Two Reds are Better than One

Anushika Brogan is the owner of Damira Dental Group. After graduating from Kings, Anushika was destined to be an entrepreneur. She quickly purchased her first dental practice in 2003, and Damira was born. Since then, she has expanded the group to 42 locations throughout the UK, including brand new practices specialising in facial aesthetics. She is also the only female CEO of a dental corporate in the UK.

You might think that managing a thriving Dental group would keep her busy, especially since she operates without a COO or CFO. However, Anushika still finds time to do a full day of dentistry every week. In this podcast, she shares why she prioritises this and why it's so important to her.

In this episode of "Two Reds are Better than One," you will discover:

• How Anushika achieves fantastic balance in her life and the role discipline plays in it
• How she maintains a strict fitness regime that will inspire you—hint: she wakes up at 4:30 am every weekday
• The lessons she learned from a messy divorce and a four-year battle in the High Court to save her business
• Why being hands-on in the business and knowing what's going on is crucial
• Her steely attitude and her life philosophy, "If you can do it, so can I"
• Her tips on recruitment and how she manages associates

If you want to be inspired by the potential of a career in dentistry, no matter what your age or background, listen to the journey of one of the UK’s most interesting dental practice owners.

As a child, Manrina Rhode wanted to become an actress, but an enlightened Headmistress saw the opportunity of combining art and science and encouraged her to study dentistry. The UK dental community (and her patients) can be glad that she did.

Right at the start of her career, she secured a position with Dr. Surinder Hundle at Lund Osler, one of whose clinics was based in Harvey Nicholls, London - innovative in its time.

Surinder, famous as an original participant in the TV show "10 Years Younger" opened up opportunities that you can only dream of (learn how Manrina beat her competition to get this job).

After several years at Lund Osler, she worked for Tim Bradstock-Smith - The London Smile Clinic.

Along the way, she ran a Music Label in Atlanta, that is another story you need to hear.

In the last 2 years, she has finally opened her own clinic - DRMR - and you’ll hear why Chris was speechless with admiration when he first visited.

In this episode you will discover;

• What it takes to become a true success in dentistry
• The importance of finding your passion in dentistry and to do what you love to do
• The big lesson she learnt from her father. If you have children, the most important message you can give them, so that they are a success in their lives
• The importance of finding mentors and networking with the very best
• If you are running an Instagram page you need to do this ONE THING to make it work for you

AND SO MUCH MORE.

In this month’s podcast we interview Chris Ball - Co-Founder of a super-successful private squat in Preston, Lancashire - Dentistry by Cure Clinics.

For anyone considering future practice ownership, anyone who has purchased or opened a clinic in the last few years - and for anybody who may have “lost their mojo” - this conversation is a must. Chris shares with us his personal life story and also a detailed account of the planning and execution of the squat opening in May 2022. By the way - the business has been a huge success story with record sales, full surgeries and they have had to close down the recruitment page on their website BECAUSE THEY WERE GETTING TOO MANY JOB APPLICANTS. You’ll learn that Chris is a local lad to Preston, grew up in a family that instilled his work ethic, discovered dentistry as a trauma patient and managed to get into dental school on his third attempt. We will discover why the phrase “luck is the meeting place of opportunity and preparation” is to relevant to the circumstances in which the concept was born - a conversation with his Pharmacist brother at Christmas 2021, that led to the plans for and creation of the clinic. In this podcast you will also hear:

• The communication rules for a successful family business;
• How the clinic manages to stay open for business 7 days a week;
• The story of the pre-registration campaign that had thousands of potential new patients asking for information before the doors opened;
• The marketing campaign that had a film crew arriving to create a news-piece for The lancashire Evening Post;
• The chance encounter in a Cornwall restaurant that resulted in the appointment of their Patient-Experience Coordinator;
• How best to avoid burn out;
• What next for Cure Clinics?

Chris Ball will inspire you and remind you that with a combination of careful preparation, collaboration, core values and future-thinking, anything is possible.

Karl Walker Finch is our latest guest on the 'Two Reds are Better than One Podcast'. Karl graduated in 2010 in Liverpool and then spent the next 5 years working as an associate on the Wirral before joining Lindley Dental in Huddersfield as an associate who announced on his first day that someday he wanted his own place. Very early on in his career, Karl discovered two passions. His first was for Implants and in 2014 took a Masters in Implantology and the other was that he had an Entrepreneurial streak in him, and that he wanted to be a Practice Owner one day. In 2022, he became a Practice Owner along with his wife Marisa, when he purchased a Practice and changed the name to 'Smiles in Tandem’ (https://www.smilesintandem.com/) which is based in Huddersfield. Karl concentrates on all things dentistry and Marisa's speciality is Counselling and Psychotherapy. This is a fascinating interview and Karl really opens up and shares some of his own mental health issues and what he did to overcome them and still does every day. There are so many take-aways for everyone. As well as running his own busy Practice, he is a family man and yet he has still found time to write a book called 'In the Loupe' - The Secrets to Finding a Passion in Dentistry' and he talks about this book on the podcast. You can purchase the book NOW at this link. In this interview you will discover;

• One of the most important principles that you need to adopt when buying an existing Dental Practice
• Karls biggest single mistake when he purchased the Practice
• The importance of Communication with the team and how to get your team to buy into the changes you want to make
• The three techniques Karl adopted to deal with his own mental health issues and how he maintains a happy work and home life
• The importance of every day writing
• The importance of pace, not race and living in the moment
• Goal setting is not the be all and end all and how it can have impact on quality
• The impact that belonging to a Mastermind group can have in your career

AND MUCH MORE.

This month we meet with Lisa Catto, founder of www.thebusinesscatlayst.co.uk And creator of: https://idealpatientjourney.com/ who talks to us about the three critical results of the work she does for dental practices:

• Saving time;
• Getting organised and
• Growing sales.

Nothing to not like there. Lisa has run her own businesses since the age of 19 and has a bewildering CV that includes:

• Turning a roller-skating rink into a rave venue;
• Running an animation art gallery in central London;
• Pioneering computer games and digital marketing before the internet “was a thing” and we were using floppy disks and dial up modems!

After a sabbatical in the South of France, she returned to the UK and started working in small business automation before most of us even knew what that meant. Chris first met Lisa during lockdown, when she was automating an ortho group and he has since witnessed the transformative work she has done with a number of his clients in general practice. For Ashley, meeting Lisa for this podcast recording was the second blind date of his life - and the first that has turned up! Lisa explains to us in very clear and direct terms the three phases of her work with dental clients, automating:

• Phase 1 - what happens before someone becomes a patient (including her unique SmileViewer systemhttp://www.smile-viewer.com/);
• Phase 2 - how they are converted into fee-paying patients and
• Phase 3 - how they are looked after as patients.

She also explains how the work she does integrates with Practice Management Software and the thorough onboarding that is done with the dental team when her systems are put in place. Ultimately, she says, “automation is about creating the extra time and space to build relationships” and that “incremental is exponential” - if you can save just 5 minutes a day, that’s almost 3 full days a year of team activity. Dentists leave too much money on the table in treatment plans never sold or not taken up - Lisa shows us how to automate improvement. It’s a great interview, never too technical or geeky and we think you will love it.