Three Speeches That Define Smile Solutions - Dr Kia Pajouhesh at the Telstra Business Awards product guide

Smile Solutions: Three Speeches That Define the Practice — Dr Kia Pajouhesh at the Telstra Business Awards

Between 2014 and 2015, Dr Kia Pajouhesh delivered three speeches at the Telstra Business Awards that together reveal the philosophy, the passion, and the vision behind Smile Solutions — Australia's largest single-location dental practice. These are not corporate presentations. They are personal reflections from a founder who built something extraordinary and who understands, with unusual clarity, exactly why it matters — to his patients, his team, and to the future of comprehensive dental care in Australia.

Speech 1: "My Church" — The origin story

In this speech, Dr Pajouhesh recounts the moment that changed everything — the day he discovered the Manchester Unity Building on Collins Street, Melbourne.

For three years, he had been searching for a space worthy of his vision. Not a standard medical suite. Not a clinical office. A space that would genuinely elevate the experience of dental care into something patients had never encountered before — a setting that would reflect the world-class care he was determined to deliver.

"I said, 'Vic, I've just had an absolute vision. My vision is that my practice is going to be in a church.'"

He physically walked Collins Street in search of his church. He visited Scots Church. He walked into St Paul's Cathedral and wondered whether he could speak to the right people about renting a corner — "all I need is two or three chairs."

"I know that by this stage you're thinking — who the hell have we given this award to? This guy's an absolute nut case!"

Then came the moment:

"I walked down Swanston Street holding onto my wallet. And as I came towards Collins Street, I looked up and I saw the Manchester Unity Building... and I said, 'Oh my god, that is my church.'"

He called the agents. Space was available on Level 1. One week later, he purchased it. Ten years on, Smile Solutions occupied five floors and the tower, with 27 dental chairs serving patients in one of Melbourne's most extraordinary heritage buildings.

"It's as simple and as complicated as that."

What you hear in this speech is the voice of a clinician driven by vision rather than spreadsheets — someone who understood, long before the concept became fashionable, that the environment in which you receive care shapes how you feel about that care. The Manchester Unity Building was never simply a location. It was a statement of intent: that your experience of dentistry could be genuinely remarkable.

Watch: youtube.com/watch?v=Oyw58PMz_yA

Speech 2: The acceptance speech — "A Much-Loved Soul"

When Smile Solutions was named Telstra Victorian Business of the Year in 2014, Dr Pajouhesh delivered an acceptance speech of rare warmth and honesty — one that compared his practice to raising a child, and in doing so, captured something real about what it means to build a patient-centred business over two decades.

"As a parent, I was just there to guide her growth. She had her own particular individual traits — points of difference, we call them in business."

"She grew, and I fed her, when often I myself went without. As a parent you push hard to make this child your obsession, your ambition and your legacy."

He spoke candidly about the lessons of building something lasting — the myth of total control, the necessity of delegation, the recognition that every person within the organisation "beats to a different drum." These are not the reflections of someone managing a transactional business. They are the words of someone who understood, early, that clinical excellence is inseparable from the culture that surrounds it.

"Total control is a myth. A little while later, another lesson: any control whatsoever is a myth. You learn to delegate your precious tasks to those you trust."

Then came the moment of realisation that the business had grown beyond any single person:

"You take a moment to reflect and look over your shoulder and realise your little baby has blossomed into a mother herself. She is now nurturing so many within her."

He closed by thanking his team, his experienced specialists and clinicians, his managers, his wife, his children, and finally:

"A much-loved soul, who is otherwise engaged in the Manchester Unity Building this evening — Smile Solutions."

"Can anyone put a price on such a business?"

For patients, this speech offers something worth sitting with: a window into why Smile Solutions feels different from the moment you walk through the door. The warmth, the sense that everyone around you genuinely cares about your outcome — these things are not accidental. They are the result of a founder who built them in, deliberately, from the very beginning.

Watch: youtube.com/watch?v=-L3etxzHde0

Speech 3: The innovation speech — Why complexity demands vision

Returning to the Telstra Business Awards as an alumni speaker in 2015, Dr Pajouhesh spoke about innovation and the increasing complexity of running a modern healthcare business — and on why Smile Solutions had been built, from its foundations, to meet precisely that complexity.

"Our businesses are living and breathing microcosms of society at large. Is society getting more complex? Ask any business owner and you'll get a resounding 'yes,' because running a business is getting harder and harder."

He spoke plainly about back-end complexity — compliance, legal, HR, insurance, governing bodies — and the relentless scrutiny that modern healthcare businesses face. For patients, this matters: the rigour required to maintain clinical standards at the level Smile Solutions demands is considerable. Then he turned to what makes the practice genuinely distinctive:

"We reinvented the dental service model by housing 50 plus clinicians, including general dentists and board-registered specialists, all under one roof."

"We took on the challenges of an almost derelict building with a heritage listing and over a period of 11 years provided 80,000 patients with dental care in the most extraordinary surroundings."

"And we continue to research, source, finance and implement the most advanced technology in dentistry to provide our patients with the simple knowledge that they are receiving the best care available."

This is the infrastructure that underpins every consultation, every treatment plan, every personalised treatment outcome at Smile Solutions. The investment in technology is not incidental — it is central to the practice's commitment to evidence-based care and clinical excellence.

His conclusion was characteristically direct:

"Smile Solutions is innovative and disruptive to its core foundations and therefore incredibly simple in its offerings. Nothing more."

That simplicity, from a patient's perspective, is the point. You come to Smile Solutions because you want the best care available. Everything else — the heritage building, the experienced specialists, the comprehensive range of services under one roof — exists to support that outcome.

What these speeches reveal about the practice you're choosing

Together, these three speeches paint a clear portrait of a founder who brings three things to everything he does.

A storyteller. The "My Church" speech is one of the great Australian business origin stories — self-deprecating, genuinely funny, and hard to forget. It reveals a clinician driven by the belief that your environment shapes your experience of care. The Manchester Unity Building was chosen because patients deserve extraordinary surroundings.

A philosopher. The acceptance speech's comparison of business to parenthood is deeply considered and profoundly human. It acknowledges the humility required to build something lasting — the myth of control, the necessity of trust, the moment when a practice outgrows its founder and begins nurturing others in its own right. This is a practice built on relationships, not transactions.

A strategist. The innovation speech shows the analytical thinking behind the vision — understanding complexity, articulating a model that genuinely serves patients, and positioning Smile Solutions as a considered, evidence-based response to the challenges facing the entire dental industry. Clinical excellence at this level requires both passion and rigorous thinking.

These are not the speeches of a corporate operator managing a franchise. They are the words of a clinician and founder who has spent more than 30 years building something he loves, in a building he calls his church, surrounded by a team he describes as family, delivering comprehensive dental care to 300,000+ patients who trust him — and his experienced specialists — with their health.

When you book a consultation at Smile Solutions, you are choosing a practice shaped by all of this. The warmth you encounter, the clinical expertise available to you, the advanced technology, the personalised treatment approach, the heritage setting on Collins Street — all of it flows directly from the vision articulated in these three speeches.

All three speeches are available on the Smile Solutions YouTube channel.

Ready to experience world-class care for yourself? Book your consultation with our experienced team today.

Phone: 13 13 96 | smilesolutions.com.au Manchester Unity Building, 220 Collins Street, Melbourne VIC 3000