Latest / Success Story with Scott Clary / Lessons - How a Celebrity Dentist Built a Multi-Million Dollar Brand | Dr. Jon Marashi - Celebrity Dentist & Entrepreneur

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Lessons - How a Celebrity Dentist Built a Multi-Million Dollar Brand | Dr. Jon Marashi - Celebrity Dentist & Entrepreneur · Success Story with Scott Clary

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  In this lessons episode, learn how to choose the right cosmetic dentists by asking the right
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  questions and demanding real, before and after examples. Learn why subtle, well-designed veneers
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  should preserve your natural teeth, not shave them down to stubs. Learn how to avoid the risks of
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  medical tourism and the importance of trusting a qualified professional over shortcuts that can
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  lead to irreversible damage.
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  When you think about the work that you do, I'm sure you see a lot of bad work because I see a
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  lot of veneers that blind me, but if somebody is just looking for your advice on how to craft
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  the perfect smile per se, what is your advice to them? What should they be thinking about if they
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  want to get some work done?
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  You know, everyone, when it comes to aesthetics, right, is subjective in nature. And the niche that
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  I've carved out in cosmetic dentistry has been the quiet luxury of smiles, you know, doing things
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  that are tasteful and look appropriate and not flashy. And some people want that other luck,
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  and no judgment, you know, they want those big white choppers, but there's a lot of folks that
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  unfortunately get an unintended result.
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  I think that's what I'm trying to avoid for people. So, you know, my advice is, look,
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  if you're out and you're looking to have cosmetic dentistry done, and I can't take care of
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  everyone, I just want to me, there's a lot of fantastic dentists everywhere.
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  You know, some of the questions you should be thinking about are, you know, you're going to
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  interview your dentist, you know, ask them, what do they think? What's their aesthetic? What's their
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  opinion on it? But more importantly, ask them to show you before and after samples of their work,
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  because there's actually smile libraries you can purchase of before and after. So that's not
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  going to work. Yeah, it just shows examples of what cosmetic dentistry can be. So you know, say,
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  show me examples of your work, where the starting point is similar to my condition,
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  and the end point is something similar that you think would look good for me.
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  And if someone has done enough of this, they'll have an extensive library to show you like,
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  hey, look, here's what I did for this person. Here's where they started. You can see the similarities
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  and here's where I was able to get them. And if you see enough of that, you're going to have a good
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  sense of this person's design and abilities and aesthetic and determine if it's right for you.
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  If you keep seeing cases where you're like, I don't like that one. I don't like that one. I don't
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  like that one. And their only answer is, well, we'll make yours different. You know, you might
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  be rolling the dice a little bit. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You know, just by, or if you have a friend that,
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  you know, you like their treatment that they receive, then, you know, that might be a good starting
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  point, you know, better than picking a name out of a hat. I see these examples of veneers where
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  they shave the tooth down to nothing. It's not supposed to happen. Well, can you explain
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  what's happening in those cases versus what it should be? Okay. So let's start with what a veneer
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  should be. A veneer once again, by definition, is just a covering. That's it. And it goes on the
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  front of the tooth. Now, if you think about it, if your tooth is already in the correct position,
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  and you put a covering on it, it's thicker than what it originally was. Right. With me.
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  And you can only increase the thickness so much before it doesn't look right. Yeah. So if your
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  tooth was smaller or normal size, and you bump the thickness just to smidge chances are you won't
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  notice, which means when the veneer goes on, you don't need to do any drilling because it's additive
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  in nature. Yeah. Okay. Or if the tooth has kind of a weird shape and you can't get the thing to
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  fit on it, maybe you got to modify the surface a little bit so the thing can lock on properly,
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  because there's a geometric shape that's required. But generally speaking, if that's required,
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  the amount of modification, and when I say modification, this is what the layperson would
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  would call like shaving or tooth grinding, is a half millimeter or less. You realize how tiny a
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  half millimeter is. It's almost imperceptible. So that's how it's supposed to be done.
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  How it ends up being done. A lot of the time is by dentists that haven't had appropriate training
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  because there's not a lot of really great training out there. And it's very quick and easy to whack
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  a tooth down because they say, oh, just let the lab guy worry about it. And that's more of like a
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  crown preparation, not a veneer preparation. A crown is where the tooth gets whacked down to like 50%
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  of the size that they put a covering on it. But the reason why that's being done is because there
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  were some major structural durability issue of the tooth that they had to basically grind away the
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  broken down parts to cover the thing and make it durable again. But if your front tooth or your
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  front teeth didn't need that. Why on earth would you want them whacked down to nothing? And then
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  there might be working with the dental laboratory where the technician is not as well trained. They
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  don't even know what the client looks like. And they just and on the model, the teeth might look really
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  good. But it's like seeing a dress in a window. And then the woman tries on and said, no, this doesn't
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  doesn't fit me very well. So it's rampant in our profession to a fault. And truth be told, I rarely
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  meet a dentist that purposely is trying to do a crummy job. But if you don't have the training,
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  then, you know, you're you don't even know that you're not doing a good job, right? You just
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  think like, oh, this is okay. So half of what I do these days is revision dentistry where someone
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  went somewhere else and they got that unintended result. Now I'm the fix it guy. You can't if your
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  teeth are shaved down, you can't fit right? Well, you can't make the tooth grow back. You're right.
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  That's a one way street. But what I can do is get rid of the crazy horse teeth, remove them.
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  They actually have a laser and the energy from the laser goes through the porcelain and it debons it.
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  It falls right off before they had to drill it off. And in drilling off the porcelain, they drill
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  off more of the tooth unintentionally. And then the the the shave down tooth got even smaller like
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  how crazy is that? So I have a laser that can remove these things. And then I can bond a new set of
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  veneers on that are smaller, thinner, yet stronger. So at least the tooth looks normal again.
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  I understand. So what's happening? What's happening when people get that little like shave down
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  and nub thing going on? Compared to what you do, if you put on veneers, you could take off the
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  veneers and they could still have fully functional teeth. If you have done a no prep design, meaning no
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  surface alteration. You just bonded the veneers on it 100% correct. The veneer can be removed.
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  The surface can be repolished and it's like going back to square one. Do you see a lot of this
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  with medical tourism? People trying to get cheaper veneers in all these different countries?
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  Oh, yeah, I had this guy, this guy named Jeff. He went to Columbia. And the funny thing is,
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  Jeff is really rich already. He just got bad advice and he flew down there and the crazy thing is
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  they knock him out. They have an anesthesiologist while they're doing the procedure.
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  And something went horribly wrong and he woke up in the hospital with no teeth. They shaved him
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  all down and they couldn't finish the procedure. And he's like, well, I can't leave the country
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  without teeth. So he recovered for a couple days and went back and they put him under again
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  to finish the thing. I mean, he could have died. And he got back up to the states and a guy
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  lives down in South Orange County and half the teeth broke because they weren't engineered properly
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  and they weren't bonded properly and his teeth were shaved down as a mess. And long story short,
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  he got referred to me and he's telling me the story. And I was just like, like as shocked as you
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  are. I mean, I thought I had heard it all. I was like, oh my god. So, you know, it was a full
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  revision case. I mean, I had to remove all the porcelains and rebuild the bite and get them
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  the aesthetics and everything is fine now. But you know, there's a lot of folks who who travel
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  because once again, the stuff is expensive. And that's not to say that if you go abroad somewhere
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  that just because you practiced dentistry in a foreign country that you're a lousy provider,
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  of course. I think what it is, it's a cautionary tale that sometimes you get what you pay for.
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  I think so too. I think that the forget teeth, just medical tourism in general is very
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  scary to me. I mean, you see all these horror stories about all these injections and all these
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  plastic surgeries go horribly wrong. And also, I mean, the anesthesia, the anesthetic part of it,
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  there was just a case anesthetic is not good to go under again and again and again and again.
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  Either I think that this is not your feel, but somebody just died from having an anesthetic for
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  full back tattoo. Yeah, because now they're doing full anesthetic general anesthetic for some longer
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  tattoos. Okay. So I mean, if you, if you, if you don't have to go, do you have to go under anesthetic
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  for veneers? No. No. Oh, so this is like very strange that. Yeah. No, it's elective in nature. I
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  mean, like, look, you don't have to go under for colonoscopy, but a lot of people prefer to say,
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  yeah, yeah. And obviously, if you're, if you're, the point is if you're doing something where you're
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  going under, maybe do it in the US at least where you're a little bit safe. I have a board certified
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  anesthesiologist doing it. Yes, not just a technician. Yeah. Because the standards of care are
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  different in different countries. And that's what you have to be careful of. That's it. It's not that
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  there's not good doctors all over the world because there is, but you just have to make sure that
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  you know what you're getting yourself into. Have you ever had to turn a patient away for a request
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  that they had? Oh, all the time. Yeah. Why is that? You know, what happens is you get to a certain
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  level of proficiency in your career and then word gets out. And so you get a lot of people that want
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  to come and see you, which is exactly what every business person wants. But sometimes as a result
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  of it, it attracts the crazies. And in my world, you know, the crazies are the ones who come in
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  and they bring a folder with them and it's about this thick. And it's got their records from
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  five, 10, 15 different dental offices. And they've been to multiple dentists and how their
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  procedures done over and over again. And as you start to listen to the story, you realize that
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  it actually wasn't the dentist. It's it was the patient's expectations. And there, there are
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  some folks that no matter how good you are at doing something, you're not going to be able to
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  deliver because their expectations simply just aren't possible. They're unreasonable expectations.
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  Now, earlier in my career, I didn't have the people management skills or even the experience
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  to sniff that out. And you know, you're hungry to do the work and you do it. And then you just
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  end up getting your ass handed to you and it sucks. But now that I have more gray hair on my head,
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  you know, I learned to read the signs and I've had to tell people, you know, you sit and you listen
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  and because they've paid you for a consultation. And they are there for you to tell them the truth.
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  And so and that's what I have to do. And sometimes it's very difficult. And I tell them I say,
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  listen, I hear what you're saying. And after listening to you, what I believe to be true is that
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  I can't help you because I'm not going to be able to give you the outcome that you're looking for.
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  And what I don't want to be is the next name on the on the graveyard list that you're carrying with
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  you of someone who couldn't deliver. It's not fair to you to spend that time. It's not fair to
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  you to spend that money. If I already know right away, I'm not going to be able to do that. And
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  most of the time when I'm saying that it's because what they're asking for are like crazy, big,
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  thick white teeth. And that's just not my thing. I don't do that. But it's not like, I don't know
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  what else what if the people get like any like jewelry or stuff in their teeth or you know,
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  I get those requests once in a blue moon. There's actually some dentists that have built
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  very successful practices. I got a buddy of mine who does like the the grills and the diamond
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  stuff and the teeth and the charge of fortune for it. So, you know, people don't really come to
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  me for that sort of thing. It's more for the veneer thing. And, you know, for, for, you know,
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  having a beautiful white smile. But there are versions of it, you know, the chick lady teeth and
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  the horse teeth that that's just not my thing. And some people want that. And they want it on
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  steroids. Yeah. And so, you know, that's where I find myself saying, hey, listen, you know, I don't
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  provide that service. So, and it's funny. It's like the second you tell someone, no, they want you
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  10 times more. And they think that they think it's and they'll beg and bleed. And it's very,
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  you know, it's very kind of them. They believe in you that much. They say, and they'll offer you
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  any amount of money. I don't care where to cost. And you're like, look, it's not about the money.
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  You know, it's just that I can't do this. Thanks for tuning in. If you found this valuable,
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  don't forget to hit that subscribe button so you never miss an episode. And if you want to dive
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  deeper into this conversation, check out the links in the description to watch the full episode.
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  See you in the next one.