We speak to Shakir and Nafisa Mughal about their path to becoming practice owners and creating two successful dental practices in Buckinghamshire and Hertfordshire.

After qualifying we both embarked on a journey of learning and improvement, which we continue to do. We both heavily invested in postgraduate dental education, to better, improve and gain new skills. These skills are continually applied in clinical practice. We are both big believers in not running before you can walk. We were not interested in being practice owners anytime soon. Instead we committed to providing the best care we could for our patients.

Becoming practice owners

After getting married in 2010, we decided the time had come to take the next step and start looking to purchase a dental practice. We both wanted to be more in control of our future careers. It wasn’t too long after that our first practice was purchased in 2011 in Hitchin. The practice ticked all our boxes, it was a busy profitable mixed NHS/private practice in a great high street location. It had a lot of untapped potential – it didn’t even have a website or signage outside the front door! Also, at that time it was only offering general dentistry. With our newly gained skills we knew as practice owners we could offer a lot more treatments alongside general dentistry.

Bucklersbury Dental Studio

Once we had settled into the practice, we then began the exciting task of developing a new name and branding. This was followed by a website and social media marketing plans.

Choosing the branding was an important task that we didn’t take lightly. We wanted a modern name for the practice to highlight the new ‘cosmetic based treatments’ that we wanted to…