Dentists typically deal with issues like bridges, crowns and gum disease in their adult patients, but it’s a different story at Splash Smiles, where Drs. Beth Webb and Jennifer Cole treat pediatric patients.
“Cavities,” says Cole. “Kids are so anxious, and it’s nerve-wracking for us, too. You don’t want a bad experience that’ll make (patients) more nervous in the future.”
And it’s not just the kids, Webb adds.
“Sometimes,” she says, “it’s hard to meet the expectations of the parents.”
Webb and Cole don’t merely see patients in their Hixson and North Shore offices — they own the practice and are sisters whose father, Dr. Tom Flanagan, is an orthodontist who practices just across the state line in Ringgold, Georgia.
“I definitely knew in high school (that dentistry) was what I wanted,” says Cole, Webb’s younger sister. “Seeing how much dad loved it, and he had a healthy work-life balance — he was always at (school) tennis matches and we were able to travel as a family.”
The sisters graduated six years apart — Webb in 1999, Cole in 2005 — from Chattanooga’s Baylor School, where they played on state championship tennis teams. Webb earned her undergraduate degree at Vanderbilt University, where she contemplated the law as a career.
“I came home and job-shadowed an attorney,” she recalls, “and he told me he could see I didn’t want to do (the law).
Webb went on to the University of Tennessee Health Science campus in Memphis, where she earned her DDS degree in 2008 and later worked a residency in pediatric dentistry. She moved back to Chattanooga in 2012.
Cole followed her sister’s path for the most part — undergrad degree at Washington & Lee University in 2009 and her DDS degree from UT-Memphis in 2013, the year after her sister moved back to Chattanooga and bought half of the practice owned by Hugh Vice, who’d taken care of her teeth, and her sister’s, when they were kids.
Webb says that when her sister moved home three years later, in 2015, Vice was readying to retire — and opening a door.
“Beth and I started talking about practicing together,” Cole recalls.
They pulled the trigger shortly thereafter — Cole joined the Vice/Webb practice in 2017, then bought Vice out two years later. They rebranded, opting for a whale logo and a new name — Splash Smiles.
“It was very challenging in the beginning,” Webb says. “We didn’t have any experience running a business that had a staff — making our own brand, naming the practice and trying new things, getting our name out there.”
The fact that they launched their business in May 2020, during the global pandemic, made it ever more challenging. They weren’t able to see patients in person for six weeks.
“That summer was really scary for us, but we were back to a normal schedule by that fall,” Cole says.
Splash Smiles rolled out a subscription program in August that Chase Cole, Jennifer Cole’s husband and the practice’s office/business manager, says has 72 patients enrolled. Families of patients up to two years old pay $240 annually; families of patients three to 11 pay $360 per year; and families of patients aged 12 to 18 pay $480 annually.
“It’s two cleanings and exams a year, annual x-rays and an emergency visit, with 20% off any other procedures,” he says.
The practice currently has two locations — one in Hixson and one in the North Shore — and the sisters agree that’s enough to keep them plenty busy, and aren’t looking at expansion any time soon.
“We’ve got an awesome team right now,” Webb adds.