Anne: Hi, everybody. It's Anne Duffy and welcome to dental entrepreneur the future of podcast. I'm so happy you're with me today, but I'm honestly thrilled to have the entrepreneur with me today, who was recommended to me by our wonderful feature article writer, Luke Shapiro, Dr.
Luke Shapiro. asked Luke, who do you know that would be a great cover doc? And he said, my boss he's developed so many things like dolphin imaging, which we will talk about. And he said, he is the all caps entrepreneur. So Dr. Marc Lemchen, welcome to the podcast. And fun story, everybody.
This is going to turn into the article that we're going to be having in the winter edition of dental entrepreneurs. So you'll have to check it out because you're going to want to hear everything about this incredible gentleman. Let me tell you a little bit about him before we get started. Dr. Lemchen is a board certified orthodontist receiving degrees from Tufts University School of Dental Medicine and Columbia University School of Dental Medicine.
is affiliated with several of New York's leading hospitals including Lenox Hill, and the New York Presbyterian, where he is a senior attending orthodontist and holds a teaching appointment at Cornell University Medical College. He has pioneered and developed many cutting edge technological innovations in orthodontic imaging mechanics and software used in his practice and others worldwide.
He is also a founder Of dolphin imaging and management, the leading imaging and management software provider to the orthodontic community. Welcome again, Mark. I'm so happy that we have this time together to just share your journey with all of the rising dental entrepreneurs out there.
Marc: So I'm happy to be here.
Anne: Well We had a wonderful conversation a couple of weeks ago and I just want to start from the very beginning. so here you are, you're looking at what you want to do with your life. You're a young lad and you grew up in New York, I believe, right?
Marc: New Jersey, which, it's a suburb, the metropolitan area.
Anne: In the metropolitan area. I gotcha. And so tell me about how your journey started into dentistry.
Marc: Well, That's a funny story. I think I have an older sister who is brilliant, studious confrontational, in a nice way. And she was a Merit Scholar. She went to Yale. She went to Swarthmore.
She spent her life teaching physics. And I think my parents were worried I'd never do anything. So when I was 17, my mother said to me, you have to go take a vocational test, which was on a Saturday and being a 17 year old, I said, mom, it's a Saturday. And she said, which is typical of a mom. She said, we bought you a car.
The least you can do is take this test. came back that I should be an airline pilot, which I probably would have loved because I loved technology. And I always wish I had learned to fly. I was in the Air Force as a dentist, but not as a pilot. at that point, she said, you were right.
Something I rarely heard. That was a stupid test via dentist. my father's family was very artistic and worked with their hands. My father was an English professor by training and ran a college during World War Two. He was a machinist in the shipyard. And it sort of a nice touch is the toolbox.
He had when he was a machinist in the shipyard was the exact same toolbox. We got when we went to dental school, the same company made it has the same draws. Except instead of having micrometers and files and ball peen hammers in it, we had dental instruments. So that's how I ended up in dental school.
Anne: Well, a couple of things there. First of all, again, I love your mom. I think that's so funny. And I also love your sister because I am the oldest sister my dad used to call me a Pushy broad, and I'm a little bossy. So she is awesome and nice to be able to follow in her footsteps of achieving great things.
And then also how ironic that your dad's toolbox. And we talked about this, the apple doesn't fall far from the tree because, as we know in dentistry, it's so mechanical and engineering based, You have to be an artist, but also you have to be able to use your hands and use the skills and that brain.
think there's
Marc: deeper connection in that he was trained as an English professor. He owned a college, which the college said registration fee, 2 in bold type, non returnable. And after the war, there were no jobs. And he became a kitchen designer who was very ahead of his time. He was in every magazine.
But the point of that is that he was in a service business dealing with people and he had amazing people skills. My sister and I always agreed he never had to raise his voice because by the time he got done talking to you there's no way you couldn't agree with him. Really? I think that's a quality that's important for, for a professional that you can state your case in a way that people are trusting and accept it.
It doesn't matter how great a professional you are if you can't explain it in a way that people Become part of the solution, as opposed to someone just questioning it all the time. So I think that that's very important quality. I think I learned essentially growing up in the kitchen business.
He was available 24 hours a day. anybody who's unhappy, he knew how to deal with them, without becoming emotional and raising his voice. He was there Always there, sometimes people say, I'm always so calm, and I like to say I'm not calm. I'm focused. And that's what I learned from my dad.
Anne: that's a beautiful trait. people say in this day and age, in 2024, that time is not your most valuable asset focuses. you can actually accomplish so much if you're focused on it. And I love the communis skills that you grew up with.
one
Marc: of our robots is talking, I have to take a little break to unplug.
Anne: Okay, no worries. Did you hear that everybody? One of his robots is talking and that's another whole thing. I can't wait to talk about.
Robot: Please charge me immediately. I am about to shut down.
Anne: That is so cool. Please charge me immediately. I'm about to shut down.
Marc: Our patients don't say that, but the robot does.
Anne: I love it. I can't wait to talk about the robots.
I've been telling everybody about that, let's go into some of the things that you've invented over the years. So you started with How did dolphin imaging even come about? Because that's like huge and used in the orthodontic community to this day.
Marc: or 87, whenever the AAO was in Chicago, I think, I was at the meeting and this was in the dark ages, and we really had no way of tracing SEFs.
Except for tracing paper in a light box. And there were a couple things coming on the market where you could put the x ray on a light box and trace it, basically crude computer program. So I was walking around the convention with a friend of mine. His name was Gary Engel, who, worked for Oramco corporation at that point.
He was a, computer nerd kind of guy we came upon the system that used sonic digitizing, which means that you put the x ray on the, light box and you had a little pen that you would point to things. And when you click the pen, it would make a sound that would measure the point where your pointer was in two dimensions.
And I said to Gary, I said, why can't we just put the patient's head down there and measure them directly? And it was one of those things where. Out of hand, he said, yeah, we can't do that. And then maybe three hours later, I guess his brain was still turning. He said, no, we could do that if we raised enough money.
So we went back and we wrote sample program basically. And we started looking for investors. we found somebody that gave us seed capital who. It was a very interesting guy and it's a whole nother story, but he started amazing number of amazingly successful companies. so that's how Dolphin was born.
It was originally given the name Sonrisa, which meant smile in Spanish because this guy was from San Diego area. we did a business plan and we went all around, Silicon Valley and Menlo Park, and we met with every big investor and venture capitalists and some of those nights were disappointed.
Well, most of them were disappointed but we kept going back, and finally we found some people that we raised the initial capital and we started Dolphin and obviously it was our first startup, it was a big learning experience. And I always said, it doesn't matter whether you succeed or not, it's a pity to waste all that experience.
And was the thread, really, of saying, even after Dolphin, we should be doing these things again.
Anne: Wow. What year was this again?
Marc: Dolphin really started in 1988.
Anne: Okay. And how old were you at this time? And how long had you been practicing orthodontics?
Marc: Oh, too long. I got out of my orthodontic program in 1974.
Anne: Okay. That is so cool. Is it, is this your first invention that you just came up, again, it's like a conversation. Some people don't think that this has to be like this, I don't know, a huge journey, but within 24 hours, you realize this could be possible.
Marc: Yep. so much.
Well, it's kind of interesting and I grew up in a family where we're always thinking of other ways of doing things. we had two other products that we developed before. And these are classic cases of before your time. And I can think of a few that I should have looked in further that later became great things.
But, I wasn't as familiar with the patent process. I was a little intimidated by it. But we did two interesting projects. One was, a hands free faucet. Before we had the kind you just put your hands under, it worked with pedals, and you had one pedal gave you temperature controlled water, one gave you soap, and one gave you hand lotion.
Now, this is before AIDS, before people wore gloves. And so there was not a lot of interest in hands free faucets other than I decided that really it should be a law that every kitchen has hands free faucets because we waste so much water when we're washing dishes we just turn it on or never turn it off until we wash the last dish.
Great environmental regulation. any case, we went through that exercise, which is interesting. And we also, these were the days when most people cold sterilized instruments at the most, you'd have a heat sterilizer, pliers, they never went on heat. There was cold sterilized and in general, people put them in this liquid.
Who knew how old it was? Like the. The blue barbershop liquid and you need something, you take it out, so we actually remember
Anne: those days. Marc was a hygienist back then. Yeah, I
Marc: remember this device. And patented it that was a container for the liquid sterilizer, but it would time itself.
So after a week or two, whatever it's set for, it would lock, you couldn't put anything in or get anything out until you change the solution, in order to make people actually at least sterilize it within the realm of what you could do with cold sterilization and no interest because no public outcry, And it's funny because we had this horrible thing happen and we started wearing gloves and our understanding of it was so limited. I remember going to an insider's meeting and one of the orthodontists proudly showing us how he wore gloves all day and he'd wash his hands with the gloves on. And gloves were very expensive. So this was the evolution, but need to really sterilize instruments, which was not really our biggest thing in orthodontists was really hepatitis. And since we didn't treat a lot of adults, there was not a lot of push in that direction either. We had no sterilization technique.
In reality.
Anne: gosh, bringing back memories because I
Marc: remember the pliers sitting on the bracket table on a rack open the air, the dust and whoever wanted to handle and put them right back on the rack and use them. we all survived.
Anne: I was going to say, it's amazing. We all did survive. I remember actually getting my first AIDS test and thinking, Oh, thank God.
I don't know. I didn't have AIDS because I mean, No gloves, no mask. I graduated in 74 from dental hygiene. boy, you were so forward thinking.
Marc: I always laugh about mercury. How, when I was a kid, the dentist would be very good. He'd put a little mercury in an empty xylocaine vial and he'd take it home, break it on the kitchen floor, of course, Or take it out and play with it. And in dental school, we didn't wear gloves, a sign of honor was how dirty your squeegee cloth was that you squeezed the extra mercury out of the amalgam, which would fall right onto the floor and evaporate. Oh, man. And somehow we don't have mercury poisoning.
I
Anne: know. God does protect us over these years, but wow. When I think about that I actually go back to your dad also, as a person that's creating kitchens and counters and cabinets and all of these things, that creativity of how Okay, you see the problem.
And how do you fix it? How do you tinker it to make it work? And so that mindset in that drive that you saw your dad do every day,
Marc: famous for developing what they call the living kitchen and McCall's magazine. This big kitchen that he designed and created. It's the first kitchen. He had a real table in a television, a couch.
it was called the McCall's Living Kitchen. And I laugh about all those things too. 'cause for all these show kitchens he did we'd get all the furniture afterwards. So our house was furnished with, things that we got for free. So
Anne: is so cool. And I remember that the Living Kitchen, and that was your dad.
And
Marc: actually we had the first. Microwave that was ever in a house and he got it from, I think it was Westinghouse or a man that had it in the world's fair. Okay. World's fair. World's fair. We got it to our house. I used to love taking people home and show them how to cook a hot dog in 10 seconds, Oh, my, which also was probably irradiating us at the same time because they weren't so safe in the beginning. But It was fun.
Anne: Oh my gosh, this is so fun. and we were interrupted earlier in the podcast recording. I hope Leland keeps it in there because I hear the, the robot in your office is picking up patients in the reception area.
you just continue to invent and think about things and nothing seems to stop you.
Marc: Well, it's sort of like a lottery. If you try enough things, some of them will work, honestly. And so we have lots of ideas and things that never get off the ground, one of my favorite actually has nothing to do with dentistry.
I might've told you is a device goes on boats to make people aware that the engine is running because they're so quiet now. it's called a moving propeller alert. And I just did it because I thought somebody should do it. And I was working on a patient and they came over to me to tell me that there was a Mr.
Bass on the phone, which I thought was funny for something for a boat and Mercury Marine licensed the product. They make them to this day and I don't make a lot of money on them. It's not that thing, but, um, just went to the consumer electronics show and every boat that Mercury showed had one of these.
Devices on the back of it. And they save lives. so it's
Anne: outside of dentistry. I mean, golly,
Marc: outside of dentistry. So I like that one. And then we've did the first patent for being able to take a panoramic or a cone beam pan and take a photographic image of the patient at the same time.
more than 20 years ago already, but PlanMECA used it. Sirona used it. It was called a face scan. And so that was a great item. part of the patent that was eventually used on the insignia, which Was a patent that Dolphin sold to Oramco. And Ornco became part of Danaher and then Danaher sued Align Technology for that patent and got 10 percent of Align at that point.
And I don't really feel bad about that because we never would have had the resources to pursue it. But it's interesting that was our patent. then I've always wanted to repeat Dolphin's plan of how we built a company. So. five or six years ago, Todd Blankenbeckler and I started EZRX, which is a software that manages digital data for the dentist and the timing was great because scanning was becoming more common and we had all this STL data that we had to attach to something to mail it in.
There was no longer a box, it was a plaster model. So we, ran that company for a while and now we're transitioning into robots and we have another little AI company that wrote software that you can scan a patient with braces on and AI software will take the braces off in a matter of seconds and you can make the retainer that visits before the patient comes in to get their braces off.
Lots of little things that we keep chipping away at.
Anne: that is just so cool. So interesting. Like I, I just love the fact that, don't stop. You just keep going. what drives you for this?
Marc: think it's some kind of genetic defect, so.
Anne: I'm sure your wife probably thinks that, and your, co workers like, what's he up to now? What's he up
Marc: to now? Something just pops into your mind, and some of them become viable, and some of them are funny, and some of them are just ridiculous. Some of them are good, but they never were picked up,
Anne: yeah. But so what's the, what do you think that the secret is then to actually get it from the idea to fruition and actually in the market to the point where somebody actually buys it from you? I mean, like, Is it just perseverance? think that you could draw from?
Marc: Perseverance is a great word.
And I think that's, an important part. there are lots of great quotes about, It's easy think about something, it's hard to do it, and I think that's part of it, just do it already, take positive steps, and get things done. I like this quote from one of the race car drivers, it's been attributed to a lot of people, is to say, if you're comfortable, you're not going fast enough.
And the other one is, good is better than perfect, if you can get started with it, because then you can make it perfect, but if you never get out on the road, you'll never be able to do it.
The two quotes I think I use the most every new idea is first ridiculed, then vehemently denied, and then accepted as conventional wisdom.
Anne: Oh,
Marc: we can apply that to lingual orthodontics, to clear braces, to invisalign, aligner technology, a thousand things in our industry. actually comes from a guy who said it in 1860.
Anne: Wow, in 1860,
Marc: and another one is, and I adopted this one when we were trying to raise money for dolphin.
It's at the crossroads of progress stand a thousand self appointed guardians of the past. There's a thousand reasons why you can't do this and one of the clearest ones I remember is we were doing the first predictions of surgical and orthodontic treatment and how they change their face. We wrote programs where we could age faces and they could use them to find lost children.
The last picture I had was the kid was eight and now he's 14. And they were actually great programs. people would say, well, what if you can't produce what you're showing them? I would say better to try to show them. Then they have them say, if I'd known it would look like this, I would have made a different decision.
I think you can always find an excuse to not do it. You got to just move past those and say, look at all the benefits of doing it. It's a half full, half empty. It's right there. it is. Don't give them a prediction, because what if they do this? Give them a prediction, because otherwise they'll do that.
Anne: Isn't that so interesting? It makes me think of, the road to heaven is paved with good intentions. And, if you don't execute where we be in this world? I mean, Think about everything that you've created, thought about, and you're not even finished.
I mean, you just, every day you come up with something new. How do you fit it all in Mark? I mean, you have a thriving practice. you're like the orthodontist in New York City, people flying in from all over the world to see you and your team.
So you've got that, and then you've got all these other inventions that are going on. You've got robots in your office, there's so many ideas in your head that are still percolating that I wouldn't ever bet against being brought to fruition. How do you fit it all in?
Marc: I think I manage my time better when I'm busy.
give me too much leeway, I'll do nothing. And so I've always been like that. When I was highly scheduled, lots of things I had to do in school, I was much better at getting things done. So I guess I've adopted that and I Going back to my dad, I don't know why I'm thinking about it so much today, but he was up early in the morning.
If I wanted to see him on a Saturday, I had to be up before television started, which was like six o'clock. So he'd start early, work every day. And so I'm still at the office by six in the morning. say to myself, and this is true of orthodontics, but if I'm here two hours early, five days a week, that's 10 hours of things I can do, as opposed to, Taking a longer shower or something.
So I think that's an important thought and how you get things done. I managed to stay up late and get up early. I don't know how healthy that is, but it's worked for me so far. And I think you just pursue everything and make sure everything is moving along. And I've been lucky to work with some really great people.
That have been very supportive and probably a lot of luck involved in the whole thing as well.
Anne: You obviously are a good communicator and you, like your dad, you're able to talk people into, woo people into your ideas. And will people into giving you some money and success?
Marc: My whole philosophy is that everything is a collaborative effort. I'm not going to tell people how to do this. I'm going to tell you all the different ways you can do it. And I have another friend who ran a very big financial company in, New York. And I used to always marvel at how he always had time to talk.
It was like, I'd say, have time, but I got to work, meanwhile, he's running them. Multi billion dollar organization. And he said to me, he said, you know, Mark, in our business, you can do the same job with anyone. You're going to do it with people you like. Relationships are everything.
And I think that's really a guiding light in life in general. it's your relationship with people. That's the way you avoid issues. he was an oral surgeon at New York Hospital, who I worked with for years. I guess he was a mentor of mine because I, Went right with him, right out of school and he had the best bedside manner in the world.
And I used to say he could operate you and half your lower jaw would fall up and you say, thank God it was you doctor. Otherwise my whole jaw would have fallen off. Wow. That was his relationship he had with everyone and he was focused and he was sharp but he was compassionate and he connected.
and sometimes we can do that more in a professional level than a personal level, but certainly as an orthodontist, it should be part of what we learn how to do, or we teach ourselves how to do.
Anne: That's so true. And dentistry is such a relationship built business. Not only with just, your colleagues, but with your patients and you've seen families grow up in orthodontics, you, then you see their, kids and then, adult.
Orthodontics just kind of came on this, into the world, I don't know, maybe, what is it, 20 years ago or something like that?
Marc: When we, when I started being in a city where there are lots of younger professional people, finance, industry, advertising, we started seeing a lot of adult patients the 70s.
Probably more than the average and it was an easy way to build the practice because a lot of orthodontists just refused to see adults they came out with the first clear brace, the plastic brace, which was from a guy, Dr. Lee. Who pivoted into the consumer market and did Lee fake nails.
Anne: Oh my goodness.
Marc: And I always said he missed the next step. He should have done Lee veneers because basically, a fake nail is just a veneer. Yeah. But he was a very bright guy, but that made it different enough so an adult might accept it. Orthodontics. And then of course, I was part of the original group that worked on lingual orthodontics.
And in fact, the end of the week, I'm going to the insiders meeting, which has been in existence since 1982. Although when I went to the last meeting or the one before, I asked everybody who was there and including the people from the Oracle corporation, no one knew where the name came from anymore. The name came from the fact that these were inside braces And we worked on them every six months we met, and it was a great group of people that were very influential in my, life, and friends that I still have.
And a good
Anne: friend of mine just had inside braces.
I was like, doesn't that hurt? She goes, no, not at all. I'm like well, okay. I don't even understand that one. But yeah, they've
Marc: come a long way. And we were working with actually invested in that product. And it's aligners with wires.
So the benefit is you can't see them. But compliance is not an issue, you can't take them all. Okay,
Anne: there's a lot of people that would like that, especially, I've thrown a few aligners away in the, in the grocery store when I try to sample and I put the Kleenex. So Mark, one last, I mean, the couple of other things, I'm just curious, why did you go into orthodontics?
You were in general dentistry and I'm assuming that was at Tufts, and then Columbia was your orthodontics school?
Marc: were in school during the Vietnam War. And we felt that we might get drafted, which was not correct, actually, but we signed up for the Air Force, and I ended up getting sent to Japan, and, I think the colonel just wanted to get the liberal Northeaster out of the clinic, sent me to take care of the kids at the school, we had a dependent school, so I had a clinic made up of two school rooms, if you can picture that, you know, the high ceilings, funny lights hanging down there, and And I had some friends who were flight attendants and they were very artistic and we painted the clinic with Mickey Mouse characters, Snoopy characters.
We painted a tree with the door where they went into the clinic and I have pictures of it. It's very professional. You would not think these people were not professional. They did a beautiful job. And we painted the furniture, which almost got me thrown in the brig there, but it became such a show place that actually, even after I was gone, it would bring people to see this Clinic, which was so much fun for kids.
And I liked working with the kids. I always assume they're trying as hard as they can to be good about whatever they're doing. I liked working with the children, but I didn't really want to go back for two years of postgraduate and what I've been doing for the past two years.
So I thought orthodontics was a good transition thinking that one of the reasons I went into dentistry and not medicine, I never wanted to be involved in the hospital. So my first. Break, however, is getting involved with the oral surgeon at New York Presbyterian, and I worked with him all the time and every once in a while I'd have to go in the operating room, which I still don't like, and I don't, I haven't done in years now, but that's how I got into orthodontics we started working with adults, we started doing more surgical cases.
It's interesting that this surgeon way back then would tell you do the surgery first because the patient got the cosmetic improvement. They got the hard part over with first, then you can pull around with the teeth. that fell into a lot of people rejected it after years now people are doing it again.
poor guy is not alive anymore. I wish he would have seen his concept sort of vindicated.
Anne: Really? Okay, that's a whole other podcast, Mark. I want to do that one too, because that's probably controversial, I would imagine, right?
Marc: I think less so now. Okay. More orthodontists are willing to do surgical cases with aligners, or inside braces.
Making sure that, of course, the surgeon has whatever they need at that time of surgery. They have to get it right the first time, we hope, even though not always. it's an interesting, concept, but it's also interesting to hear how we used to do these cases, before we had the benefits of scanning, of computer generated setups.
It was quite a little process but basically we would end up the wires for the surgery before the surgery and we made, and they would segmentize a jaw structure and somehow those wires would hold everything in place. So.
Anne: Wow. Well, It's certainly come a long way and it's so much easier now. I mean, Through your inventions and all the things that you're doing.
we've just did a podcast about, the problem that people are having now with staffing and teams and people leaving the office. And then you've come up with the robot robots that are, just very delightful and they can sometimes do some of that fun work.
And I would imagine the kids that come into your office are just mesmerized by, some of the innovation that you've put into place.
Marc: Well, We're working on some projects. It's just clearly, well. reduce our need for staffing, that's the next level of robotics course.
Anne: Oh my gosh. It's a need out there.
And think that's what true entrepreneur is. And Luke was right. You are the entrepreneur. I could talk to you all day. I know you've got patients. I'm just so thankful for this time. if you're a, young dentist, out there that's our community.
And they have an idea. What would you tell them?
Marc: I tell them to put it down on paper, to talk to a, patent attorney about how to protect it. Provisional patents are relatively easy to write. And then to pursue the reality of it and to not take the first rejections as final word if you really believe.
You can do it and there are lots of ways of structuring companies or projects where you can them off the ground. So hopefully you can do it bootstrap it up before you go for funding, because if you start too early, you end up getting the funding, but not owning any of the company anymore.
And it's always a concern. I like the other thoughts that they tell you when you learn how to drive a car. The race car driving course, they say, don't look at where you are. Look at where you want to go the car will go there and never give up. I'll tell you, if you ever try that and you're looking at something on the side of you, that's where you're going to end up. So don't look at the guy next to you, look at where you want to go,
Anne: where you want to go and surround yourself with good people. I feel like good people find good people.
And you're certainly one of those good people that I'm. thrilled to get to know you and to put you in my category of good people and true entrepreneurs. So Dr. Marc Lemchen, thank you so much for joining me today. I'm looking forward to, reading the article that we have.
I'll ask Lisa to give me that picture for the Mickey Mouse, room that you had the first clinic in Japan. That would be so lovely to put in your article as well. And, uh, maybe we'll get a picture of your dad in there too, because he sounds like he was somebody that really influenced you as you will influence others and you're carrying on his legacy, Mark.
So thank you so much, We'll have how to get in touch with you in the show notes. and anybody that's listening to this podcast today, and keep doing you, that's the important thing start and don't stop. Take care,
