Smile Business Diaries conversation with Dr Sean Bahrami

On making wellness a priority

"This is a career, as we all know, that's very demanding on our physique, on our mental health," Dr Bahrami explains as being the inspiration for establishing the Dental Wellness Society. As a non-profit, it promotes holistic wellness through education, events and networking opportunities for dental professionals. He incorporates various physical activities like yoga, shadow boxing and cycling into the society's events which aim to enhance the physical and mental well-being of dental professionals to support them to manage the stresses of the profession.

"Everyone is welcome to join these events...it's important to help us activate our rest and meditation system and also some techniques that dentists can use with our patients if the patient is very nervous in the chair."

Building and maintaining successful partnerships

Discussing his everyday business, Dr Bahrami spoke about the family dynamics between him and his uncle as business partners in four dental clinics and the challenges that came with combining experience with new systems and ideas – as well as earning the right to step up to a leadership role.

When many dentists rely on partnership agreements but a significant number of these do not last, what are the key things Dr Bahrami would suggest to someone who is looking to partner with another dentist?

“I understand that when owners are looking for an associate, they want someone that fits into their practice and kind of follows their system. But there has to be some room for that associate to develop into the type of provider that they want to be. To me, that's huge.

And the fact that you have to be able to bring ideas and get involved from the owner being open to that. The other thing is that it's like a marriage. You have to work on this actively in order to make a partnership work.”

Knowing when the time is right to expand

While Dr Bahrami describes himself as someone who likes to have things lined up before taking the next step, he concedes that taking a leap of faith when an opportunity presents itself can lead to success – and he and his uncle have together successfully expanded their practice into the multiple offices they currently run today. So what are the criteria he looks at when deciding when it’s time to open a new office?

“The first thing is that the current offices we have are doing well and they are kind of established.

The second thing is that this office we are buying into, are we acquiring? Can we improve something about that location?

There are offices that came to us that wanted to sell or were interested in a partnership. But when we looked at it, we saw that this dentist was already doing a lot of things that we would be doing. We don't really see a whole lot of room for improvement. So this is not so much of an interest to us.”

Overcoming moments of doubt

As one of the final questions, Maria focused on an issue that plagues us all on occasion: what is it that creeps into your mind and how do you get over those fears? Dr Bahrami credits his partnership with his uncle in part with helping him to do this:

“Having someone next to me that has done this for 25 years and has seen a lot of ups and downs - it helped a lot. I would call him and say, kitchen on fire we have this going on, that going on, and he was always a calm voice to put me at ease and saying that things are okay. I would look at him and see that he is not so stressed out and it would put me at ease.”

Catch up on the full conversation

Hear more from Maria Cabanellas and Dr Sean Bahrami in this episode and stay up to date with all upcoming episodes by subscribing now on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.

About the episode guest