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Show Notes
Today we're going to introduce a game changer in the dental practice management software world...
This is an innovative, all-in-one, cloud-based practice management software, and it offers an array of powerful features that are custom built for dentists by dentists ready to revolutionize the way you work.
If you are a start-up and decide to sign up with Oryx, they will NOT charge you a single dime, until you reached 200 active patients!
They are partnering up with all startup practice owners and making sure you succeed, fast!
Click this link to schedule a FREE personalized demo and to see more on their exclusive deal!
Guest: Jay Letwat
Business Name: Sunbit
Check out Jay's Media:
Website: https://sunbit.com/
Email: jay@sunbit.com
Other Mentions and Links:
Beyoncé
iPad
EBITDA - earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization
Host: Michael Arias
Website: The Dental Marketer
Join my newsletter: https://thedentalmarketer.lpages.co/newsletter/
Join this podcast's Facebook Group: The Dental Marketer Society
My Key Takeaways:
- Expensive treatment plans can build a wall of resistance in a patient's mind. Be sure to address these fears, and provide customizable options for financing.
- Sunbit approves approximately 85% of patients who need care for financing options. That's more than double the average!
- Nobody budgets for a $3,000 dental procedure out of the blue. Be sure to stress that patients don't have to pay all of this at once!
- The credit approval system in the US has largely been untouched since the 60's. It is about time to update the process and allow more accessibility.
- The patients that are scared away by price will mostly likely never return. Having great finance options will help them feel safe and included!
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p.s. Some links are affiliate links, which means that if you choose to make a purchase, I will earn a commission. This commission comes at no additional cost to you. Please understand that we have experience with these products/ company, and I recommend them because they are helpful and useful, not because of the small commissions we make if you decide to buy something. Please do not spend any money unless you feel you need them or that they will help you with your goals.
Episode Transcript (Auto-Generated - Please Excuse Errors)
Michael: All right. It's time to talk with our featured guest, Jay Lewa. Jay, how's it going?
Jay: Everything is great, Michael, how are you?
Michael: I'm doing pretty good, man. I'm doing pretty good. I appreciate you coming on. If you don't mind me asking. I know, I know. But like for our listeners, where are you located?
Jay: Based in, uh, Los Angeles. Based in Los Angeles. Yeah, that's where our headquarters are at.
Michael: How are you liking this
Jay: rain? It's kind of new to me, to be honest with you. I've, I've only been in LA for five, six years. Um, so it's new in the sense of la but like, I'm originally from the Midwest in Chicago, so it rains and snows and could snow in, you know, August could rain in, you know, March.
So we used to kind of the four seasons here, people start to panic a little bit when the rain comes or when it gets cold. It's kind of funny, but, uh, but it's nice, it's fun. Yeah.
Michael: Yeah, we do. Yeah, we, that happens a lot all the time, but Awesome man. Okay, so then tell us a little bit about your past, present.
How'd you get to where you are today?
Jay: Sure. So I've got about 20 years of experience, um, mainly on the technology disruption side. So I did a lot of consulting early on in my career. A lot of performance improvement, compliance work as well. Uh, then kind of moved along into the technology space and, and where I really have spent my time is in a lot of, um, startups or growing, uh, technology companies that have kind of passed the startup phase in which they have a unique technology and they need the ability to market that technology to the masses and, and typically, It's a company that, is really changing the game.
It's really, really disruptive. So what I love to do and what I'm doing now at Sunbelt is we're taking a disruptive technology in the pay over time space. And what we're trying to do and what we're doing it successfully is gaining significant market share in many different vertical markets, including the one that I manage, which is, uh, the dental patient financing space.
Michael: Okay, so break it down to me Sun Bit. I'm under the impression Sun Bit is a bank
Jay: or no? No, we are, we are a technology company. So we have the, uh, technology that allows or enables folks to get approved at a very high level. the technology enables us to approve about 85% of all people that apply for financing.
And, and if, I'm not sure how familiar or not you are with specific financing, but usually that number is in the 40% range, 35, 40% range. Particularly now in a, in a. Recessionary sort of environment, inflationary environment, it typically tops off at 30, 35%. We're more than double that. And a lot of it is really because of the technology that we use, a lot of ai, a lot of machine learning.
Cuz at the end of the day, what we're really doing, it's basically a math problem, right? Because you go to a bank, when you're a small business, let's say, and you go for a loan, Most people get rejected for a loan, for, for many reasons, may maybe their, their overall credit isn't good. They haven't been in business that long because the bank doesn't wanna take a risk on you, right?
Banks don't like taking risks. what we do is we're able, using our technology to provide folks all throughout the credit spectrum, you know, not so great credit. Mid-level credit, very high end credit. We're able to get all those folks the patient financing they need when they walk into that doctor office.
And so we allow through the technology, more people to say yes to treatment. And that's ultimately what we're doing. We use, we have, uh, banks, that kind of administer the loans, but at the core, our focus is on the technology. Because it's really a technology problem, like, the ability to have someone who is, you know, a good person, but they may have subprime credit, Historically, those folks don't get credit, right? You go to to Target or Walmart or Nordstrom's or wherever. If you're subprime, you're not getting a credit card. When they ask you if you'd like to, you know, get a red card or get a Nordstrom card, right? What we're saying and what we're doing is we're enabling folks both at the low end of, of FCO and at the very high end, full spectrum.
They can get the credit they need on the dental space as well as other verticals that we work with. And we're comfortable that we're going to get repaid and we do it in a fair and transparent way and cost effective for the patient or the customer. And you can only really do that. With like mathematical formulas, algorithms, ai, et cetera.
This isn't, uh, you can't do it via spreadsheet like, like the banks do, and like some older, uh, patient financing companies that have been around for 30 years. Gotcha.
Michael: Okay. So I know you wanted to show something, right? Like a demo? Sure. Real quick. Sure. Of course. Sure. The demo is for what? Like for the patient doing
Jay: it?
Right. So what we do, maybe I can explain it a little bit. So mm-hmm. What we do is we do point of sale financing. So let's say you, um, haven't been to the dentist in a few years. You go to the dentist, they give you a comprehensive oral exam, they say, Michael, thanks for coming in. Appreciate it. Here's a list of seven things our doctor, uh, the dentist thinks you need to get done.
Right. And those seven things have. Each, you know, a treatment and a cost, right? And at the end it's like, let's say $4,000. And they say, well Michael, how would you like to pay for the $4,000? And you're like, holy cow, I didn't budget for that. I don't have $4,000 in my pocket. Cuz it doesn't matter whether you have great credit you, you make a lot of money in your job or you don't.
No one budgets. For unexpected medical expenses, like you can't go on your personal Quicken and, and, and say, okay, 2024, I'm gonna budget $3,000 for dental. Doesn't work that way. So what happens is that patient generally either says no to the treatment that they need, or they do kind of like a partial kind of, you know, French menu sort of thing where they say, okay, I'm gonna grab maybe the cavities here.
You know, I'll, I'll take this $500 treatment here. But the other $3,000 doesn't really hurt me so much today, so I'm gonna go home and then when it really hurts me, maybe I'll come back. Right. And that's dentistry for the last 50 years, What they call case acceptance. So the ability of, let's say you, you have those seven things and it costs $4,000 and let's say you're only able Michael to, um, pay for 400 of that.
Well, your case acceptance is basically 10%, right? $400. Divided by the 4,000 that you should have, uh, that you was prescribed to you, right? Which is terrible, which means 90% of your needs are not met, right? Mm-hmm. And you're walking out the door and probably never coming back. So that's kind of historic dental.
So what we do is the patient comes in, they get qualified very quickly, and we approve nearly nine out of 10 folks. Without doing any kind of hard credit check, we do a soft credit check and the process is very simple, very clean. we like to think that it's like an un refinancing sort of transaction.
It's almost like buying a coffee at a Starbucks drive-through. We want the experience to be not the same experience you get at a bank or from some old time patient finance company that, you know, maybe may still do it on, on pen and paper. Okay? Mm-hmm. So, That's kind of the preface of, of what we do. and I can, I can show you the kind of the process, how it works, because it's very, very different than anything you've seen or folks in the dental market for the past 20, 30 years.
They've generally never seen it, and they usually have a very positive reaction to it. Like, you know, where have you been all my life? And can we talk and, and, you know, use this at your, at your practice. Yeah.
Michael: Could we see it? Could we see how it Absolutely. How it works and stuff. And so absolutely. For absolutely.
Sure. Sure. Our listeners listening right now, if you want to go on the show notes below, you can watch the video version of it and we can see it right now. Sure.
Jay: so right on my screen, you see iPad. Okay. And that's the iPad I have in my hand right now. Okay.
So we provide this iPad. To every dental office, and it could be more than one iPad, just depends on how many people, what kind of patient flow you have. So the first thing the, office team does is they will select their name. Okay? So again, this is a demo. Michael, who do you wanna be today?
Michael: Beyonce always.
Jay: Excellent, excellent choice. Who? Who doesn't wanna be Beyonce after all? Come on. Yeah, you click on Beyonce, then you click scan card, then we take the driver's license. Right? And it doesn't matter which state it works in all states. On the back is a barcode, right? So you take that barcode and what I do is I just scan that baby right there automatically.
What happens is, and again this is in real time, I'm not, you know, slowing it down, speeding it up, takes my home information. Patient types in their phone number and email. They continue and then you simply ask the patient, Hey patient, is this your updated info? They usually say yes. You click copy to form the patients a agrees to check their options.
And just like that you've been approved for $6,100. This is the approval process. Wow. That's it. We're done. Okay? Mm-hmm. So now there's a ton of things that happen in the background, right? But that's invisible to the practice, invisible to the patient, right? And again, this kind of goes into how we're a technology and data company.
So a couple things here. One, you were approved for 6,100, we're approving every single patient. With a FCO score of 500 or greater. So when you, when if in terms of F ICOs, 500 is a very, very low F ico, right? Mm-hmm. But we're able to approve them because of our unique and flexible model. If you approve from 500, it equates to typically 85 to 87% of all patients that apply. So going back to the dentist example, the the office example, you know that. Eight and a half outta 10 people that walk in the office have the ability to get qualified for finance and can get the treatment they need.
So that case acceptance number I gave you before, whether it's 10, 20, 30, or 40%, it shoots up dramatically so they can actually walk out being happy because they're, you know, dental problems are solved. Okay. So the first thing, high approval, second thing, we never do a hard credit check. So in the us, typically when you are.
you know, when I signed up for T-Mobile mm-hmm. They do a hard credit check, which impacts your credit. It's not fun. Right. We do a soft inquiry to get to this point. So all we do is, get basic information. It doesn't impact your credit score whatsoever, but the kicker is, even if you decide to move forward with the loan, we still do not do a hard credit check.
So it has no impact. Your credit has no impact. If you apply or take the loan initially, which is again, very, very unique. And again, it kind of is because of our kind of technology backbone. And the last thing is we approve up to $20,000. So I'll just show you one more screen. Mm-hmm. So let's say for instance, your treatment plan is 2100 bucks.
So you click 2100. And then what we have here is basically. A menu of options like, you know, burger King, have it your way. Other, partners of our, of ours call it the Cheesecake Factory Menu of options here, we usually have three to six options here, right? We highlight the one that's the most affordable.
So, hey, patient, you don't have to pay $2,100 today. Again, sigh of relief, right? You can pay 48 months, 48 to over 48 months, 56 bucks. In this particular case, it's a dollar down payment. Again, eight APRs vary. It could be 0%, um, or higher. In this particular case, let's say it's 12.99, you see everything very clearly delineated.
There's no tricks, there's no penalties. Uh, we don't do any kind of deferred interest. If you're familiar with that, maybe the patient wants 0%. We have 0% options too. And so the idea is, and they just kind of select what they want. They kind of go through, the process. Make sense. Go the z
Michael: go to the zero present one real quick.
Sure, no problem. Okay. Okay. Gotcha, gotcha, gotcha. So it, it all changes throughout the, you're not set with the percentage then?
Jay: Correct. So the, the idea is, The patient gets to choose what's best for them, right? We don't wanna make a judgment call, right? We don't wanna be judgmental, period in life, right?
We don't know what shoes the other person's sitting in, but particularly the dental office. I mean, you don't know whether somehow someone is dressed and, and we shouldn't be making that. Let's let the patient decide maybe they're comfortable with 121 bucks a month. But maybe they're not. Maybe $56 is more comfortable for them.
We let them decide, and that's kind of the power of the solution. There's again, three to six unique offers that they're getting, and they choose what's best for them. That's kind of part of the secret. If you give a product that's customizable to the individual, They're gonna like it more, and oh, by the way, they're going to pay us back at a higher rate, right?
Which lowers the defaults, which again allows us to loan to more people. here's something like I learned early on. So payday loans, right? Terrible, horrible, predatory, four, 500% terrible. Mm-hmm. Well, why? Why are they four or 500% It's not because the money costs four or 500%, right? I mean, you can get a loan from a bank now even with high interest rates.
12%, 13%, right? But the reason is because maybe five out of 10 people don't pay it back. So the five that do pay it back are paying for the five that don't pay it back. So that's why the interest rate is high. But if you can create a product that's customizable down to the individual you have a greater amount of people that pay you back.
It's kind of like a self-fulfilling thing. You can continue to loan to more and more people so that your approval rates continue to be higher and higher and higher and satisfy more patients. And that's been kind of our goal from day one. We want people to pay back. So we, have developed unique offers for every individual.
Michael: Mm-hmm. Can they customize also the down payment due at
Jay: checkout? Yeah. Yeah. So they can, for instance, you can, um, Let's look at here. Let's say they wanna lower the $56 a month. Let's say it's still too high. Mm-hmm. You would just go click here and say, okay, I wanna pay 500. What? What? I just wanna make sure remember the 56 30?
Mm-hmm. So let's say they wanna make a $500 down payment, right? Because they wanna lower the monthly payments. You click update and then magically what happens? It's $42 a month. So totally customizable, and a lot of people do that, and we want them to do what's most comfortable for 'em. I don't wanna dictate what's best for them.
I, I don't know what they want, but they know what they want. So let's give them the option. when you go to the Starbucks drive-through, do they tell you what coffee to get? No. You know, you can get 10 different variety, 20 different, uh, variations of a macchiato. That's why they're successful.
Michael: Yeah. Interesting. Jay. Okay.
so a couple questions I have when it comes to the technology, because you said this is new, right? Disruptive technology, nobody's doing it in the industry or, no, I mean,
Jay: every, their, their patient financing has been around.
For 25 years. but historically, even today, it's very much FICO driven. So if your FCO is 6 81, you get the credit you need. If it's 6 79, you get decline. It's like a straight number. Right? And there's companies that provide those numbers. There's. You know, uh, vantage, and there's various, you know, uh, Experian, TransUnion, et cetera, to provide the number.
So most of the companies historically just do that. And there's not really any technology there, right? That's mainly how banks are like old school patient financing companies that have been around since like 1990. That's what they do. But, but think about this example. let's take you and I, today.
Our FCO scores are six 50, right? Both of us, like it looks like we're the same, right? But what if a year ago, yours was 600 and mine was 700, Who's the greater risk? We're not the same. Six 50 is not the same. You're a much better risk than I am because you're on your way up, you're trending. And I'm on my way down.
So our offers might be a bit different and they should be a bit different. We can't be treated the same. So we look at thousands of data points. It all basically, and we're not getting any kind of secret information. This is, we're doing a soft data inquiry, right? So we're getting kind of condensed data.
and then we take that data and we use it to model basically we measure it against our, our AI model. And then it spits out the information. Okay, approve, not approve. If we're gonna approve them, how much are we gonna approve them for? What's the a p r? you know, then again, what's the e fee, if there's a down payment, et cetera.
So it's that uniqueness that enables us to up with an offer that could be very different than someone else. So typically, a lot of the folks that we're approving people aren't touching with a 10 foot pole. Why? Because historically, if you're measuring things by fico, it's just not real accurate for installment loans of 18 months or 24 months.
Mm-hmm. So we have confidence that we're gonna get paid back. And in terms of our, you know, numbers, people do pay us back, at great rates. So that's, I think, the difference. It's. Everyone is a bit different in the world. every American is different. When they apply for credit, they're different. And you have to have a product that takes that into consideration.
We're not like just a score, right? We're, we're made up of, of thousands of different, you know, uniqueness characteristics, whether you're, I'm not talking about finance, but just in general, we're all different. Mm-hmm. So you need to have kind of a scoring system, a mathematical model that takes that into, into consideration.
Michael: now when it comes to, when it comes to this, I know you mentioned soft data, our data pools mm-hmm. And what's behind the soft
Jay: data pool? So basically how it works is.
These credit agencies basically charge money, right? To companies that would like to pull your data. Of course, it's with your authorization. So I, I don't know if you remember on, on the iPad there's clear authorization that says you, you know, agree to having your, uh, credit soft pulled. So basically it's like a condensed credit file.
Mm-hmm. Okay. So, If you get that condensed credit file, that soft inquiry, it doesn't have any impact on your credit score, If you get a hard credit check, which by the way, nearly all the patient finance companies use, why do they use it? Because it has much more granular data, And they basically take the granular data, they feed it into their kind of limited model and, and they say approve or not.
Our technology takes the condensed, takes the more limited data, and then we feed it into our proprietary model, and it gets us to an answer that's satisfactory such that we don't need the hard credit check. And oh, by the way, hard credit checks are terrible. Like, like if you're, you know, if you're buying a house or an apartment.
it hurts you, it's questionable in terms of how much and and how long it's, it hurts you on in terms of your report. Mm-hmm. But it clearly hurts your credit for a period of time. So we avoid that. We avoid the friction in the office staff because of that. And again, they're regular people, just like the folks that are walking in.
They don't wanna offer a product or service that's going to hurt their patients. Right. That's just not human nature. So it reduces the friction. So when they use, um, you know, when they're working with us, you know, some that working with, you know, with the iPad, they can be comfortable that it's only a soft inquiry.
And so that helps us get a lot more utilization than, than the company that they used before. You know, we got to their office. Yeah. Does that makes sense?
Michael: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I know a lot of the times like. When, I remember when I was trying to build up my credit, like it was in the 600 s and I'm like, oh man, I, any little thing, hard inquiry.
Oh yeah, you get outta there, right? Like, I didn't want that
Jay: terrible Yeah. Kind of thing. Yeah. Like, I'm, I'm like, I'm like paranoid. Like I, I have, you know, um, those free credit services and I look on the report because you, you wanna check it like you, you, or if you're in the process of buying a house or whatever, or a car, you, you don't want your hard credit check.
But even if you're not, like in general, there's really no reason like, When I, I was telling a story when I got to, when I moved to LA and I went to the T-Mobile store, they took down my information and before they even asked me what package I wanted, they were like, oh, we need your social security number cuz we need to do a hard credit check.
And I'm like, why? Why do you do a hard credit check when you don't even know what, what I want? Like what if I want prepaid? Mm-hmm. Like, I'm gonna, I would maybe pay you the cash. Now, that's not what I wanted, but they're like, no, we have to do a hard check. It's like, no, well you really don't. Just that they don't have the technology in place to kind of determine the credit worthiness of that customer.
And we do. So that's why, it's a soft inquiry and we're, I believe, the only company that does it throughout in terms of the app, the, uh, approval process. And then when they actually take the loan. Still, no, our credit check. Wow.
Michael: Okay. So I never thought about that, Jay. I always thought it was like a people problem instead of a technology problem when it came to like being approved.
Jay: It's not, it's, it's, it's, I'll tell you, it's like a co it's a complex math problem, right? It's like this guy who has a six 10 fico, let's say has a job she has a job, they have money in their checking account, But based on historical, credit worthiness standards, They are not getting any credit card whatsoever, right?
Because it's been told by them that it's not happening. But we look at it very differently. Like if it's a $2,000 installment loan and it's over 24 months, the question is, does this person have a hundred dollars? And they're checking account every month cuz we're pulling out of their checking account.
And the answer is generally yes, but it goes against. All the kind of the credit, decisioning that's been going on since like 1950. I mean, I brought something here, which kind of cool. So you're, you're from the West coast. This is a credit card application. There's a store called Gimbals based in, I believe, Philadelphia.
Open in 1880, close in like 1987. This is actually, we kind of see it here. This is actually a credit card application from 1967. Pristine condition. Okay. Yeah. So what's interesting about it is if you look at the question that's kind of small, prince, I'll read, if you look at the questions, the same questions of what's your income, do you rent versus own?
Are you married versus single? this is 1967. So what have credit card companies and patient financing companies done? All they've done, this is the same 1967 application. They've just digitized it. They're asking the same questions. I guarantee you, if you go to an office that has another patient financing solution or you go to Target or you go somewhere else, they're going to ask you married versus single.
What's your income rent versus zone? These are questions literally 60 years old, and they're still asking, this is basically what you see today is digitized. So it's, there's like a lack of innovation that has taken place that actually hasn't taken place, right? And, and specifically patient financing in 30 years.
Literally nothing. Literally nothing. And so what we're doing is we're focusing on the technology and solving the math problem. And helping a heck of a lot more people get approved and get the dentistry they need. And that's why we're growing so rapidly. Gotcha.
Michael: So then I like that part where you light bulb, I mean like it, it opened my eyes.
It's true. It, we just put it on a computer and now we're kind of like presenting people and we don't really see the need to change until you kind of showed us the demo. I have a question. True. When it comes to the risk on this, let's just say, okay, six 10, right, credit score, I'm gonna pay you back. And then we do the sun bit thing and then we're like, okay, boom, I'm gonna pay 58 something.
He pays the first one, then he kind of skips on the second one, third one, oh no, it's starting to go down, right? It doesn't look good. Who runs the The risk there?
Jay: So. we do non-recourse loans, which means we take full risk. let's say you're, you're, you're at the dental office and you do a, a $2,000, uh, transaction for, I dunno, bridge, crown, et cetera.
Two days later, we send those funds to the office, then we sit back and we wait for the patient to pay Huss if they don't pay for whatever reason. That's my mistake. You guys are sitting on the money within two business days and we will never claw back those funds. So we, we are taking the risk.
And as you can imagine, that being said, you know, we have a very heavy duty data analytics, you know, risk fraud, et cetera, group that manages this risk. And obviously there's a lot of, Techniques that we use in the process to kind of minimize this. But we also have a huge collection group. So we have a customer, uh, care center, 160 people in Las Vegas.
Our employees, we manage it top to bottom and we call it like collections with kindness. So it's really, really important for us. To maintain those relationships because we have al also customers that are fixing their cars, uh, getting a new set of tires, new batteries, and those same cu customers are our dental customers as well.
So there's a lot of, cross vertical, uh, customers. We have even more when you think about it. Remember, we're not, we're not financing powerboats, right? It's not like someone goes and says, I'm gonna buy a $30,000 powerboat and then I'm not gonna pay it. Right? These payments on average could be 70, 80, 90, a hundred bucks a month.
So generally when that's the case, plus the process is good. It's very clear they, you know, we only work with, you know, great partners. they may be late by a day or two, so we'll call them up and say, Hey, what's going on Very nicely. And generally no one wants to ruin their credit for 70, 80, 90 bucks.
Mm-hmm. A month. Now, if it's a $30,000 power boat, That's kind of a different calculus, right? You may want to say, I want the powerboat and I don't wanna pay for it. Right? And it kind says okay, kind of. I understand kind of the logic there. I don't agree with it, but I understand it. But in dentistry and auto and the other verticals we're in, typically it's, it's high frequency, lower dollar, monthly payments, and generally people are paying them uhhuh.
Michael: That makes a lot of sense. So then, Into practice. Let's just say somebody's listening and they're like, oh, cool. Sun bit. Right? I'm gonna check 'em out. I'm gonna try it. But they already have like Care, credit, lending Club, Verity, right? All these other ones. Is this just another add-on? Like do we just add it on?
Or what do you recommend? Do we take others? Would it even make sense to have other ones on anymore? Cause we have some bit.
Jay: Yeah. It wouldn't because we, we like to say we are the waterfall because we're approving folks from 500. So every single patient that has a 500 FICO and higher. We're approving. So again, it's 85 to 87% generally.
So that's higher than all those solutions combined. Right. Even if you kind of stack 'em up. Mm-hmm. Um, so when we go to an office, we believe, and I think it's been proven by, you know, we've got 9,000, uh, locations in dentistry that we believe we have the best. Financing product out there for patients, bar none.
the process is better. The approvals are better. So if an office has multiple products, well, here's a question. I mean, if they have multiple products, why do they have multiple products? Right? It's like, it's the old saying, like, if you have two quarterbacks, you have no quarterbacks, right? They have, they have four products.
Cause they had one, right? And then they had two didn't work, then they had three. It didn't work and they had four. They use us and generally they eliminate everything. that they typically use in the results are better because we're eliminating a lot of friction. The office staff loves the tool we have.
we have a appreciation program for the offices as well. We have a Sun Beast program, which, you know, they can get, you know, uh, for just doing the regular course of their work. They can get, you know, gift cards, et cetera. Uh, we also do some fun stuff as well, but in, in general, we are the primary financing provider of all the offices that we're in.
Michael: Gotcha. Sun Beast is the appreciation program. Correct, correct. Oh, okay. And that's with like the
Jay: practices? Correct. So we have, right. So if you think about it, you know, we're, we, we've got right now 40, I, I wanna say 50,000 sun beasts because we have an application and, and then when we train an office, they download the application and then we, you know, send them cool things like they're just different promotions and things like that.
They can learn that we have like a, you know, a sun bit tip of the week, things like that. We want to. Train appropriately so that the office team members are really, really comfortable. We also wanna make it fun. Like we don't wanna be, you know, the boring finance company. Like we wanna be the guys that are helping people doing it the right way, not charging any crazy fees or anything like that.
We don't do any kind of, you know, deferred interest. we think we can be the good guys, be profitable, and, Help a lot of patients get the treatment that they need. Gotcha.
Michael: What are the, what are
Jay: the fees? So the fees in, in general, they're risk based. I won't go over like in detail, but in general, the fees are pretty much the same, very, very similar on a blended basis as what they're paying today.
The difference is they're gonna get double the amount of approvals and. They're gonna have more people apply. So it's very common that they see our practices and our groups and our DSOs. We've got, you know, large groups, mid-size groups, single location groups. Um, it's very common that we see three x four x, five x, the amount of production with Sun Bit.
Then whatever they're using today, because again, it's so easy in the high approvals, but the cost is basically about the same as what they're paying today.
Michael: Gotcha. Yeah. And I noticed like it's never, that's never really the issue when it comes to like, uh, presenting or when it comes to accepting this, right?
Like let's just say, yeah, I'll take some bit, right? Or I'll take another third party. What's the issue is more like the patient's accepting it, right? And the one barrier is like, oh my gosh, you're not approved. You can't, even if you wanted to accept that, you can't. Right. So that's a barrier lifted with some bit, both.
In your experience, what's the best way we could present this to a patient?
Jay: It's a great, that's a great question. That's a great question. It's something that we, we talk about quite a bit in our training. So what we like to say is, Have the iPad, do the talking, right?
Show them the product, say, hey, you know, when you go through the treatment plan, you know, you do the comprehensive oral exam, you do the treatment plan, you're sitting down with the tc and the TC generally says, or the office manager says, Hey, You know, it's $2,500, but you don't have to pay everything today.
Let me get you qualified. Takes 30 seconds. No hard credit check again. Cuz what happens is it's such a pressurized experience and it's happened to me too. Like even like prior, prior to Sunbelt, family member needed some significant dental work. It was like seven, $8,000. And you're like, you gasp. You're like, oh, man, that's like crazy, right?
Mm-hmm. It's not cheap. It's, it's not getting cheaper. It's getting much more expensive. So what happens is the person goes with, you know, sits down with the tc, they hear that number. All of a sudden there's like a wall, right? There's a wall that's built. It's panic. You're, you don't know what to do on one hand, you need to get the work done.
On the other hand, it's a crap load of money. And you're like, what do I do here? And you've stopped paying attention to whatever that other person is saying because all you're thinking about is the, the little thoughts in your head, like, how am I gonna pay for this, right? Mm-hmm. And again, it doesn't matter if you're making 300,000 a year, a hundred thousand a year, 50,000, it doesn't matter.
It's a lot of money, right? No one budgets for this. So when the TC can put the patient at ease and say, Hey, I know this might be a, a large sum, but hey, you don't have to pay for everything Today. We have a patient financing solution that approves, 85, 80 7%, let me walk you through. It takes 30 seconds, no hard credit check.
And then usually what happens is there's like a sigh of relief. The wall gets removed, there's a bit more openness, right? It's, it is very much like human psychology or, and it's, and that's what I've kind of, it's, it's very interesting and. The wall gets, uh, broken down and the patient is able to communicate clearly with the TC and the TC with the patient.
And once they do, they show the demo or they show the the iPad. It's a very easy, simple, understandable process. And, and that's generally the best way to do it. just want to kind of let the iPad do the talking. Yeah, I like that. And present it. But you gotta, you gotta present it like it doesn't, we can't approve loans.
If the iPad isn't presented right or if, yeah, you have to basically understand that hey, 40 to 50% of patients that walk in the door have less than a thousand dollars in their checking account, right? Mm-hmm. And if you wanna truly help patients, right? This is a huge impediment to case acceptance, right?
Like money. So if you can help them, then help them with this. You can get them more treatment, which is I think, the goal of everyone that's working in the office. Including the, the
Michael: dentist. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. It is the goal. I mean, but that's the thing we have to remember, like to present it right. Um, all the time to the patient.
Yeah. But I like what you said, how, how it's human psychology. It's true. Even if get approved, cuz for example, let's just say you have the cash and you don't get approved. Sure. You, you're, you're in a negative flow now, right? You're like, of course. Of course. I didn't get approved. That's what I thought.
You know what? I'll, I'll, let me talk, talk to my husband, my wife about it. You know what I mean? I'll get back to you, blah, blah, blah. But when you're approved and you're like, oh, I never get approved. I'm approved.
Jay: Exactly. Wow. Look, Michael, I've seen people cry. Mm-hmm. Tears of joy when they get approved.
I've seen it multiple times. I've gotten hugs before and like, it's, it's very weird. Like it's, it's, it's a beautiful thing, but it's very strange for it to happen because it's so infrequent. But you understand, We're not doing brain surgery here. Let me just put that out in front.
But we are helping people with their oral health, which, which impacts the rest of their body, And if we can help people, Full spectrum of folks that normally can't get helped. It's amazing. And you're right there. There's two sets of what happens here. They get approved and they generally haven't gotten approved before.
In some cases, they're super happy, but the alternative is in the past, when they get declined from other providers, they do not come back to the office. You know, it's like the Terminator when he says like, I'll be back. Yeah. He never comes back to the coffee shop at the end. And you remember he, he never comes back.
Mm-hmm. Right. So it's, it's kind of a gr it's, it's really a gratifying thing that you wanna help these folks, and this is a great tool for case acceptance, you know, increasing the production of the office and helping patients get the treatment that they need.
Michael: By any chance, Jay, do you have any like, stats on how this has improved, like any specific practices, you know what I mean?
Of course.
Jay: Yeah. I mean, we have, we have lots of case studies. I mean, we've, we've seen cases of, you know, ebitda, Significant ebitda, uh, improvements, significant production case acceptance. We've seen sometimes 30, 40%, uh, increases. significant. Um, because again, if you're offering something that approves nearly everyone, you're going to get great results, right?
Because keep in mind, from the office perspective, if you offer and someone gets declined, just like the patient won't come back, the office staff. Won't offer it anymore. So that's what's typically happened. So there's, you know, there's, there, there, you know, a large competitor out there that's been around forever, but a lot of people don't use it because they have, been declined.
You know, the office has declined folks, so they just stop offering it. But, so even though they've stopped offering it, that doesn't mean that the patients walking in the door don't have needs. Right. They of course have needs, you're just not offering it to them.
Michael: Interesting, interesting. Okay, so Where can we reach out to you if we have any questions or concerns? Sure.
Jay: So, um, the best way is, uh, sun.com, slash dental. can also email me. So I manage the dental practice at sun j y sun.com and happy to, help anyone that, whether it's, again, whether it's a single practice, you know, single practitioner, Multiunit group or large d s o we work with, um, all of them.
again, we wanna help people. We wanna do it the right way. And, and really that's why we're, we're growing at the rate that, that we are.
Michael: Nice. Awesome. So guys, that's all gonna be in the show notes below, so definitely reach out to Jay and Jay. Thank you for being with us.
It's been a pleasure and we'll hear from you soon. Great. Thank you
Jay: very much, Michael. Appreciate being on.
