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The exit is a 30 minute podcast featuring awesome entrepreneurs who have been there and they have done it.

The exit talks to operators who have bought and sold businesses of all different sizes. You learn how they did it, why they did it and get exposure to the world of exits.

It's a world occupied by a small few but accessible to many on this episode of the exit. I sit down with Steve Fox.

This is a really deep conversation around a lot of different topics and we start with talking about his first successful company that he took around the oral hygiene space and he took it public, which is a really, really difficult aspect of any business when you start up from zero all the way up to taking it public.

Over 50 employees and really just going public with something in I believe it was the early 1990s as he scaled it all the way up and after 2000 he took about 18 years to come up with his new venture, a really exciting new product that's fighting the opioid epidemic.

So a really wide ranging conversation here, but ultimately Steve talks about in his 70s now he understands what it takes to persevere and get through all of the different fundraising hurdles through all the different ups and downs of a business.

And one of my favorite parts of this interview is it seems calling from a doctor's office literally he's in a doctor's office calling and we're talking through all of these different aspects of disrupting health care and all the different dental aspects of the business and it's such a cool conversation to be talking to someone with such a great background.

And he employed Nobel Prize winners in chemistry and just an incredible talented entrepreneur so not only do we unpack pieces about hiring what it takes to be prepared for taking a company exit through going public, but also we talk about negotiations briefly in terms of underwriters like there's multiple people underwriting the price of the company when they go public and I think it's such a cool perspective because that only do you have to take the company public.

But he was in thousands of retail stores so making sure that they were running TV ads back then to sell through all these retail stores so just so many great pieces of information.

So if you are an entrepreneur and you're thinking about going into retail, if you're an entrepreneur and you're thinking about completely disrupting an industry that you're passionate about this episode is definitely for you.

So without further ado, sit back, relax and join me in talking to Steve Fox from a doctor's office here on the exit.

All right, I am here with a fellow Steve Steve Fox and he is the chairman at Aqualos. How's it going Steve?

Excellent. Good morning from New York City.

Yeah, good morning from St. Pete Florida. So let's unpack your background. What got you into business and entrepreneurship?

Well, I actually started off as a doctor in dental surgery like my father before me and I had this I guess entrepreneurial gene where I saw opportunity and I wanted to capitalize on it.

So initially all of my enterprises were related to oral health because I'm a dentist and actually pretty much all of the major businesses I've started are related to either general health or oral health.

Yeah, and I'm really excited to talk about the important company that you're working on now.

But before we get there, let's talk about the first venture. Can you unpack, you know, what that was like and how that started?

Sure. So in 1992, I licensed from the American Dental Association and the National Institute of Standard and Technology under the omnibus trade bill.

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