In the first podcast of 2022, we welcome composite king Matt Parsons to the show. 

Matt practices in the world’s composite capital, Liverpool, where a strong social presence has made him one of the city’s most in-demand dentists.

Matt tells all about Liverpool life, dishing essential tips on composites, lifts the lid on his year in practice down under and reveals how an Instagram competition took his list to heady new heights almost overnight.

Enjoy!

 

“My friend Benji said to me one day: “I’m going to be a dentist when I’m older.” We were like 11 years old and I said, “cool, so do I…” And that was the day I decided.” – Matt Parsons

 

In This Episode

02.21 – Backstory

05.46 – Dental school

07.15 – VT

09.08 – Australia

15.22 – Composites

23.05 – Instagram

33.11 – What patients want

45.48 – Composite milestones and technique 

53.07 – Clinical tips

01.00.16 – Managing teams

01.03.36 – Blackbox thinking

01.11.46 – Confidence

01.15.45 – Parents and family

01.18.46 – Future plans

01.22.10 – Back teeth

01.25.04 – Contentment

01.27.34 – Last days and legacy

01.31.22 – Fantasy dinner parties 

About Matt Parsons

 

Matt graduated in 2013 from Liverpool Dental School, where he was elected student president.

He carried out VT training in North Wales. He gained membership of the Royal College of Surgeons and Physicians, Glasgow, before travelling internationally and spending a year in practice in Melbourne Australia.

Upon returning to the UK in 2016, Matt developed an interest in cosmetic dentistry and composite bonding. His work has helped him develop a large Instagram following and he now teaches bonding to other dentists.

Matt practices at Duthie Dental in Liverpool and Ruh Dental in Manchester.

[00:00:00] But contentment so undervalued, I mean, at the end of the day, it’s all about being happy, right?

[00:00:04] Yeah, if you find contentment, drive success, like if you can find what makes you happy, then you’ll end up doing that and end up being successful. Like, look at Mini-SAR makeover. I just love coming back to that course because I just love being with you guys and it’s a fun weekend away and and I’m not doing it for like any personal gain or that kind of, like you say, the city of London. You know, let’s go here and let’s further our career and what’s in it for me. I just do it because I love it. But it has then naturally led onto me meeting some amazing dentists. Me learning loads more because I’m seeing the lectures again. Me. And you know, when you teach something, you learn it even better. So the benefits come without ever doing it because there’s benefits.

[00:00:49] This is Dental Leaders, the podcast where you get to go one on one with emerging leaders in dentistry. Your hosts Payman Langroudi and Prav Solanki.

[00:01:06] It’s my great pleasure to welcome Dr. Matt Parsons onto the podcast. Matty’s one of my good friends who I first met on Milly Smile make over the composite course that we do. Since then, he’s gone on to become one of the top composite guys in the countries. Fair to say with a brilliant social media profile and actually teaches on the course Know started out, you know, demonstrating and now teaches on the course on marketing. Lovely to have you met. I met you. Ok? Yeah, it’s been a long time coming this one. I’m really happy we managed to do it. I wanted you on with Depeche Mode as well. Anyway, I’m really happy you’re here for anyone listening. This is 1st of January twenty twenty two, which sounds weird, but with the way the virus did. Did you go out last night and have a good time?

[00:01:54] No, no, we were. We were off with a crying baby last night.

[00:01:58] Oh yeah, we went out. But it was it was very quiet. We actually ended up coming home at 11:30.

[00:02:09] I hope you’re straight to bed.

[00:02:11] No, no, no, we did. We stood up, stood around for the, you know, the Sydney. Whatever fireworks? Yeah, a bit different than, oh yeah, Matty. We usually start with the back story charted. What made you become a dentist?

[00:02:27] What if you find out this crazy bombshell for me now? Like, Well, I was born in Uganda,

[00:02:35] Just like

[00:02:36] A boxer that you never knew

[00:02:39] Your mother was a spy? Yeah, yeah. Have you been in the in the

[00:02:44] Forces my whole life? So yeah, I grew up on the world, just outside Liverpool. Normal upbringing, kind of 2.4 kids. Two younger brothers decided I wanted to be a dentist when I was in primary school, about eleven. Really? Yeah, I thought it was. I well, I wanted to be a vet when I was really young. I wrote a letter to Greenpeace wants to save the whales. So I was like some little weird hippie animal lover. And then my friend Benji said to me one day, Oh, I’m going to be a dentist when I’m older. We’re like 11 years old. And I said, Oh, right, OK, cool. So do I. And it genuinely stuck. And that was like the day that I decided, Well, there’s Benji do. He’s an engineer?

[00:03:29] He didn’t. He didn’t make it. But yeah,

[00:03:31] Did you know? So you kind of you do that thing. Don’t you think about all the different options and thought about medicine? Thought of that, thought about all the things, but always kept going back to dentistry work experience. Liked it.

[00:03:43] Enjoyed it. Did you think about leaving Liverpool or were you always going to stay in Liverpool? No.

[00:03:49] My first choice of you and you would have been Manchester if I’d have got an offer. Oh, so my group of friends kind of went to two different unis Manchester and Liverpool John Moores. So going to Liverpool Uni meant that I wasn’t at the same uni as my friends. Or if I’ve gone to Manchester, I would have been, so I would have gone to Manchester, but I didn’t get an offer. So Liverpool was kind of second choice but worked out great. You know, it’s a bit of a sliding doors moment where I look back and think it’s definitely a good thing that happened because I ended up with making really good mates and, you know, absolutely loved my time there and I wouldn’t change it for the world. But the plan was to go to Manchester. My other offer was Newcastle, which I felt was a bit too far away, which is weird because it’s literally a couple of hours and now that feels like nothing at all. But when you’re 18, you know, the drive to Newcastle feels like a different world away compared to the drive to Manchester.

[00:04:38] Did you not consider London or anything

[00:04:40] Wasn’t even on the radar? I don’t know why it wasn’t. It wasn’t a conscious thing. I didn’t even consciously discount it. It just never came into the into the frame. My other, I think Manchester, Sheffield, Newcastle, Liverpool, my four choices. I got offers from Newcastle and Liverpool.

[00:04:58] What kind of a kid were you, dude? I’ve got you down as the class clown. Is that not?

[00:05:02] Yeah, no. Nail on the head. Didn’t really know when to take things seriously. Was never, ever nasty. You know it was never horrible. Or I was kind of like forever getting in stupid little bits of trouble like it was never be. It never a big deal or anything. But it was like, you know, mum, my dad used to. Roll their eyes on parents evening when they hear the story and all that kind of stuff. But yeah, I think I kind of probably pulled my finger out when I went into sixth form. I don’t know what happened, you know, the the switch just seemed to flick. I started working hard and got the grades I needed in the end.

[00:05:46] And then in Dental school, you were president of the thing, right? The student body. Is that in the final year, that happens for you?

[00:05:55] That was good. That was that was a great year because a few of my good friends were on the committee as well. So we were like organising the event and the nights out and the parties. And that was really fun, really, really fun. Dental school was amazing. Then Dental School was like five of the best years of my life,

[00:06:11] So uni tends to be fun for a lot of people. But did you take the dentistry as in? Were you one of the top guys in the class

[00:06:18] And were nowhere near? Not even close. I would say that I did, and I did enough to pass the exams. You know, it was I didn’t really get passionate about anything and I didn’t really do any extracurriculars within dentistry. I didn’t fail anything. Well, no, I did. I failed cross infection control once because I halfway through maybe taking a tooth out. I leant over to the bin, pulled my mask down spot, spot my chin into the bin and pull my spackle. I choose to like talking to one side and was like, You really

[00:06:52] Can’t do that.

[00:06:54] So I got I’m like, I can’t remove what they call it now, like a probation from my cross infection control warning. Yeah, but no.

[00:07:03] And did you live at home with the whole at all or did you live out the whole time?

[00:07:08] Yeah. I went to halls, went to the first year and lived in like student houses the whole way through, didn’t live with dentists the first three years, which was, I think, good for me.

[00:07:15] Yeah, that’s always a good idea, isn’t it? Did you then work in the NHS at all?

[00:07:22] Yeah, yeah. So did Viti in North Wales. So there was. We did. We were the second year to do national recruitment for VTi. So there was like this big kind of procedure in terms of the application process and our group of friends. It was kind of six of us. Three of us took us, took it really seriously. And for all the work in, did all the research or the read and everything else. And three of us, which I was in kind of said, No, do you know what? We’ll smile and we’ll charm them, and we’re good and we can chat and we’ll be fine. And the three that really put the work in got like these great positions in the great schemes and me. The other one was Jack, who, you know, Rishi, you’ve met as well. Yeah, me and Jack both got North Wales, which is like way down on the list of places that are popular in the Rankin scheme. And Rishi didn’t even get a place. He did eventually, but the three of us just absolutely bombed it. What turned out to be the best thing that ever happened to me, really in some ways, because I ended up working with Adrian Thorpe and Ravi Buju on agent specialist oral surgeon Ravi Dental special interest in Ortho loved a bit of endo as well. And with North Wales, you can’t bloody refer, you know, you don’t have a teaching hospital. And the patients generally won’t go private for four and oh, four surgical for this, for that. So it’s just in at the deep end and your options are either give it a go or it doesn’t get done. And when you’ve got mentors a lot and you kind of having to try things, you end up just jumping in at the deep end. And I’ve got such good experience from that. That was obviously VTi year in the NHS and then stayed on there for six months afterwards as a kind of 90 percent NHS associate after that.

[00:09:06] And then he left

[00:09:08] And I left, then I went to Australia. And so we flew we flew New Year’s Eve near enough where I think like twenty eight December or something, we flew to Sydney. We spent three or four months travelling up the East Coast. We flew over to Perth, where I stayed there for half the year, got a job in Perth. It’s really easy to get a job in Perth. Kind of an idea. So my dentist equivalent over there didn’t get on well with Perth. It was just a bit isolated, a bit quiet, not quite right for us. So then we went to Melbourne, we decided to go to Melbourne and we made the decision. We were applying for jobs. But Meg, sorry mate, got offered a job ex-officio and I applied for loads of jobs, didn’t get any and we were sat talking and I was like, Well, we can’t really go if I haven’t got a job and they will say, But let’s just go and just see what happens. And I was like, OK, cool, we’ll go. So we booked our flights. Kind of signed for an apartment over there. And then I think it was like a day before we went. I got a phone call back from someone like, Oh, you would be interested in interviewing you. So this phone interview and got the job and it was like it all worked out in the end kind of thing. So I flew off to Melbourne, worked there for probably eight months in private practise, just general check-ups, fill ins, all that kind of stuff. And that was that was not because that was like thrown in to this very expensive private dentistry where Mr. Jones walks in and you say, Oh, you need root canal on the ground, it’s going to cost you three thousand and they go, OK, they don’t even flinch. It’s completely normal. And that was bizarre when I kind of had two patients declining to have the crown on a route filled tooth because of the three charge in the UK to walk into that was really strange.

[00:10:49] They prioritise. They prioritise healthcare. I mean, dentistry as health care there and everyone sort of saves up for it, right? Yeah.

[00:10:55] Like a lot people, people take out good insurance policies and like jobs that come with good dental insurance are really desirable and it’s a completely different culture. And it’s also a little bit more like they take ownership for it. It’s like, hands up my fault, I need a root canal. Oh, well, it’s going to cost me a lot. I knew that.

[00:11:17] Yeah. And you didn’t have like trepidation first day of treating patients over there, the whole different mindset. Yeah, something jumped in to shit myself.

[00:11:26] Oh, you do. Oh, it was awful. I walked in day one and I was like, I don’t know what it was, but I asked the nurse for counsel and she was like, What’s that?

[00:11:34] I was like, like the patients in the

[00:11:36] Chair had black mouth open, numb cavity open, and I’m like,

[00:11:42] I don’t know something similar.

[00:11:45] And they did. They had an Australian equivalent in the end that we used.

[00:11:48] But yeah, that cliché that people say about being life being laid back over there and all is that. Is that real?

[00:11:56] I don’t think it’s laid back. I think they’re actually quite intense. But what they do, what they’re good at is work life balance. So they I think in this country, I think probably London, especially there’s a work life balance, has a tendency to slip too much towards work and not not enough towards life in Australia. You finish work at a decent time and then you have a life outside work. You don’t just go home, have you dinner? Go to bed to get up early the next day. To go to work, you’ll go to the beach, you’ll go to a bar, you know, over weekends you’ll get off and you’ll exercise and then you go for a. For breakfast, they just they don’t seem to work too hard is what I’m trying to say when they’re in work, but they’re intense people, kind of. They’re competitive and they are the fairly they’re not liberal politically on the whole and stuff. I wouldn’t say the laid back, but Work-Life Balance is really good. They almost like they aggressively chase their work-life balance. So that makes sense. Oh yeah.

[00:12:55] Oh, interesting. And was there any thought of staying on there?

[00:12:58] We had the conversation, but it’s just too far away, which is a ridiculous thing to say. You know, did you not realise that? But it feels a long way away when you’re there. The time difference is big. There are a couple little things that happened while I was away, like sick, like lost an A. and lost the family patents, stuff like that. And you felt completely out of it and just nowhere near what was going on. And also, you know, were quite family and friends orientated. So we’ve got look great families here, lovely group of friends, both of us. And it was kind of you’re making the decision, OK? The sunshine and the work life balance is brilliant. But if someone said to you, OK, would you like great weather or to spend time with your friends and family? That’s kind of what it ultimately boils down to for us. And, you know, no, no judgement for people who do move over there to stay because they might think, Well, we’re going to set up a great life for our kids and all this kind of stuff. And there’s obviously a hundred arguments either way. But for us, it came down to Do we want sunshine or do we want friends or family?

[00:14:02] So you got then I guess, the taste for private dentistry. Did you then come back and decide that say, I’m only going to do private

[00:14:10] Now, straight back, straight back to Wales, straight back to NHS? Did you? Yeah, I I had no desire to become a private dentist, to be a cosmetic dentist ever, right? No, I didn’t. Similar to what I said before, how I didn’t actively think against London. I never actively decided to not do it. But it just, you know, I hadn’t really given it much thought. We am the best thing about Australia was that it gave me the time to get a little bit better. So like straight into the NHS at home more and you’ve got 50 minutes. Forty five minutes booked, whatever it is, busy practise, you never have the time to, you never have enough time to get quick. If that makes sense is a bit of an oxymoron because you’re always you’re never comfortable doing it. And as soon as I went into that private system where I had loads of time and I was like slowly, slowly finding canals working my way down, then I then found that I could call my own and do a far better root canal in less time because I’d developed the skills first, and then the speed came afterwards. So that makes sense. I feel like the NHS makes you get quick before it makes you get good, whereas we should be trying to do the other.

[00:15:22] Really. Thank you. It’s very. Well, anyway, the know. So yeah, it came back to NHS. I four days a week in Wales, one day a week at practise, practise, practise at the time in Liverpool, which is a predominantly private practise. It’s got a big NHS list there and I was I was more doing more NHS than I was private there. So the story about I suppose that the first step was that my nurse said to me one morning, if you seen these composite veneers and I said, No, what are they? And she said, Show me, I don’t know who someone’s Instagram for before and after, like 10 combativeness or whatever it was. And I said, Oh, so what? Just buckle composite. This is like, Yeah. And I was like, Yeah, you want me to do it for you? She’s like, Come here? And I said, Yeah, I’ll do my lunchtime show. Ok, cool. So literally, we finished with a patient at half 12. She jumped in the chair an hour an hour. I thought it would take me through 10 teeth and the teeth were like crowded and twisted.

[00:16:21] Like it was. It was not. It was like a really hard case by half on and we’d been through shades and all that kinda stuff. She wanted the White House. She could buy half on. I had done her centrals and that was it, and I was like, Oh God, I’ve got a full afternoon of patients waiting for me now and we have to carry on. So she got up the chair. We did a full full afternoon of patients like every time I looked at issues just like these two bright white Bugs Bunny Centrals and like nothing else on the patients, must’ve been looking at us thinking, what the hell is wrong with her teeth? And then we say, I think I can’t believe we did it in gaps between patients or stayed late or something, but we managed to physically get the comms on the teeth and they looked rubbish. And I was like, Right, I need to learn how to do this. So I messaged my mate from uni saying, I’m thinking of doing a composite course, and I was like, OK, so me and Jack booked on came along. And yeah, the rest is history just went from there. It’s a

[00:17:23] Funny idea because that day, I remember that day, I remember you that day I do,

[00:17:29] Because you say that to everyone.

[00:17:31] No, no, no, no, no, no. Seriously, you clicked on that first day, but I remember that day for it being the most difficult hands on that we’d ever done. And even to today, the most difficult hands on we were the I think chicks was helping us, you know, chicks?

[00:17:47] No, it wasn’t. You’ve said this to me before it was that Dan Chong was there. I promise you, because I know chicks from uni chicks of chicks as a friend, and I promise you

[00:17:55] Would know if he was there. It was. It was done, definitely done. And we, our dad, was in the theatre. I was at the theatre.

[00:18:02] There was too. There was two in the theatre. One of them was the worst one ever. I’ve kind of I kind of put it out of my memory and nothing to do with the cause. But the facilities there was, there was there was a play going on when we got there and no staff at all like no one.

[00:18:19] So I don’t think that was my I think I think I must have been

[00:18:22] The second one. Yes, it went without a hitch, I’m sure. All right. So, so so

[00:18:29] You did the costume. And now I’m quite interested in this year because, you know, I actually mentioned this on the course. Sometimes as they look, some some people come on this course and go ahead and become, you know, super prolific composite guys. And then lots don’t lots, lots go on and don’t even start. I’m quite interested in, you know, what did you do? What was your first case? Did you come? Are you one of those cats that you know, comes comes to a course with the full intention of I’m going to start this properly and with a plan of how you’re going to go ahead. Is that you? Or, you know, what is it? What was it that you did that made you propel you into doing a lot of this work? I know it’s a long, you know, it’s a journey and so on, but give me those early things that you did from the course.

[00:19:11] Well, the first thing was to redo my nurses see what was a good start. Second thing, while I was on and I hadn’t even really thought about it, I had a patient, Nina, who she was. Basically, we were trying to whiten the teeth, but they were so sensitive and couldn’t do it and couldn’t get to shade that she wanted. And this that and the other. And she was in for like a review or something not long after it on the course. And I kind of said it wasn’t a first sorry tell a lie. One of my nurses friends, after I didn’t read it, my nurse’s teeth, one of her friends said, Oh, can I have that done? We’re like, Yeah, cool, we’ll do it. And then another one where kind of an existing patient of mine, we tried writing, couldn’t do it, couldn’t do it and there, but didn’t want traditional veneers because very scary and all that kind of stuff. So we did composites on her, and that was like the first one where I actually took a before and after really and posted it and I just posted it on my I wanted to do no. Dossey Dental posted it on their Instagram and I just shared it onto mine. And I think I did that like two or three times. And my brother said to me, You should set up a proper page for this. By the way, don’t just keep putting them on your your own page where you meet your mates are on you. And Meg at the same time was kind of saying the same thing. So I thought, OK, cool. So I set up a page and it just it grew and it started kind of very much because. People, I’m sure, will get on so-called social media, Instagram, but you tend to attract what you put out there. So because I’ve done a couple of sets of composite veneers, then people came in wanting combativeness and it became a little bit the composite veneer guy, which I didn’t want to

[00:20:44] Be literally telling me that your first two cases brought in more cases. That will happen.

[00:20:48] Yeah. Whoa. Well, to put into all you like, I don’t want that to sound like a dick thing to say. Because of those first three cases that I spoke about, two of them now have ceramic veneers. So I wasn’t exactly set in the world like.

[00:21:03] But you know, one thing is, look, we have we have to remember composite in the U.S., you know, our parent is in the U.S. The. Yeah. And they they teach composite. They’ve been teaching composite veneers for 30 years. But in the U.S., it’s kind of thought of as a transitional treatment, not not as definitive. Over here, we’ve kind of gone into, well, this is it. And it’s a bit worrying because, you know, we know it’s not going to last forever, but I wouldn’t I wouldn’t, you know, I wouldn’t think because those two are impossible. Maybe they weren’t great. Maybe wasn’t great. But OK, so you mentioned the social media, but you went and found your first case like that. Just like that straight off the course I’m going to do, I’m going to do something.

[00:21:45] Yeah. Well, it fell into my lap. I did the course because I copped up my nurses, so I had to redo hers. And then her friend said, they look amazing. Can I get mine done? You know? I mean, yeah. So that’s my top tip for anyone is to do a really crappy set of composites before you come

[00:22:01] On the course,

[00:22:02] And that will be your springboard when you’ve got to redo them.

[00:22:05] But you got you got to understand what I’m saying here, right? Because you’ve sent enough people to the course yourself, friends of yours. Yeah, they have all become big time composite guys. So what? What is it about one guy who does and one the guy does? I mean, we shouldn’t. We shouldn’t forget. You live in Liverpool,

[00:22:20] The world’s capital.

[00:22:21] Yeah, the world’s capital of cosmetic dentistry,

[00:22:24] Cosmetic dentistry, teeth whitening. Our biggest users always come from there. But you know, you know, I’m still interested in the mindset because you’re quite young. How old are

[00:22:33] You? Thirty one.

[00:22:36] Oh yeah. Not that you would have been better if you hadn’t said quite quite. You’re quite young.

[00:22:40] Yeah. And and you’d suddenly change from an NHS guy. Basically, you’re saying to a composite of an air guy out of the blue.

[00:22:49] Yeah, interesting. It happened slowly. It picked up, you know, it was a couple of years, I think. I think I set up my Instagram account maybe two and a half years ago, and I stopped the NHS probably 12 months ago

[00:23:03] As an estimate. Well, let’s listen to that.

[00:23:05] Maybe that’s what you’re saying. Maybe saying the sheer weight of patients coming to you from Instagram ended up meaning you had to do the work and you learnt on the job. On Tell Me about the Instagram thing because I watched your account go from 15000 to seventy thousand within the weekend or

[00:23:22] Something crazy,

[00:23:25] Crazy growth on that account. And anyone who hasn’t been there needs to have a quick look. Dr Matt Parsons. The amazing thing about the wonderful thing about is your face isn’t on it at all. Not a single picture of you on it. And so, you know, people like me who are camera shy people like me would always think, Well, it’s not for me, but you let the work, do do the talking. Tell me about your Instagram Story.

[00:23:48] And so I’m no, I am not a guru. Like, it has been just really good fortune and I don’t know why it did blow off one. I don’t know why it did. And I’ve asked myself and I’ve got some ideas and we spoke about this before, but I’ve got some ideas as to maybe what happened. But then other people have done similar things and it hasn’t happened, and I don’t know why. I don’t know what what the turning point is. I don’t know. But so yes, that’s what a few cases on started growing it. It started growing slowly. Sorry, should I say it’s not something that you go and grow yourself? It’s started to grow mainly with patients kind of shouting me out if you like, you know, and that that’s because I get asked this quite a lot by dentists about where the where do you start? Because I’m here with five followers and it just feels like this impossible mountain to climb to get it anywhere near the point where we want it to be. And the first thing is is ask your patient.

[00:24:44] We were all taught at uni that confidentiality is key and no one is ever going to want to know that they’ve had their teeth done. That’s not the case. Everyone wants everyone to know that they’ve had their teeth done. Maybe this is a Liverpool thing I don’t know, but I see exactly the same in Manchester and, you know, not a million miles away, but it’s a different city nonetheless. People want to tell everyone that they’ve had their teeth. It’s almost I don’t know if it’s a I don’t know what it is. I don’t know what it is. But they if you say to someone or by the way, tuck me in a selfie on Instagram, then that’s not you saying that’s not you being cheeky or anything like that. If you say, you know what, your smile looks really good. I’m proud to be associated with your smile. Please show it off. Please tell people it was me. It’s a compliment to the patient, you know what I mean? So that was how it I think the ball started.

[00:25:28] Roland, you say that’s all your patients.

[00:25:32] I probably do.

[00:25:33] Yeah, I think that if you’re happy with the work, yeah. And if I should say this and I haven’t said it too, that doesn’t mean that I don’t like your teeth. Probably bleep that one out as well. Maybe you don’t mind.

[00:25:47] No, I will probably say. I probably say it to everyone. And if not, if I don’t say it’s over on, then it’s not. I haven’t consciously not said it. It probably just sometimes doesn’t naturally flow into the conversation. But yeah, that was the big thing I found, and that was where all my patients came from. And on that alone, I was doing loads of this kind of work, and it was getting to a point where I was having to like this wasn’t an OK. I can’t wait to get rid of my NHS. This was a this is a ball like I can’t do the Udas that I’ve I need to do for this this year. Do you know what I mean? They like to leave a job, I basically have to leave my job in Wales because they had an NHS contract and I had to fulfil a certain number of days and these new patients coming through. I couldn’t do these treatments and keep up with the goods that I needed to do for that contract like it got in the way, which is a ridiculous thing to say. It was a lovely thing to get in the way, but it wasn’t like a let’s see how we can grow this and then the competition. So I spoke to K about this. K Kailash did a competition one time on Instagram.

[00:26:51] Kelly Solanki.

[00:26:52] Yeah, and I messaged him because I knew him through you guys. And I messaged him and I was like, Oh, Kate, it’s such a good idea. I’m going to completely rip you off. And he just sent back, you know, laughing faces go for it, brother kind of thing. And I did it and it just blew up. But it just I think we went from within a week. We went from about 5000 followers to about forty thousand followers, and I had not. I said to make literally like not even that long before we were talking about it. And I said to it, You know, the problem with reducing my NHS commitment and doing more of this kind of cosmetic stuff is that what if it doesn’t last forever? Whereas the job security in this, you know, patients are coming in and they’re getting a consulate within a couple of weeks and we’re doing the treatment a few weeks later. And this might not be sustainable. Who knows? I can’t completely bin off my bread and butter dentistry for this. And then that competition overnight just created a waiting list that then gave me the the security and allowed me to kind of jump in with both feet really into that kind of stuff.

[00:27:58] What was the competition, would you say?

[00:28:00] It was. I put it like a post on just saying. Smart composite smile makeover competition, you’ve got to like this post comment on this post tagging three friends and all of those friends that got to be following for your entry to count and pick your favourite smile from my page. Share it to your story and tuck me in. And I think that last bit was the one that no one else had done. Everyone else was doing. Share this post or as mine was, share your favourite smile. And by this stage, we had a few cases on there and it became a little bit self-selecting. So the the girl with the big, you know, massive hair in rollers and six inch long false eyelashes and big fake boobs and whatever else she’d like the one that had, you know, S-band very square composite. So she share that her story. But a lot of her followers would be into the same stuff she was and would resonate with that. Whereas the guy who maybe is a bit more like me or you, I don’t know, would maybe see a slightly more natural case and say, Oh, that’s I like that. I’m going to share that one. And his followers would be into the same kind of stuff. So it was a weird, like targeted marketing in terms of the style of the case in a weird kind of way. I don’t know. That’s one theory on why it went well.

[00:29:20] Ok, so then so then, you know, 20000, whatever new people are following you now. Did you also then follow up with with all the people who entered the competition and say, Look, you didn’t win, but lucky for you, 10 percent off or something?

[00:29:35] I had the idea. Yeah, no, I didn’t. I didn’t need to. That was my plan. It was when it blew up. I was kind of saying, Look, we’ve got all these new enquiries and this, that and the other and what you always you always think it’s a bit too good to be true. So I said, OK, you know what we’re going to do next is that exactly that offer, like maybe a little discount for everyone went to say, thanks for answering. And we just we were too busy

[00:29:59] And people started saying, Book me in

[00:30:01] Full stop. Yeah, we were booked up after that competition six months in advance for consults to consultations a day every day for six months. And the receptionists. Had a bloody heart attack because that Monday morning, the phone just was

[00:30:19] They just they couldn’t do the job, they couldn’t do the job. You all of a sudden you just had 40000 people.

[00:30:26] It’s OK, so not all of them wanted to come in for consultation, obviously some we’re trying to win the competition when I was looking through the messages and we ended up trying to respond to as many as we could. We’ve got like a little crack team together and started going through them all, and I reckon we had five thousand enquiries of people asking questions about booking in. And maybe that ended up being a thousand people who actually went all the way through and got in touch to book in like a thousand people calling a practise in a few days. And these receptionists have been like an NHS slash mixed practise receptionist for 30 years. They can book in a toothache appointment and book a check-up, and all of a sudden it. It was just carnage. It was absolute carnage. So we set off a like an online waiting list with a colleague of mine, Mark, and it all became a little bit more automated and we could just send out like 50 invites at a time. And it would it would slow it down. And then we move towards directly booking into the diary and all that kind of stuff. But we managed it in the end. But it was. It was. It was just crazy.

[00:31:25] And what’s the story now? If today I want to see Matt for composite veneers? When when will I actually get my composite veneers?

[00:31:32] And if you put your name on the waiting list right now, where are we? Well, first of all, not an easy thing to remember. Yeah, I reckon your consultation will probably be maybe May, June, so all of that will probably not be any treatment in like August. Bloody hell. Yeah, I cocked up the way in recently. I ah, I had a bad night, so I was looking through the diary and I realised that like this was only a couple of weeks ago. In January, there were no sorry. In February, there were like next to no consultations booked. And then I went into March and went on and then April and I was like, shit like the bubble’s burst and the patients aren’t here anymore.

[00:32:11] My job, I don’t have a job, and I

[00:32:17] Spoke to Mark because he’d set up this thing for me because that the system we used, we used Dental and Dental can only search for appointments in three month windows. So every time it book beyond three months, mark it after kind of manually go in and shift that three month window along a little bit. And I said to him, Look, is there a way you may be setting up so that I can do this because I feel bad bothering you all the time? And he says, Yeah, OK, I’ll do it. So he set off this a little slider for me to change, and when I logged in, it was set to 90 days, roughly three months. So I thought, OK, that’s when people can book up until that stage from now. So I put the slider up, it’s like a hundred and eighty or whatever it was. And thought, OK, that’s just going to allow people to buckle to six months in advance. But what I was actually telling Dental was don’t book anyone in for six months, like that’s when to start looking. So we had all these. Yeah, so but we were it now. We sent out a big mass email and we had to do it all manually. And we’ve just filled the diary for a little while now.

[00:33:11] But tell me about how things have changed in the process. I don’t mean in the actually the building, the composites, I mean in the process. What was it like coming to you then? And was it like now? Is it the same? Is it straight into a consult with you? Is it a TKO? Yeah, it’s actually in Liverpool.

[00:33:28] It’s the same. They come in, it’s a half hour consultation, a brief exam. You know, we’re not taking photos. We’re not taking scans. It’s not a big, comprehensive thing. It’s it’s it’s a brief exam and a chat and move on from there, really. We I will put a training plan on with my nurse. We’ll email that out to the patient and they’ll contact us to book their appointments. So I work in Manchester, Ru, but we’ve had Xaba on here before. You know, Xavier, you know, Ru Dental. That is slick. Like that is a real, well-oiled machine. And that’s a that’s a different system. That is the patient comes in and they have, you know, time with the CTO. Then we’ll come in and they’ll see me. And by then, all the photos will already be taken and then they’ll go back to the TKO. Once we’ve maybe come up with a treatment plan and they’ll talk through the plan, they’ll go through consent to the book appointments. They’ll, you know, a heck of a lot more gets done on that, that first the first day that the patient walks through the door and it gives me time, you know, for example, let’s say they’re having some whitening done. I can. It gives me the time to take a quick scan and send it off to you guys at the consultation, which then saves an appointment afterwards and all that kind of stuff. So, yeah, no, nothing. Nothing to live for, but I work in a different system in Manchester, but I think I don’t know. I’m inherently quite lazy, so I end up just going with what’s there and you make it work and it’s fine, and there are pros and cons of each way. And but we’ve not made everything like super streamlined and super slick or anything like it’s we don’t we don’t need to. It’s nice to enjoy it and just feel comfortable and work and. Talk your way through and meet nice people and look after them the best you can.

[00:35:07] Yeah, although it’s fraught, isn’t it, because you’ve got patients you don’t really know? It’s not like a normal Dental practise situation where you might have met the patient for three or four years going before you start a treatment plan and then you’ve got you’ve got wants rather than needs, which I’d much prefer once myself when I was a dentist, I said, love the idea of once I used to say to a patient, this feeling doesn’t need doing, but do you want to do

[00:35:32] It like a

[00:35:37] Picture of a stained composite? I just get off on it. I just love it.

[00:35:42] But you know, it’s seriously so

[00:35:46] I just love it. That idea, I, you know. We all understand this. This issues with cosmetic dentistry and all the issues that we all know about. But there was one part of it I really loved about it was that it almost much more honest in a way in so much as I take my car for a service. Guy says brakes need changing. I’ve got no idea whether they need changing or not, man. I mean, like, I’ve no idea. And so, you know, you need that feeling on that back to, OK, you know, there’s, you know, you’re a new dentist, and I was in a private practise for me in Kent. Yeah. So this very British place and I turn up, you need those two amalgams out. You know, there’s this look on the face. It says, Do I really? And I get it. I totally get it now. It actually made me go, go out and buy straight away and intro camera when I was an associate so I could show them. But the the idea of this doesn’t need doing, but do you want to really make just to make me very happy? I think a little buzz, a little dopamine rush when I make sure to say yes to that.

[00:36:51] And you’ve said that to me before, and I say, you don’t need to drink this drink. What do you want to see?

[00:36:59] You know so much?

[00:37:03] Do you remember that dinner we had on mini spa maker of that night?

[00:37:07] I was with Barry Terry Rogers? Yeah.

[00:37:12] I hope he’s I hope he’s listening. Derek from Australia. So, OK. The problems, the problems of treating new people. I mean, you do a nice bit on the spa makeover, but the difficulties of the patient who doesn’t know what they want.

[00:37:28] Yeah. So I think to two things what you said then first of all, I completely agree that the cosmetic stuff is it’s nice that my favourite thing about my job is that my patients want to be there as a dentist. You get told every day, multiple times, I don’t want to be here, I don’t want you to do this. And as a dentist, you don’t want to do it, your root treat. And so on top of seven and you don’t want to do it and they don’t want you to do it, but you’ve just got to sit there and get it done and it’s crap. Whereas in this, it’s doing treatment that, well, I don’t the dentist love doing it, but I didn’t. This is like patients. I’ve, you know, I’ve been so excited for this. I’ve been looking forward to this. I can’t wait. It’s like Christmas and I’m doing work that I like on them, and I know that they’re going to smile and be happy at the end rather than, oh, that was an ordeal, you know, it’s just a positive, positive day. It’s a nice, nice atmosphere. And then the second thing about about kind of that trust is I’ve I’ve gone full circle on that, you know, like I feel like, yes, I totally agree that as a GDP, especially before you built up that rapport, you get just a little hint of, you know, do I really, really need that? Because the last guy said it was fine. Are you sure you sure you’re not, you know, just need new wheels on your car? Is the old kind of thing that they say, isn’t it? When I first started doing this kind of work and get patients from Instagram, I had a I had a habit of of giving what they wanted.

[00:38:51] So I definitely tackled cases that would have been better with Ortho with composite or cases that would have been better with porcelain, with composite. And I didn’t do that out of any kind of malicious, you know, money grabbing or anything like that. It was I was too kind of too eager to keep that patient happy. I suppose. I didn’t have the confidence I would maybe say to to correct them. But like I say, with time that develops and gets better, doesn’t it? And now patients coming in who will be better treatment, treat it with something else. I’m quite comfortable saying, no, you know what comes? It’s not the right option here. Let’s look at X, Y or Z instead. And and you know what? It never, ever ruffles a patient’s feathers the wrong way. The overwhelming reaction is, you know what? Thanks so much for your honesty, because they’re they’re fully aware of the fact that they were walking in asking you for a something that was they were going to spend a few thousand pounds with you and and for you to turn on and say, No, do you know what? I don’t want to do that, so I don’t think it’s the right thing for you. There are some other options that it, you know, we worry that it’s going to be taken a certain way, but it’s not. It’s actually taking the opposite way in my experience.

[00:40:02] Well, it is. If you if you say, OK, don’t do the bonding, but just have some, just have some bleaching in a couple of edges. Yeah, but but sometimes it goes the other way, right? Sometimes you have to say to the patients. You can spend more than you’d have to spend with composite veneers. I think you’re right. I think I think there’s a level of confidence that comes with knowing your six months booked ahead, who comes it comes out in your voice that the patient can see, Look, this guy doesn’t need this work. You just you’re just saying it as it is.

[00:40:32] Yeah. And a lot of that is the patients. You know, there are there are so many better cosmetic dentists out there than me, but these patients are going to see me for one reason or another have decided that I’m the guy they want to see. So they’ve already decided that I like this guy. I trust this guy. I want him to look after my teeth. So you’ve got it’s not like new patients when when people talk about, beware of the new patient with no rapport, you do have a rapport because they’ve decided that they like you or the main thing about rapport is is trying to essentially for you to try and get to know your patient on what is right for them and for your patient to trust and get on with you. Now, that second part is already done because they’ve come in because they trust you and because, you know, so that lack of rapport in the traditional sense. I’ve not found it to be an issue genuinely. If anything, it’s the other way its patients come in and go, Oh, you know, you’ve got all these Instagram followers in a big way, unless so you must know your shit. So whatever you say, I completely get it. It’s like you’ve got the credentials to to say what? What is right for that patient? And that that can go on.

[00:41:43] That is then you’ve got to be really kind of. Hold yourself to a high professional standard there, because if you’ve got patients who are saying, tell me whatever money, no issue, you know, yeah, and you’ve got to turn around to them and say, Honestly, let’s whiten your teeth, and that’s what a little bit accomplished on two teeth, and I bet you’ll love them. You know, I mean, you’ve you’ve got to hold yourself to that in terms of the patients coming in. Yeah, the three types you’ve got, the the patient comes in. The Scouser, the stereotypical Scouser, you know, I am. I thought, you know, 10 composite veneers, please. I want the whiter shade you’ve got. I know my bottom teeth are bright yellow, but that doesn’t matter. I don’t mind if it’s a different, if it’s a different colour. Or we may took a composite veneers and I want them. I don’t want any any porcelain veneers so thrilled and I can’t afford them anyway, to be honest with you. So just 10 10 composite veneers the waist as she can and I want them to look like I’ve been to Turkey, but I just don’t want to go to Turkey and that patient. You go, OK, cool,

[00:42:44] We’ll book you in. You just give me a take off.

[00:42:47] On the other end of the spectrum is the guy who comes in with very specific, you know, I don’t like that this tooth, my overwrite three is slightly rotated. My upper left, too, is a little short. And I don’t like this amalgam filling that I can see in my in my four. And you go, OK, again, there’s a treatment plan. Let’s let’s not start going well. Have you thought about 20 veneers? Because if they’re telling you what they don’t like, just address what they don’t like and go down the route of the different ways of addressing those. It’s that middle ground that are really hard where they say they say things like, I want my teeth to look done, but not to done and white, but not to white and maybe a bit fake, but quite natural. And you’re like, I don’t know, you’re like just talking in riddles. I don’t I don’t really know where you are. And and that’s the only time I’ve been stung, not stung, but I’ve not got it. Necessarily quite right for the patient is where they’ve asked for natural. And we’ve gone, you know, quite often incisal and braziers and maybe a little bit of texture. And this, that and the other and the kind of they come back and they go, I feel like I’ve got like little gaps between the edges of my teeth and like, there’s like lines on the front of them and I’m like, Yeah, that’s natural teeth look like. And I, oh, no, I don’t like that. So it’s such a visual thing, and it’s so different from person to person that

[00:44:10] So what do you do? Do you get your portfolio out photos? Do you like?

[00:44:14] So what I do, I I start with, I’ve got a go to case. I won’t say what cases, but there’s one case I always go to and it’s like the whitest square respondents on my page and I show it to the patient. I say, Is this too much for you or do you think they look nice? And if they go, No, they look nice, I go, OK, you don’t want natural, you know? Yeah. And then I’ll kind of go down a couple from there and just try and get a bit of a bit of a picture, really and figure it out. But you know, if we’re talking about composite, then it’s OK because if you don’t get it right, you can change it. You can add, you can remove, you can soften, you can redo whatever porcelain you spend time with. The temporaries don’t, you know, get the temporaries perfect and ask in the lab to copy those so you don’t have to get it perfect in your head. As long as you’re ninety five percent of the way there, you can work on it together if you need to afterwards

[00:45:04] After your work. So beautiful. I mean, it’s interesting because it is, though it is. We use it’s funny. Enlighten if we’re trying to talk to someone who’s not a dentist and we’re trying to highlight something about smiles, it’s a standard thing across all the departments that we pull up Matty’s

[00:45:22] Page and then

[00:45:25] On the Zoom we share, that’s what a line angle is that

[00:45:29] I didn’t know that talked

[00:45:33] Everyone. We pull up Matty’s page or we want to like, point something out. If you translate Dental,

[00:45:38] Speak to something that’s copyrighted that enlightens. Had a good year. I’m going to come after you. You’ve got a few quid in the bank. I can get my hands on there.

[00:45:48] But when did you go from, you know, just, you know, putting those buckle composites on and to where we are today with this beautiful, beautiful work? Was there a moment where you felt like I’ve got it now? And what are the what are the key things? I mean, look like your case? As I said, the line angles are beautiful. You’ve got a whole podcast with jazzy Gulati on this right right angles you. The line angles are beautiful, the symmetry and yet very natural overall, especially considering you live in Liverpool.

[00:46:18] The work now because people don’t realise

[00:46:21] People, people do not get the how white Liverpool people want their teeth and you know, people don’t get it. If you don’t, if you don’t know, you don’t, you don’t know for sure. But when did you get that moment of I can do this and what are the key things you look for when you’re doing a smile? Where do you start? How do you make sure what are the key sort of milestones of a smile

[00:46:41] That make it so nice? Well, it’s kind of easy to say, first of all, because I certainly don’t feel like that about my own work. I’m quite, I think, self-critical and always look into. I’ll always look at the case and spot something. I’m like, Damn, I wish I’d seen that and thought about, of course. But in terms of that self, is it self-actualisation? They call it where you think I’ve got this? I feel like I. I drop in and out of it. I kind of I’ll do a case and I’ll be like. That went really well, that’s good, that’s good, like, I’m happy with that. And then I can look back at that case three weeks later and go, That’s shite. That is awful. Why have it on that? Why haven’t it or not? And it’s just ebbs and flows, and some cases go well in some cases don’t don’t go so well. Well, one thing obviously never forget that Instagrams a highlights reel. You know, you’re only seeing the ones that’s gone. Well, there are there are cases that don’t go great and we need to tweak and make changes to. I think, you know, now it all becomes quite second nature. The first time you access a molar, you are consciously thinking about where these canals are, whereas eventually you just drill your access cavity and there’s the canal so you don’t think about it. So consciously going back to when I used to, like, go through the steps in my mind, it’s coming round to the front of the patient often, is what I’d say.

[00:48:01] We sit behind upside down until a little bit of an angle and we are always counting mid lines and incisal planes and all that kind of stuff. So sit in the patient corner on the front, make a little tweak here or there and set in that kind of the incisal upside down T. I call it so across your psychology to be centrals and that centreline, once that is kind of set to the face, the rest of it flows quite nicely from there. All the things that I’m kind of looking for while I’m while I’m doing it, line angles on laterals. They for me got easy light angles on centrals and on laterals make or break a case and having the flow of the lateral. The lateral wants to look like it joins the central to the canine. You know, it shouldn’t look like for central incisors and then a canine. The lateral should should kind of. It should just transition from the one to the three, and it should kind of curve up this the Leon and kind of exaggerate. Yeah, exactly. And it and it should kind of curve up just as the kind of the angle, the kind of the tip of the three comes down and out and and that flow from one to two to three. For me, that’s what like I look at and think, is that quite right? Is it not?

[00:49:18] Do you do the thing that Dipesh teaches about having the three at the slightly darker shade?

[00:49:24] I try and avoid doing anything that Dipesh teaches, to be honest with you, because it’s

[00:49:28] Really it’s

[00:49:29] Never really stopped me in good stead. No, no,

[00:49:32] I did that once

[00:49:33] Or twice, and it made no difference.

[00:49:36] So but you know that headlight effect people talk about?

[00:49:38] Yeah, no. So what? I’ve learnt the hard way in terms of longevity of composites. There’s there’s three things. Number one is make sure you sandblast before you edge because there is plaque and there is tartar and calculus on these teeth, especially like the medial area of a two and stuff like that. So get all that off and you’ll be amazed how much cleaner your etch look. Your pattern looks if you’ve cleaned it properly. Second thing is cure through glycerine, because with the best will in the world, we are not going to polish every millimetre of composite that’s in that contact point. We don’t we can’t do that without creating diasporans everywhere. So if you’re leavin on cured resin in your contact points that the patients then going to go away and stay in and discover, that’s when you get that into proximal staining quite quickly. What the third thing is, keep it thin. And Andy, Andy told me that he’s big on it. The thinner you keep them, the better they look for for longer than much easier to clean. You don’t get those dark into proximal areas and stuff like that.

[00:50:41] And you also get everything looks a lot more natural because you get that slight colour gradient of the tooth shining through. You know, you get that richness. Yeah, exactly. You get a little bit less warm at the tip, a little bit warmer up at the neck. And the kind of the carry on from that is that you then naturally get the canines looking a little bit yellow than the ones and the twos, and you’ve not had to do anything to achieve that. It’s just the natural curvature of the teeth comes through your composite when you keep it really nice and thin. So I did, I did do it. I did it. At first, I couldn’t tell it. There were different shades by the time I’d done them, because, you know, by the time you’ve got a lip in the way and you get the shine through and the different thicknesses and this on the other, they just look the same to me and patient never said anything. I thought, Oh, what’s the point? It’s just slightly more complexity that feeling.

[00:51:25] How long does it take you to do six eight teeth,

[00:51:28] Eight teeth now, or probably book two and a half hours

[00:51:32] At the end of that two and a half hours? You’re just tired? Or are you not?

[00:51:35] I mean, not anymore. I used to be. I used to be wrecked. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[00:51:39] So what I was going to say was at the end of that long appointment, it’s almost like you’re so spent that you then bring them back in for four for sort of refinements or no, is it done?

[00:51:51] No, it’s it’s done. I’ve had refinements once or twice where some cases are hard and you’re struggling and you get into the engineering at the time so far. But I’d say it’s maybe. I can count on one hand at the time that people have come back for planned refinements and that patients come back who have wanted to make changes, and that’s absolutely fine. But in terms of me sitting there, I can go in right. We’re nearly there. I’ll get you back in a few times.

[00:52:14] So, so do you now now it’s become so sort of second nature. A. McLain talks about it as almost like meditative when he said it. I couldn’t believe you were saying

[00:52:26] Because,

[00:52:27] You know, when I was a dentist, I know if I was never so comfortable that it was meditation. Do you find that at that point now?

[00:52:35] Yeah, I love it. It’s it’s my it’s like my chill time in my day. If I’ve got composite bond, then it whether it’s edge bonding, not funny. I do a lot more edge pollen than I do composite veneers. And that especially is just so nice to do. It’s just yeah. Whereas on the on the Nash it used to be, if I had a big block of check-ups, I think sound I can switch off now and just get through these check ups. Now the consultations are where there now. I’m tired if I’ve done a few consultations in a row

[00:53:07] With some other clinical tips. What are you? What are your tips on diets to make closure?

[00:53:12] Dysnomia closure? So I do it. Everyone does it differently. I’m a free hand kind of person. I don’t love matrices. I don’t love beauty indices. I prefer to just build it as best I can. So with a diastole pick where you want your contact point to be, if you’ve got to Centrals and they’re the same with each and you’ve got a two mil gap, then you want to add one meal to the meat of each central. However, let’s say you’re bond in two to two or three to three, and let’s say that there’s a space between upper left one or two, but there isn’t one between upper right one and operate two. Then you want to close that Midland Estimer off the upper right one and increase the width of the upper left one decilitre, then close the gap. So then you’ve got the. Does that make sense? Kind of always plan your spacing. You don’t have to close every gap evenly off of each tooth. I will build freehand a palatal wall with strong composite hybrid composite. I will then put Peaty and always do it from the plate. Ok, that’s a top tip. Close distance from the palatal because otherwise you come from the first thing.

[00:54:20] You’re looking at the teeth and you’re right, I’m going to close this. I’m going to shove some CompStat on you shove it on and then you come. You’re kind of your path of insertion, if you like is from the labial and then you do it. It looks lovely and you look in the mirror and you’ve got this like weird contact point where they kind of come and meet labile and then drop back in. You’ve got a big gap because you can sort of plate them. Yeah, yeah. So kind of your first thing, get your mirror out and close them from the palatal and then build forward off that. And then you get a much nicer contact point and everything else, and I’ll build it from the palatal off one to get my centreline right. Get it level. I’ll put you over that and do exactly the same off the other tooth and I’ll take my feet off and then I don’t have a diamond to close anymore. And then it becomes a little bit of microfilm or whatever it is enamel composite, which which which

[00:55:07] Which matrix

[00:55:10] Not. So I’ll build it and then put, you know, build it, then put Peterffy over it and then build the other one, but only almost like a free hand plate or shell, I suppose. And then I’ll use like a mile or pull to then do the labial three quarters.

[00:55:24] You literally use your thumb for the for that plate or show what you use one of those tall VM or instrumental.

[00:55:31] Sometimes I use a finger, but yeah, I think finger or thumb one of the two.

[00:55:37] Which makes it all go then

[00:55:41] To be ashamed of you, because the work is great, you know, we teach place composite with your thumb. The final layer.

[00:55:51] But this is why I always feel like a bit a bit of a fraud talk on things like this because I don’t I don’t feel like I. I kind of just wing it and make it all. But I know that what I do isn’t the gold standard, but it works for me. And that’s a big take home point is that just know because someone whose work is great does it one way. There’s a really good chance that that won’t work for you because your brains don’t work in the same way. Me and Jack, my colleague and friend who you know as well, our brains are completely different and I am kind of fiddly OCD a little bit at a time. Paint brushes little IPCA. He is like, Right, let me bug as much composite on as I can, and then I’ll spend three hours on it. Or do you know, Andy and Andy obviously was lucky enough to well enough to work with Manchester, and he has this composite on the tooth in like a like a minute and it’s cured. And then it’s just the rest of the equipment is shaping and polishing back and is his results are obviously unbelievable. So I think like, see what people do and see what feels natural to you and then just play with the different ways and see what works for your for your brain. Because we’re not all programmed like Depeche. If we were,

[00:57:03] We’d all be different. I get it. I get it. I get it. It’s interesting. Yeah, because we try to do this little series called the Mind Mini Tip, and that’s exactly what I was after. It was after those little tips that, you know, things that you do differently to everyone else. And and I know, you know, as a dentist, I know we all do things differently. But it was interesting when I said that to people kind of people find it difficult talking about it. I think

[00:57:29] It’s because I think we’re,

[00:57:31] You know, the biggest you said about, you know, like, how did you what made you develop clinically? And it was it was Instagram, you know, not ashamed to say at University of Instagram, seeing the work out there, visualising what you can achieve and being like Jesus, like I, you know, that is so much better than what I’m doing. I need to book my ideas up. Or, you know, I like that about that case. I’m going to try and do that in my next case. And that was where I learnt just seeing visual pictures. And that’s where I think maybe that trepidation in terms of giving a top tip comes from because your worry is this isn’t the status quo. You know, we all as dentists, we want to be in the herd, we want to be, you know, doing what everyone else is doing. And as soon as you put your neck out there a little bit, that’s when we feel like it’s a bit of a risk. And if everyone else is closed in disasters with bio clear, you don’t want to put your head above and go, I just shook my finger behind and pack it against PCF because you’re always like, Am I missing something here? It’s not like it’s the unknown or knowns. I remember when I when I first came out at uni, my first ever composite was on a on a central and I etched it and then I just put some composite on.

[00:58:33] I my trainer was sitting with me and he was like, Oh, like, you know, Bond, James Bond. And I was like, All right, OK, so I used it. And afterwards I was like, Well, I thought it was called Dental Bond, an agent that was just enamel. And that is like, you know, I’ve qualified as a dentist and I don’t know that I’ve got to use bond if I’m in and I’m like, It’s crazy, but I’m not ashamed to say it because we’ve all got these little black spots where we just missed one two minute sentence in a lecture one time. And like, I don’t know, no shame. So. And that’s the fear. I think, you know, I’m saying, yeah, just stick a finger behind and pocket that. But then someone who knows a lot more Dipesh might listen to that and go, Oh no, that’s terrible, because x y z will happen and I go, All right, OK, well, I won’t do that again. And that’s the thing is, you just you just don’t want to look like an idiot. Well, I know I’m an idiot. So it’s fine. I mean,

[00:59:23] The amazing thing

[00:59:24] Is the

[00:59:25] Amazing thing about the Dental courses. So many dentists come out of five years of dentistry without knowing what a line angle is. Yeah, I do. You know another? It was in the course somewhere,

[00:59:38] So I remember I I showed it

[00:59:41] To somewhere in morphology

[00:59:42] Or something. Yeah, I show my mate John, you know, John as well, John Carter, a picture of some

[00:59:47] Teeth that I’d done. And he said this way, this is years ago when we work together anyway. Yeah, the nice them lad. But you know, you just work on that line angle there. And I went, Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I walked away and I thought, What is a line until I

[01:00:00] Haven’t got a clue. I don’t know what he’s talking about.

[01:00:04] And it was like when he described on the course it was a light bulb like, Oh, that’s what it is. So, yeah, exactly that. You know, we don’t all know everything.

[01:00:16] Never will we accepted it. So tell me this, did you? I remember when I was dentist, that was one thing that I used to do sort of on purpose to get, like you said, nurses want to feel like they’re doing a job for that patient. They’re doing something as far as patient care so as to get the nurse involved in much of it, you know, for. First of all, forehand Dental itself is is like that we were taught beforehand, it luckily the place I was, I was the part of the clinic that I used to work on was awful handed, but also things like for me, I’d get the nurse to choose shade. Sometimes I’d get the nurse to call core patients and say, Is everything okay? I’d make the tea for the nurse. I see this coming up in in on the group sometimes, and it’s.

[01:01:06] Do you know what, it’s really difficult because I’ve worked at a few places, I’ve seen really good management and I’ve seen lots of good management. And I think it will. I’ve got to be careful to not say the bad things because it’s a dig at someone which isn’t fair. The two practises that I work at now are both really, really well managed and well run. And you know what D’anticorps did as well? My practise was amazing. And you know, that was a big thing because Adrian was lovely. But Ravi was like, it is like disgustingly nice, like one of those people who you think is putting on, like pretending to be nice. And then the more you know, you’re like, Oh, geez, no, this guy is actually just this nice. And the nurses would just have done anything for him, like they just loved him. And Ravi now works at room with us as well, and everyone absolutely loves him. And don’t underestimate how important it is to like to just be nice. Just be lovely to people like if you’re barking orders and telling people and pulling people for chats that they don’t want to have and stuff like that, it’s got to be done.

[01:02:08] Sometimes, of course it has. But if the vast majority of the time when you’re able to be, if you’re just a nice human to people, then you get that two way respect and you also open up. You don’t want your nurses to be or your admins have to be like, Yes, sir, no, sir. Let me do whatever you say. That’s a terrible that is like the opposite of, you know, black box thinking and all that kind of stuff. You want that you want to turn around, you go, Do you know what might be in a deck there? Or actually, you did that case and you use that composite, but you should use that one. Do you know what I mean? You want them to be empowered to give that feedback? I think the traditional model of dentist or nurse down there is load of crap. And if you have dentists, a nurse doing different roles within the same ultimate aim, then you put yourselves on on that level and everything, just you get a lot more out of both of you and it works better for everyone.

[01:03:03] Yeah, you’re totally right, I mean, at the same time, there is an issue about if you were the owner, would you be able to be as friendly? I mean, I I am with with with my team, but then I’ve got.

[01:03:16] Yes. And this is the thing. I’m only I’m

[01:03:19] Only saying this. I’m like Georgie management, having never managed. So yeah, basically what that last 20 minutes of technical issues and everything just delete that because that is not a valid opinion on anything.

[01:03:36] Tell me about I’m going to move on to darker areas. It’s your speciality. Tell me about, yeah, tell me about your your worst day at work. Your most difficult patient.

[01:03:49] My worst mistake. My worst I to come to mind straightaway. The first one was and you know, it’s fresh from memory because it’s New Year’s Day to day New Year’s Day. A few years ago, I’d I hadn’t paid my registration. So 31st of December, I thought we were having a house party. That night, I was like, I’ll pay it later. I’ll pay later, pay later. At one point, logged in, put my card details in. Thought cool done right. Let’s carry on with the party and woke up the next morning just thought to log in and check. And it hadn’t gone through whether I’d come out of it too early or declined or whatever. I have no idea what happened, but I hadn’t paid it. And God, the worry that that feeling on New Year’s Day, because no one you can’t talk to anyone on New Year’s Day. So you’ve got this like twenty four hour silent treatment from everyone who knows any answer about how that are going to be able to work for the next three months. You go online, first thing you do Facebook forums searching for it and the stories people like Karl worked for six months. You have to reset these exams and these competencies and you’re like, Oh my God, I’ve got, I’ve got a family, I’ve got a mortgage to pay like we’ve got. We were getting married that year and oh, that was that was a really horrible day.

[01:05:01] But if anyone’s listening to this, well, it will be. It’ll be gone by then. But it was fine in the end. I was off the register for like five days, but now forever on my registration. It always says current registration period started in like five years after I graduated, which is really annoying. Oh, how funny. My worst on clinically was when I was not long out of itI, really, and this guy came in a classic NHS scenario. It lost pretty much the whole of the crown of his tooth and just wanted me to do something. And I was like, Oh, you know, couldn’t afford kind of elective no post and crown and all that kind of stuff. He’s like, Can you actually put a fill in on it? And I was like, I’ll try. So, you know, good old go and get the pin kit out, put a couple of pins in one of the pins lingual or whatever it was drilled a little pinhole. No problem. Got the pin drill. Put it in and I put my foot down to the pedal and they kind of they spin in and then they shear off the shank. So I put my foot down and it just the pin bit. The shark say it was the pin bay just disappeared and I was like,

[01:06:03] Uh, what was

[01:06:05] That? And you know, that like, plunge in your stomach and that sinking feeling in that heat and you go, Oh God, where’s this gone? I’m thinking in my head that’s gone into the pulp. This is a nightmare. What have I done? What I’ve ever done? Take a quick x ray. It’s come up the side. It’s gone through the tooth and the tooth into the PDL. Yeah, explain it. Tell the patient what happened, dad, understand any kind of, you know, he knew it was a bit of a last hope anyway. And blah blah blah. But I really like that affected my mental health for, I would say, a week. Like, I couldn’t stop thinking about that. And lastly, because it was so everything even tore, everything we do on a daily basis is to try and save the tooth and see the such precious little things that you bend over backwards and risk your neck and your sanity to save them. And then by just. Doing something wrong. I had just written this one off of the bin. It was a horrible feeling, really, really awful.

[01:07:00] I’ve been there. I perforated in in Dental school and I know what you mean. I still sometimes think about that moment, the blood coming through. But I still, I’m not going to let you off with that. That’s just too easy. What you just said. My.

[01:07:15] No, I’ve done absolutely loads. I heard you podcast. You did with a lady and a messenger afterwards. I’ve done exactly the same, you know, taking out the the lower, whizzy and the shank of the bird earnings on the patient. Yeah. So I was I was made. I’m done.

[01:07:28] Yeah, yeah, I’ve done them all, honestly.

[01:07:30] We could do another podcast. I was mid-end on a friend of mine and a colleague came in and said, Can you give me a hand with this tooth? And I was like, Yeah, OK, I’ll wait there. A second run through. I happily away bone, you know, whipped out whatever. And as soon as I kind of came out the corner of the mouth just like drooped open and I was like, I was.

[01:07:52] Thankfully, the nicest patient.

[01:07:53] I was like, Right, I’m so sorry. I’ve I’ve cut your lip a little bit whilst trying to get this out. A couple of stitches in it and we’ll see how it goes and hopefully it’ll be OK. And he’s like, cool. And he came back a few weeks later and it healed and fine and not really scarred or anything. So it wasn’t really a problem. Broken files, loads of them perforations, loads of them.

[01:08:12] Now, have you ever had a patient? You’ve done a small maker before and they sat, I like it and you can’t, you know, like, you have to start all over again. One of those?

[01:08:21] And. Ok. A few examples of this without naming names, I had a patient who said, I whatever you do not know it wasn’t that it wasn’t. I said, would you like your top two or three white and bottom teeth? And she said, No, I’d like to be the same shade and I’m like, OK, cool. So we shade marched and we did it, and it was really nice result, really nice result. And I was made off and she was happy, went home, spoke to boyfriend. I think if I remember correctly a little while ago now who said, Oh, they’re not very white, are they came back and said, Oh, I want the whiter. And. That was the first one that I can remember where it was like basically saying, I don’t like my teeth. So and which is fine. You know what, Polish and back a little bit didn’t didn’t take all the comps off sandblasted, put a lighter shade on fine don. Not not seen since ones where the patient up and gone, but I don’t know if I don’t know if I like them. And then there’s there’s this a.

[01:09:18] What’s your standard response, go live with them for a week, and then

[01:09:21] I say it’s the patient’s normal normally at the start of the appointment. It depends on the patient. You can pick your patients, some patients, you know that they’re going to just love them, you know, you know that this is some patients. You just get a bit of a sixth sense for it and often for those patients. I’ll say at the beginning, you know what? You’ve got high standards or very specific or you’re a bit funny about your teeth or whatever it might be. I’m not going to make any changes to these today. I’m going to put them to where I think is right. If you’re not sure of them, that’s OK. Don’t worry, we can always make changes. But what I don’t want to do is to essentially polish the back to your natural teeth, and it was a complete waste of time. So the rule is at the end of the day, we’re not making changes. But next week, this is the point with your name on it and we’ll make all the changes that you want. And the reason I do that is because I had a patient who essentially I did slip on the edge bond in three to three. She essentially made me polish them all back to enamel by saying, I don’t like that, but I don’t like that bit really, really particular with what she said. Lovely, lovely patient by the. We don’t have this line. Everything first. Really one of the nicest patients, but really particular and then kind of essentially got to a point where they looked exactly the same and then came back and was like, they look exactly the same. And I was like, Yeah, they do. So then we redid them. In the second time, I said, OK, I’m not making any changes today, but next time.

[01:10:35] And she came back and she did want to make a little tweaks to them, but it was a lot more controlled. And, you know, she knew a lot more what she wanted. And I’ve had patients a couple of times where I’ve had this chat and they’ve got they’ve gone OK and they’ve gone to the car. This was this and wants I can remember it was quite recent. And then she came back in and said, Honestly, I just feel like they are too square. I think it was. I said, OK, come in. Let’s at least soften them a little bit for you. So obviously there’s exceptions to every rule, aren’t there? Yeah, but you can’t. You just have to be really open with your patients and honest. And if it’s in composite fine, you know we can change to our heart’s content. It is. I do not mind spending the time doing this. You spent a lot of money and you see them. We’re not going to stop until the perfect for you, so you let me know what you want to do and I’ll do it. Porcelain is tricky, but then porcelain, you’ve got the whole you do a try and first you’ve had the temporaries on, you’ve made the patient aware. You know what, if this isn’t quite right, this is a hell of a job to do it, so be a hundred percent certain with me that these are right for you. You’ve gone through a lot more words. Composite, it’s a bit more, you know, let me do what I think is right for you, and then you let me know what you want, what you want to tweak.

[01:11:46] But you’re a super confident guy. But I mean, do you do that, you agree. I mean, you are definitely super confident.

[01:11:56] I don’t. I don’t. I don’t feel it.

[01:11:59] Really, because some of the things you say, you know, it sounds like so simple the way you say it, oh, it’s got to be just got to be yourself. You know, a lot of people find difficulty, you know, with that that simple notion of just being themselves with the patient, you know, with you. There’s a few things that with you come completely. Second, nature, for instance, that first time you lecture and I said to you, What other lectures have you given it? You said, it’s my first one. I was like, You were strutting around with a bottle of beer

[01:12:34] Like

[01:12:34] Like as if you own the stage where you know, you had the crowd laughing. You know, it was it was just brilliant. Brilliant performance. First time on the stage, first time. Where does the confidence come from? You’ve always been confident.

[01:12:51] I think in some ways I am confident in other ways I’m not. I don’t really know where it comes from, I suppose just. It’s the same thing. Maybe, you know, or chicken or the egg, we were confident kid who made the most of that or were you messing around with that? I don’t know. But then I’m no more confident than my brothers or my friends. I suppose it’s probably just it’s just the way, and it’s an impossible question for me to answer, really, because and this is why this is a problem. Yeah, I don’t know. I don’t feel like I am particularly confident. If you’re telling me that I am, I trust your opinion and it’s a nice thing to hear and I’m grateful that you say it, but I don’t even know that I am, let alone give you a reason for why I am, if that makes sense.

[01:13:35] Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But but you remember being like, I don’t know, unsure of yourself. You seem so sure of yourself, you know, like for for a young guy, sometimes even when you’re not talking about teeth, you know, you seem so sure of yourself. Yeah.

[01:13:53] I don’t know. I mean,

[01:13:54] The president, you went for president of that society thing here. I wouldn’t have never have done that. Never, ever, ever have done it. So called.

[01:14:03] Well, why wouldn’t you have done?

[01:14:05] Because I’m like, if I go to a room, I’ll I’ll always stand on the side of the room. I won’t get into it. Contrary to what you might think, you know, at the end of day, you’ve got to remember we see each other at many somehow make it my event. Even even at my event, I’m quite shy. You believe it or not of meeting people, whereas you don’t seem that way. You don’t seem that way at all, man. You seem like you just fully confident. Have you ever done like drama? Have you done that?

[01:14:33] No. But. So like, do you think, could you pinpoint where that lack of confidence in certain issues come from? Or do you feel like that’s normal and other people are confident? Do you know what I mean? It’s difficult to when you know we’re all our own normal, so you can only really explain a reason behind something that’s a deviation from the following sense. Proper politician.

[01:14:57] It’s interesting. No, no. You’re right. You’re right. It’s interesting because because I don’t know if you listen to my episode with Alan, the Cornish dentist, I did. I said the same thing to him, and he basically said the same thing that you’re saying. It’s like you’re saying, doesn’t realise he’s confident. And then when I pushed him on it, he kind of went well, I guess, team sports or whatever. Then and then he got got back in touch with me the next day and he said, Oh, now now I’ve been thinking about times in my life and and now maybe, maybe it is very amicable for the guy. I don’t know.

[01:15:29] Guess? Is this what therapy is like? I have a love island. I’ll seek some 50000 is the guy. He’s such a nice guy, I suppose, because I suppose my

[01:15:40] Parents are fairly confident. My friends are confident and it’s just what

[01:15:45] Are your parents to do? And I ask you this.

[01:15:47] My dad is well. He was trained as an electrician and he’s kind of a project manager now. And my mom is a teaching assistant as a teaching assistant.

[01:16:01] So teaching assistant, did you? Did she ever teach in a school that you were at?

[01:16:05] No, she only started doing that. She she used to work as though she was a cashier in a bank, and then she had me stop working, kind of, you know, stay at home, mom until she worked part time. She did like Saturdays in the bank. I think I remember when I was a kid, but, you know, mainly at home. And then when my little brother, because there’s a big age gap between me and Josh, my my second brother when he started primary school and she had no more kids at home during the day. That’s when she took a job at his primary school. So her first job was like in a classroom with him. And she’s kind of she’s in a different school now, but. And that’s when it started,

[01:16:41] And the needs of your brothers, consider dentistry,

[01:16:44] Though, purely like. Probably out of stubbornness more than anything, so Mike Mike’s a doctor might is his GP training now and when he was writing his personal statement and all that kind of stuff, I was like, Well, you know, have you not thought about that six hours in what would have been like, second year Dental school? And he was like, No, I’m not doing the same as you kind of thing. I want to do medicine. I’m just going to go the opposite way. And now that me and my kids do medicine and dentistry kind of the health, if you like. Josh is Josh is like, Well, I’m not doing anything like that. I’m going to do law. So now Joshua Leaders doing law and of course, the barista. So it’s probably, probably a bit stubbornness, but also quite quite different people. I was always like little hands on things in health and like as a young kid, it was always painting and drawing and then up to like GCSE, I did after GCSE. I did like woodwork GCSE, and they were the subjects where I really enjoyed them and I was like, not truly good at them. And I just got on well in those classes and it didn’t really feel like school to me, whereas Mike was interesting. Mike Mike hated all that kind of stuff like his handwriting. That’s why he’s such a good doctor. His handwriting looks like a spider’s just run across the page with ink on its legs.

[01:17:50] How interesting do you say that man? Because so often, you know, getting into a deep conversation with Dipesh? And he keeps going back to woodwork at school as as as one of the key things. You know, it’s so

[01:18:04] Transferable in terms of that kind of that three dimensional spatial awareness creating something with your hands, isn’t it? And it’s different to, you know, like woodwork, especially like that is the one that I feel most similar to from school, not painting or anything like that. That’s two dimensions. You’re not thinking about things from different angles, not like making models where you just follow an instructions and remember the classic like you have to take air fix models to you, interview

[01:18:31] This stupid thing and

[01:18:34] Detail. It was like, Right, I’ve got a piece of wood and I’ve got a saw and a chisel and a file and and I want to make this piece of wood look like that. And it’s kind of the same. You’ve got a blob of composite and you want to make it look like that.

[01:18:46] Let’s look at what you reckon you’re going to be in five years time, you’re going to have a practise, we’re going to do. What’s the future look like for you? Did you like the taste of teaching that you’ve had so far?

[01:18:58] Um, honestly, I don’t really know, because if you’d have asked me five years ago where I’ll be now, it’s nowhere near. What I’m doing now. It was never a conscious decision, and I’m I’m kind of I’m I’m so sorry, I’m just dodging your questions. This is sort of horrible. But no, not actually. I will answer it. But if I decide, OK, in five years, I want to be XYZ at the risk in my mind then, is that I pass up other opportunities and other avenues that are open and all the things that I enjoy that I didn’t expect to enjoy because this is my goal. You know what I mean? Whereas if you just kind of almost say, I’m going to take one step at a time and each of those steps, I’m going to make the right step based on the information that I have, you’ll end up in the right place for you. And it will happen naturally and then you won’t end all kind of the tortured the guy who should have been and ended on test, but went down the route of Prav since then and always wishes he’d been done so that the dentist who wishes he’d been a doctor kind of thing because you, you don’t me with you.

[01:20:02] Let me

[01:20:02] Make sure. Let me make sure I’m understanding you clearly here. You’re not saying that there is a five year plan that you’re not sharing with us because you don’t want to disappoint us, the audience. You’re not saying that there is no five year plan.

[01:20:15] There is no five year plan. There are things that I know. There are things I love doing. So for example, teaching, yeah, I love that. You know, I’m very much helping Dipesh on your course, which is absolutely which is the way it should be and what I really enjoy it, and I really love that little light bulb moment or when, you know, because I think, yeah, we’re all going to which I love that. I love that side of things. I love helping people I love, I love. My favourite is messages on Instagram. Like, You know what? I listen to your podcast with jazz, and I’ve done this case and they’ll send me a photo and they’ll be like, my line angles are way better. And I’m like, Yes, I love that. That is a cool thing. So I really like teaching and feeling really good feeling. I think business ownership practise ownership is definitely a way to go, but I don’t necessarily know if I want to go and set up a squat on my own kind of thing because I feel like dentistry as a hobby. I’m really, really lucky in that I don’t feel like I’m going to work. I feel like I’m going to do something that I really like doing.

[01:21:17] And my worry, if I set up a practise with all the stress and everything that comes with it is that I would maybe detract from that if I was having to focus more on other things that I didn’t feel as passionately about. Also, you’ve got, you know, what’s your why? Why are you doing that? I love my job. I earn enough money to live a lovely life, and I come home when I forget about work. And like, we’re talking before about being on a level with the nurses rather than having to kind of manage things differently. I like that. I go into work and the nurse and my friends and and reception of my friends and the other dentist are my friends, and I know it’s a lovely, lovely place to be in. So practise ownership. It feels like the right thing to do because I do enjoy the idea of like maybe setting protocols in place and watching something grow and everything else. But maybe it’s a bit of a middle ground like in a partnership with the right people or that kind of thing. I don’t I don’t.

[01:22:10] Do you do any back teeth at all?

[01:22:13] Try and avoid them. Not out of like snobbery, I just really don’t like them. Like, I hate asking patients to open a bit wider. My and I’ve got really fat fingers like proper sausage fingers and like doing back teeth isn’t suited to me. Yeah. So what? I will do them, I’ll do them. You need a bit of variety.

[01:22:32] Don’t you know what I was going to say was like, you know, for someone of your age to be in the position you’re in, it would be really not sort of self-aware to not sort of appreciate, you know, be thankful. Have gratitude for for where you’ve landed, you know, you. Yeah, and I don’t want to make it sound like it’s luck only. But but I, you know, it is like you complete look, but it’s not. It is what everything is like. Everything is like if you to look at it that way. But I’m. My point is that you’ve managed to get yourself quite quickly, quite early on in your career, in a situation that most people would be really happy to be in. I mean, I know I would if when I was a dentist, if you told me you would only treat front teeth, there probably would be no enlightened right now.

[01:23:22] I just I’d just be doing that.

[01:23:23] I’d be treating front teeth as it ended. That said, that said, even this will become boring. You know, most jobs become boring. You know, it’s a weird thing to say because dentistry such a personal thing, it’s like saying you’re going to get bored of it means that you’re going to get bored of humans, which is unlikely. But the future, the kind of guy that you are, the confidence that you have and and the outside the box thinking, I know that you do. And when we discussing the next version of Enlightened and you come out with something and I’ve been I’ve been racking my brains for eight years about something.

[01:24:00] And then you’ll say something and saying, Oh yeah, that’s a good idea.

[01:24:05] Yeah, it would be a shame if you didn’t do something where you were the designer of the thing. You know what I mean?

[01:24:11] Yeah, I mean, and I would actually I would love that, but I would love exactly. Like you say, it’s a long career. And you know what’s funny? I was always like a staunch GSDP. Like, You know, are you going to specialise? Is the question everyone gets asked. My answer was, no, I don’t want to. I didn’t go and do an Saaho year because I knew that I didn’t want to do speciality training, so there was no benefit to me and know that kind of stuff. And then I’ve ended up essentially specialising in something that it’s not a specialism like a specialism specialism, but I’ve I’ve niche down really early, which is something that I never wanted to do. But I’m absolutely loving it. And I think the reason that I love it is because it’s happened naturally based on what I love doing. And if the next thing that comes along naturally falls into place, then I’ll probably love that as well. But I love my job at the minute, everything about it. So why would I consciously go, OK, this job? That’s great. Let’s stop this and let’s do this instead, because the grass is always greener. Yeah.

[01:25:04] So have you always been a content guy or you’re not even saying that you just think you’ve land on your feet and you want to enjoy it?

[01:25:11] And I think I’m a content guy generally. Yet you know what I am. And whereas before I was talking about the whole confidence thing almost saying this feels, you know, I don’t really even know that I am. This is something I do know that I’m a naturally very content person, which could also read as I’m a very lazy person and I’m happy to just do whatever’s going on at the time. But, you know, I’m kind of I’m happy with my lot and I’m really lucky for the people that I’ve got in my life and the lovely things have happened to me and the lovely job that I’m allowed to do and the great little baby that I’ve got downstairs and the brilliant wife and great family and great friends. And and they’re all a thousand times more important than whether or not my line angles are a bit shit on that last case. So I think keeping things in perspective has always got. I remember at my Dental School interview, I got asked, How would you cope with the pressure of the job? And I said something on the lines of, I don’t really know if it is pressure because, you know, pressure is like a fireman running into a building. And it’s not really pressure. It’s just teeth. With hindsight, what terrible answer. But that is like, that’s how I feel. It’s, you know, there’s no real. The stress and pressure is easier when you put into perspective and know what your actual important things are.

[01:26:27] Yeah, and you know, contentment, it’s it’s an undervalued thing. Somehow, it would sort of programmed to think that you’ve got to never be contented. You’ll never get anywhere, if you can. It’s a weird I don’t know if it’s like a city of London kind of, you know, that kind of business man who works all night, all day, all night. But contentment is so undervalued. I mean, at the end of the day, it’s all about being happy, right?

[01:26:51] Yeah. If you find contentment, drive success, like if you can find what makes you happy, then you’ll end up doing that and end up being successful. So like, look at Mini-SAR makeover. I just love coming back to that course because I just love being with you guys and it’s a fun weekend away and and I’m not doing it for like any personal gain or that kind of. You say the city of London, you know, let’s go here and let’s further our career and what’s in it for me. I just do it because I love it. But it has then naturally led onto me meeting some amazing dentists. Me learning loads more because I’m seeing the lectures again. Me. And you know, when you teach something, you learn it even better. So the benefits come without ever doing it because there’s benefits.

[01:27:34] Yeah, for sure. For sure. Let’s wrap it up. But it’s been. It’s been lovely to speak to you. You made a mockery of my final question.

[01:27:47] It’s just so you. The is now, buddy. You made a mockery of pace.

[01:27:55] Final question. It’s such a shit question, right? But let’s start with Travis. Final question. More darkness. Yeah, a little bit. You’re you’re on your deathbed. You’ve got your nearest and dearest around you. What a three pieces of advice you’d give them.

[01:28:16] Right, you know what? Honestly, I listen to the podcast. And whenever I listen to these answers and I’ve never actually thought about what I’d say, which is ridiculous because I knew it was coming on. Three pieces of advice, I would say never lose sight of what the actual important things in life are like the the brand of your T-shirt or the make of your watch, that doesn’t really matter, like if the people around you. Well, if that note, you know, that’s actually not a fair thing to say, because for some people, they do take joy from that and that is absolutely fine as well, but don’t kind of conform to what someone else thinks is great. So if you’re surrounded by people who are dripping in Louis Vuitton and you’re not interested in it, don’t try and get your happiness from buying loads of Louis Vuitton to try and keep up with them. Find what? What makes you happy and stick with that? Number one number two is travel. Go in like, see the world. It’s a it’s a it’s a big old world and we’re in one little country, one little city, whatever it might be. You know, go and properly travel. Like, take a year out, two years out, kind of travel.

[01:29:30] Yeah. You know what I’d add to that travel young. Yes. Because travelling, travelling five star or whatever travelling old is not the same thing. Yeah, it’s it’s all well and good. I go, go and get a nice Thai food in Paquette or something. It’s not the same thing as when you get to pocket with a backpack aged 19. It’s a different situation altogether.

[01:29:52] And just like just rocking off in Peruvian towns who don’t speak any English, there’s one lady we were trying to order Pringles and she was stood there and she had a tube of Pringles behind her. And we were like Pringles, like points in Pringles, OK? And she was like, Yeah,

[01:30:10] Read Lost Inglis, really? Could you not have guessed that? Like, that sounds so similar. But yeah, like kind of go go to somewhere.

[01:30:20] It’s really uncomfortable with no money with either on your own or someone that you love and just enjoy it

[01:30:27] For those travels you did in South America. Was that totally different time to your Australia trip or did you? Was that all part of one thing?

[01:30:34] Yeah, no. We took like two years out, so we left. Yeah, we went to Australia and then. We came up to the UK like twenty two months later, something like.

[01:30:46] Well, yeah, it’s good.

[01:30:49] And I’ll address that one, but that’s bad third thing. Go and do the mini smile make over course, it’ll change your life.

[01:30:57] The news that such a loser? No, no, no. Stay away from Payman Langroudi on a night out. He is only going to be bad news.

[01:31:11] Are you ready? You ready to answer my fantasy dinner party question now that you’ve made a mockery of it? Three. Three guests that are alive. Fancy dinner party.

[01:31:22] My first one would be the guy who owns Red Bull.

[01:31:26] Shut up. My second will be your grandma in China. I think I was think I was lonely because I was I was listening today and I was thinking about it

[01:31:42] Today and I was struggling to narrow it down. I’d love to sit down for dinner with Dave Grohl, lead singer of the Foo Fighters. He’s just got such a like a what seems like a passion for life, and I’ve recently read his book and all that kind of stuff. John Lennon. I would love to hear his views on things and stuff like that. And Freddie Mercury. Oh, imagine that part

[01:32:08] Three, three musicians there, yeah. Oh, do you know what, right? You know, what could I get a hell of a party, right? Could I

[01:32:13] Cheat? Could I have a fourth? Because the fourth one would then be my wife? Because imagine going to that dinner party and then not having had anyone there? Yeah.

[01:32:23] Wink, there’s the brownie points. But imagine coming home from that dinner party

[01:32:31] And not having someone that was there with you that you could talk about it with.

[01:32:34] It’s interesting you say that. I mean, it’s a beautiful thing to say, but you know, when you travel alone, have you ever travelled alone? I went with Mike.

[01:32:42] No, I haven’t. Really haven’t. Really. I’ve been

[01:32:44] Little places. But OK, forget. Have you ever been to a restaurant alone?

[01:32:50] Yeah, yeah. I’ve eaten alone. I picked a loads. Yeah. Most nights, you know? Yeah, I actually

[01:32:59] I actually love going to a restaurant by myself. I think it’s one of my favourite things to do.

[01:33:04] Yeah, I did it.

[01:33:06] I mean, I’ve got to have headphones. I’ve got to have headphones to tell you, I’m not quite by myself, am I? I’m listening to something. I’m listening to a podcast or something. But I love being by myself sometimes, and that story of having someone to share it with. I have there’s been times where I’ve been on a just a simple thing made up, you know, I’ve been on a road where it just looks unbelievable. You know, going through even in the UK in between, you know, trying to go from your side of the country to the other side, there’s some there’s some hills, there are really beautiful. But. And that question of I’m looking at this thing and there’s no one here to share it with me has crossed. My mind has crossed my mind. Yeah, but there is a catharsis in it. As long you know, there’s a there’s something about, you know, not sharing with someone doing it on your own. There’s something about that. We’ve got we’ve got quite deep there, always. It’s been lovely to have you back. I look forward to seeing you look forward to seeing you in Newcastle.

[01:34:09] Lovely talking to you, mate, and I’ll I’ll see you in a couple of weeks. It’s really close.

[01:34:13] Yeah, yeah. Thank you. This is Dental Leaders, the podcast where you get to go one on one with emerging leaders in dentistry. Your hosts Payman Langroudi and Prav Solanki. Thanks for listening, guys. If you got this file, you must have listened to the whole

[01:34:36] Thing and just a

[01:34:38] 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’ve got some value

[01:34:46] Out of it 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. And don’t forget our six star rating.

 

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