We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Jason Cellars. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Jason below.
Jason, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Owning a business isn’t always glamorous and so most business owners we’ve connected with have shared that on tough days they sometimes wonder what it would have been like to have just had a regular job instead of all the responsibility of running a business. Have you ever felt that way?
I have found that happiness as a business owner comes down to balance. There are many days when I wish I could clock out at the end of the day and spend an entire weekend not thinking about the office. Especially with so many people working flexible hours from home, However, I know that, for me, I would soon envy the business owner and entrepreneur more and want to be back on that side. I love the visionary thinking that I am able to do as a business owner and I love that my success is directly related to what I do.
What I have found to be most important for my happiness with work is my ability to delegate. I often try to do too much myself, and when I get stressed I just want to get things done and make sure they are done right so I end up taking on more stuff and exaserbating the problem. For me, I need to be very purposeful about delegating. I need to consciously make sure that I am not working too hard, and when I find that I am, I look for what tasks I can have a team member do. Ever since I started delegating more, I was able to focus more on what really needed my attention and am actually able to get more done without burning out and staying happy.
That all being said, owning a business is a stressful endeavor and I would be kidding myself so say that I am always happy. But for my personality and vision, I wouldn’t take the alternative and wouldn’t change a thing if I could.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
There are several different aspects about my professional life, but they all orbit around dentistry and oral health. Personally, I am a cosmetic dentist and still practice cosmetic dentistry on a weekly basis. I also am creating a dental company and brand that provides quality affordable care for patients. And lastly, I have created a non-profit that gives free dentistry to those in need.
As a cosmetic dentist, I provide minimally invasive natural looking cosmetic results. I pride myself on making the most complimentary veneers for each individual. We use the patients face, current teeth, and personality as a guide to create a smile that looks like natural teeth and that accentuates the patients face and personality. It is a specialty that I got into early in my career because I love how technique sensitive it is and love the results that we are able to give our patients. As a dentist, I also provide all other forms of dentistry and still use minimally invasive, holistic, techniques which makes it healthier for my patients and also gives better results.
As a business owner, I believe that the dental experience needs to be modernized. We have the technology that there is no reason for patients to feel any pain and no reason for patients to dread going to the dentist. My practice makes sure that patient care and patient experience is the number one priority. We want our patients to feel safe, heard, and taken care of in our office and take all of the small and big steps to make sure that that happens. We are currently only at one location in Huntington Beach, but hope to soon take these patient centric principles to more locations as it is not only a passion of mine but also a need.
As a philanthropist, I started a non-profit to help give back to those who can’t afford top quality dentistry. It started when I had patients coming in wanting veneers because they had broken or missing teeth and didn’t want to ever smile, but weren’t able to afford the treatment that they needed to give them the confidence to smile. So I started a non-profit that raises money to buy the actual implant, crowns and veneers and then I volunteer my time, supplies, and office to do all of the work needed to bring them back to full health and function. I am hoping to be able to grown this foundation to include more dentists and more locations to be able to help as many people as possible.
We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.
Once you have proof of concept, don’t give up. Everything can feel like it is going the wrong way, but know that one way or the other, it will work out. And don’t be afraid to reach out to people in the industry for help and advice, you would be surprised how helpful people are and how willing they are to lend advise to eager ears.
A story of resilience that comes to mind for me would be when I initially started looking for the practice that I currently own. I was sending out five to ten letters a week for two years, and calling their offices the following week to see if they were interested in retiring. It wasn’t until a year and a half in that I found my first one, and shortly after that I found the one that I ended up buying. And after negotiating a deal with the current owner, it took months of “no’s” from banks before I found one, many of which wouldn’t even hear me out because I was so young. But I had in my mind that I was going to buy this practice and wasn’t going to take no for an answer. What I had heard before and continue to tell myself, is that “all you need is one”. You only need one person, one investor, one yes. So when you get your hundreds of no’s, try to keep in mind that you only need one, and that it will eventually come.
Can you tell us the story behind how you met your business partner?
I met the person I bought my practice from by mass sending out letters to everyone in the industry. For me, I just found every dentist on google in the location that I wanted. Wrote them all a personalized letter from whatever I could glean from their website and called them the week after to see if they were available to talk. I know the saying it is not what you know but who you know, and I do agree with this saying, but that doesn’t mean that you need to already know these people. I am initially from Canada so didn’t have a network of people here that I had access to. But people in your industry are usually willing to help. Reach out to the more senior people in your industry, and simply ask them for advice – most people like sharing what they know. Listen and learn attentively, and make sure to nurture the relationship and you can meet all the people you need to meet on your own.
Contact Info:
- Website: jasoncellarsdds.com
- Instagram: drcellarsdds
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jasoncellarsdds
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasoncellarsdds/
- Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/jason-cellars-dds-sea-cliff-dental-huntington-beach
Image Credits
Bravo Image