How Smilevirtual CEO Brian Harris grew to $2.5M revenue and 75 customers in 2020.

hello everybody my guest today is brian harris he's one of the nation's leading experts in cosmetic dentistry his creation of the smile virtual software platform allows cosmetic dentists to connect with patients from around the world via video consults the software streamlines the smile makeover process and transforms lives by increasing self-confidence brian you ready to take it to the top let's do it all right man good stuff so tell us first off were you software guy first and then dentist or dentist first and then software guy dennis first and then software so 15 years as a cosmetic dentist and then discovered this wonderful world of entrepreneurship and software interesting so what was that moment like most dentists are happy making a couple million bucks a month two or three centers very few go i could create software and sell it to all the other dentists around the world yeah so the epiphany for me was uh about three years ago when when i first kind of developed version one of the software kind of for myself uh the the business just exploded you know and and there was people from all over the world reaching out wanting these types of procedures and and i kind of had that moment of like wow now there's a true need for this out there and i can i can do more good by leveraging it and helping others than than just being selfish and doing it myself what year was that that was in uh about 2017 mid-2000s end of 2016. okay so about a call two years two and a half years ago something like that and and walk me through how you make money now today do are dentists paying these fees or the people that want to have their smiles fixed paying the fees so uh well there's two different ways i i see on average now um two to three new smiles a day from the software myself and i'm booked out about three months right now and so i get a lot of patience myself from it and then we've got about 65 doctors i'm sorry 75 doctors currently uh using the software also uh growing their own brand and attracting patients from all over uh to try to implement the same types of things in their in their practice well what i'm trying to get though what's your revenue model on this piece of software my revenue model is my customer is the dentist so okay i still benefit personally on the on the patient side but the the business model is the dentist i see okay and give me a general sense what's the dentist going to pay you per month for this kind of software yeah so right now there's a there's like a setup fee and a training fee which is a an online kind of automated training system it's about a 3 500 fee to get started and then right now they're at about 4.99 a month uh with this new version of the software that's that's 499 a month it's like 500 500 bucks 500 bucks a month yeah so the new version of the software is going to get it down to about 299 probably okay uh so just can i take 75 dentist times 500 bucks i mean this is doing what 30 40 grand a month for you right now yeah it's doing it's doing pretty well that's nice uh why you just said the new version will cut the price in half why do you want to cut the price in half well a lot of what we're doing right now is very heavy on the service side kind of having to hold these doctors hands and walk them through it's a it's pretty intensive um as far as understanding how the platform works the new software puts it all into one place streamlines the system so the the goal is you know less hand holding by us um and more doctors using the platform okay so what is the if it can there's a setup fee obviously so you cover up any onboarding you have to do you cover those expenses with that 3500 setup fee but after they get going is there a lot of kind of human maintenance you have to put on each of these doctors with the new software no i mean that's and that's where about three weeks away from from that launching and so that's the the great thing is it frees up a lot more of our time and allows me to focus on like mentoring a lot of these doctors as opposed to you know the details of of you know helping them use the software saying talk to me about growth so if you're doing call it 75 customers today 30 40 grand in revenue where were you a year ago with it um a year we actually uh initially launched exactly one year and three weeks ago okay so so yeah we're we're one year in we took on for about the first four months we took on 12 doctors as kind of beta testers and then and then it's kind of slowly added we've done no marketing i'll just kind of word of mouth at this point so you launched early 2018 but you said this idea you started developing it in 2016. so it took you what two or a year and a half to develop it yep so a year and a half of using it myself and then it was it was just last year when we thought you know what let's let's take this to the masses interesting what's the team look like just on the software side of your business how many people yeah so i have i have two full-time employees now um i have a co-creator and partner with the concept who has a a background in marketing and degree in marketing who is super sharp and so she's uh she's constantly working on you know the business systems and operations and then i've got somebody who is full-time taking care of the doctors making sure that they have everything they need bro what about the tech brian who's the who's the developers so right now uh we're working with a company called coplex which is a a company that's allowed us to really springboard this thing and and uh and use their developers and use their marketing team to to really help us get this off the ground what's an agency yeah it's it's it's like an accelerator uh is what is what you know i call it but but it's yeah it's a group essentially that you come in uh to to take you know someone who's somewhat of a professional like myself but doesn't have a ton of background in the tech space and uh they they partner us with a team essentially that can come in you know help us streamline systems launch the product uh take it to a place where now we've got a product that we can uh we can really take out there and grow so it's it's been it's been pretty amazing you just pay them a retainer every month are they on the cap table they have equity yeah they they do have a small piece of equity so they they it works in uh that there's a small piece of equity built in for them and then i do you know we have a contract with them uh separated out into like really four segments one is kind of like an initial planning and uh and strategize session and then and then to separate onto three different segments of progress and as long as we're happy along the way then we keep paying that's great now have you bootstrapped this just with money from your dentist's kind of dentistry practice or if you raise capital no capital so the goal was to get to the this next version of the software have it fully functioning working be a be a strong product with with no debt so we bootstrapped the whole thing at this point that's obviously a great place to be um how much of your own capital have you put in um i put in probably initially um it's kind of hard to calculate that as you know but probably about 75 grand of my own capital and then the rest of the the capital has been um what what has been paid to us by doctors currently using the program that others can use there's a revenue model there but more importantly it's also lead gen right for for your tip your traditional practice which yeah exactly so this is what i always wonder about you know a guy like you this kind of software could be a massive massive company but when you've got a multi-million dollar dentistry practice because you're very successful dentist on the other side it becomes very difficult for you to really go all in on the software um it's i have a friend actually who's a dentist and i won't name him but they're based in indiana and they do about eight million bucks a year across three locations and he tried to go into software and kept asking me about you know specs and nathan am i doing this right man brian he wasted almost a million bucks trying to build a piece of software but he never needed he never needed to have the software work because the dentistry was so successful and you have to have like that need to make the software work so like how do you balance your motivations yeah so for me i've always i've always wanted a little more than just the dental practice my passion is with patients and creating smiles but you know i this last year when we first started the software i went down to three days a week and probably in the next three months i'll go down to two days a week of seeing patients and and i travel and speak a lot on the speaking circuit so for me it's always been it's not really about the money i've kind of played that game before of of trying to chase the dream because of the financial motivation now it's just about you know and impacting others on a larger scale than i can do just with my own hands and in my practice yeah and on just the software side with two employees plus the retainer you're paying the agency uh and doing 30 40 grand a month in revenue just direct revenue just from software fees on that is it profitable yeah it's profitable now we've got a good a good chunk in the bank that that we're just leaving there that's great and the two people on your team are they remote or where are they based um they're kind of both they're they're here in office and uh and they do work remotely too they both have families so if they're they're people that have been with me for a number of years from before on the marketing side of harris dental and uh so it's been it's been great we get each other but i just happen to luck out and that they have knowledge and a background in this stuff too talk to me about churn have you had any dentists sign up and then stop paying and if so why do they churn yeah we have so a lot of the churn has been the initial platform is a little bit cumbersome as far as uh having to understand various pieces of technology to make it work so we've had some turn there but some of the churn too is just you know not being willing to do the work or not being excited about that part of it you know it does take uh you know so i i right now uh for example yesterday i got 13 consults yesterday alone that came in for me and those each take about 15 minutes to record so that's a lot of time spent you know and that's an abnormal day usually it's about two a day but it's just helping doctors understand understand the idea that you got to put the time in you know it's you're giving people this gift of your time and your expertise knowing that you know in it it will return dividends to you if you if you can do it for the right reasons so it's got a little bit of churn just for from uh from a time sake of wanting the results but not necessarily wanting to put the work in yep very good all right let's wrap up here brian with the famous five number one what's your favorite business book my favorite business book right now um is probably seth godin's new book um oh geez hold on it's like state of marketing or how to market this is my athlete that's a good one number two is there a ceo you're following or studying um not necessarily the ceo i i just happen to be watching a lot of gary v stuff lately just because he's so edgy and i think just there's a lot of hype around him but i just i'm enjoying watching his stuff and what he's doing in the space number three what's your favorite online tool for building your company who that's a tough one in the past i would say probably like infusionsoft marketing automation uh now written that i'm creating my own product um you know it's it's it's tough those are really the only two tools i really uh know and understand so probably you know i don't know if we can call koplex a software uh program developer but infusionsoft's been helpful in the past company called six divisions it really helps yeah very good number four how many hours of sleep to get every night uh five okay and what's your situation married single kiddos uh married uh 18 years just celebrating 10 years last week congrats four kids holy mackerel okay four kids and how old are you i'm 40 i just turned 40 uh two months ago congratulations or not i don't know it depends on what you're going for uh last question brian what do you wish your 20 year old self knew oh geez i wish my 20 year old self knew uh how to chase ideas because of what you're passionate about not necessarily for how much money they can make you you know it took me a long time of of being a quote unquote entrepreneur to realize that the best ideas are the ones that you truly are passionate about not not necessarily the ones that you think can make you the most amount of money guys end up chasing your passion it's a good place to get to now serving about 75 dentists with this software he built it for himself it's working so well they're now all paying about 500 bucks a month so doing caught 30 40 grand a month in revenue profitable two people full time on the team and then pays a retainer to development agency to help keep building it as he works less on the dentist practice only about two days book there per week now speaking building out this piece of the software to help many other dentists deliver more big smiles and confidence brian thank you for taking us to the top of course thank you