Dr. Jeremiah Davis was recently featured on the Dental Flow Podcast!

FULL TRANSCRIPT

Ben (00:02.642)
Hello, hello everybody and welcome back to the dental flow podcast. I am very excited today to have a guest on joining me and that is Dr. Jeremiah Davis. Dr. Davis is from the teeth doctors that practices in Fayetteville, North Carolina. Dr. Davis, thank you so much for joining us. Absolutely. I, so I wanted to prepare for our, talk here. I was looking at your website and wow.

Jeremiah (00:21.577)
Hey Ben, thanks for having us.

Ben (00:31.356)
Very interesting guy. saw that one of the things that popped out right away, as you can see that you're a US Army veteran, and that's as someone who was not in the military, that's interesting to me because I'd love to know a little bit about how did what you learn and experience in the military, how does that help you manage a dental practice today?

Jeremiah (00:53.855)
Sure, I think the most important thing about the military, it teaches you selfless service and always giving your best and continuing to serve your greater community. You know, in 2004, graduating from school, and I always tell people there's no finer institution that you could join that's going to give a young man or young woman right out of the bat leadership opportunities and really a chance to serve and do something well beyond

And the first time I remember feeling that sense of selfless service was in 2001. I went to school early, but around 2001, 9 -11 kicked off, of course. And I was walking across the campus. I was a political science major and thinking, you know, great, I was going to go do some other things in my life. And at that moment when I just remember exactly where I was, right outside of the cafeteria,

And I could hear people panicking. And the moment I heard that you go right to the television screens and you could see those planes crashing into the towers. Right then and there I knew I was going to do something, something beyond me at that point. And I originally told my parents that I was going to leave school and I was thinking I was going to go out and just sign up for the military. And a buddy of mine had just walked back and he says, you know, I'm in ROTC. What do you think about joining?

And right away, I went right to the ROTC department, told them I was interested in joining. And here I am four years later, 2004, walked out and received a commission to go in as a second lieutenant. And I was fortunately enough shipped down to the 82nd Airborne Division at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. And I got to serve there from 2004 until about 2010.

Ben (02:34.098)
Wow, so Fort Bragg is right there in Fayetteville, is that correct?

Jeremiah (02:37.373)
Yeah, Fort Braggs in Fayetteville is the home of the 82nd Airborne Division. And one of the common jokes that people always ask us is, why would you ever want to jump out of a perfectly good airplane? When you're young, it's fun. When you get older, changes. But it's a great time. And I tell you, if I had to do it again, I would certainly do it again. And I've got a big family. if my kids ever wanted to join, I would feel honored that they would be willing to commit to something much bigger than themselves and to their country.

Ben (03:07.208)
That's really cool. It's the whole nine 11 thing. I think everybody, there's not one person you can talk to who doesn't remember where they were that day. And that's really cool that you took that as an inspiration to get to join the fight and get involved. And so that's, that's very respectful. Thank you for your service. I'll say that right now.

Jeremiah (03:24.943)
Thank you so much for supporting us, Every time you think about what's happening today, things can be very polarizing, but most importantly, this is our country. And if you don't stand up for your country, it won't be your country very long. So I have a soft bite in my heart for this country and for all it does and the men and women who support our country and have done so many things to allow all of us to go to the grocery store.

Ben (03:40.296)
Very

Jeremiah (03:50.109)
live our lives and do things in a way that we don't have to worry about. In general, we don't have to worry about our peace and security in this country. And that means a lot to

Ben (03:59.314)
Yeah, that's great. Thank you for sharing that with us. I, so I don't want to embarrass you, but I was looking at your website and you, you've got a very, very impressive list of credentials and a lot of continuing education. And I, I'm going to embarrass you and just list off some of these things. And then I'll ask you a question about it, but, pretty amazing. I don't really think I've seen another dentist with this level of credentials, but, so you are a diplomat of the American board of oral implantology.

You are a Dawson Academy scholar. You are a fellow of the American Academy of Implant Dentistry. You are a surgical master of the Interdisciplinary Dental Education Academy. You are a master of the International Congress of Oral Implantologists. And you are a master of the Academy of General Dentistry. I can't even spell most of those things, so I'm impressed that you were able to do all

at a pretty young age too. So can you share that with the other dentists who might be listening? you know, talk about your approach to CE and, know, how does, how do you feel like it makes you a better dentist?

Jeremiah (05:08.639)
Sure, I remember when I graduated from dental school, I looked over and I saw a professor who I really admire. He's still a mentor to this day. And I was telling him, I can't wait till we graduate. I think I'm to be done with all these books. And he just looked at me, just a very solemn look. And he said, you know, I think it's just starting for you. And right around the same time, I had made a commitment to go to a one -year AGD program at the Fayetteville VA. And when I got there, my eyes were open.

very widely to the broad span of dentistry and what were the capabilities. I met several providers who were retired military and they had been either dentat commanders, which means that they had been in charge of the army's dentists or the dental command, I should say. And I met several specialists. And from there each week, they required us to do a certain volume of advanced procedures.

And they not only required us to do them, but they required us to do them with some proficiency. And that really, again, it was just another eye opener of, okay, gosh, dentistry can be so much more, more than just a filling, more than just a partial denture. And I knew at that moment, okay, I am going to do something more. And when I graduated the Fayetteville VA residency, provider told us, well, it's great that you guys have done some implants here. I would encourage you to keep going.

And I want to say in 2017 or 18, I was introduced to the group who ran the Maxi courses. The Maxi courses are 300 hours of continuing implant education. And I thought, OK, well, I'll listen to my previous mentor. says, go get some more education. I'll do the $300 and I'll be done. And little did I know that it opened Pandora's box for me.

And every year from that time out, I picked a continuum somewhere between 180 and 300 hours. And I would do a continuum of advanced surgical, perio or PROS training. And I kept the rotation going. So every year it's either a heart tissue focus, soft tissue focus, or a sedation focus. And when I look back, know, again, I never had any intentions of kind of collecting this, these type of recognitions.

Jeremiah (07:21.225)
But over time, it was one of those things where as you were going along, you were collecting t -shirts while you were doing it and you didn't realize you were doing it. But it's, you know, I look back and I tell everybody too, I think the recognition is one thing. It just tells people the pathways that you've taken, but the information that you've gained, the skillset you've gained and the camaraderie with your peers, I think is so important. And this becomes the foundation of how you treat.

This becomes a foundation of how you look at cases. And when you get in and you're doing a case, you know how to be alone in the cases because as you're going through these courses, you're making connections with people all over the world. And this again has been a foundation for growth and development because you can ask the world experts what they think about certain situations or scenarios and they can save you the grief or the heartache. And more importantly, they can help you ensure that the patients get the best care possible.

So I'm very grateful to the individuals, the experts around the world who've contributed to my learning and knowledge. And I think that that is what helped us put patient care at the forefront. At the end of it all, if you were limited, your treatment were limited to things like just fillings or just partials or maybe just extractions, whatever it is that you decided to only focus on.

The challenge to that is that sometimes when economies get tough and or when that type of procedure is not coming into your practice, it becomes daunting because you start to look for, well, how can I get so many more of these because this is how I fund my life or this is what I think I need at this moment. But truly here at the teeth doctors, I can say because our expansiveness of skill sets now.

It really wouldn't matter what walked into our, we can say we put the patient care at the forefront of every single thing we do and finances become, or the rewards of our treatment become after the treatment is done, we get paid for doing the services that we do. And I like that as opposed to if I can do another one of these, I will get this. Actually, as it turns out now, say, gosh, you know, we hope we can do this as a very accelerated level.

Jeremiah (09:33.395)
Where what's exciting is not the money at this point. The excitement is actually the level of excellence that you can achieve for you and the patients when you're doing a procedure. And I think this is what continuing education and being around the world's experts in

Ben (09:49.212)
That's amazing. It seems like that, you know, with all the extra continuing education, credentials and services that you're bringing in, that you really are offering just an amazing comprehensive list of services in your practice. And I was looking at your website and I really like your tagline on the homepage and throughout the website that the tagline is worry free from A to Z. So it really has two different things there. You know, it's

dealing with helping people through anxiety, but you're also gonna have that Amazon model of A to Z that you've got almost everything they could possibly need under one roof. And that, when I see it all the time, that's really important to patients because they come, they form relationship with you, but then if you're say, you have to go here and here and here to do this stuff, it's kind of starting over. So can you talk about that philosophy that you've put in your practice

What does it ultimately mean to you and your team and the patients at the end of the day?

Jeremiah (10:50.207)
Sure, I'll start by giving you some anecdotal information. It doesn't mean it is coming from my practice. For every time we would have to refer a patient somewhere to do something, the patient is anywhere from 25 up to 75 % less likely to actually have that treatment done. Now, I'm sure that somewhere in the American Dental Association, there is some information that accounts for this, but this is here anecdotal in my own practice.

As the years went on and we started to develop our own programs more, what I started to see was we started to see a more higher acceptance in treatment to the point you're making as we keep patients internally. And what I've learned from this is that once patients go somewhere and they can get over certain hurdles, and the biggest hurdle is trust, the second biggest hurdle that they have is finances, and the third biggest hurdle is the fear of pain and anxiety, once they get over those three things,

If you ask them to go to a new environment and now have to do that all over again, this is where you have the 25 to 75 % less likely in the hood of them accepting treatment. So the concept of worry free from ADZ came to, know, to, fruition with looking at these things and saying, how can we service the patients and be able to walk in and take care of them literally from sealants all the way to sedation if that's what they needed. So I don't.

personally with my own hands do them all. But when you come here, having other practitioners who work here, and if the patients were to see me for most of it, they could do it. Or if they want to see a general dentist for other procedures that the general dentist likes to do. Or even if we needed to bring someone and we could do that. But to actually keep the patient in the facility where they learn to build trust, where they learn to overcome the fear and anxiety of dentistry, and also where they actually somehow looked at us and said, I consider you to be the expert. This is where we've seen

a lot of acceptance. And this is where we've seen the patients walk away and say, thank you. Thank you for the fact that we were able to reconstruct them, give them fixed appliances and put their life back together. And there's another way we can look at this. There's three models in the building system. If I were to build your house, we could build standard homes. This is a box and a triangle. And this is what national builders do. They go to a city, they

Jeremiah (13:05.951)
buy 100 or 200 acres and they'll build 1 ,000 homes that all look very similar. Then you have semi -custom builders. The semi -custom builders will come in and they say, have up to 10 designs. You can choose from one of our designs. And then the last option you have is a custom builder. And a custom builder does not care what your land looks like. The custom builder wouldn't care if you knew what type of house you wanted and or if they had to recreate it. They are capable with our own skill sets of saying,

If you are willing to do this, we can literally solve your problems. And this is where the teeth doctors comes into play because I look at us like a custom builder. If you walk in with very little bone, if you walk in with little salt tissue, if you walk in and you say, I can't figure out how to afford it, but I know I really want it. Well, from literally A to Z, we figured out how to control the anxiety. So full scope sedation and we're able to do that. IV sedation.

Not only do we do IV sedation, but we have full -time registered nurses on board. So they are here assisting throughout the surgery and they're also here at recording and helping out and doing these procedures. So from the anxiety standpoint of view, we've solved that fear. From the finances standpoint of view, we've teamed up with healthcare financing groups. So when you go to a car lot and you look at...

purchasing a car, no one goes to the car lot and says, hey, I'm dragging 25 to $35 ,000 with me in a briefcase and I've got this guy and he's got, you know, he's in security guards with me. This doesn't happen. What happens is they finance. And if we think about bigger dentistry, dentistry that's more than what I consider single tooth dentistry. This is advanced dentistry. You're working in multiple quadrants. You may be doing multiple implants in combination with crown and bridge, grafting, salt tissue grafting, those types of things.

then this is more advanced dentistry, it requires more planning. And the purchase point is the same type of decision that a person would make if they're buying a Toyota or a Honda. Or how about in this case, this type of dentistry is more like the Mercedes of dentistry because it has an advanced amount of money and an advanced amount of skillset that adds a common to it. So no one would ever go to the Mercedes lot and say, well, I'm just gonna buy this today and drag it off the lot. You put a lot of time, research into it. And patients who are looking for this type of dentistry do the exact same thing.

Jeremiah (15:23.667)
So one of the things we try to do from that perspective is again, team up with healthcare financiers and say, hey, know, how do we allow you to help we present the information? We present a solution to anxiety and we also present the solution to advanced comprehensive dentistry and say, how can we put it together? And this is where we create worry free from A to Z. And the last thing I think you have to do, you have to do this for both your own

And also for the patients, have to document your cases. And I don't mean just document your treatment. No, I mean, you have to photograph your cases. You have to look back and be critical of what it is you wanted to do, what it is you did. And then how do you go about making sure that if you're the custom builder, you're going to give patients the key to a beautiful house that allows them to live in and use their teeth for a long, time to come. You know, and the last facet about being a custom builder. When you're a custom builder, you're on the hook.

This means that right, wrong, good or bad, you're gonna be capable of coming back and saying, and this is what we'll do now if we need to dig up the pipes, change something, move something. But the patient, because of some of the things I mentioned to you earlier, they built the trust in you, not built the trust in the fact that if I gave you the money that you would just do the work and be done with it and give me my warranty, and this is done. If you come back to the teeth doctors, part of the worry free is,

What happens if you come back after your five -year warranty and it's five years in one day? What if it's five years and then six months? What if it's six years? You know, honestly, we still try to take care of you. And this is where this concept again, a worry free from A to Z because, you know, we're here for not just to make the exchange. We're here to be part of your life.

Ben (17:05.938)
That's really cool. Maybe you could just talk real quickly about because I, you know, as someone who's not a dentist, I see the videos of somebody who gets, you know, a full set of dental implants. go from having, you know, no teeth or teeth they're embarrassed about people seeing to having this beautiful smile. What does that feel like to be in the room when you have a patient where you have changed their life and made their life better and you see just their beaming smile? What does that feel

Jeremiah (17:34.623)
Well, on day one after the surgery, sometimes a little bit exhausting. But actually, as it turns out, this feels amazing. This is when you think about your life and what you will do with your life as a practitioner. For me, the visions of grandeur are over for me. I'm 5 '6", and I'm 140 pounds. I don't think I'm going to make it to the NFL.

Ben (17:38.94)
Ha ha ha!

Jeremiah (18:02.943)
I have maybe a baritone voice, but I will never sing on stage in front of a professional, you know, for, get paid for this. So what I resigned myself to is that I will be a dentist and to do something that will still command the respect and give you the rewards of feeling like you've done something to feel your role in life. This is, this is the best you could do. And I walk away.

Ben (18:29.234)
Yeah, life changing.

Jeremiah (18:30.943)
It is, I walk away every single day and I see patients who my reward now is them saying thank you. know, yes, I'm not minimizing the financial gains. This is nice and I think that this is necessary. But I actually look for something bigger and it's the emotional paycheck. Just yesterday I had someone who drove from five hours for his full arch implant maintenance. Now I explained to him, said, sir, honestly,

I know several dentists in your area. I certainly could connect you. You don't have to drive five hours. I think we've done, we've seen you for the last several years and I appreciate you giving us the confidence. says, no, know something, I just love coming back and seeing you guys and I'm willing to pay that fee. And from the bottom of my heart, the only thing I could say was, sir, thank you so much for your vote of confidence. If you think about a five hour distance and a man is gonna drive from the mountains, it is not just him driving to your dental practice.

he has to plan out his entire day to get there. Then he has to drive five hours back home. And just to be honest, the implant maintenance may only take an hour, an hour and a half. If that doesn't give you a sense of the fact that the person has confidence and trust in you, the reward is simply, this is life changing. And for me, I couldn't ask for a bigger reward at this point.

Again, will, somebody would listen and say, well, this sounds pie in the sky. You you got to get paid for this. And of course, this is something that will always happen. We will always get paid for these types of things. But the true reward at the end of the day is knowing that when you were the custom builder, your client came back and your client was satisfied and you were happy and you felt proud of the things that you created. And that becomes the win -win.

It wasn't the patient won because the patient got great benefits from you, but you gave away your service and it wasn't you got a lot of money, but the patient didn't get the service. You both won. And I think when I go to work every single day, I look for opportunities where we can walk away both as a dual win. And I think if you can't do that, that's when you have to say to yourself, okay, maybe this is not a great opportunity. But I've had many examples of this.

Jeremiah (20:53.309)
or patients, know, they come back and they say thank you. But when they say thank you, I also thank them back because I think that just as much as they got out of it, I as a practitioner got something, I became a better practitioner, whether it was a very difficult case or whether the patient, you know, just, it just required something that was out of my league, but it forced me to learn something more. I, to me,

I'm always appreciative of these opportunities. And so this is again, part of how the worry free from A to Z came into fold. These were life lessons of sitting with patients who were trusting you, but while they were trusting you, you were learning and they were teaching you how to do this, do what you do best.

Ben (21:39.9)
Yeah. It's an incredibly impactful journey to take with someone who starts as a stranger and by the end of it as a friend. That's a, it's very cool. So I also wanted to ask you, you know, I was looking at again at your website and I could see on your page, your bio page, you have a very large family. How many kids do you

Jeremiah (21:46.244)
sure.

Jeremiah (21:56.191)
We have seven kids, my wife and I, and people ask me, just some kind of funny things, every time the patients come, they will ask me things, they will ask me about my religion, they will ask me if it's one wife, they will ask me if we have twins. And just to be clear, so my wife and I have been married 20 years and we have seven single kids who's given birth seven times. yes, we have a very large family, according to today's standards anyways. And so,

this becomes a part of the teeth doctors as well. This becomes a part of the worry -free model. When I look at my children and I look at my wife and our extended family, I treat patients just like if they were my family. And I do that because I think that's important. The decisions that I make for these patients, I would make the exact same decisions for my own children or my own wife or her family members.

And a classic example of this is, you know, I'm a general practitioner, but I sedate almost daily and I take out their molars, but I would also be the one sedating and taking out my own children's third molars as well. And this is how comfortable I feel. And it wouldn't matter if it were impacted or not impacted. It is because I feel like we could do a great job and we could do that job to standard. And this becomes a litmus test for me as well. Many times over. If I would not do this for my family, I certainly would not do this for patients. And, and.

I think this is so helpful because it helps guide your decision making. You would I do this large graph on an 83 year old who really is telling me she eats exactly the way she wants? Response, no. If that were my grandma, wouldn't. But now if grandma came in and grandma was 83 years old, she was sprightly and good health, and she were looking to have fixed appliances to improve the remainder of her life, I explained to her what I thought were benefits. I explained to what I thought were risk and she accepted. Would I offer this to my grandmother? Sure.

But in both scenarios, you know, the driving factor is, it make sense to do this? And again, the litmus test is, would I do this if this were my family? So I've gained so much appreciation for having a large family because that too has been a testament of Will's and has taught me exactly, you know, how to help manage patient care and also how to take a break sometimes, you know,

Jeremiah (24:19.615)
Just look at people, not for the dentist or the doctor relationship, but just look at them as we're all alike. We're just trying to get through this life. We want to make it home safely. We want to be able to look at people and know, most importantly, the person who's treating for me cares for me. So if we need another 10 minutes on the end of a consultation, 15 minutes, if that's what makes you feel like your questions are answered, if that's what makes you feel like you were informed, great, what's another 15 or 10 minutes? This is what I would do for my family.

this is yours, you can have it. And so our large family has been such a blessing and help to me. And many times over now, people come to the dental practice. And sometimes I think they don't come for the dentistry, they just come to see how many more kids we'll have.

Ben (25:06.376)
Well, I can definitely say that your wife after seven kids is tougher than you and I for sure. That's

Jeremiah (25:13.319)
There's a, yes, I can tell you there's many times I come home and, know, I live in Fayetteville, but I commute about an hour and 15 minutes each way to work. And after a long day, I want to sometimes come home and complain. And then I look at her and she's got one in her arm, one wrapped around her leg, and then one is in the floor. I cry. And, and I sometimes think maybe I should keep walking, but I'm too fearful at that point. I'm getting in trouble.

Ben (25:42.088)
Amazing. Well, I'm amazed you find time to sleep with the practice, the huge family, all the continuing education. So it's very impressive. And thank you so much for being with us today. Before we sign off, can you just tell people how they can find you if they want to look you up?

Jeremiah (25:58.015)
Sure, we're the teeth doctors in Fayetteville, North Carolina and our website is www .theteethdoctors

Ben (26:05.572)
Awesome. Well, thank you so much, Dr. Davis. This has been great and best of luck to you and continue doing what you're doing. You're doing an awesome job, man.

Jeremiah (26:13.827)
Ben, thanks for having us and we look forward to seeing you soon.

Ben (26:16.592)
Absolutely, thank you.