When Nicola Gore found her squat practice taking off, she found a novel way of staffing the booming clinic – by persuading her husband to become a dental therapist.

She tells the whole story along with her heartbreaking decision to sell. And we’ll also hear how Nicola cut her teeth in the brutal make-or-break environment of a busy surgical ward before finally realising her dream of completing the MClinDent.

Nicola lifts the lid on her best selling book Dentistry in a Nutshell, co-authored with last week’s guest Raabhia Maan, discusses her time in Australia and much more.

Enjoy!  

 

“I thought, ‘I can’t do this anymore. This job is killing me.’ I lost so much weight and had so many sleepless nights learning to put vent-flows in, trying to find beds for trauma patients, opening the clinic on my own at three a.m to stitch people’s lips and thinking, ‘oh my god, how’s it going to turn out?  Are they going to look OK or disfigured?’ It was a big learning curve, but when I left the place, I said, ‘you can proudly raise your head and say: ‘You are Nicola Gore now,’ because I went through it all.” – Nicola Gore

 

In This Episode

02.55 – Backstory

13.55 – Guy’s

17.27 – VT, first boss and early work

24.32 – Oral surgery

31.45 – Australia

41.16 – An offer from London

47.25 – The squat

56.06 – From surviving to thriving

58.31 – Social media, sharing, training and support

01.13.56 – Blackbox thinking

01.22.27 – The next generation

01.24.11 – Dentistry in a Nutshell

01.30.40 – Last days and legacy

 

About Nicola Gore

Nicola Gore qualified from Guy’s in 1993. She completed the MClinDent in 2000 and became a vocational trainer in 2004.

She is the owner of Totteridge Dental Studio and practices at Harrow Weald Dental Dental Practice, of which she is the former owner.

In 2021, she was highly commended at The Probe Dental Awards for her contribution to dentistry during the COVID 19 pandemic.

She runs an educational YouTube channel and is also prolific across social media. Nicola co-authored the bestselling Dentistry in a Nutshell textbook with fellow dentist and influencer Raabhia Maan.

She is a member of the British Academy of Cosmetic Dentistry (BACD) and the British Society of Prosthetic Dentistry and president of the British Iranian Dental Association.

[00:00:00] Yeah. I mean, for me, social media is a platform to engage people, and I I see myself as a role model. I don’t want to portray myself as I’m the best dentist in the world or I’m the best, but I want to teach people what worked for me will work for you. You know, do it this way. This pattern worked for me. Take a little snippet out of it. Maybe it will work for you as well. And that’s all I care about. It’s not about showing, Oh, my composite is the best or my practise is the best or I’m the best person, but I want to leave like a legacy behind. So when I leave this world, which eventually all of us will, I want people to say, Oh my God, I learnt that from Nicola. Go there. It’s good to have empathy. It’s good to listen to people, you know, to leave that line.

[00:00:49] Why?

[00:00:50] Because I’ve seen a lot of my loved ones passed away, and I just feel like if you don’t leave anything behind, you get forgotten. And also what I think is every one of us have good things in our head. Why not share it so the next generation can benefit from it? You know, if you don’t share stuff, then then it’s invaluable. It’s not going to go anywhere, it’s going to go underneath that ground. So why not get it out in the open earlier on? And then if people want to then ask you stuff, they can come to you because you’re still alive?

[00:01:27] 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

[00:01:45] Gives me great pleasure to welcome Nicola Gore onto the podcast. Nicola, I’ve known for a while and see her regularly on Postgrad the lectures and she’s always, always trying to learn more. I’ve always known that about her, but where she really came to my attention was with her brilliant online presence, several different accounts that I’ve seen her, but also some of our sort of very successful guests that we’ve had on this podcast cited her as a mentor, someone who really inspired them. And I’ve always said this and I’ve said it before on podcasts about your first boss being an absolutely important person and setting the direction of your your career. And so for that reason, I really wanted to get her on to to sort of just talk about her passion for dentistry. We’ve discussed before what what keeps someone passionate intensity and I don’t know anyone who’s better suited for that question than Nicola. Lovely to have you, Nicola.

[00:02:43] How are you? Thank you, Payman. I’m very well. Thank you for asking me on your podcast. I’ve really been looking forward to your podcast and it gives me a pleasure to be here with you today.

[00:02:55] Amazing. Amazing. We usually start with the back story. Mm-hmm. What’s yours? So.

[00:03:02] Oh, my back story is very heavy Payman. And you know, my my background is Iranian, so I am half Iranian, half Indian. My father is Indian and my parents met here. And then I was born in England, in Bristol. And then my parents subsequently travelled back to Iran, where they were very successful. They opened up a few hospitals in a city called Mashhad, and my father was an orthopaedic surgeon, and he did a lot of great work for the Iranian community in Iran. He even went to war, and my mom was a director of hospital, so a very strong background in health care. And when it came to the time when I needed to get to uni, my parents both decided it’s better that I come back to the UK to continue my education. So I finished my GCSEs, which were called diploma in Iran, and then I came back to the UK. So you can imagine me, 17 year old coming back to the UK with really little English and not knowing much about the English culture, apart from what my parents told me and taught me. And I was so keen not to let them down because they were so successful in Iran, but they closed shop everything to come here for me. So I was so keen that I had to get to uni and I said two years, A-levels too long, and I’m just going to try and do it in one year. The college I went to didn’t really believe I could do it, but they accepted me.

[00:04:33] I put in my Alcoff form in which was at the time was called occa form, not UCAS, and I applied for medicine, dentistry, pharmacy and chemistry. Because if you remember those times, you could apply for everything. So my strong subject was chemistry is still is. I love chemistry, so I applied for all these subjects. I got interviews for everything. I don’t know how I got offers because my English was so bad, they probably felt pity for me. But anyway, I went to every single interview and I managed to secure a place with them. So then it was nitty gritty of passing the exam. I managed to pass the exams, I got the grades required, and when it came to the crunch of choosing what to study, my father was quite insistent for me not to do medicine. He said It’s a hard career for a woman, difficult to get to the top. He could see that I have got it in me to be able to get to the top. But he was worried that maybe it might affect my family time and being a woman and, you know, being a mother, I, you know, at the end of the day, you know? And so he said, choose dentistry. So that’s how I ended up taking the box, choosing dentistry, and I entered Guy’s hospital in 1989. As for my first year, fresher, fresher week

[00:05:54] So that the transition from Iran to here without language. Why, why do it in one year, why did you decide to say I’m going to do the in one year when everyone else is taking to use?

[00:06:09] What was the reason for that? Good question. One of the main reasons was my age, so I was already 17 and a half, turning 18. So at that time, I thought, Oh my God, I’m so old, you know everybody’s or it’s only 16, 17, you know, by the time I get to uni, I’m going to be older than everybody. Like at that time, I thought, you know, 18 is so old. So that was one main thing. Second thing was that, you know, I saw how hard my father had had all these businesses in Iran. He closed everything overnight and he came here to local and he, at his age, was 50 then. So my age, which I’m now, and he was, he started fresh. So we were staying with my auntie. We didn’t have an accommodation. We were living with my auntie for a good six months before my dad managed to get a mortgage and buy a property. And, you know, watching him work so hard at his age when he had everything he had chauffeur, he had this that, you know, and he closed his entire empire to come here for me. That was my main main trigger that I said, You know, Nicolo, you can’t fail. You’ve got to get in. You cannot let your parents down. And I had that back of my view.

[00:07:25] Were you very determined child before that? Yeah.

[00:07:28] Very determined. Very bossy. An only child. And no, no. I have two other siblings two sisters, younger sisters, younger than me, one year younger and six years younger. And they’re both married to a dentist now. So yeah, both both were very Dental family at the moment. And so but I think I’ve always been very determined. Always been like had the drive to do stuff, wanted to do more. And I never thought anything can stop me.

[00:07:57] So why?

[00:07:58] I think it’s from childhood. I was given this confidence by my parents that I would be a doctor. I can do well, I can do anything, and my parents gave me a lot of confidence. I think the way my parents raised, the three of us was like, You know, first, don’t worry about anything. Secondly, go in with a clear conscience and thirdly, have have the confidence you know you’ve got. You’ve got it in your head. You can do it, you can do it, just do it. And for us, failure was never an option. Not that parents didn’t want us to fail or whatever, and they never said, if you fail is bad either. So I remember, like, I’m getting some low grades and my mom would never tell me off, but she would say, You are my doctor and you’re going to be a doctor. And I think it’s important to feed positive information to children from a young age. Rather than saying you’re stupid or you can’t do this or you got a bad grade. I think as a parent is important, and I saw that firsthand how it helped me to progress and my sisters and we all were super confident not to the point of arrogance, but super confident and to the point where because my parents kept saying, You know, you guys are going to do well, we didn’t want to let them down. And I think all that sort of subconscious psychology helped us to get to where we are now.

[00:09:20] What did your sisters end up doing?

[00:09:22] So my my middle sister, she’s an engineer, electronic engineer, as she worked for Sky for many, many years, Sky TV, and she was sort of one of the top engineers for Sky. But then she’s had a baby, so she’s taken some time out. And my other sister, she’s a lawyer, so she did biomedical in kings. And then that’s where she met her husband, current husband at the moment. And then they both decided to do some integrated studying. So she did integrated law and then Payman with my brother in law did dentistry. So they’re both doing really well. All of them are doing quite well now and really, you know, very determined they’re running businesses. So I think it all boils down to childhood, how you are raised and what’s fed into your psychology from when you’re a kid, and that really helps when you’re an adult. And of course, other things along the way help as well.

[00:10:21] I’m quite interested in this relationship between your mum and dad because I’m definitely at that time, a Persian lady marrying an Indian man in Iran. Yeah, I mean, quite a racist society, wrong?

[00:10:35] Yeah.

[00:10:35] But how did how did he cope? How do I mean, I guess he was. He was a top surgeon that must have helped.

[00:10:40] Yeah, yeah, it did. But I mean, my my parents met in England, so my mom was studying as a midwife here in the 50s. My father, he graduated from India as a doctor, but he was raised in Australia. So he travelled to UK to do all his house officer posts, and they met in a hospital called New and Hospital in Hampstead, which is now a block of flats. And and the stories that they tell me, it’s amazing, I mean, I have actually written a big, huge article for my dad in a book called NHS Workers, which is going to be published soon. And so I’ve written all his story about him because I’m just so proud of him and my mom. And they both met and then they got married in Finchley. And after that, they did a lot of various jobs. I Canterbury Bristol, where each sister was born, and then because the weather wasn’t that great, they decided to go back to Iran. But going back to your question is that to be honest with you, my my grandma wasn’t very happy for my mum to marry an Indian boy because he said that, you know, because of actually a little bit of racism, as you say, and skin colour, you know, and things like that. But when they met my dad, they fell in love with my dad and my dad.

[00:11:59] Just the most amazing person of empathy. Very quiet, man. And he my my grandma just loved my dad and agreed to the wedding. And when my dad went back to Iran, I can’t tell you Payman that you know, his practise was in the centre of Mashhad. They would have three kilometres of people queuing to see him in his practise, and he had people where they didn’t have money to pay for the visit and they’d bring him prawns or chicken and things like that. And the and the secretary would say, But you know, you’re seeing a surgeon, you can’t pay with food. And my dad would say, You know what? It doesn’t matter because my prime job is not about money, it’s about helping and giving a service. And you know, we always are hospitals full, always filled with happiness, with joy, with food. Even at the time of revolution, where there was a food shortage and in the time of Iran-Iraq war, we were always blessed. We always had food on our table. We always had people would help us. So all the stuff he did was actually a blessing to the family, and people still talk about him in Mashhad a lot.

[00:13:14] Did you learn the language as well?

[00:13:15] Oh my God, perfectly really spoke better than me. I knew, and all of us so well, honestly, because his background is Indian. So he knew a bit of Urdu and Urdu and Farsi a bit similar like vocab wise. So he did learn it fast, but not obviously as fluent. You couldn’t write in Farsi, but he could speak very well. Yeah.

[00:13:39] So sounds like an amazing guy.

[00:13:41] Oh, amazing. Amazing. I wish you could have met him

[00:13:45] As he passed away.

[00:13:46] He passed away in March, unfortunately, so he’s left a big hole in our lives. Yeah, my god, it’s been very hard.

[00:13:55] Let’s move on to guys. Mm hmm. My brother was at guys at the same time as you. We’ve just found out just now. And then she’s a small world. My brother is a dentist. My my brother’s a medick. But I remember my brother when he got there, being a bit shocked by the sort of the rugby sort of culture of guys. We led pretty sheltered, sheltered childhoods. I mean, nothing. We didn’t go to any of the stuff that you went through. We came when we were five and six and all that. Yeah, it was, you know, private school and all of that. And I remember him being shocked by the culture. Just does that resonate with you? Or, you know,

[00:14:33] It’s so funny. I mean, when I went to guys, I was just so scared because I couldn’t speak English really well. I had no idea about the the culture or what what to expect. So when I went in and sort of I was quite timid and I’m like, OK, how do I deal with this? The best thing is I keep to myself. So again, head down in books and I just thought, You know what? Even if I don’t make any friends, at least I’ll pass my exams because that’s what my intention. So I am. After the first term, I did realise that sort of public school boys stick together, the ski kids stick together, the rugby kids stick together, and it was just like a quite sort of segregation. And then there were a bunch of Asians in my year. There was quite a huge influx of Asians, Indian Asians, and I thought, OK, I can relate to them a bit more. There were no Iranians in my ear, so I actually literally stuck to them again. Their culture was very different to me because I wasn’t raised as an Asian, even though I’m half India and I was raised more Iranian. So I have to say the first year, even though it was very different, but somehow or other in my head, I was expecting it because, you know, I had only been in England one year, so I didn’t have high expectations of it should be a bit more of a pleasant place or how it should be. I was just grateful to be there.

[00:15:55] You were grateful to be in. Yeah. And did you kill it?

[00:15:58] Oh yeah. Did you? Yeah. So so basically what happened after the first year? I thought, You know what, Nicola, you’ve got through the first year now. So come on, let’s start making friends. Let’s start, you know, being, let’s change. Change yourself. You know, I’m a firm believer that we have to move, you know, when in Rome, act like the Romans do. And and I think this is the key to success for me because I don’t stay with my own ideas, I’ll challenge myself all the time. So I started improving my English the way I talk. I started sort of booking on skiing trips. If people are going skiing, Arcam skiing because I could ski because Iran, we had good ski slopes. I knew how to ski. So I tried really embracing the culture and embracing the environment rather than fighting against it to say that, no, I’m never going to be part of this because I knew this is my life now. And in that way, I made a really, really good friends, English, Indian. And then when I was in my third year, oh my God, we had a huge influx of Iranians, which then actually just changed the whole scenario for me. So and that’s, you know, I met ball back and I met, you know, a lot of other people along the way. Farid on, you know, Mona, call me and these are all my really good friends now.

[00:17:18] Amazing. So such a small world?

[00:17:22] Absolutely. Yeah.

[00:17:24] So then you qualified.

[00:17:27] So yes, then eventually in 1993, I qualified. I remember those days. There was no, no. But then she was four and a half years. It wasn’t five years after I qualified. The next graduates came out in 1996, and that’s, I think, when Farid qualified and all the other Iranians I know. So basically, even though vocational training wasn’t compulsory, I decided to do it. But actually, no, I lie. It was I was the first year that vocational training became compulsory, so we had to apply through the deanery and I applied through the Deanery to get a place. But those days the trainers actually chose their trainees and it was unlike what it is now. So I basically had to apply to so many practises who were training practises. I didn’t get a single place because most of the training practises were Indian and they were looking for more Indian dentists.

[00:18:26] I think that was the reason.

[00:18:27] Yeah, definitely, especially in London. It was definitely 100 percent or there were or they had already chosen the dentists they wanted because, you know, they had friends and family who kids had graduated, so they already knew who they want. Yeah. So me not having a dental background, not knowing anyone, I’d been only in UK for about by then for about four and a half years, five years I didn’t have any network, so I called up the deanery. I spoke to Patricia, who was. A lady there, and I said, I have no place because, oh my God, there is a practise in Guildford and also not in Guildford, in Portsmouth, on the Guildford scheme, who doesn’t have a trainee? Would you like to apply there? And I’m like, Where is Portsmouth? I have no idea. So looked it up on the map, showed it to my mum and dad and they said, Oh, it’s near the sea. You know, Iranians love sea, so it’s the seaside. You’re going to love it. Apply. So I went up for an interview, obviously got the place, and I was with a gentleman called Mr Taylor. Amazing man.

[00:19:25] Yes, this is interesting, isn’t it? Because I’ve been saying the first boss, if your first boss is Nicola, you tend to go a long way. So tell us about Mr Taylor, your first boss.

[00:19:34] So Mr Taylor was a very interesting man. He was a very sweet and very easygoing. He thought I was the God’s gift to his practise because I graduated from guys and he had graduated from guys. But he thought I could teach him more than he knew

[00:19:51] Because he before we go any further. That was a pattern, wasn’t it? Guys, people hiring guys be nice people.

[00:19:57] Exactly because it was a bizarre pattern.

[00:19:59] I got a job once and the boss told me, he said, You are the first he’d been there since nineteen sixty four. He said, You are the first dentist I’ve hired is not a guy’s graduate. No way. I can believe glasses guys has a thing like that. Go ahead. Sorry.

[00:20:14] Sorry, guys. So yeah, actually going back to guys, I have to say the first time I could actually understand what everyone was saying was when I heard one of the professors saying that you guys are creme de la creme. You guys are the chosen ones. This is how they used to do it with the guys graduates. Exactly. And anyway, so Mr Taylor, he never wore gloves. He never he didn’t believe in wearing gloves. And I’m like, I was totally shocked. And then I forced him to wear gloves and he would wash the gloves in between patients. So he was very interesting, but technically he was amazing. He taught me a lot of stuff how to, you know, communicate with patients. He told me how to, you know, do major cases without worrying denture work was his, you know, his good subject. So I learnt a lot from him. But after finishing the first year, I realised he wanted to sell his dental practise to me. Believe it or not, at the age of 22, I thought, I don’t want to buy a dental practise. So I said, No, no, no, I don’t want to buy a dental practise. I really have, you know, I need to get out. I wanted to do a house officer post. I knew that I wanted to get back to guys and I said, No, no, I’m not going to do that and I don’t want the same.

[00:21:32] Portsmouth. I’m a Londoner. I wanted to stay in London. I’d only been in London like six years, like in total in the UK, and I wanted to spend more time, you know, in London, creating more bonds and friendships. So I said, No, I’m really sorry. I declined. He was quite upset about it. He he got another trainee for the following year. Then after that he didn’t get any more trainees, and I then ended up backing guys doing a house officer post which one? So I did the Restorative House officer post for six months, which was really good. I did a lot of high needs as well, like HIV clinics and sort of STD clinics where people would come to do their teeth. And we had to have like high infection control and I was under pitfalls as well then dentists as well. So I was very blessed. And I think in guys, we were very blessed because we had really top consultants, you know, Professor Smith Pittsford, we had, you know, the prosthetic section, Mr Campbell, you know, we had such strong people to culinary school. Prof. Scally was there, but he left. When I and I went, he went to Eastman. And so we had really strong consultants. So again, another six months of learning and adding more leadership values to to myself because I had to sort of look after students on the clinic as well.

[00:22:52] You party that.

[00:22:53] Yeah, that. Yet you know what? I still didn’t allow myself to party that much

[00:22:58] Because I did that job, that very restorative house job. No, no, not not English language. Ok, OK. Cardiff. And it was the best year of my life. I I enjoyed that year from the partying perspective, because you’re kind of you’re not kind of a proper dentist yet. Yeah, and you’re not a student anymore

[00:23:16] And you’re having money because you’re getting paid.

[00:23:18] You got you got some money. I just found it the perfect position in between the teachers and the students. You didn’t do. No, I didn’t.

[00:23:27] I thought what I was doing, to be honest with you, shall I tell you something? We did party a lot during uni days and especially with the Iranians who were out in clubbing Iranian clubs and all that all the time. So and then I went to Portsmouth. I had nobody there, but people would come and visit me or come back. But then when when it got to the sort of guys again, it was quite serious again, you know, back to like, Oh my god, I’ve got to speak to this. Listen to this consultant and sort of how to deliver the work, and even though it was easy, it was like a nine to five, sometimes nine to four, you escape early, but I didn’t party that much. I think guys, people don’t party as much as Cardiff did. Maybe, maybe I was in

[00:24:10] The wrong group. It depends on your life. I mean, I see you partying all the time now. Now I do with all your buddies. Oh my god, now I do. Yeah, and and you know, it’s just it’s a time of life kind of issue, isn’t it? You find yourself in a particular situation where everything’s right. For me, it was that six month. How sure would you stop it?

[00:24:30] God, I’m so glad you enjoyed it.

[00:24:32] I did it. So then, OK, you went back. Did that house job felt a bit more confident, I guess.

[00:24:40] Mm hmm. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Much more confident. My language was a lot better. And then at the time, when I did the house job, I realised I really want to do a master’s degree and I said to myself, I have to do the master’s degree. I really liked restorative dentistry, so I then thought I was looking at the pathways and realised I need to do PhDs and to do PhDs, because at the time you had to do PhDs, you had to do 18 months of house jobs to be able to do part two PhDs.

[00:25:08] So I left. Yes, right? Yes. Yeah.

[00:25:11] No, not PhDs. Yeah. And it was quite hard. So I thought, OK, then this is it is what it is, so I have to go for it. So then I applied for oral surgery house aceto post and oh my

[00:25:27] God, I killed my. I hated it.

[00:25:30] I hated it. I hate. How long did you do yours for?

[00:25:33] Six months, six months? It wasn’t. It was house to house job.

[00:25:36] Where were you

[00:25:37] Calling

[00:25:38] Elaine Cardiff? Okay, so I was in Mount Vernon Hospital,

[00:25:42] Which I had excellent.

[00:25:44] Oh my god, it was hard work. Mount Vernon, Hillingdon and joint with Watford and North Vic Park. So we get we got a lot of trauma cases. We got a lot of people suicide doing everything. Bashing faces came to us in in our department and also a lot of oral cancer mouth cancer operations like that. So I had eight months of that month.

[00:26:12] I say show of that, this that must have made a man if you made it one of them.

[00:26:16] That’s made me what I am now. I am not joking with you. That created Nicola Gower. That was it.

[00:26:23] You know, I had I had Alan Berg in the Cornish dentist on AHA, and he he did one of those jobs and he said he adored it, loved it so much, decided to become an implant ologist in that job and all this and I said the exact jobs I hated every moment of it. Yeah, I hated the on court. I hated the

[00:26:42] The uncle was the one in four or one.

[00:26:45] Do you remember one in four one? But it was. It was, you know, in Cardiff when they had a rugby game, people would, especially if it was England, Wales. Yeah, they have massive fights. People would put glasses in the other people’s faces and all of this and I used to I used to hate it. But what we were saying was I would definitely recommend it to anyone to make a man of you because once you’ve done that, nothing else sort of faces you.

[00:27:10] Yeah, obviously, you’re so right. Payman Honestly, it just like I remember the first day, so I joined on a Friday and then they said, You’re on call this weekend and I’m like, Yeah, where do I stay? Where do so? They gave me, they showed me. The accommodation was while walking miles away from the hospital. Mount Vernon Hospital is a spooky place. People say they’ve got a lot of ghosts and all the honesty, and all the wards are separate and they’re all outdoor.

[00:27:38] Which Town is in?

[00:27:39] It is in Northwood. It’s in London, Middlesex, Middle Middlesex. Yeah, so I moved in on Friday to the accommodation and then Saturday I was on quote from Friday night. Yeah, and before that they did a ward round. So I had Gary, who was my registrar, was from New Zealand. He did a ward round with me to show me what to expect for the weekend. So first thing we go, we’re going to burns unit where they treat a lot of burns and there were patients there which were lying on gentamicin on all sorts of funny antibiotics I’d never heard before. And this particular lady shall never forget she was lying on this bed gentamicin being infused into her a lot of leeches on her face because I had done a skin graft for her and the only way where they could get the blood flowing into the skin graft by putting 48 hours of leeches on her skin. Literally the creature needed. And I looked at her and I said, OK, what am I supposed to do? He goes, Well, every four hours you have to check her bloods because gentamicin affects the liver and the kidneys, and we have to do all the blood tests to make sure her kidneys and livers are functioning well. And you have to. Move the leeches around, and I’m like, Are you kidding me? So the nurse looked at me and she goes, Have you done this before? I said, no.

[00:29:04] And she rolled her eyes up and I thought, This is it. I’m in for a long weekend, but that just got better and better. I mean, I was like, it’s just like, you know? And at one point I sat down with my consultant and I said, Why did you hire me? I said, You knew that I have no idea about this. He says, we like people who have no idea because we can’t teach them from scratch. And after six months, I thought, You know what? I can’t do this anymore. I just can’t do this job. This job is killing me. I lost so much weight over this and so much sleepless nights because, you know, learning to put when flaunts in trying to find beds for patients and trauma patients, stitching patients up, you know, with no nurse opening the clinic on your own at three a.m., you know, to bring people into stitch their lips and this and oh my god, how is it going to turn out or they’re going to look OK or disfigured, you know, with my stitching? It was a big learning curve, but when I left the place, I was like, You know what? After 18 months, I said, Nicola, you are now Nicola go. You can actually proudly raise your head, head up and say, You are Nicola. Go now because I went through it all.

[00:30:15] It’s like climbing Everest or something like the actual process is an absolute nightmare. But when you finish it, you look back and say, you just

[00:30:23] Think amazing and you won’t believe at the time minimum, would my husband were dating and we were just sort of just started dating then? And I would tell him to come and stay with me in the accommodation because I was so scared to walk to A&E on my own at two a.m. and he would walk me there. And then to the point where then the consultants realised that that he’s doing this because the security guard said it. And then they said, Why is this happening? I said, because I’m literally scared to walk on my own. And then they they said he can’t do this because he’s not hospital staff. So we’ll get you a security guard because I was literally scared. I was scared to walk. It was a long walk for my comedy. Whoever worked in Mount Vernon, they will sympathise with me. It was a long

[00:31:12] Did you guys meet guys?

[00:31:14] So we met in a party in Guy’s So in Queen Mary. He was studying at Queen Mary at the time and he we had they had an Iranian society there and we had the Iranian society in Guy’s hospital. So then we met through that Iranian society. So of course, he fell in love with me. Then that’s my story. Anyway.

[00:31:39] He pursued you.

[00:31:40] Oh, absolutely. And the rest is history.

[00:31:45] So, OK, you’ve now. Now you’re pretty confident worker. Yeah, you’ve done the restorative job. You’ve done this nightmare that you’ve just discussed. Mm hmm. Now, were you thinking at all? You wanted to? You wanted to get a post-grad, I guess. Yeah. You know, a lot of people don’t do that, but I guess you had your dad to sort of look at in that respect, someone who’s gotten really good at something academic. Yeah, academically, yeah.

[00:32:13] Academic, yeah.

[00:32:14] So was that always? Was that always your plan? Were you always thinking, I’m going to become a specialist of one, some sort like, I’m going to learn more, I’m going to get more education?

[00:32:22] Yeah. I mean, when I first finished Dental School, I didn’t think that I thought, you know, I didn’t even know what I wanted. But as the years went by, I realised that I really I am academic and I realise that I want to. I want to do more. I don’t want to just stop at a BDS. So that’s when I started applying for MSC courses, and that’s when I realised my my journey was to do PhDs and to to be able to get into a master’s degree. So I kept applying from 1996, I kept applying and I kept getting rejected. So I applied to East. When I applied to Queen Mary, I applied to guys. I applied outside London, Birmingham, everywhere I could think of. But I was getting rejected because I didn’t have my PhDs yet. Then I started working in a practise. I don’t know if you remember called Whitecross Dental practises, they were called.

[00:33:11] Yeah, yeah. Do you remember that? Well, yeah. Well, Paul Mendelssohn just passed away.

[00:33:18] Oh no, I didn’t know. Oh, God bless him. He he was a lovely man. I met him a couple of times. Oh, God bless him.

[00:33:26] He was pioneer

[00:33:27] Real. Very honestly. He had the vision. He had the thoughts. He was very driven. And I think the only problem was that he wasn’t there all the time in his practises. And that’s why the practise didn’t do well. But honestly, God bless him. But I learnt so much from from his vision and ethos of running Dental practises and how he wanted to be so up to date and modern. All his practise were really modern, modern. Beautiful. I worked in the Angel Islington branch, which was opposite the station, is still a Dental practise now. And I was there for a year. We had seven dentists there and actually I made really good friends with loads of them are still in touch with them. And then they had loads of balls and, you know, parties and get togethers with all the different branches. And through that, I made a lot of other friends who were then subsequently travelling to Australia. So that’s when in 1997 I travelled to Australia and I stayed in Australia for a year and I worked there as a dentist in doing oral surgery, interestingly in a hospital and I was earning money as well as enjoying myself. That’s when I started partying Payman.

[00:34:40] If you asked me when I

[00:34:41] Started partying, that’s when I started putting the two of you go. Yeah, no, no, no. Just me on my my own. I mean, I we weren’t married then, so I went on my own and we went with I went with a group of my friends, boys and girls, and we all stayed in that accommodation in the hospital. So we had a ball, so it was there. So we stayed in two in three places Brisbane, in in Rockhampton and then in Cairns, up north and then in Cairns. And we did a lot of flying dentists. It’s a big

[00:35:11] Step, a big step to do that

[00:35:12] Step on. What was it?

[00:35:14] What was it? What was it? What were you thinking? I mean, your family were here? Yeah, you’d have been here that long. No. I mean, were you actually thinking you want? You want to have a good time and then travel and see the world?

[00:35:25] You know, my dad, my dad was raised in Australia, of course. Yeah, because he when he was young, his father was an ambassador of India to Australia in Canberra. And my grandfather was a professor in chemistry, but he was an ambassador to the South High Commissioner in Canberra as well for a good couple of years. And they went on a boat from India on a big ship from India to to Canberra, and he did all his studying. That’s why my dad doesn’t have an Indian accent because he was raised in in in in Australia. And then he came. He went to India to do his medicine. So he always taught me so many stories about Australia and I really wanted to see Australia. I really wanted and it was just like back of my mind. And when this opportunity arose and these people were talking about Australia, they’ve got jobs, they’ve got this. Gdc will accept our qualifications. So they all told me, why don’t you come for a month, come for a month, see how it is. You can even get a job for a month, you know, and those things were so easy to get jobs there. Yeah. So I said, OK, they were going earlier. I said, You guys, you register me as a GDC, you know, with my GDC, get my Australian board ship for me. I paid all the money and everything to them, and they gave them all my certified copies of my degrees and everything, and they took it all there. They registered me and then they got me a job. And a month later I went. I flew to flew to Australia. I went to different impression.

[00:36:57] What was your impression of Australia when you got there?

[00:37:00] Very friendly, very nice environment, even though it was winter, but it was amazing. The work ethos was work hard but easy, work smart. So people were extremely friendly, very welcoming.

[00:37:15] I started of dentistry higher there,

[00:37:17] Very high standard high than I think. So I think very high in general. I think it’s very high. They come out of their comfort zone a lot in, you know, in all pretty. It’s all privatised in Australia. They have the hospital based dentists like I was just to do extractions and to do dentures. And maybe Paul picks the patient getting the patient out of pain, but no major cosmetic work and the and the rest is all private dentistry. Everyone’s got dental insurance a bit like America. But I think what the difference was that as a newbie going to Australia, I found them a lot more friendlier than when I first came to the UK in UK. I or maybe because I wasn’t that confident myself when I first came to the UK, I didn’t find the friendly, but when I went to Australia it was very different. I settled in really, really well and finding jobs was so easy to get jobs.

[00:38:16] London, we we think that is such a great city and all that, but it’s one of the most lonely cities in the world.

[00:38:23] It can be, and

[00:38:24] It’s clicked out very much. It’s not centralised. Like it’s not like, I don’t know if you know other towns like Birmingham. Yeah, or Sheffield, these towns, everything’s in one place. Like, if you want to go out, there’s one major area you go right in. In London, it’s very fragmented and this question of how welcoming they were, I think it’s an interesting question here because firstly, you were in a small town in London, some major city. But the how people talk to each other and how people communicate with each other. I mean, I remember in the US, once I sat on a plane, I was going from Los Angeles to Miami like a long flight. Yeah, and the guy who sat next to me as soon as he sat down, he started talking to me. And then and then we talked for six hours or something, and then we ate and slept or whatever. And I thought that I’ve met a soul mate. Yeah, because we’ve spoken for such a long time and straight away and connected and all of this. Yeah. But when the when the plane landed and they said it was like, OK, see you later. Bye. Anyway, you know, I thought we were going to exchange numbers. We were going to become lifelong friends here. And I realised that I talked to my cousin who lives out there, and she said, Look, we’re very quick to get to a certain point, but then very slow to become very close.

[00:39:48] Oh, interesting,

[00:39:49] Which is the opposite of here. Yeah, yeah. At the beginning, everyone’s very standoffish. Yeah. But if they like you, then eventually it’ll be. You’ll come in close to quicker, which is interesting. So that might have been part of the thing. So did you think about staying in in Australia, moving to Australia?

[00:40:06] Was that a good idea? Honestly, every day I was talking about it, I really want to live here. It’s amazing. You know, I was on the beach at two o’clock every day, you know, I was on the beach, were surfing, were doing scuba diving, I became a paddy advanced. You know me, I love, I love to do coasters and things like that. So, yeah, I love to do courses. I love to do stuff like that. So I thought, You know what? Let me do scuba diving now. So I learnt to be a scuba diver. Quite advanced. We did the Great Barrier Reef. I was living a dream, you know, because till then I was studying very hard. I was trying to settle into a new life. But when in 1997, I felt confident, I felt I’ve achieved stuff, I felt I can proudly put my head up and say that I’ve achieved, you know, because I went through all these difficult jobs and everything. And that’s why I was just having. I just let my hair down. Basically, then the real me came out and I met lots of gorgeous, lovely people there who were amazing. I got a lot of job satisfaction because my oral surgery background helped me so much.

[00:41:16] We used to take teeth out from Aborigines up in in the Northern Territory. We flew there to take to take teeth out. So, you know, I got a lot of job satisfaction at the same time. So then my mom called me, I called my mom and I said, Mom, you know, I really love Australia. I think I’m going to stay another couple of months and whatever. And she goes, Oh, OK, whatever. You know, if you’re happy, you know, do you have money? You know the same things parents always say, Are you OK? Are you comfortable with the accommodation? Because those days there’s no face time or anything? I couldn’t show them anything. I said, No mom, everything is fine. I’ve got good accommodation, good friends. So she said, the only thing is we’ve got a letter here saying, you’ve been accepted to Royal London for some courts. Have you applied for something? I said, What? What is it? Can you read it to me? So she read it that I’ve been accepted to do a master’s in clinical dentistry in Royal London Hospital.

[00:42:08] And I said, what I

[00:42:11] Said, when did that letter come? Oh, I only came a few days ago. I said, Mum, that’s like my dream. I said, Why did you keep it from me? She said, Oh, you know, your dad said, Don’t disturb her. She’s having fun. You know, it’s not important. I said, Well, this is like what I’ve been aiming for since 1995, doing all these, you know, PhDs and this and that and house jobs and stuff. I said, Mom, just call them, tell them, I’m coming, I’m coming back to the UK. I’m accepting this job. So my mom says, Are you sure this? I said, Look, mum, I have to do it. I’ve got this is my life. I want to do this master’s degree. But I said, What is the clean? I don’t apply for Emmeline Dental. I applied for MSC, so my mom said, I have no idea. Just do you want to ring them? So I rang them. I spoke to Professor Wright, who was the dean of Queen Mary of Royal London at the time. Lovely, lovely man. And he was doing. They were doing this joint master’s programme with Gary Pollock. I don’t know if you know Gary Pollock, who sadly passed away. Amazing man, one of my role models. I have to say amazing man. And I spoke to them. I said, I have no idea what this programme is. They said it’s a it’s clean. It equals to two masters degrees. It’s not one master’s degree, it’s two years full time. It leads to specialisation and it’s orthodontics, fixed and removable implants, everything in restorative. I said, Oh my God, this is my dream. But they said it’s two years full time, so you’ll you won’t have any income and you’ll probably have to get a loan or whatever. I said, I don’t care. I’m coming

[00:43:42] To just pay for the course

[00:43:44] I had to pay. Yeah, so you pay three. I think at the time was £3000, a term I paid for two years. So nine pounds or two times 18000 and then the cost. Of living, I was living at home anyway, so it was fine, but then I did carry on working in Whitecross on Saturdays to help with the income and also keeping my hand in the dentistry. So I came back, this was I think they told me in August that they accepted me and I came back September, so I wasn’t. I was in Australia for a year. I was there for a year. I came back September 1998 back to UK and I started Dental programme. I was the second batch to do the clean dance programme. It was all on site, nothing sort of online or anything. Everything was hands on full on everything, lab work, everything. And I had two amazing people with me, Jaubert, which I don’t know if you know him and Fortis Malus and they’re my best friends, best friends for life because they they we were together. We studied together day and night, and we did a lot of work together, a lot of lab work together. We were and we passed together. So it was a it was an amazing two years of my life and I finished that in two year, 2000 difficult calls. Yeah, very, very, very, very difficult. Of course. Very difficult course. Very integrated, very pressurised. We had to do loads of stuff like, you know, you know, things coming out of your comfort zone again every time and, you know, treatment planning for mouth, the full mouth cases,

[00:45:25] Lab work as well.

[00:45:26] Yeah. And we did all the lab work ourselves, which is to be honest with you, Payman. That is the key to a good dentist, I think, to do the lab work like nowadays. Unfortunately, undergraduates don’t get to do a lot of lab work, and they don’t get to do a lot of hands-on dentistry when they’re undergraduates and it reflects on their work. It does reflect for me the lab work I did in guys. The lab work I did during my Emmeline Dent actually established my dentistry because now when I look at restorative work, I know before I’ve even fitted them in the patient’s mouth, I know what’s going to be wrong. I know it, I can see it. And also, if something is wrong, I can rectify it. So I don’t know if you did a lot of lab work in Cardano, you did.

[00:46:11] We had we did some. I remember one, there was one one crown where I had to. The patient was coming in or something and I just went to a lab and I paint the lab to make.

[00:46:24] I love it. I love it.

[00:46:26] But it was one kind of like that.

[00:46:29] Which year did you graduate?

[00:46:31] 96 Oh, you graduated ninety one. You said the first year that was the five.

[00:46:37] Yeah, OK, so you aged 96? Yeah. So, you know, so I’m clean. Dental was again a turning a turning corner for me because it pushed me more into knowing that I want to actually be academic. I love I love academia and also I love teaching. It made me feel that I really the love of teaching grew in me because we were teaching undergraduates when we were in Queen Mary in Royal London. And that said, sort of my other bit came out that, OK, I love teaching as well.

[00:47:09] So I’d imagine unimagined someone who’s done all of that. Hmm. Would then go straight into private practise. Hmm. So, yeah, I did.

[00:47:19] So I the way so I started working at four boots, boots, Dental care.

[00:47:24] When that’s done.

[00:47:25] Yeah, yeah. So I started working for Boots. Boots at the time opened up millions of dental practises. One of them was a specialist practise in Watford and some were called Harlequin Centre, which now has changed his name to into and I. It was a huge practise multidisciplinary had orthodontics, had oral surgery or so everything, and I met some lovely people. Mark Hamburger, Brett Lefkowitz, who were essential in starting off my implant career and as I met them, started working with them and in that same practise I met a guy called Anvar Omar and where it was amazing, he was a foundation trainer, but he had recently sold his practise and he started working for boots. So there were some top people working with me at the time, and I was learning and learning a lot from them, observing them, and I didn’t have a patient. I would go into their room and I would observe. And South African dentists are amazing Payman. Honestly, their work is just superb. So I was going in, observing them, looking at their work, getting lots of tips, you know, and always learning. So one day hour came to me on at the time. By that time, I was married and I was pregnant with Jasmine, my first baby. So and Mike came to me and said, Nicola, I’ve got a story to tell you. I said yes on my tell me because look, I sold my practise in burnt oak. But I am originally South African and I. Want to go back to South Africa because my parents are there and my children want to move out of UK, so I’m going, I’m going back to South Africa and maybe Australia.

[00:49:03] But when I sold my practise, he said with the money because he didn’t want to pay the lot of tax he opened up, he got a place in Harrow Field, where was a computer shop. Yeah, he painted it and he put a dental chair in there and he said, This is Harold. We’ll Dental practise OK, no patients, nothing but just to be able to use his money a bit before he’s deciding what he’s going to do. And he said that a lot of patients have expressed their interest to come of my old patients to come to this practise. But he said, really, I’m on a time limit and I want to go back to go to South Africa. So he goes, Why don’t you come on, set up your own practise here, you’ve got all the knowledge, you’ve got all the skills I can see you’re driven. And I’m like, Anwar, can you see me? I’m eight months pregnant. And I do. I really want to do this. I spoke to Mahmoud and he said, Well, let’s at least go and see the place. I said, I don’t even know where Harold Weald is because it’s near summer. I said, I don’t know where Stanmore is. He said, Just come anyway. We we went, we went there and we had to look literally. It was an empty room, one Dental chair in the centre, and that was it. I said, Anwar, this is not a dental practise, he said. But you can make it. It’s a squat practise. You can make it. So I spoke to Mahmoud, and Mahmoud said, This is your opportunity.

[00:50:27] Come on, do it. You always wanted a dental practise. I said, I’m working. I’m going to have a baby. He goes, So what? We’ll help each other. At the time, Mahmoud was in computers. He was working for a Japanese investment bank and he was a contractor. And I said, But you’re so busy how I’m going to do this because just let’s go for it. So anyway. I think it was like exchange a little small amount of money, like 20 grand or something like that with Anwar. And we got the practise. We got the practise in two thousand and three, 2002, 2003, something like that. We we set up and we started working and I set up the practise. We made it into one surgery. We started off with Anwar’s original patients who and I spoke so nicely about me that they all wanted to come and see me. They didn’t even know me, started off with them. Then word of mouth got bigger and bigger. We did absolutely zero marketing the practise build up. Then I needed to get another surgery and we built another surgery in there. And all this time then I had my second baby and all this time was getting busier and busier. So I brought in. We made another surgery, so we converted into a three surgery practise, got more nurses, more staffing. And then it got to a point where I said to my, You know what? You need to be more Dental, more Dental, because this way it’s not going to work. You’re doing your contracting. I’m having to run two kids. The business is so difficult, especially when it’s squat practise.

[00:51:55] It’s interesting because up to this point, you were being your dad. Yeah, but now it sounds like you’re being your mum, right?

[00:52:01] Yeah, exactly. So, you know, you change hats all the time. And then I said, I need another dentist as well. I can’t operate like this. So we brought in some associates they didn’t work out. Unfortunately, at the end, I said, You know what? My sister then qualified as a lawyer and my and her boyfriend at the time, Payman qualified as a dentist from Queen Mary. And then it said, all patients looking for a job, you know, and at the time, you could still choose your vet. So why don’t you apply to be a vet trainer to me? My sister said that and I said, Ninette, you know, I’ve just given birth who want, you know how I hadn’t even given birth? I said, OK, for the second child, I said, OK, let me apply. Let’s go. So I applied for it. I got an interview. I was interviewed by several people who are quite high up in the ordinary. At the time they looked at me, they said, Are you sure you can handle this? I said, I can handle anything just, you know, I’d love to be a trainer. I got the post and Payman was my first trainee and he came in.

[00:53:06] He started working in surgery too, and he was there all the time. Amazing, amazing clinician and Ninette helped me on reception because then at the time, Mahmud got a position as a dental therapist to study back in Royal London again to study as a dental chair, to become a dental therapist. Because I pushed him so much, I said, Please go and do something related to dentistry. So Payman comes in to be my trainee, Ninette says. I’ll help you on and off because she had just finished a law degree was applying for low places law firms, she said, I can help you on and off on reception and you can hire staff and Mahmood can go back to university. So Mahmood was, I think, 40 41 at the time, something like that. He went. Man, he went back to uni. I had two young kids under the age of two, under the age of three, and one was my first trainee. Honestly, again coming out of my comfort zone. Yeah, it was not easy, but it was an interesting journey.

[00:54:13] And you said this was a mainly NHS situation,

[00:54:16] So this was mainly NHS. We had at that time was fee per item. It wasn’t like what the contracts we have now. So whoever came in would pay. But then we had some things which we would do privately like composites. I remember that, but mainly an NHS practise. So I came out of boots and left boots just in time, to be honest with you, because Boots got sold with one penny exchange. Unfortunately, the corporates didn’t do well at the time. Whitecross didn’t do well boots and do well, but but I learnt so much from boots. Everything I do now in my practise or the compliance or the stuff like Stitch, you see stuff I learnt very early on in year 2000, 2001, 2002 from Boots. Boots was running their practise. Really, you know, compliance was on top of their list. Yeah, and the materials, the equipment, intra oral camera, everything was digitised. So when I came into opening this practise, I was the first practise which had digital technology.

[00:55:21] So x rays,

[00:55:22] Digital x rays we had Kodak for we want. We were one of the first practises to have Kodak or four installed into the practise and digital x rays, the scanner, a Vista scan. We were the first one of the first practises and I kept pushing me, Niccolo, you can do this and I was amazing. I have to say one of my role models and my Omar, and we’re still very much in touch. And he always he always praises me on everything I do. He he’s really role model me a lot, and he was the one who would was enticing me. Come on, Nicola, you can do it. He’s actually who pushed me to open up my practise from squads and leave boots, he said. Leave it, you’ve got too much skills to work for someone. You’ve got to work for yourself.

[00:56:06] Do you remember? Do you remember the time it went from surviving mum to actually it’s paying the bills and it’s, you know, it’s actually fun to go to work. And how long did it take to go from one to the other? Um, because in the beginning, yeah, so hard in any business, isn’t it? Is.

[00:56:24] It is hard, I think. I mean, like you, you know you, you opened up your new business. Everything is risky. You know, everything is such a you’ve got to take a risk. But if you have a bit of a backup, then it’s not so much of a risk. It’s a challenge. So because Mahmoud at the time was working and we had income, we had backup. So it wasn’t like, Oh, we

[00:56:48] Going to put food on the table

[00:56:50] Exactly so we could pay our mortgage. You could pay our bills. And this was like more like a vacation for me is my dream. Let’s do it, you know, a bit like everything else I’m doing now in my life, you know, it’s a dream. But then if it pays, why not, you know? And then the only time it became reality that, oh my god, I’m now putting the food on the table is when Mahmoud actually became a student and he he left his work, so income was then all up to the practise. We had to earn money from the practise to survive, and that is when it got a bit shitty. But at the time I had a trainee, so I had a bit of income from the from NHS because of that. And also I was working more full time because the kids were a little bit older and so it was easier. So it all happened at the right time. But you can never say that you’re always out of out of the cold water, if you know what I mean, you’re always in it because being self-employed, it’s always up and down. Yeah, isn’t it until you really get established? So even now that I’m really established, I’ll still have my moments where I do worry, you know, income coming in, you know, my patients look, have my diary marketing. You know, you do worry all the time, I think being self-employed. And that’s why sometimes I just think nurses are so lucky and my, you know, staff are so lucky. They get their money at the end of the month and they don’t have to worry about anything. But whereas practise owners and self-employed people are always concerned that, you know, where are we going to be OK for the next, I don’t know, three years, four years, you know, so that projection always is in your mind

[00:58:31] And we talk about these different hats. The clinician. The teacher and mentor and now, you know, the business side that you’ve just discussed the management bit. Mm hmm. Which one of them do you like the most? Or do you like the mix? Well, by the way, you’ve got several others, would you?

[00:58:52] Author Yes, exactly. Author And also, I have my association now. British-iranian Dental Association.

[00:59:00] Ok, there you go. Yeah, yeah. Of course. I forgot to mention that

[00:59:03] I think

[00:59:03] We’re to beaches, which is your worst. Where’s really your passion? Is it in the Meccano? Like the fitting the full mouth rehab together and happy patients smiling, you know? By the way, myself, I used to love patients.

[00:59:17] Yeah, patients.

[00:59:18] Yeah, you know, I stopped dentistry 10 years ago and I missed patients. Do you really? I don’t miss teeth. Yeah, I do miss patients. No. So what is it for you now?

[00:59:28] So for me, I mean, it’s interesting how you say you miss patients because with patients you do build up friendship, you know, and you you learn a lot from them. And I do miss patients, but I have to also add to this that patients have become very difficult now, very demanding. And I think COVID has had a big long term effect on this, you know, and people want things now, especially with social media, the pressure of things like Deliveroo delivers instantly. You know you, you click on a button and you have your clothes in a package from Amazon. You know, people are like this now. Payman. I don’t know if you realise that, but everybody is instant. Why didn’t you reply to my email? I emailed you last night. Why didn’t I get a reply?

[01:00:12] It’s interesting. I know, I know that people are like that, but I hadn’t thought about the effect of it on dentists. It’s very interesting. So you’re seeing COVID itself is made people more. Absolutely. It’s because they like that

[01:00:24] More edgy people are much more edgy. I don’t know if anybody else would agree with me, but people are far more edgy. They’re much more demanding and they they want they pay. They want it, you know, and they feel as a paying person, they should have it now deserve it. They deserve it. Exactly. And delivering that is hard. You know, you’ve got to be on top of everything. Your Google reviews have to be good. Your Instagram has to be good, your presence has to be good. You know, you’ve got to show what that you are good at this and and on and off media, you’ve got to be the same. So a lot of my social media pages of my patients come from social media and, you know, they come in and it’s so hard to be on and off social media to be the same. Sometimes they’re not having a good day, you know, maybe you’re not that fun logo. Maybe you’ve had a rough day. Maybe someone sick in your family. Maybe something’s happened. Is affected your mood, you know? So, you know, it’s a low pressure, most people.

[01:01:23] It’s interesting that you noticed social media and capitalised on it at at, at our age. You know, when I would say that when you talk to people of of your generation and my generation, many of them don’t even do social media. No. But you, you saw it. You saw it for what it was.

[01:01:43] Yeah. I mean, for me, social media is a platform to engage people and I I see myself as a role model. I don’t want to portray myself as I’m the best dentist in the world or I’m the best, but I want to say I want to teach people what worked for me will work for you. You know, do it this way. This pattern worked for me. Take a little snippet out of it. Maybe it will work for you as well. And that’s all I care about. It’s not about showing, Oh, my composite is the best or my practise is the best or I’m the best person. But I want I want to leave like a legacy behind. So when I leave this world, which eventually all of us will, I want people to say, Oh my God, I learnt that from Nicola. Go there. It’s good to have empathy. It’s good to listen to people, you know, to leave that alone.

[01:02:34] Why?

[01:02:35] Because I’ve seen a lot of my loved ones past pass away, and I just I feel like if you don’t leave anything behind, you get forgotten, you get forgotten. And also what I think is every one of us have good things in our head. Why not share it so the next generation can benefit from it? You know, if you don’t share stuff, then then it’s invaluable. It’s not going to go anywhere, it’s going to go underneath that ground. So why not get it out in the open earlier on? And then if people want to then ask you stuff, they can come to you because you’re still alive?

[01:03:12] I had a conversation with family that. Yeah, I was I was asking him about, you know, when I see you guys on on social, you’re having such a great time partying all the time. Yeah. And I said, I said to him, Well, all these people, you’re partying with dentists. Yeah. And he said, Yeah, yeah. Mainly they are. And he said, Oh, mainly they’re, you know, regular dentists, you know, regular people. But you said, Nicola, she wants to be the prime minister. I don’t think he really meant you wanted to be prime minister, but there is something in you that wants to like, leave, leave a mark. Yeah. Or, you know, they make a difference.

[01:03:50] I love reaching out to people. People tell me you sold her a wheeled dental practise, which was your baby in 2009. For various reasons. We had to sell it. And they say, But you still there. It’s 2021 and you’re still there and you have another practise. You could have easily moved into that practise. And one of the main reasons Payman, which you might laugh at me, was that I just love training. I love to train the young generation. And I knew by staying in Hyrule Field is my only opportunity because I didn’t have an NHS contract in my Tortorici Dental studio, which I am, which is all practise. I don’t have it, and to get an NHS contract wasn’t easy. So I knew I should stay in Herrold. And also I knew that I have a good pool of patients who are here, who who are going to keep my income going. And also sunny was my foundation trainee. So what better than that? He’s already looking up to me is my trainee. I was his trainer, so you know, and everybody in the practise knows me. So why leave, you know, just cut down the hours? And I knew that by carrying on being a foundation trainer, this will give me the platform to do other valuable things to do.

[01:05:12] And I did. And now I’m receiving all the fruits, you know, 12 years down the line. All the fruits are coming to me now and that this is something that I’m trying to get across to everyone. I said, You have to give yourself time to grow. You cannot grow in one day. You can’t plant a seed and and seed next year, that’s grown. It takes time. It takes time for things to grow. And now I have grown and I still have room for growing. There’s lots I need to do still, but persevering and persevering with training, even though I don’t get no money from it because I’m not the practise principal. I’m just the tutor there. But it wasn’t the money side for me. It was just persevering and giving myself time to grow as a teacher, to grow as a person. It helped me towards running, writing the book that I wrote, and without that, I wouldn’t have been able to do that. But going back to your original question is that which one is the better thing for you, like teeth running a business marriage? You know, being a mother, to be honest with you, the whole package is it’s exciting for me, and it’s been a very challenging road, really challenging, challenging a lot of ups and downs.

[01:06:30] And you know, the way it is dropping kids to school, picking them up at the right time, homework. This at the same time running a business staff call in sick. You don’t have a nurse to work with. You know, there’s so many challenges along the way, but I’ve always met the right people. I’ve always been blessed to work with the right people. Maybe part of it is because I don’t see them as my staff, I see them as family and we work really well together. I have a lot of respect for the people I work with, and maybe that makes them feel that the business is this. And a lot of my staff feel that the business actually belongs to them rather than to me. And they sometimes tell me off for overspending for this that and I love that. And when my nurse yesterday told me I was actually looking forward to coming back to work with you, you know how I felt. I felt like a Million Dollar Woman, you know? So for me, the whole package is good. I can’t say which one is better.

[01:07:27] I think the word you used respect is actually an excellent word with regards to the way you should deal with your staff, your people and your juniors, because often that’s one of the things that goes out of the window. And you know, one thing I’ve noticed about staff, and now we’ve got quite a large, huge number compared to before. Yes. And it’s something that COVID taught me very well is that you’re not you’re not hiring the body, you know, it’s not like the person doesn’t have to be there at that time. And and, you know, I don’t own that person. I’ve got to win that person’s mind and heart. And, you know, if the person sitting. In my office on the computer from 9:00 to 5:00, I’ve got no, no idea what he’s up to really. I don’t want I don’t want to know, even if I try to go and look or whatever. Yeah, you know, I’ve got to win his mind and heart. But and and Kobe’s been interesting in that respect because now most of our teams, they come in one day a week and even now, now they’re not coming in at all. So everyone’s working from home. True. And it’s interesting. The word respect is absolutely right.

[01:08:41] And I see you on social media Payman. And you know, you’re a lovely guy. You are very humble. You are very sort of matter of fact about your business. You’ve done so well. You know, you’ve done amazing. I mean, I look at you and I just think, you know, you are such a great role model for a lot of people. And you’ve done honestly and you have done so well. You came out of dentistry, you started this business and you were there everywhere, and you’ve got time for everyone when I saw you back. You know you were so down to earth, humble talking to everybody. This is a great gift. This is like, this is a gift. And this is like, you know, you’re a true gentleman and you should never change, never change. Because this is a gift that not many people have, you know? And and also you are humble about it. And I think you you role model a lot of younger generation in the fact that you don’t want to be aggressive, you know, you don’t have to be arrogant about stuff.

[01:09:42] You know, you enjoy that, too. I think I think it’s a privilege. You know, Nicola, watching these guys, I mean, you must feel so proud when you see Kish. Yeah. Hmm. What was he like? What was Kish and Jin? I mean, did you know Jin back then as well?

[01:09:56] Yeah, of course. Yeah.

[01:09:57] What was it like back then? Were they the same as they are now?

[01:10:00] Oh my God, they are hilarious. Party animals want to party all the time. I mean, they were not serious. At one point, Kish hated dentistry.

[01:10:11] So for the audience, for the audience kitchen jin from the Smile Dental, Smile Academy and all that. So now what is it? Nine practises or something?

[01:10:20] Yeah, so they are no more in their portfolio. Yeah, I think it’s about 12 or 15 or yeah, they’re doing, Wang says.

[01:10:29] The academy, they’re doing so much, they’re doing something. But yeah, they cited you as a major mentor, major influence.

[01:10:36] They’re always so kind. Honestly, Jin and Keshav are always so kind. I always tell them, I said that you guys never forget me and you always, like, have me there on a pedestal. And I said, I don’t know what good I’ve done to deserve this because they’re always talking such lovely things about me, and I’m very blessed to have them in my life. But with Jin and Kish, they were, you know, they qualified, you know, they failed and they had to retake. Then they fell into my batch of training of a so blessed. And when Kish first came to see me, a poor boy, he wanted to serve, he came to see me just to say Hello, how are you before he? He started with me and I said, Stay, I’ve got a really interesting case, so watch the case. We finished at nine p.m. Yeah. And his mom kept calling him, Where are you? Kish Dinner’s cold. Whatever, mom, I can’t talk to you now. And he was really trying to impress me. Anyway, he did his training with me and everything. After a year or so, he stayed on in the practise and then he goes, Doctor God, I really don’t like dentistry. I’m thinking of going into properties, and I just find it very boring. I said, No, you can’t do that, whatever.

[01:11:42] Anyway, I said, No, no, no, no, you’ve got to learn more. Please don’t do that. Hang on for another year. And then him and Jin for some odd reason decided to do a master’s degree. So they enrolled for PG third course. And then because they were there together, I think they enticed each other to do more and more. So he did his PG cert and he did his diploma, and then he goes, That’s it. I don’t want to do any more. I’m fed up with this is enough. I said, Look, you’ve come this far, just do the Masters. It’s only another year, a dissertation. Just do it. I’ll help you. And he goes, Oh no, I don’t feel like I want to do it. I said, Just do it. So he then went on to do that as well. And then after that, the rest is your story. The story you see, you know, they got stronger. That Masters built Kish. What it he is now. He became much more confident they became to like dentistry because he was doing more courses, so he was learning more. You know, so what I’m trying to say is that for me, my mentality is never give up on people. When people come to me and they say they hate dentistry, they can’t do this, they can’t do that.

[01:12:48] I said, Look, just do it, I’ll be here for you. I’ll help you. And if they believe that I can help them and support them, they actually do it. And they they do really well. Not because I’m there. I hardly did anything for Kishwer Jain, but I think that support means a lot and and I’m just so proud of them. So, so Prav. They’ve done so well. And, you know, I teach on the smile now I. Used to therapists for teeth whitening icon and some cosmetic work, and I see how these Kishan Gin works so hard to run these courses that they’re all the time, that they’re all the time, that every weekend, sometimes three days in a row and then they’re off to Manchester, then they’re off to hear they’re they’ve done really well and actually was my angelic wife, was my associate for a while. So she’s a lovely, lovely girl as well. So they’re they’re family now. Payman, you know, I don’t look at them as my most of my trainees are like my family. They know everything about me. You know, they know everything about me. They I ask them for help. I help them, they help me. And you know, I’ve built up a really good network of really like minded people around me. I feel really blessed.

[01:13:56] Leaders. I mean, I find it difficult to ask this question now because, you know, you’re such a positive person, but I kind of want to talk about darker days. Yeah, and I know your time is limited. So there’s a couple of questions that I want to finish up. Go ahead. Let’s talk about your most difficult patient, your most difficult situation. The situation where you feel like you could have played it better so that we can all learn from it.

[01:14:20] So it was just only recently, actually. You know, I’ve had a lot of difficult patients, a lot of difficult patients. And so everybody has, I’m sure in your career when you were doing dentistry, you came across people, but somehow or other with good communication, with empathising, I managed to solve scenarios and it didn’t sort of extend or get worse. But lately I find patients are a bit more tricky. As I said with COVID and things, I find them a bit more trickier. But I had a case just before Christmas last year. A patient came to see me and he wanted me to fix the fixed retainer for him on his tooth. And when I had to look in his mouth, the fixed retainer wasn’t actually working well. It was actually pushing his teeth. And I said to him that I’m not happy to push to fix this fixed retainer for you because I believe that your your ortho has relapsed and I believe that the orthodontist has to have a look at this. And if I stick your retainer back on, it’s actually making things worse. And I said, Let me take a picture of of it to show you so you know, those big mirrors. I said, I’m going to take a picture with this. I’ll put it in his mouth. Take a picture. That’s when he flew off the handle. He started being a bit abusive and not not coherent. He wasn’t listening to what I was saying, and he was, you know, want to arrogant a bit of arrogance. He wanted me to stick the the thing on, and I said, Look, I think breakdown of communication is better if you leave the practise.

[01:15:51] It was about 7:30 at night was just before Christmas last year, and I said it’s better if you leave the practise. He goes, Well, I’ve got a lot of Dental friends who won’t agree with you, and they would have not taken a photo. I’ve never heard anyone take photos of people’s teeth. And I said, OK, fair enough. I said, Whatever you wish, it goes, I’m going to complain about you. I said, Look, if you feel that way, then that’s fine. I can’t stop you, but I’m not going to stick this on because it’s not in your best interest and I prefer if you see your orthodontist. He laughed. Of course, I think the same night he complained to GDC. And unfortunately, a couple of months later, I got the GDC letter, the dreaded GDC letter. The first time ever in my whole 30 years of career and I felt bad. I felt horrible. I felt like I’m a really awful dentist. I felt like, Oh my god, I’m training all these graduates, all these youngsters, they’re looking up to me every day. I’m getting five or six messages on my Instagram about the book. The book had just recently been published. I felt like a failure. It really affected me. Payman to the point like, I must stop dentistry. I’m probably really bad. The complaint was that Nicola Gall put the mirror in my mouth. She took a picture. Nobody takes pictures of people’s teeth. And the other complaint was that I didn’t stick the retainer on. So anyway, I had everything I gave it all to.

[01:17:18] Dental protection Dental protection passed over to GDC. I was distraught for six weeks, got the letter back saying that it’s just been destroyed because such a case just just has been thrown out. It’s not. It’s not a case, but I learnt a lot of lessons from it. You know, one lesson was that maybe I should listen to people better to patients more, you know, maybe my receptionist should actually take in better, like understanding of the situation so we can explain more on the phone that come on. You know, maybe the dentist may not be able to do the work, so don’t make promises where we can’t achieve. And the third one was that, you know, show the patients what you’re going to do because sometimes for us, it’s easy. Like, I’m just going to take a picture, bring the camera out and take a picture. But people are not aware of these things, you know, so maybe show them, are you? Happy for me to take a picture, even though I did say it, but maybe, maybe he didn’t understood standards, so I took it as a positive thing, even though it affected my life for good six to eight weeks to the point that I just like, really wanted to cut down clinical dentistry. But I think it really it really helped me and I tell the story to everyone, you know, let’s learn lessons. Let’s learn from any complaint we get. We must learn a lesson. Otherwise it’s pointless. All that worrying so that that was the main thing that in my whole career, I have to say,

[01:18:46] Would you really say that’s your low point of your career?

[01:18:49] That was one of the low points. The other low points of my career was when I had to. I was forced to sell Harry wheeled. That was that was and I was forced by my bank to sell it because it was during the recession. And a Bank of Ireland who I had my loan with was going downhill as they were approaching all their clients to give their money back because they were trying to keep their head above water and they wanted the clients to pay the money back. And I had a loan of about maybe 200000 with them still. And I just could not overnight give that money to them and they want. They gave me a week and they had threatening letters from solicitors and it was a mess. It was a mess and I tried to raise money here and there was raising fifty grand here, 50 grand, but nobody had £200000 to give me for, you know, within a week. Maybe if they had waited for six months, I could have done that. So you got to the point where I had to approach people to buy the practise from me and whoever could manage to buy the practise in a short space of time to raise the money. And because my practise was so everything was so up to date in terms of due diligence, I actually saw the practise within two months.

[01:20:05] Must have been heartbreaking.

[01:20:06] It was. I cried every day. I cried every every day because you heard all the challenges I had. Yeah, atop the business. And it was even now when I talk about it, it has been a really it was a very low point for me in my life and for Mahmoud as well, because by then he was a therapist. He was working, you know, and to give up everything we had worked so hard for and all the sacrifices we had made. And you know, it was very difficult. I mean, unfortunately, along the way, we broke a few bonds with people because of this, you know, maybe the staff, maybe they said nobody could understand. Now I can talk about it more openly. But at the time, people couldn’t understand the pressure I was under. It was a lot of pressure, and I think that was another low point in my career.

[01:20:57] What was the gap? What was the gap between selling the Harrow practise and opening the Potteries? The price?

[01:21:02] There was no gap because already TouchWiz was running. I just thought it was two months old. Oh, three months old then? Yeah, but we had zero patients. We had no patients in there. It was running. It was we had set up the city

[01:21:15] With a different bank. Top three.

[01:21:17] Yes, with Lloyds,

[01:21:19] Luckily,

[01:21:19] Yeah. But the thing is because that one was just on a rent basis. So you were just paying rent. I didn’t need a loan either. I had money to set it up, so it wasn’t like or I had to borrow my I didn’t borrow from a bank for two or three. Oh, did you? No, I haven’t borrowed from a bank. I set that up because I was so much. Later in my career, I had some money to set up to trade and pay money. We were able to manage the monthly rents and the bills, but and also to buy the initial equipment and material. We have money for that, but I didn’t have £200000 to pay a Bank of Ireland. Otherwise, I would have kept both practises. But maybe things happen for a reason. Payman, you know, it gave me more family time when I sold Taraweeh, it gave me. We took a two month sabbatical break. We went to Ibiza. We did loads of wedding. You know, international weddings of friends was happening. Spend money on myself, you know, it happened for a reason. And now when I look back, you know, everything in our life, Payman happens for a reason.

[01:22:25] How many kids have you go to?

[01:22:27] Two young girls, Jasmine, who’s 20, and a young ladies now. And Lily, she just turned 18 and we went to New York for her birthday. Just came back from New York.

[01:22:39] Did you not encourage either of them to do dentistry? No.

[01:22:44] You know, I did. I did encourage them. Initially was my dream. Do dentistry. I love you to do dentistry. But dentistry has become a very hard career now. I feel it’s not a nine to five job anymore. It’s not as flexible as people think it is. You take it home, you worry about it, you know, and the business side is hard as well. I would have loved them to be dentists because they have up and running dental practise. They have me. I could have helped them with their career, have network, you know, in dental schools, they would have known them because of dentistry. In a nutshell, it would have been so much easier for them dentistry. But they don’t like it. They don’t like dentistry. Why should I push them? Maybe as a second degree, they might do it. But when Jasmine said she’d rather do pharmacy and then eventually go into facial aesthetics because you can, as a pharmacist, I said, why not? And she can be a prescriber and she can do very well and choose her hours and not work so hard like I do. And Lily, she doesn’t like dentistry or medicine or anything like that, and she just doesn’t know yet what she was. Maybe a bit of psychology, maybe low. So I’m just going to let them do what they want as their initial degrees. If the second degree they say, Oh, actually, you know what? Mom really liked dentistry, then let them do it because then they won’t blame me. If things go

[01:24:07] Wrong, that’s the right approach,

[01:24:09] Isn’t it? Yeah.

[01:24:11] How about the book dentist, in a nutshell? How did it come about? And Dr Raby, a man who we’re having on this show soon as well, your co-host. How did you meet her and how did this all happen?

[01:24:22] So it all boils back down to me being a trainer when I was a trainer, I was every year teaching this. So I’ve been a trainer since 2003. Yeah, until now. Never had a gap in between. Thank God, and hopefully I won’t. I want to carry on being a trainer till I can. So I was teaching everything with tips. And, you know, every time I went on a course, the tips would be adding up. And you know, everything I teach them is like a cocktail of everything I’ve learnt throughout my career from oral surgery, cosmetic, my M.S., my my experience in dentistry. So when it got to one of my trainees called Kavita, I said to Kavita, Look, Kavita, this is like going back to 2019. I said, I think it’s better. If I rewrite things down and make it into flowcharts, it’s easier to learn. And she goes, Sure, how would you like me to do that? I said, So let’s start with bridge prep. Can you put that into a flowchart and write it down? Like from from the moment that we’ve treatment plant to putting study models, topical L.A. consent forms, you know everything. Let’s do it in a flowchart, she goes, OK, I’ll try. So she did it on words, and she showed it to me and I said, Brilliant, let’s do the next one on Crown. Let’s do the next one on either an immediate dentine ceiling. So we started doing flowcharts and I got a pool of paperwork together. Then I was looking at it. One day I said, Oh my God, I should make it into a logbook. So for my next trainee, it’s easier to teach. So I started putting it into a logbook and then and then I looked at it. I thought this would make a good

[01:26:00] Book,

[01:26:02] And then I looked on and I was like looking and searching. Like, what else to write? So I said, OK, we’re going to have different chapters restorative this that and the workload was getting too much. I thought, You know what? Let me let me find someone who’s so passionate about dentistry like I am. Then I started thinking of all my trainees. I know everybody was busy and busy with small academy. Kavita was helping me anyway with this stuff. The other trainees that were doing, they had implants or so. Most of my trainees have done a master’s degrees now, and they’re very busy in their own practises. So I looked on Instagram. I came across Rabiya, which I was following at the time, and she was like talking all about her cases in surgery. Similar to what I was doing. I thought, she’s really a mini me. I really like her. So I messaged her on Instagram. I said, Rabia, I have a small project I’m working on. I really want your help. And she goes, Well, what is it you want me to do? I said, Just come over because I don’t even know what I want you to do. Just come over, say she. She said, Where are you at her? She goes, Oh, I live in Harrow. I’ll come. So she came to her, revealed she had to look at this because, oh my god, yeah, let’s do it so fun. You know, whatever I said, I don’t know if it’s going to be a book or what. It’s a project. Let’s just work on it. So we started working on it together and eventually it hit.

[01:27:23] Eventually, she fell pregnant. She was very sick. She couldn’t do any more work, and then she then turned around, she bought a dental practise, then it became COVID and then everything just fell apart. So we wrote some of it, some chapters randomised. We made it into chapters, but it wasn’t nothing major. Then during COVID, we did a bit more together, which we had time. We organised all the chapters and stuff. And then it hit Christmas time, Christmas time. By then, Pouillon, my current trainee, had started to work with me. I said to puja, You’re so good at, you know, tech stuff, which I’m so bad at. Can you help me like, tidy these flowcharts up and put photos for stuff? And he goes, Yeah, of course. Tell me what to do. So he started helping me. And then by then I had also established Peter British-Iranian Dental Association and I had a committee. One of the people on my committee, who was my secretary, the secretary, his name is Millard Miller. And he is a year Dental graduate from Glasgow. You met him in VCD. Yeah. And he you did meet him. And he said, I said to him that, you know, he said, I can’t help you as well on this. It’s such a good project because I wanted him to proofread it because it’s in Dental school and I thought it’s going to help, you know, because he’s quite up to date. So I said, can you help proofreading it? So it started proofreading it, and he goes, The doctor goes, There’s lots more we can add to the book.

[01:28:50] I’m happy to help you. So then I said, OK, why not? Then again, it hit COVID time with lockdown, and in my family, everyone got COVID. Last Christmas really badly, especially Mahmoud porting his oxygen levels dropped to seventy eight. He was awful. I mean, we didn’t take him to hospital. I nursed him myself to recovery with oxygen and everything else. And anyway, so we were on Zoom, day in, day out, day in, day out, over Christmas, over January and we it up a lot worked on it. Pouyanne Miller were really, really good at, you know, helping me organising it, giving a bit more oomph. And polio was amazing at finding publishers and editing and publishing the book. And both boys helped me with with helped us with the marketing side and Instagram videos and putting the stuff together and like, we had plans of how we’re going to move this forward and eventually release it. So really, this book is a product of teamwork, is a product of unity, is a product of trust. It’s not just it was my project for four. I would say six months. I shared it with Robbie. Robbie helped me a lot on it. And then eventually we brought Pouillon Miller in, who actually finished it and helped helped us finish it and get it to where where it is now. So I would never say it’s just my book. This is our book. It’s a team team effort, and we had a group of specialists who actually peer reviewed it as well, and everyone’s been acknowledged. So again, another blend of luck.

[01:30:28] And now I love your your your stories tend to always go around. You inspired someone to do something. It’s a beautiful thing.

[01:30:36] Yeah, it’s a beautiful dude. Thank you, Payman. Thank you.

[01:30:40] We’re going to end it. We end it in the in the same way every time. And it’s weird because we’ve spoken for over an hour and a half and we still haven’t even talked about your current practise. But you told me everything you needed to tell me that the nurse is looking forward to coming to work, and that’s the best sign you can ever have. Exactly. So we’ve got two final questions. Prav final question in mind. First, obviously, perhaps final question. You’re on your deathbed. You’ve got your nearest and dearest all around you. What a three bits of advice you’d leave them, o

[01:31:18] Prav, what a difficult question. No one always have time for people, especially people you care for. Not family, first family, always first parents, first siblings, first, then your nearest and dearest friends, but then sometimes nearest and dearest friends become family, don’t they? Payman they become like family. So always have time. Always have empathy. Try and be. If I was on death bed and my children were there, I’d say Be organised, be organised. I want to leave that legacy behind because organisation is what helped me, you know, being organised. I have books. I have diaries. I have, you know, if I show you, I have every year I have a book. Yeah, and I write everything in here for my trips. I plan ahead, you know, and I’ve learnt this. It’s not. I haven’t been born with it. I’ve watched people who do it and it’s helped me. The other thing is always the people who help you give them the credit for it. Ok. Don’t take the pie and eat it yourself, OK? Because Payman Langroudi didn’t become Payman Langroudi on his own. Nick Lugo didn’t become Nicole to go on her own. You know, we all have a story. We all have a journey. And when you actually say that that you appreciate and you give credit to people who help you, you actually get respected more and you get to higher places and you will achieve your dreams. Why? Because people then want to come and help you because they know Nicola go Payman Langroudi will credit them for their hard work. Not going to choose them and throw them away. And I think, and I hope that people who have been in my life, they feel that I am like that and I don’t, you know, use them or abuse them. And I am giving them credit for all the hard work they do for me. And I appreciate it.

[01:33:24] That’s lovely. And my final question? Fantasy dinner party, oh, three guests. That’s our life. And would you pick?

[01:33:40] Oh, God. Dinner party, fantasy, dinner party. Oh my God, your questions are so deep, guys. Um? I will pick. Ok. Does it have to be family or it can be friends, it can be anyone, know anyone.

[01:33:57] It can be. Jesus, Einstein and your dad.

[01:34:00] Ok, I would like to pick King Pahlavi on our king, which we lost. So if you’re on Shah of Iran, I want to see what was going through his head. And I want to. I want to. I want to spend time with him. Yeah, yeah. I spent I love my dad, I miss him, I spent a lot of time with him and I know everything about him, everything, everything, so I will pick the people who I want to know more from. I like Obama. Obama and his wife make a lot of sense, and I’ve read their books and they make a lot of sense. So Obama, his wife and the Shah of Iran.

[01:34:43] Nice. Nice. Have you have you listened to the Obama and Bruce Springsteen podcasts?

[01:34:49] No, not yet, but I want to.

[01:34:51] It’s lovely, really. One of my favourite podcasts I’ve ever seen.

[01:34:54] It’s on Spotify.

[01:34:55] It’s only on Spotify. Only on Spotify. It’s called Born in the USA. Boy, oh wow.

[01:35:00] I listen to it.

[01:35:01] Definitely something like that. It’s called something else. It’s called something else. It’s called mavericks. Born in the USA. Some of the Mavericks born.

[01:35:08] Okay, that makes sense.

[01:35:10] So it’s been absolutely lovely to have you. It really has.

[01:35:13] It’s been my pleasure to be here with you

[01:35:15] For people who want to connect. Your book is available. Where? How can I? How can I buy the book?

[01:35:20] The book is available on Amazon on if you just Google, Amazon Dentistry in a nutshell on Amazon or search it on in the search box, you’ll find it. Also, it’s the link is on my Instagram at Dental Cosmetics, which is called double at the end, it’s on my private Instagram as well. The link and also you can also message me.

[01:35:45] So someone’s message? Your Instagram is the best place.

[01:35:47] Instagram is really good at Dental Cosmetics.

[01:35:50] Amazing.

[01:35:51] Yeah, definitely.

[01:35:53] So, so nice to have you, Nicola. What lovely, lovely stories are really, really, really inspired me.

[01:35:58] The have you’re the inspiration Payman. You’re the inspiration. Me and mom would always talk about you and actually dinner party. I want you to come as well.

[01:36:11] I’ll come instead of Mrs. Obama. Michelle.

[01:36:13] Yeah, you call yourself Michelle. Lovely to have you. Lovely to have you as well. Thank you for asking me. Payman This is Dental Leaders

[01:36:25] 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 far, you must have listened to the whole thing and just a huge thank you both from me and pay for actually sticking through and listening to what we had to say and what our guest has had to say, because I’m assuming you’ve got some value 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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