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This Dental Specific Podcast is dedicated to the Dental "Entrepreneur" Michael Dinsio, Founder of Next Level Consultants, delivers #TRUTH when starting up a dental practice. From the very first step to getting the keys of a dental practice, Michael shares his raw & unscripted playbook with you. Not only does this podcast provide you with "What To Do" but more importantly "What Not To Do". With over over 15 years of experience & over 150 past clients, Michael delivers an educational and informative program in a real and genuine way. Start w/ Episode 01 - as we go through a STEP by STEP process.
Startup Unscripted.
The questions you have with
the truth you need to hear.
Help doctors get into
practice the way they want
to get into practice.
Hashtag truth.
That's why we put it out there.
What we want to do is we
want to bring truth to the startup game.
and now your host michael
dencio all right all right
all right guys hey we are
in toronto canada right now
at the aapd I'm super
jacked up because because
this is kicking off an
entire week of amazing
episodes uh again aapd
pediatrics startup unscripted.
Thanks so much for coming in.
And we're doing this live
this week and it's all
brought to you by a very
unique and awesome and
partner of Next Level Consultants,
Supermouth.
If you guys don't know about Supermouth,
you need to click on the links below.
I'll give you guys a
personal story here in a
minute about my kiddos and
how much they love this
system and this program.
But again,
Supermouth brought to you by
Supermouth Next Level
Consultants and Startup Unscripted.
So, hey, dentists and hygienists,
are you looking to evaluate
your practice with a
comprehensive oral care
solution for all ages and stages?
Discover...
The Super Mouth program,
a revolutionary line of
oral care products tailored
to meet specific needs of
each family member.
Kids will love the superhero theme,
and my kids do.
The themed universe,
while adults will
appreciate innovative
designs and scientifically
proven ingredients.
Plus,
everything is delivered right to your
door.
So join Super Mouth Pro
partnership today and
transform your patient's
oral health with Super Mouth.
I'm going to tell you right now,
this program is awesome.
And with all that being said,
we're lucky enough today to
be interviewing Kami Haas,
the owner and founder of Super Mouth.
Welcome to the show, man.
How you doing?
Thanks so much, Michael.
This was such a wonderful introduction.
I really appreciate it.
Thank you.
You know, hey, we love the program.
I don't do commercials very
often on the program.
And it's special to have you on the show.
It's special to be sponsored
by you today and this week.
Man,
why don't you give us just kind of
like where you came up with this?
Because I always tell my
team and all the peds that I work with,
I'm like, this guy's a visionary.
I mean,
all of the things that went into this,
every little detail, I'm blown away.
You got to tell me in the
audience how you came up
with this program.
Thank you so much.
That's very nice of you.
So, yeah, this was decades in the making,
as you can probably imagine.
I mean,
I'm an orthodontist of thirty years.
My wife is a pediatric
dentist of thirty years.
My wife became a pediatric
dentist two years
I'm just kidding because I
don't want people to start
adding the age up and then
my wife gets upset.
When I tell people how long
I've been dating my wife, my wife says,
yeah,
I started dating him when I was two
years old.
But kidding aside, we've been practicing,
as you know, for a long time,
nearly thirty years.
We have a fairly large
practice with a few dozen
pediatric dentists, orthodontists,
general dentists, hygienists.
oral surgeons end on us like
we have a pretty large
group practice in southern
california and um but until
my son was born about
twelve years ago when when
patients would ask me hey
doctor what toothpaste do I
use I would just say just
use whatever with fluoride
yeah and they would say
which one I'm like doesn't
matter because that's the
only thing I knew uh I
think it's a shock to
people when I tell them we
don't learn anything about
toothpaste and mouthwash
and floss and toothbrushes
in dental school like we
learn how to do fillings
and we need to do how to do
crowns and bridges and yeah
braces,
but we don't learn what's in an
oral care product.
And the result has been the
number one disease in the world.
And the most common chronic
disease of children is dental disease,
which is shameful because
more than ninety percent of
that is easily preventable.
If you use the right oral
care products at home,
you go to the dentist,
just do a few minor things.
Yeah.
And so it's really shameful
that we don't learn
prevention in oral health.
And this would be bad enough
if oral health was just
limited to our mouths.
But as we all know,
and we're learning more and more,
our mouth is connected to our body.
And really,
that's where my passion is
about oral health, systemic health,
oral health, pregnancy health,
oral health, mental health, airway,
sleep.
So oral health really
impacts every part of our
life from health and
confidence and how much money we make,
our dating life, how long we live,
our systemic health.
Everything, right?
And so I've been always
passionate about oral
health for those reasons.
But when my son was born twelve years ago,
I remember when his baby
teeth started coming in,
I went to him and went to
my wife finally.
I said, hey, Nozly,
what toothpaste should we give him?
For the first time as a concerned father.
After years of just saying fluoride, Crest,
Colgate, doesn't matter.
I actually think,
I bet you a lot of patients do, like, hey,
do they have kids?
Does my pediatric dentist have kids?
That's right.
Because a switch goes off.
A switch goes off.
The minute you become a dad or a mom.
A hundred percent.
A switch.
A hundred percent.
In fact,
another science is like before my
son was born,
it was so easy for me to
tell the parents what to do.
Yeah.
Because I'm like,
this is what needs to be done.
And then when I became a parent,
I was like, oh,
now I understand what
you're going through.
So I was finding out all these nuances.
But yeah, so when my son was born,
I asked my wife, we literally, she said,
I don't know.
Like for the first time,
we didn't know what to give him.
Is fluoride safe or not?
And you guys are dentists.
We're not just dentists.
We're specialists.
Yeah.
I mean, and we have a I mean,
we were like we were leading, you know,
some of the leading
dentists like we speak about this,
you know,
and we lecture about oral health.
So it's like, you know,
we're supposed to be the experts.
And when we didn't know that.
And so it was the first time
I actually Googled like
what I looked at my
toothpaste back back of the
toothpaste that I was using.
And I'm like.
What the hell are these ingredients?
I go, I'm like, oh my God.
Now,
so then I freaked out from both safety
and efficacy.
And anyways,
that was my beginning on my
journey into oral care products.
And then, of course, years later,
then it was years of building.
But as you know,
we launched SuperMath last
year with over two hundred products.
And there's a reason.
Look at this.
I mean, this is just a little example,
right?
Literally every... There's so much stuff.
So much.
And every little detail for
the YouTubers watching.
It's just the cutest stuff.
Thank you.
Who comes up with this stuff?
Yeah, so because... So we said... Okay,
so at my stage of my career...
I don't want to sell a toothpaste.
I thought I have an opportunity.
So what happened?
I wrote a book a few years
ago called If Your Mouth Could Talk,
became a number one
national bestseller about
oral health systemic health.
So I had this oral health
systemic health passion.
Then I had this oral care passion.
And I said,
if I wanted to reinvent oral
care and actually do it right this time,
because
The fact that the number one
preventable disease is dental disease,
that means whatever all
these other manufacturers
have been mixing the last
fifty years is not working, right?
It's not me saying that.
So I said, if I want to do this,
how would I do it differently?
Well, how would I do it differently is
You, Michael, sitting here,
probably record different
sets of oral care products,
toothpaste and mouthwash
than someone who's pregnant,
than a two-year-old who
never gets a cavity,
and a fifteen-year-old who
gets braces and just had a soda habit.
But if you just walk in with
those four people into a
grocery store on Amazon,
how do you know which one to get?
That's right.
That's true.
There is no model.
So we said customization is
going to be key.
Then we said safety has to be key, right?
Because we swallow a third
of the toothpaste and
mouthwash in average, some kids more,
adults a bit less.
I mean, all sorts of things.
The mouth is more than enamel,
so we should be thinking
more than fluoride.
If you're on the fluoride side,
everything's about fluoride.
If you're on the anti-fluoride gang,
Then anything that non-fluoride,
I always joke around that
literally everything other
than fluoride is fluoride.
Like poison is non-fluoride.
Ice cream is non-fluoride.
Everything like my coffee is non-fluoride.
That doesn't mean just
because cocaine is non-fluoride.
Well,
cocaine is a good example of
something that's natural.
This is another example I
always tell people because
so people who think maybe, okay,
conventional products are terrible.
They're toxic.
And they said,
maybe if it says natural on it,
it should be good.
And I always remember cocaine is natural.
You know,
there's so many terrible things
that are terrible for your
health that are unsafe and ineffective.
And this is natural.
So we really need as a
profession to learn what's
in a toothpaste finally and
get this fixed.
So that was the beginning.
And then we really our goal
was to reinvent every product.
So we have over three hundred patents.
This is just to tell you how
much innovation we've been
in reinventing every single
Toothpaste, mouthwash, floss.
Our floss, for example,
has a patented technology that expands,
removes forty percent more plaque.
Our electric toothbrushes, the bristles,
the bristles of a toothbrush.
Not that one.
There's one that we're
releasing soon for adults.
I actually brought it for you.
I'll show you if you want.
We think about it.
The current toothbrush bristles, you know,
the flat like oval or
rectangle was invented in
nineteen thirty eight,
a year before World War Two.
And it's almost unchanged.
But no tooth structure looks
like a rectangle or oval.
We have a certain anatomy on the teeth.
We have convexities.
So the way we did it,
we went and scanned
thousands of adult teeth.
Then we did thousands of primary teeth.
And then we scanned
thousands of people with braces.
And then we contoured the
bristles to wrap around the
teeth perfectly.
So there was just an
independent ISO study that
showed that our bristles remove plaque,
get this, up to forty times, not percent,
forty times better than a regular brush.
It's ridiculous.
And that's just on the efficacy,
on the safety side.
According to CDC,
up to seventy five percent of U.S.
population,
we have dental sensitivity now
because of these terrible
brushes on thirty thousand
RPM toothbrushes that are
just removing enamel and
destroying our gums.
And so that's on the safety side.
And then on the cleansing side,
there was a study two years
ago that showed that
there's more microbes on
your toothbrush than it is
on your toilet.
I'm sorry for those of you
who are having breakfast or lunch.
Or a public restroom floor.
Just think about it.
There's more disgusting microbes,
including E. coli, all sorts of fungi,
microbes, other microbes, on a toothbrush,
on a toilet, or a public restroom floor,
and then we put this in our mouth.
So we've also fixed that.
We have an unbelievable product.
I mean, if you want,
I can kind of... Let's back
up because you're talking
about all these like
really cool details from the science.
You can tell this guy knows his science.
He's got the patents.
He's got all these things.
I'm thinking it from a couple things.
I'm thinking from the
psychology because you said
that the kiddo's oral care
the disease is like the number one thing.
And I'm thinking you have great products.
You have obviously safe products.
You have all these things,
but what you also do part
of the genius of this whole
program is you're getting
the kids to actually like enjoy.
And let me just share a story.
I, um,
I made my kids watch the movie first.
Love it first.
They had no idea who super mouth was.
Then Dr. Super smile.
Nothing.
He's still talking about this.
And I forgot to say, Dr. Kamihasa, a.k.a.
Dr. Have One Super Smile, right here.
But this is part of his
everyday vocabulary.
So I had them watch the movie.
You guys have an awesome movie.
Thank you.
And then the next day,
the box showed up and they're like, oh,
my gosh, they knew all the characters.
They knew all the characters.
They're like, oh, my gosh,
they're ripping the box.
They're into this thing and
they're just really enjoying it.
So now legitimately,
it's not dad telling them
to brush their teeth.
It's Dr. Carey.
Dr. Carey's telling him to
brush your teeth.
And I'm like, oh, my gosh,
I'm going to see Dr. Have
One Super Smile today.
I'm interviewing him.
Oh, my gosh.
And so, like,
you attacked the psychology of it.
Thank you.
Are you with me on that?
Of course.
Absolutely.
That was the last piece I
was going to say.
You're right.
The fun part.
The fun part.
The fun part for the kids.
I think it's the most
important for the kids.
A hundred percent.
And also how beautifully
products are designed for adults.
So on the fun part,
just to kind of reiterate what you said,
we have, we've over the last twenty,
thirty years,
we've developed these nine
characters from superheroes to villains.
Right.
Cavitar, a villain.
Moeller is his hinge.
Cavitar actually scared
Alexander a little bit.
Is that right?
A teeny bit.
I guess a little bit.
But it was part, it's part of the story.
Because he kicked his butt.
Listen,
there's no secret that Disney is
the most successful theme park.
But I would argue and I
would assume a hundred percent of people,
almost everybody would agree with me.
They don't have the best rights.
The reason Disney is so
successful is not because
of their rights.
It's because of the way they
do storytelling and how to
tell the stories.
Because when I go there and
I see Elsa or I see whatever Star Wars,
I've seen the movies.
So I know these characters.
So I have an emotional connection to this.
So I have an emotional
experience when I go to Disney.
So I'm willing to pay.
You know,
forty dollars for the parking lot,
one hundred six dollars for
the entrance for the experience.
So how do we do to meet?
That's right.
So we've kind of we've
learned that many years ago
and we've kind of duplicate.
I wasn't thinking about copying that,
but it just now that I
think about it in the past,
so we over the years,
we've developed this world
of superheroes and villains.
And we tell stories through movies,
augmented reality, comic books, music.
And so like the movie you mentioned,
The Rise of Supermouth,
it is available on YouTube
if people want to watch it.
It was in a major film
festival at the Chinese
Theater in Los Angeles a few months ago.
It's a real movie.
I mean, you'll laugh, you'll cry,
you'll floss before bedtime.
That's our tagline on it.
But really,
we want kids and families to
fall in love with our characters.
So when they're using this toothbrush,
bristles, it's not a toothbrush,
it's bristles.
It's bristles, yeah.
The kids sleep with the products.
They take them to school.
They line up after dinner
for their dessert because
our toothpaste tastes like ice cream,
strawberry, vanilla, chocolate, and mint.
They literally wait with
their toothbrush after
dinner waiting for their dessert.
I know.
And so, yes, you're right.
Safety and efficacy,
all those things are great.
But if the kids don't
actually love and don't enjoy it,
then we're not going to
accomplish our goals.
I think about coaching
because we're in consulting.
And so, like,
We have all these great ideas.
We have all these great answers.
But if the why behind it is
off or the motivation isn't
there or the energy or whatever,
we don't see the results.
When they want it, it just explodes.
And they're just dying for more.
And it's the same thing as
if the why isn't there.
And you've created this
thing that the kids...
their why on it is awesome.
Exactly.
It's just so cool.
Our goal,
my goal has always been for the
kids to beg for brushing,
not for the parents.
And if you, before this,
that wouldn't happen.
I'm sitting there,
I got the toothbrush and I'm like, oh,
Jesus, you know?
Exactly.
And it's like, and then what?
Like, when are you going to do this?
Like,
The parents are just so obsessed with,
you know,
making sure our kids... So let's back up.
There's a business side to this,
of course.
And I want to talk about
that because... I love it.
I love the business side of it too.
It's what I'm... It's, you know,
what we're hired to do is
help folks be better business owners.
And so...
Can you explain the program,
the Super Mouth Pro program,
and how a dentist, ortho, pedo,
you name it,
can implement a system like
this in their practice?
Absolutely.
Can you walk us through that?
A hundred percent.
And let me tell you why I'm
so passionate about the
business side of it.
To me, business, like to me, I always,
when I was a dentist,
I was one of those few
dentists who loved the
clinical part of my dental
practice as much as I love
the business side of it.
And I know, you know,
as a- You're a half percenter.
Exactly.
It's not that many dentists
that love the business side.
I just, I don't know.
I just always loved it.
I think my dad is an MBA.
My sister is an MBA.
Kind of grew up in a business world.
So I just kind of like had a
big passion for that.
So-
You're right.
I mean,
I think if you're a successful dentist,
then you can provide better
care for your patients.
That's right.
You buy better equipment,
you hire better people,
you take in better trainings,
you create a better
environment for your patients.
So I always thought that's
just if I want to be a good dentist,
I just have to be also a
good businessman.
I didn't see a difference in the two.
And so the way the reason we came our big
business model for super
mouth is a B to B model,
which means we really sell
our product primarily through doctors,
pediatric dentists, general dentists,
hygienists, even on the physician side.
The reason is this, uh,
part of my family is in hair business,
like, like, yeah, a lot of them like,
My dad has a beauty supply.
My brother was like Inc.
five hundred or five thousand,
whichever it is for private companies.
Three years in a row for the
biggest beauty supply chain
in the country is called BSW.
But anyways, so what I learned,
the reason I'm bringing
this up is because what I
was always wondering in the hair business,
I don't know about you, Michael,
but my wife, for example,
Instead of going to like, you know,
grocery store and spending
four dollars on shampoo.
Yes.
She buys forty dollar shampoos.
Yeah.
And conditioners that are
from her hairstylist.
Probably same stuff.
Same stuff.
Probably maybe a little bit different.
A little bit better.
Well, why?
Hey, it's natural.
It's natural, exactly.
Because the hairstylist recommended it,
right?
So to me,
it never made sense that
hairstylists recommend oral hair products,
but dentists don't
recommend oral care products.
But you know why, Michael?
Because the model is broken.
Let me tell you how
absolutely ridiculous the
current model of dentistry is.
I will not name the companies,
but you can guess it.
The current toothpaste companies,
this is what they do.
They force you to pay them
for this sample toothpaste.
So you buy sample toothpaste
from these manufacturers as dentists.
Then we freely give it to
our patients to become the
salespeople for this company for them.
And we pay them to be the salespeople.
in the room and then we pass
this out to the patients
for them to go buy this
toothpaste from amazon from
somebody else and you paid
them and we paid them let's
roll that back I'm like how
did they get us to do this
this is like the craziest
business model and we've
kind of like oh we follow
this model like blindly so
I thought this is
absolutely ridiculous so
the way we do it we do the
exact opposite we we do a
one hour training course
online like in ninety
minutes we even give a free ce for it
It's a certification because
we want to teach our doctors.
It's a one hour education
that we all had to get in
dental school and hygiene school.
But what's in a toothpaste?
A mouthwash.
So we're confident.
That's the first thing.
Then they're certified.
It's really easy.
Then we provide,
we give them a free website, you know,
supermodel.com.
Landing page.
It's a landing page.
So it's really there.
We call it a replicated website.
It's just really their website,
but it's supermodel website.
And then they start
recommending it to their patients.
And then we have a retail
profit margin that they get
somewhere between fifteen
to forty percent of
anything that gets sold.
There's no inventory.
If they don't want to,
they can get some products
in the office and do a wholesale model.
Same thing,
but they could most of that
because we have so many products,
they just have some samples.
They genuinely recommend SuperMath.
They use their website or
the discount code that
links that patients to them.
And then we lock that
patient to their practice for life.
Whatever their patients and
their family buys,
The office gets a huge percentage.
And so it's an incredible model.
So now the doctors and the
hygienists and the team are
involved in every day care
of the patients.
Because remember,
the patients are already
buying a toothpaste.
They're just not buying it from you.
They're buying a mouthwash or a floss.
They're just not buying it from you.
The other genius part about
it is it's a quarterly program, right?
With the box,
most of the programs are quarterly.
They can.
They can buy it quarterly,
a hundred percent.
Most people get it on a subscription,
which is quarterly.
But they could also buy one time.
You know, if they want to.
So whatever they want.
It's not weird.
You can cancel.
Anything.
Whatever.
There's no contract.
There's no ongoing.
So this box shows up
quarterly and my kids love
it every single time.
But I just set up a startup in California,
in the Bay Area.
The amount of samples and
stuff you gave him to get
his practice up and running.
I was like, they gave you all this.
And that's all complimentary.
He goes, look at these drawers.
I'm like, are you kidding me?
And so now this, this, this chocolate,
super chocolate is going
into the goodie bags and love it.
And he's got the whole display and, and,
and, you know, again, um, I,
at first I was thinking it
was just kind of like a
salesy thing and I totally
bought into it.
Yeah.
But when you really dig into the,
dare I say, natural stuff,
but it is so low on the toxicity level.
I think that's why I got my
wife to buy in because
she's kind of a holistic nut.
We have a lot of holistic, biologic.
doctors by the way by the
way when I said natural all
over we don't have any
artificial ingredients
whatsoever so it's
completely natural but I'm
just I was meant to say
that just because it's
natural doesn't mean it's
good yes no and we don't
want artificial ingredients
of course but also not
every natural english so it
should be natural but it
should be correct
ingredients yes I'll give
you an example like we use
Like, first of all,
the mouth is more than enamel.
So we should open our minds
about more than just
fluoride versus non-fluoride.
First of all,
non-fluoride is just a ridiculous term.
So it should be either
hydroxyapatite or nanohydroxyapatite,
which is my favorite, and or fluoride.
And they have very different,
and I know this is beyond this.
I'm actually giving a lecture today
this morning at AAPD about
oral care products.
So I'll be discussing nanohydroxyapatite,
fluoride, a lot more in detail.
So that's at least one ingredient,
either nanohydroxyapatite
and or fluoride.
They do work very
differently that your
toothpaste should have.
Okay, that's for remineralization.
Okay, calcium, which is hydroxyapatite,
requires vitamin D and
K-two for absorption into calcium.
Ninety percent of the U.S.
population is deficient in it.
Well,
we should have vitamin D and K-two in
oral care products.
Are you a scientist?
What's happening here?
I am a scientist, and I love science.
Then your mouth is more than teeth, right?
You have gingival tissues.
You have the whole world of
oral microbiome.
So instead of antibiotics in our oral care,
like mouthwashes that kill
ninety-nine percent of your germs,
you wouldn't take an antibiotic.
Michael,
you're not a physician or a dentist,
right?
No, no.
If I told you, Michael,
I came up with a brilliant
business health model last night.
Why don't we just take two
antibiotics on a daily
basis that kills up to
ninety-nine percent of our
germs to stay healthy?
You would say, let's just end this podcast,
right?
This is crazy.
I mean,
I know that I take antibiotics for
a few days.
I have all sorts of side effects, right?
Yes.
antibiotics are fine for
acute bacterial infections
I'm not anti-antibiotics
but for a daily usage it's
ridiculous right but we do
that in our mouthwash we
don't even think about it
twice and by the way the
mouthwashes that kill
ninety nine point nine
percent of your germs on a
daily basis have been shown
to increase blood pressure
because they kill the
microbes that produce nitric oxide,
which is a very important
molecule in your body.
There's just all sorts of oral health,
not just oral health,
but systemic health havoc
that we're running into our
bodies while using
ineffective and unsafe oral
care products on a daily basis.
It's beyond just this, the system,
the products.
I mean, it's just the whole thing.
Um, you know, give us, um, you know, we're,
we're running a little bit out of time,
but I could talk to you forever.
Um, that it, did you do a startup when you,
when you and your wife started their,
your practices you buy?
did a startup you did sorry
so this whole program is
about talking to startups
so any fun tips or tricks
because I I have to say
that like when you sent me
those pictures of your
newest office with all the
stuff and all of the
figurines and stuff like
the kids I can only imagine how crazy the
they would go over something like that,
but you don't have all
those dollars at first.
That's right.
How do you create... Give us some tips.
I'm thinking patient
experience is on a twelve
out of ten in your office.
Thank you.
How do you get started?
I know.
What creates the...
craze what created the craze
in your office I think the
from very day first day I
always wanted to do
different things I didn't
want to follow everybody
else I'll give you a quick
example when we were at
kinko's I don't know if
kinko's are around anymore
like this is like I know
what that is yeah you know
what it is it's like a
place we used to have like
computers and graphic
design you know application
because we didn't have it
on our own computer oh my
god that just dated me I
feel old immediately
So I went to UCLA Dental
School at my residency.
My wife is in Los Angeles.
So I remember we had Kinko's
on Westwood Boulevard back then.
And we were going to work on a logo.
This is like a little quick
example to tell you what.
And I remember we had our
friend who was a graphic
designer student.
And we went on the Adobe
Illustrator and did a tooth fairy.
I remember I told them.
Did it end up being her?
It was a tooth fairy, yes.
Well, it was a tooth fairy first.
And I said, no, I don't want anything,
any tooth fairy, any tooth, any smile,
anything that every other
dentist uses the same stuff.
So my wife's last name is Carrie.
So she said, what about the tooth Carrie?
And then it was like the clouds.
And I said, yes, this is not a fairy.
It's a superhero.
Yes.
So we took the skirt off.
We put a superhero.
I just love superheroes when
I was growing up.
And we made our first
superhero named Tooth Carrie.
Tooth Carrie.
So that was like because I
just wanted to do different things.
And how long ago was this?
This was thirty years ago.
Oh, my gosh.
yeah and then I remember I
saw driving to san diego
because I was going to look
for a place to grab because
we were going to move to
san diego to start our
practice um I remember
thinking I was so excited
that oh my god we're going
to build a practice based
on superheroes and then of
course we created my
character to have one super
smile then we said we can't
have superheroes super
dennis without having a
villain so cavitar was
created so that's the way
you created this dirty yeah
the vision of this
The storyline of this is
literally thirty years ago?
Thirty years ago.
But you didn't have any of this.
No,
but it was a little bit of some of this
was all in my head and we
started working on it.
We had a first movie many years ago,
like a really terrible movie,
but we showed it at some local theater.
We always try to innovate
different things.
But I'll tell you my secret.
You want me to tell you my secret?
Yes, of course.
This is the biggest secret I
can give to a pediatric dentist.
I learned who truly my customer is.
I'll tell you,
this is a secret that I've
carried for thirty years.
I'll share it here this morning.
As a pediatric dentist, I think
we all think, or at least I did,
that our customer is the parents,
especially the moms,
because moms are the ones
who write the checks.
So I remember for the first
few years of my practice,
I would roll out the carpet for the moms,
give them a flower after
their appointments.
I'm like,
I would put the moms on the
pedestal because I'm like,
that's my customer.
We want to take our customer.
And one day I had an aha
moment and I learned that's not correct.
It wasn't the mom, it was the kids.
If I put the kids on the pedestal,
if I did everything for the kids,
then the parents would line
up to bring their kids.
And they would feel it.
The parents would feel it.
It was just natural.
The vibes.
And it's more because now
that I'm a dad and I know like if Michael,
if you do something nice for me today,
let's just say, bring me a cup of coffee.
I say, Michael, so nice.
I'm going to get him a cup
of coffee tomorrow.
But if you do something for my son,
that's nice.
Oh,
I'll go to the end of the world to do
something because then
you're like my favorite person.
All right.
You know.
But the opposite is correct, too,
by the way.
You nailed that because you're right.
When someone treats my kids right,
you're family now.
That said, you're family.
That's why I admire my son's
coaches and teachers.
I'll do anything for them
because they're... So in a dental office,
if you go to my office...
They're impacting your kiddos.
They're impacting your kiddos.
If you come to my office,
we have about three hundred employees,
maybe more, three hundred fifty.
If you walk to any of them and say,
who's your boss?
They're not going to say Dr. Haas.
They're going to say this
kid is sitting in my chair.
Well, why?
Because they're being taught
that you take care of this kid.
Everybody else is taken care of.
The parents are taken care of.
Your boss is taken care of.
The manager is taken care of.
This kid is your everything today.
In other words,
if I go to that person and say, hey,
Susie,
may I get a tongue scrape or a mirror?
And the kid says,
I want some hot chocolate.
They'll go get the hot chocolate.
They know who the priority is.
They get the hot chocolate
for the kid first before
they get whatever I ask for.
Wow.
I mean, that is a culture that...
takes years to create
absolutely and when you so
walk me through like my
mind's blown right now
because we talk about like
at next level all the time
about how it's the
patient's hour you may have
had the worst freaking day
ever your husband your wife
may have been just
grinding on you all night last night.
But when you walk in,
it's that patient's hour.
And we always talk about that.
What you just described is
on another level.
And there's a great book
called The Nordstrom Way.
You described it right there.
It's The Nordstrom Way.
It's all about that patient.
When you interview people,
think about a startup.
You're starting up from scratch.
You have nothing.
You have no money.
You have this big loan.
You're trying to figure it out.
I remember those days.
I'm sure you do.
You can't forget those days, right?
How do you, when you interview employees,
how do you know that you've
got someone that gets that?
Yeah.
So I don't interview personally anymore,
as you can imagine.
When you used to.
Yeah, yeah.
But what we've created the same culture.
So the people that I used to
interview now interview people, right?
The way you used to.
That's right.
And it gets easier because
over time they don't allow, I mean,
we have such a good core business and
that these people are not
going to allow other people
that are not like them to
enter that world, right?
Right, right, right.
But in the beginning, I learned my lesson.
I mean, literally,
we have our second employee
that we hired thirty years
ago still is one of our employees.
That speaks for you guys.
Thank you.
I mean, obviously,
we've had our share of
problematic employees.
Of course.
But we're in California,
so we've had... You being
the biggest problem.
You being the biggest...
Yeah,
I don't want to sound like
everything's easy.
It's really difficult.
I mean,
it's really difficult to run a
dental practice.
I don't want to sound at all
like this is easy.
It's difficult,
but it's rewarding at the same time.
It's like raising a kid, right?
It's really difficult, but it's rewarding.
And so I think what I
learned after many years is
really you want to hire...
quality, personality, genuine people,
and the skills we can teach them.
Because the more and more
you put systems together,
the less and less people
matter from that particular part of it.
But you can't train a person
to be nice and genuine and
loving and caring and honest.
These values that we all have.
Nurturing, exactly.
And so we hired those types of people.
Because if you're a dad,
let's just say you take
your kid to the dentist and
this hygienist or this
dental assistant or the doctor,
if they're genuinely nice,
but they do something bad
or stupid or something,
they can make a mistake,
you forgive them.
But if they're mean...
But they're not, you know, and by the way.
And also make a mistake.
Make a mistake.
It's completely different.
They're dead to you at that point.
And also,
we've always teach people that we
make mistakes.
Like I remember,
can we have time to give
you one quick example?
I remember a few years ago
when I used to still say,
because I don't see patients,
as you can imagine,
with all my crazy world.
But about ten years ago, I kind of,
before that, I was seeing patients still.
And I remember one day I was
in the orthodontic side.
We used to back then only
have ortho and pedo.
So one side I was doing
ortho and then I would run
like I would see like one
hundred twenty patients a
day and I would still see
like fifty exams in the pediatrics.
Oh, my God.
So I got paid to see a pedo patient.
Right.
So I'm like walking, walking,
then running through the
hallway where no one sees me.
And then I start walking fast again.
And I saw this mom with her
arms crossed next to one of
our pediatric rooms as I
was walking by her to see
this new patient.
I said, hi.
And she said, hi, like this,
like not very happy body language,
body language.
So I went and saw my patient
and I quickly came back to her.
I said,
this is the middle of a very busy day.
I said, hi, is everything okay?
I kind of grabbed her elbows, you know,
like a little very friendly.
She said, no, doctor, this is not okay.
I said, I'm so sorry.
What's happening?
She said,
not only I was waiting for like
thirty five minutes,
like pediatric dentists, obviously,
sometimes that happens, you know.
Yeah.
Ortho never, but pedo, yeah.
So not only I was waiting for like, thirty,
thirty-five minutes to get here, now look,
this assistant who's working on my son,
she doesn't even look in my
eyes to apologize to me.
She's like, ignoring me.
As this is happening.
As this is happening.
And of course, that assistant, later,
by the way, I talked to that assistant,
she said she was embarrassed.
to look at her.
So it wasn't because she was
trying to be rude.
She was embarrassed because we were late.
So I taught her, look,
she didn't get that.
Address the problem.
Address the problem.
Exactly.
So this is what I did.
I said, hey, I'm so sorry.
This is one of those crazy days.
What can I do to make it up to you?
And as soon as I see that, she kind of
Her body language changed.
Shoulders came down.
Shoulders came down.
Her response, she said, Dr. Oz,
you're so wonderful.
Thanks for stopping by.
The fact that you just
stopped by to say hi.
That's all I want.
I said, no,
but I really need to do
something for you to make it up to you.
At least can I get you a cup of coffee?
She said, no.
I said, really, what?
She said, okay, can I get a cup of coffee?
I said, what do you want in it?
She said, whatever, like cream.
Mind you, he is literally sprinting.
Exactly.
And then so I'm like, I'll be right back.
She's like, no, no, no.
I thought you're going to
ask somebody else to do it.
I said, no, I was going to look at it.
I said, no, then I don't want it.
She's like, I'm like, listen,
I'm not going to go see
another patient until I make this right.
So I went and grabbed a cup
of coffee myself.
I made her whatever she liked.
I brought her.
She hugged me at the heart.
She said, Dr. Hodge,
this is the reason I've
been bringing my kids to
her for twelve years.
I'm never going to go anywhere.
I'm going to tell every friend I have.
And I was just going to say,
and now she's going to tell
people that now it doesn't matter.
And by the way, she was pissed.
I always talk about,
especially when it was during COVID,
like five years ago, whatever, three,
four years, geez, four years, whatever.
I know.
I say, look, when crisis happens,
opportunity reveals itself.
I love it.
Because when something bad is happening,
there is literally an
opportunity to make it an amazing thing,
not a shitty thing.
Absolutely.
Listen, and the bigger the challenge,
the bigger the opportunity.
The bigger the reward in the end.
The bigger the reward.
That's how you respond.
A hundred percent.
When you have an upset patient,
that moment is your
opportunity to make that
customer for life.
And a lot of people...
go the opposite direction of that.
They don't look at me like
they're my assistant
because they're embarrassed.
You know, they think, well, I screwed up.
Let me, but you screw up.
People screw up.
So let's tie this back.
So the question was,
how do you make this experience?
How do you make this culture
of your brand new startup?
How do you get people to be raving fans?
You just gave some
incredible stories right there.
That's how you did it.
That's how you grew from two patients.
You told me a story before
we even turned on.
Love that story.
um you went from that to
just exploded I assume
because yeah we have a
twenty four percent market
share wow I mean that's
crazy right in san diego
county so we have like in
literally I think there are
eighty seven other
pediatric dentists and our
group we have twenty four
percent of all the kids in
the county of san diego
goes to one of our offices.
Wow.
I bet you the pediatric
dentists love you in the area.
You know what?
They're like,
how do I compete against Kavatar?
I know.
But you know what?
Honestly, I don't see it as competition.
I kind of like... I still
see them as my colleagues
if they ever need my help.
During COVID, we all helped everybody.
Everybody helped each other.
We were like...
Honestly, I don't know.
I've been practicing for
enough years to kind of
feel like I just want to
leave a good legacy.
Like this whole super mouth,
if you ask me the reason I get up at my,
I don't want to say I feel like I'm old,
but at my stage, you know,
thirty years into work,
every morning at four
thirty in the morning, I go to my office.
I have meetings from, you know,
internationally with we
have manufacturers all over the world,
as you can imagine,
with two hundred plus products.
Oh, my God.
Oh, my God.
So what the drive,
where do I get the energy?
Yeah,
because I feel like I'm going to
leave a legacy now.
And this is my opportunity
for the first time in the
history of oral care to do
something right and to
actually create something
that's truly safe, effective, fun and,
you know, leave it behind.
So now not only did you
touch all those kids lives,
all those employees lives
that you're practicing.
now you're impacting the world, I suppose,
with this system.
Doc,
that's a great place to kind of shut
it down,
but I just thank you first and
foremost for being on the program,
but even more so for doing
something like this because
my kids love it.
They love brushing their teeth.
They will probably...
talk about this when they're whatever age.
That means so much for me to hear that.
You just said you do
something right for my kids.
We're family.
You and I are family now.
Thank you for doing this for my kids.
Thank you very much.
You're so awesome.
I appreciate that.
I will say,
if you guys haven't checked
this book out and read it,
If Your Mouth Could Talk by Dr. Kamihas.
Check it out.
It's a really good read.
If you're into science and
really getting into that kind of stuff,
you'll probably appreciate it.
Thank you.
Good luck at your presentation.
Thank you very much.
And again, folks,
click on the links below if
you want to get any
information about SuperMouth.
I can make an introduction,
but check them out on your own, whatever,
but definitely look into
that business model because
I think anything we can do
to help ourselves be better
business owners, and again,
I'll end it on this,
is if your business is not sustainable,
You can't help the community.
You can't help kids' oral health.
And that's why you have to make money.
That's why you have to focus
on the business.
Because if you don't,
then you can't practice.
And if you can't practice,
then kids' oral health is
the consequence to that.
Everything is linked together.
So thanks so much for having me, Michael.
This was such a wonderful thing.
And I'm really always
excited to work with you.
So if there's anything I can do for you,
for your family, and your clients,
please let me know.
Thank you.
That's great.
Thanks, Doc.
Talk to you soon.
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