Dr. Eli Halabi is an Orthodontist who owns and operates 2 private practices. At age 14 years old, he emigrated from Syria to the United States, speaking not a single word of English.
After many struggles and against all odds, he went on to graduate high school with honors and earn admittance to some of the top medical and dental programs in the country.
In this episode, we discuss:
- The journey of moving from Syria to New York as a teenager and overcoming the struggles of not knowing a word of English
- How sheer determination got Dr. Halabi into the top medical programs in the country
- The business of being a doctor, and what they DON’T teach you in medical school
Sponsor
- Discover how The Hedaya Capital Group’s factoring services can help power your business’s financials: hedayacapital.com
Transcript
Dr. Eli Halabi: Personal Finance for Dummies was my business education. On average, I see between 100 and 120 patients a day. Problem is, I don’t speak a word of English. I would carry a big English-Arabic dictionary with me and whenever I’d see a word that I don’t understand, I would look it up and highlight it. “Okay, that’s what it means.” You have no choice but to succeed. I decided to stay in a hotel and wake up early and walk eight and a half miles to the interview. We closed on the practice on February 29, 2020. This was two weeks before COVID.
At just 14 years old, Dr. Eli Halabi left everything he knew behind—his home in Damascus, Syria, his friends, his culture—and he landed in Brooklyn, New York, speaking barely a word of English or Hebrew. Fast forward to today and he’s one of the most well-known orthodontists in the community, running multiple thriving practices and seeing hundreds of patients every day. His journey is nothing short of remarkable. From navigating life as an outsider in a completely new country, a new world, to mastering multiple languages, excelling in school, and ultimately gaining acceptance into one of the top dental schools in the country. Dr. Halabi’s story is a masterclass in resilience, adaptation, and ambition.
In this conversation, we dive into the defining moments that shaped him, from learning English by translating Pearl Jam lyrics to walking eight miles on Shabbat for a life-changing interview. We also discuss the lessons he’s learned about risk-taking, building a business from scratch, and the power of human connection in both personal and professional success. I’m Victor Braca, and Momentum is where I dive deep with exceptional leaders to uncover the key decisions, defining moments, and lessons that propel them to success and how those insights can inspire your journey forward. If you’re looking for a story of perseverance, reinvention, and what it really takes to build something from the ground up—and I mean to build something truly from nothing—this episode is for you. You’re going to love it. Enjoy.
This episode is sponsored by the Hedaya Capital Group.
Dr. Eli Halabi, welcome to Momentum.
Dr. Eli Halabi: Thank you for having me. Pleasure to be here.
Victor M. Braca: So excited to have you. We were talking before the podcast, before the cameras were on; there’s just so much to cover with your story and where you are today. You have so much to share, so I’m very excited to just jump right into it.
Dr. Eli Halabi: Okay, thank you. Thank you so much for having me. I just want to say first that I’m very proud of you. Nothing gives me more pleasure than seeing a former patient with a beautiful smile.
Victor M. Braca: That’s right, that’s right.
Dr. Eli Halabi: I just… to see young patients of mine, former patients of mine, become so successful and prosperous and do amazing things with their lives, it just gives me a lot of merit. This past year I got invited to four weddings where both the groom and the bride were both former patients.
Victor M. Braca: That’s great!
Dr. Eli Halabi: Really, it’s unbelievable for me, and it’s just one of the perks that I have as an orthodontist.
Victor M. Braca: Beautiful. I love it. So you know what, I actually want to use that as an introduction to who you are. So tell us, who is Dr. Eli Halabi? What do you do? Give me the high level.
Dr. Eli Halabi: People know me as the orthodontist on Kings Highway and East Fifth. I’ve had that practice for 11 or 12 years. I also have a practice in Deal, New Jersey, that I’ve had for several years now. I’m involved with… I went to Yeshiva Flatbush High School when I was younger, but my formative years, earlier years, I actually was born in Syria—Damascus, Syria. I grew up there, and I had my Bar Mitzvah in Syria, believe it or not, and I moved here when I was 14 years old.
Victor M. Braca: So tell me, what was life like growing up in Syria? We’re going to touch on obviously that, but also coming to America. Let’s start with your upbringing. What was life like, and how do you see that different from the way kids grow up in New York City?
Dr. Eli Halabi: Sure. So growing up in Syria, obviously, there were only 4,000 Jews living in Syria when I was there. We knew we were Jewish; we knew we were different. There was a Jewish quarter where everybody lived; I lived right outside of the Jewish quarter. There’s many stories that I hear through my parents and me growing up of what experience was like for Jews living in Syria at that time.
But for me personally, my parents were very educated. My father was an agricultural engineer and he never worked as an engineer because you can’t make money as an engineer over there. So he was a teacher for a few years and then worked in textiles. We had a very modest living. My mom was a pharmacist, actually. It’s very hard for Jews to become pharmacists, and for women to become pharmacists. My mom was both. She didn’t work as a pharmacist; she was a housewife. But my parents really valued education. They wanted their children to really have the best education possible. The majority of the Jewish kids went to a Jewish school, but my parents decided to send us to a French Catholic school. So I went—me and my brothers—went to French Catholic school in Syria, which has very, very high-level education there. My first language, as you can imagine, is Arabic because that’s what we spoke, and my second language was French.
Victor M. Braca: And why did your parents choose to send you to a French Catholic school? They valued education, but more importantly, where did you get your Jewish values?
Dr. Eli Halabi: So my identity as a Jew when I was a child—sorting out my identity: “Am I a Jew? Am I Syrian? What am I exactly?”—my parents didn’t want to compromise my Jewish education, so they hired the rabbi who came to my house every night. He taught me basic Aleph-Bet. I knew how to read Aleph-Bet, I knew how to pray, I knew for my Bar Mitzvah how to read the Parasha. That was the extent of it. I didn’t understand Hebrew; I didn’t know what he was saying. I didn’t learn Gemara or the stories. I didn’t know anything about Chumash—all these things I did not know.
We were very traditional. Since I went to Catholic school, I had to go to school on Shabbat. That was very confusing to me because I knew other kids did not go to school on Shabbat, but I had to. In school itself, they looked at me and knew I was Jewish. In the school, a lot of people asked me, “Did you experience any anti-Semitism in school?” And the answer really depends on the time period. The Jewish experience in Syria really depended on the political situation with Israel.
My father grew up in the 60s as a young man, and the whole Eli Cohen story happened. There was a lot of anti-Semitism back then because they looked at Jews as possible spies or possible threats to Israel. If there was conflict with Israel, things reflected negatively on the Jews in Syria. So, after—I was born in 1979—after the ’73 war, which they believe Syria won… after ’48 and ’67, things were terrible for Jews in Syria. After ’73 things calmed down; Israel gave back Sinai to Egypt and there was relative peace between Israel, Syria, and Egypt. Things calmed down between Israel and Syria, and things were much, much calmer for the Jews in Syria.
People knew we were Jewish and they tried to separate Zionism and Judaism. When I went to school, the Catholic school had Muslim students in it and it had a couple of Jewish students in it, including myself. We would salute the flag every morning—the Syrian flag. They taught in school that Judaism is a religion that we respect, but Zionism is a colonial idea that some Jews adopted to take land that doesn’t belong to them.
So there was a separation between a Jew and a Zionist. The Jews who live in Syria are not necessarily Zionists; they’re Syrian and we should respect them and they live in peace. So that was the rhetoric growing up there. Myself, of course there was anti-Semitism; there’s tension between all religions. I went to Catholic school and there was tension between the Muslims and the Catholics, and tension between Catholics and the Jews. But Catholics are a minority and Jews are a minority, so we always stuck together because if something happened to us, they were more likely to side with us. That was how I grew up.
I was a stranger because, for me, I wasn’t sure: “Am I a Jew? Am I Syrian? Do I root for… like when I’m watching a match, am I rooting for Syria?” Because it’s my country, and we had Syrian pride, but we also knew we were different. Whenever there was news about Israel, I would hear my father listening to the Voice of Israel from Jerusalem in Arabic, and I’d ask him, “Are we supporting Israel? Like, we want Israel to win? We want Israel to be good?” I knew in secret that we are pro-Israel, but you couldn’t voice it out. And of course, you can’t walk around the street with a yarmulke.
Victor M. Braca: So tell me, what went into the rationale of leaving Syria and moving to America?
Dr. Eli Halabi: Okay, very well. So Jews before 1992 were not allowed to leave Syria. We were looked at not as hostages but as a bargaining chip against Israel. There were 4,000 Jews living there at the time; I was one of them. If you decided to go, let’s say you want to go on vacation, you want to go visit your grandparents in America, or you want to go somewhere else, they would give permission to half of the family to leave. So we used to take turns. My mom would take two of us one summer and my dad would take the other two the other summer. I have three brothers. They did this to ensure that the entire family didn’t leave and never come back.
In 1992, there was a treaty between Israel, America, and Syria to allow all the Jews to leave. I was the first in my family to get that permission, for some reason. In the summer of 1993, my father wanted to… he asked me… I did very well on a national exam that really determines what high school you’re going to go to—either the scientific route or the literary route. I did very well. My father promised that he would take me on vacation, would take me to America to visit my grandparents.
So I decided to go with him. We came here in late June of 1993, thinking that I’m going to stay here for a couple of weeks and go back and then wait for my brothers and my parents to get the permit, and probably it’s going to be a year before we move to America. We knew we were going to move to America and I thought it was going to be a year later.
When I came here, my uncle is Dr. Meyer Ballas, who was the president of Sephardic Bikur Holim and he was in charge of placing all the newcomers into yeshivas. He told me, “Why are you going back? You should stay. Don’t go back to Syria; you’re going to lose a year of high school if you go back and come back next year. You’re going to have to repeat. You’re the perfect age; you should go straight to ninth grade.”
So my dad asked me, “Do you want to stay?” I said, “Sure.” The problem is I don’t speak a word of English or Hebrew. I knew Arabic and I knew French. So, as you could imagine, it was a big leap for me, but I did it. I said, “You know what, what’s the worst that’s going to happen? My parents are going to come; it’s probably going to take them a couple of months.” My father’s like, “Don’t worry, it’s going to be a couple of months, we’ll come.”
Where am I going to live? So my aunt, Aunt Arlette, she was a newcomer herself. She lived in a two-bedroom apartment on Avenue S and East 8th. She had four kids and was pregnant, and she said, “Listen, I’ll watch you for a couple of months, you could stay by me, and then when your parents come in, you go live with them and you start high school this way you don’t lose a year.” And that’s what happened. As you can imagine, my father went back and I had clothes just enough to last me for a couple of weeks. Now, you know, I’m staying a little longer.
They sent me to camp. It was Camp Salams for the newcomers. They were in this camp on East Third and Avenue S. It was fun, and then everybody spoke Arabic, but then reality hit when I started the first week of high school in Yeshiva Flatbush. When I went there for the interview, my uncle took me there. They asked me to read something in English. I knew how to read French—you know, I knew the letters—but I didn’t read English. And they asked me a couple questions; I didn’t understand anything. So they asked my uncle, “Like, this kid doesn’t know anything. Why would we take him? He knows nothing.” He’s like, “Just give him a chance, let him stay here and see how he does, and if he doesn’t cut it, we’ll move him somewhere else.”
As you can imagine, things were not very easy. I was a good student in Syria, so it was a culture shock for me to come in and all of a sudden be thrown into the whole curriculum of Yeshiva Flatbush High School, which is very, very demanding, without knowing either language. So a lot of people ask me, “How did you learn English?”
I remember wanting to learn English as quickly as possible. I would carry with me a big dictionary—this is before the time of iPads and iPhones—so I would carry a big English-Arabic dictionary with me and whenever I’d see a word that I don’t understand, I would look it up and highlight it. “Okay, that’s what it means.”
I started getting into music. I like music, and I would—back then I had a cassette player—and I was into Pearl Jam and Metallica and Green Day and all this ’90s music. My cousin got me into it and I would get the cassettes and I would get the pamphlet out of it and look at the lyrics, listen to the Walkman, and I would look up the words that I didn’t understand. Through that, that’s how I learned.
Also, I’m a big Mets fan. How do I become a Mets fan? I grew up playing soccer in Syria, so baseball was a completely new game to me. My cousin Ellie told me, “Let’s go watch the Mets.” So he took me to Shea Stadium. It was much cheaper to go to a Mets game than a Yankee game. You only needed five dollars and a can of Pepsi to get into Shea Stadium. I would listen to the broadcast on 660 with Howie Rose while watching the game and I learned the rules of the game and English just listening to him. I used to listen to Joe Benigno on the overnight show on 660, and that’s pretty much how I learned how to speak. It took years, obviously; this is not overnight. But that’s how I learned: watching the Mets and listening to music and carrying around the dictionary. I used to walk around and see “EXIT” signs everywhere. It’s like, “What is this word, ‘EXIT’?” We don’t have exit signs in Syria. So I would go back and look it up: “Oh, exit, that’s what it means.”
Now as you can imagine, it was a complete culture shock for me going from Syria to here. In Syria, there are a lot of conveniences that we have here that didn’t exist. The best way I could describe it: Syria in the 80s, when I grew up, and the early 90s was like America in the 1930s. We didn’t have electricity on 24 hours a day; that didn’t exist. They used to shut off the electricity and shut off the water also to conserve energy. So to me, when I came to America and I went to my aunt’s house and I turned on the lights, I asked her, “You’re telling me if I turn this light on, it could stay on 24 hours without being turned off?” She’s like, “Yes.” “Like for the whole day?” She’s like, “For many days and nothing will happen.” To me, that was amazing.
Also, as you can imagine, refrigeration there, because electricity is not on the entire time, there are certain things like you can’t have ice cream in your house. If you want to have ice cream, you have to go to a store that had a generator that sold ice cream. My aunt lived across the street from Sea Town. I remember the first day I went to Sea Town and I see aisles of refrigeration and ice cream everywhere, and it’s open 24 hours. You can literally go in and get ice cream anytime you want. To me it was like, “Whoa, mind blown.”
A lot of things… we lived in a socialist country in Syria. Things like sugar and coffee and tea and oil—these are not things that you could just go to a store and buy. They rationed it to people based on how many people lived in the household. We’re a family of six; they would give us coupons and I used to dread the beginning of every month because my dad would make me stand on the line for six or seven hours to give the coupons and get the ration for the month for rice and flour and sugar and tea. That’s what it is. And if you run out, you run out; you have to wait till the next month.
Victor M. Braca: So these are things… such a different life.
Dr. Eli Halabi: Completely. To me the dichotomy between life in Syria and life here was amazing. And to top that, I did it without my parents being here, so that was very, very difficult for me.
Victor M. Braca: Hedaya Capital Group is a trusted business advisor helping entrepreneurs unlock the growth potential of their businesses with tailored accounts receivable factoring and working capital solutions. They’re a family-owned, approachable team who listen and provide solutions while sharing their business experience and knowledge to help protect clients’ interests. They work from a core of old-world values where ethics and integrity have meaning, and new-world thinking where speed and flexibility ensure success. The result is that clients feel confident taking advantage of growth opportunities, knowing they have the liquidity and scalability they need, as well as a long-term partner looking out for them and helping them grow. Since 2003, their expertise and patient approach to capital have helped companies improve cash flow, protect assets, and scale their business. Visit HedayaCapital.com or email info@HedayaCapital.com to learn more. Back to the episode.
I owe a great, tremendous amount of gratitude to my uncle, Dr. Ballas, who, despite running a full-time cardiology practice and being the president of SBH and having the 4,000 Jewish newcomers’ well-being on top of him… he had to put them in schools and make sure they have the proper education and was involved in placing them in homes and everything they need. Basically, the community here really absorbed the newcomers and tried to help them out. In spite of all of that, he found time to sit down with me on Sundays and at night to read with me the Op-Ed page on the New York Times and to go over the Parasha and to teach me. He really took me under his wing, and to me I look back at that first year really with tremendous gratitude to Dr. Ballas.
Another person who was instrumental was Mrs. Shifra Hanon. I get emotional just thinking about it. Every time I think about it, I get emotional. I remember the first year I showed up to high school, I was wearing a shirt—like a sweatshirt, like a t-shirt—and jeans. She’s like, “No, no, you need a collar. You need a collar shirt.” I don’t know what that means. “No, no, collar. Collar. You know what a collar is?” I don’t speak English. So they got my uncle on the phone. He said, “You need a shirt.” He told me in Arabic, “You need a shirt with a collar.” Now, I just came a couple weeks ago; I don’t have a shirt with a collar. She knew and she felt bad for me. The next day she came in with three shirts from her husband. Her husband gave me three of his own shirts.
Victor M. Braca: Wow.
Dr. Eli Halabi: And those are the three shirts that I wore the first year of high school. Now Mr. Hanon was a big guy, God bless him, he’s extra large. I was a puny little kid. I used to tuck the shirt in a couple times, but these are the shirts I wore the first year of high school. Also, we didn’t have heavy coats in Syria; I didn’t have a heavy coat. Mrs. Hanon got me a coat. She made sure I was… she had one of her children teach me English. You go to her house and I sat down with her and she taught me basic things.
Another thing that’s a complete culture shock between Syria and here: we didn’t have central heating and central cooling in Syria. In the summer it’s boiling hot, you open the window. In the winter it’s freezing cold; you’re in the desert, it’s very, very, very cold. We used to have a firebox in one of the rooms and I used to go fill up the gas and fill up the firebox and light a match, and we all used to sit around the firebox to get warm. The rest of the house is freezing cold. My room didn’t have a firebox, so I used to run and hide under the covers every time I wanted to sleep to get warm. So when I moved to America, I went to my aunt: “You’re telling me it’s negative 10 degrees outside and I could be in a t-shirt and shorts inside?” She’s like, “Yes, there’s heat everywhere coming out of the walls.” To me that was amazing. I never heard that before.
Another thing is a few other instrumental people in high school. I remember a couple of months into freshman year, Rabbi Besser came up to me and he said, “Eli, I noticed that the freshman seminar is coming up in a couple weeks and you didn’t sign up.” I didn’t have the money to sign up for it. It’s $300, and who’s going to give me $300 to go to a seminar? So I told him, “No, no seminar for me.” He realized that was probably a money issue. He’s like, “I want you to come. You have to come to the seminar.” I said, “No, no Rabbi.” He’s like, “You have to come. Is it the money? Is it the money?” He’s like, “Give me $20. Give me $20 and I’ll make sure you go.” He didn’t want to embarrass me to tell me, “I’m going to sign you up for free.” He wanted to give me the Kavod that “Give me $20 and you earn going there.” To me, that’s a story that I’ll always remember.
There’s another person who was very instrumental in my life: Mrs. Hedayassah Appledorf. She didn’t speak a word of English; she only spoke Hebrew. I didn’t speak English or Hebrew. They put us together and she was in charge of teaching Hebrew. It’s an extremely awkward thing trying to communicate with me. But I picked up Hebrew very quickly. I considered Hebrew my third language—really, not English. I picked up Hebrew a lot quicker; there are a lot of roots that are common between Arabic and Hebrew. I would look at a word and I’d see where is that word in Arabic, if there’s an equivalent word. And I love Hebrew as a language also, because all I knew how to read in Syria… here I come in, I had my Bar Mitzvah there. Now when I came to Flatbush, I’m starting to learn all those words. I’m like, “Oh, that’s what I’m saying when I’m praying!” It clicked in my head. Now I could speak Hebrew fluently, like an Israeli almost. I picked up the accent just from listening to Hebrew music and Israeli news. Mrs. Appledorf would sit with me and she would teach me songs in Hebrew and that’s how I learned Hebrew. I’m still in touch with her now.
Somehow, some way I made it through the first year of high school. It was complete hell. It’s not an easy task making new friends. In Syria I was “the Jew,” and now I’m “the stranger”—he’s a newcomer, he doesn’t speak English, he has the same three shirts. It was very hard for me to make friends and do well in school, but I studied hard and I tried my best. A year later, my parents were still not here. In the summer, what were they going to do with me? They sent me to Kol Torah, which is in Pennsylvania. I was thinking I’m going to camp; I didn’t know they were sending me to Kol Torah. So now I’m in two and a half months in Kol Torah—hardcore learning. That was quite an experience of its own.
When I moved back and I’m starting sophomore year, I go to pick up my syllabus and it says “402” on it, which is the honors class in Flatbush. They are moving me from a regular class to the honors class! “Whoa, that’s got to be a mistake. Why are they putting me in the honors class? I barely made it through the first year.” I was very upset and I was almost in tears because it was very difficult for me to get through the first year. Now they are putting me in an honors class and I know it’s going to be a lot more challenging.
I went down to the office. As I’m walking through the hallway, I see Mr. Thomas Hausdorff. He sees me upset. “Eli, what’s going on?”
I said, “It’s wrong. It says 402 on the syllabus. Too hard. 402 too hard.”
He’s like, “No, no, no. It’s correct. It’s 402. You are in 402.”
“No, please. Too difficult. Too hard.”
He’s like, “Listen to me. You are in 402. You belong in 402.”
“Please Mr. Hausdorff…”
“Don’t argue with me,” he was a little stern with me. “Don’t argue. You belong in 402. You are going to 402.” And he walked away. And I’m like, “I guess I’m in 402.”
Then a couple of weeks later, unfortunately, he passed away. To this day I remember that conversation I had with him. He believed in me and he saw something in me through the first year of high school and he made the decision to put me in 402. That gave me a boost of confidence. I passed the Bio Regents on the first try, which is amazing, and I did well in other subjects. They saw potential in me that I didn’t see in me, and that’s why I owe a great, tremendous amount of gratitude to Yeshiva Flatbush that really believed in me.
Victor M. Braca: And you’re in honors now. How was that?
Dr. Eli Halabi: Honors class was very difficult. The most difficult part is like, “Now I have to make new friends.” Another group of people who didn’t know who I am. My English got a little better; I could relate with them through music or sports. The turning point in my high school career was in junior year. I don’t know what prompted me to decide to run for Secretary of the senior council. When I was in freshman year and sophomore year, I saw there were elections and student government. I said, “You know, it’s such a cool thing. I wish I could run to show people that I want to help, like I want to be part of the group. I’m not an outsider; I want to be part of you.”
It was a very gutsy thing, looking back at it. I ran against four people for the Secretary of the senior council of my senior year. I said, “What’s the worst thing that can happen? The worst thing that could happen is they could completely crush me, crush my confidence. But if I win somehow—some way, I don’t know how the hell I’m going to win—but if I win, maybe it’ll be good for me.”
I decided to run. It was very contentious. You have to get 50% of the votes in order for you to win outright. Out of the five people, we all split the votes more or less evenly. They dropped the bottom two and now they have a runoff: me and two other people. Now seeing my name on the ballot… the other positions were already decided. Now they are having another runoff and they see my name and the other two candidates’ names on the piece of paper. This was very nerve-wracking. We split the votes again; none of us got more than 50%. So they dropped the third person and it was me against another girl, another candidate, and she was very, very popular. I’m like, “Oh my God, how in the world am I going to beat her?”
Somehow, some way they announced that I was the winner, and that gave me a tremendous boost of confidence and I became much more popular. Kids started talking to me more; my English got better and I started doing better in school. That’s how I finished school; I graduated with honors. I decided to go to Yeshiva University for college because I didn’t know any better. They told me YU is the place to be. In retrospect, maybe I could have gone to other schools like Brandeis or University of Maryland; probably I would have fit there more. But YU was a safe bet for me. The education there is tremendous and it prepared me for the next stage of my life.
Victor M. Braca: What I want to zoom in on is the risks you took. You didn’t have much of a choice whether or not to stay in honors or switch out because the administration didn’t give you much of a choice. But you ran for student government, you applied yourself in school when you could have just sat back and said, “You know, I don’t know if this is for me.” What drove you at that time to believe that things are going to turn around?
Dr. Eli Halabi: My parents. I felt that my parents put faith in me. They told me, “You’re the first one to go to America, you’re going to pave the way for us.” To me it’s a responsibility. If I fail, I’m failing my parents, too. My parents put a tremendous emphasis on education. They sent me to Catholic school growing up and they made the decision to send me here to America to start life here. To me, you have no choice but to succeed.
Through the many obstacles… I look back at it as like “the obstacle is the way.” I truly believe spiritually that nothing happens randomly in life. People are put in your way and circumstances are put in your way in order for you to take advantage of them. Nothing is random or coincidental. If it happened to you and you try to explore it, good things will happen to you. To me, I had no other choice; just do it and see how it goes. Now looking back at it, I’m like, “I had such guts to do what I did.” I’m half the man now that I used to be back then. I really admire that kid who did all these things and I think that’s that kid and his perseverance is what made me who I am today.
In college, I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life. I knew that there is no business for… I’m not going into business; there’s no family business to go into. I had to become a professional. I had to find a profession that is going to be interesting to me and it’s also going to make a good living. I didn’t know what I wanted to do. I was a Pre-med, I took all the bio courses, and I was actually an art minor in college.
Victor M. Braca: Interesting.
Dr. Eli Halabi: Because I thought maybe I wanted to be an architect. I’m very artistic; I love painting and drawing. I actually painted the cover to your yearbook for my high school—Yeshiva Flatbush High School class of 1997. I take a tremendous pride in that. It was a beautiful, beautiful cover and it’s still till now one of my prized art pieces.
Victor M. Braca: Beautiful.
Dr. Eli Halabi: I blew it up and I have it hanging in my office. A lot of people see that piece and it just speaks to them. I’ll show you one; it’s really a special piece.
I am artistic in nature. I could sit down and paint and draw for hours and not be distracted. I thought maybe architecture would be a path for me. But I took pre-med courses and I was very good at sciences. My brother had just started dental school and he told me, “You know what, if you’re really good with your hands and you’re really artistic, maybe you should give dentistry a shot.”
Dentistry is a very unique field. It has seven or eight specialties and they’re all very different. Even though you’re working in the mouth, they’re very different ways of practice. I said, “You know what, maybe I’ll apply to dental school.” That’s how I ended up applying. YU is very known for placing their students in top schools, and I wanted to go to a really good school that gives me the best chance of specializing because I don’t want to be a general dentist. I want to specialize in a field that would interest me. I don’t know what that field is; once I get to dental school, I’ll find out what that is.
I applied to all the schools in the Northeast. I got accepted to Stony Brook, which is a tremendous school—a very small class. Financially it made sense because, you know, who’s paying for school? It’s a state university; it would make sense for me to go there. But then somebody told me, “Oh, you should apply to Penn, University of Pennsylvania.” I had no clue what University of Pennsylvania is. “It’s an Ivy League school.” “What’s an Ivy League? I don’t know.” Just apply. “One of the best. This is the top dental school probably in the country.” I applied there, they gave me the interview, and this is a crazy story.
I applied also to Temple University, which is also in Philadelphia. I’ve never been to Philadelphia before in my life and this is before the time of the internet—you’re not going to go and book a hotel in Philadelphia. So what I decided to do: I picked up a duffel bag, put a change of clothes in it, went to Penn Station, took a train to New Jersey Transit, took New Jersey Transit to Philadelphia. I scheduled the interviews—Temple University on one day and the next day at Penn.
I show up to the Temple University interview. Now mind you, I have no hotel to stay in. I have no idea where I’m going. I took a cab; I went to Temple; I had the interview there. As I’m leaving, I go into the elevator. I see a guy with a kipa. I said, “Shalom.” “Shalom. What are you doing?” “I had an interview here.” He said, “Great, how’d that go?” I said, “Great, was pretty good.” He said, “Where are you going now?” I’m like, “I don’t know. I’m going to go find a hotel.” He’s like, “What do you mean ‘go find one’? It’s snowing outside!” I said, “I’m going to walk around, find a hotel, check in, wake up in the morning and go to the Penn interview.”
He’s like, “No, no, no, no, no. You come with me.” And he took me to his house. I stayed in his house that night. And his wife drove me to my Penn interview the next morning.
Victor M. Braca: That’s amazing.
Dr. Eli Halabi: I was late because the lady was driving me from North Philly to West Philly and it was a lot of traffic. She had to drop off her kids to school. I’m like, “I’m late to my interview, I gotta get there!” Finally I got there. I was 20 minutes late; the interviewer was very annoyed. But I told him the story. He’s like, “You just showed up to Philly without having any plans?” I said, “Yeah, just showed up.” He said, “I read your personal statement, how you grew up in Syria. I really wanted to meet you.” We started the conversation and then the interview was supposed to be 20 or 25 minutes; I was there for an hour. People were knocking on the door. I was like, “Doc, you got other people that you have to interview.” He told me, “I’m so happy I came just to meet you today.” That was Dr. Rob Endling.
When I got the acceptance letter to Penn, I was very excited, but the tuition is extremely high relative to Stony Brook. But I knew there was a special scholarship: for the top 20% of the applicants who apply to Penn, they get 50% of the tuition as a scholarship. I called up the admissions office and I asked him, “Is that still in play?” They’re like, “Actually, we’re going to decide on it this weekend and we’ll call you. Your name is definitely on the list; we will call you if you get that scholarship.” And thank God I got the scholarship. Going to Penn was probably one of the best decisions I’ve made. It was an incredible school. The level of education is just unbelievable and that’s what got me to the next step.
Victor M. Braca: If we just think for a moment that you grew up in Syria, moved to America first year of high school, knew zero English, zero Hebrew, with a dual curriculum school, and you go to University of Pennsylvania, an Ivy League school… one of the top dental programs in the country. We shouldn’t forget that for a second. That’s amazing. How were you feeling when you got into Penn, looking back at the past 10 years of your life?
Dr. Eli Halabi: The most daunting thing when you’re in school, especially at a graduate level, is how you’re going to pay for the school. I had no choice but to take student loans. I wanted to take as little as possible just to pay for the tuition and maybe live in a dormitory with other people.
I remember my brother Mo—my older brother Mo, he’s a dentist. He’s a great inspiration for me and he paved the way; he went to dental school, so I went to dental school. I wanted to be like him growing up. He told me, when I told him how nervous I was to take out so many student loans, he said, “Listen, take more than you need, and I’ll tell you why. Because you are going to be alone and you have to be comfortable. If you’re comfortable, you will study better, study harder. And if you do that, you’ll get better grades. If you get better grades, you’ll get into a better specialty program. If you get into a better specialty program, you become a specialist and you’ll get a better job and you’ll make more money and then you’ll pay back those loans. Think about 30-year-old Eli. He probably feels bad for 18-year-old Eli who’s struggling and he would be happy to pay for his student loans. That’s how you should look at it.”
That stuck with me until now. Right now, when I pay back my student loans, I’m happy to pay them back because I really wanted to make myself comfortable. Now thank God I’m in a position that student loans, even though I’m still paying years and years later, but to me I do it happily because that’s what got me to where I am now. I feel bad for 14-year-old Eli. The Eli back then struggled and I want him to feel good, so I wanted to help him. This is my way of helping myself in the past.
Student loans is a big topic. You shouldn’t take student loans out to become a sociology major; you should do it for a profession that’s going to make you money. But that to me was tremendous advice from my brother. So I took out student loans and I got a nice one-bedroom apartment, lived by myself. I furnished it nicely just because I wanted to do well. The first year of dental school, I actually got my furniture from L; I went to the thrift store on McDonald Avenue and I got a couch for $25 and a bed for $125 and I rented a U-Haul, put them in, and drove them to Philly. That’s what I did.
Victor M. Braca: What I want to ask you about is—in a world where you’re from Syria, you’re a Jew, and you’re in a whole new world in terms of the Jewish community built up in Brooklyn that didn’t exist in Philadelphia—how did you stay true to your values while also advancing yourself professionally?
Dr. Eli Halabi: Great question. Obviously you’re in a foreign city. I wanted to be as close to the Jewish life at Penn as possible. I pray the Chabad house is across the street from the dental school, so it’s convenient for me every morning to go put on Tefillin, pray, and go across the street to the dental school. For Shabbat, I went to Hillel House and I was very involved.
I owe a tremendous amount to Flatbush and to Yeshiva University that the core of my Judaism stayed with me. I didn’t compromise it just because I was in an Ivy League school. I always looked back at my roots in the community and my roots as a Jew. This hops on to the next step of my career: I decided to apply for Orthodontics.
Orthodontics is a very unique and hard specialty to get into. Only the top 2% of applicants from dental school actually get accepted. But I knew Penn had a good name and I had good grades. I worked really, really hard to keep my grades up. I love dentistry as a whole, but Orthodontics specifically spoke to me. It deals a lot with growth and development and I really fell in love with Orthodontics when I was in dental school.
When I applied for the specialty program, I applied everywhere because it’s extremely hard to get in. So I got a few interviews. One interview was in Washington DC, Washington Hospital Center. What’s unique about this program is they only take two students a year. Thousands applied, they interview 20, they take two.
I get a phone call from one of the residents there. He said, “Congratulations, you got an interview. The interview is going to be on October 23rd,” which happens to be on Shabbat.
I said, “All right.” In my mind, I’m going to go stay in a hotel across the street from the hospital and I’m going to walk across the street and go to the interview.
He’s like, “But on Friday night there is a dinner where the residents meet the applicants and they tell them about the program.”
“Is it important to go to this dinner?”
“Sure, it’s very important because that’s how you learn about the program.”
“Where is this dinner?”
“It’s in Bethesda, Maryland.”
“Where is Bethesda, Maryland?”
“It’s about eight and a half miles away from Washington DC.”
“Okay, that’s a problem. What am I going to do for Shabbat?” I didn’t tell him… well, I was asking him, “Is it walkable? Is it doable?”
He’s like, “Why you asking me all these questions?” He’s a guy from the South, never met a Jew in his life. So I told him, “I am a Sabbath observer. I keep Shabbat.”
He’s like, “Do you want to come to the interview or not?”
I said, “Yes, I want to come to the interview.”
He’s like, “All right, this is the date, this is when we expect you to be there.”
Long story short, I decided to actually stay in a hotel in Bethesda, Maryland, right next door to the restaurant and wake up early and walk eight and a half miles to the interview in Washington DC. In retrospect, that was probably an insane idea. I went online on MapQuest and I typed in the two addresses and MapQuest gave me the path, the route. These were driving directions, they were not walking directions. I printed it out, but it was just vague and too long. So I zoomed in and I drew a map of all the streets that I’m going to walk across throughout the eight-and-a-half-mile walk because I don’t want to get lost.
I printed it out. I went to the dinner on Friday night, I met the residents, I learned a lot about the program. It’s a tremendous program, very unique. They have 20 professors and only two students, so it’s a very focused program. I went to the hotel room afterwards, went to sleep, woke up in the morning and started walking. I took out the map and I walked through all the streets. Bethesda was a beautiful city. I walked through the entire length of the route, and then there’s a park that separates Maryland from Washington DC—it’s Rock Creek Park. It’s like Central Park in New York. The map showed me a path that goes right through the park to get to Washington DC. The problem is, when I got to the park, the walk ended and now it’s a highway and there’s no sidewalk anymore.
What do I do? It’s October 23rd. Thank God it was not raining or snowing. I’m wearing a suit, nice shoes. I see a divider in the middle of the highway, cars going this way and that way. So I crossed the street to the divider and started walking along the divider throughout the length of the entire park while cars are zooming by—65 miles per hour—honking at me. “Who is this insane person walking at 6:00 in the morning?”
Finally I got to Washington DC. It took several hours. I got to the hospital and the program director knew I was walking. She’s like, “Thank God you’re alive!” She’s like, “You’re insane. I thought this is going to turn really bad or really good, I don’t know.”
Then you have eight interviews with eight different people. It was a very intense program and I tried to connect with each one at their own level. They all knew I’m the crazy guy who walked eight miles for the interview. One of the main reasons why I got accepted to the program was because they said, “You didn’t compromise your beliefs and you really wanted to be here.”
The funny thing is one of the attendings who interviewed me also moved to America when he was 14 years old from Iran—he’s not Jewish—and he also struggled through life. We talked about that. There was another person who I spoke in Arabic with; the entire interview was in Arabic because he’s from Lebanon, also not Jewish. I tried to connect with each one of them. They told me, “You belong to this program,” and that’s how I ended up matching there.
Victor M. Braca: I want to take a little bit of a break from your story for a second. My question is as follows: If you think about the way you connected with the interviewer for Penn by telling him your entire story and showing him that you really wanted to be at that interview… the way you just showed up to Philadelphia without a plan because you wanted to be there, and making sure everyone knew that you walked eight miles on the holiest day of the week for you and connecting with the interviewers on your heritage and common language. My question is: How do you go about utilizing connecting with people to get further in business, with your patients, or with your interviewers?
Dr. Eli Halabi: 100%. Orthodontics is very unique as opposed to other professions in dentistry where I interact with a very large volume of people every day. On average, I see between 100 and 120 patients a day. I speak to the patient and to the parents a lot of times. It’s a social experience. You want the patient to feel comfortable and feel that you give him enough attention while at the same time you have to do your job.
I have a very large practice; I have 17 or 18 employees. There’s a lot of moving parts and you have to be good at communicating with people. By nature, I’m not a communicative kind of guy. I would say I’m an introvert. But growing up being always the outsider, I was always the quiet guy who didn’t want to talk much. I think my experience growing up forced me outside of my comfort zone. It forced me to be social, to communicate, to speak my mind, to speak to people at their level.
If you want to be… let’s say I’m an endodontist, a root canal specialist. They see three or four patients a day. They do a procedure that’s two hours long and they’re done. For me, the procedures are much shorter, they go in and out, so you have to be very fast and cordial, obviously, and funny. I try to make the experience for the children and for the parents like a really top-notch experience. I learned that just from watching my attendings. Because my program in Washington DC was such a small program, a lot of the learning was hands-on. I would go to my attending’s practice and I would watch how he interacts with patients and emulate them.
For instance, my office—you’re a former patient so you remember—I have a train that goes through the whole office. Where do I get the train from? One of my attendings, Dr. Shefferman in Washington DC… his private practice is right across the street from the White House. He is at 1737 Pennsylvania Avenue. In his office he had a train that went around the whole office. It was such a unique thing. All my attendings had unique themes in their practices. One had an underwater theme, another had a sports theme, and Dr. Shefferman had the train theme. That stuck in my mind. “That’s such a cool idea. Especially in New York and Brooklyn, if I want to run a practice there, I want to have a train.” That’s a unique thing that gets people talking about the practice.
Another thing: you walk in my office, all the walls are orange. Why is it orange? Because I’m a Mets fan! It brings me back memories when I was a child watching the Mets. It’s very unique; it pops out at you. You don’t go to like a doctor’s office usually… it’s white or blue. This is very unique. That’s part of my artistic flare. I designed it the way I wanted, and now it just expanded; it just doubled the size of the office.
Victor M. Braca: Wow, congratulations.
Dr. Eli Halabi: Thank you very much. The design aspect is something that I really love. And the people that you meet that you make connections with—whether it be in early formative years or just as you’re going through school—these figures in your life play a key role later on. So tell me, how does that explain moving out of DC back to New York and starting your own practice?
Dr. Eli Halabi: Great. I got a good story for you. I moved back to New York in 2007. I was 28 years old, not married, and I didn’t know what to do. I don’t know how I’m going to start my own practice.
My mom told me, “Eli, you’re single, you need to find a good girl.”
“What would you like me to do?”
She said, “Why don’t you go on this Sephardic Community Center Thanksgiving trip? They have a singles trip. Go on it.”
“All right, fine, I’ll go on a trip.”
I go on the trip. I didn’t meet a girl there, but I met a guy. He was my roommate because I didn’t know anyone. His name is Nigel Shamash. I became very good friends with him and when we came back from the trip, we stayed in touch.
Two years later in 2009, my mom said, “Eli, you’re still single, you got to find a girl.”
“What would you like me to do? People set me up all the time and I go on dates all the time but it hasn’t clicked yet.”
She said, “Why don’t you go on the trip again?”
“It didn’t work the first time! What do you think is going to work the second time?”
“Just go.”
I went on the trip. It was in London. I didn’t meet a girl, but I met a really nice guy, became friends with him: Jimmy Mizrahi.
So, Nigel Shamash was the real estate broker who got me my office on Kings Highway and East 5th. And Jimmy Mizrahi is the contractor who built my practice on Kings Highway.
Victor M. Braca: Really? True story?
Dr. Eli Halabi: That’s right. The people you meet… unbelievable. You got to lean on people who are smarter than you in certain fields. They don’t teach you a lot of things in dental school, and unfortunately they don’t teach you the business aspect. They don’t teach you how to build a practice. All these things you kind of have to learn on the fly. Leaning on people who are smarter than you… I didn’t know anything about real estate. I saw a “For Lease” sign on Kings Highway and East 5th and I called the number.
The guy told me, “This is not for you. It’s too expensive.”
“You don’t know who I am! Why you tell me it’s too expensive?”
He said, “It’s a long story. This office is being leased by Ruby Shron for his son… actually for his wife, who’s an audiologist. They pay a lot of money and the landlord is asking for a lot.”
“Can I at least meet with them?”
“Okay, fine, I’ll set up a meeting.”
I knew nothing about real estate. So I got Nigel to come with me. We met with the owner of the building, we met with Ruby Shron’s son, and we met with the realtor. Nigel, God bless him, figured out a way to sublease the space from the Shrons and extend the lease for another 15 years afterwards. He was instrumental in getting me the space. I knew nothing about the negotiations. Zero.
And I know nothing about contracting either. So I spoke to Jimmy. He’s like, “Sure, I could build up an office for you, tell me what you want me to do.” I told him I need the train that goes around and I want orange walls… “What, are you crazy? You out of your mind?” But he did it. Him and his brother-in-law Seth, they built it for me and that’s how I ended up there.
Now let’s go back for a second. When I moved back in 2007, the recession happened right after in 2008. It was almost impossible for anyone to start an own practice. So I worked as an associate in a few places. I would travel all over the Tri-state area—I would travel a two-hour drive to multi-specialty practices and I would do the orthodontics for them. I did this for several years before I took the leap in 2011 to build my own practice.
I remember one story. When I first graduated and I moved back, there was one orthodontist who had a couple practices and he was opening a third one in New Jersey. He told me it’s a brand new practice and I wanted to go and start there for a day and see how it goes. Now, I’m fresh out of school; I don’t know how to delegate things to the assistants. It’s my first time in private practice ever. I go in and I asked the assistants, “How does he like to put the braces on? Does he like to band the molars? Does he like to bond them? What does he like to do?” She told me the protocol they usually do. Great.
He called me the next day. He said, “I’m sorry, you can’t work for me anymore.”
“Why?”
“You’re asking too many questions! You just don’t have the experience. I need somebody a little more experienced than you.”
“I was just asking to see how you like things to be done! I know Orthodontics!”
He said, “I want you to go gain experience for six months and then call me again.”
I was so distraught. I said, “Listen, I know you have a practice in Brooklyn. Why don’t you let me come to the practice any day you want and I will assist you as an assistant—not as a doctor. I will clean the instruments, I will tie patients, I’ll take out wires… whatever you want to do. I just want to shadow you until you’re comfortable giving me the job back.”
“Really? You would do that?”
“Yeah.”
To him, he was taken back. “You’re willing to negate your ego as a doctor? You have a postgraduate degree and you’re willing to become an assistant?”
I told him I would do it for free.
“Okay, come Friday.”
I went on Friday. He would show me cases: “How would you treat this case? How would you do this?” I would tell him my ideas from my schooling and he saw… three months later—I did this for three months, me and him—he felt comfortable. “I think you’re ready.” He gave me his practice in Jersey. I ran it for three years before I decided to open my own.
Victor M. Braca: So how did you take the leap to start your own practice?
Dr. Eli Halabi: A lot of people really tried to talk me out of starting the practice on Kings Highway. “Because you’re building a big space and you’re taking a huge loan, you already have student loans to pay back, and you’re starting from scratch. Wouldn’t it be better to buy an existing practice?” There were no existing practices for sale. To me, if I wanted to bring my own style and flare, I didn’t want to buy somebody else’s practice. I wanted to do it on my own.
So I went to the bank—picked up the phone, called Bank of America. “I want a loan to build a practice.” “Okay, give us a business proposal.” I had no idea what to write. I put up a couple of things: why I think my practice will be successful. I told them, “I love what I do, I’m pretty good at it, I have experience. This is a growing community, there’s a lot of children, I think I could do very well here.” They approved the loan.
My father thought I was insane. “Why don’t you just rent a space from somebody, rent a chair, start slow and build it up?” I said no. I wanted the person who comes into my office to have the experience—”Wow, this is a beautiful practice.” I took the leap of faith. If it takes a while for it to succeed, let it be. I’m working as an associate in other offices; whatever I make there will cover the cost of this practice until it becomes successful.
It took a while to do the build-out, and then when I opened up, I had no clue how to run it. I had no employees, I had no marketing ideas. I just put a big sign: “HALABI ORTHODONTICS.” Put a logo and I got a phone number, and every phone call that comes in goes into my cell phone. I’ll pick it up and I’ll schedule appointments on the Google Calendar. It was just me in the beginning. One random girl called me up. She said, “I saw the sign. I’m an orthodontic assistant. Do you need an assistant?” I said the truth is I only need somebody like half a day a week because I don’t have any patients!
In the beginning was definitely hard because people would come in for the consultation and the question is, “Why should I come to you and not to somebody else? What do you bring that is unique?” I don’t want it to be money; I don’t want to be the cheapest guy in the world. You come to me because you trust I’m gonna do right by you. It’s a service business. If you want to come at night after school, I’ll be there. If you want to come early in the morning, I’ll be there. I promise to take care of your son or daughter.
I needed braces badly myself. My teeth were coming out of my nose. If you look at my yearbook picture from high school, I smiled without showing teeth; I was very self-conscious. When I was in residency, I got braces because I said to myself, “How can I tell people to straighten their teeth when my teeth are horrible?” I got braces as an adult—I was dating girls with braces on! Your smile says a lot about you; it’s your confidence. I understood from my own experience as a patient that you’re not just providing a procedure; you’re giving somebody self-esteem.
I spent a lot of time showing patients what I’m able to provide. People took a shot at me. They came in and said, “We heard about you, we’ll give you a shot.” I’m grateful for those families. Twelve years later, they are bringing their other siblings and referring other patients. I organically built the practice from scratch. It took a while. The first two or three years I was losing money; the only money I made was from the associate jobs. In 2014 or 2015, that’s where we started really growing tremendously. And then I had an opportunity in 2020 to buy another practice in Deal.
Victor M. Braca: How did you learn sales? It sounded like you knew how to sell your services and your unique value proposition. Did they teach you that in school?
Dr. Eli Halabi: Unfortunately they don’t teach you that in school; they teach you how to straighten teeth. This is not taught in any school—medical, pharmacy, dental. My advice to all young professionals: they don’t teach you the business aspect, the sales, how to borrow, what to borrow, how to invest.
Leaning on other people who are smarter than you in that department is very helpful. My father-in-law is a salesman, so I learned from him a lot. He is in charge of other salesmen in his company. I listen to him; he gives me advice. The main thing is really building value during the consult. You’re speaking to a mother who wants to know her child is getting the best treatment possible. You got to put your emotions away and speak to the child at their own level. I try to make it a unique experience—the train, the ice cream station, the coffee station. I’m not trying to sell you anything; I’m trying to show you what we provide. If this is the practice for you, great.
When you take the business aspect out of it, things start flowing. We look at ourselves as human beings trying to help other human beings. Orthodontics is our passion and helping people is our goal. When you merge the two, money will come. I focus on that with my employees and my office manager. Angela has been with me for 10 years; she’s the best. She’s a “people person” and she helps with the finances. We’ll make it manageable, stretch out the payment plan… we’ll make it as painless as possible, and people really appreciate it.
Victor M. Braca: Can you tell me some of the top business lessons you’ve learned on the job?
Dr. Eli Halabi: You have to build a good team around you. I cannot be everything. In the beginning I was the receptionist and the assistant and the lab tech and the doctor. If you want to scale and be successful, you got to delegate. Doctors often don’t know how to delegate. Building a team is important because you stick to what you do best—consultations, putting braces on. You delegate all the other things to other people who are competent. That is something I’m still learning.
The business model in medicine and dentistry is changing tremendously. A lot of private practices are being bought out by larger groups called DSOs (Dental Service Organizations). Private equity takes over practices and merges them. It’s becoming much more difficult for people graduating now to start their own practices and compete; it’s cost-prohibitive. A lot of people are joining larger groups, which kills the business flare of the profession unless you are really good at business and start your own DSO. But if you’re a doctor, you spend your time treating patients.
I’m in the middle of my career right now. God blessed me with two successful practices. I’m focusing on that—growing the practice and maximizing my potential. Eventually, maybe towards the end of my career, maybe I would sell to a private equity firm, but I haven’t thought about it much yet.
Victor M. Braca: What do you recommend young people who are interested in medicine do to teach themselves the business side?
Dr. Eli Halabi: You have access to things I never had—the internet, your podcast. Learn early on. Understand that ultimately you are a business even though you are passionate about the profession. You have a family you have to support, and living in a community that’s financially demanding, you have to make enough. Learning the business is very important.
Lean on other people who are smarter than you. Hire an accountant to teach you how to save on taxes; hire a consultant to teach you how to grow the practice; hire a consultant to teach you how to invest your money for retirement. Lean on other members of the community—people are eager to help you. SBH and many other organizations are willing to help you. Focus also on the business and have an idea of what you want to establish. If your goal is to have a private practice, work towards that from the beginning. Start thinking: “This is the area I want to be in, this is how I envision myself in 5, 10, or 15 years.”
I did not do this correctly! I went in completely randomly and whatever things were thrown at me, I saw them as things that were meant to be for me and I just jumped in. Every risk I took worked out. Unless you try, you’re not going to know. You got to jump in. To increase your odds of success, you have to be informed and educated. It’s not just learning in high school and college; it’s teaching yourself personal finance.
I learned how to open a Vanguard account for retirement from a CD that I played in my car called Personal Finance for Dummies. That was my business education when I graduated. I relied on that first. Later on I learned things on social media and YouTube. You have access to a lot of things.
Victor M. Braca: Throughout the years, I’m sure you faced many setbacks. What was the biggest failure you faced and what did you take from that?
Dr. Eli Halabi: It’s not a failure, but it was definitely a setback. Growing up in Syria, my dad wanted to teach me how to swim. He enrolled me in swimming lessons and I had a terrible experience—I almost drowned because the instructor was terrible and just threw me in there. It’s a “Syrian way”—just throw them in! But it had a really terrible negative effect on me. Ever since then, I’ve been trying to learn how to swim. I still don’t like water so much. My wife really wants me to learn and I still haven’t learned fully.
Why am I saying this? In 2019, I was in Deal for the summer and I took swimming lessons with this lady. She asked me what I do for a living. “I’m an orthodontist.” “Oh, my best friend’s husband is an orthodontist, Dr. Kevin Lang.” I knew he was the orthodontist to go to in Deal. She said, “He mentioned that he wants to retire in a couple years, maybe you should speak to him.”
I went to his office and met with him. He had been in practice for close to 40 years. He said, “Listen, I’m getting older, I’m thinking of selling. Are you looking to buy?” I said, “Tell you the truth, no, but maybe I am.” I knew how to build a practice from scratch; his practice was outdated, not digital—everything was paper charts. But he’s a great orthodontist and he treated a lot of patients. Maybe it would be a good idea to talk to somebody also interested in buying and buy it together with a partner.
There’s a guy I met randomly at a conference in Philly: Haim Tawil. I kept in touch with him; he’s eight and a half years younger than me. He sent me a message on Facebook: “Hey, I’m in orthodontic school at Rutgers.” He’s originally from Deal. It stuck with me. I called him up: “Listen, would you be interested in buying Dr. Lang’s practice together?”
“Sure, let’s talk about it.”
We hired a consultant who appraised the practice. Long story short, we decided on a price and decided to buy it together. “What’s going to happen? You’re in Brooklyn, I’m in Deal.” I said, “Let’s work together. I will come in one or two days, you’ll go in one or two days. We will keep Dr. Lang as an associate to keep his name on the practice so people don’t get shocked.”
We closed on the practice on February 29, 2020. This was two weeks before COVID. We signed the documents, we owned the practice, we took a huge loan to buy it. Two weeks later, everything shut down. No patients from then till the end of June. You can’t see anybody! And now patients are freaking out. We just sent a letter saying Dr. Lang is bringing on two new partners, and people don’t know who we are. Now we’re seeing patients on an emergency basis only. The moms are sitting in the car outside; the kids are coming in and we’re all in masks.
If we had waited two weeks to buy the practice, we probably would have gotten it at a discount! But that’s what it was. We had to build ourselves up from nothing because people didn’t know who I was and they only knew Dr. Lang. They were upset—”Is he leaving? Who are these two bozos coming in?” COVID definitely put a huge wrinkle on growing that practice. But thank God, now five years later, I’m the main guy there and Dr. Tawil is the main guy. We updated the entire practice, rebuilt the consult rooms—everything is digital. The same experience I had in my practice in Brooklyn, I’m bringing to this practice.
I have the unique experience of having lived both: growing one from scratch and taking over an existing one. It’s much easier when you have something already existing because you have the cash flow and the patients and the brand. It took me more years to build the Brooklyn one to the same level because it was from scratch.
Victor M. Braca: What drives you? You came from Syria at an old enough age for it to be a real struggle. You speak four languages—two of them you learned during high school. You went on to dental school and opened your own practices. What drives you?
Dr. Eli Halabi: I think psychologically, I always resented the fact that I’m an outsider. I don’t want to be looked at as “the stranger” or “the outsider.” So I push myself to relate to people and to show them that I can help you. The community we live in really helped me a lot growing up, and what drives me is that I want to give back some of that to other community members. Making people happy is very important to me. You come to my office, I want you to have a good experience, but I also want to build you up.
Kids don’t want to go to the orthodontist. So why not make it a really special time? I relate to the kids. I write in the charts—let’s say I know David is going on a trip to Costa Rica. I write it down in a private note. When he comes back, I say, “Hey David, how was the trip to Costa Rica?” His face lights up! “Wow, he remembered!” I’m relating at his level. The kids love it; they want to feel special. I get joy seeing that because I didn’t have that growing up. People always looked at me as a stranger and they didn’t relate to me so much. The adults did, other kids did not. I was sad a lot of times and I was hurt a lot of times. Now later in my career, if I could make somebody else’s day better, I want to do that.
Victor M. Braca: You briefly mentioned giving back. How do you give back and why is it important to you?
Dr. Eli Halabi: I was given a lot growing up by people in the community. Giving back is just paying it forward. A couple of years ago I was involved with SBH and I saw the struggles that I faced growing up… helping the newcomers. Part of paying it forward is very important, and that’s why I like to donate a lot of orthodontic services to members of the community who can’t afford it. Through SBH, they call me up: “This family has a kid who needs braces. Can you help out?” Gladly! I would do it without even thinking about it. This is the least I could do. It’s my profession; it’s another patient in the practice. I never turn anybody away.
It’s just part of a culture I learned from another orthodontist in Maryland, Neil Kravitz. He’s extremely giving and generous and he does not focus on money at all. The focus is on an abundance mentality—just give, don’t expect anything in return. You just give, and things will happen to you naturally. If you focus on “what’s in it for me,” then it becomes difficult for you to attain. If you just give it away, it comes back to you. It’s an abundance mentality where you don’t focus on the minutia of “did I get paid this much.” This is just me uniquely; I know other business people disagree with this approach. Even my relationship with my kids or my wife—don’t expect anything in return. Do it because you’re supposed to give. I was a taker as a child, and I had to take, but I saw the givers and I want to be like them.
Victor M. Braca: Looking back, can you pinpoint a specific Momentum Moment—a moment where things really started to take off or you gained confidence in your abilities?
Dr. Eli Halabi: I’m blessed to have several. One is definitely in high school when I won that election; that gave me tremendous confidence socially. Getting accepted to Penn—that was a huge boost of confidence for me. Getting matched in my orthodontic specialty program—the top 2% that got accepted straight out of dental school. When I first opened my practice, as scary as that was, I definitely saw potential; I saw that I could reach a lot of people here. Buying the Jersey practice initially was not a momentum moment, but thank God now it is.
Marrying my wife is one of the tops of all. She’s very special and she also took a chance on me. I dated a lot of girls and then she was unique to me. It was the best decision of my life. Professionally, she’s by my side no matter what I do. In every aspect of my professional career, she’s behind me 100%. Even long hours when I get home exhausted, she’s always supportive. She’s my momentum.
Victor M. Braca: Dr. Eli Halabi, amazing. I really appreciate it. I’m very proud of you. It’s unbelievable seeing you rise and create such a beautiful thing here. Thank you so much for coming.
Dr. Eli Halabi: I appreciate it. Thank you very much.
Victor M. Braca: I’m really confident that this will reach young people who are interested in medicine or business, to inspire them. Your story, especially considering where you came from, is super inspirational. If you could do it, anybody can.
Thank you so much for listening until the end. I loved this conversation with Dr. Halabi. Here are my three key takeaways:
First, surround yourself with people who are better than you in certain areas. Whether it’s accounting, construction, or real estate, having experts in your corner is the smartest way to grow. You don’t need to be an expert in every field if you’re good at hiring out; you can lighten your load and get better results.
Second, no matter your field or your industry, you need to understand the business side of things. Like Dr. Halabi mentioned, doctors can’t only be experts in how to treat patients and the medical side of things; they have to know how to run a practice, manage finances, and hire the right people.
And finally, success isn’t about knowing everything; it’s about knowing where to find the right answers. The best entrepreneurs ask great questions, seek the right mentors, and adapt as they go. A key thing I picked up from this podcast is not to be afraid of change. If you’re nimble and quick to change with the times and adapt to new technologies and market trends, you’ll see that paying off many times over.
If you enjoyed this episode, you would love my conversation with Jack Ovadia. Just like Dr. Halabi, Jack built a thriving business out of his passion, but not without many, many setbacks. Jack founded Ovadia Design Group, an award-winning architectural and interior design firm, and in that episode he opens up about the struggle of scaling a service business that requires his direct input.
If that sounds interesting to you, you can search “Momentum Jack Ovadia” on any podcast platform or you can click the link in the show notes. Again, that’s Momentum with Jack Ovadia, founder of Ovadia Design Group. And please, if there’s anybody you’d like to see on Momentum next, let me know. Guys, leave a comment, send me a DM; I’m always looking for ideas and feedback, and I would really love to hear from you.
With that said, thank you again for watching. Please be sure to subscribe on your podcast platform of choice. Remember we’re on Spotify, Apple Podcast, YouTube, and Instagram. Be sure to rate the show five stars; it truly helps me out with the algorithm. If you enjoyed this episode, send it to a friend who would love it. And if you didn’t enjoy it, send it to somebody who you don’t like and waste an hour of their time! In all seriousness, though, thank you so much for watching. Thank you to the Hedaya Capital Group for sponsoring this episode of Momentum, and I’ll see you next time.
Momentum 
Leave a comment