194: Learn, Earn, So You Can Return; Copy Genius; and Other Advice with Dr. Bill Dorfman

Learn, earn, return. I mean, I think that's just for every entrepreneur out there who frankly might be in the learn stage. Some of them might be, you know, in that earn stage, having that higher purpose, that higher cause, that ultimately this is about that returning. Hi, I'm Emmett Scott, and just like you, I've had my ups and downs in the dental industry, but times are changing. The DEO has built a map of how to succeed in one of the most challenging industries to navigate. On this show, we talk to dental industry leaders, solve problems, get you the answers you need to face these challenging times and thrive. Welcome to DEO's Growth Secrets podcast for dental organizations. Now let's get started. Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of deo, Grow Secrets. I'm your fearless host, Emmett Scott, and today I have a special guest, Dr. Bill Dorfman, World's most famous cosmetic dentist and New York Times bestseller. He is the most famous cosmetic dentist not just in the US but worldwide. Affectionately known as America's Dentist, he's widely recognized as a leading dentist who's responsible for creating smiles for many of Hollywood's brightest stars. Dr. Dorfman has become a star in his own right as the featured dentist on the hit ABC series Extreme Makeover where he performed amazing dental transformations as well as reoccurring guest co host on the Emmy award winning daytime talk show the Doctors. In addition, he is a world renowned lecturer and author of the bestselling cosmetic dentistry book the Smile Guide and the New York Times bestselling Billion Dollar Smile. He is the founder of Zoom, Night, White and Bright Smile and founder of Century City Esthetic Dentistry. He's been interviewed extensively for shows such as ABC's Good Morning America, the View, Oprah, CNN's Larry King Live, NBC's the Today show, the Tonight show with Jay Leno, Dr. Phil and many more. And he's been featured in publications such as Men's Health, Ellie, Real Simple, Allure, HuffPost, Bustle, Los Angeles magazine. You get the picture. So, Dr. Bill Dorfman, welcome to the show. Awesome to have you on here. You have done so much in your career. When you started as a dentist, did you ever imagine like, yeah, I'll probably be on Oprah or something of that nature.

I did not have that on my radar at all. You know, I will tell you something funny though, and I don't even know what radiated from me and I always kind of scratched my head. But you know, when you graduate like elementary school, junior high school, high school and then college, they always give you these Silly awards. I always got most likely to succeed. And I always wondered like, why do people say that? I mean it wasn't like, I don't know. I honestly didn't know.

I mean, they saw something in you though. Yeah.

I don't know what it was, you know, but it was actually kind of funny. And people always would say like, were your parents like put. My parents had no clue. Like I remember when I got accepted to ucla, the letter came, I opened it up at dinner. I'm like, oh my gosh, I got into UCLA there. Oh, that's good, sweetheart. Did you apply to other schools? Like they didn't even know. Like I feel like when my kids got into college I also got in.

Right, Right.

When I graduated ucla, that was probably the most prestigious one because a month before graduation I got a call from the dean's office saying congratulations, you want Outstanding Senior in a class of 10,000 students. I was so excited, I called my parents, I'm like, mom, dad, both get on the phone. I said, you guys won't believe this or what? I said, well, I just got a call from the dean's office and I won Outstanding Senior. My mother says, what's not to believe? I said, no, come on, 10,000 people are graduating. She said, darling, you really think there's someone better? I'm like, no, mom, you don't understand. My parents had no. They were completely clueless. It was the funniest thing.

But also super loving and supportive, right? Yeah.

I mean they never got really got it but I, I think a lot of it just came from actually the two things that I really teach at leap. And we'll talk about LEAP in a little bit. But it's, it's a motivational leadership program that we teach. It's a non profit for young entrepreneurs. And I always feel like if there's just too two concepts, I want to get through these kids heads. I did my job. And the first one is don't wait for things to happen in life. If you're waiting for the universe, you can wait forever. I mean the universe is, I don't know, go to the Middle East. The universe is pretty busy right now, you know, so if you wait for opportunities. The most exciting opportunities I ever had in my life were opportunities I made. So don't wait for opportunities to make them. And the second one is this. When you get a great opportunity, don't take it, master it. And there's a big difference. You know, when ABC gave me the opportunity to be on Extreme Makeover, it literally Changed cosmetic dentistry worldwide, right? And if you look at the first two or three episodes, I'm not gonna lie, I stunk. I mean, what do I know about being on tv? I mean, I could do veneers, and I could do crowns, and I could do smile design, but actually, being on tv? No. But at least I was smart enough to know how bad I was. I did something about it. I took acting classes, hosting classes, teleprompting classes. I wanted to be the best version of me that I could be so they wouldn't fire me initially. But coincidentally, that turned into something so incredibly lucrative, I had no idea. I mean, we built discus dental. You know, I told you, or you read in my bio that that I had invented zoom tooth whitening. Well, that business was doing very well. I mean, we had been in business for a long time, and we were up around 76 million a year in sales. My first year on Extreme makeover, we broke 100 million. We did 101 million. My second year, we did 136 million. And my third year on the show, we did almost 200. $100 million in sales. So from the inception of the company until we sold it in 2010 to Phillips, we did over $1.3 billion in sales. Did I have that on my radar? No. I mean. But I'll tell you other things along the way. You know, as this business started growing, I realized I don't understand business. I understand dentistry, and I understood whitening, but business? No. I would sit in these board meetings feeling useless. I mean, we're looking at charts and graphs, and they're using terms I didn't learn in dental school. So what did I do? I went back to school. I went to ucla, and I took. I took business classes because, again, I knew if I wanted to be the best businessman I could be and contribute to the growth of my company, I wasn't qualified. So there were several pivotal moments in my life where I realized, if I really want to do this well or do it better, I need to up my game. And fortunately, it resulted in a very nice outcome for me. And so I've learned through my life that education is so critical, and. And I shared my mantra with you when I was speaking for you guys two weeks ago. You know, it's learn so you can earn and then return. Look, I. I came from nothing, Emmett. I mean, we were below, like, poverty level growing up, but I was showered in love and affection and support, and so I never thought I couldn't do something. I just always wondered how Can I do it? And so, as we became more and more successful with our business, I started this, the Leap foundation, which is a motivational leadership program for young entrepreneurs. And we do this every summer. So if you are a parent watching this and you have a student who's 15 to 25 plus, send them to our program. It's at USC July 21st to the 27th. I have great speakers in the past. I've had Richard Branson, Paula Abdul, Nisi Nash, Anthony Hopkins, Kathy Bates, Mark Wahlberg, Chris Voss, all of Pentatonix, Michael Strahan, on and on and on and on and on. So it's a phenomenal program.

Quick interruption to your podcast.

Hey, we're Influx Marketing, proud sponsors of

this year's keynote presentation at the DEO Summit.

At Influx Marketing, we understand the importance

of not letting your online presence lag behind the competition. That's why we've created the resource identifying and closing your online profit gaps.

DEO members can check it out free@influxmarketing.com DEO Influx Marketing, the digital agency for

growth minded dental practices. Now back to the episode. Can you take us back? You know, you've got people listening right now who are in school, just graduating or kind of determining their career. Can you take us back for you? You get out of school, you're top, you could go do anything, so to speak, right? What brought you to. Okay, I'm going to start with cosmetic dentistry. Did you have a mentor? Did you work as an associate somewhere? Did you just go buy a practice day one? Like, how did that play out?

All right, so let's first correct something. I wasn't top anything. Like, I graduated dental school. I'm talking UCLA was undergrad, then I went to dental school. So I graduated dental school. Level with everybody.

Okay?

The first thing I did was I went to Switzerland for two years and worked for the Swiss government. Growing up poor, I had never been on an airplane until I got to ucla. I was a gymnast. So as a yell leader, I got to travel with the football team. That was the first time I ever traveled. And I thought, you know, now that I graduate dental school, I don't want to be tethered to this practice where I can't really see the world. So I heard about a program in Switzerland where you could go and work for the Swiss government, live in Europe. Wow. And, you know, unfortunately, There was only one position and 400 applicants. I was bound and determined to get that job. I had every professor in my dental school write me a letter of recipe. I started Calling the director. Director on a weekly basis. And I realized that none of that was moving the needle. So on one of the phone calls, I don't know where I heard it, but I'm glad I did. Somebody said, if you ever really want to pick somebody's brain, the smartest thing to do is take them to lunch. So I asked the director if I could take him to lunch. He goes, well, you're in San Francisco in dental school and I'm in Switzerland. I said, oh, no problem, I'll fly out. Which was even funnier because I was broke as could be, but he said yes. So as soon as I graduated, I scrounged up enough money and I flew out there and I took him to lunch and he hired me.

Wow.

I think of all 400 applicants, I was probably the only one that did that.

Right? Yeah, right. Yeah, for sure.

So I worked there for. For two years. I came back to la, and were

you learning cosmetic there or was it just.

Oh, God, no, no, no. I learned how to extract teeth. I was taking out over a hundred teeth a week there. I mean, it. It's completely different. But I. I moved back to LA and I did something that we teach first and foremost, Elite copy genius. So I researched and found the five most successful cosmetic dentists in la. I called their offices and I asked them if I could come in and shadow. And I did. And I shadowed each one for about a week. And I took all of the great things that each of these successful guys at the time was all men were doing, and I put them all in one practice. And then on top of that, I did something that none of them were doing. It's called marketing. Because back then, in 1986, marketing was kind of a dirty word.

It had just got, like, legal in, like, 84. Right. Like, I mean, before that, in a lot of states, it was illegal.

So, yeah, but, you know, I'm sitting there going, I'm broke. I need to help support my parents and my grandparents. I need patience. So I started coming up with different marketing ideas.

Now, did you buy a practice? Right, or just like, was this just a new practice?

What I did initially was I worked with an older guy who went to school with my dad, actually high school. And the idea was I was going to take his practice over, but in the interim, he got divorced and said, I can't sell my practice. So I worked with him two years, kind of got my feet wet. And then just I had such an amazing series of fortunate events. The guy right next door to us on the 11th floor of my building, who was a dentist, left the building. So the suite was already built. It had three beautiful operatories, all the plumbing, all the oxygen, all that, all the, all, all the expensive stuff. So I basically could move in. And all I had to do was paint it to make it look fresh. It was a fully equipped dental office. So that happened. And then something unfortunate happened. One of the dentists in my building passed away. She was in a scuba diving accident. And the building was trying to sell her practice and all of the equipment and everything in it, but nobody would buy it because she was in the middle of all these high, you know, cost cases. And so all these people wanted their money back and became lawsuits. And so the building is sitting on all this equipment. And I went and I got it appraised. Patterson came in, said it was worth like $75,000. So I had a meeting with the building manager, owner, actually, Dave Wilstein. I only had $3,000 in my bank account. And I said, listen, I don't really have any money and I have no credit, so I can't take out a loan. But I'll give you $3,000 for everything in our office and I'll clean it. It will be spick and span and move in condition. And he just wanted to get rid of it. So he said, okay. So that's how I got all my dental chairs. I got everything I, I like fully equipped my office. And I was in business. And.

And that's how you start, that's how you started your practice. And then you're right. Now I got to market it.

Right, Right. So you know what I did? I'm in Century City. Right. Century city has about 40,000 people that work in a five block radius in my office. Well, we know statistically that 50% of the population didn't have a regular dentist at the time. So that meant there were 20,000 people in a five block radius of my office that needed a dentist. And at the time, they all worked for companies that all had dental insurance, so they didn't even have to pay anything. So for 350 bucks, I printed up these beautiful flyers. I hired two professional models. With great smiles, we gave them this great introductory offer. Right next door to my dental office is Beverly Hills High school. I hired four or five high school kids. This is before 9 11, so you can go up and down these buildings. And they went into every single office in Century City and dropped off flyers. My first month, I got 75 new patients.

Wow.

And then we went from just purely External marketing to internal marketing, too. When these patients came in, I would send them back to their offices with these amazing offers to get them to send in all their coworkers. And I'll be honest with you, I never had a day since I started my professional career that I haven't been booked up solid.

Some general dentistry with cosmetic layered in.

What do you mean cosmetic? It hadn't even been invented yet. This was porcelain veneers. Hadn't even been invented. Their cosmetic dentistry wasn't even a word.

So when you, when you visited these five dentists, these were just great general dentists that you want.

These were. Yeah, yeah. I mean, maybe people call them cosmetic dentists, but, I mean, there was really no cosmetic dentist.

It wasn't like modern day. Yeah, for sure.

Yeah.

And so when does that pivot happen? You're going along, you're doing your, you know, your work, you've learned that, hey, this marketing thing, you probably got a little. Did you get a little hate mail for your marketing, by the way? I mean, especially doing that in the early, I mean, 90s.

Hey, hate mail. No. But I knew there were dentists in town that didn't say nice things about me. But you know what I mean, I've always had an open door policy in my office. I don't care if you're the guy working right next door to me. I don't look at you as competition because there's enough people out there that need dentists. If you want to come in and shadow me, I. I let people in my building come shadow me. I have over 100 dentists a year. I mean, look on my Instagram, you could see, like, I'm always having people come and shadow me. You know, I feel there's enough to go around for everybody. So, you know, I think over time, people kind of got more comfortable with the idea. And the other thing was, and this was huge, I hired a publicist right off the bat. And that happened accidentally. You know, I opened my practice, a. A girl that I went to high school with came in, needed a lot of dental work, and said, hey, can. Can we barter? I didn't even know what barter meant. I'm like, what is that? And she explained to me, I go, well, well, what do you do? She says, I'm a publicist. I'm like, okay, what do you do? Like, I didn't know what a publicist was, you know, so she explained to me, and to be honest with you, I wasn't really sold. But on the other hand, I Felt really bad for her because she really needed the work. So I thought, okay, well, I'll just do a good deed for somebody. Right? And ended up being one of the smartest things I ever did. I mean, she got me in magazines and newspapers, on tv and like, I had no idea how this whole thing was going. And yeah, it was, it was crazy.

Where do you think? So she starts doing the publicist work, takes your marketing basically to that next level, if you will. Where do you think the inflection point where you're like, I mean, clearly you have enough patience, so that's not really the issue. But was there an inflection point? Was there, was there a patient that came in that kind of like, okay, wait, I'm going to take this to another level where you're starting to see, you know, Hollywood level stars and things like that.

Right. So it was, it was really kind of fun because very early in my career, I started dating a woman who was working in the mail room at the biggest town agency. It's now William Morris, but back then it was a different name and they merged and this and that and the other thing. But all of the people that were in the mail room with her at that time are the biggest agents in Hollywood. And so, you know, they started sending me their clients. And then, you know, Jason Phelps, who ran Virgin, sent me Jessica Simpson. Well, Jessica Simpson got married to Nick Lachey and they were doing a show and so she had me do veneers for Nick on tv. Well, that was big. And then Jessica Simpson's best friend with Fergie and Sam Fergian and, you know, best friends with, with, with Katy Perry and sent Katie Hudson in before she became Katy Perry. And then it just kind of grew and grew and grew and. Yeah, I mean, it's crazy. I mean, I walk in and I look at my schedule some days and it's like, who's who of Hollywood, Right?

Totally. And then you. And then is this all before Extreme Makeover?

This is all going on during Extreme Makeover.

Okay, so. So Extreme Makeover. How does that opportunity. Was that because of your publicist or how does that pop up onto your radar?

So Jennifer Fenton was a patient of mine and she was a game show hostess for. On a show with Howard Schultz. Howard Schultz, not Starbucks. Howard Schultz. Howard Schultz, the. The producer created a whole bunch of TV shows. And Howard Schultz created Extreme Makeover. And he was talking with Jennifer Fenton. I guess they went out for lunch or something and explained to her what the show was like. And so she had been working part time in Dr. Garth Fisher's office when she wasn't posting and was a patient of mine, said, oh, you have to meet, you know, this amazing plastic surgeon, this amazing dentist. So first he met Garth and it was like a love fest. And, and, and then, you know, when he asked Garth, you know, we need a cosmetic dentist, Garth also recommended me. So they called me up and they asked me to come in for a screen test. I'm a dentist, like, what do you mean screen test? And I, and reality TV hadn't even really started yet. So I'm like, not really. And I said, but I do have a sizzle reel. Because my, my wife at the time, I've gone through a few of them, was the, was an actress. And so, you know, she had recommended make a sizzle reel, right? So I had a sizzle reel. So it was on an old video cassette thing. So we sent it over to, to ABC and they basically hired me off the sizzle reel.

Wow. And then you get into it and you're like, and I have a new skill set to learn. You're like, yeah, yeah.

Well, I'll tell you what was the biggest epiphany I had when this whole thing started. So, so we shoot the pilot, right? And Garth did all this amazing surgery. I just did zoom tooth whitening on all three patients. And ABC says, you know, send us an invoice. I'm like, I mean, I own the company. Like, you don't have to pay me. This is great pr. We were the highest rated pilot on, on ABC that season. So we get picked up for 24 episodes. Our first season. Well, first patient, first episode needed 20 porcelain veneers, 10 uppers, 10 lowers. It was a $30,000 case. So I sent the invoice to ABC and they freaked out. They're like, Dr. Bill, we had no idea that dentistry was this expensive. I said, well, it is. They said, well, instead of doing 20 veneers, can you do three? I'm like, her teeth are black and she's got three white ones.

I know choose every other.

And I tell kids at LEAP all the time, you will have life defining moments. Sometimes they're evident, sometimes they aren't right at first. And this became a life defining moment. I said, I'll tell you what, I'll do all the dentistry for free. Now you have to understand, everybody got paid. The plastic surgeons, the weight trainers, the hairstylists and nutritionists on and they all got paid. I said, I'll do all the dentistry for free. Under Three conditions. Number one, I'm the only dentist. Number two, you need to commit to highlight zoom tooth whitening in every episode. And number three, I need to be able to say da Vinci veneers instead of just porcelain veneers because I didn't want to do all this dentistry for free and then have, like, a $10,000 lab bill.

Got it.

They agreed. I then had my agent write it into a contract in perpetuity. That would never happen on reality TV today. Never, ever, ever. Right. They agreed. We had ABC sign off. So I was the only dentist in the entire series until I invited a few of my friends. But I got to kind of oversee the whole dental part. And as a result, our company exploded.

Yeah, your. Your creativity and willingness to pivot, being confident in some areas and knowing when to push forward and then knowing when to be humble in others. I. I think that's your. You know, that's definitely a gift, right? So here you are, like, willing to be generous on one side, but then also being wise on the other is. Is awesome.

I'll tell you something. I've grown. I've grown up, and I surround myself with a lot of people. And to be totally honest with you, most of the people that I know and that I hang out with, I say they were. They were born on third base. You know what I mean? Like, all they had to do was run to home plate. I was born, you know, at home plate. I had to make the whole thing, and nobody held my hand. Nobody was like, hey. I'm like, I had to go out and search for it and make it happen. And that's why I'm so passionate about LEAP is. You know, in a world today where so many kids are just incredibly lost, we give them not only direction, but support, you know, and the first thing we do when these kids come to the LEAP program is we put them in a small group with 10 other kids where they, you know, have a group of kids who are not teasing them and, you know, playing jokes, but. But actually that are as committed to their growth and support as their own family is. And in fact, sometimes more than their own family. I mean, the first thing we do with kids when they get to LEAP is what we call the. We teach them the 10 culture. And the 10 culture is this. You need to wake up and feel like a 10, walk like a 10, talk like a 10, act like a 10, but most importantly, surround yourself with other tens. Because if you're trying to be a 10 and all your friends are twos, I got News for you, right?

Average is going to get pulled down.

And you want to hear something incredibly coincidental, Emmett? When we sold Discus Dental. We sold Discus Dental on 10, 10, 10 at 10am October 10, 2010. Merger documents came at 9, and I was just about to push send, and I'm like, I gotta wait till 10 and 10 manifest to the universe.

Yeah, that's awesome. Well, I love your Learn Earn return. I mean, I think that's just for every entrepreneur out there who frankly might be in the learn stage. Some of them might be, you know, in that earn stage, having that higher purpose, that higher cause, that ultimately this is about that returning and what you're doing with leap. I mean, the timing of that. And I know you've been doing it for a while, but, like, there's never been a bigger need for our youth to have more clarity and direction. And I think, you know, Covid and just so many life events, they're trying to figure out what they're supposed to be doing, what their mission is, et cetera. You providing them principles that they can use as frameworks for their own decision making. And it's not obviously about every one of them becoming a dentist, but whatever they are supposed to do, do it at a 10 level. You know, do it their best.

So LEAP isn't. Isn't there to foster young dentists. It's there to teach young people how to be successful in life no matter what they do. And if there are any DEO dentists or team members that would like to send, you know, their student to leap, we'll give them a $500 discount. The program is $2,600 for the week, and it's the best money you'll ever spend. And if they sign up, you just have to go to www.leapfoundation.com. and if they sign their student up and tell them that they're affiliated with DEO will give them a $500 donation. Other ways that that people listening can be involved. You can come as a mentor. You know, the program culminates on Friday with something called a mentor workshop, where we have 100 different professionals from. From all walks of life come and literally sit at a table every 30 minutes. We rotate and just share your life experiences with these young kids. You can sponsor, you know, some of your teammates kids. You know, one of my dear, dear friends, zam Sarabi, has 40 practices in Texas, and he sends a kid from each practice. So there's a lot of different ways. Or if you want, you can just make a donation we're a 501C3. It's fully, you know, write off for tax. Write off. If you want to just like, help change the world in a little way. You can sponsor a kid. We work with the Steve Harvey foundation, the ymca, the ywca, and you know, we'll find kids. The cool thing about leap is that 40% of the kids who come come from fairly affluent families, 60% come from low income families, and they apply for scholarships which we, you know, go out and raise money to fund. So if you'd like to be involved in any way, please, you know, go on our website or, you know, you can email me or, or DM me. I actually am the real person on Instagram Dr. Bill Dorfman. Send me a DM. I promise I'll, I'll answer you and, you know, help, you know, initiate that.

Thank you so much. I mean, so generous of you, first of all, to be willing to take this time with me, share your story, which is in and of itself very inspirational. And then how you're returning to these young entrepreneurs, you know, get involved, everyone who's listening. Leapfoundation.com just a wonderful work that you're doing around entrepreneurship and dentist entrepreneur organization. We really appreciate the power of entrepreneurship, the power of understanding your vision and mission. So thank you, Dr. Bill, for everything you're doing. Appreciate it.

All right. Hey, thank you for having me, Emmett.

You bet. You bet. For those who want to get more into this conversation, come over to our Facebook page@deodental group.com or the DEO Growth Secrets Facebook page. And until next time, keep smiling. Thank you for listening to deo's Growth Secrets podcast for dental organizations. Continue the conversation on our Facebook group and meet other dental leaders. Get questions answered and the strategies you need to succeed. Plus, we have some free resources for you right there on the Facebook page. Remember, remember, you're not alone. Let's do this together. Join DEO's Growth Secrets Group on Facebook. And until next time, keep smiling.