When we think of entrepreneurs, dentists don't usually leap to mind. That's probably because the vital but seemingly mundane services they provide don't strike us as bold or enviable ventures.

Then again, when we think of dentists' offices, the mental pictures we conjure up probably don't look anything like the luxurious, spa-like reality of Dr. Ellen Dayan's Toronto practice.

More on her startlingly unusual and welcoming environment in a moment. What's most interesting about this tangible evidence is that Dayan represents a new and still-rare breed of what might be termed "gentler dentists.”

It's part of what recently attracted some high-calibre attention.

Brennan O'Connor, Business Edge
Dr. Ellen Dayan's unique Toronto dentistry practice has attracted high-calibre attention.

Dayan was nominated in the most recent round of RBC Financial Group's annual Canadian Woman Entrepreneur Awards. Why? Among other reasons, because her waiting room is a dead- ringer for an elegant living room in a private home.

And the surprising array of amenities she offers includes calming massage therapy and relaxing hot-wax hand treatments during lengthy dental procedures.

Lest all that sound a tad too "new-agey," it's important to know that a solid business foundation was a mandatory part of the awards criteria. If Dayan hadn't created that, she wouldn't have been eligible. But she nailed it, even while choosing to practice only four days a week. During the past year, she says her net revenue gain was a whopping 237 per cent.

But it's what Dayan does beyond possessing financial acumen, and far beyond performing simple drill-and-fill work, that earned her the prestigious entrepreneurial nomination.

Certainly, this woman has done her share of such routine services since launching her sole-practitioner operation in an uptown Toronto mall-and-office complex at Yonge Street and Eglinton Avenue three years ago. She did so after graduating from dental school at the University of Toronto in 1989 and then practising as an associate in other dental offices in the city for 13 years.

During much of that time - while she and her orthodontist husband, Dr. Willy Dayan, were producing four children - Dayan says she was nurturing a dream of doing something very different from what she terms "assembly-line dentistry."

"The dentists I worked with were nice, but it was always too much of a factory situation for me," she says. "I wanted (to build) something much smaller and more intimate, a place where I could tackle the big picture on behalf of my patients, educate them about what oral health really means, and spend as much time as that would take with everyone I treated."

By the time her youngest child outgrew his diapers, Dayan's vision of providing this new style of dentistry had solidified. And she felt ready to take the huge professional and financial risk inherent in striking out on her own.

Although she declines to cite the amount of her initial investment, it must have been steep, judging by the state-of-the-art equipment and ultra-stylish appearance of her operation. In addition to two dental chairs with built-in massage panels, Dayan has a small lab in which she produces digital X-rays that require no lead, little radiation and no developing chemicals.

When visitors arrive in the waiting room, they find "a comforting and cozy" ambience that feels inviting even to children, according to Betty Kapetanios. She says her three pre-teens are regular patients who "actually look forward to coming here and aren't at all afraid."

Chic, sage-green walls surround comfortable easy chairs that face a handsome coffee table laden with a bowl of green apples. Huge urns of silk flowers festoon a hearth that houses a flickering electric fire. A towering wooden rack contains an array of the latest and hottest magazines.

Nearby is a refreshments station with a tasty selection of coffees, teas and hot chocolate. Soothing music plays on the sound system and, thanks to having minimal staff, says Dayan, "there's none of the usual noise of ringing phones and buzzing intercoms, or the bustle of people rushing back and forth."

However pleasant, these are just physical accoutrements. What induced an initial roster of about 300 loyal patients to follow their dentist to her new digs - and nearly 450 more to flock to her since then - are her own professional and personal attributes.

According to several patients and one dental colleague who talked to Business Edge, the key ingredient in Dayan's non-traditional approach is a rare level of dedication. It extends all the way from having an unusually reassuring chair-side manner to routinely following up on her patients via after-hours phone calls, and her gracious gesture of sending handwritten thank-you cards to new patients.

Then there's the educational and psychological prowess that enables her to convince people to develop a responsible, enlightened attitude toward their dental health.

Not only that, says patient Adrienne Gold, but Dayan is a wiz at making even a patient's worst fears vanish. Formerly a popular television personality on CTV and the Life Network, Gold is now an in-demand public speaker who focuses on ethics and spirituality.

"What's ironic," she says, "is that throughout a career in which having a great smile was a professional must, until I started going to Dr. Dayan, I had been trying to hide my front teeth. I was very aware that the caps I'd had since I was 10 years old were breaking down, but I was too petrified to go to a dentist."

Gold says her fear is now a thing of the past because Dayan was initially "very respectful of my panic. She didn't make me feel guilty like most dentists would, or tell me to just snap out of it. She just talked with me until I felt ready to go ahead, and now I'm smiling as much as I want."

All of the above demands far more time and attention than most patients are accustomed to receiving from their dentist. But even though Dayan's patient roster now numbers nearly 750, she still insists on spending as much quality time as she feels is necessary with everyone she sees. For example, she schedules a two-hour intake interview, plus a 30-minute followup conversation, with all new patients.

Dayan is well aware that doing this obviously adds up to far fewer revenue-producing appointments than she could command, if she so chose. So why does she do it?

"I'm not saying I want to go bankrupt," she says. "But I'm not trying to become a millionaire either, and I have the luxury of not having to support a family, as many other dentists do. What interests me is not being just a good tooth-fixer ... but developing relationships with people that lead to behavioural change and dental solutions that last for decades."

Dayan attributes much of her professional philosophy about what's coming to be called "relationship-based dentistry" to what she learns during frequent visits to a renowned continuing education centre in Key Biscayne, Fla., called the Pankey Institute for Advanced Dental Education.

"The type of dentists who go through those programs," says Toronto dentist Jeff Martin, "are a small minority of practitioners like Ellen Dayan, who take what Pankey teaches and then fine-tune it to make their practices some of the finest in North America - and I don't mean from a bottom-line point of view, but in the quality of care they provide to patients."

A last thought from Dayan for the particular benefit of business readers: "You can have a beautiful suit, great shoes and fabulous hair. But if your smile doesn't contribute to your overall image because your teeth aren't the best they can be, it can hurt you professionally.

"Remember," she jokes, "in the movies, we usually know who the villains are because they have disgusting teeth."

(Terry Poulton can be reached at poulton@businessedge.ca)