, this and that. It's a whole experience. And if we could create that and create also better patient outcomes clinically, what a great marriage. And I think it's possible and I look forward to seeing technology advance to where we can get there.

Matt Allen (28:03)
Totally. Well, I have a, I have a buddy here in my little town who's a doc and you know, he's a physician and you know, he talks about just all the time of like, I bring my computer instead of sitting there with my computer and typing notes all the time, right? I just bring my computer and I set it down. It like records my visit, gives the notes for the patient so they know what to do going home. They feel better about it. Right. But I just look at, I look at them in the eyes the whole time. Right. And, and that, that's a huge outcome, right. Of like my doctor sat there and looked at me in the eyes for a 15 minute visit instead of like typed on their computer.

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Awesome, man. Well, again, we could have a very, long conversation here. Certainly appreciate you taking the time to come on and kind of share with us what you're working on, what you're excited about, and some of the things that, yeah, like going on in your life. So thanks for sharing. If people want to find out more about you, if they want to subscribe to the newsletter, if they want to, you know, find your pod, like where should they go? What should they do? Tell us where to go.

Matthew McGaw (28:56)
Sure, dsocompass.com, pretty easy, is where you can get all that info. So anybody looking to learn, connect, get in touch. I love to connect with new people I've never met before. Yeah, all things tech or whatever you need to talk about, I'm here for it.

Matt Allen (29:12)
Sounds good, man. ⁓ yeah. maybe at some point, and you need to put together some sort of meeting in the winter where we can invite any dental people who are interested in like skiing and snowboarding. As a fellow mountain resident here, ⁓ I think that's in the future for us as well. know, Dykema always happens in summer. Can't really make that happen, but we need to get people.

Matthew McGaw (29:33)
I was gonna pull up my last Airbnb search. Is it Salida? Yeah, that's where I was looking.

Matt Allen (29:39)
Come hang out, man. We go cat skiing up at Monarch every year. And last couple of times I've been, it's just so deep and so fun and so soft.

Matthew McGaw (29:53)
It's a seven hour drive, so it's not too bad. It's doable, but let's make it happen.

Matt Allen (29:56)
Let's make it happen, man. We'll invite some other folks and make it a dental party. So Matt, thanks so much for taking the time. We really appreciate you and excited to see the impact that DSO Compass is going to continue to have in the industry.

Matthew McGaw (30:02)
Thanks, brother.

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