Craig Weiss is the Co-Founder and CEO of Retainer Club LLC, a subscription healthcare service that provides subscribers with 3-D printed custom retainers. He was the CEO of NJOY, Inc. from 2011-2014 during which time he recruited and scaled to 130 employees across half a dozen countries, manufactured and distributed over 80 million units of the company’s products, achieved distribution in over 130,000 locations worldwide, and reached a $1 Billion valuation. Craig has eleven patents to his own name, including five for medical devices. He was also the managing member of a hedge fund that focused on publicly-traded companies involved in material intellectual property litigation.
Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:
- [00:52] Jeremy introduces his guest, Craig Weiss
- [05:04] Craig talks about his family and what it was like for him growing up
- [08:26] Craig remembers the story of the very first investment he made and lost
- [11:17] Craig shares his educational background and how he ended up as a patent attorney
- [17:18] Craig tells Jeremy about how he discovered his real passion for entrepreneurship
- [19:26] Craig shares how his friend, Ellie, became his business mentor
- [23:49] Craig details the beginnings of the hedge fund he started and the importance of maintaining control over your company
- [27:48] Craig reveals the secret to life that he learned from Ellie about valuing your time
- [30:27] Craig talks about how he became the President of a company with almost zero background knowledge
- [32:45] Craig reveals how he took on the FDA and his struggles in keeping the family business afloat
- [34:00] Craig discloses how he saw an opportunity in public health, how he put together his team, and how he was able to grow a company to a billion-dollar valuation
- [40:47] Craig talks about how he met his business partner and the co-founder of Retainer Club and Mouthguard Club, Dr. Blair Feldman
- [42:00] Craig recounts how he and Dr. Feldman started talking about the idea for Retainer Club
- [52:30] How to get in touch with the Retainer Club and Mouthguard Club and where you can find them
In this episode…
Businesses everywhere hit a rough patch at some point in their existence. For some, the rough patch is merely a bump in the road while for others, they are obstacles that hinder you from achieving your success. Craig Weiss, co-founder of the Retainer Club and the Mouthguard Club has felt the two sides of the coin: being down in the dumps that you barely know where to start and reaching that point of success where you already have the capacity to pull others up with you.
Craig’s entrepreneurial journey is unorthodox and it is nothing short of amazing. From making his first investment in baseball cards as a kid to losing money on a failed business venture and to becoming the CEO of a company that had a billion-dollar valuation in just three years, his is a story that’s filled with wisdom and inspiration.
On this episode of Inspired Insider, Dr. Jeremy Weisz interviews Craig where they talk about growing a company to a billion-dollar valuation in just three years. They also discuss taking back control over his family business, what it was like to take on the FDA and winning against them, the awesome moment of being featured in the Wall Street Journal, and what it was like to have everything crumble around you and then being able to rise from the ashes and come out stronger and more successful than before. Stay tuned.
Resources Mentioned on this episode
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Episode Transcript
Jeremy Weisz 0:22
Dr. Jeremy Weisz here founder of InspiredInsider.com where I talked with inspirational entrepreneurs and leaders like the founders of p90x Tony Horton, Baby Einstein founder, Julie Clark, Atari founder and many, many more and how they overcome big challenges in life and business. Today’s episode I’m gonna, this is gonna be a little bit different episode Actually, today. I had an amazing entrepreneur. And he actually invited me to interview him for his podcast and it was so good. I said, Can you please let me release this on mine. And so it’s going to be Craig Weiss, who’s the co founder of Retainer Club and Mouthguard Club. He also talks about growing a company to a billion dollar valuation in three years and testifying in from the US Senate raising $200 million being featured in The Wall Street Journal, and much, much more. So stay tuned. This is actually where I interviewed him for his podcast. Now, if you’re an orthodontist, or dentist or know someone, you’ll definitely want to send this to them. And if you are not an orthodontist, or dentist, it’s still very valuable just you can skip through the sponsorship message because it does not apply to you. But today’s episode is brought to you by Rise25, which I co founded with my business partner, John Corcoran, and Rise25 we help b2b businesses connects their dream 100 clients and referral partners and we help you run your podcast so generates ROI. You know, as people have listened, if you listen this before podcasting is much more personal to me and it was inspired by my grandfather who was a whole customer Fiverr and his brother were concentration camps in Nazi Germany were the only members to survive but his legacy lives on because the whole cost foundation did an interview with him which you can watch on my about page. So yes, podcasting will help your business it’s been the best thing for my business in my life in general. But it helps you and your guests leave a legacy. So if you have questions I believe you know, any business should have a podcast so if you have questions, you can email us support at Rise25Media.com or learn more go to Rise25.com John and i made a video and we even left in the outtakes so now check out today’s episode,
Craig Weiss 2:36
Craig Weiss here the co host of the in your face podcast where we discuss stories of building a thriving business in today’s competitive marketplace. I scaled up a consumer business to over a billion dollar valuation. And now with my friend and business partner, Dr. Blair Feldman, who is a practicing orthodontist for 20 years. We now help orthodontist grow their practice. Today I have Jeremy Weiss here who has done thousands of interviews with successful entre Foreigners, investors and CEOs. And we flip the script today. Jeremy’s going to be the one interviewing me. Welcome to the show, Jeremy.
Jeremy Weisz 3:07
Thank you, Craig. I appreciate it. And you know, you always say so casually, you know, growing company to a billion dollar valuation. You know, we’re going to dig into that today. And that’s what I’m excited about, you know, growing a company to a billion dollar valuation three years testifying in front of the us senate and raising $200 million. And they The Wall Street Journal interviewed you too. We’re going to talk all about that. But before we do this episode is brought to you by mouth guard club and retainer club. Both services help drive new patients reactivations and referrals to orthodontic or dental office. mouthguard club provides personalized custom mouth guards that are perfectly fitted for your teeth. Not to mention you can fully customize design even put your company team logo on it. It’s one of the best fitting performing mouth guards available you can go to mouthguard club, comm slash partner for more information and retainer club is the easiest way for orthodontist to provide patients and perfectly fitting retainers at a great price. Oftentimes or you know orthodox jobs don’t even have a price point to meet what retainer club provides. And so also they send you a steady stream of new patients in your office who are actively interested in getting treatments and over 1000 patients already love retainer club. It’s easy to use online services to order and replace your retainers without taking the kids without taking up your staff time. So orthodontists love retainer club because their long term fans continue to refer new patients their office and plus the smiles they are creating are actually being maintained. So you can learn more become a partner office to bring in more patients make more money, go to retainer, club.com slash partner. So, you know with this, Craig, we have a lot of stuff to cover with this billion dollar valuation. But I want to kind of start early on because you said earlier I was slow on this entrepreneurial journey, okay, and you have an unorthodox journey. So, talk a little bit about and you’ve been Become an unusual family background. So I need to hear for one what what that means.
