This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
Hey, what's up? Thank you for tuning in to Side Hustle School. My name is Chris Guillebeau. So glad you're here listening from wherever you are in the world. I hope you're taking action on an idea that's gonna create more economic freedom opportunity, possibility for you.
And welcome as well to Throwback Thursday. We also call this Where Are They Now? Where we take an in-depth look at someone whose story has evolved since we first featured them. Now, last week we heard from Regina Leeds. Regina is an actress who starred in many popular TV shows.
She had a recurring role on "The Young and the Restless," and she eventually left that career to become a professional organizer and author. Now, today in our latest feature, we're gonna hear from a North Carolina orthodontist who invents a better way to treat impacted teeth. It's called the isoglyde eruption spring. He's gonna tell us more about it. And as he explains, people in his profession have used the same tool and method for a very long time, which would be great if it was effective, but it's actually been painful and slow.
Painful for patients, slow for orthodontists, frustrating for everybody involved. And so this guy, Grant Coleman, created a tool that is both less painful and faster, and business is booming. Glad to hear that. What's happened since? Let's get some more details directly from Grant.
I'll come back at the end with a quick wrap up. [Music]
I am Dr. Grant Coleman. I'm an orthodontist in private practice in Charlotte, North Carolina. And my side hustle is I designed and developed and patented the isoglyde eruption spring, which is an orthodontic device.
And yes, I was featured in episode 917 of Side Hustle School, and I guess maybe over a year ago. So as an orthodontist, one of the common problems that we deal with is impacted teeth. Any tooth can impact, and that just means the tooth gets stuck up in the jaw and does not grow incorrectly. And those teeth are frequently important and have to be brought into the mouth. And that requires a surgical procedure, and something has to be attached to the tooth to help bring it in.
And the old traditional way of doing that was literally to glue a small gold chain to the tooth and then pull on it with rubber bands slowly over the course of six to 12 months. And I developed an appliance that replaces that old technique with a spring that brings the tooth in for you so that you don't have to re-tie it constantly, and it does it a lot faster. My side hustle journey began in 2008. I was working in my own practice tying a gold chain on an impacted canine, and I got really frustrated. It was not a fun procedure.
I was having a hard time seeing the tiny links of chain, and the patient was uncomfortable. It was hurting the patient. And I just, I kinda lost it. And I said, "There's gotta be a better way to do this. This is ridiculous." Because we've progressed in every other area of orthodontics so much, and then when it comes to these impacted teeth, we are literally tying a chain with a rubber band.
And it just seems so primitive. And that's when I started prototyping my device. And that's what kicked off the process. I spent probably 10 years developing and testing that device in my office before I ever launched it to the public for sale. I have been so pleased with how Isaglide has done.
We, from 2019 to 2020, we doubled our sales. And then from 2020 to this year, we are on track to double again. And so our sales have really just started to escalate. I've sold and shipped Isaglide now to I think 39 or 40 US states, and 12 or 14 foreign countries around the globe as far away as Australia and New Zealand. I've shipped to the United Arab Emirates and South Africa, just tons of places because this is a worldwide problem for orthodontics and orthodontists, and people are seeing that this is a better way to do it.
The biggest challenge we are facing is getting the word out to orthodontists around the country and around the world because, well, COVID did not help that because one of the main ways we were planning on introducing this to the orthodontic industry is through trade shows. We have regional and national meetings where you can have a booth and there's big ballrooms full of vendors that are able to display what they've developed. Those all got canceled with COVID. And so we are just now finally getting able to attend some shows in person. And so in the meantime, we've just been using social media and that has been great and we've reached a lot of orthodontists.
But what I realized after going to my first in-person meeting recently is that there are a lot of adults and a lot of orthodontists that are not on social media that much. They may use it for their business but don't really look at it regularly. And we are missing a lot of people because a lot of people just are not on Facebook and Instagram. My advice for anyone considering their own side hustle would be don't give up on your idea. If you have an idea that you feel like needs a need and can be helpful or popular in a way, I guess, don't give up on it.
Pursue it and don't quit even if it gets difficult because it takes time. It is not an overnight process. I have battled a lot of slowness and setbacks with this and it has been worth it. Awesome, thanks to Grant for sharing his updates with us. I want to encourage you to take a look at isoglidespring.com just in case you are an orthodontist or if you play one on TV, maybe you should check it out or if you know someone in need of orthodontic services.
But actually, even if not, I think you can always learn something from an e-commerce website or anything that offers something for sale or a service you can pay for. This is part of what we do here on the show. We're like, let's look at this. Why is it working? And when we look at it, again isoglidespring.com, we'll link it up on the notes page, lots of testimonials right on the homepage.
I mean, it's clear that this is making a difference for people. And I think that's so important for a product that's believing pain, right? It's alleviating pain. It's also, you have to encourage orthodontists to update their tools and techniques, which you can encounter some resistance. People don't like change.
They're comfortable with what they've been using for a long time. So he's really addressing that right up front with social media, right? Using for a long time, so he's really addressing that right up front with social proof. He also has some fun with the gold chains treatment, which is the traditional method of treating these impacted teeth using gold chains. And right on the homepage, he says, gold chains are for Mr. T, pocket watches
and grandma's spectacles, not for taking care of our patients, not for respecting their time and ours. So I liked the light approach with the copy along with the clear demonstration of effectiveness. I think it's a good combination and obviously it's working well. Okay, that's all for today. If you have a question, if you have an update for us about your side hustle, sidehustleschool.com/questions.
The note page is 1881. That would be sidehustleschool.com/1881. I'll be back tomorrow. New episode every single day. Hope you will subscribe or follow.
My name is Chris Guillebeau. This is "Side Hustle School." [Music]
From the "Onward Project."
