“Going Mobile”
With special guests – Dr. Bob Mantoni and Dr. Marshall Madow
David Madow: Welcome to another episode of the Madow Brothers audio series. I’m Dr. David Madow, and it’s so fantastic to have you back with us today. We’re gonna have a great show. As a matter of fact, right here in the studio with me, I have two very special guests; I’m looking right at them right now. Let me introduce them first and we’ll talk about a few things, and we’ll get right into the meat of this show, if that’s a good word: the “meat” of the show, we’ll, whatever. Right in front of me, I have Dr. Bob Mantoni. Bob, how are you doing there?
Bob Mantoni: I’m doing great, Dave. Thanks for having me today.
David Madow: It’s fantastic to have you, Bob, and we have Dr. Marshall Madow. Marshall, how are you?
Marshall Madow: Fine, how you doing, Dave?
David Madow: Same last name; are we related in some way?
Marshall Madow: I think I, I know you.
David Madow: Marshall is another one of the Madow brothers, so it’s great to have both of you. Before we get into the topic today, which, by the way, is going to be unbelievable, I don’t think we’ve ever talked about anything like this on a Madow Brothers audio series in the 15- to 20-year history of this series; so stay tuned, it’s gonna be incredible. But before we get into it, I just want to remind you that we have a big event coming up very soon. It’s going to be November 2015, TBSE 2015; it’s our 21st anniversary. As a matter of fact, I think I’d rather call it our 21st birthday because you know, all kinds of crazy things happen when you turn 21. It’s your 21st birthday; you do all kinds of weird things, which we won’t get into now. If we refer to it as our 21st birthday, I think it’s going to be a little bit more ... you’re going to want to go there more. It’s going to be in Vegas and we’re ready to start unveiling some of our speakers’ names. Bob and Marshall, I think you were at last year’s in Miami Beach, Florida; both of you were there.
Bob Mantoni: Yes, we were.
Marshall Madow: Absolutely.
David Madow: As a matter a fact, you spoke on stage as well.
Marshall Madow: I did.
David Madow: Bob, you were in the audience watching Marshall speak and watching all the other speakers. You guys coming to 2015 Vegas?
Bob Mantoni: I’m gonna be there; you couldn’t keep me away. I can’t wait to get to Vegas and see another Madow production like that one in Miami.
David Madow: Fantastic. That’s a promise from you. Okay, Marshall?
Marshall Madow: I wouldn’t miss it for the world; you know I’ll be there.
David Madow: Okay, I’m serious. It’s gonna be really good. Here’s the thing: we spent a year in Miami Beach, which was really good, no question about it, everybody liked it, it was a dynamite show. But for some reason, I think Vegas is calling us back. We’re ready to come back, we’re ready to just take it to the next level, go all out. We’ve already got a tremendous amount of people preregistered for TBSE 2015, so if you are thinking about it, if you’re on the fence, if you’re not really sure, I would get signed up right now. Here’s the reason: as soon as we start announcing the speakers, it’s going to sell out pretty quickly; it does every year. And I know right now, two that we’ve just secured, that when we announce them, it’s going to be a frenzy I believe, so get signed up. It’s very easy to do; it’s simply TBSE.com. It stands for “The Best Seminar Ever.” Go there now and we might even have a special registration still going by the time you hear this. I think we will try to hold it as long as we can, so go there, check it out, sign up, and be sure when you’re there, to say hello to our guests today that are: Dr. Bob Mantoni and Dr. Marshall Madow. They will be there. You’re probably going to want their autograph after you hear this. This is going to be an amazing, amazing show. So let’s get into this now because we’ve got a lot to talk about and it could go in any direction; I’m just warning you, because we’re kinda going mobile today, it could go anywhere. So Bob and Marshall, whoever wants to take the lead, if I ask a question, just feel free, it’s just kinda informal. It’s like the three of us sitting on a sofa talking; it doesn’t matter. But I want to ask you if somebody comes up to either of you and says: Hey, where is your practice, how are you gonna answer that question? I don’t even know where your practice is. I can’t follow you, but how do you answer that question generally?
Bob Mantoni: Well, we’re fortunate that we have the opportunity to get out on the road and to go to wherever we’re needed. The focus of the Mobile Dentist when it started about 20 years ago was to take care of the seniors in the senior living facilities. But it has morphed into something where we’ve actually helped the Army get ready for war in Iraq, we’ve taken care of homeless resources days and missions of mercy. We can take our Mobile Dentist offices anywhere. When we originally designed them, we wanted to make them comprehensive dental clinics, and so we can go wherever we’re needed.
David Madow: So let’s back up for one second. I asked where are your practices and you start going to this whole thing about the Mobile Dentist, so we need to back up and talk about that a little bit. You came up with this idea how long ago, Bob?
Bob Mantoni: Almost 20 years ago.
David Madow: Twenty years ago. So let’s talk about, you already kind of said that you have something called the Mobile Dentist, so you really don’t have a true address. Depending on the day, depending on the time of day, you might be anywhere in the mid-Atlantic, in the Baltimore, Washington, Northern Virginia area, I’m guessing.
Bob Mantoni: Well, we have multiple clinics and we have a main office, so we do have a physical address. We have a big state-of-the-art office, and from there we can run the mobile clinics, especially with all the connections we can do nowadays with Wi-Fi. So we actually have GPS on the clinics. We can track the clinics and we can send them out to virtually anywhere. We’ve gone as far north as New Jersey, in D.C., Maryland, and all the other states are accessible, but we run the entire mobile operation out of a fixed office.
David Madow: Okay, Marshall, you go.
Marshall Madow: You know my answer to your question.
David Madow: I want to hear it.
Marshall Madow: Ask me the question.
David Madow: So, Marshall, where is your practice?
Marshall Madow: Which day would you like to know?
David Madow: Exactly, so let’s talk about this a little bit. So you came up with this idea about 20 years ago Bob, you got this thing called, the correct name is the Mobile Dentist, is that right?
Bob Mantoni: Correct.
David Madow: The Mobile Dentist, and you start, I’m gonna let you describe it, you or Marshall, but you’ve got these large vans out there that are equipped to do dentistry on the road, and you go to different locations depending on if you have a contract. If you’re helping a certain group or organization, you go to different locations and just kind of stay there for a day or longer maybe, and you’re able to do all the dentistry out of this mobile unit, is that right?
Bob Mantoni: Absolutely. We designed them to do comprehensive, so we can do quality cosmetic dentistry and we can do crown and bridge, we can do root canals, we can even do implants if we wanted to. Or we can take them down to the other end of the spectrum and do dentures and extractions, which obviously we do a lot of that too. But when I decided to build them, I wanted them to be able to provide comprehensive care, not just one aspect of dentistry. So we can take them to any location; it can be at the Army, it can be a senior living facility.
David Madow: So is it generally like one treatment room per van?
Bob Mantoni: Two treatment rooms per van with onboard autoclaves, Wi-Fi, X-ray scanner, but they are really just miniature dental offices.
David Madow: So you can literally have like a hygiene appointment going in one of the rooms and somebody getting implants or surgery or something in the next room?
Bob Mantoni: Absolutely.
David Madow: I always envisioned that it’s just one treatment chair but you’ve got two.
Bob Mantoni: Dual operatory, both operatories are identical, so you can do restorative or hygiene in either one.
David Madow: How large are these vans?
Bob Mantoni: The big ones are 30-33 feet and they even have little waiting rooms in the middle, like a seat and a desk for the receptionist.
David Madow: So you walk into this thing, there is a reception area, front desk area, and then you go a little further back and there’s two treatment rooms?
Bob Mantoni: One on each side. We put the wheelchair lift right in the middle, so when the wheelchair comes in, we can go right or left depending which chair you want to go to. They have electric awnings; we push a button and the awning goes out in case it’s drizzling, so people can get out of the rain while they are getting on the wheel chair lift.
David Madow: Now, if you’re driving down a bumpy road and patients are getting treated, how ... what happens there? Patients are bouncing up and down on the chair?
Bob Mantoni: We use Velcro to keep them stable. [laughs]
David Madow: You know, I’ve got to tell you, I had this idea. This goes back to when I had my practice in Ellicott City. I don’t know if Marshall even told you this, but I had this idea to go into people’s homes that couldn’t get out. People that were not ambulatory, people that couldn’t get out. I think I just called it my home venture service. And I put a few ads. It didn’t work that big. I didn’t try to get big, maybe I should have; I could have been competition for you these days. But what I did was put some little ads in local papers and I said: can you not get out of your home? If you want to have dentures made, dentures repaired, or dentures fixed in your home, call this number. And I started getting a lot of calls. Do you remember that, Marshall?
Marshall Madow: I absolutely do, sure.
David Madow: I think with a little belt-driven engine or a dremel and some very basic equipment, I went into people’s homes and either made them dentures from scratch or made them partials. I can’t remember; I probably did some very, very, very simple extractions; I mean, if a tooth was so periodontally involved; otherwise I wouldn’t get involved with that. But it was actually a lot of fun and something that the people really appreciated, and I didn’t take it far enough. I mean, I never contacted insurance companies or nursing homes or anything like that to really get in good with them. I just did some private residences and it worked out pretty well. Then I probably got busy with other things. I’m ADD; I go a million different directions, so I never really developed it. I don’t know if that’s kinda how you got started, or you just got started really big, like from day one you start building vans. How did you...
Bob Mantoni: Now, a very similar story. I remember when I first went to someone’s home, it was a periodontally involved tooth that needed to be extracted, and so my staff, I used to use a little bag or something, my office bought me one of those little black doctor bags to put my forceps in, and I still have it; it’s like 30 years ago. But I saw the need was there just like you did; there are so many homebound people, and then when you start looking at the number of facilities, the senior living communities that are going up, you can just see the potential. And then the baby boomers are coming and the big-chain facilities are coming, so the need for mobile dentistry became apparent to me a long time ago, and now it’s just starting to take off. The insurance companies are actually contacting us now instead of the other way around because it is such a… you know we’ve been working on it for 20 years, it’s a refined system now.
David Madow: That’s incredible. And, Marshall, how long have you been with the Mobile Dentist with Bob’s team there?
Marshall Madow: I’ve been with the team for about four years.
Bob Mantoni: Time flies.
Marshall Madow: It sure does, let me tell you something; it seems like it was just yesterday I was meeting you and talking to you about all this.
David Madow: And so, Marshall, you’ve had a ton of experience working in typically brick-and-mortar type dental office buildings, where you’re doing all types of different treatment, and patients are coming to you. Now you’re in this Mobile Dental thing. Let me ask you a candid question. Which one do you like better, and be honest, even though Bob is right here; he employs you, be honest.
Marshall Madow: I’ll totally be honest. I’m answering this question for me. For me, I like the mobile office much better.
David Madow: Wow, why is that?
Marshall Madow: You know, it just suits me and my personality; I like to be out meeting different people, seeing different sights, going different places. Nothing against a traditional brick and mortar practice but for me, and I did it for many years, as you know, but just the fact that we’re on the road all the time seeing different sights, I like that it keeps it new, interesting, and fresh for me, among other things.
David Madow: So what do you see is, like, the major differences in working in the typical, regular dental office that most people that are listening to this work, and your mobile dental van; what are the big differences there?