Life Changing Smiles

by William J. Baker, Jr.

Overview

Th is book is neither a novel, nor a fi ctitious story.
it is a true chronological accounting of how Kent
Hallmeyer, as a beginning dental technician, saw
the future of cosmetic dentistry, and dedicated
Frontier Dental Lab to revolutionizing the “drill
and fi ll” dentist profession.
It is a story of how Frontier Dental Lab applied the
cosmetic advances of Ivoclar’s pressed ceramics to making a beautiful
smile possible for anyone. It tells of how Kent, together with his General
manager Garrett Caldwell and their lab staff , conducted world-wide
seminars to introduce dentist to the art of cosmetic dentistry.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781468542837
Publisher:	AuthorHouse
Publication date:	04/11/2012
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	104
File size:	681 KB

Read an Excerpt

Life Changing Smiles

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By William J. Baker, Jr.

AuthorHouse

Copyright © 2012 William J. Baker, Jr.
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4685-4285-1

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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 bus from East Oakland to my great-grandmother's home in West Oakland. It was amazing how much we walked, and how we found the time to walk. That was probably because time management wasn't a part of me then, nor later. Everything has always had a priority to me. But there is no priority greater than finishing the task at hand. It has always been my driving force. Having many unfinished tasks is not my way of getting things done. I learned at an early age to group menial tasks of a similar nature and to concentrate my strengths on the difficult task.

Both of my parents worked, and it was easy to get into innocent trouble. I use to take the bus downtown to the YMCA. We'd escape from there and get out on the streets. We would collect bottles for money, and get French fries across the street from the "Y". I remember one time we went into Kahn's multi-story building which had a circular stair case with the center of the building being open. We went into the coffee shop on the top floor and got a handful of sugar cubes. Then, standing at the banister and looking down to the ground floor we began, "Pilot to Bombardier".... and dropped the sugar cubes down onto the dinnerware displays on the ground floor. The store people immediately ran our butts out of there with threats if we ever returned we'd go to jail. We never returned.

I recall a time when we dragged a bunch of dead limbs into an open storm drain and set them on fire. It made one hell of a fire, with smoke pouring out of the curb drains. The fire engines came and smoke was everywhere. They asked, "You kids see anything?" Naturally, we had not seen anything!

My great-grandmother, who we called, "Nan", was really something. She was an old Portuguese lady, short little thing with wiry hair, and coke-bottle glasses where her eyes looked like they are swirling in the glass. She had molds all over her face, and of course every time she'd see us she would kiss us hard on the lips. She had a woman's beard thing on her chin and it hurt like hell when she would push her chin against yours. She'd always give us a quarter in our hand. Cool, grandma.

She had a parrot, "Polly", who was her life time companion. When Nan was in the hospital for about three days the parrot died. The Vet said there was nothing wrong with the parrot, it just died of lonesomeness. Then, when she learned the parrot had died, she died shortly thereafter. It was quite a relationship. She and the parrot had lived together for nearly fifty years. We kids would try to get the parrot to talk, but it would only respond to Nan. It did, however, in the early hours of the day mimic Nan and call out, "Art, god damn you Art, get up". It also had a very nasty trick of tipping up it's rear-end and spraying whoever was close by.

In my early teens, Nan gave me a bicycle for Christmas, how neat! She lived in a tough part of West Oakland, and I had transported the bike on the bus from our home in East Oakland to her home for a visit. During the visit, Nan persistently told me, "Don't leave the bike outside". I heard her, but chose to say, "It will be okay." Well, it wasn't okay and the bike was gone. Nan, in a matter of fact way told me, "They got it. They win. You lose." I never got the bike back, and Nan did not get me another one. I had learned the lesson of being responsible for material things.

Another lesson I learned in getting started was it is easy to move ahead when you have nothing to lose. Once you are in a state of, "Hey, let's try, what the hell", you have mustered all your resources and set fear of losing aside. So, it makes you aggressive. You are willing to take a chance.

One of the most over played sayings is, "so and so came from Italy, or wherever, with ten cents in his pocket, and now he is a millionaire." What is left out of this saying is the person never had anything to lose, and therefore, he had no fear of losing. On the other hand, once you have it, the fear of losing it becomes greater, and the willingness to take a risk becomes less. You must fight this fear, for fear holds you back.

Chapter Two

FINDING A FIT

I was going to be a dentist. That was the plan. I don't know whose plan it was, perhaps, my mother's. A very close friend of my mother from childhood days was a dentist, and a rather colorful person who was a pilot in World War II, and in later years had his own airplane. Then again, it simply seemed to be the right thing to do. No matter where the idea came from, throughout high school all I thought about was becoming a dentist. Paul Taylor, my high school buddy, shared my dream and we were going to become dentists, together.

We started at Chabot College. I was a freshman, about 19, it is the height of the Vietnam War, and I was in the draft lottery which was run by your birthday. Fortunately, my number never came up. But, I wasn't being serious in my studies. My grades were bad and I was soon on my own. I was good in math, but a total failure in writing, particularly English grammar or Composition. My writing is terrible, that is why I always hired a good secretary in my business. My secretary had a Masters Degree in English. I would dictate it, and she would write it. My secretaries were expensive.

I was always good with my hands, and people kept telling me I should be a dentist. I was trying hard to learn of the qualifications for dental school. So, I took the bus over to San Francisco UCSF Dental School, where they showed me the pre-qualifications and financial obligations for dental school. A part of their entry qualification was taking a chalk tests for skills. I took the test and did very well. What was kind of neat about the test was I used it for skills evaluation in the dental lab, years and years later. So, it is something which came full circle.

My vision of becoming a dentist remained strong. But, my research of the cost of going to dental school showed it to be in the tens of thousands dollars. I didn't see how I would ever be able to pull it off. It became overwhelming.

I am convinced that over ninety percent of kids who graduate from college would never have graduated if it hadn't been for their parents. Without the parents showing them how to get there, driving them there, watching closely and prodding, a kid would not know what to do. The family that sends kids to college is usually, a family which went to college.

To get up the next rung on the ladder, or cross over to the other side of the tracks, is hard to do. Without the foundation and knowledge a kid doesn't know how to go to college. Neither of my parents, nor their parents, went to college. I started at Chabot College because I didn't know where else to go.

During this time, I was introduced to a member of a family down the street who did dental laboratory work. I really didn't know what dental laboratory work was, but I researched it and found there were schools which did two year programs. I abandoned my objective of going to dental school, as it just seemed unobtainable.

Although I was discouraged, I learned about the Orange Coast College, a dental technology school in the Newport Beach area. A friend of mine, Stewart Selland, who was our high school class president, was attending there, and I thought it would be fun knowing someone at the school. I tried for admittance, but was rejected.

However, I did get accepted to the Diablo Valley program. Okay, now here is a two year program, and you get a skill. I had not known that the majority of dental technicians are hired off the street without formal dental training. Now, here I am, a graduate of a two year dental program and I am automatically ahead of the average technician. However, I am not looking at how much does it pay, where are the work locations, or any other factors of employment. I was out of college, employable, and ready to make my mark.

Three of us rented a four bedroom house and my parents paid my part of the forty dollar a month rent. These guys were real interesting. I recall how one of them went to Mexico and was gone for five months. When he came back, he announced he'd been in prison. We guessed he was arrested for drugs, although we never learned what the charges were.

While at Diablo Valley College I ventured into the stained glass business. I made some real hot stuff, and the extra money was really great. But, I got very sick, and I couldn't figure out what was wrong. Well, after a visit to the doctor it was determined I had lead poisoning which put an end to the stained glass business.

I completed the Diablo Valley two year programs. During my time there, I did real well doing odd jobs in the college dental lab. I was named to receive an award at graduation, but I chose not to take the award. It was a mistake not to take the award. My father was very upset, and the instructor who had named me for the award was greatly disappointed. It is not just whether you think you deserve the award; it is also recognition of the one who is naming you for the award.

In our industry awards played a great part, and awards were needed by some workers. I learned from that early experience that awards are as important to the receiver as they are to the giver, or nominating person.

A nice thing about the Diablo Valley training program was they did a job placement in the last semester. In 1973 they placed me in a lab near Lake Merritt in Oakland. I went there. It was messy, trashy and not what I thought a lab should look like. In later years, I would come to understand, and accept the fact, that most labs are messy, trashy and unkempt looking, although not dirty.

I went looking elsewhere, although it was expected I would go to the lab where I had been sent. I found a lab in Livermore which was really clean. It was spotless. They took me on at a small income while I was there. My teacher was really upset when he learned I had not gone to the lab where he had sent me. Actually, I don't know how it might have worked out, as that lab later became known as a truly skilled lab, and became one of the largest in the Bay Area.

I ended up getting my AA degree and was working at Valley Dental Ceramics in Livermore. I was really impressed with the owner. He was skilled and had his own business. I thought he was real cool. We were working late one night when I accidentally burned the counter top. The owner came in, saw a bunch of beer cans in the trash and fired me. I was outside, alongside of my car when the owner, the same guy who fired me ten minutes before, yells to me, "come back here, you aren't fired, I need you."

The next few days I reflected on the situation, coming to the conclusion I should not have been drinking on the job. But, I was 22, young, and a little crazy. It was a lesson learner, a big lesson learner. I stayed there a couple of more years. Many years later, when I was running my lab I reflected on that day and the handling of an employee involving alcohol or drugs.

Chapter Three

LEARNING CERAMICS

I was doing crown and bridge work, but I wanted to do ceramics. I wanted to make teeth which looked like teeth, not gold crowns and bridges. There was a fellow worker in the lab that did all the ceramic work. He was good, and I wanted to do what he did. On my break time, lunch and whenever, I would go over to the other part of the lab where the ceramic work was done and practice on a job. The owner wasn't too approving of my behavior. So, I started practicing making ceramic teeth at home, and kept alert to what was going on in other labs.

In 1976, we moved to Sacramento so my wife could be closer to her parents. On a day we were visiting her parents an ad came out in the Sacramento Bee. "Wow, look at this", I shouted when I read the ad. I checked it out learning they were looking for a crown bridge technician. It paid seven hundred dollars a month. So, I went and interviewed on a weekend. I wasn't brought up to say I was sick and take the day to interview for another job. I wound up taking the job and I was there for six years. I would go to dental courses myself, paid for them myself and practice on the small work bench at home. I would practice, practice and then practice some more. I didn't have a clue at what I was doing, but I learned to handle the materials, and I got a solid feel for what I was doing. Not only that, I became good at it, damn good at it. Actually, it is quite simple. You take a powder, add water to it, make a paste and apply it to the surface. Too wet and it runs, too dry and it will not adhere. All it takes is skill and timing. The years moved on. I am now making nine-hundred a month. A home cost about forty-thousand. I was able to buy a house in 1978.

I kept doing porcelain at home, and my skills became ever refined, but I couldn't break through the office hierarchy which left me with crowns and bridges. It was about 1980 when my buddy got the idea of starting a lab. I am in my early twenties and we go about starting the lab. We gather up a lot of used equipment and take it to a house we rented on Williams Way in Sacramento. Then I panicked, I wasn't ready. I couldn't do it. I pulled out of the deal and I regretted my action for the next couple of years.

I went back to the lab and issued the ultimatum, "I do ceramics or I leave", Karl said, "Okay". I started doing work I enjoyed and I developed a good attitude. But, after a while the whole thing got to be too much of an assembly line thing, and it wasn't rewarding.

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from Life Changing Smiles by William J. Baker, Jr. Copyright © 2012 by William J. Baker, Jr.. Excerpted by permission of AuthorHouse. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Table of Contents

Contents

PROLOGUE....................v
ONE Getting Started....................1
TWO Finding a Fit....................7
THREE Learning Ceramics....................12
FOUR Starting the Business....................15
FIVE The Dental Revolution....................20
SIX A New Business....................25
The Magazine....................37
SEVEN Growing Pains....................35
EIGHT "Off the Bench"....................44
NINE Introducing Piece Work....................49
TEN Smiling Dentist....................52
ELEVEN Cosmetic Dentistry....................54
TWELVE Growing People....................57
THIRTEEN Life Changing Smiles....................60
FOURTEEN Selling of Frontier....................63
EPILOGUE....................67
ADDENDUM: ONE....................70
TWO....................76
THREE....................81
FOUR....................90