He renamed his own academy mid-conversation and it says everything about how he picks partners, trains surgeons, and decides who gets access to his cell phone number.

Real partnership isn't about filling a room, it's about matching philosophy before you match calendars.

Greg sits down with Dr. Rick Kapitan, oral maxillofacial surgeon and founder of the Clinicians Implant Academy (CIA), to unpack what separates a real educational partnership from a transactional one. Rick shares his "risk before reward" filter for choosing collaborators, his approach to building an academy around ongoing mentorship instead of one-off lectures, and the personal journey that reshaped why he gives back both in his Charlotte practice and on mission trips abroad.

They discuss:

- Why Greg suggested Rick rename his program from Clinicians Implant Academy to Connections Implant Academy

- The "risk first vs. reward first" filter Rick uses to decide which companies and platforms are worth partnering with

- Why one-off lectures create "data transmission" but not real education and how a curriculum-based academy changes that

- How consistency across a whole team (not just the founder) signals a partnership is built to last

- Rick's shift from viewing mission work as a "penance" to doing it from a place of joy

- What his cadaver lab partnership with Endurance Experience Anatomy looks like behind the scenes

- CIA's 2027 roadmap: more course offerings, live patient participation, and regional roadshows

- Why Rick puts his personal cell phone and email on every slide he presents

Bottom line: the practices and partners who last are the ones who choose relationship over transaction, every time.

ABOUT THE GUEST

Dr. Rick Kapitan is an oral maxillofacial surgeon based in Charlotte, North Carolina, and the founder of the Clinicians Implant Academy (CIA), a hands-on training program for oral surgeons and clinicians. He also serves as director of the Carolinas Center for Cleft Lip and Palate Surgery and is a new partner of GnA Consulting.

Rick is known for building education around long-term mentorship rather than one-off lectures, and for a partner-selection philosophy rooted in shared values over shared logos. Outside the OR, he's spent years doing cleft-palate surgical mission work internationally, including recent trips to Guatemala.

LINKS & NEXT STEPS

- Learn more: https://www.dentalconsult4u.com

- Book a call: https://api.leadconnectorhq.com/widget/booking/du9K0a2re1K4eBBk8fI7

Patients don't choose org names. They choose people.

And yet most dental groups are building brand equity at the organization level while leaving their individual doctors invisible online.

In this episode of Tooth Sleuth, Greg sits down with Sam Gaynes, Enterprise Account Executive at rater8, for a sharp conversation on online reputation, AI search, and why the way DSOs think about doctor visibility is costing them new patients and full arch cases they don't even know they're losing.

They discuss:

- Why DSOs under-invest in individual doctor profiles and why that's a strategic mistake

- The 10-20% of patients who search specifically for a provider -- not a location -- and what happens when that doctor is invisible online

- How rater8's algorithm automatically distributes patient reviews across multiple platforms to match where they're most needed

- Why AI is now reading Healthgrades, WebMD, Vitals, and verified listings -- not just Google -- and what that means for practices

- The shift from Google as a search engine to Google as an answer engine, and how AI overviews are changing where patients land

- How sentiment signals across the web -- not just star ratings -- determine what AI recommends to prospective patients

- Why 95% of patients rate five stars but only the unhappy 1-2% are motivated enough to leave a review without being asked

- The order of operations in healthcare marketing: reviews are not a final step, they are the foundation everything else builds on

This episode is a clear-eyed look at what dental groups are missing in their online strategy -- and the practical framework to fix it.

ABOUT THE GUEST

Sam Gaynes is an Enterprise Account Executive at rater8, a healthcare reputation platform that helps dental practices and DSOs build provider visibility, generate consistent patient reviews, and increase discoverability across both traditional and AI-driven searches. Based in Venice, CA, Sam has spent over a decade in healthcare technology, holding roles from sales to VP of Partnerships at rater8, giving him a ground-level view of how online reputation is built, lost, and recovered at scale across multi-location dental groups.

Sam is also a videographer, which shapes how he thinks about storytelling and how providers present themselves to the world. He brings a rare combination of operational understanding and marketing insight to a topic most dental groups underestimate until it starts costing them cases.

LINKS & NEXT STEPS

Learn more: https://www.dentalconsult4u.com

Book a call: https://api.leadconnectorhq.com/widget/booking/du9K0a2re1K4eBBk8fI7

Learn more about rater8: https://www.rater8.com

Industry average for supply spend is five to six percent of collections. Most growing groups are running eight, nine, ten. And once it compounds, it is very hard to reel back.

That's the problem Brad Freeman built Source Club to solve - and he is one of the few people in dental who actually came up in the supply chain before he started selling into it.

Brad Freeman is the founder and owner of Source Club, a hybrid GPO and outsourced procurement solution serving around 600 dental practices across the country - from single-location private practices to multi-site emerging groups. In this episode, he and Greg Essenmacher break down what procurement discipline actually looks like at the practice level, why formulary compliance is the wrong goal, what the real number is, and how Source Club helps smaller groups compete on pricing against the largest DSOs in the country.

They discuss:

- Why dental supply spend is quietly running 8-10% of collections at many growing groups - and why that number is so hard to fix once it gets out of hand

- The difference between a formulary and an ordering list - and why an 8,000-line-item formulary at a 40-location group is just a list with a different name

- Why the goal is never formulary compliance - it is budgetary compliance, and how that reframe changes how groups manage procurement entirely

- The pricing discrepancy between a 1-2 location practice and a 250-location DSO - and how Source Club gives smaller groups access to the same leverage

- How to standardize composite purchasing across a 3-location group and save $40-50k a year in the process - and why most practice owners don't have that conversation with their doctors

- The two-to-three-million-dollar threshold: when it makes sense to hire a dedicated procurement manager, and why Source Club's clients are choosing to keep them on even after crossing it

- Why Source Club charges a membership fee and takes zero commission on products - and what that means for the advice they can give

- How the ordering frequency alone - going from twice a week to twice a month - can clean up a practice's cash flow and inventory management

- The acquisition-growth challenge: why practices growing through acquisition inherit purchasing chaos, and how formulary strategy has to adapt when doctors get to keep their clinical preferences

The bottom line: supply spend goes directly to your bottom line when you save it. No marketing funnel, no conversion rate, no show rate. Every dollar saved is a dollar kept. Most practices are not treating it that way.

ABOUT THE GUEST

Brad Freeman is the founder and owner of Source Club, a hybrid group purchasing organization and outsourced procurement management company serving approximately 600 dental practices across the United States. Before starting Source Club in 2020, Brad spent nearly a decade inside dental supply chain and procurement - including a role managing procurement for a 200-location DSO on the West Coast. He is a self-described supply chain nerd, not a dental product salesman, and built Source Club specifically to give private practices and small emerging groups access to the pricing leverage and procurement infrastructure that previously only existed at the DSO level.

Brad is known for his no-nonsense, operator-to-operator communication style and his willingness to show practices exactly what they would save before asking them to sign anything. Source Club offers a free savings analysis to any practice or group considering membership and is reachable at sourceclub.io.

LINKS & NEXT STEPS

Learn more: https://www.dentalconsult4u.com

Book a call: https://api.leadconnectorhq.com/widget/booking/du9K0a2re1K4eBBk8fI7

Contact Brad Freeman directly: bfreeman@sourceclub.io

Source Club website: https://sourceclub.io