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Howard:
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It is a huge honor for me today to be podcast interviewing John U. Bond a dentist in Dallas Texas and his artist Juan Molano. Did I say that right?
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Juan:
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It's Molano.
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Howard:
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Molano?
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Juan:
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Yeah, that was close.
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Howard:
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You're from Bogota, Colombia right?
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Juan:
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Yes I was born in Bogota.
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Howard:
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Is Juan Spanish for John?
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Juan:
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Yes.
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Howard:
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It is, okay. I think guys what you're doing is everything. They say the number one goal of any species to reproduce and have offspring and everybody I've ever met has a soft spot for little kids, and there's one thing little kids don't want to do is go to the dentist and get a shot, and get a cavity and a filling. You guys take that to heart more than anybody I know with the MolarMan. Let me read your bio, so Dr. John U. Bond, that sounds like a bonding agent, U. Bond, do you use that?
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John:
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Yes, I definitely use the bonding analogy many times in my career.
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Howard:
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I think Mighty MolarMan should come out with his own bonding agent. Dr. John U. Bond brings animation entertainment and fun to the dental experience with a real passion and special interest in helping the millions of children who suffer from dental phobias, and those with special needs overcome their fear and anxiety to get the dental care they need, oftentimes eliminating the need for sedation. Also Dr. John U. Bond believes that many teens and adults do not take their dental seriously, despite the overwhelming evidence that it affects our overall health and wellness. He created Mighty MolarMan & Friends to address both these concerns as well as providing solution for all the frustrated parents who battle with their kids to brush.
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Mighty MolarMan & Friends makes education, dental appointments and dental hygiene fun, and I'm a big fan of yours, mightymolarman.com for a long time. I love everything you're doing, and the man, the graphic artist behind all these, on our right is Juan Molano. Juan Molano, the artist responsible for helping to bring the animated Mighty MolarMan & Friends characters to life in the picture books and cartoons of Molar Towne. Juan knew he was an artist when he picked up his first pencil H4, so did his uncle a professional illustrator at a magazine in Bogota Colombia, Juan's homeland. He showed Juan the ropes and the young artist was on his way, on his way to Alaska specifically where he continued to explore drawing and painting and also developed the lifelong love of snowboarding.
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More moves and mentors were in store for Juan, his parents, Christina and Gabriel who have been very influential in his life, moved the family to the state of the Washington. On the way discovered weight boarding as well as story boarding and adopted animation as his chosen outlet for artistic expression. Taught by animation pros with backgrounds and includes such renown animation studios as DreamWorks, and Disney among others, Juan sharpened his animation skills with many kinds of cartoons and even studied acting in the human form to breathe life into his characters on the screen.
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After years of working on various animation projects, he found the ideal fit with Mighty MolarMan & Friends, jumping at a chance to animate and illustrate molar in the new children's book published by Molar Towne productions. When not creating multimedia that takes the bite out of dental visits, or dabbling with his [inaudible 00:03:25], Juan has fun with his family and friends. You got to tell me, how did this all come about? How did MolarMan, what was the idea behind it?
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John:
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Well, to start off with, my father was an artist and in his younger years he was a cartoonist, and he was fascinated with all the early Disney characters and the Marvel characters; Superman, Spiderman all of those. He collected comic books then he illustrated his own comics as a youngster and as a young adult. He shared all this with me in my youth, and so it's always kind of been in my blood. When I had children, my two boys, when they started coming into the dentist, it made me very sensitive to their experiences in the dental office, and I started thinking of ways to make it fun for them.
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The other thing that was going on at the time, was they were starting to really get this resistance to brushing their teeth about the time they were five, six, seven years old. They're two years apart, and so kind of all the history of with my father, kind of came forth and I got the idea of [inaudible 00:04:53] MolarMan and so we created the first mascot, the Superhero of Smiles and it really worked.
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Howard:
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Is this the first mascot?
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John:
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Yes it is.
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Howard:
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Then there's pictures of you floating around in a cap too.
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Juan:
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Which one, the front page convention, had my MolarMan out there.
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Howard:
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Did it help with your boys?
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John:
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Absolutely, they loved coming in to the dentist and just the whole idea, the whole superhero thing was so powerful and it made all the difference in the world.
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Howard:
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How did you meet Juan?
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Juan:
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I replied to a posting for animation at a dentist office. I was ...
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Howard:
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On what, Craigslist or on what, a newspaper Ad, Craigslist or ...?
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Juan:
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Someone had mentioned it to me that they were looking for an animator at a dentist office. When I went, I called up, I followed up and I was like, "Okay, let me see what they have." I was doing freelance at the time so any animation work that I did, [inaudible 00:06:05] was keeping an eye out for that. When I met Dr. Bond, went into the office, saw the characters that he had originally, originally it was the five characters; Bacteria Boy, Hallie Tosis, Ginger Vitis, the ones in the book that are on the back cover. Those are the original characters and what they had was the mascots, those guys right there. When they had the mascots for them, he spoke about the characters so passionately and what he wanted to do with the kids and I just saw an opportunity to really bring something different they hadn't seen in animation and we kind of took it from there.
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John:
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We definitely saw the void in the dental health industry. All they really have is a tooth fairy, right? All these years, and the tooth fairy is really the symbol that we had, and that's a lot for the tooth fairy to bear, tooth fairy needs a little help.
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Howard:
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Describe the characters, and what were your thoughts, you have Bacteria Boy, Hallie Tosis, I love it, Mighty MolarMan, Ginger Vitis and Canine. That is so cute, they're so adorable.
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John:
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When you go on the website, mightymolarman.com you can click on each character and their biography will pop up, and you'll see the storyline. Every character's storyline was written to fit into a cartoon series that we have in planning right now. Mighty MolarMan a trans cartoon series.
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Howard:
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The cartoon series is going to be like a YouTube video or just something the dentist will play in the office or both or ...?
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Juan:
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There's two different, I guess facets here. We want the cartoons for dentists to be able to play in all the dental practices so that's a distraction that they're playing for the children, so the kids can get into what Mighty MolarMan is and kind of gets them really excited and breaks that fear barrier. They're like, "Oh this is what Mighty MolarMan lives and this is what he does," so it's not as scary as it normally is. Then also the bigger scope is getting the show on, one of the networks ultimately is the goal to have a series with the characters. There is so much that they can teach other than dental, just in health, in general. There's a lot of fun stuff that we can do with the characters. Bacteria Boy as villain, and roughly what it looks like, I'm going to do a shared screen real quick just to show you something, while we talk about it.
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Howard:
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I see Mighty MolarMan, oh no that was me.
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Juan:
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Mightymolarman.com. Right now when you go to the website, it gives you two options, to go to take the pledge, which is the Mighty MolarMan pledge, and then it could go to mightymolarman.com which shows you all the characters and everything else that we [inaudible 00:09:03].
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Howard:
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Let's take the pledge right now, read the pledge.
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Juan:
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All right. We'll take the pledge, the Mighty MolarMan pledge ...
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John:
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There's a couple of different versions of it for different age groups. For the super young, it's just a matter of the child; three, four, five, six years old promising to brush their teeth every day. Typically they just look at the Mighty MolarMan plush toy, that you're usually holding, and they say, "Mighty MolarMan, I promise to brush my teeth every day." As the picture shows, this is actually a two year old, her name is Gingy, and she just loves Mighty MolarMan and as you can see in the picture it's a big inspiration for her to brush her teeth.
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Juan:
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Here on the side we have it so that you can download your certificate so you can use them at home with your practice where you can get the Mighty Molarman certificate which children can sign and it says on there, "I _ promise to brush my teeth two times a day and floss and visit my dentist twice a year." We can really use it to encourage children, you guys can upload photos to right here on the upload your pledge photos. We have coloring pages for the kids, we have a lot of things here on the side, so that's your certificate. Right now, I'm not sure if you've seen them on Twitter, we do showing a lot of videos that kids are taking pledges.
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Howard:
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Tell them what your Twitter handle is, what is it?
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Juan:
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It's @mightymolarman is the Twitter, then on Facebook we have the Mighty MolarMan & Friends Facebook account and we also have the Molar in the mirror, then we just started with ten of our most popular characters, they have their own Twitter and Facebook handles. If you go to mightymolarman.com and you see the characters you'll be able to follow, find all of their direct links to those.
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John:
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There's three different pledge scenarios and wordings for the different age groups. Certainly as the kids get older then we want them to floss too, so that's included in the older children's pledge. Then for the adults, they are simply taking the Mighty MolarMan pledge and then they're challenging a friend, another family to take the pledge too. With our practice here in Dallas, for every patient who takes the pledge, we're giving back $25 to needy children and families in our community. We've set a soft cap at $10,000 for practice, I have three practices here in Dallas, so that's $30,000 that we're pledging to give back and that really spurs, and gives our adults a lot of impetus to go ahead and take that pledge. When they hear that it's a give back then it really inspires them to take the pledge.
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Howard:
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That is so cool. Now, this is the January 21st, Ryan I think, can we, I know we filmed a month in advance but can we launch this February 1st, because February 1st is national dental health month.
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John:
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Yes.
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Howard:
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Do you guys do anything special for that?
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John:
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That's the pledge. The pledge is, for the month of February is when we're using the give back portion of the pledge, so for the whole month of February, and this is going to be an annual event for us and that we hope spreads across the country for any practice to be able to do this. You can do it in your practice, anyone can and it's just an opportunity to offer something new and fresh for your patients and then your community to promote dental health and to promote your practice, so everyone can participate in this.
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The idea of it is just during the month of February, having your patients take the pledge in your practice with the idea that you're going to give back with whatever monetary amount that you want, there's a freedom to do that, but for everyone taking the pledge we give back. Then we get the total amount for February and then we have all of 2016 to do that, give back in the form of free dental care for needy children and families in your community.
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Howard:
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How do you sign up for this, is it a kit, a box, what is the starter kit, how mush is it, is it all on mightymolarman.com. Talk about how you buy this, get it set up in your dental office.
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Juan:
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For the Mighty MolarMan pledge, it's free. You go to mightymolarman.com and you can download the material you need to engage your patients. What we're encouraging, we have a section on the website, when you go to click on the pledge and you scroll down you'll see superhero practices. What we want, we want to get as many practices as possible that are already given back in your community, we want to highlight them. In order to do so, all we need to know is, let us know how you're giving back, if you have a free dental day, whatever it is that you're doing giving back to the community. Take the pledge, send us the video, or the photos that you took the Mighty Molar pledge, and we'll feature you on there, we'll just back link it to there, back to the website or the Facebook account.
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Again, just show everybody like, "Look, there is a lot of practices that are giving back to the community," and you just make it fun for everybody but it's free, right now for the website, just go on there and download what you need. The box set, practices who want to use the box set for this, you can get them right now through Smilemakers. Smilemakers now carries the molar in the mirror box set.
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Howard:
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What is Smilemakers, www.smilemakers.com?
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Juan:
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Smilemakers.com they sell novelty items for dental practices, schools, kind of like the oriental trading company, I think there's a lot of other companies that do similar things.
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Howard:
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Where are they out of?
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John:
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They're a branch of Hathaway Company.
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Howard:
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No kidding.
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John:
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Yes, they're big dog.
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Howard:
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Someone bigger must own them, I doubt one owns just a SmileMakers, is it a bigger parent company that owns this?
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Juan:
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I think it's Oriental Trading Companies, the parent company that owns them. Then the other company that carries the box set is Benco.
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Howard:
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Benco?
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John:
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Yeah. I want to say also, this is just our first year, we just launched mightymolarman.com in January of 2015, and the book is published in February of 2015. We're not even a year old yet, but Benco and and Smilemakers are our current retail partners.
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Howard:
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I love Chuck Cohen the CEO of Benco and his brother Rick and their father Lauren, they're just quality people. Smilemakers' mission is to make smiles happen, the premier provider of products use, inspire motivate reward and celebrate, we believe in the power of a smile, and they're out of Spartanburg South Carolina. Who's the CEO of that, you know?
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Juan:
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I do know the CEO ... Just a moment please.
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Howard:
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It's funny because people say, "Why do you do a podcast every day?" and I say, "It's always the most fun hour of my day." I'm always meeting super cool motivated passionate people in dentistry, and I always learn the most. I think when this show goes down, if it ever pits out and goes down to zero, I'll still do it every day just for me. Talk about the real world of how this has changed your dental practice. Just at the end of the day, John, you have a dental office in Dallas Texas, you're a general dentist, but you also do Ortho? Would you call yourself like, a kid oriented practice, are you're kind of like a pediatric dentist in a way, [crosstalk 00:17:22] specialize?
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John:
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Not at all, I'm a general dentist with a typical family practice. M first ten years ...
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Howard:
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When you say typical family, you mean they're all drunks and fighting in your office?
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John:
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The first ten years was just a typical family practice, then we grew to expand our services when I have an orthodontist team, I have a perodontists team, and we had a pediatric dentist team. They rotate between my three practices. We call it "total patient care." We created the characters in my family practice before we even expanded into the special teams. They fit very well in any general practice that sees children which most general practices do. They're very appealing for any practice with children.
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Howard:
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What are you trying to teach the children, that more that it's a behavioral daily brushing issue or is it a dietary issue, and at what age are the kids grasping some of these concepts? At two I'm sure they're staring off into space, I'm looking at my granddaughter she's four, she can grasp concepts now, but at two ... What age do you think they start sinking in and what are you trying to teach them?
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John:
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Let's talk about what we call the Mighty MolarMan experience. This is something that just evolves, we didn't really plan it, but what happened was, we had a three year old special needs child come into our practice who had previously been to two different pediatric specialists practices and was unsuccessful at getting comfortable at even an examination and routine evaluation. The mom heard about Mighty MolarMan, and she called us and we started a conversation. We had just published our website, and so what we said, "Why don't you sit down with your child at mightymolarman.com and just tour the website, explore the website with your child," and the child's name is Max. She did, she also got the book, and the box set, Molar in the mirror.
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Max had the plush toy, and she said immediately, his fear and anxiety was lifted. She made an appointment, she brought Max in to one of our practices and there was absolutely no issues. He successfully completed his appointment and from there we knew we had something special. Ever since then, this has been the protocol that we have used with all our new families, with young children. We coach the parent to sit down with the child, the same routine at the website, just go through the site, explore all the characters, listen to our music. We have two songs that are available on iTunes; the Mighty MolarMan song and Bacteria Boy song.
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Juan:
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They're also on Spotify. They're on Spotify, and when you go to the website you'll be able to see it like a little karaoke video that we did on there, under the fun and games section that highlights the songs, but the kids really react to that. When they see that, they come in, they're like, "This is not as scary because Mighty Molarman is here," there's posters everywhere of Mighty MolarMan, we have the mascot. It really breaks that fear barrier for the first initial visit and it makes it easier for them moving forward.
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John:
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It's been unbelievable.
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Howard:
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I'm on iTunes right now and you got the Mighty MolarMan, is that three songs Ryan, I see three songs, Bacteria Boy, the Mighty MolarMan, did you buy all three of those?
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John:
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We also a Mighty MolarMan Russian version that's two minutes for the brushing.
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Juan:
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That's why there's two on there, there's the Mighty MolarMan the two minute version and then the Bacteria Boy song, the bad guys.
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Howard:
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Do you think they'll have better health if they brush through the stairway to heaven, seven minute long version, don't you think that would be better for decay? Could you play those songs or would you rather them go to iTunes or I mean.
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Juan:
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You can play them on from the website, they're embedded on there, so they can watch them on there and if they want to show them ...
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Howard:
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Do you want us to embed them on this podcast?
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Juan:
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Yeah, that'd be awesome.
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Howard:
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Can you do that Ryan, Ryan on that would be cool. It really is, maybe I’m biased, I have four boys and they made me a granddaughter but this is such a preventable disease. If little kids had access to fluoridated water, if they had access to information, if they were motivated. Zig Ziglar said people need deodorant and motivation every day, and if you can create environment that motivates them and inspires them, and get them thinking about ... I always tell the kids that, "The only other person besides humans that get cavities is Winnie the Pooh because he eats honey, and you just can't drink sugar all day, and eat candy all day you got to eat what Bambi and Thumper eat because Bambi and Thumper, don't brush then they'll get cavities."
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I love your special needs stuff, my two older sisters went into the nunnery straight out of high school but my sister younger than me Keilyne, who is 13 months younger than me, she's special needs and it's all about just relating to them with trust. If she trusts you, she'll work with you, but if she's scared and doesn't trust you, it could be crazy.
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Juan:
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It's true.
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John:
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The other thing Howard is, with the book, the box set, this is a tool, a specific tool for the millions of parents out there who just battle with their kids to brush. This is a solution, this is a specific tool solution. When kids see, the Mighty MolarMan plush toy, up in that mirror, above the sink, where they brush their teeth, they get inspired to brush. Parents just do not have to battle with them anymore, we've seen it over, and over and over again.
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Howard:
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How do you make money on this, you spent a lot of time and money and effort, where do you even make this. Is this is made in Texas or china or is that a trade secret?
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John:
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Canada and the book published in Canada, and the plush toy in China.
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Howard:
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How do you make your money back on all this effort?
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John:
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We haven't, we're early on, we're a startup company.
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Howard:
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How do you plan to make money?
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John:
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In a lot of different ways. We're building our own boutique entertainment production company. One, we have a couple of illustrators that works under Juan now, that's our goal, is to expand and produce our own content, have a couple more animators working with Juan and produce all of our cartoons, a whole book series, more music, full multimedia line of products featuring the characters.
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Howard:
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They heard it here first on the dentistry uncensored podcast.
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Juan:
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Yes they did.
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Howard:
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You know what? The Dentaltown magazine goes to 125,000 dentists, you ought to write a story about this and put it in Dentaltown magazine. The editor is a dentist in Chandler, he's known by the name Tom Giacobbi, he's been the editor since like year 2000 or something but, it's tom@dentaltown.com or tom@faranmedia.com. This is really cool, what other ways do you think ... I think another way to do it, Dentaltown has 210,000 members, and I'm on your website, you got all these pictures, and things. You should go to the pediatric dentistry or practice management, how to grow your practice, and post pictures and your graphics and your story, it'd be the best free marketing you could get.
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Juan:
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We could do a blog on the Dentaltown also right?
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Howard:
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Yeah, absolutely.
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Juan:
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One other thing that we have available for practice is this, when you get the set, let's say you want to give them away for some kids, patients, we sell them on bulk as well. If anybody wants to buy the box sets and books, they can contact us at mightymolarman.com, and then we have packages specific for that. That's something that we should [crosstalk 00:26:26].
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Howard:
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How much is the box? The box comes with the book and Mighty MolarMan?
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Juan:
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Yeah, they retail for $29.99.
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Howard:
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$29.99
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Juan:
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When you buy them wholesale, you get regular retail wholesale prices on that.
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Howard:
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Say it again, it's $29.99 if you buy one but if you buy ...
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Juan:
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If you buy them wholesale, so you're buying a pallet at a time.
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Howard:
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What's a pallet, how many is that?
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Juan:
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About a hundred units.
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Howard:
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A hundreds units, then what ...
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Juan:
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80% of the MSRP, so we sell $15 a unit.
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Howard:
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What do you say SRP?
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Juan:
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MSRP.
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Howard:
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Manufacturer Suggested Retail Price. What do you do in your office, do you have those boxes out there and sell them retail in the waiting room?
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John:
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They're great promotional items for new families, they really help practices attract new families. We know private practices are suffering out there, we all know what's happened in the last 50 years with corporate dentistry and the increased competition in the marketplace. These characters really give private practice dentists an advantage and something new and fresh to promote their practice, so it can help them to attract more families and retain more families in their practice.
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Howard:
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Sometimes, it seems like when one indicator gets better, like I was really excited, this is 2016, but it looks like the pounds of sugar per year per person in America actually, we're told is now coming back down. Peaked out at about 150 pounds and it's actually trailing downwards, but then you look at the next data and 25% of American towns don't have water fluoridation, and of those towns, at least a third of them used to but voting out. You guys are in very conservative Texas, I can't think of a more conservative state than that and people just, they don't like government, they don't like big government, they don't like government putting something in their water, you know what I mean?
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John:
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Yeah.
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Howard:
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What is the state of water fluoridation in Dallas and [inaudible 00:28:27] where you guys are at?
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Juan:
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I have no idea.
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John:
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No idea Howard. Haven't been close to that topic in a long time, to tell you the truth for the past, we're just so focused on our multimedia [search 00:28:41].
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Howard:
|
That's the one thing I wish Obama would do in his closing days, he's a lame duck president and now if they just made it up, one federal law to fluoridate the water like they do with Vitamin D in milk for rickets, like they do for iodized salt to get rid of goiter. I just can't believe that the water fluoridation is just left up to 19,000 different towns individually, it just doesn't make sense. Talk a little bit about your practice, not only are you artistic and creative and unique, and all those things but, how did you get three practices and you float through in Dallas, and you float through, you said perodontists, orthodontist and pediatric dentist? You're a hell of a businessman, you're an artist and a businessman.
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John:
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As you know, we have to wear many hats, too many hats. The dental part ... I've practiced dentistry for 15 years and I wasn't one of those that was just gifted and naturally great with my hands and so dentistry ... I felt like I was a good dentist. I really tried hard but it wasn't really my passion, my passion was more on the creative side and the artistic side. I gravitated towards that and about two years ago I made a full time commitment to Mighty MolarMan & Friends and this is what I do every day. I have very confident people that pretty much run the practices and I still I'm involved a little bit to ensure quality control and the patient care remains at a high level but my heart is with Mighty MolarMan & Friends, there's no doubt. Juan and I work side-by-side like this every day, so I'm glad I like Juan and he seems to like me because we spend a lot of time together.
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Howard:
|
It's interesting because by, the dentist spend all their time away on the business, like Rick [inaudible 00:31:06], he has 1,500 offices, because he doesn't do fillings and crowns and root canals. Rick [inaudible 00:31:12] because he doesn't do dentistry and I've always told these dentists, one of their biggest problem, they spend all their time learning clinical dentistry at Pankey, and Spear, and Quay's and placing implants and they don't even know their numbers. They don't even know their return on equity, return on assets, they don't know their overheads, their break-even point. Here's the reward for you that these young dentists listening will just pay more attention to the business, after 10 or 15 years, if you just want to sit down around and write comic books, the rest of your life. You have the freedom to do what you want and that's a cool feeling to get up every morning and just do what you want to do, instead of having to do the grind to make all your minimum monthly payments.
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John:
|
True, so true. For me, even more than that, just knowing that we're helping so many children and the special needs community in particular, is a great feeling. Coming to work for that makes it all worthwhile.
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Howard:
|
Is there anything ... You're talking to thousands of dentists, what can we do to help your mission, do you want other affiliations or you're tying network with organizations. What could all of our listeners do to help your mission to help the kids?
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John:
|
If anybody has any connections with the Shark Tank, we'd like to go on that show, we follow ...
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Howard:
|
Really?
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John:
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Oh yeah.
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Howard:
|
Are you serious, where the hell are you in Dallas?
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John:
|
We've reached out ...
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Howard:
|
Is it that filmed in Dallas.
|
|
John:
|
We've reached out to Mark Hughes. It's not filmed there.
|
|
Howard:
|
Where's the filmed?
|
|
John:
|
I think it's in California.
|
|
Howard:
|
I love that show, I love watching it with my boys because the others ...
|
|
John:
|
It's fascinating.
|
|
Howard:
|
It's a fascinating show, how they cut right to the chase.
|
|
John:
|
We need help in distribution and licensing and those are the things that those guys are brilliant at.
|
|
Howard:
|
You want Mr. Wonderful then, you don't want Mark Cuban, you want Mr. Wonderful.
|
|
John:
|
That's right.
|
|
Howard:
|
The beautiful sexy bold man, who just has all the licensing agreements.
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John:
|
Barbara, Daymond, Robert all those guys.
|
|
Howard:
|
Daymond is lecturing at TBSE, "The Madow Brothers" the TBSE in Las Vegas coming up, have you heard of Dave Madow and the TBSE, The Best Seminar Ever. Daymond is lecturing there.
|
|
John:
|
Cool.
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|
Howard:
|
You could walk right up to him, right at that convention. What's your luck with getting hold of Cuban?
|
|
John:
|
Say again.
|
|
Howard:
|
What was your luck with finding Cuban, you live in his town, can you find his personal dentist?
|
|
John:
|
We had a contact, was a very good friend of his, so we passed along our box set to him, right around Christmas time and we haven't heard anything yet, so we're still hopeful he'll come in.
|
|
Howard:
|
You know the one thing, you know that six degrees of separation, the one thing about really successful people is all successful people have a dentist. If you ever made it to the newspaper, you can try [inaudible 00:34:37] dentist, one thing I've noticed, dentist always, one on one, lots of time they'll tell you who their one famous patient is. I've heard so many famous people's dentist say, "Oh yeah, that guy is my patient." Maybe between the thousands of listeners right now, maybe someone knows the dentist to one of those Shark Tank ...
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|
Juan:
|
Even there's the video ...
|
|
Howard:
|
You can post that on Dentaltown, you could just start a thread on Dentaltown set and just list the five people on ... Actually there's like six or seven that rotate in that show.
|
|
Juan:
|
Yeah, there is a couple ...
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|
Howard:
|
You say, "Hey, does anybody know the dentist of any of these people on Shark Tank?" In fact here's a big thread on Dentaltown about shark tank. With 210,00 dentists on Dentaltown, I bet you, one of those seven dentists will see it.
|
|
Juan:
|
Also we want to ask everybody, the big one is, everybody to take the pledge, we're going to be doing a lot of box set giveaways during February. If you take the pledge, submit your photographs on mightymolarman.com, right there where you can upload your pictures. We're going to be picking random people, offices, families and giving away boxes through the month of February. That will be a big help from it, if we can get everybody to do that.
|
|
John:
|
Howard I also wanted to mention our social media efforts because, you know with the box set molar in the mirror was designed for families with children about age two or three to about age ten, that's the target market. Our whole array of characters and we've got a couple of dozen characters, they were designed to appeal to all different age group. My MolarMan & Friends are not just for children, adults are getting a big kick out of the characters, especially some of the newer characters, like Biggie Smiles. He's our hip hop artist and rapper, and the Bicuspid Babes. Can we pull up an image of the Bicuspid Babes. People are just loving them, on Facebook and Twitter.
|
|
Howard:
|
You should read this book through it, can you pull up your book, or whatever you want to do. I love your book, and by the way, you're the one doing all these illustrations?
|
|
Juan:
|
Yes sir.
|
|
Howard:
|
You are one talented man.
|
|
Juan:
|
Thank you, really appreciate it.
|
|
John:
|
Here's all the characters, on the side. Some of the newer ones ...
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|
Howard:
|
Go through them all, they're just adorable.
|
|
John:
|
We know about the Mighty MolarMan, let's start with the next one, Miss Pearly White, she's our dental hygienist. You see Miss Pearly White RDH, and she's got her own Facebook, Twitter. Then we know about Bacteria Boy, he's look villain. His little minion type cohorts are the Zombie Teeth, then we'll get to them in just a minute. Then we have Hallie Tosis, she's one of our original five characters and she's a real stinker. Then Doctor D.K. you'll see a lot more from Doctor D.K. in the near future as we bring him more to life. Then we have the Deciduous Dudes, and then we have the Zombie Teeth. The Zombie Teeth are part of the villains.
|
|
Juan:
|
Basically with the Zombie Teeth the cool thing with Bacteria Boy is that whenever he touches the teeth characters in Molar Towne ...
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|
John:
|
The healthy teeth characters.
|
|
Juan:
|
... yeah, he will turn them into Zombie Teeth, so it's always the Molar Patrollers and Mighty MolarMan and all the good guys trying to bring them back and rescue them. Then we have Bling, she's a very, very old tooth, she's a witch.
|
|
John:
|
She's eccentric.
|
|
Juan:
|
Eccentric, exactly. All of her jewels keep her young and that's kind of what gives her, her magical powers. Then we have Canine, Canine is Mighty MolarMan's sidekick, his best friend.
|
|
John:
|
Also Canine works with Mighty MolarMan to add the kick for pet's oral health. As you know Howard, February is also national pet dental for health month. Canine and Mighty MolarMan team up to add the kick for pets oral health.
|
|
Howard:
|
I did not know that, February is national dental health month for children, and it's also national dental health for pets?
|
|
John:
|
It's called national pet dental health month.
|
|
Howard:
|
I did not know that.
|
|
John:
|
Veterinary offices are really, really starting to get into more and more of pets oral health because it's the same thing as in humans. The oral health of pets are overall health of their pet, for their pets. Then we have Candymn. Candyman is another villain character, you want to talk about.
|
|
Juan:
|
Candyman is really cool because he's made of cotton candy.
|
|
Howard:
|
Which was invented by a dentist?
|
|
Juan:
|
Right, was it really?
|
|
Howard:
|
Yeah, go to Dentaltown, go to dental history, and it absolutely was patented by a dentist, I think it was in Louisville, Kentucky.
|
|
John:
|
I didn't know that.
|
|
Howard:
|
He called it fairy floss, and it is very off, that was the original then he changed it to cotton candy.
|
|
Juan:
|
Sounds like Dr. D. K.
|
|
Howard:
|
That's one of my favorite jokes to kids, I said, "A friend of mine genetically spliced a cotton plant with sugarcane, and now he's growing cotton candy."
|
|
Juan:
|
That's funny.
|
|
Howard:
|
Anyway, sorry to interrupt.
|
|
Juan:
|
Rogue to kind of go over him briefly, his hands a lollipop so when he shakes the kids' hands, their lollipop gets stuck to their hands and new ones regenerate. When all these characters I mean you can start visualizing how everything is going to be in animation, it's going to be really fun for all the kids. Then we have Ginger Vitis, she's the beauty queen ...
|
|
John:
|
Cheerleader type.
|
|
Juan:
|
... from the town, Bracey is really cool, I like her. She is a brainiac and she builds all these robots. One of her ... I'm going to just click on her for a second here. One of her friends is another tooth robot that she builds. We have this whole concept of having some of her robots have actual numbers from the ...
|
|
Howard:
|
Implants?
|
|
Juan:
|
... implants. Then we have Biggie Smiles, who's our music star for the group, Manny Molar is [inaudible 00:41:20]. Grandma Pearl she's the fun party grandma, Princess PreMolar is a real fun one.
|
|
John:
|
Princess PreMolar she really relates to the little girls that are like age four, five, six as I understand it. I don't have girls but as I understand it, girls that age just love the princess. Princess this, princess that, so we created Princess PreMolar for girls in that age group.
|
|
Juan:
|
She's got a little twist to her princessness, is that she's also a ninja, so that's another part, when you see more drawings of her it's pretty fun. Then we have Necrotic, Necrotic is the old western tooth that just got destroyed from chewing and everything so, he's all just black and dead decrepit.
|
|
John:
|
Howard you know like that, he's the story behind oral cancer, so the lesson not to use tobacco and so forth because you'll end up like him, Necrotic.
|
|
Juan:
|
Then we got Gummy Smiles who's Biggie's little brother and he's kind of a little lucky. Molar Mike is a construction worker, then we have our Wisdom Tooth who's sort of the Jedi.
|
|
Howard:
|
I love Wisdom Tooth, that is so cool, I love the way he took the shape of the tooth and funneled it down into his beard, that's really cool.
|
|
Juan:
|
We have some really fun stuff too with him that you guys are going to see here soon.
|
|
John:
|
Our social media is a only a couple of months old with all ten different characters and so you'll see different posting start to evolve and one of them is wise words from the Wisdom Tooth, and if you follow him on Facebook and Twitter you'll see this.
|
|
Juan:
|
The we have Perry O'Dontal, then we have Slim who is a veneer.
|
|
Howard:
|
I'm Periodontal I never thought of Peri, P-E-R-I with the name Perry, P-E-R-R-Y. One of my dentist's friends daughter is named Perry, Perry [Perme 00:43:25], that's so cool.
|
|
John:
|
If you notice his complexion Howard, it's kind of pink and reddish because his inflammation as in periodontal disease and he's kind of clap, clap and swollen as happens with periodontal disease.
|
|
Juan:
|
The we got Uncle Mo who's the party guy, he's on a houseboat, Bicuspid Babes they're the dental sisters.
|
|
John:
|
The Bicuspid Babes have been very, very popular, since we modified them recently to be dental assistants. Their popularity mainly on Facebook and Twitter is really growing fast. We worked really hard on the illustrations to really give that dental assistant look there. One's got their impression gun and also got their sterilization tray and the goggles and so we really like that illustration, Juan did a great job.
|
|
Juan:
|
That also was Trisha one of our artists that was really, bring those characters alive. Then we have the Molar Patrollers and the Molar Rescue. The cool thing about these characters ... I'm going to switch back here.
|
|
Howard:
|
How many was that all together?
|
|
John:
|
How many was that, that was four, eight, twelve, sixteen, twenty, twenty four, twenty six.
|
|
Howard:
|
Lord, that's a lot of talent a lot of work, a lot of effort. You need to post all of those on Dentaltown. What do you think it'll be going to, just you going to national children's dental health month, should it go to pediatric dentistry, should it go under ideas to make your practice grow, under practice management?
|
|
Juan:
|
I think it can go to all of them. We were looking at the Dentaltown only yesterday, to kind of go through, because we're thinking about starting the blog and just putting characters on there, those, and then also doing one for dental health month so that people know about the pledge and what we have going on for dental health month. Then just ideas for pediatric practices, I think that will be a great other topic for that.
|
|
Howard:
|
How many pediatric dentists are there, about 5,000?
|
|
Juan:
|
That's 5 to 6,000.
|
|
Howard:
|
That's a huge market.
|
|
John:
|
We know that pediatric practices are going to really love the characters but most children are seen by general practices. My practice is a general practice, we know the characters will be very popular in general practices as well.
|
|
Howard:
|
Now, will you have this for posters or frames for the dental office or you're used to seeing that or ...?
|
|
Juan:
|
We have it, right now they're on society6, which is the link, we just sort of put in those up, I think last week. When you go to mightymolarman.com, if you go to shop Molar mart, you'll be able to see where we have available and posters we're kind of getting some of those ...
|
|
Howard:
|
Juan, you're from Bogota, and the United States has 50 million people who speak Spanish. My practice, I'm in Phoenix so 25% of my practice speak Spanish as a primary language. Are you thinking about ever doing this in Spanish or do all those fancy names, not really convert?
|
|
Juan:
|
They convert, we're actually in the process of translating the whole website right now and doing the book in Spanish so we're looking at offering an eBook first in Spanish. While we get all those things set up for next year, hopefully towards the end of this year, but ultimately the next [inaudible 00:46:52] we want it build to have an English version and a Spanish version.
|
|
Howard:
|
That's very cool.
|
|
Juan:
|
One thing that we kind of we're throwing around was having good books that do reverse, if look at the book from one side it's English, and if you flip it on over then you can then you can turn it over and it will be in Spanish and it can be two different languages as well. Definitely Spanish is the next thing.
|
|
Howard:
|
There's actually, I think a lot of people don't realize that in the Americas there's 330 million Americans, there's about 200 million Brazilian speaking Portuguese, but it's over half a billion Spanish speaking people in the Americas. It's the number one language in the Americas.
|
|
Juan:
|
It's growing in the United States it's more and more Spanish is the language to know.
|
|
Howard:
|
It was the only D I ever made in my life was in Spanish, high school Spanish the only D.
|
|
John:
|
We have a visitor that's coming in, Howard.
|
|
Howard:
|
Man, how cool is that, MolarMan for president, I will vote for you.
|
|
John:
|
Well, it gives us another choice.
|
|
Howard:
|
Is MolarMan more libertarian or socialist or democrat or republican?
|
|
John:
|
He's right down the middle.
|
|
Howard:
|
He's right down the middle? well played, man that is adorable, you guys have really gone all out. I think that would be actually the first thing I would want to buy for my practice, you know how there's mascots standing out in front of pizza places, haircuts for lass or whatever. I would buy that today, to have somebody out there for ten bucks an hour standing in front of my dental office on the four lane street, drawing attention to my dental practice.
|
|
John:
|
All that's coming, there's a lot of development on the business side.
|
|
Howard:
|
Will you just tell me, I'll buy the first one made commercially available. I'm on a four lane intersection and the pizza place and the haircut place has a guy out there flipping a sign or whatever and I've gone over there and talked to him and he says, it just totally impacts his business. Having molar man standing out there on 48th street and Elliot, that would just be ...
|
|
Juan:
|
We're working with two companies right now to get the mascots, but you're going to be our first phone call since that's ready.
|
|
Howard:
|
I tried standing out in front of my office wearing a Speedo with a cap and I almost went bankrupt.
|
|
John:
|
Howard we're in the legal process right now with our lawyers working on Mighty MolarMan & Friend affiliate licensing agreements, that will be a real simple agreement that practices can license the characters to use in their practice and to promote dental health in their community and in their practice and to give them a real advantage in the marketplace and something new and fresh. Where they can link their practice to mightymolarman.com and claim their practice as home of Mighty MolarMan & Friends.
|
|
Howard:
|
You guys think without gravity, it's amazing. Is there any companies that you think you need to talk to also I mean you've ... John is there any dental companies out there that you would like to have a conversation with?
|
|
John:
|
Sure.
|
|
Juan:
|
Maybe [inaudible 00:50:35] manufacturer's cool branding. We both ever feel better, talk with their friends.
|
|
Howard:
|
Any of them come to mind?
|
|
John:
|
Oral B ...
|
|
Juan:
|
Oral B would be very ...
|
|
John:
|
... Press, Colgate. In the near future our dreams are that you walk into Walgreens or Wal-Mart or the big retailers and you'll see Mighty MolarMan Friends co-branded, dental products, the full line of co-branded dental products.
|
|
Howard:
|
Shoot me an email at howard@dentaltown.com and if there's any company that you want to talk to I would reply to you with their CEO or some friend there and start a conversation.
|
|
John:
|
Thank you.
|
|
Juan:
|
Thank you so much Howard.
|
|
Howard:
|
What do you think about SmartPractice, they do a lot of this, what are your thoughts on SmartPractice?
|
|
John:
|
I think they're a good potential partner.
|
|
Howard:
|
Yeah, do you want to talk to Jim and Naomi Rhode about that?
|
|
John:
|
Yeah.
|
|
Howard:
|
Yeah. I think Jim and Naomi have been creative people, they're the only other creative people like this that comes to my mind.
|
|
John:
|
Howard, what's interesting I've been in business with our practices for a long time now and offered all kinds of different services and products to my practices. Mighty MolarMan & Friends have been the only product or service that I've ever offered, that has had a 100% satisfaction and appeal. We haven't met one person yet, at all the conventions we've been to the past year and all the engagement on social media, that didn't just absolutely love these characters. 100%, and so that really inspires us.
|
|
Howard:
|
You know it would be a great marketing arm for you, a lot of the companies like 3M, Ultra Dental, all of these big companies, they look on Dentaltown, they say, who are the people like 5,000 posts and Ultradent will fly a 100 of them down to South Jordan Utah, just to pick their brains. They want to get in front of the people that do all the posting. You guys should go to the townie meeting, go to towniemeeting.com, we have an annual meeting in Las Vegas and every year thousands of townies show up and they're all the hardcore posters. You guys are good guys and if you went to impress in the flesh and shaking their hand, these are people that post all day every day on dentaltown, they'll blast out your message.
|
|
John:
|
Thank you.
|
|
Howard:
|
The other meeting in Vegas is the TBSE with the Madow Brothers and they got Daymond speaking, so you should go to the townie meeting, go to towniemeeting.com I think it's ...
|
|
Juan:
|
When is the next one?
|
|
Howard:
|
When is the next one Ryan? March 39th to April 2nd at the Cosmopolitan in Las Vegas, that's my favorite hotel down there because it's the newest one, and already on my business on but I love that place. You just hang out there, shaking hands with all those, they're the biggest social media names in dentistry. You either get social media, it's either a part of your personality or it's not. It's like all my friends like, they're either not on Facebook or they're on Facebook and Twitter and Dentaltown and Pinterest and LinkedIn. It's kind of like an all or nothing thing, and I almost think with dentists it's only about an 80/20 thing. It really to me, only looks I've about one in five dentists who are into and the other four to five say, "I don't get it."
|
|
John:
|
Do you know what we're seeing, now that we've got all of our characters on Facebook and Twitter, is that the millennials are just loving it.
|
|
Howard:
|
A millennial is someone who turned of age and got a drivers license around the millennium 2000 right?
|
|
John:
|
Yeah, they're loving it. We've really studied the Muppets and Peanuts and what they're doing, and what they're doing on social media in particular and there's some good stuff to really look at there and to pattern our characters after.
|
|
Howard:
|
That was one of my earlier jokes, "Why did Snoopy become a dentist?"
|
|
John:
|
Why.
|
|
Howard:
|
Because he wanted to work for peanuts.
|
|
Juan:
|
I saw that tweet.
|
|
Howard:
|
Go ahead.
|
|
Juan:
|
Social media now real quick. One of the things we found on the practices here is engaging the patients so we have signs.
|
|
John:
|
Social media signs.
|
|
Juan:
|
Like Wisdom Tooth and like during Star Wars made the floss with you, and the Molar the merrier.
|
|
John:
|
Then there's Biggie Smiles.
|
|
Howard:
|
99 problems but decay ain't one of them, Biggie Smiles, that is so cool.
|
|
Juan:
|
Zombie Tooth because I can't feel my face. We're going to make some of these available also on the website probably in the next week or two, so practices can download them and have fun. You can post online with your patients, [inaudible 00:55:51] that's going to be funny or something different but it'll be available but I'll send you guys a link with all that information as well.
|
|
John:
|
One of our main goals is that dentists, dental hygienists, dental assistants, the whole dental staff, anyone who works in the dental industry whether be a dental supply company, or somebody processes claims with Cigna, or Delta Dental. We just want to provide a vehicle for them on a daily basis to come and be entertained, and just laugh and just give a little joy, and bring a little fun to the whole dental profession and industry, and experience. That's what we're really striving to do on social medias, especially right now but that we'll have a full line of multimedia that drives and expands. We're really looking forward to it.
|
|
Howard:
|
I love both of you guys, I love your mission, I love what you're doing, any dentist out there with kids or grandkids knows that this is really why we became dentists; to prevent disease. Firemen spend more of their time going round and checking on sprinklers and fire codes and all that, than they do running into a building on fire because they put so much time on prevention that they don't have all these houses burning like they did in 1800s, and 1900s. I adore you guys, I'm so proud of you guys, I wish you the best of luck. If you ever need any help just email me howard@dentaltown.com or go into Dentaltown and post that and those townies will ... Anything you need, those townies, one of them will have the connection or help or whatever.
|
|
Juan:
|
Awesome.
|
|
John:
|
We're very gracious, Howard and we really appreciate it, thank you very much.
|
|
Howard:
|
Thank you, and I hope you guys have a rock, a good day, and I'm sorry about your Dallas Cowboys, I'm sorry about your Quarterback but now you can just sit back and rout for the Arizona Cardinals.
|
|
John:
|
The new Cowboys that everybody despises are the patriots, right?
|
|
Howard:
|
All right guys, congratulations and thank you for all the ...
|