813 Lucia Smigel: Co-Founder & CEO of Supersmile

0:00Kara Goldin:I am unwilling to give up, but I will start over from scratch as many times as it takes to get where I want to be. You just want to make sure you will get knocked down, but just make sure you don't get knocked out. So your only choice should be, go focus on what you can control. Hi everyone and welcome to the Kara Goldin Show. Join me each week for inspiring conversations with some of the world's greatest leaders. We'll talk with founders, entrepreneurs, CEOs, and really some of the most interesting people of our time. Can't wait to get started. Let's go. Imagine running your business on a patchwork of expensive tools, each one complicated, disconnected, and barely talking to the next.

0:50Kara Goldin:It drains time, it drains money, and it slows everything down. Now imagine replacing all of that with one powerful system that actually works together. That's Odoo. Odoo brings all your core business tools together in a single, easy-to-use platform. So everything works seamlessly, from accounting and CRM to marketing, inventory, HR, and manufacturing. Odoo keeps your entire operation connected and running smoothly. If your business needs it, Odoo's got it, giving you clarity, control, and peace of mind. Odoo sounds pretty amazing, right? So stop wasting your time and money on those expensive, disconnected platforms and let Odoo harmonize your business with simple, efficient software that can handle everything for a fraction of the price.

1:46Kara Goldin:It doesn't get much better than that. So what are you waiting for? Discover how Odoo can take your business to the next level by visiting odoo.com. That's O-D-O-O dot com. Odoo, modern management made simple. Today's episode is sponsored by Found. Ask any small business owner, finances can get complicated fast. One tool for banking, another for bookkeeping, something else for invoicing, and then tax software layered on top. Before you know it, you're paying for multiple platforms and still don't have a clear picture of where your business actually stands. That's why Found makes so much sense. Found brings your essential financial tools into one place.

2:35Kara Goldin:Banking, bookkeeping, invoicing, and tax-related tasks all built directly into a business checking account. No bouncing between apps, no unnecessary complexity. What really stands out to me is how Found tackles the biggest pain points for small business owners. Things like expense tracking, budgeting, invoicing, and tax prep, and automates them. Your expenses are categorized in real time. Your books stay organized, and you can spend less time managing your money and more time growing your business. If I could go back to when I was starting my business, Found would have been at the top of my list for sure.

3:15Kara Goldin:Take back control of your business today. Open a Found account for free at found.com. That's F-O-U-N-D.com. Found is a financial technology company, not a bank. Banking services are provided by lead bank member FDIC. Join the hundreds of thousands who've already streamlined their finances with found. Hi, everyone, and welcome back to the Kara Golden Show. Today, I'm honored to be joined by Lucia Smigel, who is the co-founder and CEO of an incredible brand called SuperSmile, a 45-year brand. So, so incredible. The backstory is even more incredible. So the pioneering oral care company she built alongside her late husband, Dr.

4:10Kara Goldin:Erwin Smigel, known as the father of aesthetic dentistry. Have you ever stopped to think about what your daily brushing routine actually comes with? Harsh abrasives, sensitivity, big promises, but not always long-term health. Lusa did. And what started with one simple observation that newly bonded teeth were staining too easily turned into a decades-long mission to rethink oral care from the ground up. Instead of following industry norms, she and her husband helped create a clinically proven non-abrasive whitening formula designed to protect both natural teeth and dental restoration. long before clean even became a movement.

5:01Kara Goldin:So I cannot wait to hear more of the story from Lusa and really how she's continued on the legacy and built an incredible, incredible brand. So welcome to the Kara Golden Show. So excited to meet you and have you here. Thank you. I'm very, very excited to be here. And you've told the whole story. Imagine running your business on a patchwork of expensive tools, each one complicated, disconnected, and barely talking to the next. It drains time, it drains money, and it slows everything down. Now imagine replacing all of that with one powerful system that actually works together. That's Odoo. Odoo brings all your core business tools together in a single easy-to-use platform.

5:52Kara Goldin:So everything works seamlessly from accounting and CRM to marketing, inventory, HR, and manufacturing. Odoo keeps your entire operation connected and running smoothly. If your business needs it, Odoo's got it, giving you clarity, control, and peace of mind. Odoo sounds pretty amazing, right? So stop wasting your time and money on those expensive disconnected platforms and let Odoo harmonize your business with simple, efficient software that can handle everything for a fraction of the price. It doesn't get much better than that. So what are you waiting for? Discover how Odoo can take your business to the next level by visiting odoo.com.

6:39Kara Goldin:That's O-D-O-O dot com. Odoo, modern management made simple. Today's episode is sponsored by Found. Ask any small business owner, finances can get complicated fast. One tool for banking, another for bookkeeping, something else for invoicing, and then tax software layered on top. Before you know it, you're paying for multiple platforms and still don't have a clear picture of where your business actually stands. That's why Found makes so much sense. Found brings your essential financial tools into one place, banking, bookkeeping, invoicing, and tax-related tasks, all built directly into a business checking account.

7:24Kara Goldin:No bouncing between apps, no unnecessary complexity. What really stands out to me is how Found tackles the biggest pain points for small business owners, things like expense tracking, budgeting, invoicing, and tax prep, and automates them. Your expenses are categorized in real time. Your books stay organized and you can spend less time managing your money and more time growing your business. If I could go back to when I was starting my business, Found would have been at the top of my list for sure. Take back control of your business today. Open a Found account for free at found.com. That's F-O-U-N-D dot com.

8:08Kara Goldin:Found is a financial technology company, not a bank. Banking services are provided by lead bank member FDIC. Join the hundreds of thousands who have already streamlined their finances with Found. Oh, not nearly what really has gone on and what you've accomplished. So I'm so proud of you. But for listeners just discovering SuperSmile, How do you describe the brand today and what it really has always stood for? Well, I still feel today, as it was in the beginning, it's the only one of its kind. Because we don't use harsh abrasives. And we have a clinically proven proprietary formula that's our Coca-Cola.

9:01it's calprox which is calcium peroxide with phosphates and minerals your tooth is made up of your enamel is made up of calcium phosphates and minerals our core ingredient is made up of the same components and so every time you brush your teeth you're actually remineralizing them and you're keeping them shiny. Because when you're using an abrasive, for instance, would you use an abrasive on a glass table or on a window? If you use an abrasive, it starts to scratch. And as it scratches, it takes off the shine. Enamel, my husband, every time he would start lecturing to anyone and everyone, enamel is king.

9:54Enamel does not grow back. and one should try to maintain the enamel. Because as your enamel wears away, and as you've been using harsh abrasives and harsh toothbrushes and whatever, it starts to get thinner. Your color starts to get duller. And because it gets thinner, it starts to show the dentin. So it looks yellower. at that point you really can't do very very much you need to get either bonding or veneers or crowns which is the last resort but veneers and right now you could get veneers and then you'll be fine but it's an expensive thing and again you're doing my husband always said The best dentistry is no dentistry.

10:48To try to maintain everything. And this is how he started every lecture all over the world. And that was his main goal, was not to have a product that would be scratching away the enamel and be abrasive. Like, for instance, silica, which in nature and a natural toothpaste will be sand. So putting sand into your toothpaste and brushing your teeth with that is not the best choice. They now have come up with charcoal, which is even worse. You should really, I mean, the ADA and everybody says, don't use it more than once a week because you're really destroying your enamel.

11:38Kara Goldin:Imagine running your business on a patchwork of expensive tools, each one complicated, disconnected, and barely talking to the next. It drains time, it drains money, and it slows everything down. Now imagine replacing all of that with one powerful system that actually works together. That's Odoo. Odoo brings all your core business tools together in a single easy-to-use platform. So everything works seamlessly from accounting and CRM to marketing, inventory, HR, and manufacturing. Odoo keeps your entire operation connected and running smoothly. If your business needs it, Odoo's got it, giving you clarity, control, and peace of mind.

12:27Kara Goldin:Odoo sounds pretty amazing, right? So stop wasting your time and money on those expensive disconnected platforms and let Odoo harmonize your business with simple, efficient software that can handle everything for a fraction of the price. It doesn't get much better than that. So what are you waiting for? Discover how Odoo can take your business to the next level by visiting odoo.com. That's O-D-O-O dot com. Odoo, modern management made simple. Today's episode is sponsored by Found. Ask any small business owner, finances can get complicated fast. One tool for banking, another for bookkeeping, something else for invoicing, and then tax software layered on top.

13:16Kara Goldin:Before you know it, you're paying for multiple platforms and still don't have a clear picture of where your business actually stands. That's why Found makes so much sense. Found brings your essential financial tools into one place, banking, bookkeeping, invoicing, and tax-related tasks, all built directly into a business checking account. No bouncing between apps, no unnecessary complexity. What really stands out to me is how Found tackles the biggest pain points for small business owners, things like expense tracking, budgeting, invoicing, and tax prep, and automates them. Your expenses are categorized in real time.

13:58Kara Goldin:Your books stay organized and you can spend less time managing your money and more time growing your business. If I could go back to when I was starting my business, Found would have been at the top of my list for sure. Take back control of your business today. Open a Found account for free at found.com. That's F-O-U-N-D dot com. Found is a financial technology company, not a bank. Banking services are provided by lead bank member FDIC. Join the hundreds of thousands who've already streamlined their finances with Found. So that's our core thing is that our product dissolves the protein pellicle to which plaque, stain and bacteria attach.

14:49And it just removes it. And now we're finding out, well, we always knew, but the world is finding out that the mouth is the gateway to total oral health.

15:03Kara Goldin:Because if your gums are bleeding, the natural thing is, oops, I have blood on a toothbrush. I'm not going to go back there. Wrong. That's the worst possible thing you could be doing because it's just going to keep growing. You leave too little bacteria alone and they propagate faster than rabbits. I want to get into the backstory before we even get into all of the good stuff around the brand, which you're talking about. So you built SuperSmile alongside your husband, Dr. Erwin Smigel, your late husband. So what year was this and how did it come about that you decided it's time to build a brand?

15:49Kara Goldin:Obviously, he's an incredible dentist at that point. And what was the point where you said, let's build this brand? Well, he was an incredible dentist and he was the one who discovered tooth bonding. So if you have bonding in your mouth, he was the one who made it for aesthetics. He started to close spaces, lengthen teeth, build out the cheekbones, do aesthetic dentistry. And that's how aesthetic dentistry was born. And that's why he's in the Smithsonian Museum as the founder of aesthetic dentistry and the father of. However, the original bonding material was very porous. So yes, it looked wonderful, but if you ate blueberries or if you drank coffee or if you drank tea, it would absorb and it was much harder to clean.

16:45And in those days, they had red toothpaste and green toothpaste. So if you brushed your teeth with the red toothpaste, it was close up, your teeth would start getting red. because it would absorb the color. And the same thing with the green toothpaste. So, and it's always about me because my teeth were bonded. And I said, we can't keep doing this. I mean, I had to have the hygienist go over my teeth almost like once every couple of weeks. And dentist said, you invented this, come out with something to clean the teeth. And so we started working on it, but my husband refused to have abrasives. It took us four years to actually come up, to be able to encapsulate the calcium peroxide.

17:39Calcium peroxide, up until then, was used in white bread to condition it.

17:46Kara Goldin:So interesting. But because we had a chemist and my husband who think outside the box, and they decided this is going to work, but we have to encapsulate. Well, to this day, it takes 74 hours to manufacture one batch of SuperSmile, whereas it takes an hour and a half to two hours to three hours to manufacture anything else, including the box. So this is why we haven't been ripped off yet, because the manufacturing process is very complicated. And that's why our product is, they say, where's the white space? We're in the white space, but nobody else is there yet. And it's been 45 years. 45 years.

18:41Kara Goldin:So you started almost, in order to create the product, that was almost 50 years ago, right? Yes, exactly. Yeah, incredible. So was the idea always to have all these products and all these locations, as you do today, to build out the brand as you have? No, not at all. It was just to have the toothpaste. And we were giving it out to our patients. After they had bonding, they would get it. And dentists who were doing bonding, who had taken my husband's course, because they weren't teaching it in dental school at the time, and it was only for graduate dentists. So we had a bunch of dentists who had taken his course.

19:30He was their mentor. And actually, he started the American Society for Dental Aesthetics, which will be 50 years old this year.

19:39Kara Goldin:Wow. That is incredible. And so did you always work in the business? I know you were the first bonding patient that was getting it, but did you always work in the business? Accidentally, yes. I did not plan. That was not what I had planned to do. But I came to the office and one of his associates was sick. And he asked me to help out. I helped out and he didn't let me go home. Oh my gosh. And then I got so interested in prevention because my kids were very, very young and I took all the courses that pedodontists were giving. And they said, you never, ever have to lose a tooth. You never, ever have to have a cavity if you just wash your teeth properly.

20:39And this was the protocol. I started to teach brushing, flossing, and home care at our office and also to graduate dentists for them to teach their patients how to brush. Because my husband would say, it takes me a whole day to do a whole mouth, and then you're going to go home and not take care of it. It's not going to happen. I will do it if you promise that you will go through this protocol and you will brush your teeth. To this day, honestly, there's nothing that you could do for yourself in six minutes a day to brush your teeth twice a day for two minutes on a dry brush and brushing correctly and using the floss and using a rinse.

21:31There is nothing else you can do for yourself. And now we have gone, we started with one tube of toothpaste. We now have 74 skews. So we have you covered for the whole day for anything that can happen in your life. If you're out and your mouth feels bad because you just had garlic with lunch and you have to go back to the office, I have a quickie. You could have the quickie, you put it on, you go like that you just brushed your mouth feels clean and you can continue your day i mean we have a lot a lot of products and then we started it became a business and i i loved it i never studied to be i this was not anywhere near on my horizon when i was going to college or anything but it was so much fun.

22:27Every manufacturer of toothpaste came to our office trying to buy our product. And I kept saying, I'm having too much fun. I don't want to sell it. And that was the truth.

22:44Kara Goldin:So you launched, as you mentioned, with one product. And what was the point when you decided to expand outside of that one product? Well, I'll tell you, when we launched that one product, it became insane because we had, my husband practiced at that time with the bonding. Every model, every celebrity, anybody who was anybody all over the world had come to his office at one point or another. So all these people wanted the product. Now, we were making, originally, we made 500 tubes at a time, and it cost us$8 a tube. And it was selling, a good toothpaste at that time was selling for 80 cents. Our cost,$8.

23:44So we would be very not generous with giving it out. Every magazine wrote about my husband with the bonding. And somebody was sitting in the waiting room, and she saw people coming in and saying, this works so well on my teeth. My husband wants it. Can I please buy a tube? My tongue did not turn to$8. So I said,$4. And I figured, so we'll absorb the$4. I was not a good business person. so somebody was sitting in the waiting room and she happened to be an editor for mademoiselle she bought a tube of toothpaste she was waiting for her friend she said nothing the following month we get sacks and sacks of mail orders with four dollars attached to it i had to call the lawyer and ask him what are we going to do we're going to be out of it's going to cost us a fortune shipping.

24:47So anyway, that's how we started. So we had to order 20 ,000 tubes because that was the smallest amount. I had no idea about a fulfillment house because we didn't have Google and the Yellow Pages did not list fulfillment houses. It was crazy. It was really, really crazy. KTLA did a story on a toothpaste that was non-existent in LA. People started sending us checks in FedEx envelopes.

25:25Kara Goldin:Saying that they wanted the toothpaste. And so how long was it before you launched something other than the toothpaste then? Well, actually, it was because of QVC. They begged my husband to be on. He was on. And within four minutes, he was sold out. And they said, we need a TSV. I didn't know what it was a TSV. We had to go to Tallahassee. I mean, this was so crazy at the point. We did it as a lark. And then they said, we need new products. More, more, more. And then everybody wanted whiter teeth. And the only way you could get whiter teeth is by going to the dentist and having it done. And my husband was at the forefront of that.

26:21People would come, they would have their teeth done, whatever. And then he said, you know what? We could do an accelerator that you add to the toothpaste. You have the toothpaste and the accelerator. So you put a drop of this and a drop of that on a dry brush. Dry brush is very, very important. On a dry brush. And it'll work. And so that's how our system came about. So interesting. Amazingly. It worked amazingly. And as you continue, you can always improve. now you can get nine shades whiter just by brushing your teeth twice a day on a dry brush.

27:05Kara Goldin:With a dry brush. Your gums are getting healthier. Your enamel is going to be shiny. You're not going to be doing damage to your mouth. And there's nothing you can do for yourself in six minutes that gives you these results. I'm 91 years old, and I'm not going to lie. There's no point in lying. You can just look it up anywhere. And we had two hygienists in our office at all times. The only time I had a hygienist clean my teeth was when I was hiring them to see whether they had good hands and whether it was good. I now, to this day, have not had a cleaning in probably 37 years, professional cleaning.

28:02The associate who was with my husband, I do see him once in a while to make sure that everything is okay. And he says, there's nothing. I have all my teeth. I'm 91.

28:17Kara Goldin:Amazing. Anybody can do that. In six minutes, twice a day. Amazing. So what was the point that it went outside of the office, outside of your husband's dental practice? And how many locations do you have today? I'll tell you, the first thing was people were coming in and buying at the desk, and my husband came over to me and said, that's it. Get them out. We're not selling toothpaste. So what I did is I took a tube of toothpaste that we had in a package, our original package, and I went to the, I don't know if you know New York well enough, But on Mount Avenue, across the street from Barney's, was a drugstore, Boyd's, very, very famous drugstore.

29:12They did makeup for you. So I went into Boyd's. It was two blocks away from our office at the time. And I said, can you get me this toothpaste? I bought it in California. So he looked through the book, and he said, it's not in the book. I said, oh, look, there's an address here and a phone number. So he said, give me your number. I'll call you. I'll order it. I said, I want two. So I ran back to the office two blocks away, sat there and waited for him to call, which he did. And he said, I'd like to order the toothpaste. And I said, I have a case pack of 12. And it's$8 a tube. and he said, you're out of your mind.

30:02So I said, you don't have to take it. So he said, but I, and I said, oh, and I said, it has to be at the checkout. So I said, you know what? Take it. If you don't sell it in a week, I'll take it back. You don't pay me anything. He called me back in two hours and he said, they must have stolen it or something. I need another. I said, send a messenger. And that's how we started. My real first location was Bigelow because I did a show. And at that time, the owner of Bigelow was an older couple. And they had their son with them, who's now the owner of Bigelow, Ian. And the mother was looking at it.