How I Started Over, Again ...and Again

In 2013, after six years of owning a successful boutique C&B lab in Bend, OR, I was feeling dissatisfied with my life and decided to sell my business and move with my wife and four kids to Costa Rica. A year later, I was missing the dental industry and decided to move back to the U.S., this time to Portland, OR. I figured it would be easy enough to start another lab. Boy, was I wrong!

Though I found a temporary space for the lab, finding clients was challenging. I wasn’t known in Portland and hadn’t done my due diligence on the area, which was heavily saturated with well-established labs. It took me six months to snag my first client, so by then I was stretched pretty thin. Luckily, that first doctor gave me a good amount of work and through word of mouth, I was able to pick up a couple more doctors. Soon I was financially solvent enough to relocate my lab and remodel our house to include a very nice lab in our basement.

Less than a year later, things took an unfortunate turn: due to heavy rain our basement flooded. Fortunately, I was able to clean up the 10" of water without having to return any cases, but a couple months later I began to notice some odd physical symptoms: I had terrible brain fog and couldn’t concentrate on anything. Soon after, I noticed the flooring in the basement looked warped; I pulled up a couple floorboards and, to my horror, discovered black mold all over the subflooring.