Listen to the segment from 28 April 2025, featuring Greg and Brett Miller from Miller Dental Group.
Listen to our segment with Brent Hutchinson from Don Kyatt Group here: https://familybusinessassociation.org/article/hear-from-brent-hutchinson-from-don-kyatt-group-on-3aw-australia-overnight-with-tony-mcmanus
Listen to our segment with Catherine Sayer, FBA CEO here: https://familybusinessassociation.org/article/hear-from-catherine-sayer-on-3aw-australia-overnight-with-tony-mcmanus
Listen to our segment with Michael Stillwell from Stillwell Group and special guest, David Mann here: https://familybusinessassociation.org/article/hear-from-michael-stillwell-from-stillwell-group--and-special-guest-david-mann-on-3aw-australia-overnight-with-tony-mcmanus
Listen to our segment with Emily Hammon from Scenic World here: https://familybusinessassociation.org/article/hear-from-emily-hammon-from-scenic-world-on-3aw-australia-overnight-with-tony-mcmanus
Listen to our segment with Ray Borda from Macro Group Australia here: https://familybusinessassociation.org/article/hear-from-ray-borda-from-macro-group-australia-on-3aw-australia-overnight-with-tony-mcmanus
Listen to our segment with Grant Menzies from Adina Watches here: https://familybusinessassociation.org/article/hear-from-grant-menzies-from-adina-watches-on-3aw-australia-overnight-with-tony-mcmanus
View the transcript here:
Tony McManus
As you may know from time to time we talk about wonderful Australian family businesses for a long time have taken the view that family businesses, are pretty much the backbone of businesses right throughout Australia. That's well and truly been documented. Catherine from Family Business Association as it's now called, said, you've got to have a yak with both Greg and his brother Brett. Brett Miller and brother Greg run this business in South Australia, simply known famously as the Miller Dental Group. They're both online now. Greg and Brett, good morning.
Greg Miller
Good morning, Tony. How are you?
Tony McManus
Sensational. I don't know who I'm speaking to, but I assume that is you, Greg.
Greg Miller
Yeah, good morning, Tony. I'm the dentist brother and my brother Brett is the brains brother.
Tony McManus
There you go good morning, brains. He's disappeared.
All right let's talk to Greg for the moment. Greg, just it is an extraordinary story on so many levels and people in South Australia will know more about it, but by way of sharing with the audience through 3AW in Melbourne it's a pretty incredible story. How did it all get underway, for you and the brother and the family?
Greg Miller
I’m a dentist, I graduated in 2001 and I practiced in Hobart, relocated to South Australia and established a practice in 2008. And at around that time I had one of those epochs’ moments where my brother and I late at night were walking, talking about our respective lives. My brother had been over in the UK and had a very successful environmental consultancy and was talking about coming back to Adelaide and living in Australia with his wife. And I said, we should collaborate, and we should work together. And whilst we come from very different backgrounds our skill sets are very complimentary. And so, we took a very grassroots and almost contrarian approach to dental practice developing and building dental practice. And so we started opening regional clinics, which we have done so, throughout the last sort of 15 years or so through regional South Australia. And we now have around 20 that are there. And then in conjunction to that, we opened a dental supply company to supply the practices.
And in conjunction to that, we opened essentially a biotechnical or biologic engineering firm that undertakes servicing of dental equipment and dental related devices and also sell them. So, things like x-rays and chairs. And then we opened a dental laboratory, and we opened a day hospital and then an imaging centre that was specifically for dentistry. So, we vertically integrated and at about 2015, we saw that there was significant inequity in provision of dental services for people through the public. And so, we founded what is now Australia's largest dental charity, the Australian Dental Foundation, which sees about I think we've now seen 150,000 patients and we operate nationally. The group now has spread out of the confines of South Australia. So, our commercial operations included clinic in Melbourne, All Ability Dental, which is a specialist special needs dental clinic. One of only about 50 special needs dentists in Australia, Dr. Haja Derby works with us and again, it's a testament to our unusual way of going about doing business. We looked at an area which we believe passionately in which is disability services and services for individuals that struggle to gain access to conventional dental clinics, and we partnered with Dr. Derby from All Ability. In addition to, offering general dental services is one of the very few locations where individuals with disability can have the full gamut of dental treatment available to them.
Tony McManus
Greg, let me just, jump in that question of affordability, as you well know affordability is being questioned inside your industry for many decades. How can that ever be shifted satisfactorily, Greg? How do you maintain the balance between as a group being now profitable presumably, and being able to provide those services to which you and your brother have such an enormous commitment?
Greg Miller
Look for us it's been quite an easy arrangement because what we have done is we have grown commercially, we’re a 15-year overnight success, if that makes sense. So, we've invested heavily in areas where traditional thinking was that practices couldn't thrive out in regional areas. Small country towns couldn't support, profitable clinics and that vertically integrating a dental business with the other supply and kind of support businesses just wouldn't scale. And we actually found that was all incorrect. And that indeed if you engage with community and you provide a fantastic family service, with family-based values that support the community, the community gets behind the project. And then if you take that profit and you reinvest that into services and for a very long time up until very recently, we were by far and away the largest supporters of the dental foundation. Now we've diversified our income stream. We have oral health products, so we have toothbrushes and toothpaste. Which your listeners can procure from our website and that has augmented our income stream significantly. But you take that profit and then you invest that in the areas where there is need. And one of those enormously is in dental treatment. So as an example, we run a school dental program where we will actually visit schools and we treat all of the school children at no cost. Now the irony of that is we are actually cheaper than government dental services, because we will actually treat people that don't have Medicare cards that are migrants that are not falling within the threshold requirements for the government services, but we will do that free of charge.
Tony McManus
Dr. Greg, stay there. I just wanna go to your brother because I'm sure he would've more to say on that particular aspect as well. Dr. Brett. Hello.
Brett Miller
Hello. And just to clarify I'm not a dentist Greg, so I appreciate the title I just haven't earned it.
Tony McManus
I had written it up there, Dr. Greg forgive Brett your brother. Your brother Greg makes some great points about the work that you've been doing. He clarifies you as the brains which is very generous and very kind.
Brett Miller
Yeah, I always thought I was the looks to be honest.
Tony McManus
Yeah yeah, I would take the brains, you're obviously the younger brother.
Brett Miller
Absolutely. And look I think as Greg said, there's a real synergy in values and I think we did come from different backgrounds, but I think the values set was shared and I think to extend that into what Greg said about our approach to supporting access and equity and equitable access to services we've been very lucky to meet connect and recruit along the way a number of people both clinicians, dental nurses, and assistants. And other team members in supporting our service scope who all share those values. So, we're very lucky. Certainly, you raise a very important point about how expensive healthcare is and particularly dental health.
Tony McManus
Sure.
Brett Miller
And one of the things that Greg, again, has talked about is our passion for giving back. One of the things that I remember is as a young child I was being dropped off by my mother to cricket practice and she drove the mobile library, so she went to schools and aged care centres and children's homes where they lived with disabilities and provided that level of care. And so I think by Greg and I connecting and combining our powers and maybe some of the things that we learned potentially from Mum along the way that really linked in and so yeah, we've struck up a bit of a balance to be able to divert some of the money that we make from our private business into doing good.
Tony McManus
Brett, it's a wonderful story and the businesses with whom I've dealt through Family Business Association over many, years. And it might be Haymes Paint, or it could be what Coopers do in South Australia as a family business, or what Stillwell might do in the motor car business, all around Australia as well. That link to the idea of philanthropy. It seems to be a common thread.
Brett Miller
Absolutely. And we were, a number of years ago we were very lucky to be able to apply for a grant through the Coopers Brewery Foundation and we actually secured a three year funding arrangement, which helped to expand some of our foundation services in particular to aged care, residents throughout South Australia. And I've talked to Melanie Cooper a number of times. And she's certainly very passionate about the project and the work that we did. And so, we are very lucky. And, I think again, when you have the means to provide support to your community, it's really empowering to be able to do something. For Greg and I, guess we are first generation if we talk about family business. So, we are the founding generation and so from our perspective, we weren't able to do much early on other than apply our trade. So, Greg being a dentist early on, was visiting aged care facilities when we started the foundation and I was working on coordinating. And ever since then we've scaled, that. That support and looking at organisations and family businesses like the Coopers and Detmolds in South Australia as well and looking at how they survive generation to generation, that's really inspired us to work on where we want to go with our business.
Tony McManus
I don't know who wants to jump in here, Greg and or Brett. The idea of running a business such as this it’s clearly very unusual in Australia. Let's hope that it continues and other people jump on board with the idea of what you're doing. That's number one. And B, what impact does that have on, team members as this family business continues to grow?
Greg Miller
The team sees the purpose and I think when you have a philanthropic element that is so imbued in your culture, it brings the level of the team and the expectations of the team up. Because we are doing things not only to support our team but also to support the good for the community and the team sees tangibly, those improvements and advancements. What it also does is it takes a real commitment to quality and to teamwork and to collaborative work. And again, that approach will encourage a significant number of hardworking, good-willed individuals who see that for purpose, you are doing the right thing. And I think family purposes really generate that we do say that we are a single generation business. We did in the same way that I snared my brother to work with us. I have snared both my mother and our cousins now, and they also have drank the dental Kool-Aid, as it were. That's good. And, we work together it's not through some intergenerational plan but it's just how we've found that our skills do align and do work together. So that's been very gratifying.
Tony McManus
Back to you, Brett. Do you see this as a potential out of South Australia, although there's the presence in Melbourne already, do you see it as sometimes the possibility of a national rollout, a national presence for what you do and grow that over coming years?
Brett Miller
Yeah, that's actually what we are looking at. So, we are partway through our new strategy and as part of that, it's really to embark upon expansion. Just recently we've done, some work in the Northern Territory and on the eastern seaboard, we've certainly expanded the dental supply and dental service divisions of our business. With respect to the foundation, we are really proud to be able to be expanding that if we think about Tasmania as an example of a state if you look at the oral health statistics, Tasmania certainly. Does have a deficit when it comes to clinicians that live on the island are able to provide services. And as a consequence of that, the waiting lists are quite, horrendous. They're five to ten times more than in South Australia, and we've really worked hard to drive South Australia's performance to become nation leading. And so, one of the areas that we are really interested in is working with Tasmanian’s and the Tasmanian government to really address and to benefit oral healthcare by way of expanding service and certainly we see a lot of work when it comes to regional and remote areas. So, another example and this is more so in South Australia is Kangaroo Islands. So, we're really proud of to provide all for dental services on Kangaroo Island, which you know we went through the fires and everyone was touched by that so that's another example whereby, we're really committed to going to an island community or a remote community and staying there for the long haul through the thick and thin and really supporting wherever we can. And I think that has a really positive impact when it comes to what we say we're going to do, we do. I think that's really important. And then just the values that we espouse, we really work on delivering rather than talking.
Tony McManus
Which is what it's all about. You're just amazing, Dr.Greg and to Brett, mother would be very proud, I would imagine.
Greg Miller
She is working us hard; she's working us hard.
Tony McManus
And now just tell me, I hope one of you barracks Port Adelaide, the other barracks for the crows that would make it really interesting.
Brett Miller
I currently, as you say that I currently live in Seamore, which is in the heartland of Port Adelaide. And my father-in-law actually was a coach for the Port Adelaide junior team.
Greg Miller
And I live in North Adelaide.
Tony McManus
Boys it's lovely to spend a bit of time with you. We haven't met and I'm thrilled that you could spend some time because I think, as probably Catherine, the CEO of Family Business Association has pointed out the idea of having you come on, albeit at this time of the morning for a national radio program, is out of your realm. But I appreciate the time and continue to do the great work that clearly you are doing.
Greg and Brett Miller
Thank you so much.
Tony McManus
Thank you, boys. Dr. Greg Miller and brother Tony. It’s simply called the Miller Dental Group, all part of the Family Business Association.
