This week on Teeth and Tunes, host Dr. Davis Morgan sits down with fellow Lubbock dentist Dr. Mohaad Faraj, prosthodontist and owner of Eleve Dental, for a conversation that runs from a potato farm outside Damascus to the future of digital dentistry. Dr. Faraj shares his journey from rural Syria to Connecticut, where he completed his undergraduate degree, dental school, and prosthodontics residency at the University of Connecticut, before moving to Lubbock and eventually opening his own practice. The two dig into how clinical photography, first used in residency to document complex cases and track his own improvement, became the backbone of his marketing, patient trust, and smile design work with dental labs, and they trace the shift from traditional impressions to digital scanning, photogrammetry, and 3D printing while looking ahead to AI, in-house milling, and printable zirconia. Dr. Faraj also explains how Instagram opened the door to teaching, from lecturing on immediate implant placement to hosting mini-residencies in his practice, and offers advice for new grads weighing DSO jobs against ownership, insurance fee schedules, and which CE is worth taking, before closing on the “tunes” side of the show: writing, recording, and producing Arabic R&B music through the Syrian civil war and dental school. Topics Covered: growing up on a potato farm in rural Syria, from UConn prosthodontics residency to practice ownership in Lubbock, how clinical photography makes you a better clinician, turning clinical photos into marketing and patient trust, the move from traditional impressions to scanning and 3D printing, AI, in-house milling, and printable zirconia, getting into CE teaching through Instagram, advice for new grads on DSOs, ownership, and choosing CE, fitness for career longevity, and writing Arabic R&B music as a stress reliever. Subscribe for more episodes of Teeth and Tunes.

This week on Teeth and Tunes, host Dr. Davis Morgan is joined by his wife, Trina Morgan, who has worked alongside him on the business side of the practice since his DFW days, for a conversation on why dental insurance hasn't kept up, how they escaped the high-volume treadmill, and the philosophy that reshaped their practice: more dentistry on fewer patients. The two look back at how a typical dental benefit has sat at roughly $1,000 to $1,500 a year since 1990, never keeping pace with the real cost of supplies, lab work, and materials, and why that pushed them to gradually walk away from capitation plans and restrictive PPO contracts. Trina shares how replacing those plans with an in-house discounted family fee plan proved far more profitable than playing by insurance company rules, while Dr. Morgan explains the "calf roping" trap of high-volume dentistry, why young dentists shouldn't take on their patients' financial limitations as their own, and how intraoral cameras and high-quality photography transformed both patient education and the quality of his work. Topics Covered: why dental insurance benefits have been stagnant since 1990, moving from single-tooth fixes to comprehensive diagnosis, the volume trap of multi-operatory dentistry, dropping capitation and bad PPO contracts, building a profitable in-house family fee plan, Dr. Pete Dawson's "more dentistry on fewer patients" philosophy, the power of patient education tools, and the small in-office team versus the larger digital team behind a modern practice. Subscribe for more episodes of Teeth and Tunes.

This week on Teeth and Tunes, host Dr. Davis Morgan sits down with Dr. Justin Bonner, a board-certified oral and maxillofacial surgeon at Northwest Texas OMS in Lubbock, for a conversation on the winding road into oral surgery, why referrals — not ads — drive a specialty practice, and how everything from phone etiquette to the music in the operatory is really marketing. Dr. Bonner shares how he grew up in a dental family, took an unconventional route through school, and pivoted from a path toward medical school to oral surgery after shadowing and interning along the way. He and Dr. Morgan compare how their very different practice models shape their approach — a fee-for-service complex-care practice that grew through social media versus a referral-based oral surgery practice that treats the referring dentist as its true customer. Topics Covered: an unconventional path into oral surgery, why careers don't have to be rigidly planned, residency and surgical training, how practice type shapes marketing, referral-based growth and treating the referring office as the customer, the "everything is marketing" philosophy, and using music to calm patients and set the office tone. Subscribe for more episodes of Teeth and Tunes.