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By Margaret Webb Pressler |
Monday, May 14, 2001
A few months ago, Yvette Weir-Gladstone began having doubts about the future of her dentistry practice. She had devoted patients, but her
business was not doing what she knew it could, and it was still not profitable six years after opening.
Though Weir-Gladstone knew it might take years to build a private practice, she couldn't help but question herself: Should she tough it out, she wondered, or look at other options?
Talking with another dentist about her practice, she heard the advice that would give her the answer -- and a second wind.
"He said, 'What you need to do is crystallize your focus,' " she recalled. " 'There are too many of us to just do cosmetic and general dentistry.' "
Two days later, in the midst of this self-evaluation, she found that focus.
An acquaintance -- a "true phobic" about going to the dentist -- called Weir-Gladstone in extreme pain and, terrified, made an appointment. "There were five people in my waiting room," Weir-Gladstone remembers. "Her, and four people to support her."
The woman needed a root canal, but Weir-Gladstone's natural warmth and running explanation of the procedure allayed the woman's fears, and the surgery turned out well. It was revelatory for both doctor and patient.
Weir-Gladstone had always worked well with people who needed special attention, such as children, the elderly and the scared. But she had never tried to sell that aspect of her practice. Now, though she still offers the whole range of general and cosmetic services, she advertises herself as a practice for the "phobic and faint-hearted."
Finding an effective marketing focus can do more than win new business, it can help an entrepreneur find a sense of purpose. Weir-Gladstone found a catchy phrase, to be sure, but even more important, she found a renewed determination and greater optimism about the future.
Her marketing efforts are still new, but they're showing results. In the last four months her patient counts are up and her ad-response rate has grown. People who before might have "overlooked" her ads -- in community newspapers, the Yellow Pages and direct mail -- she said, seem to be picking up the phone.
"I feel ever since I created a focus that things have miraculously looked better," she said.
Weir-Gladstone was concerned at first that targeting a specific audience in her ads might limit her practice, since she does not want to treat only phobic patients. But she decided that showing she embraces such patients gives everyone a better sense of her relaxed and welcoming style.
Weir-Gladstone never paid much attention to the culture of her practice, beyond creating a comfortable place to work. From the outside, it looks like just another office in a big office condominium complex on Rockville Pike. Inside, there are flowers, a burbling fountain in the windowsill and a separate room full of toys for young children. The staff are young and friendly and all have small children of their own.
Weir thinks the atmosphere reflects her personality and helps put patients at ease. She thinks it gives her a competitive edge.
"People want to feel good with their doctor," she said. While refilling a tooth for 33-year-old Mary Priestland of Washington -- visiting the dentist on her lunch hour from Discovery Communications in Silver Spring -- Weir-Gladstone worked to the subtle beat of background music from a CD player in the office. She'll play whatever a patient wants to hear, or Barney videos for children.
"I had one patient recently who really needed religious music," she said.
With no request from Priestland, Weir-Gladstone chooses one of her personal favorites: soft reggae music that reflects her Jamaican heritage. She slightly turns up the volume for one particular song. It's hard not to notice the chorus: There's something in me, so strong I know that I can make it
Weir-Gladstone was raised in Jamaica and Toronto as her Jamaican father went wherever he could find construction work. Her parents emphasized education, and Weir-Gladstone admits, somewhat sheepishly, that she was the model child -- no rebellion, good grades, always religious.
But she was also adventurous, and traveling between Canada and the Caribbean instilled a desire to see new cultures.
After getting a science degree from West Indies College in Jamaica, she attended Andrews University in Michigan to get a master's. She didn't really want to be an academic, but she had ruled out a medical career because she "couldn't stand the idea of copious amounts of blood." One of her professors suggested she try dentistry, and that took her to Howard University.
Weir-Gladstone got her dental degree in 1992, but she wanted to see the world, so she signed up as a missionary for the Seventh-day Adventist church. She especially hoped to go somewhere she could learn another language, and she was happy to be sent to Cameroon, where she learned passable French and worked in a church-run clinic.
After six months in Africa, though, the church closed the clinic and Weir-Gladstone returned to the States and married her boyfriend, a fellow Jamaican whom she had met in church. They had a son, and Weir-Gladstone stayed home with him for a year.
When she was ready to go back to work, Weir-Gladstone chose to open her own practice. She and her husband put about $100,000 into building out her office space. She had no patients, no reputation in the dental community and no referrals -- just an ad in the phone book and an intense desire to be her own boss.
"I didn't think that I'd be making anything in the first few years," she said. But it was even slower-going than she expected. Competition, she says, is fierce. There are 13 dentists in her office complex alone.
She was also disappointed that she didn't get as many of her friends as patients as she'd hoped. "I've gotten over that," she said with a shrug. "It's probably better not to have your friends [as patients] anyway."
Over the years, Weir-Gladstone found a few tricks that did work to generate business, such as using her picture in her ads. Many minorities liked the idea of frequenting the business of a black woman, and others responded to her broad, perfect smile. Her emphasis on cosmetic procedures, such as bleaching, also boosted her roster of patients.
But even with that, she was not getting the amount of business she knew she could handle. She wondered if she should move to a community with a larger black population, or perhaps join another practice.
Now, though, after finding her focus, she's staying put. And she has a mission: There are vast pools of potential patients who haven't been to the dentist in years because they're afraid, and she wants them.
"To me, it's a personal and professional challenge. You tell me you drop down and faint when you go to the dentist? You're who I want to see," she says. "I'm in the profession so I'm biased, but I don't see why an educated person, an adult, has to let their teeth fall apart over fear."
© 2001 The Washington Post Company