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Intro: 00:00 From ABC News Radio, KIBT 1490 in Southern California, this is BizNinja Entrepreneur Radio, with your host, Tyler Jorgenson.
Tyler: 00:13 Well, I do want to welcome everybody out to BizNinja Entrepreneur Radio. Today we have the pleasure of talking to an entrepreneur who took a very unique path towards entrepreneurship, Dr. Sherry Sami.
Dr. Sami, welcome to the show.
Sherry: 00:26 Thank you very much. It’s such a pleasure to be with you and such a privilege to be with you, Tyler.
Tyler: 00:31 Awesome. So now you are a licensed dentist and you own a successful dental practice. But that’s not the only thing that you’re doing in the entrepreneurial space. So first of all, like when was the first time that you realized that you wanted to do something entrepreneurial in addition to being a dentist?
Sherry: 00:50 Well, first of all, I want to mention that to me the entrepreneurship was like, looking out of the box, you know. And really not fitting into a situation where we are. Hey, this is the path that is paved and you have to go this way. And that’s the only way to go. So really my husband and I usually say, like we’re not just out of the box. We just don’t even see a box, you know. So it’s completely different and then it’s passion-based. It’s like what basically just kind of boils your blood and wakes you up in the morning where you don’t have to push yourself and for me at least like the traditional. I’m a pediatric dentist and orthodontist and neither one of those things really boiled my blood. Once I got into the business, I didn’t like the way that it was traditionally practiced, you know. Just putting braces on people and filling cavities would not something that I, that I wanted to do for the rest of my life.
Sherry: 01:47 And so what I decided to do is just kind of bring out all my passions, which was nutrition, which was spiritual psychology, which was looking at the whole body. And there was no models like that, you know. I think that was a lot of my colleagues, they kind of made fun of it. They were just like, Oh, it’s not going to be successful. And it was a, you know, as you can probably 10 all your audiences can tell it’s a scary road because you don’t know if it’s going to be successful or it’s going to fail completely, you know, this new model. So I’m, I was a UCLA professor at that time and then basically just kind of took a big leap of faith and decided, okay, I’m just going to go and see whether this works or not in somebody else’s office.
Sherry: 02:32 Just rented a couple of days out of the office. Started talking to people from the entire like, you know, through the mouth and the relationship with the body, you know. Then how the body affects the mouth, you know, and how the whole airways chewing. In sleeping, nutrition as well as the family tension that is happening. How it impedes the job development of the jaw, sinuses, neck, back, all of those things. And pretty soon, like within a year I went from having eight patients to 4,000 patients. And having people that they actually like some very successful people that they started coming from England. Coming from Dubai and coming from, you know, Canada or like you know, the San Francisco or San Diego or New York. And I wasn’t seeking it out necessarily. I was just doing the things that I really love to do and I wanted to share it.
Sherry: 03:32 And the intention was just to really bring out the whole wellness of not just the child because I’ve focused on the child, but the whole wellness of the family. So I think that the part of the entrepreneurship, you know, on the growth and development of what happened with my husband and I, you know, cause then we joined practice and we created a wellness center again in Agoura Hills was theirs. What do you think that it was that holistic, you know minded and we were on the West side, which was like the holistic Mecca. We took a leap of faith and we started something from scratch, you know, a wellness center. The garden is all is completely organic and everything else. So we just literally like put everything that we believe. Then into the center, all the business consultants, they said, we are crazy. We’re, that’s not the way to do it.
Sherry: 04:24 We have to create every inch of it somehow that will generate some money. But we believed in the whole thing and we just said, well, you know, if it fails the first of all we learned something. Second of all is just the universe, you know, kind of having a course correction and letting us know we’re not on the right path, you know, and we’ll just, you know, say bankrupt, you know, that’s like the worst thing that can happen and start all over again. So thankfully it’s been very successful. And then like we started doing all kinds of things that again, it was our passion. You know, we started, we were the one who wrote the conscious uncoupling, you know, article. Now it’s called, you know, uncoupling with clarity that our book is gonna hopefully come out now. Early next year we started doing a lot of consulting with a lot of couples that they were having challenges in their relationship. So again, like the whole focus was not, you know, I have a bachelor’s and a master’s in psychology and so is my husband. But the whole focus was not necessarily doing so many things, but just doing so many different things that just bring health and wellness to the entire unit of the family. You know, we felt like no matter how successful you are, if your family unit is not thriving, then you can’t really by anything with that success, you know?
Tyler: 05:46 Yeah, absolutely. That’s fascinating. So on, let’s unpack that a little bit. So when we go, you mentioned early on that you and your husband don’t really see a box. Right. And one of the first things that you mentioned when you talked about that is that your, the way that you approached your dental practice right at the beginning was different than what your colleagues did. Dentists notoriously are not out of the box thinkers. They’re absolute like checklist, what is the right way to do this? What’s the process? Give me a blueprint, all of it. And so right out of the gate you were saying, I’m going to take a different approach to dentistry and look more complete at the whole picture. And it sounds like you took off pretty quickly with those patients and then you guys, you and your husband moved towards even a more holistic center. What obstacle did you hit as you moved into that next level of business where you said, okay, we’re going to go from having just a dental practice into a wellness center. What were some of the challenges that you guys had to face?
Sherry: 06:41 Well first people that they are on the same mindset as you, you know, so employees, business consultant, people that they are, they really understand your mission and they collaborate with you on the same page because otherwise you’re just getting a bunch of bad advice. And then as well as your employees, they don’t necessarily represent your, your belief system and your philosophy, you know? So if you come to my practice, let’s say, and you see my staff are eating Dorito chips at the front or they have the aspects of like not necessarily being the most nurturing, inviting and the most income passing people. Like you would right away not get a healing experience, you know, you would get uh, this is the same, you know, it might have different color walls but it doesn’t have necessarily a different healing experience. So from that aspect, you know, to getting people that they really resonate with our philosophy.
Sherry: 07:41 So lots of education like all of our staff for example, they’d go through a lot of things like landmark forum. They go through something called like, you know, royalty to your soul from university of Santa Monica, like insight, you know, we send them to a lot of self development courses that, so they actually understand like, okay, this patient is upset. It’s not necessarily me and how do I handle it and how to I keep being loving, you know, at the same time like getting people, like for example, when we were building the place, we had a contractor who was a pastor, we have an engineer and you know, structural engineer who was also like a Sikh, you know, the designer was someone who was very spiritual in the, you know, in the community. So we had everybody who had the same intention, the same, you know, kind of background in terms of what we wanted to accomplish to move us toward the right direction. Cause if you don’t, then it’s just every step is so much more difficult than every step is like question where like while you’re not doing it this way, that’s not how you’re supposed to be doing it. And pretty soon like you start doubting yourself because there’s so many naysayers out there that not necessarily supporting your cause, but just really, really getting excited about it. You know?
Tyler: 09:00 So I agree that it’s really, really important to have people around you that understand what your vision is and that share, you know, the core attributes and can resonate with the vibrations you’re putting out there. What is the mission and the vision of the beehive of healing, which is your guys’ wellness center?
Sherry: 09:16 Well, um, the main part of these are collaborative space. So the beehive basically like a gathering of healing being in a center that creates and extends healing in all physical, mental, emotional and spiritual level. So that’s the main thing. And it’s an integrative space. So my husband and I, for example, when we first came together in the new center, we’re like, okay, we are having an integrative center. We’re becoming business partners. You know, we are parents together, we have all of these things and we’re going to be seeing each other like literally 24, seven, you know. So we started working with a couple of coaches to make sure that our marriage is completely integrated and as it kind of hits like the bumpy road of him having a different business vision than I do and different leadership styles that I do. You know, like we are actually kind of navigating through those things a little bit more gracefully.
Sherry: 10:11 So that was really, really important for us that the foundation of who we are, it stays true and doesn’t become just a business center that, you know, after a while on the whole mission kind of, which is the healing will be lost. And I see that with so many healing centers that they start with good intentions, but somewhere along the way they just kind of lose their intention and it just goes to like somewhere that they just want to make a lot of money or they are more like, focused on the business and then their intention. So that was really important for us.
Tyler: 10:42 So is it okay? Is it possible to maintain like your, you know, be true to your mission of being really a place where you can heal and help people and make money? Is that, can that be an alignment?
Sherry: 10:54 Absolutely. What’s interesting actually, so I, I worked for this a pediatric dentist few years ago when he heard he injured his neck, I was going to buy his practice but then there was somebody else, you know, didn’t want me to buy it and it didn’t work out, you know, cause it very small practice. So a few years later it literally my practice ended up being like across the freeway from this origin will practice. You know, like this is like 14 years later. And so one day he just walks into my practice and he’s like, Sherry, I just wanted to give you some advice. I know you are like a new practitioner, you know, in this space. Like, you know, less than one year. I’m so proud of what you have done. But you know, for three, four years you’re not going to make any money on your schedule. It’s like going to be like lots of holes in it, you know, and you’re not going to have enough patients and, and you have to eat out of pocket. And then here I am like opened up about probably ten months by that point. And I was, I’m already making money. I was already like almost three and a half months in advanced full. Granted I don’t see as many patients as most pediatric dentists and orthodontists because I spend a lot of time with each patient. But all the reality that he had opening up six, seven offices was not my reality, you know, and all the experiences, you know, that he had, it was not my experience.
Tyler: 12:19 So from a, yeah, go ahead. Yeah. From a business perspective, I’ve found especially in specialties like dentists and things like that where there’s the entrepreneur and the business owner has a skill set that’s really strong in one area. I noticed a lot of times there’s a massive gap between what they do as the practitioner and what they do as the business owner. And so that particular dentist had a lot of false beliefs that instead of saying, how can I fill these gaps in my first year, what could I do to change? So we didn’t have to eat out of pocket that first year. You just said that’s normal. Right. And he accepted that instead of looking at it. I think that’s what I hear that you and your husband had done very differently, which has said just because it’s been done one way doesn’t mean that’s the way we have to do it. Right. Right. And so you got,
Sherry: 13:08 because you don’t have a roadmap, right. You know what you do. Like, you know, it’s like it’s innovative and you just have to jump into it and say, I’m just going to do it my way. Might fail miserably, but I’m going to do it my way. You know? So it’s a little bit different than like having a blueprint and saying, okay, I’m just going to take this blueprint and do exactly what other people have done. You know? And I know that there is like a 90% you know, based on research as success rate, you know, so it just takes a lot of a kind of courage and then just belief and, and then knowing that you might fall on your face and it’s okay. You know, because
Tyler: 13:45 what is a a, what’s a product or service that you guys offer that you weren’t sure how well it was going to go but that you’ve been pleasantly surprised with the results?
Sherry: 13:56 Oh that’s a good question
Tyler: 13:59 cause you guys do a lot and maybe we should just kinda touch just on the outside a level of what are some of the different things that you guys offer?
Sherry: 14:06 So first of all, it’s a very integrative place. So the kids in my place, they’re still in, you know, between the two places. They’re getting acupuncture, they’re getting craniosacral or osteopathy, they’re getting, sometimes they’re getting IVs, lymphatics, you know, none of these things are really offered to children. You know, most of the time you see like the bad and mom, they go and get all of these things. But like the child like never gets any of these things. And again, it’s the limited belief that, Oh no, massage therapists would want to be, you know, working on a child or all kids. They don’t like the needles of acupuncturist. You know, like my own daughter who’s six years old. As soon as she gets sick she asked for craniosacral therapy and acupuncture, you know, and she comes to like, I need some copying, you know, so once you get them used to really taking care of themselves from very early age, you know, like what to eat nutritionally and all of that stuff.
Sherry: 15:01 Then again like their whole perspective about, you know, do I want to go get acupuncture or do I want to take a Tylenol? You know, so it completely changes, you know, cause it’s all like how you ring them up and what’s normal in the household. So those like, I think that that was a big stretch initially cause nobody really thought that, you know, kids, they would really be enthusiastic about doing all of those things. But a lot of like, I would say like most kids are, you know, especially since the parents are so open and the parents that they come to my place, they’re super holistic and they’re very, they’re very open to all of these ideas, you know, before they go to the medication. The other part of it was that we’re actually going to start teaching at the medical school level. It’s consciousness, health and healing.
Sherry: 15:48 So the consciousness precedes the health and the healing parts. When you are as a practitioner, like if I’m sitting with you and let’s say, I don’t know, you come to me with like complain about your, you know, stomach hurting, right? You know, I’m having some acid reflux and he’s like, yeah, doesn’t, so I can write a prescription so fast for you and then will send you out of your way. Or I can say, Tyler, can you tell me about what’s going on in your life? You know, and is there a stressful situation? What’s your relationship with your wife? You know, what’s going on with, like the rest of the family? Is everything going on okay with the kids? You know, I don’t know if you have kids or wife, you know, but yeah,
Tyler: 16:26 I have four, four kids, only one wife. Wow. I answered the question right when you asked a different question. I was like, man, I gotta make sure that’s clear. One, why not four wives, one kid. Yeah.
Sherry: 16:41 So, um, that’s a lot to handle.
Tyler: 16:43 And look, I’ll, I’ll, I’ll tell you, um, dr Sammy, like what you’re saying is really fascinating to me because, so I’m an entrepreneur, but I’m also a dad and that, and honestly, I’m a dad first and last year my son fell and broke and hit his face on his dresser and broke, knocked out teeth, broke his maxilla. And uh, it was pretty traumatic, but it was right on the heels of two years of, of other issues, right. Of other health issues. And so nobody that we’ve seen has had a holistic approach. We’ve gone to GI specialists and we’ve gone to dental specialists and when we’ve gone to orthodontics, right? Like in all of these different things, but to be able to say, man, if I could have one place, one person who could say, okay, look, there’s a lot going on here. Right? Well, let’s look at it all.
Tyler: 17:29 I see what, and that is fascinating to me. I kind of jokingly say, I do that when I look, do business consulting, we looked at the big picture. What? Yeah, because all of those factors, for example, like if an entrepreneur is wanting to start a new venture, right? You have to say what’s happening at home? Like what kind of bandwidth do you have to do this new venture? Because the energy to be available, like energy is finite and time is finite, right? But money’s renewable, so you can always get that back. But the time, once it’s gone, it’s gone. And so I love how you’re taking that. And it sounds to me like you’re really applying all of these things that you’re doing for your patients. You’re applying into your business, into yourself. Um, what would you say is the biggest piece of advice for someone who’s considering going into business with their spouse? Or partner in cautionary tale. You can take it any direction you want.
Sherry: 18:18 Well it’s, there’s two pieces to it, right? One piece is not just about whether You know, you go to business with your spouse or you do anything in life. And my advice would be your life is a love story. Make sure that it’s a good one. If you don’t make your life a love, love story than your whole entire legacy and everything would be a sad kind of a, I don’t know, like it just, it, it doesn’t really,
Tyler: 18:48 you want to make it a romantic comedy, not a drama, right?
Sherry: 18:53 Exactly. So when I look at my relationship, you know, the same thing. I’m a mom first and then a wife, you know, cause I have younger children, so I’m a mom first and then a wife and then a business woman and a speaker and everything else that I do. So that comes first, you know? So I want to make sure that that relationship with my children is a love story. Not like the draining. At the end of my day, I have nothing to give any more. And then I’m just going to give them spillover and a and a little leftover. And then we have a date night every week. So doesn’t matter what happens, we make it a date night. I may have this thing where we had not talk about children and we can not talk about business. So anything that’s left, lots of stuff for a couple of dates was, was rough, you know, like, because we kept going and we’re like, Oh wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.
Sherry: 19:44 You know, and then the cell phones are put aside and, and then if the babysitter needs us, I have to, I have to call three times. So we know it’s an emergency. You know, we made sure that we make time for our relationship where we can still be thriving as a couple. The other part of it is to do your own work. You know, cause a lot of times like when we don’t do our own work, our own personal work, then everything becomes like taking it personal, ego-based, and basically that all of that comes into the place. So each one of us, we continuously, not just, you know, now or before, but continuously we do, we keep taking developmental stuff. You know, like a lot of personal classes and we keep doing our work so when things they get in the way, we have so many ways of dealing with it and communicating, not blaming each other and all of that stuff.
Sherry: 20:34 And we can have a really effective communication and then make sure that you really love seeing your, your beloved, you know, it was so many hours cause some people they would prefer to take a break. You know, I actually really enjoyed it. Didn’t know how to be honest with you. I didn’t know how much I’m going to enjoy seeing him and like passing through and then giving me a kiss on my cheeks, you know, or just, you know, just seeing him kind of coming and going to his clinic sides that are separate but you know, under one building. And I just really enjoyed seeing him throughout the day here and there and going to his, you know, asking for his opinion from here. You know about a patient, right. And the accessibility. So just make sure that you really enjoy seeing them a lot. You know, if you want to become a business partner with each other.
Tyler: 21:20 Yeah. If you’re, if you’re having a hard time on the weekend, just seeing them for that extra little bit of time, maybe, maybe don’t jump into business until you figure that out.
Sherry: 21:29 Right. And make sure your marital stuff is already taken care of before you actually go into business together.
Tyler: 21:35 Yeah. So what are some of the big things that you guys are working towards, uh, at the beehive right now? Like what are some of the next steps that you’re going to do and how are you getting there?
Sherry: 21:43 So we’re working on the next building right next to us, which is we’re considering to get a community center slash wellness slash library. So yeah, we are going to have lots of things from meditation and yoga to movement classes, cooking classes, nutritional like, you know, juice place could juice and coffee place at bookstore. We also being, we’re going to be donated a large library of medicinal books that they are from different cultures and very ancient kind of teachings. So we’re going to have that accessible to everyone. You know, as a library. We also have just basically like a place that people, they can come together of like-minded people come together, sit together. There’s a passion of mine that I have because I see a lot of moms like brand new moms that they’re very, because of are, you know, movements to where the business is best. You know, a lot of moms are becoming very secluded and they don’t have the support. So one of my passions is to get the senior citizens and the new moms together so the moms, they can take care of themselves while the senior citizens that right now they’re not necessarily being utilized in the best way. They can kind of take care of the babies while the mom goes and takes a nap or gets an IV.
Tyler: 23:06 Which is fascinating because that’s so common outside of the U S American culture. Yeah. It like, that’s how the communities operate, right? Like, it’s a, so I lived in South Africa for a long or for a couple of years. And in the townships the grandmas would just take care of the neighborhood kids. Yes. And uh, whether it was their kid or not, you know, and uh, and they would just help. And then they, you know, the moms and occasionally the dads, but mostly the moms would then go handle things. They use the handle. And that’s very common in other cultures, but not real, not real common here. So that’s a neat community.
Sherry: 23:39 What’s interesting is even in European countries now, they have found out like the intentional community living that it’s so useful. So my parents, they lived in Denmark, you know, so yeah, when I would go visit they lived in these intentional communities and you know, I was kinda like each person had their own apartment, but then there was one home with a very large kitchen and then you would be assigned once a month to cook for everyone. And then the teenagers would be like taking care of the younger kids with their homework. So there was just a gigantic, yeah. Place for all the kids to sit down and do their homework. My parents, you know, especially my father, he was assigned and everybody had to do things like it wasn’t like optional. So my dad was assigned to actually spend time with in preschool, which was so good for him because they would teach him Danish, which he was very weak at and it’s a very difficult language. And then he would take care of them, you know, three times a week and help the teachers, you know, and he loved it. He really enjoyed that. So I feel like some, even like some European countries there finding out we weren’t meant to raise our kids all by ourselves. You know, it’s a lot of work, you know?
Tyler: 24:42 Yeah. There’s the old adage that it takes a village, but these days everybody is isolated themselves from the village.
Sherry: 24:48 Absolutely. So our intention is like pulled together that they’re not necessarily that this family of origin, but it’s the family of the same consciousness and the same belief systems that we can just come together and bring forward a lot more wellbeing as a whole.
Tyler: 25:05 Very cool. Well, it sounds like you guys are doing some amazing things. If you want to learn more about what dr Sam and her husband are doing, go to beehive of healing.com it’s one E beehive of healing.com and uh, so I always ask this question and it sounds like you guys are doing a ton of great stuff. So to me, and that you are already well aware that business, like if it’s not helping you have a lifestyle that you want is missing something. So what’s one major item on your personal doctor Sami bucket list that you want to do in the next 12 months? Again, no, no kids or, or work, right. Just like data.
Sherry: 25:38 I haven’t taken a vacation all by myself for a really long time. And not for any, you know, conferences or anything. I had, I had one that was plan a, there’s a poet that I really love. It’s called David Whites, you know, and he has a 10 day retreat of hiking and writing and lecturing and all that stuff around the world. But this one was for Italy and then I broke my foot and I couldn’t go. So I have with the next 12 months, I would love to do something where I just kind of go in, you know? And no, you know, mommy, mommy, mommy, mommy, no doctors tell me doctors, every doctor says to me, you know, it was just, just completely just go in and be there. Cause I think that’s really, really important for moms just to take some time off and, and be able to, to rejuvenate and come from that fullness rather than the empty. Well
Tyler: 26:32 Absolutely. Totally agree. It’s a pleasure chatting with you. So we’re going to wrap up, So for all of our listeners, we thank you so much for tuning in here to BizNinja Entrepreneur Radio. Please go learn more about Dr. Sami and what they’re doing @thehiveofhealing.com. Now it is your turn to go out and do something.
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