Guess How I Spent My Birthday...

Hey friends!

August 12th was my birthday and guess how I spent my day. I worked... on purpose! I had a full smile design scheduled that day. Sitting with a patient and planning out an entirely new smile still lights me up more than almost anything else in this job, birthday or not.

The day flipped completely by evening. Brian and I went straight into full sports parent mode for all three boys, who somehow had baseball, soccer, and football practice at the exact same time because that is just how our house works now. We split up, each took a kid or two, and met back at home later that night wiped out and pretty proud of ourselves for pulling it off.

The Thing Keeping Us From Losing Our Minds Right Now

School is back in session for a lot of you too, which means the calendar chaos is officially real again. Three kids, three sports, three different school schedules, plus the practice, plus the podcast. If it is not written down somewhere all of us can see, it does not happen.

This is the season we lean hardest on our Skylight Calendar. It syncs across everyone's phone, color codes each kid, and sits on the wall in our kitchen so nobody can claim they did not know practice moved to 5:30. If you are heading into a school year with more than one kid and more than one schedule, I cannot recommend it enough.

👉 Shop The Skylight Calendar Here

This Week On The Making Of 🎙️

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This one is a little different from our usual build updates. Collin turned the mic on me and asked where the cosmetic side of Smile & Co. actually came from. Not the marketing version. The real one.

I ended up going back further than I expected. All the way to dental school, to the honors aesthetics program I got into at NYU, which is where I first sat in a room with Dr. Michael Apa, years before he was Michael Apa. And further back than that, to my own smile growing up and why that history is the real reason cosmetics grabbed me the way it did.

Here is what we cover:

Where It Actually Started — How I landed one of eleven spots in NYU's honors aesthetics program, studying under a professor who would later become one of the biggest names in cosmetic dentistry.

My Own Smile Story — The overbite, the headgear, the photos I still avoid, and the real reason cosmetics became my thing.

The Residency That Changed Everything — My residency outside Philadelphia, three residents total, a different specialist every week, and why I learned more that one year than in all of dental school combined.

Inside The Smile Trial Appointment — What actually happens at a mock-up day, why there is no drilling or numbing involved, and why I tell every patient it is the test drive before you commit. This is the appointment where someone sees, for the first time, what is actually possible for their own smile. That is why we keep tissue boxes in every room.

Why It Is Not Vanity — What I learned from Dr. Kois about enamel wear, and why chipping, shortening, or thinning teeth are usually a disease process hiding in plain sight, not aging or vanity. I also talk about a patient who prayed over our whole team before his case, and again after, because what changed was never just his teeth. It was how he finally showed up for his own family.

The Making Of Moment

I spent my birthday morning building someone else's confidence and my birthday evening running between three fields for my own kids. Once you start a cosmetic case, you are the one that patient calls for years. Once you sign three boys up for three sports, you are the one showing up to every single game, tired or not.

That is the deal either way. You show up because you said you would.

Until next week,

💛 Dr. Ashley Joves

Find me @ashleyjovesdds / @themaking.of / www.themakingofpodcast.com

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