A Real Live Business to Love

On Saturday*, at lunchtime at the Let’s Talk Money day,  trainer Dom asked Nicola and me if we had The Happiness Centred Business by Paddi Lund.   Sure have, it was recommended by dentists’ coach, Chris Barrow, so we ticked that off our reading lists a few years back.  Well today, I have been to the dentist (in Brussels) and been privileged to see one of these at first hand.   If you are interested in creating a business of your own to love, pin your ears back, and be warned this is rather a long story.

My current dentist is a Belgian who practises at the Hale Clinic in London where I am now six months into some very specialist and expensive treatment to save my teeth from gum disease.   He and his wife come over from Belgium once a month to sort out the gum disease of Londoners who choose afford their radical unique one-hit treatment pioneered by – er, well, a pioneer called Dr Hoisington if you are interested.   Today, my dentist revealed that he paid said pioneer to come from the States for a couple of days a month for 18 months to show him how to do it on 50 patients before he felt able to go it alone on folks like me.

At the Hale, I lay on a water bed for hours on end in December and 26 injections later, it was all sorted.   One initial consultation, one 5-hour treatment, two free follow-ups, thousands of pounds, but teeth to keep for the rest of my life.   The UK equivalent is four very painful separate visits and by the time you come back to the second one you have already re-infected yourself from the gum disease left in the other three quarters of your mouth.   The air-perio treatment was indeed successful and gum disease is at bay.   My UK dentist said it couldn’t be done.

However, on a subsequent visit, the Belgian dentist decided that my bite was so abysmal that it was compromising his work as I rely on one or two teeth only to chew and they were making a slower recovery than the rest of my mouth.   My teeth don’t meet anywhere for chewing and he wondered how on earth I had managed to eat anything, ever.   As I said to Janet Swift yesterday, “where there’s a will there’s a way!”   Anyway, gum disease resolution at the Hale doesn’t require the more heavy-duty dental kit, for serious dental work he wanted me to get on the Eurostar and go to his office over there and this was scheduled for today.   They told me to get the 08.30 train, get a taxi to their office, get euros to pay taxi, bring passport, which train to get back etc. oh and by the way could they have some more thousands of pounds.

Dear Reader, I’m a dental phobic and my gums are only in this mess because of decades of appalling UK dentistry on the good old NHS and financial stress, a major contributory factor (scientifically true).   This man I like and trust enough to spend 5 hours in his chair in December and another 6 today.   I would travel further than Brussels to work with him.   I have even laughed with him (not today, mind) and how often can you say you’ve laughed in the dentist’s chair if not on gas?

Anyway, on Sunday night I received an email saying forget the taxi, their son Benjamin will collect me from the station, which he did in trainers and cut-offs (31 degrees today in La Belgique).   He’s 22 and driving a Beamer (assume his Dad’s, its not) and I ask if he is on holiday, thinking he must be a student.   He said no, he works for his parents – computers etc., everything but going inside peoples’ mouths.   We converse in his excellent English about our two shared loves – computers and fast cars, and the journey whizzes by – about 30-45 mins. When he drops me at the surgery, everyone and I mean everyone is at lunch, the place is deserted but blissfully the dentist Dad is sitting in the window of the restaurant next door (he has a life too). He comes immediately to attend to my needs, putting on the restful music to soothe me from the journey and prepare me for my ordeal in the chair and chatting to me about other “natural” medical cures he’s researching.   He’s very interested in health beyond just dentistry.

Turns out he’s 58 and I never noticed this at the Hale, but he’s tall, blue-eyed and silver haired – my very favourite sort of bloke – and very, very clever, better still.   His wife is there, so don’t get any ideas and she’s called something delicious like Marie-Christine and she runs the business and is very artistic and stylish.   The salon is delightfully done up with a lot of low key and tasteful new age touches, candles, flowers, decor and some very nice art which I notice is signed with his surname.   I ask if he paints and he says no, both his parents are painters.   I ask what they think about having a dentist for a son and he replies that they have three sons, two are dentists and one is a doctor!   Their parents’ art is peppered throughout the surgery to good effect.

The surgery is THE most beautiful thing I have ever seen – I have already described the ambiance, music and decor and attention to customer care.   But get this – he has read my websites!   He knows I’m interested in Woo Woo, wants to copy LunchWithJudith and prints me off an article from his computer he thinks I will be interested in, about a cure for cancer, which I read on the train on the way home.   I am totally in his thrall by this point.

The surgery is not done up like ours with tiny tight white boxes each with a solo dentist and patient in – it is one enormous room filled with state of the art equipment, beautiful wooden floors and luxury reclining chairs and healthy green plants and four dentists (all women in comfy but smart and practical stripey topped, elegant uniforms which they wear with pride) all practice in the same room which overlooks the gardens – they all bustle back from lunch on the dot of two, he has his wife, son, and at least two more assistants working to help him run the surgery and it runs like a well-oiled machine with everyone smiley, lovely, kind and helpful.   They speak four languages – English, German, Belgian and French and apparently an average of three clients, like me, come from London per month on the Eurostar.   And the music is switched from new age plinky plonky to something more rockin’ the lady dentists like – and all afternoon songs rotate through all those languages again.

I am given every consideration during my six hours in the chair – water, kindness, more painless injections if I as much as flinch, talked through everything, touched really comfortingly but respectfully – my treatment is co-ordinated in time for the return train and Benjamin again delivers me at high speed in his Beamer, since we are running a tad late.   I don’t talk much this time – mouth swollen from the afternoon’s surgery and injections, feeling a tad sorry for myself and scanning my 100+ emails on phone.

Could 6 hours in the dentist’s chair and another enormous cheque be nicer?

I am delighted with my new gnashers – I have a Hollywood-ish smile, I could bite and chew my Eurostar dinner on the way home, he lasered off a polyp I had in my cheek which I am still queuing for over a year in this country to see the man up the local oral health clinic whatever the hell that is, he drilled out all my amalgam fillings and replaced them with white ones AND he gave me a bite.   I mean, this man is nothing short of a dental hero!   I am in love with my Belgian dentist as you can clearly tell, but more importantly I am in love with his business.   Happy patients, men, women and children, skipped in and out all afternoon and ask they passed my chair on their way out (no waiting visible), they all smiled (!) and said goodbye in various languages to my dentist, the boss, who knew all of their names.   I inspected my mouth full of his handiwork in the loo at St Pancras and am thrilled.

At 58, he is SO not bored with his business and still learning new things.   The man is exemplary.

It was his idea to call Teresa Hale and ask if he could bring his radical new perio treatment to the UK and his son told me he loves it here because it’s Teresa’s business and he doesn’t have to worry about anything except his patients so although he made it look easy, there are stresses and strains to managing staff, profits etc. as ever.

I learned so much today about how to run a good business, give great customer service etc. and still love your business after growing it for decades; always learn new stuff, always cherish your clients.

Off to clean my toofypegs and protect my investment.   Night night – its been a long, brave and fascinating day.   Hope there’s been something useful in here for you and your business.

J

*Wanna know the best bit about this entire story?   I was introduced to this man by Bianca who on Saturday said her strength was connecting people.   She’s so right – and guess what, we were on the way back from a Rent2Own lunch meeting at the time when I was off to the dentist to get the UK recommended painful, also pretty expensive and crappy version of the gum disease solution so she was just the right woman in the nick of time with the right referral.   Go B!