Scott Leune: I am so excited to welcome you to the Dental CEO podcast and what is our very first episode? My name is Scott Luna and I'm your host. And this is a passionate project for me because in a world and dentistry where we're inundated with people selling things to us or telling us what to do, we see all these stories online. It's hard to kind of cut out the noise and get straight to what's valuable. And sometimes that value is not inside of dentistry, but sometimes we find that value outside of dentistry, looking at other entrepreneurs, other CEOs, learning from other verticals. The dental CEO podcast is all about learning so that we can mature and advance ourselves as CEOs and we become more successful inside of our practice. And what I know is that when we can cut through the noise and get more successful inside of our practice, that better practice can give us a better life.

With this podcast, I am going to be interviewing big names, big stars, including today's episode with the one and only Daymond John. In addition to interviewing people like Daymond, I'm also going to be diving deep into the dental side of things and what I hope is that this podcast becomes a regular habit in your life. Whether you're driving to work or you're working out, you're on a walk or you're just winding down from the day, listen to this podcast weekly. Take in the content, find moments to learn from, find moments that make a difference in your life.

Alright, Daymond John, so again, thank you so much for joining us on the Dental CEO podcast. It's an honor to have you and of course you need no introduction, but I want to tell you something you don't know about me and about you. We're actually connected. I think that my wife and I and all of my friends are one of the ingredients on why you're so successful because we must be the largest purchasers in the country of this right here. Boless socks, we all wear 'em every single day. So you're still involved in that company, is that correct?

Daymond John: Absolutely, absolutely. First of all, I never wanted to, I get in trouble by my mom if I didn't. Thank you for that warm intro and thank you for all the good stuff you just said. So absolutely, I'm still an investor. I don't have to be active at all because good founders, if I call 'em, I'd screw up things if I jump in.

Scott Leune: Yeah. Well it's been amazing kind of watching your story and your career and before we dive into that, I want to ask you something dental, see if we can get something about dentistry. Of course, this is the Dental Co podcast. I was wondering when you think of the dental industry, maybe from a business standpoint, what comes to mind or if you think about dentistry as a patient or if you know any dentists, what comes to mind to you when you think of dentistry?

Daymond John: Well, there's so many things coming to mind. One of my buddies is a big consultant to a lot of dentists and I basically heard about their business and their margins and the general, the 80 20. When I think about dental industry, just like every other one, it is complex in a sense, and it's simple in a sense. There's so many different levels of it and some are very specialty orientated and some are very general practice. The ones at scale are the ones that understand how to use OPM, other mindpower, manpower, manufacturing, marketing, and they know how to be very smart about the business. The ones who I see tend to in any other industry, when they do more cosmetic and various other things like that, they tend to do much better. The ones who know how to brand themselves tend to go to the top and the ones who are as often changing lives are the worst branders in history like any other scientists. And they're doing stuff that very few can do, but they don't know how to communicate that they do it and they're so busy as a specialist that they do well, but they could do 10 times better.

Scott Leune: Yeah. Awesome. Well, thank you so much for that. I'd like to dive in some questions about you and the way you think and your life if your life is laid out in chapters. What's the title of this next chapter that you're in? What's it about? What's going on right now?

Daymond John: The next chapter of longevity? That would pretty much be it. The long next chapter is longevity, and I think this is a great question. It's longevity and legacy. What can I do myself to be on the planet for a longer period of time with the advancement of science, with the fact that I'm on the other side of 50 and I probably, if I live like everybody else and thank God, hopefully I live to a certain age, I probably got a good hot, exciting 20 more summers and I better hurry up and make that 80 120 with the advancement of science. And that my job now because I have no idea why God has chosen me to be somebody a little more recognized than others. My job now is to leave my daughters a legacy instead of an inherit and make sure that they can walk into the room when I'm gone and be proud of who their father is and get treated with respect. And how many other people can I help during this period of time to give back with all the things that I've received?

Scott Leune: What an amazing answer. I think a lot of us on the business side, once we kind of go through these different cycles and these different peaks and valleys and sometimes the business can distract us from the bigger purpose, the bigger picture, what we're really trying to accomplish here. I'm curious, what's a piece of advice that you constantly catch yourself giving to other people, to your colleagues or people that you mentor? What's something common that you say?

Daymond John: Well, there's nothing common because there's so many different people that ask for advice or need advice, and I tend not to share it unless somebody has asked. And even then, I really have to tread lightly on if I want to give what I call my advice because first of all, it's my thought process. Second of all, it may not be the right thing, and third of all, you didn't ask for it necessarily or you don't really want it. So everything, my go-tos are money is a great slave, but it's a horrible master. My go-to is will you be able to sleep at night if you did it or my go-tos? Are you doing it for yourself? Is that, why are you doing that? Because that's what your parents or society thought success means. What is the real reason you're doing it?

Scott Leune: And when you're working with other successful leaders, people that have really achieved a lot, what's a strength or superpower that you think that you are known for in their eyes? Because you've obviously worked with a lot of founders through your work on Shark Tank. Obviously you've scaled FUBU to an amazing brand and you've been exposed to a lot of people. I would imagine that in the room when working through scale, when working through great ideas, there's something that other people probably look at you as. Is there something like that, a superpower that you feel like they think you have?

Daymond John: I think they believe that I have a voice or reason because of the large amount of access I have. I think they believe that I can boil something down a very simplistic form, not a big Harvard, Yale, Columbia kind of approach and boil it down to the rawest form of a very simple person who can take an actionable step tomorrow that can actually make it happen and not over complicate matters.

Scott Leune: So an actionable step tomorrow. I think I saw on your social media feed on Instagram a while ago, I wish I had in front of me, you made a post something about when people tend to act without thinking or when they think without acting,

Daymond John: Those are two of the most common reasons why things have gone wrong in people's lives. They've either acted without thinking or thought without acting.

Scott Leune: Yeah, and I think of when I think of dentists, dentists as well as physicians sometimes come through our programs, they're very intelligent, they like to think a lot, they like to analyze things and it seems like without change they have things good enough or kind of this mediocre income, mediocre and they kind of get stuck in that. What would you say to someone that is kind of overthinking, they're not making the next step, they're kind of sucked into this trap of mediocrity?

Daymond John: Yeah, just do it. It's exactly what you asked and a combination of two things. It's a combination of my simplicity and the way that I approach things. So first of all, just do it like Nike and that sounds really, really simple and really stupid. And the other thing is my philosophy, they'll never be the perfect time. You can only make the perfect use of time. And then I boiled down, if I had to think about it from a surgeon or a dentist or various other things, their work is very scientific and there's no shortcuts around their work. You can't just start by giving somebody a heart transplant or doing a canal and come back tomorrow. And on the flip side of their work is they see the result of their work months and years later. So they put in the work and then you see how it obviously has taken or not taken or reacted in actions like understanding AI today or social media or branding and marketing or acquisitions or new companies or releasing products. You can just take very small steps, whereas exactly the opposite of what they've really been trained to do. They've been trained to plan out this surgery or this act, take it all the way through in a very meticulous way where they don't want to make any mistakes and then see the product that it comes into or what it creates over months and years. That's not the same when it comes to various other things. You have to just start in some sense or another.

Scott Leune: And when I think back to your story, your first big venture, fubu, that seemed like it was something fun, your passionate about it, it was culturally significant, it was fashion, the names involved. But then when I compare that to things like investing in a so company, I'm wondering where do you find the focus or the fun or the kind of inspiration when you start dealing with companies or products that are different than some of those childhood dreams you had? Another way of me asking is sometimes we are in a business that doesn't feel fun anymore or how do we find the drive? What pulls us into going further and further and making it work and making it bigger?

Daymond John: That's the thought process. The thought process of being an investor is giving people the opportunity that I want it, but it's also to be greedy about that. It is to check under a bunch of hoods and see what things work and don't work and apply it to my business. It's invest in somebody smarter than me so I don't have to come up and willing to work harder than me so I don't have to wake up every day with a bright idea and bust my ass and somebody who's nice and young. So I'm being selfish about it, but it's the same exact results that, or the same exact application that it was with fubu. I wake up every morning as an investor, whether it's in Bombas or whether it's in one of the other dozens or hundreds of companies that I'm in, and it is Christmas every day. It is. How are they utilizing this platform against that platform? Where are they getting their goods domestic against over here? Where are they getting creating financing? How are they getting the public to do pre-orders and or how are they licensing and branding? It's the same exact thing to me.

Scott Leune: And I imagine you have something called a CEO day and you've got coaching for entrepreneurs I would imagine sitting in a room with other CEOs listening to you, your skill to kind of simplify things and to make these connections is something that those people are greatly benefiting from. Do you think you could speak a little bit on that CEO day or what you're doing there?

Daymond John: Thank you for asking me about that. CEO day is the day that we have a bunch of small founders that come in, but they're doing good business and they spend a day with me and we go through their model of what works and doesn't work, right? Because just like in dentistry, once you get to a certain number, it's very hard to break that wall the way you've been operating and you either have to bring in new operators or you have to find a new model and you have to get a little bit out of the business yourself so you can run the business and work on the business, not in the business. And that's the difference with small businesses that turn into big businesses. A lot of businesses really, they hit a mark right around 500,000 and they hit another mark around 5 million and they hit another mark around 15 and then around 25 and then 50. And you keep hitting these things when you get to around 50, you get to start to explode through the 200 and change. And so when you get to sit with me for a day, that's what we do. We go over that and simultaneously I put you in the room with various other people going through the same matters that you end up working with probably and or using the same things that are solving their problems or avoiding the same things that are creating the problems.

Scott Leune: So it reminds me of something that I say to people every now and then. Where you're at right now many times is based on how you're doing things and who you are, and you kind of have to fire that version of yourself and build a new one to bring that company to the next level. I've got a question for you. If you look at your journey as a CEO, as an investor and going from zero to 6 billion brand like fubu, I would imagine you would've had to break and mature individually as a leader in that journey. Could you describe some of that for us, the things you've had to change and rebuild a different way in yourself?

Daymond John: Sure. I mean, for those who don't know, who will start in 89, I closed it down three times from 89 to 92, I would get public recognition around 97, 98. And then at around year 1999, I had 20 million in the bank and by year 2000 I almost went bankrupt again. I then would slow down around 2004, 2005, I would start 10 of the clothing brands and another one really wouldn't take off until 2007, 2008. And then I started co-managing people like the Kardashians and Pit Bull. I started then creating my own version of CEO access for myself and branding myself, and then I'd get onto Shark Tank, right? So there's been so many ups and downs and the day and John in 89 had to learn to work with people. And that's how I finally found my partners in 92 the day. And John in 92 had to be able to juggle working at Red Lobster in the daytime and turning my house into a factory, and I almost went bankrupt again.

And then I had learned that I needed OPM, I needed some backing, but I had to make it attractive enough to get the investment. The Daymond John almost bankrupt in 2000 needed a financial intelligence, Daymond John in 2005, 2006, needed to understand how to be an active investor and not have to roll up my sleeves and jump in and do it all the time. So I had to let it go again. Daymond John in 2008, 2009 had to understand how to be a public person and speak in certain ways and sound bites and various other things. And Dave John keeps learning. Dave John today needs to know, AI needs to know in this kind of weird world where we're super connected, how do I have work and home balance time with my family? And because we don't have a physical office to go to all the time, how do I separate the walls in my personal life with my family and with my staff and various other things?

Scott Leune: And so I'm wondering how have you looked at building these kind of boundaries to structure what you say yes to, what you say no to? I would imagine that you are having countless opportunities of things to take away your time, shiny things that they all individually have a reason why it could be great, but how do you look at that at your time in these boundaries to understand, to be disciplined, I guess, in what you're really trying to accomplish on your career side versus what you're trying to do on the family side?

Daymond John: Yeah, it's a little more difficult than most people because I still, at the end of the day, I have a moving target. I have a show that may be on next year, may not, may want me, may not. Investments that you may see on the air may not. Then all of a sudden I'm honored to say that every single president that is living has called me in some sense to want to work besides them and advise them. And that's being of service to the people. And then you have the opportunities of things you want to do. And so basically it almost becomes like every quarter I need to take inventory of what is working, what is not working, what do I like, what do I not like? What is going to be a pure passion project, and where am I failing and why did I do it and why did I not follow my own rules and some of the matters and how I have to rehack myself and swallow my pride and close it down or say I'm sorry and figure things out. So it's always about reassessing exactly how I'm looking.

Scott Leune: Is that reassessment a formal quarterly meeting with your leaders or with your family or is it something you're constantly thinking about? How does that work?

Daymond John: It's a semi-formal quarterly meeting, even though leading up to it, there's a lot of little meetings, but it's constantly taking inventory of yourself and just looking back over the time because a lot of the leaders are not going to understand if everybody understood exactly what you're doing well, there's no place for you. And some of it is emotional based. The only thing more important than the number is the person and some of these things and most of these things that we do generally initially where they start, you don't see a clear outcome for success because if everybody could put $1 in a machine and $2 came out or come up with a great idea and get every single thing in place to make sure that idea is great, then none of us would have a problem here. A lot of these things are, they're time, energy, and things that are not. They're phantom, you can't quantify them. So it's a semi-formal and formal look at it.

Scott Leune: Yeah. One thing when I've heard you in the past that stood out to me is the importance of learning and how that can just add multiple zeros to what you're doing. And one story I think of is in your expanding of the FUBU brand, this idea of licensing to get this revenue share coming back with no added costs and with just leveraging of their time was I look at it as one of those pivotal moments where FUBU could take off and become very profitable with a lot less risk. Do you have any kind of thoughts on this continued path of learning even at that when we're at the top and your experiences in learning new things, how that might've made a difference for you in the business side?

Daymond John: Yeah, I mean I learn every single day. So if I think about it, licensing was something that I learned, but I couldn't be open to learning if I wasn't vulnerable, always thinking about what do I not know out there and looking what's going on? Why does Disney do so well? Why does everybody else do so well? They can't be running. It must be licensing. But if I wake up every single day, I look at myself as a lifelong learner. I'm going to look at every day how to put the certain amount of nutrition in my body or cold plunge or do something in longevity or what to stop utilizing. I got to learn how to spend more time with my family because my daughter's eight years old in another four years, she's not even going to care about us and what new industries are going out there.

I'm looking today on what more ways can I be more efficient with AI and how can I learn more on how to use that with my staff from one side to maximize the time? So again, I wake up every day trying to learn new things every single day. And I think that that's the most critical part of being an entrepreneur and a successful person. If you're not vulnerable and telling people, Hey, I know about this, but I don't know about that. Can you teach me and I'll teach you this? Well then nobody's going to come around because they're going to think you're good and then you turn around and you're screwed. You didn't learn anything.

Scott Leune: And I've got five kids as well, one of them, my second youngest is eight. I think about teaching my children and unfortunately I've recognized what I think has become one of your passion projects, trying to get the next generation financially educated. What are you doing with that right now? How do you view that?

Daymond John: Well, I view it as all of us Americans, were not taught any kind of financial intelligence or given financial literacy in school because we are going off of an 80-year-old school system where I've shared with people, we're still teaching people shop, which is good, but hopefully it's coding. But we're still teaching people how to build ships and stuff like being a good employee. And so a lot of times when people don't have something or whether it's financial intelligence or they don't have something else, they go, it was just like that, okay, that's the past. But if we give our children right now, we teach 'em financial intelligence, well, what happens is they're all going to need to use credit cards or Bitcoin or something in the future. And at this point, if we don't teach it to 'em, what happens when they're 16, 17 years old, they get predatory loan officers offering them six, $700,000 of debt for a student in education that some of them may not need and they're not going to get out of that debt until they're in their fifties. And so that is my thing, is that first of all, people have to not be ashamed that they don't have financial intelligence as parents and teachers because it's not your fault. It's never too late to start learning. I told you I almost went bankrupt when I had 20 million in the bank. I didn't sit there and let a lot of the athletes and a lot of winners go, okay, well that just happened. I said, man, I better hurry up and learn this shit right now.

Scott Leune: And when I think about all the things you have going on and you're helping all of these people inside and outside of business, I would imagine, I'm trying to picture your entourage of leaders or helpers or people that are bringing you value. When you think of the people that you work with, who are some of the most valuable people today, what roles, what are they doing in your circle of trying to manage your brand, trying to manage your investments, trying to manage your schedule and everything you've got going on, who are those people you look at and are very thankful because they're really keeping this driving forward in a way that makes sense for your life?

Daymond John: Well, it's always going to be our significant others. So a lot of times, especially women say, well, I'm only a stay at home mom. My wife makes sure that everything is good with me and my family and that my head can be clear when I'm on that road and I'm giving myself and people are rushing up to me and she's giving a lot of the time that a normal couple would have to other people who just want to talk to me on the streets, which is fine because I understand why those cameras are on me, and I understand that if I didn't want the type of attention I have, well then I need to sit my ass down off of that stage. So it's always going to be the wife, first of all to me or your significant other, and my children who understand that they have to share daddy with the world.

Other than that, when I run my company, it's my president of my company who oversees how the brand, the Daymond John brand is being touched and perceived. Are people thinking it's a brand where they can just take and utilize it and slap my face on everything and sell people whatever they want? Well, that's not the brand that I am. Then I have my speaking brand who says, we'll make sure my communication is on key and on point and I'm talking to the right people. I can end up communication only thing that separates us from the animals. And give you example, if we vetted obviously what you do and you do great things and your heart's in the right place, but there are a lot of people that could probably put me on a podcast or a stage and I hopefully have a very influential voice, and those people could end up spending 20, 30, 50, a hundred thousand dollars with the person who's going to take their money and run with it or do bad things with it. So they have to monitor again the people around me. And then you have obviously my public persona on networks and my investing in CEOs. I have a different segment of people there who help those type of people. So I believe everybody has no matter what, whether you have seven or 70,000 working for you, you have seven people that you report to and they report to you and they execute everything and protect you against everything.

Scott Leune: What about you? What are some expectations that people have of you now you have this brand, people just assume things sometimes. What are some of these expectations they have of you that are kind of difficult or stressful for you to deal with? You're either with your colleagues or your friends or you're out in public. It just seems like, I would imagine there's this pressure that's put on you as you rise up. What is that like for you?

Daymond John: Again, I try to tell the same thing in simplistic form. The pressure that I have on me is no different than the pressure of a mother, a father, a dentist, or anybody else. It's just at a higher level. People think I walk on water, I got to listen to everybody else's problems. I can't tell anybody else my problems. I got to show up every day with a smile. So you got to show up with the kids every day with a smile. You can't say, Hey, my mother, you can't say, listen, we are only one month away from being homeless. You can't tell that to your child. Now go up and go to school and have a good day. So it's the same exact pressure that I have that everybody else has. You are perfect and everybody else's problem is your problem and your problem's your problem. It's just more, it is magnified on a larger level, but I look at it and I don't worry about that. I look at it as how can, here's what I signed up for and here's what I'm willing to do. Everybody else's problem is not my problem. These people problem are my problem.

Scott Leune: So what about your happiness? What are things you do for yourself? How do you purposefully insert happiness into what can be a roller coaster ride in being an entrepreneur as we try to just scale our brand or our companies or impact? How do we make sure, how do you make sure that there's Daymond's moments where you can find happiness, you can kind of get re-centered? What do you focus on there?

Daymond John: That's another way of asking the question that we all ask ourselves. How do you find work-life balance? And so because happiness is going to be your life, and I learned a long time ago that you got to kind of slowly steal them away every single day. You got to set goals every single morning. You read at night and you read in the morning, same exact, and you have to make yourself a priority. However, this idea, I'll get to the gym, I'll get to vacation, I'll get that two week time away, doesn't necessarily happen. So today I managed to put in some form of a work, right? Because working with you, but I also got an education. You're a brilliant man and I'm learning. So I got to check that off the box early in the morning. Now I need to go out and do my little running around what I want to do for the first two hours of the day, and then I got to listen to my wife and my daughter because now I'm, of course I got to be their concierge service.

And then later on at night, I'll put more into my education and my health. But I have to be very intentional about carving those times out, not I'll get to it. Because if you don't carve it out on purpose, what happens is you pick this up and everybody else takes your mind, your thoughts because, and they take your emotion because you look on here as soon as you look on here, well, everybody that you know or everybody that I see on here is skinnier. They're richer than me and they're all in Greece for Christ's sakes. I don't know when these people work, Robert Herbeck. And then on my email, just everybody else's problems. So if you don't do all of those things, you got social media depression, and then the emails is everybody else's problem. So it's all about carving out little times and then carving out big times and doing those before you get to the work. And so some of those little times may be, I'm just going to go out, I'm only going to walk on the treadmill for half an hour, listen to my favorite album. But if you don't say you're going to do that at six in the morning or two 15 in the afternoon, you'll never get to it.

Scott Leune: Well, Daymond, I cannot thank you enough. I want to be very respectful of your time. We're just about out of time in your schedule. Is there any last thing you'd like to say to our audience of dentists and physicians? And I know we haven't talked about dentistry or medicine much, but I really wanted to pick your brain on these life principles. Is there any last thing you'd like to say before we wrap this up?

Daymond John: I think it's all about branding and marketing. And a lot of times I try to tell people who are in great professions like this, why are you working so hard to keep the joy and the beauty of what you're bringing to people a secret? And I think that where longevity is the hottest topic in the entire world, I guess after COVID, obviously a lot of people got really aware about what they're doing. I think I'd rather talk to my dentist who has me in the chair for an hour, two hours, three hours. I like to probably consult with them more about my health. You've already got a person who trusts you, and I think that sometimes I'd see some dentists do stuff like consulting on health and they take another half an hour and they sit there and go through all the technology and the medicines they're seeing out in the world.

The first person that talks to me about how plaque goes into the system and create other issues and then told me about going get a CAC score was my dentist. It wasn't anybody else. And I think that when dentists understand that they already have a trusted customer in that chair or talking to them that they can give them overextended information about other technology out there, I think that they become more trusted and people say, how else can I support you? So it's those little things that I think that a lot of people just don't consider when they're in a certain profession, and I just want to say thank you to everybody.

Scott Leune: Well, that's amazing dentistry. A lot of people don't know this. Dentistry is actually bigger as an industry than the NBA and the NFL combined, and there's a lot of jobs. There's a lot of people being helped, and dentistry is a tough kind of market to be an entrepreneur in sometimes because it's like you own the restaurant, but you're also the chef and you giving time to us and allowing me to pick your brain with these kinds of questions is a gift to us. Daymond, I want to thank you for that. Anyone listening to this, please go to daymond john.com, learn about his CEO day, learn about his children's book, his other books he's written, his speaking engagements. Of course, he's one of the business celebrities, but there's definite ways where you can be personally impacted by Daymond and his group. So please go to his website and read about that. Daymond, thank you so much for this time. It really was an honor and I hope this was enjoyable for you. I really appreciate everything you've done for us.

Daymond John: I appreciate it, brother. Thank you.

Scott Leune: What a cool moment that we got as dentistry to hear from someone like Daymond John, and as I kind of think through his answers to my questions and connect him with dentistry, here's some things that stand out to me. He spoke a lot about branding and branding yourself, branding ourselves and how that's important in today's age of social media, and he spoke about his personal brand, about protecting that, about making sure that everything that his name is attached to really does represent what he wants to be known for. He talked about really good people at their professions not having the branding they need, and therefore they're kind of hidden from society, they're hidden from success. So I think what that means to me is we as dentists need to have a personal brand, not just a practice brand, but what is the persona of our practice or what is the brand of ourselves individually?

Everything we do online and inside of our companies should align with that brand. From the moment someone walks in, what do things look like? What do they smell? How do we act? What are the steps we take in our exam process? Is all of that aligned with our brand? In other words, have we been intentional? Have we set up the right imaging, the right, the right technology? Are we spreading that brand throughout social media, throughout our marketing, throughout our messaging? Another thing you talked about was kind of this idea of having discipline with our schedule to be thoughtful about inserting the important parts of our life. He spoke about how important his family is, his wife, and he's got a young daughter, and how important it is to schedule things he needs reading in the morning, reading in the evening, he talked about not letting the phone and other peoples steal our attention and steal our time.

What that means to me is as I think about dentistry is so often our practices are stealing our life away. We haven't been intentional to say, oh, we're going to stop practicing at this time so we can be available to our family. We're not going to start practicing until later because we are going to give to ourselves, give to our health, give to our passions. We're going to take time off to do important things. I think about my life. I have two date nights a week with my wife, and that's one little example, one little habit of me scheduling, being intentional about giving to myself. I heard him in many of his comments, kind of allude to the fact that he's very intentional about how he's using his time. Are you in dentistry? Finding yourself where the dental side of your life is stealing away from the passion or the personal side of your life?

If so, we need to be more intentional maybe about that. Another thing he talked about is that his people around him are in a way protecting him and protecting his time. He talked about up to seven people reporting to him. He spoke about the president of his company and people overseeing his branding in his life. Those are his seven people, his kind of core team that is helping him, supporting him, and protecting him, who is helping and supporting us and protecting our time in dentistry. I think a lot of us don't have anyone doing that, and so maybe finding a way to have someone protect our time could be a valuable thing. I know that in my world, I've got team members that protect my time. They do some of the more time intensive things or some of the monotonous things or they deal with the outside people so that what filters to me is really important and is aligned.

They filter out a lot of the other stuff. Also, having a personal assistant do things for me or for my wife that are not super impactful or important, protects our time. Could you of to protect your time? Another thing you talked about is using other people's minds and other people's money and being on this constant path of learning and education. When I see people come to our events and the kind of aha moments they get, how they're suddenly ready to do that next big thing in dentistry or start their practice or grow their organization or do things differently inside of their practice, these learning events, using other people's minds to see new things are insanely important. So often the world keeps changing and new ways come through, and if we don't keep learning, we can find ourselves 10 years later stuck doing things in an old way and we see these younger docs kind of elevating suddenly above us and we're wondering like, what's going on over there?

And we go learn that. We say to each other, oh my God, I wish I had done this 10 years ago. Are there things you would wish you had known 10 years ago if you were to say something to your older or your younger self, your self 10 years ago? If you could have given them great advice, would it helped you today? If so, you need to get great advice today so it could help you today and tomorrow. To me, that is just another example that I constantly hear. The more successful people get, the more they tend to focus on learning. Another thing you talked about is this idea that we need to act now. We need to act, we need to move forward. We talked about how sometimes people fail to think when they act or they fail to act when they think, and those are bad mistakes, and he said that we need to act now sometimes not even knowing where we're going to go or the result, but we need to act now.

So often we in dentistry get stuck. We're stuck in mediocrity. Our salary is good enough. Our practice that we work in is good enough, our lifestyle, it's kind of good enough, but it's not significant. It's not creating passion or excitement for us, and we know we could try new things and do bigger things, but we just think and think and think, and we procrastinate and we just don't act. So many successful people make big moves and changes. They have this kind of uncomfortable confidence to do something new even though they're unsure. They know though they want something bigger or better and they act. We sometimes need to just act. We need to just do what we know we need to do. If were looking at your life, if your life was a movie and you are actually a viewer of the movie, you know how in the movies, you watch movies and you warn people like, no, don't go into that room.

Don't do that. They're about to make a mistake or they need to just propose to her. They need to do something. If you are watching your own movie, would you be saying that to the movie right now? Would you be telling your movie self? Just start that practice. Just leave that associateship. Just fire that person that's damaging your life. If you would say that, but you haven't done those things, maybe now is the time to act. Another thing he talked about was financial literacy and how we weren't raised with financial literacy. We weren't taught this in school, and he's passionate about it. Actually, we didn't talk about it on the interview, but he wrote a book for children on financial literacy. He's been quoted multiple times and told stories about how important it is to understand money, the science of money, the use of money, and so where are you right now with that?

Have you learned about real estate, about investing, about things like crypto, about buying other companies or managing other companies or licensing or franchising? Have you learned about the discipline it takes to automatically take a third of your money and invest it a third of your money, live off of it a third of your money and improve your lifestyle with that? Have you set up these automated systems? Have you learned what you need to learn on the financial side? If not, maybe use this moment, this podcast episode as a reminder that you need to go sign up for something and learn more on the financial side that's going to impact you for the rest of your life. Why not do it now? Another thing he alluded to when I asked him, he's of course he's, he's not heavily involved in the dental profession or the dental industry, but he did kind of talk a little bit about that and he mentioned things like specializing in bigger procedures, having a better brand with that and improving the patient experience, taking maybe a holistic approach to the patient's experience or maybe a more full body approach to the exam process, for example.

All of those can make a dentist deliver more value and therefore market more value be branded as that more thorough and more holistic, more valuable dentist.

If you look at his story, he's done incredibly well branding certain people or certain companies and helping grow through the brand. Many people don't know, but he was involved initially, for example, with the Kardashians and what an amazing branding story that has been not just the branding of the Kardashians, but then them turning other companies and other brands into highly successful companies. I think that there's a lot of lessons that we can learn if we look outside of dentistry to see how people are branded, the process of branding. Many times you start that process with what do you want to be known for and are you communicating that? Are you marketing that properly? Because if we can be thoughtful and intentional about what we want to be known for and market that well, we will attract the people that want that. If we will be known as one of the top cosmetic dentists in our area, and let's say we also do facial aesthetics with that, and we kind of brand or trademark different combinations of procedures, we'll do a dental procedure with a facial aesthetics procedure, and we market that well and we have a facility that is an extension of that brand and we create videos that are extensions of that.

We do that well. We will attract the people that want that, and we become better at doing it, and we attract more people that want that, and suddenly there becomes a tipping point where we for free just get those patients because we've earned now that brand in our community. I think there's a lot we can learn about that in dentistry. Otherwise, we might get caught in the hamster wheel of just doing regular stuff or regular PPO fees, having regular careers that unfortunately the regular side of dentistry can burn us out and it's not super profitable. It's hard to find a lot of passion in that, so maybe someone listening to this is ready to say, you know what? I do want to a refresh of my practice. I do want to refresh of my brand. I do want to actually focus on a different kind of dentistry.

I do want to market that. Maybe this is the universe telling you, well, why don't you go ahead and start? Why don't you go ahead and learn and do so kind of summing up. He was so modest in the amazing successes he's had. He's run hundreds of awards. He's built $6 billion brand and helps so many people, but he's so kind of down to earth and honest and true in how he speaks, and what stood out to me was he's thoughtful about his time and his purpose. He relies on close people to help and protect him. He helps other people with a superpower of branding and marketing, and he continues to learn and he doesn't sit still. He moves forward. Even if it doesn't work, he keeps moving forward. I would love in dentistry if we move forward, if we focused on branding and marketing, if we had people to protect us, if we were intentional about our time.

There's a lot of lessons there that I think would really help us in dentistry and on personal side. Do any of those lessons speak to you? I know that they speak to me. I hope they speak to you, and I hope that this episode has been interesting. I hope it's triggering someone to do something great and new or at least causing us to step back, look at our career and look at our life and say, you know what? Maybe now's the time to make a good change, to make a good shift, a good pivot, or shoot, maybe I need to kind of turn everything inside out. This is just not working and I need to start fresh. I hope that that is doing that for someone. I want to thank you for listening again to the Dental CEO podcast. My name is Scott Luna. Look for future episodes. We're doing some pretty exciting interviews like this, so please subscribe if you haven't already. I promise you that I will do everything I can to make these episodes entertaining or make them informative that you'll be glad and happy that you spent the short amount of time in your day listening to that next episode. Thank you again.