When customers walk into Blanc Dental Aesthetics, a boutique dental practice founded by Dr. Lauren Patrick, they receive a “comfort menu.”
On that menu are options including a warm blanket, noise-canceling headphones, Netflix and other streaming options, and an eye mask.
Patrick said she is not aware of any dental practice in the Des Moines area that is like hers.
Located at 6420 Coachlight Drive, Suite 400, in West Des Moines, Blanc Dental Aesthetics combines advanced cosmetic and general dentistry with a spa-inspired patient experience. A ribbon cutting and open house is planned for Friday from 3 to 5 p.m.
“My entire goal is to make dentistry not feel like this sterile, scary thing,” Patrick said. “[It’s] just supposed to feel like an extension of somebody’s home that you’d like to be in.”
Patrick recently sat down with the Business Record to talk about her journey as an entrepreneur. Her responses have been edited and condensed for clarity and length.
Tell me a little bit about your background.
I went to Drake for college. That’s what brought me to Des Moines. And when I was a freshman at Drake, I met Kathy Elsner. Kathy is and was a dentist. She practiced for 40 years. I decided I didn’t want to do pharmacy anymore, which is why [I] originally went to Drake. My adviser said, ‘You should shadow [and] find people in different industries that you’re interested in.’ And I met Kathy, and she said, ‘Of course, you should be a dentist.’ She encouraged me and the long story short is I lived with her, I went to dental school. She has been, and continues to be a huge cheerleader.
When I moved back from dental school I practiced on the south side, and then when Kathy decided to start slowing down, I joined that practice, so I practiced there for six years. It was like a coming home of sorts, because that was the place I originally was interested in dentistry, and when I started talking about, ‘I’m thinking about doing this other thing.’ They were like, ‘You should,’ and it’s been a great community. For me to grow up and get good footing, and what good company culture is, and what quality service to your patient looks like, and when I started thinking about, like, there’s kind of this different way I want to do things in this different, very specific niche. I want to focus on … cosmetics.
How did you get the idea to do this your own way?
I have been taking continuing education courses and I really like cosmetic work. … There’s only so many ‘You got a little cavity because you haven’t been flossing’ that a person can get out of bed for every day, especially 10 years in. I started doing all the continuing education and meeting all these people and seeing these different versions of what that looks like, and Des Moines is such a small market. I grew up in Chicago. A lot of these people are practicing in Florida, New York, and bringing this, not only we’re elevating your smile and how you feel about yourself, we’re going to bring this confidence. We’re also going to do it in an environment that feels like that’s what we do here, and so I just started getting interested in the design piece of what a practice could feel and look like when you’re designing someone’s smile, when you’re designing someone’s life, basically, and changing their life, and how you want to bring that forward.
When would you say you got the idea?
I think Kathy would tell me, ‘This is what you wanted to do your whole life.’ She reminded me of that recently, and I would say I’ve always wanted to have a dental practice. I think most dentists go into dentistry with a version of flexibility or the things that we think entrepreneurship brings. Right now, I’m in the phase of I have no flexibility, and no, my life is not my own currently, but there’s that level of doing it your way, and you either fail because of you or you succeed because of you, and there’s something very attractive about that [with] dentistry, specifically for women. I have a family, I still want to be a mom, I want to be a good friend, but I want to be of service to our patients, whether that’s my friends or strangers that become friends, and it is an opportunity for me to do that with a skill that I have. It’s like the combination of I want this lifestyle, I’m super interested in this version of my industry, and I’ve got the skill to do it, and I am the person who can do it.
Talk to me about the process of turning an idea into reality. When did you start planning this? How did you finance all of this?
I think this process has been going on, probably in the back of our minds for four-plus years. This is not a cheap project. Dental comes with a lot of upfront costs, because of the cost of equipment, and now the cost of construction. Fortunately, there are banks that understand dental. I partnered with Bank of America specifically, who has a dental-specific startup program, where they lend to however many dental startups over the years. … They’ve created this program where I can get 100% financing for this project. They create set budgets based on all their other projects to say, ‘OK, we’re going to allocate this much money for equipment, this much money for your expenses, and you have to have this much money in working capital.’ They came to the table with a scaffolding for all the things I already needed, and then specifically the relationship manager that I worked with, the most vulnerable thing you can do is throw somebody all your finances – here’s all of our flaws on paper, and the person that I ended up working with has just been so great about advocating for us, and here are the things that we need to plan for if we’re going to do this in 18 months. … We have two small children, we have aging parents. So, I think it’s just been relationships that have gotten us over the hump in vulnerability, frankly, like we really want this, and you have to really want it.
Talk about testing out this idea with friends and family, and what you’ve learned and what you adjusted.
I have the best friends because they will always tell me the truth. I remember sending out a question, going, ‘When you think of dentistry, what do you think of?’ to my group of friends. Some of the responses [were] very predictable responses. … [There were] all these questions that kept coming up, which then led to, OK, can I answer these questions directly as I’m coming up with not just my business plan, but our vision, our mission, and in the practice, and infusing and relating those answers into how we are showing up in this space, and to the patients that we treat. I think generally speaking creating an environment of luxury was – if I can feel like this getting my hair cut, how come we can’t experience that same thing in dentistry?
What is it like taking the leap out on your own?
It isa daily affirmation of, ‘Are you sure this is what you want to do? Yes, this is what I want to do,’ and maybe the yes comes at 8 a.m. and maybe it comes at midnight, depending on what the task is of the day. I told my husband at the end of the week last week, ‘I am so tired, but there’s no other tired I’d rather be doing.’ It has been such a joy to have the support of the builders, and every person that has participated in this project, whether it was when it was on paper or how it’s in space now, or my team who’s trusted me to leave other places and come here because they believe in my vision, that feels like such a blessing to me, and I reflect on that 20-minute drive every day, like, ‘Wow, I’m driving to my own practice.’ My girls get to come here and see me build this thing that to them was just pretty pictures for a really long time, and while I am spending a lot of time away from them, I feel no guilt about that, because they get to see this version of what hard work looks like, and if nothing else, if I start feeling pitiful, if I start feeling bad about myself, it’s like, I signed up for this, nobody made me do this. And looking at QuickBooks is not always sexy, but this is a version of hard I would sign up for 10 times out of 10.