Kiera is a guest on The Zero Balance Podcast with John Stamper! She and John discuss the advancement of software over the past few years, and why the current culmination — artificial intelligence — isn't something to be skittish around in your practice.

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Transcript:

The Dental A Team (00:00)

Hello, Dental A Team listeners, this is Kiera. And today we are sharing a guest interview I did on another podcast. And it was too valuable not to bring you guys here.

this episode, you're gonna hear this host lead the conversation and then I'll wrap us up at the end. I cannot wait. It was truly one of my most

incredible episodes and I truly hope you enjoy.

John (00:19)

What's going on everybody. Welcome to another episode here on The ZeroBalance podcast brought to you by the team at Quanta Suite. Very excited to keep this thing going. Uh, our last conversations and episodes crazy to think it's 2026 already were at the Dykma conference. And I had the privilege of spending time, not only with the Quanta Suite team, but also a lot of great individuals that came on the podcast and talked about what they were seeing in that case, it was in the DSO space. Uh, I'm very excited today to

be with Kiera Dent from the Dental A team. I've known Kiera for many years. We were actually just talking before we came on here live. ⁓ she is doing a lot along with her team to help dental practices, take things to the next level. she's been in dental for many, many years. And so we're going to have a conversation today, ⁓ kind of around all things AI and automation and love to have her, you know, kind of share with all of you what she's seeing, you know, her and her team are working with dental practices on a daily basis. And obviously, you know, the Qantas suite team is, is creating.

their software in an effort to be able to support practices in the RCM world. But Kiera, it's such great to have you here. How you doing?

Kiera (01:26)

Oh my gosh, John, it's great to see you again. And I love chatting about all things dentistry. I love having the last name dent. I love dental. love AI. love, um, it's crazy. Dental A Team hits 10 years old this year, which is like absolutely wild. Uh, 2026, I was getting ready to, know, writing my goals out and I was like, Oh my gosh, I turned 40. My husband turns 40. We've been married for 15 years and Dental A Team hits 10 years this year. So

⁓ and I bring that up only because like, it's like a trifecta of a cool year for me. ⁓ but I think as you were discussing, like being in dental consulting for 10 years, having worked in front office teams, having worked at a dental college, having owned dental practices, having bought and sold, having consulted like 300 plus offices physically, ⁓ watching the DSO emerge, watching AI come in. I just think it's really like such a fun time for us to be in dentistry and so many great advancements and, yeah.

In Dental A Team, we are obsessed with doctors and teams, like getting them aligned, getting them streamlined, helping dentists be like CEOs and owners of their practices. We love ⁓ Josh, we love what he's building in DCS and now in Qantas. We think that they're doing some really fun, incredible things. And Dental A Team, we're just really big on, I think, streamlining dental practices, helping them say yes to more things. So getting them in their vision, getting financially free and profitable.

and then getting systems and team development to support that. And AI is definitely being a big player. And I think dentistry is, it's so fun because it's been such a, like, I think slow roll on evolution in certain ways. Sometimes I think we are very archaic. My husband's in healthcare and medicine and he's like, wait, that's your guys' software. I'm like, don't judge. I know it's a little dated. He's like, they didn't even have that when I started my career 15 years ago. ⁓ But I think,

to watch dentistry evolve into AI and automations and different things. I think we are in such a special time. So yeah, we work with solo practices. We work with multi practices. We work with emerging DSOs. We work with DSOs. We've got consulting for kind of a broad spectrum and kind of our sweet side, like two to five to $10 million practice. ⁓ We definitely have built a lot of things that can help multi offices, but yeah, we really love those offices that are obsessed about team, about culture and about.

just positively impacting the world of dentistry in the greatest way possible. So John, super excited to talk about it. I feel like we just have like so much knowledge to bring to the table and just rift and discuss and give your listeners hopefully a fresh, fun, positive perspective on the world of AI dentistry and of course bringing team and doctor perspectives to the table for you today.

John (04:03)

Well, thanks for sharing that. you can see, everybody, Kiera comes with a ton of energy, but it is rooted, as she mentioned, in years of experience in this industry. And here's where I wanted to start, Kiera. So I want to go back maybe like five or six years in dentistry when there was a lot of new software platforms that were coming to dentistry, patient engagement, right? It was like this big giant party and a lot of practices were excited. You may remember though, as someone that works directly with the dental practices with as much

excitement as there was there also was a little bit of overwhelm right because it's like where do we start like how do we build these in and it's funny that you talk about your husband because yes in dentistry these are all somewhat kind of new to the industry and so practices are figuring how to use them and I do feel like okay maybe a couple years ago with like firms like yourself that have really helped these practices figure out how to utilize them they got that under their belt and then

here comes AI, right? And here comes this whole new way for these practices to be able to communicate, you know, task orient and all that stuff. So that's kind of the first place I'd like to start is that when you look at the work that you do now with the dental practices and I say the word AI, where is everybody's heads?

Kiera (05:13)

Yeah. and agreed. I think, I think that this is just evolution of business. Like if I were to like even simplify it down, I think dentistry has been so much like we drill teeth, we fill teeth, but I'm like, guys, we have evolved. We don't do wooden teeth anymore. we've evolved and now there's laser and there's PRF and there's more advancements to dentistry that we do. Like I have a practice, I call them my PRF powerhouse and they've added PRF to their practices and we've added multi-millions to their office.

But like, yes, financially, that's been amazing, but their patient care has gone up so much, like the amount of results we're seeing. so when people are like, software's AIs, I'm like, hold on. You have evolved in your dentistry and you've seen how much it's evolved and how much better it is. I mean, the way we used to do crowns c...