Episode 89 Transcript
Heather Porter:
All right. Sonia, welcome to the show. I'm really, really excited you're going to be here. We're going to have such a fun conversation as I get to know you and what you do in your business. So welcome. My listeners love tips straight off the bat. So that's what we're going to start with. And then we'll get to know you, your journey, and what you're up to these days. But before we do that, if you could think through moments of your practice, your business, your online empire, everything that you're doing, the moments of high stress, high growth, what have you done specifically to help keep yourself grounded and sane, let's say sane as much as you could during those crazy busy times?
Sonia Chopra:
I think really having a good perspective on things and during the craziness, I always have to take a breath and zoom out a little bit and see my problems from over here. And when I do that, I, I honestly feel like they're not as big anymore. And so that just kind of alleviate some of the anxiety that I think one can have as a business owner. And then it just lets you relax. And the moment you surrender to that, and then you trust that everything is going to be okay, you can kind of change the perspective. You can get the clarity that you need to actually make the right decision and the right strategical moves to get yourself out of that rut. That makes sense.
Heather Porter:
Perfect sense. Yeah. Perspective. I, I would agree is everything, especially when you're in overwhelming, just kind of cycling around in your head, just kind of stuck.
Sonia Chopra:
Yes. It's so easy to get there. It's so easy to stay there, but it's really important to get out of that mindset and make that shift. So important.
Heather Porter:
Do you have any practical tips that you do in your day-to-day, whether it's calendar or team or, you know, health and wellness, what do you, what do you do to look after that?
Sonia Chopra:
It's all of the above. I think team is so important. I have so many teams, you know, like even having a team in my house, I'm a mother of three, you know, and then I have essentially two businesses now, right? Like my, I have my practice and then I have my side hustle, which has turned into a full fledged business. Yeah. So for me, if I tried to do everything myself, I would get nothing done. I would just get stuck in the cycle of overwhelm. So really developing people, developing leaders and having good systems in place. And I feel like sometimes I can be the most unorganized, organized person. So I think the systems really help and. clear expectations and rest.
Heather Porter:
Those are all important. They're all important. Do you have recommendations for team? I love that you have a team for your home and obviously the business. As far as being a leader, because you are, what recommendations do you have to people that are building a team right now in their own life or business?
Sonia Chopra:
Yeah, I think that can be, it can be so hard to relinquish control, but you really have to believe that there are other people out there who can do things better than you. Like I'm a dentist, right? I'm a dentist. And so I do dentistry well, but I don't do all the other things. Well, I'm a, I'm trained to do dentistry. I'm not trained to, you know, crunch numbers. I'm not trained to, you know, I'm not trying to manage a team, right? But those are skills that I've had to develop over time. And I think the art of delegation and really respecting that is such a skill that I'm so happy that I developed because my controlling like mentality behavior, right? I feel like I'm a recovering control freak, right? Yeah. But when you utilize tools like project management tools, like Asana or ClickUp and things like that, you can still micromanage, but in a softer way. Right. And in a way that's organized so that you're not going crazy, wondering if things are getting done or not. And then that allows you to relinquish that control.
Heather Porter:
I like that you said that, you know, you've had to learn how to do that. I think a lot of people forget that like, it's not for a lot of us, not natural to delegate and it's hard to let go of control. And it is a practice that you have to put in place to do it. Yeah.
Sonia Chopra:
And I have to be patient with myself to, to, to really understand how to do it well. Yeah. You know, um, it took me, it just took me time to really figure that out. And it was a few years before I'm like, okay, this is really how you delegate properly. And this is how you communicate properly. Cause it can be easy to communicate from a place of anxiety and fear. Yes. But when you don't do that, you actually learn to empower people and grow people. And then all of a sudden you cultivate these leaders that can take things off your bike.
Heather Porter:
Well said, Sonia. Love it. So I want to get to know more about you and where you've come from, because you just said earlier, you're a dentist and you actually have two businesses. So why dentistry? Why did you choose that as a path initially?
Sonia Chopra:
So growing up, I didn't have many choices. My parents basically said I had to be a dentist or a doctor because I'm Indian. So that's kind of like the common thing. And I saw the lifestyle that my mother chose. She's a physician and she's an anesthesiologist. And she was always, she was always on call and she really didn't have a lot of freedom when it came to her family. And I saw that it kind of broke her a little bit. And so I was, I knew from a very early age that that is something that I didn't want to do. Although I was still very intrigued by medicine, I actually loved it. I didn't want to have the lifestyle that my mother did. So I went in, I, I chose dentistry for two reasons. Lifestyle was one. The other was because I was always the dental patient. And so, um, I had a really bad toothache, um, when I was 17 years old, that toothache led to an extraction of a tooth that unfortunately wasn't the culprit tooth. And I still had my toothache after that extraction. And that really had an impact on me. And I met an endodontist who really, who got me out of pain, like months of pain, because nobody could figure out where my pain was coming from. But this guy changed my life. And I was like, wow, I just, I remember how he treated me with such respect. And he empowered me to trust my body, trust my symptoms. And I looked at him and I was like, I want to be him when I grow up. And that's what I became. I became and ended on is just like he did. And that's a that's a root canal specialist. And so I that's I do root canals for a living. I do about eight to 10 root canals a day. Oh, my gosh. Yeah, it's kind of crazy. It's not to most people. It's not a very sexy job. But I actually really love what I do. And I've been doing it for 15 years.
Heather Porter:
You must be incredibly good at it. I mean, for eight to 10 a day and doing what you do. Yeah, I had to get one and I was so scared because no one kind of walks you through. It's actually not that scary. And if it's done well, it just changed your life and removes pain like what you were saying. So amazing. So, okay, you're doing that. You've been doing that for a long time. And then what came first, the TED Talk or the online platform to teach others?
Sonia Chopra:
The online platform came first. Okay. Tell me more. I realized when I, as I'm in practice, I acknowledge that I was seeing my tooth story that I had as a 17 year old kid. I would see it show up fast forward 30 years, right? I would see it show up in my practice. And I was like, something's wrong here. Like, why, why don't we know this story by now? How come we don't know how to treat this story by now? I think we can really help people if we fix this. And so I would, you know, do little lectures here and there in my community. And then I took a step back. I said, well, why am I just lecturing within my community? Why don't I create a platform and make it global? You know, if people in Charlotte, North Carolina don't know this stuff, there's gotta be other people in the world that don't know this stuff that need to know this stuff. So I created an online endodontic education platform for general dentists to learn how to do root canals even better. I mean, we only are required to do two to three root canals before we graduate dental school, and then we're given the right to do it. And so there's just not enough education. I got a two week crash course in dental school. And then I only had to do four root canals in my program. And then I was free to do it. And it's a very technique sensitive procedure that if not done well can cause be a cause for somebody to either lose their tooth or have to do that procedure over again. So I took it upon myself to, to really give back to my profession and create this, this course that helps dentists really understand the field of endodontics even deeper.
Heather Porter:
you're a true entrepreneur and that they say an entrepreneur takes a problem that's not theirs and they solve it. So, yeah. And what a movement. So around the world, if you think about all the students in your platform, how many countries are represented in there at this point?
Sonia Chopra:
I mean, there's, there's several, there's at least a dozen. I mean, I'm primarily obviously teaching US and Canada, but I've had people in Australia, I've had really in the UK, I've had Ireland, I've had Qatar, I've had Philippines, I mean, I've, there have been people all over the world who've taken the course. And, you know, that's, I think it's, it's just the beginning. So that's exciting.
Heather Porter:
Yeah. So question for you to go from being a dentist and then thinking, okay, so I want to help others. I want to get the message out there. Obviously you weren't trained in tech or online marketing or any of that stuff. So talk, talk to me about how you even got started with that.
Sonia Chopra:
I'm still not trained in tech, which I think is the key is the key. It's like my, my job is not to learn the tech. My job is to find good people at tech. Right. Yeah. And that's, that's how I I everyone I think needs to stay in their zone of genius. And you just find other people in their zone of genius. You know, I really believe that the universe wanted me to create and birth this course, because I have been delivered some serious angels in my life.
Heather Porter:
Yeah.
Sonia Chopra:
And I have this one lady, her name is Lisa, I'm going to give her a shout out because without her, I never I never would have launched this. She was a woman of all trades. She was amazing. And she basically helped me pull this idea out of my brain, package it and market it and launch it and get it out to the world. And then poof, she was gone from my life. It was really, it's crazy, crazy, but she didn't just leave. She like left me in good hands with another angel named Marie. And then Marie took care of me. And I feel like I just keep having these angels. It's really weird. I, but they have fully supported me and they've had these amazing marketing online entrepreneurial brains that have now like that, those brain cells have like kind of, I've adopted them. And so I've learned along the way. And I've, I was thinking about how long I've been doing this. I just had, I started my blog and 20. 17. I launched on my birthday in 2017. So December coming up. And then now fast forward, it's been six years and it's been quite incredible. And I didn't know one thing about being an online entrepreneur. And now I feel like I'm pretty savvy, which is kind of cool. So it was an organic growth and I've learned from people and I still And I don't expect myself to know everything. I just I asked a lot of questions. I make sure I get good referrals. I know when to trust people. And I kind of put all the pieces together to make it all work.
Heather Porter:
Wow. Okay. So with your course, how, I'm just curious, how do you actually market it? Because you are marketing it to professionals and there's a lot of people out there that go, Oh, that's really difficult. Like how do you reach these people? They're not ever on social media. How do you market it?
Sonia Chopra:
I mean, it's social media mainly. So there you go. I kicked it off with a blog, right? Okay. Yeah. I provided value for an entire year. I honestly have a true passion because I would see this case come into my office and I'd be like, why doesn't nobody know this? Like this patient deserves the best, you know? And so I would just full on like passion flow would flow out of me. And I would just write how, like write about this tooth story and how I want this patient to be treated, you know? And it's not that somebody did something wrong. They're just doing the best that they can with the resources they were given. They just weren't given the best resources. So my blog was true passion. I just wrote for an entire year. I didn't have anything to sell. And then I broke the course and then I launched that in 2019. And, but I'd already built an email list. Only a thousand people were on my email list in the beginning. And I sold 38 courses, my first launch, but it was a mix of email blogging, really showing up for my audience, being consistent, um, and providing value at no charge for a year.
Heather Porter:
And that, but that's the right way to do it. Whenever I'm talking to people in my space of marketing as well. Um, it's really hard when somebody comes to me and goes, I have a course or a service. Um, you know, I, I, I don't have a following, uh, I've never done anything online and let's sell it, but I feel like that's very back to front. Right.
Sonia Chopra:
Yeah. And I did, I, you know, I started with social, I did like two, two posts a week. I, um, you know, I only did Facebook and Instagram in the beginning. Now I'm dabbling in a little bit of LinkedIn, but I don't get too caught up in the social media thing. I don't want to, cause it can honestly consume your life. Like for me, providing valuable content is what I want to do and where my passion is. Um, so it's a mix of that. Obviously I have an ad spend budget. It wasn't big in the beginning, but it's gotten bigger. I have the ability to make it bigger. And now I feel like word of mouth is starting.
Heather Porter:
Got it. Okay. And I love that you also said it's, it's like, you don't have to live on social media to be successful. You're very methodical and have a strategy to just give value. You don't even have to do huge amounts, right? You just focus on the value. Smart, because there's a misconception out there as well. You know, Oh my gosh, do I have to do Instagram stories every day? And do I have to do daily posts? And yeah, no, I'm glad that you said you don't. Yeah.
Sonia Chopra:
Yeah. And actually I did a lot of webinars. I do a lot of webinars because that's how people in my industry and the dental industry, that's how we learn and you know, COVID taught us a lot because we are all most, you know, I'm a busy working mom and a lot of my audience is a busy working mom. We don't want to close our practice. We don't want to travel. We don't want to leave our family. So the online consumption of dental CE is really important. So, I added being able to give a CE certificate, which created more value. I give free webinars that count towards their CE requirement every year. I do now lecture a lot around the country as well. So it's a hodgepodge of marketing ideas.
Heather Porter:
It's not just one thing. Yeah. Perfect. Love it. Now talk to me about Sonia, the speaker. You just said you speak around the country, but you've also done it.
Sonia Chopra:
Is TED talk or TEDx? Um, I, it's a TEDx. I was in farming, Farmingdale, New York is where I did mine. Yeah.
Heather Porter:
Yeah. Okay. What did you talk about and what was it like?
Sonia Chopra:
I talked about root canals. It was a cool little experience. It was in a speakeasy. So you went through this little ice cream shop You found this bookshelf, you pressed on the head door open and you went downstairs and it was this tiny little cute little speakeasy, very limited audience. And yeah, did the Ted talk. I got rejected many times. And then finally I was, I was accepted. Cause you know, oral health is not really a very sexy topic. Nobody really wants to talk about it. But I talked about root canals and how they can be, there's a lot of bad press about root canals out there. And so my mission is to show the world that they're actually regenerative when they're done well. You can actually grow your bone back, not just save your tooth, but grow your bone back and you can heal yourself through the power of the root canal. And it's really a cool procedure that I'm like, okay, well, I can continue to talk to dentists and teach them how to do it. but also I feel like patients should be a good advocate for themselves and they need more education. So that was my opportunity to share my expertise with the general public and give them information that I think could help them save their time, save their money and their teeth.
Heather Porter:
And I will definitely agree with you that there's a lot of bad information out there. I remember when I was told that I had to have one, I of course Googled it and it scared, scared myself to death. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It was like, what, what, who do I believe? And, and, um, so yeah, I'm glad that you're an advocate and you're putting that information out there from somebody that gets it and has been doing it for a very long time and is an expert in this space. I think more people need to get out there in their craft when they have proof and talk about it publicly. Cause there's a lot of misinformation, isn't there?
Sonia Chopra:
Of course. Yes. And, um, I think it's important, like even it's, it's easy to be shy. But just take the leap and start doing it. I'm so happy that I did.
Heather Porter:
Yeah, so glad to hear it. So thinking about all of the students that you have in your online program, is there anything that specifically stands out to you that maybe helped them massively? Was it something that you have said? Was it a way you've delivered content? What do you think is maybe one or two things that you know you've made an impact to them?
Sonia Chopra:
Well, I do. feel like my my way of teaching is different and it's very and I and I actually it's that's my one of my favorite things you know if you are ever in like one of the dental Facebook groups or ever experienced dental school you'll see that sometimes the educators are really nasty and when you have somebody trying to teach you something and they're just not nice and they're not kind, it's really hard to learn. So I think, you know, having kindness in your way of teaching and being supportive really empowers dentists to be even better dentists. So for me, I feel like not allowing anyone to feel stupid, asking questions has been my, my greatest superpower.
Heather Porter:
Love it. And I think there's so much Sonia that you're saying here that can cross over to people no matter what they do with that whole lead with kindness approach. Listen to people, don't make them feel stupid. There's a lot that you've said in this conversation so far that anyone can grab onto and listen to. And specifically, if you have an idea and you know that it can benefit a lot of people, just do it. Just do it. And you don't need to have the skill sets. You don't even need to know how. I've always been told when you're wanting to work on amazing new projects or businesses, don't worry so much about the how, worry about the who. Have you ever heard that before?
Sonia Chopra:
You know, I think I have, but now that you say it again, it makes even more sense. And I think it's, you don't even need a lot of who's like, I remember in the beginning thinking, okay, if I can just help one person, If this all flops and I help one person, that was totally worth it.
Heather Porter:
I love it. So good. What are you doing next? What's the focus for you in the future, next year?
Sonia Chopra:
So I am starting to really talk to patients. So my primary audience has been dentists, but as a result, patients have organically found my website and have have traveled to come see me to make, allow me to do their root canal. I've been super honored, but I realized that this information is really needed for, for patients. My other next step is I am going to be creating a business course for dentists. So how to really build your practice and at the same time, save your time because we waste a lot of time and we can probably and increase what we do at the practice, but also pull back our time and then do things that we love. A lot of dentists are burnt out. We stop doing things that we love. We forget to play. And I can find people time in their schedules so that they don't have to lose, you know, the production that they create at the office, but they can consolidate some of their time so that now all of a sudden they have a day or maybe two days free away from the office, or somebody else can do some work, but you can step back to actually enjoy your life. So a little bit of a business course that I'm working on, and also a course to help patients really navigate their way through the dental office.
Heather Porter:
With the course for the patients, is that a free course or a paid course?
Sonia Chopra:
It's going to be a paid course. It won't be much. It's, you know, it's really meant to be affordable, but also meant to show value.
Heather Porter:
And we all know that when something's free, it's attractive and you want to sign up for it, but you might never ever do anything with it because there's no value. With the business course, what platform do you actually use to deliver these courses? I'm just curious. Yeah, I use Kajabi. I was wondering if you use that because it's such a popular course and in for a platform for courses. Okay. So you'll just build another course in your Kajabi platform. Correct. Yep. Amazing. And when is that due to come out?
Sonia Chopra:
I, you know, I need to just finish it. It's almost ready. I'm almost ready for production. And then once it produces them, it depends on the editor.
Heather Porter:
Perfect. Perfect. So yeah, you're just been such a great case study of somebody that has such a gift that can, you can share it in multiple ways. You don't need to worry about how to do it. Just find the right people on the team. And you are, I mean, three kids, you're a busy mom and you've managed to somehow make all of this happen. So based on that thought, is there anything else that you'd like to share with the listeners around managing a life and a business that allows you to love what you do?
Sonia Chopra:
Yes. I mean, I really feel that you should pay attention to what moves you inside and don't ignore that. And I think that's what I did. And so now when I'm doing work, I don't really feel like it's work. I enjoy it. And that's a problem though, because now I can just get stuck doing the work, which you do have to take a break. But figure out what works with what you want to do and what aligns with your values. And it becomes a lot of fun. It doesn't feel like a job anymore. And I also have a tendency to be super perfectionist. As an endodontist, we work on like millimeters, right? So I have a tendency, most dentists are type A, right? And we have those perfectionistic, tendencies, but I've learned through this whole process about like forgiveness through the process, forgive yourself. Don't even like launch things as a B minus. Cause it's kind of like your wedding day. You're the only one who knows when something went wrong. Nobody else knows you launch things as a B minus don't wait for the a plus build that a plus over time based on feedback from the people who are using your product. don't go for the A plus right away, which is what I thought I needed to do. I could have launched my thing probably nine months earlier than I did, but I was so stuck in that. And then finally I was like, okay, I'm just going to press go. And I realized I should have done that a long time ago. So I'll never forget that lesson. And that lesson is what keeps me moving. You can always put something out there and perfect it as you go. You don't have to perfect it before you launch it.
Heather Porter:
I think that is the perfect place to wrap up our conversation. And if anyone wants to learn more about you, I know I probably have a few dancers listening on this, but just in general, people want to connect with you. Where do they go and find out more?
Sonia Chopra:
Yeah. So I usually hang out on Instagram. You can find me at Sonia Chopra DDS. That's Sonia with an I. And then also my website is Sonia Chopra DDS.com.
Heather Porter:
Perfect. Thank you so much for sharing your journey and throughout the entire conversation, so many words of beautiful wisdom to our listeners as well. It's been such a pleasure having you here. Thank you so much.
