Dr. Brandon Johnson
The Challenge
The practice struggled with supply unpredictability – essential items were often out of stock during patient procedures, creating stressful situations for the team and the patients. There was no reliable system in place, ordering was chaotic, and costs were hard to control across multiple locations. The team needed a streamlined, predictable, and scalable solution.
What was the problem before ZenOne?
So, before ZenOne, I was just scouring the internet, man. I was on eBay, searching through eBay. I was on Net32 and, you know, with some of those suppliers you don’t know where it’s coming from, so I’d get on Amazon. It was just a lot of man-hours that we had to spend. My assistant and I would look through stuff together, and we realized how many hours we were spending trying to find the best price, and ZenOne just seemed like a great solution to save us time – which is money – and obviously save us money too.
How did you find Zen?
So, I actually went to a Scott Luna course. We’re doing a practice expansion right now, so I was trying to gear up and get some education on the best steps to take. You were one of the sponsors there, so I went to your booth, we talked a little bit, and then, coincidentally, we realized we were right down the street from each other, like three or four minutes away. I was like, “Come by the office, man.” I’m always hesitant when it comes to new suppliers, just because people come by my office trying to sell me something every day. I would talk to every supplier from Schein to Patterson, Benco, etc. You showed me the platform and it made financial sense, so that’s how I found out about it from Scott Luna’s course, and it was just a small world, man – we’re neighbors.
Did you have any hesitations signing up for Zen?
Yeah, I have hesitations before I sign up with anybody. You know, life is sales, man – everyone’s either a buyer or a seller. For me, I try to run an efficient practice. I do this to make a living. We want to do a good job for folks – that comes first – but if you do that, you’ll make a good living off of it. So I don’t just sign up and spend money recklessly. The numbers have to make sense to make the transition. With the management fee that you guys charge, it’s super reasonable, it saves us time, and it really does save us money on the cost of supplies. Those were my hesitations, but after going through the demo with you and weighing our past bills versus what we’d be saving through ZenOne, it just made sense. So we made the transition.
Where did you see the most improvement in your practice?
It’s definitely saving my lead assistant a lot of time. That’s been a big help. She used to spend a lot more time trying to source all these deals for the best prices. Obviously, I’m keeping more money in my pocket. If we’ve been able to cut our supply budget, let’s say, by 20% – we spend about $10,000 a month on supplies – that’s $2,000 a month we can add to the bottom of the P&L. So that’s obviously been great. But yeah, just the ease of ordering, the time that’s saved, and the money that’s saved – it just makes sense to do it. The fee’s negligible, honestly.
What would you tell people who have reservations about Zen?
I remember the days when we would do $20,000 a month in adjusted production and I was losing $20K a month. Obviously, there are growth phases to a practice, but once you get past your break-even point, your supply and lab bills are variable expenses – they’re going to grow with the practice. The supply bill can certainly creep up, and it’s something that, as dentists, we often aren’t overseeing closely. If we need it, we need it – but as the practice gets bigger – we’re 10–15x the size we used to be at this point, and we’re still adding more and doing an expansion – the supply bill gets bigger. It’s a line item you want to watch. It’s not going to make or break you into bankruptcy or success, but every dollar counts. Being able to oversee that under one platform instead of having multiple reps has been beneficial. In terms of the management fee, it’s not a large amount for an established practice, and you’ve got to put a value on your time too.
Maybe if I dug through eBay and Amazon, I could find things for a dollar cheaper, but how much time are you willing to spend doing that? If you have a lead assistant you’ve delegated this to and she’s spending hours doing this, you’ve got to weigh what your time and energy are worth versus how much money you’re spending. So it just makes sense for us.
