Dr. Jon Marashi - Celebrity Dentist & Entrepreneur | How a Dentist Built a $1 Billion Dollar Brand By Seeing What Others Missed

I did not come from an affluent family. I knew at a very early age that if I wanted anything in life, I had to go out and find ways to earn money. What do skateboarding Hollywood smiles in a billion dollar exit having common? One name, Dr. John Marashi, known as the Tom Ford of cosmetic dentistry. Dr. Marashi has designed smiles for some of the biggest names in entertainment, but his influence doesn't stop there. As the co-founder of Bite, he disrupted the orthodontic space with a direct-to-consumer model, leading to a one-billion dollar acquisition by Densplai Serona. I'm a firm believer that opportunity passes us by all day long and it's just whether you're open to receiving it. My path to entrepreneurship outside of working in someone's mouth. This particular patient asked me, don't you have anything nicer than the toothbrushes you sell the outfit? I said, no. She looks at me and she goes, why don't you make one? Man, it just hit me. That's what took me down the rabbit hole on my first project. The second year of business, we had a run rate of a hundred million dollars, so we had a 10x multiple when we got out. From artistry and the clinic to innovation in the boardroom, Dr. Marashi's story is about more than teeth. It's about vision, execution, and reimagining what's possible. The crowd that we spray out of your mouth during the teeth cleaning, it's linked to diabetes, cardiac issues, and dementia. It's 25 years of experience of doing it wrong and figuring out what works. But the shortcut that I would tell someone is... Welcome to success story. I'm your host, Scott Clary. The success story podcast is part of the HubSpot podcast network. Now HubSpot doesn't just have great podcasts. They also have great tools for entrepreneurs. Let me tell you a story. I'm sure you've all heard of the Angel City Football Club. Well, you don't just become the world's most valuable women sports franchise by accident. Angel City Football Club did it. The little help from HubSpot. When they started, data was housed across multiple systems. In HubSpot, unified their website, their email marketing, and fan experience in one platform. This allowed their small team of three to build an entire website in just three days. The results were nearly 350 new fan signups a week and a 300% database growth in just two years. Sure, you can be a great team in the arena. But if you truly want to build a legacy of franchise and a dynasty, you have to build a community outside of the arena. And HubSpot helped Angel City Football Club do just that. If you want to learn about how HubSpot can help your business, visit HubSpot.com. There's some other great case studies and you'll learn how HubSpot can help your business grow better. And one quick ask. Before we dive into today's episode, I need your help with something important. I've just launched a quick survey to better understand what you guys want from the show. And your feedback is going to directly shape our upcoming content. It's only going to take a few minutes of your time, and I made it super easy to find. Just head over to ScottyClarry.com slash survey. And as a thank you for helping me out, I'm giving away a free gift card to one lucky responded chosen at random once we hit 100 responses. So not only will your feedback help make this show even better, you might score something cool just for sharing your thought. I really appreciate your help with this one. Dr. Marashi, I'm excited you're here. You have been redefining cosmetic dentistry for over two decades and counting now. But you're also an entrepreneur. So I'm curious what was the point in your life when you realize that dentistry could be an art as well as a platform for entrepreneurship? It's a great question and thanks for having me here today. And it's really one of my favorite stories to tell. You know, I'm a firm believer that opportunity passes us my all day long and it's just whether you're open to receiving it. And my path to entrepreneurship outside of working in someone's mouth was just purely happenstance. And what happened was I was in my practice doing a checkup on someone who just finished a teeth cleaning. And this particular patient asked me, she said, don't you have anything nicer than the toothbrushes you sell in the office? And at that time, my practice just like everyone else's, you know, either had a sonic hair or an oral beat. And they're great toothbrushes. And I was like, what do you mean? She's like, well, I don't like it. I said, well, what is that you don't like about it? And she said, well, it's just a cheap white piece of plastic. Isn't there anything nicer? I said, well, no, I mean, this is the best that there is. And she looks at me, she goes, well, why don't you make one? And man, it just hit me like a sack of bricks in the head. And it would have been very easy just to, you know, kind of, you know, and you know, check her teeth and go on. But the rest of the day, I was still thinking about it. And I'm like, why don't I make one? I wonder, I wonder if I could. And so when I finished work that day, I sat down on my computer, you know, open up a Google browser and said, my first search was this, how to manufacture a sonic toothbrush. And the day and age that we live in is insane because you can get so much information that you never had access to for. And the stuff that came up was just unbelievable. And that's what took me down the rabbit hole on my first project, which was an oral healthcare company called Mirashi oral health. I wanted to build a luxury sonic toothbrush. And this project, you know, took me a while. It took me from start to finish. It took me two years to get to market. And it was full of, you know, setbacks and failures and challenges, you know, like, think about this. So at that point in my career, I know teeth. That's it. I know how to, you know, work on teeth, make teeth healthy, make smiles look beautiful. Do you think that my dental school training taught me anything about supply chain, packaging, shipping, material, safety compliance testing, UL? Do you know how many pantons of rose gold there are? It's mind blowing. And so, you know, you get sucked down this rabbit hole. And then there's the time commitment too, right? You know, like, I have a full time job already. So I'm working on this, you know, late at night and in the morning, so on the weekends. And then you're spending a lot of money doing it too, right? And, you know, I bootstrapped this one myself. And, you know, every month that you're spending thousands of thousands of dollars developing this thing. And then you're getting back product that's junk and it doesn't work and you're, you know, giving it out for free because you want to get feedback from people. And finally, you get to something where you're like, oh, wow, like I'm proud of this. Let's get it to market and see what happens. So, you know, the process was an incredible amount of brain damage. But what it did for me is I, you know, I built this muscle that I didn't even know that I had. And it was only through trial and error. And when it finally launched, you know, I had some good fortune on my side and Vogue magazine did a story on it and one of their issues. And it was about a half page or so. And it highlighted the toothbrush and, and my dental practice and affiliation was celebrity. And, so it was a really amazing learning experience, you know, it's interesting that I think that, you know, when you talk about entrepreneurship, they always say like, oh, there's like a 95% failure rate. Yeah. But I believe that your version of entrepreneurship where you lived in an industry for so long then saw the opportunity. I think that you flip those numbers on its head. It's not easy. But I think that that's, that's the secret to successful entrepreneurship. You have to have like insider information on, on a pain point that no one else would ever see. A lot of people probably don't realize that whatever was on the market or in the market at that point was not good enough for for the majority of people. They wanted something better. They wanted something new. You were living in it. You saw it. Now it's still very hard to after having a successful career, take yourself out of the comfort zone, take yourself out of what you know every single day and then go and become an entrepreneur. That's not easy. That's not easy at all. But you in that position had the best possible chance of success because you lived in it and you understood the industry better than anyone else. So I just find it interesting that people think about entrepreneurship in terms of like drop out of Stanford, go build the next Facebook or Amazon or fixer Google when people that were in your position, they could have been successful entrepreneurs. But they never, they're high earning. Other dentists for example, they're high earning. They probably saw the opportunity too. It's not like you're the first person that thought of this idea. Not at all. But they just didn't want to go down that that journey. And they would have had the chance of success that you had if they had taken themselves out of that comfort zone and pushed themselves into something brand new. I think that opportunity exists for everyone and you bring up a good point. It's about, you know, the ideas they come and go in your mind and do you actually do something with it? I have a friend of mine, Scott Marlatt and he was one of the first 50 employees at Facebook. And so you can imagine after the company IPO, like, dude, didn't need to work again. And he went on to found the company GoodRx. And you know, they do that coupon for medications and prescriptions. And that company IPOed at 1.8 billion. The guys doing just fine. And he's one of the nicest fellows who meet. Well, our kids go to school together and, you know, we've spent a lot of time together over the years and we talk about business and entrepreneurship. Now, here's an interesting thing. His dad was actually a dentist. And I was like, oh, no, kidding. I had no clue. And Scott was an engineer by training. And, you know, he decided that he wanted to do something, you know, kind of more meaningful and bigger and better than what a traditional engineer would do. And that's why he went the route of doing us being part of a startup. But one of the things that we talked about one time was leveraging what you know already. So for myself as a businessman and an entrepreneur, you know, like, I could have done anything, just like anybody else could. But for me to go into something that I knew nothing about at all would have required an exponentially greater lift of knowledge and expertise. Whereas at the time when I started the toothbrush company, I already knew dentistry. I already knew toothbrushes in general because it's something that everyone uses. I was very familiar with what the pain points were. And so, you know, Scott talks about, hey, listen, you don't have to, you know, invent something. You know, it's better to copy genius than invent mediocrity. It's an old saying. But I really piggybacks on what you were saying about you can take something that in industry that you're already in and start thinking about it differently. Like in dentistry, for example, you can think about, well, what are the pain points that dentists have? What are the everyday problems that your staff would have or your patients would have? And when you start asking better questions, you know, you're going to get better answers. And when you can think about things that either have not been addressed ever, which could be disruption, or things that could be done more efficiently, you know, you're more likely to get mass adoption of it. When you, because you've done both, yeah, now you've done both. So with bite, I would consider that disruption. Bite was total disruption. So when you think about either of those businesses, if you're talking to like a young entrepreneur that's just getting started, which version of entrepreneurship do you recommend? All the above. And I'll tell you why. Because you don't know what idea is going to hit. You just, you flat out don't know. Share a great story with you. Jamie Simmonoff is the founder of the Ring Doorbell. Really good buddy of mine. And we've talked about this several times. And as I've talked to him about my entrepreneurial endeavors over the years, one of the things that he told me is he calls it the fifth idea. He said, your first idea may not be your best, or maybe it's a great idea, but you didn't execute it properly. So it didn't go anywhere. So oftentimes it's not until your fifth idea where you've gained the necessary experience that you can actually do something to move the needle and get traction. And it's actually less and less about the idea as opposed to the execution upon it. So you know, that was really, it was a very powerful statement. And it's wisdom too, if you think about it, you know, to have the expectation that the first time you do something that you're going to be amazingly successful with it, you know, that's why you have that 95% failure rate, right? Yeah. So when you think about failure, you know, in our culture in the United States, failure is frowned upon. And people, people fear it and they shy away from it. But failure is really nothing more than just, you know, lessons that you learn. And what do you do with those lessons that you learned? And how do you, you know, make better decisions and use that as experience learning of how to do it better the next go around. So, you know, I think as a culture, if we embraced it as thinking like, oh, I messed this up, I failed. I'm no good as opposed to, okay, I'm just getting my reps in and developing and building myself and my abilities and my knowledge base and my experience. I think people would probably have a higher threshold or higher tolerance for doing entrepreneurial endeavors. And I wish more people thought about it like that. I think that I think that it's very hard, especially if you don't have the influence around you, the positive influence around you that's saying things like you're saying to persevere for an extended period of time or through the first four failures to get to the fifth. I think more often than not, especially because failure is frowned upon. I mean, it's in our circles, we hear, we hear these sayings and these like entrepreneurial algorithms all the time, right? Like failure is less than, you know, you have to fail. Like, these are things that we embrace because we've lived through them multiple times, so we know they're true. But if you've never, if you've never built anything before, it's very hard to understand that idea because failure feels like shit, failure feels horrible. And I'm curious, even leaning back to your going back to your own story, what were your first failures? What were your first four ideas that led to the fifth that was successful? What was the thing that you tried that didn't work out? And then how did you persevere through it? What was the mental model or the strategy that even for, I mean, even for, for building a toothbrush for two years with no understanding of supply chain and logistics and all the other things that come with creating a consumer good? What was the thing that allowed you to do that for two years? When at any point, you could have said, you know what? F this I make good money. I make good money as a dentist. I don't need his headache because that could have happened at any point on that two year journey. Yeah, it could have happened with the first Google search, you know, just like, like, what am I getting myself into? I have always felt and, you know, maybe it's just my own internal drive that if you put your mind towards something, you know, that you can do it. And, you know, maybe I had some of the rose colored glasses on on the toothbrush endeavor. And I'll tell you why because I didn't think it would be near as hard as it actually was. And so, you know, I'm like, when I ran my first search and I'm like, okay, cool, there's, you know, offshore manufacturing. And I can talk with these folks and start dealing with design and getting some prototypes. But like the first factory that I worked with was such a dud, it was unbelievable. But I didn't know until I had burned a ton of time and a ton of money. And you're getting this product back, but it's just not right. And, you know, you're like, God, you know, you feel it. You the angst, like, how come it's not right? It's costing me time. It's costing me money. Should I still be doing this? The self doubt is always there. I think anyone who says otherwise just isn't really being forthcoming about it, you know, because you do ask yourself those questions. Like, am I doing the right thing? And the reality is like, you don't know. I mean, no one knows if it's going to work or if it isn't, but there has to be this. And money ties into it too, right? Because if all you're trying to do is make more money, your motivation for it probably won't be as intrinsic. I think my motivation was trying to develop something that hadn't been done. And for me, the reward for that of like, wow, I created something, you know, a segment of the market that did not exist that people wanted and they went out and purchased. And my name was on it. To me, I was like, that'd be pretty dang cool. So that was more of the motivator. And, you know, what people saw was the outcome, you know, like it went to market, it got traction, you know, got press. But the part that folks didn't see was all the setbacks along the way. And how many times I had to go back to the drawing board and all the extra time and money and so forth. And, you know, if you if you waited out, you know, only the individual can answer was it worth it. But for me, it was, you know, I have another buddy who's a banker and he's been very successful and he told me something similar to the fifth idea concept, but he also talked about, you know, what what his definition of success wasn't. And he told me he goes, my mentor had told me that it wasn't all about making the most amount of money. It was about being able to do what you want when you want with whom you want. And I was like, wow, I mean, that's really freedom in life. Yeah. So if you have something that you believe in that you think is going to change the world in in some small way, right? You know, like helping people solve problems, whatever that problem is, you know, that's a strong motivator. I don't know what else to say around that. No, it's good advice. I think that that's I think that that's what people should optimize for. They should figure out what they're optimizing for and let that pull them through all the hard times. And I think that's why money a couple ideas. Money can never be the motivator. And I also hate the word motivation because motivation the second something gets hard. It's out the window. Like it's gone, right? It's gone immediately. And and and if you're only pursuing it for money or some first initial fire or motivation when the hard times happen, which they inevitably will, you'll, you'll give up. You'll move on to something else and you'll and the sad thing is, I mean, all these clichés are so true. Like all the successes on the other side of of that pain and that anxiety and that stress that you will inevitably endure on this entrepreneurial journey. But the other side is worth it because then you do get true freedom and true fulfillment once you figure out how to get through all those hard times. Well, the failure too on top of it are the things that build your resiliency and better prepare you for, you know, what the next project is going to be true. You know, rush your oral health was a precursor to my larger success in life, you know, which was the company by and for those of you listening, bite was a direct to consumer clear aligner company. So imagine if you could go and get in vis-a-line done, but you didn't have to walk into the dentist's office to do it. And I'll share with you how that became about because it's a very interesting story. So, you know, the elephant in the room when it comes to dentistry is two things. One, I don't care where in the world you are, it's expensive. No one wants to talk about that, you know, especially the dentist, but it is. And I always thought access to care was an issue too. And what I mean by that is not that there isn't a dentist, you know, within a certain radius of you. But if you stop and think about it, you know, for you to go to the dentist at, you know, at an 11.30 a.m. appointment on a Tuesday, well, you got to actually carve out a pretty good chunk of your life to do that. Yeah, exactly. You got to commute, you got to do the appointment, then you got to go back to where you were, and not only did you have to spend money to, you know, at the dentist's office, but you also lost money because you weren't working during that time. I mean, it's a, I mean, like you think about the value proposition of that, and at least think good, you're getting good oral health out of it, but there is an opportunity cost, is my point. So, I started thinking about like, okay, I've been very blessed in my career that I got to become Dr. Fancy Pants and take care of all these fun Hollywood people, but what about everybody else? And so the driving question was, could there be a quality product or service that could be delivered at scale, where it eliminated the high cost, and it created a better accessible model. Yeah. And that's how, how bite came about. Clear liners was not new in dentistry. It had already been around for a while. But what I was able to do with this company, and I always like to give credit to where it's due, because I had two fantastic partners that I was able to join this team and be on the founding team and help this thing grow. Love you, Blake and Scott is a little shout out. Was that we found a better way of doing it. We built a better mouse trap and a cooler way of doing it. And, you know, timing really factors into it. So this is, this is actually the kind of the crux of the story here. So it was, you know, we launched in 2018. And it took us a year of development to actually get to market it. And we started getting some traction. And 2019 sales started picking up and we're like, okay, cool. You know, like we might actually be able to do something with this. And the company was bootstrapped and we didn't want investor money so we could make our own decisions and, you know, react accordingly based on the ground condition. You learned a lot of this stuff from again past. Exactly. You know, I already had experience in product and all of this. But imagine this, you know, rewind the clock to March of 2020. What happened? Over there. Right? Exactly. Okay. So my dental practice, I had to close my doors. And as did a lot of folks and we thought the world was over, right? I mean, nobody knew there was so much uncertainty. Now, picture this. We're having a conversation right now, me and you. I couldn't tell you to save my life if I had a piece of breakfast burrito between my two front teeth. Why? Because I can't see myself. But during COVID, outside wherever you lived or your COVID bubble that you participated in, how did you communicate with people? Exactly. Zoom, face type. Yeah. So now we're spending hours down the screen and guess what? Everyone was looking at their face. And the number one thing people notice in conversation is actually the mouth. Why? Because it moves the most so the eyes get drawn there. So mouth and teeth, your smiles, number one, eyes are number two, hairs number three. And there's been numerous studies that have come to the same conclusion. So now all of a sudden, you got the whole world on zoom, face time, etc. And they're going, oh my God, I didn't realize how bad my teeth are. And we're all our own worst critics, you know, where to come us to self. But here's the problem. Guess what? John Marashi's dental office is closed. I can't help anybody. Yeah. But bite could help everybody because we were a direct to consumer model. So now you got all these people, all of a sudden that don't like their smile. So they got a pain point, right? And they're driven by the vanity of it. And they're like, Hey, I want to have a healthier smile, but a better looking smile. And bite was here. We were the we were the antidote. You know, we were the aspirin and the vitamin at the same time. And because the business, you know, we thought we thought the bite was going to go under, but the exact opposite happened that all of a sudden this demand was insatiable. Why did you think that before COVID? No, when COVID hit is when we thought we were like, all right, we're screwed now. All this hard work was for nothing, you know, because no one's going to spend money and everyone's going to be, you know, like just like everyone else thought, but the exact opposite happened. And, you know, we couldn't have forecasted that. You know, that was just that was a total stroke of luck that all of a sudden demand skyrocketed. And, you know, there were not enough hours in the day, you know, to meet demand. It was absolutely insane, but we were in position. And the company had been structured, you know, through the skill and expertise of my partners that, you know, the supply chain had already been worked out. And, you know, we had, you know, we were running lean and mean. So, you know, we weren't like a bloated pig with overhead. And, you know, because otherwise, you're just growing a brain hemorrhage at that point. So, you know, we were in position to really let this thing run. When, when something, when you bring up and you think of an idea and you create a company like bite, how do you balance? So, how would you balance sort of the same in office experience with innovation? Because innovation is moving fast. And I think that the reason why it wasn't done at that point was because it was, it was hard to correct someone's smile direct to consumer. So, when you think about how do you create the best product that can still serve the customer in the same way and replicate the in office experience while being direct to consumer, what are the things that you have to think of? How much innovation has to be done to do it properly? Technology was the driver on this. It couldn't have been done in the past because of the technology didn't exist for it. Yes. Okay. So, having the technology available, it was basically just a jigsaw puzzle first at that point and say, okay, if we want to do our business model like this, how do we use the available technology that we can do it efficiently and cost effectively? So, you know, before I want you to think of like this, like if you wanted to get a clearer liner like an invisible line tray, you had to go to a brick and mortar office. And there had to be a dentist or a dental professional, them taking the mold of your teeth, right? And then every time that you needed a new tray, you'd go back in and then they would remold you. But technology allowed us to send the customers. They took the mold themselves. And then we could scan it when it came back and the software could actually move the teeth. So, you only needed that first mold. It would show the progression. Exactly. It was like a virtual time lapse of the teeth movement. And then 3D print each sequential movement of tooth and build trays and aligners based on that to get someone to the finish line. You couldn't do that in the past. And also this goes back to that very first point I made about it. Unless you're in it, unless you're in this industry, you wouldn't have seen that opportunity. I wouldn't. That's for darn sure. Yeah. That's in my opinion, that is the most beautiful version of entrepreneurship. And I think that's what people should think about. You don't always have to create something that you know nothing about. No. In fact, when people ask me about entrepreneurship, I tell them like, like don't go for sexy. Yeah. Yeah. Go for everyday problems that people have and figure out are you an aspirin or are you a vitamin? You know, if you're an aspirin and you got pain, there's nothing that people won't do to get that aspirin and there's no amount of money. They won't pay for it. You know, because they're in pain, solve their problem. And people run towards pleasure, right? So if you're a vitamin, you know, and you want to look good and feel good, people run towards that too. You know, that's the whole market of discretionary spending. I 100% what would be your advice for understanding if you're a vitamin or a pain killer? Understanding one versus the other. Well, I think it's just that, you know, it's going to be the market, you know, that you're in like what market sector are you in? And what is it that you're addressing? You know, are you with the toothbrush? Was that more of a vitamin than a total vitamin? You know why? Because when I was talking with that patient in dental hygiene, she said, I want something that's beautiful and elegant that looks amazing on my countertop. She's like, this piece of crap, I throw it in the drawer. Yeah. So I started thinking about all right, well, materials and premium finishes and something that's going to look elegant. And so, you know, it became a complete exercise in aesthetics. And it needed to have a kinesthetic component to it. What I mean by that is a feel because people like looking and holding things that are beautiful. So I realized like, I had to go through all different kinds of, and I used aircraft grade aluminum that was anodized. But once again, several different grades and thicknesses and finishes and, you know, and sometimes you just don't know until you've looked at it and held it and given it to enough people to get some feedback on it. Yeah. I love how you have mapped out like the vitamin and the way to bring a vitamin product to market. Very different. I think also, I think a lot more difficult because again, it's not a pain killer. It's not something that people are horrified over every time they look at themselves and zoom. It's a nice to have, not a need to have. But still at the end of the day, both can work, both can work if you understand your industry better than anyone else. There's that. And then there's another component too. It's the power of proximity and relationships. So I'm taking a little bit of a left turn here. Part of the success that I've had has been predicated by the people that I'm around. And it's because I had my mind was like an open vessel to receive feedback information and ask for help when bite was in the in the middle of it, meaning that, you know, we were we were cruising through, you know, we were our numbers were killing it during the pandemic. I was back in dental hygiene again, client of mine, guy live about mile or so from me. And, you know, when I get in to do a checkup on someone, you know, as a business owner, there's usually a hundred things going on. I just got interrupted from a procedure that I was already doing. And I got to go check someone's teeth. And then you're thinking about like what the staff is doing up front and so forth, normal owner type of stuff, right? So, you know, you get in, you do the checkup, you do your pleasantries, and then you got to get back to what you were doing. So the guy that was that needed the checkup as the name's Chuck. And I sat down with him and he's like, good guy. And he goes, hey, Doc, what are you working on that's cool these days? And just, you know, that was his icebreaker for me. Yeah. And normally, I would have said, oh, you know, the usual smiles. And I'm making teeth, you know, look beautiful. And everything is good. Okay, open wide, right? And then I do my thing. And something and I don't know what it was because I was in the middle of a procedure in another room. It made me slow down. And I said, you know, I'm working on this cool project. And I started telling him about bite. Now, Chuck Adams at the time was a healthcare banker for Goldman Sachs. And he goes, what's your exit? And so I talked to him about, you know, where we're headed with the company. He goes, are you guys ready to sell? And I said, well, the numbers ride, of course, you know, that's every entrepreneur's dream. He goes, I might be able to help with this. So really, so well, you know, let me connect you with my partners, because they're more on that side of the business. And see where it goes. So this was maybe mid to late October, 2020, December 31st, 2020, fast forward, you know, was that 45 days? Or wait, no, no, two and a half months later, month and a half later. Last day of probably, you know, the shittiest year that everyone had, right? The deal closed and Chuck connected us, the sellers to our buyer, which was Dent Splice, Serona. And at the time, they were the juggernaut of the dental industry, $12 billion market cap. And they purchased our company for a billion dollars in cash. So you talk about the power of relationships and proximity, you know, like, I built this one company because someone in my teeth claims that you should build better, but make something nicer. And the thing with bite is that, you know, that our exit was predicated on a chat that I had with with some guy when it was getting his teeth cleaned. And I could have just blown right past it, thought nothing of it. So I don't think my story is unique in terms of, um, having these opportunities. I think just most people are blind to them. And, and I don't mean that in a dragatory way. I mean, I just people are not being receptive to what's going on around them and being open to what possibilities could be. Yeah. That's, that's it. I mean, how nuts is that? That's, that's incredible. You know, because we were, we were shopping the company at the time, but this ended up being the one that got the deal done and for an insane number. So that was quick. Yeah. That was quick to a billion. That's, that's, I don't think I have a lot of entrepreneurs on this show. And I don't, how far, how long was it from when you started? So it took us a year to get to market. Yeah. And we were in the marketplace for two years. So three years to a billion. Yeah. And in the second year of business, we had a run rate of a hundred million dollars. So we had a 10x multiple when we got out. Incredible. Absolutely incredible. The first, the toothbrush did not do no. You know, I was happy that I didn't lose my shirt on it. And, you know, and I usually could have. And honestly, it wouldn't have mattered because the experience that I gained and the things that I learned about building and running a business had I not done that. I wouldn't have had the, the wherewithal, the experience, even the, the, the fortitude to have been involved with bite. It would have, it literally would have been biting off more than I could chew. So, you know, like things lead to things, right? That whole fifth idea thing, like, like, you know, Marashi oral health and the toothbrush never would have been a bite because I didn't have the skill set necessary. But when I got to that, you know, to the opportunity with bite, I was ready. I had experience and I was able to contribute to help this company grow. How does your, how does your life change after having a billion dollar exit? So let me tell you something. So I just told you the New Year's Eve, right? New Year's Day, I'm back in my office seeing a patient who had a tooth emergency, broke his tooth. And, you know, most people out, you know, on New Year's Day don't want to be back at work doing anything. Yeah. And probably even fewer people that had just had the good fortune that had been bestowed upon me. They'd say gone fishing. Yeah. And I was back in my office and I was smiling ear to ear and I was so happy doing what I was doing because my calling in life has always been about serving people. I've been very clear about that from a very young age that that's what I'm here on this planet to do is to help people. And it told me at that moment where here I am on my day off, taking care of this guy with a broken tooth. I don't even have a dental assistant helping me or anything that I had chose wisely. You know, like this was, this was a good decision that I was a dentist. And, you know, I could have retired, right? But, but I decided, you know, I want to keep doing this. And, you know, my core business has grown over the past few years. And I'm probably working harder now than even I was prior because of the growth in my business. And I'm very thankful for that. It just tells me that I, but I chose wisely. I mean, I think that that means you're, you're in your zone of genius when even after an exit like that, you're still choosing to put in work at. You know, my friends that I've mentioned so far, they've all gone on to do other things. You know, my partners from bite, they're doing a fitness mirror now and they've got other companies that they're involved in. And, and these are things that led to more things for them. You know, my, my good friend, Bashin Lehman, he founded Postmates. And he's already on another company. And so, you know, I think what it is with the entrepreneurial spirit is that there really is no destination. Because, you know, for them, for me, money wasn't the driver. It was just doing cool things and trying things and working hard. And, you know, I'm 51 years old now. And the idea of sitting around and doing nothing is actually pretty scary. Like, what, like, what am I going to do to sit around and do nothing? And, and maybe when you're busy and stressed, it sounds nice. But that's what vacations are for. You know, and then you recharge and you want to get back to work and do things. I don't even see a world where I'm not doing something. I mean, there's going to come a time where my eyes are no good and my hands aren't as nimble. And, and I won't be in someone's mouth. But that doesn't mean that there aren't other cool things to work on and to challenge myself with. No, I was just going to say, this is such a common theme with entrepreneurs that I, that I speak with, doesn't matter how big the exit is. There's, they're always moving on to the next thing. Some of them do take more than 24 hours off. Yeah. After they, after they haven't exit. But a lot of them are, they get anxious because it's just a personality type that wants to keep building and keep. Where did that, for you, where did that come from? Was that something that was bestowed upon you by your parents that you have an entrepreneurial upbringing is entrepreneurship? Something that you learn over time or is it something that you're born with? What are your thoughts? You know, I think it's, it's a combination of several factors. You know, I think some people are wired for some people have an appetite for it. There's others that don't and, you know, no judgment. That's just, you know, people, there's just different personality types. You know, how I grew up and how I was raised, you know, I didn't, I did not come from an affluent family, you know, is probably a lower middle class family. My folks worked as hard as they could to, to do what they were able to do. You know, I, I never didn't have food. So it's like, I'm not painting this picture of extreme poverty. But I also, you know, but I wasn't the kid with the fancy bicycle either. And so I knew at a very early age that if I wanted anything in life, you know, like if, when I wanted toys, in fact, when I wanted my bicycle, we didn't have discretionary income for that. So I had to go out and find ways to earn money. And so I was always hustling since I was a kid. And there's limited ways to make money as an eight year old, you know, but, you know, you're, I figured out, you know, I got two hands in a strong back. So I could shovel sidewalks in the winter. And I was able to mow lawns and, you know, weeding and a paper route and things like that. So I started very early, like I was always working in doing something. And the first time I was able to get a job as a bus boy, you know, like, and so that's, that's kind of where, you know, from an earlier age, I think some of the hustle came from is just like, okay, you want something, you have to work for it. That's how life is. And, and I'd always lived my life that way. You know, I don't think I was the smartest kid. I mean, I, I like school. It's probably debatable if I'm the best dentist on the planet. I mean, my mom thinks I'm pretty good. Maybe that counts for something. The counts for a lot. And moms are important. But what I was not afraid to do was to roll up my sleeves and do the work. I knew, I knew if I was willing to work hard, probably something was going to turn out, right? Lingoda is a partner of success story. Look, I'll be real with you. My French used to be solid. I learned it in school. I even had decent pronunciation. But when I booked trip to France last year, it was a total blank. I could barely order a croissant without sounding like a tourist. So I jumped into the Lingoda sprint challenge. And man, it changed everything. I'd take live classes late at night after podcasting, only five students max real teachers, real conversations. And in just two months, I went from a bonjour to holding full conversations at a Paris cafe. Confidence unlocked. Now here's the play. 30 or 60 classes in 60 days. And if you finish them all, you get 50% cash back. That's basically four euros or five dollars per class. That's insane value. Go to try.lingoda.com slash success underscore sprint. 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So you're going to join over 10,000 global companies like Atlassian, Korra, and Factory who use Vanta to manage risk and prove security in real time. And don't miss this. For a limited time only, my listeners can get a thousand dollars off Vanta. That's real money back in your pocket. Visit vanta.com slash Scott right now before the software expires. That is vant.com slash Scott. I think that's probably the best attitude. I am a firm believer that if you put enough time into something, you do figure it out. Some things will come easier than others, but put 10 plus years of your life into something and you'll find a way to be semi-good, semi-good at the very minimum. What was the just sort of going into your thought process about how you navigate life? I understand where the entrepreneurship side of you came from, and I understand the opportunities you sort of pursued in entrepreneurship when you're building these businesses. Where did the passion for cosmetic dentistry come from? The very unique niche. When I started noticing girls in seventh grade, for some weird reason, the ones that I gravitated towards were the girls with braces. I didn't have braces, we didn't have money for braces. For me, that was something aspirational. But I also saw it as like, boy, they're going to have this incredible smile on those things come off. I was kind of weird for a kid that young. That's the way you thought. As a kid, there were only two things I wanted to do in my entire life. It was going to be a dentist or professional skateboarder. That's it. There's only two things I was interested in. I'm still doing it. I haven't skateboarding for 39 years. I never stopped. It's my passion in life. The way the cards felt, probably for the better, being amateur skateboarder and professional dentist. But cosmetic dentistry when I was a kid wasn't a thing. Getting into dental school, I thought I'd probably just end up being in an orthodontist because I had the thing for smiles. But that's where I got the first exposure to cosmetic dentistry. I was like, holy moly, like, no, this is what I want to do. Once I saw what the possibilities were, how you could transform someone's smile because straight teeth don't always necessarily mean good looking teeth. That's what cosmetic dentistry does. Whether the procedure is teeth whitening or fixing a chip on the tooth or using porcelain veneers, which is the bulk of what I do. A veneer for the listeners is a little sliver of porcelain that's bonded over the front of the tooth and you can control the shape and size and color and when you treat the full range of visible teeth in your smile, you can really make a smile look incredible. So I got that exposure to it in dental school and I was hell bent on learning as much as I could and turned out that the guy who basically invented this procedure was an instructor at my school. So I followed that dude around everywhere to get the information. And he ended up starting the first honors aesthetic dentistry program in a dental school. And I was student number one admitted into it. Really? Yeah. So you were an OG. You were one of the original cosmetic dentists. So I mean, for, you know, people had been doing cosmetic dentistry out in private practice, but in terms of it being like a formalized type of program with us with a structured training. Yeah, I was student number one. And that set me up to start doing these advanced procedures that not even very many people were out there in private practice doing. And here I was as a student doing it. And through that, I was able to connect with the dentist in New York City. I went to NYU who at that time, he was like number one in the world for doing this. So I followed this guy around like crazy. And you know, like showing up at his office and following him to conferences and all this stuff until I convinced him to hire me. And you know, I was 27 years old working in this top cosmetic dentistry practice learning how to do all these procedures. You know, like, you know, talk about the 10,000 hour rule. And some people spend a career trying to get to there. And I had done I had had achieved that in less than a couple of years with this guy. And then at that point, I said, you know, I want to I want to go do it on my own. And so that's when I moved to California in early 2004. And you know, I've been there since. And so, you know, professionally, my ride in dentistry, you know, I had a really, you know, fast and quick ascent. But it was because of all the hustle that I did at the time where I was thinking about, you know, the big picture as opposed to many students just live sort of test to test and exam to exam to get out the door. But when you when you first start, so one common thread between all of your successes has been relationships and being around the right people. I see it again and again and again and again and even even how you created your practice, the you work with celebrities. And obviously that's a great clientele. But to your point, having that high end clientele also leads to business opportunities that you were just treating your teeth. But then all of a sudden, you have a guy sitting in a chair that can help you exit for a billion dollars. So again, your network has created not created outside of your own work, but your network has been a huge multiplier. Absolutely. And your success, you know, if you practice dentistry in Los Angeles, it's a statistical improbability that you will not land someone who works in entertainment because that's the entertainment hub of the world. But it's not like, you know, that you're going to have everybody all of a sudden, right? So it's a it's a slow process over time of building relationships and networking and hustling and, you know, until you finally get someone on the delus. Yeah. And slowly over time, you know, I've had people ask me, how'd you get everybody and all these famous folks? And I'm like, well, it's only up, you know, there's an overnight success of 25 years. You know, people, people forget about that part. But the people that I've been able to meet and take care of and spend time with, I mean, they're, they're, it's pretty mind blowing and pinching me on. I'll share a story with you. It's a funny one. You know, I'm known for doing beautiful smiles, right? But sometimes you get hired to do an ugly smile. And it's not like the normal thing that I do, but I'm walking Phoenix, who's a friend of mine and client, just a gem of a human being. I just couldn't say enough good things about him. He did this movie called The Joker. And I don't know if you saw, but it's a real dark character. Yeah. This guy who loses his way. And, and, and you're rooting for this guy to do horrible things with my wife. And he came and he's like, Doc, I'm doing this role. And I need my teeth to look terrible. And so it was really was, you know, doing the opposite of what I do to people to instead make him teeth look nice, making teeth look crappy. So it was appropriate for this role. Does he change his actual teeth? So, you know, Joaquin lost a lot of weight for this movie. You know, he's, he went very method in this. I think he lost like, you know, it was like 60 pounds or something like that. He's not a big guy to begin with. And, you know, he was down to like 120 pounds. And, you know, for a guy who's like, you know, five foot 10, that's really, really skinny. And what, what we did to his teeth. And, you know, he's allowed me to share the story because it's pretty cool. So I had fixed his teeth years ago, not with veneers, but, you know, with like teeth whitening and, you know, some chip edges. So you do this stuff called bonding. And it's like a, it's like a putty. You can, you know, you can harden it and repair the edge of a tooth like if you had chipped your fingernail and you had to repair it. And what we did is we took all that stuff off the teeth to reveal the cracks and the chips that have been there for a long time. So it's kind of like reverse dentistry. Yeah. And, and that's what made the teeth look so unsightly for the role. Oh my goodness. And then, when the movie was done, we fixed it back up. And then I had to do it a whole second time because they had Joker part two. Yeah. So, you know, you really got to do fun things like that. And, you know, it comes in unexpected places. Ryan Seacrest, dear friend. I mean, he's just, the guy's just awesome. I don't think I've ever met anyone harder working in the business than this guy. And, you know, I've been cranked called more times and you could possibly believe by this guy in the office to meet to talk on the radio or the TV or whatever about, you know, like a tooth problem that he had. And, you know, so there's a lot of pinch me moments. I mean, one of the best ones, you know, our talk about celebrity is, you know, for probably about the last 10 years or so, anytime that Vin Diesel is come in, we always go and get a cup of coffee afterwards at the end of the day. And it's funny. We'll be walking down the street and he goes, you know, he's like, I'm not out in public too often. Obviously, he's one of the biggest celebrities in the world. And so, I'll go into coffee bean and grab two cups of coffee and then, and then I'll walk out and hand him his cup and then we go behind the building and sit down on a curb. And because it's private in the alley, and it's just two old guys with kids just shooting the breeze. And so, this must have been maybe like a year or two ago. And he goes, do you want to go to Rome? And I was like, yeah, can I ask why? And he goes, he goes, well, I'm having the premiere for my latest Fast and Furious movie. I thought, no, I don't want to come. I'm like, yeah, definitely want to come. I'm like, well, when is it? He goes next week. And I'm like, can I have a day to work on this? And I go to work the next day. I'm like, cancel my schedule. I'm going to go to Rome. And, you know, there I was a week later on the red carpet in Rome for this big movie production. And, and, you know, like, I didn't get into dentistry to do these things. But what has happened and why these relationships have been so successful is because when I take care of celebrities, I don't treat them any different than I do any other person in my office. I don't care what walk a life you came from. You know, you're going to get the best of me no matter what. And you know, celebrities in general, oftentimes, you know, they have their persona. And, but when they come to my office, they can let their guard down. And you get to know the individual and the person and dentistry is very intimate. So you develop friendships with folks. And I really do count my blessings that I have been so fortunate to do and experience so many cool things like who would have thought like as a dentist, you know, that you get to do things like now. But that's so that's just it's just a lot of fun. And I do agree. I mean, I think that if the average person is not going to be running into celebrities every single day, but like just think about I'm thinking about an entrepreneur that is listening to this that is speaking with some big business on, you know, exited entrepreneur. I think the lesson is you just treat them like regular people. It doesn't matter how successful they are. I think that the people that you want to work with, you want to spend time with if they can't be normal and regular with you, they're not people that you know, the folks who want to do business with anyone. No. Yeah. If people have egos and so I like I listen, I have a podcast. I interview people that have had wild success. Very fortunate that people are, you know, a hundred million dollars, a five hundred million dollars, it's several billionaires. Fortunately, the majority of them are very down to earth, very regular, real people. And I don't think they like when they're treated any differently. Yeah. And I think that those are the people that you want to spend time with, you want to have in your circle. And again, it's not celebrity for me. It's more business celebrity. But still, if you are trying to build relationships with these people, just treat them like regular people, I think that's how you build a real relationship with them. The relationship is not a bad reason. Yeah. I mean, they really are. I look at my successes that I've had and, you know, that being able to build and cultivate meaningful relationships has absolutely been part of the success formula. Yeah. I think that just because of the people that you surround yourself with, like you said, that has led to all the success in business and life and everything. Did you hear that saying like, it's better to be the dumbest person in the room? That was a percent. Yeah. You know, to this day, I still try to be the dumbest person in the room. I actually have a chance at learning something. When you think about the work that you do, I'm sure you see a lot of bad work because I see a lot of veneers that blind me. But if somebody is just looking for your advice on how to craft the perfect smile, per se, what is your advice to them? What should they be thinking about if they want to get some work done? You know, everyone, when it comes to aesthetics, right, is subjective in nature. And the niche that I've carved out in cosmetic dentistry has been the quiet luxury of smiles, you know, doing things that are tasteful and look appropriate and not flashy. And some people want that other look and no judgment, you know, they want those big white choppers. But there's a lot of folks that unfortunately get an unintended result. I think that's what I'm trying to avoid for people. So, you know, my advice is, look, if you're out and you're looking to have cosmetic dentistry done, and I can't take care of everyone. There's just one of me. There's a lot of fantastic dentists everywhere. You know, some of the questions you should be thinking about are, you know, is you're going to interview your dentist, you know, ask them, what do they think? What's their aesthetic? What's their opinion on it? But more importantly, ask them to show you before and after samples of their work, because there's actually smile libraries you can purchase of before and after. So, that's not even their work. Yeah, it just shows examples of what cosmetic dentistry can be. So, you know, say, show me examples of your work where the starting point is similar to my condition and the end point is something similar that you think would look good for me. And if someone has done enough of this, they'll have an extensive library to show you like, hey, look, here's what I did for this person. Here's where they started. You can see the similarities and here's where I was able to get them. And if you see enough of that, you're going to have a good sense of this person's design and abilities and aesthetic and determine if it's right for you. If you keep seeing cases where you're like, I don't like that one. I don't like that one. I don't like that one. And their only answer is, well, we'll make yours different. You know, you might be rolling the dice a little bit. Yeah. So, you know, just by, or if you have a friend that, you know, you like their treatment that they receive, then, you know, that might be a good starting point, you know, better than picking a name out of a hat. I see these examples of veneers where they shave the tooth down to nothing. It's not supposed to happen. What can you explain what's happening in those cases versus what it should be? Okay. So, let's start with what a veneer should be. A veneer once again, by definition, is just a covering. That's it. And it goes on the front of the tooth. Now, if you think about it, if your tooth is already in the correct position and you put a covering on it, it's thicker than what it originally was. Right. And you can only increase the thickness so much before it doesn't look right. So, if your tooth was smaller or normal size, and you bump the thickness just to smidge chances are you won't notice, which means when the veneer goes on, you don't need to do any drilling because it's additive in nature. Yeah. Okay. Or if the tooth has kind of a weird shape and you can't get the thing to fit on it, maybe you got to modify the surface a little bit so the thing can lock on properly because there's a geometric shape that's required. But generally speaking, if that's required, the amount of modification, and when I say modification, this is what the layperson would would call like shaving or tooth grinding, is a half millimeter or less. You realize how tiny a half millimeter is? It's almost imperceptible. So that's how it's supposed to be done. How it ends up being done, a lot of the time is by dentists that haven't had appropriate training because there's not a lot of really great training out there. And it's very quick and easy to whack a tooth down because they say, oh, just let the lab guy worry about it. And that's more of like a crown preparation, not a veneer preparation. A crown is where the tooth gets whacked down to like 50% of the size that they put a covering on it. But the reason why that's being done is because there were some major structural durability issue of the tooth that they had to basically grind away the broken down parts to cover the thing and make it durable again. But if your front tooth or your front teeth didn't need that, why on earth would you want them whacked down to nothing? And then there might be working with a dental laboratory where the technician is not as well trained. They don't even know what the client looks like. And they just, and on the model, the teeth might look really good, but it's like seeing a dress in a window. And then the woman tries on said, no, this doesn't, doesn't fit me very well. So it's rampant in our profession to a fault. And truth be told, I rarely meet a dentist that purposely is trying to do a crummy job. But if you don't have the training, then you know, you don't even know that you're not doing a good job, right? You just think like, oh, this is okay. So half of what I do these days is revision dentistry where someone went somewhere else and they got that unintended result. Now I'm the fix it guy. You can't, if your teeth are shaved down, you can't fit. You're right. You can't make the tooth grow back. You're right. That's a one-way street. But what I can do is get rid of the crazy horse teeth, remove them. They actually have a laser. And the energy from the laser goes through the porcelain and it debons it. It falls right off before they had to drill it off. And in drilling off the porcelain, they drill off more of the tooth unintentionally. And then the the the shave down tooth got even smaller like how crazy is that? So I have a laser that can remove these things. And then I can bond a new set of veneers on that are smaller thinner yet stronger. So at least the tooth looks normal again. I understand. So what's happening when what's happening when people get that little like shave down and nub thing going on compared to what you do. If you put on veneers, you could take off the veneers and they could still have fully functional teeth. If you have done a no prep design, meaning no surface alteration, you just bonded the veneers on it 100% correct. The veneer can be removed. The surface can be repolished. And it's like going back to square one. Do you see a lot of this with medical tourism? People trying to get cheaper veneers in all these different countries. Oh yeah, this guy, this guy named Jeff, he went to Columbia. And the funny thing is, Jeff is really rich already. He just got bad advice. And he flew down there. And the crazy thing is is they knock him out. You know, they have an anesthesiologist while they're doing the procedure. And something went horribly wrong. And he woke up in the hospital with no teeth. They shaved him all down and they couldn't finish the procedure. And he's like, well, I can't leave the country without teeth. So he recovered for a couple days and went back and they put him under again to finish the thing. I mean, he could have died. And he got back up to the states and a guy lives down in South Orange County and half the teeth broke because they weren't engineered properly and they weren't bonded properly. And his teeth were shaved down as a mess. And long story short, he got referred to me and he's telling me the story. And I'm just like, like as shocked as you are. I mean, I thought I had heard it all. I was like, oh my God. So, you know, it was a full revision case. I mean, I had to remove all the porcelains and rebuild the bite and get them the aesthetics and everything is fine now. But you know, there's a lot of folks who who travel because once again, the stuff is expensive. And that's not to say that if you go abroad somewhere that just because you practiced dentistry in a foreign country that you're a lousy provider, of course. I think what it is, it's a cautionary tale that sometimes you get what you pay for. I think so too. I think forget teeth. Just medical tourism in general is very scary to me. I mean, you see all these horror stories about all these injections and all these plastic surgeries that go horribly wrong. And also, I mean, the anesthesia, the anesthetic part of it, there was just a case. Anesthetic is not good to go under again and again and again and again. Either. I think that this is not your field. But somebody just died from having an anesthetic for a full back tattoo. Oh gosh. Yeah, because now they're doing full anesthetic, general anesthetic for some longer tattoos. Okay. So I mean, if you, if you don't have to go, do you have to go under anesthetic for veneers? No. No. Oh, so this is like very strange that. Yeah. No, it's elective in nature. I mean, like, look, you don't have to go under for colonoscopy, but a lot of people prefer to sit. Yeah, yeah. And honestly, if you're, if you're the point is if you're doing something where you're going under, um, maybe do it in the US at least where you're a little bit safe. I have a board certified anesthesiologist doing it. Yes. Not just a technician. Yeah. Because the standards of care are different in different countries. And that's what you have to be careful of. That's it. It's not that there's not good doctors all over the world. Because there is, but you just have to make sure that you know what you're getting yourself into. Have you ever had to turn a patient away for a request that they had? Oh, all the time. Yeah. Why is that? You know, what happens is, um, you get to a certain level of proficiency in your career and then word gets out. And so you get a lot of people that want to come and see you, which is exactly what every business person wants. Um, but sometimes, uh, as a result of it, it attracts the crazies. And in my world, you know, the crazies are the ones who come in and they bring a folder with them and it's about this thick. And it's got their records from five, 10, 15 different dental offices. And they've been to multiple dentists and how their procedures done over and over again. And as you start to listen to the story, you realize that it actually wasn't the dentist. It's, it was the patient's expectations. And there, there are some folks that no matter how good you are at doing something, you're not going to be able to deliver because their expectations simply just aren't possible. They're unreasonable expectations. Now, earlier in my career, I didn't have the people management skills or even the experience to sniff that out. And you know, you're hungry to do the work and you do it. And then you just end up getting your ass handed to you and it sucks. But now that I have more gray hair on my head, you know, I learned to read the signs. And, and I've had to tell people, you know, you sit and you listen and because they've paid you for a consultation. And, and they are there for you to tell them the truth. And so, and that's what I have to do. And sometimes it's very difficult. And I tell them, I say, listen, I hear what you're saying. And after listening to you, what I believe to be true is that I can't help you because I'm not going to be able to give you the outcome that you're looking for. And what I don't want to be is the next name on the, on the graveyard list that you're carrying with you of someone who couldn't deliver. It's not fair to you to spend that time. It's not fair to you to spend that money. If I already know right away, I'm not going to be able to do that. And most of the time, when I'm saying that, it's because what they're asking for are like crazy, big, thick, white teeth. And that's just not my thing. I don't do that. But it's not like, um, I don't know what else, what if the people get like any like, uh, like jewelry or stuff in their teeth or you know, I get those requests once in a blue moon. There's actually some dentists that have built very successful practices. I got a buddy of mine who does like the, the grills and the diamond stuff in the teeth and the charge of fortune for it. So, you know, people don't really come to me for that sort of thing. It's, it's more for the veneer thing. And, you know, for, for, you know, having a beautiful white smile. But there are versions of it, you know, the chick lady teeth and the horse teeth that that's just not my thing. And some people want that and they want it on steroids. Yeah. And so, you know, that's where I find myself saying, hey, listen, you know, I, I don't provide that service. So, and it's funny. It's like the second you tell someone, no, they want you 10 times more. And they think that they think it's, and they'll beg and bleed. And it's very, you know, it's very kind of them. They believe in you that much. They say, and, and they'll offer you any amount of money. I don't care where to cost. And you're like, look, it's not about the money. You know, it's just that I can't do this. Are there, are there any procedures that people do request that could be bad for your oral health or just health in general that you would say don't do this kind of procedure? Yeah. I would say, you know, I have this actress. I love her to desk. She's been a client for about 15 years. And she has one of the most gorgeous factory original smiles that you have ever seen. And every year she, she'll come in and say, okay, I'm ready for my years now. And I won't do them. And she's, and the first couple of years, you know, she was a little off put that I wouldn't do. And I said, it is impossible to improve upon what Mother Nature gave you. I can only fuck this up. You know, and sometimes just have to know. And, and over the years, you know, she has thanked me, you know, for not doing an unnecessary procedure for her. Now, it brings up an interesting conversation because need and want are two different things. I mean, who am I to pass judgment on someone who has a healthy functioning nose that I think looks nice? And they want to, they want to alter the appearance of it. That's up to the individual. And so, you know, what she did is she listened to me and trusted my opinion on it because she could have just gone to the dentist down the street. There's always someone who's going to say, yes. So, you know, I try to steer the people in the right direction. And, you know, based on my belief system. And I say, look, if, if I think that they'd be better served not doing treatment, I have plenty of work to keep the lights on. I don't have to try to sell someone something just to, you know, to make a few bucks. And it's a good moral compass. I think that's why people respect you because you make those decisions, right? That's really that is, that is the hallmark of somebody who you want to take advice from when they don't just say yes to everything you ask them. You don't want to be a yes man. You speak a lot about the connection between oral health and just health in general. Yeah. I think I've never really had, and I've never had any dentist on this show before ever. So, what are some things that people should be aware of in terms of oral health, oral hygiene, taking care of your oral health, how that affects the rest of your body as well? So, great question. And it highlights the lack of, um, of widespread knowledge to the masses. And what a terrible job dentistry has done promoting this because the surgeon general came out, I think it was somewhere around like, uh, it was like in the early 2000s or maybe it was even the late 90s. Yeah, I'm drawn a blank here. But I mean, I think I was in dental school when this happened. And surgeon general at the time said the mouth is the gateway to the body. I mean, what you put in here is going to have an effect elsewhere. And this many years later, we now know that plaque and bacteria, you know, the crud that we scrape out of your mouth during the teeth cleaning, when this stuff has build up over time, it's linked to diabetes and cardiac issues and dementia, really? Yeah. How? Because the bacteria that's in your mouth can circulate through the blood stream and it can cross the blood brain barrier. So, we now know this to be the case. And it's not just dentistry. It's the whole medical community. And that's why there's been a massive push from the health and wellness community. Get your teeth cleaned. That's like the number one prevention. So if you think about this, like life gets in the way and it's a longer interval from getting a teeth cleaning, I'm even guilty of it. But if it's hammer and chisel for the dental hygienist to get that crud off your teeth, what does that tell you about the level of buildup that's in there? And yeah, whereas between your home care and getting periodic teeth cleanings in my practice, I try to get my patients to come every three months for cleaning, okay? Why is that? If you're coming in and your mouth is in a perpetual state of cleanliness, what do you think the chances of you having those types of problems are? It's full risk mitigation. Like you don't get fat from the one potato chip that you ate, right? And you don't get a big bicep from doing an arm curl one time, right? There's a consistency and discipline associated with your overall health and oral hygiene and oral health is related to your overall systemic health. Andrew Huberman has got a phenomenal podcast. They did an episode on oral health and I think it was like almost three hours long and I listened to it and he met with people way smarter than me, you know, people who have PhD and do research on this. And so if anyone is listening and wants to get like the real solid info and the deep dive on the science, listen to that. It was a phenomenal resource. You mentioned that people should be coming in once every three months. What does the average person do for their oral health? I don't think it's once every I don't think the dental community has really informed people of what you just told me. No, I've never heard that. That's what I'm saying is that is that our profession is done a lousy job, plain and simple. And you know, the most that the average person will hear is you should go twice a year. And look, if you can keep your mouth clean enough that when you go twice a year, there's minimal buildup, that's fantastic. It's just not most people. And Western diets are just horrific, you know, when it comes getting buildup on the teeth because of the of how carb-heavy everything is. You know, carbs stick to teeth, plain and simple. So if you had a lower carb diet, a paleo diet, a keto diet, a Mediterranean diet, whatever diet that is a little bit less carb-heavy, does that actually help your oral hygiene? Well, yeah, because you'd have less residue on your teeth. But the other facet of it too is, what are you doing to keep the surfaces clean? So if you're eating stuff that is less sticky gooey sticking on your teeth, that's going to help, right? And then there's the component of brushing and flossing it. I get asked this question all the time. People are like, well, what's the best way to keep your teeth clean? Like, look, this is not a sexy recipe. Yeah, you know, you got to clean your teeth. And you know, if if you're going to be lazy about it, at least be strategic about it. Because the best time to do it is at night time. Okay, well, why is that? Because you're done eating at that point. Get all the crap off of your teeth. So when you go to sleep and your mouth is the least active, you have the most amount of protection because the residue that's in your mouth. Like if you brush and floss in the morning, eat all day and go to bed at night, you got all this crud in your teeth. The bacteria are like, part A, you know, because they got a they have a food source now that they eat and they metabolize it and they secrete an acid and the acid causes disruption to the health of the gums and it also causes cavities. So because it's burning a hole in the animal and then the bacteria go in and colonize and starts rotting your, rotting your teeth. But if you don't have a food source for the bacteria to use to wreak havoc in your mouth, you're a step ahead of it. Okay, also your mouth is less active at night time. When the mouth is not moving, you're not generating as much saliva. Well, saliva has two functions. One, it's to coat your food so you can swallow it and you don't choke on it. And the second, it's to bathe the surface of your teeth and gums and it has protective enzymes in it that actually kill off the bacteria and help food from sticking on your teeth. But when your mouth is producing less saliva, you have less protection going on. So you want to have your mouth in a cleaner state at that point. What would be the what would be the best outside of brushing and flossing and brushing and flossing at night? What are some other things that people can do? Like think about mouthwash. Is that useful? How useful are electric toothbrushes versus regular? Do they make a huge difference? The different kinds of floss. You have like the regular floss and you have the floss on the little plastic thing. So I don't think many people really know what they're doing. They're just kind of trying to do it all and hopefully something works out. The different kinds of toothpaste or do any of them do anything differently, you know, paying more for toothpaste. So all these different things, can you let go through and tell people what's actually useful? Okay. I got to add one more thing first because you're talking about what the things that people can do to damage or mouth. People will walk around with a can, you know, like a like a little quail, you know, like these carbonated lemon waters, these are acidic. And I like that stuff. It tastes good. Yeah. But carbonated water has a lower pH. Therefore, it's acidic. And a lot of stuff that we eat that has sugars in it are acidic, lower pH. The lower the pH is in the mouth. Now what you're doing is you're you're having an acidic environment which can cause erosion of your tooth and animal. Plain and simple and make you prone for cavities. So that in itself, like people like, well, I have to drink water all day. Good, drink water. It's good. It hydrates your mouth. It's healthy for you. But, you know, dumping lemons in it is a really bad idea. Really, really bad idea. So hygiene maintenance, you know, what works? What does it? Okay, brushing and flossing we talked about that. I have always said sort of tongue and cheek, the best toothbrush and floss are the ones you actually use. I mean, that's that's kind of the crux of it. Technology has gotten so good with the sonic toothbrushes that if you spend, you know, 30 to 50 bucks, you'll get something that'll do way better than a manual toothbrush and you can spend as much as, you know, three, four hundred dollars on some of the fancy ones. Yeah. When I created my own toothbrush, I ran the other direction of not having all these buttons and lights and now they have an app and all this stuff. And I thought I thought it was a little overwhelming. And, you know, just using a toothbrush correctly and one that has a sonic motor to it, you know, the vibration of the bristles is what helps bust the plaque up off your teeth. So I do like the idea of having a sonic toothbrush over a manual one. Flossing. I'm, you know, I'm kind of, you know, non-preferential in that department because as long as you're using it effectively, a lot of people just go up and down real quick and they don't go up and around the gum line, you know, to get the stuff out. So, so manual dexterity actually plays a larger factor into the efficacy of flossing than the type of floss that you're using itself. Now, there's other aids that have been developed that can help it, you know, you've probably heard of like a water pick and so forth and you can hydrowash your tea. And, and they work if you use it and get it in a crevice, one of the complaints people have about water picks is it's just messy. It sprays everywhere. And now there's this other device that's called a pro claim where it's a custom fitted mouthpiece and you put it in your mouth and it, and there's a little hose that connects to a 22 ounce canister of water and solution. And your teeth have been digitally scanned by the dentist so the mouthpiece was custom fitted to you and all the water ports line up with your exact crevices. So in seven seconds, it blasts all the plaque off. And I've been using this, they actually sent me one to use. I was really cool and in full disclosure, I actually invested in the company. It was good. Yeah, I was like, this thing is awesome. So I said, another entrepreneurial hat that I'm wearing now too. But it's a sign of just like how technology is taking, you know, it's like really floss is the string is the best thing that we have. And so I don't think pro claim replaces floss because if you got something wedged in there, you have to mechanically and manually get it out. But the residues that can get up around the gum line and under the gum line that people struggle with getting out with dental floss, you know, things like pro claim do a fantastic job helping solve for that. What about different kinds of toothpaste because there's toothpaste. Yeah, there's there's there's charcoal charcoal. But then the regular like levels of toothpaste. And then I've seen toothpaste that claim to remove plaque. I don't know if that's a real thing or there's toothpaste that claim to fix cavities. Yeah. What do you think? Question about toothpaste is this. So I generally tell people I'm I'm on team fluoride and there's there's debate in there's debate on the internet and less than the scientific community about the efficacy of fluoride and if it's toxic and look, you can go down the rabbit hole on that on that conversation. But what I'll tell you is this is I have patients in my practice. People who are in their 80s and 90s who've been using fluoride their whole life. Drank fluoridated water have zero health issues. You know, they didn't become mentally impaired. They didn't get cancer. Like so I look at things empirically, you know, like or pragmatically. You know, I see people who are healthy that have used this stuff for decades. It does not concern me. I think the benefits of remineralizing your teeth because that's what fluoride does, especially on a Western diet that has it's highly acidic and lots of carbs. There's a lot of benefits for that. So I do like a fluoride toothpaste. Activated charcoal does a fantastic job dealing with surface stains on your teeth. So we're talking about like coffee, tea, red wine, you know, cigarettes, stuff like that. Those are external stains and it does a good job binding to the plaque and taking it off. My favorite one, I'll give a shout out. I have no financial interest in the company. It's company called Hello. Like hi, hello, how I love their toothpaste. I think they make a really good product because it's not chock full of preservatives. So I try to tell people to steer away from that. And you know, the ones that claim to remove plaque and so forth, you know, there's ingredients in it that have a higher probability of binding to the sticky stuff on the surface, but it doesn't do its job unless the mechanical action of brushing helps bust up the surface layer. So it's kind of a one to punch. You know, you want to have the toothpaste and the toothbrush and the correct mechanical action to do the most effective job. Do you think that people are taking their oral health seriously when they come into your office for the first time or do you think that people are more concerned like is it a priority? Is it still a priority or are people more prioritized with because you mentioned something interesting about brain dementia, cardiovascular health. I don't think that people correlate the two. So I'm curious if you're noticing like a younger generation is taking their oral health as seriously as definitely I was told when I was growing up went to the dentist all the time. We were told just because of cavities. That's exactly. Yeah, but there's, you know, I still agree with your earlier comment that it is not widespread enough, but the, you know, where I practice in Los Angeles, I think there's, you know, there's, there's a heavy emphasis in Los Angeles about health and wellness in general. So, you know, this is part of it. So, you know, the folks that are coming in to see me, I think are more versed in this and they do take it more seriously and, and we give recommendations and we do our best to try to educate people so they do have the knowledge and then it's their choice, you know, how they want to manage it at that point. A big thank you to indeed for supporting success story because hiring people is one of the hardest things you're ever going to have to do as an entrepreneur as a founder as somebody who's trying to build a business. It's important to hire well and find the right person, but it takes so much time and it's so labor intensive because like most entrepreneurs, you have a thousand things going on and there's a good chance that you just realized your business needed to hire somebody yesterday. So, how can you find that great, amazing, right fit candidate fast? It's easy. Just use indeed because you don't have to waste time struggling to get your job post scene on all these other job sites. If you're using indeed, you can just use their sponsored jobs to help you stand out and hire fast. Your post jumps right to the top of the page for relevant candidates so you can reach out to exactly who you're looking for faster and the results really speak for themselves. According to indeed data, sponsored jobs posted directly on indeed have 45% more applications than non-sponsored jobs. And you know what I love most about indeed? It really just makes hiring so fast because everything is streamlined in one place. 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Success story is one of the many podcasts in the Habspot podcast network which is the audio destination for business professionals. If you like success story you're also going to like billion dollar moves another incredible podcast hosted by Sarah Chen spelling. Sarah is an incredible interviewer she asks the hard questions on her show you're going to learn about the triumphs failures of all her guests the hard lessons of the best and brightest in business so that you two can make billion dollar moves in venture and investing in business and in life. I want you to go listen to billion dollar moves wherever you get your podcasts it is one of my favorites Sarah is one of my favorite hosts if you like success story you're going to love this show and a quick pause if you haven't had a chance yet I'd love your input on our listener survey at Scott the clary dot com slash survey it takes just a few minutes and one lucky respondent when a gift card once we hit 100 responses your feedback directly impacts what we cover on the show I really appreciate it is there anything that as you age and and get older there's other things you should start to consider for your oral hygiene absolutely because as you get older okay here's what we see so for people who are not healthy as they get older often times they're on medications and and a lot of the medications that people take as they get older have the potential to have side effects to it and one of the common side effects and a lot of medications is reduced saliva production in that causes the condition called dry mouth so now you take away your number one defense system in the mouth you don't end up with one cavity and up with a mouthful of cavities so the benefits of being healthy and not being on medications is not just for your overall health but your oral health too no question about that and when you look at somebody's uh when you look in somebody's mouth um can you tell if they have other serious health conditions like between the teeth and the tongue like have you ever caught something or made somebody's you know aware or something that maybe they haven't been to the doctor in a couple years and they should go yeah you fortunately in my practice I don't see that often and I think that's just a facet of the socioeconomic group that I'm taking care of but you do see stuff the scariest one to see is oral cancer because oral cancer doesn't care if you're rich or poor and unless you've seen it and you know how to recognize it and sometimes like I've seen some oral cancer that have come in where it's just like like you would have reck you would have saw and said hey that doesn't look right yeah yeah but sometimes it's literally like a dot and there could be saliva over it hiding it so you have to look really careful you know or you'll see like a uh a papaloma it's kind of like a papaloma is almost like a like a blister or a wart type of appearance and it's way back in the palate you know or in the throat and that can be a precursor for a cancer so you have to you you got you it's like when you're looking you're looking with intention like I know it's there somewhere yeah you know the certain laundry list of things um because it's about early detection for treating it and I'm not an oral medicine specialist but if I see something that looks suspicious always referred out to the appropriate specialist to get a second opinion and this is why that three month that three month window is so important because you're not going to go see your doctor every every three months you're not going to go see your GP every three months unless you have a condition but if you have somebody who's educated enough to at least sort of raise a flag I mean that can save lives totally that can save lives when should people say somebody is not going to the dentist right now because in their mind they're thinking well my teeth don't hurt so you know I'm fine what is the thing that they should be concerned about when they look at their smile so you know if you're talking about um the aesthetic component of it because it's visual looking at your smile you know if your teeth are not straight if they're not as white as they used to be if you're seeing signs of damage on the edges you know like busted up edges which could have come from like teeth grinding or teeth clenching things like that you know these are the early warning signs like hey you know you might want to have some something you know uh some interception on this to keep it from running down the wrong direction yeah okay and that's when you start to say hey I should go to a dentist yeah I should go yeah and you know if you see something if you notice something different it's only gonna get worse exact behaviors when it hurts it's already too late and you know I tell people I said look my job is to never be known as doctor I told you so yeah I'm trying to you know if if here is everything looks good and here's oh shoot what are we gonna do now I said you know what I'm gonna do everything to keep you over here no matter how much kicking and screaming you're gonna do you'll thank me that you didn't end up over in this this side I love it um okay I want to go back to sort of where you're at now in your life and sort of what's the future for you and I think that one thing that I I'm just curious about because now I know that you're investing in a new company so you're always you're always trying to become uh you're always trying to get back into entrepreneurship how do you manage uh pressure and stress of building companies while still maintaining the practice obviously you have you have it down to a science to a degree um why do you keep doing this to yourself when you don't have to but also how do you do it so the how part is you know it's it's 25 years of experience of doing it wrong and figuring out what works but the shortcut to the front of the line that I would tell someone is the power of the word no in order to do certain things exceptionally well you have to be willing to say no to a whole lot of other things so you can put your time and energy only on the things that matter I wish I had been better at that earlier in my career you know I probably wouldn't have had as much stress or you know burn out or challenges along the way but now with the gray hair and the maturity and the experience comes the ability to prioritize things in my life and not feel bad about being able to say no or choosing to say no rather to the majority of things that come along so I can focus on the things that matter there's an art and a skill and a discipline to say no outside of saying no more on a day-to-day level everyone sort of has their own practices or routines that sort of set them up for success so again when you you do say no to a large amount of things that don't serve you but you still say yes to some very cognitively draining and and and just time consuming things that you have to manage throughout your day your your dental practice your ventures your businesses and now some investments with the the billion dollar exit you have a whole portfolio I'm sure of things you take care of what are some sort of daily practices and rituals that have served you really well well I'd put that in two buckets right because just to even have the stamina to do these things and the physicality and then there's a mindset that's associated with it as well you know to have a 1% life it requires 1% behaviors and I have prioritized in my life diet sleep exercise and my mind as well so you know I sleep track at night to make sure that I get my minimum seven and a half hours and with the exception of flying out to Miami that had to get about four o'clock yesterday to catch that flight and do that that thing last night but generally speaking you know I'm very disciplined with making sure I get that sleep and you know we now know I used to be as I'll sleep when I'll die you know when I die kind of guy it squeeze out more work during the day but we now know it's like it's like after hour six and seven where the body gets the benefits of the deep sleep in the REM to do all the repair to your body to and then the detox to keep it healthy and my diet you know I'm two and a half years in now of I've always had basically a clean diet but but I do intermittent fasting now and you know I eat between 11 a.m. and 7 p.m. that's my window and you know the 16 hours that I'm not eating you know it's that chance for the body to become more efficient in metabolizing fat instead of muscle and all the other good stuff that comes with it and exercise you know it's like you got to keep moving and being active and I've had the same trainer for 19 years wow I work out with them twice a week and I still ride my skateboard and so you know finding time for me to do things that make me happy but also keep my body moving is really important and getting my mind right is a real big deal for me and you know I have a therapist that I go and see and a lot of people you know there's always there's been a stigma in the past about having a therapist but folks I'm the first one to say I got the same damn problems as everybody else you know this is life and you know relationships are challenging enough and work and business and how we feel about ourselves and to be able to work with someone just to help you process and get through and get the and get the unnecessary stories that you have and the clutter out has been a life changing thing for me and I have so much gratitude around that and so you know you combine it you know sleep diet exercise getting your mind right this puts you in a position where you live better you feel better you are smarter you make better decisions because you're not burned out you know I showed at the conference I was speaking out last night I have a slide in it and it shows a picture of me at age 23 and a picture of me now and at age 23 when I walked in the door at dental school I had kind of like straggly hair and I had braces and glasses and I smiling really big and it's it's the most unflattering photo that you'll ever see of anyone and I put that up on there and I said you would you have bet on this guy right here because it's really it's this that bad and and everyone's laughing at it and it's it's such a horrible photo I said but the guy on the the other side you know this is John now I said he didn't go from here to here it wasn't accidental it wasn't my birthright either it was built by design it was very intentional along the way and it kind of goes into another thing because along the way in my business travels I cannot underscore the importance of having coaches and mentors you know the mentors things I've had fantastic mentors you know as dentist but I've also sought out the knowledge in the business world I I got a communications coach so I could learn how to talk more effectively with my patients and I've also have a business coach to this day that helps me look at the numbers in my practice most dentists just look at you know top-line profits and overhead and and maybe new patient flow and that's about it and you know I understand how to read a profit and loss and a statement of cash flow and a balance sheet and you know all my accounting is done in a curl not in cash and I understand what deferred revenue is and and I could look at someone else's business and tell you if I would invest in it you know because I understand how to read a scorecard but these are I don't know shit about any of these things but I went out and I had to learn more in order to become the person that I wanted to be so you know when I talk to groups now I talk about you know kind of like my three takeaways I said look know your outcome and you're allowed to change your mind but start moving towards something immersion learning through having coaches and mentors is the fastest way to get cuts to the front of the line and number three and it's not sexy is discipline inconsistency you know if you live your life with those three principles it's a guarantee that good things are going to happen I agree that's so smart very very wise I think that again now I see how you've applied those principles to your own life and in your own stories like this is the I love that that built by design right nothing is just up to chance it's all built by design and if you maintain those three principles for a long enough period of time and you'll get to where you want to go yeah you really will get to where you want to go for you if you look at all the lessons that you've learned the growth lessons the we were joking about how um sort of at this stage in your career even might even sort of this podcast is to help people navigate some of the stressful moments in their life so that maybe they have a little bit of wisdom that helps them navigate them a little bit more effectively if you think about one lesson that stands out there was particularly difficult for you to learn from what was that lesson and why oh I tell you that one for sure uh January 7th 2025 this year this year yeah life will throw you curveballs I lived uh past tense now in Pacific Palisades California a house burned down yeah I lost everything life will throw you curveballs and what I've learned from this is that no matter how successful you are the only guarantee in life is that whatever hasn't happened before is probably going to happen and how you respond to it is a culmination of everything you've done up to that moment and are you in position or are you out of position um I mean I didn't walk out of my house that morning thinking like all right well it's nice seeing all this stuff and you know that's not how I thought my day was going to start and but how my day ended um I was like oh my god like it wasn't just my house this whole community wide doubt you know that's actually the hardest part of this whole thing is that your friends and your neighbors and your community is gone I mean it's just it's not like I haven't seen a house burned down before but multiple square miles like they said surface area wise double the size Manhattan burned down and so you look around and you just see see nothing um there was a fire that had happened five years prior in Malibu and most of the community had to evacuate and there were people that didn't have anywhere to go and the day of the fire I realized I'm homeless and if I don't do something right now I'm going to be homeless um so by eight thirty the next morning I signed a lease on an apartment that was furnished in pet friendly because I knew with thirty thousand people being displaced there were not enough rentals between homes apartments condos that could could support what the demand was going to be yeah and so I immediately you know I went from you know starting my day top like okay I'm on top of the world to like okay I am not on top of the world right now and and this wasn't a problem that money can solve you know and something like this but being being proactive instead of reactive is what allowed me to reorganize lightning fast and create safety for my family you know because I have I have a wife and two little girls and um you know the first couple of weeks was pretty rough it was rough on on every level because you know you've lost your community you've lost area I mean like when I left work that day I'll have to close on my back that's it literally so I stayed at a friend's house in Beverly Hills that night and on the way or in like holy crap I got to stop at the mall and go buy some socks and underwear so something I haven't done a while um and I made a decision very early in this that I needed to live not just exist and what I mean by that is I have watched my whole community devastated and watch friends of mine lose everything and people from all different walks of life people you know who are better off than me and and people not as fortunate at me and it affects everyone differently yeah and what I saw was some folks who you know have it pretty good and it rocked them to the core and understandably so but I was like oh my god I don't want to to feel that way I don't want to I can't let this run my life because you know you can't change what happened but what you can control is how you think about it and so it was a very conscious decision for myself and for my family like the show must go on and so you know the first few weeks it was just kind of getting our footing again and just buying basic provisions and things like that and and keeping my business going and fortunately you know like my business was the next town over we thought it was going to burn down for a minute but it didn't I'm very very grateful um and uh you know so you kind of go from you know from survival mode to like okay you know what I just have a new set of problems that I got to deal with that's it you know this year business wise had certain things that I wanted to do and now I have to say no to them because I have to allocate time and resources because I'm building a house that I wasn't planning on building now and so things like that and so you know life is throwing a curve while my way but like I got two choices I could be like oh whoa to me and fuck and and all this stuff yeah and justified and I could let it rock me to the core and eat it me or I could say okay this is the hand that was dealt now let's let's figure this out and move on and I'm very thankful that you know I have I have the resources to whether the storm but the thing that really matters you know in addition to that I would say is is the mental attitude and you know my my my mental attitude is I think is predicated it's like mental toughness but it's predicated on these 1% behaviors and the discipline that I've had in my life and allows you to approach something this horrific with that same mental toughness you have to it'll it'll destroy you otherwise and you know fortunately most of the folks that I know they want to rebuild they want to come back to Pacific palisades they want to see this community flourish again I'm not leaving Pacific palisades it's my home and it's going to be like 10 years I don't think it'll be 10 years you know like the government which I'll give it some credit where it's doing this my lots already they already did the EPA testing and that was phase one and phase two Army Corps of Engineers has already cleared out my lot so all I need is a stamp set of plans and my contractor can start building is it okay health wise to to be the ground is not yeah so they just soil samples the waters already been tested and actually you know that so this DWP you know they've been flushing the lines for two months and they came out and said the waters fine but but I had it tested privately yeah you know and I found this company that does like the highest trace level testing clear okay yeah okay I mean that's not an easy thing to go through it isn't man it really is it I can't even imagine like we always talk about like you know like stressful things that happen in business it's nothing it's nothing because your home is your home home is memories your home is there is emotion if you have a bad day in business it's not like so worse like in business you know the worst thing that can happen is is you go out of business or you die but you can always start again right well if you don't die yeah if you don't die you can start again there's unlimited opportunity yeah but it's it's hard to overcome the emotional connection that you have built with your house and your things and your memories it's not it's not business it's not cold it's like it's something that it's part of you that you can never get back yeah but I guess if you have the right and if you have the right reason in your family and you understand that you can build new memories and you can build a new home and and you have that mental toughness to get through so it doesn't break you things will be better on the other side but that's not easy it's not easy but it's a choice you know it's it's it's it's a choice that I've made yeah to adopt this attitude and like even being here was a is a choice right like I like I could have canceled this and said hey man just you know my life's been turned upside down and you would have like holy crap I'm really sorry that happened but for my own mental well-being it's really important for me to be here because it's part of what I would have been doing anyway and by me doing the things that I would normally do makes me feel like my life is normal not disrupted I think that's I think that's super powerful because the bad event happens to people bad events happen all the time but you can't let the rest of your life's story be rewritten by that one bad event it's going to it's going to be difficult but life does go on and the sooner I think this is very very powerful the sooner you can get back to where you're happy you're normal you're doing the things you want to do the suit that I think that's like part of the healing process absolutely I it has to be because if not that that trauma and there's going to be there there is like a level of trauma whenever stuff like this happens and that's probably where the therapy comes in and yeah thank goodness but I think that trauma can last forever if you're not careful totally I mean all it takes is one life changing event that can ruin someone yeah you know the the difference is it's just you know how do you process and how do you move on from it yeah um one thing I would say about you know mass um you know catastrophic events like this it has shown the true colors of the residents of Los Angeles in the most unexpected and beautiful way because I had folks reaching out to me from you know friends neighbors people who are even affected just saying are you okay yeah is there anything we can do and you know the truth of the matter is like I didn't need anybody to do anything for me you know like I still have the ability to provide food for my family and I got a roof over our head that was basically all that needed to be done at that moment but it didn't stop people from reaching out repetitively and what I found is just the outpouring of love and support from the community that you're receiving made you feel like hey I'm not alone in this there's other people going through this too and I feel supported and I'm going to make it through this is a huge part of it I know that your whole life and businesses in um is in LA but what makes you want to go back to that particular area that obviously has been a stressful area for fires again and again and again yeah so Pacific palisades in my opinion was the last of the leave it to beaver communities it's very small and it's very family driven and you can walk everywhere in it you know and it's a very you know beautiful upscale area like it's sort of like the Hamptons of the West Coast and you know I've lived there for 15 years and when I walk out my door there you know I run into my friends and my neighbors and my patients and so the community feel that you get from the people who are around you and just it's scenic like you wouldn't believe because it's a coastal community you know and and it's right next to the ocean it's 10 minutes from my office I mean just you know most people think in LA you know you got to drive one to two hours everywhere in the trick to living anywhere it's just having your life in a small small radius so I've been very blessed that home and work are so close to one another and like I said the people that are closest to me in my life you know are my patients and friends and we all live in the same area and the disruption now is that we're all spread out like buckshot of course you know so you know people have moved to you know Santa Monica Brentwood Beverly Hills you know the South Bay people have gone up to Santa Barbara and just you know we're all spread out and because we don't intersect in that close proximity you feel a hole in your heart as a result of it you know that like where are my people and we all want to get back and that's that gives me hope it gives me something to look forward to you know last night my wife and I were talking and she goes you know can I build my closet bigger this time and you know and it was so funny hearing that because it was kind of like throwing a middle finger up to the tragedy yeah and that's how I saw it I was just like hey you know what like if that's not making lemonade out of your lemons like I don't know what else is have any priorities in your life shifted since the fire totally yeah um you you know life throws you curve balls along the way and this is like the biggest curve ball that I've ever received where because things like this like like like what happened to us here is like when when you guys here in Florida get rocked by these hurricanes well the the other side you know the Sarasota and basically the golf side of Florida has been demolished at two or three times yeah and it's like year after year and you see these homes submerged and everything but when you live on the other side of the country and you're just watching it on TV it's um like you feel horrible about it but it's not as tangible because because you don't live there right and then it happens to you and you're just like oh my god and you you feel the um the fragility of of things that you can't control in your life right like how things can change like that so you know what's changed for me as twofold as one is that my priorities in 2025 have shifted because like I said there's there's things that I wanted to do business-wise and work-wise that I have to press pause because I got some some family and and life rebuilding to do and that's okay um and then the other thing I started thinking about for the first time too is you know like even after selling by you know I've been like working hard and killing myself and grinding and everything like that and I told you earlier I said I never see myself not working but I started thinking about like well how many hours do I really want to work and should I be spending more time doing things that I enjoy then I currently do and you know just so and that's it for me that's a really tough conversation because I love working and then I started thinking about like you know maybe I maybe I do work too much you know maybe you think you work too much I don't know you know they say it's not work if you if you enjoy doing it and and I smile when I talk about it you know that's how much I enjoy doing it but um you know so so you know what I would say is I'm having conversations with myself that I haven't had before and and the main reason before is because I was just too immersed in what I was doing and maybe even when I was younger I was too afraid to have conversations because you're you're sort of in the building and and acquiring stage of your life and you know like when you lose your house and everything you own and I've been very blessed because you know like I have a nice things or had in the past tense and you know now all my worldly belongings fit in a duffle bag yeah and you realize very quickly like you know I really don't need that much to live it's nice having all the other stuff and and even my wife and I were kind of joking like because I like clothes and fashion I had a lot unlike you know I'll probably buy less clothes this next go around and you know maybe the trade-off will be just buying like nicer clothes that better quality that lasts longer and so forth but you know do I really need 12 pairs of jeans you know yeah this part so so you know you start thinking about consumption and how much you need and there's a trickle effect to that too because it ties into well how big of a house do I want this time and how many cars do you really need and and maybe I want to have more time for traveling and and so I'm examining these now because of this traumatic episode that's happened and I don't have answers for it yet it's probably going to be work in progress but it's the first time that I'm having these conversations and I'm like hey you know what these might be some cool things to explore I think that a lot of people if they don't have this major life event they'll make money they'll be lifestyle creep and they won't even they won't even think about what they're spending money on and if they actually why they're making those purchases right yeah I think that happens to everybody lifestyle creep is dangerous it doesn't matter how much money you have because the tendency is to is to always sort of you know get to that next thing whatever that yeah and it's very easy to spend more money it's very it's all very easy to spend more money but it makes you reevaluate like maybe you don't need all the stuff and maybe it does make sense to travel more and enjoy more experiences and maybe instead of working 80 hours a week even if you love it maybe you know maybe the family is like I wouldn't mind if he spent another 10 hours you know with us yeah the week to do stuff yeah just be present be around be around yeah I hope that I hope that people ask themselves these questions without having to go through what you went through oh well there's an easier way to get to that answer those questions rather yeah don't have to mine's everything to do it yeah exactly do it more strategically how is your I like to understand you know you've gone through over your life a huge identity evolution you have evolved since that kid embraces to to where you're at now how is your definition of success changed over your life massively when I was younger you know as a as a kid you know it's funny like one of the motivators for me when I worked at the grocery store in high school I was I was a bag boy at the grocery store and and the summers I'd worked there 48 hours a week and you know help people take their groceries out to their car and I would you know put the groceries in people had like really nice cars we didn't have one I always like cars as and so for me it was kind of this motivator like one day I'm gonna have a really nice car and so you know there it was a motivator and there was there was an element of the pursuit of success and things right and and you know I realized if I work hard I could have things and I could be successful professionally and then as I said earlier things lead to things right because I didn't think that by you know by being a dentist and having a certain level of income you know that would allow you to have certain things but you know I ended up taking it to a totally different level and it actually more important than the things were the experiences and the people that I got to meet and the relationships that I got to have well the evolution of it came from my friend Jeff Sebel that's my banker friend that I told you and he was the guy who said to me success is not about having the most amount of money it's about doing what you want when you want with whom you want it and that's what I think about more now than any then I ever have in my life especially with what's transpired with the fires where I'm just re-looking at everything and saying you know just because that's how I was doing it up until this date doesn't mean I always have to continue to do it a certain way you know like that's the power of choice right and um you know the reality is that I paid my dues you know I'm very aware of that like I paid my dues I did the grind and I wouldn't have changed it for anything like if I if you said I had to go back and redo maybe maybe there's some things and mistakes that I made that I could have avoided and done more efficiently but the effort that I put into it and the intensity I would not have traded that I wouldn't trade in the sacrifices and and all of that I think it was worth it but but there there's probably a certain point where you know where I would say look no matter how much more hustle that I do I won't eat in a better restaurant yeah there won't be a nicer vacation that I can take um there won't be a nicer shirt that I can wear so you start thinking along those lines and then you start thinking about your time and how you're spending it and so forth and and it just raises interesting questions and philosophical things to think about like hey you know I actually I am in a position where I can have my cake and eat it too because of the hard work that I've done over the years what do you think was the the most significant um personal price that you've paid for something oh boy um you know what it is it's um it was family relationships yeah as far as I say I just felt like all my energy just leave me you know when I was um building my practice and writing Marashi oral health and involved with bite I didn't have a lot of free time you know I was getting up early in the morning I mean I was I'd get up at 4.45 in the morning you know and 20 minutes get ready out the door to the office and start grinding my first patient wasn't until 8 a.m so I had to have that time in the morning to work on stuff because then I had to run my business and see patients and then I wouldn't get home you know until you know 7 o'clock at night and then I eat dinner with my family and then go right to my desk and start grinding away again and it was rinse wash repeat for years doing that and you know when you when you believe in something so much and you're going to put this you know herkulean effort into it something has to give and look I have I pass no judgment on anyone of what what they choose as long as they're aware of what the outcome of their choices are and in doing this you know the outcome during that time was that relationship suffer you know my kids were this big at the time so how I justified it to myself was they won't remember they're too little they won't remember that dad wasn't around and you know like marriages and easy and you know me not being around and being able to help raise and you know I was a good provider but I don't think I was a good husband during that time because I wasn't around and I'm tired and stressed and irritable and you know the one thing I would say you know to her credit my wife is that she never said stop doing this she knew how important this was to me and that part of my drive in doing this was to give my family you know a life different than what I had growing up and you know you win some and you lose some and there was no guarantee that all this effort that I was going to put into it was even going to work yeah and so I'm glad that it did and as a result you know I've been able to give my family this really beautiful life and and I'm still young enough and healthy enough now you know to partake in it and you know back to your original question about you know like you know how do catastrophic events change you is I think I think that this long-winded answer is I want to be a more frequent participant with all of it yeah it's interesting how a couple thoughts I see this a lot where first of all I do agree that for seasons of life there has to be imbalance if you're going to build anything enormous there does have to be imbalance partner is one of the most important business decisions you'll ever make for sure totally for sure for sure but also sometimes you have to wonder like this is something that I struggle with too I also say like I work a lot you know for us for I don't have kids yet but for her for our future kids like this is why I work so much and she I mean she always it's she always says like well I never asked you to like work this much so really who are you doing it for at the end of the day I thought about that a lot and I think that sometimes it's for me and I of course it is I say that it's for a personal drive and a validation that you want to have yeah proving you can do something you know we all have stories about wanting to become someone bigger and better than who we think we are yeah um but your family gets to be beneficiaries of it yeah and what it tells you is that you partnered with someone who's fantastic because she didn't have that as an expectation yeah exactly so if you look 20 years into the future what's the impact that you want to have with your work with your life all of it I think um you know this next phase is is is definitely going to be predicated on mentorship and what I mean by that is is um you know on a professional level the practice of clinical dentistry is just really tough because it's hard enough working in someone's mouth who's squirming in the chair and but running this business and it's and it's a tough business on top of it and one of my superpowers is running a great business I know that I know the business of dentistry really well because I learned how to run a business and apply it to dentistry and most dentists do dentistry and the business is just whatever happens um so I see a world where you know I would have my own program where someone who's ready to get serious about their business and wants to learn how to make their their dental practice run efficiently smoothly profitably you know that's exciting to me I know there's a demand for it I people from all over the world reach out to me and there you know as the free helpline I try to you know help people where I can and and I think about you know like myself having a coach in business this could be applied towards dentistry and I also think about doing this for my kids too neither of them want to be dentists which I think is great you know like pursue what they want to do but I've learned a lot about business life success and a lot of what not to do's where you know as a father you think about like you know I used to joke I said Michael for my daughters was to get him out the door with good manners and no cavities that was it I was like if I've done that I've done my job and now I think about you know how can I educate and inspire my kids that they could have a better life than what I had and that they can you know go on and be successful in whatever it is that they want to do but I can help them avoid the pain points and you know be there to guide them and coach them and mentor them you know not just in life but also in business and in career and so forth and um you know I didn't have that kind of guidance you know as a kid I had to I had to figure it out myself um so being able to give them some shortcuts to the front of the line would be tremendously rewarding now I have to put an asterisk next to that because um I'm very aware from being a kid myself you know was that sometimes uh you don't give your parents their their due credit yeah like that's my kids they look at me like sometimes like on the dumbest human that ever walked the the planet but so that might be more of a pipe dream for me um I have a question so how do you balance when you've had such massive success how do you balance uh you know giving your kids a little bit of an advantage versus giving them too much and almost just a ruining like ruining them to a degree because you could you could make it so that they never have to stress about work and and especially when they're you know just starting out getting a job and they could have you know little allowances that could let them live their life and not go through all the struggles that you went through yeah they'll be highly unfulfilled and they'll probably end up you know with depression and all kinds of horrible things it's uh it's a it's a slippery slow I see it in I see it in L.A. a lot I see it I mean I see it everywhere but um on on a very serious I see kids that are like trust fund kids that do drugs yeah for dope like it's it happens in L.A. quite a bit it's real it's very real so I've always wondered how people that are are very successful and wealthy manage raising their kids properly so I think it's hard to figure out that line yeah it's a delicate line and my wife and I you know we constantly talk about it ourselves because part of the reason I work so hard is because I did want to give my kid a good life yeah um but there are I think the idea is that there has to be guardrails and you know where you know you want them to have certain comforts and strategic advantages like you know like my kid gets to go to private school you know like that's a blessing you know that she gets to go to this really great school and get access to a top notch education so you know I'm very thankful for that and that's something that I'm willing to invest in and that's not to say that public schools aren't good or there aren't good teachers there I just want to be very clear about that but you know a really good private school offers a lot of advantages that many public schools don't have so I see that as a strategic advantage and what I'm doing is I've created this opportunity and I spent a lot of money doing it that's going to hopefully help my kid in the long run you know because it's going to make him smarter but we also spend a lot of time especially now that the kids are a little bit older you know I have a 12 year old and a 17 year old and my 17 year old I have a lot more adult conversations with her now about what happens with choices that you make in life and the concept of the conversation revolves around whatever you choose there's going to an outcome or a consequence associated with it some are good and some are bad and so if you can think about what those outcomes are going to be before you decide yeah you'll probably make better decisions and so that's the edge that we've been leading with you know how old is she though she 17 yeah 17 yeah these are going to be these are real these are real yeah now I'll tell you something right now I mean I love my kid to death but my god like like age you know 12 to 15 was a rough ride you know she was you know becoming a teen and going through the roller coaster and I think you know it's like no parent is immune from that but she's coming out on the other side of it and she's working really hard in school and you know I mean maybe even what I want for her is not what she wants you know I don't have any control over that but I can at least control the narrative while I still have her under my roof and you know we've tried hard to teacher that you know your family is the most important thing and that you know we have a lot because we worked hard and we sacrificed but that also creates an obligation and responsibility for us to take care of other people because our family is very philanthropic and we we give time and we give money to all sorts of charities and causes that are important to us and my kids have watched us do the they don't know any different you know like when they were when they were a lot younger you know I made them every year in order for them to qualify for getting gifts from Santa Claus I made them donate 50% of everything they owned and they would pick and choose and they put the stuff into trash bags and then we would go to you know to Salvation Army and the fire station all this stuff to make the donations and I would make them go up and introduce themselves to the person and say you know my name is Ava Marashi and I'm here to donate my my toys to the kids that don't have any amazing and so one year we're packing the stuff and she was kind of lolly gagging and and and I just threw something in that I didn't think that she played with as she goes she broke into tears and she's like daddy not spider man please that was spider man and she pulled him out of the bag and spider man is actually well actually spider man burned down in the fire but up until now the spider man will still around he survived the cut every year and so you know like I'm not going to be able to teach my kid probably how to go without to the same level you know that I did but I sure as heck can control you know teaching them the importance of family the importance of if you're well off like that's that's not you know it's not just like okay great for us and to health everybody else like you can't take it for granted yeah you have to go out and it's your job and responsibility to help other people because not everyone is fortunate and lucky um so that's a big part of you know the the the parental philosophy that we have and and you know um you talk about like you know trust funds and so forth and personally I think that um you know too much too early is a bad thing yeah so you know you have to kind of be careful about how much and when and and try to set your kid to the expectation of you know if you want to have if you want to live your life like how you've lived it thus far then you're going to need to work hard to have you know the type of career that will afford you that type of life and that's going to affect the choices that you make of how you study in college and jobs and so forth very very good I think that's I mean listen there's a lot of ways to screw up parenting I don't know how to do it I don't have kids in my own um but I'm incredibly scared of of messing that up and I think that like some of these ideas of of keeping them accountable helping them understand that you know money can never be taken for granted just because you have it doesn't mean everybody has it you have to work for this and sort of not giving them too much too young I think that's a good a good formula at least to set them up on the right path well you try I mean like I've probably screwed them up a hundred other ways but like a regular parent um if you think about something that you know now uh that you wish you knew when you first started your career could be a life lesson could be a business lesson could be a dental lesson doesn't matter what would that thing be what things stand like stands out when I say that I think what it stands out to me is that um in the height of all the chaos whether it's your personal life or professional life or outside events that have you know caught your off guard it's gonna be okay generally speaking you know unless you have like a terminal health illness generally speaking it's gonna be okay if you work at it and you keep plugging forward things do have a way of working out and in hindsight most of the things that caused you the greatest amounts of stress and pain and you look back on me like yeah sock but it wasn't as bad as I thought it was gonna be and you know that's what I would tell my younger self um easier said than done but it gives you a little per you know wisdom and perspective moving forward for dealing with hard hard times hard things hard challenges that you don't have to let it eat it you know to the same level if people want to connect with you first of all well where do you want to send people so they can sort of like outside of coming to your office and getting their teeth on like what are you are you gonna work on anything in the future any new companies book podcast what are you what are you putting out into the world that people can consume I mean right now it's it's what we're doing you know I I'm doing like a lot of speaking engagements and podcasts yeah you know talking about this very thing um let's add on my presentation last night was from broke ass dental student to dentists of the stars to billion dollar exit that's a good that's a good title it's a good hook for you know if you're a dentist I suppose and um and so this you know this is this is where I'm at at the moment you know outside of my clinical practice and uh is having these speaking opportunities and I'm the keynote speaker for uh this big the the statewide dental convention here in Florida uh not this year they booked me a year in advance so I'll come back in 2020 amazing that was kind of neat um and then you know I connect with people a lot on social media too um you have a nice following and and you know it's fun to storytell if you will you know through that medium because it's just you know on my page it's uh it's it's more than just teeth so what's your what's your Instagram that's your main one yeah what's your handle yeah it's at dr. John Marashi so dr j-o-n-m-a-r-a-s-h-i amazing um last question I like to ask out of all the things that you've sort of learned over your career um you've sort of given over a whole bunch of wisdom and and and lessons if you had to pick one thing you only had to pick one you can only pick one thing that you can teach over to your kids the most important lesson what would that lesson be and why yeah raise your standards if you hold yourself accountable to standards higher than anyone else could hold you too stuff works out you usually come out on top things will happen you'll do far greater things than you even thought was possible you'll get in less trouble I love it I've never had that answer before I've never had that's an amazing answer thank you so much I appreciate you for coming on