Our Story

From Dr. Nate

My story begins in choosing dentistry in an unconventional way. I was raised in the small ranching/oil field community, Evanston, Wyoming. My father, a journeyman mechanic and rancher, taught me the value of hard work. My mother, a paraprofessional at an elementary school, taught me the value of education. The two of them together taught me to love and serve others and to do it with proper motives and with honesty and integrity. My love of the outdoors, working with my hands, being on the ranch, and the need to go to a university led me to the perfect career….. veterinarian. After serving a two year church mission in the Canary Islands where I learned invaluable life lessons and became fluent in Spanish, I soon married my sweetheart, Kristie Perkins. She, a student at BYU, and a soon to be graduate with a BS in education with a Biology emphasis; became my driving force and inspiration to push to become great. I elected to be an Animal Science major. I was doing well in my courses and loved the sciences. 

 Like most young couples we had to work hard to support ourselves and have part time jobs to help us survive. I had many jobs, but one job became life changing for me. I was contacted by a friend from my church mission, Allan Curtis. Allan was soon to be going to dental school and had been working as a translator at a business, CRA. He explained to me that they tested dental products and published reports on those products, kind of a consumer reports of dentistry. They had subscribers from all over the world and needed someone to help with spanish translations and any other odds and ends that may need done. He said the pay was good and they were very flexible with when I could go into work. With his recommendation I was given the job and soon began to see a diversion in my journey. I had no idea that the job I was beginning was so coveted among pre dental students. I didn’t know because I wasn’t one of them. As my coworkers did everything in their power to impress management for the coveted letter of recommendation, I went about trying to be a good employee, work hard, and receive a pay check to feed my little family. At this point I had my first son, Sam, and we soon learned we were expecting our second son, Clay.  

At CRA I got to know some of the kindest people that were dedicated and committed to excellence and they became mentors and role models for me. My immediate supervisor, Jen and the business administrator Derek, inspired me to do good work, stay focused, and be committed to whatever I chose to do. I knew very little of CRA and the prestige that it had in the dental community. Dr.’s Gordon and Rella Christensen are true leaders and pioneers in dentistry. As I translated newsletters and spoke to doctors from around the world that professed their sincerest of respect and admiration for the two of them, I too developed a deep respect for who they were and what they had accomplished in their professional lives. As I watched them work I knew the key to success was passion, commitment, and hard work. No one worked harder than the two of them to create a meaningful newsletter and make the profession of dentistry a little better month at a time, seminar by seminar, and CE course by CE course. These were all great lessons, but it would need to be applied into my veterinarian profession. I was with them, but not all together one of them. This would change with a visit to the Vet School at Colorado State.  

I was encouraged to take the visit by my professor and student advisor, Dr. Roy Silcox. He was trying to convince me that I didn't want to be a vet but to do a PhD over there in Animal Reproductive Physiology. He had a friend there that I could work with and my cousin was a 3rd year student at the vet school. I decided to go over there to visit the school with the purpose of deciding between these two career paths. My first day in lecture was filled with lectures on hair loss in cats. My sweet cousin, Tanya, could see my disgust in hours upon hours of lecture on the causes, types, and cures for hair loss in cats. I am not a cat guy. As I sat there I couldn’t believe there were people in the world that would even notice a little hair loss in their cat, let alone pay to have it treated. Day two we spent most of the day prep-testing cows in the cold, rain, and knee deep manuer. On the flight home I pondered the events of the past couple of days and made a resolution to do something I was really falling in love with, dentistry. As I landed and my wife picked me up she eagerly asked, “so…did you get some clarity on what you want to do?” I replied, “oh yeah, the flight home was the best, I’m going to be a dentist.” This began a whirlwind journey.

The following Monday I began the quest to become a dentist and apply all the great things I had been learning at CRA. My friends at work had told me that once a student has all their pre requisite classes completed they can apply to dental school even without having earned their bachelors degree but the percentage of students accepted on this tract were small. That very week a representative from Case Western Reserve School of Dental Medicine (CWRU) was visiting BYU and had a sign up list to meet with him. My wife was raised in Akron, OH, just a short 45 minute drive from downtown Cleveland, and the home of CWRU. I resolved to become a student there. I went to the academic advisors at the school and asked to meet with this man. They told me that would be impossible because his time slots had been filled weeks earlier. Undeterred, the day of his visit I put on a suit, gathered up my transcripts, and I waited by his door. One by one eager pre dental students went in an out. He finally sat down to eat a sandwich and said, “you aren’t going to leave without visiting with me are you.” “No sir, I will stay until you have to leave.” He offered to have me sit with him a few minutes while he ate his sandwich. His first question to me was, “what did you get on your D.A.T?” My answer, “sir, I’m not sure what that is but I will get it.” He laughed and said it was a test that I would need to do well on to even be considered. This meeting was in November and on the first of December their school and schools around the country would be sending acceptance letters. I told him how much I wanted to attend school there the following year and I believed I had all but one of the prerequisite courses completed but that I was enrolled the following semester. He again laughed at me and said that would be impossible, especially without a DAT score. I told him I would just go take the test straightway and that I would be going to Ohio for Christmas and would appreciate having my interview to save me a trip while I was there. He again laughed at me and said I really should take the summer to study for the test and prepare my application but that if I went and took the test right away and scored at least a 19 on such short preparation to call him and he would see to it that I got an interview. So amidst all of my semester finals, I took two weeks and did a crash course on what to expect from the DAT. I applied for the test and the first of December I took the test and received the score of a 19. I contacted Mr. Phil Aftoora and identified myself as the persistent BYU student and that I had gone and taken the test and that I indeed scored exactly a 19 and asked if he would stay true to his word and have me interviewed while there for Christmas. On the other end of the phone all I heard were crickets. He finally sputtered a little that no one would be around because it was Christmas break but he would see if he could be there along with the director of admissions, David Dalsky. All of this happened so quickly that I didn’t have time to ask for the Christensen’s coveted letter of recommendation. “No need I thought, I’ve made it this far.” The interview at the school was much like Mr. Aftoora had explained it would be, no one was there. Mr. Dalsky was kind enough to come in and interview me and they said I would have to forgo a tour or meeting with anyone really because no one was there. They directed us to the cafeteria and said they had already sent all of their acceptance letters but to keep them in mind for the following class and thanked me for the visit. I asked if there was any possible way to still be accepted with the current class they were filling and they said I could possibly be placed on an already full alternate list but it was a full list. I felt a little like Jim Carey’s character from Dumb and Dumber, “so you’re saying there is a chance.” I went home armed with this hope and resolved to continue to be persistent in contacting them.  

A couple of months went by and we had a meeting at work. The Christensens and all of the management team were there and they were getting after many of the pre dental students for only being there for a letter of recommendation and not putting forth their best effort while at work. I took some exception to this and did not appreciate being lumped into a generalized crowd and behaviors and so after the meeting I went into their office and thanked them for the work they had given me. I told them I was there to support my family and I had applied to school without their letter. I also expressed to them that I had given my job my fullest attention and it was hard for me to listen to their generalizations when I had done my best for them. They looked semi-stunned that I had come into visit with them, and that I had indeed applied without their letter. They asked me the status of my application and I told them I was kind of on a long alternate list. They asked how many schools I had applied to and I replied, “only the one.” Again, they looked at me like I maybe didn’t understand how the process worked. I had the opportunity to work much more with Dr. Rella Christensen and she knew I had gone above and beyond for her. She looked at Gordon and said, “get on the phone with that school and talk with them.” While I sat in their office, Dr. Gordon made a phone call to David Dalsky. I could almost hear him through the phone sputtering all over himself as he realized he was talking to the real Gordon Christensen. Dr. Christensen expressed to him that I would be a tremendous asset to their program and to my profession. My head and heart swelled with pride and admiration for these two people that shaped my love of dentistry and had now given me a very good opportunity to get into school. Mr. Dalsky assured Dr. Christensen he would reevaluate my application and let me know. The following week my wife gave birth to our son Clay. The day we brought Clay home from the hospital there were missed calls and messages on our machine. The first message, “Hello! This is David Dalksy from Case Western Reserve University, we would like to congratulate you on your acceptance into the dental school class of 2005!” We had done it and I owed so much to so many for the opportunity I was going to have to be a dentist. I wanted to have the same drive and passion as my mentors and this has led me to try to be the best I could be. With this as my back ground I have eagerly sought to not only practice but to excel for me, for my family, for my patients, and for my mentors that have no idea to what degree they inspired me. 

I could probably write an entire book on my dental school experiences. I received the best education from Case School of Dental Medicine. I was inspired by great professors and I had also met and worked with people that would become my best of friends. At the completion of dental school we found a small practice that was being advertised For Sale in the JADA magazine. After contacting the broker I learned the practice for sale was in non other than my home town of Evanston, Wyoming. We began a serious inquiry and through a series of miracles we were able to buy a small, two operatory practice in Evanston. The selling Dr. had started the practice only a few years previous and was taking a job in Colorado.  

The day we finally closed on the building, and all was in order and armed with my Wyoming dental license, I walked into the office and announced to the Dr. that all was done. He was sitting chair side with a patient and he wheeled the chair back, pulled out a set of keys, dropped them in my hand, and told me he would leave his address on the front desk where to send his checks we were collecting for him, and he was gone. I to this day have not seen him. I looked up at my lone assistant and said, “what did he numb up?” She said, an amalgam filling on #2.” I remember thinking to myself, “oh crap!!, I don’t have my loupes, and I hate #2.” I sat down and tried with confidence to complete the case. I smiled and thanked my patient for their trust and when they asked to give me some payment at the end I had no idea how much it cost, how to bill any of it or what to collect. I looked to my assistant for help and she said, “I have no idea, he always did that.” I told the patient I would catch up with them later. When I realized I had made produced my first $100 I nearly passed out. I wanted to do cart wheels down the hall. I had become a real producing dentist but there was so much about the business of dentistry to learn.  

This is where my practice management journey began. I hired team members from other offices in town, not a great way to make friends, but I will be forever be grateful to those employees for seeing an opportunity to create something great and to shape a young doctor into what they wanted me to be. They had the same passion and drive that I did and saw everything we did as a great adventure. How I loved my team. I quickly realized that a doctor is no more good than is his team. I felt like mine was the best. As mentioned we began in a two operatory practice with the one employee. By year end I had added a front desk, a second assistant, another chair, and a part time hygienist. I read books and worked hard and I had taken our production from $300K when we bought the business to approximately $750K by year two and three. I did not think that a single practice could possibly do any more than what we were doing. There had been bumps and bruises along the way. Some employee changes and lessons from the school of hard knocks, but I felt like we were succeeding and being successful.  

This is when I was introduced to my next mentors, Wendy Briggs, RdH and Dr. John Meis. Initially I had met them separately and thought they had so much to offer me and they soon after had met each other and joined together to teach practice management. I did everything I could to inspire my team to implement everything they were teaching us and that I believed they had the capability to take our practice to the next level. I also worked with a close friend, Cliff Park, who was the CEO of the IHC hospital in Provo, Ut. to run numbers and projections by when it came time for expansion. One of the primary lessons I have learned is that one can not and should not think they know everything and limit themselves to their own capacities. I have had very few ideas that I have come up with on my own, but I have become a tremendous “copy cat” and implementer of those that have already succeeded. Under the direction of my new found mentors and armed with a new vision for what I was capable of, we made our first big move. We bought a larger building that as a child had been my grandfather’s business, Bear River Lumber. The nostalgia of following in my grandfather’s footsteps and being a business owner there was very real. It took a great deal of work to renovate the space and turn it into a dental practice but we did it. In 2010 we moved into our new building with 6 chairs. We had doubled in size and thought things could never get better. We had attained the bench mark of producing $1 million dollars and again thought there was no way to do more. This is when we identified that we had another capacity problem and one year into being in the new building we knocked a hole in the side of it and added an additional 5 chairs. We bought the patients from a retiring doctor in Evanston to help fill the chairs and began the process of working with new associates. I also had the idea of contracting with and introducing specialists into the practice and we had added an orthodontist, and endodontist, and oral surgeons.  

As we continued to study successful offices we soon realized we were becoming one of them. We continue to study successful offices, and pride ourselves on our ability to change and to implement. We have watched the practice grow from those humble beginnings of $300K to now producing over $4million annually and 25 employees. We have watched as my best friends have worked hard to mirror what we have done to a very high degree of success also. We together feel that we have much to offer our dental community with regards to how to develop systems that can make an office as successful as it can possibly be. We have worked hard and developed training systems and practice management systems and concepts that can help practitioners not feel locked into any one size fits all approach but to give them tools to develop what will best work for them in their areas. I have lectured all across the country with Wendy Briggs and I have watched as I tell my story the lightbulb going off for doctors that feel that they can’t do more, or that they are trapped into a specific style of management. I have found the same energy level and love of helping doctors become their best as I have worked with many that now see our practice as a flag ship practice.  

We came up with the Prizm Designed Dental Systems because as one thinks of a single light or idea flowing into a prism, it exits in many ways. We feel that our practice systems and ideas shared through Mastermind sessions, will go in as a single idea and come out as many defined ideas that can be implemented to fit any practice. Russel M. Nelson, President of the LDS church and renowned heart surgeon, has said, “the duty of a doctor primarily, is to teach. A doctor is really functioning at his highest level when he is teaching his patient what is wrong and what can be done about it.” We feel that we could expound upon this statement and substitute dental offices for patients. We have a sincere desire to function at our highest level by teaching our systems to other practitioners and using our systems as a guide to discover how to make their own offices and systems the best they can be. As our light rays enter a prism we expect them to come out as many systems that will lift, inspire, and motivate any sincerely seeking dentist to become great.  

From Dr. Dave

It was Christmas break my Senior year of Dental School. The end was in sight and I was excited about the prospect of joining my father’s dental practice in Midway, Utah where I was raised. My wife and I were looking forward to returning to our childhood home to serve the people we grew up with, the people we knew and loved. During that break from school, we traveled to Utah to visit with our families, enjoy the holidays, and talk about a future business partnership with my dad. We decided that I would work as an associate for a year before purchasing the practice. At that point, my father would work for me as an associate and continue to mentor me in dentistry and practice management. We were all excited about this plan as it would provide me with a place to practice dentistry without incurring the debt of practice ownership immediately and it would provide my dad with a retirement strategy.  My little family returned to school with confidence in our future plans.

Two weeks later, a phone call came that rocked my world. It was my dad. He had been diagnosed with stage 4 Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma. Cancer. His case was unusual. That was a form of cancer that is typically seen in juveniles. But dad was no juvenile, and the doctors didn’t know how to treat him. They didn’t even know what his prognosis was, but it wasn’t good. He was going be a guinea pig for the doctors to figure out how to treat this form of cancer in adults. The doctors did not give him much hope for surviving this ordeal. Tears immediately sprang to my eyes and I thought all the things one thinks when faced with the news of impending death. It was difficult to wrap my head around that news. It was enough to make my mind spin with worry and my heart ache for the potential outcome. Then my dad shared the news that would affect another aspect of my life. He was done doing dentistry. His cancer treatments were to begin the following day and he would not be in a position to continue practicing.  Fortunately, there was an associate at the practice who was able to keep the practice afloat and continue to see patients until I finished with school 5 months later. Plans had changed big time!!

Fast forward 5 months. My dad was undergoing treatments to get the cancer under control, and would continue those treatments for 2 years, until they declared him cancer-free. Thirty days after graduating from Case School of Dental Medicine, I started practicing dentistry. The associate and I had a rocky relationship. Being six years my senior, the associate felt that he knew much more than I did. His superiority complex made a working relationship difficult even though I was humble and anxious to learn. He wasn’t willing to be a mentor to me. The associate was also threatened by my involvement in the practice, my eagerness to learn, and my relationship with the owner (my dad). The staff was supportive, knowledgeable, and encouraging. Although my dad still owned the practice, he was not involved in the day to day processes to mentor me as I had been expecting before the cancer. I was left to to figure so much out. We continued this way for a year. Even though the relationship wasn’t ideal, the associate and I had both been expecting to purchase the practice. In the end, this doctor wasn’t able to get financing for his portion of the practice. This was a time of great uncertainty, stress, and upheaval. So, I purchased a two doctor practice to run on my own. The associate left the practice to start another practice on the other end of town, taking many of our staff with him. At the end of the transition, we were left with little staff, one doctor (me), and lots of questions. I guess nobody wanted to work with and train the new guy, or fix all of his mistakes.

This new phase in life, being a solo practice owner and a boss, was an exciting new challenge and an overwhelming prospect. Since I had no idea how to run a practice, I hired a practice management consultant. He was a nice guy. He gave me some great ideas, even. But they weren’t ideas that fit my demographic, my practice style, and my goals for the future. So I continued on a quest to find a mentor and practice management group that would offer me the help I was desperately looking for. One practice management group taught me how to deal with difficult personalities. (I would rather fire a difficult personality than learn to work with one.) One practice management group taught me how to answer the phone with greater success in acquiring the caller as a patient. One practice management group taught me how to market my practice better. Another practice management group told me how many of each procedure I needed to be doing to be more profitable. Another practice management group taught me how to manage my schedule better. There were so many great ideas out there, but I still felt like it was a struggle to run the practice. Over time I had hired many different consultants and spent hundreds of thousands of dollars. Unfortunately, I always felt like the fat man in a little coat. It just didn’t fit. Although I liked the coat, and tried to put the coat on, it never really fit me, my office, my philosophy, or the standard of care that I wanted to offer.

One day, about 10 years ago, I found myself in the midst of a group of incredibly successful dentists. These were dentists who were running multiple practices with a high degree of success. They were talking about systems. This intrigued me because it was not something that I had heard in any of my previous practice management experiences. I asked one doctor, “What are these systems, and where do I get them?” But, even though this was the topic of their discussion, none of them were able to define it for me. They could not answer my questions. Realizing that systems just might be a key to much of their success, I started on a journey to define systems. Once I had done that, I started on a journey with my team to create them for our practice. When I realized what a key these were to the success of our practice, I felt compelled to share these systems with others. And that is when Prizm DDS was born.