Dr Farran has made a prominent presence on Youtube and iTunes through his timeless “Your 30-Day Dental MBA” series in 1999. Since then, he has released massive amounts of distinguished content, including his monthly “ Howard Speaks” column in Dentaltown magazine, the 11-part online CE course “The Virtues of Profitable Dentistry,” and his world-renowned podcast series Dentistry Uncensored with Howard Farran. The podcast has released more than 1,500 episodes and has been downloaded more than 8 million times.
In 2017, Incisal Edge magazine ranked him among the 32 most influential people in dentistry.
Dr Howard has an ever-expanding presence across social media platforms and has lectured internationally on the business of dentistry since 1990, sharing his genuine passion for helping young dental professionals and providing higher-quality and lower-cost treatment to their patients.
What was your motivation behind establishing Dental Town?
I have never had an original idea in my life. This means I became a dentist like my next-door neighbour. It was in 1999, I was on the ESPN website, and they were talking about soccer and football, and I thought, 'Oh My God, I am into dentistry'.
There was a company called BBB British Bulletin Board, out of London. This is back when you had to write a letter and put an international stamp on it by licking it, and it cost 300 dollars. So simply, I mailed him 300 dollars cash and never heard from him for like six or eight weeks.
Then I got a letter back. In it had a little floppy disk. The disk was actually a platform that was Dental Town. I just wanted to be able to talk to other dentists about root canals, fillings and crowns. This was five years before Facebook, and it was my huge head start, and I think it was the first social media platform. And what was good about it was that all those six million posts were achieved.
Let's say you broke a file inside MB2; you could just go and type in 'MB2', and you'd find every thread written, every case ever presented on MB2.
So it was a really good reservoir of archived posts of two decades, i.e., every post ever written in dentistry.
The Internet has played a huge role in the success of Dental Town, in fact, it was formed even before Facebook. How much difference has it brought in your own life?
It's been very great for finding friends and mentors. You might find a separate mentor for root canals and oral surgery. If you want to be good in business, marketing, advertising or have to lead staff, the internet's just a great way to network with people in the same boat as you. The planet has seven and a half billion people, but there are only two million dentists, so there are about sixty-five hundred humans for every one dentist.
‘I think it is not what you know; it's whom you know’
If you have a problem with a root canal, you could refer to an endodontist. But if you are living in a town where you don't have an endodontist and an oral surgeon, then register yourself in a Dental Town to be a member, it's free, and you don't have to worry about journalists and news. It's a place where you can be anonymous. So, if you failed a root canal, and you don't want to show how bad you are in root canals, you can just make your account 'Dr Smiley', and everybody's there to help you. I've always been amazed at the love of everybody trying to share to get you to do what you need to do so you can help your 6500 patients save their teeth.
Social media has become a source of information and disinformation. How can one differentiate?
I think this is the first generation on social media, and a lot of people like the disinformation. If you talk about the coronavirus, my entire family doesn't believe in it. They think it was all hype, and it was a cold. As a social media first generation, we're going to hear all the crazy stuff, and that's a lot better if you won't go back. It would get better and better, but it would probably going to take two or three generations before you're not embarrassed about all the crazy people saying crazy stuff.
If a five-year-old comes up to you and says she believes in a tooth fairy. Would you make fun of her? No! You just say she's fine. Similarly, patients don't know the different caps, crowns, bridges and partials. So, we really need to present it like they're five years old, and that's not insulting.
The word 'doctor' comes from the Latin word 'docer', meaning to teach. About 2000 years ago, when we were doctors, we were teachers, and when you're teaching me, I will be a doctor too, but when we're teaching patients about saving their teeth, we got a long way to go. It takes a lot of effort from doctors to teach their patients the basics to improve their wellbeing. However, this type of teaching is going to take another generation or two before it's civilized.
Social media has created an over the top demand for achieving the ‘perfect smile.’ What is your take?
I think it's really going to put a lot of emphasis on teeth. I've lectured in 50 countries, and they started tooth whitening. There's a boom in males getting Invisalign, boys putting on makeup, managing wrinkles and hair. I think this is very profound because, during the pandemic, a lot of people had to work from home. While now seeing themselves on Zoom, they're now worried about their teeth, wrinkles, nail, etc. We've seen our own face more during the pandemic than we did in the first 50 years. When people start wearing masks, they start realizing that teeth and brushing are really important.
I think looking at our faces every day is going to make people start thinking maybe I should make my face look better.
Being the pioneer of digital dentistry, how much has social media played a role in the paradigm shift and origin of modern dentistry?
When I was in school, just a textbook could cost several hundred dollars, and when you were done with the course, you had to sell the book back to get money for the next book. I think what social media and the internet has done better than anything it's made all knowledge zero cost.
‘I think what social media and internet have done better than anything it's made all knowledge zero cost.’
If you go back 500 years, only the kings and queens could afford teachers for their kids, and now the common peasant can afford it.
I was born in 1962, and in 1972, my mom went to a garage sale and bought some used encyclopedias that were printed in 1952. So my first awakening to the whole world of knowledge was 20-year-old information. Now a kid can go to Wikipedia, and it's 75 million pages long for free, all instantly updated.
The century that started in 2007 to 2021 will be human's finest century because we've all known what was wrong.
I think it's going to change all the fields. If you can look at the pandemic when that coronavirus came out, all those amazing studies were flying around the internet even before they got published. In the old days, it might take a year or two for them to publish it. Then, you'd have to subscribe to an expensive journal, and now people like you are saying, "Oh, they're not going to publish, yeah but I'll send it to you", and then you send it to her and eventually a million dentists are reading it. It's levelled the Plainfield in religion, politics, business everybody's on the same platform and information, and knowledge is zero cost. Now a patient listening, "I'm a dentist, and you're not", doesn't fly anymore because now your patient can get on the iPhone and be worried about root canals.
‘Internet has levelled the playing field between the patient and the dentist.’
Being a podcaster and interviewing hundreds of people, what was one thing that you have learnt from those conversations
What I love the most is every dentist is willing to share. I feel like I'm in an exceptional club. I contacted Stephen Cohen, the author of Pathways of the pulp, the number 1 selling root canal book of all time. He was ready to go right then.
Moreover, I remember when I called Dr Carl Misch, a great Implantologist, he was dying of cancer. He had chemotherapy, throwing up, and still put on a suit and showered and died shortly after the interview. You know, just a while longer, he still wanted to help the young kids place their first implant to the day he died.
‘The only value of knowledge is transferring it’
The only value of knowledge is transferring it, and I think the podcast transferred it well. When you reach my age, the best thing to do is transfer all this knowledge to the new graduating class.
Your message to our readers especially young dental graduates?
Just remember that one should start networking during dental school. People trust only those who they meet regularly or know. If you were going to learn karate, why don't you go to Bruce Lee's house and have Bruce Lee teach you how to do karate? Instead, we know from the guy across the street only because he's reliable and approachable.
Also, keep on working, generating energy, learning and treating patients. Keep working hard every day because success is a marathon; it's not a sprint. If you keep working hard every day, help people the way you want them to help you, then life's great.
