[00:00:04] This is Dental Leaders. The podcast where you get to go one on one with emerging Leaders and Dental Street. Your hosts Payman Langroudi and Prav Solanki.

[00:00:22] Hi, guys. Today’s episode is the second part of our social media Leaders hopefully listen to the first part last week. This is a continuation of the best bits of the social media journeys of our top guests. Thank you so much for listening. Canis Solanki Prav brother Kailash has always dominated in every form of media, but that there’s been including social. But I remember before social, he was dominating in print and dominating in Google. And then when it comes to social, he’s got he’s also there.

[00:00:54] I didn’t have a mentor like me, so I had to do things myself and everyone. Not everyone. It’s fair to say that. But a lot of people saw this young kid. He’d open this cosmetic clinic, try to go for all the awards, tries to do all this. All these dentistry goes on every cost under the sun and just thinks is going to be here today, gone tomorrow. Him, you know, his fly by. And, you know, we’re 15, 16 years on. Castaños got a massively great reputation in the northwest. You know, we get patients now from all over the. Our Instagram following our social media presence, our you know, just presence just generally is super good. And that is testament to what’s holding our ground. All kids Dental hold its ground and saying, listen, we’re here to stay. You know, from my point of view and now I think moving forward, long term plan is to ensure that, you know, maybe I can be a mentor for some people. I do it now in my private vitis. And, you know, they do super well. You know, I’ve got my private veti that’s going to be made from fee to fee, writes him just in the next coming month.

[00:02:09] And before that, he’d study dentistry in Latvia. So he’s not like he had experienced the UK dentistry. So like his mom and dad with dentists. It’s not like, you know, he’s grown up in the professional. He’s like he was wet behind the ears. He had no idea of dentistry. And for him to safely dance is the key to safely providing very good quality dental treatment, not rushing. And his kid doesn’t. Roshe, he still shadows me one day a week. So he still only dream four days. Clinical dentistry a week of the Hintz a gross 100k in one month before he goes Ebright great for me, great for my business. But that’s not the reason I’m doing it, because I’m producing I’m hoping not lots of mini mes, but I want to produce people that are not scared, that understand dentistry is something that needs to be provided past the basic level. But happy to provide it because he knows I’m his mentor. I will help him. I will go through that with him and I’ll go through every journey with him. I check his preps, I check his EMFs. I check his final fix.

[00:03:15] We used to talk about treatments to talk about this. Yeah, we should talk about is, you know, Prav and I have talked about you. I mean, you introduced me to Prav. Let’s start with you. Leaders, Prav and Prav. And I have talked about you a lot. And, you know, Prav does marketing for hundreds of dentists. And and he says that in the end, you are the one of all of his clients who converts the most. Richard Field, me from my memory, the first dentists who had a logo of himself as an associate who was very involved back in the Facebook days, less so in the instant Instagram days. So, listen, both I remember back in the day well, I don’t know how many years I’m talking about, maybe seven or eight years ago, maybe. Maybe a bit after that. You were the original social media dentist. I remember you. You were the first one to have your own logo. And I remember you getting quite a lot of chip for it. I remember you getting attacked quite a lot for it. Maybe because you were the first and it wasn’t a thing. Right. But then you kind of withdrew from social media quite a lot. Tell me tell me about it first.

[00:04:32] Yeah, I think social media is something that I think is really important to talk about. So I was the first, though, logo, my friend at uni, and he made me a logo as part of his university course. Actually, I still use the same one today and logo stuff on Facebook when Facebook was the thing. And people comment is not always for the best. And you’d have to you’d have to build quite a thick skin quite early. And there was a couple of things that happened a few years later that I don’t really want to massively get into, but it really left it really sour taste in my mouth. I was like, I don’t need that in my life. And maybe to my detriment or not, I haven’t fully embraced it again ever. And I know there are people are building businesses on Instagram who feel they’ve got some months in advance from Instagram years in advance. There’s people that have no other marketing olad Instagram. So I think is fantastic. But it’s also quite dangerous not only for dentists, but potentially for patients as well, especially the younger ones wanting Instagram smiles. And to sort of put that in perspective. I have a very secret and I’m not going to tell you what it is a secret pizza Instagram where I post on my pizzas that I make in my home oven. And I sent a picture of my smile from that Instagram to a dentist. And I have a small garlic and a small darst on my upper right lateral. I’m ecstatic conclusion. And I said, well, what do I need? A nice smile. And the answer was 20 zirconia Crohn’s.

[00:06:25] Was this dentist in Turkey?

[00:06:26] It was a. It might be well, but the reply I go as far as the counting of cranes and as I OK, sometimes Steve asked me about bonding. And he said, no, that won’t work. Cranes is better. It’ll be 3000 pounds, 20 units of two points and sent me loads of pictures. And they looked from a lay person is really good. And that’s what we’re up against. We’re up against dentists. And the general public who doesn’t know anything about dentistry sees the nice smile for a nice price, and it’s very difficult to compete with. And on the flip side, in the UK, there’s a lot of very careful what I say. It’s a lot of make overs with composter. And I love composite. I think it’s fantastic. But I don’t think what these patients are being told is the maintenance, the long term. So you’re seeing a lot of people with big competence. Smiles on Virgine teeth, very young. Not knowing the maintenance for the future, and I’ve already had a couple in. You’ve had these sort of fool my continues on for a very small amount of money. They’ve already started to fail and can’t afford to fix it. And I’m not saying this is every dentist there are Dental. They’re doing phenomenal work with concept that will last years and years and years and years. But there’s also a lot. There aren’t. And I think we’ll be in a very interesting position in three or four years time when all these sort of influencers or young people want influence or teeth. Need it redone. And I wonder who’s going to do it? Yeah, it’s definitely an issue, although I don’t know how, you know, that

[00:08:21] People aren’t telling people of and you’ve spoken to these patients, but you can’t always trust patients about that. But but but I get I understand where you’re coming from. I mean, sometimes, you know, the trend picks up and it has its own sort of legs. And then I had qadi manager you on the podcast. Right. And she was talking about tick tock as she’s massive on tick tock, you know,

[00:08:46] And I know nothing.

[00:08:49] Well, yeah, this is the thing on on tick tock. The things that trend like they have juicy headlines and so something something really like, you know, the turkey things trended on on tick tock, the people going to turkey and having their teeth. And it is problematic with composite because it can go very wrong very quick if it’s not done very well. You know that the the problems are amplified in these tiny little scratch in the composite as a big fail later on. So I do agree with you on that.

[00:09:23] I think with or in script done is they’ve made they’ve taken the medical aspect away from dentistry and it’s more of a beauty treatment. So people out there, hair who have was done Baltistan and I think it is important that the public and the patients understand that what they’re having done, it might be minimi invasive, but it’s not reversible. And I think that the side of it which broadcast or understood

[00:09:55] Rupert Monkhouse is in question live so beautiful that the zigging when they zag, talking about them, just making them just cool on Instagram, which is a wonderful achievement. And so what’s what’s been the reaction of young dentists, you know, putting these beautiful pictures on Instagram and it’s the last place. I mean, you know, these platforms sort of, you know, develop DNA. But if three years ago you told me the going to be a guy who’s going to be taking pictures of complete dentures and making them exciting and sexy on black with with reflections, I would I would believe that, you know, what’s been people’s reaction? I mean I mean, you must have inspired a bunch of people.

[00:10:44] I think so. I think I get a lot of a lot of really nice feedback. I do see a few people doing a few pictures. And I it it’s quite, quite similar. That’s cool. No one’s no one’s original show. Someone was doing the same kind of things as well that I haven’t seen. So, you know, nothing. And it’s all about the photos of it. That’s all just what Menasche teaches on his boat. You know, when did that course? Two years ago. And thought, well, I’m going to do it for what I want to do that again. I’ve had really, really nice feedback. And I think more people just obviously people were doing Dental cases. But I’m seeing more maybe I’m just following more people that I’m definitely seeing more people who are doing on the page sort of composite work and actually posting the odd Dental case, which is almost that people weren’t thinking that, oh, let’s not show the Dental cases, but. Yeah, yeah, definitely. And more more of it coming up, which is which is cool. Yeah.

[00:11:37] I mean, the thing is, we were all trained in that much more than we were trained in composites. So it kind of it kind of takes you back to that whole whole bit of Dental school. Right. But at the same time, it’s interesting, you know, that that is still the case. I really didn’t think that. I thought I thought by now the Dental course would be much more sort of digital planning and none of that. Right. Scanning was scanning involved your coastguard.

[00:12:04] So you knew it existed. You knew it existed. But we didn’t we didn’t have a scanner on the postgrads to the postcard. Obviously, they have scanners and things of that, because they have to do all that side of it, that we didn’t have anything outside that that maybe it’s changed in the last four or five years, but it’s still not not there

[00:12:26] To even even in the last four or five years. A lot’s changed and scanning is definitely penetration market penetration of it. Yeah. What else do you get up to? Outside of work? What what’s your biggest interest piece?

[00:12:41] Well, I was doing a bit of coaching still for the swimming stuff. The Covid sort of killed that off to do normal photography, not adventures. But again, Covid sort of cattail that a bit because it was more when I would travel, I’d try and go away sort of two or three times a year and do photography that obviously living and living in London, you can still go and do some some nice photography. So I spend spend most of my time doing doing that. And just sports in general. What you better watch a bit of cricket. Maybe I might get roped into a Sunday game next week. I in the shower with some players, so I’m not going to go into the arm over. But yeah, photos, not adventures, is usually what I’m doing. But I found that I’m just doing more and more of the work work photographers. I need to bring it back the other way, I think.

[00:13:26] So were you a photographer before you were a Dental photographer?

[00:13:32] Yeah. So I’ve been doing sort of photography as a sort of serious hobby for about five years, mostly stuff. But I would be in London at uni and going round and then travels and sort of landscape photography and cityscape photography and things like that. So I knew I knew my way around a camera before I went on. Yeah, that’s homophobic scores and stuff. Yeah. So it’s more than that. That’s the beauty, of course, is that it’s still had so much so much to offer because you have the full range of people on that course. And still some people don’t even know how to, you know, which we tend the whole day on sort of thing that catches up on. But the beauty of that is that the whole black backdrop, things are so simple to do once you know how to do it. But it just until you know how to do it is a little crazy, but says I still enjoy it. And that’s why I think partly I do these do all these Instagram photos, because it’s just it makes me enjoy the work that I’m doing. I enjoy the sight of is making a nice picture, whether it’s over a mountain range somewhere or more of an impression. I just enjoy the process of actually producing producing an image.

[00:14:48] Robbie Hughes, a real social media powerhouse since that interview, he’s done so many other things as well. The clothing line, that’s the concept avant garde system that he’s doing. But again, one of my favourites to listen

[00:15:07] To starts as a little bit about that. And we prior to this podcast, we said a little thing that shocked me, which is you probably run one of the biggest or most successful practises in the north and you haven’t spent a penny on marketing. Exactly. How did that happen?

[00:15:23] The power of Instagram, power of no influential people. And like like you say, I am fortunate. I’m very fortunate that, you know, influential people don’t have to beg beg influential people to help me out or offer, you know, freebies and all these things. I know a lot of influential people and all to sort

[00:15:42] Of I think that combined with the power of providing the amazing experience, because, of course, it’s impossible to grow a business at the rate you’ve grown your business,

[00:15:51] Because without you’re going to force, you can’t force people to shout from the rooftops about what you’ve had done. You can’t force people to do that regardless of what I think it’s the

[00:15:58] Combination of those two together.

[00:16:00] The experience is everything. Yeah, the experience is everything. So you want to provide an experience. You want to create this sort of lifestyle brand where people want to boast about being in the building. And that’s exactly what they do. Even the celebrities do it now to celebrities. Come pay for the teeth. Do you mind that we with you? And so Cam certainly was a was a prime example. Ken paid for his teeth and Cam was offered free teeth. But he wants to come to us and he let me video the whole experience and use as much as he wants because he knew what he wanted. He knew about the experience. He knew about what we can deliver on. And we get that all the time. We haven’t done a single sponsored post. Yeah. So I haven’t paid for anything. Now, when I’m ready to scale my business, we have the content, we have the content. They will obviously all those options we have my websites, I still get built is not even optimised. So if I can build a business of this scale on Instagram only, that’s what really excites me, because I’m not going to be sort of put all my eggs in one basket. I’m just going through the process and being so busy and do not that we do need to have all the channels and all the avenues final, all cylinders, and then we’ll see how far we can really take this business. And that’s what that’s that’s what that’s the desire inside me now is I think I want to know how far can I take it?

[00:17:22] That’s really key will be because, you know, you could say right place, right time, Instagram, you know that your reputation in the town. Yeah. Is it let’s say Instagram day after tomorrow, isn’t the platform that, you know, we can see what happened to Facebook and reach and all that. And then we’re talking to Newtown. What are the what will it take to to replicate? And I’m not asking you to answer me, but that is the that’s the big, big ask. Because because I believe in Liverpool. You’re a mini celebrity before any of this started. And Instagram, I guess you got on it at the right time and did the right thing. But what’s going to happen next?

[00:18:02] I believe I believe we have we already have a brand established well enough now to grow in any city. And the awareness is there. I know that because I know the amount of enquiries I get through every day from different areas of the country. So, again, my next stage is going to be a very, very logical decision based on where the most of my enquiries are coming from, from the right demographic and type of people and where my highest conversion rate is. So I know of I’m already very highly in that area. That’s where I need the clinic. That’s not rocket science. If Instagram falls off tomorrow, I’ve got my brand and I’ve got a good enough business brain, you know, advertised on MySpace before so I can advertise and anything. And that was free as well. So, yeah, plus we’ve got all the old marketing methods is not that I’m not not aware of. I’m just saying I’m not at the point to use it or need it. Yeah. And both scalability is common. And that’s why I love digital dentistry, because I don’t believe that’s been scalable before. Same way in the same way. But now with scalable, we can centralise a lot of things and sort of have different satellites very easily.

[00:19:06] I believe Prunus Skanda probably in the profession right now, the most influential social media queen there is. Enjoy it. One thing I quite admire about the way you’ve done Instagram is you’ve brought what you’ve brought Anna Middleton along with you. And now the notice.

[00:19:25] You’re also done tonight, babe. It’s like Charlie’s Angels and you come to see Dental.

[00:19:30] Yeah, that’s that’s quite a nice thing. You know, that’s quite a nice thing. It’s like empowering women in. So we go on to the okay, go for it. What do you feel about this wave? Why is it that now there’s so many women’s groups?

[00:19:43] Ok, so the really interesting thing is that people see me as a strong female figure, which I’m so grateful for. But as a result, they want me to be at the forefront of a lot of speaking events that are just inclusive to women. And I have actually made a decision in the last year not to accept any of those invitations, not because I’m not here to support other women. It’s because I think that this is basically a trend and people don’t understand what it means. I think that women should have a voice. I think that women should be empowered. But I don’t actually think separating men from women on any platforms is the way forward, because I think it’s all about diversity, inclusive koussevitzky and not about separation. Now, my business partners are male. I work with males all the time. I get on with them. I have never felt intimidated or disempowered by men. So actually, I don’t think that this whole wave, which kind of tries to display men as being the enemy and, you know, suppressing women is something that I relate to. And I think it’s all about integration, to be honest.

[00:20:56] Do you think it’s harder to be a woman than a man?

[00:20:59] Yeah, for sure. I mean, yeah, that’s true.

[00:21:03] Then then there’s nothing wrong with Empower. You know, I mean, the.

[00:21:06] Yeah, but I think. No, but that’s why.

[00:21:07] Is it harder to be a woman than the man?

[00:21:08] I mean, for me personally, somebody that’s built that profile on career and has lots of dreams and aspirations that I want to fulfil. I’m also very much aware of the biological clock, frankly.

[00:21:18] I get I get somebody inside of that. Outside of that, of course, of course, having a kid and I love it. But outside of that, I mean, you haven’t got a kid yet, you know.

[00:21:26] Okay. My father keeps reminding me so.

[00:21:30] So in your journey from, you know, from zero to now. Yeah. You think it’s harder to be a woman than the man?

[00:21:36] Yeah, for sure. I mean, like I think that there has been elements of in my industry, which I’m not going to go into in detail. There have been elements of also like I sometimes certain men have wanted to help. And then it turns out they actually wanted to try and get physical and then you’d go, no, no, no, no. This is like a purely business thing. And I’ve I’ve experienced some of that. And then they lose interest in trying to help you. So I think there’s definitely a little bit of that, that Harvey Weinstein culture that still goes on in every industry. But having said that, I think that if you assert yourself in a certain way, you can get the respect from both sexes, to be perfectly honest with you. And the reason why I say that is because I did assert myself and behaved in a certain way that gained respect. And I think women for some reason don’t feel like they have a voice. They don’t have the confidence to speak out. It’s not that men are saying you can’t speak out. It’s because they just don’t have that maybe that ego like men do. And I think that’s a problem with women. And trust me, more women have said negative things about me online, behind my back and so forth than men. And I don’t think that says a lot, because I think that’s pathetic that some securitise projects. Does that make sense? You know,

[00:22:53] If you were born a bloke, would you be most successful?

[00:22:56] If I was born a bloke, would I be more successful? No, but I definitely I’d have no idea how to answer that question. But I definitely think that I would nail being broken.

[00:23:06] It’s a strange question, but it isn’t. It’s a strange question.

[00:23:09] No, I understand what

[00:23:11] It

[00:23:11] Relates to your question about.

[00:23:13] Yeah, I mean, it’s a strange one to answer, but.

[00:23:15] Yeah, but I mean, but

[00:23:16] Tell me about these terrible things that these women have done to you. Are we talking, trolling?

[00:23:21] Yeah, I think that. So, for example, I’ll hear from some of my peers that certain female dentists, for example, that have never met me will say things about my persona or about my clinical work. And I find it very strange because I’ve never even met them. And sometimes on Instagram, I have had to deal with comments of trolling. But to be perfectly honest, there have been male trolls as well. As we know. There’s forums that I think I think it’s just awful that a group still on Facebook that allow dentists to publicly within the space of the forum. Shame other dentists and troll them. And, you know, to be honest, though, Payman, some of my male friends who are Dental has also suffer from anxiety about these groups talking about them. Screen shots thinks that things about them mocking them. And this happens for males and females. But I think that it’s just outrageous that we allow it. We were allowing it. I mean, with what’s happened with Caroline Slark recently, can’t people understand that the power of words can have on you? You know, like it’s so real that people say you have to develop a tough skin and just get on with it, because if you put yourself in the public eye, you’re just going to expose yourself. But I’m like, I don’t. Want to live in a box, you know, I mean, in this like security thing, but I don’t think that gives people the rights to think that I’m invincible or any of my friends are invincible.

[00:24:44] Does that. Does it hurt then? Is that what you’re saying?

[00:24:46] Hundred percent. A hundred percent.

[00:24:48] What’s your deepest, darkest moment in social media, whether it’s a comment that someone’s made or content that someone’s published or a screenshot that you’ve seen where you’ve just, oh, holy crap, you know, it has sunk in. And he said and he sent you into spiral of, you know, on depression or sleepless nights. What if they that may be.

[00:25:10] So when I was on it, I got asked to be on TV. And then the second time that I was on there, I posted about it. And someone with zero followers, zero posts. And this is the interesting thing, right? Because these trolls, sometimes it’s such a it’s obviously made up of people hiding behind a mask. They don’t have the guts to tell you to your face, have basically told me. But the PED attacked the way that I speak, my accent and the way that I looked. I’m totally matrixx at my eyebrows. And I was like, they are my signature. Thanks very much. Leavening is all over. But, you know, it’s the way that I looked and I just deleted it, obviously, and tried to ignore a few weeks ago, I had a Dental student, female Dental student that tried to attack one of my photos about being in the Telegraph. And I ended up having to disable the comments on the photo because all these other students were like jumping on the bandwagon. And I just don’t have time to deal with that when I’m dealing with patients on a busy day.

[00:26:11] Majin, that happens first thing in the morning or last thing at night. Awful. You come into work the next day, you’ve got a day full of patients. How does that affect your day and your interactions?

[00:26:21] You just really can’t focus the neck. Going back to Caroline flap thing, because I think it’s just such a prominent thing that’s happening. And I think it shows the way we have to change like behaviour. A lot of my patients are very good friends with Caroline and had come in and they had confirmed to me that she really, really suffered with the things that were being said about her constantly. And again, I just don’t know why people feel that they have the right to really attack people on a personal basis.

[00:26:50] People definitely do. Do you remember there was a picture of what’s the name? Posh Spice. Yeah. On She’s gone to America to have her teeth done and even dance with jumping in. Yeah, making making. Somehow you feel like you have licence with with famous people. It’s a weird thing. Yeah, it’s a weird thing, isn’t it?

[00:27:07] No, I mean, a hundred percent. And I think like on that note as well, is that the influence the world has also sort of affected me. I have some influences are extremely loyal, and we formed a very strong bond on the treatments that we’ve done. But influences now because I was one of the original Dental his treating influences, remember, like now everyone’s doing it, but I was one of the only ones if the only one. And now everyone’s doing it and they’ll jump from person to person. Right. And now Dentists’, I find gloat when an influence that change dentists’ because amongst the dentists, I wonder why she changed dentists. Obviously Dentist X did a crap job or, you know, didn’t fulfil their needs.

[00:27:49] You know, you alluded to earlier when you when you gave you a little intro, I’m an OK clinical dentist. You weren’t blowing smoke up yourself. You weren’t saying I’m the best clinical. Don’t talk to me about why patients come to you and what it is.

[00:28:03] Yeah. I mean, you even notice one of your stories a couple of days ago, and it was someone famous, I guess. And she said, I went on Twitter and asked who’s a good dentist? And it just all stormed in as many as Rúnar.

[00:28:18] Yeah. And that, you know, that really shocked me, actually, because I had no idea who she was initially. And then everyone was like, she’s a really big deal. She’s one of the most armloads, dentists, mostaghim like, oh, my God, you’re treating this person like. That’s amazing. I’ve been following her for ages.

[00:28:32] But what is it about the way you make people feel that?

[00:28:34] I think it was it’s just that it’s about the way that I make people feel now. I think that I never realised about the interaction, but I always think it’s such a cliche saying, but treat your patients as you would your friends and family. And I always have that in mind. I actually am really excited to treat a case of a patient who’s was going to come to me. And she had messaged me saying that she had gone through a massive surgical process and that she wanted to talk to me about the feminisation as her teeth. And I thought, what does that mean? And I looked further and I realised that she’s transgender. And when I responded back to her, she was her immediate response was, oh, my gosh, you’re the nicest person. Your energy is so warm because I’m very much about all inclusive party. And again, like Payman, if you ask me now, like you did a few years ago, what’s my vision is to show the world that you can be anyone you deserve to have good teeth. Our people now are like, oh, yeah, I want to try and influence, I want to be a famous person that’s going to like show everyone, I’m like, you know what, I want to take a step from that because I want to show that no matter who you are, what you look like, where you’re from, male, female, transgender, you know, access to you have access and you deserve a smile.

[00:29:52] And that’s kind of like my next vision, you know, for the public. So stay tuned for how I’m going to be doing that. But I think that that feeling, as you said, of making them feel comfortable. I’m very good at gauging body language. I’m very good at gauging fears. I’m very good at gauging, you know, how people feel from the moment they walk into that room. And my job is to make them feel comfortable. And I think that and personable and that I really care about everything they’re going through. And I think that’s why that word of mouth has spread, because what dentists don’t realise is, is clinical dentistry is so important, but patients don’t really know what’s going on in their mouth. Of course, they want a nice result. But at the end of the day, if you make them feel good in that chair and Brady Show, all your passion.

[00:30:38] Jason Smithson, I’ve known Jason for years, but he really did build a very unique teaching platform, if you like, on social. He came from from before Facebook was around the Dental town, had a massive presence there. And then on Facebook, you know, one of the most talented teachers around and one of the biggest names that’s ever come out of UK dentistry.

[00:31:04] So, Jason, going from the point where you beat on all these various courses, you’ve been doing a lot of invasive cosmetic dentistry and then shifted over towards this thinking go rather than doing one. Maybe we can do a load. Yeah. How did you transition from that point to being known as one of the world’s, if not the world’s best at the technique that you teach today? What was what was that transition? And in terms of just going from someone who practises dentistry, who then teaches on a global on a global stage.

[00:31:41] So I think payments heard this before. But I’ll tell you, I work in a practise a worked with a with a guy called Jeremy Harris, who was a very strong early mentor for me. But his thing is really fixed. Prostate implants, very good at Balga Carving as well. Indeed, I still work with them. They still work for the practise a day, a week. It’s nearly retired, but there we go. But he’s not interested. By his own admission, he could do good composites, but it’s not really a massive interest. So I wanted to get some feedback on it. So I started to post my cases, which were mainly at that point posterior composites, which were quite unusual at the time. Maybe what Payman would it be 12, 13 years ago in so much as I used to use, attend to the phishers and stuff like that. So they were quite what might be called now hyper realistic. So I, I posted them on on a website which is still around called Dental Town, really just for feedback. It wasn’t with any ambition to do anything other than to communicate with other dentists who were into composite resin. And it got mixed feedback. You know, it’s a fairly American dominated website. And some people were saying, oh, why are you putting all that ugly? Keri’s into your teeth. I had to restorations and some people were saying, wow, that’s really cool.

[00:33:05] As it turned out, again, there were so so but they were perhaps quite revolutionary for the time. I was the first to do it, but one off. And after a while, a guy called Lincoln Harris, who is still a good friend of mine. In fact, I had dinner with him in Sydney about three months ago. Good guy runs a group called Right on Facebook. He called me and he said, Do you teach? And I said, no. And I don’t have any interest in teaching, because at that time, and to some degree now, I’m quite shy in some environments. And I at that point, I would be quite nervous to give a presentation in a practise meeting if I was asked to give a present a short presentation to practise to me to be up all night with diarrhoea. At that point. So it was a definite no no for me. So I listened to him and he said, well, we have this business model. It’s called Aesthetics in the Alpine. I live in Australia. My wife is Canadian. We fly to Canada, to Whistler once a year. And we have a Dental meeting that’s mainly geared up to skiing. And we have three speakers. One kind of world known expert is the year I did it was actually a guy called Gary Wood, who I’m really good friends with now, who’s very prominent in the Spirit Institute, really decent guy.

[00:34:36] There is a guy who’s kind of regionally, nationally known, I was a Canadian implant ologist the year I did it. I don’t recall their name, his name. And we have a guy or girl who is who’s never liked her before. And all you’ve got to do is to go over, come over. We’ll pay for your fly economy class flight will pay for your hotel for a week or pay for Iski, a ski pass. And all you’ve got to do is give a one hour lecture. My response to that was, thank you very much. No thanks. I’m not interested because I had several barriers. The first barrier is I didn’t really like public speaking at all. I was quite shy. My second barrier was I have absolutely no IT skills, and that hasn’t changed much. So I didn’t have a I had a Dell computer with two keys missing, and I had absolutely no PowerPoint. So I said, thanks very much, put the phone down. And he said, we’ll get back to me, you know, if you change your mind. And so my wife, who was into SKEER said to me, who was that? And I said, well, it’s this guy from Australia. And I just explained the situation to her. And then finally, we have got to go make myself a cup of tea now acts. And she said, what you bring up straight back, this guy has just offered you a free holiday.

[00:36:04] We didn’t have kids. Actually, we did have one card at a time. It’s just offered a free holiday for for you to speak for 60 Minutes. And you’re saying no. And I said, yeah, I don’t want to do it. My wife browbeat me over the evening into doing it. We’re all married. So you know how that works. What she made that decision, that was it. So I rang linked the next morning and I said, look, I’ve had I’ve had a chat with my wife and I’ve had a change of heart and I’m going to do it. I say, OK, fine. So we agreed to do it. Luckily, I had about nine months of notice. So my next challenge was I have no technical ability and no computer. So luckily, Stuart, who was is has been my best friend since I was 11, am teaches computer science as a teacher. And I called him and I said what I do. And he said, don’t worry, just send me a desk. And we were at desks at that time to send me a desk with everything. You need to go on a PowerPoint and I’ll make it for you. I’ll make a really simple five four PowerPoint and just advance it with one button. Don’t press any other buttons and you’ll be fine. Just talk about slides. I didn’t even know how to put anything on a desk.

[00:37:19] I couldn’t even copy paste at that time. That’s how bad I was. So what are you going to laugh at this? What I did was my wife put all my pictures on a desk. All right. Think she labelled them a figure? One figure to figure three. And I got a 100 page flip top reporters pad page one. I wrote slide one. And then I drew where I want to the picture to be. I wrote the reference underneath it and I wrote the title of the slide and I put the floppy disk and the reporter spots. Young adults are going to be absolutely to this. I put that in a bubble wrap bag and sent out to Stewart, who lives in London, and he called me a day later. I said, what is this? And he made me a PowerPoint, which I still have. I look at kind of grounds me when I look at it with my pictures on the titles, and that actually that lectures changed quite a lot. But the backbone of that lecture is still the backbone of my posterior composite lecture. Just my first lecture. That’s how I did it. And I went on and I had no clue what I was doing. I had no. At that point, no public speaking training. And I kind of bumbled my way through it and it kind of worked.

[00:38:37] Qadi managed Shehri more recent arrival on the social scene, but the super, super successful at it, particularly on a tick tock with thousands of followers that she’s got. Now, how many followers do you got on Instagram?

[00:38:52] I think it’s nine something. Nine point three K or something. Yeah.

[00:38:57] And on top of

[00:39:00] Get one hundred twelve thousand, I think

[00:39:05] Under twelve thousand.

[00:39:07] You’re writing it down.

[00:39:08] You know what’s amazing? What’s amazing is last time I looked at your tick tock. One hundred and one thousand or something. That was like. It was a lot.

[00:39:17] Yeah. Yeah.

[00:39:18] So, you know, just to show the difference in the reach reach of the platform, doesn’t that.

[00:39:23] Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

[00:39:25] And so do you feel comfortable, more comfortable on tech talk than on Instagram?

[00:39:31] I think they’re very different platforms. So it depends on what I’m doing to be. Honest because Instagram is very planned, very polished, very you know. Yeah, just planned generally. But Tock is more spontaneous. It’s a question of five minutes between patient cell family tick tock video. I used to you know, when I was in lockdown, I had days dedicated to tick tock filming. And I think to be honest, I think that kept me going because it was an excuse to dress up, you know, shower, wash my hair, put makeup on, that kind of thing. Whereas now because obviously I have less time to dedicate to it. It’s just whenever there is time. But I really enjoy it. I really enjoy it.

[00:40:09] For you, it may seem spontaneous, but for me it seems like you’ve got a plan going to plan ahead. You got a plan where you’re pointing and well, you’ve got a plan. Tick tock. Seems more of a headache to to post on Instagram. Maybe my Instagram as as produced as they should be. Right?

[00:40:28] I think it’s

[00:40:30] Quite a hard platform. I find it hard to produce something when. Even though it’s

[00:40:34] Difficult. Yeah, it’s really difficult. I think you have to spend enough time consuming the platform to learn what works, what doesn’t work, the trends. I think it’s important to jump on the trends and that kind of thing. But I you know, I found that I was spending by two or three hours a day on that anyway. So I was I might as well be creating, because if you see enough tick tock videos, you’ll want to create. If you see the same trends, you’ll think about your take on the trend. So, yeah, definitely. I don’t think

[00:41:02] I know this is the million dollar question. Right. But what would you say makes a video go viral? Yeah, I’m not asking you to for the answer, but but what would you say, you know, from what you’re learning?

[00:41:16] Yeah, I will say,

[00:41:19] You see, title seems to work well.

[00:41:21] Juicy title works very well, I think. I think even I think anyone fully understands how the platform works. So one video could go super viral, but another similar feature could not say. I think a lot of it is down to luck and it’s about producing enough content consistently for one of them to inevitably go viral. But with me, to be honest, the first video that I thought had gone viral was 80000 views. And then the ultimate was the eight million views with the crowns of as one. But I think you need to be divulging some sort of juicy information. You need to grab people’s attention. And it’s about, you know, with tick tock, it’s about retention of the viewer. So it’s about time and how long they spend viewing that video. How many times they watch it, whether they sent it to other people. How many people like it comment at that kind of stuff plays a big part in how viral that video goes. So, for example, that video is incredibly video. It was viewed for a Tick-Tock. We’ll give you analytics. It will tell you how long they’ve spent people spend watching that video. So a lot of people have shared it with each other. They tend to. And that’s how it went super fast. It was on every kind of, you know, like light Bible, all these kind of external places as well.

[00:42:35] You were you were on the news like you.

[00:42:37] Yeah, I was in Russia TV as well. I don’t know how I was actually Reistad.

[00:42:42] Look for people who don’t know, just just go through what happened with that, because that was like a Katie Price Turkey video thing, wasn’t?

[00:42:48] Yeah. So it was an on on ticked off. There is one of the trends. So I’m ticked off with people who aren’t familiar with the platform. A lot of content is for entertainment and a lot of content is for, you know, hacks and DIY kind of stuff. So, you know, cutting hair recipes, that kind of thing. And a trend with regards to teeth and health was that people were going to turkey, shaving their teeth down and saying these are videos and then showing that before and after and then shock teeth. And this wasn’t anything new. It was on Instagram for a while before it went on on Tick Tock. And I had seen a lot of people kind of comment on this. A lot of dentists were rightly speaking up about it, saying, look, these are these are not Menez, these are crowns. But I was kind of very apprehensive about talking about it because I didn’t want it to sound like I was saying, you know, dentists in certain countries were bad and they didn’t want to sound like I was promoting, you know, a line bleach and bond kind of protocols. So I was quite apprehensive about it. And then I came across this video and, you know, I’ll take a lot of my photos with Tagame and videos that are about to to get my opinion on it. And if a video goes viral and everyone sees it and more people attacking you in that video.

[00:43:52] So I came across this video of a girl who was very young and she had she actually had beautiful, perfect teeth. They were aligned. They were very, very white. And they didn’t have any mood issues. And she had gotten all of them shaved down, I think at least five to five and had crowns on all of them saying, look at my penis. And a lot of people were commenting, saying, oh, the requirements to get this done. And it was really scary to see young people looking up to these in, you know, quotation marks, influences and wanting to do the same thing. So I made a video saying, look, these are not anaesthesia crowns and these are the risks. You know, you can get nerve damage. You’re going to need root canal treatment. You’re going to need to replace these. And I think you know what you were saying about. Juicy content. I said you might end up needing dentures by the age 40, and I think that’s what it took to kind of make people realise that actually. Yeah, actually, this isn’t like just getting false names is actually a big deal. And I got loads of messages from people like loads and loads, like hundreds of messages from people on Instagram saying, I had no idea. I’ve been thinking of doing this. Thank you for sharing this. I was literally minutes away from booking my flight to go to Turkey to get this done.

[00:45:02] And there was one message from I think I was over Christmas, there was one message from this girl who was actually in Turkey, and she said, look, I’ve come here with my boyfriend to get our teeth done. And they’ve just told him he needs full root canals before he gets his crowns done. I’m really panicking. I’m really scared. What should I do? Our treatment is tomorrow. And I was like, OK, there’s literally nothing I can do for you. Now, you’re in Turkey. You’re already there. Like this is the kind of stuff you should be thinking about before you go over there to get your teeth done. And the maintenance, like who’s going to who’s going to pay for the maintenance? Like, do you understand? Do you realise these may need to be replaced? And so it went viral. It was shared on every kind of platform that I can think of. It was one of the trending news articles on Apple News. My dad actually was going through avenues and he was like, OK, this is where you are. My brother came home and he was like, yarn, like Wlad Bible. So it was my five minutes of fame. But I’m glad they got the attention that it needed because it it made people realise that these aren’t just, you know, stuff. You get done and just forget about it.

[00:46:02] So that look, that was that was a trending thing that you jump on the majori video about. Right.

[00:46:08] So I don’t think it was a trending thing. It was just it was video. It was a trend of people showing their teeth. And my video was just saying, look, don’t do this. So it was an anti trend, if anything. Good to see you. That’s why I was surprised when it went viral, because it wasn’t anything like everybody else was doing. And then once I made my video, then everyone else, all the other Dental started talking about it as well. So that was good to kind of echo the message and get it out there.

[00:46:32] So I’m still trying

[00:46:34] To get to the bottom of, you know, why is it you’re so confident talking to the camera? And we had you filming it and listen.

[00:46:40] Yeah, that was fun.

[00:46:42] You were you were like a total match, like most people sweat.

[00:46:45] And, you know, I did if I listened, I said, no, I stutter at some point, you

[00:46:49] Know, that like, believe me, you’re one of the better one of the better ones. Where does that confidence come from?

[00:46:56] I you know, I think I put myself out there a lot. I’m not naturally super confident. I have a you know, I have my own reservations. But I think once you start doing stuff and you get used to it and you realise that it’s actually working, that gives you confidence. So, you know, with the social media platforms, the way it all started was, you know, when I was at the at my toxic dead end job, I think I was doing a hygiene. And I was like, OK, this clearly isn’t the answer. You’re working six days a week, 12 hours a day. So I’m going to take some time off. I’m going to spend some time working on some sort of creating some sort of a brand, get my name out there and then I’ll go from there. And I’m pretty proud of myself for that, because, you know, I chose to not work six days a week. And that takes a lot of think that it takes guts to say, actually, I don’t want to do this, I’m going to go do something else.

[00:47:44] Instead, say shake ru Dental. And what they do with social is it’s a real lesson to all of us on brand fun, always, you know, doing new things, novelty and their approach, and in a completely obsessed with branding and getting things right.

[00:48:06] And we help them grow their Instagram as well. It looks like, you know, the content you’re creating for them. And the

[00:48:13] Only brand that we drew is that part parcel of the day as well, that you

[00:48:17] Will help them grow their social presence if they want to.

[00:48:21] Yeah, I mean, we want to grow our social presence. So our marketing is very strong and they are our brand as well. So all marketing is based around them. Video creations for the Dental is video creations for the staff, but they then utilise that content on their platforms is absolutely fine because we want to have a synergy we don’t have. We don’t want to say that you can’t grow yours and not grow ours. You know, one of my closest dentists to me and she’s grown with me, Slaney, she is a strong Instagram Dental. But when we both when she started out, we were both growing. She was growing in her Instagram platform and we were growing in our brand. And we’ve always said to her, we’re not against each other and we have a synergy. And that was so different for her. Harvey, she said, majoras, the principles are that same to me. You can’t do this and you can’t post this about us and you can’t post that. And you have to write our logo on that and our logo on that. And I was never like that. I just said to her, will grow you in your day. And she ended up being full time with us. And she’s dihydro now.

[00:49:22] And it’s interesting. Caslen is lecturing for me tomorrow. I see. It’s a small makeover for for amazing on marketing. Amazing. But you know what? What impresses me, Zabor, is that you? Imagine this. There’s a degree of vulnerability in having your associates having such a big presence because they could take they could take their patients away with them. Mm hmm. But you didn’t see it using that as an opportunity?

[00:49:50] Yeah, I don’t. Yeah. And I always say to residents, well, we don’t ever see it that way. We always say that we just have confidence. And also there is a confidence in what we do and a confidence in our brand that we’ve seen that the dentists, once they’re in and they experience and touch and feel through and experience the journey with me. I mean, a lot of them I just feel like the journey is a long term journey that they’re and they’re both in and they feel that it’s not fake and they know that. And the ones that have left or you know, I’m not saying everyone stays with us. It’s all been positive. Those freedoms, they want to grow in a different direction. And we’ve been there. And I haven’t said or felt, you know, your patients are going with you or our patients. I’ve never felt that. I always feel that that’s enough for everyone. And I don’t need to no one needs to step on each other’s toes. You know, I just have never needed to to feel that

[00:50:48] New performance for one of the original social media guys even did a dissertation on social media seemless on the platforms now than before. But the quality of content is always, always there. You did did you do your MBA thesis on something social media as well?

[00:51:08] Yeah. So mine was dentistry and social media. I was lucky because because I’m one of the admin for Defour PhD. I was able to capture a lot of data from dentists, and it was a questionnaire based thesis looking at how do dentists see social media? And then we flipped it to patients. How do patients proceed? Dentists, social media. How many patients search for their dentists on social media? How many patients search for your private Facebook profile on social media? And the numbers were pretty impressive, actually giving a talk on it with Phillips and PHMSA next week, Tuesday. It’s my little plug.

[00:51:48] That’s cool. That’s cool. You must get approached all the time by manufacturers, implant companies and toothpaste people especially. I mean, I don’t know if you’ve kind of gone a little bit more quiet, I’d say now. But, you know, back when you were peaking, when you were a Peking duck couple of years ago on Social, but you didn’t get involved with that many different companies. But now I see you’ve got yourself involved with this indemnity thing to say about that. Does this about the whole L’Ecole thing and and indemnity?

[00:52:23] Yeah, I was doing a lot. I think my my programme was, first of all, to become known to become known in the industry. And I went through a period where early on in my career, I got in trouble with the GDC, had some disciplinary issues. That was about 16 years ago, I think. And then I went quiet for a little while. And then after that, I thought, you know, well, we all make mistakes. Let’s bring ourselves back up. Started developing Louis’ from Mannan, who, you know, with a lot of work together, and she helped build some brand recognition for me. And over lockdown, I set up a health care consultancy firm. And the idea behind that was to try and leverage what I know about health care with the MBA to do work with certain Dental companies or health care companies, pension funds, be new products coming to the market, the Internet offerings, et cetera. And through that, I got approached to be on the executive committee of a new indemnity product, and it’s called the Dental Defence Society. And you’ve got big names. You’ve got Professor Stephen Dunn, Lauren Birnbaum. And we basically designed because obviously in defo D on for dainties by Dental is one of the biggest questions we get is who’s your endowment? Which indemnity Friday using Dental. To ask the moderating that forum for about 12 years. I know every question everybody wants to ask, but I know what people are worried about. So using that knowledge, we designed a product for dentists. And it’s a really exciting offering which aims to provide reasonably priced indemnity, covers all aspects. And most importantly, every case is serviced by practising or former practising dentists. And we have a really aggressive legal team. So the idea is we’re not just there to settle all the time. We’re trying to take the dentists side. And I’ve learnt a lot about indemnity through developing that package. And it’s just being launched now. And it’s going to be quite an exciting few years. I think we’ll be up there in the top four or top

[00:54:28] Five quite quickly. I would, of course.

[00:54:31] And finally, Prav himself a bit of a social media. King marketing king, for sure. Enjoy. All right, but so I’ve got a website, I’m really good at sales because I know how to sell. And it’s second nature now. And I’ve got a good team that you’ve trained for me and I’ve continued training. I’ve got the software. I’m now I’m looking to massively scale because I want to buy practises around the corner. And I want to I want to be like, you know the guy now then what’s what’s what am I thinking now as as the thing turns into like a scaling story? Let’s talk about ad adverts, social media, Google. What’s the split, would you recommend between social ads and and pay per click? Does it differ depending on the location, this sort of thing?

[00:55:20] And this is the biggest misconception that most dentists have, right. Is the statement that you’ve just made. I want to scale. How much do I need to spend on marketing? How much on Facebook, how much on Google, blah, blah, blah. Right. Scaling in itself is a business problem that you need to solve before marketing. Ok. That involves people, processes, execution, strategy and marketing. All right. So that what you just said, that is literally classical everyday conversations I’m having with potential clients or existing clients or I want to grow on a scale. Ok. So the question I ask them is this. Tomorrow I’m going to deliver a hundred new enquiries into your practise. Talk me through who’s going to handle them, how they’re going to be handled. On average, every enquiry is going to involve 15 minutes to 20 minutes of processing time. Have you got the human power to do that at the moment? Ok. And then how many more patients do you want? How much time do you have? Do you have the dentists to deliver that in the right treatment modalities? And then once we fixed and figured out that piece, OK, then we go back to the marketing piece and say, right, OK, so we need to do we need to fill six hours of implant dentistry chair time. How many consultations does that look like? How many enquiries do I need to generate to deliver that, how much talk time have we got with the team, the CRM team in managing them? And then work backwards, OK, and then we can then we can confidently say, do you know what, if you want to send 84 cases over the next two months or three months or whatever, whatever that number is and time period is, this is what we need to do to deliver it.

[00:57:21] It’s very interesting, man. So each each person is a totally different answer to that, to those questions, depending on their sort of bandwidth, basically completely.

[00:57:31] And look, as an agency. If I turned around and said, hey, no problem, I’ll deliver you 50 enquiries. Yeah, your team can handle it. That’s your problem. Yeah. Shit leads, good leads, whatever your problem. And then they get to the other end and say, well, how many more S.A.T. cases have you done over the last three months? That it’s like two. Yeah. And I turned around what was delivered to 300 leads. Where the hell have you been up to? Yeah. Whose fault is that? Where did that go wrong?

[00:58:02] So you I remember having this conversation with AEGEE Devout seven, eight years ago, and you used to blame the dentists at that 100 percent. But it seems like nowadays you’ve taken on that mantle yourself. You know, when someone says to you, I want a website and you say it’s a lot more involved than that. This is the kind of thing you’re talking about, right?

[00:58:28] Because I’m a practise owner now. Right. And seven, eight years ago. Was it? Yeah. So I’ve got an appreciation of what happens in the black box, you know, when those clogs are turning. And I feel a sense of almost feel a sense of responsibility for delivering success. Yeah. Yeah. And I want to be more involved, you know, that that’s part and parcel of our unique difference in the way that we operate. And and all of that has come through in education, being a practise owner, seeing those problems, making lots of mistakes and trying to fix them.

[00:59:03] And even so, even to

[00:59:05] Present day, we’re tweaking things and making mistakes all the time and fixing them and then passing that on to our clients where we can

[00:59:15] Based is Dental Leaders, the podcast, where you get to go one on one with emerging Leaders in dentistry.

[00:59:26] Your hosts Payman Langroudi and Prav Solanki. Thanks for listening, guys.

[00:59:33] If you got this far, you must have listened to the whole thing and just a huge thank you both from me and pay for actually sticking through and listening to what we had to say and what our guest has had to say, because I’m assuming you got some value out of it

[00:59:45] If you did get some value out of it. Think about subscribing and if you would share this with a friend who you think might get some value out of it, too. Thank you so, so, so much for listening. Thanks.

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