Behind a Smile with Dr. Shauntel Ambrose
I host a podcast that shares the secrets behind some of the most resilient healthcare businesses worldwide, innovative products, savvy strategies and daily inspiration to reach your ultimate in your healthcare career. I interview the movers and shakers of healthcare who courageously push boundaries. Whether you a start-up, or needing a push to keep going or a family business or looking for mentorship without the business know-how. This is an all-inclusive, keeping it real, not for the faint-hearted, haters or the nay-sayers live your best life as a member of a global community in healthcare podcast!
Behind a Smile with Dr. Shauntel Ambrose
Scaling Multi-Practice Operations and Innovating Dental Care with Dr. Dineshan Govender
Ready to take your dental practice to the next level? In another engaging episode, we chat it up with Dr. Dineshan Govender, founders of the multi-practice dental business, The Smile Bar. Dr. Dineshen Govender graciously peels back the curtain on his journey to success, revealing the perks and pitfalls of running a multi-practice operation. He emphasizes the importance of understanding different demographics and patient profiles; a crucial investment of time that guarantees the success and growth of the business.
Continuing the conversation, we zoom into the revolutionary Smile Bar concept; an innovative retail space that offers premium dental treatments and products to consumers. We delve into the birth and growth of this concept, its impact on the dental landscape, and how it has made dental care more accessible to everyone. We also touch on the hosts' exciting journey to launching their own product line and establishing successful practices. This chat is a goldmine of insights for those considering a business expansion or product launch in the dental industry.
We discuss the importance of resilience, respect, and staying true to one's roots, and how these values have shaped his life and business decisions. Listen in as we explore these personal stories and more. Remember, we love hearing from you! Share your thoughts, questions, and ideas for future episodes with us. Don't miss out on this insightful episode!
I'm Shantel Ambrose and I'm a dentist and I host a healthcare business podcast that shares tips from the healthcare industry leaders. So, whether you're a startup or needing a push in the right direction, a family business or just looking for mentorship, join us. Welcome everyone, you are listening to Shantel and we're talking to one of the movers and shakers of dentistry, dr Dinesh and Galvinda. So he has 10 practices nationwide. He is the part found at the smile bar and we're going to be talking to him to give us a few tips and to share his journey of the do's and the don'ts, the good, the bad and the ugly of getting into multi-practice business. So welcome, dr Dinesh. We're really excited to have you here.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much for that and I really appreciate the opportunity to be on your show and I really appreciate the fact that my opinion here is valued and I hope I can give you some good insight on what's happening and how we do things.
Speaker 1:I would love to know from you. I just remember meeting you for the first time and I thought that you always had a very fresh and new way of doing dentistry and you always incorporated a very futuristic way of thinking about dentistry. So our question really is why multi-practice in South Africa and why now?
Speaker 2:When I set out into dentistry well now, all those years ago, one I'm very passionate about dentistry and I want to provide a place that a consumer or a patient could come through, get quality dental treatment and be reassured of it every single time. So there was only one way to do it. I could have done it by myself. At that point, it was a single man practice in Queensborough and I was busy developing all these concepts in my head and I thought to myself that, if the age old you know, it's just the basic principles of business. The only way we're going to reach and achieve what we needed to achieve is by being able to establish multiple points of entry, and that's what led me to go into a multi-practice dental setup. By doing it, I put it down on paper and I'll talk about my business principles and how I do things. So I put it down on paper and I had this thought and I had this vision and I said to myself that how am I going to be able to provide this quality dentistry, making use of quality products, quality equipment and also being up skilled because, as you know, doing the courses is not cheap and for the type of dentistry that we want to provide for our patients and whether they can afford to pay us for that is another story altogether. That's a whole other podcast, I think. So the only way I could see this is the way we're going to make this happen is that we have a multi-practice setup. We make use of number one economies of scale. So being able to have multiple branches enabled me to negotiate on a different level with my suppliers. It enabled me when I spoke, I was listened to. When I spoke, I had some sort of cloud or some sort of, I would say, like energy or strength to say to the supplier this is what my figures are, this is what I envision my numbers to be and this is what I need from you. And then I was able to get make use of economies of scale to be able to get prices at the correct rate so that I can now use that, use the little discounts that I got or the support that I have and I'll speak about my supplies and the amount of support I got from my suppliers and I still get from my suppliers enabling me to be able to provide a service to my patient which is still affordable in the medical aid space. And that's where I am, I'm in the medical aid space and if you look at it in terms of diversification, the multi-practice setup so obviously for us I can't be true.
Speaker 2:It must make business and financial sense to be able to set up a certain type of practice, you obviously have to have a certain type of clientele and if you break it into LSMs and this is the type of person socioeconomically that can afford certain types of treatment you also need to be able to understand where and where do you want to be. You could be in a place, in a location whereby there's you are working your entire life to establish you as a person, not a brand. So I then decided to let me establish my practice of dentistry into convenience locations. What is convenient? Being in a shopping center is convenient. A consumer, we call them, I could call my patient, I'll call my patient a customer.
Speaker 2:You know, to put it into the business mindset of how this works, a customer, or who is our patient, would come into a shopping center and is able to do a lot more at that shopping center than just go to the dentist, because dentistry now, as we know it, has become, if you take it across the entire demographic, for some of the demographic it is more of a grudge purchase. Some patients only come when there's a problem, and we see that too often. And then suddenly you get the mindset of a person going into a shopping environment, be it a shopping center, a mall, something in a retail hub or a retail space. They've already got the mindset that I'm going in to fix myself, to spend some money, to get things done.
Speaker 2:If I am going into a shopping center of this nature, of this caliber, I'm expecting this type of treatment or this type of product from the practice, and so we take advantage of that in that, whereas sometimes, you know, in some parts of the year I would call it, or during, sometimes there are certain areas or certain locations that are a little bit quieter than other locations, but generally, when I put it all together on a month, they're all pretty much the same. It all balances out. And when we're balancing the books and it's all about the books, I mean when it comes to being able to provide this treatment to patients also, being able to keep the doors open, being able to play stuff, etc. Etc. You then find that you're able to be okay as a business because of this diversification.
Speaker 1:So that's really quite an amazing story. So multi-practice for you actually has enabled you to establish yourself in quite a number of different avenues, and the one that is most highly impressive right now, or some of your smile bars, I think the accessibility of it is tremendous. People are able to come through to you as a dentist, but also as a consumer. It's an easy peasy way. It's in most malls, and I would love to hear a little bit about your smile bars and how that came about.
Speaker 2:So the thinking and the thought process behind the SMIRE bar was you know, when COVID happened and we all had to close our practices down and we all had to take COVID loans to keep our businesses operational I mean, that's what we had to do in a multi-practice situation and we all had to access TERS, etc. Etc. Etc. We had to understand that at some point there must be some aspect of what we provide as practitioners that can still be provided without us being behind it, without us being the salesman to say you need to come into the practice, you need to have this done and that done and that done. And what I found during that time is that people became very involved in their health, the way they look, the way they I mean because of things like Zoom and things of teams meetings etc. And they became very, very conscious of a good, accessible, clean space to access treatment. So what we did was and what my thought process was and I've always had the idea to set up a at some point. I wanted to call it a Zoom bar, and now I just got to SMIRE bar was to sort of retail put some, put certain items, certain high value items or high value treatments into a retail space whereby the consumer can come in. They already have the mindset that I'm walking into this place to get my teeth whitened and from there obviously we've got dental professionals that are doing the assessments etc. It was just a feeder into practice. So it would feed easily into the practice because the consumer now has warmed up to the fact that, look, I went into this place. It's not that there's a dentist here trying to sell me this and sell me that and do this and do that, because that's not the number one thing. I work super ethically. We do what's meant to be done for the patient. That is it and that's how it works and that's just no other way. For me it's black or white, there's no gray, and that's how we work. And suddenly now I needed to establish a space where a patient would have the opportunity, as a consumer, to go in and say I've just come here for whitening, I just want to get my teeth whitened, that's all I've come here for. I didn't come here for a panic stray, I didn't come here for, etc. Etc. Etc.
Speaker 2:So they come in, we take them through the entire journey of teeth whitening. We explain to them how you do this and what happens and why you can't have it done and why you can have it done, and that comes at no cost to them. So it does not cost them a consultation fee to have that information. When they make a decision, their decision is made on what they're thinking, not making a decision. I'm paying for this. I have to make a decision. I have to make a decision. I'm going to have to get this done. I can't leave home. I leave here without getting something done because I'm paying for a consultation. That's not happening. They come in, they choose what they want. They've already got the mindset that I'm coming in.
Speaker 2:It's a vanity thing. It makes them feel good and suddenly, when they start feeling good about the presence of their teeth, in terms of it being whiter, they then now pay attention to the fact that there's a hole on their molotov. We've whiten their teeth but there's a hole on the molotov and they come back for that and it's made my practice of dentistry. It's been so pleasant In that, yes, there are patients that are coming in for teeth whitening and we whiten their teeth. But we whiten their teeth and we show them there before and afters. We didn't sort out the cavities yet, we just came in. You came in for whitening and suddenly they see this and they say, doc, we need to sort this out and this has to happen. And now it's not me telling them that they need to sort it out. They're telling me yes, we need to sort it out because I told them and we've got this going.
Speaker 2:So the concept of the smile bar is really there to make treatment or make dentistry high quality dentistry more accessible to everybody. People who are afraid or intimidated of making that move, saying I've got, you know, going to a dentist making a dental appointment, because everybody's googling at the moment. Everybody's googling, who's got the reviews, who's saying what, what. When you Google the smile bar, you just feel good. What you see on the internet and what you see out there is just feel good stuff and people come in and then we filter them through to our practices or to a practice. So it's not necessarily. I've got patients that are coming from other dentists and we and they filter back to their dentists. And there's a few dentists that I can and I'm grateful for their referrals, because what happens is they call me and they said you know what? My patient has now noticed, what I've been telling them for such a long time and now it's becoming that easy.
Speaker 2:So the concept of the smile bar it's being, it's cosmetic, but it's also there to correct and to retail a treatment modality that doesn't necessarily require us to pick up a drill or do anything of that sort, but it's something that is a procedure driven or it's a process driven sort of treatment where this is the process Patient comes in, you have to retract, you have to isolate, you do your stuff and then they get results, as opposed to technically we need to do this, you know the nerve, etc.
Speaker 2:So that was the whole concept of the mindset behind the smile bar and you'll never believe. I mean it's been an incredible response and we've anticipated a good response. But it's opened up so much more in our practice of dentistry, in the family dental care group and I'm sure for the practitioners whose patients have been coming to us and when they go back to them, it's also opening up that. And in location wise, we're in Hilton, alongside our practice. We're in La Luscia Mall, which is our practice is downstairs at the mall. We're in a retail space upstairs. We're in Santon at the moment and we've got a practice that we've established in Santon as well.
Speaker 1:So congratulations. Yes, that is amazing. So you're in Hilton, you're in La Luscia Mall and you also have a smile bar in Santon, so I know that you are also part and parcel of a partnership in Santon, so this is really quite remarkable. Now, the other thing I want to share with our listeners is that you also offer your own products. Will you be able to give us some tips and some secrets to how? How did this journey come about? How did you know what product to put out in the market? What are the step by steps for you to get your product launched?
Speaker 2:So let me tell you about the products I often so. I'm very passionate, as I told you about dentistry. I love everything. I love the gadgets, a lot of products. I love everything.
Speaker 2:When I found or I heard of, but wind off Very early my career of the IDS, the international dental show, it was, it was my mission to get there one day. I just wanted to go. It's in Cologne, germany. It happens every every two years. It happens and I really needed to get there. So it was six years ago that I went to my first IDS. At that point I had all these ideas. What am I doing? Because I've been researching ideas since I qualified, and ideas is the Internet International dental show. It's all your traders from across the world. They showcase their stuff. It's the place that everything launches. Everything new to dentistry launches and from, they felt, just the rest of the world, and I had written down what I want to do.
Speaker 2:And my wife, who is a, is a very key and significant part of this entire journey, because we do everything together in terms of what we do, and she brings her skill set to the table, which is the color in this whole thing when we combine our skill sets together. This is what is magic. So we've been having chats about teeth widening and how do we do this? How do we create this space? How do we do this so that it's not happening in a dental practice? How do we take away a suction noise? There mustn't be a suction noise. How do we get rid of a compressor? How do we get rid of a, a front-end, etc, etc, etc, etc. So we get to ideas. Marlene and Imo is Marlene is my wife. We both go to ideas. She's not a dentist, but she shares a lot of my passions and I share a lot of her passions. I get excited for things, her milestones and she mine, and that's how it works. And so we go to to the ideas and we start our mission at ideas.
Speaker 2:Ideas is about five rugby fields of traders and we eventually got to a point where we found Brilliant, brilliant smile, which is a. It is a family run, family owned company that is in Sweden that we started talking to and we then also established relations with. The smilebar concept was established with European to French guys that are now in the east, and we all sat together and we established this concept and we decided this is how we're going to go about doing things, and so in order to bring anything or import into the country, you first and foremost have to have a supper, a supper license Importance code. You also need to have your products vetted. So all our products are completely vetted. We had to submit tons and tons of paperwork to supper. They go through the constituents of the products to see that it's acceptable here, it's safe for patient use and consumption, and then it is registered on our company For as exclusive importers and resellers in the country.
Speaker 2:So and that's what I did, it took us about two years to get everything, all the products sorted out the in the meanwhile, in the background, the smilebar guys we busy setting up the concept and then the concept came and then, when we were ready to hit, it wasn't just we woke up one day, right, we're gonna do this. You know it sort of happened and Covid is what gave us that. You know just said right, gave us that push to now let's get this going, because there has to be a way and a means for something for things to still continue In the event of us not being there. I had covid. I wasn't practicing for that 14 days, 15 days. Then they were dentists within the in the group had covid, there was stuff, so there was. Their practice is disclosed, you know. But had we had this little area where you could filter in, you know, it was a little bit less risky because there's only three, there's two staff members, there's a front and there's a hygienist, therapist or a dentist and that's it. Exposure was so.
Speaker 2:Anyway, we regards the product, we imported the product and we retail the product. I have not opened the retail of the product to anybody except our practices and that's mainly because For anybody to believe in it, I've had to distribute that product or resell that product to a far reach so that people will come eventually and come to their own dentist, if they're not us, and say my friend or family or somebody is using this, this particular product, you know where do I get it, and so that dentists will. Obviously, you know we start, then we start opening up the retail to dentists, etc. That's brilliant smile and it's brilliant products. It works as dentists, I mean, we know the story. We've been through so many products that teeth whitening, toothpaste, this, that and the rest, but this product it's developed specifically for it has all the characteristics that are required, the good characters that we need For healthy gum health, healthy oral hygiene, healthy oral health, but it also Helps with the teeth white.
Speaker 1:So that's brilliant if you if you don't mind the pun now We've been talking to too many leaders in dentistry and medicine and we talk about things that that come in the way of how you envisioned a process and Some obstacles, some some things that you need to overcome. You have a national distribution now and I'm sure that there cannot be an easy, foolproof way to just avoid some obstacles that come your way. Can you maybe share with us how you have overcome some of those obstacles and what they may have been on your journey to launching your products, as well as establishing all of the practices that you have?
Speaker 2:Being the person that I am, there's three very important things that I govern my business dealings based on. The first thing is you know I have to have a plan. I always have a plan right, I always and you know when you have a plan, the only reason you have that plan is because you have to have passion. If you don't have passion for your plan, your plan will never work, and the only way that your plan will work is if you persevere. So then I call that the three P's. The three P's are plan, passion and persevere, and that's what I do and that's what I've always done.
Speaker 2:So I'm a God fearing man. I believe in miracles and I believe in all sorts of things, and I believe that if I wake up and I have an idea and something that's come to me, there's a reason that this has come to me. There's a reason that this thought has come into my mind. There's a reason that I have a computer, that is, that we can log into the internet and we can literally connect with anybody. There's a reason that I would wake up at 4am every day which I do and start my day and go through it. There's a reading for all of that, and so I have established a well, very early in my career, what I wanted to be. I wanted to be the best dentist that I could possibly be for myself, the best that I could be. I'm not claiming that I'm the best dentist in the world, but for me, I also wanted to be the best that I could be in business.
Speaker 2:And when you establish or you position yourself to be the best at this or the best at that and the best of this, it comes with hardship, it comes with ending your stripes and my biggest obstacle to my mind, my mind and my thoughts and my plans, not my obstacle. What opens away for me is my family. I work and I do everything I do for my family, for my children, for my wife, for my brother, my extended family, and it gives me great joy to wake up every single day knowing that I put everything into this business of mine and I know how many families it feeds. I know how many staff people take something home. You know I look at we have all these WhatsApp groups and I look at. You know I look at people talking and you know, when I go to visit a practice, I see these relationships that are formed between the staff and between the dentists. They're like really good friends, you know. And this happened because they all came to this business called family dental care, this dental practice. There was this young, at the time young man who had this vision, or this idea to create something where it will touch more than one person while I'm working in one room. And that's exactly what happened.
Speaker 2:And the obstacle I have is that I'm getting a bit older now and I can only do so much with two hands. If I had maybe two more hands, I'd be okay, I'd be fine, and for most of it it's been great and it's been good. But it comes with a lot of sacrifice. I mean, I work today Sunday, I'm sure I can say that and I worked this morning. I worked this morning at the practice. We saw our patients, we did what we needed to do and that's fine, you know, and I don't see it as a problem. But as soon as you start identifying certain things as a negative, then it becomes an obstacle.
Speaker 2:If I'm waking up at eight o'clock, so let's just take my week-heat travel, my week-heat travel. On a Monday I'll travel to Waterfall, which from where I live I live in the Amshlanger area From there to Waterfall is a 30-minute, 35 minutes. I'll drop the kids off, then I get to work. Right, I'm there at 8 am. Then on a Tuesday I go to Queensborough. That's another 20-30 minutes. Then on a Wednesday I go to Hilton, which is an hour 20 minutes. That's one way. Then it goes on and so it goes on. But what I see that time as, I see that time as my time to plan, my time to to-do list, my time to put into operation what I'm thinking like, the plans to marketing, the plans to procurement, the plans to our clinical directors, our plans to our managers. So that's my time.
Speaker 2:But maybe somebody else would see it as an obstacle, because it is an obstacle To get on the road, high-pick traffic and you're driving through all of this. It is an obstacle Because anything can happen on the road and I've never seen it that way. I always see the best in anything that I do. I see the best in everyone that I engage with and I believe that there's a reason that everybody cross paths. And I also believe that the energy or the little knowledge we constantly learning because I do not know everything Today I've learned so much about the ins and outs and the background stuff about podcasts, about your mics and about your headphones and all sorts of things. I mean, we're learning every single day and that's exactly where we are.
Speaker 2:So when you say what are your obstacles, yeah, sure, you know, financially it's not easy because we're financing things and we're taking that risk and it's a risk. Now you go to a bank or a business plan and say bank, please believe in me, do this with that. Sometimes you get a crap rate. The rate's not great, but you have to look at the bigger picture. What's the bigger picture? The bigger picture is something positive is coming out of all these risks that you are taking, because where you're taking the risk now, somebody besides yourself is reaping the reward of this entire thing. Somebody is doing it.
Speaker 2:There's a reason why and this is what I'm going to say to you there's a reason why I can wake up at 4am and think that's fine. There's a reason why I could go to work seven days a week and that's okay. There's a reason why I could. You know, I'll take my daughter to work. I'll take her with me to work. She comes with me. There's a reason why she's eight years old. I told them Mia, look at this x-ray Dark area on the two. What is that? That's decay. What do we do with this? We need to remove the decay and fill that. I said what happens if that gets too close to the center? She says then we're going to end up with an infection into the nerve. She's eight years old Now there's a reason she can do that. Now she's not thinking, she's not waking up and saying Sunday I have to go with that to work. She's excited and I'm excited.
Speaker 2:I don't know what I can say in terms of obstacles, but I can say that the obstacles in your life is what you make it out to be. Everyone has obstacles, but if you really think hard about that, those obstacles could be your stepping stone to bigger things. I know if you take an obstacle like somebody's out there saying but I don't have those access to that kind of funding or privileges. I'm looking for the word. I can't find the word now, but I don't have access to that. Everybody has access to everything.
Speaker 2:I can tell you stories about people who came from grounds even worse than zero, and that's my mom and dad, and I'm sure most people have a story about their mom and dad, but my dad and my mom came from absolute zero and they came up and they gave us what they could. My family or my cousins and my brothers. We are the first generation graduates in our family. They come from very, very humble beginnings but they didn't stop. They had obstacles. They had zero money, zero degree, zero, nothing to their names. But they made something up. So I look at that. I don't know, I can't tell you what my obstacles are, I just turn it into positives, I turn it into stepping stones, I turn it into something I can learn from and I move forward with it.
Speaker 1:Okay, so I really I see that your journey is about positive thinking and I think that your leadership is about positive thinking. Just the idea that obstacles are those stepping stones that really push you that much further and accomplish so much more than even what you set out to do is really a testimony of how far you've come and the inspiration that you are to the industry at large. Now, a lot of people require a bit of a mindset change when it comes to obstacles, and I see that you lead your entire team knowing that if things are going to get tough, then you just sort of adapt and change. So when do you get that mindset change from? Has that been something that has always been part of your journey? Who are the people that have inspired you and where has that mentorship come from?
Speaker 2:I'll tell you. I'm going to go into the story. My dad was a guy that you know. The one thing he taught us and this is both my mom and dad you know my dad's late now and he was my best friend and he taught me resilience. He taught me respect. My father was a type of person he said you know, you always respect everybody. You don't care who they are, what they do, you just remember where you come from and remember where you're going. Don't ever lose sight of where you are going, because as soon as you lose sight of where you're going, you'll never remember or you completely forget where you came from. And that sticks with me. My dad and I we did. He was a businessman, he was not. He didn't make it past the end of the date because he couldn't. He had to get out there and work and take care of family and do all of those things. And he's taught me lessons in my life that I still think about now.
Speaker 2:You know, at some point I had a discussion with a patient of mine today and I said to you my father used to always say to me you know, one day you've got one brother, you've just got a brother. One day you'll only see me and your brother. You know, and I couldn't understand it, because he was trying to teach us like, as brothers, there's two of us, this is what you guys do. You will never, there will never be a line or a division between you, because you only have each other and you only have me in each other. And I couldn't understand what he was saying. And then, when he passed to you, I did not realize. Oh gosh, this guy was so smart, he primed us to see him in each other. We will never be like nothing happened. Like Nash, my brother, he knows exactly where I am, he knows where he is and we just go forward like that. And there were certain. I can tell you from a business point of view. My dad was a fearless man. He said to me and he taught me a thought that you have that's going to turn into something bigger and greater and positive and will touch people, and mainly touch them by the food that they'll eat. Is a thought that was given to you by a higher power and you will go with it. You are not as long as you're not. You know you're not, and I don't condone anyone. Everybody, each to themselves, whatever you want to do in life, as long as you do it with a good mind, a big heart and you know, for the purest and best intentions, just go ahead and do it.
Speaker 2:I used to say, dad, we were in plant hire when I just qualified. It was my dream to get my father back into his plant hire business when I qualified and was my dream at that point because my parents went through a tough time and then we went. They made sure we went to campus and we had everything me especially. I went to Cape Town and had everything and it was incredible. I had a wonderful time. And when I finished and I was quite, I took some time because I did a couple of qualifications before I finalized, finished off a dentistry. So it took me a bit of time and I know and I acknowledged the sacrifices they made and I said to myself when I qualify I'll get my dad back into plant hire, into his business and I'll get my mom's dream car as a BMW. So I know it means nothing at that point.
Speaker 2:Material things are not like a big thing. It was more the dream or the goal of achieving this. It wasn't the actual thing. The thing happened. I qualified. I worked as hard as I could. I tapped on every door, every bank till they saw value in what I was proposing in terms of my father's business to get back into it and my mom's BMW X. It was achieved, but it was a goal at the end of the day. The end of the day, it wasn't the goal, it was the happiness that he brought to my parents, my dad, to be back in his business, which was a plant hire, which is yellow metal, so that's tractor loader, back goes, payloaders, all of those things. That was his game, that his blood was yellow. My father's blood was yellow and I can tell you that with conviction, his blood was yellow and he was it. The happiness, everything it gave him. That was what the goal was.
Speaker 2:And my mom and that car, the car, stayed with us for many, many, many, many, many years, till last year's, to a point where she says I think I need to maybe get another one. This one's gone old now and it's breaking down. But it was the way she was with that car, it was something. It was just the way she was with it. It wasn't even the material thing, because it just was a car, but it's just that goal and that. So this is what I lead my life, or what drives me to do what I do.
Speaker 2:It's not about money. I always tell to people obviously we're in business to be successful. We're in business to make sure that our business thrive. But we also in business to make sure that the expenses are paid. We're in business to make sure that we can derive to get a better life. When you actually make the business about what it's meant to be about, like we're in the dental business, we're not selling cell phones or cool drink or et cetera. We're selling treatment. We're dealing with patients. So at the end of the day, we have to ensure that our business is doing good for our patients. And then what happens? Simple, you're doing good for your patients. That business of doing good for your patients and doing the right thing for your patients translates into monetary value.
Speaker 2:Now, if you become in a business where you get a patient that comes in and it's all about boom, boom, it's about doing this and doing that and doing this and doing that and doing this.
Speaker 2:So the business comes in but you don't see that patient again. You don't see. Your business does not establish. You start to service the same patient, because that patient will either only believe in you and they just think that that's just the only place I can go to, or they just don't have time to go find somebody else. And here we are, and I can give you the statistics as a group and I know it's quite more and my wife will give it to me properly, and I know we probably see over a group of 10 practices, maybe over a thousand new patients a month. You know maybe more. These are new patients coming through the door and I think that's incredible. So it's not us servicing our only patient, our same patients, which is still the new patients, and the old patients that are still coming through, and that's what it is about. I hope I answered that question.
Speaker 1:I know that you set out from the word go to accomplish something quite exceptional and congratulations. That's certainly what you've done, and you know we've been talking about the amount of energy that it takes and we do know that people on the whole that do more accomplish more. Now you're waking up on a Sunday and you're the owner of 10 practices. You're the founder of the Smile Bar, you have your own products. I'm imagining that your teams are quite substantial and what are the ways you have discovered that keep them together? How do you touch base with every one of your teams and what is the management of that like?
Speaker 2:So, basically, in anything that you do and I tell this to everybody start how you want to finish. So, for example, I believe in leadership from behind and not from the front. You lead from behind and you're able to watch people grow and you'll be able to identify weaknesses. You leave from the front. You'll identify strengths every time, because for you to be in the front, you need strength behind you. Now, when you identify weaknesses and you turn them into strengths, you have a super strong team, and this is how it's all based.
Speaker 2:So, generally, I touch a higher management team with people that are key people in my organization Myself. There's a few people that are in there. We start our meetings around about 4 am in the morning, so everybody's well aware that the management and the leadership team I call them, call us. We start with our meeting there and we send out the to-dos and what needs to happen. Then we have our practice teams, which are individual practice teams which, within the business, each practice or each team although they function independently, they are equipped with the systems, the systems, processes and the protocols of how we do things in order to achieve. Then we have the backend team, which is no business A business is not a business without a good and a strong administration team. So we have the backend and admin team which are responsible for everything, which is responsible for all aspects of people being paid, etc.
Speaker 2:Then, from a clinical point of view, I always drive. So I always say to the young clinicians we historically we've got a lot of young clinicians who are now becoming older with us, which I'm so proud of. So that's another thing that I'd like to give thanks to my incredible team of dentists. A lot of them came in as I call them youngsters. They came straight out of the service. They sat over my shoulder for months before they got into a practice and now they're better than me and I'm so happy. I'm glad they do things that I just I have to tell you I'm in complete awe of to see them practice with such ethics, with such knowledge of that. I'm not entitled. They don't have entitlement. They just go in and they do what they need to do. There's patients coming through the door and they make good on that and they do the best for them. But that's my team, and so what happens is everybody sort of knows how the processes and systems work.
Speaker 2:Everything is built on a system and a process. So we have a policy for everything. So if there's a patient that complained, we have a system and a process for that. If there's a patient compliment, we have a system and a process for that. If there's an account, we have a system and a process for that. So then that we developed.
Speaker 2:I myself and the team developed over a period of this, what 15, 12, 13 years now. So that's how we got to that. So everything is built like that. And then we've got a leadership team, we've got the smaller teams, we've got the admin team and we've got the clinical team. The clinical team we have meetings quite often, we have a mentorship. I'm always on a WhatsApp or a call, et cetera. We get to everything. So we constantly share in cases.
Speaker 2:We're learning how to do things better and you know, just training, it's all about training and upskilling. That's the only way we do it. And the only way we can train and upskill is if I am training and upskilling myself. So I constantly I'll attend whatever I need, you know, in terms of courses, conferences. I do a lot of online stuff just to learn what's new, what's good out there. And that brings me to a big aspect of where our practice is going and that's artificial intelligence and artificial intelligence and the world of digital dentistry and what it's done for my practice and what it's going to potentially do for my practice going forward and for every other practitioner in the world. It is here, it is now, it has to happen, it has to be embraced. So we use a lot of technologies at the moment.
Speaker 1:So what is the doctor donation governor when he goes home? What is your daily stress reliever, for instance?
Speaker 2:I have a 5 am exercise session with my wife, so we do exercise at 5 am.
Speaker 1:Have you taken any advice that didn't work out in business, and what was that advice?
Speaker 2:The worst advice that I took in business. It won't work out.
Speaker 1:Where do you see yourself in 5 years time Exactly?
Speaker 2:where I am today, but with a bigger team and just a happier space. What?
Speaker 1:are you most proud of?
Speaker 2:My family.
Speaker 1:Thank you, dr. Governor. I know that, taking out the time from your very busy life where you're traveling across the country to just connect with all of your different projects that you've got going, I want to congratulate you and wish you all the luck for the future. What you've shared with our guests has been tremendous and I do think that you're one of the movers and shakers of dentistry. We really appreciate you in the industry and we're looking forward to what else you're going to be bringing to us, just keeping it fresh and keeping it real. So thank you for joining us and being part of the show we really appreciate you.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much for having me on. I really, really appreciate it. I'll see it again and thank you for hearing what I have to say and, if it helps, I'm an open book. Anytime anyone wants to reach out, I'm here Always.
Speaker 1:So we're inviting everyone today to clean the beach with kind brush and a hosse. So on the 3rd of December, if you are in Cape Town, meet at the public swimming pool at sea point at eight o'clock to nine o'clock. Bring as many friends and family and get together for the beach cleanup. It's an initiative to get rid of plastic waste, make it a kind of breathing environment, make it a kind of swimming environment, make it a kind of living environment. So the clean the beach initiative with kind brush and a hosse is happening on the 3rd of December at sea point, so we're hoping to see you there. Hey, I've covered starting up and how to turn your vision into a business, and in our future episodes we look at leadership, we look at multi-practice success. I'm grateful for you and I would love to hear your ideas. What questions do you need answered? Please drop me a mail at behindasmile2.com. I look forward to hearing from you and remember you are heard, you are seen and on this platform you are invited. Let's make it happen together.