At the halfway milestone of the Dental Practice Accelerator programme, Hannan Saleem and the mentors discuss how life changing this process really is.
Having won the Dental Practice Accelerator, Hannan Saleem and his practice, the London Dental Centre, have been working extremely hard over the past six months. All with their mentors, Justin Leigh, Shaz Memon, Sameer Patel and Sandeep Kumar. The changes they have been implementing are designed to help them achieve the goal of becoming a million-pound dental practice. We thought this halfway point would be a great opportunity to see how things are going so far.
A transformative process
One of the mentors that Hannan has the most contact with is business coach Justin Leigh, founder of Focus4Growth. They catch up monthly to keep Hannan accountable and strategise for the business.
Justin said: ‘Hannan has a great attitude, he’s positive and takes on board lots of ideas. But like many practices over the last six months, he has experienced some of the key challenges that are facing lots of dentists – retaining key members of his team, recruiting and onboarding. So, we’ve worked on recruitment, retention strategies, setting really clear objectives and coaching him to lead his team more effectively, so that they start to become more autonomous and take greater responsibility.
‘Hannan was very operationally focused when I first started working with him. He was diving in and rescuing the team in every situation and the result is they start to create dependencies. The team begin to think: “I don’t need to do that, because Hannan will pick it up.” So, we’ve been working on getting him to start thinking about how to get his team to take greater ownership. That shift has really helped him to develop as a leader. His team has started to develop a greater sense of responsibility for embedding what they want in the practice. From here, we can grow.’
Talking to Justin, we really got a sense of how transformative the Dental Practice Accelerator programme really is: ‘Hannan sent me a text message one night saying: “This coaching is changing my life.” He had been trying to be all things to all people. None of us can do that, it’s a recipe for burnout. We have to learn to pause and think about who should be responsible for each area. If we don’t do that, we get trapped in the business.’
Staying consistent
The team at the London Dental Centre have also been gaining branding and marketing expertise from Shaz Memon, founder of Digimax Dental. Their goal is to attract more of the kinds of patients that they’re looking for. Shaz is aiming to help them understand how they can grow their practice without spending a penny more on marketing.
Shaz explained: ‘I’ve advised them to share their personal story. In the information age that we live in, people are very interested in storytelling. I think Hannan and Daniel have an amazing story to tell. That’s something that really needs to come out and they’re comfortable now in sharing that.
‘I’ve been really impressed with Hannan’s progress. He has been all ears and he’s working extremely hard to focus on the ideas that move the needle. I’m super impressed with everything that they’ve got in the pipeline for implementation for their practice. I think they’re going to make it.
‘I’ve seen the management of their vision. They really understand that they need to look at their business in a very different way. It’s not about selling dentistry for them now, it’s about sharing with the world how they view the growth of their practice, through the lens of their family.
‘As long as they stay consistent with their implementation and keep sharing this story to the world, they will keep making moves that will bring them closer to their million-pound target. I think they will far exceed that.’
Foundations for success
One of the things that all of the mentors, and Hannan himself, wholeheartedly agree on is that the past six months have been about laying the foundations for the success they want to achieve, which is the hardest part of this journey. They also truly believe that Hannan has worked incredibly hard to reach this halfway milestone and they have all been impressed with his progression to date.
Sameer Patel, founder and clinical director at Elleven Dental, said: ‘Well done to Hannan on the last six months, it’s the hardest bit. You’ve got to make so many difficult decisions – you need to cleanse out people that are not on the journey with you, re-engage the team or recruit new people, reinforce core and culture, perhaps even identify what your core and culture is. So, the hardest bit is done, but now this is where everything starts.’
Sameer and Hannan have been working on improving the dental business through effective leadership, clear communication with the team and patients, and creating a supporting working environment. Sameer believes now is the crucial turning point: ‘This is where I think they are going to really benefit as they have put in the time and effort to lead through true authentic leadership. This is the point where they can define where the clinic is going to be.’
He continued: ‘Moving forward now, we’ve got a great base. I think trackability data, reinforcing job roles for the staff, and reinforcing the vision and core for the culture they want to create is key. That means individual conversations with all of the staff, regularly. Those conversations create great teams because a great team is made up of great individuals.’
Uncovering the future
For Hannan, this halfway point was an opportunity to catch up with the mentors individually. With each mentor, he shared his progress and gained some more insight and advice. He said: ‘It was great to catch up with the mentors, update them with our progress and also introduce Daniel who’s coming on board full time.
‘Today, I learnt quite a lot, especially from Justin about leadership and management operations. Shaz is fantastic to bounce ideas off about our branding and marketing. And it’s always good to chat to Sameer about our clinical workflows and improving the actual dental side of things.
‘We’re really excited for the next six months of the Dental Practice Accelerator programme. We’ve got a lot to uncover and a lot of future plans. We’ve set everything up, now we just need to knock it down over the next six months. It’s very exciting.’
It seems that a very bright future lies ahead for Hannan Saleem and the team at the London Dental Centre. He has already taken a lot on board and made exponential changes in the first half of the programme. This bodes exceptionally well for the next six months. We’re all excited to see the progress they will continue to make.
If you would like to accelerate your practice and clinical growth, Align Technology can help you get to the next level, leveraging the Invisalign system, Itero intraoral scanners, and the Align Digital Platform. For more information about its education and growth support programmes visit www.invisalign.co.uk/gp/become-a-provider.
