Zahra Eram and Riccardo Meili: Luxury Dentistry Demands Radical Patient Focus and Extreme Leadership

As a part of our series about lessons from Thriving Power Couples, I had the pleasure of interviewing Zahra Eram and Riccardo Meili. Based in Zurich, Switzerland, the power couple combined their experience to create Eram Dental Health Clinic, a globally renowned dental and medical aesthetic destination. Zahra’s business development skills and Riccardo’s professional soccer career and private banking experience allowed them to recognize an opportunity in dentistry that would resonate with luxury care and customer service. Eram brings clients from across the globe to experience the world’s first real luxury dental clinic and to achieve the “Eram Smile.”

Thank you so much for doing this with us! Can you tell us a story about what brought you two to your respective career paths?

Zahra has more than 15 years of business development and dental experience. Riccardo was a professional soccer player for 8 years and worked for over 6 years as private banker in one of the biggest Swiss banks. Together, we channelled our energy, leadership skills and business savvy mindsets into co-founding the world’s most luxurious dental and medical aesthetic clinic, Eram Dental Health Clinic.

We are both world travelers, Zahra is fluent in seven languages and Riccardo in six. We credit our world experiences for developing a global clientele that seeks out the luxurious Eram experience. Our entrepreneurial spirit and commitment to provide the best science-backed services have contributed to Eram’s renowned reputation for providing premiere services with elite customer service that the clinic’s clients have come to know and expect.

We both came out of corporate and saw the need to create a unique, quality and patient focus driven dental clinic. The focus was and is to treat more patients every day by focusing on the individuality of each patient, not on the mass.

Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you two got married?

We tried for over 2 years to become parents. Thankfully, we are both healthy and we did everything that was ever written on how to “how to become pregnant”. After such a long time and so much effort, we were about to give up and then all of a sudden Zahra got pregnant. Less than 3 months after giving birth, Zahra got pregnant again. It was a miracle. After our business became successful, people started to recognize us on the streets or in restaurants. It’s interesting that when they see us they write to us over social media to say they saw us somewhere and liked our outfits.

Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?

We learned early on it was a mistake to hire family and friends. Although great to work with, they often act more from the heart than a business mindset. We have made staff choices thinking they would support our vision and goals, but were wrong. Although everyone meant well, it was discouraging to talk to people who did not see our vision. It was a lesson learned that not everybody will or want to understand your vision. It’s important to speak about your ideas only to people who support you and are motivating you to achieve your goals.

What do you think makes your company stand out? Can you share a story?

Eram Dental Health Clinic provides luxury and elegance with a special focus on aesthetics. We stand out through our extraordinary details, crafted and tested to the highest of standards that are only achieved here. We also stand out for our unique customer experience. We have what’s called Patient Relationship Managers who handle all of the individual needs of our patients. From travel planning, accomodations, personal chefs, nanny service and general healthcare/medical support during their treatments. We have our own inhouse dental lab. We believe your smile is part of your facial aesthetic, which is why we not only focus on teeth, but also offer inhouse medical facial aesthetic treatments including botox and fillers.

We take great pride in having created some of the most important smiles in the world. We have a very large international client base — from A-listers to royal families. We recently had a call from an embassy requesting a consultation. We created a full smile makeover on one of the most important royalty members in the world. This was a great moment for us and gave us yet another confirmation that we stand for the finest, rarest, and only the very best smiles.

Are you working on any exciting new projects now? How do you think that will help people?

We are in the works of opening a new Eram Clinic in 2022. Spanning 7,000 square feet, it will be the most exclusive dental clinic worldwide that will also include aesthetic surgery, plastic surgery and medical facial aesthetics. Together with our lab and scientists, we are also developing a unique and exclusive set of veneers that don’t exist in the industry. We also plan to launch our own brand of oral care products in 2022. We’re excited to bring people advanced technology and products that don’t exist in this industry yet to level up their dental care.

What advice would you give to other CEOs or founders to help their employees to thrive?

Every employee matters, no matter their role or duration. During their time with the company it’s about supporting them and helping to develop their strengths. Be a CEO that truly cares for the well-being and success of your employees. Highlight their strengths and help them learn from their struggles. We believe that it’s important to help improve their performance by offering constructive feedback. Real care is also in accountability and helping bring out the best from people.

How do you define “Leadership”?

Leadership is showing the ability to support, understand and perform any position within the company. There is no better way to influence or motivate a team than to show that you aren’t above doing any job yourself. Want to earn the respect of your company? Hop in alongside them every once in a while and show them you are happy to support their role. In our opinion, that separates good leaders from the great.

Leadership isn’t just telling other people what to do. It’s being willing to lead by example and do all the hard stuff you expect from everybody else. As the leader, the vision is yours first, you’ve got to be willing to make the biggest sacrifices and go harder than anyone else on your team.

You have to make the hard decisions. You have to show up even when you’re tired or overwhelmed. And you have to be ready to take extreme ownership of everything. EVERYTHING always starts and stops with you as the leader. Leaders, real leaders, don’t think they can do it. They know they can. People who tend to make their way to the top have great perseverance to get through any self-doubt.

They are confident in their ability, believe they have something to offer and generally feel they can execute a vision with great success. This is the healthy confidence a leader possesses.

None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?

We have a dear friend who has been one of most successful entrepreneurs and philanthropists in the Middle East for decades. He has been instrumental in guiding us in the very beginning of our journey as business owners. Sometimes there are people from the outside who can see your potential even when you don’t realize it. This friend and valuable mentor was not in the same field as us and therefore saw things with a different point of view. That was crucial to the start of our business. We thought we hit the jackpot with the first 5 locations we found — thanks to him we knew we were wrong. In every major decision, we involve this dearest friend and mentor who has led us to become a worldwide famous dental aesthetic clinic.

How have you used your success to bring goodness to the world?

Our goal is to create smiles of the highest quality that change our patient’s lives. We are creating smiles of the highest quality and changing our patient’s lives across the globe. We have a deep passion for what we do — to help others achieve their full potential by giving them a smile they can be confident in. Our success has allowed us to open an expanded clinic in 2022 that will offer even more services and bring goodness to the world.

What are the “5 Things You Need To Thrive As A Couple”? Please share a story or example for each.

1. Respect — being mindful of each other’s thoughts, habits and work styles as we make decisions and work through problems
2. Love — We are fortunate enough to be in business together and understand our love for what we do and our love for each other need to come first
3. Trust — We will get nowhere if we don’t trust each other. We constantly support each other and have each other’s back in everything we go through
4. Open Communication — This is very important for us to help us the best we can. Openly discussing our feelings, ideas and frustrations lets us understand each other better
5. Focus — Our laser-focused mindsets are everything. We constantly push each other to be the best we can be, knowing that it will ultimately make our business the best it can be.

You are people of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. :-)

We would like to inspire a movement that would spread positivity by motivating others to go out of their comfort zone. This simply spreads good and adds value to other people’s lives by inspiring others to follow in their footsteps.

Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?

We live by the Myles Munroe quote: “Keep your head and your heart going in the right direction, and you will not have to worry about your feet.” This quote has helped us through every decision in our lives — business and personal. We need to have our heart and head in the right place to make the right decision.

We are very blessed that some of the biggest names in Business, VC funding, Sports, and Entertainment read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US with whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch with, and why? He or she might just see this if we tag them :-)

There are a number of inspiring people we would love to sit down with including Mark Zuckerberg, Michael Jordan, Jeff Bezos and more. We would be honored to meet Oprah Winfrey. Although she is extremely successful, she comes from a humble background and understands all aspects of life through her own lens. She is spiritual and continues to grow. She has shifted from a television personality to an international mentor and that is truly inspiring for us.

How can our readers follow your work online?

You can find us on our social media platforms including Instagram, Facebook and LinkedIn. You can also learn more about us via our website https://eram-dh.com.

Thank you so much for joining us. This was very inspirational.