Anne: Hi everybody. It's Anne Duffy and welcome to Dental Entrepreneur, the Future of Dentistry's podcast. I'm so happy that you're with me today, but I'm extremely over the moon that I've got to have my special guests here today, and I'm gonna tell you a little bit about him before we get started. Joshua Scott is a seasoned marketing speaker and fractional CMO with over 23 years of experience in the dental profession.
He is the owner and CEO of Studio 8E8 dentistry's story-driven marketing agency, recently named as the top healthcare marketing agency in the United States by Healthcare Business Review. Their mission is to create more authentic marketing by telling better stories. Josh currently resides in New Albany, Ohio, where he collects Air Jordans really Josh?
Over a hundred pairs. Uh, maybe, yeah. Okay. And recently completed his level three sommelier certification typically ends this day. At CrossFit, I'm not surprised about that. He's been married to his high school best friend, and I'll say sweetheart, Joanna for 28 years and has two amazing kids.
Caden, age 19. He's at University of Cincinnati. Yep. And Aaliyah age 15. She is quite a beautiful young lady. Josh, welcome to the podcast. I'm so glad you're here.
Josh: Oh, thanks Anne. this is actually my last week before summer break, and I saw this on the calendar coming up at the end of the week and I was like, oh, good, because sometimes, you know that last week before you take an extended break, it's just like craziness trying to get everything in.
So it feels a little like that, but I was like, oh, talking to you today is,a fun part of it. So thank you.
Anne: Oh my gosh. Well, you guys have been so good to me, if you see any of my videos, from Studio 8E8, the way they tell a story, I just love you guys. I love your team. I'll never forget when I went up there, about two years ago and I'm actually going up again, in July, but I just remember it being one of the most special days of my life, Josh.
It just was like, wow, you guys made me feel so great. Pretty, if you will. Tom was with me and we just had the best day special. Everybody just brought out the best in me and sometimes if you're listening, you don't know you have it. Yeah. And, uh, I love how your team works together to do that. So thank you for your generosity and, and just making do really.
Arrive, first time. Yeah. I
Josh: mean, our pleasure. We're excited to have you come out again. I mean, honestly, your session, we still, there's,one photo. That our team goes back to and it gets used in some promotional stuff, it's one of our teams still one of our,our favorites.
Anne: And you'll know exactly which one. But you were in that gold dress we had the yellow background, the spotlights kind of on both sides. It's just a very glamor type shot. It just turned out amazing. Sogosh. Well, when you come to the house, you'll see it. It's framed in some of our fireplace.
Good. You know, I like that one too. But you, yeah. Yeah.I couldn't pick I mean, it was like every time somebody looks at my business card, like, oh my gosh, I know Studio 8E8, you look good. It was really good. But, you do this for so many, your work has been with, top docs and docs that wanna be top docs.
Yeah. and who doesn't, butyour strategy brand first strategy. why is that so effective and for long-term growth and relying solelythen relying solely on digital ads or SEO.
Josh: Yeah, and this is really why I got into this. I started Studio eight, 12 years ago, and when I looked around, you know, digital marketing was definitely a thing, you know, 12 years ago it was probably just, getting in its infancy.
so marketing was understood to be let's put something out there and get new patients to come in. So whether it'sdigital ads or at the time, direct mail was still a big play, you know, and a lot of the offers and all that and, and hacking. SEO this was 12 years ago, you know? Templated websites, hacking, SEO, digital ads, $29, new patient exam, free whiting, all the stuff to get patients in.
And when I was looking at it, I was just like, dentistry has such a great story though. Like it's innovative, it's inspiring. This is humans serving humans, and what more beautiful like profession is there. And when I looked at the marketing though, that story was not being told. And so for me it was just like well, well, why not?
Like, wouldn't that actually connect better with patients? And if you connected first, then the marketing would be so much more effective. And so now that whole kind of philosophy has evolved to where really we call it story driven creative. Which is the connection piece. Like just making sure let's connect with people.
Then the performance marketing, which is then the engagement, likebeautiful website doesn't do any good just sitting there. So we want to get engagement with it. And if you can put those two things together, you actually end up with predictable growth for a practice. And when I look back over the last 12 years, I'm like the practices that have done it right, that have grown a ton, you know, and maybe they've exited, maybe they're at multiple locations, maybe they're just a giant lifestyle type practice.
They've put this together, they've leveraged brand to connect, then they've got engagement with their marketing. And honestly, it's just allowed them to grow very predictably over the last decade.
Anne: Yeah. I mean, that's what everybody does though, honestly. You get a referral. You look at the website What I love about what you do at Studio 8E8 is you bring the authentic story out.
it really is mapped on to the particular culture that they're trying to build. And the vision that they have. I, I don't dunnohow you guys bring that out. you send a lot, before somebody gets there for them to think about it. So what's your process?
Josh: Yeah, I mean, think it's really helping our clients discover their story and sometimes they push back, especially if I'm at a, um.Maybe given a presentation. I'm showing some examples. I'll always have this, but afterwards, somebody will come up to me and they'll, Josh, you know, I still know that I have a story, like I saw Ashley's or I saw Brandon's, and that's amazing.
But our process is,not just centered on them as the doctor. It's really the story of the practice. The story of like, why did you launch this in the city? What's the standard of care you're trying to create? and that's really the key piece is let's just explore that a little bit, discover that and build it out.
you think about, uh, dental practice right now, there's really two problems with marketing. One is. Most dental practices want ideal patients. They don't just want any patients coming in, or let's blast the community and just get a bunch of people taking advantage of offers.
They really want to grow practices with ideal patients. So if you think about that, so there's two problems that number one. Trying this one size fits all approach marketing or templated marketing or done for you marketing. Like, so we're gonna do generic marketing, but we're expecting to get specific, ideal new patients from it.
Hmm. Yeah. Like those two things do not match. The other part of it is our digital landscape marketing landscape is so complex andLike if you think digital marketing is complex, now wait till the next two to five years when AI just comes in and disrupts all of it. So again, this one size fits all approach, templated approach in a changing complex landscape. So it just made sense of like, it's not going to work well. And what it does is it leaves dentists mostly feeling very frustrated, very overwhelmed.
They're not seeing their ideal patients. And so many times they're like, Josh, I shouldn't have to be a marketing expert just to grow my practice. No. And I'm like, I agree. And so I understand that that's where the creative part comes in, is let's create the story build connection. And I really think that that's the key to moving the whole thing forward.
Anne: agree with you, but you're not only doing practices, you're doing people's businesses now. I mean, I've seen you do a lot of businesses. And again, I remember the first time at the first retreat, the first time I met Joanna, she had a cup holder.your story matters.
I think it was your story or your story's worth it. I can't remember. It should have it in front of me. And I remember thinking, oh my God, this is so important. Everybody's got a story.
Josh: Yeah.
Anne: it is true. People, a lot of times they're so head down into the, grind if you will, or the whatever you wanna say of the practice.
They don't realize that have to dig a little deeper to get that special story that's gonna attract that. Special client that's just for you.
Josh: Yeah. A lot of times you don't always know like what that story is. and that's where some, working with an agency like us, the psychology that comes into it, and, what we know the market's looking for and what attracts people to it.
Here's the other part of it too, is I think we talk about this in light of, if you do story-driven marketing, it'll increase your marketing. If you do better marketing, it'll increase your new patients. I also run into people all the time where they're just like, Hey, my marketing's fine.
it's not great, but it's not hurting me. I'm,I'm not really trying to grow that fast. But what I always challenge people is, your marketing being fine. Okay, your website's fine. Yeah, great. But I would say if you could build a story, story-driven,web experience, story-driven marketing. Is it safe to say an extra 10 new patients a month connect with that and come in?
it's a big deal. You know, if,every new patient on a yearly average kinda return on investment is we see a new patient produce about $1,500 of treatment in the first 12 to 18 months, By your marketing just being fine, but not necessarily connecting and potentially losing 10 new patients a month, that's $15,000, and over the course of the year, that's $180,000.
And that's not even lifetime value of what they would produce. And that's not even if they would refer a couple friends over that lifetime value.
Anne: Right? Because good people find good people, good dental patients. Find good dental patients, right?
Josh: A hundred percent. And so some of this is like, is your marketing fine?
'cause I'm like, We always look at the opportunity costs of, okay, we have our website's basic, but it's fine. We're not sure. We're trying to grow fast. I'm like, yeah, but you're not connecting with patients that are actually trying to find you an ideal dentist. There are ideal patients, which what we want.
And then patients are like, I want the ideal dentist. And you're not showing them that. So that connection's not happening. And, and I believe it's hundreds of thousands of revenue easily every year that's just kind of being left out there. So. Well,
Anne: yeah. And then plus, they're leaving, right?
So quality, not quantity. We don't need. 40 new patients that are just in there to get the free whatever. you want people that are gonna really connect with you, who you are. It's gonna give you so much more. what comes first, the cart or the horse. if you're listening to this, realize how important it's to get that.
Nailed down before you put another penny into your marketing. I've got this question for you. If attention is, a key driver of practice growth. What are some innovative methods a dental practice could use to consistently capture and maintain it? so often they'll get a marketing plan, and like you say, it's fine.
Isn't it funny with our profession because everything has to be perfect, but they'll let the marketing be fine, right?
Josh: Yeah.
Anne: do you keep hold of your clients sometimes and help them through, the next couple of iterations of where they're going and how to use what you deliver?
Josh: Yeah, for sure. I mean, most of our clients, we don't have great stats on this. We've been around for 12 years and we still have clients from 12 years ago. Okay. And right now our biggest stat is our clients on average stay with us somewhere between five to six years. But it,that number keeps going up every year as we continue to retain the thing with the tension that I think is so interesting.
I just shared thisat a, conference last week in Dallas, but as dentists, we get so focused on new patients. And I get it. I mean, it's,what drives the revenue. It's what drives the business growth. But a lot of times we make decisions. if we think about a funnel, we're making decisions about new patients.
And if we're doing that to like, Hey, we need new patients next month, or they're down, we start to do this like knee jerk direct response. Let's throw an offer out there. Hey, if somebody responds, they get $50, whatever, it's fine. But like, how did they become new patients? They had to contact you. So now we're one step up, either through online scheduling, calling the practice and online forum, something like that.
But how did they contact you? Well, they had to have been interested. They probably were on your website. They were looking at social media, they were reading reviews, they were looking at you someplace. Well, how did they get interested? You caught their attention. And so I was, I was sharing this example, like let's say you have 25 new patients a month.
and you want to go to 50, you're like, Josh, I need to double. We've got an associate, I wanna go to 50 new patients. That's not the entire story. And that's where we get shortsighted with it, and it actually doesn't help and it backfires. So it's like, okay, how many calls does it take to get 25 new patients?
And it is like, well, let's just make this easy. 50 calls a month equals 25 New patient. Great. How many people had to have been interested, clicked on your site to have gotten 50 calls and we can get these metrics, you know, as a CEO and business owner, should kind of know this funnel, but like, okay, a thousand people clicking on the site equals 50 phone calls, which gets us 25 new patients.
Well now this is valuable 'cause you go, okay, you want to double, we need a hundred phone calls, which means we need 2000 clicks to the website. How can we get that? That becomes a much bigger question. That's actually easier to, to answer. You can double your digital ad campaign. We can do a social media like uh, boosted posts.
We can go get involved in farmer's markets and community events and hand out business cards and swag drive people. So if you think about that way, you just get the attention at the top, it will funnel down into new patients because you've actually built that funnel. Thinking about less as new patient conversions and more about how do we just get attention as a practice, it'll really drive so much more growth.
Anne: Oh my gosh. and you said something that, that dawned on me with that too. You partner with them, you're not a one and done marketing because you delivered, you're, you get them together, get their brand, get their culture, get all the, video, the pictures, the story.
And yet, then you have to partner with them to be able to really make it work. it's not just like, oh, here you go. Good luck with this. here's your hamburger.Eat it and we'll see it in four years. Because retaining your clients, I would imagine every six years they have to kind of redo their brand because they've grown so much if they've been working with you.
So, I,it's, just not cookie cutter. Everybody has different roadmap.
Josh: They do. And all of our packages include photo or video at some type of interval. So some packages are every two years we come out and refresh it. Some is every, every year, you know, maybe it's photo or video, and then some packages.
It's photo and video every year. And part of it is because those are playing such a major role in marketing anymore.
like, you know, 10 years ago, 12 years ago, you could build a site, put up. Photos on it. That was so new. You could probably go four or five years with it.
Anne: Yeah.
Josh: Today we just can't. And even leveraging video, you know, now our video packages include social media options, reels, tiktoks, and so we can come out and you walk away with 24 video pieces.
For a year. That's two posts a month, of like a reel or a TikTok. And then we're doing that every year. So we've really kind of built that in to be there with you, refreshing, rethinking the story, creating assets around it, and then leveraging that to get attention.
Anne: Then you're such a data geek, you know?
And then they know the data. They know what they need. I mean, see the guy I just think you put it out there, but there's, there is a method to your madness. And as a, dentist, that doesn't come naturally as an office manager. Doesn't come naturally. I mean, there's are so many things that they rely on to get this amazing growth, hey, that's.
Why we have professionals and Yeah. Really makes a difference. well, you guys are so generous and in what you do, everything you do, I mean, just the generosity that you give to people that come up and show up for you. But what role does generosity play in building a successful practice brand?
Josh: Oh gosh, that's a good question. I think, and this is maybe more just observational anecdotal from the last 12 years, but I really think the biggest organizations, the biggest companies, when you look at them, they have the largest networks, usually because they're generous, whether it's an organization or the person at the top of the organization.
For me, it's probably just been a value of mine over the last 12 years isI didn't go into this to extract a certain profit and then walk away from it. I came into it and was like, yeah, I wanna build a business. Absolutely that's profitable 'cause I wanna take care of my team and be there for them.
But at the same time, like, I wanna give back to the profession. I wanna walk away from this. And hopefully dental marketing specifically is a much better conversation because of what we were able to do with it. And so, you know, I know a lot of dentists will do a lot of, Complimentary treatment, you know, and comp work andtake care of, whether it's their team and their family, or even just certain cases every year, veteran's Day, things like that where they give back. We do the absolute, same thing with a certain amount of budget every year and just being able to, you know, show up for people and,it is a lot of times and it's like. It can be like the up and comers in dentistry where it's like, that person's so cool and they're young and they're like they're getting some traction, but maybe they don't have the money for that type of investment. It's just like, Hey, come out, let us do some work for you. It's free.
We get a little attention for it, which is fun, but it allows us to expand that network.
Anne: Oh, I love it. Well, knowing you and Joanna, I mean, you know, you come from such a great background of generosity. Yeah. And it's just who you are. So you've done so much. Honestly, Josh, I remember back in the day, I've been in dentistry so long that you couldn't even do anything in dentistry except have your name in the yellow pages.
Yeah. And look where we've come now. And it's so beautiful to be able to have this profession and have it be bigger than just. What we're doing in the operatory. It is really a profession that can really fulfill people's lives. And then you are giving them the opportunity to look back on their career and think it was, Hey, that was a good run.
Yeah. That was, you know, they did everything they could to be successful and that's very comforting to know that all they had to do was share who they are and just do a good job. I'm so proud of you guys for what you've done and what you do for your team. You've got a lot of young people.
Josh: they have great minds and it seems like you attract. Team members that really want to do well they wanna be successful, they wanna learn and they wanna grow.
Anne: And who better to grow with than Studio 8E8 and your executive.
Josh: Yeah. That's funny. It's actually such a good way to say that. 'cause we just hired our 49th team member about two weeks ago and sometimes you look around and, you know, sometimes I'm, you probably have had one of these moments where.
You know, If you're not careful in the middle of the night as an entrepreneur business owner, you wake up at like 3:00 AM and you're like, who's paying for all these people?
Anne: Oh, yeah, yeah. You
Josh: know, it kind of hits you like the heaviness of,
Anne: you know, our, our payroll's in the millions at this point. It's just like, wow.
Josh: Like if I think about that too much, it'll kind of trip me out, freak me out. So I'm just like, well, uh, nope. We built great systems. We have great clients. Like we're all, sometimes it feels like a 49. Children,
Anne: But also,
hey, let's not forget, I get on my knees at that momentand then Tom, and I'll usually hold hands in the middle of the night and say, and, and a little prayer.
So you know what? There's that too. and we just keep it going. Right. We're just gonna keep it going. We're gonna continue to make dentistry great. and with your expertise. Tell those stories that are worth it, which is everyone has one. So Josh, how do we get in touch with you? If anyone's listening and they wanna up their game a bit with Studio 8E8, how do we get in touch?
Josh: Two places. Um, best one, if you go to our website, it's, S8E8.com. So the letter s the number eight, letter E, number eight.com. I'm also on Instagram at Joshua Scott, real easy. I mean, I'm still in my account, my profile. So, you know, if you heard this podcast and wanna just leave me a message, I'll, I'll definitely send you an answer back and just, even if it's just to say hi, but much less, I, I tell people.
You know, if you have questions, you needed advice. Myself and my team we're very consultative in our approach. So even just to set up a call and kind of talk through things most of the time it's like, if I were you, here's what I would do. Type of a, an approach. we're just not salesy and so I think you'll feel just real safe. Even exploring questions you have with us.
Anne: And that's generosity. Josh. You are a generous man. You are just amazing. And you know, like, good luck with the CrossFit at the end of the day. that's crazy by the way. I love it.
and just such a joy to know you and Joanna and the team at Studio 8E8. You take care. Good luck on your family vacation, and I will see you at the next. Big meeting.
Josh: Yeah. We'll see you soon at the end of the summer. Looking forward to it.
Anne: Oh, I'll see you in July. All right. Thank you, Josh. Take care. and wait a minute.
If you're a female in dentistry, don't forget. We've got a retreat in November in Charlotte, North Carolina. It is the do dental entrepreneur woman retreat from the 13th through 15. Joanna will be there as long with 250 amazing women in dentistry, so please join us. We'd love to have you, and most importantly, keep doing you.
Thanks everybody, Josh. I'll see ya. Bye bye. Thanks.
