Client interview, October 2016

How long have you owned your dental practice?
REZA: Both of us were working at Central Dentists Brighton 3 years ago when the opportunity came for us to take it over, which we did. Almost at the same time, the opportunity presented itself for us to start another practice from scratch linked to a GP practice nearby. It was a really tough decision, having never run one business before, let alone two!

After weighing up the options, we decided that it was too good an opportunity to miss and that we would run both practices… We were met with so many challenges and really didn’t know if we were going to manage.

Fortunately, this was a month before we were introduced to Prime Practice at a workshop. We quickly realised that Prime Practice understood all of the challenges we were faced with and would be more than capable of helping us run our businesses.

What was your first Prime Practice workshop?
MAHKAM: We did Practice Owner’s Workshop first. Prior to this workshop, I had been a dentist for about 9 years. I had NO IDEA about the business side of running a practice. I was a good clinician, but I was treating teeth and the mouth, but not the patient. We gained so much from just that workshop. We realised that there was a whole new world of being a practice owner. Prime Practice had the solutions to teach us how to run our business at a time when we really needed it. So we thought we would give the Practice Management Program a try. I had wanted to learn some new skills and this gave me a great opportunity to do so while still practicing dentistry and create a new environment in my practice.

What was wrong with the current environment?
It is difficult working with other people, but in dentistry you need a lot of people- you need all your team to be on the same page and you need to be building relationships with patients and be communicating important information to them in a way that builds trust rather than breaks it. Knowing how to build relationship with all of these people in a fast-paced environment is difficult and the skills to do this was missing.

With patients, you need to be ethical- you need to be able to sit down and discuss what you see in their mouths, diagnose as if it was your own mouth and not judge them based on what you think they can afford. Before Primespeak, I'd assume the patients would get embarrassed if I'd give them all the treatment options, but it is getting a lot easier now to get patients to own their own conditions.

With our team, we went from being employee dentists to running a growing team of now 15 with 7 dentists. That’s a lot of personalities to manage! All of the Prime Practice workshops, in particular team workshops and leadership workshops, help build and nurture these relationships with team members so we function better.

What made you think you needed help running your practice?
When we joined Prime, we had so many questions… in the dental industry, you can’t just go and ask another dentist down the road for support, or to help answer some of the questions you have about patients/ team members. It was just us, with our challenges. Alone. When we first went to Prime Practice, we realized that there are other practices going through the same issues with the same challenges and problems. And it was so great to know that there were solutions!

Now, if we have even one question, we have a coach who we can always rely on. It is not good to just walk around with questions going around in your head, with no idea if you are doing the right/ wrong thing in any given situation. I know that Prime Practice have been assisting practices around the world, so I feel confident that they are giving me the right advice.

How have you found the coaching experience?
It is amazing. I don’t consider her to be just my business coach… I consider her to be our life coach. Our whole team feels the same. She is incredibly experienced and, over the last 3 years, we have been building a really solid relationship. If we have any challenges in the practice, she is available. We have also been having a group chat with our coach to help them to get to know each other. So they can trust Prime and what we are trying to achieve with our practice.

What do you think are the key things Prime Practice has helped with?
REZA- communication. The dental industry has a lot of technical words- when we, as dentists try to communicate a treatment plan, it often would get quite confusing. Prime Practice have taught me how to explain my treatment plan to the patient in a way that patients can understand what is going on in their mouth and take responsibility for it themselves.

MAHKAM- I would agree, and also leadership was another part. I think I know a lot more about how to deal with people; how to communicate with them. We are so proud that we have now had a great team for the last couple of years. With other practices I worked in, many roles were a revolving door. Now, we recruit well and if someone is not performing, we go through the causes and reasons why and we find out why and fix it.

How do you use the Prime Engine?
We use the Engine a lot- it is very helpful for our meetings. We store all our actions which are allocated to a team member with a due date and then get carried into the next meeting. Makes us all more accountable. We also watch the Prime videos at every opportunity and they are really helpful too.

We track our figures also on the site. It is good to see the progress and we sometimes share these with the team. It is also helpful to track trends year on year.

Where would you be had you not met Prime?
Well, there is no way we would have achieved all that we have in these short three years without Prime. It is not just about the communication and leadership that we mentioned, but it is also the systems. If we leave the practice for a few months, the systems are all in place and the practice truly can run itself. That’s priceless. What I also like about Prime Practice is they set leadership and financial goals. When you have them, you take smaller steps to achieve the bigger picture. And the whole team can be working with you towards the same goal.