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Ric Franzi talks with John Beaver, the president and CEO of Biolase, his career and transition into the dental industry, his new role at Biolase and the revolutionary dental laser technology that is changing dental practices across the U.S and the world
Mileage for those who want to listen on the go: This podcast clocks in at around 25 minutes… so head out for a two-miler and let Ric and John keep you company.
Overview
LINKS AND RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THE SHOW:
- Biolase
- Biolase Laser Dental Product
- Biolase Dental Laser Soft Tissue Product
- John Beaver Linkedin Profile
- Critical Mass Business Talk Show
- Waterlase.com
- Ric Franzi
PODCAST TRANSCRIPT
Soft Music
Intro:
You are listening to the Critical Mass radio show Orange County business talk show focused on exploring topics of interest to CEOs who are leading middle market companies. With your host, Richard Franzi.
Rick Franzi: Hello, and welcome to Orange County’s longest running business talk show. I am your host, Rick Franzi. We have a great show planned for you today. John Beaver is President and CEO of Biolase Incorporated, and he’s our guest.
Rick Franzi: John, welcome to the program.
John Beaver: Good morning, Rick. Thanks for having me on.
Rick Franzi: You’re welcome. Let’s get right into it. You’ve been with Biolase since 2017. Tell us what first attracted you to this firm?
John Beaver: It’s interesting, Rick, when Biolase called me back in 2017 to potentially join the company, I was not from the dental industry and not from the laser industry. So I knew very little about dental lasers for sure and as I was doing my research and started peeling the onion back, what amazed me was you have this technology that know what I know today, every dentist should have. You have a company like Biolase that’s been in business for a while and the global leader in this space. But yes, the market is only penetrated less than 10%. So I saw it as a huge opportunity to join what I believe would be a fast growing company.
Rick Franzi: So, before we talk about the firm, let’s talk a little bit more about you. What was your background, if not in the space that Biolase is in?
John Beaver: Yeah. So, I grew up always wanting to be a doctorand so, I went off to the University of Texas, set my sights on that. After a couple of years, I decided, well, maybe that’s not for me. So, I became an accountant. My first job was with Monsanto when they were a fortune 50 chemical company and for the first 25 years of my life, I really went through a career, went through the various jobs in accounting and finance and the chemical industry, all working for publicly traded companies, private equity backed. I used to joke that it was the worst of both worlds and then had the opportunity back in 2009 to join a solar start-up company here in California in San Jose and so I did that for about seven or eight years before joining Biolase.
Rick Franzi: So, what is it about you and your background that you think caused them to reach out to you, given the fact that you weren’t from or in their industry at the time?
John Beaver: Yeah. So, I think it was my experience has been manufacturing from day one. So whether or not it was chemicals, solar Silicon and solar cells or dental lasers, it was all manufacturing, making something. I think what also intrigued Biolase was the growth phase that we went in my solar company going from zero revenue to $100 million run rate revenue in a year. So that high growth and that’s certainly what we expected and expected Biolase. I think that intrigued them and also the fact that as a CFO at the solar industry, in the solar industry and also in the chemical industry, I kind of was maybe more well-rounded than some people coming out of finance. I’ve been involved in marketing, commercial manufacturing, kind of run the gamut, as you do during start-ups, right.
Rick Franzi: So, we’re going to put a pin on that piece. I’m going to want to come back to it. But I think for the goodness of the audience, we ought to talk a little bit about Biolase and so tell us a little bit more about the firm.
John Beaver: Yeah. So Biolase is the world’s leading laser dental company. We made two types of lasers. One is an all tissue laser under our Waterlase brand, and the other is a soft tissue laser or a dial laser under an epic brand. So from an all tissue laser standpoint, as I mentioned, we are the leader in the industry. We sell about 60% of these type of lasers to dentists worldwide. We sell in the US with direct commercial organization, direct sales organization and we sell in over 80 countries worldwide through distributors and so for Waterlase, the all tissue laser has over 80 FDA cleared indications all the way from treating periodontal disease, to healing sick implants to taking your kid to get a cavity restored without having a shot or the drill, kind of less pain, less shot dentistry for anatomy in a less invasive way. So, it’s all around providing what we believe is really the gold standard of care and dentistry, less invasive nature of the procedures and when you look at the body, the mouth is the last part of the body. But the lasers haven’t taken over as a gold standard of care. Right. You would never think about going to get corrective vision surgery. That guy still uses a scalpel. Lasix has taken over, certainly and I certainly believe that will be the case with lasers and dentistry in the near term.
Rick Franzi: So, let’s go back to the start, if we could, a little bit of a history lesson on Biolase. Who decided who came up with the technology that allowed the company to so my storm back in?
John Beaver: actually, the 1980s, and it was all around optics, lasers around, I would say the mid-nineties (mid 1990’s). The company really started to focus on the dental segment. We have over 300 patents, most of them in dentistry. But we also have ophthalmology patents, dermatology patents, veterinarian patents for the lasers. I kid that it seems like all lasers, the start of lasers, kind of go through Russia. One of our founders was a Russian physicist and got into lasers as well and so we saw, I think back in around 95, 96, a real benefit and a real need to have lasers in dentistry and so we developed and we’re the only company that sells lasers today that were developed, conceived specifically for dentist, our competitors and they put out good lasers, but they’ve all come from medical or derm background.
Rick Franzi: So, let’s talk about what it sounds like to me is new technology adoption in the dental industry. So, what have you learned in your time with Biolase about that technology adoption?
John Beaver: Yes. I will tell you that adoption is always slower than you think, and then it becomes an overnight success 20 year in the making. It’s amazing. What I’ve learned is really I’ve studied a lot about the technology adoption curve and when you look at that, it really doesn’t matter what industry or even if you’re looking at iPhones on your block, you have the first, say, 5% of the target population that are the innovators. Right and those are the ones that want to be the first one on the street with the new technology. They don’t care if it works all the time. They really don’t care about training that much. They can figure it out and we did a great job in selling to that segment of the dental population. The first ten or 15 years we were doing this. However, that’s only about the first 5% of the population. Right. Then after that, you get to the early adopter segment, which is the next call it ten to 15% after that, 1st 5%and that’s a whole different marketing and awareness campaign. That segment of the population requires a laser or whatever technology they’re incorporating works all the time. That is intuitive, that they have plenty of training after self-support, continuous education and that’s really where we made. I think the biggest strides at Biolase over the last few years is changing the company to really address that early adopter segment of the population, which is what we’re in now and then if you look at those change curves, once you get about halfway through that early adopter segment, penetrating with technology, it really becomes exponential growth.
Rick Franzi: It sounds like years ago I read a book by Jeffrey Moore, Crossing the Chasm, where he talked about how technology.
John Beaver: exactly, that’s exactly what I’m talking about. Crossing the Chasm. Yes. Yeah.
Rick Franzi: Different segments require different approaches and that’s really great that you came in with that knowledge and experience, ladies and gentlemen. It’s powerful to read books and to be knowledgeable about what’s out there. So many good ideas that you can put into practice you know.
John Beaver: and actually, learn from history. Go figure. Right
Rick Franzi: And moving into that major market where people are buying it every day, it’s a lot about who else like me has one of your systems, too, right. It’s reference selling and making them comfortable.
John Beaver: Absolutely. I will tell you that it’s Biolase did a great job, as I said, with the innovator segment of the population. But then the company stagnated around that and one other thing I’ve learned in the dental industry is nothing sells capital equipment like peer to peer referral. So a dentist telling a friend that’s a dentist about how great they’re doing in their office incorporating this technology and to do that, to get those peers to peer referrals, you have to treat every customer like they’re your favorite, your best customer and that’s what we’re attempting to do.
Rick Franzi: customer service.
John Beaver: Absolutely.
Rick Franzi: So, you’ve had an interesting career, and even at Biolase, you’ve had an interesting career and that you started as the CFO, then you took on the COO responsibilities and now, as I said in the open, you’re the CEO and President of Biolase. So, I wonder if you could reflect on that arc of your career within Biolase and what’s different about being the CEO of the company versus maybe the CFO or the COO?
John Beaver: Well, as I mentioned, when I joined Biolase, one of the things that I think attracted them to me and certainly attracted me to them was the opportunity, I felt to get involved in a lot of aspects of the business. So even though coming in a CFO almost five years ago now, one of the first things I did was take on form the team to look at the customer journey and how do we make that customer journey better? Nothing to do with finance, right? They’re going to be furthest away from that and it really is a cross functional team and so getting involved with the customer, going out on ride along with the account managers, territory managers that we have and seeing what the customer is saying, what potential customers are saying, that’s the stuff I love doing. So I was doing that as a CFO anyway, almost from day one. So, from that aspect, my job really hasn’t changed that much. I certainly have more support on the finance side, so I spend less time doing concentrating on that. But we’re a fairly small company. We have less than 200 employees, so very much like a start-up company as well and so in these type of companies, you just roll up your sleeve and you get involved in everything and certainly, everything that you want to be involved in, you can be involved in. So that’s been great. Certainly, during my five years here, the company and the employees, I just thank them every day for allowing me to come in and having them train me and educate me on the dental space. We have people that have been in dentistry so much longer than me that I like to say I’ve forgotten more about dentistry than I learned in a lifetime. But they’ve been so gracious with their knowledge, it’s really allowed me to hit the ground running.
Rick Franzi: I’ve seen in social media that you have been out in the field and you still are doing that and I’m wondering what have those trips, from your perspective, helped you to learn about the dental industry, meeting with prospective dentists and current clients that are Dentist, what are you picking up just from being close to the business like that?
John Beaver: So, one of the first things I learned because one of the questions I had was why isn’t this taken off quicker than it has? Right? Why is the adoption still under 10% for all tissue laser technology? And what I heard, Rick, was uncertainty. I’m unsure if I can learn how to utilize this technology and to learn how to work it. I’m unsure if I can make money at it. I’m unsure if my office staff will accept it. I’m unsure if the patients will accept it and so that was really the advent of our Waterlase exclusive trial program where we invite dentists, mainly general practitioners, but some specialists to come in. We give them two days of free training. We give them the laser for 45 days. We work with them, we train them. We track their procedures to see how much money they’re making on it. We help train their office staff and then the 45 days, we say, would you like to buy the laser or do you want us to come and get it? And so far, we’ve had about 50% say they want to buy the laser, which has been a great track record for us. So certainly, learn that. The other thing I’ve learned during the ride along is from a territory manager standpoint, we have about 25 territory managers in the US and a lot of times those guys, I think, feel like they’re on an island alone. They’re away from corporate. They’re working on their own a lot of responsibility, a lot of accountability for them and it’s me going out and trying to get the rest of the team communicating as well with them to let them know that it’s not an island. They have a lot of resources that we can provide from the mothership out here in Southern California. So that’s been interesting. But probably the most gratifying aspect of the ride along has been actually talking with the customers and getting a lot of doctor testimonials. It’s amazing how many doctors out there that they’ll close up their practice. If the laser breaks or something, they can’t use it for that day. They use it on every patient, every case and getting those testimonials have been to me, those are gold Nuggets and hearing that, I’ve also heard about some things that we can do better. I’ve been very appreciative of that as well and we’ve made some changes to our service Department to better respond to some of those things that I’ve heard
Rick Franzi: Early in my career. I was a salesperson, and many times the President would come and do a ride along because he had a sales background and one of the things that I noticed is the power of the questions that he would ask me and then the other thing was whenever offered a suggestion, and then it got implemented. The pride of ownership that I had as just the field level person that I was helping the company was really very gratifying. I’m sure in your experience, John, you have that same sense?
John Beaver: Oh, absolutely. One of the questions I ask during every ride along with the territory measures, what are we doing? Well, what can we do better? Because nobody knows more than they do out in the field every day. Right and so we got a lot of good ideas from that conversation.
Rick Franzi: So, let’s talk about sharpening the saw in addition to traveling with the sales and meeting with the clients and prospects. What else are you doing, John, to stay current and sharpen your saw as a CEO?
John Beaver: Yes. For the most part, what I concentrate on, given the relatively short period of time I’ve been in the industry, is read as much as I can about the industry, about clinical papers that may impact us. Try to get as many shows and conferences as I can. I’m on three or four different mailing list from various doctor by cusp as an example where I’m reading every funny name. Right. But Dental Town, just name a couple where I’m reading about those and something piqued my curiosity, I’ll click it. I usually spend 30 minutes to an hour every day just on things like that, kind of early in the day, trying to continue to educate about this industry that I know I can always learn more about.
Rick Franzi: And I think that’s quite powerful, having a learner’s mindset when it comes to your industry. Sometimes people have been in a space for long enough to figure like, they’ve got it dialled in, and that’s usually when things start to go a little bit off the rails because they’ve stopped paying attention to some degree. So, I applaud you for that.
Rick Franzi: What has been coveted impact on your firm and the dental industry at large?
John Beaver: Yeah. So, from our firm standpoint, it certainly was a seismic shift almost overnight. Unfortunately, we went through some furloughs, some salary reductions, just really to survive. We were able to come out of COVID once dental offices started coming back to work in late 2020 by bringing everybody back. We had everybody back work in the summer of 2020, which was great and certainly we’re full tilt now and back to pre-covid and surpassing pre-covid revenue levels. So, I think we’re past that .one of the advantages that we had, though, and certainly didn’t realize it at the time. But looking back on it, we quickly pivoted as dental offices were shut down in the spring and early summer of 2020 to doing a lot of webinars. I mentioned that education is so important to this segment that we’re trying to introduce the technology to and we had over 300 webinars during about a three-month period, and we touched about 20,000 dentists, which was tremendous educational, showing what the technology can do both on the soft tissue and all tissue space. Now what that allowed us to do is once we could get back into office, we had a significant number of marketing qualified leads. So, we said, you went to this webinar you said you wanted to learn more about this technology. Here we are and so that allowed us, I think, to certainly hit the ground running from an overall industry standpoint. Certainly, from what I’ve seen and the stats I’ve seen, everybody’s back at the dentist, and I’m talking mainly US here. International has come back slower than the US, and every country is different. But in the US, I think everybody is 100% back. The most challenging part of COVID, I think, for dentistry today is the great resignation that occurred. I hear over and over again how dental offices are understaffed. They’ve had a significant amount of hygienist leave the industry permanently retired, and so forth. They go on and do different things dental assistance, front office staff and so I think that’s the deal industry’s biggest challenge today. It’s just finding enough talented people.
Rick Franzi: It’s interesting. I don’t want to skip over that’s a very important reality for your clients and for the marketplace. But coming back to your experience doing the webinars, I don’t know how many you had planned before COVID kind of forced you to find an alternative. But sometimes those constraints can open up opportunities that I would assume you’re still doing webinars at a more accelerated pace today because they proved to be a good way to introduce your product to new prospects.
John Beaver: I would say absolutely. We were doing three or four a month and went to at least one a day, if not more than that. We’ve scaled back a little bit because dentists are now back in the office and they have their full-time job and so that we don’t have that captured audience, right. Captive audience, if you will. But we still do more educational events, more training events than we ever have today.
Rick Fanzi: I love that out of adversity becomes an opportunity and an enlightenment and then an adjustment in the business model moving forward. So, for anyone who may be feeling a little bit challenged by something, find the opportunity in that constraint that might give you a brighter future. Thank you for sharing your experience. I wonder what the future is holding, though. John for Biolase, describe your vision for the future.
John Beaver: Well, one of the things I put on my LinkedIn banner is one of my goals is to raise a generation of kids not afraid of going to the dentist.
Rick Fanzi: How great would that be
John Beaver: if kids aren’t afraid to go to the dentist and teenagers aren’t, young, adults aren’t. Adults aren’t. Right and so, we get them early and so, I’m very passionate about providing Orange County with better dental health care for children. I’m on the board of Healthy Smiles for Kids of Orange County, and we’ve donated some lasers to them and training and so forth. I love that they’re getting that training, but from a vision at Biolase, it’s all around accelerating that adoption curve. Ok. I know this is going to happen. There’s no doubt in my mind that every dentist will have a laser in their office 100 years from now. Okay. Question is how soon we can make that happen? and so everything that we do at Biolase, everything I do, I would say every waking minute that I spend at Biolase is around finding out ways to accelerate that adoption curve, be it training via the trial program that we mentioned, we have a few other things up our sleeve as well. So, it’s all around that it’s all about accelerating that adoption curve.
Rick Franzi: Well, and that’s a lofty goal to make a trip to the dentist. Not something that people worry about, because you’re right, it’s not just children. But we carry that later in life, too. I don’t know what it is about the dental office. They can freak people out. But I’ll attest that for years. I was one of those people until I found the dentist Who I had total confidence in and then over time, because I’ve been with them for almost 25 years now, I’ve learned that I’m going to be okay by going there. So, I can’t say I look forward to it, but I’m not worried about it.
John Beaver: I will tell you that when I moved here, my prior dentist in Houston did not have a laser. When I moved here, I went to Waterlase.com, put in my zip code, found a Waterlase dentist near me, and one of my favorite days every three or four months Is when I go to the dentist and get the laser treatment. I just love it and we talk shop a little bit, but I certainly never and frightened of going to a dentist.
Rick Franzi: So, you mentioned the platform there that people can go to. How do people learn more about Biolase or connect with you on LinkedIn?
John Beaver: Yeah, so we’re big on almost all the social media platforms. So not only our website, biolase.com, B-I-O-L-A-S-E but we’re big on Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram. We do a lot of YouTube and Vimeo videos as well, and people can ask to link up with me on LinkedIn @ John beaver.
Rick Franzi: Well, John, I want to thank you for giving up your time here today to be a guest on our talk show
John Beaver: My pleasure, Rick. Thank you
Rick Franzi: I’d like to thank our audience for being a part of Orange county’s longest running business talk show. John’s episode was episode number 1361. If you’d like to be on the show, if you’re an Orange County entrepreneur and you have a story to tell, who doesn’t! connect with me on LinkedIn, I would love to learn more about it and possibly have you as a future guest on the program. You can also visit my website ricfranzi.com, and until the next time we have a chance to be together, I hope all of your business decisions will move your company in a positive direction.
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