Group Function: Skipping Class for Scopes and Ergos with Jeff Metcalf and Spencer Smith

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[00:01:49] This is a production of the Very Dental Podcast Network. First, you take a group of verydental people. Then you add some interesting topics and a few microphones. Finally, add some laughs and collegial good cheer, and you get the Group Function Podcast.

[00:02:12] Verydental people, welcome to another episode of the Group Function Podcast, where I am here speaking with a couple different people. I'm actually live from the 2026 BioClear Summit here in Scottsdale. And I'm skipping class. Don't tell anyone, but I'm skipping class right now. And someone's talking about moving teeth around those clear liners. I don't do any of that, and so I'm skipping class. And I wanted to talk to these two guys who will patiently sit at a booth.

[00:02:42] We've got Jeff Metcalf, he's with Zoom X, and Spencer Smith with Enova Illumination. And of course, anyone who listens to the podcast is pretty familiar with those brands. How are you guys doing? Good. Good. So they're sitting at a booth. They've got a whole bunch of loops sitting out there. They've got a microscope sitting out there. And the BioClear crowd is probably pretty ripe crowd for scopes and ergonomic loops and that sort of thing.

[00:03:10] So a smaller meeting like this versus like a big meeting, better, worse, different? What's better about a smaller meeting, Jeff? I prefer the smaller meeting due to the fact that you spend more face-to-face time. Yeah, yeah. You have more time that you can talk to people, find out what their needs, what their ambitions are, where they want to go. Yeah. And these meetings, I think, are much more effective. Okay. And Spencer, you're out of Los Angeles, is that right? Yes. Okay.

[00:03:41] So would you prefer a big meeting or a small meeting? I'd also prefer small. Okay. I feel like big can be good and you get more people to your booth, but bad and you get more people to your booth. Yeah. Same thing Jeff just said. It makes it a lot easier to talk to someone directly. And being somewhere here where we're the only loop company, that makes it a lot easier for us to be the premier for the brand. Yeah. So it makes it a lot easier. It's interesting too because I always thought if I was going to say dental products, some are easier to sell than others.

[00:04:10] I'll say it's funny that loops, like it's easy because you can actually show them what it's like, put a type of not in front of them. And a lot of them that come to the booth are already kind of have an idea that they want to do it. So a lot of, and of course they need to be measured for them. So it's kind of a great in-person thing. So I got to figure loops are a pretty great thing to sell at meetings, maybe more so than a lot of other stuff. Yeah, definitely. Like you said, having that physical aspect of getting them in front of us, being able to see what they would be seeing for the most part.

[00:04:40] Yeah. They do have to get measured. Different magnifications too. That's gotta be a huge thing because a lot of times people already have loops and they're looking for different magnifications or they've never used an ergonomic loop before and they want to make sure that it's not too weird or something like that. Yeah. That's the biggest case scenario is they're going from a two and a half, three, three and a half, and now they're bumping up to a pair of Urgos where they're doing something specialty. They want to do like a four and a half, maybe even a five and a half. Yeah. Or they've never even touched an Urgo before.

[00:05:04] So being able to have them do that in the comfort of an easy meeting where they just have to walk out from that door to our booth five feet away is much easier than walking around the 12 different companies. You go to the midwinter, you go to the midwinter, you got to fight loop companies off and you're walking down there and they want to just, that's not true. Loop companies are not, they're not obnoxious because they know that they've got to do a little work to get people into the, I mean, Jeff has sold loops. He's sold microscopes. He's done what, what's an easier product to sell?

[00:05:32] Obviously microscopes are, are, are a pretty niche thing in some ways, but, but like in, if you're at a meeting and someone's interested in a microscope, how, how do you approach that? Like, like, well, obviously I'm biased and I think, uh, microscopes for me is a very easy product to sell because it sells itself. I don't have to be that sales guy that pushes or anything like that. Yeah. Seeing is believing.

[00:06:01] I mean, when you look into the scope, it opens up a whole new world. Sure. You know? So I think the, it's, there's always a little bit of concern about the learning curve and stuff. Yes. It's going to slow you down, but it's just one of those things you gotta, you gotta practice. It's funny too. Cause with, with a microscope, like, okay, so zoom X has a lot of different models in, and you know, from the premium, you know, the, the full 3,200 with all that stuff down to it.

[00:06:28] The, the, and a lot of times at meetings you have one or two scopes there. And so it's kind of, that's, that's a little bit where with the loops, of course they can try almost any, any frame or any time, you know, that's, that's one of the downsides of, of microscopes are funny because once a person has decided they're interested, that's a, that's a different prospect. And someone's never given it a thought, but then once they're serious, you've got a lot of options that you can throw at them.

[00:06:52] But a lot of times they can't see all those options because you don't have, you know, rarely, unless maybe you're at an endodontics meeting or a, or something like that, where you have these multiple things for them to try out. I, it's, it's funny cause. And Spencer sells microscopes too. He's, he's an Inova rep. So you sell everything that Inova sells basically. Yep. What's the, I mean, you could sell someone on loops in a single set. Inova session. Like basically they come in, they go, wow, I, this sounds great. Let's measure me up.

[00:07:21] And it's, it's, it's not an inexpensive product, but it's not a, it's not the investment in the same way that a scope is. How do you, how often do you have a contact with a scope before you've sold one typically? Like, like if you see someone at a meeting and they're like, okay, I'm kind of interested. And maybe not someone who's already a scope person. Cause that's a different kind of client for sure. Correct. Like, so someone who's new, how, how often, and what's the, what's the process typically? Uh, it's, it's usually a drawn out process. Yeah, it is. It's a capital equipment sales. Yeah.

[00:07:49] So it's, it's typically one of those things where they have to hear, see, touch. Yeah. You know, we, we always used to say about seven times. Seven times. Okay. That's interesting. I wondered. Before, you know, every once in a while you get that bluebird out of nowhere that just comes up. I guess they've been thinking about it before, but they come up and say, okay, I'm going to commit. I'm going to do this. Yeah. And they do it. I was, so I, I was obsessed with microscopes for nine years before I bought one. And I, every meeting I went to that had them, I'd go play with them and stuff like that.

[00:08:19] But I never, I was always too scared to do it. 2011. I was at the AMED meeting in Santa Barbara. You were probably there. I'm guessing. Most likely. Jeff has been selling microscopes for a long time. Uh, I, I don't know exactly how long, but, but I was, we were laughing. I said, Jeff, were you selling scopes before various scopes were like a normal thing? He's like, oh yeah. Oh yeah. Candlelight. Exactly. Right. I mean, I, it is funny because that one of the things that the learning curve, um, okay.

[00:08:49] So it used to be that you'd buy a microscope and they would train you to say, okay, make sure you you're sitting where you want to sit. And then you put the microscope in there and then you got to move the patient in the chair in the, in the lean and that to get the right focal length because, because the focal lengths were really limited or put your knee, your knee. That was the Glenn. Yeah. And actually you could, that was your fine focus was literally putting your knee, which the ergonomics people frown upon that, that you're like literally propping the patient up with your knee, but it worked. It did. It did work. You're right in this.

[00:09:19] I remember Glenn taught that trick forever, you know? And then I, and various scopes came on the scene. The first time I ever saw a various scope was, was, um, Oh, Karsten from CJ optic was building him for other scopes. This was before he even had CJ optic as, as a scope option. He was basically building add ons for other scopes for globals and for silers and all that stuff. Um, and like he let me demo one. He didn't have, I had the first scope I ever bought was a siler. I have regrets.

[00:09:48] I, uh, as I said yesterday, I sold it to a dude from Russia in like, I shouldn't say that publicly, but I, I sold it to, it wasn't directly to a dude from Russia. It was someone with really great Russian accent in Seattle who was not saying much about the client they were representing, but I'm pretty sure my scope ended up in Russia. Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. I, I, it was a fine scope. I just, it was not a, I didn't love it. It was real bulky in any case.

[00:10:15] I've owned a bunch of scopes over the years, but they didn't have a vario on it either. And I do think one of the reasons that I couldn't adapt it as well is because the very, so now they almost all come, don't they all come standard with a vario at this point? Pretty much. Yeah. Yes. The difference with the, for someone who's not used one, it's the difference between literally using the chair to position the patient or your knee to position the patient where you need it to be because your, your focal length is quite fixed versus you sitting comfortably placing the scope.

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[00:11:10] Use very ship all one word today. Where it's comfortable. And then you can dial in your focal length. Is that, is that how you describe a vario? Did I, did I do it right? Yeah. Pretty much. Yeah. Objective lens would be paste, uh, place 250 millimeters away from whatever you were looking at. Yeah. But then you only had plus or minus 10 millimeters. Yeah. It was really tight. Yeah. Yeah. So the, yeah. So now most folk, what, what they go from what's, what's the range in the 200 to 420. And then some of our upper scopes go like 200 to 600.

[00:11:40] Okay. So the, the standard one is plenty. It's plenty. I'm surprised how, how rarely I am not, I'm outside of that occasionally for like a really tall person or a person that has a hard time leaning back or something. But besides that, that's, it's plenty. And, and like all the zoom X scopes come standard with that. Right. Correct. So already, whatever the learning curve, everyone's all, it takes so long to learn. This makes a huge difference on the learning curve, uh, just because patient positioning is much more flexible than it used to be. Correct.

[00:12:10] And so he were laughing to how you used to sell halogen lights, halogen. And I, my first one had a halogen with fiber optic, fiber optic cables. Exactly. So much like I used to use headlamps that were fiber optic where you have a box in each room and you had to plug them into the back, which, and of course, if you forgot, which everyone always did, you'd get, you know, you get yanked by the thing. So, and now, now they've got LEDs everywhere, including the scopes and all that stuff. It's our LEDs, the most common now in scopes. LEDs pretty much standard. Okay. They don't sell a Xenon anymore.

[00:12:38] That's like, you know, $5,000 a bulb or anything like that. There's some companies that probably still do if you request it. Yeah. So. I don't know, man. You'd have to be, you'd have to have a real fascination with that considering how, I mean, LEDs make it pretty easy. Just to replace. They're quite expensive. Oh yeah. Some companies require you to buy two bulbs at a time and. Never knew you'd need to finance light bulbs, but here we are. I mean, that's the. Yeah.

[00:13:04] So LED was, I guess, with the multifocal objective lens. And LED, those, those were the big. Yeah. Game changes in microscopy. Yeah. And then now we're getting into more digital stuff. Yeah. Yeah. Taking it to a whole different. Yeah. I mean like the, the different. I honestly don't use the fluorescent stuff or anything like that. I know that a lot of the scopes come with some different interesting things like that.

[00:13:32] I know that there's a, what the zoom X has a green for surgery. It's great. I just flicked through that. I've never used it. What am I missing out on with the green Spencer? Technically it's supposed to be differentiating blood tissue. Okay. If you have a lot of blood in the mouth. I haven't seen. Yeah. I don't, I guess maybe I don't do that much surgery that, that I'm seeing that, but I mean, so they've got, they've got a composite filter. Yep. And all of them are going to have that if you're for restorative dentistry like that, they've got, they've got a different, different. To width.

[00:14:03] They've got a column. Spot sizes. Spot sizes. Because sometimes when you're in close, you don't need to, in all of the scopes in the bigger spot size, there's always a risk you're going to get them in the eyes. And I'm going to tell you this right now. So just, if you get a scope, start using disposable eye protection. Foamies, they have a, like a little sunglass lens on them. You'll never have anyone complain about them. It's, it's taken my, my eye protection game to the next level. They're disposables. I'm, I'm probably environmentalists don't like me, but the more disposable, the better,

[00:14:32] as far as I'm concerned, you never have to worry about wiping them off right or anything like that. So I do want to switch to, so Spencer is, is an Inova rep and he sells a lot of loops along. I mean, you, you do have skills. We were talking about some of the strategies that we might work to get more scopes into more people's hands because it's a harder product to sell. Like you said, it's a seven, seven plus contacts before people are committing that sort of thing. And a lot of times there's still a lot of fear that you just bought a very expensive coat

[00:15:01] rack, which as I said before in dentistry, there's lots of expensive coat racks out there, lasers and mills and digital, everything, all that stuff. Um, and tell me a little bit about what you've experienced with, uh, the ergonomic loop craze, which literally is probably not, you know, three, four years old. It's not that it's not been that big of a deal until recently. It's, I, at least hearing from other people, Ergo loops have really been around for the probably last five or so years, but they didn't really get popular up until last, like you said,

[00:15:31] two or three. Yeah. So they sat around for a while with no interest, but, um, now they're everywhere. Yeah. I remember my first school loop fair I did was a hygiene school, uh, up in Visalia. So about two and a half hours from where I live. Okay. And my manager told me it's going to be hygiene. They're all going to get a two and a half. Mm-hmm . So what most hygiene people do and we still see it now, but, um, out of 27 students, I sold to 15 of them and all 15 bought Ergos. Oh, wow. Yeah. And my manager was surprised.

[00:16:01] I was surprised because I didn't know any better. He told me I was going to sell two and a half. So everyone wants a three and a half Ergo. Interesting. Um, I'd probably sell one regular Galilayan pair of loops compared to every nine or 10 Ergos at this point. Okay. So they're everywhere. So Ergos are the hot product. Yeah. Interesting. Everyone. Cause it's either students starting out going for Ergos cause that's what they hear is the best. Or it's like we talked about earlier, um, dentists who already have a pair of regular ones. Yep. Now they're upgrading.

[00:16:31] Oh, I've heard about Ergos. I want to try it. Yeah. My neck hurts. Let's go for that. The dirty secret is of course, is that probably the smart move is to get one, uh, like a standard pair and an Ergo pair. A hundred percent. I've not used the Ergos in practice yet. I probably need to do that, but, but it's dumb for me to buy an Ergo. I have microscopes in all my operatories, so I don't really need that. But, um, I, I, my understanding is the Ergos make a big difference with, uh, if you, if you already know loops, you, you, you are going to find Ergos to be helpful.

[00:17:00] Do they need a different light with Ergos or can they usually adjust? Same light. Yeah. Especially with ours. I mean, same magnet we do on the, it really doesn't change anything outside of the frames. So it'll apply for every company too. It's, it's, it's interesting that Ergo thing is like, uh, in some ways it's like, Hey, you're going to sell more loops cause they got to have both if they're, if they're smart about it. But also, uh, the Ergo aspect is, and you know, I know, well, we know multiple scope users that literally saved their career by having a microscope because their back was shot, their neck was shot or whatever.

[00:17:28] Um, these Ergo loops are sort of trying to fill us, fill a void there as well, because it's, uh, ergonomically, a lot of dentistry is just a hot mess. You know, do you know, dentists that, that had, uh, that had given up because of ergonomic issues, less than magnification issue? Yeah. Oh, a hundred percent. Um, there's, uh, Jorge Zapata is a guy who was going to quit before he got into scopes. That's right. There was another gentleman down in Australia. I can't remember his name offhand, but he, uh, was in a bad accident. I think even, uh, Dr.

[00:17:58] Shanilak at one point was having some crippling back pains and stuff. And I think scope brought him back into it. Uh, I saw, I saw him the very, at the AMED meeting in 2011, I saw him lecture and, and, uh, I, um, I was like, maybe I need to quit dentistry. Maybe this is, maybe, I don't know, maybe I could, maybe I could do farm stuff or something. Cause I, Dennis Shanilak was so next level. Unbelievable.

[00:18:24] He was, I think first time I ever saw the socket shield, uh, technique being used and he was using suture numbers that I'd never heard of. Like I like the, the teeniest, tiniest sutures I'm like, and he was in a super deep in a scope. And this was before I had bought a scope. And I'm like, well, I'm, I'm either going to get a scope or I'm going to quit one of the, one of the other, because I can't, I can't, uh, I can't. And I, I'd love to say that I use a scope to the same effect that he did. I probably don't, but I, I mean, I've got no regrets, but the other thing is, is that I also am not militant.

[00:18:54] Like, like the guys in Eastern Europe who only they scopes are it. They don't have any loops. I like having both. And I, I have a, I also think that I know you guys have really great options for lights and a Nova, but if you can get a surgical headlamp, you might as well just go home. As far as I'm concerned, I've got, I've got the goofiest, you know, the whole, I've got the goofy headwear and it's, it's bright. Yeah. I, and I still have the, I don't even know if you guys sell it or not. Do you guys, I have the one with the little, you can use the waist, the waist clip battery, but you can put it on your head.

[00:19:24] You still sell it. We saw that. That's brilliant by the way, because I had the one that had a specific head mounted battery that they just stopped using. Yeah. And, and, you know, I was hanging onto him as long as I could, but finally the, the, the, just the, I just wore them out and I was like, Oh, what am I going to do? You know, that, that will hit the same battery that you can use on your hip with the head mount is fantastic. Yeah. It used to be that slide in like magazine style. Now it's pretty much just your standard battery. It's, it's, it's very smart. I don't know who thought of that, but that was like, okay, let's make it so they can use

[00:19:54] it either way. And we don't have to make more different kinds of batteries. They still last a long time. I will say the, the batteries give you a, I had a, I had a lights out moment last week. I think one battery will beep a couple of times before it goes out. I got one battery that beeps once and it's gone. It was hilarious. Now mind you, I've always got another battery on the charger. It's not a big deal, but I just sort of laugh. Cause I'm like in the middle of something and it goes dark. And my assistant would, and I was laughing.

[00:20:21] It was no big deal, but it's a, it's, it's a great, it's a great thing to have. And I think that's gotta be a harder sell because they're dorky looking, you know, and they always, aren't they so heavy? I'm like, actually, it's not really heavy at all because the battery in my case kind of counterweights the light. So it's not, it's real comfortable. I'm heavy has never been an issue for me. I was a guy who wore the Buddy Holly designs for vision, you know, six power. So I guess heavy never really, and maybe, maybe my neck will, will hate me for it later, but it's never heavy was never really my issue.

[00:20:50] And then if you're really worried about heavy, get a microscope. Cause the wall does all the wall or the cart or whatever it's on. How often are you selling scopes that are mounted to the wall or ceiling versus the rolling cart? That's pretty much the most common ceiling and walls. Yeah. At least in the United States. Yeah. Floor stands very rare. Yeah. So the problem with the floor stand is a, how much room it takes up in your operator. If you've got a huge operatory, maybe, but, but the other thing is if you have to move

[00:21:17] it from one operatory to the other, you already won't cause it's, it's hard, you know, it's not, it's not impossible, but it's not super convenient where like, I just go grab it off the wall and go with it. So it makes sense. I've always said that. And of course that means you gotta buy more scopes, but, or, or work out at one operatory or whatever, but it's a. Yeah. And your assistant, it gets in the way of the assistant. Yeah. So if you make her move it from top to top, you know, they're not going to be happy with you. Well, the other thing is if you're moving it from top to top, you're probably also moving

[00:21:45] all the endo gear or you're moving all the, you know, you've already got carts, you're moving to deploy in different rooms. So doing that for the scope doesn't make any sense. I know that. I don't know. Most people probably don't buy a laser for each operatory unless they're really heavy in it. So you're already moving stuff. That's true. I'm, I'm, if I'm having something mounted the wall, not the scope to the wall. That's for sure. So I'm, I think let's wrap it up here. This was great. I, I, I appreciate you guys helping me skip class a little bit.

[00:22:11] If you guys I'll put their, their contact information in the show notes and like Spencer's based out of LA. Jeff is kind of, he's sort of all over the place. You do international stuff too, right? Yeah. I do wherever they need me. So you're kind of the zoom X guy in the United States. It's correct. Inova is the distributor for Zoom X in the United States, but you're like the Zoom X guy for United States and other places too. Correct. Okay, cool. So these, these are the guys, these guys know a lot of stuff and I appreciate you being on. Thanks. Yep. Thank you as well. Bye.