Life Changing SmilesWilliam J. Baker Jr. Life Changing Smiles By William J. Baker, Jr. AuthorHouse Copyright © 2012 William J. Baker, Jr. All right reserved. ISBN: 978-1-4685-4285-1 Contents PROLOGUE...........................................vONE Getting Started...............................1TWO Finding a Fit.................................7THREE Learning Ceramics...........................12FOUR Starting the Business........................15FIVE The Dental Revolution........................20SIX A New Business................................25The Magazine.......................................37SEVEN Growing Pains...............................35EIGHT "Off the Bench".............................44NINE Introducing Piece Work.......................49TEN Smiling Dentist...............................52ELEVEN Cosmetic Dentistry.........................54TWELVE Growing People.............................57THIRTEEN Life Changing Smiles.....................60FOURTEEN Selling of Frontier......................63EPILOGUE...........................................67ADDENDUM: ONE......................................70TWO................................................76THREE..............................................81FOUR...............................................90 Chapter One GETTING STARTED My motivation in high school was to have money. My parents both worked and money was scarce. I carried two papers, the Oakland Tribune and the Shopping News. Sometimes, when you are younger, jobs just aren't available, so we created our own businesses. We washed windows, mowed lawns, etc. It was a matter of hustling and making things happen. No one, now or then, can or could be found standing on a corner passing out coins or bills. Most of my high school jobs were self-employed jobs. My buddy and I started things like painting street house numbers on curbs. We would paint white numbers on black, or black on yellow. We charged a dollar for each address we painted. One of us would knock on doors and sell while the other painted, and we switched off. It was a good money-maker. It was fast and there weren't any call-backs. Another one of our money making schemes was collecting and selling bottles of all kinds. Everything from Coke bottles, to beer to milk bottles. Then later in high school, I caddied at the Claremont Country Golf Club for ten bucks a bag, and a five dollar tip. On a good day I'd make thirty bucks. Oh, there were the times when I'd get stiffed, and not get the tip, but it was good money. My school mates were working at McDonald's for a minimum wage, which at the time was $1.25, or close to that, so I was doing real well. A day's work at the minimum wage earned $10.00 and I was making double or triple that. The movie "Caddy Shack" tells a good story of caddying, although a little bit over-acted. But, I was learning the value of money. We had landscape jobs, where we did lawns, trimmed bushes, weeded, etc. After I got my driver's license I was able to move into the higher paying areas of Piedmont. An outgrowth of that business was my ability to repair lawn mowers. I was repairing lawn mowers for a guy who had a lawn mower business when a fire in our garage, where I had my workshop, destroyed four or five of the lawn movers. His customers were upset when they learned he had a kid repairing his lawn mowers. I was really concerned, because I thought the owner might hold me responsible for the lawn mowers. As it turned out, the owner of the repair shop did not have insurance, but he made it right with all the customers, and never came after me. I thought he did a real cool thing. But, it taught me my first three lessons of running a business. One, was to carry insurance, another was responsibility, and the third was not to borrow. What he did, was the right thing to do. He didn't try to get out of it, and if you are going to borrow something, you own it! I never borrow, I buy it. It was somewhere about this time when I got into making "Big Daddy Roth" hot rod models. They were little car models, like a hot rod with a monster figure in them. One was called, "Mr. Gasser". I think it was the first one. I built a whole collection, and when one of my neighbors saw them he asked if he could use a couple of them for a Halloween Party. He ended up paying me for their use. I then got the idea of renting them out. It worked, and I had found another way to make money. Also, about this time, I built a mini-bike and showed it in the Auto-rama. It was a lot of fun to ride and I had a great time showing it off. Later, my buddy and I built a go-cart and rented it out at my buddy's father's parking lot business. But, I recklessly crashed the go-cart into the fence and put the end to our rental business. My buddy was really unhappy with me, but we moved on. I walked everywhere, and where I didn't walk, I rode the buses. The bus was used a lot. At six years old I would take the