"Becoming An Expert Guide" With Aditi Agarwal, Co-Founder of Practice By Numbers

🔦 If you had a light to see into the dark corners of your practice or organization, what would you find?  Having experienced the frustrations of trying to illuminate all aspects of her practice, Dr. Aditi Agarwal did something about it, building not a flashlight but a flood light for all dental teams needing the data and metrics to drive improved practice decision-making. In the new episode of Kinda Different, Matt chats with Aditi, co-founder at Practice By Numbers, about empowering providers with better data and how it can allow them (and their teams) to be more present with their patients!

Listen on Spotify/Apple or watch the entire episode below. A transcript is also included below.

You can find more about Aditi and Practice By Numbers at the following places:
Website: https://practicenumbers.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aditi-agarwal-85774322/

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Transcript
Hi, everyone, welcome back to another episode of Kinda Different, a dental podcast where we talk about innovation in the industry. We talk about how we can make dental care more human, and we connect with some of the best people that are out there in the industry doing really cool things, who are really cool humans. It's super fun.
I'm Dr. Matt Allen, CEO and co-founder of DifferentKind, and your host for Kinda Different. And I'm thrilled, thrilled, thrilled to have with me today Dr. Aditi Agarwal, who, did I say that right? Good enough, okay, close enough.
I always try, sometimes you can correct me if I'm wrong, please, but yeah, Aditi is the co-founder at Practice By Numbers. You probably know Practice By Numbers, one of the best data analytics platforms out there. So obviously, we kind of exist in similar worlds, Aditi, where we're doing, we're thinking about data and filling data gaps in dentistry and whatever.
So I'm really thrilled for this conversation. Thank you for taking the time today to join me and to join us and to inform our listeners and all of those things. Tell us a little bit about yourself, your company, and then we'll dive into some questions.
Thank you. Thanks, Matt, for having me and on this wonderful platform. You guys are so amazing at what you're doing.
And as we talked about, data is king these days. And both of us are looking at dentistry through a different lens and trying to fill a lot of the gaps that we see and to, you know, so kudos to you for that because it is hard sometimes to change your focus and look at things from the big picture when you are so used to seeing things in the millimeters.
Totally, totally. Yeah, tell us a little bit about yourself. Obviously you have a fascinating history and even how you came to kind of found Practice By Numbers.
I would love to have you share a little bit of that.
Well, thanks. You know, I'm a general dentist. Been one practicing for 21 years and I am still practicing.
I have two startup practices. I'm here in Seattle, Washington. And my first startup, I started in 2010 when the market was depressed.
That was a very smart thing to do. So, you know, when I started out my practice, I was like, oh, I'm a dentist. I got this, I can drill teeth.
And then I was like, wait, where are the patients? And I realized I needed to know about marketing. And then once we get those patients somehow by magic through the door, how do I keep them?
And so I was like, I realized I needed some sort of tracking to figure out what was happening with these patients. And, you know, it was a very slow and painful process. We, I went through first, I used Eagle Soft.
So through the, I went through all the reporting in Eagle Soft, which I'm sure you know how fun it is to use. And after that, I was like, okay, this was, you know, even with the doctorate, I would have problems with figuring out Eagle Soft reports. And then we moved on to, I said, okay, my husband who's an engineer saw all this struggle that I was going through and he's like, okay, I can create a spreadsheet for you, honey.
You know, my Valentine's Day present was the spreadsheet. It was awesome. And you know, I know all of you dentists out there understand what I'm saying.
And when I saw that spreadsheet, I was like, what the heck? This is, is this easier? I don't know.
I don't think so. And so we were, you know, having a discussion and I told my husband, I said, there's gotta be an easier way for me to visualize this. I'm a visual person.
Most dentists are. We're so used to using our hands and our eyes that we have difficulty with just all these, you know, papers with numbers on them. And so he created a dashboard.
And when I saw that, I was like, you know, it's like when you put on loops for the first time and you can see every little thing that you thought you were seeing in a tube. And it was just, it was like that for me. It was that moment where I was like, holy crap, this is what's going on in my practice.
And so that's how really Practice By Numbers came to be. It was just, you know, necessity is the mother of invention. And it was needed.
We couldn't really find anything out there that was doing that at that time. So we decided, okay, we're gonna start a company and see where this takes us. We started as an analytics company, as you said, back in 2015.
But then we started realizing that what's the point of analyzing without getting a full picture? And so that's how we started then incorporating, you know, the patient communications part, the forms, the online payments, the online booking, insurance verification, you know? So now we're truly gunning to be that all-in-one platform that a dentist and their team can use on an everyday basis.
I love it, I love it. So you have all of this fantastic technology out there, and if you've ever seen the Practice By Numbers platform, you know how in-depth it is. It's very, very in-depth.
You know, what are you specifically hoping that the impact of your innovation will be? So this came from a very personal place for you. This came from a place of need.
This came from a place of, I need a solution for this, right? But obviously it's much bigger than that now. And what are you hoping that the impact of how you're innovating will kind of change dentistry?
So, you know, the thing is that, to be honest, we are the only dentist-owned and operated technology platform out there today. And what this means is that, you know, we have a true vision for dentistry and dentists, and that transcends it from being just a tool one can use in dentistry, but to be a tool one can utilize to make the dentists and their team's lives better. So that's what I want to change.
It's not just another tool, you know? And it's a comprehensive solution, and it's stable, and it's reliable, and we want to make sure that the dentists and their team spend less time on administrative tasks and more time with their patients. So automation is the key, and that's where we are going with this.
I love it. I think it's so interesting because it's so easy to get, there's so much right there, there's so much power in what you've built.
And ultimately, the goal of that power is to facilitate ease. It's an interesting kind of conundrum. The goal is not to create rabbit holes, and if you want to, obviously you can.
You can go deep, deep, deep, deep, right, and spend lots of, you know. But I think, yeah, your goal to hear the outcomes there of, hey, we want to make you able to go see the patients that you want to see, have the information you need when you need it, right, and not be either, A, walking into those things unaware, or B, you know, struggling, really struggling, like I'm sure you did when you were building this, or, you know, in the early days, right, in a spreadsheet to get that information. So really cool to hear your kind of vision for what the future of dental software can be.
Well, you know, the power is in the provider, and I want to, I firmly believe in that, right? And I really, my aim of my game is to give the provider back their power. And once you're empowered in your, you know, day to day, you're able to have better patient outcomes.
Because you now have something that is ready and moving and working, that you can actually focus and listen to what that patient is saying to you, you know? And that is, to me, that is the main, that's the key, right? You gotta be able to listen to that patient.
For that, you need all your energy focused on that patient, not at what's going on with X, Y, Z up front.
Totally. Yeah, you want all the kind of exterior world to, you know, to fall away when you're talking with a patient, right? So you can be totally there.
You can be totally present. But yeah, if you're always thinking about all the many things that you have to go do or, you know, whatever, right? It makes it really hard to do that.
So I love that outcome. I think it's a really, yeah, it's just a great vision for what dentistry can be. When you think about, so you've been involved in change for a long time.
And you've been pushing rocks up hills and sometimes pushing them probably down hills.
Yeah.
You know, just pushing a lot of rocks, right? Really, really fighting to make change within the industry. If you could wake up tomorrow and just not have to push rocks anymore, just have a magic wand and be like, hey, you know, this is what I would love to see.
Here's the change. You know, and you've already talked about a few, but if there was just one thing where you're like, hey, to me, this is the biggest pain point that we see, and here's how I like wanna see that difference in dentistry, and I don't have to push rocks anymore, what would that change be?
You know, the main thing I think is, and I just mentioned it, you know, we, practitioners today, they're operating very differently than they did even just 20 years ago, right? The consumer of today is very savvy, right? They are very educated using the internet, and you know, and it's our job to help them make right decisions, right?
And I would, again, my whole thing is to not think about technology as a burden, but to use it as a tool and help them guide, help dentists make right decisions so they can guide their patients to make right decisions, because they already know what's gonna happen. They already know how that root canal is gonna go down. It's for us to kind of break it down and show it to them that whether it's gonna be, what the outcome is gonna be and how they're going, they only really care about the pain.
And it's just, when you don't have that mental energy to be a dentist, because you're doing so many other things, that's where I feel like technology can help. You know, it means just being more receptive and flexible to change both in and out of the operatory. So what I would like to really shift, honestly, is the mindset.
I know this is really big. It's not a small...
I love it. That's what the magic wand is for, right? I love it.
If you're not thinking about a big thing, then don't use your magic wand, right?
So that's really my thing. That's what needs to change.
I love it. I love it. And what a gift for future generations of dentists, right?
Who can come into dental school and potentially have a different mindset. I think it's harder for probably existing dentists to change than it will be for new dentists to simply come into a world where a lot of these technologies exist, right? And what a gift for them.
Not that they won't have other things to worry about and think about, and the world's always changing, but if we can solve some of the problems that have existed for a while, what a gift to be able to free up the mindset of, hey, this is what my real job as a dentist is. Which I think we continue to talk about in this podcast in lots of different ways. It's ultimately that trust creation, relationship building, all of those pieces with the dentist so that that person can walk out of there and feel good about their oral health, feel capable of doing the things they need to do with their teeth, all of those things.
And then obviously, the dental practice and the dentist and everyone within the practice wins, right? Everyone wins.
And with the new innovations coming in, just clinical dentistry, Matt, with sleep and sleep apnea therapy, and it's starting to become more mainstream, dentists need to be educated in that. So it's just that our cup is full, our plate is full, and it's no longer a plate. It's, what do you call it?
It's a platter now. And it's just like, how do you make space for all of that if you have to do so many other things? Eventually, oral cancer is becoming a huge thing and a lot of new things coming out for detection, early detection of oral cancer.
You need to have time to educate your patients on that. Well, how are you gonna do that when you're thinking about, you know, your missed call rate for your...
All the business things that dentists have to focus on, 100%, yeah, I totally agree. Totally agree. Well, Aditi, you're a fascinating person, really dynamic, you know, and just is really great in lots of ways.
So I want to learn a little bit more about you and kind of share a little bit of that with our... Share some of your dynamism with our listeners. Tell us about some of the things that shape your daily life values, that shape your daily life and or your company, because obviously you're building this company, you have built this company.
Curious to hear what makes you tick and how you... Maybe you can give us some examples of, okay, here's our value, but here's how we live that out on a day-to-day basis.
So, you know, at PBN, and I'm gonna talk about Practice By Numbers, you know, we both lead and follow, both with honesty, integrity, and I have this, at least my husband and I both have this huge appetite to do the right thing in dentistry, you know? It's about time. And, you know, this is created by a dentist, created by me, who has actually lived through every single struggle that a dentist faces in their career, right out of dental school, right?
From being out of dental school, to being an associate, to doing a startup, I have literally done them all, and to acquiring a practice, you know, the full thing, I have been in every shoe myself and the shoe doesn't fit, always. So sometimes you have to find a way to make it fit. And so I truly just wanna make a dentist's life better.
And so in our vision, it's basically, you know, life is too short to make false promises. And so we just wanna make dentist's lives better so that they can just be, you know, a part of their community and do the right thing for their communities. Whether it's as a dentist or as a parent or as a sibling or even as a friend, right?
We have to be able to enable that. And so one of our core values is treating our customers and our team members like family. And I, you know, one way I've always practiced dentistry is in my mind, do what you would to others, what you would do for yourself, right?
And that's how I've always practiced dentistry in 21 years. It's been a, you know, relatively smooth ride. Thanks, you know, thank God for that.
But, you know, and those principles are very solid with us and we carry that with our company now as well. You know, we started with two people, my husband, myself, and we have a third person, a third partner who would, I had an unused op in my practice, and we, three of us would work together in my op for the longest time when we were building our analytics prop, you know, platform. And now we have over 70 employees just for Practice By Numbers.
And we still lead with the same thing that we started when we were the three of us sitting in my operatory with the drill going on one side and the coding going on the other side.
I love it, I love it. I mean, so beautiful and so, so much that, and you talk about a relatively smooth journey, and I'm sure for, you know, you're a very positive person, like, you know, hey, like, obviously you're tackling lots of big challenges, and I'm sure for a lot of people, they would look at your journey and be like, wow, like, you know, that seems rough. And you're like, no, we're just doing it, like, we're moving ahead, you know?
So I love the optimism and just, yeah, your ability to tackle those challenges head on. What a great gift for your community, you know, your patients, et cetera, for the dental profession in general. So I love that.
Let's talk quickly about making dental care more human, you know, in terms of doing the right thing and in terms of, you know, obviously we've already had a little bit of this conversation, but how specifically do you think you're making, obviously the name of our company is DifferentKind, the name of the podcast is Kinda Different, so I always like to think about that, right, both in terms of how is it different, but also how is it kind? So how would you classify what you're doing as making dentistry different, and how would you classify what you're doing as making dentistry kind? Give us some examples.
I think what we're doing is giving, empowering our teams, you know, the teams and the provider to be able to run their business. Because there's two parts of being a dental provider, right? You were wearing the dentist hat, and then you're also wearing a business hat.
And that business hat is made of lead sometimes. It's very heavy. And, you know, I have noticed that a lot of the people start to get crushed because of that hat.
And so I was there, too. And, you know, that's why we, when we built this company, it was like, okay, how can we change this unburdened the dentist just a little bit, you know, just a little bit so that they can change their focus. And the main thing is really empowering, and this is what I did in my own practices, right, was use my data that was in my own practice to empower my team.
You know, I would, and it's amazing what empowerment does because now they feel like they're part of the big picture. They have tasks assigned to them. So now in this current landscape of, you know, difficulty in finding people to work for you, it is an amazing tool to have where people say, okay, they have incentive to grow because now their growth can be attached to a metric, you know.
It's not like, okay, the office does a big production goal of this much, a collection goal of this much, but everybody's invested in it, in playing that role. From the front desk to the assistants to the hygienist to any other auxiliary people you have working for you, it really becomes centered as a team. You talk about teamwork, that's teamwork.
And I know, because I've done it, it takes time. It's not a one-day turnaround thing, but once you have it, I can be sitting here having a conversation with Matt while my offices are still running. And that's what I want to bring.
I love that. I love that. There's so much opportunity for growth.
I think about it from the perspective of dental hygienists. They can do so much more with their licenses, and we're starting to see some of the states recognize that and whatever. But that's just a license, right?
There's people without licenses in our offices that have way more capacity than I think we often assign to them. And so being able to have some of those things taken off your plate because of, hey, we now have some of this automated and some of it's showing up and they can handle it, right? What a great gift for every single person who comes to your office.
Yeah, no, people want responsibility. That's the best thing. They want responsibility.
They want to be proud of what they achieve, right? Everybody wants to be proud of their achievements. For us, it's easy.
We do six to ten, you know, and we are like, oh, wow, there's instant gratification when the case goes well. Of course, when it doesn't, it doesn't, but you know. But when it goes well, then you're like, you know, I did this.
But for my assistant and for my front desk, where is their I did this moment, right? And so we got to create that for them. And I realized that by having metrics, this helps create opportunities.
So that they have something to say, I did this. And that is, that's a huge gift.
That's beautiful. I did this. How do we create more I did this moments?
That's what I'm saying. That's one of the things I'm taking from this conversation with you. I love it.
Last question for you. I always love this one. You're obviously still practicing.
You see patients. You're there. You know this.
What's one small, easily implementable thing you think should happen to improve patient experience, build trust, all of those pieces? What's one thing that you're like, hey, this should happen every single time a patient walks into an office anywhere in this country or in the world?
Yeah, the most important thing, and I think that's what I feel has changed my practice, is actually listening to the patient and training your team to actually listen to the patient. When that phone call comes in, listen to what they're saying. What do they want?
What do they need? You want to guide the patient based on what their needs and wants are, but if you don't listen, you just hear it, but don't understand what they're asking, then you can't guide them correctly. And I think as dentists, sometimes we understand that, right?
Or we try to take a deeper dive and understand these situations, but our teams don't really always do that. And I think if we help them understand, I mean help the teams understand that how important it is to actually, that first interaction, to actually listen to what that patient is wanting, because everybody in this world wants to feel special. And if you can make them feel special from that first interaction, that I hear you, Mr. Jones, that I understand what your actual problem is, and they can find a way to find a solution for you.
They are thankful for that. Because to be honest, these days you try to get into a doctor, a regular MD, the waiting times are three, four, five months. Specialty is even longer.
So they feel like they are just cattle pushed through in a lot of these situations. Whereas there is allied health sciences like us, they can actually truly feel well cared for. And I think that's the most important thing, is eventually your patient needs to feel well cared for.
Well, and I love what you're saying in terms of empowerment and team-based care and listening, because for most patients, the amount of time that they're going to spend with the dentist is very small, right? And so what they're going to remember from their dental journey is not always, hey, this dentist, who probably hasn't actually received training and listening, so hopefully they've viewed that as a part of their job and cared about it like you're talking about. But even if they do, and they don't empower their team to do those other pieces, right, then you still walk away as a patient feeling like I just generally was not heard here, I was generally not listened to.
And to your point earlier, a dentist has a million things going on in their brain, right, of all these different pieces running the practice, whatever. But, you know, so does the front desk, right? Like they're like, this person's waiting on hold, this is going on here, all these issues, right?
And so for them to be able to truly say, you know what, a priority for me is listening to this person because that is how we run our practice, that is what everyone here does, right? It becomes so much easier to focus on that patient, if that's the culture, if that's the norm, if that's what's expected. And obviously, you know, that's gonna be meaningful and life-giving for everyone.
So I love pulling that thread through of everything you've said. What a beautiful way to finish us up here. And certainly, I think a recurring theme.
I think if anyone has been listening to this podcast for a while, the idea that, you know, it's still early in the year, right? If you get better at anything this year and it's listening, like, you're winning. You know, that is, you're gonna be winning in 2024 if you're a better listener at the end of the year than you are at the beginning of the year.
Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. Listening builds trust, and trust builds, you know, your reputation, and reputation is everything. It will bring you great patience more than you ever wanted.
And your, you know, it's clinical skills matter, but honestly, more than that, it is your heart and your, your ears and your other senses that matter more to that patient because they need to feel valued. And that's how they feel valued. I mean, there's plenty of dentists, as you know, you know, down the street.
How do you make yourself different? And I think sometimes being different in your core, in your team, and making that patient feel well cared for, they're not going to leave, even if you want to boot them out. And then you can drop your insurance and still keep them as patients.
There you go, right? Yeah, lots of downstream ramifications of that. There's a great, one of my favorite studies from all of dental literature, came out in 2012 in Australia, Asking Patients What They Want.
Beautiful study. I've mentioned, I think, on the podcast before. But it's really cool because you go to like the second half of the study, and they're just like quotes from patients.
And one of the quotes is essentially, you know, I've left dentists before, I've dropped dentists before. How they communicated with me and how, you know, essentially like what you're saying, the heart, their ears, all of that, was more important than their skill set. And you're like, man, like, and for them, it was just kind of like dentist, dentist, you know, but it's like, how are they making that determination, right?
Because everyone theoretically has, they should have a license, they have the qualification. So what is it that's really gonna differentiate? So listening to it from the patient perspective, I think, you know, was such an eye-opener, great study for anyone out there listening and wanting to go dive into that.
So Aditi, thank you so much for taking the time to join us. If people want to connect with you, learn more about you, Practice By Numbers, where do they go, help us understand, you know, how to get in touch with you from here.
Yep, so our website, you know, if you want to learn and see what the magic Practice By Numbers can do is www.practicenumbers.com. And if you want to reach out to me, I'm always available. My email is Aditi, that's A-D-I-T-I dot agarwal, A-G-A-R-W-A-L, at practicenumbers.com.
So looking forward to hearing from you guys. Shoot me any questions you have. I've been doing this a long time.
And you're all at shows as well and whatnot too. So I'm guessing they could probably find you there. And again, what a genuine, thoughtful, kind human you are.
And if you get a chance to meet Aditi at a show, I hope you get a chance to say hello to her, give her a high five, whatever it might be. Thank you so much for taking the time to join us on Kinda Different. We're so grateful for you.
We really, really appreciate the conversation today and look forward to continuing it in the future.
Thank you, thank you, Matt. Same here, really enjoyed the conversation today.