Patients Don't Follow Practices. They Follow You.
Dr Dahlia Brinklow
Associate Dentist
Harpers Dental · Bolton, United Kingdom
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About this episode
Patients do not bond with buildings. They bond with the person delivering the treatment. Dr Dahlia Brinklow is an associate at Harpers Dental in Bolton, and she has built something most young associates never do: patients who come back for her, by name.
Her route in was not the usual one. She finished a pharmacy degree at Manchester, knew in her first week it was the wrong career, and bet three more years on graduate-entry dentistry, working three jobs to fund it. She qualified in 2024 and says she has not regretted it once.
In this conversation we get into why loyalty lives with the dentist rather than the practice, why young dentists wrongly assume their work is not good enough to show, and why photographing and watermarking your work matters more than any marketing. Plus the things dental school never taught her: taxes, pressure, and difficult patients.
In this conversation
- Why patients follow the dentist, not the sign above the door
- The moment she knew: a patient rebooked away from another dentist just to see her
- Walking away from pharmacy in week one, and betting three more years on dentistry
- Three jobs, two coffee shops and tutoring, to fund the second degree
- “Your work might not be good enough”, the lie young dentists tell themselves
- Watermarking every post so patients know whose hands did the work
- What dental school never teaches: taxes, pressure, difficult patients
- Is it ever too late to switch careers? “Never, ever, ever too late.”
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