← Travis Makes Money
Travis Makes Money
INTERVIEW | Make Money by Building, Scaling, and Successfully Exiting a Business with Amanda Lewis
00:26:31
Loading summary
Transcript50 lines
- [00:02]
Red Bull Announcer
Ready to soundtrack your summer with Red Bull Summer All Day Play. You choose a playlist that fits your summer vibe the best. Are you a festival fanatic, a deep end dj, a road dog, or a trail mixer? Just add a song to your chosen playlist and put your summer on track. Red Bull Summer All Day Play. Red Bull gives you wings. Visit red bull.com brightsummerahead to learn more. See you this summer.
- [00:26]
Travis
Foreign you're listening to the Travis Makes
- [00:29]
Podcast Sponsor Announcer
Money podcast presented by gohighlevel.com for a free 30 day trial of the best all in one digital marketing software tool on the planet, just go to gohighlevel.com
- [00:39]
Travis
travis what's going on, everybody? Welcome back to their episode of the Travis Makes Money podcast, where it's our mission to help you make more money. On this episode of the show, I have a new friend, Amanda Lewis. She's an experienced dental practice leader and entrepreneur with over 15 years of expertise in managing, growing, purchasing, merging, and successfully selling dental offices. Passionate about improving oral health and making smile care an essential part of overall wellness and beauty. She's also the founder of Louis, a startup inspired by years of caring for smiles and promoting healthier lifestyles through innovative oral care solutions. She holds three patents across the company's product line, reflecting a strong commitment to innovation and patient care. So she's made a lot of money in the, in the dental care space and now a new venture, a new chapter of life, which we talked a little bit about before we hit the record button. So I'm super excited to have her on to talk about all these different ways that she's been able to make money over the years. Amanda, what's up? Welcome.
- [01:33]
Amanda Lewis
Well, thank you for having me. I appreciate being on and getting to share some insights and. Yeah.
- [01:39]
Travis
So dentistry, did you always want to be a dentist? Was there a different path? Did it pull at you with something?
- [01:44]
Amanda Lewis
I don't know if I did. I was in second grade and I told my dad, I went in when he was working and I was like, dad, I want to be a dentist. And he goes, you want to be a hygienist? And I'm like, no, I want to be a dentist. Like his friend Grade. Yeah, like his friend Greg. So I'd always gone and it was my dad's. One of my dad's best friends was our dentist. And so I would, you know, go in and I never had a cavity. I just thought, I'm like, oh, he looks cool. He just goes in our rooms, checks things out, you know Talks about looks in my mouth and I'm like, that looks cool. So I didn't know then as much. I, I learned and I kind of grew into it. I still always enjoyed my time there. I never had a filling until I was in college. I had a small filling, so I never really saw much of that. Now, my sister, on the other hand, she did not want to become a dentist. She had, she had things going on which, you know, now that I've been around for a while, I'm like, oh, I know why you had decay and I didn't. So it's just the things that you learn as you go. But my dad was an entrepreneur. My dad always worked in independent pharmacy. And in 19, you said independent farms. Independent, yeah. So never worked for a Walgreens, never worked for a CVS back in the day, much like there were just, you know, medical doctors that you went to like a town doctor a lot. What dentistry still is, although it's changing. But there were pharmacies, small town pharmacies. I'm from the Midwest and he always worked for them. And in 1987, he went out and bought his first and then later bought a second, is now sold both of those and is sort of retired, but still likes wandering into the small town pharmacies and doing a little helping and subbing for some of his friends.
- [03:23]
Travis
So, okay, so kind of got a glimpse of dentistry from dad's best friend and then a glimpse of entrepreneurship from your dad and almost ended up marrying the two of those things together.
- [03:31]
Amanda Lewis
Yeah.
- [03:32]
Travis
So from second grade, did you like pretty much. Did you hold that line all the way?
- [03:37]
Amanda Lewis
I held the line, I just did it. You know, I'm a type of person that's driven in a way that it's like, all right, so I'm going to be a dentist and I kind of just rolled my sleeves up. I was pretty good in school, was a student athlete. So, you know, I, I do think that that is something that's important. I think it's a big thing for my background. A couple of things that made me successful were being. I've been a long distance runner my, most of my life, since I was about 7 years old. So not. I do it now just for more relaxation and getting out and hitting the road on a, on a morning. I don't go like I used to, obviously, but I think there's something about running. When you go out, if you fall down and you're two miles from home, you have to get back up. You know, there isn't another Choice. And so I think there's a lot of good lessons in that in, in entrepreneurship and in moving forward. And sometimes the only way, you know, the only way through a problem is keep on going. So that's something that I really enjoyed.
- [04:40]
Travis
What type of long distance running just
- [04:43]
Amanda Lewis
I was in, I was a cross country and long track distance athlete. Started off in college on that path of cross country, but was trying to do a three or four year program. So I graduated from college after my first year in dental school and just with the load of classwork I had to take to get things done in those three years, I couldn't, I couldn't do it. But that was the beauty of running. You can kind of like golf. You can do it on your own. You don't need anyone else to, to be there.
- [05:09]
Travis
Exactly. Right. Yeah. You don't have to, you don't have to like enter a race to run a marathon.
- [05:13]
Amanda Lewis
You could just do it. I haven't done a race in a long time, but yeah, but I really, I do still enjoy it. I actually ran this morning. I drug my son out there. He's off of high school or he's, he's actually going into high school next year and he starts a strength and conditioning training camp next week.
- [05:29]
Travis
Nice. You'll get them ready though.
- [05:33]
Amanda Lewis
Yeah, working on it.
- [05:36]
Travis
Okay. So. So had a, had a vision of your future, let's say, and when you were in second grade, you go to school, make that vision come to fruition. But, but not all dentists are entrepreneurs. Right. So where along that journey did you decide that that was the path for you?
- [05:55]
Amanda Lewis
I knew I wanted to do that just because of my dad's ownership of his pharmacy practices. And I just was like, you know, he had these little stores and, but work for himself. I knew what that took, though. He would sometimes come home quite late at night, he would sit at his desk and do bookwork. You know, it's the things that it takes to run business. And so I just kind of always saw that from a young age. And I wanted the autonomy to make my own decisions. I probably have always been wired that way. And I worked for about a year and a half for two different offices and then started to look for my own office. My first license was actually in Missouri. I was, I did my schooling out outside of the St. Louis area, but on the Illinois side. And I had started dating someone and at that time he was from the central Illinois area. And so I was like, well, I guess I'll look there. I mean, I can Always just sell the practice if it doesn't work out. That's not always true in a small town, but it did work out. So moved there, started my first practice in, just had four employees. I bought it from a retiring dentist and over the course of 15 years opened a second practice, grew with two other doctors joining me. Ended up from that small team of four to about a team of 20. Small towns are wonderful places. I didn't end up wanting to live there and so moved away from it. But for dentists and practitioners who want to have the lifestyle of, you know, being out on their own and autonomous, those small towns offer some of that. And it's just getting to be in bigger cities. It's lesser and lesser when you know there's a lot of convergence in dentistry where multiple practices are being bought up by groups that then are being bought out by VCs and being bought out by another group of VCs. Because dentistry is a business that makes money. And just like medicine.
- [07:42]
Podcast Sponsor Announcer
This episode of the show is brought to you by Whatnot. You've seen the buzz, but let me give you the inside scoop. Live shopping on Whatnot is exploding right now. I've watched the shows firsthand. I've seen Whatnot climb to the top of the app store and I've actually looked at the seller earnings. We're talking small, medium and multimillion dollar businesses all seeing real growth over on Whatnot. So if you're selling online or out of a storefront, full time, side hustle, whatever, you already know the challenge. You're hoping that people are just gonna find you and walk in. Well, Whatnot flips that. On Whatnot, you go live and sell directly to people in real time. They see what you got, ask questions, and then they buy and then they keep coming back. It is the largest dedicated live shopping point platform. Whether it's beauty, collectibles, electronics, luxury, fashion, even cookies, sellers are building real thriving businesses. And anyone can sell. Whether your business is big, small, or yet to exist, people selling on whatnot sell 10 times more than any other major marketplaces. And that's because you're not just listing products, you're building real connections with buyers. Whatnot buyers spend more than an hour a day in the app. They're not just browsing, they're engaged, buying, and they're coming back. You go live, you show off products in real time and turn what you love into real income. So download the Whatnot app today and get free shipping on your first order. Just search Whatnot. W h a t N o T whatnot in the app Store and start scoring amazing deals.
- [09:08]
Indeed Sponsor Announcer
When you need to build up your team to handle the growing chaos at work, use indeed Sponsor jobs. It gives your job post the boost it needs to be seen and helps reach people with the right skills, certifications, and more. Spend less time searching and more time actually interviewing candidates who check all your boxes. Listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsored job credit@ Indeed.com podcast. That's Indeed.com podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Need a hiring hero? This is a job for indeed Sponsored
- [09:36]
Amanda Lewis
jobs S I mean, you don't see any family practitioners around anymore, and you see very few friends. Independent pharmacies. Dentistry is moving into that same. Into that same area. Unfortunately, there is still room to do it. It's just you've got to roll up your sleeves and decide that you want it. And that's something that I did. And it was something. I wasn't good at it the whole time. I mean, my first year out of. My first year of running my own practice, I remember that next January, I had a call with my out of January, January fiscal year, and I had a call with my accountant, and he was like, okay, you know, looking over everything, I'm, you know, thinking taxes this year be around 30. And I'm like, what? And he goes, 30,000? I'm like, dollars? Holy crap. I had not balanced my checkbook. And when I did write in my checkbook what I did, it'd be like credit card payment. And so I didn't itemize anything. And I paid my loan that I took to get the practice, but I paid, was paying that loan down. So I didn't have any more money in the checking account. He goes, but you paid your loan back. That's income. And then you paid yourself. I'm like, but I took taxes out of myself. He goes, but you didn't on that. So it's those little things. I was 25 years old. I didn't. I didn't know any better. So I learned a lot as I went. Started off doing things like, you know, all my own cookbooks, all my own payroll, all my own tax payments, all of that stuff. And it wasn't until I was probably 12 years into the business that finally my accountant was like, what? You need to stop doing all of this stuff because there's too many people. You're up too late. And so it. Learning to do that delegation is probably something I should have done a bit sooner. It would have allowed me more freedom and some personal time. But, you know, as that practice, as those practices grew and as my team grew, I also grew. I had two kids and those things, you know, sometimes people will say, oh, it's really hard to do with a family. Sure it is. But it's not impossible. You have to surround yourself with a team that believes in what you do.
- [11:34]
Travis
Yeah, I was gonna say. But also, so is anything else. Like, everything's hard to do when you have little ones running. Exactly.
- [11:44]
Amanda Lewis
But then I turned around and did it again. So, you know, must not have been that bad.
- [11:47]
Travis
Right, Right.
- [11:48]
Amanda Lewis
Yeah.
- [11:49]
Travis
Well, you mentioned too, the downsides of private equity coming into a space and clearing up and rolling up a bunch of practices and stuff like that. But kind of the upside to me is that there, you know, that private equity is very involved in a space like that. Like you said, it's. It's very. It's an old industry, it's reliable, it's somewhat predictable. People still have teeth and need work done on their teeth. And so there's almost like a. The silver lining to me is that, well, if I do spend this time building this practice and I do it the right way, somebody's probably going to want to buy it versus a lot of other. Other industries you might be hustling for 10, 15 years and then realize there's not as much buyer demand. There's not as many people who are interested in buying this type of business.
- [12:33]
Amanda Lewis
You know, there's a lot of buyer demand in dentistry. There are also ways to. There's some good and bads in it. The good is that it's bringing in and consolidating those things that are hard to do. Some of the payroll things, some of the tax things, the regulations that you have to do. The other thing that's been difficult in dentistry, and that will continue to be, is how much technology is coming into everyday practice. And so where almost everything you were doing with your hands 30 years ago, now you're using a computer to take a scan. You're not writing in a chart. You're not taking a film X ray and dipping it. It's on a computer. And just to get those computers up and running and to get that scanner and to get those systems is becoming very expensive to get the X ray technology and the 3D technology that we have available to us now, you know, it's can be hundreds of thousands of dollars. So to continue to have that level of care, you can see somewhat where it's going. The unfortunate part of it is the loss of the autonomy of the doctor because when you get into the right setting, those equity people on the VCs know that me becoming a better dentist, I knew this. Me becoming a better dentist gave me a better product to sell me. Training my staff and spending that time and money on the education that allowed me to be the best clinician I could be. Was very important for me to have those bigger cases, to know how to do it, to have it be predictable, and to grow my bottom line. But there are a lot of places that just see it as, like, we can get done. You know, we can get like 14 cleanings done a day. We can have an assisted hygienist, and we're going to pay the cheapest person to assist this person to get that person. And, you know, if we really use all these diagnostic tricks that a computer can show us, we can find some fillings to do and make money right now and maximize your insurance. And those are the bad things. That's where dentistry gets a bad rap. But unfortunately, there are some of those people out there. I like to think most of them aren't. And, you know, that's why I continue to keep my. My foot in the door of dental education. I still get a chance to go out and mentor other dentists at a facility out in Arizona. So.
- [14:44]
Travis
So did you end up just exiting your practices completely then?
- [14:48]
Amanda Lewis
So ended up going through a divorce. And when I did that, Covid changed a lot of things. You know, you go into it, I'm like, oh, the only thing I could ever do is dentistry. And in. I have to stay here. And then, you know, as I kind of looked at it, and I did some travel, we were a mandatory shutdown of. Well, I mean, it was like five or six weeks. But when you live in a small town with a bunch of farmers and they're getting back in the field, they're getting antsy. They will be like, no, I will come in and meet you. I'll come pick you up if you want. I mean, so there are people that had temporary crowns in place, are like, I want my crown. I'm like, all right, just come in the back door. And I had an assistant that was really cool. So I did. I tested the waters a little earlier, and glad that I did. We were able to slowly bring our team back on, did all the precautions that we needed to do. But as I had some time, I had traveled out to visit my mom. I had started to grow what's now become Louie. It was in my mind that I really wanted to see about moving something forward. I had started with the concept of my first patent that then once I got down the rabbit hole, I. It wasn't producible on a mass scale. So I had to make a decision. Do you just kind of abandon it or do you try again? I decided to try again and signed on with somebody that helped me with branding, with product development in February of 2020. So had a little time to delve into that and ended up taking a couple trips while developing that and thinking, gosh, I don't want to live in the middle of central Illinois. And so by the end of 2020, I did something I thought I would never do. I sold my practices to my associates and I moved to Dallas, Texas. I bought a practice, and this was my, like, I guess I'm now on my third chapter, because that was sort of my second chapter of dentistry. Whereas I built this larger practice. I knew the type of dentistry that I wanted to do. I knew the quality that I wanted to put out, and I wanted to go back to the boutique. So I bought a practice in a very affluent part of town that was very driven by insurance. And I'm like, this doesn't need to be driven by insurance. The guy that owned it just wasn't as into doing quality dentistry and doing things as I was. He wasn't ever going to push the envelope against an insurance company. And so within 18 months, I dropped all insurance and I tripled the production of the practice. So, wow. I did things that, you know, again, I, at that point in my life, was a much more clinically competent practitioner than I was when I started. And I knew how to say things like, hey, you don't have to do it this way, but what you want to do is not going to work. So I'll do it. I'll fix the one tooth, but when it breaks, we need to be on the same page that you're doing the same things that cause us to break. And if we. You don't want to look into that, there's nothing I can do that's going to be better. And that would get people to say, oh, how do you know that? I'm like, well, because. And, you know, you have a collection of cases to show them. Like, because I've done this and seen this, I've done that. And so I was able to take a small team again. It was just four of us. By the end, it was like, absolutely my dream team. We were all women in our 30s, 40s, and I think one of us had turned 50. Not me, but. But we we had a great time
- [18:01]
Zootopia 2 Announcer
and Zootopia 2 has come home to Disney Plus. Let's go get ready for a new case.
- [18:07]
Carrington College Announcer
We're gonna crack this case and prove
- [18:08]
Amanda Lewis
we're victorious partners of all time.
- [18:10]
Zootopia 2 Announcer
New friends.
- [18:11]
Amanda Lewis
You are Gary the Snake and your last name the Snake. Dream Team Habitats. Zootopia has a secret reptile population.
- [18:22]
Zootopia 2 Announcer
You can watch the record breaking phenomenon at home.
- [18:24]
Podcast Sponsor Announcer
You're clearly barking at.
- [18:26]
Zootopia 2 Announcer
Zootopia 2. Now available on Disney Plus. Rated PG.
- [18:32]
Amanda Lewis
So good, so good, so good.
- [18:34]
Nordstrom Rack Announcer
New markdowns up to 70% off are at Nordstrom Rack stores now. Stock up and save big on shoes, tops, dresses, accessories and more must haves for summer. Join the Nordic Club to unlock exclusive discounts. Shop new arrivals first and more. Plus buy online and pick up at your favorite Rack store for free. Great brands, great prices. That's why you rack.
- [18:59]
Amanda Lewis
So that practice in, in Dallas flourished and at the time I was still trying to start Louie. So I had made the commitment to do that, brought out another round of products, then ended up finding out that I worked with a bad actor, had my tooling that was used to make my patented products overseas get ransomed by a factory. And so I couldn't get it back. So again you have to make a decision. Do you do it again or do not? And so I went, I went back with one product and not the other and then built some other areas of the business. But during all this time I just, I had this poll and this wonder of like, I don't know how to get Louie off the ground and continue to be full time in practice. And I was just having something tell me that I just wanted to see where it went and I could always go back to dentistry. But if I didn't stop and do this, what would I do? So that was like the nearing the end of 2023 and I'm like, man, I don't know. So I was talking to a practice broker, someone that sells practices. He goes, well, your practice is worth this. And I was like, whoa, it is. And so I was like, if you can sell it for that, I might take an exit. And so I started to entertain that, but still wasn't sure. And then my mom very suddenly passed away unexpected. And that, you know, when something like that happens, it. It hits you. She had always told my sister and I that when we, when she was younger she could be a teacher or a nurse. So my mom was a nurse. And you know, it just, she grew up in a very nice family. They her, she went to college, her parents Went to college. My great grandparents went to college. So it wasn't that they couldn't or that they didn't have it, but the rural town in Iowa. She was kind of told, that's what you do if you're a girl. So it's like there was this part of me that said, if I'm going to, I need to try this, I need to try this. I have an offer to sell. So I sold, and it was kind of a messy sale. It ended up being that I seller financed it, which was not in the cards, but it was, and that's fine. And I, the younger dentist that bought it had another practice. I understood why they didn't want to refinance their first practice because it was really low interest. So I did it. But luckily that's. It's all done and closed now. But it took a little while, but I moved forward with Louis. Louis then, you know, took me until October of that first year to get product to market and then also realized how absolutely ignorant I was about so many things in the CPG world.
- [21:25]
Travis
So can you tell us really quick just, like, overview of what Louis is and why it would have been a little bit difficult.
- [21:33]
Amanda Lewis
As an oral health and wellness company, Louis has patented dentists, designed and developed products that help to bring smile care into your daily routine. Our first round of products are meant to meet consumers on. On the go, which, you know, for years I kept hearing people come in like, oh, yeah, I didn't have time to brush my teeth. I know I haven't flossed, but I just was doing this, and I'm like, you know, you knew you had a dentist appointment and you didn't even think about, like, any of that when you came here. So it was always this, well, I wish I had some. There would be something that would make it a little simpler. I really wanted to elevate smile care to the beauty aisle. I feel like, you know, you walk into a Sephora or an Ulta and. Or just look around in billboards for makeup and things. There's these people smiling and all right, you got the eyes, you got the cheeks, you've, you know, got the lips in some ways, but you're doing nothing about the teeth. And if you took those away from that smile, it would really affect the way that people look at you. You know, you wouldn't see the same beauty. So the smile is at the center of a person's confidence, but it's one of the only things in a beauty routine. I would say the only thing in A beauty routine that if you improve and invest in your smile, you can improve your overall health and wellness. So I don't care how much mascara you put on, but it's not going to make you live longer. And something like flossing can and will. So that pushed me into moving into this more upscale, elevated oral health is beauty and wellness market. So moved forward with product development. I was in Dallas, which was great because there were more places and partners to meet than when I first conceptualized the products in central Illinois. And that helped me quite a bit. So got a team around me, went through a couple of accelerators, lots of small businesses in that area and startups in the consumer product goods area. So I just, I learned a lot. I was fortunate that I had a background in business, fortunate that I didn't have to learn the ropes of what's an llc, what's a C corp, what's all of that. I knew those things. But in a dental office, if you do good work and you're nice to people, you're probably going to be successful. Like we talked about, VCs are interested in dental offices because it's, it's pretty good business. It's kind of hard to screw up. If you have a great product and you're nice to people in the consumer product world, it's going to help. But people need to know about you. So a dentist starting a smile care line that has whitening, or, you know, Kylie Jenner having a whitener, she's coming out of the gates hot, you know.
- [24:04]
Travis
Yeah, right.
- [24:06]
Amanda Lewis
And, and it's, it's the unfortunate truth of marketing, like the biggest BIP far, the biggest expenditure of me getting things going is marketing, product photography, Instagram, social media, influencers sending things out, not knowing if you're going to get anything back. And I've become much more selective on that and how I work with things. And I'm myself trying to, you know, boost to my influence as, you know, as a credible founder. But I'm also not 25 years old and so some of these people that, you know, when I started the first business, there was no Instagram, I guess there was Facebook, but I was never on it. There was no TikTok. So I'm learning some of these things as I go along and, you know, although they're not my native platforms, I'm doing my best to, to work with them. So.
- [24:53]
Travis
Yeah, well, props to you. Like, I think you, the decision to do this is sort of like one of the frames that I look at, especially big decisions like this through is sort of the deathbed regret frame, which I think is really helpful and useful and like, to your own point of talking about your mom's sudden passing, that that probably has a lot to do with that because I just think that, I think that, I think that if you didn't do it, that you would regret not having done it. And by far, people on their deathbed tend to regret the things that they did not do rather than the things that they did do. And so sometimes it's just like a matter of I don't know exactly how it's going to come together. Yeah, it doesn't really make much sense. Yeah, I'm going to have to learn a bunch of new stuff, but also like, I gotta do it. You know, it's like the adventure calling your name and that you gotta go seek out and tackle. So congrats to you on Louis and all the different products and stuff you've been working on. Congrats to you on figuring out how to get this product to market, step back into the some of those learning roles and being willing to pivot at that stage in your career when you could have easily just done what you were comfortable with and ran dental practices forever. And so congrats to you on all of the work that you've done. Where can people go to get more from you? Amanda?
- [26:05]
Amanda Lewis
Easiest way to find us on Instagram or our website. We are my louis.com or just my Louie on Instagram, we are on Amazon and we're ramping that up. Just moved into our first retail store. So if you're in Texas, we're in the central markets and then we're also in a chain of stores in Kansas City called Hen House Markets. And expanding next year will be a very exciting retail year for Louis. So I'm, you know, we're in talks with some major retailers and I know there's going to be some positive things coming. So we're excited about that and we're in our first round of investing in order to support those things. So, yeah, just check us out@mylouy.com I'm AmandaJloui. If anyone shoot me an email, I'm happy to respond.
- [26:49]
Travis
Amanda at mylouy or mylouy. Com. Amanda, thank you so much for taking the time. I appreciate you everybody else tuning in. Remember, money only solves your money problems, but it's easier to solve the rest of your problems when you got some money in the bank. So let's start there here on the Traffic Makes Money podcast. Thanks for tuning in. Catch you guys next time. Peace.
- [27:06]
Carrington College Announcer
Your next chapter in healthcare starts at Carrington College's School of Nursing in Portland. Join us for our open house on Tuesday, January 13th from 4 to 7pm you'll tour our campus, see live demos, meet instructors, and learn about our Associate Degree in Nursing program that prepares you to become a registered nurse. Take the first step toward your nursing career. Save your your spot now at Carrington. Edu Events. For information on program outcomes, visit carrington.
- [27:34]
Amanda Lewis
Edu Sci Fi.