Today we’d like to introduce you to Holleh Tajalli.
Hi Holleh, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
Hi! My name is Holleh Tajalli; I grew up in Ellicott City and graduated from the University of Maryland School of Dentistry in 2016. After I graduated from school, I worked in MANY practices around the state and started to get frustrated with the different offices I worked at. The employees were never happy, the patient experience felt rushed, and I wasn’t allowed to take time off to attend the continuing education courses that I knew would make me a better clinician. I felt like the only way to become the best person and dentist I could be was to open my own clinic and create the patient experience from the ground up.
I started building Canton Smile Studio in early 2019. I was 29 years old living in a basement in Riverside Park with 2 roommates, in debt up to my eyeballs, and had already had my first business failure that led to 2 months of unemployment the year prior, On the personal side of things, all of my friends had moved out of the city and I felt very alone! Building this office and dreaming up how I could be an significant member of and contributor to the Canton neighborhood was the project that helped me become who I am today. I spent days working as a dentist in Baltimore County offices and nights working on the business, developing a marketing plan, creating my own mailers, learning about dental insurance, building my own website, and reading every book on how to become a great leader and boss.
I started Canton Smile Studio with 2 staff and 2 dental chairs. The lockdown of COVID-19 hit us just 4 months later, but we continued on thanks to the amazing support of our community. Today, we our expanding our office to include 12 dental chairs and a staff of 15. The support from our neighbors, many of whom we now call friends, has been outstanding. We have a team of young professionals who truly want to provide the kindest, most transparent experience possible for our patients. The respect and teamwork they show each other humbles me daily. The laughter in the office that me, my team, and our patients share is my favorite barometer of success.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
We’ve had so many obstacles! It has taken time to find staff members who want to be here, have fun with each other, and give our patients an amazing experience. It has taken time to help our patients learn about their insurance plans and the constant changing of coverage even for simple preventative dental appointments. We use the best technology (digital scanners, AI diagnosing software, two way texting etc…) to make sure our patients are well communicated with and informed about the state of their oral health. It is difficult to make every patient happy, but we still try our best 🙂
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your business?
We are a general dentist office with a focus on the highest technology any office can offer. We utilize 3-d x ray scans, AI diagnostic tools, 3-D intraoral scans on every patient every year as a courtesy. The doctor, hygienist, and patient all look at their x-rays and digital view of the patient’s mouth on a giant screen that shows every little detail. It helps patients understand exactly what is going on with their oral health so that they can make the best decisions moving forward on how to maintain and improve their dentition through age 100+.
Can you talk to us about how you think about risk?
Starting a business is extremely risky; investing and taking out giant loans to build and equip a dental office when you have zero patients is extremely risky. Submitting permits to the city of Baltimore and hoping that they will be back on time so that the construction timeline can proceed as planned is maddeningly risky! Hiring team members with zero experience and training them to your standards is risky because they could just quit at any given moment or give your patients a negative experience or make a mistake with scheduling. All of these risks have taken years off of my life, but WOW. Investing in this community and its people has also been extremely rewarding. I love what we have built and what we stand for.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.cantonsmilestudio.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thebaltimoredentist/?hl=en
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/cantonsmilestudio
