Delulu Is the Key: Making Impossible Dreams Come True

Dr. Shon shares inspiring stories from her dental practice and her challenging journey from poverty to becoming a dentist without parental guidance or established connections in the field.

• Most memorable patients are elderly ones who offer wisdom about aging gracefully and living authentically
• Heartbreaking experiences treating oral cancer patients drive commitment to thorough screenings
• Created a custom dental tray for an incarcerated patient whose insurance wouldn't cover it
• Overcame significant challenges including failing organic chemistry before eventually succeeding
• Applied to dental school twice, being rejected the first time before gaining admission to Meharry
• Drove 45 minutes to work for free shadowing a dentist who turned out to be Meharry's class president
• Developed "consistency soup" philosophy: combining delusion, showing up, being unapologetic, passion, gratitude and creativity
• Emphasizes the importance of thoroughly investigating career interests before committing

Whatever dream you're pursuing, create your own consistency soup to make it happen. Test your interests, shadow professionals, and don't let rejection stop you from showing up with your head high and shoulders back.

Chapters

• 1:13 Memorable Patient Stories
• 3:52 Overcoming Intimidation
• 8:33 Dental Career Insights
• 10:31 My Path to Dentistry
• 16:44 Creating Your Consistency Soup
• 21:40 Pushing Through Rejection

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:37

Hi, dr Sean, could you share any interesting or memorable patient stories from work? Yes, I can definitely share. I have a lot of patients who are very interesting. By the way, they're very, very interesting. I think my most interesting patients are the elderly patients. Honestly, so, my most interesting patients are definitely the elderly patients. Honestly, so my most interesting patients are definitely the elderly patients and I find our conversations just to be like enlightening.

Speaker 1: 1:10

Anytime I get somebody who's like 80 or 90 in the chair, I'm always like wow. First question how did you keep your teeth so long? And I'm also asking how do I age gracefully? So they always just say, like the most simplest thing, like you just gotta be free, be you like, don't worry about what other people think of you. Be you, live your best life, don't really worry. And they always say you so young, no matter what age you are. When you meet somebody that old, they always tell you how young you are and how much time you have.

Speaker 1: 1:51

I had patients who are from one of my most interesting patients. They are from the islands I won't really say which islands, just trying to stick with HIPAA and all that but they are from the islands and they always bring food. So I have these patients who always bring food, always trying to get me fat. We just laugh In motivational dentistry office. Honestly, all of my patients are. They all bring different stories. They bring totally different stories. And's just like a family here. When they show up, we laugh, we talk, they found out about me, I learned about them and it's just great conversations, probably unlike any other dental office, because I really like to take my time. But the most memorable patients when it comes to teeth, I would say the patients, especially since this oral cancer awareness month, those patients who I meet who have oral cancer those are like the most heartbreaking patients and their stories about how they came into this unfortunate disease is really scary, it's alarming and it's eye-opening. That's why I take oral cancer screenings on every patient and I try not to ever forget it because it's so important.

Speaker 1: 3:17

I had a patient. This patient was incarcerated and while incarcerated they developed oral cancer and in while they were in there, the facility allowed it to get really out of control and faces like swole, like this, like a big, huge abscess under the neck, and this is something that is life threatening, that can close your airway, and it's a very aggressive disease and if you don't know, then it can really take you out. This patient he was on lower income insurance and insurance wouldn't cover the thing that he needed. So this is when I first started practicing in one of the offices. So I, as a dentist, I learned the skill to make what he needed without the lab. So I decided to make what he needed without the lab because the insurance that I was using to cover him was only paying, we'll say, less than $10. It was like what is this? So sometimes as dentists we can do things and put a patient's care and what they need in front of the money, especially if you see something like that. So I saw that he needed this tray because these trays they use them while they're going through, like chemo radiation, to prevent the teeth from being destroyed completely by the medication because it creates a toxic environment in the mouth. So the trays they put solutions in the trays that have extra fluoride to kind of protect the teeth as much as possible and without making the tray, then he would have the risk of losing the teeth and that's something that's super, super scary. So that's one of the interesting patient stories that I can tell you from work. That's kind of a scary story. So make sure you are getting your oral cancer screenings. And if you smoke cigarettes, then you definitely want to have an oral cancer screening at least once a year. Okay, and make sure your dentist is doing that, because some dentists don't do that.

Speaker 1: 5:22

I was intimidated, guys. I'm gonna tell you why. I was intimidated to be the only one in the room, like dang. I thought somebody else was gonna show up. But it doesn't work that way all the time. It doesn't work that way all the time. Sometimes it's a choice for you to prove it to yourself. You have to prove it to yourself, like I had to prove it to myself, that this dream is possible. I had to prove it to myself that I can show up for me. I had to prove it to myself before I can prove it to anybody else that I can do this. It's a must that I believe in myself to overcome that fear, to overcome that little teensy bit of anxiety like dang, like if I don't show up, nobody will miss me. You know what I mean, because I don't have an audience yet. So but I gotta get out of that mindset and that's why this experiment is everything.

Speaker 1: 6:19

It's not easy to go live for an hour on twitch every day for 365 days. And if I am gonna pick something to be consistent about, why the would I do that? But that's what I want to do. I don't like doing easy. I want to make my. I want to make it hard. I don't want easy goals. If I wanted easy goals in life, I would not be a dentist. I wouldn't be a doctor from the hood, from poverty. If I wanted easy things, well, I'm not gonna say that I want things to be easier. But I know that in my life, where I come from, taking the easy route was not going to make me the person I am today. I know I know that I'm going to have to work and go to school and probably work more than one job. While doing that, I was in a bad relationship while in school, taking care of people, taking care of a man, all this type of stuff, and that could have killed me in school. But when you grow up without your mother, your father, you do make some dilapidated choices that you have to learn from and how you learn, the rate that you learn from those mistakes that you make on those learning experiences will determine the type of person you become and who you grow up to be.

Speaker 1: 7:37

Thank you for responding to my message. I'm a fan from Canada and you're such an an inspiration. I'm really interested in the field. Okay, you are so welcome. I love those type of questions, especially about dentistry, because this is my true job. Streaming is my my. Just I want to be a streamer. I think it's fun and you know I like it. But I think dentistry is an interesting field. It's a interesting time to be a dentist and I have a perspective of both sides the associate side, the school side, the pre-dental side, the residency side and the dental practice ownership side. So my experience is vast. I'm still growing in this area of dental practice.

Speaker 1: 8:27

Ownership is very different from any other area of dentistry because it's so competitive, but you have to really love what you do. So if you're interested, stay interested, and you said really interested, so that's like you really really are thinking about it. So if you're thinking about it, that means you at this point should be shadowing and doing everything that you can to expose yourself to the field before you hop in. Because, baby, let me tell you, it is not easy and it's worth it, though it's worth it, but just make sure that you do some thorough investigation and you know, really love it, because some days I'm like I could have did this, I could have been a day trader, I could have been a this, but that's why my journey is different. That's why I had to go from hood to hooded, that's why I had to go from poverty to this, because if I had known about other routes, I probably wouldn't be Dr Sean. I would be something else, like I'll be on Wall Street or interested in the stock market or travel blogger or I don't know what I would be. But but that wasn't my route. This is the route that I fell in love with and nothing.

Speaker 1: 9:44

When I was younger, when I was really interested in dentistry, that was in college. I was going to Florida State University in my hometown of Tallahassee, florida. I remember it like it was yesterday. I was going to school. It must have been my, I would say, my sophomore year at Florida State University. Shout out to the Seminoles. I was in like a biology major. I biology major. It's a lot of zoology. Biology major wasn't for me, but that was my major at the time and I was doing like pre-med route. And before I was doing pre-med route.

Speaker 1: 10:23

I really did thorough investigation, guys. So that's why I said I have pre-dental knowledge, because I didn't have a road map, there was no legacy. I couldn't go and say, hey mom, do you think? Hey, dad, could you do you? I had to figure it out on my own, like with the, with the internet. So I did research on podiatry. I bought pharmacy books. I wanted to pursue photography. I was all over the place.

Speaker 1: 10:47

But in the medical route I considered nurse anesthetist. I went to the hospital, got clearance to shadow a nurse anesthetist. I did a lot and then I'm like okay, I want to be a brain surgeon. I was just all over the place, until one day we were in this math class and there was this other alienated girl in my math class, really smart girl. I remember her name, april, and we got to chit-chatting. She brought her little sister to the school to like shadow because she was on spring break and I'm like oh, you know how you were in college. Oh, what's your major, what's your major? And so I'm like my major is biology. I'm trying to do like pre-med.

Speaker 1: 11:26

Maybe she's like oh, I'm doing pre-dental, like I'm gonna be a dentist, and I'm thinking I never thought of that, because when you go up and grow up in poverty, you don't get, you're not exposed to these careers, you don't even know anything like. You don't think that somebody who looks like me is a dentist and I see this every day in the dental office. They're like I've never seen. First of all uh, they call it black, but I'm actually indigenous to turtle island but let's say, a melanated dentist, you know what I mean. Um, and we are rare and few. So when she told me that I'm like, wow, I'm already in the major to do dentistry, why didn't I ever think of that?

Speaker 1: 12:10

So from that moment I joined the pre-dental society and I switched gears. I started researching everything I could about dentistry. I brought the books to let me know the GPAs of the people who was getting it. I mean, I went deep because I didn't have a choice. When you don't have a roadmap, when you don't have a book, when you don't have parents into it, when you don't have any idea, you have to do those programs, those pre-dental programs. I started shadowing, I started looking at the requirements. I just really did the consistency soup on dentistry, like when I tell you this this recipe that we created tonight is what I had to do to become a dentist.

Speaker 1: 12:47

I had to be delusional, I had to show up. I had to be unapologetic, I had to have a lot of passion, be grateful and a dash of creativity, because you got to do what you can to stick out. There's so many applicants for meharry. When I was applying so many applicants I think we had I don't want to get the number wrong but there were like over two to three thousand applicants for 60 spots, so that's less than a one percent chance, right, and I got one of those chances and it's a combination of everything that you do. So when you have that, I really want to be a dentist.

Speaker 1: 13:23

Vibe, dive in on that and see if you really want it. And if you really want it, nothing is going. You're going to be laser focused like this. I mean me being laser focused and showing up every day to class, enrolling myself into college, going and applying to college on my own, knowing that I don't have parents to do this, paying for my application fees, taking those tests, being disciplined. When nobody else is telling you to do this, you have to be the one to say you know what. This is my dream and I'm going to make it happen. Research, figure out if you are really interested and this is something that you really want to do, or if this is something that you might be like. Ooh, this is too much.

Speaker 1: 14:03

Because I did have people in college who started off with the same track as me, and one class that weeds everybody out of the dental profession is organic chemistry. Now, guys, this is a class that weeded me out too. Now I got an F in organic chemistry. Now, guys, this is a class that weeded me out too. Now I got an f in organic chemistry, okay, but I had to go back and take it over again and I got a c minus. And guess what a c minus back then was? You couldn't get in with any classes with a c minus, so I had to take this class again. That's how determined I was.

Speaker 1: 14:37

This was the hardest class I ever took in my life. I mean, I could have just threw up just thinking about it Like ugh, and I don't. I can't say I don't use it now, because we do use it when we do our formulary. So, yeah, not like that though, but that was the hardest class that will weed people out, because if you take it and you're like what the is this? This is like math plus science on steroids. And you doing math, chemical math, problems, that's all I can say. And I would have my book at cookouts because I'm in my hometown, right. So my family is here, they having cookouts and my home girls here, they partying, they going to fam. You, I'm like I'm coming to the party, I thought study, girl, if I get done studying, okay. So half the time I didn't go, but sometimes I did.

Speaker 1: 15:28

But when I was taking organic chemistry, man, that class it'll weed anybody out. You don't really want to do it. That's the class that will weed you out. That's the class that will make you say you know what some people like you know what? I'm gonna be an interior designer, because girl, no.

Speaker 1: 15:47

But if you like me and you, against the odds, no matter what your eyes are like, you already know my eyes is poverty. My eyes is the lack of parents. My eyes is grown up in custody battles between my grandmamas. You know my eyes is having the trauma of not or of losing my mom. As eight years old, my eyes are so heavy that people thought those eyes was gonna be like knocking me out left and right. Like girl, you ain, you ain't going to make it nowhere.

Speaker 1: 16:18

Who, when I had that interest to be anything. I'm like I have to be something. What my environment is proving to me now is that if I don't buckle down and create me some consistency soup about something, I'm going to be stuck here and ain't nobody coming to save me and I was like no. So when April told me that she wanted to be a dentist, y'all I was like what, what bit? And it was a wrap ever since then. And I've been laser focused ever since then, no matter if I fail, of course, no matter if I, you know, got denied from university of florida with my application. Well, I didn't get denied.

Speaker 1: 16:59

I cried in the interview and kind of counted myself out because I lacked the illusion on this. I was like, oh dang, they gave me an interview, but maybe I'm not good enough. Sometimes that counts you out. You think dang. If I would think dang, I ain't gonna get on twitch because I'm not a good enough streamer like I. I don't know if I can really do this. Just show up and do it delusional, do it crazy, do it head high, shoulders back, no tears, no fear. That's how you have to be Okay.

Speaker 1: 17:31

So, through the fear, through the failures, through the feelings of inadequacy, through the lack of a road map, through the roadblocks, you can still make it happen. You can still make that dream, whatever it is, come to life, no matter what it is, you can do it. Create your own consistency soup tonight to help you figure out what is my dream. Is this really my dream? Test it. Create your own consistency soup tonight to help you figure out what is my dream. Is this really my dream? Test it. Go deep into it If you're interested in it. Whatever you're interested in, this is for anybody who watches the replay. Go deep into it, figure it out. Go shadow people, go test it out. Go see how it is behind the scenes. That's the key Before you commit to any career. Go see how it is behind the scenes. That's the key. Before you commit to any career. Go see how it is behind the scenes.

Speaker 1: 18:19

A lot of people just go to college, pick these majors, don't know what they're going to do with it, or when you could have did a trade, made twice as much and been happy. Now you got college debt, you don't like it and you're unhappy. Or you got a trade when you could have been in college doing something else. It all depends on what your career is. So for me, if I was speaking to my younger self and I was interested in something, I would go and pursue it. When I wanted to get into dental school, I got denied my first round of applying to dental school. I didn't get into any school. Like I said, I had one interview at the University of Florida and when I got into the interview there was an older Caucasian lady and a really old Caucasian man and when I saw those two faces I immediately just cried like a baby, like they don't want me here.

Speaker 1: 19:11

I was inside thinking that, dang, I'm not good enough. I didn't know my Niji knowledge that I know now. I didn't know about my family genealogy and that we're indigenous to Turtle Island. I just had been told that you know, black people was you know, and I wasn't even black. But back then that that's what I thought. So I cried. I counted myself out.

Speaker 1: 19:36

The second year I applied I had to go back to the drawing board, redo my application. I wanted to freshen up my personal statement. I didn't need to take the test over because they said, hey, you took DAT, your test scores are great. You don't need to do that again. And that's what I was worried about Organic chemistry, chemistry because it's on the dat, it's on the dental admissions test. If you don't know what the dat is, it's the dental admissions test and I'm like that was my highest score on the dat. So I'm like, yes, it was a hard class and it was. I made sure that I did good on that. So they said you don't need to take it over. So I didn't take it over, but I shadow even the first time.

Speaker 1: 20:18

You have to shadow other dentists. You get out network meet dentists. Hey, I want to come to your office and shadow you to see I want to be a dentist. Don't say I'm thinking about it, just say yeah, I want to be a dentist and I want to shadow you. I'm I really I'm interested in the field. And they don't let you shadow them. Record your hours so that you can take this if you apply to dental school.

Speaker 1: 20:40

So the second time I didn't get in. I say you know, I have to find someone who is a Maharian that I can shadow, because these are the two schools where they accept mostly students who are melanated, because there's only two out of all the hundred and something dental schools, most of them are pwi, predominantly, predominantly white institutions. So I said I have to find somebody and I'm gonna apply to howard meharry. Those are only two and I applied to other schools too. I only got an interview the second time at Meharry in Nashville, tennessee. So the second time I went into that interview head high, shoulders back, no tears boo, no tears today, because if this is sink or swim, everybody in this room in this interview trying to get in. They already done, weeded down hundreds of applications and they have this pick 60. I gotta hold my head up high, I gotta let my shoulders back.

Speaker 1: 21:43

So before I got to that interview, I found a dentist. I started shadowing him but it wasn't easy because I knew who I wanted to shadow. I'm like he's a maharian. He went to the school I want to go to, so I'm gonna, I have to shadow him. There's not a lot of dentists who look like me and he. He was melanated but he wouldn't answer the phone, right? He, his practice was maybe like 45 minutes from Tallahassee in Quincy, florida. It's like a 45 minute drive.

Speaker 1: 22:13

And I'm a dentist, I mean, I'm in Florida State, I'm a student, I'm probably senior year and I'm trying to get more shadowing hours under my belt so that I can reapply to dental school and maybe I was past senior year somewhere in there. And this is the guy. So I'm like, dang, he's not answering. I'm calling, leaving messages, getting no response. This is the moment when you when the delulu come into effect, this consistency recipe, this is the moment when the delulu come into play. So I say, dang, he not answering the phone. I'm a student, I have a job, I'm taking care of a family. I don't have any kids, but I'm taking care of a child and I have a lot of responsibilities.

Speaker 1: 22:54

So Saturday, my friends want to hang out. On Friday Listen, guys, I can't hang out tonight. I got to go and try to shadow this doctor and tell him I'm going to work for free on Saturdays. So I got up one Saturday, drove my little car to Quincy, let my windows down in the Florida sun with the wind blowing and my hair, drove right to his office because he was fortunately open on Saturdays. I didn't know if he was open this Saturday, but I'm going to see.

Speaker 1: 23:21

I pull up to the office on Saturday before he got out the car. I'm here before he got here to the building hey, my name is Shanterio Redmond and I want to shout at you, or even just work as an assistant for free, no pay, just so I can learn and get more information, so that I can get into dental school. And you know, I'm just hoping that you'll give me an opportunity. That's why I came out here. I called and you got to sound the Lulu. He was like oh, yeah, you can. He said yeah, free work. What? Yeah, you can come and clean chairs and wash me new teeth. So I would clean the chairs, wipe the chairs down, break the rooms down, set them back up. And I was fast, this is free work. What? Yeah, you can shout on me.

Speaker 1: 24:15

So I got that letter and I got into my harry, not knowing that this dentist was the class president when he was there. What? This is why you got to be the lulu and network, because you never know who you're talking to, especially on your journey to your goals and your dreams. But back to why I went to the shadowing is because, well, this wasn't my, this wasn't my first time shadowing. Shadowing allowed me to go into different offices in tallahassee and just see oh, this is what dentists do, and I just fell in love with it. Once april told me that's what she wanted to do and I heard about it. That's when I started pursuing it and I really turned that interest into dental magic, dental awesomeness. Okay, the best of luck on your journey to figuring out if you're gonna be a dentist or you're gonna be something totally awesome. Whatever it is, it's gonna be awesome because I can tell that you have passion from the way you write and the questions that you ask. So thank you so much for joining me tonight.