2023 January| February Plano Magazine

FEB JAN

JAN

6 PLANO METROPOLITAN BALLET: THE FROZEN KINGDOM

FRI., 7 P.M., COURTYARD THEATRE, 1509 H AVE., $20 THE PLANO METROPOLITAN BALLET PRESENTS A THEATRICAL PERFORMANCE ABOUT ELSA AND ANA FROM DISNEY’S FROZEN

JAN

6 PRIDE & PREJUDICE

FRI., 7:30 P.M., ART CENTRE THEATRE OF PLANO, 1400 SUMMIT AVE E., $15

THE ART CENTRE THEATRE OF PLANO IS PUTTING ON A NEW ADAPTATION OF PRIDE & PREJUDICE ALL MONTH LONG.

JAN

7

HOTCAKE

HUSTLE

10K AND 5K

SAT., 8 P.M., OAK POINT PARK AND NATURE PRESERVE, 5901 LOS RIOS BLVD., $54 KICK OFF 2023 WITH A FAMILY-FRIENDLY RUN WITH A HOTCAKE AFTERPARTY.

JAN

8

DISNEY DRAG BRUNCH

SUN., 11 A.M., LEGACY HALL, 7800 WINDROSE AVE. DRAG SHOW WITH THEMED COCKTAILS AND FOOD THEMED AFTER DISNEY CHARACTERS. JAN

12 FOUR WEDDINGS AND AN ELVIS COMEDY SHOW

THURS., 8 P.M., ROVER DRAMAWERKS, 1517 H AVE., $10 JOIN THE ROVER DRAMAWERKS CREW FOR A COMEDY EVENING WHERE WHAT HAPPENS IN VEGAS IS HILARIOUS.

JAN

14 LITTLE SWEETHEART DANCE

SAT., 7 P.M., 200 E SPRING CREEK PKWY., $20 PLANO’S ANNUAL DADDY-DAUGHTER DANCE WITH MUSIC, DANCING, REFRESHMENTS AND PHOTOS FOR GIRLS 4 TO 14.

JAN

21 DALLAS AREA TRAIN SHOW

2023

SAT., 10 A.M., PLANO EVENTS CENTER, 2000 EAST SPRING CREEK PKWY., $10 DALLAS AREA SCOUTS AND SCOUT LEADERS ARE BRINGING THEIR MODEL TRAIN A-GAME FOR THIS YEAR’S TRAIN SHOW.

FEB

2023

3 THE OFFICIAL SUPERNATURAL CONVENTION

FRI., 10 A.M., PLANO EVENTS CENTER, 2000 EAST SPRING CREEK PKWY. CREATION DALLAS IS BRINGING THE CAST OF THE SHOW SUPERNATURAL TO PLANO FOR A FAN CONVENTION EXPERIENCE. FEB

7

BUBBLES & BAUBLES - CREATING VALENTINES

2023

TUES., 5 P.M., THE SHOPS AT WILLOW BEND, 6121 W. PARK BLVD. COME TO REBEL ATHLETIC FOR A FREE EVENT AND CREATE VALENTINES WITH YOUR FRIENDS. FEB 10 THE

VAGINA MONOLOGUES

FRI., 7:30 P.M., ART CENTRE THEATRE OF PLANO, 1400 SUMMIT AVE. E PLAY EXPLORING CONSENSUAL AND NONCONSENSUAL

College degrees can be expensive and time consuming. For working adults who didn’t finish a degree earlier in life — or who want to begin a degree for the first time — a return to academia can feel daunting.

Well, this paradigm is being shifted thanks to University of Phoenix.

Understanding the worth of its students’ time and money, the University of Phoenix redesigned its curriculum approach to add value during the learning process.

The University of Phoenix’s newly implemented skills-aligned learning approach gives students the ability to share skills with employers, earn “badges” (micro credentials) and leverage learning for career pursuit. This skills-aligned curriculum approach also acts as a framework for the University’s new competency-based education (CBE) programs.

Marc Booker, PhD, and vice provost of strategy for University of Phoenix, says with this skills-aligned approach, the school has built specific competency-based education degree programs that change how students can approach courses and content with faculty.

“With CBE programs, we can take the skills-aligned curricular approach and build our courses where the skills become specific competencies tied to learning outcomes. We then have students assessed on their competencies with the help of faculty in a more individualized manner.

“These programs are more flexible for students in how they manage their schedules to consume course content; they also require students to have foundational knowledge in their degree area,” says Dr. Booker.

Through University of Phoenix’s different program competency-based education models (phoenix.edu

/degrees/competency-basededucation.html) students can complete credit-based CBE programs in less than a year and for less than $11,000. Current credit-based CBE programs offered are Master of Business Administration (MBA), Master of Health Administration (MHA), Master of Information Systems (MIS) and Registered Nurse to Bachelor of Science in Nursing (RN-BSN). Studies are online, and students can enroll at any time. Students learn at a flexible pace, which is ideal for adults on the go, trying to juggle a healthy worklife balance.

Dr. Booker adds, “We are using this skills-aligned curricular model to support students in their careers with skills these students earn as currency to share with employers using some of our Career Services for Life® career tools (phoenix.edu/careerservices.html).

“For example, our students can take a look at the skills they will earn in their degree program and see where these skills match job postings existing in today’s market.

“Student value is realized early on in the classwork while learning instead of waiting for degree completion, which provides them with a common language and currency to trade in realtime with the job and industry market, so that the gap between education and employment is closed.”

Earn the degree you’ve always wanted at a flexible pace, guided by practitioner faculty, and at a price you can afford:

Visit University of Phoenix today at phoenix.edu or call (844) 937-8679 and find out how.

A college Degree in less than one year for under $11,000? You have our attention!

STIMPSON FAMILY SUCCESS

Plano’s history follows the Stimpson-Drake family story Alyssa High photography Plano African American Museum

Though Plano’s well-documented history dates back to the early 1800s, some of the first settlers are left off many of the lists. Two freed African American men were essential in establishing community in the Plano area, even before the Civil War: Andy Drake and Mose Stimpson. Though they didn’t know it at the time, the two sharecroppers would become the forefathers of one of the largest families in the Dallas-Plano area.

Drake and his wife Easter had eight sons and five daughters. Two of his sons married Stimpson’s two daughters, and Stimpson had seven sons. Though the men took their names from former slave owners, the names created a different legacy — one that can still be seen throughout the Douglass Community today.

Drake and Stimpson were given land on each side of Preston Road, where the two had many firsts. First Black men in Plano to have schools named after them and among the first with indoor plumbing and electricity. Drake’s children were among the five founding members of Shiloh Missionary Baptist Church.

“Oftentimes when you are the first it’s not that easy. But you have to draw on something,” Jennifer Stimpson says.

Mose Stimpson’s son Eddie Stimpson, Jr. spent 21 years in the army before retiring and returning to farming. He later became a docent at the Heritage Farmstead Museum and wrote My Remembers: A

Black Sharecropper’s Recollections of the Depression . In this role, Eddie began working with Plano businessman John Wells to mark the graves of emancipated slaves from Collin County, one of which was Mose Stimpson.

“As we placed a headstone on Mose Stimpson’s gravesite, I could feel a chill run through me and got a feeling and a vision that I was going to find out more about my great-grandfather,” Eddie says of the job in his next book Remembers of Most: The Life of Mose Stimpson and His Times

Though Jennifer was born in Dallas, her father was a Plano native with a rich history in Collin County leading back to Mose. This legacy is seen throughout her family line, from Andy Drake to Carrie Drake, Jennifer’s paternal great-grandmother. Mose had a son named George, Jennifer’s paternal greatgrandfather.

“Knowing my ancestry was just kind of inspiring, so it’s interesting that I also have a series of firsts in my life,” says Stimpson.

Her aunt was in the first class to integrate

the University of North Texas. Her father was the first Black pharmacist to work for the Target Corporation and the first Black pharmacist to head the Dallas Pharmaceutical Society.

Jennifer followed in her family’s footsteps with a slew of firsts. Jennifer was the first Black woman to graduate with a science master’s degree from her program and the first Black educator at The Hockaday School where she used to teach.

“I have to give myself to make the pathway easier for those girls who look up to me and those girls who like me want to forge a pathway in STEM education,” she says. “When you are the first, you might be the person that walks in the door, but your job is to make sure that the door stays open and that the path is made easy.”

Now, Stimpson is the chief program officer for the TD Jakes Foundation, implementing programmatic outreach for STEAM and workforce development initiatives.

“I’m looking forward to bringing my STEM background and experience into this position to further advance the importance of STEM in everyday life. I believe that because science is everywhere, STEM is for everyone,” Stimpson says.

The Stimpson and Drake family trees are displayed on the Plano African American Museum website, which was created last year to revive some of the information that was lost to the public when the museum permanently closed during the COVID-19 pandemic. The website includes a virtual exhibit called Founding Families, which details the lives of the Stimpsons, the Thomases, the Drakes and more.

“Anytime they showed up, there was a sense of belonging and high integrity and self-respect, and that carried around,” Jennifer Stimpson, descendant of Andy Drake and Mose Stimpson says. “Anyone knew that they’re a Stimpson or they’re a Drake because of how the members of our family carried themselves,” Stimpson says. P

Millie Stimpson Birks, Eddie’s (Sarge’s) mother. (left) Eddie Stimpson, Jr., wife Willie Ray, son Ivory Tyrone and daughter Donna M. (right)

Fish

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Above: Tri scallop sushi with crab mix, tempura flakes, truffle oil, sushi rice base, torched scallop, spicy mayo, eel sauce and black tobiko. Page 12: The 45 Roll with shrimp and tempura flakes topped with a crab meat and avocado mixture. Sliced salmon drizzled with a spicy fish sauce and microgreens finish.

OISHII IS FUSION. Salmon and tomato. Pico de gallo on scallops. The Cowboys roll features shrimp tempura asparagus, blue cheese and seared beef tenderloin.

“Thanh will say things along the lines of ‘I’m making food for the people that come into our restaurants,’” says Bryan Dobbins, director of operations. “We want to tailor the menu to the taste of those people who come in, instead of being that chef that builds their food and says like it or leave it.”

Executive chef and owner Thanh Nguyen once noticed vegetables

on a particular dish weren’t being eaten as plates were being brought back from the kitchen. That upset him for two reasons. One, the customer was losing out on the full flavor combination. Two, it was simply wasteful. So he decided to change how the vegetables were cut and incorporated in the dish. Then he stood near the returning plates and watched to see if that had impacted consumption.

Nguyen worked at Nakamoto and Steel, before buying 2525 Wycliff from a woman who was operating a Vietnamese buffet

in the space. He opened Oishii, Japanese for ‘delicious,’ in the unassuming strip mall in 2003.

There were only a few tables, and it was one of Dallas’ best-kept secrets.

One longtime customer and his wife stumbled into the restaurant years ago and no one was in there.

“So they went out and started telling all their friends, because they were afraid the restaurant wasn’t going to make it,” Dobbins says. “And he said, ‘You know, 15 years later, and it’s like gosh, I wish I hadn’t told so many people, because now I can’t get in.’”

After 17 years of being a one-location restaurant, Oishii opened its second location on SMU Boulevard in January 2020. One year into the pandemic, they opened a third location in Plano, and they’re already looking at opening a fourth.

“The purveyors are all the same, the same delivery process, the same preparation, so you’re always going to receive innovative and fresh food,” Dobbins says. P

Oishii, 8448 Parkwood Blvd., oishiirestaurants.com

Uchiko Legacy West

The sister restaurant to chef Tyson Cole’s Uchi, Uchiko will open in Legacy West sometime in the summer or fall. Owners say the restaurant, the third location for the chain, is designed to have a “Japanese farmhouse aesthetic.” Diners can enjoy smoked and grilled meats, vegetables and fish cooked on a yakitori grill, as well as sushi and a chef’s tasting menu.

Truluck’s Ocean’s Finest Seafood and Crab

7161 Bishop Road

The upscale seafood restaurant may be best known for its signature Florida stone crab, but its menu also offers a variety of crab and lobster dishes, salads, sandwiches, steaks and other seafood combinations. It is set to open sometime this year.

OUT WITH THE OLD, IN WITH THE NEW

NEW RESTAURANTS FOR A NEW YEAR

story Joshua Baethge

lano has long been lauded for its many restaurants. With burgers, barbecue, pho and Tex-Mex, there is something for everyone just around the corner. Many new restaurants are coming to Plano in 2023. Here are a few to look forward to.

P

World of Beer

5774 Grandscape Blvd. This 4,000-square-foot beer-centric restaurant is planned to open in the Grandscape development in early 2023. In addition to dozens of beers from around the globe, the menu features burgers, sandwiches, salads and tacos.

Seapot Korean BBQ & Hot Pot 1900 N. Central Expressway

This will be the first Seapot location outside of California. The all-you-can-eat joint will serve made-to-order hot pot dishes where guests can choose a soup, meat and add-ons. Seapot also offers small plates served on a conveyor belt.

Cava 1901 Preston Road

The former Zoës Kitchen is being converted into the Mediterranean fast-casual restaurant Cava and will feature a wide range of Mediterranean bowls and pitas. It is tentatively set for a February opening, becoming Plano’s second Cava. The first location opened in Legacy West in 2019.

Salad and Go

3401 Midway Road

Since its founding in 2013, Arizona-based Salad and Go has quickly gained a loyal following for its madeto-order salads, wraps and soups. The chain has one Plano location on Coit Road. This second outpost is set to open in early spring. P

Anuphillbattle

CLIMBING KILAMANGARO AND LAUNCHING SOCIAL INFLUENCE

story Alyssa High | portrait Kathy Tran

Marcela Marañon has spent the last few years climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro, skiing the Alps, swimming in Spain and hanging out with elephants in India. But she isn’t just a world traveler; she is advocating for disabled rights around the globe by hitting everything on her bucket list while in a wheelchair.

Marañon immigrated from Peru to

Dallas in 2000 for college, but instead Marañon went through the unimaginable. At 20 years old, she was hit by a drunken driver, losing her left leg, her boyfriend and the use of the lower half of her body, becoming paraplegic.

Marañon adapted quickly, learning to drive a car with hand controls, finishing college, getting married and having her daughter. Soon after the accident, she

began posting on social media fashion tips for those in a wheelchair, immediately gaining followers from around the world.

“This is what I do because I want to motivate (my followers) to come out of this shell and to not be afraid, and to try new things and be adventurous and go places they really want to,” Marañon says. “I don’t want them to think or talk of ‘Well, I can’t go because I am in a wheelchair.’”

After posting about the lack of accessibility in places she visited, brands and destinations began reaching out and asking her to come visit their cities and businesses and discuss the accessibility there.

“Kilimanjaro was pretty difficult because the more you ascend the mountain, the steeper it gets,” Marañon says. “I was in this wheelchair with special technology that comes from Israel that is made to climb mountains and big rocks, that way when the person is pulling the wheelchair, he doesn’t have to use all of his strength because the wheelchair is making it more smooth.”

Brands like ReWalk Robotics also reached out, asking Marañon to be one of the first American ambassadors for their exoskeleton device that helps people with spinal cord injuries stand, sit, climb stairs and walk.

In 2017, she launched her personal brand, The Journey of a Brave Woman, to pursue disability advocacy full-time. She also created The Brave Woman Apparel & Co to sell merchandise advocating for disability rights, where some of the proceeds go to donating wheelchair ramps in India and hosting events for disabled children.

“During the pandemic, I was using every cent to help people in the community, especially those who are disabled,” Marañon says. “So the mission of the merch is to be able to make a place around the world that is accessible.”

Still, no journey is complete without setbacks.

“I was injured this year and I’m still recovering, so that kept me from continuing traveling and doing the things that I do while I recover,” Marañon says. “I’m hoping to go back to my travels and continue my accessibility awareness content soon, and I also want to get involved in fashion and make it more inclusive. ” P

the bad doctor

A HEALTH CARE WORKER DOING HARM

Story by CHRISTINA HUGHES BABB | Illustrations by JESSICA TURNER

dr. Christopher Duntsch became the subject of a Peacock original series for all the wrong reasons. He’s serving a life sentence for gross malpractice that resulted in two direct fatalities and the maiming of more than 30 neurosurgery patients, as told by Laura Beil, the journalist who hosts the Dr. Death podcast, on which the eponymous show is based.

Beil’s reporting was sensational and entertaining in a true-crime sense, but it served an important public service. It exposed a local health care system that allowed a dangerous doctor to move around to different hospitals rather than be scrutinized for his incompetence and, in some cases, willful destruction of patients’ health and lives.

It’s important to remember, Beil says, that this “pass the trash” phenomenon, where institutions transfer a destructive employee rather than deal with them, is not consigned to medicine.

Duntsch began his career at Baylor Scott & White in Plano, but after several of his surgeries ended in paralysis, permanent damage or death, as well as reports of him showing up to surgery inebriated, Baylor revoked his privileges.

“The one ‘Holy Cow’ I had, was when I learned from the [then] president of the medical board that, had [Baylor] properly notified them of what was going on … [and] had there been a peer review, they could have suspended him on an emergency basis while they investigated,” she says. “If that had happened, there are people

who died who would have still been alive, because he would not have been able to immediately go somewhere else.”

Duntsch performed several surgeries and mangled more patients at South Hampton Community Hospital (now University General Hospital). He sliced through a man’s artery during a surgery at Methodist Hospital, and he left the sponge he used to soak the blood inside the patient when he sewed him up, causing a horrific infection. Duntsch’s reign of terror, reportedly, ended after that operation.

As recently as 2021, his patients were still dying. Jerry Summers, a primary subject of the Dr. Death podcast, and Philip Mayfield both were left paralyzed with compromised immune systems and died from infections, according to what Summers’ lawyer and Mayfield’s wife told respective local reporters.

Beil’s podcasts reveal that often hospitals do not report problematic physicians to governing boards such as the National Practitioner Data Bank (NPDB), which is intended to flag them, because of costs associated with fighting and possibly losing wrongful termination suits.

testified against him.

“The thing you don’t want is to be the patient of the doctor who is the exception,” she says in one podcast episode. “We are limited in what we can find out about a doctor, but a skepticism of a doctor you don’t know is not a bad thing.”

“THE VAST MAJORITY OF DOCTORS ARE GOOD AND CARING PEOPLE WHO WANT THE BEST FOR THEIR PATIENTS. THE THING YOU DON’T WANT IS TO BE THE PATIENT OF THE DOCTOR WHO IS THE EXCEPTION”

If there’s an overriding good thing about getting this story out there, she says, it is that people will take that extra measure, to the degree that they can, to protect themselves.

Beil, a resident of Southern Dallas County who has continued to report on deadly docs, says her stories are not meant to reflect negatively on the profession.

“The vast majority of doctors are good and caring people who want the best for their patients,” she says.

In fact, they are the heroes in the Duntsch story because they filed complaints, made phone calls and

In 2021, Duntsch became the first doctor to be convicted of a crime committed in the operating room during the act of surgery.

While awaiting trial, Duntsch was arrested trying to walk out of the Walmart at Northwest Highway and Skillman Street without paying for $887 worth of sunglasses, watches, ties, briefcases, cologne and a pair of pants that he put on in the dressing room, according to a Dallas police affidavit filed on April 8, 2015. P

MOVING PLANOITES

HOW NEW DART STATIONS COULD AFFECT OUR CITY

story Joshua Baethge

Major changes are coming to the Plano landscape this year as work commences on two new Dallas Area Rapid Transit train stations. They will serve a new rail line, known as the Silver Line, that will provide a direct connection from Plano to DFW Airport. Along the way, it will pass through Richardson, Dallas, Addison, Carrollton, Coppell and Grapevine.

For the Plano city leaders, the new DART line is about more than a faster ride to the airport. It’s an opportunity to improve transportation within the city, connecting neighborhoods and spurring new development.

The new station, 12th Street Station, near the intersection with K Avenue, will have two train platforms. Riders on the DART Red Line will stop at a new raised platform, similar to stations in downtown Carrollton or Forest Lane in Dallas. The Silver Line connection will be an at-grade platform between K Avenue and Municipal.

Plano and DART officials have collaborated on the design of the station and its overall concept, one of which includes a wave theme.

A few years ago, long-range plans called for an expansive walkable neighborhood. Those grandiose concepts have been scaled back to focus within a half mile of the station, hoping to foster additional development there and nearby downtown.

“I think the goal is transit-oriented development, similar to what we see downtown,” Plano

Comprehensive Planning Manager Mike Bell says. “It will be more intense with more residential development. Right now, that area is almost all commercial.”

The Shiloh Road Station near the intersection of East Plano Parkway will also be the eastern terminus of the Silver Line. Unlike Plano’s Parker Road Station, which serves as the end of the Red and Orange Lines, city leaders hope to make the new facility more of a destination spot. Its location is near a large cluster of businesses, known as the “research and development crossroads.”

“We’d like to capitalize on the fact that there are a lot of jobs in that area,” Bell says.

In late 2022, the city began the first phase of the station planning project, which included an existing conditions assessment report. Those results were discussed during two Planning and Zoning Commission meetings.

In early 2023, the city will form a stakeholder group that will work to refine the strategic vision at both stations. They hope that they will serve as a catalyst for growth within the city, particularly at the 12th Street station where many nearby neighborhoods are ripe for redevelopment.

“We’re hoping that it will be an economic driver for us both at 12th Street and then with the Collin Creek Mall redevelopment,” Bell says. “We are always looking at more ways to connect downtown.”

Finding ways to better move people across the city will continue to be a challenge in the coming decades. Currently, city and regional transportation committees are evaluating factors such as automated people-movers and driverless shuttles in some of Plano’s urban clusters, like the Legacy West corridor. Engineers are also looking into potentially procuring a grant for a JPod system, which would serve as a kind of elevated monorail, but with single cars.

The North Central Texas Council of Governments has also conducted studies on a future Irving to Frisco rail line that would pass through Plano, though this development could be decades away.

After more than 30 years of planning and countless debates among Plano and DART officials, the Silver Line is tentatively slated to begin operations by the end of 2024. P

12th Street Station aerial rendering at 12th Street and K Avenue. Renderings courtesy of Dallas.

MEET PLANO’S MOST POPULAR ORTHODONTIST

story Alyssa High|photography Jessica Turner

TikTok may be known for Charli D’Amelio and teenagers creating viral dancing trends, but many businesses have found early success on the platform, including local orthodontist Ben Winters, @thebentist. In fact, he’s found so much success that he is making it his practice’s mission to give back.

“We have a big sign that says ‘Do Something Nice’ at the very front when you walk in because we need to have more positivity in the world,” Winters says. “It’s getting really dark lately and we just need a bit of happiness and positivity. I think if we all treated people better and did the right thing, we would all be better off for it.”

Winters became interested in orthodontics as a child when he got braces.

ORTHODONTIC SENSATION

“I thought my orthodontist was the coolest person in the world. He just acted like a kid. His chairs in his office were hamburgers and hotdogs. He had [The] Simpsons’ paintings on the wall,” Winters says. “He was basically having fun all day long, and I thought ‘This sounds really really cool.’”

In college, Winters followed that dream while maintaining a fitness Instagram page. Though the page saw success, he stopped posting when he began his residency in order to focus on his work. Winters started his residency at a corporate office in Bentonville, Arkansas, with a company turning around a poorperforming practice.

“When I got there, it was terrible. It was probably the worst office I’ve ever seen in my entire life,” Winters says. “As

VIRAL

BEN WINTERS IS USING HIS INFLUENCE FOR CHANGE

a doctor, the first thing that you normally do in these situations is going to lunches with the dentist in your area to get referrals and try and get people to start sending patients to your office. And I tried to do that, and nobody would take my calls.”

While working with patients, the majority of which are teens or young adults, he began seeing a trend in what they would do to pass the time — TikTok. After researching how the platform worked and how trending content was pushed through the algorithm, Winters began thinking about how to apply his social media background to the practice.

“We made one about getting your braces on and off just to be funny and posted it. We thought it was funny, but we didn’t think anything of it,” Winters says. “The next day around lunchtime, I looked at it expecting 5 or 10 likes, and in the very first day we had a million likes.”

At this point in early 2019, there weren’t very many adults and professionals that were successful on TikTok, says Winters. As the platform grew, it sought out ambassadors to promote the app for people of all ages, and Winters was chosen.

“I was one of the very first ambassadors for TikTok as a company when they were super, super small,” Winters says. “We traveled all over the United States talking about TikTok and how to do creation and teaching people how to use the app and getting people on it. And it’s just blown up from there like crazy.”

He talked to his corporation about the content, and they were weary of how a company TikTok account would drive customers, so Winters created the TikTok on his own.

“We grew really quickly,” Winters says. “Within that first year, we were probably the worst office in the state of Arkansas. After one year with me, we actually won the best office in Northwest Arkansas Award. That really shows you the power of how TikTok worked, but they didn’t think it was worth their time.”

Winters gave up the company account to pursue TikTok on his own, going from 500,000 followers to starting from scratch, this time under the name “The Bentist” instead of his company’s name. He filmed TikToks on lunch breaks and in

between seeing patients.

Last year, while growing millions of followers, Winters started his own practice in Plano, called Wincrest Orthodontics, to be closer to metropolitan areas and a bigger airport to support his TikTok-related travels.

“We chose Plano because it is a great place right in the middle of the Dallas area,” Winters says. “We get people that drive three hours just to have me do their braces. But we really just like the community here.”

Now at 13 million followers (for context, the top 100 most-followed people in the United States goes down to 13.8 million followers), Winters has begun looking at the next steps to grow the brand.

One part of the orthodontic market that Winters is getting into is oral care products. Recently, Winters launched Something Nice, an oral care company that currently sells electric toothbrushes for $30 with $8 removable heads and a magnetically charging water flosser with a tonsil mode for easy tonsil stone removal for $100.

“There’s a lot of scamming that goes into oral care,” Winters says. “A lot of products are way overpriced, and they don’t do anything. We need to make an oral care company for this new generation that is science-based, no B.S., and well-priced with no gimmicks.”

In addition to promoting his brand, Winters is focused on giving back to the community and beyond. Wincrest has begun working with neighborhood high schools, and a portion of Something Nice profits will go to charity.

“We don’t have it fully aligned yet, but we are looking to work with St. Jude’s Hospital. We also have an opportunity to work with Usain Bolt’s foundation in the Bahamas that is creating a bunch of new dental offices there. For every brush purchase, we are giving one back.”

Wincrest Orthodontics is accepting new patients for braces and Invisalign and utilizes 3D printing, direct bonding, 3D scanning and other new technologies to enhance the teeth-straightening experience.

“Consultations are free, so come meet me and let’s get some braces on you,” Winters says. P

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