Brighter Image Dentistry: Dr. Spencer Maddox's Journey to Transforming Smiles and Patient Comfort

Ever wondered how a great smile can transform your life? Join us on the Good Neighbor Podcast as we sit down with Dr. Spencer Maddox, the brilliant mind behind Brighter Image Dentistry in Homewood. From his early days at the UAB School of Dentistry to the creation and rebranding of his successful practice, Dr. Maddox shares his remarkable journey. He sheds light on the pivotal shift towards cosmetic and restorative dentistry and reveals the life-changing impact a beautiful smile can have on both physical and mental health. Plus, listen to heartwarming stories of his close-knit relationship with his older brother, who shares the same passion for dentistry.

In this episode, we also explore the innovative approaches Dr. Maddox employs to ensure every dental visit is a positive and anxiety-free experience. Learn about the unique techniques like aromatherapy, calming scents, and soothing nature sounds that create a serene environment for patients. Discover how personalized communication and starting with manageable tasks help build patient confidence and ease dental anxiety. Dr. Maddox’s patient-centric approach is all about making patients feel understood and comfortable, transforming their dental experience into something truly reassuring and stress-free. Tune in to uncover the secrets behind creating a dental practice that puts patient comfort and well-being at the forefront. #GNPBirmingham #BrighterImageDentistry #BirminghamDentist #Dental #Dentist #Smile #Teeth #Health #Wellbeing   #BirminghamDentistry #HomewoodDentistry #BirminghamDentist #HomewoodDentist #Dentist #Homewood #Birmingham #CosmeticDentist #CosmeticDentistry #Crowns #Veneers #GeneralDentistry

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

This is the Good Neighbor Podcast, the place where local businesses and neighbors come together. Here's your host, Patricia Blondheim.

Speaker 2: 0:15

Welcome to the Good Neighbor Podcast. I'm your host, Patricia Blondheim, and today we have Good Neighbor Dr Spencer Maddox, and Dr Maddox is the owner and the dentist at Brighter Image Dentistry in Homewood. Dr Maddox, how are you today?

Speaker 3: 0:31

Doing great. Nice to be here with you today, Patricia.

Speaker 2: 0:35

Yeah, it's great to see you and I love letting people know about the people who will intimately and personally care for them and, as I understand it, that's a priority inside of your practice. So tell me more about Brighter Image Dentistry.

Speaker 3: 0:54

Yeah, patricia, brighter Image Dentistry is my dental practice. I'm the owner and operator and we've been at our current location in Homewood for 10 years. But my dental practice, my dental journey, started in 2002. I graduated from UAB School of Dentistry and went directly into private practice. I worked for another dentist in Homewood for a couple years and then went on my own. So we started originally at the old Grandview location, the hospital that we know now on 280. It used to be Baptist Montclair. When I started there and I took that practice over and I was there for about 10 years.

Speaker 3: 1:40

That hospital unfortunately relocated from its original location in Crestwood and at that time, after 10 years of being there at the hospital and growing with those folks, we decided to relocate to a more convenient location, to the greater Birmingham area, which is Homewood.

Speaker 3: 1:57

We're right in the heart of Homewood, on Central Avenue, which is a growing, thriving area with lots of new businesses and lots of new homeowners. People moving to Birmingham really gravitate towards Homewood because of the down home feel Great schools. I think you know you're typically ranked top three in the state for public education and schools. So it's a great neighborhood and we're we're happy to be part of that neighbor neighborhood. Like I said, for the past 10 years we sort of rebranded our office from Montclair Dental Center, which was appropriate at the old location which was Baptist Montclair, appropriate at the old location which was Baptist Montclair, and we changed our name to Brighter Image Dentistry as we turned a greater focus towards cosmetic and restorative dentistry and have continued to build great relationships with our neighbors in Homewood as well as the patients we've seen for the past 20 years as Brighter Image Dentistry.

Speaker 2: 3:04

I think that dentistry has taken great leaps in the past. Maybe I'll even say 10 or 15 years, but it's happened most quickly in the past. I think 10 years that the concentration towards cosmetic dentistry which when I was younger would not even have been considered unless you had grave damage to your mouth, but this has become part of what we recognize as having, what we recognize scientifically as having a great positive effect on our mind, our self-image, but also on our health.

Speaker 2: 3:44

Right Can you speak a little bit about why cosmetic dentistry is now mainstream, right.

Speaker 3: 3:51

Well, you know, oftentimes we think of cosmetic dentistry or cosmetics as something unnecessary that increases your appearance.

Speaker 3: 4:01

However, you know, dentistry is very necessary and is an integral part of our overall health, not only our physical health you know, your ability to chew and eat your food but also your mental health. So there's a lot of folks out there that have put off their dental care for a number of years and we have patients all the time come and they say hey. And we have patients all the time come and they say hey, you know, I wanted to do these things to increase my appearance, my personal. You know feelings about the way you look and feel and people perceive you and they just didn't know who to trust. You know, and it takes. It's a relationship that requires, you know, trust between the provider and the patient. It requires trust between the provider and the patient and we've been able to really change some people's lives is how they feel about themselves, how they feel they're perceived by others. The increasing confidence going about their lives really, really has a huge impact on some of the folks we've seen.

Speaker 2: 5:04

I think a great smile can transform a life, and you might not realize it if you have a great smile, but if you have a smile that you feel like is not ideal, it can cause you to approach life in a way that is less positive and that has a huge effect on everything that you do. Did you always want to have this effect on people? I mean it's from a young boy. Did you decide that this was the way you wanted to go? What was your journey?

Speaker 3: 5:39

Well, I'll tell you, patricia, I have an older brother, just of three years, but growing up recently from Montgomery Alabama. You know we're always very close and I've always been the younger brother that wants to. You know, keep up with the older brother and the two of us being, you know, the only siblings of our family. My older brother's a dentist and he practices in the greater Birmingham area, so we do have a close bond and that is something that you know we'll always share is our profession and you know the journey that we've had, you know, in dentistry, both being graduates of UAB School of Dentistry. It's nice to have another Maddox, you know, in town Oftentimes we get people, you know they'll call and you know they're looking for Dr Maddox, and we always have to ask well, you know which Dr Maddox are you looking for?

Speaker 3: 6:29

so, yeah, but we're very close the better looking Dr Maddox, right, of course, yes, yes, you're the better looking doctor. But, yeah, I'm very lucky to have a close friend like my brother to talk to about and, you know, to grow with in the profession itself. So that's one unique thing and you see that a lot of times in dentistry, either my dad's a dentist or my uncle's a dentist, or it tends to be handed down from generation to uh generation to generation that it is a great profession, that, uh, there are a lot of benefits to it, uh, over a long period of time. You know pretty much any profession um, you're going to have ups and downs, you're going to have uh key times in the uh lifetime of that profession, that it's a struggle and then there'll be some really great golden times. And I found, uh and I offer this advice sometimes to our younger patients, you know, trying to figure things out in life is to, you know, advise them to pick something that they feel like they have aptitude for and that they enjoy accounting or law or medicine. There will always be a time, if you stick with that career and love and grow with it, that there will be a great time, a golden time for that profession If you're passionate about it and you stick with it, that it will come to fruition, that your efforts will not be in vain, that you will thrive.

Speaker 3: 8:10

You know in that field and that's the way I feel like dentistry has been for my brother and I is that we have a great aptitude for this sort of work, which requires meticulous detail, great communication and just a love for people, and you combine those things together and you have know a very difficult challenge that you can continue to grow and, you know, sharpen your skills over time.

Speaker 3: 8:39

So it requires no complacency. You know being complacent as a dentist is a recipe for you know a downward you know downward slope. So you always have to find ways to be more fit mentally, physically, and adapting your skills with continuing education and just striving to make things better and to perform. You know more, better procedures and bring more for the patient and expand your abilities. So if you approach it that way, then you know you will thrive and your patients will thrive as well. So it's the sort of thing that it will give you all that you want over a career, if you put the effort in, and it can be just as good at the end of your career as it is the beginning, the effort in, and it can be just as good at the end of your career as it is the beginning If you find yourself in this place where you're trying to find your purpose or the thing that drives you in life.

Speaker 2: 9:47

It's so important to find the thing that you love to do and to look at your life as a full spectrum, from start to finish, because you're going to encounter a lot of hurdles and that love of what you do becomes the higher, why that fuels your engine to get to the other side of that problem again and again, and again, and I love that you brought up that you don't fall victim to complacency, because that is so easy to do on the second half of your career. It's just a coast.

Speaker 3: 10:26

Right, right, I totally agree. Yeah, to have a career that you can continue to grow in is the challenge that you need to have. To have a full career, I totally agree with that, gives me power to work for the patient is how much enjoyment we get from helping the patient have a great experience. How many times we've heard over the years that you know this was the best experience we've ever had at the dentist? And for the patient to dread, you know, coming to the dentist or dread the procedure itself. We really have made it somewhat almost of a game or a challenge, you know, to find, you know what things can we do to make this visit the very best that it can. And that's when I really, you know, am excited.

Speaker 3: 11:28

Where, man we knocked this out of the park, you know, like that was the best I think you could ever do. There's no way you could execute this smoother. The patient could be more comfortable that they could be as disinformed and clearly communicated to. So that, to me, is the driving, the driving motive to to really pull off with patients, especially when they're new and they're kind of just getting to know you, and you know that this is, this is your opportunity. You know we've kind of chit-chatted and seen this patient for a few years and finally here they are, they need us. You know it's like they've broken their tooth or, you know, something's happened. We see it all the time A patient have an accident, you know they fall, they break their front tooth. We've had this several times over the past few years and even close friends of mine that are professionals, they call me on the weekend. They're like, you know this happened, I fell and broke my tooth. I'm concerned, what do I do? And then the light bulb goes off and it's like, oh, here, here's my opportunity. You know we've been building this relationship together. Like this is my opportunity to knock it out of the park, to make this, you know to, to put out the fires of anxiety and worry is to put them at ease. So there's several different things that we use as tools to find what works for that patient. Use as tools to find what works for that patient.

Speaker 3: 12:57

So sometimes you know you may need an appointment and if we know the patient has extensive needs, oftentimes I try to find, okay, where can we start? You know what can we do, where we know we can have a win. You know, because it's so important, the psychology of you know, overcoming this huge task. They already know. They've put it off. I have all these things to do, I've dreaded it. Finally I'm here and it makes such a difference if you can create a memorable, good experience. So you start out with something you know you can knock it out of the park with and walk the patient through from beginning to end.

Speaker 3: 13:31

This is a dental procedure. Look, we did this. You know this was great. You know, and and that really sets the tone and it actually gives the patient. It increases their ability to tolerate. It increases their ability to tolerate, say, maybe later down the road there is a more challenging appointment, they have to be open longer, or you know they're, you're going to have to do something. You know that you hate to do, but they're going to feel a little shot here or there. So it really helps psychologically if they're super tense and worried and they believe this is going to hurt or this is going to be terrible or I'm going to hate this. You know it probably will.

Speaker 3: 14:10

So part of your task is to more or less desensitize the patient from the anxiety of the appointment and the dread of the appointment, the perception. Once that perception is set in, it's difficult to reverse. So you know we do both of those things. We have patients that come to us that say they love the dentist. You know, I've never had a bad experience.

Speaker 3: 14:31

That's a whole new pressure in itself is that you don't want to be the guy that created the you know the bad experience or had the bad appointment with, uh, be it your, your fault or not, you know sometimes. You know patient, you know they might not have a great appointment, um, and you don't want to be the person that creates that first one and the same as the patient that has avoided the dentist for years and years and has this terrible story of. You know, when they were a kid, you know something, uh, something kind of set the tone for okay, dennis bad, you know, don't want to go there that you have to reverse that. And we've done that quite a bit at our office and that's one of our challenges we like to overcome. I actually get excited when I have a patient that I know that they say, oh, I'm the most terrible dental patient you know. And we know it's like wait a minute, they're just hard on themselves. You know we can tell this is not a bad patient. This is someone's too hard on their self and has gotten, you know, too worked up about what the challenges are. So we say, oh, this is great, this is an opportunity that we can work with this patient. We just have to start easy and slow and find out, you know the things, some of the things that we do, like I started to speak about earlier, the tools that we use. So, like aromatherapy, we'll find a scent they like and we'll give them options for lavender or whatever type of, you know, sense that helps to calm them. You know, when you walk in the front door we have a diffuser.

Speaker 3: 16:02

We're really big about sense and sounds and language. You know the way we speak. You know we don't. We don't, you know speak at them. You know I try to listen more than I speak, but when I do speak I usually take my time and think it out and communicate in a way that I feel like they will receive, based on how their personality is, you know. So if they're very soft spoken and you know speak, you know very kind, you know we'll speak back to them that way so that they feel comfortable because this person understands me. You know I get this person, you know. So we tend to. You know, try to work with a patient on. You know, scents and smells and also sounds.

Speaker 3: 16:55

We have wireless headphones, the Beats headphones that connect to videos that we play in the office. We have nature relaxation so it's a, it's an app. There are Apple TVs on all the monitors and everywhere. Huge monitor with beautiful sights and sounds of nature, from beaches to mountains and jungles and birds that everything you could imagine this most beautiful nature 4K videos that we have in the office.

Speaker 3: 17:31

We don't have dental. We don't have dental videos about root giddles or anything scary. We don't have dental videos about root giddles or anything scary. Yes, that's one of the things that I decided when we set the office up. They all the reps tell you.

Speaker 3: 17:40

You know you need to have educational videos about dentistry in the office, you know, for the patient because that's their time when they're in the office, and we just had a different perception. I know people are already nervous when they get here that we don't want to over inundate them with scary dental terms and videos that will turn them off from the beginning. So we want them to be able to sit in the waiting room and be in the operatory and be relaxed and look to us for guidance. We will certainly educate you and spend the time required to to communicate your condition and everything that you need to know about dentistry. You don't need to worry about that. We'll take care of that and we want you to do that in a relaxed manner so that you can actually absorb what it is we're telling you and we don't want to, you know, flood your senses with too much information or information that you may interpret, you know, the wrong way.

Speaker 2: 18:39

So you know, listening to you came to the stream yard today, before we started the recording, you mentioned that you were. You had just had a meeting with all your hygienists, which you have every single day.

Speaker 3: 18:50

Right.

Speaker 2: 18:50

Where you speak about every single patient and the history of that patient and the relationship that you have with that patient, because you want everyone to come to the operatory being as known as they can possibly be, and I think that respect infuses your entire practice.

Speaker 3: 19:12

Well, thank you. So I think of these patients as a relationship that has built over time, and that's what my practice has always been, has been collecting great relationships over time and before we see those patients every day, we always meet with with entire staff too and with no notes. I don't read the chart, I don't look at anything that's been written, because these high points that you know about folks are things that we like to discuss and to continue that relationship. So we do know our folks really well and we hope that they enjoy the time that we spend with them as much as we do.

Speaker 2: 20:04

Well, I'm sure they enjoy their time with you. Obviously, it would be a great place to go just to be known and be heard, but you have to fuel yourself in order to do this. What do you do for fun when you're?

Speaker 3: 20:16

not working. Yeah, no, it's funny the way you say that you know what do we do for fun. I tell my patients and sap we talk about, like for fun, I'll get up at four o'clock in the morning and cycle, so that's my thing. I do these 50 60 mile cycle journeys on the weekend and before work, so that's my thing. That's what. What fuels my health and keeps me sharp is, to you know, exercise. That's my thing. And the rest of the time I spend when I'm not doing that, I'm not at work. I'm with my son and my wife. So I have a three year old. I'm kind of the old dad, you know. So I'm in a month I turned 49. And so, yeah, I have a three-year-old, so that will certainly keep me busy and on my toes for the rest of my career. Yeah, and that's my joy is my son. So that's pretty much when we're not, you know, building relationships with patients at the office, either riding my bike or playing with my boy.

Speaker 2: 21:29

Well, what's the one thing you would like our listeners to take away about brighter image dentistry?

Speaker 3: 21:36

Well, I just tell you, you know, that I strongly feel like we're the best in Homewood. In Homewood, that we're the best at tending to the patient's unique needs and to finding, like I said, a special recipe that is just for that patient, what works, be it, you know, aromatherapy, or the right sounds or music or videos or whatever. We need to do that. And I always ask this question to the patient what can we do? Or what has a provider you've had in the past done that makes the appointment the best it can be? So, finding that perfect prescription for that individual patient that works for them, that, I think, is unique to us, that we do that for every new patient and every existing patient that we have Well for our listeners who want the best dentist not just in Homewood but probably in Birmingham.

Speaker 2: 22:36

how do they contact you?

Speaker 3: 22:38

Oh yeah, usually the relationship starts either with contact from the patient. You're welcome to call our office at 205-591-6220. Obviously it's our phone number and also our email is easy. Easy to remember is brighter image dentistry at gmailcom. It doesn't get any more simple than that. You can Google us and find us, you know, on Google search engine, just brighter image dentistry. I always say, put in Brighter Image Dentistry, you'll find us so much better. There's a lab, I think in California, called Brighter Image Lab and we're dentistry, we're not a dental laboratory, and people get us confused all the time but we've been around as long or longer than this lab, so that is a little confusing. But brighter image dentistry at gmailcom. Or, of course, if you, if you look around on the web, you really can't miss us. We're, we're brighter image dentistry and we stand out pretty well.

Speaker 2: 23:36

Yeah, very easy. A big, beautiful smile, don't? We all want that. Thank you so much, dr Maddox, for coming by and introducing yourself and giving people an idea about why Brighter Image Dentistry is so special. I have enjoyed meeting you, thank you.

Speaker 3: 23:53

Thank you very much, Patricia. I hope you have a great day. I have enjoyed this talk.

Speaker 1: 24:02

Thank you for listening to the Good Neighbor Podcast. To nominate your favorite local businesses to be featured on the show, go to gnpbirminghamcom. That's gnpbirminghamcom, or call 205-952-0148. You.