You Winning Life Podcast Ep. 112- You Probably Can Thank Dr. Bill Dorfman For Your Smile

Alright, so everybody, welcome back. Today I am incredibly honored and grateful to have Dr. Bill Dorfman, and he's out in LA, as you've already heard in the bio beginning. And I really— Dr. Bill, I really want to thank you. This morning. I know it's earlier there on the West Coast than it is here, but I know we have a lot to accomplish and tackle in the next 30 minutes that I have with you.

Well, thanks for having me, Jason Wasser.

Thank you. So number one, one of the conversations I love having with people is what made them know for certain that the career that they chose was the career for them. And I know a lot of times it happens after because they might have, you know, inherited be going into that field, or they may have known early, but when for you did you absolutely completely know that, A, being a dentist was what you wanted to do? And then, two, when did you decide to go into that idea of being like the Michael Jordan of your field?

Well, I mean, you actually asked me like three different things. So the first thing is, when did I, you know, decide I wanted to be a dentist. I, I literally fell into dentistry. I was a little kid, I fell down, I knocked out my baby teeth, and I started having to go to the dentist to fix them. And we just had a great family dentist, and I was the oldest of 5 kids. So when my little brothers and my sister would come, I would kind of like shadow him, you know, and see what he did to them. I saw what he did to me, and I thought, wow, this is really cool, I want to do this. I mean, I know a lot of kids would have been horrified having gone through what I went through, but I don't know, I, I was always a weird kid. It just kind of really was fascinating to me. So even as a little kid, I always said I wanted to be a dentist. The second question you asked me is, you know, when did I realize that dentistry was really my calling? And I'll tell you, um, after dental school, I did a residency program in Switzerland, and it was an amazing opportunity. And I'm going to kind of tell you how I got into it because I teach a motivational leadership program called LEAP every summer for high school and college kids. It's a nonprofit where we basically teach students how to be successful in life. And, you know, there's a great lesson to be learned in this. So I'm about to graduate dental school. I was the youngest graduate in pretty much the whole country. I was, uh, 23 years old graduating dental school. I'm gonna be a doctor, and I realized I've never been anywhere. I mean, we grew up super poor. I, you know, I had never traveled. The only traveling I ever did, I was a gymnast, so I traveled with the UCLA football team. I would do acrobats at football games. That was it. You know, and so I thought, you know, before I settle down and I'm really tethered to an area— because as a dentist you can't move around a lot— um, I thought I'd like to live abroad. So I found this clinic in Switzerland, Lausanne, Switzerland, called the PolyClinic Dentaire at the Chaux. And, uh, unfortunately they only had one position and 400 applicants. Well, I was bound and determined to be that person. So I had 20 of my professors in dental school write me glowing letters of recommendation. And you know how I know they were great?

I don't know.

I wrote them all. Okay, the best way to get a great letter, you ask a professor to write it, there's always a hesitation because it's like, ah, I have to write another letter and say, hey, I'll write it if you'll personalize it. Awesome. I soon realized that the 20 letters were getting me nowhere, right? So then I started calling the director. Well, back in 1983, making a long-distance phone call was not easy. You know, you had to get the long-distance operator, and it was expensive, and I mean, it took a lot. So I started calling on a weekly basis, and I soon realized that was getting me nowhere. And then I had what I call at LEAP a life-defining moment. And, you know, sometimes you plan them, sometimes you don't. And I didn't plan this at all. I, in fact, I don't even know where it came from. I think somewhere in my past I had heard that the best way to really get to know somebody in business is to take them to lunch. So I said to the director, his name was Monsieur Schreyer, I said, can I take you to lunch? He goes, lunch? I said, yeah. He goes, but you're in San Francisco and I'm in Switzerland. I said, I know, but I'll fly out. He said, okay, fine. Well, the funniest thing is I had no money. Like, I couldn't just fly out So I had to borrow money to fly out and meet him, and he hired me. And I can assure you that out of 400 applicants, I was the only one that had 20 letters of recommendation, had called him at least 10 times, and then sealed the deal by flying out. You know, I wasn't just a piece of paper on his desk anymore. I was a living, breathing person.

Yeah.

And you could see how much I wanted a job. So I got it.

So how does someone create that experience without— because the powerfulness of that story is that it works. The other side of the story is, especially in today's society where we're getting bombarded, and I'm sure you do, you get all the time, whether it's LinkedIn or whatever, all these people that are trying to sell themselves to you versus actually creating the value, creating a relationship first. Today, with today's social media and marketing and all that stuff. How, what's the line to not cross? In other words, how can you leverage everything you did there, but to avoid where it would now become a turnoff? Cause I see that happening all the time where I'm like, oh, your business would be really cool to do something for my marketing. But you just, but that person reached out and I'm like, you just, that was, it's just way too much right now. You're getting—

Well, one of the taglines at Leap is successful people are willing to do the things that unsuccessful people are not willing to do. And I think that that really rang true in this case. Now, how much is enough and when is it too much? I think you just have to feel it out. I mean, every situation is different. But part 2 of your question was, you said, when did I really know that dentistry was my calling? And I think it was there, um, and in dental school, because in that clinic I was practicing with about 15 other dentists, and I soon realized that, you know, a lot of these guys were really struggling. Like, dentistry was hard for them. It was never hard for me. It was, it, it was always so logical and methodical. And it's funny because I once treated this woman who was supposed to be this very very famous psychic. And I'm sitting here working on her. And as I'm working on her, I could see that she's staring in my eyes. And all of a sudden she says, stop. Now I'm not like a big believer in psychics and all this stuff. I'm like, okay, so I stopped. She says, I know what you're thinking. And to myself, I'm like, She's full of it. Like, she doesn't know what I'm thinking because I'm not thinking anything. I'm literally in like autopilot, right? Yeah. I mean, that's just how I work. Like, I'm in this zone, right? And I'm like, okay, what? She goes, you're not thinking at all. You're in autopilot. I'm like, whoa, I couldn't believe it. Like, she literally took the words out of my brain. And reiterated them to me. I'm like, whoa. So, you know, that was part 2 of your 3-part question. And part 3 was, you know, how did I become the Michael Jordan of dentistry? Well, you know that thing I said, you know, successful people are willing to do the things unsuccessful people are not willing to do? I was very fortunate when I first started my career. A woman I went to high school with, came into my office and needed some work and asked if I'd partner with her. And I'm like, well, what do you do? She says, well, I'm a publicist. I'm like, well, what does that do? And I had no idea. And so she explained it to me. And I really wasn't sold. But on the other hand, I thought, what the heck, I'll give it a try. Well, one of the smartest things I ever did. Because she started pitching me for, you know, newspaper articles, magazine articles, TV shows, and it just grew and grew and grew. And one of the other things I teach at LEAP is don't wait for opportunities, make them.

Yeah.

And when you get an opportunity, don't just take it, master it. So I think the part of my career that propelled me into like this whole new stratosphere was when ABC put me on Extreme Makeover. And I realized very shortly into the filming that I stunk on TV. I mean, really bad. Like I got the dental part, but the TV and like, I was really bad. And you know the phrase, a deer in headlights? That was me, Dr. Bill in headlights. So, but I was smart enough to know how bad I was. So I was proactive. I took acting classes, hosting classes, teleprompting. I joined the Groundlings improv theater. You know, I hired the woman who worked with all the kids on American Idol to sit and interview me in these mock interviews with another person. And, You know, and then we would tape it and analyze all the bad stuff I was doing. And, you know, and I worked and I worked and I worked and I worked. And eventually, you know, that translated into me not only being the only dentist on the show— I mean, they had hairstylists, makeup artists— but I was the only dentist on ABC's Extreme Makeover. And I produced almost all my own segments. You know, I, you know, when the, when, when they would do like a breast augmentation, that was an 8-hour procedure with a whole team of people there. When I was doing dentistry, I had 3 rooms going at once, and I brought 3 different shirts, and I'd work in room 1, then change the shirt and have my associate come and help me finish up, and then work in room 2. And I saved ABC millions of dollars throughout the, the course of that, of that show.

Amazing. So the simplicity process is something I talk about with all my clients of finding the things that you're really, really good at, leveraging everything out to the people that you know are experts at that, bringing them into your life. Sometimes it's free because you can find a podcast or a YouTube video on that. Or sometimes like you did, like you have to go find the people who are experts and thankfully you're in the California area. So finding all the types of coaches are incredibly accessible there. When you were first getting started and you were at— I'm assuming there was student loans and, and stuff like that. Like, how— when did you— the investments into yourself versus like, okay, this is just a business thing versus a personal development thing versus like, I can really do something big. I can really— when, when, especially with the publicist, when did you have this like, this can be big, this could be like— right now I know you have the, the, the other businesses you've created, you're an author, you're doing all these really incredible projects, when did you have that like light bulb really turn on?

Well, you know, it's funny. I grew up pretty poor and, you know, when you start making money, everybody wants you to invest in this, invest in that, you know? And I never did. I always just invested in me. I know that if I start a company and run the company, I'm not gonna lose my money because I will do everything I need to do to make money. And so in 1989, tooth whitening started to become popular. And I looked at the systems that were out there and they were all horrid. And I actually got a phone call from the leading company at the time called, it was called Omni. And, um, they said, you know, Dr. Bill, you sell more tooth whitening than any other dentist in the world. How do you do it? I said, well, I, you know, I'm in Beverly Hills, I've got Hollywood, I got this, I got that. So while I have you on the phone, I want to tell you something. And so I started telling them all the things that I thought they could do to improve the product, and they're like, you're 27? Like Thank you, bye. And they just hung up on me. And, you know, there's this really weird thing that's happened in my life where every time I've honestly and truly just committed to doing something philanthropically, I ended up making a lot of money. So I was at a charity auction. I was, you know, there to help raise money. For children's cancer research, and I met a man and we became best friends and still are. And he was the son of Fred Heyman. Fred Heyman created Giorgio Cosmetics. In fact, Fred Heyman created Beverly Hills. And Robert was an MBA. He grew up in, you know, the cosmetic industry, so he understood marketing and advertising and how to you know, manufacturer, produce products. And I told him my ideas for tooth whitening, and we formed a company called Discus Dental, and we launched Night White. And, you know, Night White was, you know, our first product. And, you know, it grew and grew and grew. By the end of, you know, 2 or 3 years, we were the most popular tooth whitening product on the market. And then we invented Zoom. And I love telling people I invented Zoom. They don't realize it's not video conferencing, but it was still a good Zoom. And, you know, and we grew that company to almost $200 million in sales before we sold it to Philips. In fact, our gross revenue from the time we started the company to the time we sold was $1.3 billion.

And these numbers, right, you get— right, you've already referenced twice that you grew up poor. And I was a scholarship kid, went from public school to, to a private day school. And I'm thankful for the, for the love that I got in the community for me to get there. And I never had this— I never knew what it could be to become successful because I grew up in South Florida and I had this mindset. It's very simple. It's very similar probably to like that Beverly Hills, LA, you know, there's the haves and the have-nots. And I went to school with a lot of kids that were getting their Range Rovers for, you know, 16-year-old birthday. And I'm like, and I'm the scholarship kid. So I had this mindset for so many years of correlating money with not being the world's greatest person. And the only time that money was good was if you were doing charitable things. But I didn't see a lot of those people or wasn't able to get in front of a lot of those people as a young adult. And once I started seeing this through entrepreneurship, through leadership, through coaching, through working with the people who had that mindset, just like you do, everything started changing. For me. And I think that's one of the things that I love sharing with people who are listening to these shows is the psychology behind success, the psychology behind money has to change from our family of origin.

Totally. My mantra in life is learn so you can earn and then return.

That's the process. Yeah.

And that's where I am now. You know, I mean, look at my career. Has exceeded every expectation I ever had. I mean, I never thought I'd be on two primetime TV shows. I never thought I'd have two Guinness World Book Records. I never thought I'd be knighted Sir Dr. William Doherty. Like all these things, you know, but it just kept coming and coming and coming. And I think, you know, I had this huge epiphany with Oprah. You know, when, um, in 2006, you know, I, I don't know if you've ever done, but when you're on a talk show like The Tonight Show or Ellen or Rosie or, or any of these, basically they stick you in a little room with a producer and they ask you questions for about an hour. Then they cherry-pick the stuff they like the best, right? And then when you're on stage, you're filming. It's called live to tape. It's not live, but when you look at it at home, it looks like it's live, right?

Right.

And so you pretty much know what they're going to ask you because you just practiced, right? Oprah doesn't do that. Oprah has such an extensive team of researchers that Oprah knows more about you than you know about you. And so when you're on stage, you never know what she's going to ask, and she wants your raw, unfiltered answer. And when I met Oprah and she said, Dr. Bill, 'You've had a career unlike any other dentist in the history of dentistry. What inspires you to think so far outside the box?' That was not a common phrase at the time, and my honest reply was, 'What box?' Right? I just never even— like, I've never put ceilings on myself. I— it's like You know, if I want to do something, I'm going to do it. And I never fail, ever. Why? If I do something and it doesn't come out the way I want it to, that's not failure, it's practice. Then you do it again and again and again and again and again until you get the results you want. But here's the big one. People always say, Practice makes perfect? No, practice makes permanent. So if you're not getting those results you want, get a mentor, you know, go online, learn, do something different, because you really actually only fail when you quit. And I'm not a quitter. If there's something I really, really want, I'm not gonna quit. I'll do it.

Well, we usually get stuck because, you know, the idea of a New Year's resolution is always the best example of this, is that people's New Year's resolution usually lasts, if we're lucky, that month of January. And it's because they're just doing an action step change versus an attitude belief system change. And I think what you're offering is exactly that. It's a belief system change. It's you have to get out of your own head, out of your own structure, out of your own thinking system, out of your own beliefs, and expand that to realize that the limitations that are in your profession, right? I had a conversation an hour ago with a therapist who owns multiple practices. And we were talking about how none of this stuff is really taught to us in graduate school. So all of those things that we're dealing with really has that mentality of we have to see people who are outside of our lens that can really give us much more than what we have been trained and, so to speak, manipulated to see. And I think that's really the beautiful thing that you're doing. And I want to tie that in.

Totally. And I'll tell you what else, you know, I mean, I work with so many students, and the biggest reason why people don't attempt things is fear of failure. I don't know, maybe I'm stupid. I've never had that. Ever. Like, I mean, I've never thought, oh gosh, I'm not going to try that because I might fail. Like, to me, that's the fun. That's the challenge. Like, okay, I'm gonna beat this, you know? Like, if you say, hey, Dr. Bill, you can't do this, to me, you just like threw down the gauntlet. Like, I will do it, you know?

Right.

Right. So I don't get that, you know, the fear of failure. I mean, if you don't try anything in life, you'll never get anything in life.

And I think that maybe puts people into two camps. There's people who are personality predisposed or temperament predisposed like you, and then there's the people who, who are waiting for permission or grow up in a culture or society or structure where they need that permission. And remember, a lot of the people that taught us, they only can teach us to the level that they went to. So if we say something that we want to try out of the box, a lot of times because of their own insecurities and fears or their own failures will say, oh no, no, you can't do that, or you shouldn't try to do that. And I think what you're offering and what I, what I'm, what I'm offering on this platform is those aren't the people to go talk to. Find the people who are the best in your field and get in front of them. Like you said, a mentor or coach, whatever it may be. And then those people who are on that path are already achieving that. That's the people you want to get into. And, and I know we only have a few minutes left and I really do want to talk to you about philanthropy. That you've already— you talked about the LEAP program, and I know you also have a collaboration with, with Garth Brooks. Break those down for us because I just— the philanthropy field is not talked about enough. We know that in the world of entrepreneurship and successful business people or whatever are involved in, in this philanthropy field, but it's not talked about enough. Walk us through your process. How did you get involved? How can you get involved?

This is another example of us, my company, actually committing to just doing something philanthropically, and it became incredibly profitable for us. There's a group of dentists called the Crown Council. It's run by Greg and Steve Anderson, the brothers, and they called us up and said, look, we have an idea for a whitening campaign. People will whiten their teeth, and instead of writing a check to the dentist, they write it to Smiles for Life. We do it at a reduced fee, and all the money will go to children's charity. So would you sell us— since we have the most popular whitening system on the market— would you sell us your whitening product at your cost? So I talked with my partner, we called them back, we said, absolutely not. We'll just give it to you. And they're like, what? We said, we'll donate it. So Garth and I did public service announcements basically saying, if you'd like to brighten your smile and help a child smile for life, call 1-877-4-SMILES. You'll be directly connected to a dentist in your area. And then Discus Dental, my company, would donate the whitening product. Um, over the years we've raised over $45 million for children's charities. But the thing that I wasn't even thinking about when we made that commitment is that these 3,000 dentists who are part of the Crown Council are our biggest customers. I mean, these are die-hard men and women that are so committed to raising money through philanthropy, and because our company was giving them all this product they would buy all of our products. So it was a really, really nice surprise. Um, the second is LEAP. LEAP is a motivational leadership program, like I said, for high school and college kids. It teaches kids skills they won't learn in high school. Um, the last live program we had was 2019. 2020 was completely virtual. This program 2021 was a hybrid. We had 50 students live and the rest was virtual. And from now on, we'll continue to do that. I mean, hopefully 2022 will be back to 500 live and maybe a, you know, 1,000, 2,000, 3,000, who knows, virtual. But we bring in these amazing speakers, um, Mark Wahlberg, Anthony Hopkins, Kathy Bates, Michael Strahan, Paula Abdul. Um, on and on and on and on. So if any of you out there have kids 15 to 25, please send them to this program. You could go to, uh, leapfoundation.com and get information. It is a phenomenal program and kids learn so much.

Incredible. Right. I know that the idea of stakeholders, which you were talking about, the dentists a moment ago that were already using your product and already saw the benefit of your product and why they found something useful to use to help people with this. I really have been thinking about this a lot the last 6 to 12 months, especially during the pandemic, of people who are buying into you because they believe in what you're doing and believe in what your mission is, as well as vice versa, right? That mutual mission-critical support. And again, this is something that I really want to impress upon people with that, right? As we're listening, those of you who are listening, as you're listening to Dr. Bill share this, Right. It's, it's your mission, your purpose that you're not only trying to do for yourself, but you're trying to get people to buy into it because that makes it easy, right? When you created that phone number, people were donating, they were buying into that mission. So yes, even though you're donating and there's cost of product, but people were, it was enhancing the amount of people that it can get in front of.

Totally. And it was, it was a win-win-win because, you know, people come in, they get brighter smiles. And they're donating the money to charity. So it was awesome.

Yeah. So what's next? What's the next big thing?

So next, I'm actually launching two new products this year. So we sold, uh, Discus Dental to Philips in 2010. I had to sign a pretty strict non-compete. So I'm working with a company called Great Health Works. They have a very popular product called Omega XL, and they do tons and tons of infomercials. So they're going to launch our new tooth whitening product. The name of it is POOF, P-O-O-F with 3 O's, and it will be out sometime this year. And then I'm launching a chewing gum. I don't like coffee, but I love caffeine. So a lot of times, like, I would have like a Red Bull or I would have an energy drink. So this is a caffeinated chewing gum and it's really good and it works great. It's great for like a pre-workout thing. It's awesome.

That's incredible. So number one, again, thank you so much for, for the time and, and again, all the things. And I want people to hear this, right? You start off in a career not even knowing where you're going to go, you get in front of the right people, you find a mentor, you find your passion, you find your purpose, and then all of a sudden things are going to start unfolding. And I really want people to hear that message of your success, Dr. Bill. One, congratulations on everything you've achieved so far and will continue to achieve. Thank you. And I know that the more, like you said, right, that when you're going out and you're setting out to do something good for someone else, it's going to come back. In return. And I do want people to hear that, like, you know, the entrepreneurship— I personally believe that entrepreneurship is a personal development platform if utilized right, no matter what field, whether it's medical or accounting or real estate, right? But if you can take it to one, make yourself better, and you can help make the world better, then, then that's really something powerful and beautiful. And I really want to thank you for, for sharing how you've done that for the world.

Well, thanks for the opportunity.

All right, I'm looking forward to hearing next, after this big project gets launched, and having you back, and then hearing what the next projects that are after that.

Thank you.