From $250K to $2.1M — Full Arch Authority Framework | Full Arch Growth Podcast EP. 2

What I love about Spencer is that he’s genuinely nice, a genuinely helpful human being. And today we’re getting into the real stuff. How to stand out when corporate centers are moving into your market, what it actually takes to grow a full arch practice, and what most successful practices are doing that doctors really just haven’t figured out yet. Spencer, I’m so glad you’re here. Welcome to the show.

Spencer Walker
Hey, thank you so much, Chelsea. It is such a pleasure to be here. You’re just one of my favorite people out there too. And just so you know, too, I’ll say I almost became a dentist. I don’t know if you know that, but I was doing pre-dent. I shadowed a dentist. He did a tooth extraction. I almost passed out and I tapped out. I was like, I’m not doing that. And so instead I went and did marketing for dentists and it came full circle.

Chelsea Morrisey
That’s amazing. You learn something new every day. That’s awesome. I’m so excited for this conversation because I know you personally and I meant that in my intro when I said that I haven’t learned more from anyone in this space than you. It’s a whole system. It’s not any one part that someone can nail and be successful in full arch.

So speaking of that, talk about Dr. Burns because you told me about this case study the other day. In 2024, he did $250K in implant revenue, but couldn’t scale despite working with two former agencies. In 2025, he did $2.5 million in implant revenue, specifically $2.1 million in implant revenue. What did you find? What did you change? And specifically, which of those changes unlocked the most impact for Dr. Burns?

Spencer Walker
Yeah, that’s a great question. And I mean, that’s wild. Eight times growth. And I want to actually add to that because it’s even crazier when you know more of the backstory on Dr. Burns.

He did sign up with two different marketing agencies, only got three or four cases over about a year and a half. The problem that he was facing is that he’s in this little township in Northern Virginia of 3,000 people. His dental office is in a town of 3,000 people.

And the next nearest cities, he’s got one 45 minutes north and one 30 minutes south. People rarely go from a higher population density location out to a country doctor for services. They go into the city for services, not out of the city for services. So that’s what he was up against. Everybody was running ads, all this stuff was happening and he just wasn’t being successful.

But if I did have to point to one thing that really unlocked it for him, it was building more authority in the marketplace. We really doubled down on looking at his brand and helping people.

Once he got them in the practice, they were good. They had a really good team. They knew how to convert. He’s just really great with patients. His TC is phenomenal working with people. The problem was getting them to travel out to them.

With Full Arch, one of the things out there is it’s becoming more and more competitive. Everybody’s out there running ads saying, “Hey, I do dental implants. Look at my before and afters. Look, I can do this kind of work.”

Then they decide who they’re trying to pick inside of that city. There’s options, but why am I going to travel an hour out of the city or 45 minutes out of the city to go see somebody when I have all these options locally? We had to build a really good reason for them.

The truth is I’m not a special person. I just had the privilege of peering into hundreds of offices. When you get to peer into hundreds of offices, you start to see patterns of things that work and things that aren’t working and why this person is being successful versus that person.

From that, I found a framework that works. Pillar three out of this framework is all about authority. It’s your brand authority.

Some of the stuff that we did for Dr. Burns, this is kind of fun, just stuff that anybody can go and apply right now, is first off differentiation. Why the heck would I choose you? Why would I travel 45 minutes, 30 minutes, or even fly into you versus just going to the person down the street from me?

The first thing there is your unique value proposition. What makes you different?

For anybody that’s listening, let’s just have a quick conversation about what is not a UVP or unique value proposition. Please don’t use this stuff. What most people do use out there, or if you hire somebody to throw up a website for you, is general platitudes.

What is not a good UVP is “we really care a lot,” or “we’ll treat you like family.” Another one is “state-of-the-art equipment.” You use state-of-the-art equipment and say, “We really care. We have state-of-the-art equipment. Choose us.”

The thing about that is the end user, that patient, how do they assess that?

Our goal here is to create it so the value they’re perceiving of the product or service is much higher than the value of the money. That way they feel like they’re getting a deal. They feel like this is valuable to me. I want it and they’re only asking this amount of money.

We’ve all felt like that. We felt like we got a deal. And then we all felt like we’ve gotten taken advantage of or it’s overpriced. Why? Because the value of the money was here, but the value of that service or product was down here.

So the whole job of all that we’re doing here is to push this up and to do that better than anybody else out there. If we can push that up, that value perception, I call it an authority score. We can push that brand authority really high. Then when you drop the dollar amount, they’re like, “This is a no-brainer.”

How does a person assess “we really care” or “state-of-the-art equipment”? What does state-of-the-art equipment mean to that patient? Why do I care that you have state-of-the-art equipment? Sounds expensive. Sounds like you’re just charging me a lot of money.

If you can come out with differentiation that’s more along the lines of measurable facts, placed this many implants, teaches other doctors how to do it, has transformed this many smiles, or maybe you have one of those local voting things and you won the region, you’re the number one voted dentist in your area.

That’s a great way to show that people care because it’s not just you saying people care. It’s actually, no, look at the proof that we care.

Or with state-of-the-art technology, explain why that technology matters. We use this technology because this technology helps us place the implants in the best place in your jawbone that ensures it’s anchored stronger. It should last longer. It’s more likely to not fail.

Our goal here is a healthier, stronger implant that lasts longer and the investment with us will go further because of the technology.

Chelsea Morrisey
A simple trick that I use on the copywriting side, which maybe is helpful to the audience. If I’m going to talk about a piece of equipment, for example, I can say the Yomi robot places implants with 99% accuracy, which means for you faster healing, less time in the chair.

So the devil here isn’t the state-of-the-art equipment. The devil is that we’re having a hard time translating this equipment into a language that the consumer can understand when they’re trying to piece together what’s in it for them and the value that this practice provides.

Spencer Walker
Yeah. And here’s a favorite story of mine. There was this beer company called Schlitz Beer. They were number eight in sales in the nation. They hired this marketer to come in and he asked, “How do you make beer?”

They said, “Well, we take purified water, we take the hops, we make the beer.”

And then the marketer asked, “Well, how does your competition make beer?”

They said, “Well, they take purified water and the hops and they make the beer.”

And then the marketer said, “Well, nobody talks about it.”

So he rolled out these campaigns where he said, “The reason why Schlitz beer tastes so crisp and great is because of this purified water that they use to make it.”

Guess what? Everybody used purified water to make the beer, but nobody talked about it. He talked about it. Schlitz became number one for over a decade in sales based off these campaigns.

Doctors sometimes feel like, “I’m not different. I’m not doing anything different. I learned how to place implants.”

One of the fastest and easiest things that you can do to differentiate yourself is follow the Schlitz example. Come up with the doctor’s name, whatever your name is, the Morrissey Protocol, the Morrissey Method, or something like that.

Say, “This is my unique way of placing implants,” and you put your name on it. It doesn’t matter if the person down the street is following the same thing. You’re just putting a name on it. It’s the way you’ve chosen to do it. So it’s your method, your model. This belongs to you now.

Number one, if they’re talking about being a family-feel office, maybe a better way is to show local rewards or show reviews where people show that they really like them and they were treated like family.

Or if you care about your patients, maybe the best way is to talk about your aftercare program and why you do aftercare and the corporate centers don’t, for example. That is a way in which you care that is tangible and patients can understand.

Maybe for technology, instead of saying state-of-the-art technology, which doesn’t mean anything, you can use technology and talk to patients about the technology you have and why that’s valuable to them in terms of chair time or healing times.

You don’t have to necessarily be an award-winning doctor who’s placed a million implants, but you do have to translate to patients the value of what you do, and that value has to outweigh and outsize the price. If you can’t do that, you will struggle to sell.

Spencer Walker
And then on top of that, if you start capturing before and after photos, smile reveals or testimonials in video, all of a sudden you now have differentiation. You sound and look unique and you have proof of performance to back it up.

Including getting ratings and reviews online and making sure that you are maximizing the quantity. If you only have 20 reviews and your competition has 200, then that’s going to hurt you.

The goal is to ask everybody, invite everybody to leave you that rating or review so you can maximize that. It’s differentiation through social proof.

One final thing I would say to add in is educational content. And I’m not talking about the generic stuff that you can buy from companies that create generic videos for your website.

I’m talking about you educating, creating a video where you’re teaching and being the authority in your market. As you build up that library, share it on your social posts, share it on your website, have people help you create those videos and put them into ads and distribute them.

Then you look and sound different than everybody else. You have all this awesome social proof that backs that up, and then they see you teaching and the person who’s teaching becomes the authority.

You put that recipe together and this is how you become the person who people are willing to travel to from a big city out to the small country doctor.

Spencer Walker
One thing is building the authority. The next two in my framework, the first one’s actually excellent clinical skills, clinical authority, and then operations, making sure you’re running a sound operation, leading, holding your team accountable.

It’s not a sexy answer, Chelsea, but the number one reason why I see doctors fail in full arch is actually a mindset or leadership issue.

It’s a matter of holding the team accountable because people like you or people like I was before would come in, we would throw up this excellent marketing and then a doctor wouldn’t close. The team wasn’t following up. Leads weren’t getting called. There wasn’t follow through or follow-up.

They would do a consult and then nobody was following up after that and people were just falling through the cracks. There was no training. There was no obligation to get training or even if there was training, it wasn’t followed up on and mandated.

Doctors would frequently not show up to the consults. If the doctor didn’t make it a priority, then the team wouldn’t make it a priority.

The doctors that really showed up and cared and were involved and met with their teams regularly, those were the doctors that had the most success.

Chelsea Morrisey
What does holding your team accountable look like on a daily, weekly, monthly basis? When you see the highest performing practices, what meetings or components or spreadsheet do they have in place that separates them from the rest?

Spencer Walker
Typically, at a minimum, it’s a weekly check-in meeting where they’re going over metrics. They’re looking at roles and responsibilities. They’re seeing what’s going on and talking about it.

Usually, the highest performing ones have a daily huddle. It’s a quick, “Hey, how are things going? What’s going on with the pipeline? Any issues with it?”

So they can quickly identify problems. “Doctor, no leads came in today. What happened?” Or, “There’s hardly anybody on the schedule. Have you been calling the leads?”

Something stopped, and then you can see it and address it really quickly. Plus, it just holds the team accountable.

There is a point where there’s diminishing returns. I can’t set the goal at 300. But what I learned is clarity around the KPI that’s expected is the most important thing.

So if instead of “call the leads,” it’s “90 outbound dials today with an expectation to book 15 consults per week,” depending on your marketing budget, you should know what your expectation is based on your marketing budget and your marketing agency.

I think clarity for your treatment coordinator, so you actually know and they know if they’re missing the mark, means you feel like you have to micromanage the actual daily work slightly less.

Spencer Walker
Here’s the cool thing that I really love about full arch and this high ticket stuff. Once you get into it and you grow it, there can be some growing pains along the way.

But once you get into there, the full arch doctors that I know have more financial freedom. They have more time. They’re able to take some time and do things.

One of my clients, I remember I was doing an interview like this and he got emotional and actually teared up. He was like, “I’ve been able to do things with my wife and my kids that I never dreamed of.”

Before, he felt kind of like he was on this treadmill. He’s been able to break through the ceiling and do things that he never thought he would be able to do, give his kids certain things, and in fewer hours than what he was doing before.

That’s so cool to be able to set that up. I love calling these full arch patients and high ticket patients “freedom patients” because if we could get more of those, it literally translates to more freedom in your life.

It sounds exciting, but it can get messy and feel daunting. What are the hurdles that maybe doctors don’t see coming? Or what would you say is the smoothest way to make this transition? What hires do they need? What things would you put in place?

Spencer Walker
First off, it goes back to that initial team. It’s the appointment setter, which is the most overlooked.

Frequently what docs do is they hire or they just tell their front desk to call the leads and answer all the phones and schedule all these people.

One of the most important things to understand is that full arch patients are not your standard GP patients. It’s like you switch from playing baseball to cricket. It’s different.

The average full arch patient hasn’t been to a dentist in seven to ten years. It is a lot of anxiety and fear and nerves and fear going to the dentist and embarrassment and shame.

That’s a lot different from someone who just moved into an area and needs to find a new dentist to get their teeth cleaned because they’ve always gone to the dentist.

How you speak to them and how you create trust is really important, again, to push that authority score and value perception score high.

Usually, if you have your front desk trying to call the leads, it doesn’t go over very well. They’re busy. This patient on the phone is potentially worth $40,000 to $50,000 in your practice.

The person at the front desk is like, “I’m sorry. Can I put you on hold really quick? I just need to check somebody in.” That’s not going to go well.

Chelsea Morrisey
And that person had to get up the nerve to call because they’re so anxious. The second you give them a reason to, they’re gone.

Spencer Walker
Exactly. And even if the doctor has somebody calling in the back office, they don’t give them enough time to call or enough follow-up.

What I’ve found is that if you’re picking up the phone and dialing, it’s about 500 leads equals one full-time setter.

If you work with somebody who has a call center, who can leverage software to speed up the amount of dialing, speed to lead, speed to responding to that person, and get into evenings and Saturdays, that can make a big difference.

If you’re averaging 100 leads a month, you can calculate how much of this person’s time you need to set aside. If 500 leads equals a full-time 40-hour-a-week person, you’re probably going to be closer to a couple hours a day at 100 leads.

As you grow your lead volume, understand that unless you’re working with somebody who can handle that, you need to scale the team.

What I’ve learned is the sweet spot: you have to call more than you think.

Speed to lead is the biggest one. We call in under 20 seconds. Evenings and weekends are huge for connection rate.

Without evenings and weekends, we were maybe 30% less profitable as a company. When we added evenings and weekends, everything shifted for us.

And then the third thing is what cadence do you call? Almost all practices underdo it. They assume they’re calling too much and they’re actually not realizing this person needs to be followed up with.

By the time you finally connect with them, they’re like, “I’m glad you followed up with me.”

So we do two calls the first day, morning and evening, two the second day, two the third day, and then it starts to taper off. They never come out of our funnel unless they’ve got treatment elsewhere.

Most practices are underdelivering on that. And that doesn’t include the text touchpoints and email touchpoints too.

Spencer Walker
That’s what I teach people to do, but most people don’t have the capacity in the office to do that. It’s really hard and then they underdo it and don’t maximize their results or growth.

Dentists and practices are underestimating the amount that you need to dial to be successful. They’re assuming if they get to the leads once per day, that’s okay. It’s really not okay because speed to lead is impacted and the number of dials that they’re making on any given lead is impacted.

You paid $50 to $150 for that individual to be in your pipeline depending on the area. That $50 to $150 is pretty valuable. You want to make sure that you don’t just let them fizzle out in the pipeline.

Just be understanding of their time. Especially if you put your office manager in and you’re like, “Oh, my office manager is my treatment coordinator.”

I’ve seen so many doctors plateau in growth because you’re putting too much on the team. I’ve been on plenty of phone calls where that person in the office is crying to me and I’m supposed to help them be successful, but the doctors put so much on their plate that they literally can’t get it all done. Then they feel overwhelmed and stressed.

Understanding that say 300 leads equals one full-time treatment coordinator.

You’ve got to follow up and follow up and follow up and follow up with these people. Most sales, most closes occur in the follow-up. If you’re doing too little of that, you’re just missing out.

But the other important thing is weighing capacity because that again is a killer. Understanding how much can I take on, then getting to that point where you can bring on that associate and have that associate take over your GP stuff and have you just double down.

That’s not everybody’s goal. But for the person that wants to continue to grow and scale, a lot of doctors say, “If I could just do full arch all the time, that would be my dream.”

It’s that process of growing, growing, growing, working really hard and being overwhelmed and stressed for a little bit, and then getting to the point where you can bring on that associate and free yourself up to continue to grow and scale.

So, appointment setters are the first, TCs are the second, and doctor capacity is the third.

Spencer Walker
That’s a great question. I wish I had a more defined answer for you. I’ve seen different doctors jump there.

Part of it is how much GP do you already have in your practice? How well established are you already? Do you already have another GP or a partner? There’s a lot of nuance.

I know that they’ve all been at different areas. It can be scary and daunting, but I want you guys to know it’s possible. It happens all the time.

I think you’ll kind of feel it because you’ll see the revenue and what’s coming in. The number one thing is, if you’re looking at your profitability, do you have enough profitability to afford to bring on that person? Do you have enough work and profitability to bring that person on?

Chelsea Morrisey
One thing I know from scaling business is one of the biggest mistakes I’ve ever made in my career is hiring too late.

You need to hire for where you’re going and not for where you are. That requires a leap of faith, a bit of risk and a bit of confidence.

Nothing is worse than hiring too late. It causes all sorts of systemic issues: burnout with the team, burnout for yourself, bad customer service experience and bad patient experience.

If the indicators point to you having a working system that’s scalable and proven, and you know you can get these patients in and you know you can close them, you might be at that point just getting in the way of what could be if you opened up your schedule more and freed up your practice for you to dedicate more time to this.

I don’t know that it’s ever going to be comfortable no matter what the numbers tell you on the paper. If the numbers tell you you’re ready, it might even be a little too late sometimes. You don’t hire reactively. Or if you do, you’re in the soup.

What does a patient actually need to see and feel from their website in order for them to be seen as a full arch authority and for the patient to trust them?

Spencer Walker
Back in the day I tracked a lot of websites and what I found was that the average dental website was converting traffic at around 1 to 3%. Two to three percent was probably most common.

Out of every 100 unique visitors to the website, two to three people were either calling or filling out a form to request a consult.

Most people that design a website can make it look pretty. There are a lot of places that will make a website pretty. The problem is they don’t make it persuasive.

The second thing is they’re talking about facts. It’s a brochure of what you do. “I do dental implants, I do this, I do that,” but not the “which means.”

This is life transforming. This is why.

When we were running ads for people, our landing pages were getting 12 to 20% conversion rates, while websites were getting 1, 2, 3%.

We took the forms off of the landing pages and stuck them on the website. We instantly started getting 5 to 8% plus conversion rates.

Then when we overhauled the language, images and the way it was designed to be more emotional, showing people’s lives who were transformed, before and afters, videos and stories, we saw 8, 12, 15% conversion rates.

You have to make it pretty, but you also have to make it persuasive.

People typically don’t buy because of facts. They buy because of emotion. They see what it is and they want that. Then they use logic to justify the emotion.

Most websites are full of logic, all the reasons, state-of-the-art stuff, without the emotional reasons. “I want that. I want safety. I want security. I want to be out of pain.”

Most websites are really missing that emotional stuff.

Most websites have a phone number, contact us, or maybe schedule an appointment. All of that is what I would call a medium to high threshold offer.

Most people, especially full arch patients who are nervous or afraid, or who haven’t been to a dentist in a long time, need to be invited to take action.

You want to actually ask them to do something. But a medium to high threshold offer is like telling somebody to come home and meet the parents on the first date or get married on the first date.

Most people need to be eased into that relationship.

Offering a lower threshold offer, like “Fill out this form to get a pricing and information guide” or “Fill out this form to find out if you’re a candidate for dental implants,” gives people a smaller step.

Some people are ready for the consult. That’s great. You should still have it on there and invite those people to take action. But you should also have lower-threshold calls to action.

Informational and educational video can also be valuable on the website. It gives people something to learn from if they’re not quite ready for a consult, and that’s valuable because it’s relationship building.

Your unique value proposition should be woven through the website. Your social proof, video testimonials, before and afters, smile reveals, Google reviews and educational content should all be there.

Posting on social media has a big trap. There are agencies out there that will have you pay just to post. Usually it’s “don’t forget to brush your teeth,” “happy dental week,” or generic content that people don’t care about.

If people aren’t engaging with your content, your content isn’t going to show up in other people’s feeds.

The way you get the algorithm to work in your favor is to post content that people actually like and engage with.

The number one thing that I have found if you’re a dentist, to really take advantage of social media, is transformational dentistry. Implants, cosmetic, even teeth whitening. Before and after type stuff.

That’s the kind of stuff people will engage with. They’ll binge that content because they want to see all these stories and pictures.

So that’s my social media strategy: your unique value proposition, your social proof, before and afters, video testimonials and educational content.

Chelsea Morrisey
I almost feel like the theme of today has been to show, not tell.

Instead of saying patients love us, show reviews. Instead of saying we care about patients, show a warranty. Instead of saying we make beautiful teeth or create beautiful smiles, show beautiful smiles.

Show a lot of them and show every case. The best time to start taking pictures and documenting your work is today. It doesn’t matter if you didn’t do it before. Just get a ring light, get a camera and get out there.

We do need to show, not just tell. It’s not believable enough otherwise.

We want to save doctors the trauma of wasted money with the wrong full arch provider. Every marketing company in the full arch space is going to tell them results, ROI, they can do this and everything under the sun.

How does a doctor actually know how to pick the right full arch marketing company? What’s a good checklist for them to work through?

Spencer Walker
For one, a lot of the stuff that we just talked about today. When you sign up, are they just saying, “Welcome on board. We’ll get ads going,” and then spinning up ads?

Usually, what they’re doing is using generic ads that they use with everybody. It’s some kind of basic template that they roll out for everybody.

It’s fine to have a proven template, but when there’s no differentiation in any of the ads, they’re not focused.

When they come on, are they talking about unique value proposition? Are they talking about how do I differentiate? Why should somebody choose you over anybody else?

Because frequently it’s just, “Okay, we’ll just spin up some ads and go,” as opposed to, “We need to build your authority in the marketplace. What is your authority? Let’s help pull that out and craft that.”

Another one is budget. Full arch marketing is intense and you’re going to put some budget into it to get patients out.

If somebody comes in and says, “I’ll run full arch ads for you and just give me a budget of $2,000 or $2,500,” those people are just taking your money. You’re not going to hit your goals.

Somebody who’s really going to come in will be honest with you about what it takes, recommend based on your goals what the appropriate budget is, and be realistic with you.

These are true partners that are going to help you put the systems and processes in place and appropriate budgets so that you can truly be successful.

If they do websites, look at their websites. Do they have low-threshold offers? If they do, are they just sticking them at the bottom of the page? Most people don’t scroll to the bottom of the page.

Is that lower-threshold offer towards the top of the page? Do they have the emotional stuff built into the website? Are they helping you?

These are all things you can assess to see whether these people really know what they’re doing.

Also, some agencies just do Meta and you’re missing out because Google is full of patients that have higher buyer intent. You want both. There’s opportunity in both.

Multi-channel marketing is important. You want an agency that understands all of that and can tackle all of that for you.

Chelsea Morrisey
I always say the most expensive marketing is cheap marketing. The most expensive is the cheap marketing agency because even with big offers and guarantees, they’re not covering your ad spend, and your ad spend is generally a bulk of the cost.

So it gets really expensive when you work with the wrong partner.

Spencer Walker
One more thing is that they shouldn’t expect you to be the person who’s going to create your ads and design it all yourself.

An agency should understand that you need high-quality content and have a tool or team that can help create it.

If there’s no support in creating the creative, no videographer, no how-to guide, no feedback, that tells me this agency is not dialed in. It doesn’t understand the true depth of what these patients really care about and what it really takes to be ultra successful.

Find an agency that supports you in that as well.

Spencer Walker
When I left the agency, I was seeing clients come and hop from agency to agency. They’d go to another, they’d come back, hoping that they’d get these magical leads that would all just convert, and then they weren’t all converting.

It comes down to a lot of these systems and processes and what’s happening inside the practice and the brand and all that kind of stuff.

Most full arch doctors I know either aren’t hitting their goals consistently or have plateaued and are having a hard time getting past that.

So I left because I wanted to take this framework and reach out and help more doctors put this in place. You put this in place and all of a sudden you can start to scale.

What’s funny is with the framework, you can take a mediocre marketing agency and do okay. You can take a fantastic, excellent marketing agency and you can dominate.

What I do now is I coach and consult people.

Chelsea Morrisey
You really are one of the most helpful people that I’ve ever encountered in my years of business, not just in the Full Arch industry, but just business. Very selfless and helpful.

I’m sure everyone who’s listening to this agrees that you are an absolute fountain of knowledge. Thank you so much.

We’re going to have to have you back for part two. We only got through a fraction of my questions because there is so much to talk about.

Thank you, Spencer. Really appreciate it.

Spencer Walker
Yeah. Life is an A-B test for me. The question is, it’s good, but can it get better? Usually the answer is yes. Everything. You just got to keep pushing.

Chelsea Morrisey
Thanks, Spencer. We’ll talk soon. Appreciate you. Bye-bye.