#171: Behind The Billion-Dollar Byte: The Skater-Dentist Who Changed Everything

Cameron is joined by Dr. Jon Marashi, a renowned cosmetic dentist and entrepreneur, and they discuss Jon's journey from aspiring skateboarder to successful dentist, discussing the challenges he faced in dental school and his transition to practice ownership. He emphasizes the importance of resilience, building a strong team, and the impact of word-of-mouth referrals in growing his cosmetic dentistry practice. Dr. Marashi recounts his experience launching Byte, a direct-to-consumer dental product, which led to a billion-dollar exit. They also reflect on the lessons they have learned from both success and adversity, including the importance of community and personal growth.

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Thank you for listening to this episode of Medical Millionaire!



Takeaways:

• Dr. Marashi's journey from skateboarding to dentistry showcases the importance of following one's passion.
• Resilience is key in overcoming challenges, especially in rigorous programs like dental school.
• Building a strong team is essential for success in any business venture.
• Word-of-mouth referrals play a crucial role in growing a cosmetic dentistry practice.
• Transitioning from employee to practice owner requires careful planning and execution.
• The launch of Byte demonstrates the potential for innovation in the dental industry.
• Success often comes from being open to new opportunities and partnerships.
• Work-life balance is a myth; choices have outcomes that shape our lives.
• Experiencing loss can lead to personal growth and a reevaluation of priorities.
• Continuous learning and adaptation are vital in entrepreneurship.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
You're listening to Medical Millionaire, your podcast for medspot owners,
medical aesthetics, cosmetics and elective wellness entrepreneurs. Each week, we
dive deep into powerful marketing strategies, proven scaling tactics, and
the secrets to attracting high end clients, all while staying
ahead of the latest industry trends. Join us as we

(00:25):
uncover insights from top industry leaders to help you boost revenue,
enhance patient satisfaction, and master the art of marketing your practice.
Hosted by Cameron Hemppill. With over a decade of experience
in the aesthetics industry, Cameron has supported thousands of practices
and providers, working with some of the biggest names, most
well respected brands, and elite industry thought leaders in the field.

(00:46):
If you're ready to level up your practice and become
a true medical millionaire, this is your podcast. Here's your host,
Cameron Handpill.

Speaker 2 (00:57):
Hey, what's up everybody, Cam Hemphill here for the Medical
Millionaire podcast. Hey, thank you so much for taking the
time to tune in. My goal is to give incredible
value and insight for practice owners. So if you're thinking
about getting into the world and becoming a practice owner,
you're looking to take your practice at the next level.
I want to help you throughout that journey. Guys, today,

(01:19):
I have an incredible guest on It took me over
a month to get him on the show. I have
doctor John Marashi here. He's a world renowned industry leader
and innovator for cosmetic dentistry. Talk about the ability to
build a loyal clientele, right. He has a very impressive

(01:39):
roster of a list actors, musicians, athletes. He's out of
the Hollywood Hills area, and he has a unique, high tech,
precise and artistic approach to cosmetic dentistry, which is garnered
by some of the attention of the top media including Vogue, GQ, Squire, Vanity,

(02:01):
some of the top names and brands out there. The
Wall Street Journal actually even wrote a piece on him.
So in addition to his private practice, he launched a
signature Msnic luxury toothbrush in twenty nineteen, Doctor Marashi was
also one of the founding team members that helped launch
a company called Bite, a very disruptive oral healthcare brand,

(02:22):
which was acquired in twenty twenty. He sold it for
a billion dollars. So not only is a world renowned
cosmetic dentist. Not only does he change lives for his patients,
he's also a exceptional entrepreneur and was able to see
something compelling that could attach to his existing practice and

(02:44):
create a billion dollar exit. He's also a kick ass
skateboarder and if you fall him on social media, you'll
see that he's just one of the coolest, you, down
to earth guys that I've ever met, and I'm honored
to have him on the show. John, thank you so
much for taking the time, Morning Cam. Thanks for having
me absolutely so give us a little background. You've done

(03:06):
so many cool things. Skateboarding obviously that had to start
at an early age, dentistry, building a billion dollar empire.
I mean, there's a lot to talk about. I want
to jump right in. So how do you how do
you do it? How do you go from cosmetic dentistry
to building a billion dollar company? Talk about that journey
with us if you could.

Speaker 3 (03:25):
You know, there's only two things I wanted to do
my entire life. It was going to be a professional
skateboarder or a dentist. That's it. That's that's where I was.
And fortunately the way that the cards fell, it was
amateur skateboarder professional dentists instead of the other way around.

(03:45):
Probably saved me, you know, a few broken bones, that's
for sure, So dentistry. Okay. I started skateboarding when I
was twelve, Sorry to take a left turn there, and
the moment and this was it was about nineteen eighty
six and back to the future. It had just come out,
you know, the prior year skateboarding was on this big wave.

(04:09):
And I'm from Spokane, Washington, so it's not like I
grew up in southern California beach culture where it was
really prominent. But the first time I saw skateboarding, the
first time I got a step on a board, the
first time I got to see it in a magazine,
I just knew that was my calling. There was something
so mesmerizing about this blend of the creativity that you

(04:33):
could make up things and try to do things, and
there was an autonomy with it as well, because I
was never so much into you know, like the traditional
team sports, and I wasn't really good at those, but
I still remember my first night on my skateboard. I
spent the whole summer working to save money to getting one,

(04:56):
and it was it was beyond magical. That's really the
only way I can describe it. Now. The funny thing
is is the next year when I started junior high
in seventh grade. This is so vivid, this pulling this
memory back. All the girls that caught my attention had

(05:16):
braces on. And I know it sounds really weird, but
in my mind there was something about I knew what
the end product was going to be, this gorgeous smile,
and I was just really intrigued by it. And that's
my earliest memory of thinking like, Wow, I'm attracted to smiles.

(05:39):
You know. I'm a tinkerer. I like working with my hands.
I was a prolific lego builder as a kid as well.
And it was the first time that it dawned upon
me like maybe I should be a dentist one day.

Speaker 2 (05:53):
So how old were you when you said when that started,
you know, happening when you were saying, Hey, you know what,
maybe I should be a dentist. You know, it's weird.
I actually thought about being a dentist as I was
a kid too, And it's almost like when you're talking
to your parents growing up, Hey, what do you want
to do? What do you want to be? A certain
stage of life, a firefighter, policeman. Uh, and then it

(06:16):
kind of got I want to be a doctor dentist?
Was it that happened with me?

Speaker 1 (06:22):
Like?

Speaker 2 (06:22):
How how old were you talk to us about that?

Speaker 3 (06:25):
So? Yeah, I mean once it was in once I
was in middle school and you know, as I mentioned about,
you know, catching my eye with folks who had orthodonics.
You know, that's kind of when I knew I was
heading down that path. And I remember going to the
dentist as a kid and getting my teeth cleaned. I
was also really interested in the work that was being

(06:47):
done there. I liked looking around and seeing this busy operation,
and I always thought, you know, the dentist was cool,
and I was always curious. You know, sometimes they would
hand you a mirror and you can actually watch what
they were doing. So there were several things just kind
of all coming together at once and said, hey, this
could be a real strong possibility for me. And you know,

(07:07):
my my love of science and working with my hands,
you know that combined with my love of smiles, it
just seemed to check the most boxes, you know, that's
for sure. And it was just something that it never
ended up being a fleeting thought, you know, like, you know,
my dad told me once I wanted to be a
farmer in Kentucky. I don't remember that one, but uh,

(07:28):
but I do remember always wanting to be a dentist.

Speaker 2 (07:32):
Oh my gosh. Okay, So, like two years ago, I
was hanging with my youngest daughter, she's eight at the time,
she was six at the time, and you know, she's
talking about what she wanted to do when she was old,
and she's like, Dad, I want to be a bus driver.
And I'm like, okay, all right, let's uh, let's let's
you know, that's cute. Let's talk about that. And obviously

(07:53):
I just let her her fantasy, you know, brain and
where she was at, you know, because like school, buses
are cool, they're big, they're yellow, So like back to
where you want to be a farm boy in Kentucky.
Us as parents maybe remember that. She probably won't remember
that as she gets older, right, So.

Speaker 3 (08:10):
I love that.

Speaker 2 (08:10):
But when you zeroed in on dentistry, I mean very
young age, obviously middle school, you never veered away from
that because you're still doing smiles today and you love
doing it. So as you see a lot of people
like change their mind, right, they get into dentistry, for example,
or another occupation, and they quickly realized, well, this isn't

(08:32):
for me. I thought it was for me, But maybe
I don't like to be inside a people's mouths, for example,
or maybe I just don't want to be at the practice. Right.
So as you zeroed in on that at such an
early age, it just kind of continued to build off
of the curiosity. Is that right, And you never veered
away from it. I find that really intriguing. Yeah, it

(08:53):
was a one way street for me.

Speaker 3 (08:54):
In fact, you know, at that juncture, I thought I
wanted to be an orthodonist because that was the only
thing I knew of about dentistry that would be the
gateway to getting a nice looking smile. And you know,
I grew up in a lower middle class household and
I didn't get to go to the dentists particularly often,
and certainly there there wasn't enough there for you know,

(09:15):
for having orthodonics. And you know, my teeth were barely
good enough. They weren't a disaster, but I didn't have
that beautiful, straight white smile, you know that that all
the other middle school kids and high school kids, And
so there was a sense of for sure of missing
out on that. And when I got to dental school

(09:36):
my first year, one of the first things I did
was go and get braces because I was in school
and so, you know, there was this desire of something
that I wanted to have for myself as well. I
think that was part of that driving force. And you know,
very few kids are jumping at age twenty three to
put themselves into braces. But it wasn't until I was

(09:58):
in my first year of dental school where I got
exposure to cosmetic dentistry and that changed everything. I was like,
wait a second. You know, I like this orthodonic stuff,
but that's actually not what I want to do. I
want to do cosmetic dentistry. This is even more exciting
for me.

Speaker 2 (10:14):
Interesting, Okay, yeah, I could see that. I mean, based
upon the history, even going back to tinkering, you know,
being looking looking at the science the skateboarding, that the
visionary of the artistic component of it. Because skate I'm
a big snowboarder. It was never particularly great at skateboarding.
I tried it for a while. But if I'm I know,

(10:38):
for me, if I'm going if I'm going down a
mountain right, double black Diamond. I'm from Salt Lake City, Utai.
Skied and snowboarded some of the gnarliest train out there.
You had to have this creative vision of how to
accomplish a move, a trick, how to get down the
mountain right, and so like, as you have that visionary component,
I could see where you tie the scientistic component to

(10:59):
it and then bring that to life. And I can
see what you're saying from the cosmetic standpoint. So as
you're going into dental school, what was what was that like?
And like, walk us through that because that's not easy, right,
And a lot of people throughout their journey in life

(11:21):
get to this part and they say, Okay, I met
it for a year of two years, Maybe it's not
for me, Maybe it's too hard. What kept you going?
What was some of the critical factors that kept you
on track? And maybe even somes that almost pulled you away?

Speaker 3 (11:36):
You know, I'll start with the part that could have
derailed the whole thing. It was you know how rigorous
the program was. And you know, listen, I think anyone
who goes through life without adversity probably doesn't reach their
potential because it's it's the hard times, you know, that

(11:58):
build us the resilience that we need to persevere. And
you know, I was always a good student, and getting
into graduate school it was a whole other level. And so,
you know, aside from having to work harder, you know,
the tests were more frequent, the material was more dense.

(12:20):
You know, the stakes were higher because now it wasn't
just like, oh, you know, graduating from college with this
degree and you know, I'd go get some job and
maybe it doesn't even relate to it. It's like, no,
this is my livelihood on the line here. So the
stakes were a lot higher. And in the back of
my mind, I was like, look, there's a lot of
people who have done this before me, and so you know,

(12:44):
if other people have done it, it's doable. So I
just have to stay the course. And that was you know,
that was my guiding light through the adversity of dental school.
But there were two pivotal moments in my first year
of dental school that gave me the fire to never
want to give up and also head down this track

(13:07):
or this path. The first was that it turns out
that one of the professors at New York University that
I went to for dental school was considered, you know,
the grandfather of cosmetic dentistry, and his name was doctor
John Klamia. Hey, Doc, I was GIVEINGI a shout out,
and he was the dentist that figured out how to

(13:31):
get things to stick to the front of teeth. So
when you talk about cosmetic dentistry and the main procedure
which I do, which is porcelain veneers, And for those
of you listening, a porcelain veneer is it's almost like
a ceramic fingernail that bonds to the front of your tooth.
And when you do these in multiple all the way
across the front. Now you can change the shape, size, color, position,

(13:55):
and the overall layout of your smile. And that's what
I do for a living, what I'm known for. And
up up until about nineteen eighty one or so, all
the attempts were you know, hit and miss because they
could never get these things to predictably stick to the
front of the tooth. Doctor Calamia was the guy who
figured it out. And when I got my first lecture

(14:17):
in my first year where he was talking about it
and I was seeing the work that was done, I
was like, oh, my gosh, look at this. Well there
was another happy accident as well. I was living in
the dorm. They actually had a dental dorm for the
grad students, and I got a trade publication in my
mailbox that was put there erroneously. It was for someone else.

(14:39):
It's got someone else's mail and I opened it up
and I saw my first article in cosmetic dentistry in there,
where you know, veneers were done on someone and this
was on someone who already had braces. And there was
this profound realization that straight teeth didn't always equal beautiful smile,
because if the physical tooth itself, you know, had a
poor shit or a poor color, you know, then a

(15:03):
straighter version of it didn't didn't give you a handsome smile.
And so this case was showing, you know, start to finish,
you know, soup to nuts, how the process worked. Well,
it turns out the dentist who was the author of
the article that submitted the case was this famous celebrity
dentist in New York City, and I was like, oh my,

(15:25):
and I saw this article and it just it was
so profound. I was like, Okay, that's it. This is
what I'm going to do. And my dental school professor
was able to introduce me to this guy because they
knew each other. And I begged, I said, can I
please come watch in your office? And I said, you know,
I'll wash your toilets. I just want to see this

(15:47):
being done in real life. And you know, one of
the things that I've learned is that, you know, when
you're a student, it's like it's like being a puppy dog, right,
And what do people want to do with the puppy dog.
They want to feed it, they want to pet it.
You know, because you're you know, because you're there for
the right reasons. You know, you're not like the next
door you know, competitor trying to steal trade secrets or whatever.

(16:08):
So I got to go into this guy's office and
doctor Larry Rosenthal. Thanks Larry, I'm eternally grateful to you.
And man, my eyes were blown away with what I saw.

Speaker 2 (16:19):
You know.

Speaker 3 (16:19):
It was you know, people flying in and famous people
and they're getting their smiles done and they're all happy
to be there, and I'm watching the work being done,
and uh and at the end of that day, you know,
you can imagine what was going on in my mind
and and and the DOCU was so gracious. He's like,
all right, well, good luck kid, and I'm like, when
can I come back. I don't think he was expecting that.

(16:42):
And and at that point I kind of turned into
you know, like Charlie Sheen on Wall Street. I kept
showing up on Gordon Gecko's door until, you know, until
he finally got to work for him. And that's exactly
what happened. Uh, after I finished my residency and I
had stayed in touch with this guy, you know all
that time, I convinced him to hire me right out

(17:03):
of the gate. And so when you talk about you know,
pivotal moments in my career, you know, that was huge
to have gone from you know, literally being a student
to working at you know, which, at that point in time,
you know, was the number one cosmetic dentistry office and
being able to you know, get my reps in at

(17:23):
such an early stage of my career.

Speaker 2 (17:27):
Were you so he was in New York and you
were in California?

Speaker 3 (17:30):
No? No, because I went to dental school at NYU. Okay, yeah,
my professor, the guy who you know who basically invented
cosmetic dentistry, knew this guy and so I got an
introduction from him, and that's how I got my foot
in the door. But you know, once the guy opened
the door, you know, just a smid I came, you know, kicking,

(17:53):
kicking right through. I tried to close the door a
couple of times to jam my foot in the doorway.

Speaker 2 (17:57):
And yeah, were you were you always that way? Were
you always pretty persistent? Were you always?

Speaker 3 (18:02):
Like very much so? And you know I mentioned, you know,
I had you know, you know, pretty modest, uh, you know,
home life, and and we learned at a very early age,
you know, me and my brothers that if we wanted anything,
we had to figure out a way to get it.
And so I'm not you know the picture on paying

(18:25):
Like look, we always had food on the table and
like it was good, but if we wanted the extras,
that was on us. So you know, we were always
out hustling and scheming, trying to find ways to get money.
And you know, whether it was you know, starting out
early as kids doing lemonade sales or doing things like

(18:46):
you know, trying to mow the neighbor's lawn or trying
to you know, shovel walkways and do gardening. I mean
everything and anything we could think of, you know, to
try to hustle to you know, put a few bucks
in our pocket. And I mean we even did door
to door sales. I'll tell you right now, there is
nothing that will build more grit than doing door to

(19:06):
door sales, because you know, you get no. Ninety nine
percent at the time, and you're sitting there trying to pitch,
you know, selling your raffle tickets, and that builds more grit,
you know. And then you go back to the same
house the next day and they're like, hey, we just
had you here. Yes, I said, I know, but you
didn't let me finish. And and and that's a life lesson, right,

(19:27):
you know, like if you're that young and you can
and you can take or you know, handle the rejection
of it all because most people can't, and go back
and do it again with a smile on your face.
You know. I didn't realize that then, you know that
that that that was going to mold my resilience for
later in life. But but it did. And because at

(19:49):
that point in time, you know, I was doing it
just out of what I thought was necessity.

Speaker 2 (19:55):
Yeah. Yeah, there's so much to unpack there and you know,
there is there's so much of a of a trend
line or common thought or common interview that I have
with people on the show or entrepreneurs that I've just
engaged with throughout my life. Is you know, early on
in a lot of people's journey, they have to go

(20:18):
through experience. You know, they have to figure things out
on their own, whether it's the hard way, you know,
sometimes it's a super hard way, sometimes it's a little
bit easier path. But you know, entrepreneurs and people that
build this grit, this adversity at a young age, right
and put themselves out there and are not afraid to

(20:38):
knock on the door and people to say you know,
they're going to say, no, I did do ordo ourselves
as well as a kid. I had lemonade stands, I
did the whole everything you just described. I went through
all that. And you know it's it builds this this
like this armor right this shell around you, this this

(21:01):
strength and courage at a young age. And I think like,
as you continue to advance and challenge yourself, get smarter,
build upon your career age, you're built within this core
that you can almost accomplish anything. And I think it's
actually really important. So for the listeners out there, you
know whether however old you are, you can still build

(21:25):
that show. And you almost have to reinforce that shell
because you can lose sight of who you are throughout
your entrepreneurship journey. Right, You're going to have failures as
an entrepreneur, as a parent, as an adult. You're going
to fall on your face and you have to remember
all the hard shit you went through it to get
yourself back to where you are and can you continue
to pursue your career and your journey. So what I'm
saying is I hear a lot of things that what

(21:48):
you're expressing creates success. And it's the ability to never
give up. It's the ability to say, you know what,
I'm going to put my spot or myself in this position,
this spot you were in this dentistry school, you saw
this article, you knew you had an inn a little

(22:09):
bit of a potential in it wasn't a guaranteed thing,
and you went for it. And the fact that you
just had that mindset, you know what, because some people say, no, well,
if that guy wrote an article, he's like a big deal.
I No, No, that's way out of my league. I'm
not going to go there. You didn't, right, And I
think most people in this world do. They retract instead

(22:32):
of expand. And the people that expand and say, I'm
going to go for what's the worst thing I can do?
I was told no to one hundred times as a kid,
door knocking door to door. Let's just try it. And
you put yourself out there, right, and continue to put
yourself out there, and it sounds like you didn't take
no for an answer. And finally this guy's like, you
know what, I'm going to give him a shot, like
going to he wants it bad enough, he's here. Most

(22:54):
people don't do that. Ninety nine percent of people don't
do that. He gave you a shot. You went in there,
you saw, you saw their lives being changed. You saw
this like wonderful moment of going from an unhappy smile
to a happy smile, people happy all over the place,
and you making a great career out of it. So
after that journey, that experience, you work for him. When

(23:15):
did you open up your own practice? How long did
that take? How long did you work there and talk
to us about that?

Speaker 3 (23:21):
So I was in that practice for about two years
and you know, at that point in time, I started
thinking about, Okay, you know, I feel like I'm getting this,
but what do I want for my life? I started
thinking a little more big picture just outside of learning
these clinical skills and all roads lead to skateboarding. You know,

(23:44):
I still remember the first copy of Thrasher magazine that
I looked at at age twelve, in the sixth grade,
and you see this California lifestyle of people, you know,
living by the beach and you know, like you know,
like airs out of a swimming pool. Stuff I couldn't
even comprehend, but I was. I always gravitated towards that.

(24:04):
And even watching movies, you know, you're like, people get
to live like this, like you know, you see like
the beat scenes and all that. So in the back
of my mind, I knew somehow, some way I was
going to end up there. And I woke up one
morning and I said, it's time and uh and I
had to go have a sit down and have a conversation,
you know, with with my then boss and said, you know,

(24:27):
tell him that my life was going in a different direction.
And it was a difficult conversation, right because this is
the person that you know, I felt like had helped
groom me and give me this opportunity, and and you
know what happened. He was actually tremendously supportive, and he said,
you know, I hate to lose you, but you know

(24:48):
you need to follow your dream and and what you
want to do. And so he said, you know, you
got my blessing. So my wife, who at that time
was my fiance, you know, in thirty days, you know,
we packed up and moved to California and started and
started a whole new life. But this brought its own
set of challenges. So initial, so I was riding high,

(25:12):
I'm like, okay, I'm going to California, and you know,
just like buying, like a house, and there's a real
estate agent to find a house, you know, you can
do the same with businesses. For those of you listening,
there's business brokers who will help you find it. And
in dentistry you have what are called practice brokers. And
you know, the shortcut to the front of the line.
The traditional path is, uh, if you're not going to

(25:34):
work for someone but you want to have your own business,
is you try to find someone who's winding down and
retiring and wants to pass the patad. So you know,
that's what I did. And I spent that whole summer
reading books on, you know, how to buy a practice
and transition and how a practice runs from a management perspective.
And I found this what I thought was a beautiful

(25:55):
practice in La Jolla, California. It's in northern San Diego.
It's just a really affluent area and uh and it
looked really good. And so, you know, fast forward a
couple months and you know, I'm at the bottom of
the ninth and a week away from closing on this practice.
Diligence had been done, bank financing security. You imagine, I'm writing, hot,

(26:19):
I can't believe this, you know, like I'm thirty years old.
I'm going to start making a lot of money and
start building my empire. And a few days before it closed,
my accountant calls me and he goes, we got a problem,
and I'm like, what, he goes, I couldn't sleep last night.
I went back, there's something that just hasn't been sitting
well with me. And it turns out that the owner

(26:41):
of that practice cooked the books royally and he was
just really good at it, and it snuck by. Not
only am my accountant, but also the underwriting people and
the bank CPAs looking at all the financials and I mean,
I can go down. It doesn't even really matter what
the guy was doing. But it was a crook as
the bottom line, and I'm like, well, holy shit, you know,

(27:03):
I can't buy this thing. Like what else is he
you know, done fraudulently? So you know, here I was,
I kind of bet the farm on, you know, doing
this thing, and then it just all of a sudden
went to zero, and I'm like, oh boy, what am
I going to do now? And you know, because a
good practice being available to purchase is not like something

(27:24):
that's on demand. You know, there's just a lot of
timing available. So so I went from like thinking I
had it all figured out to oh, shoot, what am
I going to do now? And that started the first
sabbatical that I ever had in my life where I
had three months of skateboarding every day, you know, not

(27:45):
necessarily by It wasn't my first choice, but I took
advantage of it. And at that point we ended up
moving from San Diego up to Orange County, which is
kind of the halfway point between San Diego and Los
Angeles and rinse, washed, repea. You know, I got lucky.
I found another practice that the numbers checked out this time.
And it was what was interesting, It was not a

(28:08):
cosmetic dynastry practice at all. It was a guy who
just did like regular dentistry like crowns and fillings and cleanings.
And in my mind, I was like, hey, wait a second.
I would have a whole demographic people that know nothing
about this, and I could talk to them about this,
and I'm willing to bet some of them are going
to say yes, and I'm going to be able to
get to do a lot of cosmetic dentistry, whereas if

(28:30):
you bought a cosmetic dynastry practice, well the teeth are
already done. So so that was my gamble, that was
my calculus, and it ended up working quite well that
I bought that business and I grew at seventy percent
in the first year. And so, you know, the thing
was like a rocket ship. And all I did differently

(28:50):
was ask and I would And this is an entrepreneurial tip, right,
you know, asking you shall receive the thing of It's
a numbers game, right, Like like if you're dating and
you want to have a date on Friday night. But
you only ask out one person during the week, you know,
odds are pretty low you get a date. If you
asked out ten people during the week, you'll probably have

(29:11):
three dates by the end of the week, and you're
probably going to get lucky with one of them. It's
just a numbers game. It's a filter. And so I
was just not afraid to ask people if they had
an interest in improving the appearance of their smiles. And
most said no, just like selling the raffle tickets, but

(29:32):
enough said yes that it moved the needle that I
got to do the kind of dentistry that I wanted
to do. And and you know, you make a lot
of money doing that too, because it's an elective cosmetic procedure.
So that's why the practice started growing and growing like crazy.
And so for the next I had that practice for

(29:52):
five years. And what was interesting is that, you know,
it grew each year and I was doing really well,
and a few years into it, I started getting to it.
I was like, what's next, you know, like, what's my
next challenge? Is this it? This is all I got?
And I started thinking about, well, do I open up
another office or you know, you know what what could
I do? And you know, you talk about you know

(30:16):
what do they say? Luck is the intersection of you know,
of opportunity and readiness. And you know, I think luck's
going by people all day long. They just they just
don't have their eyes open to it. And my, uh
my lawyer called me just out of the blue and
he was he had his hands in uh in in
practice brokerage as well, and he said, hey, look, I

(30:39):
know things are going really well for you, but just
something you should know about this. This practice came for
sale up in Los Angeles and it's literally the exact
same practice that you bought down in Orange County, just
you know, as a as an old guy looking to
get out. But you know, you're in the epicenter of Hollywood,
and you know, I know you used to do that

(30:59):
kind of Dennis in New York, and I think that
there might be, you know, a way for you to
do to do what you did again, if you had
any interest. And initially I was like, I don't know,
and then I was like, yeah, you know what, you know,
like like to heck with it, let's let let's take
a look at this thing. And so I went and
looked at the practice and man, I mean this thing
was like a time warp from nineteen seventy two, you know,

(31:22):
like blue carpet, you know, green wall paper, you know,
a crazy old guy who worked there. But you know,
when I started digging deeper into you know, the core
of the business, like location, you know, unmet need of dentistry,

(31:42):
you know, because this guy had been slowing down a bunch,
I'm like, wait a second, this this thing could be
a real gold mine, similar to what I already did. So,
you know, I talked to my wife about it, and
you know, fortunately she was very supportive of me. And
so the guy that I bought my practice from an
Orange County he actually ended up becoming a practice broker.

(32:03):
And I told him and he was like, you know what,
I think you should go for it. And he helped
me find a buyer for my office down there. And
you know, within a couple months, I left and I
started over again, and people thought I was freaking nuts.
They're like, you're going to sell this practice you spent
five years building you you know, your your margins are tremendous.

(32:24):
You've already de risked your whole life, right, like you've
got a house, everything, and now you're going to, you know,
put your eggs in one basket up here this unknown
what if it doesn't work or you can't turn the
thing around? And in my mind, you know, and see
a lot of people think risk is a bad word,
but I looked at risk as hey, wait a second.

(32:45):
You know, if the worst thing that can happen is
I end up having to start over, fine, I'll start over.
I just didn't, you know, because they can't take away
what you know in your head and what your hands
can do. So you know that risk could look at
his high risk, low risk or calculated risk, and you know,

(33:05):
it was a it was a it was a hale
starting over again because I took a huge pay cut
doing it, and and and and it was going to
take a longer time because I had to you know,
I knew it was going to take at least a
few years, right because I'm a nobody in this community
and it's going to take a while to get my
name out there and turn the place around. But it did.
And it didn't happen overnight. You know, it took several

(33:28):
years to do so. And you know, from a location perspective,
you know, being in being in Los Angeles, you know,
odds are you're going to get someone from entertainment because
that's the you know, such a huge portion of the
of the economy there. And that's what happened, you know,
And like the first celebrity person that I ever got
was someone who was trying out as an extra for

(33:49):
a Mermaid and Pirates of the Caribbean. So you know,
but what you do is you do a good job
on that one and you hope that you get the
referral for a or a family member, you know, until
finally you get to the point where you know someone
from the C list makes it in and and then
you know it might take another year or two to

(34:10):
get someone from B but finally you crack a And
that's that's the hardest part was getting to that. Well,
you know, once I did, i'd done enough of the
right things and leading from the position of really trying
to take care of people because what I do is
so relationship base that that's what helped growing word of

(34:32):
mouth and getting the referrals. And you know, I'm at
this point now in my career, you know, because I'm
twenty five years in where if a younger dental student
comes in to watch me, and I've always been pretty
good about that because of the opportunity that was afforded
to me. Was how did you make this all happen?
I'm like, well, it's an overnight success. Well, it took
twenty five years. It's not. You know, people don't see

(34:53):
that aspect of entrepreneurship, and but that's essentially you. What
happened was not a sexy recipe by any stretch of
the imagination. It was just this undying belief if I
was willing to put in the work, that the odds
were pretty good that something would happen.

Speaker 1 (35:22):
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Speaker 3 (35:38):
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Speaker 2 (35:41):
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(36:05):
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(36:26):
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Speaker 2 (36:39):
The show, Jeez, I mean, just hearing you talk is
absolutely amazing. It's impressive. I love the journey. I love
the continuous resilience and the continuous push for more and
to unpacks some of that for the audience. Guys, obviously,

(37:02):
this is an incredible journey. And what I'm hearing is
never give up. What I'm hearing is always believe in yourself.
What I'm hearing is block out the noise and focus
on the signal. The signal of what you know, what
is right. I mean talk about you know, a guy
here moves across the country going to buy a practice

(37:25):
in La Jolla, the last day of closing, or leading
up to the last day of closing, finds out the
numbers are crooked, right like or cooked and he's dealing
with with a crook like. What if that transaction had closed?
Talk about a different life path, right, there would have
been a completely different path there. So I think one

(37:45):
of the great lessons here is make sure you have
great people on your team. That CPA was a life changer.
And some people may look at a CPA like, oh,
they're expensive. I don't want to hire them, I don't
want to bring them in. Talk about having a great
team that's got your bat back, right, And so that's
something that's super important that I think a lot of
entrepreneurs and business owners in life they try to cut

(38:07):
some corners, and it's okay to look at your expenses
and keep costs down and and make sure to run
your practice lean right. I'm a big fan of that.
But I'm a big fan of hiring expertise, and I'm
a big fan of believing in yourself and taking advice
from people that have been there. So the fact that
you know, doctor John here decided, you know what, let's

(38:29):
back out. He could have pressured the CPA, hey, look
at it again, look at it again, backed out, and
then you know, went on a three month sabbatical. Obviously
you'd have some savings you had, you know, you didn't
even talk about that, but I'm sure working at the
practice in New York, you had built up some savings
to give you some reserves to go through this story.

Speaker 3 (38:48):
I was on fumes, man. Yeah, I was OK. Yeah,
because my, h my, you know, my compensation at working
at the other practice was very modest, and I told
that was part of my getting there. I said, look,
I'll you know, I'll pay with blood, sweat and tears.
I don't expect to make much money. Just let me
have this opportunity. And the only saving grace at that

(39:09):
point is that my wife worked and she, you know,
she was supporting both of us during that time. Otherwise,
you know, I would have had to have just got
some random job just to you know, just to you know,
pay the bills during that point in time. So you know,
I had, you know, a little bit of support during
that window, and I would have done what I needed
to do at that moment. But you know, during my sabbatical,

(39:32):
you know, outside of skateboarding, what I was really doing
during that time, because you can't skate twenty four hours
a day, you go for you know, two three hours,
was trying to find another practice, you know, which was
calling accountants, you know, calling business brokers, you know, calling
practice management specialists, calling supply reps, trying to get a

(39:52):
lead on a new.

Speaker 2 (39:53):
One, yep, yep, exactly, never giving up. I mean it
also going back to having a great spouse. You know,
I think one of the biggest decisions anybody can ever
make is make sure sure to choose the right spouse,
right and spouse that can lift you up, stay behind
you continue to be there, and I think that's very important.

(40:14):
In fact, I was watching a YouTube video Kevin O'Leary
was recently interviewed but miss wonderful not to get sidetracked,
but he went off on a tangent about how important
it was to have a great spouse, that it's one
of the most important things you'll ever do in your life.
It's a life partner. So I mean, that's just that's
one example right there, right of someone having your back
and believing in you and giving you time to find

(40:37):
out what exactly works. So you find this amazing practice
in Orange County. Sounds like you close on it was
able to grow by seventy percent in the first year.
I mean, talk about an untapped patient database. Right. You
buy a business that has a patient database, it's got
a rolodex of incomes coming in. You know, a good

(40:59):
receipt these come in. You got good loyal clients coming in.
But there's something that they weren't exposed to, you know,
and it was the ability to have a conversation of saying, hey,
have you ever thought about a new smile?

Speaker 3 (41:12):
Right?

Speaker 2 (41:12):
And whatever your process was about that, And like you said,
most of them said no, but some said yes, and
enough said yes to grow their practice by seventy percent
and to get yourself in a spot to have it
for five years. I'm sure when you transacted on that
business you made money. Oh yeah, right, yeah, and so
you did well. Some people said you're crazy, what are
you doing? But financial success. Then you move down to

(41:33):
Hollywood and find another gold mine and are able to
build that up. So I want to hear that story
a little bit on the on the you go to Hollywood,
everybody says you're crazy. You know that, You're like, look,
I know what I'm doing. I see something here, I
have the vision, I can see what's going through. I'm
just going to implement the process building what I did.

(41:54):
And as you started to build up that word of
mouth referral, because that's kind of where you ended that.
How strong is that word of mouth referral in practice management?
In altering the physical appearance of somebody's look right and
enhancing their confidence. That's what they're getting there, They're receiving

(42:14):
confidence from your form of art.

Speaker 3 (42:16):
One hundred percent. It's everything. And you know, keep in mind,
you know this was around twenty ten where social media,
you know, as something you know, for building influence and
spreading the word, it wasn't there yet. So you know,
being able to connect with people and get them to
refer people that you know would want the same kind

(42:41):
of treatments was paramount. And you know, I I've heard
this term, it's called the BLTs. It's believed like trust,
and you know, those are the types of relationships that
you want to form with your clients. And what I
found very quickly is that, you know, being the new
guy in town, I didn't have any friends, and all
of a sudden and I'm meeting, you know, these really

(43:01):
interesting people and if they can pay for the dentistry,
they're generally successful people. And you start to get to
know people on a personal level. And you know, here
I'm all these years later, my closest friends in my
life were people that I met at work, plain and simple.
And I had someone telling my s is it weird
being friends with my dentists? And I'm like, well, I
don't think so. But it's been such a blessing in

(43:24):
that regard. And you know, as the practice grew slowly,
you know, to me, it was just a rinsewash repeat
of what I did down in Orange County. It's like, Okay,
it's going to take a minute, and I have to
be patient. And I ever heard the saying ordinary things
done consistently yield extraordinary results. So it was about going

(43:45):
in and you know, you're you're doing the dentistry. And
one thing about the practice of dentistry is that you're
an owner operator, so you don't have the luxury of
sitting there working on your business during the work day
because you're you're in there as an operator doing the persons.
So any changes that you want to make to grow
the infrastructure and create better efficiencies and so forth, you know,

(44:07):
that's on you. And now you're talking about you know,
early mornings, late nights, weekends, and there's a commitment that's
required in order to do that, because if you just
show up and do the work and go home, you'll
never get any transformative effects with you know, how this
practice and this business is run. And that's the same
you know from any owner operators. You know, we get

(44:28):
so you know, caught up doing the revenue generating procedure
that if you don't carve out that time to do
the things that are going to help you run a
better business, then you know you're not going to grow.
And you know I was willing to put in that time.

(44:48):
I had, I would, I had already built that muscle,
just you know, just from from you know, my youth,
and I mean even in high school. You know, I
worked after school in the evenings and I worked on
the weekends from six am till three pm at the
grocery store, you know, pushing shopping carts and bagging groceries.
So I already. I had already learned my lessons of Okay,
this is what it looks like working around the clock,

(45:10):
and it was just more of the same, and I
wasn't afraid of rolling my sleeves up to do the work.
You know. The next pivotal moment that happened, though, was
I was about, you know, five years in, and I
started getting the edge. I was like, Okay, the practice
is doing better, and what else is there? And you
know what I realized is if I gave my all

(45:30):
my dental work away for free, I still couldn't treat everybody, right,
there's just one of me. And then I started thinking
about like, wow, you know, I've been very blessed to
become doctor fancy pants, But what about the folks who
can't afford it? And what if there was a way
to develop a product or service at scale that could

(45:51):
address number one cost because no, no one ever wants
to talk about that dentistry is expensive and it is.
And number two access to care. And when I say
access to care, I'm not talking about because there's a
dentist you know on your block. What I'm talking about is,
you know, as a business owner, I started thinking about like,
how does someone come and see me at like noon

(46:12):
on a Tuesday. You know, you think about, like, you
got to carve as a patient, You got to carve
a lot of time out of your life because you've
got to commute to the office, the length of the appointment,
commute back to wherever you were, and if that person's working,
you know that's costing them time and money too. So
so you know, that was that was the leading question.
And you know what happened was that, you know, another

(46:34):
twist of fate in my life. Ah, a client of
mine who started out as an acquaintance who ended up
becoming a friend, who ended up becoming a client through
the persistence of my neighbor who was a client of mine,
just a you know, a single lady that lived down

(46:54):
the street. And she's like, you really need to meet
this guy, and she was she would not let up.
She's like, she's like, you guys, are you know same age,
you got kids, you'll be friends, and sometimes you're not
of the space of meeting someone else's friend. But she
was so persistent and I better listen to her on
this one. Well, long story short, he took me for
a meeting with his best friend and Blake and Scott

(47:16):
and they and they had an idea around a dental
product and service and they just wanted to soundboard with me.
And I sat down and I listened, and I was like, okay, well,
you know I like this, so yes, yes, yes, no, no, yes,
maybe I'd probably do it like this. And it just
dawned upon me immediately to spit out and I want

(47:38):
to be partners with you guys. And they were like, whoa,
you know, you think there's some likes to this. I'm
like absolutely. And the idea was to develop a direct
to consumer clear liners. So you know, thinking visial line, right,
you go to the dentist to get that done, but
this was a method which you could you could not

(48:01):
you could bypass going to a physical dental office to
get it. And you know, for the entrepreneurs listening, you know,
in vision Alignes patent had expired a couple of years earlier,
and there were you know a couple of players in
the space, you know, starting to do this DTC model,
and we thought that there was an opening because the

(48:22):
total addressable market was so huge. So that started, you know,
this journey on, you know, using what I knew already,
which was dentistry to build some you know, to build
another business. And I actually skipped a whole chapter. But

(48:42):
you know, I recognize we're on a you know, on
a time frame here, but I had I had done
the same thing on my own with the Sonic toothbrush,
you know, in a couple of years prior, just off
of a suggestion that someone made while they were getting
their teeth cleaned. And I learned a lot doing this
by myself about supply chain and customers service and fulfillment
and product development and shipping and returns and all this

(49:06):
stuff like things I knew nothing about, you know, that
I just had to figure out with the Google search
and you know, and you have successes and failures along
the way, but you're building a muscle that you didn't
have previously. So when I went, you know, when I
moved on to the next business, which this company was
called fight Byte, I had already developed some of the

(49:27):
skills that I needed on the product development and business
development side that I didn't previously have. You see, things
lead to things, and you know, we started this company
and it took us a year to get to market,
and then once we launched, you know, we spent two
years in the marketplace, and because we were small and nimble,

(49:48):
it allowed us to react to market conditions and pivot
and try things. And one of the things that I
brought to the table as the chief cosmetic dentist of
the organization was developing brand awareness and you know, which
was everything right because now we're in the era of
online and brand and you know, having my doctor fancy

(50:09):
pants credentials really helped, you know, with the trust and
credibility aspect of the product. And I was able to
work with several of my celebrity clients through philanthropic efforts
that they were part of, you know, to give oral
care to people who were most vulnerable and needed at
most and in return, you can imagine the traction that helped,

(50:31):
you know, build the brand. And you know, one of
the things that I got to do that I was
really proud of Ben Affleck and I went down to
the Midnight Mission, which and he's had a relationship with
that organization for a long time, and we got to
do smiles with people who are graduating the Sober Living
program and you know, and these are folks who are
trying to reintegrate into society and they just you know,

(50:52):
need to look presentable, right to go sit in front
of someone and get a job. And People magazine picked
up that story and that was a lot of you know,
incredible press that we got. And these are you know,
some of the intangibles that we weren't banking on. Well,
you know, fast forward to this once again is the
power of relationships. You know, we start picking up some

(51:14):
traction and so you know, now we're you know, that's
through twenty nineteen and business is growing and twenty twenty
hits and everyone can remember what they were doing in
March of twenty twenty, you know, when when COVID hit
and all of a sudden, everything is shut down. My
practice is shut down, and we're like, oh my god,
what's you know, the sky's falling. What are we going
to do? And we have this business and we have expenses,

(51:35):
and we're like, you know, like we're dead right. Everyone
thought the same thing. But here's what happened. You know
during COVID. How do people communicate just like you and
I are right, you know, we're using video cams and
people are sitting around and they can't go see me.
But when you're on video camera. You're looking at your

(51:56):
face all day long, and all of a sudden, people
start seeing their teeth like they never saw it before,
because normally, if you're face to face, you don't see
your mouth and you don't see your smile. And it
was the solution to that problem, and so our numbers
just it took like it was the inflection point on
that J curve where we went from like being moderately
busy to like, oh my god, there's not enough hours

(52:17):
in the day to get this product out for fulfillment.
But we had been very disciplined about our cost structure
and making sure that these things were profitable and that
we had the infrastructure ready that we could handle the load.
And the thing just took off like crazy. It was unbelievable.
And so now fast forward, you know, towards the fall

(52:39):
of twenty twenty, and you know, I'm back at work
and you know, this was this was a heavy lift, man.
Let me tell you, you know, like because I had
to work on this stuff in the morning and in
between patients and at night and on the weekends and
during the day. When someone finishes their teeth cleaning with
the hygienis, you have to go and to do the
checkup right, and you I try to get in and

(53:01):
out quick because I'm getting pulled from a procedure to
go and do this. And turns out that the guy
in the chair that day was another neighbor of mine
and didn't know him super well. But he's like, hey, John,
you know what are you working on at this point?
And guy's name is Chuck Adams. At the time, he
was an investment banker for Golden and Sacks. He led
their healthcare banking group. And I told him about this

(53:22):
and he's like, wow, this is really interesting. He was like,
do you have an exit planned? And I said, well,
you know, we're kind of thinking about this, and he goes,
I'll bet you I could help with this, and I
was like really, and so, well, you know, why don't
you talk to my partners because they're more involved on
that side of it. Fast forward to December thirty first,
twenty twenty, you know, end of the worst year of

(53:43):
most people's lives, and Chuck connected seller to buyer to
denzfl Sarona that acquired our company for one billion dollars
cash CFO. You know, I have a lawyer, I have
a business coach. I've always tried to be the dumbest

(54:05):
guy in the room because that's where the growth happens.

Speaker 1 (54:09):
You know.

Speaker 3 (54:09):
The other thing that I learned from this is that
you know there are times in your life where the
going is so hard and you'll always question yourself, is
it worth it? Do I have to keep doing it?
And that's human nature, this idea that you know that
maybe bad things are going to happen, but it's just

(54:31):
blocking out the noise in your head and pushing through.
You have to have a level of conviction that what
you're going to do is going to work. And you
still might fail, right, but failure is not embraced in
American culture. And you know how it relates back to
skateboarding is you know, when you try a trick, odds
are you're not going to land it, And in skateboarding
is even worse because you're going to get hurt, and

(54:52):
you get hurt over and over and over again, and
you get back up and you keep trying it until
you finally make it. And that's a life lesson. And
that's that's life in general, that's business in general. And
so I think there's probably a lot of people who
who if they had that level of perseverance, they probably

(55:13):
would have been just fine, because, as you know, it's
rarely the idea that's the problem. It's the execution of
the idea.

Speaker 2 (55:22):
Yep, yep, you're absolutely right. I have recently I came
across an idea that was extraordinary, the product's extraordinary, and
the people they need to execute and and you know,
there's so many business opportunities out there and businesses that
should have succeeded that. You know, it comes down to
the people that just for non execution, right, and what

(55:42):
you've done such an incredible job of doing it is,
for one, putting yourself in the right place at the
right time and continuing to build on your journey and
your success and your path and saying yes to meetings.
You're busy, you're running a practice, you're you're doing financially well,
very well, and your neighbors like you got to meet
this guy is super cool. You could have easily said no.

(56:08):
Something in your your thought process, something was pulling you
to say, just go sit with the guys and see
what they have to say. And yeah, I probably no idea,
what the you know, meeting and.

Speaker 3 (56:19):
No clothes you know zero. You know, I'm just like, hey,
I like this guy, he's asked a favor, like like
I want to you know, like I should, I should
try to help him. That was it. You know, there's
no ulterior motives going in. And you know, on top
of it, like I have young kids, and you know,

(56:39):
there's there's a level of sacrifice that comes into all
of this too, because you know, to the younger entrepreneurs,
one of the things that I would caution you against
is the concept of work life balance. That is a
social media fantasy. It's complete, like, there is no balance.

(56:59):
There are only choices, and choices have outcomes, and there's
good outcomes and there's bad outcomes. But the idea that
you're going to work, you know, a few hours a
day and then be on a private jet doing all
this stuff is just it's just nonsense. You know, it's
fantasy land. And I had to make a choice that,
you know, because at one point I had three companies

(57:19):
going at the same time. I had my core business,
I had Marashi Oral Health, which was my sonic toothbrush
and Bite. I didn't have a lot of free time,
you know, I didn't I wasn't taking vacations, you know,
and and my kids were really young at that time,
and in my mind, I was like, Okay, I'm not
going to see a lot of them, but you know,
and look right or wrong. I mean, like, you know,

(57:40):
no judgment, but you know, I made a decision, Well,
they're not going to remember, and I want to try
to do this thing because I think it's possible and
it's going to provide them with the life that they
might not have got otherwise. And it still all could
have come crashing down, right, But but that was the
choice that I made because you know, if you're only
going to put in an eight hour day, you're not

(58:03):
gonna you're never gonna beat the person who's putting in
sixteen hours a day. It just isn't possible. You won't
get the track. Shit. And that was the kind of
sacrifice that it required in order to do it.

Speaker 2 (58:15):
Well, you're exactly right, I mean, compound the eighteen hours
or the sixteen hours over the eight right, compound that
over a year and see what happens. You know. Kobe Bryant,
you know, made some interesting remarks around that is just
continuously building time on top of your competition, even if
that competition is yourself and putting yourself on a spot

(58:36):
to get ahead. And so I completely agree. You're the
first guy I've interviewed that has had an exit for
a billion dollars by the way, So I am absolutely
honored to have you on and to hear you share
your story and to help all the entrepreneurs and listeners
out there. And you know, there's so much to take
away from this conversation of the resilience. You have, creativity,

(59:00):
you have the ability to say yes and say no,
to reinvent yourself right to I mean, you're reinventing yourself
so many times. And it seems to me like you're
running these five year crusades and you know you, I mean, jus,
you look so great, You're incredibly young, and you've you've
given the world so much. You've you've helped so many
people along that path, and I think, like that's one

(59:22):
of the things I also want to hit home on
for the listeners out there, guys, is the more people
you service, the more people you serve, the more opportunity
you shall receive. Right talk about Bite, how many customers
did Bite have? He was able to connect with Bite
because it was direct to consumer. He has people coming

(59:43):
into his practice that he connects and change their lives.
Those people go and have conversations about their smile. They
can see the confidence from within their peers as they
navigate live right. And so it's about helping and serving
others and putting yourself in a position, and secces Us
comes with that right and he've done an incredible job

(01:00:04):
with it. I mean, I think the last thing I
talk about, just for a sec is, I know you
lost your fire in the you lost your house in
the Palisades fire, and that's that's a big deal. I
know you lost a lot of very uh you know,
important memorabilia, and yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:00:22):
Yeah, that was I'll tell you. It was not the
January that I was expecting to have, like like so
many folks. And you know, I was a long story short.
You know, I was here at work doing a mouthful
of then ears. I didn't know that there was a
fire going on, and my family was out of the country.
So when I left work that day, I left with
just the clothes on my back. And you know, I

(01:00:45):
wasn't going to abandon a patient during a procedure. And
then I was like, well, what am I going to
do if I go home anyway, like just grab stuff
and then and then what if I get stuck and
I can't get out, because you know, you figure that
there's got to be a mass evacuation going on, and
my office is only ten minutes from home, but it

(01:01:05):
just seemed risky because there was, you know, there was
so much unknown going on at that time. And a
friend of mine invited me to stay with him that night,
who lived over in Beverly Hills. I was driving over
and I was like, I don't even have underwear. I
stopped them all go by clean underwear. I haven't had
to do that in a while. But you know, something

(01:01:26):
like this, it changes you, and it changes you to
the core. And you know, I went from having everything
material to it just vanished overnight, right And you know,
I was blessed to have a really nice home and
you know, all all the material toys that you know
that one could ever hope for. And next thing, I know,

(01:01:46):
I'm in survival mode. And by eight thirty the next morning,
I had already signed a lease on an apartment and
you know, because I needed stability for my family, and
the rental market was not ready to receive, you know,
like thirty thousand people coming on at the same time.
And the best I could find in that short notice
was the seven hundred square foot apartment, you know, and
it was down the street from my office, and it

(01:02:09):
was furnished in months to month and pet friendly, you know,
because we had a dog, and you know, so you
can imagine, you know, my my accommodations, my living accommodations
radically changed, and you learned very quickly several things. Number One,
you don't need very much at all to get through life.
And I've kind of, you know, done a pivot in

(01:02:32):
my thinking, like hey, you know, like, look I still
like nice things like the next person, but you know,
like maybe I don't need as much in terms of quantity,
and I've been so my footprint is much smaller these days.
And there's something very liberating and empowering about that. And
the biggest loss is the loss of the community, because

(01:02:54):
Pacific Palisays was just such a gem and you miss
seeing your friends and neighbors. But we're rebuilding our house
and are going to be back, and you know, my
neighbors on the street are and we very much look
forward to it. It's it's it's beyond tragic of what
happened and how it's affected people. But you know, you

(01:03:16):
can like life will happen, and life can happen in
real big ways for better and worse. But a lot
of it is how you respond to it. And we
decided as a family a few weeks in there's going
to be no pity party for us, and we just
have to this is the hand that was dealt to
us and as they say in Hollywood, the show must
go on.

Speaker 2 (01:03:38):
Well, I mean, I appreciate you sharing that, and it
is it's an absolute tragic, you know, thing that took place,
and you know, I think it also takes a strong
community to come back even stronger, and you know, I
know that you guys are working hard on that. So
shout out and support to everybody that's obviously gone through
that experience that was affected by that. So thank you

(01:03:59):
for sharing. And I think that there's a lot of
growth from it, right from material point of perspective, and
maybe it happened for a reason to to you know,
lower the footprint and understand that we can go through
life with less and it's actually in most cases less stressful.

Speaker 3 (01:04:18):
Right, It is very much so.

Speaker 2 (01:04:20):
Yeah. Yeah, And I just went through a recent experience myself.
I was in Utah for the past month and my
family and I stayed in a very modest town home
that we bought, and you know, I was like, this
is just a lot easier than our house that we
have in Florida. It's just it's easier to clean, it's
easier to maintain, there's no yard. It was just it
was a little less stressful. So, you know, for for again,

(01:04:41):
I think we'll close it at this guys. But as
you go throughout your entrepreneur journey, and as you continue
to build success and you continue to learn and achieve
and go through adversity and set backs and failures and
success and wins and you know, financial gain, I think
that you also really need to be cautious of keeping
within who you are and understanding that you don't have

(01:05:02):
to expand that footprint and you don't have to get
on social media and compare yourself to others and think
that you need to go get the next thing. You
can focus on you, and you can focus on building
financial wealth over time. Not everybody's going to have a
billion dollar exit, right, Not everybody's going to go through
John's path, but what you will is you go through
your own path, and you need to make sure that
you put yourself in position to be successful and always

(01:05:25):
be ahead and be prepared for what's to come. So
I'll leave it at that. Thank you so much for
joining me. I really appreciate it. The audience is absolutely
going to love this, this episode and this interview. If
people want to connect with you, what's the best place?
Where can they find you? Where can they chat with you?

Speaker 3 (01:05:41):
Best spot is on Instagram, slide into my dms. My
handle is at dr jo n m A. R. Sachi
is at doctor John Marashi.

Speaker 2 (01:05:51):
Awesome. There, you guys have it. I appreciate it. Thank
you guys so much. Thank you for tuning in. If
you guys found this particular episode viable, my only ask
is you share it. Our entire purpose of these interviews
is just to give back, help build our community, help
build up entrepreneurship in general, and to put yourself in
position to have success. And so if you found this
episode viablem I only ask again, please share it, like it,

(01:06:13):
give us a review. I'd be super grateful for that.
Until next time, happy building. Thanks for tuning in to
Medical Millionaire.

Speaker 1 (01:06:23):
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(01:06:44):
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(01:07:06):
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